{"q_id": "2bln8r", "title": "why does it take longer to build muscle the longer you've been doing it and fat longer to burn off the less you have on you?", "selftext": "I have seen several times in fitness subs certain charts that how how much muscle you can build depending on the number of years you've been working out. It shows that you can put on less as time goes on. \n\nI've seen the same with fat loss. Apparently, it takes longer to burn off fat as your body fat % gets lower. \n\nWhy is that for both of these?\n\nEdit: I know I butchered the title of this post. It's ironic too because I consider myself a grammar nazi. This is what happens when you don't proof read your stuff, folks. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bln8r/eli5_why_does_it_take_longer_to_build_muscle_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj6irdq", "cj6is8g", "cj6iupv", "cj6jv6g", "cj6k6y6", "cj6ye5c", "cj6yr13"], "score": [2, 7, 108, 10, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Diminishing returns. The more you do something, the less of an effect you're gonna receive out of it.\nWhen initially gaining muscle, your body is doing something it isn't used to and you have a lot more room to grow. Muscle fibers aren't created, they just get bigger until they can't grow any more. \nFat is excess energy. So when you're obese, you have lots of energy that your body didn't initially need but is willing to give up. You do need fat to survive and your body does want to keep some of it.", "Not a doctor or a trainer but just someone with years of heavy weight training for sports. \n\nBasically your body is built to survive. The tasks we put it through and train for might not be the best for surviving in the wild. Having a slightly higher body fat percentage is considered good as it means food supply is abundant. Even 200-300 years ago, being overweight was considered a beauty trait as it meant you could afford enough food to over eat. \n\nBack to the original question. As the BFP goes down and your muscle weight does ups, it's much harder for your body to burn it off and build more. It does it slower. Also at a certain point, too low body fat will significantly affect athletic performance. Too low body fat may make it difficult to increase muscle weight.  ", "While it varies from person to person, there's a general sort of \"ideal\" body form that humans have evolved to favor. Back in our hunter-gatherer days, a decent amount of muscle was likely very useful for survival, and a decent amount of fat was likely handy to have just in case of tough times. \n\nBut eventually you get to a point of diminishing returns. Having enough muscle mass to be able to bench press 200 pounds might be a great trait for a hunter-gatherer human. But does increasing that muscle mass to the point where you could bench 400 pounds make you twice as good at hunting or gathering? Probably not. But all of that extra muscle mass does require more energy input in order to maintain. (You need to eat more). You get to a point where, in terms of survival in the natural world, more muscle is a bigger liability than a benefit. \n\nYour amount of body fat has similar tradeoffs. Obviously having 300 lbs of fat would make life as a hunter/gatherer difficult in a bunch of ways. But having very little fat reserves would leave you very vulnerable in times of scarce food. In terms of natural survival, there's absolutely no reason why a decently fed human body would ever want its fat percentage to drop to lower digits. \n\nWhen you're trying to get your body fat percentage really low, or bulk up your muscle mass really high, you're fighting against your body's natural inclination. You're forcing it to do things that, for the majority of human history, would reduce its chances of survival. \n\n", "For gains, you're thinking of it in percentages. Let's say you're building a Lego tower. The bigger and taller the tower becomes, the longer it seems to take to grow with the same amount of time and Legos put into it. Even if, over time, you start putting more time and Legos into it, it will be harder to see serious results when you're working with a giant Lego castle than with a small Lego house. \n\nFor losses, it's okay to think of it more in percentages. It takes a person just as long to lose 1% of their body fat if they're 300 pounds than if they're 145 pounds doing the same amount of work. If you're not thinking of it in percentages though, it would appear as though fat people are just losing much more weight, because they are!", "I look at it like this;\n\nIf you put stress on your muscles, you tear muscle fibers. In order to let your muscles repair properly you need to ingest enough proteins. Now, let's look at your example; if you bench press 200 pounds, you put a lot of stress on your muscle, causing a lot of muscle fibers to tear. You need a lot of proteins in order to restore that. Now, if you go too *400* pounds, you put even more stress on your muscle, so you need to ingest *even more* to have it repaired properly. So if you feel like the amount of muscle is not what you expected it to be, it's purely because you're not eating enough proteins to repair the damaged muscle tissue. \n\nFor losing fat, I have this philosophy:\nWhen you are exercising to lose weight, your goal is to *lose weight*. But realise that weight doesn't equal fat. You are made of much more than just fat. During exercise your body first uses any available energy source directly from your bloodstream, but once that's depleted, your body starts utilizing energy storages. Energy is stored in as well muscle as in fat. So your body is going to break down fat tissue *and* glycogen from your muscles at the same time. After this, you eat to restore energy. But don't overdo it, because then the workout would be for naught! Avoid saturated fatty acids and  go for complex carbohydrates and proteins (to restore muscle fibers and your glycogen). This way fat will barely not be restored. Now, when you come to the low body fat percentages, another part comes to play. Fat is not just ugly, it does serve a purpose. Fat keeps you warm in the winter and provides kind of like a protective layer. Your body just genetically doesn't want to lose his nice and warm soft layer so it will *actively* store fat. Even if you only ate proteins, your body can metabolize proteins to sugar and than sugars to fat.\n\nSo moral of the story; exercise is important, but **DIET IS EVERYTHING!**", "Muscle requires testosterone to sustain. You only make so much. That's why with time you will peak.\n\nContrary to popular belief, thin people burn calories at a lower rate than larger people. Your resting metabolic rate is related to weight. The more you weigh, the higher the rate. Because your rate decreases as you lose weight, it takes less calories before you start to store them as fat.", "What people are saying about fat loss seems generally incorrect. The fact is an active man needs about 15 calories per pound of body weight each day in order to maintain that weight.\n\nA moderately active 300 pound man would need 4500 calories per day. There are approximately 3500 calories in a pound of fat.\n\nIf a moderately active 300 pound man ate 2000 calories per day, that would be 1500 less than needed to maintain his weight. It would take 2.3 days to lose one pound.\n\nA moderately active 200 pound man needs 3000 calories per day to maintain his weight. If he reduced his calories by 1500 per day it would be nearly debilitating. \n\nA sedentary 200 pound man could survive on 1500 calories (perhaps) but an moderately active 200 pound man could not. \n\nIn short, a very fat person can cut out more calories per day than a slightly fat person."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48hjn0", "title": "Rules Roundtable #6: The \"No 'Poll-Type' Questions\" Rule", "selftext": "Hello everyone and welcome to the sixth installment of our [continuing series of Rules Roundtables](_URL_0_)! This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.\n\nToday's topic is addressing [the rule concerning \"No Poll-Type Questions\"](_URL_1_). So first, the rule. \n\n > \"Poll\"-type questions aren't appropriate here: \"Who was the most influential person in history?\" or \"Who was the worst general in your period?\" or \"Who are your Top 10 favourite people in history?\" If your question includes the words \"most\" or \"least\", or \"best\" or \"worst\" (or can be reworded to include these words), it's probably a \"poll\"-type question. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion - and, as such, are banned here.\n\nWhile it might seem to be pretty straightforward, I'm here to break it down, and provide some explanation as to why this rule exists, and why it is an important one!\n\n##What's wrong with those type of questions? \n\nQuestions about \"best,\" \"worst,\" \"favorite,\" \"most,\" \"least\" and the like can be great pedagogical questions, because they get to issues of historical methodology. A question such as:\n\n >  Who was the most influential person in history? \n\ncan be really useful in the classroom, because it forces us to ask a lot of questions: what is influence? how is it measured? does the nature of influence change over time? can a person from the past be more influential than modern leaders with access to nuclear weapons? is influence about military power, or the power of ideas, or the power to inspire? etc ... \n\nBut the major drawbacks of asking that type of question on this type of forum are made apparent by the above paragraph: \n\n1) the question by itself raises more questions; \n\n2) the answer to the question is largely dependent on how you frame it, as in how you answer those other questions; \n\n3) because of 1 and 2 above, there's unlikely to ever be a definitive, well-sourced historical answer to that kind of question.  \n\nBecause the goal of AskHistorians is, after all, to *answer* questions about the past, we find that allowing questions to stand that aren't answerable runs counter to that policy. Answers to questions like this are inherently opinion-based, not facts-based, and this isn't the right place for them. \n\nOn a more practical level, threads that are poll-type question threads really quickly devolve into half-baked, half-remembered answers with little to no focused discussion. And they're nightmares to moderate, and while our mod team is legion, we are all volunteers who are not unlimited in our time we have to spend on the sub. \n\n##But I really want to know why historians think some people, events, or time periods are more important than others! \n\nSomething to keep in mind about this is that we all study what we find interesting; I'm a naval historian because boats and ships fascinate me. Other people on our sub study gender, or politics, or military histories; or the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance; or areas or regions; or some mashup of the above. A lot of times that's just because it's what we think is cool, or what we became interested in through our coursework or an inspiring professor or a book we read when we were 10, and so we're leery of ranking our field in comparison to others. \n\nBut, that said, in our fields we are generally comfortable discussing what things are more influential than other things, or that are studied more than other things, and we do allow questions that ask about methodology, such as: \n\n* Lincoln is generally rated as the best president. Why do historians think this, and what criteria are they basing their arguments on? \n\n* What skills did Horatio Nelson possess that lead us to characterize him as a brilliant admiral? \n\n* Why is St. Augustine considered the most influential early Christian theologian? \n\n* Why are the Councils of Nicaea considered foundational in early church history? \n\nand so on. The basic idea is that asking how historians have ranked things will produce more insight into how history works than simply polling a group of people online. \n\n##Where can I ask a poll-type question, then? \n\nThere's always our Friday Free-for-All thread, where (almost) anything goes and which is generally lightly moderated. You might also consider posting questions of that nature on our less strictly moderated sister sub, r/history. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48hjn0/rules_roundtable_6_the_no_polltype_questions_rule/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0jqwvn"], "score": [17], "text": ["One of the forms of question that I find I struggle with quite a bit is \"What is the earliest X\". I understand that this isn't a poll-type question per se, as it may very well have a correct answer, a tentatively correct answer, or at least a well-constructed proposed answer, I feel like they are nonethless quite often somewhere between poll-like and trivia-seeking, as there is simply no way that I can conceivably know if I have the correct answer or not. So looking over the past year of such questions, for example: _URL_0_\n\n\nI can talk about early Arabic biographies of commoners. I can talk about early works of Arabic literature that are regarded as being bad. I can talk about early games in Arabic culture, but I often don't bother A: because I can typically assume that a classicist will throw out something earlier, and B: if both an Arabist and a Classicist were to answer the question about early things in our respective fields it would basically be a throughout history question, even if it wasn't precisely phrased that way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=earliest&sort=top&restrict_sr=on&t=year"]]}
{"q_id": "20wt9u", "title": "Alaska Disasters AMA: 1964 Good Friday Earthquake and 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill", "selftext": "On March 27, 1964, the second-largest earthquake in recorded history struck southern Alaska. \u201cSuddenly 114 people were killed, thousands were left homeless, more than 50,000 square miles of the state was tilted to new altitudes, and the resulting property damage disrupted the state's economy,\u201d wrote USGS geologists in a paper that followed the event.\nTwenty-five years minus three days later, the massive oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. The resulting 11 million-gallon spill is today considered one of the world\u2019s worst ecological disasters.\nThis week, Alaska is commemorating the anniversaries of two of its worst disasters with events across the state. Here today, we have a panel of experts ready to answer your questions about the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Good Friday Earthquake.\nThe panel:\n\n\u2022 **Angela Day**, doctoral candidate and author of [*Red Light to Starboard: Recalling the Exxon Valdez Disaster*](_URL_1_)\n \n\u2022 **John Cloe**, Alaska historian\n\n\u2022 **Sara Bornstein**, Alaska State Library historical collections librarian\n\n\u2022 **David P. Schwartz**, geologist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.\n\n\u2022 **Gary Fuis**, geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.\n\n\u2022 **Andrew Goldstein**, curator of collections at the [Valdez City Museum](_URL_0_)\n\n\u2022 **Cindi Preller**, tsunami program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Region\n\n\u2022 **Joel Curtis**, Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau\n\n\u2022 **Toby Sullivan**, director of the [Kodiak Maritime Museum](_URL_3_)\n\n\u2022 and **James Brooks**, editor of the Capital City Weekly newspaper and author of [*9.2: Kodiak Island and the World's Second-Largest Earthquake*](_URL_2_). \n\nPanelists will be rotating in and out throughout the day as their schedules allow. If your question isn't answered immediately -- don't worry! Someone will get to it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20wt9u/alaska_disasters_ama_1964_good_friday_earthquake/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg7gns9", "cg7gr92", "cg7gtrt", "cg7gvyb", "cg7h7b3", "cg7inbj", "cg7j7wt", "cg7n3jf", "cg7ntf7", "cg7p0z9", "cg7pl2d", "cg7r4cr"], "score": [4, 6, 10, 13, 20, 3, 7, 3, 5, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["Thanks for your time, you mention the \"second largest earthquake in recorded history\", what did this earthquake measure on the Richter scale? ", "How is the state commemorating the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Is blame assigned? I wonder if you could reflect briefly upon how the efforts to memorialize these events treat the natural event of the earthquake, which caused many deaths, versus the Exxon spill - which caused no deaths but an environmental calamity. Does the recentness of the second event alter the discourse of those involved in the commemorative activity? Do people still feel victimized?\n\nThanks for the AMA!", "Thanks for doing this AMA! \n\nAlthough Alaska is certainly part of the Pacific \"Ring of Fire,\" it doesn't spring to mind as quickly as say California when it comes to earthquake risk. A couple of questions: \n\n1) What new regulations (if any) made their way into building plans, building codes, or in general the way structures were built and/or cities were planned in Alaska in the wake of the earthquake? \n\n2) Before the Kodiak Island quake, what were some other notable quakes in Alaska's history? \n\n3) What (if any) precautions did Alaska natives take to mitigate risk from quakes? What does Alaska native lore have to say about quakes? \n\nThanks again for doing this! Any answers are appreciated. ", "The magnitude estimate is 9.2.We don't use the term Richter magnitude anymore. That was a a specific magnitude measurement from a specific instrument that is no longer in use. This magnitude is called a moment magnitude and it is based on length and width of the rupture (its area) and the average amount of slip along the rupture plane. The largest recorded event is the 1960 M9.5 Chile earthquake. Both are huge ruptures", "Prior to *Exxon Valdez*, what kinds of safety measures existed - both on the tankers as well as land based reaction  - to deal with these kinds of spills?\n\nWas the scope of the damage simply due to unpreparedness for a spill of that magnitude, or were there mistakes leading up to it and in the response that might have prevented it from reaching the levels that it did?\n\nWhat kind of reforms in the tanker business have we seen in reaction to the spill, and have they proven effective?", "Why was third mate Gregory Cousins not prosecuted for his role in the Exxon Valdez disaster?  From the research I have done, it seems like he is the person most responsible for the grounding of the ship.\n\nA few years ago a Tanker captain did an AMA and claimed that Cousins was arguing with his girlfriend(who was the lookout) and his inattention during this time lead to the grounding. \n_URL_0_\n\nIs this an accurate assessment?", "So I looked around, and I noticed that there've been a number of oil spills larger than the Exxon Valdez.  Were those comparable ecological disasters?  If not, what made the Exxon Valdez so damaging?  If so, how did their cleanup efforts compare, and do those disasters have similar levels of awareness as the Exxon Valdez in the US?\n\nThanks!\n\nedit: And a huge thank you for the comprehensive answers!", "Pictures of the Alaskan earthquake show huge fissures or cracks in the aftermath.  \n\nHow deep were the fissures in this earthquake and were there any stories of people getting swallowed or lost in these cracks?", "The 1964 earthquake is something that those who live in the mainland US don't usually hear about, other than rare, vague references. What was the impact of the change of altitude of the state, if there was one? Were there any positive results from the quake - say, an increase in regulations, a new method of detection, etc? How deeply remembered is this earthquake in Alaska, and was the public memory of the event comparable to Hurricane Katrina in the years following the quake?\n\nThanks so much for your time! :)", "Does anyone have questions on the 1964 Tsunamis? ", "How far did the oil spread? Did the spill hitched a ride on the currents and spread to Canada or Japan?", "Has there been any significant progress in changing the way oil companies operate after these disasters happened in Alaska?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.valdezmuseum.org", "http://wsupress.wsu.edu/shop/showbook.asp?id=383", "http://kodiakdailymirror.com/Book_Order_New/?cache=false", "http://www.kodiakmaritimemuseum.org"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9sszo/iama_captain_of_an_oil_tanker_amaa/c0ea0qh"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4jhnli", "title": "how can we know that we are awake ?", "selftext": "I had to change my medication a few months ago and since then, I got vivid dreams and some issues with my consciousness. I would like to know how we know we are awake or what's make us conscious that we're \"here\" when we are awake ?\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jhnli/eli5_how_can_we_know_that_we_are_awake/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d36nyrc", "d36o22h", "d36o2yn", "d36o4kl", "d36supr", "d36td63", "d36v88r"], "score": [8, 2, 23, 7, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Some advice I read when researching lucid dreaming was to look at your hands, inside a book or in the mirror. The details are supposed to be blurry and confusing. \nAnd as with everything like this, I'd ask a doctor. ", "Have you seen the TV series awake? ", "It's actually pretty simple.\n\nThe term for a check to see if you are awake or asleep is a Reality Check. Think of the spinning thing in inception, even though its much more complicated than it has to be, it's a reality check.\n\n\nMy favorite check is to pinch your nose and attempt to breathe through your nostrils. If your dreaming you're not really pinching your nose and you will feel the air flow very distinctly, if not you won't be able to breathe.\n\nDon't suffocate.", "I assume you're asking how *you* can know that you're awake, and are not asking how we know we are all awake from a biological or philosophical standpoint. With that said, there are a few ways to discern whether or not you are in a dream. I've toyed around a bit with lucid dreaming, and have gotten confused a few times.\n\n1. Look at at writing or at a clock. Note what the writing says or what time it is. Look away. Look back. If the writing is different, or the time is more than a few seconds off, you're dreaming.\n2. Trace your steps back as far as you can. In a dream \u2013 even an extremely vivid, lucid one \u2013 you get stuck at some point and can't remember anything before that. While awake, you can trace your whole day back to when you woke up in your bed, then the day before, then the week before, etc.\n3. Ask yourself if you're in a dream. Concentrate on your surroundings. Even if you're in a familiar place, is it how you remember it being? Are the physics around you the same? What about the behavior of those around you?\n4. Hold your breath for as long as you can. If you can go on without feeling the urgent demand for air, you're dreaming.\n\nIf you *are* dreaming and realize it, then you are in a [lucid dream](_URL_0_)! Go nuts, have fun, do whatever you want! In a lucid dream, you are experiencing a world your own mind has constructed. All you need in order to know if you are dreaming or not is to witness something that you know is impossible. One of the easiest ones is looking at your hands and pressing your fingers into the palm of the other hand and (in your mind) ordering them to go through. Obviously, this is impossible in reality, but you should be able to do it in a dream.", "Your brain is having a page fault so it is looking for the proper information in deep brain storage.", "Philosophically, things in reality exist whether you like or not, and behave as they want, not as you want or assume. In dreams, the lack of underlying reality will eventually show through, because no dream is perfect. This is on the condition that your mind is \"awake\" enough to be capable of such critical thinking, though.\n\n", "I have bipolar 1 with psychotic features.  Here's how I think:  if this is real, then I should try to function within the boundaries of my apparent situation.  If it is not real, I still have to function this way.  In dreams, I find that I'm generally trapped.  I choose not to do something, and then I do it anyway.  In reality, I can choose not to do something and not do it.\n\nIt's sort of like hallucinations. I see and hear things all the time.  If people are handy, I watch them before reacting.  If they don't, I assume that whatever it is, it's solely my experience.\n\nI hope this helps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "12xt91", "title": "Right Angles in Nature", "selftext": "I like keeping up on fringe theories about ancient aliens, Atlantis, conspiracy, etc.  A common assertion made by people trying to identify underwater rocks as ancient ruins or looking at fuzzy pictures of the surface of the moon or Mars is that ninety degree angles and repeating square and rectangular shapes do not occur naturally. This strikes me as utterly incorrect and just anecdotally I can remember seeing rock formations with right or near right angles and those neat cubes of fools gold.  \n\nIn your field of science, what examples of naturally formed right angles do you see?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12xt91/right_angles_in_nature/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6z1gz2", "c6z5pa6"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Wikipedia has a whole list of [cubic minerals](_URL_2_), including your [fool's gold](_URL_0_).  Also simple [salt](_URL_1_) will form cubes when it's in mineral form.", "Not right angles, but sort of in the same vein, basalt makes perfect hexagonal columns under the right conditions (these formations are known as \"columnar basalt\")\n\nCheck out this photo:  _URL_0_\n\nThose hexagons, which look like man-made paving stones, occur completely naturally.  Try a google image search for columnar basalt for lots more photos.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cubic_minerals"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giant%27s_Causeway_%2814%29.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "il49l", "title": "Why was everything so much bigger in the past?", "selftext": "Dinosaurs, bugs, plants, etc. Everything seems like it was much much bigger in past times. Why is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/il49l/why_was_everything_so_much_bigger_in_the_past/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c24nckc", "c24ng1v", "c24o3zh"], "score": [4, 24, 3], "text": ["A good question that's spawned some good previous discussions. Here's one:\n\n[Why were prehistoric animals able to grow so big?](_URL_0_)", "I'd question your premise.  Consider that both the largest animal and largest plant ever (known) to exist, exist today -- the blue whale and redwood, respectively.\n\nThere's also the fact that many of the megafauna that existed in the past existed in radically different periods, but today most of us mentally lump them together into one period of \"prehistory.\"  So it's millions and millions of years' worth of \"prehistoric\" species, versus only a few thousands of years worth of \"modern\" species.", "Big things are easier to find! Just think, digging in the soil, do I notice a fingernail-sized fossil, or one as big as my head! ;-)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iisl7/why_were_prehistoric_animals_able_to_grow_so_big/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "cb13hn", "title": "What happens to a light ray after contacting with the surface of a solar panel?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cb13hn/what_happens_to_a_light_ray_after_contacting_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["etd8ba1", "etfg37c"], "score": [4, 2], "text": ["Photovoltaic elements have two (relevant) energy regions for electrons. Light can transfer its energy to an electron, lifting it from the lower region to the upper region. With a proper cell design this leads to a current flow: an electron with a higher energy leaves on one side, an electron with a lower energy enters the cell on the other side.", "So let's start with basic atomic orbital theory, which I am going to assume you've heard of before. Electrons orbit atoms in orbitals with fixed energies. Electrons can only exist in these orbitals and energy levels, they can't at any energy in-between them. Multiple electrons cannot be at the same level (ignoring two with opposite spins), so they will start at the lowest energy and then fill there way upwards in energy levels until all the electrons are in the lowest energy levels in an atom possible. At least in the unexcited ground state. The outermost, highest energy levels filled in this ground state being called the valence electrons. You can excite an electron to a higher energy level that is not normally occupied, or give it so much energy it ionized and becomes free of the atom. You can do this by doing things like hitting it with a photon (light) of enough energy to bring it up one or more energy levels. \n\n\n\nNow the above really only applies to isolated atoms, like a gas. When you bring two atoms next to each other, the levels have to shift, as again two electrons cannot have the same level. If we have an isolated atom that has a given energy level at E energy, when two of these atoms are bound to each other this shifts to one at E+x and E-x, where x is some amount of energy, smaller than the gap between adjacent levels usually. \n\n\nNow, when you bring a lot of atoms together, billions and billions, into a bulk solid, what you get is energy bands. There's so many atoms, you get effectively continuous bands that spam a range of energies around where the isolated atom energy levels were. Electrons can take any energy they want within these bands of energy. \n\n\n\nNow all we care about is the valence bands, the highest one normally fully occupied. And the conduction bands, the band that is normally empty right above it. As the valence bands is full, electrons have no ability to easily change state and hence can't really move, that being they can't conduct. The conduction band is basically empty, so electrons in it can move, that being they can conduct. If there is no energy gap between these two bands, you have a metal that conducts. If it there is a massive gap, you have a insulator. If there's a small gap, you have a semiconductor. The gap is small enough that at room temperature enough electrons are excited into the conduction band that it can sort of conduct. Silicon is a semiconductor. \n\n\nWhen an electron leaves the valence band into the conduction, it leaves behind a missing spot in the valence band, a hole. The hole can effectively move. It \"moves\" like an empty seat \"moves\" in a row of people all jumping one seat over. It acts basically like a positive electron, contributing to conduction. It's not really a particle, it's just a bunch of electrons moving slightly, but from here on I'm going to treat it as a brand new positive quasi-particle. \n\n\nStriking silicon with a photon of enough energy to cover the bandgap pops an electron into the conduction band and leaves a hole behind in the valence band. These two drift around for a bit aimlessly, maybe moving in a net direction if an external voltage is applied. Eventually the conduction electrons falls back down, recombines with a hole (not the same one). This releases the energy and momentum back as heat. Or if the right type of semiconductor (not silicon), as a photon. I'm hinting at LEDs here. This isn't a solar panel yet though, this is just some material that becomes a slightly better conductor when you shine light at it right now. \n\n\nWhen you add certain dopant (impurity) atoms to pure silicon which have one more or one less valence electron than silicon (which has 4), it can either give away an extra electron (make a conduction electrons with no hole counterpart) or hold onto an extra electron (make a hole with no electron counterpart). Either way, all this does is just increase the conductivity a little. We call it p doped if we add an impurity that causes holes, p for positive. We call it n doped if we add an impurity that causes electrons, n for negative. \n\n\nNow for the magic of the entire modern age, what if we put a p and n doped piece of silicon right next to each other? At the junction between the two, the excess electrons on the n side diffuse to p side, recombining with some holes when they get there. The excess holes on the p side diffuse to the n side, recombining with some holes. We call this a pn-junction. This leaves some isolated dopant atoms on either side of the junction, which while contributing a hole or electron were actually neutral to start with (they had a different number or protons that caused this). They lost their hole or electron, so they are now electrically charged oppositely on either side of the junction, creating a voltage. This voltage drives current the opposite way as the diffusion, reaching an equilibrium with no net current. Diffusion and voltage driven current cancel out. But the voltage is always there. A pn-junction has a built in barrier voltage that is always present, no power necessary to have it there. \n\n\nIf you apply an external voltage against the built in voltage, it will resist it and prevent current flow. Unless of course you go to high and overcome it. If you apply a voltage that agrees with it, current happily flows by. This is a diode, a one way only electrical device. Pn-junction is a diode. Put a few of these junctions together in a certain way and you get a transistor, basis of a computer or amplifier. \n\n\nSo what if we shine light at a silicon diode? Photon creates an electron-hole pair just like before. However, if this pair happens to be created at the junction, this built in barrier voltage will push the electron one way and the hole the other way. This is a current. And not part of the equilibrium cancelling out current between the voltage and the diffusion, this is new current made from the new energy the light imparted. So light shines on a diode generates current. This is a photodiode. \n\n\nStick a bunch of large photodiodes together and you have a solar panel."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "gw3n0", "title": "Why do cats lower and raise their noses when they sniff the air?", "selftext": "My theory: They are sampling the layer of different smells that travel horizontally through thermal strata.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gw3n0/why_do_cats_lower_and_raise_their_noses_when_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1qpn9u"], "score": [3], "text": ["A guess: If cats are like humans in that they have phasic olfactory receptors they could be trying to bind the same odorant to resensitize that smell much like we do by sniffing the air to unbind odorants and bind new ones. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "fibbb8", "title": "How do we know that philosophers like Socrates or Diogenes actually existed rather than just being characters fabricated by later philosophers to teach specifics schools and ideas?", "selftext": "When studying various philosophers I find that many of their teachings come from 3rd parties years after their supposed death's. Not to mention many of their discourses and experiences (e.g. Diogenes encountering Alexander the great) can seem somewhat fantastical and fictional. It gives me an impression that these men may have not existed the way we know it but rather future philophers used these men as characters in teaching various schools of thought.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fibbb8/how_do_we_know_that_philosophers_like_socrates_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkgjbqd"], "score": [86], "text": ["Socrates himself would counsel us (via Plato\u2019s *Apology*) that \u201cwhat I do not know I do not think I know either\u201d: the point of the quote being a humility around knowledge. There are many things about Ancient Greek philosophers that we simply do not know, simply because we have a very imperfect and incomplete record of their philosophising. Many modern books have been written about the tiny, disjointed scraps of philosophy left behind by the pre-Socratic philosophers, most of which make a mountain out of a molehill. A lot of the time, our knowledge of figures like Diogenes or Thales or Anaximander is either based on a) scraps mentioned in passing by other philosophers, or b) is based on a 3rd century AD book by Diogenes Laertius which is frequently gossipy, quite credulous, and frustratingly shallow in its understanding of the philosophy.\n\nThat said, for Socrates himself, while we should be careful making claims about what we definitely know for certain, it is extremely likely that he was a real historical figure. He is caricatured in Aristophanes\u2019 play *The Clouds*, he is the central character in a large amount of dialogues written by the philosopher Plato and several dialogues written by the historian/soldier Xenophon. These all basically portray Socrates as a real historical figure who was in the habit of talking to other real  historical figures in Athens (though there is traditionally thought to be a divide in Plato\u2019s writing between the earlier dialogues that are more faithful to Plato\u2019s understanding of what Socrates argues, and the later dialogues that are more clearly Plato putting words in Socrates\u2019 mouth). \n\nPerhaps most convincing about Socrates\u2019 existence, in a funny way, is the very different Socrates characters that appear in Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. Aristophanes\u2019 caricature of Socrates is from when Socrates was still alive, and the humour in the play often fairly clearly derives from its ability to parody the kind of crap Socrates would say, as far as the average Athenian would understand. Aristophanes presents Socrates as a sophist of sorts, a glib, unworldly weirdo, and it\u2019s fair to say that a bunch of the comedy comes from tearing down a public figure, along the lines of every comedian doing Bill Clinton jokes and impersonation in the 1990s. \n\nPlato\u2019s version of Socrates is the famous one - that\u2019s where you hear Socrates say things like 'the unexamined life is not worth living\u2019 and practicing the Socratic method on unsuspecting Athenians in the agora. And it seems likely that Plato\u2019s writing about Socrates was to some extent originally motivated by trying to rehabilitate Socrates\u2019 reputation and explain what the philosopher was really about and what he really argued; Plato clearly attempted to put forth the idea that the unfair caricature of Socrates put forward by Aristophanes played a role in Socrates\u2019 trial and death.\n\nIn contrast to Plato\u2019s high philosophy Socrates, Xenophon\u2019s Socrates is portrayed quite differently, as an eminently sensible wise man of the era, with lots of useful, positive advice. But Xenophon\u2019s Socrates nonetheless meets the same fate as Plato\u2019s Socrates - the trial and death - for relatively similar reasons; the two accounts, read together, read like two different accounts of real events by people with different biases. \n\nHaving three separate writers all write about the same philosopher in quite different ways and contexts (either during his life or relatively soon after) is pretty good evidence for Socrates\u2019 existence - given how few primary sources survive from the era, we basically have more legitimate primary sources about Socrates than we have for most ancient figures.\n\nWhat we know of Diogenes of Sinope, in contrast, largely comes from Diogenes Laertius, who wrote hundreds of years later, though Plutarch relates the Alexander the Great story many years earlier than Laertius. Diogenes Laertius isn\u2019t particularly reliable - he ascribes a lot of later philosophy to Pythagoras, because Pythagoras\u2019 followers had a tendency to assume that all philosophy flowed from Pythagoras and gave him credit for plenty of stuff he never said, and Laertius wasn\u2019t enough of a critical thinker to question this. But Diogenes has access to plenty of sources we do not, and credulous as he was, he\u2019s likely reflecting ancient beliefs about the lives of eminent philosophers. The story about Diogenes meeting Alexander is likely apocryphal, meant to illustrate something about Diogenes\u2019 philosophy, but there may also just be elements of truth in Laertius\u2019 portrayal. Ultimately we have to trust Laertius on a lot - but that\u2019s the nature of doing history; we can\u2019t just say we know things because some ancient writer said it was that way. We have markedly imperfect sources of information, and we need to carefully interrogate a text...but as imperfect as Laertius is, the existence of his writing *is* something, and we can have guarded assumptions about where his account is closer to the truth and where it is telling a good story."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6kl6q0", "title": "I have heard many (some questionable) claims on the internet that during the islamic invasions of india an estimated 80 million hindus were killed by muslim invaders. Are these claims even remotely true and historical?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kl6q0/i_have_heard_many_some_questionable_claims_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djn4u72"], "score": [14], "text": ["Maybe a starting question.. for that to be true, how many people were there on the the Indian Penninsula? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8mnqkv", "title": "how does an ant not die when flicked full force by a human finger?", "selftext": "I did search for ants on here and saw all the explanations about them not taking damage when falling... but how does an ant die when flicked with full force? It seems like it would be akin to a wrecking ball vs. a car. Is it the same reasoning as the falling explanation? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mnqkv/eli5how_does_an_ant_not_die_when_flicked_full/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzp1o9g", "dzp355w", "dzp4zzl", "dzp5ft4", "dzp5wyo", "dzp61x0", "dzp6soh", "dzp7ksa", "dzp7mp0", "dzpa4o7", "dzpc19r", "dzpdqwx", "dzpf1as", "dzpvw8w", "dzq0i6l"], "score": [20, 90, 260, 20, 10001, 386, 4, 3, 12, 47, 2, 3, 13, 6, 2], "text": ["Because they're light enough to just fly away instead of being crushed by the weight. Because they fly away, they can distribute the force over a much longer period of time, making it less severe. ", "The ant doesn't have enough mass or area to absorb the energy from you flicking - the force you're pushing is extremely spread out. If you could concentrate the energy into the area of a knife blade, you would cut it. It's like hitting that car with the moon. It won't be 100% fine, but mostly the moon will just push the car.", "Instead of thinking of your finger touching the ant at velocity X, think about the ant touching your finger at the same velocity. ", "I think this can be attributed a little to the scale of the two objects. Generally if you have two structures made of the same material then the larger structure will be weaker. The materials strength doesn't change as the objects size changes. This is why it's really hard to make buildings bigger and bigger with the same steel and concrete because past a certain point the material can't hold the force. You need a stronger material. \n\nAnts people and other animals like elephants are made of \"similar\" materials but because some are larger than the others they can't always take the same forces relative to their own scale. If you drop an elephant from its own Hight it's going to do a lot more damage than if you drop a human or an ant from their own Hight. \n\nHope this correctly conveys what I'm trying to get across but it's only a partial explanation.", "Multiple reasons:\n\nThe exoskeleton of the ant distributes the force more quickly across its entire body (due to being more stiff than fluffy human tissue), protecting more vulnerable parts.\n\nThe small size makes it more resistant to blows - this is because volume (and mass) scales faster than surface area (r^3 instead of r^2). So smaller objects have a larger surface area per unit mass, which makes them move more easily even with light forces (like wind). The mass is what causes inertia (\"pushing back\" against your finger while you apply the force) and the force is distributed over its surface area. So your applied force is distributed across a relatively large (compared to its volume) surface area (leading to a relatively low pressure), while the low mass (very low, due to aforementioned scaling) makes it easy to move. This means you won't be applying your force for more than a fraction of a second before the ant is moving along with your finger, no longer receiving any significant force. Since you're not applying this force over any time (or distance), the total energy transferred into the ant is very small. This, combined with the effective armor exoskeleton, is why it's difficult to kill insects by swatting them into empty space, but if you push them against a solid object, they squash easily.\n\nTL;DR: Resistant exoskeletons and general properties of small objects make them less likely to be crushed by an outside force.\n\nTrue ELI5: It's like trying to break a balloon by punching it in midair. The punch is certainly hard enough, but the balloon just kind of gets pushed away.\n\n*edit: spelling*\n\n*edit2: added true ELI5*", "The square-cube law means that smaller objects are stronger.  Hit a car with a wrecking ball and it's crushed; hit a toy car with a ball bearing and nothing happens.  Strength scales with the square of an object's size but mass scales with the cube so the toy car might be 100 times smaller and 10 & #8239;000 times weaker, but the ball bearing weighs 1 & #8239;000 & #8239;000 times less than the wrecking ball.", "I looked up once whether an ant would survive a fall from a great height. The answer I got was that no one knows because when they took ants to great heights their bodies would explode because of the difference in air pressure so they could never test it.", "The eli5 version: same reason you're not hurt flicking yourself on the nail. Little force, lots of \"give.\"\n\nThe eli15 version: when you flick something small and nothing pushes back, the small thing is launched away. But it's not the fall that kills, it's the force of impact - specifically when one part of the body accelerates relative to another. Otherwise standing in gravity would be lethal.\n\nYour flick might detach a few legs, but the relative force is tiny. The exoskeleton won't buckle just because your fingertip became \"down\" to the ant for a bit.\n\nCompare to when you flick it up against a wall and squeeze. That *is* lethal because the ant can't \"give\" and be launched off.", "Most of the energy of the flick goes directly into acceleration of his body.   If you restrained him against a wall or the ground, the same flick would probably kill him.", "Because they are light. So they are easily moved instead of deformed. If you flick against the ground they will get squeezed and die, but if you just flick them in the air, most of your force is directly translated into movement, which is not dangerous.", "It has to do with how forces scale up and down with size and mass. If you attempt to hammer a nail, while grasping the hammer at the top, it's very hard to put any force in it, because you have less leverage and therefor less force. Also trying to hammer a nail with a feather doesn't work even if you grasp it at the bottom because the mass is lower, it's hard to put any energy into it. It would also be hard to hammer a nail, even with a big heavy hammer, if you held onto the piece of wood in your hand, so that every time you struck the nail, your arm absorbed the energy instead of the nail. IE if something can move to absorb energy, then you can't deliver the full blow of energy into it and drive the nail home, because you just push it out of the way instead of hammer into it. \n\nAnts are both small, so their limbs, bodies, head, etc cannot have much leverage or twisting, bending, force applied against them, and they are very light, like the feather, so they can be flicked, or fall long distances without building up enough inertia to cause damage. \n\nThe longer something is, like your legs, or arms, the more force can be applied to it. For instance if you fall off a 2 story building, your limbs striking the ground can put a lot of force on your joints, breaking bones. If you had stubs, those stubs would suffer less damage than the rest of your body because the force of striking the ground would put less force on the stubs than a long limb. \n\nAnd the more massive something is, the more potential energy it can develop which results in a greater force when falling and hitting something. Higher mass also results in more inertia, meaning it takes longer for the object to accelerate or more force to make it accelerate at the same rate as a lighter object. \n\nFor comparison, imagine punching a punching bag, versus punching a feather. The punching bag has mass and when you strike it, it resists moving, which allows the force of your punch to be delivered into the bag. But when you punch a feather, it has such low mass that instead of absorbing the energy of your punch, it simply gets moved out of the way by it. \n\n", "Its' the same as when falling.\n\nbeing flicked is just a sudden acceleration, like falling and hitting the ground.\n\nTheir low mass and rigid exoskeleton save them.", "Ants have other problems, of course. It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day, that you realise how often they spontaneously combust.", "When I was a child, I had an Estes model rocket that featured a transparent payload area, that the instructions warned me not to put live critters in.\n\nOf course I was sorely tempted, but I did have a conscience. So I used a Fire Ant, because Fuck Fire Ants.\n\nI can assure you, there are G-forces that ants cannot survive.", "Also consider that humans and animals without exo-skeletons don\u2019t necessarily die right away, but take a while to die from the scrambling or squashing of their internal organs. There are lots of examples of people who got injured, got transported to the hospital and then died. I\u2019ve seen animals get hit by fast-moving cars and then run off like they were being chased by the devil. Most likely their internal organs got damaged beyond repair and/or scrambled up like an egg yolk in a raw egg, and they ran off until their adrenaline wore off and eventually died. Also, some people \u2018thump\u2019 harder than others. I once thumped my adult sister in the head with my finger because of something she said about my then infant son as a joke. She ended up with a very bad headache. The final point to this long, drawn-out comment is that maybe we don\u2019t know if the poor, innocent ant crawls off and then dies from the injuries sustained from the vicious attack by the cold, heartless, pile of filthy hatred that goes around thumping ants."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "yzrnp", "title": "my parent's mentality: \"obamacare takes my money and gives it to welfare ridin', foodstamp collectin' dead beats who don't work. i hate it!\" are they missing the point or is this a fair view?", "selftext": "How can one couter argue this point? I don't want a link to the ELI5 talking about Obama care in general. I want to learn more about the specific topic of tax dollars going to those who don't work and abuse the system. \n\nThey think ObamaCare covers too many people and should be narrowed down to suit those that need it. I don't understand enough of this stuff to form my own opinion. Help me ELI5!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yzrnp/my_parents_mentality_obamacare_takes_my_money_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c608ivw", "c608j3q", "c608rxc", "c60a71j", "c60aqx4", "c60b34s", "c60cxqj", "c60epgv", "c60eqgr", "c60sj8i"], "score": [19, 58, 27, 2, 3, 9, 9, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Well, there are a number of social assistance programs. Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, etc. The biggest of these were set up in the 30's during the Great Depression. It was Roosevelt's New Deal. So, it's not like President Obama created those. Obamacare was called by many as the completion of the New Deal. It fills in the last missing piece, (nearly) universal health care.\n\nI think the simplest justification comes down to this. Are we a nation that lets its poorest citizens die because they can't afford health care? If not, then we all need to chip in to help.", "That is just how governments work.\n\nI don't drive, but my tax money goes to build roads for people who do.\nI don't have children but my tax money still goes to public schools.\nI've never had a house fire but my tax money is still used to fund fire departments.\n\nHealthcare funding is no different.\n\nIt's also a bit of a fallacy to assume everyone who is unemployed is a deadbeat slacker. Some people are simply unable to find sustainable work, despite trying their hardest whether it be due to a disability or simply bad luck. I currently have a great job and a comfortable salary, but I was unemployed for a long time after college because I simply didn't get any calls back, no matter how many places I applied or how hard I worked to polish my resume.", "This is a fair view. If you have no money and no insurance, under Obamacare you will get some care. This care will be paid for by your parents' tax dollars.\n\nThat said, this is:\n\n* a) Already true. Homeless, pennyless folks can walk into an emergency room and receive care for their major injuries/illnesses, and your parents are gonna pay for that.\n* b) Cheaper. Homeless, pennyless deadbeats can get PREVENTATIVE care for free under Obamacare, and that care is way cheaper than fixing the problem later when it's about to kill them and they come into the emergency room.\n* c) Gonna help your parents. Maybe, god forbid, your Dad gets cancer. The stress makes him do worse at work and he's fired. He is uninsurable. Nobody would cover him, since he has cancer, a pre-existing condition if there ever was one. Under Obamacare, he can (and in fact is required to) still be insured. Without Obamacare, he'll be required to make a decision between using all of his savings and mortgaging his house to try to save his own life vs. just dying and leaving money for his family.", "This is an honest view.  What it means is that they value 'fairness' more than they value 'care' for everyone.  It means they are willing to let people who they perceive to be freeloaders suffer and even die.  It's not illogical at that level, though clearly it does display an enormous amount of ignorance about who is benefitting from ObamaCare, but mostly it is unfortunate for anyone who needs that help, and what's more unfortunate, is that most Republicans share this view.  For more on this, look up Jonathan Haidt, who I generally think is an idiot, but has collected some great data.", "Huh, I'll be the first person to say \"Not really\", and I'm Republican who strongly oppose Obamacare.  \n\nThe \"my money\" part of your parents statement doesn't work.  Very little money is being reallocated from your parents taxes to the poor as a result of Obamacare.  Obamacare is paid for in two major ways, and a lot of minor ways.  The major ways are cuts to Medicare, and taxes on the rich.  The minor ways are increasing the burden on states via Medicaid (Supreme Court undid some of this, saying it can't be forced on states), increasing taxes in a few areas like tanning beds, and making some people pay more in taxes by decreasing flexible spending caps.  \n\nIf your parents were very rich, they have a point.  If they are Medicare recipients, they sort of have a point, but their point would be saying \"Some of our future planned entitlement money is being used as an entitlement for another group.\"  Overall, for the average American, Obamacare doesn't shift much money around from what they pay or to where it goes.  ", "Some unemployed people are deadbeats.  Other are honest people who just can't find a job because of the recession.  And of course, there's no way to tell which is which.\n\nSo the question is this: do we take care of unemployed people?  If we don't, then we're letting honest unemployed people - people who are genuinely trying to find a job - we're saying they don't deserve health care if they get sick.  We're saying that they're so worthless that if they get sick, they should literally *die*.\n\nIs that really what we've come to as a society, to say that if you're between jobs, then you're a worthless human being who deserves to die of an untreated sickness?\n\nI find that view repugnant.\n", "This is already true. Your parents live in a fantasy world where they don't already pay for other people's healthcare. If \"foodstamp collectin' dead beats\" can't afford a visit to a doctor they can just walk into an ER and skip out on the bill instead. They'll potentially have bill collectors after them but if they are genuinely poor little will be gained by that. People who can and do pay their medical bills pay more to make up for those people.\n\nThe key point to note is that ER care is the most expensive possible way someone like that could receive treatment. A doctor's visit may only be around $200 to treat a common ailment, but given the person was unable or unwilling to pay they just cost us all a $2,000 ER visit.\n\n**tl;dr** Your parents can either pay the \"dead beats'\" $2,000 ER bill (no ObamaCare) or pay the \"dead beats'\" $200 doctor bill (ObamaCare). The third option where they don't pay either is a figment of their imagination.", "You know, I steer clear of US Politics threads for the most part, because I'm not American.\n\nBut this one particular issue is one that baffles me. I don't understand why it is such a big deal in the USA. Yes, government tax revenue pays for healthcare. The rest of us in the first world have been doing this for decades.\n\nAsk whether Government should provide free schooling for those same freeloading poor people? And free roads too for those too poor to use private toll roads?\n\nSome people will always pay for private schools and Hospitals etc, but that doesn't mean free options shouldn't exist also.\n\nFor the record, I am an Australian with private health insurance. I have never used it beyond dental and optical. The last time I was at hospital, I went public.", "It would've been far easier for my family; single mom raising three kids and going to collage, we lived off food stamps. When I moved to Phoenix around 2010 I couldn't find work anywhere I had to get food stamps as I was down to plain pasta noodles for meals and donating plasma to pay rent. Luckily I've found work but in this day and age losing your job is serious as it's fucking hard to get another.  Without these social assistance a lot of people who lost their jobs during the financial collapse would have also lost their lives.  ", "An economist would say healthcare has a [positive externality](_URL_0_). You can look at it like this:\n\n* The amount a person buys of a good (eg doctor visits) is based on how many they want and how much they can afford. This is referred to as the **private benefit**.\n\n* There are some things you can buy that make everyone better off. For example: going to the doctor every time you are sick will make you less likely to make other people sick. This is referred to as a **public benefit**.\n\n* Because only the private benefit is taken into account when someone is buying something, people buy less of a good than is **socially optimal** (private benefit + public benefit)\n\n* Governments give money to people so that they will buy more of these goods in order to make everyone else feel better (ie get closer to the socially optimal amount of consumption).\n\nPositive/Negative externalities are the driving force behind a lot of government policy.\n\nEdit: Formatting"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Positive"]]}
{"q_id": "6vyxzk", "title": "This came across my desk. Can anybody interpret this?", "selftext": "I work at a museum in northern Sweden and these five photographs came across my desk. The photos are from a log house in Randijaur (northern Sweden). The area has been habited since 1690, although the building is more recent (perhaps 1844 as one of the photos says). From what I can understand some of this is in Russian, which I do not speak. Can anybody help me interpret this?\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6vyxzk/this_came_across_my_desk_can_anybody_interpret/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm4dv9q"], "score": [14], "text": ["The Russian bit appears to use the letter R instead of \u0420, so I'm guessing it's not a native speaker. Seems to say *\u0406\u0412\u0415\u042c\u0420\u0422 \u041c\u041a\u0418\u042c\u041d\u0412\u041e\u042c*, using the old letter *\u0406* which was eliminated in 1917. It's probably a rendition of a Swedish name in Cyrillic:\n\n\"Ivert McInvo\", maybe. I know Ivert is a Swedish or Norwegian name but I'm not confident about that last name. As a Swede, maybe you can figure out what the last name is supposed to be."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://imgur.com/a/zZYFw"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3i5it4", "title": "given that 8% of men are color blind, why did we decide to use red and green for so many important signals? (i.e. traffic light", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i5it4/eli5_given_that_8_of_men_are_color_blind_why_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cudhils", "cudhw15", "cudii02", "cudnv73", "cudq0we", "cudw9sv"], "score": [6, 19, 76, 4, 7, 4], "text": ["Because back when those decisions were made, anyone different than the norm was shunned and hidden away and not considered ", "I'm not colourblind so this is just speculation, but given the separation  in the lights on a box of traffic lights, wouldn't it just be a case of watching for the bottom light to turn on?", "Nowadays, traffic lights are red with a hint of orange and green with a hint of blue, so that red/green colorblind people can distinguish clearly. ", "Because when these decisions were made, no one envisioned a world where we were had remade cities and landscapes such that we became dependant on automobiles, rather than freed by them.\n\nWe have created a nightmare scenario where the simplest errand, going to a store for food, something the young, the old, and the lame have managed since settled civilizations began, now requires $10,000 sunk capital, lightning reflexes, perfect eyesight, and a willingness to risk death every time you leave your home.  In the past, the elderly, disabled, young, or colourblind would make it, even if they had to limp or stumbled.  Now they are rendered helpless and immobile.", "I'm color blind, but can clearly see the difference between red and green signals. The problem comes where you have two colors that are similar shades. For example, I have problems with yellows and greens of a similar shade", "Here's a response /u/whind_soull posted in TIL that covered this: _URL_0_\n\n > Since we're already on the topic, the terms port (left) and starboard (right) are packed full of TILness.\n\n > Ships used to have their rudders afixed to the right side, and this was the side they steered from. 'Starboard' is a corruption of 'steorbord' or 'steer-board.' In fact, the word 'steer' comes from the Old Norse 'st\u00fdri' meaning rudder.\n\n > When pulling into port, ships approached with the land on their left side to avoid damaging the rudder. This is why that side is called 'port side.' It was originally called 'larboard,' derived from 'load-board' (the side you load cargo on), but they decided that the term sounded too similar to 'starboard' and changed it.\n\n > **When two ships crossed paths, the one on the right side had the right-of-way (hence the name). Since ships often passed in the dark of night, they needed a way to determine the location and orientation of other vessels. So, they afixed a red light to left (port) side and a green light to the right (starboard) side.**\n\n > **If the red light of the other ship was visible, it meant that their left side was facing you, thus they were on the right, and that you should yield to them. If their green light was visible, then you were the one with the right-of-way. This is where we get our modern traffic signal colors: red means stop and green means go. This same color system is still used today on aircraft--look next time you see one\u00a0fly over at night.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3hqw6t/til_that_at_midnight_on_dec_30th_1899_a_ship/cu9xpr6"]]}
{"q_id": "16w1fk", "title": "Double chicken egg, what went wrong?", "selftext": "A man cracks open an oversized Chicken egg to find another, smaller, egg inside: _URL_0_\n\nIt would be great if someone could describe what caused this bizarre double egg. Could any of the embryos survive (if the ovum was fertilised)? I believe it is called 'ovum in ovo' and is much rarer than a double-yolker. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16w1fk/double_chicken_egg_what_went_wrong/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7zzjgo"], "score": [3], "text": ["A bit down in the comment thread that you linked was [this comment thread](_URL_1_) where someone linked to [this video](_URL_0_) from New Scientist featuring a Natural History Museum curator explaining the phenomenon. He says (only in a lovely British accent):\n\n > What generally happens is that as the egg is developing and being pushed down the oviduct, a series of abnormal contractions can occur which can push a developing egg back up the oviduct, and what happens is that one egg can be surrounded by another egg.\n\nEdit: This doesn't answer your question about whether either embryo could survive, though. I don't want to speculate as I'm not an expert (though I definitely have my guesses here) - would love to hear someone more knowledgable weigh in."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16vnw3/6_ounce_egg_what_could_possibly_be_inside/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrBTg8YANYE", "http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16vnw3/6_ounce_egg_what_could_possibly_be_inside/c7zvjib"]]}
{"q_id": "4bmzp5", "title": "how does drinking alcohol affect your ability to lose weight?", "selftext": "I eat well, exercise fairly regularly, but also drink fairly regularly.  Vodka and tequila mostly, not beer.  \n\n  I know alcohol tends to slow your ability to lose weight, but how, exactly?  And why?   Thank you for your responses", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bmzp5/eli5_how_does_drinking_alcohol_affect_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1akkub", "d1aklms", "d1aks8e", "d1aktr4", "d1al7pg", "d1aljal", "d1anym9", "d1b1aok"], "score": [2, 33, 44, 7, 7, 11, 5, 2], "text": ["A shot of tequila has 70 calories (\u00b1 10 depending on the proof).  That the same as 5 teaspoons of sugar.  That's why it makes it hard to lose weight, it takes 20 minutes of workout to burn off each shot.", "You know how you can set alcohol on fire?  \nWe'll your body certainly knows how to burn alcohol for fuel.  \nAn average pint of beer contains 180 calories.   \nAn average glass of wine conaines 150 calories.  \nOne shot of 80 proof vodka contains 97 calories.  \nFor comparison a can of Coke contains 161 calories.", "Alcohol itself is extremely calorically dense. Doesn't really matter whether you're drinking a light beer or shots, alcohol itself has plenty of calories. Just think of every three shots as eating a mcdouble, with even less nutritional value. ", "Aside from your drunk munchies and late night Taco Bell visits when you're drunk, the things that alcohol actually does to your body might surprise you.  Spirits rarely have the calories and nutrition facts on the bottle because people generally don't really care that much but alcohol itself, provides 7 calories per gram.  Alcohol is very basic in your body, your body breaks down the calories from alcohol first.  In the same way that lots of carbs can keep you from losing fat because your body breaks down carbs first, it breaks down alcohol before fat so all the time you spend eating well during the day goes down the drain when your body is burning the empty alcohol calories that night.  On top of this, it's related to your liver.  Your liver is responsible for the processing of fats in your body and breaking them down for energy.  However, it's also concerned with the toxins in your body (alcohol is one of these) and can't break down the fats if it's too busy breaking down the alcohol.  \n\n\n\n\nOn top of the damage caused by alcohol to your body, the ways it affects weight loss are basically due to being an empty calories blocking your body from processing and breaking down fats and other sources of calories so they ultimately get stored in your body.", "Well, you lose weight when you burn more calories than you take in.   Alcohol has a ton of calories, so you need to either exercise a shitload more or eat less.  \n\nFor example, let's say you had a six pack of Dos Equis.   That's 780 calories, so you need to either walk or run almost 8 miles, or eat 780 calories less to maintain the same weight.\n\nStraight liquor has a little less calories.  You could drink bourbon and water or vodka with diet tonic to get less calories.  Anything with coke, tonic, etc. makes it almost twice as caloric.", "While your liver is processing alcohol, it isn't processing fat.\n\nYou are effectively \"stopping\" weight loss while you drink.", "It's not so much the alcohol as it is the net calories you have per day.  If you eat the same amount of calories as you burn per day, the net is zero and your weight stays the same.  If you eat (or drink) more calories then you burn, you will start to gain weight.  If you eat (or drink) less then you burn, you start to lose weight.  So unless you track every calorie consumed, then you don't really know your caloric intake and even though you eat \"well\" you still can be consuming a lot of calories.  I have lost 25 lbs since January because I track every calorie I eat and keep it under my calorie goal.  My diet includes a lot of beer, but I keep it lower calorie like becks 64, guiness, etc.  ", "There is only one factor when it comes to losing weight and that's calories. Calories is a measure of energy in food. If you consume food with more calories than your body is using up through exercise and baseline use, then the excess energy is stored as fat.\n\nAlcoholic drinks tend to contain a lot of calories as alcohol is calorie dense so drinking them may cause you to exceed your daily limit. Other than that, there is nothing wrong with alcohol for weight loss specifically (though your liver won't thank you) as long as you stick within your calorie limit overall."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3b7qwh", "title": "why do we need legal recognition of marriage? what will be the result if state stops recognizing all marriages?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b7qwh/eli5_why_do_we_need_legal_recognition_of_marriage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csjm6j0", "csjm6or", "csjm8ti", "csjozwu"], "score": [23, 13, 9, 2], "text": ["Marriage is a legal contract between two people regarding property rights, debts, affairs of the spouse should the spouse become incapacitated and guardianship of children.  Marriage laws are necessary to manage how these are played out in a jurisdiction.", "Marriage is a very special form of contract between people that grants extended rights and privileges between the married couple.\n\nIf the state stopped recognizing marriages, it would be very difficult to handle issues involving children, medical visitation, power of attorney, probate, etc as the spousal relationship defines a de facto set of rights in these types of disputes.", "A lot of laws are set up so that marriage is important. \n\nDivorce law sets a legal protection so that the stuff married people own is split up fairly. \n\nTaxes are set up so married people are taxed differently.\n\nA lot of laws would need to be changed if states stopped recognizing marriages. ", "Many people of a libertarian bent propose doing exactly.  Let people enter into private contracts that confer property and other rights to each others, and leave the gov't out of it.\n\nHowever, as a matter of public policy, marriage is necessary to protect spouses who forgo their careers to maintain a household and/or raise children."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kiimr", "title": "I bought an led light to use while biking. It has regular and blinking mode. Will the battery last twice as long if it is 'blink' mode?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kiimr/i_bought_an_led_light_to_use_while_biking_it_has/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2kjcj6", "c2kjcj6"], "score": [6, 6], "text": ["Batteries are complicated nonlinear things. In general though, if you have a light blinking at a 50% duty cycle, the batteries will last _more_ than twice as long (if the brightness is the same in both styles).\n\nYou get a little bit more out of the chemicals inside if you give them a bit of time to rest. How much more depends on many things.", "Batteries are complicated nonlinear things. In general though, if you have a light blinking at a 50% duty cycle, the batteries will last _more_ than twice as long (if the brightness is the same in both styles).\n\nYou get a little bit more out of the chemicals inside if you give them a bit of time to rest. How much more depends on many things."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2gdy47", "title": "what is the difference between a nazi, and a neo-nazi?", "selftext": "Always have wondered this!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gdy47/eli5what_is_the_difference_between_a_nazi_and_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cki5n2d", "cki5psh", "cki5s6o", "cki61pi", "cki6g3l", "cki6j7w", "cki6uzh", "cki7aop", "cki7qmu", "cki7u0m", "ckia383", "ckibzye", "ckiexy4", "ckiflat", "ckihx6g", "ckikxhc"], "score": [150, 41, 14, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 39, 2, 5, 3, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["A Nazi lives in 1930s-40s Germany.  A Neo-Nazi lives now.", "Well, the nazis were members of Hitler's political party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Neo-nazis are people of later times following those old ideas of Hitler\u00b4s.", "Neo is Ancient Greek for new (so \"new-nazis\").  That's how I remember it.", "Nazis wear Hugo Boss uniforms, caery lugers, and murder Jews, Romanians, amd homosexuals.\n\nNeo-Nazis wear Ray-bans and black leather, carry tec-9s, and murder everyone.", "Era in which they live.", "A true Nazi would have an actual functioning Nazi party to be a member of -- yep, you'd have to sign up and be approved.  Probably hasn't been a true Nazi party since 1945 or so...\n\nedit:  used the word \"actual\" twice and today's apparently not a good day to do that on reddit...", "Neo-Nazi's (new Nazi's) are anyone who follows Nazism since the fall of the Third Reich (the Nazi party during WW2).", "It's like wearing those parachute pants.  It was cool back in the day, now it's just obnoxious.  \n", "FYI the prefix \"Neo\" means new, you'll see it used in a lot of contexts that have nothing to do with Nazism. For example, the Renaissance is sometimes called the Neoclassical period, since a lot of art, science, and culture from the Greco Roman (classical) era were revived during that time.", "I'm assuming you're talking about ideological differences.  A large part of Nazi ideology was ensuring the prosperity of the German people.  Because, obviously, many Neo-Nazis are not German, the idea is more extended into ensuring the prosperity and supremacy of white people in general.  Additionally, Neo-Nazis are less focused on jews as a target than foreigners and immigrants in general.  \n\nSo basically, they just differ by historical context like everyone else is saying.  Besides, it's not like Neo-Nazis are really focused on ideology; they're just general white supremacists for the most part, with a side of holocaust denial and symbols taken from Hitler.", "Neo = new", "This isn't going to be popular maybe.\n\nFascism + Racism = Nazi. Believe it or not, the original fascists were not racists. Mussolini had jewish people in his organisation, it was only to please Hitler that he added racism. \n\nSo  a Nazi was from those days, Hitler's.\n\nA neo-Nazi is a racist fascist who may or may not be a holocaust denier. And is frequently dumb.", "The word Nazi is an insult to one and a compliment to the other.", "One has that new-Nazi smell.", "One can be played by anyone, the other can only be played by Keanu Reeves.", "A Neo-Nazi is a racist who lives in the Matrix"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q0tai", "title": "What is the best guess for the actual death toll of the so-called \"Great Leap Forward\" and how much are Mao and communists responsible?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q0tai/what_is_the_best_guess_for_the_actual_death_toll/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd829d9"], "score": [53], "text": ["TL;DR Actual death toll used here: 46million. Blame - if you take one top party member's estimate using the 46 number = 32 million. My take= Upper 30s??\n\nIt's an often-argued statistic, and one that's really hard to calculate. The death toll mostly comes from the resulting famine, but estimates for violent deaths have exceeded two million. \n\nLet's start with the famine resulting from the \"Great Leap Forward.\" I'll mostly be drawing from Frank Dikotter (the Author of Mao's Great Famine) from the passages I read from the book but mostly through his 2010 op-ed in the NYT. He cites estimates that are drawn from census demographics that put the number between 20-30million. His research revolves more on recently opened archives from the period, including official correspondence to the upper echelons of the party from provinces throughout China. He concludes that at least 42 million people died in the famine. \n\nIt's impossible to say how many of these people died precisely due to Mao and the communist party's express will, but the evidence suggests you can lay the vast majority at their feet. Dittoker, going off his research, writes that \"food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party.\" \n \nAt the same time that this use of distribution was used as measure of reward/punishment, the famine was also definitely a result of the policies put in place by the ruling party. The vast population transfers didn't help the situation by moving experienced agricultural workers into industry, nor did the various large public works projects. Citing Dikotter's book, Wiki claims that the irrigation projects alone contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of workers. \n\nDikotter's final tally of the Great Leap Forward's casualty estimates put the number at 46 million at least. This includes the famine, violent deaths, related public works deaths, as well as his suicide estimates (though as I haven't read that part of his book, I'm not sure where those came from/could have come from) \n\nSo how much of this could be directly attributable to Mao and his policies? Probably a great deal. Wiki quotes the President of the PRC at the time, Liu Shaoqui, as saying \"The economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% human error.\" Aside from the change in demographic agricultural landscape, natural disasters such as droughts, flooding, typhoons and agricultural diseases have been given. (see Ashton) Another one is a cut-off of exports and deals with the Soviet Union, but that isn't as widely believed, at least according to Dittoker.  \n\nThe way Dittoker paints the picture of the Great Leap Forward puts the blame almost squarely on Mao's shoulders. I'd suggest that of his 46 million total, more than Shaoqui's 70% can be laid squarely at the hands of the government. \n\nSorry that's not really that exact of a number, but it's really, really hard to say. Based on what I've read my guess would be somewhere in the upper 30s, with the scale of the famine, not withstanding the inadequate response, spiraling well out of control. \n\nSources: \n_URL_1_\n\nDittoker, Frank. *Mao's Great Famine* - passages from memory\n\nAshton, Hill, Piazza, and Zeitz. *Famine in China* - verifying the Wiki quote\n\nWiki Article  _URL_0_ \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Famine_and_mortality_in_China", "http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html"]]}
{"q_id": "87ihiu", "title": "Are there any landforms that exist in theory, but of which there no current examples on Earth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/87ihiu/are_there_any_landforms_that_exist_in_theory_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwdsuyh", "dwe5f2y"], "score": [17, 16], "text": ["Pancake domes. These exist on Venus, formed by eruption of very viscous magma. On Earth such magma causes an explosive eruption as gas bubbles form and cannot escape; only under Venus's atmospheric pressure can it erupt non-explosively.", "The [Deccan Traps](_URL_1_) and other similar instances from earth's history would have been unlike anything today: essentially just a huge volcanically active area.\n\nThe [Gabon nuclear reactor](_URL_0_) was a natural nuclear reactor from a couple billion years ago\n\nDuring the Eocene the arctic ocean was [enclosed and periodically covered with fresh water](_URL_2_) over a layer of anoxic saltwater...it was also tropical.  Imagine a polar ocean, with turtles and alligators and lots of floating water plants, light half the year, dark half the year.  Really, any warm polar region fits the bill, but that was particularly weird.\n\nThe Mediterranean was likewise almost dry and closed off from the oceans, forming a sort of immense desert below sea level.  And when the seas rose there was a saltwater waterfall for hundreds of years.\n\nI'm not aware of any examples on earth, but in theory you could have a situation where landforms push _above_ the snowline, so the tops of mountains are actually bare of precipitation and the snow forms a halo at lower altitude.  Can't get mountains that tall on Earth, though.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps", "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7031410_Episodic_fresh_surface_waters_in_the_Eocene_Arctic_Ocean"]]}
{"q_id": "4votga", "title": "how are the programmers in big companies like apple, microsoft or google able to all stay on the same page with such large projects?", "selftext": "For instance how are they able to maintain such large code bases and ultimately achieve their goal of finishing super large projects like OS releases and such?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4votga/eli5_how_are_the_programmers_in_big_companies/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d605uw5", "d6068yv", "d60a7y4", "d60da6a", "d60gs1j", "d60p4ej", "d60pe5c", "d60pt76", "d60qafu", "d60rmod"], "score": [52, 38, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Split it in many pieces that are as independent as possible (and if you do it wrong, you can screw up massively in this step before any line of code is written). There is no way to know everything in detail in a modern operating system, or any other large software project. It is not necessary - most lines of code are for some specific function, and independent of other functions. If you program some user interface in a random system tool, you do not have to know how the operating system handles its files, for example. Even if you have to access files, you do not have to know how those are handled: the code for file handling gives you functions like \"list all files in this folder\" which you can call - and you don't care about the code that actually produces this list.", "/u/mfb- and /u/slash178 are correct.\n\nI'll add that in large code bases, at least some of the \"bugs\" encountered stem from mistakes in code management.\n\nSomeone will change one \"module\" of code not knowing it touches another module of code, it can result in errors when the code is run.  Often, these errors or \"bugs\" don't come to light until the code is in production.\n\nIn my experience (27 years in IT), documentation is poor or non-existent.  If the last programmer who touched the code didn't do a good job of in-line (in the code itself) documentation, then the next programmer who touches it either needs to read and understand every bit of the module they are changing or risk introducing bugs.", "One thing that helps are Moduls and interfaces.\n\nImagine it like this:\n\nYou are building a machine, for that you need electricity.\nNow you don't have to know much about how the electricity net works. The only thing you have to know is how to connect to it.\n\nWhen building a software thats also what you do. You build your own thing, with inputs and outputs. You define in what form these inputs and outputs are.\n\nSomeone else doesn't need to know how your software works inside, he knows if he programms something and gives data in specific parameters to you, he will get some back in a specific form.\n\nThen he can build his system independent from yours.\n\n\nThis takes a lot of planning beforehand, you need to split your big project into these modules, you have to decide what becomes a module. You need to make models and architectures and documents and plans :D\n\n\nBesides that: Documentation and Comments.\nIf someone else wants to change an old module, he has to understand it. To understand it, the person who made it has to explain everything (and follow for example naming conventions).\n\nIf that is lacking, it would be more effective to scrap the whole thing and make it new.", "Documentation, testing, and modularity of code.\n\nAlthough the exact process will vary from company to company, in most cases the requirements of the code, i.e. \"Class X will have method Y, which takes input A and returns Z\", are going to be written out before any code is even written.\n\nThis in turns allows teams to work on different parts of the project and know that they'll still function when put together. Say class X needs to use a method from class Y. Even if Y hasn't been made yet, because of the documentation a team can still code X while assuming Y works in a particular way.\n\nA common misconception is that testing, unit testing in particular, is about finding bugs in the code. In reality, testing is an important way to make sure that code actually adheres to the requirements. If X is supposed to return Z, then you make sure to test that every single time X is changed, to make sure it won't break the rest of the project. For this reason, any large project worth its salt will have a similarly enormous testing suite.\n\nIn addition to this are a wide variety of software used to manage code among multiple programmers. Git, for instance, allows multiple people to work on the same codebase at once, with several ways of managing conflicts. Many companies also use what's known as \"Continuous Integration\", or CI. CI will continuously run unit tests on code as changes are pushed. In this way, it becomes simpler to find where the code was broken, and by whom. Jenkins is a popular CI software for Java and some other languages, Google has their own in house CI system, and so on. ", "I'll list of a few of the main ones in my opinion.\n\n**Making code [loosely-coupled](_URL_0_)** is a developer term for keeping code isolated within it's own little world where it doesn't need to know about other methods and classes. When one developer is messing around with code in another part of the system it will have a low chance of breaking something else.\n\nUnit Testing Frameworks together with Continuous Integration. Unit testing is something that no one learns in college, yet is one of the most important parts of my job. In an ideal world, when you get a requirement, you should write a (or several) unit tests that complete that requirement within your code. \n\nFor example, if you have a requirement to manipulate a property of a class you would write a corresponding unit test. Then if someone  (including you) goes back in a future requirement and changes the code, you can be sure that your previous feature is still working simply by running the tests.\n\nC# Code:\n\n     private string _trimMe;\n     public string TrimMe\n     {\n          get { return _trimMe; }\n          set { _trimMe = value.TrimEnd(); }\n      }\n\nAnd a corresponding unit test might look like (I'm using NUnit in this example)\n\n        [Test]\n        public void TrimMe_Property_TrimsSpaces_At_The_End()\n       {\n           var customClass = new MyClass();\n           customClass.TrimMe = \"string with a bunch of spaces at the end                        \";\n\n           Assert.AreEqual(\"string with a bunch of spaces at the end\",customClass.TrimMe);\n        }\n\nIt's a very simple example, All I just tested for was that the **.TrimEnd()** function was on the property TrimMe. Unit tests can get really complicated really fast, especially when you introduce Mocking frameworks, and Dependencies  &  all sorts of other things.\n\nBut Unit tests gives developers the confidence to change code freely, and not be afraid to screw things up, because they have their Unit Tests backing them up.\n\n", "I'm very familiar with how things are done at Apple, specifically with OS X. \n\nThere is literally nobody there who understands everything about OS X and its various bundled applications. It is fairly uncommon for one person or team to even be knowledgeable about more than one scope at a high level. Those super large projects are done by multiple teams with lots and lots of meetings. In the end the \"final word\" as far as expertise in a particular scope comes down to 1-3 individual support engineers. ", "They use source management tools to maintain the code. They keep a main branch and module owners keep child branch that closely mirrors the main branch. Owners of the child branch will make changes to their product and update their child branch. Each time they update their child branch it automatically compiles the code and starts a suite of tests against the newly compile code. If everything goes well, the owner of the main branch will merge the changes from that branch to the main branch. Which will automatically cause a new compile and runs a more complex suite of tests. If everything their passes, branch owners will merge the code down to their child branches and that will cause their suite of tests to run against a compiled version of their local branch. It constantly goes back and forth like that as tests are added or improved and as features are added or bugs are found in failed tests and fixed. It sounds like it could get hairy but it doesn't.", "Tests, hooks, continuous integration, and bug-tracking\n\nFor every bit of software you write, you write the same amount in tests.\n\nWhen someone tries to change the piece of code, they can run the same tests as before to make sure nothing is broken.\n\nWhen they try to introduce their changes into the rest of the code-base, there are hooks that runs those tests automatically before the code formally makes it in.\n\nYou run \"every\" test on a continuous integration machine. The system will periodically run tests, and if something breaks, it'll tell you. Someone will hunt down why things broke by checking the change logs for a project/file.\n\nIf nothing catches it, someone will. They will file a bug. Someone fixes the bug, and they add a new test.\n\nThis is the most popular way to do things. There are a lot of different types of tests, and these different types of test change change things. Specifically, programmers will not run all tests manually when making a change, not all tests will be run as a hook, most tests will run on the continuous integration system, and not all bugs are caught.\n\nDon't even get me started on how bugs are fixed, and how the fixes make it back into the code-base...", "Independent modules expose functionality to other independent modules. That way, you don't need to know the intricate workings of every piece of code, just what it _publicly_ does\n\nThink of it this way -- you don't need to know how a car is constructed in order to drive a car. You don't need to understand combustion to fill the tank with gas. That's because this functionality is publicly exposed and documented.", "I can explain from my own experience. Essentially, organizations don't attempt to manage tasking for the entire group. Instead, the higher up you go, the more general your charge:\n\n1. Low level developer: my task is to complete this test, project, team task.\n2. Developer lead: my team of leads is responsible for this area of the product or application. My team specifically does this one part; the teams I work with do the others.\n3. Development manager: my organization must complete this project that does X by date Y. My direct reports, who are leads, know my priorities and work amongst each other to execute them.\n4. Directors, architects, etc.: probably the only ones who have true free reign over a product. We decide what to build and how to build it, and the managers below us execute. Our boss sets our direction as it aligns with the needs of the business.\n5. VP or similar: the executive team says our business must compete for x% of business in this market against companies A,B and C. They have such and such features, we can compete on these ones. Let's build that, with a view of profitability of Y% in 18 months.\n\nThis is an extremely general view of how this is accomplished but it would be a mistake to think that companies of that size have a single unifying vision. Mostly, there are tons of POSSIBLE visions that various VP's and architects get to explore and work on simultaneously, hoping they are right. As Yahoo's demise shows, they don't always make the right set of bets.\n\nAlso, even within a reasonably sized organization, there's no way everyone is working on the same codebase. Lots of different repositories are usually involved. Alot of work goes into coordinating communication and interface standards across groups and each group is left to their own devices to implement the agreement that was made. \n\nThink of it like 5 coworkers agreeing to provide lunch: nobody cares how they deliver their part as long as they get the order right.\n\nSource: former software developer at 2 of the companies you listed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_coupling"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2r0u6c", "title": "Is the papacy the oldest continuous position?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2r0u6c/is_the_papacy_the_oldest_continuous_position/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnbjrcw", "cnbsrnr", "cnbvmvl"], "score": [62, 25, 8], "text": ["One possible older position is that of [Samaritan High Priest](_URL_0_). Although a longer period is claimed, it seems that the office goes back to the Hellenistic period.\n\nI would also wonder about priesthoods in Ancient Egypt, but I'm afraid I have nothing to offer there.", "In tradition, The Emperor of Japan is claimed to be traced back 2,600 years. The position still exists today as a figurehead.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou could easily dispute much of the earlier history, though you could easily do the same for the history of the papacy.\n\nEmperor Sujin is the first emperor who is generally agreed to have existed, though some pin the dates as late as the third or fourth century. If you take the latest date, you would roughly coincide with Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, at which point the Christian church was taking on a more organized form.\n\nA lot of this question is going to come down how you consider early Christian history. Was the Apostle Peter the first Pope? He is in Catholic tradition, but other Christian denominations would disagree, saying the office didn't really exist until much later.", "Followup question, with the Pope being the bishop of Rome, might some of the other city bishops be older and continuous as well? Perhaps the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem or the Archbishop of Antioch?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_High_Priest"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_Japan#Origin"], []]}
{"q_id": "5sptsz", "title": "Why are * and # universally found on phone dial pads?", "selftext": "Followup: Were these characters added to computer keyboards *because* they were so common on dial pads, or vice versa?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5sptsz/why_are_and_universally_found_on_phone_dial_pads/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddh875y"], "score": [150], "text": ["These characters were not on the original 10-key touch-tone phones (1964).  They were added in 1968 with the introduction of the 12-key Western Electric model WE-2500.  These keys were added to give phone menu systems an out-of-bounds character so that it was possible to encode variable length messages.\n\nThe internal mechanics of the touch tone system made it simple to add the two extra keys.  [Touch-tone numbers are encoded as a pair of tones played simultaneously that indicate which column and which row](_URL_2_).  The top row of keys all play a 697 Hz tone and the left column plays a 1209 Hz tone, so if you hit the one key it will send both a 697Hz and 1209Hz down the line.  There was already an oscillator there for the fourth row, so adding those other two keys was very little additional hardware.\n\nSadly, they decided to arrange the keys with the one at the top.  Adding machines had always put the one at the bottom [because you use it more](_URL_1_), and computer keypads took the design from the adding machines.  This used to cause confusion when switching between computers and touchtone phones.\n\nComputer keyboards have '*' and '#' because in 1961 [Teletypes](_URL_0_) had them.... because in 1890s the Remington typewriter had them, because before that they were used in handwritten communication.\n\nInterestingly, the Remington typewriters did not have a 1/! key, even into the second half of the 20th century.  You got an exclamation point by typing \".\" then backspacing and typing an apostrophe.  To get the digit 1 you were expected to type a lower case L.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law", "http://www.globalspec.com/reference/24976/203279/chapter-17-dtmf-tone-decoding-and-telephone-interface"]]}
{"q_id": "jhszp", "title": "why the illuminati and 2012 new world order conspiracies are so popular", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jhszp/eli5_why_the_illuminati_and_2012_new_world_order/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2c88rw", "c2c8m57", "c2c8rvp", "c2c8v6j", "c2c9szw", "c2cagpk", "c2cch1a", "c2c88rw", "c2c8m57", "c2c8rvp", "c2c8v6j", "c2c9szw", "c2cagpk", "c2cch1a"], "score": [78, 7, 9, 13, 7, 2, 2, 78, 7, 9, 13, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["People are pattern seeking in nature. When someone stumbles upon a pattern, they can start to connect the dots. However, we all have biases, and many people connect the dots in a biased way (usually in regards to some fantasy they would like to see acted out). Now, let's just say you are an auto mechanic. You watch the news, you see things getting \"worse\" in the world. You don't like the president, you don't like the pope, you feel stuck in a rut. You don't have a cool car like the guy down the street, or a big house like your older brother. You kind of wish something exciting would happen, or the world would flip around a little bit so you can see something entertaining that takes you away from the mundane. \n\nMany people want to latch on to these theories because they see the dots connected by some biased person that leads them down a path to a conclusion. This conclusion would seem nonsensical to the average person, but delve into a blog, or a book with all these patterns shown, and you somehow feel enlightened. You feel like the more you know, the safer you will be when the day comes that the NWO takes over. It's just a doomsday fantasy. It's something that will draw you out of your boring life. \n\nTo not be biased, there is also the possibility that these conspiracies are true. Just stay informed, and don't trust information you see that is not scientific or does not have a credible source. There are also documentaries debunking most of the conspiracies out there. I just watch plenty of the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, and you see these programs on all the time. ", "Robert Anton Wilson explains this pretty well:\n\n_URL_0_", "Because people seek relief from the burden of free will. ", "Because shit is complicated.  People don't like to think in terms of complicated.  We like to think in terms of \"A happens, then B happens, and the result is C\".  When in the real world things are more along the lines of \"A causes B to happen, which causes ABCDEFG to happen, each of which cause HIJKLM to happen in series, which has a certain percentage chance of making A1 and Z2 happen, but may instead cause CD21 or CD24 to happen and the results may equal C or 243.  Or sometimes Pi.\"\n\nWe can only really think about a certain number of variables at any given time with any real accuracy.  \n\nIt's easier to say \"The illuminati did it\" than to understand that each and every person on the planet has a very small impact on everything else through a series of causal relationships that is too vast and complex to properly visualize.", "I think the 2012 stuff is so popular because not many people really know much about Mayan culture and technology and also because it is currently 2011. No one cares about the Swiss doomsday theory of 3045.", "A rather large group of people confused leaded paint chips with potato chips and now we're surrounded by morons.", "when some people grow up, they miss having mommy daddy and teacher be responsible for everything. it makes them feel better to make believe that some secret authority is responsible for everything.  when they feel better, they realize nobody really runs things so they start taking responsibility for  themselves and the world gets better. \n\nbut until they get to that point,  it's basically a grownup version of whining, like when you need a nap.", "People are pattern seeking in nature. When someone stumbles upon a pattern, they can start to connect the dots. However, we all have biases, and many people connect the dots in a biased way (usually in regards to some fantasy they would like to see acted out). Now, let's just say you are an auto mechanic. You watch the news, you see things getting \"worse\" in the world. You don't like the president, you don't like the pope, you feel stuck in a rut. You don't have a cool car like the guy down the street, or a big house like your older brother. You kind of wish something exciting would happen, or the world would flip around a little bit so you can see something entertaining that takes you away from the mundane. \n\nMany people want to latch on to these theories because they see the dots connected by some biased person that leads them down a path to a conclusion. This conclusion would seem nonsensical to the average person, but delve into a blog, or a book with all these patterns shown, and you somehow feel enlightened. You feel like the more you know, the safer you will be when the day comes that the NWO takes over. It's just a doomsday fantasy. It's something that will draw you out of your boring life. \n\nTo not be biased, there is also the possibility that these conspiracies are true. Just stay informed, and don't trust information you see that is not scientific or does not have a credible source. There are also documentaries debunking most of the conspiracies out there. I just watch plenty of the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, and you see these programs on all the time. ", "Robert Anton Wilson explains this pretty well:\n\n_URL_0_", "Because people seek relief from the burden of free will. ", "Because shit is complicated.  People don't like to think in terms of complicated.  We like to think in terms of \"A happens, then B happens, and the result is C\".  When in the real world things are more along the lines of \"A causes B to happen, which causes ABCDEFG to happen, each of which cause HIJKLM to happen in series, which has a certain percentage chance of making A1 and Z2 happen, but may instead cause CD21 or CD24 to happen and the results may equal C or 243.  Or sometimes Pi.\"\n\nWe can only really think about a certain number of variables at any given time with any real accuracy.  \n\nIt's easier to say \"The illuminati did it\" than to understand that each and every person on the planet has a very small impact on everything else through a series of causal relationships that is too vast and complex to properly visualize.", "I think the 2012 stuff is so popular because not many people really know much about Mayan culture and technology and also because it is currently 2011. No one cares about the Swiss doomsday theory of 3045.", "A rather large group of people confused leaded paint chips with potato chips and now we're surrounded by morons.", "when some people grow up, they miss having mommy daddy and teacher be responsible for everything. it makes them feel better to make believe that some secret authority is responsible for everything.  when they feel better, they realize nobody really runs things so they start taking responsibility for  themselves and the world gets better. \n\nbut until they get to that point,  it's basically a grownup version of whining, like when you need a nap."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjLLZ5Oi9Ws&feature=related&t=9s"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjLLZ5Oi9Ws&feature=related&t=9s"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qafab", "title": "the semicolon, when to use it and why it matters.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qafab/eli5_the_semicolon_when_to_use_it_and_why_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwdfff4", "cwdfjd3", "cwdg1u8", "cwdg6ij", "cwdg9j4", "cwdgapx", "cwdigui", "cwdisvu", "cwdl3cv", "cwdlq74", "cwdmc7g", "cwdnc3z", "cwdnje3", "cwdnnuv", "cwdrzqk"], "score": [18, 274, 2, 2, 8, 48, 2, 17, 2, 2, 12, 2, 9, 2, 2], "text": ["\u201cHere is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.\u201d\n\n-Kurt Vonnegut\n\nThey can separate two ideas that could be distinct sentences but that you want to relate. If you ask me (or Vonnegut), though, just use a period instead.", "You use a semicolon when you want to join two related statements together, but don't want to use a 'joining word' like _but_ or _and_, or you don't want to imply as long a pause as a full stop/period.\n\nFor example:\n\n*I went on vacation the other day; the flight was very long.*\n\nAn important point is that both statements should be complete sentences in their own right. In other words you should be able to use a period instead of a semi-colon and still have both statements make sense.\n\n", "It's really simple, actually. Any time you would use a period to connect sentences, you can replace the period with a semi-colon. You would typically do this when you want to add special emphasis between the sentences you're connecting. \n\nSmaller use case: you can use semi-colors to separate list items that contain commas, since separating those by commas would be confusing.\n\n[Edited for clarity.]", "This has to do with how many ideas you're presenting in your sentence.\n\n > A normal sentence already has one complete idea.\n\n > The colon's specific use: when you have an incomplete idea that is leading into another idea, often used with lists, that together form a full idea.\n\n > The semi-colon has a slightly different use; it lets you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\nIn most cases you want to avoid the semi colon. With very little rewording, you can rewrite any sentence that could have a semi colon better by using many other constructs.\n\n > The semi-colon has a slightly different use. The semi colon lets you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\n > The semi-colon has a slightly different use, to let you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\n > The semi-colon's slightly different use: to let you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\n > The semi-colon has a slightly different use that lets you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\nThere is also another grammatical construct called em dash, written in text as \"--\" (which is auto corrected in word to a long -) that, if you really really think you a semi colon is appropriate, \"--\" is probably better. The em dash can generally take the place of comma's, parenthesis, or colons too.\n\n > The semi-colon's slightly different use -- it lets you keep building on an already complete idea.\n\nIn many cases, this would be better with comma's, parenthesis, or colons anyways, but the em dash generally increases readability and adds emphasis.\n\n >  The em dash lets you take a complete idea and add any other idea -- generally something related that builds around the original idea -- too the middle or end of it. \n\n >  The em dash lets you take a complete idea and add any other idea, generally something related that builds around the original idea, to the middle or end of it.", "They are used to connect two things that could be complete sentences on their own; these things are typically also related to each other in some logical way.", "To add an ELI5 answer to the others-\n\nA semi colon looks like a period on top of a comma, right?  So, you can think of it as being both a period and a comma.  On each side of the semi colon, you need to have what would be a complete sentence on its own (hence the period).  Instead of just using a period though, you want to show that the two sentences are meant to be read as connected or maybe dependent on each other (hence the comma).\n\n\nThe way a colon is different is that what follows a colon *isn't usually a complete sentence on its own*, just additional material to, like /u/lollersauce914 said, support or clarify what came before.", "Not an expert, but I immediately thought of this video I stumbled upon a few years back.\nHow (NOT) to use the semicolon:\n_URL_0_", "Really? A hour has passed without some programmer being a smart-ass?\n\nSource: Am a smart-ass programming student", "The easiest way I've always thought about it is that it means \"that is\", as in:\n\"He eats a lot...that is, he's fat\"\n\"He eats a lot; he's fat\"", "Semicolon usage confused me for a long time until I realized a few simple tricks:\n\n1) A semicolon joins two sentences where the second sentence is required in order for the first sentence to make sense.\n2) If the second sentence refers back to the first sentence using a non-specific pronoun, such as \"he,\" \"she,\" \"it,\" then a semicolon may be used. For instance: \"I just met up with Bob; he explained everything.\" You COULD use \"I just met with Bob AND he explained everything,\" but since you didn't use AND, then there are two sentences in need of either a period or a semicolon. In this case, a semicolon is more appropriate for flow.\n3) When you use connecting words called conjunctions, such as \"however,\" \"therefore,\" \"furthermore,\" then you can use a semicolon or a period. \n\nIt's pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and I think English teachers overcomplicate it. Just ask yourself if you have two complete sentences: If I delete the first sentence, would the second sentence make sense on its own, or does it point back to the first? If that's the case, you can use either a period or a semicolon depending on how you want the paragraph to flow. \n\nThat said, semicolons confuse so many people that it is best to just leave them out, unless you're writing formally. ", "    foreach ($statement as $line) {\n      if($line- > code) {\n        end;\n      } else {\n        continue;\n      }\n    }", "I've wondered this for a long time and asked a lot of people. There is no why. There is never a reason you need one. I don't see why they came up with it.", "when programming, I use it every day. I also use it a whole freaking lot, but unless i'm programming, it's like it doesn't exist.", "As a native English speaker in the US with a job that frequently involves writing reports and such, I have never used a semicolon in my adult life.  I feel like I must have used one when I was writing a paper for English class back in high school over 15 years ago, but I imagine most English speaking people have never had a need to use it.", "It's a period, but it's for when another complete sentence relates to another complete sentence, or when one requires context.\n\n\"Johnny played football.\"\n\n\"That is why he got hurt.\"\n\n\"Johnny played football; that is why he got hurt.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/M94ii6MVilw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25xrnd", "title": "How did Byzantine co-emperors interact with each other and with their court(s)? How did they share power and responsibility?", "selftext": "There were often times when the Byzantine Empire had two or more emperors.  During these times, how did the emperors interact with each other and how did others interact with them?  In addition, how was power divided in these scenarios?\n\nI'm interested in any and all answers anyone can provide, but this question originally comes after thinking about the story of Basil I and Michael III, so if anyone could provide information about them in particular I'd be very happy.\n\nI've asked this question a few times before and never received an answer, so here's hoping someone can answer this time!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25xrnd/how_did_byzantine_coemperors_interact_with_each/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chm1zcx"], "score": [22], "text": ["Upon reviewing Byzantine history, you find that most co-Imperial relationships were very lop-sided in that one Emperor held almost all of the power, while the other acted as a figurehead. This is likely because if two people held equal shares of power (especially in the Roman or Byzantine Empire), it would almost always erupt into civil war. Therefore, the political ambitions and intrigue of the Empire almost universally didn't allow for two people on equal grounds to peacefully coexist. What you are left with is a tenuous alliance between two powers vying for the throne (generally great families) - the co-Emperorship was a compromise to prevent instability and revolts. \n\nSome great examples are:\n\n- Romanos I Lekapenos and Constantine VII Porphyrogennitos: When Leo VI died in AD 912, he left his child son Constantine as the heir to the throne with his fourth wife Zoe Karbonopsina as regent. Romanos, a famed general at the time, saw the opportunity of a weakened government and seized control of the throne. Since Constantine was young, Romanos was able to exert a huge amount of influence over him, and acted as the grand puppetmaster at court and abroad. It was only 30 years later that Romanos was removed from power for good, allowing Constantine to reign on his own until his death in AD 959.\n\n- John I Tzimiskes and Basil II: Basil was still a young man when Tzimiskes murdered Nikephoros II to take control of the throne. Since the Macedonian line had ruled for nearly 200 years by this time, it would have been political suicide for Tzimiskes to simply cast the two heirs of Romanos II (son of Constantine VII) aside. Therefore, while Basil and Michael were the rightful heirs, Tzimiskes held almost universal control of the military, as well as the adoration of the people for his triumphs, and so his position could not be challenged, but again, he had to honor the long line of the Macedonians. \n\n- Romanos IV Diogenes and Andronikos Doukas: Romanos held all of the power, and kept Andronikos Doukas \"hostage\" by preventing him from gaining followers. Andronikos only existed as co-Emperor to appease the Doukas family, who held the Imperial throne before Romanos (Constantine X ruled until his death in 1067, when Romanos became the lover of the Empress, and was crowned himself). At the Battle of Manzikert, it is sometimes said that Andronikos purposely did everything he could to sabotage the battle plan, causing the situation which allowed for the Emperor Romanos to be surrounded and captured.\n\nDuring the Komnenian period, titles were created to appease disgruntled family members. Alexios I Komnenos needed to be able to prevent revolts in an Empire that had very nearly buckled because of its own internal struggles. Therefore, lofty titles such as *panhypersebastos* (meaning \"exalted beyond all others\") and *sebastokrator* (meaning \"exalted ruler\") were given to relatives so that they would support the centralized power of the Komnenos family without revolting. This was because a title was seen as an award that carried a certain amount of grandeur and weight. In reality though, these titles were simply meant to appease and flatter. The people who carried them held little real power. This is essentially an extension of how the co-Emperorship worked throughout Byzantine history.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3vo2xj", "title": "Did Christopher Columbus really think he landed in India? Popular knowledge says so because he referred to the natives as \"Indians\". But the Spanish pronunciation of \"indigen\" sounds like \"indi-hen\", which is awfully damn close \"Indian\".", "selftext": "Basically what the title says. Has everyone just been pronouncing Spanish incorrectly? Is the term Injun then short for indigen, which means our ancestors were even more pc than we are? \n\nI mean, I'm from Indiana, nobody calls is Injiana. Something doesn't add up.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vo2xj/did_christopher_columbus_really_think_he_landed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxp6i2v", "cxpakst"], "score": [174, 44], "text": ["Columbus didn't think he was in India as we think of India today. Instead he thought he was in the Indies (what we'd call Indonesia today). Upon his return to Europe, he wrote a letter to be sent ahead to King Ferdinand, saying \"Since I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I write this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty-three days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies.\"\n\nWith later voyages by additional European explorers, it was eventually learned that the Caribbean Islands and Indonesia were not part of the same archapelago, resulting in a distinction being made between the East Indies (Indonesia) and the West Indies (the Caribbean). During Columbus' first voyage, however, this distinction wasn't made yet.", "A reply to /u/mosesecks\n\nPerhaps [a little context](_URL_0_) in support of /u/Reedstilt 's post.\n\nEven before Columbus had set off on his expedition, it was already generally accepted by scholars in Spain and Portugal that his estimate of the diameter of the earth was off, meaning that the earth was much larger than he claimed it to be. \n\nColumbus was not a scholar, and he selectively read books that were either wrong or misinterpreted. The most important one was the work of Pierre d'Ailly, a French scholar and cartographer, whom Columbus misunderstood to have given an estimate of circumference of the earth to be around 30,000 km whereas in reality it is around 40,000 km. Further, he believed the land mass of Eurasia to be shorter than one accepted by most scholar, namely the old estimate of Ptolemy. Combining the two, he though that China were much closer westward than it really was (and still is!). \n\nThis was one reason that John II of Portugal rejected Columbus' proposal in 1485. However, Columbus came to the court of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1489 at the best possible time: they were just finishing off the Reconquesta and they were feeling threatened by progress made by Portuguese navigators. It wasn't long ago that they were in conflict with the Portuguese over the Castilian succession crises. So they decided to retain Columbus on their payroll, even if it took until 1492 for the famous expedition to launch. \n\nWhen Columbus made landfall in Hispaniola, he claimed that it was not only on the way to China, but that it could be reached by ocean from there and that there was land mass nearby that was attached to China. If you look at [a map such as one made in 1492 by Martin Behaim](_URL_1_), you see that he expected to be able to sail westwards from Spain and reach China, and later on Columbus claimed that Hispaniola was merely a land mass \"slightly\" east of China. \n\nThis is why Columbus' further expeditions went farther southwards. The third voyage was to look for such an ocean route, instead they reached Trinidad, concluded that it was near a large land mass and then returned to Hispaniola. The fourth voyage searched for a passage through today's central America, similarly failed. \n\nSo while Columbus could continue in his navigational delusion until the last voyage, the Spaniards were more cognizant that they may in fact have discovered a new land mass not attached to China.  \n\nThe first passage to the Pacific Ocean, by land was by de Balboa in 1513. They crossed Panama successfully and reported their findings back in Spain. This was the point at which arguments that the Americas were attached to China became moot and lost all credibility. \n\nSource: *Columbus* by Fernandez-Armesto. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lmyys/at_what_point_did_the_spanish_colonizers_realize/cv93b9v", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/MartinBehaim1492.jpg/975px-MartinBehaim1492.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3hvc5f", "title": "All other factors being equal, who would win an arm wrestling match between two people with different arm lengths?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3hvc5f/all_other_factors_being_equal_who_would_win_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuayxjj"], "score": [14], "text": ["This is a fun question. It really depends on what \"all other factors\" means!\n\n* If each person's arm produces the same *torque*, then the person with the shorter arm has the advantage, because they can produce a larger force at the end of their arm. (The product of force and length would be the same for each person.)\n* If each person's arm muscle (not a biologist, no idea which muscle is relevant) produces a force *proportional to its length* (again, not a biologist, no idea if this is a good approximation), then they tie: the longer arm produces proportionally more torque at the elbow and therefore the same force at the hand. This assumes their elbow joints have the same dimension, though.\n* Now if you literally scale up the whole arm, the elbow should get wider also; now the torque scales with length^2 because the force goes up AND the lever arm at the elbow goes up. (Still not a biologist. It's probably more complicated than this.) Now the longer-armed person wins.\n\nNow we just need some experimental data..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3xq1i3", "title": "why do puppies and some grown dogs do that thing with their paws where they just slap the ground?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xq1i3/eli5_why_do_puppies_and_some_grown_dogs_do_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy6rbdp", "cy6rgky", "cy6rzlo", "cy6s7zj", "cy6uzmp", "cy6x79p", "cy6z9ws", "cy70ixj", "cy72hqh", "cy72iye"], "score": [14, 8, 2, 136, 20, 8, 7, 18, 5, 4], "text": ["My dog is going on six and does it when she wants to play.  Its like an invite.", "It's doggy language for \"let's play\".", "From my experience, that is part of the play behavior that dogs exhibit.", "Essentially when a dog does that, they're saying \"I want to play with you\" in dog.  That's why you shouldn't bow down to talk to your dog, especially when they're in trouble because your voice says bad dog, but your body language says, let's dick around dude.\n\n", "I just want to add, since the question has been answered by /u/T0MB0mbad1l , is that that posture is generally referred to as the 'play bow'", "If you do that to a friendly dog, just get on the floor and slap it with your hands whilst making soft eye contact, they get really excited and chase round like nutters.", "It's basically the signal for \"Anything from this moment is play, and any roughousing isn't meant as a threat\". You can sit down on the ground, plant your hands on the ground and bow down, your dog will react playfully.", "When my 70lb doberman rotty x does this it's on like donkey kong. That's like her way of telling me she's ready to play and if I pick her up and bodyslam her into the bed or if I pick her up by her tug rope and swing her around the room, she's not going to get angry with me. If I give her the \"roll over\" command she knows the game stops immediately and it's time for tummy rubs. \n\n\nHalf the time though, I end up getting chased around the house screaming for my SO to save me. ", "The DJ is playing his jam. It's kind of like the people on Jersey Shore smacking the dancefloor. ", "All of my dogs have done this before, especially my Golden. It's a playful gesture that usually means shenanigans are about to go down. Dogs are very social creatures that rely on body language to communicate to the point where subtle movements and gestures can be used to have what seems like almost an entire conversation. My Springer is very verbally outspoken (especially now that he's getting old) when compared to my Golden (who's also getting old) but my Golden only speaks verbally when he also uses his body language and/or when he really wants to get a point across (usually that he's excited or thinks you aren't listening). Dogs use rather simple communication IMHO yet they communicate very efficiently. That's why when you pound the ground while you call them over or simply sway your hips a certain way they feel the need to give you feedback, whereas cats will look at you and judge you for being a strange servant who needs to stop trying to pat their tummies.\n\nEDIT: Thinking faster than I can type"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5yobtn", "title": "Are there any experimental studies (not retrospective or self-reports) that show crying is actually healthy for humans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5yobtn/are_there_any_experimental_studies_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["desx87h"], "score": [3], "text": ["Emotional tears versus reflexive tears have special health benefits. Dr. William Frey at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis found that reflex tears are 98% water, whereas emotional tears also serve the purposeof excereting stress hormones (the ones that build up when one is distressed/sad/angry). Crying also stimulates the production of endorphins. An APA article can be found [here] (_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656611000778"]]}
{"q_id": "1ft8el", "title": "If pushed, would a frictionless marble roll across a surface or glide?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ft8el/if_pushed_would_a_frictionless_marble_roll_across/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cadjuwm", "cadsigs"], "score": [16, 4], "text": ["If it was pushed in-line with its center of mass it would glide, and if it was given some torque as it was pushed it would have a rolling component, but it wouldn't roll without slipping, which is what most people mean when they think of rolling.", "what if you applied an external force to the marble and then heated up the top of the marble as it was travelling? the marble would roll due to the imbalance of weight/mass distribution across the marble. f=ma"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "13vqke", "title": "How is it determined which direction objects in space will spin?", "selftext": "Thought about this while watching the toilet water go down the bowl and remembered how in the southern hemisphere he goes counterclockwise. Is there anything that determines which direction things like galaxies, black holes and planets turn ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13vqke/how_is_it_determined_which_direction_objects_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c77lb4y", "c77lfx1"], "score": [19, 9], "text": ["water in your toilet does not spin the other direction in the southern hemisphere. \n\nThe direction your toilet flushes is 100% defined by the way it was designed. \n\nCoriolis force only acts appreciably on large areas or high velocities while \"on\" the surface of a spinning object (planet, merrry-go-round, etc)\n\neverything in the universe which has a spin got that spin based on whichever direction the angular momentum of initial conditions dictates. \n\nThere is no rule of rotation out in the universe. \n\n", "More or less at random. Take a star, for example. It forms from a cloud of gas floating out in the galaxy, when that cloud collapses under its own gravity. But all the different parts of the cloud have slightly different velocities, so the velocities that they have relative to the center of mass will induce some spin as the cloud collapses down, and suddenly you have a spinning ball of gas. Similarly for galaxies which form in a similar way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1jmr6o", "title": "why do people put cologne/perfume on the insides of their wrists?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jmr6o/eli5_why_do_people_put_cologneperfume_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbg7eai", "cbg7gcn", "cbg8m21", "cbgajow", "cbgcww2"], "score": [7, 85, 11, 13, 3], "text": ["The blood veins are closer to your skin there, so it helps to disperse the perfume better. You can also put it on your inner elbow, inner knees, neck, etc.., wherever you can check your pulse", "I've heard 2 explanations - can't vouch for either.\n\n1. Wrist have a lot of blood flow near the skin and hence produce a lot of heat. Heat helps release the scent.\n\n2. Wrists are an area that are likely to get closer to other people. Guess they also always exposed where much of the body isnt.\n\n", "I remember seeing (sorry no proof) that it dates back to the more proper eras where a gentleman was expected to kiss a ladies hand in greeting. \nThe neck  was one of the few areas of skin available, for passionate kisses, so that was hit as well.    \nIt helped mask the BO but only had to be applied in key or \"pulse\" points.  ", "It's a kind of hold over from 17th and 18th century French society/aristocracy. At the time it was considered  fashionable to smell good but not fashionable to bathe(probably because it was also fashionable to dispose of your sewage into any nearby source of fresh water). The French actually invented perfume/cologne to try and solve this dilemma. But instead of putting it on their bodies they would put it on some kind of cloth. Usually a handkerchief or a cravat. When ever you went to a high society French party around this time you would want your perfume soaked hanky easy to get to ,so men would stuff theirs into the cuff of their coats so they could easily pull them out and wave them in the air in front of the next person they met or hold it to their nose when they were alone. Women often wore sleeveless gowns around this time so they just simply tied theirs to their wrist. Pay close attention to the next period French film you see, you will see a bunch of  handkerchief waving in the party scenes. Clothing trends moved on so that hardly anyone uses a handkerchief as fashion accessory anymore,but people still put perfume/cologne on their wrists as a tradition.  ", "I just put it on my armpits and crotch to cover up the horribilityness."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5o8oji", "title": "Did pop culture exist in the past?", "selftext": "Were there fads that would die in and out quickly, say, before the 1900s? Did they separate culture by decades? Was 1480 drastically different from 1470, the way would would consider 1980 different from 1970? If not, what caused this to happen? Perhaps the radio?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5o8oji/did_pop_culture_exist_in_the_past/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dci2jba"], "score": [10], "text": ["So, the answer to your question is going to vary somewhat depending on precise time period and geographic location. That's true of any broad historical question. The answer to yours will also vary depending on the precise definition of \"pop culture\" one decides to use. Unfortunately, I can't offer you an AH-worthy answer on the fifteenth century. What I can offer you, however, is an answer that is based in the nineteenth and early twentieth century United States (and also mostly applicable in Europe), which is the time period in which we see the development of what I would call \"popular culture.\"\n\nSo first, some terms. One might generally consider popular culture to be the culture of the masses, the ordinary people. This is opposed to \"high\" or \"elite\" culture. To be simplistic, we might posit that in the late twentieth century United States, television was a ubiquitous form of popular culture, while theater was \"high culture\" (one might quibble and ask about musical theater - as we shall see, in practice the boundaries between the two are porous, and many people have devoted large amounts of their time to defining and otherwise considering those boundaries). Popular culture should not only be contrasted with high culture. It also, in a classic definition, should be contrasted with folk culture. What is the difference between popular and folk culture, you might ask? Well, the difference is industrial capitalism. Before capitalism, in this formulation, there were indeed bifurcations in culture. The elites had their culture, which in Europe was the culture of the Church, and the universities, and generally included literature, painting, sculpture, and others of the high arts as we still understand them today. And then you had folk culture, which was autochthonous (meaning originating from below, from the earth), and was indigenous to the largely illiterate common people. This might have included popular songs, tales, and other aspects of the oral tradition, as well as the sort of vernacular architecture of everyday life, popular religious cults, etc. And really, there was not too much that these spheres of culture had to do with one another. The elite, content with economic domination, left the ordinary people alone in their culture. And without literacy, the common people had no access to their culture. However, with the advent of industrial capitalism, greater and greater numbers of ordinary people began to achieve literacy, as well as other means of accessing elite culture. This caused elites, disgusted by the lack of exclusivity attendant to their culture, to consciously attempt to push it in new and innovative directions. This is what is known as \"avant-gardism,\" the conscious attempt to push culture in a new, forward-thinking direction. However, what quickly develops is an attendant process, which we might call \"kitschification,\" whereby the new advances in high culture are claimed by popular culture, which takes the forms of high culture and removes its political and social meaning, remaking it as a pure commodity for consumption. The driver of this process is capitalism, which seeks to quiet the masses through the ever-more-insistent creation of novelty. Thus there is a kind of constant race between avant-garde and kitsch, with every advance of the former being swallowed and evacuated of meaning by the latter. One example is the avant-garde painter [Piet Mondrian](_URL_1_), whose radical experiments in painting were taken up by fashion designer [Yves St. Laurent](_URL_0_), which inspired a host of imitations, at ever-decreasing price points and further and further evacuated of Mondrian's original political and social purpose.\n\nSo, before I move on, I should mention that the previous paragraph was based entirely on an essay by the influential critic Clement Greenberg called \"Avant-garde and kitsch.\" I had not really intended to spend that much time on him, but I found myself writing quite a bit. I'm teaching 20th century art this semester, so I suppose I have the issues surrounding avant-gardism close in my mind. Anyway, if you think Greenberg's ideas sound both kind of dreary and also super elitist, well, you're right. Greenberg was a Jewish Marxist who got started in the 1930s; it was a gloomy time. And for Greenberg, as for many avant-garde artists and their fellow travelers, avant-gardism was at its core a political movement, one that married formal changes in art to radical politics. So the appropriation of high art imagery by capitalism was for him at its core a tragedy, as it made that art no longer able to serve its political function. Greenberg did not despise folk culture, the old culture of the pre-industrial common people. He despised industrial pop culture for serving as a distraction to the masses, for making them dependent on its commodities for entertainment, rather than allowing them to rely on their inherent interests. Thus, while he was undoubtedly an elitist, he was an elitist for reasons that we might ultimately diagnose as hopeful or forward-thinking\n\nI can also provide you with an example of how this played out in practice, which is the nineteenth century U.S. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the US, there was little (or at least much less) distinction between high and low culture than there was at the end of the twentieth century. To take one example: the theater. While in recent times the theater has mostly been the province of elites (especially here, where the government largely does not subsidize the theater), in the early nineteenth century it was the most popular art form among people of all stripes. In fact, the most popular theatrical productions were undoubtedly Shakespeare (remember, even Huck Finn is familiar with Shakespeare), with huge crowds gathering to see famous stars like Edwin Forrest and Junius Brutus Booth (father of John Wilkes Booth, incidentally) perform their version of famous plays, in particular *Hamlet* and *MacBeth*. In fact, one of the largest riots before the Civil War Draft Riots in New York was as a result of an early attempt by New York's moneyed classes to keep the rabble out of the theater. The working class of the city were generally fans of Forrest, who was a forceful and boisterous American type, while the elites generally preferred the more genteel English actor William Charles Macready, the two of whom were engaged in a fierce rivalry. Forrest had taken to following Macready around and appearing in the same plays as him, in order to challenge him. Eventually, tensions around this broke out, with members of New York's elite building their own theater (with a strict dress code that included kid gloves) specifically to keep Forrest's largely Irish, immigrant fans out. These fans, egged on by their superiors in various Bowery gangs, rioted, breaking windows, throwing garbage, and generally disrupting the performance. This went on for several days, until the city called out the militia, who fired into the crowd, killing and wounding dozens. The elites praised the city for taking proper measures, and moved their new opera house even further uptown, to 15th street. Increasingly, even if they enjoyed the same plays, New York's elites and workingmen did so in separate spaces. Theater remained broadly popular for some time longer, but its bifurcation ensured that the two spheres would continue to grow apart, with the elites enjoying their Shakespeare and other European imports, while the masses tended to enjoy melodrama, vaudeville, and other forms we now recognize as \"lower.\"\n\nAnother way in which this played out was with visual art. In the 1840s and early 1850s there existed an organization in New York called the American Art-Union that sought to encourage American artists, basically by buying their works and then distributing them via lottery. Until the lottery, however, it displayed its works in its free gallery, which was located downtown and featured at least one night a week of evening open hours, so that the city's working men might also take advantage of it. The Art-Union was closed as an illegal private lottery, however, and by 1870 when a group of wealthy New Yorkers decided to open a permanent art museum in the city, they did so on the Upper East Side, far from the Five Points and other working-class neighborhoods. The intervening years had seen the Draft Riots and a great deal of other civil unrest, and the elite were increasingly walling themselves off into the upper parts of the city, protected by an increasingly professionalized police and national guard. This physical walling was accompanied by further and further splits in culture, until the cultures of the two groups were largely mutually unrecognizable. Thus enter Greenberg and kitsch, and the increasing domination of capitalism over the culture of the lower classes.\n\nSources:\n\nGreenberg, \"Avant-garde and kitsch.\"\n\nLawrence Levine, *Highbrow/Lowbrow*\n\nSven Beckert, *The Moneyed Metropolis*\n\nDavid Grimsted, *Melodrama Unveiled* and *American Mobbing*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mondrian_collection_of_Yves_Saint_Laurent", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Piet_Mondriaan%2C_1930_-_Mondrian_Composition_II_in_Red%2C_Blue%2C_and_Yellow.jpg/800px-Piet_Mondriaan%2C_1930_-_Mondrian_Composition_II_in_Red%2C_Blue%2C_and_Yellow.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4fyf09", "title": "why does rain in the tropics come down heavy for an hour and then vanish, but in europe the rain is mostly light and can last all day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fyf09/eli5_why_does_rain_in_the_tropics_come_down_heavy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2d24jj", "d2d6to2", "d2dbfnn", "d2dh3t1", "d2dk0m2", "d2domme", "d2dxhsi", "d2dznhz", "d2e0nx2", "d2e54ki"], "score": [53, 1670, 261, 3, 3, 13, 2, 3, 9, 8], "text": ["Because in the Tropics that rain is usually from the day's evaporation due to heat\n\nIn other cases, when humidity is brought by a front it keeps raining because it reaches land and condenses there", "Rain in the tropics is normally air mass thunderstorms and other downpours from vertical convection (heating at the surface causing air to rise).\n\nI think you're imagining Western Europe. In Western Europe the Atlantic is so warm it provides warmth to the land in Fall, Spring, and Winter--the tradeoff of supplying that warmth is steady, misty moisture as the warm moist air condenses on the cooler land.", "Everyone that has responded is more or less correct, but I would like give you a more in depth answer.\n\nAtmospheric stability is what determines the type of clouds and precipitation that will form on a given day. Lets break down what that means.\n\nStability is the ability of the air to resist vertical motion. Stable air will tend to stay where it is, whereas unstable air has a tendency to rise. When air rises, it becomes less dense and therefore becomes cooler. Hold on to this thought.\n\nAir contains water vapor. I am sure you a familiar with the term relative humidity, which is a measure of the amount of water vapor present in the air at a given time. Cold air can hold less water vapor than warm air, so relative humidity is how saturated the air is for it's given temperature (e.g. at 50% relative humidity the air is holding half of the total water vapor that it is capable of holding). 80% humidity at 5C (41F) feels much drier than 80% humidity at 30C (86F) because the air is simply not able to hold as much water vapor.\n\nIf air is cooled to the point where it is 100% saturated, which is referred to as the dew point, water vapor will condense back into liquid water, which is referred to as visible moisture. Clouds and rain are water vapor that has condensed out of the air into visible moisture.\n\nAlright, back to stability. In the tropics the sun is more intense, which heats the ground and causes water to evaporate. This creates very warm and moist air (high relative humidity). Warm and moist air is very unstable. The warm air will begin to rise, and as it rises, it becomes less dense and begins to cool. As it reaches it's dew point, water vapor begins to condense into clouds. As the water vapor condenses, it releases the heat energy that allowed it to be in a gas form, back into the surrounding air. The release of heat from the condensing water into the surrounding air, assists the air in continuing to rise. I know that was a lot to take in, but the point is rapidly rising air releasing a lot of energy and a lot of water vapor condensing. All of this condensed water becomes too heavy for the atmosphere to support, and it falls as rain. \n\nIn the case above, the whole process happens relatively quickly. The speed at which this action takes place, plus the large amount of water involved is what causes intense, but showery precipitation.\n\nLight and steady precipitation results from more stable air being cooled to it's dew point more gradually. \n\nEDIT: it seems as though the complexity of my response has caused some divisiveness _URL_0_\n\n\n", "The rain in the tropics is caused by the water  evaporating alot due to the heat then condensing in the air until it reaches a critical point where it rains down fast because the condensed droplets are heavy. It keeps doing this in cycles during the rainy seasons.\n\nAs for the rain in europe, in the west, middle and northern europe it is mostly caused by cyclones which travel here from the atlantic ocean. In a cyclone there is a cold and a warm front, and the cold one is catching the warm one and making it rise up which causes it to rain at that point, which is quite large in ground area so the rain will stay on one point for quite a while.", "Most of Western Europe (such as northern Spain, most of France, and the British Isles) has what's known as a _maritime climate_. This climate type is most typically found at higher latitudes where prevailing winds bring in air from warm waters. In the case of Western Europe, the warm water comes from the Gulf Stream.\n\nThe tropics you're talking about sound like _tropical rainforests_. These form [almost exclusively around the Equator](_URL_0_) This takes place because the trade winds meet here, forming a region of weak prevailing winds known (among other names) as _the doldrums_. The absence of strong winds to move moisture away in a reliable fashion causes erratic and often violent meteorological events, such as thunderstorms.\n\nSo in a word: climate.", "Hey,\n\nI don't think anyone here has explained it enough, so I'm going to explain it a little bit more.  I'll try to keep it in easy language, but it will probably extend beyond the average five year old's grasp.  If you, or anyone else browsing, are really curious about the mechanism behind it, I hope this helps.\n\nOne commenter mentioned atmospheric stability, which is indeed the main difference, but he didn't explain why.\n\nThe first step in producing rain is that the water vapor has to condense into liquid (or ice) drops. (If the air rises due to convection, the natural cooling of the air can cause this condensation.  So could the air moving over a mountain, or over a cold lake, or many other things).  \n\nBut this makes a cloud, not rain. When these drops form, they are not big enough to fall to the ground.  They can float about in the air, their terminal velocity is basically 0.  Clouds can stay clouds without becoming rain, happy as a clam.  The water drops need to grow somehow, and become big enough to fall.  They don't grow naturally, because when a liquid water drop forms, the \"vapor pressure\" (amount of water vapor in the air) above the drop surface is equal to the vapor pressure in saturated air, so there is no driving force to move the water molecules from the ambient air towards the drop, and it can't grow.\n\nHot air in the tropics is unstable, which usually means it has a lot of convection.  The air rises, and then can also fall, and then maybe rise again due to wind, etc... lots of \"churning\".  This churning makes the water droplets bang into each other, which is how they grow and become big enough to fall out of the cloud.  But if there is a lot of convection, it now has to get big enough to not just \"fall out of the cloud\", but rather to fall through the intense upward convective drafts.  It keeps banging into other drops and growing until its big enough to beat the convection, which usually yields big fat drops.\n\nIn colder, more stable atmospheres, where the air isn't churning around, there is a different mechanism for droplet growth.  If the air is cold enough, there is some liquid water drops, but also a lot of ice crystals (the water vapor condensed into solid ice, not liquid water).  Liquid water has a \"vapor pressure\" (amount of water vapor in the air) that is HIGHER than solid water.  So there is more water vapor in the air around a liquid droplet surface than there is in the air around an ice crystal.  This difference in moisture content creates a driving force, where the water vapor migrates from the area of high content (the liquid droplet) to the area of low content (the ice crystal).  When it nears the ice crystal, it too condenses into ice, and the crystal grows.  If there are enough liquid droplets, the ice crystals keep leeching water from the droplets, and keep growing.  Eventually, they become big enough to fall, and then they melt on their path down through the atmosphere.  In this case, they fall down exactly when they become big enough to just \"fall out of the cloud\", which is usually much smaller than the drops that have to be big enough to fight convection.\n\nIf you are interested in this process and want to learn more, google \"Bergeron Process\"\n\n", "I haven't seen rain last more then a few hours in ages.... and I live in Ontario... I remember sitting on the deck late at night listening/watching thunderstorms... so chaotic yet peaceful.\n\nNow a days it's  MASSIVE MOTHER FUCKING DOWNPOUR  for like 5 min and nice sunshine after... it makes no sense. Rain on a car roof used to put me to sleep now it doesn't have the chance to make me think of sleep... \n\n\nStupid humans ruining the world...", "My reply is probably gonna get lost in all these posts but I will give it a try to clear some things out in this thread.\n\nAll the posters are answering the wrong question (in the correct way). That is, all the answers refer to the increased frequency of precipitation and not its duration.\n\nIn the atmosphere there are tiny particles (aerosol), that water condenses on. Practically all rain drops have a small aerosol seed (called cloud condensation nuclei if you are interested) where water vapor turns into liquid.  Water needs a surface to condense on under normal conditions - think f your mirror after a hot shower. \n\nLets take an example where the relative humidity is the same both in Europe and the tropics.Areas like Western Europe where there is significant pollution (industry, car emissions etc.) have lots of aerosol. On the other hand, the tropics do not have that problem and therefore less aerosol exists in the atmosphere. That means that there will tend to be more raindrops in Europe than the tropics.\n\nSince we have the same humidity (supersaturation) in both areas, and since there is less aerosol in the tropics, each aerosol particle in the tropics gets more water and it becomes a big droplet. In contrast, in Europe there are more aerosols and therefore each particle is assigned a tiny amount of water, leading to small droplets\n\nThe bigger droplets will precipitate faster than the smaller ones, leading to more severe rainfall (that depletes clouds faster) in the tropics than Europe, even though the amount of total rainfall (mass-wise) is the same.\n\nHope this clears it up for anyone that manages to find this buried", "ITT: ELI(15). So here's an ELI5 answer.\r\r**background**\r\rAir holds water. Examples: Steam, mist, fog etc. \r\rWhere does water in the air come from? Water on the \"ground\"\r\rWhat is a cloud? Water.\r\rWhen there is too much water the air drops it because it is too heavy. This is rain, if its really cold, this is snow.\r\r**So why does rain in western Europe last longer than rain in the tropics?**\r\rLets compare:\r\rWhere the water comes from\r\rThe temperature \r\rAnd what we get a a result\r\r**Tropics:**\r\rThere is a limited amount of water on the ground.\r\rIt get very hot during the day\r\rSo the water on the ground evaporates quickly (cause its hot), get heavy quickly, and falls in a big rainstorm. Sometimes a few times each day until it becomes night.\r\r**Britain:**\r\rThere is an ocean around Britain (example area)\r\rBritain is not very hot compared to the tropics\r\rA lot of water plus cold temperature means the water evaporates slowly, and gets heavy slowly and means it rains slowly. Since there is an ocean and its evaporating slowly there is always extra water being put in the air. So the air is constantly slowly dropping the extra back out and it drizzles all day.", "I'm from Mobile, Alabama which is now the rainiest city in the U.S. We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/hzaJ4Hn.png"], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Koppen_World_Map_Af.png/1920px-Koppen_World_Map_Af.png"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8czgcx", "title": "What would happen to a human if they could get inside of the light from an aurora borealis?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8czgcx/what_would_happen_to_a_human_if_they_could_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxj5h32"], "score": [7], "text": ["It's hard to say. First of all, the pressure that high up (more than 50 miles or so) is a fraction of a percent of atmospheric pressure, so you'd need a spacesuit or you just wouldn't be able to breathe. The temperature also starts rising rapidly in the upper atmosphere, thus the name thermosphere. However, with such a low pressure you wouldn't necessarily feel it like you would at atmospheric pressure because there will be very little conductive and convective heat transfer.\n\nThe biggest issue would be radiation. Aurora borealis is the interaction of solar winds with the upper atmosphere. Other layers of the atmosphere (like the ozone layer) protect us from most of the sun's electromagnetic radiation and the Earth's magnetic field blocks solar winds (which consists of charged particles from the sun), but up there you would be exposed to all kinds of EM radiation in the UV to x-ray range as well as electrons, protons, and some alpha particles in the keV range, which could damage human tissue. The plasma that makes up Aurora Borealis itself is at electron temperatures of around 1000 Kelvin but it's such a low density and the neutral atoms would be colder so you wouldn't necessarily get burned. Overall, I don't know for sure if the flux is high enough to cause burns or other immediate external damage, but you would probably receive an unsafe dose of radiation putting you at risk for radiation poisoning or even cancer down the line."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "48sywy", "title": "How representative of the field is /r/askhistorians?", "selftext": "I'm not sure if this is against the rule but i'd love to learn about the demographics of /r/askhistorians. Do we attract certain type of historian more often? are certain viewpoints reflected more often here than amongst historians generally? How deep into their career is the median poster?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48sywy/how_representative_of_the_field_is_raskhistorians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0mhgee", "d0miyc6", "d0mqe4y"], "score": [18, 149, 4], "text": ["Hiya, \n\nSome of this can be answered via our last subreddit census. It's a year old now but shouldn't be drastically different than now: [325K Census Results and the State of the Subreddit](_URL_0_). I suspect you'd be most interested in the section *The Flairs*, which talks about the demographic of the flaired users (as opposed to subscribers/readers).\n\nAs for \"do we attract a certain type of historian\", I can't answer that personally, but you can see how the flaired users have been categorized, and which categories have more or less people in the [List of Flaired Users](_URL_1_)", "There are three major factors shaping the AskHistorians community of flairs/unflaired answerers ([to which I say!](_URL_1_)): academic history, popular history, and reddit. As a result, AH doesn't completely reflect any one of the three, but you can see the influence of all of them.\n\n* reddit is 15% female. [In 2006](_URL_3_), 34% of tenured history faculty in the USA and 43% of graduate students were women. (There are [significant institutional factors](_URL_0_) [PDF warning] in academia that make women less likely to earn tenure.) AskHistorians' userbase, according to [last year's census](_URL_2_), is 15% female.\n\n* In terms of [flair subject area](_URL_5_), AskHistorians has the most listed flairs in European history, followed by American and military. Latin America, Africa, Pacific, Middle East and Asia lag far behind. In addition, we have flairs in non-geographic fields: art history, archaeology, history of science, and history of thought. Several points to make here: \n\n1. The popularity of military history reflects our \"history buff\" or popular history roots rather than our academic ones. Straight-up military history is an existing but very small branch of formal academic study.\n\n2. The AH breakdown of fields does not quite mirror academia's. Academic history departments work *very* strongly by geography first of all, with some attention to era. While you can find history of science (etc) graduate programs, generally professors teach in the geographic subfield of the history department. Additionally, ancient and medieval European historians would typically be halfway-Europeanists, halfway-ancient & medieval.\n\n3. When you split out the ancient and medieval historians from the list and add in the historians from the non-geographic fields (leaving aside the people from related disciplines like archaeo and art history--we love you, though!): the result probably reflects, geography-wise, academic history. America first (in America, at least), with Europe a very close second. Latin America, Near East, Asia-Pacific, and Africa kind of duke it out for the remaining spots.\n\n4. Within medieval, the AH flairbase is *extremely* powerful in the early Middle Ages and Byzantium. At least in America, the field of academic medieval history is *much* more dominated by the post-1000 period in the west. This is actually very exciting: the last 10 years saw a sweep of new \"big narratives\" of the early Middle Ages. Clearly they are not only inspiring people to take up the 'Dark Ages' again, but students are finding more and more there! Growing attention to archaeology and material culture is also helping focus attention on this period that is 'darker' in terms of textual evidence but has far more to tell us hiding in the dirt. ~~No one but me cares about point 4~~ so I'll stop now. :)\n\n5. Despite being reddit, we have very few flairs in history of science. Even medical questions usually fall to other flairs with peripheral knowledge.\n\n* In terms of experience, there is no single answer. According to the census, the biggest group of flairs are in-progress history graduate students, but \"completed history degree,\" undergraduate major, and other-background but significant interest and reading experience are not that far behind.\n\n* In terms of questions, the questions fielded at AH involve military history, daily life, and \"what was it like to...\" must more frequently than academic historians. Scholarly history tends to focus on people or sources much more heavily: what does text P tell us about medieval popular religion. My favorite example of this is /u/Binjadu asking, [\"How did people in 12th century Scandinavia survive winter?\"](_URL_4_) The answer to that question came from articles on an archaeological excavation of a Viking overwinter camp, and a book chapter on the economic integration of Scandinavia, Russia, and the Holy Roman Empire in the later Middle Ages. That second one is not the way questions come up here. The same data serves what really are two different ways of thinking about the past and how we relate to it. (Never change, AH! This is exactly what I'm here!)\n\n* By way of \"viewpoint\" or methodology, AH does a pretty good job reflecting the current norms of academic history. If you follow the Monday Methods series, you will see that even flairs who don't appear to use a specific theoretical approach or work on a topic--f.e. me posting on disability studies--are aware of the ongoing conversations, and strive to pursue our own research and write our answers with that broader discussion in mind. This makes sense given our balance of current graduate students, current undergraduates far enough into their degrees to have an area of specialization in which to be flaired, and people who deal with historians somehow in their careers. All of these people need to know WHAT historians are talking about, and HOW they are talking about those topics.\n\nI hope this helps a little!", "Admittedly I've not been subscribed for very long, but I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of historians of history itself (historiographers) on the board... when I were a lad/lass it was all the rage!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rqvhw/325k_census_results_and_the_state_of_the_subreddit/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/flairedusers"], ["http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/08E023AB-E6D8-4DBD-99A0-24E5EB73A760/0/persistent_inequity.pdf", "https://redd.it/3zkc5p", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rqvhw/325k_census_results_and_the_state_of_the_subreddit/", "http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2010/nrc-report-provides-data-on-history-doctoral-programs", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/413h9n/how_did_the_people_in_scandinavia_live_during_the/?ref=search_posts", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/flairedusers"], []]}
{"q_id": "3mngc7", "title": "if i were on the moon during a total lunar eclipse, and looked up at the earth, what would i see? why?", "selftext": "Inspired by the fuss surrounding the 'supermoon' eclipse.\n\nIf I were on the moon during a total lunar eclipse, and looked up at the Earth, what would I see? Why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mngc7/eli5_if_i_were_on_the_moon_during_a_total_lunar/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvgi5xb", "cvgi6vp", "cvgj750", "cvgjhss", "cvglfsr"], "score": [6, 402, 24, 5, 66], "text": ["You'd see a solar eclipse, but with the Earth blocking the sun instead of the Moon.\n\n_URL_0_", "You would see a solar eclipse. The earth is in between the moon and sun, so if you were on the moon you would see the earth with the sun behind it. ", "NASA has made an animation showing exactly this\n\n_URL_0_", "You would see the Earth and will post this [showerthought](_URL_0_).", "You'd see something [like this](_URL_1_). Because the earth has an atmosphere, you'd see a red ring around the earth. This would be the sunset/sunrise zone around the earth. The red sunset color is responsible for coloring the moon red during the eclipse [like this](_URL_0_). Also you'd maybe see some of the corona of the sun radiating out from the sun.\n\nEDIT: [Here's another version](_URL_2_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/20th_March_2015_total_solar_eclipse_cropped.jpg"], [], ["https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4341"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3mnbxt/if_you_were_on_the_moon_during_a_lunar_eclipse/"], ["http://www.mreclipse.com/LEphoto/TLE2010Dec/image/TLE2010-1294w.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/2vBUkPN.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/IBEIvkR.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "asfcvh", "title": "Can a pendulum clock run in centrifugal artificial gravity?", "selftext": "On theoretical space habitats where gravity is simulated by the habitat being a spinning ring where 'down' is 'out', would a pendulum clock like a grandfather clock be able to run? It's been a while since high school physic but as far as I can tell the (main? only?) forces acting on the clock would be the acceleration to the side from it's outward movement being deflected and possibly normal force with the floor but I think they might be the same force in this case.\n\nSo, without the constant acceleration from gravity but with the as far as I can guess constant centrifugal force would a pendulum clock work? Would you have to mount it on an angle because 'gravity' wouldn't go straight down? Could a pendulum of a given length have a different period because of the potential difference in magnitude of the centrifugal force compared to gravity?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/asfcvh/can_a_pendulum_clock_run_in_centrifugal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eguk90y", "egv6xln", "egv8sre"], "score": [6, 4, 3], "text": ["Whether you have constant acceleration due to gravity or due to being kept in circular motion, the force is pretty much straight down (with the \"pretty much\" part depending on the clock's orientation relative to the spinning and on the scale of the clock vs. the ship).  But if the clock is kept in the same orientation, you could calibrate out the error just like you do on earth.", "Harmonic oscillators have a fixed frequency regardless of amplitude, when the restoring force is proportional to the displacement.\n\nIn the case of pendula, it is a good approximation, as long as the displacement is a small angle the horizontal component of the gravity force is almost proportional to the angle.\n\nIn a rotating habitat, the radius of the rotating part is usually large enough so that there is not a large difference in force across the living compartment, so the pendulum is still going to be accurate.\n\nHowever if the radius of the rotating part is not much larger than the pendulum length you are going to be right out.\n\nTo take the most extreme example, if the pendulum was hung from the center of rotation it would clearly not swing at all.\n\n", "Yes, with the slight caveat that in a rotating reference frame there are actually two fictitious forces - the centrifugal one (which gives us 'gravity') and the [Coriolis force](_URL_0_). If your system is large enough that the centrifugal force looks constant w.r.t the pendulum's motion this would likely not matter, but it would be an extra error term that wouldn't happen if you did this in a linearly accelerating reference frame."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force"]]}
{"q_id": "3getm6", "title": "why the black lives matter protesters are targeting bernie sanders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3getm6/eli5_why_the_black_lives_matter_protesters_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctxhfe8", "ctxi7oe", "ctxid9q", "ctxj6s4", "ctxknt2", "ctxkxen", "ctxli3h", "ctxn7sk"], "score": [3, 30, 132, 5, 29, 7, 6, 2], "text": ["He is not being targeted specifically. Most progressive leaders are experiencing the same push to make public a plan for criminal-justice reform that address African-American issues. His disruptions are just getting a bit more notice because he is on the campaign trail.", "Because The Man (i.e. political, military industrial, and economic movers  &  shakers) want to disrupt his campaign by taking away momentum, disallowing him from speaking, and making sure negative pictures and headlines make the rounds on social and traditional media. It doesn't matter who was wrong or right. The pictures can be damming and the headlines I've seen so far have been sensationalist and perhaps hyperbolic, as to be expected.\n\nIt was set up.\n", "Bernie Sanders participated in one of the earliest sit-in protests against segregation, and helped to desegregate schools. He attended the 1963 March on Washington and saw the \"I have a dream\" speech in person. He endorsed Jesse Jackson for president, twice. \n\nBUT, a few weeks ago he was at an event with Martin O'Malley (the other guy in the democratic race) that was interrupted by BlackLivesMatter protesters. O'Malley, in response to the protesters and shouting, and probably in a clumsy attempt to agree, said \u201cBlack lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,\u201d which many took to be a very condescending and mistaken understanding of the whole point of that phrase. \n\nSanders was ... also there? He tried to say something about economic inequality but none of it seemed satisfying to the protesters and he left the stage. So, a lot of uninformed people started to see him as an \"old white guy who doesn't get it\", despite him having a better record on this than literally anyone in the race.  \n\nEDIT: Also, Bill Clinton has an excellent record regarding minority issues and was admirably called \"the first black president\". Of course that was long before Obama, at a time when most people thought we wouldn't get a real black president in our lifetimes. Still, the Clintons are very popular in that regard, and so Hillary has a lot of support from black people. ", "Because they're being ignorant and dumb. They have no idea what they're talking about and just want to hear themselves talk", "Copy/Pasted from my reply in another thread:\n\nI suspect that they're targeting Bernie because they can. Hillary Clinton has a secret service detail who would never have let these loons anywhere near the stage. [And she's not afraid to use them.](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd if they tried this at a Republican candidate's event, they'd be arrested (if the angry crowd didn't get ahold of them first) because the GOP has little to lose from the optics of locking up black protesters - in fact, it would probably help them with their base. \n\nBecause Bernie is sympathetic to their cause, he is easy to walk all over, and they know it. Hell, he even agreed to let them say their peace, provided he could proceed with his own speech, but that was not good enough I guess.", "These are the people that talk about \"microaggressions\", that say being colorblind is racist.  They're a core part of this movement, and they're so off on their own tangent unless you completely give in I doubt they can be made happy.\n\nMany are straight up fascists, like [this](_URL_0_) where a speaker says \"If you are not of African descent please step outside the circle\".", "I wonder if on some level they're bound and determined to piss off and alienate everyone so they get to feel perpetual victimhood. It sure beats actually working or doing something constructive!", "to increase the percieved importance of their grievances within the democratic coalition. parties and ideologies are coalitions and this is some activists saying \"pay more attention to our ideas/needs/problems and relatively less on the other stuff  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/04/politics/hillary-clinton-rope-line-reporters/"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9wO3kGFKE"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2g7u7s", "title": "How did Vietnamese people come to adopt Latin script?", "selftext": "I know the basics of the French colonial situation there, but I'd like to know the specifics behind the creation of their writing system. Since the Vietnamese script is unique to Vietnam I assume that there was some conscious design behind it. Thanks for any answers!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g7u7s/how_did_vietnamese_people_come_to_adopt_latin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckgo22g"], "score": [4], "text": ["The [relevant Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) is pretty good.\n\nThe modern Viet alphabet is very similar to the original Romanization of Alexandre de Rhodes's great dictionary back in the 17th century.  \n\nAlexis Michaud has done a translation of Haudricourt's 1949 paper on some of the peculiarities of the Viet alphabet, you can read it [here](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet#History", "http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/92/00/64/PDF/Haudricourt1949_Peculiarities_MonKhmerStudies2010.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "6mgb35", "title": "why do some vegetarians sight morals reasons for not eating meat/animals when animals eating other animals has persisted throughout history?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mgb35/eli5_why_do_some_vegetarians_sight_morals_reasons/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk1bpna", "dk1bxse", "dk1c0h9", "dk1dqq6", "dk1elg0", "dk1ez6k", "dk1h0fw", "dk1s1kq"], "score": [23, 8, 7, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Animals rape each other in the wild, does that justify rape?\n\nBasing your morality off of what wild animals do isn't sound logic.", "Ethics specifically deals with the fact that humanity is sapient, and can reason before making choices. What other animals do really doesn't have an impact on ethics, because as far as we know, none of them can make a conscious decision to act differently.", "Animals in the wild are not intelligent like humans, not capable of morality like humans, and most of all don't really have a choice... predators are built by evolution to kill and eat, and in an environment where that's their only survival option.\n\nHumans, however, are omnivores and capable of eating a wide variety of things to survive. Furthermore, we've constructed a huge society that makes getting access to tons and tons of different food options pretty easy. Tigers don't have a choice, Humans do, and ergo humans **choose** to eat meat.\n", "Because animals aren't considered to have moral agency, so we do ascribe morality to any of their actions.\n\nAnimals in the wild commit all kinds of acts that humans consider to be morally repugnant, including rape and murder.  The is absolutely no reasons we should look to the wild kingdom as our guide on morality.", "Because what other animals do is irrelevant. We typically don't base the ethics of our behavior and actions on that of other animals, and for good reasons: we would find ourselves in societies where it was perfectly fine for a man to kill another man for hitting on his girlfriend; societies where a mother would be justified in killing and eating her own baby.", "Lots of valid points here, but it's also worth noting that we are the only species that does factory farming. If you're a deer and get eaten by a wolf, you've probably lived your life with a lot of freedom but just died pretty brutally. If you're a chicken and get eaten by a human, your life was very likely spent in a tiny environment with a huge amount of other chickens eating food laden with supplements to force more growth and so on. This is why many vegans will argue that being vegetarian isn't enough, a chicken that lays eggs or a cow that produces milk will have the same poor quality of life up until their death whether or not they get eaten at the end of it. \n\nWhile I'm a meat eater myself, I'm strongly of the belief that the debate needs to move on from \"are we ethically **eating** meat\" to \"are we ethically **farming** meat\".", "The way animals are raised, fed and slaughtered is often very barbaric whereas animals in the wild get to roam freely.", "Lots of things commonly occur in nature that are morally reprehensible. Mothers eat their own young as a survival strategy, rape is a common way males can pass on their genes. It's the Naturalistic fallacy to assume something is right or good because it occurs in nature. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ae2kx", "title": "Are there any examples of \"bad art\" in antiquity?", "selftext": "Art that the Greeks and Romans would have found ugly/distasteful? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ae2kx/are_there_any_examples_of_bad_art_in_antiquity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0zv30n", "d102d13"], "score": [45, 35], "text": ["I'm quite interested in hearing more comprehensive answers from a specialist, especially regarding how they viewed non-Mediterranean art, but a quickie answer:\n\nThey were unsurprisingly capable of recognizing unskilled art. There's a great story about the great painter Apelles delivering a burn to a lesser contemporary painter: \"You didn't have the skill to paint Helen of Troy beautiful, so you have instead painted her rich [by portraying her as wearing lots of gold jewelry].\"  Pliny was [quite opinionated](_URL_0_ XXXIV) on art quality. Older works were counted as \"rude\", and works that were overly fussy were described as \"assiduity has destroyed all charm.\"\n\nThe Greeks and Romans also had fashions, just as we do today. One example I can think of is vase painting. The Greeks used to do black-figure / red-background vase painting, but when someone figured out new firing technique, red-figure / black-background vase painting quickly took over and dominated within a century, if not within decades.  I would guess, though I don't have a source, that black-figure vases would be seen as outmoded: not *bad*, just not the thing you'd want in your house as a fashionable person.", "[This metope](_URL_0_) is somewhat well known for being, well, just not particularly good. The centaur's legs are wompy jogged and the problem with the height of the figure is solved with the rather inelegant method of transporting its head into the middle of its chest. Compare [this](_URL_1_) similar scene, handled much better.\n\nIt is actually a pretty good demonstration that the Parthenon was handled by multiple artisans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK"], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/South_metope_26_Parthenon_BM.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Ac_marbles.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1ihljt", "title": "why does the word 'liberal' refer to the left in the us?", "selftext": "I assume it is because of the lack of a significant 'socialist' movement. In much of Europe, for example, liberals are considered centrist or even fiscal conservatives. Why is this not the case in the US? It confuses me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ihljt/eli5_why_does_the_word_liberal_refer_to_the_left/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb4ih44", "cb4ik7a", "cb4kkeq", "cb4orvv", "cb4p0wo"], "score": [11, 22, 16, 2, 19], "text": ["You assume correctly. The lack of a real socialist movement in the US means that the only opposition to the right-wing movement is liberalism, and politics in the US are so skewed to the right that people mistakenly just throw liberalism and socialism together when they're really two very different ideologies.\n\nA quick example would be gun control: Leftist revolutionary thought would suggest freer access to guns, indeed the Republicans even passed gun control laws as a reaction to the Black Panther movement, but liberals and (whatever measure of) socialists alike are now on the pro-gun-control side of the debate.\n\nThe two-party system of the US also plays a part in this. The Democratic party is a mishmash (not intended to be pejorative) coalition of progressives, neoliberals, hold-out socialists, moderates and not-far-right-enough-conservatives. These factions all have to band together under a \"Not Republicans\" banner because they can't get any national play otherwise. And then people start considering \"Democrats\", \"liberals\", \"progressives\", and \"socialists\" as interchangeable terms and it gets even more confusing.", "The word liberal originally meant something like \"people should have liberty.\" That meant stuff like elected government, rule of law, that kind of stuff. No one is really against that anymore so anyone can call them selves \"liberals\" by this old meaning. \n\nIn the 20th century, one group of liberals became important in the US and a different one in Europe.  They both came out of the old meaning of liberal so they both called themselves liberal. \n\nIn the US the thinking was something like, \"To give people more liberty the government needs to help them out when they are down.\"\n\nIn Europe it was something like, \"To give people more liberty the government needs to get out of the way.\"\n\nBoth are still about liberty but how to get it was very different.\n\nAn important note: Conservative's aren't against liberty. Of course not, By the old definition, conservatives are also liberals.  The opposite of a conservative isn't a liberal by that meaning, it's a progressive. ", "In the U.S. the \"liberal\" politicians are actually centrists, and sometimes even fiscal conservatives (and sometimes not), just as they are in Europe. the difference here is that in Europe there is usually an actual political party to the left of liberal politicians. there are actual Marxists, socialists, communists, etc. In the U.S. there is no political party to the left of liberal politicians. the entire political spectrum in this country is shifted rightward so our \"left\" isn't really the left, its the center. ", "I disagree with a few here. I mostly see it as definitions being flipped every once in awhile as opinions change and the parties with liberal/conservative/progressive labeling change with them. The lack of a real socialist movement caused a lot of that in the early 1900's and later in the 50s. But, for example, the Democratic part held the south for a LONG time and for awhile was the party of segregation; the longest serving Democrat in the house up until 2010 was in the freaking Clan. All the major democrats of the era were stalwart segregationists : Strom Thurmond, John C. Stennis, Carl Vinson. And then the party was led in a new direction in the 60s/70s by a different sect of the party aka Kennedy, LBJ, Carter. That's how we got to our current definition today. Republicans today are a big difference between the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln or even before that Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican party. That party, in a weird irony, lines itself with what would be considered modern Republican ideals (less government), but is the forerunner to the Democratic Party.\n\nUS history has a lot of big moments where the two party system basically flip flopped their ideals to stay relevant in whatever was going on at the time. The civil war was one, communism's rise was another, and the Cold war caused another. The segregation issue with the Democratic party is the best example of one party doing a complete 180 simply to appease changing opinions. \n\nIn actuality all are some form of what would be, in the rest of the world, a centrist or liberal viewpoint with neither aligning with a \"right\" or \"left\" political stance. But Democrats can be very very conservative on certain issues. For example, gun rights are an extremely liberal viewpoint historically. But the Republicans' support of the patriot act is horrifying to anyone against big government. If we were to have a two part system divided equally on issues purely on right leaning values (more government = more problems) and left values (more government to help) it would be the Libertarian party and the progressive element of the Democratic party. ", "Liberal was originally used in the US in a similar context to what is used in Europe. This is often called \"Classical Liberalism\". The modern sense of the word came into major use under FDR. \n\nWhere FDR's policies were very \"Progressive\", that word was practically banned in American politics during his era. Wilson (a known progressive) getting the US involved in WWI and many other things lead to the word \"progressive\" being blighted. Roosevelt started to use the word \"Liberal\" to describe his policies and from then on \"Liberal\" has been associated with the Left in American politics.\n\nInterestingly enough, the use of \"Liberal\" in the left forced another switch. The word \"Libertarian\", which once described various groups of communists and anarchists, was adopted by the right, for the most part, in the United States. Many US libertarians are quite close in ideology to \"Classical Liberals\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4hc346", "title": "what about touching grass with your bare skin makes it so itchy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hc346/eli5_what_about_touching_grass_with_your_bare/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2oxd4y", "d2ozkxj", "d2p06on", "d2p3sr5", "d2paiho"], "score": [62, 21, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Since the tiny edges of the grass are rubbing up against you, they usually make small, unnoticeable cuts on your skin, which can cause slight itching. This is usually the case unless you're allergic and are having a reaction.\n\nYou can read more here: _URL_0_\n\nAfter all, they're called *blades* of grass for a reason.\n\nHope this helped!", "As someone who moved from Long Island to Florida as a kid, I went from nice soft feet approved grass, to red ant infested burning blades of green.", "There's lots of different kinds of grass. It really depends on which type of grass you're touching. Bentgrass is a soft grass that's fairly common. Fescue is fairly common as well. Coarser grasses like Poa Annua when looked at under a microscope will reveal a saw-like edge; the main culprit of itchiness in the grass world.", "When I was younger I used to get really itchy from grass. After looking in the grass, I saw little white bugs jumping from blades of grass and I always thought it was that.", "I always wondered the same thing. Turns out I'm highly allergic to all types of grass. You may want to get allergy tested because apparently grass isn't that itchy to most people. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2105"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2bjzur", "title": "Why do honeybees have barbed stingers that allow them only one sting?", "selftext": "Wouldn't it be more advantageous to be able to sting multiple times like wasps and hornets? It seems like dying after one sting seems inefficient in defending a hive, since you're down a worker even if your hive survives. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2bjzur/why_do_honeybees_have_barbed_stingers_that_allow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj64bsg"], "score": [7], "text": ["Quite simple answer really. As bees evolved, their stingers weren't there in order to defend themselves against huge animals such as humans or other mammals, but rather they were used to sting other insects, and even bees of other beehives."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2auv2h", "title": "can someone explain rocky horror picture show to me? i feel like i didn't \"get it\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2auv2h/eli5_can_someone_explain_rocky_horror_picture/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciyz23l", "ciyz8ah", "ciyzy11", "ciz03dn", "ciz0c2k", "ciz0hoc", "ciz0o3r", "ciz0y6g", "ciz115n", "ciz1ffe", "ciz1jxx", "ciz1ly1", "ciz1pyv", "ciz1rc8", "ciz1wdt", "ciz1y5y", "ciz25h8", "ciz25tq", "ciz2foq", "ciz2hki", "ciz2mv9", "ciz2n8i", "ciz2ovx", "ciz2tr8", "ciz2vlu", "ciz3hsg", "ciz3uwc", "ciz40iw", "ciz446d", "ciz4bb1", "ciz4do2", "ciz4hlm", "ciz4mjx", "ciz4t4o", "ciz4tiy", "ciz4yzy", "ciz54md", "ciz57rs", "ciz5bc9", "ciz5bsx", "ciz5hao", "ciz5v0y", "ciz61ga", "ciz69ps", "ciz6k67", "ciz6na3", "ciz706v", "ciz70uy", "ciz7242", "ciz75wc", "ciz7m21", "ciz7nlw", "ciz7wav", "ciz81gw", "ciz98ai", "ciz9kod", "ciz9r7q", "cizbg1w", "cizbm6u", "cizc51b", "cizc5u4", "cizc6y3", "cizcc5d", "cizcems", "cizcjsm", "cizcxlq", "cizd5wn", "cizdjnt", "cizdqlc", "cize3aq", "cizenrk", "cizf572", "cizfk9b", "cizfngj", "cizfntp", "cizfsec", "cizg4bz", "cizg4wt", "cizgk8t", "cizgl9r", "cizgrc0", "cizgxwu", "cizh4ol", "cizh8bq", "cizhes0", "cizhlun", "cizi0gw", "cizi2ky", "cizi5kv", "cizikye", "cizilxh", "cizj2f2", "cizjacf", "cizjgc7", "cizjhxi", "cizjl29", "cizjm1n", "cizjp8j", "cizjwid", "cizk4m1", "cizkcbu", "cizkflj", "cizl226", "cizlfqw", "cizlm7z", "cizlq8k", "cizm6k2", "cizma87", "cizmjje", "cizmo2f", "cizmrrh", "cizna1x", "cizneq8", "cizni0b", "cizns8x", "ciznt17", "ciznyz1", "ciznz4l", "cizo786", "cizogd0", "cizoitx", "cizol1p", "cizoviz", "cizpicu", "cizpnpj", "cizpt3u", "cizq15m", "cizqmy8", "cizqrmt", "cizrmtj", "cizry18", "ciztcos", "ciztecp", "ciztepn", "ciztr9f", "cizu003", "cizu0st", "cizu8yi", "cizupes", "cizuvoc", "cizvd0v", "cizvdnr", "cizvloj", "cizwq0q", "cj0juv5"], "score": [67, 813, 20, 102, 22, 2889, 2, 223, 2, 8, 4, 4, 26, 12, 6, 6, 16, 2, 2, 2, 4, 7, 2, 3, 2250, 2, 2, 19, 3, 2, 2, 396, 3, 2, 6, 2, 4, 6, 3, 12, 19, 13, 2, 15, 5, 6, 3, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 10, 3, 5, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 6, 4, 4, 2, 7, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 5, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 11, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 3, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Honestly, there isn't much to get. It is meant to be over the top, obnoxious, and campy. It is a send up of the old sci-fi/horror films that generally focused on mad scientist what go a tromping through God's domain with creating life and all that. But if you're looking for a deeper meaning... well it is there, but it doesn't add anything. \n\nJust sit back, enjoy the music, and don't dig too deeply.  ", "sexual liberation, good fun and someone realized that Tim Curry looked hot in a corset and heels", "It really isn't a good movie. What made it a cult classic was the audience participation. If you haven't seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show on a big screen with the entire audience participating, then you haven't watched it.", "It is a campy, ludicrous sort of spin on a vampire/Frankenstein movie that became a cult classic because of its treatment of alternate sexualities at that time period, and its catchy songs. It remained a hit because of the audience participation part, turning it into an 'experience' where people can dress up and be silly. ", "It's pastiche of horror movies, but it's also a piss-take of traditional puritan values. And DAMN Tim Curry can shake it.", "I was in middle school when Rocky Horror Picture Show first became popular; a few years later in high school, several of my friends and I went to the midnight shows on a regular basis. It was a blast. We stayed out until 3am, with parental approval, since they knew the older kids we were with. The crowd was exotic - were those actual gay people? And when the show started, the sideshow was remarkable - young people dressed up like the cast, at the front of the theater, acting out the movie as it went along. Others dressed up in the audience, participating in some sort of secret code that they were all in on... and that we learned over a few screenings.\n\nYears later a girlfriend had never seen it, so we rented it and watched on TV. It was horrible. It's a campy B-movie.\n\nTL;dr: RHPS was all about the scene that developed around the midnight shows - a counterculture where the odd, artsy kids could blend in, and if you were gay or trans, it didn't matter. Back in the late 70's or early 80's, this was a big thing, because social acceptance wasn't at the point it was today.", "If you're watching it at home on DVD... there's nothing to get. It's a silly movie with some good songs.\n\nYou must see it at a theatre to get the full effect with the live performers, the audience participation, etc.", "Some thoughts, as a cast member:\n\nRHPS is not a good film. It is a ridiculous film that is fun with catchy songs. Part camp, part loving homage, part absurd farce, all dealing with imagery and themes from decades of horror movies and B sci-fi movies. Its got a lot going on in it, which people recognize. That makes the whole thing accessible. So the transgressive parts, dealing with alternative and non-traditional sexualities, are easier to digest. \n\nRHPS is normally seen in theatres, with a live cast and/or audience participation. Those are places where, in my experience, sexuality of all stripes is championed. Not just LGBTQ and straight sexuality, but bondage, plus-size folks, disabled folks, everything. You can let your freak flag fly in a fairly safe,  non-judgmental space, that is still public. This is a movie where Tim Curry in a corset is *believable* as the sexiest thing you've ever seen.  \n\nThe audience participation also is transgressive in other ways. There are nazi salutes, because one character is clearly a nazi. There are  racial jokes. We make fun of current tragedies. (When the RKO tower comes down at the end, the AP line is \"Wait, I thought two towers fell?\") There are no sacred cows. It is a safe place to be absolutely horrible and let your inner thirteen year old out. Its the first place that its okay to laugh after a tragedy. \n\nWhat don't you get about the show? I mean, it requires a lot of American and British film context, but outside of that, maybe there is something else I or someone could explain?", "Well, stop trying to \"get it.\" There isn't much to get.\n\nYou really need to experience the full Rocky Horror Picture Show experience which includes a set of actors performing the movie on stage while the movie is being played on a big screen and the audience participation. This occurs at a movie theater.\n\nBy itself, RHPS is a terrible movie. When coupled with a theater and audience participation it's a lot more fun.", "Man, RHPS sure was fun when I went to see it at a live theater. \n\nTransgender alien comes to Earth, owns a giant manor, lures people in to become crazy sex-cultists that also like to sing and dance in an environment that is completely accepting of gender/sexual preference/race. \n\nHonestly, there's not much to it. Just turn your brain off and enjoy the show, like a lot of theater.\n\nPS. Tim Curry makes this movie. By himself.", "Oh, also, /r/rhps in case you get interested", "It is interesting this was posted today.  I finally decided that my daughter and her friends are old enough to pop their Rocky Horror cherries.  I am awaiting one of their parent's permission.  If you want to \"get\" the film without seeing it live there isn't much to get.  The Rocky Horror experience has to be live with a bunch of people that collectively know the responses and are into it enough to mimic the action of the film on stage in full regalia. ", "It's just a jump to the left...", "An innocent, young, newly engaged couple (Brad and Janet) stumble upon a castle occupied by Dr. Frank N Furter when their car breaks down. The Dr. is holding a party for aliens from the planet Transexual to reveal his creation Rocky Horror.\n\nDr Scott comes looking for his son Eddie (Meatloaf) who Frank N Furter killed earlier but ends up discovering that Frank N Furter has developed a device called the Sonic Transducer.\n\nEverybody pretty much sleeps with everybody, they chase each other around and everyone is frozen and then thawed out for the grand finale, Rose Tint my World  &  Don't Dream It. Frank N Furter and Columbia (Meatloaf's GF) die, Riff-Raff and Magenta blasts off in the castle and Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott live.", "I'm the type of person who just hates musicals, so I'll never get it. Nothing makes me cringe harder than Bollywood movies or Glee.", "I went to see it before the \"audience cult\" went stupid. Before I saw it, it was a play for several years. It was supposed to be a parody of all the \"B\" rated horror films of the time, that's all. ", "It made me happy as a 'weird kid' who didn't know any other weird kids. It was my first glimpse of a world I'd only dreamed of. And [Hot Patootie by Meat Loaf](_URL_0_) is just the most wonderful thing. ", "Thanks for this question.  I've never gotten this movie, either, although Tim Curry is amazing in his opening number.  I never saw the stage show in college and now I'm too old.", "From what I see, most people are saying that either there isn't anything to get (campy and silly), or you haven't seen it unless you've seen it at a theater with audience participation. I partially disagree on both parts.\n\nThis has been my favorite movie for the last fifteen years. I have never seen it at a theater, but it opened my mind. While it may be silly and camp on the surface, it tells a tale of two straight edge kids who haven't really experienced anything and are engaged too early in life. How does anyone know what makes them happy unless they experiment and find out what can make them happy? \n\nThe only comparison I can think of is the Amish rumspringa (sp?). They have to know what life is (and the world they're giving up) before they can commit to their religion. Well, the same thing applies to the rest of the world, but on a less strict scale. Brad and Janet didn't know much about themselves. RHPS is about opening their world and stepping out of the confines of polite society to find out who they can be. \n\nI also took from it, if someone is raised prim and proper and strict, being exposed to debauchery and freer lifestyles suddenly, can be traumatic. Slow exposure over time near maturity is healthier than a sudden immersion. I believe that's why Brad and Janet went off the deep end.", "Reasons i don't like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.\nMusical\nFeeling like i'm trying to be subverted\n", "In my experience, \"theater people\" like it.  I found it unwatchable.", "The RHPS is a bad, campy movie where the main attraction is playing along with the movie with audience participation and in-jokes. It is not for everyone. I have seen it and done the audience participation thing. I don't think it is that great and see no need to ever see it again, with or without audience participation.\n\nPersonally, I think the people who go repeatedly are kind of living out a fantasy or lifestyle they don't feel they can engage in fully. ", "I've really enjoyed reading all the varied responses to OP's question and learning about how different the meaning of RHPS is to others. I remember the first time watching it in an old, rundown theatre on Halloween and seeing the spectrum of humanity enjoying the show and participating in the ceremony and tradition that was just as much a part of the movie as the film itself.", "The movie is at the same time a love letter to the old monster movies of the RKO era and a lampooning of everything that society at the time found taboo.  It was also a movie version of a stage musical of the same name with all the original actors with a few questionable additions (namely Meatloaf played both Eddie and Dr. Scott in the play to show that they were related but he was bumped from the role in the film).\n\nThat is pretty much the gist of it.  It is a satire of taboo subjects of the day and a send up to the monster movies of the 50's and 60's.", "It's a musical spin on Frankenstein. Teaching people to be open minded and not judge people just because they are different. It's ahead of its time and shear genius and the music is amazing. People who look deeper when they watch movies like this will get the inner meaning. Brad and Janet were two clean cut squares who never stepped outside their country club like lifestyle. Once they gave something new a chance it changed them forever and opened their minds to people who are different. It's a fun, weird, wacky movie. I Love it, and I'm a straight as an arrow. ", "The Village Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has midnight showings every weekend. See it that way if you haven't yet. ", "I don't think it had a plot", "It's okay, I didn't \"get it\" either.  When I saw it for the first time I felt like I had walked into someone else's inside joke.  I think the point is that its supposed to be a place of total acceptance and liberation. But to be honest I think a lot of the original charms that made the movie/experience so great have been lost and now people use it as an excuse to be as weird as fucking possible, at least in the theater I go to.  Just couldn't get into it. ", "Honestly, I think it's stupid as hell. You go to a crowded theatre to be made comically uncomfortable by a myriad of socially retarded strangers whilst watching a really, really shitty movie. It's great if you're one of them, but if you weren't one of the weird theatre kids in high school, it's probably not worth your time. ", "I was never a fan and have been on the losing end of many arguments about weather or not it's a good movie. I feel like Ben from Parks and Rec over Little Sebastian, and I just have to accept that I don't get it.", "It's a parody on the crazy sci-fi movies of the 50s. When it was first released in theaters it was a huge flop. This is also at a time when theatres would run movies for years because there was no way to own a movie yet. People would get drunk and go to the movie just to make fun of it. They would yell at the screen and soon learned the places where you can shout something and the actors would give a hilarious response. Soon there was a whole culture adopted behind it. ", "The current top comment bums me out. I think Rocky Horror is one of the most widely misunderstood films around. And while the midnight experience is amusing, I don't think I'll ever go again, as these days it simply amounts to a bunch of people trying to yell over each other for the best callback line. And there's always *that* guy who's gone online and memorized entire callback screenplays. It no longer feels like a cult embracing this freakish movie, but instead a culture that's evolved separately and gathers to make fun of a \"horrible, campy\" film.\n\nWhat I think a lot of people miss is that Rocky Horror is more along the lines of Airplane! than The Room. There is no unintentional humor. It knows exactly what it's doing and what it wants to do. It is to 50's sci-fi and horror what Airplane! was to the disaster pictures of its day. The problem is that while most of us are familiar with the titles of the great 50's sci-fi and horror films, like Them! and Tarantula and such, the vast majority of Rocky's audience *these days* haven't actually seen them. I'm not saying you need to be a schlock scholar to \"get\" the movie, just like I saw Airplane! before Zero Hour! and still got the jist of it. But I definitely enjoyed Airplane! more after I did my homework.\n\nOthers have already mentioned the film's themes of sexual liberation and personal freedom, but I'll add that those themes are what turned a lot of us on to the movie in the first place. I originally saw it in junior high and just didn't get it at all. Returned a few years later, and it felt like Richard O'Brien was speaking directly to me. Christ, the movie's got rock n' roll, monsters, kinky sex, and cannibalism, all wrapped up in a simple coming of age story. Welcome to the mind of 15 year-old me. And yet, I was Brad at that time of my life, and I was dating a real Janet. Seeing the stereotypical 50's couple perverted by rock music and 70's openness about sex, with horror references serving as the sugar to help the medicine down, was a revelation to me, as I imagine it has been for several generations of closeted weirdos who needed to hear someone tell them, \"don't dream it - be it!\"\n\nFinally, this is the least important point in the film's defense, but I think it's surprisingly well made. I love the cinematography, and some of the camera work is just awesome. I say that as a huge fan of 70's cinematography, so perhaps I'm biased. I love the handheld shots of Frank coming up out of the pool during Wild and Untamed Thing.\n\nOr maybe I'm the one who's missing the point. I don't know. I respect all the opinions in this thread, as it's obviously a pretty divisive picture. I just really, really love this movie, and the midnight experience no longer feels like they're laughing *with* it, but *at* it. Either way, the conversation should be interesting. So stay for the night. Or maybe a bite...", "it's like a less good version of phantom of the paradise", "From what I can tell, people like it because its a show about \"alternative sexuality\" In our society, the sexy image is an attractive young woman showing a lot of skin. This is probably because men are very visual and like eye candy, while women care less about sexy images. This means what a lot of people consider sexy is left out of mainstream society. The Rock horror picture show is an outlet for that. So the people who enjoy it are women and gay men. My guess is transgender and transsexual people also like it because they are seeing and even interacting in a show were their sexuality and gender identification can be expressed without shame. In everyday society they can't do this. \n\ntl;dr: It's an alternative sexuality and gender identification outlet for everybody who's sexuality and/or gender identification cannot be freely expressed in society, i.e., anybody but straight males, who's sexual preferences (scantly clad young women) are found everywhere.\n", "It's just a jump to the left!", "There isn't exactly a hidden message or anything. It's shock humor and silliness and a whole mess of in-jokes. A lot of it was the audience yelling things out at the actors. Like when they yell out, \"Describe your balls!\" right before the Narrator says, \"heavy, black, and pendulous\" or when they yell \"Hey Riff, kill that Smurf!\" and the actor who plays Riffraff throws a pitchfork into the bushes.\n\nAbout half or more of the comedy is in the Audience script, and the movie versions I've seen just don't do that section justice. \n\nHave you ever seen Mystery Science Theater 3000? It's like that, only with a full audience yelling things instead of three guys. ", "This pretty much explains it to a \"T\":\n\n_URL_0_", "Essentially it's a camp parody of Frankenstein, and a homage to fifties B-movies and rock 'n' roll.", "Has anyone ever done a deep analysis of RHPS?  I've seen it a bunch of times and it feels like there is a deeper meaning there somewhere....\n\nMaybe something about alternative sexuality replacing the norm, wherein SciFi represents the alternative?  Maybe that's what the whole Eddie storyline is about.  Eddie being the stand-in for \"normal sexuality\" that gets murdered by SciFi.  (Frank).\n\nBut then the movie suggests there are, and maybe should be, limits to this.  Frank gets killed (Frank N. Furter it's all over, you are now my prisoner, your mission is a failure, your lifestyle's too extreme!).  The castle leaves, leaving Brad and Janet changed forever...possibly for the worse. \n\nAnyway, that's my loose interpretation.", "It's about knowing. About nailing it all together in a group.\n\n\nIt's 1980, you've just finished doing your first school musical, you're 15, and the cool seniors who had the leads and have cars say \"let's get the whole cast together and go to RHPS\"\n\nYou beg and plead with your parents to go *and they let you* because they know the seniors and they're the geeky/artsy/smart ones, so you roll your Columbia costume up in a wad because there's some things your parents don't need to know, and you bike over to your friends house to pick up the carpool and change there (into pajamas with a band-aid over one very important spot) and then you go and because your older friends coached you *you know a bunch of the right things to say at the right time*. \n\nAnd you say them along with everyone else, and it is JUST SO COOL.  \nYou get to yell \"SHOW US A TIT, COLUMBIA\" really loud.  \n\nIt's every time you've recited the Pledge of Allegiance or sung the Gloria Patri, but turned into something *yours*, you and your cohort.\n\nIt's the satisfaction of knowing how to how to clap Miss Mary Mack, really fast, totally perfect, or  singing \"Jingle Bells, Batman Smells\" really loud with all the other kids on the bus, *except with sex.* \n\nHumans of all ages like doing things together. Sweet Caroline at a Sox game, that big \"DA DA DAAAA\" moment. \n\n\n*Adult* humans like sex. \n\n*Adolescent* humans need to push boundaries and screw around with taboos. \n\nRHPS puts them all together with just a Jump to the Left, black lipstick, and toilet paper.", "Thanks for all the replies! The biggeat thing I'm getting from all this is that this movie is a lot of things to a lot of people. \n\nI'm gonna try to give some context to my question. I watched this movie while hanging out with a few friends and my wife, who kept popping in to sing random lines.\n\nThe themes of freedom and openness were really obvious to me. I got all that. I actually liked a lot of the movie for what it was, so I don't want people thinking I was weirded out or thought I'd was stupid or anything. The plot was a bit hard to follow on my first time watching but that's cool.\n\nAfter reading the responses I probably will try to go to a live show. Seems like one of those life experience things everyone should just go and do at least once. \n\nOne thing that really took me out of the experience was the murder of that Eddie guy. It really changed my impression of Frank from a lovable creep who represents freedom and the alternative lifestyle to someone genuinely ill and extremely dangerous to be around. And then the film went right on celebrating him. Maybe it's just me. \n\nI loved Tim Curry's entrance and his character before and after that moment but I just couldn't get past it completely. It seemed like Frank was supposed to be someone you weren't sure to cheer for or be disgusted by and by casually killing someone it just pushed me too far into the latter.\n\nI think it may partially be a cultural lens thing. Seeing that movie in this day and age and being all too keenly aware of the whole \"transexual villain\" movie trope which paints people who act and think differently than most of us as something dangerous and to be distrusted. Feel free to weigh in. Like I said his character may have come across differently then than it does now. But for some reason it bugged me.\n\n\n\n", "They eat a guy named Meatloaf and then sing about it. ", "It was 1985, I was a junior in high school, and some friends had heard about this thing called the \"Rocky Horror Picture Show\" that was shown at midnight at the Lynbrook theater. With some of us having just got our drivers licenses and cars we thought it would be fun to go, so we did. We were \"virgins\" and had no idea what we were in for. Before we know if there are people in costume on the stage and a guy in a corset and fishnets dancing around and sitting in people's laps. People are shouting out lines, squirting water, throwing rice and toilet paper, and having a freakin BLAST! We had so much fun we decided to go again the following Saturday night. \n\nWe showed up early this time and were prepared. We meet the \"actors\" and talked to them and got to know them as we kept going back every week. After a few months, when one of the actors couldn't make it, the group asked if one of us would step in. We all wanted to. Fast forward another few months, and the start of our senior year and my group of friends (all guys) are now hanging out with a group of girls from a different school every Sat. night at the show. And then one week the leader of the acting group tells us that they are moving to the big time, the 8th Street Playhouse in NYC and asks if we would take over the acting here in Lynbrook. We wholeheartedly agree and go about decided who would play who. \n\nWe decided who would play who based on looks, and that is how I ended up strutting around the Lynbrook theater every Sat. night for about 8 months in a corset, speedo, fishnets, and pearl necklace and having the time of my life. During the opening I would dance around and sit in people's laps. I would have people come to me before the show and point out a friend who was a \"virgin\" and ask me to come to them during the show, and I would. It was fucking awesome. \n\nI even dated \"Janet\" for a few months, she was I think my 3rd girlfriend. And then later I dated and fell in love with \"Columbia\", though it didn't last long after I went away to college (she was a year younger). But I am still friends with those folks. \n\nAs for what the movie is about, it is a campy silly parody of an entire genre of movies that was so bad it was good, and it gained a cult following because of people who would act it out and make the movie interactive with the audience. \n\n", "A lot of people here are saying that the movie is bad, but fun. These people are wrong. Plan Nine from Outer Space is bad but fun. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is bad but fun, but RHPS is awesome and fun.\n\nHere's what makes it awesome: \n\n1. The music is fucking great. Nearly every song on the soundtrack is a legitimately good song if you like musicals. \"Science Fiction\" is great. \"Time Warp\" is great. \"Sweet Transvestite\" is great. \"Hot Patootie\" is great. The Floor Show leading into \"I'm Going Home\" is beyond great---it's fucking awesome. \n\n2. The script is great. Yes, it's cheesy camp satirizing even cheesier camp from the 50s and 60s, but that's the point and it was masterfully executed.  \n\n3. The characters. They're so original and great (except when they're supposed to be like the types of characters they're satirizing, but they're great at that too).\n\nSure, the movie isn't for everyone. It's a musical for one. It's 50s-style sci-fi for another. But if you are the kind of person who likes *Guys and Dolls* and *Forbidden Planet*, there's nothing not to like abut RHPS. Plus, throw in some sexual liberation and *Wizard of Oz* references  and you've got an awful lot to like.  ", "The musical (and subsequent movie) are a parody of American stereotypes and archetypes as seen by a foreigner. I wrote a whole essay on it back in high school.", "I believe it's what they called an \"erotic comedy-thriller.\" It's not the only one that exists, but it became the most popular through the culture that formed around it. The fact that a number of the main actors went on to greater fame (Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick, Susan Sarandon, Meat Loaf) has certainly helped its longevity.\n\nAs for the movie itself... it's your standard boy meets girl, boy and girl get stranded in woods, boy and girl find creepy castle in woods, boy and girl meet flamboyant transvestite and mad scientist with god complex, boy and girl discover sex, fetishes, and explore taboos, mad scientist's companions flip out, kill him, and return house to home planet leaving everyone else behind story.", "I enjoy anything that makes my super christian conservative parents feel weird.", "People feel like they should enjoy it so they pretend to do so and maybe convince themselves.", "Uhm .. yeah I went to that. I can see it as being rebelious and fun during the 70's. The jokes are so old now, that it's kind of boring.", "its just a musical that was good and ground breaking in its time. today it's just a crappy movie.", "A lot of you are explaining the culture and minor details. I think he's asking what the plot is.", "That's just it. There isn't anything *To Get*. It's just a film about being who you are, because you are that person. \n\nOr at least that is what i took from it.\n\nFor example. The line audiences shout in the callbacks: \"Say something sexy Riffraff.\" They don't ask him this, because he is sexy, but because he is Riffraff and he *Will* say something sexy if you ask him too.", "Well, you could always swing by /r/rhps and ask us  \n\nWe'll wait, with antici-", "If you don't get it, then you don't get it. I went once, wasn't thrilled with it. Would have rather watched the movie at home than be forced to strip in front of a bunch of strangers. A couple of people were doing some heavy petting, giving everyone a chance to watch, some people were dancing and singing, one girl actually got on stage and did a strip tease during the intro song. Lot's of exhibitionism, both gay and straight, and lots of anything else that might make middle america uncomfortable. \n\nSome posts on here talk about \"Growing up with it\", sadly I don't think that really applies anymore, at least not in Hollywood, where I saw it for the first time, recently. I think it's more of an outlet for the \"Hollywood\" crowd to go be weird...I didn't see anyone there over 35. \n\nIf you don't get it, then don't feel bad. I don't really get it either. ", "What's not to get? It's a Musical. sit back. watch. have fun. And Realise it's ok to think Tim Curry is the best thing in the universe.", "Rocky Horror Picture Show started out as a broadway show, which was fun to go to and a great show. It got great reviews and everyone loved going to see it live. When it got a little more popular, they decided to make a movie for it. Rocky Horror by itself is a horrible movie, all sorts of things wrong with it cinematically. However, it is a lot of fun to make fun of, and the only reminder of the show that we have.\n\nWhenever people say that they're going to \"see\" Rocky Horror, there's many different ways to experience it. What most people do is set up a show with actors that dress up as the characters while the movie is playing in the background. Other times it's the movie playing on a big screen with the audience members doing whatever they want, dressed as the characters and whatnot.\n\nThe reason why people go see Rocky Horror multiple times is because there's always something different happening, always something exciting to make every show different. Since the show is so widely different from others, it has a kind of ritual when people see Rocky Horror for the first time. Usually, the actors, your friends, someone at the show will write a V on your face showing that you are a virgin to seeing the show (it has nothing to do with whether or not you've had sex). There are other things that the people at the theater will make virgins do on the beginning of the show, but it is different for every show, and every stage (so I can't even spoil it for you if I wanted to.)\n\nEveryone who has seen it knows that there are \"call outs\" that are yelled out in the middle of the show to make it funnier. To some people these call outs seem rude and vulgar, but again, it's all about making fun of the movie. There's a lot of call outs that are staples in every performance, but people like to make up new ones; depending on where you live there may also be different call outs (ie. California's call outs are different from NYC's).\n\nAudience members are even given props to use during certain times in the performance to have fun with each other (ie. The audience throws a piece of toast in the air when Frank says \"a toast\").\n\nTLDR; it's a show that everyone makes fun of, where the call outs are cheesy puns, and everyone plays with the idea of sex.", "You mean like this?  Two people got stuck with a flat, tried to find help, but instead found a house full of crazy stuff that is supposed to be funny and entertaining, which turns into a spaceship and flies away.  I think that's what happened at the end, I was usually so bored by then I quit watching.", "There's nothing to get. It's an \"alternative\", pop-culture anachronism that had a cult following during its period of popularity. There are dozens of historical examples of analogous movies/plays/musical groups/events, all equally devoid of anything to \"get\" beyond their arbitrary popularity at a given point in time, and whatever cultural significance they may (or may not) have had. ", "Watched it in a student cinema. Hetero cis men dressed up in traditionally extremely female clothing. The girl next door suddenly dressed up slutty. When he said \"a toast!\" we all threw slices of toast. When it rained in the movie, people were shooting water pistols. We were all singing and dancing along, and it was amazing, liberating fun.\n\nWatching this movie, I learnt that I found trans women and gay men hot, and that there was a lot of stuff about sluthood that attracted me. I'm pretty sure I am not the only one - this movie came out in 1975, so it was basically a sexual revolution, coupled with silliness, horror and awesome, catchy music (\"Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me\" is a favourite) which resulted in quotes, memes, cult.", "It's a musical with Transvestites, humanoid-aliens and uptight white people who eventually find their inner tranny groove.\n\nIt is best TO NOT SEE IT at home on VH1.  LAME!!!\n\nYou must have a large quantity of caffeinated beverages to keep yourself awake and attend a midnight showing.  In the midnight showing (and go to one in a large-ish town/city) you will be able to hear the crowd interaction with the screen, be part of the micro-vandalism of the theater (just throwing stuff and squirt guns...lots of squirt guns) and watch the crowd re-enactment of the movie.\n\nIt's for those reasons why you go.  It's camp, it's fun and it's a great release.\n\nFULL DISCLOSURE: I have attended far over 100 theater showings of RHPS and it was a formative part of my youth.  I went to midnight movie after midnight movie and it IS a place where the disaffected/socially awkward (penguin) can go to feel part of a group.  It's immensely therapeutic.  If you're part of the cooler-than-thou crowd the movie will annoy you.  If you are looking to enjoy a logical movie/plot you will be disappointed and perhaps even pissed off that you sat through the film.\n\nHowever, I cannot recommend it enough as it's as good an initiation into the USA's counter-culture as anything you'll find.\n\nThat and you'll figure out that Tim Curry is THE SHIT!!!", "There were essentially three contributing factors to the success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show:\n\n* It was a camp film that developed an \"underground\" cult following.  By being an intentionally weird musical comedy, RHPS basically created the formula for making a movie that defined cult movie.  It was the quintessential movie that \"was so crazy, you just have to see it.\" This allowed viewers to forgive nearly all the apparent shortcomings of the film or gaps in the plot.  It was clear it wasn't intended to be art, so people could simply enjoy it for the crazy, crappy film it was.  It's rare that people get to be so free with movies, so when it's done right people immediately attach to it.\n* It has a legitimately awesome soundtrack.  The lyrics are funny, all the songs are very memorable, and it's easy to sing along with. Some would argue that the film was essentially an excuse to highlight the soundtrack and open it up to a greater market.  The plot also happens to be entirely contained within the soundtrack, so listening to the album pretty much gives you the whole experience (sans Tim Curry's exuberance).\n* The revival.  The midnight showings with the interactivity and the singalongs and the whatnot is a symptom of the bug, not a cause of it.  It does still help drive attachment to new generations to RHPS, but RHPS was it's own legitimate \"thing\" well before the theater showings started.", "It's a goofy, raunchy, whacky story, filled with old-time movie references, great music, great performances, humor, and is quite a spectacle.", "i think it matters most to people who were weirdos that didn't fit in in high school, because it's a celebration of being a weirdo who doesn't fit in.\n\nthat being said, it's a fun movie, and if you haven't seen a proper live screening of it, you haven't really seen it.  ", "You mean it didn't toucha toucha toucha touch you?", "I love this movie so hard, but it's just a weird, coke-fueled thing from the 70s.", "Not sure if you're a regular reader of the AV Club, but they did a really great feature on RHPS a few years ago. \n\n_URL_0_\n\ntldr; it was probably groundbreaking in its era, but hasn't aged terribly well. ", "The music is awesome. That's why I like it. I could listen to Time Warp a thousand times.", "bunch of hardcore drug addicts, living in a commune get together and dance to freak out weary travelers that make the mistake of visiting them.", "I think something to add is that Rocky Horror is really nuanced in many ways. Frank steals part of Eddie's brain, murders him, then serves him for dinner, unknowingly forcing the others into cannibalism. The promiscuous sex in the movie is not benign, but triggers jealousy and sometimes borders on rape. It ends with a triple homicide and a description of humans as insects crawling on the earth. The mixture of celebration and critique only serves to make the play more intriguing.", "It's a musical. ", "Who would let a five year old watch rocky horror picture show?", "I was studying abroad in South Korea when I was super excited to find a RHPS. Doing the time warp halfway across the world from home was one of the best experiences I've had in Asia. ", "Such fond memories of seeing RHPS at the Roxy in Toronto in the late '70's. A sexual eye opener in an era that was quite homophobic. I'm straight, but between this and Lou Reed's \"Walk on the wild side\", I realized gay people were humans, and often talented ones at that.", "a celebration of freaks and freak culture, plus awesome glam rock written by Richard O'Brien (Riff Raff) Wonderful performances from Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Meat Loaf, etc. It's a joy. Don't try too hard to \"get it\" just enjoy the tunes and the absurd story", "I've never been to one of the midnight showings. I deny the assumption that this is at the core of what makes it great.\n\nRHPS is a combination of camp, kitsch, musicals, and B-movie tribute. It takes a particular combination of tastes to LOVE it, and just a few to like it. I would say you'd need to fully enjoy / get it:\n\n1. **It's intentional shlock.** aka [kitsch](_URL_3_). It's meant to be tongue-in-cheek. You're supposed to laugh at the over-the-top sexuality, violence, melodrama, sociopathy, and poor production. If you just \"don't find it funny\", that's fine, let's move on to:\n\n2. **Gender-bending as a genre**. [Gender-bending](_URL_9_) is at least part of this film's genre, if you can call it that. There's something about gender-bending that appeals to a lot of people. Think of films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or musical artists like Prince, David Bowie, and Lady Gaga. For whatever reason, there's an appeal - and if this doesn't appeal to you, even as a curiosity, you're missing something. Okay - you don't like that, then there's always:\n\n3. **It's a tribute to sci-fi B-movies**. This is pretty similar to #1, except that where the movie can be taken as shlock in its own right, Richard O'Brien specifically created this as a comedy tribute sci-fi B-movies. It's one reason why people like Mystery Science Theater 3000. You don't even have to be familiar with those old films to understand what they're trying to say about them. Dang, you don't like throwbacks? Well there's always:\n\n4. **It's a musical with a great soundtrack**. The songs are very catchy and have stood the test of time. Most of them have tongue-in-cheek lyrics, but they're very catchy. The stage show is still running in theater houses around the world, even without the craziness of the full throwing-toast experience. Hm, you don't like the music either? There might not be much hope for you... at least there's always:\n\n5. **It's a comedy**, and a pretty good one. Or at least, most RHPS fans laugh a lot throughout the film. Tim Curry's timing and physical comedy is great - that show pretty much launched his long and varied career. He actually started as the first Dr. Frank N. Furter in the original stage production in London, and he carried it through to the movie. Pretty much every character in the movie comes with laughs, and only Riff Raff takes himself completely seriously. Are you telling me you didn't even chuckle? Geez, I guess there's always the fact that:\n\n6. **It has iconic imagery**. Obviously, it wouldn't be iconic if it wasn't so popular for other reasons -- but since it is, it has an unusually high # of distinctive images within it. Here are a few examples:\n\n  a. Dr. Frank N Furter's [Outfit #1](_URL_2_) and [Outfit #2](_URL_6_) and [Outfit #3](_URL_4_)\n\n  b. [The Lips](_URL_0_)\n\n  c. [Frank's Sneers](_URL_7_)\n\n  d. [The kitsch logo](_URL_5_)\n\n  e. [Pretty much every character](_URL_10_)\n\n  f. [The Phantoms](_URL_8_)\n\n  g. [The RKO Tower](_URL_1_)\n\n\nThere are many more reasons (including the cult that's built around it, memorizing the scripts, being a kind of outsider-identity thing, positive messages about gender and fun, a grotesque storyline, etc) but other folks covered those in more detail.\n\nHope that helps!\n\nEdit #1: Fixed outfit links", "In your defense, it is a truly awful movie. It became popular due to its shocking content (for that era).  It really took off after cosplay came into it. It's basically a funny and cheesy movie to watch with your friends.", "[Here's a word cloud of these comments.](_URL_0_)", "watching the movie at home? yeah its terrible, but a midnight showing at a theater is a completely different story.    its played on the big screen while actors actually act it out in front of the audience and also have the audience take part in some of the wackyness.   its not normal by any means but its very fun for some! :-D", "Until I see a definitive answer, I'm riddled with antici................................................", "If you're under the age of 40 or so you probably have no hope of \"getting it\". The RHPS is the movie version of a play that was staged in London in the 70's. It is a tribute to- and poking more than a little fun of, the cheesy sci fi and horror movies of the 50's. In a way it was a direct response to the heavy and serious culture of the 60's. People were tired of the endless riots, VietNam, the cold war, race riots + civil rights and all the \"bad news\". It was kind of like disco- the subtext being \"fuck it- enough already- lets just have some fun\". The modern equivalent of it is the fascination of our current culture with the 70's- \"Boogie Nights\" and it's spin-offs springs to mind- even then- if you're under the age of 40 you don;t remember the pre-aids 70's so\"getting it\" might be more academic than experiential for you.", "Did you see it at a screening? Unless you see it at a screening it isn't going to make any sense at all. Actually, it will never ever make sense, but that's why it's great. ", "I was 16 and took the subway with friends to see it at 8th Street Playhouse in the Village - summer of 1982. Huge audience participation and got drunk on a 40 of Old English. \n\nWhat makes is compelling? \n\n(a) Great soundtrack, \n\n(b) brilliant Tim curry acting, \n\n(c) titillating themes such as promiscuity, homosexuality, at midnight showings\n\n(d) but none of these can stand alone without the audience phenomenon\n\n\nWhile the movies does have a moral; it is intended to be zany with great music. But what made it so appealing and lasting for years is the cult following that manifested into audience participation. The two can be decoupled, certainly. but then you are left with a silly movie with a great soundtrack. Its appeal is the midnight movie phenomenon and the audience particpation", "Two straight kids catch gay.\n\nA real Christian Horror Show.", "I feel like this has always been difficult for me to explain. Because the obsession with this movie is based on the culture, the midnight showings. But I have never been to a midnight showing. Yet I LOVE the movie. It's not really the greatest movie if I were to look at it objectively. But I don't get a \"so bad it's good\" type of enjoyment out if it either. And I'm not gay, nor do I particularly care for the accepting of others theme that this movie has. I just can't explain why I love this movie? The only think I can easily explain is that I love the music. But even the parts that aren't sung, I enjoy. Also, Columbia is so sexy!", "It's kinda gay", "It was a throwback to the old Sci-Fi movies which were part Sci-Fi and part horror. The \"horror\" part comes in with all the sexual discord and a life of hedonism and how everybody has that inside themselves. The problem is, once you turn that loose, things tend to end badly--people might, for instance, get killed in the name of having a \"good time\" one can become \"too extreme\". The sci-fi part comes from the fact he is from some other planet where gender is more fluid. \n\nIt ends on a somewhat dark note--that we are all lost in time and space and meaning--trying to figure out what works--and we try our solutions--but sometimes those solutions even IF they are hedonistic and seem to bring us pleasure can come up empty.  ", "Don't dream it. Be it.", "I think OP needs to do the time warp again.", "The first time I went and saw Rocky Horror it was hosted by a small town theater group and played at one of the downtown movie houses. It seemed like a great idea for second / third date with the girl I was seeing at the time. It was the first time for both of us and so when a nice young man wearing lingerie and heels drew a V on our foreheads we just went with it. \n\nWe had been given props at the front door but didn't really know what to do with them as we watched people file in and the whole atmosphere had this great surreal feeling. \n\nAs the show was getting ready to start they asked all the people with V's on their foreheads to stand up and then they split us in to two groups. Each group had to go on stage and perform an action to the general amusement of the stage group and the general public.\n\nNow this is a second or third date- I'm 19, and this takes place during a particularly unremarkable summer in some small town in Idaho. It can be very telling to see someone you are on a date with fake an orgasm before coitus is even on the table. She was in the first group and after they had all filed on to the stage the host in his black bra and garters bid them to their task, which was to provide their most realistic fake orgasm noise. \n\nIt was mesmerizing, awkward, and very silly- I can remember staring at her face and thinking about how beautiful she was and how I would never know the difference. \n\nWhen my time came- it was the first time I had been on that side of a stage since I was in grade-school at one of those events where they made everyone sing to their parents on Christmas. So anyways- the first part of our group had to bend over and grab their ankles while the other group had to dry hump them and the crowd sang the Oscar Meyer wiener song. The nice young woman that I was partnered with (not my date - she was back in the crowd) threw in a few thrusts that took my heels off the stage. \n\nEveryone laughed- we sat back down and then later through toast at the stage and called Brad an \"Asshole!\"", "Basically it's about shedding sexual hangups (or hangups of any sort really) and living an open and free lifestyle regardless of judgement. Brad and Janet were in love, it was swell but not passionate until Frank showe them how to live by putting indulgence first, saving their relationship. Also he's an alien from outer space and Magenta and Riff Raff are his underlings who cause a mutiny and seize power. ", "As many people have probably explained, it's not about the movie, it's about the scene. You must have never gone to see it at a theater. Just do that. You may or may not enjoy it, but you'll understand why other people do. It's similar to the cults that surround movies like *Mean Girls* or *Clueless* (both decidedly mediocre films), it's no longer about the film itself, but yet there was something about them that made them endearing to people and continuously so.\n\nFor  me, the first time I watched it, I watched it on DVD, by myself in my apartment, and I fell in love with it. The first thing you have to notice is that it's silly and campy on purpose. The movie is actually quite funny after you understand that it's supposed to be. Also, in spite of the terrible music (except for 2 or 3 awesome songs, \"Sweet Transvestite\" is my favorite), and the ridiculous plot, the performances are actually quite good. Tim Curry is absolutely amazing in the movie, and Richard O'Brien and Patricia Quinn (Riff Raff and Magenta) also are great.", "Ill take the opposite stance on it. It is a musical version of \"oh so random\" Frankenstein. People choose to go to the late showings and have crowd participation even though it is a completely sub-par movie. To them the movie is amazing, but deep down it is just people with no personalities bonding over something that has been decided to be random therefore good and interesting by the leagues of (we are interesting because we are different) people. Someone saying \"oh a toast\" and having the crowd throw fucking bread at the screen doesn't make you, or the movie interesting. Everyone I've ever met who is a huge rocky horror fan is the equivalent of facebook girl meme only older. Its pathetic", "The first time I watched Rocky Horror was in college, with my Classics professor. We were *stunned* by the amount of classical mythology references in the movie, and later learned that the writers had been Classics students. ", "For a year and a half I went with my girlfriend to watch RHPS every weekend. The movie would play up on the theatre screen while a cast acted it out beneath. Everyone ran around in underwear or whatever they felt like. We threw toilet paper and made out. We ate cookies piled up on the stomach of a giggling girl. We danced and sang modified lyrics to the songs. There was almost no alcohol or drug use yet we were high on a complete disregard for adherance to societal norms.  I'm as straight as they come but learned not to to give a shit when same sex couples made out. \n\nI learned a lot from that experience. I became a lot more open minded, less concerned about what other people think. Everyone at the show were themselves, were friends, knew we'd go back to our normal lives until next Saturday when we would sprawl out across several movie seats with our significant others on our laps yelling out our own words to the songs at the top of our lungs. \n\nIt was a lot of unadulterated fun. Movie itself was meh.", "The big thing to recognize is that it means a much different thing now than when it was first produced.\n\nThe original movie was a film version of a stage musical just called the \"Rocky Horror Show.\" It was first produced in 1973, and was \"retro\" even then. It started out as a spoof of bad 50s and 60s sci-fi films, which is where elements like the creation of a Frankenstein-style monster, the Time Warp, and the alien/outer-space element all come in. At some point during the writing, it also became a show about sexual liberation and breaking conventions--and of course being a piece of avant-garde British theater from the Monty Python era only helped this. The stage show basically made Tim Curry's career, and was so successful that the movie version was put into production almost immediately. It came out in 1975.\n\nAt the time of release, it wasn't a particularly huge success, or well-received critically. Most mainstream audiences saw it for what it was: a less-than-perfect adaptation of a very weird British stage show. But it became a potent cultural symbol of the radical sexual awakenings of the 1970s--consider not just the content of the film, but the practice of lipsticking the letter V on \"Rocky Horror virgins\" their first time at a public screening. It was *because* the film was like nothing you'd seen before in a theater that it became such a symbol of avant-garde weirdness. And later on, as it opened the door for other very strange, queer (in all senses) movies to be made, I think the audience participation at RHPS screenings started to get more and more involved as a way of reasserting that it was still a \"mind-blowing\" experience, like nothing you'd seen before.\n\nTo this day, the film's biggest following are people that identify with its original target audience--that is, freaks and outcasts, people who didn't relate to The Mousetrap or Hamlet or whatever other fairly conservative standard-fare drama was playing in the British West End theaters. Nowadays it's common to see midnight screenings on Halloween, particularly in the U.S. and Canada, as we've got it hard-coded into our culture that this is the one night it's OK for even normal, well-balanced adults (the Brads and Janets of the world) to take off their normal clothes, dress up in funny and transgressive (and for adults, overtly sexual) costumes, get out of their skin, and have a wild liberating carnivalesque experience before going back to ordinary life the next day.\n\nAs a result, whatever you think of the film itself--I don't think it's aged particularly well--the cultural importance of the film has radically changed it. The sexual and especially transsexual elements don't shock us out of our skin today they way they would have for British theatre audiences 41 (!!!) years ago. But for the people who still care enough about the film to go \"all-in\" at public screenings, that's still the function it serves.", "I think it's one of those movies where you have to watch it several times.  While yes, it has a message, I've watched it so many times now that just, every single moment of the movie is entertaining.  Every single frame has something remarkable going on.  And it's comedic but the comedy doesn't feel forced at all.  Try watching it a few more times and maybe you'll get it.", "It cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. ", "It's Tim Curry being fucking fabulous with heavy glam influences in a tribute to 50s sci-fi and horror.  ", "Tim Curry is a sexy beast.", "I feel the appeal is people like it because it's different and weird. It's definitely not meant to be taken seriously. \n\nFull disclosure: I'm not a fan. I found it on tv when I was like 7 and liked \"time warp\" but now I don't really get why so many people are into it. It's one of those things that people like simply because it's out there and offensive to some and people think they're cool because of that. Like how all these people are like \"man I'm so different and unique that I love Nightmare Before Christmas, wear Doc Martens, and love this indie band Arctic Monkeys that not many people know of.\" \n\nSorry... I had a friend who thought he was so counterculture that he literally said that and thought that RHPS was some underground thing that no one knew about. ", "No, we can not. If you don't get it, we can't explain it. \n\nGet way drunker next time you see it. And go with a big boned girl in a too small dress and a really, really, flamboyantly gay guy. \n\nIf you still don't \"get it\", move on with your life.", "I've participated in the community since 2002, and have run a cast for the last four years in Long Beach, CA. I don't care if this gets buried, but I love how many points and comments this thread has.\n\nMy first show was on Halloween with what would eventually be the cast I joined - Long Beach Rocky Horror (formerly Midnight Insanity). I was a bit of shy, sheltered kid, but seeing such a collection of weirdos look so comfortable with themselves was...amazing. Music was blasting in the theater, people were dancing, making out in their seats and against walls, and folks were smoking *everything*.\n\nThe preshow festivities started, and so did the audience participation. I was dry-humped by my friend who brought me to the show in front of the crowd in mock-de-virginization. I knew some of the words to the songs from some Dr. Demento albums my dad had shared with me, and we all sang along.\n\nRocky Horror and the community has been a great way for me to constantly step out of my comfort zone. I can't sing, I can't dance, but none of that mattered to me for three hours I was at that theater. I felt free and comfortable. I've crossed paths with some of the most talented, beautiful, interesting people, and am absolutely humbled for having them remain in my life even after their time at Rocky is done.\n\nThat being said, Rocky isn't for everybody. I've brought friends and family to the show, and it can be hit-or-miss. We have people leave our theater because they weren't expecting to participate (optional at our show, but not at all shows), or were upset with folks yelling out the audience participation lines. The movie is goofy, and I think some folks might not appreciate what it's trying to satirize. I don't hold that against anybody. I DO think folks should give it a chance before dismissing it. It will always hold a very special place in my heart.", "I enjoy the film and music so much on a visceral level that I haven't bothered to find a deeper meaning, however I must say that I love the top comment in this thread.", "Are you asking about the scene or the plot? \n\nEveryone's already talked about the scene, so here's the plot. I'm not going to black it out with spoilers because 1) it's a forty year old movie and 2) knowing how it ends has little impact on your enjoyment:\n\nDr. Frank N Furter, Riff Raff, and Magenta are all aliens from another planet (the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania). They are on a mission to do something, but it's not really revealed what it is. I always figured it was some sort of \"make human alien clone things\" but Dr. Frank N Furter decided to make \"human sex toy things.\" Once Riff Raff and Magenta figure out that Frank N Furter just wants to fuck everything that moves, and then make more things that move so he can fuck them, they realize how off the rails things have gone and kill him in a mutiny (Frank N Furter was the boss, it seems), as well as Rocky (the failed experiment?) and Columbia (though not on purpose).\n\n", "Because:\nTim Curry's \"sweet transvestite\" performance.  If that didn't hook you, then you didn't get it and that's OK. ", "You can't get it. You either like or tolerate musicals or they make you want to punch someone. If you are in the later category you will never understand any musical. All you will want to do is escape them and murder anyone who gets in your way to the exit.", "I would recommend finding out more about the social and political times in which the musical play and succeeding film was born.  Until very recently, openly gay, lesbian and trans characters were still very much on the margins of pop culture.  \n\nIf you can find it, I would recommend watching \"The Celluloid Closet\", which is an excellent documentary about gay, lesbian and trans representation in cinema.  Not surprisingly, these types of characters have always been present, but the further back you go, the more heavily disguised they had to be to evade the oppressive censorship.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI think that one of the primary reasons \"Rocky Horror\" became so popular is because it was one of the few films where gay, lesbian and trans audience members could recognize themselves.  There is little emphasis on death or suffering or discrimination.  The Dionysian atmosphere of joy, sex and music is a celebrations of pleasure in every form.\n\nThere is no shame in being who you are.\n\nAfter all, one of the primary reasons we go to the movies is to be told stories in which we can see fantasy versions of ourselves reflected and our life choices celebrated.", "The audience participation and midnight time make it a fun date movie, women love it and if you show yourself centered enough to be ok with it, laugh and have a good time... need I go on?", "Did you watch it with 100 other people yelling at the screen and ton of props?\n\nIt kind of doesn't make any sense without that.", "I played a Halloween show a few years ago in a Florida amphitheater along with another band and they ended the night with a showing of the rhps. Long story short, they played, we played. All went well. So I hung out to check out the showing. Note that during our show I did notice that everyone was dressed up as I had heard about when the fans go see a showing of the film in theaters. It was so cool to hear the crowd singing along, reciting almost every good line from the film, rice throwing. I grew up with two older sisters and an older brother, so I had seen it and they always would say the usual dammit Janet on occasion. But I really had a new respect once I saw the live experience. My two cents. \nEdit: tribute bands, by the way. So it fit we Halloween mood. ", "You had to be there. I wasn't there, but I know people who were. ", "The movie was really good and weird up until Frankenfurter started sleeping with everyone, then it took an unnecessary and even weirder turn into aliens and laser guns and a bunch of stupid. Also I'm unable to explain how Tim Curry looked so hot dressed as a transvestite. ", "RHPS is a satirical, horror, musical, comedy, cult film, centered on an axis of profound indulgence. It starts when  Brad and Janet ( in their honeymoon), break down near the estate of Dr Frank-N-Futer. They knock on his door in hope of assistance. Dr Frank-N-Futer(a sweet transvestite) answers the door in the midst of a raucous ball, could be orgy. The doc answers the door thinking it was the \"candy man\". Once Doc Furter realizes these Brad and Janet people, are legit innocents, he sets about corrupting them. Individually. What ensues is a ridiculous, semi surreal, plot concerning mostly corruption of innocence. \n\nThere are numerous traditions associated with viewing the pic in a public theater. \n\nSome showings include a real time Live interpretation with actors, along side the film on screen. \n\nSquirt guns, everyone fires them off in the theater during the rain scene. \n\nNewspapers, the relevance will be apparent. \n\nAdded traditional lines, concocted as responses from the cult community, spoken out loud in unison, triggered by various script lines said on screen  \n\nAnd other gags of this nature. It is truly a original production. Also check out The Adventures of Buckaroo Benzi. Not a musical, but still ridiculous. \n", "i would add that it was what was called a \"happening\", or an excuse to have a happening. back in those days there were midnight movies and The Rocky Horror Picture Show was most popular. people would dress up and go and participate as the movie progressed. it was just lots and lots of fun and laughs. you would not be able to get it because the ambience for that sort of thing is no longer there. it is like people of today's generation trying to have a Woodstock but they don't know how. that is why we say carpe diem. live in your own time and seize that moment--there don't seem to be very many of them anymore. ", "Never sat through it all, but always attributed its popularity to girls loving to singalong. Like Grease or Hair movies.", "Go to a live show of RHPS in a large/larger city. It's an experience.  Let people know it's your first time.  =)", "fun times like this from the Drew Carey Show - pretty much shows exactly what people do at midnight shows - the costumes, the dancing (although obviously not a dance battle with Priscilla), the crowd - _URL_0_\n\nand if you're from the conservative mid-west, how are you going to let your closeted gay friends know that you're okay with things viewed as counter-culture? Watch this movie.\n", "I've also tried to \"get it,\" but I never did. That's fine, though - to each their own. I don't particularly care for the movie, but I think that's because it's just not my style of film. I do appreciate the cult-status it has gathered, though, and I do get that - I'm a huge Lebowski fan.", "Where else could you get subversion, science fiction, singing, dancing, gore, t & a, fetish, cross-dressing, transexualism (is that a word?), horror, comedy all with a nod and wink to the B-movie genre all in one package in 1975?  Up until that point there had never ever been anything like it.  It had something for everyone and offended your mom and dad.\n\n\n", "It's outsider art from a time period when horror, sci-fi, camp and 'alternative' sexuality were all very underground. It's a weirdo fantasy merging all those things, and being very funny while doing it. If you were weird, Rocky was for you.", "It took me repeated viewings to really get it. The first time I watched it I was like what is this madness, I don't get it and that was really weird. The next time I watched it I started to sing along with a few of the songs and from there it just took off. ", "It's very ordinary parody of the '50s and '60s horror B-movies - think *Night of the Living Dead* or the Hammer version of *Frankenstein*.\n\nNow it's viewed by a bunch of people who've never seen the films it's sending up and are there for the (somewhat bizarre) sexual innuendo and mockery of middle-class values.", "To understand RHPS, all you must do is understand the Floor Show. To understand the Floor Show, all you must do is understand Tim Curry's part in the Floor Show. To understand that, all you must do is understand, \"Don't dream it. Be it.\" That is all.", "I opened this thread with great antici-", "It's just a jump to the left", "Well, we all have different tastes. You may just not like the movie, and that's perfectly valid. ", "Its about giving your self up to absolute pleasure.", "that makes me really sad.. its like the essence of all that is good in this world.. that and monty python..", "The film is an adaptation of the stage production, *The Rocky Horror Show,* written by Richard O'Brien and produced by Jim Sharman. It's a tribute to cheesy sci-fi, horror, and muscle, and rock 'n' roll flicks of the mid-20th Century. The film and play are chock full of cultural references likely lost on most people under O'Brien's age (born 1942). I've seen an exhaustive list of them, and I was embarrassed to admit that I'd missed *most* of them, despite having seen it many times.\n\nThere's much more to it, too, however. On another level, it's a celebration of freak culture, and if you were a freak growing up in the Star Wars era when this came out, this film was one of the very few positive experiences you could share with other freaks in relative safety and security, for the low price of movie ticket and a late-night meal.\n", "The best way to experience it is with other people. If you have seen the movie, go see the stage performance. Bring ask the props, and it's just a lot of fun just to participate in everything", "It's a documentary about the hunting lodges of the American midwest. ", "If I'm reading your \"get it\" correctly, then perhaps this will help.\n\nIt appeals in a large way to the freaks, the geeks, the nerds and the stamp collectors; *a crowd I'm very much apart of.*\n\nWhen I was about 10 when I first saw RHPS, I didn't understand a lot of it, but I liked it. I was the kid that had his own rock tumbler, that knew how to program QBasic and made my own computer games, that enjoyed math!\n\nSo I enjoyed RHPS straight away for all the crazy people in it ^susan ^sarandon's ^cleavage ^came ^later. This was a movie with a whole bunch of outsiders who were singing, dancing, having a good time and (in my mind) the 'normals' became like them. \n\nIt also had an 'oddball' as the villian and the normals as the victims. It was the anti every-other-movie-ever. It's always the nerdy kid that you route for that gets attacked by the dumb strong guy. Karate Kid, Weird Science, Back to the Future and so on. Here we have a man in drag (Tim Curry ^and ^his ^sexy ^legs, ^and ^^I'm ^^straight! ) who's the evil mastermind.\n\nOn top of that you have the music, and then the sexual fantasy perversion etc. I know a few of my friends in school used to argue over who was the cutest in RHPS (Personally I liked [Little Nell](_URL_0_), especially in the sequal [Shock Treatment in the nurses outfit!](_URL_1_) )\n\nSo that's my take on it's popularity. I know that's not everyone's interpretation, but basically it's popular because it's a movie that gave us something we hadn't seen before. It gave something to the *outcasts.*", "I feel like I got it when you get to the dancing scenes at the end. The editing makes frank look very raw and unpolished there is no fancy lighting you can see every crag and hairy hair. MY take on it was that (as well as what everyone else has said) is that Frank is himself he knows who he is but knows he really doesn't belong anywhere that nowhere to him is real because he  can't be real outside of his make-believe palace. He just wants someone to join in the dance so it can be like it should. Frank knows it's an awful fiction but at the same is the only thing that makes him real in the way he wants to be. Its like the thing that makes him wonderful makes everything wonderful but it is self-destructive force that will take evryon with him. I kind of connect to the show on the mental health level. The bipolar super amazing powerful and terribly agonising insecurity/depression at yourself and the world and the fact that you know if you touch others your poison but at the same time you have a gift to see the world in a way they never can and you mast have someone see you for the best you are even if it means sorrow in the end. maybe a little ??", "You don't go to see the movie, you go to make fun of the movie.  \n\nIf you just sit in your living room and watch it like any other movie, you're gonna have a bad time because it's not very good in that context.\n\nIf you go to see it in a theater where there's a bunch of people who know the movie and all of the participatory extras, you're going to have a good time.  It's a blast learning that every time someone say's Brad's name, everyone in the theater shouts \"Asshole!\" (unless there's a better line that goes into that particular time slot).  It's unreal watching people act out the movie right in front of the screen as it's going on on the screen, and doubly so when the people on the screen and in front of it interact with each other, finish each other's sentences, and answer each other's questions.\n\nWithout the audience participation, it's nothing.  With the audience participation, it is a fun time that makes it the film with the longest theatrical run in the history of cinema.", "I've been shadowcasting rocky for about 10 years now and I've thought a lot about this. To me, it boils down to acceptance and open mindedness. I believe the overall message of acceptance for everybody is why they ultimately kill frank in the end. He seems sort of like an open minded character initially but he forces his way of life upon everybody he meets, as if he were the far left, gay version of the religious right. He doesn't open brad and janet's minds, he screws with their heads (just listen to superheroes) and practically dooms their relationship (you see the fallout in shock treatment).\n\nI feel like, ultimately, the movie is saying that everybody should be able to live the life they want to live, be accepting of other people's lifestyles but don't force yours on others. But with lasers and shit. ", "Weirdos may murder you. Keep away from them at all costs.", "Kinky sex. Crossdressing. Glitter. Meatloaf. Catchy and sexually charged music. If you like any combination of these things, you usually like the movie", "Just looked this film up, and The now hotel that it was filmed at, is a 1 minute drive from my house! What a coincidence....", "I have seen Rocky Horror around...30 times (all in theatre setting) and I just love it for what it is. The music, but a lot of it is if you're with an active audience. If you see it at home, its clearly not the same. \n\nThough, I've never looked at it like the others are explaining, but they all make sense now that I think about it.\n\nI wish they still played the movie  at  midnight at our local theatre but they don't anymore. :( I miss giving myself  over to absolute pleasure on a monthly basis.\n\nHell, I've seen it so much, someone can just mention it, or if its on tv or anything, I immediately switch to 'theatre-mode' and start saying the lines that are said with the film.\n\nBrad and Janet enter the mansion at Riff-Raff's beckoning:\n\nAudience: \"Hey Brad show us out a butterfly masturbates!\"\n\nBrad shakes the lapels of his wet jacket.", "How many of you ware aware that Tim Curry is also IT, the clown? I was amazed when I realized.", "First thing you need to understand is that its just a jump to the left...", "What's to \"Get?' Enjoy it for what it is!!\n\nNever supposed to be intellectually stimulating, or have a thick plot. it's only supposed to be fun!!\n\nHistorically, they have some thing wrong anyway.\n\nDon't worry about it!!\n\n\nThat flick is not about plot development!!", "I always describe The Rocky Horror Picture Show as something between a nightmare and a wet dream. The plot, that is. \n\nCulturally however, RHPS is just plain weirdness for the sake of being weird. The point was to be in your face and to say \"You think gay/lesbian/trans/artsy-people/whatever is weird?.....You're right, we're fucking ridiculous lunatics, and we love it!\"\n\nThat is I think the main consensus. ", "Are you a man? Are you a straight man? Then you probably weren't meant to get it. ", "The entire success of the movie hinges on Tim Curry's face and Susan Sarandon's breasts. Get it? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMRl55U0eDw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/the-astonishingly-sensical-plot-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.avclub.com/article/emthe-rocky-horror-picture-showem-48588"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://1morecastle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show-Lips.jpg", "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bzBv6kJJi94/TqOKWuPbspI/AAAAAAAAAG0/HNxhSqMhCUs/s1600/Frank-4.png", "http://www.hotel-americano.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/time-warp.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch", "http://cdn.okcimg.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/0x0/0x0/0/6344196307884400154.jpeg___1_500_1_500_cb94de6a_.png", "http://www.rockymusic.org/img/rhpsphotoscolor/RHPS-LipsAndLogoL.jpg", "http://eatmorebacalhau.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/drfranknfurter.jpg", "http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbr8kmyt171qeg3l9o1_400.gif", "http://www.tipwiki.net/images/3/3a/Timewarpfilm.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bender", "http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/files/2013/10/The-Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show.jpg"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/pc3ullr.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_vrb4-6_0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRyAwr4Yb5A"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://nerdline.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/rhps_048nell.jpeg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbt2TdvQ68"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29e4vu", "title": "is there ever an advantage for an average person to lease a new car vs buying it?", "selftext": "The care dealerships always seem to push leasing, so I would assume they make more money that way.  is this true?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29e4vu/eli5_is_there_ever_an_advantage_for_an_average/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cik13pk", "cik1eum", "cik1yu6", "cik2khr", "cik2lh6", "cik2ssk", "cik2vyt", "cik34we", "cik37yv", "cik4szq", "cikbk4c", "cikdggl", "cikjxgf"], "score": [2, 2, 3, 124, 2, 7, 11, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They tend to, yes, because at the end they own the car and can sell it used or for parts, whereas if you buy you own the car. \n\nBarring individual great deals or luck, the \"advantage\" for the average person to lease is that they can get a combination of more convenience and a \"better\"(meaning newer) car for roughly the same amount of money per month.  \n\nSome people put a lot of value on driving a new car, and want to know that if something breaks they won't be on the hook for a sudden huge repair bill (instead they just pay the higher monthly payments, sort of like having car insurance).  It's never \"cheaper,\" than buying a used car but if those features are what you want in the car, it is certainly cheaper then buying the same car in terms of monthly payments. \n\nIf, on the other hand, you see a lease offer where the payments are anywhere close to the payments for a car of the same year and make, then run. ", "I leased because my last (owned) car was a mechanical nightmare. I was so sick of the omnipresent stress. My Jetta will cost me around $6000 over three years. I could take out a loan and buy a $6000 car but what if it starts to fall apart? Yeah, maybe I can sell it in three years for a portion of the purchase price but I could also sink an extra $3000 in repairs and break even. For the mechanically inclined or financially stable the risk might be worth it , but for me I value my stress-free lease much more than the potential return on investment. \n\nEdit: I also need the car to get to work to make payments on the car - so if I couldn't afford repairs that month I'd lose my job and be fucked. ", "Leasing has its perks, but it's almost always a bad decision. \n\nThe only reason to lease a car would be because you are only planning on keeping the car for 2 years or less, which is a poor financial decision. People often lease because they can't afford a car they want and leasing is a cheaper option. \n\nHere are the issues:\nWhen you lease a car, you own nothing when the term of the lease is up. All of the money that you spent on payments will be gone and you will also have to return the car, leaving you with nothing of value. In addition, you have to return the car in the condition you bought it, so every little scratch and ding needs to be fixed and that money comes out of your pocket. Leasing also typically involves a mileage limit, ie how many miles you are allowed to put on the car. The more miles you want to drive, the more the lease will cost. If you go over this limit, the fines are hefty, usually in the range of $0.15 - $0.30 per mile. \n\nA lot of people will tell you that leasing is great because you don't have to cover repairs, but with just about every new car, you get the same warranty, but you also get flexibility. If you lose your job, you can always sell your car if you own it. If you are leasing, it isn't that easy. Most leasing companies won't let you out of your lease without penalties and a hit to your credit score. \n\nThere is also a bunch of behind the scenes stuff where owning is beneficial. Stuff like deducting depreciation costs and tax variations. To make a long story short, the tax on a leased car will be for the full value of the car for the life of the term, while an owned car will be for the current value,  not full value. \n\nMorale of the story: if it looks to good to be true, it is. ", "Previously worked at a car dealership and still work in the automotive industry and currently lease a vehicle. There is a lot of wrong comments in this thread. Let me give you some clarification.\n\n- Whether you Lease or Purchase a vehicle unless you write a check for the car the bank OWNS the car. Not You.\n\n- Leasing is another way to finance the vehicle where you are paying a little extra to remove yourself from liability of the cars equity.\n\n- You can still negotiate and sell the vehicle at any point while on a lease contract, you don't just have to turn the vehicle in at the end. If you have equity you can use it as a negotiation tool when you trade for another vehicle.\n\n- when you turn a vehicle in it's the banks vehicle not the dealership, usually the bank will offer it to the dealership first but you can turn it into any dealership any of them can negotiate. This means the dealership doesn't necessarily care whether you lease or buy. That being said...\n\n- manufacturers want people leasing because it is more likely you will want a new car In a few years even tho you have the option of buying the vehicle first at the end of your lease and refinancing it.\n\n- dealers want you to lease because it is a lot easier for a dealership to add profit places. they can fudge the Cap cost, they can fudge the residual value, this is where it's an afvantage for a dealer to have you lease. It has to do with the contracts, it's easier to hide money in a lease contract.\n\nTLDR: Just to wrap up because I think I'm writing a lot. Lease is just another way to finance. Any way you finance you don't own the car. If you are going to Lease do lots of research go to more places and look closely at your contract. If you have any questions just ask, I love helping people buy cars because after selling them I know there are a lot of ways you don't know where I can still make money.", "So I get the disadvantages to leasing, but I would like to share an opposing opinion where I feel leasing is beneficial. Currently the EV market is in a potential up shot, Tesla just released all its info in hopes it will kick start the market. Anyone who currently owns an EV is sadly paying a higher cost to fund the upstart costs for new research, manufacturing, and other costs the manufacturer is passing to its consumers; pretty standard that early adopters pay more in any industry. However since this technology is so new and has such room for improvement, buying an EV sounds like a bad idea. They are very expensive, and in 3-5 years I would expect the same model will likely be 2-3x more efficient not to mention cheaper. So a lease is a much better option in the EV/hybrid market. I get to cheaply own a car that is quite expensive, watch as the market changes over the course of my lease, and when its over I can almost guarantee that my car value to the bank will be significantly higher than what I could sell it for. I'll also be looking forward to reengaging in another lease for a car that will most likely be a significant improvement over the efficiency of my car, and potentially cheaper as well. In addition, If there is any mileage overages, I've heard some dealers/manufacturers will let them slide if you get another lease [cannot verify this, just from a friend saying they did this for his leases]\n\nTldr the EV market is changing so much and so fast that leasing may make sense and counter act some of the negatives pointed out by others.", "IIT there seems to be an awful lot of assumptions and \"that sounds right\" logic, but no insider knowledge.  \nI used to agree that there leasing was basically for suckers who wanted to own a car beyond their means, but my brother (who works in a dealership) convinced me otherwise.  \nLike everything, there is a tradeoff but according to him, leasing is actually kind of win win for both parties.  \n\nBuying: When you buy a car, it is yours and you do whatever you want with it. Personally, this is a big plus, but financially, maybe not the wisest move. You see, your car loses value as soon as it goes from new to used so one month in, you owe most of the car which has lost a substantial amount of value. With homes, people tend to sell them (and panic) but for some reason, they don't think about it with cars. \n\nLeasing: This benefits the dealership because, like some assumed, they still own the car at the end of the day. However, they own a 2-5 yr old car which is worth a whole lot less than when you first started using it. The reason dealerships will take this deal anyways is because there is a definite market for used cars and a need to have a used car inventory. Leasing often ties you to the dealership for maintenance, so they have definite records of how good the car is (important for warranties etc).  \nBelieve it or not, this actually benefits the consumer many times too. Whether we realize it or not, people who tend to buy a new car, also tend to want an even newer car 5-7 years down the road. If they bought, they paid a lot more than a lease, for a car that is worth way less now. For people who buy a car until it breaks down, the old car often further drains you with maintenance after the 100k mark where more expensive parts need to be purchased and cars tend to become unreliable.  \nThings to know:  \nOlder cars become less valuable, and more so at high mileage points. For this reason, the dealership puts strict rules and steep fees for driving more than the allotted miles. If you have no choice and KNOW you will use more than the miles provided, my brother recommends you BUY and not lease. However, he does suggest you buy a certified used car as the economic drop of a car going from new to used is simply not worth it. This is obviously, his advice to me as his brother, but often tells this to customers too. However, intangibles like piece of mind don't have a set value, and many customers decide to buy new anyways.  \nDeals: Some people ITT mentioned about deals. The profit margin for a new car (lease or sold) is actually quite small so saying \"give me your best price\" isnt going to work. For this reason, you will rarely find an amazing deal from dealership to dealership as they are all buying from the same company. Essentially, a 2015 Honda Accord will be the same base price in any Honda dealership. The biggest difference is in financing which can vary depending on how big of a risk a dealership wants to take on your creditworthiness (and this is actually what you probably want to focus on if getting a new car).  \nDeals do exist with used cars though. For some reason, many dealerships will sell a used car for a loss if they have had it for too long. It is pretty much just taking up space.  \nTrade ins: We didn't discuss this (my brother and I), but generally, you will get less than your car is worth for a trade in. However, it is usually likely they will take it, so some people are okay with eating the loss. He always sells his own cars to private parties.  \nLoyalty: With this 5-7 year new car trend, dealerships rely A LOT on return customers and referrals. While of course, the dealership wants to make as much money as possible, they would also rather sell you two cars than one. For this reason, dealerships generally play it safe across the board and would rather make their money with add ons than with totally ripping you off on the base price of a new car.\n\nSource: Brother works in a dealership and is a car enthusiast.", "The main advantage of leasing to the consumer is you can get a better car for the same monthly payment, at least in the short term.  If you want to drive a Mercedes but have a Toyota income, leasing can make that happen.\n\nDealers like it because it helps them sell more expensive cars.  They make about the same money whether you buy or lease a $20K car...but they make more from you leasing a $40K car.\n\nThat said, leasing is almost always a poor financial choice for the consumer.  If you have a Toyota income, you should drive a Toyota and save up until you can afford to buy that Mercedes.\n\n", "Just to point out for any Australian readers, \"leasing a car\" often means an entirely different thing.\n\nIn my time as a financial planner, I have yet to come across a more cost-effective way to own a car than \"leasing,\" which is what most people call a novated lease. If your employer is willing to play ball, you can actually pay for a good chunk of your car payments and running costs pre-tax, which is essentially claiming a deduction for those amounts. You can do this, even if you don't have any business usage.\n\nA \"leasing company\" AKA a novated lease provider will set everything up for you, pay for the car and its associated bills, then bundle them up into one invoice for your employer, who then takes it out of your pay. Simple in concept, but it goes wrong when people don't get the right information and end up setting themselves up for failure.\n\nAt the end of a novated lease, there is usually no hand-back option. You pay the balloon one way or another, so some people pay it out and keep the car (dumb) or sell it, cover the balloon, keep any overs, and move onto a new car (sometimes smart). My favourite option is to re-lease the same car for its balloon payment, thereby reducing your payments and keeping the car that you're so happy with, but still saving tax.\n\nIf you want to know anything about leases, chattel mortgages, or other tax-related car things, ask away.", "Not a financial advantage.", "A lease also counts as a sale for a manufacturer. They hope that in 3 years when your lease is up, you\u2019ll get another lease with them which will then in turn count as another sale for them. \n\nIt\u2019s all about numbers.", "A distinction should be made between leasing, financing, and buying outright.\n\nAfter reading a few posts, there still wasn't any clear indication that leasing or financing is better than buying.\n\nOne good thing about leasing is that your payments might be tax deductible if you use your vehicle for work. A real estate agent maybe? Some sales job? Now that I think about it I'm beginning to question this. It sounds a lot like I video-game developer! I need a gaming rig and multiple consoles for work!\n\nAnyways, my general impression is that buying the vehicle with cash is always the cheapest route. Both leasing and financing will charge interest, and with leasing you can get hit with fees for damage or some wear when you return the vehicle. Sometimes they're lenient and sometimes they're really strict.\n\nThe only advantage of leasing was that you never had to bother selling your car to a private party, but you might end up paying thousands of dollars more for it.\n\nWouldn't it be cheaper (if you have the cash) to just buy a car (as in pay with cash) whenever you want a new car and then sell it to private party when you buy a new one?\n\nAs long as the car doesn't depreciate horribly (you picked a car no one wants used), you should be okay. Or no worse off.", "If you use the vehicle for work like say a real estate agent you can write it all off come tax time. And you're driving a brand new car every couple years.", "I think it's much smarter to buy used vehicles after their depreciation has set in. Some vehicles age better than others and if you do your research it's likely you can pick up a good used vehicle for a fraction of the cost of a new one whose value is inflated excessively by novelty and loans.\n\nI've bought several used cars that required very little maintenance over all. I also taught myself to work on cars by doing a lot of that maintenance myself. This kept me from getting ripped off by mechanics in addition to car dealerships.\n\nIt's a long term strategy but it has saved me 10's of thousands of dollars at this point. Plus I haven't had to pay a car payment in 15 years.\n\nOh yeah.. EDIT.. I forgot this one. I got extremely lucky on a used vehicle once. I bought a 10k truck for 5k. Literally half the blue book value of it because the body was superficially damaged and there was a grind when you turned the wheel to the right. The grind was just a worn hub locker (for the 4X4) sliding over the worn out hub assembly. $200 bucks total to get this truck running awesome. Yeah he's got some dents but this guy has another 200k miles in him easy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2cr00z", "title": "how is it that, say, lebron james and danny devito are considered to be the same species despite being so physically different, but a brown bear and a black bear are considered to be completely different species despite being so physically similar?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cr00z/eli5_how_is_it_that_say_lebron_james_and_danny/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cji5e5y", "cji5rpo", "cji608z", "cji6i6t", "cji6nxj", "cji91hf", "cji9g76", "cjiasoi", "cjiaz7f", "cjiazck", "cjibb8z", "cjibkjo", "cjibmhe", "cjiby6r", "cjic167", "cjicazf", "cjiddgv", "cjide41", "cjidqxg", "cjie2ef", "cjiefk5", "cjiests", "cjievk9", "cjifb4q", "cjiflyg", "cjig21f", "cjig46k", "cjigbkh", "cjigynt", "cjih2kk", "cjihn1g", "cjihotd", "cjihpc3", "cjihq4p", "cjii0xa", "cjii2mz", "cjii340", "cjii5nl", "cjii89p", "cjiieio", "cjiifj9", "cjijqtt", "cjik18u", "cjik38d", "cjikfbw", "cjiki51", "cjil4cn", "cjilon5", "cjilr64", "cjim43e", "cjim55v", "cjimlw9", "cjimznx", "cjinim8", "cjinktp", "cjinlft", "cjinr9b", "cjio53h", "cjioe9y", "cjioptk", "cjiq6ed", "cjiqvqt", "cjir6je", "cjiraso", "cjirc0d", "cjirj3s", "cjirm0c", "cjis46v", "cjisfro", "cjj48pf"], "score": [109, 2, 14, 3164, 40, 56, 8, 265, 6, 9, 2, 8, 2, 2, 5, 13, 6, 2, 16, 2, 4, 13, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 2, 3, 3, 7, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 5, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The simplest test to distinguish species is whether or not they can produce offspring together.  Both Lebron and DeVito would be capable of impregnating a standard human woman so they're the same species.\n\nThere's some weird edge cases  &  exceptions but they're not really important for your questions.", "Species are defined in reference to a common ancestor and not solely on similarity. In humans the differences in height are not substantial enough to define a different species. The bears are distinguished as separate species a) since all brown bears can potentially reproduce and are isolated from mating with black bear b) they are defined or identified using other traits besides \"color\" (which are shared derived traits according to Biologist). ", "To be the same species you need to be able to produce fertile offspring. 2 Humans no matter what ethnicity mating can produce fertile offspring. \nSome species can mate and produce offspring, but their offspring are infertile, such as when a horse and a donkey mate they produce a mule, which is infertile therefore they are different species. \n", "Defining species is a tricky and often subjective part of the various scientific disciplines which interact with it.\n\nSome will say that the viability of offspring among groups of sexually reproducing organisms is a good test, and it does offer some utility, but it is by no means exhaustive. Polar bears and grizzley bears are a famous example of two types of organisms which are generally considered different species, but which occasionally mate in wild, producing reproductively viable offspring. Mosquitos can become behaviorally different enough that they don't know how to entice mates between groups and they are often considered diferent species despite the reproductive viability of offspring created by human intervention.\n\nArchaeological evidence throws in additional wrinkles. Although we generally consider domesticated dogs to all be of the same species, if the only record we had of them were bones (ignoring DNA) we would likely consider great danes to be a completely different species from pugs. This problem rears its head when examining hominids which co-existed as it is difficult to say if these are divergent groups of one species or two separate species; some the scientists involved usually prefer the latter result as it is more prestigeous to discover a new species than just a member of an existing one.\n\nNon-sexual reproducers add additional problems as the detectable differences in species has a lot to do with how they look and how they behave around other similar organisms.\n\nDNA has added an additional tool which allows us to statistically compare gene differences between two organisms. This has been done to create base-lines of what we already feel are different species and how much their genetics deviate from each other and then we can use this to compare other similar appearing organisms, both those we can observe today and those from the relatively recent past. If they are too similar, it is a strong mark against it being a different species and if they are quite different, it is a strong mark in favor of it.\n\nIn the end, the idea of 'species' is only important when it is useful in describing our world. It's useful to differentiate between predators and prey, or the reproductive viability of populations of organisms, or tracking forms of organism through the archaeological record. It is important to recognize that the walls we put up around species are not entirely sound and if we aren't careful we can make mistakes, but in so far that they are useful tools for helping us to grapple with the complexity of the world, they are just fine.", "A few people gave pointed out that one of the defining characteristics of a species is the ability to breed and produce fertile offspring.  I'd like to add that the physical differences, from a biological perspective, between Danny Devito and Lebron are pretty minor. Overall body size, skin color being the obvious ones. Take a look at an animal like the angler fish to see how completely different members of the same species can be. As a species humans are actually lacking much genetic diversity.", "Well, there are a [few](_URL_0_) different ways to define a species. That list is a little long, so here are the three main definitions, in order of least to most likely to result in defining a new species.\n\n* Phenetic: Determined by differences in morphology, aka visual differences, between the individuals.\n\n* Biological: Determined by whether or not the individuals are able to produce viable (fertile) offspring.\n\n* Phylogenetic: Determined by evolutionary history of traits that may or may not be visible, such as a coloration pattern or the ability to produce a specific protein.\n\nThese all have trade-offs, but the biological species concept is the most-used. When you're talking about something like bacteria, however, other species definitions like the phylogenetic concept become much more useful.", "There's also a sociological component to your question that can't be ignored. There was historically a time when (white) people did argue that Lebron James' ancestors were essentially a different species from (some) if Danny De Vito's and were treated very differently. There has been a social pressure to move away from that kind of thinking because biologically, mentally, spiritually, etc. Lebron and Danny are similar enough that you can't justify treating them differently as a function of the few ways that they're different. The science of speciation is really interesting but the question you're asking isn't about science but about society.", "If Danny had a son and James had a daughter those two could have a child together.  ", "Shut up deandra\n\n", "Tuned in to this thread to learn things and stuff, pleasantly surprised to not find any racist comments (yet).", "Well if Lebron and Danny really love eachother. They do a special handshake, and nine months later Arnold comes out. But then Arnold needs to be able to have a special handshake of his own and make babies of his own for Danny and Lebron to be considered  the same species.", "There are differences between two black bears that we aren't accustomed to notice, just like I'm sure that all humans would look the same to a bear.", "Obligatory \"Twins\" joke. I feel old now.", "There's a lot of different answers in this thread but it looks like what comes out of it is a bit of subjectivity when classifying species and that humans don't necessarily play by the rules when it comes down to classifying themselves. Another big part is the actual similitude between the 2. A lot of species that look similar can actually be quite different : for instance, despite looking the same, black bear and brown bear's common ancestor date from [5 million years ago](_URL_0_) ( almost as big of a difference as the [7 million years that made the split between chimps and us](_URL_1_) ).\n\nThere's actually a short [wikipedia page](_URL_2_) going over some debate regarding human classification. Sorry that it's not so much ELI5 but worth checking out if you're really wondering.", "To put it simply, it all depends on how you define species. Scientists can't agree on one single definition because most hard definitions end up resulting in humans being considered different species, which is the most politically incorrect thing a scientist could suggest.\n\nIf we use genetic similarity, since we already consider chimps and bonobos different species, we'd have to consider humans different species (since the difference between chimps and bonobos is similar to the difference between different human groups).\n\nIf we use shape and size and looks, humans come in extremely different forms, enough to warrant calling them different species.\n\nSame for social structure.\n\nAnd if the test is the fertility test (can they produce fertile offspring?), we have members of different species producing fertile offspring.\n\nSo scientists have decided to agree to differentiate species based on what's most acceptable to the fashions of the age. Nazi scientists would say there are different species, others would say we are all the same.\n\nPersonally I think the whole argument is foolish. It's all just bickering over a name. The differences are there regardless of what we call the different groups of humans; different sub-species, races, ethnicities or populations of similar genomic structures.\n\nWhenever there is a bickering over a name, someone's agenda/politics is being threatened. There is no bickering on whatever the fuck we call the sun or the moon, because nobody gives a shit what you call them. But when it comes to race, some people stand to gain and some people stand to lose (or think they stand to lose), and so all hell breaks lose.\n\nAnd the most intelligent among us reserve our right to think whatever the fuck we want, leaving the bickering over names and labels to idiots.", "Because if lebron fucked danny's daughter they could make babies that could reproduce. It's the same with a Great Dane and a toy poodle.", "May be a bit late to the discussion, but here's my take:\n\nThe definition of species takes many different forms, both in biology and in our understanding. The most commonly accepted definition is: Can these two organisms procreate and produce an offspring that can also procreate. (all that matters in biology is sex/babies)\n\nThis can be stopped/prevented in two forms, either Pre-zygotic or Post-zygotic methods. Let's go through each one:\n\nPre-zygotic (literally meaning *before baby is created in womb*):\n      These are restrictions such as geographic boundaries (opposite sides of a canyon), mechanical boundaries (that male part doesn't fit in the females), or behavioral differences that will prevent two organisms from even having an opportunity to actually attempt procreation. These will sometimes be overwhelmed in specific circumstances (mostly human interaction), but, if overwhelmed, will, in most cases, result in an \"unviable\" organism. (can't produce another baby, remember what Biology is all about)\n\nPost-zygotic (after the baby is *created in womb*):\n      These are restrictions that arise after the two \"species\" have had sex and created a fetus. Whether it be chromosomal differences, the inability to form gametes, or the fact the subsequent infants become less and less viable. (yes, even if the first set is viable, if the next ones to come aren't, it's also considered unviable. called Hybrid Breakdown.) The point is, this type of speciation is the fact that although reproduction can occur, it does not better the species in itself, and is, because of that, not significant (in terms of biology)\n\nThese definitions only arise because they give us as humans at least some way of categorizing all the organisms on earth. Although prizzlies exist and are viable, they are very rare to occur in natural situations, and because of stark differences in \"race,\" are seen as unique. (behavioral, geographical differences).\n\nJust like most scenarios in the natural sciences, it's always about perspective. Sometimes it's easier to accept a specific understanding simply because it prevents further confusion and is sufficient in most cases.  \n", "Human language, and peoples feelings. \n\nThats pretty much it. The laws we write for nature don't apply to us, because someone will always want to make it a negative. And hurt some groups feelings. I'm not saying any race is better. But I'm fairly certain there's no reliable racial studies simply because someone either will end up at the bottom. Or they'll feel like they have. \n\nThen you have racism/classism all over again.", "Think of it more like dogs. Danny D is a pug. LeBron J is a self centered baby.", "Beware of relativism inherent in your own species. A wild brown bear would perceive Lebron James and Danny Devito as big and small humans but isn't going to make much more of a distinction on an initial encounter. Put it in a room with a black bear and it will immediately perceive that it is very different to one of its own sloth. The smells and communication techniques will be different enough for it to register as a very different beast.  \n\nThis is for the same reason that I was recently plagued by white guilt when I confused two GPs as the same person because they were both of Asian descent. Essentially, the closer you are to a species the easier it is for you to perceive differences. ", "That's because Lebron and Danny devito could breed and the bears can't. ", "It's worth noting that polar bears and grizzly bears are a bit more seperated evolutionarily then different ethnicities of human.\n\nI believe that it's only about 100,000 years between human ethnicities, yet p. bears and g. bears are closer to 7-10 million.\n\nHow two things look and behave can be a poor measure of speciation. \n\nBiological species definition (Can they make fertile babies?) is also pretty flawed. It only really works for animals, and even then it's pretty hit and miss (Asexual reproduction, yo! Also plants. Plants are batshit insane). \n\nAll in all, I am a bit biased towards phylogenetic evidence! I'd load up some key regions from Lebron and Danny's genome (Why, I have them right here! (Not really)) aswell as some sequences from the p. bear and g. bear and compare them for differences. \n\nThe problem here is when do call two things different species? There isn't a set date where after x years two things become different species.\n\nSpecies definition all in all is only really useful for a snapshot at one particular timepoint. It serves to make it easier to talk about species, but the concept of a species is a very hard one to solidly define. Too many just break the rules. \n\nIn the end of the day, it's kind of whatever we want to label them based off of what's practical. ", "There are a many contributing factors (this is by no means a complete list):\n\n* Taxonomy, the naming of species, is in a process of change from old physiological techniques (bone size and shape, mating habits and viability of offspring etc...) to more recenct DNA techniques.  \n* Species definitions are not always agreed upon.  \n* There are major social and cutural ramifications of classifying the human species, especially splitting it up into multiple species.", "Because James and DeVito are practically identical, and two different species of bear are very different.\n\nBecause we are very social creatures, identification of different people is very important to us. This means that our brains focus on differences between people, exaggerating them. But we don't care about differences between bears, so we tend to ignore most of them unless we train ourselves.", "Haha, oh man. I had a biology teacher in high school who pointed this out, but instead used the shortest girl in the class and compared her to the tallest, beefiest guy he could find. That teacher also jumped from table to table screaming like a chimp one time. He was awesome.", "Sounds like OP also listened to Chris Ryan's podcast!\n\nedit:\n\nAnd you should too. He's the best.", "Can't the supermod hire someone from /r/askscience to tight up things around here? I don't want to read someone's shitty jokes.", "copied this from the joe rogan podcast, they used Shaquille O'Neil  &  another small actor as a reference", "A brown and black bear can't interbreed, but LeBron and Danny can.", "Danny DeVito should print out this question and have it framed.", "A female Danny DeVito and a male Lebron James could mate and produce fertile offspring, the bears could reproduce but the offspring would be sterile.", "Because Lebron James and Danny DeVito can have a baby together.", "A better comparison would be a black bear that is very \"athletic\" and really good at hunting, and another black bear that is fat and sits around all day making bad jokes. ", "A species is a group of animals that can have viable offspring that can also reproduce upon successful breeding. So someone from Mr James's family could have a child with someone from Mr DeVito's family and they would have perfectly healthy children. \n\nBut in the known cases of a Black bear / Brown bear hybrid the offspring were sterile and often unhealthy.  \n\n_URL_0_", "Because brilliant scientists who spent their entire lives watching bears or digging up lizard bones want to have discovered a species all for themselves and not commit suicide because their life is pointless. ", "I'd presume because the genetic makeup of a brown bear is not the same for a black bear.\n\nEven though physical traits (phenotypes) may be similar their genes (genotypes) can be wildly different. Just like how certains flowers, trees, and insects can looks similar, but be completely different species.", "There is so much misinformation in this thread! Hopefully you will see this.\n\nBiological species concept (aka \"species much produce fertile offspring\" thing everyone is spouting out here) is hugely outdated. The generalized lineage concept is currently accepted by those up-to-date in the field.\n\nSure, two individuals of different species *tend* to be unable to produce viable offspring, but this is a property, not the definition of a species. Nowadays, scientists can use statistical methods to delimit species based on divergence date estimated through sequencing DNA. It's not as subjective anymore as most of these people are claiming. Since Lebron James and Danny DeVito's ancestors diverged not too long ago (on a geological time scale) they are absolutely the same species.\n\nSee any papers by Kevin de Queiroz. Try this one: _URL_0_", "Well the species known as human are made up of many sub species such as:\n\ncaucasoid (homosapien + neanderthal)\n\nnegroid (homosapien)\n\nmongoloid and other smaller sub species such as pacific aboriginal etc.etc.\n\nit's not racist, it's just science, we are all human but with that there are sub species as well all enjoy different characteristics which are innate. \n", "Lebron James and Danny DeVito can mate (or at least, mate with each others' sisters) to produce probably nonsterile offspring.", "Both Lebron and DeVito have the same homologous structures that the rest of humans share with other animals, which also correspond to other species with similar structures. For instance, whales and birds share a similar bones structure where the bird's wing is and where the whale's flipper is, however they don't operate for the same purpose. While Lebron and DeVito may have different sized femurs, they are both used for the same purpose meaning they are most likely the same species.\n\nNote: This is just one of the many ways that species can be compared, and it is by no means the most accurate. You can also differentiate species through fossils, DNA testing, interbreeding (many reasons that it won't work), and probably some other ways that I'm forgetting. ", "The way you ask the question is a little misleading, since you're taking opposite extremes. Lebron James is taller than 99% of men, while Danny Devito is shorter than 99%. When you intentionally take two very different looking people, of course a question like yours will arise. When you look at the averages, though, and ask something like, \"How are Brad Pitt and Tiger Woods considered the same species?\", the answer becomes a little more obvious. ", "The spaniards BANGED the Mayans and turned them into Mexicans.", "The same reason a great dane and a toy poodle are the same species.", "Phenotype is not genotype", "The difference between those two people is the same difference between blue and brown eyes, or large or small ears. They can breed with members of the same species and produce viable offspring. Bears of different species cannot, their differences are like us and chimps.", "What about how all dogs are considered the same species? ", "Danny DeVito and Lebron James aren't as different as you think.  Human brains are hardwired to recognize human faces and notice details that would seem obvious to us, but would be completely unnoticeable to others.  There's a [disorder](_URL_0_) where one cannot recognize faces; their brains aren't hardwired like that.  So, to someone with Prosopagnosia, they just might see Danny DeVito as a short guy and LeBron James as a tall guy, just as you could see in different black bears.  To them, Lebron and Danny would be a lot closer than a black bear and a brown bear.", "Well, think of it this way.\n\nIt's not like Species are what they are, and that we discovered that fact.  We made the shit up.  We decided, and we could easily undecide it if we wanted to.", "Those are exceptions than the rule (your bear example). The 'exception' rule should be considered as important since the tests for species were pretty loose before genetic diversity tests came in.\n\nForget about other animals, humans don't have enough genetic diversity to classify different races as different species. That's the scientific reason.\n\nPolitical reasons, humans are intellectually evolved to the point where classification of races as species (even if it were scientifically true) would be very controversial and polarizing.", "It's all in the biology, they just don't split up humans into seperate species\n\nalso, brown bear (Ursus arctos) (genus = Ursus) (species = arctos) is from the same genus as black bear (Ursus americanus), but it's species (americanus (hehehe it says anus) ) is different because members of one certain species can reproduce fertile children, while members of the same genus but different species cannot produce fertile children\n\nhumans are all 1 species, because one human can mate with every other human of the opposite sex to produce fertile children (you shouldn't try tho)\nso to get to your example: Lebron and DeVito can both mate with, lets say, Angelina Joly (but Bratt wouldn't be happy with that) and get a fertile baby (if nothing goes wrong of course).\n\nto give you an example:\ndonkeys can mate with horses (in either way, so male horse + female donkey or male donkey + female horse) which gives you mules, but mules aren't fertile, they can't get children themselves.\n(horse (Equus ferus caballus) / donkey (Equus africanus asinus) they are same genus, but different species)\n\nsource: biology in highschool and a bit of wikipedia (mostly for the right names)", "it's a matter of politics", "I think their offspring has to be able to reproduce in order to be considered the same species. So we'll only know if Lebron and Danny try to make a baby.", "It is worth noting that human brains are particularly good at picking out human differences. They are less good at picking out bear differences.\n\nNow I'm not claiming that Lebron James and Danny DeVito are more similar than a black bear and a brown bear, but the bears are almost certainly more different than one would assume from casual observation.", "Even species aren't that well defined. People say if two animals can't have an offspring then they are of different species. But one has ring species, where adjacent populations can breed with each other but if two populations are too far away from each other they can not. So species is on a continuum. A great evidence for evolution btw.", "Danny Devito already made a documentary about this with Arnold Schwarzenegger called \"Twins\" ", "Do you mean like a Poodle and a Mastiff?  ", "Brown bears taking all our jobs. ", "LeBron James and Danny DeVito should breed.", "I think different races sub species. We're all houman and we can all reproduce with eachother, but most races are adapted enough to their native ranges that they should be considered sub species. Of course there's the issue that labeling races as sub species would give racists and supremacists something new to mess around with.", "I must have stumbled into the \"Explain Like I'm a Scientist\" sub-reddit.", "To refine infocide's response to a degree:  \nIt all depends on your criteria!  \nIn fact, even within biology and biochemistry, there are multiple ways to categorize animals. When making general distinctions, there are methods that divide species according to anatomical, reporductive, and genetic differences as pointed out.  \nHowever, on a day-to-day basis, the same biochemist/biologist, may argue for a relation of two species based on their genomes (DNA), transcriptomes (RNA or expressed genes), or their proteomes (actual proteins manufactured and incorporated in cell structure and function).   \nPhylogenetic trees (those stickly diagrams that show proposed organisms on various \"branches\" that diverge from common ancestors) are generated by statistical comparison of sequences of DNA, RNA, and proteins. These can all be very different and employed to relate species you wouldn't think are the same at all depending on which aspect of life (or cell function) you are studying/comparing.", "two organisms are consitered the same species if they can mate and produce fertile offspring, assuming one is male and the other is female", "Historically \"species\" has been used to mean the largest group that can reproduce to produce fertile offspring. Since all humans can reproduce and produce fertile babies, we are all classified as the same species (Homo sapiens sapiens). ", "I feel like this question borders on violating the \"not for literal five year olds\" rule. The genetic difference between a short white guy and a tall black guy are extremely tiny compared to the genetic difference between 2 different species of bears. The definition of species is obviously not based on what looks physically similar to an untrained human eye, especially since the human brain is wired to notice small differences between humans.", "if Lebron James banges Danny DeVito's sister they have the ability to obtain a fertile child. So by definition they are the same species ", "If Lebron James had sex with a female version of Danny DeVito they could produce a fertile child.  That's what same species means.  If a black bear and brown bear can't produce fully fertile offspring then they're different species.", "I've always kind of assumed the various races of humans to be different human species. Is this incorrect?", "Haha I was listening to a podcast this morning and for awhile they discussed the same thing. They talked about how if an alien race came to earth and never saw humans before and the first they saw were Shaquille oneal and a white female dwarf they would certainly think they are of a different species. ", "Because a black bear can't reproduce with a brown bear, yet if you take to very different looking humans, male and female, they can reproduce. Hence, being the same species. ", "The human race, when comparing to other species, is incredibly un-diverse. Technically, \"race\" is just a social construct and has no genetic backing. People always say \"oh yeah? well skin is different colors and hair is different!\" and blah blah blah. But these very superficial differences may be easy to see, but they actually don't represent much. Pacific Islanders or South Indians have skin colors similar to some Africans, East Asians and Europeans both have lighter skin - the list of superficial similarities is just as long as superficial differences, despite likely differing genetic origin. Everything is just an adaptation, and human populations (to our knowledge) have not experienced natural selection to a great enough degree to create what could scientifically be defined as different \"races\" - let alone different species. In fact, due to multiple founder effects (i.e., genetic diversity decreases as small populations move farther from the original population - that is, as humans migrated away from Africa) if you were to divide humans into what would be closest to genetically defined \"races\" (although I hate using that word because, scientifically, there are no human races), there would be 3-4 races: Two races of entirely African populations, and a 3rd of everyone else. Some human genomics researchers also advocate for a 4th genetic race, which would be constituted of Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians. \n\nThere's also the complicated fact that speciation is defined by sexual isolation. But the line between the ability and inability to interbreed is slow to be created, and evolutionarily, could take millions of years (and many generations of isolation, or continued interbreeding where more \"pure\" species members are more fit to survive). Because the line between species can be hard to draw - not only genetically, but physically - ancient humans interbred with \"different species\" of humanoid creatures that lived at the same time, like homo erectus (giggle), Denisovans or what are known as Neanderthals. These \"mixed species\" humans were not mutants, and many survived - we know because of the distinctly Neanderthal, Denisovan and other early humanoid genes that are found within our modern human DNA. Some humans, especially Europeans, are significant portion Neanderthal (fun fact: red hair/\"gingerness\" is a Neanderthal trait! so if you're a Catholic and think only humans have souls...)\n\nSAUCE: studied genomic perspectives on human evolution in school so... My professors!\nedits: clarifying and grammar"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species#Definitions_of_species"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_black_bear#Taxonomy_and_evolution", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee%E2%80%93human_last_common_ancestor", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_taxonomy"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursid_hybrid#Brown_bear.2FAmerican_black_bear_hybrids"], [], [], ["http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/6/879.abstract"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1c7n6i", "title": "Who were the Cagots of the France and Spain? What do we know about them, historically (in terms of both begins and ends)? Were they really \"untouchables\"? (obviously inspired by the /r/truereddit article about the \"last Cagot\")", "selftext": "This is obviously inspired by [this article](_URL_1_) posted in /r/TrueReddit called \"The Last Untouchable in Europe\".   A similar questions was [asked here three weeks ago](_URL_3_) with no response.  There is an English Wikipedia article about [Cagots](_URL_2_), as well as more extensive ones in [French](_URL_5_) and [Italian](_URL_0_) and a slightly shorter one with a better a (French, Spanish, Italian) bibliography in [Spanish](_URL_4_) (of those languages, I only speak French, but I haven't bothered to work my way through the French one yet--I've only skimmed the English one).  They're associated with the Pyrenees in places, but apparently there was Cagot discrimination as far north as Brittany. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c7n6i/who_were_the_cagots_of_the_france_and_spain_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9e3ed7"], "score": [13], "text": ["The reason the question from three weeks ago (and yours) hasn't been answered is: nobody knows who the cagots were. Or rather: everybody in the villages and towns where they lived knew which families were cagots, but nobody these days and for a long while since has been able to explain why they were excluded from society in the way they were. The most popular hypothesis is that they were thought to descend from people who harboured a form of hereditary leprosy (not actually correct medical science but we are talking about a time when leprosy was not well understood).\n\nIt seems that the earliest mention of such a group of people dates from around 1000 CE. They were indeed excluded to a remarkable extent, but not shunned outright as lepers were. This exclusion manifested itself in various ways at various times: only certain professions were open to them; they were relegated to the edges of villages/towns; they had their own separate and inferior entrances to churches; they had to wear distinctive clothing; they were not allowed to intermarry with \"regular\" people, etc. \n\nThe French Wikipedia article is your best introduction and the sources listed are your best bet for further reading. Not a whole lot of in-depth studies have appeared in English."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots", "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-last-untouchable-in-europe-878705.html#", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ah1rm/has_there_ever_been_a_consensus_reached_as_to_who/", "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots", "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "51s5yi", "title": "Was there such a thing as \"Aztec Death Whistles\"?", "selftext": "I saw [this](_URL_0_) post today. I had never heard of such instruments. Did ancient Aztecs or other Mesoamerican civilizations ever use anything like this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51s5yi/was_there_such_a_thing_as_aztec_death_whistles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7eukaz"], "score": [81], "text": ["Kind of, but not really.\n\nThe instrument featured in that video is what's known as a *chichtli*, a \"skull-whistle\" that uses an air-spring mechanism to create a rattling/whistling sound when blown. However, the particular version of the instrument shown in that video isn't exactly the same sound, and appears to be a modern instrument loosely based on the ancient one. The actual sound of the ancient instrument is described by ethnomusicologist Arnd Adje Both as \"a distorted sound reminding one of the atmospheric noise generated by the wind.\" [This video](_URL_0_) is probably closer to what the instrument actually sounded like.\n\nAlso, the idea that warriors would carry these into battle and use them to terrify enemies is pure speculation. Musical instruments used in warfare were more commonly drums and conch shell trumpets, and their purpose was more to provide signaling to their own army than to intimidate their enemies. The chichtli was more likely used in religious rituals associated with the underworld rather than warfare.\n\nEdit: I should also add that these instruments are relatively rare in archaeological contexts compared to more traditional flutes and ocarinas, which is further evidence against the idea that an entire army would be using these in battle.\n\n* Both, Arnd Adje. 2010. \"Aztec Music Culture.\" *The World of Music*, Vol. 52, No. 1/3, the world of music: Readings in\nEthnomusicology (2010), pp. 14-28"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/51quxs/woah_ancient_aztec_death_whistle_sounds_like/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4T9sYbRzcQ#t=30s"]]}
{"q_id": "87pmz2", "title": "why do people often wake up when the tv is turned off, even though the room becomes darker and more quiet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87pmz2/eli5_why_do_people_often_wake_up_when_the_tv_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwenhw9", "dwess6g", "dwesx4v", "dwf49cz", "dwgby63"], "score": [33, 9, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Because even though it's taking stuff away, it's still a big change in what's going on around us.\n\nUs humans are wired since we were primitive animals to react to things that might indicate danger. \n\nWhen a big noise suddenly happens, we'd wake up in case we had to flee. When a long consistent noise and light that had been going on for some time suddenly stops, same thing happens, and alarm bells go off so we bolt awake.\n\n[Here's a prank where you can see what happens when something in the environment stops. It's pretty jarring.](_URL_0_)", "It stems from a very primal instinct to wake up to anything that might be \"dangerous\".\n\nThe TV noise is familiar. It being there is what we fell asleep to. Any sound (or lack thereof) that is different from what we would expect wakes us up.", "Specifically because the room has gotten darker and become more quiet. It is the change in our surrounding that prompts us to wake. \n\nSudden changes in light mean danger, something has gotten between you and the light source and might eat you. \n\nSudden changes in sound mean danger, the things that were making noise stopped to hide so something may eat you. ", "In the wild, when everything goes suddenly silent it usually means someone noticed a large and dangerous predator. The sudden absence of sound is as important as the sudden presence.", "It is not only because a change might be dangerous, it is that most of our senses are sensible to differences (which for some things like light are strongly related to avoiding dangers, and it is actually the way the eye evolved: a cell sensitive to light variation was more useful than no such cell to escape predators or finding nutrients):\n\n- we don't feel absolute temperature, we feel heat transfer (which is why plastic and metal at the same temperature feel very different)\n\n- a stable image would fade out in our vision system, which is why the eye \"vibrates\" (microsaccades) when the image doesn't change.\n\n- something touching you is detected, but if after contact the pressure remain constant you cannot tell anymore if the thing is still touching you.\nand so on, including sensing concentration of chemicals inside our body."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://youtu.be/jwMj3PJDxuo?t=20"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5804et", "title": "Do photons still move at C inside the event horizon, are they still photons inside the singularity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5804et/do_photons_still_move_at_c_inside_the_event/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8wisbm", "d8wiymv"], "score": [2, 11], "text": ["That depends on your reference frame.\n\nA massless particle always moves at c in a local frame of reference.\n\nAlthough from a distance in you may not see it move at that speed, from your reference frame.\n\n[This](_URL_0_) explains it better.", "Photons right next to you always travel at *c*. Photons elsewhere generally do not travel at *c*, but rather some speed that depends on your coordinates.\n\nFor more details about the coordinate-dependence of light and the local speed of light, you can read [this thread](_URL_0_), in particular [this post of mine](_URL_0_d59so7w) within that thread.\n\nAs for what happens at the singularity, no one knows for sure. Classical general relativity is incapable of answering that question. All geodesics end at the singularity in finite proper time (or finite affine parameter) and that's that. There's no way to extend them past the singularity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/50mriq/can_photons_move_slower_than_the_speed_of_light/d759vio"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4sfhbq/if_light_is_sucked_into_a_black_hole_due_to_its/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4sfhbq/if_light_is_sucked_into_a_black_hole_due_to_its/d59so7w"]]}
{"q_id": "8ajvfz", "title": "news agencies generally follow a standard to not report news of suicides due to copycats. why hasn't a similar standard been established for reporting gun shootings?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ajvfz/eli5_news_agencies_generally_follow_a_standard_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwz6muc", "dwz6xkw", "dwz75hf", "dwz8q85", "dwz91xf", "dwz9bqm", "dwza9bz", "dwzablc", "dwzbg8t", "dwzcter", "dwzdo0n", "dwze1hy", "dwzf9hb", "dwzhspe"], "score": [81, 56, 8, 2, 5, 4, 15, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They're starting to. Note that you'll hear them named less often rather than playing their name and face everywhere. Hopefully the trend continues, but salaciuos news stories that drive ratings sell advertising.  ", "Suicides usually aren't really \"news\" unless the person is famous. Shootings are usually more newsworthy. If there's a murderer on the loose in your city, that's probably something the public should be aware of. And a mass shooting is definitely news. ", "When its a mass shooting, you can't not talk about it. Everyone will already be talking about it because it was such a huge disruption. Everyone in an area will be affected by it to some extent. You'll have crowds of people at the site, huge police presence and emergency workers in general..\n\nShootings effect the entire community.", "News stations do not report on suicides because unless it was done in a spectacular way or is someone famous it is not news. A mass shooting is news, and something people need to be aware of. ", "Mass shootings draw viewers, viewers draw advertisers, and advertisers pay the bills. News agencies are not charities, they are for-profit corporations. They do what is best for their owners, regardless of negative impacts on the public.", "Isn't suicide at an all time high? \n\nI mean, not talking about it doesn't actually fix the problem.\n\nThe problem, why the fuck is the economy fucking over the majority of people? ", "Experts warn against reporting both suicides and homicides for similar reasons.\n\nWhy do news agencies heed one warning and not the other? Simple answer is that homicides get much higher ratings than suicides.\n\nNews is big business. Honestly I think many major news outlets do a pretty incredible job considering their profit-motivations. It's far, far less than ideal, but it could be *so much worse* \n\n", "The news doesn't report suicides because one person dying alone isn't usually newsworthy.  Also, in many cases, it is unclear immediately whether a suicide has occurred.  They might handwave about copycats, but whenever a suicide is particularly interesting, it gets reported.", "Should news agencies also stop reporting on terrorism because it might encourage copycats? Suicide only involves the perpetrator, there's no reason to report it. A mass shooting involves the deaths and injuries of many innocent people. That's something worth reporting. I want to know when mass shootings happen. Why wouldn't you?", "UK Journalist here, so a little detached from the issue but let's give it a shot. \nA shooting would be seen as under public interest to report more than most suicides under any kind of editorial standard. A shooting can harm many members of a community literally, and many more from the knock on effect of friends and family left behind. A suicide is also extremely harmful, but is less likely to directly harm bystanders. This makes it hard to report a shooting in enough detail to be under the public interest while not risking copycats.\nAnother major difference is that a shooting is more often reported contemporaneously than a suicide. A shooting is usually reported as it happens, while a suicide first breaks due to a report from the police, a coroner or the family. By the very act of reporting a shooting accurately and contemporaneously you risk giving details for a copy cat, but these details often need to be given to prevent more victims from being in the area.\nThis being said, I fully support the implementation of a higher editorial/journalistic standard to these reports, it would be a boon to countering the current shooting epidemic. I just think there are issues with limiting the current level of reporting as well.", "because that would reduce the likelihood of copycats, which would be unhelpful in the goal of using these events for political gain.", "News agencies DO report on suicides when they're newsworthy ie a celebrity or someone who does in a way that affected others.\n\n", "Guns sales go up after shootings. Well technically it's after their is media talk of gun ban.\n\nNo media talk, no talk of gun ban no sale spike.", "I went to a school with a very high suicide rate and so we were taught a lot about this subject. One suicide inducing another is called a suicide contagion. It works under a different mechanism than a copycat shooting. For people who are borderline suicidal, that drive to end it all is already there and what stops it from happening are certain barriers such as fear of pain, worry of affecting others, fear of death itself etc.\u2014all of those barriers keep the notion of suicide as abstract in the persons mind. Seeing another person commit suicide makes it real and therefore a tangible and plausible outcome for the suicidal person as well. Once thats the case they are much more likely to see it as a real option and go through with it as well.\n\nOn the other hand, the human mind doesnt really have an innate drive to shoot other people\u2014its a conscious and emergent decision. As such weakening of a barrier doesnt necessarily make it more likely to happen\u2014there also needs to be specific desire to do so. For that reason you still see copycat behavior but its less about opening a flood gate against a pre-existing flood and more about directing the flood in a certain direction*should* a flood occur. As such there tends to be a stronger effect of suicide contagions because you\u2019re only inducing something they already want to do rather than inspiring them to do something they otherwise wouldnt have"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3f8cht", "title": "What is the fastest timeframe of the universe?", "selftext": "I was reading about curved space time, and it was clarified numerous times that in measurements, events are used above locations. So this got me thinking about this question. The first answer I came to was a Planck unit, however it isn't exactly what I meant by the question.\n\nWhat I meant by the question is more like this, explained in the best way I can: Using the analogy of a computer, where the fastest timeframe would be 1 processor's tick, events and data can only change each tick (I may be incorrect about this, and if I am, I'm sorry). So, applying the same logic to the universe, think of a single particle which appears in a space. Initially, it must be inertial, as all forces which could act upon it have a delay of Distance/speed of light. The first force whose effect reaches the particle first begins applying its force, let's assume an attraction. In a second, this would cause a certain level of acceleration, in a millisecond it would cause less, in a nanosecond, or femtosecond, or, if we keep going, a Planck unit, the level of the acceleration will get smaller and smaller. Eventually, we would reach a unit of time, let's say u, in which the force accelerates the particle. Past a point, as u tends towards 0, the effect of the force would be nothing, as there hasn't been enough time for the acceleration to take place.\n\nSo, let's say we have a graph, with the x-axis (time) labeled from 0 to u, and the y-axis (state) labeled from 0 to 1, which is used to measure a change. 0 is no change, 1 is a change (From the initial conditions). As you increase u, where will y change from 0 to 1? What is the minimum amount of time you need for a change to take place? That's basically my question, firstly is there an answer, or does it come down to the laws of infinity, and if there is an answer, what is it?\n\nAs ever, my question is worded horrifically, it's just that I'm tired and so I've been thinking of new ideas as I've been typing, leading to a pretty chaotic explanation.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3f8cht/what_is_the_fastest_timeframe_of_the_universe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctodkfj", "ctmmb2g"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["It sounds like you're asking what is the smallest chunk of time in the universe.  Here is a good [Scientific American Article](_URL_0_) on the subject of quantization of time. The short answer is, we're not really sure.", "The Planck constant is the only Planck-thing which has any evidence behind it right now. The Planck length, for example, is defined by the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light, and there are some proposals which claim that this value is significant, but there's no experimental basis for that claim. To the extent that we've been able to measure, time and space are continuous, not quantized.\n\nFor the other part of your question: quantum mechanics works in probabilities. There's a thing called a potential barrier, which represents the \"difficulty\" that a particle has moving from one state to another. Say, for example, you're talking about an alpha particle in a nucleus. The alpha particle is positively charged, and the rest of the nucleus is positively charged, so the alpha particle has an electromagnetic force on it pushing it out of the nucleus. There's a barrier to that though, from the strong force which holds the nucleus together. \n\nFor any given period of time there's a certain probability that the nucleus will decay and emit an alpha particle, overcoming that barrier. The size of this probability is dependent on the electromagnetic force acting on the alpha particle, and inversely dependent on the size (height) of the barrier.\n\nIn other words, from your example, y changes from 0 to 1 instantly. The question is: when will that change occur? That question can't be answered with certainty, but rather with probability."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-quantized-in-othe/"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ism5h", "title": "why are dangerous items like laptop batteries allowed on planes, but not toothpaste or water?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ism5h/eli5_why_are_dangerous_items_like_laptop/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d30rjq9", "d30rurj", "d30x9q5", "d30xudq", "d310ean", "d3121p3", "d3130or", "d3133tk", "d313dlq", "d313lko", "d313nmw", "d313xk2", "d3150a2", "d315tk0", "d31612s", "d316bx8", "d316e02", "d316jwr", "d316ovd"], "score": [43, 531, 48, 20, 12, 2, 6, 7, 2, 6, 37, 9, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Banning electronic devices such as laptops tablets and phones would make flights a bit safer, but there would be so much consumer backlash that doing so might put an airline out of business. While restricting products such as toothpaste and bottled water is inconvenient, consumers are not so attached to those products that they will make a major issue over them.", "Well, a lot of the security measures are just theatre. The truth is, someone who is truly determined to do harm on board an airplane will be able to do so unless they don't allow you to bring anything (I can think of loads of ways...like stabbing someone with a metal knitting needle, which is allowed...seriously).  But in order to convince the public that it is safe and that the government will prevent future incidents they choose to ban things that may be severe inconveniences, but that won't stop people from flying.  People can always buy new toothpaste or a bottle of overpriced water inside the airport.  They cannot, however, replace all their electronics or travel without them in many cases (for example, a business traveller).", "Because of security theater, and because people who fly on airlines are more likely to give up toothpaste and water, than their laptops. The backlash would be huge. Also, the TSA is concerned less with protecting you as it is about increasing their budgets. Ticking off 99% of congressmen and their staffs, as well as the wealthier chunk of the electorate is not a good way to do that, especially because it would draw attention to how inept they are, especially considering the massive amount of money they and homeland security get.", "It's called security theater. It's the illusion of security provided by things like banning normal items in an attempt to show control and security protocols. In actuality things like toothpaste and water as you pointed out are not dangerous but things like lipo batteries and aerosol cans can be. \n\nThese practices have been shown in many studies to do little to prevent or deter terrorism or mishaps but they give people the impression that they are safe, which is the real benefit of programs like the TSA. Whether it is an actual benefit or not is mostly a matter of interpretation and opinion. ", "Last time I got on a plane they let me take a lighter but not a bottle of water in my carry on...", "You're right, if someone took a laptop battery or any lithium ion type of battery they could probably take out a plane. Puncturing a hole into a lithium ion battery causes a thermite like effect. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso I can see people sneaking explosives into batteries like C4, or thermate.", "There is a greater chance of a liquid or fluid, with its chemical composition changed, remaining undetected when passing through airport security. Because it is so concealable it was easier for airport security to ban moderate volumes of liquids altogether. ", "1. You can't just carry on as many lithium ion batteries as you like.  Extras are required to have their leads taped closed to prevent accidental discharge by rubbing against each other.  Batteries are \"prefered\" to be kept in-device.\n\n2. There is a very big push for heavier restrictions on transportation of lithium-ion batteries in cargo planes. Transportation of bulk lithium-ion batteries is [already prohibited in passenger aircraft](_URL_1_).  There was a big push for this legislation from pilot unions and the FAA in cargo aircraft as well after the [first fatal air crash for UPS](_URL_0_).\n\n3. Banning lithium batteries entirely within the cabin of an aircraft *altogether* would bring the economy to a halt.  Just imagine the millions of people who would be required to leave their cellphone or laptop at home if they wanted to travel anywhere.  Some risks you just have to take. ", "As for water, it's linked to a plot in the past to smuggle liquid explosives abroad a flight. Wikipedia has a good page on it [here](_URL_0_)\n\nTerrorists tried to smuggle DIY liquid explosives abroad a flight. Airports all over the world panicked, and put a ban on liquids to prevent such an occurrence from happening.", "Because they are not interested in actual safety. This is all about security theater, where the appearance of safety is what counts. No one wants to be caught \u201cnot having done something\u201d if and when the next plane goes down due to terrorist activity. This is all about CYA at every level.", "The liquids people are worried about are probably acetone and peroxide. They both look like water and can be mixed to produce the explosive acetone peroxide. However, you need concentrated peroxide, not the weak stuff you get from the drug store. But if you're insane, you can concentrate the 3% to much higher concentrations. \n\nThe reason laptop batteries are allowed on planes is probably because no one has used one to attack a plane yet. Guy tries to hide bombs in his shoes, now they make you take off your shoes. Guy tries to hide bomb in underwear, now you have to go through a machine that sees through your clothes. The TSA responds to specific threats, no matter how unlikely they are to occur again. \n\nGod help us when some terrorist jams a bomb up his rectum.", "Anecdotal story: I'm a HAM radio guy and was traveling to Hawaii. Packed all kinds of QRP gear (small, portable, low watt transceiver) - wires, batteries, coax, etc. in my carry-on. They didn't say a word about all that suspicious stuff but busted me for the full size shaving cream can I'd forgotten about. And if those fluids are so dangerous, why is there a 50-gallon trash can full of it at the TSA checkpoint? ", "Because most of these so-called security/anti-terrorism measures are just for the show, for the purposes of \"mass-reassurance\", a \"media-op\" more than anything..\n\nIn the same line, you could ask why, because of anti-terrorism financing laws, they're making it harder (as if it weren't already) for the Somali/Nigerian immigrants to send money around, as if the same immigrant, who mostly can't even pay his rent, would finance terrorism even if he wanted to. Same state is ignoring shell companies/wealthy individuals in the UAE, Kuwait from where actual terror financing comes...Or why do they impose all of the KYC, credit card, digital currency hindrance supposedly to fight crime/money laundering whereas actual anonymity and zero traceability is achieved with good old paper cash which no sane person is thinking of banning in order to fight crime\n\nIt is actually much easier to shoot down a civilian plane in its take-off/landing phase using simple RPGs or even advanced anti-aircraft MANPAS (which thanks to the US/France/UK/Qatar are now in the hands of al-Qaeda in Syria), than to try and carry a bomb with you inside the plane. \n\nAl-Qaeda now has thousands of TOW missiles to destroy armoured tanks and we're worrying about someone carrying a bottle of water into a plane, what a comedy this world has become", "As far as shipping them on commercial flights, they are limited and regulated. They allow batteries to fly in cabins with passengers because if the battery ignites they will be able to put the fire out as to it spreading uncontrollably in cargo. FYI the most common battery to ignite on commercial flight are in E-Cigs. ", "I used to think it's because to make it harder for someone to construct a bowl of water to waterboard someone onboard an airplane. odd liquids could be constructed as some form of bomb? ", "I believe is that because it's very easy to make small uncheckable by rays liquid bomb. You battery won't explode to hurt a plane, but some liquid explosive in your toothpaste tube will. Or liquid deadly gas.", "Laptop batteries can burp fire, but they're not really that dangerous.  \nNitrogen based explosives are easy to detect, but non-nitrogen based explosives like TATP can look like a bottle of water.  \nA plane interior can take an explosion 100ml or less of TATP. This happened recently in Africa I believe. A guy detonated a small explosive, putting a small hole in the fuselage. Which he got sucked out of, everyone else was fine.", "Security theatre and passenger convenience explains some of the discrepancy, but not all.  Lithium ion batteries are classified as dangerous goods (UN Class 9) and so are [identified as dangerous air cargo (DAC) by the International Air Transport Authority (IATA)](_URL_0_), but they are most safe when attached to the piece of equipment they are designed for.  Transporting lithium batteries as freight requires them to be packed in a specific way to reduce the risk of fire or explosion (terminals taped, double bagged and in a tri-wall box IIRC).  Basic information on DAC is also provided by airlines when you make your booking and you will see signs at check-in desks to remind you not to put DAC in your luggage.\n\nRestrictions on liquids stem directly from a plot to attack [trans-Atlantic flights with liquid explosives in 2006](_URL_1_).  At the time I was working at an airfield in Iraq and had to deal with the kerfuffle as security regulations were rapidly adapted to cope with an unforeseen threat.  The 100ml limit is a compromise between the quantity of explosives required for a viable IED and the need for passengers to carry something on the flight.\n\nFinally adaptations to electronics can be detected by the x-ray machines you put your carry on luggage through or which scan your hold luggage.  There is a reason why you put laptops, tablets etc through the scanner on their own: so that the machine and operator can get an unobstructed view of the insides in order to spot any anomalies.  Finally swabs can be taken (and are taken at random) to detect for traces of explosives which is why it is unwise for military personnel to use their bergens or kit bags for travelling!  Detectors are also used to screen hold luggage.\n\nUltimately aviation security is a balancing act between efficacy and safety.  There is no point running a perfectly safe system if it is unusable, but you cannot be unsafe.\n\n**TL;DR: the security measures are not a sham, nor are they exclusively designed to fuck you about and over-charge you for toiletries and water.  All of the checks carried out at airports are done for a purpose and are based on a careful assessment of the risk.**", "The drink / liquid restrictions were put in place after themlucozade bomber's failed plot.\n\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjn5BC3EOQ"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_6", "http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/23/news/companies/lithium-ion-battery-ban-airplanes/"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.iata.org/publications/Pages/lithium-battery-guidelines.aspx", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot"], ["http://gu.com/p/2a3n6?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other"]]}
{"q_id": "3ek3j5", "title": "why are kitchen sinks mostly made of stainless steel, but bathroom sinks made or ceramic, porcelain or enamel-coated materials and white?", "selftext": "Yes, I know they also overlap, but traditionally there has been a clear distinction between the two.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ek3j5/eli5_why_are_kitchen_sinks_mostly_made_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctfnujx", "ctfnvhx", "ctfpnuq", "ctfv3jj", "ctfxxt8", "ctg6lda"], "score": [15, 31, 9, 14, 6, 2], "text": ["Did you ever drop anything with an edge into a ceramic sink? You have a very very good change of chipping out a part. Stainless steel is much more resistant than that which is quite a good thing considering you dump a lot of stuff into your kitchen sink.", "Stainless steel is less likely to be affected by foods and liquids that stain or leave residual odors, and it's less likely to be damaged by heat, heavy cookware, metal utensils, and abrasives used for cleaning.", "The steel is strong to hold all the stuff in the kitchen sink, the ceramic is to look good and be easy to clean", "All the comments are for why stainless steel is so awesome. If it is so much better, why don't we just ditch porcelain for the bathroom sinks too?", "Stainless steel in the kitchen because it can handle the abuse of heavy dishes or pots and pans being tossed into it etc. They are also much more resilient to stains and smells.\n\nPorcelainor whatever in the bathroom because it looks a lot nicer and it matches the toilet. Imagine having to sit on a stainless steel toilet in the morning.", "In addition to what others are saying about toughness and impact resistance, another important aspect is that it is resilient and has a bit of bounce.\n\nIf you've ever washed plates and glasses in a rigid sink like concrete or porcelain, you'll find you end up breaking them way more often.  A stainless sink will allow you to bump and occasionally drop fragile items without them breaking."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5jpxmd", "title": "how come the human body can protect you from chickenpox and other diseases after you have it only the once! but i get the flu maybe 4 times a year and i just feel its getting worse every time", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jpxmd/eli5_how_come_the_human_body_can_protect_you_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbi1hzb", "dbi1vxa", "dbi1vyp", "dbi7bsz", "dbi7n9c", "dbib3me", "dbibdab", "dbickgn", "dbijkpt", "dbik5ok", "dbj5d46"], "score": [46, 42, 7, 50, 3, 8, 11, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["long story short it is a different type of flu every time. the flu mutates very quickly sometimes in as little as 3 transmissions until it reaches a new strain. Chickenpox doesn't mutate nearly as fast and once you get it once your body can fend it off the next time. ", "Both flu and chickenpox are viruses. However, the chickenpox virus is fairly stable, and once your body has 'learned' how to fight it (by making antibodies that kill it effectively) it then 'knows' how to kill it quickly the next time it enters the body.\n\nHowever, the flu virus mutates rapidly, so you rarely get the same strain twice. This means the body is starting afresh each time you get the flu.", "Flu is a generic name for many diseases with similar symptoms/makeup. Every time you get it, you become immune to that flu, but a different one comes along. A flu shot is their best guess at the flus that will be in this season.", "Getting the flu four times a year is abnormal. If you're really getting the flu four times a year, and not exaggerating, then that could be the symptom of something more serious. If you haven't already then you should go see your doctor and discuss this with them.", "You get the flu 4 times a year???", "Alright four times a year was an exaggeration, Its Manflu so i just power through anyways! \n\nBut i appreciate everyone's concern for my health ", "Chicken pox doesn't really change much. Flu however, there are many different strains and they're constantly changing. \n\nImagine it like this. A guy walks up to you and sucker punches you. You recognize him when he walks up to you in the future, so you can just punch him first. Now imagine he has a brother who wears disguises. You never really know it is the brother until you get sucker punched.", "Chickenpox is one very closely related family, once you gain immunity to it, you're unlikely to get it again as the other members of the chickenpox family are too similar to their brothers to survive your immune system.\n\nFlu however are all distant cousins and each different strain is unrecognised by your immune system and is therefore not easily destroyed by your immune system.", "The virus that causes chickenpox does not change its outer structure, so your body recognizes it when it attacks again, and kills it with soldier cells that are prepared for it. But the flu virus keeps changing its structure. Your body's soldier cells cannot recognize it because it is different each time. Flu viruses are many in number, and they are named according to their structure. If a virus of the same structure as another virus that has attacked you before comes along, your soldier cells will kill it. ", "4 times a year would make me thing a suppressed immune system from over exposure to at risk people, stress, or an infection like HIV. Now if its colds its possible but highly unlucky still makes me think high stress.. It took me being around my sickly newborn niece for me to get a cold that many times and it was miserable. Hated my sister for having her start daycare so early.", "I used to be the same way. I gave up smoking, drank less (a LOT less), started exercising, and eat a bowl of fruit I prepare every morning along with yogurt. In one year I noticed I hardly got sick. Still the same to this day. Amazing what treating your body well does for you in comparison to treating it like shit. Not saying this id your case, but positive changes appear to have their rewards.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4lgt6r", "title": "how do computers choose \"random\" numbers?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lgt6r/eli5_how_do_computers_choose_random_numbers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3n60bj", "d3n6ono", "d3n8ud1", "d3navrm", "d3nbrsb", "d3nesdb", "d3nt3ci"], "score": [108, 17, 10, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["You start with a sort-of-random number. Often something like \"the number of milliseconds since January 1st 1970\" is close enough to random to count, but if you want to be really random, you base it off of something like whatever random noise the computer's microphone picks up or the airflow readings around the hard drive. Then you put that number through some super messy and complicated math formula to get an even more random number. Then you can feed that number back into the same calculation to get another number. These numbers aren't truly random, but it's close enough for almost all purposes.", "There are no true *random* numbers. Random number algorithms generally produce pseudo-random results that would give an equal distribution of numbers across a given interval if they are run a lot of times. \n\nHow they calculate these values depends on the algorithm and it's often based on the things /u/blablahblah mentioned.", "You have the computer take a number that isn't random but is constantly changing (for example, on Linux it's the amount of time since the beginning of 1970), then passes it through a hashing algorithm, which is basically a mathematical formula that makes the number super messy to the point where it seems random.  The algorithm works in such a way that even a difference of a single millisecond in what is input will drastically change the output.\n\nThe algorithm is also part of the reason why your iPhone would brick when you set the date to January 1st, 1970.", "Not very well it turns out. Without specialized hardware it isn't really possible for a computer to make a random number from scratch so we call them pseudo random numbers. We call these PRNG's for short and they are basically algorithms. They are started with an initial value which is called the seed, which can be anything from the user wiggling their mouse around on the screen, or the time and date (bad encryption), the state of the IRQ registers, the amount of memory in use at the moment times pi etc. You get the idea, they generate a starting number from some combination of factors, and then they use that number in the algorithm to keep generating new factors based off that starting number/seed. \n\n", "How do you tell if a sequence of numbers was randomly chosen?  It's a very hard question, but it contains a much easier one as a subpart:\n\n* What techniques can you use to prove that a sequence of numbers is **not** random?\n\nFor example, if I gave you a sequence of 100 digits between 0 and 9, and half of the digits are 7, then you can be all but certain it's not a random sequence\u2014each digit should appear approximately the same number of times as all the others.\n\nThis is an example of a [**statistical test of randomness**](_URL_0_)\u2014a statistical calculation that analyzes some data and tries to prove that it's not random.   There's a lot of different tests that have been invented for that, and automated as computer programs for testing whether a sequence of numbers is *not* random.  So a [**pseudo-random number generator**](_URL_1_) is a computer program that's designed to fool statistical randomness tests. The output is completely determined by the input, but it passes randomness tests.\n\nThere are many different designs with different properties, and I won't discuss them; that would get long and complicated really fast.", "Well for a long time random numbers werent truly random they were just spaced out enough to seem that way. But if someone had access to the data points they could predict the next random numbers. Then came a company maybe 10 years ago. I believe it was call Lava RNA or something like that. They started selling truly random numbers for things like encryption and cybersecurity. The way they were able to do this was they basically had a webcam set up in a room with a lava lamp. The random numbers came from taking the feed from the webcam and converting the pixels to a set of numbers based on the colors the camera was seeing. Since the way a lava lamp moves is random it made a great Random number generator....Now days Random numbers are generated in a multitude of ways. Everything from webcams watching traffic, to microphone in rooms with 7 radioastations playing at once. ", "You need some external source of entropy (\"randomness\"). People are using the current time as an example, but this is actually a pretty poor source. Better sources are input from peripherals (such as your mouse and keyboard), traffic from the network card, and seek times from the HDD (SSDs don't help here because they are too predictable).\n\nThose sources aren't perfectly random. For example, keypresses from the keyboard aren't typically random: they generally follow a pattern (such as writing words in a given language). But they are not fully predictable.\n\nYou then use this source of entropy to seed a [pseudo-random number generator](_URL_1_). We have techniques to turn poor random numbers into excellent random numbers. With only 256 bits of randomness, we can seed high-quality PRNGs for a really long time. The trouble is how to get this 256 bits.\n\nThere are [hardware random number generators](_URL_0_) as well, which uses quantum phenomena and other sources of physical randomness to generate random numbers."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator"]]}
{"q_id": "4i9alj", "title": "In the Middle Ages, were mayors elected, appointed, or hereditary?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i9alj/in_the_middle_ages_were_mayors_elected_appointed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2whcom"], "score": [8], "text": ["There is no singular answer to this question because different cities were founded on very different legal systems. If a city was part of a lord's personal domain then he had a great deal of control over who was in charge and why. But most cities weren't part of a nobleman's domain. Many cities were much older than the middle ages and already had an established power base that later kings and emperors negotiated with to include. As a result, many of the old Roman Civitas were governed by their own charters, which controlled such things, and were bound to a king directly by such charters. \n\nEven today some uncommon things persist as a result. For example, while London is a bustling metropolis and capital of England, the [City of London](_URL_0_) is a very small bit of the larger metropolitan area that still has a separate government governed by a charter [significantly older than the Norman Conquest](_URL_1_). It seems that the first mayor didn't pop up until 1189, but no one knows if he was elected, appointed, or just declared himself to be of equal authority to the Sheriff who enforced the King's authority in the city. By 1215 the city had settled on a system that elects a mayor on a system where the guilds and major corporations get a say roughly equal to that of the residents.\n\nMany of these old towns had the civic powers that be fail to survive the transition from the Roman world to that of the Middle Ages. In these cases it wasn't uncommon for a Bishop to end up in charge of the day to day functioning of the city. In these cases they tended to wear multiple hats. The best example of this is the fact that the Pope is also King. Even today he is the King of that little theocratic state in Rome, which is technically a separate office from the Pope, but when he became one he became both so he governs as King just as the Prince-Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire were both rulers of city-states and Bishops of the church. Bishops were traditionally either appointed by the King or by the Pope depending upon the rules of the day. Which rules were in place at any given time and in any given place was a matter of much contention between the crowned heads of Europe and the clergy.\n\nI guess that the answer to your question is all of the above. The ruler of a city might be a hereditary lord if the city isn't \"free\", many chartered cities had rules for elections (but not for popular vote to determine who ruled), and if the city was \"free\" but didn't have a charter it was ruled by a sheriff appointed by the King or a bishop at least nominally appointed by the Pope."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mapping.cityoflondon.gov.uk/geocortex/mapping/?viewer=compass&runworkflowbyid=Switch_layer_themes&LayerTheme=Show%20the%20Explore%20The%20City%20layers", "http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/about-us/Pages/history-of-the-government-of-the-city-of-london.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "6tyyyg", "title": "Why does the gas constant R show up in so many equations, even ones not involving any gasses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6tyyyg/why_does_the_gas_constant_r_show_up_in_so_many/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlonzhc"], "score": [23], "text": ["The gas constant got its name because of the ideal gas equation of state, but what it is is just Boltzmann's constant divided by Avogadro's number. So anytime you're doing statistical mechanics/thermodynamics (Boltzmann's constant), and working in terms of moles (Avogadro's number), you can expect the gas constant to show up, even if what you're doing has nothing to do with gas."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "opyoi", "title": "how the pyramids were built, and why there are conspiracy theories about it.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/opyoi/eli5_how_the_pyramids_were_built_and_why_there/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3j4c4j", "c3j4dts", "c3j4v0j", "c3j5j24", "c3j6lev"], "score": [9, 17, 2, 8, 3], "text": ["Long ago, a race of humanoid aliens ruled Egypt. The aliens brought their technology to earth in medicine, agriculture, art and architecture.\n\nThe aliens built the pyramids using their technical expertise and human labor. These building have lasted millenia. \n\nFor unknown reasons, the aliens have left earth and their stargates have been lost or destroyed.", "The pyramids were built using ramps and pulleys and thousands of workers who labored for decades.\n\nThere are conspiracy theories about them simply because they are old and big and unique. There are very few buildings around that are as old as the pyramids -- 4000 years. People wonder why anyone would build something as huge and impractical as a pyramid. But we simply do not know enough about ancient Egypt to explain everything about them.", "No one knows how they were built, we only have some pretty good ideas based on what we assume about the state of technology at that time. logs for rolling, ramps for gradual lifting and pulleys for less gradual lifting were likely involved. Also chiseling and the use of gritty water for cutting stone. That would also require lots of people and lots of time. It also seems reasonable, because of the growing season at that location, that the builders were also farmers who were working on the pyramids during the off season. They would be needed to grow during the growing season and have available time in the off season. All guesses, but they make sense based on what we think we know.", "Some people can't wrap their heads around the idea that ancient humans were capable of things such as performing basic geometry and moving rocks. ", "Conspiracy theories are just an argument from ignorance. I don't understand how people could have built the pyramids with their level of technology so [insert dumb idea to explain it] god did it, aliens did it, or they must've had some other type of outside help we are unaware of."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9jr5yq", "title": "Why does Wyoming exist?", "selftext": "Besides the Tetons, Wyoming doesn't have distinct natural borders nor does it have large amounts of water or arable land. When it became a territory in 1868, Wyoming Territory was sparsely populated and had only small amounts of known mineral reserves. Why was it thought necessary to make it an independent territory rather than keep it divided between the Idaho, Dakota and Nebraska territories?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9jr5yq/why_does_wyoming_exist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6ugjmv"], "score": [38], "text": ["The creation of the territory was almost entirely driven by the railroad - Cheyenne was that important. Coal and gold mining, assisted by the railroad, were also important in increasing the area\u2019s population.\n\nThe following paragraph describes some of the reasoning surrounding the law that created the territory:\n\n >  The first proposal to establish a temporary government for the territory of Wyoming was made on January 5, 1865, by James M. Ashley of Ohio, who for a short time served as Governor of the Territory of Montana, and later became the chairman of the House Committee on Territories. Politicians in Dakota Territory, to which Wyoming belonged, also favored a subdivision, since they realized that the large population following the new railway could swing an election, regardless of what the older citizens of Dakota wanted.\n\nSource: *Wyoming, a Guide to Its History, Highways, and People*, University of Nebraska Press\n\nIt should be noted that for many years, it was Nevada, not Wyoming, that people were wondering same thing about. It had very few inhabitants; why was it still a state? Then Vegas took off (lots of interesting history about that), so now Wyoming gets the short end of the stick."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2hzcl4", "title": "why do dogs go grey around the mouth? do animals have \"beards\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hzcl4/eli5_why_do_dogs_go_grey_around_the_mouth_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxd1eu", "ckxfxhm", "ckxgbpp", "ckxi6m9", "ckxkxve"], "score": [279, 52, 5, 8, 2], "text": ["The same reason many humans generally start going gray at the temples first and then it spreads to other parts. It's because as we and the animals age, certain pigment-producing cells at the root of our hair die, and that usually starts in specific body regions first. \n\nNormally as the hair grows, those cells inject a colour into the hair, but when they eventually die off in some body regions as most people (and dogs) age, they're not there any more to inject the dye, so the growing hair becomes essentially fingernail-clipping coloured.  \n\nGenetics determines when and where this happens, in the same way that it determines other hair features such as waviness or patches of colour on a cat's or cow's hide (except that's not as time-related). ", "So when we draw them in cartoons we can designate the older ones.  Mother nature anticipated our need for animation and planned accordingly.", "One of my dogs is going prematurely white.  It seems to be sex linked as well, as all the females in her line go white early but the males don't.  The fur on her face started turning white when she was 3 years old.", "[My dog Murphy is a Miniature Schnauzer](_URL_0_) and totally has a beard.", "I'm 16 and i have black hair, all except one string of hair that is golden, i mean literally golden, it's shiny and straight like all the others. Anyone who knows why?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://flic.kr/p/g4wXS9"], []]}
{"q_id": "odr17", "title": "the opposition in america to a national health plan", "selftext": "I was recently talking to some American friends about the NHS in the UK, and they were violently against it. Why do some people in the States have issues with a government-sponsored health plan?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/odr17/elif_the_opposition_in_america_to_a_national/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3gf7ht", "c3gflok", "c3gfy21", "c3ggei0", "c3gggee", "c3ggjr0", "c3ggyon", "c3gib5n", "c3gih40", "c3gj824", "c3gksgo"], "score": [12, 20, 10, 2, 12, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Uncle Sam expended a vacation over in Asia slaying guerrilla fighters. It got so traumatized by the word communism that now opposes anything that even remotely resembles the idea, including \"socialized\" Health Care.\n\nAlso, Taxes and medical corporations.\n(This is a redditors humble opinion, I'm not North American, the 70% of America that is not the USA have different opinions on National Health Care Plans)", "Because the people who are making barrels of money off the current system have a kick-ass PR machine.", "I had a long discussion with my father-in-law about this last week.  He is very conservative, listens to conservative talk radio, watches Fox news, the whole nine yards.  Basically it comes down to a feeling that giving more power to the government is a bad.  If the government taxes people to pay for health care then everyone has less freedom; you can't decide if you don't want to pay for insurance you have to and if you wanted and could afford better care you can't get it.  Also, what if the government didn't have enough money to pay for everything?  Or what about people with really specific conditions?  What is stopping the government from not helping these people to save money?  \n\nThe conservative solution would be for the government to have no control over healthcare so that the free market determines everything.  If the government weren't taxing people as much then there would be enough charity to cover all of the people that can't afford health insurance.  \n\nAlso, there is a feeling that if people want their state to deal with healthcare then it should all be on the state level because the money stays closer to the people who are taxed so they are served better by it.  If the states dealt with it all then a lot of the bureaucracy and red tape would be removed. \n\nSo in a perfect world, the federal government would only deal with those things in the constitution and bill of rights and the rest would be taken care of on the state level.  The feeling is that as a nation we need to go back to that.\n\nPersonally this seems really naive to me.  To go completely back to just the constitution and what not would require forgetting the last 230+ years of US history, political thought, legal thought, change in technology etc.  Frankly, it just isn't gonna happen.  So instead we get a lot of people wanting to deregulate and have the government not help where it really could do a much better job than the private market does.  In doing so more people are hurt than helped and those with the most money and power are given a means to increase their control over the system.\n\nEdit: Sorry this wasn't really on a 5 year old's level but its the best I can do.", "It's easy to make southern white people afraid that black people are going to sit around being lazy all day (eating fried chicken and drinking 40's on a stoop somewhere) while stealing white peoples' tax money to pay for medical attention for their diabetes. The entire situation is imaginary, though. Lots of people living in imagination land. ", "It seems like the answers here are going to be fairly liberally biased (which I would more or less expect). I am also socially liberal and support expanded healthcare in the U.S., but I will try to answer your question in a way that's fair to both sides.\n\nIn the United States, the idea of capitalism is one that's been engrained in our culture for decades now. This is due in most part to our tussles with various communist nations, especially the USSR, during the mid-to-late 20th century. Capitalism isn't just the idea that \"socialized medicine\" is automatically a step toward communism (although that can be part of it as well), but it's the idea that more economic and governmental weight in society should be placed on the notion that those who earn more should get to have more. That is, someone who contributes a large amount to society on his/her own and earns a lot of money for the responsibility should not have to contribute as much of that success toward others in society who do not contribute as much; **the idea is that the more that is given to those who contribute less to society, the more imbalanced the capitalist ideal is, because we reward behavior that is antithetical to a well-run market economy.** Note that we're talking about individuals, not groups; yes it's true that the U.S. economy would be in the toilet without factory workers, but ONE factory worker is not worth as much because he is easily replaceable. One CEO (in theory) is worth a lot because you couldn't just give any guy on the street his job with the expectation that he would be successful.\n\nNow, socialized medicine is an example of increasing the economic reward to those who do not contribute as much to society on their own. In this model, the CEO (for example) makes a ton of money each year because he has the most responsibility at a company like, say, Wal Mart, which contributes untold billions to the U.S. economy. This person makes a lot of money for what he does, and in a capitalist society, money equals freedom; the more money you have, the more closely you can do what you want and tailor your lifestyle to your ideal. One of the freedoms that comes from having money, and thus as a tradeoff for having the burden of national economic responsibility, is that you can purchase something like healthcare, which almost invariably improves your quality of life. This is a reward for the contributions you make to society.\n\nNow, further down the food chain, you have the middle class. These people do contribute a ton to society, but not as much as the upper class. These people do have money to spend on healthcare, but they would have to forgo other things in order to do that; their economic contribution is not as high, so they lack the financial freedom afforded to those whose contribution is higher. When they buy health insurance, it can be a real sacrifice, because maybe now they can't send their kid to as fancy a school as they wanted, or live in as nice a house as they wanted. There are tradeoffs, but they work hard enough to earn the ability to have a reasonable amount of comfort and financial freedom. With socialized medicine, the upper class would be helping to partially subsidize the healthcare of the middle class; this means cutting into the financial freedom that the upper class has earned and giving it to the middle class, even though middle class citizens haven't rightfully \"earned\" it due to not contributing as much to society. Since socialized medicine would likely take the most from the upper class of any of the classes, this could put a sizable dent in that class' financial freedom.\n\nThe lower class are the people who would benefit the most from socialized medicine. The problem here is that these are the unskilled laborers and people who are either unemployed (i.e. contributing nothing to society) or employed in jobs that anyone in society could do. These people are thought to contribute little to nothing to society on their own. They are paid meager wages because we recognize that they are contributing *something* if they're working, but the wages are so low that, ideally, they are only enough to pay for basic necessities-- food, clothing, housing, and the like. This is the way a capitalist thinker would want it; a capitalist doesn\u2019t *want* those people to have a lot of financial freedom, not because the thinker has something against those people, but because their output to society would be disproportionate from what they get in return. If everybody in the lower class had an adequate amount of financial freedom, there wouldn\u2019t be much of an impetus to climb up the professional ladder and get a job that contributes more to society. Smart people would be content taking jobs that require less work and less responsibility because their financial freedoms would still be guaranteed; a capitalist wants those people to have a desire to fill their highest sensible roles in society, not stay down in the lower class.\n\nBut more than that, in a society with socialized medicine, the **middle class** would bear a large portion of the cost for the healthcare of the lower class. While the upper class might be able to take a financial hit because their financial freedoms would remain guaranteed, the middle class, which was already making sacrifices just to live comfortably, will now have to make MORE sacrifices. They will be paying higher taxes to support the healthcare of the lower class, so while their healthcare will now also be free, it would be offset by the fact that they\u2019re now paying for other people\u2019s healthcare, plus the increased systemic costs that are though to be part and parcel of a socialized medical system; this means more people in the middle class will now effectively be in the lower class. The middle class does not want this.\n\nThis all circles back around to capitalism because you\u2019ve now got an economic imbalance. Healthcare is a big deal, and if the lower class has it, that means they are getting something they haven\u2019t really earned in society. The capitalist ideal is that each citizen is afforded freedom equal to that which he contributes to the nation. Thus, socialized medicine becomes wrong from an economic standpoint, and can cause many economic imbalances. This differs from things like farm subsidies, welfare programs, etc. in the eyes of many because those programs are designed to correct existing economic imbalances (and just provide basic things to people like food and shelter) rather than giving people a clear leg up like healthcare would (the notion is that if someone REALLY needs healthcare, an ER won\u2019t turn them away, so socialized medicine would only be used for non-essential procedures, even if they are greatly life-improving).\n\nSorry for the length, but I hope this helps; this is essentially the conservative economic mindset in the U.S. and can be applied to other things as well like illegal immigration and tort reform.", "I am not strongly for or against it. Losing my job and health care helps me to see different sides of the issue.\n\nI am most suspicious of the plan because it's so huge and the govt is so very incompetent and corrupt. How could it not be a disaster? ", "I suppose the Republican mentality is that they don't want to be reliant on the government for anything...because then they would be less free or something. There's a frontier attitude in some segments of society of being as self-reliant/enterprising as possible.\n\nAlso there's the idea that if someone can't afford something (healthcare, housing, food), they didn't work hard enough for it and therefore don't deserve it. This attitude has been holding America back for some time, as it stops some from wanting to grapple with real problems in infrastructure. On the other hand, the economic downturn is helping more and more people overcome their pride and realise that anyone can become poor or jobless - not just the lazy.\n\ntl;dr, FUCK THAT I'M NOT PAYING FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S HEALTHCARE", "Another reason is that every American has been to the DMV and based on that thinks all government is incompetent, hostile bloated bureaucracy and that all private business is a model of nimble efficiency. Especially when HR takes care of all their health insurance for them.\n\nI promise you that if every American had to file just one medical claim and get the money on their own health care reform would have somewhere over 90% approval.", "Our government is completely incompetent and corrupt. I have no faith that they could pull universal health care off...", "Actually, most of the arguments I read are concerned with addressing the root of the problem of excessive spending on healthcare: Medicare and medicaid.  By removing the factor of cost, medicare and Medicaid have created a culture that ignores the cost of various health treatments.  Whereas weekly dialysis was once a measure that could only be afforded by the very wealthy, it is now done for everyone on medicare/Medicaid.  If you wanted weekly dialysis in the past, then you would have needed to get out of retirement, skip vacations, etc.  Many people say,\"you know what, it's not worth it to me.\" Now we put people on dialysis for decades and don't think twice about it.  Now apply this to the whole field of medicine, and you can see what the concern is.  With regards to other European nations who have done socialized medicine successfully, I think many of them see that path as ending the way Greece has where their government is keeping the price of acetaminophen so low so it can be affordable to everyone, but pharmaceuticals there rely on acetaminophen profits to stay afloat, so they actually sell it abroad, so the citizens there can't get acetaminophen. \n\nTl;dr The monster is a system that ignores costs;  the monster is currently hungry, but giving it more to feed will only make it bigger in the future and when it gets hungry in the future, it's appetite will bankrupt the government who will ultimately resort to price control that will lead to devastating shortages that would not have otherwise occurred. ", "Like I'm 5... Ok, one of the largest problems in the US is personal responsibility, both real and perceived.  \n\nThink of school when your friend Billy has to borrow your crayons at art because he broke all of his the day before.  Sometimes crayons break and thats understood, but it seems like Billy breaks his crayons an awful lot and when you let him borrow yours he breaks yours too.  Eventually you get sick of giving crayons to Billy.\n\nHow this relates to healthcare... National Healthcare is only cheaper if it is used as a preventative measure.  I focus on cost because its what drives the country.  \n\nBack to art class:  They make a [crayon protector](_URL_0_) that will keep crayons from breaking but you have to put it on each crayon individually and thats annoying and slow and has an initial expens and keeps you from drawing which is the fun part of art, so no one uses the crayon protector.  This means that crayons break and you have to buy new crayons.  The rich kids don't mind this because they can afford to pay for the new expensive crayons, but the poor kids can't and so they end up not having crayons.  \n\nTL;DR:  If everyone would use the crayon protector, you would need fewer new crayons and overall class costs would go down, but this would require a paradigm shift in how art class is run and paradigm shift is way too large a word for a 5 year old."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.capcityequipment.com/miscinventorypics/0884-crayonarm.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "74kvwg", "title": "why do we need to use polygons in video games? what causes us to need flat polygons rather than simply having rounded shapes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74kvwg/eli5_why_do_we_need_to_use_polygons_in_video/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnz4w3k", "dnz52an", "dnz57kl", "dnz771a", "dnz93p6", "dnzbs4j", "dnzep5a", "dnzfdcd", "dnzfmsg", "dnzgiq3", "dnzhawe", "dnzk60o", "do044zi", "do059j1"], "score": [356, 10, 20, 42, 57, 4, 3, 2, 13, 4, 1360, 15, 3, 2], "text": ["There are methods for making \"true\" round volumes and geometry objects in 3D software. Its called Parametric modelling (or it's cousin NURBS) and it's often used by drafters, engineers and architects because it's great at dimensions, simulations and converting models into coordinates machines can use to make real world objects.\n\nHowever parametrics have no way to be distorted or textured. At least, not in software meant to run real-time like in video games.\n\nPolygons trade off real object detail for the ability to easily squish together points in 3D space (vertices: the corners of polygons). This enables Animation.\n\nVertices can also have their XYZ 3D coordinates collapsed into 2D coordinates (called UVs) and this allows textures.\n\nIt's easier for computers to handle lots of polygons than it is for it to calculate the presence of surfaces and objects from mathematical functions, which change every time the object moves. This wouldn't be a big deal for something mechanically shaped like a gun, but it would be a horrible nightmare for something shaped like a person or a creature.", "Drawing speed. By definition, straight lines are faster to draw than curved ones and I can make a very good approximation of a curved line using straight line segments.", "There are a lot of things that go into this, but at the most basic there is a lot less math involved when dealing with polygons than with circles. The processors and code for rendering graphics were designed at a time when processing time was expensive; the hardware simply wasn\u2019t fast enough to draw at the speeds needed for games. Now there is no economical reason to change. The code and standards that are in place work", "Graphics are defined using math. The equation for a triangle (the basic shape for drawing) is much simpler than the equation for a circle or sphere or other round shape. That means that implementing drawing based on triangles is cheaper and faster.", "Straight lines and flat planes are FAR simpler and faster to calculate, i.e. render, in real time. When processor time and computer memory were more expensive, this mattered a lot. Memory dictates how many shapes you can have at any one time (Ever see a tree come out of nowhere in the distance as you walk across a map? Somewhere behind you another one disappeared, freeing that memory space.) and the processor speed tells you how fast you can change their location in 3D space.\n\nMemory is a lot cheaper now, and processors are stupid fast, so you can have way more polygons and they render very quickly, which results in you clearly seeing the bad guy jump out and get you.\n\nRemember how cinematic sequences a few years ago were far better quality graphics than the game graphics? The cinematic is a stored video file that gets pulled from memory one chunk at a time and that chunk is processed into colors that are sent to the screen pixels. Video file processing is cheap, timewise, and easy to do because the file data never changes. The processor doesn't have to \"think.\" It plays beginning to end every time, so the quality can be much higher. Game graphics constantly change with player input, so the quality wasn't as good, but good enough to keep you playing.", "Maths is the reason. Flat surfaces are simple and fast to calculate, rounded surfaces are not. So, you can choose between a game that flows well and looks good enough, and a game that's looks extremely good but is a slow slideshow.", "Graphics hardware can break the polygons into individual triangles which can be batched to as many shader cores as you have. You can't really do that with parametric models. ", "What nobody seems to have mentioned here is that computers store and manipulate data as a discrete set of information (coordinates). This means that only lines can be used to represent the connection between two discrete points. If you want a curved line, you need more points, but at the lowest level it is still going to be straight lines connecting any two points.\n\nEdit: Some good replies have been made, it seems I was incorrect. I'll leave my comment up in case anyone else has this misconception. ", "Graphics are made of triangles. The advantage triangles have that no-one has mentioned so far is that they are guaranteed to be a 2D plane. If you use 4 points you can make a 3D shape. Having a 2D shape to fill in makes it much, much easier to fill in a texture and apply lighting, but then you can use as many triangles as you like to make a complex object. ", "there are also games ( or at least i know there was 1 game but i forgot the name ) that is entirely made out of perfect spheres. When you want realistic light effects you can use a different technique called 'raytracing' and in the world of raytracing, its faster to draw perfect spheres than polygons. \nWith this technique you try to simulate the lightrays bouncing of walls (or spheres). this is also how real life works, so it can become really realistic \n\nBut in general it is still slower than drawing polygons using the traditional technique (rasterization). its all about performance. If you can fake a good sphere with polygons, and it looks good, why not.\nThis techinique looks more like drawing. you dont simulate lightrays bouncing off walls, but you draw the walls with a pencil basically. just draw the polygon lines in the correct way and fill it with some color. much less calculations needed and so performance increase 100 fold\n", "EDIT: For the actual 5 year olds, feel free to ignore anything written between the (parenthesis) - this is extra stuff for people to Google-search for if interested.\n\n---\n\nI program 3D graphics engines.\n\nTo calculate a triangle, you just need 3 points and then you fill the space between them. This simple nature allows for some optimisation; we know that only the pixels between these 3 points will be modified when rastered. We can use this knowledge to simplify how the triangle is shaded, so simple texture mapping is just a case of interpolating texture co-ordinates between these points (keeping depth in mind for perspective correctness). There's more optimisations to be had here that will take a lot of explaining (our GPUs have evolved to be very good at dealing with space between 3 points).\n\nTo calculate a rounded surface, you need an equation for the 3D curve, as well as the limits of the surface. Interpolating texture co-ordinates here would involve re-using that equation over and over again, quite the expensive operation. That equation may also \"push\" the pixels of the surface out into unexpected directions, so optimisations related to the flatness of a simple triangle are going to be much more difficult (they'd need the 3D curve equation to be used again - clipping would definitely be more complex).\n\nAs a result, early graphics hardware evolved to be very efficient with triangles and all the research and development has been spent there, resulting in real-time graphics to be as amazing as it is right now in its current state. To go back and make a new way of rendering would involve a new class of graphics acceleration hardware that doesn't have all the years of development of the triangle-based hardware we have, that's not a good trade-off.\n\nThe graphics hardware we have now is also great at sending additional information along with the XYZ positions of a triangle vertex, so we can send texture UV, XYZ normal, reflectivity, roughness, and more as additional numbers tied to triangle vertices and these get interpolated between the triangle points too, very handy.\n\nAs GPUs get more and more generalised as compute-oriented machines, rather than triangle-rastering-oriented machines, we may see new types of rendering (real-time ray-tracing is possible now, as is voxel based rendering) but these almost always will be slower than using current hardware to render a triangle, so we see these techniques getting used in parallel to triangle-based rendering to achieve effects that aren't as efficient with a triangle-based world (voxels are fast for real-time global illumination, ray-marching [limited ray-tracing] is faster for limited reflections in scenes limited by the amount of triangles displayed).\n\nPerhaps one day we'll gain a \"curve\" shader where we can use a curve equation to do a perfectly smooth surface between the points of a triangle (I expect the nature of current raster hardware will allow for some cheats here, interpolating between fragments come to mind), but for the time being that's slower than just having lots of triangles to better estimate the curve with current hardware.", "Have you ever seen those animations or drawings where you start with a triangle  and they add another side to become a square, and another to become a pentagon, and so on to hexagon,  and on and on until you get a circle?  Triangles, rectangles, etc, are all polygons and all polygons cane be broken down into triangles.  \n\nTriangles are the simplest polygon we have.  \n\nAnd that circle you're finally getting, if done on a computer, can be seen as a bunch of triangular shaped wedges all neatly placed to look like a shape curved at the edges.  Almost like as if a pizza were made up of a thousand triangular slices instead of 8 pieces that actually do have one curved side.  \n\nIt turns out that any curved shape can be replicated on a screen, to greater and greater detail and smoothness, just by using smaller and smaller triangles.  \n\nAnd triangles are really easy for computers to calculate and fill with color.  The problem is that the more detail and smoothness you want, the more triangles you need.  And that can really add up when you want things to look like they aren't made up of a bunch of triangles.  \n\nWe got started doing it this way because of the fact that visual images on a screen are made of pixels: individual points of light in a rectangular grid.  So by the very nature of screen technology itself all images on a screen are geometric approximations of curves and shapes.  \n\nAnd triangles fill the gap quite nicely between curved surfaces and the straight lines forced on us by pixel technology..\n  ", "Because the maths is so much quicker than any of the alternatives.\n\nA triangle in an imagined 3D world maps directly to a triangle on the computer screen. So to render that triangle, you just need to calculate what's going on at the corners, and then use linear interpolation to fill in the rest. Linear interpolation is really, really fast. (Polygons with more sides are usually just broken up into triangles.)\n\nSometimes, linear interpolation doesn't give the best results, but that's okay. Just throw more polygons at the problem. By and large, your GPU cycles give better results with lots of cheaply rendered polygons than with fewer, more carefully rendered ones.\n\nWhen you start working with curved surfaces, many of your linear interpolation tricks go out of the window. It's possible that, somewhere, someone's written a paper showing how a clever compromise is possible, but if they exist, those algorithms have a long way to go before they turn up in your graphics card.", "There are two different ways of creating a 2D rendering from a 3D scene: rasterization and ray tracing.  \n\n**Rasterization** is actually a 2D process and the process used by nearly all video games.   How a \"3D\" rasterizing renderer for a video game works is that it takes the 3D scene made up of polygons and then mushes it down into a flat 2D image by scaling the entire world along the camera perspective.   Every frame of a video game is actually like a Flash animation: a 2D vector image with a layer for each polygon.   The problem though for curved surfaces is that it's really mathematically easy, (using a matrix), to take a specific 3D (x,y,z) position in space (which is called a *vertex*) and flatten it into a 2D place on screen (x,y) based on the camera's perspective.  If there are 100,000 points (*vertexes*) in a scene, the renderer only needs to run the squishing algorithm 100,000 times to convert all of the *vertexes'* 3D positions into their 2D position on screen.  If a 3D shape though is curvy you not only have to squish the 100k 3D points into 2D points, you also have to mush every point along the curve between those points as seen from the camera and mush that down.  That's for all practical purposes mathematically impossible, except in the most simple of cases such as a sphere, which is easy to flatten into a circle.\n\n**Raytracing** doesn't necessarily have this problem.  Raytracing works by firing rays out from the camera for each pixel and then once each of those rays hits a surface in the 3D scene they render that pixel on screen based on what they hit.   Generally speaking for raytracing the ease of calculating where that ray fired out from the camera intersects \"something\" is from easiest to hardest: an infinite plane  <  box  <  a sphere  <  a triangle mesh \\ an arbitrary curved surface. \n\nFor a ray tracer, intersecting rounded shapes can be as easy to calculate as a triangle, and in some specific cases, like a sphere, the intersection calculation between a ray (line) and the shape (sphere) is easier than a bunch of triangles approximating the shape of a shere.    That being said, 90% of all raytracing is just triangles.  The reason for that is that nobody really wants to bother with benchmarking which is faster for each individual object in a scene and as a result everybody just defaults to the object type that is on average easiest to all around deal with for the sake of consistency and not having to deal with two different object types.  \n\n**Bonus, background info that's beyond ELI5**   In the case of film, another reason everything is a triangle is that we use something called \"Displacement mapping\".  Instead of having a vertex for every little tiny bump and curve of a dragon's scales, we start from a smooth surface and then have the computer push the surface at each point out based on the map.   This makes storing the model much more efficient.  Instead of trying to simulate the scales (and the necessary million and millions of vertexes) sliding over a muscle, we just simulate the smooth skin sliding over the muscle and add the scale bumpiness as a final step on top.  The renderer is generally very good at doing this though efficiently where the surface is only displaced based on how big it is on screen.  There is no reason to have lots of displacement if the dragon is 10 pixels tall.   For film\\tv\\commercials where quality is paramount usually the number of vertexes internally in the renderer will be equal to the density of the pixels on screen.   Since every pixel already has its own vertex there is no reason to use smooth curvy surfaces. \n\n**Bonus Bonus**  There are some games which mix polygon and non polygonal renderers and then merge them.   For instance some games which used giant worlds would do a first-pass on a voxel world and then layer on the polygon characters.   Some games also do implicit rendering of some simple shapes instead of using polygons.   Since a game engine effectively layers every pixel anyway, it's really easy to to mix and match how each layer is rendered with different rendering techniques.   So it's not quite right to say \"All games use rasterizers and polygons\" since many big blockbuster games also mix and match renderers where necessary.   For instance I think the Quake 3 engine supported rendering implicit (curved) walls.  Although I can't find any documentation of that fact. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1nfirp", "title": "what are night terrors, and what causes them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nfirp/what_are_night_terrors_and_what_causes_them/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cci71il", "cci72xj", "cci738w", "cci7ito", "cci7qoc", "cci9eyt"], "score": [7, 12, 7, 4, 2, 4], "text": ["My dad has them. His eyes will be open and sometimes it is hard to tell if he is awake or not. So one time he wakes up my mom and whispers \"don't move there is some one standing in the corner of our room.... do you see him?\" My mom said she was so scared she couldn't respond.", "I can't exactly explain the science behind night terrors, but I can recount the experience of having them as a very young child.\n\nThe one that is most memorable happened when I was around 4 or 5 years old. My bed faced a window and it was often the source of strange shadows and lights that scared me before bed. When this particular night terror began I was first jolted awake with a very bright light shining through the window. My eyes opened wide and something like a \"ghost witch\" appeared to be flying towards me through the window. There was loud noises like thunder behind her. I turned away to flee and realized my arms and legs wouldn't move. The feeling you get when a limb falls asleep; that's how my entire body felt. The most intense sense of my limbs having fallen asleep. When I looked at my hands I noticed there were shackles pinning me to the bed. Except they were bright, like electricity. It was as if they were shocking me and that was the feeling in my limbs. I turned back to the window and the witch was now only feet away from me. She was staring right at me and was very bright. I felt like I was going to die. She opened her mouth and let out the most ear piercing screech I have ever heard in my life. I screamed in response and closed my eyes. Moments later my parents rushed in my room.\n\nThere were other ones I remember. This was the worst and most memorable. It was over 30 years ago, but I remember it vividly. They are truly terrifying. I could not imagine living with them as an adult. Your entire body just goes into overdrive. Everything was bright, loud, painful and I felt like I was going to die the entire time. My understanding is that part of night terrors are accelerated heart beat, pupil dilation, sweating and fear. I don't know if that's what causes everything to be so bright and loud or if your mind is just perceiving these dreams as real and responds to them physically.\n\nSadly, my daughter suffered from them as well. She had bad sleepwalking as well, which I understand to be a related disorder.\n\nedit: can't spell", "My daughter is 6 and has has them for 3-4 years. I was hoping for a good answer. She walks around with her eyes open staring past me. Sometimes she cries and other times she cries/screams. She does it almost every night. ", "There you own little personal hell. ", "I had night terrors when I was younger for a few years (8-11) also slept walked during this time.  My parents were initially afraid and had me checked out by a psychologist.  The psychologist thought that it was due to watching TV/reading just before sleep, leading to being mentally stimulated just before gong down. There is also a genetic per-disposition to having them (several of the men on my mom's side have had them when they were young.  My parents didn't know about this until they found out while talking to my mother's siblings).  \n\nFor parents who don't know about Night Terrors they can be crippling.  There is nothing they can do until the terror is over to comfort the child.  My parents being in the room helped a bit, but the feeling of dread didn't go away until my mind calmed\n\n\nBut from personal experience I can remember a few of the times vividly.\n\nImagine having one of your worst nightmares but being completely conscious during it.  You are completely inconsolable during the event and hallucinations seemed to happen a bit.  I remember waking up and feeling intense dread each time, to the point where I wanted to scream but couldn't or did and woke everyone in the house.\n\nOne time I woke and was absolutely convinced that my teeth were becoming trees and trying to plant themselves, breaking open my mouth.  The muscles around my jaw clenched up and I couldn't talk or communicate with anyone.  I tried to move all of my limbs to climb out of bed, but my muscles were taut and wouldn't let me move.  My parents eventually checked on me and were able to help me sit up, but I was still scared out of my mind.  The feeling that my teeth were going to kill me (as crazy as that sounds) was the forefront of my mind.\n\nAnother time, I woke up sleep walking into the living area.  I sat down on the couch with my parents (and aunt/uncle) and they wanted to know what was up.  My parents initially just thought i was sleep walking, but I can clearly remember them realizing that I was in the middle of something.  They had my aunt/uncle and one of my parents went into the other room while I stayed.  During this particular event, I felt that the ground was giving way slowly pulling me into it.  I  remember hallucinating a flying green skull that was screaming just on my periphery.  This caused me to emit one of those blood curdling scream.  A part of my mind knew it was false, but I couldn't stop feeling completely helpless and about to die.\n\nThere were a few times when I wanted to run out of the house and my parents had to restrain me, which just leads to a larger sense of dread on the sufferer but probably helped me stay safe.\n\nIf you know someone who has them (or have a child), most grow out of them in adolescence when the body can process most stimuli.  Be aware that this can make sleeping over at other people's place a nonstarter.", "Throwaway account. I can't provide an explanation, but experience night terrors often. I suggest upvotes be given to infaereld, as his explanation is the best I've seen yet. \n\nInfaereld is right though, sleep terrors are often caused when one stops breathing. Growing up, I would wake up gasping for air in a panic, and sometimes sleepwalk, wake up, and immediately panic. The worst night terror I ever had was when I was in college. I was stressed due to finals and my full time work schedule. I came home after work one night and went to bed. I fell to sleep, and around 2 am (roughly 2 hours after I went to bed), I woke up to hear my fianc\u00e9 at the time screaming at the top of her lungs. She was screaming \"PLEASE LET ME GO! PLEASE!\u201d. My immediate thought was that someone was in the room with us. I reached out trying to feel for an intruder. My arms stung and felt wet, so I thought someone was stabbing both my fianc\u00e9 and I with a knife or something. I began reaching out into the open, trying to feel for an intruder. She was trying so hard to get away from me, and I was screaming \"I GOT YOU!\". I \u201ccame to\u201d a bit more, got out of bed, flipped the light on, and discovered my fianc\u00e9 on the ground, in the corner, covered in blood. Her neck was bruised, lip busted, and sobbing. I tried helping her, but she wouldn't let me touch her. I grabbed the shotgun I keep next to my bed, and searched the house. After finding no one, I asked my fianc\u00e9 what happened. \n\nShe said that I pulled my arm underneath her back, pulled her on top of me, with her stomach facing the ceiling. I then wrapped my arm around her neck, and began screaming \"SHUT THE FUCK UP\" in a very high pitch voice. After everything settled down, we were both a wreck. She was in a lot of pain, and I couldn\u2019t believe what was happening. It is one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had. I was able to piece together some of the dream after everything cooled down, but not all of it.\n\nNeedless to say, night terrors are NO fun. I had two sleep studies performed after that incident, and I am now taking medication every night before bed for it. I will never forget the experience, and if my wife and I begin talking about it, even in passing, we both become emotional about it. \n\nIf you experience night terrors of any kind, I highly suggest you see a specialist for it. Not only can they cause you harm, but also others :( Sorry for any misspellings/run-on sentences. Typed this in a hurry. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1z8fex", "title": "why is a 2 liter of coca-cola $1, a 12 oz bottle $1.49 and the same size bottle of water $1.99?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z8fex/why_is_a_2_liter_of_cocacola_1_a_12_oz_bottle_149/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfrgi4m", "cfrgs2z", "cfrh52c", "cfri1rs", "cfrj0ca", "cfrj0xw", "cfrj7o8", "cfrjhao", "cfrjjwg", "cfrjndk", "cfrjpd1", "cfrjqhr", "cfrjqom", "cfrjqr1", "cfrjuvm", "cfrjxcx", "cfrjxmm", "cfrkdzc", "cfrkfqe", "cfrkm5v", "cfrkm7s", "cfrkp8i", "cfrksgb", "cfrktac", "cfrkv7g", "cfrlb5a", "cfrlfl2", "cfrlfwz", "cfrlhh8", "cfrlpzf", "cfrlrj0", "cfrm1jg", "cfrmh54", "cfrmkz2", "cfrmqfu", "cfrmqr2", "cfrmqw0", "cfrmrth", "cfrnkad", "cfrnplq", "cfrntb3", "cfrnwoi", "cfrnx1d", "cfro3l3", "cfro4fe", "cfrom9c", "cfrome4", "cfrouau", "cfrow6d", "cfroy0b", "cfrp0ma", "cfrp2xc", "cfrp80j", "cfrpelh", "cfrpqnp", "cfrpryr", "cfrpze2", "cfrq9pp", "cfrqez2", "cfrqrg7", "cfrqsvt", "cfrqw0e", "cfrr526", "cfrr5zw", "cfrr8c3", "cfrrsn1", "cfrrtir", "cfrsh81", "cfrshxq", "cfrsi82", "cfrslrp", "cfrso7a", "cfrsqin", "cfrt80e", "cfrt87m", "cfrteaw", "cfrtuip", "cfrvcjl", "cfrvwrj", "cfrw4w2", "cfrw70w", "cfrwb63", "cfrxdwq", "cfs6qt1", "cfu2c76", "cgakgdm"], "score": [1874, 1423, 804, 55, 2, 2, 269, 3, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2, 13, 2, 2, 3, 8, 2, 3, 2, 42, 2, 5, 8, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 55, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 38, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because people will pay. Plain and simple. Capitalism at its best. ", "convenience is the biggest factor\n-people are not going to buy a 2 Liter cola and pour it into a smaller one for travel. Companies like Coke recognize this and exploit it. It might sound odd, however people are willing to pay more for a smaller coke because of personal preference. \n\nalso this is capitalism.", "Some of it is what's called \"Point of Purchase\" merchandise in the business. When you see that cooler next to the check out lane, those small soda bottles are marked up more because they are chilled, yes, but also because the store knows you'll buy something like that on an impulse because you want a cold soda immediately no matter the price. Same thing with small bags of chips or bubble gum which can be marked up slightly higher than normal in this case. This is slightly different than just buying things in bulk to save money.\n\nAs for water being expensive, it costs that much because people are willing to pay for it. It's just water after all, if everyone said, \"Hey, what the hell are we playing 2 bucks for something I can get out of a tap for 5cents a gallon?\" then it wouldn't exist. Bottled water can taste better than tap water depending on your water source, but a water filter at home would do about the same thing for hundreds of dollars less. It's a human quality to assume paying a lot for a product means it's better, even though a lot of it is just a placebo effect of increased pleasure.", "I work at sheetz (a gas station) and our 2 liters are kept in the open, so they're warm while the smaller bottles are kept in the cooler. So I think it's because of the refrigeration costs. Also people want to drink they're soda right away, so they'll pay more for the cold one.", "You are purchasing convenience. It is much more convenient to bring a 12 oz beverage with you than a larger gallon - sized jug of water.  ", "Strange. Here in Australia you can get a bottle of water for like 80c but a 600m bottle of coke is $2 or more. We have deals at the supermarket that consist of about 5 litres of coke (4 1.25L) for $7 and that is normally really good.", "Well, I would dispute your prices. A non-sale 2 liter of Coke is usually $1.99, bottles of coke are generally 20 oz, and you can easily find a 12 oz bottle of water for 80 cents. But the truth of the matter is that all three cost the manufacturer 5 cents to make. The prices are based on what the market for each will bear. The market for 2 liter soda bottles is different from the market for 12 oz bottles of soda and different from the market for bottled water. 2 liters are for home, parties, etc., 20 ozs are for personal use while on the move, are bottles of water are for health/hydration. The different markets mean different demand levels and different prices. There is no objective value for a product.", "What I vaguely remember from high school econ is that companies maximize profits by opening their products to as many different markets as possible by stratifying prices.\n\nThe person who is willing to pay $2 for the bottle of water can afford to and that convenience is worth the $2 to them. The same argument goes for the smaller bottle of soda. But, the soda company doesn't want to shut out the people who would walk past the $1.49 single-serving bottle because of price. The cheaper-per-serving larger bottles are for the people not willing/able to pay more per serving but are willing to deal with the less convenient 2 liter bottles.\n\nBoom. Drink company gets profit from customers willing to pay more for their product but doesn't lose out profit from more frugal customers.", "$1?! You're lucky if you can get a 2 litre bottle of Coca Cola here in England for less than \u00a31.99, which converts to $3.33", "It's supply and demand.\n\nPeople buy more of the cokes, allowing Coca-cola to sell at a lower price and still manage to get a decent total profit, all thanks to the [economies of scale](_URL_0_). To put it in numbers, if the net profit per small bottle of coke is $0.1 and 1000 get sold, they'll get $100 total net profit.\n\nPeople buy less of the bottled water than the cokes. Selling it with small profit margin like the coke would result in a crappy low total profit, so they have to mark up the price to get a decent profit. To put it in numbers, if the net profit per small bottle of water is $1 but only 100 get sold, they'll get equally $100 total net profit.\n\nUltimately what really allows these pricing possible is because people are willing to buy at that price. Where I live, a bottle of water is $0.25 but people here buy coke and bottled water almost equally in quantities.\n\nBy the way, I've never seen a 2-liter coke on sale cheaper than a small bottle of coke. A small bottle of coke is $0.4 here. The 2L bottle is about $1.25.", "Costs more to stay healthy and alive.", "Where do you get Cocacola for $1, where the hell do you live? In Australia we pay $5 for a 2L.", "Also you have to take in the consideration of the product being, \"Fridged\" People also like to buy there drinks cold. But yes mostly because people would rather buy the smaller size and drink it...cold. ", "Where on earth are you finding a 2 liter coke for $1?", "one (2liter versus 12oz) is a matter of convenience.\n\nyour paying for convenience (small size  &  refrigerated) your saving for bulk.\n\nthe other is just plain old \"fuck you because we can\" type mentality :-)", "First, I somewhat have to take issue with your pricing.  Where I live, the supermarkets generally sell 2-liter bottles for $1.89 and vending machines and merchants sell a 20-oz for $1.25-$1.75.  Now, there's always some soda on sale for $1 for a 2-liter.  That seems like the price you're thinking about, but it isn't always Coke or the soda you'd most prefer.  This serves two purposes.  1) There are some people who might only buy soda at $1 for 2-liters.  They don't want to lose those sales, but would like to charge people willing to pay a higher price more.  There will be some people who are brand loyal and only get the $1 price a third of the time.  That way, the average selling price to people who are brand loyal and willing to pay $1.89 becomes $1.59 while the store doesn't lose out on the cheapskates.  2) Supermarkets need to entice you to purchase things.  Most people don't go to the supermarket thinking, \"I need this item for the next 15 minutes\".  So, they want to entice you to purchase it.  If you go to a lunch cafe or a vending machine, you're buying something that you want at that moment.  They don't need to entice you - you're thirsty and want to quench that thirst now, not on wednesday when you go shopping.\n\nSecond, usually when you buy a 2-liter of Coke, you're buying something that isn't refrigerated.  When you buy a 20-oz bottle, you're usually getting a refrigerated soda.  Refrigeration costs money (electricity to run the units and the units themselves).\n\nThird, usually you purchase smaller bottles from more convenient locations.  You can't compare the supermarket price of a 2-liter bottle to the price you get for a soda in a more convenient location.  From the prices you quote, it sounds like you're comparing the price offered by a supermarket on sale for a 2-liter to the standard price offered by your local pizza place for a 20-oz.\n\n**tl;dr:** With a 2-liter, you're pre-planning a purchase of an non-refrigerated beverage for later from a discount store; with a 20-oz bottle, usually you're grabbing a refrigerated one for immediate consumption from a convenient non-discount location.\n\nIn terms of water, many types of water are shipped.  Soda is an efficient beverage to transport.  They ship syrup to local bottling plants.  If a gallon of syrup makes 5 gallons of soda, they would need 5x the number of trucks hauling liquid for spring water.  I think a gallon of syrup making 5 gallons is probably a conservative estimate, but you can see how transportation takes its toll on the price of spring water in a way that it doesn't with soda.\n\nFor bottled tap water, there still may be a transportation issue if they don't have as many bottling centers.  Maybe it's the same water they put into Coke, maybe it isn't.  Even if it is, people get a certain price in their head for a type of product and spring and other bottled water seem like substitutes.", "There was this guy who would bring a two liter bottle of orange soda to my 9am class everyday and drink it all by the end of class. Breakfast of champions.", "Because the 20oz bottles of coke are usually sold cold, and 2 liters are warm. So essentially you're paying for the convince of being able to buy it and drink it cold as opposed to having to take it home and put it in your fridge. That's always been my take on it anyways. ", "Government Subsidies help and people are willing to pay that price.", "Convenience is one factor, but you also pay for the refrigeration. A $.99 2 liter is almost always room temperature.", "coke takes over the water supply of third world countries and sells it back to the people as sugar water. if it was up to coke, we would drink it instead of tap water.", "3 Markets - On Premise, Home Market, and Convenience Retail\n\nOn Premise - Sales in Hotels, Restaurants and Caf\u00e9s. Sold in BIBs (bag in a box), premix and limited bottle sales. Coca Cola literally loses money in the market because of costs associated with equipment service. Primary goal is brand exposure. \n\nHome Market - 2L bottles, bulk packages. Primary goal is to keep consumers drinking their brand at home. Limited profitability do to extreme competition for retail shelf space and merchandising costs. \n\nConvenience Retail - where Pepsi and Coke make nearly all their money. Single serve packaging. Huge markup. Low cost to market. ", "If its a warm two liter then its cheaper because all it takes is shelf space, and if its a cold 12oz then your paying for the \"privilege and connvience\" of it already being cold. The water probably has more to do with the process they use, in which they filter the water to distilled water and then add chemicals to make it taste \"natural\" ", "Cause you still buy this shit. Supply and demand.", "water is better for you", "I'll answer each in relation to each other:\n\nThe 2 liter of cola is $1 (at it's low price) because of bulk sale. The more cola you buy, the less it costs per liter (try owning vending machines or fountain soda machines). Companies do this to encourage buying of large amounts of their products, which in reality makes them more money. The expensive part of a bottle of soda (for the company), is actually the bottle, the cap, and the ink the logo was printed with. Those 2 liters of cola costed them so little its not even worth mentioning. When you buy in larger quantities, you both reduce their costs and increase their sales:production ratio. \n\nThe 12oz of cola is $1.49 because you aren't buying just \"the soda\". You're buying the convenience of a 12oz tasty softdrink in a place where you more than likely do not have easy access to larger quantities of cheaper drinks. They charge you $1.49 for the smaller bottle and for the fact that you won't be able to get another drink, so you're stuck paying whatever they tell you to pay.\n\nThe bottled water is $1.99 because *you will pay for it*. People always compare bottled water to tap water (with the vast difference in price), but bottled water does *not* compete with tap water. It competes with soda. And if you are the kind of person who is health conscientious and wants to drink water instead of soda, you are totally going to pay the extra $.50 for that water. \n\ntl;dr: capitalism all over that shit", "I don't know about the cola, but you can charge anything you like for bottled water, because people who drink bottled water are idiots.", "Because cup holders. People need a size they can fit in their cars' cup holders so they'll pay double the price for a much smaller portion just for convenience.", "A 2 liter isn't convenient and is usually warm. 20 oz is usually cold and you're going to buy it if you're just looking for a quick drink. And bottled water costs more per gallon than gas.", "Here in Finland coke/pepsi costs about 2.70\u20ac for a 1.5 litre bottle. Special offer for a two pack is usually 3.30\u20ac. I'd say that price gives the drink a nice level of prestige and it glorifies the moment of consuption making the drink taste absolutely magnificent.", "Because they are different products. Okay, bear with me. \n\nMOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE ANSWER:\nThe 2L bottle is sold, warm, in bulk, for home consumption. The 20oz and the water are sold cold, individually for immediate consumption to carry with you. Each of these markets will bear a different cost, and so the company charges what people will pay. \n\nLESS IMPORTANT PART OF THE ANSWER:\nIn making a \"bottle of beverage\" usually most of the cost is in bottling and transport. The product itself is nearly free. For a bottle of coke, a manufactured product, they have a logistical system over a hundred years old to ship syrup (highly concentrated coke) and mix it with water local to the market of sale. This minimizes shipping cost and VATs. A bottle of water can only be \"made\" at the source and then shipped from there. That's why evian is expensive and arrowhead is cheap. Secondly, in the shipping, one can ship the 2L bottle more efficiently and the smaller bottles - that is, the crates contain less air. Plus, the 2L bottles themselves are simpler in shape, and have thinner plastic. Then, the 2L sells very efficiently off store shelves, while the 20oz takes up space in a cooler. \n\nIn other words, water can actually be more expensive than coke, because coke can and does use any water source on the planet, and a 2L can plausibly be cheaper to bring to market that the 20oz. ", "ELI5: why do you compare 2L with 12 ounce?", "It has to do with what people are willing to spend. People are very stupid. You can exploit their stupidity and gain profits. I felt very bad about this at first. Now I am rich because people are too stupid to save money. It is what it is. They rather spend $2 on half the item than $1 on twice the amount which in turn leaves you hundreds of percent profit each day.", "Whenever there is a price difference such that the \"smaller\" version costs more-per-unit, the difference in price is the cost of storing or transporting the smaller amount so that it can be available to you when you want it. You're basically paying to rent the shelf-space until you're ready to pick up the rest.", "Is 2l of coke really $1 in the US?\n\nThere is an offer on coke at my local supermarket at the moment, 2 bottles for \u00a32.50, that's still $2.09. \n\nThe USA really is the land of dreams.", "Because you will pay for it.    ", "Because it's town water sweetened with high fructos corn syrup ", "The 2 liter one is not usually Refrigerated. Is also most often shipped on pallets, or in bulk settings. That is one reason why it may cost less. The 12/16 oz is usually served cold, or refrigerated, once the unit has been broken down and then chilled, that is overhead, it costs. I have never bought a bottle of water, hope I never have to, I have seen it for sale at stores, I guess is the general principal that Water is needed to survive, daily, so if sold, the seller can virtually ask what they will. In your example did you notice the water was more than both flavored , sugared and colored drinks are. by volume...\nand buy volume, is supply and demand. \n", "Compared with German pricing:  \n\n1l Coca Cola - 0.99\u20ac  \n1.5l Coca Cola - 1.29\u20ac  \n2l Coca Cola - 1.49\u20ac  \n\n1.5l bottle of water - 0.29\u20ac  \n\nI don't get why water (edit: in America) would be so expensive!?", "Companies don't charge what a product is worth;  they charge what they feel people will pay. ", "Because you pay next to nothing for the resources, what costs is marketing, transportation, bottling and retailing. The prime product of added price is cereals. For products like Kellogg's cornflakes, less than 1% of the cost goes into the product (the corn and sugar).", "You can get 1.5L water bottle for like 0.20\u20ac in Germany.\n", "Because they know that if you're on the go, you're not going to buy the cheaper large bottle because you have nothing to pour it into.\n\nThey're fucking you right in the face.", "Great video explaining it fully.\n\n_URL_0_", "In general terms, cost of goods for a company is cheaper on more mass produced items. There's certainly a point-of-purchase mark-up but this mark-up probably also includes the fact it costs more to make x times more small bottles than larger ones. ", "In short, the price's not based on **VALUE**, but by the **DEMAND**. They know people won't buy the big one when they don't need it, because they're often lazy to carry such a big bottle, although cheaper, so they can afford (dare) to raise it. People simply buy small more often and they know it.\n\nAs for the water, there goes the same. If you *need* water, you will pay a lot. If you don't you can simply buy anything else. Music festivals take advantage of this all the time cause of hydration.", "As a former soft drink merchandiser, we were told to always fill the 12 oz bottles in the checkout lane coolers first because the sale of those brought the greatest value to the company. They are more expensive because people will buy them as impulse or for convenience. I would guess that the water is more expensive because more people drink water than pop.", "Horrible retail marketing and management but proves only that customers are not the brightest. Buy big or bulk save as well as buy water machines or purify your own. Summer time is coming soon will water atleast go down?", "why is the top comment not a real informative answer?", "Where the fuck is a 2 liter of coke a buck?", "Because soda is bad for you and they want to make money.", "Because thanks to some great marketing, people will pay $1.99 for water.", "Companies are going to sell stuff for the most money the average person is willing to pay for it. They also spend lots of money making people believe it is a good price. I mean 2 bucks for water that I can get for almost free out of my faucet but $2 does sound like a great deal.", "You don't only pay for the cola itself but also for the packaging, production, storage, logistics etc. 100 bottles of 2 liter coke are cheaper to produce and manage than 400 bottles of 0,5 liter coke. That's why bigger capacity offer a better price/liter ratio most of the time.\n\nAs for bottled water, that must be an American thing because where I live (EU) bottled water is cheaper than any soda, by far.", "It kind of doesn't in europe. \n\n2l coke costs 1.99\u20ac, 0.5l coke costs 1\u20ac and 1.5l water costs 0.3\u20ac - 0.5\u20ac in austria.\n\nedit: Talking about water prices not different size bottles.", "Everything is worth as much as people will pay for it. ", "The 1.49 coke is refrigerated, the 1 dollar coke sits on a shelf and is warm. You're paying for convenience and refrigeration.", "Dude, it's not the same price at **EVERY** fucking store!", "because you idiots keep buying them", "I actually had a case study on this a while back for an entrepreneurship class at my college.\n\nIn short, the way that it works is that cost of manufacturing the bottled water is lower than the Coca-cola itself (less ingredients basically), but they spend a greater percentage of the end product cost on advertising campaigns geared to make people think that the bottled water is better for them than what comes from the tap.\n\nNow, in some places this is actually true, but in the majority of the developed world this is not.", "Anyone wanting to quit drinking soda should start tracking how much they spend on it per week/month/year. \n\nI tracked my spending at starbucks and figured I blow $1200-$1400/year. Ive since bought a coffee maker.", "Short answer: because people will pay it.", "Because bottled water is the biggest rip-off ever invented.", "If you're dumb enough to pay it. I'm dumb enough to charge it. ", "Cars don't have cupholders for 2 liter bottles.\n\nAlso; most of what you're paying for is the distribution and packaging of the coke, not the liquid itself... so most of the costs are about equivalent, they can charge more for convenience.", "US citizens pay taxes to subsidize corn farmers. Most products that use high fructose corn syrup use it because it is *far* cheaper than other sweeteners, because we all payed for nit to be that way. \n\nThe smaller bottle is more expensive because it uses more plastic per unit volume than the 2 liter. The less plastic used per unit volume means the product will be cheaper. \n\nWater costs what it does because people pay for it at that cost level. ", "And why can't I just get a god damn literacola", "having worked at coke in strategy, there is (in every business) a clear distinction between immediate consumption and future consumption products. the former being higher priced because the people want it then and there, thus are willing to pay for it. this is also why you never see chilled 2 liters or larger sizes, because people would just buy that and drink a little then throw the rest away because it would be cheaper than a 16oz bottle. its all about playing the market, consumer, and product placement (for impulse buys...do i really need sour patch kids?...fuck yeah i do.)", "It comes down to one simple fact.\n\nThey charge what you will pay.\n", "Because, in general, people are fucking stupid.", "You pay for your convenience, simple as that.", "Because Americans are unwilling to just tell the store it wants the item worse than than they do and let the store keep it.", "Because we live in a stupid, fucked-up world.", "because we are stupid", "Because the kind of people who will buy water are so fucking stupid they will pay whatever it costs.", "The question should be \"Why am I drinking bottled water...?\"", "The most interesting part is that a gallon of water is only a dollar. \n\nImpulse buys. ", "Price discrimination. It costs Coca Cola fractions of pennies to create the soda and a good 15-25 cents to create the packaging. After shipping, cost still might only be at 10% of market price. They can, and want to keep costs down to promote their product, which is uniquely competitive in the cola market in comparison to something like bottled water, which is comparable from countless companies and sources. In this way, the cola market is called a \"tight oligopoly\" and bottled water is in \"perfect competition.\" \n\nOn the other hand, everyone needs and wants water, and in particular, bottled water if they're parched while out and about. For a regular human, (apparently Americans trump this) thirst begs for water, not soda. And because water is theoretically a pure substance, it appeals to a universal market. Everyone needs it, and when they do, they will certainly buy it. Therefore, to turn a profit, Coca Cola only has to make their water cheaper than the next guy's bottled water. In this way, water maintains a higher demand than cola, so sellers can practice \"price discrimination\" and charge a greater amount (the same strategy Comcast uses). \n\n\n\n", "Because it's costly to take the coke out of the water?", "Market segmentation.  \n\nThe people at Coca-Cola who decide sizes and prices did research to figure out what sorts of people buy their products, and what those people are looking for. They figured out that their customers fall into different groups (broadly speaking), like people who are buying in bulk for a household, and people who are buying for convenience. \n\nThe people who are buying in bulk don't care so much about the size of the product, so long as it is a good value (unit size per unit cost).  \n\nPeople who want a convenient quick soda are less sensitive to a higher per-unit price, so long as it is cold, handy size and shape, and ready to go.\n\nThe people who buy bottled water tend to have the lowest cost-consciousness of all (not that there is anything wrong with that. People want different things at different times and that's ok). This is pretty obvious when you consider that water from the tap (in drinkable quantities) is essentially free: it's less than a penny per gallon throughout the US. Marketers who decide on what products to offer at what prices know that someone willing to buy a bottle of cold water is willing to spend more. \n\nAlso, generally speaking, soda vs water consumption is inversely correlated with income level in the US. Poor people drink more soda and more wealthy people drink more water. When you know that your target market has a higher income, you can charge them more and they will be more willing and able to pay it.\n\nAlso, as said elsewhere in this thread, storing things cold is substantially more expensive than storing things at room temperature, so the extra cost of the cold drink is passed on the the customer.", "I dont want a large farva I want a goddam liter of cola!", "Because we're running out of water and Coca Cola and Nestle are buying up water rights everywhere and are just getting us used to paying more for water.", "It's because you're supposed to buy the copious amount of Coca-cola instead of the healthier but more expensive alternative. That's what being an American is all about.", "because people are stupid as fuck.", "If lottery is tax on the poor then bottled water is tax on stupid because it is the same or worse quality as tap.", "Supply and Command Bubs"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7eyjg5", "title": "Was the Roman destruction of Carthage genocide? Was the destruction as comprehensive as is widely understood? Did the Romans present a united front or did any argue for leniency? Were there lasting ramifications on the Roman conscience, or how Roman foreign policy unfolded?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7eyjg5/was_the_roman_destruction_of_carthage_genocide/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq8npkb", "dq8zb4p"], "score": [133, 2], "text": ["In short, [no](_URL_0_). The destruction to the city of Carthage itself was immense and lasting and the pain inflicted upon the people of the city immeasurable, bit this was not generalized to a war against the Punic population as a whole. Many Punic cities had sided with Rome, and Punic culture continued strongly well into Late Antiquity.\n\nSort of a side question, was there an article or documentary about this recently? I feel like we have had a number of questions in the last couple months about genocide and the Third Punic War.", "Follow up questions: what changed between the end of the second Punic war and the third Punic war that caused so much more 'heavy handedness'? Was the Roman army at the end of the 2nd Punic war capable of carrying out this type of long lasting seig on Carthage?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7agx5z/carthago_delenda_est_as_a_layman_the_third_punic/"], []]}
{"q_id": "mcjy1", "title": "Does space-time have viscosity?", "selftext": "[In regards to the Gravity Probe-B Space-Time Experiment](_URL_0_) it appears, to a layman like myself, that space-time acts exactly like a fluid.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mcjy1/does_spacetime_have_viscosity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2zu6uw", "c2zugrc", "c2zu6uw", "c2zugrc"], "score": [13, 5, 13, 5], "text": ["No; In the viscosity/fluid analogy, satellites would have to experience a net force at all times, slowing them down to some degree no matter which direction they travelled.  Somewhat like the thoroughly debunked [Luminiferous Aether](_URL_0_).\n\nA gravity-fluid flowing towards masses doesn't fit either, since acceleration under gravity is inconsistent with this model (no terminal velocity in a vacuum).", "There are some theories that model a local space as a kind of superfluid (meaning zero viscosity along with superconductivity) but its only really useful for understanding some of the properties of quantum systems.", "No; In the viscosity/fluid analogy, satellites would have to experience a net force at all times, slowing them down to some degree no matter which direction they travelled.  Somewhat like the thoroughly debunked [Luminiferous Aether](_URL_0_).\n\nA gravity-fluid flowing towards masses doesn't fit either, since acceleration under gravity is inconsistent with this model (no terminal velocity in a vacuum).", "There are some theories that model a local space as a kind of superfluid (meaning zero viscosity along with superconductivity) but its only really useful for understanding some of the properties of quantum systems."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether"], []]}
{"q_id": "k49p1", "title": "coriolis effect", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k49p1/eli5_coriolis_effect/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2he7pj", "c2hemuv", "c2hexyz", "c2hey4v", "c2hfb1a", "c2he7pj", "c2hemuv", "c2hexyz", "c2hey4v", "c2hfb1a"], "score": [12, 6, 16, 4, 2, 12, 6, 16, 4, 2], "text": ["Imagine you are throwing a baseball at the wall in your room: you aim for a spot on the wall and hit it.  Now imagine that your entire room is rotating... The ball has inertia so it will not want to change direction and wants to keep moving in the same direction.  Because the room is rotating, the ball's path will be deflected from the target on the wall.  This same logic can be applied to the rotation of the earth.  You can google it for more information but I think that is the best I can do for now", "In long range shooting, it's the effect of the earth's rotation on the flight path of the bullet. The bullet continues in a straight path, but looks like it curved to one side. ", "You can see the Coriolis effect happen IRL by using a Merry-Go-Round at your local playground.  You need 2 people and a tennis ball.  Get the merry go round going, both of you get on and throw the ball back and forth.  It's pretty impossible to catch.", "Think about a ballerina or an ice-skater spinning with her arms stretched out.  Her whole body makes a complete turn all at once, but her outstretched arms have a bigger circle to travel in the same amount of time, so they're moving faster.\n\nWhen she pulls her arms in, they don't have as far to go, but they still have the energy (inertia) from when they were stretched out, so her whole body spins faster than before.\n\nNow, imagine for a moment that you're at the center of a spinning space station shaped like a wheel with spokes.  Like [this one](_URL_0_).  The rim is a bigger circle than the center, but it has to all spin at once, so the rim will be moving faster.  If you climbed a ladder in one of the \"spokes\" connecting the hub to the rim, you'll feel a slight pull to the left or right depending on which way the wheel was spinning.  Since you're coming from the center, you're not moving as fast as the area \"above\" you, so that's why you feel like you're being \"pulled\" a bit sideways.  The station itself is pulling you to bring you up to speed as you climb.\n\nAnd it's the same way on a sphere.  The Earth spins all at once, so if you draw an imaginary line through the center of the Earth (its axis), the equator is moving the fastest, since it's furthest from the center of rotation, like the rim of the disc, or the ballerina's outstretched arms.\n\nSo if you take a cloud at the equator, and shove it North, it has more inertia than its surroundings, so it will tend to drift a bit to the left (or west).  Take another cloud that's North of the equator and shove it south, and it will tend to drift a bit to the right/east.  If you get enough energy into a storm system that it keeps pushing clouds north and south, it'll tend to spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.", "Don't know much about this effect, but in case anyone is wondering, this effect doesn't change how sinks drain.  _URL_0_", "Imagine you are throwing a baseball at the wall in your room: you aim for a spot on the wall and hit it.  Now imagine that your entire room is rotating... The ball has inertia so it will not want to change direction and wants to keep moving in the same direction.  Because the room is rotating, the ball's path will be deflected from the target on the wall.  This same logic can be applied to the rotation of the earth.  You can google it for more information but I think that is the best I can do for now", "In long range shooting, it's the effect of the earth's rotation on the flight path of the bullet. The bullet continues in a straight path, but looks like it curved to one side. ", "You can see the Coriolis effect happen IRL by using a Merry-Go-Round at your local playground.  You need 2 people and a tennis ball.  Get the merry go round going, both of you get on and throw the ball back and forth.  It's pretty impossible to catch.", "Think about a ballerina or an ice-skater spinning with her arms stretched out.  Her whole body makes a complete turn all at once, but her outstretched arms have a bigger circle to travel in the same amount of time, so they're moving faster.\n\nWhen she pulls her arms in, they don't have as far to go, but they still have the energy (inertia) from when they were stretched out, so her whole body spins faster than before.\n\nNow, imagine for a moment that you're at the center of a spinning space station shaped like a wheel with spokes.  Like [this one](_URL_0_).  The rim is a bigger circle than the center, but it has to all spin at once, so the rim will be moving faster.  If you climbed a ladder in one of the \"spokes\" connecting the hub to the rim, you'll feel a slight pull to the left or right depending on which way the wheel was spinning.  Since you're coming from the center, you're not moving as fast as the area \"above\" you, so that's why you feel like you're being \"pulled\" a bit sideways.  The station itself is pulling you to bring you up to speed as you climb.\n\nAnd it's the same way on a sphere.  The Earth spins all at once, so if you draw an imaginary line through the center of the Earth (its axis), the equator is moving the fastest, since it's furthest from the center of rotation, like the rim of the disc, or the ballerina's outstretched arms.\n\nSo if you take a cloud at the equator, and shove it North, it has more inertia than its surroundings, so it will tend to drift a bit to the left (or west).  Take another cloud that's North of the equator and shove it south, and it will tend to drift a bit to the right/east.  If you get enough energy into a storm system that it keeps pushing clouds north and south, it'll tend to spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.", "Don't know much about this effect, but in case anyone is wondering, this effect doesn't change how sinks drain.  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/artgrav.html"], ["http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp"], [], [], [], ["http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/artgrav.html"], ["http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp"]]}
{"q_id": "in8f9", "title": "What is a Lie group?", "selftext": "What is its application? What field of math is it a part of? Why is it so complicated? And finally, what textbooks do I have to read to get to that level, I figure Linear Algebra is step 1? I only ask here because hours and hours on Wikipedia got me nowhere.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/in8f9/what_is_a_lie_group/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c253ome", "c253qli", "c253wl8", "c253wso", "c253zdq", "c254anv"], "score": [2, 6, 3, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Have you asked r/math or r/learnmath?", "You can get a basic idea of what a Lie group is fairly easily. It's just a set along with a binary operation, such that the operation obeys the group axioms (closure, associativity, and the existence of an identity and inverse), and the set describes a... well, smooth thingy is the best nonformal way to put it. A ball is a smooth thingy, while a pyramid is not a smooth thingy; the analogy is slightly misleading, because the thingy isn't required to have geometrical structure, but it gives you the basic idea.\n\nIt's so complicated because you need a complicated formal structure to get all of the details I glossed over right. For instance, it turns out that there is no way to make a Lie group out of a sphere; this isn't that surprising at all when you work out the formalities, but you would never be able to derive it from the informal description I just gave you.\n\nLinear algebra is step 1. You'll also need some group theory, topology, and differential geometry. And then of course studying Lie groups is a subject in and of itself...\n\n", "Applications? Lie groups and Lie algebras are all over the place in particle physics. They describe so called gauge symmetries.", "A Lie group is a group and a (smooth?) manifold, such that the group operations are smooth/continuous. This makes it part of algebra (because of the groups) and differential geometry (because of the manifolds), although to be frank, I guess the majority of applications are found in the geometry field.\n\nI don't find Lie groups to be very complicated. Group theory is \"straightforward\" (if anything in math is), and differential geometry is only complicated because it has to be to express some very simple ideas. Once you have worked enough with diff. geom. to intuitively understand what a manifold is, you will wonder why you ever thought it was hard. This goes for anything in math, but manifolds in particular.\n\nIn particular, the study of objects with more structure will often be simpler than the study of objects will little structure, in the sense that you have more tools at your disposal. Compare the study of Lie groups to the study of general groups or general manifolds.\n\nYou will want to read some group theory and then differential geometry (quite crucial). Once you have that, you're good to go. Group theory has few prerequisites, but indeed, you may want to brush up on linear algebra and basic functional analysis before diving into differential geometry, but you will typically want to do that before touching any higher mathematical field anyway.", " > And finally, what textbooks do I have to read to get to that level\n\nLet me preface this by saying that Lie groups, from a mathematical perspective, are typically not introduced until the student is already deep into their mathematics program.  Lie groups are not necessarily a complicated concept, but to get even a bit beyond a hand-wavy analogy one must understand the background leading up to it.\n\n[Here is a list of decent math books in their respective subjects](_URL_0_).  If someone asked me to give them a fast-track way of really understanding Lie groups (starting off with only a basic knowledge of, say, calculus and discrete math) I would suggest to start off by reading Dummit & Foote's *Abstract Algebra* (at least the group theory in there).  If that doesn't scare you off, try some books by Rudin and Spivak and move straight on to geometry.\n\nNB: This is from a mathematican's perspective.  Results may vary, especially if you are a physicist.", " > What field of math is it a part of?\n\nIts used a lot in mathematical physics. For example the angular momentum operators belong to SU(2). Its also used in studying fiber bundles.\n\nIt would help quite a bit in knowing what exactly your background is, are you a senior level physics student who has heard the term thrown around, or a math student who has just started learning algebra?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "5q8zh2", "title": "Was \"Deus Vult\" used in the same way Islamic peoples use \"\"Allahu Akbar\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5q8zh2/was_deus_vult_used_in_the_same_way_islamic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcxdpei"], "score": [62], "text": ["I can comment on the use of Allahu Akbar more so than the use of Deus Vult, but I suspect that may go a long way towards answering your question.\n\n\"Allahu Akbar\" is often rendered in English as \"God is great\", but literally it's a comparative meaning \"God is greater\" (I've come across suggestions that it is superlative \"God is greatest\", but to my admittedly non-native grasp of Arabic grammar that would have to be \"Allah huwa al-akbar\".)\n\nAs a phrase, it has a fundamental usage and position in Islam. It features in the call to prayer, Islamic prayer itself, and [ in the Sunnah](_URL_1_) (NB: \"takbir\" meaning to recite \"Allahu akbar.\"\n\nSocially/culturally/linguistically its usage and meaning goes far beyond either its literal meaning or religious use. It can be used as a joyous expression equating to \"thank god!\" (alongside the existing Arabic phrase al-hamdulillah lit. thanks be to God) or in anguish, such as at a funeral or upon witnessing terrible (akin to the English usage of \"Oh my God...\" or \"Jesus Christ...\")\n\nIt has perhaps gained most notoriety in the west as a battle cry of Islamist militants, notably in their last moments before committing a suicide bombing or similar \"martyrdom operation.\" While the phrases use as a battle cry goes back to Muhammad, the particular association of the phrase with violent terrorism is something that would have been alien to Muslims historically.\n\nThe phrase also has wider political usages outside of militancy. The call and response of \"Takbir!\" \"Allahu Akbar!\" is common at Islamist rallies and gatherings of all sorts, not just extremist Islamist militants. It has adorned [the flag of Iraq](_URL_4_) since 1991, initially in Saddam's own handwriting. It appears in block kufic script in white leterring in two rows on [the flag of Iran](_URL_2_). And it has historically appeared on other flags of predominantly Islamic countries, such as [Afghanistan](_URL_0_). It was the title and formed a large chunk of the content of [the national anthem of Libya](_URL_3_) until the 2011 revolution.\n\nSo while I cannot say whether or not \"Deus Vult\" was used in some of these situations, I think I can say with some degree of knowledge that it was not used in the myriad ways that Islamic peoples use \"Allahu Akbar.\"\n\nedit: also as an addition that slipped my mind; the closest translation to \"deus vult\" itself in Arabic are the phrases \"Inshallah\" meaning \"if God wills\" (which is obviously more epistemelogically circumspect about knowing what \"God wills\" and \"mashallah\" meaning \"[this] is what God willed\". While the latter has the same literal meaning of \"deus vult\" it has *not* been used in the same context of what I, for one, most associate \"deus vult\" with, namely as a kind of justification for orthodoxy or for taking action against heresy/infidels. Rather, \"mashallah\" is used to express joy, again somewhat akin to \"Thank God!\". \n\nedit 2: what I had written about its use in the Quran I think was misleading/incorrect so I deleted it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Flag_of_Afghanistan_%281992%29.svg", "https://sunnah.com/search/?q=takbir", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/255px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allahu_Akbar_\\(anthem\\)", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Flag_of_Iraq.svg/255px-Flag_of_Iraq.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "772x4c", "title": "Is there any evidence that Medieval ordeals were generally rigged by the priests conducting them? Are there any specific instances where the ordeal was rigged.", "selftext": "I ask this in response to [this](_URL_0_) dubious and very unscholarly article posted in your lazy step-brother subreddit /r/history.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/772x4c/is_there_any_evidence_that_medieval_ordeals_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dojahy8"], "score": [2], "text": ["While not directly answering your question [this](_URL_0_) post by u/TheFairyGuineaPig which has sources which may answer your question if you choose to read them. I remember seeing a similar post a while back and wanted to link it, but it didn't answer the question. I could link it though if you want.\n\nEdit: Formatting, and giving due credit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-trial-by-ordeal-was-actually-an-effective-test-of-guilt"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vw0ql/how_common_were_fatal_trial_by_ordeals_in/"]]}
{"q_id": "y2vwc", "title": "If you released a bag of sand in space above earth would it create a mass of shooting stars?", "selftext": "By my understanding shooting stars can be as small as grains of sand. Is it possible to release them from orbit in a manner that would create a show similar to a short meteor shower? Also if you used copper or potassium shavings would the resulting flashes be colored blue-green or pink respectively, corresponding with their flame test results?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/y2vwc/if_you_released_a_bag_of_sand_in_space_above/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5rvvb1", "c5rw1an"], "score": [5, 9], "text": ["Am I wrong to think that the grains would not accelerate to any where near the needed speeds?\n", "Meteors (all \"shooting stars\" are meteors) are typically the [size of a grain of sand or smaller](_URL_1_), but are traveling at least [25,000 mph (40,000 km/h)](_URL_0_). At earth gravity it would take about 20 minutes to accelerate to that speed, but since you specify releasing the sand from orbit, and almost every manned mission is in [Low-Earth Orbit](_URL_2_) with speeds of about 18,000 mph (28,000 km/h) it seems likely that the sand would reach shooting-star speeds.\n\nDifferent substances would likely change the colors of the shooting stars, as the glow is a combination of [ionization of the air and the meteor](_URL_3_). So yes, it would likely correspond to the flame-test colors of the material, but slightly augmented due to the presence of air.\n\nEdit: Terminology and an additional source"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.meteorobs.org/maillist/msg21596.html", "http://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit", "http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi/Meteors?obs=91162915977566"]]}
{"q_id": "6kx69a", "title": "what makes graduating from one university better than graduating from another when they have access the same information?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kx69a/eli5_what_makes_graduating_from_one_university/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djph7gh", "djph8u5", "djph994", "djphkev", "djphon9", "djpj3ee", "djpmg0o", "djppx6k", "djpt0tt", "djpt3zy", "djpug4s", "djq2arm"], "score": [169, 41, 10, 17, 68, 51, 7, 10, 2, 2, 10, 5], "text": ["In my university at least, the material is widely complemented with the professor's personal experience in the field. A school like Harvard probably attracts professors with more renown across their field for the things they've done than a local college with professors who might not have experienced as much as the Harvard guy. This doesn't mean that any one school is automatically better than all others, but no school is exactly the same because of this. \n\nYou might take a class at one University and the professor has absolutely no idea what they're talking about and just reading off slides that aren't even theirs. You can take the same class at another school, with the same curriculum, but with a professor that shares more insight into how things actually work in the real world.", "the Quality of professors and human cognitive bias. Harvard is good because someone said it was. Talented professors fight to get tenure there because it's prestigious, giving the faculty more choice to get the best. having the best teachers draw in students. more students wanting to get in give the university the choice to only take the best. the best graduates  and perpetuate the reputation of the university, keeping Harvard a prestigious university.", "Why does driving an Infiniti cost more than a Nissan when they are mostly the same car?\n\nThere is notoriety with graduating from a prestigious school, just like driving a luxury car.  While a top end university has most of the same information as other schools they have the best professors and programs that surpass the normal school. ", "The name of the school can be used as a shorthand for excellence based on the admissions criteria of the school.  If you graduate from a place like Stanford or MIT, that means you were *admitted* to such a place - and that means you're probably on the top end of the intelligence spectrum as well as being highly motivated.\n\nIn contrast, if you graduate from the University of Wyoming, you *might* be a student like that - but it's more likely that you're a fairly average performer.\n\nNote that the same is true of different types of degrees.  One of the reasons that 'STEM' degrees have become so pre-eminent isn't so much that employers need people with those specific skill sets as they need the kind of intelligent, hard-working people who can succeed in those sort of degree fields.", "MIT and University of Phoenix students may have access to 99% of the same information, but they are going to be asked to apply it in very different ways. Simply put, MIT students are going to be challenged in a way that University of Phoenix students are not. For that reason the degree confers more value-- it's a signal to employers that the individual could cut their teeth in a demanding, competitive environment. ", "Networking - I went to top-10 grad school, a lot of people already knew each other or had friends/colleagues in common.  This helps a lot when you're looking for a job.\n\nBrand recognition - I just hired 2 people, first I look at their experience, skills and job history, then education.  For the entry-level position, I checked what school they went to and any volunteering or other stuff to set them apart.  Alma mater means less, the longer you've been in the workforce.", "Everything everyone else has said...  but also important is your name-brand recognition as a graduate.\n\nWhen you apply to a job and your resume is from a school the person has at least heard of, it just seems better.  Similar to when you go to grab a drink at the market and if they're all priced the same...  do you buy a Coke, Pepsi, or Rite-Aid Cola?  Do you get Kraft, Velveeta, or Walmart-brand Mac  &  Cheese?\n\nThere are advantages in networking and professor experience, as well as library, equipment, and funding access...  but sometimes it just matters that the hiring director knows what type of \"product\" they're getting in you when s/he's choosing between graduates from Purdue Engineering, ITT Technical Institute, and/or Saint Whatzit's College in Hometown, USA.\n\nThat hiring director may be looking and multiple/dozens/hundreds of applicants...  You might have gone to a really nice niche college that had a great program.  However, if that program/college isn't well known but everyone knows what \"Harvard Law\" or \"MIT Engineering\" is...  those brands mght just easily be sorted to the top when the director is trying to look at the many many resumes.", "People going to a \"lesser\" respected university don't appreciate the massively higher expectation and quality of output of the people in the top tier universities. \nA highly regarded dissertation from a middling university is just a weekly paper at Cambridge. \n\nSounds pompous but it's true. \n\nPeople from other universities say a degree is a degree and they're all the same but until you see the quality from someone at a better university, you see the reality. \nCambridge and Oxford (and top tier universities elsewhere) have their reputations for a reason. ", "The actual standard of teaching, the equipment/facilities available (for technical courses such as science/engineering - you can't replicate hands-on lab time with pure book reading. If your university has an active research unit, then that expertise and experience filters into the teaching. Imagine the difference being able to do your final year project as a part of someone's multi-million-dollar research programme compared to making something up and doing it on your own (granted the latter can inspire more creativity, but being even a small part of a professional research group and seeing how they operate holds some clear advantages when it comes to applying for jobs).\n\nAlso, simply the standard that students are held to. Although universities should all be holding their students to a high standard, it's a fact that some are \"easier\" than others, whether by dint of more generous/less interested teaching staff or [through blatant up-marking](_URL_0_). That standard is often a function of the admissions standard - being the catch-22, that universities like Oxbridge/MIT/Stanford/Harvard attract the top echelons, and therefore if you are admitted, not only does that mean you were top of the pile, but you've spent those years rubbing shoulders with similar high-achievers pushing each other along.", "At some schools professors teach from a textbook.  At other schools, the professor wrote the textbook.  At other schools, there are professors who get textbooks written about them.", "They don't have access to the same stuff, they don't teach the same material, they don't teach it to the same standards, and they don't require the same standards to receive the same degree classifications. For example, compare and contrast [this](_URL_1_) (Cambridge's 1st year mathematics course list) and [this](_URL_0_) (Kingston's entire maths course). ", "Many of the top answers so far are true, but don't tell the complete story. I am a college professor, and I think that one of the big problems in higher ed right now is that the industry doesn't do a good job of explaining its product. What makes one college different from another? What do you get when you pay to go to a private school? What do college rankings tell you? \n\n\nIMO the three most important / ELI5 differences between colleges are:\nDifferent student bodies. There is (should be?) a lot of peer learning in college. Who do you want to be around? What do you want your future network to look like? This isn't a linear spectrum either: things like racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity matter to the college experience just as much as having smart classmates. \n\n\nMore resources. Students at \"lesser\" colleges will routinely need to spend an extra semester or two of time and tuition because their financial aid changed, they couldn't get into the classes they needed, they were advised poorly, or some other preventable situation. Students at \"better\" colleges are then given access to research labs, internships, travel abroad, and other things that put icing on a great education. \n\n\nHigher standards and academic reputation. Even with the same core content, standards really are not the same everywhere. People know this, and it feeds into the reputation. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/4391888.stm"], [], ["http://www.kingston.ac.uk/undergraduate-course/mathematics/", "https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/coursesIA.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "zog9x", "title": "[META] 40K Subscribers -- State of the Subreddit", "selftext": "Actually, it's almost 41K now; people have been subscribing at an astonishing rate.\n\nThere've been a lot of mod posts lately about rules and such; we don't have much to add to them at this time, but we will post them here as a reminder:\n\n- [Welcome to visitors, and some reminders about posting](_URL_1_)\n- [Widescale revisions to the official rules](_URL_0_)\n- [A note on modern politics](_URL_3_)\n- [An unfortunate but necessary announcement](_URL_2_)\n\nThis post has three purposes behind it:\n\n1. To give you an account of where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.\n2. To thank our subscribers for their submissions and their support.\n3. To gauge reader opinion of the weekly project posts and inquire after new possibilities.\n\nIt's amazing to think of how far /r/askhistorians has come in the previous year.\n\nIn August of 2011, this subreddit received just over 10,000 page views, 2000 of them unique.\n\nIn August of 2012, /r/askhistorians blew past ***1,000,000*** page views without even trying, with 225,000 of them unique.\n\nIn September of 2012 -- so far -- we have had ~600,000 page views and 260,000 uniques.  ***So far***.  And that's only accounting for the data we currently have... it takes a day or two to update, sometimes.\n\nWhat makes something like this possible is the constant stream of contributions from you, our subscribers.  You ask questions, provide thoughtful answers, and engage in the kind and caliber of discussion that has provoked approving comment even from those inclined to be scathing.  We're proud that our contributors' work makes frequent appearances in /r/bestof and /r/depthhub, and while we're not as thrilled about occasional appearances in /r/subredditdrama or /r/circlebroke, even those tend to involve the problems at hand being received as the surprising anomalies they are rather than just what's to be expected.\n\nIt's been a year fraught with incident.  Things like the \"Bill Sloan\" debacle have taught us skepticism and caution (we hope), while countless instances of popular discussions attracting hundreds -- even thousands -- of new subscribers per day tell us that things are also ticking along as they ought to be.\n\nThe moderators have had a hand in all of that, for good or bad, but we rely on our subscribers to produce all of the content that appears, report bad comments, and generally strive to keep the level of discussion in /r/askhistorians as high as one might hope for it to be.  We thank you for all your work.\n\nBut our own isn't over, and won't be getting any easier as time goes on.  We are currently in the process of reviewing a number of possible new moderators, and hope to have an announcement to make about that in short order.  In the meantime, your current team is happy to keep on plugging away at it.\n\nAll of this is where we are -- but what of the future?\n\nThe general popularity of the daily project posts (Tuesday Trivia, Friday Free-for-All, etc.) has more or less spoken for itself, but we'd like your feedback on what you've thought of it all so far and what you might recommend to improve it.  We're already faced with the imminent prospect of having to move Monday's usual thing to Thursday instead, but the rest of the schedule is not likely to change.  All the same, what do you think?  How have you enjoyed it so far, and what other such initiatives might you like to see in the future?\n\nThat's all we've got to say just now.  We thank you again for the wild (but also very often restrained and respectful) ride that you've made /r/askhistorians over the last twelve months, and we only hope that the next twelve will see bigger and better things yet.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zog9x/meta_40k_subscribers_state_of_the_subreddit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c66cnha", "c66ddbs", "c66e5mm", "c66egqr", "c66eiyy", "c66f7h9", "c66fd48", "c66fvcp", "c66g54o", "c66g8ls", "c66h61q", "c66in00", "c66l4o8", "c66u57k"], "score": [79, 13, 26, 3, 7, 10, 18, 11, 4, 4, 10, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["This is basically the only subreddit I post in anymore, and certainly the only one I care about.  The mods and the work they do play a huge part in that, and I want to thank you guys for all that you've done and continue doing.\n\nBut yes, there needs to be more of you!", "Do you guys think you have enough mods for this growth?  When I subscribed here the sub had a measly 12,000 readers.  Because so many posts here get linked in best of reddit, I can't imagine the growth slows down any time soon.", "First off let me say that I very much enjoy this subreddit. I do have some concerns but I am not sure there is much we can do about them. Although unlike some of the other posts I feel that four mods works fine, I have gotten an almost immediate response to any question or reported post sent to them.\n\n1. Increase in questions with a decrease in flaired posts. I assume this is related to the start of the school year which probably leaves some of our contributors who hold teaching positions and or are working on academic degrees with less time. It also doesn't help that the Flairs tend to be focused in certain areas, so in early  American history  for instance, between myself Jonalesk, Smileyman, Fatherazan,Carol White and tribu173 I feel we can cover virtually any aspect of early American history ( yes I spelled all of your names wrong,and I probably forgot someone apologies all around). However when it comes to other Fields, Eastern European, Latin American, African (outside of one guy) we are sadly missing expertise. I don't think there's anything we can do about it, but I do wish it was something we could change.\n\n2. I'd really like to see some more sources from people who apply for flairs. Obviously if you can prove that you are a PHD or work in a educational environment an exception can be made. But specifically I have noticed that people who apply for Civil War and World War Two flairs really do not have a very comprehensive understanding of either event. \n\n3. More up-votes I don't get enough of them, and less partisan politics questions, which you have already made a post about \n\nedit because I forgot someone", "This has become my favorite subreddit.  I'd like to thank all of the historians who take time from their day to answer questions on this subreddit :).", "I love this subreddit. As an aspiring historian it's really great to see how popular /r/askhistorians has become whilst still remaining incredibly informative and pleasant. I must congratulate the mods and the community on their hard work. \n\nAs a student, I'd quite like to see more discussion of history as a subject (best degree options, application in other areas, questions about methodology etc.) rather than just knowledge of specific events/time periods/areas. However that's probably less likely now that the subreddit has become so encompassing. ", "Further proof that a strong hand in moderation is what keeps a good subreddit from going all pear-shaped.", "My only real issue right now is that in the last month or so the number of subscribers who are only interested in *American* modern history has increased at quite an eclipsing rate to subscribers interested in history/ancient history in general. If you look at the front page normally over 50% of the threads are related to American history, if you look at /new over 90% of threads are American related.\n\nNow this isn't a complaint, it's just an observation. It can feel at times though (I casually browse /new on and off for a few hours a day) that this subreddit is now becoming /AskModernHistorians or /AskHistoriansAmerica.\n\nI'm curious if anyone wants to address this?", "Besides the already-voiced concerns that flaired historians seem to be getting drowned by non-flaired posts, the only major concern I have about this subreddit is that we seem to be narrowing our specialization. Have a question about a bit of speculative history? Go to /r/historicalwhatif? A question about sources? /r/historyresources (or somesuch). While the subreddit has grown hugely, I wonder if we're turning people away towards smaller, less capable subreddits. I think there is something to be said for letting our Panel handle a wider range of questions while still referring visitors to smaller, more specific subs.", "What was the Bill Sloan incident, if I may ask?", "also, another good subreddit is r/askhistory.  significantly smaller, but has good questions nonetheless, and plus only the experts comment and the comments are not buried due to the fact that its a small subreddit", "Only major complaint is to do with poor questions. \n\n\"Whats your favourite....\"\n\n\"What's the greatest...\"\n\nBasically, anything that promotes a simple listing of events. I feel these posts rarely contribute anything to a discussion and it can feel like AskReddit sometimes. ", "This is by a whole hell of a lot my favorite sub-reddit. Hell, in a post I made today I got: \n\n* Educated responses, with links to great documents and books I want to read to help form my own opinion. \n* Well-formed opinions from people who (seem) to know what they're talking about and have been well-read on the topic. \n* Informed speculation that led to really lively banter. \n* And a joke or two. \n\nWhat more could I possibly ask for? The balance in this subreddit is fantastic. I really loved, also, the anecdotes from the fella whose grandfather was a part of history on the Prinz Eugen. It wasn't scholarly work, it was old war stories, and it was great. ", "This is the first subreddit that I subscribed where I read EVERY single post. I really learned a lot. And I just subscribed 3 days ago. Is fascinating, I really hope that this subreddit maintains its quality...", "I would love to see flaired users do a presentation and then ask questions about it. For example in my area I might talk about the various factions and splits of the parties involved in the American Revolution and then ask about comparisons to other revolutions. \n\nI'd love to see users be able to get flair via user nomination or by mod nomination. I do think that many users feel intimidated about their level of knowledge and could probably get flair if they just applied for it. \n\nI'd love to see posts where users within a particular color get together to create a posts asking for questions. I think an inter-disciplinary Q & A session might prove to be very interesting. Even users from different colored flairs could be interesting, for example someone with a European flair and a Pacific Islander flair and a North American flair talking about colonization and annexation in the Pacific Islands from the various perspectives of those involved. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z9uyg/meta_widescale_revisions_to_the_official_rules/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yozop/meta_welcome_to_visitors_and_some_reminders_about/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zj29f/moderator_post_sight_an_unfortunate_but_necessary/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zcctn/meta_a_note_on_modern_politics/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "49shx6", "title": "how do fire engines in the uk get water to put out fires, if we don't have fire hydrants?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49shx6/eli5_how_do_fire_engines_in_the_uk_get_water_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0uh9jo", "d0uhal9", "d0ulez8"], "score": [27, 14, 8], "text": ["you guys do have fire hydrants but just like here in Australia the are not big red/yellow things that stick out of the ground but rather dug into the ground and covered by little metal plates \n\nthe trucks carry the equipment to plug into them  ", "You do have fire hydrants, they're access points beneath the pavement rather than above ground ones like in the US. Look for 'H' signs next time you walk up the street and you'll find them.\n\n", "Every single yellow sign with a black H and two numbers is near a small manhole cover with FH on it. There's your fire hydrant - there are loads of them. Blew my mind when i found out "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "220dcv", "title": "i've heard that you can easily learn a foreign language if you watch foreign language tv. so if i watch tv in spanish, will i learn spanish? how does this work without subtitles?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/220dcv/eli5_ive_heard_that_you_can_easily_learn_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgi3m2v", "cgi3m4m", "cgi3mvi", "cgi3omc", "cgi4hi8", "cgi50nx", "cgi535f", "cgi5s8t", "cgi6vjs", "cgi80yj", "cginjmb", "cgioc7v", "cgivwhl"], "score": [3, 2, 2, 77, 19, 2, 15, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I know several people who learned Spanish just by watching Spanish telenovelas with subtitles in their own language (my understanding is that Spanish is considered a fairly easy language to learn).", "It helps a lot with understanding speech. If you only learn by text you won\u2019t be able to have a conversation: everything will sound foreign. I don\u2019t think you can use it as a first step.", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that this will work.\nYou may be able to guess a bunch of words by doing so but you will never be able to get into the grammar rules etc.  \nWhen learning a foreign language you definately have to get deeper into the topic instead of just watching movies. Otherwise you won't be able to understand how that language works.  ", "You technically could, sure.  It'd be the same way you learned your first language.  Over time, you begin to associate nouns with actual things on the screen, verbs with actions you see, and adjectives from how things look/sound/whatever.\n\nIf you saw someone walk into a room, and the man behind the desk said \"por favor si\u00e9ntate\", and the person sat down, eventually, you'd learn that this phrase, in some way, likely means 'sit down'. You'd then notice that 'por favor' is used when someone is asking for something. you could then intuit that 'si\u00e9ntate' means to sit, and 'por favor' means to ask nicely for something.\n\nEventually you'd pick up on the patterns, but it's not like a weekend of spanish soap operas would really *teach* you spanish. It would certainly take time.  Enough exposure would eventually work to some extent, though.", "I've pretty much learned English entirely from watching British and American TV and movies. In the Netherlands everything on TV is subtitled (by law, I think?) rather than voice-overed.\n\nIt is by far rthe easiest way to learn a new language since you do it uncounsiously. The downside is that (especially hollywood) doesn't use a wide variety of vocabularely so you often still missspell words.\n\n\nOn the other hand I have now downloaded 150gb of German movies and tv shows. Tsch\u00fcs!", "Idk but 20+ years ago my Japanese tennis coach had two kids stay the summer and neither of them spoke a word of English.  By the end of the summer both had some rudimentary English.  From watching terminator re runs.  First words:  fuck you asshole.  ", "I learned Spanish at 19 years old....first by spending a month or two in a crash course, and then living in Chile for several years. \n\nMy guess is that maybe you could pick up SOMETHING of a language by watching it on TV, but there are so many contexts that you'd never understand until you actually lived a daily life in a foreign country. Even something as simple as shopping in the grocery store would be difficult of you only knew TV language. \n\nYou want to learn a language, you have to be fully immersed in it (meaning that, unlike a TV show, you have to respond to questions, ask your own questions, explain yourself, learn the intricacies of the language...and screw up enough with correction that you learn.) \n\nTV will make you a parrot. Immersion will make you a master. ", "I took a Spanish class for nine weeks, three in the USA and six in Guatemala. I learned so much more and so much quicker in Guatemala learning from native speakers who knew very little to no English. After that I went to Nicaragua for a year and a half and had to speak to the people there and live with Latina who rarely knew any English. I went weeks without ever speaking English. I had to learn Spanish to survive. \n\nWhen I returned to the states I enrolled in Spanish class at school and realized I know the language but I have no clue why Spanish speakers speak like they do. In reality I think it's better to know how to use a language than to know why one uses a word in that language. \n\nI also met a guy from Guatemala who had grown up watching every TV show in English. He was kind of a TV buff and it was hard for him to give it up for two years while he was in Nicaragua, but he was fluent in English. So with a lot of years, yeah you could learn a language. But there comes a point where you have to try and speak it. He was really nervous to speak English to us, but when he did he was really good at it. ", "I'm polish and that's how I learned English! I watched cartoons in English with no subtitles or vocice-over at all. From my experience watching TV may grant you a kickstart with nouns and phrases, and that's good. You do it simply by associating words to pictures you see on screen. Later on however you'll probably find yourself lacking in grammar etc. that's when you start taking lessons or even leave to another country. You'll be far ahead in terms of vocabulary, and find it easier to catch on with everything else.\n\nAlso: use that language as much as you can. For example when alone and making dinner try to act as if you were a host of some Spanish cooking show. It really helps :)", "I've been watching anime since I was 13 so about 6 years, and I know maybe 10 or 20 Japanese words, and knowing how to say \"Roger that\", \"Thank you for the meal\", and \"No brother, don't touch me there\" isn't gonna get me too far in Japan", "Some good points in the comments, but it also works much much better when your a child and your brain is still developing. The language part of your brain is able to understand/comprehend foreign languages easier in your youth. This typically fades away as you enter adolencense (9-12). Thats why taking your kid to a bilingual school when hes young is great, learning multiple languages when you're young vastly improves cognitive abilities as an adult. ", "I don't think it works very well, either for me or for non English speakers I've heard of who tried.  The thing is, to learn a language you have to practice speaking and writing in it.  Just inputting it is too passive.", "A lot of the people here in China I know learned a lot of their English from \"Friends\".  They had a base from studying but watching the show helped them immensely.  It helps a lot with grammar and sentence structure is what one person told me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4yp3s6", "title": "why do car companies make insanely cool concept cars and then when the cars are released to market, they look like regular old cars?", "selftext": "Why not produce the cool looking car? And if you don't end up producing it, why even create it in the first place?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yp3s6/eli5_why_do_car_companies_make_insanely_cool/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6pehtw", "d6pejsm", "d6pf8bv", "d6pfc15", "d6pl8hd", "d6plf8j", "d6plrgf", "d6pnuqt"], "score": [2, 52, 16, 7, 2, 14, 6, 2], "text": ["It is not necessary that if you create a concept it will come in the market. Concepts are ways to test different types of Technology's and their limits. ", "Concept cars are usually hand-built. They often don't meet all the regulatory requirements for things like safety features and they may not even have engines if they're only going to be displayed at an indoor show.\n\nThe purpose is to build hype for a future model and/or show off some new technology or styling feature. The final production model, if there is one, will usually include a few elements from the concept. ", "Have you ever seen video/photos of a fashion show and the clothing looks totally ridiculous? That's because fashion shows are for fashion insiders, but consumers, as a whole, don't want to buy something that deviates too much from normal. \n\nAuto designs are like that. The car companies don't want to change designs too radically for fear it will hurt sales. ", "There have been a couple of unusual-looking concept cars that eventually hit the market, like the Plymouth Prowler and Chrysler PT Cruiser.\n\nBut I think car manufacturers are reluctant to make anything too radically different from the average car. Car designs change over time, but very gradually. Like if you put a 2016 model next to a 2015 or 2014, there's not much difference. But it's very different compared to a 1986 or 1976. Cars that look too different all of a sudden may not sell as well.", "Price. With a concept car its art, with the product its business. The company has a box of parts, and adding anything new is expensive. So you end up with rehashes of the same thing with just a different cheap plastic bumper put on it.", "There's a good reason that all cars look pretty much the same; after decades of refinement, the engineering behind cars has largely coalesced into a set of common features and designs that are simply the best and most liked by consumers. Combine that with restrictions around safety regulations, and you end up with pretty much all cars being pretty much the same.", "Concept cars are like a car fashion show.\n\nThey basically are saying \"forget about cost and practicality, let's make something cool and innovative.\"\n\nOnce thing have completed this expensive exercise in creativity, they see what ideas can be incorporated into their regular line up. ", "Car buyers generally don't like drastic change year to year. So the futuristic Mustang would likely not sell to those buyers who purchase Mustangs every two years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fddadd", "title": "What are the benefits of using heavy water (compared to light water) as a neutron moderator in a nuclear reactor and why do they work?", "selftext": "E.g. in a CANDU reactor.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fddadd/what_are_the_benefits_of_using_heavy_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fjh41xv", "fjh5dn1"], "score": [12, 15], "text": ["The best moderator is a material containing hydrogen-1, because the hydrogen-1 has a nucleus with a mass closest to that of a neutron.\n\nBut hydrogen-1 will also capture neutrons to become hydrogen-2.\n\nHydrogen-2 is less optimal for moderation because of its higher mass, but it\u2019s also less likely to capture a neutron of a given energy.", "Okay, so hydrogen is the difference between light and heavy water. Heavy water has deuterium, which is hydrogen with a neutron attached. The normal percentage of deuterium in water molecules is very low, less than a percent. Heavy water has a much higher amount.\n\nThe advantage of using heavy water is the ability to use unenriched uranium as a fuel source. When a U235 fissions, it emits about 2-3 neutrons, depending. To maintain a steady reaction, you want an average of exactly 1 neutron from each fission to cause another fission event. Unfortunately, fissioned neutrons are traveling very fast (~7% the speed of light). Fast neutrons are very unlikely to cause fissions in other U235 atoms. A moderator is a material with a high scattering cross-section, i.e. one that is good at slowing neutrons down. Hydrogen is great as a moderator but it also has a chance of capturing those neutrons rather than slowing them. Since a neutron needs many collisions to slow down to \"thermal\" speeds which are good for fission (say, mach 10 at STP), many neutrons would be absorbed by hydrogen and turn it into deuterium.\n\nHowever, the chance of a deuterium absorbing a second neutron (its \"absorption cross-section\") to become tritium is very low. So if your water has a lot of deuterium, you won't lose as many neutrons as they slow to thermal speeds. This means you don't need as much U235 to maintain your fission reaction, and properly balanced you don't need to enrich at all. The increased cost of using heavy water as your coolant is lessened by not needing the uranium enrichment process."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2gbxv3", "title": "why does it feel like less effort to watch 3 - hour long tv episodes back to back than a film?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gbxv3/eli5why_does_it_feel_like_less_effort_to_watch_3/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckhkqno", "ckhks5m", "ckhlfaf", "ckhsg8n", "ckhsi30", "ckht2ec", "ckhtnbm", "ckhtq6k", "ckhu3p2", "ckhuigu", "ckhv84i", "ckhv8ry", "ckhvxsz", "ckhwmtm", "ckhwxzc", "ckhx3oa", "ckhx5os", "ckhx97a", "ckhydu1", "cki1ura", "cki2vim", "ckif0ty"], "score": [70, 1008, 5, 726, 9, 2, 8, 6, 70, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Probably because it's episodic in nature and can usually be paced better to be continued next time. (also they tend to use hooks to keep you enticed for another episode)\n\nThis is why it's easy for marathon junkies to zip through 6 seasons of enjoyable content but trudge through 1.5-2hrs of hollywood averageness.\n\n(first time answering in here, hope I could help!)", "Doing a lot of small task is usually easier than doing one big task. For example nobody has any problem reading reddit all day, but reading a full book is hard and daunting.\n\nEvery time you finish doing something, you get some kind of satisfaction, and we like to get that often.", "People might start watching the series half way through on TV so they need to constantly make it interesting or risk loosing potential viewers in *looooooooong* boring parts.", "TV scripts are written with the aim of retaining viewers through commercial breaks, so they have to contain a steady stream of compelling dramatic or comedic cliffhanger scenarios.  Films are made with the expectation that the audience will watch them uninterrupted from start to finish, so they can take more time with plot exposition, setting up the mood and style etc.", "For me, it's because I get a kind of mini-break every 22 or 44 minutes (depending on how long each episode is). When the credits roll, it feels like the end of something short, so we can justify the idea of watching another episode, because it didn't feel that long.", "Movies and tv shows are, essentially, structured the same way.\n\nThere is the introduction, a problem, a solution to aforementioned problem, then a major problem and then the major resolution (normally). \n\nIn watching a movie you follow the one storyline.\n\nIn watching the 3, smaller episodes, you are still watching the one storyline (depending on the show) but you are going through the structures much quicker so it's easier to keep interested etc. ", "I feel like you get a little more attached to the show. With multiple episodes I can keep looking into that world for another hour here and there. \n\nA movie has an end which you know is near IMO. I like getting invested in the universe of a show ", "Much like sex, the basic point of a story is for the satisfaction of the climax and resolution.  Usually, every episode of a television show has its own mini climax and resolution (even if that resolution is a clif-hanger.)  This means that the payoff is at least more frequent, if not greater, when you watch three episodes of a television show rather than watch one long movie.   ", "Lots of good answers in here.  One I'd like to add is that when you're watching TV episodes back-to-back like that, you're most likely already invested in it.  You know the characters, you know the plot, so you can just jump right in and enjoy the show.  No set-up is necessary.  Plus there's that motivation of wanting to know what happens next.\n\nWith a movie, you're going to have to meet the characters, learn about their situations and their motivations, and possibly learn about their world too.  And since you don't know the characters yet, you don't really yearn to see them again and see what's going to happen to them next.\n\nAnd you're just comparing movies to television.  If you get more specific and compare watching a tv show you're already sucked into, and watching a tv show you haven't started yet, the difference becomes more clear.  I know I have plenty of tv shows I haven't started waiting in my Netflix and HBOGo queues.  The way I put off *starting* a tv show is similar to the way I put off watching a movie.", "I had the opposite experience. I used to do quality control for DVDs (checking for hits, drop frames, etc.), and watching 3 hours for the same TV show was painful. Watching an old movie became like taking a little break. Granted, I rarely got to pick what I was watching, and most of the stuff came from the '60s or '70s, but watching more than 1 or 2 episodes of anything in a row makes me want to scream.", "I think for me it is because there is a lot of effort involved in immersing myself in something new. When you watch a show, you're usually already familiar with a continuing plot, characters, setting, etc. Whereas a movie (or a show's pilot, for that matter) involves learning something completely new. ", "because, like snacks, TV episodes are comparatively bite-sized and therefore \"easier\" to consume", "Also, TV is the new movies. \nTV was crap quality stories.\nMovies were where the great stories were.\nRoles are reversed now.\n\nHouse Of Cards is a great example.", "As someone who spent yesterday watching season 2 of House of Cards, I'd say it's easier to process smaller chunks of information that are presented as small tasks. \n", "In between the episodes you will move around or do things. Change and activity can keep you awake and alert.\n\nYou can also stop watching TV episodes at any point when the shows end. You'll feel like you've been able to complete something before you got too tired. If you get too tired at any point into a really long film you may not think of it as completing the same amount of watching time, you'll probably just think you couldn't finish the whole thing.\n\nAnd of course that particular TV show could just be more interesting too you than that particular film.", "I was thinking this. I almost always get bored half way through a film, but I watched 7 episodes of homeland back to back, and then the other 5 the day after. \n\nTime to start season 2!\n\nThen probably get a job or something...", "TV episodes are made so you want to watch the next one. Their plot is built so there is something to look forward to. In the case with movies (which don't have obvious sequels), they are made so they have a finite ending. i.e. Having something to look forward to in the next episode make you want to watch more.", "I would much rather watch a film that a TV show anytime. But I'm just not a TV person. ", "I get what OP is saying... I can not stay awake through most movies when I watch them at home but I can watch a whole season of Weeds or Dexter in one sitting. ", "Because with 3 episodes of TV you likely go through three 3-act structures of setups, problems and resolutions - usually with some sort of cliffhanger at the end, with less time having to be spent on exposition as its not a standalone movie, which probably makes the pacing much better/faster giving such an effect.", "Not only does each episode have a beginning, middle, and end, giving it a faster pace, you can always get up and use the bathroom or do something else at the end of an episode; there aren't as many good times to pause usually during a movie.", "less stuff to keep in your memory. each tv episode is mostly self-contained, so most of the information can be downgraded in memory or dumped when you're done watching it. TV shows also draw from a repeating base of information (people, places, events), so there's much less learning to do when watching the same show. with a movie, you have to learn a bunch of new information. then you have to retain everything for the full 2-3 hours, and continue to parse new events in the context of a larger pile of information. that translates into increased glucose consumption in your brain, which is, in fact, genuine effort."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "br8x60", "title": "Does the ISS need course corrections due to people moving around inside, and if so how frequently does it happen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/br8x60/does_the_iss_need_course_corrections_due_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eodx99i", "eoed2c6", "eoepbkq"], "score": [20, 4, 5], "text": ["There a couple important points to make here. Absent of external factors, there is nothing you can do on the inside of closed vessel in space that will result in any long-term change in the velocity. Essentially, momentum conservation means that you pushing off the wall at some point is exactly cancelled by you running into the opposite wall later. However, in a non-uniform gravitational field this needn't necessarily be the case. That being said, anything the astronauts do will we dwarfed by the fact that the ISS is not high enough to be completely outside the influence of the atmosphere. The height of the ISS is constantly decreasing due to drag: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_). Corrections are regularly done every month or so.", "No.  Astronauts inside or otherwise attached to the ISS must obey Conservation of Momentum and thus any motion (i.e. linear or angular momentum) imparted on the ISS by an astronaut will be cancelled out a short time later when the astronaut must impart an opposite force on the ISS to stop their original motion.", "No.  The people moving around inside will not change the location of the [center of mass](_URL_0_) of the system: the weighted-average position of the station and its contents will be unaffected.\n\nWe can even do the math!  There are [6 astronauts](_URL_1_) on the ISS right now, with a total mass of about 400 kg.  The ISS has a mass of [400,000 kg](_URL_2_), and is about 70 meters long.  If everybody on the ISS moved from the front to the back, the ISS would move from back to front by about 70 m \\* (400/400,000) = **7 centimeters**."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_mass", "https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/", "https://www.nasa.gov/feature/facts-and-figures"]]}
{"q_id": "3i0eu7", "title": "what happens if a small female dog mates with a large male dog?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i0eu7/eli5_what_happens_if_a_small_female_dog_mates/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuc652y", "cuccd48", "cucctt4", "cuccy73", "cucd78o", "cucdi0v"], "score": [83, 4, 29, 24, 5, 13], "text": ["Well, with the Great Dane and Chihuahua the act of mating itself would most likely kill the Chihuahua. But assuming she survived without grievous injury, and became pregnant (or was artificially inseminated) they would have major problems as the pup developed and would likely die from a single pup as it would be larger than they are naturally even with the mix of genes. \n\nIf the size difference is too great and the female is the small she will almost always die before giving birth due to not being large enough to bring the offspring to term. ", "What I wana know is what stops big dogs from mating wih little dogs,  or dear I say it,  a big dog mating with a small dog thats not consensual but the little dog could not get away due to being pinned? \n\nI guess the little dog in general would instantly feel pain and not bother?  Or is there some interbreed taboo that they naturally know? \n\nOh god dogception", "Height difference is a significant problem. Dogs 'tie' during mating, meaning the dogs penis engorges so much he is locked into the bitch. Usually once tied the dog lifts one leg over the bitch (with his engorged penis still stuck inside her) so they are stood back end to back end. This can last from 5 to 30 minutes and would be impossible if the both participants were wildly different sizes.\nIf however mating did occur we would call it a mismatch mating and recommend that the pregnancy is terminated. We can do that with injections. ", "Had a teacup poodle who was impregnated by a toy poodle. Not as big of a difference in size but the puppies were absolutely huge for her little body. Just two in the litter, and both stillborn. :(", "Unlikely that a Chihuahua and a Great Dane would mate.  But in cases of difficulty giving birth due to the puppies being too big, c-sections are sometimes performed on dogs to get the pups out safely.  \n\nSource:  am a vet tech", "I had a toy dachshund that was impregnated by a large male dachshund while being \"watched\" by a friend. Normal pregnancy until it was time to give birth. She couldn't push them out because they were too big and ended up having a c-section. She had four puppies, each one with a birth weight 1/3-1/2 of her total weight. We lost two of the puppies and almost lost mom. It was not a fun ride for anyone involved. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5d9cgf", "title": "if unborn babies' lungs are filled with amniotic fluid, what happens to the fluid in their lungs after they're born?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d9cgf/eli5_if_unborn_babies_lungs_are_filled_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da2pzzu", "da2u6ja", "da2ubmd", "da2vjod", "da2vsux", "da2xdli", "da2zmba"], "score": [122, 251, 69, 7, 24, 4, 103], "text": ["They aren't filled. As the baby nears full term, the lungs absorb most of it. Any remaining is either squeezed out during delivery or coughed up once the baby is born.", "Fun side note: when you drown, your lungs don't fill up with water until after you're dead. Your trachea clamps shut to prevent water from entering your lungs, then you run out of oxygen, then you die and water seeps in.", "People have the misconception that babies breath amniotic fluid. They don't. The heart has an opening that bypasses the lungs while in utero. It closes on birth and the lungs which aren't inflated inflate when the newborn starts to breath. All o2 before then is provided by the mothers oxygenated blood.", "When I was born my lungs where filled with amniotic fluid. The doctor had to siphon it all out. They said I was practicing breathing in the womb. I still have respiratory issues and probably will forever. ", "It really is miraculous.Having a person grow inside me blew my mind and still blows my mind every single day as I watch him grow...That's 10 yrs of being mind-blown.", "I misread this as \"Unicorn babies\" and spent  1 minute pondering how a unicorn baby's lungs would react.  ", "First thing you've got to understand about babies' lungs. They're not actually filled to capacity with fluid. Think of the capacity of a baby's lungs as being like a compressed can that doubles in size at birth.\n\nThe first time the lungs actually expand is during the process of birth, when the child cries for the first time. During that time, the lungs double in size as air is drawn in, and the little fluid that is present in the now expanded lungs is reabsorbed into systemic circulation, and then peed out after the first couple of days of life. The lungs as such don't participate in oxygen exchange until after birth. Until then, the baby gets all the oxygen it needs from the umbilical cord that connects it to the mother."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "vksz0", "title": "I hate to do this, but who in the bible was likely real?", "selftext": "I'm getting tired of the \"was Jesus real\" posts, but this is a more broad question. Let's just exclude Jesus and the entire New Testament. So from Genesis through the Maccabean rebellion, who seems to be based in at least some form of truth?\n\nThere were tribes of Israel, so does this mean there were twelve brothers? How else could these tribes have formed? Was there an Aaron from which the priests were descended? Was there an Isaiah, an Esther, a Samuel? What proof is there?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vksz0/i_hate_to_do_this_but_who_in_the_bible_was_likely/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c55ea0q", "c55ejqb", "c55jbmr"], "score": [14, 30, 5], "text": ["Wow, sorry this was downvoted so thoroughly. It's a good question, and I came here hoping for some intelligent answers.\n\nI assume you are asking about the Old Testament, since the majority of people discussed in the New Testament are most likely historical figures.", "Umm, this is an extraordinarily broad question, which makes it incredibly difficult to answer.  No, there were no brothers, and arguably (likely?) no tribes.  Probably no Aaron.  We might as well call the author of the original text of Isaiah \"Isaiah\" unless you have a better name for him.  \"Guy who wrote proto-Isaiah\" seems a little long-winded.  Esther?  I doubt it.  Samuel?  I doubt that too, though he has his advocates.\n\nYou'll get a more useful response with a more specific question, such as what is the evidence for and against the patriarchs, or for or against David.  You're asking who is real from a book that contains literally hundreds of names.", "I'm pretty far from an expert on this, but I can at least point you towards some informative wikipedia links.\n\nThe short version is that there's not really any evidence for anyone that shows up earlier than kings.  After that, there's some scraps of archaeological evidence both from Jewish sources as well as others of the region. Basically, many of the post-Solomon kings probably were based on real rulers, but evidence is too sketchy to say much beyond that.\n\nThe [Mesha Stele](_URL_2_) may or may not refer to the house of David, and corresponds somewhat to biblical accounts of a war with Israel.\n\nThe [Taylor Prism](_URL_0_) is an Assyrian account of a war with Israel that is mentioned in the bible.\n\n[This page](_URL_1_) has a more comprehensive list."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Prism", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artifacts_significant_to_the_Bible", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesha_stele"]]}
{"q_id": "be1ctn", "title": "Why were scientists able to photograph a supermassive black hole 55 million ly away in another galaxy but not of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy some 25,000 ly away?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/be1ctn/why_were_scientists_able_to_photograph_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["el5dawh", "el5ocuo"], "score": [16, 5], "text": ["When we look at the black hole in the center of our galaxy we are looking through the bulk of the Milky Way's disc, there is a lot of gas, dust and stars between us and our supermassive black hole.\n\nM87 is oriented towards us so that the center of the galaxy is easily viewed and M87 is home to a truly gargantuan black hole that is actively consuming material and producing brilliant jets of material radiating away from the \"north\" and \"south\" poles of the galaxy.", "M87\\* is about 2,000 times farther away than Sagittarius A\\* but it's also about 2,000 times larger. It works out to a very similar angular size, and as other commenters mentioned there's less stuff in the way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "iwclf", "title": "What causes the buzz associated with sleep deprivation?", "selftext": "To clarify, by \"buzz\" I mean a feeling of euphoria, relaxation, and dizziness; I should note that this combination is actually fun. I'm not sure if this applies to everybody, but I have personally experienced and was wondering how common it is and why it happens.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iwclf/what_causes_the_buzz_associated_with_sleep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c275u3l", "c275xke", "c275zhr", "c277tw3"], "score": [2, 5, 5, 7], "text": ["If you have bipolar or hypomania, sleep depriviation can trigger a manic or hypomanic episode. If it was a manic episode it would be obvious. \n\nIf it was a hypomanic episode you might feel happy, optimistic, have a desire to talk a lot, feel hornier, have more confidence, be somewhat delusional or not feel tired. Note that is an inclusive or.", "I want to know, too.  High school was four years of sleep deprivation, and the feeling is not unlike getting stoned.", "Huh, strange. No euphoria here, I just start shivering (teeth chattering and all) like a madman even when it's 80+ degrees (F) out.", "It's in large part thought to be associated with increases in central serotonin release, which results both in the promotion of wakefulness and the antidepressant effects noted by smarmyknowitall. Reference: [(PMID: 10884045)](_URL_1_). \n\nThere is also evidence that the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation are correlated with alterations in peripheral vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), but it's not clear if this is merely downstream of alterations in central serotonin (or other neurotransmitters) or a more direct effect of sleep deprivation. Reference: [(PMID: 21704134)](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21704134", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10884045"]]}
{"q_id": "shrud", "title": "why does it get colder as we go up in altitude although we are closer to the sun?", "selftext": "I thought about it that at night it's very far, but that is offset during the day. could it have to do with heat retention in different layers of the atmosphere?\n\n I also feel stupid and that my engineering degree should go to waste", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shrud/eli5_why_does_it_get_colder_as_we_go_up_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4e4sl5", "c4e4sn2", "c4e6kr8", "c4e7onr"], "score": [6, 7, 6, 17], "text": ["Because the earth's surface reflects heat, and that heat is held down at lower levels because the atmosphere holds it in like a blanket.  The accumulated heat held down at lower altitudes gives us our warm, comfy environment, while the atmosphere above protects from other radiation.\n\nAs you go up, the atmosphere becomes less dense (so it is a poorer insulator), and you are further away from the source of accumulated reflected heat, so the temperature drops.\n\n*Surface temperatures*, however, of stuff in space, and at higher altitudes can bequite high, as the sun's infrared energy isn't blocked by the atmosphere, however, temperatures only a short distance away from that surface are freezing because there is less or nothing to trap the heat.", "~~ > could it have to do with heat retention in different layers of the atmosphere?~~\n\n~~That's exactly it. Don't doubt yourself - you were on the right track! :)~~\n\n~~\"Greenhouse gases\" like CO\u2082 absorb heat before it can escape into space, therefore when we go higher up into the atmosphere and air is thinner, there are less greenhouse gases around, so it's colder.~~\n\n~~The distance between us and the outside of our atmosphere is very small in terms of how much closer we get to the sun. \"Summer\" for the northern hemisphere is actually when the Earth is farthest away from the Sun in its orbit; it's only because the Earth is tilted towards the Sun, and we get more direct rays, that the Earth heats up.~~\n\n**Edit:** [I humbly stand corrected.](_URL_0_)", "The Earth's elliptic orbit has far greater annual variations in the distance to the Sun than your puny airplane flight. So, you're not getting \"closer to the Sun\" in any way that matters.\n\nAll you do is getting away from the huge heat reservoir called Earth's crust, which is daily being baked by solar radiation, conveniently releasing it back as heat; and away from the greenhouse zone contained in the lower layers of atmosphere. And you get into the upper layers of atmosphere which don't retain any heat, just waste it by radiating it into cosmos.\n\nBTW, if you were up in orbit, the half of you facing the Sun would get scorched, unless your costume is designed to reflect light. The other half would freeze by radiative cooling.", "**preamble**: as a physicist, I'm sorry to see that ELI5 has so many wrong answers.  [OccularHedonist (8 points as I type) says](_URL_0_) \"The heat is held down at lower levels because the atmosphere holds it in like a blanket\", which is sort of correct -- but the holding down happens in the stratosphere, which is higher than any mountain (and therefore doesn't answer the question), and/or is regional rather than based on altitude.  ~~[potterarchy (6 points as I type)](_URL_2_) says that it's greenhouse gases, which is basically the same wrong answer, rephrased.~~ [Florinandrei (5 points as I type)](_URL_1_) says that it's distance from the heat reservoir of the Earth, which isn't really the answer either.  *If you want real answers to questions like this, you are probably better off at /r/askscience, which is more heavily moderated and more heavily frequented by people who actually know the answer to your question*.  Here at ELI5 you are likely to get the same kind of easily-memorable but wrong answer that your dad gave you when you were 5.\n\n**answer**: The air gets colder as you go up because the lower atmosphere is mixed up by up-and-down winds, which I'll explain in a moment.  Air that moves up expands and cools off as it goes up, because all gases cool off as they expand.  Air that moves down gets compressed and heats up from the compression.  You can notice that kind of cooling if you spray a whole bunch of paint out of one of your dad's cans of spray paint -- the can will get cold from the expansion.  You can notice that kind of heating if you pump up a bike tire.  The nozzle of the air pump will get hot from the compression.\n\nUp and down motions of the air carry a tremendous amount of heat up and down in the part of the atmosphere where we live, and mix it all up.  That makes the air at every height above sea level the same temperature as it would be if it just came up from sea level very fast, so up high the air is colder because it just expanded more.  \n\nThat lowest part of the atmosphere is called the \"troposphere\" (pronounced like \"trope oh sphere\").\n\nThe reason the troposphere mixes up heat is that air in these bottom, dense layers of the atmosphere is heated by the sunlit ground.  Air right near the ground gets warm, then expands and rises (like a hot air balloon, without the balloon).  As it rises, it cools off -- but it's still warmer than the cooler air around it, so it carries on rising for a long time -- up to about 20,000 or 30,000 feet above the ground(!) Eventually, that little parcel of air does cool off by radiating heat (like a warm rock cools off if you put it in the shade), and then it sinks all the way back down to the ground again to get some more heat.  All of the air in the troposphere does that more or less all the time.  That's why airplane rides are bumpy on approach to the airport, particularly on sunny days -- you end up flying through the up and down currents in the air.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shrud/eli5_why_does_it_get_colder_as_we_go_up_in/c4e7onr"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shrud/eli5_why_does_it_get_colder_as_we_go_up_in/c4e4sl5", "http://www.reddit.com/user/florinandrei", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shrud/eli5_why_does_it_get_colder_as_we_go_up_in/c4e4sn2"]]}
{"q_id": "4fsseb", "title": "money - if a bank takes a deposit and lends it out again have we got twice as much money as before?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fsseb/eli5_money_if_a_bank_takes_a_deposit_and_lends_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2blx3a", "d2blz2o", "d2bm8ak", "d2c4yrj"], "score": [5, 5, 6, 2], "text": ["No. As a depositor, you lend your money to the bank. That's why you get paid interest. All the bank has done is act as a broker between the depositor and the person taking out the loan. ", "It depends on how you account for it.\n\nFrom a strict accounting standpoint, no.  The bank has an asset (the money they are owed by the person who took out the loan) and has a liability (the money they owe you for the deposit).  The person who took out the loan has an asset (the cash) and a liability (the loan they have to pay back).  It all nets out to zero - the only person who has a net positive is you, since it's ultimately your money.\n\nNow, that all said, it does allow money to have increased [velocity](_URL_0_) in the economy; despite the fact that you have your money \"sitting in the bank\" that money can still be used to buy goods and services, which is a big net benefit to commerce.  It _functions_ like there is twice as much money in the economy.", "Yes and no. It depends really how you account for money. If you look at monetary base (for simplicity, just all the cash in an economy), then the bank did not increase the amount of money. If you look at M1 money supply (which is monetary base plus checking accounts) or M2 money supply (which is M1 plus savings accounts and time deposit accounts), then yes the bank created \"money\". This in economics is known as the money multiplier. It won't be twice as much because the bank has to hold onto a specific amount depending on the central bank. In the US, most large banks have to hold onto 10% of all deposits before loaning it out or investing it. So if we look at a simple money multiplier, the bank would only create 90% more money after a single transaction. ", "If you deposit $1 in a bank they can lend it out 10 times.\n\nThis is called fractional reserve banking and it does cause inflation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3n043j", "title": "how do cellphones communicate over such long distances with such a small antenna while my router barely can cover my house?", "selftext": "Also why are phone antennas so big? Wouldnt a small antenna like one from a smartphone be enough?\n\n\n\nEDIT: Holy... i just woke up. Well that blew up. Thank you all for your answers.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n043j/eli5_how_do_cellphones_communicate_over_such_long/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvjnryn", "cvjo580", "cvjoxk4", "cvjqce6", "cvjrdl9", "cvjuvkj", "cvjxapm", "cvjxcd2", "cvk01qp", "cvk045c", "cvk2veo", "cvk75d8", "cvkagyp", "cvkap8q", "cvl7ifo"], "score": [164, 21, 2, 22, 324, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 13, 3, 2], "text": ["WIfi uses different frequency than cell phones. Frequencies used for wifi is absorbed by air more than those used by phones.", "First off, the antennas aren't the important part of this relationship; they are the length they need to be based on the frequency they are tuned to.  What you are thinking of is the transceiver that the antenna is attached to, however I will put it into layman's terms:\n\nPutting it simply, there are 2 antennas in radio frequency communication: the transmitter antenna and the receiver antenna.  If you think of the cell phone antenna as the receiver, and the cell tower as the transmitter, you have your 2 antennas.  \n\nThe connection between the 2 antennas needs a certain power level, and since the cell tower is nice and large and therefore providing the bulk of the necessary power, your cellphone antenna is much much smaller.  \n\nWith your router and computer, you are covering a smaller space, but the same principle applies.  The router and computer are the 2 antennas, the router is providing the bulk of the necessary power, and the computer antenna can be smaller.  \n\nLooping back around, cellphones actually have transceivers meaning they can send and receive information on radio frequencies, but the same ideas apply.  \n\nThere is an entire science and industry based on RF communication...my experience is based on that of RF design for sound engineering, basically wireless microphones, but the physics is the same for cell phones, satellite communication, ham radio, etc.  ", "Well first of all not all of the wireless network is actually wireless when it comes to cell phones. You have towers that transmit the wireless signal your cell picks up over a short distance ( few miles ) that are actually connected to a wired ground network that forwards the calls / data to the desired destination.\n\nYour wifi router uses less frequencies to transmit the wireless signal. Probably 2.4ghz - 5ghz.\n\nthe lower the frequency the wider the radio wave is and the shorter it travels but at the same time can penetrate walls better for a better signal. The higher the frequency the longer the wave will travel but once it hits a wall bounces around like a chicken with no head\n\ni could be wrong in some of this and if i am im sure someone will correct me.", "Cell phones really don't travel **that** far because there are cell towers everywhere.  These towers are very tall, which allows them to pick up the very faint signals of cell phones around them.   The size of the antenna isn't really relevant to reception.   The placement of antennae (up high and without obstruction)are the important parts.   Wifi routers operate on very high frequencies (2.4 gigahertz) which are more easily absorbed by walls,which is why they don't always cover a big house. ", "Two reasons:\n\n   * WiFi typically operates at 100 mW, cell phones are allowed to transmit up to 2000 mW.\n   * WiFi operates at a higher frequency, which is blocked more easily by walls, etc.\n\nThese are intentional. Wifi links have been established by hobbyists using souped- up routers over long distances (miles), but that defeats the purpose of home use, because if all routers reached that far, they'd all interfere with each other, making the connection slow.", "Your cellphone communicate only with the nearest cell tower, and the cell tower connects to something like a cell station and they are connected to (I don't know the english word ) cell communication centers and they are connected to each other. And in the frequency you are using 0.5w is doing a great job. So when you're talking to a friend every one of you talk to your nearest cell tower and the do all the rest (they are connected with cables mostly ) ", "So basically, wifi is specifically supposed to NOT have good range. WiFi operates on shared frequencies (2.4 ghz band has a few different channels, 5.8 ghz has more), so if it goes much past your house/apartment, you can interfere with your neighbor's wifi. If that happens, no one has wifi.\n\n-Because WiFi operates on shared radio frequencies, it's limited to very low power. It's also kind of disorganized and chaotic. \n\n\n-WiFi is on a higher frequency, which means the already limited signal power dissipates faster.\n\n-Although your cell phone radio doesn't transmit with quite as much power as the cellphone tower, there is some compensation for this at the cell phone tower. The antennas at the tower are also really good. \n\n-The equipment at the tower can be  several tens of thousands of dollars, whereas your average WiFi router is under $100\n\n-Most towers are tall, which helps signal go further (gets around buildings, over trees, etc).", "Alright, some seriously bullshit comments on this thread. This probably won't be seen by many but hopefully op sees it.\n\nMultiple factors are in play when considering cell phone signal vs wifi signal.\n\nTL;DR - A shit ton more power+lower frequencies+directed antennas=much farther range than your home wifi. \n\n1) Frequency - Frequencies are waves. The lower the frequency, the bigger the wave is. The bigger the wave, the farther it travels before it is no longer usable. Why does Verizon have such good service in very rural areas? They have a lot of 850mhz spectrum, this means that a single cell tower can serve a much greater radius. Lower frequencies also impact penetration. The lower the frequency, the better it is at getting through buildings, trees, etc... so less will interfere. \n\n2) Directed antennas - Your wifi router at home has an omni directional antenna. This means it is sending out signal in all directions. Ever seen those DIY hacks that you put a parabola on a wifi antenna to get better signal in a certain area? That's why, directing more power in one direction will improve signal in that direction. \n\nCell towers are not omni directional. Each cell tower has sectors, I've seen them go from 1 (rare), 3 (most common), to 6 (also rare). Each sector broadcasts its signal in a direction and if you could visualize how it's waves looked, you would see a cone. If you stand directly under a cell tower (assuming no other cell towers are near by) you will not get very good, or possibly any, signal.\n\n3) Power - this is the biggest factor. This is the biggest factor. Cell towers use a LOT of power compared to your home wifi. A single cell is powerful enough that, if not turned off, will burn a worker operating directly in front of the cell. \n\nPut simple, you could possibly power a single or maybe a few cells with your home power connection but you wouldn't be able to power an entire cell tower. \n\nSource: I work for a cell phone provider on the networking side. I now deal with the core but I used to work with the cell towers. If you have any more questions about how a cell phone network works, feel free to ask. I love talking about it.", "Have you ever seen a cell tower? Its a lot bigger than ur measly router", "The simple answer is that cellphone towers are transmitting with a lot more power than your WiFi router. It has nothing to do with the frequencies, as WiFi and cellphone towers have similar frequencies.", "Do you mean why router antennas are so big?", "There are a lot of cell base stations for your phone to talk to, they're very, very well situated, and they're somewhat more powerful than an average wifi AP. Tons of care and attention goes into antenna location, positioning, and characteristics. The physical size of the antenna is mostly a function of the frequencies being used, which are high, thus the small antennas. ", "This probably won't get seen - but I'll give it a go anyway.\n\nIt's a combination of a lot of factors that people have been talking about - but the key here is \"combination\". It's not just that your phone and the cell tower run at higher powers. They also know how to communicate with each other, maintain a constant link between each other and the cell tower has a \"capacity\" of number of phones it can talk to at one time; which cannot be broken - after this number it will not accept communications from another phone (for simplicity sake I'll state that your WiFi router is not limited in this way - it is limited, but not in the same way: that's a separate ELI5...)\n\nImagine you and your friends out in a field and you've all got a set of alphabet flashcards of different sizes (from postage stamp size up to A1) each with their own colour. You tell your friends to go and stand in a line about 10m apart from each other all facing you and then use the cards to send you a message. You will respond to them with the cards of their own colour as you have a set of all the colours.\n\nThe guy 10m from you holds up the A1 sized cards to start, and you're not able to see anyone else behind him because the card is in the way, so when you see the A1 sized card, you show your card to say you've got the message - but also that he needs to use a smaller sized card (the postage stamp one because you can read that from 10m away). This means that you and he can communicate (him using postage stamp sized cards, you using his coloured cards)\n\nWhile this is happening all you other friends are also holding up their A1 sized cards trying to get a message from you, but because you can't see them and so aren't responding, they keep trying the first part of the message. As the first guy changes to the postage stamp sized cards, you can see the 2nd guy and respond, tell him to use a smaller card, but bigger than the postage stamp so you can read it still from 20m away.\n\nThis continues down the line until you can see all of your friends and they're all using different sized cards. They know which messages are for them because your cards are colour coded, and you've made sure that you can see all of their cards, so you can talk to them all.\n\nThis means that your friend furthest away can still talk to you, even though he's a long way away. He's holding up the large card, which can be seen over all the smaller cards infront of it. This is like transmission power, phones nearer the tower are told to turn down their transmission power so that the tower can see what's happening \"behind\" them.\n\nThis only works because the tower creates an unbroken link between itself and each phone that it is talking to, so it has a record of what phone is on what power and how to talk to that phone. Because the tower then knows what it is looking for to communicate with the phone, the phone doesn't need to be transmitting with such high power.\n\nThere's a whole load more going on, if you're interested then drop me a PM and i'll explain more.\n\nTL,DR: It's not just 1 single thing that enables cell phones to work - there's a whole system designed specifically to get around range problems and a lot of smart things happening all at once.", "The bottom line is,  your cellphone operates on a frequency that can transmit to a cellular radio tower.  The tower is linked to an infrastructure and connected to a SP (service provider).  And wifi opperates on a higher frequency, and can only travel so far,  intentionally. ", "The cellphone tower is both a gigantic ear and a gigantic megaphone. The towers can \"superman listen\" and \"superman shout\" to everything else. Your router and your computer are like two people yelling across a train platform."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5v7rvq", "title": "A lot of people know about characters such as Captain America, which were used to promote american values in WW2; was there a german equivalent?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v7rvq/a_lot_of_people_know_about_characters_such_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de0cg77"], "score": [45], "text": ["Jay Baird's book *To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon* covers a lot of the Nazi's death-cult figures (such as Schlageter and Horst Wessel).\n\nThese mythologized, highly-propagandistic \"lives\" of Nazi \"martyrs\" served the function of providing idea Nazi role-models. \n\nSimilarly, Nazi films such as Hitlerjunge Quex set up ideal-types (in this case, of a Hitler Youth boy who takes on communist boys and is killed). \n\nThere was a lot of martyrdom and dying-for-the-cause, in short. \n\nI can't think of any cartoon and/or comic-type figures, though.  Such \"non-serious\" approach wouldn't really fit well with the supposed gravity and earnestness of Third Reich culture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5ox18t", "title": "if electricity travels at 300k meters per second, why does it take several hours to charge some lithium ion batteries.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ox18t/eli5_if_electricity_travels_at_300k_meters_per/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcmo5v0", "dcmq9w3", "dcmqqwh", "dcmrh7r", "dcmtn4h", "dcmvwsg"], "score": [6, 7, 5, 16, 3, 9], "text": ["Those two things aren't related.\n\nElectricity travels that fast.  That's why when you flick on your lights, it's basically instant.\n\nBut a lithium ion battery takes several hours to charge because it holds *a lot* of electricity.  The issue isn't how fast electricity is traveling, but how much has to pile in before a battery is charged.", "If you open the tap, water starts flowing out of it quickly.\n\nIt still takes a while until your bathtub is full.\n\n300 million meters per second, by the way.", "I bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, but you would still take hours to fill a house with bullets fired from your gun. ", "A battery isn't simply 'storing electricity' the same way a glass stores water.  The electricity that flows to a battery is used to reverse a chemical reaction.  The electricity is converted into chemical potential energy.  This is the part that takes some time.  Since it isn't a 100% efficient process, excess heat is generated.  If you were to charge the battery super quickly, bad things would happen.\n\nWhen the battery is being used to power something, the chemical potential energy is being converted back into electrical energy.", "\"If light travels 300k meters per second, why does it take several days to get a tan?\"", "Electrons in a conductor don't travel nearly that fast. The velocity that the electrons themselves travel at is referred to as the [drift velocity](_URL_0_), which is actually very slow (typically less than a millimetre per second). What travels quickly is the electrical *signal* - when a voltage is applied, the electrons at the far end of the conductor start moving almost instantly.\n\n\nYou can imagine a pipe filled with water:\n\n* The velocity of the water doesn't tell you how long it's going to take to fill your tank - you would also need to know how big your pipe is. What you want to know is how *much* water is flowing, not how fast it's flowing.\n\n* When you start pumping water, the disturbance will propogate at the speed of sound in water (which is about 1.5km/s), but that doesn't mean the water itself is travelling that fast. The water that starts flowing out the end of the pipe when you turn on the pumps is water that was already sitting near the end of the pipe.\n\n\nThe reason you can't supply a lithium battery with a higher current to make it charge faster is because doing so can damage the battery. Lithium batteries rely on a chemical reaction to store energy, which can only proceeed so fast. If too much current is supplied, lithium metal gets deposited on the electrodes, which results in loss of capacity as it is the lithium ions that store the charge. If this results in a short circuit, it can lead to thermal runaway and the [catastrophic failure of the battery](_URL_1_). Lithium batteries must be used within specified voltage and temperature ranges in order to remain safe to use. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J96ywv7yAM"]]}
{"q_id": "6ofbso", "title": "why is pedophilia considered a mental disorder?", "selftext": "DSM 4 puts pedophilia in the same category as paraphilias.  \n >  \"recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors that involve children, nonhuman subjects, or other non-consenting adults, or the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner.\"  \n\nDSM 5 talks about pedophilic disorder.\n >  \"\"[Pedophiles] would be diagnosed with pedophilic disorder either if their attractions toward children are causing them guilt, anxiety, alienation, or difficulty in pursuing other personal goals, or else if their urges cause them to approach children for sexual gratification in real life,\" \n\n\n\n\n  \nThese make the fact that pedophilia is a disorder go back the fact that it's socially unacceptable. If we lived in a society that allows intercourse with kids, it wouldn't be put there. It's just a disorder now because It can't be fulfilled in a healthy way, and without tragic consequences. I cannot find any sources that talk about the pedophile's brain compared to the normal brain. What's so different between, say, the homosexual brain and the pedophile brain that makes us say that homosexuality is not a disorder and pedophilia is? I kind of want a neuro-psychological explanation.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ofbso/eli5_why_is_pedophilia_considered_a_mental/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkgx1t7", "dkgx2dl", "dkgxc2r", "dkgxw6k", "dkhwzqz"], "score": [11, 7, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["Having a mental disorder does not mean that your brain is different.\n\nWikipedia:\n\n\"A\u00a0mental disorder, also called a\u00a0mental illness[2]\u00a0or\u00a0psychiatric disorder, is a\u00a0behavioral\u00a0or\u00a0mental\u00a0pattern that may cause\u00a0suffering\u00a0or a\u00a0poor ability to function\u00a0in life. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting, or occur as a single episode. Many disorders have been described, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders\"\n\nI imagine pedofilia is considered as such because fulfilling such desires is violent and extremely harmful to a childs psyche.\n\nPedofilia is after all always non consensual, since the target is by definition a person too immature to be able to give consent. ", "Nothing. It's just that it's socially unacceptable and children aren't smart enough to know what's being done to them. That's all. ", "There has been so much talk of paedophilia in recent years that I've been wondering what's going on there. I have friends with children, and those children seem totally non-sexual to me. They don't have any experience or understanding of sexuality at all - they are completely unable to relate to it. \n\nSo my theory is that paedophilia is a kind of delusion: by sexualising children, a paedophile sees sexuality where none actually exists. I remember how clueless I was a a child: had I been attacked by a paedophile, I would not have understood him or her at all: I would just have been hurt without understanding why. ", "All a \"mental disorder\" means, as far as the DSM is concerned, is that something is abnormal enough to cause a poor ability to function \"normally\" (I agree this can be an arbitrary metric at times) or causes actual harm, whether that be mental or physical. This can be something that's going on behaviorally, for example someone picking their skin due to OCD, it can be due to brain chemistry like when the dopamine receptors in the brain get all funky and cause some types of depression, or a combination of both.\n\nIf you look at the language in the DSM 5, it actually gives you your answer. Not all pedophiles have \"pedophillic disorder.\" There's a big old IF in the middle of the sentence - it's only a disorder if it's making it difficult to pursue a normal life. What the DSM 5 did was take pedophilia and put it on a spectrum similar to many other mental disorders. It acknowledges the fact that some people have pedophillic thoughts and are able to ignore them and carry on with their lives as though those thoughts never happen, while for others it can have a significant enough impact on their lives to cause real problems.\n\n(that, and it makes it easier to bill the insurance company/convince the insurance company to pay for therapy, but the messed up ways insurance interacts with mental health providers is a whole different can of worms)", "I read an article years ago, so I'm afraid I can't provide sources, where they stated paedophilia is more like a compulsive disorder than anything else. It's not just the sexualising of children there is also an issue with impulse control which is where the danger really lies.\n\nMy information, being as old as it is, could be completely out of date and they may have a better, different understanding now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vl3tt", "title": "why do i feel like i'm going to vomit when i get really hungry?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vl3tt/eli5_why_do_i_feel_like_im_going_to_vomit_when_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cetcd10", "cetcj98", "cetcm5c", "cetd5ok", "cetdcgo", "cetdkgh", "cete158", "cete6ea", "ceteiwu", "cetessj", "cetf54m", "cetfarm", "cetg02b", "cetjb4i", "cetjclv", "cetlr1r", "cetm4yo", "cetnrna", "cetqtan", "cetrck1", "cett4z8", "cetum7o", "cetvswh"], "score": [32, 1045, 116, 14, 5, 3, 19, 59, 4, 5, 3, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["This previous answer should help\n\n_URL_0_", "Because your blood sugar drops and you get hypoglycemic which causes the nausea or the puky feeling.\n\n a simpler way to explain this- When have been hungry for a while our bodies start slowing down to preserve nutrition. This affects blood circulation to put it simply which is why some of us feel light headed, dizzy,etc. \n\nEdit 2- another reason for nausea is the acid produced in the stomach. Excessive acid on an empty stomach can cause nausea/ vomiting as well.\n\nEdit 3- Before my inbox explodes, I would like to say I don't think Hypoglycemia is the only cause here. It's different things for different people as I explained above.  We all have different tolerances towards hunger. This is not a thesis on starvation. \n \nEdit 4- link in my post below in the thread \n\nEdit 5- RIP my inbox. \n\nNot all of these things will happen if you've skipped a meal. It's different for different folks. Some of us have blood sugar issues and some don't. A person in this thread got a stroke after starving for nearly a week. \nSo, I am not saying if you skip a meal your body will completely shut down. There are different stages of hunger. \nEdit- language \n", "I get that every morning, until I sneeze. Then the feeling vanishes like magic.", "I've suffered from this almost permanently for two years now. It has totally ruined my life. I've been unable to work and have moved back in with my parents. Every month or so I feel myself for a few days but then I'm back to feeling shit. I've been to many doctors, the going hypothesis is that it's psycho somatic. I've gone along with this but this post has made me question it. I've never been tested for blood sugar. Plus, the symptoms started when I started a new diet (not on any diet any more though) . If anyone helps me solve this there's a lifetime of reddit gold in it for you. Also I will fly to your town to give you a hug. ", "You should see a doctor about being hypoglycemic. I am the same way, i use a glucose meter regularly to prevent myself getting to that point. Peanut butter crackers works miracles. You need protein and carbs \n", "Can someone tell me why this never happens to me? I can starve myself to the point where you pass that hunger stage and you just forget about it but I've never, EVER, felt nauseous because of it.", "Question... why does this happen in obese people just as much as slim people? I feel as a big girl i should have a reserve for my blood to regulate with no? Ive tried skipping a meal and youd think my body could \"afford\" to not eat but no i get this pain/nausea also.", "It's can be caused by the acid in your empty stomach.  The longer it's been since you ate the worse it can be.  By the acid not having anything to digest it causes irritation to the stomach lining and lower esophagus which you feel as a sensation of nausea.  This sensation tends to be worse in people with a predisposition to having acid reflux.  \n\nAn actual medical cause can be gastroparesis where the stomach does not empty correctly and can leave food in your stomach from meals digested during your prior meal that adds to irritation.  \n\nIn addition if the nausea is extremely transient, such as a sensation going back and forth between extremely hungry and nauseous quickly, it's likely a caused by a strong signal in the gastric nerves and the limited ability of our brains too correctly interpret this signal.  So it is likely trying to interpret the extreme range of human gastric sensation and gets the two confused, i.e. hunger or nausea.", "Your respirations, or breaths in and out, become more shallow and rapid (ex. Hyperventilating). This causes your oxygen (good air) levels to drop, and your carbon dioxide (bad air) levels in the blood to rise. Blood sugar at this time is obsolete (irrelevant). Next time you feel angry, try to focus on slowing down your breaths. You will not get nauseous. \n\nEdit: Holy shit I read this wrong. Hungry not angry. I wondered why everyone was getting so off topic. Agree with first comment. Your blood sugars are not consistent. If you keep glucose levels...uh, level throughout the day you should never have that feeling. In other words, eat small meals every 2-3 hrs, even if you are fat. And don't freaking starve yourself. It's lame.", "A few days ago, the weather was REALLY hot, and so I didn't really feel hungry for pretty much most of the day. In the late afternoon that day I went to the pool with a friend (since it was still hot) and I got the nauseated feeling. That feelin of nausea was really the only thing reminding me that I hadn't eaten. At first I was wondering why I felt sick, but a few minutes later realised that it was because I hadn't eaten anything (I'd had the feeling bedore for the same reason).", "I always thought it was because your stomach in anticipation of food starts producing more acids to digest and the acid makes you feel pukey.", "This used to happen to me all the time, multiple times a day. And occasionally I would actually puke. I was eating every hour or so to make sure I was never hungry because whenever I got hungry I would almost instantly get nauseous. Turns out I was hyperthyroid and my metabolism was way too fast for my body. I'm now at normal levels of TSH, T4 and T3 and haven't had a problem since!", "I think it might be your body preparing to survive without food, so It'll run on body fat and other stuff instead of food. This also happens to me when I'm not hydrated enough. Drink lotsa water!", "I would like to know why the same feeling occurs when I get really sleepy. ", "Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I always thought it was from both your blood sugar dropping and your stomach acids churning around in there.", "It's probably because your digestive juices are starting to get irritated from not giving it food to break down.", "FYI Caffeine impedes insulin, raising blood sugar, and also has an anorexic effect (in many people). If you consume caffeine without eating you're doubling the effects of the low-blood sugar crash, especially finding food disgusting.", "I'd like to know this too, it's always bothered me. I'm 24, healthy, and ain't dead despite being afflicted with this 1-2 times a month since I was really young, so it obviously isn't something serious.\n\nI could never (and can't still) eat breakfast because if I try to eat that early I get sick or find the idea of eating so unappealing I can't, and usually have a big lunch. If I'm still not hungry at lunch, then I can get sick from not eating later on.", "Cause your stomach is trying to digest your stomach.  \n", "Another reason is that your gut produces very powerful contractions in a starved state, trying to squeeze out every little bit of food in your system. This causes the rumbling feeling. Also you would be hypoglycemic, causing your brain to not get the supply it's demanding, making you lightheaded. Along with that, in a starved state your body starts to break down fat and protein, changing the pH of your blood. All those reasons and a lot of other metabolic changes cause you to feel sick.", "Glad someone ask this I always feel like puking if I get to hungry then i get really bad stomach cramps. ", "What would be the best way to combat this without eating? \n\nBefore anyone expresses concern, I'm not asking bc I have an eating disorder or want to adopt any unhealthy habits, but I have been practicing intermittent fasting and occasional cleanses (which I enjoy and don't need anyone's opinion on) but my biggest challenge is that nauseous feeling. I'm not hungry, don't want to eat, enjoy fasting, but I end up eating just bc I am dry heaving through a shower in the morning. I'll usually drink some orange juice, which helps  &  now makes sense to me, but my main reason for fasting is to occasionally break a sugar/carb addiction, so it kinda defeats the purpose to have to eat something really sweet. ", "I get this feeling right when I wake up. Then I drink my coffee and I am good for another 2 hours or so."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mu4ex/eli5_why_do_i_feel_nauseated_when_im_super_hungry/cccpxvf"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fy7qw", "title": "Is Magnetism Simply Angular Momentum at the Atomic Level?", "selftext": "(As I understand it, and probably way off)\n\n\nImagine electrons that exist in the metallic cloud of valence electrons contained within a bar magnet.  This magnet has a lot of free flowing electrons within the iron.  At the North pole the electrons are spinning in one direction, who knows, maybe similar to a vortex.  At the South pole, the electrons are spinning in the opposite direction.\n\nIs the force that leaks out - what we call magnetism - simply just angular momentum from electrons spinning within the bar magnet?\n\n\nYour views are appreciated as always,", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fy7qw/is_magnetism_simply_angular_momentum_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1jiihj", "c1jj3n2", "c1jj41f"], "score": [5, 5, 2], "text": ["Fundamentally, a magnetic field is a relativistically transformed electric field. In other words, when charged particles are moving, there's a magnetic field around them.\n\nI still don't really understand ferromagnetism, though. I mean, I understand that it comes from the \"spin\" of the electron, but then I'm told that this spin really doesn't exist at the quantum level, so you just have to accept that it's a quality of valence electrons that creates a magnetic field just like you'd expect from an actual spinning electron. But I'm probably missing something there.", "I'm not sure whether your question is why spins would line up in a ferromagnetic material, or why lined-up spins would cause a magnetic field -- I'll try and give a quick answer to both.\n\nFor the first, ferromagnetism is basically a result of the Pauli Exclusion principle (what isn't, right?).  As fermions, any two electrons want to be antisymmetric.  As charged particles, they also want to be far away from each other.  In larger atomic orbitals (think unfilled d orbitals like those in iron, nickel, or cobalt) there is some considerable overlap between where one electron wants to be and where it's neighbors are hanging out.  Since they are not friendly neighbors they want to see as little of each other as they can -- they want to spread out, and that favors a *spatially* antisymmetric wavefunction (i.e. they spend as little time as possible in the same place).  To remain antisymmetric overall, this requires a *symmetric spin portion* of the wavefunction.\n\n**In essence, when their orbitals overlap it's easier for electrons to avoid each other if they have the same direction of spin.**\n\nAs for why this creates a magnetic field, it's because this quantum mechanical property of spin causes particles to have an intrinsic magnetic moment.  While it's analogous to a spinning sphere of charge, It's not *because* this or that.  It doesn't make much sense, I think, to ask *why* particles have electric charge -- it's just a property of particles.  Same with their spin and associated magnetic moment -- it might result in crazy stuff but hey, whatya know, they have spin and a magnetic moment.  But since they have these magnetic moments, if they all align they can cause a very sizable magnetic field, which can be seen by anything with electric charge nearby.\n\nAlso, to pick one nit, in the \"perfect\" bar magnet we're talking about here the spins at both ends are aligned in the *same* direction.  We have one direction picked out and there is an \"in\" side and an \"out\" side, no flipping of directions for the spins within.", "Magnetism is a result of the fact that when an electric field changes, the information about the change can only travel at the speed of light.\n\nWhat you're sort of talking about is alignment of small magnetic fields from atoms, which is generally called the Ising model."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "23i6fg", "title": "universal basic income. if the government guarantees everyone a certain amount of money, wont it just cause the cost of goods and services to go up until the basic income is irrelevant?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23i6fg/eli5_universal_basic_income_if_the_government/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgxa0qh", "cgxa6j6", "cgxcd56", "cgxcfen"], "score": [14, 18, 5, 13], "text": ["Depends on shortages and surpluses, a lot of that money for \"basic income\"  (transportation, housing, food, and healthcare) is already being spent by the poor or subsidized by the government.   Theoretically, if you provide a guaranteed income, you wouldn't need other expensive social programs like food stamps, wellfare, medicaid, subsidized housing, etc.", "\"  > It is, and it will just become more feasible as technology grows. The real question is whether it's politically acceptable, since it would require some radical changes.\n\n > Take the federal budget of $3.45 trillion. We can eliminate social security ($800B), medicare/medicaid ($750B), welfare ($400B), and probably some defense and other miscellaneous cuts ($200B). \n\n > This leaves us with a federal budget of $1.3 trillion or so.\n\n > We can replace the medical programs with universal healthcare, since it would be more efficient to do it this way than to have people buy insurance and all. Most other countries spend around $3000 per citizen, or around 10% of GDP, depending which figure you take, you'll get different numbers. If you take the $3000 figure, you can spend around $1 trillion for UHC, but if you go by GDP, you're more likely to spend closer to $1.5 trillion. I'll use 1.3 trillion for the sake of estimate. This means we have federal outlays of $2.6 trillion (to be fair, states will cut their programs too, so you'd save a lot there). \n\n > next phase, a tax code change. Eliminate the entire income and payroll tax code. Replace it with about a 40% flat tax on all earned income. No loopholes, no deductions, no nothing. Well, ok, since capital gains go into that, in order to make the 40% tax more acceptable, we can allow for a 40% capital loss deduction to make the gambling \"fair\", but yeah, other than that. Same with corporate rates, jack them up to 40% to prevent abuse (only profit taxed, obviously).\n\n > _URL_0_\n\n > Going by that calculator, assuming 230 million adults eligible, 2.6 trillion in other outlays, and using those numbers (which, looking up the stats themselves, are accurate), the numbers add up. Every adult US citizen will be able to get $15,000, cash. Or, if they desire, I'd say they can take it in form of a tax credit or deduction. \n\n > So, let's see how this works for numerous income levels.\n\n > Minimum wage is currently $7.25 and that's $15,000 a year, roughly. So they pay $6,000 in taxes and then get their $15k UBI. So they end up with $24,000.\n\n > Say they jack it up to $10.10 like Obama proposes, which I'd deem unnecessary with UBI, but let's work on the numbers. That's $21,000 a year. You'd get taxed on about $8400 of that, but get a $15k UBI. So you'd make a total of $27,600. \n\n > Say you make around the household median income of $52,000 a year. That's $20,800 in taxes, but it would only be $5,800 after UBI, or 11.2% in effect. \n\n > Say you make $1,000,000 a year. You get taxed for $400,000, but get the same $15,000. So you'd end up with a 38.5% tax rate. Considering these guys currently pay around 20%, they're gonna be unhappy, but they're still freaking rich and going home with $615,000, so I see it as perfectly fair.\n\n > So yeah, the math is feasible. I'll admit, this is kind of the rough, perfect world numbers, maybe the real numbers would be different somehow due to finding ways to avoid taxes, etc., or maybe more outlays than I'm accounting for, but you can get the gist of it. Some people fear capital flight with taxes those high, but considering how a lot of other countries have effective rates in the 30-40% range and don't have problems, I don't see a problem. You still will have state and local taxes, but I'd see these getting cut since they'd no longer need safety nets themselves. Regardless, I can see most people, even top earners, keeping at least half their paycheck, with ALL taxes taken into consideration.\n\n > This budget is also revenue neutral, which should make people who care about the deficit happy. \"\n\nOriginal post was from r/basicincome. I would recommend going there for more questions and information. \n\n", "If the government will give you welfare for just existing, won't it just cause the cost of goods and services to go up until the welfare is irrelevant?\n\nWait, the government DOES give you welfare?! How come everything isn't more expensive than welfare folks can afford?", "I'm sorry, a little late but I didn't see a real answer to your question. \n\nIf the government were to declare a basic universal income, made no other changes to policy, printed off the cash to cover every dime of this new promise, then yes, after a short period prices would have risen to offset the increase in the quantity of money. \n\nIf, however, the government takes its over $1T in current anti-poverty spending a repurposes it in the form of UBI, there would be little concomitant inflation because those funds are already in the system and there is no increase in the count of dollars. \n\nDon't believe economic hocus pocus about people being exploited or costs being distorted, in the economy now or under an alternative scheme. That is usually fear-mongering founded on ignorance. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://jsfiddle.net/3bYTJ/11/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "azlcve", "title": "Why were women commonly used as personifications of nations or ideals (liberty, justice etc..) around the enlightenment era if they were considered to be the lesser sex?", "selftext": "I live in France and the symbol of Marianne is everywhere. She\u2019s not the only women who represents an identity or an idea. Liberty and justice are depicted as women too. National personifications don\u2019t seem to escape the feminine touch either. Britannia is depicted as a woman and a lot of art from the enlightenment period seems to depict different ideals as women. This doesn\u2019t seem to make a lot of sense when you consider the fact that women were seen as less intelligent and weaker than men during these times and wouldn\u2019t even have the right to vote in the US, U.K. and France until the early 20th century. \n\nMy absolute favourite piece of art is \u201cliberty leading the people\u201d by Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix. It\u2019s a good example of the female personification that I\u2019m talking about. Liberty (or Marianne I guess) is depicted as a bare chested general, leading revolutionaries forward across a pile of corpses. Surely any woman who attempted to stage a scene like this would be highly frowned upon in that era? Women were also considered to be \u201cmore sensitive\u201d and \u201cweak\u201d so why is she depicted in such a warlike pose? The Statue of Liberty is another example. She stands tall and with a harsh expression. That goes against a lot of ideals about womanhood from the time. They aren\u2019t depicted as wives or mothers but as fierce warriors, judges, revolutionaries and leaders. Why? Is it a male fantasy? An idealistic portrayal of humanity? Just an aesthetic choice? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/azlcve/why_were_women_commonly_used_as_personifications/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eiapaa7"], "score": [11], "text": [" > This doesn\u2019t seem to make a lot of sense when you consider the fact that women were seen as less intelligent and weaker than men during these times and wouldn\u2019t even have the right to vote in the US, U.K. and France until the early 20th century.\n\nTo go broader than your immediate title question ... the issue is a lot more complicated than \"men were considered strong, capable, and smart and women were considered weak, incompetent, and stupid\". As I explained in my answer to [Were there women opposed to suffrage?](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Basically, by the 1840s, it was firmly established that men and women were complementary in all things, and that while men had to go out into the world to make money and participate in politics, each needed to be balanced with a sweet woman who took pride in domestic management and raising children, on the personal level as well as on a macro scale. (This ties in very strongly to Queen Victoria's self-presentation as the mother of a nation/empire.) Today we recognize that this is an unfair playing field, and that men and woman should be given the same opportunities and expectations, but the complementarian view was very widely held by both men and women and was generally put as a positive: women were morally pure, and by raising children and creating the ideal home for men, they were influencing the world on a much deeper scale than any MP or senator who made laws or a random male citizen who cast a vote. The nitty-gritty of politics was opposed to this moral purity, and, it was thought, could muddle it. Women who took on masculine qualities or tastes weren't bad, per se, but they were unnatural and a threat not just to their individual family, but also on that macro, societal level - including to other women, since their own high moral standing was derived from everyone believing that their domestic duties were as honorable and worthwhile as men's public work that earned money.  All of this is very middle-class, since it relies on a male-wage-earner/stay-at-home-mother pairing that didn't exist among the working classes (where women often had to work for a wage or at least concentrate mainly on the onerous and dirty work in the home, since they were unable to delegate it to a servant, and not spend hours reading to and instructing children gently) or the upper classes (where men often didn't earn a wage, but lived on inherited money, and wives had access to lots of servants to handle domestic management and childrearing) - but the limited applicability in some sense strengthened the power of the ideal. Working-class women saw it as a life to be aspired to, and used the stereotypes of female innocence as their one defense in court or in public life, for instance.\n\nHistorical fiction written in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries tends to take our modern consensus that this is unequal and unfair treatment and project it back, having only bad characters believe in it for the most part, and having any good male characters stop believing it promptly after seeing evidence of female competence. The bad characters do not *really* believe in the beneficial qualities of women, too - they use this philosophy as an excuse to marry women against their will, imprison them in asylums, steal their money and property, etc. And certainly many men historically did this as well, but it was by no means all a pretense. Women were seen as possessing good qualities of their own, and if they appeared to be doing something coded masculine well, it was always possible to show them as exceptional examples (\"Most women don't have much of a head for mathematics, but you wouldn't believe what Miss Lovelace is working on!\") or, in extreme cases, redefine the coding.\n\nThe concept of depicting a people (in the sense of an ethnic group) as a woman originated with the Romans, and was revived in the Renaissance/Early Modern Period for self-description by a number of countries - Britannia, Dame Scotia, Helvetia - and in Early Modern art there's also quite a lot of female personification of various virtues, sins, and abstract concepts. Portraying \"liberty\" as a woman, as revolutionaries in France were doing from the 1770s on, was simply traditional, and also allowed the supposed moral superiority of women to be brought into play; most likely the ideal of protecting a woman or womanhood with violence also comes into it psychologically, as artwork and rhetoric that made the country or the revolution or the quality feminine could be seen as exhorting specifically men to come to its aid through war. The famous painting by Delacroix certainly shows Marianne as more active on the battlefield than others might, but she's also *holding* the gun rather than firing or even brandishing it, her more engaged arm holding up the French flag that she also represented. The Statue of Liberty comes from the same tradition of anthropomorphizing liberty and doing so with a woman's form (it's a French artwork given to the US), and likewise she's not performing any kind of violence or direct action: she's holding a torch and welcoming the huddled masses - it's somewhat maternal.\n\nI hope this makes sense?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/abt9ek/were_there_women_opposed_to_suffrage/ed497dh/"]]}
{"q_id": "30vdkj", "title": "why is it common for animals to birth multiple offspring at a time but rare for humans?", "selftext": "Edit: What I mean was, why will animals have a litter at one time, while humans will usually just have one child at a time", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30vdkj/eli5_why_is_it_common_for_animals_to_birth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpw53ik", "cpw5bnb", "cpw5c6i", "cpw5qv7", "cpw8myt", "cpwgc9e"], "score": [11, 6, 9, 3, 15, 2], "text": ["Lots of animals have single offspring at a time.  Most larger hoofed mammals as well as many apex predators and larger primates typically have single births.", "In general, it has to do with survivability. Single births mean the parent has more time for that individual. Multiple births mean less time per offspring. Each individual offspring therefore has a lower chance of survival, but as a group, there is a good chance that at least one will survive. \nSeems like the larger mammals tend to have single births.  For example, polar bears and elephants usually have single births.  But that doesn't always equate to larger offspring. Polar bear cubs are exceptionally small at birth. I'm not positive, but I'm thinking ounces. They are also denned up at the time of birth though and are a more decent size by the time they emerge. Elephant calves are a couple hundred pounds at birth. Larger size at birth or by the time they emerge from the den and risk encountering predators also helps with survivability.\n", "Among other things, the way our hips are built. Being bipedal, our hips bear  a lot of weight from our body. To compensate for the increased stress as compared to other animals, female birth canals are much smaller. This means that human births are comparatively more painful, traumatic, and dangerous than the births of other animals. Since even one at a time can create massive trauma, multiple births at one time could easily be lethal. This likely created a very strong selective pressure for women who did not have multiple births at once, since they could have more children over time than their rivals, who would be much more likely to die and thus have fewer total offspring. ", "It's because of our development. Lots of animals are exactly the opposite for them it's just spray and pray they simply produce hundreds or thousands of offspring and hope a few make it. For example sea turtles you see the hatchlings running down the beach and most of them don't make it, but they have so many hatchlings that it keeps the species going. There's no parental involvement the young are independent from day one. \n\nHigher mammals are different it takes us a long time to mature. This is especially true for humans because of our brain development. So we have one or two offspring at a time but invest massive time and resources into raising them. ", "As others have posted here, not just humans but many animals tend to birth one offspring, while many others have lots of babies at one time. As a species you can adopt one of two strategies: you can have lots of babies so that even if some die, others will hopefully survive to the age where they can reproduce. The disadvantage of this is that you have to spread your love around - you can't spend as much time and attention on each one as you could if you had fewer kids. The other strategy is to have few babies, and pour as much time, love and attention to them as possible to ensure they will survive. These two strategies are known as [r/K selection theory](_URL_0_). Species like fruit-flies that have tons of kids are r-selected. This is generally a better strategy in an unstable environment. Humans, cows and others that normally have one kid at a time are K-selected. This strategy is better in a more stable environment, where you can expect to live long enough to reproduce again later in life. ", "It's a matter of resource management. Some species dedicate more resources to few offspring to give better odds of survival. Other species dedicate fewer resources to more spawn and count on the survival of some to carry on the legacy.\n\nEvidence of this, species with fewer offspring tend to have longer gestation periods and care for their offspring longer after birth while those that produce more spawn tend to leave their spawn sooner. Also, those that invest more resources tend to have offspring that take longer to mature into independence while those that have more offspring tend to develop more quickly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory#r.2FK_selection_theory"], []]}
{"q_id": "1x9d28", "title": "Is there any place in the solar system that one can see a moon as big as ours?", "selftext": "I assume gas giants would be quite spectacular to see in the sky from their moons. \n\nBut where else in the solar system would be a good place to watch the sky from a glass dome?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x9d28/is_there_any_place_in_the_solar_system_that_one/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf9afvw", "cf9bwf3"], "score": [6, 10], "text": ["As far as I can tell, the only moon that would appear bigger from the surface of its primary than our Moon is Io as seen from the surface of Jupiter (whatever that means). But only about 15% bigger in diameter compared to the Moon as seen from Earth.\n\nHowever some moons as seen from another moon do appear bigger than that. Io as seen from the next moon of Jupiter Europa, at their closest pass, would look about 50% bigger by diameter than what the Moon looks from Earth. Saturn's moon Tethys as seen from the moon Enceladus would look almost twice the diameter of the full moon. Uranus' moon Ariel as seen from Miranda would be about the same.\n\nI didn't go through all the minor moons of the gas giants, but some of them may pass very close to each other so despite being very small, they could appear quite big from the surface of one another. One pair that caught my eye were Pandora and Prometheus, moons of Saturn. They're fairly similar in size around 80 km in diameter. From the surface of the other, they each would appear around 3 to 4 times the diameter of our Moon. Especially Prometheus is very irregularly shaped so the long side could be up to 5 times the diameter of the full moon.", "Pluto's moon, Charon, orbits at only 19500 km from Pluto. That's much closer than our Moon at 380000 km. Even if Charon is considerably smaller, it should look very big from Pluto.\n\nIf I didn't mess up with the math then the angular diameter (apparent size) of Charon seen from Pluto should be 3.76 degrees. Compare this to our Moon, which is only half a degree seen from Earth.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "wscli", "title": "Should I throw a apple core when in the outdoors or just keep it and throw it to the garbage later?", "selftext": "So I was eating an apple at the beach the other day and it got me thinking. Is it less harmful for the environment if I just throw the core or any organic waste right in the outdoors or keep it and throw to the rubbish instead, where it will be together with a ton of non organic materials that will not decompose? And what do YOU do?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/wscli/should_i_throw_a_apple_core_when_in_the_outdoors/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5g342e", "c5g5xo5"], "score": [7, 4], "text": ["As a back packer, I can say that you should be careful what you do with organic waste that may contain seeds.  There's almost zero chance that your apple core will result in an apple tree that disrupts the ecosystem of your suburb.  However, if you are in a national park or some other delicate ecosystem, just pack it out.", "In the Environmental Science class I TA'd for in grad school, each semester we had a guest lecturer from the local landfill come to talk about what a landfill is, how it is constructed, how it works, etc. etc. etc.\nShe actually made a point of saying that due to conditions in the landfill (compression and anoxia were mentioned, off the top of my head), an apple core will take significantly longer (on the order of tens of years) to decompose in a landfill than it would otherwise.\n\nTossing it on the ground isn't always the best. As others have said already, there's the issue of seeds to consider. Plus, it will still take time to decompose, and some people may not take too kindly to a rotten apple core laying about on the beach/hiking trail/suburban lawn/side of the highway/wherever. Be considerate. Think about where you would be tossing it. The best option may be to save it and compost it later."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "t5g42", "title": "In regards to a black hole, what does it mean for space to be moving faster than light?", "selftext": "I'm talking about [this video](_URL_0_) at about 1:05 he explains that the event horizon is where space is moving faster than light. I don't understand this means, like the vacuum of space is (sucking? expanding?) faster than the speed of light? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t5g42/in_regards_to_a_black_hole_what_does_it_mean_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4jozyl", "c4jti1b", "c4jtv7e"], "score": [6, 2, 2], "text": ["I'm not sure what they're referring to because I don't have sound on this computer, and that's a weird way of phrasing things. Around a rotating black hole there's a region called an ergosphere, in which it is impossible to stand still. In effect, the space around the black hole is rotating with it, and to resist that rotation and stay in the same place you'd have to move faster than the speed of light.", "That is not a good way to describe what is happening. The gravity of a black hole (and all other mass) curves space. At the event horizon the curvature of space is so great that any direction of travel is towards the singularity for an object of any velocity, including light (especially light, since light has no choice but to travel with the curvature of space).\n", "Honestly, I think this is a very poor description of the physics. I wouldn't read too much into it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYKyt3C0oT4"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4xbv51", "title": "Is this claim that the Bahmani sultanate of India killed 100,000 Hindus yearly accurate?", "selftext": "[This website](_URL_0_)\nclaims that the Bahmani sultanate of central india would set a quota of 100,000 hindus to kill yearly. This seems an extraordinary claim and does not cite sources. Through googling I found [this website](_URL_1_) which attributes this claim to \"Ferishtha\", who I believe refers to a Persian scholar called Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah. Is there any truth to this claim and also how tolerant was the Bahmani sultanates of Hinduism in general if not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xbv51/is_this_claim_that_the_bahmani_sultanate_of_india/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6f5bzm"], "score": [15], "text": ["This is somewhat outside of my time-frame, but I'd like to add some context to these claims, and hopefully others can add to it. First off, some reservations regarding *sources*. I'd be very careful with a website like the one you cite titled \"The Biggest Holocaust in World History\" that doesn't give a full author's name and ends with the nice sentence \"*Any one who speaks for Hindus is a Hitler or is in the process of becoming one and any group which speaks for Hindus are Nazis or are in the process of becoming Nazis*\". Some obvious reasons: Here we have a conflation of historical processes a few centuries apart, and the use of the modern concept \"holocaust\" in a completely different, pre-modern context. What is more, it shows the author's clear partiality (e.g. Muslim deaths are simply not mentioned) in the field of South Asian history where according to Richard M. Eaton \"*visions [of how history happened] were [...] used by nineteenth or twentieth century imperialists, nationalists, or religious revivalists for their own purposes*\", and still continue to be used by various groups.\n\nIn the article \"The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan\", Eaton raises some more interesting points on the relationship between the Bahmani sultanate and the neighbouring medieval Hindu realms including Vijayanagara, and on the source you mention (p. 137):\n\n >  North of the Krishna River, meanwhile, the medieval Persian chroniclers who wrote the histories of the Bahmani Kingdom and its successors - Sayid 'Ali Tabata, Rafi' al-Din Shirazi, or *Muhammad Qasim Firishta* - were all high-born Iranian immigrants who tended to adopt a colonialist view towards non-Muslim Indian society. Transplanted from their native homelands in Iran, such immigrant writers routinely stigmatized the people of Vijayanagara as 'infidels'. Since these men were hired to chronicle their patrons' grand deeds, many of which focused on struggles with Vijayanagara over control of the Raichur Doab, and these struggles became the principal context in which subsequent readers would see this period of history. Replete with mutually demonizing tropes, the rhetoric of warfare generated by literate ideologues on both sides of the Krishna ultimately took on a life of its own and hardened into the Maginot Line that today continues to divide Daccani historiography into a 'Hindu' south and a 'Muslim' north. \n\nHere we can see how foreign elites adopted a strong emphasis against their rulers' Hindu enemies, similiar to strategies used by Brahman chroniclers in the rival realm Vijayanagara. Adding to this perspective are further reservations regarding Firishta as a source here. It's interesting to note that the second website you linked to deviates from the quoted 100.000 executions per year by stating that \"*Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus*\". Furthermore as the Bahmani sultanate existed for around 180 years this yearly number would make one serious headcount, even taking into consideration the sultanate's decline following the beginning of power struggles in the late 15th century. \n\n >  how tolerant was the Bahmani sultanates of Hinduism in general if not?\n\nA last point that seems important to me here is *geopolitical*. Eaton in his article goes on to describe similiarities in the adoption of Islamic and Hindu customs in the rival realms: \"*Such rhetoric, however, has prevented more recent generations from appreciating the degree to which Vijayanagara and its northern neighbours were integrated into a multi-ethnic, transregional universe knit together by shared political norms, cultural values and aesthetic tastes - the Islamicate 'world-system'.*\"  (I've written about [Muslim influences in Vijayanagara](_URL_0_) earlier in case you're interested.) Apart from cultural exchange, it's important to keep in mind that the Bahmani sultanate bordered on Hindu realms like Vijayanagara but also the Gajpatis of Orissa -- which meant that despite huge military campaigns from both sides there were also attempts to hold up a kind of political equilibrium. Killings of Hindus by the Bahmani sultanate in the numbers quoted (if they were hypothetically possible) would have surely led to strong retribution campaigns by other realms.\n\n **So:** While it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to find clear demographical sources for the numbers mentioned, and while wars with huge casualties did take place at the time, the numbers still seem clearly exaggerated to me. This has to do on the one hand with the partiality of the given source, Firishta, a Persian chronicler highlighting his Bahmani rulers' strength and their Hindu rivals' weakness. On the other hand, the Bahmani sultanate was connected both culturally and geopolitically with the neighbouring Hindu realms, leading to attempts of upholding an equilibrium or even peace at certain times in its history.\n  \n  \n**Sources**: \n\n- Richard M. Eaton: \"The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan\", in \"Cultural History of Medieval India\"\nby Meenakshi Khanna.\n\n- Hermann Kulke  &  Dietmar Rothermund: \"A History of India\" (ch. 4).\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.hinduwebsite.com/history/holocaust.asp", "http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/irin/genocide.html"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fbfd6/the_islamic_period_of_india_gets_portrayed_as_a/ctoc4w0"]]}
{"q_id": "1jc1kw", "title": "when you multiply a negative number by a negative number, why is the result a positive number?", "selftext": "This never made any sense to me, and I've gone through college calculus 2. I mean let's say you have negative 5 sets of negative 10 apples. This means you actually have 50 apples? Do two wrongs actually make a right?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jc1kw/when_you_multiply_a_negative_number_by_a_negative/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbd5twg", "cbd6ecu", "cbd6edt", "cbd7jhk", "cbd7t4q"], "score": [6, 17, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["5*10 = 50.\n\nNow, what's 5 * -10? Well, I don't know, but let's call it x. 5 * -10 = x. And now let's add those two equations together: (5 * 10) + (5 * -10) = 50 + x. Cool. But look, there's a factor of 5 I can take out of the left hand side: 5*(10 + -10) = 50+x. I really hope 10 + -10 = 0, so 5 * 0 = 50+x. So x = -50. Awesome, we've learnt how to multiply a positive by a negative. You can check that -5 * 10 = -50 in the same way, by factorising a 10 out of the left.\n\nNow what about -5 * -10? Let's do it in the same way - call whatever it is y. So 5 * -10 = -50, and -5 * -10 = y. Adding the two equations, and factorising out a -10 again, we get (5 + -5) * -10 = -50 + y. But 5 + -5 is again 0, so 0 * -10 = -50 + y. So y = 50.\n\nIf we didn't allow -5 * -10 = 50, we wouldn't be able to add two equations together or take out common factors. These two rules *force* -5 * -10 = 50.", " > I mean let's say you have negative 5 sets of negative 10 apples. This means you actually have 50 apples?\n\nYes - sort of. It's important to be clear about what negative means though in order for the example to make sense. In physics, this part is really easy to conceptualize because when you're dealing with vectors (velocity, for instance), a negative value just means a positive value in the opposite direction.\n\nIn your sets/apples example though, we need to figure out how that would apply. What does it mean to have a set of negative 10 apples? It would mean that you're in debt 10 apples. So if somebody gives you negative 10 apples, they're taking 10 apples away from you. It's the exact opposite of them giving you *positive* 10 apples, which would be them simply giving you 10 apples.\n\nWhat about a negative set? Same thing applies. If somebody gives you a negative set of something, they're taking a set away from you. If they give you negative 5 sets of something, they're taking away 5 sets of that something from you.\n\nSo what if I give you negative 5 sets of negative 10 apples? That means I'm actually taking 5 sets of negative 10 apples from you. Another way to say that would be I'm having you give me 5 sets of negative 10 apples. And since giving somebody a set of negative 10 apples is the same thing as taking 10 apples from them, **by giving you negative 5 sets of negative 10 apples, I am essentially giving you 50 apples.**", "Think of the English language. Suppose the following sentence:\n\n* I ate a cookie.\n\nIf I say \"I **didn't** eat a cookie\", that's like introducing one negative to your operation. It changes the meaning from positive (I *did* do something) to negative (I did *not* do something).\n\nNow consider the following sentence:\n\n* I **didn't** **not** eat a cookie.\n\nWhile it's redundant from a language standpoint, this illustrates the fact that two negatives in English, as well as math, can be seen as a positive. ", "It's like why using a double negative in language is wrong - if you never don't do something, you're always doing it.", "I'm probably a little late, but this topic has been asked before, and I've read a really good answer that helped me understand it. I can't find the thread though, so I'll try to explain it the best I remember: \nYou can stand up and do this if you'd like.\n\nSo lets say you have this problem: 5* 2.\nYou would move five steps forward, twice. Therefore, you would end up going forward 10 steps, since 5* 2 is 10. Easy enough right?\n\nNow lets say you have 5* -2. \nSo a negative number is __basically__ the opposite of a positive number. Instead of going forward twice, you will move backwards twice. Therefore, you will end up being 10 steps behind where you started. That's -10.\n\nSo now you are given the problem -5* -2.\nThe first number is a negative, so instead of facing forward,you would do the opposite of that, which is facing the other direction. Now, the second number is also negative, so you will be moving backwards twice again. However, since you turned around, the spot you ended up at will be 10 steps __forward__ of the place you started. This makes sense because -5* -2 is 10. \n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2buxvx", "title": "how come every week it seems that life altering discoveries are made, yet almost every time, nothing comes of it", "selftext": "like the \"this week in science\" threads like [this](_URL_0_) are always coming up, but they dont ever really change the stuff in textbooks and it's never huge news.  daily life seems to carry on as normal", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2buxvx/eli5_how_come_every_week_it_seems_that_life/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj94wob", "cj95ajd", "cj95rlh", "cj97e1w", "cj98ntn", "cj9c4le"], "score": [57, 12, 4, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["The news media hypes a lot of this stuff to high hell.\n\nMost of these announcements should be properly read as \"In a lab somewhere, scientists found that this may be true\".  Of course this makes for an unattractive headline.  So you get people blowing stuff way out of proportion.", "There is a quite a long trickle down time between discoveries being made and them being added into text books, and even being put into use, but it does happen. Usually to be taught at any lower level the evidence needs to be very strong, and then accepted by the education board and text book publishers. I have old physics text books which don't have any mention of the accelerating expansion of the universe. My newer books do.\n\nAlso, a lot of these things aren't really applicable for lower level text books. For discoveries such as HIV \"deletion\" it's only going to be used by researchers, and so papers are much more efficient.\n\nAlso, the mainstream media don't really have an audience for these sorts of pieces. Current affairs, celebrity news etc. brings in much more money, even for relatively good news sites such as the BBC and Al Jazeera. Science blogs how are the main place for accurate and constant news about scientific discovery.\n\n", "A lot of what is discovered is at a very early stage in their development, it takes significant work to take things through from discovery to marketable/viable product.\n\n\nUsing something like a [Technology Readiness Level](_URL_0_) is a great way of visualising/thinking of these things in terms of their progression. Much of what makes the news is TRL1/TRL2 type things - so the basic principles are proven and potential applications validated but they're still a long way away from being a viable product.", "You have to understand, a lot of these issues have to be boiled down to the smallest headline. \n\nYou read \"AMAZING SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH PUTS US AT THE BRINK OF CURING BUTT CANCER!\". \n\nWhen you should read \"AMAZING SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH ~~could~~ *maybe* PUT US AT THE BRINK* OF CURING** ~~some kinds of~~ BUTT CANCER!\".\n\n*At the brink is used in this sentence as an exaggeration for the sake of attracting readership.\n\n**Curing or mitigating only possible in 1 of every 3. Results only speculated upon lab rats. Human testing still 10 to 20 years from now, at best. \n\nAs with... Well, pretty much every issue outside of celebrity gossip, things are too complicated or...\"mundane\" to be explained in a newspaper article, nevermind a headline. \n\nNewspapers/science blogs/whatever know this, so they go with whatever helps them sell either the paper itself or the editorial line. \n\nMost people don't really care for that thing that *maybe*, *possibly*, *we're hoping* will *probably* cure *some* types of diseases in the next 20 or 30 years. They want to hear butt cancer will be cured next year. ", "One word: Sensationalism, or rather sensation journalism. While scientific articles strive to provide an objective view on the study, regular journalism is under no such obligation, and since headlines like \"*Cure for Cancer found!*\" sells better than \"*Small statistical difference in a petri dish trial, in some obscure form of cancer, while using this drug under certain conditions found*\", we get this immense volume of life altering discoveries. ", "It's a combination of a lot of different factors:\n\n1) Media attention/blowing things out of proportion. From your example, the sixth mass extinction. Several scientists in a lab do some ecology simulations, and find evidence that it is statistically possible for X% of species to go extinct. They think this is interesting and possibly concerning, so they publish a paper saying \"we had this simulation result, what do you guys think?\" A reporter takes it, and republishes the story with the headline \"Mass extinction incoming! RUN AHHHHHHH CLICK HERE\"\n\n2) Effectiveness. For example, HIV deletion in cells. Their lab result might have been \"it's physically possible to go into a single bacterial cell with cultured human DNA and remove the HIV code without killing the bacterial cell.\" This is definitely interesting and will likely advance the field of AIDS research by providing more info on how the virus operates, but on its own is useless--this isn't something that can be directly adapted into a medicine.\n\n3) Optimization. Example: the biological amplifier. Let's say you work in a top research lab, and you come up with this awesome thing and publish a paper on it. Right now, what good is it? It's likely very difficult/finicky to produce, it's expensive, and it requires research staff to work with it. Five years from now, they have continued testing the material, and eventually have optimized the procedure enough that the first-level grad students can prepare the amplifiers themselves, it's not incredibly complicated. Eventually, a company's R & D department decides that the technology is looking likely enough to work on. They buy the patent, and start testing it to figure out how to produce it cheaply and consistently in a useful way. Then, maybe 15 years after the material was developed, a company discovers an economically effective and reliable way to implement that technology in a consumer product. Think about how long it was after the invention of the computer that the average person had a PC. \n\nIt's not that these discoveries aren't amazing or worthwile contributions to their respective fields, but they are all in the \"discovery\" phase, or they are *potentially* life-altering. This means that it will take years before someone comes up with an effective way to implement them, and many of them will never actually find a use. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/QrEFHve.png"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "p4tox", "title": "What are the most promising technologies for storing electricity from a solar power plant for cloudy days?", "selftext": "It is currently expensive to store electricity.  The idea that I think shows a great deal of promise (with no basis in science) are flywheel batteries...Doesn't matter.  My question is about storing power cheaply so that solar may someday be viable.  What's going to be the way it gets done and why?\n\nNote: this question is not about producing electricity with solar tech but about storing that electricity given a sufficient means to supply it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p4tox/what_are_the_most_promising_technologies_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3miclf", "c3miw7e", "c3mjjwb"], "score": [12, 2, 2], "text": ["Mechanical Engineer here.\n\nPumping water up into a lake for later hydroelectric use is fairly efficient. Solar panels are 15-30% (45% in the lab) and hydroelectric dams can get as much as 90% (depending on how you measure it, it's actually less than that.)\n\nThat's assuming you actually have water to pump.\n\nYou've probably heard that one before, but it's still the best as far as I know\n\nEDIT: If you want to be possessive, it's EYE TEE apostrophe ESS. If you want to be contractive, it's just EYE TEE ESS. Scallywag!", "There is a lot of talk of a hydrogen energy economy, which is predicated on finding efficient ways to crack water molecules.\n\nShould this occur, using solar power to store hydrogen, then drawing power from hydrogen fuels cells becomes a promising possibility.", "This problem highlights one of the big challenges with renewable energy - balancing variations in hourly, daily, monthly and even seasonal supply and demand. If large scale renewable energy is to be viable different technologies will probably be needed depending on when energy will be required and how much needs to be stored.\n\nAt present for short term, small scale storage, batteries would seem to be the most suitable option. This would allow rapid response to changes in demand. Different battery types could be used at different places in the grid (e.g. local vs regional storage). \n\nFor longer term storage existing battery technology isn't really feasible. Nor do power companies want large quantities of batteries lying around doing nothing most of the time. Therefore other large scale storage such as pumped water storage or compressed air storage are more likely  for longer term demands.\n\nIt is a very complex problem, which is often overlooked as energy generation is normally of primary concern. \n\nEdit - I'd recommend reading through the the discussion linked below. It explains some of the problems of balancing grid load when we have comparatively good control over energy generation -\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p0rqk/how_are_the_alternating_currents_generated_by/"]]}
{"q_id": "3qtysp", "title": "is susan g. komen as bad as i've heard?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qtysp/eli5is_susan_g_komen_as_bad_as_ive_heard/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwiaqpf", "cwibvd4", "cwicw73", "cwidpn5", "cwidv7j", "cwidw72", "cwiekpw"], "score": [61, 35, 38, 15, 5, 11, 2], "text": ["SGK died in the 80s.  The charity that has her name is run and was founded by, her younger sister Nancy Brinker.  Nancy drew a salary of $684,000 last year.  I'll leave that up to you to decide if it's fair or not.\n\nThe main issue that people have with the SGK foundation is that they don't actually seem to be after a cure for cancer.  For example, if I make a cancer fun run and decide to call it a \"run for the cure\".  The SGK foundation is going to sue me for using their trademark.\n\nFrom Wikipedia \n >  Komen has come under fire for legal action against other non-profits or organizations using the phrase \"for the cure\" within their names. An August 2010 article in The Wall Street Journal detailed a case in which the organization Uniting Against Lung Cancer was told in a letter from Komen that they should no longer use the name \"Kites for the Cure\" for their annual fund-raising event. Komen also wrote to the organization to warn them \"against any use of pink in conjunction with 'cure.'\"[80] More than 100 small charities have received legal opposition from Komen regarding various uses of the words \"for the cure\" in their names.[81] Among the offending charitable organizations and events were \"Par for the Cure\", \"Surfing for a Cure\", \"Cupcakes for a Cure\" and \"Mush for the Cure\".\n\n_URL_0_\n ", "The last thing the SGK foundation wants is a cure for cancer. It would be devastating to their bottom line.", "I was turned off by the organization when my mom got sick in the 90s. I wanted to run the event in her honor and was denied. Women only at that time. Mom died Christmas morning 1998 and it was very painful to me. Since then my money has gone to other cancer charities. ", "It's pretty bad. SGK is pretty much a for-profit business hiding under the veneer of being a charity: it's just all the profits go to the people running the business instead of any to stockholders. \n\nThey aggressively monetize every aspect of a public campaign to \"cure cancer,\" and then they have to pay out less money for actual research than a \"real\" corporation would have to do in taxes. ", "It's not a great charity, but it isn't as bad as many would have you believe.\n\nThe first thing to realize is that the charity is all about \"raising awareness.\"  Breast Cancer is already very treatable, so simply detecting it early is an important part of helping minimize the effect of the disease.  The organization gets flack for not putting most of their budget towards finding a cure but that's because highly effective treatments already exist.\n\nThe organization does pay its executives an abnormally high salary.  The organization is remarkably corporate\u2014they're well known for their \"for the cure\" and pink ribbon trademarks and they defend those trademarks with the full force of the law.  They make a lot of their money off of letting other big corporations use these trademarks to look more charitable\u2014you get brands like Yoplait painting their products pink as a marketing strategy, encouraging people to buy those products over their competitors with the justification that some amount of the purchase price goes to help fight breast cancer (which is true, but it's typically only a few cents per product).\n\nAs with all organizations some of the money they receive goes towards raising more money.  It's easy to knee-jerk react to this that they are evil for doing this, but if you take in $1,000,000 and can spend $200,000 of that in advertising to bring in $400,000 then you can then use that $1,200,000 on research, awareness, etc.  Presumably the organization wouldn't be spending so much on fund raising if it wasn't showing a positive return.\n\nCharity Navigator, which is usually pretty fair about these things, [gives SKG For The Cure a high 2-star rating out of four](_URL_0_).  They score very well on their transparency and accountability, while they score pretty mediocre on their use of funds.  They do note that 80.4% of the funds are used for \"program expenses\" (i.e. the things that the charity is supposed to support); this is pretty reasonable, all told.\n\nThere are plenty of better charities out there and SGK is far from perfect, but they're also far from evil.  ", "It isn't super terrible, but its focus seems to be the brand, not the result.  There are much better places to put money aimed at cancer research and treatment.", "The premise of the organization was good; Nancy Brinker's promise to her dying sister that she would do everything she could to end breast cancer. \n\nThe reality is, SGK is a now a huge money maker.  They can defend suing other organizations that use a \"*blank* for the cure\" slogan as trying to reduce donor confusion, but it comes down to they want to make sure they get as much money as possible.  \n\nI think there's been a shift in the organization's goal - they spend more on making people \"aware\" of breast cancer than they do actually trying to find a cure, which isn't what Nancy promised her sister back in 1982.  The fact is, as long as there is breast cancer, there's money to be made from it.\n\nAlso, [read this](_URL_0_) about the \"feel good\" war against breast cancer, from the perspective of a woman diagnosed twice with it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Controversy_and_criticism"], [], [], [], ["http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&amp;orgid=4509#.VjOAZ_lVhBc"], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war-on-breast-cancer.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"]]}
{"q_id": "2zi0os", "title": "why does a jury find you 'not guilty' but doesn't find you 'innocent'?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zi0os/eli5_why_does_a_jury_find_you_not_guilty_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpj2mlf", "cpj2nww", "cpj2qhv", "cpj37ad", "cpj3qek", "cpj5kta"], "score": [65, 5, 3, 8, 3, 3], "text": ["\"Not Guilty\" means there is no sufficient proof against you.\n\n\"Innocent\" means you did not do it.", "We have a high bar (at least in theory) for what we consider to be guilty of a crime.  As such, the jury just needs to determine whether that high bar has been met or not.  Since you don't have to be innocent to be found not guilty, we simply leave it at that.  They have not been found guilty so we say they are not guilty.  We don't attempt to take the further, more complex, step to determine that they are innocent.", "Those are two different findings.\n\n\"Not guilty\" simply means that the case against you was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. You were not found guilty.\n\n\"Innocent\" is not used in courts as frequently, but it is usually part of the phrase, \"factually innocent.\" This means that not only can we not prove that the defendant did it, but it has been shown to be fact that they did not do it. It's a step farther.", "If you commit a crime in front of dozens of witnesses you are, by the US standards, innocent until proven guilty.  You enter the courtroom for trial innocent.  Only a finding of guilty changes that status.  \n\nThe burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove guilt, there is no burden at all on the defense to prove innocence.  Since innocense is never in question the only logical conclusion if the prosecution fails to prove guilt is \"not guilty.\"", "In Scots law there is a third \"Not Proven\" verdict.", "The presumption is that you are innocent. They are there to determine your guilt, your innocence is already presumed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b5htmt", "title": "If I have two devices (a remote and a flashlight, or whatever) each using two common AA/AAA/D batteries, but only one of them has 100% remaining useful battery power and the other one has 0%... Can I theoretically swap one battery in each device and increase the power of each device to 50% life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b5htmt/if_i_have_two_devices_a_remote_and_a_flashlight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejdm5gr", "ejdqx0v", "ejdrt5z"], "score": [4, 18, 2], "text": ["Just a question to anyone here for this post, how will the device which requires a 3v connection work with just one 1.5 battery ? If it\u2019s 100 : 0 ? Wouldn\u2019t the device just stop working? If it wouldn\u2019t then, why are there slots for 2 batteries ?", "Sometimes. It isn't a very good idea, and unless some emergency requires both devices, it's better to put both good batteries in the same device, use it, and transfer the batteries when the other device is needed.\n\nI'm making the assumption that the batteries are in series - that is, configured with the positive terminal of one connected to the negative terminal of the other such that their voltage is added. If they're in parallel, you can power the device from the one charged battery at a cost to runtime.\n\nFirst, a bit about batteries. An important measure of battery performance is *internal resistance*. This is a measure of the battery's ability to maintain its voltage under load, modeled as if a resistor was in series with the battery. Internal resistance changes with the battery's state of charge, and sometimes with the amount of load placed on it. Alkaline batteries have fairly high internal resistance compared to other types, and it can increase as the battery is discharged, or simply aged.\n\nSo what's 0% useful power? That's not necessarily 0.0V open-circuit voltage. You might see 0.8V or 1.0V testing a battery with a voltmeter, but when asking that battery to power a high-power device, the internal resistance is so high that it drops to near 0V. This battery might work fine in a low-powered device. As an example, a battery that will not power a high-output flashlight usually will power an IR-based remote control. You could put both batteries that are too weak for the flashlight in the remote and get some use out of it.\n\nAnother scenario is a battery that can no longer supply any power (0.0V open-circuit), but will still act as a conductor with some resistance. This will function in series with a full battery in a device that can run on less than 1.5V, though performance will probably be poor. You're better off using some other conductive spacer if you can find one.\n\nUsing mismatched batteries in series is very bad for most types of batteries. It can result in the weaker battery being drained below 0V and reverse-charged. Most batteries react poorly to this kind of abuse; alkalines will usually leak an electrolyte based on potassium hydroxide, which corrodes many of the materials used to construct electronics. Lithium-based chemistries often explode.", "People have danced around it but the answer is usually no, but it depends.  If the batteries are alternating direction it usually means that they are in series, meaning that each battery adds 1.5 volts (at least in the case of AA, AAA, C and D).  Two live batteries gives ~3.0 V then but one alive and one dead would give only 1.5 V.  Since the electronics are expecting 3.0V they probably won't work (I say probably because most electronics have a wide window of operation and it might work, but not well, and not for long).\n\nIf all the batteries are facing the same way then they might be set up in parallel, meaning you have multiple batteries to add current or lifetime and the supplied voltage is just that of the battery.  Then you could put one live and one dead and get 50% life at full voltage, but if the system needs more current than the one battery will supply then you won't get there.  Pure electronics should be fine, but something with a motor won't work so good.\n\nLots of caveats here, but there's a reason why designers specify a certain number of batteries.  The only exception to this is with a spacer, you can swap out any 1.5V battery for another type (like use a AAA instead of a C).  The problem you will run into is that the smaller batteries will die out quickly.  Going the opposite way (hooking up a C battery for a spot that fits a AAA) will make everything last super long but it will also be very silly looking and likely uncomfortable (but that's ok with me)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6efne8", "title": "how after 5000 years of humanity surviving off of bread do we have so many people within the last decade who are entirely allergic to gluten?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6efne8/eli5how_after_5000_years_of_humanity_surviving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di9w6l2", "di9wmo9", "di9wpx5", "di9xaqm", "di9xe6c", "di9xhxq", "di9y2kf", "di9yce6", "di9ygy6", "di9yqfm", "di9ytt7", "di9yws6", "di9yxec", "di9z3fq", "di9z421", "di9z781", "di9z8kc", "di9zc6l", "di9zg4w", "di9zh1o", "di9zivv", "di9zki8", "di9zolp", "di9zzdv", "dia00qy", "dia03jm", "dia04e8", "dia0fb2", "dia0fk9", "dia0flm", "dia0j7r", "dia0jy6", "dia0rpw", "dia0xsn", "dia10h6", "dia11ma", "dia13pz", "dia14xo", "dia14zy", "dia16q8", "dia1i06", "dia1k8d", "dia1kh6", "dia1lsx", "dia1tie", "dia20d2", "dia21vt", "dia2448", "dia2531", "dia28ra", "dia2bu3", "dia2f8h", "dia2ion", "dia2jen", "dia2os1", "dia2qqg", "dia2sdq", "dia2svh", "dia2upw", "dia2yqh", "dia33f9", "dia33z9", "dia34h1", "dia34ke", "dia358y", "dia35xr", "dia375c", "dia38pj", "dia38yr", "dia394o", "dia3aij", "dia3bei", "dia3dv5", "dia3ej5", "dia3fq0", "dia73z8"], "score": [645, 2776, 93, 16, 9, 87, 134, 33, 73, 4, 23, 400, 46, 23, 441, 4, 63, 23, 157, 3, 15673, 6, 376, 50, 6, 18, 2, 575, 12, 5, 5, 68, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 77, 5, 69, 35, 8, 7, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 738, 11, 22, 4, 11, 5, 7, 5, 13, 7, 14, 2, 4, 8, 5, 2, 3, 35, 28, 10, 31, 21, 25, 14, 15, 10], "text": ["Gluten intolerance remains fairly rare, and often not particularly severe. We have higher expectations for our own health now that we ever had in the past, so historically, people with a sensitivity to gluten may have just ignored it.\n\nFurther, while many people relied on wheat-based food products, it wasn't the only diet out there, and only became as dominant as it is now in the 20th century.", "Just so we're clear: Allergy to gluten is a thing, but is different from celiac disease. Both are well-defined and different from gluten intolerance, which is less clear. \n\nThe most common explanation for increased allergies is the hygiene hypothesis. The idea is that aggressive modern hygiene removes the parasites and bacteria that help calibrate the immune system, leaving it more likely to react to harmless targets.\n\nIt's also been suggested that modern wheat could be more allergenic. The cross-breeding of new wheat strains in the 1960s, which allowed us to feed billions of people, could have selected for a protein variant that immune systems just don't like. Modern wheat processing has also been noted as a potential contributor.", "Allergies aren't something that dissappear because of natural selection. Gluten intolerance isn't even the weirdest one you can have. You can be allergic to:\n\n- Pollen, which have always been everywhere.\n- Cats and dogs, while humans have been keeping dogs for a long time.\n- Semen. Yep.\n- Water, I had a minor water allergy when I was younger.\n\nNone of those make any sense when looking at our history, but an allergy is (most of the time) just your immune system that lost track about what's good and bad.\n\n", "Stone ground wheat flour of yesteryear is not the same as enriched wheat flour of today.\n\nIt is missing key nutrients. ", "one answer could be that bread used to take multiple days to make, and it only recently began to be made in a matter of hours. I watched a documentary on Netflix, called 'whats with wheat' or somethin like that. look it up. its a good doc.", "We do not actually have a large number of people allergic to bread. We have some, and due to finding it they are more likely to survive till adulthood, and we are better at identifying people with Celiac, but we have not actually had a major increase in either from historical norms. Identifying something better is not an increase. \n\nMost of what you are seeing is not even people with a gluten intolerance, gluten allergy, or Celiac. It is the current fad diet and pseudo-scientific dietary advice demonizing gluten causing people to avoid that we are seeing. ", "[The vast majority of people who claim gluten sensitivity, etc, are just deluded.](_URL_0_) Actual gluten sensitivities are pretty rare, celiac much rarer still, and wheat allergies the rarest of all.\n\nBut how did that survive? Allergies aren't hereditary (though there is thought to be a genetic component), and most of this stuff isn't serious enough to kill you before you have a chance to breed.", "There are not many people \"allergic\" to glutens. It's just another health food fad.\n\nYes, gluten sensitivity does exist...but very few people actually have it. Most are just Nocebo'ing themselves into having symptoms.", "Because most people aren't allergic to it.  They jumped on the gluten free bandwagon.  Studies are starting to show that avoiding gluten, if you don't actually have gluten intolerance, is bad because you miss out on the nutrients and vitamins your body needs.  Gluten free is a fad, people think it will help them lose weight, but it's not cutting the gluten that helps lose weight.  Plus gluten just sounds like a nasty thing.  So people believe it needs to be eliminated from their diets.\n\n_URL_0_", "_URL_0_ \nWatch Cooked on Netflix episode 3 \"Air\" \nIt's more of a doc about food than a cooking show\n", "Shortest answer: Bread was made out of different grains throughout our history - spelt, emmer (Farro), and einkorn to name a few.", "Reddit has a weird hate boner about gluten, so a lot of folks are going to tell you the rise in allergies is psychosomatic. [That's not true:](_URL_1_) \n\n >  For reasons that remain largely unexplained, the incidence of celiac disease has increased more than fourfold in the past sixty years. Researchers initially attributed the growing number of cases to greater public awareness and better diagnoses. But neither can fully account for the leap since 1950. Murray and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic discovered the increase almost by accident. Murray wanted to examine the long-term effects of undiagnosed celiac disease. To do that, he analyzed blood samples that had been taken from nine thousand Air Force recruits between 1948 and 1954. The researchers looked for antibodies to an enzyme called transglutaminase; they are a reliable marker for celiac disease. **Murray assumed that one per cent of the soldiers would test positive, matching the current celiac rate. Instead, the team found the antibodies in the blood of just two-tenths of one per cent of the soldiers.** Then they compared the results with samples taken recently from demographically similar groups of twenty- and seventy-year-old men. In both groups, the biochemical markers were present in about one per cent of the samples.\n\nThe whole article is interesting, and it's well reported (it's from the New Yorker, not some sketchy clickbait \"_URL_0_\" meme your aunt posts on Facebook). ", "My understanding is that the rise of gluten-sensitivities has less to do with the food, and more to do with the farming and harvesting methods.  Roundup has been around since 1974, and has been used by nearly every farmer in the country until relatively recently with the rise of organic farms.  A common practice is to spray the whole wheat crop down with roundup shortly before harvesting in order to reduce the strain on machinery.  There's still a lot of debate on this matter, but I have a feeling we're going to look back on modern farming techniques the same way we view surgery during the civil war.", "One thing bout biological evolution.  If it doesn't kill you before you breed, or inhibit breeding in any other way, it will not be thinned out from the gene pool.", "Probably the same reason people are lactose intolerant. Unless milk could actually out right kill them, they stay in the gene pool. \n\nI've been drinking milk since I was a kid. Had bad cramps every day. But since every kid eats cereal for breakfast, milk being the culprit never dawned on me. Suddenly lactose-free milk comes out, I suddenly find that moo juice was the cause. I'm sure generations have suffered the same fate before me.", "What I've heard is that the strains of wheat which are now most commonly grown in my country have triple the gluten that they did a generation or two ago, let alone compared to the wheat we as a species have been accustomed to eating since the dawn of grain consumption. Our digestive systems have not adapted to such an increase in such a short time.", "Combination of: \nA lot of people who claim a gluten allergy/sensitivity are just people eating better and blaming it on the gluten free part of their new diet--trading tons of pasta/pizza/cookies/etc. for fresh fruits and vegetables is bound to make anyone feel better\n\nHygiene hypothesis (and other possible causes) for an increase in allergies overall\n\nSome gluten tolerances were relatively minor annoyances \"back then\", it's only in modern times that we have time and energy to worry about things like stomach aches\n\nAnd finally, people with true Celiac disease simply died. It could be chalked up to some common ailment like the flu or a stomach bug, humans didn't have much time or ability to investigate things like that before the modern era.\n", "Part of the equation is education and the availability of alternatives, another is fad elimination diets.\n\nCeliac disease is difficult to diagnose and wasn't widely understood until relatively recently. It affects around 1 in 100 people and can be life threatening if gluten isn't eliminated entirely from the diet. That's not the same as a gluten allergy, but the recognition of it has caused a surge in foods that are safe for sufferers (and fad followers) to eat. \n\nThis is part of a broader trend over the past couple of decades, where food companies have realized the demand for alternative products - consider, when compared to a decade ago, how many different milks are available now, how many foods are nut-free, or vegan, or paleo and so on. It's part real health needs, part fad, but all necessary to remain competitive if you're selling processed food.\n ", "The wheat of today and the wheat of our ancestors is vastly different in terms of constitution, cultivation and processing. It has been hybridized for greater yield, bathed in pesticides and then largely stripped of its remaining nutrition to produce the ubiquitous wheat flour that is in a huge percentage of our foods today. Our bodies have had essentially 1-2 generations to adapt to this largely new food product that has more differences than similarities to the ancient grain and subsequent processing our ancestor's bodies were accustomed to. \n\nAlso, ITT people are conflating true wheat (gluten) allergy with wheat (gluten) sensitivity. These are matters of degree and have significant differences. \n\nedit: sp", "[Antibiotic overuse](_URL_0_) might play some role", "We don't know. There are a number of theories about this. To clarify, while the increase may be exaggerated by people who falsely claim intolerance when they probably have other health issues (or are hypochondriacs), there is actually an increase in people with diagnosable gluten intolerance. And gluten intolerance is different than celiac. I'm taking here about gluten intolerance. Some possible causes include changes in the gut microbiome and changes in how we process and make bread.\n\nChanges in the gut microbiome are a likely cause/contributor but the causes and effects of that are just stating to be understood, and barely. So I won't go into that too much, but if anyone has questions I may be able to answer.\n\nOn the processing side, one interesting theory is that the germ of wheat helps us process the gluten in some way. It has lots of nutrients, vitamins, fats, etc. Modern wheat flour (even most whole grain stuff) is made by separating the germ from the rest of the wheat first, then processing. This causes the flour to keep longer but removes all those nutrients. This is why flour/cereals need to be fortified. However, we only fortify with the vitamins and minerals for which we notice obvious deficiencies. So it's entirely feasible that we are neglecting to add something back into the flour that helps SOME people not develop gluten intolerance. This may be via some immune response or due to changes caused in the gut microbe (e.g. we are no longer giving some micronutrients to a specific bacteria in our gut so it dies out. That bacteria helped us process gluten or a byproduct and without its help we get sick). It's also possible that our body just needs some nutrient in the germ to process gluten efficiently. We really just don't know.\n\nTldr: shits complicated literally\n\nedit: First, I know the difference between a theory and hypothesis. I was using the term colloquially, which *even scientists* do sometimes.\n\nPeople seem to have extrapolated way more than they should have from my comment. Like are asking me where to buy bread with wheat germ and how to fix their gut microbes. That's really not how this works. Anybody who gives you an easy answer to your problems is probably trying to sell you something (I'm looking at you, supplement/probiotics industry...). \n\nUntil relatively recently we didn't even know bacteria could survive in your gut, so expecting the scientific community to have a solid understanding of the gut microbiome now is absurd. These questions span the fields of nutrition, microbial ecology, microbe-host interactions, immunology, and more. I'm sure there are hundreds of plausible explanations, but we are VERY FAR AWAY from definitively answering most questions related to the gut microbe. We DO know that it affects digestive health, mood, weight, and all kinds of other human physiology. What we don't know is how to bend it to our will or how it causes all of these things. We do know that the answer is complicated. How do different bacteria interact with each other in your gut, and then with your body? We also don't know much about that. But we're learning.\n\nThere is a unique soup of maybe 1000 species of bacteria in your gut, and they are mostly different than the species that live in mine. We are just starting to learn how specific individual species of bacteria can affect their hosts. But even with this research, we don't think that it will be the same in everyone.\n\nexample: Maybe bacteria A has effect B on me, but it has effect C on you, because I have bacteria Q in my gut and you don't, and bacteria Q is necessary for effect B. Now consider that x 1000 species, and that a genetic component also affects this, and diet and stress levels and fitness also affect this. See where I'm going?\n\nWe do know that the gut microbe is influenced by stress, diet, sleep, environmental exposure, your parents, exercise, infection, travel, antibiotics, alcohol consumption, genetics, epigenetics (which is affected by all of these things and more), social habits, sun exposure, etc. Just to name a few. The extent to which these affect each person is probably highly variable. So asking about specific solutions or a quick fix is a waste of time, especially on the internet. And if you have a shitty diet - especially one high in carbs and sugar - or high stress levels, or you drink a lot, addressing those first is probably a smarter solution than asking about wheat germ and special bread and probiotics (may work in some cases for some people sometimes, and usually not as a \"fix\" but as a supplement. it's just not well studied enough.) and GMOs (no evidence of them affecting any of this or even a feasible mechanism for how they would). \n\ntldr2: no really, shit's complicated. Something that works for one person may not for another for hundreds of reasons that we don't know much about yet, but are sort-of on the verge of understanding. This is also why the human microbiome is so hard to study. Remember, none of this is well researched enough for there to be standardized advice for anybody outside of the normal \"live a healthy lifestyle\" advice, and slowly figuring out what makes you feel better. So don't ask for a quick fix and don't trust anyone who offers one. Here are some links about the microbiome and a couple on the microbiome and gluten. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_6_\n\nedit2: yes, non celiac wheat/gluten intolerance exists. some studies have shown that people who claim to have it do not, but that does not encompass all the literature. the key to those studies is that they were looking at SELF REPORTED gluten intolerance, so basically your average \"but gluten\" person, not people who were medically evaluated and thought to have it. turns out you just have to find the right people to study (who actually have it). just skim this google scholar search and you will see significant evidence of its existence: _URL_7_", "Yes it's a thing, but people are making it a fad. Remember low carb? Or sugar free? Each thing well get a momentary rise until they find something else to blame for there weight and not use their own self control. ", "a little off topic : one thing I read a long time ago in nature before the anti-gluten trend we're seeing.  It was an article about fibre in our modern western diets.  and how we lack a lot of fibre in our diets and how the lack of fibre causes the lower intestines to not be healthy, getting swollen and enflamed.  When the lower intestines get to this stage, gluten can and has been shown to pass through the walls into the blood stream. At that point, once past the barrier,  problems occur.  It was a good read and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing it way wrong, but what I took from it, because our diets are bad in one way it's causing other problems to appear.  And you didn't have to have an allergy or Celiacs to see some of the problems appearing.   note: I think this is very different then the trend we are seeing today where everybody is afraid of the \"glutens\" \n\nI'd love to find that old magazine or online version to re-read it and see how relevant it is. \n\n", "It's actually simpler than it seems if you separate an auto-immune disorder (celiac), from the intestinal distress, bloating, and discomfort many people experience from bread.\n\nThe processes in which bread is made normally includes a \"ripening\" time where the dough rises and the yeast digests fully or partially pre-digests for you the parts of the wheat that cause digestive distress.\n\nIn an effort to maximise efficiency large scale, must speed up the process usually by using additives to the yeast to let the bread rise faster and allow for faster preparation times. Even your local baker can't let bread rise for 2-24 hours (depending on the bread) while checking it in between, it needs more predictability and consistency.\n\nThe rise of wheat intolerance (not celiac) falls nicely inline with mechanisation of the production line of bread products.", "Celiac Disease is pretty rare still, around 1% incidence in the United States. And non-celiac \"gluten intolerance\" or \"gluten allergies\" aren't a thing, so mostly it's just a psychological phenomenon/placebo effect/trendy diet. ", "Celiac has been around for thousands of years. It has been identifiable more recently. Many people that actually have Celiac don't know they have it. For instance my younger sister was diagnosed at a young age, and it typically runs in the family. Doctors think my grandmother had it and never had it diagnosed, similar to my father._URL_0_ This shows some proof of origins reaching back 2000 years.  \n\nedit- bad spelling", "It could very well be that this is just a case of not knowing what it was until quite recently, since the symptoms can be very different.", "A documentary was made for this exact question. It's called Cooked: Air.\n\nFrom what I remember, it basically said that the way we make bread has changed drastically in the past 200 years (wonder bread, pure white flour, instant yeast, etc.) and that is what has caused people's \"gluten allergies,\" not to be confused with Celiac's disease. It says that the original way to make bread, with homemade flour and long periods of fermentation, is better for people, and that most people aren't allergic to it.", "One possible reason: _URL_0_\n\nThe hypothesis is basically that the practice of crop desiccation causes wheat in the food supply to contain traces of glyphosate, which in turn causes allergic reactions. I.e., perhaps it isn't the wheat, it's what's on/in the wheat.", "[Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence Have Now Shown It Doesn't Exist](_URL_0_)  \n    \n[Gluten Intolerance May Not Exist](_URL_1_) \n", "Wheat from the west was hybrided with our own in the US, basically forced because it would yield more wheat even though it was basically a failed hybrid. This with pesticides and herbicides and over consumption of it. There is a good documentary on this called whats with wheat I believe, its on netflix.", "So there's a lot at work here.  Ignoring whether or not I believe anyone who said they have trouble eating wheat (because I'm not such an asshole that I'll call someone a liar about how they feel when they eat food) I'll say this.  5000 years is basically an evolutionary hiccup.  It's nothing compared to the million years we've been humans. Also, if we accept that something about eating wheat isn't ideal for the digestive system, then it stands to reason that the damage done is not short term.  Long term woes (those that occur over decades) don't really impact evolution. Moreover, the way modern people eat wheat IS dldifferent than it was in the past.  Our wheat is a different subspecies, it is prepared differently, in different quantities, and with greater frequency.  \n\nOn top of that  it's eaten WITH different things that compound bodily stress (that is to say, he amounts of sugar and corn products).  Hard to say whether the combinations might be important (like joker makeup). ", "Netflix has a show called Cooked where a guy argues that it has to do with the lack of properly fermenting the dough. So theres that. Quick rising yeast and industrialization of bread vs proper slow bread making", "The celiac disease cabal has been successful in their bid to have better options when eating out. Their plot to convince health nutters that they are allergic to gluten and so demand non-gluten foods be available took years to pull off, but pull it off they have.", "Caveat: I am **NOT** one of the anti-GMO crowd.\n\nThat said, I know an intelligent doctor who believes, based on cases he has dealt with over several years, that GMO grains have starches and proteins that are not *quite* what we are adapted to.\n\nAnd that these are the source of all the new allergies,\n\nPersonally, GMO foods have never caused me any problems, but I wonder if he could be onto something.", "IMO: we started using quick rise yeast in the early 20th century and stopped making fermented sourdough. The fermentation process actually breaks down most of the gluten.  Probably a mix of this and all the other things listed in this thread. \n\nTry making real sourdough bread - it's like having a pet... that you eat", "Because we have so many alternatives now.  We also have science and modern medicine.  The reason so many people who are allergic to gluten and peanuts even exist now is because natural selection can no longer weed those traits out.  That goes for a lot of diseases and genetic traits now.  Before medicine those people would just die and not pass on their genes.  Now they survive and the gluten allergies thrive.  There was a Louis CK joke I remember about how when we drop food like peanut butter to starving African or Middle Eastern children we don't hear about them whining about their nut allergies. That's because they:\nA: starve\nB: eat the peanut butter, have a nut allergy, die for lack of medical care\nC: eat the peanut butter and survive\n\nTL;DR natural selection isn't working on humans anymore because science and medicine counter act it", "My wife contracted celiac disease in her mid thirties after having multiple issues in a short period of time.  She had her gall bladder out (gallstones) and appendix out in a short time period after developing an abcess in her digestive tract.  Sort of a perfect storm of digestive issues all at the same time.  Her theory is that the high doses of antibiotics she was on during that time wiped out the good and bad bacteria in her digestive tract in effect doing a reset on her immune system and somehow in doing so making gluten a problem.  Previously she had no problems with gluten.  They had diagnosed her with celiac disease around that time.  That was about six years ago and has been gluten free out of necessity ever since.  She has gotten \"glutened\" (her word) on occasion that proves this is still a problem but the prevalence of gluten free foods has been a big help to her.", "Most people who do not eat gluten are not actually allergic to it, by which I mean they do not have a histamine reaction. There are, however, many other factors which discourage it's consumption.\n\n1. Genetic modification. Over the past fifty years especially, we have bred wheat to have more and more of the glutenous protein because it's what makes pizza and other bread products so stretchy and delicious. Our bodies may be having trouble keeping up. This means our gut can't digest it as easily. \n\n2. Processing. White bread was a miracle once! But it lacks the fiber, fats, and nutrients that wheat originally had. Bad for you? Maybe. Good for you? No. Bread products are rarely fermented anymore, which was arguably the most important step in being able to eat flour. Gluten causes awful neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms for me, but I can eat homemade (truly fermented) wheat sourdough no problem.\n\n3. Overabundance. Gluten and various derivatives are used in almost every processed food, so our consumption levels are somewhat camouflaged. This also means that when you cut out gluten, you're also cutting out a lot of preservatives, sugars, and other fairly undesirable food products.\n\n4. Inflammation. Whether due to our inability to digest it or other reasons, gluten is known to cause inflammation, in levels that vary person to person. Inflammation in your gut reduce your body's ability to absorb nutrients. Whether or not you're allergic to gluten, reducing systemic inflammation by not eating can have benefits in a wide variety of disorders, from MS to schizophrenia to Krohns and beyond.\n\n5. Chemicals. In America at least, many farms douse their fields in RoundUp just before harvest because it increases yield. That means the wheat is full of heavy chemicals. For Americans at least, we may not be allergic to wheat, but heavy chemicals can still mess you up pretty badly.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a New Yorker article that discusses many factors. \n\nEdit: link", "Food writer here: Recent studies suggest the changes to wheat that were engineered (by grafting, not GMO processes) in the early 1960s to increase yields changed the basic structure of wheat in ways that have made it harder for many people to digest. This theory has been substantiated somewhat by anecdotal evidence that many people with gluten sensitivities (not celiacs) are able to enjoy and easily digest products made with heirloom wheat--which is unchanged from its original form. Eli Rogosa's \"Restoring Heritage Grains\" goes into this in detail.  ", "Actual medically diagnosed gluten sensitivities, due either to Celiac Disease or allergy, remain extremely rare. There is zero evidence that either of those conditions are any more common today than they were a thousand years ago.\n\nHowever, they do exist. There are, and always have been, people among us who are negatively impacted by gluten. The difference is that those people now have access to social media where they can tell many, many people at a time how terrible their symptoms are. And a lot of those people hear that and wrongly believe that gluten is bad for everybody. They begin to manifest psychosomatic symptoms, futher convincing them. Then they find out, after further research, that not everybody has this sensitivity. But their imagined symptoms convince them that they themselves do. Thus is born their claim of gluten sensitivity in the absence of any medical diagnosis. \n\nThe same exact thing has happened with aspartame. There is an exceedingly rare condition called phenylketonuria that makes aspartame very toxic to its sufferers. I knew a girl in highschool who had it. Aspartame would give her seizures. But, like I said, it's rare. For anybody without phenylketonuria, aspartame is harmless. But the symptoms of phenylketonuria hit social media and people read about it and concluded that aspartame must be terribly toxic! The result is that a huge movement of scientifically illiterate people are now anti-aspartame. Nevermind that this logic is exactly the same as saying that nobody should ever eat seafood because some people are allergic to it.  (Personally, I avoid aspartame drinks because they all taste like the first syllable in \"aspartame\" - but I'm not afraid of them.) \n\n", "This doesn't account for the last 5k years, but this article has a bit on the history of the discovery and diagnosis of celiac disease, _URL_0_\n\nIt was a mystery in the 30s when it started to become more widely recognized, but doctor's still didn't find the cause of the allergy until the 50s following world war II. A dutch doctor, \"noticed that in the last few years of World War II, when bread was unavailable in the Netherlands, the mortality rate from celiac disease dropped to zero.\"\n\nBefore that point and before the time period this article covered, people would more than likely die from an allergy to gluten and people would see it as severe malnutrition and gastrointestinal problems but not be able to  determine why. Now we have more information and diagnostic tools to be able to identify gluten allergies so it seems like the rate has increased dramatically when really its just finally getting noticed. ", "- Celiac leads to failure to absorb nutrients, if you don't absorb nutrients then you die from either starvation or \"failure to thrive\" due to the resulting weakening of your immune system that leaves you succeptible to all sorts of other things.  So many people just didn't live to adulthood if they didn't figure out to avoid it. Allergy (not celiac) would lead to a major immediate response upon eating, which likely could also kill someone if severe, or lead someone to avoid the thing altogether. Intolerance (also not celiac) would cause mostly minor discomforts that wouldn't really be noticable to most people concerned more with survuival than optimal health. \n\n- Testing availability and knowledge. Even just about a decade or two ago, there were doctors who still didn't know about celiac and the only way to be diagnosed formally involved a stomach biopsy (not a simple procedure), so most people with it were not formally diagnosed and so not recorded as having celiac for any sort of reporting - typically they would just try to avoid gluten bearing foods as a result of that being a possiblity, and if it worked keep it up. ", "A few have already said this, but Celiac Disease (an autoimmune disease, where the body's immune system reacts to the gluten protein negatively, i.e. \"allergy\") is different from gluten intolerance (which is just the bodies' inability to properly digest the gluten proteins).  \n\nThey are not the same thing. And many people who go to restaurants who say they are \"allergic to gluten\" are just people who change their diet because the \"feel better\" without gluten. Although they could be right, most of the folks who make this determination but have not taken a true test are at best guessing, but at most probably just intolerant.  So the numbers are probably a lot skewed.  As the saying goes beggars can't be choosers... but we in modern society can.  \n\nAs for the numbers of allergies increasing; there are a lot of theory. The most quoted one is the hygiene hypothesis. Also, frankly, I don't buy that one (at least not completely). For one, there are clearly other factors at play; e.g. what kind of diseases one is exposed to (and there what kind of immune response the body mounts), where one lives, where one was born and where one moves to.  Most of the hypothesis are still guessing at it... but the real answer is we don't really yet know why we have more allergies than previous centuries.  But also, we have factors more people than we ever had before. Many kids in the old days didn't make it pass childhood, so perhaps many people before died before they reached adulthood due to some of these factors.  My guess is that all of the hypothesis probably contribute in some way.  \n\nTL;DR -- Most people who claim \"allergy\" to gluten are probably intolerant. And for the most part we don't really know why overall allergies have increased... but probably a due to many factors combined. \n\nsource: human bio degree  &  took a few years of Immunology", "The reason so many people are *now* having a bad reaction to gluten is due entirely to the food manufacturing business and monoculture farming practices.\n\nSimply put, wheat has been modified from it's long holistic history of human farming, when the grain was ground into wheat and the stalks dried into straw. \n\nThis documentary, [\"What's with Wheat\"](_URL_0_) on Netflix is pretty explanatory.\n\nThe TL;DW is that due to the demands of both monoculture farming practices and the manufactured foods industry, wheat has been modified from it's longtime farmed form in the last 50 years, and now contains much more gluten than previously.\n\nAdd to that the practice of using wheat in just about every manufacturing process, from shampoo to heaven knows what, and it's impossible tell how much gluten one actually absorbs based on food labels alone.\n\nDid I mention how heavily subsidized wheat production is? And that it's a commodity being heavily traded in the stock markets? There's more than one influence on the push to create ever-more-modified plants.", "My guess would be the wide use of antibiotics for starters. Some meds might destroy too much good gut flora but leave a bad bacteria unaffected. C.Diff is a more extreme example of this. It could just be killing off certain bacteria diminishes your ability to properly digest certain foods and enzymes. ", "We don't. A lot of people eat gluten free because it's another healthy sounding option along with the organic food that many shop for. \n\nMore people think they have an allergy or intolerance to gluten than actually do. Way, way more. That inflates the numbers.", "Bro science here:\n\nBread is made differently than it was 100s of years ago. Most bread was like traditional sourdough. [Not the sourdough you buy at the supermarket](_URL_1_) that has added vinegar, the traditional stuff is fermented which makes it taste sour-ish.\n\nThis type of traditional bread has [lower gluten contents](_URL_0_) and [some celiac patients can eat it without ill effects](_URL_2_).\n\nBroken link located here: _URL_0_", "\"Gluten allergies\" are what people call intolerance of things made with wheat, but there are several factors: \n\n* Modern wheat is covered with loads of pesticides\n* Modern commercial bakers use chemical leaveners instead of fermenting breads\n\nIf a person can distinguish between them, say can eat pasta but not bread, that person may be allergic to chemical leaveners.  ", "Less than half of a percent of people have some sort of **actual** gluten intolerance. Its not \"so many\". For the most part, gluten-free is a stupid \"health\" trend that became popular because it made people lose weight, and they incorrectly attributed it to the lack of gluten, when in reality anything with gluten in it also has carbohydrates, and westerners typically consumer waaaaaaayy too many carbs in the first place.", "There's a great Netflix 4-part documentary called Cooked that delves into this. The documentary series 4 parts were titled Earth, Air, Fire  &  Water, and it looked at an anthropological history of our diets and hunting/eating/cooking rituals. The Air episode was all about bread, and about how it has been a staple of our diets for so long.\n\nTheir postulate was that for the vast majority of people, gluten isn't the issue. Sure there are some people for whom the gluten is the problem, they just assume it is because modern bread doesn't agree with them because of the accelerated processes they use to make it. Or perhaps there used to be something in bread that prevented gluten from having such an adverse reaction.\n\nIt used to be that bread was fermented. The dough was a living, breathing colony. In more recent years, to speed up the bread making process, instead of allowing the natural bacteria in the water supply to thrive in the wheat and change it - they instead use \"clean\" additives, such as yeast.  Due to this, there are various nutrients that used to be in bread that aren't any more, so manufacturers have also added fortifications in also, to make up for those that were missing and actually have it be nutritious. \n\nTLDR: The bread we eat now isn't really anything like the bread our bodies evolved with. ", "One person I knew who was allergic to gluten said that she was able to eat wheat in other countries; it was only wheat grown and processed in the US that gave her digestive problems. Her grandmother had the same issue.", "1% of the population are entirely gluten intolerant. \n\nThe other 85% of those who *say* they are gluten intolerant are either hypochondriacs, liars or attention seekers.  ", "Didn't the same people who released the study showing gluten intolerance retract the entirety of it?", "99% of people on gluten diets are not allergic to gluten, they're merely hopping on a bandwagon where people think gluten is bad for you. Gluten is only bad for you if you have celiac disease, which is extremely rare. The media has interviewed people who claim to be on gluten-free diets if they know what gluten is or what it does and almost all of them had no clue other than \"it's bad for you\", \"it makes you fat\", \"companies add it into bread as a chemical additive\",etc...", "Some people mix up gouten intolerance with fructose malabsorption. An easy way to find out is to switch from bread with high fructose corn syrup to bread without which is usually more expensive.", "You have to account for surviorship bias.\n\nThe people who actually survived off bread 5000 years ago would not have been allergic to gluten.", "I have no information about the rise or fall of gluten issues in the population. \n\nThat being said we often forget that just because we didn't have a name for something or understand it fully, doesn't mean it didn't exist. \n\nThink of all the people you've heard of in history who were \"sickly\" or died super young for vague reasons. Maybe they couldn't handle gluten or had some other condition we now have a name for.\n\nThose town weirdos... Maybe it was autism or ADD.", "We don't, gluten-free is mostly a fad that people are blindly following because it's been marketed extremely effectively. ", "My theory: Because wheat now is pretty different than 100 years ago. In the agricultural revolution of the 50s and 60s wheat was cross bred to create shorter strains, therfore reducing the height of the wheat and increasing potential yield. Wheat was so tall it would tend to fall and rot when moisture got to it. Having a shorter height avoided loss of potential yield. All this is of course an addendum to other comments regarding detection, recording, incidence and increased awareness. ", "Most people who think they're allergic to gluten are not, in fact, allergic to gluten. Only about 1% of Americans, for example, have the actual medical condition. About 10x that many have convinced themselves that they have a problem with gluten through casual observations and assumptions. ", "I have two theories. Not everyone who is allergic to gluten isn't actually allergic to it. They might just think they are or they're trying to be cool. Also with the population so large you're going to see a lot more people with those \"rare\" conditions like 1:10,000 etc.", "It's worth noting that many people can go with celiac their entire lives and not know. My grandmother was diagnosed in her 70s, only because other family members were testing positive.  She lived a very normal life with not too many health complications. Celiac is more likely to just shave some time off your life due to the damage it causes to the intestines and provide an array of minor inconveniences than kill you outright like say a peanut allergy.  This isn't the case for everybody of course, for some people who have abstained from gluten due to celiac for decades, any gluten at all can be deadly.  \n\nOne great thing about the hipster gluten free craze, is more and more people are thinking 'Well maybe I'm allergic' when they have an upset stomach after eating bread, and therefore get tested for celic.  I'd say this helps identify a lot of celiac patients whereas getting tested for celiac twenty years ago wouldn't have even been a thought.", "Can I just say this thread makes me really happy. :) I fully expected to open this and find a whole bunch of \"whatever, Gluten intolerance is made up and only people with Celiacs can complain!\" I understand Celiacs must suuuuuuck! They definitely get dibs, But it's also pretty lame to have insane back pain, cramps, headaches etc., and deal with people saying you're making it up :/ Like no, I don't eat pizza and doughnuts because I'm in it for the long con /s \ud83d\ude44 \nEdit: scrolled further and there was almost word for word that comment, so I guess there was some of that here, but at least there was mostly helpful stuff here! :)", "I have a friend that once claimed he was lactose intolerant because he didn't like the taste of milk.", "Because our farming industry is using round up to dry the entire wheat field out 7-10 days before pulling the crop. It adds additional wheat to the harvest but remains in the food after production. Great idea in motion since the early 90's. ", "Obligatory I'm not a doctor, or even knowledgeable in the subject... but...\n\nI've kinda wondered if there actually is an increase. Much like the increase in peanut allergies.  But rather: Is it possible that simply our understanding of the cause of these things has increased thus resulting in many people actually becoming aware of what's causing their reactions / problems?  Edit: Also with social media and a much more connected world, sometimes these small parts of a population can seem to have a much larger voice than what they really do (not saying we shouldn't care though).", "There's no scientific evidence for it. Celiac disease is a thing. Gluten intolerance appears not to be. A lot of people say they have it, but there is no evidence under lab conditions. Here's an easy to read article that cites sources: _URL_0_", "Traditional (sourdough) bread only had three ingrediants: flour, water, and salt. But bread needs to rise and this took a lot of time before there was additives such as fast acting yeast and leaven. \n\nA sourdough bacterial culture takes 5 days to cultivate and when you create the bread you'll need to let the dough rise for another 12-24 hours before baking it. \n\nThis slow fermentation process breaks down the difficult to digest gluten fibres in the bread, And this does not happen now with fast acting yeast and leaven and it's just now kicking our butt. \n\nA great book on this topic is Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan. It has also been turned into a documentary on Netflix.", "Not every culture survived off bread for 5000 years. Lots of cultures eat predominantly corn, rice, or tef, all of which are gluten free.", "Because \"gluten allergies\" are not a real thing for 99.991% of the people who say they are afflicted.", "I literally once watched a documentary on bread... don't ask I love bread. But they mentioned how the strains of wheat they farmed in ancient civilizations don't even exist today. Also, that type of wheat was hand-milled, fermented and then baked. Apparently, there some very rustic/homemade types of sourdough bread that do not irritate those who are normally allergic/intolerant to gluten.", "I knew this kid that used to come to our regular poker games who was celiac. \n\nHe had that look about him, the one that says \"i've spent 8% of my life on the toilet.\" \n\nOur games would go pretty late - 5am or later - and around midnight these fat fucks we played with would order their burgers and donuts. When the food came this kid would high-tail the fuck out of there and basically sit in a locked room, waiting for these animals to devour midnight snack. When the coast was clear, celiac boy would come out with wet wipes, sanitize all surfaces and swap out the decks to his own clean cards. \n\nDecent player, nice dude, good-looking and smart but being in the same room as a cruller would turn him into a shit volcano for weeks", "A short and efficient answer would be that something has changed about humans that is unrelated to genetics. For example, if gut flora populations were modified by modern diet, stress, sedentary lifestyle, chemical exposure, or any other factor, that would impact our ability to digest certain foods (as well as mental health demograhpics).", "Those genetics didn't survive. 200 years ago those would die and not pass it down to their offspring.", "I'd say it's in part the hormones and the degree of modifications our food (or food in the western Hemisphere) goes through. I spent a month in a 3rd world country with my wife who is gluten and lactose intolerant. She had all bread and dairy products all month without any issues. This is a country whose government refused to sign up to the international seed and farmer programs which would've ensured that any seeds, livestock or poultry could be genetically modified and shipped across borders.... Sort of like what Monsanto and other companies have modelled their businesses after. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2015/06/11/think-youre-sensitive-to-gluten-think-again"], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-gluten"], ["http://grainfoodsfoundation.org/reviews_gffs_take/netflix-cooked-episode-air/"], [], ["GlutenAlert365.com", "http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://chriskresser.com/has-antibiotic-overuse-caused-a-celiac-disease-epidemic/"], ["http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiome/changing/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26605783", "https://genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13073-016-0295-y", "https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161003113009.htm", "https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-guts-microbiome-changes-diet/", "http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/309642.php", "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=non+celiac"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.csaceliacs.org/history_of_celiac_disease.jsp"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation"], ["https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-who-found-evidence-for-gluten-sensitivity-have-now-shown-it-doesn-t-exist", "https://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2014/05/15/non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-may-not-exist/#76c4d25c574f"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain/amp"], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/24/529527564/doctors-once-thought-bananas-cured-celiac-disease-it-saved-kids-lives-at-a-cost"], [], [], ["https://www.netflix.com/watch/80175827?trackId=13752289&amp;tctx=0%2C0%2C65816674a82dbf141d1f8e4cc3b98d54905df8c6%3Aa0063866ca1197bddc714c3c615f834340f29369"], [], [], ["http://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565(10)00987-0/abstract", "http://gnowfglins.com/2017/01/11/is-store-bought-sourdough-true-sourdough-aw057/", "http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/sourdough-breadmaking-cuts-gluten-content-in-baked-goods-1.2420209"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celiac-gluten-intolerance-actually-exist/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2noyqz", "title": "how do we automatically know to say \"black leather chair\" rather than \"leather black chair\"? is there a formal way to order adjectives?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2noyqz/eli5_how_do_we_automatically_know_to_say_black/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmfikpx", "cmfmig9", "cmfn53j", "cmfn8ze", "cmfncv7", "cmfqb3n", "cmfqmy9", "cmfyti5", "cmfz41w", "cmg1syv", "cmg5ely", "cmg5npb"], "score": [9, 16, 345, 8, 22, 2, 4, 2, 5, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["I think in that instance at least one way to look at is \"leather chair\" can be considered the noun, and black is the adjective.", "It is not automatic.  You have learnt it through repetition.", "There is in fact a prescribed order.\n\nDeterminers, Observation, Size and Shape, Age, Color, Origin, Material, Qualifier\n\nmore detail at:\n_URL_0_", "There is a formal order for adjectives. \n_URL_0_\n\nThat image pretty much covers it. According to that image \"black\" is before \"leather\" because color precedes material. \n\nHow we know it is through repetition. It isn't something that is formally taught (at least, I never remember this coming up during grammar lessons), but rather something is learned via experience from speaking with other people.\n\n Here is another link that goes more in depth into this. _URL_1_ You'll see a table part of the way down that more or less mimics the first image. IIRC, it is not 100% fixed, but it more of a guideline that should be followed, otherwise you risk sounding strange. ", "[Tom Scott does a great video explaining how it works.](_URL_0_) basically in English it tends to go:\n\nGeneral Opinion  >  Specific Opinion  >  Size  >  Shape  >  Age  >  Colour  >  Origin  >  Construction\n\n Different languages have a different order, and as with all language there aren't any hard 'rules' as such. ", "In english, word order is the only way to distinguish what you are describing with an adjective. You are not calling the chair  black, you are calling the leather black. Some languages, like Russian, change the endings of the word, making word order less imperative. ", "if you cut a piece out of the chair, you would have a piece of black leather, not a piece of leather black.", "To put it simply, black describes the leather so it goes before it. Leather describes the chair, so it goes before it", "Some adjectives are cumulative,  which means that we order them so that the most defining feature is nearest the noun. This rule is clearer when we say \"spotted Dalmatian puppy\"  or \"green Christmas tree\" or \"fast police car\" because the adjectives police, Christmas, and Dalmatian are so closely tied to their respective nouns that people tend to (mistakenly) think the words \"police car\" count together to form one noun. \n\nIn your example, leather is more closely tied to the chair because lots of things are black, but fewer are leather. So \"leather\" defines the noun most specifically. \n\nIt should also be noted that cumulative adjectives stand in contrast to coordinate adjectives, which *can* be reordered without sounding strange. Example: \"The noisy, smelly cat ran away.\" sounds just as natural as \"The smelly, noisy cat ran away.\" The cat is equally smelly as it is noisy. \n\nAdditional note: as in the examples above, cumulative adjectives are not separated by commas, but coordinate adjectives are. ", "doesn't it come from the fact that such constructs are formed from smaller parts which must themselves be linguistically correct?\n\nfor example, take an \"old black leather chair\".\n\nwhy not a \"leather old black chair\"?\n\nbecause \"old black leather\" by itself is a thing.\n\nwithin \"old black leather\" there is \"black leather\". there is no \"old black\".", "It will ALWAYS be a leather chair. One could paint it a different a color. ", "The chair is made of black leather. \n\nLeather blackness isn't a thing, but black leather is. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm"], ["http://www.grammar.cl/rules/adjectives-word-order.gif", "http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTm1tJYr5_M"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "70ziof", "title": "why does repetitive hand movement such as typing cause damage, while repetitive use of other muscles makes them stronger?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70ziof/eli5_why_does_repetitive_hand_movement_such_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn73qf2", "dn74jr7", "dn75hea", "dn7bab7", "dn7ikx1", "dn7laio", "dn7wz0y", "dn80hq6"], "score": [53, 10, 4, 19, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Your fingers are controlled by tendons while your arms are controlled mainly by muscles. Tendons can possibly damage over long-term use, while muscles regenerate after microtears and get stronger. Muscles have a type of regeneration that adapts to heavier things over time. Tendons, not so much.", "The muscles in your fingers do get stronger. It is the elastic tendons, and the fluid between joints that deteriorate from constant use.", "Both are not distinct from each other. One of the biggest threat in any repetitive job is called [Repetitive strain injury](_URL_0_).\n\nSure, lifting 500 buckets of cement a day will reinforce your muscles, do that for 6 months and even though you developed strong arms, legs and back, you'll start hurting like hell. \n\nIn some job it's just inevitable. The workers will do 5-10 years, and then be put on light work on and off for the rest of their lives. ", "Remember that part of the reason why typing or mouse usage can cause injury is because, unless you've invested in ergonomic equipment, they require arm positions that are unnatural. Sure, a bit of typing now and again, and your body can handle it. But several hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 or so weeks a year for many years will start to take its toll. You have two bones in your lower arm, the ulna and the radius, which allow you to turn your wrist (exposing the back or palm of your hand) by twisting and crossing. Using a standard mouse leaves them in the crossed position, so extended use puts pressure on the muscles and tendons in this area as its not a natural resting position for them. ", "The difference is in what you are comparing based on the volume of bones and joints.\n\nThe repetitive hand movement involves a lot of bones and joints, while repetitive arm movement involves fewer bones and joints.", "As others have said fingers are controlled by muscles in the forearm. These have long tendons that go down the arm  Through a \"tunnel\" which keeps all the tendons together before they reach the hand and fingers.\n\nWhen you get surgery on  Repetitive strain injuries  They cut open the tunnel made of fascia and connective tissue in the wrist  which often relieves the problems", "There are differences between building up strength, and hurting yourself that go beyond repetitive movements.\n\nRunning, jumping, walking, are all natural movements and our bodies are evolved to do these things without trying very hard. Contorting your hand to play an F chord on a guitar on the other hand is a very un-natural position to hold your hand in. It puts most of the strain on your ligaments, tendons, and finger joints, and very little on the muscles of your arm. So working your body in that position doesn't really strengthen muscle, but does put a lot of strain on the hand. \n\nThe wrist and hands are mostly bone and connective tissue, where most of the muscle is in the arm. With carpal tunnel it's not the muscles that get hurt, it's the connective tissue that connects muscle to bone that get injured. This tissue is slow to heal and painful when inflamed. Muscles and bones for comparison have more blood flow and are much quicker to repair damage. \n\nThe range of motion also matters. Typing type injuries are made worse by contorting the hands and wrists into positions that are not natural. When you hold your hands out in front of you at rest, they are usually sideways like holding can of soda. Turning them flat, bringing them in and rotating the wrist to make the fingers line up to a keyboard, puts strain on the wrists, fingers, and hands. Lifting the arms up to float over a keyboard puts strain on the shoulders, neck, and back. ", "It's not the repetitive hand movement that causes damage.  It is that the way that people rest their wrists on the desk causes pressure on a certain bundle of nerves, which over time causes issues.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >  The pain in your carpal tunnel is due to excess pressure in your wrist and on the median nerve. Inflammation can cause swelling. The most common cause of this inflammation is an underlying medical condition that causes swelling in the wrist, and sometimes obstructed blood flow. Some of the most frequent conditions linked with carpal tunnel syndrome are:"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/repetitive-strain-injury/Pages/Introduction.aspx"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.healthline.com/health/carpal-tunnel-syndrome#overview1"]]}
{"q_id": "naaya", "title": "american accents. how much do they differ between states / regions? what are some defining characteristics of particular accents?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/naaya/eli5_american_accents_how_much_do_they_differ/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c37it2u", "c37j7zh", "c37juru", "c37k252", "c37k841", "c37lhrn", "c37n3qi", "c37it2u", "c37j7zh", "c37juru", "c37k252", "c37k841", "c37lhrn", "c37n3qi"], "score": [6, 54, 19, 3, 2, 12, 4, 6, 54, 19, 3, 2, 12, 4], "text": ["greatly. I am from the south and i am one of the better spoken people in my town. However, let me go to boston or some where and people call me on my accent constantly.", "American accents are most variable in terms of vowels, nasality, rhoticism (final R), intervocalic consonants (VCV), and final consonants.\n\nYou will obviously find greater diversity in places like NYC.  The dialect situation in America is very complicated.  For example, one of the dialects of New Orleans is the 'yat' dialect, which can trace its ancestry directly to Brooklyn.\n\nIn general, the **Inland North** is fairly 'standard.'  It exhibits the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.  The **East** and **Northeast** typically resists merging pin/pen, cot/caught, mary/merry/marry.  As a result they have more vowel variation.  Some NE dialects are non-rhotic and nasal.  You will find larger differences between individual states here.\n\nThe **Midlands** have some diversity, like in Ohio/Indiana... I'm not familiar with them.  The **South** has a good deal of diversity, but most dialects are characterized by the Southern Cities Vowel Shift.  Some also have drawls, where an extra schwa vowel (uh) is added after glides.  Some dialects have double negatives.  Again, there is sometimes non-rhoticism.\n\nThe **North Central** typically merges the vowels I mentioned resisted by the NE accents.  This accent is on the UP of Michigan, and northern WI/MN. They have strong rhotics and unreleased final consonants.  \"bag/flag/tag\" are pronounced \"beyg,fleyg,teyg.\"\n\nI believe there is a California Vowel Shift as well, but everything west of the Mississippi river is a mystery to me.\n\nSome dialects round their lips when pronouncing \"sh\" and \"r\" but I don't know who does/doesn't.\n\n**Caveat:  Do not confuse vowel sounds with vowel letters.  Our alphabet has 5 vowels, but the alphabet is irrelevant.  Most Americans have 10-12 vowel phonemes, not counting diphthongs.**", "Go [to this site](_URL_0_) to listen to natives of different areas read the same paragraph.", "In Colorado, we drop the T's in things like Mountains, Hunter, Buttons, so it sounds like moun'ains, hunner, bu'uns, ETC.", "Does any one say Aranges? Instead of Oranges? I say it like Aranges and get made fun of alot.", "This site is a quiz I stumbled upon a while back that might be fun for you?\n_URL_0_", "Where my yinzers at?\n\nI'm goin' dahntahn ta get some jumbo and chipped ham ta make a sammich before the Stillers game starts. Yinz coming aht with me after the game ta Primanti's fer some Arns?\n\n(read: [Pittsburghese](_URL_0_))", "greatly. I am from the south and i am one of the better spoken people in my town. However, let me go to boston or some where and people call me on my accent constantly.", "American accents are most variable in terms of vowels, nasality, rhoticism (final R), intervocalic consonants (VCV), and final consonants.\n\nYou will obviously find greater diversity in places like NYC.  The dialect situation in America is very complicated.  For example, one of the dialects of New Orleans is the 'yat' dialect, which can trace its ancestry directly to Brooklyn.\n\nIn general, the **Inland North** is fairly 'standard.'  It exhibits the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.  The **East** and **Northeast** typically resists merging pin/pen, cot/caught, mary/merry/marry.  As a result they have more vowel variation.  Some NE dialects are non-rhotic and nasal.  You will find larger differences between individual states here.\n\nThe **Midlands** have some diversity, like in Ohio/Indiana... I'm not familiar with them.  The **South** has a good deal of diversity, but most dialects are characterized by the Southern Cities Vowel Shift.  Some also have drawls, where an extra schwa vowel (uh) is added after glides.  Some dialects have double negatives.  Again, there is sometimes non-rhoticism.\n\nThe **North Central** typically merges the vowels I mentioned resisted by the NE accents.  This accent is on the UP of Michigan, and northern WI/MN. They have strong rhotics and unreleased final consonants.  \"bag/flag/tag\" are pronounced \"beyg,fleyg,teyg.\"\n\nI believe there is a California Vowel Shift as well, but everything west of the Mississippi river is a mystery to me.\n\nSome dialects round their lips when pronouncing \"sh\" and \"r\" but I don't know who does/doesn't.\n\n**Caveat:  Do not confuse vowel sounds with vowel letters.  Our alphabet has 5 vowels, but the alphabet is irrelevant.  Most Americans have 10-12 vowel phonemes, not counting diphthongs.**", "Go [to this site](_URL_0_) to listen to natives of different areas read the same paragraph.", "In Colorado, we drop the T's in things like Mountains, Hunter, Buttons, so it sounds like moun'ains, hunner, bu'uns, ETC.", "Does any one say Aranges? Instead of Oranges? I say it like Aranges and get made fun of alot.", "This site is a quiz I stumbled upon a while back that might be fun for you?\n_URL_0_", "Where my yinzers at?\n\nI'm goin' dahntahn ta get some jumbo and chipped ham ta make a sammich before the Stillers game starts. Yinz coming aht with me after the game ta Primanti's fer some Arns?\n\n(read: [Pittsburghese](_URL_0_))"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&amp;language=english"], [], [], ["http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have"], ["http://www.pittsburghese.com/"], [], [], ["http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&amp;language=english"], [], [], ["http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have"], ["http://www.pittsburghese.com/"]]}
{"q_id": "57w75u", "title": "why can't we just put nuclear power plants in 'the middle of nowhere' and use all the power they generate? why place something potential dangerous anywhere near civilization?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57w75u/eli5_why_cant_we_just_put_nuclear_power_plants_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8vhja3", "d8vhlg2", "d8vhoee", "d8viqh0", "d8vjk2k", "d8vk8el", "d8vnzck"], "score": [66, 3, 4, 42, 20, 17, 3], "text": ["If you place a nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere you need expensive power transmission lines to connect it to the users. You also need to build trains and roads to the area for the construction. You may also need to make a factory for the concrete and steelworks close by. All the construction workers need a place to live and later you need places for the workers at the power plant to live. The logistics is a lot harder as you can not just pop out to the hardware store if you need something. In Soviet they did this for administrative purposes. The Chernobyl power plant had 50,000 people living in the nearest city and they only provided the power plant with workers and hardware.", "There is water needed for cooling. It's hard to find a place near water that isn't populated. Even if you did, there is power loss over power lines.\n\nA different approach than the large power plants, is to use small power reactors for local power. ", "And how would we get the workers there? Would you like a 2 hour commute each way on a daily basis?\n\nIf you did have such a commute it wouldn't take long until somebody got the bright idea to have housing right next to the powerplant, and voila, a new city with a powerplant right next to it.", "A plant in the middle of nowhere needs workers. The workers need to live somewhere. Their families need groceries and schools and recreation facilities, which in turn generate more jobs and more demand... and suddenly there is a city next to the power plant. ", "As well as the other reasons, they're just not that dangerous, even if people didn't learn from last disasters  (Don't override safety features) a coal plant or even heavy industry does much more damage on average.", "Not only is it impractical, its also (assuming no nuclear accidents occur) unnecessary because of safety precautions. The maximum allowed yearly equivalent dose of a radiation worker (UK) is 50% of what an average human recieves annually (from the ground and cosmic radiation).\n\nPower plants require large access to water, which they can only get from natural sources such as rivers/the sea.  They also need to be able to put the water back. Don't worry, this water doesn't get irradiated, its only used for cooling and heat transfer.\n\nThis and a close input to the power grid are what limits the location of a nuclear power plant. \n\nThe problem is the possibility of accidents occuring, which we don't want to happen EVER, let alone around a large human population. So we take a lot of precautions. Accidents the size of Chernobyl can only really occur from ignoring procedures or in the case of chernobyl, messing about with the processes. At chernobyl they were testing something whilst at low power in an attempt to make it safer.\n\nThe next most infamous accident is Fukushima. In Fukushima the calculated death rate was (I believe, im on mobile so i lack source) 0.5 people. What you really have to consider is the risk - for example, more people were harmed from the evacuation of Fukushima (due to the elderly being removed from their homes) than harmed by the radiation its self. \n\nKnowledge and research is our friend when trying to tame nuclear reactions. What we don't really have enough research on is the effect of radiation on humans - because only the japanese atomic bomb survivors are the only samples we have. ", "Power plants generate Watts and Vars. \n\nWatts are used for actually powering stuff like motors, lights, computers.\n\nVars are used to stabilize the grid and deal with imperfections in the way electrical equipment interacts on the power grid. Vars are especially important around parts of the grid with lots of large motors. \n\nWatts can be sent over transmission lines, Vars cannot. So you need Var sources near your customers. \n\nGenerators are the best way to make Vars. They can produce 1 Var for every 2 watts. This makes it desirable to have large plants near big urban areas or industrial areas. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "50cjqr", "title": "Kaaba. In modern times, there are two attempts to seize/destroy it. One is by ISIS, which is a mere bluff. Another is in the successful 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. Prior to that, has any other groups attempt to occupy or destroy it?", "selftext": "It's the most sacred symbol to Muslims. I wonder if during the long Crusades anyone ever attempt to defile it? What was the meaning of Kaaba to outsiders?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/50cjqr/kaaba_in_modern_times_there_are_two_attempts_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d73fcsq", "d73yb7o"], "score": [13, 3], "text": ["My example will relate to Mecca in general rather than the Kaaba, since I am unaware of any other attempts in history at destroying the city.\n\nReynald de Chatillon was a notorious Crusader who was lord of Oultrejordain from 1175 until 1187. He was a French knight who was held in disdain by both Christians and Muslims, as he had terrorized friendly states such as Cyprus merely for plunder. He was in fact imprisoned by the emir of Damascus for some 15 years, and afterwards he attained his position as ruler of the territories beyond Jordan, giving him proximity to Arabia. Reynald had not given up his old ways, and in 1182 he commenced a series of raids against neutral Muslim vessels on the Red Sea, during which time he made his intentions of targeting Mecca clear. However, Saladin's brother Al-Adil managed to destroy the fleet and Reynald retreated, never again to venture south on campaign.\n\nPerhaps this is not the ideal example, but it is a case of a Crusader attempting to attack the city of Mecca, although his exact intentions with the city are unknown.", "The Portuguese made a couple attempts at capturing Mecca after they successfully circumnavigated Africa around the turn of the sixteenth century. \n\nFrancisco de Almeida attacked Jedda in 1505 and attempted to conquer Mecca the following year, but was repelled by Mir Husayn al-Kurdi. Affonso de Albuquerque also variously tried to blockade Jedda (a key supply route to Mecca) to starve out its inhabitants and to capture the holy city in 1513 to exchange it with the Mamluks for Jerusalem. \n\nIf you'd like to read more, check: Abbas Hamdani, \"Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India,\" in *Journal of the American Oriental Society* 101, no. 3 (1981): 326-327."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3oj2eu", "title": "why don't bugs take fall damage?", "selftext": "I've seen bugs fall from high distances yet they walk away fine, why is that? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oj2eu/eli5_why_dont_bugs_take_fall_damage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvxnyj4", "cvxodbz", "cvxofw8", "cvxqb2d"], "score": [101, 24, 22, 5], "text": ["Two main reasons: First, they're very light. The force of an impact is proportional to the mass of the object involved. Insects have very little mass, so they receive comparatively little force. It also means they have a low terminal velocity because the force of gravity pulling them down is more easily countered by air resistance.\n\nSecond, they're armored. That doesn't seem consequential when you squish a bug, but on insect-scale the exoskeleton is quite strong, and it helps them minimize the impact of what force they do take from falling.", "Remember when you were a 50 lbs kid and you fell down all the time and got right back up?  Then as an 100 lbs adolescent you fall down on occasion, it hurts a bit, but you just walk it off.  Then you become a 150+ lbs adult, you fall down once every few years, and it'll require a doctors visit and possibly surgery.\n\n***The bigger they are, the harder they fall***\n\nBugs are way smaller than little kids.", "It's something called the [square cube law](_URL_0_). In laymans' terms it means that the strength of an object decreases as it gets larger if the same density is kept because the volume of that object increases much faster than its surface area. This means that proportionately the skeletal structures of animals have to get much stronger to be able to handle stress. If an ant was scaled up to the size of a human while its exoskeleton remained the same, it would probably collapse under its own weight. If a human was scaled up to the size of an elephant, we would break our legs trying to stand up. As a consequence, small animals can take a lot of fall damage because their bones are proportionately stronger than ours for their size.  ", "Actual \"Explain Like I'm **FIVE**\" answer: It's similar to why your toy cars don't mash up in crashes like a real car. \n\nAdult answer: Size and structural strength don't scale together. If you scaled an ant up to be the size of an elephant it would definitely make a big splat if it fell. But because they are so small they have a high strength to weight ratio. Bugs also usually have a slower terminal velocity because they are so small."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law"], []]}
{"q_id": "6dau7f", "title": "Western food culture during a certain period of time seemed obsessed with the idea of \"digestion\"...things that were hard to digest, things that made digestion easier, etc. Where did this come from, and why did it go away?", "selftext": "You can see it in the creation of the _digestif_, in advertisements like  [this one](_URL_0_), and in the notion that certain diseases were caused by abnormalities in digestion. Why the fixation on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dau7f/western_food_culture_during_a_certain_period_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di1jxjp", "di1v1hg", "di280xn"], "score": [74, 2, 10], "text": ["As a quick disclaimer: I approach this primarily from the American home economics movement, which was heavily about nutrition, not as a food historian, so if we are lucky someone else can give you a more culinary perspective, but here is the sociological perspective. \n \n\u201cDigestibility\u201d at is right at the birth of nutrition as a science, and \u201cdigestibility\u201d is a polite advertising buzzword to intimate to you, dear homemaker, that the food will not give you a tummy aches, heartburn, or toots. And heck, we still get [food advertising to that effect.](_URL_3_) Humans in general before this time had a fair idea that food goes in, it churns around in your stomach, poop comes out, both of these happening regularly and in the least painful ways possible is preferred, but a lot of the details about how exactly that works get worked out (perhaps not to our understanding today, but still worked out to themselves) around the turn of the century. For example, most vitamins were discovered from 1910-1930s, and how exciting would those breakthroughs have been? [Consider this cutting-edge nutrition book from 1923](_URL_4_), which will help you get more of all FOUR vitamins in your diet. Nutritional science is hot though, and of great interest to many parties: poor parents, who have agonized watching their children suffer the effects of poor nutrition, especially during the Great Depression; rich parents, who also stress over their children and if they\u2019re healthy; governments, who have a pretty hefty interest in maintaining a healthy population for various purposes, especially after WWI; and Progressives, rich charity-minded folk who care about the poor and want to better their lives. Enter the food producer, who wants to market to all these people. This concern for nutritional science starts entering the consciousness of homemakers as they get exposure to home economics training through school, charity efforts, and government programs, from the turn of the century through the 50s. Any homemaker worth her (iodized, of course) salt is going to care that her family is fed nutritious food, that gets in and out of their bodies with the least drama. Advertisers cater to her scientific mind. \n \nSo what makes a food \u201ceasily digested?\u201d Low fiber, first, cause fiber gives you the toots and that was not seen as a part of healthy digestion then and nobody really likes it now even, but also low fat, low acid, well cooked (proteins and stuff broken down), and now spicy foods are banned in the bland diet too, but that wasn\u2019t much of a concern for a White American housewife at the turn of the century. So some advertising, [like this one for canned beans,](_URL_1_) makes sense. Cooking the tar out of your beans will indeed make them more \u201cdigestible,\u201d and maybe you won\u2019t fart as much, especially if Jane Homemaker doesn\u2019t know all the tricks to cooking beans to make them less noisy. Early breakfast cereal, also [makes a fair pitch to being digestible, because all the wheat is pre-cooked and broken down.](_URL_0_) However, that \u201cdigestible\u201d word is slapped on a lot of things that, uh, aren\u2019t really more easily digestible than anything else. Like your Worcestershire sauce there. I spent a while trying to find any \u201cscience\u201d the company had put behind that claim, but I\u2019ve come up a blank. You didn\u2019t need to prove a word like \u201cdigestible\u201d back then though. I think it was a general grasp for the \u201chealth halo\u201d effect, like when they market potato chips as \u201cnatural\u201d now. \n \nProbably the most famous marketer under the \u201cdigestible!\u201d banner is Crisco, who found a pretty good way to market a rejected soap-making fat in their own bestseller, *The Story of Crisco*, where they give us this [very [citation needed] claim](_URL_5_) \n \n > The first step in the digestion of fat is its melting. Crisco melts at a lower degree of heat than body temperature. Because of its low melting point, thus allowing the digestive juices to mix with it, and because of its vegetable origin and its purity, Crisco is the easiest of all cooking fats to digest.\n \n > When a fat smokes in frying, it \"breaks down,\" that is, its chemical composition is changed; part of its altered composition becomes a non-digestible and irritating substance. The best fat for digestion is one which does not decompose or break down at frying temperature. Crisco does not break down until a degree of heat is reached above the frying point. In other words, Crisco does not break down at all in normal frying, because it is not necessary to have it \"smoking hot\" for frying. No part of it, therefore, has been transformed in cooking into an irritant. That is one reason why the stomach welcomes Crisco and carries forward its digestion with ease.\n \nAlso choice quote: \n \n > Crisco is Kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco. It conforms to the strict Dietary Laws of the Jews. It is what is known in the Hebrew language as a \"parava,\" or neutral fat. Crisco can be used with both \"milchig\" and \"fleichig\" (milk and flesh) foods. Special Kosher packages, bearing the seals of Rabbi Margolies of New York, and Rabbi Lifsitz of Cincinnati, are sold the Jewish trade. But all Crisco is Kosher and all of the same purity.\n \n*4000 years.* \n \nLater Crisco got more explicit about what they mean with \u201cdigestibility:\u201d [it\u2019s all about preventing getting heartburn from all the fried trash you eat.](_URL_2_) \n \nThe aperitif/digestif thing in alcohol is a different beast though, and outside of nutritional science/home economics. Most home ec scientists were Prohibitionists and teetotalers! \n \nTl;dr: it\u2019s usually code for \u201cwon\u2019t give you heartburn,\u201d or farts, or general indigestion, a concern which isn\u2019t advertised to as much in food anymore, because another industry got in on that gig (see: Beano, Zantac, Pepto Bismol, etc etc) ", "You might also want to ask this over at [r/AskFoodHistorians/](_URL_0_).", "One thing I'd like to point out here that hasn't been mentioned (and isn't in /u/caffarelli's otherwise excellent answer) is that prior to the modern industrialized age being infected with Helicobacter Pylori was quite common, and nearly universal. It still is in the developing world. The changeover likely having a lot to do with improvements in sanitation (especially in drinking water, but also foods, especially preserved foods). In any event, H. Pylori infections are known to cause inflammation of the stomach lining, gastritis, ulcers, and stomach cancer. Probably about 10-20% of people with H. Pylori infections develop peptic ulcers. In the developing or pre-industrial world something like 80% of people will be infected by H. Pylori by their mid-20s. Which means that somewhere around 1 in 12 to 1 in 6 of *all people* in the pre-industrial world would end up with a peptic ulcer at one point in their lives.\n\nThat's a lot of people. On top of that you'd have random bouts of acute gastritis or less severe forms of just having a more \"sensitive stomach\" than usual. All of those symptoms would have lead to a desire to alleviate or ameliorate them. Experiencing a peptic ulcer even once is fairly likely going to lead to a lifetime of being careful with what one eats in an effort to avoid it, which will encourage others to follow the example out of an abundance of precaution. And even if the behavior has no effect often times the gastritis or ulcer will simply get better naturally, leading to the perception of a causal relationship."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Leaperrins.png/363px-Leaperrins.png"], "answers_urls": [["https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1021/8371/products/TIN2_024.jpg?v=1493253219", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Campbell_bean_advert_in_Saturday_Evening_Post_1921.png", "https://envisioningtheamericandream.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/food-crisco-36-swscan00021-copy.jpg", "http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2008/07/gut_instinct.html", "http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=hearth;cc=hearth;idno=4170476;q1=digestion;node=4170476%3A7;frm=frameset;view=image;seq=5;page=root;size=s", "https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13286/13286-h/13286-h.htm#The_Story_of_Crisco"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFoodHistorians/"], []]}
{"q_id": "l37v8", "title": "if a star is 5 million light years away, then are we looking into the past?", "selftext": "If I see a star through a telescope, is it possible that it doesnt exist anymore and I am only seeing as it was 5 millions years ago?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l37v8/eli5_if_a_star_is_5_million_light_years_away_then/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2pe5pm", "c2pe6wy", "c2pe9vr", "c2pfbhg", "c2pe5pm", "c2pe6wy", "c2pe9vr", "c2pfbhg"], "score": [12, 6, 2, 21, 12, 6, 2, 21], "text": ["Yes. It would take 5 millions years for the light to reach us, so you are seeing light sent from that star 5 million years ago. Yes, it is possible it no longer exists.", "Yup.\n\nThere are, in fact, several big, unstable stars that are far enough away that they might have already exploded. Eta Carinae is an example.", "I'd give anything to be on a space ship that could do a large fraction of the speed of light, a spaceship that had GIANT windows of course... Imagine what you would see...", "You are \"looking into the past\" whenever you look at *anything*. Sure, that star is 5 million light years away, so what you're seeing is as it was 5 million years ago.\n\nThe sun is ~8 light minutes away. You're seeing it as it was 8 minutes ago.\n\nThe moon? ~2 seconds.\n\nYour monitor? A very tiny amount, but more than zero.\n\nEdit: As an addendum: the stars you generally see in the sky are not as far as 5M light years. Our galaxy is only about 100 000 light years in diameter.", "Yes. It would take 5 millions years for the light to reach us, so you are seeing light sent from that star 5 million years ago. Yes, it is possible it no longer exists.", "Yup.\n\nThere are, in fact, several big, unstable stars that are far enough away that they might have already exploded. Eta Carinae is an example.", "I'd give anything to be on a space ship that could do a large fraction of the speed of light, a spaceship that had GIANT windows of course... Imagine what you would see...", "You are \"looking into the past\" whenever you look at *anything*. Sure, that star is 5 million light years away, so what you're seeing is as it was 5 million years ago.\n\nThe sun is ~8 light minutes away. You're seeing it as it was 8 minutes ago.\n\nThe moon? ~2 seconds.\n\nYour monitor? A very tiny amount, but more than zero.\n\nEdit: As an addendum: the stars you generally see in the sky are not as far as 5M light years. Our galaxy is only about 100 000 light years in diameter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6c03l1", "title": "my neighborhood has a sign that says \"conserve water, irrigate lawns between 7pm and 7am\" how does watering at night, but using the same amount of water, help conserve water?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c03l1/eli5_my_neighborhood_has_a_sign_that_says/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhqv8ko", "dhqvks4", "dhqyddv", "dhr47mb"], "score": [80, 27, 8, 7], "text": ["The thinking behind this is in the evening or at night its generally cooler. And without bright sunlight, with cooler temperatures, less of the water you spray onto your lawn will evaporate. \n\n", "If you water at night the water will evaporate much slower. This allows more of it to soak into the soil and be absorbed by the plants. So you actually have to water less often to keep the plants healthy. ", "This is bad advice.\n\nWatering at night can promote fungus and other disease.\n\nWatering in the early morning (4 - 10am) is best. It still allows water to penetrate into the ground and not evaporate as fast as in the midday.\n\n", "There is a two pronged process behind this kind of social engineering.\n\nYes, watering overnight can use less water but its more about spreading the load on the water infrastructure out.\n\nThey don't want everyone getting home from work, slamming a load into the wash, turning on the dishwasher and having their sprinklers on...need more and larger reservoirs, more capacity at the treatment plant, etc. So they tell you its a conservation measure but the underlying reason is so they don't have to upgrade expensive infrastructure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ezijt", "title": "A question on the snowball earth hypothesis. ", "selftext": "I saw a documentary on the snowball ball earth hypothesis last night and it just raised a few questions in my mind.\n\nOver 650 million years ago was the amount of water on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere the same as it is today?\n\nIf there is the same amount of water on earth today as there was over 650 million years ago, how was there enough to completely cover the land mass in ice and snow as the snowball earth hypothesis describes? On the documentary it was stated that the earth was covered by several thousand meters of ice and snow. \n\nI just don't see how there would have been enough water on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere to cover the planet in that much ice and snow.\n\n\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ezijt/a_question_on_the_snowball_earth_hypothesis/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1c5uld"], "score": [7], "text": ["70% of our planet is covered in oceans. More than half of the oceans are 3000+ meters deep. Enough water to cover the 30% land on our planet. Even enough to cover the planet in several thousand meters, which seems a bit unlikely to me, but it is possible, in theory. Also keep in mind that snow and ice are less dense than water. Given enough time with ocean water evaporating, snowing and no thawing, it is possible. \r\nedit: corrected an (obvious) error\r\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3e806f", "title": "why does the white house often not respond to petitions submitted through its online portal even if they've reached the required number of signatures?", "selftext": "The [online petition page](_URL_1_) for the White House says you'll get a response if you reach 100,000 signatures in 30 days. Many of the [most popular](_URL_0_) petitions have exceeded that threshold and yet don't have responses. Some are several years old.\n\nSo what gives?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e806f/eli5_why_does_the_white_house_often_not_respond/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctciydv", "ctcmep7", "ctcvniz"], "score": [23, 6, 6], "text": ["Many of the petitions they haven't responded to are related to law enforcement or diplomatic issues.\n\nIt's often considered inappropriate for elected officials to intervene directly in law enforcement issues, because this can be perceived as the government inappropriately favoring or disfavoring individuals for political reasons.\n\nAnswering questions on diplomatic issues, meanwhile, could compromise relationships or bargaining positions with other countries.", "They are not required to respond within a certain amount of time. And even if they were, it would be a self imposed restriction. For particularly contentious issues in which any response is more likely to hurt the administration than help it. I suspect the administration either doesn't yet know what they want to do, has no direct power to do, or publicly responding reduces their future options on the subject.\n\nEven a \"no comment\" could cause political, popular, or diplomatic scandals for most of these. If you were in their position, would you respond if you didn't have to?", "Because its not politically convenient. The white house will *only* respond to a petition if the response puts them in a better political position. If the petition is critical of the administration, then the white is not served by answering it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0/", "https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8sttg8", "title": "my boss says that giving a customer a 10% discount and being able to sustain it, would mean we would need to increase business by 40%. how does that workout?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8sttg8/eli5_my_boss_says_that_giving_a_customer_a_10/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1262t9", "e126gtr", "e12ae9f", "e12bqea"], "score": [45, 6, 7, 4], "text": ["10% comes from the whole amount, but a company only makes a margin of profit.\n\nLet's say I sell thingies.  A thingie costs me $8 to manufacture (or that's what I pay for it wholesale) and I sell it for $10.  My goal each month is to sell 100 thingies which gives me a $200 profit ($2 per thingie)\n\nIf I give a 10% discount to a customer and sell it for $9, and I sell 100 thingies, my profit is $100.  I've lost half of my money.  I will need to sell 100% more thingies just to get back to where I was before a 10% discount.", "a 10% discount on the customer's price is a  > 10% loss of profit because costs remain fixed.\n\nIf the sale price is $1 and my fixed costs are $0.50, a 10% sale cuts profit by 20%. Such a sale wouldn't be worth it unless it causes sales to increase by 25%.\n\nThe fact that you would need to increase sales by 40% implies that a 10% discount on price amounts to just under a 30% loss of profit which means that internal costs make up about 2/3 of your sale price.", "Your boss runs at a 25% profit margin. Long equation short, 25% margin of 40% more sales = 10% to cover decrease in net sales.\n\nEli5: 10% decrease in prices does not mean a 10% increase in sales will cover costs.", "If your fixed costs remain the same (cost of item being sold, rent, employee costs, etc.) then the 10% discount just comes out of the margin -- the amount left between the revenue and the cost to generate that revenue. \n\nLet's say you sell baseball caps for $15. You have to buy the hat from the manufacturer, rent your store pay the utilities on the store, pay your store employees, pay to run advertising and so on... let's say the wholesale cost of the hat is $10, and the rent, salaries, etc. run you another $3 per hat (averaging the month's sales vs. those monthly costs).\n\nSo you have a margin of $2 per hat sold. Let's say you sell 500 hats/month, that's a total margin of $1000/mo. on $10,000 in sales.\n\nNow let's say you run a 10% off coupon that all your customers use for a month. You're still paying $10 for each hat. You're still paying the same rent, same utilities, same salaries. But you're only making $13.50 per hat now, and the margin after paying the expenses is $250. So instead of having $1000 in profits, you barely break even at the end of the month.\n\nNow you increase sales by 40%. Instead of selling 500 hats, you sell 700 hats. You have to pay the $2000 additional to your supplier for the extra 200 hats you sell, but your rent, salaries, etc. remain constant. So your effective margin is $3.50 on those 200 hats, or $700. Now, your profits are $950 ($250 + $700), or almost equal what they were before but you sold 40% more merchandise at a 10% discount. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27hd7v", "title": "grammar--what is the logic behind not ending a sentence with a preposition?", "selftext": "It is widely known that one should not end a sentence with a preposition. What is the logic behind this? What is it all about? Other than it just being an eternal rule of grammar, what is it about ending a sentence with a preposition that requires correction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27hd7v/eli5_grammarwhat_is_the_logic_behind_not_ending_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci0t9c5", "ci0ujdw", "ci0v97b", "ci13ekd"], "score": [24, 9, 10, 3], "text": ["So, this supposed \"rule\" of grammar is known as a [prescriptive rule](_URL_0_): there is no inherent reason why you can't end a sentence with a preposition, other than because people consider it \"bad form.\"  Like wearing a t-shirt to fancy dinner party; there's nothing inherently *wrong* about it, it's just considered bad taste.\n\nIf you're asking where the actual rule comes from; it was invented by 19th century grammarians, who thought that the idea of a *pre*position coming at the end of a sentence was inherently illogical.  ", "In English, a preposition requires an object (sometimes called a referent). Think of these sentences:\n\n > I gave the donut *to* Blurgette. \n\n > I received an upvote *from* Blurgette. \n\nThe idea is that the sentence is less comprehensible if the preposition and the referent are separated and in general this makes sense. \n\nIn current usage, people tend to end sentences with prepositions when they form questions. The structure is a bit more complicated here. In a declarative (non-question sentence), the typical word order is *subject, verb, direct object, indirect object*:\n\n > Blurgette gave the upvote to FinanceITGuy.\n\nAs a question, the formal structure of the sentence should be *indirect object, subject, verb, direct object*:\n\n > To whom did Blurgette give the upvote?\n\nTo many people, this usage feels stilted and overly formal, so you hear many questions structured like this:\n\n > Who did Blurgette give the upvote to?\n\nThis usage is commonly accepted in informal usage, but it drives grammarians crazy. The reason for the aggravation is at least as much due to the use of the nominative pronoun 'who' (which should be used to indicate the subject of the sentence) in place of the dative pronoun 'whom' (which indicates the recipient of the verb's action) as it is to the shockingly naked pronoun at the end of the sentence. \n\nIn conclusion, one of my favorite grammar jokes describes an alternate resolution to this issue:\n\nA young man is accepted to Harvard. He is the first one from his family to attend a university and he is not used to formal English grammar. His first day on campus he is exploring the grounds and asks an upperclassman: \"Where is the library at?\" The older student looks down his nose and says \"Sir, here at Harvard we do not end our sentences with prepositions.\" The new student pauses for a moment and then says, \"I see, excuse me. Where is the library at, asshole?\"\n\n", "As I understand it, not ending sentences with prepositions was a grammatical rule in Latin. Then, in the 19th century, grammarians decided that they should make English follow Latin as closely as possible, and so started applying it to English. It's a ridiculous, awkward, bullshit 'rule' that isn't even a rule anyway (and [the Oxford English Dictionary](_URL_0_) agree with me). So feel free to put prepositions at the end of sentences, unless you're speaking Latin there's absolutely no reason not to. ", "It has to do with dumbing down language for teaching kids basic operations.\n\nKids are told early on things like you can't start a sentence with 'and' or you can't end a sentence with 'to' because you're trying to teach the basic concepts of conjunctions or prepositions needing to be connected to things to make sense.\n\n(Side Note: As a grade one teacher, I recently has to explain to a student that he could not answer true AND false to a question. What can I say? Kids sometimes need things oversimplified in rules that don't explain WHY.)\n\nThe problem is grammar nazis start taking these 'rules' too seriously (mostly teachers who never understood WHY they were teaching it or students who grew up without a sense of context and take things too seriously.)\n\nSo then they start trying to impose these 'rules' on adults although those adults understand that the preposition is still connected to an object even if it is at the end of the sentence.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription"], [], ["http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/ending-sentences-with-prepositions"], []]}
{"q_id": "1gn24a", "title": "why is it illegal for news programs and and other major media sources to show people's faces without having consent, but it's perfectly legal for papparazzi and tabloids to print and sell candid photos of celebrities?", "selftext": "I really can't think of any real reason other than celebrities sign something when they get big that allows anyone to use their image for anything. That theory of mine just sounds a bit ridiculous.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gn24a/eli5_why_is_it_illegal_for_news_programs_and_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caltebi", "calu1qx", "calusst", "calut8s", "caluthr", "calveot", "calvork", "calvp4n", "calvykf", "calw9vi", "calwdqm", "calwk9o", "calxsqx", "calyvd0", "cam2u44", "cam6gh6"], "score": [528, 24, 7, 69, 14, 7, 9, 27, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4], "text": ["Laws differ by country, so my answer applies to the United States...\n\nIn general, if a person is in a place where they don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy (street, shopping center, etc.) you are allowed to take their picture and publish it (newspaper, tv, Internet, etc.) if it's in the public interest.\n\nFor example, if you are walking down the street on a hot day and I take a picture of you wiping sweat off your brow I can publish the picture in the newspaper, without your permission, to illustrate an article about the hot weather.\n\nHowever, I can not use that picture in an advertisement for sunscreen (or anything else for that matter) without your permission.\n\nThere are exceptions to this rule that protect people from libel and invasion of privacy, but there's no law requiring news organizations from blurring out faces.", " >  but it's perfectly legal for papparazzi and tabloids to print and sell candid photos of celebrities?\n\nThat's kind of a misconception. In a lot of cases, said celebrities can (and some have) sue the paparazzi for taking the picture or the tabloids for publishing them, but they don't. The reason they don't is because they know that if they sue too much, the paparazzi will actually stop, and they don't *want* them to stop, it's annoying, but for a lot of them, that's pretty much free publicity. ", "Fun fact: a good number of these supposedly candid pap shots are arranged by the celeb in question, and they're paid for it.", "I think [this article in Wikimedia Commons](_URL_0_) summarizes the differences:\n\n > The following examples do not require consent in many countries:\n\n    An anonymous street performer\n\n    An anonymous person, in a public place, especially as part of a larger crowd\n\n    People taking part in a public event at a privately-owned venue, for example, a press conference at an office\n    building\n\n    A basketball player competing in a match which is open to the public\n\n > The following examples typically require consent\n\n    A man and woman talking, entitled \"A prostitute speaks to her pimp\" (possible defamation)\n\n    An identifiable child, entitled \"An obese girl\" (potentially derogatory or demeaning)\n\n    Partygoers at a private party, unless press is specifically invited (unreasonable intrusion without consent)\n\n    Nudes, underwear or swimsuit shots, unless obviously taken in a public place \u2013 even if the subject's face    \\\n\n    is obscured (unreasonable intrusion without consent)\n\n    Long-lens images, taken from afar, of an individual in a private place (unreasonable intrusion)\n", "There is a legal difference between public figures and non public figures.  Public figures have lower privacy rights and higher burdens when suing for libel and slander.", "When it comes to privacy law, your position in life matters. For example, many states have lax privacy laws for public figures. The idea is that since you have decided to become an actor, or essentially a person who performs publicly, then by doing so you waive some of your right to privacy. If you become a politician you voluntarily put yourself out there as a public figure and so waive some of your right to privacy. Most private citizens have a large amount of privacy rights, until they give it up voluntarily. The only time you don't give it up voluntarily exactly is if you become a news report- especially for something violent. If you kill twenty people they don't give a shit about your privacy they will report everything they find out about you. ", "It's not illegal for new programmes and other major media sources to show people's faces without having consent (in public).\n\nSo there's your answer.", "As a former newspaper employee in the US, our rule was: If you were legally allowed to stand where you were when the picture was taken and didn't need the photo equipment (telephoto,night vision, etc) to see, then the photo is legal to print.\n\nHowever, only under exceptional circumstances would we choose to print without permission.\n\nWhy?  You want the people in the news to be willing to talk to you. Asking and respecting the answer garners goodwill and cooperation.", "Pretend you and your mom are at a park. You're five years old. You get there, you start playing in the sandbox. You look over and some people are gathering around your mom. They're other parents, discussing the recent PTA meeting. Nobody pays you any mind. They talk for a long time, and a student reporter who happened to be nearby takes a picture to put in the school newspaper (PTA RELAX AT THE PARK!). It's been a couple hours, and your mom finally comes to get you. When you're leaving, you ask your mom who those people were, what you were talking about, why they were taking her picture. She answers, and you listen and, satisfied, fall asleep in the car seat.\n\nEdit:\n\nCourt cases!\n\nTl;Dr: You don't spur public debate, you don't forward public interest, and you don't possess the resources to block or otherwise tame the bad mean things said about you that can cause harm. Therefore, your privacy is more important than a public figure's. \n\nHere's one. Curtis Publishing Co. V. Butts. Little legal difference between public figures and public officials -- essentially lumping everybody I just said into one category. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:\n\n\"Many who do not hold public office at the moment are nevertheless intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large.\"\n\nThis was for a libel case, but the idea still holds up. Public officials and public figures alike have a massive hand in shaping public opinion, spurring talk and debate, and forwarding public interest whether we recognize it or not (nobody LIKES those tabloids, but how many are sold a day?). As well as this, and established in another court case (Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc.):\n \n\"Public officials and public figures usually enjoy significantly greater access to the channels of effective communication and hence have a more realistic opportunity to counteract false statements than private individuals normally enjoy. Private individuals are therefore more vulnerable to injury, and the state interest in protecting them is correspondingly greater...\"\n\nBasically outlining the idea that, not only do public figures spur debate and provide for society's best interests, but they also have a more-than-normal power to deflect or otherwise change the news or debate that disfavors them through the use of money and status, and therefore the state focuses more resources on protecting your rights than theirs. ", "The reason for this is because of the difference between public and private people. A public person is someone like the president or famous actor. The Supreme Court ruled that public people have less privacy rights. I believe the reason for this is because public people need to be open to criticism.\n\nThe actual definition of what a public person is is more complicated, but it basically boils down to a person that has been thrust into the public spotlight. Jimmy down the road is not a public person, but if he runs for Congress or his dad runs for Congress, he would be.\n\nEveryone else has more privacy rights. Now, this does not mean that people always have to get consent to film people withot blurred faces, but it does mean that if you are in a situation where you would expect privacy, you'll receive it.", "Paparazzi are used so the people can decide which celebrity will be sacrificed for the next corn harvest.", "Is it actually illegal for new outlets to not blur your face, or do they do it to avoid any potential lawsuit...just a blanket policy because it is cheaper to do it that way than deal with lawsuits?", "People are right here about the expectation of privacy and the difference between public and private figures but there is also just plain old caution.  \n\nThe benefit of publishing a picture of someone without consent often doesn't outweigh the cost of fighting a lawsuit(even if bullshit) or dealing with people angry that their picture was published. Or, even worse, the person they showed was in hiding say from an abuser or some other person intending them harm and the picture helps locate them. \n", "They can and do show people's pictures in group street shots.  It's when they run a piece about \"the obesity epidemic\" where they show muffin tops trotting around that they blur the faces.  If it's for some sort of advertisement, or where a company gains profit by the shot, then they'll need a release to be signed.  It's cheaper to blur the faces on those.", "Hey, just a heads up, asking a legal question on reddit will almost always leave you more uninformed than you were to start with.  ", "Actually in the US you don't need permission to publish images of an adult taken in a public place. That's why street photography is legal. News papers don't need permission either. Blurred faces are most often courtesy or for minors "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people#Examples"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5xfs1p", "title": "why are people often ridiculed for buying $5 lattes but not for buying $5 beers?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xfs1p/eli5_why_are_people_often_ridiculed_for_buying_5/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dehre6h", "dehrwtz", "dehsd8t", "dehsm09", "dehzr9r"], "score": [19, 5, 2, 5, 12], "text": ["Making coffee at home is much more common than brewing beer at home. That's really all it is.", "When you're paying 5 bucks for a beer you're usually in a social setting, playing pool, listening to music. Having a good time with your friends.\n\nWhen you go through the drive through for coffee every morning you are paying for something to sip alone or at work. Something you could have made at home for a couple of cents, while saving yourself time not sitting in a drive through.", "You can only justify expenses you'd do yourself (in most cases). The people laughing at the latte drinkers think that the beer is worth it but that the latte isn't. Vice versa also exists in some circles", "Making beer is more involved than making coffee. There's more ingredients, it takes more time, and there's more waste. For coffee, you grow the beans, dry them, roast them, grind them, and mix with hot water. It's delicious! For beer you grow the barly, malt it, mash it, boil it, add hops whch you've also grown, then add yeast which has been specifically chosen for certain characteristics. Then you wait a week or two, possibly adding more hops, then you carbonate the beer and ship it to wherever people want to drink it at. It makes sense that beer cost more than a cup of coffee.\n\n\n\nAbout the stereotype though... I like coffee and beer. When I buy coffee from Starbucks, I just get coffee. Plain, black coffee in the smallest size. This only cost a few bucks. The expensive drinks are the ones with all the extra stuff. Those are basically milkshakes with a bit of coffee flavor. I can see why they're more expensive, but they're also much more than a \"cup of coffee\".", "You can get the same size brewed coffee or tea for under $3, sometimes under $2--with the same sweeteners or whatever as the latte. You likely will not find a $2 beer outside of happy hour.\n\nThe fact that you can make coffee (or even espresso) at home while half-asleep also adds to this. That drink is even cheaper, minus the initial cost of the press/brewer/machine. You can't brew a single bottle of beer very well, much less \"on demand\". \n\nSo while costs are the same at the time of service, the frequency of purchase and fact that there are easy lower-cost options for one and not the other combine to make a $5 latte ridiculous and a $5 beer normal.\n\nIt's weird, but it is what it is."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5x6a5r", "title": "if humans were to colonize a new planet and could only send \"x\" number of people. what is the minimum number of people we would need to send in order to create a genetically diverse population?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x6a5r/eli5_if_humans_were_to_colonize_a_new_planet_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["defl2fk", "defl7jz", "defnq9x", "deft8tz", "defu958", "defveij", "defvzlb", "deg0or0"], "score": [26, 10, 332, 26, 107, 8, 5, 2], "text": ["[Seems like](_URL_0_) if we wanted people to be happy and allowed to date, 160. But we could get that down to about 80 if we screened out groups genetics very carefully. ", "Ultimately it doesn't matter as the new population's genetic diversity will develop differently to the originals due to the founder effect (newly established populations are less genetically diverse then those they came from).", "I actually discussed this with my fianc\u00e9e the other day.\n\nRealistically we would only send women and carry stored semen for the men. This is because in order to grow the numbers as quickly as possible we would want as many wombs at the start as possible, and men would be too much of a life support and weight burden for the population benefit. Also in the event that some of the crew is lost it would be a terrible thing if by happenstance all the women were killed. Considering we currently lack the ability to develop a child in an artificial womb that would mean the failure of the mission, so to maximize the allowable loss of crew every crew member should have a womb.\n\nConsidering varied semen is much more compact than taking male colonists it shouldn't be any trouble at all to send excess genetic diversity for any proposed colony. Of course this implies that every colony would by its nature develop a matriarchal society as the founding members who are the most educated and skilled would all be women, and the first few generations would likely be purely women as well. By the time men are even allowed to come to term there would be far more women than men.", "While not an actual scientist, I'm an undergraduate student of genetics and I don't think it's an issue.\n\nBy the time were ready to send an interstellar colony ship, we'll have such an advanced understanding (the rate of gain of knowledge in the field of genetics is really really really fast) that low diversity won't be an issue. Maybe not a complete understanding but it wouldn't surprise me.\n\nEveryone in the population is a carrier of this gene and were at risk of massive portions of the next generation being born with a degenerative condition? That's ok, we'll cure it in zygotes and adults alike using this diversity library we bought? \n\nOh no there are no extra alleles for this locus? That's fine we'll simulate a protein that can do the job better and add the code for that into the genome.\n\nSeems farfetched at the moment, but considering how far the field has come since its inception and even in the last 5 years it's not unlikely that 100 years from now we'll wield these abilities.", "According to a Portland State University professor, you could do it with 10,000 people on a strict breeding program, or 40,000 people allowing for more natural pairings and attrition.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: As shown in the article (but summarized here for simplicity), his program runs a 300-year simulation. Significantly fewer than 10,000 people would result in reduced genetic variation over that much time. As few as 150 people could last a few generations, but then all the permutations of pairings would effectively be used up.", "Everyone's doing this the hard way: \n\nAll you need is 1,000 women and a sperm bank with 10,000 samples. ", "The best estimates can be found by looking at population bottlenecks.\n\nThe population bottleneck caused by the Toba catastrophe 70,000 years ago reduced human population to an estimated 3,000 breeding pairs. Possibly as low as 1,000 breeding pairs. \n\n[This](_URL_0_) study says that the native population of the Americas are descended from about 70 people.  Not necessarily that there were only 70 individuals at any one time - in the same way [mitochondrial eve](_URL_1_) wasn't the only woman alive at the time, but we're all related to her.\n\nBut seeing as we would be able to select a genetically diverse group to begin with, use genetic screening, keep frozen sperm samples etc - I'd say less than 70 is viable.", "I'd have to find the article, but just a few weeks ago I was reading that it could be done with as few as 160 people, but it would include a very strict breeding program. You'd be told who you have to have children with, and your children would be told who to have kids with and so on until you have a sustainable population. \n\nEdit: I was wrong, /u/lukimcsod links the article I'm talking about. 80 people with a strict breeding program but 160 of you want to let people choose who they have kids with. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for-space-pioneers-calculated/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10369/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-colonize-another-star-system-16654747/"], [], ["http://www.livescience.com/289-north-america-settled-70-people-study-concludes.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve"], []]}
{"q_id": "4vngug", "title": "in movies that involve an interrogation scene, why does the cop put his gun and badge on the table?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vngug/eli5in_movies_that_involve_an_interrogation_scene/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5zsjah", "d5zskhs", "d5zx5hb", "d60fss3", "d60nj1c"], "score": [9, 25, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["Mostly because it looks dramatic on screen.\n\nBut also, it's hard to sit in an armchair with all that junk hanging off your belt.", "Those are his symbols of office.  Putting them on the table means he's not acting like a cop anymore, and is willing to break the rules in this interrogation.\n\n", "Keeping in mind that doing something like that would probably cost an officer their job in real life, it's done in films when a police officer is going \"off the books\" as a \"good cop\" (opposed to bad cop who might threaten the person being interrogated).  They're trying to show the other person that they're just an ordinary guy and not a threat.", "There are multiple potential reasons, such as using it as an intimidation tactic.\n\nPutting your gun on the table where the other person can see it can easily be a threat, a visible reminder of your willingness or authorization to use force.\n\nYour badge is an actual status symbol, and most places have laws regarding things like impeding an investigation, or just plain old social stigma, and putting your badge on the table can be used as a reminder of such.\n\nAlternatively as the others have mentioned it can also be viewed as them stepping outside their duties, such as when they hand their gun and badge to someone else to engage in a fistfight with someone.\n\nOr maybe the screenwriter or director thought it would be cool.  They do that a lot.", "If it's done in a very deliberate and dramatic fashion...\n\nGun: I could shoot you.\n\nBadge: I can get away it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4l34di", "title": "why do depression and anxiety often occur together?", "selftext": "Is there any chemical/biological reason that people who are clinically depressed most likely also have generalized anxiety disorder? Is that even true? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l34di/eli5why_do_depression_and_anxiety_often_occur/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3jzhwk", "d3k6m6s", "d3k7f5q", "d3k7ywm", "d3k930m"], "score": [30, 25, 7, 5, 5], "text": ["There is indeed a substantial co-occurrence of major depression and various anxiety disorders; while it's inevitably difficult to get accurate numbers, some estimates put it above 50%, with GAD and panic disorder leading. In one of the largest antidepressant trials which didn't try to select for \"pure\" depression, anxious depression was the norm.\n\nWhy is a much more difficult question, because the root causes of major depression and anxiety disorders are fundamentally not known. Every serious source in the psychiatric literature stresses what we don't know; while there's always someone out there who will give you a clean and intuitive answer about magic brain chemicals, they really shouldn't. Besides, these are clinical diagnoses, which makes it hard to know whether what we're seeing on the surface correlates with one or more underlying issues; imagine trying to figure out the cause of pneumonia without microscopes or the concept of germs.\n\nThat said, as I once heard it explained, \"we now know a lot more about what we don't know.\" One simple explanation is that they share many risk factors, both genetic and environmental. Another line of research concerns the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is tremendously important in the stress response, and implicated to some extent in most psychiatric problems.\n\n_URL_0_", "For me, for example, anxiety affected major aspects of my life like university, relationships with girlfriend and friends, my job and that, with the help from my pessimistic nature led to depression", "this is off topic, but I've been struggling with both depression and anxiety for a little over 2 years now. i know i need help very badly but dont know where to begin. I dont even know of anyone to talk to and say i have a problem. Any help would be much appreciated", "Dunno about the biological stuff, but rumination (revisiting thoughts that agitate/worry you) is often something anxiety sufferers engage in compulsively. This might then lead to symptoms of depression as you keep ruminating. Or vice versa.\n\nI know some people are too willing to blame chemical imbalances on depression/anxiety, so they might not give things like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy much of chance. I was in that camp too.\n\nFor anyone suffering from either, attacking the tendency to ruminate might be very helpful. Doing some mindfulness meditation will make you aware of how incessant your internal dialogue is. Keeping at it will also enhance your ability to focus when you'd normally go daydreaming (documented physiological changes in the brain in regular meditators).  \n\nFor practical advice on how to view life (and things), I'd look into to Stoicism (which CBT is largely based on).\n\nJust these two have practically wiped out my recurring depression by lessening my anxiety (through cessation of rumination and \"reprogramming\" my world-view).\n\nSry if it seems like a sales pitch/rant. Just thought it might help someone.\n\n", "In my experience, anxiety pulled up on you until there's so many small things it's overwhelming, or you've been so afraid to be around people for so long that you become incredibly isolated.\n\nLiving in a country where the only way to really get help is to have insurance and the only way to get insurance is to maintain until you're in a situation in which you become eligible for insurance doesn't help."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.dsm5.org/research/pages/comorbidityofdepressionandgeneralizedanxietydisorder(june20-22,2007).aspx"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1usyg2", "title": "[Not sure if right sub] My grandfather was a POW of the Japanese during WWII. I'm wondering if I can find where he was held", "selftext": "As the title says...my (British) grandfather was in the Merchant Marine during the Second World War, and spent 3 years in a Japanese POW camp after his ship was sunk by a U-Boat. \n\nHe currently lives in England, so I don't see him often, and he (unsurprisingly) doesn't like talking about it. I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find information on where he might have been held, and such. Not for any real reason, besides my own curiosity. \n\nThanks in advance for all your help. This sub is fucking awesome.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1usyg2/not_sure_if_right_sub_my_grandfather_was_a_pow_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["celj08t", "celpvpl"], "score": [11, 5], "text": ["This seems like a good start: [Search in: World War II Prisoners of War Data File, 12/7/1941 - 11/19/1946](_URL_0_) from the U.S. National Archives.", "I worked a few years in the Red Cross war archives in the Netherlands as a researcher. I looked into these questions a lot and worked with the original POW lists. \nIn addition to what is already mentioned, I like to add the following: The Japanese telegraphed their POW records from Tokyo to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland. They telegraphed the list of POW's to the British Red Cross for the purpose of informing Armed Forces and family. \nThe information you are looking for is probably in the already mentioned POW archive. Other options are the British Red Cross and the ICRC in Geneva. They all should have a copy of the list. You might try the Japanese Red Cross or other Japanese state archives, but I would not begin looking there. Usually the Allies took all the relevant sources with them to their countries. I never redirected a question like this towards the JRC. \n\nEdit: As a merchant marine sailor he was militarized the moment GB was at war with Japan. So he officially served in the Royal Navy and was treated as a military prisoner of war.       "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=644"], []]}
{"q_id": "2m013c", "title": "why are motorcycles built to be so loud? / why do people want loud motorcycles?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m013c/eli5_why_are_motorcycles_built_to_be_so_loud_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clzq3ps", "clztfi8", "clztizq", "clzu8u7", "clzuc0h", "clzv5z7", "clzwm53", "clzy2m2", "clzz23b", "clzz5h9", "clzzpce", "cm003rz"], "score": [35, 81, 109, 23, 54, 228, 63, 2, 7, 2, 68, 20], "text": ["because many people that ride loud motorcycles are attention whores and are so proud of their motorcycle they want people to swivel their head and and look at them.  \n\nNow before all the hates hate I agree that the loud pipes are a good way to be noticed on the road.  I ride a bike with cobra pipes but I don't gun it in heavy residential areas or when I start it up in a parking lot like so many douchebags do .", "The loudness argument is largely BS.  I generally cannot hear a bike until it's right on top of me.  Their answer?  Get louder.\n\nThey just want to sound cool, and are looking for an excuse to justify it.", "As someone who lives in a residential neighborhood in a large city, I can tell you I have zero respect for people who ride with unreasonably loud tailpipes.\n\nSome might think that if they dress like a leather pirate and make a lot of noise, others will respect them or fear them or think they're interesting.  Nothing of the sort is true ... they might be impressing each other and teenage boys but to everyone else, it's a sad and pathetic annoyance that wakes people up at night, interrupts patio conversations and scares the crap out of dogs and babies.  It can ruin time spent outdoors and on mountain roads when you're trying to get away to quiet.\n\nSadly, many thrive off the idea they are annoying people and the perception of getting attention.  It aligns with the immature philosophy of freedom to do whatever they want at any cost, a false sense of pride and the facade of manliness and the bad-boy image.  Like they are part of a naughty gang.\n\nI'm not buying the safety argument.  If that's the concern, buy a safer form of transportation.  There are a lot of motorcycles on the road that aren't a quarter as loud that follow safety protocol just fine.\n\n\n\n", "Why do people like loud cars? or huge v8's? or tomato juice?\n\nBeyond that a bike can be louder then a car because of higher revs and not having the entire body of a car to dampen the sound.\n\nMost importantly I feel like your talking specifically about harleys or people with straight cut pipes, that's not all motorcycles.\n\n[woo wooooo](_URL_0_)", "Well it would really depend which kind of motorcycle you are talking about. The general idea behind louder pipes is that it allows for less back pressure, it takes some strain off the engine and allows it work faster better, etc. Essentially you get more hp from it.\n\nMost of these comments are addressing aftermarket pipes, not stock pipes.\n\nWhy someone would want to put a louder pipe on their bike can be for one of two reasons, or both. As you know hp gain, also they tend to be lighter, so bike = faster. \n\nThe second is the whole \"loud pipes save lives\" I've personally tested this with my R6(has aftermarket pipes) and a car. Needless to say you wont be heard unless you are right on top of someone on the highway. BUT if you are a pedestrian or aren't moving very quickly you will definitely hear me coming. The effects in terms of safety are still an issue that most motorcyclists will fight about. \n\nMy opinion on loud pipes save lives? \"Common sense save lives\" should be the real slogan. Every time I ride like an idiot there are issues, close calls, regrets, etc. Otherwise I've had maybe 1 close call in 6 months of riding when I'm not being an asshat(97% of the time). ", "This has always bothered me. How come some guy blaring his car stereo at 90 decibels deserves a ticket, but some guys motorcycle blasting down my street at 180 decibels so loud it's rattling my windows and scaring small children is socially acceptable?", "Motorcycles aren't, \"built to be loud.\"  The acceptable dB limit varies state-to-state in the US, but manufacturers usually just take the most restrictive state's requirement and build to that to avoid the cost and hassle of having multiple parts to meet differing requirements.\n\nThat said, tons of motorcyclists buy aftermarket pipes, sold for \"off road use only\" -- mostly broken into two different camps:\n\n- The ones wanting to pick up a few extra horsepower.  These pipes tend to be a little louder, but not ridiculously so.\n\n- The ones that are desperate for attention: HEY AIN'T I FUCKING COOL AND REBELLIOUS RATTLING YOUR WINDOWS WHILE WEARING THIS PUDDING CUP OF A HELMET LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!  *PS LOUD PIPES SAVE LIVES AND I'M STICKING TO THAT STORY LOOK AT ME!", "I can't really speak for Harleys, but modern sport bikes (aka crotch rockets) often only get loud at higher rpm (most cars barely break 3k when driving, where most sport bikes reach over 12k regularly).\n\n When idling, an OEM exhaust is fairly quiet, not much louder than a car. Most exhaust mufflers use packing (a kind of synthetic cotton) and baffles to quiet a bike by disturbing airflow. These chambers are often reduced in size and density (less weight+better airflow=better performance) in aftermarket exhaust systems, meaning less noise suppression, thus louder bikes. \n\nHere is a common sport bike muffler cut open. _URL_0_", "Well motorcycles aren't necessarily BUILT to be loud, the louder bikes you hear out there are actually modified to be loud at the expense of performance.  Opening up a carborator for instance, makes more noise, but reduces fuel efficiency.\n\nAs for why people want them to be so loud, it's mostly little dick syndrome or compensating for some other short coming.  An effort to be rebellious and obnoxious in a society of polite people that mostly won't say anything, but you should really check out the episode of southpark about bikers and fags, it's pretty accurate. ", "Some people like them to be loud to make themselves feel cool. However, they are loud enough at first because there isn't much of an exhaust system on a motorcycle.  They can't have a big muffler like a car can.  It would be terribly unsightly to strap a car muffler to a bike.", "Motorcycles are not built from the factory to be 'loud' if they are for street use. What happens is that people modify the bikes by putting on an aftermarket exhaust or just removing the stock mufflers.\n\n\nThere are four camps to this:\n\n1) Loud pipes save lives. By making more noise, other drivers will hear me and therefore I'm safer.\n\n2) Loud noise = I'm cool. You know who you are, you spend more time cleaning than riding and revving unnecessarily while not moving.\n\n3) Loud noise = I think I'm faster than I am. I can make my motorcycle loud and it sounds just like [Rossi](_URL_0_) so I'm as good as Rossi.\n\n4) I want to go faster = I want more hp to go faster than what it was stock. One of the cheapest ways to do this is to change the exhaust. Usually a person who goes to the track.\n\n\nThere are an exception or two out there, but for the most part you'll find them in one of the categories above.\n", "Due to the amount of debates generated by the question and large influx of personal opinions and low-effort explanations, I have decided to lock this thread. As a friendly reminder, questions of subjective nature and debates (\"Why do people think/want/like X?\") belong on /r/AskReddit or /r/changemyview. \n\nRegards."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSgYtmCnyYw"], [], [], [], ["http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/44/65/63416596247224/0/repack-motorcycle-muffler.w654.jpg"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentino_Rossi"], []]}
{"q_id": "1vxxh3", "title": "the bizarre border between russia, china and north korea", "selftext": "I was peeking at North Korea in Google Maps when I came across [this border](_URL_0_).\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vxxh3/eli5_the_bizarre_border_between_russia_china_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cewvasa", "cex4hfh", "cex940j", "cexhyq6"], "score": [43, 8, 8, 4], "text": ["The border between North Korea and China is defined by the Yalu river and the Tumen river. Russia deliberatly didn't want China to have control over the entrance to the tumen river because it might threaten its Far eastern shipping route cities like Vladistock in the northern Pacific. Russia has had the 18 km border since an 1860 treaty with China and it was used during the 1940s as a transit route for Soviet arms and supplies to reach the North Korean leadership. The border was deliberatly designed for strategic and commercial reasons agains't China and then utilized for Russian dominance over the North Korean regime in the Soviet period. \n\n\nEdit:  _URL_0_    This is the treaty the Qing Empire negotiated with Russia ceding territory in assistance in getting rid of the Anglo-French force that occupied Peking ( Beijing) in 1860 ( due to unequal treaties of the 2nd Opium war). \n\nthe area of Fuangchuancun was given over to Russia. Its now part of China but as you can read here their are environmental issues at play as well and Russian hostility over a port that might compete with its possesions in the Russian Far east:  _URL_1_\n\nEdit 2:  There is a growing issue that was touched upon recently in a reuter article about growing Chinese investment in Agriculture in the Russian Far East and the ambivalence and worry in Moscow over this:\n\n_URL_2_", "I always love borders where 3 countries meet in the same point.", "I bet C.G.P Grey ( /u/MindOfMetalAndWheels ) could explain this in very entertaining way, like this:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "I read a guy's travel blog once about a trip he made by train from Moscow to Pyongyang via the Russia-North Korea border which is apparently closed to tourists now (though some sources say that it's reopened/\"unofficially\" open). It was quite a fascinating read, the route is obviously well off the beaten path, and I'd love to make the same journey some day. \n\nI'm on mobile, but you can find the blog if you google \"from Vienna to Pyongyang\" IIRC. \n\nAlso, checking out the obscure geopolitical features of the world on Google Maps is one of my favorite things to do as well.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/A3FMOxi.jpg"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Peking", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fangchuancun", "http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/22/us-china-russia-agriculture-insight-idUSBRE9BL00X20131222"], [], ["www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkYlIA7mgw", "www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vui-qGCfXuA"], []]}
{"q_id": "2br6vw", "title": "Why are ship captains allowed to marry couples?", "selftext": "So, it's a well known that, traditionally, only priests, judges, and captains could join people in matrimony. It's obvious why priests and judges are allowed, but why ship captains? That seems kind of odd, especially since women were very rare on oceangoing ships anyway. When did this custom begin, and why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2br6vw/why_are_ship_captains_allowed_to_marry_couples/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj8iz2w", "cj8ps1u"], "score": [15, 2], "text": ["NYT wrote an article on this recently\n\n\n[\"Appealing though it may be, the myth of a ship\u2019s captain presiding over the nuptials of dewy-eyed couples has for most of the last century been pretty much just that. And yet the demand for weddings at sea has grown to the point that some cruise lines, operating under foreign flags and laws, have found ways to perform legal unions in international waters with the ship\u2019s captain as officiant.\"](_URL_0_)", "It may be well known that only priests, judges and captains can marry people, but it's not actually true, at least in the UK. I was (very) surprised to find that I'm allowed to do it myself. As my church is not Church of England or Quaker, the couple would have to obtain a marriage licence from the Register Office (basically notify them in enough time for a check that they can legally marry) and there's some differences in record keeping. However from then on it's governed by whether the church will recognise me for the purpose, which it does (I'm a lay preacher). The same seems to apply to many other religious organisation other than the two above, or the Register Office itself. It does not apply to at least some non-religious organisations, e.g. the [Humanist Association](_URL_0_) (other than in Scotland - remember that's a different country with a different legal system from England), so I'm not sure where that leaves ship's captains.\n\nBTW, no, I'm not going to do one!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/fashion/weddings/a-marriage-at-sea-get-me-rewrite.html"], ["https://humanism.org.uk/ceremonies/non-religious-weddings/"]]}
{"q_id": "3pmpi4", "title": "how do cemeteries continue to pay the bills after there are no more plots left to sell?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pmpi4/eli5_how_do_cemeteries_continue_to_pay_the_bills/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw7k964", "cw7kmsm", "cw7r76a", "cw7s6gi", "cw7slco", "cw7ukst", "cw7umrl", "cw7xavy"], "score": [26, 54, 10, 6, 5, 5, 6, 3], "text": ["Eventually, they dig up old plots  &  resell them.  How long they have to wait depends on where you are.\n\nThe alternative, as you see with some historical cemeteries, is that they just *don't* make money.  Some church or the local government ends up eating the maintenance costs.", "The cemetery has to put some money for each burial into a perpetual care fund. This money is invested and used to pay for the ongoing maintenance of the cemetery. Some cemeteries are publicly funded by taxes.", "In most jurisdictions, cemeteries are required to set aside money for an endowment that ensures they will be able to provide care indefinitely. ", "So what happens when we run out o space for cemeteries? The world is only so big.", "some cemetery plots are subscription based.  If you don't pay dues, your loved ones will be dug up and cremated so they can fit new bodies in the ground.\n\nsucks.", "When we bought my father's plot, we had to pay into an escrow account.  The money is held at a financial institution and the interest serves kind of like rent.", "Where I live what they do is you pay for the burial site. Body is there for 8 years. After 8 years they unburry the coffin to see if the body has decomposed yet. If not, goes back down. If it has, the family will have to either pay for a [\"drawer\"](_URL_0_) with a special box where they move the bones to, or they pay to cremate the bones and then you can keep them and do whatever you want. So the same body will bring in money twice (unless you cremate it to begin with which is the best anyway).", "It really depends where in the world you live.  \n  \nHere in the Netherlands, a grave is usually rented for 30-40 years. After that time is over, the grave is cleared and the remains are put into a mass grave. Exceptions are rare - mostly to very old graves (historic value) or for those of important people."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.agencia.ecclesia.pt/netimages/old/cemiterio_gavetas.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "o8zj4", "title": "what does \" no two electrons in the universe can have the same energy state\" actually mean?", "selftext": "Does it mean there are an infinite levels of states an electron can be, like an infinite rungs on a ladder?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o8zj4/what_does_no_two_electrons_in_the_universe_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3fcc4r", "c3fdmnq", "c3ffy2h"], "score": [2, 2, 4], "text": ["where did you hear that? the levels are actually discrete, and their states are important for the formation of different elements...", "It makes more sense when you change \"have\" to \"occupy\"", "It should actually be \"have the same state\".  Energy or not doesn't matter.\n\nThe state of any quantum system is a normalized vector in a Hilbert space (well, it's typically called a *ray*, but they're essentially interchangeable).   Like a normal 3-d vector, we can describe this vector by a list of numbers saying how much it goes in some fixed set of \"basis\" directions.   For two states, both where a given observable has a fixed value, but different in one then the other, the two vectors will be \"orthogonal\", at right angles to each other.    This means that values for observables can be used to pick out a standard basis for a system.   Energy is often used as a factor in picking out a convenient basis.\n\nThe actual rule is that any two electrons must have orthogonal vectors.   (Well, actually the full rule is that the entire global \"tensor product state\" must be antisymmetric under exchange of any two electrons.  But it gives the first as a consequence.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31mdyb", "title": "Did any South American cultures use llamas for transportation?", "selftext": "My wife who used to work with llamas, among other animals, assures me they can be ridden by adults, easily carry packs, and are quite pleasant when properly raised. Yet, in everything I have read about their use they are never used for transportation either with teams pulling wagons or by being ridden. Am I just not aware of their use as a riding animal, or were they never used in that way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31mdyb/did_any_south_american_cultures_use_llamas_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq2w4f4"], "score": [30], "text": ["Your wife is correct that Llamas are docile animals that can easily carry packs, but they are to small to be ridden by adult humans. A typical adult llama may be 5 feet to 6 feet five inches tall at the head, but they have long necks and are only three to four feet tall at the shoulder. They can carry up to 25 percent of their body weight as a pack animal, but few llamas exceed 400 pounds. Most can carry 80 pounds over distances of 5 to 13 miles per day.  Llamas do have one advantage over horses, they can climb and decend stairways that would spook most horses. Llamas are well adapted to the Andean high lands, but their thick wool makes them less suited to the hot deserts of the west coast of South America.   They were the primary transport animal of the Inca and earlier highland Andean cultures.  \nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.llamasofatlanta.com/llama_facts.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "f42gv", "title": "How does the human eye see brown?", "selftext": "I'm colourblind (protanopia), so I'm pretty curious about why things look different to me than for other people.\n\nThere was a great post earlier in /r/TIL on how purple versus violet works with the whole idea that purple is a non-spectral colour.  \n\nThat very neatly explains why I mistake purple for blue, but it left me wondering how the human eye sees brown. Brown is a very confusing colour - dark red, dark green and brown are very similar for me. \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f42gv/how_does_the_human_eye_see_brown/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1d4vel", "c1d57lx", "c1d5sqf", "c1d6d1h"], "score": [4, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Just occurred to me, if I check a list of the RGB colour values (like [this one](_URL_0_) and look up Brown, I get Red=0xA5 (decimal 165), Green=0x2A (decimal 42) and Blue=0x2A (decimal 42).\n\nDoes that ratio 165:42:42 indicate (approximately) to what extent the Low, Medium and Short frequency cone cells in the eye are triggered for the brain to register brown light?", "I seem to recall that brown only exists in contrast with other colours (e.g. a yellow object will start to approach brown as the background is made more dark). I also once heard that brown is somehow 'adaptively salient' due to its prevalence in nature (though I would love to know if there is actually any data to support this claim). On a possibly related note, there may also be top-down factors affecting our perception of colour (e.g. see [the bit about donkeys, here](_URL_0_)).\n\nWould anybody be so kind as expand upon any of these points?\n\nEDIT: link added", "I've heard that our reaction to brown is an integration of our three cone types, aptly called short, medium, and long. which have pigments that absorb best at  419nm, 532nm, and 558nm, respectively.  \n\nAnother interesting phenomenon is the Purkinje Shift, which describes our transition from cone to rod vision as evening approaches.  This effect can best be seen when wavelengths at the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum tend to appear *brighter* as we switch over.", "very dark orange?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/color.cgi"], ["http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/aesthetics/perception.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5kh1j2", "title": "how people woke up on time before alarm clocks", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kh1j2/eli5how_people_woke_up_on_time_before_alarm_clocks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbnvmjp", "dbnvwd0", "dbnvxqj", "dbnwvx1", "dbnxvgq", "dbnzndc", "dbo2oeh"], "score": [60, 44, 11, 5, 8, 15, 5], "text": ["For upper classes, someone would stay up all night with the purpose of waking people up in the morning. They would wake up servants who would in turn wake up their masters. The waker-uppers would go to bed and be woken up in the evening by other servants. ", "Depends on how long ago you are talking about...\n\nThe concept of being \"on time\" and having any precision when discussing time is largely a post-industrial revolution phenomenon. Before that, people didn't wake up \"on time\", they woke up whenever they woke up, usually depending on more vague and relative markers such as \"sunup\" or \"mid morning\".\n\n I recommend reading \"In Praise of Slowness\" for a very interesting discussion of humans changing relationship to the concept of time. ", "Some people would put metal items in candles that had a flat burning rate. Once the candle melted enough the items would drop waking the sleeper.", "I remember there was a post here about people drinking 2 cups of water before bed and they would always wake up within 6 hours or something for work.", "The human body is made in a way that it can detect patterns, and will strive to follow those patterns. It also reacts to light, and how much of it (and of what type) there is.\n\nThe first is the reason why you may feel odd after changing your clock for Daylight Savings. Your body is used to doing things on a schedule an hour before/after the new one. I'm pretty sure it takes around 3 weeks for your body to fully adjust. \n\nThe second is the reason why it's easier to stay up at night if you have your lights on or are playing games on your phone. Light, until very recently, meant day, especially if it was of certian colors, so that's what our bodies evolved to react to.", "I actually know something! \n\nKnocker uppers. They were literally people who walked around villages in the morning banging on shutters of those who paid to have themselves woken up. \n\n_URL_0_", "\"On time\" was less important/precise before alarm clocks.\n\nYou had largely agrarian societies, so you'd wake up with the sun and the rooster crowing as it was time to feed the animals.  Early to rise also meant early to bed; people generally went to bed earlier and staying up was less convenient before electric lighting.\n\nOn top of that, you also had town criers and church bells."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up"], []]}
{"q_id": "1v2ag8", "title": "what was the point in www. and why is it still a thing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v2ag8/what_was_the_point_in_www_and_why_is_it_still_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceo0acv", "ceo1jle", "ceo3kk5", "ceo81w8"], "score": [24, 8, 8, 2], "text": ["It's not so important anymore, but in the early days of the internet, _URL_1_ was how you accessed the web page for _URL_2_, as opposed to _URL_0_, where you would access email for _URL_2_ -- it was the subdomain for _URL_2_ that indicated \"There's a web page here\"", "When you look at a URL (web address) like _URL_0_, \"_URL_1_\" is the name of machine on the internet.  A company might have a bunch of different machines that *aren't* web servers.  They could have a mail server, an FTP server, a remote login server, a Minecraft server that they want the world to see.  On top of that, they might have file servers that are for internal use and all the desktops in the company probably have names too.  There's all sorts of reason to give a machine a name that *aren't* serving up web pages to people on the public internet.\n\nThe name \"www\" has just become the default name for the public facing web machine.", "Quick DNS and DNS records lesson, DNS means Domain Name Server:\n\nwww. is a subdomain for a website like _URL_2_ that points to the website. This \"type\" of subdomain is also known as an A Record because it takes an alphanumeric easy to type name and points it to an IP address (the identifier for the resource hosting the website). \n\nReddit may also host an email server and needs a public facing email server name, they could go with mail._URL_2_ (may not exist just an example) to point their mail client to the server. That type of DNS record is known as an MX record.\n\nHow your computer figures out that _URL_0_ is 23.67.253.16:80 is that there are DNS servers that convert these names back into IP addresses again. Your internet service provider hosts them and so do many other companies. When I type _URL_2_ in my browser of choice it asks my router \"Who is _URL_2_?\", my router then goes \"I don't know who is that is, forwarding you to Cox's DNS server\", my router asks Cox's DNS servers \"Who is _URL_2_\" and Cox might know who it is and if it does it then sends the IP address back to my browser in the form of the webpage.\n\n\n\nIf you are curious about how this works the page for DNS on Wiki actually does a good job of describing it: _URL_1_", "It is tied to the name server to specify which ip address to use for that network protocol. \n\nThere are other ones such as mail., FTP., and obsolete ones such as gopher.  \n\nIf you have _URL_1_ it makes it easy to specify which web service goes to which external ip address. \n\nMost domains have the default one point to the web server so if you type in _URL_1_ it goes to the same ip address as _URL_0_. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["mail.whatever.com", "www.whatever.com", "whatever.com"], ["http://www.example.com/long/path/here.html", "www.example.com"], ["Reddit.com", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System", "reddit.com", "mail.reddit.com"], ["www.widget.com", "widget.com"]]}
{"q_id": "sqn2q", "title": "Is there a way to tell from a DNA sample whether it came from a live or dead animal?", "selftext": "I know a fair bit of molecular biology but for some reason this simple question has stumped me. Example: [the U.S. government is using \"environmental DNA\" (eDNA) from water samples to guess where invasive species are present or absent](_URL_0_), but\n\n >  At present, eDNA evidence cannot verify whether live Asian carp are present, whether the DNA may have come from a dead fish, or whether water containing Asian carp DNA may have been transported from other sources such as bilge water, storm sewers or fish-eating birds.\n\nIs this really not a solved problem?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sqn2q/is_there_a_way_to_tell_from_a_dna_sample_whether/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4g5sch", "c4g5sq4"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["Once an animal dies the proteins that care for the stability of the chromosomes are no longer made and the quality of the sequence will break down. While this does not tell you whether the animal is alive or dead it's a start.", "At the risk of starting to answer my own question - I wonder if (at least for appropriate organisms) the ratio of mitochondrial to nuclear DNA could be at least somewhat predictive. You might expect recent residues from live organisms to be less likely to have lysed, i.e. their nuclei and mitochondria are more likely to still be found together. Is that realistic?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.lrc.usace.army.mil/AsianCarp/eDNA.htm"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8d64it", "title": "why people are/can be attracted to cartoon or anime characters", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8d64it/eli5_why_people_arecan_be_attracted_to_cartoon_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxkk1gf", "dxkkd9s", "dxkrlgu", "dxks9ye", "dxkxlah", "dxl248j", "dxl5wcg"], "score": [246, 35, 24, 8, 8, 3, 7], "text": ["So first, your brain is pattern seeking. It doesn't really see a man or woman infront of them. It see's a lot of specific patterns like hip to waist ratio,  eye spacing, symmetry etc. And that all makes someone attractive or not. Anime, or similar art, works by highlighting specific characteristics and usually putting emphasis on them to make them specifically attractive somehow. \n\nAs for the emotional attachment, it could be partially pathos. Pathos is where the audience empathizes with the character of a story. We grow feelings for these characters. Those feelings can be internalized. \n\nSecond is a sort of disconnected feeling amongst certain people. Often these people don't have a whole lot of love coming to them from real life. Either percieved or real. So they settle for what they can get, even if it is artificial. Often the artificial love is in some ways better than real life. Virtual waifu loves you unconditionally, despite your failings. Something that many real relationships don't offer. ", "Because at some level we don't see them as fake, which is the reason we can enjoy them in the first place.\n\nWhen you watch a program on TV, what you are really seeing is glowing bits of color moving across a flat surface.  We know it is \"fake\", that there isn't a car chase in our living rooms, but that doesn't stop us from relating to it as those it were real.  We feel excited about the action, we identify with the good guy trying to save the day and worry about the bad guy getting away, even though we know it is fake on many levels.\n\nThere is no reason these sorts of emotions can't extend to animate characters who are just fake in one additional way.", "It's kinda like this: what's better, a cake, or a picture of a cake? The cake smells pretty good, looks pretty good, and tastes pretty good. It's not great, but not bad either. The cake in the picture however is the perfect cake. It is, objectively, better than any other cake, in every way. But in the end, it's only a picture of a cake. \n\nIn short, these people look at the picture of the cake, and like that. They can't eat it, but they still prefer it over the real deal. ", "Like much of psychology, there is a lot of speculation and a lot of different theories on how and why people think. However, to understand why people have waifus requires a brief explanation of attraction.\n\nThe generally held consensus is that, first of all, your brain is pattern-seeking. You look at symmetry, ratios, and the like, and you determine that a character is attractive that way. As cold as that sounds, there is another half to this.\n\nThe other half is personality. What makes someone likable is that they are relatable to you, or you find them interesting in some sort of way.\n\nWaifus may display both, but they are obviously not real, tangible people. The reason people choose waifus is because it gives them a sort of connection that they may otherwise not have. ", "A character in the anime Genshiken explained it quite well: _URL_0_", "A good story suspends disbelief for the duration of the story.   Hence movie stars, screen crushes, and the difficulty of most people to entirely separate actors from the screen roles they've played.   A screen crush happens when we've spent a relatively short but intense period of time with an interesting and charismatic character. \n\n In a movie, these fictional characters are every bit as fake as an animated character.   One is drawn and one is pantomimed by a human, but the characters are equally unreal.\n\nOr equally real.   ", "I get what you're driving at but your phrasing of this sucks.\n\nA picture of a 'real' woman in a magazine or whatever is just as 'fake' as any other picture. It's a picture. Lines and curves, color and shade, given form. \n\nAlso uh, I dunno about 'emotional attachment' do you get emotionally attached to an image of a pair of tits, real or otherwise?\n\nI don't think you understand how arousal works."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5xdg2l"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "20s21k", "title": "capitalism vs. communism during the cold war, why does america care so much how other countries are run?", "selftext": "It's been a few years since high school. I understand the Cold War and Vietnam Conflict existed because of the spread of Communism, but I still don't understand why America was so threatened by a different ideological view. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20s21k/eli5_capitalism_vs_communism_during_the_cold_war/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg67bhv", "cg67dfp", "cg67eh8", "cg67f4c", "cg67mwr", "cg68wix", "cg69trp", "cg6a4t9", "cg6b7sl", "cg6bj8b", "cg6e6mb", "cg6ehpk", "cg6eybn"], "score": [8, 4, 2, 48, 15, 2, 3, 7, 28, 4, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["It wasn't threatened by the ideology itself, though I'm sure every American president has personally despised Communism, it was threatened by having more states align with the Soviet Union and Communist China. The more states became Communist, the more they aligned with the Soviet Union. The more states aligned with the Soviet Union, the less security the United States had. Russia has more allies, America is relatively weaker.", " >  but I still don't understand why America was so threatened by a different ideological view. \n\nCommunist countries had a bad habit of acting much like Russia is now; gobbling up their neighbors whether they like it or not. Conceptually communism was communal effort, but in practice it was a small group of people dictating the direction of the country. And it turns out that those people, like Putin, were not nice people and would do some very nasty stuff to acquire power and retain it.", "The West hated communism. They hated everything about it. Its isolationist tendencies, its way of government, its restrictions on freedom, its atheism. You name it. \n\nOkay so why be bothered if another country is communist? Basically, it comes down to how likely is it that the world becomes communist? The theory goes if one country becomes communist then the next country will become communist. So you're American. South Korea falls to communism, then so does Japan, then so does Hawaii. The people there, initially, are loving this change in their way of life. Suddenly it's on your doorstep. Then California starts to exhibit communist ideas, then the whole country becomes communist - the very thing you detest.\n\nNow you may think this sounds a little farfetched but if you think about it this is exactly what happened with capitalism. Half the world was capitalist, capitalism spread, and now even the most communist of countries are starting to adopt capitalism.", "It was less about ideology and more about rivalry.\n\nThe US and the USSR were struggling for global dominance.  Since communism and capitalism were largely incompatible, they were useful tools to force countries to pick one side or the other, and to stay on that side once it was picked.\n\nIf instead of Russia, communism had taken hold in say, Greece or Argentina, the US probably wouldn't have cared nearly as much.", "For some less-than-relevant economic reasons, a capitalist economy MUST grow in order to keep from dying.  That's why you see economists freaking out when growth is too close to zero.\n\nHere's the kicker -- the planet is full of finite resources.  Some of these are natural (coal, oil), some human (labor), and some conceptual (intellectual property).  In order to grow, a capitalist system must continue to consume these resources so that it can profit on their \"movement\" (from source to consumer).  \n\nAmerican could care less about what other countries \"believe\", but the idea of a competing economic system thwarting its ability to exploit markets was intolerable.  \n\nThis was my first ELI5 -- how'd I do?", "America looks big and powerful. If we don't seem to run other countries, we lose that image. When we lose that image, we are no longer big and powerful. Think of a bully (not saying we are one or are not one) picking on kids. He's respected, even if out of fear. Then he stops picking on the other kids and goes to his studies. To them, he just becomes another kid on the playground.", "So basically the end goal of communism is a **worldwide** revolution that dismantles every nation-state and the capitalist mode of production in favor of a democratic mode of production (socialism) and a unified human race. From the outset there's been no attempt at hiding communism's global ambitions.\n\nThe USSR was part of what's called a Comintern - shorthand for communist international. The comintern was a grouping of revolutionary movements across the world that were seeking to overthrow their local capitalist governments.\n\nThe US started its rise to superpower status as it embraced colonialism in the 19th century. When the cold war started up the USSR began giving military aid to the communist revolutionaries that were springing up around the world. These movements were springing up in places where US corporations, or those from allied nations, were doing business.\n\nThat was the immediate motivation for US involvement, but as others have said, the cold war was essentially an arms race between the USSR and US to conquer the world. Neither country needed to extend their official state government to other countries in order to claim victory, they simply needed to install friendly governments that utilized their favored modes of production (capitalism/socialism).\n\nNote: Full disclosure - I side with the Soviet Union so feel free to dismiss me as Commie Scum.", "Just after the war, there was considerable optimism that the US and USSR would get along. Things fairly quickly shifted. The following line from George F. Kennan's \"Long Telegram\" says a lot about how many American diplomats came to view communism:\n\n\"Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine Are as Follows: USSR still lives in antagonistic 'capitalist encirclement' with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.\"\n\nCommunist ideology before the Soviet Union had strongly emphasized revolution in all capitalist nations--Stalin had distanced himself from that line of thinking by talking about \"socialism in one country,\" but it was still there. Whether or not the Soviets particularly wanted to overthrow the entire American way of life, it was very much perceived that way. Nuclear tension certainly didn't ease that tension.\n\nAgreeing to disagree was not an option to those who viewed the Cold War as a life-and-death, winner-take-all affair. Accordingly, many saw any spread of communism as part of a slippery slope to global revolution, and argued that it had to be stopped before it become uncontrollable. Thus, even corrupt dictators were considered worthy of support if it meant their reliable opposition to communism.", "As with most things in international relations, it comes down to power. After the Second World War, the US found itself in a position of unprecedented opportunity; it benefited from the war economy, and it saw growth soar on the back of arms and munitions exports amongst other things. This was helped by the fact that, by contrast to the old manufacturing hubs in Europe and Asia, the US mainland was largely untouched by the physical effects of war. On the other side of the Atlantic you had the old colonial powers suffering the effects of huge social and economic disruption as Europe began the long process of rebuilding. \n\nIn short, the least damaged of the victors had manoeuvred themselves into the forefront of a new world order, and it wasn't until they - that is, the US and the USSR - realised that each sought to become the new Britain, as it were, that ideology became an issue. The late 19th and early 20th Centuries had seen some conflict between Marxism and Capitalism - like the Spanish Civil War - but it now became important as a way of trying to achieve hegemony. The US recognised that 'soft-power' approaches are every bit as important as military strength when it comes to keeping yourself important on the world stage; so, to make sure that they stayed more influential than the Russians, they implemented schemes like the Marshall Plan, which injected capital into Europe to help with the rebuilding.\n\nThe hallmark of American aid, though, is that it comes with strings attached; free market strings, ironically enough. Countries buying into the American way of doing things, and accepting all the various benefits that brings, were expected to toe the line in terms of establishing liberal free-market principles. So using the language of freedom and democracy, and 'otherising' the Soviets  by painting them as evil centralist god-haters (as per Sen. Joe McCarthy's modus operandi), America was able to maximise its own economic and military reach in the post-war balance of power and set itself up as one of two superpowers for most of the rest of the 20th Century. \n\nTl:dr, the world order was shaken up after WWII, America and Russia were both in a position to take advantage, and both needed an ideological framework to sell their way of doing things. It wasn't so much that America hated Communism as that America loved liberalism. The relationship was more coke and pepsi than black and white. ", "One theory that was actively adopted during the Cold War was known as the Domino Theory, where there was a belief that if one country fell to communism, its neighbouring countries would be at risk of falling to communism as well.\n\nAs to why they directly opposed it, I don't know enough to explain it beyond the fact that there was a stark contrast in ideologies and what would only be baseless information.", "the Cold War was a real life board game of risk. USA started in the USA, Russia I'm Russia. After WWII, the US took Western Europe (NATO). Russia took Eastern Euro(USSR, the Bloc). This was even playing field except in Germany and Berlin but never mind that. \n\nAsian was the final battleground to gain the most territory. USA promised Russia parts of the Japanese Empire for help in the land invasion of Japan, which never happened due to a couple of Atomic bombs. Russia had invaded anyway and claimed it held up its end of the bargain. \n\nThe US got Japan and RS got Mongolia and bunch of smaller nations blah blah. \n\nALL OF A SUDDEN China, who the US saved from Japan, goes Red under Mao. US believes all RED is from RS(not true) but puts the US in the position to lose all the hard fought influence they won by defeating Japan. \n\nKorea was going RED, USA went AMERICA on KOREA to keep their interests alive in the region. 50% win \nVietnam- a homegrown communist group takes over NK lead by Ho Chi Ming. USA can't let RED have more land then it so they get involved go AMERICA. 50% win kinda. \n\nThen the Middle East and South America each had their wins and loses for RED and USA. \n\nMoral of the story: I WANT MORE THAN YOU. ", "The reason is this: capitalists need access to new markets and resources. Russia had an official policy of exporting communism to achieve world communism. You can't have both. ", "Late to the game, but ELI5:\n\nCommunists (then) = Terrorists (now)\n\nJust a political catchphrase to herd the masses."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bw4da1", "title": "Was a shot through the lung survivable in the past?", "selftext": "I remember that i watched a couple of old american western movies which show characters getting shot in the chest (right side) after the town physician examines the person in question they explain that he will make it since it is only a clean shot through the lung.  \n\n\nWas it possible to survive something like that back in the 19th century, while living in a town far away from a proper hospital?  \nWouldnt such a injury need a thorax drainage to keep the lung from colapsing?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bw4da1/was_a_shot_through_the_lung_survivable_in_the_past/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eq0afiw"], "score": [3], "text": ["So, to very directly answer your question, a shot through the lung could absolutely be survivable.  For example, if the shot was through the apex of the lung, then the tissue is very poorly perfused which would limit the amount of bleeding into the pleural cavity.  This would still rupture the pleural membrane, which would interfere with the ability of the lung to expand and could result in the lung collapsing.  however, a collapsed lung is survivable without medical intervention as well.    So, assuming that someone was shot with a small caliber bullet, through one of the less-perfused areas of the lung, and that they survived the almost-certain pneumothorax, AND they didn't succumb to any kind of infection, than yes, they could survive a shot to the lung.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWould it be likely to survive though?  Absolutely not.  A large caliber bullet, or a bullet through the bottom of the lung (where the lung is better perfused), or an infection, would all likely kill someone."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "956yc2", "title": "What made Norse Longships different from other common galley type ships of the early medieval era, and why were they considered so much more advanced?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/956yc2/what_made_norse_longships_different_from_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3rv127"], "score": [11], "text": ["So, we actually don't know a lot about the \"Viking\" or Norse type of longship that would have been used in northern waters. I wrote about this before in a [previous comment](_URL_0_), which I can expand on: \n\n >  [t]he \"longship\" has been romanticized in the stereotypical Viking community all out of proportion to its actual use, and also that our archaeological evidence of actual longships is highly fragmentary. (The Gokstad and Oseberg ships which exist in the popular imagination as the \"longship\" are of the same type and buried within a few years and a few miles of each other, and may not be typical of anything other than their own mid-9th century style). \n\n > All that said, what we think of as the modal Viking warship of the 8th-11th centuries was the longship, which that appears to be a (very small) replica of. The longship was classified by its number of \"rooms\" (defined as an area between thwarts, or cross-members) with an undecked longship presumably having as many thwarts/rooms as pairs of oars, which we also assume corresponds to pairs of warriors. These are large assumptions, but the records we have from ship-musters in Alfred's England (for example) talk about ships in terms of rooms, without a lot of evidence for manning. \n\n >  In any case, a ship of less than 20 rooms wasn't considered much of a warship at all, with ships of 20-25 rooms seeming to be average. King Harald Hardrada had a 35-room ship built in 1061-62, which was extremely large. (The ships of 20-25 rooms were called *esnecca*, \"snakes,\" while ships larger than say 30 rooms were called *drekkar* or \"dragons,\" and seem to have been celebrated in sagas as very unusual.)\n\n > In general, though, ships used for exploring voyages were not of the longship type. Longships were distinct from trading vessels by being, well, long in proportion to their width. We have some evidence that the Norse used fatter (for lack of a better term) ships that were mostly propelled by sails and had oars only at the bow and stern; the Bayeux Tapestry depicts English forces using some of these types of ships, with shields hung over the gunwale and oars at the ends of the ship. These trading ships are more likely to be ones that made longer voyages, with longships and other ship types following once the navigation was well understood. The trading ships the Norse used (*knarrar*) would have been partially decked over, as would larger longships have been, and would have offered some shelter from the elements. \n\nThe defining feature of the longship seems to have been that it was, well, *long* -- \"longship\" is the word for it in English and the Scandinavian languages, and \"snake\" as I mentioned above is also a term for that type of warship. \n\nThe thing is, though, that we don't know how exactly they looked, and there were at least three different shipbuilding traditions at work in the North Sea. We know this because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that \"King Alfred had long ships built to oppose the [Danish] warships [*lang scipu ongen \u00f0a aescas*]. They were almost twice as long as the others. Some had 60 oars, some more. They were both swifter and steadier and also higher than the others. They were built neither on the Frisian nor the Danish pattern, but as it seemed to him himself that they could be useful.\" (Quoted in Rodger, *Safeguard of the Seas* pp. 15). \n\n(As a sidenote: It's quite possible that \"him himself\" literally means that Alfred designed these himself; he was both a carpenter or at least familiar with carpentry and a seafarer.) \n\nSo the author(s) of the ASC were aware of at least three different shipbuilding traditions going on around England (the ships Alfred had built, the Frisian and the Danish ships). The Danish ships were probably warships, the Frisian ships were probably traders, and the English ships were built to counter the Danish ships. If they were in fact 30-room ships (with 60 oars) they would have been quite large for the time, with probably 2-3 times the crew of a 20-room ship. \n\nIn terms of being \"advanced,\" that's a tricky question to get to. The Norse longships that we have (and again, remember that we have about a quarter of the Skuldelev 2 wreck, the Gosktad and Oseberg ships and that's pretty much it) were long, narrow, had good carrying capacity, and drew fairly little water, so they were ideal ships for the Norse type of raiding warfare that we know existed at the time. But they were not good for carrying large amounts of cargo (people built merchant ships for that) or apparently for defensive warfare (like Alfred's design was for). All ship design is a compromise, and \"advanced\" isn't really a useful comparison. \n\nDoes that answer your question? \n\nThe main source I'm drawing on for this other than Rodger, quoted above, is John Haywood's *Dark Age Naval Power*. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28hjbr/how_in_the_world_did_vikings_sail_from/cibmcq8/"]]}
{"q_id": "222qwm", "title": "why do pain killers such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen help with fevers as well?", "selftext": "Suffering through a cold right now and thought I'd pose the question. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/222qwm/eli5why_do_pain_killers_such_as_ibuprofen_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgiubko", "cgiux5o", "cgiuy8n", "cgivhi9", "cgix4j9", "cgixsd7", "cgiy75z", "cgiyae4", "cgizvjj", "cgizwh9", "cgizyq5", "cgizysx", "cgj33uo"], "score": [57, 20, 14, 5, 3, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Don't know what the second one is but can answer for ibuprofen. It belongs to a class of drugs knows as nonsteroidal anti-inflammitory drugs(NSAIDS). Basically inflammation is your body ramping things up to deal with a situation. This involves the release of chemicals that cause inflammation, which(among other things) create pain through direct contact with nerves. They also create fever through a number of mechanisms that basically serves to create a hot hostile environment for what ever is invading your body and increase blood flow to the affected area. NSAIDS work by reducing the amount of these inflammatory chemicals being released in the first place.", "Interestingly it is argued that the use of antiinflammatory and antipyretic drugs should perhaps be avoided with mild fevers and colds as you're counteracting some of the responses needed to effectively clear the infection! ", "Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and some other common over-the-counter drugs are \"non-opiod analgesics\" (EDIT: also called NSAIDs, as someone else in the thread mentioned). They work by inhibiting certain mechanisms in the body, including the ones that cause inflammation. Basically, your cells can produce a lipid (fatty) compound called prostaglandin. It's part of your body's immune/pathogenic response, or how your body reacts to an infection, presence of a foreign body, or trauma. It encourages functions that help your body fight off pathogens and begin to heal.\n\n\"Inhibitors\" work in a particular way. Essentially, your cells have what are called receptor sites where certain chemicals and compounds can \"connect\" to the cell, if you will. Inhibitors work by taking up some of those spots so there's less room for whatever chemical you're trying to prevent from affecting the cell. Imagine that for whatever reason you want to keep a particular group of people off of a bus. You could try to get other people to fill in all of the seats first. Not a perfect analogy, but I think it sort of helps.\n\nProstaglandin causes inflammation and an increase in temperature, i.e. a fever. Fever, swelling, redness, and pain are all generally interconnected as part of your immune response. To a certain degree, stop the prostaglandin, stop the fever. Prostaglandin also has many other functions, including controlling smooth muscle structures in your body, like blood vessels and the intestines, which is why people who fear they are having a heart attack or are having chest pain will often chew a few \"baby Aspirin.\" It causes widening of the arteries which can help resolve issues with blood supply to the heart muscle.\n\nUltimately, the prostaglandin is one of the common factors in the fever, headache, and sore throat you might be experiencing. Acetominophen and ibuprofen can't stop it from being generated really, but it keeps that stuff from getting where it needs to be to cause a fever, etc. I hope this was helpful, I'm really weak when it comes to pharmacology but I've always found it interesting. Feel free to correct me.", "NSAIDs such as ibuprofen (acetaminophen/paracetamol is not a NSAID) reduce inflammation and reduce pain by inhibiting the action of the enzyme cyclooxygenase (COX). The COX-1 enzyme is responsible for the protection of the stomach mucosa from its own acids. The COX-2 enzyme is responsible for the prostaglandin synthesis. Prostaglandins act as messenger molecules in the inflammation pathway -- one of the symptoms of inflammation happens to be fever, thus by reducing the amount of prostaglandins the inflammation response reduces, reducing the fever.\n\nSome NSAID drugs non-selectively inhibit the COX enzyme, meaning that it inhibits COX-1 and COX-2, which is why it is recommended that these are taken with food, as food reduces the effects of the acid on your stomach mucosa. This also explains why your stomach might hurt after you take one of these drugs without food/water. Drugs, such as Celecoxib, selectively inhibit COX-2, reducing this gastric distress.\n\nAcetaminophen/paracetamol  is not considered a NSAID because, although it does inhibit COX-2, it only does so in the central nervous system, only blocking the pain, and not the localized inflammation.\n\nTL;DR -- NSAID painkillers inhibit an enzyme necessary for an inflammatory response, thereby reducing fever with it.\n\nEdit: Spelling", "Paracetamol is a far more effective treament - its anti-pyretic (anti fire), a COX-2 inhibitor (Cyclooxygenase being part of a biological pathway that causes fever, 2 being the particular receptor it acts on) and it affects the hyperthalmus (bit in your brain that controls temperature) to reduce body temperature back to normal (stopping your fever).\n\nIbuprofen is, as pointed out, nonsteroidal anti-inflammitory drug (NSAID) which stops inflammation through the same \"Mechanism\" as Paracetamol (just its less selective about what it targets). It's effect on a fever isn't as good as Paracetamol, and it is mainly used to treat muscle pain/headaches more than fever's. \n\nAlso note, its very dangerous to take Ibruprofen if your taking Warfarin (blood thinner, anti-coaulant). That is because they both compete with one another and have a higher impact on the body.\n\nAnd don't forgot, cold and flu remedies are a cocktail of drugs that affect other areas like the throat and nose to help alleviate the symptoms of a cold.", "I must say, what everyone told you here is true. But ibuprofen just doesn't have the same antipyretic (fever reducing) effect that Paracetamol (acetaminophen) does. Paracetamol is theorized to also work in the hypothalamus in your brain to change what the body temperature should be (this is a theory). Ibuprofen, while reducing mediators such as prostaglandins, doesn't have a direct effect on your temperature because \"only\" IL-1 and IL-6 (interleukin 1 and 6) work in your brain causing you to have a fever. Prostaglandins can activate your white blood cells to produce these Interleukins and so ibuprofen may indirectly reduce your fever but that is not what it was meant to do. It also cannot do it as well as acetaminophen. How acetaminophen works....is still a mystery.", "When a part of your body is inflamed, that is, when there is anything illiciting an immune reaction(Bacteria, injury etc). Five basic things happen. In medicine these are called\n\nDolor(pain)\n\nCalor(heat)\n\nRubor(redness)\n\nTumor(swelling)\n\nFunction laesa(loss of function)\n\nThis may be very localized or more systemic, depending on your illness.\nWhat drugs like Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen(paracetamol) do, is to inhibit the mediators of these inflammatory responses, thereby reducing the pain, swelling, redness etc.\n\nMore specifically, they inhibit something called cyclooxygenases in your body (COX-1 and COX-2), which are vital to the synthesis of prostaglandins. Prostaglandins, amongst many other things, are responsible for raising your body temperature when you have a fever.\nThey act on the hypothalamus(control center) in your brain, which generates a systemic temperature-increasing response.\n\n\nAs an added note, prostaglandins are also important for the formation of the mucus membrane lining your stomach. That is why excessive use of these blockers might make you more susceptible to ulcers, especially if combined with other risk factors.\n\nAnother useful fact is that acetaminophen(paracetamol) follows the same pathway of metabolism as does alcohol. This is why it is not advised to combine the two, as you run the risk of exceeding your livers capacity for detoxification, and causing liver damage.\n\nSource: Medschool", "As someone who has a severe allergy to ibuprofen, (or NSAIDs for that matter) I can tell you that Acetaminophen  &  ibuprofen are certainly not the same thing. \nNSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) have anti-inflammatory (swelling reducer), analgesic (pain reliever), and antipyretic (fever reducer) effects, while Tylenol, or acetaminophen is a pain reliever.  Acetaminophen relieves pain by elevating the pain threshold, that is, by requiring a greater amount of pain to develop before it is felt by a person. It reduces fever through its action on the heat-regulating center of the brain. Specifically, it tells the center to lower the body\u2019s temperature when the temperature is elevated. Acetaminophen relieves pain in mild arthritis but has no effect on the underlying inflammation, redness and swelling of the joint. \nAcetaminophen is actually a safer choice than ibuprofen. \n", "Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen kill pain by destroying the spiders that feed on your organs and muscles (your immune system is less able to destroy the spiders when they attempt to enter your body while you sleep if you are ill or becoming ill). The spiders usually create nests in your brain (and sometimes your entire body) and these nests are very warm. These drugs are not only good at killing the spiders, but also their nests, so your fever goes down as the millions of spider babies in the nests in your brain die.", "Some of the responses make me feel like we shouldn't sell such basic things OTC.  People just don't seem to understand how to take them or even they what they are.  They can have serious side effects people!  Read your labels! ", "Well little dilli, let me tell you....\n\nWhen your body has trouble with bacteria or a big ouchy a little cell called the white blood cell comes to the rescue. Think of it as the superhero of the body, protecting the rest of the cells from evildoers. One of its jobs is to shoot out little magic bullets called cytokines including a specific group called interleukins. These interleukins go about setting up the different defense mechanisms of the body. Think of it as a game of a strategy game where you have to build up the different defenses to protect your base. One of the defenses is to raise the body's temperature. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen are \"antipyretics\" which means they fight the fire of increased body temperature by overriding those interleukins in part of the brain. This can be a good thing in cases of high temperatures that backfire and cause more harm then good. In the case of a mild fever though let it ride little dilli because it will help fight off whatever ails you!", "Ibuprofen- anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antipyretic\nAcetaminophen- analgesic, antipyretic \n\nEven though its not an anti-inflammatory, acetaminophen is still an antipyretic, hence it's ability to help with fever", "When you take any drug, it essentially has two types of effects on you. The effect(s) its intended for (Therapeutic effects) and the effects that occur that are not intended (non-therapeutic/side effects). \n\nJust like Barbiturates and Benzodiazepines help raise the threshold of seizure activity (makes it harder for someone who is prone to seizures to start convulsing), other drugs have positive side-effects.\n\nThough, I wouldn't recommend anti-inflammatory or opiates to help with a fever. Stick to Motrin. \n\nedit: typo :("]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "23ceux", "title": "what if? the privatization of water.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ceux/eli5_what_if_the_privatization_of_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgvm75v", "cgvmtwx", "cgvmzcp", "cgvngg8", "cgvnjuu", "cgvnlvf", "cgvnvyi", "cgvo2ly", "cgvobsk", "cgvolmd", "cgvoqre", "cgvswqt", "cgvvimo", "cgvvklt", "cgvwe2h"], "score": [4, 72, 12, 8, 2, 15, 3, 6, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Economics has great theories on this. Since water is essential for life and such a great necessity, if you own the water supplies you could charge a ridiculous amount for access and people would still pay for it because their lives depend on it. This allows you to continue to increase the price as you know people will continue to pay. At some point, the price will be so high only the super rich will be able to afford water and everyone else would die.\n\nAs a consequence of rising prices you might see water charities: \"Take a penny, leave a penny to buy water for the poor\"", "If water becomes privatized basically it becomes a commodity like shoes, clothing brands, cars, etc. Only those who can afford it will have access. Now this isn't a big deal for most commodities, if you can't afford a pair of Nikes there is a cheap brand, knock off or warehouse sales for clothes, public transportation if you don't have a car but water is pretty different as it is literally essential to a healthy life, or any life at all for that matter. \n\nIf water becomes privatized, it might not be an issue for 1st world citizens like us at first, though privatized water systems have infrastructure issues, most people would still be able to afford it at first though. In third world countries though, and eventually in 1st world, there will come a time where not everyone will be given access to water and this is when things will turn bad. \n\nI truly think that water will be the focus of some major conflicts in the relatively near future. This isn't some comfort issue, this isn't some superfluous need, this is water. You will fucking die in a day or two without any water and that's if it's clean. People have been rioting all over the world for far less, if you take away something so essential to life you can damn well be they'll fight for that.\n\nTL;DR War and in my opinion the possible destruction of society could result from the privatization of water.", "There are plenty of theories, but why not just look at what happens in real life? \n\nIn Scotland, water is nationalised. \nIn England, water is privatised. \n\nWater in Scotland is cleaner, cheaper and more efficient. ", "_URL_0_\n\nThis is pretty good documentary on various instances of privatization in different places - It looks at Greece, Russia, Bolivia and USA. \n\nIn Australia, the commonwealth bank was once state-owned, now it is a private company. Telecom was a state owned telecommunications company, now it is private. \n\nI think in general, privatization has been going on for a while with mixed results. \n\nIt's a principle of the free market ideology, that everything is a commodity to be traded on the market place, whether this makes society a better or worse place is debatable. \n\nPersonally I think we should go in the opposite direction, we should publicize everything and just have one brand for everything, like they do in North Korea but without the dictator and shit\n\n", "Not \"what if\", it is.\n\nWater: s already a product for sale.", "\"The newcomer to Arrakis frequently underestimates the importance of water here. You are dealing, you see, with the Law of the Minimum. Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate. Water is the least favorable condition for life on Arrakis. And remember, growth itself can produce unfavorable conditions unless treated with extreme care.\"", "Might as well charge people to breathe. I fucking hate corporations. ", "In the UK at least, when water was privatised over 20 years ago the companies that took it over, in order to keep costs down, stopped investing in the infrastructure.\n\nFast forward to today and the price of water (and other utilities they control) keeps going up as the lack of investment 20 years ago (and some other smaller factors) means that a huge nationwide repair and new pipe laying project is underway which is costing millions and millions per day.", "Since most people here have pointed out the downsides of privatization, I'll try and point out some of the arguments for.\n\nPersonal usage of water is minuscule. The vast majority of water (70% of fresh water usage) is used in agriculture. However in most cases the price of water doesn't track the effort of moving the water, so the cost of water is not really factored in, leading to inefficiencies. This is a pretty big deal since by 2050 the world is going to need to double food production while reducing agriculture's share of water usage.\n\nAnother argument for is there needs to be some mechanism for moving water from water rich areas to water poor areas. When people talk about \"water wars\" what they mean is that a lot of poor countries don't have the ability move large amounts of water. Private companies could. For example, Blue Lake, Alaska holds trillions of gallons of water, supplying fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles. Every year 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka\u2019s reserves go unused. Privatizing the water supply could allow companies to ship the water to places that need it.", "Near as I understand the problem, the issue isn't $2 bottles of Coke brand Dasani purchased at a well stocked supermarket in America, the issue is the massive amounts of water necessary to sustain food production and keep food prices stable.  If water privatization goes unchecked, first world residents (like me) pay 50% more for a bottle of water, but third world residents experience instability in their food prices, and pay 500% more to eat.  all statistics are guesses", "I believe this is already happening with Nestl\u00e9. Check out the documentaries Flow  &  Tapped on Netflix. ", "So ashamed to be from the only country in the world where water is fully privatised (England).", "Nestl\u00e9 is already trying to do this. The CEO has been quoted as saying no one has a right to clean water", "Why stop at water? Let's privatize air, or heartbeats.", "privatizing water is like all of the other privatizing efforts out there, complete and utter bullshit, shat down upon us from the cunts of the 1%. fuck rich people."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RORPpFL21dM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1zvhzs", "title": "why don't airplanes broadcast their exact gps coordinates continously to some central authority who records them so that they can be easily found if they crash?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zvhzs/eli5_why_dont_airplanes_broadcast_their_exact_gps/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfxctj7", "cfxd19t", "cfxdhzi", "cfxeit5", "cfxfje9", "cfxft92", "cfxg3hs", "cfxg7ds", "cfxgec5", "cfxgio5", "cfxh7du", "cfxjtsk", "cfxk2qc", "cfxkaub", "cfxl0x8", "cfxmbv0", "cfxn0me", "cfxn5ac", "cfxnir8", "cfxoiad", "cfxplnx", "cfxpmhc", "cfxt9kv"], "score": [183, 90, 2, 1714, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 15, 6, 24, 11, 4, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They likely do. Doesn't help if their communication equipment stops working, which is what many suspect happened to that flight that's currently on the front page.", "It's very rare that it's hard to find a crashed aircraft.\n\nWhen it does happen, it's usually not because we have no idea where it is. It's because it's somewhere inaccessible, like the bottom of the sea, or - as in this case - densely forested areas. (Edit: later news reports suggest the crash was actually over water.)\n\nAircraft are fitted with locator beacons, which send out a signal that rescuers can home towards, and this does exactly the same job as what you're describing, if the location of a crashed aircraft isn't known. But again, it's only of limited help if you can't get to the aircraft because of the nature of its location.", "They broadcast speed and location every ten minutes. It's too expensive and frankly unnecessary to broadcast that info constantly. \n\nInterview in this piece has the full details _URL_0_", "They do. In America, the data is fed through the FAA and then released on a delay (about 2-3 minutes).  Europe has recently been installing new hardware into their planes called ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast) which broadcasts its data to receivers set up around the world practically instantly.  If you love planes like I do, you will get addicted to this website...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe US is expected to have all planes equipped with ADS-B equipment by 2020, which will let us bypass the FAA in receiving the data about planes' locations.\n\nFor more information on ADS-B:\n_URL_1_", "Actualiteit they do.  See pic, last known position of the Malaysian plane..._URL_0_", "Incidentally, this technology has been around for a long time, but not every airliner uses it because it is not yet federally mandated.  Requiring ADS-B is one step as part of [NextGen](_URL_0_), a massive overhaul of American airspace that will greatly increase efficiency, lower the cost of flights for the airlines, reduce waiting and travel times for passengers, reduce emissions, and save millions of dollars every year for taxpayers.  It has been put on the backburner because the airlines and the U.S. Government each want the other party to pay for it.", "\"Why don't airplanes broadcast their exact GPS\"... except they do,at least modern jets do. They are monitored by GPS, radio,and radar.\n\nThere's no such thing as a central authority either. Countries take charge of international flights depending or when the flight is departing and arriving. Say for example, a flight from Brazil to France. Part of the flight will be controlled by Brazil, part of it by France.\n\nThe on-board computer constantly updates the planes location and sends it off to whatever airport is monitoring the flight. Flights also fly by waypoint becons,and this is another way that we know where we are and where they are going.", "They do, you can watch them on flightradar... the problem is that beacons don't only stop broadcasting when planes crash. The wreck might be 100km from where their beacon turned off, and under 1km of water.", "Can't they just track some of the passengers mobile phones?  Or is there absolutely no signal there?", "[Aircraft do transmit their location data](_URL_0_), but in order to do so, they require the use of large and powerful antennas / radios.\n\nIn response to OP's reply to Havegooda's comment, putting something like that into a blackbox is very difficult as, because you can only use a small antenna, you need a crapton of transmitting power to make up for it. To get that much transmission power, you need to be running very power-hungry electronics, which in turn need batteries.\n\nYou might think that you would only need to transmit for a few minutes, and while sometimes that may be the case, in mountainous regions or area with bad cloud / dust cover, you may need to be broadcasting for a long time in order to have your signal noticed by passing satellites, or ground or air based communication relays (ground-based antennas or other aircraft equipped with receivers).\n\nAnd so to get a powerful enough battery, you need to be putting volatile substances *inside* your blackbox, which compromises its security / safety features.\n\n---\n\nAlso, for the majority of aircraft that can power such systems through large antennas / powerful transmitters, you generally don't need a giant GPS transponder to know where the plane went down; just follow it's flight path and look for the hundreds of metres of debris or the smoke plume (obviously water landings are tougher, but they still manage to locate parts of aircraft that crash into oceans).", "Aircraft do broadcast their coordinates continuously. Its reported to air traffic services as CADS position reports and as ADS-B pseudo-radar. The CADS position reports are short text messages sent periodically by a service. ADS-B is setup to look like a radar source. Planes have to be equipped for that but its in widespread use. There's been a bunch of these added to [greenland] (_URL_0_)\n ", "Okay, so it's pretty clear that you're talking about the Malaysian Airlines incident. Major international airlines, such as Malaysian, already do using ADS-B: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nFurthermore, almost every aircraft in the world has a transponder, which  broadcasts certain information about the aircraft, including its type. When the transponder is given a certain Squawk code (i.e. a certain frequency to broadcast) by air traffic control, this now gives ATC information about that specific aircraft on their radar systems, including airspeed, approximate altitude, and direction of flight.\n\nPertaining to the Malaysian incident, it sounds to me as if the electrical systems failed first, which wouldn't explain what happened. Like all aircraft this size, the 777-200ER has backup electrical systems that would continue to work. So something else must have happened. \n\nAnd if THAT happened, the only thing left is the emergency locator beacon, which is related to the \"black box.\" In the case of a crash, this beacon will broadcast for several weeks before its battery dies. Most aircraft (private included) have these beacons, and the 777 should be no different.\n\nThe way I read the news reports, these systems all functioned perfectly until everything failed over Viet Nam. Now we just need to pray that there was a positive outcome. ", "Aircraft normally carry ELT's, which stands for Emergency Locator Transmitter. These are devices that are either activated manually by a flight crew member or automatically during a sudden deceleration (crash). Modern ELT's use a satellite network and a frequency band that narrows a possible search area to several square miles. In addition, many of these newer ELT's will also transmit GPS coordinates to the satellite, which very literally takes the Search out of Search and Rescue. Unfortunately, the move to newer ELT's has not been compulsory for all aircraft, and older technology radios are still used in a majority of general aviation aircraft. These radios do not emit useful signals in many incidents, and do not allow for as accurate location determination. The average search time using the older equipment without any other information in the US is over 36 hours. In some cases, victims succombed to exposure hours, days, or even weeks after accidents in remote areas of the country, even with operating ELT's. It is too soon to evaluate still, but indications are that the newer technology improves reliability substantially and reduces search time to a few hours. Only about 15% of general aviation aircraft have the GPS enabled Elt's installed. \n\nADS-B only covers a portion of the aircraft in the air currently. It has far lower adoption than even the new Elt technology. The Faa would like more people to use the system, and has integrated traffic, weather, and other information for free into the network to induce more to adopt the standard. The equipment is quite expensive for general aviation users, however, and has proven to be a real barrier for wider penetration. ", "I really don't get how a plane can still be considered \"missing\" at this point. ", "Oh, shit.  _URL_0_ still shows Malaysia Air 370 over the Gulf of Thailand/South China Sea...", "The short answer is they do. The problem with locating reckage is that an explosion can happen at 20000 feet, causing the wreckage to be distributed over a HUGE area. That wreckage then mostly sinks, and is moved even further by currents.\n\nIf you then think how far a plane can go in 2-3 minutes, you've got an idea how just how huge an area the search parties have to look over.", "IIT: Broadcasting signals too often is a waste of data space and cost too much money. Meanwhile Imgur just hit a new milestone of 1 million terabytes of data per day.", "Calling captain hindsight", "Airliners are tracked in the US. I believe there are some balckout areas for transatlantic flights.However Most if not all modern airliners are equipped with an ELT which stands for emergency locator transmitter. This device is armed (turned on) as part of the pilots' preflight check list. It should go off when the aircraft crashes and is usually located in the tail of the aircraft. If the tail of the aircraft sinks deep underwater this can have an effect on the range of the transmitter. Most large airlines that fly over great expanses of water are also equipped with a portable ELT. It looks kind of like a walkie talkie and the the unit is held so the antenna is upright. If a crash is sudden and unexpected it may not be possible to retrieve all needed safety equipment in time. \nSource: I was a flight attendant for 6 years. ", "All airplanes that fly Inter or in the US and UK all have an ELT - Emergency Locator Transmitter - ADS-B is a type of transmitting to make plane more efficient when flying...... BUT in the time of an Accident there is an ELT onboard which transmits on a frequency which ATC monitors and the Stations in the Area..... When it comes to Intl flights every X amount of time they have to broadcast their position because there is no Towers picking up your location.... which is still going to be an Issue with ADS-B, Satellite usage is very expensive and not All Airlines use Satellites all the time... Unless you want your ticket to be 10k :) - I fly a Cessna 421 to the Caribbean and back....Also wikiPedia is not a reliable source....AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION(AOPA) is your best source for basic information regarding any airline or recreational information for flying.... :) It will also link you to FAR(Federal Aviation Regulations (US)) - I hope this helps \n\n", "I think I understand why you're asking.\n \nThe plane was reported in the news as \"having lost communication\" because that's a nice, and moderately alarming way of putting it, even though people familiar with the situation likely knew well ahead of time that it was likely the worst case scenario.", "It crashed into the ocean, now if there were survivors that made it to rafts they would have found them as each one is equipped with a emergency locator beacon. I used to be an ALSS tech, every commercial aircraft and ship have them in their survival bags", "Very cool website that shows this:\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.runwaygirlnetwork.com/2014/03/07/world-stunned-mh370-could-vanish-in-2014/"], ["www.flightradar24.com", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast"], ["http://i.imgur.com/fOfoBdG.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Aircraft_Tracking"], ["http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/526613/nav-canada-projects-major-savings-through-initiatives-to-reduce-ghg-emissions-and-fuel-costs"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast"], [], [], ["Flightradar.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.flightradar24.com/"]]}
{"q_id": "1fsb9g", "title": "do different gps companies have different satellites that their customers beam to?", "selftext": "On a related note, how many devices can communicate with a satellite before overloading it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fsb9g/do_different_gps_companies_have_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cadao9r", "cadaowa", "cadat1f", "cadawqt"], "score": [6, 15, 7, 20], "text": ["No - there are 32 satellites in the GPS constellation currently. A minimum of 24 satellites is required to enable position fixing anywhere in the world.\n\nIt is not possible to overload a satellite, any more than it's possible to overload your local radio station. This is because, just like your local radio station, the satellites are transmitters - they do not receive signals (at least, not from the GPS unit in your car). Once a signal has been transmitted, there is no limit to how many units can receive it.", "A GPS device doesn't transmit anything to the satellites, it just listens to them. And they all listen to the same satellites. \n\nThe [simple wikipedia on GPS](_URL_0_) has a pretty good explanation of how it works:\n\n > A GPS unit takes radio signals from satellites in space circling the Earth. There are about 30 satellites 20,200 kilometres (12,600 mi) above the Earth. (Each circle is 26,600 kilometres (16,500 mi) radius due to the Earth's radius.) Far from the North Pole and South Pole, a GPS unit can receive signals from 6 to 12 satellites at once. Each satellite contains an atomic clock which is carefully set by NORAD several times every day.\n\n > The radio signals contain very good time and position of the satellite. The GPS receiver subtracts the current time from the time the signal was sent. The difference is how long ago the signal was sent. The time difference multiplied by the speed of light is the distance to the satellite. The GPS unit uses trigonometry to calculate where it is from each satellite's position and distance. Usually there must be at least four satellites to solve the geometric equations.\n\n > A GPS receiver can calculate its position many times in one second. A GPS receiver calculates its speed and direction by using its change in position and change in time.", "I wrote software for a GPS application once on on board terminals. They all use the same sats. They all work similar. You have a GPS-antenna which receives a shitload of data continuosly in a specific format. It's up to you to do whatever you want with that data and that's where they differ.", "Most of your question has been answered but here is another part that wasn't. All GPS satellites are owned and operated by the US Air Force. They maintain these systems and provide their signal for free use to anyone in the world who wants to \"listen\". A big radio station in the sky, all you need to do is tune in to hear it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6jm4dx", "title": "TIL about the Great Mosque of Xian that looks more like a Chinese temple than a mosque. Why does it seem only in China that mosques adopted native architecture rather than following the usual design?", "selftext": "More about the Great Mosque of Xian - _URL_2_ - as you can see no one will think that it is a Muslim mosque - it looks more like a Shinto, Buddhist or Confucian temple.\n\nMore Chinese mosques examples - \n\n* _URL_4_\n\n* _URL_3_\n\n* _URL_0_\n\n* _URL_1_\n\nThis caught my curiosity that China seems to be the only place I read of in the world where mosques and Muslims, instead of using the usual Islamic architecture like domes, crescent moons, arabesque styles adopted instead the style of Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian temples or the existing native architecture.\n\nWhy did the Chinese Muslims in the particular time periods chose to build their mosques like this - something not replicated in other parts of the world? What exactly is different with Chinese Islam or Chinese Islamic architecture.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jm4dx/til_about_the_great_mosque_of_xian_that_looks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djfmwgn", "djfv1dp", "djfylku"], "score": [38, 8, 18], "text": ["I\u2019m not knowledgeable enough about East Asian architecture to tell you much about Chinese mosques. However I can tell you that the premise of your question isn\u2019t really true. Throughout the ages Muslims have adapted older building traditions for their own needs in many regions outside China.\n\nThis already starts with the oldest extant examples of Muslim religious architecture, the 7th and 8th century monuments of the Umayyad Caliphate in Greater Syria. As Muslim architecture was only just coming into its own their architects and craftsmen necessarily had to draw on the older traditions of the Late Antique Near East. For example it is no accident that the famous [Dome of](_URL_10_) [the Rock](_URL_3_) on Jerusalem\u2019s Temple Mount is very similar in design to some Early Byzantine churches in the region like the [Sergios Bacchos](_URL_0_) [and Leontios Church](_URL_4_) in Bosra. The details of its decoration like the mosaics or the architectural sculpture also clearly follow Roman templates. Similarly the [Umayyad Mosque](_URL_8_) in Damascus and other early mosques adapted the design of Roman basilicas, be they civic or christian.\n\nWhen the center of the Caliphate shifted towards Iraq after the Abbasid revolution Sasanian building traditions came into the forefront as this region had been the seat of Persian rule before the Islamic conquest. This meant that [mud brick constructions](_URL_5_) and [stucco d\u00e9cor](_URL_1_) became the norm for the great imperial projects.\n\nThere are plenty other examples from other epochs and geographic regions throughout the history of Islamic architecture. The [Seljuq mosques](_URL_2_) in Anatolia share obvious similarities in construction technique with the [churches of the christian Caucasus principalities](_URL_9_). The [great Ottoman Mosques of Istanbul](_URL_7_) were often heavily inspired by the architecture of [Hagia Sophia](_URL_6_) which had been build roughly one thousand years earlier in the same city.\n\nSo all in all I\u2019d say the examples from China that you mention aren\u2019t as extraordinary as you think.", "I agree with /u/guchfuckhs, and I'd add examples like the [great mosque of Mopti](_URL_1_), the [djinguereber mosque](_URL_2_) of timbuktu, or Kano's old [grand mosque](_URL_0_) (since rebuilt in a more standard design) all show West African architectural styles very different from what you might see in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.", "If you look at Ottoman Mosque architecture, you will see that the vast majority of the important ones follow a particularly pattern set out by Mimar Sinan, the most important Ottoman architect.  However, this pattern is largely based on emulation not of traditional Arabic architecture, but of the Byzantine Church architecture, in particular the great cathedral of Haggia Sofia which the Ottomans turned into a mosque shortly after the conquest of Istanbul.  \n\nIn a very real sense, a lot of the basics of Ottoman mosque architecture (the low domes, the use of half domes, poriticos, the square or rectangular plans) look like Byzantine churches with minarets, though there were also some obvious differences (different proportions, more open space inside the main dome, almost no colonnades, an emphasis on inner courtyards where Muslim absolution is preformed).\n\nLater mosques in the Ottoman Empire didn't necessarily follow this pattern, however.  One of my favorite Mosques in Turkey is the Ortakoy Mosque, which is very obviously in the same Baroque style as continental European churches of the period.  The original was built in 1721, the one that currently stands was build between 1854-1856.  One interesting thing about this mosque is that it was designed by two famous ethnic Armenians, farther and son Garabet and Nigogayos Baylan, who also built Dolmabahce Palace and a nearby Armenian church in similar neo-Baroque styles.  This was one example of many and European-influenced Baroque architecture in many ways displaced Byzantine-influenced Classical Ottoman architecture as the dominant style of the period.\n\nTo echo /u/Guckfuchs and /u/Commustar, I am not sure I really understand what you mean by your question.  Mosques seem to be *generally* built under the influence of local styles (or a fusion of a local style with a non-local style).  Perhaps simply local styles of China are more different to your eye than local styles of the Near East or South Asia.  My Turkish friends who've gone to, say, India have been shocked at how different the mosques look, and my South Asian friends who've visited Istanbul tend to see the mosques as architecturally very different from the mosques \"back home\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinan_Great_Southern_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongxin_Great_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Xi%27an", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaisheng_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niujie_Mosque"], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/JO5x03W.jpg", "http://www.museumsjournal.de/pix/upload/20131101_1.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/22RMizt.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/Fbc0khu.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/1Bkmi6C.jpg", "https://www.beautifulmosque.com/PostImages/great-mosque-of-samarra-in-samarra-iraq-04.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/aAqKa9Z.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/xbOP2dw.jpg", "https://archnet.org/system/publications/covers/1271/original/FLS1319.jpg?1421341272", "http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DR8E71/georgian-orthodox-basilica-bolnisi-sioni-cathedral-oldest-extant-church-DR8E71.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/t7LaqxC.jpg"], ["http://www.bendav.nl/gif/ebay13/0899.jpg", "http://www.learn.columbia.edu/mopti/", "http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/3939806-3x2-940x627.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1xcjsr", "title": "Why did Germany stop using the Gothic script halfway through WWII?", "selftext": "According to [the wiki](_URL_0_) it is because Bormann thought that it was discovered the script was designed by Jews. I can't help but think that there are other reasons though.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xcjsr/why_did_germany_stop_using_the_gothic_script/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfa9ook", "cfaa6xc", "cfaafco", "cfagd6t", "cfaiks2"], "score": [43, 58, 35, 5, 2], "text": ["Hey guys, just a general, thread-level reminder here :) \n\n* **While sources are not required in a top-level comment, they are heavily encouraged.** \n\n* **While brevity is the soul of wit, a choppy answer helps no one.** If you're posting no more than one or two sentences to the OP's question, please don't answer. [We have standards that we do not hesitate to enforce](_URL_0_) here - so please, be considerate to other posters :)\n\n* **Remember the original question.** \n\n* **Please don't speculate**. If you don't know the answer, or otherwise aren't willing to follow the standards that I linked above, then again...please, just upvote the question and keep an eye on it. Someone will come :)\n\n* **If all you can offer is a link to Wikipedia, please do not post.**\n\n* **Racism is unacceptable here. Similarly, civility is mandatory.**\n\n* **If you do not know the answer, then please do not post.**\n\nThanks again!", "Scripts are a little detached from my niche, but to offer a response:\n\nThe German script debate is mirrored by the [War of the Romantics](_URL_0_), the moniker given to the debate among the German intellectuals regarding Germany's cultural/ideological identity. There were two camps which were broadly labelled conservative and progressive.\n\nThere was a lot of this going on in German culture affecting everything from the Brothers Grimm to Wagner. One side advocated enshrining the mysticism associated with German history while the other wanted to modernise. This reflects the [Antiqua-Fraktur dispute](_URL_1_). The \"ideological connotations\" Wikipedia mentions are the aforementioned ones.\n\nFraktur, on the Gothic side, represented the mystic German history I glossed over, while Antiqua (despite its name) was considered the more modern alphabet. [Bormann and others in power were modernists](_URL_2_) and saw Antiqua as the way forward in German supremacy. It wouldn't surprise me if Blackletter typefaces were called Jewish to speed this along.\n\n\nNow, while this may be the \"theory\" behind the shift, in practice it's probable that Blackletter wouldn't have held up happily to the pressures of European support of Antiqua/Latin typefaces anyway, considering Germany's place in Europe.", "Ach.  I am on the road now so I don't have my references with me.\n\nBut as I recall it was due to eligibility issues.  The old gothic and [fraktur](_URL_0_) fonts which were being used were difficult to read for those that had not grown up with them (ie .. the people in the occupied territories.)\n\nEspecially .. s, f, z, l, t, j .. are tricky and can easily be mistaken for one another.  And you also have to add confusion from slavic names like \"Sojczynski\" and you can imagine how a lot of confusion would come up as things go back and forth between the occupiers and the occupied.\n\nWhen it concerns military orders, or police lists of people to be arrested, etc .. you don't want to have people bickering over misread names, addresses, and other details.\n\nSo the story was concocted that the old fonts had Jewish \"taint\", and a more eligible font was introduced.  Because of course, the Gothic/Fraktur fonts, being traditionally German and therefore superior, couldn't just be called \"hard to read and problematic\".", "From a quick survey of the online sources from the [German Wikipedia article](_URL_3_), hence all links are in German except if noted otherwise.  \n\nThe Antiqua-Fraktur dispute dates back to the beginning of the 19th century and it appears that usually the nationalists preferred Fraktur. But the front lines in the dispute were not settled enough to prevent the use by left wing groups during the Weimar republic. ( [Social democratic propaganda poster](_URL_4_) )  On the right Hitler apparently disliked Fraktur. In 1934 he said in a address to the Reichstag (translation [English Wikipedia](_URL_1_))\n\n >  Your alleged Gothic internalisation does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete, of womanly beauty and manly strength, of head raised high and intention defiant ... In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations of the east, the north and the west will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced by the script we have called Latin so far ...\n\nBut this did not lead to a coherent policy, [in 1939 high-schools were still ordered to teach both](_URL_0_) \"German and Latin script,\" that is Fraktur and Antiqua.  Additionally, on 7/30/1937 the Propaganda ministry forbade Jewish publishers to use Fraktur. Which was a demand of the *Deutsche Studentenschaft* ( German student union) from 1933. \n\nAn interesting detail is, that the NSDAP party newspaper *V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter* was [set in Bernhard-Fraktur](_URL_2_), a font by the Jewish designer Lucian Bernhard, until after the banning of Fraktur. The publisher of the *V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter* was at the meeting referenced in the Normalschrifterlass. And it is a temptation to speculate, if these two are related. \n\nFriedrich Beck notes in his 2006 essay on the topic ([German, pdf](_URL_5_)), that the banning of Fraktur was puzzling especially for Germans abroad, and he sees it as a expression of dictatorial power. That is, it is simply a matter of Hitlers personal preference, rather than some deep reason.  ", "Fun fact: the memo that [Bormann released](_URL_0_) to mandate the changeover to modern script was printed with the Nazi party logo in Fraktur (Gothic) script."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabacher"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jsabs/what_it_means_to_post_a_good_answer_in"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Romantics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute", "http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&amp;type=summary&amp;url=/journals/modernism-modernity/v003/3.1fritzsche.html"], ["http://www.google.de/imgres?sa=X&amp;espvd=210&amp;es_sm=122&amp;biw=1366&amp;bih=643&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbnid=IuWTcUi0n5RntM%3A&amp;imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2FEBchecked%2Fmedia%2F129064%2FSeven-black-letter-fonts-by-Rudolf-Koch&amp;docid=ZzZch8cTYfecVM&amp;imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-1.web.britannica.com%2Feb-media%2F75%2F132375-004-156D683B.jpg&amp;w=450&amp;h=450&amp;ei=22v2UoarLqqa4wT2oIDYAQ&amp;zoom=1&amp;iact=rc&amp;dur=1605&amp;page=1&amp;start=0&amp;ndsp=18&amp;ved=0CI8BEK0DMBE"], ["http://vau-ef-be.beepworld.de/frakturverbot.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute", "http://home.arcor.de/lutz.schweizer/schrifterlass.html", "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur-Streit", "http://imgur.com/6dl5J0Q", "http://opus.kobv.de/fhpotsdam/volltexte/2007/28/pdf/Beck.pdf"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schrifterlass_Antiqua1941.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "4xvu4n", "title": "why is it that as we get older, we are able to handle eating hotter foods", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xvu4n/eli5why_is_it_that_as_we_get_older_we_are_able_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6iuf3z", "d6ivrzt", "d6iw77o", "d6iwtp9", "d6iy01h", "d6iz55y", "d6iz6n2", "d6izw9h", "d6izyrn", "d6j0x83", "d6j3plb", "d6j60lh", "d6j72zx"], "score": [18, 130, 710, 19, 2, 7, 71, 4, 11, 4, 42, 2, 2], "text": ["This probably isn't the only reason, but one likely contributor is that the number of active taste buds a typical person has naturally deteriorates with age, much like our vision and hearing tend to deteriorate with age.\n\nSo children on average experience tastes more sharply than adults, which is probably one major reason they prefer blander foods.", "Its not about age, its about how accustomed you are to eating spicy foods. As you eat spicy foods more often you build a sort of tolerance to it, so that you can handle eating slightly spicier foods. When you are a child, you don't have that tolerance because you haven't had a chance to develop it yet.", "I'm not sure I accept the premise. Children in cultures where spicy food is common, think nothing of it. My nephews had no problem eating hot peppers when they were very young because it was just a normal part of their diet. It's a sort of acquired taste/tolerance and it's \"easier\" to acquire that at the very malleable young age. If you don't acquire it when you're very young, then it's a much slower process and might not happen until you're much older.", "I'm not really sure this is true.  In my experience older ladies and gents normally slow down on the spicy stuff a bit.\n\nBut, if it is, I would argue it's something like how senior citizens go nose deaf.  Ever wonder why they have so much cologne/perfume on?  It's because they do.  Their senses are not as sharp as younger personnel.  ", "The brain learns to tune out unimportant pain with time. You get a scrape as a kid and it seems like the end of the world. You get one as an adult and you may wince, but then you move on with your day. Spicy foods are similar. ", "It's not about age, but exposure and tolerance. my parents forwent the customary child discipline (wooden spoons, belts, grounding, etc) and instead rubbed my gums and tongue with hot sauce. hoo boy. but by adolescence i *loved* spicy food. and as i get older i want more and more spice as long as it still has flavour and isn't just pure heat for the sake of making someone puke. A deeply flavorful authentic Indian curry is one of my favorite dishes. get some thai chillis in there, a bit of mango habenero sauce, mmm.", "You're talking about temperature, not spiciness right? ", "Maybe because you begin to wait less and less, as you get older.  After having a kid, i either eat my food fast while it's still hot, or eat gross cold food.  \n\nSame with coffee, i've notice my heat tolerance is getting higher, i've also learned how to sip it (kind of a slurp), so that i can drink it as soon as it's ready.  \n\nWait! Are you talking about temp or spiciness?", "I'm honestly under the impression that as we grow older we understand more and more how much life can suck. And we enjoy the pain of hotter/spicier foods because at least then we feel something. ", "While it is true that eating more spicy food will let you get used to the level of heat and try hotter food later, as you age the taste receptors in your tongue become less sensitive. This is part of the reason why you see some old people eat their food while it's scalding hot, or they add a lot more salt and sugar to things; their palate is not as sensitive as it was before and they need more \"flavoring\" to get the same sensation. The same thing happens when people frequently ingest really hot (as in temperature) foods or smoke often. The repeated damage (as slight as it might be perceived) will take its toll and those people will need to use more seasoning to get the same flavor. It's essentially the same process, but it happens at an earlier age. ", "The top comment here was about hotness in terms of spiciness, but I think op is just talking about the  temperature of foods. So I'll speak in terms of that. Over our life time, you're bound to burn and cut your mouth and especially your tongue. When you damage these areas and they do their thing and heal, scar tissue is left behind. Scar tissue is tougher and less pliable than the original tissue. So it only makes sense that as you age and inevitably damage your mouth, it \"toughens up\" and become less sensitive. ", "Says who?  As I get older I can handle spice less and less(except curry for some reason).  I hotsnake more often than not with spicy food now, and usually with worse and worse digestive pain.  It's terrible. ", "I don't know where you got this from exactly. Most old people I know are deathly afraid of anything remotely related to being spicy and avoid it like it's poison. Meanwhile all of my friends (in our 20s) will demolish the spiciest burritos we can find and drink ghost pepper sauce in a heartbeat."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5eh24m", "title": "What are some of the more seriously discussed alternatives to \"classical capitalism\" in the economics  &  philosophy circles that could practically be implemented or transitioned to in the developed world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5eh24m/what_are_some_of_the_more_seriously_discussed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dackxox", "dad8r39"], "score": [7, 3], "text": ["Economics, as you probably know, is the study of scarcity. The two \"efficient\" solutions to the problem of scarcity are the command economy and the free market economy. Seriously discussed solutions are always, at the most basic level, some combination of these two mechanisms. There aren't any alternatives that solve the problem of scarcity, that aren't combinations of these economies. However, there are economists who study theoretical post-scarcity economies, and those theoretical economies can have much different solutions. A post-scarcity economy, would be one where goods are produced automatically, and there are no limits to raw materials, i.e. we are mining other planets and the such.", "There are many flavours of capitalism. The US and UK are currently working under the influence of neo-liberalism. Germany could be said to implement ordoliberal capitalism. For most of the post-war period most western democracies followed some form of keynesianism. And there are plausible arguments for moving back to some form of neo-keynesianism in both the UK and US.  Japanese capitalism is occasionally referred to as collective capitalism \n\nThere are quite a number of ways you can manage capitalist systems but the key differences tend to be the degree of state employment, the degree of state intervention in markets and the degree to which public services are provided by private actors. \n\nIf you're interested in an easy read that covers many of these differences check out John M Legge's \"capitalism vs reality\" it is a great book. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1eutn5", "title": "Does anything special happen when an aircraft breaks Mach 2+ like what happens when the craft breaks Mach 1?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1eutn5/does_anything_special_happen_when_an_aircraft/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca3z9zd"], "score": [24], "text": ["No, there are effects when Mach 1 is reached because the aircraft is going exactly the speed of sound waves, so pressure waves on the wing tend to build up, causing wave drag (hence initial aerodynamic predictions in the 1940's that the sound barrier was impossible to surpass).  However, once the speed of sound is exceeded, there's a significant reduction in drag vs. flying just below Mach 1.\n\nThere are challenges associated with higher Mach numbers for aerospace engineers, flight scientists, and supersonic engine designers, but these are just natural fallout from the extreme pressures and temperatures associated with adiabatic compression and high drag (or lower lift/drag ratio), but there's nothing special that happens at Mach 2 or Mach 3.\n\nAbove Mach 2, it's difficult for conventional jet engines to function, because the air is heated so much at engine entry, and because traditional propulsion relies on combustion and heating to generate thrust.  (So in layman's terms the air is heated too much by compression due to speed for combustion to be very useful in making more thrust.)  At very high speeds, ramjets and scramjets are useful in overcoming limitations of turbine engines.  Ramjets are effective around Mach 3 - 6, but can't produce thrust if the aircraft is not already moving quickly.  Similarly, scramjets are an even higher-velocity engine (**s**upersonic **c**ombustion **ramjet**) that are effective (theoretically) up to double-digit Mach numbers.\n\nedit: spelling, details about engines"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8jf0lg", "title": "When did the \"Cleopatra haircut\" appear? Did Cleopatra ever hairdress like that?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8jf0lg/when_did_the_cleopatra_haircut_appear_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e56ulrb"], "score": [2], "text": ["Not to discourage any further answers but you'll probably enjoy this older post:\n\n[On Cleopatra\u2019s hairstyles and the origins of the \"Cleopatra cut\"](_URL_0_) \n\n[Insider look at Cleopatra\u2019s fashion routine](_URL_1_)\n\nby /u/cleopatra_philopater"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7gwxeb/did_cleopatra_vii_always_cut_her_hair_short_at/dqmu1zw/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=user&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=frontpage", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/88kk50/cleopatra_gives_rare_insider_look_at_her_fashion/dwlga9q/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=user&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=frontpage"]]}
{"q_id": "3a6wqu", "title": "Is there any connection between the term \"White Russian\" for anti communists and the translation of Belarus \"White Russia?\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a6wqu/is_there_any_connection_between_the_term_white/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csa1p8c"], "score": [30], "text": ["No.\n\nThe Belarusian term stems from the 16th century, and the idea from Alexander Guagnini, a Polish writer, who claimed that that Russia was split up into three parts: White Russia (Muscovy reigon), Black Russia (Poland) and Red Russia - the rest of Russia. The Grand Duke of Moscow was known as \"The White Tsar\", which furthers this claim. Later in the 16th century, the term White Russia became specific to Belarus, although it is overall unknown what the true belief is. One belief is that White was to seperate from the Tartars, but ultimately it is speculated that it was to seperate from the Byzantines and the Romans by wearing white robes to be seen as a third rome. While it is not exactly known why Belarus is called that, the Russian Whites were named after the Imperial White uniforms of the Russian army. So, afraid not, but interesting speculation.\n\nSources:\n\n- Christopher Lazarski, \"White Propaganda Efforts in the South during the Russian Civil War, 1918\u201319 (The Alekseev-Denikin Period),\" The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp. 688\u2013707.\n\n- Alexandrowicz S. Rozw\u00f3j kartografii Wielkiego Ksi\u0119stwa Litewskiego od XV do po\u0142owy XVIII w. Pozna\u0144, 1989\n\n- Cosmographey oder beschreibung aller Laender, Herrschaften, f\u00fcrnemsten Stetten... Beschriben durch Sebastianum M\u00fcnsterum... Basel, 1550; Ulrichs von Richental Chronik des Constanzer Concils 1414 bis 1418. Herausgegeben von M. R. Buck. T\u00fcbingen, 1882"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "31oicr", "title": "Why was the \"Phantom time hypothesis\" developed, and what possible reasons are there for subscribing to it?", "selftext": "/r/askreddit lead me to the [phantom time hypothesis](_URL_0_), and I was hoping /r/AskHistorians could explain the history of the hypothesis to me.\n\nI'm not really interested in a debunking of the theory, that seems simple enough. I'm more curious about the history of the theory. Who is Heribert Illig and why did he he want to believe it? Why would somebody subscribe to the hypothesis (both valid reasons for belief and reasons why that person would really want it to be true)? Is there anybody (or any group) who would benefit from people believing this hypothesis?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31oicr/why_was_the_phantom_time_hypothesis_developed_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq3hnd7", "cq40ip5"], "score": [11, 10], "text": ["I have a followup question: if 613-911 never occurred, how does the Arab conquest and the expansion of Islam fit into these theorists historical timeline? ", "I'm no expert on this, but I dug into this area once when reading about Gary Kasparov's alleged support for the \"Fomenko New Cronology\", which is a somewhat similar theory originating in Russia in 1980.\n\nIllig's theories need to be viewed in the context of a (strange!) set of theories originating from a man named Immanuel Velikovsky who published a book called \"Worlds in Collision\". This book is mostly about a set of (strange!) theories that are best understood as astrology. \n\nMy understanding is that the timeline for his astrology didn't quite work, so he concluded that the \"traditional\" timeline of history must be wrong. \n\nVelikovsky's translator founded the \"Society for the Reconstruction of Human and natural history\", which Illig was later a member of. \n \nThere's also a set of work originating from the work of Jean Hardouin in the 1600s, where he claimed most Greek and Roman history was faked in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. \n\nI'm not sure how much influence Hardouin had on Velikovsky (and Illig), though he did influence Fomenko."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "47w4mc", "title": "Were there any ancient/medieval cities whose economy was entirely tourism-based? (Like, a Las Vegas of the ancient world)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/47w4mc/were_there_any_ancientmedieval_cities_whose/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0g5t62"], "score": [64], "text": ["There were sites of pilgrimage, and in some of them the pilgrims provided the main source of income for the area as a whole. Mecca and Medina are famous examples to the present day. [St Iago de Compostela](_URL_0_), in modern Spain, which houses the relics of St James (\"Sant Iago\"), is probably the most famous example in Europe. It's worth noting that pilgrimage to Campostela was so popular that a whole network of pilgrimage sites grew up along the various roads from Europe to Compostela and became known as [Camino de Santiago](_URL_2_) or in English the Way of St. James. There are Asian sites of pilgrimage as well, though I can less easily name them. [Bodh Gaya](_URL_1_) is an obvious one, but there are many places of pilgrimage that formed the backbone of the local economy scattered throughout South and East Asia (and possibly Southeast Asia, though I know less about it). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodh_Gaya", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago"]]}
{"q_id": "2e9vag", "title": "Did the Third Reich person on the street use the \"Heil Hitler\" greeting in their regular life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e9vag/did_the_third_reich_person_on_the_street_use_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjxshlx"], "score": [44], "text": ["Yes. It was in fact the mandatory greeting from 1933 until the end of the war and, especially in the later years of the war, not responding to a Hitler salute in kind was considered a criminal offense that could land you in a bureau of the Gestapo for a couple of hours. \n\nI once read an excerpt of a diary by Victor Klemperer who noted in September '41:\n >  \u201eMan z\u00e4hlt, wie viele Leute in den Gesch\u00e4ften \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019, wie viele \u2018Guten Tag\u2019 sagen. Das \u2018Guten Tag\u2019 soll zunehmen.\u201c\n\n >  (my translation:) \"One counts, how many people in the stores say \"Heil Hitler\" and how many \"Good day\". \"Good day\" is apparently on the rise.\"\n\n\n(Quoted after: Klemperer, Victor: \"Tageb\u00fccher 1940-41\", Berlin 1999, p. 157)\n\nThe usage of the Nazi salute seems to have been used frequently while the common people supported the government but declined when the war kept on going and made a turn for the worse. This would explain the harsher punishments for not using the Nazi salute in later stages of the war when war exhaustion was growing rampant and the Nazi leaders couldn't be sure of popular support anymore.\n\nThe Wehrmacht meanwhile didn't use the Hitler salute but rather their old military salute - until the assassination attempt of 1944, after which the Hitler salute was made mandatory for soldiers as well, apparently to ensure their loyalty to the F\u00fchrer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4lkpzg", "title": "Was it a risky choice to have Captain America punch Hitler on the cover of a comic book in 1941?", "selftext": "In [a recent article](_URL_1_), it was claimed that:\n\n > In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we\u2019re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.\n\n[A question from a couple of days ago](_URL_0_) got an answer adding nuance to Americans' positions on the Axis and the war itself, but I was wondering about the other part. I'd be most interested in reactions of the time to the cover of Captain America #1 (showing Cap punching Hitler), but in general - was it seen as really edgy to use the actual Nazis as villains in American fiction before America's entry into the war, or disrespectful to depict Hitler? Did any works of American fiction outside the superhero comics genre at this time do something similar?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lkpzg/was_it_a_risky_choice_to_have_captain_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3o42en", "d3o51fc", "d3oz9br", "d3p8cjf"], "score": [74, 100, 14, 2], "text": ["With regard to other anti-Nazi works of fiction, The Three Stooges made a short film in 1940 called You Nazty Spy! which satirized Nazi Germany. It takes place in a fictional country called Moronika. A scene in the film shows a [flag with a swastika made of snakes over the slogan \"Moronika for Morons\"](_URL_1_).\n\nMoe played a character based on Hitler, Curly played the Goerring character, and Larry played the Goebbels character. The film ends with them being overthrown and eaten by lions. \n\n[The entire 18-minute film is on YouTube](_URL_0_).", "The 1940 movie The Great Dictator is another famous anti-Nazi piece of American entertainment.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe movie brutally mocks its faux-Hitler character, especially having him appear terrified of being overshadowed by faux-Mussolini as they try to one-up each other.\n\nThe movie also features mistreatment of Jews and culminates with a Jewish barber (also played by Chaplin) who looks like the dictator taking the dictator's place and gives a stirring speech in opposition to everything Naziism stands for.\n_URL_1_\n\nI highly recommend clicking on that link and remembering that this movie was made a year before the US went to war with Germany.", "Regarding the reception to Captain America #1 there's a [Comic Book Legends Revealed](_URL_0_) that quotes from Joe Simon's memoir, *The Comic Book Maker*:\n\n > There was a substantial population of anti-war activists in the country. \u201cAmerican Firsters\u201d and other non-interventionist groups were well-organized. Then there was the German American Bund. They were all over the place, heavily financed and effective in spewing their propaganda of hate; a fifth column of Americans following the Third Reich party line. They organized pseudo-military training camps such as \u2018Camp Siegried\u2019 in Yaphank, Long Island and held huge rallies in such places as Madison Square Garden in New York. Our irreverent treatment of their Feuhrer infuriated them. We were inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious, obscene telephone calls. The theme was \u201cdeath to the Jews.\u201d At first we were inclined to laugh off their threats, but then, people in the office reported seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building on Forty Second Street and some of the employees were fearful of leaving the office for lunch. Finally, we reported the threats to the police department. The result was a police guard on regular shifts patrolling the halls and office.\n\n > No sooner than the men in blue arrived than the woman at the telephone switchboard signaled me excitedly. \u2018There\u2019s a man on the phone says he\u2019s Mayor LaGuardia,\u2019 she stammered, \u2018He wants to speak to the editor of Captain America Comics.\u2019\n\n > I was incredulous as I picked up the phone, but there was no mistaking the shrill voice. \u2018You boys over there are doing a good job, \u2018 the voice squeaked, \u2018The City of New York will see that no harm will come to you.\u2019\n\nThere's also a story about some American Nazis rocking up to their studio and Jack Kirby personally rolling up his sleeves and heading downstairs to sort them out mentioned in Grant Morrison's *Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero* and I suspect either Simon's other memoir *My Life in Comics* or the rather splendid *Kirby: King of Comics* but I'm in the process of moving house and they're all boxed up so I can't confirm which!\n\n", "There are a couple things at play here. While Americans were certainly isolationist, there was a large anti-Nazi feeling in the country. That anti-Nazi feeling was enough to create a market for Captain America and other heroes who fought against Nazis (or bad guys who looked a whole lot like Nazis). That same feeling was enough to empower FDR to do everything to oppose the Axis, but take the country to war (i.e. Lend/Lease, Convoying, ect). In the sense that a market definitely existed for this material (and indeed Cap was not the first superhero to fight Nazis), the choice was not risky. \n\nIt's also worth noting that while Captain America's debut seems impressive in retrospect (particularly after three recent great movies), at the time of his creation he was just one of literally hundreds of characters being churned out in the Golden Age of comics rush to attempt to echo the success of Superman. If the Cap magazine had failed, the writers and artists could've just come out with a different character and today we might go and see movies about [Stardust the Super-Wizard](_URL_0_).\n\nThere might have been a way in which it was rather risky though. The writers of Captain America (like the writers of virtually every comic book in the Golden and Silver Ages of comics) were Jewish. In so blatantly attacking Nazism, there might have been the fear of blow back on them or on other Jews. Either in the form of business damage of physical threats. Aside from these comics being banned in Germany, I don't know that there was any other blowback.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l5i7l/what_were_attitudes_in_the_us_towards_wwii_and/", "http://panels.net/2016/05/26/on-steve-rogers-1-antisemitism-and-publicity-stunts/"], "answers_urls": [["https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAIR0i4X1g", "http://asokan63.blogspot.com/2012/12/morons-in-moronika.html?m=1"], ["http://i.imgur.com/yVYnbqx.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKm_wA-WdI4"], ["http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/03/08/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-93/"], ["http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Stardust"]]}
{"q_id": "fwhegl", "title": "Have any British Prime Ministers ever died while in office? And what were the ramifications?", "selftext": "With current PM Boris Johnson being admitted into intensive care this question has to have crossed people\u2019s minds. Has any Prime Minister ever died? What was the fallout?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fwhegl/have_any_british_prime_ministers_ever_died_while/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fmoqxd4", "fmp7807"], "score": [115, 3], "text": ["(1/4)\n\nThe answer to this question - *especially* if you want to look for lessons about what this might mean in 2020 if, God forbid, the worst happens to Mr Johnson - is somewhat complicated by the fact it depends on what you mean by the term 'Prime Minister'. This might sound nitpicky, but it really is quite important for understanding why what has the UK on edge today is not necessarily comparable to the past.\n\nFirst and foremost it's important to understand how a Prime Minister comes to take office. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is not and has never been elected and can serve an unlimited number of terms with no set length. The power to appoint a Prime Minister lies exclusively with the King or Queen of the day and upon appointment, they are said to serve at *His or Her Majesty's pleasure*, meaning they can continue in office indefinitely. The Monarch in theory is entitled to appoint literally anyone as Prime Minister at any time, or to dismiss a current Prime Minister at any time. In practice however, the growth of the power of Parliament - with the House of Commons made up of several hundred directly elected Members of Parliament representing different parts of the British nation - means that any appointment the Monarch makes must be able to *command the confidence of the House of Commons*. This means that the Prime Minister must be someone the Monarch is confident could win the support of an overall majority (50% + 1) of MPs if the Commons was asked to vote on whether or not they have confidence in the Government they lead. There is no *requirement* for a vote to be held to confirm a Prime Minister, although in practice until very recently, UK Governments and Prime Ministers submitted themselves twice yearly to votes to determine if they had Parliament's support (the Queen's speech - a statement of the government's plan for the upcoming year year - and the annual Budget; until a legal change in the last decade, a defeat on either was taken to be a rejection of the Government).\n\nSince 1716, elections to the House of Commons have had to be held on a regular basis rather than when the Monarch or the Government of the day deemed them necessary; this was initially every 7 years until 1911, when the limit was shortened to every 5 years. Until 2011 the Prime Minister had the power to call an early general election at will and the frequent use of this power, combined with some periods of political instability, has meant that the UK historically votes every 4 years for Members of Parliament. Because the selection of the Prime Minister depends on who has the support of a majority of MPs political parties in the UK choose leaders who sit in the House of Commons years in advance of the election, and these leaders are almost always (with only some very rare exceptions in the last century) the party's informal candidate for Prime Minister. After a general election's result is known, the Prime Minister visits the Monarch and advises the Monarch as to whether or not they believe they can still form a government. If the Prime Minister says that they can, then they carry on as if nothing had changed unless they are challenged by the House of Commons; if they say that they cannot, then they are expected to nominate a candidate to succeed them as Prime Minister who can. The UK's electoral system, which rewards large parties and severely limits the prospects of smaller ones, means elections where one political party does not have an overall majority in the House of Commons are rare. Of the 32 general elections held since 1900 only 8 have failed to produce an overall majority in Parliament for one party (Jan  &  Dec 1910; 1923; 1929; 1951; Feb 1974; 2010 and 2017 - in 1951 the Conservatives failed to win a majority but did win a majority with their pre-election coalition partner the Liberal National Party).\n\nAs such, the normal transfer of power between Prime Ministers occurs either because a Prime Minister has resigned voluntarily (in which case he or she simply tells the Monarch who their party's next choice for PM is, as David Cameron and Theresa May both did after resigning in the last few years) or because a general election has occurred and their party has lost. The latter last happened neatly in 1997, when the outgoing Conservative PM John Major went to the Queen and asked her to invite the Labour leader Tony Blair to form a government after Labour won a landslide at the previous day's general election. In the event that the balance of power in the House of Commons is unclear prior to a change in the law in 2011 the Prime Minister of the day was *always* in modern history, by virtue of being the first to see the Monarch, the first person given a chance to form a government. Thus the Commons rejecting a Prime Minister through a vote of no confidence does not automatically lead to the PM's dismissal if no other person in Parliament is capable of putting together a government to replace them and prior to that law change in 2011, if a Prime Minister lost the confidence of the House, they had the right to seek an early election instead of resigning. This last happened in 1979 when Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan lost a confidence ballot by a single vote after the Scottish National Party put forward a vote of no confidence; although minor parties have no such right in the House of Commons, this inspired Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher to bring an official motion of no confidence forward. Had Callaghan opted to resign instead Thatcher would have been invited to form a government and called the early election anyway, which she went on to win comfortably. The situation is more complicated if a Prime Minister is forced out by their own political supporters - no one can force them to resign and when she was challenged for the Tory leadership in 1990, Thatcher briefly toyed with the idea of remaining on as Prime Minister until the 1992 general election, using the threat of an early election to discourage her MPs from formally voting no confidence in her. Had she done so, this would have sparked a constitutional crisis of immense proportions as the Queen would have had to choose between doing as her Prime Minister instructed - the proper constitutional thing to do - and obeying the higher constitutional principle that, with the support of a majority of MPs, the new Tory leader should be appointed PM instead and Thatcher dismissed.\n\nThe sudden and unexpected death of a Prime Minister, then, creates a constitutional anomaly. How can the outgoing Prime Minister appoint the incoming Prime Minister if the outgoing Prime Minister has passed away suddenly and unexpectedly? There is no automatic system of succession in the United Kingdom now or ever for the Prime Minister in the same way that there is for the Monarch (contrary to popular belief the heir to the throne assumes the throne immediately upon the death of the previous Monarch in the UK; the formal accession and coronation ceremonies are just that - ceremonies). Although Prime Ministers can and have appointed deputies since the 1940s the job exists only at the gift of the Prime Minister and has no unique constitutional role; it has been vacant for years and years at a time. And I'm afraid looking to history for an answer doesn't necessarily offer us too much in the way of insight here - but it's certainly a better starting point than the blind speculation of political Twitter.\n\nThe role of Prime Minister as we understand it today is a relatively novel invention in the British constitution; there was no single point in history at which the majority of political leadership responsibility passed to the role that we now call Prime Minister, and its powers and responsibilities accrued gradually over the course of time. Until the 20th century the term 'Prime Minister' was a kind of political slang that was sometimes even used mockingly and disparagingly, rather than as an official job title. Even today the role of Prime Minister is not alone in and of itself enough to ensure the authority to lead a government - the men and women appointed Prime Minister are also simultaneously appointed to other positions. Within the UK's constitutional framework the Prime Minister is said to be *primes inter pares* in the Cabinet, meaning *first among equals*. In other words on paper, the job of the Prime Minister is to chair meetings of the most senior members of the government but in theory to have no more or less say in its final decisions than any other member of the Cabinet. In practice modern Prime Ministers derive their unique status as leaders from two facts: they are the duly elected leader of their political party (which in most years will have an absolute majority of MPs in Parliament), and they have the unique power of being able to appoint or dismiss other members of the Cabinet.", "Follow up question: I've done plenty of recreational research into American continuity of government operations, and its evolution, esp. with the development of nuclear weapons and their c2 functions. That structure parlayed itself well when Reagan was incapacitated, Bush jr was away from a secure command and control point et cetera. Does the UK have that same kind of institutional knowledge and framework to fall back on?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7wq141", "title": "Why was the US west coast so culturally diverse (pre-1492)?", "selftext": "I came across this image mapping Indigenous American languages:\n_URL_0_\nand the west coast just seems kind of crazy. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wq141/why_was_the_us_west_coast_so_culturally_diverse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du2l8pf", "du44f1p"], "score": [15, 3], "text": ["This is a very interesting question. Being from California, I was always curious about the linguistic diversity of the indigenous population in California prior to colonization. However, I think you\u2019ll get a more thorough and accurate answer from r/AskAnthropology or r/Linguistics. ", "How accurate is the map in the first place? Where did the author of the map get the info from? Were Spanish explorers documenting languages the same way as French or English explorers? Ie, is the baseline the same? How homogenous are the largest groups and how similar were the smaller groups?\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Langs_N.Amer.png"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1m84k4", "title": "Is it true that fan violence is more common in European sports than in American sports because traditionally in Europe, fanbases were based around deep political, religious and ethnic divisions? (xpost from /r/asksocialscience)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m84k4/is_it_true_that_fan_violence_is_more_common_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc6rjq1", "cc6u0u4", "cc6ucgg"], "score": [9, 5, 6], "text": ["I don't have any insight into the truth of your statement. But I can compare american to german sports.\n\nAmerican clubs are more or less companies, that play a sport as their business. They are owned by private equity, usually not the public (except for the packers).\n\nI will elaborate on the difference to german clubs, because I am from there, but this applies to most european clubs. Unlike in America clubs are public entities. If a group of people wants to form a club they have to apply to a register and tell which public benefit they will bring to the community (for example exercise for the people in a certain area, or a choir for a church, works for every kind of club). Every german proffesional sports club has started out that way. They are always democratically ruled by their members and pursue their goals. Of course this has changed a lot. German football clubs nowadays often separate their proffesional sector from the public one in a company. (but that company is still owned by the club it originated from, the company provides flexibility). Often the soccer branch of a club gets separated and all the other sports (table tennis, volleyball etc.) remain in the public branch of the club.\n\nSo the origin of any german club is a group of members with a common goal. Of course these groups are more likely to form rivalries to other groups. Additionally: since the involvement with the club is bigger (as a member you have a vote) the empathy is likely to be bigger than to a club owned by some millionaire(billionaire) that happens to play in your city. (keep in mind: not every fan is also a member, but many are. Bayern Munich as the biggest german club has 125000 members, but millions of fans)\n\nAs an example of two such clubs with a big rivalry: Schalke and Dortmund, two german soccer clubs, cities 25 miles apart: They originated from coal miners sports clubs. Being so close their mines were always in competition to each other. Since these provided more or less the only jobs for the community the match on the field was a subsidiary economical fight. Nowadays the mines are closed, but the rivalry was inherited.\n\nTo get back to your question. If the violence is actually more common these points might give you a hint why.\n\nP.S: Another possible reason: The licensing system of your proffessional leagues: Your clubs need licences to play in the big leagues, this results that you usually don't have a \"Derby\", because clubs are distributed all over the country. Two clubs in close proximity playing against each other (only New York has two NFL teams) doesn't happen very often. European leagues have that regularly. The english premier league has had up to 7 clubs from London. This results in a derby of the posh club from one part of town against the working class club of another giving the match a social component.\n\nEdit: clarification, editing mistake.", "I think I can bring my personal experience on the subject.\n\nThe football (soccer) in Europe is not only a sport but a cultural thing. It used to be the sport of the people, with dirt cheap tickets (no longer true) and fans that supported their local team for life.\n\nNow there was originally two big football cultures : the British one and the Italian one.\n\nThe British one knew violence very soon (think nineteenth century soon), especially in teams very close from each other geographically, it then faded and things went smoother until the 60's and the rising influence of youth movements such as the skinheads (not necessarily nazis, the first skinheads were generally friends with the immigrated populations they shared their popular districts with and listened to reggae/ska) or the teddy boys. Violence in football was strictly a mirror of violence everywhere else, these youths were poor, idle and had no hope of a better future. It was encouraged by the fact police forces were not really trained to face such big fights sometimes involving 200 people and more. Rivalries came back between teams that were close from each other, often along with stereotypes linked to a team or another (Tottenham = jews, Chelsea = rich boys, Leeds = Pakistanese etc.). Violence was a show of strengh, the group was the members' families and support. Some hools sometimes did not even bother showing to the game, the only game that counted for them was before or after the game and happened in the streets.\n\nThe Italian culture was about strictly organized \"Ultras\" groups. They considered themselves the \"elite\" fans of their team. They have well defined leaders, and are financially autonomous gaining money from membership cards and by selling merchandising with the colours and logos of the group (some ultras groups sell more of their own merchandising than the team they represent). This money was mainly used to organize huge shows at the beginning of the game called \"tifos\". These tifos are designed, created, handcrafted and organized by the ultra group. \n\n[Dortmund, Germany](_URL_8_)\n\n[Paris, France](_URL_5_)\n\n[St Etienne, France](_URL_4_)\n\n[Fenerbahce, Turkey](_URL_0_)\n\n[Varsaw, Poland](_URL_6_) (a good example of how provocative tifos can be, this tifo has been made specifically to provoke the Hapoel Tel Aviv -an Israeli team- ultras)\n\n[Unknown](_URL_11_)\n\n[Unknown, Turkey](_URL_10_) (a tifo taunting the ban on pyrotechnics in stadiums)\n\n[Nicosia, Greece] (_URL_1_)(good example of politics getting involved in some groups)\n\nBordeaux, France [wip 1](_URL_9_) [wip 2](_URL_7_) [wip 3](_URL_2_) [Final product](_URL_3_) creation time : 3 weeks, total cost : about 20 000 \u20ac\n\nThe quality and the size of the tifo demonstrate the power of the group and assure them the respect of other groups. As you can guess when it comes to displays of power and gaining respect, violence is never far either. Very soon violence became a great way to gain respect as well by basically showing the other group you had more balls. Some groups were therefore rivals, some groups were friends, some groups were neutral to each other. \n\nThe biggest rivalries as usual was among teams close from each other and sometimes with politics added to it. AC Roma (left wing antifascist liberals) vs Lazio Roma (right wing fascists), Milano AC vs Inter Milano etc...\n\nThe two cultures travelled a bit, both can be found everywhere in Europe, you have hooligans in France (Paris have the meanest reputation, Lyon are quite respected as well) as well as Ultra groups (Magic Fans of St Etienne, Bad Gones of Lyon etc...). The same goes in Germany, Poland, Greece, Russia etc... It sometimes even exported outside of Europe, I know Turkey have two well respected Ultras groups, as well as in Argentina. \n\nIn most European countries, hooligan groups are strictly prohibited and actively hunted by the police meaning they are becoming rare and or better at hiding themselves. Ultras groups are tolerated as long as they behave which they partly do (they generally try to keep the violence far from the police eyes).  \n\nConcerning the comparison with North American sports, I am far from a specialist of US sports but coming from this football culture, they seem to have no soul and just be about money and show business, with strippers on the pitch doing what should be the fans' job of warming up the stadium and putting up a huge show and people just sitting and enjoying the show like they are at the theater. Even without violence everytime I went to the stadium, the next day I had no voice. I was spending every 90 minutes of the game singing and cheering and clapping, I had litterally no time for pop corn and no one was sitting on his seat or complaining. I think the difference on violence mainly comes from that, money show business has taken the place of true popular fervor. It is something that is currently happening in Europe as well. \n\nWhen you go to a game expecting to be spectator of a show, chances are you are not going to fight over it, just like you rarely see pro-rebel and pro-empire Star Wars fans fighting it out in the middle of the movie theatre because Vader hacked at Skywalker while he was on the ground which is a fucking coward move. European fans consider themselves as actors of the game and personnally spend a lot of time, energy and money pushing their team. They are therefore much much more emotionnally involved I think.\n\nA good book I could advise is G\u00e9n\u00e9ration Supporters by Philippe Broussard which is often considered as a very good reference in the French ultra movement, unfortunatly it only exists in French as far as I know. \n\nFootball Factory (the book, the movie is good but the book is better) is pretty good on the Hooligan movement.\n\nEdit : added a few exemples of tifo pictures\n", "A reminder to those coming to this thread: We are interested in in-depth, factual and historical answers to the question, not personal theories, speculation, guesses, anecdotes, or a list you found on Wikipedia that's semi-related. Thank you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://dc.img.v4.skyrock.net/0140/77010140/pics/3053965949_1_9_QSud2YNC.jpg", "http://analoguefootball.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/tumblr_m1jqkswsez1rs4qqbo1_1280.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Tifo7.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2-ultramarines-25ans-640x349.jpg", "https://sphotos-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/p480x480/551296_445287722213100_254491470_n.jpg", "http://www.psgclan.com/site/images/tifos/02-03_PSG-om_coupe%28kob%29.jpg", "http://legionisci.com/zdjecia/12hapoel1_dzihadH_d.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/702553_10151262842242074_352767753_n.jpg", "http://www.iamsport.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Tifo-Dortmund.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Tifo3.jpg", "http://www.tuxboard.com/photos/2012/03/Troll-Face-Probleme-Tifo-640x360.jpg", "http://www.topito.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tifo_etonnant_007.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "a1tcjs", "title": "[META] Loaded questions, leading questions, and false premises.", "selftext": "So many questions asked everyday include unnecessary preamble statements or premises, many of which are non-expert opinion (or outright false) but presented as historical fact (and therefore read by vast numbers of people as historical fact). In the vast majority of cases these questions do not actually rely on the premise as written, and could be trivially rephrased to be questions alone rather than statements with an arising question.\n\nThe issue I have with these types of questions is:\n\n* The premise is very often wrong, malformed, or prejudiced. Often if a user could authoritatively establish the premise to a certainty, they could answer the question themselves.\n\n* The premise *may* be rebutted, but only if the question receives an answer.\n\n* False information in the question (ie. the title) will be read by far more users than the answer itself.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a1tcjs/meta_loaded_questions_leading_questions_and_false/", "answers": {"a_id": ["easis4e", "easyjae", "eatag11", "eatf5zd"], "score": [58, 11, 5, 2], "text": ["One of the basic principles we have here is that we don't expect people asking a question to know the answer to the question; that seems pretty basic to a question-and-answer subreddit. [There are no stupid questions.](_URL_2_)\n\nThat also implies that people may have the wrong idea about historical things when they ask a question. It comes with the territory.\n\nOne thing that a lot of our readers and subscribers don't seem to realize is that a human moderator reads *every question asked here* and decides whether to approve or remove them. \n\nWe already have a rule against [loaded questions and soapboxing](_URL_1_.), and while approving questions can often be a judgment call, it's pretty trivial to call on some other mods to check on things. We *already* remove questions that are soapboxing, in poor taste, etc., but it's not practicable to remove every question that might contain a wrong premise, and comprehensive answers that we allow to stand will correct any false premises. \n\nIf you see a question that you think should be removed, [hit the report button](_URL_0_) and it will tell us to take another look at it. ", "Overall I don't think there is a reasonable way to improve the current policy by establishing stricter requirements for the \"quality\" of a question. OPs can in all fairness be just wrong on something - and especially on somewhat delicate topics, this can very well derive from their specific education.\n\nI am certain that I have misconceptions on American history that may rise more than a few eyebrows - and having thought a few classes around here, I have seen kids holding thoughts that border on downright offensive. And I assure you most questions centered around Italian history do contain a few flawed assumptions. But as pointed out by /u/jschooltiger, that's the nature of questions. Most people ask questions about things they don't understand; and that may include also those who have a generally poor understanding of history and historiography (and who have the same right to ask a question regardless, and possibly to receive a good one). \n\nI fear that forcing requirements on the questions - beyond those basic ones that already exist - would either discourage those naive but genuine questions. Or end up producing more elaborate and well argumented questions, that might still be substantially wrong while appearing at first glance better quality (which may make the problem worse rather than improve the situation).\n\n\nOutside of that, I don't think OP's concern to be entirely misplaced. There is an intrinsic problem with (a certain type of) questions: that the question itself implies an alternative, the existence of a debate. Is this position right, or is the other one? What is the consensus on the issue? But while at times there is in fact a true and substantial disagreement, or a pattern of different interpretations; there are also those when no genuine alternative exist.\n\nExcept that, once the question is asked, answering the question becomes then also a matter of explaining and clarifying that there is in fact no question, that one alternative is so \"out there\" that it does not really require a historian's answer. If you don't, who is to say that one reader may not take your answer as implicit confirmation that the debate exists and that there are indeed two legitimate points of view on the matter, even if this answer claims one to be wrong...\n\n\nA couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a question that I had to re-read a dozen times to understand it. It seemed incredible to me - but I have no evidence that everyone who read it felt the same. And in answering I would have felt compelled to explain as thoroughly as possible why that one wasn't a \"true question\". To clarify that point, I'll paraphrase it into something ahistorical that hopefully should create the same reaction:\n\n >  Why do people say that Michael Jordan never played for the Utah Jazz, if he was Scottie Pippen's team mate?\n\n\nHow many of these questions are needed before someone begins questioning if perhaps Pippen played for the Utah Jazz? Or at least to believe this is not after all such a clear cut issue. Maybe you don't know what I am talking about, and feel a need to google Pippen's career or to look for sources explaining why Pippen didn't play for the Jazz. I mean, if the question is fair...", "I don't know what prompted this discussion but the \"Why is Freud so popular today?\" question I saw this morning made me reflect on the policy of this sub.\n\nWho says Freud is popular? What is the basis of this affirmation? The premise of the question implies that Freud is popular, instead of letting historians debate if Freud is or not popular. To me, this question is in the same category then the \"Nixon was the worst President of all time. Why isn't Obama considered the worst?\" given as an exemple of a loaded question. I don't think it should have gone through in this form.\n\nIMHO, it should have been refused with the proposition of reposting it in the \"Is Freud still a relevant source in the field of psychology?\" or \"Do the theories put foward by Freud still stand the scientific review today?\" or, at least, \"Is Freud a popular figure in today's world and does his theories stand the test of time and science?\"\n\nI just wanted to share my observation, cause it seemed necessary to find what prompted this discussion to discuss it. I thought that sharing my experience that fited with the discussion could help. Remove if not pertinent.", "I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with false premises. The point of this sub is that the person asking the question wants to be educated about a topic. Frankly, it's kind of insulting to the intelligence of readers to assume they aren't clever enough to think that maybe the question itself could contain misinformation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/442wbx/rules_roundtable_4_raskhistorians_wants_you_to/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22soapboxing.22_or_loaded_questions", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8r50yv/meta_the_answers_on_ask_historians_are_often/e0oiyw8/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "i4828", "title": "Is it really bad for your health to eat in front of a computer?", "selftext": "I've heard this more than once in my life, but can't recall hearing a plausible explanation. That is, one with the actual medical facts.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i4828/is_it_really_bad_for_your_health_to_eat_in_front/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c20rkyz", "c20si6g"], "score": [9, 2], "text": ["Scientifically, no.  There is absolutely no reason to think it would be.\n\nBut also scientifically speaking, i really doubt anyone has ever done a study on it.\n\nIt is unhealthy to eat a lot while sitting on your butt a lot in front of a computer a lot all day long.  Easy to see why the myth could emerge.  But there is no reason to believe it.  If you are overweight, eat less and sit in front of the computer less.  But eat in front of the computer all you want.", "It doesn't have anything do with the computer, but more to do with your emotions towards eating.  We sit at computers a lot, and if you connect food with the computer you *may* find yourself eating more than you should for your diet.  If you train yourself to think \"I should not eat in front of my computer,\" you are less likely to sit down at the computer and feel emotionally hungry.\n\nI know that when I get bored and I'm at my computer I almost immediately want food for no reason in particular.  There is some truth behind it, but its due to controlled eating habits rather than the computer specifically."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2oo893", "title": "with respect to the new anti-marijuana ads claiming pot is \"300-400% stronger today than in the past\", could this fact not be argued in a positive light in that this means users can smoke less and still get just as high? therefore reducing arguably the worst aspect of smoking. inhaling smoke?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oo893/eli5_with_respect_to_the_new_antimarijuana_ads/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmoypq8", "cmoz9bn", "cmoziki", "cmp02zb", "cmp0ak7", "cmp0doy", "cmp0e6z", "cmp0e7h", "cmp19mc", "cmp23v0", "cmp25n7", "cmp2yz9", "cmp31mz"], "score": [20, 12, 2, 4, 3, 2, 6, 4, 7, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I think the argument here is that even though the drug is arguably much more potent than it used to be, people are still consuming roughly the same quantity of the drug per sitting so the effects are stronger than they used to be. I do not know whether or not that is actually true though.", "To someone who's not familiar with pot, \"300-400% stronger\" sounds scary as shit-- it conjures up a mental image akin to the relationship between vodka and jet fuel. This connection isn't entirely accurate, and (as you said) may just lead to less product consumed, but for the purposes of their agenda that doesn't really matter. ", " In speaking with my mom and her brothers and sisters that are open about the subject, they would also agree that the amount they used to consume when they were younger was much higher than what I consumed at about the same age. That being said, these commercials were funded by the conservative government and have been blasted for not using any actual unbiased medical sources before releasing them, so I wouldn't worry too much about how much they matter. ", "The same logic could be used towards our more highly processes, low fiber, high calorie foods. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to work that way.", "Most people I know who had abused pot in their teen years. Is either a burn out or a bit questionable in the brain department now. \nLike anything else in life educating your kids that they shouldn't abuse it is a must. I've smoked. But never in my teen years and I'm glad i didn't. \nAlso naturally grown marijuana has a lot of medicinal value. But these days they focus on weeding those qualities out and upping the thc. \nJust like alcohol. Don't abuse it. But legalize it so that it can be regulated and studied more thoroughly. I say that for all psychedelic drugs. ", "One thing that I think needs to be discussed is the fact your brain comes equipped with canabanoid receptors. When we use them too much they don't damage at all, they simply turn off. So I suppose the tolerance question comes into play. If it's so much stronger, why is it when I give my Vietnam Era father a dab, he swears it's the exact same as the hash oil of decades past? At the end of the day we're taking about a plant that happens to have some effects when it is exposed to heat. One of those effects happens to be curing epilepsy. If the consequence of the current day cannabis breeding actually dose make it stronger, I can tell you from living in Colorado my entire life that you will not notice the difference. This isn't like from cocaine to crack. We don't have people robbing dispensary's. We don't have hash addicts begging on corners. Despite the quality of the product people who typically use out here are the elderly, sick, and hard working blue/white collar Americans. This insanity over the quality and legalization is simple fear and propaganda, and a little research and seeking of opinions is the only way we're ever gonna come to a middle ground on anything.", "It's hilarious to go back through old ads.  Pot in the 70's was 4x stronger than in the 60', pot in the 80's was 4x stronger than in the 70's, in the 90's it was 4x stronger than in the 80's, etc.\n\nSince it started out at about 5 percent THC it now consists of approximately 300 percent THC and will create a space time singularity at any moment.\n\nIt's just a matter of selection bias.  You take the strongest sample you can find today and compare it to the average or weak sample from the past, then shout about how much stronger it is now. Truth?  The average is higher than it used to be, there used to be a lot more crap on the market, these days even the average is decent.  That's why it seems like it's stronger.  Even in the 60's if you knew where to get it there was pot just as good as the best of today, if not better, but it was rarer.", "It's like comparing liquor to beer. You don't drink as much liquor because it gets you intoxicated faster. Some goes with stronger strains of weed. Just take 2 hits instead of 5, or whatever your tolerance allows. It's a silly comparison and doesn't make much sense. It's not like someone would would chug a bottle of vodka.", "Yes and hard alcohol is 1000% more potent then beer", "Funny enough I thought that these numbers sounded a bit off so I looked into the research.   Their data is taken from the processing of plants taken from illegal growers during drug busts.   Their \"300%-400%\" stronger number comes from the  amount of THC for the ENTIRE plant.   This isn't showing that marijuana has gotten stronger it is showing that the average amount of THC on a single plant has gone up.   This doesn't mean you are going to get crazy strong weed,  it means the growers have gotten better at growing and are getting better yields. \n\nThese advertisements are misleading. ", "2,700 ago, they were growing extremely potent, almost completely seedless marijuana, comparable to todays commercially grown cannabis. That isn't done accidentally.\nWhile it is true westerners have in recent decades figured out how to maximize the potential of the plant, making it much more potent, those growing techniques have been known by other cultures for thousands of years.\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: forgot a word because of thc content", "exactly this... yes.\n\nwhenever you hear 60-70 year old people talking about how \"powerful\" weed is now... they are comparing it to dirt weed full of seeds and low THC content from when they were kids... before the \"war on drugs\" was ramped up and the hippy culture was suppressed.\n\nback in the day people would sit around and smoke joint after joint to get high, it's when blunts were invented.\n\ncontrast that to these days where 5 or 6 people can split a small joint and get just as high.\n\nfar less smoke/tar/carcinogens yet all the benefits of the THC.\n\nif you look at old paraphernalia from back then... even stuff as early as the late 80's early 90's before \"good weed\" started to become nationwide... the bowls were **huge**. like you could pack 3 or 4 grams in them.\n\nnow you have tiny bowls, even smaller if you are looking at dab's/oil/wax stuff. because you can pack a very small bowl with enough marijuana for 2 hits and it's more than enough to get you high or relieve your symptoms.\n\nthat being said... it's all complete horseshit anyway. some of the stronger strains from back in the day, when grown properly, were very potent... much higher THC content than this absurd scare ad is claiming.\n\nwas it *as* strong as some of the more potent strains these days? probably not, selective breeding and advanced growing techniques have driven the THC content much higher... but %400 is just ridiculous.\n\nkeep in mind whenever you hear crap like this that it is all coming from people who profit from marijuana remaining illegal (prison workers unions, alcohol and tobacco lobby, pharmaceutical corps, prison labor based production, etc...).\n ", "There is a limit to how high you can get,youll throw up or fall asleep at a certain point . If smoking flower,your lungs tell you when youve smoked enough. Wont want another hit cause you cough so badly. Anti weed ads are mostly bs,just people who stand to lose alot of money put ads up against weed. Or religious nuts."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28034925/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/worlds-oldest-marijuana-stash-totally-busted/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bx7bg8", "title": "Why is the Bible Belt like this?", "selftext": "I am not American and i recently grew interested in the Bible Belt.\n\nso i read this, \"Many commentators have pointed out that while religious observance in the Bible Belt is high, it is a region of a variety of social issues. Educational attainment and college graduation rates in the Bible Belt are among the lowest in the United States. Cardiovascular and heart disease, obesity, homicide, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections are among the highest rates in the nation.\u00a0\"\n\n([_URL_0_](_URL_0_))\n\n & #x200B;\n\nCan anyone explain this to me? Please excuse my ignorance lol.\n\nThank you.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: I first posted it here but later realized that the post would be better posted on r/AskAnAmerican. So i reposted it, please refer to:\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_1_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bx7bg8/why_is_the_bible_belt_like_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqcbizp"], "score": [3], "text": ["You might be interested in a now-anonymous answer to [this question in the FAQ.](_URL_0_)  /u/jschooltiger adds some nuance further down in the thread."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.thoughtco.com/the-bible-belt-1434529", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/bxj1b9/why_is_the_bible_belt_like_this_low_education/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/bxj1b9/why\\_is\\_the\\_bible\\_belt\\_like\\_this\\_low\\_education/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dx803/how_did_the_bible_belt_become_the_bible_belt/cju66gy/"]]}
{"q_id": "gdk81", "title": "What validity is there to the claims of the insignificance of genetic similaity made by this creationist piece? (regarding humans, chimpanzees, dogs, horses and flies)", "selftext": "Forgive my ignorance and not being well versed in manners of biology, but I came across the following (creationist) piece regarding the insignificance of genetic similarity whilst searching for info on the common descent of humans and apes: _URL_0_\n\nNow I'm not really concerned with the theological aspects of this piece, but more so how it claims (and provides subsequent examples) seemingly supporting the irrelevance of genetic similarities. \n\nPrimarily, the claims that cytochrome C (which admittedly, I have no idea what is) of dogs being 90% similar to that of humans and the hemaglobins of a horse being 88% similar to that of humans caught me off guard, as I had assumed that the only significant genetic relative that humans had were apes. Subsequently, the author goes on to remark that the genetic sequences of 2 seemingly identical species of flies were only 25% similarly sequenced. \n\nAdmittedly, I tried a Google search for all 3 of the claims, and received nothing in particular that was useful, so here I am r/askScience, asking if there is any validity to these claims, and if there is, why the claims so and whether or not this signifies a flaw in the theory of natural selection via commons descent. \n\nOnce again, I apologise for my ignorance and wish that this doesn't offend anyone particular belief systems (or lack thereof). Thanks in advance!\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gdk81/what_validity_is_there_to_the_claims_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1ms5s5", "c1mscvk", "c1msq2b", "c1mt86v", "c1mu0ka"], "score": [8, 7, 16, 3, 2], "text": ["All organisms share mostly the same genetic code. As Richard Dawkins says, if you arrange them by how similar certain genes are, you can see a family tree form. The fly thing I have a feeling is bullshit; their source is just a creation science book.", "Look, the basic building blocks of cells work; and there is no pressure to evolve separate systems when you already have a working one. Very basic parts of cell design and function are very similar across all living things.\n", "All mammals have very high sequence identity, especially for important proteins like cytochrome c.  The thing is, for the most part, it's not the differences in our proteins that differentiates us from other mammals, we're all carrying around the same 25K genes for the most part, and the biochemistry they're doing is more or less the same (granted, this is less true for the immune system).\n\nThe big difference is in what tissues we express those genes, the duration we express them for, and the level of expression. All of morphological development is controlled by the same 7 or so signaling pathways, but you can make drastic changes in morphology just by switching on a gene where you're not supposed to. The DNA sequence changes required to alter these pathways are fairly small, and a lot of them can be explained through genomic rearrangements. You can lower a gene's expression just by moving it closer to the centromere, for example, or by removing an enhancer sequence. Neither of these things necessarily change the coding sequence of the gene.\n\nSimply pulling two random species and remarking on their similarity doesn't really say much of anything regarding common descent. That comes from looking at multiple species: Your cytochrome c sequence has a higher sequence identity with chimps than monkeys, is closer to monkeys than horses, and is closer to horses than kangaroos. This trend is generally true with all the genes in your genome.", " >  caught me off guard, as I had assumed that the only significant genetic relative that humans had were apes.\n\nSo yeah, our cousins are apes, but our cousins once-removed are mammals... We all come from the same origins, but from some life-forms we said goodbye earlier in evolution than from others. ", "transcend and include.. that's the role of evolution... if each organism had to completely reinvent itself from the ground up.. well, I guess the creationist hype would have a little more bang."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/apes.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5a8wv1", "title": "Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina paints rural Russian estates as lands of gaiety and lightheartedness in comparison to a drab urban lifestyle, and extends this dichotomy to both the peasants and the aristocracy. How accurate of a view is this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5a8wv1/leo_tolstoys_novel_anna_karenina_paints_rural/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9f1868", "d9fmaz4"], "score": [41, 6], "text": ["But does it really? I've just started the second volume of the book and the rural peoples are frequently described as ignorant, resistant to change, and generally not equipped to handle even the most basic of tasks that will better their futures. In that sense, ignorance is bliss as the peasant class is both unwilling and incapable of understanding urban ideologies exemplified through Levin's painstakingly slow reforms. \n\nVladimir Lenin seems to agree with this, at least in part. The Lenin Anthology edited by Robert Tucker includes Lenin's 'The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats.' Lenin encourages the educated urban proletariat to educate the rural peasants as they were poorly educated and thus easily exploited by the land owners. \n\nI agree that Tolstoy tells of rural lands of gaiety, but only in the sense of extreme ignorance on the part of the peasants. The passage where Levin goes to work the fields with the peasants comes to mind as the most obvious example (the happiness from hard labor, the songs among the farmers, etc)\n\nI can't give any sources on the noble class besides the general assumption from the above that rural life was a place of refuge for the elites as it was away from the intrigue of St Petersburg and Moscow and sustained on the backs of cheap and ignorant labor.", "Not a history guy, but a literature one. One thing that should be kept in mind with Anna Karenina is that the social dichotomy you speak of was put there as a commentary on the social upheaval of the time, so it is likely exaggerated, but not wholly unrealistic. He is partially showing this conflict between the old Russian paternal patriarchy and the liberal, \"libre panseur,\" ideas coming in from the West so he can in the end say that western ideas won't really work in Russia.\n\nHe is generally regarded as a realist in terms of setting so he uses real historical issues of the time as backdrop, like the Emancipation Reform of 1861 and the development of the Zemstvo. Lenin may have been able to grab on to many themes inside the novel as even though Levin tries to help the lower class, he begins to realize it cannot be achieved using western ideology--thus the need for new, non-western ideas. \n\nSo basically, from a literary stand point Tolstoy IS reflecting the times he writes about, but from a historical one it must be remembered that this is largely commentary."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1tl45s", "title": "In Napoleon's armies, how was it determined whether a soldier would serve in artillery, cavalry, line infantry, skirmishers, or etc.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tl45s/in_napoleons_armies_how_was_it_determined_whether/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce92hmw", "ce94fa3", "ce96ri8"], "score": [145, 13, 11], "text": ["I couldn't find out how the different arms received men (although officers would have graduated into those arms) but I can talk about grenadiers, regular line infantry, and skirmishers.\n\nWithin a Napoleonic Line battalion, there are three parts, a company of grenadiers, four to six companies of standard line, and one company of voltigeurs.\n\nA grenadier is a large and imposing man with a bear skin cap that added to his height. These were the elite of the infantry battalion, known for their skill with a bayonet on top of their height. So to gain entry to this, first you needed to be tall enough, being at least five foot six inches in contemporary Imperial measurement. These are the tallest men, so while five six seems small to us, it was tall due to the dietary limitations.\n\nFrom this, there was standard line, which would fill the gap of the height measurement. Here, a soldier needed to be between five foot six and five foot two inches. They were the standard infantryman that would be of no uniqueness.\n\nNext came the voltigeurs, or skirmishers. Generally, light infantry and skirmishers would be assigned the smallest men since they needed to be the most agile and quick thinking. The reason for this was that they would often fight in open order, requiring a bit more thought than the standard line soldier. So, soldiers that were assigned here would normally be between four foot ten inches to five foot two inches.\n\nThere's height limitations to the cavalry as well but I don't have a good source for that at the moment.", "I'll add a little more just in case you wanted to know more in depth on how a French grenadier was selected.\n\nEvery year each line company captains would select a few men they deemed worth of being a grenadier.  These men would be needed to fit the height requirements and have at least 4 years service with 2 campaigns.  They would be reviewed by the grenadier company's officers and NCOs.  The grenadier captain would select the men he thought suitable and would give their names to the commander of their demi-brigade/regiment who would ultimately decide.  New regiments/battalions did not have grenadier companies since none of their men have the required service records.", "Cavalry and Infantry were assigned as needed. Elzear Blaze, for example, was initially selected to serve in the cavalry as a cadet but was then admitted to the Fontainebleau as an officer-cadet of the infantry. Jean Roche Coignet was a horse trainer of vast exerpience but served in Napoleon's Imperial Guard as a grenadier. \n\nArtillery and Engineers were chosen having undergone some sort of examination. The journals of Louis-Fran\u00e7ois Lejeune had him start out as a student in an Art school in Paris, enrol himself as an infantrymen then getting accepted into the Engineers as a staff officer attached to Berthier's command. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3p85vy", "title": "We often hear about CIA programs that have failed or suffered from unintended consequences. What are some examples of the CIA achieving extraordinary success, whether planned or not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3p85vy/we_often_hear_about_cia_programs_that_have_failed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw4340i", "cw43bty", "cw43ei7"], "score": [6, 6, 3], "text": ["While this is a very important question a lot of the problem is if a CIA operation is truly successful the public never knows the events that occurred were because of a CIA operation. The CIA are essentially spies, if their work is public they are doing their jobs wrong. ", "Many programs are considered still classified. However one that is published by the CIA is Operation Gold (=Stopwatch in the UK) , which was a \"co-production\" so to speak with the British SIS, the CIA and the NSA involved. The British and Americans had intercept stations in Berlin such as [Teufelsberg](_URL_0_), but as the DDR repaired its infrastructure, military communications moved from radio to landlines. \n\nThe British had already dug a tunnel in Vienna to tap the Soviets and the US wanted them to do the same in Berlin. The project ran from 1955 through to 1956 collecting an immense amount of data until it was finally compromised by the Soviet mole in SIS, George Blake.\n\nYou can get some basics [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_2_). There are extensive links to more documents that have been declassified. The project is unusual because the Soviets discovered it after a while so a lot of the story became public knowledge very quickly. The details took rather longer though.\n\nOne of the interesting points is that a while previously, it had been discovered that encrypted teletype transmissions would often have a little noise from the plain text. However, you needed to be close to the source as the signal is weak.", "A lot of their \"successes\" are also some of America's darkest chapters --- See: Iran, Central America, etc.\n-Afghanistan in the 1980s - kept America out of a protracted land battle in Central Asia (because you know that's an awful idea)\n-Expressionism as an art movement in the 1950s-60s \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/", "https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/the-berlin-tunnel-exposed.html", "https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/on-the-front-lines-of-the-cold-war-documents-on-the-intelligence-war-in-berlin-1946-to-1961/art-7.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ehw7d", "title": "Is it possible to target different parts of the same muscle through exercise?", "selftext": "In the fitness world, including forums and the like, there are a lot of guys recommending specific routines and exercises to target, say, the upper/lower pecs.  \n\nThen, a lot of people appears saying that it is not possible since both are the same muscle (pectoralis major).  \n\nThen, in comes yet another group of people stating that, even though it's the same muscle, you can train its different heads. And others saying that muscles are formed by fibres and they can develop independently depending on where the exercise focuses.  \n\nAll of this, accompanied by large amounts of anecdotal evidence (\"of course you can I started doing incline and my upper pecs exploded!\", \"if you only do flat bench your pecs will look like breasts!\").  \n\n\nBut no one ever provides evidence to support any of their claims.\n\n So, what the actual scientific answer? Can muscles be trained in different ways to achieve different developments, or is all hypertrophy going to produce the same final result?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ehw7d/is_it_possible_to_target_different_parts_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctfasr2"], "score": [4], "text": ["I'm not necessarily sure if you would need a study or journal article to \"prove\" this concept since it's rudimentary biomechanics: as our joint positioning changes in relation to a load, the influence and demand of the musculoskeletal system varies. \n\nFor example, the chest has two heads: the clavicular and sternocostal head. The clavicular head flexes the upper arm (humerus) and the sternoclavicular head extends the humerus. The same varying functions of muscular heads can be said for the triceps or the biceps, for example.\n\nAnd while all heads of the muscle can be engaged to perform its function, the demands placed upon particular areas of the body or a particular movement result in the appropriate adaptations (SAID principle).\n\nThe other people over at /r/advancedfitness might have a reference that's a bit more detailed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2tpg2s", "title": "why was the soviet union hated for their communism? why is communism very evil in public opinion? i mean, it may not function but on long term capitalism won't either.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tpg2s/eli5_why_was_the_soviet_union_hated_for_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co14ntr", "co14w4k", "co155yt", "co15655", "co1592f", "co15dvi", "co15p5s", "co179iq", "co1b5wj", "co1cf8v"], "score": [27, 13, 6, 4, 2, 2, 11, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It wasn't so much the form it took (communism), as it was the fact that it was a totalitarian dictatorship run by an insane megalomaniac who couldn't have killed more of his own people if he had done a drive-by from Leningrad to Kamchatka... \n\nTotalitarian dictatorships are evil whether they're communist or not...", "*All* the implementations of communism resulted in *huge* violations of *multiple* *basic* human rights. And most of the people believe that it is intrinsically needed to restrict these rights to achieve communism. That's why it's a big no-no.\n\nCapitalism, despite all of its widely known limits, had people living much better *and* freer lives. I might complain every day about what's wrong with the system where I (we) live but I'd still rather be there than in any communist country that has ever been.", "Pol Pot literally killed everyone who wore glasses, because people who wear glasses read books, and were therefore too smart for communism. ", "Mainly American propaganda. In truth there was nothing the soviet union could do in the event of a war except throwing themself infront of american bullets. The soviet nukes could not reach USA untill very late in the conflict, and although they had alot of nukes they had very few rockets and it is speculated that at one point as little as 5 rockets carrying nukes was all the Soviet Union could muster up on short notice and the people where sceard shitless living in fear of an iminent american invation of the soviet union. American propaganda on how dangerous the soviet union was, allowed for a military budget and size unrivaled in history without any questions.", "Interestingly enough the United States has had a love hate relationship with communism. The US and many other Allies backed Russia's White Army during Russia's Bolshevik Revolution. When the Bolshevik's or the Red Army won it was a pretty awkward situation for the Western Europeans who had backed the losing side and those in power in Russia never forgot. Before WW2 Stalin actually had an agreement with Hitler to split most of Eastern Europe which only broke when Hitler tried to expand beyond the agreement. The Allies of World War II included the USSR as an uneasy ally and it was generally accepted at the close of WW2 abroad that the USSR did most of the heavy lifting while the UK and US mostly destroyed Nazi infrastructure through bombing raids. As the Cold War started tensions again rose between the West and USSR and our propaganda machine turned our once-allies into dire enemies. If people really hated communism then they would be much more wary about using most of the goods they consume today as they're all made by China which is a centrally planned economy. Ironically the economies of both communist and capitalist countries heavily rely on each other today, regardless of which system is \"best.\"", "There was little to none of communism in USSR (or any other \"communist\" country) - it was purely an abstract ideology used as an excuse to run totalitarian state. So, what is known as \"communism\" is actually a term to decribe an oppresive totalitarian state and has little connection to utopian marxist ideology.", "The USSR was hated and feared from the outset. It was a major threat to the status quo from day one. Communism is a workers movement. It is all about empowering the workers. Empowered workers means less for those that have power over them. It's the same fear held by the Monarchs of Europe during the French Revolution. Until the fall of the tsar and the establishment of the USSR, communism had been primarily a radical fringe movement. Suddenly they were in charge of a massive and formidible country. And they were openly in favor of supporting the workers of the world to join them in arms to overthrow their governments. \n\nIn addition to being an ideological for, it was a financial one. The USSR took power and nationalized everything. The US had financial interests there. \n\nBefore the USSR had even had time to perpetrate any evils, the US put an embargo against them and had covert operations to try to undermine/overthrow them. The fact that the USSR was also evil was a convenient way to rally Americans against them. Put that was not the primary reason. ", "Fear for their own lives and their lifestyles among the capitalist elite.\n\nOn the surface, communism sounds awesome to the poor and uneducated people (the majority, especially back then).\n\nSo the rich minority was scared that their plebes might contract that idea of communism and it would spread. Resulting in the existing capitalist ruling class violently replaced by a new communist ruling class.\n\nThey obviously didn't want that. So they opposed it with everything they had (fighting, financing, brainwashing). The capitalist elite were literally fighting for their survival.\n\nBut then, the communist elite realized that they could transform into capitalist elite rather than continuing to rule through \"socialism as the path to communism\". So the communist elite transformed, and the cold war was over.  The old communist party bosses became the new silent billionaires, mostly through proxy. And that was that. \n\n\n\n", "The rest of the world, being capitalist, is controlled by the capitalist ruling class.\n\nCommunism calls for global revolt against the capitalist ruling class and the seizure of their property.\n\nThey were afraid of this, because they like being so rich, so naturally they put a lot of effort into making people hate Communism. Simple. ", "For some 150 years, there has been an ongoing smear campaign in America against socialism and communism (which most people just take as the same thing), and now many Americans just automatically associate it with evil.\n\nBack in the 19th century, socialism became quite popular among people fighting for social justice and decent working conditions and pay. Socialism almost caught on as a major political force, there were several socialist political candidates that did well.\n\nBut the robber barons of the time mounted an enormous smear campaign against it, equating it with anarchy, bomb-throwing lunatics, etc.\n\nWhen Stalin shot whoever was standing in front of him and seized control of Russia, that made things a whole lot easier for the smear campaign, because now it was easy to confuse people by conflating Stalinism with socialism (made easier by Russia loudly proclaiming it was socialist. It really wasn't very).\n\nAlso in the early 20th century, the government finally got off its ass and started passing health and safety laws, and unions gained significant power in dealing with workplace atrocities, so socialism began to fall out of favor among the general public.\n\nBy the time of the Cold War, the decades of propaganda finally paid off, and socialism acquired the permanent taint of dictatorship and evil some still associate with it today. Indeed, the conservatives managed to shoot down the nascent universal healthcare movement by branding it as \"socialized medicine.\" A B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan even recorded a speech detailing the HORRORS of socialized medicine, and it was released on a record album that got played at a lot of country club luncheons. Decades later, long after the collapse of the Soviet system, when the ACA was being debated, conservatives even trotted out the old term like it was some dusty, moldy, old cardboard Frankenstein statue at a carny funhouse. And people still swallowed it.\n\nHowever, today we know that the \"international communist threat\" was never really MUCH of a threat. They sought to increase their \"market share\" in the world, sure. Just like every other superpower in history. But it turns out they really had no plans to roll tanks across Europe and take over the world. Khrushchev himself wrote that Stalin was terrified by the thought of all-out war with the west. The Russians took a horrific beating from JUST the Germans in WWII, and were not anxious for a second round with the entire west.\n\nThe cold war arms race was really mainly started by the US. In the 1950s, the CIA issued a seriously-flawed report that said the Rooskies had WAY more nuclear-capable bombers than they really did. So the US panicked and started building bombers like there was no tomorrow. The CIA followed that up in the early 60s with a report that said the Soviets had some 490 nukes pointed at us, and the US soiled its underwear. So it started building nuclear missiles like there was no tomorrow. And there almost WASN'T. When the Russians saw the US cranking out nukes like cheap hot dogs, the only reasonable conclusion they could come to was that it was because we intended to attack them and wipe them off the planet. So THEY started building nukes like mad.\n\n\"Wait,\" I hear you cry. \"STARTED building nukes? What about the 490 they already had?\" Well, see, funny story there. The CIA report was just a weensy bit off in its estimation of Russian nuclear strength. And by \"a weensy bit,\" I mean TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. At the time, Russia had four--count 'em--FOUR nukes capable of hitting the US.\n\ntl;dr: Americans were trained to consider socialism as evil by the rich, and then it became government policy. Hilarity (and almost the end of the world) ensued.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7qjcpa", "title": "Was the Han Dynasty of China truly more technologically advanced than Rome at the same time (2nd century AD/CE)", "selftext": "I am by no means an expert when it comes to Chinese and Roman history, but I've always been told that Han-era China was more advanced scientifically than Imperial Rome and it honestly seems to be the opposite. Rome could produce very high-quality glass, had cranes, concrete, generally slightly more advanced hydraulic engineering, much higher-quality steel, Polyboloi (repeating Scorpions) and even knowledge of the steam engine (though they did nothing with it). When people discuss China under the Han Dynasty's rule the main technological feats they mention are silk (which the Romans simply couldn't produce due the lack of silk worms where they lived), windmills and gunpowder (2 things which were only discovered much later, with Rome actually having watermills (though not windmills) before the Chinese), the first seismograph, farming technology, kites and the Chu-Ko-Nu (repeating crossbow). There are of course many other technologies which the Hans had but the Romans didn't but those are the main ones mentioned. But whilst inventing things such as the first seismograph and repeating crossbows is very advanced, it really seems to me that the Romans were more advanced in a purely technological sense, and that many people appear to misinterpret these questions and describe the Han Dynasty as being more advanced because they invented more during their rule whereas the Romans invented very little themselves but adopted technologies from other ancient civilisations around them.\n\nSo, in absolute, which civilisation was more advanced purely technologically and scientifically (or were they roughly equal but developed in different ways)?    \n\nEDIT: neither the Romans nor the Han Chinese had windmills.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7qjcpa/was_the_han_dynasty_of_china_truly_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dspwiaa", "dsqdxon", "dsrw6s6"], "score": [136, 50, 5], "text": [" > much higher-quality steel\n\nQuite the opposite, actually--it is pretty unlikely that the Romans had any real consistent production of artificial steel, while the Han Dynasty not only did but also had cast iron, which would not become available in the west until the early modern period. But generally trying to put two sets of tally marks for \"technology\" against each other will not yield a particularly informative comparison.\n\nThere is a generally plausible argument that the Roman empire was significantly wealthier than the Han empire and had a more complex economy, but I generally feel that until much more archaeological work is done in China that judgement will be a touch dubious. A lot of the transformation of understanding of the Roman economy very the past fifty odd years has been driven by extensive archaeological work, while the archaeology of China is still relatively undeveloped and heavily focused on tombs.\n\nEdit: forgot the source, but Schiedel et al *Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires* is an excellent work that deals with this topic.", "First off, I'll dog pile on here a bit and challenge the idea that you can directly compare the level of \"scientific advancement\" in two complex, wealthy societies before the advent of anything approaching actual science.  Historians really don't like the idea of \"technology\" as a list of inventions that a civilization or proto-state slowly advances along.  It really doesn't work that way.  Much of what you might consider \"technology\" either isn't practically useful in any way to the general society (kites, roman steam engines), or is more an expression of available manpower and resources than anything scientific.\n\nSecond, I would like to push back strongly on the idea that Romans had more advanced hydraulic engineering than the Chinese.  I'm not as familiar with most of your other examples, but China unquestionably had the most sophisticated understanding and practical implementation of large scale hydraulic engineering of any pre-modern area other than possibly parts of the Netherlands.\n\nChina's systems of irrigation, canals, flooding controls, sea walls/reclaimed land, locks, levees, water pumps, polders, were more sophisticated and organized than any Roman systems.  This led to a density of agricultural production and a level of direct state control that was not possible in Rome.  \n\nLook at things like the 246 BCE Zheng Guo canal.  A massive feat of organized civil engineering, it allowed deliberate controlled flooding of farmland with silt-rich, fertilizing water.  It also facilitated grain transport and checked soil salinity.  This was not just a big ditch - the canal was the product of a very sophisticated understanding of hydrology and relied on a number of technologies.  From the rock baskets used to divert water, to roofed areas that protected the canal from gully runoff, to the surveying techniques used, to grilles used to block debris but not water from entering, to the understanding of large scale hydrology and so on. \n\nThe Romans had nothing of this scale and sophistication - their largest canals were usually just a few miles long and were usually just used to drain an estuary or marsh or for transport.  It's not even the largest ancient Chinese canal - it's dwarfed by the monumental Grand Canal and its precursors.\n\nStuff like that is harder to see as \"technology\" than a useless toy like a proto-steam engine, or in the case of hydraulic engineering something like a complicated decorative fountain.  But I don't think that's a particularly useful way of looking at the subject.  \n\nIt's also very important to point out that none of what I said really points to Roman technology being more or less advanced than Chinese, even in the area of hydraulic engineering.  Roman technology met Roman needs quite well.  Chinese technology met Chinese needs.  Because the goals and challenges were not the same, it's very difficult to look at them from the perspective of one \"winning\" a tech race.  Rome did not have the need to connect a series of east to west rivers in a north to south empire the way the Chinese did, nor did their tributary/vassalage/trade system of imperial control immediately reward the intensification of agriculture in the way the more centrally controlled tax based Chinese system did. \n\nMost of this is drawn from *Retreat of the Elephants: an Environmental History of China* by Mark Elvin.  Some comparisons are drawns from *Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires* By Walter Scheidel.", " > When people discuss China under the Han Dynasty's rule the main technological feats they mention are [...] windmills and gunpowder (2 things which were only discovered much later, with Rome actually having very primitive windmills before the Chinese)\n\nAlthough I'm not a historian, I do work as a miller on a historic windmill and have delved quite deep into the history of (wind)mills. What you're writing here is a bit misleading and perhaps only half-true at best.\n\nAlthough China is sometimes credited with the invention of the windmill, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support this claim.\nThe earliest mention of a windmill that we know of dates back to the 7th century in Persia, although the authenticity is being questioned because no documents from that age survive. The first certain mention dates to the 10th century in Persia, only about 100 years before the first certain mills in western Europe. [These mills had a vertical wind shaft and worked by sheltering one half of the rotor from the wind.](_URL_7_)\n\nFrom there the vertical windmill likely spread to India and China, where it is mentioned in the 13th century AD. These Chinese windmills were an evolution of the Persian design and didn't require a windshield. [These so-called panemone windmills were used to irrigate ricefields.](_URL_2_)\n[Picture of a reconstruction](_URL_3_)\n\nEurope however is a different matter. Water power has been used since antiquity to drive [small mills with a horizontal water wheel.](_URL_1_)\n\nIn the first century BC the [vertical watermill](_URL_5_) appeared. This type was described in detail by Roman engineer Vitruvius in 20 BC, who noted its angular transmission to drive the stones: revolutionary at the time and vital to the later windmill. Where the horizontal mill was limited to fast currents, this mill could work in slow rivers and had the potential to provide more power.\n\nBut after Vitruvius, despite its clear superiority to the horizontal mill, the vertical watermill seems to be forgotten. A reason for this could be the ample availability of slave labor for manual mills. The mill was again mentioned in the 5th century when slavery was abolished, after that there was a long silence in the dark ages. The watermills that were described during the dark ages were of such low yield they could only be of the horizontal type. \n\nThe vertical watermill reappeared in the 9th century in Flanders and from there spread rapidly over western Europe. Around the 11th century nearly all available power from streams and rivers was used for watermills in flat area's so other sources of power were sought.\n\nThis logically resulted in the first windmills, which are somewhat of a mystery. Depending on what historian you believe it is apparently invented somewhere in Flanders, Coastal France or England. The first hard textual evidence we have of windmills date from 1180 in Normandy, 1181 in England and 1191 in Flanders. All these texts mention already existing windmills.\n\nWhat these windmills looked like is a matter of debate. The majority of historians agree they must be primitive versions of the [post mill](_URL_8_) that still exists as a type today. The main problem with the wind in Western Europe is that it blows from different directions. The medieval solution to this was to place the mill on a central post on which it could be turned into the wind. There are few historians and millers who believe the early postmill was essentially a vertical watermill placed on a pole with the wheel swapped for sails. Although it would be a logical progression, there is no evidence for it save a [17th century sketch.](_URL_4_)\n\nOriginally these mills were quite small, and the post and crossplates were buried in the ground to prevent them from being blown over. The remains of buried crossplates have been found all over England and Flanders This subtype has the name ['sunk postmill'](_URL_6_). Over the course of centuries this mill evolved -including a few critical changes improving its stability- into the [full scale postmill](_URL_0_) in the mid-15th century that is completely above the ground. As a miller I'm still impressed with the amount of craftsmanship people had to build such a structure. Despite its rickety appearance, this final form of postmill is actually very stable. Many of them have survived for over 400 years.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/9lbuS4h.png", "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2c/e8/ba/2ce8ba5b898a3f7ccb7f4241393f3250.jpg", "http://kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Pic-3-Chinese-Windmill-1030x764.jpg", "http://amc.stust.edu.tw/Sysid/amc_en/01.png", "http://i.imgur.com/bhqy6E1.jpg", "https://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.2/361/247.A.1.B.5.1%2810%29.jpg?sequence=1", "http://i.imgur.com/G5niX9u.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WCO1l7ZJyY", "http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/1310843.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3giduh", "title": "how is pure mathematics researched?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3giduh/eli5_how_is_pure_mathematics_researched/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctyeaxh", "ctyekav", "ctyetiy", "ctyfvzr", "ctyglec", "ctym2do", "ctysm91"], "score": [25, 82, 3, 12, 5, 121, 4], "text": ["Researchers choose a problem, perhaps a conjecture that it would be cool if we could prove, and they try to find out if it is never true/always true/sometimes true.  Depending on what they can prove, they might be able to refine an idea and prove it's always true subject to defined constraints.", "You pick a problem. Here are some for you: _URL_0_\n\nYou then try to break it down into smaller problems. Maybe you try solving a 2D version of a 3D problem. If you solve the smaller problem you write a paper on it. Most problems are solved bit by bit by mathematicians all over the world. ", "It stems from axioms, or \"self-apparent\" truths.\n\nI am not a mathematician (and this example has been disproved by non-euclidean math)  - but the gist is \"What is the shortest line between two points\".\n\nSimilar concepts make the foundation upon which mathematical knowledge is built.\n\nAnd that is how I would describe it to my niece - follow up questions are of course welcome!\n", "* think up a concept that seems somehow interesting. Example: natural numbers.\n* formalize it as a small number of axioms (things you just assume to be true because they describe the basic properties of your concept). Try to make them as few and as simple as possible. Example: the Peano axioms.\n* play around with the concept, notice interesting properties, define them formally and give them names. Example: divisibility and prime numbers.\n* notice that there seems to be a rule that is non-obvious - that's a theorem. Example: every number is a unique product of prime numbers (aka t-he fundamental theorem of arithmetic).\n* formally prove or disprove that theorem based only on the axioms or other theorems that have already been proven.\n* find another theorem and repeat, if necessary first make up some more definitions. ", "Adding onto other comments in this thread, a lot of discoveries in mathematics arise from mathematicians 'playing around' with stuff, like knots or shapes and trying to boil them down to fundamental rules.", "Pure mathematician here. Just to add to the comments below (or, will be below once you upvote this comment - zing!):\n\nPure mathematics, as a discipline, originates from the process of successively abstracting the ideas of concrete math. In other words, it looks for the essential structural features that make concrete math \"work,\" without the nonessential, context clues that make it concrete. Think of it like building a taxonomy of the animal kingdom by studying a bunch of animals, classifying them into categories based on their common features, then classifying those categories into categories based on *their* common features, and so on. For example, one path in mathematics might be Euclidean geometry - >  [inner product functions](_URL_4_) - >  [norm functions](_URL_5_) - >  [metrics or distance functions](_URL_3_) - >  [topologies](_URL_1_) - >  [sets](_URL_0_) - >  [foundational axioms](_URL_2_). At each step, \"structure is lost,\" meaning that you sacrifice some of the special properties of each for the sake of putting concepts into successively bigger groups, like squares passing to rectangles passing to quadrilaterals to polygons, or bumblebees passing to bees passing to order hymenoptera to class insecta. \n\nAnyway, the \"facts\" which hold these classifications together and connect among them are called theorems, which in order to be accepted must be able to be logically deduced from the accepted theorems \"above it\" in abstraction. For example, you can prove a statement about squares using facts about rectangles, but not vice versa. (That's what makes it deductive reasoning.) The thing is, just like we could discover a new species of bee tomorrow, we could discover some new fact about a mathematical system that hasn't yet been deduced. Or, perhaps more commonly, we could discover a proof -- pure math's standard of demonstrating logical deduction -- for something that mathematicians \"believe\" to be true based on their knowledge of the field.\n\nHow would you do that? The same way you discover a new species of bee: get familiar enough with all the existing species so that you can spot the one specimen that doesn't fit the pattern, or a new pattern that no one has spotted before. In math this means immersing yourself in all the recently discovered theorems in your field, looking at how their knowledge was constructed from more general and related principles. And then go immerse yourself in those more general and related theories to understand how they work. And so on. Naturally, you typically have to start with learning a lot of general knowledge in the field, growing more specialized as you go.\n\nAnd then, reading a paper, you spot a theorem that you can take one step further down the line. From a logical perspective, this usually takes the form of a hypothesis you can weaken (\"All red squares are rectangles...\" Wait a minute, they don't need to be red!) or a conclusion you can strengthen (\"All squares are quadrilaterals...\" Wait a minute, they're more specifically rectangles!) And then you embark upon constructing a proof, borrowing recent results as well as general knowledge and often a stroke of insight and creativity to form the logical scaffold of the work. You write up your proof, submit it for publication, present it at conferences, teach it to your graduate students, rinse, and repeat.\n\nThe last paragraph is probably an answer to what you were asking - the \"process\" of pure math research is difficult to describe because it is so often a slow, deliberative, and creatively frustrating search for the right pieces and the right way to put them together, like being in a room full of mismatched puzzle pieces and trying to put together a picture of the specific dog you had as a child. It can be years of labor for small amounts of progress, and there's no accepted procedure, just as there's no fixed procedure for designing great sculpture. But at least from my end, the few rewards pale in comparison to the thrill of the hunt. If you have the chance to pursue pure math even for a while in university, take it!\n\nTL;DR: Boil math down to its essential features. Look for hypotheses to weaken or conclusions to strengthen, and try to prove it.", "While this may not be the answer you are looking for, if you're interested in maths, I cannot recommend the Numberphile YouTube channel enough.  Look up the \"astounding -1/12\" video.  Blew my mind, and have been hooked ever since.\n\nYou can also check out r/bradyharan, the dude behind this, and many other, very interesting channels."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_space", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_set_theory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_space", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_product_space", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_space"], []]}
{"q_id": "2umsnl", "title": "how come people don't borrow from low-interest rate countries like japan and deposit it in high-interest rate countries like argentina?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2umsnl/eli5how_come_people_dont_borrow_from_lowinterest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co9rgm3", "co9t69c", "co9vn84", "co9w480", "co9y9wt", "coa2uw7", "coag9yr"], "score": [28, 5, 2, 2, 131, 11, 2], "text": ["First, because argentina is high risk because they've previously defaulted on their loans (twice if I'm not mistaken) which means everyone who invested there lost a lot of money.\n\nSecond, Japan being low rate doesn't mean they loan money to you at low rates, it means they pay you low rates when you loan money to them.\n\nJapan though (or the US) could take a loan from you at a low rate and loan it to argentina, but that's risky (which is why argentina offers a higher rate in the first place).", "Let me write a longer drawn out question /explanation, as it sounds like you're confused from your other responses.\n\nScenario: You have 0, but you have a good credit score, so you apply for a Line of Credit in Japan (ignoring all regulations and rules), and are approved for a loan of 100,000 yen. (Roughly 850 USD).\n\nWhat's important to note here is the posted interest rates. I couldn't find a lot of data on Japan, but it looks like their posted interest rate is 0.1%. This is for huge dollar value loans. Everyday citizens don't qualify for this. Your line of credit with BoJ is probably going to be around 3-4%.\n\nSo you take your 100,000 yen, and convert it to Argentinian Pesos. The conversion rate I could find was  1 JPY = 0.0736139 ARS. Again, this is for huge currency conversions from bank to bank. Your rate will undoubtedly be much worse. \n\nEven if we gave you the perfect conversion rate (which you will not get), you would need to open either some kind of savings account or an investment account to deposit your ~7,000 Argentinian Pesos in. To make money with your plan, you would need  to have a rate of return that is much higher than the 3-4% the BoJ is charging you. Remember that even though the bank of argentina is saying 7%, joe schmoe is going to get much less on his savings account than that.\n\nRemember that every month the BoJ is going to want an interest payment on it's loan. That's ~3000 yen / 220 pesos every month. If you can find a savings account that pays 7% interest (again, not likely), you'll be bringing in a cool ~490 pesos a month. Congrats! You're making money!\n\nThe biggest downside to all this is the fees. You're going to get dinged on conversion fees when you convert pesos  >  yen every month. You're also going to have to pay a fee to wire the funds from Argentina to Japan (at least $15-$30 USD, or ~130 pesos). Unless you want to travel back and forth in person...\n\nFinally, we're assuming that all currencies remain exactly the same forever. If the Pesos go down, or the yen goes up, or interest rates change at all in either country, your plan could go to hell quickly. This is all assuming of course that Argentina doesn't default on their loans again (as per /u/Mason11987)\n", "It might be easier to short Japanese debt and use the proceeds to buy Argentine  debt. You would still need considerable assets to try this and it is highly speculative. ", "I am sure that people do...but the concept is far more risky than what you're implying. Currency rate fluctuation would have a much greater effect on your final profit/loss than the difference in interest rates.\n\nI've actually thought about doing this sort of thing before, since I live in Mexico but am from the US. At times when the US dollar is exceptionally high (like now) it could (could being the operative word here) pay off to borrow a large sum of money, throw it into a high-paying certificate of deposit (it is easy to get a guaranteed, gov't insured 5% here in Mexico), wait a year and see what it's worth (assuming a simultaneous drop in the value of the dollar).\n\nIn the end, though, when you run the numbers, your maximum profit, even if you were to borrow like 20 grand, just isn't all that great, particularly when you look at the ratio of risk to reward. We're better off looking for another customer for our [resort](_URL_0_) :)", "Victor, this occurs regularly, although it is difficult for individual investors to do.\n\nThe trade you are discussing has happened in the past, and is likely happening today. In finance parlance, this is known as a carry trade. The best known carry trade was in the 90's, going short (selling, or owing) the Japanese yen and going long (buying, or owning) the US dollar.\n\nThe key to the carry trade is exactly what you described. It is not simply a matter of being short one currency and long another, but it is being short one currency and long another with a view towards profiting off of the interest rate differentials. \n\nIn the JPY/USD example, you would be selling JPY that had interest rates of near 0% and buying the USD with interest rates of near 5%. So, you are paying a near 0% interest rate per year towards people you owed JPY, but receiving a 5% interest rate per year from your ownership of USD. If, on a relative basis, the JPY appreciates (gets more expensive) by 5% or more per year, you would lose money as this would wipe out your gains from the interest rate differential. If the currency moves the other way, with JPY getting cheaper relative to USD, you could stand to make a lot of money this way. If the currencies remain flat, on a relative basis, you would be pocketing the 5% per year interest rate differential.\n\nOne of the reasons this is hard for individuals to do is that you are unlikely able to borrow at headline interest rates unless you have sizable banking relationships. In addition, there are numerous risks, including currency exchange rate movements (one currency getting cheaper or more expensive relative to the other), interest rate changes (thus removing the positive interest rate differential you are gaining), among others.", "Everybody's missing the most important explanation.\n\nIt's all about the relationship between inflation and interest rates.\n\nYou can borrow at 2% from Japan, invest at 12% in Argentina, resulting in a **nominal** interest rate of 10%.  But if inflation is 0% in Japan, but 10% in Argentina, then your gains are going to be wiped out by the decreasing value of the Argentine Peso *as compared to* the Japanese Yen.  And after adjusting for inflation, your 10% nominal becomes a 0% **real** interest rate.", "i did this,  :)  using the OANDA foreign currency platform.\n\nhigh interest rate is high inflation\n\nlow interest rate low inflation\n\ni was getting 23% monthly interest. \n\nhow ever due to inflation and such i was losing 30% \n\nit sounds like a good idea but it did not work out for me!  do not do any foreign currency trading! that is my best advice i can give anyone"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://geckorockresort.com/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9meps8", "title": "What is the historical event behind the Pied Piper legend?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9meps8/what_is_the_historical_event_behind_the_pied/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7eyx70"], "score": [7], "text": ["Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but FYI /u/itsallfolklore has tackled this question a couple of times\n\n* [Is there any truth behind the Pied Piper fairytale?] (_URL_0_)\n\n* [What are the origins of the Pied Piper legend?](_URL_1_) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nsto6/is_there_any_truth_behind_the_pied_piper_fairytale", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kbutq/what_are_the_origins_of_the_pied_piper_legend"]]}
{"q_id": "3kwr7e", "title": "why does chemotherapy work if it's basically just pumping poison into your body? why don't we often die from that poison?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kwr7e/eli5why_does_chemotherapy_work_if_its_basically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv14czl", "cv14egi", "cv14n4q"], "score": [6, 15, 5], "text": ["Its poison that kills the cancer before it kills you. So basically youll get sick but youll live but the cancer will die. You can survive poison.\n\nGranted this is an over simplification but its the basic gist.", "Well it's not 'just pumping poison into your body.' It is a variety of treatments tailored to more specifically target certain types of cells. For instance, many target cells that undergo extremely rapid division, because this is a fairly common feature of cancer cells. \n\nThis does indeed damage healthy parts of the body, for instance hair follicle cells divide rapidly, and hence you get the characteristic hair loss. ", "One of the big differences between cancer cells and healthy cells is how fast they replicate. To grow so fast, cancer cells need a lot more \"fuel\" than an average cell does.\n\nWe can use this fact to slightly \"poison\" the fuel. It's not enough to kill a regular cell that uses the fuel slowly (although it'll make them  sick) but it'll kill anything that uses a ton of it fast.\n\nThink alcohol... If you drink it slowly, you'll just feel a little woozy and disoriented. But if you chug it and chug it and chug it, you might end up in the hospital or dead with alcohol poisoning.\n\nThis is also the reason why Chemo is especially effective against aggressive cancers that replicate quickly, like Lymphoma or Testicular, but not so much against slow cancers like Skin Cancer or Lung Cancer"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2l9k0n", "title": "what is the story behind american cup sizes in cooking?", "selftext": "Nothing is more annoying for an European (or German in my case) than to try to cook an American recipe.  \nBesides the slight differences in available ingredients, cup sizes are a major inconvenience in my eyes.\n\n\nWhat is the history/story behind this type of measurement?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l9k0n/eli5_what_is_the_story_behind_american_cup_sizes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clsoecl", "clsoo97", "clsp7ua", "clspi0v"], "score": [16, 13, 6, 8], "text": ["It's standard imperial measurement.\n\n1 cup=1/2 pint (8 oz.)\n1/2 cup= 4 oz.\n1/4 cup= 2 oz.\n1/8 cup= 1 tablespoon\n\nMany measuring cups in the US are glass, and have both imperial and metric measurements marked.  Funnily enough, I've gotten used to the metric measurement because I'm left handed, and the metric measurements are on what would be the \"opposite\" side for a right handed pourer.", "The American \"cup\" (also used in Liberia) is a fixed measure of volume. To you Europeans, it's about 2 1/3 deciliters - though it's very frequently rounded up to 2.5 dL in your recipes. It's also a little confusing because a coffee \"cup\" is 5 fluid ounces (1.5 dL), and a British imperial \"cup\" is 9.6 fluid ounces (2.8 dL).\n\nAnyway, prior to standardization -- such as it is -- the \"cup\" was a handy way in much of the world to measure ingredients. Everyone had one and if you used the same size cup throughout your baking, you'd always have the proper ratio of ingredients even if you had no idea what the actual volume of the cup was. It also eliminated the need for a scale and weights (which would have been somewhat bulky, and kind of pricey).", "You need to double check if you see 'cup' in a recipe, usually if it's an American recipe intended for household use it will refer to a customary cup. (approx 237 ml) but if it's for an industrial process or large-scale catering they may use a US legal cup (240 ml) and if it's a British recipe using imperial measurements it will have British Imperial Cups (284 ml). The difference between the two US versions are negligible, so shouldn't make a difference in cooking, not even in baking, but the British one is different enough to cause problems in recipes calling for accuracy if you confuse them. It happens quite often that recipe books and websites translate the terms across the pond as if they were the same when they are not and that can mess with ratios if a mixture of units are used.   ", "Alton Brown explained in his Cupcake episode that cup size measurements came from American colonists not having fancy scales to weigh things with. So recipes came to be in cups which were more easily obtained. I don't know if this is apocryphal or not.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g92zg", "title": "What is the most interesting protein you know of?", "selftext": "I once heard how influenza has a sort of knife--grappling hook protrusion made out of alpha helices that swings out and sticks into the cell wall when the pH changes. I don't know if that one is accurate. What else do you know about?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g92zg/what_is_the_most_interesting_protein_you_know_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1ltw2q", "c1lu9ar", "c1lucth", "c1lulre", "c1lumlr", "c1luyhj", "c1luz4z", "c1lvdph"], "score": [5, 3, 15, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["[PKM zeta](_URL_0_)\n\nI guess I'm biased because I work on this one :)", "Good ole GFP doesn't stop amazing me.", "My top three:\n\n1. [ATP Synthase](_URL_0_)-This is literal rotary motor in your cells that turns a H^+ gradient into chemical energy by pushing bonds close to eachother. (And changing the binding environment)\n\n2. [Heat shock proteins](_URL_2_)- These are little molecular barrels which collect mis-folded proteins and give them a chance to refold, they even have lids!\n\n3. [Myosin motors](_URL_1_)- This class of proteins is how most large scale movement happens in your body. There is a lot of actin, myosin, and micro filaments in your body. Myosin motors (and similar proteins) use ATP energy to literally **walk** down these cytoskeleton elements to cause muscle contraction, deliver, compounds to the right areas in cells, and even to bend actin filaments to be cut during LTP.", "[GroEL](_URL_1_) and [Proteasomes](_URL_0_)", "Rubisco, anyone?  Not particularly functionally awesome, but crazy for its prevalence.", "Prions in general impress me.", "I'm not exactly captivated by its function, but [Sonic Hedgehog](_URL_0_) has the most interesting name.", "DNA polymerase- a very elegant protein indeed. Also other proteins that are involved in DNA replication as well :)\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/70519/title/Enzyme_revives_long-term_memories"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YndC0gS3t6M&amp;feature=related", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ9ffKeUCvE", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26829/?rendertype=figure&amp;id=A1105"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteasome", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GroEL"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jtmOZaIvS0&amp;feature=related"]]}
{"q_id": "4cjw63", "title": "order of operations in math (bodmas, bedmas)", "selftext": "eg. 2+2x2 = 6\n\nI know the proper order of operations but WHY are they done in that order? There must be a better reason than \"because otherwise you'll get the wrong answer\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cjw63/eli5_order_of_operations_in_math_bodmas_bedmas/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1iud26", "d1iudij", "d1iufxi", "d1iug07", "d1iuk7d", "d1ius2p", "d1iz3rf", "d1izsfk", "d1j0504", "d1j0cr8", "d1j0fpg", "d1j0npl", "d1j0p59", "d1j348l", "d1j7fht", "d1j83ft"], "score": [3, 2, 13, 138, 42, 233, 58, 2, 24, 4, 6, 2, 2, 4, 5, 2], "text": ["The truth? Most of it is completely arbitrary. Obviously parentheses make sense to be worked out first, but the rest of it is just so everybody will try to do the math problem the same. If you take enough math you figure out that most of the operations rules are there to minimize the amount of actual writing your professor has to do to teach a lecture. ", " > There must be a better reason than \"because otherwise you'll get the wrong answer\"\n\nNope, not really. A long long time ago it was decided the order would be that way so that when given any equation everybody would get the same result. Just like there's no scientific reason a wedding ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand.", "You can see it in action with real world examples.\n\nFor example, you buy 3 cokes for $2 each, 4 candy bars for $1.50 each, and 5 cupcakes for $3 each. How much are you spending altogether? You know here that you *must* do the multiplication first.\n\n\nI think it boils down to what these operations represent. Multiplication is repeated addition. So if you break down the above problem, you have 2 + 2 + 2 + 1.50 + 1.50 ... etc. There is truly only one right way to do it.\n\nI disagree that it's arbitrary.", "So, this has nothing fundamental to do with mathematics, it's entirely just to do with how you write things.  You could choose different rules for how to write and the math would be exactly the same.  It's like asking why a word is spelled one way instead of another.  There's a historical reason, but it could just as easily be another way and it wouldn't break anything.\n\nThat said, I don't know that anyone knows exactly why we ended up with the notation we did.  One could guess that it comes from things like calculating goods.  If you have to write that you sold 3 apples at 4 dollars each, 10 bananas at 2 dollars each, and a cake at 20 dollars, it's nice to be able to write that as\n\n    3*4 + 10*2 + 1*20\n\nThat's just a guess, though.", "Essentially, it's an arbitrary choice of ordering that the mathematics world has standardized on. So long as everyone writes and reads using the same order, we can accurately communicate mathematical concepts.\n\nUltimately what we want to convey here isn't a linear list of symbols but an *expression tree* that says what operations to apply to what numbers in what order. It looks like this:\n\n       +\n     /   \\\n    2     x\n         /  \\\n        2    2\n\nThe \"normal\" way we write down this tree is called \"infix notation\". You start from the top of the tree, write the part on the left branch, then the operator at the top and then the right branch. But the problem is that this infix notation is ambiguous. \"2+2x2\" could also be a way to write the tree\n\n           x\n         /   \\\n       +      2\n      / \\\n     2   2\n\nwhich does not have a value of 6 and is not what we want to communicate.   \nBEDMAS gets around the ambiguity of infix notation by creating invisible parentheses so that \"2+2x2\" is read as \"2+(2x2)\" by convention, and that unambiguously means the first expression tree. \nBEDMAS itself was chosen mainly because it allows us to write polynomials compactly.\n\nStill, there are other solutions to the problem of writing expression trees compactly and linearly. For instance you can use [\"postfix notation\" - write first the left part of the tree, then the right, then the operation](_URL_0_). This way you always know what two things each operator works on, without needing BEDMAS as a crutch to disambiguate. The first tree would then be written down as \"2 2 2 x +\", while the second tree is \"2 2 + 2 x\". ", "It's not purely arbitrary. There's a logic behind it.   \nFirst off there's the brackets, this has to be first because this is how you force an equation to do what you want and override the other rules,if it was after then you'd lose the ability to do something.   \n  \nNext is exponentiation, multiplication and division.  \nThis group of three are all united under the banner of product actions.  \nThings that multiply and divide. The order actually doesn't matter for multiplication and division.  \n\nAfter that there's addition and subtraction.  \nAgain the order of addition/subtraction doesn't matter.   \nSo we'll put them under the banner of sums.  \n  \nSo why are products given priority over sums?  \nThis is one of those things that mathematicians the world over and throughout history have sort of silently agreed with one another. The best suspicion is that all products of sums can be rewritten as the sum of products.  \nEG: you can write (A+3) x (B+5) as (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5), but notice how many more brackets are in the second one.   \nIf you made sums have precedence over products, you could write (A+3) x (B+5) as A+3 x B+3, but then you have to write (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5) once you expanded it out.      \nNow if you put products before sums (A+3) x (B+5)  stays the same but (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5) becomes AB+3B+5A+5B, it's so obvious you don't even need the 'x' symbol anymore and you save time writing parenthesis.  \n\nSo why exponentiation before multiplication?  \nSimilar book keeping reasons. Exponentiation is basically A^2 = AxA. And the product of sums for (A+1) x (2A+1) = 2(A^2 )+(2xA)+(Ax1)+(1x1).  \nBut the situations where you want to multiply before exponentiating come up less frequently then quadratic equations and such, at least to early mathematicians, so they just save the brackets and write 2A^2 +2A+A+1    \n   \n#TL:DR math people are kinda lazy/efficient, they came up with this because it takes less time to write it down that way.", "Is it not PEMDAS anymore? I learned PEMDAS, when did it change?", "It's a syntax more than a rule. Common interpretation of equations. \n\nInstructions on how to read (and write) formulae.", "The reason the order is the way it is come from two facts: first, everything can be expressed as addition if you were crazy; and second, we have already defined our operations. The order of operations solves everything from the top-down so the final evaluation is all the result of addition.\n\nRecall that subtraction, say 4-2, can be expressed as 4+(-2); this makes it of the same priority as addition. This allows us to see why 4-3+2 is the same as 4+2-3. (That is 4+(-3)+2 = 4+2+(-3).)\n\nLikewise, multiplication can be expressed as repeated addition. The statement 4x5 can be expressed as either 5+5+5+5 or 4+4+4+4+4. These sums will both be equal to 20, as will the product. In order to \"undo\" multiplication, we define division, which can be expressed as repeated subtraction. (And subtraction can be rewritten as addition!)\n\nFinally, exponents express repeated multiplication. The statement 3^4 can be rewritten as 3x3x3x3. This, in turn can be written\n\n(3x3x3)+(3x3x3)+(3x3x3)\n\n=[(3x3)+(3x3)+(3x3)]+[(3x3)+(3x3)+(3x3)]+[(3x3)+(3x3)+(3x3)]\n\nand so on.\n\nParentheses are used to \"force\" a given operation to be performed first. This merely treats everything in the parentheses as a single number. The expression 8x(2+3) evaluates to 40 because we can say 8x(2+3) = 8x5 = 40 or (2+3)+(2+3)+(2+3)+...+(2+3) [repeating eight times] = 40.\n\nIn the end, we're just expressing lots of addition as much simpler expressions and adding everything up in the end.", "Following on from what other people said, it's just grammar for maths.\n\nThe difference between 2+2x2 and (2+2)x2 is similar to the difference between 'we're going to eat, grandma' and 'we're going to eat grandma' essentially we're getting the same information, but where we need to focus what we're doing is where the 'grammar' is (or lack of).", "I was taught it was PEMDAS. So who's right?", "Brackets have to come first because that's our way of breaking the rules.\n\nExponentials are a shorthand for repetitive multiplication. eg. 3^5 = 3x3x3x3x3\n\nMultiplication are a shorthand for repetitive addition. eg. 5*4 = 5+5+5+5\n\nDivision is just inverse multiplication, and subtraction is negative addition.\n\nNaturally, exponentials are on a higher level than multiplication and division, which are on a higher level than addition and subtraction. That's why the convention is to operate on them in BEDMAS.", "If it's arbitrary like all the other answers are saying, couldn't we do it differently and still get the same result? \n\nAs a matter of fact, yes! See [Polish Notation](_URL_0_). Basically, the middle most operator works on the two middlemost numbers, and both proceed to opposite ends. \n\n-+/4 2 7 3\n\nIs the same as\n\n((4/2)+7)-2\n\nThe way we do it is just a notational convenience. ", "Maybe others have explained it better, but to me multiplying is just glorified adding. Which would mean that\n\n    2 + 2 x 2 = 2 + (2 + 2) = 6\n\nThis means you have to solve the multiplication first inorder for things to make sense. Let's have another example\n\n    10 + 5 x 5\n\nNow if you think that 5 x 5 is just (5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5) then you have to count it first, otherwise you would end up with (15 x 5) which would be (5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5)\n\nSame with division it's just glorified substraction.\n\nThis might just be dumb and someone probably explained it better, but just my two cents", "As a sidenote, most computers handle this stuff in a Reverse Polish style (on the insides. The parts we see are standard notation).  That looks like the following:\n\n1 4 3 + *\n\nWhich is equivalent to:\n\n1 * (4 + 3)\n\nIn this notation, there *is* no relevant order of operation. All that matters is the order of the terms. To read it, you basically do the following:\n\nfor each item in formula (left to right):\n\n1. If the item is a number, put it on a stack\n2. If the item is an operator, remove two items from the stack, perform that operation, and put the result back\n\nSo in the example I gave, it would go like this:\n\nInput | What do you do? | Stack\n---|---|----\n1 | Push 1 to stack | [1,]\n4 | Push 4 to stack | [1, 4,]\n3 | Push 3 | [1, 4, 3,]\n+ | Pop 2. Push (x + y) | [1, 7,]\n* | Pop 2. Push (x * y) | [7,]\nNone | Return result | 7\n", "The precedence of operations is entirely arbitrary from a mathematical perspective, there's no good reason to choose one ordering of operations over another.\n\nHowever, there are practical reasons. When you get into algebra and you have to write equations like:\n\n    a*x1+b*x2+c*x3\n\n...it would be a real hassle to have to write:\n\n    (a*x1)+(b*x2)+(c*x3)\n\n...all the time. Soon, an alternative shorthand would develop anyway to make these expressions more tersely represented (as often happens in mathematics...check out bra-ket notation or how tensors are represented)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation?wprov=sfla1"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3pijq2", "title": "why is turboprop aircraft obsolete in commercial but not military aviation?", "selftext": "Title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pijq2/eli5_why_is_turboprop_aircraft_obsolete_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw6kqhw", "cw6l4t2", "cw6lib3", "cw6mk0k", "cw6svsz", "cw6sz7v", "cw77lnu"], "score": [27, 2, 10, 6, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Why do you think turboprops are obsolete in commercial aviation? Westjet recently bought a fleet of Bombardier Q400 turboprops for short-haul flights. They fly at considerably slower speeds than commercial jets, however, which would explain why they're less popular. I would argue though, that they aren't obsolete.", "Propeller aircraft move slower than jets. This is rarely a plus for civil aviation but there are many military applications where flying slower is a plus. ", "The other answers here are totally correct, but another important thing to note is that jet engines are most efficient at high speeds and high altitudes.  Turboprops are most efficient at low speeds and low altitudes.  \n\n\nI used to do search and rescue in C-130s which used a turboprop so it was important to be able to fly low and slow for a long period of time.  There is no reason for commercial aviation aircraft to fly low and slow unless they are very near an airport.\n\nedit: weird spacing", "There are places jet aircraft just can't get into.  Grass landing strips in the middle of the jungle, short runways, crap terrain.  Bush pilots in Super Cubs and ancient DC-3's will exist until they can't round up parts anymore.  Buffalo Airways up north still runs piston radial DC-3's in cargo and passenger service.   There are a bunch of old Convair 440's (or some derivative) that make daily flights to the Caribbean from Florida every day.", "Turbofan engines used on passenger jets have a few advantages over turboprop engines. They don't generate as much noise, they are mechanically very simple and therefore very reliable, they have a higher primary efficiency (more engine power for the fuel used), and they are very compact, causing less drag. \n\nAll this makes them ideally suited for passenger traffic: They are efficient at high altitude and speed, and they cause less issues with residents close to airports.\n\nTurboprops lose out on all these points. They are larger and heavier, have more moving parts, are noisy, and have lower primary efficiency. For an aircraft designed to land and take off in civilian areas, travel at high speed and cruising altitude, and to have low operating costs, turbofans are simply better.\n\nHowever, they have one huge advantage: They have more thrust relative to engine power. Jet aircraft are terribly inefficient when they are not flying at cruising altitude, particularly during take-off. A turboprop with equal power might not reach the same altitude and cruising speed, but it will need a shorter runway and less fuel to take off, and is far more efficient when flying at low altitude and speed. This is a big advantage for military transport planes, as well as for short range passenger aircraft.", "As others have mentioned, they are not obsolete in commercial aviation.\n\nThe difference is that different engines work better in different situations.\n\nImagine that the different engine types are olympic athletes.  The jet engine is the sprinter, capable of high speeds and high altitudes, it gets where you want to go in a flash.  The turbo-prop engine is the marathon runner- it's not trying to go faster than everyone, or higher than everyone, but it can keep on trucking at lower altitudes and speeds that are its ideal environment.\n\nSure, the sprinter could compete in a marathon, but he will have trouble doing as well as a marathon runner would.", "KC-130J electrician here. Turbo-props are wonderful for shorter take offs and landings while still having the thrust to haul a lot of cargo. I am a Marine and we use them for midair refueling, cargo, and personnel transport.  They are rugged and reliable with the \"J\" model being the most recent upgrade to a plane that has been around for over 60 years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "54vjy5", "title": "[Physics] Would there be any benefit to a space mission hitching a ride on an asteroid?", "selftext": "From mainly an energy/fuel perspective would there be a benefit to a spaceship/land being launched from earth, landing on an asteroid when it passes nearby and then waiting until the asteroid is near some other interesting planet, and then launching itself off the asteroid to land on the planet?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54vjy5/physics_would_there_be_any_benefit_to_a_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d85cpmr", "d85ijlz", "d865tu7"], "score": [23, 2, 2], "text": ["If you just want to land on it but still live in your spaceship there is no benefit of doing this to save fuel. You will need as much fuel to match speed with the asteroid as you would need to simply coast to your destination. In fact you will almost certainly need more since you will spend fuel landing, and it's unlikely that an asteroid would have the exact trajectory you want.\n\nThe situation it can be useful is if you can make use of the asteroid materials. You could for example dig a sizable habitat there so don't you don't have to carry a habitation module on the spaceship. Another possibility is turning some of the material of the asteroid into fuel.\n\nThis kind of idea is often also discussed in the context of a [cycler](_URL_0_) where a big ship with living quarters, radiation shielding, greenhouses, etc is sent on a trajectory between Earth and Mars (for example) and smaller ones are used to shuttle people to and from Earth/Mars. ", "The short version is no, it would not save fuel.\n\nTo land match velocity with the asteroid would take about as much fuel as just taking the same trajectory without the asteroid present (landing and then taking off would require even more fuel). And if the asteroid isn't on the exact most efficient to trajectory, which it almost never would be, it is better to just go it alone on a more efficient flight path.\n\nWhat would work in principle is a gravity assist, but those don't tend to be worth it without a big mass, and most asteroids just won't be worth it. Gravity assisted trajectories pretty much always cover more distance for less fuel, but take more time than direct transfer trajectories. Using an asteroid will still require a long trajectory, but won't save as much fuel as using a planet for the gravity assist.", "Not particularly. Everything in space is in freefall, just coasting. There's a tendency to think of things in motion as constantly exerting force to maintain speed, due the familiar examples from our life on Earth, where friction and gravity are omnipresent, and things invariably slow down without continuous effort. In space things will just travel forever and ever with no work exerted. In order to \"hitch a ride\" on an asteroid you'd have to match speeds with it, which destroys any advantage of a ride. You could, potentially, cross paths with an asteroid and be impacted by it, giving your spacecraft a nudge, but that seems a dubious method of propulsion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5e4d1a", "title": "why do, sometimes, we simply forget what we were going to do when we go to another room of the house?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e4d1a/eli5_why_do_sometimes_we_simply_forget_what_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da9ms0a", "daa47fp", "daa7b5i", "daa8ut9", "daae2nt"], "score": [326, 21, 32, 3, 3], "text": ["They've done some SCIENCE on this and it turns out whenever you cross some kind of threshold, like a doorway, your brain does a kind of reset. This is presumably so when you leave your house you need to start being aware of lions or whatever.\n\n_URL_0_", "Or as you enter the door of the supermarket\n\n\"What the hell did I come in for?\"", "The doorway effect I think it's called. I remember looking it up a while ago so I don't remember the specifics. It's basically that you take a mental image of your surroundings when you have a thought, about anything, and you associate the two with each other. So when you walk into a different environment, and your mind has strayed slightly from what your doing, it's easy to completely forget as your brain doesn't match the environment with the thought you had in the previous place.\n\nIt's why people walk back into the room they had the thought and often remember what it is they were thinking of. It's kind of strange that people so commonly do that and most likely don't even know why they do it and how it helps them.\n\nEdit:\n\nAaaaand I'm late to the party.", "memory works  by association with the 3D space around you.\n\ntop memory folks build \"memory palaces\" with objects / ideas in them to remember as a physical space.\n\nLSD can have little or no effect if you sit in one spot before ingesting and stay there ... but when you move it will \"kick in.\"\n\ni don't buy the threshold theory, I think any single room point of view suffices. if you move from one room to an identical room the same thing doesn't happen", "It's because of the Silence and since you don't have a marker all the time you never realize it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.livescience.com/17132-forget-walked-room-doorways-blame-study-finds.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9m8umf", "title": "When Hippocrates said, \"Let Food Be Thy Medicine,\" there wasn't much in the way of processed foods to make unhealthy choices with, so what foods were people making themselves sick with, and what were viewed at the medicinal foods?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9m8umf/when_hippocrates_said_let_food_be_thy_medicine/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7dbi3i"], "score": [126], "text": ["Ah, I think I can help with contextualizing this some. I have to get two things out of the way that rustle my jimmies first.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFirst is the phrase \"Hippocrates said\". While there almost certainly was an historical Hippocrates, he almost certainly did not write most of -- or even all -- of the works of the Hippocratic Corpus. Modern historiography suggests that they were rather written by a group of doctors, for a variety of different audiences, over a considerable amount of times. Of course, it's impossible to write about the history of medicine without talking about the Hippocratic Corpus, so I try to use phraseology like \"the Hippocratics,\" though even this probably suggests a more coherent group than they actually were.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy second jimmy-rustler if you quote, which is apocryphal ([_URL_0_](_URL_1_)) though widespread. That being said, the sentiment is SIMILAR to what the Hippocratics meant, though they would disagree with the way the quote is used.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTo understand this quote, you need to understand the ancient conception of disease. Traditional Western medicine is similar to modern medicine in that it accepts that disease is caused by natural, and not supernatural causes (the classic example is \"On the Sacred Disease\", about epilepsy), but their understanding of its etiologies and noslogy is super bizarre to moderns. Human health was thought to be caused by the four humors -- blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances of these humors. Breakdown of the humors could be healthy (ie, concotion, or pepsis) -- such as what happens when urine is made. Or breakdown could be unhealthy (sepsis), such as digestion in the gut, though sepsis was also associated with the formation of new life. The life of a human was intimately linked with nature, so the environment dramatically affected the make up of the humors -- living on the second floor was associated with cooler air, and phlegmatics; swampy areas associated with black bile and melancholics. Temperature, of course, was essential; different humors were hot and cold. And I'm sure you can see where this is going -- different foods affected different humors. I'm certainly no specialist on this, but there's a ton in the Hippocratic Corpus if you want to do some googling, and Galen, Avicenna, and plenty of other authors have their opinions about the humoral influences of different foods.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut here is why I find the apocryphal quote disingenuous (or at least how it is used) -- the Hippocratics, Galen, and traditional Western medicine would have felt that the importance of diet was mostly to MAINTAIN a healthy balance of humors, not to treat disease. This makes sense practically too -- there are few effective treatments in this era, and prevention makes the most sense. When a human is diseased, and the humors are unbalanced, then it is the time to use medical treatments such as blood letting, or medicines (the materia media, largely herbal medications, some of which are either used today, or their derivatives are). The Hippocratics would not have felt that \"food is thy medicine\"; rather, they would have felt that food, along with the climate, elevation, and temperature, are essential to countering natural imbalances in the humors and maintaining good health. When that health broke down, however, medicine was still essential.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI recommend taking a look at Epidemics I and III -- my favorite books in the Hippocratic Corpus. They are very short, and basically the medical journal of a traveling Greek doctor. You can see many of the treatments that were offered to these patients.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo tying back to my second peeve about this quote -- it is pulled out by supporters of \"fad diets\" to suggest that radical diets are somehow an ancient idea to treat disease (which is a silly point in and of itself; there are plenty of ancient ideas for treating disease that we've rightly given up on). It annoys me as someone who loves medical history because the idea is an anachronism that ignores the humoral context, and it annoys me even more as a doctor because it dramatically overplays our understanding of nutrition, and downplays the effectiveness of medications.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI hope that adds some context!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258099432\\_Let\\_not\\_thy\\_food\\_be\\_confused\\_with\\_thy\\_medicine\\_The\\_Hippocratic\\_misquotation", "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258099432_Let_not_thy_food_be_confused_with_thy_medicine_The_Hippocratic_misquotation"]]}
{"q_id": "50xvlp", "title": "how did early highway builders know if they were building their roads in the right direction/angle?", "selftext": "I can't even walk straight without a point of reference. How did early highway builders know that their curves and angles would get them to exactly where they needed to be? Did they have an overhead helicopter supervising or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50xvlp/eli5_how_did_early_highway_builders_know_if_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d77sh9w", "d77tg93", "d77tlc5"], "score": [13, 5, 5], "text": ["You ever see those guys along the side of the road with a tripod and a bunch of flags and stakes?\n\nThey're surveyors. It's their job to make sure things like roads are *exactly* where they are supposed to be. They take sightings, and then do the math. A little trigonometry and a good [theodolite](_URL_0_) can get you an incredibly exact measurement.", "You don't need to be complicated. If you drive a stick down in the ground and attach a string on it, that string will run in a straight line if you pull it hard and attach it to another stick. Primitive but damn efficient.\n\nEver seen one of those instruments on a tripod that are manned all the time that are accompanied by someone else with a long stick that walks around a lot.\n\nThe optical instrument is, among other things, a very exact scope with a crosshair. The stick is a ruler with easy-to-see markings. In the scope is also an optical reading that gives the distance to the stick (remember how I said that the stick has reading that are easy to see? They only are if you focus properly with the scope) so now you also know the distance between the scope and the points. Compare two points and write down the markings on the stick and you know the height of three points (including the one you are standing on with the scope) and while you are at it the tripod also tells you the direction you point it, which gives that you know the angle between the points.\n\nYou have effectively given yourself enough knowledge to calculate distance and establish if the height difference between the points is the preferred one.\n\nYou can do the exact thing with more precise laser equipment and you can use positioning satellites and a very exact receiver.\n\nThe entire road will be built with a lot of reference points. Someone walks around a lot with an instrument and writes things like +5, -2, 0 (which translates to add five, remove two or keep) on the ground at regular intervals so that he machine operators can see where to add some dirt and where to shave some off.\n\nIf you want to make it more advanced you set up a reference radio beacon that all the machinery listen to and combine with gps positioning, and run all of the reference points as data lists where the machine helps you and gives you a constant reading on a display in front of you. Costs a lot, but the machine operator can do his job better if he had less guesswork.\n\nEDIT: ...if you attach it to another STICK.", "Surveyors and cartographers.\n\nCartographers are the people who draw maps. These maps usually have measurements on them allowing the reader to know what direction they need to be travelling.\n\nSurveyors are the people you see on the side of the road with the two tripods set up several hundred feet apart.\n\nWhen they begin building the road they survey and create a straight line according the maps available through cartographers. These lines are not always straight which is why some roads seem to have random curves. But for the most part they only needed to go in a general direction to meet up with another road.\n\nFun fact - They set up the 49th parallel as the border between the USA and Canada. In an attempt to mark the border quickly, they sent teams of surveyors out with minimal equipment resulting in the border being a zigzag instead of a straight line. This line sometimes goes off course several hundred meters before returning to course."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodolite"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "iaw8b", "title": "I've heard the human hearing works logarithmically, if this is true, which base do we hear in?", "selftext": "I suspect maybe the word logarithm is being used liberally, but if not, shouldn't we be able to determine the base of the logarithm?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iaw8b/ive_heard_the_human_hearing_works_logarithmically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c22akri", "c22b29y", "c22b2ce", "c22b2pc"], "score": [31, 3, 5, 4], "text": ["[It doesn't matter](_URL_0_). Changing bases is just a multiplicative scale that's constant for the two bases. That being said, decibels are a base 10 logarithm.", "Are you talking about the basilar membrane? How exactly your ear and associated neurons transmit wavefunctions is still up for debate, but I think you're looking for [The Place Theory of Hearing](_URL_0_).  \n\nPerhaps this page from [The Physics of Sound](_URL_1_), 3rd Ed. by Berg and Stork will help  \n\n\"An important experimental observation is that, over the entire range of audible frequencies, two tones separated by an interval of one octave (a factor of 2 in frequency) excite regions equally spaced along the basilar membrane, slightly over 3.5mm. [Talks about looking at a graph] The curve in [graph] is not linear, because equal distances along the vertical axis [*distance from base*] do not correspond to equal frequency intervals but rather to octaves, that is, equal frequency *ratios*. The full range of human hearing, 20 Hz to 20kHz, encompasses just under ten octaves; the full length of the basilar membrane of about 3.5 cm is divided into ten approximately equal intervals of one octave, each about 3.5mm in length.\"  -page 149  \n\nNot enough? Perhaps this will sate you (its the next part of the same passage!)  \n\n\"It is interesting to note that musical intervals \"sound\" the same irrespective of the pitch of the pitch level at which they are sounded. For identical musical intervals (at any pitch level) the physical spacings along the basilar membrane are approximately equal. It thus appears that the most important factor in determining how a musical interval between two pure tones sounds is the spacing along the basilar membrane of the points that respond to the two tones.\"\n", "As Shavera said, the base of your logarithm is completely interchangeable. All logarithms change the frequency layout to a \"linear\" one, the base just changes the slope.\n\nIt is definitely a meaningful use of the word \"logarithm\" though. Pitch sensitive areas are laid out in your brain in a log-linear fashion, just noticeable differences is pitch scale exponentially with frequency.", "As an audiovisual engineer, I can answer this one. Our hearing is variant for various \"loudness\" (measured in dB-SPL, or sound pressure level measured in decibels) and frequencies(measured in Hz.) It really depends on what you want to hear. For example, hearing intelligible speech requires a difference of 10-20 db-SPL between your target and the background noise. This is how a lot of office privacy systems seem to work. If you can never quite hear other people in a \"quiet\" office, it's because there is a sound system preventing you from hearing by broadcasting noise (usually white or pink) at a level that's just close to the normal talking volume of someone who's behind a cubicle. True, actual silence means you can hear your own blood in your ears. It's rare to find that level of silence in today's society. As you grow older, you start to lose hearing off the top of your hearing range. I can't hear any sounds above 17kHz anymore without really concentrating, so it's really hard for me to understand women, especially in loud venues. I tend to avoid them for this reason.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm#Change_of_base"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_theory_%28hearing%29", "http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Sound-3rd-Richard-Berg/dp/product-description/0131457896"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "lw19x", "title": "How much energy would it take to completely stop an ocean current? ", "selftext": "Specifically the Gulfstream.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lw19x/how_much_energy_would_it_take_to_completely_stop/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2w1xea", "c2w2jx4", "c2w4g7m", "c2w1xea", "c2w2jx4", "c2w4g7m"], "score": [2, 7, 2, 2, 7, 2], "text": ["All the world's oceanic currents are connected in one large system. As a result in order to stop the gulfstream you would have to stop everything or at least alter it in some way which would require a massive amount of energy although I don't know exact values.\n_URL_0_", "A nearby gamma ray burst could flash boil all of the water on the planet, effectively stopping the current forever. Here's hoping. *fingers crossed*\n\n\nedit: Please don't do that universe. I was only kidding. ", "The Coriolis effect may also keep the water moving (or start it afterwards)\nEffectively you might need to stop the earth spinning to stop it permanently\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n\nSo it depends if you are wanting it permanently stopped or just for a short time.", "All the world's oceanic currents are connected in one large system. As a result in order to stop the gulfstream you would have to stop everything or at least alter it in some way which would require a massive amount of energy although I don't know exact values.\n_URL_0_", "A nearby gamma ray burst could flash boil all of the water on the planet, effectively stopping the current forever. Here's hoping. *fingers crossed*\n\n\nedit: Please don't do that universe. I was only kidding. ", "The Coriolis effect may also keep the water moving (or start it afterwards)\nEffectively you might need to stop the earth spinning to stop it permanently\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n\nSo it depends if you are wanting it permanently stopped or just for a short time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/vlcsnap-324533.png"], [], ["http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/coriolis.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect"], ["http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/vlcsnap-324533.png"], [], ["http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/coriolis.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect"]]}
{"q_id": "lf6r4", "title": "how does the silencer on a gun work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lf6r4/eli5_how_does_the_silencer_on_a_gun_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2s6em7", "c2s6f5i", "c2s6igf", "c2s7efk", "c2s7muc", "c2s7vp3", "c2s8z2b", "c2s9ilc", "c2s6em7", "c2s6f5i", "c2s6igf", "c2s7efk", "c2s7muc", "c2s7vp3", "c2s8z2b", "c2s9ilc"], "score": [3, 149, 5, 31, 8, 3, 13, 2, 3, 149, 5, 31, 8, 3, 13, 2], "text": ["As far as I know its a series of chambers housed inside a piece of metal (that sits on the end of the gun) These chambers come in a variety of designs. But all work to the same end, which is that any gas emitted from the end of the gun, gets partially trapped inside and isn't emitted as quickly as it would be without the silencer\n\nThis fast release of gas from the end of the chamber, is what makes the noise, so making the release slower makes it quieter.\n\nThis comes from a guy with zero gun knowledge though so im probably wrong.", "A gun is loud for two reasons. \n\n1: any gun which fires a bullet which breaks the sound barrier is impossible to suppress without slowing the bullet. Part of the sound is the sonic boom created by the bullet breaking the sound barrier.\n\n2: The way that a gun fires is to create enough pressure behind the bullet the push it out the barrel of the gun. There are very hot gasses which expand very quickly. A suppressor (also known as a silencer) slows the expansion of the gas outside of the barrel. If you were to disassemble a suppressor, you would see it is basically a tube with small holes that feed into another chamber. By giving the gasses a slightly larger area to expand in, it allows the gas to expand and cool at a slower rate.", "I'll take a stab at this one. I've asked this question before, and this was roughly how it was explained to me. \n\nThe two things that are loudest when a gun is fired is the explosion of gases that follow the bullet as it exits the barrel, and the bullet creating a sonicboom as it breaks the sound barrier. A silencer slows down the bullet so that it doesn't break the sound barrier, and it also helps so that the gas explosion isn't as powerful. \n\nWith that said, you can make a gun even quieter by using subsonic (slower than sound) bullets to begin with, at the cost of having a shorter firing range.\n\nHope that helps", "When you pop a baloon it makes a loud bang sound, but when you slowly let the air out of it you only hear a slight hiss.  The suppressor (silencer) works on the same basic principle.  All the hot gases are vented from the barrel into the suppressor which has a series of chambers that allow the gas to expand before exiting the barrel.  This will significantly reduce the sound of the explosion.  However, if the bullet is travelling faster than the speed of sound the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier will still be heard.  The quietest guns use a subsonic bullet with a suppressor.", "Silencers, suppressors, moderators, regulators, cans whatever you want to call them...\n\nThey slow down the high pressure escaping gas from behind the bullet by forcing those gases into chambers.\n\nIt's not blocking sound or anything, it's just giving the gases a sealed chamber in which to normalize in pressure with the surrounding atmosphere, and therefore, no concussive bang or flash at the muzzle.\n\nSilencers are also very effective at getting rid of a lot of recoil because the escaping gasses are directed away from the direction of the muzzle.  A muzzle brake also reduces recoil by this principal.  [Here is a good demonstration of how a muzzle brake works](_URL_2_).  It's easier to imagine a suppressor as a super effective muzzle brake which is completely enclosed by the wall of the suppressor.\n\nLike other people have mentioned, if the bullet is travelling at supersonic speeds, then the bullet itself will create a very distinctive crack.  You can't get rid of that unless you slow the projectile down, but doing so means that you're losing a great deal of energy.\n\nHowever, guys who want to shoot ultra-quiet, make special subsonic loads.  Subsonic ammunition uses just enough powder to push the projectile to just under the speed of sound 1050 feet/sec is a safe benchmark for most altitudes.\n\nThere are specially designed cartridges which are design to deliver a huge amount of energy on target, but still keep the projectile going slower than the speed of sound.  [The best example of this is the .510 Whisper cartridge](_URL_4_).  [Another](_URL_1_).  It uses a smaller than normal cartridge casing behind a .50 caliber projectile normally found in the .50 BMG cartridge.  The [.510 Whisper](_URL_0_) is a pretty unique example of keeping it ultra-quite but having enough energy to be used for any long range applications.\n\nSo that's it.  Silencers are very effective firearm accessories which help make things safer for the shooter and the people around them.\n\n[Here is an x-ray image of your most typical suppressor designs](_URL_3_).", "\"Silencers\" (really suppressors: you can't make a gun totally silent for a lot of reasons) work a lot like a car's muffler.\n\nSound is the movement of air. Guns work by causing a controlled explosion, which pushes the bullet very fast, but also creates a lot of hot, fast-moving air; that fast-moving air is most of the loud sound of a gunshot.\n\nA supressor slows down as much of the \"extra\" air as it can, which muffles the sound \u2014 less moving air reaches your ears. \n\nThere are a few techniques. One is called a \"baffle\", which is like a maze the air has to escape through. The air slows down a little every time it has to make turns through the maze. Another is just to make a very big chamber so that the air decompresses some before it escapes: less pressure means it makes less of a \"popping\" sound.", "_URL_0_\nThis should help", "Just so you know, a silencer doesnt work like it is shown in the movies. Its not this faint pft sound, its just a less loud bang.", "As far as I know its a series of chambers housed inside a piece of metal (that sits on the end of the gun) These chambers come in a variety of designs. But all work to the same end, which is that any gas emitted from the end of the gun, gets partially trapped inside and isn't emitted as quickly as it would be without the silencer\n\nThis fast release of gas from the end of the chamber, is what makes the noise, so making the release slower makes it quieter.\n\nThis comes from a guy with zero gun knowledge though so im probably wrong.", "A gun is loud for two reasons. \n\n1: any gun which fires a bullet which breaks the sound barrier is impossible to suppress without slowing the bullet. Part of the sound is the sonic boom created by the bullet breaking the sound barrier.\n\n2: The way that a gun fires is to create enough pressure behind the bullet the push it out the barrel of the gun. There are very hot gasses which expand very quickly. A suppressor (also known as a silencer) slows the expansion of the gas outside of the barrel. If you were to disassemble a suppressor, you would see it is basically a tube with small holes that feed into another chamber. By giving the gasses a slightly larger area to expand in, it allows the gas to expand and cool at a slower rate.", "I'll take a stab at this one. I've asked this question before, and this was roughly how it was explained to me. \n\nThe two things that are loudest when a gun is fired is the explosion of gases that follow the bullet as it exits the barrel, and the bullet creating a sonicboom as it breaks the sound barrier. A silencer slows down the bullet so that it doesn't break the sound barrier, and it also helps so that the gas explosion isn't as powerful. \n\nWith that said, you can make a gun even quieter by using subsonic (slower than sound) bullets to begin with, at the cost of having a shorter firing range.\n\nHope that helps", "When you pop a baloon it makes a loud bang sound, but when you slowly let the air out of it you only hear a slight hiss.  The suppressor (silencer) works on the same basic principle.  All the hot gases are vented from the barrel into the suppressor which has a series of chambers that allow the gas to expand before exiting the barrel.  This will significantly reduce the sound of the explosion.  However, if the bullet is travelling faster than the speed of sound the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier will still be heard.  The quietest guns use a subsonic bullet with a suppressor.", "Silencers, suppressors, moderators, regulators, cans whatever you want to call them...\n\nThey slow down the high pressure escaping gas from behind the bullet by forcing those gases into chambers.\n\nIt's not blocking sound or anything, it's just giving the gases a sealed chamber in which to normalize in pressure with the surrounding atmosphere, and therefore, no concussive bang or flash at the muzzle.\n\nSilencers are also very effective at getting rid of a lot of recoil because the escaping gasses are directed away from the direction of the muzzle.  A muzzle brake also reduces recoil by this principal.  [Here is a good demonstration of how a muzzle brake works](_URL_2_).  It's easier to imagine a suppressor as a super effective muzzle brake which is completely enclosed by the wall of the suppressor.\n\nLike other people have mentioned, if the bullet is travelling at supersonic speeds, then the bullet itself will create a very distinctive crack.  You can't get rid of that unless you slow the projectile down, but doing so means that you're losing a great deal of energy.\n\nHowever, guys who want to shoot ultra-quiet, make special subsonic loads.  Subsonic ammunition uses just enough powder to push the projectile to just under the speed of sound 1050 feet/sec is a safe benchmark for most altitudes.\n\nThere are specially designed cartridges which are design to deliver a huge amount of energy on target, but still keep the projectile going slower than the speed of sound.  [The best example of this is the .510 Whisper cartridge](_URL_4_).  [Another](_URL_1_).  It uses a smaller than normal cartridge casing behind a .50 caliber projectile normally found in the .50 BMG cartridge.  The [.510 Whisper](_URL_0_) is a pretty unique example of keeping it ultra-quite but having enough energy to be used for any long range applications.\n\nSo that's it.  Silencers are very effective firearm accessories which help make things safer for the shooter and the people around them.\n\n[Here is an x-ray image of your most typical suppressor designs](_URL_3_).", "\"Silencers\" (really suppressors: you can't make a gun totally silent for a lot of reasons) work a lot like a car's muffler.\n\nSound is the movement of air. Guns work by causing a controlled explosion, which pushes the bullet very fast, but also creates a lot of hot, fast-moving air; that fast-moving air is most of the loud sound of a gunshot.\n\nA supressor slows down as much of the \"extra\" air as it can, which muffles the sound \u2014 less moving air reaches your ears. \n\nThere are a few techniques. One is called a \"baffle\", which is like a maze the air has to escape through. The air slows down a little every time it has to make turns through the maze. Another is just to make a very big chamber so that the air decompresses some before it escapes: less pressure means it makes less of a \"popping\" sound.", "_URL_0_\nThis should help", "Just so you know, a silencer doesnt work like it is shown in the movies. Its not this faint pft sound, its just a less loud bang."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/silcarts2.jpg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxFpah2X678", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5_nYEOvPNE", "http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/suppressor-x-ray.jpg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd1wuN-sag"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/nu06K.png"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/silcarts2.jpg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxFpah2X678", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5_nYEOvPNE", "http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/suppressor-x-ray.jpg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd1wuN-sag"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/nu06K.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "5godux", "title": "what are the negative effects of mass incarceration in the united states?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5godux/eli5_what_are_the_negative_effects_of_mass/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dattqfq", "datzpiv", "dauacng", "daub6ep"], "score": [16, 51, 2, 11], "text": ["Well, for one, taxpayers are paying to have someone housed, clothed, fed and protected. Who, at the end of their term, is unlikely to be able to get a good paying job due to being a felon and the negative stigma surrounding them. \n\nSo, in my eyes, we spend a lot of money to rehabilitate people who are largely unable to put themselves to good use afterwards.", "This question is so big I almost don't know where to begin. \n\nTo start we have to explain why private prisons boomed in the US and why we actually have mass incarceration. In the 70's the US started their campaign The War On Drugs. Since then our prison population has sky rocketed. In the 80's local, state, and federal governments could no longer afford the rising costs of the prison boom. Because of this in the 80's we also saw the beginning of a Private Prison boom across the US. \n\nWhy does it matter that we have private prisons? Corporations have fiduciary duty to be profitable for their share holders. So now we have prisons that do not care about rehabilitation, they only care about incarceration. The more prisoners they can warehouse in a single prison, the more money they make. The less \"amenities\" the prison offers to the prisoners, the more money the prison makes. And when people do get out, or die inside the prison then they need to be replaced to maximize profits.\n\nOk, so now we have a very basic view of why we have mass incarceration. Why is it so bad? Well the main driver of mass incarceration has been the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs was historically started by Richard Nixon as a way to oppress \"The Anti-War Left and black people.\" And it worked. Since the beginning of the war on drugs we have seen drug laws that disproportionately target poor people. I will leave this [clip](_URL_0_) of Eugene Jarecki's Documentary *The House I Live In* Here. If you have not seen the whole documentary I suggest that you do. \n\nDidn't all these people commit crimes? Yes, but because of the war on drugs we tailored our laws not to rehabilitate those in need of medical care, but instead chose to incarcerate them for generations. Do you have any idea what it does to the poor communities to have their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, etc... ripped out of their lives for decades?\n\nTo answer your original question. It has cost the taxpayers billions in keeping a failed system (the war on drugs) afloat in order to keep our prisons full. We have basically destroyed generations of families and communities for the profit of these prisons. Mass incarceration has bred hatred, mistrust, abuse of power, oppression, and division. It has mimicked slavery and fostered racism within our legal system. It is destructive and disgusting at its core.       ", "If you want the truth in a simple way that is entertaining to watch, watch these videos:\n\nAdam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything):\n- Adam Ruins Prison\n_URL_6_\n\nJohn Oliver (Last WEEK Tonight):\n- Prison: \n_URL_2_\n- Prisoner Re-entry: \n_URL_1_\n- Mandatory Minimums: \n_URL_5_\n- Municipal Violations: \n_URL_0_\n- 9-1-1:\n_URL_3_\n- Mental Health (if you watch it, you'll see why it's relevant):\n_URL_4_\n(I'm trying to make this into a bullet point list, but I don't know how to do it since I'm new here\n", "The US prison system is one of the worst in the developed western world. \n\nFirst. There is this strange feedback loop from many prisons being private, rather than state owned. A state owned prison wants to minimise inmates because they area a cost to the state. A private prison wants to maximise the inmates because that maximises the profit. A state wants to encourage rehabilitation to prevent people from re-offending. A private prison wants as many people in there as often. If they re-offend, it's more likely that happens so rehabilitation isn't widely done. Note: The US is slightly different in this regard too. The US has a culture that does not focus on rehab and does not *want* to focus on rehab. For the most part the US people are happy with using prison as retribution/punishment only. That means no rehab is good politics, because that's what people want. Terrible policy, because it has worse outcomes. \n\nSecond (not unique to the US). Prison ingrains disadvantage, both for the individual and for the family. The person out of prison has no support network and limited job opportunities. How else are they supposed to afford things other than through crime? Let's say my father went to prison. Now my mother is on a single wage trying to raise a child with far less support (he's not paying much child support in prison). That tends to lead to poorer school results (for a variety of reasons) and worse social outcomes latter on. Education is the number one thing that has positive social benefits. Better job, better health, better life in general, less crime. Lack of education is correlated with the opposite. \n\nThe result of these is it creates entire communities who have poor outcomes *and* perpetuates those poor outcomes. Entire communities end up with high crime. That normalises crime and perpetuates it at a wider community level too. This isn't unique to the US. What is unique to the US the scale. The private system and mass incarceration has made more people enter the crime cycle and it harder to exit than other countries. In doing so it's disadvantaged many thousands of people and disadvantaged them beyond what most other prison systems do. \n\nEdit: \n\nI see people arguing against rehab. The issue with the American system having no rehab and being purely retributive is multifaceted. Consider what happens *after* the sentence. The prison sentence is supposed to serve as the crime. However, without any supportive framework and quite a few barriers in place, when they leave the US system the person has been set up for failure. The reason every other western country focuses on rehab as well is because it has better outcomes at 3 levels. Individual, population, economic. If the people repeat offend that increases the crime rate *over the entire population*. All things equal, no rehab makes you less safe, not more. The US has increased the police force markedly to combat this and still has significantly worse outcomes than many western nations. Which leads to economics. Rehab makes people less likely to be in prison, so the cost of the prison system is reduced *and* it also requires a smaller police force to maintain the same crime rate. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ4VFqXVrJE"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJtYRxH5G2k", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pz3syET3DY", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-XlyB_QQYs", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDVmldTurqk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSw1ROFmklE"], []]}
{"q_id": "1jteui", "title": "Why did St. Augustine so strongly condemn theater?", "selftext": "In his *Confessions*, Augustine repeatedly laments the time he spent going to shows as a young man, going so far as to call theaters \"filthy.\" Were plays much different in his time than they are now? \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jteui/why_did_st_augustine_so_strongly_condemn_theater/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbi7cgw", "cbi7mnl", "cbiaboy"], "score": [2, 26, 20], "text": ["I'm not sure I'm the one to give a full answer to this, but it does remind me of a later statement by 7th century Monastic leader St. John Climacus, from *The Ladder of Divine Ascent:*\n\n >  \u201cA man who has heard himself sentenced to death will not worry about the way theatres are run.\u201d\n\nIn that there is a similar negative attitude toward the theatre (the implication that a monk won't have time for such trivial matters) but the statement also hints that it's not worth \"worrying about,\" implying that others in the Christian discourse of his time *were* worrying about it. The statement could almost be read as a dig against Augustine, but Climacus was writing in Greek, and if I remember right Augustine wasn't translated into Greek til around the 14th Century.\n\nI can't speak as to what the actual theatres were like, but this does seem to me to show that there was a substantial segment of Christianity for whom the theare was to be avoided.", "Augustine saw in the audience's reception of a specific performance the proclivity for finding enjoyment or relief from apparent grief, sorrow, or anger. He viewed the audience as a somewhat passive vessel that would drink in a given performance and create a false emotion in themselves. This emotion could either be joy from sorrow, which is a perversion, or it could be a deepening of the sorrow already in the audience member.\nAugustine wrote from his personal perspective about the way in which theater affected him and, therefore, most of his viewpoints are tied into his own reactions to performance. In his Commentaries 3.2.4 he notes, \"In my wretchedness at that time I loved to feel sorrow, and I sought out opportunities for sorrow. In the false misery of another man as it was mimicked on the stage, that actor's playing pleased me most and had the strongest attraction for me which struck tears from my eyes.\"\n\nBy drinking in the false emotion of the actor, Augustine feels he is reinforcing an unhealthy desire in himself to further his own grief. \n\nThis concept of a false emotion also brings to mind the age-old dislike of the theater as an arena of counterfeit sincerity created by the mimicking of emotions. The very basic act of theatricality itself is a constant ability to lie well, to simulate. That basic falseness is what has caused theater to be considered a low art akin to prostitution at various points in history.", "/u/jud34 is right on point about what Augustine thought the effects of theatre attendance were, but there are some other reasons for him to come down fairly hard on attending the theatres which have to do with the politics of space in Roman Africa.\n\nTheatres were public works with distinctly pagan backgrounds that, alongside dramatic performances, would often be the locus of festivals to whatever local god the town owed devotion to. Granted, Augustine was not opposed to taking over pagan symbolism and pagan space, the Basilica churches were often just repurposed market spaces, but Augustine was only interested in claiming spaces that he felt could be repurposed. (He lays this out in De Doctrina Christiana book 1.) But there were certain things he saw as not worth it. Drama was one of those things. Non-Christian Rhetorical performances were another, and those happened just as, if not more often than dramatic performances. (This might be the reason why he doesn't see Aristotle's categories as useful. If he read Aristotle at all, scholars have differing opinions as to whether or not he did. Personally, I think it's doubtful.) If he his thinking of rhetorical performance then he'd much rather folks in Hippo come to *his* sermons as opposed to the rhetor down the street. There was more than a little competition there.\n\nI'd also encourage you to not look at the Confessions in the same way we might read an autobiography today. As beautiful as Augustine makes it he was not trying to simply put his experience to paper. He was trying to frame his life (parts of which were of questionable character) within his current role as Bishop of Hippo. He wrote it to be read, and so those jabs at things like womanizing, the Manicheans and the theatre all had more than a few rhetorical barbs. We are supposed to be convinced of his convictions, based on his recounting of his experience. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4daxwa", "title": "how come we always assume innocent until proven guilty unless it's a sex/rape thing? why was the entire internet on kesha's side against doctor luke?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4daxwa/eli5_how_come_we_always_assume_innocent_until/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1p9gvb", "d1p9h1m", "d1p9lro", "d1p9md8", "d1p9tsi", "d1pblao", "d1pbng1", "d1pcxu4", "d1per3b", "d1pkevs"], "score": [101, 2, 5, 55, 18, 32, 2, 21, 7, 7], "text": ["Because \"innocent until proven guilty\" is a legal concept about legal punishment, not some rule about talking on the internet or whatever stupid thing you are trying to make it. ", "In the eyes of the law, you're innocent until proven guilty\nIn the eyes of the public, you're guilty once accused.", "Innocent until proven guilty is only a legal thing. The court of public opinion however is uncontrollable and does what it wants.", "Or for that matter, look how militant some of the hate against James Deen was last year when that scandal broke. \n\nHonestly though, I think it comes down to the nature of rape, and the inherent difficulty in proving allegations either way.  It's not like murder, where the action itself it wrong, but instead the \"crime\" here depends upon the second party's willingness. \n\nThis can lead to a lot of confusion and gray areas, and muddies the waters quite a bit on definitive guilt.  If I put the moves on my wife tonight, and she's not really feeling it, but she doesn't actively tell me \"No\", and just lays there and lets it happen, some would say that I've committed rape.  I was never given a clear indication that she was not a willing participant, but she didn't want it.  \n\nMeanwhile I could hookup with some random chick at a club tonight, we've both had too much to drink, and wind up doing something that we might not normally have done.  I was just as drunk as her, but if she regrets the decision enough to file charges, I would inevitably be the one facing rape allegations. \n\nI'm not trying to weigh in on whether or not any of these actions are or are not rape, but hope to show just how unclear this issue can be.  It's almost like if I didn't take the time to get a written and notarized consent prior to the act, then it's questionable.  \n\nMeanwhile since the only crime here is the willingness of one or both parties, it can be extremely hard to prove in a court of law.  Therefore even if Keisha was raped, she's not likely to ever find justice in the legal system.  Therefore a lot of people will inherently support someone who makes a rape allegation, simply because it could have happened, but they'll never find justice. ", "\"Innocent util proven guilty\" is a legal concept and principle regarding needing a certain level of proof to punish people. It has nothing to do with the requirements of public opinion. The public is absolutely free to make whatever judgement they want with whatever level of proof they want to use. ", "For sex/rape, one of the biggest claimed issues is that it is under reported because people fear coming forward.  Why they fear is due a series of reasons, common ones include people will not believe them or that they were asking for it.  One current push, socially, to combat this is to 'believe the victim'.  The argument made is that if it is instilled in people that they will be believed, then more people will come forward and report rape.  This in turn will mitigate how under-reported the crime is.", "This happens with any crime, and it's because generally where there's smoke there's fire. The media and the public will almost always overwhelmingly conclude guilt in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately false accusations and prosecutional misconduct happen, which is why the standard of proof is so high in a trial.", "There is a stigma associated with rape victims that isn't associated with, say, burglary victims. Even though innocence remains presumed in criminal justice, society has chosen to err on the side of the victim with rape in the court of public opinion, and even to this day a large percentage of rapes (particularly rapes with male victims) aren't reported because they are considered embarrassing.", "Without discounting the seriousness of rape, our culture, with direct collusion of most of our media sources, has settled as truth the idea that many, if not a majority, of men have the potential to be a rapist/sexual abuser. The most glaringly obvious comparison would be the Duke Lacrosse team. The presumption of the court of public opinion at the outset was-this was a group of young, privileged, rape-culture stereotypes, so why WOULDN'T they be guilty? \n\nAdditionally, the gender-normative reaction to act in a protective way over women in general, especially someone we view to be \"young and vulnerable\". None of these observations satisfies the need for evidence to \"prove\" someone is guilty, but it does explain why we generally react the way we do. \n\nBesides, do you want to be the monster that questioned someone that is ultimately proven to be a victim? No, you do not.", "Your premise is incorrect, unfortunately. If someone says \"so-and-so hit me,\" we also believe them. If someone says \"someone broke into my house and stole stuff,\" we believe them.\n\nPresumption of innocence is only for the court of law. The court of public opinion has no such protections."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mpljf", "title": "how does hypnosis work? does a person who is easily hypnotized not have as much of a powerful brain as someone who isn't able to be hypnotized as easy or at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mpljf/eli5_how_does_hypnosis_work_does_a_person_who_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccbfdte", "ccbgkwq", "ccbicq6", "ccbiim1", "ccbjh4s", "ccbjru2", "ccbklzj", "ccbl1ls", "ccbv2ut"], "score": [61, 5, 48, 4, 21, 7, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["Hypnosis is largely misunderstood by a lot (perhaps even most) people.  Even by the experts it is not fully understood.\n\nIt involves taking a subject and working with them to open their mind to be more willing to accept and act on suggestions.  I cannot speak to the psychology or physiology of that interaction--I'm not a doctor.\n\nHowever, I can say, from having listened to a number of stage hypnotists, that it is an entirely voluntary act.  Hypnosis is not about the hypnotist taking control of a weak mind.  It's about the hypnotist guiding a person to bring their mind to a very specific state.  Thus, according to some hypnotists, it is actually *easier* to hypnotize \"smart\" people (I will leave the defining of \"smart\" as an exercise for the reader; most likely the key characteristic is that the individual has a good awareness, an ability to follow instructions, and an ability to \"let go.\").\n\nIt's also important to remember that a person under hypnosis still has quite a lot of voluntary control.  They cannot be made to go against their moral fiber or to ignore most basic instincts (\"you can't hypnotize someone to death\").  Also (for fans of the movie Office Space) if someone is put into hypnosis and then the hypnotist leaves then they will come out of hypnosis relatively quickly (as in within hours, as opposed to being in a semi-trance for the rest of their life).  Hypnotic triggers can be activated decades later, though (in some cases).", "As far as I know you have to 'accept' the hypnosis.  You're not meant resist it because the reason why you are being hypnotized is likely to get help i.e. hypnosis as a cure for irrational arachnaphobia.", "As a non-official expert on hypnosis ^^^and ^^^by ^^^that ^^^I ^^^mean ^^^a ^^^hypnofetishist \n \nREAL hypnosis is not at all like you might see in movies or stage(d) hypnosis. \n \nIt has nothing to do with someone's intelligence or mental power or whatever. It does not grant complete control over someone. It cannot make you do anything you already are not willing to do. Hypnosis basically allows you to relax and become \"suggestable\". That doesn't mean \"Will obey any suggestion\", it means that, when a suggestion is made by the hypnotist, your brain will consider the possibility of taking that action, as opposed to your normal inhibitions taking over and, for example, saying \"But that's embarassing!\". In the same sense, if someone were to hypnotize you and suggest that you do something that you would never in a million years do... you won't do it. That will usually cause you to snap out of trance, but even if you don't, you won't feel compelled to do something you absolutely would never do in the first place. \n \nSo, if you're told to think you're a chicken, and you start clucking, you probably don't care if it makes you look a little silly, especially since stage hypnosis has a sort of \"magic show\" feel and you're more inclined to accept silly commands. But if someone were to, for example, hypnotize you and tell you to have sex with them, unless you REALLY wanted to screw that person, you wouldn't do it.\n", "I have notes related to this topic so let me just post it here: \n\n**What is hypnosis?**\n\nIt is the ability, using verbal direction, to lead someone into an altered state of consciousness (it resembles daydreaming), during which time they are much more receptive to suggestion. Once in this state, the hypnotist can make either direct or indirect suggestions to help the subject to break damaging or undesirable habits, such as smoking, over eating, anxiety, etc. This is where hypnosis becomes hypnotherapy.\n\nThe actual mechanism that makes hypnosis work is quite difficult to\nquantify. Basically, the things that drive us and make us who we are, are\ndeeply embedded in our subconscious mind. We don\u2019t need to carefully\nthink about what we strongly agree or disagree with, what we love or\nhate, or strongly desire, it is \u201chard wired\u201d into our mind. Some of this\ncomes from personal experience, preference, and needs, and some from\nour childhood from direct commands or suggestions from our parents or\nauthority figures.\n\nNormally we process information via our 5 senses and our \u201chard wiring\u201d\nforms something termed the \u201ccritical censor,\u201d which acts as a kind of\nfilter to determine whether anything presented to us conforms with our\ndeepest beliefs. The critical censor decides whether or not to accept or\nreject the information presented to us. If it is accepted it is \u201cabsorbed\u201d\ninto our subconscious and becomes either accepted knowledge, a part of\nour belief system, a moral viewpoint, or an ambition/desire.\nInformation or commands that are at odds with our previously accepted\nknowledge, beliefs, morals, or desires are rejected by the critical monitor,\nand they have no effect on our behaviour or actions.\n\nThis can be explained quite nicely by Freudian psychology. The Id\n(subconscious) is the most powerful part of the mind, and it\nautomatically, and without our conscious realisation, contains our deepest\ndesires, and controls our behaviour. The Ego (rational, logical mind)\nanalyses information to see if it makes sense, before passing it onto the\nSuper Ego (critical censor). The Super Ego is like the gatekeeper to the\nsubconscious mind, it decides whether or not to accept the information,\ninstruction, command, and either sends it into the Id (subconscious)\nwhere it becomes a component of our behaviour, or rejects it out of hand.\n\nAll problem behaviour, like smoking for example, are habits that are\nembedded in our subconscious mind and have become a part of our image\nof who we are, this is why they are difficult to break. We all know that\nsmoking is bad for our health, but trying to make yourself stop is\nincredibly difficult \u2013 the command that your logical mind gives yourself\nis rejected by the critical censor and never makes it into the subconscious.\n\nThis is where hypnosis can help. By concentrating all of the subjects\nattention onto a single object, their critical censor is gradually subdued\nallowing the hypnotist to speak almost directly to the subconscious mind,\nand overcoming the problem of the suggestion not being accepted.\n\n**Common Misconceptions about hypnosis**\n\n*1) You can be hypnotized and do things against your will*\n\nThe simple fact is that although you subdue the critical censor and speak almost directly to the subconscious mind, people will not respond to suggestions that are against their most deeply held moral beliefs.\n\n*2) Under hypnosis you are unconscious*\n\nThis is not the case. Hypnosis is an altered state of mind in which the\nsubject is in a state similar to daydreaming. They are at all times\nconscious and aware and in control of what is happening to them, and can come out of hypnosis anytime that they choose.\n\n*3) Only weak minded people can be hypnotized*\n\nThe opposite is true. Generally more intelligent people are easier to\nhypnotise, possibly because they have a greater ability to inwardly\nvisualise and not be distracted by other thoughts.\n\n*4) You can get stuck in Hypnosis*\n\nThis is impossible, if the hypnotist dropped dead after inducing the trancethe subject would either come out of hypnosis by themselves or drift off to sleep.\n\n*5) You can be made to reveal embarrassing secrets*\n\nThis is false for the reasons given above. The subject is aware of what is happening and can not be forced to do things against their will.\n\n*6) If you can hear the Hypnotist you weren\u2019t hypnotised*\n\nPeople experience hypnosis in different ways. Hearing and remembering\nwhat the hypnotist said to you is completely natural, hypnosis is not\nsleep, it is an altered state of consciousness. Although your subject may not have felt hypnotised, the hypnotist can usually visually see the physical changes, and of course the subjects modified behaviour is the ultimate proof.", "Hypnotist here (on a hobby basis).\n\n**First question:**\nThere are many theories to how it works, but the one I was taught is that your brain has a filter called the \"critical filter/sense/mind\". Hypnosis is ONE way to lower the critical filter to a point where commands are accepted without question.\nThe \"concious mind\" is considered to contain this filter, so the general goal in hypnosis is to get you unconcious (not in the sense of being knocked out) but still listening. The most widely spread way of doing this is to put someone to sleep. Almost. That's why hypnotists say \"Sleep!\", because we're all familiar with that state and it helps to lower/disable the critical filter.\n\n**Second question:**\n\"Powerful\" is a provocative word. It's not that they are not as powerful, it's that some people will respond better to authority than others. In classical hypnosis (aka \"direct\" aka. \"You are getting tired! You are sleepy!\") you are relying a lot on that people will accept your authority without question. In modern hypnosis (aka. \"indirect\" aka. \"You MAY feel your eyes are getting HEAVY\") you don't rely on authority as much so it will work on more people. Your language is the key.\n\n(Third question - you didn't ask, but you assumed something about hypnosis):\nPlease understand that a good hypnotist can hypnotize anyone. Both \"Powerful\" or not. Some people make *easier* clients because they accept authority better but a good hypnotist can hypnotize anyone IF they are WILLING.\n\n**Some more info on the two methods:**\nClassic: Forcing your will onto someone until they \"caved in\" either by having them look at a fixed point or repeating commands like \"Sleep! Your eyes are getting tired!\" etc. This is how hollywood usually depicts it. It can look and sound dramatic so it makes for good theater and movies.\n\n**Modern:** Use of indirect commands like \"You may feel your eyes are getting heavier, so it's ok to blink and close them\" or \"As you sit in the chair and feel the weight of your own body dragging you down you may feel a relaxing sensation. It's ok to go along with it\". This is not so dramatic, however this is the way most modern therapeutic hypnosis works. You can combine the methods since the classic method can be more effective and less time consuming.\n\n**Are there other methods than classic and modern?**\nYes! There are a lot of \"instant-\" and \"almost-instant\" methods that work on the same principle as trick-theifes use: Confusion. Confusion means your brain is desperately looking for an explaination and will likely grab at whatever it gets. This is where you have a split second to throw in a command like \"Sleep!\". You can also use physical touch, turn people around, grab their hand and even bump directly into them to get a moment of confusion. In this moment, your attention will be misdirected and/or looking for explaination or direction. The idea is that you forcibly tell them to sleep in the moment of confusion to give them direction. It won't always work. People are different.\n\n**\"Fun\" fact about confusion and misdirection (act of directing your concious attention):**\nTrick-thieves use this method as they bump into you (initial confusion), then they grab you with both arms (extends confusion) and say sorry (explaination and misdirection) and perhaps grab your arm (confusion and misdirection) and shake your hand (extends confusion) to \"truly\" say sorry (misdirection) and perhaps even go further to ask for direction while talking quickly and saying contradictory things (further extending the confusion and misdirection).\nMeanwhile, his hands are all over your wallet but you won't conciously notice because your constantly confused and misdirected.\n\nLong write. I hope this helped someone. Let me know if you need any further explaination.", "Your susceptibility to hypnosis depends on your ability to bypass your \"critical factor,\" not on your intelligence. \n\nSo what is the critical factor?\n\nEvery day, you have random thoughts, such as \"I really hope I don't spill this cup of apple juice all over myself.\" Or \"I should go study now.\" Whether your subconscious mind automatically carries out these instructions depends on your critical factor. When you are child, you have not yet developed the critical factor. That's why if you tell a small child: \"don't drop that,\" they will invariably drop whatever they are holding (since the subconscious mind can't understand \"don't\" - e.g. if you read \"don't picture a pink elephant,\" you tend to automatically picture a pink elephant). It's because they have no critical factor. The instructions you give them go directly to their subconscious mind, and and their body implements them. As you grow older, you recognize that you can't simply blindly follow every external instruction that you receive. However, you still need the ability to communicate with your subconscious. How else do you instruct your body to do things, like eat, drink, walk over to the bed, etc? Your critical factor parses which instructions you want to follow and which you do not.\n\nA hypnosis \"induction,\" which is said before any instructions are attempted, is supposed to induce the subject into a relaxed state and to distract the conscious mind so that the critical factor will be lessened (for the later instructions to come). \n\nFor 99% of the population, hypnosis places them in a relaxed state where their critical factor is not as strong. These people are more likely to follow suggestions. But for those 99%, when they are hypnotized, they still feel in complete control. If they are hypnotized by a stage hypnotist, for example, to squack like a chicken, they will report that they were aware of what was happening the whole time. They complied because they thought it would be funny and didn't see any harm in it. The hypnosis induction made them relaxed and lessened their critical factor, so they were less worried in this state about embarrassment or the social implications of doing something stupid. The fact that everyone expected them to comply also lessened the social embarrassment from doing something stupid and in fact placed peer pressure to comply. So most people under hypnosis are still in complete control of themselves. They are simply in a state of heightened suggestiveness. However, one could choose not to be hypnotized. The induction won't do anything to you if you think hypnosis is stupid or won't work (this is your critical factor telling you not to pay any attention to the hypnosis). I have personally been under hypnosis and gotten an important phone call and decided to break out of the trance state and go back to my \"normal\" state so I could answer the phone. There is no such thing for most people that if they are not broken out of trance, they will continue to walk around like zombies.\n\nFor most people, also, unless they are completely skeptical of hypnosis, the longer you spend on the induction (relaxing their critical factor), the more susceptible they will later be to suggestions. \n\nSo for 99% of the population, hypnosis is not strong enough to alter your perception of reality or force you to do anything you would not otherwise.\n\nHowever, approximately 1% of the population are extremely susceptible to hypnosis. They can be hypnotized to *completely eliminate* their critical factor. They will accept all suggestions with critically evaluating them, just as a small child might. The hypnotist is giving commands directly to their subconscious, with no interruption for their conscious mind. These can be hypnotized not to feel pain. They can be age regressed so they can perfectly describe a memory from when they were 2 years old and can be led to believe they are actually still 2 years old. They can be hypnotized to forget whatever they have done while under hypnosis. \n\nThere are various measures of susceptibility to hypnosis, such as the Harvard Group Scale (HGSS). Hypnosis works better to treat some types of disorders because they tend to be more susceptible. For example, people with multiple dissociative personality disorders tend to be VERY susceptible to hypnosis and can be hypnotized to switch between various personalities to allow the therapist to talk to a certain personality.\n\nHere are some examples of what can be done to this hyper-sensitive 1% with hypnosis. They can be convinced to throw what they believe to be acid in someone's face:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey can be hypnotized not to feel extreme cold (to the point where they could die of hypothermia without ever feeling cold):\n\n_URL_3_\n\nThey can be instructed to forget what has happened (Derren has already hypnotized this subject at this point in the video not to remember anything he does when he sees polka dots):\n\n_URL_2_\n\nDisclaimer - Derren is an entertainer, but what he does in selecting a subject (narrow down to only the most susceptible person he could find) is done by many other researchers who have tested hypnosis theories. You can also see Derren himself being *shocked* at certain points in the video that his subject really doesn't seem to remember anything. Derren himself is amazed at how far he can go with hypnosis with someone who is so hyper-sensitive to it, which leads to the conclusion that these videos are not merely staged for entertainment purposes. Derren even makes the subject take a polygraph to see if he is lying about being that deep in trance: _URL_1_", "Hypnotherapist here (registered with the GHSC in the UK) and I also just graduated with my BSc in Psychology.\nHypnosis is a deeply relaxed state of focused attention (e.g. The hypnotises voice). All hypnosis is self hypnosis, you are always the one who puts yourself in trance. I prefer to call a hypnotherapist a 'hypnotic operator'. For the sake of ELI5, hypnosis allows you to relax your conscious, thinking part of your mind and explore the realms of your unconscious which, when coupled with suggestions, can create powerful change. Hypnotisability is correlated to intelligence but int he opposite way you describe. People below a certain IQ (iirc 75?) cannot be/very hard to be hypnotised as an imagination must be present. The more creative you are, the more easily you can be hypnotised. Those who are more SKEPTICAL however have a harder time of letting go. While this may scream the placebo effect, there have been hundreds of clinical studies comparing the effects of hypnosis to a placebo, meditation and suggestions without trance. Hypnosis is almost always show to be better than the alternatives (the studies I recall were using hypnosis for both chronic and acute pain relief). Stage hypnosis is much different, very much based on social pressure of not wanting to be the one idiot on stage who doesn't go along with the suggestions. Also, these people are always volunteers and so there's a bit of a performer inside of them waiting to come out anyway ;)", "A few years back I attended a Hynotist stage show.  I was called on stage with my friends in tow. One by one each friend was hypnotized and suddenly performing silly tricks on stage like a bunch of circus monkeys. I was asked to leave the stage and ushered off quickly when the \"magic\" fell flat on me. Comments?", "Hypnosis does not work.  It's a fraud.  Not withstanding the placebo effect and the power of suggestion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=oC9J6O6soHA#t=452", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=oC9J6O6soHA#t=2138", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=oC9J6O6soHA#t=1793", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=oC9J6O6soHA#t=810"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "lgbas", "title": "how were they able to increase the speed of usb 2.0  40 times compared to usb 1.1. it's using exactly the same connector with the same 4 wires and the same shielding.", "selftext": "USB 1.1 has 12 Mbit/s while USB 2.0 has a speed of 480 Mbit/s, but how? Why didn't they make is 480Mbit/s the first time?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lgbas/how_were_they_able_to_increase_the_speed_of_usb/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2sgd9h", "c2sggwz", "c2shnbl", "c2si7zn", "c2skhyl", "c2snsqs", "c2sgd9h", "c2sggwz", "c2shnbl", "c2si7zn", "c2skhyl", "c2snsqs"], "score": [172, 36, 34, 20, 2, 2, 172, 36, 34, 20, 2, 2], "text": ["They never aimed for speed on USB1. It was a replacement for a bunch of different disjoint ports with a speed that would allow all their functions to be condensed to a single connector. That was the whole point - a Universal Serial Bus. You could connect keyboards (no more PS/2 keyboard connector), mice (no PS/2 mouse connector), serial devices (no more serial ports), parallel devices (no more parallel port) and similar devices. It wasn't intended for fast transfer - you'd use Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394 for that.\n\nFor a five-year-old: It's like somebody took the good Lego, Duplo, Meccano and K'Nex parts and made them fit together. Your parents will still call it a toy but it's really really awesome.", "I compare your comparison to saying how can cars travel faster now on the same roads as 20 years ago. \nRoads (cable) stay the same. The cars (electronic circuitry) evolved. ", "In USB 1.1, you were only allowed to use small sentences once a millisecond (1000 microseconds) (8 bytes) to talk back and forth, so it took longer to send blocks of data.\n\n\nIn USB 2.0, you could start a sentence every 125 microseconds (8x more sentences), and they could be 1024 bytes long\n\n\nUSB 1.1: 1000000 uSec/sec / 1000/frame = 1000 frames/sec\n\nUSB 2.0: 1000000 uSec/sec / 125/frame = 8000 frames/sec\n\n\nUSB 1.1 - 8 bytes x 1000 frames/sec = 8000 bytes/second\n\nUSB 2.0 - 1024 bytes x 8000 frames/sec = 8,192,000 bytes/second\n", "Ever pack a suitcase haphazardly, find out stuff won't fit, and re-pack it to make more efficient use of the space?  The suitcase didn't change, but the way you fit stuff in it did.\n\nWhen USB 1.x was created, it was meant to replace serial, PS/2, and parallel port functions. None of these things used transfer of over a few megabytes per second. So the engineering focus was on reliable data transfer, hot-plugging, etc; so long as it was \"fast enough\".\n\nAs people created things like video cameras, storage devices, etc., there became demand for a faster interface.  The engineers were able to improve the way data is \"packed into\" a USB cable, so that instead of a new connector and cable, you only had to upgrade the ends.  This also meant you could use old devices with the new stuff, which meant you could just have one type of connector on your PC.", "You're going to shit your pants when you hear about S/PDIF and ADAT Lightpipe.", "Imagine that the USB slot is a mailbox, and that the circuitry on either side is the postal service.\n\nBack in 1990, they weren't very organized, and they only had a few staff. So the postal service came once a week.\n\nNow it's 2011, and the postal service has invested a lot of time, research, and money into creating new infrastructure (better trucks, paved roads for the trucks go to on, etc). Your mailbox (USB port) is still exactly the same, but the postal service (circuitry behind the port and the cable it uses) has drastically improved with all that effort, so now they're delivering your mail every single day. Yay!\n\n\n", "They never aimed for speed on USB1. It was a replacement for a bunch of different disjoint ports with a speed that would allow all their functions to be condensed to a single connector. That was the whole point - a Universal Serial Bus. You could connect keyboards (no more PS/2 keyboard connector), mice (no PS/2 mouse connector), serial devices (no more serial ports), parallel devices (no more parallel port) and similar devices. It wasn't intended for fast transfer - you'd use Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394 for that.\n\nFor a five-year-old: It's like somebody took the good Lego, Duplo, Meccano and K'Nex parts and made them fit together. Your parents will still call it a toy but it's really really awesome.", "I compare your comparison to saying how can cars travel faster now on the same roads as 20 years ago. \nRoads (cable) stay the same. The cars (electronic circuitry) evolved. ", "In USB 1.1, you were only allowed to use small sentences once a millisecond (1000 microseconds) (8 bytes) to talk back and forth, so it took longer to send blocks of data.\n\n\nIn USB 2.0, you could start a sentence every 125 microseconds (8x more sentences), and they could be 1024 bytes long\n\n\nUSB 1.1: 1000000 uSec/sec / 1000/frame = 1000 frames/sec\n\nUSB 2.0: 1000000 uSec/sec / 125/frame = 8000 frames/sec\n\n\nUSB 1.1 - 8 bytes x 1000 frames/sec = 8000 bytes/second\n\nUSB 2.0 - 1024 bytes x 8000 frames/sec = 8,192,000 bytes/second\n", "Ever pack a suitcase haphazardly, find out stuff won't fit, and re-pack it to make more efficient use of the space?  The suitcase didn't change, but the way you fit stuff in it did.\n\nWhen USB 1.x was created, it was meant to replace serial, PS/2, and parallel port functions. None of these things used transfer of over a few megabytes per second. So the engineering focus was on reliable data transfer, hot-plugging, etc; so long as it was \"fast enough\".\n\nAs people created things like video cameras, storage devices, etc., there became demand for a faster interface.  The engineers were able to improve the way data is \"packed into\" a USB cable, so that instead of a new connector and cable, you only had to upgrade the ends.  This also meant you could use old devices with the new stuff, which meant you could just have one type of connector on your PC.", "You're going to shit your pants when you hear about S/PDIF and ADAT Lightpipe.", "Imagine that the USB slot is a mailbox, and that the circuitry on either side is the postal service.\n\nBack in 1990, they weren't very organized, and they only had a few staff. So the postal service came once a week.\n\nNow it's 2011, and the postal service has invested a lot of time, research, and money into creating new infrastructure (better trucks, paved roads for the trucks go to on, etc). Your mailbox (USB port) is still exactly the same, but the postal service (circuitry behind the port and the cable it uses) has drastically improved with all that effort, so now they're delivering your mail every single day. Yay!\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1glo92", "title": "What was the average citizen's stance on personal privacy during Cold War era America?", "selftext": "Were Americans concerned about wiretapping/illegal surveillance? \n\nWhat if something on the magnitude of the Snowden leak had happened during McCarthy's time, would there likely be a public outcry? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1glo92/what_was_the_average_citizens_stance_on_personal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cally1r", "calobu4"], "score": [12, 5], "text": ["The first question is rather difficult to answer simply because defining the \"average citizen\" is always a problem. If we define that using the stereotypical 1950's [sub]urban white man, then it would go something like this:\n\nAnti-communist propaganda was widespread during the early Cold War / era of McCarthyism. As such, many/most Americans thought the communist threat (subversion, espionage, etc.) was very real and that the government had to protect the American way of life using whatever means were available. The average American did not always know *exactly* what this entailed, but people knew that things like wiretapping existed and were being used. However, there was also a prevailing sense that \"yeah, government surveillance exists, but they're not surveilling *me*. And even if they are, I've got nothing to hide. I'm no *communist*!\" On the flip side, something curious happened: following the lead of some poets/literary figures of the day, there emerged a concept of \"voluntary confession\" and transparency regarding one's personal life. But this wasn't always what it seemed. Though people gave the impression that they were open books, they used this image of transparency to actually hide their personal business, if that makes sense. In other words, from the outside, they looked like good Americans with nothing to hide, but this image formed a shield behind which they were indeed hiding things. In the case of the average American, this often concerned what went on in the bedroom. Bedroom secrets were especially worth hiding due to all the \"morality\" laws on the books in those days, and the fact that being homosexual or even just having a fetish could quickly get you lumped-in with communists and other \"subversive\" groups. I recommend reading Deborah Nelson's [*Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America*](_URL_1_) to learn more about what I'm talking about here. It's a historical book with a literary focus (she's an English prof), but it's very relevant to this topic.\n\nIn those days, the major surveillance entity was the FBI, and we now know that their surveillance operation was enormous and widespread. Most people know about how J. Edgar Hoover surveilled politicians and public figures, but the fact is that the FBI surveilled millions of Americans, including average nobodys, at one time or another. To varying degrees, many average people knew that this was going on, but open dissent was not common. To speak out against these programs meant that you would at best find yourself under surveillance, and at worst find yourself in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee labelled a \"subversive member of society\" or outright communist. Deborah Nelson discusses what she calls a panic over \"the death of privacy\" that resulted from general post-war societal changes, surveillance programs, etc. I agree with her that there was certainly a general unease at the invasions of privacy. People liked their privacy, but at the same time, average Americans weren't willing to risk the consequences of speaking out against invasions of their privacy. Also, people were even less willing to speak out against things that were happening to other people. As long as they weren't on the receiving end, average Americans sometimes simply didn't care what was going on.\n\nEdit: Looking back on my comments above, it kind of sounds like I'm saying everyone and their mother knew what the FBI was doing, and that is not what I intended. True, many people knew what was going on, but a great many--probably the majority--did not. It's hard to quantify Americans' knowledge of surveillance in this time because average folks did not exactly leave us detailed accounts on the matter. People tended to mind their own business and keep their opinions on touchy subjects to themselves, at least as far as writing is concerned. Much of what is known comes from the FBI itself, especially former agents and informants. Also, by surveillance, I don't always mean wiretapping. While wiretapping was relatively widespread, much of the FBI's surveillance came in the form of old-school methods, especially a large informant network. Finally, surveillance was heavily skewed towards urban environments. The FBI did not pay much attention to Small Town America, but instead focused their efforts on large cities where actual subversive activity was likely to occur, or so the thinking went.\n\nI recommend reading Ivan Greenberg's [*Surveillance in America: Critical Analysis of the FBI, 1920 to the Present*](_URL_2_). Greenburg certainly is not a fan of the FBI or surveillance, but his bias doesn't detract from his message. Also, this book is very well-sourced and I consider it a reliable look into FBI surveillance.\n\nFor a more general look at Cold War society, I recommend reading [*American Cold War Culture*](_URL_0_), which is sort of a collection of essays. Surveillance comes up quite a bit in the book, and the chapter on mobile trailers is interesting regarding surveillance. The author argues that the proliferation of trailers in the 1950s was in part born out of a desire to escape surveillance.\n\nAs for the last question, we can only speculate, which is of course frowned upon in this subreddit. However, I think many here will agree that it is easy to surmise a likely scenario. *What follows should not be taken as fact, and it's only purpose is to humor the OP and give readers an idea of how serious the sociopolitical climate was in the McCarthy era.* In my opinion, the whistleblower would've been quickly and unmercifully discredited in every possible way. He/she would've been labelled a communist and possibly even a Russian spy, and the government would've treated him or her as a traitor who was trying to undermine not only the U.S. government, but also the American way of life. Since average Americans had no desire to share in this whistleblower's misfortune, he/she would likely not have enjoyed the support of public opinion. He/she would've rotted in jail at least until the late 60's/early 70's when public opinion turned against the government. Maybe then the whistlebower may have received clemency. Again, all that was conjecture, and you should not consider it historical fact in any way, shape, or form. Mods, please tell me if I should edit to remove this part.", "As someone who lived through the Cold War era and considered myself an average citizen, we believed that personal privacy was our right.  It's what made us different from the Russians.\n\nMost of us were completely unaware of much of what Vox_Scholasticus wrote about.  We didn't believe the FBI really bugged regular citizens.  We thought they would only do it if they had very good reasons to do it.  And if a \"regular\" citizen thought they were being watched, we assumed they were paranoid.  \n\nWe believed that some court had to give permission for wiretaps and that permission would be based on proof that there was a reason to be suspicious of the person.  When I think back now, we knew nothing about who would give that permission.\n\nWe had a naive trust in the authorities.  We also were not connected in the same way people are today.  We were very sure no one we knew was being watched because we were very certain that the government hardly knew we existed.\n\nI agree completely with Vox_Scholasticus that people would be afraid to speak out if they knew what was happening.  That would just cause them to be watched as a communist sympathizers.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=DztQtydwimMC&amp;lpg=PP1&amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=EcDYphlCRHwC&amp;dq=Pursuing+Privacy+in+Cold+War+America&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://books.google.com/books?id=TrRvqYQL_soC&amp;dq=Surveillance+in+America&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s"], []]}
{"q_id": "4nlucl", "title": "how does google or other companies benefit from offering a free storage service such as google drive?", "selftext": "I feel like my pictures are being used for experiments of some kind...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nlucl/eli5_how_does_google_or_other_companies_benefit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d44yrgb", "d44ys2o", "d451z0i", "d454z2g", "d454z2k", "d45hw3q"], "score": [98, 11, 21, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Nothing is free. While they might not share your data, they look at it. I put a file on one of the \"free\" storage servers as a test (it wasn't Google, but I'm not convinced they don't do the same thing). It was a Word doc and it had 10 words in it. They were just arbitrary words. Not even 24 hours later I started noticing that all the ads I saw were for things about these words. The funny part is that one of the words was bra. I'm a man and I don't need one, but all of a sudden I'm seeing bra ads. ", "Im not explicitly sure about google drive, but at least for gmail, they scan your email for targeted advertising. My guess is they do the same for the drive, or it's a feature to attract people to gmail ", "To get you used to and comfortable with that service. That way when you have a need either personally or for a business to have high capacity paid cloud storage you'll naturally want to go with the product you already trust.", "I think a large part of it is that it google has access to vast amounts of cheap data storage capacity. Upgrading from a free account to 100 gb is only $2 a month. So a free 15 gb account needs to provide less than $0.30 per month value to be equal. The other answers here address how that can be.", "Using that service (and others like Gmail) require you to be logged into the service with your Google Account. Then they know who is using that device. And if you are using it from multiple devices, they know all of them are you. They then use that information to better target you with advertising, which is how they make their money.", "The same way a crack dealer benefits from giving you your first hit for free..  They hope you really like it and are willing to pay for it eventually.\n\nThey might do it for competitive reasons..  Everyone in the space is doing it so its viewed by the customer base as a \"requirement\" to be considered a viable competitor.  Alternatively, a more established company could use it as a loss leader to drive down the profits in a particular space to make it harder on a struggling competitor.  Maybe to put them out of business or to lower their market value so they're cheaper to acquire.."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5w40sm", "title": "Why has the Stalin regime been so obsessed with receiving testimonies (if need be, by torture) before proceeding against all the perceived spies and terrorists?", "selftext": "Why not enjail or kill them arbitrarily like it was done in the contemporary right-wing dictatorships and in the colonies? \n\nThey did certainly not have to keep up appearances for the press or the judiciary branch since both were under tight control of the selfsame security apparatus that did all of the torturing-some-folks.\n\nSo why did they go through the hassle of getting, [sometimes literally blood-stained](_URL_0_), confessions? Why not forego all these formalities or write a confession for the prisoner on your own? It should have been painfully obvious it is a witch hunt to everyone involved in this procedure and yet they did everything by the letter of the law, which happened to allow for some extended interrogation techniques due to the state of \"capitalist encirclement\".\n\nAre there any books which attempt to explain this peculiar Kafkian side of Stalin's dictatorship? Are there any philosophers attempting to draw lessons from it for the other countries with a formal rule-of-law?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5w40sm/why_has_the_stalin_regime_been_so_obsessed_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de8cnzq"], "score": [17], "text": ["This question is irritating me as I have definitely read a detailed examination of this and I can't remember where. It may have been Halfin's *Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University*. \n\nFor the Stalinist purges and, indeed arguably the revolution itself, a great deal of stock was placed in being \"right\". Seen through the mechanism of dialectic materialism, the socialist revolution is an expression of \"History with a capital aitch\". So too is the dictatorship of the proletariat and the idea of revolutionary violence. \n\nThe Soviet organs of repression needed the people to believe that they were always right. They needed to convince themselves of that. The only way to justify the trials and the purges was to convince everyone that they always had the guilty party, even if that was forced by confession. This also had the effect of encouraging the population to remain obedient and calm - as they would trust that only the guilty could be sanctioned.\n\nIt is notable from a lot of the literature, especially Orlando Figes' work, that it was common for victims of the purges to say things like \"Obviously I was innocent, but all the others were guilty\". \n\nThe contrast with, for example Nazi Germany lies at the heart of what these regimes were trying to achieve. The victims of the Holocaust were condemned for their natural traits - Jewishness, Homosexuality etc. That did not need to be proved to a court as it was so evident, though do remember the regime developed various bureaucracy for identifying victims (different grades of Jewishness, measuring physical features). The Soviet system was different as it was repressing citizens, and that needed to be justified. \n\nThere was also a form of redemptive belief in the process. By providing a confession, the prisoner was accepting that the state was right. They were even proving their loyalty by confessing to the \"alternative facts\" of revolutionary justice - see further *1984* - all part of the grand narrative and self-justification of the Stalinist state. \n\nI hope this answers your question. A lot of this is half-remembered from something I read a while ago. I'd be happy to try to clarify if you have follow up questions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/May_25_1937_Tukhachevsky_recognition.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2yibep", "title": "How accurate/biased is the intro to Argo that gives a brief history of the shah, and the revolution?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nTo me it comes off as biased in favor of the revolution.\n\nThere are tiny hints.  Occasionally you'll see a single woman in that total black covering that stands out a little from the crowd, and carries a gun or something who are fairly obviously supposed to be in some kind of security role, maybe monitoring the crowds, or driving the crowds.\n\nI'm certainly not saying that the shah was everyone's friend.  And the intro does admit that \"it descended into score settling, death squads, and chaos\"...  but, for instance, I think one of the crucial problems, is that they seem to frame the revolution itself, and it's demands as coming from \"the people\"...\n\nI'm sure there was some popular support for the overthrow of the shah.  And certainly, with supporters of the revolution, the US was not popular, but how accurate is it?  What do they get right?  What do they get wrong?\n\n*edit* It looks like the closest the concorde got to iran was bahrain.  I suppose they could relay it passing it from plane to plane, but that seems even more ridiculous.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yibep/how_accuratebiased_is_the_intro_to_argo_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp9ywh8", "cpa2wv4"], "score": [61, 24], "text": ["The revolution in Iran was genuinely popular.  It covered a cross section of the population with liberals, secularists, women, orthodox muslims and others all uniting in opposition of the shah.  In this sense we should not be mislead by the ideological narrowness of the theocracy that resulted from the revolution; while it was and is decidedly exclusive, the movement behind the revolution itself was remarkably inclusive.\n\nThis clip is a generally accurate if simple record of Iranian history.  For example, many histories (including this one) paint the shah as universally reviled, but some of his policies were well-liked.  For example, the lower class (peasants) liked his land reforms when they were unveiled.  Dislike of the shah built and built over time rather than existing at a constant high.  This clip also leaves out important antecedents to the revolution, like the Tobacco Protest, the Shah refusing to hold elections, inflation, and corruption, among other things.\n\nRegarding the US and the West, Nikki R. Keddie says \"western values did not trickle down to the popular classes any more than did significant benefits from the modernization program.  Ultimately the vast majority of Iranians became more anti-Western, more anti-Shah, and more open to oppositionists who stood against the shah, the West, and Western ideas\" (135).\n\nNikki R. Keddie, 2006, *Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution*.  New Haven: Yale University Press.", "Oh boy, overall the intro is sort of accurate in the grander scheme of things, however it has many, many points wrong, some of which I'll list below:\n\n* Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi wasn't put into power in 1953, he was king since 1941 after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran.  Iran was a Constitutional Monarchy at the time, the Shah ruled while the Prime Minister had control over Parliament and such.  The 1953 coupe resulted in the over through of Mossadegh, the Prime Minister at the time, which allowed the Shah to gain more power over time until 1979.  Big difference.\n\n* The Shahbanu, aka the Queen of Iran (wife of the Shah), is rumoured to bathe in milk.  This may *sound* like opulence to non-Iranians but in reality bathing in milk was thought to help with aging and skin care.  Women in villages in particular did this practice.  What it tries to show via [the picture](_URL_0_) in the intro is the contrast between the veiled servants compared to the naked princess bathing in milk, which is more out of the movie 300 than reality. \n\n* There is no record of the Shah ever owning a Concorde plane (which was put into commission in 1976, three years before the Revolution), much less using one to fly his lunches into Iran every day.  While Iran Air, the national airline of Iran, ordered a set of Concorde jets in 1972 they were scrapped after the Revolution.  On a side note the Shah was known to have many dietary restrictions, including an allergy to caviar.\n\n* Also it was unlikely the \"people starved\" in Iran, far from it.  At the time Iran was one of the fastest growing economies in the world and due to the White Revolution beforehand land reform allowed property and land to be distributed to the lower class.  On another note the White Revolution reformed the education system in Iran, especially in regards to universities.\n\n* The movie implies that the Shah was given asylum to the US and stayed there, however he was allowed to enter for medial treatment in New York (he had lymphoma).  However Carter kicked him out of the US less than two months after his arrival, due to US hostage crisis.  \n\n* The movie also implies that the Revolution was based around Khomeini and his ideals with no other opposition or organisations.  Prior to Khomeini's return in 1979 protests were organised by many groups of people.  Some groups wanted less reform and to slow things down, others wanted more reform and to make it more liberal and secular.  There wasn't just one central theme behind it, however when Khomeini returned to Iran he was able to successfully organize and crush almost the entire opposition to the idea of the \"Islamic Republic\".   \n\nI'll post more in the morning but in short Argo is a typical Hollywood movie, with inaccuracies and all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0SARWYiJc"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/milkbath.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1hhqyy", "title": "how we all know who the mafia is and who belongs to which family what happens in the family but many still walk freely?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hhqyy/eli5_how_we_all_know_who_the_mafia_is_and_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cauftjh", "caug8a7", "caugtpv", "cauh7wk"], "score": [40, 27, 7, 8], "text": ["Because you can't go to prison simply because the media or police suspect you belong to a crime family.  They need to convince a jury that you've committed specific crimes.\n\nIt's also worth noting that a lot of what we think we know about the current structure and membership of any given family is probably wrong or outdated.  Joaquin Garcia noticed exactly this when infiltrating the mob for the FBI, and I believe Joe Pistone found the same thing.", "It has to do with hierarchy.\n\nLook here\n_URL_0_\n\nImagine you are a crime boss: you tell Billy (who you trust), to tell sammy (who billy trusts), to hire some schmuck (who doesn't really know anyone) to do some crime. If the schmuck gets caught by the coppers, he can say Sammy told him to do it, but Sammy won't say who told him. Sammy will take responsibility keeping the top of the chain untouchable.", "The Untouchables shows it nicely: everyone can know you're Mafia, but they have to prove/link you to a crime to put you away.", "innocent until PROVEN guilty my friend."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia#Clan_hierarchy"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14ym1l", "title": "how do biologists identify the various types of insects as distinct species?", "selftext": "given two insects that are very similar what do you use to determine if they are in-fact distinct species or the same?\n\nDo you use physical differences, behavioral differences, geographical separation, or a combination?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14ym1l/how_do_biologists_identify_the_various_types_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7hps2w", "c7hpsb2"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Normally, there's differing morphology (perhaps a different number of hairs on a leg segment or a different color pattern or something of that nature) and/or different diet (i.e. different host plant for herbivores or different host in parasitoid wasps or lice) and/or significant enough (~3% base pair difference) genetic difference (typically in barcode genes like COI).  Typically taxonomists will rely on a combination of these criteria.", "This question isn't just unique to insects. The problem in biology is that there are many different definitions of \"species\".\n\nThe one to which the other poster referred (put them together and see if they mate) is the \"biological species\" concept. It's obviously fairly difficult to verify.\n\nUsing physical differences is known as the \"morphospecies\" concept, and it's what's still done in most taxa, since it's the easiest and most efficient method you can use and since gathering shitloads (or even a pair!) of some rare insect that's only found on one tree in one level of thick jungle canopy is really hard. You just look at the organisms you've sampled and, based on a different set of markings or a slightly different limb anatomy relative to what's already been categorized, conclude that you've got a different species. What could go wrong?\n\nGenomics can actually shine some light on the question, too. I heard a lecture from an entomologist (I think it was [Bob Smith](_URL_0_)) who had been working on a group of beetles on an island in a river in West Virginia. Some genetic analysis revealed that these beetles, seemingly identical in every way, actually consisted of two distinct, non-breeding subpopulations\u2013\u2013that is, two species.\n\nReasoning correctly that there must be some physical or chemical basis for the distinction, he decided to look at the penises (penes?) of the males, and it turns out the two groups had very, very different penis shapes.\n\nThis is one tool you could, in principle, use to identify different insect species, at least among taxa that have \"direct\" fertilization (i.e., intercourse). On a side note, this is also one reason why beetles, as well as some other insect taxa, speciate so rapidly; direct fertilization means you can have speciation (even non-allopatric speciation) occur really quickly due to the evolution of intricate lock-and-key mechanisms. Imagine all those jointed parts that make up an insect's exoskeleton. Now imagine a penis made up of similar parts. If the image doesn't make you want to bleach your eyes, you'll have some picture of how quickly subtle changes here can lead to a new species forming."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://ag.arizona.edu/ento/faculty/smith.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "8uyddw", "title": "leveraged buy outs", "selftext": "What are they, how do they typically work, and how come they sometimes go horribly wrong (Toys\u2019R\u2019Us)?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8uyddw/eli5_leveraged_buy_outs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1j7cga", "e1j974l", "e1j9oom", "e1jfqr1"], "score": [12, 67, 5, 2], "text": ["Let's break it down into two parts: a buyout is the acquisition of a company, generally by management or some of its own shareholders.  By purchasing the other owners' shares, they are said to have 'bought out' the those owners.  They may then continue the company as a private enterprise, or subsequently hold a stock offering.  A buyout might happen for a variety of reasons: perhaps some owners believe the company is undervalued, or want to run it a different way, or want to continue to operate without being publicly traded.\n\nThe 'leveraged' part indicates that these buyers took on debt to make the purchase, rather than using their own capital.  Typically this involves the company's assets becoming collateral for a loan from a bank or other financial sponsor.  The company is then responsible for paying back this debt.\n\nIn the case of Toys'R'Us, the firms that bought it out were unable to make its business profitable enough to overcome the interest on those debts while continuing to operate, and thus filed for bankruptcy.  The criticism of the buyers (Bain Capital et al) is that in the course of this process, they also extracted hundreds of millions in management fees from the company. They will wind up writing off the loss, while a company that might have managed to survive on its own will instead be shuttered.", "Good:\n\nA company is for sale for $100.\n\nI decide to buy it. I'll put up $10 of my own money and borrow $90 at 10 & #37; interest.\n\nI sell it 1 year later for 20 & #37; more, or $120. I pay off the $90 loan and $9 of interest and keep $21. On my $10 investment, I made $11. That's a big return.\n\nBad:\n\nA company is for sale for $100.\n\nI decide to buy it. I'll put up $10 of my own money and borrow $90 at 10 & #37; interest.\n\nThe company starts tanking and I can only sell it for $80. I can't pay off the loan and interest. I lose all my money and company declares bankruptcy.", "An LBO in principle is the same thing as a mortgage for buying a house. You put down some of your own money when you buy a house, but the lion\u2019s share of the purchase price of the house comes from the bank in the form of debt.\n\nPrivate equity funds that transact in LBO\u2019s do the same thing. Funds raise capital from limited partners, who are large endowments, corporations, and wealthy individuals. The fund\u2019s general partners use that pooled capital to invest in companies. That capital is used the same way your cash down payment on a house is.\n\nAssume a company is valued at $100. A PE fund will put down $30 of fund equity and $70 of third party debt. They do this after an extensive due diligence period where they go through the target company\u2019s financials and business model. They build their own financial model and project out the financials to understand how the company can handle the debt load. Leverage, and the purchase price, is usually expressed as a multiple of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, also called EBITDA.\n\nIf we assume this company\u2019s EBITDA is $20, it was just purchased for a 5.0x purchase multiple and 3.5x leverage (this is lower than you\u2019d usually see in real life).\n\nOnce the company is purchased, private equity funds will usually hold the company for five years, over which period they\u2019ll seek to grow their equity investment and realize a return for limited partners, whose fund equity (the $30) is allocated as a percentage of their total percent of the latest fund pool. Funds grow equity by paying down debt, increasing earnings, or selling the company for a higher multiple than they paid. Let\u2019s explore.\n\nAssume five years have passed. Company maintains $20 EBITDA (not super great, you want growth). However, they company paid down $30 of the $70 in debt it took on at the advent of the deal. The PE fund sells the company for the same multiple they bought it for (5.0x). The enterprise value of the company is still $100, so to get to the equity, you subtract the debt, which now is $40. Ending equity is $60. Funds think about how well an investment does in terms of two main metrics: internal rate of return (IRR) and multiple of money (MoM). The latter is just ending equity over entry equity, which in this case is 2.0x. IRR is a similar metric that takes into account time as a factor, but less relevant here.\n\nA 2.0x MoM is okay. Most funds target 3.0x as their hurdle for \u201csuccess\u201d. So, in order to juice their return, they will also want to expand EBITDA (grows ending enterprise value and maybe accelerates the rate at which they pay down debt) and potentially increase the exit multiple. The latter can be achieved if he market is more favorable five years down the road or if they\u2019ve scaled the company to a point where it\u2019s more valuable.\n\nPE funds usually will work closely with management to improve earnings and optimize the business model of their companies to achieve these goals. If things don\u2019t go well, sometimes they will install some of their own executives or replace the CEO.\n\nAt the end of the day, though, the success of this whole process relies on how good the fund\u2019s due diligence was and how accurate their mode was. If they didn\u2019t make he model accurate enough, they could load the company up with too much debt. If the company can\u2019t reasonably service their debt load, it\u2019s a huge constraint on their ability to function. They bust covenants (a covenant is basically what the lender says a company can and cannot do) and if things get really bad, they can go bankrupt.\n\nBasically, this happened with TRU. Bad due diligence. Bad model. Too much debt, and they couldn\u2019t service it with interest payments. Amazon ate their lunch and eventually they had to declare bankruptcy.", "A company is worth 100, you have 50$, but you don't want spend all that so you borrow 80$ against the company. You now have 30$ left, yet a company as well. Overtime the company earns back all the money you borrowed. You decide you want to sell it. If you did nothing as an owner but kept the course than you could sell it for 100$ leaving you with 130$, a 80$ profit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3wb18z", "title": "for over a year i've been reading about california being in the midst of an insane, unprecedented drought, but it seems like all the cities there are doing just fine. where's their water coming from if things are so bad?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wb18z/eli5_for_over_a_year_ive_been_reading_about/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxut539", "cxut6zq", "cxutacy", "cxuv9o2", "cxuva6c", "cxv2amc"], "score": [58, 2, 3, 5, 5, 33], "text": ["We're drinking up our groundwater, as well as shipping it in from other areas like the Colorado River.\n\nNone of this is sustainable, and something major has to give eventually, but most of our smaller-scale government doesn't really want to talk or think about it much. Our state government will, but only because they have to, and even then in minimal amounts.\n\nThere's a perception I think that rabble rousing about the drought is political suicide, even if that's the only thing that'll save us from running out of water. \n\nThe sad thing is, that's not entirely unfounded - last time we rationed water, people got *angry*, and incumbents lost.", "The drought is indeed huge, the biggest one they've seen in years, but to be honest not much will change. The immediate effects would be increasing water prices, but they will never get so outlandishly high as to really change California. To address your question: it varies    _URL_0_", "Let's say you need 1 gallon of water a month to live, and you have a 20 gallon jug of water that you can't refill (ground water). You also have a 1 gallon cup that you can fill up by putting it outside and collecting rain, which would normally satisfy your thirst. What would happen to your 20 gallon jug when you only get enough water to fill up a portion of your rain collecting cup?", "Agriculture and industry use the vast majority of water in California, so you're unlikely to see the effects of a drought in the cities. The biggest thing you'll probably notice in cities is the contrast between the underwater, dead grass and the bright green grass kept alive by reclaimed water.", "Something to think about that many don't, is that water in California isn't just used by people. Between the Sacramento, Salinas, Central and Imperial Valleys, California grows a large portion of specialty produce that is consumed by the entire world. Crops need water to grow! \n\nThe water shortage in California isn't just a problem for Californians. ", "Cities in california only account for about 10% of the state's water usage.  The rest is used for agriculture.  \n\nCities have cut back water usage.  There are more restrictions on watering lawns, for example.  Also, there is a greater emphasis on using recycled water.  Golf courses in Los Angeles (for example) are able to stay green by using recycled water.\n\nHonestly, though, agriculture will need to cut its water usage because that's where most water is used.  Even if you forced cities to use only desalinated ocean water, the state would still be using 90% as much water as was using before."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.watereducation.org/all-california-water-sources"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2o6jhe", "title": "How small is a \"differential\" element?", "selftext": "My teachers always played \"fast  &  loose\" with the definition of a differential - I have always heard a differential slice is \"infinitesimally small\" but how can this be?  I know how to use the derivative/differential in practice - but am struggling to understand the theory - this was never covered. All we got were limits - infinitesimals were not elaborated on because they are really small and can be ignored .... right?\n\nIf the differential element is not used why do we still use the notation and say, \"infinitesimally small\"? I would think the dx is a very small but *real* number. After all, it's integral (infinite sum) is *finite* (or even zero?).  What does it mean for something to be \"infinitely small\"? \n\nMore questions: how can you divide anything by infinity? What happens if we multiply infinity by dx - an infinitesimal \"number\" (in regular calculus, dx is NOT a number...) - do we still get infinity? Is dy/dx a ratio or not?\n\nPerhaps a clarification in terms is required ...  Why do books equate dx and delta x? This does not seem to be mathematically sound! \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2o6jhe/how_small_is_a_differential_element/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmk7kfr", "cmk8grg", "cmkda0e", "cmlqnwl"], "score": [14, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["There are two different ways of looking at this which you are jumbling together, the mathematical way and the physical way. In mathematics, perfect points, lines, circles, and limits exist. In the physical world, they don't. This does not mean that mathematics is wrong or useless. Mathematics is right in its own realm. And mathematics is can give us excellent approximate answers to real-world physics.\n\nMathematically, an infinitely small object can exist with no problem because we just define it that way. In mathematics, the differential length element is literally an infinitely-small length. But infinity is not really a number and it only plays nice in the context of limits. There are different kinds of infinities. To determine which infinity we are talking about, we have to properly take a limit of a finite as it approached infinity. My point is that, mathematically, we can literally take the limit all the way down to infinitely small because mathematics is defined to allows this. So there is no problem. For integrals, we take the limit such that the total integral stays a constant, finite number. \n\nFor example, if we want to know the area of circle, we could, in principle cut the circle into a grid of squares, measure the area of one square and multiply by the number of squares that results when we cut up the circle. But at the edges of the circle, this approach does not work since you only get partial squares due to the curved sides. Your answer will be slightly wrong. To avoid this problem, you start over and cut the circle into smaller squares, measure the area of one square and multiply by the number of squares. There is still some error because of the edges of the circle, but it is closer. As you use smaller and smaller squares, the edge of the circle looks more and more straight to a given square, there are less partial squares and the error gets smaller. In the limit that the squares get infinitely small, the error goes away completely. But the limit is taken carefully so that the area of one square times the number of squares is always a finite number and is constant (up to the amount of error present at the beginning of the limit). This is effectively what an integral means.\n\nPhysically, the picture is different. We can't have infinitely small parts of an object. For example, say we want to find the total mass of a physical sphere by integrating over its mass density. If the differential element in the integral gets too small, we are at or below the size of atoms, and the macroscopic equation of the mass density that we are using is no longer valid. Therefore, in physics, the differential element in an integral is not literally infinitely small. Rather, the differential element is simply small enough compared to the rest of the system that it can be approximated as infinitely small. The point is that in the real world, once the differential element gets small enough, the integral converges to an answer with an error that is beyond our level of detection or beyond our desired accuracy.", "_URL_0_  I've never done much (or anything) with these, but it's my understanding that they can be used to derive a lot of properties of calculus while containing rigorous definitions of infinitesimals. It's somewhat dense, however.\n\nEDIT: See Philophobie's post, you actually want the hyperreal numbers, not the surreals.", "In the real numbers, which is where we usually work in calculus, there is no such thing as an infinitesimal quantity. This is known as the [Archimedean_property](_URL_0_) of the real numbers, and it is a very important feature of them. For any real number you choose, there is always a smaller one. So one way to answer this would be to say that there is no such thing as a \"differential\" element.\n\n > All we got were limits\n\nLimits are the foundation of modern analysis. Calculus is built on limits. The great thing about limits is that they allow us to rigorously define things like the derivative and the integral *without ever having to appeal to infinitesimal quantities*. That's great, because although there is some intuitive appeal to the idea of infinitesimal quantities in certain contexts, they turn out to be really tricky to put on a rigorous logical foundation.\n\n > infinitesimals were not elaborated on because they are really small and can be ignored .... right? \n\ninfinitesimals were not elaborated on because they do not play a part in standard analysis. \n\n > If the differential element is not used why do we still use the notation and say, \"infinitesimally small\"? \n\nIn part, it is because these notions and notations are a legacy from the early practitioners of calculus. Leibniz and Newton each made use arguments involving infinitesimal quantities when they invented the calculus. As I said, the idea has some intuitive appeal: the derivative is the ratio \u2206y/\u2206x for infinitely small \u2206x. This appeal to intuition can get us pretty far in calculus. We can derive all of the important rules and identities by appealing to the idea of infinitely small quantities, and thinking about infinitely small quantities helps a lot to understand what's going on. \n\nBut, for exactly the same reason that you're here asking this question, mathematicians were not satisfied with the imprecise notions underlying calculus and related fields which made appeals to infinitesimal quantities. In the 19th century, all appeals to infinitesimals were thrown out in favour limits, which require only a rigorous construction of the real numbers to justify logically, and not infinitesimal quantities. This is the stuff you'd learn about in a class on [real analysis](_URL_1_).\n\n > More questions: how can you divide anything by infinity?\n\nThere is no real number called \"infinity\", so if we are working in the real numbers, you can't divide anything by infinity.\n\n > Is dy/dx a ratio or not?\n\nIf y=y(x) is a function of x, then dy/dx is a function\u2014in particular, it is y'(x). But remember what y'(x) is: it is the slope of the tangent line of the graph of y=y(x). If we let y(x) be a line\u2014say for example, y(x)=(2/3)\\*x\u2014then dy/dx *is a ratio*: it is 2/3. The derivative is a generalization of this idea of slope: dy/dx is the \"slope\" of the function y(x), and so for every x that you input into that function, you get back a \"slope\" which is in fact a ratio of rise/run.\n\n > Why do books equate dx and delta x?\n\nDifferent books say different things, but they are all (or at least, they all ought to be) *internally* consistent\u2014that is, any good math book will define the terms that it uses carefully and then stick by those terms. Discrepancies between authors should be handled on a case by case basis, because more often than not the discrepancy can be settled by checking how the different authors are defining their terms. ", "Infinitesimals have gotten a bad rap, but using Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis, they can be made rigorous easily. No pesky limits involved. You need to give up the axiom of excluded middle, but there are arguments for why you should do this -- become a constructivist today!\n\nIn SIA, Infinitesimals are numbers x such that x^2 = 0 but x does not necessarily equal zero. If you have the law of excluded middle, you can prove that there are none such numbers, but if you discard it, you cannot show this and you get a very elegant calculus. \n    f'(x)dx = f(x+dx)-f(x) for all infinitesimals dx\nNote that dx is not dividing. dx could be 0, so we may not divide by infinitesimals.\n\nIntegration is defined as the opposite of derivation. It can and should be thought of as adding up an infinite number of infinitesimals, because that's a very useful mental model, but the actual operation is just the antiderivative. Summation isn't involved."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_property", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_analysis"], []]}
{"q_id": "6796wb", "title": "what's happening when you take a pill, but it feels like it's caught in the back of your throat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6796wb/eli5_whats_happening_when_you_take_a_pill_but_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgoleql", "dgoujcc", "dgov6ub", "dgovnkg", "dgoxk42", "dgp0yfr", "dgp273e", "dgp3ig2", "dgp3kvq", "dgp4cim", "dgp4f6q", "dgp4n00", "dgp52ws", "dgp5hdw", "dgp6ykp", "dgp7jv2", "dgpatvy", "dgpbjp9", "dgpdmds", "dgpf56h", "dgpg43j", "dgpg6oa", "dgph4d3", "dgpkg21", "dgpkkeb", "dgpm93n", "dgpmqre", "dgpnzac", "dgptva4", "dgq6n5a"], "score": [4312, 32, 312, 5, 3, 1898, 45, 5, 10, 10, 8, 3, 2, 4, 21, 787, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 8, 98, 3, 3], "text": ["A few possibilities. \n\n1. The pill actually is lodged. Fairly uncommon but some people have difficulties swallowing pills.\n\n2. The pill rubbed/scratched against the back of your throat and you're feeling that, not the pill.\n\n3. Psychosomatic. There's no pill but the thought/idea/fear of the pill getting lodged is causing the sensation.", "The muscles of your esophagus are slowly moving the pill down your throat. This is the same feeling you may feel after taking a large bite of food and thinking that it is stuck, but the muscles just slowly push it down.", "I think it's psychosomatic - you think the pill is stuck in your throat so your neck muscles tense up in response to force it down, which only reinforces the idea that the pill is still there. \n\nProtip: to get rid of this sensation, *blow kisses to the ceiling/sky*. It relaxes the muscle in your throat and stops the subconscious globus response. ", "Most of the time the coating/texture of the pill rubbed a weird way on your esophagus causing that feeling.", "Have you had your tonsils removed? If so and they dug too deep you may have a pocket in your throat that is catching the pill.\n\nNow days I think they do it with a laser and it wouldn't happen but back in the day they used a metal instrument and doing it too shallow or too deep wasn't unheard of.\n\nFor example I had mine taken out twice. First time wasn't done right, they grew back, second time they cut so deep I almost bled out in my bed a day or two later. I've literally had pills lodged in that spot more times than I'd like to think about.", "Pills get lodged in valleculae of the throat, people aren't imagining it at all. For example here - _URL_0_ \n\nIt's a totally different feeling to a pill going down uncomfortably. It doesn't go down. You know it's stuck and you can't dislodge it with water. It's happened to me twice because I'm a lazy bastard and I take pills dry like some kind of pathetic hard man who thinks he knows better than everyone else.\n\nAnyway it's not nice, and depending on what's in the tablet you might not want it anywhere near your throat. I've managed to dislodge them with food before.", "There's a little groove somewhere in your throat called the piriform recess. It's a common place for food and pills to get stuck, but since it's not all that deep, it gets unlodged pretty easily. My anatomy professor loves tagging that thing on the cadavers for some reason.", " That feeling hurts in my right shoulder blade.  Anyone else have that?", "This is called dysphagia. It can be a symtom of a few things, including eosiniphillic esophagitis. I'd suggest you visit a doctor to make sure you don't have strictures. ", "You have a thin mucus layer on your esophagus that is disturbed by the dry pill and takes a while to restore. This is the way it was explained to me.", "Just learned about this in anatomy. The lower esophageal sphincter is between the esophagus and the stomach. Sometimes it doesn't relax properly giving you the feeling of something being stuck. It's more common among those with acid reflux.\n\nNow I just learned about this so anyone who has a better knowledge of anatomy can correct me. Just summarizing what my textbook said.", "Zenker's diverticulum if you also have chronic bad breath. \n\nThere are also small folds near the bifurcation of the airway and start of the esophagus where it's possible things can get stuck\n\nOr, like others are saying, it could be psychosomatic in that you aren't fully swallowing them because you're expecting a problem", "I once had to take large ibuprofen tablets for a torn muscle. I swallowed one dry at work and thought nothing of it. Until I burped about 1/2 hour later and it shot out of my throat like a pink skittle. Freaky.", "Oh my God. I was taking a pill for my cold (with water). It got stuck in my throat. I freaked out. It tasted bitter and nasty as all hell. Took me a good while to get it out and I had a horrible taste in my mouth for afterwards. Yay", "Sometimes psychosomatic, sometimes the pill is actually stuck - especially if you dry swallow pills. I'll go ahead and second u/zimtamslam and say ALWAYS take pills with water. We have a family friend who dry swallowed a pill, which proceeded to burn a hole completely through her esophagus :(", "Hi! So im a PA working in interventiona' radiology and fluoroscopy. I do barium swallow studies on people with this complaint everyday! More often than not the pill is actually delayed or stuck in the lower esophagus and the sensation is referred upwards from there! rarely is it ever actually caught in the upper portion.", "\"Got somethin' stuck in yer craw?\"\n\nHumans don't actually have a craw, in the sense of the crop of a chicken. But my family does have an enlarged entity in the back of our throats which occasionally (temporarily) traps some food or a pill. Sometimes I take a drink of water and lower my head to swallow and sometimes I raise my head to swallow. One or the other usually works.", "Is it only when you swallow pills? If not, it could be something innocent and simple called \"silent reflux\" which is essentially just spasms of your esophagus at random times that give you sensation something is stuck in your throat. It's really common - I have this.\n\n_URL_0_", "The best way to get pills, it even anything at all like fish bones that is stuck in throat is to eat a banana. Eating a banana will get it down your throat ", "Bonus question: why do you get this feeling when swallowing pills, but not when swallowing regular food? ", "I don't know much about it, but when it happens to me, it's like it's glued to my throat.  I grab some sticky food like peanut butter on bread or a Snickers bar and gulp a big hunk down with liquid.  Seems to grab up the stubborn pill and shove it down.  But yeah, just use a glass of water first and it shouldn't happen anyway. ", "I just scanned the whole thread - is nobody concerned about \"will I choke to death on it\"???\n\nI'm always tempted to type 9-1-1 into my phone before every Extra-Strength Advil so I can just hit Send if I can't get it down!", "This feeling happens to me rather often when taking my supplements before the gym or my glutamine after. Usually if I keep drinking liquids and \"force a burp\" (where you suck down a little air to create enough to burp) and it'll dislodge itself. Then I taste my supplements for hours, which isn't very pleasant. Luckily I never had the horror stories I see here", "One time when I was like 13, I took a pill and it ended up coming back out of my nose. I had a bit of a phobia about swallowing pills. The whole process was always a bit spastic and difficult. ", "I don't know but i always take my pills with food and water. In my experience its actually just the sensation of the pill scratching the back of your throat its not actually stuck. so eating helps get rid of that sensation. water makes sure you swallow the pill properly.", "This is why i dont take pills at all, I can't swallow pills at all. If there is liquid medication I take that instead. Might need to get a scope some day due to the fact certain foods go down hard in my throat, ex meat, rice, ect.", "To prevent this, I put the pill in a tablespoon full of yogurt and it never gets stuck. Pudding may also work. Drinkable yogurt is also good for this.", "From a nurse practitioner: due the way the nerves of your throats are placed, sometimes when something is stuck low in your esophagus, just above your stomach, it will feel like it is actually stuck much higher in your throat.\n\nShe told this to a patient as we went through a procedure that involved swallowing barium, a thick, pasty substance.  the patient kept saying was getting caught in their throat. Since it was a fluorography exam (x-ray), we could actually see it was not in the throat at all.\n\nI never followed up on the research, but it has always made sense to me.", "This can become an    \n **extremely serious problem**    \n if the pill has harsh ingredients.     \nWater and something like coconut oil will help you get it down    \n(see the other comments about chin down etc)    \nbut you can seriously damage your esophagus if you ignore the pain.    \nsource: experience(_s_)    painful    \nI do not even do pills anymore unless I can chew them or they are gels.    \nChewing is not a good idea, but I do pop open capsules    \n and mix the ingredients into water or -maybe- tea or apple juice.    \nNot a good solution if you are looking at antibiotics that need time-release,    \nbut hey, we all gotta go someday anyway.    \nFinish up with something very soft and mushy like some yoghurt or oatmeal   \nto help flush the ingredients all the way to the stomach. \n", "I had a doxycycline (antibiotic) capsule get stuck in my esophagus for about two days, and it was the beginning of the most painful ordeal I've ever experienced. \n\nDoxycycline is on a short list of drugs that are chemically corrosive when the powder is released before the capsule reaches the stomach. The capsule was stuck for two days, and trying to dislodge it probably caused more injury. \n\nThe powder burned away the surface of my esophagus, and swallowing anything (or nothing) was excruciating for about two weeks. My doctor prescribed me viscous lidocaine and a medication to promote regrowth of tissue, but the level of pain was delirium inducing. \n\nJust like any burn, the most painful part is when the tissue grows back. I lost about about ten pounds over the course of the injury due to being unable to eat. \n\nMoral of the story is this: Don't take medicine within 30 minutes of lying down to sleep. That's how I ended up with a corroded esophagus. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.healthcaremagic.com/search/pill-stuck-in-valleculae"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngopharyngeal_reflux"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ihix7", "title": "if i watch a 1080p video on my 720p phone, would it look \"better\" or the same as a 720p video on the same screen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ihix7/eli5_if_i_watch_a_1080p_video_on_my_720p_phone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cugft5w", "cugijj8", "cugle7y"], "score": [6, 23, 6], "text": ["It would look the same, barring actual quality differences between the 1080p version and 720p version.\n\nHowever, it has been shown that on Youtube, if you set it to a higher resolution, it will display a better quality video which could improve the image, despite still being 720p. ", "Let's make a distinction between \"is different\" and \"looks different\". \n\nA 1080p or 4k image on a 720p screen will BE different from a 720p image. By that I mean if we took every pixel and compared the color value of them while displaying the 1080p and the 720p, they would be different. This happens because a 720p screen can't display all the pixels from a 1080p image, so it resizes it into 720p. To figure out what colors to display for each pixel of the new image, it \"averages out\" the neighbour pixels of the big image. This process isn't perfect, you're taking several values and producing 1 value. There's loss of quality (comparing to the original 1080p).\n\nNow let's compare that to a native 720p photo. Let's imagine you took the exact same photo in 720p and 1080p. Your screen displays the 720p natively, but resizes the 1080p. In order to BE the same, the average-out process would need to produce the exact same 720p image (as in, every pixel having the same color value) as the original 720p photo. This can happen, but it's unlikely. It depends on too many factors (if the camera is the same, it also averaged-out when taking the 720p, for example).\n\nNow about LOOKING different. In my opinion, it can look better. The difference isn't usually that obvious, but 2 factors make it somewhat better to watch for example 4k on a 1080p screen. If you have a 1080p camera and take a 1080p photo, it has 1 sensor-thingy determine what color should be attributed to 1 pixel. But if you use a 4k camera to take a 1080p shot, or you take a 4k shot and resize it to 1080p, you have 4 pixels to figure out what the color for the new pixel should be. It should look closer to the natural thing. I have several 4k wallpapers that look better on my 1080p screen that 1080p wallpapers.\n\nThe other factor is that it makes sense that cameras with higher resolutions will also have better overall quality. Although it's possible that a manufacturer produces a 20 megapixel camera and cuts corners on the aperture, for example. Or for example people who own and use 20 megapixel cameras are in general more knowledgeable about photography than people with 1080p cameras. This has nothing to do with the resizing or the screen, of course.", "A really short, incomplete description:\n\nPixels you see on the screen are generally made of 2-4 \"sub pixels\" that generate the actual primary colors, and when combined together (in groups of [commonly] 2-4), they can represent millions of colors.\n\nAs such, a good renderer can take advantage of subpixel information and output more detail, or at least interpret more detail from a 1080p video into a 720p display, since each pixel is made of 2-4 actual elements.\n\n\n(2-4 subpixels? I thought there were three primary colors!)\n\nConstraints of technology. A lot of older OLED displays had issues with blue elements burning out, so they doubled the size of the blue elements, and had every other \"pixel\" switch between a blue/red and blue/green combo. A bit of clever programming helped the subpixel array overcome the red and green deficiency, but not without complaint.\n\n3 colors is the most \"normal,\" and probably most common for most displays. Primary colors (for lights), red green blue.\n\n4 colors is sometimes done, either for luminosity (so a \"white\" subpixel) or for color depth (short explanation; consumer display technology doesn't really display all of the colors we can see, for [predominantly] cost reasons).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yhtwb", "title": "why is there a blood shortage? hospitals charge like $800 per unit. why don't they pay $250 for a donation. everyone would donate. eli5", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yhtwb/why_is_there_a_blood_shortage_hospitals_charge/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chhvksg", "chzlxxo", "cfkn5ef", "cfkn5wd", "cfkndj3", "cfko68a", "cfkoakq", "cfkp66o", "cfkp95e", "cfkpq8o", "cfkq8t4", "cfkqdgk", "cfkqjuj", "cfkqx3z", "cfkqxc0", "cfkr0qq", "cfkr1yo", "cfkr6f2", "cfkrc15", "cfkrjvg", "cfkrl9j", "cfkrlac", "cfkrpkx", "cfkrqlu", "cfkrqne", "cfkrrj9", "cfkrupg", "cfkruxi", "cfks2n5", "cfks4m2", "cfkscz0", "cfkshlk", "cfksiid", "cfkskbl", "cfksoys", "cfkssih", "cfksys0", "cfktchk", "cfkthsq", "cfktjig", "cfku46y", "cfku58t", "cfku6sr", "cfkutjy", "cfkuu27", "cfkux6x", "cfkuxn0", "cfkuz92", "cfkuz95", "cfkv2la", "cfkv374", "cfkv49y", "cfkv8kh", "cfkvbui", "cfkvbxt", "cfkvedl", "cfkvey7", "cfkvkgb", "cfkvonm", "cfkvqp0", "cfkvst9", "cfkvypa", "cfkw12g", "cfkw2h4", "cfkw7r2", "cfkwbcx", "cfkwbo7", "cfkwgc9", "cfkwh4n", "cfkwj1z", "cfkwnvi", "cfkwpeq", "cfkwpst", "cfkwrna", "cfkwu73", "cfkx4m8", "cfkx4tr", "cfkx5kq", "cfkx5xw", "cfkx9sn", "cfkxdcx", "cfkxfr2", "cfkxfva", "cfkxgq4", "cfkxiug", "cfkxlng", "cfkxydc", "cfky30z", "cfky4xe", "cfky9ci", "cfkybei", "cfkycno", "cfkykmd", "cfkykvg", "cfkykzb", "cfkyqfo", "cfkz0xj", "cfkz340", "cfkz5g4", "cfkzrss", "cfl01ov", "cfl052u", "cfl0ib6", "cfl0o7i", "cfl0swm", "cfl0tha", "cfl16d5", "cfl17c3", "cfl19xl", "cfl1cty", "cfl1n7v", "cfl1z4t", "cfl22y1", "cfl2hrx", "cfl2i39", "cfl2piu", "cfl31k1", "cfl3ksj", "cfl3wm6", "cfl4j0s", "cfl4xdc", "cfl570p", "cfl5d8l", "cfl5kul", "cfl5p83", "cfl6d56", "cfl6ijr", "cfl6mna", "cfl6roa", "cfl6w46", "cfl7a3k", "cfl7er3", "cfl7um3", "cfl8l60", "cfl8mgi", "cfl9ptb", "cfla9or", "cflbfvq", "cflbl64", "cflclae", "cfle6kk", "cflj7au", "cflpa7h"], "score": [2, 2, 92, 2399, 6, 3, 1430, 2, 121, 2, 46, 2, 15, 7, 2, 4, 3, 2, 5, 3, 35, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 35, 25, 8, 5, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 5, 7, 14, 2, 2, 2, 14, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["When you start paying people for blood what was once a nice gesture to help people in need becomes a nasty way of selling your own fluids for money.  ", "They actually should. In florida, an organization called One Blood does most of the donation drives, as opposed to the Red Cross. They use incentives like free movie tickets and other giveaways to draw folks generally. Red Cross generally uses emotional pleas through mailings and emails, and irritating telemarketing tactics.\n\nNeedless to say I've donated far more regularly since moving to Florida.\n", "It's illegal to traffic in viable human body parts. They don't actually charge for the blood, they charge for related services. Some places do buy blood , but they tend to do things like sell it to dopers or send it overseas to countries where donating is a religious or cultural taboo. Broadly, there is a blood shortage because people are either ignorant, apathetic, or both.", "If you pay people to donate blood, you encourage people to give blood more frequently than they should, lie on their donation forms and perhaps even use aliases to give excessive amounts of blood in the short term.\n\nYou are also encouraging people to give blood that ordinarily wouldn't - maybe it's not safe for them to currently do so but they need the money. This is often the reason some scientific experiments with potential side effects or harm to participants are purely voluntary and not paid.\n\nEdit: Here is some research FOR paid donations and counters the research behind the points I raised, just for the other side of the story: _URL_0_", "This isn't the whole answer, but it's important to remember that there are different blood types.  Not every person can receive blood from every other person and not every donor can donate to every other person.  Some can, and they're called universal donors.  Their blood is rare and highly sought after.  ", "I'm not American, but that price seems high. [This](_URL_0_) seems to indicate significantly cheaper costs to patients.\nIf you look at the cost breakdown for a unit of blood product, banking, testing, separating, and acquiring blood is not cheap and makes up a significant portion of the cost. \nAlso remember that just because \"everyone\" would want to donate doesn't imply those people would be of the needed type, disease free, and able to donate safely.", "The beginning of the book Freakonomics discusses this in a fair amount of detail, you should read it if you're interested. The short answer is that they've tried it (though I'm not sure if the dollar amount was so high), and it actually led to decreased blood donations. People donate blood to feel altruistic, and turning it into a painful way to make money made those people want to give less. There's also concerns it will give people who shouldn't donate a reason to lie about their eligibility", "Anyone know how much people are charged per unit of blood in Canada? Or Ontario? Just curious, tried doing a search but couldn't find anything specific. ", "There's a really interesting episode of Radiolab that touches on this topic. I believe it's the third segment of this one:\n\n_URL_0_", "I was under the impression that the Red Cross had tried this at some point in the past, but it undermined the \"giving blood = altruism\" thing and turned it into an economic transaction, which significantly undermined the desire to participate in the general public.  Can't find a source for that, though.", "This is a modern debate in the law: do you own your own body?  If so, can you sell your kidney?  If not, why not?  \n\nIf yes, can you sell yourself into slavery? (say, have the money go to your mother who needs an expensive treatment).  \n\nIf not, do you own the produce of your labor? If yes, what is the difference?  \n\nI could write hundreds of pages on the above questions alone.  It is relevant to your question because we presently cannot pay people to donate parts of their bodies.  \n\n----\n\nThe other part of your question is, why is there a shortage?  \n\nThe shortage isn't in the supply, it is in the distribution, storage, and allocation.  It costs a great deal of money to move, store, and efficiently allocate these products.  ", "This used to be the case. It made it more likely for drug users and prostitutes to give blood.\n\nThey are more likely to have HIV. since the current ELISA HIV test only tests for HIV antibodies, somebody who has just recently(within past 6 weeks) contracted HIV will not have antibodies and thus not test positive for it.\n\nThis would increase the chance for a person (particularly haemophiliacs, who need factor 6/9, which is made from many samples of blood pooled together) to receive HIV from a blood transfusion(It is currently really really low).\n\nWhether it would increase the chance enough to make up for the benefit of more blood  is an experimental variable. But that is why they don't pay for blood anymore.\n\n", "3 letters. FDA. It became donor only after HIV/AIDS became prevalent.  And just to comment on the the free donation and 800 dollar per unit disparity..... Overhead. Blood collection supplies, testing, wages, hundreds of vehicles, property leases and mortgages add up. Just looked at the 2012 overview at the blood bank I work at recently (on website) 36 million in sales. 35 million in overhead.", "It's because they tried it in the past and it didn't work. What happens is you get predatory blood banks who will buy blood from alcoholics/homeless/unemployed and then sell it to the hospitals. What happens next is you have liquor stores set up next to the blood banks in symbiotic relationships. There is a radiolab episode on it called Blood.\n\n\nBlood is actually a good profitable business for blood banks and it spoils quickly making it a good product to sell for repeat business. It's often not in shortage overall, though it may be in shortage in your local city. It's really your local hospitals shortage as it hasn't had many blood donors. They could of course buy more blood in but at $800 a unit or whatever it it is, most hospitals would rather have it donated. And should, we all should be giving it away anyway, but it did used to pay donors however, as always greed got in the way of a good system.\n\nSource: listened to radiolab and repeated what I heard like I'm an expert.\n", "Because you live in the USA and profit if more important than health", "Because I lived in western europe (Belgium) for more than 6 months in the early 90s, I'm not allowed to donate blood where I live in Canada. Which is a shame, because I would definitely do so. I have asked on two or different occasions but they however they have not changed these criteria. I believe it had something to do with mad cow beef coming out of the UK around that time if that makes any sense? Feel free to enlighten me if I am wrong.", "My blood is worth that much? Now I don't feel guilty when I take two snacks. ", "Biologics (replacement enzymes, proteins  > 100-mer, antibodies, etc) are a pain in the ass to make and are held to very high quality standards - refining blood is likely annoying as shit (just guessing based other biologic mfc protocols).\n\nThey don't just take the stuff out of you an put it back into someone else. They filter it, either w/ actual filters or a centrifuge and add in some preservatives/stabilizers.\n\nSo basically, you have a situation where you need to create a highly pure product that complies with expensive, though not highly technical standards.From a business perspective, it becomes a matter of scale. \n\nI look at this situation and I see a commonly used product that probably does a lot of volume, that requires strict standards of manufacturing, with no real way to block competitors out. The only way to clip a legit margin is to scale up production. I'd prob have to throw down $20mm to start up a factory (very low ball estimate) to clip $5mm (generous estimate) w/ 15% net margins (fair)? That's 750k per annum in my pocket. I would be paying 26x NI for some shitty product that is EXACTLY the same as every other blood substitute. I'd have to wait 26 YEARS to make my money back.  \n\nThe only way to differentiate my product is price. The only way to lower my price is to funnel cash into this money pit of a business and get some economies of scale going. If i even thought about trying to push my top line (revenue), i'd have to hire a sales team and that just eats at my net income. \n\nBasically, blood product manufacturing is a shit business as it is. No commercial incentive to fill these gaps in supply. Your suggestion would make it more expensive at both the company and patient level. Why are you trying to kill these patients?**\n\n**obligatory pharma guilt trip \n\nSource- biotech/pharma finance guy\nedit - math", "Donate blood!  People die if you don't!  Many thanks to the 7 people that donated blood that has kept me alive the last six weeks!", "What if patients at hospitals that give blood donations, receive a discount on their medical bills. Seems like a fair trade.", "As the wife of the OP of this ELI5, we had to reschedule our blood tests for marriage license due to his fear of needles. The only way he would willingly be stuck with needles is money or someone he loves dies. ", "I have AB- blood. I give every time I can since I know it is so rare.\n\nEdit: Looked it up. I am the 0.6%", "This was addressed thoroughly on Radiolab season 12 episode 1 \"Blood\".  From memory, blood is never in short supply.  The high price is due to blood banks taxing each other when blood Is transferred from one to the other (much like drug dealers).  It's a multimillion (billion?) industry.  A notable quote from NYC blood bank supervisor(?) after 9/11 \"omg people will be lined up to give blood, most will be discarded\".  There have not been a shortage in blood for a very long time and will not be in the foreseeable future.  ", "I just learned from my wife that we are both universal donors.  While I was dancing around because my post was going viral, she informed me that I was giving my O- away for free tomorrow.", "If your interested, and have half an hour, listen to the radiolab podcast \"blood.\" It's got a section about the blood business. It is, by the way, a business. Basically, they buy/sell blood with jacked up prices and do their best to get it to areas who need it. Some places have high demand with low donations, so they buy. Others are the opposite. \n\nAlso, here's an interesting thing. When people donate blood, they feel they've fulfilled their civic duty and don't donate for a while. That means a while after a crisis, like the Boston bombing, (where they got TOO much blood), there can be a shortage. So it's more complex than it seems.", "It doesn't help that they won't give you  blood for ridiculous reasons. For example, I have not been able to give blood for years now because I go on vacation out of the country, and they won't let me donate. They are going to test the blood no matter what ,so why do they just not let me donate?", "I'd give blood if I actually weighed enough", "Going to go with the assumption that it costs money to store the blood, extract it, insurance in case of malpractice, staff salaries, etc. ", "I believe that blood doesn't have a very long shelf life, so it's hard to transport and store. ", "I'm a little late to the party, but oh well:\n\nLike previously said, you don't want to encourage people to donate when they shouldn't. As in:\n\n* they're sick, running a fever, etc.\n* they just donated a week ago, not giving their body enough time to regenerate the lost red blood cells\n* they are unsure of their status, as in hepatitis, HIV, etc, or have exposed themselves to this since their last donation and might omit this information\n* for women, they might be pregnant in the time between the last donation and this one\n\nAs for the hospital/blood center customer itself:\n\n**Yes, they may charge $800/unit to the patient, but this is NOT the cost that the hospital pays to the blood center.** The markup is due to the pre-transfusion testing that the hospital performs. It's not just ordered by the hospital and passed directly to the patient - further testing is performed to ensure compatibility to the recipient. It's a huge liability to give blood to a patient without prior testing and is heavily discouraged unless it's an emergency situation. My hospital paid around $225 for a regular unit without special requests (CMV status, irradiated, etc). That $225 pays for the person before collection to screen patients, the person to collect the blood, the time to collect the blood, the products used to collect the blood, and the post-collection testing (HIV, hepatitis, etc). Also... a lot of blood just doesn't get used before it expires. It's just the nature of the beast. We do our best to limit this, but a large hospital will still expire 2-3 units on a 'good' day. The hospital ends up eating a lot of the extra cost.\n\nSource: I worked in a level-one trauma center blood bank for five years. I've seen it all.", "I've been battling aplastic immunity for three years or so. A rare form of cancer that does not allow my bone marrow to produce healthy blood. I have received dozens of plasma  &  blood transfusions. All I have to say is that donations DO save lives  &  thank you to all that donated, no matter what the motivation was that brought you to donate. ", "They charge $800?! \n\nThis makes me very, very, very glad to live in the UK and not be charged a penny for healthcare when I need it. ", "I worked for Canadian Blood Services as an analyst- maybe I can help you out. In short- there is no blood shortage for most blood types. Due to the different surgical methods of reusing your own blood and laparoscopy, the demand for blood has dropped significantly. The reason why blood costs so much in American hospitals has to be mark up. In Australia and Canada, the cost per unit of blood is under $400. This includes collection (voluntary donation), testing, processing, and distribution.", "I work in a blood bank at a hospital so I have a pretty close working relationship to this. The reason that each unit of blood costs that much is because of all the different testing that is done on it from the time it leaves the donors arm until it gets transfused. \n\nIt first needs to checked for infectious diseases, typed, analyses that its counts are high enough, and so on. When it gets to the hospital, it needs to be crossmathched against the patients blood, which has already had a few different tests done to determine type and to see if the receiving patient has unexpected antibodies. If all tests are okay, only then can blood be transfused.\n\nAll the tests are described are highly regulated by certifying bodies, such as the American Association of Blood Banking, Federal Drug Administration, and usually College of American Pathologists. Each of these governing bodies require a wide variety of quality assurance, documentation of every step of the process, continuous education of the testing employees, and inspections every 18 months to name a few. \n\nThird expense is all the people that are involved in the process and their paychecks. From the phlebotomist at the donation site, to the medical technologists (all with either an associate degree or a bachelor's degree) at both the blood center and the hospital, administrators at the blood center ranging from quality assurance managers to personal managers to marketing people to human resources. \n\nFourth is all the equipment that is needed. Highly precise instruments that separate RBCs, plasma, and platelets aren't cheap. Neither are the irradiators that are needed for immunosuppressed patients. Or the fleet of buses that each blood center has so they can have \"mobile donation centers\" that travel to churches, hospitals, schools/colleges, and local businesses. \n\nIn conclusion, paying you for your donation would only further increase the cost of each unit of blood. All the expenses stated above are not going away. \n\nTl;dr - Patients don't get charged for the product. They pay for all the things that happen to the unit between donation and transfusion!", "There's some good reasons listed already but an additional one is the Red Cross. Despite what they save, it's the life blood of the organization. They turn blood into money and use that to pay for their overhead. It makes it look like they spend a greater percentage on charitable works than they do since your blood isn't a monetary donation. Since they run their organization with blood money they can spend most of their donated dollars on charity and make it look like they only spend 10% on overhead. \n\nIt's a huge organization that has lots of money and all the blood. They spend millions a year on lobbying. ", "The truth is they probably would, but its against the law because we have this strange taboo against the selling of parts of the body.\n\nPeople usually justify this law on a \"wont somebody think of the poor people!\" argument, but IMHO, it sucks because just blanket assuming that people who think they really \"need\" the money is wrong because they're stupid poor people, is in my opinion, incredibly stupid. \n\nIf a person is willing to buy blood and another is willing to sell, there is no good moral reason to stop the practice. Hell, you could even put limits on selling if you wanted to protect health. \n\nIts also why you need proof of address when \"donating\" plasma. The homeless clearly would just donate so they could get money for like, homes (rent) and stuff. Wouldn't want them to exploited in such a way /sarcasm. \n\n", "It's been proven that more people donate when there is no monetary reward. ", "Many people do not realize the costs that go into blood donation. You have to pay for the skilled workers to collect the blood, the equipment to collect the blood, the transportation costs, the sterilization costs, the paperwork, the management, and the storage of the blood. Blood does not have a long shelf life so many of the areas with shortages are localized areas. On a national scale, there is a surplus of blood that goes wasted, but it is better to have a surplus than a shortage. \nTL:DR A hospital's cost factors in many costs associated with blood collection and distribution. You are also paying for the waste.", "In a study done by Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics) it was shown that when people were paid to donate blood, it resulted in less donors because the moral incentive to donate blood was reduced because they were getting paid.", "Capitalism aka Corruptism\n\nThey pay like $20 - $30 per unit and sell it for $$$. \n\nSimilar to saline water....", "There's no blood shortage in The Netherlands. In fact when I asked they said.. yeh you can donate anything you like, but there's so much that it probably ends up in the waste. But I donate anyway, stemcells and blood. Btw there needs to be more stemcell donators. \nOh and we don't get anything for donating, just a mug when you donated 5 times. We just like to share I suppose, many of my friends donate.", "Most countries pay nothing because giving blood is a donation, not a sale. Then again, most countries wouldn't allow hospitals to make a profit from saving lives.", "This post just made me book in to my first blood donation. Cheers. ", "Donating blood is in fact very expensive for the hospital side. Depends on who pays the bill, all the processing and testing of the donated blood can cost in the hundreds. So while it is relatively cheap to set up a facility and draw people's blood, there is a very expensive process afterwards, before the blood can be used in a hospital.", "The best way to get more blood donation is throuigh increased social capital. The problem is that can't be done artifically, socialcapital is a natural byproduct of homogenius well run societies with a good core value set. ", "Why pay 250$ for a donation when you can get it for free? A shortage just means you can inflate the prices even more.", "People have pointed out the reasons why not, but I'd just like to point out that at least in South Africa you do receive payment indirectly.\n\nIf you donate blood, you will receive free blood transfers if you are ever in need of blood.", "I'd be willing to donate blood if I got something more than a damn cookie for being stuck by a needle and drained of my life source.", "I like how people have to keep repeating the same exact argument in different sentences. It is a fairly valid point that donating blood would become more unethical if it was driven by profit", "I'm from the uk and we give away our blood for free, seems to work well enough. I give blood every year or so, i figure one day all need someone else's.", "I know in my region, the blood shortage is blamed on the weather. Since the weather has been so bad, a lot of blood drives have been canceled, leading to less blood being donated. ", "So either blood banks do really good viral marketing campaigns, or some people are going to die every year from lack of donors? Seems like a good business case to buy blood if you ask me.", "Can they test blood to see if its usable? I mean do they have to test for everything individually or is there a general series of tests they can do? \n\nwhy not charge $50 to give blood, and when the test comes back that it's good the you get $250. If it comes back full of THC or anything else that disqualifies it you loose the $50.", " > charge like $800 per unit\n\nAmerica!", "As an English man I cannot get my head around the whole concept of being charged or paid for blood.\n\nI would have been no less suprised if the topic would have been about the cost of breathing air when out walking in the park.\n\nIt took me at least 3 or 4 post to realise it was a USA issue.\n\n", "I'm not sure on other countries but in the UK blood donation is purely altruistic - no payments made. \n\nI can't remember where I saw it but I read an article that suggested the 'quality' of donations seemed to be noticeably higher in the UK because of this.\n", "[This Radiolab podcast talks a bit about the blood business and how hospitals distribute blood supply.](_URL_0_)\n", "That is such a good business idea. Selling blood. Vampire Inc.", "Guess I am late to this party but it is the area of my expertise.\n\nThere is no over-arching, on-going national blood shortage.  Blood usage for non-trauma purposes and the total number of units of blood being collected is falling nation wide.  Orthopedic surgery in particular has gone from 6-7 units of blood to rarely needing any for lots of common procedures over the past 20 years.  The Red Cross has actually been shutting down blood banks and consolidating.  Of course lower total usage means lower standing inventory levels means less ability to absorb spikes.  Harder forecasting, apparent shortages.\n\nShelf life and storage capacity are both quite low, making regional inventory levels vulnerable.  A bag of blood is legal for 35 to 42 days depending on what they mix in it, but it's not like it's new and shiny until midnight on the 35th day and then turns green.  In reality doctors know it's badly degrading after two weeks or so.  Blood that is getting older will preferably only be used in emergencies when nothing else compatible is found.\n\nLots of blood gets thrown out.  It expires.  It goes out of temperature range during transport.  The container is compromised.  Or it's ordered and never used.  (Once it's out of the controlled environment of the hospital blood bank and sitting on a cart in the ER for hours they're not allowed to just take it back and toss it in the fridge for someone else, it is trash.)  So the cost of one is also covering the cost of the lost overhead expense on unused units.  (Affects what it would be reasonable to be able to pay per-donation.  I don't work on the hospital side, don't know a firm number of what % collected units go unused nationally.)\n\nFor donors who are compensated in the US (that is, plasma) the protocols are more stringent, there is a lot of extra work the clinic is required to do to make sure you're a legitimate donor.  Blood Banks aren't set up for this, it's more work, more staff.  Some of the rules used to make compensated plasma donations acceptable just don't really translate onto blood banking.  Imagine the task and cost of developing a protocol to assert a compensated donation is safe for use and getting it past the US FDA...!", "You PAY for getting blood? I keep getting chocked by these things...", "If they pay for blood, health officials would be scared of adverse selection. By offering money you may invite those who aren't in the best of health to donate purely for the money.", "Not russians, nor aliens, neither global warming. Your own healthcare system will destroy United States.", "Because the american medical system is based in a capitalist structure. If supply is below demand then the price goes up accordingly. The system is set up to periodically create shortages due to disdain for gouging which due to the literally vital nature of their product leads to blood drives marketed around shortages guilting them into donating. Each time the supply becomes abundant again the price reduces from where it was in the shortage but still significantly more than before. So the cost of an abundant renewable resource goes up exponentially perpetually. ", "College student here. I'd do it. Set up an office buying blood near campus. Win-win. ", "I don't want to start the whole US healthcare circlejerk, but a unit of blood is around \u00a3125 GBP in the UK ($208 USD).  [Source](_URL_1_)\n\nIn the US, the cost to a hospital of acquiring the blood is almost exactly the same, on average: $210 USD.  [Source](_URL_0_).\n\nThe ~$600 dollars difference between the cost price and the sale price is  presumably profit for the hospital and/or insurance company.", "I work in a hospital and not sure if anyone said this but, blood only last so long a week or two and they throw it out quite frequently. Also vampires break in and drink it. ", "Here in Egypt. Hospitals require a ratio of blood to blood donation. So if you're a A+ or B+ it's 1:1 of any type. If you need something rarer it can go as high as 8:1 (you need to donate 8 units to get 1 unit) so people gather their friends and family members to help. ", "Stupid question here.  Do hospitals charge patients for donated blood and how because that seems evil.  End stupid question ", "If they paid $250, they'd have to charge $2500.  It is the U.S. healthcare system, after all.\n\nThat covers all of the administrative and healthcare costs, as well as this...\n\nI went to the emergency room one day, and my bill was about $1200 (my out-of-pocket share).  Then I noticed that my health insurance info was wrong, and that the hospital has charged them too much, as my insurance didn't cover a couple of the procedures.  I mentioned that my health insurance info was wrong.  The clerk looked and said, \"Oh, I'm sorry, that is incorrect.\"\n\nWhen she handed me back the bill, it was $750.  \"We forgot to reduce the charges because your health insurance doesn't cover those things, then we give you a further price reduction because of the lack of comprehensive health insurance coverage.\"\n\nSubsidies.", "This is how you get blood bandits. Do you *really* want blood bandits? ", "Hospials \"Giving Away Money\" ? When pigs fly!", "I think it's silly that you have to pay for blood at all what kind of backwards country are you from? ", "I am a blood donor.  Donor.  That means I give it for free.  I resent like hell that hospitals charge around $800 per unit for something that I gave them for free.  I know, I know...they have to store it, follow costly protocols, etc. etc. etc.  So they could charge SOMETHING for it...but hell.  I don't donate for money, so people shouldn't be profiting off of my blood.", "South Korean govn't solved blood shortage by making conscripted soldiers donate their blood. ", "blood and kidneys should be able to be sold to hospitals for cash. \n\nthe only reason its not is because losers cry over who is getting it and are afraid the rich will of course. \n\n\n", "Kinda related factoid for Brits:\nI used to work for the NHS Blood and Transplant service. In the UK blood donations are mostly unpaid and completely voluntary. Consequently only about 3% of British people donate regularly. This creates a massive shortfall in blood and plasma available for treatment. We actually have to import blood donations from the US and France to make up the shortfall. This costs us about \u00a3100 per unit (more for infant-suitable donations).\nIf you are a Brit and you have ever considered donation, I would urge you to do it! Grab a friend or partner and get down to your local NHS donation centre! This is especially important if you have a rare blood type or are from an ethnic minority (blood donations are used to make all sorts of bio-products and variation matters!). ", "sorry I don't buy in the economics argument. \nBlood needs to be tested anyhow, and money can be payed according results. That will filter out anybody who shouldn't donate.\n\nif there was a price paid for, the whole blood industry would perform better, leaner, cleaner, and more efficient. \n\nOn the other hand hospitals in US charge just because they can. You have no choice, and insurances play the game. it's all skrewed up...", "I donated blood until I found out it was a for-profit thing. You're gonna make money off my blood? Fuck you, pay me. I hate the health care industry in this country.", "That's a good question. My father works in this area as well, I know the companies make boat loads of cash selling the blood to hospitals, whilst getting it for almost nothing.", "Well if everyone got payed 250$ for blood then eventualy when the bloodbank were getting full, the price would drop to about 25$ and you would stop giveing donatins til the price goes up again, and this would keep the bloodbank in good supply forever.", "There's not enough profit in that.", "What do I have to do to donate blood right now.", "$250 appears a bit too much. Here in Germany you can chose to just donate without revenue or get 15 to 20\u20ac per blood donation or get a meal or a coupon for some shopping mall. It depends on which organization you chose you donate your blood. For plasma donation it's the same. \nYou can donate blood up to 8 times a year and plasma up to 45 times.\n\nSo here it's more like a small gift you get in return, you can't really make a living from it.", "I used to work for a plasma 'donation' center during college. I started off working on the donor floor as a phlebotomist (the guy that stuck the big scary needle in your arm), then as a lab technician. We paid our 'donors' up to $35 per bottle. I use the apostrophes around the word 'donor', because they were not donors in the true sense of the word. They were there to collect money in a slow, painful manner. By paying our 'donors', we had to weed out liars, and there were many of them. For every 10 people that would enter the building and sign in at the front desk, maybe 4 or 5 would make it back to the donor room, but, believe me, there was no shortage of work to be done in the donor room. There would be people walking in who would fill their pockets with rocks, just so they could be bumped up to the next weight bracket, so they could give more plasma, and thus be paid more. There were countless people we had to reject after their first donation because they would test positive for HIV/AIDS or some other disqualifying disease. They would come back to the center multiple times, insisting that they were not sick, and that they should be able to donate. There were multiple times where the police had to be called to escort these people out of the center, or where they would threaten to harm (or, on at least one occasion, contaminate employees with their tainted blood). In the three years I worked at this center, there was rarely ever a day that went by where a 'donor' wasn't in your face about how long they had to wait to get into the donor room, and how they preferred the needle be inserted into their massive scar tissue port.\n\nI donate blood to the Red Cross on a regular basis, and have since I turned 18 (I'm 25 now). I've just surpassed the 3 Gallon mark, which means I'm pretty much a regular at my local donation center. I never feel threatened or packed in with a crowd of...'interesting' people when I'm at my donation center. I never feel the need to lie about my eligibility requirements, because I receive no incentive for doing so. The only tangible reward I receive for my time is a bottle of water and a small snack to help restore my blood sugar. The employees at the donation center are always kind, willing to answer any questions that I might have, and take great care of me throughout the donation process. Compare this to the 16+ donors that I, as the phlebotomist at the plasma center, had to set up, stick, document, and disconnect, with maybe only one other person to help me, who usually spent their time staring at the TVs, or restocking supplies. \n\nI don't care if my wallet weighs the same coming out of the Red Cross as it did when I went in, it's a great feeling to donate blood, knowing that I have saved quite a few lives in the process. ", "There is an NPR interview with one of the people from red cross or whatever that takes blood donations.. Look it up and listen to it. They make big time profits of the blood you donate by selling it to hospitals across the country, and they sell it to other hospitals, and then to others... Its like a big money train and every stops gets more expensive", "Paying a huge amount like $250 might also lead to a moral hazard. People who desperately need the money but don't have a healthy lifestyle may contribute and therefore, the cost of checking/running tests may be greater than the benefit. Just a theory. ", "Because then the CEOs of the blood banks can't make mid to high 6 figures ", "Australian blood donators receive a biscuit and a cup of tea.\n\nYet, they still don't understand why the bank is empty. ", "Radiolab did a great job covering this issue. Here's a link with some further reading/listening: _URL_0_", "Red Cross Volunteer here. The biggest reason blood banks don't pay for blood anymore is because it increase the chances people will lie on the health history, and in turn, increase the chances that there will be more blood-borne pathogens(HIV, Malaria, etc.) in the national blood supply.", "What the shit? I thought donating blood ment whoever who needed my donated blood will get it. But instead they need to PAY for it? Wtf", "I make a decent enough living, but $250 every couple weeks or so would get me to donate blood. I could use it to pay extra on my student loans, which seems a bit ironic since they already got so much blood, sweat and tears from me. ", "Germany here. You recieve in common about 40$ and a free meal.", "Paying anything for blood donations is a bad idea. It can lead to people who are not fit for donations to do it for the money. In Finland they offer you some sandwitches, cookies, coffee etc. but never money. It's pleasant to go there but you don't gain anything but a good feeling. ", "It wouldn't be a donation then", "Paying people to donate would make the blood less safe because there would be an incentive for donors to lie about risk factors (like IV drug use or travel to Africa). We test for many infections (like HIV and hepatitis) but there's a potential for these tests to not work in certain situations. Also, several infections (like mad cow disease and babesiosis) just don't have any good screening tests \u2026 asking questions like \"How long did you live in Europe\" is the best we can do. Paying donors would result in more blood being thrown out, and potentially some unsafe blood being given to patients. Also, many donors keep donating because they feel good about helping others as volunteers; paying people to donate would make these awesome (and low disease risk) volunteers less likely to return.\n", "In the UK a unit of blood costs 0 because our healthcare isn't retarded.", "What freakin country do you live in where hospitals charge you when you need a blood transfusion????", "This fact cause me to not donate. If I give my blood freely and then someone makes $800  a pint off of it then I am getting exploited.", "Jesus H Fuckington hospitals charge you for Blood that's been donated?? What kinda shit is that?? We get charged for going to the hospital but if we need blood it's free. USA is fucked up when it comes to Medicine.", "i would love to donate blood... unfortunately i cant because of my sexuality and can guarantee i am more careful than most straight people. i have only had two sexual partners, worn protection and STILL gone for a check.", "You have to pay to donate blood ? Wow...   \n\nIn Romania you get:  \n   \n* 7 meal vouchers. 1 is 2.83$ = >  7x2.83 = ~20$   \n* One free day  \n* 50% off for public transportation subscription for 30 days  \n* free blood analysis  \n\n450ml is the quantity you have to donate.", "My friend actually works in cryo at the blood center. They have three shifts of people processing blood bags every day of the year. I'm not sure the exact process but it's a lot of equipment, a lot of staff and a lot of work. [Pic](_URL_0_) for proof. That's one night of work. She said that table has 66 units on it which has the potential to save 198 lives. Not to mention logistics and advertising blood drives. I guess I could ask her more about it. ", "They don't pay you for it to make sure people who desperately need money like drug addicts or people who can't afford propper food donate their blood for money because their blood is of a bad quality.", "There's a great radio lab on this topic...very eye opening!", "RadioLab has a podcast about this very topic: [Blood](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically, when you pay people for blood, you get more donations from those that need money. Red Cross and others used to pay for blood donations. They found that the people that donated for money tended to be less healthy than those that donated for altruism and their blood tended to have more contaminants, disease, etc.", "I can provide a really interesting thought/answer from a statistical viewpoint.  An example, I have been studying the ELISA blood test for HIV.  This test was designed so that the false negative rate (IE the chance that the test would tell you that you do not have HIV when you really do to be around 1/10000). Now stay with me, here is where it gets really interesting. \n\nfor the sake of the problem we assume 1/10000 people actually has the  HIV virus ( a probability of .01 which is reasonable).  The sensitivity of the test is 99% (seems good right?) and the specificity is 98% (also seems passable) so you would expect probability that a person having HIV given the test says they have HIV to be high.  However this is false.  **The chance of having HIV given you tested positive for HIV is below 50%**, meaning over half of the people who tested positive will not carry the virus.  But who designs a test like that? \n\nWell it all comes back to decision theory, we have to consider what happens in two cases.  First, what happens if the test says a person has HIV when they really do not?  and second, what happens when the tests says a person does not have HIV and they really do.  \n\nFinally we can apply the above thought to blood banks.  **If a person receives a transfusion from HIV positive blood they will get HIV.**  Therefore blood banks have requested that the test have an extremely low false negative rate, as a consequence the false positive rate grows very large. **The end result is that blood banks throw away 1/2 to 2/3 of the blood that is clean because it tested positive, all to ensure that nobody gets HIV from a contaminated transfusion.**  \n\n\nThanks for reading, I will go into the Bayesian calculations if requested but its super dense.  \n\n**TL,DR Statistical analysis of the blood for contamination forces blood banks to throw away a large portion of incoming stock**", "I give blood semi-regularly as I'm an o-negative donor and am CMV negative.  I usually do it when time permits but if the were paying me $250 you can bet your butt I'd be there every 56 days on the dot to donate.", "I can somewhat answer why hospital blood costs so much as my dad is the manager of the blood bank within a hospital.\n\nFirst, blood goes \"bad\" very quickly, and if it isn't in a properly cooled container for over 30 minutes, it is usually disposed of since there is a chance of bacteria growing. There are quite a few instances where blood is quickly used up. For instance, if a John Doe comes in with extreme trauma requiring blood and there's no time to type him or look up his medical file, he gets the universal donor blood type, and will probably need lots of it. If a surgeon orders too many units of blood down to the OR, they can be contaminated if handled and have to be tossed. Another problem experienced in hospitals is doctors ordering blood for patient's with a low hemoglobin that don't necessarily need blood, especially if they have already been given blood previously. The issue is the doctor not waiting for the hemoglobin to slowly return to normal levels, and will order blood to get back within normal limits.\n\nThen there's outside costs involved in donating blood. All the medical staff at donation centers are getting paid, there's overhead on the building(rent/utilities), and the blood also needs to be screened for blood borne diseases such as hepatitis before it can be safely administered to a patient. \n\nAfter all of that screening, the blood needs to be inventoried in the hospital's blood bank by staff where there's overhead on the building, cost of employees, and the cost to have and maintain equipment.", "Maybe it should be a one for one. You can receive as many units of blood as you have donated up until that point free. Then you have to pay for more after that. This way, there is a real incentive to give to build up this credit.", "I feel like if you at least donate blood regularly, then you shouldn't have to pay $800 should you need a transfusion.", "Wait, so we donate blood, and then hospitals charge people for the blood!? What the fuck!? I always thought donating blood meant you're giving someone your blood for FREE... Apparently hospitals just get rich off it?", "I know hospitals in USA overcharge for everything, but doing it with blood seems unethical, that blood was donated, i know they have to do things to keep it in good condition, but i'm sure it won't be that 800$, in Spain i think the blood banks charge between 50 and 100\u20ac per blood bag, which seems fair.  \n\nThe answer to your question is probably selfishness in most cases, and fear in others, money would probably mobilize more people, but it's illegal and it should be.", "I would donate blood, but I'm gay, so I must have AIDS.\n\nThanks, American Red Cross (and the FDA)!", "I think apathetic individuals, like myself, don't donate blood. My reason is the blood center calls ne every single day at like 8-9 am. I blocked them, but every time they call and their call gets blocked, i hear my phone vibrating. It is really annoying, and they have really obnoxious emails. During a snow storm, they basically wrote that I should be safe, but hey donate some blood. I got an email not too long ago wishing me a happy birthday and give the gift of giving blood. It seems they're not sympathetic at all. I think its just a culmination of everything that's pissing me off.", "They could always be bending the truth.  The $400,000 hospital administrator salary has to come from somewhere.", "In Ireland they used to offer a pint of Guinness for a pint of blood in my university. They had very high donation levels. ", "There was a \"this American life\" about this I listened to. Basically the blood banks are just like the people who are in control of the diamond market. They hold on to extra blood, scream about a shortage that is not true to raise the price. ", "Some insight as to why hospitals charge so much for blood. My hospital gets blood donated but then has to pay to have it all tested and rebagged and whatnot at its sister hospital. Then has to buy it back from its sister hospital when it needs it. ", "Somebody has to pay for the hospital administrators' Mercedes and second home on the seashore.", "Radiolab did a great episode about the blood industry _URL_0_\nGive it a listen!", "Paying people to donate blood also attracts the wrong type of people. For example: IV drug users. People will lie on the pre-donation form just to make the $250 bucks, and then the money to workup the product goes to waste.\n\nThe shortage is more for O type units anyway. O negative blood is always in demand because it can be used in trauma situations. To be honest, even if donor numbers increased, there would still likely be a shortage of O negative units, since it's less than 5% in most areas.\n\nThe same can be said for type AB, which is needed for platelets. ", "This is going to get buried.  But at one point in history up to the early 1970's they did pay.  And it became a huge issue that alcoholics and drug addicts would donate multiple times of day couple while being infected with Hep C and HIV.  They couldn't even test for HIV at the time, but by the end of the paying period 1 out of 7 blood samples were infected with Hep C due to this practice.  Theres a great series of investigative articles by a Chicago Tribune journalist I can link you to if anyone's interested.  ", "There's more than just \"Fuck you, that's why\" tied up in that price. You can't just shove blood in a fridge and call it a day. The blood has to be handled properly, properly labeled, and kept at very specific conditions. It's actually harder than people think.", "There are many other ways to incentivise giving blood. If when you donated blood you got a voucher to pay for some of your future hospital costs, everyone would donate blood. If I got a voucher for $250 off a hospital bill, I would donate every two months for life.", "Or on the contrary.. if the get the hospitals get the blood for free, why do they charge $800 per unit!?", "Shelf life. \n\nCurrently, the FDA limits the storage of red blood cells to 42 days, but studies have shown the cells begin to become damaged after just 21 days and it could be harmful to receive older blood. \n\nAdd the fact that only 38% of the population can donate and advances in medicine that require additional blood and there's just not a lot to go around.", "Anecdotal for sure, but with the knowledge that my blood is being sold to patients I stopped donating to red cross altogether a few years ago. I'd donate the blood for free of they weren't using it to cover their overhead, but I don't find it ethical to charge patients for something people give to you freely. Now I just donate to any friends or relatives who are expecting to have surgery soon. If anyone is in the northeast is having surgery soon and wants some awesome O- blood with good  O2 and clotting factors, PM me.", "One: As many people on this post have said. Charging for blood donations attracts the wrong kind of people. People with drugs in their system, contagions and other nasty things that can be transmitted via blood contact. This would create a massive stock of unusable blood which would have to be disposed of in a sanitary way (not cheap). Plus the syringe, blood bag, tubing, etc. is completely wasted, again not cheap. This would be more detrimental to the health care industry then a shortage of blood. Which will continue to exist as long as doctors are saving live no matter the cost.\n\nTwo: There will always be shortages as a single patient can go through the entire blood reserve just to keep them alive. I asked my father if the hospital had ever ran out of blood. My father being an internal medical doctor who specializes in respirology and intensive care. His response was yes. In fact he practically used up the entire hospitals blood supply attempting to keep a car accident patient alive. You see if a doctor has the ability to save someone he is legally obligated to. It doesn't matter if the local blood supply will run out. They will bleed it dry if necessary. This leads to one of the reasons why euthanasia is a difficult idea for some doctors as it goes against every fibber in their being. Even if it does cease an otherwise excruciating death. ", "They charge 800 per units? Its free in Argentina. Damn, US sucks health wise.", "People will come up with all sorts of inane and solve-able roadblocks to sensible ideas. When nothing is physically stopping humans from doing something, it is only words and rules that do. We are the masters of words and can do anything we want with them. And the most powerful people DO whatever they want. And the rules stopping sensible and progressive solutions to most societal problems are a result of what (the big) they want. \n\nAnything that makes it easier to live with less money, or easier to make money, destroys a lot of profit along the line, and nobody with any financially strewn power wants that. \n\n", "Payment should be in form of a Kind. People who donate blood receive free blood when needed.  ", "There was an excellent Radiolab piece about this not too long ago. Check it out. Very interesting.\n\n_URL_0_", "Addressing the hospital charge: There are many costs associated with giving a unit of blood that account for that $800 including the bag and tubing it comes in, the phlebotomist that performs the donation procedure and the facility where this happens, the equipment used to store and climate control the blood, the blood bank that physically stores the blood and the transportation cost to get it there, the cost of the laboratory tests to check the blood for infectious pathogens and the cost of the type and crossmatch to make sure it is compatible with the recipient, the cost of processing the blood into the separate components of plasma, packed red cells, and cryoprecipitate since we never transfuse whole blood anymore, the salary of the nurse or anesthesiologist that administers the transfusion (the doctor ordering blood gets paid for his services separately from the $800 you mention), the cost of giving intravenous fluids that must be administered with the blood.  Not to mention most hospitals must extract profit for everything or at least net profit on some things.  To compensate donors more, hospitals would need to charge more.\n\nAll of that aside, we don't want to pay blood donors because it would encourage some people to donate more often than is recommended and because many people would donate just to get money for drugs, making the donated blood less safe.  That is why frequently donors are compensated with less currency convertible items such as movie tickets.  In short, you get more favorable donors and more of them when it is a charitable donation.  ", "I didn't know that all blood centers profit off my donation. Even Red Cross profits off it. I understood some costs were necessary for test and other overhead costs but i didn't know they actually profited off it. Once I learned they all did, it didn't deter me from giving but certainly motivated me to give to a local community blood bank instead.", "My company gives us PTO (paid time off) to donate blood. If we give three times in a fiscal year, we get one day. If we give six times (which is the max you can give), we get two. My company also has a policy allowing us to sell back PTO during open enrollment. As such, I can sell back the two days I earn and get paid a decent chunk for each time I donate. \n\nI never before gave blood before working for this company... Never had the incentive. I'm proof that paying for donors works. ", "is now a good time to bring up the thing where [you can't donate blood if you're a dude who sleeps with dudes](_URL_0_)?\n\nlike, you don't even have to be 'gold star gay' to be excluded - you can sleep your way through a hundred women, but if you fool around with one guy, boom, disqualified. your blood is tainted.\n\nhey also guess what else - all those women you slept with? they're disqualified for *a year* just as a result for being exposed to you and your filfthy man-loving ways.\n\nit's pretty fucked up. that rule is basically why I don't think blood donation is any kind of big deal. if the need is as dire as people make it out to be, they couldn't afford to be so discriminating.", "because there is no profit for the CEO corps of this world, for caring, or keeping healthy people in mass numbers.\n\nthis is why you must learn and educate your next of kin, to be healthy from the get go, and not depend on pharmaceuticals in your adult life.", "The real question is why don't hospitals charge less for blood units?  I would be interested to know how that cost is appropriated.\n\nedit: I guess U/leftnuttriedtokillme answered this", "I'm only commenting here because I feel that I have something that could add some insight into this. I use to work at a blood bank and processed blood that people donate. Sometimes I like to tell people that I have held a bag of AIDs infected blood before, but that's another story. ;)\n\nSo donors would be asked a series of questions and although the donors could lie, most did not. A few people do lie about it and because every donation of blood had to be tested for various diseases, some use it as an STD test or something like that. Some donors had to give blood because they were ordered by their doctors to do so. These units of blood had to be thrown out because there was something wrong with it.\n\nI worked in the back of the lab and processed the blood that the company collected. Reading some of the comments on here I'm not sure that people realize how much work goes into the processing and testing of the donors blood.\n\nSo there were a few different types of bags used to collect blood depending on what we wanted to do with it. The simplest type was a double bag system like this one _URL_0_ and we would start to process it by putting each bag into a plastic cup, weigh it out for putting them into a centrifuge. The process would separate the red blood cells from the plasma.\n\nThis is where the second bag would come in at. Once the blood and plasma were separated you would drain the plasma out and into the other bag. The device that did this was a device where you would put the blood bag into and would squeeze it into the other. Once you got all the plasma into the 2nd bag, you would seal it and break them apart.\n\nNow let me take a moment to explain something. There were times when just based on the plasma you were able to figure out someone's gender (the plasma was green due to some birth controls) and you could always tell if the person as obese. The plasma looked like milk shake mix. The reason for bringing this up is that these were set off to the side. Unless the plasma was usable, ie able to be sold to a hospital, it would be put off to the side. It was not thrown away, but was instead sold to overseas companies for an insane amount of money. These bags would be weighed and the weight written on them and frozen. Once a week a truck would come and pick up a pallet of the stuff.\n\nWe also processed other donations another way, but the bag used was a three bag system similar to _URL_2_ and was processed the same way. However once the plasma was extracted, you would spin the other two bags again. You would then squeeze out the plasma and what was left were platelets. We processed a lot of these units because platelets have a short time frame and after that you had to throw them away.\n\nSo you have the potential to have 2 or more products off one donation. There are a few other products you can make from just one donation. That is all that we did for those. For the red blood cells, we had to process them further using a process called Leukoreduction ( _URL_1_ ) which in a nut shell, remove the white blood cells. You can do around 70 to 100 units an 8 hour shift.\n\nOn top of all this processing, you have people that are attaching the blood type stickers. You would also get doctors and nurses that would order a specific type of blood Rh which if that happened, one of the higher paid doctors would just randomly grab a blood bag and run a few tests that could take a few hours. If it didn't meet the requirements, another random bag was picked to run tests on.\n\nYou also need to keep in mind that this stuff was not held at the hospital and the doctors ordered on a need by need basis so we used our own system of drivers and some different curriers.\n\nPlease keep in mind that the job I did was not that technical and is a job that has no real requirements. In my book it was a slight step up from fast food. I hope this helps and can put some of this into perspective.\n\n", "I was led to believe by my economics teacher that paying people to donate blood would cause less people to give blood.  He sourced it with a study (can't find the link right now).  But in essence, people donate blood because of the good feeling they get.  It is hard to create an incentive to donate blood in addition to this \"personal-high\".  This also falls in line with the risk of people that need to donate blood having stds and such.  ", "Can confirm. \n\nI work as a Medical Coder at a medium-sized hospital, and one of my duties is entering blood bank charges. \n\nWe charge $912 per unit of packed red blood cells. The transfusion itself is something like $250.", "Caught something on NPR about this back in November.\n\nThe TL;DR is that people who show up to sell blood are not the kind of people you want giving blood."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://jme.bmj.com/content/20/1/31.full.pdf"], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21174480"], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21174480", "http://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/annualreview/blood-supply/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308780-blood-banks/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/qQuBYq1"], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood/"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_male_blood_donor_controversy"], [], [], ["http://www.suru.com/bloodbag2.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukoreduction", "http://www.suru.com/bloodbag3.htm"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "783xe1", "title": "why does sugar turn brown when melted?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/783xe1/eli5_why_does_sugar_turn_brown_when_melted/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doqwk5f", "dora36x", "dorbyzc", "doreq1x", "dorh446", "dorjiib", "dorjsbr", "dormdig"], "score": [3279, 23, 98, 3, 174, 4, 8, 13], "text": ["Sugar is a molecule made of a particular arrangement of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms.  When you heat up the sugar, this adds energy to the system that can be used to fuel chemical reactions that rearrange the bonds between these atoms.  Some of these compounds are dark brown in color and add caramel flavors to the sugar.  Similar reactions occur in meat when you cook it and get a tasty brown crust.", "I had a lab report due on the Maillard reaction at 11:59. It\u2019s because of what everyone else said. Monosaccharide sugars respond quicker than di/poly- saccharides and the reaction increases speed with increased temperature and or increased pH to make it more a more aqueous or basic environment. It\u2019s a non enzymatic browning reaction that occurs between a reducing sugar and an amino acid with heating/ etc. ketones work better than aldoses because they are more inclined to release positive aromatic compounds while aldoses such as Xylose release compounds that smell like dirty socks. ", "It's worth mentioning that it is possible to melt sugar with it remaining clear, but it is difficult because it so readily burns.", "As others have said there are some reactions that occur to make it brown, however there are many compounds that I work with which are nice white crystals when solids but are yellow or brown oils when liquids so a change in color doesn't necessarily mean a chemical reaction.", "It turns brown because of [caramelization](_URL_0_).\n\nNow, caramelization in itself is a poorly understood process, but we know a few things about it. It is, simply put, the degradation of sugars under heat. Now, these sugars break up into simpler sugars, dehydrate, fragment into aldehydes and ketones, polymerise and undergo several other reactions. Don't concern yourself with the details of the reactions unless you want to - just understand that there are many reactions simultaneously occuring at that temperature.\n\nFor the compounds we are interested in, we can broadly separate them into two categories - volatile compounds and polymers. (It's a lot more complex than this but these are the two important classes).\n\n* Volatile compounds like [diacetyl](_URL_2_), [Hydroxymethylfurfural](_URL_1_) etc. are released which gives caramel its characteristic smell/flavour.\n\n* The polymers (30+ carbon atoms/molecule) formed are grouped into three classes: Caramelans, Caramelens and Caramelins. They contribute to the brown colour of caramel.\n\nClearing out some misconceptions\n\n1. Caramelization is not the same as the Maillard reaction (browning of bread, meat etc). *The Maillard reaction requires amino acids to react with sugars, whereas caramelization does not* (it is simply the degradation of sugars with heat). They both involve browning and can occur simultaneously, on the same food base, and with similar results on the taste buds, so they are quite easily confused.\n\n2. It is not brown because of carbon. That sort of burning requires a much higher temperature than the caramelization reaction. If you try to caramelize on too high a flame, you will see it turning black and tasting charred. That is carbon (see pyrolysis/carbonization for such reactions).", "Sugar is part of a type of molecules known as carbohydrates.  At a very simplistic level carbohydrates are carbon atoms with waters around them with the generic formula (CH2O)x.  For sugar x is 12 but that is not important. \n\nWhat is important is that if you heat sugar enough, you eliminate water molecules (think of it as boiling) and you are left with just carbon atoms (basically coal). Between coal and sugar, there are various levels of dehydration, so you go from colorless/white to black. In between you have yellow and brown, depending on how much dehydration you did.", "Don't all things go brown/golden when heated.. Then black when they burn..?", "A lot of whack answers in here and misinformation. First off, it has nothing to do with the Maillard reaction so ignore all those.\n\nELI5:\n\nThink of sugar like a pyramid of Lego bricks, you start heating them up in a frying pan and start by breaking them into single bricks, this is your melted sugar. As you keep heating, your going to start melting some of your bricks that are touching the frying pan. Clearly these melted Lego bricks aren't going fit back together, maybe you can get a few together but you can't stack them like you could before and some of them might start melting together, these are your browning products and flavors in your sugar (caramelisation). If you keep heating your eventually going to burn your Lego, turning it black (pyrolysis).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramelization", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxymethylfurfural", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacetyl"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2wku3h", "title": "Is there a historical basis for claims that kosher laws (e.g., no eating pork) originated as a means to prevent disease, because there was a lack of understanding how to properly raise/prepare those foods?", "selftext": "For example, some claim that pork is not allowed to be eaten because the Jews at the time (or perhaps they were just Israelites then, my religious history is poor) didn't prepare pork properly, resulting in trichinosis. \n\nI've heard alternative explanations, such as kosher laws being enacted to ensure that the Hebrews did not assimilate into local (Egyptian perhaps) society and remained a distinct people. Or that, specific to pork, pigs were just not a good animal for that area (high water requirements in a low water region). One place I read said that it might have to do with the time period when the Jews entered Palestine after the exodus, because there were celebrations for the god Ishtar than involved consuming pork, and treligious leaders weren't keen on intermixed rituals.\n\nIs there any historical evidence for claims like these?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wku3h/is_there_a_historical_basis_for_claims_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["corut2l", "cosd8i8"], "score": [21, 2], "text": ["The origins of the pork prohibition are a little mysterious.  Richard A. Lobban wrote an article in 1994 that explains the origin of the pig prohibition as coming out of Egypt's upper classes in the Bronze Age.\n\nHis argument is that the pig became associated with the Egyptian god Seth, the \"bad\" god, the one who killed his brother Osiris, and were associated with defeated nomarchs of the Egyptian marshlands. Pigs thus gained a negative stigma, associated with defeat and bad things, especially among the ruling class (who were the victors).  Pigs continued to be consumed by the common people.  Pigs thus began to represent evil itself.  He continues by noting that Moses was raised by the upper classes in Egypt, and this may have influenced the prohibition of pig consumption.\n\nYou can read the article here:\n\n[Lobban, Richard A. \"Pigs and their prohibition.\" International Journal of Middle East Studies 26.01 (1994): 57-75.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe prohibition probably continued as a way of differentiating certain groups, and creating identities of \"self\" and \"other\".  The Muslims embraced the pork prohibition as it differentiated them from the Christians around them who were permitted to eat pork (allowed in Acts).  The ancient Jewish people embraced the pork prohibition as it differentiated them from the people around them, at least on an ideological level.  Archaeological evidence shows that they did actually consume pork, though not to any great degree.", "hi! you'll find more responses in the FAQ\n\n* [Why do Judaism and Islam prohibit pork?](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://digitalcommons.ric.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&amp;context=facultypublications&amp;sei-redir=1&amp;referer=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dorigin%2Bof%2Bpork%2Bprohibition%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt%3D1%252C22%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22origin%20pork%20prohibition%22"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion#wiki_why_do_judaism_and_islam_prohibit_pork.3F"]]}
{"q_id": "3b9wwe", "title": "Can a rapidly rotating section of mirror function as a complete mirror?", "selftext": "If you cut the majority of a mirror off each side of a central line, leaving a section that is the full diameter but only a small portion of the total surface area, and rotate it at high speed, will it function sufficiently like a complete mirror to be able to replace a heavier reflector in a telescope?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3b9wwe/can_a_rapidly_rotating_section_of_mirror_function/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cskdh69", "cskflre"], "score": [14, 4], "text": ["You would percieve it as a partially transparent mirror. It wouldn't help a telescope because spinning it would not make more light hit the mirror, and the reason telescope mirrors are large is to collect more light.", "There are a lot of engineering problems that your system would create that they wouldn't be worth overcoming just for the reduction in weight of the large mirror. \n\nFirstly to spin a mirror that wide to be semi opaque would require a lot of weighty bracing and a large motor. And even then then the mirror itself may not structurally be able to withstand the speed at the edges before it shatters. There's a reason that CD drives went from 1x to 2x to 4x to 52x very fast and then didn't get any faster. That little 5\" solid disk flies to pieces. \n\nSecondly the vibration of the motor and mechanism would make the mirror almost useless for some types of astronomy that require extremely well ground mirrors on extremely stable mounts. If you have ever taken a zoomed picture from a vehicle you will know how even a smooth ride gives you largely useless picture. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4x8rnt", "title": "How do engineers and construction workers ensure that all the cables are under the same tension on a suspension bridge?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4x8rnt/how_do_engineers_and_construction_workers_ensure/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6e5rry"], "score": [3], "text": ["First, there is no absolute need for all cables to be under the exact same tension.  \n\nIf you look at this image _URL_0_ for the nomenclature.\n\nThe bridge is designed so that the static load is distributed more or less equally along the main cables, by placing the suspenders (the cables that drop from the main cables to the roadway) equal distances apart.\n\nHowever, if a big load is placed on part of the bridge, the tension in the suspenders supporting that section would be higher and the shape of the main cable could be slightly distorted.  There's no problem doing that with small loads.  Presumably loads large enough to present problems are not permitted on the bridge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.warwickallen.com/bridges/images/suspensionforces2.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "btcxpc", "title": "Was Aladdin originally set in... China? What was the point of this if the story was culturally Arabic in every single way?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/btcxpc/was_aladdin_originally_set_in_china_what_was_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eow585u"], "score": [165], "text": ["The history of the story of Aladdin is complex because it is one of the \"orphan\" stories that appear in the supplemental nights and was not, consequently, part of the original stories woven together by the Scheherazade frame. That said, it should come as no surprise to find a folktale from anywhere set in what is locally seen as exotic: in this case, \"China\" is a way of saying \"in a far away land.\" At the same time, it is not unusual for a folktale to fail to depict details of an exotic setting in an accurate way. Typically, the exotic place has specific details that are more reminiscent of the place where the story is told than of the place where the story is supposed to unfold. \n\nTo simplify matters when depicting the story in film, the very Arabic features of the story - as you mention, sultans, viziers, bazaars, etc. - are best not confused by a Chinese setting. While western China has an Islamic population, it made more sense to move the setting to Arabia for the various film depictions of the story.\n\nThe Aladdin story is Tale Type ATU 561 (with affinity for ATU 560). It has a wide distribution in Europe and the Middle East. In the various tellings, setting is the first to be affected by local perspective and preference. One should not take the Chinese setting of the version appearing in the \"Supplemental Nights\" too seriously; other variants have other settings.\n\nedit: a fair response, which has since disappeared, asked about the classification system ATU: The point here is not the classification in itself, but rather the fact that the folktale can be classified. It is ubiquitous and has caught the attention of folklorists for a long time. The ATU classification system was originated by the Finnish scholar, Antti Aarne. It was amended by the American Stith Thompson and then most recently by the German folklorist, Hans-J\u00f6rg Uther (hence the ATU)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "h91jc", "title": "How close are we to adopting robotic technology for many, if not all, minor and major surgeries?", "selftext": "The lack of doctors means that patients have to travel quite a bit for a needed procedure, or vice versa. And also, developing countries without adequate medical care becoming a thing of the past is a goal shared by many.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h91jc/how_close_are_we_to_adopting_robotic_technology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1tk0t6"], "score": [4], "text": ["Doing surgery in remote locations isn't really the reason for the development of robotic surgery.  You still want a surgeon on-hand in case of complications that are best managed without the robot.  Practically speaking, these robots are very large and expensive, and getting these to remote locations is more difficult than getting a surgeon to the patient, or even better, your patient to a surgeon.  It's not a solution for a surgeon shortage, because you still need a surgeon to operate the machine.\n\nThe main attraction of robotic surgery is the degree of very fine control that it offers over a surgeon's hands.  I think it offers a real benefit for prostatectomies (in the spirit of r/askscience, I should add that the benefits are not proven), and perhaps some cardiac surgeries, but for most of the other things I see surgeons using a robot for now, they seem to just lengthen the procedures without much observable benefit, and are mostly a marketing tool."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "490r3x", "title": "Why was Denazification (and the equivalent in Japan) so successful?", "selftext": "The ideological transformation of Germany and Japan seems to have been so quick, painless, and complete -- but seventy years later, the idea that you could impose liberal democratic institutions via military occupation seems absurdly naive.\n\nWhy was there no meaningful fascist (or at least nationalist, or anti-occupation) insurgency in either country? How did the Allies convince the German and Japanese people to repudiate the ideology that had inspired such fanatical zeal during the war?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/490r3x/why_was_denazification_and_the_equivalent_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0o64ma", "d0og50k"], "score": [59, 15], "text": ["I think you have to seriously consider the effect of the World Wars on the national psyche of the defeated powers, especially Germany. Ive studied German rearmament in the Cold War, and a major theme which came up over and over was this idea of \"Not again.\" And think about it, in the 31 years between 1914 and 1945, Germany went to war twice. Millions of young men died, Europe was torn apart, and Germany was politically, economically, and spiritually broken. A person who was 18 in 1914 and served in the \"Great War\" would have only been 49 by the end of the next war. \n\nSo Fascism, Nazism, Monarchism, and Prussian Militarism in general all became linked with these great defeats. In 1950, Germany was split, disarmed, and controlled by the Allied Powers. Germans didnt need much convincing to see how their actions had brought them to that position.\n\nAnd then you have to work in the horrors of the Holocaust, and how the Jewish extermination affected the German people. Many had supported, either directly or indirectly, the Nazi state. Over 30% of Germans had voted for them in 1933, and millions had served in their army and government apparatus. Thousands more had informed on their neighbors, business partners, and friends to the Gestapo. And as a result of this Fascist feaver, millions of Jews and others were killed in the camps. Even more were imprisoned and forced into slavery in the worst conditions imaginable. After the extent of the Holocaust became known, it didnt take much to convince the German people that Nazism and Fascism were wrong. \n\nIf youre interested in reading more on this topic, I think Konrad Adenauer's memoirs are actually pretty interesting. He was the first Chancellor after the fall of Nazi Germany, and he faced the challenge of putting Germany back together again. He had to rebuild a Germany when people still feared what Germany had been, and had to do it within this new framework of the Cold War. Its all very interesting and deals, in part, with this whole subject. I have a lot of respect for Adenauer. \n\nAs for Japan, Im less clear on. But I would also point out that things are not so cut and dry. They did not (and have not) abandoned their wartime heroes the way Germany did, and it's still a huge problem even today. ", "I'm not an expert on the time period (as I merely studied history teaching, not actual academic history), but I want to interject that the question whether Denazification was in fact successful, and how successful it really was, is still very much up for debate among German (and Austrian!) historians. \n\nGiven the amount of people employed in the direct or indirect support of the Nazi state during the war (be it as active Nazis, bureaucrats, snitches, party functionaries, or just loyal supporters), the Allied Denazification campaigns only reached a small part of the population involved in the Nazis' crimes, and many former party members, particularly academics and military men, were quickly re-integrated and re-established in their former professions.\n\nThis was even more pronounced in Austria, which quickly re-integrated even war criminals like [Heinrich Gross](_URL_0_) into academia and state apparatus.\n\nOne should also be careful of mixing up the attitude of trained historians with those of the general population, which had a much less harsh view on certain parts of the Nazi apparatus than is commonly held among academicians. Particularly the Wehrmacht was long thought of as a relatively \"clean\" and \"umblemished\" part of the Nazi apparatus, and [an exhibition in Germany that aimed to revise that popular image](_URL_1_) was controversial among the general population at the time (though not unwelcome among historians)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Gross", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung"]]}
{"q_id": "rb6a1", "title": "why are so many people up in arms over \"you have to have health insurance\" initiatives, but are okay with mandated car insurance?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rb6a1/why_are_so_many_people_up_in_arms_over_you_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c44e83l", "c44ec85", "c44eghf", "c44fe21", "c44fgq2", "c44finf", "c44fix8", "c44fkkv", "c44fmnu", "c44fmu0", "c44fv0j", "c44fv8j", "c44fvld", "c44fvwu", "c44fwxp", "c44fz8s", "c44g13k", "c44gb0s", "c44gvka"], "score": [240, 3, 8, 2, 57, 14, 12, 175, 4, 2, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4], "text": ["Mandated car insurance covers drivers you hit, it doesn't cover you.  Comprehensive insurance, which does, is not normally mandated.", "Because the president is black.  Seriously.  Nobody had a problem with it when it was the Heritage Foundation and Gingrich and Romney pitching it.", "You don't have to get car insurance, (just don't own a car).  Under the new health law, you must get health insurance or else you pay a very large penalty.  That's the difference.\n\nHaving the federal government force citizens to buy a product or pay a penalty is something that's never been done in this country.  ", "AFAIK nobody has taken up arms over either. Mandated car insurance is unfortunate as well though, because it means that the insurance companies can now raise their prices, which people will then say have to be regulated by the government, and then we continue down that dark road. ", "You don't have to own a car, but you do have to own a body. ", "Car insurance can be seen as optional in the way that getting a car is optional. No car, no insurance necessary. Many don't have a car because they don't need it (as they can walk to use public transport) or that they can't afford it (as their income is too low).\n\nOn the other hand, while not everyone has a car, everyone has their health to take care of. As mentioned before, some people already have low incomes such that they can't buy insurance, and now they are forced to purchase something they can't afford. Or can they...?\n\nProponents of the mandated insurance say that by making health insurance mandatory, it will force insurance companies to be competitive and lower prices such that they will be able to take in more people. Part of the way insurance works is that it does get less expensive for both the company and the people they cover as more people buy into it. Now that everyone has to buy it (or rather everyone needs to be covered if you want to change perspectives), companies are supposed to scramble over each other so that they stay in business by trying to attract the most people. Thus, everybody wins; companies get their money and people get their health care.\n\nBut that's theoretical for the most part, but proponents have cited the car insurance mechanisms as their proof. But here is the second reason why people don't like the idea of the mandated health insurance: people don't trust that the \"competition\" part of the mandated health insurance plan will play out, given the track record of corporations these days. The mandated health insurance plan at it's core relies on economics (which has proven itself to be a failure) and ideal conditions (which will never occur, which is why we call it ideal), so many are unwilling to rely on a system which is based on what they believe is broken from the start.\n\nEDIT: It seems like a lot of people were pinning some reasons on Obama and his race. Ironically, mandated health insurance is the most capitalistic type of plan, a far cry from the belief that he is a socialist. That said, if you want the more simplistic answer to why some are bitter about this plan, then yes, it's a race/party issue, which extends to issues of willful ignorance. But that's a discussion for another time. I myself have no issues with Obama's background and my issues about his policies is not relevant to this; I simply presented some other facets of the plan itself that many have found issues with.", "I don't think car insurance is nationally mandated. It's state-by-state.", "To play devil's advocate (and to directly answer your question):\n\n- Auto insurance is not a federal mandate. It is determined by state- NH for example does not require any auto insurance.\n\n- You only need auto insurance to drive on government property (i.e., public roads). You can drive around in your back yard all you want without insurance (at least in most states).\n\n- People see the health insurance buy-in as paying for others, where auto insurance only applies to the insured and the people directly affected by the insured. \n\nThese are the main objective differences between the two, but when you talk to many people who are opposed, you'll begin to realize these aren't their main motivations for opposition.", "the root problem is not the requirement that you have health insurance. the root problem is that it is being required by the federal government. something they shouldn't be doing. Car insurance is only a requirement at the state level. not the federal. make more sense?", "The car insurance mandate is not a federal issue.  It is done by the individual states.  In other words, there is no federal law that requires you to have car insurance.\n\nThe health insurance mandate is a federal law.\n\nCertain segments of the population find wide ranging exercises of federal power much more frightening than the same wide ranging exercises of state power.", "Driving on roads built by the government is a privilege. I'm free to drive however I want on my private property, but I have to follow rules on public property. My body and health. The government should have no say on what I do with my body unless it puts others in harms way.", "What I find even stranger is that Republicans and conservatives are very much against the health insurance mandate, but they're more than fine with mandated trans-vaginal ultrasounds. ", "Come to NH - no mandatory health or car insurance here! Or motorcycle  helmets :P\n", "Driving a car is an optional privilege.\n\nLiving is a default condition. ", "You don't have to have car insurance if you don't have a car.\n\nTHe only way to get out of mandated health insurance is to no have health (be dead). That's the big difference.", "Because driving a car on public roads is optional. Being alive is not.", "Driving a car is a choice. Being a human is not.", "Just because one injustice exists doesn't mean we should accept other injustices thrown upon us.\n\nIt's also much more difficult to change or remove a law that's been passed versus preventing a law from being passed to begin with.\n\nAlso, there are some differences between the two that make mandated car insurance considerably less intrusive, as outlined by \"ignoramus\" (who is anything but).", "*tap*tap*tap* Is this thing on?  \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qk953/eli5_why_requiring_people_to_buy_health_insurance/"]]}
{"q_id": "797wpi", "title": "How exactly were the first forged iron tools/weapons made without iron tools like hammers, anvils, tongs, etc.?", "selftext": "This question is inspired by the recent primitive technology video showing the building of a natural draft furnace:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt got me thinking on a quandary: \n\nyou need iron tools to make iron tools (and by this I mean, you need a very good and strong iron hammer to hammer away impurities in molten/hot iron and to shape it you need tongs and an anvil to hammer against.\n\n\n\nso how did the first people to break this chicken and egg problem do it? Did they use stone tools?\n\nthanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/797wpi/how_exactly_were_the_first_forged_iron/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dozxl7w", "dozy1j2"], "score": [6, 40], "text": ["If you don't get an answer here, I recommend trying /r/askhistorians", "You don't necessarily need iron tools to make iron tools. The quality won't be good if you use softer materials, and the durability of the tools might not be the best, but you can improve that step by step. Use a stone hammer to make a bad bronze hammer. Use a bad bronze hammer to make a good bronze hammer, use that to make a bad iron hammer, use that to make a better iron hammer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3n2dll", "title": "Why aren't more medications administered nasally?", "selftext": "It seems like a pretty direct route of administration for recreational drug users, why aren't legitimate medications ever administered in the same way(In a controlled setting)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3n2dll/why_arent_more_medications_administered_nasally/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvm2ipx"], "score": [3], "text": ["History is part of it-- we are used to pills or injections.  In theory, you can take a pill and reformulate that drug into an nasal spray, but without another $100,000,000 in new clinical trials, that would be considered off-label use.  Doctors can prescribe (most) drugs off-label, but drug manufacturers can't advertise them this way.\n\nBut there are a couple of bits of physiology to consider as well:\n\nThe lining of your nasal cavity changes pretty significantly depending on your health.  A thick (inflamed) mucosa would be less capable of absorbing medications.  Not all drugs can tolerate this sort of uncertainty in doseage.\n\nAlso, the nasal mucosa doesn't have much surface area (compared, say, to the lungs or intestines).  You'd have to administer a very concentrated form of the drug nasally.  Not all chemicals can be highly concentrated without forming crystals (which probably would be painful to spray into someone's nose)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "bylyoe", "title": "Why did Calvinist communities, like John Calvin's Geneva, hold to such strict behavioral standards if your actions don't affect salvation in Calvinist theology?", "selftext": "I was reading about the incredibly strict policing of behavior in Calvin's geneva (ditto US puritan communities), and was sort of confused by this.  If Calvinist philosophy says that not only do one's actions not affect salvation, but one's salvation is already determined in advance, why was there this rigorous policing of behavior which, from a theological perspective, doesn't seem to matter? \n\n Were there any Calvanist theologians who said \"Since we're already saved/damned and can't affect that, who cares what you do?\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bylyoe/why_did_calvinist_communities_like_john_calvins/", "answers": {"a_id": ["er4qq34"], "score": [10], "text": ["Ah, something I can answer! \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe question of a faith-based versus an action-based soteriology (ie. salvation theory) is a difficult one, and is not only limited to the Calvinists. It was a huge and complicated theological debate, especially during the Reformations, and one of the central gripes of many of the Reformists (Martin Luther included) was, specifically, the idea that your actions did not decide whether you would be saved or not. Lending to this specific question is also the history of the debate about predetermination, the question of the church's role in the material world and the historical context of anti-Catholic polemics. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhile I am no expert on Calvinism specifically, I think I can answer your question by explaining the general outline of the above complexities.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFirst of all, on the question of predetermination. While predetermination, and the discussion of its intricacies, had existed within the church since St. Augustine, it was brought up again in full power by the Reformists. Each one had their own specific theology, but most (including Melanchton, Luther and Calvin) were staunchly predeterminist. Calvin, especially, had predetermination as the very core of his theology, and he brought it up in almost all of his sermons. \n\nNow, the thing to remember about predetermination is that there really is no way of knowing whether or not someone is predetermined to be saved. Calvin tentatively believed that one could make an educated guess based on how often a person went to church and did good deeds (we'll get back to this), but generally, the idea of predetermined  salvation was a hypothetical one; it was great for complicated theological debates between scholars, but not much use when it came to determining how to practice Christianity in real life. One must also remember that predetermination, at least according to Calvin and the other reformists, was never supposed to be random; it was not so much that you were predetermined to be saved, as it was that your were predetermined to be a faithful and good Christian so that you would in the end be saved. That is to say, it \\*did\\* matter what you did and believed in your life, since this would be the deciding factor in whether your soul was among those predetermined for salvation. This leads us to the question of actions versus faith.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe soteriology of both Luther and Calvin was based on the dogma of *sola fide -* 'faith alone'. What this meant, in theory, was that the *sole* thing determining whether a person is saved or not is whether or not they have faith in God, and not whether they do good deeds in their life. In practice, though, the Reformists believed that someone who had faith would naturally do good deeds, and so the end result was.. pretty much the same. So why the distinction? Theologically, it was based on a certain reading of the Pauline Epistles. But functionally, it was a way for the reformists to condemn the Catholic Church's selling of indulgences as a way to gain salvation. If your salvation is based on faith alone, then there is no way to buy yourself to heaven - neither by buying indulgences, going on pilgrimages or fighting crusades. So *sola fide* makes it impossible to gain vast riches and power by dangling salvation over the heads of believers, and takes away the Catholic Church's main income.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLastly, there is the question of the two regiments. How, according to the Reformists, should the world be ruled? Martin Luther had his idea of the two regiments, the worldly and the spiritual. According to him, the two should have nothing to do with each other. The state is in charge of keeping an orderly and peaceful society while protecting the church, and the church is to own no land or armies, but only focus on spiritual teaching. In Luthers worldview, the ideal world would have good Christians as judges, lords and kings, but the church should have no worldly power while the state should have no spiritual power.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis is not true for Calvin since, as in all things, he goes a bit further than Luther. He demanded that all people should live *imitatio christi -* that is, imitating Christ in their way of living, and that this should be instituted on a structural level. This included the establishment of a State of God. Basically, he saw the Bible as a book of law, and believed that society should be structured entirely based upon it. This meant that there was to be no separation between church and state, and a perfect Evangelical society should be built for the good of the good Christians.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo in conclusion, Calvins Evangelical society was built to provide a perfect example. While not everyone was predetermined for salvation, he still believed that society should be held to a rigorous moral standard (and perhaps this would lead to more good Christians predetermined for salvation being born in that society?). While this can still seem confusing, it's because.. well, predetermination and its practical effects is confusing.  It was confusing to the Reformists as well, who spend their careers either trying to avoid talking too much about it (like Luther and Melanchton) or trying at length to explain it (like Calvin). There's a reason it's been an active theological debate for almost 2.000 years.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTo answer your final question, I can say that it was definitely something brought up by numerous Catholic polemicists as a critique of Calvinism and Lutheranism. But, qua all of the above, I know of no Calvinist theologians who saw it as a valid point. If anyone else knows more, I'd love to hear about it.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI hope this answers your question halfway-comprehensively. I realise it's a mess, but when it comes to theological dogma and Church history, things simply become very complicated very fast, so I've done my best to try and boil it down."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2l056s", "title": "Is it possible for something being heated by a flame to become hotter than the flame?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2l056s/is_it_possible_for_something_being_heated_by_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clq7xiq"], "score": [13], "text": ["No, at least not unless any additional chemical reactions occur within the system being heated. However otherwise, heat cannot spontaneously flow from a reservoir at a lower temperature to one at a higher temperature. \n\nIn case you are curious, the reason for this behavior can be explained in terms of the overall change in entropy. The change in entropy is dS=Q/T where Q is the heat and T is the temperature. Now say you have two reservoirs, one at T1 and the other at T2 and you are exchanging Q heat between them. The change in entropy in the first object will be Q/T1 while in the other it will be -Q/T2 (the sign switches since heat is now removed). This means that the total change in entropy will be: dS= Q/T1 - Q/T2 = Q/(T1\\*T2)\\*(T1-T2). The second law of thermodynamics says that for a spontaneous process the change in entropy must be positive or zero, which means that the heat transfer will only be spontaneous when T1 is greater than or equal to T2, or in other words, heat only flows from a body at higher temperature to one with lower temperature."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8c3jo6", "title": "How do Lasers burn objects? Do the stream of photons actually impart energy in the form of heat upon absorption, or does the act of hitting a surface create some sort of friction-based heat?", "selftext": "I\u2019d imagine it\u2019s not friction-based or else glass would heat up as light passed through it, plus, someone once told me that light cannot generate friction because it lacks the mass, although I have no idea whether that\u2019s true or not. It doesn\u2019t sound right, but I\u2019m far from being an expert.\n\nAlso, I know that dark surfaces are meant to get hotter in the sun than lighter surfaces because they reflect less light and absorb more -  I\u2019m guessing this would be the same for a laser beam, the absorption of light generating the heat?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8c3jo6/how_do_lasers_burn_objects_do_the_stream_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxcbclf"], "score": [15], "text": ["The molecules absorb energy in form of photons, which are the quanta, or packets of energy. This energetic molecules jiggle more strongly, which gives rise to the phenomenon of heat. Although glass looks transparent, it absorbs light of some parts of the frequency spectrum, but most of the visible light is unabsorbed, it depends upon the energy states of the atoms/molecules. \n\nGenerally dark surfaces absorb and also radiate heat more quickly than shiny surfaces. So dark surfaces heat up and cool more quickly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4oq81r", "title": "why isn't sheet music just the letter notes versus the way that it is written", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4oq81r/eli5_why_isnt_sheet_music_just_the_letter_notes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4enn4r", "d4eouk5", "d4epfgl", "d4eqq4n", "d4er1zf", "d4euicl"], "score": [20, 11, 7, 48, 2, 2], "text": ["If you are playing a chord -- that is, multiple notes at the same time -- it's much easier to represent that visually on a staff. Also, there can be multiple instruments/voices written on the music. So, writing the letters doesn't work all that well.\n\nAlso, I can tell you as someone who sang for years in choirs without any instrumental training, that the musical notation gives me a sense of the interval between my current and next note, even if I have no idea what the actual note I am singing is.", "There's a lot more information in standard notation than just the note. You have the length of the note, the octave, how it relates to other notes, etc. ", "In addition to what everyone else has said you should also note (hehe) that there are multiple instances of each letter. A musical staff has more than one a note or g note and if you just used the letter it would be confusing which one. ", "To explain, I'll first give the letter-note idea a try:\n\nFor one thing, there's more than one of each note name.  \nIf you go to a piano and play the key on the far left, that's a note called 'A'. If you play every white piano key from left to right, the note names go: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,...and so on.\n\nSo, with a note-names-only system, you'd have to specify which particular A you're wanting the person reading to play. This is already a thing, by the way. The 'octaves' the note names are in are numbered by their pitch from low to high. They're written A1, A2, etc.\n\nSo if you're trying to write out the first line of \"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star\" using only note names, you'd get something like:  \nG2 G2 D3 D3 E3 E3 D3 C3 C3 B3 B3 A3 A3 G2.\n\nWe have another problem here. The D3 after the two E3s is supposed to last twice as long as the other notes. So we need to invent a system for informing the player to hold that note exactly twice as long.\n\nAnother potential problem is, what if the player doesn't use a Roman alphabet? There are many great Russian, Asian and Arabic composers. How do I communicate with them? \n\nI'll stop here, but I could find a few more problems easily. The point is the letter-name system only works on a very limited and simple level. If you wanted to communicate anything more than a list of the notes played, you would have to start inventing more and more complex notations, which would eventually make the music as complicated to learn as the present system we already have. \n\n \nWritten music is a picture of the sounds you're making. You can tell from looking at the score that there are places with high-pitched notes, or low-pitched notes. There are places where the notes are very long, or places with a run of very fast notes, and that's easy to see from the way the music appears on the page.\n\n  \nPersonally, I think it's beautiful. Think of it, how do you \"write\" a sound? More specifically, how can you tell a violinist to play this arpeggio at this exact speed, accenting the first note, slurring the last three notes, and bringing the volume and intensity down as the arpeggio progresses? Even harder, how do you tell a violinist to do that when the violinist lives on the other side of the planet from you, and was born three-hundred years in the future?  \nWritten music is a system which has evolved over hundreds of years and continues to evolve. (I'm currently rehearsing a score for a Broadway musical which has a few icons of eyeglasses in various places. The eyeglasses are a warning to pay particular attention to what's about to happen. You won't find the little 'eyeglasses' icon in Beethoven. It's a new thing and it works pretty good.) It's not a perfect system, but it works very, very well when you consider the complexity of what it's conveying.\n\nAs a teacher, I get asked OP's question quite often. I blame the alphabet. The problem is, as a teacher, you have to get the student to play some notes, and you have to call the notes *something.* So you say, \"Play this, we'll call this note 'A.' Now play this, we'll call it 'B.'\"  \nPretty soon, the student has learned to play a bunch of notes and has memorized the names. The memorization part is easy because the student is already an expert at the alphabet.  \nThe hard part is getting the student to attach the sound he or she is making to the musical staff instead of the alphabet. Once the student has attached the letter 'A' to a physical motion on the instrument, it's incredibly hard to detach them from it. When, in fact, the letter-name of the sound you're making is the *least* important thing to know.\n\n  \nThe fact that OP has posted this question makes me think that he or she has gotten stuck in this trap. If so, you're not alone.  \nI got 'unstuck' by two methods:\n\n  \n1. Take a piece of sheet music and read it while listening to a recording of it. Try to follow the notes with your finger as they play. This is a great way to understand the twists and turns a score throws at you; codas, repeats, and whatnot. Plus, you get to see what intense passages look like on the page, and what mellow passages look like.\n\n\n2. I took the advice of a teacher who told me \"Read, read, read! Every day. Get a piece of music, read through it, and throw it away. Then get another.\"  \nThis is one of the best pieces of musical advice I've ever gotten. It really works. The 'separation' from letter names to 'just playing' occurs when you no longer notice the notes any more.  \nFor a non-musical example, when you look at a restaurant menu and see 'Cheeseburger,' you don't think \"Letter C, letter H--they combine to form a 'ch' sound--letter E,...etc.\" you just think \"cheeseburger\" and automatically understand not only how the word is spoken, but all of the meanings it conveys.  \nThis same, instant level of understanding *will* happen with music reading, if you read a lot of music, just as it took a lot of reading practice to understand 'cheeseburger.' \n\nEventually, after enough practice, the little black dot on the staff will just be a sound that you make on your instrument. You won't give it any more thought than you do the 'ch' in 'cheeseburger.' Remembering its letter-name will be an extra step that has no bearing on the music.\n\nI'd write more, but now I'm hungry for a cheeseburger.\n\n", "Because there is a lot more information being communicated. Yes you are reading the note name (letter note as you put it), but you are also reading its relation to the chord/key signature, its duration, the style that it is suppose to be played in, the tempo it is suppose to be played in, what octave the note is in, and many more things. ", "People have said that it's much easier to write it on paper, although, it can be represented in many other ways. Before writing, things were spread orally. You can teach somebody to play a song without written music at all. Furthermore, there are lot of people who learn piano music by using the bars going across the screen thingy. That's not written music, either. As for melody, I can write it using note name and octave register. It would be understood, but then I would have to do rhythm, which could be done by writing a number under each note and that is it's length in reference to 1, which I could define. Not all sheet music is written that way, either. There is also guitar tablature, which is different. Some say chords are easier, but I could tell you to play an A minor seventh chord by writing C/A, which is saying play a C chord over the pitch of A, which makes it an A minor 7th. I could write a D major chord in 1st inversion as D^6 and it would be understood.\n\nBasically, the reason why sheet music is what it is today is because we decided it would be. Using the Roman alphabet wouldn't be a problem at all- the Japanese know and use the alphabet (I don't know about other countries, but I don't see why they can't either- especially just 7 symbols). It's just what we developed into. There are many different, more simple ways of doing it, but we started with that and developed it to work with anything we want to do, so it's what we use."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "n4f2r", "title": "Does getting punched in the abs make your stronger?", "selftext": "I would assume it only bruises. Is it about the clenching of the muscles? Then why punch? Thanks /r/!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n4f2r/does_getting_punched_in_the_abs_make_your_stronger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c366v8k", "c369nzu", "c366v8k", "c369nzu"], "score": [9, 2, 9, 2], "text": ["I would like to split this out into three questions:\n\n1. Does getting punched in the abs exercise the muscles... maybe by eccentric loading?\n1. \nDoes getting punched in the abs somehow improve your ability to take a punch in the abs by some mechanism other than strengthening the muscles?\n1. \nIs there some psychological benefit from getting punched repeatedly that coaches want to train?\n", "As someone who trains in Muay Thai on the regular I can at least confirm that getting punched repeatedly gets you used to the sensation of taking a hit no matter where it is. For instance, leg conditioning will involve you and your partner kicking at each other in the leg to get you used to the sensation of taking a kick. The first time you get punched in the face is really awful and you don't expect it, but after several times you get used to it and it's not nearly as bad.\n\nTL;DR: Getting hit anywhere, gets you used to the sensation, but I'm not sure if it actually strengthens the muscles.", "I would like to split this out into three questions:\n\n1. Does getting punched in the abs exercise the muscles... maybe by eccentric loading?\n1. \nDoes getting punched in the abs somehow improve your ability to take a punch in the abs by some mechanism other than strengthening the muscles?\n1. \nIs there some psychological benefit from getting punched repeatedly that coaches want to train?\n", "As someone who trains in Muay Thai on the regular I can at least confirm that getting punched repeatedly gets you used to the sensation of taking a hit no matter where it is. For instance, leg conditioning will involve you and your partner kicking at each other in the leg to get you used to the sensation of taking a kick. The first time you get punched in the face is really awful and you don't expect it, but after several times you get used to it and it's not nearly as bad.\n\nTL;DR: Getting hit anywhere, gets you used to the sensation, but I'm not sure if it actually strengthens the muscles."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "u6ae8", "title": "steampunk.", "selftext": "I tried to google it, I looked at some pictures, I still don't really understand it. Could someone please explain this odd style of whatever to me?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u6ae8/eli5_steampunk/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4so5e4", "c4so5kj", "c4spf24", "c4spw1i"], "score": [7, 12, 2, 9], "text": ["Basically, when it got rolling, it was the idea of a steam powered \"future\"; where the Victorian age had, mostly, our modern conveniences by their own means. Think Flintstones, but in the 1800's, instead of the Tertiary.\n\nOf course, now, it's been over played, jumped the shark, and kind of gotten lost from what it once was. Now, it's - more or less - just brown goth instead of a fiction genre.", "_URL_0_\n\nEdit: Basically if science, society, and western culture never moved passed the Victorian times but continued in time down that path.\n", "Its people who see gears, cogs, and other mechanical devices as aesthetically pleasing art. Whether they wear them, decorate their house with them or whatever, they like to think of a world where mechanical computers and devices are used instead of digital. Lets compare watches. Obviously telling time in style is important to people, even if the skeleton watch isnt backlit, wont tell you the day, or go underwater.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "There was this man, Jules Verne. He wrote science fiction in a time where there were no computers and electricity was a novelty. He imagined space vessels, launched to the Moon using gunpowder, submarines capable of travelling the world without the need of refuelling ect. Steampunk is like fanfiction to it. Victorian era understanding of science and engineering taken into the future."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk"], ["http://www.amazon.com/Leather-Luxury-Skeleton-Hand-Wind-Mechanical/dp/B005ASC2MQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1338067388&amp;sr=8-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Casio-W800H-1AV-Classic-Digital-Sport/dp/B001AWZDA4/ref=sr_1_1?s=watches&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1338067420&amp;sr=1-1"], []]}
{"q_id": "29a398", "title": "what makes the united states more \"free\" than other countries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29a398/eli5_what_makes_the_united_states_more_free_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciiwbxw", "ciiwrw8", "ciiwt31", "ciix790", "ciix7j5", "ciix9pu", "ciixa1e", "ciiyfjh", "ciiyik2", "ciiyiph", "ciiyoac", "ciizfat", "ciizkrd", "cij075k", "cij1fhq"], "score": [25, 16, 15, 8, 8, 6, 13, 2, 5, 4, 2, 9, 2, 3, 4], "text": ["We were the first country to fully adopt Enlightenment principles of individual freedom and what not.  \n  \nHowever, today we're really not any better than other Western counties", "Not really that much, America is just a giant soundbox; you've kept telling yourself you're free so much you actually started believing it.", "It is an illusion to claim that the USA is more \"free\" than other countries. \n\nIn fact, there are far fewer freedoms in the USA than in most countries nowadays. \n\nFDR wanted to add more freedoms to the USA, in the \"2nd Bill of Rights\", but sadly this did not happen. \n\nThis would have given all US-Americans the many freedoms which are now enjoyed by other countries in the world:\n\n1) the freedom from worry with decent and prompt medical care, without going massively into debt or going bankrupt. \n\n2) the freedom of decent and high quality education, without the fear of going massively into debt. \n\n3) The right to vacation. The USA is the *only* country in the developed world where the right to vacation is not a part of law. Many other countries in the world require at least 20 to 25 work days as vacation, and this is a freedom which most USA workers can only enjoy after many years on the job (it depends on the employer and not on the law).\n\nThe concept of the USA being more \"free\" than other countries may have been somewhat true in the 19th century (except the slavery), but nowadays it's an outdated concept. ", "It's really just an illusion. Its just nonsense people spout thinking they are patriotic. Lack of affordable healthcare, a pretty huge rich/poor divide, falling quality in education, higher defence spending while less goes to the people in need etc. Its just nonsense to keep people from moaning while politicians and people with power can tell Americans that ", "Propaganda. And lots of it. The USA is just a capitalist country with more right wing views, and has had a lot of 'freedomistic' (if that's a word) propaganda engrained into its culture.", "Guns.  Pretty much all the other non-shitty countries have all the other rights.\n", "Anybody with $$$  & /or stock, can buy a senator. No cast system or royalty required.", "How loudly we express our freedom. USA!USA!USA!", "I'm not sure the US is really all that free any more. Compared to most of the rest of the world, however, this is still paradise. You can largely do what you want with your life, without government interference. You can even own guns, which are prohibited almost everywhere else. You can write or say anything, practice any religion, be any ethnicity. \n\nThe government keeps trying to acquire more power every year, yet we've still had the same government for over 200 years. We're doing pretty good. We inherited our love of liberty from our parent nation, the UK, and the expanded it greatly. We then exported what is commonly called \"liberal democracy\" to the entire developed world, over the span of those 200+ years. \n\nWhile modern people may object to many of the things that our recent governments have done, history will show that the overall influence of America on humanity has been enormously beneficial. We really are in a golden age for humanity, and I hope it lasts. ", "Far as I can tell the only things in America that are freer compared to other countries are gun rights, speech rights, and religious liberty.", "You can get a credit card without a job.", "Nothing at all, you are actually less free than in many countries. You are led to believe you are free to keep you docile. ", "US citizens have the most freedom to travel. We have the strongest passport in the world, allowing US citizens to travel all over the world to more countries than any other.", "Americans traditionally, and still the right wingers, frame Freedom in terms of \"freedom from\" rather than \"freedom to\". Freedom from - taxes, government authorities intervention in their lifestyle, laws, religious prescription etc. However even in these terms America isn't necessarily freer these days in many ways although it would've been in the past. ", "Hate speech. Some of the other free countries make it a crime to say certain things. (This mostly means publishing. Not simply whispering somewhere.) By contrast,  in the US, unless you are threatening someone or there is a clear call to action to commit a crime, it's all pretty much legal.  \nThat's the only \"freedom\" the US has that some of the other developed countries don't.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6elsgf", "title": "How do I calculate the probability of a frequency distribution", "selftext": "Dear people. I did an experiment that results in a frequency for a set of stochastic variables x. I also did a computation that predicts the distribution of the variable x given random chance (the probability distribution of x given randomness). Now I would like to know how likely it is that my experiment x is just random. Similar to throwing a dice 1000 times, counting the occurence of each eye and then calculating how likely it is that this dice is fair or that it is unfair. \n\nHow does one do this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6elsgf/how_do_i_calculate_the_probability_of_a_frequency/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dib7zbp"], "score": [2], "text": ["By \"random\", do you mean \"uniformly distributed\"? To test the compatibility of your data with a distribution of known properties, you can do a goodness-of-for test. If you don't know the parameters of the distribution, you can assume a certain type of distribution and do parameter estimation to find the parameters. Then you can use the chi-squared you get from the fit to see if it's a good fit or not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "a9rpd1", "title": "In Goldeneye (1995), Russian General Ourumov blames Siberian separatists for an attack on a military base he ordered. How much of a threat was Siberian separatism perceived to be in 90s post-Soviet Russia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a9rpd1/in_goldeneye_1995_russian_general_ourumov_blames/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ecm6t7b", "ecmvlj0"], "score": [21, 42], "text": ["About a year ago, [I asked this same question, and I received some responses](_URL_0_).", "This is actually a rather fascinating subject and an excellent question, as it is not commonly assessed or written about from a western perspective. However I will attempt, with due diligence to preserve impartiality as to remove any perspective skew. The threat lies in a plethora of overlapping and coinciding issues, which each serve to contribute towards one another in a compounding domino effect of consequences, either potential or formulating in actual conflict and a threat towards Russian national integrity.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe baseline factor of the importance, and from this, the threat of loss through separatism within the region lies within the bountiful mineral wealth of the Siberian regions.^(1) The land mass is abundant in highly sought after oil, gas, ore and timber^(2), as well as serving as a surprising fertile agriculture zone in the Far Eastern Siberian regions.^(3) This particular baseline contributes towards post-Soviet sentiment of the gravity of the loss through separatist movements. An assessment of the post-Soviet mindset will not be complete without the preceding mindset of the USSR of course. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe following factors encompass a period that threads the line between 20th century and modern to contemporary history, so may be in breach of the subreddit rules, but alas I shall ensure that it is capped to a minimum mention at the end of my answer. The threat level was indeed present and very tentative, with tensions flaring and sparking in the mid 20th century, with the 1969 border conflict with China, after the Sino-Soviet split.^(4) This situation was resolved in 1991^(5), ratified in 2005^(6), and again in 2008^(7), with the two sides agreeing on border lines. However this agreement only amounted to a compounding of Chinese economic mobilization and thus political disaffection occurring on both sides in different forms. It is in both countries interest to stir up separatist sentiment in border regions as to ensure an ease of beneficial economic expansion and access into those resources and areas by applying countermeasure pressure which lead to eventual economic concessions and a furtherance of delimitation, with Xinjiang Uyghurs in China^(8.) and disenfranchised citizens of Siberian regions.^(9) More so for China, as their economic output is rapidly expanding, and so is their need for resources. There have been multiple agreements signed which allow the Chinese to work within Russian Siberian regions, in the areas of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry, expanding into mining. ^(10) This suits Russia well due to the logistical problems of extracting primary resources from their remote Siberian territories, with China investing a sustained subsidy of 100 billion yuan towards infrastructure in the region and a further 10 billion USD investment being announced at this years belt and road conference.^(11) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe threat comes primarily from dissent towards Moscow from the population of the Siberian citizens, which contain 16 million people, this dissent is derived from economic factors of the Soviet and post Soviet era, with resources being extracted yet infrastructure and subsidies for local amenities of the population severely lacking, added towards the fact that living wage is low, along with quality of life, for such a wealthy mineral rich region, this creates political dissatisfaction.^(12) This sentiment is indeed a threat toward a post Soviet integral nation, as dissatisfaction leads towards a possible move to greater autonomy for these regions. This greater autonomy will allow the populace to reap further benefits from economic co-operation from China in the far eastern regions, as they can raise the paltry amount of land rental rates that government sanctioned management companies have leased at exorbitantly low rates.^(13) Post Soviet Russia now balances the plates of political reactionary elections within their Siberian regions, with a communist governor being elected in Khakassia and a far right LDPR official being elected within the region of Khabarovsk.^(14) Each of these elements play a role in adding towards the possible threat of separatism, economically or politically. As on one hand the dissatisfaction towards the current United Russia party of Moscow may lead toward a regional led insular pivot of operations in  Khakassia and Khabarovsk, which would not be conducive towards the ideology of leading Moscow government^(15) and would threaten the economic unity of the Siberian regions doing business with China, which they see as a threat towards the economic benefits of their populace due to the Chinese tendency of rapid and intense resource extraction.^(16) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo to sum up without stepping over the sub rules for proximity to current affairs, the region is indeed highly valuable towards the economic trajectory of the Russian state, and thus any infringement towards the post Soviet ideal of Russian unity is perceived as a threat, economic, political or otherwise. Is it as much as a threat as say Chechnya ? , most definitely not, as the threat lies in an economic baseline,as opposed to one mired in centuries of ethno-religious strife.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n1.  Shabad, Theodore and  Mote, Victor L. *Gateway to Siberian Resources* , p.27\n\n2.  Velikanov, Nikolai, *Soviet Military Review 1986,* p.8\n\n3.  Kotkin, Stephen, Wolff, David, *Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East: Siberia and the Russian Far East,* p.35\n\n4. Yang, Kuisong, \"The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement\" in *Cold War History* , p.21-52\n\n5.  Akihiro, Iwashita, \"An Inquiry for New Thinking on the Border Dispute: Backgrounds of \"Historic Success\" for the Sino-Russian Negotiations\" in *Slavic Eurasian Studies 6*. p. 95\u2013114 \n\n6.   [\"China, Russia solve all border disputes\"](_URL_1_). *Xinhua*. 2 June 2005 \n\n7.  [\"China, Russia complete border survey, determination\"](_URL_2_). *Xinhua*. 21 July 2008\n\n8.  Gladney, Dru C. , ''Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism?'', in *The China Quarterly No. 174,* p.457\n\n9. Lomanov, Alexander, *China Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism,* p.86\n\n10. Stroski, Paul, ''Cooperation and Competition: Russia and China in Central Asia, the Russian Far East, and the Arctic'', in *Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Feb 2018,* p. 2\n\n11.  ''Chinese in the Russian Far East: A Geopolitical Time Bomb?''.  [South China Morning Post](_URL_0_),  7 July 2017\n\n12.  ''[Irkutsk in the spotlight: the leak in Putin's watertight system?](_URL_4_)'' The Guardian, 16 March 2018\n\n13. [11\\^](_URL_0_)\n\n14. [Red governor: Communist to lead Russia\u2019s region in Siberia after being only runner on ballots](_URL_3_), Russia Today, 11 November 2018\n\n15. Hale, Henry E., \"The Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development\", in *Demokratizatsiya. 12*,  p. 169\u2013194.\n\n16.  Cons, Jason, Eilenberg, Michael, *Frontier Assemblages: The Emergent Politics of Resource Frontiers in Asia,* p.163\n\n### \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n# \n\n# \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67g8ni/in_the_james_bond_film_goldeneye_russian_general/"], ["https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2100228/chinese-russian-far-east-geopolitical-time-bomb", "https://web.archive.org/web/20090112225410/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-06/02/content_3037975.htm", "https://web.archive.org/web/20080726183004/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/21/content_8739941.htm", "https://www.rt.com/russia/443696-khakassia-election-russia-communist/", "https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/16/irkutsk-in-the-spotlight-overlooked-leak-putin-united-russia-system"]]}
{"q_id": "9soxhu", "title": "Until recently in Colorado, it was illegal to collect rainwater. How did that come about? Was anyone collecting rainwater in significant enough quantities to affect groundwater supplies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9soxhu/until_recently_in_colorado_it_was_illegal_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8rn1ta"], "score": [36], "text": ["This is actually rooted in two competing legal doctrines that were codified in the US, England, and Europe starting in the early 1800s. While I'll be focusing on the history of these doctrines, there's no avoiding getting into their definitions to give the necessary context for later developments.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Overview**\n\nExisting US water rights doctrine during Colorado's incorporation and admittance generally followed the *riparian doctrine* inherited from Roman civil law and expanded in French law. Riparian doctrine holds that water rights come with owning land next to water, which the landowner can make reasonable use of.\n\nColorado (and other western states) found riparian doctrine inadequate to govern water rights in an arid climate and developed a new doctrine based on *prior appropriation*. Prior appropriation in a nutshell (more detail below), is a doctrine that prioritizes water rights based on whoever first diverts some of their water for *beneficial use*.\n\nThere is not, in fact, any evidence that rain barrels significantly impact the amount of water that flows downstream, and they were never explicitly banned. The use of rain barrels was mostly a contentious legal issue that was never definitively ruled on because of the nature of prior appropriations and the complex system that enforces water rights.\n\nThe legalization of rain barrels occurred in 2016, so I'll not be discussing that due to the 20-year rule (and because it was/is a contentious use, and I don't want to get in a fight with anyone over my home state's water laws)\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Riparian Doctrine**\n\n*Definition*\n\nRiparian rights *do not* confer ownership of flowing water. Flowing water in a natural source is always a public good, like air. What riparian rights *do* confer is a right to allow water to naturally flow through a property and divert it for something called *ordinary/primary uses* and something else called *extraordinary uses*. These have different definitions, but riparian owners are generally entitled to use a reasonable amount of water flowing by their property, so long as it doesn't affect downstream neighbors (e.g. substantially reducing the amount, reducing the flow, or polluting the water).\n\n & nbsp;\n\n*History of Riparian Doctrine in the US*\n\nThe sixth-century *Institutes of Justinian* was one of the earliest legal codes to touch on the riparian/prior possession/prior appropriation question. It codifies running water as *res communes*, the \"negative community\" or \"things the property of which belongs to no person.\" Specifically, Title 1 Section 1 includes it in the \"following things [that] are by natural law common to all\u2014the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the seashore\" (Title 1 Sec 1), while still recognizing that *access* to water is a right. Landowners were allowed to use and divert water, so long as they did not infringe on others' access, including rainwater - building a structure that obstructed a neighbor's rainfall, for example, was illegal. \n\nHowever, the *Institutes* were ambiguous on who owns the right to use flowing water; this ambiguity continued throughout most of Europe, with water rights being governed largely by local laws, prescriptions, and historic customs.\n\nThe Napoleonic Code's establishment in 1804 was the watershed year (sorry) for water doctrine. It clearly laid out the foundation of modern riparian doctrine in Article 644:\n\n >  644. He who property borders on a running water... may employ it in its passage for the watering of his property.\n >  He whose estate is intersected by such water, is at liberty to make use of it within the space through which it runs, but on the condition of restoring it, at the boundaries of his field, to its ordinary course\n\nUS and English courts, lawyers, and legal treatises started referencing the concept of riparian rights in the early 1800s, citing rulings and writings both within and between the two countries, as well as Articles 644 and 645 of the Napoleonic Code. The word \"riparian\" as a legal term with a precise technical definition first appeared in English-language legal literature in 1833, with credit to others using it in non-published contexts (i.e. correspondence, notes, or spoken in conversation) a few years prior.\n\nEnglish courts went back and forth for a while on prior appropriation and riparian law until it was settled in *Mason v. Hill* (1833). US courts, however, adopted it very quickly \u2013 in part due to an intentional effort to consider more civil law, fueled by a post-Revolutionary closeness with France and reexamination of common law roots after the conflict with England.\n\nWhich brings us around to Colorado. The Territory of Colorado was incorporated in 1861, when riparian doctrine had been the established standard in the United States for thirty to fifty years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3aaal6", "title": "Environmental impact of reusable mugs vs paper cups?", "selftext": "I usually use a mug for my coffee at work, but yesterday I realized how much water I use to clean it after use. Which has a greater environmental impact: using reusable utensils/cups and wasting a lot of water to clean them, or using disposable ones but contributing to landfills? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3aaal6/environmental_impact_of_reusable_mugs_vs_paper/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csaz2xb", "csb36uw", "csb3p0z"], "score": [7, 2, 3], "text": ["I think the amount of water used in the creation of wood pulp/paper, which also involves a lot of solvents, would dwarf the impact of a couple swishes of relatively pure rinsewater going down a drain at work per day. (Assumes paper cups.)\n\nA more glib suggestion would be never to wash your office cup, but that's a matter of preference.", "[This paper](_URL_0_) attempts to answer that very question. If you only wash the mug after 5 uses, it probably is better than disposable paper, even factoring in recycling. Any less than that and the paper is probably better, according to the summary of the report. I can't find the original study, so I can't comment on their methodology.", "This is a major issue when people are trying to be green without thinking of the big picture. We often only look at the end use of a product when trying to determine if it is the environmentally responsible choice. Common examples of products that may not be as environmentally friendly as the product they are replacing in all usage scenarios, due to the impacts of the manufacture, maintenance use or disposal of the item include:\nHybrid cars vs an efficient small diesel.\nCompact fluorescent bulbs vs incandescent in buildings that have to be heated.\nCeramic glasses/cups/dishes, vs paper if the item is likely to be broken or no longer used before around hundred uses or if reuse involves lots of hot water and detergent.\nNew efficient device vs using/repairing an older inefficient device.\nRecycle paper (including all the infrastructure and transportation energy) or use it's energy to heat your home, or even just throw it out.\nIn many cases the factors that need to be considered to determine if a product is actually better for the environment are very complex and end up relying on value judgements regarding different environmental risks (is it better to reduce energy consumption or volume of waste? Better to save forests, or reduce mining?...)\nIn many of these examples, the best choice for the environment depends on specific circumstances. Incandescent bulbs are better for the environment in Canada, fluorescent bulbs are better for the environment in Australia. People can't be bothered with trying to figure out the actual numbers for their usage case and fall back on simple and often wrong assumptions about green products. Paper cups (vs ceramic, glass or plastic) might be one of those cases."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://vending-europe.eu/file-documents/news/Summary_TNO_study.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "60a03o", "title": "If a drunk driver is severely hurt in a crash, how does the hospital treat the pain?", "selftext": "Alcohol and opiates are dangerous to mix and the interaction (both being CNS depressants) looks like it would increase head injury and blood pressure problems. So what would a hospital do here with someone in severe pain (i.e. crush injury) who they also believe had recently been drinking heavily?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/60a03o/if_a_drunk_driver_is_severely_hurt_in_a_crash_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df5mbvg", "df60bbq", "df7fgj4"], "score": [19, 3, 2], "text": ["They still receive pain medications *as needed*, including opioids.  If they are so drunk that they are passed out, they probably don't need strong pain medications, but someone who is drunk but writhing in agony does. While it is, in general, not a good idea to mix booze and narcotics, patients in a hospital can be closely monitored, and potential problems can be rapidly addressed.", "From direct experience with having alcohol poisoning I know they still do. They hook you up to all manner of gizmos and get really mad when you wake up 6 hours later and tear it all out because you have to pee or die. But they watch you really close and they went nutso when I was unconscious\u200b and had labored breathing because they gave me drugs including opiates because I couldn't stop wretching and started to bleed from that. ( Only had 3 drinks out of town but they were almost entirely alcohol which I was not aware of.  Bad experience. )", "It really depends on the state the patient is in. A severely intoxicated patient will be monitored anyway so they see if your oxygen saturation drops and can act accordingly. If you're so badly hurt you need general anesthesia, they could also use Ketamin, which works both as a narcotic and as a strong painkiller, Whithout lowering your blood pressure or depressing your breathing. Due to this it is frequently used in emergency medicine and a standard for narcosis outside of hospitals and/or emergency trauma surgery. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7hqmqp", "title": "how does certificate authority help with Man-in-the-Middle Attacks?", "selftext": "So, I'm struggling to understand the message scheme of CA authentication and how that prevents MITM attacks. Is the CA just a server somewhere? If Alice and/or Bob are being targeted by a MITM attacks, Eve can also intercept messages to the CA, so I don't get how that helps. \n\nAny1 willing to shine some light on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7hqmqp/how_does_certificate_authority_help_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqt33la", "dqtwt2z"], "score": [8, 3], "text": ["A certificate authority is just an X.509 certificate (same format as SSL certificates) which is used to sign other certificates and which is trusted to do so.\n\nThe CA is not directly involved in the communications between Alice and Bob, just in the creation of the certificates they use. The CA company may publish a list of certificates which have been revoked, and most browsers will check such lists (the URL to check is encoded as part of the certificate). But that's the browser saying \"Hey, CA which I trust, has this certificate which you issued been revoked or not?\" and the CA answering Yes or No. If the certificate has not been revoked, then it is trusted because it is signed by the trusted CA.\n\nEssentially, CAs mean that I don't have to independently verify that the certificate for www._URL_0_ is legitimate or not. I trust DigiCert to perform that verification by trusting their CA, and if they sign off by issuing Reddit a certificate, I can reasonably trust that the site I'm visiting is the real _URL_0_. Eve could easily intercept my traffic and create her own certificate for _URL_0_, but unless she gets it signed by a CA my browser trusts, my browser will throw up a big scary warning message that the  certificate the site uses isn't trusted.\n\nNow, that does expose one hole in the CA system -- namely that a bad actor who is nonetheless trusted by my browser could issue a certificate for _URL_0_, and then I wouldn't get that scary warning. Or, a government could *force* a CA to issue a bogus certificate for a site to them. CAs aren't perfect.", "You generate an encryption key.  No problem, a bad guy can do that too.\n\nYou provide a service over an encrypted channel, bound to that key.  No problem, a bad guy can do that too.\n\nYou host that encrypted channel at your IP address, which people discover via DNS.  No problem, for a bad guy who is a man in the middle, they can be that IP address to.\n\nYou go to a certificate authority, claiming to represent _URL_0_.  They sign the key, you use for the encrypted channel, that is hosted at your IP address.\n\nThe presumption is that a MITM can't get the certificate authority to sign his key as well.\n\nIn practice, this is mostly true, up until the CA itself is MITM'd during its authentication process.  It's all DNS through several layers of obfuscation, plus the minimum of human validation across the set of available CAs.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["reddit.com", "www.reddit.com"], ["you.com"]]}
{"q_id": "2ylonp", "title": "Does the second law of thermodynamics apply at astronomic scales? (and if so, through which process?)", "selftext": "So I was just reading [this thread](_URL_0_) and it initiated a train of thought that ultimately ended in me questioning the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Wowy. Let me list my thoughts/assumptions, hopefully you can point out where I went wrong (if indeed I did):\n\n* Entropy is a measure for how evenly distributed energy is in space. The more clumped together things are, the lower it is. It \"should\" always be going up though.\n* At astronomical (i.e. intergalactic) scales, gravity is the dominating force. This force clumps matter together, decreasing the entropy.\n* I can only think of one process that would increase entropy, which is Hawking radiation, transforming matter into electromagnetic radiation. That radiation behaves thermodynamically, going in random directions, spreading energy around the universe, increasing entropy.\n* This process only happens at the event horizon of black holes.\n* The formation of black holes is very rare, and would not automatically happen if more and more astronomical bodies clumping together.\n\nI might just be missing some process or don't understand it as well as I thought (maybe something on the atomic level?), but right now it just doesn't make any sense to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ylonp/does_the_second_law_of_thermodynamics_apply_at/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpaqn5c", "cpasck0", "cpb12tq"], "score": [17, 3, 2], "text": ["Gravitational potential energy is lost when objects are attracted to each other and clump. That potential will get converted into kinetic and then eventually thermal energy. So the phenomenon of matter coalescing due to gravity has a net increase in entropy. \n\nThere's more discussion (non-authoritative sources) at these links:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "The important thing is, entropy is a matter of disorder, not just of \"clumping.\" More precisely, it measures how many ways a system can be configured so that it \"looks\" the same (has the same macroscopic properties). \"Clumped\" matter can have a lot of entropy, if it's hot. In fact it's guaranteed to have a decent amount of entropy as long as it isn't arranged on a grid (which is to say, crystalline).\n\nSo suppose that, over time, an extremely spread-out cosmic gas condensed into a neutron star. (Maybe it formed smaller stars which happened to merge into a larger star which then collapsed in on itself. Maybe that's impossible, so we'll just have to pretend that it could happen.) Neutron stars are the densest - therefore, clumpiest - state of matter known to occur naturally in the universe. They're practically just a single enormous atomic nucleus, held together by gravity instead of nuclear forces. But the neutrons inside them can flow freely, so they're really disorderly inside. What's more, when they form they're ridiculously hot - thousands of times hotter than the sun, so the neutrons inside them are moving around quite frantically, and that's a lot more entropy. Now, they cool pretty fast, but they do so by emitting neutrinos and other forms of radiation, *all* of which are moving in a disorderly way and so provide entropy.\n\nSo key points:\n\n* Hotter objects tend to have more entropy.\n* As /u/ramk13 points out, when objects - astronomical or otherwise - clump together on their own, they tend to get hotter.\n* Black holes aren't the only thing that produce entropy in their environment through radiation (though it should be noted that they, too, lose internal entropy when they do that.)", "Everything we see in the night sky where something is going on is increasing entropy. Nebulas glowing from a central star are vast engines of entropy increasing. The coronas of stars, glow of dust clouds and the slow spin down of neutron stars and highly massive binary systems are all increasing entropy.\n\nIts only the things that have nothing happening that conserve it. Gravitation conserves energy when there is nothing interfering with the slow progression of the planets and galaxies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2yk6hv/is_it_true_that_laws_like_conservation_of_mass/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.quora.com/Doesnt-the-Law-of-Gravity-defy-the-Law-of-Entropy", "http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4546/please-clarify-how-entropy-increases-when-matter-gravitationally-coalesces"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "11r2w0", "title": "why is modern day camouflage pixelated?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11r2w0/why_is_modern_day_camouflage_pixelated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6outof", "c6ov2ha", "c6ov6el", "c6ovfqy", "c6ovsaw", "c6ow60z", "c6owzyo", "c6ox62s", "c6oybnt", "c6oz5f8", "c6ozi92", "c6ozvqo", "c6ozxmo", "c6p00rk", "c6p05jh", "c6p0uc1", "c6p26pl", "c6p368y", "c6p3det", "c6p3vga", "c6p4ay4", "c6p4m9o", "c6p4vq4", "c6p565j", "c6p5m2t", "c6p6bmj", "c6p6cod", "c6p6w0g", "c6p78g2", "c6p7jkv", "c6p85sx", "c6p894k", "c6p8qla", "c6pabiu"], "score": [401, 31, 23, 10, 78, 126, 21, 304, 6, 8, 93, 5, 6, 3, 12, 3, 17, 6, 2, 12, 2, 3, 12, 2, 3, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 7, 6, 3], "text": ["_URL_0_  \n\n > The pattern is formed of small rectangular pixels of color. In theory, it is a far more effective camouflage than standard uniform patterns because it mimics the dappled textures and rough boundaries found in natural settings.", "The principle behind camouflage is to obscure perception. This is opposed to the widely held idea that camouflage is intended to make the wearer appear  as though they were a part of their environment. The old style camouflage actually tends to be kind of repetitive and a trained eye can pick it out even among an environmental setting. Ghillie suits tend to fill both of these requirements, by using actual foliage from the area where the wearer is deployed. Each is handmade and customized to the environment, so patterns can't be found in their construction.", "I thought it may be because so much digital surveillance is used that environments being scanned become pixelated by cameras and satellite photos. I wonder if this camo helps to blend in while under video surveillance?", "Camouflage doesn't always have to look like what you're hiding against (mimicry). \"The purpose of the digitized pattern is to match the visual texture of typical backgrounds. When compared to a white background the MARPAT does look surprising and would seem to catch attention, but when used in an operative environment, its textured appearance and lack of hard edges make it more effective than traditional patterns.\" [Wikipedia.](_URL_0_)", "Modern \"digital\" camouflage uses patterns called fractals to eliminate repeating patterns that can make traditional camo easier to spot. That, combined with using smaller \"blotches\" of color, is supposed to make it work better. Of course, the colors used still matter, and anyone who has worn US Army ACUs in Afghanistan could tell you that non-digital \"Multicam\"is a better choice in that environment. There is also a newer camo called ATACS that, while resembling WWII German camo in some respects, is also a result of fractal patterns. It doesn't appear digital but actually is, because the pixels are much less distinct (USMC likes Marpat because it *is* distinct...that is, it allows them to be identified as Marines when not in concealment).", "[Interesting page](_URL_0_), includes this:\n\n > \"Digital\" camouflage is actually a misnomer, based on the superficial resemblance of these patterns to quantized or coarse digital images. In fact, the patterns of squares (or whatever shape we use) is employed to model the texture of typical backgrounds using a mathematical function. We could use hexagons or shapeless blobs as well, except that it is easier to render complex patterns by computer using squares. It is easy to misunderstand the purpose and mechanisms of this kind of design, which is why so many measures that try to use the approach without insight fall short.\n\nOr ELI5, it's pixelated because computers work with pixels and we use computers now to generate the best pattern.  They could smooth it out afterwards, but it doesn't give any benefit at the distance camo works at so why bother.\n ", "Think of it this way. When you look at a digital screen really close up, It's basically a mess of pixels and such. But when you view the full screen, you can see everything sorta comes together to make one big picture. The same principle applies with these new uniforms. Up close, they look like a glitched out game boy screen, but from a distance, the uniform more easily blends in with the surroundings. ", "It has been known to work very well [in some locations](_URL_0_)", "If I remember correctly, the geometric patterns confuse the eyes actually hiding people better ", "Marpat may have worked very well, so well in fact that they offered it to the army...however pride and contracts got in the way so the Army went and commisioned their own pixellated camo...called ACU. ACU is so shit...every soldier hates it...even to the point were army deployments to Afghan now receive MULTICAM  uniforms which actually work very well. i would provide links but I'm on my phone. possible edit later if I don't fight too hard with my girl. hooah yall.", "Funny quote from the wiki page:  ...a Marine Spokesman who, when MARPAT was launched, said, \"We want to be instantly recognized as a force to be reckoned with. We want them to see us coming a mile away in our new uniforms.\"\n", "This explains it quite nicely...plus, it is from Mail Call with R. Lee Ermey and well, he is just awesome.\n_URL_0_", "About a year ago, when I was in the Navy, there was a bunch of talk going on about how the digital camo was shitty and made people stand out more.", "They have actually already decided to cancel the fancy new pixelated camo, although its quite possible that the next camo will still be pixelated and just a different pattern and colors.\n", "Funny thing is that MARPAT generated so much buzz in the USMC that the other branches just had to have a digital camo uniform as well. So the Army got their ACU (which is only designed to *look* like MARPAT and has been reported to be ineffective) and the Navy's work uniform has a blue-themed digital pattern, not intended to serve as camouflage. ", "Multicam and ATACS are the 2 patterns replacing digital camos now, the digital theory may not have been so hot.", "I still don't get why hard rectangular edges are better camouflage. What about at close range? Wouldn't a rounded or distorted edge be better than straight lines? \n[example](_URL_0_)", "Because we're in the future motherfucker.", "It isn't always ([Australia doesn't use digital camo yet](_URL_0_).), but I believe it provides better camouflage in an urban environment, which is where most fighting takes place these days.", "I always wondered this, and then I realized the reason: the camo is pixelated in case the soldier has to hide inside a computer and/or the Internet. ", "TIL modern day camouflage is pixelated", "i heard its just random, also.. if being spotted by binoculars/telescope, etc.. it just appears more like an unfocused pattern..", "It's made from Japanese vaginas.", "Damn good question.\n\n+tip $.1", "Technically, and not to be a dick or anything. But the camouflage had been changed to MULTICAM. _URL_0_\n\nAt least that's what my brother, and some recent pictures, told me.", "Decreases their resolution. They're harder to see.", "Well, I can tell you that the pixelated camo the Air Force has DOES NOT work. As stated by the manufacturer of the USAF Airman Battle Uniform(ABU). [Tiger Stripe's apology to Airmen](_URL_0_).", "Everyone is talking MARPAT, the little brother of CADPAT.", "The current US[ UCP is useless](_URL_0_) and MARPAT isn't much better. There have been a lot of complaints about it for a fair while.  [Multicam](_URL_3_) is currently used by the vast majority of combat personnel in Afghanistan not only in the US army but in[ just about every other army](_URL_2_) as well. I spent most of the year wearing [this version](_URL_1_) and honestly it is one of the best uniforms I have seen not only in Australia but also in Afghanistan. It does not use the \"pixelated\" pattern but is closer to random blotches of colour. \n\n[\"MultiCam has background colors of a brown to light-tan gradient](_URL_3_#Appearance) and lime green blending in between, the main part consist of green to yellowish green gradient and finally dark brown and light pinkish blotches spread throughout the pattern. This allows for the overall appearance to change from greenish to brownish in different areas of the fabric, while having smaller blotches to break up the bigger background areas. MultiCam hides volume and form by tricking the human eye's perception of color. MultiCam allows the object it covers to blend into the background with the camo pattern. \"\n\nIt craps on any digital pattern and works in far more environments than the UCP or MARPAT without the need for several uniforms with different colours.", "As well as matching surrounding environments, camo disrupts the eyes ability to define the human shape. Making it harder to see them.", "I couldn't tell you the reasoning, but here in the army the acu pattern is known as the 5.4 billion dollar mistake. Its only effective on ugly couches and pits of shredded money. We are moving to multicam now.", "When they try to zoom in on it in an episode of CSI:Miami, it confuses the protagonist.", "Something the Canadian military had before Americans! Events like this only occur once a century.", "Per infantry boyfriend:\n\"1mm pixels are used for 2 reasons: the eye cannot discern boundaries between objects of that size, and the pixels further distort depth perception and object boundaries under generation 3 night vision. Basically, the army's ucp is good theory, bad color palate. Marine woodland marpat is good, their desert is too monotone. The best for north America is Canadian cadpat. outside of the digital realm is multicam, which is currently used by army in Afghanistan. surprisingly, socom has forgone digital for the most part, due to METTT-C, and uses a mixture of m81 woodland for spring/summer, dcu in the winter, and multicam for transitional/general purpose in Afghanistan.\" \n \nSorry, this isn't ELI5, but most of you aren't 5 and this is a detailed answer. Google any terms you don't understand, there are some that I can't explain. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPAT"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPAT#Design_and_colors"], [], ["http://www.hyperstealth.com/digital-design/index.htm"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/3lpHB.jpg"], [], [], [], ["http://www.history.com/videos/new-pixelated-camouflage-uniform"], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/5rhcW.jpg"], [], ["http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2010/02/10/1225828/709095-australian-army-uniform.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam"], [], ["http://www.tigerstripeproducts.com/airforcetiger.htm"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Camouflage_Pattern#Controversy", "http://www.army.gov.au/Our-future/3D-soldier", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam#Users", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam#Appearance"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6o846j", "title": "how does the machine measure oxygenation through the skin of your finger?", "selftext": "I was at the doctors with my kid and the nurse put a clip over his finger wich was hooked to a monitor. How can it measure pulse and oxygenation?\n\nPS: I am a first time poster and english is not my native tongue. Be gentle:)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6o846j/eli5_how_does_the_machine_measure_oxygenation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkfaadv", "dkffrff", "dkfgbha", "dkfmf15", "dkfpa7g"], "score": [104, 4, 3, 6, 6], "text": ["The process is called \"Pulse oximetry\".  To simplify the way it works, the device which is placed somewhere on the body where the skin is thin, in your case the finger, and it emits specific light wave lengths, and its sensors detects what waves are being absorbed through the blood, giving them a fairly accurate approximation of the oxygenation of your blood.", "Samsung phones can do this, too.  I can test my pulse and my blood oxygen level with the Samsung Health app.  \n\n ", "The real questions is - why can't I and other athletes get an earring that does this, so that I can track real time while doing intensive cardio or weightlifting without having a fiddly thing on the finger??  \n\nThe tech is there and relatively easy and the (never used) patent expired in 2012.  They already do it on earlobes sometimes, so earlobe is the perfect place for it.  C'mon chinese manufacturers / kickstarter entrepreneurs!  ", "Hi! Pulse oximetry does indeed measure blood oxygen concentration by measuring absorption of specific wavelengths of light. However, it is important to note that these devices actually measure the bound hemoglobin (Hb) inside red blood cells. This is typically fine, however CO (carbon monoxide) binds to Hb thousands of times more strongly than O2 (oxygen). For this reason people rescued from fires, and fire fighters working a blaze need their O2 testing preformed with special pulse oximeters that use an additional light source to detect CO bound Hb and subtract it from the percent of O2 bound Hb, in order to obtain the correct percentage of Oxygen in the blood.\nAlso of note is that since this is a percentage, it only determines relative O2 bound Hb, not absolute values. If you were anemic (or hypovolemic) with 100% O2 binding, you still might not be meeting your bodies oxygen demands. ", "Fun fact: While oximetry didn't come into common use until the 1980's, it's actually a much earlier invention...a physiologist named Millikan had an oximeter working in 1941. It used incandescent lamps instead of a laser, so it didn't have a lot of resolution, but it delivered useful data on pilot respiratory problems during WW2.\n\nThe Millikan instrument and its supporting electronics took up a whole wall of a lab, and you can see it in action in the 1942 film *Dive Bomber*, with Errol Flynn as a Navy flight surgeon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "74uqg2", "title": "why can't we replace limbs like we replace organs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74uqg2/eli5why_cant_we_replace_limbs_like_we_replace/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do17ms0", "do17nuc", "do17ssx"], "score": [9, 16, 34], "text": ["We can reattach a severed limb, and in limited cases transplant one. However, connecting the nerves is extremely hard, and most people don't want a new leg that they cannot walk on, or a new hand that can't pick anything up or feel anything.", "We can.\n\nThe problem is that the nerves required to have full movement are really hard to fix. So, you end up with a numb limb that flops around and years of work to get it working much at all. \n\nThis is more hassle than it is worth for most people.", "Organs can function adequately without nerve connections.  As long as they're hooked up to the plumbing (i.e. blood flow) many of them will function just fine. \n\nWith limbs, the primary purpose of them is to respond to nerve impulses, either sensory or motor (i.e. feeling and moving).  Connecting nerves is tricky even when it's re-attaching your own extremities.  Transplanting someone else's onto yours is turning the difficultly up to 11.  There has been some success with transplanting extremities, but they have nowhere near full function capability."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6rhnty", "title": "why the temperature going up 2\u00b0 celsius (or about 3.6\u00b0 fahrenheit) is going to break the entire planet, and why we can't filter carbon out of the air", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rhnty/eli5_why_the_temperature_going_up_2_celsius_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl53zfs", "dl54wl3", "dl55aco", "dl55qj8", "dl56k9p", "dl57sca", "dl5eylz", "dl5u5kq", "dl622l1"], "score": [96, 9, 6, 92, 4, 3, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["The impact of the temperature rising by a few degrees F isn't that it feels hotter when you go outside on Saturday afternoon, that it's now 93F instead of 90F.  That's not it.  It's that a bunch of the earth's cycles now operate significantly differently.  This leads to dramatically different weather patterns and sea levels, which pose risks for civilization.  It's not inherently *bad*, it's just risky for humans and what we have built.\n\nIf you need an analogy to reason through this, think of human body temperature.  It's normally around 98.6F.  Crank it up to 102F, and you're very sick.  Keep it at 102F for an extended period, and you are suffering, sick, and probably(?) eventually die.  And if your body temperature stays at 95F for an extended period of time, you suffer and probably(?) die.  That's an example of a system that runs into serious problems if its temperature changes by a few degrees.\n\nAs for filtering carbon out of the air, there are three main problems.  The first is that this process would require tons of energy.  The second is that it would have to be deployed at a positively ENORMOUS scale.  We emit 36 billion *tons* of carbon per year.  The third problem is what to do with all of that carbon, do we turn it back into oil and bury it, or what?  And the last problem is, of course, the astronomical cost.\n\nScience can make carbon filtration systems, they already operate on some power plants.  It is possible.  But to deploy them at large scale is not feasible.", "Kudos to anyone who can successfully ELI5 global warming :D  !  Here's an example of why 2 degrees isn't piddly.  According to paleoclimate records Earth's warming cycles average 5 to 7 degrees F over 5000 years.  Currently we are preduicting a 2 to 4 degree F warming within a 200 year period.  It is unprecedented and we do not know that anything alive will be able to adapt in such a short time - **worst case scenario** is doomsday for most things on Earth.", "To answer the second part of your question first, there are in fact ways to filter carbon out of the air. A quick Google search would likely show a few of such methods. The main problem is simply money. The only way to encourage people to spend the amount required to filter the air and then store it somewhere suitable would be to make it profitable. As of right now, it's not.\n\nOne of the reasons going up two degrees is problematic is the ocean. The last time earth was two degrees hotter was the Pliocene of the tertiary period 3 million years ago. The ocean was 5 or 6 feet higher, meaning that rising oceans will create many environmental refugees along just about every coastline in the world. Europe is already struggling with Syrian refugees, imagine if the entire Mediterranean tried to storm northern Europe too. \n\nAdditionally, the ocean traditionally acts as a \"sink\" for carbon dioxide stored as carbonic acid. As the ocean gets warmer, the ocean will not be able to absorb as much carbon dioxide. If you've ever taken a basic science course, you should have learned that solids, liquids and gasses all have particles the move against each other. Every system on earth is constantly changing state, but it's at a dynamic equilibrium where the same number of particles evaporating are condensing. As heat puts more energy into the ocean, the carbonic acid molecules gain more energy and shift the equilibrium towards the gaseous phase of CO2. This accelerates the heating process further.\n\nLess oxygen can also dissolve if the water is warmer, potentially wiping out or damaging marine species. We already see this with coral bleaching, but worse could happen. The warmer waters mean tropical storms increase in both number and severity. The US struggled with Katrina, and even Ike, what if storms like that happened on a yearly, or even biannual basis? People would flee, increasing the refugee crisis.\n\nThe heat also affects land as well. If we get to two degrees, bacteria in the soil that digests plant life will increase their metabolism, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere from the soil, again, accelerating the heating process further. This especially hurts the Amazon, as there is a great amount of decomposing organic matter. Additionally, even two degrees means increased heat waves especially in the summer. Rivers would dry up, the lower parts of year round ice on mountains would unfreeze causing avalanches (it already is). The West US would be desert (talking Kansas and Nebraska) as well as the rainforest. The Amazon dried up in certain parts in 2005 due to a heat wave. As temperatures rise those droughts will only become more common. Fire would be a huge problem, especially as rivers dried up.\n\nI'm on mobile currently, so I can't include links.\nThe equilibrium stuff is just Le Chatliers principle\nMost of the sea ice and soil predictions are based on fossil records of when the Earth was that temperature. \n\nTl;dr As earth heats up, more carbon is released, speeding up the heating process. Environmental refugees due to desertification and rising sea levels will be a thing.", " >  Is this planet that's been around for billions of years honestly that delicate\n\nThe planet has been through ice ages, volcanic periods, hit by giant meteors, even had the moon torn off of it at one point early on and yet it survived.  \n\nThe planet will be fine. \n\nWhether the planet will still be fit for human habitation is the question. ", "That's the mistake a lot of people make - confusing global climate with the weather outside their house. Yes the temperature local to you fluctuates by more than a few degrees but only temporarily. With global warming the entire average temperature is rising permanently, which can have the knock-on effect of making those local changes more severe. ", "One thing not yet mentioned is that literally *no one* is saying \"OMG the temperature will go up and kill EVERYTHING\" yet I see this straw man quoted very often in \"skeptical\" writings. Yes it would be silly to say so. Humanity will be having a really bad day though.", "At the last glacial maximum, when there was permanent ice cover over much of europe that was so heavy that the crust sank, the temperature was just 4 degrees less than today. The Earth is a finely balanced system, and the main thing is that the current warming represents an untested experiment in the history of the Earth. Though the Earth has actually warmed in response to an injection of carbon in the atmosphere before (e.g. PETM), the current \"experiment\" has no precedent because it is far, far more rapid than anything that has happened in the past. The Earth is actually colder now than at most points in its history, and the past million years the most stable in the Earth's history, but usually there is a gradual transition from an icehouse world to a greenhouse world, allowing the earth system and ecosystem to gradually adjust. This is the main reason why current climate change is the gravest danger to the Earth; undoubtedly the system will eventually reach equilibrium, but the transition period is going to be tumultuous and much of the ecosystem may not cope with the rapid change. The main impetus for keeping the change in temperature to 2 degrees is to slow down the rate of change.", "It's not going to break the planet. Part of the reason I can sympathize with climate change deniers is because of how people dramatize the whole situation. We can absolutely adapt to the new environment. It won't be ideal but we won't all die out like some people will lead you to believe. ", "This [XKCD](_URL_0_) shows what a 2 degree temperature rise looks like in terms of historical perspective. Notice that the \"ice age\" was only 4 degrees colder on average than it is now and that when it was only 2 degrees colder polar ice sheets covered Chicago, and that the 0.5 degree little ice age was cold enough that the river Thames froze thick enough to have shops on top of it.\n\nSo yeah, a world with an average temperature 2 degrees higher is a very different world with way more extreme temperatures, although the average difference will be only 2 degrees"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://xkcd.com/1732/"]]}
{"q_id": "2yddwg", "title": "why do parents seem to stay the same age for long periods of time to their kids? i thought my mom was 45 for several years at one point.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yddwg/eli5why_do_parents_seem_to_stay_the_same_age_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp8geps", "cp8gpqr", "cp8gvyp", "cp8h0md", "cp8nigh"], "score": [5, 13, 9, 5, 2], "text": ["Parents do not age, this is very basic knowledge.", "Because kids are self-centric.  We think of our parents as OUR parents, not people in their own right.", "Compared to yourself, your parents aging doesn't change anything. They don't get taller, grow hair in new places, etc., at least not on the short, very noticeable time scale that kids do. Plus kids haven't learned to give a shit about their parents, yet.", "It's because you are truly witnessing age progression. Compare the way you viewed your parents each day over a period of time as opposed to only seeing them once over the same period of time. ", "My mom used to write her age  on all government and medical forms as 45 from my grade 6 through grade 10. 15 years passed and she is 53 now. Makes no sense to me although I like to tease her that she is 45 now. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6se8rd", "title": "why are unpaid internships not illegal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6se8rd/eli5_why_are_unpaid_internships_not_illegal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlc131g", "dlc17dh", "dlc1it1", "dlc3dzj", "dlc4f48", "dlc7pdz", "dlccic2", "dlcdc8h"], "score": [12, 16, 90, 22, 4, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Interns are not **working** they are **learning**.  It's an opportunity to learn about a job by being involved with it.", "UN treaties are really not the place to try to enfoce something like this. They have zero enforcement power., and really just serve as a prebuilt mechanism for large countries to try to get sanctions passed every now and then, if they want to. Also if violating it were really that much of an issue, a country could just pull out of the treaty. The place to stop this is at the national level, with laws that forbid it, and a Government that is interested in enforcing those laws. Trying to bring real change from UN actions is unwise.", "First, that is not a law.  Second, many countries have not signed or ratified.  Third, in the US at least, you can hire unpaid interns only if certain criteria are met.  \n\n* The internship is similar to training/education which would be given in an educational environment.\n* The experience is for the benefit of the intern.\n* The intern does not displace regular employees but works under close supervision of existing staff.\n* The employer providing the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.\n* There is no guarantee of a job at the conclusion of the internship.\n* Both parties understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the internship.\n\nEdit:  a word", "International conventions have absolutely no bearing on US law and no authority in the US. We are a sovereign nation. So appealing to them means nothing. \n\nAdditionally while there are laws regarding wages, and laws regarding slavery there is nothing that bans you from volunteer work. That is what unpaid internships are classified as. You are a volunteer, not a forced worker and as such are not by default entitled to any kind of pay. You also agree to this by taking the volunteer position. \n\nThat said, some States have heavily restricted what qualifies as an unpaid internship or outright banned them. But the specifics vary by State. ", "Legally, interns MUST be paid IF the business is benefitting from their labor in any way. An unpaid internship is supposed to be strictly educational, even to the *detriment* of the business that is helping you. (People spending time teaching you, etc)", "It's hard to force people to not volunteer their time for free.  It's their time, they can do what they like with it, including (constitutionally protected) associate with other people.  Including in relationships that involve work-like behavior.\n\nWho bans volunteers?", "1. In some places they are. \n\n2. You can think of it this way - The intern gets paid $X for their work. The intern then pays $X for training. \n\nI took on a few short, unpaid internships and they were crucial for helping me get stronger internships thereafter and launch my career. \n\nIf opportunities like that go away then it'll pretty much just be people who are born well connected who have a chance at class mobility. ", "You pay to go to school right?\n\nUnpaid internships are usually for people who have no real world experience and need to be taught on the job.  You are paying for your education by working instead of paying.\n\nNow you have the skills you need to get a paying job where you work for money instead of education.\n\nThat's the process at least.  Most unpaid internships are crap through, you work for free and they don't teach you anything.  Make sure the internship is worth your time, or at least will be worth it on paper to get where you need to go."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3uviw6", "title": "how exactly does shopping at small independent stores help the local economy?", "selftext": "Can anyone break this down the benefits into concrete terms? Why exactly is it \"better\" to do your shopping at a local independent shop vs a local big box store?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uviw6/eli5_how_exactly_does_shopping_at_small/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxi2ts7", "cxi2tya", "cxi3mg7", "cxi47fp", "cxi4rhz", "cxibbqb"], "score": [8, 4, 91, 11, 2, 2], "text": ["The argument is that local shop owners pay taxes in the city/county/state where they live and they spend their profits in that city as well. There's also a better chance that local stores source their goods from local producers. Non-local corporations pay some local taxes, but not as many and the profits are distributed to shareholders who will spend the money wherever they live and not necessarily in the city where the store is located.", "Its about where the money is circulating. A local shop probably buys from local sources while big box stores ship stuff in from all over the world. \n\nIf you buy a catfish that's was caught in china then at least some of your money is going to china, which is a problem because of unequal trade between china and where you live.\n\nThe question is where do you want your money to go. Do you want it to feed your next door neighbor, who is probably sleeping with your wife, or do you want it to go to the crack head Walmart heirs.\n(full disclosure, i don't know who is sleeping with your wife, it might be your neighbor or it might be your pasture. I don't know your life.  )", "As a local shop owner, when people buy from me, it means I (your neighbor), get your money, not an investor to Caribou Coffee. I, the only guy who works here, can afford to feed my family. I'm not a corporation that has 1000 stores and paying overhead on 1000 stores. That money you give me goes to the electric company, the restaurant where we celebrate after the Sport Team wins, and the local farmers market. I'm buying my produce from the guy who lives down the street...his tomatoes came in great this year. He's also got a daughter in college. I helped him pay his bills this month, and when she graduates, she's gonna run a B & B, which means more people are gonna drop the town and have a cup of coffee. \n", "I own a small children's boutique so this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.  There are many benefits to shopping local.\n\n1. Your money stays in your community.\nThis happens on many levels.  First, you are directly supporting the shop owner and their family as opposed to your dollars going to increase the bottom line for a bunch of stock holders that are probably already extremely wealthy.  Those dollars are typically spent locally and used for things like their children's sports, piano lessons, etc.  Secondly, most local businesses are active members of the community.  My business donates thousands of dollars to local non-profit organizations that serve people in our community.  If I (and other local businesses) weren't there, they would most likely have to cut programs or go under.  Lastly, most small shops support local manufacturing, cottage businesses, and US made products.  For example, I carry multiple handcrafted lines in my store that are local home based businesses.  These small businesses would not have an avenue to get into a retail location if a small shop like mine was not around.  A mom and pop botanical business is not getting on the shelf at Target, let's be real.\n\n2. By supporting local business,  you create diversity and choice in your community.  You can see this by shopping around,  if you want to purchase something unique from a brick and mortar location... you aren't going to find it at Walmart.  Big box stores have a very bland selection, and are typically products that can be found anywhere.   Want something truly unique?  Visit a local boutique. \n\n3. You are most likely going to get a high quality product.  The small business owner knows that everything they sell in their shop reflects on them personally.   Carrying crap on your shelf will result in nothing but problems.  Big box stores and Amazon however,  couldn't give two shits if you end up with some p.o.s. from China.\n\nThere's my rant, now buy some shit from me ;) \n*edited for formating ", "If you buy at big name store, the money goes to corporate which is probably out of state.  Maybe 10\u00a2 on the dollar is paid to the employees, meaning 90% of that money just left the area.\n\nWhen you buy from local owned, the money goes from the register to the owner, who then pays his employees their cut, still 10% let's say, buys his products (which may or may not be local) and keeps that 50% markup for himself, just like corporate. \n\nThe difference? Local business owner lives in your town, and spends the money there.  If he shops at Walmart or on amazon you still lose the money after one transaction though.\n\nBut if you trade locally, you keep the money local. If you buy stuff from people who but stuff from out of the area, eventually you don't have any money left. But if that 5$ bill keeps trading hands in your town, your town stays that much richer.", "If you buy local from somewhere, the money goes to the owner of the company. Usually theyre in the same state community. If you buy from big retailers, buy from people who get paid commission because it goes right back into the community."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1fyg62", "title": "What is the biological basis of feeling tired, and feeling sleepy? They're different, right?", "selftext": "Sensations are based on levels of chemicals manufactured by our systems. Which chemicals are responsible for our sensation of overall fatigue (not necessarily chronic fatigue), and which are responsible for our sensation of sleepiness?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fyg62/what_is_the_biological_basis_of_feeling_tired_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caf2scu"], "score": [5], "text": ["The words \"tired\", \"sleepy\", and \"fatigued\" are used differently in different fields. In sleep science, they are largely interchangeable. The term \"sleepiness\" is used in the context of \"objective sleepiness\" (literally how long it takes an individual to fall asleep, as measured by a multiple sleep latency test) and \"subjective sleepiness\" (an individual's rating of their own sleepiness, e.g., on the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, ranging from \"Very Alert\" to \"Very Sleepy\"). The term \"tiredness\" is less common, but also associated with subjective ratings (e.g., on a commonly used scale of fatigue, ranging from \"Fresh as a Daisy\" to \"Tired to Death\"). The term \"fatigue\" is more widely used, applying to both subjective ratings of fatigue and objective ratings of declines in neurobehavioral performance (e.g., impaired performance on cognitive tasks).\n\nThese subjective and objective ratings are all associated with the processes that regulate sleep: the circadian rhythm and the sleep homeostatic process. The circadian rhythm is an approximately 24-h cycle in sleepiness/fatigue/tiredness that is endogenously generated. The sleep homeostatic process is the process that results in increased sleepiness/fatigue/tiredness the longer one is awake. The biological basis for this process is presently thought to be the accumulation of sleep-regulatory substances in the brain, including adenosine, nitric oxide, and some cytokines. Since cytokines are immune signaling molecules, we now know that the tiredness associated with illness or chronic inflammation probably involves the same biochemical pathways as those involved in generating sleepiness under healthy conditions.\n\nMuscular fatigue (e.g., due to exercise) is a different phenomenon, involving different biochemical pathways from those regulating sleep and wake. I don't know enough about muscular fatigue to comment on it in depth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "19rnxd", "title": "Are there any common compliments or insults from your era of expertise that would sound completely ridiculous today?", "selftext": "Or alternatively, are there any that you think deserve a come-back?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19rnxd/are_there_any_common_compliments_or_insults_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8qp5zo", "c8qr9kh", "c8qrckd", "c8qst01", "c8qtlls", "c8qtqb9", "c8qufw5", "c8qx785", "c8qz3lu", "c8r2amo"], "score": [54, 27, 62, 114, 13, 4, 12, 4, 4, 7], "text": ["Athens, circa 400BC: \"Go to the crows!\"\n\nRoughly equivalent to our \"go to hell\". ", "In the U.S. and probably elsewhere in the late 18th century: calling somebody a 'scoundrel' was grounds for a duel.", "From a court martial of an 18th century British officer on the grounds of \"Conduct Unbecoming an Officer \"You shitten dog!\"\n\nWhat's great about that one is that they weren't even prosecuting the guy who cursed. They were prosecuting the man who was cursed for *not responding* to his aggressor! \n\nAs to compliments, an actual 18th century compliment would be: \"Pleasant show of calf.\" It was perfectly manly to tell another guy that his calves looked good in those stockings.\n\n19th century: Nob gobbler.", "Shakespeare recorded a bunch.  Here's a famous one from Romeo and Juliet:\n\n > Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n\n > Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.\n\n > Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n\n > Sampson (to Gregory): Is the law of our side if I say ay?\n\n > Gregory: No.\n\n > Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.\n\n\"Bite your thumb\" sounds ridiculous to us, but it was the equivalent of giving \"the finger\" in modern America.  So today it would be:\n\n > Abraham: Are you giving us the finger?\n\n > Sampson: Yeah, I'm raising my middle finger.\n\n > Abraham: Are you raising your middle finger *at us*, asshole?\n\n > Sampson (to Gregory): If I say yes and start some shit, will the cops back us?\n\n > Gregory: No.\n\n > Sampson: Nah bro, I'm not flipping you off, but I do have my middle finger up.", "Not an expert, but I like the Swedish derogatory term for Norwegians _Norrbagge_. The exact meaning of it has been lost to time, although \"Norr-\" is for Norwegian and \"bagge\" would normally mean a ram or male goat. \n\nIt's still used now, but it's got a jocular tone rather than being a serious insult and it seems to have been that way since around the late 17th century or so. But it was a lot more insulting back in the Middle Ages (and quite possibly earlier); in [H\u00e1konar saga](_URL_0_), it tells that when King Haakon IV of Norway visited Swedish ruler Birger Jarl in 1255, the latter prohibited his men from calling his visitors '_bagge_ or other insults' under penalty of death. I think this is the earliest written reference to it. \n\nThe thing that's a bit funny about it is that the exact meaning of the insult is lost; _bagge_ here is almost-certainly etymologically related to the word for the animal, but the exact intent here is unknown, because it's believed to have sprung from some now-lost dialectal meaning (according to the Swedish Academy's dictionary). In part because the word 'bagge' for the animal _wasn't_ really offensive, it existed for instance as a medieval noble family name (_Bagge af Berga_). \n\n", "Not 100% sure if this counts, but in a lot of Renaissance-era English literature, a common insult was \"a pox on you!\" It always sounded a bit funny to me, and it's essentially wishing a deadly disease upon your target. \n\nI believe it had fairly common usage, but if someone requests a source I can probably find one", "This is tangentially related, but a euphemism in Rabbinic texts is often to say the opposite of what you mean.  This is related because in the Talmud, phrases like \"bless Israel\" sometimes actually mean \"curse Israel\".  Similarly, the prayer the \"blessing for the heretics\" both is a blessing in terms of structure and liturgical placement, but actually is a curse for heretics.", "Was \"You sack of wine!\" an actual insult or something the writers of Troy just threw in because \"yeah, that sounds like a historical phrase\" ", "\"Blaggard\" or \"black guard\"  makes very little sense today. So much of 18th-century slang is weird and wonderful. \n\nI wish we could still close letters with the 18th century \"Your humble servant  & etc.\"", "Some of the racial epithets used in parts of the US sound quite strange today. They're absolutely horrible, but kind of hilarious at the same time.\n\nMy particular favourite is from early 19th Century New York (and doubtless other places). There was a large wave of Irish immigration, which led to a fair bit of backlash over their Catholicism, street gangs and generalised working class cringe. The Irish were also seen as being biologically more similar to Africans than other Europeans. \n\nSo, 'smoked Irish' for blacks, and 'niggers turned inside out' for Irish. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1konar_saga_H%C3%A1konarsonar"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "dtsds4", "title": "Do worms have a front and back? Do they prefer laying on one side versus another?", "selftext": "I was wondering, since snakes will only crawl on their \"belly\", is there any particular way that worms will orient themselves, or does it not matter because they can move differently?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dtsds4/do_worms_have_a_front_and_back_do_they_prefer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f72aiuh"], "score": [12], "text": ["Earthworms have a:\nProstomium (sensory organ)\nPeristomium (front and mouth)\nClitellum (middle-ish bump thing)\nAnus \nEach of these are connected by what can be described as segments. The prostomium acts as a sensory organ since earthworms do not have eyes, nose, or ears. Peristomium is what you can consider the front portion of the worm. Both the mouth and prostomium is here. The middle of the worm is called the clitellum is about 1/3 of the way down the length of the worm. On mature adults the clitellum is typically swollen. This is also responsible for the secretions that create the cocoon for the worm. Earthworms have a dorsal and ventral side (top and bottom) the ventral side in some species of worms is lighter in color. Hope this helps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "s9usk", "title": "how did christianity get such a strong foothold in korea?", "selftext": "Christianity seems to have had the biggest impact in Korea out of all the Asian countries. You never really see any Japanese or Chinese churches but you see lots of Korean churches. How did that happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s9usk/how_did_christianity_get_such_a_strong_foothold/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4cajyb", "c4cb00b", "c4cb2jc", "c4cb3kw", "c4cba5w", "c4cblu5", "c4cd668", "c4ceh7y"], "score": [16, 2, 37, 68, 8, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Note that even though a large portion of oversea Koreans are Christians, Christianity is not the major religion in South Korea. \n\nMissionaries sent there were just more effective and they went there later than in most countries. In other countries there were some resentments towards Christian missionaries due to cultural destruction  and other shitty things they did, but missionaries who went to South Korea managed to tie their culture to Christianity instead of completely destroying their culture. This made them more accepted than other missionaries. ", "I think it one reason that they latched onto Christianity is to create a sense of community. Korea spent much of it's modern history controlled by some empire or another, so to try and keep their culture alive, they molded Christianity to fit their culture, and used it as a form of both support and resistance. In a way, it's similar to how African Americans in the US dealt with slavery: the church became their source of strength. I'm sure it's not that simple though, so this might just be one of many reasons.\n\nEDIT: Made my comment more appropriately worded for a 5 y/o.", "You may get a better answer in /r/AskHistorians", "This question belongs in [/r/AskReddit](/r/AskReddit) or /r/AskHistorians. ELI5 is for requesting simple explanations of complex ideas. Nothing about your question suits this subreddit. The more you know", "Those [red neon crosses](_URL_0_) they they use for their Christian churches are creepy as hell. They are like cyberpunk stimulant bodegas.\n\nI had seen them before in pictures of Seoul, and then in person on a visit to Los Angeles, in Koreatown. ", "Yoido Full Gospel Church probably has a lot to do with it.  \n\nStarted in 1958 with one family.  Pastor Cho began preaching on the Three-Fold Blessing (the blessing of the spirit, soul, and body), proclaiming that physical health and financial prosperity are as much a part of God's will for Christians as the salvation of the soul. Inspired by his message of hope and monetary wealth, many previously uncommitted people joined the church, and by the beginning of 1961, membership had grown to a thousand.\n\nBy the late 60's membership was around 8,000.  Cho divided the city of Seoul into zones, with church members in each zone comprising a \"cell\" that would meet on a weekday for worship and bible study in the home of a \"cell leader.\" Cell members were encouraged to invite their friends to attend cell meetings to learn about Christianity. Each cell leader was instructed to train an assistant. When cell membership reached a certain number, it would be divided, with about half of its members joining the new cell led by the person who had been the assistant.  He also let women lead the cells, who seemed to be more outgoing and hospitable to neighbors.\n\nMembership was above 50,000 in the 70's and doubling every few years.  Full satellite churches were built around the city, and 5 years ago membership was over 800,000.  They probably have over a million now, and plenty of people moving around the country would take the influence and popularity of Christianity with them.\n\n**tl;dr** a guy started a church in the 60's, preaching good health and $$$ along with the Bible.  Now there are a million members.", "My dad always tells me Korea is the only country that didn't have missionaries come in to introduce Christianity. A Korean guy went to China and brought back some books.\n\nIf you really want to learn more look [here](_URL_0_).\n\nFrom what I see, it started to spread because Christianity taught you shouldn't be looked down on because you weren't of noble blood. Korea was all about the class system until the royal family was removed.\n\n\n**ELI5 version:** All the poor kids at school (majority) are unhappy because all the rich kids (minority) are popular and get all the attention. One day a kid who went to China came back with some self help books saying you shouldn't have to be rich to be popular, just a good person. This was bad news bears for the rich kids so they beat up everyone they knew was reading those books. The poor kids started reading in secret.\n\nThen history happened. ", "Early Korean Christianity (19th century/early 20th century) was almost exclusively Catholicism and most Christian pioneers were scholars who had studied in China, where they learned about the religion. The Catholic church has standard practices around the world and the Korean Catholic church is no exception. Other branches of Christianity are probably what you are thinking about when you talk about Korean Christianity because honestly Korean Catholicism isn't all that exciting or different from Catholicism in other countries. I don't know how this happened, but people who don't go to church fucking hate non-Catholic Christians because they are obnoxious about trying to get people to come to church.\n\nKorean-American churches are a bit different. I have not been to a Catholic Korean-American church, but I have been to Baptist churches and whatnot, and they are extremely cliquey and exclusive. That's probably because churches were about the only place where Korean immigrants could socialize with each other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.hancinema.net/photos/photo176568.jpg"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Korea"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ip5mx", "title": "Week 2 fundraising update: AskHistorians hits TILT", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://i.imgur.com/QSilqA6.gif", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuieap7"], "score": [39], "text": ["**You've done it.**\n\nTwo weeks ago, [we announced that AskHistorians has been invited to present a panel at the American Historical Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia in January](_URL_0_).\n\nUnfortunately, plane tickets and hotel rooms aren't free. We put together a budget and estimated that it will cost $7,500 or so to send all our panelists to Atlanta.\n\nFortunately, you all have been incredibly generous. /u/kn0thing and the Reddit staff donated half the needed total. In the two weeks since we made the announcement, you all showed your good faith and came up with the other half. Through the crowdfunding site TILT, we've been able to raise enough money to attend and spread the word about AskHistorians. With any luck, we'll be able to share the importance of public history and interacting with folks like you. (Even if it means collecting the world's largest database of \"what Hitler thought about X.\")\n\nWe've all be struck by your kindness and graciousness both in this fundraising campaign and in the everyday operation of this subreddit. We understand that AskHistorians operates differently from the rest of Reddit, and you all have shown that it works.\n\nThough we've formally met our stated goal, TILT has informed us that about $50 in donations could not be processed by card, so we're still technically a little short. If you're able to help us make up the gap, we'd appreciate it.\n\nIf you've been thinking about pledging but haven't signed up yet, we'd appreciate it if you clicked the link to show your support. Even if you can only contribute a dollar, it'll be a help. Thank you.\n\n###[**DONATE HERE**](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/", "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description"]]}
{"q_id": "3veqe4", "title": "how did switzerland stay out of wwii?", "selftext": "Austrian is already literally penetrating them, and they are in between the axis and France.  How did they resist being invaded and stay neutral?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3veqe4/eli5_how_did_switzerland_stay_out_of_wwii/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxmuhm8", "cxmuimf", "cxmxdol", "cxmy0iz", "cxmzin3", "cxn4wmx", "cxn77rq"], "score": [7, 37, 10, 9, 3, 2, 7], "text": ["They were literally the bankers of the war. The Nazis and the allies both kept their assets there. This is how they stayed neutral, because if either side invaded, that side's assets would either be seized by the other side, or seized by the Swiss. You don't fuck with the banker.", "First realize Switzerland had no specific resources needed by anyone. They are resource poor.\n\nThey also have a history of having a strong self defense ability. Every man was a trained soldier with a rifle stored in his home. Those mountains are honeycombed with tunnels and defensive firing positions. They had no great strategic value and were literally to tough to be worth a symbolic conquest.", "Switzerland:\n\n* had a strong defensive capability\n* is largely mountains\n* had few strategic resources\n* was easy enough to go around\n\nPerhaps more importantly, invading a declared neutral state would have concerned and frightened other neutral states, like Sweden, Spain, or Portugal, and caused them to be more sympathetic to the other side.\n\n", "The Germans had a plan for invading Switzerland, but never followed through. The Wikipedia article provides some insight into why they would want to invade and what Switzerland had done to make it difficult:\n\n_URL_0_", "My Grandfather helped build some of the bunkers with his father during WWII. We were ready for the probability of an invasion. Bunkers were stocked, everyone was a part of the army, in my grandma's home town some parts still don't have road signs as they were taken down so an invading force would have troubles locating where their were. Tank buster columns (cement pillers in the middle of roads) were put up. Being surrounded by mountains makes the entire country very defensible, and the fact that the locals know all the mountain routes very very well. So if the Swiss were invaded they would have fought for every inch of land, and the Nazis would pay for it.\n\nOn the other hand, the Nazis had plans to invaded Switzerland, but besides land rights there wasn't much to be gained, and the cost of taking it would very costly.  Supply routes already went around the mountainous Swiss region and wouldn't benefit them. There were a few Swiss casualties in WWII, my Grandma told me a story of a Swiss ammunition factory on the German border was 'accidentally' rocketed and killed a few, and there was a few pot shots over the border between the Germans and Swiss patrols. \n\nTL:DR - don't fuck with the Swiss, they were ready and the Nazis had nothing to gain", "We are proud of our tunnels and I've barely seen mention of them!\n\nSwitzerland, onced dubbed \"das Stachelschwein\" (the porcupine), by Hitler, has always held enormous import to european markets because of its tunnels and railway systems. If Hitler had tried to invade, our means of destroying his access to the country would have ruined important trade routes.\n\nSwitzerland's main exports have always been service. But that doesn't mean Fridu W\u00e4uts-cheib* with his K31 Schmidt-Rubin standing at the border spooked anyone away, even though selling highly trained warriors has been a very lucrative market for CH (since we're neutral).\nNo, sadly, Fridu isn't what gave us the nickname \"Stachelschwein\", but rather the idea that if we were disturbed we would huddle up and make ourselves incredibly inaccessible with our pokey mountains.\n\nAlso, we have tons of these bunkers that look like regular houses. But if you open the shutters [there's just cannons looking back at you](_URL_0_ ). You can believe me when I say our mountains are peppered with fun surprises like this. Lots look like chalets too. \n\n\n*This is a fake name, like Fritz Superstar", "History, Tax evasion/money laundering, and compliance.\n\nAnyone telling you 'switzerland has a history of well armed defence' hasn't paid much attention to swiss history.  The last major war they were involved in, the napoleonic wars, both sides over the course of 7 wars moved armies back and forth through switzlerland without much thought.   Yet Switzerland remained independent after.  The Swiss could have maybe mustered half a million soldiers to defend themselves in WW2, even in mountain passes they would have been doomed, out numberd 4 or 5 to one from all sides, and they had no capacity to produce their own air power or defences, so the Axis powers could have simply bombed them into starvation (eventually) if they couldn't be bothered mopping up.  Switzerland produces no fuel of it's own, and only about half of it's own food.  Who needs to invade when you can simply cut them off and wait for them to surrender?  \n\nSweden remained neutral as well, and they were equally encircled by nazi forces.  They had iron, the nazi's wanted iron, the swedes sold it to them.  \n\nSwitzerland though has a history of being an independent entity within the holy roman empire (as all of the various principalities and kingdoms were).  The Nazi's felt as the new Holy Roman Empire that they'd force them into the fold eventually, but that it wasn't pressing to do so immediately.  During the unification of germany a number of southern german states remained separate from the main prussian confederation that went on to form germany about 5 years later.  So this independence wasn't unprecedented, and many in the axis hierarchy anticipated another anchaluss like happened to austria, there were after all lots of nazi sympathizers in the swiss ranks.  \n\nWhich then leads us back to the two key factors.  Tax evasion and compliance.\n\nSwitzerland has historically been surrounded by 4 (later 3) great powers.  Rich influential and important people in all of those places use Switzerland as a method to evade taxes in their own country, and the Nazi state used Switzerland as a place to basically launder looted gold.  Lots of important people were quite happy to maintain the status quo because they got something they wanted from the Swiss for the time being.    That flow of money allowed, for example, the germans to get access to money to buy things from Portugal, who would otherwise not have had much use for German Reich Marks was important to the Axis.  \n\nLastly - compliance.  Switzerland played an important role in the war both for intelligence and as a meeting place between both sides.  The allies and axis could (secretly of course) negotiate various agreements, about prisoners, bombings etc.  Basically if I have a million of your prisoners and you have a million of mine, we need a neutral party to make sure those people are being treated fairly and to send them mail etc.  (Hence the Red Cross based on the swiss flag).  \n\nAnd lets not forget, lots of important Nazi's fled after the war.  In part using their swiss bank accounts.  Once there was a hint this whole taking over europe plan was going to go tits up they wanted a backup plan.  And that backup plan needed to be hidden from the Gestapo.  \n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum"], [], ["http://www.newsbreak.ch/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/bunker013.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "5gua1c", "title": "why do some morbidly obese people smell like moldy gym socks?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gua1c/eli5_why_do_some_morbidly_obese_people_smell_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dav309p", "dav5f87", "dav7dez", "dav9nef", "dav9qqh"], "score": [138, 61, 14, 29, 13], "text": ["When sweat and bacteria accumulate in skin folds, it stinks. Particularly once yeast gets invited to the party. It happens to everyone, but it's harder to keep those areas clean and dry when you're morbidly obese. ", "There is often a psychological factor, too. Morbidly obese people are seldom happy, and often chronically depressed. This can just cause them to often just give up on regular hygiene practices. They figure if the world has already pre-judged then on their size, then the rest just doesn't matter, ether.", "Anyone can produce this smell. Leaving washed clothes damp for too long before placing them in the dryer, drying with a dirty towel after a shower, not drying at all after a shower, will produce the same smell. Not practicing proper drying techniques will allow bacteria to grow and cause the funky stank. ", "That smell is produced by micro-organisms that like warm, damp places, and we all have some of these on our skin. The places you usually think of as \"smelly\" on people who've been sweating are ideal environments for them. Those are relatively small environments, and we tend to do something to them (powders, deodorants, etc.) to either make less bacteria grow and/or cover the small amount of smell.\n\nThe skin folds of obese people (or people who _were_ obese but lost the weight quickly) are _also_ the perfect environment for these organisms. People with skin folds can manage that in a similar way\u2014deodorants, drying powers, etc.\u2014but they typically have additional challenges.\n\n* Very obese people tend to sweat more, which makes it a greater challenge to control the microbial environment\n\n* Some obese people are obese in part because of an underlying condition (e.g. a physical disability, mental illness, etc.) that also makes it difficult to properly care for themselves. This means that they might bathe less and/or not take preventative measures", "Paramedic here...sweat and poor hygiene is a leading factor. Not to mention things found under skin folds while performing a 12 lead ecg...including but not limited to: a cockroach, chicken wing, and a tv remote control."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16lrc4", "title": "what is happening in mali and what do germany and france have to do with it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16lrc4/eli5_what_is_happening_in_mali_and_what_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7x6cro", "c7x9a5j", "c7x9ouk"], "score": [78, 32, 5], "text": ["Finally somebody asking about this! I was beginning to think people were blind to this, since it could easily trigger a larger international crisis. My professor summarized it today, actually, and I will attempt to relay her ideas. \n\nThe long and short of it: Islamic groups, some but not all associated with Al-Qaeda, want to establish a larger Islamic state in the western Sahara and instil Shariah law. However, many of the citizens, most of them Muslim, are not devout Muslims nor do they support such a drastic state. However, they also do not necessarily support the West, which still has remnants of colonial pretensions (see France having an Army base in Mali, it is a legacy of this older time). Many of them are armed since thy were originally part of Ghaddafi's army, and have now trucked all that high-level military equipment into northern Mali. Naturally, this does not sit will with the current government, Mali's neighbours, or the West (who oppose the Islamists for various reasons I do not comprehend as of yet, but alliances are part of it). \n\nMost recently, they took a key town smack in the centre of Mali, and, despite the UN resolution for intervention not taking place until almost half a year from now, France deemed that they absolutely had to begin military intervention since this town would open all of Southern Mali up to these Islamic rebels, especially since it has a usable airfield. it didn't hurt that France had a military base the next town over. \n\nAt the moment, many UN nations have agreed to intervene, France and the United States being two of them. Canada has limited itself to training Nigerian troops who are fighting, since they refused to take an active combat role after the mess that was Afghanistan. This is controversial since the Islamic groups quite probably don't care, and see intervention as a yes/no thing. \n\nEDIT: as to Germany, I do not know. ", "I can't ELI5 this. I'm sorry, but it's international intrigue and politics.\n\nThe French maintain special relationships with their former colonies (that didn't stage armed rebellions to oust them). It's understood that if you are the President of a former French-colony in Africa like the Ivory Coast and you're facing a rebel army, the Foreign Legion will assist you and possibly even the actual French Army.\n\nFast forward to present day:\n\nThe Western world is entirely fed-up with the desire in many islamic countries to instill Sharia law and rebuild some sort of Caliphate. Terrorist organizations thrive in these countries and they threaten the international rule of law while committing atrocities left and right. At the same time, the United States simply doesn't have the political will to intervene in *yet another* Muslim country, let alone Sub-Saharan Africa. It needs another war like it needs a shotgun to the head.\n\nIn comes France. Its status as the former colonial overseer gives it the unique ability to intervene at the behest of the Malian government. France isn't a NATO member (they left in 1966), but it still maintains close military ties with the organization. France's NATO connections allow it to intervene with some support from the Germans (sending medical support) as well as some limited logistical support from NATO countries.\n\nThe French citizenry don't seem to mind because much of the fighting is done by the French Foreign Legion, which is primarily manned by foreign applicants. There used to be rules against Frenchmen joining the Legion.\n\n**But why is Mali important?** Well, the rebels in Mali are closely aligned with Al Qaeda and are members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) which could develop the ability to plan large attacks if left unmolested. After some [unbelievably bad messaging by the rebels](_URL_0_) in which they ransacked the very beginnings of West African Islam for being \"insufficiently Islamic\", the international community realized this was the African Taliban. The French have decided this is a baby worthy of abortion and are proceeding in doing so.", "Islamic insurgents/terrorists are fighting a civil war with the legitimate government of Mali, so Mali asked for foreign military assistance, which France is providing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/07/radical-islamic-rebels-in-mali-destroying-timbuktu-treasures.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "7l5rah", "title": "Other than Neanderthals, did humans live alongside any other homo species?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7l5rah/other_than_neanderthals_did_humans_live_alongside/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drjzkyp", "drjzxzy", "drkelic", "drkjzpn"], "score": [2, 20, 3, 2], "text": ["Homo erectus and homo sapiens sapiens would have had a point of cross over in time but it may be possible they did not interact. Homo erectus lasted up until about 70,000 years ago possibly later. But as our species evolved and more dominant we most likely pushed them out. A quick breakdown on Wikipedia here is good: _URL_0_. A book that I think really breaks down further the evolution and cross overs of the homo species is The Human Career by Richard Klein.", "There was a time when there were five hominids alive: humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus, and a race of hobbits that lived in Indonesia. East Asians and Pacific Islanders have Denisovan contribution to their DNA from interbreeding in a similar way that Europeans and West Asians have Neanderthal DNA. All of these were around about 170,000 years ago, when erectus died out.", "A nice resource to see this is here\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBut know that its impossible to give a one correct answer to your question, not only because the study of human evolution is not compleatly solved, but also because the term \"species\" is somewhat subjective.\n\n_URL_0_", "We know humans have cross-bred with at least three others: Neanderthals, denisovans, and an unknown species probably similar to *Homo erectus*. Presumably, there were others that either weren't genetically compatible, never cross-bred or that we've yet to identify in the genome."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#List_of_species"], []]}
{"q_id": "1te3ub", "title": "sam harris' argument that we do not truly have free will.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1te3ub/eli5_sam_harris_argument_that_we_do_not_truly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce70e7s", "ce70gk0", "ce711ad", "ce71gyr", "ce71k7y", "ce71lkg", "ce71pkg", "ce71zqs", "ce71ztm", "ce729wd", "ce72jur", "ce72ry2", "ce72too", "ce734ok", "ce735ca", "ce73dgp", "ce7475q", "ce753d0", "ce75k8z", "ce75s8i", "ce7623c", "ce76zyo", "ce77dib", "ce77hnb", "ce77vbq", "ce78elh", "ce79awu", "ce79qxj", "ce7a2p3", "ce7ahwa", "ce7d7a3", "ce7dnei", "ce7elor", "ce7h8v0", "ce7havh", "ce7ogkz", "ce7ohbj", "cegfxb8"], "score": [4, 256, 5, 2, 7, 2, 9, 3, 34, 2, 13, 5, 7, 3, 5, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The fact that we are unable to control our emotions. We're driven by incentives, knowingly and unknowingly. ", "The underlying question here is an important one: If 'Free Will' is real, then how do you (scientifically) describe the universe in such a way that it makes sense?\n\nWith almost every other phenomenon we experience, we can justify it and attribute it to the natural laws around us. But not so with Free Will. And so you have to ask... \"if there is no evidence for it, why do I automatically assume it must be real?\"\n\n*Everything* you perceive is as a direct result of external stimuli. So even your innermost thoughts have an outward cause, and that cause is ultimately out of your control. Even something as simple as \"do I eat the chocolate now, or wait until after dinner?\" will be decided by a million other factors, such as subtle gene influences, the way your personality has been shaped over the years, your metabolism, the time of day, the weather, maybe some \"fat joke\" comments someone made about you, etc.\n\nHe comes up with a very simple experiment to try and demonstrate this:\n\n* Think of *one* person you know, and concentrate on their name.\n\nNow, explain why you chose *that* specific person, rather than the dozens and dozens of other people you know. Most people want to say \"Well... I just chose them!\" but neuro-physiologically, we know that's not true. That memory is *manufactured* by your brain, and you are merely the recipient of it.\n\nI'm not a philosopher myself, so it's difficult for me to talk authoritatively about it. But it's an extremely interesting and compelling argument.", "From an ethical point of view, what is the consequence of having no \u201cFree will\u201d?  If the society or the law were to take this view, how should it treat its heroes and villains (since the individuals don\u2019t have any say in their acts)?  What would be the future of a society which does not believe in \u201cFree will\u201d?  Will its people be ethical or corrupt (compared to a society that does believe in \"Free Will\")? \nI am somehow convinced that there is no \u201cFree will\u201d \u2013 pardon my English.\n", "Another viewpoint on this is determinism where in theory there are a finite number of atoms that composes your brain. Because it is finite, it is possible to predict every position of every atom that literally determines what you do, what you think, etc. So if you can predict the position or how these atoms act would you not be able to completely predict what someone will do in the future? In the same respect, because there is a finite combination of atoms in the brain (although massively large) then it must be limited. If something is limited can it be considered \"free will\"? It is like saying you are completely free to do anything you want, but you must stay in this room.", "Simply put, it's the truth. We don't have free will. We are a product of our genetic makeup and our environment. Since there is no part of us which is free from these influencing factors, there is no part of us which is free to do anything other than what we're aware of, capable of, or inclined to do given our circumstance. ", "It is fundamentally materialism. Everything is a physical cause and effect. If their is no soul or non-physical piece to life, than we are just the domino effect of matter. Consciousness gives us the illusion of free will but are ultimately bound by the past; our brain makes decisions based on it's experience and it is all probability. \n\nPersonally i think this is bullshit. We make choices, we are something beyond a biological robot. I'm not religious, in fact I base this on the study of neurology and psychology, but a freewill is essential to all creativity, experience, and consciousness itself. \n\n", "Nobody could explain it more clearly or more eloquently than Harris himself.  I recommend watching [this 12-minute clip](_URL_0_) of Harris explaining his basic view.  The video is actually a response from his last AMA, I think.  [The book he wrote on the subject](_URL_1_) is cheap, short, and accessible.", "Read \"Behaviourism\", \"Operant Conditioning\" and B.F.Skinner. \n\nThen take any one attribute of your own character and try to trace it to its very origins. I can guarantee you that this experiment will illuminate you like nothing else.\n", "Everything we can explain, we explain through cause and effect, like a series of complex \"If x, then y\" statements.\n\nLet's start simple, and build from there.\n\n\"If I release a ball in mid-air, then it will fall to the ground\". Because we have an extremely good approximation for the laws of motion, we can calculate the speed at which the ball will fall, how it will accelerate, how long it takes to fall and how high it might bounce, if we are supplied will all the relevant data.\n\nThat ball has no choice in the matter. Once set in motion under certain parameters, it will not deviate from its fate.\n\nTaking this one step further, if you imagine a snooker table with the balls set up. If I hit the cue ball at an object ball, I can largely predict what will happen, depending on the angle I strike the object ball, its distance to the cushions, etc. Again, once I hit the cue ball, there is only one way in which things will play out. The balls, again, have no free will and no say in the matter. However, in this case I do not have all the data I need to calculate exactly what will happen. I don't know exactly how much force I'm using on the ball, I don't know the exact spin and angle, and I don't know what small unevenness there may be on the table and cushions. But even though I can't predict what will happen, the result is already defined because of the conditions that are present.\n\nSo even in situations where we can't predict the outcome with a simple (or even complicated) cause and effect statement, events are still only ever going to turn out in one set way. Call this fate.\n\nIn the case of free will, we can't explain what's going on, and we feel like we are in control, but there's not enough evidence to suggest that it operates differently to everything else we know about the universe. When all we are is a bag of water and proteins and electrical signals that interact with each other in extraordinarily complex ways, it's difficult to map out exactly what's going on, but we have no reason to believe that fundamentally it differs to snooker balls striking each other.\n\nBut at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. When I'm reading a book, I know that it ends a certain way. Each character has a destiny. No character has actual free will, since the author has predetermined what they'll do or say. But it's still incredibly exciting.", "I think there are 2 main issues.\n\n1 - it's very hard to get an exact definition of free will. \n\n2 - if all the choices we make are actually explained by natural phenomena, then the term free will doesn't actually mean anything. \n\nAs in - lets take 2 different terms. Light and dark. Dark is actually an absence of light. So now we can describe everything as light. EVERYTHING is light! Now the term light doesn't mean anything. Same with the term free will. If nothing has free will - then the term doesn't mean anything.", "I really don't understand what people mean when they claim that having \"free will\" is important to them.  What do they mean be free will?  The concept is so dated - it goes back to when Descartes was convinced that the soul could commandf the body through the pineal gland.\n\nWell, for those who don't believe in souls, it's ridiculous to think this way.  Every activity in my brain has a physical cause.  \"I\" am a physical being.  My brain and my body is me.  So saying that the configuration of my brain and inputs to it determine my choices is equivalent to saying that I and my experiences determine my choices.\n\nWhat else would you want?\n", "The difference between free will and a perfect illusion of free will is not significant enough to worry about. ", "I just want to note that this view is not the view held by the majority of philosophers. Most professional, academic philosophers believe that there is free will AND believe that our actions are caused our physical makeup, environment, and situation. Here's a crude version of the view: Being free isn't being uncaused. It's being caused in certain ways. It is doing something BECAUSE you desire to do it. If someone puts a gun to your head and makes you eat a sandwich, you aren't freely eating that sandwich. But ff you eat it just because you are hungry and want to eat it, then you freely ate it. Of course, what you want isn't magically free of the casual order, but so what? Choosing, desiring, and so on aren't being magically free of the causal order, but freedom isn't magical. It's a pretty mundane kind of thing metaphyically speaking, even if it isn't so mundane morally (e.g., when people want to do something wrong and do it).\n\nHarris has a less than stellar reputation among philosophers. ", "LOVE TO BUT I CHOSE NOT TO READ IT", "Me: \"I have free will. I could get up and start dancing on top of this table in the middle of this restaurant right now.\"\n\nSam: \"But you won't.\"", "How can Sam Harris argue we don't truly have free will and that, at the same time, [Israel is morally superior](_URL_0_)?\n\nIf we have no free will then morality doesn't exist, which means there's no such thing as justice, which means if Richard Dawkins punches him in the face, then he shouldn't blame him or sue.", "Sam Harris is not a philosopher and you shouldn't pay him any mind.", " The question of free will versus pre-determination is an ancient one, and one that I have personally devoted a large portion of my life understanding. After years of pondering the implications of the various schools of thought, I was able to prove through a series of thought experiments and mathematical formula that both states exist at the same time and in harmony with each other.\n\n While I can not explain Sam Harris theory in the manner you have requested, I can provide you with an accurate description of free will based on the physical universe without the problem of human perception tainting the process.\n\n Imagine an ancient alien race from another universe, a universe that ended it's natural life long before our universe came into being. This alien raced was advanced enough to survive the end of their universe and became transcendent beings that went on to colonize hundreds of thousands of universes. One of this races favorite past times is recording and logging the birth of a new universe.\n\n Imagine now that they record the birth of our universe in all its detail. They have defined every single element that makes up our universe, and have a complete database of it. Using this gathered data, they would be able to create a model of our universe that they could manipulate to their own end. Using the models to create a series of simulations and given enough processing power the alien race could then map out every single possible eventuality of our universe. \n\n Here's the kicker. See while they may be able to map out every single possible eventuality, they will not know which eventuality is reality until it actually happens. With nearly all the processes of the universe, the actual outcome of the reality is random happenstance. This is where the math comes in, which I am not going to get into right now, but there are several avenues of conventional mathematics you can explore that describe the random nature of our universe if you desire more information\n\n Now comes the introduction of life into the mix, and by extension free will. Life forms have the very unique privilege of being able determine the outcome of the reality around them. Understand that this alien races wouldn't just have your current life defined. Your entire life, everything you have ever done, everything you could have ever done, everything you could potentially do, has been predetermined by the physical nature of the universe. Thanks to free will however, we as living beings have the unique privilege of getting to choose which of our potential eventualities come to pass. Of course it's not quite that simple. We are not accounting for outside influence which effect the decision making processes. For our general understanding of the fundamental concepts however it's not necessary to get into that much detail. \n\n Before I end my lecture I will propose an experiment that anyone can try at home. Go to an area with some space and stand still. Now you are going to make one quarter turn in a direction of your choice. Random chance would suggest that there is a 50-50 chance you will turn left or right. For the purpose of this basic experiment we will ignore outside factors. Now make another quarter turn in the direction of your choice. Continue to make quarter turns in whatever direction you choose. As you make turns the odds of the direction of your turns will change depending on the direction you turned in previous turns. Random chance would keep your turn rate at 50-50, and most processes in the universe work in such a manner. \n\nIn fact, if you have a friend counting for you, and you made 500 quarter turns while they logged the directions of your turn, and you did not keep track of your turns, then it would stand to reason that you would keep a balanced ratio of turns. While doing this you may find that the results are not balanced for you. If this is the case you may wish to consider outside factors such left handed vs right handed. Once you have defined the contributing factors and accounted for the effect they have on your ratio of turns you will see that your turns are still consistent with the random nature of the universe. \n\n Now lets bring free will into the mix. Turn 10 times in a row in a single direction. What are the odds of that happening naturally? Now do it 100 times in a row. In doing so you will become, in your own living room, an exceptional force in the universe. The odds of such an occurrence happening naturally are staggering. Eventually, if you were to turn in the same direction long enough, you would reach a point where the odds are no random process in the lifetime of the universe would naturally turn that way. Free will however makes such a process almost commonplace. \n\nTldr - free will and pre-determination exist in harmony. If you think you have no free will turn around in a circle a hundred times in a row.", "There are lots of comments here already, but [here's](_URL_0_) a good video from Waking Life that I hope you'll watch. ", "The notion of 'free will' is an artifact of consciousness.\n", "Also free will is a state of choosing what you want to do. You can not choose your parents, skin color, and economic class. So it's not really free will but a state of mind. From birth you are faced with a limited amount of decisions that you can actually make. Your social interactions are limited to whoever is around you. With free will your life would be able bend around what you want not influenced by outside thoughts.  ", "My definition of free will: your brain cannot be influenced directly- ie mindcontrol or what have you. But in hospitals we have probes doctors can use on a brain to say, raise ones arms. this isnt free will b/c someone can directly control your brain.", "*Compatibilism* is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. Sam Harris is an *incompatibilist*, meaning he believes that free will and determinism are not compatible. The two sides don't actually disagree about what happens, their disagreement comes from using different definitions of \"free will.\" The compatibilist definition of free will is that you are the cause of your actions (as opposed to someone else). So even is the electrical impulses in your brain are fully determined, they're still you, so you have free will. Sam Harris's definition of free will is the sensation we have that there are multiple ways we can act in the future, and at any point in the past, we could have acted differently than we did. Whether or not we call it free will, it's true that that sensation is an illusion. Sam harris argues that his definition of free will is the better one, because he claims that it it what normal people (i.e. people that don't talk about free will for a living) mean when they talk about \"free will.\" Why would you chose a definition of free will that doesn't imply that there are multiple ways you can act.", "Because your brain can be observed to make decisions before your conscious mind is aware of it, and your brain is subject to physical laws, genetic predispositions, habits from upbringing and outside stimulation,  he believes you don't actually make conscious decisions, but rather our conscious minds observe our brain's reactions. ", "I think the illusion of chocie is a result of how the human brain predicts the future\n\nwe see a ball rolling down next to us. we think \"That ball will roll to the bottom of the hill unless I stop it\", and then we stop the ball and then think \"*I changed the future*\"\n\nNo you did not change the future. Your original view of the future, that the ball would roll down the hill, was false. It was NOT going to roll down the hill because in the future you stop it.\n\nInstead of accepting the fact that our prediction of the future was wrong, we say that we changed the future\n\n\"changing the future\" is an obvious paradox. free will cannot exist.", "\u201cHistory. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.\u201d \n\u2015 R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before", "There is a lot of debate about free will, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. :x", "Even If free will is an illusion, we're all under the same illusion. No one has the capacity to put all the variables of reality together in order to determine one's actions, so it's a moot point. So long as we're all on an even playing field such as we are now, the practical aspect of free will is perfectly intact and well. Influencing isn't controlling, and so long as that's all we're capable of, free will, for all intents and purposes, does exist.\n\nObviously the reality is we're in a relatively discrete closed system (planet earth), so the system should be map-able and predictable. So the idea of true free will is a pretty silly notion.\n\nAlthough I do wonder how Sam Harris would respond to a quantum idea of human will. What if our decision making processes involve quantum superpositions? That might be a very strong argument for free will. We only think there isn't free will because we're constantly measuring so we only see discrete states.", "Free will is an illusion that sentient beings can chose to accept as reality and therefore actually becomes reality.", "what about zizek/freud theories that we manufacture our own desires?", "You have two crayons a red and a blue, you like blue, but your friend say use the red, so you go ahead and grab a green! ", "I look at all of these answers and remember something I once read. Trying to understand these types of things is like a blind man explaining what the color green feels and looks like.", "More interesting to me are the legal ramifications. Whether deterministic or random, without free will, how can we assign blame? \n\nYour honor, this collection of deterministicly and/or randomly acting particles acted with malice and intent--or, more accurately, the universe caused these events to happen--either way, we should remove this particular collection of particles from society.", "We respond to stimuli according to our conditioning like any beast. We only call it making a choice. It was decided whether we would go left or right at the fork in the road long before we got there.", "Idk Sam Harris, but as a psych major at a behaviorist university, I often hear that if we knew all of the forces that act on a leaf, we could determine exactly where it would fall. It's a radical behaviorist perspective, but it makes sense. ", "This has always been the least... Useful philosophical theory for me. It's strange because, if we do have free will, why do we wonder about not having it? And, if we don't have free will, then a) why do some of us think we have free will and b) who \"sits there and controls us\"? Sounds a lot like some form of \"God\" to me, and as you may know, philosophy outlaws religion, in most philosophers eyes. They are sorta... Counterarguments. And this, my fellow philosophers, is why I believe in free will.", "And if this mysterious \"God\" did control us, it couldn't possibly know what will happen to us, and our experiences, which can make changes in our supposed \"set out unfree life path\".", "Sam's biggest mistake is in NOT clarifying his point; that demonstrating vulnerabilities in free will, as he has done, doesn't necessarily leave us with determinism.\n\nInstead of \"pick a city or movie... now why did you choose that?\" Sam should just go \"choose to feel a strong emotion, like your first kiss.\"\n\nYou can't just will emotions. Emotions heavily influence cognition. Congnition precedes behavoir. Behavior is the movement of your body. Thus, if you can't perfectly control your emotions, you can't perfectly control your body, but you can control it to a large extent. In this world you are not FREE. You are CONSTRAINED.\n\nI believe you retain a degree of control. Determinism means there is only one future for all of us: the future was determined at the beginning of time and we are simply bystanders watching it unfold.\n\nI disagree. I see us as being able to shape the future, not perfectly, and within many limits. On the first day of existence, I don't believe it was preordained that one day a race of men would become self aware on Earth and invent Cheese Whiz. If determinism is true, then Cheese Whiz was always destined to be. I think man made Cheese Whiz because he chose to. Why we like cheese is a result of evolution selecting tongues that find cheese to be desirable. We didn't choose to like cheese, but we did choose to satisfy that need creatively. Creativity is an act of free will.\n\nIn American, you are not free to do whatever you want. Yet you aren't a slave. You can set goals, within limits, and achieve some of them in time. I think our brains work this way. We exert will over our bodies, despite the bodies needs and limits. We don't have free will. We have constrained will."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRIcbsRXQ0o", "http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris-ebook/dp/B006IDG2T6"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus"], [], [], ["http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81377365/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "42bg5u", "title": "When did weather forecasting get to a point where, say, people in New York City could be reasonably sure a major snow storm was going to hit at least one day out?", "selftext": "Also, how quickly did people embrace forecasts? Were they placed in newspapers right after their development? Were they trusted? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42bg5u/when_did_weather_forecasting_get_to_a_point_where/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz9vxs9"], "score": [7], "text": ["[As it happens, NASA has an 8 part article about this very subject](_URL_3_).\n\nBasically weather forecasting was made possible on a local level with the advent of the *thermometer*, the *barometer* and the *hygrometer*; all of which had been invented by about the mid 17th century.  With these tools local observers could study weather in their area.  However it took the advent of the telegraph to allow communication between meteorologists over a great enough distance to make large scale weather maps.  These early attempts were rudimentary and often subject to technical failure.\n\nIn the 1920's a device known as the [*radiosonde*](_URL_0_), launched via weather balloons, transmitted weather data to stations which could be used to predict weather patterns over a large area.  The problem is that this data took vast amounts of time and people to calculate a forecast. [Lewis Fry Richardson](_URL_1_) was a pioneer of the mathematical weather forecast, but it would take computer technology to calculate the data fast enough to make a useful forecast.  This was accomplished by the mid 1950's.\n\nOn April 1st, 1960 the satellite [TIROS 1](_URL_2_) gave us the first pictures of weather systems from orbit, and with that data accurate weather observation and prediction was finally possible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ua.nws.noaa.gov/factsheet.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson", "http://www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/tiros.html#history", "http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WxForecasting/wx.php"]]}
{"q_id": "8ohjly", "title": "if humans can only hear sounds between 20hz and 20,000hz, how does it matter if headphones and speakers have frquency ranges that are greater than 20-20,000?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ohjly/eli5_if_humans_can_only_hear_sounds_between_20hz/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e03c9xz", "e03dsbh", "e03ifc2", "e03s02z", "e03ug39", "e042hgm", "e04dcx5", "e04snjm", "e04x2n9", "e05s5n0"], "score": [3, 169, 27, 10, 24, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["So, basically you can feel sounds above or below the range and those sounds can harmonize with sounds in the spectrum of hearable sounds. Therefore it matters. ", "We can feel frequencies below our audible range. Some film producers/directors use \"infrasound\", as in, sound that has a frequency of below 20hz to introduce suspension or fear in the audience to enhance a scene.\n\nWhen you are walking on a suspension bridge and it sways, you can feel that, its still vibration, just not audible. If the bridge vibrated hard enough and fast enough, you would hear it as it would push and pull the air fast enough to make it audible.\n\nIn terms of headphones, the effect of infrasound and sounds above 20khz are negligable. That's because the drivers \\(speakers\\) in your headphones are more than likely too small a diameter to accurately produce those frequencies to a sound pressure level \\(db\\) that you would be able to \"feel\". ", "The short answer is that it doesn't matter.\n\nNo, you cannot perceive frequencies higher than 20 kHz, either by hearing or by vibrotactile perception (feeling it). Depending on your age, you might not be able to hear above 15-16 kHz. \n\nThere are several reasons we can't hear above these frequencies. The primary one is because the physical organ of hearing doesn't resonate at these frequencies. The organ of hearing lies along a membrane which is narrow and stiff at one end, where it resonates more with high frequencies, and floppy and wide at the other end, where it resonates more with low frequencies. It's much like piano strings. It's a pretty basic physical system in that sense. Above around 20 kHz, you're not going to get a lot of sympathetic vibration along the membrane. Secondly, cells (and attached nerves) are arranged along this membrane which are activated basic on frequency, with cells and nerves at the short, stiff end coded for high frequencies, and cells at the other end coded for low frequencies. This \"tonotopic\" organization is preserved all the way to the auditory cortex. As we age, we lose cells and nerves coded for high frequencies first, which is why by out teen years we start to be unable to hear up to 20 kHz. \n\nThere is really no vibrotacile perception of high frequencies. It may be possible, but the level would have to be extreme, way above any potential output of an earphone.\n\nThe other thing to consider is that most sound files aren't going to have information in frequencies above around 20 kHz. The sampling rate of CDs is 44.1 kHz, making the Nyquist frequency (above which no information is coded), 22.05 kHz. This gets into signal processing stuff, but essentially the way the digital information is preserved is such that you aren't sampling fast enough to accurately encode frequencies above about 22 kHz. The sampling rate of CDs for example was chosen at 44.1 kHz because humans cannot hear above 20 kHz, so it didn't need to be any higher. There will also be a low-pass filter used which will further restrict frequency information above the Nyquist frequency in order to avoid something called aliasing. \n\nThe short of that is: even if we could hear above 20 kHz, and even if headphones can reliably produce these frequencies, even if drivers can pump fast enough to create these, there aren't frequencies that high present in most common audio formats.\n\nVery low frequencies you can feel, sure - but most music doesn't contain frequencies below 20 Hz (most won't go below probably 50 Hz), so again, unlikely to matter if the headphones can go super low.\n\nAs with many audiophile things, the extended frequency range of most fancy headphones is just kind of a dick swinging contest.", "The response range of headphones is the point where response decreases by some amount, usually -3dB. That's a 50% reduction in sound pressure (but less than a 50% reduction in perceived loudness). \n\nNow, \"theoretically\", you wouldn't want performance to decrease at *all* throughout the entire audible range. If you produced speakers where that was the case, the point where response *did* decrease would be outside of the audible range. \n\nIn reality, headphones/speakers never perform perfectly flat within that range, nor are those extreme frequencies any more important than other aspects of their behavior. But they have practical designs which don't stop working at *exactly* 20hz or 20khz, sometimes a design that performs well in that range will also reach quite a bit higher. \n\nSo, showing off those ratings is partly a pissing contest, as others noted.\n\nBut one thing I will note is it suggests they **actually measured** the frequency response. If I see 20hz-20khz on a $20 pair of earbuds, I know they guessed (or lied) about that and who knows what else they guessed/lied about. Let's say they did have good frequency response, what are the chances of 20hz-20khz being the range instead of 21hz-19khz, or 18hz-21khz, both of which would be equally good? ", "One way to make performance better in the audible range is to make performance acceptable well beyond the audible range. Just like you might want a car that can go 150 miles per hour just because it will go from 60 - 80 for passing much better than a car that can barely get up to the speed limit. An audio amplifier or speaker that is capable of playing much louder than you need and at frequencies much higher than you need will sound better at the levels and frequencies you actually listen to. ", "Very large pipe organs (think cathedral type installations) sometimes have a whole set of pedals which operate pipes with tones below 20hz.  There is interaction between these inaudible frequencies and those higher up that cause a change in the quality of the sound. The music sounds more full and carries out into large spaces better.\n\nThis works for a live performance or an analog recording. Digital recordings and playback are limited by their samples. In standard digital recording and playback, the sub-sonic sounds are not recorded and wont be properly played back. \n\nFor what its worth, most peoples hearing falls in the 30hz- 15khz range and not 20-20k. ", "In general, anything that low you feel (not hear) and anything that high you can't hear anyhow.  However,  consumers tend to be attracted to big numbers... bigger is better right?  Marketing people know this and so always find away to ensure the products for sale have the biggest numbers possible... even if they are irrelevant.  In a similar way, large vacuum cleaners (aka \"ShopVacs\") are advertised with misleading HP figures.   \"6.25 Peak HP\"...  emphasis on the *peak*.   There are 745W in a HP.  That is about 4400W... you'd need a 35A circuit at 120V for that!  Bigger numbers sell... not a lie, but not the whole (or relevant) truth either. ", "There's no reason to have headphone speakers stop at exactly 20,000 Hz. Sure, we could do it by installing a low pass filter, but why? We can't hear the frequencies anyway.\n\nBasically high quality headphone manufacturers produce headphones to match whatever audio frequency curve they want within the design limitations of the headphone/drivers, matching the frequencies between 20 and 20,000 Hz as best they can. Whatever is \"extra\" is exactly that. Extra. They don't care about anything above or below that range, and it'd be more expensive to install a low pass filter. Therefore, to save money, they don't.", "For earphones, it doesn't matter at all. Heck, most amps filter out frequencies outside that spectrum anyway, as there is no use wasting power on sound that cannot be heard.\n\nFor speakers, going above 20 kHz is useless, but you can feel the \"rumble\" of frequencies below 20 Hz, even if you can't hear them. You mostly feel this in your chest, so there is no reason to have it in headphones.\n\nAnother reason you don't want higher frequencies is that they can cause the membrane of the speaker to \"ripple\", instead of moving back and forth as a solid unit. This distorts the audible sound, so you do not want that. So, just another reason to cut high frequencies.", "I'm seeing some good answers, but there is one concept being left out.\n\nA lot of instruments, especially stringed instruments like piano or guitar have something called subharmonic frequencies.\n\nBasically what happens is, the reason why a note is given its name is because of how many vibrations a second that note is played. The most standard example is most Western music is based on A440. What that means is that the A note vibrates 440 times a second. The B note vibrates about 494, etc etc. Just an aside, that concept is kind of a cool thing to look into on it's own, but I don't want to bog this post down.\n\nThe thing is, that when something like a string vibrates, it doesn't just move back and forth. Within the string are smaller vibrations. They look like [this](_URL_0_). Those are the subharmonic frequencies. When you listen to a string, you're not really listening to a single note, but a BBQ sauce of notes that create the tone and color of the note. And like BBQ sauce where some of the flavors aren't tasted directly, some of the subharmonic frequencies are going to be too high pitched to be heard on their own, but they do influence to lower pitches that are in range."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/RNVZm5b.gifv"]]}
{"q_id": "1x6z1u", "title": "Is it possible for the sky of a planet to appear green, and under what circumstances would this happen?", "selftext": "Just going to take a shot in the dark and tag this for physics, let me know if that's the wrong category!\n\nAlso, any chance this planet could be habitable?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x6z1u/is_it_possible_for_the_sky_of_a_planet_to_appear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf9f4ad"], "score": [3], "text": ["Rayleigh scattering (which causes Earth's blue sky) could cause red skies as well but not green. [To achieve a green sky](_URL_0_), one would need an atmosphere containing green dust (akin to the red dust on Mars that tints the Martian sky) or a gas that reflects green preferentially (e.g. chlorine air which would be incompatible with life as we know it and would need to be at an extremely low atmospheric pressure to make a green sky vs blotting out light entirely)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.xenology.info/Xeno/5.4.2.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "diexic", "title": "Before the discovery of the Americas the Catholic Church justified slavery on Theocratic basis, after the colonization of the new world however they started to despise it and even armed Native americans to fight slavery in Spanish colonies, what caused this radical shift in policy towards slavery?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/diexic/before_the_discovery_of_the_americas_the_catholic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3wnpk3", "f3xar46"], "score": [3, 11], "text": ["Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment. Please understand that people come here because they want an informed response from someone capable of engaging with the sources, and providing follow-up information. Wikipedia can be a useful tool, but merely repeating information found there doesn't provide the type of answers we seek to encourage here. [As such, we don't allow answers which simply link to, quote from, or are otherwise heavily dependent on Wikipedia](_URL_1_). We presume that someone posting a question here either doesn't want to get the 'Wikipedia answer', or has already checked there and found it lacking. You can find further discussion of this policy [here](_URL_2_). In the future, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with [the rules](_URL_0_) before contributing again.", "Armed Native Americans to fight slavery in Spanish Colonies?? \n\nMay I inquire where you got this information from, because I have never encountered this when studying the history of the Latin American Colonies. \n\nI am aware of the opposite *sort of* happening: that is the Spanish empire giving up trying to recapture runaway slaves in certain regions (be it due to the difficult geography or due to heavy losses in combat) and reaching an agreement for those runaway communities to serve as a barrier against hostile Indigenous tribes... but I have never heard Native American communities being systematically armed to fight slavery, specially not by the Catholic church."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yjz53/rules_roundtable_2_explaining_the_rules_regarding/"], []]}
{"q_id": "8ozyln", "title": "when glancing at a clock, why does the first second after glancing at it sometimes feel longer than the rest?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ozyln/eli5_when_glancing_at_a_clock_why_does_the_first/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e07btq8", "e07c0fy", "e07ljb5", "e07mgme", "e07msbp", "e07qu4r", "e07tvn0", "e080ojl", "e08o9c1"], "score": [8130, 619, 282, 5, 52, 8, 4, 12, 9], "text": ["An interesting phenomena, it is because the brain doesn't store what you saw during the time your eye spent moving, instead the brain fills in this time with what you saw when you stopped moving your eye.\n\n\nWikipedia has an article on [chronostasis and the stopped clock illusion] (_URL_0_) if you want to read about it. ", "When you move your eye or blink the images from your eyes are just blurry or dark and therefore quite useless for your brain to interpret. So the brain use the information from the view before and after the eye movement to fill in the blanks. So if you move your eye to the clock as the second hand is moving your brain does not see the second hand moving and interprets it as if it have been standing still during the entire time you moved your eye. So the first second looks longer because your brain makes the wrong assumption.", "I will try to explain this step by step.\n\nFirst, you are looking at something that *isnt* the clock. Your brain is focusing on making that image make sense and be clear, with detail, color, etc.\n\nThen, you move your eyes to the clock. It takes a few milliseconds for your eyes to actually move there, and once they land on the clock, your brain has to \"stabilize\" the image, which takes a few milliseconds as well.\n\nBecause of those few fractions of a second it took for you to move your eyes and find the details of the new object you're looking at, your brain just decides to fill that space with the new thing you're looking at, instead of making everything blurry and unclear. So, when you look at a clock, your brain is filling your vision with the image of what you moved your eyes to, instead of the blurry eye-motion that it would've been. That image is whatever time was on the clock when you looked at it.  This makes that first second look/feel longer. It **is** longer. Your brain is literally telling you that it is longer.", "When you looked at a clock for the first time, there will be \u201cframes\u201d missing for a very short amount of time, instead of making those missing frames black, your brain fills the missing frame by making the second \u201clonger\u201d than it should be ", "Basically, it has to do with a phenomenon called \"saccadic masking\" where the brain selectively blocks visual processing during eye movements so that neither the motion of the eye (and subsequent motion blur of the image) nor the gap in visual perception is noticeable. You can \"observe\" this phenomenon yourself by looking at your eyes in the mirror; look back and forth from eye to eye and you'll notice that you cannot see your eyes move, even though you know they're moving and an observer would be able to clearly see your eyes moving.\n\nThe process works like this: in the beginning milliseconds of your eyes moving, a signal is sent to your brain to start this process of masking and your brain starts receiving significantly reduced information from your eyes. When your eyes move to the clock, your brain also receives the message, \"hey, a little bit of time just passed there and we didn't send you any information\" so what the brain does in response is actually backwardsly fill in the period of time that you \"missed\" with what your eyes refocus on. So, when you refocus on the clock, your brain receives basically \"extra\" visual information of the clock with the second-hand at whatever time it's at which can make a second seem extra-long.", "Because each time you do a saccade (a rapid movement of the eye), you are technically blind. Your brain retroactively fills your memory with the first thing it sees after the saccade, so that\u2019s  longer. Your brain is weird \ud83d\ude48", "On top of what everyone is saying about the eye movement, the brain also pays more attention when it sees something novel, and relaxes back to the laid-back glide when things go as expected. You can see this with short videos: the first watch-through seems slower and appears to take more time than the following repetitions.", "Your eyes fill in the blank time that it ignores while your eye moves. The reason it ignores that time is because otherwise our eyes would blur like a video shot by a shaky handed camera man. To avoid the blur your brain has 3 choices. Completely blind you while your eyes move, continue to show you what you were looking at prior to moving, or extend the time you see the thing your eyes moved to look at. And of the 3 your brain chooses the last one because being blind is a disadvantage in nature, and if you look toward something its best to have as much time as possible to process whats going on before its to late. If im picking berries and a wild animal comes to attack me its better to see them quicker and longer then the berries.", "Your brain blurs out what you see in the time between looking down and looking at the clock, so instead of your \u201cframes\u201d going 1-2-3-4, with 4 being the clock, it replaces that 2-3, with 4, making you \u201csee\u201d 1-4-4-4, and appear longer. \nVsauce has a video on this :)\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: link to video"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/nNBTLbw1_2Q"]]}
{"q_id": "q4mbh", "title": "Light and fields in QFT", "selftext": "I've started reading about Quantum Field Theory recently, and I have a couple of questions about the very basics of it. I've approached the theory from more of a popular science / non-mathematical approach, so I'm sorry if these questions are obvious from the mathematical framework of the theory.\n\nFirst of all, how is light defined in QFT? I understand that particles are excitations of corresponding fields, but how is light defined in that sense? The first thing that came to my mind was some kind of a wave going through the field, but I'm not sure how that would work.\n\nAlso, do fields have a physical presence, or are they just a mathematical model (such as, say, the wavefunction)? Are they observable or measurable in any way (other than by observing the particles)?\n\nThanks.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q4mbh/light_and_fields_in_qft/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3uokgx"], "score": [9], "text": ["So I'll try to start with what a classical field is. Imagine you take a bunch of mattress springs. You connect them all in three dimensions and make up this big region of interconnected mattress springs. Somewhere inside of those springs you pluck one. The vibration travels throughout all of these springs in a very specific manner that can be calculated using a bunch of complicated math and physics.\n\nNow imagine that you shrink the springs and add more so that you keep the region the same, but the density of springs goes up. You modify your equations slightly, and take the limit as the size of the spring goes to zero. Now you have a field. It's a volume of space for which the field can vibrate in certain ways and according to certain physical rules. \n\nNext, and this is the really bloody complicated part, we assume that these fields can only carry *certain* vibrations, \"quantized\" excitations. Those vibrations *are* the particles that we measure; excitations of their respective fields. And there are multiple fields at any given point of space, some of which are coupled to each other strongly or weakly or not at all. And some of the excitations within a field self-interact and some excitations in other fields don't self-interact. (above [from](_URL_0_))\n\nSo to answer your question, light, in the colloquial sense, is a large number of excitations in the electromagnetic field propagating from source to sink. As for whether fields are \"reality\" or just a mathematical description thereof remains open to your philosophical tastes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iokwd/what_is_physical_vacuum/c25eybx"]]}
{"q_id": "7wde4o", "title": "how is a vending machine able to know the differences of how much a bill is? (like 1's, 5's, etc)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wde4o/eli5_how_is_a_vending_machine_able_to_know_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtzf5c4", "dtzgkqg", "dtzhc7d", "dtzi2s0", "dtzj6v7", "dtzjk13", "dtzklj0", "dtzkpe6", "dtzkxd3", "dtzl8fi", "dtzlj0q", "dtzostz", "dtzp15f", "dtzr1u7", "dtzr9ix"], "score": [219, 13, 2807, 47, 134, 45, 2, 15, 5, 2, 4, 2, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Same way as you do, it looks at them. It looks at size and at the print.\n\nIt has images of how they should look, and if it looks enough like one of those images, it accepts it.", "Old is weight, new ones lasers the material and size, very old sizes get split down as the holes make the small fall in a slot and the bigger to the latter slot etc, then a sensor sees one small, 3 big etc. ", "I actually know quite a bit about this. My best friend writes the code for the optics that go into machines lime this and a\nATM's. \n\nBasically what happens is the US bills have water marks and other identifying features on them for safety. When you use a specific light they light up brightly. A photosensor is able to identify the image and thus the bill it is. A 1 has no mark. A 5 I think has Lincoln on it, a 10 is Hamilton and so on. So the computer matches it up with a portrait like a game of guess who and then identifies the bill that way. \n\nThis is only one way. Some higher tech machines have more sophisticated means. Some include identifying the specific ink that's on the bill, identifying micro print and so on.  It'll depend on the level of security required by the customer as to which programs get put where. For instance vending machines the risk of loss is relatively small. So a less advanced identifying algorithm is used. An ATM involves a high level of risk so an advanced algorithm would be used. So on and so forth. \n\nEdited ATM ", "To add to this, why does it seem like the readers haven't improved in decades? Seems like any wrinkle will get rejected. It hasn't learned how to accept a bill put it with Washington facing down?", "So it seems newer machines work based off of image recognition, but how did older machines work, like from 30+ years ago?", "The programming depends on the manufacturer, but most validators use a combination of optical scanning and magnetic signature. An LED shines light on the bill and a light sensor reads the reflection.\n\nMars VN series validators were the first ones (that I'm aware of) that used a purely optical scan. (And a frequency coupled power supply, which was cool.)\n\nI spent 8 years repairing bill validators and coin changers for a living.", "There are a lot of ways, by width, length and weight are the more usual. New readers check the image of the bill and compare it with its database but also with all the measures mentioned before. Atms do the same when delivering money to keep count of everything.", "This has evolved over time. If anyone remembers the Jolly Roger cookbook from the 80s/90s you used to be able to tear off s little square part of bills on the bottom right (about an inch from the side). This would allow the machine to recognize the bill but kick it back at the last second due to the tear.  You would get the item plus your bill back.", "Tiny little bumps and markings are read by a laser in the ATM. Specifically the raised ink on the 5, and 10. The ATM \"reads\" it and recognizes it to be that of the correct denomination. ", "I\u2019d love to know how the ones from the 80s worked. Today I\u2019m sure it\u2019s digital image recognition, but what about back then?", "Follow up...before there were fancy LEDs and lasers and all the different kinds of bills...US money was basically all similar.\n\nHow did those machines work? ", "you know the bad guys always ask how something works before they can figure a way out to scam the system. \n", "Current bill validator technology has come a long way from what it used to be. The BVs we use at work (I'm a slot technician at a casino) actually take a digital image of the bill and  check it over thousands of points to ensure legitimacy. They store a digital image of the last bill in, bill history, acceptance rates, and other info. This results in a very very very high rate of bills being accepted even if they are in poor condition, while rejecting almost every counterfeit bill. The BV then sends the info of the amount to the CPU. ", "Better question: How do you trick it?", "The cheapest and most finicky method that I know of:\n\nThe ink in US currency is metallic. When passed by a magnetic reading head, like the kind in a cassette player, the bill will create an electronic signal. Imagine this signal is a single song. In reality, if you played it, it would be like a \u201cbzzzrrp\u201d noise. \n\nEvery denomination plays the same song. So all dollar bills play the \u201cWashington\u201d song and all fives play the \u201cLincoln\u201d. So on and so forth. \n\nThe vending machine has a chip in it that has a library of all these songs. Some only have one song saved (almost always for a dollar bill). So the machine will play the song, and then try to match the song it just heard to all the songs in the library. When it finds a close enough match, it\u2019ll add the value linked to the song to the tally of money entered. \n\nSometimes machines can only recognize the song from side a of the bill, and it\u2019ll show you that you have to insert the bill face up. Some machines know both sides. Also, because bills get handled and bent up and disfigured, sometimes the song doesn\u2019t play right and the vending machine can\u2019t find a match. In these cases, the machine will spit the bill back out. \n\nThis is my favorite method because it\u2019s old, it\u2019s cheap, it\u2019s everywhere, and it\u2019s REALLY cool. \n\nNewer methods are laser readers, photo readers, combinations of all the above..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "cvem0i", "title": "Who was the real Bruce Lee, and was he a \"good\" fighter compared to his contemporaries?", "selftext": "The last Tarantino movie makes Bruce look both arrogant, and a weak fighter. This unsurprisingly caused some controversy. Tarantino also said this is how Lee acted in real life.\n\nWhat was his personality really like?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cvem0i/who_was_the_real_bruce_lee_and_was_he_a_good/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ey5t855"], "score": [23], "text": ["I will steer clear of commenting on Bruce's personality and focus on his fighting ability and legacy.\n\nBruce Lee is a very complicated figure in the martial arts community. As one of the highest profile martial artists of all time, he did more than anyone to spread the good word of eastern martial arts in the west. His movies, his philosophy, his brand aided in the explosion of eastern martial arts in the United States and abroad.\n\nIn many ways, Bruce Lee was a man ahead of his time. His denunciation of dogma, his appetite for techniques from different martial arts, his approach to training, his integration of strength, conditioning, and nutrition into his overall philosophy, all of these things are reflected in the Modern Martial Arts landscape. \n\nUnfortunately, his status as a pioneer in the mixing of martial arts is what makes him so difficult to evaluate as a fighter. The same year Bruce Lee arrived in America in 1959, a brazilian family called the Gracies began producing a Rio-based TV show called \"Her\u00f3is do Ringue\". While mixed rules, catch as catch can fights had long been carnival mainstays, it would be decades before the establishment of promotional pioneers such as Shooto, Rings, and Pancrase. The first regulated Mixed Martial Arts bout in California wouldn't occur until 2006, many years after Lee's death.\n\nSimilarly, American Karate competition was in its infancy when Lee arrived. Following the end of the second world war, Karate began to appear in the continental US, brought back from the Pacific and Hawaii by servicemen such as Robert A. Trias. Trias is credited for organizing the first Karate competition in the US, the 1955 Arizona Karate Championships. The first national competition in 1963 at University of Chicago's Fieldhouse and the subsequent U.S. National Karate Championships in Washington, D.C were disorganized and limited in scope. American kickboxing also had yet to find its feet. The PKA and WKA would be formed in the mid 70's, coming too late for Bruce, who passed in 1973.\n\nThere are many anecdotes on Bruce's personality, his fighting ability, and his philosophy. Perhaps his most legendary meeting was with Chinese-American martial artist Wong Jack Man in 1964.  It is very much a story of two sides, with neither side presenting much in the way of evidence. Bruce's wife Linda said \n > The fight ensued, it was a no-holds-barred fight, it took three minutes. Bruce got this guy down to the ground and said 'Do you give up?' and the man said he gave up\n\nOthers, including Wong Jack Man, allege that the fight ended after 20-25 furious minutes due to Lee's \"unusually winded\" condition, as opposed to a decisive blow by either fighter.\nWhat is not up for dispute is that Bruce Lee changed his fighting philosophy following that day, formed Jeet Kune Do, and in the process changed the story of American Martial Arts.\n\nBruce Lee was not a professional fighter. Unlike his student Joe Lewis, we do not have an extensive list of bouts won and lost. He was never a champion, he never defended a belt, and he never retired from professional sport. He was an actor, he was a teacher, and he was a life-long martial artist. Without  competition record, there is very little we can definitively say about how good a fighter Bruce Lee was. At 5'8'', 141lbs, Bruce was no heavyweight. Common sense indicates that two equally skilled fighers, all other aspects being equal, the larger man will win most bouts. \n\n**Conclusion**\n\nI think it reasonable to conclude that Bruce Lee could defeat well-trained period martial artists near his weight, and larger, untrained opponents. However, it is equally reasonable to conclude that he would struggle to defeat larger, well trained period opponents such as his student Joe Lewis (heavyweight kickboxer with training in wrestling, karate, and boxing).\n\nAs an aside, I believe Bruce would struggle to compete with modern top MMA of any size. The number of participants, the level of training available, and the evolution of technique over time has changed the sport into a form that would be unrecognizable to earlier audiences. If a young Bruce Lee walked into a gym in San Jose or Huntington Beach tomorrow, now that is a completely different story."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "wfhoa", "title": "what on earth is happening on the floor of the stock exchange, exactly?", "selftext": "What's the point of a bunch of people in a particular room for what seems like an increasingly electronically accessed trade? What function does it serve in stock trading?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wfhoa/eli5_what_on_earth_is_happening_on_the_floor_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5cvzn2", "c5cvzzc", "c5cw9in", "c5cxbm0", "c5cxlsf", "c5cy7v5", "c5cypro", "c5cysm2", "c5cz66a", "c5d070u", "c5d8ry1"], "score": [98, 5, 6, 5, 46, 9, 295, 2, 6, 59, 2], "text": ["I'm 37 and I still don't really understand the end of Trading Places.", "Here's somewhat of a good [explanation](_URL_0_) from my favorite movie of all time.\n\nEdit: Apparently this isn't a stock exchange. Oh well...you get the general idea of what's happening.", "The stock exchange floor is just a TV set for news broadcasters these days. All the real trading is done elsewhere with huge data centres connected by fibre links. You'll notice how desolate it is compared to how it looked in the past.", "I have a Bachelors in Engineering and I cannot understand any of the answers till now. EXPLAIN LIKE 5, PEOPLE. If not 5, make it 12.", "I'm really surprised to see there's not a good answer on here yet.  I would love to know the answer to this as well.\n\nSomeone mentioned yelling and hand signs.  What if you are misinterpreted and someone does something you didn't intend to signal for or communicate.  Seems to me there's so much on the line.", "I'm shocked there's not a good answer on here yet...\n\nWait, I know why!  It's because the people that do this for a living don't even know how it works! :D", "I'm a broker.  I have never seen the trading floor as I sit at a computer all day.\n\nThe trading floor serves a few purposes.  One of them is volume.  There are many traders who trade their own (very large) accounts in the pit.  They make extremely fast trades based on reading what others in the pit are doing (based on customer orders) as a way to read the market.  \n\nIt's also tradition.  It exists because people don't want to get rid of it, despite how useless it is.  It puts a face on trading.\n\nIt's fast disappearing and the markets will be fine without it.", "Just curious, how many dB's loud does it get in the NYSE since they are all yelling?", "I was going to write an ELI5 explanation, but honestly this section of the [NYSE Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) explains it best.\n\nIn short--the people on the trading floor were actually buying and selling stocks on behalf of investors. It's like an auction, but there are multiple auctions happening at the same time, hence the yelling. These days, the trading is done electronically. There are still people on the floor for the auctions, except they can get orders and place them electronically. There's probably less yelling these days.", "\"** Part One : Stocks **\n\nFirst, let's imagine that down the street there is a toy store. Mr. Jones owns the toy store, and he has owned it for the last ten years. The toy store is a company which sells toys and all the kids love to get toys from Mr. Jones' toy store.\n\nLet's suppose we wanted to buy Mr. Jones' toy store from him so that all of the kids would buy toys from us instead. Would we be able to buy it for a dollar? No, of course not. It is worth a lot more than that. How about ten dollars? A hundred dollars?\n\nWell, how exactly would we find out how much we need to pay in order to buy Mr. Jones' toy store? The most important thing to consider is simply how much money is the toy store making. If the toy store is making $100 every day, that means it is making roughly $3,000 (30 days of $100) every month, or $36,000 every year (12 months of $3,000). Let's suppose we are able to figure that the toy store should be able to keep making this much for the next ten years. Then we could consider that the entire toy store is worth $360,000 (which is $36,000 for ten years). \n\nNow, in practice this is a lot more complicated. But the basic principle is simply to figure out how much money a company can be expected to make in a certain time frame. Fortunately, we don't have to figure it out ourselves. There are big companies whose job is to figure out how much other companies are worth, and they do all of the hard work for us. They will tell us just how much Mr. Jones' toy store is really worth, and then we can decide to buy it or not.\n\nSo, let's consider that the toy store is worth $360,000. If we want to buy it (and if he is willing to sell it), we can pay Mr. Jones that much money and now the toy store is ours!\n\nNow, this is all well and good if we have $360,000 and we want to own the entire company. But let's suppose we only have half that much, we have $180,000. What can we do now? Well, as long as Mr. Jones is willing, we can buy half of his company instead of the whole thing.\n\nThis means that we will own 50% or half of the company, and he will own the other half. That means that instead of all of the money from selling toys going to Mr. Jones, half will go to him and the other half to us. \n\nAnother way of saying that we own 50% of the company is to say that we own 50% of the stock in a company. When a company is set up in a way that you can buy pieces of it, those pieces are called stock. There are two ways to think about stock: percentages, and shares.\n\nWhat we just talked about are percentages. We can buy 50% of the shares in Mr. Jones' toy company for $180,000. Similarly, we could buy 10% of the shares in Mr. Jones' toy company for $36,000 (assuming the total value of the company was $360,000), or we could buy 1% of the shares for $3,600, and so on.\n\nWhen you hear people talk about stocks, you will hear them talk about shares of stock. What exactly does this mean? Well, let's imagine that Mr. Jones has a lot of people who want to buy a piece of his company. What he can do is say \"Hey everyone, I have 100 different pieces of my company for sale.\"\n\nIn this example, there are 100 total pieces he has for sale, each one being worth 1% of the stock. To buy all 100 pieces would cost you $360,000 and this would mean you own the entire company. This would mean that whenever the company makes money, you get all of the money. But let's suppose we only have $3,600 to use. This means all we can afford is one piece of his company, but that one piece is worth 1% which means that every time the company makes a hundred dollars, we will get one dollar.\n\nSo in this example, Mr. Jones' looks at the situation and realizes it is very hard to find people to buy pieces of his company, because each piece costs $3,600 which is a lot of money. So he decides rather than just have 100 pieces, or shares, he is going to have a thousand pieces! Now it takes ten shares to have 1% of the company, but each share is only $360. That is a lot more affordable. He could even decide to make 10,000 shares which means that you could buy a share for only $36.\n\nSo this is the basic concept. Companies cut their value into pieces, or shares, and then sell the shares to people who will buy them. The people who buy shares are called \"investors\" and the act of buying a share is called \"investing\". This means that they are buying shares in a company because they think that eventually they will make back more than what they paid, because they are getting a piece of all of the money that the company makes.\n\nWhen a company is enormous, worth billions of dollars, even a thousand shares is simply not enough. They need to have many, many shares in order to make sure that shares are affordable. Some companies have millions of shares of stock.\n\nNow, we have covered one aspect of what it means to own stock in a company. You are able to keep some of the money the company makes, based on how many shares you own. But when you own part of a company, you don't just get some of the money it makes. You also get to make decisions. Everyone who has shares in a company has the right to vote for what the company will do next. The amount of voting power you have is equal to the percentage of shares you have. \n\nImagine that a company is owned by three people: Billy, Melissa, and James. Imagine that Billy owns 40% of the total shares, and that Melissa and James each own 30%, which is less than what Billy owns. \n\nLet's suppose that the toy company is trying to decide whether to sell a certain toy. Billy thinks it is a good idea, but Melissa and James think it is a bad idea. Well, even though Billy has more shares of stock in the company, and more voting power, he will still be out voted by both Melissa and James. This is because together Melissa and James have 60% compared to Billy's 40%. \n\nWhen a company has a lot of share holders (people who own stock in the company), they will have meetings called shareholder meetings. In these meetings, everyone gets to vote based on the shares they own. The company will do whatever the prevailing vote decides.\n\nSo then, this brings up a question. What if there are a lot of people who own shares, but one of them owns more than half of all the shares? Would that person be able to out-vote everyone else, no matter how many other people there are? \n\nThe answer is yes. If a single person owns more than half of all the shares, then they have what is called \"controlling interest\" in the company. This means that they can decide anything for the company and outvote everyone else. \n\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------------", "Buy, sell! Buy, sell! Funny money boo-bah!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24_8wRnPqAM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Stock_Exchange#Trading"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "75y5jl", "title": "Is there a condition that exists that would cause someone to perfectly understand English, but only be able to speak one word, like Hodor from GoT?", "selftext": "Watching GoT (finally) has made me curious if this is actually something that could happen, or if it was just something made up for the story.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/75y5jl/is_there_a_condition_that_exists_that_would_cause/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do9ti8u"], "score": [30], "text": ["Yes, something like [Broca's aphasia](_URL_0_) \n\nEdit: the first reported case of this, the person could only say \"tan\" or \"tan tan\". See [this](_URL_1_) Scientific American article"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.aphasia.org/aphasia-resources/brocas-aphasia/", "https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/the-man-who-couldnt-speakand-how-he-revolutionized-psychology/"]]}
{"q_id": "6g0ght", "title": "I've been reading Anna Karanina, which takes place in the 1880s, not long after the end of serfdom. How accurate was Tolstoy's portrayal of the peasantry? Was it as idyllic as he makes it sound?", "selftext": "He goes into detail about the difficulties that post-serfdom land owners had in getting the peasants to produce enough, and there's also lots of handwringing about agricultural modernization vis-a-vis Europe.  \n\nThat aside, he makes the peasants sound like a jolly, carefree lot, whose existences aren't much more than wholesome outdoor work, homemade vodka, and joyous outbursts whenever their landlord comes ambling by.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6g0ght/ive_been_reading_anna_karanina_which_takes_place/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dimra24"], "score": [67], "text": ["Nope. The way that Tolstoy portrays the peasants is in no way accurate. While there was a lot of change, modernisation and so on, in general the average life of the Russian peasant in this period was unpleasant, brutish and short. The following quotes are taken from a book called \"village life in late Tsarist Russia\" by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia an ethnographer writing in the early 1900s. To a certain extent she was writing to rebuff the very idyllic images which many Russian intellectuals, including Tolstoy, had of the peasants. She embedded herself with them and observed them a year in assembling the notes which eventually went into this work. It seems that the also realised that actually finding out what the peasants thought was very difficult since they tended to lie to her. She was a good water colourist and took to painting in public spaces as a way of evesdropping on peasants so she could observe them without changing their social interactions by her presence. That said, while Tolstoy's portrayal of peasants in his work is clearly idealised, the one which I quote below is possibly biased in the other direction. The author had a very negative conception of peasants and peasant culture. While nothing here is fabricated it is certainly presented in as negative a light as possible.\n\n > \u201cyoung mothers very often smother their children accidentally in their sleep. The mother sometimes places her infant between herself and her husband\u2026 she goes to sleep, rolls over onto the baby and smothers it...a good half of women have overlain their child in this way\u201d \n\nShe later comments about how she does not really believe the peasant claims to the accidental deaths of children. \u201cThere have been two notorious cases of infanticide in the village\u2026in practice the number of these killings is higher\u2026 I have always been suspicious of cases of reported accidental smothering of babies since it is very easy to roll over on a baby and intentionally smother it\u201d  The outright murder of illegitimate offspring was also not uncommon\n\n >  \u201ccases of infanticide of illegitimate babies are not at all rare. A married or unmarried woman gives birth alone somewhere in a shed, smothers the baby and dumps it into the river with a rock secured to its neck...in fact in the large village of muraevnia, one or two children are found dead almost every year\u2026 recently pigs out by the graveyard the body of a newborn that had turned blue, making it obvious that the baby had been buried only a short time before. No action was taken. Peasants do not like criminal investigations\u201d \n\nWomen tended to return to work very quickly after giving birth, normally the week after. \n\n >  \u201cAnd the child is consequently neglected; it is left alone in a dirty cradle wearing a soaking wet diaper, criying its heart out in hunger pains and its navel swells and hurts.\u201d\n\nWomen had very little medical care after birth and were subjected to some odd medical treatments. \n\n > \u201cmore often than not, the hard work that follows childbirth results in some degree of prolapse of the uterus\u2026 the midwife soaps her hands, forces the uterus into place, then pushes a peeled potato into the vagina and binds the lower abdomen tightly with a handkerchief\u201d \n\nWife beating and abuse was endemic and impossible to control.\n\n > \u201cin the village of muraevnia there was a case of a drunken husband who killed his wife for infidelity. He rolled her braids around his hand and beat her head\u2026. Until she lapsed into a coma and died three days later\u201d \n\nThe author was also fascinated and appalled by the way that the peasants treated the animals which lived with them.\n\n >  \"in their treatment of cats, dogs and other animals, ivan and his family can be quite cruel\u2026 peasants will torture them just for fun\u2026 when I ask \u2018don\u2019t you feel sorry for them?\u2019 the children respond \u2018why feel sorry? They're not people, just dogs\u2019\"\n\nMany peasants also lived in the most awful conditions. For example most peasant houses did not have chimneys (called a black stove) and \n\n > \u201cwhen a black stove is being lighted\u2026. [the smoke] forms a blue and white blanket\u2026 a good sized man finds it difficult to stand up when the stove is being fired because his eyes will be in the caustic cloud\u201d \n\nwhich would then cause a whole host of health problems including cataracts and respiratory issues. There is an awful lot more that I could insert, about alcoholism, poverty and so on. However it makes me unhappy so I am not going to include it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "640q2p", "title": "how is it that water at the bottom of the oceans doesn't freeze, if it's colder at depth? why is it that water freezes downwards in large bodies of water?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/640q2p/eli5_how_is_it_that_water_at_the_bottom_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfyfosg", "dfyfxqh", "dfyfycg", "dfyg7so", "dfyj4ky", "dfyjfnz", "dfyp2g0", "dfyxmpb", "dfz0atd", "dfz0kmt", "dfz1amk", "dfz39z1", "dfz5bgn", "dfz66py", "dfz9a1z", "dfza3x3", "dfzauvc", "dfzd9rw", "dfzgkxy", "dfzipqn", "dfzjnyc", "dfzlhga", "dfzls4i", "dfzorgv"], "score": [414, 3, 47, 6770, 5, 371, 24, 42, 2, 100, 3, 5, 14, 2, 4, 2, 39, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Ice is less dense than liquid water, so even if it was freezing at the bottom of the ocean the ice would float to the surface.  That being said, the only place that water is exposed to temperatures cold enough to freeze it is at/near the surface.", "it doesnt get that cold really.  even at the bottom of the Marianas trench, the temps are above freezing.\n\nyou get colder in arctic regions, but not cold enough to freeze, especially when you factor in that its super salty and under a lot of pressure (water doesnt like to freeze under pressure).  you might get just under zero in these areas, but the pressure and salt lower the freezing point.", "First of all, it's cold at the bottom of the ocean, but not that cold, between 0 to 3 degrees Celcius (32-37F). Part of the reason why it's not that cold at the bottom of the ocean is because of earth's internal heating.\n\nSecond of all, water freezes from top to bottom, and most of the salt leaves the water as it freezes, which makes the water around the ice saltier. This has two effects: first, it lowers the freezing point, and second, it makes the water denser, such that it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. \n\nNow, since the temperature at the bottom of the ocean is only 0-3C and not colder, this very briny water simply does not freeze because 0-3C is well above its freezing point.", "Assume that we're talking about a body of water where the air temperature is constantly below freezing. The important thing to know is that is that water is MOST dense at about 4 degrees C. The reason for this has to do with the shape of the water molecule, but that's not necessary to answer the question. As water gets colder, approaching this temperature, it tends to sink, so the water at the bottom of, say, a big lake, is going to be that temperature. Once the whole lake is 4 degrees, the top starts to go below 4 C where the density starts to decrease again because of crystallization and becomes less dense than liquid water at any temperature. Hence, it floats. But it also creates a thermal barrier, so it's harder for more ice to form. Hope this helps!", "When water turns to ice, it needs space for its molecules to arrange themselves in a less dense space. The immense pressure at the bottom of an ocean compresses the water enough to counteract the force of the water expanding. \n\nA practical example of pressure melting ice is when you go ice skating. The pressure generated by the skates melts the ice, and hence when ice skating you're actually skating on a very thin film of water.", "Chem engineer here.\n\n[Take a look at this **ILLUSTRATION **and see if you can understand it for yourself](_URL_0_).\n\nWell, in most substances a raise of pressure may provoke a passage from the liquid state to the Solid state (Solidification). This happens because the pressure forces the molecules to be closer.\n\nHowever the Water molecules are further apart when they are in the Solid state compared to the liquid state. It has to do with the geometry of the H2O molecule. That's why at 0\u00baC Ice as a density of 0.9 (Water is 1).\n\nSo when you increase the pressure and force the water / ice molecules to be even closer they pass to a state where they can be even closer: liquid.\n\n**EDIT**: I know this is not a proper graphic. It's an illustration. Even if it had a scale it would be useless: engineers use Equations of state because we need to know partial pressure at different points of pressure and temperature (It's like knowing how much of the water goes to moisture / humidity. There is no 100% liquid water with air around it with 0% humidity ). ", "Your assumption that water is colder at depth is inaccurate. Depending on the depth of the body of water in question the water temperature can be layered due to external energy sources. Solar radiation warms the top, thermal energy from the earth's crust warms the bottom. Rivers and springs add different temperature water to the lake/ocean of your question. As ice forms in salt water the salt molecules are squeezed out creating less salty ice which floats and a salty slurry that sinks. The top freezes first because that's where the cold air is sucking the energy out of the water. ", "pressure and salinity are what prevent the freezing of water. A phase diagram of pure water will show you the conditions necessary for freezing and will allow you to compare conditions in the ocean depths with those on the diagram. Salt is just icing on the freeze prevention cake", "What other substances are less dense at solid state than at liquid state?", "There are a lot of factors... But one that is easy to ELI5 is to ask you if you have ever stuck a bottle of pop in the freezer, took it out and it was liquid but when you opened it if froze?\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPressure lowers the freezing point of liquids. The deeper you are in the water, the more pressure there is due to the weight of all the water above it.  Carbonated liquids like coke shown in the video above are under pressure in the bottle due to the carbon dioxide gas that tries to escape the liquid. this lowers the freezing point until you release that pressure with the satisfying \"TSHHHHHT\" you hear when opening a bottle or can.  This causes the freezing point to raise and it freezes before your eyes. \n\nFun fact, the reason why ice is more slippery the warmer it is is purely because the pressure of you walking on it melts the ice a little bit. If it is colder out, you don't melt as much ice by stepping on it. \n\nIt's also how ice skates work. That blade is pressing down on the ice, melting it ever so slightly and making it slippery. ", "Water is densest at 4\u00b0C.\n\nSo the bottom of oceans is always 4\u00b0C and thus above freezing temperature.", "Water is less dense when its frozen. That's why ice floats. If bodies of water froze from the bottom up then plant life would die leaving the food chain without a cog in the wheel. Theoretically if that were true, human evolution (or any life for that matter) would not have taken place. So the fact that water floats when frozen is just another reminder of how freaking lucky as a species to even be here. ", "It's actually due to the pressure that exists that those depths.  You know how water expands as it freezes into ice?  The pressure on the water at the bottom of the ocean prevents it from being able to expand.  Therefore, it can't freeze.", "This is probably wrong but I know that ice is less dense than water, so I would assume that whenever water freezes it floats to the top of the body of water it's on instead of staying at the bottom of the body of water because things less dense than water float..? Just a guess though ", "Ice floats, all the water that's close to being ice get's pushed to the top and cools water warmer than it. \n\nWarm water also \"floats\" on colder water so that also gets pushed to the top to warm the ice and water colder than it.\n\nAt the bottom of the ocean is the water that's cold enough to push all the water warmer that it up to the top and also all the water colder than it to the top. That water is something that's 4\u00b0 celsius or 39\u00b0 fahrenheit. Look for James Cameron there.", "The water at the bottom of the oceans not only tends to be more dense but also more saline than the water at the top. This decreases the freezing point of the water at the bottom of the column effectivly making the molecules more resistant to forming ice crystals than the warmer yet less saline water closer to the surface. ", "Because it's\u266aunder pressure do do do dah dah do do \u266a\n\nIce requires water molecules to move apart in order to assume their crystallized position. Under that sort of pressure of gagillions of tons of water, you simply can't move them apart because the forces involved (particularly hydrogen bonds) are weaker than gravity and its affect on the scenario. Had to add this bit because my first line got deleted by the bot. Elon Musk is right, AI is gonna kill us.", "As pressure increases, the freezing/condensing point decreases. Think of LPG (liquified propane has); it's kept in a liquid form inside a pressurized tank. If you expose the liquid, by opening the valve, it immediately becomes gaseous, but while inside the tank, under pressure, it is still liquid. The water at the bottom of the ocean is under ENORMOUS pressure; therefore, the temperature would have to decrease far below the normal freezing point of salt water (which is below the freezing point of fresh water) to cause it to freeze.\n\nI'll be honest; this is from the view of an engineer, but I believe it to be correct. A chemist might be able to shed a little more light on this, and may already have. Hope this helps!", "Water gets dense until about 4 degrees C.\n\nAt 0 degrees C, water becomes ice and the bonds that form to make ice (making it hard and solid) cause it to expand and be less dense than the water around it, which is why ice cubes float (like in your drink.)", "Others have answered your question well.\n\nBut, you can get water at the bottom of the ocean freezing by what are called brinicles. Basically a lot of concentrated very cold brine can descend in the oceans do to its higher density freeze surrounding water as it falls.\n\n_URL_0_", "Hydrogen bonding between the molecules makes them oppose the surrounding water molecules. Water actually becomes less dense as it gets colder... essential for life. ", "If ice froze at the bottom of the ocean, it would just cause the entire ocean to become ice. And ice is less dense than water, so it will float up to the surface", "Probably incorrect but doesnt the salt content have something to do with it?", "Where's the simple answer that states it's just under to much pressure to freeze? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/research_education/equilibria/h2o_phase_diagram_-_color.v2.jpg"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTiC0PZE3sg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyWn1XJ9kTE"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "dxlv4s", "title": "Is it possible to achieve real time communications between the Earth and Mars?", "selftext": "If not, what is the minimum time that would take to transmit a single bit of information between the planets?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dxlv4s/is_it_possible_to_achieve_real_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f7u625s", "f7ylgcx"], "score": [37, 2], "text": ["No. The distance between the two planets makes it prohibitive to achieve real-time communications due to the finite speed of the signal (which is actually the speed of light). This may vary between 4 minutes when the planets are at closest approach to about 20 minutes when they are farthest from each other.\n\nA common mistake in this context is to confuse latency and bandwidth. The figures I mentioned above are the minimum delay to start the transmission of data (or to transmit a single bit as per OP's question), but this doesn't mean it will take 20 minutes for each bit. You can still send a large packet of information in a single beam. This way the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter can achieve data rates up to 2Mbps.", "At its closest approach, Mars is 3.11 Light Minutes distant from Earth. So even with the best possible equipment, there will still be a delay of at least 3.11 minutes.\n\nIncidentally, the Sun is 8.33 Light Minutes from Earth (average), so we are actually seeing the Sun as it was 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago when we look at it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2v791s", "title": "What was the importance of the title \"King of Italy\" throughout the Middle-Ages?", "selftext": "Hello! This is the first time I ask a question, so sorry if the title isn't very precise.\n\nI used to believe that there was no title of King of Italy, and that the north of the peninsula was ruled over by city states. However, reading about the early middle-ages I saw that there used to be a kingdom of Italy, and that the title was very well alive until 1530.\n\nWhat was the importance of this title? Did it have any legal power?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2v791s/what_was_the_importance_of_the_title_king_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cof7ljh"], "score": [77], "text": ["I'm about to summarize nearly one thousand years of history. Fasten your seat belt. \n\n**Part I: The First Kingdom of Italy**\n\nLet's begin at the beginning. The year is 476. The Western Roman Empire has lost Gaul (to the Franks) Iberia (to the Visigoths) and Africa (to the Vandals). Only Italy and Dalmatia continues to be ruled by Rome. Years of civil wars an infighting has decimated the army, and a long succession of army-backed strongmen have taken turns ruling the empire, many of whom have mixed heritage; Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, was himself was a puppet of his father Orestes, who was the *Magister Militum* (head of the army) and although he had married into a Roman family, he himself was not an ethnic Roman (to be pedantic, the Eastern Emperor never even recognized Augustulus, which allowed Julius Nepos, the pervious emperor, to rule in semi-autonomy in Dalmatia claiming all the while to be Emperor of the West). \n\nFlavius Odoacer, the *de facto* leader of the *Foederati* or ethnic \"Barbarians\" fighting for Rome (who made up most of the army), deposed Romulus Augustulus when he lost the army's favor. Odoacer then openly admitted that although he might rule Italy, he was powerless beyond the alps, and didn't call himself Emperor, rather, he sent the imperial paraphernalia to Constantinople and asked to be recognized as \"Consul\", keeping all of the functions of the Roman Administration in Italy intact (understandable, Flavius Odoacer as was so romanized historians aren't sure which \"Barbarian\" ethnic group he belonged to). He initially played lip service to the pervious emperor Julius Nepos, minting coinage in his name, but may have been involved in the plot whereby he was murdered. Regardless, after the murder of Julius Nepos, Odoacer asked to be given the title of Patrician by the Eastern Emperor, and be recognized as the ruler of Italy under the wing of a single Roman Emperor in Costantinople.\n\nThe Eastern Emperor Zeno, however, had his own issues to deal with involving \"Barbarian Generals\", namely involving two Ostrogoths, both confusingly named Theodoric (this in addition to social, religious, and political unrest in his own half of the empire). \n\nAlthough the Ostrogoths had been given lands in Pannonia in exchange for the defense of the upper Danube, Zeno came to the conclusion that the Ostrogoths were more trouble than they were worth (fighting with him, fighting with each other, and in a general sense just being another annoying thing to have to deal with) so he convinced them to go conquer Italy. This way, they would stop annoying him, and he could also get rid of Odoacer, at this point another potential opponent. \n\nTheodoric the Amal, King of the Ostrogoths, had been raised in Constantinople. His people were largely Romanized, having lived within the Eastern Empire's borders for centuries. When he defeated Odoacer and set up the first Kingdom of Italy, he did his utmost to further maintain the Roman institutions, law, and judicial system. However, he did not rule from Rome, rather, he ruled from Ravenna, seaside city conveniently defended by swampy surroundings, and easily supplied by ship. \n\nAlthough Theodoric was *de jure* a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor, *de facto* the Kingdom of Italy operated entirely independently. (I suggest this book every time Theodoric comes up, he was awesome: Theoderic in Italy by J. Moorhead (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3079xp", "title": "ted cruz is staunchly anti-obamacare. why is he signing up for obamacare then?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3079xp/eli5_ted_cruz_is_staunchly_antiobamacare_why_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpprbe0", "cpprc78", "cppresq", "cppsbwd", "cppuel2", "cppzoo8"], "score": [20, 12, 79, 17, 10, 5], "text": ["Because it's the law, and he has to?", "A Republican sponsored amendment to Obamacare requires congress to use federal exchanges to obtain insurance. ", "Practically speaking, it is because he was previously getting health benefits through his wife's job. His wife is going on an unpaid leave of absence for the duration of the presidential campaign, so he (and his wife) won't be covered.\n\nPolitically, he's still against it, but said something to the effect of that its still technically the law, and he'll follow the law, even if it's one he fundamentally disagrees with.", "First, Obamacare is not \"something you sign up for.\" He's searching for a plan provided by a private company on an exchange set up by the federal government.\n\nSecond, he's doing it because his wife quit her job at Goldman Sachs, leaving him without insurance. The ACA requires people to have health insurance and for congressmen to enroll through the exchanges just like everyone else.", "Actually, he has a couple options.  He can go thru a traditional insurance agent and have them find him a policy.  He can also go directly thru the insurance provider directly and sign up under special enrollment (blue cross blue shield or whatever.). He definitely does not have to go thru Obamacare to get private insurance. ", "\"Ted Cruz thinks the transportation budget is overfunded. Why doesn't he stay in his house all day with a dunce hat and avoid using the roads because I think that's the logical conclusion of disagreeing with my politics?\"\n\nEdit: typo fixes"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lcu0q", "title": "Before drunk texts, was there any history of drunk letters?", "selftext": "Just something I was thinking of the other night.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lcu0q/before_drunk_texts_was_there_any_history_of_drunk/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cby0jx4"], "score": [51], "text": ["Impassioned letters which the sender immediately regretted sending? Of course! The difference between a letter and a text though is that there is only one copy of the letter, and it can be taken back! Though at the moment I have only a literary example; in *The Brothers Karamazov*, published 1880, Lise writes to her childhood friend Alyosha (I've shortened it a lot),\n\n > \"Dear Alyosha, I love you. I've loved you from my childhood, since our Moscow days, when you were very different from what you are now, and I shall love you all my life... Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps forever, is in your hands. I shall certainly cry today. Good-by till our meeting, our *awful* meeting. \u2014Lise\n\n >  P.S.\u2014Alyosha! You must, must, must come! \u2014Lise\"\n\nBut then when he does show up the next day she asks for the letter back, saying to him,\n\n >  \"I've been regretting my joke all night. Give me back the letter at once. Give it to me... But you can't consider me as a child, a little girl, after that silly joke! I am sorry for that silliness, but you must bring the letter, if you really haven't got it\u2014bring it today, you must, you must... But you are mad to take a joke so seriously!\"\n\n\nHeheheh. So, this isn't explicitly an example of drunkenness, but it's the one I had on hand. I'm sure drunk variations existed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8gmvpd", "title": "How straightness is achieved in construction?", "selftext": "How did we develop first straight objects? For example to create a ruler we need some straightness reference(I assume). Of course nothing will be 100% straight but when you think all the delicate machinary such as medical devices and the machines used in the space we must be pretty close. Is there a way to geometrically approximate to a straight line without a straight device?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8gmvpd/how_straightness_is_achieved_in_construction/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyd0tuk", "dyd2wwg", "dyd6bi2"], "score": [22, 6, 10], "text": ["simplest straight lines are a taut string or a flat water surface.\n\nearly surfaces were just created by hand.  our precision has increased over time.  we never hit perfectly straight, just straight enough to suffice.", "Hanging a string or a piece of hair with a weight at the end creates a simple straight edge. A shadow from a fire or candle can make a straight edge. Any sort of line of sight setup can make a reference for a straight line. ", "Read about the Whitworth Three Plate Method. You can use three flattish plates to create very precise flat surfaces by using them as references for flattening each other. Once you have those, you can use them as reference surfaces for straight edges, etc.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://ericweinhoffer.com/blog/2017/7/30/the-whitworth-three-plates-method"]]}
{"q_id": "51k0g0", "title": "why do heating pads (or any other warm thing) help with period cramps, stomach pain, etc?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51k0g0/eli5_why_do_heating_pads_or_any_other_warm_thing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7cmzr2", "d7cp1kp", "d7cqaie"], "score": [99, 32, 6], "text": ["Because heating pads are warm, they open blood vessels in the area and improve blood flow. This carries with it chemicals that can block pain and reduce swelling.", "Heat dilates blood vessels allowing a higher volume of oxygen, chemicals etc to reach muscles. \n\nPeriod pain is (mainly) muscular. The uterus is contracting to push it's old lining out, causing literal cramps just like you get in your foot or leg. \n\nMore blood = more oxygen and pain blocking chemicals (including pharmaceuticals) = less pain.", "There is a theory called the Gate Control theory of pain which basically states that your brain can only process a certain amount of somatosensory input (pain, pressure, hot/cold sensation, etc.) from a given area of your body at one time. So by applying heat to an area of pain, you're basically distracting your brain from the pain itself. \n\nAlso, this may not apply to period cramps or stomach aches in particular, but many aches are caused by muscle soreness, which typically stems from overexertion of those muscles. When you overexert muscles, they build up lactic acid, which causes a sensation of pain. Adding heat to an area causes vasodilation (an increase in the diameter of local blood vessels), which increases blood flow in the area, and allows the lactic acid to be drained away from the area more quickly. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ko52f", "title": "Does light exist outside of time while in space?", "selftext": "Based on my understanding as something approaches the speed of light time begins to slow to accommodate this speed. Then once the speed of light is reached time stops. If I am understanding this correctly, then does light experience time while traveling through the vacuum of space? Does light exist outside of time while traveling through our universe? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ko52f/does_light_exist_outside_of_time_while_in_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2lt8yc", "c2ltajw", "c2ltyl1", "c2lt8yc", "c2ltajw", "c2ltyl1"], "score": [11, 7, 2, 11, 7, 2], "text": ["As far as a photon is concerned - it experiences no time and from its perspective it dies the moment it is created.", "The proper time interval along any path a photon takes is zero, and proper time is in general the time experienced by a particle traveling along some path. So it's true that light doesn't experience time, it's not really accurate to say that time stops, and it's just completely meaningless to ask if it exists \"outside of time\".", "For a massive object traveling near the speed of light, time doesn't slow. It only appears to slow for an observer in a different frame of reference. \nA common example is that if a spaceship buzzed our planet near the speed of light,  people on earth would \"see\" a very fast moving object whose inhabitants appeared to be moving in slow motion. Conversely, astronauts would view time on earth as passing very quickly. \nLight is massless, however, and isn't subject to relativity in the sense of time dilation. It always travels at a constant speed of c, and, from it's perspective, in a straight line when in a vacuum. But due to the fact that it travels along the fabric of space-time (which is warped by gravity and the expansion of the universe), it can be distorted, bent, or shifted from an observer's perspective. It's known as gravitational lensing. \n\nTL;DR Everything is relative. Except the speed of light. ", "As far as a photon is concerned - it experiences no time and from its perspective it dies the moment it is created.", "The proper time interval along any path a photon takes is zero, and proper time is in general the time experienced by a particle traveling along some path. So it's true that light doesn't experience time, it's not really accurate to say that time stops, and it's just completely meaningless to ask if it exists \"outside of time\".", "For a massive object traveling near the speed of light, time doesn't slow. It only appears to slow for an observer in a different frame of reference. \nA common example is that if a spaceship buzzed our planet near the speed of light,  people on earth would \"see\" a very fast moving object whose inhabitants appeared to be moving in slow motion. Conversely, astronauts would view time on earth as passing very quickly. \nLight is massless, however, and isn't subject to relativity in the sense of time dilation. It always travels at a constant speed of c, and, from it's perspective, in a straight line when in a vacuum. But due to the fact that it travels along the fabric of space-time (which is warped by gravity and the expansion of the universe), it can be distorted, bent, or shifted from an observer's perspective. It's known as gravitational lensing. \n\nTL;DR Everything is relative. Except the speed of light. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4jzzw4", "title": "how does criminal justice work for conjoined twins?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jzzw4/eli5_how_does_criminal_justice_work_for_conjoined/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3b13sm", "d3b2amw", "d3b2bys", "d3b2ev0", "d3b2mtu", "d3b306k", "d3b33av", "d3b36s3", "d3b3dt6", "d3b3fy2", "d3b3is3"], "score": [106, 31, 4, 8, 21, 95, 3, 5, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["When similar things have happened in the past, [both twins generally go free.](_URL_0_).\n\nConjoined criminals are so incredibly rare that this has been a workable solution so far.", "Great question, and one that was voted the [question of the year in 2009](_URL_0_) ... TL;DR Nobody knows.\n\nI like the bonus question too, \"Could an innocent conjoined twin be compelled to testify against her evil sibling?\"", "This is a \"Tales from the Crypt\" episode called [My Brother's Keeper](_URL_0_)...", "As a followup question-aren't both twins guilty because the other was present for the entire thing and partially involved? Shouldn't they both be put in jail? ", "Arguments from both sides can be put forth.\n\n**Not Guilty:** It's morally and ethically wrong to imprison the other twin for the crimes of his brother, so for the sake of justice, you allow the guilty man to go free so that the innocent man isn't punished.\n\n**Guilty:** The uninvolved twin had both knowledge of the crime while it took place and the ability to prevent it from happening. While that's normally not enough to convict, in this case, the uninvolved twin was also partially in control of the rapist's body, thus the crime could only be committed by the uninvolved twin's consensual act. He'd probably be charged with aiding and abetting in that case.", "Am I the only one who lost their shit over the diagram?", "I don't think any judge in history would think anything else besides \"well, you're already imprisoned by biology. Not much else we can really do here.\" ", "It would make more sense, contextually if they both were gun owners, each open carrying. One decided to shoot someone at random, or rob a store they were visiting, being a spur of the moment thing that they hadn't vocalized.\n\nThe good twin not being able to shoot the evil twin in time to stop the crime.\n\nGood twin could slap evil twin in the nuts to stop a rape, or call for help nearby or any other number of ways to stop a rape from happening. Spur of the moment murder/gun crime is impossible to stop without murdering the evil side, which has the likely possibility of killing both of them, deepening on what's conjoined.", "You can be charged for negligence of a crime depending on where you live. For instance, you could get in trouble if you knew someone was going to get murdered but didn't say anything. Love the diagram btw.", "Why the twins gotta be black?", "Why are they black? Lol... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/01/if_a_siamese_twin_commits_murder_does_his_brother_get_punished_too.html"], ["http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/01/if_a_siamese_twin_commits_murder_does_his_brother_get_punished_too.html"], ["http://tftc.wikia.com/wiki/My_Brother's_Keeper"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3tyq0y", "title": "are bugs capable of conceptualizing their dead brethren as a warning of danger? are most animals capable of this?", "selftext": "roommate killed a roach \n\nleft that bitch in the the kitchen under the counters\n\ntold him to clean it up \n\n\"nah, leave it because now others that come by will know this place is dangerous because they see the dead one\" \n\nwhat? \n\nI'm 80% sure that's fucking nonsense\n\nbut that 20 though\n\ncan't make him pick it up until I'm sure\n\nis he a lazy bitch or is this actually possible? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tyq0y/eli5are_bugs_capable_of_conceptualizing_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxabpkw", "cxabq8a", "cxaenpd", "cxamvz5", "cxanwm8", "cxaq2cp", "cxaqsio", "cxar1fm", "cxasf5a", "cxawaq2", "cxaxmbo", "cxay2t2", "cxay3ng", "cxayzfj", "cxb11j7", "cxb1gp9", "cxb1ogn", "cxb1piz"], "score": [547, 52, 24, 13, 156, 5, 9, 4, 4, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["Insects don't have the complex brain structure to form concepts. But what can happen is that when some insects die, they release a pheromone that is detected by the rest of their comrade, and they'll come to defend against whatever killed one of their own. Individually they are stupid but as a colony insects are very clever.\n\nTL;DR he's a lazy bitch tell him to clean it up", "By sight? No. But some insects release certain pheromones when they die violently that are interpreted by their fellow insect species as a warning of danger. Many ants do this, but the effect is the opposite of what your friend would hope for: it calls ants to come fight a perceived enemy.\n\nThen there are bugs that scavenge, or are otherwise attracted to death scents. Your friend is probably inviting a lot more insects to come check out a tasty meal than he is warning any away.", "All I know i that it doesn't work that way with people. If you kill one, many more will come to find out why you did that.", "There's an anecdote about a killer whale that killed a shark in such a way as to make all the other sharks in the area leave despite being in food-filled waters.\n\nOther than that I got nothing.  He should probably clean it up and stop being such a shit roommate. \n\nAlternatively, you could run your own experiment and see if it discourages mailmen.", "So, funny story.  When I was a kid, I lived on a farm.  We had a couple dozen peach trees and we had a minor invasion of a green - lady bug looking insect.  They covered the damn trees like a moving green quilt.  Dad tried everything he could think of to get rid of them, to no avail.  Finally, he scooped a couple thousand up in a net and took them inside. \nStep two was grabbing mom's blender and dumping the bugs inside.\n\nStep three was... yes... blending the bugs into a horrible greenish brown milkshake, which he then dumped into a sprayer and proceeded to stink up the entire farm with by spraying them on the trees.\n\nIt didn't work and mom was pissed.  She got a new blender though.", "Some birds recognize and avoid area's where their dead kin are. Source: Hang a dead crow from a pipe in your garden and the other crows won't fuck you with your plants/seeds/feeders.", "Tell your roommate Vlad the Roach Impaler that they will just eat the carcass and multiply.   Clean it up.  ", "Cockroaches are avid cannibals, and when they have no food they start nibbling on each other even when they are alive. So in the case of cockroaches, a dead roach will not deter other roaches at all. ", "Not pertaining to OPs question but still a bit on topic...\n\nIf insects can't comprehend danger, what makes ants go into a frenzy when they run into a dead ant? ", "I can offer some anecdotal evidence as a hunter.  I've seen white tail deer, Canadian geese, and ducks of many types come right up to a recently killed animal of the same species and go about their day as normal.  Death is commonplace in the wilderness.", "I used to leave out a dead cockroach at my store cause the others would come and eat the corpse\n\nDon't think they got the hint...", "When you poison roaches with boric acid when the others eat the dead they die, too. Your roommate is confused. ", "I don't know about insects but I know that sharks can smell their own sharks blood and it repels them.", "I have heard this is true for coyotes. If you kill one and leave it near your property or wherever, the others will stay away", "Crows show aversion to other dead crows. Humans wearing masks have been able to illicit a negative response after holding a dead crow around a flock. ", "100% false.\n\nDead roaches bring more roaches to cannibalize the brethren corpse.\n\nSource: dumb little brother did the same, ended up waking up to a huge tribe feeding on their fallen.", "I think in this particular case, roaches will come and eat up the leftover dead roach. So if thats the case, he should really get rid of it and wipe down where it was killed, lest he wishes to attract the roach's hungry brethren.", "I can tell you with 100% certainty that its bullshit.\r\rSource: Had roaches. Killed hundreds with blowtorch. Still had roaches. I did trap one under a glass and left it to die. Always thought it prolly fucked with their psyche."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2i3v9p", "title": "How did Roman merchants protect themselves when traveling, especially beyond the borders of the empire?", "selftext": "I'm most interested in how they traveled during the height of the empire's power (the reigns of the \"five good emperors\"), but I'm curious about other eras as well.\n\nAdditionally, does anyone have any good books to recommend on ancient trade and commerce, and in particular Roman activities outside the empire?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2i3v9p/how_did_roman_merchants_protect_themselves_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckz1j3c", "ckzfvow"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["As a follow up, did Roman citizenship carry and weight outside the borders of the empire? If a Roman was in, say, Persia or India would local authorities be reluctant to treat the merchant poorly/demand bribes or something, out of fear that the Romans might do something?", "I can't comment on Roman merchants specifically, however, I remember reading about how Muslim merchants protected themselves. First, Muslim (or in some cases, Jewish) merchants would acquire letters of safe conduct from local rulers which would guarantee (at least in theory) their safe passage through territories. Second, Muslim merchants would arrange to be accompanied by a partner, usually another trader, called a *rafiq*, and each partner would rely on the other for some degree of protection.\n\nI know this doesn't answer your question, but hopefully it can point you in the right direction, or at least, give you an idea on how merchants during the ancient world handled their personal security while abroad.\n\nBernstein, WJ, *A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World*, 2008, p. 6.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3enj3k", "title": "why is it that every time we put something down our throat toothbrush, finger etc. we start to gag but when we but food and water down our throat we don't gag at all?", "selftext": "ELIF: Why is it every time we put something other than food and water down our throat- a toothbrush or a finger etc. we start to gag? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3enj3k/elif_why_is_it_that_every_time_we_put_something/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctgmkdo", "ctgn34l", "ctgnwjq", "ctgnztc", "ctgo83n"], "score": [179, 11, 5, 18, 5], "text": ["Because when you eat, you're mushing it and mixing it with your saliva until it becomes a mushy soup of mushiness. For example, you can't shove a chocolate bar down your throat without gagging, despite it being food. An experiment you can do is to start eating something, but instead of swallowing you spit it out on a plate. It looks absolutely disgusting. But you will see the food is not solid at all anymore, it's like a mushy soup. And as we all know, swallowing soup isn't really an issue. Furthermore, we swallow things in steps, so to speak. If you put a lot of food in your mouth, you won't be able to swallow it all in one go (maybe some can). You will swallow it bit by bit, although you won't consciously think about it.", "Gagging isn't a reflex as much a s a reaction. You can suppress it if you try. I get bad breath so I brush my tongue. As long as I focus on what I'm doing and don't let my attention wane, I can reach the back part of my tongue with no reaction. ", "Why the hell do you put your toothbrush down your throat?", "It's because you make a conscious swallowing action, which starts the peristaltic movement in the esophagus,  moving food downwards. \n\nBut when iserting a finger or other objects, they just stay there, which tells the body that smth is wrong. Abort. Abort.  Hence gagging. ", "When you swallow food, you swallow it. Your throat shapes itself and moves in such a way to move that food into your stomach. When you use an object or your finger, it doesn't move to your stomach. Your throat then assumes your choking and tries to dislodge the object to prevent you from dieing. Your gag reflex is designed to prevent you from choking. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kp5kz", "title": "writing in the passive voice is something i like to do eli5: why is it such a bad thing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kp5kz/writing_in_the_passive_voice_is_something_i_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2m1ho5", "c2m1jv0", "c2m1l98", "c2m2kie", "c2m1ho5", "c2m1jv0", "c2m1l98", "c2m2kie"], "score": [11, 2, 7, 6, 11, 2, 7, 6], "text": ["It's not. Most of these stupid english rules (passive is incorrect, don't split infinitives, don't end sentences in prepositions, etc) came from grammar books published in the 18th and 19th century by people who wanted English to read more like Latin, which they thought was a more scholarly language. It's a form of [linguistic prescription](_URL_0_), which basically means telling people how they ought to be speaking/writing.\n\nSee also: _URL_1_", "We're taught that it is \"bad\" because usually an active voice makes the sentence easier to understand. We've grown up with most of our sentences following a \"subject verb\" structure.\n\nPassive - The ball was thrown by the boy.\n\nActive - The boy threw the ball.\n\nThe active voice places the \"actor\" at the front, so you know immediately who is doing what. In the passive voice, you are first told what was done, and then finally who did it.", "The passive voice certainly has its uses. A quick scan of the wikipedia entry and I found this:\n\nMerriam\u2013Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning:\n\nThe child was struck by the car.\n \nThe store was robbed last night.\n\nIn the sentence where the child was struck by the car, the focus of the writer or speaker's intent is the child, not the car. Had the sentence read \"the car struck the child\", then the focus would be on the car as it is the subject of the sentence. In the passive voice, the child is the focus of the sentence (despite the fact that the car is still the subject - I think) and some action is being done *to* it.", "There's nothing inherently wrong with it. Often, sentences structured that way can sound stilted, awkward, or wordy, which is why a lot of English teachers will tell you not to use passive voice. In this case, the problem isn't with the passive voice itself, but with inexperienced writers' inability to use it effectively. It certainly doesn't come very naturally, except in cases of victimization; most often, sentences will read more clearly and be more concise in active voice.\n\nHowever, if you're planning to publish any sort of scientific paper ever in your life, it's best not to listen to those English teachers, because you'll need those passive-voice-ification skills they're trying to drill out of you. Overall, it's generally best to learn where and when passive voice is most effective, use it in those cases, and stick to active voice elsewhere.", "It's not. Most of these stupid english rules (passive is incorrect, don't split infinitives, don't end sentences in prepositions, etc) came from grammar books published in the 18th and 19th century by people who wanted English to read more like Latin, which they thought was a more scholarly language. It's a form of [linguistic prescription](_URL_0_), which basically means telling people how they ought to be speaking/writing.\n\nSee also: _URL_1_", "We're taught that it is \"bad\" because usually an active voice makes the sentence easier to understand. We've grown up with most of our sentences following a \"subject verb\" structure.\n\nPassive - The ball was thrown by the boy.\n\nActive - The boy threw the ball.\n\nThe active voice places the \"actor\" at the front, so you know immediately who is doing what. In the passive voice, you are first told what was done, and then finally who did it.", "The passive voice certainly has its uses. A quick scan of the wikipedia entry and I found this:\n\nMerriam\u2013Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning:\n\nThe child was struck by the car.\n \nThe store was robbed last night.\n\nIn the sentence where the child was struck by the car, the focus of the writer or speaker's intent is the child, not the car. Had the sentence read \"the car struck the child\", then the focus would be on the car as it is the subject of the sentence. In the passive voice, the child is the focus of the sentence (despite the fact that the car is still the subject - I think) and some action is being done *to* it.", "There's nothing inherently wrong with it. Often, sentences structured that way can sound stilted, awkward, or wordy, which is why a lot of English teachers will tell you not to use passive voice. In this case, the problem isn't with the passive voice itself, but with inexperienced writers' inability to use it effectively. It certainly doesn't come very naturally, except in cases of victimization; most often, sentences will read more clearly and be more concise in active voice.\n\nHowever, if you're planning to publish any sort of scientific paper ever in your life, it's best not to listen to those English teachers, because you'll need those passive-voice-ification skills they're trying to drill out of you. Overall, it's generally best to learn where and when passive voice is most effective, use it in those cases, and stick to active voice elsewhere."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_English_usage_misconceptions"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_English_usage_misconceptions"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e2hg2", "title": "If a lump of rock in space needs to be a certain size to be considered a planet, how many stars does it take for the group to be considered a galaxy?", "selftext": "I was thinking about the sizes of stars and this question popped into my head. If an object in space gets bigger and bigger, it goes from being an asteroid to a moon to a planet to a star etc. Analogous to how a brown dwarf is a failed star, is there also a name for a group of stars that's not quite big enough to be considered a galaxy?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2e2hg2/if_a_lump_of_rock_in_space_needs_to_be_a_certain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjvfo5t"], "score": [13], "text": ["To start off, the process there isn't entirely right.\n\nI'll start with a star, which is the easiest concept to somewhat explain (astronomy and definitions don't always get along well), a star is massive enough that the pressure and temperature are sufficient that it is undergoing fusion.\n\nSmaller than a star, and really limiting ourselves to our solar system, we have planets, moons, and asteroids. Planets are round by their own gravity, are the dominant object in their orbit, and are orbiting the sun. So this constraints it both to be big enough that it becomes round, and also orbiting the sun. A moon, then, is a body that is orbiting around a planet. It's defined not by a physical characteristic, but by its orbit.\n\nNow, going the other way to deal with stars. Within our own galaxy, we have star clusters. One kind, the [open star clusters](_URL_2_), are where young stars have been formed, before the cluster has spread out in the galaxy. The other are [globular clusters](_URL_3_), these contain many more stars more densely packed together, and contain old stars that have remained held together as a group by gravity. The number of stars for open star cluster can be hundreds or thousands, but for the globular cluster can be hundreds of thousands.\n\nWe usually find the open star clusters within the disk of our galaxy, as that's where the young stars are forming, but we find the globular clusters in a [shell](_URL_1_) around the galaxy, roughly. We see them with other galaxies as well.\n\nNow, where things start to get a bit more uncertain is if these globular clusters necessarily formed as part of the galaxy or not. We do find very small galaxies orbiting around the Milky Way as well, something on the order of up to a billion stars. And there's some research going on this topic. If a much small galaxy were to come close into the Milky Way and interact with it, the Milky Way would gain stars and the smaller galaxy would lose them. Over time, the small galaxy would be absorbed. It's been suggested that at least one of the globular clusters in the Milky Way may actually be the remains of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way cannibalized. It's also tricky because finding these dwarf galaxies can be quite tough, so putting a lower limit on what it takes to be a galaxy is hard because smaller groupings of stars are harder to discover and study, and so we actually keep finding new dwarf galaxies as equipment improves.\n\nThe question is also still what should count as a galaxy or not, so [here's](_URL_0_) an example of a small galaxy found that is one of the smallest known. An important tangent here is that even though when we look at a galaxy we see the stars, the majority of the mass of the galaxy is made up of dark matter, which is stuff that has gravity but we can't see. So here they discuss that this group of stars has so much dark matter that they consider it a galaxy even though it has 1000 stars, but if it had much less dark matter, then it'd just be a star cluster.\n\nEdit: feel free to let me know if there's any terms I forgot to explain in there, I think I got all of them."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/11/smallest-galaxy-ever-discovered-bolsters-dark-matter-theory/", "http://www2.astro.psu.edu/users/rbc/a1/lec19_f1.jpg", "http://www.crystalinks.com/pleiades1107.jpg", "http://www.daviddarling.info/images/M80_2.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "191d5a", "title": "Can the brain imagine itself into real physical pain?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/191d5a/can_the_brain_imagine_itself_into_real_physical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8jxayr"], "score": [2], "text": ["Real physical pain is difficult to pin down. \n\nLook up the experiment with the thermal bars of alternating temperature. Very interesting "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ai5zr", "title": "Is it possible to stop or survive a pyroclastic flow?", "selftext": "I'd like to know whether or not you can either avoid or stop a pyroclastic flow.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ai5zr/is_it_possible_to_stop_or_survive_a_pyroclastic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d10tp7p", "d11sk01"], "score": [8, 6], "text": ["There are 2 main approaches, neither of which is miraculous:\n\n1 - the best way to survive lahars is not to be in their path in the first place. To that end, monitoring of the growth and evolution of the topography of a volcanic edifice allows to model and contrain the areas most susceptible to get it in the teeth when a pyroclastic flow starts barreling down. Lahars tend to be channeled in topographic lows and narrow corridors which it is beneficial to make off limits to construction.\n\n2 - In the event where existing structures which would be too costly to evacuate are in the path of one of the corridors discussed above (lets say growth of the volcanic edifice has altered the topography in such a way that a previously safe community is now at risk), it is possible to build berms and sabo dams to attempt to alter the direction of an incoming pyroclastic flow or halt it. Such methods are of limited effectiveness, and prone to beeing overwhelmed by all but the smallest flows. I, personally, would freak out at the knowledge that there is nothing but a couple of berms and dams between myself and an incoming Lahar.\n\nAnd of course: constant monitoring of volcanic activity, with evacuation calls when warranted, but that is as passive as it gets, and not what you are after, I believe.", "Pyroclastic flows (pyroclastic density currents - PDCs - in modern parlance) are real problems for hazard mitigation.\n\nThese flows are comprised of tephra (volcanic ash fragments at a wide variety of particle sizes from micron to cm scale) and hot gas, and can range from very short-duration unsteady pulses through to huge ignimbrite forming eruptions which are sustained for minutes, hours, or even days.\n\nThere are a number of significant problems with dealing with these flows. \n\n1. They are highly mobile. The internal gas pressure within them means they can traverse long distances (10's, even hundreds of kilometers over flat terrain). They can flow uphill for some distance, which means to some extent they can ignore topography.\n2. They are hot. At up to several hundreds degrees C they can be hugely devastating to infrastructure they come into contact with, and the deposits they leave can take weeks , months, even years to cool down.\n3. The tephra they are made up of is very nasty for living things. Silicosis by inhaling tephra is a real issue.\n4. They are fast moving. With propagation speeds up to a couple of hundred kilometers and hour outrunning them is rarely an option.\n5. They can traverse water. When a hot PDC encounters water it can flash-boil the surface of the water, causing a volume expansion which further drives the internal gas pressure and mobility. _URL_0_\n\nWhile the very smallest and densest flows can be diverted by culverts to some extent (see measures on Sakurajima for example) in reality the best bet is to not be there. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLZc1zKUt4"]]}
{"q_id": "2aq6om", "title": "Why does skin attach to an object if in contact for a long period of time?", "selftext": "Every once in awhile you hear a news story that an obese person sat in the same spot on a sofa for years without moving, or on a toilet seat for years, and when they eventually tried to move, they were fused to whatever they were sitting on.  How and why does this happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2aq6om/why_does_skin_attach_to_an_object_if_in_contact/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cixu3zc"], "score": [13], "text": ["As I understand it, the continual pressure causes bedsores.  The body tries to heal these but they remain in contact with the material of the seat.  This causes the flesh to regrow around and within the weave of the material leaving the person joined to it.\n\nThis is another reason to change wound dressings often."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8pwe6t", "title": "Why do a lot of hobby rockets use sugar and potassium nitrate as fuel?", "selftext": "Seems like every video I've seen uses a combination of sugar and potassium nitrate as fuel, what makes these two work so well together?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8pwe6t/why_do_a_lot_of_hobby_rockets_use_sugar_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0ernut"], "score": [10], "text": ["It's very similar to any other rocket fuel and oxidizer. The sugar acts as the fuel, and has a lot of energy in its bonds. The nitrate acts as an oxidizer, giving up its oxygen while burning with the sugar. These would be replaced kerosene and liquid oxygen in many full scale rockets. This type of sugar-nitarate mix is not nearly as efficient as real rockets. The main benefit of these \"rocket candy\" mixes, is that they're very cheap and obtainable, and legal to produce as a hobby."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2jc3hk", "title": "how come in elementary school, we are taught that the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow, but in high school physics, we're taught the primary colors are red, blue, and green?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jc3hk/eli5how_come_in_elementary_school_we_are_taught/", "answers": {"a_id": ["claad7u", "claag5l", "claagf8", "claal9l", "claaqnv"], "score": [11, 2, 3, 6, 7], "text": ["RBY are the primaries of the reflective color wheel. RBG are the primaries in the transmissive color wheel.", "Primary colors are just sets of colors that can be used to make other colors. For humans, we usually use three colors because our vision is trichromatic (based on three colors). RGB is often used in electronics. RBY is often used by artists. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are often used for making dyes. Basically, you pick three colors that can be used to make lots of other colors and you base your choice off of whatever works best for your medium.", "Because in elementary school we learn the primary colours for mixing paint. In high school physics we learn the primary colours to mix light.", "Your elementary school was wrong.\n\nBut they were TRYING to teach you about subtractive colors (even if they didn't use that word).  This applies to dyes.  \n\nYou take a surface which reflects white light and you add dyes that **subtract** from the colors that surface reflects. If you have Magenta dye (not red) it subtracts Cyan (not blue) and Yellow.  If you have Cyan it subtracts Magenta and Yellow.  If you haveYellow it subtracts Cyan and Magenta.\n\nSo subtractive color is based on Cyan/Magenta/Yellow\n\nAdditive color is what your high school physics class was talking about.\n\nAdditive color is what happens when you add LIGHT to something.  If you have no light and you add red light you get red.  If you have no light and you add blue light you get blue, if you have no light and you add green light you get green.\n\nAdditive color is based on Red/Green/Blue\n\nThey are different color systems.  Subtractive is for dyes and paints (because it changes the reflective surface, not the light, which is white).  Additive  is for light.", "Red, blue, and green (RGB) are the colors the eye detects, and are therefore the primary *additive* colors. Colors that add together. Sprinkle a few drops of water on a TV screen, and you\u2019ll see that the picture elements are only red, green, and blue. (Red + green light looks yellow or orange.)\n\nCyan, magenta, and yellow are the *subtractive* colors. Colors that subtract from the default white. They are the ideal primary colors to use with printing technology, or with paints. Of course, the real world isn\u2019t ideal, so printers use black as well (CMYK).\n\nRed, yellow, and blue are the traditional colors of art, but aren\u2019t the ideal three primary colors for mixing paints, but that\u2019s okay because artists usually use a wide variety of base colors."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2q5edx", "title": "why do directors get so much credit/disapproval if a film or t.v. show is bad/good, shouldn't it fall on the writers who have control of the show/movie?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q5edx/eli5_why_do_directors_get_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn31v87", "cn31y4l", "cn31yhy", "cn31zfz", "cn32bbp", "cn32wxx", "cn36hgw", "cn371bs", "cn37tbf", "cn3g89w"], "score": [9, 4, 169, 3, 66, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["Writers get approval/disapproval for what's written.\n\nDirectors for whats filmed. ", "The writer is actually a very small part of it in the scheme of things.  They come up with the characters, the dialogue and the plot, and then hand it over for production.\n\nSomeone else takes it and turns it into a script / screenplay which can be acted out in front of a camera by actors.\n\nThe Director has a *lot* more creative control and is responsible for:\n\n- Deciding which parts of the script to film, and which to omit.\n\n- Casting the roles with actors and directing them as they play out the script.\n\n- Selecting the appropriate musical score for different scenes.\n\n- How each scene should be lit and filmed, which costumes are to be used, and how the scenes are put together.\n\n- Identifying areas requiring special effects and integrating those into the film at the end.", "Do you judge the chef or the farmer for how your meal turned out? Sometimes it's the ingredients that make or break a dish but it's the chef's job to take what they got and transform it into something tasty.", "The writers write down ideas, events and scripts for whatever is being produced.\n\nThe director gets to take all of that and interpret it how he wants. It's his (or hers) vision of the final product.", "There is a huge difference in how TV and Film assign credit. For example,  TV gives almost all credit to its writers. Due to its inherently episodic format and because directors come and go, writers do all the heavy lifting. They develop the characters, they set the tone, they make the story. And they do it weekly. \n\nFor film, the writer is not necessarily involved at all.  The writer could have sold the script and is not working on the production. But that doesn't mean that the story is being written. Rewrites can be requested,  other writers, ghost writers, minor rewrites, indistinguishable rewrites. But still the director has more or less the final say on everything. They choose everything, they okay everything. Final say on cast, final say on tone. Hell they can ask for rewrites. \n\nTldr: Film directors get the credit because they make all the stylistic and direction choices. For TV, writers do that because the directors come and go. ", "Writers decide what happens, who does what, what people say, etc.\n\nDirectors control EVERYTHING else, including setting the mood, how the actors deliver the lines, how dramatic/comedic a scene is, etc. \n\nAlso some directors (Tarantino is a good example) are very involved with the writing process. ", "One of the responsibilities of directors (and stars) is to function as a lightning rod for criticism, either good or bad.  Sometimes this means they get credit for things that they didn't have anything to do with, but sometimes they have to shoulder the blame for situations that were not their fault.  That's part of the reason directors, stars and other above the liners get paid more than the BTLs - it's a type of hazard fee.  ", "This question gets to a common misconception about film and television production that dates back to the rise of the auteur theory (thanks, French New Wave). In reality, most films can't single out any one individual to blame as virtually every Hollywood scale film is made by committee. A screenwriter's story may go through a meat grinder of development notes prior to even having a director attached. Then more notes. Then an actor may get attached. Then more notes. Then the director has a brilliant vision, but the actor wants more money so the production design budget is cut in half. Then the shooting schedule is plagued by that typhoon nobody saw coming (production manager's fault) and the cinematographer, keen to try out a new camera system, loses a day's footage, demoralizing the crew. Then the editor presents the director's brilliant, three-hour rough cut, which the studio whittles down to a ninety minute incomprehensible plot. Then the marketing department has notes... People always site Tarantino as an example, but he's the outlier. Donald Petrie is the norm. And he's a fine director, but he's not a brand, he's a cog in a much larger system.\n\nEdit: Typo", "Here's an example of how much control the writer has.\n\nRaiders of the Lost Ark: The writer puts down \"Awesome fight between a Sword Guy and Indy with the whip\" in however much detail. \n\nHarrison Ford's back hurts. He pulls out his gun and shoots Sword Guy. The director thinks it's brilliant and keeps it. ", "The predominant theory in filmmaking at least is the Auteur Theory. auteur is French for author. Basically, although filmmaking is clearly a collaborative effort, there is only one \"author\" of a film and that is the director. The director is responsible for all the artistic elements of the film. That is why the director gets the last credit in the opening credits.  \n\nThe writers have been fighting for more credit for years and have gained some. If you watch a movie from the 60s, the writer credit is usually somewhere in the middle. Now it's usually the second to last credit before the directors. Also, it is much harder for a director to get a writing credit then a regular writer. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "76575m", "title": "If mathematical models of artificial neural networks are so effective, wouldn't creating physical models of neural networks be even more effective?", "selftext": "Just wondering why this hasn't been done already?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/76575m/if_mathematical_models_of_artificial_neural/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dobl0rm"], "score": [9], "text": ["People have, in different shapes and forms. Hardware implementations of artificial neural networks (ANN) generally promise faster computation and better power efficiency, so there is a lot of interesting research going on in this area. The issue is that the hardware implementations are nowhere near as flexible as the digital counterparts. The weights of the ANN have to be hard-coded in the hardware (or is difficult to change), so once you build it in hardware you're kinda stuck with it. This also means that you still need to train it in software anyway, which for certain tasks, is the hardest part of the machine learning process. Additionally, because digital circuits are resistant to noise and hardware implementations are often analog computations, the precision is going to be much higher for the digital implementations. Here are a couple examples I can think of off the top of my head:\n\nVery recently, a group at MIT [implemented an ANN in photonics](_URL_0_) and demonstrated a simple machine learning task on it. The advantage of photonics (optical computing) is orders of magnitude greater speed and energy efficiency. The issue is that photonics is difficult to miniaturize on the same scale as electrical components (think Intel's 14nm processes). And as stated before, training is done on a conventional computer, and the analog computations result in a hit on the machine learning performance.\n\nOn a related note, artificial neural networks are only loosely related to how the brain functions. There have been a lot of work in simulating biological neural networks more closely in hardware, such as [IBM's TrueNorth chip](_URL_1_), which promises amazing improvements in power efficiency. The issue is that these specialized chips take so long to design, that by the time they fabricated it, the digital chips and algorithms already advanced very quickly to overtake any promises in performance."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-system-allows-optical-deep-learning-0612", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueNorth"]]}
{"q_id": "5d7o33", "title": "why is car insurance mandatory, but mandatory health insurance is \"unconstitutional\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d7o33/eli5_why_is_car_insurance_mandatory_but_mandatory/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da2fk27", "da2fmpj", "da2fnu5", "da2g0ml", "da2g3ui", "da2gbl3", "da2gmg9", "da2gyue", "da2h3n7", "da2i53r", "da2iawe", "da2kqxn", "da2kvu3", "da2l74j", "da2lcay", "da2li9q", "da2lqg1", "da2m434", "da2mcbt", "da2mgo0", "da2mujl", "da2mvtv", "da2mxlt", "da2mxo7", "da2mzx6", "da2n0j4", "da2n3hj", "da2n5t7", "da2n71z", "da2nb1e", "da2nire", "da2njz1", "da2nki5", "da2nm62", "da2nmmf", "da2nsua", "da2nw1t", "da2nx1o", "da2og10", "da2ohhc", "da2oi8a", "da2oin8", "da2ol8t", "da2oob2", "da2ox2k", "da2p1rm", "da2pvwz", "da2pxv3", "da2qh46", "da2qhjs", "da2qqja", "da2qu8i", "da2qx0f", "da2r7ig"], "score": [93, 104, 5, 2, 3111, 63, 4, 251, 3, 2, 2023, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 13, 2, 360, 24, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 10, 9, 4, 2, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 31, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["So the real answer is that car insurance is mandatory because each state has a law that says that it is, and the state's constitutions don't forbid that.\n\nBy contrast, the federal government is limited to the powers granted to it in the Constitution.  There's no line in the Constitution that says \"The federal government can compel everyone to own health insurance.\"  Of course, going off of *NFIB v. Sebelius*, it is constitutional through the taxing power.  So, it is ultimately constitutional.  \n", "Because car insurance pay for the repair of other people's vehicles when you are responsible for an accident. Health insurance only covers you. \n\nAlso mandatory health insurance is not unconstitutional. Very specifically so as the Supreme court ruled that it was not in violation of the constitution. ", "Car insurance isn't mandatory. \n\nIf you choose to drive a car on public roads, the individual state may require you have at least liability insurance. \n\nThis ensures that if you cause accident the victim isn't stuck with the bill.", "Car insurance protects others, while health insurance only protects you...Assuming you don't count medical expenses the hospitals eat, and then pass on to everyone else.", "You don't have to own or drive a car. If you choose to do so, one of the responsibilities is to get liability insurance. I don't have to live in a certain apartment or rent a certain home but some may say that if I want to live here, I need renter's insurance. \n\nBasically you can opt-out of having to buy the insurance by not doing those activities. You have a choice.\n\nMandatory health insurance though, simply by existing you need to have health insurance. Other than dying, not living in the country, or paying a fine, there is no method to opt-out ", "I don't know if you missed it, but the Supreme Court held that mandatory health insurance (specifically how the ACA is set up) is constitutional.  That's why the ACA still exists.", "Living is a right. Driving (on publicly funded roads) is a privilege. \n\nRights cannot come with caveats. Privileges can. ", "Car insurance is not mandatory for everyone.\n\nIt's only mandatory for people who want to drive a car on a public road.\n\nSince driving isn't a right, much less a requirement, car insurance can in no way be considered mandatory for everyone.\n", "Health insurance's constitutionality is debatable (could be decided either way by a future Supreme Court) while car insurance is okay because driving is seen as a privilege. You can choose to not drive if you disagree with the insurance requirement, but mandating health insurance has no such option - it is mandating that you purchase a good whether you want to or not. The current ruling is that it is a \"tax\" which is a loophole so for the time being it is in fact constitutional as the government has the power to tax, but that may or may not remain as the ACA is challenged in the future.", "Because your driving can affect the lives of others, but not caring about your health only affects you.", "The mandatory part of car insurance is *liability* insurance.  It guarantees that if you crash in to someone and injure/kill them, then there's money available to pay the people you've hurt.  The idea is that if you want to be allowed on the same roads as everybody else, you have to show that you are capable of paying for damage you cause.\n\nEven then, the insurance is generally not required.  In California, for example, if you don't want to buy insurance for some reason, you can deposit $35,000 with the State to use as surety against any liability due to your at-fault accidents.  If you ever either give up your license or purchase insurance, you get the $35,000 back.  The requirement is that you have to prove financial responsibility sufficient to pay for up to $30,000 of medical bills and $5,000 of property damage in the event that you cause a wreck.\n\nYou can buy car insurance that protects your car, but it isn't required.  (Though, if you finance a car, the bank will require you to buy insurance that covers at least the amount of your loan until you've repaid it)\n\nHealth insurance is completely different.  It covers you for healthcare that you want.", "Actually mandatory health insurance was determined constitutional by the Supreme Court using car insurance as the basis of that decision ", "Only liability is mandatory. In short it is to protect people that you might hit so that they don't have to pay up or risk their premium increasing because of an accident that wasn't their fault. \n\nI am completely for universal health care but the discourse on the matter has not gotten to a point nationally where people view it as an infringement on others abilities to be healthy. The reason it is \"unconstitutional\" rather than simply unconstitutional (without the quotations) is because it violates \"life liberty and the pursuit of happiness\"  in what is considered to be a fundamentally different way.", "People have already pointed out the obvious, driving a car is a privilege, not a  right, but beyond that, car insurance is not mandatory. ", "It's not. Americans just have a terrible healthcare system that denies them the right to life in exchange for the right to not have insurance.", "I find it strange everyone is saying that car insurance affects others and health insurance only affects you. That's totally false and the whole reason ACA should have worked. Your health does affect others. If you get obese or don't take care of yourself and end up in the hospital or emergency room you are a burden to society and everyone else ends up footing your bill. That's the whole reason insurance companies weren't accepting people with preexisting conditions. \n\nObesity is killing our economy.", "Ability to show finicial liability is what is asked. Auto insurance fulfils that requirement. Also of note auto insurance is a state mandate. Not a federal one.", "It boils down to a matter of perspective. I could argue, as the Supreme Court has, that taxing those that choose not to carry insurance is perfectly constitutional. Why? Well the easiest example is emergency room care. Since we generally take care of people in need whether or not they have health insurance, the system has to recover those costs from somewhere. The benefits, premiums, and availability of insurance are all affected by those costs.", "You don't have to drive. You don't have to drive on public roads. Car insurance is only mandatory if you intend to drive on public roads. It is not required on large farms, companies, reservations... Many people don't drive at all, those people are not required to have car insurance.\n\nThe Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) requires by law all citizens to buy health insurance. This is seen to be unconstitutional because of the right to freely enter into contracts. Article 1, section 10, of the US Constitution. However, later the US Supreme Court ruled that since the ACA was a tax, the Contract Clause did not apply.\n\nStill, many Americans consider the ACA to be unconstitutional.", "Depends what state you live in actually. Where I live NJ we are considered a no fault state. So your insurance covers you not the other guy. All these people saying that it's for someone else really don't know everything they're talking about. ", "**There is no federal law making car insurance mandatory.**  Those are state laws.  The constitution gives the federal government certain powers and the rest of the power is given to the states (unless prohibited by the constitution/federal law).\n\nOthers have mentioned that you can opt-out of driving while you can't opt out of living, but ultimately the issue is that the states have much broader powers than the federal government.\n\nAnd to be fair, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is constitutional for the federal government to \"tax\" (worded as a penalty in the law) you for not having health insurance.", "The I know it's different in the US, but in the U.K. we have the NHS, which I believe is essentially ObamaCare. The idea behind it is that you may need critical care in your life, whether it be from a fatal car crash to cancer treatment. However, it's also handy if you have a pathetic cut that won't stop bleeding. Instead of sitting at home trying to sort it out there's care available for you. We pay this through National Insurance that is 10% (?) of our earnings and is taken from us automatically. This guarantees that we have that option there and I believe NI actually funds other things in the government too such as bin collection, roadworks etc. It's very similar to tax. Britain is used to this idea so much that we don't even think about it. We don't pay for doctors visits, consults for certain things, quite a few things that you wouldn't expect to be free because you've technically already paid your way. In America people seem to be really against this because they may never actually be sick in their life, they may never need treatment for anything. That's a consequence that comes with security. While I see the logic behind the idea of American's disdain for the idea, I would think more people would rather be secure. Just me I guess. \n\nCar insurance covers the money for someone's car, treatment for a crash, potentially covers the cost for someone else's car. This is pretty basic explaining but it does the same thing as health insurance, but for car accidents.\n\nAlso, British health insurance covers Ambulances, so we don't pay thousands for that. Makes me quite happy that I don't have to worry about that, but sad that America doesn't see the benefit\n\nEdit: okay thanks guys for trying to educate me, but this was just a throwaway comment really, I'm in no way educated on the ACA and get many things wrong. No need to be so emotive, as if you're offended that I'm comparing the 2. However it seems that I will need to look into things before assuming anything.\n\nEither way, I still stand by America's model of insurance as ridiculous. Bring in the ANHS, a lot of people will have a shit load taken off them.", "Some people like to point out that the commerce clause doesn't give the government power to charge you a fee for not buying service.  Some people like to point out that the supreme court went out of its way to redefine \"fee\" to become \"tax\", which the government has unlimited power to levy; had they not literally legislated from the bench, the ACA would have been doomed.  Some people like to point out that since SCOTUS decreed this a tax, it is unconstitutional because it originated in the senate.  Tax bills must originate in the house.  \n\nAll that shit out of the way, you know what grinds my gears?  When people flippantly point out \"driving is a privilege\".  Reading this thread is like nails on a chalkboard.\n\nThere's half a dozen supreme court cases stating that the right to freely travel on public roads is a no brainer.  Other SCOTUS cases establish that the most popular means of exercising a right are constitutionally protected.  So travel on roads is a protected right, and the most popular means of doing so is with a personally owned vehicle.  \n\nThis is what happens when the government is reasonable.  They have an inherent interest in highway safety, and only require an easy test to access it.  If they suddenly decided everyone had to undergo a three month evasive driving school that cost $20,000, and 95% of drivers couldn't pass or afford it, we'd find out real quick that driving wasn't as much of a privilege as we thought.  But the government is reasonable here, so we don't get that case law, and everyone can go on preposterously asserting that driving on public roads is a privilege.", "If you drive on government roads, the government requires a drivers license and insurance. Their roads, their rules.", "those are the rules for using public roads.  You can own a car without insurance or even a licence if you drive it on private roads.", "Laws in the US is built upon preventing others from violating another's right. In the case of car insurance, the basic liability insurance is meant as a guarantee that in the case you violate someone's right to life or safety, that you can compensate them. On the other hand, health insurance applies only to you and has no impact on another life. ", "Simply put because it involves others! Health insurance only affects the individual (in theory) ", "Because car insurance pays for the car repair of the guy who is your victim in the car accident. \n\nMedical insurance just covers you.", "Mandatory health insurance is like me having to pay someone to live for the rest of my life when I'm already alive.  While car insurance is for a necessity that I can live without.  ", "If you want to drive in the US you need car insurance. \n\nIf you want to be alive in the US you need health insurance. ", "The car industry likes to victim blame so they lobbied for the mandatory liability insurance. Again it's fun for Congress to victim blame so people without health insurance are clearly at fault for getting sick.", "Contractors and various types of businesses are required by law to carry a bond. The bond is basically insurance so that if you cause damage doing your business, you can't cut and run without any way for the people you hurt to get compensated.\n\nCar insurance is the same thing. You are driving a multi-ton death machine, and getting a license is so easy a teenager can do it. Liability insurance is basically a bond that anyone you injure/damage can collect from in case you are too dirt poor to pay yourself. If it did not exist, people would get into car accidents all the time where the wrongdoer would get off scot free by virtue of being poor. We call that \"judgment proof\". This would make poor people tyrant kings on the road, who could drive trash heaps Mad Max style and God help you if you got in their way.\n\nAll mandatory health insurance is, is a government bribe to the insurance companies to go along with Obamacare. You see, Obamacare would cause insurance companies to lose money normally, because it forces them to cover people who buy insurance KNOWING that it will be a net loss for the insurer. We call this \"pre-existing condition\" coverage. Already have health costs of $50,000 a year? No worries, just buy insurance and make that insurance company pay that $50,000 for you, while you pay your $500/mo premium. This would put the insurance companies out of business pretty fast! How do we solve this problem?\n\nBy forcing all the healthy people who don't want insurance (like me) to pay your bills instead, by FORCING US TO OVERPAY, which is what Obamacare does, since we are very low risk, yet we are forced into the same pool as the already-sick people and have to pay for THEIR bills, which drives up our cost. It is not really insurance, it is just a convoluted scheme to tax the healthy and force them to pay for the sick, but dress it up as being done through the free market.\n\n", "Like you're 5? OK.\n\nIf you drive a car, you could hurt somebody, and maybe you couldn't afford pay the hospital bills for them. So laws were made to say you have to buy insurance that will pay for the hospital cost for fixing the person, if you hurt them. That's called 'liability insurance' and everyone agrees that's a *good thing*.\n\nThe judges who decided mandatory health insurance is \"unconstitutional\" (against the basic rules of our country) think that you *don't* need to be forced to have health insurance because, if you get sick, the only person who is getting hurt is you. So if you get sick and there's no insurance, you can bankrupt your family, lose your house or just die because you can't pay for treatments, but that's A-OK with them.\n(See my ELI5 on the Supreme Court..)", "Car insurance is not mandatory, you can choose not to own a car. People that can't afford a car, don't get fined for not having one. If you choose to own a car, you are required to protect others from your potential acts of negligence. Choices. \n\nMandatory health insurance punishes people for not being able to afford the protections they wish they could afford. ", "Mandatory car insurance is only mandatory if your drive a car.  There isn't a law forcing you to drive a car.  Don't want to buy / can't afford car insurance?  Easy - take the bus.  However, mandatory health insurance is mandatory regardless of personal choice.  Don't want to buy / can't afford health insurance?  Too bad.", "Because driving a car is, legally,a  privilege, not a right, it is regulate d by the states, and the insurance rules are part of that regulation, and the US Constitution doesn't deny this power to states.\n ACA is a Federal program and does not reflect  specific provisions of the Constitution. If a state went to a public option and made it mandatory, it would likely not be challengeable in Federal unless an argument were made the ACA or other Federal laws have supremacy.", "Driving is something you can opt to not do. You don't have to drive. But if you do you have to have insurance.\n\nMandatory healthcare there is no way to opt out.", "Well let's see my car insurance is a choice to drive \nI have 3 cars that I actually do use daily it costs me 130.00 month insurance  and now I must have medical insurance which costs over 900 a month \nI don't get sick and the mandatory illegal insurance that I don't use costs more than my mortgage on my house\nWhich due to the 900 a month i now have to pay extra \n I may lose the house I live in and use in order to pay for something I never use and can't afford to begin with \nEven if I got rid of the house and all the cars it still wouldn't give me enough to pay for the medical insurance that I can't afford to begin with and never use \n\n", "Because you elect, or choose, to own a car...you don't choose to exist.  The majority should not force a minority to do something against their will.  In this case the government claims to represent the majority and is forcing those who do not want insurance to have insurance, which is a financial obligation.  It's no different than a group of your neighbors forcing you to rent a car in order to live where you do.  Want to move?  Surprise!  That neighborhood requires that you lease a car, too.  Is it beneficial for you to own a car?  Perhaps, but what if you are concerned about carbon footprint and only ride a bike?  Or maybe you work three blocks away and walk to work?  It take every individual and treats them like a number, having the same desires and goals and values.  It is a form of tyranny.", "The big difference in between HEALTH insurance and AUTO insurance is that AUTO insurance protects other people who might get hurt from your car.  HEALTH insurance only pays for your doctor and hospital bills is case you get sick or hurt.\n\nSo we are required to buy AUTO insurance to protect other people, but since the only person to suffer if you don't have insurance is yourself, it was NOT required in the past.  \n\nAnd recent court rulings have shown that in most cases, it is constitutional to require health insurance.", "tl;dr car insurance is really to  help protect other people. Health insurance is really to protect you.\n\nIn CA, auto insurance is usually mandatory. But if you could prove that you had enough money shooting in a bank account and not being used for anything else, you don't actually need car insurance.", "This doesn't directly answer the post but it's very disingenuous to say people can choose to drive. In the vast majority of places in the US driving is a must if you want to work. If you can't drive you can't work, as the public transportation system isn't as efficient and ubiquitous as it needs to be. For most people there aren't any other options, thus auto insurance is mandatory in their life. ", "Car insurance is not mandatory.\n\nHowever, if you own a car, then liability insurance (insurance for damage you cause to others, not yourself) is typically required by most states. New Hampshire, whose state motto is \"Live Free or Die\", does not require car insurance.\n\nThere is no federal mandate on car insurance for car owners. The requirement comes from each individual state who set their own requirements for registering a vehicle. \n\nIf you do not own a car, you do not need to purchase insurance. If you do, your state will determine if you do. \n\nThere is a federal mandate on health insurance, and a financial penalty if you do not purchase. There is no way around this. \n\nNow as for health insurance mandate being unconstitutional or not, this is an opinionated argument based upon the constituion and a combination of court rulings over the years. It is not a fact, it is an opinion on the interpretation of the constituion. \n\nThe argument and court rulings are rather complex, so the simplest way to describe the argument is that many feel it is unconstitutional for the federal government to force citizens to buy a particular good or service.\n\nSo the main difference between the two is car insurance is not federally required, it is a state requirement in states that have chosen to pass a law only for those citizens that choose to own a car... meanwhile, health insurance is a federal mandate on all citizens.\n\n", "I think of it like this. As a driver, you not only have a chance of being harmed, but you also pose a risk of harming others. The minimum required insurance is to help the other party should you injure them. Health insurance is only to protect you. One could see it as unconstitutional because it should be the sole choice of the individual if he or she pays to protect his or her own health and welfare. ", "Because one impacts you and maybe your family, the other impacts millions of drivers every day. \n\nIs ELI2 a thing? ", "Because you likely cant pay for another persons car when you total it and they have to deal with your poor choices if liability insurance wasn't mandatory.  No one else is dealing with the condition of your body except you.  \n\nAlso, a lot of people don't own their car, i.e. making payments.  There has to be some sort of guarantee that people won't just wreck the car and stop paying.  What are the banks gonna repo at that point, a hunk of scrap metal?  ", "It isn't so much that \"mandatory health insurance is unconstitutional.\"\n\nWhat most people are objecting to is the way the current system was set up.\n\nWhat most people who supported a \"mandatory\" system wanted was what most other developed countries already have: a state controlled or semi-state controlled *single payer* system.  What this means is, the government is the \"payer\" of the services, so they set the rates they will pay the healthcare providers, collect the premiums (or taxes, depending on your point of view) and the system operates that way.  Some countries allow private insurance to work within this system to help deliver the services, but they operate within the government structure at the government determined rates.  If they want to be in the market, they have to do it under the rules and rates determined by the government.  And, if they don't want to participate, the government provides the services instead.\n\nWhat we got in the US instead was a system that forces the consumer to buy a product from a private insurer.  The corporation gets to determine the premiums they charge, the amount they will pay in benefits, and they also get to determine whether or not they will participate in the market at all.  The taxpayer, however, does not have that choice.  They are forced to choose between the premium the insurance company charges, or the fine the government levies for not participating.\n\nThere is no other aspect of the US economy where the Federal Government has stepped in and forced a consumer to purchase a product. That's what most people opposed to the current system do not like, and it is why they consider it unconstitutional.\n\n", "Mebbe this got pointed out farther down than I was willing to read, but anyway....\n\nThe only auto insurance that I am required to carry (in order for the State to sanction my operation of a motor vehicle) is a policy that covers damage that I do to other people and/or their property. Anything beyond that is my choice.", "Why does this have so many up votes for such an easy answer. You drive on the road, you're a liability to others, but if you want to not have health insurance, you're a liability to yourself. ", "Because if you have no car insurance you could be fucking someone, with no health insurance you're only fucking yourself ", "Because if you wanna wreck my car with yours and die IDGAf, it's your life, that's your right. but if you think you're just gonna wreck my car and die and not be able to pay to fix mine... party foul man... ", "Because every other insurance is based on an actual choice.  I don't have to have home insurance if I don't own a home.  I don't have to have flood insurance if I don't live in a flood zone.  Nobody HAS to have a car.  You have no choice in being born.  It's really that simple.  ", "Because you (and me) are more of a liability to crash into other drivers which will cost you (and me) and them money to repair the damages than you are liable to give someone else cancer or heart-disease. If you choose to roll the dice and not be covered by health insurance, that should be your right since its an individual choice that does not affect others, only you. No one who has a fulltime job and works hard for a living wants to be forced into high-premiums on health insurance or face a tax penalty so a portion can pay insurance for those who dont work", "It's this simple:\n\nIf it's not specified in the Constitution, it's a state issue. Car insurance is a state issue. Mandatory health insurance was instituted at the Federal level, therefore subject to Constitutional review. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1rglgq", "title": "why does injecting air bubbles into your veins kill you?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rglgq/why_does_injecting_air_bubbles_into_your_veins/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdn1455", "cdn2g6w", "cdn3qtb", "cdn5b86", "cdn6wey", "cdn8qfg", "cdnc4ef"], "score": [7, 17, 8, 2, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["The air bubble can quite easily get 'stuck' in the lungs - it would be an air embolism that you are most at risk from", "_URL_0_\n\n > Small bubbles can block capillaries in vital organs, most urgently the brain, causing anything from pain and inflammation to neurological damage and paralysis. A small bubble impedes blood flow the same way a solid obstruction would \u2014 the bubble's surface tension relative to its size is too great for the force of blood to break it up or shove it along. Bad? Yes. Fatal? Probably not, although see below.\n\n > A big bubble, on the other hand, gets us into the vapor lock scenario. Your heart, like the fuel pump in an old car (cars with modern fuel injection work differently), is a simple mechanical device. In ordinary operation, its contracting chambers squeeze the blood out and force it through the circulatory system. All is well. Now imagine a massive air embolus shows up and your heart starts squeezing on that. There's nothing to get any purchase on; the air just compresses. Blood flow stops, and eventually so does your heart.", "Tiny amount of air -- no problem. Small amounts -- could cause stroke symptoms if they go to brain circulation -- treatment is supportive +/- hyperbaric oxygen. Larger amounts (about 60cc) can cause \"airlock\" in the heart -- causes the pump to lose its prime and thus lead to cardiac arrest.\n\nTreatment for witnessed, large volume air embolus is immediate positioning of the patient left side down with legs up which may prevent the air from movement into the RV/pulmonary artery. Since it's often caused by air entering a central venous catheter you can try sucking it back out by advancing the catheter and withdrawing blood/air with a syringe.\n\nOccasionally aggressive CPR can \"shove\" it out of the heart and get things going again if it has caused cardiac arrest. \n\nI've only seen it once, positioning prevented problem.", "Small bubbles aren't a problem.  If you've had an IV, which I've had a few this year, you've probably had small bubbles get into you.  As long as they're small enough your lungs just remove them.  ", "In case anyone is wondering, it would take an entire IV tube filled with air for it to begin causing problems in a relatively healthy individual. \n\nSmall amounts in a syringe or a few bubbles in IV tubing will not cause problems as it will end up dissolving. Oxygen will bind to the hemoglobin in the red blood cells and the CO2 and other gasses will dissolve in the blood and will be exhaled when it reaches your lungs.", "Small bubbles won't kill you. It takes a full IV tube of air to have any real effect.  \n  \nSource: Just came out of an eight day visit to the hospital, had bubbles in my IV which I asked about. I am completely fine.", "Blood flow relies on pressure gradients created by the compressing/beating heart. Normally blood is in liquid form (a non compressible form), Liquids transmit pressure equally, thus maintaining the pressure gradients between the heart and the veins, blood then flows along the gradient.\n\nAir on the other hand is compressible. if you have a small block of air, the pressure from the heart simply compresses the air; thereby not transmitting the pressure through the full length of vessel. This distorts the pressure gradients, literally stopping blood from flowing.\n\nSmall amounts of air are not harmful as it dissolves over time. Organs such as your lungs and brain which have really really tiny veins, a small amount of air could cause some major damage. \n\nDeep sea diving is a great scenario to see the real effects of air in the bloodstream."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2866/can-air-injected-into-the-bloodstream-really-kill-you"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "54ornl", "title": "What is the maximum size for a particle to be able to do simple diffusion into a cell?", "selftext": "So I understand that small non-charged molecules such as H2O and O2 can pass through the plasma membrane with just simple diffusion, whereas bigger molecules such as glucose cannot and need facilitation. My question is what is the \"cut-off\" for a molecule being too big, and needs to be facilitated through?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54ornl/what_is_the_maximum_size_for_a_particle_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d83vdfp", "d8423k4"], "score": [7, 3], "text": ["There is no hard cut-off. The diffusivity of a molecule in the membrane (the property that relates flux through the membrane to the chemical potential difference across the membrane) is dependent on more than size. For example, many hydrophobic molecules do not have too hard a time getting through the membrane, as long as they are not too polar, such as longer chain alcohols. Very polar molecules will not diffuse through regardless of size (note that proton gradients are maintained pretty well by membranes). Water, too, does not diffuse very easily through the membrane (also depends on membrane composition) and in many cells its transport is facilitated by proteins known as aquaporins.\n\nSo, the bottom line is, it depends on the molecular composition almost as much as size, but for a general answer, single atoms for charged ions,  < 200da for largely hydrophobic molecules, and somewhere around ~50da for somewhat polar molecules (e.g. DMSO or acetone can move through a bit).", "/u/sometimesgoodadvice has a great answer, but I think your question of \"simple diffusion\" might be put as \"not requiring energy-dependent uptake\". If so, I'd want to also point out that some larger molecules are able to enter the cell, such as [cell penetrating peptides](_URL_1_) (CPPs). \n\n[Arg17]PACAP(11\u201338), which is around 2000 daltons in MW, can enter the [cell through the plasma membrane](_URL_0_) without being endocytosed, though the exact mechanism is still debated. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168365912006335?np=y", "http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nn4057269"]]}
{"q_id": "ckhd88", "title": "Why don\u2019t the space probes get fried at the End of the Heliosphere?", "selftext": "I\u2019ve read that the heliosphere (especially the termination shock) is where all the the solar wind converge, and then smack into the interstellar wind, and abruptly drop off. Would that mean because of the drop off the spacecraft can safely pass? But then what about the interstellar wind? Why doesn\u2019t that hurt the spacecraft?\nI\u2019ve always wondered about this, but haven\u2019t found any answers online.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ckhd88/why_dont_the_space_probes_get_fried_at_the_end_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["evnexke"], "score": [19], "text": ["Both are incredibly thin. This \"collision\" happens over a giant volume. If you are there you won't notice anything special unless you have suitable sensors to measure the motion of the few particles that are around you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "44bn2r", "title": "When integrating real functions, we're basically getting an area under the function. Is there a similar analogy for complex integration?", "selftext": "I'm a student, currently 2nd year of physics. We're doing complex integration and I just can't grasp visually what we're actually doing. Is there a comparison with surfaces under real functions, or is it something completely different where I should just deal with the fact that I need to look for residues and integrate over closed surfaces?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/44bn2r/when_integrating_real_functions_were_basically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czp30qe"], "score": [9], "text": ["It will be hard to visualize in the same way as Real Integrals. Complex Integrals essentially do what real integrals do, but if we have a complex function F(z), we can break it up into the real and imaginary parts F(z)=f(z)+ig(z) where f and g are real valued. The line integral of F(z) along some curve in the complex plane is Int(f(z))+iInt(g(z)), where Int(f(z)) and Int(g(z)) are typical real valued line integrals on the plane. So the same mechanics are being used, but they are being combined in a nontrivial way.\n\nIf you have a closed curve and you do a line integral, then most of the time, your starting point is the same as your end point and you get zero. But if you have a pole like 1/z, *not* 1/z^(2), then the pole keeps track of how many times the line integral rotates around the point. If we integrate dz/z along the unit circle, then this is the same as integrating ie^{it}dt/e^{it} = idt from 0 to 2pi which is 2pi i. If we go around twice, then the integral is from 0 to 4pi, so we get 4pi i. The pole is a puncture in the complex plane, and to it the only characteristic that a curve has is how many times the curve circles it.\n\nThe reason that it is poles 1/z and not 1/z^(2) is because the integral of dz/z is related to the logarithm (the integral of something like this [define the logarithm](_URL_0_),  and logarithms of complex numbers are not uniquely defined. If z=e^(it) is on the unit circle, then Log(z)=it  which is the angle of the point. So if we start at z=1 with t=0, and we traverse around the unit circle, then Log(z) will increase from Log(1)=0 and be whatever angle z is at. But when we get back to z=1, we'll have Log(1)=2pi i. But we already have Log(1)=0. This means that logarithms are tricky on the unit circle, but also that an integral of the form dz/(z-a) will keep track of logarithm of points on the curve, that is, it will continuously keep track of the angle as we integrate along the curve, whereas all other powers of integration will only keep track of the location of the points along the curve and since the curve is closed, they'll evaluate to zero. So only the terms dz/(z-a) will give nonzero integrals.\n\nAlso note that the integral of x^(r)dx is simply another monomial term, x^(r+1)/(r+1), *except* when r=-1, in this case the integral is ln(x). Integrating any power around a circle that is not r=-1 will return another polynomial expression, so it's boring. But integrating r=-1 will give the logarithm and the logarithm tells us how the angle changes along the curve."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_logarithm#Definitions"]]}
{"q_id": "3taa6o", "title": "why does the ripping of the skin near the thumb's nail hurt more than any other part of the body and case inflammation more often?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3taa6o/eli5_why_does_the_ripping_of_the_skin_near_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx4fusn", "cx4gfnm", "cx4pxxs", "cx4qkg7", "cx5ejrh"], "score": [47, 7, 5, 5, 2], "text": ["I don't know about the \"causing inflammation more often\" part, but the fingers are specifically chock-full of receptors for stimuli. Fingertips are one of the most touch-sensitive parts of the body. This is why fingertips and nails are used as a specific form of torture, as well. They hurt a lot because there are a lot of receptors there, including for pain.", "_URL_0_\n\nHere's the classic representation. The size of the body part shows how much it \"communicates\" with the nervous system (sensory = sight, smell, taste, touch, hear; motor = movement).", " > skin near the thumb's nail hurt more than any other part of the body\n\nI'll say you are a chick", "May be more likely to get inflamed as the hands/fingers tend to be very dirty so can be prone to infection? ", "iirc, it is this idea of the size of your fingers are a small amount of tissue. Its the same reason why a paper cut hurts so much. The inflammation doesn't have much room to spread and so it is very localized to the one area.\nSource: anatomy and physiology in nursing school\n\nEdit: also because of the high amount of sensory nerves we have in the hands. Google the homunculus"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://accessphysiotherapy.mhmedical.com/data/Multimedia/grandRounds/motorpathways/media/slideImages/Burke-Doe03_slide04.jpg"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48dnfp", "title": "what is the difference in skill between circus performers and gymnasts? could circus performers be competitive in gymnastics events?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48dnfp/eli5_what_is_the_difference_in_skill_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0it90v", "d0itwu8", "d0iu6v7", "d0ivcjz", "d0ivmj5", "d0ivqnw", "d0iyd8p", "d0j02p0", "d0j2oj0", "d0j30df", "d0j5jol", "d0j8njj", "d0j9icu", "d0jcdjq", "d0jg9y3", "d0jl1r3", "d0jlxyt", "d0jmysm", "d0k2dj7"], "score": [26, 114, 12, 487, 6, 35, 6, 2, 5, 13, 4, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Or on the flip side... Could olympic-style gymnasts perform the same routines as circus performers? Is there a major difference in what they are doing?\n\n\nAlso, were you thinking more about \"cirque du soleil\" circus performers, or traveling bigtop type of circus?", "I may be mistaken, but I believe that many circus performers are former gymnastic athletes.  Unless a gymnastic athlete has a big sponsor, and only if they keep winning, they are not going to make a lot of money.  Working in a circus like Cirque du Soleil will earn them a lot of money.\n\nIn any case, I assume that a circus performer and a gymnast have the same athletic ability, but not the same skills.  A gymnast could be perfect on a balance beam or pommel horse, but useless on a trapeze or a spinning cage.  This not due to poor athletic ability, but because that's not what they train to do.  It would be like comparing a cardiologist to neurologist.  Each of them could perform surgery and have a wealth of knowledge, but since they each only focus on one set of organs, they may not be the best with the other ones.", "The circus is not an uncommon second career. Cirque recruited a rather lot of their performers in \"O\" from Olympic competitors, because where else will you find people to do trick dives and dance in the water? [Here's one of many articles I found](_URL_0_)", "So as someone who went from being a competitive gymnast to train in the circus with my goal of being in cirque (got injured so didn't make it). Very similar skills although there was some relearning of acrobatic technique to\n tumble on a hard surface/powertrak rather than sprung floor. Biggest difference is the artistry and creativity needed. As a competitive gymnast you learn to be very stiff and less fluid. Also bars has limited cross over to aerial silks/trapeze/lyra. ", "The answer is yes, but that's not the typical pathway.\n\nI'll use Cirque Du Soleil as the \"circus\". They heavily recruit former gymnasts. They tend to have the fundamental skills required to perform. While there's some overlap, different skills are required. It's an extremely competitive program and many gymnasts don't make the cut.\n\nMoney and age are a large reason why this is true. Competitive gymnastics is brutal, you're being judged by professionals and you're often performing solo. Youth helps out here.\n\nSource: Acquaintance of mine was a gymnast until college. She went on to perform at Cirque Du Soleil afterwards.", "For every gymnast in the Olympics, there is probably 100 that appear just as good to the untrained eye, and both groups would have basic physical skills, if not the performance skills, to be in the circus.  The reverse is not true.\n\nBeing an Olympic gymnast is a very narrow skill set, designed to show off technical abilities.  If you can't master them all, you won't be a great gymnast.  \n\nCircus performances have much looser requirements, and if you aren't good at something, you don't include it in your routine.  Also,  being difficult is a lot less important than *looking* difficult, and that is about showmanship as much as skill.\n\n", "A lot of gymnasts graduate college with a degree that is worth less than their 20 years of gymnastics mastery. So in terms of finding a job, they can either coach gymnastics or try out for the circus.\n\nIf you were competing in the olympics, you may get some sponsorship deals and will probably make more money as a coach than you would as a performer. But for the thousands of kids who don't make it to the olympics, the circus is a decent way to get paid for your skills.\n\nThe difference between circus and gymnastics is the rigidity of the skills you do. In gymnastics, everything is supposed to be done a very specific way. In circus, if it looks cool and hard, nothing else really matters.", "Many circus performers *are* former professional gymnasts. In fact, at least one cirque du Soleil *clown* is a former Olympian medalist (bronze?).\n\nSo the reverse of your question is true, many \"retire\" into show business to continue doing gymnastics and get paid. All very talented people.", "Never a gymnast, but spent the better part of my upbringing performing in and around a local circus. Given that most gymnasts peak at a young age, we get plenty of early 20-something former gymnasts. Now I've taught all kinds of folks over the years, and IME gymnasts (and dancers) tend to learn much faster and work much harder than the average person. \n\nAs for an actual performance, I'd say the biggest difference is in the audience. Talking to current and former gymnasts, they're typically performing for judges and critics. If they miss a trick or mess up a routine, then the whole thing is a bust. Transitioning to a circus performance, the audience doesn't care what you do, as long as it looks fun! ", "I'm a past gymnast and current circus performer, so I've got a bit of insight there.\n\nMost training in circus arts have some background physically, but not necessarily in gymnastics. A lot of aerialists come from dance or yoga backgrounds (as well as gymnastics). A lot of acrobats come from martial art or combat sport backgrounds. The only exception I've noticed are fire and/or sideshow trick performers; most of which have quite a few circus skills, but not necessarily an athletic background otherwise. Though in the former two examples, I can't recall anyone (that's stuck around long) who had no athletic background whatsoever.\n\nI'm sure a gymnast could fairly easily convert to circus arts and vice versa, but obviously the skill sets are different and take time to learn the nuances of. Certain things are even reversed; hand positioning for uneven bars and trapeze, for example, are typically opposite.\n\nActually, an issue a gymnast might have transitioning to circus arts is the pain involved. I don't recall much pain in gymnastics, whereas with something like aerial silks or lyra, there's typically a fair amount pain involved.", "Here's a documentary on Cirque du Soleil auditions. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey actively recruit gymnast once they are done competing.", "Every once in a lot of gymnasts graduate college with a larger influence of dance and different disciplines.", "A circus performer can also be a juggler, however some rythmic gymnastics group acts with balls loom a lot like and take ideas from juggling patterns.\nI am a circus performer (Chinese pole artist) however I have not got great flexibility so moving into gymnastics would be a hard move for me. I'm also not too fluid, most of my stage presence is that of a clown.", "In terms of crossover, I have read that Australia re-trained gymnasts that weren't going to be competitive at gymnastics into other sports like ski aerials where they would.", "If you have Amazon or Hulu, you can watch a show called Fire Within, which follows a group of competitive gymnasts training to become Cirque du Soleil performers.  \n\nIt really isn't bad as far as reality TV goes, they manipulate the editing to create some artificial drama, but the artistry, physical intensity, and difficult lifestyle are the main story. ", "I'm guessing it's sort of similar to the Harlem Globetrotters/And1 type basketball players vs Pro Basketball players debate. It's the same 'basic' skills, but the goal of competition vs. showmanship is the difference.  ", "There is definitely cross-over, but it's usually the other way around. A lot of people try gymnastics growing up and it's not unusual for circus performers to have that background. \n\nCirque recruits gymnasts reasonably regularly but gives them additional training for the specific thing they want them to do. \n\nAs a more open / amateur circus group, the people I train with take anyone who wants to have a go but the there's still some former gymnasts there and it definitely gives them an advantage", "I know that almost all of the skaters in Disney on Ice (or any similar show) were competition ice dancers or figure skaters. Some of the featured people are actually former Olympic athletes. So I figure circus performers would be similar.", "Sister in law is a Cirque performer, being a gymnast would benefit a cirque performer the same way being a track and field star would help you as a basketball player. You benefit from being already in good shape and being athletic, but the nuanced skills needed to be a basketball player (shooting, defense, court awareness) that has to be learned.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/more-sports/running-away-with-the-circus-a-real-alternative-for-former-olympians/article4625379/?page=all"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/BLouxprAHtQ"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25uz1o", "title": "Do members of British Royalty eventually loses the title of being part of the royal family?", "selftext": "Let's say the youngest son of the youngest son of the youngest son... since the earliest line of British Royalty. What happens to them? Do they still have titles today or do they eventually just get forgotten? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25uz1o/do_members_of_british_royalty_eventually_loses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chl039n", "chl19rx"], "score": [131, 17], "text": ["The British nobility (still, in fact) uses a system of male primogeniture; most of the holdings of the father, including the family estate and the titles, pass on to the eldest son, while younger children receive a smaller share. Titles do not pass on to daughters, except in the absence of sons; daughters, however, can of course marry into titled nobility and thus gain one by right of her husband.\n\nWhat customarily happens in the English royal family is that titles are created for all sons. The Prince of Wales is traditionally the heir apparent, while the younger sons hold duchies: the second son of King Henry IV was thus Thomas, 1st Duke of Clarence, third son John, Duke of Bedford, and fourth son Humprey, Duke of Gloucester. These are some of the traditional titles given to close relatives of the reigning monarch; they would ordinarily pass down in the male line until it becomes extinct, after which the title could then be again bestowed on a new line.\n\nFor the other sons of the royal dukes, titles may be created by the king at some point, much like for other younger sons of the high nobility: this could happen, for example, as a result of political or military service. This may be more likely than for an average member of the nobility; royal blood was obviously valued. This blood, and thus the status from being related to royalty, would dilute through the generations, so yes - eventually any advantage would be lost.\n\nSo to give an example; if a fictional king has two sons, one will be the heir apparent, Prince of Wales, and the other will be created Duke of Clarence. The Duke of Clarence has two sons: the elder will be the 2nd Duke of Clarence, the younger will have no title but one may be created for him, say Earl of Buckingham. He, again, has two sons. The elder son will be the 2nd Earl of Buckingham, the younger will have no title. \n\nAt this point it is less likely that the younger son will gain a title: he will be three generations removed from royal blood and will probably have less to do with the court and politics within it. If one continues this for several generations the younger sons of younger sons will be of increasingly low rank, though this may be corrected by a fresh marriage into the high nobility or extraordinary personal ability, leading to contributions in military or political affairs and thus fresh titles. \n\nIt is also notable that especially in pre-modern history these situations may not happen as frequently as one might expect. Infant mortality was high, and not all royal brothers had children; out of the duchies Henry IV created for his sons, none passed on, as none of the three dukes had legitimate issue (though they did have bastard sons). The younger sons joining the ecclesiastical orders was also a way in which splitting the inheritance could be avoided.\n\nSo - yes, after some generations the younger sons will lose the advantages of royal status. This is also illustrated by contemporary etiquette: a sovereign's great-grandchildren are addressed as Lords or Ladies, but thereafter there is no set form of address or title.\n", "The current system of royal titles dates from 1917, when in the midst of World War One, King George V issued letters patent declaring exactly who would be eligible for the title Prince or Princess and the corresponding HRH. This stated that the only people automatically granted royal status are the sovereign, his or her children, his or her grandchildren (in the male line. This means that while Prince Andrew's children were automatically Princesses, Princess Anne's were granted no royal title) and the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. \nBefore this, all great-grandchildren (once again in the male line) were automatically given the title Prince or Princess, with the slightly lesser designation HH (Highness vs Royal Highness). This meant that George VI, born as great-grandson of the Queen, was originally styled His Highness Prince Albert of York before being elevated to the Royal Highness level. \nThese letters have been modified a few times. Most recently, when Prince William and Kate were expecting, the Queen issued Letters Patent to say that their child would be styled a Royal Highness, whether or not it was a boy or a girl. \nSorry for any formatting issues, I'm on my phone\n[Further explanation here](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/daughter-of-william-and-kate-will-be-a-princess-8444692.html"]]}
{"q_id": "48gd6m", "title": "are judges forced to accept legal precedents or can they ignore and decide by themselves", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48gd6m/eli5are_judges_forced_to_accept_legal_precedents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0jb2li", "d0jb34x", "d0jd2i3", "d0jd6bb", "d0jf59k", "d0jharq"], "score": [77, 4, 24, 2, 8, 3], "text": ["Legal precedent comes from a court which can overturn the judge's ruling. If a judge ignores a precedent, then that judge's ruling will be overturned. If it keeps happening, he or she will end up angering a bunch of colleagues and, depending on the local rules, might get fired.\n\nIf the judge at least makes good arguments as to why a precedent is wrong or doesn't apply in a particular case, then it's usually considered just fine to not apply precedent. Of course, people, including other judges, will differ on their opinion of what is a 'good argument'.", "They can ignore it and decide by themselves. The current system values judicial independence and no judge has been impeached over failing to abide by precedence.\n\nHowever, for lower-courts, all this is doing is asking for the ruling to be overturned on an appeal.", "The early answers are not exactly accurate, at least for the US system. A higher court's decisions are precedent, and the lower courts must follow them. If the lower court does not comply with the decisions of its superior courts, the decision *will* be overturned on appeal. Further, if a lower court continually ignores precedent, the offending judge will be very likely to have violated ethical rules, and could end up removed from the bench or even disbarred.\n\nAlthough a higher Court's decision doesn't become law of the land, it is binding on all of its inferior courts. For instance, if the (mid-level) appellate court for my state issues a decision, every court in its district *must* apply that law. If the Supreme Court of my state issues a decision, it becomes binding on all courts in my state. If the Federal court  in which my state is situated issues a decision, it becomes immediately binding on all of my state's courts, as far as the federal questions go. Those decisions, however, may or may not have an impact on the state issues.\n\nI hope that helps. I know this can be a bit confusing - it's confusing when you start law school, too!", "Let's say your parents have made a rule that you can't have ice cream Monday to Friday. But one day dad notices you had a rough day at school so he says you can have an ice cream. \n\nNow a couple of weeks later you have another rough day and want ice cream so you ask your mom. She says no. Now you can argue that last time you had a rough day at school you got to have ice cream. However your mom doesn't nessasarily have to say ok because of last time.\n\nSo in this scenario your parents are judges and you are a lawyer. The ice cream when you had a bad day is a precedent. Precedents help lawyers argue a case but it is up to the judge to use it or not. Unless of course it becomes law", "wow i think it would be quite hard to explain this in a summary because there are so many nuances and there is a real debate on this but nonetheless very simply, it really depends on the system of law that you are referring to - different jurisdictions have different systems. basically, there are 2 main (if not only) systems of law - civil law systems and common law systems. and then there are some jurisdictions that are an amalgamation of both civil law and common law. \n\n\ncommon law systems - e.g. England, America, British colonies and ex-British colonies (e.g. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, India)\ncivil law systems - e.g. Germany, France, Indonesia, China\n\n\nin common law systems, there is generally the doctrine of stare decisis, which is that precedent should be followed. the rationale behind this is that 'like cases should be treated alike', and therefore the requirement of following legal precedent is so that there can be a coherent body of law (because in common law systems the legislation is not always as comprehensive and 'dictative' as in civil law systems). \nwhether judges have to accept legal precedent depends on a few issues \n\n1. level of court:\nbasically, if there is judicial precedent by a court of a higher level on the same issue, you have to follow the law that is stated in that case. for cases at the same level, without higher precedent to bind them, they can deviate from their own level's judgments. \n\n2. reaction to the precedent:\nthere is ratio decidendi of the case - which is binding precedent, and then there is obiter dicta of the case - which is persuasive but non-binding. depending on how you read a case, some people get different ratio/obiters. effectively, the ratio is all that is required to come to the final judgment and nothing more; the rest is obiter. the tricky part is getting to what the ratio is in the first place - i.e. depending on how you read the case, a ratio can be very broad or very narrow. \n\n3. how the judges apply the law and view the current case:\nwhat judges can do if they wish to differ: distinguish the precedent from the current case on the facts of the case, just ignore (and like what pseudothere says), or recommend that it should be further discussed at a higher level. \n\n\nin civil law systems, there is no real 'binding precedent', because these systems are mostly based on a very comprehensive code that is insanely long and detailed (ref. French/German Civil Code). judges have to go to 'judge school' and they sort of learn how to apply what the code says to the facts. so judicial precedent de jure doesn't bind them, and is not binding, because they are supposed to refer to the code rather than to other precedents (i.e. judgments)\n\n\nand then there is international law. international law doesn't really give rise to binding precedent, and they don't really have as comprehensive a code as civil law systems. however, they do have some kind of 'soft form stare decisis' - and this is in the name of certainty as well, so that Members can look to previous decisions by the dispute resolution bodies by which they can conduct themselves.", "The thing is: Precedent is binding on all courts lower then the court that issued it, but the entire role of lawyers arguing for their client is to dispute *which* precedents bind your judge and how.\n\nTo take the \"No iced cream Monday through Friday\" example.\n\nOne lawyer might argue that sorbet doesn't count because it's not specifically \"cream\" while another argues that the rule is more about barring frozen sweets.\n\nAnother lawyer might argue that strawberries and cream don't count because they aren't \"iced.\"\n\nAnother lawyer might argue that iced cream on a monday during summer break doesn't count because the Monday-Friday rule is about school days.\n\nAnd so on. You'll have lawyers trying to bend precedent to their purposes in front of different judges and with different facts, and it comes down to whomever can convince the judge that their interpretation is more in line with what the binding authority says. Each of these decisions either further clarifies or further confuses the issue."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2kscgd", "title": "why aren't there any mammals with green fur considering there is so much green in the natural world?", "selftext": "Maybe there is and I'm just not thinking of it but it just seems that green would be a common trait given the amount of green vegitation.  I realize that many mammal species live on the ground where things are typically darker but it just seems like there would be a few species with green fur wouldn't there be?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kscgd/eli5_why_arent_there_any_mammals_with_green_fur/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clo7yxj", "clo8lxt", "clo98yo", "clo9y3t", "cloahwh", "clobh6q", "clod4ii", "clodurs", "clodzsw", "clog4d0", "clogvep", "cloi6rk", "cloiowc", "cloj69h", "clolr1g", "clomwof", "cloozen", "closq88", "clou6s4", "clovt6k"], "score": [2, 2, 52, 132, 6, 37, 6, 2, 6, 12, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Plants are green because of chlorophyll. There's no chlorophyll in fur.", "Thinking about it, it's a very justified question.\n\nMaybe because of mating behaviour. Too good a camouflage on your body and the females don't recognize you either.", "Sloths are the only mammals that come close to having green fur. They have a symbiotic relationship with green algae. So, while they're not born with it, it grows on their fur and aids a great deal in camouflaging their bodies up in the trees.\n\n[Sloth](_URL_0_)", "Giving this my best shot: The hair colouring is decided by the chemical structures that make it up. Depending on the ratios of two chemicals (eumelanin and pheomelanin) hair colours range from black through brown, red, and into white. There just isn't a colour in there for green and there isn't much of a selective pressure to have such a colour in mammals. The colours we have are good enough.", "What constitutes camouflage is dependant on the optical properties and brain processing of what you're trying to fool. Animals senses are very different to ours, what and how they see is equally different. What stands out to us is usually not what stands out to them (as whilst our other senses are dull by comparison, our colour vision is some of the best on the planet).\n\nGreen fur would be pointless if either predator or prey aren't advantaged by it. Perhaps green is an 'expensive' pigmentation in evolutionary terms, perhaps it isn't necessary for the animal to fool other animals? We don't know. Perhaps the most obvious reason not to disguise yourself as a plant is that plants are edible - it would be better to disguise yourself as a rock, or a stick, or dry grass, rather than verdant vegetation.\n", "My hunch is that there are several reasons.  \n\nFirst, many predator eyes are very sensitive to green.  In humans, cats, and other predators, green variations are the most apparent color. Mammals are not creatures known for having big warning colors, instead are more known for stealth. Mammals have browns, blacks, grays, and mottled white, colors that eyes are usually less sensitive to.\n\nAlso, while short grass may be green, long grass is very often a yellow/brown with mottled light. While tree leaves are green large mammals don't live near leaves but near trunks, which are yellow/brown and have texture.  Shadows are dark grays and browns with occasional light spots rather than vivid greens and reds. Bare dirt is brown with occasional light spots. \n\nThe earliest mammals were predators, which means hunting and likely hiding, which in turn means blending in with brush and dirt. Most mammal young are relatively defenseless and need to hide, another area where \"dark with light spots\" is excellent. One time I very nearly stepped on some newborn deer, their brown with white spots was almost invisible in the underbrush.\n\nCouple them, excellent for hiding and protecting the young, excellent for sneaking up on prey (especially before herbivores evolved), and you've got a recipe for grays, browns, dark yellows, and light patterns.", "The background is often not green....imagine a field mouse.  She lives under the grass, and the ground is brown / grey soil.  So she's camouflaged against the soil\n\nDeer have brown fur with spots. This is to do with dispersion of light....as they move through the long grass they blend in more with their background.\n\nTigers really seem to stand out because they are bright orange with black stripes, but again this is to do with dispersion...as soon as a tiger is walking through long, dry grass it pretty much vanishes due to the dispersion effect.", "I imagine that if there were more mammals that had green fur/hair, it would also be conflicting among those who eat greens (vegetables and grass) and those who eat meat. Lots of fighting out there in the wild for the kangaroos and goats who decided to munch down some grass and suddenly finds themselves in the wake of a fight with one of their natural predators.\n\nLong story short, survival of the fittest dictates that only the most fit will survive. I'm not sure how effective it would be for any mammal to be green and survive in their area despite what could be a green leafy environment. However, maybe there was a mammal species that lived centuries ago that was green and died out!", "Evolution doesn't just pick a point and try to get to it.   There's no evolution director saying \"Yeah, if your fur were green you would do better\" and then go and redesign the genome so that they could make green fur. \n\nEvolution is a slow process.  The way that fur is colored makes it hard for that to happen. There's the same range of hair colors for pretty much everything, and its the range of whites to blacks, reds, oranges, yellows and browns, which are made by melanins or lack thereof. \n\nEvolution happens slowly. You'd need a completely new compound to make green fur.  You'd have to take steps towards that.  But the steps toward that wouldn't make your fur any greener, so it wouldn't improve your likelihood of passing the genes down.  \n\nThink about something like a mallard.  Mallards have green heads.  But not because of green pigment.  The pigments on feathers are the same pigments in hair and fur.  But they have evolved to grow the small feathers on their head to be a specific shape that reflects green light.  This is called a structural color.  This is something you can do with a feather because of its structural strength, but you can't do with fur. \n\nBasically, you have skins that have living cells on them.  Living cells have a lot of options for colors, even letting the organism change it's color.  Skin can be a lot of colors because it's alive.\n\nThen you have something like feathers and insect scales, which are pretty rigid structures.  They are colored by melanin pigments to be the normal brown, red, black, blonde, white colors.  But they can also hold a rigid structure that refracts particular wavelengths of visible light. \n\nThen you have something like hair, which are non-living cells, and are flexible and soft, and grow differently than feathers.  They can develop structural color, (I found a few examples) but it's rare.\n\nThen you have some examples of things like sloths with blue-green fur through a kind of symbiotic relationship with algae and properties of their fur. \n\nBut basically, the more rigid structure of feathers and insect scales made it easier for them to develop structural colors.  It's possible for them to exist in mammal fur, but is a big leap evolutionarily so it happens rarely.  \n\nFur works really well.  Fur coloring works really well.  In order to evolve to have green pigment we'd basically have to see a new organism re-develop fur from the ground up in a different way, or mess with it ourselves. ", "Maybe those with green fur are so sneaky you've never seen one OP. Think about. ", "In a world full of low bushes, grasslands... a nice number of green furs would have come up for sure. \n\nIn a world where nearly everything projects from grey to dark shadows, green is not an option if you are on the move. Rainforests or rather thick forests are only green seen from above. Once you enter, a greyish-brownish darkness is the most common light situation. The green of birds gives them a chance to get overseen within the highest branches or leaves of trees, and most of the green lizards I know share the taste for insects to be caught close to flowers. \n\nToo many shadows in this world. :)\n\n ", "Why is mammal coloration so dull?\n\n \"mammals have principally just two types of pigments: eumelanin and pheomelanin, both of which have their   color variants, but within a known range. Bird pigments, besides melanins, include carotenoids and porphyrins. Arthropods generally have carotenoids, melanins and ommochromes [and other pigments?]. E.g. carotenoids and ommochromes alone can create rather \"exotic\" coloration from a mammal point of view (green, pink, violet).\n\n birds and insects actively utilize iridescence. With fur it seems to be technically much more difficult to achieve than with feather or scales.\n\n many (most?) mammals do not differentiate colors. Birds have much better vision abilities in this respect. From a selectionist point of view this cuts out a considerable part of selection acting upon coloration, which could otherwise produce broader spectrum of phenotypes.\"\n\nfrom _URL_0_", "For the same reason that there aren't (many) blue fish. An all-blue fish would look blue and stand out to animals above it, would look dark to animals below it looking up towards the water's surface and would have a \"shadow\" on its underside when viewed from the side. It would be very easy to see and would be eaten unless it had some other defense. This is why many fish and other animals, including many birds and mammals, have a dark top and are lighter underneath. It's basically an optical illusion to make them cast less of a shadow. This principal is called [countershading.](_URL_1_)\n\nSo animals that use countershading already have an adequate coloring scheme to make them harder to see. Why aren't more of them green on top? The answer for fish is obvious. Most of the birds and mammals that I can think of that have it live in temperate zones so green coloring wouldn't help them in the winter. (Plus spring-green color looks different from summer-green, etc.)\n\nLions and gazelles live in yellow grass so they need to be yellow not green. (Note that they use countershading to either hide from their prey or sneak up on it.) Elephants don't really need it. Chimps hide in trees and aren't as worried about predators up there, zebras look the way they do because they travel in herds and their coloration [makes it harder for predators to single out a single animal to chase](_URL_0_), etc.\n\nPeople wear green when they don't want to be noticed in the wild because the whole countershading thing wouldn't work for us based on our upright posture. A [leafy brown color](_URL_2_) (such as that found on animals) might also work and of course soldiers wear white in winter when there's snow on the ground.", "The green fur never evolved  to become dominant because the green fur mutations got eaten in the winter when there was no green around to hide them", "From most of whsat I've read, green fur color would b e of no particular value since most predatory animals (wolves, lions, etc.) don't see in color and so their prey depend upon coloration and patterns that best blend with their background, whenb seen in black and white.", "Brown is actually better camouflage than green. The green stuff is mostly off the ground, the stuff on/near the ground is mostly brown.", "Good question, it's actually pretty simple: Green pigment comes from chlorophyll, which is a molecule that enables plants to conduct photosynthesis (turn sunlight to energy). Since fur doesn't need to do this, no chlorophyll, and unfortunately no green dogs running around.", "I'll take a shot:  I heard plants evolved to be green because it absorbed the wavelength of light (red and blue) that best suited their growth given the climate...in fact, I think originally plants were largely darker purple and red colors if I remember correctly (due to the composition of the atmosphere effecting the light it gets, possibly?, so absorbing different wavelengths could act as a shield against too much light/heat?)   \n\nAlso, animals don't have as many needs that are based on (or influenced by) light, so our fur/skin evolution didn't prioritize itself as heavily in the direction of light-based evolutionary reactions/changes, as much as toward factors that would allow us to, for example, hide from predators in the best way, or other things that are more relevant to the survival/lifestyle of a moving, acting creature, as opposed to one that is much less self-sufficient.  We can easily move around to control our temperature, for example.  The shade of the plant will effect the heat/light it gets\n\n", "The world, even in green forests, is way more brown than green. See for yourself: Go walking with two friends. Have one wear green, the other brown. The one wearing green will be VERY visible.\n", "Because chlorophyll, the substance responsible for giving plants their green color, is exclusive to plants. It is something they need to make food combined with sunlight, and animals do not make their own food. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://deoxy.org/gaia/eyefood/sloth.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/10179/why-is-mammal-coloration-so-dull"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Stripes", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countershading", "http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/columbia-monarch-pass-wool-jacket-brown-camo?a=1031174"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "54uk40", "title": "Is cannabis a vasodilator, or vasoconstrictor?", "selftext": "I've seen many conflicting arguments online. Forums say it's a dilator while some websites say it is a constrictor. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54uk40/is_cannabis_a_vasodilator_or_vasoconstrictor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d85byx0", "d85wiul"], "score": [3, 4], "text": ["I've only heard of it being a vasodilator.\n\n\nBUT...there are substances which do both, so I suppose it might be one of them. Certain things (such as caffeine) act as one or the other depending on how large a dose you take and some things act on different parts of your circulatory system in different ways. Adrenaline for instance constricts blood vessels in your extremities while dilating them in your core.", "The active ingredients in cannabis activate receptors of the endocannabinoid system, which is widespread throughout the entire body and brain. These receptors come in a variety of forms (the three most popularly studied of which are called CB1, CB2, and GPR55/CB3, although there are others besides these), and the molecules that activate these receptors come in an even larger variety of forms. Keep in mind that we've only known about this system since about 1992, and it is so complex and involved in so many different body processes that we're only starting to get a glimpse of how powerful it is. It has an influence on the skeletal system, urinary system, circulatory system, respiratory system, and actually I could just name every other system in the body because the endocannabinoid system is ubiquitous. \n\nThe endocannabinoid system appears to act as a modulator of body functions, like a dimmer switch. So for example, it doesn't just strictly \"turn on\" bone formation, but it up-regulates or down-regulates bone formation according to the body's needs. The same seems to be true for all of its functions. \n\nWe humans have been domesticating cannabis for thousands of years, and have produced hundreds of strains containing all sorts of molecules that activate the endocannabinoid system in different ways. It is entirely plausible, perhaps even inevitable, that some strains of cannabis act as vasodilators, while other strains act as vasoconstrictors. That being said, it is also plausible that cannabis might tend to change this modulation consistently in one direction (e.g. it usually stimulates appetite rather than suppressing it; or as the other commenters have said, it appears to usually trigger vasodilation rather than vasoconstriction).\n\nThe fact that you can get medicinal marijuana from a dispensary, and look over dozens of strains which describe themselves simply as \"Clear, Alert, Sociable\" while giving a raw percentage of THC, without telling you any of the dozens of cannabinoid molecules that they contain nor their specific effects, indicates that a ton of research is needed to elucidate just how we can tailor this plant to do exactly what we need it to do for each person (e.g. stop seizures, mitigate bipolar mood swings, control cancer growth, etc.). Cannabis is probably the single most promising source of new pharmaceuticals in the entire world, yet the state of the science for medicinal marijuana is absolutely abysmal. But it's a start."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "rw29k", "title": "In honour of Good Friday: What would actually happen to someone who was crucified? What would kill you first? How long would you live for?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rw29k/in_honour_of_good_friday_what_would_actually/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c494kju", "c496a4e"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["The [wikipedia article has lots info](_URL_0_), though it seems written by a Catholic.", "The Romans made it an art and people would generally last for a few days.  In 73 BC, they crucified 6,000 men at one time due to the Sparticus slave revolt.  They were surprised that Jesus died as fast as he did.  And more than likely he was crucified completely naked as that was the standard way they did it.  \n\nThe guards would sometimes break the legs of the condemned to put them out of their misery.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion"], []]}
{"q_id": "5d94do", "title": "why is the us the only country, apart from liberia and burma, not to have adopted the international system of units?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d94do/eli5_why_is_the_us_the_only_country_apart_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da2oj7y", "da2okmq", "da2rxdi", "da2sgsh", "da2srb0", "da2t9ol", "da2tkp1", "da2upgf", "da2uyhq", "da2vot9", "da2vuus", "da2vvuc", "da2wdvw", "da2wwhk", "da2wxc5", "da2wycu", "da2x2sm", "da2xdcf", "da2xiv3", "da2yeu8", "da2yilu", "da2z94b", "da3068n", "da30sw3", "da31bpc", "da345en", "da35by5", "da35m33", "da35uyv", "da364g7", "da36juw", "da39g8h", "da3ahh6", "da3ap2i", "da3apkf", "da3b7tx", "da3cnik", "da3hwht", "da3irig", "da3mkeb", "da3necn", "da3nszc", "da3ovud", "da3p9op", "da3ptga", "da3qxmq", "da3r1yx", "da3r94x", "da3rncx", "da3tgwy", "da3ujc2", "da3uq92", "da3y7vv", "da3zu7j", "da3zz2q", "da3zzvc", "da40yxq", "da42tmg", "da44cgr"], "score": [40, 4435, 2, 3369, 13, 7, 3, 7, 110, 20, 2, 75, 10, 26, 86, 4, 5, 19, 25, 8, 542, 4, 1088, 46, 3, 2, 2, 89, 8, 102, 2, 98, 6, 2, 84, 3, 7, 4, 2, 6, 7, 6, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 4, 2, 7, 2, 2, 24, 2, 2], "text": ["Because that is not something that can be dictated as a country. The Federal government can adopt it for the purposes of the Federal government. Currently the Federal government is \"bilingual\" and you will see both imperial and metric units on labeled goods and such things as fall under the authority of the Federal government.\n\nHowever, at a lower level, that is up to each individual state and no state has adopted the metric system. Recently Hawaii and Oregon have proposed bills, but none of have passed. The short (if unsatisifying) answer is: we just haven't decided to as a country.", "The short answer about this is that the US *has* officially adopted it. But nobody wants to use it. There's no public will to actually change everything over to standard units, so that doesn't happen. \n\nBut if you talk to scientists, or medical personnel, they will tell you that they use metric at work. ", "Didn't the Reagan administration decide not to switch because they wanted to minimize unnecessary spending?", "Aerospace Engineer *(emphasis space)* here.\n\nThe short answer is we have and we haven't\n\nThe long answer is in industries that are collaborative with other countries (Medical, space programs, shipping) we HAVE switched over. (Ever hear a US TV medical show go \"I need 20 CC's, STAT!\" - CC means cubic centimeter, a metric unit).\n\nIn other industries that are more insular and only affect the US, we haven't. Civil engineers still use Kips, feet, pound-feet etc., as do car manufacturers (EDIT Apparently they're metric now), bakers, and your everyday carpenter.\n\nThey haven't switched for a number of reasons, but I'll explain why I use meters, Newtons etc for work:\n\n* When doing complex calculations, having everything be multiples of 10 is VERY useful. Making a kilometer into a meter means moving the decimal point 3 to the right, while making a mile into a foot means multiplying by 5280 -- try doing that in your head in 5 seconds. \n\n* Every paper and textbook in my field is already in SI, so to find a constant or something I need to use in calculations is a breeze in SI but can be a nightmare in Customary.\n\n* Converting to Customary just to convert back to SI can cause errors in measurement that get worse each conversion. It's similar to how you can put a sentence into Google Translate (\"I love doing math!\"), translate it to a random language--Hindi sounds fun-- then translating it back, only to see your initial input has changed (\"I love doing the math\"). That is what can happen if you convert too many times.\n\nThat all being said, this is why I still use customary at home:\n\n* Converting is annoying and difficult. Even if everyday use doesn't really care about round off errors, I don't want to have to convert 1 Cup of flour to milliliters every time I'm making a cake.\n\n* I know customary more than metric, and it would take a lot of readjusting to get used to an entirely new system. Imagine being told your country was abandoning its language for a new one-- Swahili seems interesting. How long would it take you to get used to speaking Swahili? Would you EVER be fluent? \n\n* This is the most controversial, but there's no NEED to change. As great as converting by ten is for calculations, most of the time your conversions are very simple or nonexistent (except for the whole pinch-teaspoon-tablespoon-cup-pint thing. ARRRGGGHHH that's more confusing than orbital mechanics). And the smug \"Customary units are arbitrary!\" people forget that SI is just as arbitrary: some guys in France grabbed a chunk of Platinum and thought 'eh, this is good' and BAM, the kilogram was born.", "The US tried to switch in the 70's/80's but nobody liked it so it was canceled.  \nThe STEM fields extensively use the metric system though.", "Isn't a miscalculation between SI and US something that caused one of the Space Shuttle disasters?", "It would expensive to change over all the signs for speed limits and distances but mostly there is no will to change. The mindset is, it has always been this way and it works why change it now? ", "Because people with a deep sense of misplaced patriotism think that we need to be different, thus freedom units^tm.  Plus metrication would cost money and people are weird about how the government spends it.", "Let's not pretend like the adoption of the metric system is as universal and pervasive as you suggest.  When in the UK I ordered beer by the pint; in Central America I bought much of my produce by the pound and gasoline by the gallon.  The US simply hasn't had a big government-led push to make a changeover happen, and until it does people will continue to use what is familiar and comfortable.", "Mechanic here. I can tell you bolt head sizes in metric all day, but can't even spit ball what size a bolt is in standard measures.\n\nBut if you tell me to go a kilometer down the road, you better change that to \"just over half a mile\" because metric distances mean nothing to me", "Have you ever seen parents try to teach \"new math\" I'd imagine changing the measuring system would be disastrous lol\n", "The US actually has adopted the metric system. That's why you see it on things like bottles and packaging. The thing is Americans understand the imperial system better so packaging and signage continues to use it alongside the metric system. In order to break the cycle would essentially require banning the imperial measure on packaging and other parts of daily  life until people's perception of measurement changes but since people grew up with imperial measures they think in them. They mentally know a sheet of paper is half an inch shorter than a foot and they can mentally judge feet and inches. ", "In general, engineers, scientists, and a few others use metric primarily. I work entirely in metric and only convert back when talking with customers. ", "Because there's really no compelling reason to other than \"everyone else is doing it.\"  Sure, there's the science and engineering argument, but both fields already use metric either extensively or exclusively, so that leaves the everyday use argument, and that just falls apart. \n\nKilometers don't make our cities closer together, and Celsius doesn't tell the weather more accurately than Farenheit (I'd argue that Farenheit is superior here).\n\nPlus, there's the cost.  Just changing every single speed limit sign would cost billions.", "Don't Forget Belize. \n\nWhy does everyone forget Belize when they bring up the old English system? That tiny relic of British Imperialism shoved on the Isthmus of North America. Inches for days in that place.", "As others have said, when the United States tried to switch over to the metric system about 40 years ago, the public didn't take to it. But have you noticed that the switch was never really implemented in full? \n\nHere's an example: what do you think the cost would be to replace all those mile markers, one every tenth of a mile, along all 47,856 miles of interstate highways in the country? Not to mention the signage along non interstate highways! \n\nIt's just too damn expensive! ", "Odd thing is \"time\" isn't measured in the metric system really unless working with small values...\n\nSecond \nMillisecond  \nMicrosecond   \nNanosecond   \nPicosecond   \n\n\nBut conversely, there's no kilosecond, megosecond, gigasecond, terasecond, unless talking about astronomical values I think. Instead, we use minutes/hours/days/months/years.", "Engineer here. Science has adopted SI globally, so US scientists use SI. Because scientists use SI, most engineers use SI on things that are big, important, and might involve other countries. \n\n", "Why doesn't Great Britain change to drive on the same side of the road as much of the rest of the world?  There would be some minor advantages, and a huge amount of cost.\n\nGo to a hardware store.  Look at the number of products that are sized in nice round numbers of units.  It isn't a simple matter of renaming things, the things are all sized in convenient fractions or multiples of inches (in the US) or meters (elsewhere).  All those parts would have to shift over to things in metric sizes.  They'd be similar, but different.\n\nAs noted elsewhere, much of the US is already heavily metric.  Why the rest will shift when it needs to.\n\n ", "Doesn't the military use the metric system?", "Reading these comments has been interesting. For what it's worth, I have a Canadian perspective on all of this. Our government made the decision to swap years ago and faced heavy opposition for the same reasons the US did during their attempt. People claimed that metric was confusing and cited the costs of swapping road network signage over. The government was firm, though, and a couple generations later we are all \"fluent\" in metric.\n\n\nThe USA never made this swap, though. We are all huddled against the border trying to stay warm.... Through this proximity, most of us having a working knowledge of imperial as well. This leads to some uniquely Canadian issues: We drive in kilometers per hour, and buy our gas and milk in litres. However, if you ask us our height and weight you will most certainly receive it in feet, inches and pounds. The temperature outside? Probably in Celcius, unless you're from the oldest generation.\n\n\nPersonally, I'd like to think we took the best of both worlds. I might just be telling myself that though. ", "We do use it, I personally use it in engineering. Most people choose not to because they grew up with the standard.", "I'm pretty late to the party here, but I'll chime in anyhow.  The turning point dates back to the Carter/Reagan divide in the 1980 election.  \n\nAbout the time that everyone else (including England) were switching from English units to metric, Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter pushed very hard for America to switch as well.   This was moderately successful, and between congressional action and executive order America began to move toward accepting SI standards.  \"Metric\" measurements were commonly taught in schools, cars had to report km/h as well as mph, and there was a trend toward acceptance of MKS in daily life.  There were large information campaigns with pamphlets, guides to the metric system, television spots, lesson-plan packets in schools -- even school lunchboxes (remember those?) with the metric system outlined on them.  I still remember a few of them from the late 1970s, but you can find TV PSA spots dating to 1973 on YouTube.\n\nThen Ronald Reagan got elected, on a wave of reactionary resentment against the actions Carter was taking with the economy,  Volcker's \"bitter pill\" of very high interest rates to curb resource shocks, and \"stagflation\". But Reagan's campaign was taking no chances, and pulled out all the self-identity stops.  A minor plank in Reagan's platform was to roll back adoption of the metric system, to leverage general grousing and resentment at the changing systems of units into a small additional advantage in the vote.  So in 1981 all motion toward SI for commonplace things in America stopped cold.\n\nThat's why, for example, NASA specifies all space hardware in SI units -- but the numbers always turn out to be round numbers in English units rather than in MKS (e.g. the Space Shuttle's dimensions, and the ISS modules' dimensions, are all in round multiples of 25.4mm).\n\n**tl;dr**: SI adoption fell prey to identity politics in the 1980 presidential election.  Ronald Reagan killed it, nobody else picked it up.  And here we are.", "In defense of the customary system, it has several benefits over the metric system, namely its use of fractions and convenient metrics.\nThere are 12 inches in a foot because 1/12, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 of a foot then come out to an integer number of inches. (1,2,3,4,6 respectively). Most of our customary system is in use for this reason. Most all of our measures are maximally divisible for their size. For example 12 (inched in a foot, points in a pica) is divisible by 1,2,3,4,6,12; 60 (seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour) by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60. The rest are often powers of 2 (2 tablespoons in an ounce, 8 ounces in a cup2 cups in a pint, 2 pints on a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon, 16 ounces in a pound, 2 weeks in a fortnight), so that they can be halved repeatedly with ease. Others are just a maximally divisible number times a power of 2 (24=12\u20222 hours in a day).\nOther units like the mile used to divide up nicely too, but the units they were based on are now uncommon, likely because we can travel so quickly by car. \nThe metric system is instead based on decimals, and its ability to easily convert between units because all units are multiples of ten of the base unit has been much trouted, but it actually adds very little. Sure I can convert 2,000,000 meters into 2 Mega meters, but I could already do that! I just call it 2 million meters. A gigawatt is just a billion wats. This base ten conversion is not a nice property of the metric system then, but a result of any base ten system that has a special word for each third power of ten. We have that too, we just call 2,340,000 ft \"2.34 million feet\". \nEdit:spelling", "At least in the field of civil engineering, switching over would cause a decade of stagnation, not to mention most of the practitioners losing productivity on a large scale for a LONG time. They (we) would lose our intuition for the numbers.\n\nI personally don't see how English vs. SI units measure things any differently; it's arbitrary what you use.\n\nI used both systems extensively in school, and it's not really that hard to use either one. I think you should have to explain why we should exclusively use one system of units, other than the argument \"it just makes sense.\"", "Because we don't have to.  There is no real drive to change.  We are a big enough country and most of us only interact with Americans that there is little incentive to change.  When we collectively have to interact regularly with people on the Metric system, then we will more happily embrace it.  There is no need to government mandate 'force' it.\nSame with learning a foreign language.  When our population really needs to collectively learn a foreign language, we will....until then, we don't need to.", "Interestingly enough in the North Sea we still use Customary units for oilfield work (lb, US gallons, US barrels, PSI, etc.) but when reporting to clients that are Europe based we have to convert over to bar, kg, m3, L etc.  In Canada they use all metric in their oilfield units.", "I'm in the UK. Distances are in Miles. Car mileage is in Miles Per Gallon (it's a different gallon, though). Height is feet and inches, and weight is stone and pounds. In the US you buy soda in Liters.\n\nThe US is far from alone, ignoring Liberia and Burma, in this. Modern society in many places is just all mixed up.", "I know the oil industry doesn't use it because restrapping, changing the tools and measurement system would cost a lot of money that they don't want to spend. \n\nMy job for a long time was converting from standard to metric based on API gravity or weight in lbs/per gallon at temperasure farenheight to centigrade temperature, density, cubes, and metric tonnes. Plus foreign tankers are all strapped in cubic metres so we have a separate tools for measuring level there than we do with shore tank figures. Thousands and thousands of hours I've spent doing it.", "This isn't the whole answer, but a part no one else has brought up.\n\nOutside Britain and its colonies, customary units varied from place to place within a modern country. A pound in southeastern France was 18% lighter than a pound in Paris. A Japanese cloth foot was 25% longer than a Japanese construction foot. Measurement differences were easily abused by fraudulent sellers. So changing to the metric system was an opportunity for new regimes to unify a chaotic system of measurement. \n\nEngland was able to mostly unify its measurement system in the Middle Ages, so it bequeathed a usable system to the modern US. It's not perfect, and there has been some drift between units used when the US broke away and units used when the UK switched to metric. But switching from most countries' patchwork of local customary units in 1850 to a unified English system would be a bigger improvement than switching from a unified English system to a unified metric system.", "It's not true, many countries still use a mix of units, especially European counties.  Example, The UK still posts speeds in MPH.", "Drug dealers have been at the forefront of teaching students the metric system for decades. That's how I learned to convert ounces to grams when I was in high-school. 3.5 grams to an eighth an ounce. Metric, Imperial, decimals and fraction conversions all in one little baggie of weed! ", "I think this had largely to do with post WWII era construction. America's 'Big Boom' happened in part because most of the world-wide infrastructure for manufacturing was destroyed, damaged, or converted to military hardware during the war. As a result the US, having not lost its factories, became a manufacturing power house. Had we adopted the ISoU prior, the 'inches' would have been a thing of the past. However, even though manufacturing has declined in the last 20 years or so, many generations have been manufacturing on the 'inches' scale. Some industries made the conversion but at times I feel like its just complacency and a lack of desire to change/learn something new.", "One big reason is the interstate system. Changing all the speed limit signs would be expensive, and people would have to get used to it, but also how the exit systems work. The exits arent just numbered 1,2,3,4 etc. They are numbered by what mile they are, so if you are at mile 14, you pass exit 1r, but the next exit might not be for 3 miles which would be exit 17, skippinh 15 and 16. \n\nAlso the interstates have mile markers on the side of the road every 1/10 of a mile, so that would have to be changed too. \n\nUt would be HUGELY expensive for no benefit other than a slightly easier system for conversions.", "Just chiming in to say that Liberia is using both imperial and metric at the same time, but metric has never been made official simply because nobody cares.\n\nThe reason for the dual system is that Liberia is still one of the poorest countries on earth, and hence all goods are imported from wherever they can be obtained cheapest.\n\nNow some cars (almost exclusively used ones) are imported from the US, others from Europe, so you'll have gauges in miles and kilometers, as well as fuel indicators in gallons and liters. Same goes for clothes and fabrics - you'll have them in inches and meters. People need to be familiar with both, since the availability varies.\n\nEven some road signs are in km instead of the official miles (distances and speed limits alike), which might be considered as \"officially adopted\".\n\nSource: Been working there as a development finance specialist about 2.5 years ago.", "Metrologist here. The official measurement system is metric SI in every country. This provides a traceable path to the 7 standard units of the SI. All primary standards operated by that country's national measurement system will be expressed in units derived from those units. E.g. Volume is length^3 in units of metres. \n\nThis is different to what the general public sees. However, the true amount of something will be based on the SI, then converted to customary units using a defined conversion factor. ", "The people use both in their lives, but it is very expensive to change all of the signs on roads and other public places. ", "For much the same reason that we use QWERTY keyboards instead of Dvorak. The productivity gains wouldn't feel worth the investment of time and mental energy to convert for most of us.", "I never get this question.  We officially adopted the metric system long ago.  Does it not count until we criminalize use of standard units?", "We tried and it never caught on.  That's why we have soda bottles in liters. The major soda companies spent quite a bit to switch their production equipment to metric when we tried to change as a whole country. It never caught on and the soda companies didn't see any advantage to spending the money to switch back after the movement died.", "Hey, I'm from India, a metric using country, and let me tell you that we don't just use the metric system, we sometimes use the imperial (american) system sometimes too.\n\nA barber can cut in inches or centimeters. Wood, cloth, tiles, etc. are still measured in inches and feet. Gasoline and other liquids are sometimes measured in gallons. Volume is measured in gallons for devices and appliances. etc, etc, etc.\n\nSo in addition to everyone else's answers, the whole world uses both systems whenever it is convenient.\n\n", "Liberia and Myanmar (Burma) are both in the process of switching over to the metric system. The US stands alone.", "I always thought it was to befuddle possible invaders. And so our spy's could report if any national forces are learning miles/feet, causing them to show their hand.\n\nI'm not right, never thought I was. I'm gonna keep using my explanation when I hear it mentioned.", "Imperial units are still the standard in some fields.  International aviation uses nautical miles as the standard of distance and feet as the standard of altitude.  I would imagine the same for nautical navigation, but my experience has been in the air.\n\nEdit: As for the reason why, because it's a hassle.", "Automotive industry is mostly metric with a little standard tossed in.  Short of older classics and some early 90's vehicles, I couldn't tell you the last time I used a standard tool short of improvising.  Engine sizes are metric, bolts, nuts and many parts are labeled in metric.  However hoses, lines, and similar items are often in standard.   \n\n\nThe odd ball is wheels and tires.  Tires incorporate both in their sizing.  225/60r16?  That's 225mm tread width, fitting a 16 inch wheel with a sidewall ratio of 60% the tread width. ", "As a side note, many lives have been lost and billions have been spent because of errors while converting", "I read that machinist unions oppose metric whenever that discussion comes up because many of the measurements in hardware are done in respect to inches.  Screws, sockets, etc. ", "What's funny is how metric has (to some people's POV) \"infiltrated\" the U.S. just for practical reasons. Go look at your Jack Daniel's bottle. See that word near the bottom? It reads \"Litre.\"\n\nEurope is a huge market, so they're kind of calling the tune on that and other beverages. It's not the old guy sippin' whiskey on his Kentucky porch that demanded his \"fifth\" switch to metric units.", "As someone who went from never using metric to using it all the time, I think it has to with the people in charge of it becoming the school curriculum nationwide are all old. What they have ingrained is one thing, and for their whole world to change (even in a slight way) is more headache than they'd want. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but why would they want to go out of their way to do it?", "The same reason we still have the electoral college and marijuana legislation. It's yet another outdated thing we've never bothered to get rid of that causes a lot of problems, but not enough for people to stick their necks out and solve. ", "It is hard to change a thing we're all used to and most people refuse to change or learn new system. But what we can do is a gradual change, starting from the scientific community, where they really do understand the advantages of the metric system and go from there. NASA have already adopted the metric system after the big snafu a few years ago. We can do it! ", "I don't understand why there can't be a slow and steady initiative to gradually ween off the imperial system and use the metric system. \n\nMandate it in all our schools to to put a much heavier emphasis on the metric system. \n\nAdd kilometers/meters to road signs in addition to the existing Miles. So when you're driving on an interstate, you'll see a sign that says something like, \"Los Angeles: 345 Miles / 555 Kilometers\" ", "It is slowly changing as schools are no longer concentrating on teaching inches and ounces as measurement , it does take time though but as kids grow up they will understand what mm and cm are more than inches and feet.\n\nDo they still teach inches and feet in the US schools?\n\nRight now everything in the uk is labeled in both.", "For most people, whatever measurement system they are familiar with, and is the one they are confident of using, is the one that is better.\nPeople who have learnt metric from an early age, will say metric is better, while people who have learnt Imperial or US Customary measures from an early age will say that Imperial or US Customary measures are better.\n\nHowever, if one is to take a neutral position, and analyses the metric system, and compare it to any other measurement system, them metric is undoubtably better. \n\nAll counties use metric, although no country is totally metric. Metrication is advancing in all countries, including the US. It has been for at least 100 years, and it will continue to be learnt, understood, and used by more and more people throughout the world every year. It's popularity increases as people see the many advantages of the metric system.\n\n\nWhy is the metric system easier, and better, than Imperial or USC? The most frequently given answers include:\n\n1\u2026Because metric is simple and consistent. There is only one meter and one kilometer and one liter..Unlike the mile (3 miles, international mile, US Survey mile, nautical mile.) and two gallons (Imperial gallon and US gallon) metric is simple and less confusing, fewer errors, less cost. \n\n2\u2026Because it dramatically reduces conversion factors in calculations. Less time doing calculations, fewer errors, less wastage in material and time, less cost. \n\n3\u2026Because metric prefix\u2019s enable whole numbers only. Avoiding decimal fractions and missinteruptation and errors. \n\n4\u2026Because metric offers units from very large to very small. \n\n5\u2026Because metric dimensions are easier to divide by three. \n\n6\u2026Because it has links between related measurements. \n\n7\u2026Because it uses logical symbols. \n\n8..Because it is the only properly maintained system. \n\n9..Because practically everyone uses it. For more than 95% of the world population, the metric system is the customary system of units, and for more than half of the industrialized world, it has been for at least a century.\n\n10..Because when one uses it, there is no need to use any other system of measurement, because it is a complete system of measurement, and everything in the known universe can be measured with it.\n\nAlso I believe that the metric system is better than Imperial measures because..\n\nThe metric system is a system. The metric system is the only measurement method ever developed as a complete system. All previous attempts used random developments at different places, at different times, and for different purposes.\n\nThe metric system is universal. The metric system has been gradually adopted by all of the world\u2019s people. Despite often-vigorous opposition, the metric system has always been successful.\n\nThe metric system is coherent. Because the metric system was developed as a complete system, it was possible to design it so that it has an internal consistency. Its internal coherence means that if you learn one part of the metric system you can easily extend your knowledge to all other parts.\n\nThe metric system is capable. All crafts, trades, and professions can successfully use the metric system. Although the structure of the metric system is quite simple, it can be used in every human activity.\n\nThe metric system is equitable. The metric system is fair and just to all who use it.\n\nThe metric system is simple. The metric system uses only 7 base units and 22 units with special names \u2014 29 units in all. There are now only 20 old measures left that are non-SI units currently accepted for use with the International System.\n\nThe metric system is supported. International treaties and research keep the metric system modern and forward looking.\n\nThe metric system is fundamental. The metric system is the only system used internationally. It is now fundamental to all measurements, both old and new.\n\nThe metric system is unique. The metric system is unique because: it was planned; it is decimal; it has prefixes; and it is human in scale. It is unique because there has never been a measuring system like it.\n\nThe metric system is legal. Legislation in every country in the world supports the metric system. It is often the sole method of measurement recognised by governments. International agreements also support the metric system so that contracts written in metric units have validity across international borders.\n\n\nThe US adopted the metric system, when it was made legal and official in 1866, with the Metric Act, the only measurement system to have an Act of Congress. \nThe primary reason that it has never been universally accepted, is because its uptake is voluntary, whereas standard/USC is by default mandatory, and the first measurements learnt in schools, thereby resulting in metric to be mainly understood, through messy and unpopular conversions to standard/USC", "Because the British suck. They arrested the French Ambassador who brought it to us, and he got chucked in a Caribbean jail and ended up dying before being able to deliver it.\n\nSo yeah, thanks British empire, again.\n\n", "It is because adjusting to new things is tough on people. Kind of like Burma nowadays is called Myanmar but people keep calling it Burma. ;-)", "I feel like this belongs here:\n\n\"In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade\u2014which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to \u2018How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?\u2019 is \u2018Go fuck yourself,\u2019 because you can\u2019t directly relate any of those quantities.\" Wild Thing by Josh Bazell.\n\nOh and still using a measurement for temperature which is based on the coldest day of the winter of 1708/09 in Danzig is kind of stupid, if you ask me.", "Every other country had a plan and stuck to it.  The US had a policy that metric was better, but conversion had to be voluntary.\n\nThe Metric Act of 1866 let everyone be as metric as they wanted to, so those who wanted to metricate did so and ignored those who didn't. (The domestic auto industry converted in the 70's).  In some ways, this makes metrication harder, as those who wish to metricate just do, leaving only the opposition caring enough to be vocal.  The politicians listen to the vocal and continue to insist metrication be voluntary.  The pols don't even realize how many industries and multinational corporations in the US are metric.\n\nThe auto industry has a lot of leverage with its supply base and forced them to metricate as well.  Smaller companies may have more of a problem buying metric parts they need at fair prices.", "Americans don't want to have to learn anything \"new\".\n\nSee Common Core and the outrage it has created."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52352h", "title": "from material science perspective if possible, why we let the food cool down to room temperature before putting it in the freezer or refrigerator.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52352h/eli5_from_material_science_perspective_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7gxha9", "d7gxjrn", "d7gy7zr", "d7h1hej"], "score": [6, 7, 14, 3], "text": ["This is actually not a good practice because it will keep food in the warm \"danger zone\" longer.\n\n_URL_0_", "This is not a best practice in terms of food safety. Letting food cool to room temperature allows bacteria to grow in and on the food. Refrigerating slows that growth down, but the longer the food spends at room temperature they greater the risk of sickness becomes. It's better to go straight from hot to inside the fridge. ", "In the olden days, we didn't have refrigerators or freezers.  We had insulated iceboxes.  The [ice man](_URL_0_) would bring by a chunk of ice every day (see also: milk man, egg man, and mail man).  The ice would be put in the top of icebox.  The ice would melt and run down the inside walls, cooling what was placed there, and the water would collect in a drip tray at the bottom.  If you put hot food in the icebox, it would melt the ice faster.  All the ice would melt before the ice man came again and your food would spoil.  So it was common practice to let the food cool to room temperature before putting it into the icebox.  Early refrigerator/freezers weren't very efficient, taking a long time to cool down hot food and allowing other food to get warmer in the process, so the practice continued.\n\nWith current refrigerator/freezer technology, there's no reason to wait for the food to cool.  I mean, I wouldn't go straight from the oven to the freezer, but no need to wait for it to get anywhere near room temperature, either.", "As others have said, the main reason this is done is to not to heat up the inside of your fridge, but honestly, 99% of the cooking people do at home is perfectly fine to straight to the fridge. The only time you might have an issue is if say you trying to put a gallon of piping hot soup into a mini fridge, but a standard size modern refrigerator won't really be affected. Having worked in kitchens for a long time, I can tell you the main reason we allow a soup or sauce to cool before transfer is mainly the potential danger involved in transporting 5 gallons of 200\u00b0 liquid. Since you are more than likely not dealing with this volume at home, it really shouldn't be an issue. However, I wouldn't recommend going straight to the freezer with something hot, as you don't want to have any surrounding food in the freezer thawing and refreezing. Instead let it cool down in the fridge first, then transfer it to the freezer. No matter what you do, the most important thing to take away from all of this is NEVER put a hot item away in a sealed container. You're just laying down the red carpet for bacteria. Cool first, cover later."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/basics/mistakes/"], [], ["http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqlsua_three-stooges-057-an-ache-in-every-stake-colour_fun"], []]}
{"q_id": "126n0f", "title": "What happens when I make a decision?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/126n0f/what_happens_when_i_make_a_decision/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6sp82g"], "score": [2], "text": ["We don't know. If we knew exactly what happens when a human thinks, neuroscience would have a lot less to do. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "75z0au", "title": "When we watch videos on YouTube do they get temporarily stored on the hard-disk or phone's storage or are they just stored in the RAM for some time ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/75z0au/when_we_watch_videos_on_youtube_do_they_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doay60w"], "score": [3], "text": ["In an OS with virtual memory, any virtual memory unit (most commonly, a _page_) may at some point be stored on disk - or more accurately, not in main memory. The process of moving a page to \"secondary\" storage is called _swapping_. [This](_URL_0_) is a good overview of how the concepts around virtual memory work."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ee.sunysb.edu/~yang/333slides-2010/MOS-3e-03-2010.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "6zn6no", "title": "How did \"My Country 'Tis of Thee\", \"God Save Our Queen\", and \"Kaiserhymne\" all end up with the exact same melody?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zn6no/how_did_my_country_tis_of_thee_god_save_our_queen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmwz4ff", "dmxkh7m"], "score": [24, 5], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion, but [I wrote a post on basically this subject](_URL_0_) about a year ago.", "Not to mention the Liechtenstein national anthem. One time they were playing a football match with Scotland, and the Scottish fans booed their national anthem (because they hate England). The Scottish FA later apologized for that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/58q492/why_do_god_save_the_queen_and_my_country_tis_of/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ws04w", "title": "why is it considered harming or disturbing for children to witness sexual content?", "selftext": "I don't get why we always have to \"protect\" children from seeing anything sexual in movies etc. \n\nIs there a psychological reason behind it or is it just a thing developed in our society ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ws04w/eli5why_is_it_considered_harming_or_disturbing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cotkwmz", "cotkxke", "cotkzwg", "cotlkvp", "cotloda", "cotmpgr", "cotmxfi", "cotn5a5", "cotnh3h", "cotnudk", "cotpb0r", "cotpouh", "cotqfqn", "cotqmwv", "cotqqa2", "cotr6fg", "cou3h8g", "cou4kd0", "cou4tm6", "cou6aqu", "cou6ycm", "cou8glj", "coublok", "coubm8b", "coucj88", "coucpkz", "coucqk3", "coudi7s"], "score": [51, 7, 526, 2, 56, 9, 3, 31, 6, 6, 412, 3, 3, 5, 110, 11, 41, 10, 4, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3, 5, 2, 3, 5], "text": ["Without the context that puberty brings, sex can be a really weird thing. Even pretty vanilla sex can be weirdly aggressive if that feeling of desire is foreign to you.", "Sex is a difficult subject for people to explain to children due to it having a dark side (rape, sexual violence, pedophilia etc.)\n\nThat being said, a lot of it is to do with tradition, as sex was made taboo in most countries via the spread of Christianity, a lot of it is to do with parents wanting to keep the \"innocence\" of their child.", "Because children are like little sponges that suck up every little bit of information they are exposed to, they also seek to emulate everything they perceive that grownups do. Finally they don't understand all the finer points of social etiquette, which is why they'll frequently do things like pick their noses or disrobe in public if you let them. \n\nIf you let your kids be exposed to foul language or sex scenes, be prepared for many awkward situations that ensue when they start to emulate things they've witnessed or heard without understanding things like the context, consequences, social taboos and etiquette.\n\nA simple example: your kid witnesses you give your SO a passionate kiss. Later that night when you tuck them in and give them a kiss goodnight, they try and jam their tongue down your throat. They have no idea why that would be inappropriate.", "Because we raise our children in ignorance.  It is more comfortable with us.  We teach them it is evil and dirty and prepare them for their future therapy sessions.  Always remember, families put more people in mad houses than all the wars put together.", "It's easier than explaining it to them.\n\nNot saying it's the right way. Europeans have more lax media laws in terms of sexual content in movies, and they seem to be functioning fine.", "The spread of judeo-christian faiths is what brought about the taboo of Sexuality. Many cultures and religions around the world, did not see sexuality as something to be ashamed of; In fact it has been embraced in many. Ancient Rome, India, Japan, are just a few of the cultures who found no issues with sex.\n\n**TL:DR. Christians...**", "In our environment of ancestral origin, adults certainly had sex in front of their children, as they would all have shared a single room dwelling. So we know that it is not harmful. Overall the children were much better adjusted than children in our current culture, because their parents spent so much time with them and the children knew their value to the family and tribe. ", "The widespread habit of \"protecting\" children from the idea of sex is a fairly recent custom, simply due to the impracticality of it.\n\nIt's shocking, but true. I've read conversations on the subject a few times, but this interview between Stephen Colbert and Bill Bryson might be the most entry-level place to start:\n\n >  Stephen Colbert asked author Bill Bryson about his new book \"At Home: A Short History of Private Life\" on his show last night, saying: \"What about bedrooms. Are those new?\"\n\n >  \"Originally, in the original hall houses in the middle ages, there were no bedrooms,\" Bryson said. \"So everybody lived and slept together.\"\n\n >  Shocked, Colbert asked: \"How did you make more people in front of everybody else?\"\n\n >  \"You made more people in front of everybody else,\" Bryson replied calmly.\n\n >  \"Really?!\" Colbert exclaimed. \"Well, it wasn't as boring as I thought [back then]. There was your entertainment!\"\n\n >  \"Our ideas of privacy are really very recent,\" Bryson explained. \"Right up until about 1800, it was not at all uncommon for servants to sleep at the foot of the bed.\"\n\n---\n\nEdit: Here's an [Ask Historians Reddit](_URL_0_) thread covering the same topic.", "Essentially because they don't have the social/emotional educational foundations to or what they're setting into a proper context.", "Sexual content usually gets treated more harshly because if a kid sees someone swear or do something violent you can tell the child that those actions are bad, and that they should never try to do it\n\nUnless you want to deceive you kid you can't treat sex as something negative, best case the kid gets that it's something for when one gets older ", "This is clearly a topic where a lot more context is needed in the question itself.  I've barely seen 10 comments and it's all chaos.\n\n\"Children\" is being interpreted as everything from 2 to 20.  Where *exactly* a particular child falls in that range will make the correct answer vary *wildly*.\n\n\"Anything sexual\" can be anything from a tender kiss to anal gangbangs.\n\nPeople are also ignoring one very specific bit of context that *was* provided in the question:  **in movies**.  And yet people are talking about what happens when a little kid walks in on something happening **in real life**.  Even my four-year-old reacts to real life and on-screen stuff differently (not to mention things she sees *me* doing vs. things she sees *other people* doing).\n\nI do see some insightful answers in here, but it'll take some combing.  Sadly, it looks like a lot of people are not ready to have a real conversation about this and are looking to push their own agendae.", "Because sex and sexuality are extremely complex, and most parents would rather teach their children about it themselves at an age that they believe their child will be able to understand than learn about it through the boobtube. ", "We would much rather not have to explain sexuality, than have our children grow up with a healthy view of sex.", "Well when I was 7 I got manipulated into watching parts of a porno by a babysitter. He'd lure me and 2 other kids out with Scooby Doo then quickly change it. I told my mom and his mom but they were too high to care, so I thought I was in the wrong and was pretty traumatized by it. Flash forward a year, my mom was having loud enough sex that I could hear and I pretty much blacked out and threw furniture all over the room, punched walls, and nearly burned the house down. She kept it up for a couple months and I honestly considered killing myself, and I was 8. I wasn't sheltered or anything, I had seen sexual stuff in movies, but it really fucked me up for a long time. The sounds were triggering something in me I guess, but yeah: as a result I honestly don't know how I'll handle teaching my future children about it, but I can understand why some parents want to keep their children away from it. I'm just saying that there is some awful negative shit. ", "It is definetely an  American thing. The amount of sexual content children are exposed to varies tremendously between cultures.\n\nExample: My daughter has a book about where her little sister comes from. It is aimed at children aged 2 to 7, and it is quite explicit. That is not unusual in Northern Europe.\n\nAnother one: I just had a friend return from Ghana, where the exposure are even greater, in a \"look after your little brother for 15 minutes while your mother and I have sex\" kind of way.\n\nI am not a psychologist, but a mechanism which would give children psychological trauma from exposure to sex sounds extremely weird from an evolutionary perspective. How would any genes for that not be weeded out very quickly? ", "United States, Dad of two. The best answer I can give you as a father is that there are levels of seriousness to life that I don't find my children quite capable of grasping right now. They view things through a lens where everything is fine and wonderful and most subjects really aren't taken seriously. We push them to study hard in school, but it's difficult for a child to grasp that it's actually important. I would say that I don't want my kids viewing sex with any more flippancy than they do murder. It's not really all that wrong to have kids shielded from sex or imagery, I hope they get to enjoy it themselves someday, but I'm trying to wait until they can grasp different levels of seriousness before the topic comes up. It's far more worrying to me that as a group we view it as totally acceptable to have our kids' hero's be weapon-wielding action heroes or that war and violence are shown so much. That's just something that I don't want them to ever experience so why do I want them thinking it's normal?", "It probably has something to do with the fact that our country is governed by laws that reflect christian values which generally condemn sex and make it very taboo. I wouldn't be surprised if there are or were cultures that didn't consider it a bad things for kids to be exposed to sexuality and it probably just seemed natural. ", "As a parent, I've thought about this and my opinion is that sexuality is a deep and vast topic. My 5 year old is working at piecing the world together and when he sees 2 people  kissing he is learning that it is a way to show affection but he is still not mature enough to get the proper context. We don't kiss everyone that way. \nBy me limiting his views of sexual content has me slowly introduce the rules and guidelines that society has as well as explaining feelings and attraction...slowly over time.\n\nIf he were to be exposed to it all the time, I believe he would be fed too much for his mind to comprehend and therefore misinterpret important meanings and essential behaviors that are acceptable in life. (Boundaries,  respect of others bodies and feelings)", "Shielding children from sexual content is necessary as it detracts away from the time they could be spending witnessing violent content.", "Because it makes them lose their innocence. It's important for parents, to have them innocent and pristine for as long as possible.", "Kids copy things they see. Parents don't want them copying what they see. That's basically it. And if you're saying there's noting wrong with sex, well, if you're not intelligent enough to do it properly it can be devastating. Disease, unwanted pregnancies are at the top of the list.\n\n", "Psychology student here i did a quick search and didnt saw anyone talking about the main man Sigmund Freud, he said children had their own sexual theories and one of them its that sex has a sadist aggresive nature thats why watching the act could be harmful to their mental health.\n\nFreud also said that children are polymorphic perverts they lack shame or morals and their little minds are capable of anything. you have to be really careful with the stuff you expose to them.\n\np.s: Im not a english speaker so i probably butchered a lot of words plus Im on my cellphone so i dont have autocorrect i will try to edit later with more info.", "I guess because of our societal view on sex. \n\nAnd that is to say, we as a society view it as more than just a physical act. \n\nIgnoring all the issues surrounding pregnancy, and disease. Sex and sexual gratification has been placed on a pillar as something to be sought after, but also to be considered sacred and taboo.\n\nWe as adults both fear and lust for it, and while we support the rights of each other to seek out these desires, we are uncomfortable acknowledging that we all have those needs and wants. \n\nWe have created a feedback loop of its okay, but its not okay. Its okay to want sex, but its not okay to talk about it. Its okay to admit you should want sex, but actually saying that out loud will make me think differently about you. Of course you are a healthy individual for liking sex, but you should feel just a little bit ashamed about it. That subtext is always present in every situation and no matter how openly we embrace our sexuality in open, we will always be considered a fringe minority, of deviants. \n\nOut there to get kinky and lustful in all the most unabashedly immoral, carnal ways possible. Waiting for their next sexual gratification.\n\nIs this the group you want in charge of the innocent, impressionable children?\n\nAren't we supposed to teach them right from wrong; Aren't we supposed to protect the children?\n\nThat emotional entangling of what is right and wrong, has been so engrained into our societies view on sex and sexual content, that we feel we must seperate a child from that confusing experience. Because frankly we don't have a firm grasp on it ourselves, and how can we protect the children, if we can't even fully identify the enemy. \n\n", "This is an American and conservative thing. We don't have stick up our asses about sex and sexuality in Latin America.", "One main aspect many posters did not take into account is the differentiation between actual sex and perceived sexual content.\n\nChildren rationalize everything they see. Two people having sex without understanding what sex is can get rationalized as one person hurting another (as pointed out by /u/Lucas_Berse). You wouldn't want your child to associate sex with something bad, so until your child understands what sex is (which can be a quite complicated process by itself), it's deemed better for its development to not be confronted by it, much less in the uncommented visual form media tends to show it.\n\nOn the other hand, the things perceived as sexual by an adult are generally not considered as harmful to the child, at least not on their own. Exposed breasts, general nakedness,  even innuendos tend to fly over the heads of children. It's simply not a thing. Children know that all people are naked underneath their clothes, and that's okay. Innuendos tend to get stored under the \"adults say strange things\"-file. The problem here is the reaction of the other adults. When the father flips his shit upon seeing an exposed nipple during the Super Bowl show, it is hard for the child to contextualize the nipple as innocent. So it won't.\n\nTL;DR: Sex is not understood appropriately by children. Reactions of adults on things associated with sex, such as bare breasts, are also confusing them.", "When I see answer like in this thread, I can more easily see the fascination with boobs in young US men. The view that kids should be shielded from sex up until one \"talk\", and then suddenly expected to be totally competent, is so foreign to me.", "Psychological. Kids develop a sense of emotions, trust, self-awareness, overtime. Their  exposure to the world should match the level of their understanding  of feelings, self-protection, consequences, etc etc etc. ", "It might have to do with children repeating what they see on TV and movies. Every little kid that saw the power ranger movie growing up was jumping off the couch practicing moves. Now imagine that but sex..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2r4sq7/how_did_couples_with_children_have_sex_in_one/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q47md", "title": "How accurate are the scenes in WWII movies (and other war movies) when soldiers approach a tank and drop grenades down the hatch? Did this happen as frequently as seen in the movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q47md/how_accurate_are_the_scenes_in_wwii_movies_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd8zoy5", "cd91jui", "cd92cew", "cd93bmq", "cd983qx", "cd9sl75"], "score": [50, 64, 20, 38, 192, 2], "text": ["I'm in interested in an answer, and because no one else has commented yet, I'd like to throw in a ride-along question:\n\nWere the 'sticky bombs' from Saving Private Ryan ever used against enemy armor?", "World War II was an enormous war, involving tens of millions of men and hundreds of thousands of armored vehicles\u2014if you can think of a way to kill tanks with common 1940s-era military technology, there's a good chance it happened.\n\nThat said, most hatches could be bolted by the tank crew, and likely would if enemy infantry was known to be present. More common means for infantry without dedicated anti-tank weaponry to disable a tank  would include using large charges (like sticky bombs/satchel charges, or just tying [seven grenades together](_URL_0_)), and placing them under the tank. If you HAD to use a single grenade, the best means would likely be to shove one into a viewport. Even if you couldn't get it all the way in, the explosive force would make its way into the cabin, with lethal results. \n\nShould note that these attacks were almost always borne of desperation, and were much more likely to end in infantry deaths than the destruction of tank. Tanks, it should be remembered, are faster than humans (on nearly any terrain both can traverse), are almost always used in groups, and are equipped with weaponry which can easily dispatch infantry in large numbers.", "Im assuming your talking about the scene in Saving Private Ryan? First of all the hatches on tanks could be locked from inside, and in urban combat like in the movie they certainly would have been locked. If I remember right the scene also shows an American soldier shooting into the tanks viewport, but during WW2 German tanks (not sure about other countries) used bulletproof glass in them...", "Similar to previous comments, no, nothing like the movies.  The use of armor in SPR is pretty silly.  Look to BOB and Longest Day for better depictions, as they're based on historical incidents/anecdotes.\nAlso, Normandy is a very odd battle tactically so is not a good indicator of general AT tactics.\nLets look at the Russian front and how both sides dealt with armor: AT guns and mines and lots of them.  Yes, pzfausts were plentiful in the later stages and useful up close but that requires lots of guts/drugs to be effective.\nFor the Russians the best weapons they had to kill tanks was cold, mud, and distance.  You don't have to blow up a tank if it won't run or the crew is disabled.\nSame applies in the West.  The Germans had a powerful fear of \"Jabos\" the allied fighter-bombers that patrolled the skies.  But after action reports show that many times more panzers were scuttled by crews when out of gas, bogged down, or broken than were even hit by aerial rocket attack.  Most of those were as a result of heavy artillery, saturation bombing, and supply chain interdiction.\nIt doesn't make for a good movie but if you want to win a war focus on logistics.  ", "Instances where soldiers approach an enemy tank and drop grenades down the hatch are almost unheard of as far as I'm aware. Anti-tank grenades like the RPG40 and RPG43 (which could be tied together in a bundle) and Molotov cocktails were the most common way for your typical ordinary infantryman to deal with a tank at extreme close range. In battle the tank hatches would normally be closed from the inside, but tank crews occasionally did open them to throw a grenade from the tank into a nearby trench. However, soldiers did commonly use to throw grenades into their own tanks if they had to abandon the machine, recorded examples of this occurred in the initial stages of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, like seen [here](_URL_0_) (from the recollections of a Soviet tankist, in Russian).  \n  \n  \nWith that in mind I would like to mention the rather unique example of Lt Petrishhev from the Soviet 53rd army. He and 15 other men in his platoon managed to capture a small hill from the Nazis after a bait and switch manoeuvre. After fighting off three waves of attacks and destroying three tanks including a flame tank with anti-tank grenades, their numbers were dwindled, but they had to fight off yet another German attack. Because they were low on ammo at this point, Petrishhev decided for this attack to let the tanks pass over the trench they were located in and then focus their fire on the infantry behind the tanks. This was working until one of the tanks that passed them opened its hatch and the Soviet soldiers were treated to German grenades. Petrishhev was concussed by a blast, but managed to throw an anti-tank grenade towards the tank, which landed into the hatch and blew the tank up! The hill was held after Petrushhev ordered artillery fire on his position, but only four of the platoon survived to the end, and all were awarded Hero of the Soviet Union stars. [Here](_URL_1_) is the full story, from his recollections (in Russian).  \n  \nEdit: thank you for the very unexpected gold, kind anon!", "There is a petition to have Lt-Col (Ret) Megellas' actions upgraded from a silver star to a Medal of Honour, for his action in killing a Panzer V with 2 hand grenades, one of them down the hatch.\n  \n_URL_2_\n > Nearing the outskirts of town, his men were then attacked and pinned down by a German Mark V Panther tank.  \nThe tank destroyers were not in position to engage the tank.  \nImmediately and at profound risk to his own life, Megellas charged the tank.  \nExposed to deadly small arms and machine gun fire, he reached the tank armed only with his Thompson Submachine Gun and two hand grenades.  \nHe disabled the tank\u2019s advance with a gammon grenade.  \n**He then climbed onto the tank, dropping a fragmentation grenade into the turret hatch, destroying the tank, killing its crew** and saving the lives of many of his men.\n\n_URL_1_\n > However, as they prepared to assault the town, a German Mark V tank took aim at them. Megellas ran towards it, and disabled it with a single grenade.  \nClimbing on top of it, he then dropped another grenade into the tank, eliminating the threat to his men.  \nHe then led his men as they cleared and seized the town, and not one of his men was killed or injured.  \nHe was nominated for the Medal of Honor shortly afterward, but the account of his actions was not included in the original battle reports, and he was instead awarded the Silver Star.\n\nAn American tanker received the Medal of Honour for his action on the receiving end of a grenade through the hatch:  \n_URL_0_  \n > A few days later \u2014 on July 8, \u2014 Sgt Timmerman's tank, of which he was tank commander, was advancing a few yards ahead of the infantry when the attack was held up by a series of Japanese pillboxes and trenches.  \nThe sergeant had been firing the tank's antiaircraft gun during the vigorous attack but when progress was halted, he prepared to fire the 75 mm gun.  \nExposing himself to the enemy, he stood up in the open turret of his tank to warn the infantry to hit the deck because of the muzzle blast of the 75 mm.  \nA Japanese grenade came hurtling through the air aimed in the direction of the open turret.  \nSgt Timmerman fearlessly covered the opening with his own body to prevent the grenade from killing his crew and the grenade exploded on his chest, killing him instantly.  \nAlthough two members of the crew received slight wounds from the grenade, none were killed, all the larger fragments being taken by Sgt Timmerman.  \nFor that his country bestowed its highest honor upon him - the Medal of Honor."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_24_grenade"], [], [], ["http://army.lv/ru/kv-1/996/4452", "http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=1737"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_F._Timmerman#Medal_of_Honor_citation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Megellas#World_War_II", "http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/petition-for-medal-of-honor-james-maggie-megellas.html"]]}
{"q_id": "vxofp", "title": "Would my air conditioner work more efficiently if I misted water over the outside part that disperses the heat?", "selftext": "I have central air and as it is the job of the [condenser coil](_URL_0_) to disperse heat, would it work more efficiently if I ran a sprinkler or mister so it would hit the condenser unit? It's made to be out in the weather so I don't think the water would harm it. What do?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vxofp/would_my_air_conditioner_work_more_efficiently_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c58iy0n", "c58iy3a", "c58kvm0", "c58mmta", "c58ngzx"], "score": [8, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Yes. By a lot, if you are in a dry climate. \n \nWater is very good at taking energy out of the air. This: _URL_0_ will explain it in detail, and commercial (industrial for sure, have not seen one for residential use) examples are abundant of water cooled air conditioner coils. ", "Possibly. People attach sprayers to their intercoolers (small radiator) for their turbochargers which helps dissipate the exhaust gas heat before it enters the turbo. Generally they use water or Isopropyl alcohol, the latter because it evaporates at a much lower temperature.\n\nI am not sure how much change you would notice in your A/C if you did this, but it would be interesting to see. \n\nI found this DIY intercooler sprayer guide that might help you should you decide to build one. \n_URL_0_", "Building Services Engineer here. Traditionally air conditioning systems used evaporative cooling towers to dissipate the heat from the condenser. Water will evaporate taking away heat rapidly, down to lower temperatures than the ambient \"dry bulb\" temperature. A lower temperature here means a lower temperature difference and so improved efficiency of the compressor.\nHowever, while evaporative cooling is still sometimes used, legionella bacteria have made it very uncommon, without strict controls to prevent the lukewarm water becoming a breeding ground for the pneumonia like bacteria, which would then be spread by the misting into the air. Some modern computer room cooling systems use a wick to evaporate the moisture while preventing the mist being sprayed.", "Yes, most window units now include a 'Water sling' fan blade system. The rear fan blades will have a plastic loop or ring that bands around the impellers. This allows the ring to dip down into the area within the rear of the AC, where the condensation water pools, to pick up and throw the water onto the rear coils were the heat is dissipated. Most people assume this is not correct, when they hear the blades touching the water, and they remove the rubber plug from the rear of the AC, allowing the water to run out. Do not remove the plug, and you'll likely see no water escaping from the AC at all. Instead you will hear the water being thrown onto the coils, where it will evaporate and help to cool the coils, and result on no water dripping from the AC at all.", "It takes 2260 joules to vaporize one gram of water at 100 degrees Celsius, so yes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/heating-and-cooling/how-to-repair-central-air-conditioners.htm"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_vaporization"], ["www.enginebasics.com/Advanced%20Engine%20Tuning/Intercooler%20Sprayers.html"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1e2tky", "title": "Are the normal skin flora of our feet different that those on the rest of our body?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e2tky/are_the_normal_skin_flora_of_our_feet_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9wn0gt"], "score": [3], "text": ["I assume you are referring to bacterial flora. \n\nYes it varies dramatically from other parts of your body. \n\nCheck out this figure: _URL_1_\n\n**Important**: Each chunk of those pie charts represents a **class** of bacteria. So each chunk can contain within itself multiple genera and species!\n\nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21407241", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3535073/bin/nihms424100f3.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2c4xvg", "title": "why do buildings have gravel on top of them?", "selftext": "A lot of big city buildings will have a layer of gravel on top of them. Why is this? Does it serve a purpose or is it just left over material from building?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c4xvg/eli5_why_do_buildings_have_gravel_on_top_of_them/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjby3ps", "cjc0vpz", "cjc10om", "cjc1tyh", "cjc2ty2", "cjc3mxj"], "score": [9, 233, 3, 30, 2, 8], "text": ["Those buildings are using a low sloped roofing system with a EPDM (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer).  It's a rubber layer that protects the roof.  The buildings that have a layer of gravel on them use an EPDM that does not have an adhesive side to keep it on the roof.", "The layer of gravel on a low slope / flat roof is used to help keep the underlay fabric secured and to provide some protection from the elements and human interference.\n\nThis roof type is typically composed of  overlapping layers of tar paper or rubber sheeting separated by tar.  Putting a thin layer of gravel (usually river gravel for the smooth edges) on top of the top tar layer will keep the tar from running as much during hot weather thus reducing the risk of a leak developing.  It also provides a safer, cleaner, more stable footing for anyone on the roof, as well as protecting the roof from that person's weight.  It keeps hailstones, errant baseballs, etc. from damaging the waterproof seal created by the paper and tar, as well as helping to keep the layers in place.\n\nFlat roofs in my experience are seldom totally flat.  Most of the ones I have been up on had a tiny bit of slope to them to feed water to the edges for removal.\n\nSource:  Carried more than a few rolls of felt paper up those steep ladders back in the days of my youth.", "A flat roof has a rubber membrane adhered to the decking that waterproofs the roof. The roof will also have a slight slope so as to remove water. Gravel serves a couple purposes, 1) to protect the membrane from damage, 2) to provide a flat surface to walk on and place equipment like A/C pumps.", "True Story:  Working in a hotel in Boston (with a big, flat roof as described by OP), the VP of the United States is planning to come to speak at a banquet, arriving in a motorcade.  A few hours before, I am in the GM's office when the call comes in from the VP's advance man asking if it is okay for them to arrive by helicopter, and land on the roof.  The GM says he thinks so (he's thinking about the weight), but says let me check with our Chief Building Engineer.  Calls the Chief on the phone, explains the question, and the Chief replies so loudly that I can hear his response sitting 8 feet away, \"Who's going to pick up the fucking pebbles!\"  The GM politely explained to the VP that they could land on the lawn.  ", "I always thought there was some salt element to the gravel to prevent snow buildup as well.. ", "Another that Skeezy hints at but needs to be pointed out is that gravel is used versus some lighter material is to provide weight to hold the roof material down during high winds. Flat semi concrete panels can be used for same purposes as all listed and are more suited for times when roof will be used for higher traffic such as tenant use. Gravel just happens to be a cheap suitable material that provides for a lot of benefits. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "448p9x", "title": "why, when carrying cargo, do helicopters dangle it so far below the helicopter while in transport?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/448p9x/eli5_why_when_carrying_cargo_do_helicopters/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czodxde", "czofj5p", "czok5it", "czomf8p", "czopp0g", "czp5gqi"], "score": [27, 13, 14, 695, 37, 2], "text": ["* the load is more stable there, and is less likely to shift the balance of the craft\n* there often isn't room inside\n* part of the advantage of helicopter cargo transport is being able to fit into tight spaces...having the cargo far below allows it to be loaded and unloaded without the helo having to land", "On top of the other great ideas/points, there is also the matter of the helicopter ideally gaining height before the load becomes a weight, a lot of slack allows the load to be a ways away (to the side or front or whatever), and for the helicopter to be fairly high when the load lifts.\n\nLower to the ground any small shift or sudden move is compounded by the fact that you're close to the ground, no wiggle room for the pilot.", "The distance below the helicopter varies depending on what is being hauled, the equipment being used, and special considerations such as setting the sling load down in a wooded area.  There are some more common pieces of equipment used in sling loading (exterior loads) that will give a somewhat uniform distance from the bottom of the helicopter.  As the helicopter accelerates it will pitch with its nose towards the ground, and the load will move behind it more and more as the helicopter flies faster based on air resistance and acceleration.  You don't want the load so close that it will strike the helicopter if oscillation occurs.  \n\nThere are three ways to improve the stability of a sling load.  They are to place the center of gravity in the 1st 1/3 of the load, give it a nose down attitude, or to streamline the load.  \n\nAnother reason reason that the sling load will be further away from the helicopter is because there may be a special circumstance that requires the load to be attached or detached while the helicopter is on the ground.  \n\nSource: U.S. Army Field Manual 3-21.38 (Pathfinder Operatons), and I am a Pathfinder School Graduate.", "Most of the answers here are plain wrong.\n\nActually, you try to have the load as close the the helicopter as possible (within reasonable limits, of course). There are several problems with dangling it far below:\n\n* Vibrations can build up in the wire, even to the point where the hook releases (I've seen that happen).\n\n* The load becomes a giant pendulum, which takes skill to keep in check, as it tends to have a will of it's own. All manouvres have to be planned further in advance, and done with more precision.\n\n* When the load has been dropped, the long wire is a potential hazard if it's not weighted down properly. You don't want it to snap up into the tail rotor.\n\n* Maximum speed is lower, due to above problems.\n\n* The pilot has a harder time being really accurate when hooking/unhooking, as the load will be further away.\n\nUsually, the load is just hanging a meter or two below the helicopter. You want enough clearance so that the cargo won't hit the helicopter, should the weight shift.\n\nThere are exceptions, of course:\n\n* When the circumstances don't allow a short wire. For example, if there are trees or you are building a power line.\n\n* When making a movie. It looks more impressive with a long wire.\n\n* When the load is large, so that the downwash will push down on the load. For example, some large antennas or building materials.\n\nSource: My father was a helicopter pilot, and I often worked with him.\n\nNote: I know they usually don't use a wire, but I don't know the proper English word for the nylon loops used. \"Stropp\" in Swedish.", "I spent nearly two years as helicopter crew on a HH60 in Afghanistan. \n\nOne of the reasons you want it lower is because the crew unloading doesn't have to get beaten by the rotorwash. Secondly you can set cargo down in spots where the bird may not fit. \n\nThird, and one of the most important points, is balance. Imagine a long pendulum. It swings slowly and doesnt necessarily affect it's anchor point that much. Of course it does, but not compared to a short pendulum that will swing more violently. \n\nYou don't want a too long line either though. If it's too long you'll get too much swing and landing the cargo becomes increasingly dangerous and difficult. ", "When the cargo is on the long line, the pilot can look out the open door, thru the bubble window if installed meaning you don't have to open the door or down thru the floor mounted viewing port.  This gives you an excellent view of exactly where the load is as opposed to looking at it with the small underside mirror you would use if you short line the load. Being able to look straight down the long line makes it so much easier to position the load when you need to be within inches of the target position.  When moving diamond drills for instance, you have to have motor or tower hovering almost exactly over matching holes so that crew can insert bolts to put the drill together.  If the process takes a long time for the crew to due, if for instance it is windy, you are watching it happen down the line and can make small corrections of the position of the load the aid the process.  If you are slinging a load into a clearing in the trees with a long line, even if the clearing is big enough for the helicopter to fit, it is better to be up above the trees and in the wind, because any breeze helps the helicopter produce lift.  If the load is near the maximum that you can lift, and it always is, then you will enjoy being above the trees for the entire duration of the lift. On a short line, when you go down into the clearing, the wind dies down, the lift decreases and the helicopter might sink under little control because you are near the maximum for being able to hover with the load.  The guys under you in this instance are not pleased to have their work space intruded on by an out of control load.  I always used a long line because I had much better control of the slinging operation with it. In the winter you also had a much better view when the guys went unhook the load and got zapped by tremendous amounts of static electricity.  Another advantage of a long line is that if the load starts to fly apart, think sheets of plywood cinched together and the straps let go, then the load on the long line is far away from the helicopter which means foreign object damage is not a concern.  Another example of a long line being ideal is if you have the camp groceries in a net on the end of a long line, you can park them right next to the cook tent door for ease of delivery.  You are so far up that the downwash isn't a concern on the ground.  Generally speaking there is always a little more wind just seventy or a hundred feet up, so staying up in that air when hovering is always better.  Another good fact about long lining is that you aren't down where the rotor downwash will make a tarp, jacket, garbage bag or whatever fly up into your main rotor, tail rotor, or compressor intake. Lots of helicopters get killed by them. Nuff said.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8pa2ty", "title": "Floating Feature: Awesome LGBT+ People of History", "selftext": "*Every now and then we like to run Floating Features--periodic threads intended to allow for more open discussion that allows a multitude of possible answers from people of all sorts of backgrounds and levels of expertise. We expect that anyone who wishes to contribute will do so politely and in good faith, but there is far more scope for speculation and general chat than there would be in a usual thread.*\n\n**Happy Pride Month, /r/AskHistorians!**\n\nOne of the most strongly-entrenched historiographical ideas has become the idea that \"homosexuality\" as an identity did not exist before the late 19th/early 20th century. Not, obviously, that men never had sex with men and women never had sex with women, but that, for example, (in early modern terminology) \"sodomy\" was something men did, or (in medieval clerics' minds) \"the sin against nature\" was something women had absolutely no idea about unless men told them so shhhh.\n\nSo historians often adopt a more restricted, LGBT-focused version of literary studies' queer theory to peer into the past. We look for non-normative patterns of gender partnerships or signs of attraction, and non-Western-normative expressions of gender.\n\nSo today, tell us about some of your favorite LGBT+ people or moments of homoeroticism, genderbending, and love between people of the same gender in history, before and after the 1900 divide!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8pa2ty/floating_feature_awesome_lgbt_people_of_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e09p8on", "e09w6vh", "e0a9cv0", "e0aallt", "e0awzn8", "e0bef46", "e0bjrii"], "score": [43, 17, 5, 10, 9, 6, 4], "text": ["Well, we should obviously mention **Sappho**, who even gave us the English terms 'sapphic' and 'lesbian' (Sappho came from the Greek island of Lesbos)! \n\nProblem with Sappho is that so little about her survives that it's difficult to sketch any biographical details; the only facts that seem fairly certain is that she was a 7th century BC lyric poet from the island of Lesbos, who would have written and performed verses to be accompanied with a lyre. Apart from that, we only know Sappho's titillating afterlife, as she was hailed as one of the greatest lyric poets of antiquity, who wrote verses so beautiful that they were almost sublime or divine in quality. Even Plato, who wasn't much of a fan of poetry, called her the Tenth Muse, and many male ancient authors showered her with passionate praise (e.g. Plutarch: \"Sappho speaks words mingled truly with fire; through her song she communicates the heat of her heart.\"). Most of her poems survive in fragments quoted by other ancient authors, which is a testimony to just how popular and loved her poetry was in antiquity. This is all really remarkable, since hardly any women in antiquity were respected or celebrated for their literary achievements, and all the more significant that Sappho had a persisting reputation of having female-lovers, and some people even thought she was a prostitute. \n\nAlthough Greek and Roman societies did not have a concept of homosexuality per se - it was pretty much granted that all men could desire both women and men - female x female action was always thought as unnatural and monstrous, since women were supposed to by nature assume the passive role in intercourse. The 11th century dictionary Suda states that Sappho had three female companions\u2014Atthis, Telesippa, and Megara\u2014with whom she had \u201cdisgraceful friendships\"; and many ancient authors, especially comic ones, discuss Sappho's female relations and use allusions to Sappho and the island of Lesbos as euphemisms for lesbian sex.  However, it's difficult to say whether Sappho's reputation as a lesbian is simply due to the impassionate and unusually outspoken way she talks about erotic desire towards both men and women - of course, poet could simply assume a female-loving persona for the sake of male audience - the fact that her work as a poet and performer transgressed the boundaries of normally acceptable female behaviour, or whether there is any historical truth to her actually having female lovers. There are also traditions of male lovers and that Sappho was married. Some ancient admirers seem to have an ethos to try to 'normalise' and explain away Sappho's homosexuality as only disgraceful rumours. Roman poet Ovid's (43 BC - AD 17/18) [piece about Sappho](_URL_0_) is especially interesting; Ovid there acknowledges Sappho's lesbian tendencies as sort of youthful folly and 'guilty love', but makes her fall desperately in love with Phaon, an old and ugly boatman in Lespos whom Aphrodite made dashingly handsome and youthful. Sappho even ends up committing suicide because she cannot stand her unrequited love for Phaon, who is after the more beautiful maidens of Sicily. So, Roman version of the 'you're not a lesbian, you just haven't come across the right man'?\n\nSo, even though it's open whether Sappho ever was even gay, she deserves her place in the history of LGTB people as a lesbian icon and as an amazing artist, whose work was loved so much that she transcended even the prejudices of the severely misogynistic and anti-lesbian Greco-Roman society. \n\nHere's one of my favourite 'gay' Sapphic fragments (fr. 16), translated by the amazing Anne Carson:  \n\n >  Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing\non the black earth. But I say it is    \nwhat you love.  \n\n >  Easy to make this understood by all.  \nFor she who overcame everyone  \nin beauty (Helen)  \nleft her fine husband  \nbehind and went sailing to Troy.  \n\n >  Not for her children nor her dear parents  \nhad she a thought, no\u2014  \n]led her astray  \n\n\n >  ]for  \n]lightly  \n]reminded me now of Anaktoria who is gone. \n\n >  I would rather see her lovely step   \nand the motion of light on her face   \nthan chariots of Lydians or ranks  \nof footsoldiers in arms.    \n[...]\n\n \n\nIf anyone wants to read more about Sappho, [the New Yorker](_URL_1_) has a pretty good and entertaining article about her directed to the general reader. ", "Happy Pride! There's a lot I could try and touch on here -- Edward II, Richard II, James VI and I, Eleanor Rykener, Shakespeare, Marlowe -- but I'm feeling like going way outside my historical comfort zone for one view of gay identity before the coinage of homosexuality as a term: the 19th century German essayist and poet Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. \n\nBefore the 20th century, many historical individuals we might now categorize as LGBT+ entered into historical documentation against their will -- people who were involuntarily outed, or whose identity came to light in the course of criminal prosecution. For me Ulrichs is an interesting case because he's frank about the apprehension he experienced around coming forward as an activist -- moments that have been characterized as *voluntary* coming out before formally coming out in a professional or domestic context was a common part of gay life. Ulrichs came out to his extended family via letter and documented his theory of sexual difference in his writings -- if the terminology of Urnings and Dionings ring any bells for you, he's the reason why, though he's not single-handedly responsible for the propagation of \"Uranian\" as an adjective for same-gender desire. (Blame Plato for that one.) Writing as Numa Numantius in his essay *Gladius Furens*, Ulrichs described his decision to publicly protest the suppression of a proposal for reform of the laws governing punishment for same-sex sexuality before the Association of German Jurists in Munich: \n\n\n > *Until my dying day I will look back with pride when on August 29, 1867, I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the specter of an age-old, wrathful hydra which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was poisoned. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.*\n\n > *What gave me strength in the last moments finally to mount the speaker's box at the  Association of German Jurists was the awareness that at that very moment the distant gaze of comrades of my nature was fixed on me. Should I return their trust with cowardice? Also giving me strength were the thoughts of a recent suicide caused by the governing system and whose effects are still smoldering since it occurred in Bremen in 1866. And also a letter I received as I was on the way to our session informing me that a colleague was said to have remarked about me, \"Numa is afraid to take action.\"*\n\n > *And in spite of all this, weak moments continued to creep up on me, and an evil voice whispered into my ear: \"There's still time for silence, Numa. You need only to forgo the words you have prepared. Then your heart palpitations shall cease!\"*\n\n > *But it was almost as if another voice began to whisper. It was the warning not to be silent, the one that warned my predecessor Heinrich H\u00f6\u00dfli in Glarus and which at that moment loudly resounded in my mind forcefully:*\n\n >  > 'Two paths lay before me [H\u00f6\u00dfli]: to write this book [*Eros Die M\u00e4nnerliebe der Griechen*, a survey of homosexual love in Classical Greek literature] and submit myself to persecution, or: not to write and be riddled with guilt when I enter my grave. For, surely I have already been confronted with the temptation to give up writing. But then the images of Plato and the Greek poets and heroes would appear to me, those who belonged to the nature of Eros and who became all that which should become of humanity. And beside these images I saw before me what we have caused such men to become. Before my eyes appeared the images of the persecuted and of those already damned who are yet unborn, and I behold the unhappy mothers beside their cradles rocking cursed, innocent children! Then I saw our judges and their blindfolded eyes. Finally I envisioned the gravedigger slide the cover of my coffin over my cold face. Then the overwhelming urge to rise and stand up for the oppressed truth powerfully seized me victoriously. And so I continued to write with my eyes decidedly turned from those who labor for my annihilation. I do not have a choice between keeping silence and speaking. I say to myself: \"Speak, or be judged!\"' \n\n > *I should like to be worthy of H\u00f6\u00dfli. I, too, did not desire to come under the hand of the gravedigger without having willingly attested to my oppressed inalienable rights and without having broken through one alley of freedom, even if for me there is less fame and a greater name to be made.* \n\n > *With these thoughts and with my heart pounding in my breast, I mounted the speaker's box on August 29, 1867, in the grand hall of the Odeon Theater in front of more than 500 jurists of Germany, among whom were members of the German parliament and a Bavarian prince. I mounted with God!*\n\n > [(trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash)](_URL_0_) \n\n\nAfter his public act of protest in Munich, Ulrichs went on to tangle with the law, breed butterflies, publish Latin-language prose and verse, correspond with other Latin language enthusiasts, and write more essays on the riddle of man-manly love. His works would come to the attention of sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld toward the end of the 19th century and his coinages describing gender and sexuality remained in circulation through the early 20th century. H\u00f6\u00dfli's statements about the \"curse\" laid on innocent children in a prejudiced society resonate with me much as they did for Ulrichs -- I get especially worked up about that kind of thing around Pride, surrounded by younger people whose experience of the cultural response to LGBTQ identity is very different from mine. Good luck, you gay babies. ", "So a lot of the talk here seems to equate LGBT with sexuality, but what about people who are gender variant?Does anybody know of trans people prior to the turn of the previous century?  \n\nThe one I\u2019m familiar with was Albert Cashier, a trans man who signed up to fight for the union in the civil war, then continued living as a man until he died in the late 1910s. \n", "I've felt a deep affection for Sappho thanks to JD Salinger since I was 13 or so, but she's been honored already \\-\\- so, to another tough woman:\n\nGertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein was born in America but relocated to France in 1902 at the age of 28, eventually settling in Paris, where she'd remain. Stein's name might not mean much to most, but she started her own salon and entertained the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, etc. She also had an incredibly close bond to a young Pablo Picasso. Her patronage and support of his art is really why you know him today (Picasso was hardly the only artist with whom Stein had a close relationship, but all of my books about her are in America and I am not at the moment).\n\nShe was also a lesbian. She began exploring her sexuality as a student at Johns Hopkins, but in Paris is where she really embraced it, finding a partner in Alice B. Toklas with whom she would remain until she died.\n\nAmong Stein's many contributions to the world of 20th century art and literature, she also coined the term, *The Lost Generation*, which happens to encapsulate most of the artists and writers that she was connected to.\n\nIf you want to read more about her, she wrote several books, the most well\\-known of which is *The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.*\n\nAnother LGBTQ hero of mine I'd like to give some much deserved, albeit ineloquent praise to is Marcel Proust. Proust is the writer of the immensely intimidating seven volume novel, *\u00c0 la Recherche du Temps Perdu*, translated as  *In Search of Lost Time*.\n\nProust was a sickly child of a well\\-to\\-do French family, although he did serve some time in the French Army. He spent his life alternately wasting away and taking part in the artistic high\\-society of France. The last three years of his life, illness got the best of him and he was essentially, although not physically tied to his bed. It was from this life \\-\\- as a child with a strong attachment to his mother, a soldier, a loafer, etc. that he drew inspiration to write *In Search of Lost Time*. It took, I believe nine years to write, and he died before he was able to complete it. It's a terrific novel, hellishly depressing in places, deeply reflective and a great source for understanding Parisian society at the turn of the century.\n\nHe never was open about his sexuality, but there is an undercurrent of homosexuality in ISOLT, and his compatriots almost universally agreed that he was a gay man.\n\nThere's lots of writers out there that you're better off not learning much about their personal lives \\-\\- but Proust is one of the exceptions. He's always struck me as a truly good, decent human being.", "Rock history is littered with promotional pushes for genuinely interesting, talented pop acts who commercially sink like a stone. Judee Sill, for example, was pushed pretty strongly by David Geffen and Reprise around 1970-1972 (listen to her great ['Jesus Was A Crossmaker'](_URL_2_)). Her music is moving and very well-constructed, baroque/Bach-influenced singer-songwriter music which nowadays has a cult following. She also, for better or worse, simply failed to capture the market despite the promotional push, the excellent reviews at the time and her current popularity.\n\nSill, despite her quite pristine, thoughtful music with its classical influences, was also a former junkie and sex worker, who as a teenager had a Bonnie  &  Clyde act with an older armed robber - she learned how to play Bach in reform school. Her story is *rather* a contrast to her music. And she was apparently bisexual: a [Barney Hoskyns piece on her in *The Guardian*](_URL_3_) suggests that one time when her lawyer came to visit her, she was *'surrounded by her adoring female fans. I remember going round there one morning and there were maybe four or five other women, all sunbathing in the nude.'* (Hoskyns also claims that Sill went through a series of female lovers whom she treated with mild contempt).\n\nPerhaps it was Sill's openness about her decidedly un-Christian life choices that made the singer-songwriter audience wary of her often religiously-themed music. In contrast, modern audiences, with a bit more distance (and much more of a taste for darkness, in the age of Nirvana and Eminem), find the distinction between the music and the person fascinating; a 2009 tribute album to her featured tracks by Bill Callahan, Beth Orton, and a member of Grizzly Bear.\n\nBut I was originally only going to discuss Sill as an example; instead I was going to talk here Bruce Wayne Campbell, better known as Jobriath, who was basically the first out gay man to get a real promotional push as a rock star, in 1973-1974. Jobriath had previously been in a folk rock band called Pidgeon and musically was somewhere between Elton John and David Bowie. And Jerry Brandt, the manager of Carly Simon, discovered a demo of Jobriath and was besotted, and he went and tracked down Jobriath, who was an alcoholic working as a prostitute in California at this point, and sobered him up and got him signed to Elektra Records. By this point, it was the height of glam and androgynous male singers who liked to suggest at least bisexuality, and Brandt and Jac Holzman of Elektra thought there might be a place in the market for Jobriath.\n\nSo they recorded an album, with Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones involved, and had a *proper* music industry promotional push. Put it this way: over Christmas 1973, a massive 41 by 47 foot poster of Jobriath adorned New York's Time Square, and there were full-page ads everywhere from Vogue to Esquire to the music press. And they were not shy about Jobriath's sexuality: he proclaimed \"I'm a true fairy!\" in one interview. Brandt's influence got Jobriath a slot on the premiere music performance television show of the time, The Midnight Special ([which you can see here](_URL_0_)). It was going to be huge.\n\nClearly, as you have probably never heard of Jobriath before, it was not huge. Despite the promotional blitz, the public was largely either nonplussed or actively hostile. Bruce Wayne Campbell had not actually performed in public at this point as Jobriath during Brandt's promotional blitz - it was all image rather than music, as far as Brandt was concerned. In a [1998 *Mojo* piece](_URL_1_), Jobriath's keyboard player, Hayden Wayne, complained of Brandt that \"your manager has to have you interests at heart, not the creation of a platform to gesticulate his own ego and power of influence.\"\n\nOnce they were finally booked to play shows in America, they played a show at the Nassau Coliseum in New York, and discovered the crowd booing them as 'faggots', In England, where glam rock was much more massive than it was in the UK, the album was *slammed* by the press: the NME sneered that it was the 'fag-end of glam rock'. In the rock world, the androgyny and bisexuality of glam rock was largely seen as play-acting; people at the time famously thought that Freddie Mercury's camp mannerisms were just affectations. Someone openly saying they were a 'true fairy', in 1974, was pretty far out for mainstream America/the UK; the Stonewall riots had only been five years previous, and gay rights advocacy was in its infancy.\n\nJac Holzman of Elektra said in an interview for a 1998 piece about Jobriath in *Mojo*  that *'It was an awful album. The music seemed secondary to everything else. It was all too much too soon and didn't suit the label. Not because of the gay angle, it was just lacking in any sense of reality. It's an embarrassment, something that's come back to haunt me.'* \n\nJobriath released a second album, six months later, before the record company and Brandt lost interest; he auditioned for an important role in the Al Pacino film *Dog Day Afternoon* before retiring from show business to live on the top floor of the (in)famous Chelsea Hotel. He passed away in 1983, an early victim of AIDS only months after the disease became frontpage news.\n\nNonetheless, Jobriath ended up with quite a range of followers, suggesting that not everyone agreed with Holzman that it was an awful album; Gladiola-brandisher and Smiths lead singer Morrissey was the impetus being a 2004 release of a compilation of his music. Def Leppard covered Jobriath's 'Rock Of Ages', while Okkervil River's album *The Stand Ins* has a song titled 'Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel, 1979'.\n", "(1/2)\n\nContrary to some modern sensationalist claims that sailors of old were at least tolerant of same-sex relations as a substitute for women in an all-male environment, there is mountains of evidence to indicate this was far from the case. The crime of sodomy was legally punishable by death in most European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, and sailors accused of sodomy at sea could either be executed (sometimes by being tied together and thrown overboard) or marooned. Other times they could face lesser punishments like flogging. \n\nThe topic of this post is an employee of the Dutch East India Company or VOC who was convicted of sodomy and marooned on the remote and uninhabited Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in 1725, where he eventually died from thirst. To give a little more historical context, just five years after this in the Netherlands there was an intense outbreak of persecution of homosexuals in 1730-32 called the Utrecht sodomy trials which resulted in at least 75 men and boys being executed for sodomy. That should give some idea of just how deadly and vicious things really were when it came to this. \n\nLeendert Hasenbosch was probably born in The Hague in the Dutch Republic in about the year 1695. He was the fifth of six children, all girls except for him. His father appears to have at some point worked as a grocer, but in around 1708-09 he made the decision to travel to the Dutch East India colony of Batavia with three of his daughters. This would have been a very drastic and risky undertaking likely brought on by some financial catastrophe. Leendert for whatever reason was left behind in the Netherlands and likely appointed some type of male guardian and given some education. In 1713, Leendert joined the VOC himself as a soldier at about the age of 18. His ship departed for the East Indies in 1714 and he arrived at Batavia that same year. He served as a soldier in the Dutch East Indies for the next eight or nine years, eventually being promoted to a corporal and then a military clerk or minor bookkeeper. \n\nHe never married. There was also a strange thing that occurred in August 1722, when Leendert transferred his complete outstanding salary (totaling over 287 Dutch guilders or something like $5,000 today by my calculations) to a man named Jan Backer living all the way back in the Dutch Republic. Why Leendert did this is unknown but the salary logs record negotiations between notaries and representatives of Leendert, and that Leendert had been summoned to pay several times in the preceding years. Had Leendert incurred some huge debt all those years ago before he left the Netherlands or committed some terrible crime that he was being demanded to pay restitution for? Was he being blackmailed in some way? Again, we don't know but aside from a desire to rejoin his father it could explain why Leendert might have joined the VOC as a soldier at the age of 18, a notoriously dangerous and grueling employment that only desperate people would usually undertake. But if he was hoping to escape something or somebody in the Netherlands it clearly didn't work because eventually they found him. \n\nIn 1723, Leendert's father died in Batavia. In 1724, Leendert for whatever reason decided to finally return to the Netherlands. In October he signed on for a voyage functioning as a bookkeeper (still in the employ of the VOC) and in December the ship set sail for the Netherlands as part of a fleet of sixteen ships. On March 19, 1725, the fleet stopped in Cape Town, South Africa, to restock provisions for the next leg of the voyage and they departed again on April 11. Cape Town had been a Dutch outpost for over a century by this point and letters and mail were deposited here for the next ship to collect and take to their destination. It's possible that some sort of incriminating information against Leendert emerged as a result of this because less than a week later he was convicted aboard the ship he sailed on and sentenced to be marooned on an island. A note on Leendert's salary log later read:\n\n >  On 17 April 1725, on the *Prattenburg,* he was sentenced to be set ashore, being a villain, on the island of Ascension or elsewhere, with confiscation of his outstanding salary. `\n\nPossibly one reason he was spared execution is that as the ship's bookkeeper he was classed as an officer (which included even having his own cabin). On April 27, the ship passed by the island of Saint Helena (of course where Napoleon was imprisoned a century later) but Leendert was not left there, presumably because the island was inhabited and owned by the British East India Company. On May 3, the ship reached Ascension Island almost 500 miles further to the northwest and Leendert was put ashore on May 5 with little more than a large cask of water, a musket with some powder and shot, a tent, a hatchet, some buckets, a frying pan, some rice and vegetable bulbs. Ascension is a decently sized island measuring roughly five miles in diameter. It is also hilly and does have several sources of fresh water that had been made use of over two decades previously when the English captain William Dampier was temporarily shipwrecked on the island with his crew in 1701. \n\nSo given these circumstances, although being marooned on an uninhabited island with limited tools and resources certainly isn't easy, why was Leendert not able to pull off an impressive feat of survival and learn to live off the land eventually with relative ease like Robinson Crusoe or the real-life Alexander Selkirk or other famous castaways? Why did he instead end up dying of thirst on an island that had already several decades earlier been attested as having fresh water sources? To answer these questions, our only option is to examine a short published account called *Sodomy Punished* first appearing in 1726 that purported to be the journal of Leendert Hasenbosch that he kept on the island and another very similar account published in 1728 purporting to be of an \"anonymous Dutchman\" called an *An Authentick Relation.* These accounts are very similar and describe Leendert's activities in the form of log entires written each day or so, and altogether give a quite gritty and believable view of his struggles to survive and find water on the island and his eventual failures to do so and deteriorating physical and mental state leading up to his death over five months later around October 14 when the journal finally stops. \n\nMore problematic are the moral and religious sermons very obviously injected into the text by publishers as a pronouncement against sodomy and which attempt to paint Leendert as extremely remorseful for his sins and his death as divine punishment. It even includes him being tormented by ghosts and spirits. This is why it's hard to say how much of any of it is reliable and based on a real journal found with Leendert's belongings when they were reportedly discovered by English sailors in January 1726. However, the best evidence that there is indeed a basis of truth to the account is that modern researchers have independently tracked down the Dutch VOC records of Leendert Hasenbosch and the ship's logs which record the ship he sailed on as stopping at Ascension Island on the exact date he was marooned -- things the 18th century Englishmen who found his belongings wouldn't have had access to. \n\nAssuming the finer details of his struggles on the island are mostly true, after being left alone on May 5, Leendert mostly spent his first month hunting and eating turtles and birds along with boiled rice. He raised a white flag atop a hill to signal to passing ships that someone was there but didn't do much else. He tried to plant some of the vegetable bulbs and pease that had been given him but found it was impossible without enough moisture. He also managed to accidentally light part of his tent on fire through forgetfulness, although nothing much was destroyed. Supposedly he spent a lot of his time reading the Bible and also briefly kept a wounded bird as a pet which died a week later. He also seems very depressed and frequently mentions not caring if he lives or dies. \n\nOn June 8, Leendert began to worry about how low his supply of water was getting and went searching for water across the island which he eventually found a small trickle of and this was enough to sustain him. He continues to seem very depressed and a typical day concludes something like this\n\n >  [June 13] In the evening went and looked out for ships, but returned very melancholy, seeing none. \n\nThis is also the point where *Sodomy Punished* and *An Authentick Relation* inject various passages about him seeing the ghosts and spirits of hellish creatures, and even being haunted by his former male lover. This part is probably made up but does contain a few interesting lines and the only references to who his lover might have been:\n\n >  ...we were formerly soldiers together, and I know that he was a very debauched person, and a Menist [Mennonite] as to his belief, and not baptized; yet tho' he was no stranger to the words and works of our almighty God, I have heard him use the most blasphemous expressions that can be. (*Sodomy Punished*) \n\nThere is also this single seemingly heartfelt reminisce that seeps through:\n\n >  ...when he was in this world we were as great as two own brothers. He was a soldier at Batavia. (*An Authentick Relation*) \n", "Elagabalus is endlessly interesting, but given the politicised nature of contemporary writing, with sexual deviancy used alongside and as invective, in conjunction with Dio's references to Elagabalus' 'barbaric' Syrian dress, his placing a foreign God before even Jupiter, and referring to him as 'Sardanapalus', I would love to know where best to read further as  I am not conversant with the discussion as to the veracity of the below.\n\n[Dio](_URL_0_) reports thusly\n\n >   Sardanapalus, on seeing him, sprang up with rhythmic movements, and then, when Aurelius addressed him with the usual salutation, \"My Lord Emperor, Hail!\" he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him with a melting gaze, answered without any hesitation: \"Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.\"\n\nFurther going on to state\n\n > He carried his lewdness to such a point that he asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in his body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.\n\nHe also reports Elagabalus comported himself as a woman,  'standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do', and wooing men paid for their part. Elagabalus' most stable and longest relationship is also reported to have been with the chariot driver Hierocles, whom Elagabalus referred to as his husband, seeing himself as his 'queen'.\n\nIt certainly seems as though Elagabalus may be perceived as transgender, and it is a very different relationship from the more normative paedarasty, but is there anything further corroborating Dio and Herodian? I feel as though the very fact that such terminology and characterisation was used suggests that there is at least some precedent for such a presentation of gender and sexuality (whether from Elagabalus or other sources). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0085%3Apoem%3D15", "https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted"], ["http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts/UrningPride.pdf"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXks3Xjydh0", "http://web.archive.org/web/20060427003407/http://www.crapfromthepast.com/jobriath/mojo.htm", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8tDmPmC_Bk", "https://www.theguardian.com/observer/omm/story/0,13887,1369079,00.html"], [], ["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/80*.html#79-16"]]}
{"q_id": "6jemcp", "title": "When and why did Mendelssohn's \"A Midsummer Night's Dream\" become the most popular musical accompaniment for wedding ceremonies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jemcp/when_and_why_did_mendelssohns_a_midsummer_nights/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djdzowe", "dje1of8"], "score": [27, 67], "text": ["Not to answer the question, but for anyone else puzzled by the question, this is the tune the OP is talking about.  You will recognize it when you hear it.  I never knew the name.\n_URL_0_\n", "Firstly, I wouldn't say that the *Wedding March* (*Hochzeitsmarsch*) from the incidental music that Mendelssohn wrote for *A Midsummer Night's Dream* is the *most* popular music at weddings. In fact, the Wedding March *shares* its popularity at weddings with the *Bridal Chorus* (popularly known as *Here Comes the Bride*) from Wagner's *Lohengrin*. The two pieces are complimentary. *Here Comes the Bride* is stately, solemn, almost ethereal and is used for the moment when the bride floats, swanlike, down the aisle on her father's arm towards the man with whom she will share her destiny while her mother wipes away a tear, etc, etc; the *Wedding March* is 'an ideal mixture of bombast, sentimentality and gravity' for the recessional as the laughing couple, with the crowd of guests behind them, walk out to get rice thrown into their hair. That's part of the 'why\u2019 the March has remained popular for so long - it's great music and fits the mood at the end of the wedding very well. \n\nThe incidental music to *A Midsummer Night's Dream* was written in 1843 and premiered in October 1843 at Potsdam (the famous Overture had been written in 1826, while Mendelssohn was still a teenager). The British premiere, with the composer conducting, was in May 1844 - (Mendelssohn was a frequent visitor to Britain, where he was very popular and was befriended and greatly admired by Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort and the other royals). A vocal score was published in 1844, and a full score in 1848. \n\nIn March 1899, after the Wedding March had been popular for a considerable time, Samuel Reay, a British organist, wrote to the *Musical Times*, noting that he had transcribed the piece for organ and performed it for the first time at the grand society wedding of Mr. Tom Daniel and Miss Dorothy Carew, at St. Peter's Church, Tiverton, June 2, 1847. Whether or not Reay was the first to have played it at a wedding, no one seems to have stepped forward with a claim of a prior performance. _URL_0_ Punch mentions that it was played at a fashionable wedding in Knightsbridge in 1857. _URL_2_\n\nIt is often said to have been the wedding of Victoria, the Princess Royal and daughter of Queen Victoria, to Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia in the Chapel Royal in St James\u2019s Palace on 25 January 1858 that made the *Wedding March* fashionable. It is possible that this was a request made by the bride or her mother to honor their dead friend, but this is unknown. At any rate, from here on the piece was often played at weddings, and by 1870 one writer notes that \u201cin these times, all the young ladies 'in the fashion\u2019 expect to have Mendelssohn\u2019s Wedding March played over them\u201d.  _URL_1_\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIM5cWB2wmM"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=npAPAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PA194", "https://books.google.com/books?id=YLMPAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PP8", "https://books.google.com/books?id=PmlPAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA50"]]}
{"q_id": "38ajrg", "title": "why are power companies in the us allowed to hold monopolies on the areas they service?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38ajrg/eli5_why_are_power_companies_in_the_us_allowed_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crtklkn", "crtlzb1", "crtohj0", "crtq9te", "crtt8y6", "crttk9a", "crtv72b", "cru1inw", "cru5f84", "cru7apl", "cru96lh", "crua1it", "cruet1g", "crui2qk"], "score": [352, 60, 8, 35, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because each electric company would need to install their own wires, which makes it costly to enter the market and also if multiple companies did, would mean there would be electrical wires and cables everywhere. The government decided the best thing to do would be allow monopolies but closely regulate them so they don't exploit the customers.", "**MONOPOLIES ARE NOT INHERENTLY ILLEGAL**\n\nThere's nothing wrong with having a monopoly, it's only when you start using the monopoly position to affect other markets or block competition that it becomes illegal.\n\nFurthermore, utilities are generally an example of a [natural monopoly](_URL_0_) - there's too much overhead and startup costs to support healthy competition.", "Investors would not fork over the large sums of capital necessary to wire up every home and business across a large growing nation without some chance of a reasonable return.  \"Natural Monopolies\" are granted if the benefit to everyone is apparent and necessary.   Just like cable, the distribution of electricity required wires running everywhere to everyone.  There's little benefit to ripping up infrastructure every time a competitor wants market entry.  \n\nNote the industry has two other entities;  bulk power generation and transmission.  These have been exposed to competition in various state/fed regulation experiments. ", "I got this one!\n\nI work at a RTO(regional transmision organization).  We manage an electric market for our region of the US in which all member companies can buy or sell power.  In this market we have both generators, Duke, PECO, TVA and other power companies as well as market participants, which are investors or speculators.  \n\nWithin this market we can provide a wholesale pricing for the generators and incentive more or less power production using our pricing model.  Basically what this does is make one massive pool of energy we can float around the entire region to service under powered areas, think of NYC (lots of consumption and little production) from over powered area producers (that big nuke plant out in suburbia)\n\nAn areas bills may all say they come from one provider.  When really that electricity you are using is coming from multiple sources all across the country and landing in your home, there is no way to split out each individual generators power.\n\nA little bit more light reading if anyone is interested.\n[RTO info](_URL_0_)\n\nIf there is any interest I can answer any other questions out there too.", "Just a general note: Monopolies aren't illegal. Maintaining a monopoly through market manipulation is the illegal thing.\n\nNow, specifically in the realm of electricity, other answers have mentioned natural monopolies and they cover most of it but just a wee bit of science helps explain why it's 'natural' and not just convenient.\n\nAs electricity moves along a wire, it heats the wire up and the current of electricity gets weaker. Roughly, this loss can be made proportional to length. You could think of it kind of like needing to fill pipes up with water before you can pressurize them. The less wire electricity goes through, the less energy you lose. Unlike other industries, there's an economy of scale that benefits from minimizing the grid infrastructure in a physical way. Multiple, competing grids results in more power loss because the power has to effectively make a longer trip. As the analogy with water suggests, this also goes on with other utilities to varying degrees.", "It's cheaper for us as consumers. \n\nThe current power grid in existence is all from cooperation, and it's already not perfect. Now imagine having to put in a whole new power gird for each company that popped up? The coverage would be awful, the costs would be higher, because the infrastructure would cost the same, but not as much revenue would be generated. \n\nThere are some other smaller points that would also contribute, but I think I got most of the major points.", "Any lower-level micro econ class will get into this. Essentially, it's thought best to have a heavily-regulated monopoly running utilities.", "Most of the answers are pretty good so far, but they lack a little something I will clarify.  \n\nThe electricity grid can be split in roughly 3 parts:  \n1) Production  \n2) High-capacity transportation  \n3) Local distribution  \n\nPart 1) has mostly been a private and public partneship for most of the past 100 years; sometimes with more or less of the former or latter. Nowadays, it's pretty much wide-open.  \n\nPart 2) has mostly been a public thing until the 1960's but the tide is turning back to more private involvement. It used to be a way for the governement to get their hand on all the energy and then redistribute it \"equally\".  \n\nPart 3) has pretty much been well covered in all the answers. You grant a monopoly to:  \n\na) stimulate companies to spend millions and billions of dollars on the local infrastructure;  \nb) avoid parallel forests of pylons in cities and  \nc) most importantly, to allow the the deployment of a full grid that realizes the numerous advantages of a \"grid effect\" (namely rerouting, balancing).  \nThere you go my friend!\n\nEDIT: oh, I forgot to mention about the energy brokers... Nowadays, some private companies are allowed to buy energy from the producers, transporters or even distributors, and then market that energy and of course, sell it to consumers. For example, they can buy it from a transporter and then pay a \"toll\" to a local distributor, to get it to your house, for example, for using their local infrastructure. There you have it, the 50,000 feet high energy picture!", "What else are they going to do? It's power which is transmitted across power lines. The only interaction different utilities really have is when they sell power to each other which is done by calculating how much power is sent between utilities.\n\nUtilities are often at the mercy of the state government due to how they're regulated, so the monopoly they have isn't quite as heinous as or similar to, say, a telecom company.", "They're considered natural monopolies, opening a new utility company for the most part would mean they need to make their own infrastructure. This is too costly and isn't worth it, also would be too difficult in most already developed areas. So govt allows it with strict regulations ", "I just had an exam that dealt with this from an economic point of view. It's called an natural monopoly. The infrastructure needed sell electricity to the consumer is extremely expensive, but the marginal cost of selling more electricity once the cables and power plant is up is relatively speaking very cheap. Any established natural monopoly will always be able to outbid any newcomers. This means that competition is not really an option. Lack of competition means that the monopolies need to be regulated - if not they will demand \"monopoly prices.\" There are several ways to regulate the monopoly but none of them are perfect. \nI don't know how you do this in the US but in Norway the local power company has a monopoly on the connection to the grid, but the consumer can buy the electricity from any company they want. So we have manged to break the monopoly on the electricity, but it's still not possible (or economically feasible) to have full competition on the connection to the grid.     \n\n", "The idea is that due to increasing returns to scale, power companies are natural monopolies (as opposed to monopolies from market power or collusion, etc.) the problem with monopolies is that their profit maximizing strategy is frequently to set prices at levels higher than would be expected from a fully competitive market, meaning that there is less of the good/service in the market than is socially desirable.\n\nSince power companies are natural monopolies, governments instead a) regulate the rates they can charge and b) mandate that they provide certain services that they would not provide otherwise, such as electric power to very remote homes. It's not a perfect solution, but probably better than a non-interventiost outcome.", "The top content is incorrect.  In Texas, there is one company that is in charge of the infrastructure and dozens of power providers. Go to _URL_0_ to see what deregulation can do to your electric bill... If you lived in state tax free Texas.\n\nThere are options for all wind power or all alternative power of you chose. Pretty cool.", "Some states allow it because they installed the lines.\n\nIllinois recently (last few years) got rid of that regulation. Now we can get power from anywhere.  The problem is that ComEd still owns/maintains the power lines since they installed them. So I get my power supplied from somewhere else, but ComEd is still my provider.\n\nI can switch suppliers at any time, but \n\n1. billing is still handled through ComEd (it breaks it down on the bill then)\n\n2. most suppliers have minimum term contracts you must agree to. So I can get power from CompanyA, but for 12 months at a locked price and afterwards I have to renew, or switch. If i want to switch sooner, then I will have to pay a termination fee.\n\n3. ComEd gets to maintain that ownership because not every company has the equipment to install/maintain those lines, and it would be problematic for every company to just build on.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organization"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["www.powertochoose.org"], []]}
{"q_id": "5firsf", "title": "how can a side affects of antidepressants be thoughts of suicide?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5firsf/eli5_how_can_a_side_affects_of_antidepressants_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dakhzh0", "daki7xc", "dakir0s", "dakt4vo", "dakuv6n", "dakxi9t", "dald4sb"], "score": [117, 8, 2, 4, 2, 3, 7], "text": ["The side effect isn't as direct as your post title makes it seem.\n\nRather it goes like this:\n\nA heavily depressed person has suicidal thoughts/tendencies, however the depression is so deep that it negates the will/drive to do anything, including committing suicide.\n\nOn starting the therapy, the therapist realizes that any treatment will fail due to the absolute lack of drive and deep seated melancholia. He prescribes antidepressants. They work as intended and increase the depressive persons activity level, thus making them theoretically \"fit\" for treatment. However in doing so, the pharmaceuticals also increased the likelihood of suicide as the treated person now has enough drive/motivation to act, including potentially acting on their suicidal tendencies.\n\nTL:DR\nSometimes the only thing keeping a depressed person from committing suicide, is their total lack of drive to act. Antidepressants may work just well enough to up the drive but not well enough to remove the suicidal tendencies.", "We don't even know \"how\" most antidepressants work. \"How\" is less relevant than the fact they do work, some of the time, for some people.\n\nHow it can, apparently, have an opposite effect is not entirely clear. \n\nOne theory is that the drugs make the person more alert and more active, more able to act on their motivatons, making it easier to follow through on existing suicidal ideation. Another idea is that their brain chemistry, and their mood,  is changing in ways they are not used to,  and this up and down effect can push someone to extreme ends of the spectrum.\n\nHere's some more information: _URL_0_", "Side effects are things that you are likely to experience while taking the drug, as determined by what was reported by people using the drug during clinical trials. They're not all necessarily *caused* by the drug.\n\nThoughts of suicide are commonly reported by people who are depressed, and antidepressants aren't 100% effective, so it's not unreasonable to assume that the thoughts of suicide are just an aspect of depression that is not wholly alleviated by the medicine.\n\n", "An incredibly complex question that modern science cannot answer. \n\nWe can't answer it for two very important reasons: \n\n1.  We do not understand fully the neurological mechanisms by which antidepressants (SSRIs  &  others) act, and \n\n2.  We do not fully understand all of the neurological causes behind suicidal thoughts and behaviors, nor can we say that all suicidal thoughts are created equal or stem from the same source. \n\nLike /u/monkiesnacks mentioned, paradoxical reactions can account for some of it - for every drug that does X in 95% of people, 5% of people will have Y, the *exact opposite* reaction.  \n\nThe problem is, we don't fully understand how the brain and cognition works, and how our own neurotransmitters and hormones affect this process, and we don't fully understand how the pharmaceuticals we're introducing factor into that. \n\nConsider this huge, gaping flaw - to be prescribed SSRIs, you go to a therapist, who diagnose your mental state, and prescribe you the drug. \n\nSSRIs inhibit reuptake of serotonin.  Now for a lot of people, that seems to make them happier / less depressed.  Which leads us to believe, ok, obviously serotonin, and serotonin reuptake, has a large role in depression and anxiety. \n\nBut does ALL clinical depression and anxiety stem from Serotonin reuptake?  We don't know.  What if that depressed person who went to the therapist has some sort of atypical manifestation that on the surface acts just like depression, but neurologically *has absolutely nothing to do with standard neurological causes of depression?* \n\nIt isn't like they do scientific tests to confirm some sort of deficiency before prescribing the drugs - they basically throw drugs at a patient until something sticks, leaning on the balance of probability.  This drug works for *most* people, so it will *most likely* work for you. \n\nSo if you have some sort of quirky neurological cause for your depression, not only may taking SSRIs *NOT* help you, it may actually *exacerbate* your condition, because now you're upsetting a neurochemical balance even further *in the wrong direction*.  Perhaps your Serotonin levels had some intricate relationship to the real cause of your depression, and you needed LESS serotonin, not MORE.  By prescribing SSRIs, and increasing your extracellular concentration of serotonin, you may in fact throw your neuro-chemical imbalance into overdrive, rapidly accelerating the process. \n\nThis, alas, is the great difficulty with pharmacology.  When a drug works *for most people*, it usually goes to market without its mechanisms of action being fully understood.  \n\nTo REALLY study a drug, you should give it to a few thousand people, some with one condition, others with no condition, and study those people *for their entire lives*, accumulating data about their hormone levels, moods, life outcomes, causes of death, and then autopsy them after death for good measure to see if the drug made any significant changes. \n\nInstead, they usually give it to a few hundred people for six months or a year, find out it works, and then go to market.\n", "As others have said, medically speaking it is difficult to say.  It makes sense from a psychological standpoint though.  If you are horribly depressed and someone finally offers you a \"cure\", you are now given a sense of hope.  Once you take that cure and find yourself not only still depressed but now you are suffering through the side effects of anti depressants (Weight gain, insomnia, sexual side effects) which can be psychologically damaging in their own right.   Now your cure has made you feel worse than you were before taking the cure so you could start to wonder what is the point?  You feel doomed to a life of crippling depression with or without nasty side effects.  It can feel like a no win situation.", "I think something that can be confusing is the naming of these drugs. We call these drugs \"**anti**-depressants\", there are other like \"**anti**-psychotics\". These names are misleading because it implies that the drugs have a specific mechanistic effect against the symptoms. This is like giving alcohol to someone who has social anxiety and because it makes them less inhibited and more confident we then call it \"**anti**- social anxiety\" medicine.\n\nOf course most people intuitively understand that alcohol is not correcting something in the brain of people with social anxiety. It is simply changing their mental state in a way that masks the original symptoms. It would be silly to think that these people have an alcohol deficiency. \n\nAnti-depressant drugs are not really known to have a specific effect against some underlying cause of depression. They are simply changing a persons mental state just as other drugs do. Once we start thinking of the drugs in this way then we can start to understand how they might have unexpected effects. For example, 70-80% of people who take SSRI antidepressants experience some form of sexual dysfunction. This is because the drugs disrupt normal serotonin function in the brain, and serotonin is important for sexual function.  \n\nOne of the negative side effects that some people can experience is called akathisia. This term is a little broad but it essentially means that people can become extremely restless almost like they are having a \"depression attack\" which is similar to a panic attack only instead of anxiety building up it is depression and feelings of despair and hopelessness. This can be extremely disturbing and make people feel like the only way out is to harm themselves. This may be the reason why in large trials there are more suicidal events in the drug group than placebo, because some people experience this side effect. It also explains many of the anecdotes of people who were prescribed SSRIs for off-label conditions such as sleep, who had no history of depression, and they subsequently went on to commit suicide very suddenly after taking the drugs. \n\nI should point out that this is not a mainstream view. Most doctors and psychiatrists will tell you that the reason why people commit suicide is because the drug is helping them and giving them more energy. However there is no evidence to back this up and it doesn't explain suicides of those without mental illness. In my view it is much more likely that the drugs are harming people than helping them. If you interact with a complex system (our brains) in ways you don't fully understand, you are far more likely to cause disruption than to enhance function. The problem is that any drug that causes a side effect that is also a symptom of the illness it is used to treat can be easy to overlook. Since people who are depressed are more likely to commit suicide, someone who does so while taking an anti-depressant is not thought of as being particularly unusual and it is easy to \"pin the blame\" on the depression as opposed to the drug. ", "Time to get an explanation from someone on antidepressants! This should be fun.\n\nLet's visualize my brain as a person.\nMy skull is a control room, got some lights flashing, control panels beep boop boop all that shit.\n My brain is the only worker, and he's slumped over against the big red \"SELF DESTRUCT\" button. \n\nNow, to actually complete the self destruction he'd have to lift himself off the button, but he can't do that; He's passed out from overworking. The antidepressants are the bomb squad crew members that come in to make sure everything DOESN'T go to shit. \nBut, they're pretty bad at their job, and kinda just lift my brain off the button and proceed to panic. \n\nAs a result, I have the energy to actually go kill myself, and the will to go kill myself.\n\nThis can be remedied by having a more members come in, or by having a different squad come in to make sure everything doesn't blow up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-do-antidepressants-raise-your-suicide-risk-surprising-science-behind-paradoxical-reactions"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52u9ci", "title": "on 9/11, why weren't the 2 planes headed for the twin towers shot down for being in restricted airspace? or not shot down at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52u9ci/eli5_on_911_why_werent_the_2_planes_headed_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7ncq8v", "d7ncrxg", "d7ndcb1", "d7ndgme", "d7ne9hn", "d7ng8h3", "d7nh5cf", "d7njzko", "d7nk2tg", "d7nkxy0", "d7nn8kh", "d7nnczx"], "score": [3, 26, 77, 9, 14, 3, 4, 18, 2, 5, 3, 3], "text": ["Easy to second guess the decisions with hindsight. At the time a terrorist attack on this scale was not on anyone's mind. At the time the assumption was mechanical or pilot error. By the time they realized there was a problem it was too late to shoot it down.", "In the history of hijacking ,  the hijackers always held the passengers at bay for some ransom.  Freed prisoner, public statement, etc.   Then fly to some agreed safe airport and they'd release the passengers.      the goal before 9/11 was to protect the passengers onboard.     No one thought they didn't care about the passengers but were wanting the plane itself.\n\nBesides. Manhattan isn't restricted nofly space.  You can take helicopter rides of Manhattan.    The corridor along manhannttan is vfr airspace \n", "Keep in mind that much of the security on aircraft is a result of 9/11.  It would be common for passengers (typically small children) to get to go and look around the cockpit during a flight; there were no heavy locking doors.  Security was significantly more relaxed, so bringing small weapons less difficult than with the modern TSA (which itself does a fairly poor job at screening, but that's another rant).\n\nOn top of that you have the precedent set by previous hijackings where the hijackers wanted the plane as a means of transportation or wanted the passengers as hostages.  9/11 was so jarring to the world because the hijackers wanted the planes themselves to be used as weapons.\n\nOn 9/11 the U.S. was at peace.  We didn't have armed planes sitting all over the place to quickly intercept any plane that gets out of line.  However, when the reality of 9/11 became clear we *did* scramble fighters.  [This](_URL_0_) article is about an F-16 pilot who was ordered into the air to intercept Flight 93 which was ultimately downed in Pennsylvania.  The aircraft had no weapons loaded on board; it was a suicide mission to physically strike the Boeing 757 with her plane to knock it out of the sky.\n\nThe article is a good read.  It sheds some light onto the pre-9/11 atmosphere in the United States.  ", "The communication on 9/11 was not great. By the time the military was notified of a hijacking it was way to late. At the speed an airplane travels, it entered restricted airspace less than 30 seconds before it hit the towers. Also as others have mentioned, the history of airline hijackings had entirely been for ransom or political purposes. To my knowledge no hijacker had ever handled the controls of an airplane, let alone used it as a missile. The government was preparing itself for a hostage situation, not a missile attack on a skyscraper.", "The amount of time the planes were actually flying over Manhattan was maybe 30 seconds for the first plane and zero seconds for the second (the towers are right on the water and the second plane came from New York Harbor). Not enough time to shoot them down. \n\nPlus civilian airliners had never been weaponized before, so shooting down a civilian airliner that could simply have drifted into restricted airspace would be an unlikely response. There were quite a few notable incidents during the Cold War where a civilian plane was shot down for accidentally violating airspace. ", "Shoot them down with what exactly? There are no ADA units deployed around the city. There is no CAP flying around. No MANPADS soldiers stationed on rooftops.", "Your thoughts on our security are pretty much wrong.\n\nIt isnt an immediate response to send fighter jets to a commercial airliner.  What happened on 9/11 had never happened before and we just werent prepared for it.  I mean these people did it with box cutters and shit.  We don't have defensive AA batteries sitting around in cities waiting to protect us from incoming missiles and run away planes.  In all honesty if our land bases were ever struck we would be pretty much sitting ducks.  ", "Here's a link to the [airspace](_URL_1_) around NYC. Take a moment to look at it.\n\nThe region inside the blue lines is the NYC controlled airspace (technically, we call it \"Class B\"). It's not \"restricted\" in the sense that you're not allowed to fly there. They only serve as a regulatory zone \u2014 that is, you need permission from Air Traffic Control to enter the zone. And in fact, you can fly above or below it without permission all you want. You don't even have to have your radio on or be on a flight plan.\n\nThere are three major airports in the zone and a fair number of minor ones. It just wouldn't be practical to ban airplanes from that area. And even if you knew there was a rogue airplane coming in to do mischief, there aren't any military bases nearby to get fighters in the air, and if there are any anti-aircraft batteries in the area, I've never heard about it. And finally, as other posters have pointed out, nothing like 9/11 had ever happened before and we were at peace, so there was no reason to think that incoming planes needed to be stopped.\n\nNow look at [Washington, DC](_URL_0_) by contrast. The heavy dashed circle around the area is an Air Defense Identification Zone. You need a clearance to enter this and you have to obtain it in advance. There's a very good chance that you *will* be intercepted by fighters if you come in without permission. It used to be that the only ADIZs were out over the ocean to guard against aircraft coming in from overseas without permission, but since 9/11 we've had one over Washington as well.\n\nFor good measure, the red circles are Temporary Flight Restrictions, which are thrown up for special occasions such as airshows or VIP visits. However, the big one over Washington isn't so temporary.\n\nEven now, this stuff isn't enforced *that* heavily. Some years ago, I saw a guy who flew through the TFR over G.W.Bush's home in Texas while he was in residence. He was intercepted by fighters and ordered to land, and then the police came and took him out of his plane and took him to the station to be questioned. He wasn't shot down, and in fact after he convinced the police that it was an accident, they just let him go.\n\nEdit: heh. Looking at the NYC airspace today (15 Sep 2016) I see the whole thing is a TFR (scheduled to start in 3 days). Wasn't there when I made this post. Will probably be gone a week from now.", " > Is there a reason that it was so easy for Al Qaeda to break into the cockpit, hijack 4 airplanes, and fly them for just under an hour going completely undetected?\n\nThey did not go completely undetected. It was known that those planes had been hijacked. Stewardesses were in touch with ground control and told them what was going on on the planes. In the case of Flight 93, the last plane to be hijacked (because it took off later than scheduled, unlike the other flights), passengers were calling their loved ones to say goodbye, so in that case, it wasn't just ground control that knew what was going on.", "Even if you could reliably shoot down two passenger jets in time, you're basically condemning all the passengers aboard to death. That they were doomed anyway was unknown at the time: nobody had ever hijacked planes to use as flying bombs before. Everyone expected that the planes would be flown to, say, Havana, demands made, possibly a few hostages shot, but eventually most of the passengers would be set free one way or another and have a thrilling story to tell the grandkids.\n\nIn any case, shooting down a passenger airliner (or anything, really) over Manhattan is hardly a good idea: you'd end up killing an awful lot of people on the ground as well. Perhaps not as many as were, in the event, actually killed, but right up until the first plane hit, nobody had the faintest idea what the hijackers were up to.\n\nAir traffic control couldn't do anything. Well, they can refuse the pilots permission to fly into a certain area, but we're talking terrorists on a suicide mission: they're hardly going to break off their attack just because somebody is shouting at them over the radio.\n\nThe hijackers were able to enter the flight deck (btw, you shouldn't refer to it as the \"cockpit\": only fighter planes have cockpits, passenger airliners have flight decks) because before 9/11, the flight deck doors were not normally locked. It was 9/11 that actually changed that: so the hijackers didn't have to \"break in\", they just had to barge in with their box cutters -- in the days when security screening wasn't nearly as rigorous as it is now (again, it was 9/11 that changed things).\n\nIn short, the reason the US was unprepared for such an attack was quite simply that nobody had ever attempted to carry out such an attack before, and nobody had ever seriously thought for one moment that terrorists might actually hijack a plane and deliberately fly it into a building.", "As others have mentioned, people never thought this would have happened. Here's a few things of note as well:\n\n*How were air traffic controllers not able to detect/prevent this?* Air traffic controllers were able to quickly determine the planes were hijacked. The planes stopped following the direction of ATC, and started going maverick. Initially, Boston Center controllers notified surrounding centers, including New York. But, the hijackers stopped the transponder code for the planes, so controllers were looking at just a blip with no information on their screen. They notified the military, but, military controllers were looking at literally hundreds of blips on their screens, so it was tough to sort out what was the hijacked planes. Also, by the time the military was advised of the hijackings, the most warning time they had was six minutes.\n\n*Wouldn't there by military planes ready to deploy?* Yes, there were. Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) had two bases to deploy air defense jets (Otis in Massachusetts and Langley in Virginia). As soon as the report of the two planes from Boston being hijacked came in, they put the jets on \"battle stations\" (which is putting the pilots in the cockpits) and then \"scrambled\" (getting them in the air) within minutes. However, they had no idea the targets of the planes, so it took a little bit for the military to plot a course for the pilots. After the two planes hit the towers, the Major in charge of NEADS put the jets over Manhattan. As far as Washington DC, a military C-130 actually watched the hijacked plane crash into the Pentagon. But, the military only had two minutes warning to scramble the jets from Virginia, which takes 15 minutes flight time. The military also wasn't notified about Flight 93 until much later, and they had scrambled jets that were out on a training mission, and unarmed, to fly into the area, and if necessary, to ram the plane.\n\nAnother note of interest is that even IF they had planes in the area, they weren't authorized to shoot down hijacked planes until ordered to do so. The order eventually came down from the Vice President, but there was a delay due to the Secretary of Defense helping evacuate victims from the Pentagon. In fact, it was noted he was unreachable for 25 minutes.  \n\n(If you have time to kill: _URL_0_)", "[From Popular Mechanics:](_URL_0_)\n\n > On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. \"They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us,\" says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked\u2014the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-sept-11/2015/09/06/7c8cddbc-d8ce-11e0-9dca-a4d231dfde50_story.html"], [], [], [], [], ["https://skyvector.com/?ll=38.86537484491789,-76.89921569183238&amp;chart=301&amp;zoom=3", "https://skyvector.com/?ll=40.67324337307865,-73.946090691646&amp;chart=301&amp;zoom=3"], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/dzYUuiv5pu8"], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a5654/debunking-911-myths-planes/"]]}
{"q_id": "bkbj4i", "title": "Men who wore suits in the 20s and 30s. How often did they wash them?", "selftext": "I was looking at some old time baseball stadium pictures and everyone was wearing super formal attire. It seems that men and women dressed formal all day every day even in the hot summer months. So I'm wondering how was the hygiene back then? Did they wear the same suit daily for a few days? Did most people have many suits so they could wear something clean 7 days a week? I'm sure most people were poor and could not afford many nice clothes. Can someone tell me how they kept clean while being poor but still dressing formal? Or were they sweaty smelly nice looking people?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bkbj4i/men_who_wore_suits_in_the_20s_and_30s_how_often/", "answers": {"a_id": ["emgvorh"], "score": [7], "text": ["Added question: ...and... do suits then vs  now have the same typical wear length before cleaning?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3hu773", "title": "during 9/11, why didnt firefighters/rescue teams set up safety nets for people stuck at the top of the burning buildings to jump out onto and land on?", "selftext": "Since now we know you wont suffocate on your way down.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hu773/eli5_during_911_why_didnt_firefightersrescue/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuajx7a", "cuajx9i", "cuak08v", "cuakuwc", "cuapdjj", "cub88h6"], "score": [2, 2, 14, 18, 6, 2], "text": ["It was probably too high for the net to have any effect.   The higher and faster you fall the more space you need stop.", "The towers were tall. There wouldn't be a net strong enough to catch people on the upper levels.", "1) It would take hours to set up enough nets, assuming there are enough nets. The first tower fell in 56 min, and the second in 102. There would not be time to set up many of them. \n\n2) After around 4-5 stories nets no longer serve as a viable means of protections. People are falling fast enough that they will still be dead landing in them. \n\n3) They did not expect the towers to fall. Standard evacuation methods were being implemented.  ", "Jumping off a buildings with 110 floors, reaching terminal velocity, into a net just above the ground?\n\n_URL_0_", "Fire departments don't have stuff like that laying around--and for good reason. If you jump from more than about 3-4 floors up, your chances of not killing yourself on landing are slim unless you're a trained stuntman. The highest jump into an airbag by a stuntman was about 100 meters. Your average mope who isn't a stuntman would have almost zero chance of surviving jumping from more than about 10 stories.\n\nAnd that's IF you found a way to keep all the falling flaming debris from destroying your airbag.\n", "My thoughts:  \n1) Probably not enough nets  \n2) Hard to set up tons of nets quickly  \n3) The speed at which these people were falling at was very, very high so the nets wouldn't have done too much  \n4) The firefighters/rescue teams might not have enough people to do this  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/bTgcgXm.gif"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "541gxr", "title": "[meta] I've noticed the \"Interesting Inquirer\" flair, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the rules. Whats the requirement for this flair?", "selftext": "I've noticed questions with this flair seem to make the front page quite often, wondered how one can be granted such a distinction.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/541gxr/meta_ive_noticed_the_interesting_inquirer_flair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7y5yjh"], "score": [70], "text": ["You're right, Interesting Inquirer flair isn't in the rules anywhere. Oops. ;)\n\nSubject flair in AskHistorians, including Quality Contributor flair, is awarded based on two criteria: (1) quality answers and (2) commitment to AskHistorians. \n\nOur application threads are littered with requests from people for flair based on their claimed credentials alone, or listing in-depth, comprehensive, well-sourced posts in other subreddits as evidence of their historical knowledge. These applications get denied. Herodotus himself could apply for AskHistorians flair, and we would say, \"Sorry, first we need to see 3-5 posts in AskHistorians itself.\"\n\nBut the AskHistorians community is more than the people who answer questions. The *coolest* thing about AH--our defining feature--is that we exist on user-driven content: we are **Ask**Historians, not HistoriansAssume.\n\nJust as some people devote enough time and energy to AskHistorians writing quality answers to earn subject master flair, some people who don't feel confident writing answers of their own nevertheless work to make the AskHistorians community a better place.\n\nFor the most part, that tends to mean reliably asking thought-provoking questions that can on occasion lead to some really great historical inquiry in the answers. Just like subject flairs occasionally write a less than award-winning answer, not ever question has to get 5000 upvotes and an answers that requires 3 posts to fit it all in. But *in general*, questions from an Interesting Inquirer flair should be just that: interesting!\n\nAsking questions is the bulk of II flair, hence the name. But just like we have higher standards for answers submitted as part of a subject flair application, Interesting Inquirers make the AskHistorians community a better place in other ways. They read other people's question-threads and post cogent follow-up questions. They join in weekly threads like Tuesday Trivia or Saturday Reading  &  Research, show up in Floating Features, post links to their favorite answers in the Sunday Digest, maybe post their favorite answer each month to DepthHub.\n\nAs with Quality Contributor flair, which is awarded for people who write amazing answers across multiple fields, Interesting Inquirer is a recognition and an award. It's not something that can be applied for. Flairs and moderators have a pretty good finger on what goes on in this subreddit. Prospective QC and II flairs are nominated by another user and vetted much like we vet subject flair applicants. (Of course, sometimes we move like a rusty Rube Goldberg machine and it takes much longer to process these and other flair apps than we'd like).\n\nThe vast, vast majority of the AskHistorians community does not have and will never earn flair. That's the nature of this subreddit. We are always looking for ways to allow as many people as possible to participate, and we want to reward awesome participation when it happens.\n\nIn short, AskHistorians exists at the pleasure of the people doing the asking. Doesn't it make sense to recognize some of those askers?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5hkb5r", "title": "Why are pneumonia shots only recommended for old people?", "selftext": "I'm in my early 40s and I've had pneumonia a few times since the first time in high school. Pneumonia sucks, so I wanted to get a pneumonia shot, but it was very difficult to get because I'm not 65+. \n\nWhy is that? Is it just in perennially short supply, so they reserve it for the most needy? Is it less effective in younger people? Other? \n\n(I eventually got one, so this isn't a request for medical advice) ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5hkb5r/why_are_pneumonia_shots_only_recommended_for_old/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db2388z"], "score": [3], "text": ["Every shot has a cost and risks assosicated with it. For vaccination shots the cost are usually somewhat big, while risk is very low. \n\nThen clever people with access to huge databases make a statistical decision of who benefits enough from the shot to make up for the costs and the risks. And since the morbidity and mortality of people  < 65 years is rather low, they decided it's only recommended for people older than 65"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3vc2ix", "title": "why does congress want control of net neutrality so badly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vc2ix/eli5_why_does_congress_want_control_of_net/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxm6qre", "cxm6qsa", "cxm6t70", "cxma5ub", "cxmaeot", "cxmmhvz"], "score": [85, 8, 2, 25, 6, 2], "text": ["The telecom industry has made significant donations to help elect or re-elect many, many Congressmen.  The telecom industry also stands to lose a huge amount of money if net neutrality continues.  The Congressmen, who want to continue to receive their donations, are fighting against net neutrality to save their donors' wallets.", "Because they're bought and paid for by donors, many of them have shares in comcast etc. It's all about money and control. They have gerrymandered their way into office and now they don't even work for the people. Most people agree with net neutrality, and congress is supposed to represent us. Well, most people are democrats too (68% to be exact), but the house is controlled by republicans. Our democracy belongs to a few wealthy elite.", "Loaded question, honestly. Enforcing net neutrality would not give the government control over anything on the internet. It would simply force ISP companies to not favor certain content with their connections.\n\nWithout net neutrality, your ISP (Time Warner Cable, for example) could block or throttle all traffic to _URL_1_ or _URL_0_. If you wanted to use these website reliably, you would have to pay TWC extra or switch to another ISP that does not do this. For many people, switching ISP is not an option, so they would be forced to pay a premium to reach that content. This is obviously unfair for customers and for the sites that are blocked or throttled.", "Because of Lobbying.\n\nLobbying is a loophole to get around that nasty business of \"bribing an elected official\" being illegal.\n\nISPs spend a ludicrous amount of money on lobbying, making the elected officials they lobby to very happy. In return these elected officials ignore you (the people who elected them) and what you want, and instead try to make the ISPs happy instead.\n\nWhat will make ISPs happy is being able to make your internet slower while saying \"If you pay us EVEN MORE money, we'll let you visit some sites at regular speed.\" \n\nCongress taking control of the Net Neutrality laws from the FCC would mean that these ~~elected~~ purchased officials would be able to make the laws that make their ISPs happy. Which would make you very unhappy.\n\nIt is important to note that \"Fast Lanes\" is a very deceptive term. \n\nThe internet will not be faster for those who pay more, the ISPs will simply throttle those who don't pay more, making the regular internet speeds we have now into the Fast Lanes.", "Because in our fucked up governmental system we elect people who care more about their own agenda than the well being of the people who elected them. Pretty fucked up when you really think about it. ", "Why have no competitors to Comcast emerged in the last 20-25 years (!) if it is so lucrative? I'm talking about someone laying fiber or cable.   Why do we still have the same crappy cable modems we had 15 years ago. Is net neutrality really making things better?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["netflix.com", "youtube.com"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "51juc2", "title": "Is there anything that doesn't conduct electricity at all?", "selftext": "I know most things like wood, and plastic are not good conductors, but it's *possible* for it to conduct electricity, if it's really really strong.\nBut is there anything that is immune to electricity? Or something that has such a high resistance, that electricity just can't go through it?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/51juc2/is_there_anything_that_doesnt_conduct_electricity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7cy23p", "d7dpb22"], "score": [8, 2], "text": ["Yes. They are known as [superinsulators](_URL_0_), the opposite of superconductors. Basically, the electrons are bound tightly together in pairs, and the pairs completely avoid each other, so no electron transfer happens.\n\nMore practically, there are some more common materials, like teflon, with such tightly bound electrons they have close to zero conductivity.", "Under restricted conditions, (i.e. electric fields low enough so that no [dielectric breakdown](_URL_0_) occurs) a chemically pure insulator does not conduct (i.e. no net charge transport in the bulk material). But all dielectrics will eventually [breakdown](_URL_1_) under a sufficiently high electric field. In practice, pure dielectric materials exhibit high but finite resistivity limited by surface leakage currents whenever moisture is present in the atmosphere. In a high vacuum environment, the surface leakage effects are minimal, but again, at a high enough voltage, the residual gases that remain will ionize and lead to [arcing](_URL_3_). One can image a perfect vacuum where there is no matter to ionize, however, there is even a limit under this ideal state called the [Schwinger Limit](_URL_2_) where it becomes possible to produce virtual electron-positron pairs. I don't think that high a field strength has ever been realized under laboratory conditions, but it's an active area of research."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulator"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_strength", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakdown_voltage", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwinger_limit", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_discharge_in_gases"]]}
{"q_id": "69kf00", "title": "how much do we sweat during and after taking a hot shower/bath? how clean are we really once we step out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69kf00/eli5_how_much_do_we_sweat_during_and_after_taking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh7a6og", "dh7aquh", "dh7hgkc"], "score": [16, 31, 16], "text": ["provided you wash yourself in said bath, perfectly clean. sweat does not filth make. ", "This isn't really a good ELI5 type question because the answer depends on a lot of different stuff.\n\nHow clean you are completely depends on what kinds of dirt were on you before you got in the shower, what you used for cleansers, and how well you rinsed off. \n\nYou do sweat some in the shower but it's just slightly saltier water that gets washed away with everything else. But if you had a really hot and long shower that raised your body temperature and you're stepping out into a hot room, you'll continue to sweat some as you exit the shower, at least until your body cools down. ", "Sweat is actually pretty clean you know, it's the bacteria that makes it icky and stinky. You're probably pretty clean assuming you used soap and water."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1cbn4b", "title": "Why do Gurkhas have such a fearsome reputation?", "selftext": "It seems that they've been highly respected by outsiders for a long time, but what makes them seen as the most fearless and feared combatant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cbn4b/why_do_gurkhas_have_such_a_fearsome_reputation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9eyzxs", "c9ez47z", "c9ezlt4", "c9f582i", "c9ffhsy"], "score": [75, 24, 29, 3, 6], "text": ["because they earned it.\n\nWhen they fought the British in 1814, they fought to a draw, this is against the British Empire, which at the time, was still very much at its prime. The Gurkhas were outnumbered and facing superior weapons. \n\n_URL_1_\n\nThey fought in every major conflict around the world since that time, and have more decorations as an ethic group per person than anyone else\n\nThey have along history of warriors long before the English \"discovered\" them.\n_URL_0_", "One of their most significant achievements was the Anglo-Nepalese war. They fought the British army(during their rule in India) who had a lot more soldiers and better weapons. Although, Nepal did lose some parts of the border lands to British india due to political treaties, the amount of casualties was very high for the British.\n\nThe Gurkhas also have a reputation for hand to hand combat, especially with the 'khukuri', a Nepalese knife. ", "They've continually proved themselves in every engagement. Large number of VC recipients. The citations  are jaw-dropping.\n\nFor instance the actions of Tulbahadur Pun:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWikipedia (sorry) also has links to most of the citations published in the London Gazette _URL_0_\n\nAnd their descendants continue to live up that legacy -\n\n\"Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun used up all of his ammunition and resorted to using his machine gun tripod to repel the attack in Afghanistan in September.\"\n_URL_2_\n\n", "Like everyone else here, I have to say that they have earned it. And they keep earning it over and over. If you want some amusingly narrated examples (and don't mind profanity) check out some examples of Gurkha badassery at Badass of the Week. [These three stories](_URL_0_) are pretty good.", "Although I am not a historian by any means, I am Nepali and I would like to add a few things to this thread. \n\nLike many have said before, the Gurkhas impressed the British East India company at the Battle of Nalapani (and later battles) during the Anglo-Nepali war, where around 200 Nepalis held off around 2,000 British soldiers with much better equipment. After the Sepoy mutiny, the British came to rely more on the Gurkhas, who proved their skill in battle many times over. \n\nThe Gurkhas are not one ethnic group per se. At the time when the British attacked Nepal, it was a kingdom ruled by the Gorkha dynasty, a lineage of kings who originally hailed from the district of Gorkha in central Nepal. Back then, the Gurkha soldiers consisted mostly of the ethnic groups Rai, Magar, Limbu, etc, most of whom live in the upper hills/mountains of Nepal and were Tibetan in ethnicity. Now, the pool has been expanded to include Indo-Aryans too like the Newars and the Bahuns and Chettris. \n\nThe British are not the only ones to still have Gurkha soldiers. The Indian Army has regiments of Gurkha soldiers and the Singapore Police regularly recruit Nepalis. \n\nOne last thing, I feel like many of you are romanticising the idea of a Gurkha soldier. Sure, they have a reputation for bravery but they are not superhuman fighting machines. Compared to what one could make in Nepal, the British Army pays better. So there is cutthroat competition to get into the British Army. I personally know around 5-10 friends who tried out for the British Army 2 years in a row and didn't make it. For many, it is a source of pride as their fathers and grandfathers have been in the Army but for others, it is one of the few ways to escape harsh poverty and make a decent living upon retiring. \n\nThe British, though, have been less than kind. The Gurkhas had long been demanding pay equal to what British soldiers made as they were getting paid far less than Britishers. After years of fighting legal battles, the British Army finally raised the Gurkhas pay but it is still not on equal footing with that of the British themselves. The Gurkhas have also demanded that they be allowed residential rights in England and the British have acquiesced to this too, but with a certain cut-off date. \n\nOne last last thing, the Gurkhas are a source of shame for many Nepalis, especially our Communists. Nepal is a sovereign nation and yet, its citizens continue to fight for another flag as basically mercenaries. When the Maoists came to came to power in 2007, they issued statements and made a big stink over the Gurkhas but were unable to put a stop to it as there are still many others who wholeheartedly support it. The reasons being tradition, honour, and most importantly, pay. \n\nIf anyone is interested, there is a great documentary out right now called [Who Wants to Be a Gurkha](_URL_0_), directed by Kesang Tseten. I don't know if its available worldwide though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ayo-gorkhali.org/", "http://www.tangting.org/latest-news/ttta-blog/30-the-history-of-the-gurkhas"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brigade_of_Gurkhas_recipients_of_the_Victoria_Cross", "http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/36785/supplements/5129", "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12854492"], ["http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?search=1&amp;tag=Gurkha"], ["https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kesang-Tseten-Shunyata-Film-Production/206521757052"]]}
{"q_id": "z3ern", "title": "Dieting and mass energy equivalence", "selftext": "In physics energy = mass * speed of light squared.\n\nIn dieting 3500 calories of calorie deficit = 1 lb of body fat loss.\n\nIn both equations the left hand side is energy (energy is calorie). \n\nIn both equations the right hand side is mass (mass is lb).\n\nAre these equations the same or fundementally different?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/z3ern/dieting_and_mass_energy_equivalence/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c613s2p", "c616auf"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["Fundamentally different...ish.   \n\nFat is a method of storing energy in chemical bonds.   Your body can convert one pound of fat into 3500 calories.  This is equivalent to 32,000 joules per gram of fat.\n\nFrom E = mc^2, one gram of fat contains about 9x10^13 joules (that's 90,000,000,000,000 joules) in terms of matter-energy equivalence.  \n\nSo only about 1/3 billionth of the energy contained in a mass of fat is able to be converted to usable energy by your body.  ", "Yes, they are fundamentally different things.\n\nMass-energy equivalence by E=mc^2 applies when mass is converted into energy, and is most noticeable in nuclear reactions.\n\nYou gain or lose body weight when eating or dieting because food or metabolic products are entering or leaving your body. The chemical bonds that make up high-energy molecules in food are broken down by oxidation. We then exhale the CO2 and H2O produced, and excrete nitrogenous and other wastes in urine. Those molecules still exist, and if you could gather up your exhalation and other bodily excretions over your dieting period, it would equal the weight that you lost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "75ppo0", "title": "IAMA Lecturer in Modern History researching the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs in the UK", "selftext": "My [present research](_URL_3_) examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. I'm currently working with Parliament on the [Vote100 Project](_URL_5_), BBC Radio 4 and the Smithsonian, and in 2019 I'll manage the [Astor100 project](_URL_0_) celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.\n\nI am no longer online because at 8pm BST (3pm EDT, 12pm PDT) I'll be giving a public lecture, titled Suffrage and Citizenship, at the University of Reading where I work. You can watch live online through the [University's Facebook page](_URL_1_), and [get in touch with me on Twitter](_URL_2_). I will also look again over the next few days.  Many thanks for your questions.\n\nAMA about the campaign for equal citizenship, the parliamentary politics, the campaigns for and against, the issues of class, marriage, and militancy around the suffrage movement. \n\n[More about my research](_URL_3_), [my blog](_URL_4_), and [me on Twitter](_URL_2_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75ppo0/iama_lecturer_in_modern_history_researching_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do7z2li", "do7z8e7", "do7zemq", "do7zx8x", "do800mn", "do80ngc", "do80sgn", "do88r9g", "do8rj13"], "score": [11, 7, 16, 7, 7, 5, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Hello Dr Turner and thanks for doing an AMA.\n\nHow did the English liberals and those influenced by ideas of people like Adam Smith, David Ricardo react to the demands of woman suffrage? Or did the support come only from Socialist movement like that of Chartists?\n\n", "How much of the material you're working with, particularly in the 19th century, was originally public, and how much is from letters, diaries, etc?\n\nI ask because my own work in food history in that era relies almost completely on women's private notebooks, commonplace books, and the like, rather than materials intended for public consumption, and the difference in tone and intent from public conduct can be striking.", "Hi Dr Turner, thanks for doing an AMA!\n\nAs far as I know, the common argument against women's suffrage tended to be that the man voted for the whole household. Was there ever any notion that widows or (perhaps less likely) adult but unmarried women were unfairly excluded? What was the role of single women in the movement? ", "Hello!\n\nDid these new female MPs face a lot of sexism when they first started?", "One more! Was there concern that by being politically involved these women were endangering their marriage? ", "Hey there! Can you introduce and detail some of the struggles early female MPs went through for someone like myself who isn't too knowledgeable about womens suffrage?", "Thanks for doing this and crossposting to /r/UKPolitics,\nTwo questions:\n\nHow much did the allegations of the use of the term D-Day Dodgers hurt Lady Astor's political career and reputation?\n\nNot sure if it's your area, but how much were women involved within British fascist movements like the BUF?", "Hi Dr. Turner. \n\nHow would you describe the class background of early female MPs? How did that stack up against the general class background of the male MPs?\n\nToday when we form Select Committees, they are typically elected by the Committee of Selection, which can add expertise to a Select Committe or just as likely keep them off of one, if the party whips wish it. The shape of Parliament may have morphed and changed a lot since women first entered Parliament and the Select Committee is a more recent addition to the structure of Parliament, however, some form of committee must have existed when women first took to the floor, and with that some form of membership selection. There had to be some variety of precursor. How was the access of women to any precursor committees dealt with, where there any particular areas they were intentionally given access to, and areas they were deprived of access? If possible, what were the given reasons for this? I mainly ask because the appointment of select committee membership has a powerful effect which the public often does not see on the direction that investigations against the government take and the way policy is developed, it sets the agenda. The place for the man behind the curtain to stand, as he whispers to you gently \"please, do not heavily investigate this issue\". I want to know how women were incorporated into this process.\n\nFinally, after centuries of dealing with only male MPs, how did party whips adjust to suddenly having to find ways to leverage women in Commons to vote with the party line? What was the relationship between early women MPs and their respective party whips? The whip is something of a dirty job in politics, and can be the source of either much strife or much success, so there must be some stories there. Incidentally, any stories which you think are worth sharing regarding the first female party whips? How did they carrying out of the role differ from their male counterparts? Was there any refusal to co-operate on the discriminatory grounds of men not wanting to take orders from a woman?\n\nThat ended up being a fair few questions, however, I hope you can educate me here. I am woefully uninformed about early women MPs.", "Great AMA so far! My question is, did female voters tend to vote more heavily in favour of female candidates for parliament? What about men?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.parliament.uk/nancyastor", "https://www.facebook.com/theuniversityofreading", "https://twitter.com/jacqui1918", "https://www.reading.ac.uk/history/about/staff/e-j-turner.aspx", "https://jacquiturner.me/", "https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/vote-100/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aqay7b", "title": "Is there an explanation as to why there were Empires such as the Inca's and Aztec's in the Southern Hemisphere, and yet no such Empires in the North?", "selftext": "In particular I've noticed this deep rich history and civilization that Inca's and Aztec's had in the Pre-Colombian era, yet I'm hard pressed to find anything similar in regards to America or Canada for that matter. It seems they were more nomadic and divided(in the sense of the multitude of tribes) the more North you went. Is there a reason for this? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aqay7b/is_there_an_explanation_as_to_why_there_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egf8q5b", "egg4ovt"], "score": [4, 48], "text": ["Sorry for my mistake with the hemisphere's, my apologies. Also does anyone know why it says there are comments yet I cannot see any?", "First time posting here, but I think I can give it a go! Hope this helps. If you don't want to read it all, there's a very short summary at the bottom. Edited for links\n\nOn a technical note -- the Aztec empire was solidly within the Northern Hemisphere (as was part of the Inca Empire), and the Aztec, Toltec and other Mesoamerican states were also on the North American continent. But it seems like your question meant more to address the difference in empires between what is now Latin America and the US/Canada/Northern Mexico, so I'll talk more about that, and refer to that area as North America for the sake of convenience.\n\nPart of the answer to your question is that our records of North American peoples and civilization are much spottier, for a variety of reasons. First, Andean and Mesoamerican states were encountered by Europeans earlier than North American ones were. The Inca and Aztec were already conquered by the time major expeditions into the modern-day U.S. began, and Canada was even after that. Coupled with the fact that there isn't any writing from indigenous North American peoples, we simply don't have as many records about that region. So there might have been more empire-style states in North America than we realize.\n\nEuropeans arriving in the Gulf of Mexico first also meant that the infectious diseases which decimated the Americas' indigenous populations spread outwards from that place. Importantly, those diseases spread *faster than European exploration*. By the time Europeans arrived in many locations -- before they could write records or witness native states -- disease had already ravaged the region. One of the more dramatic examples of this is in fact the Inca empire. When Pizarro arrived, hundreds of thousands (at the very least) of Inca subjects had died before any European had been to the empire. Perhaps most importantly, one of the Inca smallpox victims was the emperor Wayna Capac, whose death led the the Inca Civil War between his sons Waskar and Atawallpa, which [tore the empire apart and facilitated the Spanish Conquest](_URL_0_). The regular lives and societies of the indigenous Americas were largely disrupted before Europeans arrived to record information that we might see now\n\nSecond, we have to recognize the malleability of the word \"empire.\" Do we mean a centralized government that actively restructured and consolidated conquered areas in its own image, applying government power across the state? If so, the Aztec \"Empire\" doesn't really count -- their state was much more one of forced tributary relations, and didn't necessarily restructure conquered polities. The Inca Empire might be the most comparable to what an Old World tradition might call an \"Empire,\" but we have to be careful about how we use the word. Cultures develop different tactics of domination, and \"empire\" might not be the right one for the societies that developed in much of North America.\n\nHaving said that, there is increasing evidence that there were much more complex states in North America than archaeologists and historians have historically realized. Perhaps most famously, discoveries in [Cahokia](_URL_1_) and other urban sites from the Mississippi area are rewriting the archaeological record. Here you had complex urban societies which waged war and had centralized governments and religions -- maybe, if we had more information, we could call some of these states empires. It seems that there were at the very least governments and individuals in \"paramount chiefdoms\" who commanded power and significance over [hundreds of miles](_URL_3_). Missisippian societies built massive earthworks, including pyramids. Along with archaeological findings, the accounts of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto provide insight into that area. His expeditions explored it before those states were completely wiped out by disease, and are simultaneously educational and thrilling, with stories of the Spanish force moving through alternatingly hostile and friendly towns and cities that they can't comprehend, and fighting against thousands of Amerindian soldiers. There were also complex and concentrated polities in the American Southwest. Ruins such as the 500+ miles of Hohokam irrigation canals, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and Mesa Verde all point to this.\n\nBut I'm getting long-winded, and I'll try to directly answer your second-to-last sentence. It does seem to be generally true that, the farther north you go, the fewer complex states and certainly fewer empires there are in North America. A large part of this is simply environmental. It is extremely hard to grow crops in much of Canada and the northern U.S., making it difficult for a possible empire to grow. Population densities are lower and people are generally more dependent upon hunting and gathering, because it's difficult to do anything else. Exceptions to this rule include the Pacific Northwest, where powerful chiefdoms developed, but this area is warmer than other North America locations at the same latitude and also supports an unusually high amount of food from sea and land resources that were exploited. This is also the same reason that extreme southern South American peoples were also generally hunter-gatherers. A more historical reason for the phenomenon you're wondering about is the location of the New World's \"cradles of civilization.\" Urban societies were original inventions in the New World along the Peruvian Coast, southern Mexico, and possibly the Amazon Rainforest (according to extremely new theories). Cities, and states that could become we might call \"empires,\" spread outwards from those locations. So cities and urban states were still spreading northwards from Mexico when Europeans arrived. We see proof of this slow spread, and how much it could change societies, in things like the presence of maize among the Iroquois: traveling north from Mexico, maize reached the Iroquois in the 12th century, precipitating an agricultural shift and huge societal change that allowed for the creation of the Haudenosaunee, or  [Iroquois Confederation](_URL_2_). So the factors that allow for urban civilization, and by extension empires, were less complete and newer the farther north you go.\n\nTo wrap it all up: Our records are weaker the farther north you go, because those areas were encountered by Europeans later (and were generally encountered after disease devastated them), so there might have been complex states we don't know about. Additionally, it's a myth that there weren't complex states north of the southern U.S. border, as evidenced by the Mississippian states and Southwestern U.S. But, holding in mind that the term \"empire\" the way we think of it simply may not be the way North American states ended up operating it, it is true that imperial-style states are less common the farther north you go. This was largely due to the lack of resources, and even more importantly the fact that the social inventions and factors leading to possible imperial states spread outwards from Mesoamerica, creating a kind of south to north gradation of potential-empire societies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.jstor.org/stable/27977824?Search=yes&amp;resultItemClick=true&amp;searchText=huayna&amp;searchText=capac&amp;searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhuayna%2Bcapac&amp;ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&amp;refreqid=search%3Adb2f7fbd215ff1ddde0858e839a0dde9&amp;seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/41053152?Search=yes&amp;resultItemClick=true&amp;searchText=cahokia&amp;searchText=empire&amp;searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dcahokia%2Bempire&amp;ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&amp;refreqid=search%3A631175fe3c50f35558ce5852fb6ed18c&amp;seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents", "https://uclajournals.org/doi/abs/10.17953/aicr.21.2.k36m1485r3062510?journalCode=aicr", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183p8pq.13?Search=yes&amp;resultItemClick=true&amp;searchText=hernando&amp;searchText=de&amp;searchText=soto&amp;searchText=mississippi&amp;searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhernando%2Bde%2Bsoto%2Bmississippi&amp;ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&amp;refreqid=search%3Acd1d3daedea37d2b64c05b2d99cfb104&amp;seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents"]]}
{"q_id": "1qiz57", "title": "Today, a lot of people seem to resent US power and its interventionist foreign policy, and Americans are often stereotyped as arrogant and ignorant. Did this happen to the British Empire at its height? Did ordinary European citizens (so, not really their governments) resent British power?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qiz57/today_a_lot_of_people_seem_to_resent_us_power_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdd98mc", "cddarft", "cddba5t"], "score": [13, 59, 15], "text": ["Do remember that Britain was an Empire and at the height of its power at the same time that Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and a few other European nations were Empires as well. ", "Yes and no. \n\nAmerica is unique in that it is essentially an example of a hyperpower. That is, it is the only global power of its calibre on the planet at this moment. This is sort of undisputed hegemony is comparable to the Roman Empire's position in the Mediterranean before the East-West split, or to the power of the Mongols at the height of Genghis' reign. \n\nThe latter half of the 20th and the 21st centuries are also unique in that these are the only centuries (Well... Century and a half) wherein mass media has been existent. Mass media (that is, the diversified and accessible media technologies that make accessing information so easy today) plays a phenomenally important part in how people today form opinions. Mass media means that a supermajority of people can not only access information with incredible ease, but create information as well. \n\nAnd thirdly, these last two centuries have been unique in that a great liberalisation of political and social attitudes have occurred. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, as mass media facilitated this liberalisation considerably. \n\nEssentially, the lack of the aforementioned for 19th century Europe resulted in a distinct lack in diversified opinion and information, which limited the ability for most people to create informed opinions. The little media that was accessible was controlled by the government and/or the upper classes, and so were basically mouthpieces of imperialism and conservatism. This means that yes, people didn't like Britain. *But* not for the same reasons people nowadays dislike America. \n\nThe average European disliked the Brits... Not because they were seen as an oppressive giant thundering about the globe, waving a big stick. Not because their imperialist agenda was jingoistic, ignominious and just plain rude. Not because their government was seen as corrupt, or because their arrogance was unique in both its audacity and prevalence, or because their armies were intrusive and... Well... Everywhere.\n\nGood Lord! Every European country that could afford a steam engine and a rifle thought of itself the same way! Imperialism was the new black, and the Brits were disliked simply because they were competition to the Germans/French/Belgians/Russians/Turks/Swiss/Liechtensteiners in the big colonial race, and because they were *filthy foreigners*.\n\nThe reference points we have in modern mass media to draw conclusions about the *wrongness* of it all that make us all (supposedly) hate America simply wasn't there. In addition, the liberalisation of society that have allowed dissent opinions about that glorious Place in the Sun, hadn't taken place, so things like r/politics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/socialism etc. wouldn't have been there to proliferate their dangerous anti-European-conservatism opinions, and most people lived their lives with a gleefully positive view of imperialism, interventionism, jingoism, racial discrimination etc., but with an antagonistic view of that-guy-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence. ", "This is a tough question to answer, because a concept like \"ordinary European citizens\" is somewhat of an anachronism. I am no specialist on Imperial British history, but let's say that the British Empire began to move away from the pack (i.e. other European states) somewhere after 1850, reaching the zenit of its power in the years just before 1900.\n\nThis same period is the age of nationalism and nation building in Europe. This period saw the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany, the introduction of a truly constitutional monarchy in the Netherlands and generally a lot social upheaval. \n\nThe appearance of the nation-state also meant that governments started to actively try to culturally unify their countries. For example, it was only during 1870 and 1914 that, in the famous words of historian Eugen Weber, \"peasants were turned into Frenchmen\". Education became institutionalized, rationalized and put under state control. Identity (whether it is national or individual) always operates through a In-Group/Out-Group logic. \"We\" are the in-group, and we are good. \"They\" are the out-group, and they are mostly that which we are not.\n\nNow we reach a subject I have a greater familiarity with: history education was considered the prime school subject for instilling national pride and identity in students. Considering that GB/England had either been THE historical enemy and was the contemporary rival (France, the Netherlands and Germany), the UK/British Empire was hardly portrayed in a positive light. \n\nThe question is: was the influence of history textbooks and other forms of nationalizing literature strong enough to affect ordinary public opinion? The League of Nations certainly thought so, launching bi- or multi-national textbook revision projects to weed out nationalist/xenophobic bias in history textbooks. UNESCO is financing similar projects to this day. Flemish historian Antoon de Baets (based at the University of Groningen) made an attempt at gauging the effect of history textbooks in shaping/influencing individual perceptions of the Other in his Ph.D. thesis. He did his work in the eighties, and concluded that textbooks have some influence, but that it cannot be over- nor understated. Basically: Hell if we know.\n\nSo, to return to the question: Did ordinary citizens resent British power? To a certain extent, surely, but I'd argue that ordinary people were more concerned with social reform and/or getting by, than consciously contemplating British political hegemony.\n\nSources/interesting reads regarding textbook research:\nFalk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (2nd revised edition: Paris and Braunschweig 2010). Available here: _URL_0_\n\nAntoon de Baets, Images of Non-Western Cultures: The Influence of History Textbooks on Public Opinion in Dutch-Speaking Belgium, 1945\u20131984 (Univ. of Ghent, Ph.D., 1988) [in Dutch].\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001171/117188e.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1k57bd", "title": "why is healthcare linked to employment, as opposed to rent or a mortgage, etc...?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k57bd/why_is_healthcare_linked_to_employment_as_opposed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cblhl4e", "cbli1f3", "cbljc5j", "cbllo2e", "cblop71"], "score": [7, 339, 6, 12, 2], "text": ["In the United States, the development of health care access was tied very closely with the rise of labor movements, but never made the transition to government-run health care that occurred in other societies with a similar history. The health hazards of early twentieth-century industrial life were tremendous. A demand of organized labor was that companies be responsible for the health damage they inflicted upon the workers and these demands resulted in health insurance provided by employers to large numbers of employees. For a variety of socio-political reasons, from American individualism to strong anti-communist sentiment, attempts to replace the employer-sponsored health care system with a government system like what was developed in the United Kingdom failed.\n\nRent is a benefit which was often provided by employers in the past and in some cases still is. Historical rent providing for lower-paid positions were riddled with abuse where employers would use their control over the living conditions of employees to control their lives in an effort to make them more productive or as methods of recapturing wages. 'Company towns' where employees had little access to housing or goods not provided by their employer gained such a bad reputation that many governments have a variety of rules to try to limit the abuses.\n\nIt takes a lot of conjecture to explain why some historical trends endure while others are replaced or why others don't even arise. The best we can usually do is describe situations of various sorts and try to glean some understanding from them.", "During the Second World War, the U.S. government thought it was a good idea to limit what a company could pay a worker.\n\nSo, let's pretend your job is making Ninja Turtle action figures in my Ninja Turtle factory. I pay you ten gummy bears an hour for making these Ninja Turtle dolls. Now, I think you're a good worker, so I want to pay you fifteen gummy bears instead of ten. The U.S. government steps in and says, \"No! That's not fair. You can only pay ecfunj1 ten gummy bears an hour. That's the law. It's for the greater good- we're in a war, doncha know.\"\n\nNow I, being the staunchly capitalist factory owner that I am, who thinks that you should be paid what you're worth, say, \"Well, you're not the boss of me, Federal Government! I think ecfunj1 should get more money.\" However, not wanting to go to jail, I devise a way around this ridiculous statute. Instead of giving you more money, I pay for your healthcare, which gets around the wage controls set by the government and compensates you more for your labor. Other ways I find to get around this law are paid sick and vacation days.\n\nBasically, the reason there is a strong tradition of employer-based healthcare in the United States stems from 1940s government-mandated price and wage controls. Employers who competed in hiring workers in a scarce labor market were unable to pay more money to attract more/better workers. Employers resorted to offering perks, such as health insurance and paid sick/vacation days, to compensate workers more without breaking the law by paying them more.\n\nAdditionally, there are special tax-deductions in the Tax Code for employer-paid healthcare. Employers are able to reduce their tax burden by providing health insurance to employees, and employees do not report health insurance paid by their employer as income. These special tax privileges reinforced the employer-based health insurance structure that came into existence in the 1940s.\n\nEdit:\nHere's more reading for the economically-curious: _URL_0_", "If you're interested in the history of the US health care system, This American Life has a great episode on it called \"[Someone Else's Money](_URL_0_)\". Act II answers this question specifically.", "Because the government instituted wage controls, Henry Ford, to offer better wages without increasing the pay, offered health care. It was done as a way to encourage more workers to work at Ford, and to screw with his competitors. \n_URL_0_", "Healthcare insurance being linked to companies was started to give them a recruiting/retention advantage over their competitors. In the past, this was paid for mostly or in whole by companies. Now it's more like companies collectively bargain for this stuff for you...but most companies really don't seem to try hard to get the best deals for you, only a few tiers of coverage. It's an area where there really doesn't seem to have been much evolution aside from the insurance companies finding ways to make you pay more for less."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PriceControls.html"], ["http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/392/someone-elses-money"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#The_rise_of_employer-sponsored_coverage"], []]}
{"q_id": "gvqdv", "title": "Could all of our theories and math be wrong because the math we're doing is wrong?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gvqdv/could_all_of_our_theories_and_math_be_wrong/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1qm7rn", "c1qm7ur", "c1qn69u"], "score": [3, 5, 40], "text": ["I'm unsure what you mean. An important part of scientific theories is that they've been experimentally confirmed. It's possible that any theory is \"wrong\", in the sense that there's more complete theory underlying it. But with the amount of experimental evidence we can produce today, it'd be very hard for any part of accepted theories to actually be false.\n\nAnd it's literally impossible for us to \"do the math wrong\" in any significant sense. Math is nice like that; you can just define things to work precisely how you want them to, so you don't need to worry about external consistency like you do with science itself. Of course, individual people may occasionally make math errors, but that's not really the same thing.", "You're going to have to explain your question a little more.  What are you trying to figure out?  Do you mean \"Could we be wrong about the way the world works because we're incorrectly applying our math?\"  Or do you mean \"2+2 might not be 4\"?", "Based on your responses to other questions, I might be able to give some insight.\n\nMath is the study of logical consequence. It's founded in just a few logical syllogisms, that are very difficult to deny. Ultimately, we have to take these syllogisms as premises for the pursuit of mathematics (that is, we can't proove them, but must simply agree to their truth), but they are very difficult premises to deny. They are simple on the order of the following statements: \"If I know that you have either a green ball or a red ball in your hand, and I furthermore know that you don't have a green ball in your hand, then I can deduce that you have a red ball in your hand.\" If you can accept a small set of really simple deductive rules like the one used in that statement, then you accept the logical foundations of mathematics.\n\nNow, mathematics also makes use of systems upon which to perform these deductions. The integers are such a system. Now, every mathematical system \"talks\" about some system in the real world. The integers talk about whole items that can be counted, that is, items have have numerosity, and furthermore a numerosity that is preserved in the straightforward manner when you do such things as grouping items together (adding) or removing items from a group (subtracting).\n\nNow, here's a tricky part, and I think this might get at your question. The tricky part is, how do we know which sorts of items meet those criteria? How do we know which sorts of items we can use the integers to talk about? Do the integers talk well about feelings? If I have both sorrow and longing, do I have two feelings or do I have one? Who knows? Oranges seem to be more \"integery\", though: if you have three oranges and I have four, and we dump them together then we should find seven oranges in our collective pile. I deduced that number by transferring your oranges and my oranges into integers, doing deduction in the world of integers, and supposing that by the \"integeriness\" of the oranges, the deductions I made about the integers should hold true for the oranges.\n\nBut, how do I really know that oranges are \"integery\"? Why do I say that feelings are not? Ultimately, we have to decide these things based on induction: we observe so many times that the numerosity of oranges is preserved in the straightforward way with *grouping and removal*, that we figure it will probably always be preserved with grouping and removal.\n\nThis is the chink in the armor of mathematics. Mathematics itself relies purely on *deduction*, and so no one can deny its validity. And yet, to make statements about the real world, mathematics relies on premises such as \"the system of integers can describe the addition and subtraction of oranges\" which can only be formed through *induction*.\n\nWe have plenty of evidence (in the robustness of skyscrapers and bridges, for example), though, that these premises are generally accurate enough to help us produce truths that are far beyond what any human could produce by mere intuition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5cmra5", "title": "Is there any sort of modern historical consensus on the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste?", "selftext": "For those who don't know, the Mary Celeste was a ship found adrift in the atlantic ocean, totally deserted, but in totally seaworthy conditions and with the crew's belongings perfectly intact. The crew was never seen or heard from again.\n\nAs a kid, I read that the case was a total mystery, but I'm having a hard time believing that in retrospect. What are some modern theories as to what could have happened? Also, how common were \"ghost\" ships like the mary celeste? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5cmra5/is_there_any_sort_of_modern_historical_consensus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9yeqvp"], "score": [47], "text": ["*Mary Celeste* ([pictured here](_URL_1_)) was an American brig with a crew of eight and two passengers \u2013 the master's wife and infant daughter \u2013 which embarked on her fatal voyage, from New York to Genoa, in the autumn of 1872.\n\nHer story, as it's usually told, emphasises several aspects that add to the air of mystery that still surrounds the disappearance of the ship's entire complement. The master, Benjamin Briggs, was highly experienced and highly respected, a man of good character and strong religious beliefs. The ship herself was in good condition and had been manned by a sober, reliable crew, made up of a mix of New England seamen and Germans. And, when she was found by the men of another sailing vessel, the *Dei Gratia*, she was alone on the sea, and, as you mention, still perfectly seaworthy and sailing on in calm conditions.\n\nA lot of the mystery that surrounds the *Mary Celeste* originates from what secondary sources report that the men of the *Dei Gratia* found when they rowed over to the *Mary Celeste* and went on board. As generally told, these details include:\n\n > The brig was well-built and reliable and was found with her sails properly set, a hot, half-eaten meal still sitting in the cabin, a watch, not yet wound down, still ticking in the master's berth, and a full bottle of cough medicine, with the cork out, sitting unspilled on a table.\n\n > There were no signs of any sort of hasty departure and the ship's boat was still hanging in its davits.\n\nPlainly, had all these details been accurate, the mystery of the *Mary Celeste* would indeed have been very difficult to solve. But the popular story of the ship is not correct at a number of key points. \n\nOne thing to bear in mind is that a significant number of the weirder aspects of the mystery turn out to have their origins in the high-handed investigations of Frederick Solly Flood, the lawyer in charge of the ship's salvage claim, or in fictionalised versions of the story, not least Arthur Conan Doyle's short story [\"J. Habakkuk Jephson's Statement\" (1884)](_URL_0_). It's thanks to Conan Doyle that the ship's name is almost invariably incorrectly given, as *Marie Celeste*, and the date of her voyage as 1873, not 1872.\n\nOther aspects of the story, which are important to the various attempts that have been made to provide a rational explanation for the crew's disappearance, would include:\n\n > The ship and her cargo were quite heavily insured, for a total of almost $55,000\n\n > She carried a cargo of 1700 barrels of raw alcohol\n\n > The captains of the *Mary Celeste* and the *Dei Gratia* were known to one another.\n\nAs to the state of the *Mary Celeste* when she was found, the truth is that she was sailing under very short canvas (jib and foresail) \u2013 that is, almost all of her sails were furled \u2013 that the running rigging was badly battered, that barrels of fresh water on deck had shifted, and that the cabin interiors were soaking wet, all indicating that she had encountered a heavy storm. In addition, two of the ship's hatches were off, the ship's clock had stopped, there was no food on the table and indeed the plates in the kitchen had been secured as if for rough weather, and the last entry in the log was dated to the morning of 25 November, nine days earlier; it gave a position about 600 miles from where the ship was found.\n\nMost importantly, the *Mary Celeste'*s papers, navigation instruments and ship's boat were missing. Hence it was clear that the crew had deliberately abandoned ship \u2013 apparently very hastily indeed, because most of Briggs's charts, together with the men's oilskins and pipes, had been left behind. The true mystery of the *Mary Celeste* thus lies not in explaining how 10 people could literally vanish, apparently only moments before their ship was boarded by would-be rescuers, but in reconstructing a sequence of events that could plausibly have caused Briggs to have risked putting his wife and child, as well as his men, in a tiny boat in rough weather in the middle of the Atlantic, when his ship was in no obvious danger of sinking. There's very little mystery as to what happened to the people on board \u2013 their lifeboat was almost certainly swamped in heavy seas.\n\nIt's certainly true that no really clear reason for the ship's abandonment was found by the men of the *Dei Gratia*. The cargo was well stowed. There was no evidence of fire or of any sort of violence. There *was* a makeshift sounding line lying next to a hatch down to the hold, together with about three and a half feet of water down below \u2013 quite a lot, but not so much that the crew could not have drained it by steady use of the *Mary Celeste*'s hand pumps \u2013 which were perfectly functional. The ship had not sprung a serious leak and was not in danger of foundering. Half a dozen barrels of alcohol \u2013 made of a different sort of wood to the rest of the cargo \u2013\u00a0were found to be empty.\n\nA crew made up of men from the *Dei Gratia* took the *Mary Celeste* to Gibraltar and there lodged a claim for salvaging her. Their theory was that the original crew had miscalculated the amount of water in the hold and panicked. Other theories that were put about after the ship made port included Flood's claim that there had been mutiny and murder on board \u2013 he found an old sword in the master's cabin, and believed it had been carefully cleaned (presumably of bloodstains) with lemon juice, and located mark on the topgallant rail he believed had been made with an axe, plus what he took to be bloodstains on the deck nearby \u2013 and the idea that the master of the *Mary Celeste* had conspired with the men of the *Dei Gratia* to be taken safely off their ship and then to lodge a fraudulent salvage claim. Another popular suggestion was that the ship had been struck by a waterspout.\n\nIn secondary sources, many of them confused thanks to inaccurate reporting or the incorporation of purely fictional elements, we can find many wilder claims: \n\n\u2022 that the people on the *Mary Celeste* had been snatched by a sea monster such as a giant squid\n\n\u2022 that they had been enveloped in a gas cloud released by a submarine explosion, which drove them all mad and made them leap into the sea\n\n\u2022 that one of the crew had descended into a religious mania and murdered everyone else before casting himself into the sea\n\n\u2022 that the ship (which was actually found well to the east of the Azores, not too far off the coast of Spain) was a victim of the Bermuda Triangle\n\n\u2022 that everyone on board had died as the result of a bizarre agreement to run a swimming race around the ship, which the remainder of the crew had chosen to watch from a jury-rigged platform at the bow (where identical indentations were found cut into both sides of the ship's rail). The platform was supposed to have collapsed, depositing the passengers and crew into the water with the swimmers, leaving the ship to sail on without them\n\nAs for Conan Doyle's story, it revolved around a statement by an alleged (but non-existent) survivor of the ship, who recounted how the rest of the crew had been murdered in a racially motivated attack carried out by an equally non-existent black sailor.\n\nOnce we separate Flood's real evidence from his errors and speculation, there is no real evidence to support the mutiny theory. Probably the most ingenious and likely solution to the mystery was first suggested by one of the *Mary Celeste*'s owners, James H. Winchester, who hypothesised that leaks from the cargo of alcohol had generated gas that exploded when a man went down to inspect the hold carrying a lantern \u2013 thoroughly alarming the crew, who abandoned ship fearing that the entire cargo was about to blow up. In one interesting version of this theory, it was suggested that Briggs decided to vent the hold (accounting for the open hatches) while he and his men stood off the ship at a safe distance in the boat, which they tethered to the *Mary Celeste* with a rope; they were then cast adrift when the rope parted in a squall. In my own opinion, the idea that the crew mistakenly believed that their ship had sprung a leak and was rapidly filling with water (perhaps, as suggested above, as a result of a hasty and botched sounding of the hold) is also fairly credible, though it's hard to imagine how any sounding could have been so much in error that the crew imagined they had only a couple of minutes to escape before the ship foundered.\n\nBy far the best source for the case is Charles Edey Fay's *The Story of the Mary Celeste*, first published in the 1940s, which prints almost all the surviving primary sources and very ably discusses them.\n\nComparable \"ghost ship\" stories, involving ships found still afloat but minus their crews, are not hugely common, and several of the ones that do exist are very poorly reported or heavily fictionalised, but you might well enjoy looking up the details of two that remain mysterious: the disappearances of the crews of the *Carroll A. Deering* off the Carolinas in 1921 (which [I wrote about here](_URL_2_)) and the *Joyita* in the South Pacific in 1955. The former is the subject of the semi-fictional *Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals* by Bland Simpson, and the latter is convincingly dealt with in David G. Wright's *Joyita: Solving the Mystery*.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/images/4/43/Cornhill-magazine-1884-january-habakuk.pdf", "http://imgur.com/a/6d77d", "https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/04/08/the-ghost-ship-and-the-president/"]]}
{"q_id": "3ejecu", "title": "How loud were late Roman Republic/Early Empire battles? It's hard to imagine taking commands and orders over the shouts of thousands of people.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ejecu/how_loud_were_late_roman_republicearly_empire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctfn7vy", "ctfu5c0", "ctg3vs8"], "score": [123, 6, 3], "text": ["Each Centuria (which is a group of 10x8 men) had a cornicen. A horn player who could signal out various orders and formations. \nThese centuria were each lead by a centurian. Who took his orders from his leader a primus pilus. A group of 6 centurias made up one cohort. So the centurians just had to listen for commands (horn signals) from their primus pilus. And then signal their own centuria. \nA legio is made up of 10 cohorts. So the 10 primus pilus had to hear the commands from the legate (overall) commander. \n\nIt wouldn't be a mess of random shouts. But rather controlled horn signals throughout the legio. \n\nLegate gave a command to his senior staff, primus pilus, who then signaled their own centurias. \n\nAnd below you have a group of 8 men, contubernium. \n\n", "There's some detail in Caesar's *Gallic Wars* about the noises of battle. He mentions the horns frequently (/u/Astrogator has done a brilliant summary), and during the battle of Gergovia, says that he ordered the recall to be sounded by trumpeters, which wasn't heard by the whole army due to the rolling ridgeline; the assumption is that normally it would be heard. He also mentions (Gallic Wars, 2.25) that during the fighting near the River Sambre, he was able to get into the front line, call out to the Centurions and men, and order the line to advance - so there must have been methods for the people in the thick of the fighting to pass orders along.\n\nThere's also comments on the general noise of battle - the arrival of the second Gallic army outside Alesia (Book 7) was only known to Vercingetorix, who was inside the city, when they engaged the Roman besiegers. Considering this was about 2k from the city (ish, distances are a little uncertain) there must have been a fair bit of noise.\n\nHowever, as a general rule I suspect that the Gallic battles were potentially noisier than 'ordinary' ones given the presence of women and children cheering their menfolk (or alternately begging for mercy, depending on what stage the battle was at), and the amount of cities that were besieged. Every nation would also have its own battle culture, and it must have been fairly confusing during the Civil War for one \"Roman\" army to face another \"Roman\" army...\n\nNB. I don't have specific references for passages to hand, but can find them if anyone wants them.", "Doesn't answer the question, but I'd recommend watching a short video called \"[RAM Roman Army Structure](_URL_0_)\" for some basic knowledge about the roman armies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://vimeo.com/31781946"]]}
{"q_id": "1fju1o", "title": "how is it possible for internet searches to get results so quick?", "selftext": "Why is it when I search my computer for a file it takes an eternity, yet I can search something on google, that has to search through......billions? Of websites and usually spit out the perfect result?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fju1o/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_internet_searches_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caay7h5", "caaygyu", "cab2c2y", "cab65fv"], "score": [17, 6, 19, 2], "text": ["Google actually has servers all over the world constantly updating their data caches of as much information as they can store. So when you search for something, Google is rarely actually searching for whatever porn subgenre you're looking for. It already found it on it's on and stored the information, so when you searched for it, all that data pops up.", "Your computer is optimized to store, view, and manipulate files.  Your PCs search function is fairly weak. \n\nGoogle keeps an index of all it discovers and they have optimized their software and hardware to search that index at blinding speeds.  \n\nThe arrangement of the data, the amount of memory, the data throughput rates, and the topology of the network are all set up to produce incredibly fast results. ", "Compare these two things:\n\nIn the next sentence, find the number of all the words that are \"dog\".\n\n\"The dog in the field is a black dog.\"\nYou found word 2 and word 9.  But you probably had to read the whole sentence and count carefully.\n\nUsing the following information, tell me which words are \"dog\"\n\nblack: word 8\ndog: word 2, word 9\nfield: word 5\n\nSee, I did the extra work of reading the sentence and storing where the words are.  I also eliminated the \"useless\" words like \"the\" and \"in\".  And then I stored it in alphabetical order so you could look up anything really fast.\n\nGoogle does something similar.  It has a set of information that includes things like:\ndog: _URL_0_, _URL_1_, _URL_2_\n\nSo when you search for \"dog\" it just goes and looks it up and reports it as fast as it can.\n\nOn your computer when you search for \"dog\" it goes and reads all your documents.  (except for when you have an indexing service, then it's working more like google, and then it's usually pretty quick).\n", "Google has an index, your computer doesn't \\*. Imagine it like you're looking something up in a book. Your computer is a small book, the internet is a very large book.\n\nNow, your computer book doesn't have an index section so you have to flick through every page looking for the bit you want.\n\nThe internet book does have an index, so you can just turn to the back, find the bit you're looking for in the index then go straight to that page.\n\nEven though the internet book is much larger, because there's an index you can find something much quicker than in the computer book.\n\n\\* You can get your computer to create an index, but it's still not as effective as Google's index.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dog", "http://pets.webmd.dogs/default.htm", "http://pets.webfinder.com/dogs"], []]}
{"q_id": "6fkwww", "title": "what actually happens when you go through ego death on psychedelics?", "selftext": "Some people in high doses of LSD or Mushrooms have experienced a feeling of not being themselves anymore and going through the death of their ego. They then come out of the trip a different person. What happens inside the brain/what makes this happen? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fkwww/eli5_what_actually_happens_when_you_go_through/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dij0cms", "dij7cpm", "dijcgyk", "dijewvz", "dijgec0", "dijhmk0", "dijoppn", "dijuhx6", "dik6eqk", "dikjtcj", "doxw9vv"], "score": [70, 7, 45, 23, 10, 3, 2, 2, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["The difficulty here is the ineffable nature of the psychedelic experience. As a simplified analogy, imagine going to the doctor and having a pain in a part of your body that you can't name. You have to resort to demonstration and pointing to get the doctor to understand. The psychedelic experience is sort of like that in parts, you feel and experience things that you don't have a word for, and the only way to point it out to someone is for them to also experience it. Ego death is the pinnacle of this scenario, where all that was explainable and definable as 'you', is no more.\n\nI've never had ego death, but even in my limited LSD experience I know i've felt things that I couldn't explain here in words. I think that's going to make your ELI5 difficult, or impossible, to answer. ", "I 100% agree with the comments already posted, the best way I can try to describe it in words is that it must be similar to whatever mechanism occurs during vivid, intense dreams. During a strong dream you almost feel like being in an entirely new realm, you don't remember the real world at all. \n\n[It has been shown through brain scans that LSD users experience a \"more unified\" brain, similar to the brain of a young child](_URL_0_)\n\nWe dont know nearly enough about the brain to be able to answer for sure sadly. But if you ever have the chance to try it for yourself, do it. It is one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had.   ", "Ego death to me happened during a dmt experience. I was faced with all of my fears, my demons, every uncertainty in my life was fluttering around me as I fly through this space. It was so high energy and terrifying.  I finally relaxed after my friend said everything is alright. I saw everything leave my body like a paisley patterned rain drop from each pore on my body. After that,  I was comfortable. Things changed,  I'm no longer uncomfortable with people touching me,  as well as thinking deeply,  I'm just okay with just about everything. Everything changed after that moment of acceptance and I'm very thankful for it. ", "The neurological effects of psychedelics are not well studied, since they are typically Schedule I drugs in the US, and very difficult to get proper permission from the Government to do research on.\n\nI'm not sure what you mean when you describe ego death though. From the personal experience of a friend of mine who is totally not me, it isn't that your ego dies when you trip, and you are a different person afterwards, it is that there can be a sense of \"ego death\" during the trip, but you go back to being yourself as you come down (of course the experience can change you as well, but I wouldn't necessarily call that ego death, non-psychedelic experiences can also change you, and we don't say that is caused by ego death).\n\nWhat is this ego death like? Well, I am sure experiences vary widely, but here is the experience of that friend who is totally not me: I'd describe the experience as less ego death, than ego expansion. Imagine you are sitting in a room with some people, and others are coming and going through the door. Now the feeling starts to build in you that everything going on around you is just part of yourself, part of your mind, part of your existence. Whenever someone enters the door it isn't just something you notice, but something you feel, as though their entering the door only happened because of your awareness of it. At the same time, you are aware that this is weird, like you have two tracks of thought going on: one experiencing a feeling of oneness with the world around you, and one that is observing the other (in other words, you aren't delusional, part of your mind realizes these \"mental sensations\" aren't an accurate depiction of reality). I'm not sure I can explain it any better than that.\n\nI have often wondered if this sort of experience is caused by a disruption in what Metzinger calls the \"Ego Tunnel\" illusion our brain generates. Everything we experience of the world around us is actually a reconstruction created in the brain based on sensory input, in which our self-model is placed. So perhaps this sense of ego death or ego expansion is caused by this process being disrupted in such a way as to make us vaguely aware of it. In this sense the experience is true. The \"ego tunnel\" of the mind is part of yourself. Seeing someone walk into a room is all in your head, it is just that what is going on in your head is based on something really happening in the external world. ", "It's like being so amazed by something that all your thoughts and attention are focused on that. You feel nothing else, there is nothing else and that something is everything.\n\nIt's like a dream where you aren't yourself, but rather some omnipresent being. Like being a dummy pronoun. In the sentence \"It is dark outside\" what does the \"it\" refer to?\n\nIt's like tuning a radio to listen to all stations at the same time and instead of sounding like chaos, it is soothing. Then when you're \"coming back down\" it's like you're focusing back to the radio station that is our existence.\n\nPart of the reason I think it happens is because the experience from the drug is so strange that everything else seems normal. All your preconceptions and all the things you think you know are being challenged, so you feel as though everything is possible and everything is acceptable. Everything is ok and everything is real.", "I'm curious to ask if going through ego death without the use of psychedelics is a recorded practice? Such as through meditation?", "My ELI5 answer: The chemicals in those drugs change parts of the brain that are active and inactive.  This means your thoughts and the way you think, see, hear, and feel also change temporarily to work in an entirely new way.  In extreme cases (higher doses), this new brain functioning can change your thinking so dramatically that you lose track of who you are for a time while your brain is busy experiencing things around you in this new way without being self aware (this is ego death).  You remember what it was like to look at your carpet and remember a sense of wonder you felt after having seen beautiful rolling waves in it, or how a problem that had been eating away at you for months looked completely trivial from that different perspective.  All sorts of positive mental health aspects are reported after having such experiences, and often permanent personality changes, such as becoming more open and happy, feeling more connected to the things and people are you.  However, when talking of doses of hallucinogens strong enough to create experiences involving ego death, it's important to mention that these can also be extremely negative experiences (bad trips).  And if you have experiences that are intensely negative while in this state of thinking, these new memories will stay with you also.  Bad trips with ego death are basically the stuff of nightmares and can be a terrifying experience that doesn't translate well back into your normal way of thinking, and can actually CAUSE anxiety, rather than fix it.  Granted, these cases are usually much less common, but do happen, and are worth mentioning.", "You just realize that you're not important in any way and that you're just another thing that's happening at such a deep level, and you become just okay with not mattering (while also then being able to appreciate so much your own point of view). ", "Apparently some people are not aware of ego death. We aren't talking about the consciousness expanding effects that can make the ego seem trivial in the grand scheme of the universe but rather an experience closer to amnesia.\n\nI had an experience on mushrooms where a friend was having a bad trip that began to affect mine. He started to panic about something, I became overstimulated, and the end result was that I put my toes over the edge of ego death and looked down, so to speak. \n\nMy experience was that the overwhelming amount of stimulus started pushing aspects of my emotions, memory, or consciousness out. First I forgot stuff like who I was with or where we were. Next I forgot stuff like what I had done to feel so strangely. Then I forgot my name and who I was. I don't think I went fully into ego death because I did remember \"I\", just had no idea what \"I\" was. \n\nThe only thing left from who I was before was duty. I couldn't forget that I had responsibilities. I didn't know what those responsibilities were, but I knew that they were important and that they depended on me. This is one of the more frightening things that I've experienced, because I knew that I was in no condition to fulfill any responsibilities to anyone. I was just left with the overwhelming sense that I had a duty and that I had abandoned my post in some way. Imagine going on a three week vacation in Thailand only to lose your passport and money, then you realize that you left your baby in the car at the airport two weeks ago. That kind of feeling.", "I have experienced Ego Death from years of heavy psychedelic usage of mostly LSD and DMT, but mushrooms at times as well. I wish I could tell you what scientifically happens to the brain (chemical processes, different grey matter balances, etc), as that is your question, although I don't have a deep understanding of the Biology, Chemistry, and neurology needed to answer your question. I do, however, have the personal experience and can perhaps provide some sort of insight that you may find to be valuable either now, or years down the road.\n\nFirst of all, it is important to understand the relationship between ego and confidence. Thinking highly of oneself requires a certain degree of confidence, and vice versa. However, deriving confidence from one's own ego is similar to scratching one's ass and subsequently smelling one's finger. Such action reinforces the idea that although traditionally farts and shit smell bad, only in the case of oneself is this not only untrue, but quite the contrary, the smell is stiflingly pleasant.  \n\nOn psychedelic drugs, we are able to see ourselves as others see us. When this happens, we can see areas of our lives we should be improving that we often never gave any thought to. As you can imagine, this will bring the ego crashing down, but it's important not to let your confidence crash with it. Often times confidence crashing is unavoidable (depends on the person), and one will need to learn how to rebuild their confidence without their ego.  This is the tricky part.  \n\nAs you begin to try and rebuild your confidence, as confidence is essential to success in all aspects of life, it's all too easy to allow your ego to grow in your confidence garden like a weed. You must actively maintain this confidence garden by weeding out the ego until it becomes something you do naturally. Like anything in life, with enough practice, it will become second nature - but without maintaining your ego-free garden, you'll never experience true ego death.\n\nPsychedelic drugs are no miracle solution (p.s. there are none in life). Rather they offer you a glimpse at what life can be free of your ego, anxiety, and worries. They often help you realize what is truly important in our lives. When the trip ends, it's our choice whether to apply what we've learned and make real changes, or to fall back into our old, comfortable ways.\n\nA side note about bad trips...\nMost of the time people have bad trips, they are afraid of themselves - their own thoughts, misgivings, flaws, etc.  ", "From what I have read here and what I have experienced there seem to be different forms of ego death for people. \n\nFor me I had a horrible first time experience with it and I will likely never try it again because of it. On a personal level I was not ready to try it and I suffered the loss of my father some months before it. But for whatever reason I thought I could try it. It was a party and the mood seemed right at first. I had tried mushrooms before a few times and I thoroughly enjoyed those experiences. The difference between acid and shrooms in my opinion is that the high of shrooms comes on naturally and organically. Visually the effects feel external. You have a natural sense of boundary from your sense of self and the trip. \n      However acid is another animal. I felt as if my mind was being manipulated and that things were permanently changing. I feared never coming down from it. I thought to myself, am I going to see polygons and and eyes bugging out of the tv from now on? And I\u2019ll have to lie to people to pretend to act like a sane person?\n   Now don\u2019t get me wrong the first few hours or so were great. Everything was hilarious. The moon looked incredible.\n        One thing that was scary though was that I got caught in the loop. My friend and I walked to the back yard to look at the moon and admire how awesome it was. We walked around and came back to the same spot and had the exact same conversation. I thought it was low key terrifying. I also felt like the backyard was going on forever and I just had to explore and see the back of it. Yet my rational self was saying, \u201cwell that\u2019s a good way to wander in a neighbors yard and get shot \u201c. The trees however looked badass. They looked like N64 Zelda tree graphics.\n         Now the ego death part was hell. I was confronted with a lot of fears and terrible sense of guilt and shame. That I wasn\u2019t enough and that I would not live up to be what I think and what my family and peers think I am capable of. I ended up crying my eyes out almost uncontrollably. \n          I will likely never try the stuff again. I do not want to revisit the experience. Still I believe it was something to learn from and a bit of wake up call for myself. \n       Now the other sense of ego death seems to be that you lose the idea that anything is about you. You become more in tune with everything around you. That sounds pretty awesome. Not like mine lol. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lsd-brain-scans-effects_us_570e5e8ae4b03d8b7b9ef83c"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g5yvg", "title": "How exactly do you show hemispheric asymmetries in the spherical harmonic coefficients?", "selftext": "All of the spherical harmonic coefficients seem to be symmetrical across both the equator and the prime meridian. So it's hard to find a way to increase the value in one hemisphere while not increasing it in the other (this is especially important when you want to measure anisotropies over a field, such as those involved in the cosmic microwave background)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g5yvg/how_exactly_do_you_show_hemispheric_asymmetries/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1l5c5s", "c1l5cpq", "c1l7d9e"], "score": [2, 6, 3], "text": ["the[ dipole moment](_URL_0_) is the measure of hemispherical asymmetry.", "* this is a math question, not science.\n* all the spherical harmonics with odd values of m+l are *anti*symmetric about the equator.  Combining y^0 \\_0 with y^0 \\_1  results in a distinct asymmetry.\n\nEDIT: It sounds as if you're confused between the amplitude and the power.  Functions that are anti-symmetric in amplitude are symmetric in power.  To describe a function with uneven power, the amplitudes are added first, and then the absolute value of the total at each point are squared.\n\nFor longitudinal asymmetry, note that all spherical harmonics have an exp(i m phi) component.  Combining with the opposite m value lets us get both cos(m phi) (even) and sin(m phi) (odd) contributions to the function.", "For a practical example of hemispherical asymmetries in a real world spherical harmonic coefficient application, see the [International Geomagnetic Reference Field](_URL_1_) which comes with [source code](_URL_0_) and [coefficients](_URL_2_) for five year epochs from 1900 through (projected) until 2015.  \n  \nAs wnoise pointed out, the asymmetries arise from the odd contributions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipole_expansion"], [], ["http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/IAGA/vmod/igrf.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geomagnetic_Reference_Field", "http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/IAGA/vmod/igrf11coeffs.txt"]]}
{"q_id": "iver9", "title": "Assuming it comes into contact with (only) dust-sized particles, will the Voyager 2 probe eventually be destroyed by pieces of dust smashing into it or going through it? How long could that take?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iver9/assuming_it_comes_into_contact_with_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c26zdc6", "c26zint"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["I see no reason why not. \n\nMy guess is when is really hard to estimate, as I understand it the science behind how things break apart is very complex. Also, different parts could break before others, etc. \n\n", "It could, but it's impossible to say for certain, there are too many variables we don't know. It's likely that eventually Voyager 2 (and 1) will pass near or through a stellar system (or several), which would significantly raise its chances of hitting something large enough to be destroyed. That said, there's a reasonably strong change that the Voyager probes will still be around largely intact for perhaps billions of years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8x0l3p", "title": "my wife says that whether an object sinks or floats in water is determined by the size of the container, not just object density. help me", "selftext": "I say floating is simply a product of relative density (as long as object has enough room and water to float in to begin with)\n\nShe says that whether or not something floats is determined by the density but ALSO the volume and/or depth of water in the container.\n\nE.g. if I put an egg in the sink bowl it will sink and she says that it might float if I put it in a full pint glass as there's 'more depth water to make it float'\n\nAssuming there is at least enough water to submerge the object in, can you help me explain why she's wrong? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x0l3p/eli5_my_wife_says_that_whether_an_object_sinks_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1zwdcf", "e1zwe63", "e1zwjgc", "e1zwpre", "e1zxy1a", "e1zy1m1", "e20564v", "e206qsi", "e2097qc", "e20alqc", "e20dx8x"], "score": [115, 160, 11, 23, 14, 2, 12, 2, 2, 22, 4], "text": ["You don't even need an explanation, you can just do the experiment!\n\nHowever, if you prefer a concept: a floating object is simply not affected by water too far below to even touch it. So if it's going to float in shallow water it will in deep water, and vice versa.", "[Archimedes principle](_URL_0_) states that the upward\u00a0buoyant force\u00a0that is exerted on a body immersed in a\u00a0fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the\u00a0weight\u00a0of the fluid that the body\u00a0displaces\u00a0and acts in the upward direction at the center of mass of the displaced fluid.\n\nSo, as long as the weight of the amount of water displaced by the object is ~~less~~ *more* than the object itself, the object will float regardless of how much other water there happens to be.\n\nEdit: fixed", "You could refer to the \"principle of floatation\" paragraph :\n\n_URL_0_\n\nOr alternatively refer to the \"happy wife, happy life\" principle which stipulates that, even if you are right, you are wrong. \nAdmit it, be a gentleman about it, move on and open that bottle of wine that is waiting to be open while you are arguing the point \ud83d\ude02", "Imagine submerging the pint glass with the egg (full to the brim) just to the brim in a bath of water. Then imagine the glass vanished. Would the egg now begin to float?\n\nAlso: Do the experiment! Ask her to find something (an egg? a potato? or anything) to support her view. \n\nA tricky apparatus is the [Galileo thermometer](_URL_0_) where the floating objects are very close to the density of the liquid. The slight temperature-dependent variations alter which balls float or sink.\n\n\n", "Take a bath. Put a rubber ducky in the tub and slowly fill it up. Then slowly let the water out. \n\nDucky will always float at the same height. ", "Sorry - in order to explain why she's wrong, you'd first have to work out what leads to the conclusion she's made - why she thinks the shape of the container would make any difference. \n\nFloatation is simply an application of Pascal's principle - that the force in a fluid is exerted in all directions. The pressure at a point underwater is higher than the pressure at the surface, and the difference is the mass, per unit area, of the water above that depth.", " > I say floating is simply a product of relative density (**as long as object has enough room and water to float in to begin with**)  \n >   \n > She says that whether or not something floats is determined by the  density but **ALSO the volume and/or depth of water in the container**.\n\nEveryone is explaining, I wonder if you guys missed this sentence? If there's not enough water to displace the weight of the object, it's not going to float. His wife is not wrong? Or am I missing something. \n\nI also don't see the difference between these 2 arguments... Am I being dumb :/", "Is winning this really worth sleeping on the couch?", "Easy to see why with a simple thought experiment.\n\nGet her to imagine an object which only just floats (or sinks). Now imagine another identical object and bring then closer and closer together until they join.\n\nWould she expect them to suddenly sink (or float)\n\nThe density is unchanged, but only the 'size' has increased. ", "I think most people are misinterpreting your wife's statement and missing an important point\n\n >  there's 'more depth water to make it float'\n\n*To everyone commenting:* She's not saying the water is too shallow to float it because the egg will rest on the bottom, she's thinking the extra depth of water gives the water extra ability to float objects. Her bath example is wrong because she's touching the bottom (I'd be impressed if someone can float in a pool without going deeper than a bathtub), but that's not the misconception that's throwing her off.\n\n*To OP:* She's not entirely wrong to think depth of water changes some characteristics of the water, but her logic is upside down. The water at the **bottom** of the glass is affected by the weight of the water above it (because of gravity) but the water at the **top** of the glass is not affected by any water underneath it. There's no force that propagates up from the bottom and is increased by additional water depth to make the water more able to float an egg.\n\n**It's like if you stack up 5 bricks - the bottom brick is feeling the weight of all 4 bricks above it but the top brick doesn't feel the weight of the 4 bricks below it.** *(edit for emphasis because this is the nutshell of it)*\n\n*A few more words*\n\nAs water gets deeper, it does get denser - the pressure increases from all the water above a certain point. However, water's not very compressible so the density doesn't change much (because \"more dense\" means you've squeezed the same number of molecules into a smaller space). So if you drop an object *ever so slightly* denser than water it into a very deep well, eventually it will stop sinking because the density of the water below it is higher than the density of the object. So now it's floating because the water is deep (and dense) enough. But like I said water will compress a minimal amount so your object's density has to be just a hair's edge more than water's for this to work.\n\nCounter intuitively, this increased pressure only depends on the depth of the water and not on the volume. If you have a tube 1 cm in diameter and 10 m long filled with water, you can measure the same pressure at the bottom of the tube as you would if it were a culvert 1 m in diameter of the same height.", "Who cares about explaining buoyancy? If your eggs float, they\u2019ve gone bad. Your wife is eating bad eggs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_thermometer"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4rbo4q", "title": "why does it seem like there are no 'official' song lyrics available on the internet? a vast majority of lyric sites seem to be based on what people hear, not actual lyrics.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rbo4q/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_there_are_no_official/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4zrzxk", "d4zs4t8", "d4zsyu3", "d4ztb1y", "d4zvphz", "d4zwwvd", "d4zxluh"], "score": [16, 252, 18, 29, 1094, 2, 67], "text": ["Because the lyrics are protected by copyright and unless you have permission to reprint the whole of the lyrics you could be in breach of copyright law. So the more respectable sites only publish part of the lyrics, as for the others...", "If the artist publishes the lyrics in the album booklet usually those are the ones copied on to the site. If the artist hasn't published the lyrics then they go on what people hear\n\nBtw do you use genius for lyrics. It is by far the best lyrics site because all the others seem so sleazy", "To add on to what others have said, Genius is the best site for lyrics and will have verified explanations of the lyrics by the artists if possible. ", "Wikipedia doesn't publish them for copyright reasons, which would extend to pretty much every other reputable website. Which is why the only place you find them are a bunch of user-generated ones that disagree with each other.", "Mike from SongMeanings here. \n\nOur lyrics are licensed, but the majority of them are lyrics derived from a few content editors. From my probing the industry, the copyright makes getting the actual lyrics difficult -- often there are several writers to a song, all represented by different publishers and all with different lyrics too. Getting them all on the same page is challenging. ", "Songs' lyrics are copyrighted works like poems, novels or books... and you need the author's authorization to publish them on your website.", "Hi, Michael from Genius here. (_URL_0_)\n\nGenius works with artists (writers included) to verify the lyrics our crowd sourced community transcribes. We have dedicated super fans who transcribe albums the second they release, getting the most popular albums transcribed (The Life of Pablo, ANTi, LEMONADE, Views) within an hour of release. This is as official as you can get!\n\nCheck out the verified lyrics to Rihanna's [\"Work,\"](_URL_1_) for example. Which FYI /u/smmmike, are incorrect on SongMeanings ;)\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["genius.com/michael", "http://genius.com/Rihanna-work-lyrics"]]}
{"q_id": "8gnjvp", "title": "why is it that 75% of the world has lactose intolerance but it seems like everyone i know drinks milk without drawbacks?", "selftext": "Edit: as people where asking, my family is from Costa Rica which was colonized by Spain in the 1500s. Most of CR has mixed genes between European and Latin American people. My last name is french so possible french blood too. I've consumed milk since a young age as it is a escential part of our meals, I believe this is the same for most of my friends and family.\n\nEdit 2: words", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gnjvp/eli5_why_is_it_that_75_of_the_world_has_lactose/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyd53xg", "dyd5ol3", "dyd7em8", "dyd7tti", "dydblec", "dydbpg9", "dydc9kg", "dyejnu0"], "score": [32, 34, 11, 5, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Because the intolerance is concentrated in non-Caucasian populations. If you know mostly Caucasian people, you'll see more lactose tolerance.", "Also, there are ranges of lactose intolerance and maybe you can train yourself to be less so.\n\nI'm East Asian and most of us are lactose intolerant. My father grew up in a country  &  at a time when young people did not regularly have dairy products. He can't drink any milk without having some problems. \n\nI can tolerate up to a pint of milk I think. I never thought I was lactose intolerant until I chugged a quart of chocolate milk after a hard workout. That was a shitty night.", "A mutation occurred in populations in Northern Europe, Central Africa, and the Asian Steppe that allow for the digestion of lactose. So if you and the people around you are from those populations then it is likely that they can digest lactose. Without you telling us where you are from or the ethnic backgrounds of most of the people you are around we cannot give a more detailed answer. ", "Lactose intolerance, like most things, is a spectrum; you can describe it on a scale of 1-10. You have people who it technically affects but not so badly and they would be closer to a 1 on the scale. You have other people whose stomachs cannot take it, and they would be closer to a 10.\n\nFurthermore, you can move up or down the scale based on how much and how often you're exposed to it.\n\nI would describe myself around a 4; the worse it gets for me is a ton of flatulence. I have gone a few months without dairy before and my level of discomfort after drinking milk would reach about a 6 or so.", "Even people who are lactose intolerant can generally drink a certain quantity of milk without feeling sick. The quantity is something like a glass a day. Many people don't consume enough milk products in a day that they'll be sick. Also, some processed milk products, like cheese, have enzymes in them that process the lactose in milk so they won't make them sick.", "I'm Asian.  Believe me when I say I know a lot of Asian people... but I can only think of two people off the top of my head who are actually lactose intolerant despite their love for dairy products.  My little brother and some Korean guy who is half white.", "Most white people are lactose tolerant, while about half of Hispanics are lactose tolerant. Then most Asians and black people are not lactose tolerant. \n\nIt may seem like everyone is drinking milk because your family is basically white and so you can all digest milk. Additionally, mixed white people will still mostly be able to digest milk.\n\nIf you moved to a different neighborhood where everyone was black, or you moved to China, you would not feel like everyone could drink milk.", "Adult Tolerance of Lactose is an evolved trait. All human babies produce the enzyme Lactase which serves to break down lactose from mothers milk into some simple sugars that your body can actually use. If your ancestors did not have domesticated milk producing animals, then they did not need the lactase enzyme once they were done breast feeding, they eventually evolved to stop producing it after early childhood.\n\nIf though, your ancestors had access to animals they could milk (cows, goats, etc) then it would be highly beneficial to be able to consume the milk even after you were done breast feeding. That is a valuable food source! And they evolved to continue producing Lactase well into adulthood.\n\nTLDR: OP you are tolerant of lactose because your European ancestors had cows and goats and stuff. Congratulations. Go enjoy a nice glass of chocolate milk."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1doemm", "title": "Why is infrared radiation only absorbed if it causes a net dipole moment change?", "selftext": "And while I'm at it, why are the vibrational energy levels quantized?\n\nAlso, is it possible for a molecule to be in more than one vibrational mode at the same time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1doemm/why_is_infrared_radiation_only_absorbed_if_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9s9h61", "c9srxcl", "c9sryi7"], "score": [8, 2, 2], "text": ["Quantisation arises necessarily out of the mathematical treatment of the quantum harmonic oscillator. A change in dipole moment is required because a photon is an oscillating electric field, and if its frequency matches that of a particular dipole-altering vibration in a molecule, the photon can excite that vibration.\n\nIt's totally possible for a molecule to be vibrating in more than one mode at once.", "The quantization comes from quantum mechanics, as arble said.\n\nAs for the dipole moment change being a prerequisite for absorption, there are several ways to explain this. The most basic is that the overlap integral becomes zero if there is no dipole moment change, and as the probability of interaction is proportional to the overlap integral, the probability of interaction, absorption is this case, becomes zero.\n\nHowever, that doesn't really help with the understanding, so let's try another approach: For the molecule, the photon looks lik an oscillating electric field, as the photon is much larger than the molecule. If the molecule can change from state A to state B, and state B have a higher dipole moment in at least one direction, the energy difference between the two states becomes smaller if there is an electric field in the right direction. The photon supplies just that electric field, meaning that the transition can happen.", "Oh, and for vibrational states: The vibrational state of a non-linear molecule with N atoms can be described as the sum of its vibrational state in 3N-6 fundamental vibrations. In that way, it can have a different vibrational state for every fundamental vibration. \n\nApart from that, the molecule can be in a superposition of different vibrational states. But that is just pure quantum weirdness. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "49krdg", "title": "how did ireland export food during a famine without the people revolting?", "selftext": "I have this question after reading a TIL: \"TIL Ireland exported enormous quantities of food during the height of the 1840's Great Famine, \"more than enough grain crops to feed the population.\" (_URL_0_)\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49krdg/eli5_how_did_ireland_export_food_during_a_famine/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0skjzf", "d0skreg", "d0sneq4", "d0szaoz", "d0t6ak6"], "score": [89, 7, 12, 6, 7], "text": ["The British were in control and didn't care at all about the Irish population. They made the Irish grow wheat to export and forced them to grow potatoes to eat. When the potato failed, there was nothing left, and the British were not about to give up their profits for humanitarian concerns, especially not for Catholics. If there had been a revolt, the British would have slaughtered thousands with their superior weaponry and organization. They'd done it many times before.\n\nIf you ever wonder why groups like the IRA and Sinn Fein exist, centuries of behavior like this is it. Not saying terrorism is justified, but being angry at the British over this history absolutely is.", "The fact that they were literally starving probably had something to do with it.\n\nAnd there was significant resistance in Ireland to the British export policy, including armed rebellion. None of it was successful, obviously.", "Ireland had existed in an on again off again state of rebellion for the previous three centuries.  The UK usually had something akin to martial law in place, so rebellion was more difficult than it might seem.\n\nAfter that is was just money and power.  During a previous famine, ports were closed to prevent food exports.  Merchants protested because they had to sell their food at low local prices, which cost them dearly.  This time around, the merchants prevailed and were allowed to export their cash crops, and the locals had neither the money nor the power to stop them.", "Revolutions almost never occur when things are bad and getting worse.  When people don't know how they will feed their children, they focus on that and solely that.  Almost all revolutions have occurred as circumstances got better.  Once you know you can feed your kids, then and only then can you focus on tomorrow.", "You would be surprised at how common this is; same happened in both Russia and China under communism.\n\nRemember that the people with guns and/or power are the ones who get fed, and if a people are not very strong compared to their government, people generally see their odds of survival better if they just try to wait it out. More likely to survive a famine than a bullet in the head."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["en.wikipedia.org"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6iu0kw", "title": "why is turkey a more common cold cut for sandwiches than chicken, when chicken is a more popular meat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iu0kw/eli5_why_is_turkey_a_more_common_cold_cut_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dj96vhv", "dj9ba6x", "dj9d1gn", "dj9hqs8", "dj9kr3t", "dj9kuyk", "dj9lw4o", "dj9m98v", "dj9myi8", "dj9ntac", "dj9ocp3", "dj9t3hd", "dj9tp1g", "dj9tu6e", "dj9uoi2", "dj9v9jx", "dj9x1ou", "dj9x5xw", "dj9xxal", "dj9y9j8", "dja5iv1", "djabl44", "djai10s", "djajg4u", "djak87l", "djalxrt", "djbwq9z"], "score": [4066, 12, 1010, 24, 197, 55, 30, 27, 2, 3, 7, 2, 2, 8059, 6, 3, 7, 18, 3, 24, 2, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["i work in a grocery store beside the deli counter - let me explain.\n\nMostly it's the illusion.  And the fact that turkeys only sell a few times a year (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas), so the industry needed to find a way to market turkey meat year round.\n\nAs for the illusion part - that is because nobody really expects to see slicked chicken since a chicken is small and they think that people are actually slicing a chicken breast.  \n\nWhen you get sliced turkey (from a deli for example) you are not getting an actual sliced turkey breast either.  The meat arrives in a ball to the store, its mostly preformed meat with a little bit of binding agent (corn starch or something, I don't really know) and a whole lot of water.  The person who is going to slice it has to drain a lot of water - the water is great for adding weight and you pay by weight often.  \n\nThe big ball of meat is easy to slice and that is what they used to make sliced turkey from - which is a lot easier for people to believe than a sliced chicken breast I suppose.\n", "Adult male Turkeys are too big for a home oven.  The hens are raised for oven roasters the toms are for cold cuts and hotel breasts.", "Turkey is much more popular in the US than in other parts of the world. \n\nOutside of the US (specifically thinking of Australia, UK and other parts of Western Europe) I'd estimate chicken sandwiches to be 10 times more available than turkey", "Chicken, especially dark meat is fatty and cold chicken fat is not good. Turkey is lean and is just better tasting than chicken when roasted and eaten cold. Also a real turkey breast is big enough for many sandwich slices, while a chicken breast might have a few big slices in it. White meat chicken is good in chicken salad, but the dark meat is not good at all, because it has too much fat. ", "Turkey has less fat than chicken, and during the \"fat is evil\" era of the 1990s, this health aspect gave turkey a big boost, especially with all the ad campaigns reminding people of that fact. \n\nTo this day a lot of people still think that turkey is the healthy alternative to lunch meats like ham and roast beef.", "I worked in a Deli in Australia many years ago (here Deli's just sell cold meats, olives, sliced cheeses, etc).\n\nI would say that Ham was the most popular product by far. There were at least 8 types of ham, with varying degrees of processing - with 'off-the-bone' being the least processed, and most expensive. 'Champagne' ham was just a ball of pink with a ham-like skin. Once sliced they all looked roughly the same.\n\nTurkey meat was a niche, and the 2 types you would get here were; processed, or breast meat - which again appeared similar once sliced, but tasted completely different.\n\nThere was also sliced processed chicken meat, which is mainly for kids and disgusting.", "If the question is 'Why is turkey more popular on sandwiches than chicken' then I would say the question is flawed.  I don't believe that is true at all. \n\nI think the answer to this question is going to vary depending on where in the world you are, so I can only answer this for New York delis.\n\nIf the question is 'Why is deli-style sliced turkey breast more common on sandwiches than deli-style sliced chicken breast,' it is primarily due to the relative sizes of the birds.  The average turkey is probably 5-6 times more massive than an average chicken and the size of their breast is proportionally larger as well.    Therefore, the (much) larger turkey breast is more suited towards roasting, slicing and cold packaging than a chicken breast.  Chicken breasts are more conveniently packaged as-is and served as sliced cutlet for sandwiches.  While 'deli-style' sliced chicken breast is also commonly available as well it is usually an alternative option to fresh grilled or breaded chicken.  So when you order turkey at a deli, you can only (usually) get the deli-style cold cut form, but when you order chicken you usually get it as a whole cutlet as well as the deli-style cold cut form if you specifically ask.", "Because the traditional sandwich meat was ham, and turkey was the low fat substitute. Over time, turkey became equal to ham, and now, I would say the more popular choice.\n\nChicken was never a ham substitute in a sandwich, so never needed to be processed as a cold cut to act as a replacement.", "Turkey meat is cheaper per pound, largely because it is only popularly consumed during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. There are large sell offs between those holidays, and a lot of it goes to deli. In recent years though Turkey has been starting to move to ground turkey, turkey sausages, and turkey burgers.", "Chicken doesn't slice as well as ham and turkey. It falls apart more easily, especially when cold ", "Marketing.\n\nThe chicken industry sells chicken all year.\n\nTurkey traditionally is only eaten at Christmas/Thanksgiving.\n\nThe turkey industry wants to operate year round, so they need a market for their product.\n\nTurkey sandwich meat, turkey bacon...", "Turkey meat is cheaper. Farms raise turkeys year round, with only 2 days a year when they are needed. Christmas and Thanksgiving. Chicken meat is more expensive, because after a chicken reaches a certain age, the meat quality is less desirable. I. E. After 2 months old, chicken meat becomes tough. Turkeys, on the other hand, you can get much better return on investment., since the breast part is more desirable, and turkey breasts are bigger than chicken breasts. ", "I worked in a deli at target and sold 2 different brands (3 selections) of chicken that could be sliced and bagged: Archer Farms (oven Roasted and BBQ) and Healthy Ones.\n\nWorking there for the years that I did, eating the product myself and asking customers about it I did learn a few things. The cold cut chicken was either too bland or 2 greasy across all selections or too greasy for customers; as far as the employees were concerned it was indeed bland and greasy, but also it tends to literally melt and shred when you put it through a slicer thats anything less less then \"I was sharpened 5 seconds ago\".", "HOLY CRAP! A question from my industry!  Yes, i worked the first FOUR years of my engineering career at a factory in rural America that produced approximately 2 million pounds of unsliced turkey deli meat per week.  I still work for one of the largest producer of turkey in the world.  The answer almost exclusively boils down to economics.  Turkey is a lower cost protein to make than chicken (by a small margin...but feed inputs are roughly 70% of the cost of poultry and turkeys are more efficient feed converters.  Every little bit counts here).  On top of this turkey is incredibly seasonal.  Thanksgiving, christmas, and to a lesser extent easter are when turkey producers make their money and spend the rest of the year trying not to lose it.  You cant just turn on the giant industro-ag machine that is turkey production for three holidays so production must remain relatively stable year round.  People dont buy whole turkeys throughout the year so producers have to get creative.  Enter turkey bacon, burgers, and.....deli breast!  Essentially...if you want reasonably priced thanksgiving and christmas turkeys...the industry has to find creative ways to sell it year round....the white goes to deli, dark goes to ham, bacon, and burgers.  If you have any other questions i would be happy to answer! Poultry is my life! Currently working at a large cooked chicken plant (edited to remove a customer reference...don't want to get make anyone mad...i can't/won't be able to answer questions about specific customers or products)\nEdit to add a few other economic factors...turkey takes substantially longer to grow than chicken so contracts on pricing are easier to secure.  Chicken grows in weeks...so your contract price might look great the first flock...but feed prices change rapidly and if you lock in a year contract on chicken you could be getting screwed.  Also, there are higher margin outlets for chicken breast than deli meat.  Restaurants dont want to serve turkey because its slow to cook...chicken is fast and with high margins...chicken breasts are incredibly popular at the meat case for grilling.  If you can get it in your store, buy a raw turkey tenderloin to marinate and grill! Best cut of meat to grill bar a ribeye!\nEdit a second time to say thanks for the gold.  If you have questions keep asking and i'll answer ALL OF THEM.  NOW GO OUT THERE AND ORDER SOME TURKEY! Im headed out for a bit but keep asking.  Ill answer all the questions you send me.  \n FINAL EDIT GUYS: My fingers hurt and i need some cold cut turkey to rejuvenate.  some people are getting pretty close to figuring out my identity so i've disclosed to much and am gonna stop answering questions.  i am not a \"heartless animal killing nazi\" but i do have a family to feed and a great job i wanna keep!  For the vegans/vegetarians out there i know i won't change your opinions but know we are doing the most humane and respectful processes we can.  i feed this stuff to my family and eat it almost every day.    if you have any turkey specific questions let me know in my private messages and i'll be glad to answer them.  ", "This is localised.\n\nHere in Australia sliced chicken is more widely available and cheaper than turkey.", "Chicken breast is smaller than turkey breast and therefore harder to slice. \n\nSource: was a butcher", "Idk if it's an Australian thing but most deli's here do roast chicken which is primarily used for sandwiches in most family's I've ever interacted with. Chick loaf us also a common meat used for sandwich as well as the use of boiled chicken breasts for cold meat sandwiches in cafes and bakeries, your far more likely to find a chicken salad sandwich then a turkey sandwich at least in Sw qld and northern nsw. Turkey exists but doesn't seam as common (worked in a store with deli for 5 years, we moved hardly any turkey. 3 or 4 regulars would buy it and that's it, but fuck me did we sell some chicken) ", "In Australia chicken sandwiches are ubiquitous - sold in every cafe, convenience store, and takeaway place you can imagine. To find a turkey sandwich though you'd have to go to some sort of specialist sandwich shop or gourmet deli, and even then you might not find one. \n\nEdit: I expect that'd be much the same in many other, non-American countries.", "who remembers Weaver Chicken Roll cold cut? It was probably bad for you but I loved it. Wish I could find it.", "Deli slicer of over two years speaking. Cold turkey just tastes better. I've given many samples and people prefer turkey over chicken. We sold boars head items. They even had this delicious Buffalo chicken and Cajun chicken item. Also this herbed chicken item as well. People continuously preferred to purchase turkey. No matter if there was a sale. We'd maybe see a small rise in chicken sales. Even going up against beef. People would prefer turkey. As a cold cut item turkey and ham seem to be the ideal choices. Among salami and roast beefs. Chicken seems to be the last option for many people. Unless they're just craving it. Plus turkey items had a lot more choices. Different flavors, brands, and prices. Chicken tended to be one item with maybe two brands. ", "turkeys are big so they are more economical to gut and mince into sliceable geometric meat shapes by the cold cut factories. chickens are small so it would take more of them to mince ti get the same weight of meat, all fillers being equal.\n\ni prefer chicken, even in november.", "Pretty sure that's only a thing in America.\n\nI live in New Zealand and I can safely say I've never eaten a \"turkey sandwich\"... it just seems weird.  \n\nHowever, I usually pick up a sandwich for lunch from the cafe near my work; regularly chicken or beef, usually with lettuce/tomato/mayonnaise.  Yum!", "light brine for a day, spice, and slow bake. \n\nbigger breasts yields more cuts, especially if u know how to use a deli slicer\n\n(mom and pops deli worker)", "I'm not a professional or anything. It I love to cook and I bake sourdough bread for multiple kids' sandwiches and also roast turkey for them instead of buying the expensive overly salted and liquid injected turkey. Chicken tastes great when you cook it, but when it's cold it can taste Haney, and each day it sits in the fridge it gets more and more weird. Turkey in the other hand seems to retain its flavor for a few days after. And also seems to retain moisture better. Basically: It tastes better cold and it doesn't dry up as fast. ", "Australia here. Chicken is by far the favourite here. Especially on sandwiches. Maybe because we have never been a large consumer of turkey. Just sayin'.", "It isn't a more common cold-cut, you are looking at this from an American-centric viewpoint I believe.", "Marketing and necessity pure  &  simple.  Let me explain:\n\nEvery family in the western world is used to cooking a chicken.  It's a perfect bird bred for utility.  One chicken feeds 4 people for one meal and it is delicious.  Easy and economical.\n\nTurkeys on the other hand are far too big to naturally accommodate a regular western family for Tuesday's dinner.  Yet we demand turkeys on special occasions.  NOBODY will serve you a chicken dinner on Thanksgiving.  Would you cook a chicken dinner for your extended family of 23 people on Thanksgiving?  It must be a turkey on this one day of the year, and maybe Christmas too.  \n\nThose 2 days of the year in the US are when you cook a turkey.  That's it.  So what of the turkey farmers that are working year-round to bring you your beautiful bird on Christmas morning?  They try hard to gear up, but they actually have real live (dead) turkeys to sell all year long regardless of your holiday.\n\nHow do the turkey farmers find a market when it's not Thanksgiving season?  Anywhere they can!  Turkey sandwiches.  Turkey burger.  Turkey bacon.  Turkey jerkey.  Pet food.\n\nBig beautiful cooked turkey breasts slice up so perfectly at the deli, and they are delicious.  The less sliceable dark meat parts such as legs go to bacon, sausage, burger, jerkey, and (mostly) pet food. \n\nLet's all applaud our local turkey farmer and the incredible job they do to both bring us our sandwiches on Tuesday, and our family dinner on Thanksgiving.\n\nChickens are easy.  Turkey farming is tough stuff and you gotta be smart..\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8d5dlg", "title": "Do recreational drugs effect different ethnic groups differently?", "selftext": "I'm not trying to sound or be racist racist. I'm curious about the effects of drugs on different ethnic groups. I believe certain drugs may effect people with certain DNA SNP's differently. I put my DNA into a SNP reader and it says I could have poor metabolization to certain medications. So I was wondering if the effects of say alcohol on someone who's say British/Irish ethnicity would differ to someone who's say Japanese ethnicity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8d5dlg/do_recreational_drugs_effect_different_ethnic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxkkrej", "dxklop4", "dxl73pi"], "score": [16, 7, 4], "text": ["Well, Native Americans metabolize alcohol differently than Europeans do. It makes alcohol much more potent and thus addictive and deadly. (Don't read this as Native Americans are more likely to be alcoholics.) It's due to a missing liver enzyme.\n\n\n", "So I\u2019m not aware of any such effects that occur to *all* or *most* members of a given race (e.g. \u201call white people receive more of a high from THC\u201d). There is however the pretty well-known example of \u201cAsian Flush\u201d, where something like 36% of people of East Asian descent lack a particular enzyme necessary for breaking down one of the metabolic byproducts created as the body processes alcohol (I think? I\u2019ll rely on someone smarter than I to make sure I got that right). [Here](_URL_0_) is a video by Vox explaining it, and \n\n[this](_URL_1_) is the wiki page on it. ", "The state of colorado did tests where groups of people would get high on known quantities of marijuana then drive in a driving simulator with various scenarios where they can measure attention and reaction times. They were attempting to establish legal standards for marijuana intoxication similar to those already established for alcohol. The results were not helpful for their goal. They found that heavy marijuana users could have very high concentrations of THC or whatever it was they were measuring, and still be relatively unaffected. Others who were never or infrequent users would be greatly incapacitated with even minor levels. The results were not consistent across similar experience groups though. There was a small set of people whose reaction times got much better when they were high/had high levels. Not everybody who was a neophyte/lightweight got floored by small doses, and some heavy users still got pretty bad with small doses.  It does suggest there may be genetic differences in different people's responses to the drug in addition to there being some correlation between prior usage and the response. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G6717bNakuA", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction"], []]}
{"q_id": "5jx83b", "title": "why do we have data plan limits?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jx83b/eli5_why_do_we_have_data_plan_limits/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbjmf68", "dbjmfsl", "dbjn9qw", "dbjprp8", "dbjuwpr", "dbjvflx", "dbjxbze", "dbjxfdi", "dbjxudy", "dbjyl66", "dbk0vqx", "dbk7xbi", "dbkador", "dbkciz6", "dbkhzgb"], "score": [92, 9, 14, 2, 173, 53, 67, 4, 2, 3, 5, 4, 3, 8, 3], "text": ["Because telecom providers pay for spectrum which is the the right to transmit data, which requires investment in infrastructure, which must be paid for through subscriptions.", "Customers will agree to pay more for data under plans with caps and limits.  Companies want to make more money, so that's what they offer.", "There are several things at play:\n\n1. Infrastructure. In order for your phone to get data, it needs to be able to contact a cell tower. Cell towers have limited ranges, and therefore you need many of them. Then the cell towers need to connect to the internet (likely through several intermediaries). In short, it takes a lot of money to get all the pieces into their places. Even after all of that...\n\n2. Technological Limits. There is no technology currently powerful enough to be able to quickly and efficiently handle all data requests within the U.S. or comparable countries/areas. Investments here are costly and risky.\n\n3. Return on Investment. If you spent a lot of money on all of the above, you'd like to see a handsome return. To do this, you have two options: 1. Make the bandwidth unlimited (which would strain your systems) or 2. Divide up the \"data plans\" with caps. If you go with option one, you will necessarily need to increase your prices. If you increase your prices, however, less people will be willing and able to afford the service. Additionally, you'd be subject to more service outages due to higher data demands, which would lead customers away from you. If you divide it up with caps, you can reach more segments (i.e. poorer people can still buy your data if it's capped at 1GB, for example), your network strain is reduced, and you can reach a more steady equilibrium that turns a profit. \n\n4. Regulation. Radio waves are regulated, and you're only allowed to use certain frequencies. Frequencies can't just be stuffed to the brim, or you'll run into interference and other issues. ", "Try out Jio it provides unlimited 4G data, but the speed reduces after 4GB of usage in a day", "There are some good points talking about how it's due to infrastructure and the cost of maintaining their systems and how they have to pay for the spectrum and all that, and while ideally that would be the cause of data limits it's not. ISPs make an insane amount of profit, and a few years ago the government gave the largest ones money to improve their infrastructure (which they didn't do a very satisfactory job of).\n\nSo if that isn't the cause then what is? Money. They want to make more money. If they set limits they can charge more for larger plans and charge overage fees. At least in the US it all comes down to making more money by screwing the customer. ", "Simple -- it creates more profits for the data provider. Comcast has admitted their data caps are a business decision and not an engineering one. \n\n_URL_0_", "**To make you pay way more for way less.**\n\nData caps are restrictions on the total amount of data transferred, usually confined within the billing period. There exists no technical justification for them. They are 100% arbitrary.\n\n- ***Muh spectrum though?***\n\nSpectrum is limited, both on cable and mobile networks, more on the latter. This means the total effective bandwidth on any network is limited, and as a result, the bandwidth for users. Quite logical. \n\nA common myth is that this would justify data caps. It does not. Spectrum doesn't limit the total amount of data you can download. Only the *rate* or speed at which you can download. \n\n- ***Muh congestion though?***\n\nAnother common myth is the one about congestion. People try to justify data caps because otherwise, due to overselling (the ISP selling more bandwidth than they can offer since not everyone uses the network 24/7), congestion would occur because too many people would download too much at once. \n\nHowever, congestion means saturating the network bandwidth, so that by itself is more a spectrum issue than a data issue - data caps do not prevent congestion at all. It's still possible for people to log on at the same time and overload the network. Data caps instead serve to prohibit users from connecting to the internet. \n\nCongestion is also already solved by dynamic bandwidth adjustment, which is a fancy way of saying the ISP temporarily (on the scale of seconds to minutes) reduces the bandwidth for some users to prevent congestion. So, it doesn't occur anymore - the worst thing that could happen is a temporary slower internet. You don't notice this with normal usage.\n\nData caps, on the other hand, prevent usage of internet altogether. I mean, this is not a difficult comparison: 'Slow' Internet versus no Internet. Easy choice right?\n\nSomeone will inevitably argue against this, then I'll present a simple calculation to destroy them. The fact is that you're able to get far, far more data (hundreds of times more data) without data caps with congestion, than with data caps without congestion. And as for the latter - even on capped connections, congestion still occurs. \n\n- ***M-muh money?***\n\nWell yeah, that's the point. The ISP wants more money. That's why they do it.\n\n- ***But they have to earn back the costs for maintenance and such!***\n\nYes... so? Doesn't justify data caps. It would justify either increasing the price of connections - which is already high enough anyway, it's a total lie that they don't have enough money - or to reduce bandwidth. \n\n- ***If everyone has unlimited data, something something Netflix something something congestion!***\n\nSee the big rant about congestion above. And if the network couldn't ultimately handle an increase in, say, streaming - the solution is not to make users pay more or to make them less able to use the Internet. The solution is to improve the network to enable users to stream that much. \n\nShitty analogy time: If there are congestions on highways, does that justify forbidding people from driving 6 days per week? (Fun fact: 1/7th is still way more than you'll get with data caps, so it's not an extreme example. It's a mild one.)\n\n- ***[Insert argument in favor of data caps]***\n\n[Insert rebuttal of argument that is probably not justifying data caps at all.]", "Because the cost of a resource is directly related to its scarcity. Data limits impose an artificial scarcity and therefore increase the cost. ", "Well here i am using tmobile and everything unlimited including tablet\n(Yeah i work for tmobile)", "Nearly all broadband providers ditched data pland for internet a decade ago in denmark.\n\nFor phones its still around but you can get unlimited as well", "Because providers can. Same reason they still charge, in many cases, for long distance calling outside your \"local calling area\".", "It generates revenue, evidently more so than not having limits.\n\nAnd I speculate that service providers have an interest in conditioning customers to pay fees and to restrain their data usage.", "For cable ISP's specifically, they are bleeding out the arse with Cable TV subscriptions because people are increasingly abandoning TV programming for just their internet connections. Forcing people to upgrade plans to match their data use is a logical (though evil) way to compensate for revenue losses on the cable side.", "Mobile reddit fucked my answer, so I'll give you the short version. \n\nNo. Infrastructure is designed to compensate for traffic. Congestion is an issue, but that's a backbone probablem and isn't going to be solved by restricting use. More like managing the pipe you're given. \n\nData caps are mostly an anti piracy method from comeanies that utilize their bandwidth for iptv and vdsl. (Video content) Can't pirate files if you have to pay for em.\n\nEdit - I work in telecommunications with copper infrastructure and fiber optic.", "Because the providers are money hungry whores that will charge as much as they can. And because most people cannot spend more than 3 minutes in their own quiet space anymore, they resort to downloading funny cat videos they would pay any amount to get. Buy a lead pencil and fuck TCOM. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.extremetech.com/computing/212376-comcast-admits-that-its-data-caps-are-a-business-decision-not-an-engineering-requirement"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3dlko4", "title": "Is the Cascadia Subduction Zone Overhyped?", "selftext": "The New Yorker recently published this story about how the Pacific Northwest is invariably going to be destroyed by an earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone. (_URL_0_) \n\nThere was another post in AskScience about it, but only touched on a portion of the article. Overall, it seemed sensationalistic, but, I'm no geologist. Anyone with the proper expertise able to weigh in on what's accurate and what's hyped in the article?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3dlko4/is_the_cascadia_subduction_zone_overhyped/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct6f001"], "score": [5], "text": ["These types of things do come and go in a hype train as some people enjoy calling them. But nevertheless, the danger described in those articles are very real, and should not be dismissed.\n\nNot sure if the articles go into detail (As I haven't read every single one of them) but the Cascade region is overdue for a big event when compared to the average interval between large quakes. The amount of energy released in each quake is easily measured by the amount of damage left behind in geological, and archeological records. So we can base the estimated damages on these records, and the results are rather scary, hence our current hype train scenario.\n\nBecause of the scale of the area that is able to be affected (It's not just the Pacific Northwest that will suffer the consequences if this were to happen today) very little preventative measures have been implemented. And compared to where scientists would prefer us to be, we've practically done nothing in terms of establishing evacuation routes and methods to move the population away from the ocean within just a few minutes of detecting the quake. So when the earthquake hits, we are essentially sitting ducks when we've had all of this time to prepare for it, knowing that it is a possibility."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "45ev3p", "title": "how obvious clickbait is an effective use of ad space.", "selftext": "\"7 vegetables that could KILL you!\"\n\"How to grow your penis 9 inches with this simple trick!\"\n\"This woman figured out 1 simple trick to look young. Doctors hate her\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45ev3p/eli5_how_obvious_clickbait_is_an_effective_use_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czxatye", "czxawxe", "czxaz27", "czxb5pa", "czxod0l"], "score": [5, 5, 35, 7, 6], "text": ["Humans are curious creatures. Even though most people know it's click bait, all it takes is a few clicks for them to make money. ", "They target the lowest common denominator. You and I could probably be able to tell its bullshit by just being savvy or having actual knowledge in the field they're advertising, but the group they're trying to target are older people or soccer moms. It's similar to why shows like Dr. Oz are popular, they have offer \"simple\" solutions for problems that the \"establishment just can't figure out\". They're more or less the tabloids of our generation. ", "You'll never believe why this is such an effective use of ad space!\n\nELI5 version: Imagine you are fishing. A net might catch a lot of fish, but it's expensive and must be thrown into a targeted area. But imagine putting a really REALLY tasty bit of special fish food on a hook. Actually, it could taste like shit. The only important part is the smell. That really REALLY good smell attracts a fish. The fish bites the hook. Now... it doesn't really matter if they like the taste or not. The fisher got what he wanted. Lots of other fish might have recognized that smell and thought, that's obvious shit masked with a yummy odor, but a few fish will bite it. \n\nThese people don't care if their articles are shit. They want your click. It's effective because it works like bait, not a net. If I wrote an informative article I wouldn't advertise it. People looking for it would find it via google. A clickbait article is more like using bait, people are lured to it by that yummy smell without actually looking for it.\n\n\nIt's effective because it works. There is an entire industry around it. People make a living by writing clickbait articles. We all know exactly what they are... and I bet we STILL click on them from time to time because... well, we take the bait.", "imagine you havent been on the internet for the last 10 years straight. i can totally imagine my mom go like \"oh damn i hope i didnt eat something that could kill me\" *click*", "Because it filters out the people who would not fall for the scam anyways.  If you look at the ad and see that is is clickbait, you're not the type of person to input your name and address and other information in order to get a sampler of gluten free handsoap or whatever.  This is turn makes the people operating the scam have an easier job since they're not spending time trying to convince people who are already skeptical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5mywo6", "title": "Nazi \"Ecology\": How important was it in the ideology of National Socialism? What, if any, environmental policies did the Nazi state enact.", "selftext": "Every now and then it's pointed that there was a \"green\" tendenancy in Nazi ideology. Often I hear this in partisan contexts as attempts to discredit or smear advocates of contemporary environmental protection policies. More recently, I encountered Timothy Snyder's book *Black Earth*, which argues that Hitler's obsession with carving out territory in Eastern Europe, *lebensraum*, was underpinned by anxieties in Germany regarding diminishing natural resources and agricultural productivity. Snyder's argument would suggest that an ecological panic was a major contributing factor to the Second World War and the Holocaust. I'm curious to know what r/askhistorians makes of this specific claim. \n\nI'm also curious, however, about the extent and importance of \"green\" or \"environmentalist\" strains in Nazi thought and policies, though I appreciate that applying these exact terms here is an anachronism. Was an appreciation for nature more of an ancilary concern for the Nazis, something coincident with the much broader lineage of nature worship in German Romanticism? Or was it intrinsic to the rest of the Nazi worldview?\n\nAnd finally, one last question, to what extant were any environmental policies actually enacted by the regime? I know there were plans to \"Teutonize\" landscapes in territory incorporated by the Reich by introducing select species of plants and animals native to Germany (though this is actually the opposite of what ecological wisdom would encourage). Were these ever implemented? Likewise, were there any efforts to establish any agencies or programs akin to the American E.P.A., i.e., programs charged with things like pollution restrictions, land use regulations, et cetera?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mywo6/nazi_ecology_how_important_was_it_in_the_ideology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc7m0w0", "dc7nesq"], "score": [8, 27], "text": ["backdrop:  I find Snyder's work often monocausal and even simplistic.  (Haven't read *Black Earth* yet, but I definitely thought *Bloodlands* was a lot of old stuff--included discredited theories of Totalitarianism--repackaged with a simple-sounding sound-bite...)  \n\nThis is itself a simplistic (and time-constrained) first stab at your complicated question, but here goes: \n\n\nLandscape preservationism and environmentalism both have very long historical lineages in Germany (both having been more or less 'invented' there), and they thus both played into Nazism in a similar way to other ideologies (Lutheranism, Socialism, colonialism, etc.) that fed into, factored into, and were used by Nazism:  namely, in complicated ways. \n\nFirst, the majority of Nazi leaders (and likely, of Nazi members) were far more worked up about a few key issues (namely, anti-Versailles Treaty, anti-semitism, anti-socialism, and eventually, war) and \"green\" thinking was nowhere near a primary concern of theirs.  It barely factored into the thinking of any of the top Nazis (with the possible exception of Goering--the self-styled \"Reich Master of the Hunt\" and \"Master of the German Forests\"... though he seems to me to have been more of an outdoor enthusiast and quasi-conservationalist than any sort of true environmentalist.)  \n\nAs to your question about being an ancillary concern (German Romanticism, aesthetic appreciation of/by \"the German peoples\", Blood  &  Soil, etc.), \"ancillary\" is a good way to phrase it.   \"Nazi thought\" was a chaotic miasma--almost an open field for anyone to leap in and promote their own agenda.  \n\nThere were many adherents of National Socialism before and after 1933 who were also advocates of or influenced by landscape preservationism and even environmentalism, and so 'brought' these ideas into the party  (and were sort of \"green evangelists\" within the NSDAP).   After 1933, they could \"use\" Nazi rhetoric and Nazi politics to advance their ideas (when given an appropriately-Aryan gloss.)  The language of \"Heimat\"  (homeland) was very useful in this context, as it was easy to use Romantic notions of \"Heimat\" to rhetorically and ideologically bolster landscape preservationism with the racial thinking that saturated Nazism.  \n\nSo preservationists saw opportunity in Nazism... in part, because of top Nazi's claims that they would rein in capitalism in favor of something more \"German.\"  (They did not.)  \n\nAnd of course, there were the military-economic concerns of autarky, which could also carry a conservationist gloss...\n\nThat's all I have time to type, now, but here are some sources: \n\nThere is a strong essay collection *How Green Were the Nazis?* that came out a decade ago.  (can't remember the editors, though)\n\nThree other great books on this topic (all academic histories, though all are quite readable):  \n\nThomas Lekan *Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945*  \n\nFrank Uek\u00f6tter, *The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany* \n\nDavid Blackbourn, *The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany*\n\nEDIT:   to come back to your point about contemporary partisan uses of this to smear environmental protection policies, you are certainly correct.  The same is done with \"Socialism\"--even though Nazis were hardly socialists.  An on-point retort might be:  the Nazis were \"environmentalists\" in the same way that they were \"Christians\"...that is, opportunistically, tactically and brutally, and in a way that exaclty inverted the true meaning of these ideas they were both borrowing and abusing.  \n", "Modified from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_) and since the OP started first with the anachronism of environmentalist/environmentalism, for clarity's sake, so will I. \n\nThere's a lot to unpack in these questions and the charge that the Nazis were green is one that has been and still is instrumentalized by opponents of the environmental movement. Snyder's argument about anxieties is part of a larger thesis in *Black Earth*, and I'll leave it to /u/commiespaceinvader 's [answer](_URL_1_) on Snyder. I will say that Snyder often falls into a myopic love with his grand sweeping paradigms that explain complicated historical events and processes. The problem is that even though his historical models are often quite elegant, they do not explain as much as he purports they do and they are nowhere near as novel as he claims. Both *Black Earth* and *Bloodlands* often bang on open doors and even when historians agree with Snyder, this quality is often quite grating. \n\nEnvironmentalism within the Third Reich had a very strained and complicated relationship with the state and its dominant ideology of National Socialism. German environmental thinkers often had to adjust and shift their thinking to fit this new climate. For many, this was an easy task since the German environmentalism of the 1920s and 30s shared a number of congruencies with *v\u00f6lkisch* nationalism that stressed that Germans were deeply connected to certain types of landscapes and climates such as the forest or bucolic countryside. But the transition was seldom easy and in many cases this was environmentalism in a National Socialist key. Moreover, the Third Reich found some environmental thinkers of greater utility than others. Agronomists that could make the land bloom or zoologists seeking to find the genetic key to breed cows into their original auroch form found state patronage much easier than other Germans whose research and interests did not so closely align with the principles of National Socialism. This dynamic of selectively engaging environmentalist thought and self-coordination of many Germans environmentalists would become the dominant *leitmotifs* of environmentalism within the Third Reich. \n\nOne of the clearer examples of this process was the *Reichsnaturschutzgesetz* (Reich Nature Protection Law, or RNG). The RNG was arguably the most comprehensive law for the protection of the environment in the world when it was enacted in 1935. Yet the same state that enacted the RNG, which stipulated that any public works project needed to consult local conservationists, it also advanced a ruthless exploitation of natural resources in the name of economic autarky. In numerous cases, the needs of the war economy triumphed over the legal principles behind the RNG. Many German environmentalists played a much less prominent role in the direction of state policy as it evolved in the late 1930s. They could gain traction when the needs of remilitarization were not apparent, but getting the state to apply the RNG was  much less likely to if environmental protection came at the expense of industry. For example, Frank Uek\u00f6tter\u2019s monograph on Nazi-era conservation, *The Green and the Brown*, notes that environmental protectionists in Baden were able to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric plant in the Wutach Gorge during wartime through their exploitation of local patronage networks to ensure that the state enforced the RNG. By contrast, the earlier efforts of the *Heimat* activist Ludwig Finckh to close the neighboring basalt quarry at Hohenstoffeln Mountain hinged on the quarry no longer being economically feasible. \n\nSimilar contradictions were present in the Third Reich's management of peasant agriculture and seed distribution. One of the foremost proponents of the NSDAP's program of \"Blood and Soil\" was Richard Walther Darr\u00e9 who became Agriculture Minister in 1933 and promoted a centralized bureaucracy *Reichsn\u00e4hrstand* (RNS) to promote a peasant agriculture. Darr\u00e9's various writing stressed that the German peasant ideally lived in a symbiotic harmony with the land, and the role of National Socialism was to encourage this symmetry. The RNS promoted certain seed strains and coordinated with various agronomist research in various institutes, whom the RNS often reminded that they had to benefit small-holder farms. The RNS's policies created an initial period of prosperity for Germany's peasants, largely because of protectionism and subsidies, but the good years did not last beyond 1936. The pressures of autarky pushed the RNS to advocate greater yields and seed strains for peasant farmers. This centralization implicit in the RNS meant that peasantry found themselves locked out from a system that was ostensibly for their own benefit. The turn to more commercial and high-yield farming also made a mockery of Darr\u00e9's claim to promote a *v\u00f6lkisch* agriculture that eschewed modernity and returned the peasantry to its primeval roots. \n\nEnvironmentalist ideas often became associated with *Volkisch* sentiments at points within the Third Reich that the latter often outstripped the former. German writers on the environment conceptualized the environment in racialized terms during the Third Reich. A healthy forest or land was a sign of an Aryan land. Hans Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG, Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG\u2019s text, in a December 1939 speech claimed that although Germans have always possessed a strong affinity to nature, it was only after 1933 that the Germans possessed a government that sided with nature.  Klose encouraged his audience to fully comply and educate the public on rationale behind the RNG and conservation in general.  Similarly, a 1942 editorial from *Gartenbau im Reich* that reflected a radicalization of environment was Max K. Schwarz\u2019s 1942 \u201cZeitgem\u00e4\u00dfe Gedanken \u00fcber Garten- und Landschaftsgestaltung.\u201d Schwarz\u2019s perspective was that landscaping, whether individualized gardens or the planning of cities, had to reflect a racialized nature. \u201cThe landscape,\u201d he asserted, \u201cis not determined by the determination of a single thought, but rather by the entire Volk. Only the Volk itself can comprehensively design the countryside.\u201d  According to Schwarz, the dynamic character of National Socialism had made it possible for human beings to more completely understand themselves and their role in nature. He then developed a theory of total nature which is not to be enjoyed just for its aesthetic value but for the insights they can give into the *Volksgemeinshaft*.  For example, he instructed his readers that \u201cplants are should not only be appreciated go for passive viewing, but appreciated more so for their organic and influential connection with the body and their own environment.\u201d  This vision of nature was only to be cherished and enjoyed through the unique character of the German race. This implicit embrace of a racialized conversation efforts was even more noticeable in Walter Schoenichen\u2019s editorial \u201cNaturschutzgebiete der neuen Reichsgaue.\u201d Appearing in the December 1941 issue popular middle-class magazine *Westermann\u2019s Monatshefte*, Schoenichen described, in vivid language, the unspoiled paradise in the newly-absorbed territories in Poland and the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. According to Schoenichen, the experience of a raw unblemished nature needed to be protected by a large national park system found in other nations. Such a park system would be \u201can uplifting thought that [a national park] would be dedicated to the highest and proudest summits of the Greater German Reich which is devoted to the spiritual edification of the German Volk and its reverence for nature.\u201d  \n\nOf course, when dealing with the issue of pollution and environmental degradation, German writers would invoke the familiar spectres of Poles and Jews. SS-affiliate authors for *General Plan Ost* would claim that soil erosion and depletion of the environment were typical behaviors of inferior races and the SS-led new order would erase this damage through the *Gr\u00fcnaufbau* (greening) of Polish and Soviet lands. \u201cHag und Heimat\u201d by Heinrich Friederich Wiepking-J\u00fcrgensmann, Heinrich Himmler\u2019s special representative for the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKfDV) and a prominent prewar landscape architect, drew a very tight connection between this new *Heimat* and the *Gr\u00fcnaufbau*. Wiepking-J\u00fcrgensmann explained to the public in the article \u201cHag und Heimat\u201d the spirit of the special relationship between the Heimat and nature developed under SS patronage. \u201cHag und Heimat,\u201d written in a clear and colloquial style, contended that this symbiosis was fully congruent with the racial principles that the SS also protects in the Greater German Reich. For example, he wrote that \u201cthe landscape is an unmistakable mirror of the Volk and their entire being; in the neglected landscape the greatest robber is only the most efficient inmate of the land.\u201d  The double-meaning of this passage indicated that not only has the SS liberated the *Volkdeutsche* in the Eastern territories, but its previous non-German governments mismanaged the land so much as to corrupt its inhabitants. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/317bt7/hitler_wasnt_such_a_bad_guy_because_his_social/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/46ua9d/in_black_earth_snyder_argues_that_the_holocaust/"]]}
{"q_id": "7kw049", "title": "how can mma fighters often handle multiple blows to the face, but go down if they get a punch to the liver?", "selftext": "I have always wondered why this is the case. I\u2019ve seen the most hardened fighters go down due to a simple kick or punch to the liver. Hope someone can explain this phenomenon to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kw049/eli5_how_can_mma_fighters_often_handle_multiple/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drhlq12", "drhmdg9", "drhv66b", "drhwray", "dri5fdt"], "score": [48, 2, 12, 8, 3], "text": ["Your skull is really good at deflecting and absorbing impacts without actually taking anything beyond superficial damage.\n\nGetting hit in the face is painful and disorienting, but if the force isn't sufficient to actually cause a concussion or fracture there (usually) isn't actually much damage.\n\nThe organs below the rib cage don't enjoy the same level of protection.  Your brain, heart, and lungs are well defended by bone armor but the lower organs are exposed.\n\nBlows there can cause organ damage, forcefully empty the lungs, and/or fracture the \"floating\" ribs that aren't anchored to the sternum, all of which will drop even a skilled fighter if they take a bad body blow.", "your face has almost 100% bone behind it. the eyes are set inside of your skull which protects them from most blows. the only thing that has nerves is your skin. the liver, however, is an organ, inside of your body, which has limited protection. part of it is encased by the ribcage, however your ribcage expands and compresses as evidenced by breathing.", "As I understand it, when the liver is struck, it causes blood vessels to dilate, resulting in a massive drop in blood pressure. This drop causes your brain to force your body into a prone position in order to still, you know, get blood.", "Former hobby kickboxed here, getting punched in the head doesn't hurt at all because everything is well protected.\n\nThere are several very important things in your torso that are not fully protected by the rib cage but are very sensitive to impact, cheif among which is the liver. It gets hit and your brain tells you that something very bad just happened (i.e. it hurts, alot). Your brain then stops you from continuing except in extraordinary circumstances where massive amounts of adrenaline allow you to get to safety.\n\nThat's how my instructor explained it anyway", "Taking a blow to the liver is no joke, I fell off my bike when I was like 12.  I wasn't even going fast, walking pace at the most,  an imperfection on the road caught the front tire, twisted the handlebars in a way that it stopped the bike dead on its tracks, almost went over the handlebars but I did not have enough  speed to clear it,  I landed on the now facing up handle bruising my liver.\n\nI had to go to the ER to make sure I didn't rupture anything because it was hurting so bad, after a few test and ultrasounds, nothing major just a bruised liver, that lasted a day or two. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qkwsq", "title": "why are people so paranoid about government surveillance or surveillance in general?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qkwsq/eli5_why_are_people_so_paranoid_about_government/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cddt97l", "cddtdc7", "cddtv4n", "cddv22t", "cddvvi3", "cddvvo8", "cddx9q6", "cddzljz", "cde0ix2", "cde2h5a", "cde47mg"], "score": [30, 20, 5, 11, 5, 15, 2, 5, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Cause people don't like people watching them. That is a pretty simple one.", "It's not the surveillance itself which is the problem, it's who gets that information and how they intend to use it. Surveillance can be used to keep people safe but it can also become the tool of an oppressive government.", "Someone else actually explained this exact thing to me, so I'll relay what I remember to you.\n\nPretend we've got a huge school (talking thousands of children), and the principle wants to stay up to date on their very activities. After all, it'd be very bad if there was a little incident in a school this size as it can easily balloon over, plus there are idiots from other schools whom know kids from your school and come by to mess things up. So you ask a very smart, honest, and secretive kid to ask about three or four of his friends to keep their ears open, and to relay results to you.\n\nAt first, this plan is perfect, after all nothing bad could possible happen. I mean, he did choose great kids. However, these kids in turn gave their responsibility to their friends and that's where the buck stopped. However, we've gone from a brilliant kid, to just some people helping their lazy friend. This is maybe about 1% of the school population whom know what the principle wanted done. So the smart kid from earlier and his select three or four are trust worthy. After all, they wouldn't abuse the information they found out just to get back at someone. However, what about the couple of other kids whom have never even come face to face with you?\n\nSo now back to your question, the principle is the US government, the smart kid is the head of NSA with the people he chose personally the upper executives. The people they in turn chose are just the normal workers whom listen to all interactions done by people. Now the problem with why people don't want the NSA listening on to them is because the people at the bottom level haven't done anything to prove that they have robot like mind-sets. After all, they are human and and could very well succumb to their human emotions and reveal something important or embarrassing to get revenge on someone who may or may not have wronged them. For example, would you want your mother, grandmother, teachers, boss, coworkers, and the nice old lady at the supermarket knowing about your giant amputee porn collection?\n\nAs well, this much information given to so many people could very well fall in the wrong hands (leading up to what I just said). And that my 5 year old class, is why we don't want the NSA listening to us.", "Imagine you're in class and you just pooped your pants. No one else in your class knows you pooped your pants, and you go to your teacher to ask for help. Your teacher takes you to the bathroom to clean up your pants, and doesn't tell anyone else that you pooped them. You would be happy that no one else knows.\n\nIf a government or someone else is doing surveillance, then they would also know. They could tell other people, and they might write down that you poo your pants in class. Even if you do not know those people, you would not want anyone to know you pooped your pants.\n\nPeople don't like surveillance because they do not want others to know everything about them, and they do not want to worry about how their actions are viewed.", "After High School you will realize that who you are with your superiors and your  clients is different than who you are with your friends and this  could be different  from who you are on the net all alone.  \n\nSo whoever  gets access  to it can show it to the people you don't want to and put the pressure  on you to go get information  on other friends. \n\n\nI'm mostly  worried about how some hard headed agent could use anything in order to use us to infiltrate our friends,  our groups, our families.  To do their undercover jobs. \n", "\"1984\"  is the name of a novel by George Orwell you should read.", "The question is how far will it go?  \n\n", "Serious answer:\nThe big problem with surveillance at least in America falls on a few different levels.\n\n1. Surveillance shows a dangerous trend historically. Normally when governments install massive amounts of surveillance they become oppressive and use the surveillance to control the behaviors of people. See: (Cuba, China, USSR)\n\n2. Surveillance is a breach of our 4th amendment rights. Surveillance on the level of the NSA is breaking the barrier of illegal search and seizure, when you start to break down one of our constitutional protections, you can slowly break them all down. \n\n3. Everybody is doing something wrong. Whether you know it or not, you have probably broken some law and if the people with this surveillance technology were so inclined they could likely charge you with something. ", "Because while the people doing the surveiling today may be honest and well intentioned, tomorrow they may not be. \n\nVarious countries have had their run ins with these problems, in the US that would be Mcarthyism, though few other people were comparably creepy,\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically what do you do if someone comes to power in the government and says 'all these tools we've built to find terrorists, we're now going to use to find gays and jews', or 'to root out communists' or whatever agenda they happen to have?  \n\nIf the data exists it can be misused.  \n\nNow the upshot of surveillance is that well, for example, the police can wiretap any phone from a technical perspective.  Pick essentially any random phone number in your country and the police can wiretap it - there are legal constraints on them randomly wiretapping phones usually, but the the technical capability is there.  Intelligence is kind of the same problem - you need to be able to spy on people because well, frankly they're spying on you, and sometimes people really are plotting against you.   If prostitution is the oldest profession, spying is the second oldest.   It's a matter of what are you willing to risk you spies being able to do, for what benefit they can get out of it, without knowing for sure who you are worried about before hand. \n\nCan intelligence officials blackmail politicians or public figurs?  Certainly the police have tried to do that over the years.  Could a political party use the information to suppress their opponents?  \n\nTake voter ID - where the data is legally acquired (peoples names, ages and addresses basically).  Knowing what the data says you can write laws to specifically target people you don't want voting, women, blacks, students or, whomever.  Of course knowing voter names, ages and addresses also helps you keep the voter rolls up to date so you know who is allowed to vote where.  Lots of countries have some form of voter ID laws that aren't used to oppress people - the same information can be used for good things or bad.  It's just a matter of whether or not you trust future politicians to not misuse it.  \n\n\n\n", "1.) Possibility of blackmail. There are some embarrassing truths about everyone and someone who knows them can use them. Also there are enough people in high position in politics, the economy or the press who have potentially career destroying secrets (like infidelity) to give those behind surveillance enormous power.\n\n2.) You are not the same person everywhere. When you talk to a potential employer you show a very different personality than when you party with your friends (I hope). Surveillance makes you retreat to a \"safe\" personality all the time.\n\n3.) Selective enforcement of the law. You can scan the population for people you don't like and then scan those people for breaking of minor or rarely enforced laws and then suddenly enforce those on them only. (Today's laws are complicated and vague enough that everyone sometimes breaks some of them without realizing)\n\n4.) In the event of a totalitarian takeover (for example a government loses an election but successfully refuses to step back) it gives a huge database into the wrong hands.\n\n5.) In the past many countries mistakenly persecuted people for example for being of a certain sexual orientation, religion, race and so on. It would be naive to assume that it won't happen again in the future and a huge surveillance database would of course be employed to find those people and make a case against them.\n\n6.) Many harmless things we do, like for example taking photographs or wandering around, look suspicious in the eyes of someone trained to search for threats. You don't want to constantly think about whether what you are about to say or do would look suspicious to someone looking for suspicious stuff.\n\n7.) I know no example in history of a large surveillance infrastructure that wasn't eventually used against the population.", "If  \"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear\" is the philosophy of government officials, shouldn't the government declassify everything? In fact, this is really hypocritical of them; they obviously set up these surveillance programs in secret to hide it from the American public."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ake76r", "title": "How did so many people survive the Hindenburg disaster?", "selftext": "When you see the famous footage of the Hindenburg going up in flames, it seems impossible to imagine that *anyone* got out alive. But most of its passengers did make it out. Why was the death toll so (relatively) low?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ake76r/how_did_so_many_people_survive_the_hindenburg/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ef4p7en", "ef4q7cr"], "score": [58, 18], "text": ["The generally accepted reasons for the relatively low death toll is three-fold.\n\nFirst, the Hindenburg was relatively close to the ground when it ignited, as it was coming in for landing.  Additionally, it fell relatively gently, as you can see from the movie footage of the disaster.  Not all of the hydrogen ignited at once, maintaining some buoyancy for critical seconds, lowering the craft a bit more slowly than freefall.  This allowed many of the passengers and crew to jump to the ground.  Though many of them were injured severely by the fall, they were able to escape the fire.  If you look at the [diagram](_URL_1_) of crew locations, you'll see that most of the survivors were located near the bottom of the craft as well as being near windows they could egress from.  Most of the crew located in the inner portions of the craft died as they were too high up to survive the fall at the point when ignition occurred or unable to get out quickly enough.\n\nThe second reason is that the majority of the fire was caused by burning hydrogen.  Hydrogen is extremely low density, especially as it heated up from combustion.  As you can see [here](_URL_2_), the hydrogen is rising relatively harmlessly as it burns.  Obviously, this didn't do the crewmembers in the forward parts of the vehicle any additional favors (The vehicle buckled and so the nose of the Hindenburg ended up going into the column of burning hydrogen), but it did avoid most of the passengers or crew who were concentrated along the bottom.      Burn injuries were extremely common, but most of this is attributed to burning debris and diesel fuel raining down on everyone.  \n\nThird, the disaster occurred at the landing site.  There were numerous Navy ground crew in place to secure the Hindenburg who were able to rush in and help survivors clear the area before burning wreckage crushed them as well as providing emergency medical aid at the scene.  Also, there was a road, casualties could quickly be evacuated to nearby hospitals.  Large sections of New Jersey are filled with dense, marshy forest, which would have greatly complicated access to the crash, had it happened away from the landing zone.\n\nAll in all, it's very lucky that this occurred when the Hindenburg was so close to the ground and landing.  Other incidents such as the Akron had few survivors.  If the Hindenburg had ignited even a few minutes earlier, it's quite likely there would have been few to no survivors.\n\nThis is an excellent source:  _URL_0_  It has copies of both the US department of Commerce as well as the German disaster reports.", "The footage is somewhat deceptive due to exposure and our unfamiliarity with airship operations, and the whole story is known as a famous disaster in no small part because it was a famous flight caught on film in an era when smartphones and video cameras were not ubiquitous.  It's possible that this was the [first example of a live disaster recording](_URL_2_) played on-air for a national radio audience in the United States, and in any event it was easily the most well known example in at time when this wasn't common.  Both of these factors set an expectation of the disaster death toll that isn't entirely in-line with reality.\n\n >  Today, coverage of such a cataclysmic event would almost instantly be broadcast out over the\nairwaves. But, in 1937, satellite relay and other such options did not exist. Furthermore,\nat that time, NBC maintained a policy against the airing of recordings on their network. It was a\npolicy they relaxed the day after the Hindenburg tragedy in order to air some of Morrison\u2019s\nremarkable, eye-witness account.\n\n >  The effect of the Hindenburg recordings on audiences was startling. Never before had such a\nlarge audience heard such a blow-by-blow description of such a horrific occurrence. For\nlisteners, the news of the day suddenly became active, proximate, real.\n\n >  News gathering and reporting was altered too. Though reporters had been witnessing\ndevastating events for decades, previously, they had the benefit of time and distance\u2014both\nemotional and geographical--between the things they observed and what they eventually wrote\nfor publication or broadcast. \n\n[This Pathe film](_URL_1_) shows quite a bit more context than the usual short clip, particularly as the Hindenburg circles to release ballast.  You get a much better sense, with the proper exposure and framing, of the altitudes scales involved.\n\nIt's important to remember that the Hindenburg was at low altitude (no more than 90 metres altitude at any stage) and in the process of mooring when it caught fire and, in spite of the fact that the fire consumed much of the hydrogen, it didn't ignite instantaneously.  Thus the Hindenburg settled onto the ground rather than dropping without any lift at all (the official German report estimates 30 seconds from the initial fire to the first contact with the ground).  For the most part the passengers and crew suffered horrific burns, even those who survived, but they didn't tend to suffer the kinds of impact injuries that we would normally associate with an air crash.\n\nIf you read the [German report on the disaster](_URL_0_), it goes into further detail as to the locations and actions of the crew and you can see that the entire crew was at mooring stations at the time and this doubtless reduced the death toll as well, simply because everybody was awake alert during a potentially dangerous evolution.\n\nIn essence it was a low speed crash followed by a short but intense fire fuelled by a lighter than air gas that quickly dissipated when the gas bladders were ruptured by the impact and fire as opposed to the sorts of air crashes we're more familiar with today.  So combining this with a bit of \"luck\" and you can start to see how it was a crash that resulted in serious injuries for nearly everybody but killed a smaller number than it would seem."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/", "https://3iz4pu1r2cxqxc3i63gnhpmh-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/crew-locations21.jpg", "https://3iz4pu1r2cxqxc3i63gnhpmh-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/hindenburg-disaster-hull-buckle.jpg"], ["https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/german-investigation/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgWHbpMVQ1U", "https://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Hindenburg.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "i2z5v", "title": "Question concerning the orbital velocity of two bodies of different mass orbiting a star at the same distance.", "selftext": "I'm wondering what the orbital period of a body that is more massive than the Earth would be if it orbited the Sun at the same distance as Earth.\n\nLet's say we took Jupiter and made it orbit the sun at 93 million miles out.  Would it need to orbit the sun at a faster rate than the Earth currently does in order to maintain orbit? \n\n I would think that since Jupiter is more massive than the Earth, the gravitational attraction between the sun and Jupiter would be stronger, and therefore Jupiter would need to orbit at a faster rate to avoid falling into the sun.\n\nAm I correct in assuming this?  If so, how much faster would Jupiter need to orbit to maintain a stable orbit?\n\nOr am I mistaken in that, compared to the Sun's mass and gravity, worrying about the difference in mass between Jupiter and the Earth when determining orbital periods is kind of like wondering how much faster a horse can run when carrying a grain of sand as opposed to carrying a paperclip?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i2z5v/question_concerning_the_orbital_velocity_of_two/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c20gp6i", "c20h0cv"], "score": [5, 2], "text": ["It'd be exactly the same.\n\nThe short explanation for this is that objects of different *weights* both fall from a height to the ground in the same elapsed time. In other words, how fast a falling object accelerates is independent of how much that object weighs.\n\nThe more technical explanation is that gravitational potential *energy* is the *product* of *potential* and *mass.* What's that mean? It means that at each point in a gravitational field there is associated a quantity called the *potential.* The potential is *just* a function of the source of the gravitational field. But put an object in that gravitational field and it has a *potential energy* which is equal to the *potential* associated with that point *and its own mass.*\n\nNow, an object *accelerates* in *inverse* proportion to how massive it is, and in *direct* proportion to how much *potential energy* it has \u2026\u00a0and *potential energy* is *directly proportional* both to mass and to potential. The net result is that the object's mass shows up in both a numerator and in a denominator \u2026\u00a0so they cancel out. The way an object accelerates in a gravitational potential is *independent* of that object's mass.\n\nAnd yet another even more abstract and technical way to explain it is that gravitational acceleration is the *gradient* of the gravitational *potential,* which does not depend on the falling body's mass at all.", "For relatively circular orbits at a distance R from a star of mass M, the speed required to maintain orbit is sqrt(GM/R) where G is the gravitational constant. Notice that the mass of the orbiting object doesn't factor in."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2lpihe", "title": "What became of pigs following the Islamization of regions conquered by the caliphate?", "selftext": "Following the conquest of a region/state/etc, what became of the pigs following the subsequent conversion of Islam in the preceding years? Were they slaughtered en masse? Slowly bred out due to lack of demand? Did these newly converted Muslims continue to consume pork? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lpihe/what_became_of_pigs_following_the_islamization_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clx3wy5"], "score": [47], "text": ["Interesting enough I just did some reading on pigs and the Roman diet. They're a luxury food that really only predominated in the area around Rome, a demonstration of wealth and power. \n\n\nIn the east, the consumption of meat was primarily sheep and goats with cattle a distant third and pigs a small minority (6.7% of recovered bones). So there probably wasn't a big issue there.\n\n\nNorth Africa is fairly different with low pig consumption during the empire (18% of meat diet), then increasing in Late Antiquity (32% of meat diet), and then not surprisingly plummeting in the Islamic phase (5% of meat diet). The data for the Imperial and Islamic period is a bit thinner so grain of salt and all that. \n\n\nThe one thing that's evident from the study is that rural regions tended to preserve their eating habits while military or urban sites changed to adopt a more (in this case) 'Roman' diet. So I'd hypothesize that it followed a similar pattern, it probably phased out over time - either willingly or at the point of a spear. \n\n\nI'd note also that in the study the author notes that some pig bones do turn up in Iron Age Jerusalem, \"[i]t may therefore be the case that the strict application of a ban on pork consumption was at its strongest later, i.e. in the late first millennium B.C. and early Imperial periods.\" If it took the Jews a few centuries to enforce a ban, I can't see Muslims not having the same issues. \n\n\nSource: Anthony King, Diet in the Roman world: a regional inter-site comparison of the mammal bones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ctojv", "title": "What kind of Islam was Malcolm X apart of? Can you explain how it differs from popular Islam in the middle east if it differs at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ctojv/what_kind_of_islam_was_malcolm_x_apart_of_can_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1ljki0"], "score": [48], "text": ["Much of this can be found in The Autobiography Of Malcom X, as told to Alex Haley.  However there have been allegations that this book has fabrications and is not historically accurate, or even exactly an \"auto\"-biography.\n\nIn the main part of his career, Malcolm X was a member of the Nation of Islam, and a follower of Elijah Muhammad.  Elijah Muhammad was also the mentor of Muhammad Ali and Louis Farrakhan.  The Nation of Islam was originally founded by Wallace Fard in the 1930's.  Although the group grew quickly, there were early controversies, including apparently acts of human sacrifice committed by members.  Human sacrifice, of course, is not condoned by Islam.  Fard disappeared in 1934 without a trace (some speculate he was assassinated), and Elijah Muhammad (formerly Elijah Poole) assumed the leadership.   \n\nThe group had many earmarks of what today would be known as a 'cult'.  That is, a fanatical group who is controlled by a leader who claims to have supernatural powers.  Elijah Muhammad claimed that Wallace Fard was Allah Himself.  This of course would be considered blasphemy by mainstream Islamic groups.  Elijah Muhammad taught that the White 'race' are devils, and that persons of African descent should separate from whites.  The Nation of Islam was an explicitly racist group and the separation of races was a main aspect of their teachings.  This is not a mainstream tenant of Islam - a fact that Malcolm X said that he discovered during his Haj to Mecca where he saw persons of all races worshiping together.  Malcolm X also stated that he observed that Elijah Muhammad was having extramarital affairs with young women in the group (and having children out of wedlock by them) - which violated Elijah Muhammad's own teachings and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.  \n\nMalcolm X publicly left the Nation of Islam in 1964.  He worked with Halley on the 'autobiography' as a way to explain his own beliefs and why he left the Nation of Islam.  He was publicly assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam within a year of his leaving that group."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6hfnqm", "title": "If a sea dries up, would the land be more fertile due to the decomposition, or would it be less fertile due to the salt?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6hfnqm/if_a_sea_dries_up_would_the_land_be_more_fertile/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diygaeb"], "score": [10], "text": ["Well, that depends on where it happens. One example of this occurring in the past is the Mediterranean Sea drying up about 6 million years ago in what is officially called the [Messinian Salinity Crisis](_URL_0_) (crazy, huh?). There were widespread deposits of various salts, so most of the land would not have been fertile. On top of that, because the basin is well below sea level, temperatures would have reached scorching levels similar to those in Death Valley today. The major problems with agriculture in such a setting would be the heat and the lack of fresh water. That, and the [catastrophic floods](_URL_1_) that would refill the basin at some point.\n\nIn a different scenario, we can imagine what would happen outside a restricted basin. If sea level were to fall globally, as it did in the last glacial advances, the continental shelves would be exposed. Initially, a lot of the soils would probably be too acidic for many plants because pyrite would oxidize and lower the soil pH dramatically. Pyrite forms in anoxic/reducing conditions in mud under water. But when it is exposed to the air, it will oxidize, forming sufuric acid. This lowers soil pH to about 2-3, which kills any plants that we like to interact with. These are referred to as acid suphate soils (or ASS) in pedology, and makes for many fun puns.\n\nGive some time, though, the soils would neutralize as a result of mineral weathering and deposition of fresh sediment from river systems. Eventually we'd gain a whole lot of nice real estate for farming and living, but it might take a few hundred to a few thousand years for that to happen."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v400/n6745/abs/400652a0.html", "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7274/abs/nature08555.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1yqfqz", "title": "What does it mean to say that \"Electromagnetism is a more powerful force than gravity\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1yqfqz/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_electromagnetism_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfmvgsy", "cfn7jyd"], "score": [11, 4], "text": ["The electrostatic attraction between a proton and an electron is about 10^40 times as strong as the gravitational attraction between them.", "In daily life, you can show this easily.  A kitchen magnet doesn't fall when you stick it to something metal, even upside-down.  Its magnetic force is stronger than its own weight (gravity force). And those are pretty weak magnets. A good magnet can hold many times its own weight."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1h7t0d", "title": "How accurate did the movie \"O Brother, Where Art Thou?\" depict the American south during the depression?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h7t0d/how_accurate_did_the_movie_o_brother_where_art/", "answers": {"a_id": ["carsb75", "carsmgb", "cas1kp2", "cas1mk6"], "score": [25, 241, 3, 11], "text": ["About as accurate as Fargo's portrayal of the eponymous town in North Dakota. Joel and Ethan Coen are well-known for doing parodies on regional stereotypes, especially of dialect. In their depictions of places and people and eras, they're usually pretty tongue in cheek.\n\nAlso, it's a movie that's intended to map onto Homer's Odyssey, which is foremost a mythological narrative. Brilliant film, but I wouldn't look to it for historical realism.", "The consensus seems to be that the Coen brothers successfully created a sort of mythological universe that contains genuine elements of the Depression-era South inextricably mixed with trenchant representations of the South's nostalgic conception of itself. It's accurate in the sense that it consciously constructs a mythological memory of the South that someone who had lived through the time might recognize, but it's certainly no historical document. So yes, there were con men, convicts, corrupt politicians, bluegrass musicians, gangsters, and *plenty* of racism, but the movie doesn't attempt to present a particularly realistic portrait of each group; instead, it merges them together and views them through the hazy filters of *The Odyssey* and Southern Gothic literature.\n\n[Here](_URL_1_)'s a good article by Hugh Ruppersburg (of the University of Georgia) called \"'Oh, so many startlements...': History, Race, and Myth in *O Brother, Where Art Thou?*\", which partly deals with your question. A couple excerpts:  \n\n > [F]or me at least, and I suspect for many people of my post-World War II generation in the American South, O Brother, Where Art Thou? speaks in a particular way, as if some of its scenes linger on the verge of memory, as if it is family history, or might have been, as if Ulysses Everett McGill is the paterfamilias of us all. [...]  \n\n > Setting the film in the 1930s Depression South; faintly tingeing it with the ambience of Faulkner and Welty; setting it to blues, bluegrass, and gospel music; vaguely associating it with historical events and figures... **the Coens created a compelling, not entirely credible patchwork portrait of America (and not just the South) in the decade preceding the Second World War.**  \n\n > In a sense the film portrays a parallel universe, a fabulistic world both like and unlike our own. It plays fast and loose with facts. It's highly selective. It creates characters who are like real people but who never existed, and others who never existed and who are not like real people at all.... It uses a number of historically real characters\u2014George \"Baby Face\" Nelson, Robert and Tommy Johnson, and Pappy O'Daniel\u2014but radically changes the facts of their lives. [...]  \n\n > ***O Brother, Where Art Thou?* is intentionally reckless in its treatment of southern and American popular culture, its use of fact, its invention and reinvention of myth, its fabrication of falsehoods, all of which are woven together into the fabric the film presents as reality**. In essence, the film creates its own myth of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, a myth that is as much a tall tale as are the exploits of Everett, Pete, and Delmar. The point of the myth is to celebrate that which is worth celebrating\u2014the folk culture, the music, the history, the life of a time different from our own, a time just before the modern world when rural electrification dawned. But is the myth so selective that it lacks relevance?\n\nI'll let you read the rest to find out (spoiler: no, it's not). [Here's another good article (PDF warning)](_URL_0_) by Sean Chadwell called \"Inventing That 'Old-Timey' Style: Southern Authenticity in *O Brother, Where Art Thou?*\" A relevant quote: \"What the Coens point to throughout the movie is not that hicks, rednecks, or white trash populate the South and make its music but that these stereotypes are themselves part of the mythology the South has created about itself.\" (edit: formatting)", "One part that stood out was authentic-ish accents of the non-starrring roles.   It's rare to hear \"authentic\"-sounding regional accents in films.   \n\nGranted, these accents aren't as thick as they actually would have been in the 1920s-- if it were, you might well have to add subtitles.  ", "All these replies are great. As a small fun fact, when the Soggy Bottom Boys go in to record their song \"I am a man of constant sorrow\" Ulysses asks \"who's the head honcho around here?\". Honcho (one of the few loanwords from Japanese) is not to be seen in American English until after WWII."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3200/JPFT.32.1.3-9", "http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/southern_cultures/v009/9.4ruppersburg.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ayrisj", "title": "International Women's Day AMA - the Astor100 project, celebrating the life and legacy of Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in British parliament", "selftext": "Welcome back for another AMA with me, Dr Jacqui Turner from the Department of History at the University of Reading in the UK, and my PhD student working on the Astor100 project, Melanie Khuddro (/u/MelanieKhuddro)\n\nMy [present research](_URL_6_) examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. I'm currently managing the [Astor100 project](_URL_3_) celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.\n\nAmerican-born Nancy Astor (1879\u20131964), n\u00e9e Langhorne, succeeded her second husband Waldorf Astor as Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton in 1919, becoming the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. She continued to represent the Plymouth Sutton constituency until her retirement in 1945.\n\nAsk Us Anything about the history of women in politics in the UK, the struggle for suffrage, the life, thoughts, and beliefs of Nancy Astor, her relationships with her female contemporaries and male parliamentary colleagues, her parliamentary campaign, the current push for formal recognition of her achievements, and more. \n\n[More about Jacqui's research](_URL_6_), [Jacqui's blog](_URL_1_), [Jacqui on Twitter](_URL_2_), [Melanie on Twitter](_URL_0_), and the Astor 100 project on [Twitter](_URL_5_) and [Instagram](_URL_4_). \n\nMANY THANKS FOR YOUR QUESTIONS, MELANIE AND I ARE SIGNING OFF. \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ayrisj/international_womens_day_ama_the_astor100_project/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ei2rg3x", "ei2s3tj", "ei2sdvr", "ei2sle6", "ei2t3y2", "ei2t5xd", "ei2t6ig", "ei2xdxt", "ei300mb"], "score": [8, 9, 9, 7, 6, 3, 6, 9, 5], "text": ["Hi Dr Turner  &  Melanie! Thank you so much for joining us for this AMA today, I'm really delighted to have you here with us. \n\nMany people will have heard Nancy Astor's name in snippet quotes from her fiery exchanges with Winston Churchill. And they _were_ fiery! As the first women sitting in Commons, what kind of image did Astor cultivate for herself? Was she a firebrand and wit, like one might assume from those examples of banter, or were these remarkable exchanges a rarity for her career?", "Hi Dr. Turner, and Happy International Women's Day! \n\nI often hear that the women's suffrage movement in the UK forced men into war in WW1 en masse. Was there mass support for the White Feather Movement (both among the suffragettes and among the general public), or was it more fringe? How many women dissented or protested against WW1, and whether there was also a widespread anti war sentiment among certain groups of suffrage activists.\n\nAdditionally, in the US at least, there was tension between suffragettes of color and their white colleagues, in particular about slavery and later about civil rights. I know that slavery was outlawed in Britain by this point, but were there similar tensions between white suffragettes and those of color in regards to civil rights or colonialism or the Empire? ", "The timing couldn't be more perfect. I'm in the middle of Andrea Mansker's *Sex, Honor and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France* (very good, highly recommend, but that is neither here nor there) and something mentioned in passing is how many French feminists contrasted their own movement in the early 20th century with that across the Channel, the British women's suffrage movement being seen as apparently violent and undignified in comparison (the focus of the chapter however is on women challenging men to duel, so obviously not all felt this way!). But at least so far this hasn't been explored too much, so I was hoping you might have a little more insight into the levels of *international* cooperation by the British suffragettes in that period, and how their fight was viewed by similar movements elsewhere, not just France but also somewhere like the US.\n\nThank you!", "Did the english people had any issues with the first woman to sit in the House of Commons being an American?", "Thanks for offering your time for this!\n\nA couple of questions:\n\nWhy were the Conservatives the first to have a woman representing them in Parliament? As I understand it, it wasn't a fluke, with quite a few of the first women MPs being conservatives.\n\nThe first woman to be elected as an MP - Constance Markievicz, I believe - tends to get a bit overshadowed by Astor and other early women MPs who actually took their seats. All I know about her is her party affiliation, can you tell us a bit more about her?", "Thank you for doing such a fascinating AMA! Its pretty impressive that Nancy Astor sat in the House of Commons for so long, from 1919-945. Through the war years and everything. Did she face controversy or push back the longer she had her seat, or did things eventually settle for her?", "Hello Dr Turner and Melanie, thank you so much for this AMA!\n\nI would be interested in how (if at all) the British suffragette movement was drawing inspiration from/coordinating with corresponding movements in other countries. Without knowing too much about it, I would imagine that the ties to the US were especially strong in that regard. But what about former British colonies like New Zealand and Australia, where women had the right to vote since 1893 and 1902, respectively? And to go beyond the Anglosphere - how closely did British women\u2019s rights activists monitor the developments in European countries, especially in Germany where (if I am understanding the writings of Hedwig Richter correctly in this regard) a strong women\u2019s rights movement took a different, more \"legalistic\" approach towards achieving their goals?\n\nThank you again for your AMA, I am looking forward to your sharing your knowledge with us!", "Did she actually call soldiers of the Italian campaign D-Day Dodgers? And if she didn't, do we know how it came to be attributed to her ?", "Could you talk a little bit about the Astor100 Project? Without getting *too* 'modern politics' given the rules here, what do you see as the lessons for today that we can learn from her legacy?\n\nAdditionally, just poking around the Astor100 site, what can you tell us about the women mentioned from the 1918 general election? Especially Markievicz who sounds quite interesting, but the rest too. Was this part of a coordinated campaign to stand for election, mostly independent actors...?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://twitter.com/melaniekhuddro", "https://jacquiturner.me/", "https://twitter.com/jacqui1918", "https://research.reading.ac.uk/astor100/", "https://www.instagram.com/ladyastor100/", "https://twitter.com/LadyAstor100", "https://www.reading.ac.uk/history/about/staff/e-j-turner.aspx"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "lse8p", "title": "How long until we can customize the helpful bacteria that live inside us?", "selftext": "A little [background](_URL_2_): every person has trillions of bacteria living inside them. Our cells are [outnumbered around 10 to 1](_URL_1_) in favor of these bacteria. Most of the bacteria seemingly do nothing to help or hurt us. Some of these bacteria tend to push us [toward disease](_URL_4_), while others greatly improve our digestion and immune system.\n\nWe aren't born with a full microbiome, but [we are colonized at birth](_URL_0_) Everyone has a different set of bacteria in them.\n\nThere's are [several precedents](_URL_3_) for changing the human microbiome.\n\nNow imagine what we could do if we had fine control over our microbiomes. Several diseases could be eliminated outright, with strong resistances to more. We could have ultra-efficient guts, allowing us to eat less but be healthier. We could even customize odor eating and odor producing bacteria in the gut to, yes, *make our shit smell like roses.*\n\nThe [Human Microbiome Project](_URL_5_) is still a ways away from a full sequence of all our flora. In the mean time, what's preventing us from coming up with a designer bacteriotherapy from a controlled culture?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lse8p/how_long_until_we_can_customize_the_helpful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2v87v2", "c2v95ba", "c2v9ngp", "c2v87v2", "c2v95ba", "c2v9ngp"], "score": [2, 8, 2, 2, 8, 2], "text": ["You can do it now (create customized transgenic organisms) in your garage for a few thousand dollars.  Buy [recombinase](_URL_1_) and [custom DNA sequences (at $0.29/base pair)](_URL_0_), a little bit of sterilizable glassware, and a photographic sink (which lets you make controlled temperature baths)\n\nThe procedure is to mail-order DNA sequences from the vendor above (or a competitor), duplicate your DNA sequences by putting them in a bath of base pairs (you have to buy those too, they're easy to find) with the recombinase, to make the [polymerase chain reaction](_URL_3_) happen -- this requires some careful temperature work, but nothing difficult compared to (say) developing color slide film.  Then you have lots of your custom gene, and can use [electroporation](_URL_2_) (a lot easier than it sounds) to inject your custom-ordered sequence into your favorite host cells - be they bacteria or amphibian eggs.  \n\nIt is totally straightforward to produce and inject new plasmids into organisms -- the dream of Mad Scientists since the days of Mary Shelley.  I'm surprised more people don't get into this, considering how many folks have comparably expensive and difficult hobbies (like building extensive model trains or RC jet aircraft).", "I would say that we are still a ways off from customizing our microbiota.  As drzowie brings up, genetic manipulation of an organism can now be done fairly simply and cheaply.  This is especially true for model organisms such as lab E. coli strains, but as soon as you move towards bacteria found in nature, even in E. coli recently isolated from a person, genetic manipulation gets to be much more difficult.  Compared to lab strains of E. coli, altering the genetic code of many organisms such as Bacteroides, another gut microbe, is relatively new.  A lot of work has to be put into learning how to alter the genomes of newly identified organisms, and what works for one may not work for another ([Source](_URL_0_)).  Considering there are hundreds of species of bacteria in the gut, we are likely far from knowing how to manipulate them all.  It is likely that we haven't even learned how to culture them all in the lab yet.\n\nOf course, even if you just wanted to focus on a single, easily manipulated bacterium, knowing what genes would be beneficial to introduce, and figuring out how to get your organism to thrive in the gut are two challenges that still need to be addressed.  Additionally, you would have to figure out how to ensure your genetic alteration is stable in the gut where it cannot be maintained with selective antibiotics as is frequently done in the lab.  \n\nSo overall, it seems doable, perhaps within the next few years, but it will likely be difficult, and we still need to make a lot of progress first.", "Something of a follow-on question.  How much of this customization would require genetic manipulation of the microbiome, and how much could be accomplished simply by selecting the existing microbiota we want?  If some people have microbiota that are already better for digestion and immunity, can we isolate the strains with those benefits and cultivate them in other people?\n\nI guess what I'm asking is, to what extent do we need the fancy new genetic manipulation techniques, and to what extent can we use old-fashioned selective breeding?", "You can do it now (create customized transgenic organisms) in your garage for a few thousand dollars.  Buy [recombinase](_URL_1_) and [custom DNA sequences (at $0.29/base pair)](_URL_0_), a little bit of sterilizable glassware, and a photographic sink (which lets you make controlled temperature baths)\n\nThe procedure is to mail-order DNA sequences from the vendor above (or a competitor), duplicate your DNA sequences by putting them in a bath of base pairs (you have to buy those too, they're easy to find) with the recombinase, to make the [polymerase chain reaction](_URL_3_) happen -- this requires some careful temperature work, but nothing difficult compared to (say) developing color slide film.  Then you have lots of your custom gene, and can use [electroporation](_URL_2_) (a lot easier than it sounds) to inject your custom-ordered sequence into your favorite host cells - be they bacteria or amphibian eggs.  \n\nIt is totally straightforward to produce and inject new plasmids into organisms -- the dream of Mad Scientists since the days of Mary Shelley.  I'm surprised more people don't get into this, considering how many folks have comparably expensive and difficult hobbies (like building extensive model trains or RC jet aircraft).", "I would say that we are still a ways off from customizing our microbiota.  As drzowie brings up, genetic manipulation of an organism can now be done fairly simply and cheaply.  This is especially true for model organisms such as lab E. coli strains, but as soon as you move towards bacteria found in nature, even in E. coli recently isolated from a person, genetic manipulation gets to be much more difficult.  Compared to lab strains of E. coli, altering the genetic code of many organisms such as Bacteroides, another gut microbe, is relatively new.  A lot of work has to be put into learning how to alter the genomes of newly identified organisms, and what works for one may not work for another ([Source](_URL_0_)).  Considering there are hundreds of species of bacteria in the gut, we are likely far from knowing how to manipulate them all.  It is likely that we haven't even learned how to culture them all in the lab yet.\n\nOf course, even if you just wanted to focus on a single, easily manipulated bacterium, knowing what genes would be beneficial to introduce, and figuring out how to get your organism to thrive in the gut are two challenges that still need to be addressed.  Additionally, you would have to figure out how to ensure your genetic alteration is stable in the gut where it cannot be maintained with selective antibiotics as is frequently done in the lab.  \n\nSo overall, it seems doable, perhaps within the next few years, but it will likely be difficult, and we still need to make a lot of progress first.", "Something of a follow-on question.  How much of this customization would require genetic manipulation of the microbiome, and how much could be accomplished simply by selecting the existing microbiota we want?  If some people have microbiota that are already better for digestion and immunity, can we isolate the strains with those benefits and cultivate them in other people?\n\nI guess what I'm asking is, to what extent do we need the fancy new genetic manipulation techniques, and to what extent can we use old-fashioned selective breeding?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/23/baby%e2%80%99s-first-bacteria-depend-on-route-of-delivery/", "http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ipid/2008/613979/abs/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome", "http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13micro.html?pagewanted=all", "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html", "http://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.genscript.com/gene_synthesis.html", "http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;ion=1&amp;nord=1#q=recombinase&amp;hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;nord=1&amp;site=webhp&amp;prmd=imvns&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=shop&amp;ei=MfGqToWEE-aPsQKR4rH8Dg&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=mode_link&amp;ct=mode&amp;cd=6&amp;ved=0CAwQ_AUoBQ&amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&amp;fp=c7f58bc4f869669a&amp;ion=1&amp;biw=1005&amp;bih=731", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroporation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction"], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1046202399909039"], [], ["http://www.genscript.com/gene_synthesis.html", "http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;ion=1&amp;nord=1#q=recombinase&amp;hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;nord=1&amp;site=webhp&amp;prmd=imvns&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=shop&amp;ei=MfGqToWEE-aPsQKR4rH8Dg&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=mode_link&amp;ct=mode&amp;cd=6&amp;ved=0CAwQ_AUoBQ&amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&amp;fp=c7f58bc4f869669a&amp;ion=1&amp;biw=1005&amp;bih=731", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroporation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction"], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1046202399909039"], []]}
{"q_id": "2zbojf", "title": "what happens to all of the atoms in our body when we die?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zbojf/eli5_what_happens_to_all_of_the_atoms_in_our_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cphfzfr", "cphg9ev", "cphghwi", "cphhb34", "cphimc9", "cphjs0n", "cphnbz2", "cphte7s", "cpibvwc"], "score": [71, 7, 10, 17, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["To many creatures people are just a walking meat pile. The only reason we don't get eaten is because we walk too fast (and our internal defense system kills anything we can't walk away from).\n\nAfter death our bodies get eaten by bacteria, fungi, insects, small animals and whatnot. Our atoms eventually become atoms of animals and plants and earth and wind. ", "They chemically react with the environment the body is put in. Bacteria and countless other organism in the air and the dirt eat and reproduce in and around it basically and changing the chemical make up of the body into the byproducts of decomposition. \n\nThis can expose a lot of good nutrients (N, CO2) into things like soil, so you turn into cool natural fertilizer.", "Interestingly, your body is constantly refreshing itself with new atoms and a few years it is most likely that every atom in your body will be one that is not in you now. you are not born live your life with a single set of atoms. What happens to your atoms when you die is the same as what is constantly happening to your atoms your entire life. That is you shed them and they go back to the earth to back to the earth to be recycled. Except in this example they are not being replenished only shed.", "A kinda relevant   & amp; beautiful quote by Richard Feynman -\n\n & gt; ... It means the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced: the ones that were there before have gone away.\n\n & gt; **So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago\u2014a mind which has long ago been replaced.** To note that the thing I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance, that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, and then go out\u2014there are always new atoms, but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.\u00a0\n\n\nSo not just after death, even when we live our atoms are constantly getting refreshed/replaced by new ones from the environment.", "They prove someone wasted too much money to store your remains.", "TIL I'm a meat pile consisting of other meat piles my mother consumed ", "Harvard studies suggest postmortem atomic mass undergoes a simple transformation process into what they dubbed as \"white gold\". Some consideration was put into the study after the debunking of the popular theory that several MIT researchers dubbed \"Fecal Earth\". Yale Prof. Antony Gibbs says \"The MIT theory that the remains of the deceased turn into earth's shit upon decomposition is one that could only come out of an institute of technology\" he continues to say, however, \"Harvard's own theory that the matter becomes earthly semen is preposterous, even if more credible.\" A response from Harvard has yet to cum foreword.", "As we decompose, they return to the environment.  \n\nSome, such as those in bones, are heartier than others, and stick around.  But the rest return to the ecosystem.\n\nI read somewhere that this return to the system is so dramatic that every person alive has a substantial number of atoms in them that once belonged to Shakespeare.  \n\n > If you live to 75 years, some 500 trillion of his atoms enter you during your life.\n\n_URL_0_", "This comment is explained by like every post. But I'll help you get a hold of what's going on.\n\nSo basically you eat and get nutrients and all those molecules that make up your body get replaced but the main structures like cells are still the same. If you look at cells real time under an electron microscope you will see basically a bunch of vibrating molecules. Atoms get replaced all the time, that's thermodynamics in action.\n\nWhen you die you aren't a concept. In fact you are linking the atoms that make \"you\" as \"you\", but this is not a concept. You,.. is well, a recognization of matter. I think therefore i am.\n\nWhen you die the atoms just go to whatever next they thermodynamically change too. A lot of carbon is eatan up and that produces carbon dioxide from cellular respiration. Your nitrates are eaten by bacteria. Maybe some bugs or animals the atoms for food.\n\nYou've got to think of atoms as simple basic building blocks of the universe. They are just tiny little grains of salt that conform to structures big enough for us to comprehend. \n\nIn all reality atoms do what they do, the work with the pyshics of thermal dynamics and just go from a more organized state to a more dispersed state."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.jupiterscientific.org/review/shnecal.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "6ak3ij", "title": "why do christians follow the king james bible when it was written 1600 years after jesus?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ak3ij/eli5_why_do_christians_follow_the_king_james/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhf4391", "dhf4kjh", "dhf689h", "dhf6v90", "dhf98ve", "dhfafa2", "dhfb23o", "dhfehsy", "dhffux4", "dhfgm1o", "dhfhfy7", "dhfhi7u", "dhfhn9j", "dhfho1l", "dhfhyj6", "dhfi98e", "dhfic1g", "dhfiduo", "dhfiw96", "dhfixju", "dhfj2yx", "dhfj9ll", "dhfjlup", "dhfk59j", "dhfmd9u", "dhfnknt", "dhfo0ew", "dhfoe2e", "dhfpa6t", "dhfpt57", "dhfpy8g", "dhfqqi8", "dhfqst5", "dhfr0zc", "dhfr3o9", "dhfrmsl", "dhfuj0i", "dhfun5c", "dhfuocd", "dhfx4sx", "dhfx7ow", "dhfxxy3", "dhfxzzn", "dhfygzf", "dhfys0z", "dhfz5wo", "dhfzgqb", "dhg0szh", "dhg0t9j", "dhg12mn", "dhg34of", "dhg3dy9", "dhg5fab", "dhg61r7", "dhg6aag", "dhg6mpb", "dhg6qrr", "dhg7552", "dhg8ndu", "dhg9kqc", "dhgbpwg", "dhgcciw", "dhgdm0j"], "score": [93, 38, 4, 25, 8288, 209, 4, 19, 2, 2, 4, 5, 379, 84, 10, 2, 49, 893, 2, 312, 128, 10, 2, 6, 44, 5, 8, 5, 3, 2, 2, 27, 8, 5, 9, 23, 2, 4, 3, 3, 458, 2, 2, 2, 2, 49, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because they don't know Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic..\n\nThe King James Version of the Bible isn't made up, it's simply a translation of the Bible from its original languages.", "There are several different versions and translations of the Bible. The King James Version is only one, and it was the first that was printed in English. Most Christian churches I've attended tend to use the New International Version (NIV) because it uses modern language.\n\nThere was no agreement of what constituted \"The Bible\" for several hundred years after the supposed life of Christ. Even after there was some agreement, the Bible was only printed in Latin, because the Catholic Church at that time believed the common people were not capable of understanding it for themselves. It was not until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's or so that there was any major effort to print the Bible in a language other than Latin.\n\nMy understanding, and I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong, is the goal of \"versions\" of the bible is to remain as true as possible to the original language of the canonical books, while translations \"interpret\" those books.\n\n**EDIT:** I don't think I've ever been more wrong in a comment.", "Some churches use it. They do this because it's one of the oldest translations of the original text into English and fear a newer one may be altered in some way. Others use more modern translations, and some even use the original texts, the Vulgate (a famous latin translation, iirc for a long time basically the entire Bible was original Hebrew and greek- > greek- > the Vulgate- > english), or something else entirely. ", "Most don't. The King James bible was the first English language bible so a lot of English Speakers used it. But there are numerous modern translations: New International Version (NIV), New King James Version (NKJV), New Revised Standard (NRS), and others. These more modern translations go to as old of text as they can get, (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) and translate them into the modern language. \n\nThe reason that people read these is that most do not understand Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic. ", "While some Christians prefer the King James translation of the Bible, there are many, many translations of the Bible in many different languages, made at different times. Christianity is a world religion, and has become very aggressive about translating its holy texts into whatever languages its people speak.\n\nThe original languages of the Bible are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. What we call \"Modern English\" didn't exist until shortly before the time of Shakespeare - and the King James Bible. There are earlier English translations, but they're even more difficult to read for people nowadays.\n\nThe influence  &  staying power of the King James Version comes from a couple of things: the translation was made after the invention of the printing press, so it was widely available. The translation was authorized by the Church of England, which used it exclusively, so anywhere that the C of E had influence, the KJV did too: it wasn't too long after the KJV was published that the British Empire circled the globe, bringing British culture and religion with it. And the KJV was, for its time, the best English translation available.\n\nThere are other translations of the Bible made about that time and later, but for centuries the KJV remained dominant for the reasons above. But languages change over time, and the meanings of words change. Eventually re-translation is necessary. The last century has produced a number of very good English translations now widely used by English-speaking Christians. (My favorite is the English Standard Version, first published in 2001.)\n\nBut because the KJV was the dominant translation for so long, its language has become entrenched in English-speaking society. And people like tradition. It feels weird to change how a holy text reads or sounds. People stick with what they know or what they're used to. Therefore the KJV is still around and will still be around for many years.", "\"Christians\" is a pretty broad category, and it is very untrue that all Christians follow the King James.\n\n\nKing James sounds like Christianity, it's been popularized so much that it has that old timey gospel feel in the language. The old language also sounds more formal and authoritative.\n\nBut there are many many better translations, including ~~King James II~~ New King James, and the NIV. Those were translated more than 1900 years after Jesus, but they are based on older manuscripts, so they actually represent a better translation than the King James.\n\n\n**edit**\nCalled the New King James, King James II, they are entirely different things", "Little note is that the king james version has extra verses in it as most modern bible translations actually use older copies than the king james did and those verses that werent in the older copies were taken out of the newer translations.", "Well \"Christians\" don't necessarily, as the King James Bible is only accepted  by Protestant branches. Anyways, it contains the works written around the time of Jesus, it was just translated into English during the time of King James 1 of England. The New Testament was largely originally written in Greek or Aramaic then translated in to Latin and stayed like that until the Protestant Reformation. ", "Not written, translated. Of course, the books were all written over a pretty broad time period as well but were all over a thousand years old before the King James translation was made.\n\nWritten and translated are not the same thing.", "The bible is actually a collection of books. The new testament, which is a subsection of books, were each written shortly after Christ's death and resurrection. \n\nWhen new versions come out, it's like a new version of an anthology - not a new version of a whole book. ", "In addition to the many great answers given here, there is a spiritual element as well. We believe that God would have made sure, in His infinite power, that His word was available to His children in an accurate way. Faith tells us that if God did not consider the KJV or NIV versions of the Bible to be correct, He would not have let them become what is considered \"the norm\" when referring to it.", "Your question is phrased poorly. People don't 'follow' the King James Bible any more than they necessarily 'follow' any other bible. It's just the case that some people prefer to read it over other translations, and it's particularly popular because it's one of the oldest English bibles and it's become ingrained into the way a lot of people, particularly in the Church of England, hear the bible (thou shalt not kill, for example may sound more familiar than you shall not murder, but it's the same thing).", "I only glanced through and didn't see this comment and it's important to understand when talking about translations. There are two ways to translate a book.\n\n1) Is to be word for word as accurate as possible. You don't look at the context, inference, anything like that.  Tree = tree even if the description sounds what we would call in English a bush.\n\n2) They try to figure out the idea they were trying to get across and use the best words in English to convey what was trying to be said, and that's what they translate it to. He towered above them might get translated to he was taller than the men around him (this is a terrible example but gets the idea across)\n\nSomeone smarter than me can explain it better.\n\n\nThere are other people who can describe it better and come up with some examples.\n\nEdit: Slide show showing different methods of translation: _URL_0_", "Just to add something that I don't think anyone else has mentioned, the King James bible is I think the only widely-available English translation that doesn't have a copyright. So Christians can duplicate it however they want. I know a few Christians for whom that's a significant detail.", "You may not realize this, but most of the New Testament was written 80+ *years* after Jesus died. Think about that for a moment. If something happened today and no one bothered to write any of it down until 2097 - there would probably be a few inaccuracies.\n\nThat is what biblical scholars do, they try to look at the newly discovered information and fix them with new revisions.\n\nIf this interests you and you're in college or have access to an affordable community college, I would encourage you to take a class that looks at the New Testament from a scholarly point of view. What was happening in the world at that time, why Christmas occurs when it does, and so forth, is all very fascinating.", "\n\nlol, it wasn't written from scratch.  Its largely an amalgamation of earlier works.\n\nIts the most popular (probably) because it is the first one written in English.", "I grew up in a church that was King James only.  Like many have already said, it is far from \"all Christians\", i but you could call it a regional thing, probably mostly the southern US.  \n  \nAs a young man I read the Bible quite a bit and as some of it sunk in, I started wondering why King James only.  It does not help to spread the word at all.  I could never get a good answer from the church leaders that wasn't essentially dogma.  Tradition.  \n  \nHere's a theory though, and it holds for much of the history of the Bible.  If you lead a group of people and authority comes from a book, the more those people depend on you to interpret that book, the more power you hold.  If you can force the adoption of a text that most people cannot understand, then you can essentially tell the people whatever you want to.  \n  ", "Christian pastor, college prof, academic writer here. \n\nThe vast majority of Christians do not prefer the KJV over the translations in their language or ones that are more modern. \n\nSome are vehemently opposed to anything but KJV, King James Only-ist, and they have been mentioned. This is rare but very energetic. I don't fight with them, I just tell them I pledge to obey and believe the KJV, too. They tend to be conspiracy theorists that think that other translations have been damaged. And 9/11 was an inside job. \n\nAs others have mentioned the Bible wasn't \"written\" but translated from manuscripts that came from real historical figures and groups.  These manuscripts number in the thousands, with many, many copies of each book spread all over the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Asia Minor. \n\nThat's much better than having one \"original\" manuscript as far as increasing or improving certitude. One \"original\" can always be faked. But thousands of almost identical copies spread over the known world can't be faked. Copies buried in a cave can't be faked. \n\nSo the KJV was translated from a group of manuscripts available during the 1600s that were pretty good, though not as good as the ones we have now, and that's enabled us to clear up some confusion about certain words--not teachings, not doctrines, just very fine adjustments in the precise word or semantic range of a word. So modern translations are generally better, although some have been influenced by modern gender-equity issues to make them neutralize pronouns and things like that--I'm not for it. If the Bible is a very male oriented book, then for truth's sake, make that clear in your translations. \n\nBut even then, we are talking about whether we use it or he. Not a big issue (except in Galatians 3-4). And then not a big issue except for scholarly types. ", "Tradition. It was the best English translation of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek at the time. Now there are newer translations (ESV, NIV, NASB) that more closely resemble today's english that were also translated directly from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. No games of telephone. ", "A lot of answers are debating different versions of the Bible. The sense I get from your question is that you believe the bible wasn't written until 1600. (Forgive me if I'm wrong.)\n\nThe Bible, whichever translation you use, is a collection of books and letters written thousands of years ago. The New Testament was written by Jesus' contemporaries. These original works were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The King James Bible was the English translation commissioned by King James of England. \n\nPersonally, I prefer the NKJV (New King James Version) because I think it's a more accurate translation. For example, the KJV says, \"Thou shalt not kill.\" whereas the NKJV says, \"You shall not murder.\" (Exodus 20:13) The NKJV recognizes that, just like English, Hebrew has several words to describe taking the life of another person. (Murder, kill, manslaughter, homicide, patricide, etc.) It's hard to argue that the Bible doesn't contradict itself if it says \"thou shalt not kill\" and then the Lord tells the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. However, if you understand that killing someone in a field of battle in defense of your nation is not the same as cold-blooded, premeditated murder, then the NKJV correctly translates this and avoids the appearance of contradiction. ", " >  Why do christians follow the King James bible when it was written 1600 years after Jesus?\n\n1.  It wasn't \"written\" 1600 years later, it is a particular translation that was translated 1600 years later.\n\n2.  Not all christians prefer it.\n\n3.  Most of the other popular translations are written even later than the KJV, for example, the New International Version (NIV).\n\n4.  As a former southern baptist I can say that the SBC tends to (or used to tend to) favor this translation the most.  I always assumed that it was because it sounded more archaic/fancier than the modern translations.\n\n5.  I have also had people from a number of different evangelical persuasions who told me that the KJV was the original version, or the original true translation.  In other words, they believe that god thinks and speaks in English, and that the previous translations were flawed until finally it was translated into god's \"native\" KJV English.  Clearly that's a load of crap, but there are some people who believe it.", "Some say that other modern translations are \"better,\" but that's highly debatable. What the King James has going for it is that it's based off of the *majority* text, The Textus Receptus. The *majority* of existing manuscripts are in agreeance with the Textus Receptus and thus the King James. While other modern versions translate mostly from the Nestle-Aaland Greek text, which also favors the Westcott  &  Hort greek texts. And these texts are based off of the \"minority\" of manuscriptive evidence. They chose rather to translate from the suspected oldest manuscripts in existence (because dating these manuscripts isn't even an exact science). They believe that older = better. But that isn't necessarily true. The older manuscripts could have been manipulated. And the majority of manuscripts were likely not as old because they had been read and read, and copied and copied. It shows signs of great use. Which is a sign that they were much more highly valued. KJV vs. Modern translations is a highly debated topic. I would encourage anyone looking to read a Bible to read multiple versions, compare, and look into the histories of each translation.", "it was translated to english 1600 years after jesus from ancient scripts of which some predates jesus. they did not come up with it 1600 years after jesus.", "I think that Christians like the \"King James Version\" (KJV) of the bible for three reasons. \n\nFirst, because it is very famous. People tend to like and trust famous and well-known things simply because they are famous and well-known. This is called 'celebrity.'\n\nSecond, people like the KJV because it is very old, and people tend to like or trust things that people have trusted and liked for a long time. Old things that people do and have done for a long time are called \"traditions,\" and most people like traditions. \n\nLast, some Christians like the KJV because it is fancy. The KJV is a more 'flowery' or fancy version of the bible than many other translations, and it has lots of old, fancy-sounding words like 'thy' (means \"your\") or hath (means \"has\"). These old words make the KJV seem even older and more interesting to some people.\n\nI am a Christian, and while the KJV is not my favorite version of the bible, there are two things about it that I do like:\n\nFirst, when I read it, the fanciness of the words reminds me more than other bible versions of how old and special the bible is. I also think that some of the fancy parts of the KJV sound very nice and grand, even though I also think that it confusing and wrong in some other places.\n\nSecond, the fact that I do not understand some of the words in the KJV (even though it is an \"English\" translation) reminds me that when I read ANY version of the bible I am not actually reading the bible as it was written, but I am actually reading a translation of the bible from very old languages into modern English. \n\nThis helps me remember that if I really want to know what the bible is really trying to say in one part or another, I need to think about what the real words of the original language would have meant to the real people who originally wrote and read them.", "A lot of these top level comments don't seem to address a very important issue. Where the translations came from. I went to a Baptist school and this is what we were taught as to why they believed in that. There are two main categories of manuscripts that we have found. (haven't found any originals, but the most complete and oldest manuscript are considered the source as far as translations are concerned.) \n\nThe two types are the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. \n\n- The Sinaiticus was found in a monastery on Mt. Saini, only had parts of the old testament, but most or all of the new testament. \n\n- Vaticanus was found in the Vatican library and had pretty much the entire New and Old testament.  (IIRC the monks/priests in that area took delicate care to preserve the words when they originally hand copied it. So it is without mistakes from the original.)\n\nThe King James Version was translated word for word from the Vaticsnus, with essentially no interpretation taken by the interpreter. So it is as close as possible to the original. Every other version was translated from the Sinaiticus, or a combination of the two. This is what leads to different phrases, wordings, and versions.\n\n\nNow this is a debated topic even among Christians. We have hundreds of denominations and many different interpretations of the Bible, so there's going to be a lot of dispute. \n\nOne of the big difference between Conservative Christians (Baptists, Pentscostals) is that they believe that the word should be literally translated with no interpretation by the part of the translator. Contemporary Christians believe that so long as the interpretation doesn't change, the Doctrine doesn't change, and that the spirit of the translation is there, it doesn't matter.  ", "I'll add that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS - Mormon) uses the KJV exclusively, with a belief it is the most correct translation.  Those missionaries you see around - they are carrying the KJV and the Book of Mormon, both valued equally.", "There reportedly are 30,000 \"Christian\" sects or branches (defined as faith groups who identify with Jesus Christ).  For Catholics, only bibles as defined by the Douay-Rheims conference from the mid-1500's are correct.  Other branches have customized bibles, or variations of mainline protestant bibles.", "I am not exactly sure about the version of the Bible, but I was raised Catholic, studied in a very strict Catholic school run by sisters and they say that Bible versions with the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat are the only ones recognized by the R.C. Church. So those are the only ones we have at home.", "ELI5: Why do people make blanket statements about \"Christians\" as though any one statement could possibly apply to all of them, when it's super-easy to say \"many Christians\" or \"some Christians\"?", "People prefer certain interpretations - often over the original. It's why so many people have seen Disney movies over and over, but how many of them actually read the original Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson fairytales?", "The King James Bible wasn't written 1600 years after Jesus lived, it was *transcribed* from the different languages previous versions of the same book and put into English by the most learned linguistic scholars available to the king of England(not just Englishmen mind you, there were African scholars among them.)\n\nBack in the olden times schools weren't a thing, some rich folks had people to teach their kids but most folks didn't and so almost everyone was illiterate, they couldn't read. Because most were poor and nobody had cars, information, like languages, was very expensive to move around and teach people, because of this there were way more languages in a single area than there are today so in order for the early church to spread they couldn't just print out bibles for everyone to read, men had to travel across the land telling people about Jesus and his miracles, often they had to learn this new language then preach the gospel in that language to the people were they were and build a church there, keep a postal correspondence, pen pals. About 60 years after the death and resurrection it struck the leaders of the early church that they should write this down and that it would be easier to have one guy in charge of reading from one book to a bunch of people instead of sending men to places to teach an oral tradition. When they took to writing this book they used the languages which were common and which they knew. The Torah, the old testament, had been finished for hundreds of years by this point and it was written in Hebrew, the new testament had pars in Aramaic, the Jesus' first language, an off shoot of Hebrew, Greek as it was a common language after Alexander the great conquered so much of the world, and Latin which was the roman language it was becoming very popular at the time because the roman empire was expanding rapidly and and almost all of the events of the new testament happened within Rome's borders.\n\nAfter a time this early assembly of texts began spreading so far the none of those languages were known to the local population, so the early church decided to put together a Latin only version and to have all the priests and other people who read the book for others learn just that language and this sped up the spread of the religion even faster, it also helped people from all over Europe and north Africa communicate because the upper classes were all learning Latin themselves.\n\nThere was a problem with this strategy of spreading the bible though, bad men could become book readers and lie about what it said for their own benefit and eventually the heads of the church began doing this. That made other people in the church very upset and so the church began to split up into new sects, one man named Martin Luther was largely responsible for the biggest split when he nailed a list of 95 grievances to the door the Castle Church in Wittenberg. It was out this act and many others that Protestantism was born, and the main labor of early protestants was to translate the bible out of Latin and into their own languages so the people could read and understand the words themselves. advancements in technology and trade had helped standardize languages over longer distances, the printing press had sped up the time it took to make a copy of a book from months and years to a matter of days. As early versions were being written people noticed certain things didn't translate very well and whole orders of monks, friars, vicars and other faithful and well learned men came to translate these books as accurately as possible.\n\nThe reason we can trust a book that is so old to be accurate is because newer versions of the bible are a relatively new thing. The bible is the best selling and most printed book in world history that means almost every major publisher in the world wants to get in on that market and so many order a new translation to stir up a bit of media interest and to makes sure they hold all the rights to their unique translation, it is a very valid argument to say that the first and second king James versions are the most thoroughly researched versions of the English bible and does it's best to keep to a literal translation which results in certain things being hard to understand without context but it wont oversimplify the translation. It's also worth noting that modern translations have political purposes behind them in some cases.\n\nKJV first the have other versions at hand for quick contrast, a scoefield study bible paired with KJV is the best you can do though, it's the difference between knowing that Ham saw his father Noah naked and was cursed and knowing that the phrase\"To see/uncover your father's nakedness\" was an idiom or turn of phrase meant to express that you had slept with one of your father's wives. other versions may simply say Ham got his father drunk and undressed him and was cursed they  don't leave the idiom in tact nor do they explain who cursed Ham, it wasn't God, it was Noah.\n\nI hope this helps, I really did my best to put this together so a young child could grasp it.", "The Catholic Church alone is 1+ billion Christians that don't go by the King James version as it was written by...well a heretic. You should look up the history of it. King James did some pretty sketchy things that discredit it on the minds of many non English speaking non Anglican derived churches.", "Are you asking why they don't read the original Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew versions?", "Some do, most don't, Catholics, for example are the largest Christian sect (50.1%), and dont use the  KJV.\n", "There are many translations. King James is popular, which is why some Christians prefer it. However is of horrible quality and also have a very dated language, so dated that some words they use don't even mean the same thing today.\n\nA Christian should conduct his bible studies study using several translations in all the languages he understand, with cross references, dictionaries, concordance, etc. Even learning some rudimentary hebrew/Greek to read the original language texts is good.\n\nSpeaking of which, there is no ancient manuscript that is so well verified as the Bible, with over 6000 different manuscripts and fragments found, so there's a whole lot to research in.\n\nSome quick checks you can do to check if the translation is good or not:\n\n1. Does it translate the name of God? The book is about God after all, and his name is in there almost 7000 times. If it uses Yahweh, Jehovah, Yehowah, etc then it's better than if it says \"LORD\". King James gets it right 2 times out of 7000. No bueno.\n2. Check Job 40:15. If it says \"Hippopotamus\" instead of \"Behemoth\" it means the translators put their own ideas into it, because no one really knows what a Behemoth is.\n3. Check Matthew 24:28. If it says \"Vultures\" instead of \"Eagles\", the translators are also taking liberties.\n\nEd: 27 > 28", "I see some important stuff missing from the answers here, although there is a mention of the quality of the language.\n\nFirst of all, the King James Bible is a revision to the Tyndale Bible, which was the very first translation of the bible into English.  In addition to the Vulgate, Tyndale used numerous sources including manuscripts older and more authoritative than the Latin Vulgate, which was the only version of the bible authorized by the Roman Catholic Church.\n\nSecond, this pissed off the Roman Catholic Church for two reasons\u2014one, the scripture and mass were kept in Latin in order to maintain the \"catholic\" nature of the worldwide church (and for elitist reasons too).  During the reformation, bibles in native tongues became popular as a way of democratizing Christianity.  The establishment of the Church of England made English language bibles the norm.  After a few years, many criticisms emerged of existing English versions, which is why mainstream Anglicans and Puritans alike were looking for a better edition.  Therefore King James assembled a committee of scholars to undertake a new English translation.  This pleased the Puritans because they wanted the word of God without an intermediary, and it pleased the Anglicans because James, as head of the Church of England would be providing them with an *authorized* text.  The clergy of an organized church could debate and contemplate ecclesiastical issues and reach some level of consensus more easily.  The committee relied on all the extant English versions (particularly Tyndale's) and numerous other texts in their original languages, but apparently few or no ancient manuscripts.\n\nThird, tradition.  That's been mentioned.  And, for the material they had available, as a translation it is Not That Bad.\n\nFourth, the beauty and power of the language.  I am agnostic with absolutely no leanings or sympathy towards the religions of Abraham.  However, one has to know at least some of the bible in order to more fully appreciate literature and European culture.  If I want a good translation, I will go to some newer scholarly edition such as the English Standard Version.  If I want gorgeous poetic language, I will go to King James.", "The old Christian joke -\n\n\"If it was good enough for the apostle Paul, it's good enough for me.\"", "As a catholic I upvote this. 3% battery won't allow me to explain the subject more, but the main points are:\nLuther and his changes to the Bible.\nBad translations of the Bible.\nAnd Christian's that won't recognize Old Testament books written by the Jews during  diaspora.", "Bible scrolls WRITTEN in the first century were all lost due to rot, mold, fires, floods, wars, famines, etc.  But we know even from secular history that groups of Christians kept hand writing duplicate copies which soon made their way south to the the Alexandrians (Egypt), east to the Orthodox church (Turkey, Russia), and of course west throughout the Roman Empire.  The 1611 King James version gathered the most reliable and earliest scrolls that were available at that time and paid the most experienced translators of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc. in London for several years.  I own and read several 20th century translations so I am not telling anybody what to do.  However, I appreciate the fact that the KJV predates most of the natural sciences and all of the social sciences.  Therefore, if the KJV has errors, they aren't because someone literally tried to subtly force them into agreement with post-enlightenment ideas.  The Dead Sea scrolls unearthed in 1946 include an even earlier version of Isaiah than the KJV translators had access to...which has further validated their attention to detail and accuracy.", "While most of these answers are really good, I want to tack on something that I think many people have missed in reading OP's question. The King James Version of the Bible, or KJV, was not \"written\" 1600 years after Jesus death. It is an English translation of the Bible that was finished being written within 60-120 years of his death. Also, churches sticking so strictly to this translation are not as common as they once were. It's actually almost a meme for younger Christians to joke about how that the \"only good translation\" (it's not, but that's just because we have a better understanding of how to translate the original text. For what it was, it actually is pretty decent.)\n\nAnd we don't \"follow\" that specific translation either. We follow the Bible to the best of our understanding of what the authors' intents were. We typically rely on Theologians to follow good historical practice in trying to discern what that meaning was. And I don't mean to say there is some special or hidden meaning in the Bible left behind for us modern people. I mean much of that meaning has likely been forgotten due to changes in cultures and languages, and we're just trying to figure out what it meant back then.\n\nI hope this clears some things up for you OP.", "National Geographic [published an article](_URL_0_) a few years ago, which speaks to both the poetics and the influence of the KJV on the English language. It's worth a read.\n\nCuriously, there are some concepts that are holdovers from the KJV that are so ingrained in the Christian tradition that they've persisted into an era in which other English translations are preferred. For example, everyone knows that Moses parted the Red Sea, despite that this is evidently a mistranslation, and should be the \"Sea of Reeds\". The latter could perhaps describe wetlands and tidal flats that would make more geographical sense.\n\nAnother holdover from KJV is that we largely still infer that Jesus was a carpenter, owing to the stated profession of his father. However, the word given for Joseph's profession is tekton, which is also used for stonemasons. The KJV translators were largely from Western and Northern Europe, and went with \"carpenter\". \n\nHowever, contextual clues would seem to suggest stonemason. Stories about Jesus routinely find him using analogies about building with stone. \"The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,\" although here, \"cornerstone\" may actually read \"head of the arch,\" which would suggest not only a stone analogy, but also an understanding of the construction of a Roman arch. There are metaphors about safe places to build, adding rooms to houses, etc, all of which were stone structures.\n\nBut, KJV established certain readings, and they outlive that particular translation.", "Im assumimg you're talking about English speaking Christians. \n\nWilliam Tyndale was the first person to translate the bible from the original Hebrew/Greek (where applicable) to English, as opposed to Latin, and was the first to use a printing press to distribute it. This was early 1500s, the King's English was English. \n\nHe was later executed and his bible (translation/press edition) banned. ", "In my view The first bible wasn't until much later after Christ anyway but it was also in ancient Hebrew and Greek so as language changed translations were made to accompany it", "Because at the time it was translated that version was the best translation into English for centuries.\n\nI think some people still use the KJV out of habit/tradition in their Church.\n\n", "User of KJV here. \n\nThe KJV is descended from the original manuscript called the \"textus receptus.\" Which we believe was the original words of God.  \nThe manuscript's origin is a place called Antioch. Antioch is significant to Chistians because of a number of reasons I forgot. But the main reason it was significant is because that is the place where followers of Christ were first called \"Christians.\"\n\nAlmost all of The of the modern versions are said to be descended from various \"corrupted\" manuscripts which originated in Alexandria, Egypt. The reason we believe that these aren't the true words of God is because of their origin. Egypt was known in the Bible as a very ungodly place. Is it often used as an example when referencing wicked places. It's where the Israelites were enslaved for over 400 years, it's the place that received the ten plagues. And they were considered the most wicked because of their constant conflict with Israel. \n\nHope this made sense.", "(wall of text incoming, but it's relevant to the question.. bear with me!)\n\nIn the early 16th century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus tried to compile a 'New testament in Greek' as a comprehensive version didn't really exist and there were doubts about the quality and integrity of the few manuscripts that were available for study around that time. The New Testament texts had been written around 50-150 AD (as is commonly accepted) but around the 15th/16th century, most known Greek manuscripts were only a couple of hundreds of years old - anything older was either lost and forgotten in monasteries all over Europe, or worn out beyond use, or decomposed due to the age of the biological materials used to write on, for instance. \n\nSo, Erasmus studied the few manuscripts he could find and, in 1516, published the first edition of his New Testament in Greek - which became popularly known as the 'Textus Receptus' (TR for short) There were several revised editions later, as more/earlier manuscripts were found in monasteries and such and textual variants were discussed, accepted or rejected. For a long time, the TR was the gold standard of Greek New Testament - and it had a large influence on the KJV; the translators that made the KJV made extensive use of it. You could even say that the KJV is largely based on the TR!\n\nNow - Erasmus lived in northwestern Europe. The manuscripts (parchments) he could study, came from the western church, via Byzantium (eastern Roman empire). In later centuries, howver, archeology and other research yielded many new texts for study, not parchments from the western (byzantine) tradition, but from sources in Egypt for instance: papyri, often much older than the parchments Erasmus had. Some of these papyri are dated to the second and third century AD, which brings ur much close to their time of writing, when compared to what Erasmus had to work with! These texts are sometimes called 'alexandrian' (from Alexandria in Egypt), to distinguish them from the western 'byzantine' texts. \n\nSlowly but surely, the influence of these alexandrian texts grew. And newer compilations of a Greek New Testaments (such as Nestle Aland) which replaced the Textus Receptus, made good use of the more ancient alexandrian sources, with their own unique textual variants. This leads to textual differences with the Textus Receptus of course!\n\nSo how is this relevant to the usage of the KJV today? Well, most newer bible translations no longer use the Textus Receptus as source, but newer compilations such as the already metioned Nestle Aland. But, there is a specific subset of christians that do not accept the alexandrian textual variants as valid; they consider them corrupted by gnostic influences and/or other early heresies, or by theologians such as Origenes for example. These christians only want to use a bible translation that is based on the TR and that pretty much leaves you with the KJV only!\n\nIn Dutch, we have the 'Statenvertaling' bible translation, which was based on the TR and made in the early 17th century, and here, too, we have people who only want to read that one translation for pretty much the same reasons.\n\n(edit - punctuation)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "KJV was written based on 10 different sources which was all they had at that time. We now have over 5,500 Greek pyro and over 27,000 Latin and Greek texts. Dr. James White has a great YouTube video covering all the many issues with the Bible and how they don't detract in any way from the Bible once you understand the history of Gospel transmission here. _URL_0_", "I am a Christian and I read bibles in several different translations to understand it better. ", "Lots of answers that are technically correct but needlessly complicated. Also many assholes. Let me make it simple. \n\nIt wasn't WRITTEN 1600 years after Jesus lived, it was TRANSLATED at that time. The Bible's various parts were written over several hundred years ending around 70 AD, in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The King James Version is one of many translations into English. For what it's worth, it's pretty accurate to the original (as translations go), but its English is a bit archaic now. But there are lots of newer translations, and many Christians prefer those instead. ", "u/purestvideos said ELI5 not \"need out for a minute\" the KJV was the first time the bible had been put into English and passed around freely. There you go 5yo, u/purestvideos", "I don't get it either. Don't really understand the obsession with the bible at all. Jesus didn't write it. It is just an edited collection of *some* of the stories told about jesus from his contemporaries. The early church didn't even think the books were that big a deal as they valued more highly the conversations and opinions of believers who are the body of Christ.\n\nSeems like at some point, the churches had too much local variations and so they tried to find compromise by compiling all the written accounts they had and then choosing which ones they wanted to legitimize. Then three edits and three translations later **THIS IS THE ONLY LEGITIMATE TRUE WORD OF GOD!!**.\n\n But that was never the point. The point was never the words. The point is how you treat others, and that is with kindness, empathy, generosity and humility.", "It wasn't \"written\"\n\nIt was translated.\n\n\nIt is accepted because of the method used to create the translation, it was an honest attempt to translate from the oldest trusted documents available to be as clean a translation as possible, without an attempt to interpret.\n\nIt's important to know the sheer number of people invovled and the decision making process when a line was in dispute to understand why it is accepted.  Are there still likely mistakes?  Of course.  Does it rely entirely on the accuracy of the chosen sources, which themselves have been questioned?  Again, yes.\n\nBut its not unreasonable to pick a standard that was created under such an effort.  Clearly better than the dominant catholic translation, which leaves out entire lines or has some very forced translation in order to push the Catholic doctrine.\n\nIt should be noted that the biggest oddity in translation is names.  Old testament names and new testament names are translated differently, even when they are the same name.  Joshua/Jesus, Jacob/James being the two most obvious examples.   ", "King James AUTHORIZED the TRANSLATION of the King James Bible. He had help from a bunch of Hebrew and English scholars, to translate the Bible from Hebrew to English. He didn't write the Bible or make the Bible. ", "Short answer, it's the dominant english translation of the work and english is the worlds dominant language.", "Because they are foolish people?", "Simple answer: The King James Bible is a mere **translation** of the original Greek/aramaic/Hebrew text.", "The best thing you could do is learn how to read Hebrew and Greek and research the original holy documents. The King James is a word for word translation of those documents into English. This was done when the English language was born and began to spread across nations so that people could understand the original writings in their own language. English was not yet established when the prophets and apostles laid down in writing the founding scriptures. English began to thrive long after. ", "Just going to add something. \nCatholics make up a large majority of Christians, and some Catholics can read some of the original manuscripts of the Bible.  One of the newer translations in English that is based upon these is the New American Bible, so that is something you can take into account. ", "Why did Martin Luther remove books from the Bible?", "Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible is what I used. I am a Christian and not catholic or protestant. ", "Honestly, I love the poetry of it. The language has weight to it. But, to be clear, the KJV has some parts that are specifically interpreted to support the monarchy. This means you have to read carefully in order to filter out the bullshit.", "Such good answers all around.  Just to add:\n\nFor English speaking Catholics, the most recent translation is the New American Bible (Revised Edition).", "Uh just also want to point out that, statistically, most Christians are Catholic, and therefore used the Douay Rheims bible and later the New American. DR was based on the Vulgate, the Catholic Latin Bible from the 4th century. KJV was based on Greek new testament translations. \n\nBut i think to say that KJV is dominant or the most popular is a biased statement. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.slideshare.net/dr.shadiabanjar/methods-of-translation-presentation"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/king-james-bible/nicolson-text"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/LuiayuxWwuI"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "13fgne", "title": "What happens to clay when it's fired?  Is there a chemical change that occurs?", "selftext": "Wiki describes it as a sintering process.  I've only heard sintering referred to during rapid prototyping processes for metals.  Does it also apply to ceramics?  Is it the same process that occurs in glassmaking?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13fgne/what_happens_to_clay_when_its_fired_is_there_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c73h88y"], "score": [3], "text": ["Clay firing , sintering, is heating a (usually) granular material nearly to the muting point, the individual grains do not lose all shape and liquefy, changing phase, but they do form to each other, and can be worked as a solid.\n\nGlass making is equivalent to forging metal, the individual grains all change phase, liquefy, and they are then cooled , changing phase into solid again. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5l79ik", "title": "How does a brain cell in a chimpanzee differ from a brain cell in a human?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5l79ik/how_does_a_brain_cell_in_a_chimpanzee_differ_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbtnd1u"], "score": [7], "text": ["[A wide range of animals uses a set of neurons that are mostly the same](_URL_2_) . \n  \nIn addition, even neurons in worms and insects have [a lot of similarities with ours](_URL_0_)  \n   \n[The fundamental function of the neuron is the same in all species](_URL_1_) but many species evolved variations on the theme.   \n   \nAs with computers-- nothing intelligent is happening in each transistor.  Each transistor is a very, very simple dumb switch.  The magic comes with the complexity of connections between transistors, and the software designed to run on them.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20351718", "http://www.jneurosci.org/content/26/12/3319.full", "http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Nerve6.html"]]}
{"q_id": "4zn08a", "title": "when you're flying, how come nearby clouds don't seem disturbed by the plane?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zn08a/eli5_when_youre_flying_how_come_nearby_clouds/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6x5sdh", "d6x9ied", "d6xds08", "d6xflq5", "d6xh2bb", "d6xidc8", "d6xjb8y", "d6xlnx2", "d6xszuq", "d6y05z8", "d6y16h0", "d6y1sbl"], "score": [1891, 166, 28, 658, 11, 6, 12, 8, 4, 3, 7, 9], "text": ["What looks nearby to you is actually some distance away -- clouds are HUGE. Planes do disturb the part near them -- see these pics.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "To see any disruption you'd have to sit out on the wing and look backwards, and down.\n\nAn aircraft wake is only a bit wider than the wingspan (roughly 2x the span, so imagine that the wings are twice as long.)   And, rather than trailing horizontally behind the aircraft, it moves downward.\n\nThe [typical famous photos](_URL_0_) show a rear-facing view of the Learjet's descending wake punching a slot in a fog bank below the plane's path.\n", "Clouds are disturbed, but only behind the aircraft, where you cannot see them, and directly around the aircraft, where they pass so quickly that you cannot see them properly.\n\nIf you see a different aircraft flying through clouds it is possible to see some perturbation behind it.", "Pilot here (PPL).\n\nAs has been pointed out, clouds are often massive and wing vortices generally affect clouds to the rear and below your fuselage. However you can see the effect as a pilot depending on the aircraft you fly. A commercial airliner leaves you with no chance of seeing it because of the speed, dimensions and limited field of view (Even for the pilot).\n\nHowever I in my little Piper can brush some cloud and look back to see the effect to a good degree and anyone in a bubble canopy has an even better view of it. I would never do that as a deliberate act though, merely if I was transitioning through, even though I am IFR rated. Cloud is never a thing you want to be near or in as a pilot if you can avoid it and indeed many private pilots have to specifically avoid it as they fly under a restriction called visual flight rules or VFR.\n\nAirliners often do have an effect on clouds that are quite far away from them. The turbulence from big jet engines can spawl around for quite some distance and affect clouds that are reasonably far away.", "Planes certainly \"disturb\" the clouds they fly near. However, purely because of how the wings of an aeroplane work, it affects the areas behind the wings the most. \n\nSince an aeroplane's wings create lift, they can appear to \"push\" air/clouds below them downwards. Unless you have a proper rear view, you generally won't be able to see this happen while on the plane. (On a commercial jet, you most certainly can't)\n\n\nAnother effect of aeroplane wings are the vortices created by the wing tips. \n\nAt the end of a wing, the difference in speed between air flowing over and under the wing creates spiral flows of air (sort of like a cyclone), called wingtip vortices. \n\nBoth of these effects create a phenomenon called wake turbulence, which can be extremely dangerous to other aeroplanes. \nThis is why it is important to keep planes separated from each other, particularly much smaller planes from larger ones, as they can be severely shaken about and damaged. \n\nMost modern planes have curled wingtips (so-called winglets or sharklets), which redirect the air to make this phenomenon less intense.", "Same reason they don't appear to be in a boat if you look to the side. The plane leaves a wake behind it too, you're just traveling 600mph so it's far behind it.", "Related/unrelated thread hijacking question:\n\nWhy do pilots continue to fly in clouds when there is turbulence?\nI've been on Aeroflot and Lufthansa flights where the pilot or copilot comes on the PA system and says that due to turbulance they will ask permission to climb to a higher altitude where the effects are less.... sure enough the turbulence stops. \n\nFlying on every other airline, turbulence in the clouds ah never mind. \n\nDo the pilots get a kick out of it... or are they all being denied access to a higher altitude?", "Another thing to consider: clouds aren't really all that densely filled with particles. We only see them because there is a lot of thickness we have to see through. Some local turbulence caused by a plane isn't really a big deal because the rest of the thickness that we look through is preserved and untouched. Thought experiment for a moment: a screen on a window, by itself, doesn't really block vision. But if you put a bunch of screens stacked on top of eachother your vision starts to get blocked. Clouds are the same way. \n\nMore specifically, according to _URL_0_, there is only about 0.5 grams of material per cubic meter in a cloud. For perspective: that's a few drops of water in a volume a little larger than your stove. Next time you're cooking, spit in a hot pan and spread out the vapor in the volume above your stove - that's about a cloud's density. After it spreads out even a little bit beyond your pan, it's probably in-perceivable in the relatively small volume. \n\nLastly, and another way to think about it: why don't you make wake in ground-fog? I can't find exact numbers for some reason (probably because it's so variant) but my guess is that a good pea-soup fog is higher particle/vapor density than a cloud.", "ELI5 - its the same as a power boat going through water.  The boat does not disturb water that is in front of, beside and underneath the boat.  There is only a small line of a wake left almost directly behind the vehicle.  This is the same for airplanes, and in most airplanes you cannot see directly back enough to see any wake.  Plus, since you can't see air, and thick clouds would block your view of the wake, its hard to see the wake even if you can look behind the airplane.  \n\n_URL_0_\n", "The easiest way to think of this, for me at least, is to think of a motor boat.  When traveling through the water in a motor boat the water on either side of you is not disturbed by your boat unless it is very close to the boat.  Behind the boat the most disturbance is right behind the boat in the same general size and shape of the boat, it spreads out from there are you travel away from it... creating the wake of the boat.  The faster you travel on a boat the more narrow your wake looks, because it is spreading out at the same rate but you are moving away from it faster.  \n\nThe same general thing happens on a plane, but it is much harder to see in the air.", "Scientist here.\n\nThe earth is actually flat. When you get on a plane, they lift it with a crane, surround you with stills of clouds (hence the not moving!) and quickly rearrange everything during flight time to match your destination.", "The clouds get very disturbed by planes.. damned flying buses getting all up in their business.\n\nRain is cloud tears"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://contrailscience.com/skitch/Photos__Boeing_777-236_ER_Aircraft_Pictures_%7C_Airliners.net-20100220-080829.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/Un5JnWu.jpg", "http://contrailscience.com/skitch/Google_Image_Result_for_http__www.efluids.com_efluids_gallery_gallery_images_cessnajet_1.jpg-20100219-174651.jpg", "https://www.metabunk.org/sk/Look_Up_Take_Action__YouTube_720p.mp4_20131214_104732.jpg"], ["https://www.pinterest.com/canaryfly/aviones/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleatmosphere.html"], ["http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/fluids/flupic/aircraftwake.jpg"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7j1s16", "title": "Is there a limit to the energy density of batteries?", "selftext": "Could they ever overtake fuels such as kerosene/gasoline?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7j1s16/is_there_a_limit_to_the_energy_density_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dr3ha7a"], "score": [5], "text": ["There's a limit for closed galvanic cells set by the redox potentials of the halves of the cell. If you demand that your anode be solid then the best battery anyone will ever have will involve lithium because of the combination of extremely light weight and being a fairly strong electron donor.\n\nThere are numerous ways to cheat this limit. [Lithium/air batteries](_URL_0_) use the atmosphere as the cathode, so you really only need to carry half a battery. Per mass energy density rivals gasoline, at least on paper. Most of the battery technologies you've only heard about once were foiled by the cells not lasting long enough to be useful and this is one of those."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery#Cathode"]]}
{"q_id": "5lwzii", "title": "Bismarck specifically excluded and alienated Austria from German confederation and unification. The victorious allied powers of WWI forbade unification of Germany and Austria in the post-war treaties. Why the effort from various parties to prevent Austria joining any sort of greater Germany?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lwzii/bismarck_specifically_excluded_and_alienated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbzkhf5"], "score": [27], "text": ["First, during German Unification, for Austria to join would mean either the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had to cede sovereignty to the new German Emperor (i.e. Prussia), or vice versa. It also would increased religious tension (Austria was majority Catholic, Prussia majority Protestant) and cultural tension (the Germany already had a lot of Polish land, now add in Hungary and a large chunk of the Balkans). For more info, see /u/vonadler's [answer here](_URL_0_) on a similar question. \n\nAn alternate option would be the Hapsburgs ceding their ancestral lands (and power base) in Austria to the new Germany and keeping the rest of the Empire, which would have collapsed the empire given that they had just had to make major concessions to keep the whole thing going anyway.  \n\nAs for the Treaty of Versailles, with the collapse of Russia and Austria-Hungary, Germany's eastern border was far safer than ever. Their only true threat was France in the west - and France had a smaller population than Germany. Preventing unification between Austria and Germany was a matter of preventing a nation that was fundamentally the strongest nation on the continent (despite political instability and a near-miss Socialist/Communist revolution) from immediately becoming more powerful - in fact, it would arguably be more powerful at the end of the process than it started. The Allies also knew that there was no certainty about future alliances with Russia (already embroiled in a civil war with Allied intervention) or future help from the US (historically isolationist). \n\nLate Edit: Imagine the worst case scenario for some: unification of Germany and Austria, and both Russia and Greater Germany end up Communist (not out of the question during mid-1919 when negotiations were wrapped up), with France already having a strong Socialist bent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fy0pq/why_didnt_bismarck_try_to_include_austria_in_his/ctthlqb/"]]}
{"q_id": "25a93l", "title": "The Byzantine Empire had access to all the ancient Greek writings, and yet contributed very little to science. What are the proposed reasons for this?", "selftext": "I find it really mind-boggling. At the end of the Hellenistic era, ~50-100 A.D. there were people like Hero of Alexandria who invented the steam engine. The scholars there were really close to an industrial revolution, so to speak. The decline of the Roman Empire brought this to a halt, but the Eastern Roman Empire, aka Byzantine Empire never lost access to the writings of all the wise ancient Greeks. They had the books stored in monasteries (and studied, translated, and diligently copied by hand generation after generation) all along, for 1000 years, and yet it seems that they didn't do much else with it.\n\n\n\n\nWhen the Arabs discovered the ancient Greek texts, they had their Golden Age, which brought important contributions to Algebra, Astronomy, Alchemy, just to name a few. When Western Europeans got access to those texts, they had the Renaissance. I am kinda generalizing here, and I would be surprised myself if the Greek texts were the only reason for those two movements. But my question stands regardless: I don't think there is another example in world history, of a 1000 year old culture, prosperous more or less, with access to education and resources like that, that didn't do more science.\n\n\nI'm wondering why that is.\n\n\n\n\nPS\nThis is my first reddit post. I did read the faq and the r/askhistorians rules, and everything should be OK. Sorry if I missed something :)\n\nEdit: I changed some phrasing and added couple of elements from a reply of mine to a comment, to improve clarity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25a93l/the_byzantine_empire_had_access_to_all_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chfd2my", "chfe5qu", "chfkcek"], "score": [81, 65, 50], "text": ["But the Byzantines did contribute a lot to science. Here is a link to a thread with more details: _URL_0_ ", "I'm afraid your question is based on a number of misconceptions. Firstly, the Greeks were certainly nowhere near an industrial revolution. They never invented the steam engine either. Hero's aeoliphile was a toy that had as much in common with a 17th century steam turbine as a child's spinning top has with a gyroscope. \n\nSecondly, the decline of the Roman Empire didn't result in the loss of the knowledge of the Romans in the West, the writings of the Classical writers were well known in the west all the way through the medieval period, and were discussed and built on by the scientific minds of the time. There was considerable progress made after the Roman period, in both east and west. The medieval period advanced the knowledge of the Romans. The medievals invented cannons, handheld gunpowder weapons and advanced shipbuilding as well, all things the Greeks and Romans had no idea about. \n\nSo the answer to your question is that both East and West had access to all the ancient Greek writings and both made considerable contributions to science. See [this article](_URL_0_) for a brief overview.", "**Part I:**\n\n >  that didn't do more science\n\n\"Science\". What is science? \n\nAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary:\n\n*The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment*\n\nThe key questions for us are \"did the Byzantines actually study the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world?\" and furthermore, \"did they do it through *BOTH* observation and experiment?\". In all cases, the answer is overwhelmingly YES, and I will try to expound upon these as best as I can here. Note: this is a huge subject, and I can't reproduce everything that I have found out in this essay, but I will be gladly willing to answer any specific questions you may have.\n\nAnyways, one must consider Byzantium's unique situation before delving into the question of their apparent \"lack of scientific product\". For much of the thousand-year history of the Empire, there was a crisis, and one which at some times appeared more dire than at others. That crisis was that the Byzantines, being the last vestige of old Imperial Rome, were constantly at odds with a world which sought to move on. To make matters worse, the Empire, specifically Constantinople, was the prize that everyone wanted to take, because of its high-culture, its smug attitude, and its mountains of stockpiled gold. For much of its history, Byzantium was under attack, and at various times, the light of the Empire was very nearly extinguished. First and foremost, owing to their martial heritage passed down from the old Romans, the Empire first and foremost sought to survive, and the Byzantines achieved this through advancement of their military. The Byzantine army and navy were the life force of the Empire, and were those two to fail, the whole of the Empire would fall into ruin. You will find that many of the innovations of the Byzantines were in the realm of military science and technology: Greek Fire, flamethrowers, trebuchets, terror grenades, standardized military manuals, and *klivania* to name a few. These are what they are generally remembered for. The Imperial war machine was one based on majesty, adaptability, discipline, and most importantly, intimidation.\n\nWhen the Empire was in turmoil, whether due to civil war, or external wars, science and literature on the whole seem to diminish drastically, and so we find that in times such as these very little information survives, especially from the dark days of the 7th-9th Centuries, when the Empire was wracked by numerous dire internal and external troubles, and though the Empire would recover afterwards, there were still eras of decline left in store. A notable exception to this decline in learning is the Palaiologan period, but it is the exception because knowledge and education on the whole had increased in Europe and the Near East by the 13th Century. Anyways, knowing this, we can effectively say that even though the Empire lasted for over a millennium, there were periods where scholarship was severely reduced in favor of the very survival of the Byzantine state.\n\nIn contrast, we find that the high points of Byzantine history, where the Empire, due to competent leadership and great military success,  allowed for amazing and extensive scholarship, and this was furthered by the favored interests of a number of well-read and learn\u00e8d philosopher-Emperors such as Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. Under leaders that understood the benefits brought about by widespread education, the number of scholars within Byzantium exploded, leading to a \"golden age\" of learning starting in the late 9th Century and lasting until the sack of Constantinople in 1204. This isn't to say that there wasn't any learning before, but during this span of time, learning on the whole was extensively and drastically returned to levels that rivalled that of old Rome. \n\nBut you may ask, \"what exactly did the Byzantines do to further their interest in education, and, was it science?\". You find, upon reading many primary sources, that education during the high point of the Medieval Byzantine Empire was actually quite impressive. According to Lars Brownworth, as well as the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, literacy (defined as being able to read and write) within the Byzantine Empire around the time of the Macedonian Renaissance might have been as high as 30-40%. There are numerous mentions within both Imperial works, as well as personal letters of contemporary people, of many children attending primary, secondary, and even at times tertiary education. Michael Psellos himself (an upper-middle class scholar) wrote that his daughter Styliane, even at the age of 6 years was \"the best and brightest in her class\" and he marvelled at the development of her educational ability throughout her teen years, which implies that many other children attended school as well. The Skylitzes manuscript helps to support this by [illustrating Byzantine children and their teacher attending school](_URL_0_). Additionally, the fact that Byzantine military manuals were intended to be read by both generals and their officers tells us that a good portion of soldiers were also expected to be able to read, and since they were often drawn from all lots of life, this means that a good percentage of regular people must have also been able to read and write. Of course, there is much other evidence to support this, but I shall not dwell on it. \n\nAs for science. Well, there IS a lot of scientific thought that was developed in Byzantium. A lot of the work that I am aware of begins with the great Michael Psellos, who I mentioned before. A proverbial \"Renaissance Man\" who wrote 500 years before the start of the Renaissance, I have had the fortune of reading some of his scientific works, and by God, are they fascinating. Psellos might be thought of as one of the progenitors of the scientific method. One thing that pervades Psellos' works is a keen desire to support rational thinking and support scientific inquiry with evidence, which contrasted heavily with the religious doctrine of the time. Thankfully, it seems that the Orthodox Church became more lenient during this period when it came to this scientific inquiry, and so Psellos was able to make many of his comments without too much trouble. He does, however, seem to thinly veil his true purpose within his works, which is to support education and reason, rather than dogma. To give you an idea of what I am talking about here is an excerpt from the *Chronographia*: \n\n*\"At that time I was in my twenty-fifth year and engaged in serious studies. My efforts were concentrated on two objects: to train my tongue by rhetoric, so as to become a fine speaker, and to refine my mind by a course of philosophy. I soon mastered the rhetoric enough to be able to distinguish the central theme of an argument and logically connect it with my main and secondary points. I also learnt not to stand in complete awe of the art, nor to follow its precepts in everything like a child, and I even made certain contributions of a minor character myself. Then I applied myself to the study of philosophy, and having acquainted myself sufficiently with the art of reasoning, both deductive, from cause to immediate effect, and inductive, tracing causes from all manner of effects, I turned to natural science and aspired to a knowledge of the fundamental principles of philosophy through mathematics.\"*\n\n*\"If the reader does not find me boring in this and will allow me to go on, I will add to what I have already said concerning my own activities the fact to which I am about to refer will undoubtedly win for me high approval among men of learning, quite apart from all other considerations. And you, who read my history today, will bear witness to the truth of my words. Philosophy, when I first studied it, was moribund as far as its professors were concerned, and I alone revived it, untutored by any masters worthy of mention, and despite my thorough research, finding no germ of philosophy either in Greece or in the barbarian world. I had heard that Greece had a great reputation for philosophy, expressed in simple words and simple propositions, and their work in this field set a standard and criterion for the future. There were some who belittled the simplicity of the Greeks, but I sought to learn more, and as I met some of the experts in the art, I was instructed by them how to pursue my studies in a methodical way. One passed me on to another for tuition, the lesser light to the greater, and he again recommended me to a third, and he to Aristotle and Plato. Doubtless my former teachers were well-satisfied to take second place to these two.\"* \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k1jso/the_byzantine_empire_often_gets_remarkably_little/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology"], ["http://hodegon.nvg.org.au/skylitz/school.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "71ptiq", "title": "if there is water on mars, why can\u2019t one of the rovers be directed to the suspected source and simply confirm or deny speculations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71ptiq/eli5_if_there_is_water_on_mars_why_cant_one_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dncj0u8", "dncjn50", "dnck9k7"], "score": [38, 10, 10], "text": [" >  why can\u2019t one of the rovers be directed to the suspected source and simply confirm or deny speculations?\n\nRovers are extremely slow, you can't just drive them to wherever you want. [Opportunity travelled 45km in all its 12 years on Mars](_URL_0_)\n\nWe know (for a long time now) that there is indeed [water (ice) on Mars](_URL_1_), no need to send a probe there just to confirm it.", "It was a rover than let us know there's water on mars, and completely by accident! One rover, called Spirit, was sent to mars to look around, and one of it's back wheels broke. But that didn't stop the rover, it carried on driving, dragging a little trench in the dirt behind it. In that trench we noticed shiny white stuff, which could be snow. So the rover turned around to get a proper look at it, and Bingo it was snow!\n\nSpirit has a partner, called Opportunity, but it's aaaaaall the way on the other side of mars. Using both rovers to look around, we made sure we weren't seeing imaginary things.\n\nIt seems that if you dig almost anywhere on mars for long enough, you'll find some snow and ice mixed into the dirt. And we thought mars was a dry ball of dust all these years. Turns out, it's a very soggy ball of dirt instead.", "Because the water is not in a form of lake or a block of ice. It is more like permafrost. Wet martian soil that is permanently frozen deeper under the surface. It thaws a little during martian summer and wetness can be observed flowing down martian hills. Again not a river just water soaked into soil. Soil stays mostly put and the water flows down through the gaps between soil grains. Martian hills are hard to traverse for rovers and their equipment is designed to take relatively shallow surface samples.\n\nAlso what needs to be addressed is public opinion on what qualifies as proof of liquid water on Mars. Scientists can show graphs, spectrometer findings and maps constructed by orbital probes and say that this is strong evidence but public will remain skeptical. What public wants is a picture of a lake but that is not what they will get."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_\\(rover\\)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars#Present_water_ice"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2bx3ko", "title": "My World History textbook contains like 60% of its material focused on European society. Why?", "selftext": "Firstly, excuse my English grammar etc.\n\nI don't exactly know should I ask this here but let me do out of my curiosity. I'm from Japan, and Japanese history class for high school curriculum is divided into national history which exclusive for Japanese history and world events involved our heavy presence from our perspective, and world history which is supposedly covering the history furthering down to each regions and also deal with worldwide intrications. My question is related to world history part, which most of the textbook has its emphasis over European history (from ancient Rome and Greek, throughout medieval ages, dismantle of ancient regime and bourgeois revolution and progress of industrial revolution, world wars and modern ages), while history of other regions including India, Arab, Central Asia, Africa, South-East Asia, Australia (and Aborignie), and Native Americans having less particulars or being supplementary of whole development of European centric history. Even inside Europe itself the \"quota\" can be dig down into like 45% Western Europe(Britain, French, German, Netherlands etc), 35% Southern Europe (mostly Rome, Greek, Byzantines, Italy, Spanish), and the rest for Eastern Europe/Balcan/Russia/Scandinavia etc. While my conjecture of the reasoning is the amount of historical bibliography and scientific research of European history exceeds that of the rest (which also could explain the reason why Chinese history is being significant part of history class exceptionally; there are tons of Chinese bibliographies we can find), I'd like to hear your answer from historian point of view. This question raises when I had my Indonesian friend showed me his world history textbook and it was almost the same thing with European history being the \"protagonist\" and the rest of the world are at the supporting role. But, there could be different textbook with different perspective, highly, so please correct me if Im wrong and Im eager to hear that.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bx3ko/my_world_history_textbook_contains_like_60_of_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj9tvsy", "cj9u6ce", "cj9u73u", "cj9xtip", "cja2i7d", "cjcbjll"], "score": [20, 5, 114, 2, 2, 2], "text": [" > which also could explain the reason why Chinese history is being significant part of history class exceptionally; there are tons of Chinese bibliographies we can find\n\nThis isn't an answer to your main question, but I just want to address this point above, and it may be related to the question about Europe as well.\n\nThere is actually a huge amount of Japanese scholarship on Chinese topics. My own examples are coming from linguistics, but if you really want to get into things like Manchu scholarship or even more general historical linguistics, Japanese sources are quite significant. So in addition to there being a lot written about Chinese history (and I mean that in the broadest sense), there's a lot written about it *in Japanese* by Japanese historians. It's also a huge area with historical and archaeological records going way back, and in an area very much related to Japanese history and culture. So that being prominent in the text books in Japan doesn't surprise me at all. The history of the region is very accessible, so it's easy to distill into a textbook.\n\n~~What level are the books for that you're asking about? Something like high school?~~\n\nedit: yep there it is, clear as day. oops.", "I may be wrong but since most of the first world countries are in the westen world, its more likely that thats where the focus is, as many things comes from the ancient european civilizations. Atleast this makes sense for us from europe, as we read a lot more about general  european history then about our own history (swedish), or about easten history. For us, we had more then 60% of our textbook focus on the rest of the world, with almost only 20% was about sweden, but then again, this might be casue we are in europe, and there isnt much to be said about swedish history. ", "This really comes down to some of history's core identity issues as an academic discipline. What constitutes 'important history' and how that history is presented is a central point of contention. On the one hand, one historian would say that a Eurocentric view of world history stands at the forefront of world history because European affairs have had the greatest impact on the world for many centuries. This is also linked to colonization and European politico-economic domination of the developing world,  Eurocentric history is dominant because it is the 'history of the political majority'. Thus European history is more important because it is more influential and central to understanding the world as we know it today. On the other hand, another historian would challenge this idea by asking 'what makes European history more important than say Japanese history'. They would argue that all history, no matter what perspective it is told from is equally valid. This is where social history originates, the idea that history has been told from one perspective for far too long and that the experiences of minorities needs to be heard. \n\nYour world history text book isn't unlike many others out there. Regardless of what you perceive to be the 'proper' or 'better' way of presenting history is, I think it is important that you know and understand the Eurocentric version of world history because it is the most dominant. If you wish to challenge it, you will first need to understand it. I also think that this isn't so bad for secondary level history, which is primarily focused on building your knowledge base and giving you an opportunity to exercise some critical thinking, which I can see you are doing :)     \n\n\nI recommend you read: Richard J. Evans: In Defence of History  ", "Since you are asking about Japan specifically, can I ask a follow-up question?\n\nWhen did that happen? Was it during the Meiji restoration? Or perhaps after WW2? I assume before that Chinese History would have been heavily studied, as Japan was part of the Sinosphere. And was it a gradual, or an abrupt change?\n\nIs it possible to find contemporary sources explaining why they felt the need to change the textbooks so? That way we would get the reasons \"straight from the horse's mouth\", so to speak.", "High school history also informs future education which is history based.  In that sense it is utilitarian.  \n\nIf you want to study the political sciences, economics, or many of the sciences the history of Europe and the western world is particularly germane to your subject area.  \n\nThat is not to say that the history of Japan or India or any number of other places is not important, but the foundations of the world economic order and the international system, to say nothing of the rise of the scientific method are all tied to western european history.  \n\nIf HS history is preparatory for later study that focus makes sense, pedagogically speaking.", "It also has a lot to do with the fact that you read a book written in a European language (I presume), probably written by someone of euro descent (or assimilated to that culture) and thus marketed towards your culture as a whole. \n\n\nIf you go to west Africa or China, they are certainly not going to be as interested in Romans and knights and will tell you about their own history. Granted, many around the world are partially \"westernized\". Westerners most frequently speak to foreigners who are fully or partially westernized (in real life, or through media) creating a selective bias that tends to make Western 1st worlders believe their culture is more widespread and global than it actually is.\n\nAnd many times, that information about history from elsewhere is either written in another language, or isn't written at all. Lots of history isn't easily accessible in English, as with any other language too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2a5qu2", "title": "why is bitcoin so popular/expensive?", "selftext": "I don't really understand the appeal. I mean, why not just use real money?\n\nObviously it's an investment for some people, but why? Why are people still buying them and why is the price going up?\n\n\n\n\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a5qu2/eli5_why_is_bitcoin_so_popularexpensive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cirqf5d", "ciryk83", "ciryrc3", "cirzr13", "cis0ux3", "cis2n9f"], "score": [14, 10, 7, 3, 2, 3], "text": [" >  why is the price going up?\n\nSupply and demand.\n\n >  why not just use real money?\n\nBitcoin is real money. Why not just trade gold coins? Why not trade living goats? Bitcoin is popular because it revolutionizes money. ", "First, what is \"real money\"?\n\nDo you mean the currency of your country? What about other currencies? In some countries they would rather have US Dollars or Euros because it is more stable than their own national currency.\n\nAlso, do you mean cash? How about when you want to pay for a large purchase, like a car or a house, do you not use checks or bank transfer for instance? Yet, it is not actual money, but rather a \"system that allows you to transfer money\".\n\nAnd when you want to buy stuff online, do you use debit or credit card, or even vouchers or prepaid cards? This is definitely not real money. But you want convenience of a modern system designed to be used online.\n\nAlso, savings, do you store bank notes under your mattress? Or maybe gold? Wait, gold is valuable and a great way to store value, but definitely not real money. Would you keep your savings on a bank account losing value every year because of inflation, or try to make it grow by buying stocks for instance? Stocks are definitely not real money either.\n\nBitcoin is popular because it is answering many questions that are brought up by our modern globalized, connected world.\n\nBecause there is a finite number of bitcoins, the simple rules of supply and demand apply: more demand, less supply, price goes up.\n\nHope this helps. ", "Bitcoin price is not very important but it's useful is SOME situation like sending money in an other country or online where physical cash cannot be used. \n\nOther existing methods can do that like Credit card and Western Unions but they charge big fees (3% to 20%) and are restricted to some companies and countries and some products... Those services often have fraud where the merchant lose both the product and the money.\n\nBitcoin can be used by ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME (midnight weekend?)... create your own wallet and try it!\n\nThose reasons make it attractive and supply/demand make the price move up a bit.", "You cannot send real money like a 5 dollar bill through the internet.  You can send it with Visa or something like that, but then you have to type 16 numbers, a expiration date, and usually give you name and address..  With bitcoin you can just send 5 dollars with a click or two.\n\nBitcoin's price doesn't matter to a buyer.  You buy 10 dollars worth of Bitcoin is worth 10 dollars plus or minus a bit..  So if 1 bitcoin is worth 600 dollars or 1000 dollars, 10 dollars worth of bitcoin is still going to be worth about 10 dollars worth of stuff, So price is effected a lot more by demand than demand is effected by price..   It doesn't matter what decimal point of bitcoin we use to buy our coffee.  It is still 4 dollars worth of bitcoin..  \n\n", "Bitcoin allows people to do things that they cannot do with any other technology at the moment:\n\n*Send money anywhere in the world, to anybody in the world, almost instantly, almost for free, and without going through a third party.\n\n\n*Bitcoin allows you to transact with other people without needing to trust them. That Nigerian prince wants to send you $1000 for something, will you accept a bank transfer for what he is asking? No, because after you send what he wants, the transfer will be undone, and you will get nothing. Will you accept Bitcoin from this completely untrustworthy individual? Hell yes, because the transaction cannot be reversed, and it cannot be counterfeited.\n \n\n*Bitcoin allows you to do micro transactions. Did you like that reddit comment? Tip the author 25 cents with a simple command. You don't need to know anything about him to transact.\n\n\n*Bitcoin gives you full control of your wealth. If used properly, it cannot be confiscated, frozen, or denied access.\n\n\n*Bitcoin allows for advanced features like digital contracts, notaries, etc.  It is programmable money.", "It has the technologic potential to be to cash what e-mail has been to regular mail. \n\nWhen i understood how the thing worked, it just blew my mind. From a programming prospective is pure genius.\n\nFrom computers all over the world elaborating apparently random numbers without trusting each other and in competition to each other for a reward, emerges a behaviour apparently confuse and unpredictable but so precise that is valued by many as money. And noone and everyone is in charge of it.\n\nI bought some as an investiment, but in reality i just laughed like a child when i made the first few transactions from the pc wallet to my phone wallet. Knowing that my transaction was in the memory of thousands of computers, that were competing each other to write it in a page of a digital ledger copied itself in thousands of computer. The whole thing distributed on the planet, open to everyone and based on the fact that noone trust noone, but the majority is honest. Just. Whoa. To me it seems something from a star trek like future.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vyy5z", "title": "why does it feel almost required to sleep with our eyes closed? what does closing our eyes do that promotes the act of falling asleep?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vyy5z/eli5_why_does_it_feel_almost_required_to_sleep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d62k9s8", "d62kxkm", "d62paty", "d62s54t", "d62sk17", "d62teid", "d62tul5", "d62ueoo", "d62umr3", "d62vnkn", "d62wo4p", "d62yxm1", "d63127k", "d6338y7", "d633gld", "d633vcy", "d636gdx", "d636h9r", "d638v84", "d63azyo", "d63hqkp"], "score": [834, 3023, 93, 4, 37, 2, 8, 2, 3, 26, 21, 3, 5, 16, 48, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Keeping them hydrated, and allowing [R.E.M.](_URL_0_) sleep.\n\nAlso, the blank slate helps to draw focus from reality, in order to allow the sandman to sweep the blur across your mind's eye.\n\nSome people sleep with their eyes open; my friend Macias bunked next to me in boot camp, and any time I woke up in the night and looked over, he would just stare at the ceiling.\n\nAfter two nights of wondering why he was ignoring me, I finally asked him and he burst out laughing. He forgot he did this, and had no idea I was talking to him.\n\nWe started having fun with that for the remainder of our time there.\n\nTL;DR: \n\nEyes dry out, and need to be in a dormant state to allow the brain to sleep. They shut off when not being used.\n", "There are two things at work that would make it a good idea for your body to close its eyes for sleep.\n\nThe first being that during the day we are constantly blinking to lubricate and moisten our eyes.  At night, keeping your eyes closed protects them from drying out and getting irritation and from building up mucus in the eye ducts.\n\nThe second has to do with a chemical known as melatonin.  Melatonin is dependent upon the light and dark rhythms around your body.  When it is nighttime and the light around you begins to disappear, your body begins to produce melatonin which is a signal to your brain that it is time to sleep.  The darker it is, the more melatonin your body will produce.  Once it lightens again, your body stops producing melatonin and it signals your brain again that it is time to awaken.  \n\nIt is best for your body to close its eyes so that they can sense as little light as possible, produce more melatonin and thereby convince your brain to sleep.", "1) closed eyes block light reducing stimulation to your brain. Reduction of data feeding into the brain facilitates the drop in consciousness \n\n2) keeps eyes from drying out\n\n3) keeps stuff from touching your eyeballs while you sleep. \n\nIf you scratch your butt and touch your pillow then rub your eyeball on the pillow, you could get pink eye. Just sayin...", "It further decreases ability of incoming light to get to the back of the eye(retina) and go to the areas of the brain that send message to the pineal gland that amps up melatonin production making you sleepier.  Also i read somewhere that light is an acute stressor that literally raises stress hormones  especially if close up.  Any form of stress is not conducive to sleep.  That is why the natural circadian rhythm has stress lowest at night and highest in the morning to wake you up.  \n\nOn the topic of decreased sympathetic nervous system output rate, you wont feel the need to blink and keep dust out of your eyes.  Also the lacrminal gland (lubrication) and the many muscles that control the eye get the message to turn down sharply(work mcuh less). ", "The same reason we like quiet and a comfortable temperature when we sleep... reduced sensory stimulation", "For the same reason that it's easier to fall asleep in a dark room than a light room, or it being easier to sleep without having had caffeine recently. Less stimulus for the brain.", "For people who don't close their eyes when they sleep do their eye's roll back ? How exactly does it work are the pupils dilated? Because if they were wouldn't it damage the fovea ? ", "Why can't we close just one eye and get \"half a sleep\" when needed?", "I actually end up sleeping with my eyes open. I close them when I'm trying to sleep but I inevitably open them through the night. My whole family does. One problem that I have run into because of this, is my eye will dry out and I will get a corneal abrasion. These hurt like hell and not the most fun to wake up to.", "Melatonin build-up is what promotes sleep. It allows the brain to enter into it's sleep cycles. Melatonin is broken up, through a series of reactions, when light hits the back of your eye, therefore darkness = sleepyness, then eventually sleep\n\nsource: Medical School", "The pineal gland is stimulated by Darkness so when you close your eyes, and obviously not always, the pineal gland begins to secrete melatonin.  That is what induces sleep.  Closing your eyes protects them from dehydration and debris.", "Closing our eyes helps reduce sensory input, and protects the eyes.\n\n  If you think of your eyes as a visual input, and compare it with others... like hearing, feeling, smelling.  Then it's easier to understand why it's important to limit these inputs to the brain.  Just try sleeping with a loud concert playing in your ears, somebody poking you, or a nasty foul odor in the air.  Makes it significantly harder to sleep, but possible.\n\n  There are people that can still sleep with their eyes open.  It's a matter of training, and it's almost a meditative rest more than a full and deep sleep.\n\n  However, most of us are trained or conditioned into feeling like eyes closed means shutting down or sleeping.  How often do we close our eyes for anything else after all.", "If closing the eyes is helpful for sleeping for a number of reasons why do some people (my son) sleep with their eyes open and is it in any way detrimental?", "No all of us sleep with our eyes closed. I start out that way, but at some point in my death slumber my eye lids roll back...Major Payne style. My wife threw water on me one night when we first started dating, she thought I was dead (we had been drinking).", "Ooh! I'll add to this something I have been wondering for 4.5 years now... as an adult, when I lay down in bed to go to sleep, I close my eyes right away. My kids, however, keep their eyes open until the moment they fall asleep and have since infancy. Is that just that they are fighting sleep? Is it that they fall asleep in minutes and I take 30+ minutes? Have they been faking being asleep the second they close their eyes for 4 years and I haven't noticed?", "Can someone answer why I can only sleep with the light on and with consistent noise in the background? It seems to be a bad way to sleep but I've done it my whole life and its the only way I can sleep.", "i would presume by having your eyes open you are being presented with visual stimulus , thus your brain has to concentrate on what you're seeing. By the brain having to decipher what your eyes are looking it, it can't rest or go into an unconscious state. So we find it easier to close our eyes and usually sleep in silence as it means our brains aren't working as hard at trying to interpret stimuli, making it easier to rest  ", "I used to sleep with my eyes open as a kid, scared the shit outta my mom a couple of times. \n\n", "How do we choose to go to sleep? Like, at the end of the day, I may feel relaxed but not necessarily exhausted to the point of passing out.\nI just lay down, lie still, close my eyes and let my thoughts drift. Next thing I know, the alarm is going off.\nWhat about lower animals, like cats or dogs. Do they just consciously lay down their heads and close their eyes waiting for unconsciousness to sweep over them like us?", "TL;DR \nIt's so your brain can better recuperate due to the sensory receptor being hindered. ", "Your eyes require a LOT of energy and consequently, bloodflow. By weight they consume almost 8x more energy than any other tissues in the body! \n\nShutting them down while sleeping allows for tissues to rest, regenerate, and rebuild the wear and tear of the day."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5ck0x1", "title": "why are surgeries and operations usually held in early mornings?", "selftext": "Whenever I hear about someone going into surgery or when I myself had an operation, why is it that it's always early in the morning (around 5-7am)?\n\nEDIT: Thank you everyone for your answers c: I didn't really expect this to be #1 on ELI5...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ck0x1/eli5_why_are_surgeries_and_operations_usually/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9x2nfk", "d9x2ts7", "d9x355d", "d9x5t47", "d9x6b2e", "d9x7wl9", "d9x9puk", "d9xbmjf", "d9xbyzb", "d9xbzww", "d9xc9xm", "d9xcr7d", "d9xhs1n", "d9xii20", "d9xij7c", "d9xir0r", "d9xjda8", "d9xkzub", "d9xlmc2", "d9xmeqh", "d9xofn8", "d9xpvqb", "d9xqmfl", "d9xv1zj", "d9xy30p", "d9xz1pe", "d9xzhvc", "d9y12ii", "d9y1jsb", "d9y1kkk"], "score": [5, 129, 463, 12, 727, 3, 1056, 40, 11, 4, 16, 518, 6, 2, 4, 4, 5, 34, 3, 2, 75, 2, 18, 6, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Probably because it's easier to not eat all night and then skip breakfast than not eat all day.", "Surgeons don't just do surgery- they also have office hours where they see patients and supervise the care of other patients in hospital. It is far easier to take care of responsibilities in one location all at one time, then move to the other location for the remainder of the day.   \nAs most surgeons (and most patients!) prefer to work when well rested with plenty of energy and mental focus they schedule the most demanding aspects of their job early in the day and have their office hours later.", "This is because you need to administer a strong anaesthesia for most of these surgeries, for which you need an empty stomach for 10-12 hours. \n\nSo the patient is made to have an early dinner and then sleep, without making him feel hungry or thirsty during the hours he has to stay without food or water. \nIt would be a major inconvince to skip meals when one is hungry during the day. ", "There was another major advantage for me for a surgery scheduled at 7 am. It meant I wouldn't have to go through the anxiety of waiting for a surgery while being awake all day. I entered the OR around 7 o'clock. I saw a big needle, I panicked a little when I saw the size of it and then, it was total blackout. I woke up in the afternoon, it was as if only one second had passed.\n\nYou need to fast for 8 hours before the surgery mostly because when you're under general anesthesia, the mechanism preventing food from entering the lungs stop working. They need to make sure, there's no food in your stomach because otherwise, there would be nothing to stop it from going into your lungs, causing major problem. I also had nausea after I woke up, it didn't last for long but it was easier to cope with with an empty stomach.", "Fasting comes in to play- compliance is higher if you over night fast versus making some one fast from 0600. Doctors will block out x amount of time per week for surgeries as they still do consulting etc on other days. Surgery in the morning means patients can often have visitors and spend 'less days' as an inpatient. Morning shifts have lower ratios of patients to nurses here on surgical wards so there are more hands on deck so to speak for the post operative patients. ", "it's easier to staff recovery and discharge you on the same day if surgeries are done earlier ", "Edit: Thanks for the gold!\n\nEarly morning surgery is mostly about a condition called ileus. \n\nOther commenters have pointed out that fasting compliance is greater before breakfast. While having an empty stomach for anesthesia induction is important (mostly to prevent stomach contents from going places they shouldn't -- like the lung) and likewise not having a lot of blood flow to the gut while maneuvering there is also good those are generally minor considerations (you can drain stomach contents fairly easily if required).  \n\nOne of the more serious potential side effects of surgery and anesthesia is this condition called ileus, it is essentially when your intestines stop working because of surgery. This disease is caused by surgery and can be diagnosed as soon as the anesthesia wears off. While many cases resolve on their own (watch and wait), cases that don't have potential to cause serious harm to the patient.  And because of how the gut works and the post-surgical medicines, by the time a patient complains of their symptoms, serious harm may be done.  But what does that have to do with morning surgery?\n\nEssentially, after you have completed surgery and recovery (which takes some time), your surgeon can then start to examine you for ileus (using a stethoscope to listen for activity, observing passing gas or a bowel movement). With early morning surgery, patients start recovering between lunch and dinner when their gut is primed for activity which when combined with the water (which can trick the body into starting the digestive process) makes the condition much easier to detect. Having the patient recovered from anesthesia also gives some 'lead time' to allow the disease to resolve itself (many cases of ileus resolve themselves within ~4 hours) before making decisions about whether to keep the person overnight. If you are doing a surgery starting at 2pm, by the time the person is out of recovery, they are already shutting down for the night, harder to hear whether ileus is present. (Another consideration for early morning surgery, is to avoid unnecessary drowsiness when out of anesthesia)\n\nSo with early morning surgery, you make the disease easier to find and prevent (at least some) people from staying overnight if they don't have to. There's lots of other more minor considerations and factors that make life easier, but the ileus is the big factor and why surgeons almost universally start surgery early.\n\nTl;dr: After recovery, fart for your surgeon, it will be music to their ears.", "Cases start at 0700 because that's when a normal work day begins.  The people in the operating room (nurses, techs, docs, sales reps) are normal people who want a somewhat normal schedule.  Same with all the pre op nurses, the guys who run the operating room schedule, down to the people who clean the rooms between cases... all staffed by people who want normal work hours.  \n\nEdit:  source - am an anesthesiologist", "They aren't always early. I volunteered for a while checking people in for surgery at a hospital and they had surgeries scheduled throughout the day. Longer ones always started early, but short procedures were scheduled every two hours or so from 7am to 7pm.", "I have seen that there was a study done that showed more of a survival rate of operations that were done in the morning. This is presumably due to the surgeon being in a ready and fully awake state than if they should have to do a four hour op after a full day at work. Also as others have mentioned to do with fasting and the anaesthesia working correctly. ", "People keep talking about fasting, but that is only a small part of it.  \n\nIt's that early to do all the prep work and tests to get you ready to surgery. You have to be shaved, cleaned, blood tests, urine tests if needed, put in a bed, wrapped up, math done for anesthesia, double checked and triple checked for correct surgery, review books on how to perform it and check for common complications, cut open, surgery performed that can take hours and hours, extra time for complications, sewn up, observed.   \n\nEven though you're scheduled to show up at 5, your surgery may not start officially until 8-9.", "Multiple reasons, none of which i think are so paramount that it necessitates starting early in the AM, but altogether make it most convenient. many times we do cases in the evening or on weekends, but unless they are necessary to do relatively promptly, they typically wait.\n\n1. As many people mentioned, fasting for 6-8 hours from midnight onwards allows for lower risk of aspirating gastric contents during the induction of anesthesia and developing subsequent pneumonia.\n\n2. surgery requires not only a surgeon, but a preoperative staff to check in and evaluate the patient, anesthesia team to help keep patient asleep and pain free but also safe during surgery, post operative team to receive patient after surgery and make sure effects of anesthesia wear off and no major immediate complications are discovered, cleaning staff, circulating nurses, scrub nurses, radiology assistants, pathologists etc. because the normal schedule for many of these people is normal work hours, cases are typically scheduled around this.\n\n3. many surgeries are quick, but some take many hours to complete. by starting early in the am, it allows for the case to finish and patient to be admitted to the proper area of the hospital when the majority of staff is still here.\n\n4. it allows for as many surgeries to be done as possible during the work day.\n\n5. certain studies suggest that outcomes are better if started early in AM versus in the middle of the night (probably related to all of the above). this is mostly only applicable to more urgent surgeries where the decision needs to be made to either go immediately to surgery or try to wait until the sun rises. but, if its truly an emergency (gun shot/trauma/perforated intestines/etc), you just have to go.\n\nWhen is this not true:\n\n1. some surgeons operate at multiple hospitals, so they will have an early case at one hospital and then afternoon cases at different hospital. if you happen to get your surgery at hospital 2, the surgeon may only be able to schedule cases in the afternoon.\n\n2. emergencies happen whenever, even in the middle of the night.\n\n3. some hospital systems keep ORs operating with scheduled cases longer, as they see the OR as a fixed cost, and the use of it should be maximized, so they will schedule cases throughout a longer portion of the day (but still want to start early) ", "Just a point, many countries do not follow this type of schedule. It's a common assumption on ELI5 that everywhere is the same as the country that you live in. ", "Because that's the time we go to work: Full hospital staff availability, nurses, pathologists, ICU, radiologists, labs etc means full coverage of op or post-op needs or complications (ileus is just one of them, definitely not the main reason for this). \n\nAlso, depending on the specialty/operation, early start means more patients treated or for the big ones (8-10 hours+), a chance to finish up during the same day.", "This isn't meant to disrespect anybody.  And as other people have posted, there are many reasons.  One is simply:  \nGolf.", "Where I work, our first case starts at around 6 or 7 as soon as the morning rounds are done. (Excluding any emergency cases, those cases are prioritised over electives and other non emergency cases.) \n\nWe start early due to a couple of reasons one being that we have a schedule to follow and those cases for that day should ideally be completed and since surgeries may last longer than expected we have to start as early as possible. If we fail to complete those surgeries then we'd end up having to try squeezing in patients so that work doesn't pile up and so patients don't have to stay longer than they should. At night, we mostly do the emergency cases or those that weren't done during the day. \n\nAlso, not all of us are in the operating theatre at the same time. We're either around the wards, in surgery, or seeing patients in the clinics. \n \nAnd regarding fasting prior to surgery, we make sure patients fast at night (we also take into consideration the time of your surgery so you won't fast longer than you should) since you're asleep you won't feel the need to eat, so by the time you wake up, it's off to the operating theatre. ", "There are a lot of responses on here that are simply inaccurate. Including the top comment relating to anesthesia. \nYou are told to be ready for surgery or arrive for surgery early simply because of the queuing system used by most healthcare facilities. Example: your getting knee surgery at 9am, you will be told to arrive at 6 or 7 if PAT is done. \nWith having you there early they can have your case fill gaps for no shows or have you wait longer if an emergency arises. \n\nRe: 11 year healthcare manager with much experience in patient through put. ", "In a lot of places it's actually too cold to golf that early in the morning, so might as well get work out of the way.", "The suggestions that surgery is done in the morning because of fasting guidelines is not 100% true. People can be asked to fast at any time for surgery as not all elective surgery is done during the morning. Some afternoon cases will fast from breakfast, for example.\nThe principle reason is that we perform better in the daytime. It is well-known that surgical safety is highest when the team is well-rested. Daytime procedures are also kindest for patients. They can fast overnight, which is convenient.\n[Sleep deprivation and the effects thereof can be the equivalent of being intoxicated](_URL_0_). This is not what a patient deserves but sometimes in the middle of the night there is no alternative. There is no reason to increase the risk of medical errors.\nEdit: Source - anaesthetist (anesthesiologist) in Australia", "They're not. Both myself and wife work in the surgical departments of a major PAC NW hospital and surgeries run all day everyay and night. ", "I work in an operating theatre. The correct answer is a practical one.\n\nIt takes more time than you might think to get patients ready to go for elective surgery. They have to arrive, be checked in by clerical staff, taken into the theatre complex, seen by nursing staff, changed, have premedication given, seen by the surgeons, seen by the anaesthetist, possibly have investigations done and lines put in. This is all to facilitate a start time of, say, 0800 The expectation is that surgery will physically start at this time (\"knife-to-skin\"). This fits in with a general hospital working day of roughly 0730-1730. \n\nConsider a hospital with 14 theatres. This means 14 \"first on the list\" patients have to go through this process. But patients won't necessarily arrive in order. So maybe the first three might arrive together. That's 42 needing to go through.\n\nThere can be delays at every stage of the process. Patient wasn't told they needed to bring in their scans which need to be chased. Patients late due to an accident on the freeway. Patient has unexpected severe hypertension on admission. Dr Hotstuff is at an emergency and isn't available to review the patient yet. The consent paperwork is out of date or lost and needs to be redone. All of this needs to be sorted out.\n\nGiven the staff and equipment, theatre time is extremely expensive and extremely valuable. When you have a manned and prepared theatre ready to go, any time spent not utilising that is incredibly wasteful. This is something that hospital administrators and theatre staff are very keen to avoid. Furthermore, lists are often packed as full as they possibly can be to avoid the situation of unused theatre time. This means that any delays in the morning lead to run on effects hours later. In the worst case this might mean having to cancel the last patient on this list. Unhappy times for all. \n\nSo patients are asked to get in early to allow sufficient time to get them ready to start surgery and hopefully avoid delays to start time. \n\nI would add that, for more complex surgery, patients may be asked to get in even earlier. There are a few reasons for this but the main one is that the Anaesthetic part takes longer as the patient needs a more complex assortment of lines and monitoring to be set up and sited. For example, cardiac surgery.\n\n\n\n", "In the case of OB (Ie; c-sections) we have people come in earlier in the day time for a scheduled case because the doctors have office hours later on in the day and it's easier for them to get things done at the hospital before heading to the office. Also, there are more people around and any complications can be taken care of faster. Usually, someone isn't getting a c-section because everything is totally normal. Even a totally average, scheduled repeat c-section is by definition not \"normal\" because you're dealing with the potential issues already present caused by the fact that the mom to-be has already had major abdominal surgery. More importantly, the regular flow of the unit doesn't stop because a case has been booked, so we ask people to get there early and sometimes they end up waiting a few hours while other emergency cases are done. At least the patient with the scheduled case is already on the unit and ready for their c-section as soon as the OR is free. From a purely comfort standpoint, it also means that the patient can be NPO for less time, can usually have clears for lunch and a regular dinner and can have visitors if they want to help with the baby while they're totally stuck in bed for 12 hours.\n\nWe can and do perform surgery aalllll night long...it's just easier for everyone involved in the case if we keep the scheduled stuff to the day time, and leave the emergency stuff to night.", "I worked in a cardiac surgical unit.  I would say the biggest reason is convenience.  Firstly, you start your work day in the morning.  Secondly, the patient needs an empty stomach and the sleeping hours can be utilized for emptying.  Lastly and most importantly, if something bad happens you would rather have it happen during the day.  Our heart surgeries started at 6-7 AM with the last case of the day finishing at 4 PM at the latest.  Usually cases did not run this late and they only ran this late during times of high demand.  There is a consensus among hospital workers (I worked at a large, well-respected hospital in a major city) that having something bad happen at night decreases your chances of a good outcome.  Skeletal staff lends itself to less skill present.  Imagine that you have a heart attack and come to the ER in the middle of the night.  The \"A plus\" cardiologist is not going to be there if he is there at all.  If you needed an emergent procedure called a heart catheterization, the cardiologist would most likely have to come in along with a team that is called in.  That's an hour before you're on the table.  Time is tissue.  Depending on the severity of the attack, you could be dead in this time.  Had the heart attack happened during the day, the cath lab team and cardiologist would likely be close at hand.  Using this example for surgery, if you roll out of surgery before 10 AM, this gives your body many hours to show health care providers that something untoward is happening before most skilled providers go home.  If you have heart surgery and come out at 5pm and develop a cardiac tamponade (a serious bleed into the lining of the heart that presses on the heart until it cannot beat and death QUICKLY results) an hour later without a surgeon present within about 30 minutes you will die.  I think the biggest case for early morning surgeries is to maintain a larger window of time between when the surgery ends and the time that most of the specialized labor leaves the hospitals (most importantly, the surgeons who can fix serious problems that arise quickly).  Most serious problems from surgery will develop soon after the procedure so you don't want to finish near or during the evening when there are less resources in the event of an event.", "I've asked a doctor about this once. He said it was to perform the surgery during hours that were least likely to coincide with incoming emergency patients who might require the same surgeons and staff resources.", "Surgery resident here. One of the other reasons we start early that isn't covered too much in this thread is we want as many people around as possible. If stuff starts going sideways, the day crew being available is always safer for the patient. In a similar vein, we try not to extubate people in the middle of the night. Having extra hands around is always safer. ", "Normally because patients are often required not to eat anything on surgery day\n\nI had my Keratoconus surgery at 3PM 3 years ago, I was released arround 5PM being insanely hungry", "easier to fast overnight while you're unconscious,\n if something goes wrong it's better to have the more active day than the stripped down night shift if you have the choice", "Also an important medical reason for starting surgery early in the morning is the body\u2019s normal cycle of contra-stress hormones. Cortisol (stress hormones) have a diurnal rhythm and are high in the morning and decrease throughout the day. These extra stress hormones provide protection agains the \"stress\" of surgery. ", "They're not always held in the mornings, but major and planned surgery usually is. You want to get a fresh start and stack the deck in your favour.  \n\nYou can have a surgery at any time, but the most low risk time is when your stomach is empty, so you don't regurgitate the contents up into your lungs. Sometimes when we put a person to sleep we have a tube which just goes to the back of the throat, and other times it goes right into the lungs. The one which goes to the back of the throat is fine if you have an empty stomach, but the one that sits inside your pipe to your lungs is preferable if someone has not fasted for at least 4 hours. The tube which goes right into the lungs and means less risk of any vomit getting up the swallowing pipe (oesophagus) and then down into the lungs ('aspiration' via the trachea). This breathing tube is called an [endotracheal tube](_URL_0_). \n\nGenerally, the surgeons I've worked with prefer it mostly so the patient can be discharged the same day, and because it's tradition. We started work an hour before the morning rush for traffic, because surgeons want to get shit done and get home/to the golf course! Start early - (probably) finish early!", "Nurses and techs have to have you in to get you prepped for the surgery and then watch you recover post surgery. It wpuld make more sense to have all this happen between 5 am to 7 pm rather than start at noon and finish at 2 am or something like that. People seem to misunderstand what medical staff do. There is so much more to it that just getting you on the table, performing the surgery and then sending you home."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bcmj.org/article/impact-sleep-deprivation-resident-physicians-physician-and-patient-safety-it-time-wake-call"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.medicalexhibits.com/medical_exhibits_image.php?exhibit=08138_05X"], []]}
{"q_id": "cgkl65", "title": "Why didn't the Apollo program \"reuse\" astronauts?", "selftext": "[Of the nine Apollo missions that went to the moon, 24 astronauts either orbited or landed on the moon](_URL_0_). Only three of those astronauts went on 2 separate missions - the other 21 only went once.\n\nWhy was this the case? Once an astronaut was trained and proved himself in an Apollo mission, wouldn't it have made more sense to use the same astronaut in future missions, rather than taking a gamble at somebody who hasn't quite proved himself?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cgkl65/why_didnt_the_apollo_program_reuse_astronauts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["euioj1w"], "score": [188], "text": ["First of all there were 49 astronauts in the corps. The needed to do training for their missions months/years in advance for prime and backup crews. In the end though, it really depends on the astronaut who flew the early Apollo missions. \n\n* Wally Schirra (Apollo 7) was one of the Mercury 7 astronauts, he flew on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. He was planning to retire after the flight anyway, but he caught a cold and his illness soured the three man crew's mood and they nearly mutinied during the flight, especially over a TV broadcast. The late Chris Kraft (who was flight director) swore the three would never fly again. \n\n\n* Don Eisele (Apollo 7) was having an affair before his flight and the program didn't want the embarrassment of a divorce (also, see Schirra above)\n\n\n* Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7) got kicked upstairs to head the Skylab program (again, see Schirra)\n\n\n* Frank Borman (Apollo 8) had no interest in being the first man on the moon and he felt that once Apollo 11 was successful the rest was icing on the cake. \n\n* Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9) got sick on his flight (Borman did too on 8) and NASA hadn't pinned it down on Space Adaptive Syndrome, yet or understanding it. Not necessarily wanting someone who would get sick on the way to the moon, he became a guinea pig for motion sickness tests. He did fly in Skylab though. \n\n\n* Tom Stafford (Apollo 10) got promoted to take Alan Shepard's job as Chief of the Astronaut Office. Shepard had gotten experimental surgery on his ear, and was returned to flight status. Stafford also flew with Deke Slayton as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. \n\n\n* Michael Collins (Apollo 11) was offered back up commander on 14, and then commander of 17, but Collins turned him down as training and spaceflight put undue stress on his family. \n\n\nAfter 11, crews (and back up crews) had already been assigned to future missions, three of which would be unfortunately cancelled by Congress before they could fly (which would have had 3 Apollo program veterans).  In fact, Curt Michel got bumped from Apollo 17 for Harrison Schmidt who was a geologist, and the only geologist to walk on the moon.\n\n\nThe only one I'm not sure of is Bill Anders from Apollo 8. \n\nMain Sources : Chaikin, Andrew (1994). \"A Man on the Moon.\" Slayton, Donald; Cassutt, Michael (June 15, 1995). \"Deke! U.S. Manned Space From Mercury To the Shuttle\n\nThis is my first answer on AH, I hope this meets the standards of the sub. If not, I understand."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1twiap", "title": "why are companies legally allowed to advertise 1gb/1tb as 1000mb/gb (after adding small print stating so)? why hasn't a law been put into place preventing this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1twiap/eli5_why_are_companies_legally_allowed_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cec5945", "cec5dxh", "cec6gpa", "cec6taj", "cec6ua1"], "score": [4, 47, 6, 12, 15], "text": ["A strong argument can be made that 1MB = 1000 kilobytes; i.e. the metric system.\n\nOne of the more persuasive positions I've seen is that 1MB = 1000 kilobytes, and 1 MiB = 1024 kilobytes.\n\n**edited:** Corrected 1MB = 1000 kilobytes, not 1MB = 1000 bytes.", "They are actually right.\n\nKilo = 1.000 = 10^3\nMega = 1.000.000 = 10^6\netc...\n\nThats why the IEC \"invented\" binary prefixes that work as expected:\n\nKibi = 2^10 = 1.024^1 = 1.024\nMebi = 2^20 = 1.024^2 = 1.048.576", "Check out IEEE 1541-2002 \n_URL_0_\n\n\"While the International System of Units (SI) defines multiples based on powers of ten, a different definition is sometimes used in computing, based on powers of two. This is due to the use of binary addressing for computer memory locations.\"\n\n1GiB [1024MB] \u2248 1.074GB\n\nAlso, nice round numbers are an easier sell for the average consumer.", "As others have said, its because there are 1000 Bytes in a kilobyte.  However, the history of why your operating system^1 lies to you is a rather interesting to me.\n\nSo back in the day, computer makers basically decided that ~~they hated the SI system~~ it was easier to talk about cache lines in memory, amount of data moved in an operation and so on, if the units were a power of 2, because all these things tended to be in powers of two. Hence them using Kilo = 1024 = 2^10\n\nBut that's not true of everyone. Harddrive makers in particular, due to the way harddrives are made, aren't limited to powers of two^2 . Hence, there's no convinience gained from having a power of two, so here, kilo = 1000.\n\nSo when you buy a harddrive, and it says its 1TB = 1000 GB = 1 million MB = 1 billion kB = 1 trillion bytes, its doing what its always done. Telling the truth. So don't get angry with your harddrive maker - they are legit. Instead, get angry with the makers of your OS, who took something which was already well defined, and instead of coming up with a new unit just crapped all over the existing definition. Because hey, screw standards, right?\n\n^1 : Apparantly OSX gets this right. That's pretty neat.\n\n^2 : The first magnetic harddrive, the 350 RAMAC stored 5 million 6 bit characters.\n\nEDIT: 1TB = 1000 GB, not 1 PB as originally posted.", "Why does every inconvenience have to have a law to repair it?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9ttaiq", "title": "Do electric and hybrid car batteries become useless within a few years just as cell phone and laptop batteries do? Is this a common problem in their case? How expensive is the change?", "selftext": "I'm really interested in this and would like an informed answer.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9ttaiq/do_electric_and_hybrid_car_batteries_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e90vz6z", "e92tawi"], "score": [7, 3], "text": ["The thing about electric/hybrid car batteries is that they are built and run in such a way as to maximize lifetime. They get a pretty pampered life compared to something like a cell phone battery. \n\nThey have better charge/discharge cycles, better charging/discharging rates, better thermal management, better cell balancing, better chemistry in terms of lifetime, and better mechanical construction.\n\nSo while they both in the same family of battery, EV batteries are given every possible advantage while laptop/phone batteries are constantly being pushed to their limits.", "My gasoline hybrid is 11 years old. When it was new, the estimated driving distance on a full tank of gas was about 540 miles. Now it is about 400 miles. The dealer told me a new battery would cost $1800-$2000 if I had to buy one, but that the one I have is guaranteed for the life of the car."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2hhpvw", "title": "can someone please explain to me how exactly a 3-d printer works? my mind simply cannot grasp the concept of a printer that can make an actual gun that can shoot real bullets.", "selftext": "Edit:  Thanks for all of the useful information.  The concept is much clearer, even if I still don't totally get it.  And thanks to those who spoke up about not understanding as well.  I don't feel quite so old and out of touch.  :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hhpvw/eli5_can_someone_please_explain_to_me_how_exactly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cksrpy8", "cksrqvo", "cksrtqi", "ckstell", "cksu67w", "cksu9nj", "cksumzx", "cksvpbf", "cksvt7c", "cksws2f", "cksxi7q", "cksy1qe", "cksydre", "ckt276h"], "score": [7, 110, 19, 3, 7, 3, 12, 3, 10, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Most 3D printers work by printing multiple thin layers of plastic on top of each other. 3D printers won't necessarily make machines that just work, but they can be used to build parts that a user can then assemble.", "First imagine if we could put a gun onto a deli slicer.  Then start making slices of the gun that are very thin.  1mm or less in thickness.  The 3D printer works in the reverse of this.\n\nIt will take something that is in liquid form, but will solidify when lowered to room temperature and exposed to air (like liquid latex, cyanoacrilate, heated up plastic).\n\nSo it lays down the first slice.  Then the next slice on top of it, and so forth until you have the gun (this is greatly simplified, but illustrates the concept).\n\nTo shoot real bullets isn't terribly difficult.  It just requires a hammer to strike a firing pin.  You could make one out of papier mache as long as you had a hammer (not taking accuracy or rifling into consideration)\n\n", "If you have never listened to the podcast  \"Stuff You Should  Know\" I highly recommend it. They have a great episode  on how 3-d printers work along with a bunch of others ", "Don't think of it as a printer. Think of it as a machine that builds things with tiny Legos. It puts down a base layer, then another, then another, slowly building a recognizable object, the same way a kid makes a toy Lego gun. The 3D printer just uses much smaller pieces that tend to permanently bond to each other. If your imagination is stuck on every object being blocky, just think of how those huge, 10ft tall Lego sculptures look. Not as much pixelation. Now just scale it down.", "So I'll just say it.....I thought a 3D printer used paper.\n\nA gun from a paper printer...WTF?!?!?\n\nI really needed an ELI3 on this subject....", "Basically lays down a layer of plastic, then lays down a layer of another material that supports the next layer, so on and so on, until it's competed. \n\nYou could see it as a sandwich. Many layers but not ready to eat until it's done. \n\nFun fact, you can buy a kit to build a 3d printed 3d printer. ", "Please do not ever shoot a 3D printed gun. They are not put under the same stress tests and cannot handle bullets well at all. Most will probably explode in your hand.", "What if we could 3D print a 3D printer?", "You can make a gun from clay too. That doesn't mean it's safe to use. ", "I built a Prusa i3 3D Printer about 10 months ago and i must say its a little confusing concept to hear about.  There are different types of printers that can print all sorts of things (99% of these materials being some sort of plastic). Mine is extrusion based, think of having a veeerrry fine tipped (.35mm diameter) hot glue gun...that squirts out molten plastic .1mm away from the surface to print on...until it is finished with that layer on the X and Y axes, after the first layer is done...the nozzle tip is then raised on the Z axis by another .1mm and the X and Y axes continue precisely squirt out more molten plastic on top of the first layer (which has already cooled) and is a good medium for the current layer to adhere to.  Look up 'Reprap Time Lapse' on youtube...one of the first ones should be a blue hand lookin' thing. Should bridge some gaps for ya :P hope this helped some.", "_URL_0_\n\nHere you go. I was printing a shotgun stock spacer.\n\nIt basically warms up the plastic (fed from above) and lets it flow out the nozzle while moving the head. That produces lines of plastic. From those lines (placing them one next to the other) you get layers. And so on.", "Coffee maker - is technically a 3d printer..", "Thank you for asking this.  I don't get it either.  Why not just...make a gun the normal way?  How does a *printed copy* of anything even work?. Ugh.  Brain hurts.", "Super simple explanation. It has print heads that can move on the X, Y, and Z axis. This allows the placement of \"ink\" on top of and next to. Just like stacking building blocks.  Moving parts are generally printed separately and the item is assembled once it is printed.\n\nThe software is just telling the print heads where to poop out the plastic, frosting, metal powder, or whatever other material that particular 3D printer is supposed to be using as its \"ink\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/3pzH6KHDU-I"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33ne9a", "title": "how do registered sex offenders go to grocery stores and malls etc, where children just are naturally?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33ne9a/eli5_how_do_registered_sex_offenders_go_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqmjpx6", "cqmjt1v", "cqmnu25", "cqmny18", "cqmodeb", "cqmoklg", "cqmou8u", "cqmouh8", "cqmph5y", "cqmph8t", "cqmpv4j", "cqmq8rp", "cqmqd19", "cqmqtic", "cqmqut3", "cqmqz9o", "cqmrdww", "cqmre9d", "cqmretk", "cqmriib", "cqms13h", "cqmsodv", "cqmt0am", "cqmt61t", "cqmtguu", "cqmu555", "cqmunqq"], "score": [63, 1467, 2, 33, 7, 38, 14, 116, 3, 9, 3, 3, 8, 5, 3, 7, 5, 114, 9, 3, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Comitting a crime doesn't mean you get to be completely ruined for life after serving your sentence. ", "The only restrictions are schools and parks: places where children are likely to congregate, especially unsupervised.\n\nMalls/stores are fine; as long as they aren't within the radius of a school/park.", "If you are headed to a mall or grocery and a school is on the way, are you obligated to take the long-route around the area to get to your destination?", "I'm a probation officer that deals specifically with sex offenders. \n\nIn my state, the law says sex offenders cannot reside or visit within 1000 feet of a school park, daycare.\n\nOf the nearly 4500 square miles in my units jurisdiction, we have a lot of rural areas where there is only one Walmart, or grocery store, or other \"necessity\" within reasonable distance of the offenders abode.  In instances like that, I usually give the offender a specific time range he/she can go to that particular location and require them to call my office voice mail and leave a message stating where they are going, when, and for how long.\n\nWhile there, they are supposed to have no contact with children (assuming the offender has child restrictions). If they do, then they are supposed to notify me of the incidental contact and typically it's not a big deal. If I find out about incidental contact and I wasn't notified about it I'm going to become very interested in what is going on with that person very quickly and why his/her rules of supervision are not being followed.\n\nAssuming this person is compliant and things are progressing as they should, I'll be receiving regular polygraphs to confirm what they are or are not telling me, including incidental contact with children.", "We have a sex offender who comes into the store where I work but he always without failure comes in right when school is let out, and the school is like right down the road, and he stays around for like a good 20-30 mins. He knows a very good bit of parents come in with their children after they pic them up from school. So how is that not like breaking the restrictions that are placed on him?\n", "Can i point out that not all sex offenders have the same rules. Offenders who are likely to repeat have way more restrictions", "Two reasons. First, people pretty much have to go to stores, even pedophiles. Second, kids there are generally supervised. \n\nThere was talk that limits should be extended, but criminologists are all but certain that sex offender registries are generally a bad idea anyway and shouldn't be expanded. \n\nEdit: I shouldn't say certain, but it's hard to justify expanding after we've done studies on the basics. ", "I used to work with individuals with disabilities. Had a guy I supported that was a sex offender for exposing himself to some kids at a pool. (I wasn't on shift that day). Anyway, protocol was that anytime we were out in public I had to maintain \"LOS\" on him. Meaning I needed him to be in my line of sight at all times. This included going to stores, going on walks, going to movies etc. \n\nI felt bad for the guy. He wasn't a bad dude, just had some pretty significant mental issues and couldn't really be trusted to be on his own. Otherwise he seemed like a normal guy, except for the fact that he couldn't control himself around women/kids. The sad thing was he saw nothing wrong with it, he simply didn't understand what he did/wanted to do was wrong and illegal.\n\nAnother story, he had to go to our office to sign paperwork one day, (again I wasn't on shift). As you walk in the building the adult section is to the right, and the children section is to the left of the lobby. The staff sat him down in the lobby to go to the adult section to grab the paperwork and when he returned he found the guy looking through the kids section window with his dick out, masturbating. Ugh. Again, this guy just didn't get it, couldn't control his urges. He was about 26 with the mentality of an 11 yr old. Better stated, he was an 11 yr old with 26 years of experience. \n\nSad deal all around. Luckily none of the kids witnessed it thankfully, but the staff and receptionist did. They had no choice but to call the police.", "Brings up a question, if a registered sex offender has a child can they legally be there as the parent with them? Or will the child be taken from them", "Any and all distance requirements are just safety theatre that play no actual role in helping keep people safe. ", "ELI5, why do people who had underage sex, where the age is just a few years apart, people who took a piss in public, people caught masterbating, or any of the other stupid shit people can be put on the sex offender list for doing, why do they have to avoid children.... You say sex offender, people automatically think child molester. I'd be cool with lists like this if only serious offenses like rape and molestation were the criteria, but every week there is a news story about somebody doing something stupid, that doesn't involve rape, exposing themselves to people (other than trying to go to the bathroom, IE non sexual), or molesting someone, ending up on one of these lists. \n\nI looked up the sex offenders in my are and there is one on literally every block. How do you tell who's sick, and who got screwed over by an over zealous system? ", "Can a sex offender go to an amusement park?\n", "Why are sex offenders assumed to be always targeting children or are restricted from children zones? If you commit rape on a person of legal age, you're a sex offender right? But then how does that instantly correlate to being restricted near children?", "Not all sex offenders are pedophiles. Some places people have to register for urinating in public. ", "My mother is a registered sex offender, and since I don't get involved too much in this side of her life, I can't speak for others in her position, but she at least has a few restrictions regarding stores.\n\nShe's not allowed to go in stores geared towards children - ToysRUs, etc. There's only a few stores she's 'approved' to go shopping at, and even at those she can only go at certain times of the day, when children are less likely to be present (such as really early on weekday mornings, not in the afternoons/evenings, etc)\n\nWhen it comes to places like doctors offices or the dentist and such, where she could 'have contact' with kids just by proximity, her official 'rule' is that she's supposed to leave the waiting area (go outside for example) if a child/minor enters the waiting room, or wherever. \n\nOther restrictions apply for different situations and locations, but that's usually her general rule of thumb.", "I for one didn't know children were naturally occurring in malls and grocery stores. Are they like mold?", "How many posts away is a registered sex offender allowed to be to the ELI5 sub?", "Isn't this question ironic considering the name of this sub? Lol", "Why am I suspicious that OP could have titled this \"Am I allowed to go to the grocery store now?\"", "Probably with a car or walk. Use money and bring the food home. ", "**The question makes no sense.**  It would only make sense if you were discussing pedophiles specifically.\n\nIn some states, getting drunk and mooning someone will get you tagged.  \n\nWhile pedos are certainly part of the \"registered sex offender\" category, the automatic association is a real **problem**.  Mostly because of the number of registered that people assume are pedos, raising the **fear factor** and **promoting a surveillance/nanny state.**  \n\nIt's hard to find exact numbers, but Tier III offenses may be around 20% of the total number of registrants.  \n\nTier III Offenses require lifetime registration and quarterly verification, involve:\n\n    sexual acts involving force or carried out under threat, 18 U.S.C. 2241(a)\n    sexual acts with one whom the actor causes unconscious, or impairs by drugging or intoxication, 18 U.S.C. 2241(b)\n    sexual acts with a child under the age of 12, 18 U.S.C. 2241(c)\n    sexual acts with one whom is mentally incapable of appraising, or physically incapable of declining, or communicates unwillingness of, the sex act, 18 U.S.C. 2242\n    sexual contact with a child under the age of 12, 18 U.S.C. 2244(c)\n    non-parental kidnapping or false imprisonment of minors,\n    any attempt or conspiracy to commit of any of the above, and\n    any new offense committed by a Tier II offender.\n\nTier II Offenses require registration for 25 years and semiannual verification. It generally consists of nonviolent sex offenses, involving minors:\n\n    sex trafficking of minors, 18 U.S.C. 1591\n    transportation of minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, 18 U.S.C. 2423\n    coercion and enticement (Mann Act), 18 U.S.C. 2422(b)\n    sexual acts with minors age 12\u201315, 18 U.S.C. 2243(a)\n    sexual contact with minors age 12\u201315, 18 U.S.C. 2244\n    sexual offenses involving those in custody, and the actor has custodial, supervisory, or disciplinary authority, 18 U.S.C. 2243(b)\n    offenses where minors are used in prostitution,\n    offenses where minors are used in sexual performance,\n    offenses involving the production or distribution of child pornography,\n    any attempt or conspiracy to commit of any of the above, and\n    any new offense committed by a Tier I offender.\n\nTier I Offenses require registration for **15 years** and annual verification. This tier is for sex offenses that do not fall into the higher tiers, and includes both felonies and **misdemeanors**. States can include any conduct that by its nature is a sex offense, although Tier I is generally reserved for nonviolent offenses where the victim has reached the age of consent:\n\n    sexual contact without permission, 18 U.S.C. 2244(b)\n    offenses involving simple possession of child pornography,\n    offenses involving public indecency (some states limit this to where the victim is a minor),\n    offenses involving voyeurism, 18 U.S.C. 1801\n", "[Florida Sex Offenders Forced To Live Under a Bridge](_URL_0_). srsly.", "From a relative that was put on lifetime probation for having sex with a minor. He is not allowed at malls, any movie under a rated r, corner stores, etc. If he is in a place where a minor shows up, he has to leave. For the record, this person and I have no contact because he's a horrible person, so this is just from when he was sentenced.", "Just asking for a friend? ", "They must shop at 3am, and run in the opposite direction when confronted with a child.", "I thought this question was like how do they resist", "Here in Austria there is no public sex offender registry and they don't have those restrictions. Just to clarify and not all sex offenders are pedophiles.\n\nSo \"our\" sex offenders can go anywhere they want to unless the court restricts it, for instance school teachers wouldn't be allowed to work as such anymore. Otherwise restrictions are very rare."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104150499"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4lp8ey", "title": "Why did White Russians and Soviet troops fight together in the Xianjiang invasion?", "selftext": "[The Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) about the Soviet invasion of Xianjiang in 1934 (to prop up a pro-Soviet warlord) mentions that Soviet and White Russian troops fought together, and even jointly occupied cities.\n\nWhat motivation did these two bitter enemies have for joining forces? How did Soviet propaganda explain this to their troops? What was the eventual fate of these White Russians - did they join forces with the Nazis/Japanese after Barbarossa? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lp8ey/why_did_white_russians_and_soviet_troops_fight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3p9kfx", "d3pbjk4"], "score": [38, 8], "text": ["Ok, Soviet inter-war stuff is not my forte and especially the far East stuff is rather complicated but as far as I know this unlikely alliance resulted from Sheng Shicai, the local pro-Soviet warlord employing formerly White Russian soldiers who had initially fled to Xinjiang as a result of the Russian Civil War.\n\nWhen the Chinese Republic was founded in 1912, the former deputy governor of the province Yang Zengxin originally accepted the Republic as their new state. In subsequent years however, nationalist tension arose among the Muslim Uyghur population of the region, partly under the influence of Pan-Turkish movements, partly under Communist influence following the establishment of the Soviet Union. When Zengxin was assassinated in 1928, his successor, Jin Shuren, further stoked the flames of Uyghur rebellion by instituting a policy of Sinicization, closing down Uyghur schools, levying new taxes and so on.\n\nIn 1930/31 this resulted in a rebellion of the Uyghur population, which marks the starting point of the incredibly complicated Xinjiang wars. During this initial phase Jin Shuren had already employed formerly White Russian soldiers in his army that fought to suppress the Uyghur population. When most of us today hear \"White Russian forces\" we tend to think of people from the Ukraine, Russia, the Baltics and Belorussia that fought the Soviet Union in the European theater. But it is important to emphasize here that the Russian Civil War, being a Civil War involved more than just the population of the European part of Russia. Parts of the White movement came from the Central Asian and Far Eastern parts of Russia and that is also where fighting lasted the longest. A lot of them together with a lot of former White inhabitants of European Russia crossed the border into Xinjiang after the Civil War had ended because they sought refuge in a place near the Soviet Union, possibly with the aim of further destabilizing the Soviet Union.\n\nThe most prominent of these figures in Xinjiang was Pavel Papengut, a former member of the Turkestan Military organization that sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918. He had entered the service of Jin Shuren in Xinjiang in 1931 after years of having fought a guerilla war against the Soviets in Central Asia and having been forced to go into exile because it was a way for him to put his expertise in warfare to use and earn money. In 1933 he came to play a pivotal role in the further developments in Xinjiang. Shuren was in a dangerous situation in 1933. Not only was he besieged by Uyghur, the Kuomintang had decided to intervene in Xinjinag, seeing as it still was their province, and had sent another warlord there to depose him. His position under assault from all sites, his deputy, Sheng Shicai, convinced the White Troops under Papengut's command to attempt a coup d'etat against Shuren who was forced to flee to the Soviet Union.\n\nWith Shicai being the new man in power in Xinjiang, the Soviets quickly realized that in order to retain their influence there, they had to support him or else risk losing Xinjiang to either the Muslim rebels or the KMT. And that is how this unlikely alliance came to be. After Shicai had secured Soviet support, Pappengut -- as a known enemy of the Soviets -- was removed from command and shot after having been accused of planning another coup d'etat. He was replaced by the elusive figure of a General Bektieieff about whom nobody seems to have any information aside the former WWI correspondent Sven Hedin.\n\nWith Papengut out of the way, nothing stood in the way of Soviet aid, aside the issue of militarily intervening in what was nominally still another country, China, being a cause for war. Wanting to avoid war, Stalin devised the plan that two divisions of GPU (formerly the Checka, later known as the NKVD, and still alter known as the KGB) were to intervene secretly in Xinjiang. This is the reason why they mingled with the Russian troops, wearing Royal Russian uniforms and no further marks of identification. The formerly White troops didn't just provide support, they also were the perfect cover for Soviet intervention.\n\nThe intervention was successful and Sheng remained in power with Soviet support and the formerly White Troops under his command until 1942, when he miscalculated about the eventual victory of the Germans and turned anti-Soviet and towards the KMT. He however underestimated Stalin who basically pressured the KMT into removing Sheng from power and in 1944, his reign ended.\n\nWhen it emerged after WWII that Xinjiang would not remain the de-facto state it had been in the inter-war and war years and that Communist revolution was likely in China and Stalin decided to better not alienate Mao, the USSR decreed that all former citizens of the Russian Empire, even if they had fought in the White forces during the Civil war could return to the Soviet Union. This offer was made in 1946 and apparently, many of the former White soldiers living in Xinjiang took it. Apparently, two thirds of them accepted their Soviet papers and returned, albeit also keeping their Chinese papers. While fear of reprisal might have played a role here, their history after their return is sort of lost and nothing I came across today further expanded on their fate.\n\nIn short, this temporary alliance of unlikely partners in form of formerly White Russian troops and the Red Army resulted from an alignment of interest between the White Russians paymaster and Stalin's realpolitik in the Far East. As far as explaining this to the Red troops involved goes, since they were Secret Service troops, an explanation beyond that it was necessary for Soviet and socialist interests would most likely not have been necessary. And since the whole thing was a secret undertaking, there also wasn't the need to address it with the Soviet public. As for the White troops, aside Papengut, there doesn't seem to have been that much of an opposition to this undertaking, mainly related to them wanting to get paid, fed, and not killed by Nationalists or Muslims.\n\nSources (I was lucky to be in the library today for these):\n\n* Linda Benson: The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang 1944-1949, 1990.\n\n* David Brophy: Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier, 2016.\n\n*  S. Frederick Starr: Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland, 2004.\n\n* Andrew D. W. Forbes: Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang 1911-1949, 1986.", "The \"White Russians\" in what is today part of northern Xinjiang frequently \"changed sides\" in order to preserve their short term interests. You can read more about this in the following paper:\n\n[To Die On the Steppe: Sino-Soviet-American Relations and the Cold War in Chinese Central Asia](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso note that the phrase \"White Russian\" in Xinjiang is often a generalization--many of the ethnic Russian peoples who lived in Xinjiang were not refugees/defectors from the Russian Revolution. While some certainly were, many other ethnic Russians had lived in the region for quite some time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Xinjiang"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.academia.edu/5634236/To_Die_On_the_Steppe_Sino-Soviet-American_Relations_and_the_Cold_War_in_Chinese_Central_Asia_1944-1952"]]}
{"q_id": "2dv23y", "title": "insane clown posse", "selftext": "There's constantly articles coming out about their crazy fans. But I also read somewhere that they're actually evangelical Christians. Can anyone explain them to me?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dv23y/eli5insane_clown_posse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjtd79s", "cjtdd01", "cjtdm8c", "cjtduhz", "cjtip2n"], "score": [15, 9, 7, 2, 5], "text": ["I'm not even trying to be funny, I would just honestly love to see someone try to explain that shit.\n\nGood luck to whoever takes this on.", "Ok, so. I have met a few of these \"juggalos\" in my life, and lived with one for a while. As far as I understood when he explained it to me its kinda like a family that takes you in and takes care of you if you don't get along with your parents or don't fit in elsewhere or whatever. So basically its a group that kids join (that have too much anger towards their parents or teenage angst built up) so they can act like fools and do as they please straight into middle age and sometimes beyond. They are foolhardy and intense as well as crazy and short term thinkers. But they have a love for their own and will protect eachother.\n\nELI5: Somewhere between a gang and a family of misfits and outcasts that like attention and bad music.", "J and Shaggy aren't evangelical Christians in the sense that, say, Pat Robertson or Benny Hinn are or Jerry Falwell was. They seem to believe in the Christian perception of God without all the bullshit filler endorsing slavery, rape, etc. that the Bible contains. They believe in divine retribution, the afterlife, doing good by your fellow man, and all that jazz, but they framed it all in the form of the Dark Carnival mythos because, simply put, it's way more fucking entertaining.\n\nHowever, the problem with this is that they ain't exactly scholars (neither ever even got to 10th grade) or particularly deep storytellers. Around 2002, after they released \"The Wraith: Shangri-La\"  &  \"The Wraith: Hell's Pit\" (the finale to their Joker's Cards series), life was just so good for them and they were feeling so happy  &  blessed that they seemed to go off the deep end. The song \"Miracles\", with its infamous line about magnets, was the lowest point of that journey. Since then, they've dialed back the God talk and tried to get back to their schlocky, pulpy roots, but the non-Juggalo world doesn't really know it because they don't pay close enough attention.", "You'd probably be better off asking for an explanation of Homestuck.", "Huh, well because they are ass backward morons? They dress as clowns, and the fans look like dumpster divers. The ones I have meet are not the slightest bit intelligent, and it seems more like a way to fit in with other simple minded morons. Lots of attention seeking, and a need to fit in. The need to fit in is a huge need (not want) for youth as a way to form ones identity (or realize what they are NOT). I was a punk once, and talk about not fitting in! I was the shittiest punker on the planet. Eventually I realized that I kinda got along with everybody, and didn't need to adhere to a clique. Some folks need that, and some folks identify with others who drink shit beer, threaten women with harm, and spit shock value for attention. They are not the only ones either, as hipsters, and the emo movement are equally disgusting in my opinion. I have a lot more respect for goths to be honest. I used to hate them, but seeing some of them still practice the style twenty years later is kinda cool. They know who they are, where as some of the cliques these days will fade away (remember grunge).\n\nPlus, that stupid \"ax man\" logo is a hop skip and jump away from the favorite of the 90's. You know what I am talking about, the stupid fuckin' \"no fear\" guy. I laugh when I see folks with that damn ax man tattoo."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2wnwbz", "title": "If the Battle of Manzikert was not a bloodbath, as previously believed, why was it still a disaster for the Byzantines?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wnwbz/if_the_battle_of_manzikert_was_not_a_bloodbath_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cosm847"], "score": [76], "text": ["The disaster of Manzikert lied not with the battle in of itself but in the events that followed. The direct consequence of the battle was that for the first time since Valerian that a Roman/Byzantine emperor had been captured by an enemy power. \n\nNow, it had not been Alp Alsan's intention to become involved in an extended war with Byzantium given that the Seljuk Turks' principal enemy were the Shia Fatimids of Egypt (The Turks had in the recent past become Sunnii and fundamentally opposed to the Shia). Thus, Alp released Romanos IV on the conditions that he would pay the Seljuks 1.5 million nomistia (gold coins) and another 360,000 nomistia annually.\n\nThe real issue that made Manzikert such a pivotal point in Byzantine and Turkish history was that Romanos' hold on the throne was had shaky from the start given that he had come to power essentially by marrying the widow of the previous emperor Constantine X Doukas. This act do not endear Romanos to the Doukas family, who used the fact that Romanos had been humiliated by the Seljuk Sultan to dispose of him and install Michael VII Doukas as emperor instead. \n\nHowever, Constantine was a weak emperor who set off a chain reaction where in the imperial throne was viewed as being up for graps and generals abandoned the outer defenses of the empire to stake their claim on the throne. All the while, the main reason Romanos had instigated the Manzikert campaign in the beginning was to put an end to Turkoman raids coming from the east. While the Seljuks had little interest in the Byzantines, this did not stop still nomadic bands of Turks called Turkomen from invading Armenia and Cappadocia.  Given that these areas were under the control of Byzantium and that the emperor had a responsibility to protect his empire and that defeating the Turks would help to stabilize his hold on power, There is little wonder that Romanos decided to undertake his campaign.\n\n However, with the emperor defeated and the command structure fighting amongst itself, this provided the Turkomen a golden opportunity to enter the empire nearly unopposed and settle in a land similar to their Central Asian homeland. In a move reminiscent to how the Western Roman Empire had used Germanic tribes in its wars, many Byzantine generals started using the Turks, a provilent case being one Suleyman ibn Kutalamis who had aligned himself with the Governor of the Anatolic Theme (Providence) against Michael VII. The Governor was ultimately defeated but Suleyman took over the city of Nicea, which would be the first capital of what would be the Sultanate of Rum (Rum means Rome in Turkish and refers to the fact that the Byzantines still referred to themselves as Romans and their Empire as the Roman Empire).\n\nIt also be mentioned that the Turks were not the only people the Byzantines had to concern themselves with. In addition to conquering England , the Normans also conquered Sicily and Southern Italy from both the Arabs and the Byzantines, ending with the fall of Byzantine Bari in 1071. The Normans also served as mercenaries to the Byzantine generals and one Norman, Roussel de Balliou attempted to establish for himself an independent state in Anatolia before being defeated by the Byzantines.\n\nThe crisis brought on by Manzikert only started to come to end in end with the proclamation of Alexis Comnenos in 1081. He quickly married Irene Douka and appointed Constantine Douka, the son of Michael VII as co-emperor, putting an end to the civil war. However, Alexis's primary concern at the beginning of his reign wasn't the Turks but the Normans under Robert Guiscard, who saw that Alexis was a usurper and desired the throne for himself.  Likely for Alexis, Guiscard's plans fell apart as a storm in 1081 and a epidemic in 1082 decimated Guiscard's forces. Regardless, Guiscard did make Alexis neglect Anatolia, as Alexis essentially kept Suleyman in power until he was killed in 1086 near Antioch. However, what Suleyman had started to form in Anatolia passed on to Kilij Arslan, who set his base in Nicaea after moving away from the collapsing Great Seljuk Empire  that had defeated Romanos IV. It was that this point that Alexis sent a fateful letter to Pope Urban II for military aid that would set off the Crusades and ultimately seal the fate of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire.\n\nTL;DR: Romanos IV's capture and release set off a civil war in which the Turks both participated in and took advantage of which occurred alongside Norman aggression, which was considered a greater threat to the empire.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2kf5oa", "title": "why are actors in regular movies so much more convincing in sex scenes, than porn stars are in porn?", "selftext": "I feel like pornstars should be better at looking like they're having a good time. As it is i feel like 90% of the women I find in porn are not even remotely enjoying what's going in, but open up most hollywood movies and suddenly everyone's really into it. Why can't pornstars act better?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kf5oa/eli5_why_are_actors_in_regular_movies_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clkpjqn", "clkpkwf", "clkq0ts", "clkq0xh", "clkqfm4", "clkqibn", "clkr1ku", "clkw2tk"], "score": [6, 3, 6, 3, 3, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["Porn is often over-acted and therefore a little unrealistic. Porn is going for raw arousal from its target audience.\n\nMovies on the other hand typically go for as realistic of a portrayal as possible (without showing actual penetration like porn), and the point is often to get a character's emotions across to the audience. \n\nBasically, porn is about arousal, movie sex is about emotion. \n\nEDIT: oh, and movie stars typically have a lot more training in acting ;)", "Pornstars are not professional actors. They are professional athletes. Their jobs require extreme amounts of physical endurance, ability, and pain tolerance in addition to a ton of maintenance. There isn't a lot left over to focus on learning to act well.", "Porn is spectacle, movies are substance.\n\nThe rule against one sentence answers is stupid, by the way.", "I totally agree women in porn never look like they are having fun and that ruins it for me. Of course I guess if porn stars could act they would be doing Hollywood movies not porn...", "Non porn actors are generally chosen by their ability to convincingly deliver dialog naturally and then by if they seen like a person to fit the part. \n\nPorn stars are chosen primarily for their looks (naked) and ability to have convincing sex.\n\nBecause of the stigma of porn, people who are really good at acting would avoid doing porn as they would be worried about hurting their future chances of getting work in non-porn acting. ", "Dammit, you're 5 years old! Who let you watch these movies?", "Acting convincingly takes practice-- acting coaches, rehearsals, multiple takes, etc. Porn isn't that high-production. Porn actors are chosen for their looks and their willingness to get naked. \n\nJust curious, are you a woman, OP? As a woman I don't like much porn because of the fake acting. I'm into it then I see the woman wince or her eyes glaze over in boredom. But the guys I know don't have this problem. ", "Do you think those women in porn will still be there if they could be movie stars?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "17j3qi", "title": "How hard would it be to crash the moon Phobos into Mars?", "selftext": "Wikipedia reports that in 11 million years the Martian moon [Phobos](_URL_1_) will either [crash into the surface of Mars or be turned into a planetary ring](_URL_0_).\n\nPhobos also isn't terribly large, massing (approximately) 1.072\u00d710^16 kg.\n\nIf right now Phobos is getting 20 meters closer per century, how hard would it be to give it a push the rest of the way? If we strapped a Saturn V engine to Phobos would it be enough to destabilize the orbit? Would it even come close? How much force would be necessary and is it something that humans could do if we really wanted to?\n\nThanks for any answers!!\n\nP.S. - There was a somewhat related question [here](_URL_2_), but I'm more interested in the mechanics of crashing the moon than the effects that such a crash would cause.\n\nEdit - Just a quick note that I'm using the Saturn V because it's usually what I think of when I think of extremely powerful devices. Would something else work better? Solar sails, nuclear warheads, etc?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17j3qi/how_hard_would_it_be_to_crash_the_moon_phobos/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c85zo75", "c85zw8f", "c860jo7", "c8622zk", "c86683p"], "score": [14, 2, 2, 8, 3], "text": ["Phobos goes about 2 km/s so it has a momentum of about 10^19 kg m/s. If you eliminated that momentum, it would fall towards Mars. A Saturn 5 could apply a million pounds of force for six minutes. That is about 10^10 km m/s. So, you'd need to strap about 10 billion Saturn 5 rockets to Phobos to do that.", "Keep in mind that while it \"only\" has a mass of 1x10^16 kg, it's also traveling at 2.138km/s.\n\nYou'd need a really big rocket. You need to calculate in terms of delta-v. The equation is dv=ve*ln(m0/m1), where m0 is the full weight of the payload, propellant, rocket, everything, m1 is that minus the propellant, and ve is the velocity of the exhaust. In this case, the first stage of the Saturn V would produce roughly 6x10^-7 m/s in velocity change. So, if you had a few dozen million Saturn V rockets, maybe.\n\nThat's only the first stage (the other stages have much less propellant so I didn't bother), and you don't need to hit 0 m/s to de-orbit it completely, but you'd need at least a km/s of delta-v, which... would be difficult.", "I see people posting about rockets. What about nuclear devices on one side to push it out of orbit?", "If a ball is rolling down a hill, how much force do you need to apply to push it to the bottom? None.\n\nIn other words, you're asking how much you would need to interfere to make something happen that will happen eventually without interference.\n\nThe more change in momentum you apply, the sooner the collision will occur (if you're applying the force to that end). If you want to know what it would take to make Phobos hit Mars within 8 million years, or within 8 hours, the answers will be completely different.", "I calculated that reducing the orbital velocity by about 600 m/s would bring Phobos low enough to crash into Mars. The later stages of Saturn V had a specific impulse of 420 s and were more efficient than the first stage. Using those engines we can then calculate the amount of propellant needed using the [rocket equation](_URL_0_). It comes out as about 15% of the mass of Phobos, which is 1.6*10^(15) kg. That's the mass of about 600 million whole Saturn Vs (whole as in all stages and structure and everything)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(moon\\)#Future_destruction", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(moon\\)", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vfivh/is_it_possible_to_crash_phobos_and_deimos_on_to/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_equation"]]}
{"q_id": "3atjp2", "title": "what are benefits of tpp ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3atjp2/eli5_what_are_benefits_of_tpp/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csft0rn", "csft5x3", "csfyooc", "csfz8jt", "csg0oyu", "csg43t8"], "score": [4, 7, 7, 5, 9, 2], "text": ["In the most basic sense, free trade is about lowering or removing tariffs, which are taxes that countries charge on foreign imports. Companies that sell their products in foreign countries obviously want tariffs to be as low as possible, and so they generally support free trade. Every country has these companies and that is likely where the support comes from.", "Noe one knows what the benefits are because the entire thing is a secret. The details are not allowed to be released until 4 years after the law is signed into law. If this were so beneficial to the people of these nations then what reason would there be for it to be a secret? The simple answer is that there is no reason to keep it secret except to screw the common person.", "Greater economic reliance on other countries. In the early 50s France, Germany and the Benelux countries signed a trade agreement called the ECSC (now known as the EU) which aimed to not only create a common market but also to prevent future colossal wars like WWII. With greater dependency on other countries, there can be an inevitable decrease for the desire of armed conflicts. ", "People touched on it but did not really spell it out.  The problem with lowering tariffs on other countries is that it makes it possible to have goods made cheaper overseas than if they are made at home, due to the lowered import tax.   So if we remove the tariff on electronics made in Thailand for example, then tech companies can have their tech built in Thailand for a lower cost (when labor and/or materials are cheaper).  If the tariffs remained in place then it would be harder for a company to justify sending the jobs overseas.  Labor is mad about the trade deals because they almost always result in lost jobs for working people in the US.\n\nTrade deals are also usually only focusing on how the tariffs will help out the biggest of companies.  But Americans are actually a \"small business\" centered economy, contrary to popular belief.  So when trade deals don't really take into account how their changes in tax code and tariffs will effect small companies they can potentially severely damage a very large sub-sect of our economy.  You can see how this would anger both people on the left and right, which is exactly what is happening.\n\nEdit:  Oh and to answer the original question /U/okofosho probably summed it up best.  Trade deals intertwine countries so that conflict would hurt everyone.", "The TPP is a trade liberalization treaty with investment and intellectual property provisions, we think.\n\nLots of people will tell you why it's terrible. Maybe they're right. Here's the counterargument:\n\nTrade: Asian countries want to sell stuff, Western countries want to sell stuff, we all want to buy stuff. Right now there are innumerable rules limiting what companies and people in different countries can and cannot buy from each other. Trade agreements try to get rid of some of these rules.\n\nWhy is this good? Because when you can sell to more people, you can make more money. There is also some orthodox (meaning accepted, not necessarily correct) economic theory that says that tariffs create a deadweight loss. \n\nNone of this is new, the WTO (previously GATT) has existed for ages with the purpose of reducing trade barriers. \n\nWill this lead to more jobs going abroad? Maybe. More likely it will hurt low-skilled workers in countries that are better at high skilled things (I.e., if your country decides to specialize in high finance and Internet startups, its going to suck for your welders). \n\nInvestment: These are the rules that let companies \"sue\" governments for losses. Basically, this is fine for the U.S. but can suck for developing countries. These rules basically say to countries \"if we build a factory in your country, you can't just take it for no reason.\" Developing countries (and developed ones) actually do this from time to time, so the idea is that by promising not to just randomly take shit, countries will attract more foreign companies to invest (ideally creating jobs, paying taxes to the government etc).\n\nFor companies, it's good because they get to invest in booming countries like Indonesia without as much risk that an irresponsible government will nationalize their money and kick them out on a whim.\n\nThe problems with this are that 1 sometimes countries need to up and seize private property and 2 foreign investment isn't always as good as it looks in theory (generally developing countries covet foreign investment).\n\nIn any case, most of the investment protections probably are already contained in other treaties. The U.S. has loads of bilateral investment treaties (look up BITs UNCTAD I'm too lazy to link on mobile). So does China. Japan does not have the same sort of investment protection regime, but the again most people seem to consider Japanese politics relatively stable.\n\nSo there's your TPP. There's definitely some problems with it but the people who are losing their shit appear to be unaware of any of the developments in international economic law in the last 50 years. \n\nEdit: I forgot IP. A lot of developing countries don't have very strong protections for copyrights, patents, etc. American brands would probably like to see fewer rip offs of their products.", " > why would FR/UK/NZ etc. want to sign it\n\nFrance and the UK are not part of TPP. That's TTIP, a similar but separate deal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lbkkd", "title": "why does my brain always scare me when it's dark and/or i'm alone?", "selftext": "Whenever I'm alone and it's dark my brain suddenly decides that now is a good time to start remembering all those horror films I've watched over my life! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lbkkd/eli5_why_does_my_brain_always_scare_me_when_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbxl7f6", "cbxl9rb", "cbxlmw8", "cbxluxb", "cbxwsb3"], "score": [6, 6, 5, 6, 2], "text": ["a) When it's dark you have reduced vision of your surrounding\nb) When you are alone you don't have a group around you to connect with or to feel secured with\n\nThose two things make you feel more vulnerable.  We tend to want to connect with people because we have greater chance of survival in a group than alone and we want to connect with others and be accepted and liked etc.  The reason why we can feel anxiety giving a speech is because we might embarrass ourselves and therefore not liked by the group etc.  We feel anxiety and fear because it protects us.  If there's a danger your body tells you to flight or fight.  So those feelings make us realize that we need to do something.  So when you feel alone and it's dark, you feel more vulnerable. \n\nThe fear you then feel triggers the anxiety/ fear/ paranoid phenomena, either memories, or stronger feelings or potential perceived threats (future threats) etc.  Have a look at \"sleep paralysis\" and the theory behind it, it also works on the vulnerability and the perceived threat of something supernatural.  ", "Humans evolved to be social animals. During the day you can see, be aware, and be free. At night, you can't see, could get attacked, and are vulnerable.\n", "Usually the most timid and easily scared animals are the biggest evolutionary successors.\n\nIt's natural to become scared in the dark because in the wild, you'd need heightened awareness to not die.", "Dark = less visibility = more potential of danger lying around you.\n\nYour brain doesn't want you to be in potential danger. So it makes you want to go out of dark.", "Evolutionary speaking, being alone and being in darkness are prime opportunities for predators to kill humans. Your brain reacts this way as it is ingrained into our survival instincts. Imagine if you were on the plains as an early human, alone and its dark. If you were nonchalant about the whole thing you're just begging to have your genes not get passed on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3co0r3", "title": "what makes walking on train tracks so dangerous? couldn't the average person hear a train coming long before it reaches them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3co0r3/eli5_what_makes_walking_on_train_tracks_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csxaxv7", "csxay2w", "csxb8tr", "csxbbun", "csxbc93", "csxbeta", "csxbo6n", "csxbtuy", "csxckoq", "csxen0w", "csxfx23", "csxi78u"], "score": [27, 6, 16, 38, 2, 8, 8, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's like running across a road. \n\nThe dangerous part comes from tripping or getting stuck.\n\nYes, you can hear the train from quite far away, but that's little help if you can't move. ", "Evidently, no they can't. The statistics speak for themselves, it wouldn't be presented as a danger if it wasn't actually dangerous. ", "Well, we have to keep in mind that most statistics when it comes to railroad fatalities are somewhat skewed as they often also include people who purposely threw themselves in front of the train. Which would therefore not paint an entirely correct picture re: the danger for the average person who is walking on the track trying not to die.\n\nThat said there are some reasons why average people might not notice a train coming. Impairment is a big one (drugs, alcohol, hell, even something like noise-cancelling headphones can do it). There is the fact that most modern trains are not always *that* loud anymore, so some people don't notice them until they are too late. Sometimes there are two trains on parallel tracks at the same time, and the noise of one train will cover the noise of the second train, which leads to people getting out of the way of train A, then getting hit by train B as it passes them on the other track. Sometimes natural features of the landscape (such as a thick line of trees or a mountain pass) can distort the noise, catching people unaware of it until it is too late.\n\nReally though, there is absolutely no fucking reason for anyone to be on the tracks except terminal stupidity, so just keep your ass off them and save some poor driver the horror of having to wipe someone's splattered guts off their window.", "Unless impaired via listening to music, drugs or alcohol you will hear, see or if you're standing on the rails you will feel it coming. And unless you're on a bridge or in a tunnel you don't need much warning. You just need to side step the train, not out run it.\n\nSource: played on a lot of tracks as a kid and still have a stash of flattened coins.", "Well, nowadays the danger is from kids taking a selfie of them trying to jump out of the train tracks right before the train hits them. Sometime it does not go well.\n\nThat and cars prefer to stall on train tracks. They must like the vibrations.", "I had no idea so many people are hurt each year. \n\nOne danger is from listening to headphones. Another is having two trains passing each other- you may only see one of them. This happened to someone I know who was waiting at a crossing and as soon as a train passed he ran across and got killed by a train going the other way. \n\n_URL_0_", "Modern high speed trains do no make a lot of noise (listen for example to _URL_0_). \n\nAnd (at least in europe) they are going quite fast, so even when you do hear them you only have seconds to move out of the way. And due to the Doppler effect the sound you hear isn't directly associated with a train in your brain but rather a high whistle. You can prolly notice the train the best because the tracks start to hum, but if you don't associate that with a train you could be dead in a few seconds.\n\nA train driver might sound the horn, but if he's on a long track and just staring ahead, you might very well be in his blind spot and he won't notice you until he's a few hundred meters away. A train traveling at 250km/h only needs 5 seconds to travel 350 meters and you won't hear it at that distance, especially not if it isn't a straight track or it is lined with trees.\n\nAnd the best reason to avoid train tracks: You will scare the train driver to death every time he sees you walking between the tracks and he has to apply the emergency brakes, blow the whistle (and if he's smart he'll look away in the last few seconds). He doesn't know if you're trying to commit suicide or if you are just plain stupid. Crossing tracks just before a train or even worse; walking on train tracks can give those drivers serious mental issues, especially when they did run over someone before.\n", "Not your answer, but when I was in college, we had train tracks near my school without a barrier to stop crossing.  Often the lights would be on with a train stopped on the tracks nearby.  Standard operating procedure was to slow down, look for the train, and keep going.  Once my car was loaded with 5 kids, it was late, and I was distracted.  Didn't slow down in time or pay attention.  I had to gun the engine to get past the tracks and was missed by the train by a few feet.  We all would have all been dead.  I have never been as scared, and from that point all I always respect crossings.", "Some train tracks have a 3rd rail which is what powers the train. This is especially true of subway systems. While subway systems run mostly underground, they can extend far out into the suburbs running above ground.\nThe 3rd rail is highly electrified and is not much different looking than a regular rail track.", "In short, no.\n\nThe days of trains going \"click click, click click, click click\" are long gone because the rails are now one smooth, welded piece with no visible seam. Combine this with the almost silent electric engine and a lack of attention, you probably wouldn't hear a train coming until it was too late.\n\nThis is true in the UK at least.", "Adding to others, it's difficult to gauge the speed of something moving towards you quickly while at ground level", "If you step on a live rail then you can get electrocuted. This could kill you outright or it could stun you such that you cannot get out of the way of a train."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/hundreds-die-walking-the-tracks-each-year/article_b9c8bbcc-f424-559a-a0c4-bee46f8d4fe7.html"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxkO6PfiOxM"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "jaflu", "title": "why do people on online communities help out so much, what is the incentive?", "selftext": "I have used many helpful forums and such, and I never understood why people try so hard to be helpful and accurate, especially when there's no incentive. You're not in a group of friends, so you cant say you're helping out your friend, or that you gain the reputation of a smart guy.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jaflu/why_do_people_on_online_communities_help_out_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2ah29q", "c2ah2le", "c2ahawv", "c2aho7d", "c2ah29q", "c2ah2le", "c2ahawv", "c2aho7d"], "score": [6, 6, 17, 3, 6, 6, 17, 3], "text": ["The act of helping someone is its own reward. I come on here as a psychologist in his free time just to help others, to reward curiosity with knowledge.", "Isn't that really the only purpose for life? To lend a hand to help out your fellow man?", "People get bored of looking at pornography and funny cat images eventually.", "I don't think this belongs in ELI5. ", "The act of helping someone is its own reward. I come on here as a psychologist in his free time just to help others, to reward curiosity with knowledge.", "Isn't that really the only purpose for life? To lend a hand to help out your fellow man?", "People get bored of looking at pornography and funny cat images eventually.", "I don't think this belongs in ELI5. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yvztp", "title": "why do some people find gmo controversial when farmers have been modifying crops for centuries?", "selftext": "So, my understanding is that corn is a perfect example of a GMO, since it has been selectively bread to increase yield.\n\nWhy is there a modern push away from GMO?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yvztp/eli5_why_do_some_people_find_gmo_controversial/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfo8rjj", "cfo93du", "cfo95ly", "cfoak1t", "cfoar33", "cfoayer", "cfoc66p", "cfofs6n", "cfovgx3"], "score": [40, 14, 3, 13, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3], "text": ["There are several reasons:\n\n* There's an aversion to food that \"comes from a lab,\" as it were.\n* Selective breeding is generally between crops that are the same or very similar. Genetic modification allows traits from other species to be incorporated into the crop (if you want a tomato that doesn't freeze in a cold snap, you could take genes from a fish that lives in frigid Arctic water, for example). That freaks people out.\n* GMOs are largely controlled by a handful of corporations, the most notable of which is Monsanto. These are companies that people aren't too fond of, and they use some pretty heavy handed business tactics to shut out any smaller competitors.\n\n*Edited for word choice*", "Most people also don't understand the science behind genetic engineering, whereas selective breeding sounds safe and familiar (even though GMO foods have undergone way more safety testing) - fear of the unknown.", "Selectively breeding is different than GMO. selectively breeding can theoretically happen in the wild with cross pollination, so is viewed in a good light. \n\nGMO. Crops can never be replicated in the wild. Literally Genes are spliced together in the lab, so it kinds of freaks people out. ", "It's the \"round up resistant\" crops that concern me. Round up is an increasingly ineffective weed killer and all around toxic chemical. Instead of dealing with evolution and developing better weed killers they created RUR crops allowing farms to use ridiculously high levels of roundup on commercial food crops which then us runoff into the groundwater. ", "I think most of the push away stems from ignorance.  This logic applies to any concept that is hard to grasp technically like nuclear energy, fracking, etc.  The further a concept becomes from something simple like making mud pies, the more likely you are to hit an ardent militant person that feels their feelings are more pertinant than facts.  I don't profess to know, but I'm smart enough to know that since I don't have a fact based arguement, I'd better shut my piehole.  Also, _URL_0_", "GMO and selective reproduction are not the same thing.\n\nSelective reproduction means selecting a crop/animal and breading that exclusively. Select the best from this again and plant/bread again. Rinse and repeat. Best compared to \"survival of the fittest\" which is largely natural.\n\nGMO on the other hand changes the DNA; fundamentally changing what the crop/animal is or can do. The thing is that we don't know how this impacts what it grows and if it has any impact on human health. It also could be very damaging economically. The main concern is that this may not be a short term issue; it could take 10s of years of constant usage that results in some fatal disease/cancer.\n\nOn the economics side here is a possible scenario. To increase the yield of a crop, the crop is genetically altered to scare away/kill any bugs that typically eat it. The crop is a success and is sold everywhere. 5 years later a bug has become immune to the implanted defense mechanism and starts to eat the crop. The immune bug multiplies faster than it can be irradicated and entire crops are lost to the bug. No harvest, no money - >  bankruptcy with no one being able to buy the older crop as it is now too expensive to produce.\n\nWhile i am pro-gmo on a small scale for long testing, there are definitely concerns.", "The only reason there is controversy at all is because people are irrationally afraid of the word \"genetically modified.\" There's been a lot of unnecessary scaring of people uneducated on the topic that has led to all GMO crops being labeled as bad for you.\n\nWhile there are most certainly some cases where the genetic modification is under-tested or executed for reasons other than producing a better, healthier crop (anything and everything Monsanto comes to mind), not all genetic modifications are bad, and branding them as so is putting down a field of science with a healthy body of research that could one day put a serious dent in world hunger.", "In general, it's because of the psuedo-science available on the internet. \n\nIf you look long enough, you can find enough 'internet evidence' to support just about any position.... like creationism.", "There's also a very wide misunderstanding of GM.  Let's take one example, let's say I develop a crop or fertilizer that kills all other crops, or takes over all others that don't contain a certain gene or property.  Perhaps I instead created one of either that requires you to use my super expensive Formula X to continue to grow the crop.\n\nNow suppose Joe Idiot hears about this - and makes the ridiculous assumption that ALL GM has this property.\n\nIt's lunacy at it's finest, but largely what happens when you mention GM.  Yes, there are without question ethically questionable products that come out of the industry. Sadly, people paint the entire industry in this way because of a few dodgy products, and this is the kind of rumour and scaremongering that just spreads like a plague and is near on impossible to stop spreading."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "pni77", "title": "Is there anything capable of withstanding direct contact with lava?", "selftext": "So, is there anything capable of withstanding direct long-term contact with lava? Like some type of metal or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pni77/is_there_anything_capable_of_withstanding_direct/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3qrpv0", "c3qrqby", "c3qrwya"], "score": [11, 2, 32], "text": ["With the temperature of lava (That is, above ground and not magma, which is below ground) being between 1300 - 2200 degrees F, any alloy or material with a melting point above that will withstand contact.  Magma can reach much higher temperatures in subduction zones however.  \n\n[Here](_URL_0_) are some melting points of metals if you are interested\n\nEdit: I should add that some lava CAN reach temperatures of over 2900 degrees but it is uncommon and requires a high amount of magnesium oxide to reach those temperatures.", "Since lava is typically around 2200 F, Platinum and Titanium would both be fine since they both have melting temperatures above 3000 F.  Also, some ceramics could probably withstand these temperatures. I don't know that much about ceramics though.", "You might want to see **[my thread here](_URL_0_)** about some of the cool things (pun intended) we do with lava (like **cooking** in lava, **holding** lava, etc).  You will see shovels, gloves, etc - all handling lava.\n\nPeople are always surprised at how lava does NOT just melt everything. Toss a rock onto a surface flow and it bounces and gets carried along.\n\nWe tossed small propane tanks into a lava tube (with a magma river flowing in it) - and it took about 20 seconds before the container blew.\n\nThe gloves we use are Kevlar and Spun Glass and can withstand direct contact to lava (2000 F) for up to 20 seconds without breaching.  With those gloves I have actually lifted molten lava with my hands - it is like lifting taffy off the ground.  The interesting thing to note is the hard rock under the surface flow is not molten.\n\nOnce lava hits the surface, as in a surface flow - once the flow stops moving all it takes is 1 inch of solidified lava on top of the liquid lava to support human weight (we regularly walk over molten lava, as long as it has a crust).\n\nLava exploding into the air - where it can rain molten lava around you, also is rather surprising.  I've had a couple of blobs hit my jacket and just bounce off (burning the jacket of course).  You really don't want to be anywhere where the lava explodes, goes over your head, and lands behind you.\n\nThat said... any material that has a melting point higher than 2000 F will withstand lava.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.saltlakemetals.com/MeltingPoints.htm"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hp02d/what_would_happen_if_you_touched_lava/c1x6lbh"]]}
{"q_id": "duvkxp", "title": "Middle Age sources are chock full of people having long, clear visions sent from God, Mary, the Saints, etc. How do historians understand these?", "selftext": "It seems unlikely that all of them are charlatans (obviously some were). But, while possible, it also seems unlikely they all had schizophrenia (and even schizophrenia doesn't normally, in our current culture at least, manifest as such clear hallucinations). So I wonder how historians understand this. What is the explanation?\n\nOr is it just viewed the same way early medieval Saint's hagiographies are viewed; we look at what it tells us about the society at the time, and basically don't bother too much about what \"really\" happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/duvkxp/middle_age_sources_are_chock_full_of_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f79plsw"], "score": [43], "text": ["/u/sunagainstgold has talked about [what pre-Dante Hell looked like](_URL_7_) and [different interpretations of what angels look like](_URL_3_) and about [Satan ruling over the underworld](_URL_6_).  See also [this thread about Joan of Arc](_URL_1_) where someone in the comments asked about medievalists being religious. [Another thread](_URL_5_) about the maid of Orleans. Also [whether to take Dante seriously](_URL_0_) (whatever that means).  Sunagainstgold has probably written even more elsewhere that I can't find right now.\n\nHave you heard about Jesus' Chinese brother? /u/EnclavedMicrostate will tell you all about him! This is 19th century stuff but super interesting.\n\n[What's the origin of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?](_URL_2_)\n\n[Was Hong Xiuquan serious about being Jesus' brother?](_URL_4_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8m5ddi/should_dantes_divine_comedy_be_read_as_a_story/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bxi6a9/how_did_joan_of_arc_an_illiterate_16_year_old/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/85j9wa/as_the_american_civil_war_was_winding_down_the/dvyh1mj/?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a1ic5y/why_are_angels_depicted_as_humans_with_large/ear7ga4/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bhzdia/saturday_showcase_april_27_2019/elxk8hd/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t351i/joan_of_arc_and_her_story_seem_too_fantastic_to/ddkanpf/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ae97dc/where_did_christians_get_the_idea_that_satan/edozpyf/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z13di/since_most_of_our_physical_and_visual_perceptions/deurwwj/"]]}
{"q_id": "177gbp", "title": "[META] From today, the downvote button will be disabled for questions", "selftext": "The mods, and the subreddit as a whole, have been concerned about questions being downvoted [for a while](_URL_0_). We all have subjects we're more or less interested in, and some questions are better than others. That's why the upvote button is there; good questions that a lot of people are interested in are made more visible and are more likely to get answered because of it. But downvoting a question is *actively reducing* the chance that it will get answered. We feel that there's no good reason to go that far. If a question isn't related a history, or it breaks one of our few other rules for questions (no \"what ifs\", no \"polls\"), then the policy has always been that it should be reported and deleted.\n\nSo we've decided to trial disallowing downvotes for questions. For the next couple of weeks, the downvote button will be removed in the default subreddit style (this is easy to circumvent, but we hope the majority will respect the new rule regardless). We hope to see fewer good questions languishing unanswered in the new queue. If so, we'll consider making it a permanent change. It will also inform an ongoing behind-the-scenes discussion on further changes to the subreddit style, aimed at promoting high quality comments and upvoting/downvoting for the right reasons (any ideas on this are welcome).\n\nWe also want to hear from the wider community on this one: is this a good idea? Are there other ways that we can promote original questions on lesser-known subjects?\n\nEither way, downvoting *comments* that don't meet our standards is still strongly encouraged.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/177gbp/meta_from_today_the_downvote_button_will_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c82x48h", "c82xlbr", "c82xmqu", "c831yw0", "c832e45", "c834k0w", "c837vsh"], "score": [130, 41, 13, 9, 6, 16, 4], "text": ["As someone voting on questions of the AskHistorians /new/ queue multiple times a day, I disagree with the decision. It undermines the voting system and therefore *the* fundamental principle of reddit. It will result in even more bad questions one has to wade trough in order to find the few interesting ones. Many users have already complained about this in recent [meta] threads (one example: \"[META A number of things that I believe are watering down this subreddit](_URL_0_) ).\n\nI think that downvoting repetitive questions, homework questions, simple questions that are very easily answered by google, and other useless questions should be allowed, even encouraged. Everyone who enjoys these should set the visibility of links in his personal reddit preferences to -5 or -10.", "I think it's an interesting experiment.  I know I've been frustrated with downvotes on questions I've asked and ones I've answered.  Not everybody asks great questions, but sometimes good questions seem to get downvoted for no good reason.  I don't really see the point in downvoting any question, even if it's a commonly answered/homework/easily answered one.  Just ignore it and move on to a different one - that's my opinion anyway.  I say give it a while and see how it goes.\n\nSomeone mentioned in a previous meta thread about inserting something similar to the /r/askscience \"solid science\" \"not science\" buttons within the comments.  I also wanted to add that maybe there could be a pop-up when you hover on the downvote button like in /r/twoxchromosomes that asks people to reserve downvotes for comments that don't contribute to the discussion.\n\nAny of the notices though are useless on mobile devices.  They don't show up.", "It's an interesting idea but I think this will ultimately follow the same path as /r/games experiment with removing the downvote as seen [here](_URL_0_).\n\nBut hey, this is a different community and context so it might work out.", "I've often seen these trials end in failure considering it's just a style sheet change (correct me if I am wrong please). ", "I think this is a great idea as long as moderation stays strict and weeds out the bad questions.\n\nI've had experiences personally in /r/askscience where I thought something was a decent question and it immediately got downvoted and ignored.  Then, two days later, someone else would ask something similar with misspellings, or something much more ridiculous than my question, and it would get dozens of replies not by virtue of being BETTER but because it got lucky and somehow made it through the initial gauntlet.  Those initial downvotes can be a killer.", "I have to say, I'm really not sure if I agree with this or not.\n\nInitial reaction: Oh hell no. \n\nHowever, on further reflection, it's more nuanced than that. To explain my initial reaction, I'm another annoyed at the Hitler/WWII/America/Rome fixation, but I do realize that my interests are not everyone else's and there's not really any point in trying to force the issue. I also find myself annoyed sometimes at things sitting in the new queue that just don't make sense. I try to ask questions of the OP to clarify what their question really is, but often, I either don't get any answer and the question is buried, or I do get an answer and the question is buried. So people aren't getting their questions answered there.\n\nConversely, I see very specialized questions at times (and have been guilty of some myself) which get downvoted, not voted on, or only upvoted once or twice even though they're very good questions. But they lack broad appeal and so are buried and often unanswered. A sustained number of upvotes gives a post the life it needs to actually be seen by someone who knows the answer, but these specialized questions disappear.\n\nI can see how disabling downvotes on posts would ameliorate some of these questions, but also don't see how it will make a big impact. \n\nThe lack of variety on the main page of the subreddit is starting to drive me away. Again, I know this is my problem and not a function of the community, but I'm probably not the only person who feels this way. The thing is, though, there's actually a vast variety of questions posed, but most of them vanish without a splash, and Reddit seems to make it unnecessarily difficult to scroll through old posts to find the ones you're looking for (past all the questions being asked for the third time this week). Sometimes, an interesting question will only have a short answer without much meat, but no one else will post because it's obscure, lacks appeal, and was already \"answered.\"\n\nTo end my babbling, I'd like to say that I hope the mods are considering larger changes like a \"solved/unsolved\" toggle (which I've mentioned before) or maybe the ability to sort questions by flair type and solved status. That would make it easier for flaired users to find questions that are in their field, too.\n\nI generally support the moderation in this community and it really is one of the best places on Reddit (if not the best), but in this case, I can't really stand behind them. This change seems largely pointless.", "Can we sticky mod posts? And leave them up for several days? That alone would probably do more for this subreddit then removing downvotes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15orr4/meta_a_reminder_to_all_about_downvotes_and/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11f248/meta_a_number_of_things_that_i_believe_are/"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/16vx24/the_shortlived_experiment_with_hiding_the/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32n4v3", "title": "When did it become the norm for supermarkets to have fresh fruit and vegetables available any time of the year?", "selftext": "In regards to how modern shipping and globalization, how long did it take to build the infrastructure to support it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32n4v3/when_did_it_become_the_norm_for_supermarkets_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqcu9qv"], "score": [31], "text": ["By the time we have things we call \"supermarkets\" in the 1950's, both in Europe and the United States, there were already fresh fruits and vegetables available any time. Now, *exactly which* fruits and vegetables those are would vary from place and place and season to season, but certainly *something* fresh was available year round. Even older green-grocers decades before then usually managed to have something fresh most of the year. \n\nBut, if you're thinking of the usual spread of vegetables available in a Vons (is that a national chain?) or a Tesco's, like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, garlic, potatoes, peppers, maybe a few others, and fruit such as apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, and maybe some stone fruit or tropical fruit, the things that you pretty much expect to find whenever (and my students have NO IDEA when these things are in season, or even that they HAVE seasons) then basically we're talking about the postwar period. There was long-distance shipment of fresh goods before World War II, and even before World War I for some items like oranges, which were shipped from California and Florida to the eastern metropolis. However,  these things aren't really fully available year-round and at any large grocery store in Europe and the United States until after the war.\n\nThe large-scale infrastructure necessary was likely in place before 1945. Susan Freidberg has described the creation of a \"cold chain\" of refrigerated spaces like railways cars and warehouses connecting farms and markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though I believe that was typically used more for eggs, dairy, and meat than fruit and vegetables. The other major pieces of infrastructure were railways and steamships, both of which were well developed by the early 20th century. The real changes that came about with supermarkets were in the consumption patterns of families; we could equally think of this as \"infrastructure\" as well, but of a different sort, perhaps a smaller scale. Consumers had to begin buying things like automobiles and refrigerators, and those are not really common--and certainly not universal--until after the Second World War. Without those items, large supermarkets were impractical, and people shopped mostly at their local markets, many of which remained quite specialized as independent butchers, bakers, and grocers well into the postwar period, particularly in Europe. \n\nSee Victoria de Grazia, *Irresistible Empire* (which covers the spread of supermarkets from the US to Europe, though it is NOT a particularly good book), and Susan Freidberg, \"Moral Economies and the Cold Chain\" (behind a paywall [here](_URL_0_), sorry; I'm not sure if she has a monograph on the subject or not. I haven't seen one.)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2281.12076/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;userIsAuthenticated=false"]]}
{"q_id": "wpvn4", "title": "how does legalizing drugs make for less addicts?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wpvn4/eli5_how_does_legalizing_drugs_make_for_less/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5fej44", "c5fen81", "c5fensn", "c5fgmvl", "c5fhkm8"], "score": [47, 28, 6, 2, 5], "text": ["When drugs are illegal, addicts are criminals, so they're obviously afraid to go seek help from authorities. Addicts who don't get help find it a lot harder to quit.", "The biggest arguments for legislation is not less addicts. It's that the addicts (and other) will suffer less. If you can buy heroin at the pharmacy, you won't buy bad drugs (which I believe is what causes most deaths). They will also be more likely to seek help (as you won't be afraid of police involvement if you call them).\n\nIt will also, hopefully, decrease the money going to drug cartels. Drug cartels cause lots of suffering. ", "Legal drugs would be regulated somehow by the government.  For example, think of alcohol and cigarettes; people under 21 have such a hard time getting them because it's legal and regulated.  If alcohol was completely illegal and had an underground market like most drugs, alcohol \"dealers\" wouldn't care how old their customers were, just if they have the money to buy it. And age is just one example, drug dealers don't care about anything but the money. They dont care if they bankrupt their customers, take advantage of their addiction, etc. The government would regulate drug distribution, so fewer people would have access and fewer people would get addicted.  At least that's how it's supposed to work.", "More accessible help, better drugs education.", "In the same way that the best thing for a heroin addict is an ample supply of heroin. The problem with street heroin is that a user does not know that they can get it at any time, or the quality of it. They will buy it when they can and get what they can. An unsteady supply makes it hard to ration and therefore hard to slowly cut back and quit, it also keeps the addicts mind on the task of acquiring the drug and makes them worry about their supply. (Source: _URL_0_)\n\nI cant find a source for it at the moment, but if I remember correctly there are no more addicts now then there were before many drugs were made illegal. Addiction rates are generally the same in most societies during most times in history.\n\nSince its easier to kick the habit when your habit is more acceptable, and there is a good supply, people are less likely to be lifetime addicts when their drug is legal.\n\nLegalisation should not lower addiction rates, but it reduces the length of time people are addicts (and therefore harm). Legalisation is usually a strategy of harm reduction.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC169643/"]]}
{"q_id": "6wy880", "title": "Is there any concrete use of Geometric Mean in Physics? Does it relate to any physical quantity like Arithmetic Mean does to the Center of Mass of a body?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6wy880/is_there_any_concrete_use_of_geometric_mean_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmc23ea", "dmcez4l"], "score": [7, 8], "text": ["I use the geometric mean in my work. It is useful in characterizing distributions where you expect significant variation across many orders of magnitude. For example, you might encounter lognormal distributions whenever a random process introduces *multiplicative* rather than *additive* changes to some quantity. \n\nThe geometric mean of a set of data points can be expressed in terms of the arithmetic mean of the logarithms of those data points. You can do a similar thing for the [geometric standard deviation](_URL_0_). I do not believe an easy relationship exists for the higher geometric statistical moments though. ", "Geometric Mean Distance (GMD) is used when calculating the impedance of three-phase power transmission lines. Some line structures are imbalanced thus causing different inductance values on each phase. This can be mitigated by transposing the phase conductors in the middle of a line to give each the same average inductance. GMD is used to calculate the average (effective) inductance over the entire length. GMD is simply the geometric mean of the distance between each phase conductor. \n\nEdit: I removed the word \"intrinsic\" from \"intrinsic impedance.\"  Intrinsic impedance is a wave impedance of an electromagnetic medium. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_standard_deviation"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ajzeq", "title": "why is charcoal so effective in fire places/pits/barbeque stands if the most of the wood/fuel has been used up?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ajzeq/eli5_why_is_charcoal_so_effective_in_fire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d111a5r", "d116vzy", "d118tp3", "d118uv8", "d11aehb", "d11c4hx", "d11flh1", "d11g59k", "d11jkas", "d11mw1p", "d11t22p", "d11t95y", "d11wz85"], "score": [3827, 216, 163, 16, 3, 13, 39, 7, 3, 13, 2, 2, 8], "text": ["Wood burns in two stages: the hydrogen stage and the carbon stage. In the hydrogen stage, hydrocarbon molecules are broken and oxidise. In the carbon stage, the carbon oxidises.\n\nThe carbon stage burning is a hotter and cleaner chemical reaction than hydrogen stage burning.\n\nCharcoal is made by burning wood in the hydrogen stage (hence removing the hydrocarbons) but not allowing the carbon stage (by limiting the amount of oxygen).\n", "Why then is it more advantageous to burn off the hydrogen stage first, as opposed to letting it all go up in one conflagration?", "The best part of the fire to cook with is the bit at the end. The coals and embers make for a much better cooking heat than the beginning of the fire. People used to start a wood fire, then wait for hours and hours for it to die down and start cooking on it then. Then they realized that they could pre-burn the wood in large amounts, and have JUST that last part of the fire! That's what charcoal is, it is wood that is preburned so you ONLY have the good part of the fire. ", "It's carbon, it can be burnt without emitting toxic fumes and glows red hot, emitting heat by radiation. You can't really cook over a flame, the flame is erratic.\n  \nWood fires emit a mixture of flammable gases and condensible tars. A major component of the gas is toxic carbon monoxide. A lot of the flammable gases and tars don't get burnt because the air moves upwards by convection, carrying the unburnt  gases  &  vapours away from the red hot fire bed at the base of the fire..  You really don't want tar vapours condensing on your food.", "you are not burning the majority of it, just getting rid of the impurities. the carbon burns better and hotter than hydrogen, methane and water", "Here's a great doco on smelting iron in Africa. The old way using charcoal.\n\n_URL_0_", "Well you have to ask yourself how wood burns? Even very dry wood, is still considerably wet and full of water by weight. Water doesn't burn, it creates steam. There is also hydrocarbons that when heated make up something we call wood gas, which is usually the first thing that burns when you light wood on fire, along with the sap. Wood burns incompletely and inefficiently so it burns much slower. After all of the volatiles are used up, the real kcal value of wood comes from the carbon, which when combined with heat and oxygen gets you carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and even more heat. \n\nWhen you make charcoal you are not just burning wood, you are heating it in the absence of oxygen so that it can't really burn. It drives out all of the moisture, sap, tar, and volatiles which contribute only a small amount of energy when burned, and what you are left with is mostly elemental carbon. Carbon is not ash though, it's fuel. \n\nThe higher carbon content of charcoal allows it to burn really hot, and it takes a flame really well. It has a higher kcal value by weight than wood does so it packs a lot of energy per kilo of fuel. It also burns very cleanly since the only real by products are ash, heat, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and whatever trace elements were left behind. \n\n", "_URL_0_\n\nA way to make Charcoal utilizing the \"mound\" method.  The video description offers a decent summation of how and why charcoal works.", "Charcoal is basically all carbon with tons of surface area making for a wonderful ratio of fuel to air.\n\nWood, before it is burned, is filled with lots of other substances. Many are combustible in a regular fire pit but they are less efficient and reduce the potential of the fuel. Others are not readily combustible (water) and inhibit the fire. By driving all them off with enough heat to vaporize but not providing oxygen for them to burn, you can leave the carbon intact and have nice, holey and airy charcoal. :)", "\"Effective.\" That's actually a common misconception. You see, charcoal is an inferior fuel that leaves you tasting the heat, not the meat. What you really want is clean burning propane.", "_URL_0_\n\nIf you're interested, here's a video of a rudimentary way of making charcoal. ", "I'm confused by all the people saying charcoal burns cleaner than wood. What definition are you using? Typically with fuels the more hydrogen it has the cleaner we say it is (ie methane, natural gas, is a clean fuel and coal is a dirty fuel). Charcoal is nearly all carbon, so do you mean clean in some other sense?", "All the bitch ass pussy wood gets burnt up real quick, a'ight, leaving the slow burning charcoal behind, which gives us that sweet ass flavor all up in our BBQ, a'ight?\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLvqCTvOQY"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLvqCTvOQY"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "s129l", "title": "Are there any \"laws\" governing our language?", "selftext": "I am curious about any laws/rules pertaining to:  Germanic, West Germanic or English languages. \n\ni.e.  In physiology we have Henry's law, Gay-Lusacs law, Boyles law, etc\n\n\nThanks.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s129l/are_there_any_laws_governing_our_language/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4a9hkn", "c4a9tyh", "c4aa7ic", "c4aakvz", "c4abgwm", "c4ai462"], "score": [5, 17, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["There are no laws pertaining to (just, specifically) Germanic or West Germanic or English etc., except those \"laws\" that are actually descriptions of historical linguistic events that happened in the past to a proto-language, and which then caused changes in it that passed in one form or another to its descendant languages. They're mostly phonological, like Verner's Law. These are one-off events, not really \"laws\"... It's like calling the theory of the formation of the Moon through cosmical billiards \"Daly's Law\".\n\nThough you do have universals in typology, which describe things that have a tendency to happen... sometimes even correlating with stuff. But it's really hard to find any hard linguistic \"laws\" that are universal in all human languages. You have to go for stuff like \"all languages have verbs\"... or even \"languages are a means of communication through the use of arbitrary symbols made out of a small set of basic elements arranged in linear patterns\", and even there someone could quibble about that \"linear\", etc.", "I'm a linguistics student specializing in historical Slavic linguistics. \n\nI'm not sure any statement about linguistics could be regarded as a 'law'. Even so-called 'linguistic universals' are mostly statements saying something like a language with characteristic A is very likely to have characteristic B.\n\nWith that said, I think we can identify processes that occur in all languages. For example, grammaticalization occurs as a cycle: semantic reanalysis happens first (periphrasis), and then morphosyntactic change (fusion or fixation), and finally, phonological change (erosion). The specifics of grammaticalization are of course going to be different from language to language, but the processes that occur at each stage of this cycle are unidirectional. \n\nPhonological change, for instance, commonly involves an independent word becoming a clitic, then becoming an affix, then being lost completely. We can't always predict that phonological change will happen,  but we can say that it is part of a process that really only occurs in one direction.\n\nTL;DR: we can make broad statements about language, but they're not really 'laws'.\n\nEDIT: accidentally a word.", "I'm a linguistics student, and the only one I can think of off the top of my head is [Grimm's Law](_URL_0_) in terms of named laws. That's not a law describing how things work, though, it's a description of how certain sounds changed into other sounds.\n\nThere are some things that are rules in English, like the order of determiners, adjectives, and numbers before nouns in English. Considering the following: (*whatever means \"whatever is ungrammatical.\")\n\n* The/my three red rubber balls\n\n* *The red three rubber balls\n\n* *Red rubber the three balls\n\n* *The red rubber three balls\n\n* *The three rubber red balls\n\nThere are also some phonological (sound-based) rules that are always true. So, for example, the plural in English comes in three forms: [s], [z], and [\u0259z]. [s] always follows unvoiced sounds and [z] always follows voiced sounds. I can't think of an example where this is not true.", "As pointed out by other posters, \"law\" in linguistics means something very different than \"law\" in the physical sciences.  It should be taken to mean something closer to \"very robust pattern\".\n\nThat said, many such \"laws\" have been identified, with wider or narrower scope.  Since you asked about Germanic specifically, you may be interested in NE Collinge's book [\"The Laws of Indo-European\"](_URL_0_) which details many of the patterns of sound changes that produced Germanic (among others) from the Proto-Indo-European source.", "Much of the work done in linguistics focuses on historical changes in certain languages or language families, and from that basis it's obviously impossible to posit any universal laws; however, [computational linguistics](_URL_1_) studies languages mathematically, and probably comes the closest to finding what in hard sciences would be called \"laws\".\n\nFor comparison, the study of sound change in languages presents one with \"laws\" that explain the development of phonemes in languages. See here, for example, a list of laws for Indo-European languages, based on comparative study of the phonemics of languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European: _URL_0_", "A few well known ones are Verner's Law, German spirant law, ruki sound laws, Brugmann's Law, Winter's Law, Hirt's Law, Grassmann's Law, Siever's Law, Bartholomae's Law, Grimm's Law.\n\nThese are \"laws\" detailing sound changes in the history of the Indo-European language family. Not all of them apply to Western Germanic.\n\nYou can read more about them [here.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm's_law"], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Laws-Indo-European-N-Collinge/dp/0915027755"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_sound_laws", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_linguistics"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_sound_laws"]]}
{"q_id": "2ftiei", "title": "why doesn't the us have a freeway system like the autobahn?", "selftext": "Driving home today, my car was at 90 mph without me realizing it. In fear of a ticket I slowed down, even though there was no need. Traffic was flowing nice and smooth and I had a open highway ahead of me. That's when this thought came across my mind.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ftiei/eli5_why_doesnt_the_us_have_a_freeway_system_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckck7ip", "ckckirl", "ckckofk", "ckckrn2"], "score": [11, 4, 6, 7], "text": ["We do have one. It's called the Interstate Highway System.\n\nIt's very much like the Autobahn, except that it always has speed limits.", "So we used to have a pretty wide spread lack of speed limits. The gas crisis changed that. The faster you're going the more fuel you're consuming and it's not linear. Going 90 doesn't mean you're using 33.3% more fuel than going 60, its actually more than that. SO if people can get the same distance for a lower price by going a little slower, we can save resources, esp. during a crisis. The Fed basically said here are the mandated speed limits, post and enforce them, or your state gets no federal funding.\n\nAlso, driving faster on roads causes more wear and tear. Our highways are only like 2 inches thick where the Autobahn is like 6-10 inches thick (i forget the exact number). That makes everything from building to repairs more expensive and we have a hard time funding basic social programs like... roads here in the US. Also I'm pretty sure the Germans used imprisoned jews to build at least parts of the Autobahn, so that cut costs in a pretty significant way\n\nEdit: as a side note, I was in Airzona once, close to the mexican border, and there was a speed limit sign that just said \"Use Caution\" so there are still some places you can be free from real speed limits", "It all comes down to two things:\n\n1. Costs - The autobahn costs more, per mile, than the US interstate system and it is *constantly* under massive maintenance. Also, cars must be held to an even higher repair standard than they are in the US, resulting in a higher cost for the public.\n\n2. Training - Driving is much more of an \"everyone should be allowed to do it\" in the US and the barrier for getting a license is lower than it is in Germany.", "My experience driving in Germany compared with driving in the US has caused me to form the opinion that we just aren't responsible enough in general. Also, the specifications of cars sold in this market have been designed to cut corners and save costs where allowed by our own rules and regulations.\n\nGermans are generally raised to obey the rules for the sake of the common good. Example: In German cities everywhere you'll see people standing waiting the for the lights to change at a pedestrian crossing when there aren't even cars in sight. They have a saying there that, \"even during a protest, nobody will walk on the grass\". Basically it means that even when a large number of people who are pissed off and exercising civil disobedience, they'll still kindly obey somebody's sign asking not to walk on their grass... You rarely see this in the States; if somebody can get away with something here and/or they feel like they deserve it, they'll probably just do it.\n\nThis difference in mindset is even more visible in how we drive in the US. I live in NJ so my experience definitely falls on the worst end of the spectrum, but there is zero lane discipline on the highway here. Keep right, pass left? Fuck that! People doing ten under the speed limit sitting in the left lane oblivious to reality, others getting impatient and zipping around them at 90mph in the right lane... Unrestricted speed limits absolutely depend on people exercising lane discipline and following all other restrictions with religious discipline. Could you imagine if somebody pulled in front of you without signalling while you were doing 150mph in the left lane? Fiery death.\n\nThis brings me to my next point, which is that cars sold in the EU all have superior brake systems compared with US market vehicles. Since any car sold in the EU may wind up on the autobahn cruising at triple digit speeds, they have to be able to slow down repeatedly from top speed without brake fade or instability. Cars sold in the US that aren't in the premium market segment (so around $35k and under) all have the bare minimum in terms of stopping performance. Additionally, vehicle inspection in the US is also a joke compared with Germany. For example, here in NJ there is no more safety inspection. If your car passes emissions you could have no seatbelts, a cracked windshield and brakes with 10 years of wear on them and you'll get a valid inspection sticker. Put a car like that on a highway where you can do 120mph all day and that person would invariably die or be the cause of someone else's untimely death.\n\nTL;DR: America just doesn't have the driver education and enforcement required to make something like the Autobahn work safely... And we suck at cooperating with each other for our own sake."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hpenh", "title": "why do so many movies tend to cast people in their mid-to-late twenties to play as high school kids?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hpenh/eli5_why_do_so_many_movies_tend_to_cast_people_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db1x5zh", "db1x84p", "db1x8vf", "db1x9m7", "db21942", "db2q37u"], "score": [6, 4, 10, 59, 12, 2], "text": ["Because teenagers are too ugly, basically. \n\nCracking voices, acne, and gangly limbs. \n\nPuberty is a bitch and Hollywood wants beautiful people. ", "Because it's close enough (especially given make up) and it beats dealing with actual kids. Have you MET actual kids?  > _ > ", "Because laws prevent anyone under 18 to work so many hours.  Lots of regulations on minors.", "Underage actors have far more regulations regarding when they can work and how often; those regulations are intended to protect child actors, but it means that it's just easier to work with older actors.\n\nIn addition, older actors just have more experience and and are generally more convincing on screen; think about how terrible the acting is on, say, Disney Channel, where most of the actors are actually about the same age as the characters they're portraying, compared to most movies where you have actors in their twenties playing high school kids.", "Consider the ethical implications of real teenagers \"having sex\" on screen, vs adults pretending to be teens \"having sex\" on screen.", "In addition to the points others have made, movies can sometimes film for a year or more. An actual teenager's appearance could change more noticeably in that time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1obnl6", "title": "why do teeth, unlike other parts of the body, not heal properly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1obnl6/eli5_why_do_teeth_unlike_other_parts_of_the_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccqiik3", "ccqj8yf", "ccqjqwy", "ccqk9uc", "ccqm396", "ccqma5x", "ccqmytm", "ccqnuxu", "ccqo5zw", "ccqwc9v"], "score": [104, 16, 27, 14, 6, 8, 4, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Teeth don't have cells.  Healing takes place when cells divide to replace cells that were lost.  Your teeth were grown inside your body and then pushed out.  Our DNA is only programmed to do this with 2 sets.  ", "In order to be so amazingly strong, teeth are made of many minerals, like a rock or a pearl.  \nTeeth aren't made up of cells like your bones or skin are. It can't heal because it's not alive.\n\nWe can make our two sets of teeth because while they are still in our jaw, our body can work on them and paste together the minerals. Once they leave the jaw and come out, ready to be used, the body can't work on them anymore.", "I should probably add that some healing does take place.  The teeth can absorb minerals from our food and drink to make some repairs, but it's obviously not the greatest way to heal.", "Apparently there are devices in work to [re-grow teeth.](_URL_0_) I can't say whether this is legitimate or not, but we can hope.", "Teeth, or rather, the pulp does have cells that can recover from injury. If decay approaches the nerve, the nerve shrinks away from it. Sensitive teeth also become less sensitive due to a shrinking nerve. ", "A tooth basically has 3 layers; enamel, dentin, and pulp (the nerve of the tooth). The outer layer if the tooth (enamel) is the hardest substance in your body and mostly made of minerals (crystalline calcium phosphate). There are no blood vessels in the enamel (although your tooth is very much alive because of the pulp) and cannot regenerate itself once significant portions have been destroyed. When enamel starts to demineralize and \"soften\" (due to acid wear from bacteria (eating sugar), acidic foods/ drinks, throwing up from drunken nights etc) the tooth will try and defend itself by remineralizing, but if the acid exposure is too often (combined with poor oral hygiene and genetics) it can cause a hole (cavity/caries) to form. Since the enamel is not \"alive\" it is not able to renew/fix itself after a certain point. Usually during early stages, if decay is isolated only to the enamel and does not progress to the second layer of dentin (which is much softer and has a similar density to bone) it is possible to remineralize and \"reverse\" the cavity. \nTL;DR: Brush (min. 2x/day) and floss (min 1x/day) your teeth, you only get one adult set. ", "Enamel (the outer layer of a tooth) lacks cells, once cavitated, it cannot remineralize and form the original structure again.\n\nTeeth do however have cells in the inner layers (dentin and pulp).  These cells are responsible for the tooth's ability to respond to things such as thermal stimuli and pain.", "The cells (ameloblast) that form the layer of enamel while you're an embryo die. Therefore, the enamel layer is not repairable or reformed. However, the supporting dentin underneath do repair (as tertiary dentin) because the cells (odontoblast)that form it don't die\n", "Dr. Weston A Price was successfully healing many people's teeth and I have mine... It's not impossible, but you have to give your body all it needs to repair and remineralize, and create the environment for it to happen :) it takes a while. I had one bad cavity which has mostly healed but has taken about two years. Not something like a scrape on the knee.", "Teeth can heal in a very limited capacity, in terms of tissue replacement and deposition is concerned. The pulp or nerve/vascular part of the tooth, can laid down tissue in a limited capacity. The pulp contains odontoblast cells, which, in certain instances can insulate themselves from dentin that has been invaded by bacteria. Pulp capping is a procedure that can be done when a deep filling is placed and there is a slight amount of hard, but decayed dentin remaining near the pulp, or in some cases when then pulp is breached. This procedure relies on the reparative abilities of the tooth. This procedure works much better in young people due to the fact that there are SCAP cell or stem-cells of the apical papilla located at the apex of the tooth contiguous with the pulp, which can differentiate and help with healing a tissue deposition. These degrade as you age, which is why pulp capping does not work as well as you age.  the tip portion of the root will lose its stem cells and will \"close.\" Also the adult pulp has been seen to have less of a vascular components and less Mesenchymal stem cells, which will also contribute to poor healing of said tissues. \n  The dentin of the tooth has very limited reparative ability, more of a protective response really. Dentin has a cellular component and can respond to bacterial invasion. In many folks tertiary dentin is formed when bacteria draw near to odontoblast cells. I have many times drilled out decayed tooth structure to find stained dentin near the pulp. This dentin is very hard and not Carious, and therefore will not be removed. This was the body's response to the decay, or the protective response of the cells in the dentin.\n   Enamel has NO capacity to heal strictly speaking. You are able to \"remineralize\" small area do decalcification. This is similar to placing a rock in a saturated solution of some compound and having with compound precipitate onto the rock. Outright cavitation require intervention, removal of bacteria, and subsequent replacement with filling material. I have not seen great clinical evidence, studies, or results with trying to remineralize tooth structure. I have seen some evidence and some results, but nothing that really makes me think we shouldn't do filling on heavily demineralized enamel. \nIn summary pulp can heal, dentin can protect itself to a degree and enamel can only be remineralized. This in no way is meant to be a comprehensive explanation of the disease process of teeth, or the healing of such, but to give you insight into the \"healing\" or reparative capacities of human adult teeth.\nSource I am a dentist\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/30/new-low-intensity-pulsed-ultrasound-device-helps-re-grow-teeth/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1cjwrl", "title": "Are there any verified times when a media event greatly influenced the beliefs of a culture or actions of a national leader?", "selftext": "In 1983, there was a made for tv movie (in those days, they weren't abominations of bad like the sort we have now days on networks like SciFi) called [The Day After](_URL_2_) about a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  [You can watch the trailer for it here](_URL_3_), and I believe it is available for streaming on Netflix.\n\nAt the time of it's airing, it was watched by over 100 million Americans, almost half of the 230,000 million at the time.  Grief councilors were set up to talk to people about the film.  A debate on the show hosted by Ted Koppel [was where Carl Sagan](_URL_1_) gave his famous \"room awash in gasoline\" analogy about nuclear war.  You can watch the whole debate [here](_URL_0_), commercials and all!  The panel includes, Elie Weisel, William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scrowcroft, Robert McNamara, and George Schultz...so yeah, expect smart people talking to each other intelligently.\n\nAdditionally, Ronald Reagan wrote in his personal diary\n\n > \"Columbus Day. In the morning at Camp D. I ran the tape of the movie ABC is running Nov. 20. It's called THE DAY AFTER in which Lawrence, Kansas is wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It's very effective and left me greatly depressed...\"\n\nIts interesting to note that by 1985 to coincide with the assumption of power by Gorbachev, Reagan had softened his saber rattling against the Soviets.\n\nClearly the film had a major impact on American culture.  Are there comparable events that were reactions to *scripted* media or artwork (not news events like the JFK assassination or the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine?)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cjwrl/are_there_any_verified_times_when_a_media_event/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9h8syi", "c9h9h03", "c9h9jwe", "c9h9mlu", "c9hc2p7", "c9hc49v", "c9hhun9", "c9hjwze", "c9hk4x2", "c9hknlr", "c9hmupj"], "score": [16, 15, 24, 46, 4, 6, 9, 8, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["I believe a similar TV movie called \"Threads\" was aired in the UK around that time, and strengthened the anti-war/anti-nuclear movement.\n\nSpeaking of anti-nuclear, the movie China Syndrome greatly increased public fear during the Three Mile Island incident that occurred soon after.", "* The movie [Birth of a Nation]( _URL_0_) is said to have usherer in the 2nd era of KKK.\n\n* When Orson Welles did *War of the Worlds* as a radio show, Adolph Hitler noted the public panic it caused and cited it as evidence of the decadence of Democracy.\n\n* The movie *Jaws* kept a whole lot of beach goers out of the water for at least a season.\n\n* The movie *Sideways* was linked to a decline in Merlot sales. In fact, its called [the Sideways effect]( _URL_1_) in the industry.", "I know there are a ton of excellent Holocaust specialists around here who can explain this much better than I can, so I'll just briefly suggest the American TV miniseries *Holocaust*, which aired in 1978 on NBC and starred a young Meryl Streep alongside actors like Fritz Weaver, James Woods and Michael Moriarty. The story takes place from the perspective of the well-to-do Weiss family, who were German Jews, and a young and ambitious SS officer. It follows the protagonists through many of the major episodes and experiences of WWII and the Holocaust, including Kristallnacht, Buchenwald, Jewish ghettos, Jewish resistance, and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. One of the Weiss daughters is even raped by German soldiers.\n\n*Holocaust* was huge. It won Emmy Awards and earned as much as a 50 per cent market share in up to 15 million homes during its original airings, which is something unheard of today. For a lot of Americans, the series served as a first in-depth look into the horrors of the Holocaust, and was crucial in shaping how Americans (and others) would come to understand the event. It was aired in countries around the world. There were criticisms, too. Some felt the series trivialized the Holocaust, exploited its victims for entertainment, did not present it in all its gruesome reality (by TV-ifying it), and Elie Wiesel panned it as \"untrue and offensive.\" But it was a cultural phenomenon, to be sure.\n\nScholars have generally viewed *Holocaust* as a watershed moment in the formation of Holocaust memory (by which they mean public collective memory of the Holocaust). Judith Doneson argues that \"the amazing aspect\" of the series was that it held real-life political and moral repercussions in the places where it aired, which went way beyond the impact of any previous representations of the Holocaust. She argues that American audiences reacted to the series with moral outrage, while in West Germany and other parts of Europe it caused political tensions and brought audiences to the discomfiting position of having to face their own participation in the destruction of European Jewry. Other scholars have noted that the series was reacted to differently among different audiences; Emiliano Perra notes that the series was *not* such a formative event in Italy, and argues that instead of viewing the series in terms of the country's complicity, Italian audiences and commenters focused disproportionately on instances wherein Italians attempted to rescue or help Jews, and on Italian victimization at the hands of the Nazis, thereby avoiding frank discussions of guilt and complicity. \n\nSuffice to say then, at the very least, *Holocaust* spawned all kinds of public conversations about the Holocaust, how we represent it, and how we remember it.\n\nAlso, *Roots*. The two are not unrelated; *Holocaust* was released on the heels of *Roots* and the two series shared a director (Martin Chomsky). I am equally as ill-equipped to speak to the cultural impact of *Roots* as I am with regard to *Holocaust*, but I'll throw it out there.\n\n**References:**\n\nJudith Doneson, *The Holocaust in American Film* (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).\n\nEmiliano Perro, \"Narratives of Innocence and Victimhood: The Reception of the Miniseries Holocaust in Italy,\" *Holocaust and Genocide Studies* 22, no. 3 (Winter 2008).", "What about the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel *Uncle Tom's Cabin*?  Or Upton Sinclair's novel *The Jungle*?  \n\n**Edit**:  [*Uncle Tom's Cabin*](_URL_0_) was said to have helped fuel the abolitionist movement and also may have helped discourage the United Kingdom from supporting the South in any way.\n\n[*The Jungle*](_URL_1_) was said to have led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, with the latter establishing the Bureau of Chemistry (in 1930 renamed as the Food and Drug Administration).\n\n\n", "The fall of the Berlin wall comes to mind. They accidently said that the borders were open during a press conference and it resulted in chaos and ultimately the end of the GDR. I wont go into details but Mary Sarotte's 1989 sums it up excellently.", "The Cold War had a continuous series of films made about it so it's hard to isolate one film.\n\nOne anecdote I've heard often is how when Ronald Reagan became President, he thought the Pentagon had a 'war room' like in Dr. Strangelove, and one was built later to accommodate him.\n\nA quick googling turned up this from the Guardian, however it doesn't cite its source - \n_URL_0_", "While not really a media event, *Silent Spring* by Rachel Carson was a partial cause of the ban on DDT, despite being a shaky case at best.  The knock on effects from the ban on DDT are numerous.\n\nAfter it was published in 1962, it also helped start the American Environmental movement, adopted by the hippies, that has spread worldwide.\n\n[Wikipedia article](_URL_0_), sorry too busy for real sources", "President Woodrow Wilson once said about *Birth Of a Nation*: \"It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.\"\n_URL_0_\n\nIt definitely influenced his attitude and supported the racist beliefs of the time.\n\nWhen Abraham Lincoln met with Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of *Uncle Tom's Cabin*), he was reported to have said \"So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!\"\n\nHer book generated a lot of anger in the South, and hyped up sectionalist feelings. It provided proof of the North's prejudice towards Southerners. Some states even managed to limit the amount of anti-slavery literature that was published and sold there.\n\nSource: *United States History: Preparing For the Advanced Placement Examination* by John J. Newman and John Schmalbach (pgs. 243, 244)", "While studying Herodotus's Histories our professor told us that there were rumors Lysander was reading the histories during the final battle against Athens, and the reason he decided not to destroy the city was because he was so moved by the memory of the two great allies uniting and defeating the Persian empire together.\n\nOf course I can't find any verification of this with a google search.  It's a lovely thought, though.", "I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Thomas Paine's \"Common Sense\" and \"The American Crisis\".  Both were incredibly influential when they were written, and changed the mind-set of the entire nation.", " > Its interesting to note that by 1985 to coincide with the assumption of power by Gorbachev, Reagan had softened his saber rattling against the Soviets.\n\nJust as a side note, Reagan had toned down his saber rattling after almost getting us into a nuclear war with the Soviets in 1983. After a KGB defector reported how seriously the USSR took the [Able Archer 83](_URL_0_) exercise, Reagan greatly toned down his rhetoric. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?c=1823", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO1EOjr_s9s", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBfZTkuVzt4"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation", "http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=features&amp;content=61265"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin#Contemporary_and_world_reaction", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Federal_response"], [], ["http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/nov/14/artsfeatures1"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_spring"], ["http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_birth.html"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83"]]}
{"q_id": "zz71i", "title": "why is it when i look down over a high cliff or balcony, i feel tingly in my downstairs places?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zz71i/eli5_why_is_it_when_i_look_down_over_a_high_cliff/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c691dig", "c691qvs", "c69223n", "c6934wh", "c693qgv", "c69441t", "c694bsz", "c694q03", "c694sad", "c694ywy", "c694zw9", "c69507g", "c695ad4", "c6961lc", "c696iym", "c6974lj", "c697l5u", "c699i21", "c699zsg"], "score": [263, 84, 38, 183, 26, 8, 7, 4, 2, 3, 34, 13, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Reaction to stress. Blood is pulled from regions like stomach to support run or fight response (more blood to muscles and brain)", "You may have a fetish for high elevation. Airplanes must be difficult for you.", "The call of the void, or \"l'appel du vide\", is the urge to jump. To fall. It's part of the Fight or Flight reflex in the baser parts of the brain. ", "'downstairs places'? C'mon we're mostly all adults here. You can say it. Why do you feel tingly in your toes.", "I get the exact same feeling, and I have no idea why, but I am SO HAPPY that it's not just me.  I've tried to explain this to my husband for years and he thought I was nuts.", "I get a feeling like that too.  But it's not when I'm looking down off a cliff or balcony, but more when I see a video of something gross, or someone being hurt.  I wonder if its the same thing?\n", "Try a skydive.  You'll actually know what it would feel like if you did fall.", "My husband is terrified of heights. When my son and I was riding the ferris wheel at the fair, he told me later the whole time, his feet and balls hurts. I wonder of this is the same thing.", "I'm behind you, feeling them.", "that's your balls telling you to get the fuck away from the edge.", "I feel it in my ass. No joke. Everytime I'm at a certain hieght and I look down I can feel my ass tingle. Iv even told me friends right when it happened once and they were just like wtf. ", "It's because it's **gorge**ous view.\n\nThank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.", "Seriously, I have perfectly fine balance but as soon as I'm looking over a cliff I feel like I'm gonna fall and I start swaying. It's annoying cause I can't pee off cliffs. ", "The sensation is called \"cremasteric reflex\" but why it's triggered is a mystery.", "For some males, when they feel that physical harm is imminent, their testicles draw up closer to their body where they will be safer as part of a fear reaction.  ", "Fearful reaction when finding yourself in a high place is one of the most basic human instincts. The only two fears we are born with are fear of loud noises and fear of heights. That's how deep it goes into our biology, so it makes sense that you would feel it all throughout your body in places you wouldn't normally experience fear - it comes from the reptilian part of our brains", "holy shit i thought I was just me. This mall I go to has glass railings on the balconies and every time I go near it or lean on it I feel like its gonna shatter and my balls cringe", "I can't explain it but when I'm scared, stressed, super happy, any extreme emotion really, my vulva throbs. Weirdest thing ever! \n\nPre-emptive edit: It's different than sexual excitement throbbing.", "My favorite thing about this post is that you asked it like you were five"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6c2xac", "title": "why are women athlete outfits far more revealing than those of men?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c2xac/eli5_why_are_women_athlete_outfits_far_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhrgdcd", "dhri96f", "dhriwyi", "dhrjoz1", "dhrkmkr", "dhrlxb1"], "score": [57, 7, 16, 44, 17, 4], "text": ["Some of it is probably the sexualization of women, but some of it is just what the athletes find acceptable and comfortable. \n\nMany women already wear tight/ form fitting clothes in their daily lives. Few men do. So it would be unusual for that to flip when it comes to athletic wear. Women commonly wear short shorts. Guys commonly wear baggier shorts. So it's not a surprise that women feel comfortable with short shorts/ tights in athletics. It would be weird if a guy started wearing short tights when he only wears longer, more baggy clothes outside of sport. ", "Bikini Rugby sounds like a fake sport designed for cheap thrills.  Women's basketball uniforms are about as revealing as men's (not very).  Swimsuits?  Ski/skating wear?  ", "There's a few sports that play up sexier outfits for women, like tennis, beach volleyball and others.  Even in those, it's function over form.  But if you've got a great body, what's wrong with showing it off? Especially if it gets some sponsorship dollars.  \n\nConversely, when men's sports apparel is more revealing than women's, such as in boxing and swimming, it never gets mentioned.  But I know women (and quite a few men) are looking at them.", "The question should be. Why aren't men's athlete outfits as revealing as women's? I want to feel comfortable with my cock and balls enveloped in latex, not wrapped up like pigs in blankets.", "As a woman I hate t shirts when exercising. I buy tank tops. They are much cooler. And tight clothes is better for running as it doesn't move around as much. Guys who want less matterial in their shirt just go shirtless.", "[Are](_URL_1_) [they](_URL_0_) really, though?\n\nTBH it probably has more to do with what is socially acceptable than anything else. I'm sure a guy would be free to wear clothing similar to a girl, like extremely short shorts and a crop top, or a full bathing suit, but he won't because it's not normal right now. \n\nFYI, in reference to the Olympics, it used to be men only and everyone would compete naked. Even the audience was naked to make sure no women came to see it, because no women were allowed... and it was fine cause that was what was socially acceptable at the time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/04/article-0-145F794B000005DC-630_306x511.jpg", "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/88/dc/b9/88dcb954f651e5457fcc3e86f3afa93e.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1f28li", "title": "How many sea creatures make noise?", "selftext": "Dolphins, porpoises, and whales can sing or click to communicate, but are there others?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1f28li/how_many_sea_creatures_make_noise/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca62n3b", "ca6rrnk"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["Yes, many do. Here's an [excellent article](_URL_0_) about how marine animals use sound.", "a bit late to the party here, but [manatees](_URL_1_) actually have a significant degree of mother-calf communication using short whistles. Most marine mammals actually do, including seals [seals](_URL_0_) as well as otters. Noise isn't just used to communicate either, sperm whales for example can use focused beams of sound to stun prey and dolphins use it to echolocate. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.dosits.org/animals/useofsound/animalsusesound/"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jh4HpCpQw0", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjH1gTarrx8"]]}
{"q_id": "5z5ts5", "title": "How accurate was Kremlinology?", "selftext": "\"Kremlinology\" is a somewhat derisive term for mountains-out-of-molehill analysis of opaque, authoritarian political systems, doing things like looking at seating arrangements in public events to determine what factions are in or out of favor. But I have never seen an analysis of whether or not the Kremlinologists during the Col War tended to get things right or not, and whether their focus on minor details like image framing was an accurate reflection of how the Soviet media arm functioned.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z5ts5/how_accurate_was_kremlinology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dexcgc9", "dexez33"], "score": [3, 9], "text": ["As a follow up-question, did the Soviets have an equivalent (as in \"Washingtonology\") and if so, did it provide any useful information for Soviet intelligence?", "The problem with Kremlinology is roughly the same as what you get with the study of similarly restricted states - and the more restrictive the state is, the tougher it is to conduct meaningful analysis. Simply put, conventional sources of information are often unavailable or are otherwise difficult to access. \n\nAs you say, sometimes it devolves into making judgments based on otherwise inconsequential information like what people are wearing on official photographs, and whether or not some people are present in them (or where they happen to be standing). \n\nIn general, I would say that there is a definitely a difference between \"Kremlinology\" and genuine scholarly research on the topic. Not to say that the Kremlinologists never got things right, but the methods and sources that were available to them were very limited. In the nutshell, classic \"Kremlinology\" implies subjecting the Soviet press and other published material to thorough examination, attempting to ascertain and judge Soviet policies and, importantly, *predict* Soviet actions (something that a relatively small proportion of purely scholarly material sets out to accomplish).  Naturally, the biggest problem here is the trustworthiness of the published materials in question - at worst they contain completely fabricated information, at best they leave many points uncertain and under-illuminated. \n\nSo, working from there I would also say that the viability of \"Kremlinology\" depended largely on when we're talking - specifically the degree to which the Soviet Union was closed to outside observers. Simply put, when you can just go to Moscow and do research there, even with some limitations, you obviously are better off doing that instead of trying to analyze state-sanctioned Soviet press sources. In other words, Kremlinology was more of a necessity at times, brought upon by the lack of viable alternatives. Especially during the Stalin period the researchers had little to go by apart from the Soviet media. Ironically, at the time the same can largely be said about the general Soviet populace. \n\nArguably, the biggest blow to the credibility of classic Kremlinology (or the state it ended up evolving into by the end of the 1980s - more on that later) was its failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fairness, the same can be said of pretty much everyone else who was studying the Soviet system at the time of the collapse, including the more traditional academic research - but then again, most did not set out to plot USSR's course for the years to come as their ultimate goal. With that in mind, a lot of the Kremlinologists openly admitted that their approach offered too little reliable information to properly understand what is actually happening in the country, and a lot of them reverted to some of the more conventional research methods when and if the opportunity presented itself to them.\n\nThe proportion of Kremlinology that tended to end up on the pages of regular press tended to be almost entirely speculative in nature as a result, and hardly anything of what it \"predicted\" was presented in concrete terms. On a personal note, I can say that much the same thing can be said about the contemporary reporting of mainstream press on Russia - they rarely refer to actual specialist on the matter, that is to say the people who studied Russia professionally, or were otherwise engaged with Russia (and IN Russia) in some professional capacity, and rely on either anonymous sources, or sources with shaky credentials - for example this article from [The New Yorker](_URL_0_) quotes Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister between 1990 and 1996, but hasn't been active in politics since the late 90s, and since 2012 has been living in the States, while Oleg Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general they also referred to, has been living in the States since 1995, so their viability as reliable sources of information for analyzing *contemporary* Russian policies is very questionable. The situation was much the same with most of the Kremlinology during the Cold War. So a lot of the \"predictions\" were more semi-educated guesses, and a lot were purposefully ambiguous in their prognosis, so it is hard to accurately gauge their predictions. Those that weren't ambiguous were instead overtly ambitious - claiming that they could ascertain that the leadership struggle was becoming more heated because the portraits of Beria and Malenkov changed their spots twice within the same day during the October Revolution Day festivities in 1947 for example. At the time, when there was nothing else to go on, these predictions were literally everything you could work with, and were treated very seriously, but in retrospect their conclusions were more often off the mark than not. \n\nAs the conditions for reporting on Soviet Union loosened up after the death of Stalin, serious Kremlinology started to fade away, becoming history's equivalent of alchemy so to speak. By the mid 1970s it was mostly an anachronism and was already largely used in a pejorative sense to describe the \"guessers\". \n\nNowadays the reasons for employing the same methods, that is to say Kremlinology in relation to states such as North Korea, are the same as before (with the same implications for producing accurate analyses and predictions) - the lack of other available information.\n\nHopefully this answers your question, at least in part. \n\nSome decent relatively recent academic articles on the subject (behind the paywall unless you are accessing them from an academic institution I'm afraid): \n\n* Zachary J. Jacobson. \"On the \u2018arcane modern science of Kremlinology\u2019 or the case of the vanishing birthdays,\" Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 141-158.\n\n*  Stephen Kotkin. \u201cThe State \u2013 Is it Us? Memoirs, archives, and Kremlinologists,\u201d Russian Review 61, no. 1 (2002): 48\u201349."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war"]]}
{"q_id": "13eg3v", "title": "what is causing the escalating situation in israel and palestine?", "selftext": "I'm somewhat familiar with the overall situation in the middle east.  I'd say that I stay more current than most of my demographic, but I don't understand why everything has become so tense over the last week or so.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13eg3v/eli5_what_is_causing_the_escalating_situation_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c738j91", "c739clt", "c73af2n", "c73bkd6"], "score": [12, 17, 3, 9], "text": ["On November 14 Israel launched a missile strike against Gaza City, assassinating Ahmed Al-Jabari, the leader of Hamas's military operations. The Israeli Defense Force tweeted* that \"All options are on the table. If necessary, the IDF is ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza.\" The IDF maintains that it has a right to defend itself from attacks originating from Gaza and the Palestinians believe that Israel is perpetrating war crimes.\n\n*Srsly, IDF? Tweeting?", "Basically, Israel assassinated a high-ranking military leader from Hamas. \nThis rather peeved Hamas. So, as retaliation, they launched ~400 missiles, some of them to Tel Aviv, but most of them in between Gaza and Tel Aviv. A lot of them were shot down by a defense system Israel has set up (called Iron Dome). \n\nAs retaliation for THAT, Israel has started firing back with air strikes, and also some artillery/shelling from naval vessels. Israel said that it will also follow up with a ground invasion, if necessary, and has 75,000 troops at the ready to go in. Israel has hit a ton of targets, and said they had something like a couple hundred they wanted to hit (two of them were media buildings for news shows for example).\n\nPalestine has been launching a few rockets back (yesterday they launched at least 13-15 according to BBC), but they seem to be pretty outgunned. \n\nCurrent death toll stands at: \n3 Israelis (2 men and a woman). 7 other people had to be treated for \"shock\" but that's not really much as far as injuries go. Can't seem to find any other stats. \n\nAround 58 Palestinians, anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of which are civilians according to different sources, but at least 7 of which are confirmed to be children. Total injured is ~560. \n\nAll numbers taken from BBC. \n\nEdit: [Here](_URL_0_) is the link for the BBC article, and [here](_URL_1_) is the wikipedia article for the current conflict. \n\nEdit 2: Death toll is now 69 in Gaza.", "God  &  Real Estate", "The major problem is that everyone in the world wants this to be explained to them like they're five. It's just not that simple. Neither party is the righteous hero in this situation. It's a really intricate, nuanced issue."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20386755", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Cloud"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6f733x", "title": "given that polar bears have existed 600,000 years, they must have gone through periods warmer than today (prior to and after the ice age) and somehow survived. but today they are on the endangered species list due to expected climate changes. are they really in danger?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f733x/eli5_given_that_polar_bears_have_existed_600000/", "answers": {"a_id": ["difwonh", "difwrdr", "difxpn3", "diggske", "dih3rhq"], "score": [65, 14, 66, 2, 4], "text": ["Animal populations can adapt and evolve along with a changing environment if the change happens slow enough.  Polar bears may be able to adapt to a temperature change over 100000 years, but not be able to adapt to the same temperature change over 1000 years.  Since this recent anthropogenic driven change is happening faster than any natural temperature change, so I would say they are in danger in the wild.  I guess we will be able to see them in zoos though.", "There is wide scientific speculation about polar bears but the most common conclusion is that they have only been around for 150,000 years. If they are 150k then they have survived only one event of warming like we are currently undergoing. If they are 600k then only two events of current magnitude. Before large-scale encroachment  &  habitat destruction polar bears could migrate if they had to. \n", "The issue is not actually the temperatures we are going to be changing to. It is the speed of the change. We have taken a warming process that would have taken up to 100,000 years or more and sped it up. Even if we have only made it 10 times faster some animals that could have adapted in 100,000 will not be able to adapt in 10,000. And odds are that the speed we have increased the change is far far faster so the chances of animals adapting is far lower. \n\nBut with polar bears there does seem to be one kind of adaptation occurring. They are mating with Grizzly and Brown bear and having hybrids that are fertile. ", "Over the period of about 1000 years, it is theorized that polar bears will [adapt into brown bears](_URL_0_). We won't be alive to see if that happens, though.", "while your polar bear example is a good one - this is a major problem facing ALOT of wild animals. I don't want to sound like a doomsday soothsayer, but if humans keep breeding uncontrollably - there will come a time in the not too distant future when the only wild animals on earth will be humans and the farm animals and cattle used to feed those humans. It sounds crazy but it's alot closer than you think.\n\nFor hundreds of thousands of years, there was a natural selection - survival of the fittest where the food chain was a natural process - but humans have banded together to become bigger/smarter/better weaponized to overcome all other predators, and have halted natural selection - to where now - it is humans - and whatever humans want to let live. If the elephants have valuable ivory - humans hunt them until they are nearly extinct or until the only elephants left are close to extinction. Its the same with the millions of fishes in the ocean and the corral reefs that provide their homes. Except instead of hunting/fishing them to extinction, the humans have polluted the earth and caused the earths temperature to rise so much - that the reefs are dying off, as well as the fishies that used to call those reefs home. \n\nHumans' un-controlled breeding without limits to the point of massive over-population is a much bigger issue than greenhouse gases, (and is the biggest cause of greenhouse gases) if you had a world full of 1 million people who wanted to run electricity full blast year round - no problem, they could burn coal and drive cars and throw their trash in landfills, or directly in the ocean and the impact would be minimal. but when you are talking 7.5 Billion people and increasing every single day - with longer life expectancy and no end in site - humans will continue to destroy the earth until there's nothing left for wild animals."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/climate-change-could-turn-polar-bears-brown-study-says-1.1320965"], []]}
{"q_id": "4lqoar", "title": "what makes steven spielberg and stanley kubrick stand out from other directors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lqoar/eli5what_makes_steven_spielberg_and_stanley/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3pd99j", "d3pey2h", "d3peyqm", "d3pf7ph", "d3pf7q8", "d3pf8ri", "d3pfg4n", "d3pfjlq", "d3pflyf", "d3pgyhl", "d3phzp5", "d3pi5gc"], "score": [128, 30, 212, 6, 4, 19, 6, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["What makes them special is a whole lot of things that all culminate in a great director.  \n\nSpielberg, by and large, has a strong eye for cheesiness and \"overdoing it\" and was excellent at pushing that boundary without busting it.  E.G. Jaws, he watched a cut with the animatronic shark and was like \"wow that was cheesy, make the cut quicker\", so the shark is visible for like 6 frames of film.  The animatronic didn't even look that good but it was so fast, viewers couldn't tell it was fake.  Now the movie is scary as fuck. \n\nHe also has a knack for coaching actors, ESPECIALLY child actors.  He got performances out of people who would never expect it.  He's excellent at making the focus of the film *the PERSON* rather than the monster, or the alien, or the robot, etc.  ", "There's a youtube series called \"every frame a painting\" that I found excellent  to learn about directors  and filmmaking. ", "Kubrick had a highly unusual eye for detail and was a complete perfectionist. There's practically nothing in a single Kubrick frame that is accidental, and he would strive *endlessly* to get the exact, perfect result that he wanted - look up some of the horror stories from the cast of The Shining, like making Shelly Duvalle re-shoot scenes hundreds of times in one day with the deliberate intention of getting her exhausted and stressed out to get the right look.\n\nHis films, for better or for worse, are intricate puzzle boxes full to the brim with hidden meanings and subtleties.", "If I had to pick one thing I would say they were innovative.  They changed the way movies were made.\n\nHitchcock used many different types of camera shots that (if he didn't invent himself) were not popular to use.  He shot movies in a way that changed the way people identified with characters in movies.  The shots he pioneered are staples of movies today, especially in horror films.\n\nSpielberg's was also an innovator.  I think most people would say his biggest contributions were the use of technology and special effects.  Spielberg's films typically used these in ways people had not thought before.  He basically invented a \"Blockbuster.\"  \n\nKubrick innovated with atmospheric music.  If you watch any of his movies you can tell the music is a huge part of what makes them great.  Of course music was used in films before, however, Kubrick innovated the types of songs that were \"allowed\" in films.  \n\nThis by no means is an exhaustive list, but if you watch any of these directors films you will notice these type of elements.\n\nEdit:  Thought I would add some quick examples\n\n[Hitchcock film techniques](_URL_0_).  There are a ton of videos out on this and I just picked one.\n\n[Article on Spielberg's Jaws saga](_URL_2_) and how it changed the industry.\n\n[Kubrick atmospheric music](_URL_1_) from The Shinning.  Its just a random place that I thought demonstrated the idea.\n\n", "Not quite an answer but I saw this awesome short Kubrick video the other day and [this seems like a good place to leave it](_URL_0_) \n\n", "Spielberg, Hitchcock, and Kubrick all have very unique styles that, especially for their time, were truly innovative. The each have their own style that makes for excellent story telling for the type of movie they are making. Kubrick always seemed to leave things for the viewer to decide the meaning of. He seemed to want his audience to have a \"crisis of self\" during his movies. As a result a lot of his movies can be very unsettling. People tend to love/hate his style, but it is undeniable that they make an impact on the viewer. That impact is the mark of a brilliant director. Whether you like his movies or not, you have to be completely \"switched off\" to not have an experience while watching them. 2001: a space odyssey is famous for this. The exceptional lack of dialogue, requires the viewer to impose themselves on the imagery and fantastically chosen score. It also makes you feel very alone, and in a movie about a journey through space, that can be very uncomfortable. I always feel slightly on edge. Most of his movies are famous for this. I cannot actually think of one that this doesn't apply to. 2001, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, etc. all leave the viewer with a variety of feelings about themselves, others, the humanity of mankind, the past and future, and where humans fit in the greater picture (if anywhere). It's pretty rare for a director to be able to inspire those types of emotions in someone, but more often than not Kubrick achieved that with his movies. I think this is, in no small part, why his movies have endured. \n\nSpielberg and Hitchcock have their own styles that I think others can probably discuss better. But their styles, and their ability to create emotions with images, actors, and especially sound are a huge part of why their movies are considered to be some of the best ever. ", "Kubrick and Hitchcok wheren't afraid to go to extremes to get genuine emotions into a shot, even if it meant endangering actors. (See Hitchcok's The Birds, where he released live crows into a room with the actor who thought they where fake, so that he could get genuine fear.)\n\nSpielberg innovated and created entire universes. ", "However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. - Stanley Kubrick\n\nAwesome director, but that quote rings true to me. I love it.", "Kubrick - PERFECTIONIST. He is famous for doing a zillion takes of each shot. He has an amazing visual style. His shots are works of art in themselves. \n\nSpielberg - POP. Spielberg is a master of getting the audience engaged. He knows what people want to see and he is a master at making it come to life. He is extremely creative with the way he puts together his films. \n\nBoth masters at their style of film. Both legendary. ", "They have artistic integrity and just know what to do. Their movies were written, shot, and directed to convey a story in a very specific way and they strive to do just that, tell a good story in a believable way. They have total control over the tone of the movie, can bring out the best of their actors, and understand what works and what doesnt.\n\nOn the flip side hacks like Michael Bay or Zack Snyder do things \"cause they look cool\" while other hacks like M. Night are lazy and end up making movies full of obvious errors and mistakes or let their egos get in the way (fucking seriously M. Night? you cast yourself as the genius writer who's work is misunderstood but will ultimately save the world in Lady in the water). \n\n", "A lot of it is their technical mastery. They know all the details of the filmmaking process: cameras, lens, film stocks, digital noise, lighting, sound, VFX, SFX, drawing, storyboarding, editing, etc. They probably could do everyone's job good to great, but it would take too long. They know who to hire because they know exactly what they're looking for. \n\nIt's hard to appreciate what makes them great without being of age when they were coming up. Remember that first time you saw James Cameron's AVATAR and thought, now thats how a 3D movie is done! The same thing happened with Jurassic Park (now THAT is how CG is done) and ET (now THAT is how puppetry is done) and any Hitchcock (now THAT is how camera movement is done) and with Kubrick (now THAT is authentic storytelling). These guys know all the latest tools and how to use them intently. \n\nA lesser director is expert in fewer parts of the filmmaking process. ", "These directors have the added non-cinematic ability to secure financing.  Big fantastic ideas need money to enable retakes, rebuilds of sets' multiple cameras and lots of well paid crew who carry out the ideas.  We all have heard of many famous anecdotes on how a famous director just shot a famous scene over and over till it was right.  That costs money and need backers to say...go ahead spend the money.\nGreat talents BUT also great deal maker$$."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/Eg6velhQxGs", "https://youtu.be/WAdZr6OQZ-A?t=201", "http://mentalfloss.com/article/31105/how-steven-spielbergs-malfunctioning-sharks-transformed-movie-business"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flq0t4jrqJQ"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "arj6hu", "title": "The film The Favourite depicts Queen Anne engaged in lesbian relations with both Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill. Does this have any basis in history or is it just a fanciful creation of the scriptwriter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/arj6hu/the_film_the_favourite_depicts_queen_anne_engaged/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egnno6h"], "score": [30], "text": ["Here is an answer that was posted a short while ago by u/cdesmoulins : \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn case of the movie it's generally a good idea to remember that director Yorgos Lanthimos said that they intentionally went for a narrative and presentation that was more fiction than accurate."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ai3a3x/in_the_new_movie_the_favourite_queen_anne_is/eelngqs"]]}
{"q_id": "3ja14y", "title": "kim davis, rowan county, kentucky who is refusing to issue gay marriage licenses", "selftext": "Please post your questions about the issue the county clerk who is refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, even after being ordered to do so by the courts.\n\nRemember this sub is for discussing concepts in a fair and non-judgemental manner, opinions should be posted in r/offmychest or r/changemyview \n\nAlso please see _URL_0_?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ja14y/eli5_kim_davis_rowan_county_kentucky_who_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cunjcm8", "cunjg5s", "cunn7ct", "cunp7ux", "cuo8vsl", "cuoeqet", "cuolmiu", "cuolnao", "cup3605", "cup3m1r", "cupkk87", "cupqlp0", "cupqu87", "cuprp2f", "cupsxv0", "cuq92lm", "cuqavc8", "cuqkzk9", "cuql0qy", "cur19e1", "cur6mbe", "curjqfa", "cust0l4", "cutqk16", "cuv84x9", "cuvkiqv", "cuwh1z7", "cuxr7l2", "cv0bgxg", "cv2awmx"], "score": [7, 204, 57, 73, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 3, 2, 27, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 24, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["I would love to have this explained as well. It seems silly that a judge commanded her to do something like that. Shouldn't she simply be fired? She is refusing to do her job correctly. Each time she does this she is making the state vulnerable to lawsuits. Why is it that the legal action being taken is against her instead of the state for employing someone who is willfully breaking the law?", "For anyone who hasn't heard of this whole situation, here's a  summary: \n\nKim Davis is the County Clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  After the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, she stopped giving out marriage licenses to any couple.  Davis based her actions on the idea that same-sex marriage conflicts with her Christian beliefs, so she refuses to be involved with a marriage between people of the same sex.  \n\nDavis took the matter to court, arguing that her religious views should excuse her from the aspects of her job that she considers immoral.  The court did not accept her position, so she appealed, and again the courts said she could not stop issuing marriage licenses.  While this was going on, Davis was granted a \"stay,\" which basically said she could keep denying marriage licenses while the matter was in court.  The stay just expired and the Supreme Court rejected an extension to the stay.  As a result, it's pretty clear that Davis will not be able to get legal permission to continue avoiding issuing marriage licenses.\n\nIn spite of the courts telling her she needs to issue the licenses, Davis still refuses to do so.  By continuing to do this, she risks being fined or jailed at a later point in time.  However, because County Clerk is an elected position, she cannot be fired.  It is possible that she could impeached by the legislature, but that would not be a simple procedure. \n\nTL;DR: County Clerk refuses to give out marriage licenses, citing religious objections to same-sex marriage.  Issue goes to court and all rulings go against her.  Clerk continues to refuse to give out marriage licenses, but she can't just be fired or anything straightforward like that. ", "Think of it like this. Your parents tell you its ok to have an imaginary friend. Your parents ask you to do your chores, but your imaginary friend says not to after you've agreed to do your chores. You then cry and whine to everyone that your parents are being unfair and say that anyone who doesn't listen to your imaginary friend is ruining your life. Your parents are the government, your imaginary friend is Jesus, and your chores are to get paid 3 times as much as you should be paid to sign pieces of paper that let people be married under the government's eyes.", "ELI5: How could she be divorced three times, and still claim religious exemption for a religion she clearly picks and chooses the rules she wishes to follow?", "Can't she just be replaced with someone who isn't an incompetent nut?", "I don't, in any way, agree with this woman, and I don't mean, in any way, to blame the couples who just want to get married.  But my question is, Why do they have to get their license from HER?   Can't they go to another city or county?  They shouldn't have to, but they can, right?   \n\nI feel like, if it was me, I'd want to make a stink about how awful she's being, but I'd want to be married more.", "The 14th amendment states \"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States\". Wouldn't KY making her issue marriage licenses be enforcing a law that infringes on her right to freedom of religion? I know that the 14th amendment was intended for former slaves but it should still apply to everyone correct? \n\n", "Is there anything stopping the governor from bringing in clerks from other counties into Rowan County to issue the marriage licenses?\n\nI don't see why there should be a delay if there are other clerks in the state who are willing to issue licenses.", "Could she quit herself? Couldn't someone bribe her into quitting?", "Let me start by saying I'm FOR marriage equality, but what I don't get is why isn't she just moved to a different position within that office and the \"office manager\" or someone else fulfill the license requests? Just as I have the right to my opinion of marriage equality, she has a right to her opinion of no equality, but this should be a non-issue. Just have someone else do the job...", "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.  - Romans 13\n\nAny questions, Ms. Davis?", "What exactly is a \"county clerk\"?", "Why do \"Christians\", I use quotations out of respect for people that acually do follow Christianity, why do they cherry pick their believes she doesn't want to be stoned to death ok that's understandable. Then why does she feel ok to get married again that's just as sacrilegious as gay marriage and even worse since she had a child from an afair. \n\nI just don't understand how Christian Conservative Terrorists can make these more stand claims while they're  completely devoid of morals under their own beliefs?\n\nTldr;\n\nWe must call these people what they are \n\nChristian Conservative Terrorists, \n\nand refuse to address them as anything but what they are.\n\nIf you're Christian you have just as much duty to stomp this out as an Islamic would Radical Islamic Terrorists.", "Since she is being jailed for contempt, and can't be 'fired' because she is an elected official, does that mean she's basically stuck in jail believing herself to be a martyr for her cause until she either resigns, gives up, or is impeached?", "How is Kim Davis refusing to do her job of issuing marriage licenses different than Barack Obama refusing to enforce immigration and drug laws?", "ELI5: How come this job is done by an elected official and it is not just a regular government position for which you can apply?", "Now that Kim has been jailed and 5 of her 6 deputies have agreed to issue licenses - what happens now with her son, the 6th deputy who is still refusing? Is he able to skate by now that the office is issuing in general? How is he held accountable to the law now too?", "I've begun to see those arguing in support of Kim Davis stating that the ruling of the Supreme Court does not make a law and only Congress can create laws therefore she is doing nothing wrong. So what is it that the Supreme Court does that are not making laws? Is it that equal marriage is a right, not a law? I'm pretty much convinced these people are just using words and nothing they argue in this situation makes any sense. Also if this argument actually made sense, even her incompetent lawyer would have been using this in her defense but rather he chose to invoke Nazi comparisons.", "Can someone explain to me the limits of the freedom of religion regarding this case, and why her actions and decision are or are not protected?", "Why is all the focus on Davis when she is not the only clerk pulling this stunt?", "Question:\n\nShe is being jailed indefinitely until she gives gay marriage licenses out. How are they still going to make her do it once she is released? She goes back to work, refuses a licence, goes back to jail, goes back to work, again refuses, back to jail. Is this how this is working?\n\nAre they going to force her to quit her role?\n", "Forgive my ignorance when it comes to US law, but I do not understand why Kim Davis was put in jail, instead of just fired? Wouldn't a better solution just for whoever is her boss to fire her for non-compliance and the problem would be solved?", "There is an old saying that comes to mind in this case: \"Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose\". \n\nShe can't be fired because she is elected. \n\nShe is not in jail because of her religion, she is in jail because of contempt of court. \n\n\nThe law of the land is not a moveable feast. You cannot decide which ones you are going to obey and which ones you are going to ignore when you are an elected official. Her right to practice her religious beliefs (swing her fist) are trumped by the law of the land when she violates the legal rights of others (tip of my nose). Court told her to stop swinging her fist into other people's noses, and she kept beating up on others anyway. ", "Can someone explain the argument of a Hindu man being thrown into jail for refusing to slaughter a cow. I don't understand the similarity. Wouldn't the cow have already been slaughtered and he would be filling out the paperwork stating the cow was slaughtered? It's a state document for an action that has already taken place, correct?", "Can someone explain how it is that she is getting out of jail, but still saying she is not going to issue licenses? I thought that to get out of jail, she had to either resign or agree to issue licenses to homosexual couples. So how is it that she's out but not doing either of those things? What happens next? ", "It's simple. Her job has certain requirements. She is unwilling to perform her job. Rather then bitching and moaning about her \"rights\", she needs to find a new job. That's the way it works in the real world. \n", "What is happening now that she has been released. And, why was she released?", "I don't understand the big debate. Kim Davis is citing freedom of religion not just \"while\" but in order to force her religious views on others. Literally the only reason she thinks it is ok to not issue marriage licenses to same sex couples is precisely the reason why its NOT ok. The blatant hypocrisy is baffling. This government was specifically founded secularly, so any justifications for her actions as a GOVERNMENT official that are \"because religion\" are invalid. ", "Gay marriage does not make babies so some people have a problem calling it marriage. Others see it as an attack on a cultural practice that has been around for thousands of years.", "One last thing.  How do we know that Davis really is acting out of religious faith and not just bigotry because she hates gays?\n\nWouldn't the government have to have some sort of RELIGIOUS TEST for her to pass to make sure it's actually religion and not something else?\n\nLet's say I'm in the air force. And I realize on the eve of battle that I am a Quaker pacifist. Can I keep my job and pay but not fight? Do they join me up to a Quaker tester machine to see if I'm lying?\n\nLet's say I'm a meat inspector. And I convert to Islam. (Like Davis had a religious awakening whilst on the job). Can I not certify any meat processors that are not halal?  How about if there are none? Can I just sit on my ass?\n\nGovernment has a DUTY to uphold the constitution (the real one, not the one they wish it was if Jesus was president) and perform FAIRLY and within the law for all US citizens.  Otherwise there is no freedom, only anarchy driven by money, power, and religious zealots.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/3j83xs/what_are_your_thoughts_on_the_gay_marriage/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1pduwn", "title": "Where does gingerbread originally come from?", "selftext": "I was looking at the origins of biscuits/cookies (depending on your side of the Atlantic), and one of the earliest referenced types of sweet biscuit is gingerbread. There have been two common references to its origins across what I've looked at, and one is a corrupted version of the other; the former is citing Medieval monks in Europe, and the latter is pointing a particular Armenian monk as introducing the recipe into Europe during the 10th century AD. The latter seems the more well attested, but also doesn't answer the question as it is specifically referring of the introduction of gingerbread to Europe, not its origin as a *thing*. But, as seems likely, gingerbread seems not to have originated as a recipe or concept in Europe. So I find myself wondering; where *did* this particular idea originate, if the answer is even known at all?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pduwn/where_does_gingerbread_originally_come_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd1rhga", "cd1s2l5"], "score": [5, 6], "text": ["11 hours and NO answers???\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI saw this paper given last summer. It was excellent, though I've no idea if the author has studied the really deep origins of gingerbread, as you seek. You might be able to get in touch with her and see if she's got any books to recommend.\n\nWhile we're on the topic though, what did you find about the origins of biscuits? I gave a paper on the 19th-century industrialization of biscuits at this same conference. All I ever came across was that Romans and perhaps even older societies had twice-baked, dried bread products useful for traveling. I sort of left it at that and picked up my account in about 1830. What have you found?", "Probably lost in the mists of time along with the origin of breads and cakes.  Ginger seems to have been originally domesticated in India or Southeast Asia(1), but had spread to the Mediterranean basin and China by the 1st century B.C.(2).  Ginger cannot be grown, at least not outdoors, in much of Northern Europe, but unlike pepper or other spice plants that generally require true topical conditions, ginger can be grown anywhere that there is 6-9 months: of average daytime temperatures above 75F, nighttime temperatures above 50F, at around 2.5 inches of rain per month over the course of the growing season.(3)  \n\nThis means that ginger can be grown in most of the Mediterranean basin, including Italy and Iberia.  Thus by the later middle ages it could be obtained within Europe as a trade good.  First attestation in English is in the 11th century.(4)  The OED reports that the modern meaning of \"gingerbread\" is first attested in the late 13th century.(5) \n\nSources:  \n(1) _URL_2_  \n(2) _URL_3_  \n(3) _URL_0_  \n(4) _URL_3_  \n(5) _URL_1_  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://prezi.com/xdrmp0uijeeg/ihr_gingerbread/"], ["http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=a763", "http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/78377?print", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1479262111000670", "http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/233889/ginger"]]}
{"q_id": "2f3aj6", "title": "Is there any evidence of USSR officials reacting to Animal Farm or 1984?", "selftext": "For example, Soldier Nitzkin was arrested, but he was a Russian Citizen.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2f3aj6/is_there_any_evidence_of_ussr_officials_reacting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck63ea5"], "score": [18], "text": ["Orwell was persona non grata in the USSR by 1945, the time of *Animal Farm*'s publication. Orwell had been tried in absentia by the POUM in Spain for the ideological deviance of being a Trotskyite. Although the Soviet Union would only allow legal publication of *1984* in  1989, the critical acclaim its original publication received  necessitated a degree of reaction from Soviet cultural officials and their fellow travelers in the West. Most of these critiques are trenchant exercises in completely missing the Orwell's point.\n\nFor example, I. Anisimov's May 1950 review in *Pravda* asserted Orwell's dystopia was component of American propaganda:\n\n > It is clear that Orwell\u2019s filthy book is in the spirit of such a vital\norgan of American propaganda as the *Reader\u2019s Digest* which published this work, and *Life* which presented it with many\nillustrations.\n > Thus, gruesome prognostications, which are being made in our\ntimes by a whole army of venal writers on the orders and instigation of Wall Street, are real attacks against the people of the world\u2026\n\nThe *Pravda* review concluded with a truly Orwellian paean to the USSR:\n\n > The living forces of peace are uniting ever more firmly into an\norganized front in defense of peace, freedom and life. They are the\nonly hope man has for the salvation of culture. Led by the Soviet\nUnion, these forces are mighty and indomitable. They will assure\nmankind happiness and prosperity despite the monstrous intrigues\nof the imperialists, the instigators of war.\n\nSamuel Sillen, one of the Communist party USA's cultural intellectuals, had a similarly hysteric misreading of *1984*\n\n > Not even the robots of Orwell\u2019s dyspeptic vision of the world in 1984 seem as solidly regimented as the freedom-shouters who chose it for the Book of the Month Club, serialized it in Reader\u2019s Digest, illustrated it in eight pages of Life, and wrote pious homilies on it in Partisan Review and the New York Times. Indeed the response is far more significant than the book itself; it demonstrates that Orwell\u2019s sickness is epidemic.\n\nAfter invoking Orwell's Trotskyite betrayal of antifascism in Spain, Sillen portrays *1984* as a sign of the imminent collapse of capitalism:\n\n > The bourgeoisie, in its younger days, could find spokesmen who\npainted rosy visions of the future. In its decay, surrounded by\nburgeoning socialism, it is capable only of hate-filled, dehumanized\nanti-Utopias. Confidence has given way to the nihilistic literature\nof the graveyard. Now that Ezra Pound has been given a government award [Pound had conducted propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini] and George Orwell has become a best-seller we would seem to have reached bottom. But there is a hideous ingenuity in the perversions of a dying capitalism, and it will keep probing for new depths of rottenness which the maggots will find \"brilliant and morally invigorating.\"\n\nNor were these aspersions against Orwell limited just to the US and and USSR; Orwell's Britain had a number of intellectuals critiquing Orwell's betrayal and his popularity among anti-communists. E. P. Thompson would accuse Orwell of being ignorant of the \"deformities\" of the Communist system and Orwell conflated them with \"the nature and function of the movement itself.\"  A 1956 review in *Marxist Quarterly* by James Walsh continues to assert Orwell was \"a mouthpiece\nfor some of the most deep-seated petit-bourgeois illusions\" and:\n\n > Orwell\u2019s neurotic hatreds are revealed: continental socialism which has brought even its decimal system, steel-and-glass industrialism, the smell of the lower classes. This dismal trial of prejudice continues right through the book; this sensitive soul of the middle class Orwell has been bruised by capitalism, which he hates, and by socialism, which he hates more. He joins the socialist movement for a while, long enough to learn a few superficial facts about it, and then runs shrieking into the arms of the capitalist publishers with a couple of horror comics which bring him fame and fortune, and recognition of his individuality and love of freedom.\n\nPerhaps most strange is the British-based emigre journalist Isaac Deutscher who contended in a 1955 essay on Orwell that he was provincial Englishman without any practical experience of Marxism, so he naturally could not see the rational behind the Stalinist purges. \n\nMany of these critiques would zero in on Orwell's alleged complicity within the British empire (which begs the question did they **read** *Burmese Days*!). For example, Walsh sneers Orwell was  \"petty colonial dictator and as a minor official in the main capitalist propaganda agency.\" Sillen was less subtle:\n\n > The author of this cynical rot is quite a hero himself. He served\nfor five years in the Indian Imperial Police, an excellent training\ncenter for dealing with the \"proles.\"\n\nThese critiques were an unsubtle ideological attacks on Orwell and quite frankly hatchet jobs (Sillen mistakenly declares Winston is shot at the end of *1984*). In reflexively attacking him for abandoning the cause in such a patent and crude manner, the inadvertently proved Orwell's point.\n\n*Sources*\n\nCaute, David. *Politics and the Novel During the Cold War*. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2010.   \n\nMeyers, Jeffrey, editor. *George Orwell: The Critical Heritage*. London: Routledge, 2011. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4z99ib", "title": "why can a far-sighted person just walk into a store and pick out the pair of reading glasses that matches their vision, but a near-sighted person has to go to the doctor and get a prescription?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z99ib/eli5_why_can_a_farsighted_person_just_walk_into_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6twxm2", "d6txhcb", "d6tz75i", "d6u0j3y", "d6u2sgp", "d6u2zn0", "d6u61bc", "d6u75ij", "d6u7mcm", "d6u9uyr", "d6uksff"], "score": [2, 361, 30, 34, 8, 2, 2, 6, 22, 3, 3], "text": ["They can't. Those reading glasses will not match the far sighted persons vision prescription. It will just be close enough for them to read.", "They can. A far-sighted person just needs the near-point of focus brought near enough so they can read. You can easily check this yourself, and it doesn't matter what it does to your vision for other distances, because you take them off for other purposes. \n\nA near-sighted person needs the exact amount of adjustment to correct their far-focus to infinity. (Without glasses, my far-focus point is about 10 inches.) Any increase in strength beyond that will move their near-focus point further out, so they can't read. They have to wear their glasses all the time, so this would be intolerable. \n\nNear-sighted people generally are capable of the full range of accommodation; it's just that the set-point is wrong so that it doesn't match the real world requirement. One you fix the set-point, they can have basically perfect vision. \n\nWhen people need reading glasses as they get older, it's because the lenses in their eyes have gotten less flexible. They no longer have the full range of accommodation. This means that they can not regain perfect vision with a single change to the set-point, so getting it exactly right is less important, and as I said, you can do it roughly yourself. \n\nEDIT: The other part of the equation is the people who wear strong corrective lenses all the time want designer frames, special high-refractive-index glass and correction of up to 10 diopters or more. That's why my glasses are an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive than pharmacy reading glasses. \n\nOK it does feel like a bit of a scam sometimes. ", "Reading glasses fall into the \"good enough\" category.  They work good enough to get the job done.  But they aren't as good as prescription glasses.\n\nI'm nearsighted and I use \"reading glass\" style goggles when open water swimming.  It's the same idea as reading glasses.  They're good enough that I can kind-of see when I'm trying to sight a course in the water, but they don't give me perfect vision.", "It's all about use. OTC reading glasses are usually used for a short period of time. If needed for an extended period, or by a person with astigmatism, prescription glasses will reduce eye strain and headaches. Near-sighted people need to wear glasses to walk around, drive a vehicle, and recognize a familiar person's face before s/he is too close to avoid. If near-sighted people could just grab a pair of glasses off the shelf without anyone checking to make sure their pupils are centered in the lenses, any astigmatism is corrected, and the glasses fit correctly, there would be many more people driving around believing their vision is fully corrected when it isn't.", "Reading glasses are just magnifying glasses. You can buy these in the toy section. \n\nDistance glasses correct for \"fuzzy\" vision far away and for astigmatism. Astigmatism means the cornea has two curved axes, i.e., it is shaped like a football rather than a basketball. The lens in distance glasses starts as a disc ground with two curvatures. Then the optician takes the disc and determines how to cut out the lens so that it sits in the frame correctly aligned with the astigmatism. Not available in the toy section. ", "OTC reading glasses as far as I know don't correct for astigmatism either they just have plus sphere. I know there are glasses out there that can adjust for -6 to +6 sphere  (_URL_0_) but they also leave out cylinder.", "People that wear drug-store glasses are generally (but not exclusively) older folks that basically have good vision. Their eyes have been fine their whole lives, but normal age-related changes to their eyes, for example, the small muscles that change the shape of their lens to see objects close up, change or fail. \n\nSo they can still basically see 'fine' more or less over very large distances. They can see a police officer half a mile down the highway, and they can read writing on a chalkboard in a classroom. It's just when they read or look at things close up, their eyes cannot \"accommodate\" so they have to throw on glasses that do the work their eye muscles used to do. \n\nPeople (like me) that have to wear glasses all the time have problems in a bunch of different ways. The shape of our eyes can be fouled up, e.g. oval instead of round, or the lenses in our eyes can be focusing the light on the wrong part of the back of our eyes, plus many more ways...\n\nAnother way of looking at it is, people that need reading glasses need help controlling their eyes over like 12-15 inches, or however far you hold a book from your face, whereas people who are able to see near objects, but not far away, need help controlling their eyes over distances of between one foot, and like twenty feet.\n\n------\n\nOld people with reading glasses have eyes that fail in one very specific way that affects their vision over a short range of distances.\n\nYoung people who wear glasses all day everyday have eyes that fail either in one specific way that affects their vision over long distances, or in many ways that affect their vision over long distances\n", "Isn't it rare that both eyes require the same correction for near sighted people? This would make it harder to do OTC.  I sure hope we can 3D print our own at some point.", "Optometrist here. It is legal to buy \"reading glasses\" only b cause it is legal to buy a magnifying glass (plus power) and to buy two of them held in the same frame. Manufacturers make them between +1.00 to +3.00 because that's what sells. Easy and cheap to make... Cheap to sell bare minimum. ANSI standards require dress frames to a certain durability; not routinely checked. If you're blurry, why is it blurry? Is it simply out of focus? If so, how much? Is it spherical or astigmatic? Higher order aberrations? Do you have a disease? If so, what kind? Corneal, like keratoconus? Lenticular, like cataracts or a subluxation from a systemic disease? What about macular degeneration? A retinal tear? What if it's a melanoma or even a pituitary adenoma? I've even caught a large glioma... There's a reason why glasses are considered a medical device. It's mostly so people get blurred vision checked out. They're free to get them wherever. Like food, you can go dirt cheap but it doesn't mean it's good for you...\n\nEdit: prior to hate. You get what you pay for with glasses, sometimes. Lenses are where to put the money, especially if you have a greater need. My advice, as with most things: get the best that you can afford... I don't care, personally. #shoplocal... But please make sure you're staying healthy and check yourself out regularly. ", "Well, with astigmatism the rotation of the glass lens has a big effect on how well the lenses work. You can rotate the lens slightly clockwise or counter clockwise and it will stop working even if it's the right prescription. So that might be one aspect of it.", "Doctors should probably be the ones determining your prescription if your driving is dependent on it. Reading, on the other hand - not quite so deadly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://adlens.com/product/adjustables/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6fvk46", "title": "why are ssns so damn insecure?", "selftext": "It is literally a card with nothing but a fancy design and number to it, and it can make or ruin someone's life.\n\nSince this is so important, why is it so insecure?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fvk46/eli5_why_are_ssns_so_damn_insecure/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dilawl3", "dilbikz", "dilbs2d", "dilkcjn", "diloy4z", "dilr0y1"], "score": [54, 38, 5, 21, 16, 6], "text": ["Because it wasn't designed to be secure. The fact that it is so important is because lots of organizations and groups have latched onto it as a unique identifier for lots of purposes outside of what it was intended for.", "They started issuing these numbers in 1936, and they were only intended to be your account number for your social security benefits.  That's it.   \n\nEverything else that has happened with them since then is an unauthorized use.   But there have been so many unauthorized uses that the government finally just gave up and let people do whatever they wanted with them.\n\nSo like Drafterman said, they weren't ever intended to be secure.", "Because social security (the people that issue the numbers) don't really care they just needed a unique identifier for working citizens. It doesn't even really need to be that secure for what they are doing. It's every body else that is piggybacking on this poor identifying system that gives it the ability to ruin your life. ", "Short answer: because it's being used in ways it wasn't designed for.\n\nSlightly longer answer: because a national ID card/number is incredibly useful but American paranoia prevented the creation of one. So all the industries and organizations that want to be able to differentiate one person from another wound up using the SSN for that, because it's the only de facto national ID number.", "Social Security Numbers aren't Secure because they weren't *meant* to be secure when they were created.\n\nSocial Security Numbers have no built-in safeguards, because they were originally just the number that the Social Security Administration used to figure out who you were a little quicker. They could, and still can, look you up based on other information. It was just an Account Number, and those don't need to be secure since the security is in the other associated information.\n\nThings went wrong when the IRS needed a way to identify people. The effort to make a National ID System got shot down because they were associated with the Nazis... so the IRS grabbed onto the next best thing: Social Security Numbers.\n\nMost people weren't required to get a SSN until they actually entered the workforce, but you *could* request one sooner. In order to encourage more people to get numbers, the IRS tied the Dependent Tax Break to the SSN of the child you're claiming on your taxes. Before that, the Dependent Tax Break ran on the Honor System. \n\n >  Side Note:\n\n >  There was a significant drop in the juvenile population, as far as the IRS could tell, when they started requiring a SSN associated with the child. Such is the effectiveness of the Honor System when money is at stake.\n\nThe Social Security Administration *discouraged* the IRS, because (as the old Social Security Cards used to say on their face) the SSN was not meant to be a method of identification. However, the IRS's use of the SSN for tax-records made using a SSN as ID look like a good idea to a lot of people. Thus... more groups began to do it.\n\nThat eventually brings us to today... and that insecure number being deathly important.", "[CGP Grey](_URL_0_) did a pretty good video about it not too long ago. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus"]]}
{"q_id": "xi25u", "title": "What effect has \"stranger danger\" had on people? I.E., have rates of certain phobias increased, etc.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xi25u/what_effect_has_stranger_danger_had_on_people_ie/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5misfn"], "score": [4], "text": ["Epidemiology is a very complex science, however I do not believe there is any method by which one could extrapolate the direct effect of \"stranger danger\" on the incidence/prevalence of phobias.  How would you even operationalize \"stranger danger\"?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4rjbd7", "title": "How did the Arabic word \"alcohol\" come into usage in Europe rather than the Latin word \"vocatus?\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rjbd7/how_did_the_arabic_word_alcohol_come_into_usage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d51n1ff", "d51sp6n"], "score": [42, 9], "text": ["Words very often get tied to a new technology or skill.  So they learn the name of the technology in the source language.\n\nAlcohol in Arabic (al kuhul) referred broadly to the process of distillation in any form, including eyeshadow or any fine powder.  This is true into the 18th century.  So it didn't refer to exclusively to the beverage until very late.\n\nThe other half of the story is that the Greeks and Romans fermented, but they didn't distill.  So when the skill of distillation spread, it used the Arabic word and the outcome was referred to as alcohol.  And since the word 'alcohol' applied not just to the liquid product, but the process by which the liquid product was achieved, it was going to stick.  \n\nEventually the word was then applied to a specific chemical compound that became known as 'alcohol'.  And since that compound is found in beer and wine as well, they became known as alcoholic beverages too.\n\nSo basically you can thank science for that one.", "Where are you getting \"vocatus\" from? I havent come across this\n\nAlso, the answer of pastillus_fartus is correct."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "41svz2", "title": "if \"the oceans are running out of fish\" why doesn't the price of fish go up significantly? (or at all?)", "selftext": "So there is a recent thread in /r/worldnews about the [\"oceans running out of fish\"](_URL_0_).\n\nNow I understand this is probably not meant literally (?) and maybe they are talking trends and being a little dramatic for effect, but I do remember reading about \"overfishing the ocean\" in general quite some time in the last couple of years.\n\nSo I guess my question is, why doesn't the price of fish go up? \n\nDoesn't any thing you sell on the international market rise in price if the supply gets lower?, and I understand this isn't a new thing, but has been going on for a while - so how do the price not seem to reflect that? \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41svz2/eli5_if_the_oceans_are_running_out_of_fish_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz4w9pz", "cz4wjle", "cz4wkkj", "cz4wv20", "cz4x4cp", "cz51mmf", "cz58hva", "cz59tzx", "cz5k5cw"], "score": [2, 7, 72, 11, 5, 35, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["because not all fish in the ocean are used from consumption.\n\nDon't worry though, Asian carps will be sold everywhere, the damn things are literally a pest.", "If you look into the price of Bluefin tuna in Japan (a rare and overfished species) you will see that a single Bluefin can cost as much as a sports car.", "A lot of fish are overfished, and are considered commercially extinct, but not extinct as a species. Meaning there are insufficient stocks of fish to continue harvesting them. And as the food chain changes, because we've destroyed a layer of the food chain, a different species may take that position and make it permanently impossible for the original species to recover.\n\nThe price of fish has gone up, farmed fish are helping replace that. For example, [Atlantic cod](_URL_0_) is almost impossible to buy at market. Current harvests are about 1% of what was previously caught. Same goes for haddock, red drum, and a few others. \n\nWhite abalone is almost extinct, in 1980, it was about $2/lb, before the fishery was closed in 1995, it was selling for almost $15/lb. \n\nYou should consider, it's cheaper now to grow farmed striped bass in the middle of the Arizona desert than it is to fish them in the oceans. That gives you a hint as to the scale of the problem.", "Fish are becoming more scarce but fishermen continue to become more and more efficient at getting fish, so they are still relatively inexpensive. \n\nAlso, farmed fish make up about half of fish sales. ", "What's going on is that certain species of fish are readily available and become popular to eat and people buy them up and they get overfished and the population collapses. Then the fishing industry moves on to new fish. People want *fish*, but not necessarily a specific species. So the fishing industry now searches for fish via *satellite* to find large schools of fish that are deeper or further away from shore than the usual fishing locations. These are fish populations that have never been fished before so there is an abundance of them. Species like orange roughy. They continue to catch orange roughy, then one day it will experience population collapse and they'll move on to another species. They can keep doing this, while the price of fish remains cheap because as of now, fish isn't scarce, just certain species of fish that will have populations that may never recover and may go extinct.\n\nA second reason why the price remains low is: slavery. Increasingly, slaves in southeast Asia are used in the seafood industry.  _URL_0_\n\n", "Let's use an analogy where you're a tree lot owner. You inherit three acres of nice maple-covered land and you decide to switch to wood as the primary source of heating for your house. Year one you cut, dry and burn the wood that's closest to the road. Year two, you have to go back in further a bit to cut more wood, so you buy an ATV and you can still get the same supply in to burn. Year three, you're at the back of the lot. Your supply is exactly the same - you get six cords of wood to burn... but then comes Year Four. You have nothing left but some small maple shrubs now. Suddenly the price you pay to acquire wood to burn goes way up.\n\nFisheries are the same. They completely collapse when very nearly the last schools of fish have been detected and harvested. Until then, the *current* supply is stable, and the price has to stay reasonable or people will buy something else. \n\nIt's only when boats start coming home empty that the impact of reduced supply will affect the price.", "Let's say that 1000 fish are caught each month, the total population of fish is 10000, and the population is replenished at a rate of 500/month. The population of fish is obviously declining and at the current rate will eventually perish, but at the moment that has no effect on the supply of fish in the market, which is still 1000/month.", "i think the price of fish has risen quite a bit in the last 10 years ---halibut now at 10-12 a pound flounder at 8-9 .the popularity of farmed fish like tilipia (very easy and quick to grow) finding a market .", "If the price of fish goes up, then it becomes more economical to produce fish in \"fish farms\".  Much of the fish we eat in the US already comes from Asia (even if you're eating at a restaurant on the coast of California that has waiters dressed like sailors, the fish may have come from China or the shrimp from Thailand).\n\n[From China, The Future of Fish](_URL_0_)\n\n[More Than One-Third of U.S. Shrimp May Be Mislabeled, Study Says](_URL_1_)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/41pe4d/oceans_running_out_of_fish_as_undeclared_catches/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_cod"], [], ["http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/slave-labor-shrimp-thailand-walmart-whole-foods/420837/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_44/b4201088229228.htm", "http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141030-shrimp-mislabeling-seafood-fraud-oceana-food/"]]}
{"q_id": "1kr9xu", "title": "I have read that the Koran was not translated and the meaning of the text was virtually unobtainable until fairly recently. what is the history of the translation of the Koran?", "selftext": "I read this in Benedict Anderson's, Imagined communities. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kr9xu/i_have_read_that_the_koran_was_not_translated_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbry5a3", "cbryahg", "cbs0kuw"], "score": [39, 10, 6], "text": ["fairly accurate. there use to be a strong cultural taboo about copying the koran into other languages. Arabic was considered a holy language, so to change it from Arabic to another language would literally alter the word of god. Another argument they made against translation was a word that has one meaning in its primary language, could have shades of unintended definitions. it wasn't translated into another language until ~880 CE under the orders. even in modern times this taboo extends. This is why every copy of the Koran includes the annotation that its only a translation and Arabic Korans are more accurate.", "\"**With it came down the Spirit of Faith and Truth; to your heart and mind, that you may admonish; in the perspicuous Arabic tongue**\" (Ash-Shu`ara' 26: 193-195).\n\n\n >  The task of translation is not an easy one; some native Arab-speakers will confirm that some Qur'anic passages are difficult to understand even in the original Arabic. A part of this is the innate difficulty of any translation; in Arabic, as in other languages, a single word can have a variety of meanings.[3] There is always an element of human judgement involved in understanding and translating a text. This factor is made more complex by the fact that the usage of words has changed a great deal between classical and modern Arabic.", "Would someone who speaks MSA be able to interpret the full meaning of the Koran or has Arabic changed that much since then?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5z0r3j", "title": "why do undocumented immigrants returning to mexico drive down wages there, but proponents of relaxed immigration say they don't do the same here?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z0r3j/eli5_why_do_undocumented_immigrants_returning_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["deud0nd", "deud3q9", "deudbfl", "deuec5z"], "score": [18, 7, 2, 6], "text": ["Essentially, they're saying that competition for wages in *Mexico* will increase because of the influx of skilled workers.\n\nThat is, the people gained skill in the US, and are now returning to Mexico as skilled workers--which (ironically enough) ends up meaning they're taking Mexican jobs away from Mexicans who have been there for years or decades. \n\nSince there will be an increase in skilled labor, that means there will be a corresponding increase in competition for jobs, which means wages will be driven down.\n\n > Is there someone who can explain to me economically whether undocumented immigrants are good or bad for the wages of American construction workers?\n\nIt could be good or it could be bad. It's a loss of talent, which means that jobs will open up. Depending on the labor pool in the area, that could cause a feeding-frenzy of job searching that drops wages down, or it could cause a higher demand (from employers) than supply (from employees) that would drive wages up. \n\nMy *personal opinion* is that the slow removal of illegal immigrants from the system (note: *slow.*) is a good thing, economically. A very fast removal would be a bad thing because it would totally upset the economy. None of that opinion even touches on whether it's a good *social policy.*\n\nEDIT: Fixed spelling mistake.\n", "It's because, by and large, undocumented immigrants can't get the same _kind_ of jobs in the US that they can get in their native country (e.g. Mexico). \n\nThe higher paying the job, the more difficult it is for an undocumented immigrant to get it. That's why you see a lot of undocumented immigrants doing agricultural work, food service work, manual labor, etc. But there are fewer undocumented immigrants in manufacturing jobs or skilled jobs like plumber or electrician or white collar jobs. Those sorts of employers are more likely to check on immigration status. \n\nSince undocumented immigrants are primarily in the jobs that are _already_ the lowest paying jobs in the US, they don't do much to drag the overall wages down. \n\nHowever, when they return to their native country where they are full citizens, they can compete for those higher paying jobs. More people in the job pool for those higher paying jobs can pull wages down. ", "Supply and demand rules suggest that if you remove a percentage of the work force (decreasing supply), the wages should increase with even demand. So if a percentage of American construction workers left and returned to Mexico, theoretically it should help American workers left.\n\nBut that might not be the case exactly, or as directly as in theory... Mexican immigrant workers might be paid under the table, reducing overhead costs of paying payroll and other taxes that would need to be done with legal workers. Immigrant workers might be willing to work for wages that just aren't sustainable for American workers, or they might be willing to do the tough/harsh condition/dirty/smelly jobs that Americans wouldn't be willing to do. As costs rise, some jobs will be scaled back or done by one's self, so in reality as costs increase then demand will decrease.\n\nFor example, let's say somebody want to build a deck in Arizona. Contractor bids $10k and hires 2 undocumented workers for $100 cash daily to assist. Now, they're gone and he has to hire workers and report their incomes, and they want $12/hr., don't want to work after 2pm due to the heat, so now the job's going to need to be charged at $14k and take 2 weeks longer to complete, so they can't move on to the next job. Home owner decides he and his buddy will do it themselves because cost is too high and take too long.", "Illegal immigrants in America do drive down wages for lower income positions. They provide an abundance of unskilled labor position that are generally filled under the table and at rates that legal tax paying Americans would not do the work for.  Their surplus of unskilled labor created an advantage in the market for employers to pay less and still fill their positions. It also increases unemployment rate.\n\nIf they leave the US they have the a similar impact on the lower class of the Mexican economy. It is the basic economic principle of supply and demand."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8r3apb", "title": "Get Cultured II, Acculturation and its Discontents! - Massive Cultural History Panel AMA", "selftext": "It has been a long time since we've done a panel AMA and even longer since we have[ done one on Cultural History](_URL_0_)! So let this be the day where we correct those mistakes.\n\nIf history if the record of our successes and mistakes as a species, than cultural history is perhaps our way of *expressing* those successes and failures. While many other species have demonstrated creativity and variety of culture, none have done so as widespread or as massively as humans have. As a field, cultural history is usually dated to Fran\u00e7ois Furet's 1978 essay *Interpreting the French Revolution* which attempted to locate the reasons for the French revolution away from Marxism and to a more general politico-cultural understanding. However, since then (and really, honestly, before) there has been an explosion in varieties of methods of cultural history.\n\nIn our last panel AMA, /u/depanneur wrote\n\n > So then, what is cultural history? Admittedly, it is a fairly nebulously defined subfield when compared to its sisters like economic or military history. Peter Burke answered the same question thusly: \u201cit still awaits a definitive answer.\u201d Cultural history can be done across time and space, and study nearly any aspect of a society: there exist cultural histories of animals, of clothing, of landscapes, finance, religious beliefs, warfare and so on. Burke posited that because cultural historians study such a multitude of subjects, it is their methods, not objects of study, which unites them:\n\n > \u201cthe common ground of cultural historians might be defined as a concern with the symbolic and its interpretation. Symbols, conscious or unconscious, can be found everywhere, from art to everyday life, but an approach to the past in terms of symbolism is just one approach among others.\u201d\n\nWhich is as good of an introduction as any. We are cultural historians! Ask us anything.\n\nWithout further ado, our list of panelist-participants:\n\n\n\n\n-------------------------\n\n/u/flotiste Western concert music (\"classical\" music), from the Renaissance to the mid 20th century. Particular areas of expertise:\n\n- propaganda music and banned music in the 3rd Reich\n- development of woodwind instruments\n- performance practices of opera\n- classical and romantic era of opera\n\nBackground is University education in music, specializing in flute and opera performance. Am an active professional flautist and opera singer.\n\n------------------------\n\n/u/depanneur  I study the terminology of insanity in old irish and also specialized in the history of emotions in early irish history\n---------------------\n\n/u/agentdcf: I am a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain, with particular thematic emphases in culture, environment, and food. My research is a cultural and environmental history of wheat, flour, and bread, and it stands at the intersection of several (usually separate) themes and methodologies: cultural history (which I would define as histories of \"meaning,\" broadly defined), social history, environmental history, food, science and medicine, the body, and consumption. I'm best-equipped to answer questions about food and ideas of nature, though I can take a stab at questions of cultural history across the West in the modern period. I have a lot of teaching experience in Western Civilization, world history, environmental history, and some US history (especially California, my home state); this has given me a long and global view of things, but a fairly spotty expertise.\n\n\n------------------\n\n/u/chocolatepot\n is a fashion historian, specializing in women's clothing from the 18th through early 20th centuries, and the author of Regency Women's Dress: Techniques and Patterns, 1800-1829. More broadly, she can answer questions relating to women and society during the same time period.\n\n\n----------------------------\n\nu/Stormtemplar\n, better known as Joe IRL is a recent graduate in literature, focusing on the Medieval period. His research interests are Medieval Literary Theory and the overlap between Oral and Literary Culture in the Middle Ages. He's happy to take a swing at any questions involving medieval intellectual or literary culture or the medieval mind generally, and has written a fair bit about the ideology of the Crusades on this sub.\n\n-------------------\n\n\n/u/itsallfolklore Ronald M. James, \n, is a historian of the American West and a trained folklorist who has worked with Western American as well as European beliefs and traditions. He can address general topics dealing with folklore - understanding that no one can answer specific questions about all the world's traditions. Specifically, he can discuss topics dealing with the folklore/culture of Northern Europe and the American West. James is about to release a book on Cornish folklore, dealing with topics including storytelling as well as Celtic studies and its relationship to Scandinavia.\n\n-----------------------\n\nu/drylaw is a phd candidate studying native authors of central colonial Mexico and their relation to the pre-Hispanic past. For this AMA he can also talk about history writing on the Aztec-Spanish war and more generally on early Spanish America. Connected interests include transcultural studies, colonial and intellectual history.\n\n\n-------------------------\n\n/u/amandycat I studied a Masters degree in early modern English literature, focusing on Christopher Marlowe's drama in my dissertation. I am now part-way through a PhD on early modern manuscript culture, in particular, the way in which epitaphs are presented in manuscripts (if this kind of thing tickles your fancy, you will probably enjoy the episode of the AH Podcast I took part in recently). Ask me anything about the early modern English theatre, early modern manuscripts, and death culture!\n\n\n--------------------------------\n\n\n/u/Commiespaceinvader is a PhD student writing about everyday life in Serbia under German occupation. In the course of his research he is applying cultural history as a method, especially history from below, history of everyday life and microhistory.\n\n\n---------------------\n\n\n\nu/bigfridge224 aka Stuart Mickie \n is a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Manchester in the UK. His research is on magic and religion in the Roman north-west, but he's happy to cover anything relating to Roman cultural or social history if he can!\n\n-------------\n\n/u/AnnalsPornographie, aka Brian Watson is primarily a historian of the book, but focuses specifically on the history of pornography and obscenity, with a heavy focus on histories of sexuality, marriage, and privacy. He he is the author of *Annals Of Pornographie: How Porn Became Bad*. He is happy to answer questions about the overlap between cultural and intellectual historians, or how the book can be a cultural force.\n\n\n-----------\n\n\nAlso around are /u/historiagrephour and /u/sunagainstgold, I'm just waiting on their bios :)\n\n\nPlease feel free to address your questions to the panel as a whole or to individuals by tagging them with the /u/ tag. Also of note: not everyone is here! This AMA will run from noon today until noon tomorrow.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8r3apb/get_cultured_ii_acculturation_and_its_discontents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0o2xjs", "e0o47wc", "e0o4gku", "e0o7net", "e0o8v8f", "e0o8y5t", "e0o90ng", "e0oaqac", "e0ob0l1", "e0obvu5", "e0od4xi", "e0oicvp", "e0ojomk", "e0ooyw5", "e0or6fz", "e0ot4bt"], "score": [8, 9, 6, 8, 12, 7, 7, 8, 7, 6, 3, 5, 3, 3, 4, 3], "text": ["Here's my opening gambit for the whole panel:\n\nWhat does cultural history mean to you? How do you research something as squiggly or as weird, something that's not just the cold hard facts ma'am?\n\n", "Does the panel think that cultural history will reach (or perhaps has reached!) the same point of ubiquity that social history seemed to after a few decades - that its methods and questions will have become so broad and all-encompassing that virtually everyone is doing cultural history in one way or another?", "How hard is it to get a more whole picture of a cultural history when literacy for poorer people was relativity low. Also a second question what is looked for to build a cultural history for a non writing people.", "How can historians situate difficult aspects of cultural history (unpleasant attitudes, behaviors and attitudes that seem alien to many modern people, material goods that serve a somewhat obscure purpose, etc.) when we're engaging with the public without making out the past and its inhabitants as totally alien or falling into polite inaccuracies? I know this is an *incredibly* broad question, and any of you might have the opposite problem altogether, but feel free to approach it from whatever angle you feel like. ", "I teach AP World History to 9th and 10th graders. \n\nCultural and social history is obviously of far greater emphasis in college curriculum than it was a few decades ago, yet my students find them the most boring of the five AP framework categories (Social, Political, Interaction with Environment, Cultural, Economic). \n\nI find this especially with male students- they want the battles, they want the great men and the rise and fall. Not so interested in social hierarchies/patriarchy. \n\nWhat would be your advice to make complex social/cultural history more accessible/interesting for them?", "What are some examples of cultural historical context (that the general educated population might not know) that would paint a commonly known historical occurrence in a whole new light?", "Did Japonism have an effect on fashion in Europe? I know of the art that has been inspired by Japonism but did it affect what people wore and start any trends, was it mainly limited to just kimonos being fashionable?", "Hi u/depanneur\n\nHow ubiquitous is belief in Irish magic / paganism / the fae today? Has Ireland preserved some of their magicoreligious traditions better than other European regions?", "u/Stormtemplar\n\nWhat would be considered popular literature to a peasant of 12th century Europe? Right at the cusp between a literary culture and an oral one, Europe in the premodern period must have been awash with legends, ancient folklore, and biblical allegory. We're any predominant before the Crusades? If so, was this due to direct involvement from the Church or was it a symptom of a highly Christianized society?", "Big thanks to all the contributors to the panel!\n\nHow do cultural historians incorporate concepts like contingency and individual choice into their understanding of their subjects?  A lot of social and cultural history gets stereotyped as vast impersonal forces driving history, with all of us just along for the ride, so I'd be interested in seeing how these different forces interact.", "You all seem to talk about cultural transmission by way of books or oral history. What about other media? I'll give an example: after WW2 most italians were uneducated. Many had only a few years of school and had not even finished the elementary schools (5th grade) and many were complete analphabets. Television changed all this. On the Rai tv channel a school teacher began to give lessons on writing, reading and other basic stuff and the rate of alphabetisation changed dramatically. That's why the Rai channel was called \"mamma Rai\" (mother Rai) for a long time, by the way.", "The late Medieval \"Book of Hours\" (or books as if I understand correctly there were innumerable different versions) was a mega popular and important literary and religious work, surpassing in numbers any other written work in circulation, including the Bible. How did this come about, and why was the Book of Hours so popular?", "Hi /u/itsallfolklore, I know it's not your specialty but maybe you could recommend me some literature on pre-Christian West Slavic folklore? I'm not particularly picky, anything that you think or heard is worthwhile I'd be willing to check out. Thanks!", "Big thanks to all. I worry this maybe pushing the bounderies a tad, but how would you all define \"Diaspora\", specifically around the 10th century in Northern Europe? I'm doing an undergrad level essay on it and am happy with what I have, just wondering what other people think.\n\nSomewhat related, how far would you say Scandinavians and Vikings could be entwined as a culture? Ie were they the same, or would you think Vikings were just one section of society?\n\n\nBest \n\n", "[u/chocolatepot](_URL_0_) \n\nIn a light of a recent controversy about cheongsam, when a Canadian teenager was accused in the most ignorant and ironic fashion of \"culturally appropriating\" this autochthonic Chinese dress, I would like to ask how prevalent were fusion dresses like this? Have Japanese or Koreans crafted dresses similarly influenced by the Western fashion? Have \"Oriental\" styles influenced the Western fashion?\n\n[u/AnnalsPornographie](_URL_1_) \n\nHow did child pornography become not just illegal, but deeply immoral?\n\nI read (don't ask me where) that magazines containing child pornography were sold semi-openly in Northern European countries until the 70s. Taking a glance at [Wikipedia article on the US legislation](_URL_2_),  the laws against it begun picking at the 80s. Nowadays the stigma of associating with any sexual crime related to children is often worse than one associated with a murder. This for me indicates a deep cultural shift.", "/u/agentdcf --  re: the 19th century especially, I was wondering if you have come across sources that mention composting (now a very common practise in organic gardening/farming) as I have found little mention of it. Also, how was human waste dealt with by farmers \u2014 did they incorporate it into manuring practises? again, I find little mention of this\u2026 Finally, have you found sources mentioning what methods of pest control farmers employed for wheat and other crops, since at that time there were no petro-chemical solutions? Thanks!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/?utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_medium=usertext&amp;utm_name=askhistorianspanel&amp;utm_content=t3_8kesna"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/u/chocolatepot", "https://www.reddit.com/u/AnnalsPornographie", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_United_States"], []]}
{"q_id": "rha87", "title": "Does a male child always receive the penis-size gene from his father? (If a father has a small penis, will his child also have a small penis? Or does the mother's genes factor in?)", "selftext": "I'm hoping any future male offspring of mine won't have to live the shitty small-penis life I've lived.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rha87/does_a_male_child_always_receive_the_penissize/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c45v52x"], "score": [10], "text": ["There are many things that influence penis size. However, the main factor seems to be a hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT). It is derived from testosterone by an enzyme called 5 alpha-reductase (5ARD). It is found in higher concentrations in genital skin. This leads to \"virilization\" of genitals. Women with higher androgen levels (the class of hormones T  &  DHT belong to), tend to have misshapen genitals with a larger than normal clitoris. Men with a reduced amount of 5ARD, called 5 alpha-reductase deficiency, have less virilized genitals at birth, but then experience a significant growth in penis size at puberty because the vast amounts of androgens released compensates for the reduction in 5ARD. This is particularly common in one village in the Dominican Republic, and is locally known as \"Guevedoces\" which translates literally to \"penis at 12\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "deexoh", "title": "What is it about our place in the galaxy which makes it so conducive for the existence of life? What about our place in the greater clusters and beyond?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/deexoh/what_is_it_about_our_place_in_the_galaxy_which/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f2uztgs"], "score": [24], "text": ["While our place in the *solar system* is important for Earth to have the right temperature range for liquid water, it's still debated whether our place in the *galaxy* is important or not.\n\nIn the past, there has been some talk about a \"galactic habitable zone\". This is a combination of two effects.\n\nIn the middle of the galaxy, there are a lot more stars. This means there's a lot more radiation, which can break up the complex molecules you need for life. It could even boil off an atmosphere over time. So you might be less likely to have advanced life near the centre of the galaxy.\n\nBut to get a planet in the first place, you need to have heavy elements in the star system. Most of the universe is hydrogen and helium, and the heavy elements are only formed in stars, and then ejected into the hydrogen/helium mix in the galaxy. The gas all gets stirred up and mixed, but it's not completely evenly mixed. Because there are more stars in the middle of the galaxy, you get more heavy elements. There are fewer stars as you go further out, so the density of heavy elements goes down. So if you're on the outskirts of the galaxy, you might not expect there to be enough silicon  &  carbon for you to form many rocky planets.\n\nThis gives you a \"galactic habitable zone\". If you're too far out, you don't get many planets. If you're too far in, you get too much radiation. And we happen to be about half-way out from the centre of our galaxy, which is a small (but not very significant) confirmation.\n\n*However*, it's debated whether these effects are very strong. We seem to find planets all over the place, around all sorts of stars. We're also finding complex molecules just floating around in interstellar space, so they look more robust than we expected. It may be that you're a *little more likely* to have life in certain parts of the galaxy, but it might not really be a strong effect. In turn, this means that there's probably not a strong difference in habitability between different galaxies either."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ji8ef", "title": "why are some animals tasty and some not? would we be tasty if prepared properly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ji8ef/eli5why_are_some_animals_tasty_and_some_not_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d36ss27", "d36svon", "d36sxcu", "d36sz1t", "d36uvsl", "d373n9q"], "score": [7, 28, 8, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Which animals are not tasty? I'm pretty sure that's entirely a matter of personal preference and you could find someone who enjoys any kind of meat.", "In terms of meat I would imagine it's down to the consistency and texture of the cut as well as the amount of fat to be found.\n\nHuman beings may or may not be delicious, depending on whether or not you're a fan of veal.\n\n[William Seabrook](_URL_0_) was a guy from about a hundred years ago who got to try out some human meat while on a trip to Guinea. He had this so say: \n\n\"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.\"\n\nVeal is really tender and flavourful and fatty, so if you've got taste buds like most of the rest of us, you'd probably find TASTING your BUD to be a pretty yummy experience. ", "I've eaten a ton of non-traditional animals including bear and lion.\n\nYou know how when you get some spicy food the smell comes out of your pores? Animals eat stuff that is way more \"flavorful\" shall we say than curry so you would never want to eat vulture or possum. Some animals (a lot) have a natural \"gaminess\" and this is just species-dependent. Like elk, it is gamey but it just eats the same thing a cow might eat. Other animals have tasty parts but are by and large too lean and tough to eat (horse is a good example). Some animals like bear and wild boar are far too parasite-ridden to \"prepare properly\" (from a culinary, not safety standpoint).\n\nPeople taste like pork apparently.", "I remember reading, years ago, that lions in Kenya etc. developed a taste for human flesh because we're saltier than their typical prey. If that's true, then how we taste would depend on how much salt you like in your food. ", "Taste is subjective. What one person finds tasty, another finds disgusting and vice-versa. Assuming it is fresh meat from a healthy animal, that is not toxic, odds are good someone, somewhere finds it delicious. There are people who would tell you that guinea pigs are the single most delectable meat there is. I've had some things that a lot of other people haven't tried. I can tell you the animals diet makes quite an impact, as does how active they are. Some are stringy, sinewy, and the texture is just unpleasant. Some are succulent and juicy but have a very irony, liver-y taste that I find unappealing. Then again, others will disagree. \n\nAs far as human flesh, there are those who say it is quite tasty. I haven't eaten any, so I cannot say...but I'm thinking there's a reason human meat is referred to as \"long pig\". ", "There is a video out there where these two men have parts of their body surgically removed like a small chunk of skin from their butt or leg and prepared for the other person to eat. It was conducted on live television in some European country either Sweden or Switzerland. I am not really sure about the country to be honest. Both of the men said that it tasted good.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Seabrook"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2gjw3c", "title": "can somebody just explain \"infinity\" to me?", "selftext": "I've been thinking about the fact that there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2, but none of those numbers will ever be 3.\n\nThis is wrinkling my brain. How does that even work? Infinite means \"never ending\" right? By that logic how can Infinity not include Everything?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gjw3c/eli5_can_somebody_just_explain_infinity_to_me/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckjs39p", "ckjs5kd", "ckjstoo", "ckjth5x", "ckjtmkl", "ckjto3e", "ckju4jy", "ckju7o1", "ckjwe8b", "ckjxhiu"], "score": [16, 5, 9, 2, 4, 11, 2, 58, 2, 2], "text": ["Hey, current mathematics student here, I'll do my best. So, in your question, you specified \"between 1 and 2\", and asked, \"why doesn't that include 3?\", and that's sort of like asking \"When I go hunting for mammals, why don't I ever get any fish?\" and the answer is, fish aren't in the set of things known as mammals, just like the number 3 isn't in the set of numbers between 1 and 2\n\nedit:words", "Everything is by definition finite, as it includes all there is. Infinity  can be a tricky concept, specially because depending on the context its used, there are different types or definitions for infinity. This introduces concepts like one type of infinity being larger that another, which may sound counterintuitive at first. There are many good articles about it, but this video is a good simple explanation. _URL_0_", "Infinity is a very complicated topic in maths, and often counter intuitive. An easy way to visualise your example is by construction:\n\n1. Start with a list of numbers containing just 1 and 2\n2. Pick 2 consecutive numbers in the list and take the average (eg. 1  &  2 becomes 1.5)\n3. This is clearly always between 1 and 2 so add to the list\n4. Go to step 2\n\nFrom this simple algorithm, you should hopefully be able to see that at no point you would have any trouble finding a new number between 1 and 2, hence the list is infinite.\n\n---\n\nBut, if you find that confusing, consider the fact that there are *more* numbers between 1 and 2 than there are natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4,...) despite the latter being infinite.\n\nA quick way to visualise this is to take any number, n, and consider 1 + 1/n. So you would have 1.5, 1.33..., 1.25, and so on. This new list of numbers has a one-to-one ratio with the natural numbers, but you can see the gaps between this and the list you mentioned. (note: this isn't a proof; the proof involves irrational numbers and is a bit more complicated)\n\nGenerally, we consider two lists to be equally infinite if there is a one-to-one link between them. But, again, this is counter intuitive!\n\nThe natural numbers (1, 2, 3, ...) is equally infinite with the even numbers (2, 4, 6, ...) because there is a one-to-one link: natural 1 maps to even 2; natural 2 maps to even 4; etc.\n\nSource: I'm a mathematician\n\n[Numberphile](_URL_0_) is probably better at explaining it than me!", "Pick a number. Infinity is bigger than any number you might pick. Also, infinity is itself not a number so you cannot pick infinity. \n\n", "BS in Mathematics here... This one always helped me.\n\n1+0.1+0.01+0.001.... This series will infinitely grow in size but never reach 2.. that idea kind of blew my mind...\n\nHere's another example:\n _URL_0_\n\nThis koch snowflake has a finite area yet an infinite perimeter.  Crazy stuff.", "You may be confusing \"infinity\" with \"everything.\"\n\nYou can think of infinity as uncountable. If something is infinite, no matter how many you count, there are more. For example, if you count natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...) you can never reach the end because there is always more to count! No matter how big the number, you could always add 1 more. Therefore, the set of natural numbers is *infinite*.\n\nBut notice, the \"infinite set of natural numbers\" is not *everything*. It doesn't include 1.5, pi, *i* - and those are all numbers. It also doesn't include you, me, the colour purple, the sound of laughter.\n\nLikewise, when you look at the numbers between 1 and 2, you can always find another fraction that fits between any two. For example, 1.1, 1.01, 1.001, 1.0001, etc. You can keep finding smaller and smaller bits between 1 and 2 and never run out -- it's *infinite*. However, it's not *everything* and you will not find 2.1 or the colour red, or 3.", " >  Infinite means \"never ending\" right?\n\nClose enough.\n\nSo that gives us: \"there is a never-ending amount of numbers between 1 and 2\".\n\nWhich basically means \"make up any list of numbers between 1 and 2 you like - you'll have missed some\".\n\nHere's one such list of numbers:\n\n1.1\n\n1.11\n\n1.111\n\n1.1111\n\n...etc...\n\nAll those numbers are between 1 and 2. There is a never ending amount of them. None of them is 3.\n\n(There's more to say on this subject, but hopefully the above helps with your specific question).\n", "Infinite doesn't mean everything. It just means that counting it doesn't ever come to an end. \n\nI'll give you a simple example. You know that the integers are infinite. If you start counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...., you'll never come to an end. But it's also true that if you just count the evens 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...., you'll also never come to an end. So the evens are infinite too, even though it is missing ALL the odd numbers. \n\nSo the first thing to erase in your head is that \"infinite\" means \"everything\". ", "The most interesting thing I've ever heard about infinity is that the numbers 1 and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or any number are the same distance away from infinity", "It's a harder topic than you think, because there are \"levels of infinity,\" described by the transfinite mathematics of Cantor.\n\nLevels of infinity are designated by the Hebrew letter aleph and a number. Aleph-0 is the infinity you find in integers {...-2, -1, 0, 1, 2,...} There are an infinite (aleph-0) number of integers.\n\nBut between *every pair of integers,* there is an infinite number of real numbers (...1.000001, 1.000002,...}. That's aleph-1, and it's a \"bigger infinity\" than aleph-0. It's \"infinity squared,\" if you will. Things get a little weird after that.\n\nThe most common mistake laymen make about infinity is assuming that it MUST be all-inclusive. That is, if time and space are infinite (they are not), then somewhere, there MUST be a planet that is exactly like Earth in every last detail, except you have brown eyes instead of blue eyes. The formal term mathematicians apply to this argument is \"bullshit.\" It's trivial to make an infinite list of integers that doesn't contain a single odd number, nor any number evenly-divisible by 6,280,324. This fact does not change even when you toss in some vague concept of \"random.\" An infinite, genuinely-random list of integers MIGHT contain numbers divisible by 6,280,324, but there is no guarantee of it.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://vihart.com/how-many-kinds-of-infinity-are-there/"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elvOZm0d4H0"], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ugwr9", "title": "What would be the easiest way to destroy a star?", "selftext": "More specifically if I wanted to destroy a star for some reason, what would I need and how would I do it. \n\nTo be clear i'm not planning anything, I'd just like to know for science! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ugwr9/what_would_be_the_easiest_way_to_destroy_a_star/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4vatvq"], "score": [3], "text": ["Probably taking it apart through [star lifting](_URL_0_).\n\n\"Easiest\" is relative."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting"]]}
{"q_id": "3mlzxb", "title": "Do black holes interact with the electromagnetic field? If so, what kind of interaction?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3mlzxb/do_black_holes_interact_with_the_electromagnetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvh06za"], "score": [3], "text": ["Black holes can have net electric charge (say, if it had been constructed entirely out of protons and no electrons), in which case they interact with the electromagnetic field just as a charged particle would. It's important to note that while a (classical) black hole has no memory of what fell into it (e.g. protons) it DOES (and MUST) remember their electric charge. Energy, angular momentum, and charge are the only things a black hole remembers of what falls in (see [no-hair theorem](_URL_0_)).\n\nMore interestingly (in my opinion at least) electromagnetic fields interact *gravitationally* with black holes; the most significant effect being that charged black holes produce their own EM field which has its own gravity and modifies the structure of the black hole. There is a maximum charge that a black hole can have before its singularity becomes exposed (without an event horizon) and these 'extremal' black holes are important theoretical objects even though most astrophysical black holes are almost certainly electrically neutral."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hair_theorem"]]}
{"q_id": "h41o7", "title": "askscience Geologists/ Archaeologists, is heating magma and pouring it into molds impossible?", "selftext": "Hi, I am currently writing a paper on Tihuanaco. This is for a college level writing class so it's not strictly speaking a research paper but more of an exploratory paper. I was studying the rocks of Tihuanaco / Puma Punku in Bolivia and was wondering: would it have been possible to either heat rocks until they turn to magma or rather gather magma running from a volcano into a mold? I know this seems ridiculous but I haven't found a reasonable answer online. Thank you.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h41o7/askscience_geologists_archaeologists_is_heating/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1sec7e", "c1sel6i", "c1ses89", "c1sf54b"], "score": [4, 6, 32, 3], "text": ["I don't see why not. On a side note, magma is molten rock underneath the surface. It is called lava when exposed.\n\nEdit: This is speaking from the point of view of chemistry.", "I don't know a lot about lava.  But I do know some things about crucibles, though not of the Bolivian sort.  The best crucibles out there for many centuries were Hessian crucibles, from Germany.  As it turns out, they have a special clay and process that leads to an extremely resilient crucible.  If you want, you can read more about Hessian crucibles and their unique mullite structure [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_).\n\nBut back to your question.  Based on the temperature of lava that wikipedia shows (700-1200 C), high-quality ceramic crucibles should be able to support lava.\n\nThere are some issues.  First, I don't know exactly how you'd get a person close enough to the lava to pick it up.  That seems hard.  Again, I don't know what sort of crucibles the Andean folks had.\n\nAre you suggesting that that's how they built their city?  If you are, you may want to rethink it.", "Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii where we have active volcanoes and we play with lava.\n\nWe often hike to the surface flow, armed with shovels, molds, kitchen utensils, and chicken.\n\nLava scooped from surface flows is very easy to mold.  We use kitchen wisks to pull lava and twist it into little statues.  You can pour lava into any type of mold that can handle things like glass (lava is 2000 degrees F when liquid). You can actually use cold lava rock itself as a mold since hot lava will not melt cold lava in the amount of time it has, before it cools.\n\nCooking in lava is a blast (google \"Cooking in lava\") - we wrap the chicken/pork in many layers of Ti leaves (you could also use banana leaves) then take shovels full of hot lava and pour it over the chicken (you need to leave a small steam hole or the lava will explode as the chicken cooks).  Takes 45 minutes for the chicken to cook - then you smash the now-cold lava with the shovel, unwrap the last few layers of burnt leaves, and enjoy the tasty chicken.\n\nWe've been in the middle of nowhere, cooking chicken in lava - only to have some tourists appear saying \"my wife SWORE she smelled chicken cooking - I said Out here? No way... but here you are\".\n\nBasically, lava is no different than glass (temperature wise) - and can be molded in much the same way.  The BIGGEST problem is getting it to cool slowly enough that it doesn't fracture internally, making it brittle.\n\nEDIT:  Note... for those wanting pictures, scroll down further to another readers comments where I have posted photos in response.", "Hey, I am a Geologist. It is possible both to heat rocks until they are molten, and to mold molten lava, but it is highly unlikely that ancient societies did that. First, heating rock: different rocks have different melting temperatures, so a basaltic lava flow can be significantly lower temperature than a rhyolite flow would have to be. That means that you can also re-melt basalt more easily. That being said, it is a process which requires an oven at ~ 800 degrees. Containing or casting basalt would be simpler on a small scale. As KaneHau said, the basalt will cool quickly enough that a hole dug in the ground or other basalt will not be effected by the lava. The main issue I think would be getting the basalt into a cast without personal injury (if you didn't have modern protection). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/staff/martinon_torres/usercontent_profile/Martinon-Torres_et_al_2008_JACS.pdf", "http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/people/staff/rehren/usercontent_profile/MMTRehrenMaterialityCruciblesAmetry51.pdf"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6r8md8", "title": "Did the knights of medieval Europe ever study battle techniques of ancient or foreign cultures?", "selftext": "Did the knights of medieval Europe study the battle techniques of other cultures? Either ancient such as the Romans, Greeks or Persians; or concurrent at the time such as Chinese, Arabian or African.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6r8md8/did_the_knights_of_medieval_europe_ever_study/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3qi38"], "score": [12], "text": ["Follow-up question: How much strategy would an average knight would have known in the middle ages? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "11g837", "title": "Humans have huge brains. It's that the only thing we have going for us?", "selftext": "I am always fascinated by the feats some animals can do, their amazing senses and evolution and adaptations. So... Besides our brains, do humans have any other kick-ass things that other animals would be jealous of?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11g837/humans_have_huge_brains_its_that_the_only_thing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6m6quv", "c6m6rbh", "c6m6xah", "c6m85m4", "c6m8tmc", "c6m9pju", "c6ma729", "c6mchn4"], "score": [36, 25, 22, 4, 6, 5, 2, 5], "text": ["We sweat!  This gives us very impressive endurance compared to most of the animal kingdom.", "opposable thumbs, though some other animals have this as well. ", "Bipedal motion and the ability to sweat makes us the best long distance runners.\n\nRelevant: _URL_0_", "Having huge brains has several more specific advantages that just extra processing power, language probably being the most salient.  We also have opposable thumbs and locking knees, which allow additional manual dexterity and the ability to stand and walk upright for extended periods of time.", "We actually have one sense that is good enough to compete with almost any other animal - our sense of touch! Our fingertips can sense differences as small as one tenth of a millimeter. \n\nWe may not have anything on the star-nosed mole though...", "This is not mine, I copied it to notes from another post. I'm sorry to the guy that wrote this, it is an amazing read and I will search high and low to add your name here. \n\n\n**Aspects of language:** mainly in how complex we can make it, and our ability to change it so quickly. Animals also communicate in very complex ways and we are still discovering new modes of communication. Some species display tendencies of recursiveness, syntax, regional dialects and other aspect of language that one might consider \"human\". This is a highly debated area. I tend to think that animals can have very complex modes of communication, ones that certainly meet their needs, however humans are still able to take advantage of our cognitive abilities - which enable us to form even more complex modes of communication.\n\n**Aspects of cognition**: We know that animals are capable of cognitive reasoning, problem solving, they teach and learn, they feel many if not all the emotions we feel especially mammals, they are capable of deception, lying, cheating etc. They have a concept of the \"self\" and \"others\". \n\nHowever, humans do stand apart in some key areas of cognition. Some researchers surmise that cooperative breeding enhances the performance of social cognitive domains and it also motivates the individual to share mental states with others. [Cooperative breeding](_URL_1_) is a social system where mothers require help from others to raise their offspring - all human cultures exhibit this trait and this developed because we are bipedal and have [trouble giving birth](_URL_1_). Combined, cooperative breeding and the motivation to share mental states leads to [shared intentionality](_URL_3_), which is the ability and desire to work collaboratively with others towards a shared goal, as well as understanding that others are aware of your intentions. Cooperative breeding in primates to date is observed only in callatrichids and humans, both of which exhibit shared intentionality. What sets apart humans from other cooperative breeders with shared intentionality is our ancestral ape-level cognitive system. The unique combination of social cognitive skills, ape-level cognitive skills and shared intentionality led to the development of our species-specific traits, including language and enhanced cultural transmission. Our ape-level cognitive skills stem from freed grasping hands, our tool use and ability to solve complex problems.\n\nIn theory, extant apes have all the necessary cognitive preconditions (i.e. simple understanding of others mental states) approximating humans but they lack the motivational components of cooperative breeding, and thus lack shared intentionality. However, groups of chimpanzees hunting involve the delegation of tasks (i.e herders, ambushers) where all participants must assess the others hunting position and effectiveness in order to successfully carry out a shared goal. What is contested is whether they understand that together they are dedicated to the shared goal, a key component of shared intentionality.\n\n**Aspects of Culture** [Animals posses culture](_URL_2_) in much the same way we do. There are countless examples and I would be happy to provide them but this post is already long enough. Human culture is only different in one way - we build upon previous experience. Known as the ratchet effect we can take someone else's idea and change it slightly to build on it, the previous idea is never lost. Our knowledge is continuously building upon its self. Animals have a harder time accomplishing this, if a novel idea is presented it takes a long time for it to take hold.   \n\n**Fire and Cooking**\n\nI think fire and learning to cook food definitely changed the way our brains work - only fire and cooking predate humans. Physical fire and cooking evidence dates back 400,000-700,000 years. Things like fire pits and charred remains. Morphological evidence dates back 1.2 million years with Homo erectus being the first hominid to show morphological changes due to a change in diet - the teeth change, the length of the intestine changes etc. If the hominin body underwent such drastic changes as a result of cooking food, then why not the brain as well?\n\nFun fact - there is a chimpanzee named Kanzi, who learned without training how to [build a fire and cook food](_URL_0_). So it is not necessarily that our closest cousins can't do something we think is uniquely human - they lack the motivation to do so. Natural selection only acts on existing traits or behaviours. \n\nRemember that this area of science is moving forward really fast, we are discovering more and more each day. Its hotly contested part of science - sometimes for personal reasons. My favourite quote that revolves around this topic is this: \"\u201cEverybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it\u2019ll spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.\u201d \u2013 Albert Einstein\". We need to make sure we are testing animal's intelligence in their own right - not based off of our own preconceptions or misconceptions.\n\n**References**\n\nBurkart, J.M., Hrdy, S.B., and van Schaik, C.P. 2009. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive. Evolutionary Anthropology. 18:175-176.\nTomasello, M., Carpenter, M. Call, J., Behne, T., and Moll, H. 2005.\n\n Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition. Behavioural and Brain Sciences. 28: 675-735.\nTomasello, M., and Carpenter, M. 2007. Shared intentionality. Developmental Science. 10: 121-125.\n\nHrdy, S.B. 2009. Mothers and Others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, University Press.\n\nHuman Adaptation to the Control of Fire by RICHARD WRANGHAM AND RACHEL CARMODY.Evolutionary Anthropology 19:187\u2013199 (2010) \n\nTL;DR Animals and Humans are more akin then we previously thought, what defines us and led to our unique cognitive abilities stems from our evolutionary past and a combination of factors - shared intentionality, cooperative breeding, ape-like cognitive abilities - that work in together within our species. Where as in other animals they may not have the exact combination of these factors.", "We have developed very large differences due to our love of sex!  The males have large penises for our size and the females have permanently enlarged breasts and preferentially store fat in rounded attractive buttocks, rather than in their belly like men do.\n\n\"When compared to other primates, including large primates such as the gorilla, the human penis is largest, both in absolute terms and in relative size to the rest of the body.\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"The sex appeal of rounded female buttocks and plump breasts is both universal and unique to the human primate\"\n\n_URL_1_", "Throwing. Accurately, far and quite hard. In fact it appears that the [size-weight illusion](_URL_0_) exists to allow us to choose rocks that we can throw the furthest. ([source](_URL_1_))"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting"], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080050/Now-thats-chim-PAN-zee-Meet-monkey-fry-burgers.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_breeding", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture", "http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/pdf/Publications_2007_PDF/Shared_intentionality_07.pdf"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size", "http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/14/breast-size-evolution"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size-weight_illusion", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;_udi=B6T6H-51XFXWG-1&amp;_user=1111158&amp;_coverDate=01%2F11%2F2011&amp;_rdoc=1&amp;_fmt=high&amp;_orig=gateway&amp;_origin=gateway&amp;_sort=d&amp;_docanchor=&amp;view=c&amp;_acct=C000051676&amp;_version=1&amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;_userid=1111158&amp;md5=de199b626ea59b7b94d00e9aa1055039&amp;searchtype=a"]]}
{"q_id": "6lzlzw", "title": "Do we know how \"smooth\" was the dissolution of KGB? How significant was the initial overlap in personnel with the FSK and later FSB? Were the methods and role of KGB ever officially condemned by the new organizations (or the state)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6lzlzw/do_we_know_how_smooth_was_the_dissolution_of_kgb/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djyj8j7", "djytmjt"], "score": [6, 8], "text": ["[I asked a similar question during Espionage week and got good responses](_URL_0_) from /u/k1990, /u/Slide_Jeremy, and /u/klieslowskifan.", "This is a question that is very difficult to answer within a twenty year time frame, because certain developments set in motion in 1991 did not reach fruition until the 2000s. I am almost entirely drawing from Soldatov and Borogan's *The New Nobility*, which is technically a piece of journalism but that sort of thing is neccesary given the topic, and they are generally considered the experts on the topic of the FSB.\n\nThe broad answer to your question of whether the transfer was smooth is is yes and no. The KGB was a very sprawling organization with an enormous amount of power that was still tightly controlled by the Communist Party (a feature that differentiates it from its successors). Its power, and the fact that its director was a key participant in the 1991 coup attempt, led Boris Yeltsin and his administration to be deeply suspicious of the organization, but the political uncertainty of the early 1990s meant he was also unwilling to really dissipate its power. So the KGB was broken up into a number of different organizations, such as the FSK/FSB, the largest and focused on counter espionage/counter terrorism, but also the FSV (focused on foreign intelligence) and the GUSP (focused on secret underground KGB projects, no joke). The KGB itself was hardly a model of internal harmony, and its power being divided among different organizations likewise did not produce harmony, particularly seeing as Yeltsin encouraged infighting and division to head off political challenge (for example, the FSK was in charge of counter espionage, but communications in general was handled by the FAPSI, so the two butted heads over jurisdiction and thus Yeltsin could benefit from their correspondence). This did not lead to particularly effective action, but Soldatov and Borogan frame this as a feature rather than a bug: the Soviet Communist Party had cells in virtually every level of KGB administration, which meant that no matter how powerful it got it could never escape political control. This was not possible in the liberal democratic political structure that Yeltsin sort of attempted to build, but as noted earlier he did not ant to actually give up the state's power. So he tried to use competition and mutual enmity as controls. In this way, the transfer was organizationally chaotic, very much unsmooth, but perhaps purposely so.\n\nTo step outside of the twenty year window a bit, the FSB later absorbed many of the KGB splinter departments. It would be very easy to attribute this to Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB, but the groundwork was laid at least as far back as 1995, when the FSK's problems were lay bare in Chechnya.\n\nOn a personal level it could also be very difficult. KGB officers were highly valued in Soviet society and entitled to apartments, pensions as well as general benefits accruing to the prestigious. The collapse of the Soviet system put this in jeopardy and many officers were forced to find work elsewhere--there is something of a cliched image of a ex-KGB officer working for a mobster or in an oligarch\u2019s employ that was not entirely fictional. The 1990s were dangerous, even for the rich and powerful, and KGB officers were the best trained to deal with that. Ging from honored defenders of the state to gangster bodyguard is a bit of a step down in self esteem terms.\n\nBut to use another cliche, there is no such thing as a former KGB officer. Despite its rivalries it was a very close knit organization, even generationally--many KGB were the children of KGB. Adding to this, many of the former KGB were in fact so-called \u201cactive reserve\u201d or undercover agents (although for sort of complicated bureaucratic details of pay many actually had greater ties to their new bosses). So while the KGB underwent wrenching organizational and personnel changes, the internal culture and camaraderie remained, Putin himself being a very good example of this, as he left the KGB in 1991 but, stepping outside of the twenty year rule, has clearly not forgotten the people there.\n\nSo the broad answer is that yes it was wrenching, but no the changes did not really provide a long term weakening of the security services. The details are within twenty years (hell, within one year), so I can only suggest you read Soldatov and Borogan\u2019s book."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gmv0w/was_there_a_tsarist_secret_police_what_was_the/"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ye3j3", "title": "If faecal transplants from obese donors can induce obesity in recipients, can living with an obese person increase risk of weight gain through other forms of bacterial transfer?", "selftext": "Is there any evidence that bacteria passed through primary and secondary contact can have the same effect as that from a faecal transplant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ye3j3/if_faecal_transplants_from_obese_donors_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6n8zgp", "d6nnjqp"], "score": [9, 7], "text": ["It's reasonably well understood that cohabitation leads to people's immune systems and gut microbiota reaching (somewhat) similar states. By far and away this is best studied for families and intimate partners\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nI vaguely recall hearing that it takes about 3 years of cohabiting with a non-family and non-intimate partner to fully exchange gut microbes. I'll be dammed if I can find a reference for that so it may have been a throw away comment in a talk so please take that with a huge pinch of salt.\n\nThat said:\n\n >  Is there any evidence that bacteria passed through primary and secondary contact can have the same effect as that from a faecal transplant?\n\nI think the answer to this is going to be 'we have no idea'. I certainly couldn't find a study on this specific question and any real-world analysis is going to have so many confounding factors it would be hard (or nearly impossible) to tease out the effects of gut microbes on any weight gain observed. Even the Nature paper above suggests that cohabitees typically align their lifestyles (exercise, drinking, eating patterns) to some degree. So it seems plausible that behavioural changes might better explain weight gain for a formally normal BMI person when living with an obese person. ", "So I've done some work in this field a couple years back, and I remember lots of people raising similar concerns over clinical applications of fecal transplants. Even with that, I really wasn't convinced that this should be much of a concern. There were basically two main reasons given, a case study and this paper by [Ridaura et al., 2013](_URL_0_)  \n\n\nThe case study involved a mother with either *C. difficile* infection or irritable bowel syndrome (I can't remember which) so bad that she DIY'ed a fecal transplant using her obese daughter's feces. It did seem to cure this woman, but she then apparently gained a whole bunch of weight which was blamed on the microbiome. There's really nothing conclusive here. Think about it for a second, if you're shitting your brains out so bad that you'll not only convince someone to give you their feces, but actually go out, buy a blender, some tubing, and (hopefully, at least) lots of paper towels so you can give yourself a poop slushy enema made from (and I really can't stress this enough) **someone else's butt butter**, it's safe to conclude you're really in distress. I mean, there's no way to be anything but emaciated in this state. So if the treatment was effective, of course this woman would gain weight! This would be a side effect of being healthy!  \n\nThe paper I linked above, was (and is AFAIK) the best evidence the microbiome could directly cause obesity. It's quite frankly one of the most well done studies I've ever seen and the results are extremely interesting. First of all this was done in a germ-free mouse model. Mice are not humans. Things don't always work the way you expect. However, even by mouse standards, germ-free mice are, for lack of better term *weird*. So with all that being taken into consideration, yes, the results suggest can directly promote obesity. This however, is far from the whole picture. In this same paper, they showed diet actually determined whether the obese microbiome was transferred to mice with a lean microbiome. Oh and I should probably mention that mice are [coprophagic](_URL_1_) and, for the most part, humans are not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2049-2618-2-25", "http://americangut.org/intra-family-microbial-dynamics/", "http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v17/n4/full/ni.3371.html"], ["https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256452638_Gut_Microbiota_from_Twins_Discordant_for_Obesity_Modulate_Metabolism_in_Mice", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia"]]}
{"q_id": "28kcid", "title": "when you open someone's eyes while they're sleeping, why don't they see you and immediately wake up?", "selftext": "I used to do this to my dad while he was sleeping on the sofa when I was a little kid. His eyes would just kind of blankly look at me with this weird, cloudy, empty look. Why didn't he wake up?\n\nI was a creepy kid...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28kcid/eli5_when_you_open_someones_eyes_while_theyre/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cibrcbc", "cibrd3e", "cibrfzf", "cibtjou", "cibtr7a", "cibtxof", "cibudn2", "cibuwwu", "cibv6dg", "cibv6os", "cibvfcn", "cibvsr5", "cibwoyg", "cibx1d7", "cibx4ne", "cibxlym", "cibygtg", "cibyw1c", "cibz108", "cibzenn", "cibzgcg", "cic1mzf", "cic2u37", "cic43xk", "cic47q9", "cic4klj", "cic4x2k", "cic50xv", "cic58go", "cic6q1r", "cic6zlv", "cic7cto", "cic7pze", "cic8fyw", "cic940a", "cic9p81", "cic9t27", "ciccrpm", "cicd2nr", "cicd32a", "cicdzo0"], "score": [2784, 35, 50, 7, 257, 1352, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 20, 6, 7, 11, 2, 2, 8, 2, 3, 106, 2, 6, 17, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4], "text": ["The eye doesn't do the seeing. The eye is just the thing that takes in light, bounces it off the optic nerve, and sends that message to the brain. The brain is what does the seeing. It takes in the electrical impulse and translates that into what you understand as a visual image. Unless it is asleep. Then it isn't taking in impulses, it is sleeping. No impulse, no image. ", "I also want to know why they gasp in their sleep when you  plug their nose for a quick second instead of waking up.", "Physiology student here. During sleep, most of the (in 5 year old terms) things that make you see are turned off from reaching the level of being awake. ", "You can think of sleep in some ways as a self-induced paralysis of certain aspects your nervous system. Of course our sensory organs are transducing stimuli from our environment, but that information is not integrated by our brains in the way it is when we are awake. Crazy and interesting things can happen when this mechanism goes wrong - like sleep paralysis (waking up but not being able to move), narcolepsy, etc.", "its like a webcam connected to a computer that's off.  the light goes into the lens of the webcam but it doesn't matter.  the part (computer or brain) that processes that information is off ", "Does a camera which is off take a picture?", "You can hear things around you, but it doesn't always register with your brain. I can sleep through storms with very loud thunder and right through most alarms (I use a vibrating alarm usually which shakes the bed).\n\nYou can smell things around you, but that doesn't necessarily wake you up. Sometimes I smell bacon though, and it makes me wake up slowly, usually preceded by dreams about pigs.\n\nI have even opened my eyes and had complete conversations (though my answers are sometimes nonsensical) with my SO over the years.\n\nBut just the other day I rolled over and there was a silhouette over my side of the bed closing in quickly. My eyes must have been slightly open. I sat up, said \"WTF!?\", and then realized she just wanted a kiss. Nothing registered until I realized who she was, and then couldn't figure out why I was sitting up, and I didn't remember saying anything.\n\nI would guess it has something to do with how deeply you sleep, and where you are in the sleep cycle. Some people wake up to the slightest noise or light. My brother has to sleep with blackout curtains and complete silence. A rotating fan will wake up him from the noise alone.", "I did this to my younger siblings... long car drives are boring until you make it hilarious", "I'm just guessing it's like your other senses, you don't hear, smell or feel very much when you're asleep. No experience with taste though. ", "Its like opening the camera shutter without turning on the CPU to process the images. The lens and CCD can collect all the light it wants, that data isnt being received. Its in recovery mode, please standby.", "Look at the issue Like a computer. When a computer is in sleep mode it takes a little bit of time after the wake up signal to fully work again\n\nEdit: Changed the word \"Mike\" into the word \"like\", it shouldve been the word like in the first place", "For the same reason that you don't wake up immediately when you're touched, or when you hear a noise. It's just a stimulus. You're brain is asleep and not paying any attention to your body so it ignores all of these stimuli unless they become too hard to ignore. For example if the touching turns to slapping, the talking turns to yelling, or the light in the eyes turns to really bright light in the eyes. Then you wake up. You seem to think the eyes open=awake and eyes closed=asleep. This isn't the case. Your eyes close when you're asleep because the muscles that keep them open relax.", "Think of it this way, opening the lens of a camera won't do anything unless its on to take a picture.", "I sleep with my eyes 100% open to the point it is difficult for a stranger to determine if I am asleep or awake (I have been told I make a particular face when sleeping).  I was born with little control of my eyelids also known as Ptosis and after two surgeries have very little eyelid left. My SO has confirmed that I have a blank stare when asleep, I will not make eye contact with her, and my eyes just shift back and forth slowly. \n ", "Because when someone is sleeping, the higher level brain functions handled in the cerebral cortex are temporarily unavailable, thus requiring more time than usual to decide how to disembowel you without actually killing you so that you will still be available for the slow, tortuous death you deserve for touching my EYES! while I'm sleeping.", "This is probably the creepiest ELI5 I've ever read.", " >  When you open someone's eyes while they're sleeping...\n\nstop doing this.", "Eyes are open. Brain is still sleeping. \n*drops phone and walks away*", "It's like Turning on a computer monitor before turning on the computer.", "You are your brain. Eyes, limbs and your entire body are just tools. \n\nWhen you sleep you are not using these tools, so they're just there sitting until your consciousness is back and you use them again. ", "Actually, the brain is still very much awake during sleep, it just doesn't take signals from external stimuli (e.g. the eyes).  ", "You're not opening their brain just the eyes. ", "*Sigh* Some of the comments on this thread...\n\n\"Your Dad was a fucking drunk and didn't care about you.\"\n\n\"He was probably dead.\"\n\n\"You're retarded go to school.\"\n\nThank you to everyone who gave me a good answer instead of using this as an opportunity to try and belittle someone. I marked it as explained. Much appreciated.", "Why did you remove the ''and yes, I was creepy as a kid'' part? That had me lolling so hard. ", "you creepy mother fucker", "ELI5: Why do you open people's eyes while they're sleeping?!", "How many sleeping people's eyes do you open OP? ", "Cause they be sleeping OP.", "he was dead", "This is what is called REM's sleep.\n\nYou are essentially unconscious. You don't wake up because you aren't really looking at anything.\nIt's like a telescope with no one using it. sure it can still observe but  there is no analysis or recognition.", "I sleep with one eye open and my nephew when he was like 5 yrs old would stare at me till I woke up. I am not sure how long he did it but I would wake up immediately.", "Because they don't like you and they would rather just keep sleeping.", "the eye is just a camera, but the \"cable\" that transfers  the information is off", "Since he was a dad with some rare time to rest, I assume he was in a vegetative state. Source: I am a dad.", "I used to do this to my ex. We're divorced now. ", "ELI13: The [thalamus] (_URL_0_) is responsible for this phenomenon. Major sensory pathways stop in the thalamus for initial processing before being passed to the cortex for complex sorting (Read: information turned into meaning). Right next to these initial sensory pathways are parts of the brain responsible for consciousness and activating the cerebral cortex to wake up during sleep. Most input is ignored while sleeping and is not passed to the cortex but a threshold telling the cortex to wake up can be reached with enough stimulus. Interestingly, that threshold is different for various stimuli. Specific sounds or a spider crawling across the body are hard-wired to wake the brain up faster with a lower threshold than other stimuli. ", "They have to go through their POST", "Picture a camera. The eye is the lens, the brain is the shutter. Without waking him up, the shudder doesn't click.", "just be happy dad is not a Vietnam vet he'd punch you. We sleep, eyes are irrelevant during this necessary process.  ", "He didn't wake up because he was passed out drunk.", "What our eyes actually do is send signals to the superficial part of our brain, specifically on the back of head. This superficial part of our brain is called the cortex and it processes all of our consciousness, including vision.\nWhen we sleep our cortex is effectively off! So even though our eyes still work perfectly when we're sleeping we don't actually see anything, because the images aren't being processed by our brain.\n\nSource: Finished my Neurobiology course this week."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalamus"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "11g5w8", "title": "Is there a textbook on special relativity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11g5w8/is_there_a_textbook_on_special_relativity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6m62hv", "c6m6b0b"], "score": [5, 4], "text": ["Yes, absolutely there are many excellent texts.\n\nYou say you understand calculus, set theory, vectors, etc.  So that's great.  I'd absolutely recommend learning a bit of linear algebra before attempting to touch special relativity.  There's a lot that won't be necessary - singular value decomp, jordan form, etc.  But you should be familiar with basic concepts from linear transforms, because special relativity is all about Lorentz transforms.  So if you're going to teach yourself linear algebra just to get to special relativity, there's a ton you can skip.  But if you're gonna read half a linear algebra textbook, why not read the other half while you're there?  The hands-down single best linear algebra textbook I know of is Sheldon Axlers **Linear Algebra Done Right.**  After you read that, you'll have to go look up the word determinant, because he won't use it.  \n\nOnce you've learned linear algebra, you can do special relativity.  When it comes to relativity teachers, there is no name bigger than John Archibald Wheeler, and with good reason.  Wheeler published a book with another author, Taylor, and it's called **Spacetime Physics**.  It's an excellent, excellent text for somebody who wants to learn special relativity.\n\nIf you're interested in continuing on to general relativity after that, you can pick up \"Gravitation\" by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler (although everybody just calls it **Misner-Thorne-Wheeler** or MTW). It is simply THE introductory text to general relativity, but the first section is just special relativity.  General relativity relies on a few new areas of math that you'll need - differential geometry, partial differential equations, some light low-dimensional topology - but MTW includes all the math you'll really need in the text, except for the partial differential equations (PDEs).  I'd HIGHLY recommend MTW.  The go-to text for PDEs for non-mathematicians is Habermans **Applied Partial Differential Equations**.  I won't rave about it like I will Axlers book or MTW, but it's a very adequate book for learning PDEs.  I wouldn't recommend learning everything there; just like with Axler, there's a lot you can skip if your goal is getting acquainted with general relativity.  Perhaps use it as a reference if you come across material in MTW that is unclear.\n\nIf you're more interested in the mathematical background, look at Naber's text, \n**The Geometry of Minkowski Spacetime.**  It spends a great deal more time on mathematical structure, like the Lorentz group, the Poincare group, the EM tensors and the classic tensor-rephrasing of the Maxwell equations, and the causal structure of space-time.  This is not an intro text; don't pick it up until after you've down your time with either one of Wheeler's books above.\n\nWhatever you do, steer clear of anything from Dover (the publisher).  Their texts are usually hit-or-miss, and every SR text I've seen from them is a miss.", "There are tons of books.\n\nThe final chapters of Kleppner  &  Kolenkow, *An Introduction to Mechanics* do a nice job of introducing special relativity.  Purcell's *Electricity  &  Magnetism* (vol. 2 of the Berkeley series) has the most easily acessible introduction to how relativity plus electric fields leads to magnetic fields.\n\nTaylor  &  Wheeler, *Spacetime Physics* is good.  Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, which zelmerszoetrop recommends, is indeed wonderful, but is also highly idiosyncratic.  I don't think it's where I'd recommend starting, but rather save it for down the line a bit.\n\nWeinberg's *Gravitation and Cosmology* is also a general relativity book that introduces special relativity in the tensor notation first.  I think it's a great resource.  Weinberg's book is deliberately algebraic, while Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler have written an aggressively geometric book.  The combination of the two is really nice, but I think starting with Weinberg's book and then reading Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler on special relativity would be the best way to combine them.\n\nMost textbooks entitled \"Modern Physics\" while have a couple of chapters introducing special relativity.  \n\nFinally, let me point you to John Baez's [recommendations for books on special relativity](_URL_0_), in the middle of his larger page on relativity books more generally.  (FYI, Baez is a mathematician with a keen understanding of physics.  I think it's safe to say that anything he writes is worth paying attention to.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/rel_booklist.html#intro_sr"]]}
{"q_id": "2ok0m8", "title": "whats the reasoning for nordic countries such as denmark and sweden actively accepting so many refugees?", "selftext": "Especially considering the tax burden it adds on to, difficulties with integration and high youth unemployment in general.\n\nWhats the reasoning behind it? perhaps some long term economic benefit? a way to offset a declining population? Strict political views on current and past administrations?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ok0m8/eli5whats_the_reasoning_for_nordic_countries_such/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmnu9z8", "cmnuawe", "cmnw395", "cmo0ku4", "cmo0uch"], "score": [39, 15, 12, 7, 3], "text": ["it's called humanity.\n\n\nScandinavian people are more concerned with who they are and what they will become then they are concerned with who others are and what they could do to them.\n\nThey see the oppertunity that people bring, not the dangers that they could create, and strive to increase the opperunity rather then obstruct it, resulting in less trouble from migrants and more positive results.", "Because its the right thing to do, they wouldn't be some of the worlds happiest countries if they didn't care about peoples well being.", "Simply because of sentimentality and humanity. ", "Too many people think they can save the world by accepting immigrants and asylum seekers. They refuse to admit that a huge bunch of them are luck seekers and are only after our benefits. \nGranted there are many successful immigrants, there are far too many that contribute little or negatively to our society and make it an unsafe place to live. They often gather in the large cities and in malm\u00f8 and soon oslo there are ghetto areas that white people avoid.\nA large number of people are very disgruntled with this policy, but the leftists put a racist stigma on anyone who air this opinion.\n\nFact is, with the huge amount of resources these immigrants cost our society in the long run we could actually help them in their own country to a much better effect. We take in one family that are quite likely to be failures in our society and with the resources they cost we could help ten families where they are instead.\n\nTL:DR, it is a terrible policy but the political climate does not allow sensible opinions without racist stigma.", "extreme liberal guilt for being hard-working and productive. Many think they 'owe' others something. But the backlash and buyer's remorse has already started..multiculturalism is a failure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7xjnk2", "title": "why do governments and companies keep building luxury apartment skyscrapers in cities where the majority of the population can't even afford the rent?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xjnk2/eli5_why_do_governments_and_companies_keep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du8qpzl", "du8qvcj", "du8qx9b", "du8sq09", "du8sqwi", "du8t98d", "du8tan6", "du8u0q6", "du8ueba", "du8vji1", "du8wiot", "du95lyz", "du9bgv9", "du9dwaa", "du9fshl"], "score": [12, 146, 28, 11, 15, 3, 19, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Land is of high value and there are more than enough citizens that can afford that rent so that is the building that is made. Because there are still people able and willing to pay that price supply and demand actually dictates a price increase. ", "It's because the demand is still much, much higher than the supply.    Part of this is because real estate in American cities is a pretty good place to store a lot of wealth if you live overseas.  It can't be confiscated easily by whatever your local government is, and you can be pretty sure the value will stay high.  Add those types to the massive number of people who want to live in big cities and will find a way to make it pay, and there's enough demand to keep costs high.", "Cost does not decrease just because the supply increases.\n\nSince the demand is great, and so disproportionately higher than the supply, whenever there exists apartments on the market they still fetch a premium.\n\nEven if a whole new building is made which might seem like a lot of new supply, it is not enough to saturate the market, which is what would have to happen to lower the price.  Everyone who wanted an apartment would have to already have one, then any newer ones made could be more affordable since the market is not in high demand anymore.", "Because they're not selling them to the majority of the population -- they only need to sell them to the tiny fraction who can afford them.\n\nAny while there is a need for lower price point housing, it's just not economically feasible to build that given the costs of materials, contruction labor, etc.\n\nSo what instead happens is that those who can afford the higher end housing move into that, which creates less demand for the housing they vacated and that becomes more affordable to those with lesser means. And then the housing those people vacate becomes more affordable, and so on eventually creating more housing supply at the bottom of the housing market.", "The fact that you cannot afford living in these apartments doesn\u2019t mean others cannot. There is a lot of demand, more than there is supply, hence why the price is increasing.\n", "One reason is to look at the legal requirements for building apartments. Some cities require so many expensive add-ons, that it's only profitable to create luxury or otherwise high rent apartments. Things such as rent control or very tenant friendly laws, also tip the balance in favor of more expensive apartments.", " >  \"Supply and demand states that when supply increases, cost should decrease.\"\n\nIt's true that when 5,000 brand new buildings are built across the US with higher rent, 5,000 older buildings may decrease in rent because there has been an increase in the supply of apartments **in the whole market**. The other apartments that now need to decrease their price are older, and possibly not even in the same city.\n\nIndividual city governments and businesses want to offer nice apartments to attract wealthier residents that pay more taxes and stimulate the local economy with more spending.\n\ntl;dr: A supply increase generally causes a cost decrease **as a whole** across the entire market, but not on a **micro** scale for an individual apartment complex.\n\n", "Supply and demand as others have said\u2014NYC has attracted a lot of wealthy residents and foreigners as it has been remade in the last few decades after the decay of the 70s and 80s. \n\nWorth noting that NYC has built so many luxury units in recent years that it's actually putting a downward pressure on mid-range units (lower rent, free months, upgraded amenities, etc) for the first time in over a decade and rents are going down\u2014slightly\u2014overall. I recently moved into a mid-range 2-bedroom in Harlem (~$2500) and it included a W/D, free month of rent, no fee, and up to a $1000 credit on my rent to buy furniture. \n\n\"Luxury\" buildings I consider like $3500, at a minimum, in Manhattan from what I've seen. ", "ROI - developers want a return on their investment, and they get more by building nicer things. \n\nAlso, the majority of the population can afford rent, or the majority of the population would be homeless. There is a price on living in NYC (especially Manhattan), and that is high rent.  Long Island and New Jersey beckon to those who wish to pay less, as do the vast, vast swathes of land that exist outside of NYC where rent is actually quite cheap. ", "Because there is a demand and they don't need a \"majority\" of people to be able to afford them, they just need enough to fill those spaces and currently there ARE enough people.\n\nIf/When there aren't enough people to fill those buildings, they're stop building them. \n\nDemand in NYC in particular is nearly unquenchable.  It's a small area in high demand and that demand has been constant for decades.", "If I own one apartment, I don't need the majority of the population to rent my apartment.  I just need one person to.\n\n >  Supply and demand states that when supply increases, cost should decrease.\n\nOnly if the demand curve stays the same, which is an absurd assumption to make about the real world.", "When I lived in Brooklyn,  I was working in Manhattan commuting everyday. My rent was about $800 for a two bedroom apartment. I had a roommate so everything was really cheap. We had a girl from Texas that started working with us and few nights a week we would go out for drinks. I found out that she lived in the city with astronomical rent. I think her entire salary went to her rent/utilities and parents back home helped her with groceries. When I asked her why doesn't she move to surrounding boroughs she said that if you are going to live in NYC than you have to live in Manhattan and not Brooklyn or Queens which she considered suburbs. Over the years I've encountered numerous people who had similar opinion. I guess as long as others will keep coming for live in NYC demand will increase and so will the prices. Over the years I think it changed a bit and now people want to live in good neighborhoods outside Manhattan still paying unbelievable rents. The real estate market in NYC is unaffordable to regular middle income workers. You either get caught in the rent game or get stuck in a crappy neighborhood with house that is falling apart. I moved to NJ in 2011 and for the price of my rent at that time ($1300) I own the house. Yes there are taxes and commuting costs but I own a property. Just for comparison a condo at that time that we were looking at in Brooklyn would have been around $2900 a month plus $600 in fees a month.  I don't foresee any changes to any of it anytime soon. ", "Most likely bankrolled by mob money, government officials taking backhanders and any celeb using a charity bank account to buy or rent these properties, most of London\u2019s property prices were hiked because of this. Not forgetting to mention half of those properties will be bought as assets.", "There are still a huge amount of wealthy foreigners buying flats for as investmentbanken for example. In london i see a lot of korean students living in expensive flats for example.", "I can't speak for NYC, but Seoul, (with a metropolitan population of 30+ million, including visitors/tourists it could be very well over 40 million), is way more populated than NYC and therefore has more apartments and buildings for people to live in. I think a skyscraper needs to have 40-50 floors, many apartments in Seoul have 25-30 floors so they're not \"technically\" skyscrapers, and more are constantly being built and under construction.\n\nThe majority of the population in Seoul lives in these kind of apartments, even if they can't afford it traditionally. Most large companies in Korea (especially a company like Samsung) own several skyscrapers and these large apartment buildings, and they usually allow their employees to live there for free, or for a much cheaper price. Also, the Korean system of rent payment is much different.\n\nBasically, the more money you deposit, the cheaper the rent is. If you deposit, let's say, $100k (it might be more), you could live in one of these skyscrapers rent-free. When/if you move out, you get the money back. That $100k was taken by the company that owns the building and is invested. Since average people don't have $100k cash, they loan it from a bank, and then the bank gives it to the owner's of the building, and the tenants only have to pay small interest to the bank, it's like a mortgage, but better. When they move out, the bank gets their money back from the building; and the owner's of the building got their profit from the bank's investment. It's like a win-win-win, the owners of the building made a profit from the bank's deposit, the bank got interest from the tenant, and the tenant got to live in a skyscraper for dirt cheap.\n\nThis is why average working class people *can* live in relatively luxurious skyscrapers in Korea, and that's why more are being built.\n\nIn NYC, I have no idea. I assume people with careers can make enough to pay $3k rent, and most people living in cities like to live in nice places."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2609es", "title": "why are rape fantasies so common among women?", "selftext": "Since diving into the world of online dating - specifically OKCupid - I've been shocked at the number of women who openly admit to having rape fantasies. The fact OKCupid has a question on the topic of rape fantasies was weird enough. Even stranger that a lot of women say they have these fantasies. Given the social stigma against rape it's safe to assume the true number of women who fantasize about rape is much higher.\n\nI'm ashamed to say this has somewhat soured my view of women. Why is this so common? Is it because of porn? Or is there an evolutionary reason, e.g., rape is a signal of strength and dominance and hence fit genes?\n\nI would never want to act out such a fantasy, which seems to be a deal breaker for a lot of otherwise sane women. Help me understand!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2609es/eli5_why_are_rape_fantasies_so_common_among_women/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chmfafp", "chmfh4c", "chmfrpu", "chmgakz", "chmhtf2", "chmipzj", "chmiwt2", "chmj5z0", "chmjd2u"], "score": [2, 186, 31, 22, 4, 12, 2, 5, 5], "text": ["If they've been raped or sexually assaulted it's a way of taking control of a situation they had no control over.  It's a way to own it and be in control there.  ", "First of all, I want to say that the rest of the comments on this post thus far are horse shit.\n\nThe key word in this is \"fantasy.\"  These women don't actually *want* to be raped, they want to role play a dangerous situation. It's the same reason people enjoy horror movies or roller coasters- simulated danger for the sake of an adrenalin rush. \nFor you, OP, to say it makes you lose respect for a women with rape fantasies would be comparable to women losing respect for you because of the porn you like to watch. \nThey have control over the situation in these fantasies, it's fake. \n\n\nEdit: When I made this post, there were only about three other comments in this thread, and they were pretty immature.  A lot of you have since made some great points.", "People have spent their entire careers [trying to answer that question](_URL_0_).  The only definitive answer is the one that applies to most questions beginning with, \"Why do women. . ..\": \"Depends on the woman.\"\n\nAs you seem to be troubled by this, however, I thought this quote [from Michael Castleman](_URL_1_) might be helpful:\n\n >  At first glance, rape fantasies make no sense. Why fantasize about something that in real life would be traumatic, repugnant, and life-threatening?\n >  \n >  But on closer examination, such fantasies are not unusual. Many men daydream about getting the girl by rescuing her from a dangerous situation--without the slightest wish to confront armed thugs, or be trapped in a fire on the 23rd floor.\n\nNone of us can really say why (or how) we're turned on by what we are.  I'm sure you've had fantasies that surprised you.  Don't be too quick to judge women as less than sane because of theirs.\n\nI'd also like to mention that you can't assume that every woman who has rape fantasies wants to act them out, or that every woman who would like to act out a rape fantasy considers it a deal breaker if a man isn't willing to play along.  Fantasy is fantasy, and most people are happy to keep it that way.  ", "Assuming you are a straight male, with little experience in the BDSM world.\n\nHow much do like her being on top? How much do you like eating pussy? Do you like having your face sat on? Surrounded by that wet, sweet cunt of hers? Her lips grinding up and down your face? Thighs clamped over your head, you can hardly breathe, but you just love it? You come up for air, but she grabs the back of your head and shoves it between her thighs, taking your mouth and lips for another ride. She holds you into the moist little slit of hers until she cums over and over. Do you like it when sits down on your cock and hands braced against your chest rides you until she's cums? She unwraps her fingers from your hair and falls back, ready to take a nap. Most guys do love it, because it's great. Who doesn't love pussy? Hey, dude, hate to tell you, but you just got used for sex. That's it, she just USED you to get herself off.  It can be wonderful to feel THAT wanted that she can't help but take it from you. It's nice when you lose that control from time to time. She just raped your face and you let her.\n\nRape fantasies are just that. Take me and lose control. Grind me, need me, want me, they say. \n\nThere's such a culture of men being unable to be raped, and women being so able to be raped, that rough CONSENSUAL rape play tends to be pretty one sided. When in reality, we as men don't even notice the power dynamic when it happens to us. It's all about power, and consensual play. \n\nFantasy is the word you seem to be glossing over. Consensual non-consent is the phrase you are missing.  It's generally saying that it's okay to objectify me and be rough with me, as long as we both know we are playing. Sex is fun, let's play.\n\nRemember your safe word.\n\n\n", "Personally, my own research on the topic leads me to think that because of the guilt and shame often associated with sexual woman (slut-shaming etc), women are hesitant to admit to desiring sex. The rape fantasy is a means to an end, in which they can enjoy all the good things about sex - the pleasure, feeling intensely desired and appreciated - without the guilt or shame of having had morally reprehensible sexual desire.\nA lot of this research is spouted by misogynists and anti-feminists (who are usually of the opinion that women SHOULD feel shame about sex). Obviously I don't think women should feel shame about it, but I think a lot of women have an ingrained sense of guilt about sex.\nAgain, as many of the posts have said, it depends on the woman, but as a base line I think this idea has merit.", "This, of course, varies by person.\n\nI saw one good explanation:\n\nThe fantasy allows a woman to do things sexually that she wouldn't normally do, and she is allowed to not feel guilty for doing them or debauched for wanting them. Hence the rape fantasy.\n\nAlso, feeling helpless and out of control - within limits (e.g. with a trusted partner and a safe word, or on a roller coaster) - is a good adrenaline rush.", "Try explaining this to a 5 year old! ", "Hold on, there's not a \"social stigma\" against rape. Rape is one of the worst things you can do to another person; it's not some stigma like using the word retarded. ", "Many women fantasize about being dominated. When you fantasize about something repeatedly, your fantasy gets more extreme. Rape fantasies are simply a more extreme domination fantasy. Maybe the fantasy starts as wanting rougher sex, then as that fantasy is replayed over and over, it becomes wanting to be manhandled, then wanting to be held down, then restrained. Pretty soon, it's a rape fantasy.  \nRealize that most rape fantasies are very different from an actual rape."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/200805/why-do-women-have-erotic-rape-fantasies", "http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/womens-rape-fantasies-how-common-what-do-they-mean"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "eufgrx", "title": "How do twisted pair wires reduce electromagnetic interference?", "selftext": "I've scoured the web and I just keep finding sources that elaborate what a twisted pair is or their history. I cannot find anything that explains how twisting 2 wires around each other insulates them and prevents magnetic fields affecting them. Are they creating their own protective magnetic field? What is happening?\n\nEdit: what a great turnout! Seriously thank you everyone for the replies. Everyone explained it a little differently, but in the end it helped visualize it for me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eufgrx/how_do_twisted_pair_wires_reduce_electromagnetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ffp8qpx", "ffp97yf", "ffp98pk", "ffpgp5d", "ffpzvai"], "score": [28, 9, 5, 8, 5], "text": ["The signals are transmitted over both wires in opposing polarity, but the EM interference picked up will have the same polarity. When both signals reach the other end, one is inverted and the signals are summed. What you end up with is \u201cnoise cancellation\u201d of the interference. This happens because both wires will carry a mostly identical interference signal, but by \u2018re-inverting\u2019 the original signal, you\u2019ve now inverted one of the interference signals. When those are summed, the opposite interference cancels out, while the signal you want to keep gets added together and becomes stronger.", "In a twisted pair, each wire carries a differential signal that is the opposite polarity of the other.  This means that the actual data is the difference between the 2 signals.  Since they are opposite of each other, they cancel out each other's emissions.  Any external signal that tries to induce a voltage on the wires, induces the same voltage on them (common mode), which doesn't affect the difference.", "It\u2019s all about [differential signalling](_URL_0_). In a nutshell, if both wires gets affected by the same noise, by using a pair to send the signal and it inverse and summing both wires on the other end, the noise should cancel itself out.", "Lets compare two wires that are twisted together to two wires that simply run along side each other.  Two wires that run along side each other form a big loop, with the area in the loop contained between the two wires to the points at the end of the wires where the two join the transmitter and receiver at each end.  From Faraday's law, we know that a changing magnetic field in a loop of wire induces a voltage.  Therefore the two wires form a long and narrow loop to pick up stray magnetic field interference.  On the other hand, if the wires are twisted together, they form a loop, but the magnetic field lines intersect the loop in the opposite direction for each twist of the loop because that part of the loop goes from facing up to facing down, and then facing up, etc.  So while you get magnetic induction, the voltages from the even twists cancel the voltages from the odd twists, and there is little net induced voltage.  \n\nAdditionally, if you use differential signaling, there is a further advantage.  Twisted pair is a balanced transmission line, so that the voltage on one wire is the opposite of the other, and it is the difference in the voltage that indicates the signal level.  If an electric field is applied along the twisted pair, a voltage potential exists along the wire.   This voltage can sometimes be much higher than the difference voltage between the two wires.  By using a differential line driver (for example RS-422) and receiver, the two wires are driven with opposite voltages given a digital signal at the transmitter and the voltage difference is turned back into a digital signal at the receiver, while the effect of the common voltage is greatly reduced.\n\nA further complication is that in general, it is not desirable to connect the grounds on multiple pieces of separated equipment that could be on very different circuits, because a \"ground loop\" might be formed.  A ground loop is when there are multiple connections between the grounds of two pieces of equipment that are actually at different potentials forming a loop in which noise can be picked up.  For example, a 50/60 Hz hum heard in audio speakers is often due to this problem.  Because the absolute voltage level of a differential signaling line is not important, differential signals can be transformer or magnetically coupled, so that the two grounds are not connected by the signaling path.  Ethernet magnetics/transformers are for passing the differential signal through using magnetic coupling but isolating the grounds so that multiple pieces of equipment can be connected together without being concerned about noisy and occasionally  dangerous potentials between them.", "1) twisting the wires scrambles the far field (ie any EM effects from a distance of more than 3-5x the twist length), so they're unable to efficiently lose energy to EM waves. They're also frankly terrible at *receiving* interference for the same reason.\n\n2) Signals on twisted pairs are transmitted differentially, which means the transmitter pulls one up and the other down, then swaps. The receiver is carefully designed to only look at the difference in the voltages, not the absolute voltage vs ground like conventional signals. When electrical interference hits the cable, it tends to make both wires go up and down together, which the receiver ignores.\n\nThey're only effective with balanced transmitters and receivers, you can't just put any random signal on a twisted pair and expect it to magically get better."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_signaling?wprov=sfti1"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "gpjlh", "title": "What is with eyes?", "selftext": "Why do we feel a \"connection\" with somebody when looking at their eyes?\n\nWe don't feel a connection when smelling someone's nose? why is sight different than the other senses.\n\n(I think touch/connection makes sense because it actually does connect people physically)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gpjlh/what_is_with_eyes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1pb2g5", "c1pboz4"], "score": [2, 11], "text": ["Speculation: \nIt's rooted in evolutionary psychology, and eyes being identified as living things. [Numerous animals](_URL_0_) evolve \"eye spot\" patterns to ward off predators. An eye is an image we pick up on and pay attention to as a symbol of attentiveness and the presence of another being.", "There is a decent wikipedia article on [Eye contact](_URL_1_). It goes over some social implications, but doesn't really delve into the meat of the issue. Fortunately, there does seem to be a good amount of research on the issue. [This study](_URL_5_) postulates that, since eyes are a good feedback indicator, eye contact is linked to affiliative motivation (an unconscious desire to maintain relationships). [This study](_URL_0_) investigates the importance of eye contact during infancy. It seems that eye contact plays an important role in developing many relationships, including flirting. Another study, thrillingly entitled [*Breaking the Ice in Human-Agent Communication: Eye-Gaze Based Initiation of Contact with an Embodied Conversational Agent*](_URL_3_) tackles that beast, but arrives to the unsatisfying conclusion that it's good to be attractive, but eye contact certainly doesn't hurt when flirting.\n\nBut *why* you ask? What really causes that connection? This is where it gets tricky, and where some speculation comes in. David Sloan Wilson wrote a wonderful book entitled [*Evolution for Everyone*](_URL_2_), and in it he tackles a few topics of human evolution. He describes how important (and overlooked) human social structure has been on human evolution. A good part of this (along with why rock throwing is important) is devoted to our body language and how we communicate our feelings in a way that we can't control. This helped prohibit individuals trying to take advantage of others; their real intentions were displayed with out them knowing. Now, to speculate, eye contact could be some sort of challenge. Initiating eye contact shows a desire to know what that person is thinking and what their intent is. Also, by initiating eye contact, you are opening yourself up to them for investigation, putting your intentions on display. I feel like [this study](_URL_4_), which documents how people felt that individuals avoiding eye contact were being deceptive, vindicates that speculation.\n\nEdit: forgot a word."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://images.google.com/images?um=1&amp;hl=en&amp;biw=1227&amp;bih=543&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=1&amp;q=eye+spot&amp;btnG=Search&amp;aq=f&amp;aqi=g2g-m4g-ms1g-m3&amp;aql=&amp;oq="], ["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1967.tb02176.x/abstract", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_contact", "http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change/dp/0385340214", "http://www.springerlink.com/content/kr25h3544n777455/", "http://www.springerlink.com/content/r414681657143728/", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/2786027"]]}
{"q_id": "5uz5kd", "title": "why does going to bed later than usual but sleeping the same amount of hours as you normally would, feel worse when you wake up?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uz5kd/eli5why_does_going_to_bed_later_than_usual_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddy0450", "ddy1f35", "ddy6tyf", "ddybk56", "ddycew1", "ddyexv8", "ddyijkx", "ddyvsjd"], "score": [2, 43, 2, 2, 388, 88, 7, 5], "text": ["When you go to bed later you go to sleep with less energy than you normally would. This means it would take more time to get all your energy back and the same amount of hours you normally get wouldn't be sufficient.", "That may be specific to you, not a general phenomenon that applies to everyone, having to do with your circadian rhythms. If your body clock works well with a certain sleep time, and you shift that, you may get poorer quality sleep in the morning when you're used to being awake, or just generally have disturbed your body's rhythm. ", "I have a night shift and college class , I sleep when I can, usually early morning to mid-day or any time. The only difference is how you adjust your sleep cycle and it makes you more keen on getting up and awake instantly, because you're probably already late for class.", "Well it may because you're not used to it. Sleeping consistently is important for you to get optimal rest out of sleep, so by going to bed later you end up getting less rest despite the same amount of hours. It's an efficiency thing.", "The major contributing factor is your circadian rhythm. This rhythm is basically your natural biological clock. However it does not run exactly on a 24 hr cycle, there are slight deviations naturally and other factors can contribute to altering your biological clock. \n\nThe next factor to take into account is which stage of the sleep cycle you are waking up from. There are typically 5 stages of sleep, stage 1/2 are \"active\" sleep cycles, your brain activity is still highly active and almost indistinguishable from a wake person. In stage 1/2, you are also more likely to respond to stimuli, such as someone calling your name. Stage 3 is regarded as \"inactive\" sleep cycle, this is the stage where your brain activity drastically drops, preparing your brain and body to enter stage 4. In stage 3, a person is much harder to wake up and waking from this stage leaves a person exhausted and generally disorientated. Stage 4 sleep is where actual rest and rejuvenation occurs. In this stage, your brain activity is picking up slightly but still in a mild manner, not too much to be called wakefullness, but enough to signal repairs in the body. Lastly is REM stage, this is where your brain is now increasing activity and causing dreams. After REM, the cycle repeats back from stage 1. \n\nBasically as you sleep, you go through this 1-4+rem cycle over and over, with each cycle lasting about 90 mins. Depending on what your body needs, stage1/2 will shorten as you go through the sleep cycles and lengthen stage 4 for rest and recovery or REM sleep. If you wake from REM, you will feel refreshed and ready, that is why most people dont remember dreams or recall a dream suddenly disrupted by waking up. If you wake up during stage 3/4, you will feel tired and exhausted, your brain was trying to turn down the power after all, and signal the body to recover from things like exhaustion or injuries. \n\nSo thats it, a bit long for ELI5, but its a complicated question that takes many things into account, as is common when talking about neurological issues\n\nEdit: forgot to talk about sleep deficit and how that also contributes alot, but im on mobile and cant continue forever.", "Feels worse? Am i broken ? If i sleep 8 hours but get up at 6 i feel like shit but if sleep 5 hours but wake up at 11, i feel awsome and ready to do a 16h shift ! \n\nEdit: it all make sense now, according to the top post, i have to wake up in the middle of my stage 3 sleep before the actual rest occur, also, a train could hit my house i woudnt wake up if its early morning.", "The reason is because: about an hour before we wake up, our bodies prepare us for the day by releasing certain brain chemicals, namely cortisol. One reason why it is important to get up around the same time everyday is because of this chemical timing. Our bodies become habituated to this cycle, this circadian rhythm, and if we all of a sudden shift away from that, we feel off. \nKind of explains jetlag and the off week a lot of us have after changing our clocks for daylight savings. ", "How does having naps during the day affect sleep quality/sleep debt? I'm interested if naps are beneficial or actually disrupt evening sleep quality."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ugg83", "title": "why is prince philip of england a prince and not king, despite his being married to the queen? the wife of the previous king, george vi, was queen elizabeth, not princess elizabeth.", "selftext": "The fact that people are upvoting this makes me feel glad that I wasn't the only one confused by this!\n\nMandatory \"This blew up\" edit. \n\nMarked as Explained, because of /u/barc0de's fantastic explanation. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ugg83/eli5_why_is_prince_philip_of_england_a_prince_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxen24i", "cxen2pm", "cxen55i", "cxen74q", "cxen751", "cxeol1i", "cxepwiy", "cxerc7a", "cxes9t2", "cxeskcl", "cxeswiw", "cxeuk2z", "cxeuyjj", "cxev3n6", "cxeva0k", "cxevgdf", "cxexj1d", "cxexvok", "cxeyvg1", "cxez7ri", "cxezo0h", "cxf1kmz", "cxf1sbv", "cxf47ml", "cxf51n2", "cxfaus3", "cxfchwm"], "score": [123, 9, 5, 4473, 9, 59, 890, 4, 8, 2, 54, 54, 53, 9, 2, 6, 2, 3, 19, 29, 5, 3, 6, 3, 9, 2, 7], "text": ["The reasons for this are perhaps a bit sexist, but it basically boils down to the fact that people have historically tended to think of kings as \"outranking\" queens - they're higher values in a pack of cards, after all. And up until very recently, a male prince would be higher in the order of succession than his older sister(s).\n\nBecause the authority (or at least, the kabuki theatre of ceremonial authority which is the modern British crown) of the monarch should not be undermined by their spouse, the female spouse of a reigning male monarch is a queen and the male spouse of a reigning female monarch is a \"Royal Consort\".\n\nLike pretty much everything to do with the British monarchy, it's all a bit old-fashioned and anachronistic, rooted more in tradition than in modern sensibilities and logic.\n\nas /u/flooey correctly mentioned however, that tradition is subject to change and it may be that \"consort\" becomes the permanent title for the monarch's spouse from now on.", "The spouse of the reigning monarch must be at a lower level than the monarch. King George was the reigning monarch, so his wife could be Queen (Consort). Queen Elizabeth II is the reigning monarch, thus her husband has to have a lower rank than she does. That is why he is Prince Phillip. \n\nAnother example is Anne, Princess Royal. Since it is she with the royal blood line, any husband of hers could not be prince since that would place him higher than her. \n\n_URL_0_ ", "Queen Mother Elizabeth's title was Queen Consort. Someone is a Prince/Princess if they are a recognized member of a royal family, and King/Queen only if they are crowned. Most female consorts were crowned alongside their husbands, but as far as I am aware, none of the males (in England). Also, English language doesn't really differentiate between ruling Queen and Queen Consort in practice, because there are so few ruling Queens.", "There are two types of Queens, Queen Regnant and Queen Consort.\n\nQueen Regnant inherits the position from the previous monarch, and is the ruling head of state\n\nQueen Consort is the wife of the current monarch and has no official role within the state.\n\nThere is no equivalent King Consort, so Philip could only be Prince Consort instead. Ruling Queens have avoided naming their partner as King to avoid appearing weaker or not in charge.\n\nThe only occasion where a Queen Regnants husband was styled King was as a result of the glorious revolution when Mary replaced her deposed father on condition that her husband be allowed to rule jointly with her", "The monarch chooses which title their spouse receives. There's almost no rules, it's mostly tradition.\r\rQueen Victoria wanted to make her husband King, however that title requires Parliament's approval, which they did not grant because he was foreign. So she chose Prince Consort instead.\r\rElizabeth chose to make Philip simply Prince.\r\rNote that whatever gets chosen the title is only ever ceremonial, even if he was King Philip he would have no power at all.", "King is a higher rank than Queen. So if the sitting monarch is a Queen then their spouse is not able to be a King. They are the Queen's Consort, commonly called a Prince Consort. But it should be noted that Prince Philip is a prince in his own right and so that part of the title is not necessarily there due to him being married to the Queen. ", "King > Queen.   \nWhoever inherits the title has to be highest rank.  \nElizabeth II inherited, therefore has to outrank her husband ", "This was on Answer me this podcast last night.\n\nBasically, women are less than men, so when 2 people marry, if the man is a king, she will move up to be queen, but if shes queen, he won't move up to be king.\n\n", "Because King is technically a higher position than Queen, and Elizabeth is the true heir, and would be queen no matter what even if she wasn't married.  If the King married someone she would be Queen consort.  In this case, the queen married somebody, but there is no King consort title, just prince consort.", "How does inheritance work?  Why did the Queen inherit the throne, and not her closest male relative?", "A Wife receives the female equivalent of her husband's title  \nA Husband receives nothing from his wife's titles, and just uses his own title, if anything.\n\nSo the wife of Sir Patrick Stewart is \"Lady Stewart\", but the husband of Dame Helen Mirren is just \"Mr Hackford\"\n\nThe Wife of the Earl of Wessex is \"the Countess of Wessex\", however the husband of the Princess Royal is \"Sir Timothy Laurence\"\n\nSo the Wife of King George was Queen, because she adopted the female equivalent of his title. The Husband of the Queen however just uses the highest of his own personal titles, which is currently Prince.\n\nPhilip was born a Prince (though of Greece and of Denmark, not of the UK) however he renounced those titles prior to marrying the Queen (or Princess Elizabeth) as she then was and became just been \"Mr Mountbatten\". To Avoid the future queen legally being just \"Mrs Mountbatten\", George granted Philip the title of Duke of Edinburgh on the eve of his marriage, so that she was The Duchess of Edinburgh. After she became queen, she gave Philip the additional title of Prince, but that was her gift, rather than him getting it automatically", "This does not applies to UK. It's just some fun fact I remembered. When Poland was ruled by a woman she was called a queen. But officially she was a king. It's always confusing for Polish kids \"how can a woman be a king\", but she was. You can check Jadwiga of Poland in Wikipedia. But a problem appeared. She got married. Her husband became king as well. The queen already was a king, you cannnot take the title from her. What now then? Simple. Until her death, for 13 years, Poland had two independent kings at once. Luckily for Poland they were smart enough not to give contradictory orders.", "Reading comments on Reddit are somewhat like being in a bar drinking. You start out smart and intelligent, then as you drink, you lose focus and become distracted by random thoughts...it's awesome.\n", "The royal family always has the highest rank,  this means that everyone that is married into the family can't be of a higher rank than the king or queen.  Because the rank of king is higher then that of a queen,  the person marries to the queen can not be of a higher rank.  In the netherlands there was a similair situation, with the previous queen. Her husband was also a prince while she was queen of the netherlands.  Now that her son became the king, and thus being the highest rank,  his wife became the queen instead of staying princess. \n\nTL;DR: king is higher rank then queen,  royal family by blood has to stay highest rank,  so husband of queen can never become the higher ranking king. ", "So if the king is gay and marries another guy, does that mean the other guy will be a king or a prince? ", "Essentially you need to be born King, you can't marry into the position.  This is not true with the title Queen.  ", "In order to keep the monarchy in the same \"bloodline\" if the king and queen only have daughters, then when she becomes the queen and marries, her husband is only a prince since he was not a descendant of the previous king and queen.", "King is always higher than queen, being married to the queen he can only be lower and thus a prince", "Woah lots of terrible speculation and misinformation here. Here's your real answer: there are two kinds of titles, landed and titular. Landed titles are attached to land (duchy, kingdom, barony, etc.) and there are very specific rules about how those titles move from one person to another.  \nTitular titles are functional ones and can be granted or applied by custom. Where the confusion arises is that there is some overlap in vocabulary. If you marry a king then you are a titular queen, but if a kingdom passes to you then you are a landed queen. That works because 'queen' is a title for each. 'King' is not. It is only a landed title, but relation to a monarch gives you a solely-titular title of Prince(ss). \n\nTl;dr- She is queen because she holds the 'kingdom of great britain and northern ireland' title. He is prince because he is related to a monarch. He is not king because he doesn't hold a kingdom title.\n\n", "As a side note, Philip is not Prince of England, he's the Prince of the United Kingdom.\n\nIn the same way that Obama is never referred to as the President of Texas", "There have been some good answers with insight into UK monarchy. But they don't touch on one thing, etymology, the linguistic background of the whole ordeal:\n\nPrince derives, via French, from Latin \"princeps\", from primus (first) + capio (to seize), the latter coming from the same root as caput (head), which shows the meaning \"the first head, chief, most distinguished, ruler, prince\"\n\nKing is derived via Middle English kyng, Old English cyning from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, *kunungaz \u200e(\u201cking\u201d), which is equivalent to kin +\u200e -ing, a \"person from The Family\" (meaning the aristocratic, high ranking family).\n\nQueen was derived from Middle English forms of cwen, from Old English cw\u0113n, from Proto-Germanic *kw\u0113niz \u200e(\u201cwoman\u201d), from Proto-Indo-European *g\u02b7\u1e17n \u200e(\u201cwoman\u201d). Some related forms are interesting: Middle Low German quene \u200e(\u201celderly woman\u201d), Dutch kween \u200e(\u201cwoman past child-bearing age\u201d), Norwegian dialectal kv\u00e5n \u200e(\u201cwife\u201d).\n\nI'm not the one qualified to draw any conclusions from this but it appears that while king was used for a the ruling person of a family, clan, people, early on, queen was the word for their female companion. Prince, picked up from Latin, French, influences was added to the ranks below both of these.\n\nBtw, the German(ic) word for prince is F\u00fcrst pronounced 'furst', and you should know what it's related to (first of rank in a region, country, nation).", "When a King marries a woman, she becomes a Queen. When a Queen marries a man, he doesn't become a King.\n\nBasically, kings have traditionally been seen as being above queens. When a woman inherits the throne, it has to be emphasized that the man she marries isn't the monarch, she is. If they call him a \"King\" then people will assume he's the real monarch, but he isn't because he doesn't have the birthright. So therefore he can't be called a \"king\". On the other hand, if a woman marries a King she can be called a \"queen\", because nobody will assume that she has precedence over the king.", "You might be interested in this, from [_URL_0_](http://www._URL_0_/faqs/britfaq.html):\n\nWhat is the title of a Queen's husband?\n\n\nThere are too few cases in English or British history to establish a rule. Here are the precedents:\n\n\nMatilda (d. 1167) should have succeeded her father Henry I in 1135 but a civil war broke out and she never effectively ruled, although the crown ultimately passed to her son. Thus the question of the style of her husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, never really arose.\n\n\nMary Tudor married in 1554 Philip, king of Naples. He became king of England and Ireland by right of his wife. Parliament was called in their names, acts are dated from the year of their joint reign. His reign ended with her death in 1558, as stipulated by the marriage contract and by act of Parliament (1 Mar I 3 c.2).\n\n\nMary Stuart, queen of Scots, had two husbands who held the title of king: Fran\u00e7ois, dauphin then king of France, (d. 1560) and Henry Lord Darnley (d. 1567).\n\n\nMary II and William III became queen and king jointly and each in his own right, by virtue of the Bill of Rights; after her death, he ruled in his own name. Thus, his title did not derive from being the husband of a queen.\n\n\nAnne's husband, prince George of Denmark, was created duke of Cumberland in 1689, before her accession.\n\n\nVictoria's husband received the title of Prince Consort in 1857. He never received a peerage.\n\n\nElizabeth II's husband had been created duke of Edinburgh in 1947, before her accession. He was also made a prince of the United Kingdom in 1957.\n\n\nOne can also note a near-miss: when George IV's daughter and heiress presumptive married prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a dukedom of Kendall was mooted for him, but he apparently turned it down.\n\n\n\nIn short, no two husbands of queens were treated alike. However, it is unlikely that the case of Mary I's husband will arise again.", "We have the same situation in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It probably involves the same reasons as barc0de's explanation, but there is one more: namely, in the Dutch constitution the position is called King. So constitutionally, a Queen Regnant is King. The title Queen is not constitutionally defined as such and can therefore be given more freely.", "Kings make queens. A queen can\u2019t make a king. If a king marries a bum bitch, that bitch is now a queen\u2026 But look at the Queen of England, that bitch is married and that nigga ain\u2019t the King of England. That nigga is the Duke of tittley-squats.", "The reason, as others have said, is because until very recently (around about when Prince George was born) a king outranked a queen. Elizabeth was the royal heir, while Philip is simply her husband. If he were king he would outrank her. \n\n\nThere have been cases in the past in English history where a Queen's husband was also a king: Mary I and Philip of Spain for example. However Philip retained no rights on the throne after Mary died (similar to the current Philip). Philip was also heir to the throne of Spain and became King of Spain during Mary's reign. \n\n\nSimilarly Mary II and her husband William III ruled England together despite Mary being the heir. There were extenuating circumstances here too though. English parliament were prepared to crown just Mary but she insisted William be crowned alongside her and William announced he would leave England if he wasn't made King. Considering England was going through a very turbulent time with the previous king having just been deposed and another legitimate male heir on the scene, England needed strong, Protestant rule and William and Mary provided that better than Mary would alone.", "Ultimately, it's for the same reason her country is not called the \"United Queendom\".  \n\nThe word that became \"queen\" in modern English originally meant \"wife\"; it was later specialized to \"wife of the king\". The English monarchy is traditionally patriarchical: the king ruled, while the queen didn't.  When we eventually had actual female heads of state, they didn't invent a new word (\"kingess\"?); instead, that became a new type of \"queen\".  The two senses were distinguished by qualification: \"queen regnant\" for a reigning queen (\"regnant\" is French for \"reigning\" or \"ruling\"), \"queen consort\" for the wife of a king (\"consort\" is French for \"wife\" or \"partner\"). There are also other types of queens, notably a \"queen regent\" (\"regent\" is an older French/Latin word for \"ruling\"); like other regents, these are those who rule temporarily on behalf of a child not yet old enough to rule on their own.  Cersei Lannister Baratheon is a queen regent.\n\nBut the word \"king\" was never so qualified.  Male regents and consorts were called by simply those words, with no \"king\" prefix. Styling Philip as \"king consort\" would have been unprecedented, and it would be hard to get past the longstanding implication that a \"king\" is the one who's really in charge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.britroyals.com/faqs.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["heraldica.org", "http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/britfaq.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2kgu9w", "title": "why is it so much easier to fall asleep on the couch than it is in my bed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kgu9w/eli5_why_is_it_so_much_easier_to_fall_asleep_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cll61ib", "cll62fc", "cll6h3m", "cll6jcn", "cll6uzy", "cll7tci"], "score": [37, 32, 2, 2, 11, 2], "text": ["for me I think it's the fact that dozing off on your couch whilst watching a TV show or reading a book is super nice, but also natural and sorta involuntary... whereas when you're in bed, you're so conscious of 'having to sleep now' that the awareness itself prevents you from going to sleep... ", "It's a psychological pressure you have put on your mind, in your bed you HAVE to sleep, in the couch you can really relax, and then sleep.", "You put yourself to bed at a socially accepted time, you fall asleep on the sofa because it is a much more natural way of doing it - sleeping when and if your body wants to ", "Can confirm. ..  my couch sleeps better than my bed.", "Falling asleep in bed is easy, when are you folks going to learn, DRINK YOURSELF TO SLEEP.", "I found that when I watched TV from bed I would get sleepy just the same as a sofa.  Then you can just flip off the set (or not) and snooze."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6ackcb", "title": "why is it a ticketable offense to ride in a car without seatbelts on yet a motorcyclist that faces the same risks with less protection doesn't have to worry with such restraints?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ackcb/eli5_why_is_it_a_ticketable_offense_to_ride_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhderpy", "dhdetj5", "dhdeww7", "dhdeyck", "dhdhei1", "dhdhrpy", "dhdj1vq", "dhdnhk4", "dhdqm43", "dhdqnku", "dhdqv9t", "dhdr0qa", "dhdrazj", "dhdrbc7", "dhdrcuh", "dhdrpai", "dhds1mx", "dhds3bm", "dhdsdon", "dhdslv8", "dhdsp7e", "dhdss10", "dhdszb0", "dhdtyn2", "dhdu4qc", "dhdu4r8", "dhdu5gx", "dhdujzd", "dhdunmn", "dhdut55", "dhduzkm", "dhdv6iu", "dhdvkgu", "dhdwxpo", "dhdxg3d", "dhdxn64", "dhdyd96", "dhe07bc", "dhe18a7", "dhe1dtq", "dhe2oqq", "dhe399l", "dhe3asb", "dhe4var", "dhe69h5", "dhe6ua0", "dhe6ugs"], "score": [80, 137, 32, 4103, 5, 294, 8, 2, 2, 2, 107, 2, 5, 4, 3, 3, 6, 6, 2, 2, 32, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 162, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Being tied to a motorcycle in a crash is more likely to kill you than save you. The reverse is true when considering being fixed to a seat within a car.", "Because a seatbelt is not giving extra protection on a motorcycle since in the case of an accident being bound to the motorcycle is actually more dangerous than flying off.\n\nIn the case of a car the seatbelt is increasing the safety in the case of an accident very much and is preinstalled in every car, so the only reason not to wear it is you being too lazy to put it on. Therefore they introduced the punishment to make sure people would use it.", "In a crash, a car is a big protective metal box. You want to be restrained inside it and let the metal box take the worst of the impact. A motorbike is pretty much the opposite. It's a big lump of metal that can only really make things worse for you. Being separated from the bike is very likely to be a good thing. If you're going to slide along the road and slam into a wall, then being strapped to the bike won't stop that happening. Instead it'll mean that you get crushed between the bike and the road or between the bike and the wall.", "The clue is the less protection part. In a car you have a safe cage around the occupants and a lot of crumple zones and airbags to keep you save in the event of a crash. So the best place to be is firmly in place strapped inside the car to the seat where all the protection works best. However in a motorcycle there is nothing protecting you in a crash. You are already sitting on the outside of the vehicle. So the best way to avoid injury is to get away from any potential heavy pieces of wreckage as possible. You would rather have the bike hit something after you have gotten away then if you were squished in the middle of the collision. This is why motorcyclists have protection to their bodies instead of on the vehicle. The helmet, suit, boots and gloves are designed to give someone good protection from smaller bumps and scrapes which make a collision survivable as long as you are able to get away from the biggest impacts.", "It has to do with insurance.  Crash studies prove car seatbelts work and Insurance company's incentivise police departments to enforce seatbelt law with tickets and checkpoints .  \n\n\nThere actually we're politicians who wanted to enact a seatbelt motorcycle law.  It got scrapped when enough people told them it was utterly stupid. ", "First, in a bike accident it's safest to \"throw\" the bike away and hence avoid being hit by it / trapped under it. Watch some bike racing crash reels, you'll see the riders literally throw the bike away in a crash and go \"ragdoll\" to avoid injury.\n\nSecond, bikes are one of those inventions that would never be allowed if they hadn't been around for 100 years. If we didn't have them already, you'd never be allowed to introduce them.\n\nIn many places, riding without a helmet is an offence - although ironically it means the police may not chase you for fear of causing you to fall off  &  kill yourself. Certainly the case in the UK, a lot of young scrotes on illegal/unlicensed scooters  &  dirt bikes deliberately ride without helmets so they can't be chased.", "If motorcycles were invented in 2017 there's no way in hell that they'd ever be allowed on public roads, way too dangerous. \n\nHowever, they were invented back in the heroic age of motorized travel when cars had no seat belts and plate glass windshields and steering columns that would jab out and spear you in the chest during a car crash. So now we're kind of stuck with them, not because of anything objective about their relative safety but because there are a bunch of people who ride them now and would be pissed if they got taken away.\n\nIt'd be kind of stupid to avoid making cars better because motorcycles are worse so meh, it's just kind of how things turned out.", "My buddy motorcycles to work. This is in California where lane splitting is legal and allows you to skip a lot of traffic (at the expense of your safety). He says it feels weird to get in a car and put on his seatbelt. \"If I'm strapped in how can I be thrown safely clear in the event of an accident?\" He's only about 20% serious.", "Why don't you have to wear a helmet in a car. It would definitely be safer?", "Simple! If you're gonna lose control on a bike; the best thing to do is drop it and let it skid down the road than to lose all your skin being pinned under it.\n\n\n\n", "In addition to everything already said, not wearing a seat belt in a car puts the other occupants of that car at risk.  If you're in an accident without a seat belt on you essentially become a projectile around the inside of the vehicle.\n\n_URL_0_ (don't worry he survived)", "It would be less safe to strap yourself to your motorcycle. This is why most states have helmet laws. Why not make people in cars wear helmets too? The two things are different and it's all about the amount of safety that society has deemed to be \"acceptable\" given the trade off of inconvenience.", "All of these responses are wrong. Politics and laws on the books have nothing to do with common sense or safety, though they can be correlated.\n\nThe local municipalities want to increase their influence, power, and revenue, and local police departments want more reasons to be able to pull people over and exert authority so that their jobs are easier.\n\nThis is an easy way to do it because it ties in with peoples innate desire to control what other people are doing and can be masked as a \"public safety\" initiative, which is patently false given motorcycles and other alternative, less safe vehicles are allowed on roadways. ", "This is a simple yet perfect example of why we should never freely give away our personal rights.", "Of course, all accidents are different, few are expected or happen slow enough to react with any degree of certainty that no one will be hurt.\n\nA seatbelt on a motorcycle would be more dangerous in an accident. While it isn't ideal by any means, being separated from the motorcycle is better. Imagine sliding on the road after a collision strapped to hundreds of pounds of tumbling metal. Or even just sliding or falling without being able to get your legs out from under the bike. In some cases, dumping the bike and sliding behind it could be the safe move.\n\nIn a car it's much more dangerous to be thrown from the vehicle because you're not wearing any protective gear. Hopefully motorcycle riders and passengers are wearing helmets and second skins. It's also not safe to be thrown around in a car, which the motorcycle rider can't do.", "The literal answer is that they have a different license class with different requirements.  Much like a class 4 (emergency vehicles) they also aren't required to wear seat belts. So you can't give a cop a seat belt ticket.", "You really don't want to be attached to a 400lb+ hunk of aluminum, plastic, and iron as it goes tumbling across the road/roadside. It is much less traumatic to the squishy meat sack riding the motorcycle to be thrown clear of it (wearing appropriate protection, always) rather than to remain attached to it.", "Same reason you don't have to wear a helmet in your car.\n\nDifferent vehicle, different risks.", "Also think about how the back seat passengers often become projectiles in a crash. Often the unbelted passenger kills the ones in front of them. A bike you personally just go flying; more potential personal injury potential.", "The real reason is because the government just wants more of your money and loves making rules ", "The simplest answer is that for a motorcyclist it is *more* dangerous to be strapped to the bike. In a car you crash and have a seatbelt you're kept relatively safe, the safety devices can activate without you're head being in the wrong area where it'll do more damage than protection, the seatbelt is about keeping you safe in a confined space where many things can hurt you.\n\nOn a bike, being connected to it can lead to worse outcomes. If it crashes and begins sliding, you need to be able to leave it so it doesn't drag you along asphalt at 60mph, or under a guard rail into a dangerous drop, or even into more vehicles. The ability to disconnect yourself from the crash is more important. That is why the safety precautions are focused on the individual separate from the bike (helmet, padded suits, etc.) A car can't safely take you out of the crash, so it has to make it safer for you during a crash.", "When a motorcycle crashes, more often than not it starts tumbling and flipping violently down the road.  I don't want to be strapped to a 400-900 pound sledgehammer that's tumbling down the street.", "I guess this is why we have to have seatbelt laws. Because people really can't see the difference between being strapped in a car versus strapped to a motorcycle? Really?", "On average more than one person occupies the car, but more often than not cyclists are alone.  The ethical reason, as explained to me by my driving instructor, is your body becomes a projectile in a car crash. It has the chance of bouncing in the car and killing the other passenger because of the contained nature of the vehicle", "Restraining someone to a 1200 lb, potentially airborne and explosive projectile,  is probably more dangerous than letting the rider fall off as the bike goes flying. ", "Helmet laws are the equivalent of safety belt laws. Belting yourself to the top of a motorcycle isn't safer, but wearing a helmet is.\n\nWhy do we pass laws forcing people to be safer? Because their injuries and deaths impact people other than themselves: they cost the healthcare system, they leave unsupported children behind, etc. If something is proven safer and it's easy to do, it should be a law, period. People whining about their freedom can go live in the woods without the benefits of society. If you want the benefits of society, respect your responsible place in society.", "U.S. based answer (facts and figures are for U.S., not sure if the trend is the same in other countries):\n\nThe reason is simple numbers. These are laws being made by politicians so they are looking at numbers primarily. Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people in the US under the age of 55. Over half of these deaths happen to people that were not wearing a seat belt. This is not to say that all of them could have been prevented had the person been wearing a seat belt but a lot of them likely could have been. By passing seat belt legislation, politicians are addressing one of the main causes of death for people under the age of 55. That is good politics and has a major impact on reducing traffic fatalities. \n\nFor motorcycles, there are far less deaths than compared to passenger vehicles. In fact, until the seat belt laws began to take effect, motorcycle deaths regularly made up less than 10% of all vehicle related fatalities. After those laws began being enforced with fines more universally, passenger vehicle fatalities began dropping and motorcycle fatalities began to make up about 12-13% of all vehicle related fatalities. The real issue with motorcycles is the impact that helmets can have and despite this, only 19 states require helmets.\n\nSome sources:\n[CDC facts about motor vehicle fatalities and seatbelts](_URL_1_)   \n\n[Insurance Institute for Highway safety facts and figures about vehicle deaths with breakdowns for motorcycles and passenger vehicles](_URL_2_)   \n\n[CDC site about impact of wearing a helmet on motorcycle fatalities and costs of accidents](_URL_0_)", "Because as human beings, \"there oughta be a law\" is a thing, and we're all more familiar with riding in cars than in motorcycles, and so the scrutiny is on cars.  \n  \nWe understand intuitively (and statistically) that wearing a seatbelt drastically improves our risk of injury or death during an accident.\n  \nOne could easily argue that I have a right to put myself at risk (the chance that I'm putting somebody ELSE at risk by not wearing my seatbelt is small, though it's clearly real), and so I could argue that I shouldn't have to wear a seatbelt BY LAW.  \n  \nThere are a number of other laws on the books that are similar - i.e., regulation of personal behavior that largely impacts the individual and perhaps only tangentially affect a larger group (drug prohibition, for example).  Some laws (such as universal health care) have the side affect that we can now argue that people have a responsibility to lower their individual risk for the sake of efficiencies at the larger scale.  This is at least part of the reason why advocates of personal responsibility argue that these types of laws are unnecessary (at best) and intrusive/rights-restrictive (at worst).  \n  \nUnderstanding the consequences of these laws is important, and is why it's important to have a thoughtful, engaged citizenry when enacting legislation that places restrictions on our fellow citizens.\n\n", "This might have already been answered and I'm sure this will get lost but here we go anyway. \n\nThe seat belt is to keep you in the car, if you're in an accident it doesn't just stop after the initial collision. On a motorcycle it does. But in a car if you're not still in the seat after that initial impact no one is controlling your heavy ass box of death. The car will quite possibly still be rolling and semi controllable. With you being held infront of the wheel and brakes there is still a good chance multiple collisions will be avoided. ", "Imagine a motorcycle accident. Now imagine being strapped to the motorcycle during that accident. 9 times out of 10 you would be better off being thrown off of it.  \n", "because stopping you for not having a seat belt on gives a cop time to look in your car for probable cause to search it.\n\nyou can agree that wearing a seat belt is a good idea while at the same time argue that the police should have no authority to chase you down and extort you for it.", "A car is a huge metal object moving super fast  &  close to other moving metal objects that are also moving super fast. If one is not in the driver's seat in a proper position, they cannot control the vehicle. If a person were to lose control of the vehicle, it then becomes a large weapon moving very fast that could veer off into any direction.\n\nMotorcycle accidents are usually only fatal to the person on motorcycle and not the other vehicle. Not the case with cars/trucks.\n\nLastly, it seems to me that getting ejected off a motorcycle might be better than being affixed to it while it crashes.", "I think the simplest explanation is that if you get in a motorcycle crash, you don't want to be strapped ON the motorcycle. That would be more dangerous than rolling away. If you're strapped in, your leg will most likely be crushed under the bike or your entire body could be run over.", "Seatbelts increase occupant security with no real inconvenience. There is absolutely no reason not to wear a seatbelt.\n\nThere is simply no such solution for motorcycles, other than wearing a helmet and ABS system. Both of which are required in EU (ABS on bikes produced from 2016 onward).", "Think about what a 'seatbelt' would do for a motorcyclist?\n\nBest case scenario you are now strapped down to your crashing bike as it is mangled in a wreck and it tumbles over your body and crushes you to tiny pieces.\n\nSeatbelts would be counterproductive in a bike wreck. Now OTHER safety items, like bike helmets and proper riding leathers, are another story. That helmets aren't required in all 50 states baffles me, but even then, i can't tell you how often i may see some schumck riding his bike at 80 mph, weaving through traffic, maybe wearing a helmet, but also just wearing nothing but a tshirt and cargo shorts or and sandles or some shit. riding a bike dressed like that, besides looking like a doofous, is just asking for a series case of road rash if you ever wipe out. ", "Seat belts on a motorcycle are an injury sentence at best, death more likely.\n\nThink of when you were little and fell off your bicycle at slow speed. You just kind of stepped and fell away. Now picture if your butt was belted to the seat, now you're practically being slammed into the ground on your side. Now replace the bicycle with a 500 pound piece of burning hot motorcycle. You don't want to be trapped under that.\n\n", "**ELI5:** Cars and motorcycles are different so there are different rules.\n\n**ELI15:** Motorcycles are inherently unsafe. Making them safe turns them into a car.\n\n**ELI30:** Insurance companies push safety laws. There are 210 million car drivers and 8 million motorcycle drivers. Also, motorcycles are cheaper and usually do less damage in an accident. Car accidents cost more and are more frequent than motorcycle accidents so insurance companies focus their lobbying money in that area. (Motorcycle accidents often kill the cyclist so health costs are morbidly minimized.)\n\n**ELI50:** Why are you asking me? You made the laws!", "The same reason we don't have seatbelts on bicycles... ever had your bike fall over and been tied to the seat? Yeah, me neither. ", "I'm sure it's been said... besides helmet laws....   it's generally much safer to bail from the bike in an accident than to be secured to it by a restraining device.", "I'm no motorcycle rider, but from what I've heard from other riders, the last thing you wanna do when a bike goes down is be strapped to it.", "Seatbelts should be at the drivers discretion if theyre the only one in the vehicle. This is more of another argument for optional seatbelts than a question w a good answer", "Modern motor vehicles create a protective cocoon around the passengers, and the use of seatbelts keeps them inside the cocoon in the event of an accident.\n\nMotorcycles have no such cocoon, and therefore being physically strapped to one would create far more danger to the rider in the event of an accident.", "Because it doesn't matter. Being strapped to a motorcycle isn't going to improve your chances of survival. This is a classic equity vs equality situation. ", "It's an insurance issue. The law was pushed by the insurance company. \n\nIf you get into a car accident and aren't wearing your seat belt, you're likely to be more hurt than if you wore it. More injuries mean more medical care. It costs them more. \n\nIf you get into a motorcycle accident without a helmet, death is more likely than if you wore one. So they have there are more medical costs if you wear a helmet. \n\nYou're a product in this scenario. ", "A few things:\n\n1. Restraints on a motorcycle are not going to be helpful, whereas they are in a car\n1. If you fly off a motorcycle, you are unlikely to hit another person. In a car, you can bounce around and injure another passenger who IS wearing a seatbelt\n1. Many safety devices in a car require you to be in a seat in order to work (crumple zones, airbags). Your primary safety devices on motorcycles are your clothes and helmets, so your physical location is irrelevant to the function of those devices. ", "You asked a question about legality, yet you got many answers about safety.  Why is that?  Well, it's not nice to mention, but most people aren't particularly intelligent, or even consistent.  And lawmakers are, first and (Sadly) foremost, people.  So the laws that govern motorcycle safety aren't even reasonably close to those which govern car safety, and if they were then motorcycles would require major changes.  They would have to resemble small cars...\n\nTL;DR  Our laws aren't consistent or reasonable.  Deal.", "A car: a big ole box of structural metal designed to keep you inside and in your seat when you crash.\n\nA bicycle, no box around you there. Imagine your bike flips. If you had some crazy harness on, you would of course be flipped, crushed, dragged with the bike. Its likely that there are better chances of survival if you're flung off. And you have more discretion on how you take the crash. You may judge its better to bail from the bike before impact in certain situations.\n\nA helmet is a whole new ballgame. Personally, my opinion is that you should wear proper riding gear (thick leather or similar) and a helmet always. Especially the helmet."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcVSQh5MbTo"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/mc/", "https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html", "http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/motorcycles/fatalityfacts/motorcycles"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27b9iz", "title": "why do flies fly in patterns without a destination nor an obvious reason that would make them want to do so?", "selftext": "So I've been studying civil rights for my finals, but there's a fly that has been flying over my notebook for about twenty or so minutes. It follows the same, squared pattern, but there is absolutely nothing in this room. There is no food, no rotten stuff, no dirt. There are not other flies this fly might be attracted to, so what is it doing? I've been testing it by shaking my hands near it: it flies away, but then comes back immediately and start doing that pattern again. I've built a tower with my books that obstructs its path (perhaps an inanimate object would cause a different reaction than my hand. And yes, I like to procrastinate) and things changed a bit: the fly smashed his head the first time, but then built another squared pattern around the tower. Is it marking territory or something? Thanks :D\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27b9iz/eli5_why_do_flies_fly_in_patterns_without_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chz62uf", "chz6gd9", "chzamxn", "chzejms", "chzf07n", "chzg2ye"], "score": [104, 40, 14, 2, 11, 7], "text": ["Here's the thing about a housefly:  It's really fucking dumb.  It's got a tiny brain and limited reasoning.  So applying any sort of logic to it's action is probably a fool's errand.\n\nIt's better to look at a fly like a robot with a very specific task.  For a housefly?  That task is **Find rotting meat and/or feces.  EAT.**  Somehow they've also shoehorned in **BREED** as an alternate task.\n\nSo the fly going around like crazy in your room?  It's probably following some very simple search algorithm to find rotting meat and/or shit in your room.  It doesn't think \"No shit around here, time to move on\", it thinks \"no shit directly below me, turn left\" or something like that.\n\nAnimal behavior is written by millions of years of evolution, and especially for the dumb animals like a housefly, it's probably not all that effective at adapting to humanity's dominance over the Earth, which is only a few thousand years old.", "You are asking the wrong question.\n\nFlies are just barely alive.  They have extremely limited volition, and in fact their brains are no better than a small cluster of nerves.  Much of what they accomplish in their lives is by luck.  You cannot really even say that a fly is \"seeking out\" food at all.  They are just flying around and stopping when their senses detect something edible and / or mate-able.  Turns out that you can be highly evolved and still be dumber than dirt.\n\n\"What's he thinking\" is a question best reserved for things like mammals.  Flies just aren't capable of doing anything you or I would consider \"thinking.\"", "I wish they'd fly straight, they'd be much easier to swat.", "many insects plan short paths and take a break to plan the next route. very energy efficient. hard to chase after.", "What I want to know is why gnats...who do not actually eat human faces...will unerringly seek out a person and get in their face, no matter how much room is provided. And if you ignore them long enough, they crawl into your nose and tear ducts and die while causing mild revulsion and distress.", "Two thinks about flies. We might not understand their behaviour, but whatever they are doing has been honed by evolution, and given they are still around, they must be doing it right. Second....we use flies for time of death calculations...and they are perfect for it because they are on that body within hours....sometimes within minutes. Evolution has crafted them into meat seeking missles.....they're amazing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ab730v", "title": "In the Chinese Civil War, why did the Soviets recognize the KMT?", "selftext": "Why did the Soviets recognize the Kuomintang (KMT) as the government of China instead of the Chinese Communist Party?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ab730v/in_the_chinese_civil_war_why_did_the_soviets/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ecy7qoq", "ecyut50"], "score": [32, 16], "text": ["This [answer](_URL_0_) by u/ParkSungJun, about why soviet-sino relations broke down, partly answers why the soviets supported the KMT over CPC initally.\n", "The Soviets recognition of the KMT as the government of China goes back prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War (or World War II) with Sun Yet-sun.  The recognition had nothing to do with ideology and mostly for practical reason. The KMT loosely kept the country together and due to United States isolationists policies, turned to the Soviet Union for foreign assistance and military training.  In return, Sun Yet-sun allowed CCP members to part of the government.  The CCP was a handful of people at the time and the KMT controlled the military, the money and had governance over the country.  During Japanese expansion into Manchuria, the Soviets were concern of Japanese expansion into Russian territory so, like the  United States, were incentives to keep China afloat against the Japanese during the war, thereby helping the KMT.  They even intervened through the Communists International (Comintern) to force the CCP to form the Second United Front with the KMT to fight against the Japanese.   \n\nFast forward several years, and when the Chinese Civil War erupted, by every metric Mao was not suppose to win the war.  Chiang had a veteran military, controlled all the resources and major cities, while Mao had peasants and was hiding in the mountains.  However, while the Soviets did recognize the KMT, they were also secretly assisting the CCP, financially and militarily.  After CCP outmaneuvered the KMT in the Northeast (Manchuria), city after city, the CCP took every major city, mostly without spilling a single drop of blood as the regional generals surrendered and join the CCP without putting up a fight.  Chiang fled to Taiwan, the Soviets recognized the CCP's victory and the People's Republic of China as the government of China and the rest is history.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6of14g/what_were_some_of_the_reasons_for_the_sinosoviet/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2b89sa", "title": "Did planes carrying diplomatic leaders get special privileges to not be shot down during WWII?", "selftext": "In particular, when Churchill flew to Moscow in August 1942, did his plane fly over German occupied Russia, or did it just take the long route through the Arctic?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b89sa/did_planes_carrying_diplomatic_leaders_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj2tv3v", "cj31tc7"], "score": [70, 17], "text": ["No. In fact, BOAC Flight 777 (a civilian flight) flying from Lisbon to Bristol was shot down by the Germans. The predominant theory for the reason the plane was shot down was that the [Germans thought Churchill was on board](_URL_1_). Of course, that wasn't the case. Instead, the actor [Leslie Howard](_URL_0_), who acted in *Gone With the Wind*, was on-board along with several other passengers and crew. ", "Molotov's 1942 flight to the US crossed over the front lines in a converted Pe-8 four-engined bomber. It traveled over the Baltic and made refueling stops in Scotland, Canada, and the US. The flight evaded enemy patrols, but was attacked twice on the return leg by both German and Soviet fighters without sustaining damage.\n\n*Source*\n\nRzheshevskii\u0306, Oleg Aleksandrovich. *War and diplomacy: the making of the Grand Alliance ; documents from Stalin's archives edited with a commentary*. Australia: Harwood Academic, 1996.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=S0_gLwEACAAJ&amp;dq=Flight+777:+The+Mystery+Of+Leslie+Howard.&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=QTLMU7_TGem-sQSnwIHoDQ&amp;ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA", "http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/other_1ashley.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "4g40wq", "title": "a classic argument is: the universe can't come from nothingness, because something can't come from nothingness; stephen hawking says yes it can; brian greene says current theory states that nothingness is actually a type potential; doesn't that make nothingness something after all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g40wq/eli5_a_classic_argument_is_the_universe_cant_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2ed4pm", "d2ed5rt", "d2edbgd", "d2edkqx", "d2eglnf", "d2fgbo6"], "score": [4, 6, 146, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Well pure nothingness can't have potential, so if that's true than nothingness indeed is a bit more than it sounds like. However, once everything is accounted for, I'm pretty sure we could always say nothing exists, but since we can only perceive of 'things', 'no-thing' would be imperceptible. It really comes down to semantics.", "In so far that a potential is \"something\". This is mostly just word play. Nothingness is still nothingness in the sense that it is the complete lack of anything. Even if that lack has the potential to become something, it is still nothing until its potential is realized.\n\nTo put it another way, if I am holding a ball in the air it has potential energy, but I wouldn't describe it as falling until I let it go.", "So the problem here is that you're dancing around the semantic problem of defining \"nothingness\".  In physics, nothing is *nothing*: even empty space is a frothing sea of quantum foam with particles spontaneously popping in and out of existence constantly.  Inside the universe, there is no such thing as \"nothing\".  In that context, from what we think we might possibly know about \"before\" the universe, it's possible that our universe spontaneously sprang from \"nothing\" in the same way that particles out in empty space spring up from \"nothing\".  There might be a potential for universes to exist, and our universe is the result of that potential.\n\nBut that brings up another semantic point: what was \"before\" the universe?  Well, there is no \"before\", because time is a function of the universe.  You can't say \"before\" the universe because that requires a dimension of time that's moving in one direction.  Imagine a line starting at one point and going infinitely off in one direction.  What's on the line before it starts?  There *is no line* before the line starts.\n\nWe're using words and concepts that necessarily must exist within our universe and according to its rules to try to describe something that exists outside of those boundaries.  So there's going to be some places where the semantics just don't fit how we normally think of them.", "The reality is that there's still a lot about our universe we simply still don't understand. In trying to explain the origins of the universe we know that matter and energy can't come from *true* nothingness so there must always be something preceding the perceived scientific start of everything. Taking the big bang as an example - we have ideas about what happened \"before\" the big bang, but we don't know for sure.  \n  \nSo in short - it's not wrong to say something can't come from nothing but often we find out what we perceive to be nothing actually ends up having something to it after all.  \n  \nHope that helps!", "May I suggest an online lecture by Lawrence Krauss on this.   I can only paraphrase but I believe I remember him stating that 'Nothingness is inherently unstable'.  The arguement now is that the universe MUST come from 'nothing', there is always a potential.", "Everything came from something because something is always somewhere; somewhere may be nowhere, but nowhere can't be nothing because nothing is somewhere without something"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2pybg6", "title": "Does my neighbor above me hear things differently than I hear it from them below? That is, does sound travel better/faster/louder upwards or downwards (or no difference)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2pybg6/does_my_neighbor_above_me_hear_things_differently/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn1cqej"], "score": [6], "text": ["A significant difference would be the fact that you're in contact with the floor.\n\nBy this I mean that your walking, shuffling, dropping objects onto the floor will be much more audible to your downstairs neighbour than it will be to your upstairs neighbour.\n\nHope this answers your question?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "68tdub", "title": "Can petroleum extraction cause tremors/earthquakes?", "selftext": "Petroleum is being extracted from the subsoil and years of continuous extraction could leave the cavity where petroleum used to be empty. Could this cause the ground above the cavity to collapse, possibly leading to a tremor/earthquake?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/68tdub/can_petroleum_extraction_cause_tremorsearthquakes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh1696y"], "score": [4], "text": ["Let's break your question up a bit, first:\n\n > Petroleum is being extracted from the subsoil and years of continuous extraction could leave the cavity where petroleum used to be empty. Could this cause the ground above the cavity to collapse\n\nThere are some misconceptions about the nature of oil/gas deposits embedded here, I'll refer you to my [answer to a related question](_URL_0_), but here is the most relevant bit from this post:\n\n > There are not large chasms filled with oil/gas (or groundwater) that we tap into when we extract these resources. A much better visual is wet sand, i.e. the oil or water we extract occupies spaces between grains within the reservoir rock, this is why 'porosity' (amount of space between grains) and 'permeability' (how connected those spaces are to each other) are extremely important for reservoir rocks. So what happens when we extract oil/gas or water from a reservoir rock? Well, what we call the 'pore fluid pressure' decreases (basically the force exerted on the grains by the presence of a fluid between them that is trapped) as the material filling the pores is extracted. This can lead to compaction (i.e. a decrease in porosity), which causes a bulk volume reduction (i.e. density increases), which means the ground surface lowers (i.e. subsidence).\n\nSo, what you can and do get in areas of oil extraction is a lowering of the land surface, but not via collapse.\n\nNow for the more general question:\n\n > Can petroleum extraction cause tremors/earthquakes?\n\nYes, and we typically refer to that as [induced seismicity](_URL_3_) (though as you can see in that link, oil / gas extraction is not the only cause of induced seismicity). Generally, induced seismicity results because some human activity changes the state of stress in a region in such a way that a fault that previously did not have enough stress (or enough stress in the right orientation) on it to fail, now does. At present, the most common (or at least most discussed) form of induced seismicity related to oil and gas production comes from the injection of waste water. [The USGS](_URL_2_) has a nice set of resources discussing the induced seismicity problem within the central US.\n\nReturning back to the problem of subsidence (land lowering) caused by reservoir compaction after extraction of oil/gas (or groundwater), this also can change the state of stress in the local area and thus also induce seismicity. It's a little harder to find discussions of this, but [this paper (pdf)](_URL_1_) documents induced seismicity in the Netherlands that seems to be driven by differential compaction of the reservoir after petroleum extraction. To emphasize though, the earthquakes here are being caused by changes in the stress field as different areas compact more or less, not via catastrophic collapse of large voids."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/64vryt/what_is_happening_to_the_land_from_the/", "http://www.proc-iahs.net/372/129/2015/piahs-372-129-2015.pdf", "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity"]]}
{"q_id": "1ep39o", "title": "what do business people actually do all day?", "selftext": "A friend suggested that an MA in International Business would be a great fit for me... and the admissions office is likely to agree, but I can't actually picture myself doing a 'business' job. What do these people do?\n\nEdit: Thanks for all the great responses everyone! Sounds... plausibly interesting.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ep39o/eli5_what_do_business_people_actually_do_all_day/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca2d6go", "ca2d74p", "ca2dnhw", "ca2f2we", "ca2f947", "ca2gv6c", "ca2h3w8", "ca2i1cy", "ca2jkft", "ca2kieb", "ca2kooo", "ca2kopz", "ca2koud", "ca2l4w7", "ca2m2in", "ca2oj2u", "ca2wd2c", "ca2yv83"], "score": [16, 76, 4, 7, 4, 10, 2, 7, 50, 3, 8, 3, 4, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["* Meetings (e.g. phone conference calls, in-person meetings in a meeting room)\n\n* Reviewing metrics (e.g. how many widgets were sold yesterday)\n\n* Planning (e.g. how many eployees do we need on staff next week to meet our goals?)\n\n* Working with team members (e.g. resolving problems, training, helping, mentoring)", "I am an executive at a smallish business (~150 employees), and therefore could be considered a business person.  Here's what my days consist of:\n\n* Monitoring our suppliers to make sure that their products are being delivered to us on time and high quality. \n\n* Dealing with any issues with our suppliers, such as inability to fulfill our requests, or quality problems.\n\n* Negotiating new contracts with suppliers that get us what we need at the lowest possible price.\n\n* Reviewing evaluations our employees have done of new products to see if they'll meet our needs for less money.\n\n* Plenty of meetings with other executives at my company to make sure our segments of the business are all working together smoothly.\n\n* Review and evaluate my employees' performance, regularly deliver praise, as well as correct mistakes and educate people.\n\nLogistically speaking, what this amounts to is a lot of phone and email conversations, as well as a bunch of data analysis and building reports.  These reports then feed into decision making.", "Paperwork.\n\nThen, paperwork to let people know that the paperwork got done.\n\nThen, follow-up paperwork documenting paperwork completion.\n\nThen, paperwork to let people know about the current lack of paper in the office.\n\nLunch.\n\nReddit.\n\nHome.\n", "Explained like you're 5: Tell subordinates what to do and ask peers for stuff in order to get closer to the goals set by your superiors by deadline.", "For me, it's constant meetings. All day long.", "Honestly, 60% of my day is PowerPoint, Excel,  &  Email.  The other 40% is meetings about what I need to do in PowerPoint, Excel,  &  Email...", "The mudane details of what you do will be interesting if you're developing a project you feel passionate about. Daily tasks are boring and routine but your motivation will come from the goal and energy of moving the project forward.", "At a *very* high level, I spend my days researching questions/problems, answering emails, and in meetings/teleconferences.  What you talk about in these meetings depends on the type of role you have.  My days as an employee of a large insurance company with 30,000+ employees are dramatically different than they were when I was a real estate appraiser in a 2-person office.  \n\nI expect when you're asking about generic \"business jobs\" - you're thinking more along the lines of what I do now (the big insurance company).  Being in such a big company, even the smallest changes require coordination between a lot of different areas.  Everyone has different goals and report to different leaders.  So you spend a lot of your time in meetings, on teleconferences, and sending emails to coordinate so that everyone has the same expectations and knows what they need to do.\n\nFor example, I recently worked on a a project where we needed to send a new form along with the insurance policy.  The form should be completed by the insured, then sent back to us.  Things we have to coordinate:  \n\n* designing the form\n* getting approval from lawyers that the form accomplishes what we need it to\n* working with IT to make the system start printing the form\n* finding out what address should be used to send the form back (so that it won't just get lost in the shuffle)\n* figuring out who will handle/process the form and what that involves, and\n* writing up instructions to detail these procedures.\n\nFor some people, this may sound excruciating, but I actually enjoy coordinating with so many different areas.  (One of my main responsibilities is overseeing these types of projects.)  I like knowing about these random corners of the company and knowing who I need to go to to accomplish all these tasks.  And it feels great when it's all done and you see it working as you expected.", "Just wanted to say I love this question, and it's really the ideal sort of question for ELI5.  Thanks for asking it!", "They make sure the TPS reports have coversheets.", "I'm the general manager of a small factory (100 people). My boss, who is the regional manager, and GM of the parent factory, likens the job to \"shit cricket.\" You are sitting in your office, and someone hurls a piece of shit at you, and you have to knock it out of the park. Then the phone rings, and it's another person hurling a piece of shit, and you have to hit that one out. Meanwhile, you've gotten five more pieces of shit in the email. That's a huge chunk of the job. Anything easy people take care of themselves. It only comes to you when it's gone horribly wrong. And, turning over 20 million a year in revenue to 300+ customers, all custom jobs, something is ALWAYS going wrong. \n\nIn the few moments of breath, it's walking through, and looking for things that are wrong, or could be better, or dealing with things that are simply too big for anyone below you to handle. \n\nAnd, the real key, is figuring how to build your future and grow your business. It's about making hundreds of decisions mostly right, and sweating the details. The biggest rookie mistake every manager makes is brushing too much stuff off as too small to worry about. It adds up. It ALL adds up. You fight for every nickel of profit, and seems like losses just fall from the sky any time you aren't looking. So you keep looking. \n\nThis means I spend a lot of time thinking and talking, and a LOT of time on Excel and Outlook. Gut instincts only take you so far, and you don't have the discipline to plan in detail, you will go down. \n", "Majority of the people posting in this thread do not know anything about business.", "[HA HA! *Business!*](_URL_0_)\n\nHow I've always imagined it, anyway.", "Get an internship at a company that does the work that you are interested in, unpaid if necessary; you'll find out first hand if you really like it or not.", "Drink coffee. Stand around the watercooler. Show pictures of their kids to people who don't care. Dream of retirement. ", "I am an outside Sales Rep (medical equipment). I \"call\" on medical directors (I go see them) at Hospitals. My territory includes several states so much of the job involves driving. I will never (err, rarely) sell anything to anyone who I haven't already seen multiple times, so I go see people repeatedly to build a relationship.\n\nI work out of the house and have \"office\" days where I catch up with stuff like: emails, little projects where I do financial/other assessments for customers/myself, call people, have conference calls, Reddit a little.\n\nOnce I do sell something I have to \"in-service\" (train) customers on use of the product. In addition to initial training all existing customers inevitably will need continued support and refresher training.", "There are three kinds of jobs in this world. At the bottom, you get paid to work. In the middle, you get paid to think. And at the top, you get paid to decide. \n\nAt the bottom, the company could hire someone else pretty easily to do your job. They might have to train them a little, but they wouldn't be worried about replacing you. \n\nIn the middle, you have skills and experience that aren't as easily replaced. You contribute something that is very much you. If the company had to replace you, they could. But the new person wouldn't do the job the same as you and it might be hard to find someone who can even do the bare minimum. \n\nAt the top, it might look like you don't do very much. You might spend a lot of your day reading the news about your industry and meeting with other people in the company who do the actual work. You'll also meet with the people who own the business. They have entrusted you with their money and they will check and make sure you are doing well. You get paid to decide and your decisions will mean more--measured in dollars--than anyone else in the middle or bottom. \n\nThose people at the top are business people. Even if they aren't businesspeople by education and even if they hate being a businessperson, if they make the big decisions they are running the business. ", "This might be a legitimate 5 year old question. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://inflatableferret.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/haha-business.jpg"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14lbu8", "title": "If bacteria is everywhere and can seemingly grow on anything, then why aren't more colonies visible?", "selftext": "Was just wondering since bacteria are on everything; handles/doorknobs, counter tops, floors, soil, underground, lakes/rivers, etc.  I mean, we've all seen colonies in our toilets every so often as gross spots that seemingly double in size after a day or two, but seeing as how there are literally trillions in every room, on you, etc., why aren't there more colonies that are visible (on basically every surface) to the naked eye when they multiply so rapidly?\n\nAnd for that matter, why haven't they basically taken over the Earth?  You'd think that with such a rapidly evolving, resistant, and plentiful nature, they surely would've overcome all obstacles in the last 3+ billion years and just entirely covered the Earth.  I'm glad they haven't, but what's the deal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14lbu8/if_bacteria_is_everywhere_and_can_seemingly_grow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7e52z5", "c7e5hx1"], "score": [11, 3], "text": ["You don't see them because there isn't enough nutrient density for them to grow into visible colonies. Take a door handle made of metal. Sure there's bacteria there, but there's just not enough biologically available material present to sustain continual growth/division. Most bacteria are not actively dividing, they're just chilling out. The colonies we see in laboratory settings form because they're grown on extremely rich media.", "You would be surprised how little there is to eat everywhere. Food sources are broken down quickly. I grow fungi and bacteria for a living and I've done experiments where I add chunks of fungi to soil and not much really happens, the soil is not this hotbed of waiting energy you might think it is. It has really already largely been digested and large amounts of its available energy has already been utilized. It is only if you add a food source such as potato flakes or Cheerios that you see visible large amounts of growth of one type of bacteria or fungi. It is really neat. The rest of the time the organisms are in a state of competition and stalemate, battling over very scarce resources that limits their growth to the microscopic, not macroscopic level."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7ndrvj", "title": "why are polar bears and grizzly bears considered different species if they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ndrvj/eli5_why_are_polar_bears_and_grizzly_bears/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds14dx0", "ds1550c", "ds159b8", "ds167xg", "ds17r4d", "ds1hfgj", "ds1jxo2", "ds1tz6n", "ds1v3fe", "ds1zwnc", "ds5jr13"], "score": [931, 6, 30, 9, 62, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's very difficult to group living, evolving organisms into discrete categories.\n\nPolar bears diverged from the rest of the *Ursus* genus very recently, therefore they are still genetically similar enough to other bears to produce fertile offspring.\n\nTaxonomy is also based on physical appearance. Since polar bears are  quite distinct from other species of bears in terms of their physical appearance and geographical habitat, the decision was made to consider them a separate species.\n\nDoves and pigeons are another example. There are 310 species of birds within the *Columbiformes* order (which encompasses all pigeon and dove families), many of which are capable of breeding with other species and producing fertile offspring. Their classification as separate species lies mainly in their physical differences.\n\nThe long and the short of it is that taxonomy is a human construct, and not everything fits nice and neatly between the lines all of the time.\n\n**Tl;dr:** while this typically isn't the case, there is no hard, taxonomic rule stating that members of different species cannot produce fertile offspring. A better way of thinking about it would be: \"if two populations are unable to interbreed, they cannot be considered the same species\". This doesn't necessarily preclude two species from being able to interbreed.", "Be cause they look and act differently enough. The seperation between species is pretty grey for a long time. If kept apart for long enough they will no longer be able to cross breed.", "The differentiation between species is more of an art than a science.  In the botanical world, massive flame wars between adherents to various authorities break out frequently, because having the only specimen of a particular species in cultivation can net you tend of hundreds of thousands more than just having a particular variation of a more common genus/species combo.  It\u2019s way more of a grey area than simple interbreeding.", "The Brainscoop YouTube channel does a really great video on the topic. The tl;dr is that we did our best to make groups that made sense at the time they were made... but we're working on incomplete, inaccurate, sparse datasets. Also life, uh, finds a way.\n\n_URL_0_", "This is a common misunderstanding. While you are right that species are defined in terms of those that can interbreed, this distinction is made on the POPULATION level, not the individual level. \n\nWhile individual polar bears may be able to successfully mate with individual grizzlies, the two groups mate at different times and places. That's enough to keep the count of known wild hybrids to... \n\n3... \n\nThat's right, just 3 wild examples known. Ever. As such, they are different enough that they are reproductively isolated despite having overlapping territories. ", "Fertility is an artificial criteria humans use to help define species (although there are numerous definitions of the word). \n\nIn actuality, \"species\" may not be a real thing. And there's no reason to assume that the boundaries separating species work in the same way for all organisms. ", "Because in nonhumans any consistent difference between any two populations of animals, no matter how small or trivial, is sufficient for them to be classified as a \"different species.\" \n\nOr more precisely there isn't a real official basis for determining species, mostly just depends on to what extent a scientist wants to insist on it or not.", "Even if they can interbreed if they are brought together by people, but they don't ever encounter each other due to natural barriers in the wild, then the two organisms can still be considered separate species because they are not *naturally* interbreeding populations", "What constitutes a species is highly subjective and not entirely empirical. Arguments regularly break out in the field of taxonomy regarding classifications.", "Geographic isolation. They cannot breed because they cannot naturally come in contact with each other. Same thing with a species of lion on Madagascar that never meets lions of the Savanna even though they are the same", "We don't really have a proper definition for species. It's a human construct to help us categorize things because that's how our brains work.  In reality, life in all it's forms is a continuum and vastly more similar than we sometimes like to think."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/9fOfFlMe6ek"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15axle", "title": "Cathedral Acoustics", "selftext": "I know that cathedrals and the like are designed to be as acoustically perfect as possible. My question is, with as old as many of these buildings are, which came first: the \"cathedral\" design or the understanding of the acoustic properties of those forms? Where those designs aesthetic at first and the acoustics were a happy coincidence, or were the acoustic properties understood before cathedrals began to be built?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15axle/cathedral_acoustics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7ksmcp", "c7ktbbb"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["They were aesthetic (and symbolic) from the beginning, and later people began analyzing why certain buildings sounded so good.", "They are not acoustically perfect, by any means.   Many of them have flutter echos in upper sections.\n\nSome cathedrals have fantastic acoustics and others have bad acoustics.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "lhy1g", "title": "Can the mind be restarted?  Can all electrical activity in the brain cease, and then restart, and not cause psychological changes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lhy1g/can_the_mind_be_restarted_can_all_electrical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2suf1x", "c2svbr6", "c2sz6fa", "c2suf1x", "c2svbr6", "c2sz6fa"], "score": [13, 12, 3, 13, 12, 3], "text": ["No.\n\nThe brain has inherent electrical activity that we can measure.  However, [a vast majority of the interactions are chemical.](_URL_3_)  The process of communication involves the transfer of charged ions across the neuron's outer walls (membranes), so we **CAN** take some electrical measurments, and do some [frigging amazing things with them](_URL_0_).\n\nThere are a few electrical junctions, [mostly for very fast interactions that happen at regular intervals.](_URL_1_) (think of the heart)\n\nAnyways, if all electrical activity stops, everything stops. Your brain is never \"off\".  When a heart stops, like [this](_URL_2_), you die because of lack of oxygen getting to the brain via the blood stream (this happens amazingly fast) however you will still have a good deal of brain activity for quite some time.  W/o oxygen, the brain can no longer carry out many of the chemical processes it needs to function.\n\nThere are also any number of very tightly held gradients of chemicals throughout the brain.  Shutting down would mean the loss of many of these gradients.  A chemical mechanism like our brain just doenst function at a core level like an electrical mechanism like a computer.  Losing any of the complex interactions for even a split second would result in permanent damage.\n\nI'm struggling for an analogy here if anyone can help...", "Neuroscience grad student here. I disagree with Syberton.\n\nFirst, let's define what we would mean by 'electrical activity in the brain ceasing'. I'm going to take it to mean, that somehow, we magically stop every axon from firing for a couple of seconds. This would stop all intrinsic rhythms and patterns and would basically represent a complete shut down of 'thought'. However, membrane potentials and cell metabolism would continue, so widespread cell death would not occur. \n\nWith this definition in mind, I am pretty sure that you could restart the system pretty easily. If you removed the block on axons all at once, you would almost certainly seize, which would probably cause some psychological damage. However, if you removed the blocks in order, eg senses and then their downstream targets as they'd hit them, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't seize too much. Most of the rhythms in the brain that are well-correlated to thought (through EEG and sticking electrodes in the brain) are generated by intrinsic firing patterns of cells and the underlying anatomical properties of the brain. The brain would fall back into rhythm fairly quickly and you probably wouldn't have much of a long lasting effect.\n\nHowever, if you locked the axons still for too long (without stopping all metabolic and degradation processes in general), some of the cells would start to die off. This would mostly be due to housekeeping cells not receiving the proper signals and the energy balance in the brain falling apart.\n\nLet me know if you want me to go deeper into the question or want a source for something I said.\n\n", "Interesting question. In the normal course, electrocerebral silence is only encountered when\n\n1. a person is brain-dead\n1. a person is in especially-deep coma\n2. a person is in an especially-deep medically-induced coma\n\nEven then, the cessation of electrical activity is just that which is measured on scalp EEG; ie, we can only really be certain that the most superficial layers of cortex aren't firing. Because of the widespread coupling of the brain, it's assumed other parts are silent, too.\n\nCase #1 is by definition irreversible. The other two cases are complicated by other factors. Most people with a flat EEG aren't in a very reversible coma; if they wake at all, they're likely to have severe residual deficits from whatever global insult caused the coma. Most persons in medically-induced coma to flatline have refractory status epilepticus, a state of continuous seizure which can itself be damaging.\n\nNote that in general anesthesia, the most likely pattern on EEG is what's called suppression-burst, not a flat line.\n\nBut what if, on a lark, we took a healthy volunteer and flattened his EEG? [Kirshbaum and Carollo](_URL_0_) reported years ago a case of a woman with barbiturate overdose, iso-electric EEG, and then complete recovery. So it happens.\n\nThe caveats: I'm interpreting your question to mean no electroencephalographic activity. EEG really only measures the excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials generated in the superficial dendritic trees of cortical neurons. (At least, that's what we think.) Electrical activity, more broadly considered, might include the resting potential of the neuron and the gated and leak channels that maintain it. If you stopped things like sodium-potassium pumps your cell may not be very healthy. Also, I do not recommend you try things like barbiturate overdose at home.\n", "No.\n\nThe brain has inherent electrical activity that we can measure.  However, [a vast majority of the interactions are chemical.](_URL_3_)  The process of communication involves the transfer of charged ions across the neuron's outer walls (membranes), so we **CAN** take some electrical measurments, and do some [frigging amazing things with them](_URL_0_).\n\nThere are a few electrical junctions, [mostly for very fast interactions that happen at regular intervals.](_URL_1_) (think of the heart)\n\nAnyways, if all electrical activity stops, everything stops. Your brain is never \"off\".  When a heart stops, like [this](_URL_2_), you die because of lack of oxygen getting to the brain via the blood stream (this happens amazingly fast) however you will still have a good deal of brain activity for quite some time.  W/o oxygen, the brain can no longer carry out many of the chemical processes it needs to function.\n\nThere are also any number of very tightly held gradients of chemicals throughout the brain.  Shutting down would mean the loss of many of these gradients.  A chemical mechanism like our brain just doenst function at a core level like an electrical mechanism like a computer.  Losing any of the complex interactions for even a split second would result in permanent damage.\n\nI'm struggling for an analogy here if anyone can help...", "Neuroscience grad student here. I disagree with Syberton.\n\nFirst, let's define what we would mean by 'electrical activity in the brain ceasing'. I'm going to take it to mean, that somehow, we magically stop every axon from firing for a couple of seconds. This would stop all intrinsic rhythms and patterns and would basically represent a complete shut down of 'thought'. However, membrane potentials and cell metabolism would continue, so widespread cell death would not occur. \n\nWith this definition in mind, I am pretty sure that you could restart the system pretty easily. If you removed the block on axons all at once, you would almost certainly seize, which would probably cause some psychological damage. However, if you removed the blocks in order, eg senses and then their downstream targets as they'd hit them, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't seize too much. Most of the rhythms in the brain that are well-correlated to thought (through EEG and sticking electrodes in the brain) are generated by intrinsic firing patterns of cells and the underlying anatomical properties of the brain. The brain would fall back into rhythm fairly quickly and you probably wouldn't have much of a long lasting effect.\n\nHowever, if you locked the axons still for too long (without stopping all metabolic and degradation processes in general), some of the cells would start to die off. This would mostly be due to housekeeping cells not receiving the proper signals and the energy balance in the brain falling apart.\n\nLet me know if you want me to go deeper into the question or want a source for something I said.\n\n", "Interesting question. In the normal course, electrocerebral silence is only encountered when\n\n1. a person is brain-dead\n1. a person is in especially-deep coma\n2. a person is in an especially-deep medically-induced coma\n\nEven then, the cessation of electrical activity is just that which is measured on scalp EEG; ie, we can only really be certain that the most superficial layers of cortex aren't firing. Because of the widespread coupling of the brain, it's assumed other parts are silent, too.\n\nCase #1 is by definition irreversible. The other two cases are complicated by other factors. Most people with a flat EEG aren't in a very reversible coma; if they wake at all, they're likely to have severe residual deficits from whatever global insult caused the coma. Most persons in medically-induced coma to flatline have refractory status epilepticus, a state of continuous seizure which can itself be damaging.\n\nNote that in general anesthesia, the most likely pattern on EEG is what's called suppression-burst, not a flat line.\n\nBut what if, on a lark, we took a healthy volunteer and flattened his EEG? [Kirshbaum and Carollo](_URL_0_) reported years ago a case of a woman with barbiturate overdose, iso-electric EEG, and then complete recovery. So it happens.\n\nThe caveats: I'm interpreting your question to mean no electroencephalographic activity. EEG really only measures the excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials generated in the superficial dendritic trees of cortical neurons. (At least, that's what we think.) Electrical activity, more broadly considered, might include the resting potential of the neuron and the gated and leak channels that maintain it. If you stopped things like sodium-potassium pumps your cell may not be very healthy. Also, I do not recommend you try things like barbiturate overdose at home.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1181062-53.stm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_synapse", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBIdcUxdgo0", "http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/synapse.html"], [], ["http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/212/7/1215.1.short"], ["http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1181062-53.stm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_synapse", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBIdcUxdgo0", "http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/synapse.html"], [], ["http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/212/7/1215.1.short"]]}
{"q_id": "3nxipf", "title": "why did cars used to have their engines in the back, then with more modern cars the engine was moved to the front, then with some sports cars the engine is in the back again?", "selftext": "ELI5: why did cars used to have their engines in the back, then with more modern cars the engine was moved to the front, then with some sports cars the engine is in the back again? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nxipf/eli5_why_did_cars_used_to_have_their_engines_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvs5e5s", "cvs5k24", "cvs5wfc", "cvscq66", "cvshpqx", "cvsi1gb"], "score": [9, 6, 11, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Few cars had the engine in the back, primarily VW bugs. The original cars had them in front with a hand crank to start them. ", "With modern cars, it has to do with weight distribution, the rear wheels get better traction when the most of the weight is over them. Back in the day, I'm pretty sure the main reason was to make the engine as close to the wheels as possible, to make everything simple and less likely to break ", "Most of the high end sports cars put the engine behind the driver, but ahead of the rear axle for better weight distribution.  These are considered mid-engined cars.  A car with 50/50 weight distribution front to back will be more stable, easier to control and faster through curves.  ", "The main reason is that the engine is probably the heaviest part of your car. Having it up front puts that weight over the two front wheels. These are important because they steer and do most of your breaking. For that they need traction. So having a lot of your weight on top of them keeps them on the road where they do the most good. \n\n\nFront wheel drive cars also use this force to stick to the ground while accellerating and rear wheel drive cars use it to counter balance the torque your rear wheels create with hard acceleration. Your front end actually wants to flip up if your engine is strong enough.\n\n\nAnother point is that front engines are easier (cheaper) to cool because you have all that air you're driving through going against the front of your car. So no pipes or protrusions on the car. Just a nice simple grill with a radiator behind it.\n\n\nRear engines in older cars are made mostly to be cheaper by not having a long drive train to your rear wheels. In sports cars and racing, the engine is placed so as to best balance the car for the race it's doing. Generally if you have your weight evenly on all four tires, your car races better. ", "It should be considered that cars had engines in various places throughout history.  I'm pretty sure the original Benz motor car was in the back, but that was probably to simplify the drive train.  The model T, Model A, a whole host of WW1 era cars and trucks all had their engines in the front.  The original Volks Wagen (which became the Beetle) had the engine in the rear because it made for a more compact, roomier interior, where the antiquated engine technology of the day could spew fumes and oil out the back instead of all over the passengers.  \n\nAs many have noted ad nauseum, you get much better weight balance if the engine is as close to the center of the wheelbase as possible, because it's the heaviest component.  \n\nWhen it comes to designing a car, everything's about compromise.  You can't make a monster truck take a corner at 70MPH, but you can't make a Ferrari climb over another car; you can't expect a Toyota Camry accelerate 0-60mph in 1.5 seconds, but you're not going to find a top fuel dragster that can go 100,000 miles and be frugal.  ", "The very early cars had rear engines and chain drive (1902 Oldsmobile, for example).  Most of them used rear-drive, front-steer because it was more stable and simple.  They started switching to front-engine, rear drive pretty quickly for several reasons.  The drive shaft design was safer, sturdier, quieter than the chain drive.  Liquid cooling needed a front mounted radiator.  The more sophisticated transmissions needed more space.  Maybe most importantly, front engines open up cargo space in the back.\n\nSome sports cars use a rear engine (behind the rear wheels, mostly just Porsche 911), or mid-engine (between the front and rear hubs) both to get the weight distribution closer to 50/50 and to reduce the polar moment of inertia.  Having the engine close to the center of the car helps it rotate better."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1icpkd", "title": "Cannot find source for claim: \"The malaria parasite has been responsible for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age\"", "selftext": "Alright, so I [posted a comment](_URL_1_) in TIL about malaria and how it has been responsible for 50% of all human deaths since the Stone Age.\nI used [Sonia Shah's article in the WSJ](_URL_0_) as a source, because... I felt a bit lazy.\n >  The malaria parasite has been responsible for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age, and one in 14 of us alive today still carry genes that first arose to help protect us from its ravages. \n\nSince then I have tried to find out where she got that number from, I figured she must've read it in a survey research paper. All I can find about that statistic however, are references to the original article.  \nIs the information hidden away somewhere in an archive or did she make it up?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1icpkd/cannot_find_source_for_claim_the_malaria_parasite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb38qvn", "cb3bblt", "cb3e5x3"], "score": [7, 5, 2], "text": ["It's an estimate by Baruch Blumberg, who has a Nobel prize in medicine. It may be from [the TV-series \"Plagues\".](_URL_0_)", "I do research on malaria diagnostics, and the factoid I like to use at the beginning of presentations is that [1 in 6](_URL_0_) childhood deaths in Africa is attributable to malaria.", "One of [vsauce's videos](_URL_0_) gave this statistic as well mentioning Baruch Blumberg as the source.\n\nMany places seem to cite him as the one responsible for the 50% claim, but it is unclear where/when he actually said it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111704575354911834340450.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ic1ll/til_that_burkina_faso_students_invented_a_soap/cb354na"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/9433/title/Baruch-Blumberg--Science-on-TV/"], ["http://www.unicef.org/health/index_malaria.html"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T4XMNN4bNM&amp;feature=share&amp;list=TLq3kLUTtKy7k"]]}
{"q_id": "3rgpee", "title": "what's the reason for the perpetual raising of awareness for breast cancer? is there some commercial benefit? does anyone out there really not know about it at this point?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rgpee/eli5_whats_the_reason_for_the_perpetual_raising/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwnwnvp", "cwnwvcx", "cwnwzhw", "cwnx10k", "cwnzniy", "cwo0pie", "cwo10uz", "cwo22wx", "cwo359l", "cwo3u3p", "cwo3zn3", "cwo4ud7", "cwo4x5l", "cwo546c", "cwo54ge", "cwo576n", "cwo5b2k", "cwo5sop", "cwo60xz", "cwo65wl", "cwo6bsj", "cwo6e2w", "cwo6joj", "cwo6juu", "cwo6lm1", "cwo6nwc", "cwo6r4y", "cwo7dmo", "cwo7fqt", "cwo7h6r", "cwo7oln", "cwo88hy", "cwo8i32", "cwo8x3e", "cwo99kx", "cwo9h3k", "cwo9js7", "cwo9ocv", "cwoabsy", "cwoam3k", "cwoaybu", "cwobeo3", "cwoc2uk", "cwod2ii", "cwodlnj", "cwodw7m", "cwodxaa", "cwoe48b", "cwoef0z", "cwoezry", "cwof0xv", "cwog2wm"], "score": [8, 2278, 472, 69, 9, 10, 5, 2, 16, 125, 19, 5, 2, 1106, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 9, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 8, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's not that people don't know about it, it's that they don't really think about it. \"Raising awareness\" gets people to think about it and considering donating. \n", "It's so companies and organizations like the Komen Foundation can line their pockets duping people into thinking they've done something towards research by using their services or buying their products because they're pink.", "Breast Cancer is a form of cancer that is incredibly treatable if caught early, and not so much if not. So if you can remind women to check themselves regularly you can save a lot lives. ", "Anytime we do anything to raise \"awareness\", it functions to increase awareness of the cost of and necessity of research.\n\nIt's main goal is to gather donations with the ideal of funding research for cures/vaccines/surveillance of the illness. \n\nLike those above me said, there are some companies who are using this to make a quick buck so be careful about who you choose to donate to! \n\n[Charity Navigator] does a great job at outlining which charities will give you the best return on your money! (_URL_0_) ", "I have to seriously question any charity that commits more than zero dollars to the \"Raising Awareness \" line item of their budget. As the Ice Bucket Challenge proved campaigns for awareness cost nothing.   \nAs for breast cancer specifically, the reason it seems so prevalent is just the marketing, as far as cancers go it is nowhere near the most deadly, nor most common, but it IS the most marketable. And has the most successful marketing plan, think about it, how many \"specific cancer\" months can you name most of the big ones have a month but none with the prevalence of breast cancer. Women in the USA make far more purchasing decisions than Men so it is not a stretch to think that buying power hasn't reached to charitable endeavors as well. So breast cancer has high visibility, and I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, just that it, is, a thing.\nThe fact of the matter is that raising breast cancer awareness can be an effective vehicle for general awareness of all cancers. And if you are looking for a worthy charity to donate to I recommend finding a local one that focuses on improving lives of actual people with disease. Donations to fraudulent groups like Komen are just lazy.", "literally everybody knows about this. It's a circlejerk amongst women who want to pretend they're helping without actually donating any money", "People are aware of it at this point and it's so ingrained that pink= breast cancer awareness. We got it...", "Raising awareness doesn't mean that you are literally telling someone that something exists.\n\nIt is to remind people that something exists and that there are things they can do (in this case donate money, check themselves for lumps, have regular checkups at the doctor... )", "It's a bunch of people fund raising to pay their salaries, and a lot of manufacturers getting in on a great advertising ride.\nA lot like some of the other non-profits really. They don't do anything, can't actually help anyone, all they do is raise money for awareness. \nPeople have been spoon fed this Pink Ribbon Campaign for so long they don't even question it.", "Touchy subject, here are my thoughts:\n\n- Breast cancer is neither the most common, nor the most dangerous form of cancer, but it is very easy to market. As /u/chefgrinderMcD mentions, how many other cancers have a specific awareness month?\n- It's a [huge form of income](_URL_3_) for the various 'charities' that rake in billions every year, and they don't necessarily [spend](_URL_4_) it in an [appropriate](_URL_1_) manner. Heck, all of these 'fun runs' [cost money](_URL_5_) to organise, too.\n- My personal concerns don't just stem from larger charities either, to me it seems like every man and his dog want to set up their own charity, which is causing [unnecessary fragmentation](_URL_2_). I mean, why start another charity when there are already [1357204867208956](_URL_0_) in existence?\n\nThis just turned into a sleep-deprived rant of sorts, but I did too much copy/pasting to delete it. Maybe it'll be useful to someone.", "Well, we all know about it because of awareness campaigns!  If those campaigns stopped, people might actually stop thinking about it.\n\nThat said, Komen for the Cure are outrageous assholes who have perfected the art of profiting from awareness campaigns.  They will sue you for using \"for the cure\" or anything similar in *your* awareness campaign, or even just the color pink, because *they* get the money from your awareness purchases.  Komen for the Cure isn't doing much to fight breast cancer *financially* -- don't donate to them!  But they have been effective in raising awareness, which is good in general.\n\nA good awareness campaign was the ALS ice bucket challenge.  You didn't need to pay anyone to do it (other than ice and bucket providers, I guess) and you would donate directly to research instead of to professional awareness campaign managers like Komen.  But if you ever see some company spending vast amounts of resources for a charitable cause with no obvious source of funding, you should be asking yourself where the company gets the money, and more often than not, it's enriching itself under the guise of \"awareness\" (which, again, is a worthwhile thing to have).", "Not entirely relevant, but its surprising how poorly informed on diseases and how they're developed some people are. My ex's parents thought smoking didn't cause lung cancer, all while keeping the father on frequent oxygen tanks while smoking. \n\nThe oddest part was that everyone else in the family was totally aware of the fact. Sometimes raising awareness just needs to get people to talk about it.\n\nThe father hasn't stopped yet, though. Now that he knows.", "A lot of the money that is donated towards these organisations are often used on marketing in order to raise even more money, sadly its a pitiful amount of what is donated that goes into research or even treatment. The majority is spent within the company, on various expenses. \n\nJust the last few years the Komen foundation withdraw support from Planned parenthood, and the only support they gave was mammograms the thing the Komen foundation is trying to battle. And on top of that Karen G Komen earns 684,000 dollars a year that seems like one hell of a lot of money for a non profit organisation.\n\nI refuse to support them anymore, untill they straighten out their act i wont donate, if Karen G Komen went down to a small pitiful sallary like say 60,000 dollars a year that wouldnt bother me, but over half a million a year for doing what? having your name on a non profit organisation that makes you rich, fuck off bitch i hope you catch fire and die.", "There was a time when women were too ashamed to talk about their breasts in public. It was very shameful to talk about breast cancer. Since no one spoke about it women didn't know what to watch for and they would only seek medical help when it was much too late. \n\nThe first celebrity to go public with a breast cancer diagnosis was Judy Holliday. If you don't know who she is look up her movies, she's a delightful and skilled comedic actress. She lost her life to breast cancer, but not before she spoke out about signs and symptoms on every television program she could. Makeup maven Estee Lauder was also touched by breast cancer. She started the original ribbon campaign.\n\nThe awareness campaign was started by women suffering from breast cancer who knew that if they had known what to look for they would have gotten treatment years earlier, and maybe not died of it. They took a taboo subject and got everyone talking about it.\n\nThen the corporations saw dollar signs. \n\nedited because I can't spell.", "There is a huge financial benefit. You should see the salaries paid at the Susan G. Komen foundation. Good rule of thumb if a charity spends a good portion of its money \"raising awareness\" they are pretty damn close to a scam. We are not going to cure cancer by telling somebody about especially when everybody already knows about it. ", "Man it's a massive scam.  Someone posted on Reddit a few weeks ago about the NFL pink campaign only contributing something like 4% of the money to the actual foundation, and less than a quarter of that 4% goes to actual cancer research.  So yeah, don't buy any of that shit.\n\nAlso, the idea of yearly mammograms ha actually been contested by recent research as there is some evidence breast exams may aggravate breast tissue and actually cause breast cancer.  Not going to hear that from the link campaign which is of course pushing for more exams.  What a world...", "[Here](_URL_1_) is the wikipedia section on the Susan G Komen Foundation's use of funds. Make of it what you will. [Here](_URL_0_) is the section on the same page that details how they have sued other charities over trademarks. Make of it what you will.", "The same reason there's a retail financial industry. The same reason there's religion. Because there's a limitless supply of interest from people who are terrified about their health, looking for something, anything they can do about it, even if the right answer is far simpler than what's on offer.", "its a feel-good charity. thats the bottom line. its so people can put on a little ribbon and feel good about donating a few dollars every month or something like they are trying to help people. its the slightly more expensive version of sharing a post for the troops, or changing your profile picture to a rainbow so that everyone knows how progressive and accepting you are since its a pretty safe position to be in since very few actually oppose it. \n\nthey use that feeling people get to sell it as an addition to branding. see how much yoplait cares? buy our shit and we'll put a cent from every 10 sold to raising awareness so that more people will care enough to buy our product and help support raising awareness so that more people will  care enough to.....\n\nyou get the point. anything about raising awareness seems incredibly stupid and useless. most of the issues that have groups about raising awareness everyone knows the point already, its just a way for people to pat themselves on the back. ", "Profits. Most organizations that \"raise awareness\" keep the money while donating about 1% of raised funds to actual research. Remember these companies do not care about a cure. They are in cahoots with Big Pharma who will openly admit they are not in business to find cures, but rather create medicines to offset symptoms that will require people to use their medicine for the rest of their lives. ", "There's a huge financial benefit, just not always for breast cancer.  I try to only buy from or donate to causes that I know will actually give the money to research and treatment.  it's hard to actually find out if those companies are legit or not (I am not a fan of komen for this very reason).  ", "Seems like there are many cynics out here. It's true there are many parasitic organizations that capitalize on our charity and good will, but the fact is that breast cancer is one of the many cancers where death is preventable if caught in early stages. This is alongside cervical (get your pap smears at 21 ladies, and HPV vaccines for everyone), prostate for men (older men should do digital rectal exams), and of course lung (stop smoking). It's a little unfair to say that breast cancer is the only one getting awareness when all these other cancers are also getting attention. I think breast cancer was the first big movement because you are able to do a self-exam and that is empowering to women, so it is now the biggest (btw the main reliable screening tool is regular mammographies, so self-exams are a start, but not sufficient). \n\nJust to provide a scale of the problem, more than 50% (a half!) of women will develop a benign breast lesion. Fortunately most of these are not lethal and should not progress to a malignancy. More than 10% of women will develop a true malignancy, where your odds of survival are almost exponential the earlier you catch it. So it's kind of important to make it common knowledge how to find a lump in your breast, because there's a chance that it might kill you. \n\nThat's not to deny the aforementioned parasitic organizations. I guess the best advice is find a good charity of your choice and ignore the bad ones, but don't hate on the movement as a whole because it is trying to make a difference for the American public. ", "Does Coke advertise because some folks don't know about them?  It's about constant reminders of something people already know about.", "It's actually a symptom of a larger problem with some charities and social organizations. Many of these organizations form to combat a real problem, with a noble goal. They get donations, hire a staff, and all work hard toward it. But then the taboo is broken, the awareness is raised, and it becomes a part of society. \n\nBut now what do you do with the organization they built up? For something like breast cancer awareness, their mission is complete. The public at large knows about it, and pays attention to the changing recommendations about it. But are they going to just tell their staff \"Alright everybody, we won! Show's over, you're all fired.\" Of course not - The people working here will \"Goal creep\" and look for new things to do to legitimize their organization. The benefit now is to them, to sustain their own organization. It doesn't really serve much of a public good anymore, which is why you see all the hatred for it from those who have researched it.", "There are a lot of highly voted aggressive neckbeard comments. While they we not entirely incorrect in facts, they are false in the response to the question. \n\nThe main reason is awareness and clarity. People don't get checked. They get cancer and then it's too late. If you get frequent checks you might prevent cancer or find it at a point that it can be removed. Terminal cancer is often found too late and could have been prevented. \n\n\nSince the awareness month and company campaigns, breast cancer deaths HAVE went down, and prevention has went up. That result is good and has saved the life's of your mothers, sisters, and wife's. \n\nSo what if komen pays its ceo 85% of all the earnings. Some companies focus on awareness and the promotion of the message instead of actual research and that does result in life's saved. All it takes is that pink shirt or commercial to get that stubborn woman to get a check. Plenty of other companies over pay their CEOs and higher up while doing nothing for the community and saving no life's.\n\nLook at the positives, and if you know the facts, donate to different charities like the research programs themselfs but don't ask for the abolishment or harass the ones like komen, because without them we have a lot less awareness and advertisement. You can have the best researchers with the most funding on the world but without awareness they have no one to cure. ", "Us triple negative breast cancer researchers do like when people care. This also makes investors fund projects. Even as a student where I see no money I need it to buy breast cells, media, pipettes, materials to synthesize our cancer drug, etc.", "I'm all for raising awareness of cancer......ALL cancers.  Breast cancer gets a disproportionately large % of the attention.  Kormen will never get a nickel from me. ", "I'll say something other than the conspiracies (however much truth there may be) here.\n\nAwareness is so much more than making someone aware of beat cancers mere existence. Awareness is about knowing and recognizing the signs in yourself and others, so that the disease can be detected early, and thus be more easily treated.\n\nFor example, I bet most people who have heard of breast cancer haven't heard of Inflammatory Breast Cancer. It's a rare form of breast cancer that forms in sheets instead of lumps. By the time it's detectable as a misshapen breast, is usually already at stage 4.\n\nAnother example is that men can and do get breast cancer. Most men don't realize this, and would have absolutely no idea how to monitor for it. That's another part of awareness: knowing who is at risk.\n\nMost people only know that lumps = breast cancer. But there are many kinds that manifest in different ways. Awareness helps (or should) people understand more about the disease, not just make them aware that it exists. This should be the case for most cancers, but breast cancer gained traction due to its prevalence in modern America, and organizations like SGK getting the word out.\n\nP.S. Try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when talking about breast cancer awareness. There are shady people trying to profit off it, sure, but there are also a lot of people out there who this cause is very important to, and are trying to help with nothing but the best intentions.\n\nMy sisters and I are considering starting a charity for IBC awareness and research, in honor of our mother who died from it. We've already hosted a few fundraisers whose proceeds were donated to the American Cancer Society. There are people out there trying to help. I'm one of them.\n\nTL;DR: Awareness means knowing who is at risk, why, and recognizing signs of multiple forms of the disease. It's not meant to simply make you aware of the diseases existence.", "Well, with the pink NFL garbage its all about revenue, almost nothing is donated. With the pink ribbon \"for the cure\" pennies from every dollar are donated, the majority goes to salaries and advertising and marketing. \n\nIf you want to actually help, don't give your money to \"charities\". ", "This is a two-fold answer for me.  \n\n1: 'Awareness' is a euphemism for money.  Ideally research money, but people make a profit on the research as well.  When you say you are raising money, it puts people off.  When you say you are raising awareness, people are more likely to be involved because their is not cost.\n\n\n2:  Saying you are raising awareness allows people who make no physical contribution to feel like they are doing something important, when all they are doing is sharing something on social media. They are \"raising awareness\" and pat themselves on the back, when really they are just being arm-chair activists.  That is not a bad thing.  You can't make concrete contributions to every cause, so promoting others is good, but too often I think people believe if they click 'like', they are doing something other than easing their conscience.  ", "I don't know if you're a comedy fan or not, but Doug Stanhope actually has a great bit about charities and \"raising awareness\". It was in his special, Beer Hall Putsch. Basically, he talks about how a lot of these charity awareness-raising organizations only donate like a fraction of a cent of their proceeds towards actual research, and the rest is spent on more promotional material and salaries for the bosses.", "All cynicism aside, it's like most advertising.  Does anyone not know about McDonalds or Pappa Johns at this point?  No, but they need reminding to invest money in their products.  Similarly, these \"awareness\" efforts are to promote a cause and ask you to invest money (donating to research or testing ideally) or effort (getting yourself tested) into the cause. \n\nAs silly as the \"Ice Bucket Challenge\" was, there was a sharp rise in donations to ALS societies from that campaign.", "There was a time when people with certain diseases were seen as weak, or generally lesser people. A lot of the awareness stuff just kind of normalizes this. It lets people know that survivors are people you know. They are your family, coworkers, classmates, people all around you. They can lead valuable lives. We should not forget about them, and we should not look down on them either.", "It's billions of dollars. Raising awareness comes down to three things: 1) collect more money 2) fly all over the world with rich accommodations at 5 star resorts, personal drivers, lavish meals all paid for by your donated dollars 3) suing anyone and everyone who uses a shade of pink too similiar (within 10 shades) of their own, or uses the word \"cure\" in anything.\n\nA certain pink charity spends more money every year suing people for trademark transgression that most charities have to spend each year on their mission. Their CEO makes somewhere just shy of $750,000 a year", "Was developing a website once that wanted to include the breast cancer awareness pink branding mumbo jumbo. When we contacted them about involving them in the site they immediately began the discussion by saying there would legal action of we used it without their permission and to get their permission we had to guarantee $10,000.00 in donations each month. If donations didn't reach that level the company had to make up the balance. \n\nShook my head and laughed, never spoke to them again. Felt very dirty dealing with them. ", "There's an excellent documentary called Pink Ribbons, Inc. which goes really in-depth on this topic. Production values aren't great but it makes up for it in accessibility and content.\n\nUsed to be on Netflix, it still might be.", "It's the oldest form of karma-farming.\n\nStart a 'foundation' with a tear-jerker rationale. Set yourself as the director with a fat salary. Pass-along residual donations to 'The Cause'. Try to keep your salary 80-90% of foundation income. Everyone thinks you are a swell dude, but you are really just a con man.", "As a breast cancer survivor (at least for now), the Komen campaign for breast cancer awareness has made me hate the month of October.  31 days of non stop pink and give for the cure bs.  Truth is the same amount of women die from BS today as 30 years ago.  No where close to a cure.  They do fund some things like mammos for poor women but the amount of money spent by people buying pink stuff is way more than is spent on research.\n\nI truly wish they would make a rainbow ribbon for ALL cancers so there would be no favortism because really, all this fundraising hasn't really helped those who have/had it.", "It's partly because of pandering. There are many types of cancer that affect both sexes that are more prevalent and deadlier than breast cancer but it's a way for people to show support for womens causes and so it gets a lot of attention. \n\nProstate cancer is just as deadly and many men die from it each year yet very little is done about it from a fundraising perspective. This can be argued because it's a cancer that affects privileged men VS under privileged women. Supporting womens causes is seen as progressive. Supporting mens causes or equal right causes is seen as misogynistic to some. To put it another way, all the hype around breast cancer awareness is just a kind of reverse sexism. ", "A lot of it is for commercial reasons - breast cancer research is \"big money\", even if we really aren't any closer to developing a cure than we were 60 years ago. I'd have to try and find the link, but I think I remember reading that only a small percentage of the money raised even goes to research. Most of it goes to advertising and the millions of dollars worth of salaries for the higher-ups. There was an infograph I saw on ifuckinglovescience about a year ago that showed the deadliest diseases versus how much funding they received. Breast cancer may have just barely broken the top 5 of deadliest diseases, yet it received about 6 times more funding than the leading killer disease. Here's the graph:\n\n_URL_0_", "Putting aside any ulterior motive companies that may or may not profit from, my literal eli5 would be:\n\nReminding people of a problem that many people face may seem bad, but reminding them that they should check the area regularly, can help fix* the problem sooner.\nLike when adverts remind us to fill in tax returns, we all know about it but can easily ignore it. So being reminded will keep it in out minds to do it sooner.\nIt also helps make it less scary for some people, knowing that their not alone and others that may not be in their situation can talk knowledgeably or aid helpfully.\n\n(*'fix' is subjective, but this is eli5. 'Not die' is best outcome of worst case)", "Big cancer is one of the most profitable industries. They employ mostly volunteers, produce little in the means of ribbons, flyers, and shirts. Probably their biggest overhead is commercials and other advertising. The pink breast cancer ribbon campaign you're speaking of donates a very small percentage of their profits. I've read as little as 3%. It's not about perpetual awareness as much as it is perpetual profits. These \"charities\" should be audited quarterly and their giving should be made public.", "The Komen Foundation is getting a lot of flak ITT, as they should, but I think most people are not answering your question, which might be better understood as, \"Why does the Komen Foundation behave as it does?\" It is because of the difficulty of funding non-profit organizations.\n\nAs you might be aware, most non-profit organizations have to divide their resources between administration and their cause. What you might not be aware of is that a lot of the administrative costs go toward finding more funding. Unless a non-profit has a stable stream of income from committed donors, grants, or an endowment, every non-profit is in constant pursuit of more sources of revenue. This often means hiring a professional grant writer and hosting some sort of open house or gala that informs and solicits donors. Even stable non-profits will probably be constantly pursuing more revenue to further their cause and expand their programs.\n\nThe Komen Foundation decided to try a for-profit marketing campaign in order to get revenue. The people they hired advised them to have an ambitious advertising campaign with the justification that it would bring in a lot more revenue than it cost. It cost a ton of money but it was wildly successful, so they have kept it up and followed those strategies. \n\nThe obvious downside is that an inappropriately large percentage of their budget goes toward marketing, which increases awareness but does not create a cure. The upside however, is that they have raised more funds for their cause than they would have otherwise.  \n\n", "At this point it's just slacktivism, people feel like they've made a difference when they put a ribbon magnet on their car. ", "I'm actually very disappointed that \"public awareness\" doesn't seem to give a shit about skin cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, bone marrow cancer in comparison. I wonder what the funding/charity disparity is.", "Yeah, as many people have echoed in this, my concern is that the money is not getting allocated the way that donors are hoping/expecting. \n\nFor example, the NFL spends untold millions presumably to make all the equipment and advertisements pink on given weeks. Every player has pink cleats, towels, socks. Billboards are pink. All the TV ads are pink related. What if...we just gave all that money towards an organization that studies cancer? And just didn't have the pink stuff?", "_URL_0_\nThis guy goes into detail as to how much money actually goes to research for breast cancer.\nBeen on reddit before just wanted to put it out there again.", "As with everything, it's all about money sadly. Also If I want to donate I will donate to an actual research facility, or to cancer patients themselves, not some for profit company. Plus everyone(in the us at least) knows about breast cancer in women. Since these campaigns only are about spreading \"Awareness\", they need to start spreading awareness about men with breast cancer. Which I've literally never heard and of the big companies bring up. ", "its like how on reddit you always see stuff about climate change as if there are people on reddit that dont know cars and shit are bad for the environment, people just wanna feel superior to everyone else", "For the Breast Cancer cause, their biggest friend is visibility. These endorsements by, say, the NFL, bring in a lot of money for them. And political clout.\n\nSome Breast Cancer charities go as far as [trying to shut down other, smaller cancer charities, for infringing on their copyright.](_URL_0_) The Susan Komen Foundation is trying to shut local charities down for using the word \"Cure\" .", "Two things\n\nPeople do donate more to causes that they see. We all know what mcdonalds is, why do they advertise?  It's similar logic to that.  Everyone knows what breast cancer is, but you're more likely to donate if its shoved in front of your face.\n\nTwo things:\n\nCharities make money, they run a lot of things that give no money to actual research, but can still say they are donating to the cause of increasing awareness.  This seems lame but is one of the reasons that \"awareness\" is talked about so much.  ", "\"Awareness\" in this case is just a different word for \"give me money\" perpetuated by mostly shady non profit hustlers. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&amp;cpid=497#.VjmvY64rKRs"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-register-statistics/recent-charity-register-statistics-charity-commission", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10225883/How-much-charities-spend-on-charitable-activities.html", "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/there-are-too-many-charities-doing-the-same-work-claims-charity-commission-chief-executive-9562997.html", "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2835947/The-Great-British-rake-really-happens-billions-donate-charity-Fat-cat-pay-appalling-waste-hidden-agendas.html", "http://uk.businessinsider.com/cancer-charities-allegedly-used-187-million-in-donations-to-buy-luxury-cruises-and-cars-2015-5?r=US&amp;IR=T", "https://www.lovemoney.com/news/10302/5-things-charities-secretly-spend-your-money-on"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Legal_battles_over_trademarking", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Use_of_funds"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.imgur.com/AJIUUmd"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/qa4pzXv5QA0"], [], [], ["http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/komen-foundation-charities-cure_n_793176.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "187bda", "title": "What is the most disadvantageous evolutionary adaptation humans have in the modern world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/187bda/what_is_the_most_disadvantageous_evolutionary/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8c8vmq", "c8c91nf", "c8ca4wk"], "score": [6, 16, 2], "text": ["Stress response is a pretty good one. One that is getting a decent amount of press lately is not exactly evolutionary, but sort of co-evolutionary. As we've cleaned our environments, the rise of autoimmune disorders seems to have increased. The general theory being that now that we have fewer infections to fight off, our immune system has started attacking us. \n\nAn example, this systematic review found that infection with hookworms significantly reduced the risk of asthma. _URL_0_\n\nEdit: And another, which found that helminthic infections seem to attenuate auto-immune diseases in animal models, though there is lacking data in human disease models. _URL_1_", "I'd probably go for how high-calorie food tastes delicious. Obviously in a natural competitive environment, food's not readily available, and so the sense of taste evolved to enable identification of high-calorie food (as well as identifying bitter poisons) so you can find the best possible food to keep you from starving. Now that the availability of food is a non-issue for many people, our hard-wired desire for high fat/sugar food, coupled with the instinct of 'eat whatever you can, whenever you can' is mostly (if not entirely) to blame for the world's obesity problems.", "I think the goal/reward system in our brain is pretty flawed for modern society. Like someone already said it makes stuff like high calorie foods, a lot of video games, pornography, alcohol, and drugs, release high dopamine amounts, and even higher amounts if it's unique. It basically makes people gorge themselves, or makes them emotionally dependent on these survival needs. But with these things so available it has negative effects. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/content/174/5/514.long", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19880560"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22azhr", "title": "Are our oceans 'dying' and if yes, what are the consequences?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22azhr/are_our_oceans_dying_and_if_yes_what_are_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgla2d0"], "score": [9], "text": ["There are certainly some things wrong with the oceans.\n\nThe oceans are acidifying due to absorbed carbon dioxide. Good for us in that it hides some of the carbon dioxide we release, bad for fish and anything with a calcium carbonate skeleton (clams, some plankton, corals). Lots of [general information](_URL_2_); pH is on a logarithmic scale so it doesn't sound like much when stated in those units but acidity has gone up 30%. I consider having such a profound chemical effect on the ocean to be one of humanity's most astounding accomplishments.\n\nWe've collapsed a lot of fisheries. Once the population gets too low it takes a really long time for their numbers to recover. A single large tuna can be worth millions of dollars and market pressures will probably continue to hunt them down to extinction. People never seem to be able to stop until it is too late; our plates would be empty and a lot of people would be unemployed. Trust me when I tell you to enjoy wild-caught seafood, especially the large predatory fish, while you can. \n\nThe oceanic conveyor belts are [shutting down](_URL_1_). Sea ice leeches columns of cold, salty water. This flows down in the arctic, spreads out, and drives major ocean currents. We melt the sea ice, this stops, ocean currents stop, and then the models give conflicting results on what happens to us but those currents were important for keeping the ocean mixed and controlling weather patterns.\n\nWe cause impressive algal blooms. You should see what our fertilizer runoff does to the nitrogen cycle; we fix more nitrogen from the atmosphere than all life on Earth through the Haber-Bosch process! When excess fertilizer washes off farms and into rivers and ultimately into the oceans, it fertilizes algae. Some of these algae die, sink, and suck all the oxygen out of the water leading to massive fish kills. Some of the algae is also really nasty and makes neurotoxins. Clouds of the stuff bother some people even if they're just on a boat or at the beach and you don't really want to swim in it. Sometimes it looks vaguely like huge amounts of blood in the water, and combined with all the dead wasted fish it has a nice apocalyptic ambiance. The algae blooms seldom go more than a couple of kilometers from shore though.\n\nIt is possible for oceans to truly die on a more fundamental level than mere red tide. This rarely happens in Earth's history but [this has happened before](_URL_3_). During the Permian mass extinction, anaerobic sulfur-breathers and methane-producers seized control of all but the top few meters of the oceans, killed 96% of life in the oceans, and about 70% of life on land through runaway climate change and [poisonous clouds of hydrogen sulfide](_URL_0_). This is not a serious threat right now but you wanted to know what the consequences could be. Personally I believe in humanity and what we can accomplish, and given our jaw-dropping achievements at modifying ocean chemistry so far I think we can manage to completely and utterly destroy the oceans as they are now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223130549.htm", "http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=159", "http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F", "http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140331153608.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "28b0d3", "title": "why do i feel alert and energetic when i accidentally wake up early, but then exhausted, struggling to get up, and constantly hitting the snooze, when i fall back asleep and my alarm goes off an hour later?", "selftext": "This happens no matter how much sleep I've gotten or how early I initially got up.  I assume I'm not the only one who experiences this.\n\nEdit:  typo", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28b0d3/eli5_why_do_i_feel_alert_and_energetic_when_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci95vd6", "ci9dmnx", "ci9e4iv", "ci9f02o", "ci9gba4", "ci9hvhs", "ci9ig76", "ci9ij8l", "ci9jm2e", "ci9ku7b", "ci9n6at", "ci9nm56", "ci9qkxp", "ci9sl6k", "ciaaih4"], "score": [1029, 5, 71, 8, 3, 15, 112, 8, 21, 2, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["You get the rest you need during REM sleep that takes about 90minutes to achieve and only for limited times\n\nSleep consists of natural 90minute cycles. If you wake up naturally it will likely be at the end of the cycle and you aren't interupped and are well rested. An alarm will most likely wake you mid cycle and leave you feeling tired.\n\nTry sleeping in multiples of 90mins ( 1.5hr ,3hr ,4.5hr etc) and you'll notice yourself less tired when you wake, allow about 15mins to get to sleep when setting an alarm ", "As other's have explained it's because of the sleep cycles. I have been a late night sleeper for the longest time and struggled with the Alarm clock, my bittersweet enemy. \n\nI found that if I sleep earlier then I don't need an alarm clock and wake up refreshed. It wasn't easy to sleep earlier, but for me if I worked out that day, I am more tired and can sleep earlier. ", "Going back to sleep after your brain wakes you up also causes your brain to start releasing more sleep inducing chemicals, so when you wake up basically in the middle of your brain drugging you, youll be drowzy. ", "What if no alarm went off? During vacation time, i find myself waking up at 1-2pm feeling sleepy as hell still even though I woke up on my own (Usually I spend around 30mins in bed after I wake up and then I kind of have some energy). Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have absolutely nothing to do during the day, but I'm not sure.", "Your body probably wants you to get up earlier; trying to reset your circadian rhythm to its natural state. If you started getting up and going to bed earlier, you probably wouldn't feel exhausted or struggle as much.\n\nWhen you go back to sleep, you're forcing the 'hands' on your biological clock in a different direction, and the body gets screwy. It's the same reason so many people feel terrible after taking naps. SO much of your physiology is under the command of your circadian cycle. Genetic expression in the brain, cortisol and other stress hormones, insulin production, digestive function... All affected by the sleep/wake cycle.", "What's usually the culprit:\n\nYour body wakes naturally at the end of one or a few 90-min sleep cycles, at the end of which you're most likely to be easily woken up. \n\nOtherwise, you're likely being forced awake through either shock or progressive bothering mid-way through a sleep cycle, meaning your body still thinks there is more sleeping to be done.", "The best wakes I get is when I travel for work and leave the blinds open in the hotel.\n\nI wake up to the sun, and since I'm traveling I generally don't have a set schedule like I do when I'm in my home office.  I can wake up naturally instead of to some fascist alarm clock.\n\n", "Interesting side note. Alcohol interferes with REM sleep. So if your drunk and sleep for a full 8 hours often times you are still tired because you got less REM sleep.", "When I wakeup naturally, even if its a few hours early, I don't go back to bed. I usually put on my workout clothes and just ride my stationary bike for an hour or just fap; either way, the day starts well.", "Sleep cycles. \n\nLearn 'em. Love 'em. \n\nThe average person has a sleep cycle of about 90 minutes. This is the amount of time it takes for you to reach your deepest sleep level and then come back out of it. \n\nUsing the 90 minute theory, an 8 hour sleep \"sesssion\", would have you about 1/3 of the way into your next sleep cycle when your alarm wakes you up. \n\ntry setting an alarm for either 7.5 hours or 9 hours, when you are trying to get truly good sleep.\n\nAlso, try out the alarm clock \"Timely\" on the google play store. It has a smart clock feature, that will actually start your alarm 30 minutes early, softly of course, to help you start the morning better by catching you before you go into REM. \n\nBeing awoken from REM sleep is a bad thing, not just for sleep, but could actually increase stress levels, and it just really makes for a bad morning. ", "Sleep cycle yo", "Great article here from the BBC.  Apparently back in the day, two sleeps a night was the norm as we could follow more natural sleeping patterns.\n\n_URL_0_", "Because in the first scenario you are waking up during light sleep or in between a sleep cycle. Use a smart alarm and it will do it for you.  ", "AsapSCIENCE explains it here: _URL_0_", "I work for a company where I don't set an alarm and wake up naturally. I get in between 8-10 and leave 5-7. I feel great pretty much all day, unless I eat a heavy lunch. If more companies let their employees do that, they might have more productive employees."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6zcSFA7ymo"], []]}
{"q_id": "14h1td", "title": "- why can't native american tribes just sue in open court for what they're owed under treaties that weren't honored?", "selftext": "Recently the Great Sioux Nation purchased back sacred land from private landowners, but they assert that they already had a legal claim to the land based on treaties with the US government (and, y'know, having been there first anyway). Why couldn't they have just sued the private landowners, cited the treaties, gotten their land back, and called it a day?\n\nRelevant article: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14h1td/eli5_why_cant_native_american_tribes_just_sue_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7czm37", "c7d0bqp", "c7d30hr", "c7d3i7p", "c7d5xit", "c7da5f8"], "score": [4, 31, 16, 44, 3, 3], "text": ["It would be a PR nightmare for them to attempt to have the government kick private landowners off their land to give to the tribes.  Also, they probably felt that they would be unlikely to win because of pressure from the public and politicians.", "They have.  In many cases, it has been found that the statute of limitations had expired.", "No one cares when they do.\n\nThey tried to take Alcatraz back after it went out of use: _URL_0_\n\nNixon's administration hemmed and hawed to stall them out until they gave up, after being knowingly cut off from all government services.\n\nThen there are American Indian tribes who sue colleges and sports teams who use offensive imagery/mascots*, win in a lower court, and then get buried in years' worth of appeals and nothing happens...\n\nBasically, you're assuming the US honors the treaties it signed before, during, and after the genocide it committed. It doesn't.\n\n* *One* tribe has given their approve for this. The Florida State Seminoles have the express permission of the Seminoles to use their likeness. No one else - the Cleveland Indians, the fighting Illini, the Washington Redskins (a name which is a reference to scalping) - has permission to use those names or likenesses; the courts just don't care.", "As other people have said, statute of limitations.\n\nIs this injustice? Some may think so, but there are very good arguments that it is not.\n\nImagine that the status of every piece of property, everywhere in the world, could be called into question, with its current owners called up to pay for the crimes of their ancestors centuries ago. Where would it end? Could the descendants of the Romano-Celts in Britain sue the Saxons? Could the Saxons sue the Normans? Could one American Indian tribe be sued by another for something that happened before European colonization?\n\nA functioning system of property rights requires that a cutoff point be established, beyond which no appeals can be made. (The moral basis for this principle is that someone living today is not responsible to the victims of his ancestors many generations ago.) In a capitalist system, this turns out to be the best for everyone, as anyone who \"unjustly\" starts off with more than his ability would grant him, because his ancestors were conquerors, gradually sinks down to the mean level of wealth, just as the aristocrats in Europe gave way to the capitalist *nouveau riche*.\n\nFurthermore, the Indian tribes' claims to \"ownership\" of land were very often invalid, as the land was not owned by individuals, but \"collectively\", and was often not developed, but simply roamed over (however, there were exceptions, such as the Cherokees, who Westernized but were still unjustly deported). For more on this issue, I recommend pg. 317 of George Reisman's [Capitalism](_URL_0_), available for free online.", "For anyone that says this can't happen, this happens in New Zealand with the Treaty of Waitangi, but the government recognises the need for it to happen.\n\n_URL_0_", "About the \"being there first\", ELI5 Answer: Because US law doesn't recognize the tribes as having power to own land when we arrived to take over. Natives didn't believe in owning property, they owned something so long as they physically had it on them, but that was the extent of it. As such, the \"acquisition (gaining) of property by discovery\" doesn't apply to them, and so all US soil's titles are traced back to the US government at start. There was a very big US Supreme Court case where a man tried suing for his title (he bought from a tribe) but lost because the natives never owned it in the first place, according to the court. \nTL;DR - US government are dicks."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/06-6"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz"], ["http://capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM_Internet.pdf"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi_claims_and_settlements"], []]}
{"q_id": "26mf5r", "title": "why is hand-made stuff \"better\" than machine-made stuff?", "selftext": "A lot of high end suits and shoes brag that they're hand-made. Why is this better than machine-made, where the machine will do things precisely, while the man making it could make mistakes?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26mf5r/eli5_why_is_handmade_stuff_better_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chsdkk0", "chsdl4g", "chseoih", "chset8v", "chshcr3", "chshtg5", "chsi3xp", "chsibe2", "chsij26", "chsk4ka", "chskdgj"], "score": [8, 5, 97, 4, 67, 3, 4, 3, 3, 13, 2], "text": ["hand made gets you exactly what you want usually at a higher quality since they aren't constrained by producing as cheap as possible.", "I suppose it depends on who is doing the hand making. If he or she is a master craftsman, then he could add unique touches to each widget that a machine doesn't have the creative intuition for.", "Machine-made generally means something that's designed for mass manufacturing. There are shortcuts in the design, because it has to be efficient to manufacture in quantity. The materials involved also have to be suitable for mass manufacturing and, ideally, inexpensive.\n\nA good craftsman can do much better work. This involves skill, time, and generally better materials, because there's no point in wasting skill and time on inferior work.", "Because for some processes, the cost of building a machine to do the job is very high. And for some products, it's not economical to build such a machine because it will never pay for itself.\n\nHumans may not be very precise, but we're very flexible. You train a person to do a job, and they can generalise those skills to do a vast number of similar jobs.\n\nFor this reason, lots of things are hand-assembled even if they aren't \"handmade\". At the moment, it's cheaper to hand assemble an iPhone in China than it is to design and build a robot factory to do the same job. Also consider that new models are introduced annually, so your machine either needs to be as adaptable as a human or you're going to be building a new factory every year.\n\nAs noted by other posters, this is particularly evident for limited-run or bespoke items, where a machine would have to save a lot of money per item to make it worth building in the first place.\n\nIn other cases, it's because a human really can do a better job. Take fashion. It's possible to make a shirt which is entirely machine-stitched (ie. where no human needed to pick up a needle). But certain details are better when done by hand. A machine can easily lay down a perfectly even stitch, but that doesn't make it the best way to sew on a sleeve. A human tailor can adjust the tension stitch by stitch to make everything sit perfectly. It's impractical to give a machine the sensory and manipulatory apparatus to replicate the feat.\n\nOf course, in the case of some premium goods, it doesn't need to be \"better\". It just needs to be marketed as better.", "Hand-made isn't necessarily better than machine-made. Which is better depends on the materials used, the precision required, the attention to detail required, and the overall design. It also depends on the person making it. Shoes handmade by me aren't going to be very good. \n\nWhen something is advertised as being hand-made it is usually because it is something that can benefit from attention to detail and a certain amount of artistry. The person making it by hand can check the quality of each bit of material as it is used and ensure that everything fits together absolutely perfectly. \n\nImagine a machine programmed to make sushi. It will not distinguish between slightly fattier pieces of fish, it will not account for the stickiness of the rice, it will not know how long to massage the octopus (instead it will use a pre-determined average ideal time), it will simply do the same thing over and over, without adjustment. This might give you pretty good sushi, but it can't give you great sushi. \n\nOther tasks are ideally suited to a machine. If I want to make precise, standardized cuts of wood, a machine will do it faster and better than an excellent carpenter. The resulting wood will then be sorted by a human expert based on grade, but the cutting itself is best done by machine with human supervision. ", "I build and repair stringed instruments and can tell you that having a set of very critical eyes on every step of production will give you a better result. From materials selected to placing the item in a box when finished, there is no substitute. \n\nHere is my favorite example:\n\n A shop that I do repair for had the same version of guitar from five different manufacturers. Each guitar featured the same woods, the same shape and style. It was the best way to actually compare the brands against each other. Three of the guitars were made by small companies that build by hand: Huss  &  Dalton, Santa Cruz, and Collings; respectively. Two guitars we \"factory\" guitars, meaning that there is considerably less hand working involved: Martin, and Taylor. If you have experience with guitars, you recognize the names Martin and Taylor, no doubt. We put the guitars in a circle and each employee sat and played them one by one, each coming to their own conclusion. There were no outliers. The Martin and Taylor were dismissed by even the most hardcore Martin/Taylor fans. This became far more evident down the road when the store was unable to sell any Martin guitars that were even hung next to the other brands on the wall. \n\nThe the difference was the handmade aspect. ", "It's more personal and seen as higher quality. Someone spent their time making it by hand instead of just pushing a button and letting a machine do it.\n\nIt can also be more creative since they can make each one unique with a different design, unlike a machine most of the time.", "Manufacturing Engineer here.\n\nI think the largest reason for the distinction actually comes from the idea of tolerances.  \"Machine made\", as many pointed out here, tends to be something that is mass manufactured.  Every component of a process and assembly has tolerances, and these tolerances lead to less than perfect fits.  \n\nHowever, \"handmade\" pieces are done one at a time, usually by one person.  This allows for custom fits between things and much more detail being paid to make the parts perfect. \n\n", "Handmade clothing is better because it is tailored to your measurements. Off-the-rack clothes can be altered but it's not the same. Quality of materials is entirely variable. My mother had a gown made up for my brother's wedding. The fabric she chose wasn't any better than the fabric in the off-the-rack gown that I rented.", "First, it isn't always.  I wouldn't buy a hand-made CPU regardless of the craftsmen's skill.\n\nSecond, there is an aspect of tradition.  We grow up with the association that handmade necessarily means higher quality because that's what we're told.  The higher price reinforces the association with quality.\n\nThird, there is an element of chance which is absent from machine manufacturing.  When I buy a Coke, it tastes the same no matter what.  This strengthens the value of the brand, but it has the side-effect of eliminating the uniqueness and individuality of the product.  When I drink I Coke, I don't think \"wow, that was a particularly special coke!\"  But, if I buy a hand-made knife, the knife is uniquely mine, and I can appreciate the qualities that distinguish it from mass-produced knives and from other hand made knives.\n\nFourth, you could argue that part of it is conspicuous consumption.  In some social settings, wearing or owning hand-made goods yields social dividends, increasing their perceived value.\n\nFifth, for some products, hand-made can actually be better.  This is less true now because machines have improved substantially, but some particularly intricate items, such as artwork, may require an active intelligence to be involved throughout the entire process to a degree absent from the assembly line.", "You could go back to Marx's theory of added value, which IIRC, states that all the work put into a thing increases the value of the thing by some amount. So unconsciously we might see a handmade shoe, for example, and say \"Oh wow someone spent hours and hours working on this shoe, it meant something to them! I will pay a high price.\" But if we see a factory-made shoe, for one thing it is not unique, as the handmade shoe is, but also there is no connection to another human inherent in the shoe itself. So we just say, \"Eh, just like every other shoe, it's not worth as much.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1spu6l", "title": "how some people can raise an eyebrow and others can't.", "selftext": "Surely the muscles for this action exist in everybody, right?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1spu6l/eli5_how_some_people_can_raise_an_eyebrow_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdzzcj3", "cdzzdqb", "cdzzgl5", "cdzzosz", "ce00nbp", "ce012qg", "ce01g2g", "ce01gmf", "ce01uj9", "ce023g4", "ce04rgj", "ce08uoy", "ce0bjxg"], "score": [25, 3, 2, 12, 5, 2, 6, 8, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Not a matter of muscles but of controlling them. We don't know the right nerves to trigger in order to get the muscles to do what we want.", "Not sure how it works but I can do the full Spock with my right eyebrow only.  Just discovered that I can't do it with my left now!  I am right handed.", "Passive/dominant genetic traits. Just like which way you cross your arms. Some go right ovet left others opposite.or being able to taste a penny. Some can some can't.", "~~It's just the way genetics affect us and makes us unique !~~\n\n - Can you lick your elbow ?\n - Can you touch your nose or chin with your tongue ?\n - Can you wiggle your ear ?\n - Best for last : Can you whet your own sword ?\n\nIf you can do all that. You are pretty special friend.", "Anyone can, it just takes practice. Same with wiggling your ears, flaring your nostrils, etc.\n\n >  Surely the muscles for this action exist in everybody, right?\n\nWell no. Some people can't roll their tongue. Quick google says it's not entirely hereditary, but there's a genetic element. ", "Why can some people move their ear but I cant :( is it possible to train yourself to? ", "I've always been able to raise both eyebrows independently. I'm also a \"supertaster\" and can wiggle my ears. ", "I have full control over both eye brows and it is simply from practicing.  I did it a lot when I was real young and now they are how I express stuff with my face so they still get a lot of use.  If you want to you just have to try a lot.  Same with ear wiggling.  I couldn't do it but figured out through the use of my eye brows that my ears could move ever so slightly and by doing it a bunch I isolated it and can control just the muscles needed to do it.  I don't think it is genetic like tongues are.  Practice makes perfect kiddies.  \nEdit:  I can do the wave both directions with my brows just to give you an example of the control I have developed over the years.", " I would agree that it's a matter of muscle control, building up the connection between your nerves, and plain old practice. Your brain has never had to send out signals to raise your eyebrows/waggle your ears, so it doesn't know how to isolate the signals. \n\nSince I know a few people (including myself) who taught themselves how to raise their eyebrows/wiggle their ears, I do not think it's just genetics.\n\nQuick guide to moving your eyebrows/ears:\nFind a mirror. Then, make faces until you find one that coincidentally also moves your eyebrow/ears.\n\nFor moving your ears, try suddenly widening your eyes and lifting your eyebrows up in surprise -- you'll notice that your ears would would slightly move up when you do so. \n\nFor eyebrows, it's a bit tougher. I was always able to raise my left  eyebrow while furrowing the other (kind of like a \"are you kidding me?\" look), so I taught myself how to raise my right eyebrow, and also how to raise my left without furrowing my right. Basically, I kept lifting up my right eyebrow while staring at my face and trying to keep down my left, sometimes with my hands. Unlike for the ears, there isn't a real trick for this, though thinking a sarcastic \"are you joking?\" helped me. It took a few days, but my face got the hang of it.\n\nOh, bonus: if you want to be able to look super cross-eyed (one eye looking straight, another eye looking at your nose), try going cross-eyed first, and then suddenly trying to stare at someone in front of you while being cross-eyed.", "I read a book (The Outsiders I think?) when I was very young in which a character would \"cock\" one of his eyebrows.  So I started practicing moving just one of my eyebrows (my right) and as an adult now I can move that eyebrow completely independently.  If I try to move the left eyebrow by itself, I simply can't.  The right goes with it.  I don't know if this is innate or due to practice.", "For a long time I could lift my right eyebrow but not my left. With several hours on the road and a sore forehead, I finally mastered the art of the left eyebrow. And coincidentally the nostril flair. And dual ear wiggle. \n\nI noticed that I could do all those things but I only did them out of facial expression in response to something. For instance, someone on my left makes a remark and I would raise my left eyebrow out of habit. But I couldn't do it on command. I also learned that before I sneeze I would instinctively flair the nostrils to stop the sneeze. So I just recreated those until I could remember how I was controlling it. After that it became cake. ", "I can only raise my left, and both at once, but I can't raise only my right ", "When I was young I loved WWE, this was about the time when The Rock was becoming a superstar. The People's Eyebrow inspired me to start practicing eyebrow raise, I practiced everyday religiously for months so I can impress my friends. I started with squinting / frowning eyebrows and  looking up towards the eyebrow I want to raise and trying to push that eyebrow up. This engages all your eyebrow muscles and let you concentrate on one.Initially you'll move both but with practice they will become independent to each other. A few months of practicing and it became natural, I can raise both of my eyebrows independently.\n\n**tl;dr** I taught myself how to do The People's Eyebrow."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "uopzx", "title": "Can a man become erect while under anesthesia? (Crosspost from r/AskReddit)", "selftext": "I was put under recently and it made me curious about some of things. This was one of them.\n\nAs a side note, does anyone have any other interesting tidbits on the subject?\n\nSomeone in the other thread suggested I post this here instead of r/askreddit. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uopzx/can_a_man_become_erect_while_under_anesthesia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4x8cyc", "c4xdtnl"], "score": [7, 2], "text": ["Case studies:\n\n[Priapism during transurethral surgery under spinal anaesthesia: Implications and review of management options](_URL_0_)\n\n > Intraoperative penile erection when observed is more common in patients younger than 50 years, with epidural anaesthesia or general anaesthesia with propofol.[1] It is difficult to perform transurethral procedure during penile erection because attempts to do so may lead to complications, such as excessive bleeding and urethral trauma.\n\nShort answer: yes, it is possible.\n\n", "I would say no under general anesthesia. In the absence of mechanical stimulation and absence of parasympathetic activation there should be no erection .\nIn the article above I believe it is the mechanical stimulation inherent in transurethral surgery that when high enough can activate the sacral plexus and cause vasodilation. \n\nImage of Transurethral surgery \n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016585/"], ["http://uvahealth.com/Plone/ebsco_images/2427.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "118ims", "title": "In '1493' Charles Mann makes a brief mention of Japanese samurai working in South America in the early 1600s protecting the Spaniards' silver shipments. Does anyone have any more info on this phenomenon? Also, why is this not a movie?", "selftext": "pg 364\n\n*Known collectively as* chinos, *Asian migrants spread slowly along the silver highway from Alcapulco to Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Indeed, the road was patrolled by them--Japanese samurai perhaps in particular. Katana swinging Japanese had helped suppress Chinese rebellions in Manila in 1603 and 1609. When Japan closed its borders to foreigners in the 1630s, Japanese expatriates were stranded wherever they were. Scores, perhaps hundreds, migrated to Mexico. Initially the viceroy had forbidden...* chinos *to carry weapons. The Spaniards made an exception for samurai, allowing them to wield their katanas and tantos to protect the silver shipments against the escaped-slaves-turned highwaymen in the hills.*\n\nI found this idea badass and fascinating, but haven't been able to find any more info on 17th Century South American Samurai. Anybody know anything about this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/118ims/in_1493_charles_mann_makes_a_brief_mention_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6k8wlb", "c6ka9ec", "c6kb34l", "c6kb7nq", "c6kbkub", "c6kc1js", "c6kcxzl", "c6kf9eq", "c6kfzhh", "c6kggi4", "c6khww9"], "score": [38, 5, 7, 26, 8, 21, 7, 3, 3, 6, 3], "text": ["I don't know anything about them being in South America, but I do know about them being in Manilla. [They were Japanese Catholics who were hired to fight against the Dutch](_URL_0_). [They were driven out of Japan in the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion](_URL_1_), in which [the Dutch had helped the Tokugawa Shogunate defeat the Catholic rebels](_URL_2_) and marked the beginning of serious persecution of Catholics in Japan.", "I also read recently that post-Tokugawa ronin fought for Thailand. The fact that some got all the way to America blows my mind.", "I can't remember who but someone kept quoting (in a neckbeard western vs eastern martial arts issue) that the Portuguese fought against samurai, buckler and rapier/rapier and dagger, has anyone even remotely heard of any sources which enforce this?", "Mexico is not in South America", "I actually have a source on this one somewhere. IIRC, there was a colony of Japanese exiles in the Philippines, and once the Spanish took the place over they started getting jobs on the galleon fleets. If I remember after work, i'll try to hunt for the footnote again.", "Am I the only one who isn't at all sure that the OP's quote from *1493* actually states that samurai ended up protecting silver shipments in Mexico?\n\nIt mentions Japanese expats and samurai in Manila, certainly plausible, and that some of the expatriates migrated to Mexico in the 1630s, also plausible. But where does it say that the silver shipments being protected by samurai were in Mexico and not Manila/the Philippines?\n\nFor one, the governership of Manila was overseen by the Viceroy in Mexico City, so the ban on weapons would have come from him regardless of whether it was in Manila or Mexico, so that part isn't conclusive. Next, so far as I know Mexico furnished decent amounts of gold but much less silver. Most silver from the Spanish Americas came from Peru, IIRC, not Mexico. What's more, the Manila-Acapulco trade carried American silver all the time, so samurai in Manila would certainly have been in a position to protect it there if the Spanish had allowed it.\n\nI'm admittedly not a historian of this era specifically but I ~~did stay at a Holiday Inn last night~~ am taking a seminar on the subject at the moment, and I'm not sure Mann's text is saying what the OP thinks it's saying.\n\nedit: OP should check out Mann's bibliography/references for that page, as there's bound to be a citation (look for the little endnote numbers on page 364. If that passage isn't cited anywhere specifically in Mann's text, I wouldn't trust it. But if it's there, I might be proven wrong.\n\nedit 2: there's semi relevant evidence in the form of [Hasekura Tsunenaga](_URL_0_), a Japanese samurai who traveled the Manila-Acapulco route on a diplomatic mission to Europe in the early 17th century, about 15-20 years before the events Mann is alluding to. This guy was on a diplomatic mission, didn't stay long in Mexico or protect silver shipments, but it is an instance of a samurai entering into Mexico (and evidently for the first time).", "I think these Samurai were ex-member of Keich\u014d Embassy (wikipedia's article is [here](_URL_1_)).\nAs far as I remember [this book](_URL_0_) (\"Samurais who were missing in Europe\"), which focus on vestige of Keich\u014d Embassy,some of the members and the shipcrews were left mission due to Tokugawa shogunate's persecution of the Christian faith, and settled Spain,and Mexico. And few Spainish documents (I can't remember but probably New Spain's record) mentioned Japanese mercenary,i.e. Samurai, several years after departure of the mission.\n(Sorry for my poor English and vague answer)", "True or not there needs to be a movie. I'd watch it like twice! Anyways there does need to be more love for the Manila galleon route. I think I saw some show or read some book taking about many Filipinos in Acupolco from the galleon days but the been in Mexico so long and people were. It called Filipinos when they came over. Also before WWII Davao city was mostly Japanese abaca and production center. Remember Philippines was governeerd through Mexico before Mexican independence and the. On crucified Japanese Catholics were shipped to Philippines. It's like a big triangle with Philippines in the middle.  So it can be plausible but with out some solid evidence just can only reflect upon the epicness of it all.", "So I found [this book](_URL_0_) while trying to find more information on Hispanic-Asian interaction. I would try searching through the book for relevant information, but I have to go to class. Hopefully one of you guys can gather some more information.", "This was floating around TIL today: _URL_0_\n\nSemi-related, a town in Spain with the descendants of 17th century samurai", "_URL_0_\n\nsemi- relevant, but some Japanese sailed accross the Pacific to Mexico with some Spaniards. Thanks for introducing me to William Adams, fascinating ! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=kk_iU0f-iT8C&amp;pg=PA243&amp;lpg=PA243&amp;dq=japanese+samurai+galleons&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Dc-ovzVQWf&amp;sig=yfYhZ8mQ5Xv90vIjVG_7Zywu3Sk&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=Z_90UILvC8SDjAKc24Fg&amp;ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=japanese%20samurai%20galleons&amp;f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=RMBdoimD2kIC&amp;pg=PA260&amp;lpg=PA260&amp;dq=japanese+samurai+galleons&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=VcYIa36YyB&amp;sig=MnPfxAwvEbPFI2LRIsIuJGCDWMc&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=rf50UOa5N-vpiwL934HQDQ&amp;ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;q=japanese%20samurai%20galleons&amp;f=false", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_Tsunenaga"], ["http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%83%91%E3%81%AB%E6%B6%88%E3%81%88%E3%81%9F%E3%82%B5%E3%83%A0%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1-%E3%81%A1%E3%81%8F%E3%81%BE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E5%A4%AA%E7%94%B0-%E5%B0%9A%E6%A8%B9/dp/4480422951", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_Tsunenaga"], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/They-Need-Nothing-Hispanic-Asian-Encounters/dp/1442645113/ref=sr_1_114?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1349887681&amp;sr=1-114&amp;keywords=Samurai+Europe"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/118syg/til_that_there_is_a_town_in_spain_where_700/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Sh%C5%8Dsuke"]]}
{"q_id": "2j6f43", "title": "why can't alcohol commercials actually show anyone drinking the product?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j6f43/eli5_why_cant_alcohol_commercials_actually_show/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl8t2ne", "cl8tx98", "cl8x51p", "cl8xmkh", "cl8xpud", "cl90wii", "cl93f1m", "cl96fti", "cl96yca"], "score": [35, 4, 12, 9, 7, 4, 3, 2, 12], "text": ["Legally, they can show it, however unofficially, it is banned based off previous agreements and  codes of conduct and network guidelines.\n\nWhat does that all mean? It means while the govt hasn't specifically prohibited commercials  from showing alcohol consumption, among advertisers and tv stations/channels its an official (but not legally binding) agreement that they simply do not show people drinking alcohol in a commercial, if you want your commercial to air.  There is not much demand to change this, so it goes on.", "In India, any commercial for alcohol is banned. To get around this, alcohol companies run commercials for drinking water and music CDs!", "You just saw the Heineken commercial with nph right?", "In Australia they show people drinking and going \"ahhhh\"", "In America there is no government rule/law against it, but [each network self-regulates]( _URL_0_)\n\n > A spokeswoman for The Beer Institute, the voice of brewers, told us their members are loath to take chances with network policy.\n\n > \"If you\u2019re putting an ad together, you will be as conservative as possible so you know it will get past all the networks,\" said Megan Kirkpatrick, director of communications at the Institute.\n\n > Kirkpatrick said the brewers have no desire to stir things up and risk stirring a cry for a new law.\n\n > \"The fact that it is self-regulated now, that\u2019s not something brewers would want to put in jeopardy,\" Kirkpatrick said. \"It\u2019s the way they have operated for decades. You show a lot of people enjoying a football game or enjoying a baseball game but you don\u2019t show any consumption. I don't think you\u2019re going to see that change.\"", "Here in Germany you can show alcohol consumtion in comercials but i heared it's forbidden to hold the bottle above a specific angle because it's considered as alcoholism", "A lot of beer adds in belgium show people (men) drinking for example all the Jupiler ads end with a Guy chugging beer", "_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nboth of these have people drinking the product... is this a US law maybe?", "Because it makes white moms in America uncomfortable. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/20/heineken/neil-patrick-harris-heineken-ad-we-cant-drink-tv/"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCeVLEafW0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O04XKK6Awe8"], []]}
{"q_id": "42j4eb", "title": "if i see 4 apples on the table, do i count them unconsciously or just recognize that there are 4?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42j4eb/eli5_if_i_see_4_apples_on_the_table_do_i_count/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czas6a5", "czas8yb", "czasam0", "czasov6", "czautph"], "score": [251, 45, 12, 2, 6], "text": ["There is actually a concept called subitizing, that relates to identification of small numbers of things without the need to count. Most humans are good at doing this for about 4-5 objects, and apparently several other primates are far better at subitizing than humans are, and can do with up to 9-10 objects. \n\n_URL_0_", "Your brain does something call \"Subitizing,\" in which it makes a judgement about small numbers of items. In up to four items, your brain almost immediately recognizes the number of items. For any items larger (up to around 8), it can take just a second or two longer to recognize it. Pretty much anything more than 8 you will have to count. \n\n[Here is the Wikipedia article on Subitizing in case you are interested in further reading.](_URL_0_)", "This is studied in cognitive science. _URL_0_\n\nIt's also a way to distinguish the cognitive capacity of animals vs. children. Knowing the term is the place to start. I'm just stalling for time, because if I just post a link, my comment gets deleted.", "I heard tidbit that people usually have grasp of numbers up to 4 or so. After that, it's counting, combining smaller groups and adding them together.\n\nLike, you're seemingly asking difference between recognizing right away the number, and on the other hand counting to that number. How people have studied this is to time people when they need to say out loud the number of items shown to them. The idea is that counting, subconsciously or consciously, takes extra time, so you would see significant leap once our \"detect number at glance\" ability no longer is enough. And as far as I remember, conclusion has been that we only recognize very low numbers at glance, simply by recognizing the pattern straight away. Other patterns you combine, like, patterns of 3 and 2 make either 6 or 5\n\nComparing two different sets of objects, when both have 5 or more objects, requires counting or other more difficult heuristics. ", "Here's a great [comment](_URL_4_) I found, all credit to /u/surfktizzle:\n\nThe human mind has two systems for representing numbers: a [subitizing system for numbers up to four](_URL_0_), and an approximate ratio estimation system for larger numbers. Your choice of the number \"five\" is interesting because it is right on the edge of the subitizing system's capabilities, but you are probably able to see that there are five without actually having to count them. Let's spell out the difference here to be clear.\n\nFor numbers less than four, you can immediately tell precisely how many there are without having to count them (this is what the subitizing system does). For numbers larger than four you can only get an approximate estimate unless you count them (this is what the approximate number system does). The approximate number system [works like Weber's law, in terms of ratios](_URL_7_). This means that you can discriminate say 90 from 100 and 900 from 1000 about equally easily because they are both a ratio of 9:10.\n\nNow to counting, which is actually a cool little invented trick that expands the capacity of the subitizing system by using language to precisely enumerate more than 4 objects (keep in mind you can't get a precise count of more than 4 objects without counting them). The way this trick works is as follows. We all memorize a verbal list of numbers that we store in long term memory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ...). You may remember this being a big part of learning when you were 4 or 5 years old, and you can see that it isn't all that natural because it takes kids some time and effort to memorize this list. Now, once you have this list memorized, you can use the following counting algorithm to precisely enumerate more than 4 objects. You can then count the number of objects you're looking at by giving each a label from the memorized list of numbers, and continue this process until each object has a label, and has only one label. The label that you end at is the number of objects there are. \n\nSo, let's say you had seven objects on a table, there are two ways you could precisely enumerate them. The first would be to create two groups of objects that are subitizable (say, identify one group of three objects, and one of four objects), process them immediately and then add them together. The other way would be to start labeling them from your list (the first gets the label \"one\", the second \"two\", and so on). Then you will run out of objects to label precisely at the label \"seven\" and you will know you have seven objects. If you wanted to count 90 objects though, you would be forced to run the counting algorithm because there is no way to break that up into a manageable number of subitizable sets (sets of four or less objects).\n\nWhen I first learned this it blew my mind, but if you think about it a little bit, you realize that is precisely what you are doing when enumerating some group of objects. You should notice that you can immediately recognize up to about four objects without counting (and can increase this with the little grouping trick I mentioned above, that I often use for numbers less than ten or so). However, notice that if you have to enumerate, say 17 objects, you probably won't be able to do so without the \"little voice in your head\", which you are using to recite your memorized list of numbers. \n\nThis also explains how some cultures don't have number systems that go above two or three. All cultures have words that distinguish one object from multiple objects, but some stop there, or have counting systems that are something like \"one\", \"two\", \"many\". These cultures simply have not invented this linguistic counting trick because the need has not arisen, and this is not uncommon among hunter-gatherers and hunter-horticulturalists: they don't need to enumerate identical objects because most objects in the natural world can be identified individually because they are all unique. While counting seems incredibly natural to us, it is only because it is so well learned that we overlook how we got there in the first place, and so the idea that some people can get by without the counting trick can seem really odd to educated people. Interestingly, number systems seem to arise when the need arises, and specifically when people need to keep track of large numbers of roughly identical objects, or keep some record of the number for the future. When does this happen? Often with the invention of agriculture, since this often leads people to be trading, tracking, and exchanging larger numbers of nearly identical objects (e.g., bushels of wheat). This is why the counting trick has been independently invented many times over across many different cultures, yet has not been invented by all of them. For some cultures the need simply never arose.\n\nIt is a little tricky to give sources for all of this because it is a broad summary of a ton of research, but here are some good places to start:\n\nWhere Mathematics Comes From by Lakoff and Nunez\n\nHuman Universals by Donald Brown\n\nDevelopmental psychology work on numerical cognition by [Elizabeth Spelke](_URL_3_), and [Karen Wynn](_URL_5_). \n\n\nEdit: Thanks for the comments and gold. I'm glad you all found this interesting. I would love to keep fielding questions here, but I should probably get back to doing real work. However, I did want to add a call out for anyone who knows more about this topic to post something on variation in subitizing ability. It seems like over half of the comments are asking about whether this can be greater than 4, and I don't know for sure or have a source off hand. My memory is that subitizing capacity does vary, but only around about 3-5, so you can't subitize much higher than that. If anyone can find a source for this please post it. Thanks.\n\nEdit 2: Looks like /u/svof posted a source on individual differences in subitization below. He points out that 4 is the modal subitization ability, which is a helpful elaboration. The general points hold, but there is more nuance in subitizing abilities than my answer implied.\n\nEdit 3: Wow, thanks everyone. I just wanted to add that there are other ways to assess the number of objects without counting them or subitizing them, for example by using a heuristic based on shape. Many comments/questions keep stating that people don't need to count higher numbers on dice or dominoes, and that is because you have memorized the shapes that the marks make, and how each shape relates to a specific number. So, there are other ways to figure out the number of objects, such as spatial heuristics, and I bet there are probably a lot of other work arounds one could come up with. The key to these work arounds would be figuring out visual stimuli that are immediately perceptible and map onto the number of objects somehow (e.g., like if every time there were 33 objects, they would be red, and only when there were 33 objects would they be red--then you could just instantly see the red and know there were 33 objects).\n\nEdit 4: Man did this blow up. Thanks for all the gold, and for the interest. I just wanted to add this edit to say that I probably won't be answering any more questions. If a unique one comes in, I'll try to respond, but almost every new comment/question is about one of the things I addressed in the post or the edits above (variation in subitizing ability, counting by subitizing in multiple groups, or counting by pattern recognition). Since I addressed those here, I'm not going to go through and answer each one over and over. One other common question is why four specifically, and I think /u/99trumpets [gave the best answer for this below](_URL_8_). The last thing people keep asking about is subitizing savants (e.g., people that can instantly count 100 objects), and I just want to say I know nothing about that. I haven't seen a single credible source on it though, as everyone just references some vague thing they heard or Rain Man, so it's hard to tell if it is a real documented phenomenon or not. If someone does post a source on it, I'll add it in up here, otherwise I'm not really sure how to address that specific topic. Thanks again for reading, and I'm glad you all found this so interesting.\n\nEdit 5: /u/SirSoliloquy [built a cool little web app to demonstrate subitization.](_URL_2_) [Check it out!](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit 6: Radiolab did a segment on exactly this topic. You can listen to it [here](_URL_6_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_cognition"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing", "http://stringsofwords.com/?p=82", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ayhkp/if_someone_asks_me_how_many_apples_are_on_the/cj1fx1y?context=3", "http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/index.html?spelke.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ayhkp/if_someone_asks_me_how_many_apples_are_on_the", "http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kw77/Research.html", "https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/424231", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ayhkp/if_someone_asks_me_how_many_apples_are_on_the/cj06o71"]]}
{"q_id": "1wxbry", "title": "Were the late Merovingian kings really as useless as the record painted them out to be?", "selftext": "Additionally, how was it that the mayors of the palace began to usurp the authority of the monarch? Was it a very gradual process, or did a single weak king let it all go? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wxbry/were_the_late_merovingian_kings_really_as_useless/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf69f4w", "cf6es1e"], "score": [76, 8], "text": ["Let's break it down into phases:\n\n(1) During the reigns of Chlothar II and his son Dagobert, the Merovingian kings are seemingly experiencing a temporary apogee. For instance, in 626/7, a church council celebrates King Chlothar, comparing him to prophet kings of the Old Testament, and the subsequent edict he publishes reasserts his right to nominate bishops. Similarly, his son, Dagobert, seems to control an extensive network of courtiers, who had been brought up in the palace and then nominated as bishops (people like Didier of Cahors, Dado/Audoin, or the most famous one, Eligius (French \u00c9loi)). On the other hand, this consensus may be superficial: we know that factions already beset the aristocracy. A good example of this is the treatment given to Dagobert in the *Chronicle of the pseudo-Fredegar.* The anonymous author of the work apparently had austro-burgundian sympathies (I am assuming you know about the *tria regna*; if it is not the case, ask me) and basically said that while Dagobert was ruling in Austrasia, he was the ideal king, but that he became perverted and luxurious upon his arrival in Neustria. Of course, that was the expression of the fact that Dagobert dismissed his Austrasian advisors (Pippin and Arnulf, two precursors of the Carolingian line) in favour of Neustrian courtiers. The underlying tensions that would give way to civil war were already there, and the importance of these advisors must not be underestimated in this period.\n\n(2) Then, apparently, after the death of Dagobert (639), everything changes. There, we have an obvious problem with sources. The *Chronicle of Fredegar*, which was nowhere near as good as the *Ten books of history* of Gregory of Tours, was still quite accurate, but it ends in 641. For the following years, narrative sources become quite poor, and we are often obliged to fill in the gaps with hagiography, not the most reliable thing around. Even the narrative sources we have write with later developments in hindsight: so their emphasis on the aristocracy might reflect rather what was happening when their authors were writing than in the 640s. As a result, our understanding of very important events is often quite shaky \u2014 and most historians tend to avoid this utter mess, hence the lack of a good synthesis work on the topic. It is clear, however, that the young age of Dagobert's two heirs led to an empowerment of aristocrats (but then, Chlothar II also was a minor king for a very long time, and he did manage to create a solid basis for his rule). This generation might have been the weakest, but it is rather due to the age of the kings than to their personal dispositions. But without even trying to explain some of the most intriguing events of the period (for instance, the mystery of Childebert the Adopted), let's just say that some things seem to show that kings still have a degree of power and influence in the second part of the 7th century. Childeric II (king from 662 to 675), for instance, actively struggles against some of the factions (mainly that of Ebroin: the subsequent events would prove that he was right to do so); we are told that he \u201coppresses\u201d the nobility by hostile sources, which suggest that he was actually quite energetic. However, his final audacity (ordering the assassination of an aristocrat) costed him his throne and his life. \n\n(3) After that point, our sources do not give indications at all on the role of kings. It seems that they could, in some occasions, manage to get some power: the simple fact that Dagobert II, king of Austrasia from 676 to 679, ends up assassinated (by Neustrians?) shows that he had an importance, even if we cannot know how he effectively enforced it. After 679, our knowledge of Merovingian kings disappears. The civil war that had begun c. 673 was all about aristocratic power \u2014 Ebroin and his clique leading the Neustrian nobility, crushing Leodegar in Burgundy, and then getting assassinated; and, eventually, the Austrasian victory of 687 in Tertry against the troops of Berthar (a Neustrian mayor). After this point, no Mervongian king has a visible role besides the signature of charters. It seems, however, that the Merovingians still retained a part of their charisma \u2014 the Pippinids/Carolingians would not topple their last puppet king, Theuderic III, before 751. Hence, many historians have thought that there was maybe more to it than meets the eye, but we cannot know for sure.\n\nSo, to answer your question: the inappropriateness of sources makes really hard to understand what was happening. Overall, however, it is clear that royal power was still there during the 670s, even if was being challenged. No single king was responsible, even if we might argue that the two sons of Dagobert, being minors, revealed the fragility of kingship. One last thing about the mayors: it is I think wrong to analyse this position in institutional terms (or at least this is not the most important thing). People did not get powerful because they are mayors; they became mayor *because* they were powerful. Indeed, it is much more helpful to envision them as spokesmen of the aristocracy (or of the majority of a regional aristocracy). The role of the mayors became much more important because the aristocracy was becoming more powerful (and an important thing to consider is that kings are all-important in this process: the first revendication of aristocrats is not to rule, it is to have a king at hand to give them favours and lands. The very rise of the aristocracy, therefore, pretty much depends on the importance given to kings. The fact that factions expressed their disagreements by setting up rival courts is quite revelatory in this regard)\n\n(as I have said, there is no useful synthesis on the 7th century, as far as I know; but I. Wood's *The Merovingian Kingdoms* is as useful as ever, and *Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography* gives a range of useful sources with interesting prefaces/notes)", "/u/GeorgiusFlorentius has a thorough response but let me also add to the readings Paul Fouracre's great article [\"Long Shadow of the Merovingians\"](_URL_0_). It deals with the subsequent *reception/ memory* of the Merovingians, particularly under the Carolingians, and why the Merovingians got such a bad rap. Short answer: the Carolingians wanted to cover up their coup d'etat."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=vTbvq_8HFPUC&amp;lpg=PP1&amp;pg=PA5#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "tssyz", "title": "[meta]Let's talk about downvoting.", "selftext": "It generally isn't a problem, but when it does arise, it is a pretty severe problem.\n\nDownvoting should only occur as noted in the sidebar when:\n\n > comments that are off topic, antagonistic, or trollish\n\nNot when you don't like them.  In this subreddit, you will have your opinions and positions challenged sometimes.  Unlike many opinions you may have, like best quarterback or best way to cook a steak, how you view history can sometimes be an integral part of how you view the world.  If you are a Marxist/Communist, you will view history through that prism, Anarchist, Capitalist, Austrian School, Democrat, Republican, Whig, East Coast Liberal, Labour, etc. will all affect you the same way.  You want to see history through that particular tint of  glasses.\n\nUnfortunately, that tint can obscure real and valid facts that make your position less tenable, or challenge it's foundations.  Sometimes this will challenge you personally because it is an integral part of how you see the world.  Sometimes when you view the U.S. as a noble nation facts about Manifest Destiny and Native Americans or perhaps slavery will challenge that view.  Perhaps you see America as an evil villian out to crush good honest workers and minorities, but there will be facts that counter act that view.  This will of course make you uncomfortable and probably even angry.\n\nWhen this happens.  *Keep your mouse off the downvote button*.  You only downvote if it's trollish, antagonistic, off topic or just blatantly wrong i.e. \"Christopher Columbus was a Spaniard who discovered America in 1423\".  \n\nDO NOT DOWNVOTE IF THE ARGUMENT IS VALID AND MERELY UPSETS YOU.  \n\nSorry.  But history requires you to play hardball with your belief systems and your world view.  If you get hit, it's gonna hurt, and you won't like it.  That's part of the game, and honestly part of life.  If you can't handle having your views challenged then you really shouldn't play outside or with others, it's gonna happen.\n\nMost egregiously, if you downvote because the statement upsets you, and don't write a reply...in a way, that is saying, \"I don't like what you said but I can't refute it.\"  If you can't refute the point, then don't downvote because you disagree.  That's about a close minded as you can get on Reddit.\n\n*Remember folks, downvoting is only for trolls, bad info, antagonism, and off topic discussions, not for opinions you don't like and or can't refute.*", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tssyz/metalets_talk_about_downvoting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4pfjdt", "c4pg07p", "c4pgbkr", "c4pggt2", "c4pgjmh", "c4pj4h5", "c4pk7ed"], "score": [59, 15, 6, 53, 6, 4, 3], "text": ["You say it at the end there but it isn't in the side bar. Downvoting \"Bad info\" is important in keeping the quality here at a high level. The sidebar should make an explicit mention of downvoting posts which are counter to established historical facts, the interpretation of said facts is however another matter entirely.", "We have the same problem over in /r/AskSocialScience, where threads dealing with political subjects will have panelists with flair voted down below the visible threshold while laypersons' answers get voted to the top.  I spoke to one of the mods about it, and floated the idea of going upvote-only like some other subreddits, but he didn't seem terribly concerned.  Instead we have a weekly PSA reminding people to cite sources.\n\nI'm not sure there's anything you can do about it, because history deals with political subjects.  Whereas over at /r/AskScience the physical/natural sciences have fairly objective answers, you're always going to have answers here that are contestable and subjective.  People on reddit are simply not going to resist the urge to downvote things they disagree with politically, whether downvoting Marxism, conservatism, libertarianism, or what-have-you.", "This is one of the best subreddits on the site.  I'm very grateful for the heavy moderation here.  Honestly, it's one of the few havens from jokey, karma whore BS.", "But can we agree on downvoting those dreadful pun threads, bad jokes, \"funny\" images and anything similiar? If you like those, you can view them on 99% of reddit. I think they don't belong here at all and this subreddit should stay more professional.", "This is kind of off topic, but someone is downvoting every single post in this subreddit.  It's weird.  ", "You guys should institute something like they have on the /r/nba subreddit, where if you hover over the downvote a red message appears that says \"Please do not downvote based on fandom\". For /r/AskHistorians it should also be a red bar and it should say something like \"Please do not downvote valid arguments just because they challenge your beliefs\"", "While this is a thread about downvotes, I think it is a good time to bring up the role of the moderators in this subreddit. I am a strong believer that AskHistorians should have an active and powerful moderator team. They should remove posts that don't fit the rules and police the subreddit on the model of AskScience. For a subreddit of 600,000 people, it is still fantastic and hasn't devolved into chaos like so many other subreddits have. I sense a lot of fear in this thread over this subreddit turning into /r/atheism. \n\nSo what I'd like is for moderators to remove spammy comments. I would say off-topic, but I feel that if the thread is on, say, British colonialism in Africa, and someone asked about the French in Africa, that is technically off-topic, but I feel that is relevant anyways. So spammy. I recognize that this rarely happens in this subreddit. To be honest, I can't recall a single thread that I would have removed like this. What I think is important, though, is that the mods have the ability to do this and not find themselves the subject of /r/subredditdrama.\n\nYes, this would probably be a lot of work. I don't have a vendetta against the mods and want to swamp them in work. Even if they don't get everything, but remove at least part of the spam, the subreddit will be better for it.\n\nI don't think this should apply to bad history, though. Bad history should be kept in the threads, but downvoted and made clear why it is not good history. I think AskScience removes stuff like this, but history is so full of misconceptions, and I think that showing why it is wrong is more important than keeping the threads only full of good explanations. Bad history should be downvoted unmercifully, and more importantly, explained why it is bad.\n\nSomeone posted below about how their flair got taken away, apparently for unjustified reasons. I don't believe that is true, but maybe flair removal should be made public. Maybe there should be some sort of council made up of the flaired users to determine whether or not the users should have flair or not. That would prevent moderator abuse of flair removal, and give a say to the supposed experts of the subreddit. I'm not really sure how this would be done, really. I feel that posting about it would just cause drama. Maybe a thread for all questions on whether users should have flair, but reddit is very ill suited for this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "26dv1a", "title": "During the great emigration wave from Europe in the 19th-early 20th century, how did people decide which country to emigrate to? Were there advertisements? What made someone pick Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa or somewhere other than the United States?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26dv1a/during_the_great_emigration_wave_from_europe_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chq4lgg", "chqfjju"], "score": [47, 6], "text": ["There were indeed advertisements, but each place operated differently in that regard. In the United States, I don't know of any ads placed directly by the federal government, but state governments (_URL_1_) did. For the USA, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand (the 'white' dominions as it were) there was also advertisements in Europe (and especially Britain) targeted at attracting people to the new colonies. More 'colonial' states, like India, and certain African Colonies, women were also specifically targeted (which was nothing new; similar strategies had taken place for Quebec and New England).\n\nThese new colonies were not the only ones advertising of course. There was also a big influence from shipping companies, who stood to benefit from the increased traffic (and indeed, some countries placed the blame squarely on shipping companies for attracting their poor workers). _URL_0_\n\nAs for the decision why, it is almost certainly a factor of opportunity. For example, let's take Canada and the USA. Canada did not really experience an immigration boom until land in the United States became more scarce. The United States, Canada, Australia, and many other colonial states offered the chance at owning land, something that we take for granted here in North America, but which was extreme rare in Europe during this period. Arable land continued to be controlled in the majority by wealthy estate owners, farmed by tenants. These vast new places not only offered the chance at ownership, they offered it for essentially the price of a steamship ticket. Other reasons people were attracted to particular countries stems largely from nationalism, language, and politics. The United States was very attractive to certain people seeking a more democratic environment (Germans and Irish were particularly keen, for obvious reason) while the colonial empires provided a supported environment for those who wished to remain under the control of their home countries. Some instances seem a bit confusing here as well. For example, why did Argentina receive so many immigrants while places like Colombia or Peru did not? The answer is the land issue again; the Rio de Plata and surrounds is much closer to the land characteristics of North America than what we associate with South America. ", "Canada actually had an entire campaign to lure immigrants to the Prairies.  In (what is today) Saskatchewan (and parts of Manitoba and what would become Alberta) there were vast swaths of land that were going unoccupied and unfarmed.  In order to lure European immigrants, the government of Canada began the \"Last Best West\" campaign, advertising the Prairies as the last great plains left to settle.\n\nThe Dominion Lands Act also gave newly arrived farmers 160 acres of land to cultivate, for only a small administrative fee, a further incentive to move to Canada."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.russborough.com/antique_prints/posters/canada_immigration_posters.html#white_star_olympic", "http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-018/?action=more_essay"], []]}
{"q_id": "1uuq3q", "title": "I tend to see a lot posts about WWII vets that have guns from an enemy soldier that they killed. Exactly how easy was it to get these weapons home?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uuq3q/i_tend_to_see_a_lot_posts_about_wwii_vets_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cely2be", "cely8wg", "cem4f42", "cemfs1w"], "score": [8, 3, 32, 3], "text": ["Also a question:  How many vets took issued weapons back home?", "I think he is asking what were the rules on what can be brought back. Like could i bring back a mg-42 I found or a pistol or rifle about it?", "Pretty damn easy. The government even footed the shipping costs for occupation troops to send stuff home after the war, not exceeding 25 pounds, plus a premium for officers. All war bring backs were supposed to have capture papers though. Here is an [example of one](_URL_1_) for a .25 pistol. It basically showed that the soldier had gotten permission to send it back, and someone had inspected the weapon to make sure it was eligible. Weapons with their capture papers these days fetch a very high premium from collectors.\n\nOriginally, you could even bring back machine guns, as long as you registered it under the National Firearms Act upon importing it to the country, but the practice it was decided that they were no longer allowed in mid-1945 (This was via Circular 155 referenced below). And regardless, in more recent conflicts, any fully automatic weapon is prohibited from import due to the Gun Control Act of 1968 (and registration was ended, period, in 1986), and I am unsure what current military policy is in general, although I know that the ATF does have a form for the importation of war trophies, so it can be done. \n\n[This document has some more information](_URL_0_) (but can't be copy/pasted so you'll have to click through). As you can see, allowing the importation of 'war trophies' was considered an issue of morale, and the Circular lays out the explicit ground rules on pages 3-7, including the prohibition of live ammo, and automatic weapons (which, again, were allowed up until then. The circular doesn't say *why*, but I imagine it was a headache to deal with since they had to be registered immediately upon entering the country. ", "I don't know if any Australian troops brought weapons home, is there any example of these and how did they do it. Most of these answers seem very Amero-centric"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/WD_Cir_No_155_28_May_45.pdf", "http://i416.photobucket.com/albums/pp244/wleoff/CapturePapersEM.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "aewi16", "title": "What planets have we developed surface maps of?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aewi16/what_planets_have_we_developed_surface_maps_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["edvqzsg", "edvrtnx"], "score": [5, 4], "text": ["We have maps of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. One Orbiter has mapped Mercury. I'm unsure of Venus, but one orbiter mapped the surface with radar. The earth of course. And Mars has been extensively mapped.\n\nThe other planets are gas giants so they don't have a surface to map.\n\nThe moon while not a planet has been mapped with great detail.\n", "As of 2009, we now have decent global maps of all planets that have solid surfaces.  Surprisingly, the last one to be completely mapped was Mercury.  Because of the way its spin synchronized with its orbit, one side of it was always in darkness when we visited it with early spacecraft, so we didn't get good pictures  of that side until the Messenger mission in the 2000's.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWe also have decent pictures of at least one side of Pluto, most large moons, and a few asteroids, amounting to every solid solar system object bigger than 500 km in diameter and closer to the sun than Neptune.\n\n_URL_2_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1614.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/886i3k/in_this_pic_of_mercury_what_is_the_giant_flat/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size"]]}
{"q_id": "jv91t", "title": "what prime numbers are and why they're important", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jv91t/eli5_what_prime_numbers_are_and_why_theyre/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2fdrrl", "c2fdszp", "c2feffq", "c2feqcl", "c2fer2x", "c2ff9ta", "c2fg44b", "c2fgfum", "c2fiefn", "c2fdrrl", "c2fdszp", "c2feffq", "c2feqcl", "c2fer2x", "c2ff9ta", "c2fg44b", "c2fgfum", "c2fiefn"], "score": [5, 2, 488, 88, 3, 26, 6, 3, 2, 5, 2, 488, 88, 3, 26, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["What a prime number *is* is simple enough: Any whole number which can only be divided by itself and one and still give a whole number as a result. e.g. 6 is **not** prime, because you can divide 6 by 2 and get 3. 3 however is prime, because you can't divide 3 by any whole number besides 1 and 3 and get another whole number.\n\nFor any non-prime whole number, you can get that number by multiplying together 2 or more prime numbers, e.g. 50 = 2 x 5 x 5.\n\nWhy they are important is a more complex issue. They have their uses in cryptography which have been explained to five year olds [before](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat mainly interests mathematicians is that there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the prime numbers. Take the first few: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 23, ~~27~~... there is no discernible pattern to this sequence of numbers. An awful lot of mathematicians have spent a long time searching for a pattern in the prime numbers, but no one has found one yet.", "A prime number is a number that can be divided only by 1 and by itself. The first primes are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on. Usually 1 is not considered prime. For example 4 is not prime because 4 = 2 x 2. 6 = 3x2, 9=3x3, on the other hand 17 is prime because 17 = 17 x 1. \n\nPrime numbers are infinite. It was proved by an ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid. \n\n*He said: suppose that there are only 3 prime numbers: 2, 3 and 5. Multiply these three numbers: 2 x 3 x 5 = 30, now add one: 30 + 1 = 31. This number is not divisible by 2, not divisible by 3 and not divisible by 5. So there are two cases: 31 is prime or is the product of other prime numbers. In both these cases the list of primes is incomplete. Note that with this method you don't get all the prime numbers. (Like You're 12)*\n\nFinding big prime numbers is hard (even with computers). This is why prime numbers are interesting for mathematicians. They are struggling to find a way to get prime numbers easily. \n\nNow prime numbers are used to hide messages (there's a lot of theory behind this so it's difficult to make it easy) in what is called public key cryptography.\n\nPrime numbers also have some application in mathematics, but not really useful (for now).", "Imagine I gave you a whole bunch of blocks, and asked you to arrange them for me. I need you to arrange them in a rectangle.\n\nLet's start with 10 blocks:\n      \n    **********\n\nAfter messing around a bit, you manage to make the following rectangle:\n\n    *****\n    *****\n\nGood! Now count the number of blocks on each edge of the rectangle. \n\n2, 5, 2, 5.  Notice each number will for sure appear twice, so we only need to keep track of the two that might be different, 2 and 5. We call these numbers a *factorization* of our first number, 10. \n\nWhat if I give you one more block?\n\n    *****\n    ******\n\nIt doesn't seem to fit anywhere. After a while, you give up. That's because 11 is a *prime* number, the only rectangle you can make with it is: \n\n    ***********\nthe line rectangle. \n\nNow, how about we add one more?\n\n    ************\n\nThis time, you manage to make two *different* rectangles:\n\n    ******       ****\n    ******       ****\n                 ****\n\nSo 12 is definitely not prime, it is composite. \n\nWhy don't you try 13?\n\nWhat makes primes important is that you can use them to build up all the other numbers. When you have a composite number, you get two factors, two numbers that multiply to give you the composite number. These two numbers might be prime, but if not, you can factor them instead, and keep going down until you have all prime numbers.\n\nFor example 10=2\\*5, which are both prime. 12= 2\\*2\\*3, all prime. \n\nSo often, if mathematicians can show something is true for prime numbers, they can then show that it is true for all numbers, because every number is built up this way from prime numbers.\n", "This isn't really an answer, just an interesting related note.\n\nYou also see prime numbers in biology.  For example, the [Cicada](_URL_0_) has a very long 13 or 17 year life-cycle.  Its no accident that these are prime numbers, since it means that their predators, with shorter life cycles, can't synchronize their cycles so that they always emerge at the same time the Cicadas do.\n\nIf a Cicada had a 12 year life cycle, then a predator with a 2, 3, 4, or 6 year life cycle could have a feast once every 6, 4, 3, or 2 cycles respectively.", "Not like you're five, but i'll try to simplify. Let's say we find a rock on the ground with a lot of different colors. We put it through a magical grinder which crushes the rock into tiny atoms and sorts them into different piles. One pile contains carbon atoms, another one contains cobalt, and so on. These atoms are the fundamental building blocks of all things in the universe.\n\nNow let's look at a number. We grind this number by dividing it into smaller numbers. At the end, we have numbers that cannot be divided any further. These prime numbers are the fundamental building blocks of all other numbers in the sense of multiplication. This is why they are interesting.\n\nThe word 'primal' is probably a better description. Primal as in fundamental, the beginning, optimus prime..al?", "I think others have covered what prime numbers are quite well.  Let's talk about why they're important.\n\nFirst, every whole number bigger than 1 can be expressed as a product of  primes--and the series of primes that represents a whole number is unique.  Reducing a number to the series of primes that represent it, however is *very hard*.  In fact, it's so hard that we haven't come up with a fast and consistent way of doing it that doesn't depend on trying every possible combination--or at least making educated guesses.  This is particularly true of semiprimes--the product of two prime numbers.  \n\nHowever, checking if a number is prime--and checking the factorization of prime numbers is correct--is a *very* easy thing to do.  We can check 300 digit prime numbers within a fraction of a second using computers!  \n\nNow, one thing we can do is use two very large prime numbers to scramble messages--as all messages can be encoded as numbers.  What's more, the way we scramble it means that I could hand you one number to use to scramble the message you want to send me, while I keep one that de-scrambles that message.  It doesn't matter how many people know about the number I give you: as long as it takes several hundred computers two years to factorize a large semiprime (large here meaning more than 200 digits), nobody's going to calculate *my* number using yours.  This process is called asymmetric key encryption (or public key encryption).\n\nWhy is this important?  Every time you want to make a purchase online, you want to make sure that bad guys don't get your credit card number.  Websites use asymmetric key encryption to ensure that bad guys listening to your Internet connection cannot get your credit card number and take trips to Thailand with your money.  Banks use similar methods to ensure that bank-to-bank electronic money transfers are secure and that bank robbers can't take their money by tapping into an Internet connection.  The military uses it to pass its orders around so that enemies can't see the military's plans.  Indeed, the Nazis lost the war at least in part to the fact that their message scrambling wasn't as secure as they thought.  But you didn't ask about how computers were invented, so we'll save that story for another time.", "[Terence Tao on Prime Numbers](_URL_0_)", "There's something my brain isn't quite grasping, which is, if a given number X is the product of two primes Y and Z, then those are the *only* two primes which can be multiplied together to make X. \n\nI mean, I can sit here and go \"3 x 5 is 15; are there any other primes which can be multiplied together to make 15? Obviously not. Next, 5 x 7 is 35...\" but I don't instinctively, logically *see* that this remains true all the way up. \n\nCan anyone Prove It  To Me Like I'm Five?", "This question itself is way more interesting than any possible answer:)", "What a prime number *is* is simple enough: Any whole number which can only be divided by itself and one and still give a whole number as a result. e.g. 6 is **not** prime, because you can divide 6 by 2 and get 3. 3 however is prime, because you can't divide 3 by any whole number besides 1 and 3 and get another whole number.\n\nFor any non-prime whole number, you can get that number by multiplying together 2 or more prime numbers, e.g. 50 = 2 x 5 x 5.\n\nWhy they are important is a more complex issue. They have their uses in cryptography which have been explained to five year olds [before](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat mainly interests mathematicians is that there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the prime numbers. Take the first few: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 23, ~~27~~... there is no discernible pattern to this sequence of numbers. An awful lot of mathematicians have spent a long time searching for a pattern in the prime numbers, but no one has found one yet.", "A prime number is a number that can be divided only by 1 and by itself. The first primes are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on. Usually 1 is not considered prime. For example 4 is not prime because 4 = 2 x 2. 6 = 3x2, 9=3x3, on the other hand 17 is prime because 17 = 17 x 1. \n\nPrime numbers are infinite. It was proved by an ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid. \n\n*He said: suppose that there are only 3 prime numbers: 2, 3 and 5. Multiply these three numbers: 2 x 3 x 5 = 30, now add one: 30 + 1 = 31. This number is not divisible by 2, not divisible by 3 and not divisible by 5. So there are two cases: 31 is prime or is the product of other prime numbers. In both these cases the list of primes is incomplete. Note that with this method you don't get all the prime numbers. (Like You're 12)*\n\nFinding big prime numbers is hard (even with computers). This is why prime numbers are interesting for mathematicians. They are struggling to find a way to get prime numbers easily. \n\nNow prime numbers are used to hide messages (there's a lot of theory behind this so it's difficult to make it easy) in what is called public key cryptography.\n\nPrime numbers also have some application in mathematics, but not really useful (for now).", "Imagine I gave you a whole bunch of blocks, and asked you to arrange them for me. I need you to arrange them in a rectangle.\n\nLet's start with 10 blocks:\n      \n    **********\n\nAfter messing around a bit, you manage to make the following rectangle:\n\n    *****\n    *****\n\nGood! Now count the number of blocks on each edge of the rectangle. \n\n2, 5, 2, 5.  Notice each number will for sure appear twice, so we only need to keep track of the two that might be different, 2 and 5. We call these numbers a *factorization* of our first number, 10. \n\nWhat if I give you one more block?\n\n    *****\n    ******\n\nIt doesn't seem to fit anywhere. After a while, you give up. That's because 11 is a *prime* number, the only rectangle you can make with it is: \n\n    ***********\nthe line rectangle. \n\nNow, how about we add one more?\n\n    ************\n\nThis time, you manage to make two *different* rectangles:\n\n    ******       ****\n    ******       ****\n                 ****\n\nSo 12 is definitely not prime, it is composite. \n\nWhy don't you try 13?\n\nWhat makes primes important is that you can use them to build up all the other numbers. When you have a composite number, you get two factors, two numbers that multiply to give you the composite number. These two numbers might be prime, but if not, you can factor them instead, and keep going down until you have all prime numbers.\n\nFor example 10=2\\*5, which are both prime. 12= 2\\*2\\*3, all prime. \n\nSo often, if mathematicians can show something is true for prime numbers, they can then show that it is true for all numbers, because every number is built up this way from prime numbers.\n", "This isn't really an answer, just an interesting related note.\n\nYou also see prime numbers in biology.  For example, the [Cicada](_URL_0_) has a very long 13 or 17 year life-cycle.  Its no accident that these are prime numbers, since it means that their predators, with shorter life cycles, can't synchronize their cycles so that they always emerge at the same time the Cicadas do.\n\nIf a Cicada had a 12 year life cycle, then a predator with a 2, 3, 4, or 6 year life cycle could have a feast once every 6, 4, 3, or 2 cycles respectively.", "Not like you're five, but i'll try to simplify. Let's say we find a rock on the ground with a lot of different colors. We put it through a magical grinder which crushes the rock into tiny atoms and sorts them into different piles. One pile contains carbon atoms, another one contains cobalt, and so on. These atoms are the fundamental building blocks of all things in the universe.\n\nNow let's look at a number. We grind this number by dividing it into smaller numbers. At the end, we have numbers that cannot be divided any further. These prime numbers are the fundamental building blocks of all other numbers in the sense of multiplication. This is why they are interesting.\n\nThe word 'primal' is probably a better description. Primal as in fundamental, the beginning, optimus prime..al?", "I think others have covered what prime numbers are quite well.  Let's talk about why they're important.\n\nFirst, every whole number bigger than 1 can be expressed as a product of  primes--and the series of primes that represents a whole number is unique.  Reducing a number to the series of primes that represent it, however is *very hard*.  In fact, it's so hard that we haven't come up with a fast and consistent way of doing it that doesn't depend on trying every possible combination--or at least making educated guesses.  This is particularly true of semiprimes--the product of two prime numbers.  \n\nHowever, checking if a number is prime--and checking the factorization of prime numbers is correct--is a *very* easy thing to do.  We can check 300 digit prime numbers within a fraction of a second using computers!  \n\nNow, one thing we can do is use two very large prime numbers to scramble messages--as all messages can be encoded as numbers.  What's more, the way we scramble it means that I could hand you one number to use to scramble the message you want to send me, while I keep one that de-scrambles that message.  It doesn't matter how many people know about the number I give you: as long as it takes several hundred computers two years to factorize a large semiprime (large here meaning more than 200 digits), nobody's going to calculate *my* number using yours.  This process is called asymmetric key encryption (or public key encryption).\n\nWhy is this important?  Every time you want to make a purchase online, you want to make sure that bad guys don't get your credit card number.  Websites use asymmetric key encryption to ensure that bad guys listening to your Internet connection cannot get your credit card number and take trips to Thailand with your money.  Banks use similar methods to ensure that bank-to-bank electronic money transfers are secure and that bank robbers can't take their money by tapping into an Internet connection.  The military uses it to pass its orders around so that enemies can't see the military's plans.  Indeed, the Nazis lost the war at least in part to the fact that their message scrambling wasn't as secure as they thought.  But you didn't ask about how computers were invented, so we'll save that story for another time.", "[Terence Tao on Prime Numbers](_URL_0_)", "There's something my brain isn't quite grasping, which is, if a given number X is the product of two primes Y and Z, then those are the *only* two primes which can be multiplied together to make X. \n\nI mean, I can sit here and go \"3 x 5 is 15; are there any other primes which can be multiplied together to make 15? Obviously not. Next, 5 x 7 is 35...\" but I don't instinctively, logically *see* that this remains true all the way up. \n\nCan anyone Prove It  To Me Like I'm Five?", "This question itself is way more interesting than any possible answer:)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=public+key&amp;restrict_sr=on"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magicicada"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKSXk5Xwg8"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=public+key&amp;restrict_sr=on"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magicicada"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKSXk5Xwg8"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14qyvr", "title": "how should i store my money?", "selftext": "Credit Unions, Banks, under a mattress, you get the idea. I've heard from all over that Credit Unions are the shit, but I'm 18 so I don't know what rates or benefits to look for.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14qyvr/how_should_i_store_my_money/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7fmow0", "c7fn3mg", "c7fpe3n"], "score": [7, 6, 16], "text": ["Head on over to /r/personalfinance, you'll get much better advice over there.", "Oh boy.\n\nYou are asking the right question at the right age. You have no idea how well you are setting yourself up by looking into this at 18.\n\nUnfortunately, there are no easy answers. It all depends on you, or more accurately, things about you like what you want to do in life, what obligations you have/take on, will you work a stable job or not, etc?\n\nThe good thing is, you have time to get out in front of it. Take some finance classes. Learn a little bit about how businesses handle money, and apply those principles to your own life. So many things are bought and sold everyday on this gap in people's knowledge. This will teach you the time-value of money and how to calculate the true cost of a thing.\n\nExample: let's say you decide to get a fancy watch. You figure you'll spend a couple of hundred bucks every 5 years or so, or you can just spend a couple of thousand once and get a nice Rolex or whatever, and you'll pass that down to your grandkids. What you may not take into account is the insurance costs of owning the watch, and the fact that you'll probably spend a few hundred getting it serviced every 5 years. Suddenly, your \"one time\" purchase is a constant drain on your finances.\n\nNone of anything else you learn about finances will help you if you spend more than you have. Debt is the ultimate killer. It takes away all of your freedom to make decisions. That doesn't mean it's *never* a good idea to go into debt, but it does mean you should be very sure that you would rather have the thing you're getting now than the freedom you're giving up to make decisions later.\n\nWhen it comes to investing/saving, that's a different ball of wax. You can buy those lame books like *A Random Walk Down Wall Street*, or you can let me save you $10 by telling you what they all say: buy low, sell high.\n\nHow do you do that? Well, the books will carry on for several chapters explaining different strategies that people have used in the past that worked. Each of these examples is immediately followed by the proviso that this doesn't mean the strategy itself is sound, it could mean the person got lucky. Wait, what?\n\nCome on, what's the real secret of these books? Ok, here it is, for real: write books that are essentially meaningless, sell a buttload of them. That's a great way to make money.", "u shoud buy potatoes and bury them, then theyll multiply and you can sell them and get twice the money"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2z2hm6", "title": "Are there any species on Earth considered more recent than human beings?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2z2hm6/are_there_any_species_on_earth_considered_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpg6xnh"], "score": [12], "text": ["The short answer is \"yes\". For the sake of argument we'll accept that [*Homo sapiens* date back ~200 000 ybp](_URL_1_). A famous example of recent speciation is the radiation of cichlids in the African Great Lakes. The youngest lake is Lake Victoria, which was dry around 14 500ypb and then filled with water. Since then, 500-1000 species of cichlids have evolved. [Source](_URL_4_).\n\nThere are other examples as well. Speciation is going on all the time. An example of a modern organism that seems to be starting this process is a bird, the European Blackcap. Since the 1950s some Blackcaps, which breed in central Europe, have been overwintering in Great Britain instead of the usual overwintering areas in Spain. They are able to survive in GB over the winter probably because of bird feeders (possible aided by climate warming). The change in overwintering site is genetic, caused by one or two genes that cause birds to fly NW instead of SW. The population overwintering in GB has begun to genetically diverge from the Spain population even though they breed in the same areas. This is likely because the flight distance for GB birds is shorter so they arrive first and tend to pair up together and also because hybrids are less fit as they seem to migrate in an intermediate direction. So reproductive isolation is starting to accrue. There are also some morphological differences in wing length, plumage colour, and beak shape and colour. Sources: \n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe long answer would tell you that it's impossible to rank unrelated species by the exact age because species don't form suddenly. Another difficulty is that dating \"modern humans\" is not a matter of looking at the time to most recent common ancestor with it's nearest living relative as in the cichlid example. If we did that with humans, the divergence is about 6 mybp between us and the two chimps (common chimpanzees and bonobos diverged from each other around 2-3 mybp). Dating \"the origin\" of modern humans is based on judging anatomical similarities and differences in dated fossil remains. That is, we are judging change along a lineage to set a cut off between categories. In reality there was no such sudden jump, there was never a *Homo sapiens* child whose parents were both not *Homo sapiens*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/100201_speciation", "http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/the-oldest-homo-sapiens/", "https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/incipient-speciation-in-blackcaps/", "http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/03/british-birdfeeders-split-blackcaps-into-two-genetically-dis/", "http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/269/1490/491"]]}
{"q_id": "4av2t7", "title": "When you stick your hand outside of a moving vehicle, are you slowing it down? If so, by how much?", "selftext": "\"How much\" is very vague and dependent on basically every variable...", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4av2t7/when_you_stick_your_hand_outside_of_a_moving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d13rs4h"], "score": [11], "text": ["Yes (assuming you don't put your foot on the accelerator to compensate). Let's do the calculation, assuming you're in an average-sized car (about 1800 kg in the US) going 60 mph (about 28 m/s). Let's also assume the [drag coefficient](_URL_1_) of your hand is about 1 (it will depend on how you orient your hand) and that the area of your hand and wrist projected onto the plane orthogonal to the car's motion is about 0.02 square meters. We can calculate the drag force using the [drag equation](_URL_0_), plugging in the mass density of air (about 1.2 kg/m^3 ) and the above numbers (except the car's mass, which I will get to in a moment), I get a drag force of about 10 N. That means that if the car is coasting (ie your foot is not on the accelerator) and we ignore the drag experienced by the car itself and the friction of the tires with the road, the drag force from the hand contributes an additional deceleration of (using F=ma) 0.005 m/s^2 . Note that 10 N is equal to about the weight of a 1 kg (2.2 lb) mass, which isn't all that much. Note that if we double the velocity to about 120 mph, we increase the drag force by a factor of 4, to about 40 N, equivalent to the weight of a 4 kg mass, which is I think roughly about what the limit is for most people holding something using only their wrist muscles, so you probably wouldn't want to stick your hand out of a car that is going much faster than 100 mph. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient"]]}
{"q_id": "32tmuo", "title": "Where does the stereotypical Native American music you hear in western movies come from?", "selftext": "Does it have any resemblance to the real thing or is it just a cinematic invention?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32tmuo/where_does_the_stereotypical_native_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqenco7", "cqeo0ka", "cqf67bt"], "score": [44, 30, 3], "text": ["Found an interesting [Smithsonian Folkways article](_URL_0_) about Hopi songs recorded in 1924. It was an official recording by the Smithsonian Institution and Bureau of American Ethnology so I feel comfortable linking it here. These are Hopi chants / songs and were recorded in Arizona so it is only representative of that tribe.\n\nIn the [PDF liner notes](_URL_1_) there are mentions of recordings made as early as 1889, but I couldn't track down any samples. Very interesting read nonetheless.", "It's hard to say what general \"stereotypical\" native american music might consist of, but in my experience Hollywood Westerns do tend to use somewhat authentic music for their depictions of Southwestern US and Plains Indian cultures. I used to attend Ute pow-wows regularly, and the heavy rhythmic drumming, undulating singing, and occasional flute is definitely in line with what you'd hear in a Western. \n\nOf course, whether or not modern pow-wows are a good representation of the historical culture is absolutely up for question and I sadly can't find any real academic information on it. \nMicrostudies of specific Native American cultures are ridiculously hard to come by, at least for a amateur like myself.\n\nMore generally, [this seems worth a read](_URL_0_). \nThe details about two-three tone chanting and AABB or ABAB rhythmic structures in the Paiute section definitely correspond with what you hear today - not surprising however, since this survey is based on recordings made in the 1940s. ", "You might repost this question under [/r/ethnomusicology](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.folkways.si.edu/hopi-katcina-songs-and-six-songs-by-chanters/american-indian/music/album/smithsonian", "http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW04394.pdf"], ["http://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/AFSL38GreatBasin.pdf"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/ethnomusicology/"]]}
{"q_id": "hpa9h", "title": "What's the difference between a spinning object and a stationary one?", "selftext": "Imagine two tennis balls in an empty universe, spinning at different speeds; why does one tennis ball experience more centrifugal \"force\" than the other?\n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hpa9h/whats_the_difference_between_a_spinning_object/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1x87hf", "c1x87ln"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["There is quite a discussion on this subject. See [absolute rotation](_URL_0_)", "if im not mistaken, it was Newton that pondered a similar question regarding a bucket filled with water.  If the bucket and water existed in an otherwise empty universe and the bucket was rotating, would the water climb up the walls of the bucket.  \n\n\nThe answer is that it just has to do with momentum, in this case, the angular momentum.  A higher rotational velocity would mean a greater angular momentum would would mean a greater centripetal force.\n\nas a side note, there is no such thing as centrifugal force but for the sake of this philosophical conversation, centrifugal and centripetal forces can be used interchangeably.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_rotation"], []]}
{"q_id": "21fby3", "title": "How did Judaism's 'Satan' (Heaven's Attorney-General) become the evil ruler of the world in Christianity? (X-post from DebateReligion)", "selftext": "(I have posted this in DebateReligion first but have been advised to put it here. I am subscribed to r/AcademicBiblical but the community on there is very small and I figured you guys might also be able to help).\n\nHello,\nI would like to ask anybody who knows about the history and theology pertaining to the existence of the devil in Christianity and specifically how the concept of a malevolent supernatural evil ruling the physical world superseded the portrait of 'Satan' in the Hebrew Bible as a heavenly prosecutor who presented sinners before God to accuse them. I've read much of The Birth of Satan but I am still at a loss to how the Jesus movement in the 1st century CE, from the apostles to the Gospel writers and Paul's Gentile converts, came to believe in an 'evil one' who opposed everything God did and actively fought against the work of the Lord. The idea of the devil is so central to Christianity that one may say that as one must believe in Christ in order to be saved, one must also believe in (the existence of) the devil as an evil being in order for the entire narrative to make sense. I know some Christians have reinterpreted the devil to be an allegory for personal temptation and shortcomings, but ultimately the New Testament is very clear: the devil is real, the source of everything that is evil, the 'father of lies' and he will eventually be destroyed in the Lake of Fire.\nThis picture seems so contradictory to everything about 'Satan' in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that it defies belief. The amount of projection involved in reconciling the two pictures does little service to Christianity, in my opinion. How many Christians believe that the serpent in Genesis is the devil or a servant of him based on a single vague reference to 'the ancient serpent' in Revelations? The Lucifer/king of Babylon/Satan elision is a similar problem. The amount of reinterpretation involved almost resembles retconning in fictional canons and for me, it presents great difficulty in believing the central tenets of the Bible.\nPopular folk beliefs that the devil 'rules hell' or will be responsible for torturing sinners himself are rooted in mythology and popular culture and are of course not in line with Christian orthodoxy. But then again, are these popular folk beliefs really that out of tune with the original role of Satan compared to Christian orthodox understanding of him? The 'movie Devil' who torments sinners in hell is at least serving a purpose for God in punishing the wicked, closer to his original Jewish perceptions than the world-ruler presented in the New Testament.\nIf anyone can shed light on this it will help a lot. How common was belief in the \"devil as evil world-ruler\" before the ministry of Jesus? Had Second Temple Judaism produced a wider new understanding of 'Satan'? How influential were books like Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve on the early Christians and the Gospel writers (bigger question I know but if it helps what I'm looking for)? And why didn't this understanding of the devil emerge earlier in the Hebrew Bible, if it is the correct understanding?\nI am seeking dates, places, books, specifics of who believed what and when. I read the Epistles and the Gospels and they seem to presume prior knowledge of the devil and what he does.\nThanks for any and all perspectives\n\nEDIT: Wow, was not expecting this level of a response, thanks everyone!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21fby3/how_did_judaisms_satan_heavens_attorneygeneral/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgcm4e6", "cgcmiz0", "cgcqgks", "cgcsjmf", "cgcum6b"], "score": [14, 76, 2, 12, 12], "text": ["It was under my impression that when Jews were exiled from the Holy Land and sent across the Middle East into a diaspora, Zoroastrian influences entered the religion and the idea of Good versus Evil came into being, but that happened far before Christianity, so I'm curious as to whether it was because of that or not.\n\nSo to add to the original question, did Zoroastrianism influence Judaism and add the conflict of good versus evil or did it influence early Christianity and add the conflict of good versus evil? I'm expecting that whoever can answer OP can also answer this question too.", "Note that, regardless of whatever the earliest function of (a) 'satan' was, even in the Hebrew Bible this was conceived of as a being that could simply take up \"certain less pleasant aspects of the deity\u2019s work\" (to quote Strokes 2009, writing about the ambiguity of the term in the Hebrew Bible). But not only did this satan take up the unpleasant work of the deity, but could also be the one \u201cresponsible\u201d for leading someone to commit a sin or make a bad decision (cf. [this](_URL_2_); and in the New Testament, see Luke 22:3 and Acts 5:3). In fact, there's a [post](_URL_0_) still at the top of AskHistorians that's a good example of this, about the so-called \u201cSatanic verses\u201d of the Qur'an. In this case, there were some verses originally present in the Qur'anic text that early Muslims considered highly embarrassing \u2013 and so later apologists ascribed their original composition to \u201cSatanic\u201d influence.\n\nThese functions transfer over quite easily to several different ideas. For one, this need not be limited solely to *individuals*. One could imagine *groups* of people being collectively misled by this evil force. Second, a range of negative things could be ascribed to this evil being: which is where we can see a tie-in with demonic possession and such (Mk 2:23, \"How can Satan cast out Satan?\").\n\nWhat motivated these innovations is a complicated question. In early Judaism and Christianity, we could perhaps imagine that Iranian (cf. Zoroastrian) ideas had some influence on the idea that a large portion of humanity can be \u201censlaved\u201d to forces of darkness. Qumran (the DSS) is a good place to look for stuff relevant to this. There could also be tie-ins with Greco-Roman astrology, or the idea that people (or even entire nations!) could have their own supernatural \u201cguardian\u201d (which, in the case of the \u201cenemy\u201d \u2013 like Rome \u2013 would be thought of as a malevolent being). You might also want to look into [Mastema](_URL_1_) from the book of Jubilees.\n\nI gotta run for a second, but I'd be happy to expand on any of this soon. As for some of the more specific things you mentioned: the Book of Enoch certainly had an enormous influence on more general demonological ideas in the mid/late Second Temple period. The only mention of Satan (Sataniel, IIRC?) comes from the Parables/Similitudes, which was the latest written section. This is the earliest instance in which the serpent in the garden is explicitly associated with Satan.\n\nAs for the *Greek Life of Adam and Eve*: these days, this is usually held to have been composed quite a bit later than the writings of the New Testament. So it's probably not of great relevance here (though some of the ideas that appear in it certainly have a longer history).", "Anyone have suggestions for academic texts, articles, etc. addressing this question?", "It's important to remember that there really is not a consensus on the origins of satan within the christian church. Some denominations do not even recognize the devil as a real entity. Others, especially presbyterian reformed members, believe that satan is very real and is very active in todays world. \n\nAccording to reformed theology satan held, as you had mentioned, a high position in heaven. This concept as well as the reason and subsequent fall, can be seen in Isaiah 14:9-20. Though the hebrew scriptures mention satan only 14 times in the entire old testament, only three of those occurrences fall outside of the book of Job. Most reformed people will sight those verses in Isaiah as one one those instances.\n\nContemporary understanding of satan is that he is the author of evil and temptation. However, in ancient hebrew days, the jews understood god to be the sole mover and shaker of all things. Including evil and temptation. God gave you fortune and he took it away.\n\nThe concept of satan really started in Babylonia while the jews were in captivity. Persian religion was strong in duality deities and the concept of a dark lord dishing up famine, illness and general shit was strong. The Israelites were quick to adopt this given there current misfortunes. The book of job was likely written during this time.\n\nA full description of who and what satan is wasnt really presented until the new testament. There he is a very prominent figure. He tempts christ, he unleashes demons and is credited as the cause of judas betraying jesus. Notice that in all new testament scripture that no one had issues with satan being in the mix of all this. This tells us that satan, as the evil doer, is very present and highly accepted with in the jewish culture by this time. The new testament is said to have been started about 400 years after the last book of the old testament was written.\n\nThe book of revelation makes several references to satan. Even calling him the \"snake\". This is where people start to put two and two together. This is the same snake that was in the garden of eden in the book of genesis. This is the guy that tricked eve into eating the apple and in doing so introduced sin into the world. \n\nThen you bring in the doctrine of original sin. This is where the dispute really starts. Not to go into it much here but most take one of two sides, original sin (total depravity) is scriptural proof that all need christ as savior since we are all born in sin. Or their was no original sin (not born into sin) and there fore christ is a gift of redemption for all despite everything. Thats a severe over simplification, but you get the gist.\n\nIf you buy into total depravity then you sight gen 3:15 as the covenant of grace, the first promise from god and the first hint at christ coming to earth. You need this because your sinful blah blah blah....\n\nThat all being said, I am not a historian, I have just had the displeasure of being around some fundamentalist reformed/puritan christians quite a bit and so this is mostly a regurgitation of things I have picked up.\n", "I'm a Jehovah's Witness who has done extensive research on this and other subjects. Allow me to shed some light on the information I have found on the character known as 'Satan':\n\nFirst off, I will quote a few scriptures to show what information the Bible itself gives on this figure. I know this subreddit is about historical documentation but as this is a somewhat religious question hopefully this will be okay.\n\nIn many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the word sa\u00b7tan\u2032 appears without the definite article. Used in this way, it applies in its first appearance to the angel that stood in the road to resist Balaam as he set out with the objective of cursing the Israelites. **(Nu 22:22, 32)**\n\nIn other instances it refers to individuals as resisters of other men. **(1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:21, 22; 1Ki 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25)**\n\nBut it is used with the definite article ha to refer to Satan the Devil, the chief Adversary of God. **(Job 1:6, 2:1-7; Zec 3:1, 2)**\n\nThe verses in Job and Zechariah are perhaps the oldest recordings of Satan used as a definite article. These passages refer to Satan acting out against God's interests by attacking one of his servants in Job and Satan being rebuked by an Angel of God in Zechariah.\n\nThe name 'Satan' isn't exactly a name either, and whatever his real name is we don't know it. As I said earlier, 'Satan' by itself is defines as a sort of 'resistor' or 'rebel'.\n\nThe examples in Job and Zechariah show that even in the Old Testament Satan was not an 'idea' or a symbol of evil, but was an actual person.\n\nAs far as modern beliefs regarding hellfire and eternal torment these are teachings that were adopted from non-christian origins. \n\nThe *Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205)* under \u201cHell\u201d says: \u201cHindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment.\u201d\n\nIf you check out _URL_0_ you can see that numerous religious bodies had their own concept of hell. The Bible itself does not include a 'Hell' but certain churches added and encouraged this concept. It is not a coincidence that the Norse underworld as well as its ruler were named 'Hel'. \n\n*-Cleasby-Vigfusson, pg. 255, s.v. \"hel-viti\"; pg. 718, s.v. \"viti\"*\n\n*-Hensleigh, pg. 233, s.v. \"Hell\"*\n\nAs far as the other modern interpretations of Satan in regard to his position as an evil ruler of the world, **1 John 5:19** says: \"We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.\" This verse along with the previous ones I quoted could easily lead Christians to believe that Satan is the evil ruler of the world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ejqe/how_much_truth_is_there_in_the_book_by_salman/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastema", "http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/1a7rtb/any_insight_on_the_apparent_contradiction_of/c8uvand"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell"]]}
{"q_id": "8g8hgs", "title": "How could hadrons containing top quark be produced?", "selftext": "I know that top quarks cannot produce hadrons because of their incredibly short lifetime. \n\nDisregarding that; how can top quark conceivably produce hadrons, even if in bizarre conditions?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8g8hgs/how_could_hadrons_containing_top_quark_be_produced/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyaoh6p"], "score": [3], "text": ["Conditions where the top might live longer make hadrons completely impossible.\n\nYou would have to change the laws of the universe, e.g. by making the weak interaction weaker or reducing the mass of the top quark to extend its lifetime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "58zgdj", "title": "why are tv and monitor manufacturers along with tv cable subscription company's marketing 3840x2160 as 4k when in 4k's native resolution is 4096x2160?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58zgdj/eli5_why_are_tv_and_monitor_manufacturers_along/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d94emc7", "d94g3qj", "d94gcia", "d94hiu9", "d94jqvt", "d94k8wx"], "score": [25, 8, 6, 35, 12, 2], "text": ["4K is a resolution of 3840x2160 in 16:9 format.  I'm not sure what you're getting at, thats what the actual format of \"4K\" is and will be by people doing it and such, in other words, thats the practical application of 4K, it is 4K, and we call it as such. \n\nIn some original, older, less pracical sense, yes the 4096 one is \"real 4K\", but no one wants to use it, no one ever expected to use it either, because its a little more than \"double\" 1080p which would make downscaling any 4K content to non-4K far more complicated and impractical, among other issues. Its somewhat strange they ever included the 4096 one in there at at all, though I suspect it has some niche uses.\n\nEdit: Since people are complaining, to clarify, 4096 does have uses in cinema applications (I wasn't trying to exclude that, just focus on what 4K is for consumers, since that was the question), Its  easier to understand that consumers don't ever need to think about that situation, for consumers, 3840 is 4K\n", "It really doesn't make sense because  1280x720 is called 720p and 1920x1080 is called 1080p so really \"4k\" should be called 2160p", "Because 4K UHD (3840x2160) has been defined as a subset resolution of 4K. While it's the same relationship between FHD (1920x1080) and 2K (2048x1080), 1080p was never defined as a subset of 2K.  \n  \nYou will notice that no major tv manufacture sells a 4K tv, they all say \"4K UHD\". It's mainly only cable companies and electronic stores that use it wrong.  \n  \n[Wikipedia page](_URL_0_)  \nArticles on the difference: [ExtremeTech](_URL_2_)  &  [TechRadar](_URL_1_)", "4K 4096x2160 is a digital cinema resolution, similar to 2k in aspect ratio which is 2048x1080.\n\nThe broadcast world uses aspect ratios of 16x9, e.g, 1920x1080, or 3840 x 2160.\n\nIn cinema, there are two overall aspect ratios depending what the content is, if your film is 1.78 - 2.0, people tend to use a flat container, meaning the image is scaled into a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, introducing letterbox if the active image aspect ratio is greater than 1.89:1.\n\nFor titles with aspect ratios larger than 2, e.g 2.4 or 2.35 or 2.39 and more, they'll use the frame called scope, which has a pixel aspect ratio or 1.5:1. Basically so they can squeeze more content into a frame, in this case preserving the vertical information more so than the horizontal. When the image is projected, the image is unsqueezed, preserving more detail or image than would exist in a flat container.\n\nBroadcast/ consumer electronics are more restricted, in order to broadcast over the air, the distribution architecture decided on 16x9.\n\nSome televisions do support digital cinema initiative frames, many 4K capable televisions will squeeze 4096x2160 content into a 3840x2160 frame. Most people won't notice, however you can usually notice some minor aliasing or thinning of people when this occurs.", "Because 4K sounds so much more catchy than the technically correct [UHD](_URL_0_)", "I just like a HSXGA display in the old proper 5:4 format instead of all this 16:9 malarkey."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution", "http://www.techradar.com/news/television/ultra-hd-everything-you-need-to-know-about-4k-tv-1258884", "http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174221-no-tv-makers-4k-and-uhd-are-not-the-same-thing"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_television"], []]}
{"q_id": "2tkc6w", "title": "what is law for people born on the 29th of febuary, like with alcohol age restrictions and other?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tkc6w/eli5_what_is_law_for_people_born_on_the_29th_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnzs2xm", "cnzs3yo", "cnztboc", "cnztklh", "cnzwvz6"], "score": [28, 12, 47, 2, 9], "text": ["March 1st. The date where you become legal is the day of or after your birthday. ", "The law may vary between different jurisdictions, but in general it's treated as if the person was born on March 1 when it's not a leap year.", "You are never a year older on February 28th.\n\nYou are always a year older by March 1st.\n\nEvery fourth year, you are older by February 29th.", "Where I live, age is legally evaluated by the day following your anniversary.\n\nSo, people who were born February 29th always get their new policies on March 1st. And people who were born February 28th get them either February 29th or Mach 1st, depending on whether there is a February 29th.\n\nSame goes with everything legal that expresses a measurement relative to an anniversary.\n", "It can vary by jurisdiction, there really really isn't a common way to handle it, however that said, every time leap day shenanigans come up in court, its generally ruled agaisnt. Courts seem to like treating them like they don't exist in terms of determining time frames.\n\nIf you are sentenced to a year in prison, you are still stuck with the leap day. If you have a certain amount of time to do something, leap days don't give you extra time. If you need a certain number of years of service to qualify for pension and come up short, trying to bring up the leap days putting you over doesn't fly.\n\nThis is probably because leap days/years/seconds are all correcting for rounding errors, so strictly speaking don't actually exist. They aren't extra time, you have essentially been saving up for it one fraction at a time over the interval between leap days/years\n\n/u/kouhoutek sums it up nicely, on the 28th is isn't your birthday yet, on the 1st your birthday will have been in the past. This little oddity illustrates how a leap day is just a book keeping error, not an actual extra day."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b4qjj5", "title": "Have we ever discovered/recovered ancient fingerprints from artifacts (Clay pots, concrete, etc.)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b4qjj5/have_we_ever_discoveredrecovered_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eja0o9i"], "score": [3], "text": ["Yes.   Brannigan, Keith, Yiannis Papadatos and Douglas Wynn, Fingerprints on Early Minoan Pottery: A Pilot Study [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) also cites earlier work\n\n# "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.jstor.org/stable/30073183?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/30073183?seq=1#page\\_scan\\_tab\\_contents"]]}
{"q_id": "54wbpn", "title": "why do humans have fetishes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54wbpn/eli5_why_do_humans_have_fetishes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d85gmeq", "d85gwk8", "d85jtli", "d85kp45", "d85m6jl", "d85ma22", "d85mdld", "d85medl", "d85mmvi", "d85mz7g", "d85n7v4", "d85nqwx", "d85nvbs", "d85o3j4", "d85o8a2", "d85o9k5", "d85ol5d", "d85olmk", "d85oxes", "d85ozjr", "d85p35k", "d85p7k9", "d85q5zl", "d85qd7f", "d85qm0z", "d85qwa8", "d85t0lv", "d85tmb2", "d85u77w", "d85uh5w", "d85v1gl", "d85xlw0", "d85yzvg", "d85zmkz", "d862cma", "d8636c4"], "score": [32, 544, 1347, 10, 284, 3, 2, 9, 28, 85, 2, 9, 8, 3641, 2, 55, 4, 3, 2, 23, 6, 12, 2, 2, 2, 5, 16, 2, 2, 4, 2, 56, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["[Here's some previous threads](_URL_0_).", " >  dominating, being dominated have nothing to do with reproduction\n\nThis has plenty to do with reproduction. Animals want their offspring to be the the best they can be; this increases the chances of them surviving and having offspring of their own. So, to have strong offspring, you need a strong mate. The dom/sub dynamic is all about this.\n\nIn regards to feet and other fetishes that seem unrelated to reproduction: sex is intimate. Activities and body parts that are usually overlooked or hidden from sight are seen as 'wrong'. These 'wrong' things are a cause of anxiety and shame. For example, feet are mostly hidden from view and treated as dirty or foul smelling. Wouldn't it be nice to find a partner who embraces your dirty secrets? This is why a repressed culture like Japan is simultaneously known for sexual fetish.", "I imagine a lot of it has to do psychologically with things that we normally can't or don't get in our day-to-day lives that are considered socially unacceptable, so they have to be done in private.\n\nYears ago I saw a video clip on an S & M documentary where a dominatrix was describing one of her usual clients.  Guy was apparently head of cardiology or neurosurgery or something like that at a major hospital.  Lives on the line, he asks people to jump and they ask yes-sir-how-high-sir, that sort of thing.  All day every day.\n\nSo for entertainment, he liked to come and be treated like a dog for an hour.  \n\nSome Yin for his Yang.", "We don't know. At least we don't know well enough to do anything about them. \n\nLots of people have all kinds of speculation, and things they feel like should be true or makes sense to them, but there is no strong consensus explanation.", "Foot fetishism is proposed to be due to the fact that [somatosensory cortical representation for genitals and feet being adjacent to each other, and there is perhaps extra cross wiring that can link the two areas.](_URL_0_).  In fact, if your genitals get amputated, you will continue to have \"phantom genitals\" where it will feel like they are still there. You can then stimulate your phantom genitals by touching your feet. When your genitals are amputated, that area of the brain isn't needed anymore. But the brain is very efficient and it rewires it to adjacent areas for it to represent those areas instead. It's hypothesized that people with foot fetishes have excessive cross wiring between that area. ", "My hypothesis about the prevalence of foot fetish is [this:](_URL_0_)\n\nYour sensation for feet and genitals is literally touching in the brain making it very easy for potential crossfires. If a nerve isn't as insulated as it should be or just built wrong at birth. People could have actual genital stimulation from having their feet touched or thinking about feet.", "This is my own theory, based on people I know.\n\nIn the modern age, especially developed countries with readily available internet, people are exposed to a lot of porn and other sexual content on a daily basis. This has pretty much made vanilla sex ordinary, or boring. So people try to add something 'new' or 'extreme' to try and make it more interesting.", "Something I have found interesting as a psychology student is an area  of the brain called the somatosensory cortex that processes sensory information from all different parts of the body. Take a look at the human homunculus : _URL_0_ \n\nIf you notice, the area of the brain that processes sensations of the genitals is right next to that of toes and feet. I think that that is too much of a coincidence. I feel that an overlap between those two areas (and sometimes there is overlap) could associate feet with sexual pleasure. Just my personal theory about possible biological basis of certain fetishes!! Foot fetishes just seem so pervasive (I mean have you seen that guy on True Life???) that I am inclined to believe that certain fetishes could be at least partially explained by this. ", "I'm no expert so this is just speculation but I imagine the answer to this derives from a different question: \"Why do humans have shame?\"\n\nThe concept of treating sex as something to keep private isn't common among animals. Perhaps humans are even unique in the way that we treat it - as something to hide away and share with only a selective audience.\n\nAccordingly we have all sorts of cultural motivators towards sex in private, monogamy (albeit some animals are monogamous), we cover up our sex organs with clothing, and so on.\n\nThis behaviour probably has some good Darwinian basis around mate selection, limiting sexual violence within the species (males killing each other in competition etc) and so on, and these in turn lead to fetishes.\n\nWhere we have shame and an expected set of behaviours, so we also have transgression and deviance from those behaviours. \n\ntl:dr I suspect fetishes are a sort of psychological byproduct of shame rather than a primary evolutionary behaviour in their own right. \n\n", "/u/ponieslovekittens posted something about that in a discussion about a virtual reality \"waifu simulator\".\n\nFrom _URL_0_\n\n > Have you ever wondered where fetishes come from? Simple: Associative conditioning. When people grow up and first realize that sexual feelings are a thing they can have, whatever stimuli are available at the time tend to get thrown in with it. Pick any fetish you want, and I'll explain where it comes from.\n\n > Furries? Want to know where furries come from? Ever watch Thundercats? Cheetara is responsible for furries. Maybe you're more a Disney kind of guy? Ok, try Disney's Maid Marion. I bet she created a bunch of furries too.\n\n > People grow up, they see this stuff, their developing minds are trying to figure out what's going on and why their body feels new and strange but exciting is feeling the way it does...wires get crossed, and their brains start to associate the stimuli with the feeling. They try masturbating to it, positive reinforcement occurs and just like Pavlov's Dog and the bell, the brain comes to associate these two things as being related.\n\n > What else?\n\n > Fecal fetishists? Easy to explain: people with siblings who never had any privacy in their bedrooms, and ended up masturbating while sitting on the toilet because it was the only place they could have any privacy. Wires get crossed, the scent ends up associated with sex.\n\n > Guys who enjoy crossdressing? Simple: they had a sister, and she and her hot friends dressed them up when they were a kid, resultin in a bunch of girls are paying attention to them and touching them, it turned them on...wires got crossed, they associated crossdressing with sex.\n\n > Stuff in the OP? Simple: they watched anime when they were kids instead of Disney and Thundercats. Wires got crossed, they learned to associate small, asian body types drawn in the anime style with sex. That's all that's going on here.\n", "Porn is probably a huge factor. Just like hard drug users, people who watch a lot of porn need more and more intense videos to get off. Over time they switch around to different categories and I'm sure some but not all fetishes develop because of that. Some of it may have to do with upbringing and psychological things that people dealt with growing up. ", "I've read a lot on this kind of stuff and it's always amazing what I find. \n\nA lot of fetishes have a great deal to do with psychological trauma or some kind of abuse.\nYour humiliation, degradation, physically abusive or mentally abusive fantasies come from.\n\n While others have to do with overwhelming feelings that you just can't put your finger on and control, so you need objectify this emotion. This is where mostly fetishes of praise and idilization occur.  Your feet fetishes, boob, ass, toys, etc etc \n\nYou also have the ones where you seek to escape reality, be someone you're not, change your role in life, etc. People who are dominant want to be dominated, costumes, characters, personality traits changes, etc etc \n\nWhat's so amazing to me is that while all of these things are harmless on their own, or if mildly played out - say you are flexible on certain choices but not on others. You have a day dream while sitting at work where you're the character from your favorite movie or whatever, you want to see your girlfriend in kinky lingerie depicting her as a slut or school girl etc etc - this is all fine and dandy...but if you're a bit over the fence, or you have certain combinations of these then you've got a psychological problem.  \n\nThis obviously is mild and like I said, for the average Joe. When you're fantasizing about rape, killing your boss, blowing a building up, killing yourself, etc etc...you gotta talk to someone...\n\nIn my opinion, I think fetishes have been around forever... society has dictated how we should behave, and that the smallest thing out of the ordinary can have a massive impact in our lives...as fetishes have become a byproduct of our attempts at controlling everything and maintaining this acceptable but fake image of ourselves. So we create these unordinary ways of releasing all this creative energy... The human brain is amaaaaazing....", "First its important to note we find mates based on secondary sexual characteristics (clothing, hair, makeup, height, eye color, facial expressions, personality, lifestyle, wealth, power) the things that aren't inherent to our gender but that we exemplify to show our gender and how we wish to display ourselves for mate selection. The reason fetishes are taboo is purely due to society saying it is so. Our society has accepted fetishes of many things (men over 6ft, woman with large chests, blondes, redheads, ethnicities, muscle, fat) and other cultures have fetishes we may see as taboo (elongated necks, perceived effeminate males, bestiality).   \n\nIts important to note, mate selection based off our fetishes is not done so entirely for reproductive reasons. Producing offspring with a person based off a physical trait may - or may not - help with natural survival but could provide a social advantage, as people are predisposed to make opinions based off of physical features. Being able to thrive in society is important to humans survival as we are a group animal.  \n\nSociety in humans is deep and complex but less so in say birds, who commonly choose mates based off 'displays'. A bird choosing another bird based off a trinket or plumage could be considered a fetish. We are not so different.", "A lot of the answers in this thread are trying to explain or rationalize *specific* fetishes, but I think OP's question is more general in nature.\n\nFirst, a point of clarification: the word \"fetish\" in common language essentially means \"a sexual attraction or fixation on body parts, objects, or activities not normally associated with sex.\" It's essentially when a person can be particularly sexually aroused by something that isn't typically considered to be arousing.\n\nPsychologists have not yet agreed upon a single explanation for why people form fetishes in the first place, but a common explanation involves (accidental) positive feedback loop of classical conditioning on the part of the fetishist. Under the right conditions, somebody who might *weakly* associate a non-sexual stimulus with sex will be able to get arousal out of it, which only further strengthens the association and the arousal that can be gained.\n\nLet's say that you're a straight guy with pretty vanilla sexual tastes. You're browsing porn on the internet, when all of a sudden you come across a video featuring a girl wearing a cat ear headband. At this point, you don't have a particular fixation with this sort of thing, but it doesn't turn you off either, and the girl is cute, so you like the video anyway. Meanwhile, your brain is picking up on the cat ears as something \"new,\" and novelty is a *big* factor in your brain's reward system, so when you finish, you've formed a slight association between \"girl wearing cat ears\" and \"getting your rocks off.\" \n\nFast forward in time a bit to another porn session, and you come across *another* video with a girl wearing cat ears. The reward center in your brain remembers the last one, and is going \"yeah, this was good last time, I like this one too.\" The situation repeats, and strengthens the association between catgirls and sexual pleasure. Repeat this process enough times, and you'll get to the point where you *actively seek* porn with catgirls in it, and maybe you even *require* it to get it up. There won't be a rational reason for you to like this sort of thing, you just *do*, because you've inadvertently trained yourself to like it.\n\nEDIT: Alright, a lot of you are asking the same questions, and I don't have the time to respond to all of you, so I'm just going to put this shit up top.\n\n* The core thing to keep in mind is that this is all about *arousal*, which is distinct from *pleasure*. Yes, they often go hand-in-hand, but \"arousal\" is basically another word for \"excitement,\" and has meanings that go beyond *sexual* arousal. Anything that excites you, that gets your blood pumping, that gives you a tiny rush of adrenaline and endorphins, can be be considered \"arousing.\" Yes, a lap dance can do that, but so can being threatened with a knife, or being tied down, or being humiliated, or whatever. The associations we make with arousing stimuli depend enormously on the context and timing that we experience them with. If a nonsexual-but-still-arousing stimulus is presented with a sexual stimulus or context, then sexual association can begin to form around that nonsexual cue. \n\n* It's *entirely* possible that fetishes might have their origins before somebody reaches puberty. Like I said, \"arousal\" is just \"excitement,\" and is hard-wired into us even more deeply than sex. Understanding of sex and sexual maturity are not requirements for people to be influenced by outside sources. The example I cited with porn is just an *example*, and there's no reason why the same mechanism can't happen earlier in life, and completely by accident. Just because you recognized something as a childhood fetish in retrospect doesn't mean that it didn't form similarly to how I described. I'm betting that, whether you realized it was sexual or not, you sought out *more* of that thing because it made you feel good, and fell into the same cycle of reinforcement that I've described. Mind you, I'm not judging here, just explaining.\n\n* Homosexuality is *not* considered to be a fetish by the mainstream psychological community, so stop citing it as examples of an \"innate fetish\" or whatnot. It doesn't disprove anything, because you're comparing apples and oranges. However, if you want to talk about *transgenderism*, the field is much less settled on this matter, despite what people on tumblr might say. I'd recommend reading [The Man Who Would be Queen](_URL_0_), which is a book that ignores all of the politically-correct bullshit around identity politics and actually examines it as a scientific phenomenon without trying to judge the fuck out of everybody involved. I had the good fortune to take a course taught by the author, and I swear to god I have never met a person who was as committed to taking an *objective* look at human sexuality as he is.", "I can understand most fetishes, but feet. I just dont get it! It seems like its a higher form of perversion because....well you can't put your penis  in a foot, so how does someone sexualize that? ", "Throwaway because short personal story about myself and my girlfriend (and we are MUCH more out there than the average normal person's fetishes):\n\nNo idea how accurate this is, but we've theorized that fetishes can possibly result from one mistaking something for sex when they are younger. In my own childhood, when I was 3-5 years old, I loved the movie \"The Jungle Book\". Like, I watched it almost daily. In one of the opening scenes (so when my attention span was still fresh), there's a snake that has an oddly seductive voice who tries to eat the main character. He seduces him and tries to get him to go to sleep. Look up \"Kaa\" on Youtube to see what I mean. As a kid, I loved that scene, and it always made me feel funny. I believe some instinct in me had an idea what sex was, and hearing this snake speak like this confused me. I ended up thinking this was sex. Flash forwards a few years, I'm in middle school. We are reading \"The Jungle Book\", and someone in the class mentions the snake. I suddenly am flooded with memories, and feel compelled to look up the snake online, and find tons of fanart, and many, many similar pictures, with different creatures eating women. Turns out, I'm into vorarephillia, sexual arousal by people being eaten.\n\nMy girlfriend has a similar story. As a kid, she played a pet-raising simulator, and used to love feeding the pets too much. She liked the way they rubbed their bellies, and she said their groans always made her laugh. She then developed a love of seeing similar things in cartoons, when people would eat too much and groan. She said she always loved the noises, and believes her mind interpreted those groans as sexual moans. Like me, she outgrows this as she gets older, until middle school, when one of her friends on DeviantArt starts uploading pictures with the feeding/stuffing fetish. Suddenly, she finds herself sexually attracted to the idea of people eating and gaining weight (luckily for me, she doesn't want herself to gain weight and she can keep her perfect body :P ).\n\nBoth of us developed bizarre fetishes as young children by things we incorrectly believed to be sexual. I stand by that as my theory. Also, from what I can see, not a lot of people have mentioned any fetishes quite as out there as these. Boring normal fetishes! :P\n\nIf anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'm an open book here :P", "I don't remember where I heard it, and I don't have any sources, but I remember once hearing that it was possible that fetishes developed during adolescences based on some of peoples first sexual experiences.   ", "\u201cPersons have to keep from going mad by biting off small pieces of reality which they can get some command over and some satisfaction from. This means that their noblest passions are played out in the narrowest and most unreflective ways, and this is what undoes them. From this point of view the main problem for human beings has to be expressed in the following paradox; Men and women must have a fetish in order to survive and to have \u2018normal mental health.\u2019 But this shrinkage of vision that permits them to survive also at the same time prevents them from having the overall understanding they need to plan for and control the effects of their shrinkage of experience. A paradox this bitter sends a chill through all reflective people.\u201d \n\nErnest Becker, Escape from Evil -Chapter Ten \u2013 Retrospect and Conclusion: What is the Heroic Society? \u2013 Page 153.", "Apes are obsessed with novelty, and humans the most so. In our ancient past, we probably even sexually selected for those who are weird, because social diversity allowed us to pull through many tough survival situations. In a nutshell, intelligence/novel thought has always been sexy.", "I took a psychology of sex class last semester and the way they explained it is that the reasons vary, but often it is accidental. people have a positive sexual experience around those things and begin to associate them with pleasure. they gave an example of a guy who masturbated when he was young to a video of people having sex, but in the video the people were barefoot. He subconsciously looked for feet in the next video he watched because he had an enjoyable orgasm before while looking at feet, though not actually BECAUSE of the feet.", "We all want to feel a little good once in a while. But always the same is always the same. So just sex is not the experience they are looking for.  Maybe it is somebody who has had 'just sex' for over 30 years and it feels too much the same. Trying new things out is a way to get past this. \n\nSometimes these new things give us such a good feeling that we want more of them. The normal sex makes us feel less good then the super hot kinky fetish stuff. If this keeps happening a while, you would call it a fetish instead of a couple trying something out. The better we feel hormones such as Oxytocin get released. Our brain knows from which activity we will get those lovely hormones and thus will prefer them. A fetish pumps all the lovely hormones in the brain that we all look for.", "Some fetishes have roots in advertising desirability as a mate. It's not hard to imagine fixating on a particular body part as an outsized emphasis on a feature that indicates a potential mate's general fitness (which can include things like social status).\n\nE.g: \"pretty feet\" can be a sign of high social status (people who do things for you) as well as health.  Dominance demonstrates strength; submissiveness advertises availability.  It's a fetish when those things become valued unusually highly.\n\nSome fetishes have roots in fear/taboo. This is probably because what happens in your brain when you're afraid is quite similar to what happens in your brain when you're horny. It's easy for your brain to interpret \"afraid\" as \"turned on\", so long as the fear isn't too intense.\n\nWhat things are taboo\u2014and therefore able to trigger that sensation of mild fear\u2014are heavily social, and evolutionary explanations for those tend to be quite a stretch (at least, anything beyond \"cooperating and forming societies helps humans survive and breed\").", "Yeah, I don't think I see the answer. Let me give that a shot:\n\n* **Foot Fetish**: Imagine being a cave man living before there is language or even fire. You want to find a mate. What do you look at? Well, feet are a very good candidate because nobody is wearing shoes. Humans feet are the only part that constantly touch the ground. They get scared from the terrain and as the scars are exposed to the soil, they grow infections. SO, you look at a potential mate's feet. If it's clean, it shows they have a good immune system or they don't need to walk far away for food. Eventually, humans start to find feet a key factor in sexual stuff.\n\n* **Dominance**: This has to do with social hierarchy. In every tribe there have been the alphas and betas. Enjoying receiving orders from someone is great to keep the tribe going.\n\n* **HotWife/Rape Fetish**: It's not only humans. Birds have this as an example. It helps the animal receive genes that will not normally end up in their genetic tree so that they will use the diversity and better immune system.\n\nBasically, you should keep in mind that for the most part humans have not been civilized so they developed all these fetishes to survive. Some fetishes happened to be actually quite useful in helping you and your children survive so they remained even though they are strange.", "All animals have fetishes.\n\nYour cat likes his neck scratched\n\n\nYour dog likes his belly rubbed\n\nEtc", "My guess has always been that the human reward system can basically connect pleasure/discomfort to almost anything. Like people can develop phobias, fetishism, addictions. The upside to this is that this makes us very adaptable animals. We learn to like/avoid things based on emotional positive/negative feedback. Even if it sometimes end up making little logical sense.", "What u/Br0metheus said is an excellent ELI5 response! To anyone wanting a little more detailed information, here's what one of the leading Clinical Sexologists says about Sexual Template, which helps to further explain fetishes. Link too:(_URL_0_)\n\nAt the root of human sexual desire is the \u201ccore erotic personality\u201d\u2013a.k.a. \u201csexual template\u201d\u2013which, in a nutshell, is whatever gets you off. \u201cEveryone has in their mind an image of someone or thing they find sexually desirous,\u201d explains Dr. William Granzig William Granzig , dean of clinical sexology at Maimonides University in North Miami Beach and president of the American Board of Sexology. That image might be a person of specific age, race or hair color, or it might be every person. It could be a fondness for a particular style of dress, objects such as women\u2019s shoes or fur-lined handcuffs, or behavior such as cross-dressing or exhibitionism. Whatever it is in particular, the sexual template is believed to develop early on during a childhood erotic experience\u2013perhaps as early as age three or four\u2013and it sticks with you for life.\n\nThe difficulty of maintaining sexual desire over the long term, of course, is that if your partner falls outside of your sexual template\u2013or you fall outside theirs\u2013sooner or later one of you is going to lose interest. \u201cMany people whose template is not, say, age-specific can have great sex throughout their lives,\u201d notes Granzig. \u201cBut if you\u2019re only attracted to 20-year-olds, once your partner hits 30, your desire will decrease. Unless, of course, you can figure out some ways to spice things up.\"", "This post is super late to the party and no one will see it but I just wanted to put my self out there kind of.  \n\nI've had a diaper fetish since I was at least 5 years old, for my entire life I've been trying to figure out why.  What happened in my life that caused this?\n\nIt couldn't be the positive sexual feedback loop because I didn't masturbate for the for the till I was like 12.\n\nIt wasn't the internet because the internet didn't exist until I was like 13.\n\nSo why do I have such a fixation on diapers and women  losing/having no bladder control and having the wear diapers.\n\nI don't think I'll ever figure out why.", "I wrote a scientific paper in college regarding broad sexual attraction and preferences and why they tend to differ among cultures and generations within a culture. I specifically examined specific body type preferences by generation in the United States, with a few asides to other cultures. If you look at the female body type most preferred by men by decade, you see a huge range of sizes and shapes. They range from the curvy days of Madonna, to the athletic beach bodies of the 80's, and lets not forget the thin and frail androgynous waif of the 90's.\n\nGenerally, sexual attraction has influences which are biological, societal, and derived from personal experience. They reflect what we find biologically appealing, socially appealing (physical indicators of upper class are ++) and personally appealing. Someone's body shape preference, for example, can be driven by biology. People tend to prefer characteristics that are directly or indirectly associated with health and fertility.\n\nThere can also be societal influences- what has society concluded is important? What celebrities are popular at the time and what are their physical characteristics? What body types are selected for advertisements, movies, and media that's shown to young people? Often times societal preferences act as a pendulum. After so many years of one \"ideal\", people push against it. Different body types have novelty and people get tired of looking at the same shapes.\n\nAnd of course, there are preferences and fetishes derived from personal experiences. General attraction is more influenced by biology and society, but specific fetishes draw a lot on personal experiences and the arbitrary details that we associated with sexual attraction. We collect a lot of these during our developing years and early sexual experiences. Perhaps the first time you had a crush on an adult woman was an elementary school teacher who wore glasses, and later in life you find glasses to be sexy and mysterious. A lot of people have preferences that are associated with power and control, whether it's relinquishing it or taking it. These can be hugely influenced by a person's personality as an adult or by their experiences growing up.\n\nSo basically, a lot can contribute so someone's fetishes or sexual attractions. Looking at an individual you could probably get to the bottom of their personal fetishes. It's harder to draw conclusions about society as a whole.", "I read about something like this once, if someone knows more than me on this feel free to correct me. (Boys specifically)\n\nSome instances of boys developing fetishes can be traced back to when the boy is going through puberty and developing that initial attraction to females. The idea was that some guys chose specific things that women had that men generally didn't, the example in the book was high heels or long hair. These boys would initially get attracted those things and normally the boy would develop and start being attracted to the female themselves rather than their hair or high heels BUT in some cases boys don't develop any further than that, and remain attracted to only the hair or heels. Then the fetish is born \n\n\nTLDR: HAIR AND HIGH HEELS", "A lot of people are citing the cross-wiring of nerves connected to feet/genitals as a possible explanation for a foot fetish.\n\nBut wouldn't this only account for people who are sexually stimulated by having their feet touched, massaged etc.? Not people who are sexually aroused by others' feet? \n", "Combinations of positive reinforcement, taboo, and some huge black box of personal developments and brain chemistry. Fun fact I blame much of the foot fetish on shoes - if feet were all over and everywhere, they probably wouldn't be the driving kink they are for some people. Many sexual fetishes have roots in childhood.\n\n Sexuality isn't a precise or pure thing, it's a set of physiological motivations the body provides to vaguely hope to motivate the human toward reproduction. It can rope in any number of things and be like 'oh yeah, we like this' and boom. People like the taste of things that are plenty unhealthy. To shut down the avenues your body provides you for experiencing and appreciating things sexually is alot like ignoring any personal preferences for what food you may like or love to eat in favor of always consuming solely optimal nutrition at all times, hypothetically; it can kind of be neglecting your own human experience.", "When you get turned on, you biologically have to suspend your disgust response for the purposes of getting down and dirty. A lot of sex involves mixing fluids and doing things that your not turned on self might not engage in. The disgust response is a very strong thing in humans, and its very important. It keeps us away from rotten food that could make us ill, or things which could be poisonous, part of the reason so many people are literally disgusted by things like bugs.\n\nHowever, if we were experiencing this strong disgust response we would procreate a lot less, therefore, having the ability to suspend this response is biologically advantageous trait, so from an evolutionary standpoint, makes sense.\n\nNow what does all this have to do with fetishes, well, things like licking feet, armpits, sniffing underwear and many others, all have an element of taboo to them, such that people who dont have these fetishes are disgusted by them. Our complex brains remember stimuli that feels good and rewarding, and its very easy to form an association that when you are engaging in 'dirty' behaviour, your getting ready to engage in sex, which we all want to do more of. So you directly associate your dirty secret with a state of arousal, you've 'made yourself ready' for sex by taking part in the fetish, because you've successfully suspended your disgust response to the activity. These associations are unique to everyone, depending on what you engage in, try, and start to think that your fetish =sexy time. That's why some people can have one specific fetish, but not  the other, even if that other person is into an equally 'disgusting' fetish. one likes feet, the other armpits etc.\n\nThis still holds true for other fetishes you might not think immediately have a 'dirty' component to them, like being dominated, but a big part of that is turning over control, willing to accept anything that other person wants to do with you, you have to be in this 'ready for sex' altered state to be titlized by the idea that they can treat you as degrading as they like and there is nothing you can do about it.", "Pavlov's dogs had a fetish for bells. Association between a desirable thing and an unrelated thing. Now substitute sex for food, and black-rimmed glasses for bells. ", "A fetish isn't necessarily sexual - in psychoanalysis there's an anecdote of a traumatized guy who's a jittery wreck unless he has a hamster to hold. Once he has his hamster he becomes calm and can lucidly recall his traumatic event clearly, but take the hamster away and he goes back to being dysfunctional. The hamster is his '(non-sexual) fetish' - what allows him to function optimally.", "Have you ever tried one of those games for toddlers, the ones with the shapes that fit through matching holes?  You know what I'm talking about at least. For the average adult that would be boring as hell, no challenge, nothing unexpected, just matching the right shape in the right hole. My point being, one can only match the shape and the hole so many times, before it starts to get boring.", "There are several different cognitive mechanisms so it might make sense to actually use different words rather than calling them all \"fetishes\". But simply, the most basic is based on brain wiring -you're born with them- the most common being neural crosstalk between areas mapping genitalia and those of the feet. The second is positive reinforcement, which associates particular objects or concepts with a positive sexual reward. These can develop over time. And then there is the most difficult to understand mechanism, known as aversion suppression. Because it is in your biological interest to have sex, the brain will counter aversive stimuli by pumping up your sex drive; if there is something a little bit icky going on, you will end up being _more_ sexually engaged because your brain is compensating for the ickiness. These fetishes are also built up over time. A simple example is french kissing (ordinarily aversive thing -mouth to mouth is gross in other circumstances- increases sexual engagement because of the aversion-suppression response), but via the same mechanism people can develop positive responses to different aversive stimuli, explaining, for example, shit fetishes (not to put too fine a point on it). Generally speaking, if there is something that should not be sexually stimulating, it is for that exact reason likely to be someone's fetish, due to the aversion suppression response. There is also an empathic aversion suppression -if we see someone engaged in sex while also doing something gross, we subconsciously/intuitively infer that they must be _really_ turned on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=fetishes&amp;sort=new&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;t=all"], [], [], [], ["http://antranik.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/homunculus-of-primary-somatosensory-cortex-in-blue.jpg"], ["http://antranik.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/homunculus-of-primary-somatosensory-cortex-in-blue.jpg"], [], ["https://garyborjesson.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/meet-your-homunculus/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4pxx52/waifu_simulator_have_fun_with_your_virtual_waifu/d4pik6x"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/10/cx_ns_0910healthintro.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e9rrx", "title": "why we like to bounce our leg when seated.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e9rrx/eli5_why_we_like_to_bounce_our_leg_when_seated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjxem9t", "cjxi1ot", "cjxi9cc", "cjxj9bf", "cjxm5pl", "cjxm9wm", "cjxn3w8", "cjxn5f8", "cjxnxpf", "cjxoc84", "cjxoxc3", "cjxp2w6", "cjxs9ze", "cjxt8or", "cjxxmm5", "cjxy0os", "cjxyuc7", "cjxyucm", "cjy1pok", "cjy2yjg", "cjy4b5p"], "score": [644, 3, 44, 4, 2, 2, 2, 18, 6, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["[It aids the heart in circulating blood.](_URL_0_) Your calf muscles are divided in half and blood collects between. When flexed the blood is forced out and up your leg, leaving less work for the heart to do.", "There was a study a few years ago about school children where it was discovered that leg bouncing/fidgeting actually stimulates the male brain.  So contrary to the common teaching wisdom it's an attempt to up the level of focus in many cases. ", "I'm not going to go much into explaining because I'm not so good at keeping things simple. To be honest, I don't think this is fully understood but there ARE some interesting things behind this!\n\nFirst off, Restless Leg Syndrome : _URL_0_\n\nBasically, the urge to move your leg is so heavily imprinted to the point that if you aren't moving your leg, your brain causes pain to start urging you to move it.\n\nFor how it relates to actually having been started I can't be certain it's a genetic advantage (However, I do believe it to be)... Unfortunately there are no studies for it in humans but in goats we have found what was referred to as a beautiful hinney gene, basically a hereditary gene that was causing goats to do this bouncing and would cause them more muscle growth and thus have a nice butt. Unfortunately I can't find the name of the gene which makes it hard to find the study, but I would have loved to link it for everyone.\n\nTL;DR : We can't be certain. However, from a genetics standpoint it is an evolutionary advantage towards a nice butt and strong legs.\n\nSource : BSc. Molecular Bio and Genetics.\n\nEdit : As for the top comment of it being about circulation I do believe that is a possibility, however that seems like a side benefit to me. Your heart is powerful and designed to pump blood all over your body, including upwards. Getting your blood down towards your legs isn't really a problem for it as gravity helps while the heart has evolved to work against gravity. On top of that, moving the leg requires energy output which means it would require more energy (and thus bloodflow) and the activity raises your heart BPM making it a kinda redundant process (it may be overall beneficial but still, there is slight redundancy and evolution likes to stay away from that and find more efficient methods). ", "It also releases endorphins to calm you down. You will notice people doing this if approached by a stranger or called out in front of a group etc. \n\nThis is also why you run around or punch things when you stub your toe or hurt yourself in general. ", "For people with attention problems like myself,  this can help us do something and focus.", "As far as the top comment about blood circulation, that's a possibility, but your leg/calf muscles already contract on a small level to aid blood return. You don't necessarily need extra movement. There have been studies that show repetitive actions such as playing with your hair and shaking your leg release serotonin, calming you.    \n    \nIt could also be a sign of being overstimulated, i.e. too much caffeine or being nervous. ", "If you're on an antidepressant and your leg(s) bounce when you don't want them too, talk to your doctor **right away.** The condition can become permanent. ", "Some people have a tendency to move around a lot (i.e leg bouncing, foot tapping, scratching imaginary itches, playing with something in one's hands, etc) when idle for various reasons, and all of them are neurological, not circulatory like /u/Antimutt claimed (your circulatory system does not induce movements :P).\n\nClinically, ADHD is a common cause of such behavior when paired with difficulties operating in areas with lots of distractions. OCD-type disorders can cause behaviors in which one feels the \"need\" to constantly move. Restless Legs Syndrome produces a powerful need to move one's legs, particularly while falling asleep. Certain drugs (usually stimulants such as Ritalin/Adderall, Cocaine, Caffeine, etc) can increase minor motor activity while giving the perception that the increase was intentional on the user's part. Hyperthyroidism can sometimes cause this kind of excitable behavior, but it's paired with a long list of severe symptoms.\n\nAnd then when the behavior is occurring without being severe or alongside other symptoms, it can just be the result of \"different brain wiring\". Some people have lower activation thresholds in response to stimuli and hence can find themselves easily excited by surrounding noises, movement, etc. Others develop this behavior as a method of warding off boredom.\n\nIf you find yourself very uncomfortable when you try to stop doing it, it could be a symptom of a disorder (unlikely to be severe in absence of other symptoms, most likely minor untreated ADHD or RLS) of some sort. It's normal for people to unconsciously do things like this, but they should be able to easily override the behavior when they notice it.", "If you push your foot outwards more so that your heel is on the ground it wont do it.", "IAM NOT DOING IT RIGHT NOW.", "I don't know about you, but I do it to keep her from getting restless.", "I've noticed that most often I see this with men, especially while eating (myself included). A girlfriend once said that it's the human version of wagging your tail", "I was doing this as I say it on the feed. God dammit.", "I know this isn't an answer or explanation to why we do it. But I personally bounce my legs or wiggle my feet when laying in bed due to extreme anxiety (I believe). I've never been diagnosed with RLS so it's possible that could be the cause, however when sitting if I'm not bouncing my leg I get this incredibly overwhelming sense of anxiety that builds and builds up to the point I want to literally freak out. The bouncing/wiggling seems to relieve this.\n\nI have spent my entire life, or as long as I can remember with diagnosed anxiety disorders and depression however.", "In Sweden it means you haven't had sex in a while. I can confirm; my sex-deficiency signal is through the roof.", "I read that there is a positive correlation between leg jiggling and high intelligence. I wrote that myself...then read it. ", "Would this be considered exercise? I sit most of the day at a desk job and find myself constantly bouncing one leg or the other. It seems as though constantly bouncing your legs and utilizing your muscles over and over again for hours on end (despite the lack of much resistance) would provide some type of benefit?", "I was bouncing my leg when I read this. ", "[we will conquer earth](_URL_0_)", "TIL bouncing your leg up and down apparently makes you literally Hitler to some people", "Crossed legs with top one bouncing\n\nScrolling through Reddit\n\nSee post\n\nMind explodes"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://ergoguy.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/flex-your-calf-muscles/"], [], ["http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/restless_legs/detail_restless_legs.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://xkcd.com/228/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2b5k86", "title": "How far apart are the atoms (or whatever else) in the lowest-pressure areas of the universe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2b5k86/how_far_apart_are_the_atoms_or_whatever_else_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj22y17"], "score": [4], "text": [" >  Outer space has very low density and pressure, and is the closest physical approximation of a perfect vacuum. But no vacuum is truly perfect, not even in interstellar space, where there are still a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Outer_space"]]}
{"q_id": "1czyv6", "title": "If friction arises as a result of electric forces, and electric fields are conservative, why does friction dissipate energy?", "selftext": "Perhaps I'm wrong about the initial point, in which case I'd like further explanation on the atomic causes of friction.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1czyv6/if_friction_arises_as_a_result_of_electric_forces/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9lm2cz", "c9lmbu9"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["Friction does not dissipate energy, the energy seemingly lost through friction becomes heat.", "When two solids rub against each other, the atoms of both bump into the atoms of the other. Now while you are correct that these are perfectly conservative forces, the interactions are not fully elastic. If you bump into a single atom on the surface of a solid, what happens is that that atom will bump against its neighbors, which will bump against their neighbors, and so on. You've basically made a wave travel through the material.\n\nBut those atoms were already moving a little! The thermal energy inside a solid is stored in atomic vibrations. The atoms wiggle around a little around their equilibrium positions. This can be decomposed as (sound) waves traveling through the material, back and forth. The more of those sound waves, the more wiggling, the higher the temperature. Now what happens if you add another of those waves? Well, you've effectively raised the thermal energy, and thus raised the temperature.\n\nAnd where is that energy taken from? From the kinetic energy that came from moving those two materials across each other in the first place, causing them to slow down. This is also tied in with the second law of thermodynamics. Energy likes to dissipate into as many degrees of freedom as it can find. A big, solid hunk of material can only move and rotate, that's not so many degrees of freedom, only six (three for movement, three for rotation). But if you can dissipate it into each of those vibrational modes of the individual atoms, you've suddenly got billions upon billions of degrees of freedom! And this is why a sliding object comes to rest, and why a basketball bounces a little less high after every bounce. Not because energy or momentum are lost, they simply bleed into all of those degrees of freedom with every interaction."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3yn28c", "title": "how can other counties already be at 50% renewable energy while the u.s. struggles with getting it done by 2030?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yn28c/eli5_how_can_other_counties_already_be_at_50/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyeu05m", "cyeu1dc", "cyeu1it", "cyeu390", "cyeu4ap", "cyeu4v3", "cyev76m", "cyevr8u", "cyewlci", "cyewlup", "cyex81z", "cyexm5i", "cyeyeyl", "cyeyluy", "cyf1qu9", "cyf4ryv", "cyf4ul0", "cyfc42i", "cyff9cr", "cyfhq6w", "cyfiiyc", "cyfq2zf", "cyft8kz", "cyfy18h"], "score": [3, 26, 3, 2, 8, 122, 25, 63, 3, 3, 4, 13, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["If you don't make it your priority, it won't happen if its not more lucrative moneywise, which it isn't (if it were, they would use it).  \n", "The easiest issue to understand is that most other advanced countries have much higher taxes than the US. Simple by lowering taxes on *any* kind of economic activity, they can immediately get much more of it.  So tax subsidies produce much larger effects for them than for Americans.\n\nAll the countries that have met aggressive targets are islands or peninsulas.  Why does this matter? Because there is nowhere in Denmark more than a few miles from the ocean.  The ocean is an easy place for wind power (no land features that break up the movement of pressure systems) but is also typically close to population centers, which cluster around ports.  The US has a long coastline, but also an immense interior where windpower is dubious until long-distance transmission becomes more reliable.\n\nFinally, all measurements are different in smaller units than in bigger units.  I could easily get my home to be 50% renewable simply by adding solar panels.  But I would still have to use coal power for the other 50%.  My entire *region* could not do that so easily, because any one home that wants to use coal power when the sun goes behind a cloud is parasitic on all the other homes who are using a coal power plant that can adjust its output according to demand.  For *everyone* to be 50% renewable, we need to find ways to get power without using that coal  power plant.", "Different countries have different situations with regard to how much energy they use, where they use it, and what methods of generating energy are available. Iceland, for example, has a fairly small population that's densely packed into ciities - pretty much ideal - and is sitting on some great volcanoes for geothermal power; they very much have it easy.\n\nThe US is a big country, consumes a lot of power (way too much, really), has large areas where people are very spread out, and can be hit or miss when talking about how well a hydroelectric, solar or wind farm will work for the area. When you get to smaller levels, states or sometimes counties, you'll see that it varies by region (my county has an option for 100% renewable electricity to homes, for instance, that I'm on). Politics also come up given how big the US is: some states care more than others, and some states may be invested in other modes of power, so at the federal level it'll take time.", "There could be many factors involved. Most people dont realise the USA is almost or just as big as Europe iirc. Also countries like Sweden, 440,000km^2, with a population of only about 10million (Pop. of Chicago and New York combined, which would be 1300km^2) has vast amounts of empty land and the georgraphy of the place allows for lots of hydroelectric energy production, up to 44% of their energy is from that. The rest is 47% nuclear. I guess the rest is politics too. ", "The size of the united states is one factor, having grids that meet the demands of energy in very short periods of time across a wide area is a hassle, especially when you consider that most renewable sources of energy don't have instant yield like fossil fuels do.\n Oil money is huge in the U.S. and with Canada, Texas, and Alaskan oil as well as an established refining and distribution network it doesn't make economic sense in the short term with oil so cheap. \nIf the United States government NEEDED to get it done sooner it would; but there isn't the political and social pressure needed to serve as a catalyst to counter the inertia of so many powerful people with a vested interest in riding the oil cash cow as long as possible. Nuclear energy is also hugely unpopular, for reasons I don't really agree with but it means a huge part of that renewable energy pie is off limits for the most part. With recent blunders over seas, (fukushima etc.), the nuclear movement has all but come to a halt in the mainstream. \nWithout a reliable form of Hydro-Electric or Geothermal NATIONWIDE (excluding the isolated locations) the united states is left with wind and solar. Both of which require massive investments to reach gigawatt levels of output which can't be relied upon completely. It's very complicated to design a grid with fall backs to maintain the necessary energy levels/freq/etc and variable levels of output only further complicate it.   **TLDR: Bigger/Sparser/fossil fuels are the perfect energy source if you don't give a fuck about pollution and we can get plenty cheap.** ", "$97 million was spent on Oil and Gas lobbying in the United states. The United States is also rich in natural resources and is well set up for the refining of oil, meaning there is not  much of an incentive for it to switch to renewable energy besides being more environmentally friendly.\n\n On top of that the European countries that are leading in renewable energy are a lot smaller both in terms of area and population, meaning they need to produce far less energy and don't have to transport it as far.", "Well, let's look at the other countries which are at 50% renewable electricity (**Important note : energy =/= electricity**)\n\nAs you can see in the list, most of those countries get most of their renewable power from Hydro power plants. There are only two exceptions. Denmark, and Belize.\n\nBelize is a small middle American nation which spreads it's renewable energy production equally between biomass and hydropower. \n\nDenmark gets pretty much all their renewable energy from Wind, but they just happen to be located next to hydropower giants Norway and Sweden, and closely insulated in the European grid, which allows them to balance their energy production easily.\n\nThe answer thus is simple. The US doesn't have hydro power plants. No conspiracy, simply geology.\n\n_URL_0_", "There are a few reasons: \n\n1.  The USA is not a particularly densely populated country. Some areas, such as Manhattan and LA are, but on the whole the population and industry are spread out - which increases the cost of any infrastructure work compared to countries such as the Netherlands, UK or Japan.\n\n2.  The electrical infrastructure in the USA is woefully underfunded - there are huge chunks of the electrical network that are either so old or poorly maintained that they should be scrapped, but there is no money to do so. This is often a reason for not being able to build plants or even install panels on a house - the local grid is often at its limit and any more load would cause major problems.\n\n3. The USA is actually one of the highest power users per capita in the world, and that use is growing thanks to increased use of electric cars, air conditioning and other gadgets. This means that more energy sources per person are required to achieve the same proportion of renewable supply that is seen in other countries.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_", "Think about the size of the US.  It is the same answer for all infrastructure related questions.  If the US only had New York, Florida, Texas and California to worry about things would be easy to change.  But we don't, we have the largest developed country (as in developed aera).", "Let's just remember that all those countries had a renewables national policy and action plan in place first before they achieved those high percentages. \n\nIn Uruguay, where they achieved 55% very quickly, \"the main attraction for foreign investors ... is a fixed price for 20 years that is guaranteed by the state utility. Because maintenance costs are low and stable, this guarantees a profit. As a result, foreign firms are lining up to secure windfarm contracts. The competition is pushing down bids, cutting electricity generating costs by more than 30% over the past three years.\" _URL_0_) . \n\nUS could do the same if... you fill in the blanks. Renewables are more about smart politics than about geography or abundance of national resources. ", "Electrical engineer here. I'd guess 2-3 reasons.\n\n1. Subsidies. It's not profitable to build renewables at all! Not as long as nom renewables get a tax cut. If we give renewables Subsidies people build them like crazy.\n\n2. State dependent resources. Some places need wind and others solar. Both put different stresses on the grid that requires more government funding. Our low tax system can't handle building a new energy grid. Generally speaking a mile of power line runs around 1-3 million per mile of high voltage transmission line. It's a cost that really factors in.\n\n\n\n", "We make far more electricity than those countries, so it will take a lot more time to convert it to renewable sources. Here is an example:\n\nDenmark makes about 35 TWh of power a year, using about 8 fuel-burning power stations and 13 wind farms. 100% renewable electricity could be achieved by replacing those 8 fuel-burning power plants. \n\nThe US, however, makes about 4300 TWh of power a year, using around 7000 power plants. Of those plants, about 1200 are renewable (mostly wind or hydroelectric) and 5800 are non-renewable (mostly natural gas, oil, or coal). To reach 100% renewable electricity we would have to replace 5800 power plants instead of 8. \n\nIn short, the United States has MANY more power plants than these small countries, and replacing them with renewables is a far, far bigger task, and involves dramatically more effort. \n\nSources: \n\n- _URL_3_\n\n- _URL_2_\n\n- _URL_0_\n\n- _URL_1_\n", "Hydro electricity is the reason these countries succeeded.  You can't just build more dams in the US till you get 50%.\n", "Other countries are physically much smaller and have much smaller populations. Some countries are small enough they could provide power for the entire nation with less than a dozen power plants so they only have to replace a small number of them with renewable energy plants. If they have rivers then it is even easier to get to that number. ", "Those countries haven't actually solved the problem. Either:\n\n1. They have very high hydro production, which isn't something you can't build more of. Most countries are already heavily using their natural hydro capacity.\n\n2. They have high \"nameplate capacity\" of wind and solar production, but don't actually power their economy off of it. Oil, gas, and coal continue to supply the baseload capacity of most countries with heavy renewables. The wind/solar power, which is variable, unreliable, and cannot be stored, becomes a hot potato that no utility really wants, and tends to get dumped on export markets. It's possible for a few small markets to have high renewables production, but not everybody, because it is not feasible to load-balance all of it around on the grid.", "Ignoring the financial burden, take a look at how big the US is compared to Europe.\n_URL_0_", "Total worldwide installation of new wind power in 2014 was 50 GWhr.  \nTotal worldwide installation of new solar was 40 GWhr.\n\nU.S. electricity production in 2014 was 4000 GWhr of which 13% was renewable (plus another 19% nuclear).  So to get to 50% renewable, the U.S. would need an additional 1500 GWhr of renewable installations or 15 years of the entire world wide production rate.", "The GOP has been taken control of by oil and natural gas lobbyists. The GOP opposes anything that may potentially be bad for their wealthy donors.", "Lobbyists, logistics, people who think climate changes is a myth, snowballs in Congress...etc", "Corporations which have big money invested in fossil fuels are lobbying and paying off power companies to try and slow down the progress of green energy.\n\nLittle do they know Compact Fusion is on its way like a downhill train without brakes, and they won't know what hit them.", "A better comparison is looking at individual states, and seeing which states are far behind and which ones are leading with high % of renewables. That is more apples to apples to a European country.", "because it's a lot easier to supply the energy needs of a country of 5-6 million (norway, finland for example) than a country of 330 million.", "Very few countries are at 50% renewable energy. Occasionally we will hear a story about an extremely windy day in germany where they made 50% of their power from wind but its not the norm.\n\nI strongly recommend you go to the [OECD's better life index](_URL_0_), they have a little bit of information on each countries renewable energy %. Here are a few examples.\n\nAustralia 5%, Belgium 5%, Canada 18%, France 8%, Germany 11%, Italy 13%, Japan 4%, Netherlands 4%. etc ", "I sat in on a \"public forum\" about wind farms and offshore drilling near the Chesapeake bay. It was hosted by oil lobbyists and did not take questions or comments from the audience. Highly touted was the \"All of the above\" doctrine of the Obama administration (as in fossil fuel, renewables, and nuclear) and this terminology was used to essentially justify offshore drilling. \n\nStrangely, despite an offshore wind farm being a major item on the agenda, it was completely glossed over."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources"], ["http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC", "http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/energy/conditions-and-capacity"], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/uruguay-makes-dramatic-shift-to-nearly-95-clean-energy"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_Denmark", "https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=65&amp;t=2", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Denmark", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production"], [], [], [], ["http://m.imgur.com/VpZf49c"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/belgium/"], []]}
{"q_id": "443dd5", "title": "what's the difference between browsing and downloading on the web? my understanding is that content gets downloaded to your computer in both the cases, so what's the catch here.", "selftext": "The title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/443dd5/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_browsing_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czn4mol", "czn4tjm", "czn841j", "cznbnju", "cznc5za", "cznc6hw", "cznjzdm", "cznkjgn", "cznu2ap", "cznz0fm"], "score": [114, 5, 3, 7, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Yes, you're downloading pages as you browse.\n\nThe difference, as far as I know, is:\n\n- **Browsing** downloads the page to a temporary location, which will be removed when you delete your browser history or cache.\n\n- **Downloading** loads to page or file to a true destination for later, offline use (often the /Downloads folder).", "When you browse, your browser downloads the pages to some temporary place. You're right that it's downloading the content. But when you leave the page the browser will delete the content because you're no longer looking at it (not necessarily right away but that's not important).\n\nWhen you download something from the web, you're saving it to a place of your choosing, usually outside of your browser's control. When you leave the page your browser won't delete that thing you downloaded.", "There's no real difference from an external standpoint. \n\nThe only real difference is how your computer treats what you downloaded.  Stuff that was downloaded to display a website is marked differently and saved in a different location,  with the plan to clean it up later. ", "From your computer's perspective, there's no difference between browsing and downloading; both operations involve reading bytes (data) from a network connection.\n\nWhen you navigate to a web site, your browser resolves the name of the website to an IP address and opens a socket (network connection) to that address on port 80 (http) or 443 (https). It then reads all the data from the main page of that site and starts to parse it (in HTML, a markup language).\n\nHTML contains text and other formatting instructions, which your browser knows how to display. It can also contains instructions pointing your browser to other data (in the same server, or a different one). If your browser receives one of such instructions and it knows how to deal with the data (say, an image), it will do so. This is how images show in webpages.\n\nIf, however, the page points your browser to a file it doesn't know how to handle (say, a zip file), it offers you the option of saving it to disk. Most people see this action as \"Downloading\", since you're saving it for posterior use.", "I always thought **browsing** was for humans (like: surfing, consuming the internet, reading and \"pass along all the info you gather\") \n\nAnd **downloading** is the physical/technical term for ~~storing~~ getting the data.  \n*Storing:saving*\n", "There's no really profound difference.  In both cases your browser requests data from a server.  We usually call it \"browsing\" when the browser just shows you the content on the screen and then throws it away, and \"downloading\" when instead it saves it to a permanent file on the computer.\n\nWell, more or less, because the words are not used consistently.  Like, for example, a lot of people in this discussion are using the word \"download\" to mean just a *transfer* of data over the network, regardless of whether it's written to a file.  Others are using the word \"save\" to include not just files that the user knows about, but also the browser cache\u2014a set of files temporary that the browser creates behind the scenes so that it doesn't have to request the same content over and over from the same server.\n\nNeither of those is either right or wrong; the terminology for these things isn't super-standard, and the people who understand the details of how things work have no problem figuring out what is meant from context.", "The easiest analogy is to look at it as the difference between watching a movie on a television channel, versus going to the store and buying a hard copy of the movie.  You get the same result when you watch a television show and watching a movie, but the difference is that when you have a copy of the movie, you can watch it later without needing the television network to play it again.\n\nConversely, with most media (songs, television, games, books, etc), you typically call it \"streaming\" because of the actual meaning of the word browse.  The word \"browse\" is usually used when you are just topically looking ~for~ content, such as when you Reddit, Google a question, or jump down the Youtube hole.  The word implies that you don't know exactly what you're looking for (if you are looking for anything specific at all).", "They are the same, the difference is what's done with the data afterwards.\n\nIf you download, you put it in a location where it's expected to remain until you delete it, when you browse, it's stored in a temporary location, which can be deleted whenever the computer feels it could do something better with the disk space.\n\nThe same difference between downloading a movie and streaming it, by the way.", "There's really no difference.\n\nWhen you download, you're generally placing the downloaded thing in your \"Downloads\" folder, for keeping.\n\nWhen you browse, you also download, but it only gets stored in a temporary place, which either gets cleaned up automatically, or manually right before someone borrows your computer, or it shows up in your criminal trial as evidence.", "kinda the difference between borrowing and buying.\n\nthings downloaded from a browser as part of normal browsing is expected to go into a temp folder and be deleted when convenient (or when the expire time elapses) things downloaded are placed in an area of the users choice with the expectation it's going to be kept...but the mechanism is identical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "111pd0", "title": "what's so bad about apple maps?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/111pd0/eli5_whats_so_bad_about_apple_maps/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6iiqka", "c6iitej", "c6iiv3g", "c6ij5av", "c6ikr23", "c6ikta2"], "score": [3, 7, 10, 12, 4, 2], "text": ["Well, Apple Maps is basically upsetting a ton of people because of false information. Apple Maps is using a company named TomTom, I believe. You have to remember, everyone is comparing Apple Maps to google maps. Google maps showed landmarks and transit maps, and Apple Maps lacks both. ", "Probably because apple built new airports, train stations, made the earth a wavy lays chip, etc. overnight", "For me it's the bus system. I used to be able to type in any address and it would give me buses to the next point in a very clear and concise manner, like name of the bus, time, etc, but now after I enter an address and select bus, it makes me go into a different app that almost never works correctly (times out, doesn't show all the routes, etc).\n\nPlus it's apparently missing a lot of smaller streets that Google Maps had.", "Summarised:\n\n* iOS users had Google Maps, undoubtedly the best mapping solution, due in part to things like street view, transit directions, consistent maps, etc.\n* Apple (in their continuing \"get Google off iOS\" mission) removed Google Maps, and users had to use Apple's mapping system.\n* The mapping system has every error possible. Cities moved, missing features, incorrect information. [This] (_URL_0_) tumblr will help explain some of the issues.\n\nAlso, it shows very clearly to the average consumer something the tech world has known for years: Apple will reduce the user experience for company interests. \n\n****\n\nEdit: Apple Maps is *okay* in the US. Not as good as Google Maps, but perhaps useable by those that don't use public transport. Outside of the US, it's terrible.", "Because unlike a company like Nokia that has spent billions of dollars and years of effort to make their incredible mapping tools happen, apple simply demontrated their typical arrogance by licensing questionable data and repackaging, hoping their usual marketing nonsense would carry them through. \n\nIn the larger sense, apple maps shouldn't be a surprise, it's the same approach/ logic as every other apple product. Looking at their iPhone hype when it came out, you'd think people used carrier pigeons in 2005...to this day the iPhone doesn't do some of the things phones have been able to do for years...oh but it can send attachments now! Innovation indeed. Or the iPad...which is the first ever tablet...omg you can touch the Internet! Kiss my ass you shitheads.\n-typed from my mint condition iPhone which mysteriously stopped detecting the sim card. \n\n", "Even after Apple fixes all of the inaccuracies they'll still be way behind Google in mapping. Google Streetview is a massive worldwide effort to capture an enormous amount of data.  Streetview is even available [inside the White House](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/"], [], ["https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.897712,-77.036505&amp;spn=104.845584,158.027344&amp;t=v&amp;z=3&amp;layer=c&amp;panoid=wzNa0zYX_nHLILcbrjtOQA&amp;cbll=38.897712,-77.036505&amp;cbp=13,0,,0,0"]]}
{"q_id": "7a3htl", "title": "Is there any evidence that medieval women used broomsticks to rub hallucinogens into their vaginas?", "selftext": "I've seen this rather weird explanation of the witches-flying-on-broomsticks trope a few times, most recently in\n [this article](_URL_0_).\n\nIs there any reason to think it is accurate?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7a3htl/is_there_any_evidence_that_medieval_women_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp6zbvo"], "score": [218], "text": ["No. This story is a complete modern fabrication. It is titillating, it is sexist, it brings Science and Reason to the supernatural, and it is a whole lot more comfortable than the reality it was invented to explain away.\n\nThe various pieces of the figure that would become \"the witch\" in the early modern era were falling into place by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Broomsticks enter the legend fairly early on, but not nearly as early as that article would have you believe.\n\nThe trial of Alice Kyteler and Petronilla of Mearth (who never gets mentioned despite being the one who was actually burned at the stake--guess which one was the aristocrat and which one was the servant) referenced in the article, in 1324, predates *maleficium* as a formal charge; Petronilla was burned as a heretic, not a witch. But it's considered a very important sign of the diabolization of 'black magic' because a lot of the pieces of the later witch trope are present.\n\nBut not the broomstick.\n\nYou'll notice the article's quotation uses some funky spelling: ladie, staffe, and so on. That's because this is not from the chronicle account written by Bishop Richard Ledrede, who was present for the actual events, translated from its Latin into modern English. It's from *Holinshed's Chronicles*, which is to say, 1577. The closest Ledrede comes is:\n\n >  The bishop [i.e. the author] made a huge fire in the center of Kilkenny, and on it, for all to see, he burnt a sack full of potions, powders, oils, nails, hair, herbs, worms, and countless other horrible items which Alice had used in her sorcery and magic.\n\nWhatever the \"truth\" behind Ledrede's account (his narrative has little to do with the actual heresy case and is much more concerned with discussing injustices against him and the matter of Church versus secular authority, so he needs to make himself look good), we see the trappings of what appear to be spells and potions *if* one is already inclined to see their owner as a witch.\n\nThis is important when looking at the full passage from Holinshed and other later accounts with almost the same wording (but not Ledrede's). They recount among the charges against Kyteler:\n\n >  Also that she swept the streets of Kilkennie between Compline and twilight, raking all the filth towards the doores of hir sonne William, murmuring secretlie with hir self these words: *To the house of William my sonne / Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne.*\n\nFirst, Holinshed is sort of right about some of the other charges (Kyteler's alleged sexual liason with a demon/incubus called the Son of Art or Robin, Son of Art, becomes a \"nightly conference with a spirit called Robert Artisson, to whom she sacrificed on the highway nine red cocks and nine peacocks' eyes.\") However, the broom/sweeping bit is a post-14th century addition to the tale. This is important became it makes the broom another one of those \"tools of the witch's trade.\"\n\nThat is to say, the broom in the witch legend by the late 16th century was an everyday object assimilated into people's idea of the \"witch's toolbox\". The interesting thing is, it wasn't the only one initially. Early witch iconography from Germany has witches with cooking forks as their symbol--cooking and consumption (including cannibalism) were major components of the witch legend, too. However, the imagery of broomsticks became more popular in France first. From a group of 1420s-40s witch hunts, royal magistrate Claude Tholosan pieced together the following information out of confessions. (Broedel observes that this was a different version of cannibalism than Tholosan had originally found in stories of non-witch heretical movements).\n\n*His* witches would go out one night a week, identify an unlucky local child, and slaughter them. The witches would cook the victim, literally. The fat from the child would be the ointment smeared on the broomstick to enable them to fly to their feasts with the devil. It's a specific, gory, and well-attested in global cannibalism folklore idea of the \"witches' brew\" used in a spell--here, to animate the broomstick.\n\nBut /u/sunagainstgold, you say, there's a problem. You're citing official investigative reports and the actual confessions of women accused as witches as though they were factual.\n\nAnd therein lies exactly the problem: *women and men in early modern Europe confessed to witchcraft.*\n\nAnd not just confessed. Confessed in all the gruesome, sacrilegious, titillating, diabolic detail their inquisitors could record. The pattern happens frequently enough across national/cultural/linguistic boundaries (with details varying regionally), and is found in diverse enough types of sources, that scholars are very comfortable saying: yes, women and men accused of witchcraft confessed, and named their accomplices, even knowing there was a high risk they were sentencing themselves and their friends to a horrible death. They told stories of naked nighttime flights to have sex with Satan, of wild parties with the other witches of the town in the woods, of the deceptions they laid on other people, the things they made other people believe they saw. They said these things under oath and despite the potential, or certain, death to follow. They said these things despite them not being in the least bit true.\n\nThis should be deeply unsettling to us.\n\nThat's where the hallucinogenic dildos come in.\n\nThere's this idea perennially circulating in various pop medieval/early modern bad history about ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that can grow on various grains and cause a whole bunch of bad symptoms before it kills the person who inadvertently eats it. Ergot poisoning has been used to explain medieval prophetic visions, the Anabaptist kingdom in Munster, most famously the testimony of the *accusers* at Salem--and here it is pressed into service to explain why 50,000 women and men across Europe died at the stake, in the river, or on the gallows as witches.\n\nWe crave a \"biological\" explanation for the confessions. The witches, it is comforting to believe, *believed* what they were confessing was true, and believed it because of Science. In the modern world, we can prevent this by preventing rye poison. We're smarter, we're better, it can't happen again.\n\nErgot poisoning, as numerous scholars have shown, bears very little resemblance to the actual situations noted above...unless those 50,000 people also developed seizures, gangrene, diarrhea, vomiting, skin peeling off, and other fun things *without this being noted in records.* Some people occasionally fall into hallucinations or psychosis. But, you know, Science.\n\nAnd you'll notice one more important part about this myth: it implicates the *victims,* and does so in a way that criminalizes female sexuality. Medieval women trying to get themselves off did a thing that made them believe they were witches. And this practice is why, when faced with physical and psychological torture, they told stories of flying through the night to consort with Satan. Because in this worldview women are just that lustful, and that can only ever be a bad thing.\n\nThe intentional stimulation of visions of the divine played a major role in later medieval culture. It was in fact associated with women in particular. This association grew stronger over the 14th century as male theologians grew ever more anxious about the power of women's visions and the potential that women, the weaker sex, could so so easily be corrupted (\"seduced\") like Eve. It was an interpretation forced onto and yet accepted by women visionaries,  a bargain for the potential authority their visions might grant them in a deeply patriarchal world. By the 15th, it was an open question whether a woman's visions of God and Christ, once only needing her word to confirm their veracity, came from \"nature\" (hallucinations), God--or the devil.\n\nBut when these women (and much more rarely in this case, men) had visions of the devil, they recounted themselves *oppressed* and *tempted* by the demons, they told of their *victories over* Satan. And they didn't need hallucinogens smeared on *instrumenta vel machinae* to produce these visions.\n\nThe method that medieval monks had developed to provoke the mind to higher contemplation of God, the method that filtered out to lay people? Reading religious books."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2017/10/31/the-origin-of-witches-riding-broomsticks-drugs-from-nature-plus-shakespeare/#2558004e61a9"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5260q7", "title": "Did females in US public schools have to swim naked in PE class back in the 40s and 50s?", "selftext": "I was talking to a 63 year old man who said that when he was in high school in South Chicago they had to swim naked in PE class in the school swimming pool. They could wear caps to cover their heads, but they were told they could not wear suits because the fabric would clog the filters. He said when swimsuits options came out with silk swimming trunks, they could wear those, since silk would not clog up the filters. Since PE classes were segregated by sex, he doesn't know if they same rules applied for girls at the time. It seems strange that boys would swim naked but girls would not, but that is why I am offering this question up to the sages here at r/askhistorians! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5260q7/did_females_in_us_public_schools_have_to_swim/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7i5y8b", "d7ieq40"], "score": [33, 2], "text": ["A point of chronology: Your question asks about the 40s and 50s, but if the guy is 63, then he was born in 1952 at the earliest. He would have started high school 14 years later in 1966.", "Can someone also comment on the plausibility of the technical aspects of this anecdote? Weren't synthetic fibers starting to become widely available by the early 60s? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3m4oc0", "title": "what is it about the new marriage equality laws that people think violates their religious freedoms?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m4oc0/eli5_what_is_it_about_the_new_marriage_equality/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvbyibc", "cvbywbg", "cvbyzln", "cvbz1k9", "cvbzjya", "cvbzojr", "cvc5c1e", "cvc681n"], "score": [7, 15, 5, 7, 5, 6, 15, 3], "text": ["People often confuse the concepts of \"freedom\" and \"the hegemony we've become accustomed to.\"", "Some people think that their freedom to practice their religion/beliefs means that they have the right to never come in contact with the freedom other people have to practice their religion/beliefs.  They seem to think that if two gay people get married its a violation of their right to practice their religion/belief because they believe it's a sin.  ", "Some people believe that extending rights to others that don't fit with their religious convictions is an attack on their religion, and treat it as persecution.\n\nThey should probably remember the famous quote \"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins.\"  You can celebrate and believe every facet of your religion, and we can mostly agree that we'll all be fine with that... until the moment when your practice or your beliefs cause any other person harm.  ", "People think they should be able to live by the rules of their religion, including how their religion tells them how to behave toward other people who have different beliefs.\n\nOur laws tell people that they have to treat everyone the same, regardless of what religion you have and what religion they have.\n\nIn your home or private clubs you can make your own rules about what kind of people you allow or how you treat them.  \n\nIn a public place like a business or a government office you have to follow the laws and treat everyone equally.\n\nAs much as some of us think you should \"keep your religion to yourselves\"  to other people their religion is \"who they are\" and they feel discriminated against if you tell them to keep it to themselves or to only live their religion at home, in church, or on Sundays.  Someone who can leave their religion at church probably doesn't really believe it.", "Some people believe that the United States is a Christian nation.  Adding gay marriage undermines that Christian nation status and therefore undermines a huge Christian institution.  But that only works if the US is a Christian nation, which it isn't or at least it's not supposed to be.  ", "Objective answer: You need to understand how some religions (Christianity in this case) view freedom.\n\nSuppose you really believe in the Christian God. I mean REALLY believe, not like you just go to church or think of a \"higher power\" or something. It isn't your hobby or some small part of your life. You REALLY believe that an all-powerful God made you, sent his son to die for you, and at the end of every person's life will judge them as worthy or unworthy. The worthy will be sent to live forever in perfect bliss, while the unworthy will be tortured in such profound and horrible ways that you can't even begin to imagine it. \n\nAll God asks is that you love him and follow some simple rules. Maybe you find it hard to love him - to truly and freely do what you absolutely have to do - but at least you can follow the rules. And everyone else is in this situation too, so you better help them follow the rules. It doesn't matter if they don't want to, or don't believe, or were \"born different\", you are literally saving their eternal soul by helping them - by any means necessary - follow the rules. \n\nSo, freedom of religion means you are allowed to do this. Allowed to make damn sure everyone follows the rules so that they don't burn in hell for eternity. A human-made government or popular opinion is completely meaningless compared to the judgement of God and the suffering of eternal hell. Of course the government gives you this freedom. They have no choice, you'd make people follow the rules whether they wanted you to or not, but it is good that we set up a government that allows us - freely - to enforce God's rules. \n\nNow, if the government were to go and condone something that directly violates God's rules, well now that just can't stand and you'd do anything to fight it. Because it is impinging your freedom to save people from hell. But also, the bigger issue, is that you'd do literally anything - anything - to save people because the cosmic stakes are far more important than any earthly rule or government.\n\nNote: I'm not saying this is correct in any way, but that is the perspective and that is why people feel it hurts them (and everyone). It is sort of like when you're a kid and you want to drink some radiator fluid because it tastes good, but Dad takes it from you and makes sure you never get any. You want it, and it will make you happy, but Dad knows that it will turn out badly for you. He does what is best for you even if you don't realize what is best for you. Now imagine that the government passed a \"fluid equality\" act that allowed everyone to drink radiator fluid whenever they wanted. Dad would probably think that it interfered with his freedom to raise his kids. \n\nAGAIN NOT SAYING THAT GAY MARRIAGE IS EQUIVALENT TO DRINKING RADIATOR FLUID, but if you believe in eternal hell and suffering then actually it is much worse (one only kills your body, the other damns your soul). ", "Nothing. Its a thin shield for their bigotry. There are three major ways the idea of anything else falls apart.\n\n1 . There is no basis in scripture to prevent gay marriage. The bible actually calls for the execution of gays. But nobody's going to claim the gays still being alive violates their religion because they know how batshit that is. They just moved the goalpost.\n\n2 . Religious freedom means *you* are free to practice *your* religion. This works for anybody. In any direction. The comedy answer is comparing it to a diet. \"To say my marriage is against your religion is like saying my cookies are against your diet.\" But I like this West Wing quote better.\n\n > TOBY\n > The truth is, I don't, sir. At least not a good one. I was intimidated by\n > your Catholicism.\n\n > BARTLET\n > Really?\n\n > TOBY\n > Yeah.\n\n > BARTLET\n > It's my Catholicism, Toby. It works for me.\n\n > ABBEY\n > And me.\n\n > BARTLET\n > And her. Did you break any laws?\n\n > TOBY\n > No, sir.\n\n > BARTLET\n > Then a blessing on your house, young man. Mazel tov.\n\nIts *his* Catholicism. It affects how he acts and thinks. But not somebody else. You get to practice your faith, but you don't get to demand other people obey the requirements of your religion. Religion is a personal choice.\n\n3 . Marriage is two different things. There's the religious thing, in the church, with the priest, the ring, and the pretty dresses, and the hilariously large cake. You know, all the Hollywood stuff.\n\nAnd then there's the thing the government does. That's a filing fee, a couple of witnesses and a couple of signatures. Romantic it ain't. Legal it is. \n\nEvery time you read something about gay marriage rulings in the news, and all the court decisions. They are talking about option two. That's the one you have a Right to. Its a government service. People opposed to it try to talk like they are the same thing in an attempt to make the issue about religion, or the government forcing a religion to do something. Its not.\n\nGay people have a right to walk into a government office and apply for a Marriage license. That church down the street being a religious institution still has the right to refuse to let them have their party with the cake and things there.\n\nGovernment employees have another problem. The government is forbidden from having a religious opinion. So someone acting on behalf of the government is also forbidden from having a religious opinion *while on duty*. The Davis court rulings made that really clear, Kim Davis is not entitled to First Amendment protections (Just like you may speak your mind, you may not be forced to speak things that you do not believe) for speech arising from her duties as County Clerk. Government Officers actually lose a bunch of rights while on duty, because people are given a lot more protections than the Government gets, and the Government is straight up not allowed to do some things.\n\nThis is the only part where Religion meets Law and there is a direct conflict, because a Government job requires them to do things, and Government isn't allowed to do or not do something for religious reasons, so a religious person has to choose between their religion and their job if they conflict. But that brings it right back to the personal choice.", "It's alot like after racial segrigation was made illegal.  After the immeidate court ruling there were a number of cases (_URL_0_) were people tried to argue that the law didn't apply to them because of ... in a hope to either get the court to maybe overturn it or carve out a small exception just to them.  \n\nAnd most of the time it's not the same sex unions they object directly too, legally speaking, it's the idea that if they do anything in the furtherance of a same sex union, Signing the license, making the flowers, taking the pictures, backing the cake, they are now linked too it and endorsing.  \n\nIn some of the examples, like the bakers in Colorado, sexual orientation is considered a protected class (If you want to refuse service to them you need a good business related reason) so they don't have a leg to stand on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel_v._United_States"]]}
{"q_id": "cw0255", "title": "Why was Mars viewed with more respect in Rome than his counterpart Ares did in Greece?", "selftext": "In Greece, it seemed that Ares was considered a god of senseless violence that represented the savage side of war. However the Romans in contrast viewed Mars as a major god who was dignified and represented wars fought for the purpose of peace. Is there a reason for this stark difference?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cw0255/why_was_mars_viewed_with_more_respect_in_rome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ey8gfh1"], "score": [56], "text": ["I have some problems with the premises of this question, but I\u2019ll try to answer it as best I can. Hopefully I don\u2019t end up answering the question I wish you\u2019d asked, rather than the one you actually asked! I should also say right at the beginning that although I\u2019m good on Roman religion, my knowledge of religion in Ancient Greece is patchy so I\u2019m not going to address that side of the question. In terms of how I\u2019m going to approach this topic it\u2019s actually not a problem \u2013 one of the premises of the question that I find problematic is the idea that there were these two separate things called \u2018Greek culture\u2019 and \u2018Roman culture\u2019 that can be compared and contrasted as neat, bounded entities. It\u2019s probably too much of a tangent for me to address that properly here \u2013 perhaps we can go into it later if someone is interested.\n\nOK, so let\u2019s focus on Mars. He seems to have been worshipped at Rome from very early on, although the evidence for archaic Rome is not good. Later Romans would have us believe that the whole edifice of Roman religion was invented by Romulus and Numa, the first two legendary kings of Rome. This includes the worship of Mars \u2013 Livy (1.20), Plutarch (*Numa* 13) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2.70) all attribute the foundation of either one or both major priesthoods of Mars (the *flamines Martialis* and the Salii) to Numa. The major problem here is that all these writers, and indeed all the information we have on archaic Rome, come from much later \u2013 no earlier than the 1st century BC. They were not writing what we would call an \u2018accurate\u2019 history of the city\u2019s early history but were using these descriptions to define Roman culture for themselves and their contemporaries, and to debate its problems and peculiarities. Again, probably too much of a tangent to go into too much detail here but suffice to say that the literary record on Rome\u2019s early history must be read very, very carefully. Nevertheless, we have no reason to doubt the fact that Mars was worshipped in early republican Rome by dedicated priesthoods, and that this worship was connected to the army.\n\nHowever, the Roman association of Mars with war was more complicated than just the overseer of battles and armies. He was more closely connected with the purification and protection of the army, and by extension the whole city. The major festivals for Mars were clustered in March (the month named after him), at the beginning of the campaign season, and October at the end. In the March festivals, Mars was asked to protect the soldiers and their equipment in the coming battles, and in October the rituals remove any spiritual pollution picked up over the summer, thereby protecting the army and the city as a whole. It\u2019s important to remember that for the entire republican period there was no professional Roman army \u2013 all the soldiers were conscripted citizens who were drafted for particular campaigns and then disbanded once they were no longer needed. Hence the close connection between the army and Rome more generally \u2013 the army was the citizenry and vice versa.\n\nThis connection with the ordinary citizenry brings us onto Mars\u2019 other main area of influence in Roman religion: agriculture. Cato the Elder, in his handbook on agriculture, makes it very clear that Mars was called upon to protect farmland, and that specific sacrifices were expected before using land for the first time. Again, Mars is being called on as a protector and purifier and is worshipped using the same rituals that were used to purify the army before going into battle. It\u2019s interesting that Cato specifies that the sacrifices be offered to a particular version of Mars \u2013 Mars Pater or Father Mars. This is almost certainly a reference to the fact that Mars was supposedly the father of Romulus and Remus (having raped their mother), and therefore symbolically the father of the whole Roman people.\n\nSo, we\u2019ve got a relatively clear picture in the republican period of Mars as a protecting and purifying god, connected with the army as a god of war, but also presiding over farmland and the population of Rome in general. I\u2019m not quite sure where you\u2019re getting the idea that Mars represented wars that brought peace \u2013 I can\u2019t really think of any specific ancient sources that discuss him like that, although I\u2019d love you to point me in their direction!\n\nI wonder if the question as you\u2019ve asked it is actually more to do with Roman attitudes towards and justifications of their own wars of imperial conquest, rather than being specifically about the god Mars. It is certainly true that from at least the first century BC, the Romans were starting to think about why they go to war and the ways in which they have conquered their empire. In his speech on the Lex Manilia, Cicero gives hints that the idea of so-called \u2018defensive imperialism\u2019 is already being bounced around, suggesting that the Romans waged war on their enemies to ensure security, peace and prosperity for themselves and their allies. This idea gets a huge boost under Augustus after 27 BC, once he\u2019s ended the civil wars and installed himself as the first emperor. From then on Rome supposedly entered a new Golden Age of peace \u2013 the Pax Augusta \u2013 free from strife and bloodshed. The job of the army now was to preserve the peace, even if that often still meant fighting offensive campaigns against the barbarians outside the Roman frontiers. The Roman historian Tacitus criticises the obvious paradox in this image \u2013 into the mouth of Calcagus, leader of the Caledonian resistance to the Roman invasion of Scotland, he puts the now-infamous words: \u201cTo robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2ulcya", "title": "There has been an article floating around recently that claims Africans discovered America before Columbus. I was wondering if anybody could speak to the validity of some of the claims it makes.", "selftext": "_URL_1_\n\n\nI don't find it to be very trustworthy and found some [scholarship](_URL_0_) disputing some claims, but can't find evidence disputing all the claims it makes, but also find the claims somewhat hard to believe.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ulcya/there_has_been_an_article_floating_around/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co9ltxv", "co9md1l"], "score": [11, 45], "text": ["I only know bits and pieces about this, mainly relating to Musa I of Mali. He was a King whose predecessor had sailed into the Atlantic with a large fleet(supposedly more than a thousand ships) to see what was beyond the water. A previous fleet had gone ahead and only one ship had returned, saying that the rest were lost in a giant whirlpool.\n\n[This answer by /u/Reedstilt is far more detailed and gives a good overview of the question.](_URL_0_) It won't counter all of the claims in your article, but most of those are more cases of choosing a theory and then finding things that fit it, such as the appearance of pyramids in both the Americas and Africa. Coincidentally, that was explained a week or two back by someone else here as a logical building development of a basic shape(a triangle).", "You're right to be skeptical. This all kinds of wrong.\n\nIn the order of claims:\n\n1. _URL_5_\n\n2. _URL_4_\n\n3. I'm sorry, but no. Egyptian artifacts were not found in Arizona. The closest thing to this that's *actually* been found is the [Calixtlahuaca head](_URL_6_), but that is widely considered a hoax. If only Payon had properly recorded his digs...\n\n4. Their evidence that there's no progression in Mesoamerican pyramid design is just ridiculous. Here's a picture of [La Venta](_URL_0_). Interestingly, just like early egyptian Pyramids, La venta was in fact probably stepped. Designed eventually moved from that to more complicated structures, like that of the [Pyramid of the Niches](_URL_3_) (which was not Olmec). \n\n5. I'd just like to quote a review of Wiercinski's work, because its quality really speaks for itself:\n >  To determine the racial heritage of the ancient Olmecs, Dr. Wiercinski (1972b) used classic diagnostic traits determined by craniometric and cranioscopic methods. These measurements were then compared to a series of three crania sets from Poland, Mongolia and Uganda to represent the three racial categories of mankind.\n\n6. Which American and African religions are actually being discussed? Egyptian religion was definitely not the same as religion in Western Africa, nor was Aztec religion at all related to the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. \n\n7. Nunez de Balboa's visit to the Americas was in 1552. Spaniards had been transporting African slaves to the Americas for roughly half a century by that point. It's not entirely improbable that some escaped and were seen. This was certainly a common occurrence later. \n\n8. _URL_2_\n\n9. I'm not sure how stylized stone heads can be \"clearly crafted in the likeness of Africans\", considering the diversity of appearances on that continent. This says more about the author's preconceptions  than anything else.\n\n10. Interestingly, I'd never heard of this particular theory before. It appears to be a variation on the [Lake Tritonis](_URL_1_) idea. Unfortunately, the desertification of the Sahara precedes the evolution of humans and Lake Chad has never extended into Egypt. Similarly, the idea that African traders introduced cotton to the Americas is... amusing. Genetic evidence indicates the American and Afroeurasian genuses diverged around a million years ago.^1 In order for this timeline to make sense, we'd either have to rewrite essentially everything we know about human evolutionary history or concede that Cotton is probably native to the Americas.\n\n^1 Wendel, J. F.,  &  Cronn, R. C. (2003). Polyploidy and the evolutionary history of cotton. *Advances in agronomy*, 78, 139-186."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/vansertima.pdf", "http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/23/10-pieces-of-evidence-that-prove-black-people-sailed-to-the-americas-long-before-columbus/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zmi5t/is_there_any_evidence_that_moors_reached_the/cfuzqd8"], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/La_Venta_Pir%C3%A1mide_cara_sur.jpg/1024px-La_Venta_Pir%C3%A1mide_cara_sur.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tritonis", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nvf4c/did_the_ancient_egyptians_ever_cross_the_ocean/ccmm135", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/PyramidNiches1.JPG", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wlujw/over_on_rtodayilearned_theres_a_big_thread_right/cf3ja4z", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2meuz5/recep_erdogan_just_claimed_muslim_sailors/#cm3nqr3&amp;context=1", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Tecaxic_calixtlahuaca_head.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2rqi4r", "title": "why did mohammad marry a 6 year old?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rqi4r/eli5_why_did_mohammad_marry_a_6_year_old/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnib4ng", "cnib4q2", "cnib5hs", "cnib8lh", "cnibaoz", "cnibaub", "cnibcw6", "cnibere", "cnibexq", "cnibg9s", "cnibjjm", "cnibjus", "cnibkyt", "cniblil", "cnibpol", "cnibsrb", "cnibtus"], "score": [4, 18, 15, 3, 7, 20, 32, 3, 3, 2, 9, 2, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I wouldn't expect to get a Straight answer on the subject. There are too many religious fundamentalists out there who will justify their position using rhetorical technique and never actually address the question. ", "I have follow up question: Was the marriage consummated when she was still a child?", "Religion is weird, and times have changed. Many things that happen in religious texts would be considered quite strange or perverted, but it's possible it's just a story I guess. ", "Cuz he lived the thug life, he could fuck yo bitch if he wanted to. ", "As far as I was told by my religious family members. The girl was an orphan and the only way she was allowed to live in Muhammeds house only if he married her at that time. The accuracy of the story I don't know. ", "You either believe all of the writings or none of them, either he was a prophet from God and married a 9 year old, or none of it happened?\n\nPlease, also remember, that the reasons for him marrying the girl were not so he could fuck a kid, but so that she would be under his ward, as she was an orphan she had no one available to look after her ... or so the writings explain.\n\nThe Hadith, is also based upon the words of others and not the original religious text, anyone could have written anything in there.\n\nThis is all coming from a non-religious person that actually researched the topic rather than thought he'd get a cheap giggle and post some bullshit loaded ELI like a fucking dick. \n\n**EDIT** Just to add, there seems to be an insane amount of chaps choosing parts of the Hadith, which again was not the original religious text, the Quran, and only accepting those as complete truths simply because they can twist those sections to fit an agenda of hate and ignorance. It also states that Muhammad was a messenger from God? That must be true as well then? Since it's all scripture! No pun intended. ", "You know what? The answers here stink. \n\nYou could ask a Muslim sub (especially an ask/debate/101-style sub) but it might be seen as a bit inflammatory and you'll probably get rubbish answers of a different kind there too.\n\nMy best advice is to ask /r/exmuslim - they know their Islam over there so well that they dislike it, but if you explain that you want to get some of the background behind it then you'll probably get a few people who know their hadiths and what have you to give a critical overview of that part of Muhammad's life. And they're a pretty funny bunch too.", "Marriage isnt the right word for that time and place. She was spoken for. If a woman had no tribe or was not spoken for there was no repercussions for anything that happened to her. He took many wives to keep them safe. ", "I thought this was under r/jokes so I was confused when there was no punchline. ", "I'm not a historian by an means and I don't actually know the story here but it wasn't uncommon for men to marry girls who were very young (in some cases toddlers) only to consummate the marriage when the girl came of age (whatever that may be given the context).\n\nEdit: okay did a little more reading and they consummated when she was nine. That's really really messed up.", "Well, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves his entire life and even took one as a concubine, but people still seem to think the things he had to say are worth studying, talking about, and even abiding by.\n\nSame thing.  We are all subject to the moral standards and norms of the cultures in which we are born and live our lives.  It might be that, 1000 years from now, we'd all be guilty of any number of decidedly horrible crimes, but that doesn't mean we cannot contribute anything of value.", "Alliances I believe. It was important for the Prophet to have strong and valuable allies in the early days of Islam, which meant marrying their daughters. One just happened to 6 at the time.\n\nBut don't forget that the Prophet married a 40 year old woman when he was 25. She was his employer and she proposed to him. They were monogamously married for 25 years, until the Prophet was 50. He was deeply saddened by her death and called it the saddest year of his life and remained so for the rest of his life. It took a year until he remarried.\n\nSo let's be fair and have both sides guys.", "Joseph was supposed to be around 90 when he married Mary, who was around 12. Let's just say that the first millenium was a shitty time to be an underage girl.", "Because she was not, and texts pointing at her age are most likely wrong. Also a 6 or 9-year old girl isn't considered as \"old enough\" anyway in Islam\n\nSome actual research here:\n\n_URL_0_", "If you read this, check the labels on your clothes to see if they were made in Bangladesh, Indonesia or Pakistan. If so, it is highly likely that children of under 9 were involved directly in the manufacturing process (7.9 million children between 5 and 17 years old to be precise [source](_URL_0_) ). They work long hours - which would be forbidden in OECD countries - for a pittance, and are fired for any hint of unionisation. Does the fact that our link to these children is at a geographical remove and part of a larger economic system absolve us from responsibility from the lives they are forced to lead? Just pointing out that any exploitation is easily justified as an inevitable part of a larger socioeconomic system.\n\n[source 1](_URL_1_) [source 2](_URL_2_) [source 3](_URL_3_) [source 4](_URL_0_)\n\nBTW How can anyone respect Thomas Jefferson or George Washington seeing as they were slave owners? Even if they advocated for reform, they knowingly used slave labour throughout their adult lives. If your answer is: \"They were good men but trapped in their time, so we can respect them when thus contextualised\", then please explain LI5 why this same line of reasoning cannot be applied to the prophet Mohammed?\n\nEDIT: This all does not exonerate any paedophile behaviour by anybody, but I want to de-isolate all the well-meaning muslim-bashing going on right now. Let's look in a big cultural mirror before bearing down on others too quickly, eh?\n", "Historical records can be spotty. There are diagreements about her age. The most generous view is that she was married at 9 years old, which is what I heard originally, and she had sex at age 12. This is what I believe.\n\nSo, my simplest explanation for this behavior is:\n\n1. Morality changes based on the conditions in which a society lives. When circumstance changes, generally speaking, so does morality, or what is acceptable, and not acceptable. For example, it's generally thought of as cruel to kill another person. However, when they are threatened the views change, and then it turns into \"self defense.\" Morality, or what we call morality, is not rigid, or fixed.\n\n\n2. People didn't live as long back then. Dying younger was very common. There was no saving anything for the future. It was do it today or never. However, it should be noted that the low average life span was due to babies dying. But in terms of how society perceived their own longevity that is the most important part. If people thought they would die in their 40s that is a rather short time to live. Therefore people would be more pressed to do things that they would think beneficial, including marrying earlier, and having a family.\n\n3. Giving birth was no easy task. It isn't now, but today in a proper hospital you will generally come out alive. Back then birth was an extremely perilous task. It was of crucial importance a woman, or girl rather, be in the best shape to give birth; otherwise, that would result in her death. So, it was the general view that a young girl would be best suited to have a baby.\n\n4. Men often went to war and died, or were involved in deadly conflict. That meant a woman could be left as a widower, which would have devastating consequences. If she was too old, somewhat like today, that meant she could not get remarried  and/or be capable of taking care of her child. Therefore, having a child at a younger age would be beneficial. Imagien that you had a baby when 12, and then your husband died, 10 years later. You'd still be attractive at 22 years old. \n\nNowadays many people have babies at age 30. But imagine that 10 years passed. Then she would be 40. No problem today, right? Because a woman can earn. But back then that was not the case. A woman could not earn for herself. So the idea that women marry young was largely perpetuated by sexism, and inequality.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "It was an agreement to marry her when she came of age. She lived with her father until she was old enough to be married. \n\nYou also must remember that in those days people got married very young, it isn't the same as today's standards."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.el-baghdadi.com/index.php/component/content/article/35-the-islamic-paradigm/the-islamic-paradigm/126-when-was-aysha-born"], ["http://www.ilo.org/legacy/english/regions/asro/newdelhi/ipec/responses/bangladesh/index.htm", "http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/children_4863.htm", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00527/abstract", "http://www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/findings/2013TDA/bangladesh.pdf"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3yx1rb", "title": "Contemporary spy novels were popular in the west during the cold war - did the eastern bloc have an equivalent?", "selftext": "Considering the popularity of the format, and the opportunity to portray 'the other side' how you wish, were there novels about brave Soviet agents trying to get home across the Berlin wall, albeit in the opposite direction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yx1rb/contemporary_spy_novels_were_popular_in_the_west/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyi3dfh", "cyi9h6k"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Leaving open the possibility of new responses, you might also find [this earlier thread on a similar question helpful](_URL_0_).", "\"The Soviet James Bond\".\n\nBBC R4 Documentary.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/188xka/during_the_cold_war_did_the_soviets_have_their/"], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59h9"]]}
{"q_id": "98jy6z", "title": "Was Hermann Goering in ANY way competent or useful ?", "selftext": "My impression of him was that he was incredibly incompetent, so why was he in charge in the first place ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/98jy6z/was_hermann_goering_in_any_way_competent_or_useful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e4gk2ri"], "score": [162], "text": ["From [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)\n\nOne of the common denominators of accounts from Allied personnel who encountered G\u00f6ring was that they were shocked at his intelligence. Allied prosecutors at the IMT tended to see him as one of the cannier defendants as did the journalists that covered the Tribunals. The RAF officer Eric Brown also found G\u00f6ring to be intelligent and well-versed on technical matters after the fact. These accounts of his intelligence were not just impressions either; IQ tests conducted by the Allied authorities placed G\u00f6ring in the 99th percentile. This picture of a highly intelligent Reichsmarschall is at odds with though with G\u00f6ring's leadership of the Luftwaffe. Postwar accounts by Adolf Galland and many of the *Jagdflieger* veterans were often at pains to stress G\u00f6ring's incompetence and unsuitability for his position. Nor was this postwar picture by Luftwaffe veterans entirely an attempt to blame-shift  defeat on their military chief. G\u00f6ring did have his hand in a number of disasters and did push the Luftwaffe down a number of strategic dead-ends. These two pictures though- the foolish air leader and the intelligent, charismatic individual- are not too hard to reconcile though. Intelligence and bad leadership were not mutually exclusive in the National Socialist state. \n\n*Pace* the common perception of G\u00f6ring as a complete failure, his leadership of the Luftwaffe in the early years was actually not that bad. G\u00f6ring knew enough to delegate to various Reichswehr leaders that had been prepping for aerial rearmament since the 1920s. In particular, G\u00f6ring relied very much on the technocratic and capable Erhard Milch at the helm of *Reichsluftfahrtministerium* (aviation ministry/RLM) to resolve the major technical and personnel issues that occurred when expanding a military force from scratch. Milch, in conjunction with Walter Wever formed a competent team that managed to create a structure that could be expanded quickly. G\u00f6ring himself also had fairly decent technical instincts towards certain aircraft in this early period  and appreciated that this was an era of great technical change. Milch also had a knowledgeable relationship with nascent German aviation industry and knew its capabilities. The industry itself also formed a profitable relationship with G\u00f6ring and the two worked in symbiosis in this period of expansion as G\u00f6ring's duties for the Four-Year Plan meant he could funnel resources into the aviation sector to enhance his own prestige within the National Socialist state hierarchy. \n\nThe Luftwaffe's successes of the early war years was a beneficiary of this prewar system. Germany possessed a large, technically advanced air force in September 1939 with a great deal of trained personnel and a coherent doctrine. This was no mean feat for a service that barely existed prior to 1933 beyond the Reichswehr's experimental units. The Luftwaffe procurement certainly did have its own boondoggles like the Ju-86. This bomber set to be powered by diesel engines, was obsolete before it even entered service and most Ju-86s were either sold or went immediately into training units. The Ju-86 debacle and other mistakes like adding too many requirements to the Ju-88 program were problems, but every air force in this period also had similar failures and setbacks. Dead-ends like the Ju-86 were normal in an era of massive technological change when promising technology like diesel aviation engines never quite delivered. \n\nNonetheless, the victories of 1939 and 1940 did mask a significant number of problems within the Luftwaffe that became more prominent as the war dragged on. The losses in the 1940 campaigns in France and Britain were quite severe. Despite this, German industry could only barely cover operational losses and the same could be said of the Luftwaffe's training establishment. Victory over France had vindicated the use of airpower, but no the Luftwaffe found itself facing a hard ceiling on its expansion. Milch's championship of American-style production techniques ran into resistance from aviation firms who came from an older German industrial tradition of craftsmanship and technical precision. The technocratic Milch was often abrasive to men like Willi Messerschmitt, and while industry could form a functional relationship with Milch in peace, this relationship suffered under wartime pressure. G\u00f6ring tended to side with industry over Milch in these internal squabbles as he both feared a potential rival within the Luftwaffe and he too found Milch abrasive.\n\nTechnical issues also began to loom more seriously for the long-term prospects of the Luftwaffe. A 1939 decision to focus all future production on only four aircraft types- the He-177, Me-210, Bf-109, and Ju-88, proved to be disastrous as only the latter two aircraft were able to resolve technical hurdles to become operational. A good deal of the blame for this problem was the leadership of Ernst Udet at the RLM technical office. Udet, who replaced Wever after the latter died in a crash landing, was like G\u00f6ring an flying ace from the last war and chosen for his job largely because of his connections to the Reichsmarschall. Udet was patently unsuitable for his job and often wasted precious time and resources on dead-ends and chimeras like making every bomber capable of dive attacks. Udet's leadership further exacerbated RLM's tendencies towards focusing too much on technical issues and solutions at the expense of the bigger picture. Additionally, Udet and the RLM's leadership as a whole was incapable of thinking flexibly about new roles and uses for aircraft despite their focus on high-technology solutions. Roles and aircraft for them sometimes had to be implemented on the ground as opposed to Berlin. Such was the case with the FW-200 which was derived from a Japanese order of a militarized version of the airliner and came into service largely at the behest of Hauptmann Edgar Petersen, an officer of the X.Fliegerkorps (the unit tasked with maritime strike), after he visited Focke-Wulf in September 1939 to ascertain whether or not civilian aircraft could be used for this role.\n\nIn fairness to G\u00f6ring, not all of the problems with the Luftwaffe in this period were entirely his fault. A number of postwar narratives have inflated his role in the decision to halt outside of Dunkirk. While G\u00f6ring certainly did claim the Luftwaffe could destroy the pocket alone, research by Karl Heinz Frieser has shown that such assertions only came after Hitler and his generals had made the decision to halt the ground forces. The decision to fight the Battle of Britain also fell in line with a number of air strategists around the world that felt that airpower alone was sufficient to force political results. G\u00f6ring may have reveled in the idea that *his* air force could force a British capitulation, but even without this egoism, this thought was not all that out of line with contemporary thinking on airpower. And G\u00f6ring does deserve some credit for the Fw-190 program. He was sufficiently impressed by a demonstration of Kurt Tank's fighter and understood that relying too much on the Bf-109 was unwise given the bottlenecks of Messerschmitt's plane like the troubled production of the DB 600 series of engines. \n\nCracks began to appear in the edifice of the Luftwaffe by 1941. Udet's suicide may have been prompted by a love affair, but the man was under extraordinary pressures from his failures at RLM like the Me-210. German procurement was left in chaos as attempts to inject rationalism and streamlining the process ran afoul of existing power blocs and created unnecessary frictions. Udet though was emblematic of a deep-seated problem within the Luftwaffe's leadership in that G\u00f6ring had a tendency to promote the wrong men to positions of authority. The Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff, Hans Jeschonnek, was typical of the wrong man in the wrong place. Although Jeschonnek possessed a keen mind, he was also slavishly subservient to higher authority. This was one of the attributes that endeared him G\u00f6ring, but also to Hitler. It was the Luftwaffe's chief of staff, not its commander, that assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could resupply the Stalingrad pocket. Jeschonnek had a tendency to agree with his superiors' desires and then try to find a way to make them work around existing capabilities. In the Stalingrad airlift decision, both G\u00f6ring and Hitler initially proceeded along Jeschonnek's optimistic assessments of German capabilities, and in fairness to the chief of staff, they were not inclined to investigate the matter on their own. It was telling of the Luftwaffe's habits of leadership that even though Jeschonnek later figured out his errors after consulting with frontline commanders, he never really tried correct them and committed to this course of action. This was one of the byproducts of the Luftwaffe's swift expansion within a National Socialist milieu. Younger officers tended to be promoted to the upper echelons well past their experiences while the Nazi system prioritized a type of political loyalty that verged on cronyism. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6o5cj9/hermann_goering_was_very_intelligent_and_an/"]]}
{"q_id": "313glp", "title": "why are really fucked up hateful subreddits allowed to exist?", "selftext": "I know that reddit is a place where free speech and and freedom of choice are encouraged but why are certain subs like r/rapingwomen and r/coontown still allowed to be on the website even though they encourage violence and hatred? I like this place just as much as the next person, it sucks that people using it as a tool to spread their awful filth.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/313glp/eli5_why_are_really_fucked_up_hateful_subreddits/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpy3ncl", "cpy42il", "cpy4772", "cpy4m0v", "cpy4nn7", "cpy5r3v", "cpy5reg", "cpy68ff", "cpy6i01", "cpyekjv"], "score": [69, 2, 13, 23, 9, 2, 2, 8, 4, 2], "text": ["The point of freedom of speech is that it's not up to you to decide what is \"awful filth\". You think it is, which is fine, but the people who post there (not me) don't. To ban their stuff would be to say that your opinion was more important than theirs.\n\nAlso, it's easy enough to not be subscribed and never have that stuff show up.", "I am not sure why subreddits devoted to Christianity, Islam, Republicans and many others are allowed to exist.\n\n\n(Your answer is that it is all subjective. Once you close down r/deathtofags, you need to close down r/christianity for similar reasons.)\n\n\nToo much censorship is slavery.", "It is not the role of reddit, twitter, comcast, Verizon, or any other information medium to regulate content.  That's all.", "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.  Prohibition never works, it just pushes behavior into a darker corner of society.", "You're going to get a lot of answers from privileged folks about the absoluteness of free speech, and essentially that's the philosophy Reddit embraces. What it omits is that moderating a site so as not to provide a platform for violent or hateful rhetoric is not a violation of free speech as Reddit is not a governmental entity (a certain cop-out of a post by a certain ex-CEO notwithstanding), and it's questionable in many cases as to whether hate speech is protected even if it were.", "Like you said, its free speech. That's the dark side of freedom you do have the right to be a total racist, misogynist douchebag. ", "It's a good way to monitor my potential haters. ", "I'm going to dispute your premise (and the premise of many responders here).\n\nReddit does not promote free speech. It allows certain kinds of speech in a private forum. It already regulates speech beyond what we would see as \"free\" (as in unregulated). Hate speech is a good example. Prohibited on many subreddits, but not even government can arrest you for it.\n\nFurthermore, the entire upvote-downvote system has been abused to the point of censoring minority opinions. (I call this the Downvote Disease, btw). When you get enough downvotes, your comment is hidden, and you start needing to wait in order to reply.\n\nHow does this tie into your question? See what happens to people with unpopular opinions. Your example  of r/rapingwomen works, but it's the same in a lot of subreddits like having a pro-gun opinion in /r/GunsAreCool or an anti-gun position in /r/progun. The minority opinion is driven out of subs into their own little subs, and removing them without them violating the site's terms of service is a lawsuit waiting to happen.", "Banning the subreddit doesn't make people stop thinking that way, it just sends them underground.  At least now we know who they are and we know where they are and if they cross the line between hate speech and hate crime, they'll be caught.\n\nAnd by giving them a playground, it keeps them from spewing their hate all over the other subreddits...", "Because there have been no news organizations pushing to close them. Creepshots was only banned because of the news finding out about it. It has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with getting more users. If a subreddit gets in the news about something bad it will be banned, even if said subreddit has been doing it for years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vijry", "title": "Do large, fast moving masses leave behind a gravitational wake?", "selftext": "When a fast moving object like a comet is flying through space, is its affect on spacetime limited to the discreet area its mass currently inhabits at any given moment, or is space still physically affected to any degree after the object is gone?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vijry/do_large_fast_moving_masses_leave_behind_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cesp890", "cesqzt7"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["I believe what you are looking for is gravitational waves. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey haven't been directly observed but physicists are pretty confident they exist. Been ages since I did any relativity so someone else can go into detail. But yes I believe a comet orbiting a star will generate gravitational waves. They would however be many orders of magnitude too weak to be detectable. ", "What you're talking about is generally referred to as gravitational waves (GWs).  In the most generic sense, these are ripples in an otherwise static gravitational field.  It's important to not that we have not *directly* detected GWs, but the predicted sources of such waves are non-symmetric bodies that undergo acceleratoin.  So a symmetric body moving at constant speed is not predicted to emit gravitational radiation.\n\nA slightly more technical discussion:\n\n > Conservation of mass/energy forbids gravitational radiation from mass monopoles, while conservation of angular momentum means that there can be no dipolar gravitational radiation. Thus the leading term in the gravitational radiation expansion is a quadrupole term. However, in contrast to electromagnetic waves, which are dipolar in nature, gravitational waves, as quadrupole waves, contract space-time in one\ndirection while expanding space-time in an orthogonal direction, exerting a tidal strain on space-time. Thus the sources for gravitation radiation are accelerating systems where the inertia tensor for the system gives rise to a mass quadrupole moment, that is, systems whose mass distribution is neither spherically nor cylindrically symmetric. \n\n > It is for these reasons that anticipated sources for gravitational waves include binary inspiral of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes, low-mass X-ray binary systems, rotational instabilities during stellar core collapse, and non-axisymmetric pulsars among others. [source](_URL_0_)\n\nThere are a small number of Gravitational Wave Detectors around the world (LIGO, VIRGO, GEO,etc) who's entire mission is to confirm the existence of GWs.  Many GW detectors use interferometry to determine changes in length to scales 1000 times smaller than a proton (or smaller!)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave"], ["http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7774&amp;context=etd_theses"]]}
{"q_id": "13buoi", "title": "How would an Elizabethan audience react to Act V, scene i of Hamlet?", "selftext": "As many times as I've read this play, I've never understood how to interpret Hamlet's encounter with Yorick's skull.\n\nFirst, are we supposed to assume that the skull is indeed Yorick's, or is the clown/gravedigger continuing to screw with Hamlet -- as he did when asked whose grave he was digging? Considering the amount of bones and skulls tossed from the grave, how can the gravedigger be so sure? Is the gravedigger fucking with Hamlet? Or were gravediggers during Shakespeare's time just damn good at matching skulls to their former owners?\n\nSecond, how would an Elizabethan audience react to Hamlet fondling the remains of his former babysitter? It seems like this would be regarded as taboo. Would they see it as a further deepening of Hamlet's madness? Or would they just roll with it because it's theatre and interpret it as Hamlet coming to terms with his fate?\n\nAny articles or books would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13buoi/how_would_an_elizabethan_audience_react_to_act_v/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c72lfrd", "c72mp8g", "c72n5qw", "c72o8k9", "c72uhvx"], "score": [9, 38, 7, 57, 4], "text": ["There's also an [r/Shakespeare](_URL_0_) if you're interested. (I figured there just *had* to be a subreddit for that, given there's one for everything else, so I searched...)", "Honestly, this probably the most interesting question I've seen on this subreddit ever. It's rare to find a question that requires someone with actual deep knowledge of their field to apply to a unique query. Most of the junk on here can be answered with a google search. Kudos to you for putting the thought into asking a bright question. I don't care if this post is against the rules of \"only posting if you know an answer,\" this sort of content needs to be praised.", "[Here is a link to the text of the scene for quick reference.](_URL_0_)", "The gravediggers are comedy characters, and more specifically a fool or clown character. The Elizabethan \"fool\" character had a semi-magical quality that allowed them to simply know and speak truths, a fool cannot dissemble, so when a fool speaks, it is understood to be \"true\" for the purposes of the story. Feste as played by Ben Kingsley in the 1996 film is a good example of the power of the fool. Clowns often \"break the fourth wall\" and occupy both the setting of the play, and the setting of the performance. When a clown/fool says something on the Elizabethan stage, it's most likely going to be true. \n\n\nSo, the audience *most likely* would have simply accepted that the skull was Yorick because of the kind of character who was saying it, however this is Hamlet, and the level of what would now call \"meta references\" are huge: it's entirely possible that Shakespeare's audience had a thought process of \"How does he know that's Yorick's skull? It's probably not Yorick's skull... Wait, of course it isn't... I'm watching a play\"; there's a lot of that kind of thing in Hamlet, views of how much would be understood by Shakespeare's audience swings between \"none of it\" and \"more than we do\".\n\n\nIn a more specific sense, Yorrick is widely believed to have been a reference to Richard Tarlton, who was a pre-Shakespearean comedy legend that the audience would have been aware of, so they may well have simple \"got the reference\" and enjoyed it on that level.\n\n\nAs to the second point, when Hamlet handles the skull, rather than crazy semi-necrophiliac breaking a taboo, the audience would have seen it as a Memento Mori, a reminder that everyone must die, which was not seen as an especially crazy thing to do even up to the early 20th century (an example would be the Victorian custom of taking photographs of deceased people, it seems mental to us now, but was acceptable at the time). \n\n\nBooks to check out:\n_URL_2_\nHas lots of stuff about the performance of Hamlet in general, if I'm remembering correctly, there was some good stuff about the \"original way\" it was performed.\n\n\nUnfortunately, the best book I ever read about the Elizabethan fool (Enid Welsford's) seems to be out of print; but here's a thesis up on the Internet Archive that seems to cover the same ground:\n_URL_0_\n\n\nAnd there's a nice little article here which goes into the gravedigger scene specifically, among others:\n_URL_1_\n\n\n\n\n ", "Roll with it, I think. The Elizabethan audience after all were very au fait with histrionics on stage since the theatre at the time reveled in showing very extreme situations and reactions - recall Titus Andronicus putting people in pies and feeding them to their father. It was a way to showcase the best acting talents of the day and I think in the Elizabethan theatre (noisy, daylit) big performances were sometimes necessary to make an impact. They probably relished the very Shakespearian meta-ness of Hamlet's performance too - an actor playing a madman, or an actor playing a character playing a madman? \n\nRegarding the taboo question, somewhat tangential but it's fun to read Voltaire's reaction to seeing a Shakespeare play. He of course was used to the French drama of the time, which was very staid, Aristotelian, based on the [Classical Unities](_URL_0_).\n\nHere's his opinion on Hamlet:\n\n*Far be it from me to justify everything in the tragedy of Hamlet; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river, a grave is dug on the stage, and the grave-diggers talk quodlibets worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands; Hamlet responds to their nasty vulgarities in silliness no less disgusting. In the meanwhile another of the actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law, carouse on the stage; songs are sung at table; there is quarrelling, fighting, killing \u2013 one would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in Hamlet, by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages, worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatsoever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/shakespeare/"], [], ["http://www.enotes.com/hamlet-text/act-v-scene-i"], ["http://archive.org/details/studiesindevelop00busbuoft", "http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/shaksper/files/ROLE%20CLOWN.txt", "http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1717445.Acting_In_Shakespeare"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_unities"]]}
{"q_id": "dy7sp1", "title": "What determines the size of a sonic boom? Is it how loud the aircraft is, or its size?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dy7sp1/what_determines_the_size_of_a_sonic_boom_is_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f81hozj", "f81onq7", "f82qg5i"], "score": [3, 9, 3], "text": ["What do you mean by \"size\"?\n\nThe shape and size of an aircraft and its speed matter. The noise produced by the aircraft's engines is largely independent of that.", "A sonic boom is produced by airflow over the aircraft. Engine noise is insignificant.\n\nAircraft size is a factor. All else being equal, bigger plane, bigger boom.\n\nDistance to the aircraft, which in turn relates to how high the aircraft flies, is a factor. Higher flying, quieter boom but one that is heard over a wider area.\n\nAircraft shape is very important. By suitably designing the aircraft the sonic boom can be reduced. This has been an active area of R & D for some decades but so far only experimental and prototype reduced-boom aircraft have flown.\n\nSpeed is surprisingly not a big factor. As long as the plane is supersonic, whether it's doing Mach 1.2 or Mach 3 makes little change in how loud the boom is. An exception is for a plane flying only just over Mach 1, the change in speed of sound with air temperature can cause the sonic boom to be refracted and never reach the ground.\n\nIf I remember rightly aircraft manouvering affects the sonic boom. A sudden pitch upwards can make a louder boom compared to straight and level flight.", "Virtually all smokeless propellant centerfire rifle cartridges fire bullets that travel faster than sound for all or most of their flight, and they make sonic *snaps*.  If you are far enough away from the rifle's muzzle blast that it is either inaudible or well delayed, and the bullet flies past you at a fairly close distance, it's as if a sharp, snappy little firecracker appeared out of thin air (so to speak). \n\nThe point is twofold:  Any object moving fast enough though significantly thick atmosphere will create a \"sonic boom,\" not just aircraft; and the size  &  shape making a difference can be demonstrated with bullets alone.  No onboard power source required."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jr4x2", "title": "i open a big bag of chips, family sized. i take my portion, and also fill 3 zip lock baggies with those freshly opened chips. two days later the chips i put in the zip locked bags are stale. 2 weeks later, the chips in the original bag are not stale.", "selftext": "I thought I would be saving money, saving the chips in fresh zip locked bags, but no. Stale as Hell. I am old. I don't do it anymore, I'm just wondering why, when I leave the family sized bag folded over/barely closed, WHY do they still taste fresh, and my \"freshly\" sealed goes bad within 2-3 days? Cheers!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jr4x2/eli5_i_open_a_big_bag_of_chips_family_sized_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clecbi2", "cleckay", "cledif7", "cleea6f", "cleegbl", "cleia95", "clejg3y"], "score": [5, 9, 11, 2, 12, 2, 2], "text": ["Moisture can penetrate Zip Loc bags much easier than the silvery plastic that comes in chip bags. Moisture gets in and ruins the chips. You should have kept them in the big bag until you were ready to pack them. They would have been fine. Two weeks is a long time for chips also.", "You know, that's a good question. You have your hypothesis, now go for some experiments. I have bags, wrap, wax paper, and potato chip bags. I'm going to try it out.", "There are at least two reasons.\n\nAs other people have mentioned, zip-loc bags, made from cheap plastic (LDPE or whatever), are not impermeable to oxygen or water. Some will eventually get through. The inside foil lining of your chip bag is much, much better at keeping the outside air out.\n\nHowever, even though a zip-loc bag is comparatively terrible as a diffusion barrier, it is still pretty good. I'd have a hard time believing that a zip-loc bag would allow that much moisture in to render chips stale in two days. \n\nWhich brings me to the second reason:\n\nThere are a lot more chips in the chips bag than in the zip-loc bag. I'm guessing the zip-loc baggies don't contain many chips, because the bag can only stretch so wide, and chips are irregularly-shaped. So the air-to-chips ratio in the baggies is pretty high. Contrast that to the family-sized bag, which probably has a lot more chips, and only a bit more air.\n\nWhy does this matter? It is possible, if the air is humid enough, and the air-to-chips ratio high enough, for your chips to go stale simply due to the moisture in the air already in the bag. The chips in the bag won't have this problem, as there are so many chips, each individual chip won't get a lot of moisture. As a bonus, most chip bags come filled with nitrogen, which is slightly heaver than air. Although it will eventually diffuse out, that initial, moisture-free nitrogen will linger for a while, giving your chip bag chips a nice advantage as well.", "Plastic isn't an air barrier, and air carries moisture. The lining on the inside of the chip's packaging is an air barrier, however.", "Bags of chips are not full of air, they are full of nitrogen (I think) or some other chemical mix that keeps things fresh and reduces moisture and bacterial growth. As soon as you open the bag this dissipates. ", "Maybe light exposure plays a role? ", "Another factor not mentioned is light, which causes photodegradation. That's why they're stored in a light-proof foil package.\n\nAnd to add to the comments made by /u/YMCApylons and /u/Poduler about nitrogen - here's a study from 1994 that showed that a trained panel of tasters could tell the difference between chips stored in a nitrogen filled bag and one without after 11 weeks of storage.\n\n[Effect of nitrogen flushing on shelf-life of packaged potato chips](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso the gas is also dehumidifed and usually filtered as well, which reduces the number of microbes (though some microbes will actually do better in anaerobic conditions, but I think they're usually associated with meat).\n\nBUT, you say you've opened the bag already, so I guess most of the difference is due to the reduced permeability of the foil bag and the blocking of light."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pts.2770070205/abstract"]]}
{"q_id": "j2kzr", "title": "why does the product of two negative numbers equal a positive number? can you explain it like i'm five?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2kzr/why_does_the_product_of_two_negative_numbers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c28m64p", "c28m6p2", "c28m9mg", "c28m9ti", "c28n73y", "c28njm1", "c28nupv", "c28nyex", "c28o7d2", "c28px98"], "score": [15, 35, 1143, 6, 4, 2, 6, 3, 3, 15], "text": ["Negative numbers may be too abstract for a 5 year old mind, but let me try.\n\nLet's pretend you have 5 apples. If I give you 5 apples 5 more times, you have 25 apples! Lucky you!\n\nNow let's pretend that not only do you not have ANY apples, but you are actually missing 5 apples. If I remove the fact that you're missing 5 apples 5 times, you have 25 Apples, because I got rid of the gaping hole of apples you didn't have, 5 times, and the only way to do that was to give you 5 apples.\n\nThat came out more confusing than I meant it to, but it makes sense in my head.", "It is because you are essentially finding the opposite of an opposite.\n    2 * 2 is 4.\n    2 * -2 is the opposite of 2 * 2, -4.\n    -2 * -2 is the opposite of 2 * -2, 4.\n    \n\n", "Hmm, tougher than it seems... Oh, I know a way, but you really have to think like a five-year-old.\n\nSuppose I told you, \"take two steps *forward* three times\". You are now six steps away from the starting position, in the \"forward\" direction. This is 2x3=6.\n\nNow imagine you're at the starting point again, and I'm telling you, \"take two steps *back* three times\". You are now six steps away from start in the \"back\" direction. This is -2x3=-6.\n\nNow you're at the starting point again and I'm telling you, \"*turn around* and make two steps *forward* three times\". You are now facing the opposite way, so you end up the same six steps away in the \"back\" direction. This is 2x(-3)=-6.\n\nFinally, you're at the starting point and I'm telling you: \"*turn around* and make two steps *back* three times.\" See? You're moving \"backwards\" *while* facing \"backwards\", so you end up six steps away in the *forward* direction. And this is -2x(-3)=6.\n\nThe nice thing about this explanation is that you can actually try it out.\n\n*EDIT: fixed missing minus sign in third example, thanks for noticing*", "There is a geometric answer if you take multiplication as a way to move numbers on the number line. If you multiply by 5, it stretches everything by 5 times its distance from 0. (.1 goes to .5, 2 goes to 10, 0 goes to 0 and -1 goes to -5). Think of the number line stretching. Also, if we multiply by 1, the number line does not stretch.\n\nThe minus sign counts as a reflection across zero. So if we multiply by -1, the line does not stretch, but everything flips. -1 goes to +1, -5 goes to +5 and so on. So a negative number becomes positive and a positive number becomes negative when multiplied by -1 (or by -4, etc)\n\nI understand all this has done is change the question from why is the product of two negative number positive to the question of why does multiplying by a negative give a reflection. \n\nHowever, the actual reason may be simply \"Because mathematicians defined it that way and it is useful\" There are many other ways to define multiplication that are not necessarily useful.", "TL;DR You are *removing* the state of *not having*. \n\nLet's use money as an example. I like money.\n\nYou have three $5 bills, 3x5=15; you have $15.\n\nNow what if you *did not* have three $5 dollar bills? 0x5=0, so you would have $0.\n\nNow what if you *did not* ***not*** have three $5 bills [Oooooo, double negative ;)] \n\nYou would *take away* the state of *not* having three $5 bills. You are taking away the state of not having something a predetermined number of times. -3x-5=15; you took away not having $5 three times. I hope this went well.", "The way I always try to simplify multiplication for myself is by addition.\n\nSo, if I was having trouble with 2 * 4, I'd think 2+2+2+2 = 8.  Thankfully I don't (normally) have trouble with that.\n\nSo -3 * -2 = -(-3 + -3) = -(-6) = 6.", "There are already some great responses here, but let me take a swing at it. You might need to be 7 rather than 5 for this explanation to make sense though; there are no apples, but it should be pretty easy to follow.\n\nFirst, you need to understand that -1 is the one and only number with the property that for any real number x, \n\nx + (-1)x = 0\n\nor in other words\n\n(-1)x = -x\n\nOr in English, -1 is the number where if you multiply it by a number, it switches the sign. So 8\\*(-1) is -8, 8\\*(-1)\\*(-1) is (-8)\\*(-1) is 8, etc.\n\nNext, you need to know that when you multiply two numbers, that is equivalent to multiplying their factors. So\n\n8\\*9 = (2\\*2\\*2)\\*(3\\*3) = 72\n\nYou're also allowed to shuffle the numbers around with multiplication (ie. multiplication is *commutative*), so\n\n8\\*9 = (2\\*3\\*2)\\*(3\\*2) = (2)\\*(2\\*3)\\*(2\\*3), etc.\n\nAlright. So now let's consider the case where one of them is negative:\n\n(-8) \\* 9 = (2\\*2\\*2\\*(-1))\\*(3\\*3) = (2\\*2\\*2)\\*(3\\*3)\\*(-1) = (8)\\*(9)\\*(-1) = 72\\*(-1) = -72\n\nRemembering that (-1) is the number that changes the sign from + to - or vice versa when you multiply by it, you get -72.\n\nNow consider the case where both numbers are negative.\n\n(-8) \\* (-9) = (2\\*2\\*2\\*(-1))\\*(3\\*3\\*(-1)) = (2\\*2\\*2)\\*(3\\*3)\\*(-1)\\*(-1) = (8)\\*(9)\\*(-1)\\*(-1) = 72\\*(-1)\\*(-1) = (-72)\\*(-1) = 72\n\nLooking at the last three steps there especially, you can see that what you're really doing is multiplying the positive numbers by each other, followed by two iterations of multiplying (-1). Multiplying by (-1), again, simply *means* changing the sign from positive to negative, so we do that twice, bringing us back to a positive number.\n\n**EDIT** added a million backslashes in front of my asterisks, thanks reddit", "I know it isn't what you are looking for, as lampochka_returns has it answered very well, but I thought I would add this:\n\nWhen good things happen to good people, it is good (+ x + = +)\n\nWhen bad things happen to good people, it is bad (- x + = -)\n\nWhen bad things happen to bad people, it is good (- x - = -)", "A deficit of a deficit is a surplus. ", "I find this to be a useful example when explaining this concept:  \n\n4 * -4 = -16\n\n3 * -4 = -12\n\n2 * -4 = -8\n\n1 * -4 = -4\n\n0 * -4 = 0\n\n-1 * -4 = 4\n\netc. Not a rigorous argument, but it helps people sometimes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "j2s6d", "title": "li5: how do ones and zeros become complex computer games?", "selftext": "I understand that computers are basically math machines adding 1's and 0's, but how can 1's and 0's become computer games with moving images? I don't understand the translation from 1's and 0's to moving pictures and sounds. Can you explain it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2s6d/li5_how_do_ones_and_zeros_become_complex_computer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c28nwt7", "c28nyeb", "c28nyu1", "c28o2tc", "c28oa07", "c28oqqj", "c28p3uq", "c28pbo1", "c28po4s"], "score": [3, 100, 16, 14, 3, 39, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["First point:\nYou can do a lot with mathematical functions.\n\nSecond point:\nYou can think of your computer display as one big number.  However, instead of going from 0-9, it goes from Red to Green to Blue, and anywhere in between.  The computer display is a very, very, large number which our eye interprets as an image.\n\nThird Point:\nThis large number can vary over time in a variety of ways, and your computer can determine the time between the delays.  Say, for example, I know that the number 10 looks like a person on some theoretical computer screen.  Maybe 10 looks like him with his left foot forward, and 11 looks like him with his right foot forward.  Therefore, by switching back and forth between 10 and 11, I can create the illusion of a walking man.\n\nCombine all three of these things together, add a whole mess of complexity, and you can have a simple game.", "First read the question about how programming languages work:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nGames these days are all written in high level programming languages. These languages all have support for *loops*. A loop allows the programmer to make a certain behavior repeat over and over again. The programmer can put conditions on when the loop should stop (e.g., you hit the escape key, or click \"Quit\" on the menu).\n\nAt the center of every game is a loop that repeats itself really fast. Each time the loop iterates, the entire game is updated. The computer will check whether you've pressed any butons or moved the mouse, and if so it will recalculate the positions of relevant objects in the game world. This might be simple, but it might also involve a vast physics simulation in the background which has a lot of brilliant tricks to take into account the fact that the physics is updated at discrete steps (every time the loop iterates), not continuously as in the real world (or so we assume... :D).\n\nAs for how pictures get on the screen, the screen is *redrawn* every single frame. Every. Single. Frame. It's all redrawn. (And a \"frame\" is nothing but an iteration of the loop I talked about above.)\n\nHow does the programmer actually get stuff on the screen? That's what DirectX and OpenGL are for. These are vast libraries of pre-written code that can communicate directly with the video card, which in turn has the capability of convincing the monitor to display stuff. How does DirectX know how to communicate with your video card? That's what the video driver is for.\n\nNow, finally, what does the programmer tell the video card to draw? How in the world does he figure out how to draw a 3D scene on a 2D grid of pixels? This uses [linear algebra](_URL_0_). But forget about the details of the math. It's just a sequence of steps.\n\nSay you want to draw a cube on the screen. Now the vertices of the square exist in some arbitrary coordinate system whose origin is probably the cube's center. The first step is to translate the cube to its desired location in the actual game environment. This also involves rotating the cube or scaling it. \n\nNow we know that the player is somewhere in the environment looking in some direction. The second step is to translate and rotate the entire world according to where the player is standing and where he's looking. Ex: if the player strafes left, the world slides right; if the player is looking up, then world rotates down, around the point where the player's eyes are at. (Simplified.) \n\nI remember playing Crusin' USA on N64 when I was little, and I sometimes wondered... is the car really moving, or is the ground moving while the car is stationary? The truth is much closer to the latter! The world moves around the player. (Simplified.)\n\nThe final step is to project all the transformed geometry onto a plane, which represents the screen. This produces a set of polygons on the plane to be drawn, almost always triangles because video hardware is optimized for rendering triangles. These data are then send to the video card, which then gets it on the monitor.\n\nEach of these three steps is a simple mathematical computation expressible in a unified manner using linear algebra. Video hardware is exceptionally well-optimized for performing these calcluations with triangles.", "Think of the ones and zeroes like on/off switches.\n\nIn a computer the one or zero determines if a given gate is open or closed to an electronic signal.\n\nThis can be likened to a mechanical calculator.  As switches are flipped and the gears move they manipulate other switches in a predictable pattern.  Old calculators were like this.  You punched a series of buttons and then the machine whirred through one \"step\" and produced an output.  If you get more fancy you take that output and feed it back in and run another step.  Do it over and over and you can manage complex calculations over time.\n\nA computer does exactly the same thing except electronically instead of mechanically.  Being electronic allows for massive speed increases and dramatically smaller size.  Your computer also runs through one \"step\" at a time, same as a mechanical computer.  This is the \"clock speed\" you see advertised for CPUs and such.  Your computer runs like a metronome doing one thing per tick.  It happens it can do a helluva lot of ticks in one second.\n\nSo, how does this convert to a computer game?  Make it simpler and consider how digital music becomes sound.  The switches are manipulated according to rules as mentioned above.  The final output is a digital stream.  This is fed into a digital-analog-converter (DAC) which converts the input into an analog output that runs your speakers (all speakers are analog at the end of it).\n\nGiven the enormous speeds and huge number of switches (billions) in a modern computer you can get them to produce elaborate results that can be converted into colors and sound and tactile or whatever you want. When you can do enough of them fast enough the results can be combined into a game.  Obviously in the past when they were slower you had less elaborate results.\n\nHope that made some sense.\n", "Alright, I'll take a shot at it. You're right, at the lowest level, computers manipulate all data in the form of 1's and 0's. However, any information can be translated into 1's and 0's.\n\nOn the computer, a picture (and you can see this clearly when you really zoom into a digital image) is just a grid of tiny squares. Each square is assigned a color, and each color is created by mixing 256 different shades of red, green and blue (RGB). So saving any image is just a matter of writing down the RGB values for each square in the grid, each of which can vary from 0 to 255.\n\nConversely, your computer screen is also just a grid, with a fixed resolution (E.g. 1280x1024 squares), so to display an image it just needs to figure out what color to show on each of those squares and transmit that information to the monitor. An animation, or moving image, is achieved by changing the display very quickly to fool the eye into perceiving continuous motion.\n\nSimilarly a sound is just a waveform. So, to save a sound, you would have to note down the amplitude of the wave at a given point in time. If you noted this amplitude once per second, you would get a very crude approximation of the actual sound. If you increased this to many thousands of times per second, it would be very hard for a human ear to distinguish between the original wave and the digitized version. E.g. CDs sample music at a rate of 44,100 samples per second.", "brain melted. need to lay down", "To a five year old I'd say...\n\nYou know how a brick is basically just a block of stuff. If you put enough bricks and shape them, they can become something huge like a house, bridge, etc.\n\nComputer games and programs are similar, except they are made from ideas that you can't touch like you can touch a brick. \n\nIf you have an idea you can tell me your idea using sentences, words and letters. To a computer, the Ones are Zeros are the \"letters\" that make up the words that form the ideas which in turn make up a computer program/game.", "You may have sort-of read it already, but I think that some people are trying to add too much detail. You read the other question about compilers already, so you kinda get how you can program in a higher level language and get that converted into the 1s and 0s. \n\nA fundamental concept that needs to be understood is that you can represent a wide variety of complex things using a combination of more simple things.\n\nWords are probably the good and obvious example. Letters, in and of themselves, are meaningless. When you combine them together, you get things (words) that are more complex and have *some* meaning. Then you combine those words together into paragraphs for more meaning, and some context, and so on until you have chapters, books and so on.\n\nTo represent numbers, with ones and zeros you have to know how binary works. I'm not going to go into detail, but it's enough to know that 0001 is the number 1, 0010 is the number 2, 0011 is the number three and 0100 is the number 4. This goes on and on.\n\nThen, at some point people decided that the numbers 65 and 97 would be the letters A and a (this is in [ASCII](_URL_0_), which is a common encoding, though less-so than it used to be) along with a bunch of other numbers for characters.\n\nSo, now a computer 'knows' what letters are. And a human can type using a language that the computer is capable of converting to its 1s and 0s. But how does the computer know what those *words* mean? Well, you need a language. Just like we have English to communicate, computers understand languages too. With the right tools/compilers (\"dictionary\" maybe is a good parallel) a computer is able to know what your words mean.\n\nConstructing all of those words together, you have higher-order meaning like methods/aka subroutines and from there you can have things like objects, and from there you have groupings of objects that have meaning. If some of these groupings are common then programmers often call these design patterns and give them a name that they can then use to speak about at a higher level. Get all of these together and you have something that conveys the entire meaning of what you're trying to say: a program or game.", "I hope I understand your question correctly. If I do I think no one's quite addressed it. I'm coming at this from the angle of \"What does it mean to say data on a computer drive is just 1's and 0's\" or perhaps \"How can a string of 1's and 0's actually be a computer program / game\".\n\n-----\n\nStarting with something like a Turing machine:\nImagine you have an old-school tape-recorder. So you have a long magnetic strip of tape, and a tape head which is sensitive to how the tape is magnetized (charged (1) or not (0)), and it can also write out onto the tape either 1 or zero.\n\nBeing an electronics genius, you hook up a circuit to the tape recorder which does the following:\n * if the value under the tape is a 0\n  * move to the right one inch\n  * write another 1 on the tape\n * if the value under the tape is a 1\n  * move to the left one inch\n  * write another 1 on the tape\n\nIf you set this going, it wouldn't be very exciting: The initial value would be zero, so the machine would go right, and write a 1, then the value under the head would be 1, so it'd go left and write a 1, then the value under the head would be 1, so it'd go left and write another 1 and so on forever.\nLet's say you make another circuit that does the same as the first one, but moves left instead of right when it sees a 0, and right instead of left when it sees a 1.\n\nNow you hook up both circuits to the tape-recorder, and you have a switch that allows you to toggle between them. So Lets say you modify the first circuit such that if the value it sees is a zero, it does what it did before, then switches to the second circuit.\nAnd you make the second circuit, if it sees a zero, switch back to the first circuit.\n\nOk - so you could expand this principle, making additional circuits that write zero instead of 1, and move left instead of right, and so on depending on what's underneath the tape-head. And each time you'd be hard-coded to switch to a different circuit.\n\nLet's say you have (at least) 1 circuit where if it sees one symbol (a 1 say), it rings a bell and stops the machine to tell you it's done.\n\nGroovy. Now you could start out with some set of symbols on the tape\n(1,0,0,1) and depending on how your circuits were set up you'd end up hearing a bell ring, and if you looked at the tape you'd have some different set of symbols on it (1,1,0,0).\nExactly what symbols you end up with would depend on how your circuits were configured, but you could (for example) have a setup which put all the 1's together at the beginning of the tape.\n\nThis is actually the beginning of performing automatic calculations. For example if you took a base 10 number and represented it in binary (so 1 is 1, 2 is 10, 2 is 11, and so on), you could have circuits set up that would automatically increment by 1 (so 10 - >  11 or 11 - >  100, etc), or double, or add 2 numbers together, multiply by (an approximation of) pi, etc etc. and write the result out to the tape. Great - you've got a calculator.\nIn the description so far, the tape contains raw input data (a number to double or whatever).\nHowever it's also actually telling the machine what to do (go left, go right, switch to circuit 'b', etc).\nSo you could also think of it as containing a set of instructions being applied to the machine. In the case of adding 1 to the value: if I want to write out \"11\", I pass in \"10\".\n\nIn fact, it could contain both -- for example - I could have a string of 1's and zero's that caused the machine to read the slot to the right of the string, and to the right of that, and write out the total in the two slots beyond that (Then stop and ring the bell!). \n\nThis is actually a computer program, right? You've got some instructions and some raw data to perform the instructions on.\n\nFast forward 90 years and circuits are miniaturized down to microchip size, information is written out to hard drives, and you of course are not ringing a bell and having to examine a tape to see what the results of a calculation are - instead you have hardware that responds to the instructions, displaying pixels on a screen, playing sound through speakers, etc., and of course you have a keyboard and mouse, which essentially are electronic switches picked up by the hardware and software to modify how the programs behave.\nAnd of course programs aren't written by hand in 1's and 0's. See the programming language discussion that everyone else is linking to for more on that!\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI hope this is somewhat helpful.\n\nDisclaimers:\n 1) I am a programmer but I write JavaScript and some Java so deal with no low level memory management stuff directly\n\n 2) My explanation is based on my somewhat hazy memories of computability classes from University which I really haven't used or revisited in 15 years, and a quick skim through the wikipedia entry on Turing machines.\nIf I'm way off base please feel free to make this better\n", "Here is a view from LOW LEVEL to HIGH LEVEL.\n\n*Processor Work.  \n\nThe CPU is a pretty simple concept. Transistors are devices which either let voltage through or not. They are controlled by voltage. Therefore, combine transistors together and you can make gates. [2 inputs, and if they are both high the output is high]. Ok, so now we can combine those gates to make a multiplexer [selects output], registers, memory, etc. Once those are made we can make an Arithmetic Logical Unit. It will have 3 inputs: A, B, fun. Fun selects what you want to do. For example, Fun is a two wire input, 00 is add, 01 is sub, 10 is AND, 11 is OR. Thus it will be a simple multiplexer to these operations.  \n\nThen the CPU has a register called IR - instruction register. The current instructor [16 bit for example] is stored there.  Individual bits go to multiplexers to control different operation for operation. For example, let's say first two bits make the CPU add/sub/add/xor. That means those two wires will go directly to Fun wires in ALU. \n\nThus, a single instruction can be processed purely easily with multiplexers and registers. Now, there is a control register. This register  gets incremented* every clock cycle. The processor then has a comparator, and if CR = 0 then it loads a new instruction in. If CR=1 then it takes the output of ALU and stores it into a register using multipexer. If CR=2 then it increments the PC [program counter].\n\nSee? Simple. We now have a very simple processor that loads an instruction, executes it and then increments PC. Now, more advanced processors have instuctions that tell CPU many more things -- like load or store from memory, talk to other chips on the board, etc. But that is not needed. Instead we will connect the output of ALU to a screen. The screen will display the colour that it gets from CPU. Then the programmer will program the memory to output the pixel to screen.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_algebra", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2ekw/how_did_we_go_from_binary_to_assembly_language_to/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.asciitable.com/"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2ekw/how_did_we_go_from_binary_to_assembly_language_to/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3xa4gp", "title": "how do steroids make your muscles grow, and are they as dangerous as people make them out to be if taken in moderation?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xa4gp/eli5_how_do_steroids_make_your_muscles_grow_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy2u787", "cy2ve6r", "cy2w30i", "cy3012x", "cy30zjq", "cy3cmvo", "cy3f0bc"], "score": [26, 9, 4, 2, 56, 3, 2], "text": ["If done correctly the downsides can be minimized substantially. That being said most people probably don't do it the right way, that being in the care of a professional. This is a great documentary on the subject: _URL_0_\n", "The simplistic explanation is that they increase the amount of testosterone in the body. \n\nThis helps increase the rate of muscle growth in response to weight training. \n\nIt also increases how much protein the body absorbs, and uses for muscle growth. \n\nIn moderation, and with expert guidance, they are not dangerous (just look at Lance Armstrong, and the top bodybuilders) \n\nBut without guidance, people get greedy for faster results.\n\nAnd the side effects of large dosages, or not giving the body enough time to recover, are very scary... ", "Anabolic steroids \"supplement\" your body's natural testosterone.  Testosterone is one of the substances that tells your body to send more cells to a muscle after a workout.  (It does some other stuff too)\n\nWhen taken correctly, steroids are quite safe and the notorious side effects can be minimized or avoided entirely.  They become dangerous when people use second-rate products, share needles, don't sterilize the injection sites, or create dangerous \"stacks\" that can cause organ damage.", "In moderation or not, they can be extremely dangerous for a small number of people who experience acute bland cholestasis, even after taking relatively small amounts for a relatively short amount of time. \n\nI was the main caretaker of someone who went through this after taking steroids for about a month under the guidance \"of a very experienced guy at the gym\" and it was hellish. They were in the hospital for weeks. Even after they were in the hospital and being treated, their liver function continued to deteriorate so that too much bilirubin (the fatty acid that causes jaundice when there's too much of it) clogged up their kidneys and they had to start dialysis. The worst part for them seemed to be the incessant, intense itching everywhere and even inside their body. And there were mental effects of all the toxins the liver and kidneys weren't filtering out properly---paranoia, delusions, anxiety, short term memory problems. By the time they were released from the hospital, they basically looked like a skeleton with skin and they could barely walk. Oh, and for MONTHS, they looked like they rolled around in a pile of turmeric. They ended up having to do outpatient dialysis for a while but not permanently; the doctors had been unwilling to make a prediction on how long they'd need dialysis, but in the end declared this person \"extremely lucky.\"\n\nThe doctors explained that some people have a genetic difference and when anabolic steroids are introduced into their systems, there is reaction that compromises bile production, leading to liver malfunction and then the rest. Estrogens can have a similar effect, and some women experience cholestasis when their hormones dramatically shift during pregnancy, or when they start birth control.\n\nIt's estimated maybe about 1% of people will react this way,(1) but after watching it and taking care of someone going through it, I wouldn't risk it.\n\n(1) _URL_0_", "hey. i'm a dude who's on steroids, and i've been studying them for about 5 years. i know a lot about them.\n\nanabolic steroids are either testosterone or derivatives of it. they are all classed under the \"androgen\" umbrella rather than the \"estrogen\" umbrella that corticosteroids are classed under. the body has a lot of receptors for different hormones all over the body. anabolic steroids activate the androgen receptors in the body, many of which are located in muscle cells (although there are also some in bone tissue, kidney tissue, skin, etc). \n\nyou can think of androgen receptors as locks and anabolic steroids as the keys- when the key opens the lock, it triggers a genetic response in the muscle cells that basically tells the cell to synthesize more protein. this lets muscles recover more quickly and more efficiently. \n\nmany steroids also exhibit an effect called \"nutrient partitioning\" which... simply put, changes what your body uses nutrients for. if you've ever seen a [government spending pie chart](_URL_0_), you can see how there are a lot of different things that the government is spending money on. your body does the same thing with nutrients. lots of different processes to spend calories on. steroids basically make the piece of the pie that would say \"building muscle\" bigger.\n\nas for the health aspect... well, we don't really know for sure. steroids definitely have adverse effects. but of the ones listed, most of them are cosmetic and reversible. the ones that are not cosmetic usually are not reversible, and those are the ones to worry about.\n\nthe side effects most commonly talked about by the media would be:\n\n* roid rage\n* mental instability\n* shrunken penis\n* shrunken testicles\n* liver problems\n* kidney problems\n* heart problems\n* cancer\n* baldness\n* gynecomastia (man boobs)\n* acne\n* infertility\n\nof those things, a couple aren't even real side effects. shrunken penises do not happen on steroids, i promise. cancer has never been linked to steroids. and there hasn't been any scientific evidence to substantiate the idea of \"roid rage.\" in addition, kidney problems and mental instability as a direct result of steroids have never (as far as i can tell) been directly proven, but i've read about weak correlations. never heard of kidney problems, personally, but mental instability has happened. problem is, the people who use steroids are often not the most mentally stable people in the first place. many of us already suffered from some form of mental illness before we started, and sometimes drugs like antidepressants or antipsychotics can cause symptoms that people will blame on the steroids.\n\nof those not mentioned above, many are reversible or preventable entirely. shrunken testicles can be prevented with hCG use, and even if you don't use hCG, they go back to normal when you get off. i've never actually read about a single case of incurable infertility as a result of steroid use either. baldness can be prevented by avoiding certain steroids and using things like finasteride or dutasteride (basically rogaine like stuff). acne can be prevented with a good diet, by controlling your estrogen levels by using certain drugs called aromatase inhibitors, and you know, basic human hygiene. gynecomastia is also preventable with aromatase inhibitors (AIs) and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs). and again, both of those things are reversible.\n\nthe real problems are heart and liver damage. that shit is real. almost all steroids will cause the heart to grow, which is not good. steroid use has been correlated to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular issues. it's never been explicitly proven but we all know the link is there. injectable steroids actually don't do any harm to the liver, but oral steroids can. their molecular structure is modified in a way allows them to survive the digestive system and become active in the bloodstream. this is called 17-alpha-alkylization and basically means that they cause buildup of toxic materials when they pass through the liver. if abused, they can cause liver damage. but, most responsible steroid users take supplements that help promote healthy liver function, many of which are very effective. \n\nif used in moderation, can they be used pretty safely? yeah. you're definitely gonna take some time off your life by using, but that's a risk/reward thing that the individual must consider on their own. personally, it's worth the risk for me. to have a chance to be the best at what i do, i would need to juice no matter what. and i'm following my dreams even if it takes time off of my life.\n\nedit: if anyone wants me to go into more detail about anything in particular that i said, i'd be glad to do so, just ask. these explanations are pretty simplified believe it or not. if you're confused about something, i'd love to explain the process behind what i'm talking about and show you what i mean.", "I think that every \"arm-chair\" non using steroid expert in here should watch the short movie called \"Bigger Stronger Faster\" before passing blind judgement against steroids. The fact is that responsible people using steroids are surprisingly interested in their overall health, I am one of them. I get blood work done every 3 months, avoid all fast food and eat a very healthy and clean diet, am on a first name basis with my doctor who I see every 8 to 12 weeks at minimum. My doc knew absolutely nothing at all about steroids before we met, since seeing me- a healthy user he has attended several conferences and began to educate himself a little more on the subject. Steroids CAN be dangerous... but so can a pair of scissors in the hands of a moron.", "Anabolic steroids are basically chemicals that has androgenic properties like building muscle. Steroids also increase protein in muscles. This helps with the muscle-building process. As for taken in moderation, it's up to their own decision, however there are risks. But I think in moderation it's alright.\n\n**ELI5**\n\nThink of it like this.\n\nImagine a house (muscle). And you want to make it as big as possible (muscle hypertrophy). So, you send in workers (hormones and stuff) to do it, and the money to buy materials (proteins etc). But sometimes it's a bit slow and a bit inefficient. So you brought in some foreign willing workers (steroids that add to the testosterone) that's a bit more efficient (more protein is added to muscle mass with steroids).\n\nNow sometimes these foreign workers sort of mess up the house or put some strains on your budget (known cardiovascular problems due to steroid use). Or maybe they changed up the plans for some reason that we do not know (ilnesses usually associated with steroid use that we don't know the cause of). Or maybe some of those foreign workers are doing the job so good that your original workers quit (the testes stops producing internal hormones and it shrinks, it goes away once you stop consuming steroids).\n\n**/ELI5**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1151309/"], [], [], ["http://livertox.nih.gov/AndrogenicSteroids.htm"], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "455cod", "title": "What are the historical origins of stripper poles/pole dancing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/455cod/what_are_the_historical_origins_of_stripper/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czvleed"], "score": [26], "text": ["Poles were used far back in other manners, like Mallakhamb in India with gymnastic poses, the athletic feats of the Chinese Pole, Panjat Pinang climbing games, or even the Maypole. The use of a pole for more modern dancing purposes came out of circus tents in the 1920s with the Hoochie Coochie side-shows where women dancing took to utilizing the tent poles as part of their act. The striptease itself comes out of Burlesque shows of the 19th century. Originally these shows were a mix of singing, dancing, comedy, pretty girls, and much more. Lydia Thompson is credited with bringing this show to America in 1868 with chorus lines of beautiful, scantily clad women called her \"British Blondes\". The girls were hugely popular in burlesque shows and over time became more and more of the acts. Stripping evolved out of some of the risque acts just before the turn into the 20th century. The can-can as well as the belly dance (which inspires the Hoochie Coochie) are also popularized in the 19th century. While the combination of pole dancing and stripping makes its way into bars in the 1950s, the first \"official\" pole dance was in 1968 by Belle Jangles in Oregon at a strip club. Nightclubs as well as strip clubs picked up the hugely popular new style, and with the boom of the strip club in the 1970s it spread easily."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "728by9", "title": "why do people of iranian descent often refer to themselves as persian?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/728by9/eli5_why_do_people_of_iranian_descent_often_refer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dngk8ky", "dngk8r8", "dngntzq", "dngxl6w"], "score": [13, 30, 2, 11], "text": ["Because the ethnicity of Iranians is Persian, not Arabic.\n\nThe part of the world where Iran sits used to be Persia in ancient times. Iran has Persians, Afghanis, Jews and Arabs (and probably lots more). They are all Iranian, but only Persians are Persian.", "Persians are an ethnicity within Iran. Not all Iranians are Persians. It's like saying your are English when you are of British descent or saying that you are Inuit if you are of Canadian descent.", "Persia used to be the name of Iran, but people still use Iran and Persia interchangeably. Persian = Iranian \u2192 NATIONALITY (place of origin)\n\nPersian also refers to the dominant ethnic group of modern Iran. There is no ethnic Iranian identity. Persian \u2192 ETHNICITY \n\nSomeone who identifies as Persian is definitely referring to nationality. They might (but not necessarily) also be referring to ethnicity.\n\nFor example, my maternal great-great-grandparents all fled Urmia in northwestern Iran (still Persia at that time) where they had lived for thousands of years speaking their own language, practicing their own religion, never evangelizing, and marrying exclusively within their community before their Muslim neighbors (Kurds, Turks, ethnic Persians, etc.) began massacring them in the 1910s/1920s. They were Persian nationals (turned refugees) but not ethnically Persian. ", "I've spoken with Iranians in the west about this before, and they give a few different answers, but if you dig a little, a lot of the older (45-50+) folks that have actually lived there, and now live in the west, are sort of ashamed at what the country has become after the revolution in the late 70s.  I feel like it's a way to distance themselves from what's happened there and what's happening there now.  \n\nTL;DR - Younger folks from Iran or with Iranian parents, call themselves Persian to distance themselves from the western idea of what Iran is.\n\nThis answer isn't very popular, so I'm sure it'll get buried, but at least now you've got this side of the answer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8h2w9s", "title": "As I understand it, Romans of the Augustan period regarded the Republic as a failed state that resulted in incessant civil wars; what led the American founding fathers to hold the Roman Republic in such high regard? Would they have taken imperial Roman critiques of the Republic seriously?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8h2w9s/as_i_understand_it_romans_of_the_augustan_period/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyh3sjg", "dyhgjq7"], "score": [77, 16], "text": [" > As I understand it, Romans of the Augustan period regarded the Republic as a failed state\n\nOh good heavens no!  The whole conceit of the Augustan regime was that it was a restoration of the Republic!  Augustus made a point of remaining an informal power, only keeping hold of the Tribunician Power permanently.  Augustus cultivated a literature that celebrated the Republic - Livy is probably the best example of looking toward the Republic as a salve for the crisis of his times (he probably wrote that in the Triumviral period), but Virgil and Varro also showed an interest in Roman origins and continuity.  Velleius Paterculus, writing under Tiberius, still called the state a \"res publica\" I think unironically (though others disagree).\n\nThe first indication of \"the end of the republic\" as far as I know is Tacitus, who was writing under the Flavians.  He was the one that said the Republic died with the army of Cassius and Brutus.  That's something like 150 years later.  Also he has a political interest - he's afraid of criticizing the Flavians (he says so), so he writes about the previous regime, the Julio-Claudians.  He'll go back to the Flavians later, but his first attempt at long form history works as a sort of justifying Flavian rule.  It just happened that his account of the Republican past caught on in scholarship.\n\nI'm afraid I can't comment on the American Revolution bit, but I hope that correction about Augustan attitudes towards the Republic is helpful.", "I did some looking on the American end, and found some sources and historical precedent. It seems pretty clear the Founders were emulating not the corrupt late republic, but the noble early republic. The memoirs of Major General Lee (Washington's number one) refer to James I \"being expelled like Tarquin\". Tarquinus Superbus was the last king of Rome, before he got the boot and the republic was founded. Parallels between Tarquin and George III aren't difficult to infer.\n\nAnother key figure emulated was Cincinnatus.  This Roman is most famous for (according to Livy) assuming dictatorial powers, leading the army successfully against the Aquians and the Sabines, and then promptly resigning his office and returning to his farm.\n\nWashington set himself up as a deliberate parallel to Cincinnatus when he resigned his commission and dismissed his staff in 1783, and the Society of the Cincinnati was set up soon after by the Founders (and headed by Washington) to further this deliberate mirroring of the American Founding Fathers and the civic virtue of the High Roman Republic. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4w4ht5", "title": "how the new colorizebot works", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w4ht5/eli5_how_the_new_colorizebot_works/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d63vgfl", "d63wdbu", "d63wv1a", "d63xldr", "d6414ck", "d64aiu9"], "score": [7, 4, 53, 7, 4, 3], "text": ["For those who haven't seen the new colorizbot his username is /u/pm_me_your_bw_pics ", "I believe this is what you're looking for. Though it might be more like ELI25. _URL_0_", "Hi, I'm one of the creators of this bot. There a link to a post I wrote on how the bot works with each replay it gives, but here is also a post from r/technology where I tried to explain it in a more simple way\n_URL_1_\n\nThe original post:\n_URL_0_\n\nIf there are any questions/suggestions let me know.", "Ok, I will try a ELI5, what I say will be extremly abstracted and horribly inaccurate. I won't go into what Convolutional Nets are, but will try to explain the rough idea: What you basically do is build a mathematical model which takes an black and white image, does some manipulations to it and could theoretically output a colorized version of it. The manipulations in the middle are of course what makes it work and will be something like: Take the brightness of the first pixel times some number, take the brightness of the second pixel times another number, ... add them all together and you got one pixel of the next layer. You apply this process on the new output pixels again and again until you got an output image. So the problem now is: how do you get those numbers? This is called an optimisation problem and one algorithm to solve it is gradient descent: You initialise the numbers (they are called weights) randomly, run the mathematical model on some training image and get some output. Of course, with random numbers that will look nothing like what you'd like it to. But because this was a training image you will have the correct solution and can compare it to what your random numbers produced. Now you tweak the numbers (weights) slightly, so that the output of the model will look slightly more like what it was supposed to produce. (This is done by basically subtracting the gradient/derivative of a loss function, which says how much the model is off, with respect to the weight.) We take another training image and repeat the process until the outputs are very close to the solutions. (It is important that we have very many training images or the algorithm will just 'memorize' the outputs.) [Here's a cool video that visualizes what the layers of a convolutional neural network learn to do.](_URL_0_) If this sounds interesting, there are plenty of resources that can be found if you google neural nets.", "The colorize bot basically uses image recognition to identify objects in a photo.  It then uses a catalog of color images that it knows have the same objects and tries to fit those over the source image.   To prevent loads of artifacts, the scale of the style transfer is set very high, giving the blurry color overlay that you see.", "Could this algorithm potentially be used for video?  Can't tell you how annoying rotoscoping and coloring film can be. It's manual frame by frame work.  I've been really impressed by this bot, and it would be amazing if there was a version built for video!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://whatimade.today/our-frst-reddit-bot-coloring-b-2/"], ["http://www.whatimade.today/our-frst-reddit-bot-coloring-b-2/", "https://m.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4vrttl/comment/d61fjni"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgkfIQ4IGaM"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2023uz", "title": "why do i avoid going to bed at night, almost like i'm procrastinating sleep.", "selftext": "I love sleeping (who doesn't?), I don't have insomnia either, I just find any reason to stay up at night and not go to bed, it's 3:40am right now and this just came to mind, I googled this and a lot of people seem to have the same problem. I could fall asleep instantly if I went to bed right now, but there's just some magical force stopping me from going to bed. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2023uz/eli5_why_do_i_avoid_going_to_bed_at_night_almost/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfz28j5", "cfz2tdp", "cfz3foq", "cfz3kip", "cfz40wf", "cfz4yrd", "cfzbmec", "cfzc3hq", "cfzfjax", "cfzl9w9", "cfzmntc", "cfzmzop"], "score": [17, 80, 3, 3, 2, 2, 4, 15, 5, 5, 3, 3], "text": ["I feel the same way.. But for me I think it has more to do with not wanting to get up and go to work in the morning than not wanting to go to sleep at night.  As much as I love sleeping, I know that the sooner I fall asleep, the sooner I will wake up and have to get out of bed.  The funny part is that if I went to bed earlier it probably wouldn't be as hard to get out of bed in the morning.", "Some of it is a subconscious desire to avoid morning responsibility. For me it is a desire to just do things that I would not otherwise have time for during the day. Like surfing the web, or playing games, or reading stuff on Reddit are all things I like to stay up late doing, even though I know my body is going to wake up early in the morning. The mental stimuli keeps me going, and because I am deriving enjoyment and excitement out of it and therefore I keep myself up later because of that and in-spite of the fact that I know I should go to bed earlier. ", "I always feel like I could be getting something else done in the time that I'm \"doing nothing\" by sleeping. Weird?", "More time sleeping = less time spent doing fun stuff.", "I started tracking my sleep.... this has helped me realize how little sleep I'm getting. You can use an app like SleepBot for android do it.  ", "I do this as well. I always just think about it as not being able to give up on the day yet. It isn't so much that there is anything in particular that I'm doing and enjoying so much that I don't want to go to sleep, I just don't want to call it yet.", "It's your body being tired but your brain is far from exhausted and wants to keep doing things. Try taking on tasks that require more mental tasking throughout the day. When your mind is tired like your body, it won't care about that next episode of your netflix binge.", "I read an article on Cracked that said your brain sees your future self as a different person; to the point where the consequences for your present actions will only affect your future (different) self.\n\nIt explains why we go to bed late knowing we'll be tired the next morning, why we drink knowing we'll feel terrible the next morning and why we fap to certain depravities knowing we'll feed bad about it just moments later.", "My five-year-old says \"But daddy ... going to sleep is *boooring*\" \n\nWhich is probably not too far from the truth.", "The \"putting off tomorrow\" reason was the one I told myself forever until I started studying to become a sleep technician. The minute I found out about [Delayed sleep-phase disorder (DSPD)](_URL_0_) I realized that's what I had.\n\n\n\n TL;DR Your brain is in its own time zone.\n", "This is going to sound really immature, but sometimes I think that I stay up because I feel at my age it is suitable to be staying up to a certain late hour. I feel like parents go to bed at 11:00 and grandparents at like 9:00, and as a 21 year old it is the acceptable for me to stay up to 3:00ish. I feel like it's what the little kid version of me would of wanted", " > ...there's just some magical force stopping me from going to bed.\n\nIt might be the [blue light](_URL_0_) from your screen.\n\nGet [f.lux](_URL_1_) software.  It really has made a difference for me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder"], [], ["http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/May/blue-light-has-a-dark-side/", "http://justgetflux.com/research.html"]]}
{"q_id": "59ni0w", "title": "how do we decide what is a war crime and what is not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ni0w/eli5_how_do_we_decide_what_is_a_war_crime_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9a1dag", "d9a3ee7", "d9a44fe", "d9a44gm", "d9a5boa", "d9a61w2", "d9a6ace", "d9a6d9n", "d9a774c", "d9a9ivx", "d9abshg", "d9acg6a", "d9adajp"], "score": [4, 2, 50, 19, 114, 2, 2, 3, 16, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Did you win the war?  Yes?  You committed no crimes.  No?  You are guilty.", "The international criminal court has jurisdiction over war crimes, but this is complicated because countries have some latitude in participating- the US has not accepted jurisdiction but under Obama has become an observer and collaborator with member nations. The ICC asserts jurisdiction in situations where national courts are unwilling or unable to perform as regards war crimes, etc, and this has the force of the security council behind it so a nation resisting an ICC ruling would at the least be facing substantial trade and aid embargoes, and difficulty negotiating internationally. But because this path is reserved for the most serious crimes, it's not like there are a ton of rulings and history here. \n\nThe UN in certain pre ICC circumstances set up independent tribunals to assess and work through claims for a particular situation. The paradigm for this was Nuremberg, but there were tribunals established for claims stemming from the Rwanda conflict, and the Former Yugoslavia. \n\nAlso of note are the regional human rights systems- the European Court of Human Rights being the most active, followed by the inter-American and African systems. Each of these systems has a multinational court established by treaty. The European court is the most active international tribunal- their docket isnatretched past its limits. While many of the claims brought to these courts are not about the highest level human rights offenses like war crimes, they sometimes are. An advantage of these courts is that individuals have more direct access to bring claims against their own state, and, perhaps, other states, though in this latter case, for a war crimes issue, asking one's home state to represent you at an international court against the defendant state would be the more likely route. \n\nThere is also some jurisprudence from national courts, the U.K. and U.S. Included, indicating openness of some national courts to hear the claims of nationals and aliens against states or their officials, but only for the most serious and universally condemned behavior, and only perhaps after such an official is out of office. The decision to do so would also be restrained by courts' general hesitancy to act in a way that impacts foreign relations- opting instead to defer to the political branches or allowing a more directly involved state or perhaps the international community to handle the situation. \n\nTL;DR there are a variety of variously empowered international/multinational tribunals that hear war crimes cases, but participation in such systems is complicated, partially consent based, and there are many overlaps and gaps in enforcement. ", "Algorithm of a war-crime definition:  \n1. Go to war.  \n2. Get your people killed or mutilated in most horrible ways.  \n3. Kill your enemy's people in the same way.  \n4. Get both horrified by prospects of this process a lot.  \n5. Tell your enemy and your friendlies not to do it at all in exchange of not doing it yourself.  \n6. Sign some kind of paper to prove that you and they agreed upon that.  \n7. Pray that all parties were horrified enough not to break the treaty or enforce it via raw power by punishing all offenders.  ", "Basically gentleman's agreements.\n\nIt all started with stuff like \"Hey, if we walk toward you with a white flag, it means we want to chat, so don't shoot us, and we'll do the same for you.  If you trick us though, all bets are off.\"\n\n\"Hey, let's stop shooting for a second so we can bury our dead.\"\n\nEtc.  It slowly evolved into stuff like the Geneva convention.\n\nThese aren't \"laws\" in a traditional sense to be enforced.  And as a rule winners of wars are never prosecuted for war crimes.\n", "Wow, okay, everyone is coming in here with charged answers and edgy statements, or answering what falls under a war crime rather than why the list is what it is.\n\nWar crimes are basically what we decided is in the best interest of everybody to avoid, regardless of what the war is. We, as a world, understand that war itself will pretty much never go away. Countries will have conflicts over trade and land and such, and one of the ways in which they will decide the conflict is through war. What we've decided is that war is first and foremost a **conflict between states**. Governments and their actors i.e military. When Russia invaded Georgia or Crimea, it wasn't some Russian woman at the grocery store, it was Putin, his government, and his military. \n\nWe want war to follow a simple formula. War is declared, the military carries out a series of strikes and offenses against each other, one side concedes and an agreement is made as to the conditions of victory. There is no need to go overboard on certain things. We've decided that doing so would cause unnecessary further damage to innocent people, or cause lasting effects beyond typical combat. We don't want those things to happen to us, so we won't do it to them.\n\nThis is where we get the list of war crimes such as chemical warfare, torture, killing innocent civilians etc. We sure as shit do not want chemical warfare to be used against us, and it's pretty easy to not do chemical warfare when you have several other methods of killing enemy combatants. It's basically a way to still allow war to occur in the least damaging way possible. It sounds ludicrous, because war is in and of itself horrible, but it's a morbid practicality.", "War crimes are defined by various treaties.  Treaties are agreements between different nations.  If a nation doen't sign a treaty, they aren't bound by its terms.  The main treaties regarding war crimes are the Geneva Convention (relating to treatment of wounded soldiers), the Geneva Protocol (formally banning chemical warfare), the Geneva Convention relating to the Protection of Prisoners of War, the League of Nations and Geneva Protocol relating to protection of civilians from acts of war, the Nuremburg principles, the UN convention regarding Genocide, and others.  ", "Why haven't I seen what I came here expecting?\n\nI'm wondering if maybe what I was expecting was incorrect.\n\nWhich is:\n\n & nbsp;\n\nWar crimes are actions considered (usually by the victors, obviously) to have gone beyond *only* war.\n\nActions that, while perhaps causing comparable levels of damage to peoples as war does, did not further that nation's chance of winning the war and could not have been misunderstood to.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIs this wrong? I've always looked at things like the Holocaust and Unit 731 that way - war crimes because not only were they terrible (like war) but *also* unnecessary in wartime. And couldn't have been thought of as necessary.\n\nI guess there are things like chemical warfare: did it not further the chance of winning the war? But then wait a second!: nuclear weapons, are they considered war crimes? And if not, wouldn't it be worse and unnecessary to use chemical warfare over nuclear warfare?\n\nI seem to be able to view most of /u/JalelTounsi's list this way as well.\n\nIs this incorrect?", "The simplest explanation of it I can make\n\nA bunch of countries got together and said \"you don't do this to our guys and we won't do it to yours\"  \"ok\"  and then they didn't do those things", "This is a great question.  This was actually a key reason for the unbelievable brutality of the Eastern Front in WW2.\n\nA war crime is established by treaties during peacetime.  The main purpose of it is to limit the scope of wars, so that it does not cause more destruction than necessary.  The large modern treaties that the world observes these days were established during two massive conferences in the Hague, Netherlands, in 1899 and 1907.  A famous later addendum was added to these during a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1929.\n\nOne reason that countries want to adopt and observe these standards is that it protects their own people.  If you don't want your civilians killed, you don't want your soldiers tortured, then you adopt a treaty banning it and you stick to it.\n\nThe German Wehrmacht was famous for bending and breaking these standards during their surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.  Hitler was always planning to invade the Soviet Union as part of his Lebensraum plan (displacing and exterminating untermench Slavs to create new living space for the noble Aryan Germans.)  As part of the invasion, Hitler specifically defined tactics that would broaden who would qualify as a \"combatant\" under these treaties, and used this legalism to wipe out huge numbers of Russian, Lithuanian, Belorussian, and most especially Ukrainian civilians.  This led to a general attitude within the Wehrmacht of disregard for the human rights of all Soviet civilians and prisoners of war.\n\nUnfortunately for Hitler, the Soviet Union was much stronger than he anticipated, and were able to mount defenses of Moscow, Kursk, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd) that were very costly to the Wehrmacht.  The Red Army's repulsion of Germany and its subsequent invasion of German-held territories in Eastern Europe were then  treated with the same disdain of human rights.  Very few Germans - combatants or non-combatants - who were captured in these territories ever returned home.  Rape became incredibly common.\n\nThe horror that the Germans experienced at the hands of the Red Army was unspeakable, but the worst part of it for the Germans was that they knew they had brought it on themselves.  Germans in East Prussia and Berlin were well aware of what was coming, because it was revenge for everything they had done on the way East.  They had forfeited the protection of these treaties, because they had violated them so egregiously.\n\nAs a result, if you exclude every single other death in WW2 except for the Eastern Front, it's still the largest and most destructive war in human history - this is acknowledged by all parties, even when there are large discrepancies between sources and so much missing information.  Even at its lowest estimate, it dwarfs every other human conflict.  And the reason, largely, is failing to obey these war crime agreements.\n\nTL;DR war crimes treaties are the idea of \"don't-start-no-shit-won't-be-no-shit\" taken to an international level.  We have seen the trauma that happens when it's not taken with deadly seriousness.", "Donald? Is that you?", "So what I'm getting from this thread is let's say we got two people who wanna fight. Before the fight they lay down some ground rules. No biting, scratching, below the belt hits or sucker punches. Although these two people agreed upon these terms neither has to uphold said rules. As far as punishment goes it comes down to who's the victor and/or his peers. Is this a good enough analogy?", "One of the things that boggle my mind though is the fuss about *depleted uranium ammo*. What difference does it make? Would you feel better if you got killed by a lead bullet vs. a DU bullet? I don't get it...", "To add to this qustion: who should be punished for war crimes? Is it soldier who did execution after being drafted, officer of the company or batalion, general, leader of afgressors political party? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "366kk8", "title": "why do we love to take pictures of our food and post it on social media.", "selftext": "I'm guilty of this myself, yet I can't pinpoint the exact psychology behind why we like to do this so much nowadays.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/366kk8/eli5_why_do_we_love_to_take_pictures_of_our_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crb69we", "crb6bj2", "crb7nt2", "crb7rma", "crb7y9z", "crb8wqi"], "score": [9, 31, 2, 2, 18, 5], "text": ["Because we like to share our day to day lives with our social acquaintances and show others that we are partaking in an enjoyable and envious experience.", "It's a common misconception that people think that others care about what they eat. They don't. Please stop it.", "I think it's similar to when someone goes to the gym, as if everyone knowing your being healthier/more sophisticated makes you better than them or summing", "Once saw a article from a psycologi study, saying they most likely have eating disorder, or are fixuated on the food they eat.\n\nits like this, you either post it, when its a nice well cocked, and healthy meal, or its something you can relate to?, like the weekend snacks, or the \"hangover meal\".\nIts like the skin pictures of women, the gap between the legs photo, if you have a healthy meal ofcause you are gonna post that, instead of the boring pasta, in the end of the mounth.  its not like you are bolimic or something because of it, more like you properly aint perfect, and the idea, that the food pictures are healthy or and something relatebel, its to make a stand of the perfect way you are eating, and even if you are eating perfect, to the exact amount people would say its a eating disorder, or a fitness freak.. \n\nwhen you post the picture, its most likely a setup, and therefore a unrealistic image, of you eating habits.\n\nyou then proceed to let people know, that one of your basic needs are being covered, thats a statement about your need for food being furfilled and therefore people know, or have the impression that you eat normaly. though unless the type of everyday foods are the same, as thoose you post its not true, and you have \"glorified\" picture of a persons eating habits.\n\nhope it gives something to relate to your posting:)", "Everyone has to eat, so we all have reference points to food. A photo of your meal can say so many things without words. \"Look how much money I have. Look at where I'm vacationing. Look how sophisticated I am. Look at how down to earth I am. Look how healthy I am.\"\n\nThere's nothing inherently wrong with sharing food pics, just as there's nothing inherently wrong with sharing a selfie. The problem lies with the intent. WHY are you sharing this?\n\nAlso consider who the picture is for. Did the person share this with you in mind? If not, stop judging and just move on.", "its the closest thing to seeming like you are interesting, without actually being interesting\n\nsome people dress up at restaurants and eat food more as a fashion statement"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ln4sv", "title": "If sitting with legs crossed was different enough to become known as sitting Indian Style how did Europeans sit when they didn't have a chair?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ln4sv/if_sitting_with_legs_crossed_was_different_enough/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clwdo9a", "clwl4bb"], "score": [11, 55], "text": ["...and how does this relate to sitting \"tailor fashion\", which is, well, sitting with your legs crossed?", "\"Tailor's fashion\" is the older term for the same sitting style. [Tailors sit cross-legged upon the board](_URL_0_) (table) rather than at it on a chair. It's a term still used in some European nations today and dates back very far. It's done this way to tighten up the back muscles so they don't wear out as quickly. In fact, studies have been done on tailors bodies that showed quite a few changes due to the constant sitting in this manner. The blood vessels enlarged to keep the legs from falling asleep and the long muscle that reaches from the pelvis into the tibia is longer than in normal people, hence why it is now termed the Sartorius muscle (word for tailor). \n\n*edited to correct the medical info that ExpectedChaos provided*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image/65635/anonymous-interior-of-a-tailors-shop-1767-1800"]]}
{"q_id": "10rhkn", "title": "[Meta--Historiography] Remembering Eric Hobsbawm", "selftext": "Dear Historians,\n\nThe eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm has died, aged 95 ([Guardian](_URL_0_)). Hobsbawm is probably best known for his sequence of histories of the 19th and 20th centuries, *The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848*, *The Age of Capital: 1848-1875*, *The Age of Empire: 1875-1914*, and *The Age of Extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914\u20131991*. However, a quick look at his published works reveals a historian whose influence on historiography in the past 50 years is undeniable: *Primitive Rebels* in 1959, *Captain Swing* in 1969, an *The Invention of Tradition* in 1983. I don't think it's a stretch to call him one of the most important historians of the last century. \n\nSo, with that in mind, let us send Professor Hobsbawm on his way with a few thoughts on his works. What has everyone read? What are his best works? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10rhkn/metahistoriography_remembering_eric_hobsbawm/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6g01wz", "c6g0tpn", "c6g12ki", "c6g174x", "c6g24ah", "c6g2mrb", "c6g3e4z", "c6gdn14"], "score": [16, 7, 4, 12, 6, 5, 2, 6], "text": ["Well this sucks. My buddy on facebook posted this about him\n\n > The phrase we informally inclined use when the honored old die is, \"s/he had a good run.\" For few is this saying truer than it is for Eric Hobsbawm. His was one of the great and, in many respects, representative (for good and for ill) lives of the twentieth century. As that century turns into increasingly-distant memory, and thus into a bone to be worried over by the usual crew of varying-quality academics and assorted culture-industry types, I think his example as an engaged intellectual who did not shy away from tackling big questions with eloquence and commitment will only grow in importance.", "Hobsbawm was probably the historian whose book made me decide to do history at university (On History, I think it was called). I'd say that he was one of the greatest (and prolific) historical writers of the 20th century.", "Eric was so awesome. I was around 19 when I laid my hands on History of the 20th Century, and, my God, did this guy have a prose. I read this behemoth of a book like it was a Paperback novel. I still remember going on vacations to the beach and reading that dorky huge book on the beach like a nerd, I was mind blown by it.\n\nI'm not a historian, but more of a recent-history buff, and Eric started that for me. He was the first to really convey how the masses and individuals at the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th fought for what we now consider \"basic rights\", putting their lives on the line every day. I became passionate about Anarchism during that period and it was this guy that really inspired me to learn more.\n\nBye Eric, as the guy above said, you had a hell of a good run. See you on the other side.", "If you want to talk about the idea of nationalism it's impossible to avoid Hobsbawm.  I leaned heavily on his idea of ethnic chauvinism in my work, and really it took over the direction of my paper.  *The Age of Empire* really was a spectacular read, as is *Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality*.", "As I sit here it is almost impossible for me to put into a short reddit post the impact Hobsbawn had on the field.  I suppose I'll just cut to the chase and say that his work was central to the evolution of the field in the last 50 years or so.  Although it is perhaps cliche to say that people live on through their work, if it ever applies, it certainly applies here.", "I've discovered him 2 years ago, in my first year at the university. For our modern history course, we had to read Age of the Extremes. I hope to discover more of him in the future, but this particular book was an excellent read. What a historian!", "I am an A level student (1 year before university). Hobsbawn's book *The Age of Empire* was a fascinating book. It put the British Empire, which I have much fascination for, into context in a world which was catching up with Britain. America, and Germany for that matter, were already steaming past Britian in many aspects. It easy to forget how the 'Empire in which the sun never sets' was already destined to die years before colonisation. Rest in Peace Hobsbawn, your book will always live with me.", "As a conservative guy, knowing he was Marxist, having read his The Age of Extremes, I must say he was a much more honest guy than most lefties so I respected him. At least in his old age, I don't know his younger works, but the Age of Extremes was more or less balanced  - although some leftie myths were still in there, he actually dispelled some others. For example I really liked how he explained that fascism was neither extreme capitalism nor a new version of the old, aristocratic conservatism, but something new and populist. He was a bit like a leftie version of John Lukacs (another great historian, a proudly reactionary one, still alive in his nineties), they balanced each other nicely. R.I.P."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-died-aged-95"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "132laa", "title": "if i pay my cable bill, why do i still have to watch commercials?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/132laa/eli5_if_i_pay_my_cable_bill_why_do_i_still_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c709h76", "c709uk2", "c70carb", "c70dali", "c70e3rg", "c70hbp4"], "score": [69, 5, 33, 3, 2, 7], "text": ["You are paying the cable company to connect you. The channels have to support themselves, so mostly do it via adverts.\n\nRather like paying for the internet but seeing adverts on websites.", "Channels don't make enough money off of cable subscriptions to support themselves.  ", "The short answer is: because you still watch them.", "I am older enough to remember when you didn't.", "Because they can.", "You didn't used to. When my family got cable, it was OnTv in the early 80s, and there were no commercials, only interstitial ads between movies that told you what was coming up next month on OnTv. Other than that, it was wall-to-wall programming.\n\nThe cable TV became commoditized. There were channels like MTV and ESPN that weren't \"premium\" content, and they were all lumped together in huge packages of channels and sold in one big group. The deal was that as the consumer, instead of paying x dollars per month for just one premium cable channel, you pay a little more but you get like 20 channels (then 40, then 60, etc).\n\nAll of these \"basic cable\" channels only use the cable company as a delivery mechanism, but they are historically much cheaper than the premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Showtime, etc. So they have to generate revenue for the cable company and themselves outside what you pay the cable company.\n\nIncidentally, I don't know how old you are but showing ads in movie theaters is a fairly recent thing as well. As recently as 10 years ago it was uncommon to go into a movie and see anything but trailers for other movies for the 5 minutes leading up to the film you paid to see. And that film would start on time.\n\nLast weekend I went to see 007, and not only did the theater force us to sit through ads for the 1/2 prior to the movie showtime, but they also made us sit through more ads (often the same ones they'd already shown prior) + movie trailers *after* the stated showtime on our ticket.\n\nSucks."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1aar2b", "title": "how do we know that there is an infinite number of digits in pi?  is it possible that it's actually just a really big but finite number?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1aar2b/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_there_is_an_infinite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8vn754", "c8vny8l", "c8vqrf2", "c8vrt80", "c8vrtdp", "c8vs1ci", "c8vthcw", "c8w6rgk", "c8w9f0n"], "score": [281, 40, 3, 11, 7, 27, 9, 2, 2], "text": ["Truth be told, pi isn't big at all. Pi is approximately 3 (3,141592...), it's just impossible to display exactly. Any approximation you make, will necessarily be off by a little bit.\n\nSo, let's see. Let's fill the circle with a square size 2. Then we've still got 4 parts left, so let's try and fill those up with squares. As you may be able to see, this will never fill up. A similar thing happens to pi, no matter how many digits you list, you never \"fill up\" the number.", "In mathematics, unlike in more concrete fields of study, we can prove things without a doubt in various ways. Pi has been proven to be an irrational number in several different proofs. One of the properties of irrational numbers is that their decimal representation has an infinite number of digits. Therefore Pi must have an infinite number of digits.\n\nNone of the proofs are really able to be boiled down to an ELI5 level.", "I've gone through the majority of proofs that pi is an irrational number and can't figure out a way to break it down to a 5 year old.\n\nPerhaps someone else would like to chip in, but from my understanding, the concepts one must learn prior to understanding the proof of irrational numbers means that such proofs can't be explained in layman terms.", "It's in the same vein as why 1/3 isn't a 'finite number' when converted to decimal (0.33333... repeating forever), there is technically a \"definite\" number that pi is, it is just not possible to represent it completely accurately in the system of numbers we use. So we use the pi symbol to represent it, like we represent 0.3333... as 1/3.", "I think I read in a different ELI5 about a similar question about pi, circles, diameter/circumference ratio, etc. that a good way to think about it is that a circle is basically an infinite sided polygon (I have a vague recollection of this being taught back in grade school too, but that might not be real). So a representation of pi (the diameter/circumference ratio) is basically just an approximation using a really really high number sided polygon but it's still not exactly pi because the number of sides is less than infinity.\n\nSo for example a hexagon using a specific diameter and calculating using trigonometry the circumference would give a certain (crappy) approximation of pi and then with an octagon it would get a bit better and so on up to higher and higher amounts of sides. But since there can always be more sides there can always be more digits to pi.", "Right, first thing first: numbers come in two varieties: rationals, and irrationals. Rational numbers are those that can be described as a ratio between two whole numbers (like 2/3 or 1/2 or -9999/11014). Irrational numbers are those that can't be represented that way.\n\nNow, some rationals have finite decimal expansions, others don't. 1/2 = 0.5, but 1/3 = 0.3333333333(...). (As a random piece of information, if you use a system other than decimal, then you change which numbers have a finite expansion). However, irrational numbers always have _infinite_ decimal expansions. This is surprisingly easy to prove: 1.2 = 12/10, 1.23 = 123/100, etc: You can just remove the decimal point and divide by a power of ten with as many digits as you need to get the decimal back in place.\n\nSo your question boils down to: how do we know that Pi is irrational. Unfortunately, as several people have already mentioned, the demonstrations are surprisingly elaborate and require a fair bit of foreknowledge about maths.", "Well, the way you're thinking about this is muddled.  Pi is not an \"infinite\" number; it's actually finite.  You can perfectly describe pi in a finite amount of space, for example, as a computer program.\n\nNumbers can be thought of as falling in four categories:\n\n1. Those can be described just as a finite list of digits + the location of the decimal point.\n2. Repeating numbers like 0.123131313...  We can describe these with: (a) a finite list of digits that doesn't repeat, (b) a finite list of digits that repeats, and (c) the location of the decimal point.\n3. Non-repeating numbers whose digits can be calculated precisely using a finite computer program.  Pi is one of these; you can write a computer program to tell what any digit of pi is.  You will have to wait very long for a very late digit, though.\n4. Numbers whose digits cannot be calculated.  Now this is complicated stuff, like [Chaitin's constant](_URL_0_).  We'll ignore these.\n\nThe numbers in (1) and (2) are both *rational*, and the numbers in (3) are *irrational*.\n\nSo the question you need to be asking, really, is: how do we know that pi is in (3) and not in (2)?  Well, this is actually rather complicated, and involves many parts.\n\nFirst, you need to understand the concept of rational and irrational numbers properly.  I explained it above in terms of decimals, but those are not the true definitions.  Rational = the number can be described as the ratio of two whole numbers, irrational = it cannot.\n\nSecond, you need to understand the link between rational/irrational and repeating/nonrepeating.  Basically, a number is rational if and only if it's in (1) or (2), and irrational if it's in (3).  But I've just *told* you that, not *explained* it or much less *proven* it to you, and I'm not gonna.\n\nAnd even after this, proving that pi is irrational is not an easy proof.  If you're interested in the topic, however, a simpler example is [the square root of 2](_URL_1_), which can be proven irrational in a few short steps.\n\n**EDIT:** I'll just add one more point: **irrational numbers are just not an ELI5 topic**.  They are fundamentally unintuitive.  The easiest way I can think of explaining it is by talking about rectangles and diagonals:\n\n    +-----+\n    |\\    |\n    | \\   |\n    |  \\  |\n    |   \\ |\n    |    \\|\n    +-----+\n\nThink of the length of the longer sides vs. the diagonal.  Intuitively we all understand that the diagonal is longer than the side.\n\nBut now suppose I asked you to play a game like this:\n\n1. Cut up the diagonal into a finite number of lines of **the same length**.  You choose how many pieces, no limits on how many.  But they must all be the exact same length!\n2. Throw out some of the pieces\u2014however many you like.\n3. Put the pieces you kept together into a straight line.  No overlap allowed; the pieces can only be connected by the ends!\n4. If the new line is the same length as one of the sides of the rectangle, you win $10,000.\n\nWell, the mind-blowing thing is that math shows that it is **impossible** to win the $10,000.  No matter how finely you cut the diagonal, if the pieces truly are the same length and you don't overlap them, then when you put any number of them together they're always going to end up shorter or longer than the side.  And that's what irrational numbers are about\u2014there is no *ratio* between the diagonal and the side (no way to cut the diagonal up into equal pieces that can match the side).", "While your question has been answered I think it would be appropriate to demonstrate how a number can be proven to be irrational. AFAIK the easiest such proof is that sqrt(2) is irrational.\n\nFirst we assume that sqrt(2) = p/q where p and q are integers with no common factors. By squaring both sides we get \n\n2 = p^2 / q^2\n\nwhich leads to\n\n2q^2 = p^2\n\nSince q is an integer, q^2 is also an integer and thus p^2 is an even number. Since p^2 is even, p is also even and can be written as 2p' = p. Now we get\n\n2q^2 = (2p')^2 = 4p'^2\n\nwhich gives us\n\nq^2 = 2p'^2\n\nwhich means q^2 must be even, and therefore q as well. Since both q and p are even, they have 2 as a common factor. This results in a contradiction with the assumption that 2 is a rational number. Therefore, sqrt(2) is an irrational number.", "Any number that can be expressed as a terminating or repeating decimal is a *rational* number.  That means if *x* is rational, there exists integers *a* and *b* such that *a*/*b* = *x*.\n\nTo prove a number is irrational, and thus cannot be expressed as a terminating or repeating decimal, all you have to do is prove that no *a* and *b* exist for that number.  With pi, it is a little beyond ELI5, but proofs of sqrt(2)'s [irrationality](_URL_0_) are pretty accessible, and demonstrate the point."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant", "http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/q1.html"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_2#Proofs_of_irrationality"]]}
{"q_id": "dx4d5s", "title": "How is the effective exhaust velocity computed for rockets with non-homogeneous propellants?", "selftext": "For a rocket with multiple different species of molecules in the exhaust, such as a O2-H2 rocket with 4:1 (by mass) ratio between oxidizer and fuel, resulting in (simplified) exhaust of H2O and H2 at a ratio of 9:1 by mass (or equal amount of molecules), how exactly does one compute the effective exhaust velocity, and thus specific impulse?\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI tried googling for it, but every equation and calculator I can find just assumes a single molecular mass. Is there some easy way of averaging out the molecular mass that it can be plugged into the normal formulas, or is something more complex needed?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dx4d5s/how_is_the_effective_exhaust_velocity_computed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f7oqp7t", "f7p00mw"], "score": [3, 7], "text": ["I don't know much about the underlying mathematics but there is computer software to design rocket engines, such as \"Rocket Propulsion Analysis\" from _URL_0_ . The software will predict thrust and specific impulse/effective exhaust velocity based on engine design.\n\nMeasuring effective exhaust velocity is conceptually simple - measure the thrust of the rocket and the flow rate of the propellants.", "I don't know how other people do it but I have gotten good ballpark numbers by looking at where the energy goes. I do it like this.\n\n1: calculate how much energy is produced in the reaction (using the enthalpy of formation)\n\n2: estimate how much of that energy goes into propelling the exhaust and how much goes into heat (using heat of vaporization and specific heat)\n\n3: use the formula for kinetic energy to calculate the velocity of the exhaust (KE=m/2\\*v\\^2)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nexample:\n\n1/2 mol O2 + 1 mol H2 - >  1 mol H2O +  241.818 kJ\n\nThe hydrogen and oxygen have to be vaporized which takes [6.82](_URL_1_) and [1.808](_URL_2_) kJ. If the water ends up about 1000 kelvin hotter than it starts that will consume about 26 kJ. This totals 45.628 kJ.\n\nThe kinetic energy per mol is about 196.19 kJ. 1 mol weights 18.015 grams.\n\nDoing the math I get 4,667 m/s.\n\nThe actual value is something like [4,462](_URL_0_) m/s.\n\nIn this case I underestimated the temperature of the exhaust or used a bad approximation for the specific heat of steam or most likely both. Unfortunately the specific heat of a material is dependent on its temperature so it is very hard to approximate across large temperature changes. This problem can be solved with a data table for each compound involved in the reaction. It is very difficult to estimate how hot the exhaust will get.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nedit: corrected 1 mol O2 +2 mol H2 - >  1 mol H2O +241.818kj to 1/2 mol O2 + 1 mol H2 - >  1 mol H2O +  241.818 kJ"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://propulsion-analysis.com/index.htm"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_rocket_propellant", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen"]]}
{"q_id": "xm7hi", "title": "Putting pressure under my nose stops me from sneezing. Is there something similar for vomiting?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xm7hi/putting_pressure_under_my_nose_stops_me_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5nsowz"], "score": [3], "text": ["I work with medical personnel and they offered me [this.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/cricoid+pressure"]]}
{"q_id": "aenqsa", "title": "Wikipedia says the vikings had to leave Britain in AD 1005 because a famine struck their army. Did that famine just effect them, or were the native English badly hit as well?", "selftext": "_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aenqsa/wikipedia_says_the_vikings_had_to_leave_britain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["edsc9kr"], "score": [17], "text": ["The source of the account of the famine in the year is Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E: The Laud MS)  a. 1005 ([edited]: , and F of the same year) that also states that the famine hit the Anglo-Saxons as well.  \n\n & nbsp;  \n\nThe following is the passage in question (sorry for my miserably rough translation, and I cannot type even proper OE for now):  \n\n > 'In this year there was so terrible famine across the Anglo-Saxons (*Angel cynn*) that no one remembered such so severe [famine], and also in this year the fleet left this land for Denmark, [edited]: and came back for a little after'.  \n\nThe original text comes from: Plummer, Charles (ed.), *Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel*, London, 1892, p.139.  \n\n & nbsp;  \n\nIt also seems to me in rather more straightforward reading of the source text that the primary victims of the famine was the Englishmen, not the Vikings.  \n\nDo you wish to have the more extensive information on the famine then in England?  \nI afraid that there not so much more primary sources can be found in this event itself, but I hope I can find some secondary literature on this period.   \n\n[Edited]: tweaks the format of the translation, and correct some translations. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1005"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2zq1bj", "title": "if you detonated a nuclear bomb towards the bottom of the marianis trench, what effect would the water pressure have on the explosion?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zq1bj/eli5_if_you_detonated_a_nuclear_bomb_towards_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpl8v4s", "cplai62", "cplbzbh", "cpld05m", "cpldgxz", "cplg6yn", "cplin4t", "cplm4re", "cplml22", "cplmzo8", "cplnaan", "cploevf", "cplpp4k", "cplqabp", "cplqrzt", "cplrl3i", "cpltadv", "cplwlod", "cplwnhe", "cplx5nn", "cplxgxj", "cply9bn", "cplzmdc"], "score": [3321, 199, 128, 435, 67, 18, 2, 11, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 34, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Interestingly enough, Randall Monroe, the author of XKCD, a wonderful webcomic, has addressed this very question, and in a very approachable way.  One which is, in fact, long enough to not run afoul of the auto-nazi modbot.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe short answer is \"not much, just some turbulent warm water which doesn't even make it to the surface.\"", "I hoped the answer would be that the intense heat and pressure would just create a miniature sun at the bottom of the ocean. ", "Anyone know about the effects of the radiation? Would the trench contain it?", "Could a nuke knock a big chunk off the ice shelf in Antarctica, or somehow otherwise knock a bunch of polar ice into the ocean, enough to substantially affect global coastal areas (flood NY, inundate the Netherlands), and would flood control measures in the Thames protect London? ", "The explosion will push the water away in all directions forming a giant bubble.\nAs the bubble expands the pressure of the gass and vapour will drop and it will cool dome somewhat.\nThen because of the water pressure, the bubble will start collapsing again making the volume smaller and therefore increasing the pressure and again making the gas glowing hot again. (really like the opposite of the explosion)\nThis collapsing bubble will \"bounce\" and expand again.\n\nu/Astramancer_ linked to an xkcd 'what if' page which in turns links to this article:\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n(worth skimming trough it)\nOn page 20 you see what I described, the bubble radius increases and falls back again, bounces and increases again, collapses again,...\n\nYou might also be interested in [sonoluminescence](_URL_1_):\nThis is basically the same. You can use a sound wave to \"expand\" a bubble and collapse it periodically.  Even on a tiny scale enormous temperatures are produced making the bubble glow like a tiny star. \nSo hot (Like think 10 000\u00b0C and some simulatios up to 500 000\u00b0C) that the normal way of determining a temperature via the light (via the black body spectrum) doesn't work anymore.\nNo one really knows how hot the core of the bubble becomes and there are all sort of weird factors that influence the luminescence and noone really knows in detail how it works.\n\nBut the collapsing bubble at the depths of the mariana trench will surely produce a series of bright flashes. \n \n", "You remember the ending to pacific rim... I'm assuming nothing like that. ", "I don't understand why we aren't actually doing things like this. \n\nFuck consequences ", "After reading the title, I immediately recall the scene in Pacific Rim when one of the Jaegers detonate and there's a pocket of air for a brief period where there was no water, until it came back rushing in.\nThat scene was pretty badass IMO", "At those depths, I'm sure the water would cushion the implosion and explosion and lessen the impact.  There would probably be at least some rough waves though.  Fortunately, water is an amazing insulator of nuclear radiation.  We wouldn't feel the effects of the nuclear radiation at all up here, but the radiation world contaminate the water.  I'm sure the sea life would suffer as well.  \n\nI can't link to it right now because I'm on mobile, but there is a really relevant what-if-xkcd comic that talks about this.\n\nEdit: Holy, crap, [the comic](_URL_0_) is actually extremely relevant.  As in: It answers your question exactly.", "Wow that's a fascinating question.  I recently watched a documentary on the Mariana's trench.  I forget why it's so deep now.  Is it on a fault line?  It's crazy to think there's life five miles below sea level.  The pressure is so intense.  ", "Most likely what happen with death charges but not as a big explosion. most likely anything above it will be pulled under water by the bubbles making the water less dense that the ship, so the ship will sink.", "The pressure wave would travel faster, but the gas/plasma bubble would collapse faster.  \n\nYou'd really hurt whales and dolphins in the area.  Might even \"blind\" them, sonar-wise.", "I'm glad this was asked. I was wondering something similar. What would happen if we blew a nuclear bomb up in space? Like just in the middle of no where in space. ", "what would happen to you if you were swimming directly over it if it had been detonated at the bottom?", "According to Wikipedia, not much happens when a nuclear explosion happens deep underwater: _URL_0_", "I don't think people here understand the question. OP didn't say \"please correct my grammar\" he asked a question that is very interesting. Everyone understands what he meant. Mariana Trench NOT Marianas Trench the band. You don't need to correct him and pretend you are a hipster because you know a band name. Please provide some good feedback that is relevant to this question. Reddit sometimes...", "Would the pressure force the explosion down and concentrate it towards the sea floor (assuming it's touching the sea floor) creating a big hole?", "I wonder if the water pressure could cause a detonation of a nearly-critical mass of uranium if Id throw it down there.", "To answer the question exactly as put, it would to some significant extent reduce the size of the explosion as less water would be vaporised (turned to steam), as under all that pressure the boiling point of water would be higher. The immense weight of water on the bubble would quickly compress it, so the bubble would be very short lived.", "Randall Munroe has already pondered this question:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe gist is that there won't be much happening on the surface, but the bomb would blast a 580-meter cavity that would then collapse on itself and bounce back a few times before stabilizing into a mass of water a bit warmer than the surrounding water.  This warm mass would then rise to the surface, where the warmer water might noticeably strengthen a passing cyclone.\n\nTo translate this to a direct answer to your question, we need to look at the formula about halfway down the page I linked.  If we detonate the bomb on the surface, the term \"Mariana Trench pressure\" drops from 1100 atm to 0 atm, and the resulting blast radius increases by a factor of 10.3 to nearly 6 km.\n", "I wonder of underwater nuclear explosion cause tsunami", "does water impede the spread of radiation to any noticeable degree?", "Follow-up version, is it possible to drop a sphere of enriched uranium into the trench, that get's compressed to criticality by the water pressure at the bottom and explodes?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/737271.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence"], [], [], [], ["https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_explosion#Deep_nuclear_explosions"], [], [], [], [], ["https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64zwwz", "title": "how does blood circulate through your body after you've had an amputation?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64zwwz/eli5_how_does_blood_circulate_through_your_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg6akue", "dg6anwj", "dg6dovx", "dg6eiak", "dg6f85i", "dg6h7yz", "dg6he24", "dg6iami", "dg6kaqc", "dg6llxa", "dg6mk1w", "dg6mnlo", "dg6ndc0", "dg6nj85", "dg6nmhi", "dg6nwvq", "dg6o9nj", "dg6qo0s", "dg6spe7", "dg6y6u4", "dg70zjj", "dg718cj", "dg7351b", "dg74glf", "dg75if5", "dg76bwh", "dg79nrh", "dg7b5a8"], "score": [8362, 4864, 7, 49, 17, 62, 2, 2, 340, 7, 47, 3, 31, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You have arteries which supply the blood and veins which take it away, but in between those two is a massive spiderweb of smaller capillaries which get that good blood to every cell in the body then take it away once the cells get what they need.  \n\nSo even though you have had an amputation, there are still thousands of connections between your arteries and veins in what remains of that amputated limb.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "It circulates mostly as it always did. I bet you are imagining blood circulation like some sort of highway loop with big arteries directly connected to big veins, and the smaller vessels and capillaries branching off from them. It isn't like that: The blood from the heart is split up again and again until it is all going through tiny capillaries. Then the blood to go back to the heart is collected from the tissue by capillaries which then combine back into larger veins.\n\nSo if you cut off a limb it isn't like you removed a section of that central highway backbone and need to reroute before things can flow. Instead think of it like a fluid source being split up to be pushed through a sponge (the tissues) and then collected on the other side by a return fluid system. If you remove a big section of the sponge and plug up the larger supply tubes everything else continues as normal.", "Just like a tree, with its roots still pumping water into each of its leaves even after one branch is cut off.", "Follow up question: Say you lose a leg in a car accident. Is there danger from applying a tourniquet to the arteries still pumping blood to the now blocked end? Overpressure? I'm not talking about flesh dying after the choke point, but the rest of the body's ability with this?", "**Super simple ELi5**\n\nFirst, you have linkages that loop at every level \u2013\u2013 shoulder, bicep, fingers, etc. \n\nSecond is chemicals. There tons of chemical signaling that will sense if a limb falls off and trigger what's called \"angiogenesis,\" which constructs larger and more blood vessels. ", "Imagine arteries and veins as the vertical legs of a ladder, it doesn't matter how tall the ladder is, there are always horizontal rungs in the ladder for blood to flow from one side to the other.", "Arteries and veins are like roadway system for the body.\nIf a road is closed off, the cars (blood) will just have to take a detour at the next street to get to where they are going. There are multiple ways to different areas. \n", "Arteries and veins are like highways.  If something obstructs the highway, the cars can still get where they're going by taking the back roads (capillaries).  If the highway is broken permanently, eventually a few of the back roads get built up to be a new highway. ", "Picture a ladder standing on end. The ladder is hollow. Now start pumping blood up one leg of the ladder. The blood reaches the first rung, and some of the blood goes through the rung and down the other leg. The rest of the blood continues up the leg of the ladder, until it reaches the second rung, and some of the blood flows through it and down the other leg. This continues all the way up, with blood flowing up the leg of the ladder, across the rungs, and down the other side. Now, cut the top off of the ladder. Blood will continue to flow up the leg, across the remaining rungs, and down the other side. That's how blood flows through a limb after an amputation.", "Im going to try to dumb it down further. The blood in your body is like cars on the street when the main road closes you can still get to where you need because there is more then one street to a destination. Now with someone losing a limb you have more of a roundabout at the end of the limb to allow all the blood to come back.", "A water treatment facility supplies water to the entire city's four regions, the south, north, east, and west. What it does is send water through very large pipes into these different regions, and then smaller pipes and containers capture the water and start dividing it by streets, then smaller pipes send water into homes, and smaller pipes send the water into the faucets, toilets, and showers.\n\nThen, drains take it all back in the same way small pipes in the drain to the bigger pipes under the homes to bigger sewer pipes in the ground that take the water all the way back to the water treatment facility to purify the water.\n\nOne day, a tornado rips through and rips up some of the houses, to the root, in the southern region. Water status pouring out very wastefully and if left unchecked*, too much water will be wasted that other regions in the city need. So, what they do is just shut down the main pipe leading into the southern region so water doesn't go into that region, but the other regions are still functioning as normal. Water still flows into those regions, runs through the main pipe then smaller pipes into homes and back into sewers and back to the water treatment facility. It just doesn't have to go into the southern region anymore.\n\nEdit*", "Lymph system doesn't always cope well.. just saying' (not med so happy to be corrected because I don't know)", "I think the main misconception is that people believe our blood system was a circle. You know, you pump blood in the arteries and all the blod flows in a giant cucular path all arround your body until it reaches your heart again. If you cut a leg the path is broken and blood cannot flow anymore. If that was the case we had a big problem because that would mean if you cut a vein blood would pour out as if it was an arterie and you would die. \n\nThankfully this is not the case. We have two seperate blood systems. The arterie which has overpressure and the vein system which has an underpressue. Cutting a vein open some will get out but due to the underpressue most of it will stay inside. If you cut an arterie you will see a fountain of blood and you have to apply pressure on the wound to keep the blood inside.\n\nSo how this works is your heart pumps blood from your veins into your arteries system. This constant overpressure in the main arteries presses the blood through tiny paths in between all cells of your body. The underpressure in the veins sucks alll this blood into its system again. \n\nSo instead of a giant circle you have many arteries and veins which are all dead ends creating over and underpressures. Attached to those dead ends are many many tiny tunnels acting like a web all across your body were the blood gets pressed into and sucked out again. The mechanism is much more simple than it sounds and you could easily rebuild it using a regular pump.\n\nFun fact: Due to this overpressue effect your face for example slighly increases in size each time the heart pumps. It's hard to see with the human eye but a camera and a neat algorithm can see it. This is how good authentification software verifies a person is actually a living being and not a photograph for example.", "The way this question is phrased makes me think you don't really know what you're trying to ask.  And the top answer does not really address it.  Blood does not circulate through a limb once it is disconnected from the body.  ", "Some folk missing a large part of this- that end artery isn't blind with no connections. The body sorts this out through a process known as neovascularisation, literally the formation of new arterioles (small arteries) and capillaries at the terminal end of the arteries.  That capillary bed meets up with a venous plexus, again formed by neovascularisation, to drain back into venous circulation. And voila, circulation is restored. \n\nSource: slogged through 6 years of medschool. ", "Question has been answered, but:\nI'm still curious to if a \"high pressure\" artery like the thigh artery (femoral) is cut near the hip, couldn't the shortened \"stop\" influence vessel pressure and burst capillaries nearby? As this \"thicker\" region of the artery has no natural end-point branching as in a \"full leg\"? \n\nDouble-whammy: Could an amputation of a whole limb, say a leg, increase the blood pressure, or for instance hemoglobin levels, of a patient in any significant way? ", "I like the ladder analogy. Blood goes up the right, in to the rungs, and down the left. If you cut off a few feet, blood just doesn't go as far.", "Know how you get to work even when some of the roads are closed or there's a traffic jam? That. \n\nBlood moves through your body based on pressure -- it is highest on the 'out' side of your heart, and then drops off the farther it gets from your heart. At many, many points along the way, blood is trying to find a way to get to a lower pressure area, and so it moves along from a network of arteries, through cells, and back into veins, where it is pulled back into the heart and recirculated again. \nJust like on our highways, some road closures have a big impact. It can starve that flow of blood so that there's not a way to get around fast enough to get into the tissues past the constriction. When that happens, the tissue dies. Think of muscles, fingers, toes, like neighborhoods, and your arteries and veins like highways. A road closure in a neighborhood isn't a big deal because there's a bunch of roads nearby, so it'll really only affect a couple of houses. But if a freeway or an offramp blows up, that entire neighborhood becomes inaccessible.  All the blood (cars) will try to cram into the sidestreets to get in. Of course, it goes slower. A lot slower. Your circulatory system looks very much like our transportation networks do, and breakdowns look much the same way and happen for similar reasons. The difference is... you don't die if you don't get home on time. Your soft tissues do.\n", "It helps if you think of your circulatory system like a pressurized grid. Sure, half of it flows one way and half of it flows the other to make it \"circular\", but it is not linear. Meaning blood doesn't always follow a set path. one blood cell might make a full \"circulation\" of the system in 10 seconds by immediately being perfused to the heart and then expelled into the superior vena cava and find itself right back where it started. Another might end up in some stagnated blood in a varicose vein in someones leg and be stuck there for hours before eeking it's way back to the heart.\n\nIf instead of thinking of the circulatory system as a system that circulates blood, think of it as a three dimensional grid of pressurized pipes that generally flow in one direction. If you cut off some of the grid, the rest can still function relatively the same.\n\nThat being said, I wouldn't classify post amputation circulation as normal at all. Especially immediately after the amputation. over years, angiogenesis (the growing of new blood vessels) will re-construct a grid of pipes to create the best possible circulation. But that still wouldn't be normal.\n\nWe can also thank modern medicine for better techniques of surgical amputation. These days we understand in detail the anatomy of the vasculature, nerves, muscles, and have perfected techniques that maximize perfusion of the remaining tissue.  If you had an amputation during the civil war when things were much more crude, altered circulation could cause tissue to necrose, and become gangrenous, killing you. If the surgical amputation was done in a way where you had better postoperative circulation in the area you might have survived. So, although there are some good reasons you can survive an amputation and have great perfusion in that limb after, the opposite could happen as well. Because of that, I can't say that someone with an amputation has \"normal\" circulation in that area, although (especially with modern surgical techniques) they may well have excellent circulation. ", "when you get a limb amputated a surgeon will make sure to connect the loose ends of the arteries and veins, but honestly it really shouldn't be an issue. there are tons of branches of the major arteries in you body and eventually everything is pushed through the capillaries  which are located literally everywhere in your body, except the center of your eye. There are also connections between many smaller arteries in the body so if blood flow is lost to an area then these connections can help pick up the slack. The only issue i'd really see you running into is if you amputate an area that doesn't have abundant interconnections in arterial blood supply, but any surgeon worth their salt will be aware of these problem areas and will patch you up good", "Blood will sinus up to a point.  If you remove the most distant connections there will be a certain amount of stasis.  I amputated the tip of a finger and that finger gets cold because the blood doesn't flow through as effectively.  None of the tissue dies but the blood simply doesn't have the normal connections at the end of the finger.  Arms and legs do that too, to a lesser extend since they have way more vessels than a finger.  Source: I'm a physician assistant with an amputated distal phalanx on my left ring finger.", "While this will probably get buried but coming up on 8 years as an amputee, immediately following the surgery mine and most legs swell. Depending on the person and body type you can experience extreme volume changes in an amputated limb. \n\nEven now if I spend all day swimming my prosthetic will fit funny. ", "It's a huge circuit. The body already had a massive web of capillaries everywhere. If they amputated say your foot, your major arteries don't go that far. If say your leg, they'll sew the artery so you don't bleed out. The artery will eventually sprout new capillaries that provide oxygen, waste and blood exchange. One thing people who lose an extremity suffer from is false limb syndrome", "The bear ELI5 answer is considering it a 2 layer web. One web is fresh blood spreading out from the middle \nThe other is used blood returning to the center. \n\nCut a section of the web out and it wouldn't effect the flow to and from the other sections. ", "You have vains. They move youre blood everywhere. So when ur hand gets cut off the blood hits the end of ur arm and goes back the other way", "In terms of blood pressure autonomic control, cardiac output and peripheral vascular resistance are also regulated or adjusted dynamically by specialized neurons at the central baroreception sites (in the [carotid sinus](_URL_1_)  and aortic arch), which measure pressure and are able to modulate the system such as vagus nerve and [Renin\u2013angiotensin system](_URL_0_) to the effect of  how much blood the heart is pumping out (heart rate) and also the diameter of arterioles in order to keep blood pressure around a set safe value. ", "So glad you asked this, tried to ask the exact same question a few days back but I'm new and have no idea how to post properly!! ", "Lots of people have already given great answers but I thought I'd also give my two cents. \n\nIf after the limb amputation the blood supply is lacking and the oxygen concentration in surrounding tissues falls below 1% the cells are said to be hypoxic (don't have enough oxygen). The cells recognise hypoxia and promote the secretion of a protein named vascular endothelial growth factor. In essence this protein (along with many others) induces the formation of blood vessels in tissues where the oxygen concentration is too low. \n\nAn increase in vasculature results in increased blood flow to the area and thus the oxygen concentration in the tissues increases, eventually coming back to normal tissue oxygen concentration. \n\nTL;DR: if cells don't have enough oxygen they can promote the formation of now blood vessels!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.theninemuses.net/junk/cardiovascular.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capillary_system_CERT.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renin%E2%80%93angiotensin_system", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotid_sinus"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2k6zmp", "title": "Can someone explain how Quantum Numbers work?", "selftext": "I understand that \"n\" indicated the average distance of the orbital from the nucleus, \"l\" describes the shape, \"m\" describes the orientation, and \"s\" represents the spin.\n\nWhat I don't understand is how to determine the quantum numbers of the electrons of an atom.\n\nMy teacher gave us one example. \"List the four quantum numbers for each electron in a carbon atom\". Then he wrote this on the board. \n\n1: 1 0 0 1/2\n\n2: 1 0 0 -1/2\n\n3: 2 0 0 1/2\n\n4: 2 0 0 -1/2\n\n5: 2 1 -1 1/2\n\n6: 2 1 0 -1/2\n\nCan someone explain how he determined these numbers? I normally understand everything in class but I can't understand this concept.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2k6zmp/can_someone_explain_how_quantum_numbers_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cliswu5"], "score": [24], "text": ["Provided that you've learned how s, p,  &  d orbitals fill, it's fairly easy to translate to quantum numbers. Carbon, for instance, has the electronic configuration:\n\n**1s^2 2s^2 2p^2**\n\nThe filling of atomic orbitals follows the sequence:\n\n    1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d\n\nAnd you can read a bit more about that in Wikipedia's article on [electronic configuration](_URL_0_), but for now, I'll explain the quantum numbers and how they relate:\n\n***\n\nFIRST, the **[principal quantum number](_URL_15_)** [\"n\"] relates to the \"shell\" and energy of the orbital. For [hydrogen-like atoms](_URL_22_)/ions, meaning that they **have only 1 electron**, the [energy of an orbital *only depends on the principal quantum number*](_URL_11_). This relates to the [*average* distance](_URL_12_) of the electron from the nucleus, but it also relates to one other feature for distance: the electron is **forbidden** from existing at certain points in space in relation to the nucleus. We call these \"nodes\", and for the principal quantum number, these nodes are positioned radially. Here's what the [s-orbitals look like with their nodes](_URL_9_). The 1s orbital has 0 nodes (but zero probability of being at the centre of the nucleus), the 2s orbital has 1 radial node, and the 3s orbital has 2 radial nodes, hence why they're sometimes referred to as \"shells\". Notice the pattern?\n\nSo Hydrogen or He^+ or Li^2+ etc... would look like [this](_URL_6_). Note that regardless of what the other quantum numbers are, the energy level stays the same and only depends on the principal quantum number.\n\nHowever neutral lithium atoms, which have 3 electrons, would look like [this](_URL_18_). Here, you'll note that the energy level is different, depending on whether it's an s, p, d, or f orbital.\n\n\nSECOND, the **[angular momentum quantum number](_URL_5_)** [\"\u2113\"], tells you how many **angular nodes** exist. These are planes (or cones) which go through nucleus, and which define places in space where the electron can and cannot exist.\n\n* \u2113 = 0  \u2014  s orbital \u2014 0 angular nodes (a [perfect sphere](_URL_16_))\n* \u2113 = 1  \u2014  [p orbital](_URL_3_) \u2014 1 angular node (a [single plane cuts it in two](_URL_1_), like a [bow-tie](_URL_20_))\n* \u2113 = 2  \u2014  [d orbital](_URL_8_) \u2014 2 angular nodes ([two planes cut](_URL_7_) it in four (or three), usually like a [four-leaf clover](_URL_17_))\n* \u2113 = 3  \u2014  [f orbital](_URL_19_) \u2014 3 angular nodes...\n\nThe possible values (orbitals) are limited by the principal quantum number, according to the formula:\n\n    \u2113 = 0... n-1\n\nSo here's a table of the possible values:\n\n| Principal Quantum Number (n)  | Possible angular momentum Q. #'s (\u2113)    |\n|:-----------:|:------------|\n| 1  |    \u2113 = 0 (s) |   \n| 2  |    \u2113 = 0 (s), \u2113 = 1 (p) |   \n| 3  |    \u2113 = 0 (s), \u2113 = 1 (p), \u2113 = 2 (d) |   \n| 4  |    \u2113 = 0 (s), \u2113 = 1 (p), \u2113 = 2 (d), \u2113 = 3 (f) |   \n\nTHIRD, the **[magnetic quantum number](_URL_24_)**, [\"m\u2113\"]. The name is a bit confusing, but it relates to the [Zeeman effect](_URL_2_) which causes the energy of an unpaired electron in an orbital to change as a function of applied magnetic field. So ignore the name for a moment: think of it as a **directional quantum number**, which defines which way an electron's orbital can point. e.g. there are 3 ways/directions that a plane can divide space into 2 equal parts: along the x-axis, the y-axis, or the z-axis, [as you can see with the p-orbital](_URL_14_) (or alternatively, 3 *orthogonal* directions along which a p-orbital can be aligned. The s-orbital is uniform, so there's only one possible arrangement. It gets more complicated for d  &  f orbitals... [but I think that you can see a pattern](_URL_10_).\n\n| Orbital (\u2113)  | # permutations of m\u2113    | possible values of m\u2113    |\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| 0 (s)       |          1|     0     \n| 1 (p)  |    3 | -1, 0, +1   \n| 2 (d)      |        5 |   -2, -1, 0, +1, +2  \n| 3 (f)      |        7 |   -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3\n\nThe rule says that *m\u2113* values can range from +\u2113 to -\u2113. I like to think of it as simply a set of permutations.\n\nFOURTH, the **[spin quantum number](_URL_13_)**, or [\"ms\"], which defines the spin of an electron. Two electrons can share the same orbital only if they have different spins, according to the [Pauli Exclusion principle](_URL_4_):\n\n >  The Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle that says that two identical fermions (particles with half-integer spin) cannot occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. In the case of electrons, it can be stated as follows: it is impossible for two electrons of a poly-electron atom to have the same values of the four quantum numbers (n, \u2113, m\u2113 and ms). For two electrons residing in the same orbital, n, \u2113, and m\u2113 are the same, so ms must be different and the electrons have opposite spins. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925.\n\nElectron spin can either be +\u00bd or -\u00bd.\n\nWe draw +\u00bd as an upward-pointing arrow (\u2191) and -\u00bd as a downward-pointing arrow (\u2193). There are also [rules in filling up atomic (and molecular) orbitals](_URL_23_) to determine whether electrons will be paired (demanding opposite spin) or unpaired, as in the case of [atomic oxygen](_URL_21_).\n\n***\n\nSo to analyze the carbon atom, with its 6 electrons in orbitals thus: **1s^2 2s^2 2p^2**\n\n* **1s^2** The first two electrons are in the lowest energy level, the 1s orbital, so both will have the same n=1 and the same \u2113 = 0 (s). Because there are two, one can have +\u00bd,  &  the other, -\u00bd.\n\n* **2s^2** The second pair of electrons are in the 2s orbital, so n=2, \u2113 = 0 (s), and m \u2113 = 0 (only possibility for s-orbital) and ms = +\u00bd or -\u00bd (one of each).\n\n* **2p^2** The third pair of electrons are in the 2p orbital, so n=2, \u2113 = 1 (p). Hund's rule dictates here that the two electrons won't be in the same orbital, so of the three orbitals (px, py, pz) and values of m\u2113 (= -1, 0, +1), the electrons will occupy two of them. Any two can be chosen in this case. Spin will be maximized, so electrons will either be **both** +\u00bd  &  +\u00bd, or both -\u00bd  &  -\u00bd (pointing in the same direction, like the [example of atomic oxygen](_URL_21_)).\n\nTo summarize:\n\n| Label | principal (n)    | angular (\u2113)    | magnetic (m\u2113) | spin (ms) |\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| 1s^2  |         1|    0 (s) | 0  | + \u00bd |   \n| 1s^2  |        1 |    0 (s) | 0  | - \u00bd |  \n| 2s^2  |        2 |    0 (s) | 0  | + \u00bd |  \n| 2s^2  |        2 |    0 (s) | 0  | - \u00bd |  \n| 2p^2  |        2 |    1 (p) | 0*  | + \u00bd |  \n| 2p^2  |        2 |    1 (p) | 1*  | + \u00bd |\n\n(for the pair with the asterisk, other combinations are possible, and the spins could also both be -\u00bd).    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_configuration", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E1wkxfpIArA/Ubd6X1_KBDI/AAAAAAAAAH8/wEhpVS2ORBI/s1600/6.PNG", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeman_effect", "http://img.sparknotes.com/figures/0/083ee1e849c82204c3d7c342d336a448/fig1_1.gif", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_quantum_number", "http://ocw.tufts.edu/data/36/393091/393124_xlarge.jpg", "http://images.flatworldknowledge.com/averillfwk/averillfwk-fig06_026.jpg", "https://isis.ku.dk/kurser/blob.aspx?feltid=34680", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/S_orbitals.png", "http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/@api/deki/files/8855/Single_electron_orbitals.jpg", "http://img.sparknotes.com/figures/0/083ee1e849c82204c3d7c342d336a448/fig1_2.gif", "http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtext/atoms/atpt-images/s-orb_shells.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_quantum_number", "http://i.stack.imgur.com/jMW9A.gif", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_quantum_number", "http://www.nhsjusticegroup.co.uk/images/sphere.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/4-leaf_clover.JPG", "http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/imgqua/lithlev.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/F_orbital.png", "http://brandonhillphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/bill_nye-tie.jpg", "http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/@api/deki/files/1279/oxygenexample.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-like_atom", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hund%27s_rule_of_maximum_multiplicity", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_quantum_number"]]}
{"q_id": "2es05y", "title": "what is it like to have a sense of smell?", "selftext": "A number of years ago, I lost my sense of smell in a traumatic brain injury. As time progressed, the *idea* of smelling has become foreign to me. I can not recall smelling anything, nor recall what anything smells like. I'm never sure how to respond when people ask what it is like to not smell, because from my point of view I have never been able to smell (if that makes sense). So I got tired of being asked that question and thought I'd flip it on you folk who do have the ability to smell.\n\n\nThis is kind of out there, but I'm curious what responses will be like.\n\nEDIT: The first two responses mention tasting -- it is too late to change things now, but I also lost my sense of taste in this injury, though that is different because I still eat, chew, notice texture etc. Any explanations outside of tasting are welcome as well :D", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2es05y/eli5_what_is_it_like_to_have_a_sense_of_smell/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck2desz", "ck2djjo", "ck2dxtr", "ck2e3ko", "ck2easz", "ck2efx3", "ck2gfdu", "ck2hn14", "ck2imnu", "ck2k8dl", "ck2mjyp", "ck2o0d3", "ck2pq82", "ck2x0z6"], "score": [45, 3, 11, 11, 8, 5, 2, 24, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Like tasting with your nose.", "to smell is a gift and a curse at the same time. Overwhelming scents can be devastating such as a skunks spray while others such as the aroma of a fine wine can be uplifting.", "Smelling is a function of the brain, as you know.  It lets me know I am alert.  It taps into the primal part of self.  I am able to place locations like certain streets or kitchens by smell.  I can know the scent of another person and know that they have been.  It comes about unexpectedly, one minute I have smelled the same smells for one hour and with a single breath I am introduced to a foreign scent without my approval. \nBut sometimes I smell a smell I am expecting.  Like my farts.  I love the smell of my farts.", "for want of taste, smell is best compared to touch. a truly foul odor is very much like having a mild acid in your sinuses. courtesy of menthol and similar compounds in cleaning products, things that smell \"clean\" are best compared to a feeling of cold. ", "It's a subtle bookmark for places and events that so instantly take you back to a memory. Smell is the nostalgic sense", "How had your loss of taste affected your diet?\n\nI've often wondered if it would improve ones diet if they could suppress thier taste senses, as it would (in my theory) eliminate any eating based on cravings.", "It's like tasting things which you eat, but with nose.", "I'll use hearing as an analogy, since it's closest in my mind.\n\nImagine that every chemical in the world made its own sound.  I don't mean like the difference between the musical notes A# and D, but like the difference between a flute playing A# and a blender with rocks in it.  Smell is that rich and complex of an experience, compared to the simpler colors  &  brightness of vision.\n\nLike sounds, you can smell things over long distances without direct line of sight, and it's hard to completely block out, even if you pinch off the pass to the organ sensing it.  Some smells drown out others, and some come through clearly no matter what (like a baby crying).  Some smells are pleasant and stir emotions (particularly primal ones like hunger, lust, and safety), and some are incredibly annoying or even painful.  \n\nSome differences are that you filter out background smells faster and more completely than sounds; you don't usually smell yourself at all, whereas you do hear a distorted version of your own voice always.  It's harder to be overwhelmed by odors unless they come from gasses that cause other physiological effects (e.g. ammonia), whereas deafening sounds will cause permanent damage.  It's hard to impossible to burn out smell from overexposure to non-toxic chemicals.  On the other hand, bad smells can make it hard to breathe and make you nauseous.\n\nI can only imagine eating without smell would be like watching a movie without sound and subtitles.  Maybe you can get a general feel for what people are saying by watching lips (so long as they face you), but you miss out on the effects of the background music for setting mood and all the foley effects.  [Edit:  Missing a word.]", "I read an article about a woman who had a magnet in planted in her finger. This resulted in a new sense where she could feel magnetic flieds (like microwave ovens, high voltage lines, etc.) and detect near by metal. \n\nThinking about this completely alien sense helped me to consider my other senses more objectively.\n\nSo being able to smell actually gives you information about the chemistry of objects. Consider all the chemical reactions that take place in cooking; they result in differnt smells (and tastes).\n\nSmell can also tell you if fruit and vegiyables are ripe or even spoiled. Likewise of meat goes bad it give off a smell - kind of a warning. \n\nSo you can think of that as being smiliar to being able to see or hear that information - since you get it from a distance. It it probably more similar to hearing since it doesn't require direct or uninterrupted \"line - of - sight\". \n\nOff all my senses, smell is the one that most often conveys bad information. For like in the case of spoilage, the smell is revolting. Like a loud sound, or a bright light. \n\nSmell is a really strong trigger for memories too. For many people smelling cookies reminds them of home. Or maybe certain foods remind them of holidays.  The part of the brain that processes olfactory (smell) information is closely associated with memories. \n\nBecause smell gets stronger the closer you get to the subject, it often times draws me in for smells I like (good food, a woman with nice colonge, the smell of the woods, etc.), or drives me away for ones I dislike (spoilage, feeces, filth, body oder, too much fragrance, etc).  \n\nAs a parent of small children, smell is one way I know my kids needs a clean diaper. Often times he\\she will get cranky (audible) or show other visual signs. The smell is another queue. My mother in law has no sense of smell, so she would always stick a finger in the diaper to veifiy - which is messy. I just look when I am unsure. \n\nGenerally speaking smell is a way we learn things not to eat. There are some poisons that are adapted to smell good or not at all, but very few things that smell bad that are good for you (individual tastes aside).\n\nSo smell is just another way to collect information at a distance from the world around us. Most of that information can be collected other ways too. Especially if you took chemistry and have isolated different compounds and elemtents. Smell is just a convenient way to do that..\n\nEdit: hit post early. ", "Hey! I lost my sense of smell just a few years back, but I can still remember how things smell. It's kind of like closing your eyes and picturing something, but instead smell. \n\nAs a note, I don't have full anosmia, I can still occasionally smell extremely strong scents (like a lot of cologne, or smoke) if they're right under my nose, on my upper lip. ", "A good smell is like feeling something very pleasant and soothing. It often elicits memories, as smell is very strongly tied to memory, and you may find yourself back in a happy childhood memory. The smell of bread in the oven would immediately transport your mind back to being a small child, helping your grandmother bake in the kitchen and feeling like the world was amazing and the day would last forever. It's a very visceral, all-over feeling when one is enveloped by a familiar, pleasant smell. You feel your body open up to pull it in, your eyes close and you salivate involuntarily, and everything around you slows just a little bit. Think of it a little like being in the afterglow of a good orgasm.\n\nConversely, a bad smell is not as often tied with memory but creates a very physical response just the same. You'll feel your throat close as you gag, and your stomach churn or heave. The smell feels viscous and heavy in your mouth, as though it's tangible and you've bitten down on it. It seeps into you, burns a little, and feels thick and wet in your throat like you're choking on something slimy. Smelling something bad is like trying to swallow a mouthful of lukewarm eggwhites when you're already so full from eating that you're rather nauseated.", "Many of the responses here deal with the emotional response that smelling something produces. I think that's good, but I prefer digging deeper, since there's still a link in the chain there that's missing, and that is the actual physical perception of smell. I'm sure that you know what it feels like to have the emotional experiences that the people are talking about, so that isn't explaining anything that you don't already experience or know, so a more detailed description of how the stimuli presents itself to your awareness is in order, I think. /u/pyr666 does a good job of comparing it to touch, since that makes a link between your experience of touch and what it feels like to smell. Maybe that's just my take on it though, since I can understand how all sense is in a spectrum and that they cross over from time to time (I'm a mild synesthete).\n\nTo me, extreme hot and extreme cold are similar to white, which are similar a loud trumpet playing its highest possible note, which is similar to very strong and distinct tastes like pure lemon. To me, they all share the property of being \"high energy\" because they present themselves to my awareness such that I'm keenly aware of them and they can't be ignored. In the same way, some smells have that same kind of spectrum of \"can't ignore\" - they \"shock\" your nervous system - often in a specific way. A very bright point of light to your vision is like a sharp needle to your touch, which is like a squirt of lemon juice or wasabi to your taste, and perhaps like vinegar to smell. That's generally what sour smells (and tastes) are like. Then there are those at the other end of the spectrum - tastes and smells that aren't overpowering, but that you need to pay attention to your sense to make it known to your attention. This is like the smallest amount of hair on your arm being moved but you just barely register it in your sense of touch. Similarly, colours that are hard to distinguish such as very pale colors or very dark colours may blend together and not be as distinct or catching to your awareness. In terms of smell, you might say this is like the smell of something fairly muted, like the smell of paper or sand. Bitter, as both a taste and a smell, to most people, is not pleasant if too strong, and might even be said to be painful and presents itself to your awareness with a kind of sense of immediacy, like being overwhelmed by looking at the sun (that sense of needing to look away), or pull away in the case of getting a deep papercut. Sharp spices like cinnamon are like having the blood flow back into your hand and you get pins and needles - many tiny bursts of individual neurons. Like the tickle you get in your nose when you're just about to sneeze, but milder and more diffuse. \n\nFor more complex smells, such as where someone invites you to try to smell the different \"notes\" in a wine, it usually has a very strong sensation of one sort (usually the alcohol or the sourness of grapes) which makes it very difficult to make out the other smells - like trying to pick out the clarinet with a tuba blaring beside it (one drowns out the other, or makes it necessary to search harder for it). \n\nSome smells \"feel\" pleasant, like silk caressing your skin (such as the smell of butter or vanilla), or \"warm\" like the feeling of warmth on your skin after being out in the cold (such as the smell of freshly baked bread). These smells generally produce an immediate effect on your body of making your muscles relax, or to feel tingly all over. Similar to medium-saturation warm colors like yellow, orange, and red. \n\nBlue and green colors are like fresh coolness on your skin, which is the same as \"cool\" smells. The coolness of the sensations is also a relaxing one, often. A cool smell is like mint, pine, citrus because they seem to \"reset\" your sensory pallatte and don't linger long. A cool mist on your warm skin will seem to numb your skin very slightly and then cannot be felt soon after. ", "Smelling is like touching the texture of the air (a chemical texture), except there is a lot of different nuances, a little bit like different colours (except each person has about 400 \"primary odor\"). Also, if you stay a long time in the same odor, it disapears, you get used to it.", "It's like tasting the air, but not as strong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ti5fg", "title": "[Meta] Has there ever been a disagreement between Mods on /r/AskHistorians?", "selftext": "Hello, I've been browsing this fantastic Subbreddit for months now and I always love reading the incredible detailed and fascinating answers that mods regularly produce but I was wondering (as the title suggests) as there ever been an instances of flaired mods disagreeing on an event or answer in the comment section?\n\nFrom what I've seen, mods are typically very friendly to each other here but as Historian often has many points of debate and 'camps' so to speak I just thought it would be interesting to ask if these disagreements have found their way into a debate here.\n\nApologies if this is a silly question and I'd completely understand if this is to be removed. Regardless, thank you very much for your time :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ti5fg/meta_has_there_ever_been_a_disagreement_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnzagjt", "cnzbapw", "cnzc0qh", "cnzcql4", "cnzdwiq", "cnzgk1h", "cnzhdnh"], "score": [164, 10, 25, 34, 27, 14, 15], "text": ["We don't disagree on anything, mainly because, well, might as well admit this, we're all alt accounts of the same 73 year old white guy.", "[There has been disagreement](_URL_0_) over the Holodomor between several flaired users and rusoved, who is a mod, so that almost fulfils your criteria.", "Well any conflict is resolved through ritual duels at which hundreds of flairs will gather and watch the spectacle baying for blood.", "Imb4 post is removed to violating the 10 year rule /s\n\nMore seriously, their was a bit of a tiff when one flaired user asserted that the incident at wounded knee was a massacre and another flaired user asserted it was a battle. Their was even a bad history follow up post. That's some subredditdrama level hijinks right there. \n\nAlso, there was once an extended exchange between two flaired users over whether the atomic bombs or the soviet invasion of Manchuria was more important to convincing the Japanese leadership to surrender. I'm pretty sure that ended amicably though (the debate, not the war)\n\nAs for drama between actual mods? I can't think of any times that spilled out in public, which makes this subreddit pretty unique. The cabal is very good at keeping its internal workings shadowy. If they ever fight over something like how to dole out the shill money I assume that they go to bad history and settle the matter Churchill vs Stalin style: with absurd amounts of alcohol at ungodly hours of night", "So, to provide a serious answer to your question, we thrive on the diversity and knowledge of our flaired users. When scholars approach a subject from a different background (history, anthropology, archaeology, etc.), or as you suggest different 'camps', there is a chance that different approaches conflict in their interpretation of the past. \n\nWhat separates /r/AskHistorians from other more volatile forums is the dedication to civility and respect in debate while maintaining a solid grasp of the limits of your expertise and a teachable attitude. \n\nThe vetting process for flaired users intentionally selects those scholars with a proven background of maintaining civil discourse. When we disagree we still maintain respect the work, dedication to the field, and wealth of acquired knowledge of the other party. We know we can learn from a constructive debate, and welcome the chance to explore other interpretations. \n\nI'm still new to modding but I can't remember any \"big crisis moments\" because when there is a disagreement there isn't a major explosion, or drama, or fighting. If you read a thread with a debate, it is almost always civil, respectful, and a great opportunity to learn about the different facets of the question. You may not even notice you are reading a debate on a potentially heated topic. We approach the other party with respect, ask questions, willingly acknowledge we don't have all the answers, and see it as an opportunity to learn. \n\nThis environment is only possible because we trust and respect each other.", "So the question seems to be about differences of opinion between the *flaired users* (i.e. the subject matter experts, most of whom are not mods) on history topics, rather than scraps between the *moderators* (all of whom are flaired, most of whom are also experts) over subreddit policy.\n\nThe example that comes to my mind are some striking differences in opinion on how to approach Jared Diamond's pop history book *Guns Germs and Steel*, which range from blazing rage, to firm recommendations against, to ambivalence, to one flair who actually recommended it in some particular context. But these tend to happen in separate threads, rather than several flairs in the same thread challenging each other.", "To be honest, I can't really think of much in the way of major disagreements between flaired users--there have been a few, but it is rare. Part of the reason is that the questions asked just don't really lead themselves to much in the way of disagreement. From an academic standpoint, they are often pretty basic--which certainly isn't a bad thing! The other reason is that although there are a large number of total flairs, this is a number that covers the entirety of human history, and so there aren't all that many overlapping specialties. So for example, there are quite a few people flared for Greece and Rome, but nobody besides me really does the Roman economy, and so if I make a contentious statement I probably won't get called out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20hf1i/did_stalin_really_kill_millions_of_people_how_do/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4d6g39", "title": "Did Lenin actually want to create a single-party state, or was it unavoidable?", "selftext": "He had promised all power to the workers Soviets in his April theses and temporarily went along with the idea of a constituent assembly, but communism was slower than Lenin had wanted:\n\n - The rest of Europe didn't undergo socialist revolutions as Lenin had expected.\n - The unrest in the countryside meant that Lenin couldn't deny land to the peasants and so went against communist principles to give them ownership of the land.\n - Despite its name, War Communism went against the principles of Communism by taking power from the workers and putting factories under the control of industrialist individuals.\n\nDid the single-party state simply arise from the fact that socialism wasn't yet fully implemented yet in Russia, and the Communist party would need to stay in rule to embed it?\n\nEdit: Moreover Russia had been in a state of political flux for so long that economic issues had not been dealt with. Perhaps the single-party state was considered necessary until economic issues could be resolved.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d6g39/did_lenin_actually_want_to_create_a_singleparty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1oabd5", "d1pvnu9"], "score": [7, 2], "text": ["Were there any factions within the party (or any other single party system's party) that functioned as de facto parties?", "No, the Vanguard Party model (as it is known) was specifically put forward by Lenin. Speaking as a Leninist myself, the idea of the Vanguard Party is that it begins as a subset of the \"class-conscious\" (i.e. revolutionary) section of the working class which simultaneously educates their fellow workers as well as agitating for revolution within the structure of the capitalist state. When revolution arrives, the Vanguard Party leads the workers in combatting the capitalists, and when the socialist state is established, the Vanguard Party organizes the state in such a way as to be as interconnected between the government, the workplace, and the general public as possible - the idea being to create a government that was subservient to and a part of the working class, from top to bottom. \n\nTo give a rough outline of what such a system looked like, in the workplace (such as a factory), workers elected a representative to local workers' councils (Soviets, where the Soviet Union gets its name). These in turn elect regional legislatures, which send representatives to the legislature of their SSR, which in turn send representatives to the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature. In addition, all workplaces, as well as schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure-esque offices, also had Party representatives, to which any citizen could go to submit suggestions or complaints. Via the process of Democratic Centralism, which Lenin described as \"freedom of discussion, unity of action\" if I recall correctly, these issues could be brought before the Party, who would discuss and debate the issue freely as they so wished, and then cast a vote on the matter. Party members were expected to uphold the decision, no matter what it was. Lenin famously said that this model was \"1,000 times as democratic as bourgeois (capitalist) democracy\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5kxpj5", "title": "why are most cars front-wheel drive, but motorcycles and bikes are rear-wheel drive?", "selftext": "You're really going to need to dumb this down for me. I know very little about engineering and physics. For whatever reason, I woke up with this question on my mind. Hope someone can explain it to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kxpj5/eli5_why_are_most_cars_frontwheel_drive_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbrdamz", "dbreovq", "dbrfhqp", "dbrjohd", "dbrmcj4", "dbs4sg9", "dbsgu3m"], "score": [20, 65, 6, 2, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["FWD in cars requires less drive train linking the front of the engine to the rear wheels.  Great for economy vehicles.\n\nMotorcycles however are single track vehicles that turn differently than cars.  On a car you turn the wheels and they shift left or right.  On a bike you lean to the side to turn as well as use the handlebars.  If you linked a chain between the engine and front wheel you could no longer turn your handlebars at low speed.\n\nAlso front wheel drive causes things to be bad at turning.  A FWD car will always understeer, not an admirable trait for a bike.  Higher end cars often are equipped with rear wheel drive or all wheel drive which both offer advantages in performance over front wheel drive however are less economic.  \n\n", "Most cars are FWD for two somewhat related reasons; packaging and cost. Generally speaking, FWD powertrains are less complex, require fewer parts, and take up less room than a RWD car; this makes the car lighter, cheaper to produce, and increases cabin space. \n\nMotorcycles and bikes are RWD mostly due to the interference with the steering and/or engineering difficulties that would result from running a chain to the front wheel. It's much easier to run the chain to the rear wheel that never turns.", "Most cars have engines in the front.  The engine is pointed sideways so that the turning motion the engine generates can be connected straight to one of the front wheels. \n\nIf the engine needs to turn one of the back wheels, then you need to add a bunch of stuff in order to get the turning motion from the engine all the way to a back wheel. This usually means a long shaft connected at 90 degrees to another shaft that is connected to the wheels. The more stuff you add the more you lose energy to friction. This is bad for fuel economy.", "It would be difficult to steer with a chain linked from the engine or pedals to the front wheel on a bike.", "it's engineering reasons.\n\ncars come in all kinds of drivetrain. it's just that most are front wheel drive, because they're cheap, efficient, light, and mostly controllable.\n\non a bike. it's easier to transfer the power to the rear wheel, as they don't really lose and efficiency by doing so, unlike most rear wheel drive car, which have to add a number of moving parts, and along with it, weight, to transfer the power from the front of the car, all the way to the rear (quite a bit more part than you might think)\n\nso on a bike, there's no real reason to move the driving wheel. instead, there reason to keep it rear wheel driven. that is weight bearing and grip.\n\non acceleration, weight transfer occurs, and some amount of weight is transferred to the rear half of the vehicle, and then to the rear wheel, and now because it's bearing more load, it's being pushed down, and it has more grip, so more acceleration, means more weight transfer means more grip, at least until the tire hit it's limit\n\nbut if it were front wheel driven, when you accelerate, the weight that was supposed to be pushing down on the driving wheel, the front wheel, and lifted off, and so the more you accelerate, the less grip it has. on a car, it may just results in wheel spin, but that's it, reduce the acceleration, the tires grip again, and you're off again.\n\nbut a loss of front wheel grip on a bike is literally fatal. because you're balancing your bike with your body, and not with 4 wheels, once one of your wheel loses grip, it's SUPER easy to lose balance and fall. rear wheel momentary loss of grip may still be manageable, but front wheel loss of grip will almost guarantee you a fall.\n\nof course there's mechanical reasons too, mainly how to transfer the power to the front wheel on a bike, except is it's an electric bike\n\nTL;DR : you want grip on the driving wheel, and when you accelerate you're 'giving' the rear wheel more grip. but loss of grip on the front wheel on a bike is more fatal than it is on a car", "The only reason FWD exists is because of packaging and cost. FWD is cheap to produce as everything interesting about the car (engine, driven wheels) can be packaged together in one place.\n\nRWD provides superior handling and performance to FWD. It permits you to have control over the behavior of both the front and rear of the vehicle under acceleration and braking (e.g. oversteer), allows 100% of friction from one set of wheels to be allotted to acceleration instead of split between steering and acceleration, and due to weight transfer under acceleration allows for greater force to be applied while accelerating (weight shifts to the rear when accelerating and shifts to the front when braking, thus large brakes on the front wheels). There is also no interference of the powertrain with the steering of a RWD vehicle -- e.g. torque steer can occur in a FWD car if one wheel gains even slightly more traction than the other -- and the feeling/responsiveness of the steering wheel is usually better because of the lack of interference as well.\n\nAWD in performance cars is usually heavily biased to send power to the rear wheels, and it's for these reasons. The reason AWD is useful in performance cars is because many of them have so much power that the rear wheels alone do not have enough traction to put all of that power to the road without wheelspin, so the front wheels can also be used for acceleration. AWD drivetrains have more loss due to mechanical inefficiencies, so there needs to be a good reason to use AWD vs. RWD or FWD alone (and usually that's because there is so much available power -- 500+ hp -- that the loss is worth the other tradeoffs).", "Most answers are wrong. The main reason for FWD is that it handles easier. If you lose grip, the car behaves calmly and nicely, instead of going into a fishtail that requires some skill to control. That said, with skill, you can do a lot more with RWD, but, the sad truth is that very few drivers have that skill (even if many think they have). This is why racing cars often have RWD (and because it's easier to put a large engine in and transfer the power from a large engine without things breaking).\n\nRWD is actually easier to build. Sure, the drive shaft is a little longer, but the mechanics are simpler. It's not a coincidence that RWD came before FWD.\n\nSo, why not on motorcycles. Well, the front wheel is also a large part of how you keep the balance. So, if it looses grip, you get a very nasty situation. Anyone who has tried using the front brake on a bike on ice knows that it's painful. This is not a problem with cars, as they aren't very prone to tipping over."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7ky8fl", "title": "Have any new species or sub species evolved because of chinas great wall?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7ky8fl/have_any_new_species_or_sub_species_evolved/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drifhab"], "score": [11], "text": ["Not sure about animal species, but this [article](_URL_0_) from Nature does have some information on genetic differences observed in 6 plant species on different sides of the wall in the mountains near Juyong-guan."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nature.com/articles/6800237"]]}
{"q_id": "fjcp7r", "title": "Upon King Charles II of Spain's death, the coroner reported many medical irregularities. Were these meant to be taken literally?", "selftext": "\"His heart did not contain a single drop of blood, it was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.\" Are any of these legitimate medical conditions that would be possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fjcp7r/upon_king_charles_ii_of_spains_death_the_coroner/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkmhcj4"], "score": [42], "text": ["More can always be said of the topic, but I commend to your attention [this examination of this matter exactly](_URL_0_) by u/BedsideRounds."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a2dkmw/the_physician_in_the_autopsy_of_charles_ii_gave/"]]}
{"q_id": "2a8llh", "title": "if nobody \"owns\" the internet, who exactly am i giving money to when i buy a domain?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a8llh/eli5_if_nobody_owns_the_internet_who_exactly_am_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cisj0ac", "cisj7rt", "cisllny", "cislm95", "cismmrk", "cismpvp", "cismqdr", "cismtzc", "cisng8i", "cisnj9v", "cisnsmp", "cisnzhx", "ciso8e9", "cisoxyc", "cisp73i", "cispc4n", "cisqaq7", "cisqkmc", "cisrtes", "cissvp2", "cisu408", "cisvbsr", "cisvj4j", "ciswm59", "ciswqj3", "cisxige", "cisxnpm", "cisyi2m", "ciszcc0", "cit2717", "cit3c8l", "cit5ffa", "cit9fq3", "cit9lle", "cit9nw6", "cit9rvk", "citaxgv", "citde7n"], "score": [126, 208, 3068, 104, 73, 510, 3, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 35, 3, 2, 2, 19, 2, 9, 2, 5, 2, 5, 4, 2, 3, 7, 2, 6, 3, 3, 7, 3, 2, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["When someone types \"_URL_0_\" into their address bar their computer has no idea where to send that message to.  So it goes to something called a \"Domain Name Server\" which says oh, _URL_0_ that's located at IP Address 4.34.16.20. Then your computer send the request there instead.\n\nIf you set up your own website you buy a domain, all you're doing is paying to reserve that name with the Domain Name Server.  If you don't want to do that you can set up your server and just hand out your IP Address and people can access it that way.\n\nSince there is a limited number of good names there has to be some way to make sure _URL_0_ always goes to googles servers, and not to some scammer, so the DNS system requires google pay a fee to keep their IP reserved to that domain name.", "ICANN does not retail domain names out. To avoid all that mess, they lease the right to lease domain names under each Top Level Domain (TLD), such as \".com\". For instance, Verisign has lease rights to \".com\". These TLD providers may either sub-lease the rights to \"resellers\", or do it themselves, or both, depending on their business model and contractual limitations on the lease agreement with ICANN.\n\nWith a typical transaction, the webhost takes a slice (e.g. ABC Webhost), the reseller (e.g. _URL_0_) takes a slice, the TLD provider takes a slice (e.g. Verisign). ICANN receives a portion of the aggregate for operational costs.", "ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit that was founded in '98 to handle the reserving of names for websites. Before ICANN, it was literally handled by [some dude](_URL_2_). If you wanted a unique website name you had to contact that dude. That was becoming unsustainable so everyone got together and decided on some rules.\n\n\n\nWhen you pay for a domain name, some of that money is going to ICANN for operational costs and some of it goes to the registrar (like GoDaddy).\n\nThe reason some domain names cost more than others is simply because they are more desireable. They work a bit like stocks. So \"_URL_0_\" is going to cost more to register than \"_URL_1_\" because there are probably more people that want it. Supply and demand.\n\n\n\nEDIT: Hey guys. I know that Postel was not just \"some dude\". But this is ELI5. I was just trying to give some background without going on a tangent or getting complicated. Which is why I linked to his Wikipedia page. Also, ICANN was not created because Postel died. The US government was discussing alternatives back in '97 - well before his death. A bigger reason for the creation of ICANN was probably that time Postel decided to change the root zone server of most of the Internet to his own server without telling anyone (again, ELI5). That freaked a lot of people out.", "I'm still a little confused at how this works even with the answers provided... Can someone make an analogy?", "While no one owns all of the parts of the internet, each step of the way is owned by someone.\n\nPart of that is the DNS ~~system~~ - that maps names (_URL_3_, _URL_1_ _URL_0_ etc.) to ip address.  Ip addresses are the things actually computer equipment uses to talk to each other.  \n\nThe DNS ~~system~~ was created by treaty (edit:  a treaty agreeing that everyone in the ITU was going to just use the US system, not that the treaty actually built the system), and while the top of it is a non profit organization it still 'owns' the right to give out top level domains to countries, every country has their own registrar (for .ca, .uk, .us, .fr etc.) and the US owns a few others (.com, .gov. mil), some countries have more than one (e.g. Russia/Soviet Union), and somewhat like wireless spectrum, ownership is implicitly assumed to belong to national governments, and you need the permission of their agencies to own a domain.  They contract out these services to various companies.\n\nNow for example, lets say I wanted to own _URL_4_ - I'd find the organization responsible for handing out domains on .ca and ask them for it.   That organization needs to handle requests for names, it needs to resolve disputes (what if you own _URL_2_ already, but I own a competing business in Canada already called _URL_4_, and how do you resolve this dispute?).  All of those people who handle that stuff need to be paid.  And then the physical hardware that stores this information needs to be paid for, and people and software that connect to the world all need to be paid for.  Companies that sell these things are allowed to do so by national governments - Verisign which is the big one in the US does so with the approval of the US Department of Commerce.  \n\nIn addition to paying for your national registry there are 13 root name server (2 of which are controlled by verisign, the other 11 each have one operator), these form the backbone of the name - >  IP address system.  All of those servers need to be kept reasonably in sync with each other and they all need to keep running.  13 was a technical limitation at one point, but now we also have replication of those servers - your ISP probably runs a clone of one of those 13 for example and when you access the internet you're probably doing so via the clone.  But either way, the web traffic those servers could have to handle is significant, the reliability requirements are extreme, and keeping everyone happy is expensive. \n\nSo that's what you're paying for - people to make sure that when you buy a domain I can't buy the same one, that we agree on where that domain points, and that it will be the same everywhere, and all of the equipment used to make sure that happens.  ", "If nobody \"owns\" the Earth, who exactly am I giving money to when I buy land? ", "When you buy a domain, you are buying an address entry from a Registry that has secured the rights to sell TLD (extension like .com)from ICANN. You cant buy direct to registry though. You have to buy from a registrar (enom, godaddy, networksolutions, moniker, etc) or through one of their resellers like namecheap, google, etc. \n\nIts like buying a car. You can't go to Michigan and buy one from the Ford motor company. You have to buy from a dealership (registrar)", "When I pay $15 or whatever to register a domain, what actual costs are the companies involved incurring, other than the usual overhead of running any company?", "There is no reason you cannot register for a domain name directly from a registry at a much lower cost. Except that ICANN says so. It created a faux industry, layering fees on top of unnecessary fees, and arbitrary rules on top of arbitrary rules (ever read a registrar accreditation agreement, or a registrant agreement?) \n\nDomain names become \"real estate\" but not really because although you can buy and sell them, they can be taken from you at any time. They are also first reserved for intellectual property interests (ie corporate trademark owners), who are ICANN's primary constituency. \n\nSee _URL_0_ or google it any which way you want.\n\nDomain name markets consist of two primary markets: the trademark owners, who keep buying defensive domain names in each new TLD, and secondary marketers, who speculate wholesale and/or sell the dream of speculation.  This is my opinion, and you are free to disagree.\n\nThere is an excellent archive still online (among many many others) called _URL_1_ that is reported by some of the best in the advocacy history of ICANN and domain names. I have made some small contributions to it, and others, over the years.", "You paid the registrar when you bought the domain, so that's a silly question because you know exactly who you paid. The person you paid. Someone needs to hold the records of who owns the domain so you can be contacted.", "Nobody really \"owns\" anything. They just have rights to it until the rest of us change our minds.", "The Internet is a collection of networks, who all agree to speak a collection of languages. Your ISP pays multiple provides to be able to connect to their networks, and you pay to connect to type ISP's network. Internet = inter networked. \n\nOne protocol that functions over the internet, or language in ELI5 terms, is the Domain Name System. This is essentially a global address book, allowing lookups from _URL_0_ to its numerical IP address. \n\nIn order the maintain the infrastructure to run DNS, and provide a barrier higher enough to prevent spammers and low enough to allow individuals to buy in, a charge is levied on purchasing entires to this global address book.\n\nDNS is hierarchical. ICANN own the highest level, and sub contract out levels directly below this. You know the old school address/phone books with a letter tab down the side for each page? Think of ICANN as owning the physical address book, but then telling Verizon they can lease out space on the pages for A, and Godaddy for space on B. Go daddy  then lease sub page BA to me, and BB to you, and BC to Joe Smith. I can now technically rent out BAA etc, but my agreement with my host likely prevents this.\n\nThere are other  global DNS  roots around, so you can choose not to buy space from our global DNS. Prime example being .onion DNS, used by Tor, which its a completely separate system, and doesn't require money to purchase.\n\nWe are familiar with DNS because it is so ubiquitous, but this is only a very small part odd the wider internet, and certainly not a mandatory component.\n", "domains are not \"the internet\" they are simply easier to understand names that point to \"addresses\" on the internet.\n\nthe internet is not \"some single thing\" its an ethereal concept.\n\nthink of it like the united states. who owns the united states? the PEOPLE do. no single person or entity \"owns\" the united states. we came together as one and agreed \"we are the united states\"\n\nthe same sort of thing applies to the \"internet\"\n\nsomeone owns the servers the networks the wires the computers the hard discs.\n\nJust like people own land cars homes etc.. in a nation.\n\nwhen you \"refer\" to the \"collection\" as a whole you have a \"nation\" when you refer the collection as a whole you have \"the internet\"\n\nyour paying for \"access and storage\" not \"the internet\"\n\nyour address on the internet is a number. 192.168.1.1 for example is the \"local\" address typically of your router.\n\nyour website also has an \"address\" which is a number like that one.\n\nthose numbers are the \"real\" address to your website. to make life easier for minds that don't recall and associate numbers so easily we created \"domain names\" _URL_0_\n\n_URL_0_ is a fiction. it goes no where. it means \"nothing\" to the internet infrastructure.\n\nSO we created DNS servers. when you buy a domain name you \"tell it\" where you want that domain to point too.\n\nso for example you want to goto www._URL_1_ problem is _URL_1_ is a fiction.\n\nwhat you really want and just don't know it is 74.125.225.19\n\nTHAT is the \"address\" for google on the internet.\n\nthey register www._URL_1_ and program the DNS server to associate _URL_1_ with 74.125.225.19\n\nwhen you connect to the internet you are also \"assigned\" DNS servers whos purpose it is to translate between what we understand _URL_1_ and what the networks understand 74.125.225.19\n\nthis all typically happens in the background transparently to you.", "Where did you get the impression that nobody \"owns\" the internet? It's certainly not one person or organisation, but each and every part of it is owned by someone. \n\nFor instance, all the physical connections are owned by the corporations that operate them (usually). And on top of those connections sit routers and switches owned, again, by corporations that operate them. And using that equipment and those connections, we speak a protocol called IP which uses numbers (as addresses) that are given out by IANA (of which ICANN is part). We all decided to use that protocol a long time ago and decided to give IANA the authority to distribute the IP addresses. \n\nAnd then we decided that remembering IP addresses was a pretty shitty idea so we invented DNS. Which we then also gave a central authority (again IANA) the ownership of so that they could coordinate things and actually run and administer the system. This of course requires money, which is where your fees come in.\n\nIt's technically possible to do this all yourself, but you'd have to invent your own protocol and then set up your own DNS-like system. The latter is not difficult (but getting people to use it is), the former however, is, because no other companies are going to route your traffic unless it uses IP.", "You don't buy a domain. You rent it. The money you pay goes partially to the registrar (ex. GoDaddyt) and to ICANN, the non-profit who keep track of who is renting what site. \n\nOnce you start renting it, you always get dibs on it and can rent it as long as you want. Companies will pay big money to get dibs on your domain name if it's helpful for them. For example if Apple released a product called iHotSauce and you happen to own _URL_0_ - they may try to pay you off to get the 'dibs' from you so they can use the site. ", "How does this work with the darknet? If somebody knows I would like to know, is it the same process but still with \n'some dude?\"", "Basically you're paying for your phone number (IP address) to be connected with a name (website url).  When you type a website into your browser, it gets looked up in a directory to find a corresponding address to call for content.", "Here I'll throw another analogy into the mix:\n\nYou are a baker in a very very big city (the internet) the address for your shop is very hard for people to remember for example it is 521.154.159.126, the city is hightech though and has teleporters that when you type in this string of numbers to the teleporter machine takes you right to the shop! We humans are not very good at remembering long series of numbers so a group of helpful people(ICANN) started making a list matching these numbers to a name for example \"521.154.159.126 = Bob's Bakery\" over time this list got longer and longer and other people wanted to start using it because it made life so much easier instead of having to remember all those numbers for all the places they wanted to go in the teleporter.\n\nThis group of people which we call ICANN were getting so many requests from people in the city for their shops and homes to be put on the list that the job got too big so they got other companies (GoDaddy, etc) to deal with all the requests. But in exchange for using ICANN's list of shop addresses GoDaddy must get permission from them and let them stay in control. \n\nThis list got so big and useful that everyone wanted to be on it and if your shop wasn't on the list you wouldn't sell your baked goods as well as Mr Jons bakery who paid to be on it. Nobody is forcing you to be on this list but it's what everyone is using to find the bakeries in town so it wouldn't make sense not to. \n ", "The most ELI5 answer is to say that you are paying for a service that you cannot set up yourself very effectively. ", "When you are buying a domain, you're actually just reserving a name on a giant contact list. Your money is paying the contact list manager (domain registrar) to associate whatever word(s) are in your domain name with a computers IP address on the Internet. The IP address is like the computer's phone number. Your contact list manager agrees to share the list they manage with anyone that asks to look at it. ", "Your registrar for the service of putting you on a big list that verifies that you paid for that little swath of internet where you put your content.", "First, you have to understand the difference between the terms you quote in your question.\n\nThe internet consists of many interconnected smaller networks. Hosts in these networks are identified by IP addresses. IPv4 first, to be more pedantic, nowadays a mix of IPv4 and newer/longer IPv6, when it became clear that us humans are getting too many devices connected to the network and run out of IPv4 addresses. IP data packets are passed between hosts, sometimes through a chain of intermediary routers (the \"gateways\" of those connected smaller networks) using IP addresses as identifiers.\n\nA domain name  is different. A domain name is a human readable string, since humans aren't very good at remembering numbers (IP addresses). A whole infrastructure is needed to maintain the mappings between IP addresses and domain names. Keeping that infrastructure working costs money. Technically, the domain name is usually optional. You can run most services by sharing just the IP address (and port number, if you run a common service on a non-standard port, but port numbers are entirely another story) so others would know where to connect to.", "You pay for air.\n\nThat's right, air. You pay \"some company\" to add 1 line of text to their database. They, in return, pay to be accredited. Domain names cost *nothing*. You pay the company to keep it operational for you.\n\nSource: I am a registrar.", "This is a fantastic question.  Thank you for asking it.", "ICANN back during the creation of the internet a man named Jon Postel created the internet. He is responsible for founding ICANN which is a non profit organization dedicated to defending the world from those that would harm it. Companies bid on domain names which can get very expensive, the money taken from this go's to the counsel of ICANN which is located on their main base on a small island off the cost of Cuba.  ICANN maintains a small but Highly experienced military force of about 3000 solders.  If anyone can remember the cuban missile crisis it was ICANN that sent in about 100 solders to disarm nukes which were set to go off by a rouge Russian general who wanted to create WWIII between the soviet union and the U.S.A.\n\nEdit: feel free to ask more questions regarding ICANN", "The cost of domain is determined by the Registry, not ICANN as the main driver. For .Com for example the registry is Verisign. They drive the price for the Registrars (godaddy) which is now just over $7USD. The Registrars add their margin which is how GoDaddy is able to sell you domains for $9.99. They make the extra and then offer you support services like hosting etc. If you are paying more it is because that registrar doesn't have the same volumes to make $2 viable. ICANN gets around .25 per domain for overseeing the Global Registries. ANSWER-the Registrar and Registry-Worked at a Registar for many years", "ICANN awards \"top level domains\". The most popular: .com, .net, and .org, were awarded to Network Solutions. I believe they had to bid to be awarded these back in the 90s, and ICANN used that money to help setup the initial internet architecture. Since then Network Solutions was acquired by Verisign, so the money you are paying, minus whoever your registrars cut is, goes to them.  You are paying for permission to use a subdomain of their top level domain. Plus, the price helps deter domain squatters. \n\nSome other TLDs were awarded to other companies and countries. Countries like Tuvalu make good revenue from renting out subdomains to their TLD \".tv\" which internet users associate with television and video. \n\nTechnically, your domain is actually a subdomain, but we don't call it that because you can make your domain name have a subdomain, so it would be a sub-subdomain.  So we just call it the \"domain name\" of you \"top level domain\", and if you want you can make any additional \"subdomains\". \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Perhaps this will help.\n\nIf you buy a new domain, you're paying the registrar, which is the equivalent of a retailer of pay-for-scan merchandise, like gift cards or greeting cards.\n\nThe moment you pay them, they contact (and pay) ICANN electronically, to add your new domain into their server registry.\n\nThe registrar takes your a markup as profit, and ICANN takes your money to maintain the network registry equipment.\n\nIf you buy any other domain, you're paying the current owner of the domain.  It's either an auction, or a straight-out price.  Generally, registrars play middle-man for these domain exchanges.  In addition to your fee for the right to \"buy\" a domain name, you're also paying the registrar to register that domain in your name (see above).\n\nEDIT: To give a little more context... none of this has to do with owning the internet.  You're paying to put your name next to your number in a phone book.  Without it, you're still available by that number.  \n\n_URL_0_, for example, is just the reference for a bunch of IP addresses in the range 74.125.226.64-78... without a DNS entry, you could still always get to google by typing 74.125.226.64 into a browser.", "What about WHOIS info? Why does it *have* to be valid, and why do we usually have to pay to have it hidden?", "The internet and Domain name are 2 different things.  Some one just came up with the idea to associate a domain name to a network address like 192.872.736.22 so you don't have to remember a long number to find a website.  You're paying for a company to store that name eg. _URL_0_ so when someone types in _URL_0_ it will forward to wherever your site is stored. You can forward  it to your home computer if u want. ", "You are giving money to the yellowpages (DNS) to publish your phone number (website) so people can visit it.", "Also, Internet is capitalized, and it it refers to the one thing that is made of all the little networks people do own, hooked up together. \n\nIt's like if you live in a neighborhood. No one owns the neighborhood, but everyone owns their houses and the government owns the streets. The neighborhood is just what you call all the little pieces taken as a whole.", "Alot of people seem to have part of it right. Basically 3 R's and ICANN:\n\nRegistrant: That's you, he/she who owns the domain name for a specified period (usually 1-10 years). And there is no argument over that, you do OWN that domain. It's just not yours forever, if you don't renew it or delete it, then it's gone and someone else can pick it up. However for the time you have it registered, it is your domain which you own. Enough lawyers and people spend alot of money on online presence, it's real.\n\nRegistrar: Company officially recognized by ICANN (and Registry) to sell domain names. This is your GoDaddy, Hover, Network Solutions, _URL_1_. You buy a domain from them and they directly connect to the Registry system (below) and register the domain for you. \n\nRegistry: Verisign (com/net) Afilias (info/mobi/pro) Neustar (BIZ). They maintain the technical systems and backend that run a particular Top Level Domain, ie com, org, me, info, name etc. You rarely as a domain owner hear about the Registry, but Registrars have to use their system to register and manage your domains. Without the Registry, your domain wouldn't \"exist\". \n\nICANN: A non-profit (*COUGH*NEW GTLDs*COUGH*) organization who policies which company runs which Registry (above). Usually lots of money and bidding to gain control of one. They spell out the general policy all Registry and Registrars must follow with respect to the domain industry. They decide which .whatevers exist, which right now is a big deal because they opened it up some for people to apply for new ones _URL_0_ it's why you'll see .guru, .blue, .sex this and coming years. \n\nWhen you watch that overpriced super bowl ad and decide to go to godaddy and fork over 10 bucks, you as a Registrant are paying the Registrar.  The Registrar on their end have various fees to pay to ICANN and the Registry, but that doesn't involve you as a domain owner. \n\nSource: I work for a Registry\n\n\n\n", "[ICANN](_URL_3_) is the root authority for all domains. They allow companies to manage [registries](_URL_0_) for the TLD's (Verisign for .com and .net, PIR for .org, Educause (a proxy of Verisign) for .edu, Neustar for .us, Nominet for .uk, etc). [Registrars](_URL_4_) are then given access and accreditation to register domains in the registry. There are also resellers (many web hosts, for example) for the registrars as well, though they aren't required. Each level pays the next level up a fee.\n\nDomains used to be free for most registries, but you'd have to actually use them. Most of the short URL's were snatched up during this period (_URL_1_, _URL_2_, etc) and re-registered when the fee model was implemented.", "Nothing is free.\n", "I [asked something similar](_URL_0_) to this a while back on this same sub, and some of the answers I got might be relevant to your question.\n\n*Edit: fixed incorrect link. Stupid shortlinks won't copy in my browser unless I rightclick on them... At least I didn't accidentally link to anything embarrassing.*", "No matter who you are paying, domain names are not the internet. Even if someone owned all the domains, the internet could still function based on ip addresses. The reason no one can own the internet is because it is just a giant network with a ton of machines attached to it. When you go to a website, you actually are copying a file from a computer (server) somewhere else and loading it on your computer to view it. Most people seem to think their computer is more like a window, showing other locations, but your machine is more or less copying the blueprints for the site and then building the page in your house. Domains are just human friendly ways of navigating to all of the locations around the world. If we didn't have domains, remembering websites would be like remembering phone numbers. The web address of any site is a numerical address separated by periods. If everyone remembers your ip, you can have a page without having a domain at all!", "I guess this is pretty much cleared up now, even though it's still fairly complicated (for me at least. It doesn't help that I'm a colossal imbecile).\n\nAlso nice making the front page of reddit in my first ever post. Thanks for the answers guys!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["google.com"], ["monster.com"], ["coolwebsite.com", "coolwebsite92thatpeoplelike.biz", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel"], [], ["cogeco.ca", "reddit.com", "CoolDeathFalcon.com", "www.google.com", "CoolDeathFalcon.ca"], [], [], [], ["http://www.google.com/#q=icann+and+intellectual+property+constituency", "http://www.icannwatch.com/"], [], [], ["google.com"], ["www.whatever.com", "google.com", "www.google.com"], [], ["iHotSauce.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["google.com"], [], ["Abc.com"], [], [], ["http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/", "Name.com"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_registry", "hp.com", "sex.com", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar"], [], ["http://redd.it/294pcr"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3nd1re", "title": "why is it such a concern when russia fights isis in the middle east but when the us do it(along with other things in the area), no one gives a damn.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nd1re/eli5_why_is_it_such_a_concern_when_russia_fights/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvmwps9", "cvmxg02", "cvmy49a", "cvn76q3", "cvn8mmg", "cvn8q3j"], "score": [43, 5, 13, 14, 6, 4], "text": ["Plenty of people object to US involvement in the Middle East, including a lot of the people who live there. \n\nRussia was especially unhappy about it, but we didn't hear much about that. \n\nAlso, when Russia does anything outside it's borders,  it stirs a very deeply programmed American phobia that goes back to the Cold War days. ", "As far as I can tell the issue is that Russia *says* it's gone in to fight ISIS but is *actually* there to prop up the regime of Assad in Syria. On the news here (UK) we have been seeing images of where ISIS is in control and also of where the anti-Assad forces are. Most of the Russian actions so far seem to have been in the anti-Assad areas with only a few in the ISIS areas.\n\nI don't claim to understand the international politics of it all.\n", "So far, Putin seems to be taking advantage of the situation to help Assad kill his enemies, not ISIS. Russian planes have reportedly been tracked as they attack areas where there are no ISIS threats, but there are plenty of the anit-Assad rebels. ", "You live in the West, therefore you receive media that is biased in favor of Western interests. Don't be fooled into thinking the media presents an accurate view of the world.", "Because it challenges U.S. hegemony. \n\nThe United States likes to try to control areas with instability, because gaining footholds increases their scope, influence, and power. \n\nDuring the cold war, the United States was incredibly concerned about the influence of communism over the rest of the world, because it is at odds with capitalism and the United States way of life. The Soviet Union's brand of totalitarianism just didn't fit with the United State's brand of totalitarianism. \n\nAfter the U.S. \"won\" the cold war, the Russian bear went dormant and struggled to find itself and it's place in world domination. Now-a-days, the bear is trying to spread its wings, and this challenges the domination the United States has over the rest of the world. \n\nUnstable Middle Eastern and African regions are supposed to be controlled by the United States, and any intrusion into that control is going to be met with hostility. \n\nSo in summary, it's basically about the U.S. controlling the world, and having that control challenged. Areas of instability are areas of economic opportunity for the United States, both government and corporate entities. If the United States can establish a dominant presence in a region, they can sell military equipment, and McDonald's to the fledgling beta powers in those regions. \n\nRussia getting involved in Syria is like Burger King getting their shit together and putting out a decent burger, and promoting the hell out of it. They're bombing the people that are like the United State's McDonalds marketers. The U.S. wants McDonald's to seize control of the airwaves from the evil Taco Bell, but Russia is challenging that air time with their own marketers. Customers have to be coerced into eating someone's garbage, and both Russia and the United States are determined to be the hand that feeds. \n", "Uh... People do give a damn. It's just that we are surrounded by our propaganda so you don't get to see their propaganda. \n\nThe most sophisticated and insidious propaganda are in the west. The simple, primitive and draconian propaganda are in backwards societies like north korea.\n\nBut either way, we are just as brainwashed as those in north korea."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xiljt", "title": "A question to anyone who knows molecular symmetry and character tables.", "selftext": "Thanks in advance, I understand the character table itself and what the symmetric/ antisymmetric blah blah all means. But what is this x^2 + y^2 term that keeps popping up in the quadratic column, I recognize x^2 - y^2 as a d-orbital, but I have never came across this x^2 + y^2  until I started working through character tables. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThanks\n\nEDIT: wasn't expecting reddit to use exponents ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xiljt/a_question_to_anyone_who_knows_molecular_symmetry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5mplrz", "c5mr4on"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["The final column of the table lists a number of functions that transform as the various irreps of the\ngroup. These are the Cartesian axes (x,y,z) the Cartesian products (z2, x2+y2, xy, xz, yz) and the\nrotations (Rx,Ry,Rz).\n\nSo, these are possible basis functions for this point group.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "In chemistry, the x^2 + y^2 (+ z^2) term in the character table denotes an s-orbital.  The z^2 orbital has the essentially the same symmetry properties as the s orbital, and you'll find them grouped together in the A, A1, Ag, or A1g character."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.webqc.org/symmetrypointgroup-c3v.html"], "answers_urls": [["http://vallance.chem.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/SymmetryLectureNotes2009.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "364k8i", "title": "does the net serve a purpose in basketball ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/364k8i/eli5_does_the_net_serve_a_purpose_in_basketball/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cranti2", "crantrm", "craodrp", "crap4up", "cras134"], "score": [42, 17, 13, 13, 2], "text": ["Slowing the ball descent to the ground to enable it to be clearly seen that the ball passed through the hoop and no just alongside it.", "It serves to compel the ball to fall more-or-less directly straight down when a basket is made, as opposed to someone shooting a 3 pointer and ending up with the ball rolling a quarter mile past the hoop.", "Because it makes more sense than using a peach basket and having to manually get the ball out every time. ", "1) It keeps the ball on the court. 2) Allows a score to be easily seen. 3) Prevents injuries by slowing the ball after it passes through the hoop. ", "Have you played basketball before without a net? Its so unsatisfying not hearing that wet swish sound, and its harder to see if the ball actually went in"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "96nmcf", "title": "When Belisarius was sent to reconquer Italy, he had just 7,500 troops. Why so few?", "selftext": "This seems like a laughably small force to retake the entire peninsula, given the number of Austrogothic forces, and especially relative to the 100,000 troops the empire had sent to Africa just a half-century earlier. If regaining Italy was so important to Justinian, why did he send such a puny force to do it? Was that really all the empire could spare? Were there recruitment problems? Were the rest of Byzantine forces tied down defending other parts of the empire? \nThanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96nmcf/when_belisarius_was_sent_to_reconquer_italy_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e42qc68"], "score": [21], "text": ["To start Belisarius' 7,000 man army wasn't \"laughably small\" its smaller size was likely a strategic choice. There several factors that may have played into Justinian's decision to send Belisarius with only 7,000 men. In addition to this Belisarius was an extremely capable general and Justinian most likely trusted that he would be able to make significant progress in the initial stages of the war with a smaller force. In addition to this Justinian also sent an army commanded by Mundus to capture Salona in Dalmatia. Justinian also had an alliance with the Franks who were a very powerful kingdom at this point.\n\n\nFirstly, acording to Procopius the war against the Goths began rather spontaneously: \n > And the emperor, upon learning what had befallen Amalasuntha, immediately entered upon war (Procopius *De Bello Gothico* I.V)\n\nAnd it seems that Justinian also wanted to invaded Italy before the Goths even knew they were at war:\n > And the emperor instructed Belisarius to give out that his destination was Carthage, but as soon as they should arrive at Sicily, they were to disembark there as it obliged for some reason to do so, and make trial of the Island. And if it should be possible to reduce it to subjection without any trouble, they were to take possession and not let it go again; but if they should meet with any obstacle they should sail with all speed to Libya, giving no one an opportunity to perceive what their intention was (Procopius *De Bello Gothico* I.V)\n\nSo the war was not only spontaneous but Justinian also wanted to keep the element of surprise up until Belisarius landed in Sicily. Forming an army of 15,000+ men would have taken much longer than it would to gather 7,500 men. This means that Mundus' invasion of Dalmatia either would have to be delayed, or he would have arrived and put the Goths on alert before Belisarius could reach Sicily. An army twice as large also means that Justinian would need twice as many ships to get them to Sicily. It would also make for a longer trip as it would likely take more time and effort to ensure that such a large number of ships stayed together for the entire journey. It would also be less believable that the emperor would send his best general with that many men to Carthage, when they already controlled North Africa. 7,500 men on the other hand could simply be perceived as a garrison force to help keep the peace in the newly conquered territory. Sicily also would not have been as heavily defended as the Italian mainland, and the entire island could be, and was, taken with a smaller force. A large number of these men were also described by Procopius as \"notable spearmen\" which probably means they were distinguished soldiers. He also would have hard men from his household guard with him, most of whom would have fought with him against the Vandals. In addition to these men Belisarius had approximately 3,000 Isaurians, who were elite troops the Empire often used in war (they even formed a large part of the imperial bodyguard for several centuries. So while we might perceive 7,500 men as being a \"small\" force, it was composed of some of the best men that the Empire had available and was led by their best general. There's also a possibility that Justinian and Belisarius had hopes that the non-Gothic population would support their war effort as many of them still viewed themselves as Romans. Also, controlling Sicily meant that Justinian could easily reinforce Belisarius if the need to do so arose. It also gave Belisarius easy access to the region of Calabria, whose Roman population was largely dissatisfied with Gothic rule.\n\n\nBelisarius actually managed to take nearly the entire island of Sicily without any Gothic opposition, the port city of Panormus being the only exception to this. Despite the resistance at Panormus Belisarius was still able to take the city with relative ease, and thus completed the conquest of Sicily. Meanwhile, Mundus defeated a Gothic army in battle and caprtured Salona. According to Procopius both of these events made the King Theodatus extremely afraid and he agreed to surrender the entirety of Italy to Justinian. If Procopius is right, then Belisarius and his \"small\" army was partially responsible for Theodatus admitting defeat, with minimal bloodshed. However, while the Romans and Goths were negotiating a treaty the army commanded by Mundus lost control of Salona. Mundus actually defeated the Goths in a second battle, but he was killed and his men then withdrew from Dalmatia. This emboldened Theodatus who immediately rescinded his promise to surrender Italy when he learned that the Goths had retaken Salona. \n\n\nThe composition of Belisarius' army likely played a role a role in its size as well. Based on Procopius' description of several battles, and troop movements, of the Gothic War, Belisarius' army contained a large number of elite cavalry. After crossing into Calabria, Belisarius would often send a smaller contingent of cavalry, around 2,000 men, to skirmish with larger Gothic armies and sometimes he would even send them to capture entire regions. The added mobility of an army composed largely of elite cavalry allowed Belisarius to take several cities before the Goths could even react. Belisarius was able to reach Rome with relative ease, the only major roadblock being the city of Naples, with this smaller army, largely because of the increased mobility that came along with its size and composition.  The armies ability to skirmish and then retreat before suffering significant casualties would have been an invaluable strategy for conserving manpower while also inflicting a large number of casualties on the Goths. Oftentimes this tactic also demoralized the Goths, as they were usually unable to kill very many, if any at all, Romans before they retreated back to their camp. Part of the reason they were so successful in these skirmishes is because a large number of Belisarius' cavalry were Huns and Slavs who were skilled at using the bow from horseback, and thus they could return to camp before the Goths were able to come anywhere near them. \n\nIn regards to not being able to spare more troops, Justinian certainly had plenty of soldiers that he could have sent with Belisarius to begin with. In fact during the siege of Rome Justinian sent around 6,000 men to reinforce Belisarius. The first force was approximately 1,600 cavalrymen who were mostly Huns and Slavs, and then another 4-5,000 Isaurians. The Empire had access to a large number of *foederati*, in fact most of Belisarius' army seems to have been made up of non-Romans, and they did not hesitate to use them in large numbers. \n\nThus its not that retaking Italy wasn't important, because it absolutely was considering how much money he spent in the attempt, or that Belisarius' army was small because the Empire couldn't spare or gather more troops. It just made strategic sense to give Belisasrius a smaller army to begin with, and then reinforce him over time if need be. If anything the size of his army speaks to Belisarius great skill as a general, and the amount of trust that Emperor Justinian had in him. \n\nSources:\n\nProcopius, *De Bello Gothico*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1k0sfj", "title": "what do military medals (purple heart, medal of honor, various service crosses) actually do for you after you are discharged?", "selftext": "Not trying to be disrespectful, but what do these war honors actually do for someone that gets them? I'm sure it's mostly about prestige and esteem, but from what I've seen they just pin some metal to your shirt and send you on your way.\n\nThat same guy could be homeless and begging for food in a year or two because most places won't hire ex-military types and can't pay for the medical attention they desperately need.\n\nEdit: thanks for all the answers guys. And for taking me to the front page, haha.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k0sfj/eli5_what_do_military_medals_purple_heart_medal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbk6qbk", "cbk6te0", "cbk6wez", "cbk6xb1", "cbk6yrc", "cbk7di9", "cbk7go8", "cbk7kgj", "cbk7pd7", "cbk7r0g", "cbk7ut6", "cbk7ynm", "cbk82k7", "cbk86wj", "cbk86xe", "cbk8a3h", "cbk8bpu", "cbk8cye", "cbk8sfi", "cbk8tc8", "cbk8tnz", "cbk8tzx", "cbk9a6s", "cbkabmb", "cbkacyu", "cbkaili", "cbkamo7", "cbkc9rp", "cbkd0iw", "cbkdnze", "cbke5s1", "cbkeo4f", "cbkfpfq", "cbkgnni", "cbkhqum", "cbkie4l", "cbkk1e0", "cbkkuf1", "cbkmtb9", "cbkrd0e", "cbkrtss", "cbkrvcx"], "score": [2, 325, 99, 596, 20, 8, 2, 21, 78, 2, 2, 4, 13, 2, 18, 3, 109, 49, 5, 18, 2, 9, 16, 5, 2, 2, 2, 9, 12, 4, 2, 4, 2, 5, 3, 9, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Most men who earn those medals aren't doing it for the recognition.\n\n Your right. They do nothing. They can get medical through the VA, but that's a crap shoot. There's the biblebelt \"support the troops\" circle jerk and a few discounts at restaurants, but that's about it. College money is the most useful thing, but none of this has anything to do with medals.", "A purple heart will usually get you some kind of disability payment related to the injury and a sweet new licence plate. A Medal of Honor will get you stopped at airport security by a bunch of dumbfucks who don't know what a Medal of Honor is, like what happened to Joe Foss.", "It might help you get a job with the US Federal government or the District of Columia. The preference for qualified candidates is  \n\n1. Native Americans\n2. Disabled Veterans\n3. Combat Veterans\n\nBut the candidate still has to be qualilfied. ", "Certain medals will let you receive benefits such as compensation, medical preference, educational (for yourself or family), and lower rates on things like license plates, free access to state parks. A lot of it varies by state, though. \n\nI wouldn't say \"they mean squat\" (especially coming from someone who didn't serve in the US military).\n\n[Purple Heart Benefits](_URL_0_)\n\n[Medal of Honor Benefits](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: Just wanted to address some of the other comments:\n\nYes, all service members get to use Tuition Assistance while in. Once you get out, you can use the GI Bill. You can transfer those benefits to a family member if you've been in at least 10 years. I know California and Indiana your child can attend a state school for a certain amount of credit hours (in Indiana where I live it's enough to get a Bachelors), but you often have to have a disability rating--not necessarily a Purple Heart of Medal of Honor. For example, in Indiana you only need a 10% rating. \n\nThe medals OP asked about do have additional benefits. The stuff above is essentially a given, provided you meet the Time in Service requirements and the disability rating requirements. It does help with your medical preference so you have a somewhat easier time getting treated, as if you were given either of these, you'll probably need future treatment.", "The Medal of Honor is really the only one you listed that has benefits after service.\n\nFrom: _URL_0_\n\nRecipients receive a 10% increase in retirement pay, and they receive invitations to all future Presidential inaugurations and inaugural balls. Most of the other benefits most all other service members already receive such as being buried in Arlington or using military transport.\n\nOtherwise everything looks good on a resume.  ", "Purple Heart:\nFree license plates for life in the state of Ohio (likely others as well).\nHigher tier of VA care.\nDisability payments based on the severity of injuries received.\nFree food/drinks (if you are willing to advertise your award, most consider that disrespectful, myself included).\n", "In some states, having marksmanship medals and ribbons will count for exams in concealed carry classes as well as law enforcement. ", "Prisoners of War are exempt from paying many forms of taxation in many different places (up to state/local governments).", "You are wrong. Most places love to hire veterans. I work at a fortune 500 company and we make it a point to. They tend to be disciplined and hard workers. They also tend to be natural leaders.", "Beyond what these medals do for the recipient, they also tell us how we should act, in ways such as jobs, general help, or whatever. I'd gladly allow certain medals to move ahead of me in a line, or I'd gladly sacrifice in some big or small way, if it improves the medal recipient's position.\n\nTake purple heart guy there. I don't get to check out of the grocery store before him (if I know). I get my stuff and I just move out of the line to back behind him. I don't bother him unless he asks why, I just do it. For those that would abuse this system, there are ways of correcting such dastardly behavior :)", "they command huge respect from knowledgeable civilians.", "Once upon a time military honors meant knighthoods or other traditional medieval military titles. Compared to what they used to mean you are not wrong in that their value is partly based on a military culture and tradition that goes back to the age of chivalry, and in the context of the 21 century military awards are of dubious social value. But remember that military honors and titles come from a military culture that has its origins hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.  ", "This doesn't explain anything, but all the purple hearts awarded today were manufactured during WWII in anticipation of the invasion of Japan.  There are still 120,000 left, even after 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.", "I cannot speak for the individual who receives them, however, here it can mean a lot to the family.\n\nMy Grandfather was in WW2, but he never talked about it.  Wouldn't really talk about is a better way of saying it, he just refused and everyone was OK with that.  He had several medals and honors, but we didn't know why or what they were.  They got destroyed in a fire when he and my grandmother were younger and he never wanted them replaced.\n\nAfter he died I got curious so i sent out some emails, and i was able to get his record, explanations for why he received the medals and I was able to get reproductions of them.\n\nWhen I gave them all to her, it was like my grandmother had a piece of him back.  I mean she always knew he was a good person, and she obviously loved him, but reading about him being courageous in ways she had never heard about.... it was pretty meaningful.\n\nSo there is more to them then just tangible benefits.  it creates a legacy and a link to the past for the family as well.\n", "When i got out i didn't care what happened to mine, stuck them in a box and when i found them 8 years later i gave all of them to my 5 year old daughter. She has them sporadically pinned to stuffed animals in the house, its weird seeing a stuffed purple gorilla and thinking about dragging a dead guy but hey, whatever makes her happy.", " > Not trying to be disrespectful, but what do these war honors actually do for someone that gets them?\n\nFor the really prestigious awards, you get respect while you are still in the military.  Once you leave the military, you can't expect much except from other veterans.  It's like winning the \"employee of the year\" at your job... nice but you're only hot shit while you still work there.", "I was awarded a Bronze Star in Afghanistan, and I am hoping  it cuts a little bit off of the prison sentence I am about to have to serve.", "Retired Army SFC here.\n\nIn the civilian world, when you do something extraordinary for your business, they give you money.\n\nIn the military, when you do something extraordinary, they give you a medal.  \n\nPersonally, I like cash better.  ", "Fuckin nothin. No metal earned, nor awarded will put food on the table.", "I have a BSMV (bronze star w/ valor) and a Purple Heart. The bronze star doesn't mean anything to anyone but me really, it means a lot that my guys thought I deserved one. Not letting them down is really the only thing that got me through the worst times. It doesn't do anything when you get out though, no one really knows what it means, what the \"V\" device means, but I mean, if you're looking for recognition then you're probably not gonna have a great time with it. \n\nThe Purple Heart on the other hand.... The real perk is the license plates. I'm a safe driver and I don't like to abuse the power of the plates but you're going to have less issues with police. They know at least one thing about you when they run your plates. You also have free vehicle registration with the plates (or its 3 bucks or something). \n\nIt took me a long time to even get the plates, it weirded me out to display that kinda shit but I mean....yea, you hear of people getting pulled over for ridiculous stuff all the time and I'd rather avoid it.\n\nI've also heard my son will get free college at when he gets older. I'm not sure about the details but I have 16 years or so to figure it out. ", "A significant paper trail follows each award or medal you earn. Those awards and medals provide a significant amount of credibility.\n\n\nExample:\n\n\nLiberation of Kosovo NATO medal - means the recipient very likely went to Kosovo or was in direct logistical support somewhere else in the world. Also, the *NATO* portionmeans that in some way you were part of a joint effort with many nations and probably had to work with, communicate or support military personnell from other countries.\n\n\nEarning a NAM (Navy and Marine Achievement Medal) can be for any reason. You could have worked countless hours tirelessly coordinating the distribution of millions of toys for the Toys for Tots program (Public Relations/community service)\n\n\n\nA Combat Action Ribbon likely means you were in a highly stressful military battle, maneuver, action... anything where bodily harm or death was immenent.\n\n\nMilitary people  who earn these things, get out of the military and prove themselves as marketable can be seen as fairly valuable to many companies.\n\n\nEdit: (read your last sentence and it is completely false) I am a 15 year Marine and current. The only Marines I have seen get out and not find a job is because of their own personal issues, not because of their military service. Most of them have great jobs or are enjoying retirement. Also, Vets who are homeless actually rate many benefits but either choose to ignore them or are ignorant of them. There is always an initiative by certain entities to find these veterans and make sure they are aware of their benefits.", "The history of military rewards is interesting.\n\nBack in the middle ages, war was a racket. Piracy. One bunch of aristocrats, with their army of indentured slaves (called serfs) would attack another bunch of aristocrats (to whom they were related), and the winners would take the losers land.\n\nThe reward for winning a battle (if you were an aristocrat) were real and material - you got a cut of the profits from the war. So new land, a new castle, new slaves. If you were a serf of course, you got nothing. Blenheim Palace for instance, where Churchill grew up, was given to his family when an ancestor of his chopped the heads off a bunch of Frenchmen.\n\nHowever, sometime about the late middle ages, the Germans (I believe) realised that their nobles were doing quite well out of war, and this was a bunch of money that the King could keep for himself. Also, with the rise of professional armies, the serfs started to be used to organise the battles themselves and could rise through the ranks. Still, giving away a bunch of estates to commoners was, of course, unthinkable.\n\nSo, quite suddenly, the rewards for helping win a war were changed from being a cut of the war profits - land and castles and so on - to a worthless piece of tin you pinned to the poor idiots chest. I imagine the first guy to win one of these new medals instead of an estate and a comfortable life was incredibly pissed off.\n\nSo war is far more efficient nowadays. You don't hand the profits to the participants any more, it goes to the organisers instead, which everyone seems to have been persuaded is a far more sensible way of running things. Not a racket at all any more.", "Where in the world do you get the idea that \"most places won't hire ex-military types\"?", "I am a combat vet, 11B, certified disabled (gunshot wounds). I have a CIB and a Purple Heart. It has never been of any use other than a little respect in meetings and with colleagues. So, to answer the OP, they are worth a little respect but nothing else.\n\nThe US Army pays me $125/mo for the gunshot wounds. That's something.", "10 year vet - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING", "Not sure, but I know the \"Hero of the motherland\" medal in the USSR got you a butt-load of free stuff, example being you got a paid vacation every year or so, you could use the thing to get free rides anywhere, better retirement benefits, priority for your family in stuff, blah blah blah.", "My buddy got his top front teeth blown out and his lips torn up because a garbage truck filled with explosives exploded 20 feet from his guard tower. He saved a completely unprepared base of 150 soldiers from a huge wave of insurgents; killed numerous hostiles, pulled his comrades to safety, resupplied medics and other defenders after he was pulled from the line by his C.O., almost bled out, was medevac'd to Germany, came back to reality after a few weeks, got a Silver Star.... and now he has to fight the VA for any medical treatment at all. GG.", "I would have to say your statement \"most places won't hire ex-military types\" is false considering there are laws against discriminating veterans and laws that actually give them preferential treatment. No doubt there are some who get around this but saying most has to e a complete overstatement. ", "A lifetime of regret and PTSD.", "I'll tell you what they get from me:  My undying respect and pretty much anything you asked of me.", "Two specific benefits I haven't seen yet: \n\nIf you receive the Medal of Honor your children will receive a special nomination if they are applying to one of the Service Academies.  Normally somebody would have to get a nomination from their congressperson or senator, however they can skip this process if their parent has been awarded the Medal of Honor.\n\nAdditionally, Medal of Honor Recipients may request a parade in their honor when they visit the service academy. (I don't know if this applies to all military bases.  I have also never heard of someone actually requesting a parade in their honor, but the option is still there, which is what counts.) ", "Your wee ones will look at you one day with admiration and a deep newfound respect when the find your medals stashed away in a box in the garage and read the citations. Everyone thinks their dad is a hero when they're little. Then they get a little older realized he's flawed. Then they find the stuff he did when he was your age and realize he really was a hero, a deep, honorable man they could respect and admire regardless of all the shit life has dealt him.", "Most places won't hire ex military?  Where did you get that from?  It's actually the opposite.  Also, if someone in the military gets hurt or has issues when they get out, the military pays for their care through disability.", "You're looking at it wrong.  First of all... That's EXACTLY what those medals are meant to do.  Recognize you for some certain exemplary or exceptional aspect of your service.  You did 'X', which most people/service members have not done.  GOOD JOB.  Seriously, that's the whole point.  Now, there are literally TONS of programs implemented by states, federal agencies, private companies, organizaitons, etc... that are designed to demonstrate appreciation for the actions that earned someone those medals, but that's all third party stuff.   The thing is,  \"showing appreciation and recognition for extraordinary sacrifices and accomplishments\" isn't, especially in a morale dependant organization such as the military, a silly or frivolous exercise.  There are occasions where it BECOMES that (Soldier X pulls 3 people from burnning vehicle and gets Medal Y.  Soldier Z mans a desk for 15 months in Iraq without screwing it up too bad and recieves same commendation), but that's it's own issue that needs to dealt with independantly of what OP is talking about.  \n\nMore to the point, I think, is this:  You're not going to DO the sort of things that would merit those commendations (outstanding acts of bravery, etc..) because you want a better parking spot at the Social Security Administration building downtown, or whatever.  Silly little economic incentives like that don't really factor into it, because stuff like that will never be worth the risks involved.  If you're taking those risks, it's because you're the kind of person to do that sort of thing anyway. ", "Military service actually looks really good on a resume, I have no idea where you are getting your information about not hiring former military members from.", "When my brother got a purple heart he said, \"Can't wait to get my purple heart license plate.  A lifetime free speeding pass.\"\n", "Does the Presidential Medal of Freedom have any sort of benefits?", "If you earn a Medal of Honor your son or daughter can automatically get into West Point or the Naval Academy.  That education is valued at ~500,000 USD.  ", "After my 7 years in the Marines I worked at Hanscom AFB at the gate.  We were always told to notify base Commander so he can escort the Medal of Honor recipient around the base.  Something I don't know if mandatory but was happy to see.  ", "It's meant to be a mark/badge of honor, not a materialistic reward. It's meant to signify that you are among the best humanity has to offer.", "The Medal of Honor confers special privileges on its recipients. By law, recipients have several benefits:\n\nEach Medal of Honor recipient may have his or her name entered on the Medal of Honor Roll (38 U.S.C. \u00a7 1560). Each person whose name is placed on the Medal of Honor Roll is certified to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs as being entitled to receive a monthly pension above and beyond any military pensions or other benefits for which they may be eligible. The pension is subject to cost-of-living increases; as of 2011, it is $1,237 a month.\n\nEnlisted recipients of the Medal of Honor are entitled to a supplemental uniform allowance.\n\nRecipients receive special entitlements to air transportation under the provisions of DOD Regulation 4515.13-R. This benefit allows the recipient to travel as he or she deems fit across geographical locations, and allows the recipient's dependents to travel either Overseas-Overseas, Overseas-Continental US, or Continental US-Overseas when accompanied by the recipient.\n\nSpecial identification cards and commissary and exchange privileges are provided for Medal of Honor recipients and their eligible dependents.\n\nRecipients are granted eligibility for interment at Arlington National Cemetery, if not otherwise eligible.\n\nFully qualified children of recipients are eligible for admission to the United States military academies without regard to the nomination and quota requirements.\n\nRecipients receive a 10 percent increase in retired pay.\n\nThose awarded the medal after October 23, 2002, receive a Medal of Honor Flag. The law specified that all 103 living prior recipients as of that date would receive a flag.\n\nRecipients receive an invitation to all future presidential inaugurations and inaugural balls.\n\nAs with all medals, retired personnel may wear the Medal of Honor on \"appropriate\" civilian clothing. Regulations specify that recipients of the Medal of Honor are allowed to wear the uniform \"at their pleasure\" with standard restrictions on political, commercial, or extremist purposes (other former members of the armed forces may do so only at certain ceremonial occasions).\n\nMost states (40) offer a special license plate for certain types of vehicles to recipients at little or low cost to the recipient.\n\nThe states that do not offer Medal of Honor specific license plate offer special license plates for veterans for which recipients may be eligible.\n\nAdmiral Eric T. Olson salutes Sergeant First Class Leroy Petry at a ceremony at The Pentagon.\nAlthough not required by law or military regulation,[95] members of the uniformed services are encouraged to render salutes to recipients of the Medal of Honor as a matter of respect and courtesy regardless of rank or status and, if the recipients are wearing the medal, whether or not they are in uniform.[96] This is one of the few instances where a living member of the military will receive salute from members of a higher rank.", "The children of Medal of Honor recipients receive admission into one of the military academies without having to meet the standard academic quotas of said institution."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://military.answers.com/military-benefits/explanation-of-purple-heart-recipient-benefits", "http://www.military.com/benefits/veteran-benefits/the-medal-of-honor.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor#Authority_and_privileges"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "m3mno", "title": "If some liquids are not compressible how does sound, a compression wave, travel through them?", "selftext": "The less compressible a medium is, the faster sound would travel, so if something is not compressible at all, wouldn't it travel infinitely fast?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/m3mno/if_some_liquids_are_not_compressible_how_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2xtfxn", "c2xtg3v", "c2xtfxn", "c2xtg3v"], "score": [21, 17, 21, 17], "text": ["Not compressible when compared to gasses. But all matter has some compressibility.\n\nAnd yes, sound does travel much faster through liquids and solids (but not infinitely since they are still a bit compressible).\n\nEDIT: Looking it up, 330 m/s in air, 1500 m/s in water, and 6000 m/s in steel.", "They are all compressible. Just, for certain engineering applications, it's easier to treat them as incompressible.", "Not compressible when compared to gasses. But all matter has some compressibility.\n\nAnd yes, sound does travel much faster through liquids and solids (but not infinitely since they are still a bit compressible).\n\nEDIT: Looking it up, 330 m/s in air, 1500 m/s in water, and 6000 m/s in steel.", "They are all compressible. Just, for certain engineering applications, it's easier to treat them as incompressible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2edl71", "title": "why can't we tickle ourselves?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2edl71/eli5_why_cant_we_tickle_ourselves/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjyfr3b", "cjyhbns", "cjynb5o", "cjyo5lx", "cjytn70"], "score": [6, 12, 4, 11, 2], "text": ["It's a defense mechanism from others. We don' believe to be a threat to ourselves.", "I can. Am I a mutant? Is this my power?", "Try the top of the inside of the your mouth.", "A few people here are claiming tickling is a defense mechanism but that's not entirely correct. The theory goes, tickling developed as a play mechanism to teach basic combat/defense skills. Think of the places that are normally ticklish: neck, underarms, behind/around knees, haunches etc - all places that are vulnerable to attack (from predators, for example). So it's advantageous to learn and hone reflexes that protect those areas. When someone is tickled, they act to escape it. However, it's fun (kids laugh when they're tickled), so that they practice repeatedly.\n\nThe reason most people can't tickle themselves is probably because it doesn't lead to good practice, so it evolved as a particularly social mechanism. I can't comment on the actual nuts and bolts of it, if that's what you're looking for", "I think we can relate this to laughter and it's social history.  Laughter developed as a way for one person in a tribe to say, \"everything is OK, even though it looks/sounds like there might be trouble\".  If your think about this in a tribal setting, it makes sense.  Laughter evolved as a social reassurance that the tribe wasn't about to be eaten.\n\nTickling, similarly, probably evolved as a way to reinforce that even though it looked like someone or something was attacking our weak spots, it was OK and wasn't a legit threat.  The juxtaposed pain that comes along with tickling is our primal side reminding us that these areas are indeed our \"holy shit I just got bit in my abdomen I'm gonna die\" spots. \n\nErgo: tickling.  Something that being is both laughter and pain at the same time.  Laughter to let those around us know we aren't getting killed, and pain to remind us that we could very possibly be killed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "l9ire", "title": "What is the most damaging thing humans, with our current technology, could do to the universe; how much of an impact could we make?", "selftext": "Strange question, I know.  I was just wondering how much of a splash we could make.  Could we destroy a star? Move planets off of an orbit?\n\nLets say we are children, and the universe is our destructive playground, how mean/ingenius could we be with what we have so far?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/l9ire/what_is_the_most_damaging_thing_humans_with_our/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2qv8pr", "c2qv9r4", "c2qve3m", "c2qvnt2", "c2qvs0r", "c2qx9vy", "c2qv8pr", "c2qv9r4", "c2qve3m", "c2qvnt2", "c2qvs0r", "c2qx9vy"], "score": [5, 2, 23, 2, 7, 3, 5, 2, 23, 2, 7, 3], "text": ["We could do some pretty terrible things to our planet's habitability.  We could probably kill all mammals in under a year, if we coordinated a nuclear strike for that purpose.  \n\nI can't think of any current technology that would make an observable, lasting impact on the Sun.  ", "Could we bring down the moon?", "This is kind of a weird question, because nothing in the universe is ever \"damaged\", just rearranged. \n\nBut giving you the benefit of the doubt:\n\n > What is the most damaging thing humans, with our current technology, could do to the universe\n\nEffectively nothing whatsoever. \n\n > Could we destroy a star? \n\nAbsolutely not. We're many orders of magnitude away from being able to do this. \n\n > Move planets off of an orbit?\n\nAbsolutely not. We're many orders of magnitude away from being able to do this. (This is slightly easier than destroying a star, but it's like the difference between carrying an oil supertanker across Asia on your back with your own muscle power and carrying a battleship - both are simply impossible.)\n\n > What is the most damaging thing humans, with our current technology, could do to the universe\n\n- We could cause severe damage to the Earth's ecosystem in a short time by detonating a lot of nuclear weapons. \n\n- We could cause damage (possibly severe) to the Earth's ecosystem over a longer time scale by carrying on the normal activities of technological civilization. \n\n- If we wanted to put a huge amount of effort into it, we could move a number of nuclear bombs to a small asteroid or comet and blow it up or alter its orbit. \n\n\nYou really need to get some sort of sense of how extremely big the universe is and how extremely small we are by comparison. \n\n\nThe Earth as seen by *Voyager 1*  from the edge of our solar system. (We're the \"pale blue dot\" indicated by the arrow.)\n\n\\- _URL_1_ - \n\n\\- _URL_3_ - \n\n\\- _URL_0_ -\n\n\\- _URL_2_ - \n", "it has taken us centuries to kinda damage the surface of this planet. i can't see us even having an influence beyond this solar system for thousands of years.", "If we used our current blueprints for interstellar spacecraft, we could spread humanity and life itself across the cosmos. In the long run, it could change quite a bit for the locales that receive the gift of life.", "We could probably send an asteroid as big as the one that killed the dinosaurs onto a planet like Mars. There it would make a great big dust cloud and a nice sized crater. That's about it.", "We could do some pretty terrible things to our planet's habitability.  We could probably kill all mammals in under a year, if we coordinated a nuclear strike for that purpose.  \n\nI can't think of any current technology that would make an observable, lasting impact on the Sun.  ", "Could we bring down the moon?", "This is kind of a weird question, because nothing in the universe is ever \"damaged\", just rearranged. \n\nBut giving you the benefit of the doubt:\n\n > What is the most damaging thing humans, with our current technology, could do to the universe\n\nEffectively nothing whatsoever. \n\n > Could we destroy a star? \n\nAbsolutely not. We're many orders of magnitude away from being able to do this. \n\n > Move planets off of an orbit?\n\nAbsolutely not. We're many orders of magnitude away from being able to do this. (This is slightly easier than destroying a star, but it's like the difference between carrying an oil supertanker across Asia on your back with your own muscle power and carrying a battleship - both are simply impossible.)\n\n > What is the most damaging thing humans, with our current technology, could do to the universe\n\n- We could cause severe damage to the Earth's ecosystem in a short time by detonating a lot of nuclear weapons. \n\n- We could cause damage (possibly severe) to the Earth's ecosystem over a longer time scale by carrying on the normal activities of technological civilization. \n\n- If we wanted to put a huge amount of effort into it, we could move a number of nuclear bombs to a small asteroid or comet and blow it up or alter its orbit. \n\n\nYou really need to get some sort of sense of how extremely big the universe is and how extremely small we are by comparison. \n\n\nThe Earth as seen by *Voyager 1*  from the edge of our solar system. (We're the \"pale blue dot\" indicated by the arrow.)\n\n\\- _URL_1_ - \n\n\\- _URL_3_ - \n\n\\- _URL_0_ -\n\n\\- _URL_2_ - \n", "it has taken us centuries to kinda damage the surface of this planet. i can't see us even having an influence beyond this solar system for thousands of years.", "If we used our current blueprints for interstellar spacecraft, we could spread humanity and life itself across the cosmos. In the long run, it could change quite a bit for the locales that receive the gift of life.", "We could probably send an asteroid as big as the one that killed the dinosaurs onto a planet like Mars. There it would make a great big dust cloud and a nice sized crater. That's about it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://wimp.com/knownuniverse/", "http://friendswelove.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/pale_blue_dot.jpg", "http://www.primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/scale-of-universe-v1.swf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://wimp.com/knownuniverse/", "http://friendswelove.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/pale_blue_dot.jpg", "http://www.primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/scale-of-universe-v1.swf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bz17kf", "title": "Do we completely understand how Pre-Columbian Incan stone workers moved and dressed massive stones? Many documentaries claim its a mystery...is it?", "selftext": "There are many documentaries out there claiming that how exactly  Pre-Columbian Incan stone workers moved and dressed massive stones is a real mystery no one fully understands. \n\nIs that accurate? \n\nHow did they quarry, lift, transport, and then perfectly and precisely cut these stones with such primitive levels of technology?\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bz17kf/do_we_completely_understand_how_precolumbian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqpbmwk"], "score": [53], "text": ["No, it is not at all accurate to say we don\u2019t know how they built their temples and other structures. .\n\n\n[Here is a write up on Incan masonry techniques](_URL_1_) from /u/Mictlantecuhtli in /r/badhistory and here's a [short version](_URL_0_) posted in /r/AskHistorians.\n\n\nEdited to make it clear what I was saying no to."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://imgur.com/a/2Nzuj5t", "https://imgur.com/a/PMeAat3"], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/420d4o/ancient_inca_stone_softening/cz6jyp6/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3hx31g/all_in_all_its_just_another_12_sided_block_in_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "703vwz", "title": "Are there any other planets in our solar system that experience totality during an eclipse?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/703vwz/are_there_any_other_planets_in_our_solar_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn11yz2", "dn11yz2"], "score": [12, 12], "text": ["Given that the ratio between the size of the Earth and it's satellite is incredibly large, I would doubt any other satellite in the Solar System is capable of a complete occultation of the sun.\n\nedit: It's just the particular coincidence in Earth's case that the size ratio is very nearly 1 that we can have total and partial eclipses.\n\nOkay, after making a spreadsheet and calculating the ratio between the apparent sizes of the sun to the various moons of the solar system, I found 42 other moons capable of a total eclipse or greater: _URL_0_\n\nedit2: I sorted the sheet by largest ratio of moon-to-sun size, and bolded/italicized Earth.\n", "Given that the ratio between the size of the Earth and it's satellite is incredibly large, I would doubt any other satellite in the Solar System is capable of a complete occultation of the sun.\n\nedit: It's just the particular coincidence in Earth's case that the size ratio is very nearly 1 that we can have total and partial eclipses.\n\nOkay, after making a spreadsheet and calculating the ratio between the apparent sizes of the sun to the various moons of the solar system, I found 42 other moons capable of a total eclipse or greater: _URL_0_\n\nedit2: I sorted the sheet by largest ratio of moon-to-sun size, and bolded/italicized Earth.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14NRcrwYfyLQCtl29WdOOYZq3-ol5qFbxqgiNXVHU-qk/edit#gid=312570305"], ["https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14NRcrwYfyLQCtl29WdOOYZq3-ol5qFbxqgiNXVHU-qk/edit#gid=312570305"]]}
{"q_id": "6ru768", "title": "Did the old testament really borrow from ancient Sumerian text? Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ru768/did_the_old_testament_really_borrow_from_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl8acfg"], "score": [21], "text": ["Which Sumerian text are you referring to? \n\nIf you're referring to the Atrahasis myth, yes and no. It's clear that there is some sort of general ANE flood myth (Noah, Atrahasis, Utnapishtim). Nobody in mainstream scholarship (whether conservative, liberal, or centrist) really disputes that, as any introductory textbook to the Hebrew Bible would tell you. See Collins' *An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,* for example. \n\nHowever, what is not immediately clear is whether or not the OT directly \"borrows\" these texts, or simply culls from the already well known story. While the OT certainly does have links to other pieces of ANE literature, it's not necessarily the case that these pieces of literature proper were being copied. In my view, just because you have a parallel in another piece of literature doesn't mean that it's necessarily one copying from the other; see Samuel Sandmel's article \"Parallelomania\" for a very interesting and enlightening discussion. \n\nI guess, to answer your question in a more direct way, there are far better explanations for the OT flood myth than a simple literary dependence of the OT upon a Sumerian text. The OT was written primarily in an oral culture, one in which stories were primarily communicated verbally, rather than via the written word (as the vast majority of the population was illiterate). The book to read on this is *The Flood Myth,* ed. Alan Dundes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1arhed", "title": "why is there any controversy involving drones?", "selftext": "They use less fuel than normal planes and keep our pilots out of danger. Why is a bomb dropped by a drone any worse? Why is a terrorist getting killed by a bomb a problem to anyone?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1arhed/eli5why_is_there_any_controversy_involving_drones/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c902g8k", "c904hqk", "c905atv", "c9081r6", "c909m1g"], "score": [12, 11, 9, 4, 4], "text": ["The controversy over the drones is not really about the drones themselves. The controversy is that Obama used a drone to kill a US citizen. US citizens should be provided due process (a trial, the opportunity to offer a defense, etc.). This drone strike violates that principle, even in the most narrow readings of the law.", "It comes down to questions of whether they are, or will be, used ethically.  \n\nMilitary drones are often used in counter-insurgency/counter-terror operations, where the enemy is out of uniform and surrounded by non-combatants.  People claim that drones have injured or killed civilians during these missions.  Collateral damage is always bad press, not to mention that these are essentially assassination missions.\n\nDomestic use of drones for surveillance and pursuit is controversial as well, which seems to be mostly based on a lack of trust in police using them ethically.  There is also the possibility of using them to expose and persecute people for \"morality\" crimes, such as homosexuality or failure to uphold religious mandates.\n\ntldr; People are pissed about drones because they don't trust the people using them.", "A few other things that haven't been mentioned:\n\n1. Surveillance. Unweaponized drones can engage in espionage, and that's difficult territory to work out (especially in the framework of Geneva).\n\n2. Some guy can drop his kids off at school, drive to work, press a button that kills a person on the other side of the world, and come home for dinner. It skews the psychological balance of warfare to an arguably unfair degree.\n\n3. [Double tapping](_URL_0_) and other tactics that are at best legally and ethically questionable.", "Because in general international law and human custom goes like this \n1) Killing people you're at war with is okay \n2) killing people you're not at war with is not okay\n3) sending your army into someone else's country is an act of war\n4) using a neutral third party as a battlefield in a war your fighting with somebody else is very much not okay\n\nSo, are we at war or not, and who with? We declared war on Afghanistan and Iraq, so nobody much minds if we try and kill people there. We also say we're in a \"war on terror.\" What the fuck that means, nobody really knows. You can't be at war with an idea. You can be at war with a defined group of people, and Congress also passed a bill after September 11th saying that the president could take any steps necessary to kill or capture the people behind the September 11th attack, or in other words, Al Qaeda. We have, for the most part. Is Congress' declaration still good to let us go around killing whoever the fuck we want as long as somebody, somewhere, is still using the name \"Al Qaeda\"? Nobody knows. \n\nIf you take the view that it is not --- that is, the view that has held for pretty much all of civilization, which is that just going around and killing anyone who might pose a threat to you someday is fucked up and should be illegal --- then drone attacks are a problem. \n\nAs a general rule, crossing other country's borders with your military and killing people is regarded as an act of war. The reason we're getting away with it is that we have this vague \"war on terror\" fig leaf and also we're the richest country in the world and have the biggest military, so no matter how much other countries don't like it, there's really very little they can do to stop it.  \n\n2, terrorists aren't the only casualties of drone attacks. Civilians are often killed. Sure, you might argue that they're often somehow connected to the terrorist --- their wives and children and cousins, people sheltering them. Sometimes though, it's just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the intelligence was wrong in the first place. If we're at war, then this is maybe legal. If we're not, this is murder. \n\n", "The issue isn't necessarily drones themselves, but extra-judicial killings without oversight or even disclosing the legal framework behind the killings. Flying killer robots just puts a face on the issue."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.policymic.com/articles/21070/predator-drone-double-taps-highlight-possible-war-crimes-by-obama"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "crt03i", "title": "Are moths and butterflies able to cross breed like tigers and lions?", "selftext": "I know that lions and tigers can make and produce sterile offspring. Do moths and butterflies have that same ability? They seems close enough genetically but what factors would limit them?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/crt03i/are_moths_and_butterflies_able_to_cross_breed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ex9xh71", "exdys2w"], "score": [13, 2], "text": ["I suspect you'll have to be more specific as there are thousands of species of moths and butterflies, which are an order, whereas lions and tigers are species within the same genus. \n\nIf you mean if an arbitrary moth and an arbitrary butterfly, then almost certainly not. They diverged 56 million years ago, with hugely varying chromosome counts even within their clades.", "Moths and butterflies diverged about 50 million years ago. So this question is similar to asking could a human and a lemur reproduction. This is also overly simplified as well. There are generally 3 life cycles a year for butterflies, so you might expect that divergence occurs faster in shorter generation time species."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1d8277", "title": "Is there a difference between thinking of subatomic particles as localized forces compared to thinking of them as really tiny physical grains of something?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1d8277/is_there_a_difference_between_thinking_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9nw7br", "c9nxcit", "c9o7yu4"], "score": [5, 2, 2], "text": ["This might not be the answer you're looking for, since I'm not entirely sure what you mean by localized forces, but whatever, lets explore the topic!\n\nGenerally, there are two ways of describing subatomic particles: as waves or as particles. It can be necessary to describe them with properties of both descriptions, though. Describing them, or thinking about them, as one or the other changes what you might predict a subatomic particle might do in certain situations. \n\nFor example, in the double slit experiment, they take a laser and aim it at a plate with two very thin, parallel slits in it and they observe the pattern that is created on a screen behind it. If you think about photons as particles, you would expect that they travel through one slit or the other, creating two, roughly slit-shaped blobs of light on the screen. You would also expect something similar if you fired the photons one at a time and marked where they fell on the screen. \n\nInstead, what happens in BOTH situations of this experiment is that the photons produce an interference pattern, something typically produced by a wave. We obtain the same result when we perform the experiment with electrons. I can explain the experiment in more detail if you like, but the main result is \"electrons/photons are waves.\" \n\nIn a separate experiment, we can fire electrons or photons at a lone electron. What happens when we do this, is the collision acts just as we would imagine if we thought of photons and electrons as particles. (Think billiard balls.) momentum is conserved, angles add up, all that good stuff. The result of this experiment is \"electrons/photons are particles.\" \n\nFor completeness' sake, I'd like to include that there is the idea that an electron, and other subatomic particles, are excitations of certain fields that permeate the universe, but I'm not knowledgable enough to be able to tell you more about that, even though that might be closer to what you mean by localized forces. \n\nSo to give you the short answer to your question, the two ways of thinking about subatomic particles are definitely different, but the same in the way that you can't use one or the other exclusively. \n\nBy all means, please tell me if this wasn't the answer to your question or if it wasn't satisfying. \n\nThis is the first experiment I was talking about. \n_URL_1_\n\nThis is an interference pattern. If you draw a horizontal line anywhere, you'll see bright spots and dark spots along the line. The screen in the experiment acts as the line, and we see bright spots separated by dark spots. \n\n_URL_0_", "Functionally, no. There is an accepted measurement for the size of some atomic particles (proton, as mentioned in other posts), but, since those measurements are obviously done by interacting with the proton through forces, there is no observably difference as of yet between a grain with electric and gravitational charge and a small region with the same electric and gravitational charge distributions as the grain (also strong force). I am not sure if there is a difference in more advanced theories, however.", "I think the best way to think of elementary particles is as localized excitations in a field. \n\nIn the modern understanding, the framework for physics at the most fundamental level is quantum field theory. In quantum field theory, the fundamental objects are fields which pervade all spacetime. Not only is there an electromagnetic field, which many people are used to thinking about, but there is also an electron field, a quark field, a neutrino field, and so on. Classically, the electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's equations and the matter fields are described by the Dirac equation.\n\nBut that's just classical. To get particles, we need to *quantize*. I don't know how much physics you know, but it's possible to define things in terms of an \"action\", and then classically the laws of physics come from saying that the action must be extremized. You can get Newton's laws from this, for example. In classical physics, the action can be smoothly varied to be any number, but in quantum mechanics it has to be *quantized*: you are only allowed to vary it in amounts of \u0127 (reduced Planck's constant).\n\nSo if you have one field configuration (just think of water), and you want to put a ripple on the surface, you can't do it an arbitrarily small amount, you have to add one \u0127-worth of ripples. This could be a localized wave-packet or it could be a standing wave or anything, so long as you've only changed the underlying field by \u0127. \n\nThen for the electromagnetic field, the \u0127 ripples you can add are photons, for the electron field, the ripples are electrons, and so on.\n\nSome people say the quantum fields are *made up* of photons or of electrons etc., I hate this, I think it makes as much sense as saying that the sea is made out of waves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/sdIAkPy.jpg", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31130w", "title": "Is there any agreement among historians about who started the fire that's been burning since the world's been turning?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31130w/is_there_any_agreement_among_historians_about_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpxqjq2", "cpxrazv", "cpxsmt7", "cpxxnie", "cpy1pss", "cpy2574"], "score": [2, 13, 21, 17, 2, 2], "text": ["We didn't start the fire.", "I'm not a historian, but all I've ever read or heard it that we didn't start it. Maybe someone else will come in with a more solid answer but I doubt it. ", "The two current leading theories waffle between the Roman Emperor Nero and Mrs. O'Leary's cow.", "No one did.  It was *always* burning, since the world's been turning.  That indicates it predates life.", "I guess this prompts a similar question: When did the world start turning?", "I believe Dr. Schrute once concluded that Ryan started the fire. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mqsf9", "title": "A Russian woman told me that Stalin's second wife, Nadya Alliluyeva, wanders the earth as a ghost, haunting the minds of young men. Is this a widespread myth or just a crazy old lady's fantasies?", "selftext": "According to her, the soul of Nadezhda Alliluyeva is condemned to Earth for eternity since she committed suicide, and that care should be taken while reading about her or thinking about her, or she'll visit you in your dreams with her face covered in blood.\n\nWhat fascinated me was that it sounded like a stereotypical old legend about wronged queens in Western Europe (Bloody Mary, for instance), but with the queen replaced with a modern, Bolshevik revolutionary and the wife of Stalin, who himself have repeatedly been compared to the old Czars (he also liked to compare himself to the Iranian Shahs).\n\n*If* this really is a widespread myth, are there other weird hybrids between folklore and the collective memory of Soviet statesmen and -women?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3mqsf9/a_russian_woman_told_me_that_stalins_second_wife/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvhomia", "cvhrdpp", "cvhykke"], "score": [9, 29, 21], "text": ["New here. Is this a valid question for this subreddit? Not about any historical facts, more just a speculation of current superstitious beliefs?", "While I can't speak on this specific legend, the short answer to your question is: yes, several pieces of folklore were re-worked under the the genre of socialist realism. See: *Politicizing Magic-An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales* by Marina Balina, Helena Goscilo, and Mark Lipovetsk. \n\nA couple specific examples mentioned in Politicizing Magic:\n\n- Tolstoy's *The Golden Key* is a retelling of *Pinocchio*\n- Lagin's *The Old Genie Khottabych* is a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights\n\nAll of which you should be able to find with a quick search. Moreover, many Soviet tales took familiar plot lines (e.g. the heroes quest) and motifs (e.g. repetition of the number 3) from folklore and put a Soviet spin on them, such as replacing the gain of personal wealth with the advancement of society as a whole. So while they weren't direct retelling the similarities are fairly easy to see when compared. I don't want to speak too much on this since I've only had one class on it a few years ago, and hopefully someone who's more informed can chime in.", "I can't speak specifically of this case, nor can I address the specific question of folklore and collective memory of Soviet statesmen and women. It's a great question and topic, and I suspect a great deal could be made of it.\n\nWhat I can do is provide some context, drawing on a couple of excerpts from my [Introduction to Folklore](_URL_0_). First, a general comment about suicides - a situation that many believed, following Europe tradition, required a special type of penance. Here is a paragraph from my Introduction:\n\n\"European folklore includes the idea that the time of death was pre-determined. There was a general feeling that a certain number of tasks or obligations must be completed before a person could die. Those who had committed suicide were forced to walk the earth as ghosts until the appointed time of their natural death. In addition, the place of burial was predestined. North American culture preserves the older European tradition of interpreting a sudden shiver as evidence that someone has just walked over one\u2019s final resting place \u2013 a location that is as predetermined as the time of death.\"\n\nAnd then there is a question about souls condemned to walk the earth because of some extraordinary sin. The sins Nadezhda Alliluyeva exceeded suicide because of her association with widespread murders in Stalin's period, so it should not be surprising to find folk belief that places her in the larger tradition of souls condemned to linger in a perpetual state of earthly penance.\n\nWhat I don't know is if this is a single person's imagining, placing Nadezhda Alliluyeva in a larger context of folk belief - that she concluded that Stalin's wife SHOULD be wandering the world and therefore she does. Or whether this is part of a larger specific tradition that has transformed the tortured life and death of this historical figure into a folk motif of legend. We need to hear from someone who can specifically address that question.\n\nOf the possible condemned souls, this instance you raise fits into #4 and #5 below. The story you cite FEELS like a real tradition, perhaps because it fits neatly into a context of folk belief. But whether it is a real traditional folk legend, as I have indicated, remains to be seen. \n\nHere is a second excerpt:\n\nEuropeans were fascinated by the idea of condemned souls, either of individuals or groups of people, who could not find rest. These unfortunates were forced to exist in a nether world, appearing occasionally before the living as evidence of their hideous or peculiar plight. Such motifs have been favorites with artists and writers. It is possible to identify six types of these beings.\n\n1. The \u201cWild Hunt\u201d is probably the oldest, occurring in ancient Greek sources and Scandinavian mythology. A cluster of stories refers to ghostly riders who race across the landscape or the night sky, questing for some phantom quarry that they can never catch. Legends tell of people seeing this eerie phenomenon. There are occasional references to the leader as being the god of death.\n\n2. The \u201cSleeping Army\u201d is a motif that appears in a variety of stories telling of a group of warriors killed in combat, who haunt the battlefield or wait inside a mound for some future conflict. People often believe such an army serves as a matter of last resort, a supernatural force that will rise up if their country is threatened with destruction. King Arthur\u2019s knights are often regarded as sleeping in this way, waiting for the return of their king, healed from his wounds after recuperating in the western island of Avalon.\n\n3. The \u201cFlying Dutchman\u201d is one of the better known and often used motifs of the condemned souls. This motif describes a phantom ship of ghostly sailors who travel the seas but never find harbor or rest. Their only respite comes every one hundred years, when they are allowed to anchor at a legendary port. Their ship is seen in bad weather. The story seems to be of medieval origin.\n\n4. The \u201cWandering Jew\u201d is also a motif belonging to this class. Like the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew appears to be of medieval origin. The legend tells of Ahasverus, a shoemaker of Jerusalem who refused to allow Jesus to sit while carrying his cross to Calvary. His fate is to wander the world, longing for rest.\n\n5. The Will-\u2019o-the-Wisp is described in Chapter 4. The character was not good enough for heaven and made himself feared by the devil, and so he was exiled from hell. He carries a burning ember, a relic from the time when he briefly entered the abode of Satan, and with this phantom light, he lures nighttime travelers away from their destination. This character is common in Britain.\n\n6. There are also various legends of medieval origin about cities that sank underground or into the sea because of some collective sin committed by the inhabitants. These towns return to earth every hundred years for a few hours, only to sink back to their eternal existence in perpetual limbo.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Folklore-Traditional-Studies-Elsewhere-ebook/dp/B00N65B0BY/ref=la_B001JS9G8Y_1_15?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1443526004&amp;sr=1-15&amp;refinements=p_82%3AB001JS9G8Y"]]}
{"q_id": "67vtgp", "title": "how and why does the human body build a tolerance to many different types of drugs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67vtgp/eli5_how_and_why_does_the_human_body_build_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgtlyn0", "dgtmvxv", "dgtp68k", "dgtpldi"], "score": [29, 9, 2, 6], "text": ["Our body seeks to metabolize drugs because they are putting us into an unnatural state.  We want to get back to 'normal' state for our own bodies.  So we become more and more efficient at clearing out the drug by making more enzymes that aid in breaking down the drug, as well as we are becoming more use to that drugged up state.  \n\nCertain drugs that act in place of natural hormones such as insulin, our bodies do not really build up a tolerance to.  ", "Short answer: Up regulation of receptors. When you take a drug like morphine, the drug bands to receptions. If you keep taking the drug,  your body will grow more receptors and therfore it takes more of 5he drug to attached to the increased number of binding sites (receptors). \n\nAnother example is LSD. When we take LSD, it binds to specific brain receptors. Those receptors are like the tentacles of a slug. When you touch a slugs eye it retracts inward and isn't useful to the slug for a few seconds. Same thing happens with LSD ( your receptors retract and then if you try to drop acid on the next day there are less binding sites (because they temporarily retracted)", "From a different perspective, humans are also smart enough to figure out a correct dosage so that the body has time to build up tolerance for drugs. If we were dumb and took too much of something, we'd probably die instead of building up tolerance. ", "Here is an example with caffeine. \n\nImagine a board (brain) with holes (receptors) in it. If I drop some marbles (adenosine) on the board they will roll around and drop into the holes. That is how it works when you are tired. The marbles fall into the hole and you get tired. \n\nBut, if I drop some balls (caffeine) first that plug up the holes but don't drop through then the marbles cant get into the holes so you get less tired. \n\nBut imagine if the board gets bigger then you will need more balls to plug up the holes. That is your body building up tolerance, it is making more holes and in turn you need more balls to block the marbles.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "dgss8z", "title": "Will a photon travel endlessly inside a fiber optic cable connected at its ends(in a circle)?", "selftext": "And will it cross paths with itself, since the cable is less than 1 ly in lenght and the photon travels at 1ly speed?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dgss8z/will_a_photon_travel_endlessly_inside_a_fiber/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3el5rr", "f3emz2o", "f3eutkd"], "score": [16, 13, 5], "text": ["The fiber optic cable is not a lossless medium, which means light energy will get weaker and weaker as it gets converted to heat.  Eventually it will dissipate completely.  So no, it won\u2019t travel endlessly.  Also, the propagation speed inside the fiber will actually be slower than the speed of light in free space, to a degree dependent on the dielectric constant (refractive index) of the glass.", "1 light year is a distance, not a speed.\n\nFibers can transmit light over 100 km or so, maybe a bit more, but they lose light quickly (~a millisecond).", "Interesting question. First let's talk about it in a practial view. In order to close the loop after you sent some photon into a fiber you need time. E.g. 3 sec. to de-couple your optical device and close the loop. Light travels with approx. 300 000km/s. So you would need a fiber with a length of 1 000 000km(!).\nSo...how does a fiber cable \"bend\" light? Well, it has some layers with different diffraction indices, so that light is refracted towards the centre of the cable. But also in those cables it is possible that light reaches a non-optimal refraction angle and is thus scattered towards the mantle. Besides, light travels in a medium which consists of molecules which (depending on wavelength) absorbs light. Also in real world applications you need a repeater once in a while, because of absorption or signal loss in the cable.\nSo no, it is not possible for light to travel endlessly in an optical fiber. Whereas, when light would be bend by a black hole it is possible to travel in circles \"endlessly\" (Except the black hole gains mass, which affects the radius of that circle or the photons reacts with another photon to form a particle/anti-particle-pair.)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4wbswf", "title": "Was the last Roman-Persian War (602-628) the biggest war in Antiquity?", "selftext": "There have been many wars between the Romans and Persians (and before that the Parthians). It seems to me the biggest and deadliest of those was the very last one, in which the Sassianians conquered huge parts of the Eastern Roman Empire but eventually were defeated by Heraclius.\n\nI was wondering then, how this war compare to the other wars of antiquity, particularly in the Roman World? If asked, I'd say the biggest war the Romans ever thought was the Punic Wars (especially the Second) but would I be wrong here?\n\nps: by biggest, I'm thinking number of troops deployed, sheer destruction and casualties.\n\nGratitude.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4wbswf/was_the_last_romanpersian_war_602628_the_biggest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d66i4ku", "d66jqdd"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Preface: I don't know anything about China so I'm not going to factor it into my post. There are also larger numbers for battles in various Greek sources but I'm no expert on those and I don't really believe most of them so I'll just talk about Rome.\n\nThere are lots of possible to answers, as huge numbers are often thrown around in the ancient sources. The last Roman-Persian war wouldn't make the list in terms of numbers, though it would be right up there in strategic and historical importance, especially considering its role in weakening the world's two superpowers just as Islam came on the scene. \n\nIn the Roman context, the largest pitched battle in antiquity in terms of casualties where we can be pretty confident of numbers might have been Battle of Cannae, with probably about 130,000 troops on the field and something like 80,000 Roman casualties, not to mention the thousands of Carthaginian casualties.* But the Battle of Arausio might be a better candidate, where the Romans appear to have suffered even greater casualties than at Cannae and the Germans probably suffered significantly more casualties than did Hannibal's troops at Cannae. At Arausio total battlefield deaths could easily be in the area of 100,000.** If we're going to believe the figures given in the ancient sources (aside from crazy outliers like many Persian numbers for Marathon or Thermopylae) then Roman victories such as Aquae Sextiae or Alesia are even greater in terms of casualties. Maybe I'm a bit of a sicko but I find the Roman defeats more interesting: overwhelming Roman victories are a dime a dozen.\n\nThe biggest war the Romans ever fought in terms of numbers was actually probably the long period of civil war that saw Augustus become the *princeps*, at the climax of which the Empire had 1.5 million troops in the field (Howarth 42). This was almost certainly the most troops any power of the ancient world had ever been able to field, and was without doubt never equaled. Whatever numbers you might read anywhere else, no other state but Rome in the entirety of antiquity had the logistical capacity to field such numbers.\n\n*Daly discusses these numbers on pp. 25-32, 202. Roman casualties might have been only around 50,000 (not including those captured) so maybe Arausio is a better example.\n\n**Compare that to one of the bloodiest days of WWI, the oft-referenced \"Black Day of the British Army\", the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where the British took half as many casualties, about 20,000 killed, over a front of several dozen kilometers.\n\nSources: \n\nGregory Daly, Cannae: The Experience of Battle, London: Routledge, 2002.\n\nHowarth, Randall S. War and Warfare in Ancient Rome, from The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, Eds. Brian Campbell and Lawrence A. Tritle, Oxford University Press,  New York, 2013, 29-45.", "In contrast to /u/PapiriusCursor, I will argue that the war of 603-628 (the war began a bit later) really was as significant as it looked, a war between two imperial powers that overshadowed anything that came before it, though obviously with the caveat that I know very little about what happened before 500. \n\nThe geopolitical implications of the war speak for themselves - war was unleashed not just on the borderlands of the two empires, but also in their very hearts. Constantinople was besieged for the first time ever by an army led by the Avar khagan in 626, whilst a Persian army looked on across the sea waiting for an opportunity to make the crossing and put an end to the ailing Roman empire. Merely two years later, Ctesiphon itself was under threat by a Roman army and the great Khusro II was overthrown by his son, an anticlimatic end to a career of unprecedented Persian military success. Powers beyond Rome and Persia were drawn in as well: the Avars with their Slavic confederates, the fractious Christian princes of the Transcaucasian mountains, and most decisively of all, the superpower of the Eurasian steppes, the Gokturk Khaganate. It was not a war between two powers of equal strength as before, but one fought by the Persians in order to destroy the Roman empire - a goal that had seemed so realistic in the 610s, and which the Romans themselves knew very well, for otherwise they would not have offered to become a vassal state of the Persians in 615, the lowest point the empire had ever sunk to.\n\nBut despite all that (or perhaps because of all the destruction caused), we still lack a good understanding of the war. The sources are poor and the best of the lot are very problematic. Persian accounts of the war can only be recovered from later Arab compilations, whilst contemporary Roman accounts leave much to be desired as well: the *Easter Chronicle* was far more interested in calculating the date and in events within Constantinople, saying only a little about the broader military situation, whilst the poetry of George of Pisidia is literally imperial propaganda written to glorify Heraclius, so it is hardly the sort of critical account of the war that historians want. Later sources often fill in the gaps, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to know how accurately they used their sources and how their agendas affected their telling of the earlier war. \n\nThe largest problem here is that we simply don't have the sources necessary to provide the numbers, yet the two opposing sides must have mustered huge armies in order to achieve their goals. For example, we know virtually nothing about the conquest of Egypt, the breadbasket of the Roman empire, apart from the fact that it happened and that the patriarch of Alexandria fled the province in dodgy circumstances. Yet presumably Roman forces must have given battle (and lost), whilst the Persians must have left behind a substantial garrison to integrate Egypt into their new empire. The same must be true for the Levant and Armenia. It is a shame that we cannot write a more substantial account than that, but surely this enterprise was a significant one, so when we think about the numbers involved we must take this into account.\n\nThe same was true for the Romans, since decently-seized garrisons were maintained throughout the empire. Between 603-608, significant forces were placed alongside the Danube frontier (no numbers are known, but one source recorded that Phocas sent back the Danubian troops after his seizure of power, so presumably the previously highly militarised imperial presence was maintained) and in North Africa, from which Heraclius would launch his coup. One rebellious army was sent into Egypt, provoking Phocas to send an army there rather than to defend the east, whilst the African navy sailed for the imperial capital itself. Both prongs of the rebel assault succeeded, so we can only assume that both forces were perceived as at least equal to the challenge of seizing both Constantinople and Egypt. There was a revolt in Italy c.615-7 as well, which had to be crushed by local imperial forces, whilst the Lombard threat must have ensured a heightened military presence even if this had not occurred. Spania, that strip of imperial territory Heraclius still had in Spain, was meanwhile finally lost in 624, taken by force by the Visigothic King Sisebut, which implies that there was a military struggle of some sort there too.\n\nWe do not know the numbers involved in any of these places, but it is important to remember that whilst the empire was struggling for its life, a good chunk of its army was elsewhere fighting their own battles. This made the Persian war all the more threatening and makes it even clearer that the war was greater than what the sources say on the surface. I find it difficult to think of a time when the empire was in such dire straits, in which it was embroiled in conflict on multiple fronts, though perhaps a classicist can help me out here.\n\nWe do of course have some figures for the number of soldiers involved, which I think are still fairly impressive. For the siege of Constantinople, there were supposedly 80,000 besiegers, whilst the defenders had 12,000 cavalry and an unknown number of infantry. Since there must have been more infantry than cavalry (especially in a siege), this battle must have easily involved more than 100,000 fighting men. We don't have any estimates for how big the Persian army at Chalcedon waiting to cross the straits was, but we can only assume that it was reasonably strong if it is to have any hope of surviving the march across Asia Minor and to help out in the siege. Altogether, the size of the forces involved actually compares quite favourably to the Battle of Cannae mentioned by /u/PapiriusCursor. These numbers can of course be criticised and Avar/Persian numbers are only Roman estimates, whilst the suggestion that more Roman infantry were involved is only a suggestion, so we can hardly be certain. But that is the nature of history and even if all these numbers are off by a few tens of thousands, the armies involved were still sizable ones.\n\nThe most well-recorded front was in the Transcaucasian mountains, in which Roman sources provide a variety of figures. Heraclius in 624 for example allegedly faced a Persian army of 40,000 men; he defeated this army and a multitude of other attacks, resulting in him having 50,000 captives by winter. This is I think fairly unreliable, since this is only preserved in the ninth-century Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. He probably had access to official records, but even if he did, how are we to judge whether these figures are correct? These are Roman estimates at best and only the size of one Persian army in the region was provided, who knows how many Persian soldiers were available there as a whole. Closer to the time, Pseudo-Sebeos, writing around 660, noted that 120,000 men marched with Heraclius on the campaign of 624, which is obviously a ludicrously large figure and should not be taken seriously, so this isn't particularly helpful either. For the campaign of 625, pseudo-Sebeos was a bit more sane and recorded a Persian pincer movement with one army of 30,000 men and another army of unknown size; this attack was repulsed. Later, a surprise Persian attack was also defeated by an elite Roman detachment of 20,000 men, but that's all we know.\n\nIn 626, a Persian army of about 50,000 in the Caucasus was recorded by Theophanes, which I think is significant when it took place at the same as the thrust towards to Constantinople, so (guessing wildly here) the Persians were perhaps able to muster up 100,000 men in one year, if we assume both armies to be of the same size. This is after the victories and defeats of the previous two decades, so this number is to me quite impressive. Near the end of the war, the Gokturks intervened in the war, allegedly sending 40,000 men to help Heraclius with his final campaign against the Persians, as well as presumably doing great damage on the Persians' eastern frontier. The numbers are obviously problematic, but from a strategic perspective it should be obvious that the Persians now not only had to defend their new provinces around the Mediterranean, but also the previously 'safe' territories in the east, just as the Romans still had to maintain a presence in the western Mediterranean.\n\nThis answer is a bit all over the place, but I hope I have demonstrated the problems with our sources and how the numbers we have are not illustrative of just how damaging the war was, simply because the 'true' number is unknown and must be much larger. I don't know what numbers historians have suggested for the Second Punic War, but I fail to see how a war fought on a far grander scale could have involved less people. Sources-wise, a fine summary of the war can be found in Peter Sarris' *Empires of Faith* (2011) in the relevant chapter, but keep an eye out in the future for James Howard-Johnston's *magnum opus*, a monograph focusing in particular on this 'last great war of antiquity', which I believe will be the definitive study of this conflict for a very long time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1jruhy", "title": "Is Cardinal Richelieu the great mastermind that some portray him to be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jruhy/is_cardinal_richelieu_the_great_mastermind_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbhzrkf"], "score": [21], "text": ["To break your question into two slightly different flavors:\n\n**Question #1**. Is the image of Cardinal Richelieu as a political mastermind purely a creation of popular fantasy, or are there historians who view it as roughly accurate?\n\nThe standard view is roughly that, yes, he was a particularly influential and adept negotiator of the political scene, who dominated the politics of France in his era, and played a key role in centralizing France and strengthening the monarchy. A good representative of that view is Jean-Vincent Blanchard's biography *\u00c9minence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France*; the introduction starts like so:\n\n >  Take a look at his portrait. See the poised authority of the statesman, the gaze that stares back with lucid intelligence, and maybe a touch of bemused irony, as if he had just been asked a question ignorant of the magnitude of his responsibilities, the immense task of making France a powerful and prestigious land. [...]\n\n >  These are not just effects born under the flattering paintbrush of the painter Philippe de Champaigne. Armand-Jean du Plessis\u2014Cardinal Richelieu's full name\u2014was a leader of the government of France, a chief of diplomacy, and a war commander. [...]\n\n...and continues for several pages recounting his always-central role in various events.\n\nOn the other hand we might ask,\n\n**Question #2**. Are there historians who consider the popular image of Richelieu as an era-dominating mastermind to be embellished or even outright wrong?\n\nYes to this question as well. A good representative is David Parrott's *Richelieu\u2019s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624-1642*. It's a large book arguing a lot of things, but has a general flavor of arguing that France was not as effectively centralized under Richelieu as some accounts portray, and Richelieu himself did not have as big a singlehanded effect on its development as popularly thought. Instead, Parrott emphasizes the larger set of social and political forces at work in 17th-century France.\n\n[This review of Parrott's book](_URL_0_) provides a good summary of that view:\n\n >  Parrott shows convincingly that the notion that \"Richelieu had laid the foundations for a strategy that was about to bear fruit in the 1640s must be questioned\" (162). If a centralized France prospered in the years after Richelieu\u2019s death, Parrott implies that the Cardinal Minister of Louis XIII merits little credit for it. If France ultimately emerged from the Thirty Years War in a powerful position, it must have been due to factors other than a brilliant Richelieu at the helm, for there was no overall direction of the French army in the era of his ministry, but rather various \"levels of administrative confusion and incoherence\" (415). In the light of this study, images of Cardinal Richelieu as the clever mastermind behind the triumph of French royal absolutism, at home and abroad, in peace and in war, may seem more part of the history of French government propaganda than as anything else."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://repositories.tdl.org/tdl/bitstream/handle/2249.1/5386/V60-I3-27-Worcestor.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "62svwj", "title": "why did titanic become famous? isn't it just a shipwreck like the many others?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62svwj/eli5_why_did_titanic_become_famous_isnt_it_just_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfoxhwl", "dfoxju4", "dfoxl31", "dfoxp6m", "dfp0heb"], "score": [6, 8, 3, 19, 25], "text": ["Hyped up to be unsinkable. Biggest and most glamorous ship of its time. Sunk on maiden voyage.", "The Titanic was sold as unskinkable and reports in Irish papers quickly got the myth going. The ship then sinks on its maiden voyage so I imagine the irony adds to its fame.", "She's famous because she was the biggest and best ocean liner ever built at the time, and because she sank on her maiden voyage despite being billed and designed as \u201cunsinkable.\u201d Also, that was predicted in a way in [a book from 1898](_URL_0_). ", "It was one of the biggest disasters in naval history with 1500 deaths, a large amount of that could have been prevented if the owners didn't skimp out on lifeboats, communications, and life jackets. The boat only had enough safety equipment to save 50% of the people on board, and somehow they fucked that up and lost 68% of the people. Also after its sinking after supposedly being \"unsinkable\" it became something of a tragic tale of human arrogance.\n\nAfter the sinking there was a major push in ocean liner's safety regulations and procedures so that you wouldn't have more people than you have the capacity to save them.", "She was billed as invincible, she was the biggest passenger liner built at the time and they had one of the most experienced crews of White Star Line at the helm.\n\nUnfortunately a chain of completely avoidable errors caused the accident, including the ship having the absolute legal minimum of life boats which was the start of the problem.\n\nA last minute reshuffle of senior crew meant that the holder of the key to the cupboard that contained the binoculars ended up not going with the ship, and he simply forgot to hand the key back over.\n\nNumerous warnings from ships nearby (notably the Californian which was close by and had stopped surrounded by icebergs) were pushed aside by overworked radio operators who were busy sending and receiving passenger messages.\n\nThe iceberg was spotted very late due to a moonless night and eerily calm waters, meaning there were no waves crashing against the bottom of the icebergs. \n\nOnce it was apparent the iceberg was there, First Officer Murdoch attempted a manoeuvre to swing the front of the ship round to the left, and then push the rear of the ship outwards using the propellers in a move called a port-about. However the delay involved in switching the engines to reverse caused the ship to adopt a slow sideways drift towards the berg. Many experts believe that if Murdoch had simply turned the ship at its current speed, it would avoided the collision by some feet.\n\nOnce the collision had taken place, the Captain was roused and almost immediately told by the ships designer that sinking within 2 hours was a 'mathematical certainty'. The Captain became paralysed with indecision and gave no orders other than to rouse the passengers and put their life jackets on.\n\nPrompted by other officers onboard, he ordered the lifeboats to be loaded and lowered saying \"women and children first\". However the officer in charge of one side of the ships evacuation took it as \"women and children ONLY\" and therefore dramatically reduced the amount of passengers to be saved.\n\nIt is believed the Captain never officially ordered to abandon ship, or even evacuate, with many officers and staff working on their own initiative.\n\nThe Californian had shut its radios down for the night, and even though both radio operators on the Titanic worked tirelessly sending distress messages (even the yet to be introduced SOS signal), the closest ship was 4 hours away. The Carpathia made full steam through the minefield of icebergs towards the ship that had given its position as 15 nautical miles from where it actually was. The Captain of this ship was later credited with saving nearly every possible survivor.\n\nThe Titanic shot rockets from the deck which was seen by the Californian, however the Captain elected to ignore them.\n\nThe sinking of the Titanic was a major wake up call for the authorities to start tightening procedures and regulation, as well as the media attention it received. Imagine the inaugural flight of the Airbus A380 crashing - it would hit news big time.\n\nI'm probably missing out a few details as well as having forgotten the vast majority of the crew members' names, but I've given the just of what happened and hopefully it helps. I'm sure there are some redditors that are considerably more knowledgeable than I on the subject that can point out any mistakes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Titan%3A_Or%2C_Futility"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "666tcy", "title": "Did ancient Polynesian civilizations actually use such decorated sails as depicted in Disney's Moana?", "selftext": "So sadly I only just now got around to watching the latest Disney animated movie. And this part honestly confused me slightly. As per my understanding, sails were really prone to breakage, falling apart, getting holes and such. And thus spending so much time on sails that were so finely and artistically decorated seems... pointless ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/666tcy/did_ancient_polynesian_civilizations_actually_use/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgrcave"], "score": [2], "text": ["I'm a tad late for it, but anyways. Your question has been replied here before _URL_0_ by /u/b1uepenguin"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fev2n/are_the_boat_designs_in_disneys_moana_accurate_to/?ref=search_posts"]]}
{"q_id": "1xatn9", "title": "why do i feel a tingling feeling in my genitals when i feel i think about falling from a really high place? like a sky scraper.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xatn9/why_do_i_feel_a_tingling_feeling_in_my_genitals/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf9owmp", "cf9pzj6", "cf9q7lc", "cf9ttze", "cf9ujfx", "cf9unit", "cf9v2z8", "cf9vabm", "cf9vcgr", "cf9w9nu", "cf9wr9z", "cf9wt3t", "cf9x8sz", "cf9xalt", "cf9xm64", "cf9y3ao", "cf9zzc0", "cfa05sk", "cfa1j1h"], "score": [40, 217, 2, 68, 2, 11, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["AIUI, it's actually imagining a common physical reaction to falling.\n\nThe same way you can have a dream where you're falling - except you're awake and imagining this scenario.\n\nSo the next question I suppose is why you get this feeling when you fall for real. Presumably it has to do with the temporary weightlessness your body experiences and your genital area is sensitive. A car going fast over a hump in the road can create the same effect sometimes. \n\nFear of heights is instinctive afaiaa - pretty much everyone has it. It's the one thing in a game or movie that actually affects me - i.e I can sit and watch horror films etc with no reaction at all - I don't get scared watching them. But if I fall in a game I sometimes experience the sensation of falling for real and the mere thought of being somewhere precarious and high up can make me shudder.", "this always gets asked and no one has a concrete answer.\n\nI heard on a documentary that its actually your balls/ovaries tucking into your body to protect themselves presumably from physical trauma.  But I cant find anything on the internet to validate.\n\nIts a quick physical movement that causes the feel.  Similar to falling when the balls or ovaries are actually moving.  \n\nIf you are in free fall long enough like in a space shuttle your body stops because they cant go tucking in any further or your body realizes they no longer need protecting.\n\nTL;DR your balls protecting themselves by tucking into your body", "Sometimes when I climb stairs really quickly I get this feeling.  It's not really my balls but like a feeling in my lower back.  It sort of feels orgasmic. Is this the same thing?", "The dartos muscle, which is in the skin of the scrotum, is controlled by the sympathetic (fight or flight) division of the nervous system.  When your brain thinks you're about to fall off a cliff, the whole sympathetic nervous system flares up, including the dartos muscle which causes that weird feeling in your scrotum.", "anyone else's balls just tingled whilst thinking about it?", "Everyone has two parts of their nervous system that are constantly battling. Parasympathetic (energy uptake) and Sympathetic (energy expenditure). The sensations of *tingling genitals* or *heart dropping* or even *butterflies in my stomach* is the sudden burst of energy your body just sent through to the sympathetic system (energy expenditure, or fight/flight).\n\nEngaging the sympathetic nervous system pretty much stops the parasympathetic from working. Things the sympathetic controls are (but not limited to) lungs (for more oxygen); heart (for more blood to take the oxygen to muscles); guts (to close all sphincters and prevent digestion); adrenal glands (to pump epinephrine); bladder (to evacuate bowls); genitals (to induce labor, secrete gametes, or ejaculate) and even hair (to make it stand on end)\n\nThe best thing to describe it is your body says \"stop using energy on digestion\" and \"**GO**\" to every other damn thing that'll get you away from that ledge.", "Intense fear or stress is a powerful diuretic (according to author Matt Stone, anyway). I wonder if it's a more urethral response to keep you from peeing yourself, rather than a genital response. ", "I'm not sure if it's related but the chemical response in your brain related to fear is distinctly similar to that which arouses you. Ergo; bdsm etc.", "This stopped happening to me when I was around 10 or so, for some reason. And yes, I have been in intense drops/falls (on roller coasters) since then.", "In Scotland we have a word for that feeling when you see something painful or that feeling of falling, we say it 'gies us the grue'", "The external cremaster muscle contracts in fight/flight scenarios. You can also make it happen by stroking your inner thigh.\n\nreference for fight/flight (sorry for the graphic pic): _URL_0_\n\ncremasteric reflex:\n_URL_1_", "It's all of your potential future children screaming at you to be careful", "Is it a fizzing sensation just behind your penis? James May has that problem.", "I always thought it was part of our flight response. Blood is being re-routed away from that part of our bodies to more vital escape-focused parts. ", "I get the female version of this. I call it Minge Twinge. ", "I don't know, but my guess would be that it's your body reminding you of what pain is by sending a tingly feeling in your tender spots.  Thus, reminding you not to do something stupid.  So you lean over a balcony, your body's like \"screw that...  hey... self... remember how sensitive your nuts are?  Yeah, don't lean over too far - this could hurt...\"", "Your balls are afraid to drop, man.", "When I went skydiving, I was surprised NOT to get this sensation.  Raised railroad crossing at moderate speed on the other hand?  Ohhhh boy!", "You know what's fucked up? When I was a kid my cousin told me this only happens to you if you have a small dick. \n\nWhenever my friends went to an amusement park and they asked me if I felt that tingle, I was like \"fuck no, my dick is huge\"\n\nit was a hard knock life"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ansci.wisc.edu/jjp1/ansci_repro/lab/lab2/boar_tract/ex_creamaster.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremasteric_reflex"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "147uxu", "title": "How do you get energy from electromagnetic radiation?", "selftext": "Is this even possible, if not, why can't we? Or explain how we already do. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/147uxu/how_do_you_get_energy_from_electromagnetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7amjlg", "c7amp8e", "c7aoj3o", "c7az1sm"], "score": [9, 11, 4, 2], "text": ["We already do. You've heard of solar cells, right?", "You can harness the energy in electromagnetic radiation by absorbing it.  Photovoltaic cells absorb light and produce electricity.  Other systems absorb light and increase their temperature, the idea behind passive solar heating.  You can take sunlight and use mirrors to focus the light to heat water and run a turbine to generate electricity.  In the biological world, photosynthesis is another method for converting the energy from light into other forms.  And, just to look at another part of the electromagnetic spectrum, crystal radios generate sound by absorbing radio waves and using their energy to create that sound.\n", "A wave of electromagnetic radiation is a photon travelling and oscillating at the wavelength of the light/radio/microwave/whatever radiation that is observed. Along with the photon oscillating, a magnetic field is oscillating, in sync with the photon, but perpendicular to the plane of the photon oscillation and travelling with the photon. The oscillating magnetic field causes movement of electrons when it is absorbed, which, if the right substance is used to absorb it, can be used to provide an electric current that we can use for useful work.", "Three posts about Solar cells?!? Man, this place is filled with EEs....\n  \nHow about plants!  Plants are nature's solar cells and are responsible for 99.9% of life on this planet.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "85exmt", "title": "Was nude swimming really enforced in public swimming pools in the first part of the 20th century? If so, why?", "selftext": "I just heard this for the first time, and I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it before. Someone mentioned it in passing on a podcast I listen to and, after some quick Googling, it seems to be true. It seems crazy to me that this was the case, and that I had never heard of this until now.\n\nIs it true that most public swimming pools (including school pools) enforced a rule of nude-only swimming? What was the reasoning here? Also, what prompted the cultural shift away from this? It seems to be counter to the typical trend of society becoming less modest over time.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/85exmt/was_nude_swimming_really_enforced_in_public/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvxxbik"], "score": [28], "text": ["Yes, nude swimming (at least for males) was commonplace in schools, universities, and YMCAs all across the country. Pools or bathing times were segregated by sex.  \n\nThe official reason was to eliminate problems with mildew if damp suits were stored overnight, and to avoid problems with fabric threads in the pool filters. The American Public Health Association recommended nude bathing for males in their 1926 standards handbook.  Not until the 1960s were quick-drying nylon or similar swimsuits widely available. Same-sex nudity wasn't unusual at the time, when rural boys still skinny-dipped, and when soldiers, sailors, and athletic teams showered or bathed in groups.  Some teachers and youth leaders viewed group nudity for boys as a part of growing up and as preparation for military service. Same-sex nudity seems to be an area where American society has become much *more* modest since the 1970s.\n\n[This Chicago Public Radio report](_URL_0_) gives more detail on the nude-swimming requirement in Chicago public schools."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.wbez.org/shows/curious-city/baring-it-all-why-boys-swam-naked-in-chicago-high-schools/c9a3a9e2-6ae3-404b-80e5-0c4bf4d5a0be"]]}
{"q_id": "xfh1f", "title": "why is aurora shooter charged two counts of 1st degree murder for every victim?", "selftext": "he apparently deserves every punishment the legal system can deliver, but why two accounts per victim? what is the legal basis of multiple counts per victim?\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xfh1f/eli5_why_is_aurora_shooter_charged_two_counts_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5lwndo", "c5lwwdi", "c5lxs68", "c5ly5s6", "c5m0bn3", "c5m11f4", "c5m15v5", "c5m1r0w", "c5m39bq"], "score": [44, 279, 2, 111, 5, 7, 3, 3, 5], "text": ["If you wanted to hurt Bobby and planned out way ahead of time how to do it, you would be charged with \"pre-meditated murder\", which is just a fancy way of saying that you thought about it a long time before you did it. \n\nLet's say the day comes and you beat up Bobby, but his friends Timmy and Johnny were there too and you decided to beat up them as well, just because you felt like it. Because you were being incredibly mean to everyone around you, not just the one person that's called \"malice manifesting extreme indifference to human life\", because you didn't care **who** you hurt. \n\n~~In Colorado they can put you in jail for twice as long if they can show that you did both of those things.~~ \n\nWhen the teacher comes out and sees you beating up Timmy and Johnny and takes you to the principal, the principal might not be able to prove that you planned to beat up Bobby, because that's really hard to do. He can see that you were hurting everyone around Bobby, so he can try to get you in trouble for planning to hurt Bobby and Timmy and Johnny, and in case he can't prove that you planned to hurt them he can prove that you didn't care about hurting anyone else and get you in trouble for that. ", "When you're involved in serious crime that's sure to go to trial they go through the law books and charge you with everything that's even remotely likely to stick.  Then during the trial, each charge is answered separately and the jury decides which ones you actually did.  \nThis saves the trouble of setting up repeated trials if you happen to get off the first charge they try on.  ", "Will he likely get the death penalty?", "[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nHe killed 12 people, so he's charged with 12 counts of first degree murder, but he did it in a way that could've resulted in the deaths of any number of people, so he's also charged with \"depraved indifference\" associated with each of those counts. By the same token, he wounded 58 people, and so he's charged with 116 counts of attempted murder.", "It says it directly in the article:  \n\n > Prosecutors, who are under a protective or \"gag\" order imposed in the case by the judge, declined to explain their decision to file the double charges, but it appeared to be a strategy to offer jurors more than one path to a guilty verdict.", "Instead of promoting the culture of death in this country of ours. Why not study his brain or mental state and figure out what made a perfectly normal person do this? This in turn, might save future victims.", "Rudimentary knowledge of the common law and nothing specific from Colorado, but I heard the story on NPR and I'm pretty sure he's charged with First Degree premeditated murder for which the prosecution would have to prove that he had pre-planned and thought about the murder before intentionally shooting his victims *for each and every victim.* They also charged him, alternatively, with what's called a reckless or \"depraved heart\" murder, from what I know. Basically all the prosecution would have to prove for that was that by open firing into a crowd of people he was sufficiently reckless to know that at least some people would die. This would be an easier burden for the D.A., but I doubt the sentencing guidelines would be as serious for this type of murder as for the first one.\n\nOn the double jeopardy note, you can never be tried for the same crime twice, you can be charged multiple times, but not convicted for the same crime in the same trial more than once. These are alternative theories.", "because he also pirated some mp3's...", "Not to hijack this thread, but I don't think my question merits starting a new one.\nWhy could his trial take so long? I heard on NPR that it could take years, and I just can't imagine why."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0730/Colorado-shooting-suspect-spends-a-second-day-in-court"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depraved-heart_murder"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "jjn15", "title": "Are there words that are more prone to semantic satiation than others?", "selftext": "\"Cheese\" did it to me pretty fast just now. So I was wondering if there was some phonetic background to it, or some combinations of letters or something. Or combinations of  ~~the former~~ these.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jjn15/are_there_words_that_are_more_prone_to_semantic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2cpf4u", "c2cpf4u"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Interesting question and I'd like to know as well. \n\nI'd be curious to know, *if so*, if there would be any correlation between words that are more common in daily language and less common words.\n\nE.g. as an arbitrary example, would \"run\" or \"purgatory\" tend to lose meaning in fewer iterations, and for that matter, is there even any better way of measuring this effect?", "Interesting question and I'd like to know as well. \n\nI'd be curious to know, *if so*, if there would be any correlation between words that are more common in daily language and less common words.\n\nE.g. as an arbitrary example, would \"run\" or \"purgatory\" tend to lose meaning in fewer iterations, and for that matter, is there even any better way of measuring this effect?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1f5t96", "title": "Is this Facebook post accurate?", "selftext": "\"If I had a pole in my hand that could reach to the moon, and on the moon was a button that I needed to press... using my pole, it would take about 2 weeks for the other end to push the button.\"\n\n*sorry I couldn't think of a more fitting title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1f5t96/is_this_facebook_post_accurate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca72m5p"], "score": [57], "text": ["The speed of sound in steel is 6,100 m/s.\n\nThe moon is 384,400,000 meters away, on average.\n\nIt would take 63,000 seconds for movement to travel the length of the rod, or 17 hours.\n\nSo no, not quite.  The original creator of that thought was probably incorrectly using the speed of sound in air, which would give a value of 13 days."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "fpmln", "title": "Can anyone tell me if this guy is legit?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nThis is one of many articles he has on his site. He seems to have some very interesting ideas about nutrition that conflict with a lot of mainstream ideas about what is healthy (especially his article on fish oil).\n\nHe makes what seems to me to be convincing arguments, but I don't think I have the proper background to fully make that judgment. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fpmln/can_anyone_tell_me_if_this_guy_is_legit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1hp4j6", "c1hp649", "c1hpksc"], "score": [7, 4, 23], "text": ["Hard to say.  I'm no professional in metabolism, but on first glance it looks to me to be a case of extrapolating from basic science to full-out clinical observations, which is often a big mistake.  It's the same reason why people think antioxidants are good for you--they claim that, because on the cellular level oxidative stress can result in some damage, things that reduce free radicals must therefore be good.  They fail to address the fact that free radicals may be good for other things (they have roles in cell signalling, for example).\n\nI can't make a judgment in this case, but I can give advice: a basic science rationale is rarely good enough when it comes to the human body.  Many people are misled by such a fallacy.", "well, he does not appear at least to be a one trick pony type with the magic bullet cure for all disease.  When you mentioned fish oil I thought this might be a case of one of these types. \r\n\r\nIt is a shame that the article linked to has references at the bottom but many statements if not all do not include any reference of the sort you might expect in a serious article.  On the face of it he does have a phd and was a teacher.  Some background research into that claim and others made in the articles themselves might be warranted.\r\n\r\n", "Probably not.\n\nIn general, if you wonder if someone making scientific claims is legit, you should look for a publication record. The way that you know if your crazy idea is right is by testing it, and the way that you establish your testing as legitimate is by letting your peers review your work and check for errors.\n\nSaid a different, better way: If a researcher really wants to help people with a novel treatment, he needs to convince doctors that he's right, because that's how the treatment will get to patients. To convince doctors, you need to publish peer-reviewed research. *Nothing* else effectively changes patient care.\n\nSo, let's see if Ray Peat has done this.\n\nFirst, go to [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) and enter his information to see what he's published. Now wade through the \"Rachel Peat\" publications that aren't him.\n\nHe seems to have published three things. First, the research from his dissertation, from 1972:\n[Estrogen stimulated pathway changes and cold-inactivated enzymes.](_URL_3_)\n\nSecond, a letter to the editor about progesterone, here:\n[ORAL ABSORPTION OF PROGESTERONE](_URL_2_)\n\nAnd finally, something titled [humanistic therapy](_URL_4_) from 1971.\n\nI can't read any of these papers today, because I'm in a waiting room without a journal-proxy.\n\nThe short version, though, is that the human body and nutritional system are very complicated. It's easy to come up with clever theories, and even easier to be completely wrong about those theories. Unless someone has formally tested his theories, you're foolish to put even an iota of faith in them.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["pubmed.com", "http://pubget.com/search?q=author%3A%22r+peat%22", "http://pubget.com/paper/3712456", "http://pubget.com/paper/4376841", "http://pubget.com/paper/pgtmp_jstor3955844"]]}
{"q_id": "5zjn5p", "title": "When did doctors in the US stop making house calls? And why?", "selftext": "At what point in US history did this shift take place and what were the economic and/or sociological forces that prompted this shift?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5zjn5p/when_did_doctors_in_the_us_stop_making_house/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dez33l8"], "score": [9], "text": ["Tag on question, did this shift occur in other places around the globe and does it relate to population density/urbanisation?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1q7qbn", "title": "Could cancer cells be genetically modified to \"uncontrollably\" grow beneficial things such as stem, brain, or blood cells?", "selftext": "Or vice versa: Could good cells be given the trait of rapid multiplication much like that of a cancer cell?\n\nI assume the trait would have to be \"switched off\" or weakened before the cells could be given to a human.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1q7qbn/could_cancer_cells_be_genetically_modified_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cda8kuf"], "score": [3], "text": ["If you mean hybridoma technology for mAb production [(here is a simplified article)] (_URL_0_), it is an established science. But obviously, growing beneficial cells is a whole different ball-game. Chief concern is the fidelity of differentiation into such cells, as cancer cells inherently are unruly (genetically in a population).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://medimicro.blogspot.in/2010/09/monoclonal-antibody-production-by.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3l5qp4", "title": "Why did the USSR reject genetics?", "selftext": "From the little I've read about it, the rejection seems to mainly be for ideological reasons. As in it didn't fit with the  communist ideas of equality and was too \"bourgeois\". Surely this can't be the whole story? Was there some economic benefit to it or some other type of pragmatic reasoning behind the rejection?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l5qp4/why_did_the_ussr_reject_genetics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv3fazs", "cv3hzs2", "cv3lmsk"], "score": [10, 127, 6], "text": ["Just to clarify, I think he's asking about [Trofim Lysenko](_URL_0_) and I'm very curious about this myself.  I studied botany in college and am interested in the Soviet Union, and I never quite could figure this out.", "This is actually a very interesting case study for politics under Stalinism, and how Stalin's ideas moved on from the purely political, the theoretical, to the practical. They didn't so much reject genetics as adopt, for a time, a more politically convenient theory as their view of heredity.\n\nThe Soviets, and particularly Stalin, saw the Mendelian idea that competition was the basis for passing on genes as repugnant, *because he could not change them* as easily, and the parallels to capitalist *economic* theories were too inconvenient. There was an inherent competitive trait in both. Lysenko proposed a theory that somewhat sidetracked the idea of competition in genetics. It fit with Stalin's and the political establishments ideas on many levels.\n\nIf you look at Soviet education theories from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, a period sometimes referred to as \"High Stalinism\", there was a theory that the minds of children, and to some extent the working classes, were like empty pots. This was convenient for the Soviets as they could create a whole new kind of man through education.\n\nThe Soviet Union under Stalin was a place where total political control was not only seen as necessary but also *positive* in the move towards a true communist state. This idea that total control was a requirement grew into a state of mind where *everything* could be bent to political control. Including plants, animals, and the transfer of genes. \n\nIt went hand in hand with the drive for the new man, sometimes called *Homo Sovieticus*, where education had to be correct ideologically so too it had to be for scientific theory. The idea that Lysenko presented was attractive to the politics of the time in the Soviet hierarchy. The idea that children, plants, and animals could inherit *acquired traits* rather than genes were great news because it would make the creation of the New Soviet Man, and his society *easier*, all the while giving more weight to Soviet political dogma. \n\nIt all contributed to the way of thinking in the Soviet Union, and in other dictatorships, specifically the Third Reich, that everything around them could be molded, everything they controlled was plastic rather than hard stone, that with sufficient zeal and obedience, you could bend even the fundamental structures of life to your politics was a gold mine for the Soviet or Nazi regimes. It gave them equal parts motivation, and legitimacy for their actions.\n\nNothing these regimes did happened independently from politics, nothing happened in a bubble. Everything was tied to politics, and there was some understanding that a good career came with good, aligned with the regime, politics.\n\nBut the Soviets also thought it really worked on crops. Initially, the Soviets saw yield increases from Lysenko's theories, at least that's what they *thought*. But they started trying Lysenkos theories when they also started using tractors and *chemical fertilizers*. That's where the yield increases came from, but since Lyshenko was a favorite of Stalin, saying so was not only political suicide, but practical suicide too.\n\nSources include the following:\n\n*Iron Curtain: the crushing of Eastern Europe* by Applebaum, specifically chapter 13 *Homo Sovieticus* is of particular interest.\n\n*Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II * by Lowe \n\n*The Cold War* by Gaddis (not a lot from this one)\n\n*Revolutionary Russia* by Figes", "This BBC show from a few years ago:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nis about that very subject. I found it really to be a fascinating story. I'd say the short answer is that the picture it suggested of reality was inconvenient, ideologically. The guests on the show are estimable experts and explain it much better than I could."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko"], [], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bw51j"]]}
{"q_id": "8ig56n", "title": "how did ancient people discover how to refine stuff such as grapes into wine or cooking made food taste better?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ig56n/eli5_how_did_ancient_people_discover_how_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyrftyc", "dyrik98", "dyrisdy", "dyrmp50", "dyrpjrz", "dyrq70q", "dyrr698", "dyrs4u8", "dyrt0uu", "dyrxtrc", "dyrzmtd", "dyrzvv5"], "score": [433, 61, 39, 27, 14, 10, 6, 3, 8, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Food was rare back in the days which meant that throwing it away could have terrible consequences as long as it was still somewhat edible. Cooking possibly couldve happened by someone accidentally dropping food into a fire and because they wouldnt want to throw it away they ate it. Wine was probably similsr by forgetting about some grapes and they started fermenting. A lot of things happened most likely by accident because food was scarce and hard to come by...", "I always wondered about cooking, and the best theory I've heard so far is it came about from people walking through the ashes of forest fires and picking up the animals they found teaching them \"hey this tastes better and we get sick less often. Maybe we should be putting meat in fire\" ", "Cooking is something that may have caused humans to evolve differently from other animals. We are tens of thousands of years removed from our primative ancestors. While this may seem like a long time nowadays based on technology progress, it is actually a very short time scale for evolution to happen.\n\nTherefore, our bodies have not changed much from our ancient ancestors. Our bodies are not well-designed for raw foods. In contrast to other animals, humans have very small jaws compared to head size. We cannot chew as much as other plant eating animals. Many plant eating animals spend a great deal of their day chewing up their food to aid in digesting it. Since humans are omnivores, we also eat meat. But our small jaws doesnt allow for large muscles to tear and rip apart raw meat. Have you ever tried to eat too-raw meat? It ends up extremely fiber-y and tough to chew.\n\nSo how have we managed to survive while still powering our extremely energy-draining large brains? Cooking. Cooking breaks down food so that it is easier to eat. Easier to eat means less time spent eating and more calories that can be digested from the meal. It's not that humans discovered cooking but cooking is what allowed us to evolve into humans. Therefore it is hard to pinpoint how exactly we discovered how to cook.\n\nFermentation is a form of cooking but using bacteria, yeast, and/or mold to break down foods before we eat it. Fermentation was necessary because there really wasn't many ways to store food, especially in regions where food rots easily. Fermenting foods use a \"good\" edible rot that prevents \"bad\" or poisonous rot from living on the food. This way, fermented food can keep longer and we also get the benefit that it is partially digested (more nutritious) and free from poisonous rot. \n\nHow did we discover it? Foods pick up the spores of these microbes from the air. Sometimes we are lucky to have good rot taking over the food. Someone may have decided to try older stored food only to realize it was edible and may have tasted better.", "That\u2019s not nearly as weird as how humans figured out how to eat cassava root. Cassava contains cyanide. If you don\u2019t peel it and process it in a particular way then it will kill you.", "I've heard for asian cuisine, a lot of the \"unusual\" stuff was discovered by Daoists?/Taoists?.  In search of food that will extend their lives/immortality - they apparently tried everything edible and not edible.  \n\nFor example, in the days before deep understanding of chemistry and proteins, how did anyone figure that mixing salt with soy beans and wheat and letting it ferment for a few weeks - then eating the resulting smelly product (soy paste/soy sauce) would actually taste good/not kill you?\n", "The one that really blows my mind is Aloe Vera.\n\nWho was the brave person who got a really bad sunburn and thought \"You know what would feel good on this burn? If I took that tough, prickly plant and rubbed it all over me!\" ??", "With something like wine (or anything which involves a multistep process) this would likely have happened gradually, in stages, with each stage being possibly discovered by accident, or after a period of deliberate trial and error, and refined over time.\n\nSo eg you collect grapes when they are in season and store them in a container. The bottom of that container will get filled with grape juice. Which might start to naturally ferment. You might notice that this tastes good, and has pleasant effects, if it's left for a certain length of time, but turns sour (or worse) if you leave it too long. So people start deliberately making it by leaving the juice for the right length of time.\n\nThen it might be noticed that if it's made in a certain type of container it tastes better than in another. Or if it's made in a cool cave it tastes better (or worse) than if made out in the open. Or you get a different flavour if you pick the grapes sooner rather than later. And so on and so on, with lots of different variations competing with each other in a kind of Darwinian process.", "waste not want not.. unused food, stored food. grapes in a barrel the magical liquid on the bottom made your tummy warm. left over porridge baked to dry it turned into a flat bread", " >  Did they really just taste test and if they died they died?\n\nIt was more like, \"I'm starving to death, it can't hurt to give this a try.\"\n\nFood was often scarce, hunger and starvation lurked around every corner.  Caution would give way to desperation, kind of a trial and error at gunpoint.\n\nAlso, this happened over thousands of very, plenty of time for all sorts of happy accident.  I saved up a bunch of grapes for later, whoops, looks like they went bad, hey, we can still eat them and wow!  I'm just going to set my chunk of raw meat here by the fire, whoops, it is all burn now, but hey, it tastes even better, has fewer parasites, and won't go bad as quickly.", "Not every discovery had to come from random dumb luck. Ancient people had the same compactly to reason as we do today and they could think things through and experiment intelligencetly. ", "People are getting beer wrong here:\n\nIn the old days food really sucked.  They didn't discover the Americas yet, so there were no potatoes, tomatoes, corn.  Pretty much all they had was barley, vegetables and squirrels.\n\nSo now barley is made out of seeds and the seeds start to grow all by themselves and that is no good because then you can't cook squirrel and barley soup.  So then they roast the barley seeds  to stop them growing and that is called malted barley.\n\nWhen the next harvest of barley is ready, the price of the malted barley drops close to zero, because people prefer squirrel soup made with fresh barley.  So they fermented the malted barley to make ale and get drunk.\n\nOnce they made ale, they got all experimental because they were drunk.  Then they started adding all sorts of herbs and stuff to the ale.  Eventually, some monks discovered that if you add hops to the ale, it keeps longer, so the hops was used as a preservative.\n\nAle with hops in it is called beer.  Yeast was discovered later.", "The real ELI5 is they didn't waste their time watching TV or playing video games or browsing the internet.\n\nOur ancestors couldn't just go to 7-11 and get a 6 pack.\n\nTherefore, they spent a lot of time thinking about ways to improve their lives."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "35eyvh", "title": "What makes Uranium 236 more unstable than Uranium 238, and why can't the products of Uranium 236 fission be predicted?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/35eyvh/what_makes_uranium_236_more_unstable_than_uranium/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr412i4", "cr4n639"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["The energy needed to fission U-236 is similar to the energy needed to fission U-239. But the energy released in adding a slow neutron to U-235 is larger than energy released in adding a slow neutron to U-238. So if a slow neutron is captured by U-238, the resulting U-239 does not have enough energy for fission, and has to get rid of the energy by emitting gamma ray. If, however, a slow neutron is captured by U-235, the energy is big enough to cause fission of U-236, and most of time does, though it still often emits gamma ray instead of fission. If a fast neutron is captured by U-238, the additional energy from the kinetic energy of the neutron may be enough to cause fission.\n\nsauce _URL_0_", "This is a physics question, not chemistry.  There are many factors that go into determining the stability of nuclei.  The easiest method is by using the [SEMF](_URL_0_).  Why is U-236 more unstable than U-238?  That is a tricky question.  My best guess by looking at the chart of the nuclides is that it has to do with the energy for the alpha decay.  That has an effect on the half-life.  The difference in half-lives between U-236 and U-238 is not that much.  That factor can be attributed to the difference in energy for the decay, but I haven't worked out the math.  \n\nThe products of U-236 fission are predicted, they are the most studied out of all fission.  You have the England and Rider tables.\n_URL_1_\n\nI want to add that U-236 fission is what happens when you have a neutron absorb onto U-235. \n\nThe fission process is stochastic.  So you end up with what percentage of time a certain fission product is made, but you cannot determine the exact fission products for each fission event.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/why-unstable-uranium.692943/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-empirical_mass_formula", "http://ie.lbl.gov/fission/235ut.txt"]]}
{"q_id": "1ot3xp", "title": "why are some watches so expensive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ot3xp/eli5_why_are_some_watches_so_expensive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccvaoeh", "ccvbkjx", "ccvgek8", "ccvii8k"], "score": [25, 7, 5, 2], "text": ["You may be surprised to know there are quite a few reasons. Among the most important are craftsmanship, attention to detail, brand pedigree and popularity.\n\n\nThe precious metal cases aside, one of the largest factors is the craftsmanship a high-end watch's movement. The movement is what makes the watch tick. I'll save the complex talk for another article, but what is important to note is that a high-end watch typically uses a hand-made, super-accurate automatic movement. These movements are constructed of very small gears, springs and synthetic jewels to prevent friction. So small, in fact, that even a speck of dust can through off the accuracy of a watch.\n\nIf you compared an expensive watch to a to low-end, you would notice that the more expensive of the two is made of much nicer materials and that everything just seems to look and feel right. I know, it sounds so corny, but it's true. The high-quality watch has the right amount of polish, the movement sounds right (the ticks), the crown clicks and functions flawlessly and the band is heavy duty. And I could write a whole article just about the math and styling behind watch dials.\n\nSure, there is all of this attention to detail, but how can a watch be worth in excess of $10,000. Well, you'd be an idiot to think that watch value is based on those details alone. Many of the best watch brands are rich in history and extremely trusted. When buying a top-tier watch, there is no doubt that you'll be paying a pretty penny to be a part of that history.\n\nLastly, high demand of expensive watches allow them to be priced much higher than most other watches. If people will buy a watch for thousands of dollars, you can bet your life that a brand will charge that much.\n", "Because there are people willing to pay for them. ", "Apart from the technical details described by /u/PlaneHijacker, higher-end watches are what is known as a [Vleben good](_URL_0_), i.e. something that is appreciated for it's rarity rather than it's utility.  A similar effect exists for antiques, for example: a table is a table, but a table once owned by George Washington will sell for a lot more than one from IKEA, even if they are similarly useful.", "Some features of watches are extraordinarily complicated and difficult to produce. You must remember no electronics are used whatsoever, and it's incredible that watchmakers are able to create these functions with just little pieces of metal. Once you grasp this fact, you start to seriously appreciate these watches. It's unbelievable to me that it's even possible to create such things using nothing but little pieces of metal.\n\nSome of the features I'm talking about are time repeaters, perpetual calendars, sunsets, tourbillon, etc."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good"], []]}
{"q_id": "3vlmlt", "title": "why would/wouldn't the chris rock approach to gun control of taxing bullets work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vlmlt/eli5_why_wouldwouldnt_the_chris_rock_approach_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxojxux", "cxok5qz", "cxokvrh", "cxonjaj", "cxooaec", "cxoobrt"], "score": [3, 16, 7, 3, 3, 6], "text": ["Because you can manufacture your own. You can create literally ALL of the materials you need if necessary, but there is such a quantity in circulation that you can reload your own rounds for far cheaper than Chris Rock's stand up jokes about.", "Severe taxation only works on complex goods that cannot be easily made or distributed to the black market.\n\nCars are great example of goods that are not easily smuggled, replicated, or obtained outside of the white market. You cannot make one at home, you can I buy one from your drug dealer, and the state has a firm control on their use within the public sphere of roads.\n\nBullets can be made at home, can be purchased on the black market, and thier ultimate use is normally not regulated in the public sphere.\n\nThis means that while commercially available bullets could be taxed for law abiding citizens... Taxation of all munitions would never be an effective means of deterence, much like the current US policies against drugs.\n\nEdit: two major typos on cell.", "Because evil people hell bent on doing evil shit are gonna do it in whatever way they can.  These types of control measures are only punitive measures against honest people.", "Actually the government is making it difficult to get ammunition as it is.  This is forcing retailers to limit purchases of powder, etc. \n\n[source](_URL_1_)\n\n[source](_URL_0_)", "One reason not to do it is that the average criminal only needs a handful of \"bullets\" to go out and rob a store or kill someone.\n\nA typical target shooter will go through a hundred rounds in a range trip.  \\#papertargetlivesmatter", "...because not everyone is scared of guns and wants to make them unaffordable because of their irrational fears"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2014/q2/the-facts-on-dhs-and-government-ammo-purchases/", "http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/04/15/u-s-postal-service-joins-dhs-social-security-admin-and-noaa-in-ammo-purchases/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3q54cq", "title": "why do most schools all across the world teach english? why is it valued so much?", "selftext": "I live in England so that's probably why I don't know.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q54cq/eli5_why_do_most_schools_all_across_the_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwc3kr0", "cwc3s9k", "cwc3uzd", "cwc64ji"], "score": [6, 9, 5, 3], "text": ["Students in a country can learn their native language and be able to speak to 1% of the world's population, or learn English too and be able to speak to around 30%. English is very widespread in western countries so is generally taught, if that makes sense", "English has become common a language used in commerce transportation and science across the world.\n\nWhen a Spanish pilot tries to land on a French Airport they will talk English with the air-traffic control for example.\n\nEnglish is often used as a Lingua Franca, a language used by two people who don't share the same native tongue to communicate with one another. Other languages were used for that purpose in the past usually the ones of the great empires and traders. English is just the last in a long row of languages used for this purpose that thanks to the British colonial efforts followed by the rise of its former north American colony to superpower status in the 20th century was predominant just in time for the development of global communication networks to make it *the* language everyone used to communicate with one another.\n\nIt probably helps that English is as languages go rather easy to learn for many people. Everyone who has conquered parts of the British isle over the last few millennia has left parts of their own language in the mix that the natives spoke and once they started conquering of their own they imported vocabulary back home from whoever they encountered. They also dropped all the hard and complicated grammar stuff that the original languages had making it a very 'simplified' language.", " >  I live in England so that's probably why I don't know.\n\nOddly enough, that's quite relevant. British colonialism lead them to have a globe spanning empire that was one of the dominant world powers for much of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century.  \n & nbsp;  \n[This](_URL_0_) was all under control of Great Britain just 96 years ago. And while the British influence waned due to the impact of two world wars and decolonization of much of that territory, one of their English speaking colonies that got away from them late in the 18th century, came out of WWII relatively unscathed, and sort of ended up taking their place as the biggest meanest bulldog in the junkyard.", "Once upon a time, the British spread all throughout the world and conquered very many countries. Often, when they did this, people in the countries they conquered would start learning English. Sometimes this was because the British would force them, other times it was because its really useful to be able to talk to the people who just conquered your country. \n\nMeanwhile, Britain was a very powerful country, so even people who didn't get conquered found it useful to learn English so they could talk to British people. Later, the United States grew more powerful than Britain, but because Americans also speak English, the language was just as useful. \n\nSo what did all this lead to? The English language was 1) a good language for talking to powerful people and 2) spoken in many parts of the world. This means that it was in an ideal place to become a global *lingua franca* -- if two people meet, and one speaks Language X but the other speaks Language Y, it's likely they both speak English, so they will often talk in that. \n\nThis lingua franca status and the fact that a few English-speaking countries are still very powerful means that many important international groups use English: conventions of scientists, air traffic controllers, politicians, etc. \n\nTL;DR: English lets you talk to a wider range of people, and more powerful people, than many other languages"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_empire_on_which_the_sun_never_sets#/media/File:BritishEmpire1919.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "9mufmn", "title": "What\u2019s the best way to check the accuracy of a documentary?", "selftext": "I feel like a lot of times documentaries aren\u2019t always accurate scientifically or historically (extreme example being discovery channel \u2018documentary\u2019 on mermaids). What\u2019s a good way of checking whether a documentary is actually historically accurate and not wildly lying to me? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9mufmn/whats_the_best_way_to_check_the_accuracy_of_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7if6c7"], "score": [24], "text": ["This is a great question, and one that I can actually talk about from my own personal experience because it directly impacted the rest of my life.  While it starts out as anecdotal, I will use this as an example into how you can fact check historical documentaries. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn August 2010, I was in the Army and had just come back from Iraq and was on leave, so I had a bunch of time on my hands.  I started watching random documentaries and somehow stumbled upon one called [The Revolution](_URL_1_) that was created by the History Channel.   It's a 13-episode show that spanned from the 1760s to 1800 in North America.  I blew through the series in a day or two and loved every second.  Part of what really drew me in was that there was a ton of information presented by the historians in it that I never heard before because American High Schools mainly teach a mythological version of this history that exemplifies America as the heroes.   Examples of new things I learned were: \n\n* The Boston Massacre wasn't actually a Massacre and the British soldiers weren't really villains in that particular scenario. \n* The Continental Congress constantly argued with one another.\n* Washington's 1775-1776 Army was dead awful, filled with unqualified leaders who had no idea what the hell they were doing.  \n* Slaves weren't granted automatic emancipation for fighting in the Revolution and the British were the first people to actually make this offer.\n\nSo after it was over, I found myself asking, \"is all this true?\" I wasn't a historian, so I didn't know how to find this stuff out.  So I reached out to an old professor of mine (I had dropped out of college years earlier) and asked him, 'how do you vet a documentary like this?'  He immediately asked me if historians were in the documentary (there were) then he told me to read some of their books.  A historian who was featured in the series named Bruce Chadwick had written a book that the documentary referenced so I ordered it ([George Washington's War](_URL_0_)).  The book was amazing and captivating. (This was also a year before I went back to school to become a historian and 6 years before I choose the Revolutionary period in Grad School for my speciality).  The book outlined so much info that I had no idea about, especially on Washington's life.  I then used this as a jumping off point since I realized that it was helpful to see Chadwick's work in book form, but I wanted to see if other historians or writers agreed with him.  So I went to Barns  &  Nobel and bought another book on Washington's Army and was again really surprised by what I saw.  \n\nWhile I didn't fully realize it at the time, what I was doing was cross checking my secondary source by finding out what the historians in the film actually said themselves (and not simply what the film makers wanted them to have said) but also checked to see if the film linked up with what other historians were saying about the same period.\n\nSimilarly, this is the best way for anyone to vet a documentary.  Find what historians in the documentary are saying for themselves and then cross check it with other historians not featured in the film. This can be done across disciplines and can be super helpful. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-War-Revolutionary-Presidency/dp/140220406X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539177556&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=george+washington%27s+war", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-SwXEifHHo"]]}
{"q_id": "9zox5b", "title": "How do engineers of extremely powerful rocket engines, like the F-1, keep the thrust from crushing the engine itself?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9zox5b/how_do_engineers_of_extremely_powerful_rocket/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eaavflz", "eabc185"], "score": [6, 9], "text": ["The thrust expands, not contacting... It wouldn't crush into self, it would explode like an overfilled balloon if too much pressure was to build up.\n\nAs for support, if you look at images they are reinforced with metal rings as you can see in the F-1 pictures online", "The thrust isn't much more than the weight of the rocket, so if the engine is strong enough to hold the rocket up just sitting on the ground, it is already most of the way to holding up under flight conditions. The mountings and weight bearing parts of the engine do need to be significantly stronger than just to hold the weight of the rocket, the thrust to weight has to be greater than one, so the force is greater than the weight of the rocket, and the whole thing vibrates like crazy because of the constant explosion that powers the launch, so the structural parts have to be tough. And there is also a very harsh weight constraint, so it isn't an easy thing to do.\n\nAll that said, the bigger challenge is probably containing the pressure in the combustion chamber, which is enormous."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2r5bge", "title": "why did florida get such a bad reputation for trashiness?", "selftext": "I'm not from Florida but why does Florida have such a reputation for trashiness?  For example, as seen on /r/floridaman and _URL_0_'s \"Florida\" tag.  \n\nWhenever an odd story emerges from Florida why is the fact it happened in Florida relevant when it just as easily could have happened in Alabama, Kentucky or Ohio?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r5bge/eli5_why_did_florida_get_such_a_bad_reputation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cncldyw", "cncn08l", "cncn5gx", "cncpum6", "cnctiox"], "score": [38, 21, 10, 3, 3], "text": ["Because the State of Florida has EXTREMELY extensive government transparency (\"Sunshine\") laws, where reporters have access to large quantities of governmental, police (arrest information, court proceedings, etc), and such information. So it's pretty much just a matter of fishing for the strangest stories.\n\nAlso, American Media, the publisher of most of the tabloids in America, is based in Florida, which means a lot of \"local color\" stories ends up getting published as national news.", "I've lived in Florida. Here are some reasons:\n\n-Florida has a huge population, 4th highest in the nation at around 18.5 million. News stations don't report on normal people, they report the crazies. Just by virtue of having a higher population, there's a higher incidence of trashy behavior (although it may have the same amount of trashy behavior relative to other states).\n\n-It's a tourist destination. When people are on vacation, they let it all hang out. They're gonna leave in a week, might as well party it up in Panama City Beach, no one's ever gonna see you again when you go back to snowland.\n\n-Psychopaths, homeless people, and just general weirdos always migrate to warmer climates.. same thing as California.\n", "I can come up with a few reasons:\n\n1. Florida is a vacation/cut loose spot for a wide variety of people (e.g. Spring Break at Daytona, Redneck Riviera in the Panhandle, cruise passengers at Fort Lauderdale, the entire shitshow known as Orlando, etc.), most categories of which have \"getting drunk\" as a high priority on the list. Guess what happens when towns are filled to three times beyond normal population with drunk people.\n\n2. Florida has/recently had the [5th highest violent crime rate](_URL_0_) and has a much greater population than any of the states ahead of it. (IIRC Florida just moved into the #3 spot in population behind CA and TX) This means that there is simply a lot of violent crime to report on.\n\n3. [People get pissy when it's hot and Florida is very hot.](_URL_1_)\n\n4. Just throwing this one out there, but simple classism may be part of it. There isn't a lot of \"middle income\" in Florida and the cities that aren't beach resorts tend to be quite poor. (For fun, check out the Sarasota area, which features both sides of the income spectrum in close proximity - the local government in Sarasota also happens to be extremely unfriendly to homeless people). These disparities likely create a lot of tension and give a lot of ammo for the media (guess which income group they cater to) to report on what the \"white trash\" are up to.\n\nHope this helps!\n\nEDIT: Clarified the bit about Florida being 3rd in population now.", "Florida resident here (tampa area), most of the points being brought up here are true. As with any state, you'll have your mix of normal people and crazies. Another problem IMO is the large concentration of \"rednecks\". No, not your normal hard-working, traditional living rednecks, I'm talking about the lived-in-the-city-all-my-life ghetto rednecks. I swear every time I see a big ass lifted trucks with confederate flags in the back I know to stay away. \n\n", "In addition to what others have said, most people who live in Florida aren't \"Floridians\". They are people who moved here from other states. Florida is often called the \"melting pot\" of people. Different people from many man different places move to Florida in big numbers.\n & nbsp;\n\nLarge groups of VERY different people/cultures, people are bound to butt heads."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["FARK.com"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/ranks/rank21.html", "http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/abstracts/1985-1989/89A1.pdf"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "doylzp", "title": "In Disney's Mulan, how would Mulan have brought dishonor to the remains of her fellow soldiers by being revealed as a woman? And what would it have meant?", "selftext": "I recall that the emperor saying that Mulan dishonored the chinese army by disguising herself as a woman. Since he listed it along with assuming a false identity and destruction of property, I assume that the damage done to the honor (whatever it may be) was non-negotiable.  \nSo...what I want to know is if Mulan actually did screw people over in her masquerade, and how badly, and if she knew what she was putting on the line.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/doylzp/in_disneys_mulan_how_would_mulan_have_brought/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f5uwp8k"], "score": [185], "text": ["I feel a bit silly mentioning this, but I might as well: Disney's *Mulan* (1998) is not a historical representation of any period of Asian history. From the clothing to the setting to the politics to the architecture to the gender roles. (And for that matter, I'm sure 2020's version will be more of the same.) Really, Disney's *Mulan* (1998) is much more about America's changing understanding of identity and gender roles than about Chinese understanding in any era of dynastic history. \n\nI'll be the first to say it's an animated classic and list it up there as one of my favorite Disney films, but it's unfortunately a film steeped in Orientalism. Everything in the film is picked for it's \"Chinese-ness\" not for any role it actually played in Chinese history. Take for example the final scene of the Palace being blown up by the final fight between Mulan and Shan Yu (spoiler alert). It's portrayed atop the Forbidden City. Which began construction during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) but is portrayed at its Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) incarnation. That said, the Xiongnu (Huns) haven't been a threat to China since the *first century C.E.* But ultimately, as per *The Last Samurai* and *Lost Horizon*, the oriental setting is just that, a *setting* to play out Western understandings and ideas. *Note: that doesn't make them bad, but they're certainly not ideas that spring from classical Chinese poetry or philosophy. \n\nThe story of Mulan is a very popular Chinese story, so I'll focus on the two most classic interpretations of the story and won't bother dealing with the explosion of reinterpretations into the 20th Century (though we'll stop by Maxine Hong Kingston's work since it leads directly to 1998). \n\nThe earliest extant version of the Mulan story comes from a 12th Century text that the author, Guo Maoqian, claims comes from a 6th Century musical text. This ballad, which I'll refer to as \"the original\" Mulan, takes place during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-535). The Northern Wei, who referred to their country as Tuoba, were under threat not from the Xiongnu (Huns) but from the Rouren. What's especially notable about the Northern Wei is that they were not a native Chinese Dynasty, but were established by a nomadic tribe that took over China and established their rule. Prior to the establishment of Tuoba, Buddhism was a curiosity. An academic study, but was fundamentally averse to the Chinese understanding of the universe. If people reincarnate, then what use is honoring the ancestors? If, as Kong Tzu (Confucius) has said that fathers are supposed to be the head of the household, then how to understand monasticism and celibacy? \n\nTuoba, like future nomadic-based dynasties (the Mongols and the Manchu) had no such hang ups and used Buddhist imagery and institutions to justify their rule, placing them above native Taoist and Confucian justifications for rule. Until arguably the Republic but most definitely the Maoist victory in the Civil War, this was a feature of Chinese governance and their understanding of how the universe works. \n\nAnyway, if the 12th Century original is inspired by a 6th Century, i.e. a Tuoba text taking place during their war-time challenges with the Rouren, it can be read with that understanding in mind: \n\n >  Merits are recorded in twelve ranks\n >  And grants a hundred thousand strong.\n >  The Khan asks her what she desires.\n >  \"Mulan has no use for a high official's post.\n >  I wish to borrow a ten-thousand mile camel\n >  To take me back home.\"\n\nNote the use of \"her\" in this translation is for English users. The Chinese doesn't have a gender marker. It would initially lead an English reader to think that the Khan (note the title is not the Chinese *Emperor*) was never under the impression that Mulan was a man. (See the link at the bottom for the full text and translation)\n\nThat said, Mulan's family doesn't seem to be bothered by her cross dressing and gender role, but are more concerned that she might die and not return. \n\nAt the beginning: \n\n >  At dawn she bids farewell to Father and Mother,\n >  In the evening she camps on the bank of the Yellow River.\n >  She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling for Daughter,\n >  She only hears the Yellow River's flowing water cry jian-jian.\n.\n >  At dawn she bids farewell to the Yellow River,\n >  In the evening she arrives at the summit of Black Mountain.\n >  She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling for Daughter,\n >  She only hears Mount Yan's nomad horses cry jiu-jiu.\n\nAnd after the war: \n\n >  Father and Mother hear Daughter is coming\n >  They go outside the city wall, supporting each other.\n >  When Older Sister hears Younger Sister is coming\n >  Facing the door, she puts on rouge, .\n.\n >  When Little Brother hears Older Sister is coming\n > He sharpens the knife, quick, quick, for pig and sheep.\n\nOnly Mulan's comrades in arms were unaware. And presumably, we, the audience, are taken aback that Mulan was able to keep her identity hidden for so long. \n\n >  \"I open the door to my east room,\n >  I sit on my bed in the west room,\n.\n >  I take off my wartime gown\n >  And put on my old-time clothes.\"\n >  Facing the window she fixes the cloudlike hair on her temples,\n >  Facing a mirror she dabs on yellow flower powder\n.\n >  She goes out the door and sees her comrades.\n >  Her comrades are all shocked.\n >  Traveling together for twelve years\n >  They didn't know Mulan was a girl.\n\nIn other words, Mulan puts on women's clothes and when her comrades come to visit, they are shocked to discover that their brother-in-arms was a woman the whole time. \n\nIf I had to interpret this from the lens of the Northern Wei, assuming such a text exists, it's impossible for me not to see heavy Buddhist imagery. Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is primarily represented in China as his female form, most commonly known as her Tibetan variant, Tara, but popularly known in China as the Goddess Kuan Yin. As you can tell, Bodhisattvas take many forms. They have male forms, female forms, peaceful forms, and wrathful forms. And Mulan's role in the ballad, in my understanding, has far less to do with classical Chinese values, but places emphasis on her willingness to die for her family - her elderly father and her younger siblings particularly. \n\nRegardless of what it may be saying to the average listener or story teller beyond pure entertainment value, the original story of Mulan tells a very loud tale of the shifting understanding of Buddhism's gentle and caring nature within Chinese society, but also as a wrathful and protective force when it needs to be. In other words, how the Tuoba sought to be perceived to the Chinese they ruled over. \n\nHow that compares with contemporary Tuoba military practices is a little beyond my skill at the moment, but what we're concerned here with art and its interpretation over the centuries. \n\nNow all of that above is assuming that Guo more-or-less correctly transmitted the text about six centuries later. Even if he didn't, the Song Dynasty would have been quite Buddhist, and I find it hard to believe the Kuan Yin imagery would have been lost on him. \n\n1/2"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2inhq5", "title": "when you're sick and can only breathe out of one nostril, then you turn over and a few minutes later it \"falls\" and you can breathe out the other.", "selftext": "What is going on here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2inhq5/eli5_when_youre_sick_and_can_only_breathe_out_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl3olgu", "cl3psdy", "cl3pv2f", "cl3py19", "cl3pyz7", "cl40jzl", "cl48ec6"], "score": [6, 18, 119, 11, 25, 2, 2], "text": ["Wait, why have I never heard of this? I almost wish I had a blocked nose so I could try it.", "I get this too, especially at the moment due to my cold. \n\nIt's not due to any actual mucus that you feel you have a blocked nose, it's actually an infection swelling your blood vessels in your nose that causes the blockage. \n\nWhen you lie on your side with a blocked nose, the blood in the vessels have weight and do shift, albeit ever so slightly, from one side of the nostril to the other. This means that although it feels like you have something in your nose, it's actually the nostril's passage that is being changed in shape and size. ", "from [Iowa ENT Center](_URL_0_)\n\n > **What is a turbinate?**\nA turbinate is a strip of tissue along the lining of the nose.  It can swell or shrink based on many factors.  When swollen, it blocks airflow; when decongested, it permits airflow.  The turbinate is responsible for the back-and-forth nasal blockage people experience.  For instance, when one rolls over in bed and one side of the nose opens and the other closes off, it is the turbinate swelling on one side and shrinking on the other that is responsible for this change. ", "When you're sick and your nose is stopped up, it's actually not from mucous/snot, it's from inflammation in the lining of your nose.  As the lining fills with blood, it swells, blocking your nasal passage.  Rolling from one side to the other affects how the blood drains.  When you roll over what you find is that the \"higher\" side of your nose is the part you can breathe out of...It is actually physically harder for your heart to pump to the higher side, and it's easier for the blood to drain back, so the inflammation isn't so bad.\n\nSomething to notice is that when you cry, your nasal passage isn't inflamed in the same way it is when you're fighting an infection.  You actually produce a tremendous amount of mucous when you cry, but you can easily blow it out and breathe freely.\n\nTL;DR, Stuffed up feeling isn't from snot, it's from nasal passage inflammation, rolling over helps \"drain\" the blood allows you to breathe again.", "when sick? i've always only been able to breath our of one nostril :( it changes from time to time.", "I asked my ENT about this, except it's slightly different.  When one of my nostril's is clogged, it will randomly clear up and the other one will get clogged.  It will swap back and forth all day, but not as a result of lying down.\n\nPeople are correct that it's the inflamed turbinates, but the question is why does it switch sides? \n\nHe told me it was actually neurological and that they didn't know the reason it happens.", "There's something called a \"Nasal Cycle\" where which nostril you are primarily breathing through switches. This change occurs every 2-3 hours on average. When you are congested it becomes more obvious which side is which at the given time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.iowaentcenter.com/specialties/sinus/nasal-congestion/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ywzzd", "title": "What caused protons and neutrons to come together in the early universe?", "selftext": "In the early universe, when the temperature was hot enough, there was a sea of protons, neutrons, electrons, and radiation (photons). Eventually as the temperature dropped, it became possible for protons and neutrons to come together and form atomic nuclei, though it was still too hot for electrons to bind and form neutral atoms. \n\nMy question is - what caused the protons and neutrons to bind in the first place? If I understand correctly, the nuclear force keeps the nucleus together **once** it's already formed, but what caused the proton and neutron to bind? Why didn't all protons and neutrons continue as individual particles as the universe continued to cool? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ywzzd/what_caused_protons_and_neutrons_to_come_together/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyiadyk", "cyhfz36"], "score": [2, 10], "text": ["Neutrons and protons are made of quarks. Quarks interact by exchange of gluons. Exchange of gluons is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force. In the same way that the quarks are held in neutrons/protons, neutrons and protons are held to each other by the residual of the very same force. I see no reason why nuclear force will act only 'once' the nucleus is formed. Although nuclear force does require presence of a very small distance but as you know, universe started real small as inflation happened.\nYou can see this video if you wish to understand the interaction of fundamental particles better. _URL_0_\nHope this helps :p", "You're talking about primordial nucleosynthesis. The first reaction in the chain is the production of deuterium:\n\np + n  < - >  d + \u03b3\n\nThere's a photon so this is an EM process (electromagnetism mediates it). The subsequent processes to create helium and heavier elements contain both EM, weak and strong mediated reactions.\n\nHowever, this first reaction cannot happen until the weak interactions are *decoupled*, i.e they've become weak, which happens when cooling below 1 MeV.\n\nWhen they're active, there is this channel\n\np + e  < - >  n + \u03bd_e\n\nAnd permutations. At equilibrium you will find a certain ratio of protons and neutrons, given by the Boltzmann distribution and using the last reaction. At T=1 MeV the weak interaction decouples and this ratio is \"frozen\" at the value it had at 1 MeV.\n\nThen a little time has to pass before we can start making deuterium. This is because we have a sea of photons messing with our stuff and decomposing our deuterium. We therefore need to wait for lower temperatures. In this small time neutrons decay. Remember that free neutrons are unstable with a 10 min or so half-life and they decay according to\n\nn - >  p + e + bar \u03bd_e\n\nSo that when we get to making deuterium the neutron fraction is even lower.\n\nAll of this alongside a lot of boring calculations explains why not all of the hydrogen was fused into helium, which only forms a fraction of the total mass of baryonic matter today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9otDixAtFw"], []]}
{"q_id": "1eue76", "title": "is there a particular reason doctor's handwriting is often sloppy? what about left-handed people?", "selftext": "Is there a reason most doctor's have horrible handwriting? Do they not want me to be able to read it?\n\nWhat about left-handed people? I've noticed a lot of my left-handed friends and boyfriend have messy writing. Is there a reason for this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eue76/eli5_is_there_a_particular_reason_doctors/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca3ub1a", "ca3uxwc", "ca3v9sm", "ca3x6gw", "ca3z4vk"], "score": [18, 7, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["No idea on the doctors for sure, but I'm guessing it's because they have to write an incredible amount very quickly over and over so they go for quantity over quality to ensure they get all the information rather than risk missing writing out something important.\n\nAs for lefties, I can say for sure that there are a number of reasons. First and foremost, when we learn to write as children we are all taught the right-handed method of writing, which works fine for righties because it involves dragging the pen/pencil over the paper, but doesn't work for lefties because we have to push the pen/pencil over the paper instead. Most of us never learn any other way to write and so out handwriting is pretty awful as a result. Consider that in combination with the vast majority of desks in classes and such are all oriented automatically to the right for righties, which makes lefties have to reach all the way across our bodies to be able to write on them. Oh, and because we are pushing the writing utensils across the paper rather than pulling them we also have to deal with the side of our hands dragging across whatever it is we just wrote out, smudging it a lot. Just look at the heel of any lefties hand after hand writing an essay, you'll see what I'm talking about.\n\nHope that helps! ", "Doctors write **a lot**. After a decade or so of writing the same shit every day for hours, their handwriting changes to be geared towards efficiency. They also use abbreviations that you may be unfamiliar with.", "All peoples handwriting is sloppy when you're more concerned about speed/efficiency than aesthetics. ", "I know a left handed doctor that would blow your mind.", "Dr here, my hand writing was sloppy from first grade but it did get a bit sloppier in med school because we have to be able to take notes fast. Writing faster means writing sloppier, I would actually prefer it if everyone could read it so I wouldnt have to rewrite it for the second time.\n\nA positive unintentional side effct of this is that no one can immitate my chicken scratch writing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ebalpd", "title": "Movie swordfights nowadays are flashy but unrealistic. We don't know any better, but a medival citizen might. Were swordfights in medieval plays done realistically or flashily? And when/how did flashy swordfights become more popular on stage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ebalpd/movie_swordfights_nowadays_are_flashy_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fb60f6c", "fb68sm8"], "score": [10, 16], "text": ["We know little about fight scenes in Medieval plays. For example, Symes (2009) writes\n\n >  ... a group of new converts in Riga were terrified by the all\u2010too\u2010realistic battle scenes of 'an extremely well\u2010produced play of the prophets' performed by German missionaries. Who knew that *ordines prophetarum* even *had* battle scenes? We never would have guessed, were it not for this stray reference in Henry of Livonia's chronicle, since none of the scripts that survive contains such a scene.\n\nBut we know rather more about theatrical fight scenes from later times, when swords were still in use. Our modern tradition of theatrical combat - with slower, bigger movements than \"real\" combat, both for safety and for audience appreciation - has solid roots in Elizabethan theatre, when duels were still fought, and fencing was an important part of a gentleman's education. \"Gladiators\" (such as the famous James Figg) were still fighting with swords as sport for public viewing.\n\nThus, we have four kinds of swordfighting co-existing: fighting with swords on the battlefield, duelling, fighting on stage with sharp swords as a public sporting performance, and theatrical fighting. That theatrical fighting need not have been the same as the others should be no surprise. Today, people still fight with their fists on the street, in bars, etc. We have televised sports where people fight with their fists (e.g., boxing). Theatrical fistfights are often different.\n\nFilm and TV offer different conditions for fight choreography - it doesn't need to work in real time, special effects can be used, and the action is viewed from a specific camera angle. Even then, there are usually differences between \"real\" fistfights and TV/film versions. Film/TV also offers the opportunity for large scale battle scenes that are difficult or impossible to do on stage. Wars are still fought, and genuine combat footage is readily available, with some examples being famous, such as [\"With the Marines at Tawara\"] \n(_URL_0_)). Some TV/film goes to a lot of effort to deliver realistic battle scenes. Other TV/film gives us grossly unrealistic fight choreography (e.g., deliberately done to look more like modern computer games than real battles). Given the modern acceptance of - even preference for - unrealistic fight choreography even for types of fighting that still exists in the real world, I see no reason why the Medieval audience would have demanded realistic swordfighting.\n\nOutside Western Europe, we can see similar divergence between \"real\" fighting, and fighting as presented on stage, which originated when such fighting was still \"real\" (see, e.g., fight scenes in Beijing opera (AKA Peking opera)).\n\nA further clue to expectations of realism on the Medieval stage comes from literature. For example, *The Travels of Marco Polo* uses standard Medieval battle descriptions:\n\n >  And thenceforward the din of battle began to be heard loudly from this side and from that. And they rushed to work so doughtily with their bows and their maces, with their lances and swords, and with the arblasts of the footmen, that it was a wondrous sight to see. Now might you behold such flights of arrows from this side and from that, that the whole heaven was canopied with them and they fell like rain. Now might you see on this side and on that full many a cavalier and men-at-arms fall slain, insomuch that the whole field seemed covered with them. From this side and from that such cries arose from the crowds of the wounded and dying that had God thundered, you would not have heard Him! For fierce and furious was the battle, and quarter there was none given.\n\n >  But why should I make a long story of it? You must know that it was the most parlous and fierce and fearful battle that ever has been fought in our day. Nor have there ever been such forces in the field in actual fight, especially of horsemen, as were then engaged - for, taking both sides, there were not fewer than 760,000 horsemen, a mighty force! and that without reckoning the footmen, who were also very numerous. The battle endured with various fortune on this side and on that from morning till noon.\n\nIt's a conventional and non-realistic description of a battle. Readers were happy with it.\n\nReference:\n\nCarol Symes, \"The History of Medieval Theatre / Theatre of Medieval History: Dramatic Documents and the Performance of the Past\", *History Compass* 7/3 (2009): 1032\u20131048,  _URL_1_", "Great question! What you've asked actually requires a very dense response that touches not only on medieval theatre history, but also cultural, social, political, and classed aspects of sword usage from the medieval period into the modern era and the changing representations and significations that occurred with swords on stage through those periods. I'm a specialist on medieval theatre (it's was my PhD dissertation and remains my continued research in academia), so I'm going to focus most of my attention on that part of your question. I'll also touch upon the use of swords in theatre into the early modern period. Some things I can only provide minimal contextual information and I would look to other historians for help, including a wider history of the knowledge of sword fighting in the Middle Ages and other eras.\n\nLet me begin with a work that serves to highlight an interest in combat and sword fighting that was very influential throughout the Middle Ages\u2014especially in monastic settings. *Psychomachia*, by the fourth century Latin poet Prudentius, is a narrative allegorical tale that vividly details the conflict between vices and virtues based upon the Christian theological perspective of the world as a moral and spiritual battleground. The poet describes, in graphic detail, the fights that occur between the various allegorical characters. Many of the combatants wield swords. For example, in the fight between Chastity and Lust, Chastity wields a sword and \u201c[with only one thrust of her sword, she pierces the throat of the whore and stinking fumes with clots of blood are spat out; the foul breath poisons the near-by air](_URL_0_).\u201d *Psychomachia* is not considered a play, through it is highly dramatic and signifies distinct visual representations in its narrative, but it was nonetheless popular amongst early medieval monastic communities as an instructional text on the aims of Christian-centered rhetorical \u201ccombat\u201d and dedicating one\u2019s life to the advancement of Christian morals and ethics against all odds. Furthermore, there are significant parallels in the treatment of the allegorical characters between *Psychomachia* and the twelfth-century play, *Ordo Virtutum* by Hildegard of Bingen\u2014though, the Hildegard does not retain the mimetic violence of the earlier poem. What should be noted here is that swords and sword fighting served a dramatic function in medieval sources, representing the offensive might of those who wielded the weapons and to signify to the reader/viewer that the character carrying a sword is to be taken seriously. Additionally, the use of swords in dramatic imagery translated to the real-world settings in the form of instructional symbolism applicable to lessons on monastic life and activity.\n\nNow, turning to swords in medieval plays; perhaps the earliest extant representation of violence by sword(s) in medieval theatre comes from the so-called *Fleury Playbook* (eleventh century, archived at Orl\u00e9ans, Biblioth\u00e8que Municipale MS 201) in the form of the play, *The Murder of the Innocents* (*Ad interfectionem puerorum*). The play was performed as a part of the liturgy on the Feast of the Innocents (December 28) and tells the story from the Gospel of Matthew concerning Herod\u2019s decree that all the infants of Bethlehem be slaughtered in an effort to ensure the killing of the prophesied Christ child. In the play (I\u2019m using the edition in David Bevington, *Medieval Drama*, pp. 67-72), Herod gives a sword to a man-at-arms (*armiger*) and instructs him to \u201ccause the boys to perish by the sword\u201d (Bevington, 69). The man-at-arms then proceeds to kill the children. Thus, the sword is the material from which the power of the king meets (or ends) the life of the subject, even if that meeting is represented as morally reprehensible.\n\nIn more specific examples, there are two early medieval plays that clearly use descriptions of swords and sword fighting to affect the dramatic action of the plot. The so-called *Play about the Antichrist* (*Ludus de Antichristo*) from the imperial monastery at Tegernsee, Bavaria was written in the twelfth century and contains many battle scenes between armies of various European powers as well as the forces of the Antichrist. There is no indication as to how those battles would have been performed or how many people might have been involved but some characters, like the group known as the Hypocrites (who serve Antichrist), are instructed to carry swords under their garments. Written by monks for monks, the play shows, like *Psychomachia*, that monastic settings took particular interest in swords within violent contexts as a means to make effective (and affective) the deadly offensive aims of certain people. So it\u2019s no surprise that other medieval plays would also make use of swords. As u/wotan_weevil identified by pointing to the scholarship of Carol Symes and the thirteenth-century *Livonian Chronicle of Henry* (*Heinrici Cronicon Lyvoniae*), the document includes \u201ca short record of an audience, comprised of \u2018converts and pagans\u2019 (*tam neophitis quam paganis*), who had gathered to watch the performance of a liturgical *ludus magnus* (great play) in Riga during the Baltic Crusades at the beginning of the century\u201d (Kyle A. Thomas, \u201cThe Performing Arts and Their Audiences,\u201d in *A Cultural History of the Middle Ages*). Details on this performance are scant, but it\u2019s certain that this play was performed in the midst of a crusading context, so perhaps actual knights wielding swords and battle armor performed the battle scene in the play that caused the Riga audience \u201cto take flight, fearing lest they be killed\u201d (Brundage translation). This is perhaps the most direct evidence that not only did realistic portrayals of swords, sword fighting, and battle-ready fighters happen in medieval plays, but that audiences could interpret them as deadly real.\n\nWhile swords do appear in later medieval plays, they are sparse and mostly revolve around similar plots, settings (like *The Murder of the Innocents*), and symbolic affect of those plays already described. What changes in the mimetic representation of swords is the emphasis on gentlemanly, courtly identification that occurs beginning in the early modern period. This is easily recognizable in the plays of William Shakespeare. Whenever a character carries or brandishes their sword, they are almost always defending their honor of the honor of those to whom they are related or protecting. These are clear indicators of the classed social signiferes these characters are working to represent in his plays. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine that these characters also employ sword-fighting techniques that were a realistic representation of those learned by courtly gentlemen in the course of their education. And that actually brings us full circle: the sword, throughout the medieval and early modern periods, is consistently used in educational contexts to teach and represent authority, power, and offensive prowess.\n\nBibliography:\n\nJames A. Brundage, translator. *The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia*. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.\n\nPeter Dronke, *Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry, 1000-1150* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).\n\nBruce W. Hozeski, \u201cParallel Patterns in Prudentius\u2019s *Psychomachia* and Hildegard of Bingen\u2019s *Ordo Virtutum*,\u201d in *14th Century English Mystics Newsletter* Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 1982): 8-20.\n\nSin\u00e9ad O'Sullivan, *Early Medieval Glosses On Prudentius' Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradition* (Boston: Brill, 2004).\n\nKyle A. Thomas, \u201cThe *Ludus de Antichristo* and the Making of a Monastic Theatre: Imperial Politics and Performance at the Abbey of Tegernsee, 1000-1200.\u201d Unpublished dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: 2018."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JolhiCbU_u8", "https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00613.x"], ["https://web.archive.org/web/20020429135514/http://www.richmond.edu/~wstevens/grvaltexts/psychomachia.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3p3sdy", "title": "how has russia been able to destroy so much of isis' ground facilities and supplies, while the us has been fighting and droning isis for years and hasn't made such victories in as little time?", "selftext": "I find it astounding that the US who has talked about fighting ISIS, could not do as much damage as the Russian military has. So what are they doing that the US did not do?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p3sdy/eli5_how_has_russia_been_able_to_destroy_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxc1e05", "cw2vbfs", "cw2wuro", "cw2xndk", "cw2xvjt", "cw2y0gr", "cw2yicv", "cw2ymit", "cw2yxn8", "cw2zgb9", "cw2zsrm", "cw307ut", "cw30zla", "cw317oj", "cw3252z", "cw32qtb", "cw33r0o", "cw35q4f", "cw35zz1", "cw36txg", "cw36ymn", "cw36zc6", "cw3996q", "cw39yio", "cw3a4lz", "cw3c37v", "cw3d9dx", "cw3f6og", "cw3immb", "cw3jdtz", "cw3klqi", "cw3l12m", "cw3mk9d", "cw3r5g0", "cw4hu6m"], "score": [3, 14, 17, 39, 155, 303, 2213, 26, 122, 37, 4, 79, 2, 30, 9, 2, 8, 2, 3, 4, 2, 4, 8, 2, 3, 3, 6, 2, 4, 11, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["I think it's obvious that America wasn't doing shit about ISIS because ISIS served Americas interests.", "One of the main reasons, in my opinion, is that Russia has allied itself with the Assad regime, and the United States has allied itself with the Rebels fighting against Assad and to some extent they have also allied with the Kurds.\n\nSo the Russians have different intel, and more enemies than the Americans . Basically it looks like this:\n\nRussia and Assad VS IS, Rebels, and To some extent the Kurds\n\nAnd USA, Rebels and Kurds VS IS and Assad.", "Source on Russia destroying a lot of ISIS' ground facilities and supplies compared to the US? Vast majority of their air strikes have targeted other rebel groups.   ", "Wars are far different than they used to be. If this was WW2, everything would have been flattened. Nowadays, everything is almost instantly reported. Russia plays by old school rules, whereas the U.S. tried not to. \n\nI also don't completely believe all the success of the Russian military. Don't get me wrong, I hope they wipe out IS, but both countries are pretty good at spewing out the bs. ", "They haven't. For the most part, they have been bombing the secular revolutionaries fighting Syria, while the US has been careful to avoid targeting them. It's also possible that Russia has been exaggerating its success for propaganda.", "1.  Do you have a source for this claim?\n\n2.  The US tries hard to avoid civilian casualties.  This is not to say they don't make mistakes, but one countermeasure ISIS would take against bombings would be to set up shop near civilians or to hold prisoners at their facilities.  Russia could simply bomb them anyway while the US would have to wait to hit convoys away from populated areas.\n\n3.  The Russians are not just bombing ISIS, so groups that have not taken any countermeasures against precision bombing will be more vulnerable than ones that have, even if those are not as effective because of #2.\n\n4.  Air campaigns are more effective when you have a ground force that you can follow up with/support.  Russia has the Syrian army, the US does not really have anyone.", "I saw this on another thread so I'll repost it here.. credit to redditor \n/u/thef1guy \n\nThe U.S strategy is what military planners call 'funnelling'. The objective wasn't to destroy ISIL(S) command  &  control centers, but funnel their attacking routes towards the Assad troops. When CIA backed rebels are cornered by ISIL advancements, the coalition will launch defensive strikes to deter them from an advancement, thereby pushing them towards Assad forces instead.\n\nThis is the reason the U.S  &  its coalition have dropped thousands of precision strikes with little dent to ISIL(S)'s force projection and growth in the ground. If the U.S really wanted to destroy the core of ISIL(S), they would have done so already.\n\nRussia has clearly observed that the 'funneling' strategy was cornering Assad's forces, with the CIA supported rebels  &  ISIL(S) hitting them on both fronts. Assad's supply lines were stretched and the regime was close to collapsing. Russia had to intervene and this time, their strikes are actual, targeting anything which is not Syrian government and its clear this is starting to rattle the opposing forces and disrupting the U.S military strategy. The Russians are not stupid, they have enough intel to know what's going on and reacted at the perfect time.\n\n", "Have you read about where they are bombing?  Russia claims to be bombing ISIS but ISIS isn't in the area they bombed.  The area's they bombed had anti Assad rebels, and Russia is allies with Assad.\n\nThis article has a pretty good map of Syria showing who controls what area's.  Very few bombings were in ISIS territory.  _URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso Russia isn't concerned with civilian casualties.  Things can be ended very fast when you ignore civilians and Geneva Convention.", "If you believe they're the heroic saviors they portray themselves as, you might want to look at a map: _URL_0_\n\nEverything they bomb is considered \"terrorists\" or usually just \"ISIS\". Their mission in Syria is to help prop up Assad by bombing all his enemies away, and right now that's those in the northwest region which is predominantly rebel-based and has very little ISIS presence. OP's statement is the one Russia is pushing, which is completely devoid of any actual facts.", "And the independent source for that mind-bogglingly implausible claim would be...?\n\nAll I can say is that the reports reaching the public in the UK, through media channels that are normally reasonably unbiased and independent, hardly support such an assertion.", "I laughed so hard... You understand that Russia is known to say BS as propaganda and the media fuels it for political/money purposes?\n\nLet's just believe everything what they say on the internet, shall we?", "This conflict is not about destroying ISIS. It is about overthrow or maintaining Assad in power. The Russian strategy has been to obliterate opposition to Assad (including CIA supported factions) and the US strategy has been to support opposition to Assad without resorting to open military conquest. \n\nDirect overwhelming action will win over indirect supporting action.", "In my opinion it is impossible to compare success unless we know sorties flown, bombs dropped, successful missions (need BDA or battle damage assessment), it would also help to know what kind of munitions are being used (dumb bombs, smart bombs...) As far as I know this type of data is not available from the US or Russia.\n\n", "There's no explanation because your premise is wrong. If you think what Russia has done in the past few weeks (even more specifically against IS) has surpassed US/Coalition strikes in damage or casualties, you're kidding yourself. ", "What is the source on Russia being more effective against ISIS? \n\nRussia is bombing to support Assad, and whilst they are hitting some ISIS targets, their main aim is to buy time for the Syrian regime. In contrast coalition and regional forces have conducted thousands of sorties specifically against ISIS,  with a far higher amount of fixed wing aircraft and generally more accurate munitions.", "It's entirely possible that they've done fuck all against ISIS and are just saying that have. It's not unheard of for Russia to lie and to make untrue claims that make them look better than they are. Also, I doubt Russia would care all that much about collateral damage. They don't seem to mind doing shitty things and then denying it afterwards.", "Simplest ELI5 I can surmise.  \n\nUS: Precision hits. Take out one or two high ranking targets, personnel or material while trying to push ISIS to the Assad. \n\n\nRussia: Fuck ISIS, here's a hellfire missile. As long as Assad remains in power, Russia does not really care why or how, as long as their allies stay in power. ", "The US has a complicated strategy called Operation Inherent Resolve, which has destroyed a [significant amount of ISIL targets](_URL_0_). The problem the US has is that they support rebels against ISIS, where it is difficult to tell between friend or foe since there are many sub-factions with different interest very close to each other. The US also has no incentive to take out ISIS right away since adding troops have negative public sentiment due to casualties. So the easiest way to address this is to add air support and give outdated equipment to allies.\n\nOn the other hand Russia has an incentives to enter the war in Syria to save their ally Assad, to gain back international trust tarnished in the the Ukraine conflict, and to show off their military power using the press. Unlike the US, Russia will indiscriminately bomb all groups against the Syrian government including both the rebels and ISIS. Their goal is to polarize the war and have two sides by removing the different factions, convincing the international community to support Assad. At the same time Russia is pulling out of Ukraine to try to appease the international community to remove their sanctions. Russia is using the press announcements of effective bombings as promotions to sell their weapons and aircraft. The PR campaign will take focus away from both Ukraine and their multiple military aircraft crashes in the summer of 2015", "Russia is in the Middle East for control of oil. This is partly why USA is not cooperating with Russia. If you believe otherwise, you might be a gullible millenial.", "Because maybe their state run media is lying?", "tinfoil hat time: the US wants IS to deal with Assad and further destabilise the middle east before it \"reconstructs\" the region using US multinational firms and install's a pro a US government in a further attempt to isolate both Iran and Russia  ", "Because Russia is targeting only ISIS as an after thought. The current goal of the Russian air campaign is to allow the Syrian army which support Al Assad to recapture territory around Aleppo and Damascus. The Russians are heavily focused in a small area with limited and achievable goals. Additionally, the American media is not portraying the fight over there as realistically as it should. ISIS is only 1 fraction of the fighters over there. Russian reports is also likely over estimating their success rate. On the opposite side you have the american campaign. The American campaign is much broader than the Russian campaign, an is specifically targeting ISIS, but has no endgame. The Americans arnt really supporting any ground force hoping to make gains against ISIS, but just keep them from spreading. For the american campaign to be successful, they would need the Iraqi army to get its act together to retake territory, but the Iraqi army is pretty incompetent at the moment. Its all perception. Even though America is probably doing more damage to ISIS, they have no achievable goals, so they cant really succeed at anything. The Russians are doing less damage, but have achievable goals, so it looks like they are succeeding. ", "I still believe that this is all politics and big business.  War is huge a huge moneymaker for the companies that supply and the politicians they buy off.  It is so far beyond disgusting I don't have a word for it.", "Have they though? Our only sources from syria are newspapers that more often than not make stuff up for views. I think its fair to say that we actually know nothing what is actually going on or has happened there.", "Because there is not as much money in destroying Isis as there is keeping them on the fringe. ", "Because Russia doesn't piss around like fear mongering US does. Russia means business. The US wants ISIS to exist. ", "I find it astounding that Russia gets to shoot down more passenger airliners than the US.  What's wrong with the US?  Why aren't they doing it as well?\n", "Cuz Russia don't play, you heard about that theater hostage crisis right?", "The stories you are reading about Russia's astounding successes are appearing mostly in RT (*Russian Times*) and *Sputnik,* both propaganda arms of the Russian government. Consider the source before jumping to conclusions.", "This is a loaded question. Russia did not destroy a lot of ISIS ground facilities. You are believing propaganda. ", "Russia is calling anything that is not the Syrian army, Isis, this includes all warring factions including the Western-backed rebellion. Further to that, they have access to Syrian intelligence and positions which allows them to pinpoint and destroy any and all that are a burden on the regular army. Lets also not forget the \"accuracy\" of Russian information. There must be a lot of propaganda involved to boost morale of pro gov supporters, their allies and to show the world and the Russian people that Russia got their \"shit together\" (pardon my french).\n\nEDIT : for typos.", "Because the US and Saudi-- and the Israelis for that matter-- are more interested in prolonged destabilization of that region. The US businesses and Saudis are profiting tremendously. The Israelis just want less countries focusing on their land grabbing lol...", "I think your information is incorrect. Russia has been completely ineffective in bombing ISIS. In fact they have mostly bombed the other rebels with very little success.", "Russia doesn't care about collateral damage. The US has to try and act without killing the locals, which severely limits their options.\n\nRussia has almost complete control over their domestic press and couldn't care less about international approbation.", "Just one photo _URL_0_ instead of 1000 words"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-bombing-us-trained-rebels-in-syria-says-john-mccain/", "http://www.vox.com/2015/10/7/9471271/russia-syria-bombing-map"], ["http://i.imgur.com/Fi7pSvt.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/2014/0814_iraq/Operation-Inherent-Resolve-August7.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://s.instela.com/m/abd-nin-isid-e-karsi-hava-saldirisi-duzenlemesi--i576588-1200x630.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2a6qme", "title": "do astronauts at the iss get \"private\" time?", "selftext": "They're up there for 5-6 months.  Do they get permission or allotted time to have, well, \"private\" moments?  \n\nEjaculation is a part of human nature and also a healthy exercise for men, though I can see it being a logistical nightmare on board.\n\nDo they just go inactive for 5-6 months?  Or is there a contingency?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a6qme/eli5_do_astronauts_at_the_iss_get_private_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cis15qq", "cis3ig1", "cis5jny", "cis5nvw", "cis6da1", "cis7gbf", "cis7wjp", "cis9iq6", "cis9tid", "cish8ya", "cisn8gr"], "score": [76, 43, 15, 2, 20, 5, 3, 8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They have private bathrooms and while the station isn't big there are not constantly people around every square inch of it.\n\nHowever I don't think they get special jerk-off time they can probably find private time in the bathroom or in their bunk.  Of course it is space so you have to take extra precautions for anything that might go flying off and float around.", "I sailed across the Pacific with my old man once.  Just the two of us. Not a sexy time.  But trust me,  you find a way.  It gets unbearable after a while. ", "I don't think this is an appropriate conversation for 5 year olds.\n\nBut on a more serious note, IIRC there was post a while back about whether anyone has had sex in space and it seemed that the general consensus was that there was at least one married couple on the ISS at the same time that probably did.  ", "The two pump chump skill requires intense mental focus. I'd hope there would be a formal whack hour or signal as to allow for a distraction-less self-rape.", "I don't think I would stay sane after 6 months. I have the romantic/sexual life of a particularly impotent snail, and *I* would have a need to bed the first human being I make eye-contact with after landing.\n\nOn to the question, I assume they would have a way of 'relieving' themselves every so often. It just might not be talked about much in public outreach, due to America's fear of penises.", "\"In space, no one can hear you scream.\"", "Now I'm thinking about this. Do they bring their porno magazine stash or a HDD full of porn? I've been in the military on deployments, the imagination can only take you so far. ", "Apparently your penis is smaller in space when erect because of the blood flow or something.", "Shoulda asked Buzz Aldrin on his ama", "The book \"Packing for Mars\" explained that the astronauts have various moments of free time and an understanding to spend some of that time \"alone\", but dedicated time is not to be specifically allotted because if they have to schedule it then it goes in the official flight log which is available in public records and they didn't want to list \"jerk off time\"\n\nIn addition, if it goes in the flight log then they have to do tests to account for it which means timing the astronauts during their \"sessions \" on earth. ", "This was asked in an astronaut's AMA a while back. I believe the answer he gave was (and I'm summarizing here) that the space station is big and the inhabitants can find an out of the way place for 'private' time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3sqri9", "title": "why was the guillotine considered \"inhumane\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sqri9/eli5_why_was_the_guillotine_considered_inhumane/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwzmie1", "cwzmj92", "cwzmlxr", "cwzmm23", "cwzngez"], "score": [14, 2, 9, 7, 2], "text": ["It's not so much \"inhumane\" as \"gruesome\".  The huge rush of blood is very messy.  While the state might want someone dead, it's not going to want the optics of desecrating a person's body this way.", "The guillotine was much cleaner than the previous method of a guy chopping through the neck. Considering the stories of having multiple attempts before the head and torso being separated, the single slice of the guillotine was preferable.", "Largely because - despite our image of it - it often took many drops of the blade to actually remove the head.  Ouch, then dead.  Not just dead.", "The death penalty has moved from \"We need to put it in public so potential criminals can see the consequences of their actions and the public can see the consequences of their judicial system.\"\n\nto\n\n\"We need to hide away the death penalty and use methods that do not upset those watching\"", "It was actually invented to be more humane than the previous method of hacking away with an axe for a couple minutes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2olcc0", "title": "How does this gentleman touch two (live, with current going through them) poles and not end up electrocuted?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nI always was taught; touching anything with current can cause serious harm. This man is unhurt though. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2olcc0/how_does_this_gentleman_touch_two_live_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmo9alk"], "score": [28], "text": ["What you were taught is a very wise course of action, and will help you avoid electrocuting yourself. The reality is more complicated. It is like handling a gun, you always assume it is loaded. The guy in the factory that is making the gun needs to look down the barrel occasionally, so he has to check for himself that it is not loaded and it is safe for him in that case. For everyone else in nearly every case, you don't look down the barrel of a gun.\n\nAs the guy mentions in the video, volts and amps are both important for understanding electricity. He is able to hold live conductors because the voltage of the source is low enough that it is unlikely to penetrate his skin. Voltage is like pressure, and a high enough pressure can drive current flow through very resistive materials. Another important property is dielectric breakdown, basically at a certain voltage electricity can jump through an insulating barrier. If this happens through your skin, current will flow through your blood and other fluids which are much more conductive than your skin, and this is very bad news for you. \n\nGenerally, voltages below 50V DC are safe to touch and work around for trained electricians or engineers. The wall voltages of 120 and 240 volts AC are dangerous to touch and can cause death in certain cases. As the guy in the video demonstrates, you can potentially touch the live wire of a 240VAC circuit and only get a tickle, but you have to be very certain how you are connected to any ground sources. If you touch the live and neutral wires with different hands, you are inviting death. In general, it is just best to avoid touching any electrical wires. Electrical engineers and electrical technicians are able to evaluate the risks to themselves and pull stunts as shown in the video without harm to themselves, very much like someone doing a professional motorcycle jump."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMKe2PMenvk"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1q3l60", "title": "why is there a debate about vaccinating kids?", "selftext": "How did it become controversial? Are there actual risks? Does the medical community seem to have an answer?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q3l60/eli5_why_is_there_a_debate_about_vaccinating_kids/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd8sxju", "cd8sxwu", "cd8syt7", "cd8t35u", "cd8t4hd", "cd8t4nb", "cd8tme7", "cd8wkcz", "cd8xgrp", "cd8y72n"], "score": [21, 2, 16, 4, 4, 6, 2, 4, 2, 4], "text": ["It's not controversial. There are some people who have no idea what they are talking about who have decided to pretend there is a controversy because they personally don't trust the actual...you know, experts.  It's not controversial among the scientists and medical doctors at all. ", "Because people think they know more about immunology and toxicology than immunologists and toxicologists.", "A now known-hoax science paper linked the MMR vaccine (It was MMR, right? One of the big ones anyway.) to autism. A lot of people haven't caught up with the fact it's a proven hoax and the author was stripped of his medical license. ", "because Jenny McCarthy, unfortunately.", "There was one study published in 1998 by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that suggested that there was a link between autism and the MMR vaccine.  That report has been thoroughly [debunked](_URL_0_) and Dr. Wakefield is persona non-grata in the research community.  This study was latched onto by Jenny McCarthy and others as an explanation for their children's autism.  No matter how much it is shown that there is no link some people refuse to believe it as they need something to blame for their children's autism.\n\nThe MMR vaccine does not cause autism and while there are a few bad reactions to the vaccines every year they are far, far outweighed by the good the vaccines do and the lives they save.", "The debate exists because people are stupid. \n\nThere is no risk. \n\nThe response from the medical community is its safe, stop being silly. ", "It is my understanding that there is a slight risk of medical vaccines, although, the chances of truly negative side effects are about 1 in 10,000 000. ", "Wakefield, [published](_URL_0_) a paper in 1998.  The paper suggested with very dubious evidence that a link between the MMR vaccine and intestinal pathology could exist.  With **no supporting evidence whatsoever**, he then went on to suggest that the \"connection was real\" between autism and the MMR vaccine, but then danced around the issue/covered his ass by saying he didn't prove the connection.  He followed all of this up with a very public press conference announcing there may be a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.  It later was [discovered](_URL_1_) through incredible journalism by Brian Deer that not only did serious ethical misconduct occur by Wakefield, but he outright made up his data, *and* he was being paid by a class action lawyer!!  \n\nWakefield was later disbarred, discredited, and his research article retracted, but the damage was done.  Hundreds of thousands of parents worldwide now mistrusted a lifesaving vaccine, and as a result thousands of children suffered and died as a result.  He is lower than sh*t in the scientific community.\n\nThere's always risks with vaccines, unfortunately there is no magic shot that cures you with no complications.  The reason you should get vaccinated is the benefit outweighs the risks.  Here's an excellent example: ever wonder why the smallpox (vaccinia) vaccine is no longer used?  Two reasons: it's officially eradicated, but also there was a risk of complications from it.  When it was administered, smallpox was such a horrific, deadly disease that it didn't matter, but now the risk of getting smallpox is so negligible, there's no point in the potential risk of complications from the vaccine, so it isn't given except to members of the military or if you have a specific need.  Another example is with the flu shot you may feel sick (but not actually be sick), but you'll be protected from the flu.  Autism simply is not a risk from MMR or any vaccines, though.", "In 2009 when the swine flu was active my country offered the vaccination to the whole population. My family decided not to take it as nowhere in my country you had heard of anyone actully getting the disease and it wasn't that dangerous anyway. Later on it showed up that several people had gotten narcolepsy, which is a chronic neurological disorder causing sleepiness,  including one guy from my class. It's not comfirmed that it was the vaccin that caused the narcolepsy but it's very likely when many people got the diagnosis just months after the vaccin.\nA few people also complained that they felt like there immune system was weakened from their shot. Like a friend of mine, who had never stayed home from work because he was sick in 7 years, needs to stay at home at least once a month.\n\nBut this is just from my experience. I'm not saying you shouldnt vaccinate your kids, I just think you should be cautious and not just do like everyone else does when it comes to these things. Do your own research.", "I am the father of a 21 month old son. I will start by saying he is fully vaccinated though we took a little extra time in getting him completely up to schedule (he had his last shot 3 months ago). I am also the uncle of two autistic nephews and their experience certainly played a part in our decision to go with an alternative. Without getting in to too much detail about their particular situations I can say that after literally years of her own research their mother still does not fully understand why 2 out of 3 of her children suffer from autism. Her advice to us was to try to minimize any factors that may contribute to autism no matter how remote. After giving it careful consideration we decided to follow Dr. Sears alternative vaccination schedule. Over and above our fear of autism it just struck my wife and I odd that expectant mothers are strongly cautioned about all manner of things which might be consumed during pregnancy that would thereby be consumed by the unborn baby. Everything from cigarettes and alcohol to lunch meat. All of this stuff poses potential threats to lives so young. Yet, literally hours after said baby is born, all of the sudden 16+ vaccinations are not only permissible but advisable. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe vaccinations are a good and necessary thing. My wife and I simply took issue with the schedule. This was a decision we felt was best for our family. I'm not preaching it to anybody else. You have to do what is right for you. I will say sending kids off into the general population (I.e. School or day care) with no measure of vaccination protection seems wrong and irresponsible. Just my opinion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html"], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9500320", "http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28r2dq", "title": "why shows like game of thrones can pump out 10 60 minute episodes in a year, but movies take 2-5 years to complete?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28r2dq/eli5_why_shows_like_game_of_thrones_can_pump_out/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cidm4a1", "cidm4b4", "cidm66l", "cidm89a", "cidmwba", "cidne79", "cidnubg", "cidpr7i", "cidpuqd", "cidpwb3", "cidqtms", "cidtqv9", "cidv1sj", "cidv5yj", "cidxt21", "cidyqmu"], "score": [3, 2, 3, 44, 50, 5, 13, 2, 2, 3, 2, 85, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Just a guess..but movies are flashy. It's like..combine the best cgi with a bunch of other badass effects and some surround sound awesomeness..throw Brad Pitt, or some other A list star(s) in the mix, and BOOM! One sexy ass movie. They spend more time on it.. Just a guess though..totally ignorant haha. ", "I'm guessing it's because the foundation of the script is already there, courtesy of George RR Martin (and scripting/storylines can take a long time before filming begins).\n\nNaturally, there are deviations from the books, but the foundation is still there.", "Shows take a lot of shortcuts to lower the production time.  I'm not an expert, so I couldn't tell you every trick, but a big one is simply not showing large battles often or even at all.  You might notice this in GoT quite a bit, especially during the episodes (SPOILERS) focusing on Robb's war where they hardly showed any battles, even the battle where they captured Jaimie, they simply focused on the aftermath.", "Budgets. When you have more money you can afford to pay people/studios for their services over a longer period of time, thus getting exactly what you want out of the production. I'm sure GOT would benefit greatly from a blockbuster budget per episode but it's just not realistic to spend a ton of money per episode, so they cut costs and sacrifice production quality/operate within their means which is usually less time consuming. \n\nAlso when a movie studio invests 100s of millions of dollars for a movie they expect to make that money back in sales, HBO on the other hand doesn't operate the same way in that they are a subscription service and only have a finite amount of money, no matter how popular the show is", "Much of the time that goes into making a movie is spent building the team of people who will do it. A series may spend years on that as well, but once it is in place they can keep production going without having to bother with that again.", "Avengers, from principal photography to post production, took about 8 months (April 25, 2011-December-ish 2011 by the wiki article). Most films don't even need that much time for actually shooting scenes. It's just spread out over a year or two because studios, actors, directors and producers are all working on multiple projects. You also have to get together the people for the film and, if you're making a triple A blockbuster you need to either spend a buttload of time making realistic costumes and working on stunts up front, or have a bunch of people do cheesy CGI special effects in post.", "Films only take 2-5 years if you're including everything. Usually production is a few months and post is a bit less. Pre-production on GOT is probably similar to many movies but most of it only had to be done once before the pilot episode was made. Once that's done, pre-production is mainly writing the scripts which is pretty straight-forward given they have the books to work from. They presumably have a deadline to work to as well so they will only spend a fixed amount of time on a script and they'll produce it whether it's good enough or not", "I always kinda wondered about this too. Sadly I think I have yet to see a good answer here either. My best guess is that it's mostly due to overhead costs (no new scenery etc)", "My assumption would be about foundations. It took a long time, on the scale of several years, to get Game of Thrones off the ground. Now that it's running, and they have all the funding secured and the actors hired and the sets built, they just show back up and, essentially, keep making more pieces of the same movie on a constant schedule.", "They use multiple directors and multiple filming locations for GoT, so I'm sure while scene A is being shot is one place, scene B and C are being shot concurrently elsewhere.", "A) Marketing.  Movies are promoted like crazy and it's typically at least 6 months from end of filming to release... even if they don't need that amount of time for editing and post-production.  With the insane amounts of cash given to them, they need to.\nB) Movies are typically filmed on location, typically in many locations.  The more the locations, the longer the shoot.  Plus you have to send teams to scout for locations beforehand.  This takes a lot of time.  Game of Thrones is filmed on a lot and in a studio.\nC) Money.  Money and financing for a big-budget movie can take a long time to secure, especially if it's the size of the GDP of a small country.\nD) Directing/Writing.  You have to seek out and find a good director and writing team for a movie.  TV series have their own writing team and rotating group of directors that are a dime a dozen.  They don't need to seek these out.\n-It also depends on the movie... most of Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen's movies are filmed in less than a month and are barely edited because they don't film much extra.  There's a big difference between that and, say, Avatar.", "_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nGame of Thrones began development in January 2007 (pitches to HBO and Martin happened in 2006). The first episode was filmed in 2009. \n\nThe first episode aired in April 2011, over 4 years after development began and two years after it was filmed.  \n\nIn other words, OP, your question is faulty. With the casting, development, location scouting, contracts, etc... done, they can produce season 2 in a year subsequent to season 1, sure. But season 1, and specifically the building of that infrastructure, took years. \n\nMovies operate the same way. Especially in circumstances where you know, when casting the movie, drafting the contracts, and working out schedules etc, that should the movie succeed you will want to release a sequel quickly thereafter. Doubly so when you are adapting from already published source material. \n\n", "Also, movies don't take nearly that long to make.  The longest movie I ever worked on was The Lone Ranger, which had a production time of over a year, if you count from the first day we started building, the several weeks where the movie was \"cancelled\" and everything was in storage, and the time to take sets for an almost complete wild-west town out of storage and put it back up.  They also pushed back the release date of that movie at least twice so that it could spend more time in the editing room, because it sucked.\nThe difference in production times comes from a few things:\n1. Deadlines- pretty straight forward. TV has to stay on track, movies have more time for the egos to indulge themselves.\n2. Build times- As mentioned elsewhere, TV can reuse sets over and over for years. Movie tend to build more elaborate sets anyway.\n3. Editing/reshoots--movies try harder to save their product if it isn't doing well because of the investment.  In TV, we can crank out a spin-off episode here and there without the whole projectfalling apart.", "Typically, shows and movies start off in the same manner, with someone approaching a studio with a script or idea (this process varies greatly but for arguments sake let's keep it simple). The studio likes the script or idea and decides to green-light it, let's start the \"clock\" there on how long it takes to make something. \n\nWith a show (providing the script is written) green-lighting something means making a stand alone pilot episode. It starts with pre-production which involves casting the actors, finding the shooting locations, creating a budget, and hiring a crew/director etc.. This can take months. Then shooting the actual one episode show, which should take a few weeks. And finally editing it and adding any post VFX/SFX needed, which will take another few weeks, depending on how VFX heavy the show is. The finished pilot will go into the studio to decide whether or not they want to make a season of this show. This will also take months. They will screen test with test audiences, it will be passed between hands, a perspective budget for an entire season will need to be drawn out, deals will have to be made between studios and networks that will lay the groundwork for millions of dollars to exchange between them, a lot of things need to happen. Takes months. Right now we're looking at six months, at least from start to where we are now. If the studio decides to pick it up for a season (or more), that's when you really go into production.\n\nNow here's why a show is seemingly pumping out content at a much faster rate than films; it's because a show is already a streamlined process at this point, and you probably haven't even heard of it yet. You already have the locations, the actors, the crew and the post houses (where editing/VXF/SFX are done). All you need to do is start working. A show like GOT probably take 9-10 months to make from this point and in all future seasons. 3 months a straight writing, a few weeks to shoot each episode (which sounds short, but since they shoot in different locations, everything can be set up at overlapping times). Say they can shoot it in two weeks, that's 10 episodes, so 20 weeks or 5 months. And they're doing post production (editing) while they're shooting other episodes, so that doesn't add to the time it takes to make. Add some time at the end for however long it takes to edit the final episode, and any additional VFX needed, and you're at about 9-10 months. \n\nAfter it's made the studio/network will do some advertising and release it whenever their magic 8 ball (carefully analyzed studies) says they should. So, all in all, you're looking at at least a year and a half to make that first season of a show, then subsequently 9 months for every season after that (again all of this varies, but from my experiences this is the norm).\n\nThe real reason movies seem to take so much longer, is that movies are often announced to the public as soon as they're green-lit, before actors are even attached or a budget is made. That's why you've known the new Star Wars is being made for months now, but just finding out that Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) is going to be in it. And with shows, the public usually only starts hearing about them right before they're released. \n\nMovies go through the same pre-production process as a show (without the hassle of having to make a pilot or waiting to be picked up). But another reason they may take longer to make is lot of times they will have a higher budget than shows. Which means a lot more money spent adding VFX or CGI, which, when done right, takes a looong time on it's own. It also means that if the studio isn't happy with something they have the resources and flexibility to go back and re-shoot scenes, or the entire movie, if they so please. Typically if you have $100 million sank into something, you're going to take your time to make it right. A show like GOT isn't afforded that type of luxury since they have deadlines set long before production is done (but IMO they're doing a damn fine job with the time/money they have). \n\nTL;DR - Movies seem to take longer than shows to make because they are announced a lot sooner in the process. Or they have a ton of money and want to re-shoot everything.\n\nSource: Am a film producer.\n\nEDIT: Spelling", "Well the books took 15 years to write.", "That is not true.\n\nFilming is usually done within tops a year.\nEveryday filming costs alot of money.\n\nWhat is adding on time are after effects, the cut and the mastering.\nAlso the decision when to show the movie.\n\nHungergames2 had a really tight deadline and yet they delivered with alot of cgi.\n\nAs a counter question. What movies took 3-5 years to make till they were showed?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2010/03/game-of-thrones-hbo-george-rr-martin-.html", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3hwtcz", "title": "One week on: Only 10 percent more needed for AskHistorians fundraiser", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description", "answers": {"a_id": ["cub9m40", "cud714n", "cuf02m3", "cuhv3v0"], "score": [47, 10, 6, 6], "text": ["[In case you missed it last week,](_URL_0_) we announced that AskHistorians has been invited to present a panel at the American Historical Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia in February.\n\nThis is a **huge deal**; it's a chance for us to present Reddit to an academic audience and explain how public history outreach through the Internet is important. We've gathered panelists from as far away as New Zealand to participate and [present on a variety of topics](_URL_0_cu3gcsv).\n\nUnfortunately, plane tickets and hotel rooms aren't free. We've put together a budget that estimates it will cost $7,500 or so to send all our panelists to Atlanta.\n\nFortunately, you all have been incredibly generous. Thanks to a grant from Reddit, and donations you've pledged through Tilt, we're now 90 percent of the way toward our fundraising goal. We only need 10 percent more to complete our fundraising and ensure our panel can make it to Atlanta.\n\nIf you've been thinking about pledging but haven't signed up yet, please take the time to click the link and show your support. Even if you can only contribute a dollar, it'll be a help. Thank you.\n\n###[**DONATE HERE**](_URL_1_)", "356 more! So close :)", "Done my bit.  But you know, since it's Atlanta, there's a good chance some of you won't make it , will get stuck in traffic.", "Just put in $50 myself (penance for missing AHA this year)--we're $50 away from tilt level.  Who wants to match me?  We're so close now!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/", "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/cu3gcsv"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3rytv8", "title": "how can people doubt huge moments in history, like the holocaust or men landing on the moon?", "selftext": "There are videos, photos, witnesses. How can people deny enormous events in history when wars have been accepted and (I'm just being complete curious with this one rather than to incite debate) believe bible stories, where miracles are just a norm?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rytv8/eli5_how_can_people_doubt_huge_moments_in_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwsi8ig", "cwsiga3", "cwsihzj", "cwsjtxl", "cwsjwju", "cwskktz", "cwsko7y", "cwsl6y1", "cwslr72", "cwslsp5", "cwsm66x", "cwsmgs2", "cwsn1jw", "cwsn3ju", "cwsn6mj", "cwsn9uw", "cwsnnpd", "cwsnwzh", "cwsogid", "cwsojjz", "cwsoqtw", "cwsoyz8", "cwspoqj", "cwspu40", "cwspwmc", "cwsqlfu", "cwsr27i", "cwsr2hr", "cwsr7zv", "cwsrm9j", "cwsrpoc", "cwsrvta", "cwss8a2", "cwssgd9", "cwssh37", "cwssjjg", "cwst00f", "cwst53e", "cwstjyw", "cwstn1v", "cwstsvi", "cwsu3gp", "cwsufb7", "cwsv3hi", "cwsv3m8", "cwsvo6u", "cwsw2a7"], "score": [251, 26, 17, 34, 5, 66, 4, 2646, 11, 235, 2, 6, 4961, 125, 2, 44, 3, 29, 2, 3, 9, 16, 30, 2, 3, 2, 2, 10, 4, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 4, 9], "text": ["When it comes to any 'huge' moment in history we are depending on those who write the history to determine, first of all, what constitutes \"huge\" events, and secondly how they unfolded. There are many events in History that are lost to many, simply because they are underreported. If things can be lost, who is to say things can't be added?", "The truth is a north Korean is confronted routinely with fake evidence that their leader has divine powers and that there is starvation in America. A sufficiently repressive government can force all sorts of crzy ideas.\n\nParanoia is a psychological condition that causes you to see conspiracies with little direct evidence. Once you believe that you live in a north Korean state, it's easy to believe anything that supports that state is a lie.\n\nYou will find that all moon landing deniers and holocaust deniers have strongly negative feelings about the US government.", "Human memory is a very complex thing.\n\nRecall of a memory refers to the subsequent re-accessing of events or information from the past, which have been previously encoded and stored in the brain. In common parlance, it is known as remembering. During recall, the brain \"replays\" a pattern of neural activity that was originally generated in response to a particular event, echoing the brain's perception of the real event. In fact, there is no real solid distinction between the act of remembering and the act of thinking.\n\nThese replays are not quite identical to the original, though - otherwise we would not know the difference between the genuine experience and the memory - but are mixed with an awareness of the current situation. Memories are not frozen in time, and new information and suggestions may become incorporated into old memories over time. Thus, remembering can be thought of as an act of creative reimagination.\n\nBecause of the way memories are encoded and stored, memory recall is effectively an on-the-fly reconstruction of elements scattered throughout various areas of our brains. Memories are not stored in our brains like books on library shelves, or even as a collection of self-contained recordings or pictures or video clips, but may be better thought of as a kind of collage or a jigsaw puzzle, involving different elements stored in disparate parts of the brain linked together by associations and neural networks. Memory retrieval therefore requires re-visiting the nerve pathways the brain formed when encoding the memory, and the strength of those pathways determines how quickly the memory can be recalled. Recall effectively returns a memory from long-term storage to short-term or working memory, where it can be accessed, in a kind of mirror image of the encoding process. It is then re-stored back in long-term memory, thus re-consolidating and strengthening it.\n\nWhen people get a false notion in their head, it colors all the recollections that come after it.  Over time, the person remembers the past quite differently than it really was.  Additional evidence doesn't fix this, because it doesn't code consistently with the person's memories.  So a bible story that doesn't change (because the pages in the book don't change) much more effectively reinforces itself than exposure to new facts.", "You know, the US president during the holocaust knew people would say the holocaust never happened, so he ordered shut tons of photographs to be taken", "Prove that they happened. Your evidence (in their mind) will be what you've been told, unless you experienced it yourself. Their evidence is what they've been told.", "Denying something commonly known, as well as claiming something commonly denied, is a way of feeling special.  Whether to compensate for some social or personal issue, or to conform to some stereotype is for a therapist to determine, but the feeling is the same:  when you believe something against the common consensus you get this \"have-seen-the-matrix\" feeling that is addictive and ego-boosting.  That is why a conspirscy theorist will tend to pick up many fringe beliefs and even mix them.  9/11 is an inside job + aliens = aliens did 9/11 as an inside job therefore US president is alien.  Trying to reason with them except for the casual believer (if someone rather naive runs into a conspiracy group might pick up on the beliefs until shown how stupid they compare to reality) is a waste of time because you are attempting to deny them a huge pleasure.", "Because they read 1984 and see the masses as sheep.\n\nGovernments lie.  They've been caught doing it.  They manipulate facts to gain political ends.  It is not surprising that people suspect everything.\n\nLikewise, people have certain world views, and if certain facts challenge those world views, they would rather challenge the facts than change their thinking.\n\nIt's like people who believe the world is 7000 years old.  It's not.  Period.  They just chose to believe a make-believe story, and now have to reconcile it with facts by challenging those fact.  I mean... dinosaurs for crying out loud.  Dinosaurs!  ", "Belief is basically accepting the proof.  No matter what proof is given to some people, for whatever reason their minds will not accept the evidence.\n\nFor example - Lets say *I don't believe in China.*  I've never **seen** it.  I've never traveled that far.  Hell, as far as I know it could be some huge crazy thing and I'm in my own version of the Truman Show.  You could tell me all about China, show me pictures, videos, whatever, but I think it's all part of your conspiracy to trick me.  The proof is not proof because it's all part of the deception.  \n\nSo you fly me to China, show me the view from above and we land and walk around.  Okay now I **see it**, I believe it.  You can't do that with past events.  You can't take the JFK conspiracy people back to when he was killed and *show* them.  No evidence put before them will be believed because they think it's all propaganda.", "When you make questioning an historic event punishable by imprisonment, people get suspicious. ", "Here's what most people think about themselves. They are presented with an idea (say the holocaust happened). They consider they evidence. They listen to the arguments. And using their reason, they deduce a conclusion (true).\n\nHere's reality. They are presented with an idea. They consider whether or not they want to believe that idea. Does it fit with what I already believe? Would it put me in a tough position if it were true? How will my peers react if I believe this? They reach a conclusion. They then nod as they consider the evidence and arguments in their favor, and shake their heads at everything else.\n\nSounds stupid, but everyone acts this way. Including me. Including you. The truth of the matter is, it's really hard to prove things. If you only believed what you could definitively prove, you wouldn't believe much at all. People who doubt these events aren't less capable of reason than those who do. Instead, they disagree because they have different initial biases. \n\nI recommend reading Bertrand Russel's \"The Problems of Philosophy\". In his first few chapters, he shows how hard it is to prove even that anything exists at all (that is, the world isn't an illusion). If you can easily doubt they existence of the entire world, well then it's easy to doubt any particular event now isn't it?", "The 'fact' there are so many conspiracy theorists is actually in itself a wide-ranging conspiracy spread among the masses by the Trilateral Commission and Knights Templar, the Illuminati and Dick Cheney.  As the masses focus on this inconsequential crap.  these major manipulators go about their dirty work in plain sight.  We're all destined to become Idiocracy slaves and I know this because it's all written on the Dark Web.    (ref:  www.dark.web/com)", "A must see hilarious mockumentary on moonlanding conspiracy is Dark Side of the Moon by William Karel 2002. Some interviewees - Buzz and Lois Aldrin, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and many many more. I watched it without realising it was a joke until it was part way thru. Felt my known world collapsing around me, then became suspicious, then couldn't stop laughing. Dirty rats, had me goin' for a bit.", "Have you considered why you believe that the Holocaust happened? \n\nThink about it. You believe that it happened because people you trust told you it did. You believe that there is a huge amount of evidence because those same people that you trust told you that there is.\n\nHave you examined the evidence yourself? Have you examined huge numbers of written accounts, and analyzed their accuracy? Have you visited the camps, spent years studying forensics, and collected the evidence you need to make a conclusion? Have you even gained enough knowledge to critically examine the work of the people who *do* claim to have done these things? Have you actually looked through the body of \"videos and photos\" and considered whether they constitute real evidence for the claims involved? Have you looked at Nazi records discussing mass extermination?\n\nI suspect that 99% of the people on this subreddit have not done all this. I certainly haven't. \n\nNow, I tend to trust the historians who have actually studied World War II. They put in the time, and they say it happened, so I accept that it happened. But I can't pretend that I did the work to gain that knowledge myself - someone else did that, and my acceptance of the Holocaust as a fact depends on my trust of those people.\n\nSo if you don't trust the establishment, whether that be the government, or historians, or the mainstream media, then it's very easy to doubt the work that they have done, since almost nobody has actually examined the evidence themselves. This holds true for almost all historical events. If I don't trust the US government to tell the truth for shit, then why should I believe that the first moon landing was anything other than a propaganda piece? All the evidence that says it happened is sourced from somebody I don't trust, and I'm sure as hell not going to go the moon myself to check. \n\nThis is why people disbelieve historical events - they don't trust the people who are the sole providers of evidence, and they are not able to put in the years of work to actually accumulate the evidence themselves.", "Now, I believe that the Holocaust happened. I'm Jewish, and members of my family were greatly affected by it.\n\nBut in Germany, Austria, and surrounding countries, it's *illegal* to deny the Holocaust. The same government that teaches that it happened can put you in jail for challenging it. Doesn't that make it sound like a big conspiracy?", "Not that I follow this line of thinking, but all of the examples you provided (videos, photos, witnesses) can be fabricated.  They can also be propaganda where they only show a half truth due to political reasons.  After all, historical perspective often boils down to an ideology that the masses choose to accept and propagate.\n\nFor example, how often are the Japanese internment camps mentioned in the US when discussing WW2?  The answer is \"not very often\" in the US.\n\nA nation denying that they do not do despicable acts, and their populace believing them/not caring, is par for the course.  Just look at Guantanamo or the black sites in Chicago for examples.", "Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a possible reason. The basics of it are that the experiance of the individual is their reality, and even when exposed to the \"Truth\" of something they preffer the fictional perceptions because it relates back to their experiances. The process to accept a new reality are sometimes painful and so people avoid changing their perceptions if it causes them injury.\n\nAnother way to describe this reaction is bias. People unconciously preffer to believe in a lie if it is more comfortable than the truth (IE I got fired because my boss didn't like me, not I was a poor employee).\n\nThere are alternate reasons as well beyond subconcious denial. For example if I told you that Nasa had made contact with an intelligent alien life form but hid it from the world, would you believe me? Probobly (hopefully) not, but what if it appeared on CNN BBC Fox ABC NBC the cover of Time magazine and every major paper in America? You likely would believe it, even though you never saw the aliens yourself. There is some logic behind that choice, but either way you cant know for sure because it is an event in the past. Your rely upon a judgement of how credible the source of information is. \n\nPeople who deny major historic events often cite that the credibility of the source of the primary evidence is inadequte. This in itself might be a logical reason for dismissing a source of information. Take the moon landing as your cited example. Often moon denyers will state that Nasa and the US government have a motive to decieve people into believing there was a moon landing. Since all of the source material (lets ignore the laser reflection devices left on the moon for now) originates from a government controlled source\nand that source has a viable motive for not telling the truth if they did not land on the moon, they cannot be trusted. Since the source is suspect and it conflicts with their personal belief that we did not land on the moon, it is easier to deny it and create a false reality for yourself than it is to change that belief.\n\nTo take your example of the Bible, a person who has for the majority of their life been told that the Bible was true by trusted sources will believe that. In order to change that belief they would have to accept some uncomfortable changes to their world view, for example death does not lead you to a heaven or hell, you just stop existing. That would be a pretty uncomfortable truth to accept for someone who believed their faithfulness and good deeds would be rewarded and their abstinance from committing sins appreciated after death.\n\nConfirmation Bias is a tendency to look for facts situations or explanations that justify an already held belief. Back to the moon landing, people stating that the flag in the video would not wave in the vaccum of space on the moon view the flag moving as proof that the entire thing was a hoax (this was disproven on mythbusters a while back, pretty good episode). In either case, confirmation bias leads them to believe that the waving flag is proof they are correct.\n\nTLDR\n\n* When accepting a new peice of information as a fact, if the fact is aversive to already held beliefs it is easy to dismiss as incorrect. \n* People have a bias towards certain types of sources and against others.\n* Confirmation bias reinforces the incorrect or misinterpreted facts in the eyes of an observer.\n", "Because history is written by the victors. Common held beliefs of history change all the time. We can for example, look at certain Roman accounts of battles. \"Well it says here they killed thirty thousand enemies, but we now know the enemy army was most likely only 20 thousand strong\" This is something that no one has any problem questioning because it happened X amount of time ago.\n\nPeople (rightly) doubt things because of this. Remember not to confuse those of us who believe an event like the holocaust is  exaggerated with those who deny it happened outright.  For example, nearly 57% of people who were surveyed across the globe believe the Holocaust to be exaggerated. This does not mean they deny it happened. \n\nThere are  discrepancies about previously held public \"knowledge\" about the holocaust. The term \"denier\" gets thrown at anyone who questions the numbers and methods used.  Most people still believe the common notion of \"6 million Jews were gassed or executed!\" Which we know to be inaccurate. \n\nBut anyone who tries to discuss these historical inaccuracies (mostly presented by the Soviets, mind you. A nation renown for lying and exaggerating for propaganda purposes) is instantly shouted down. \n\nThere isn't a single Nazi document of plans, ideas or even methods pertaining to an undertaking of gassing or otherwise executing millions of Jews. Were Jews killed? absolutely. It was a terrible time and millions of people from all over the world were killed. \n\nIt's no real surprise though, as the holocaust is still used as justification to this day for certain groups of people to treat other people like shit. \n\nThis comment will more than likely be down voted and will likely not even receive a response other than personal attacks and insults. Challenging common held misconceptions makes people feel uncomfortable. ", "Damn. I had this huge thing written up and somehow something crashed and ah... anyway\n\nThere's a lot of reasons. History's written by the victors\nThe government has proven they'll do shady things (and in times of war have more reason to)\n\nWe've recently found out just in the last few decades that stuff they were commonly teaching when I was a kid was complete bullshit (like Columbus discovering America and Paul Revere \"the red coats are coming\")\n\nThis makes us more skeptical about the history we already know\n\nAnd the moon landing is an easy target .\n\nFirstly it's mind blowing to think they went to the moon back in an age of such crappy technology. The same people with no cell phones and no personal computers went to the moon?\n\nSecondly; the fact that we haven't hardly gone back since the 70's\nIf you look at the way every other technology has progressed you'd think we'd be taking tourists to the moon by now, instead it seems like we're exactly where we were in the 60's as far as going to the moon is concerned \nAnd that's hard to believe \n\nIn general, the same government that came up with a plan to blow up an airliner near Cuba and blame it on them---which only didn't happen because the president said no--- the same government that doused an entire town with lsd .... It's not hard to believe they'd fake a moon landing to get one up on some commie bastards \n\nEdit: also while I haven't surly fact check this, I heard somewhere that some scientist have said there's a problem with radiation that we still haven't solved today that would have made it impossible to go to the moon in the 60s", "In respect to the Holocaust, it has specific elements to it that are denied by \"deniers\" or \"revisionists.\"  Mainly they include how many died, how they died and why they died.  Proving the last, intent, is probably the hardest job for historians.  \n\nWhen it comes to specific evidence the rationalization for dismissing them assumes many forms.  \n\n* For eye-witness accounts, depending on when those accounts were given, they will be dismissed due to bad memory if it has been decades since the events in question, or some type of bias against those being accused if it's immediately after the event(s).  \n\n* Interviews with perpetrators, like SS guards or the heads of concentration/death camps, that detail what happened are readily dismissed with the idea that they were coerced by interviewers.\n\n* With respect to photos and videos, they were doctored. \n\nThese are \"simple\" arguments that get much more complex and complicated when you dissect and deconstruct them.  More so, they support already established belief systems; conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, if you believe in one there's that much more reason to believe others.  ", "A similar thing happens much more commonly with racism and sexism. There are people who believe that there is no such thing as white male privilege and will deny it, in spite of the mountain of evidence that says otherwise", "Holocaust : the denial is not binary. It's more like :  <  1 million people were killed, not the 6m that the conspirators would have you believe. I wouldn't know whether that's true. I'm just pointing out that the claim in more nuanced in the case of the Holocaust. (The men never landing on the moon claim, of course, is binary in nature : it never happened as per the conspiracy theorists).\n\nAs a only-somewhat-related example of how perception can be skewed : I live in Hong Kong, and we have these cage homes here (literally cage-like small cabins, 6 per room) for the poorest of the poor to live in. Now, 90% of cage home dwellers are male. Yet, when you walk on the street, you would be likely to meet someone handing out a pink ribbon (and collecting some $$) to raise awareness for breast cancer than for the plight of men living in cages. The likelihood of these two happening is at a ratio of 1000:1 women:men. Most people reading this post, even from Hong Kong, might not know about the gender disparity in cage dwellers. That skewed ratio of perception-bombing is how \"reality\" gets defined for most of us, whether we like it or not. Most of \"history\" that is promulgated widely is advertisement, too, IMHO. In particular, the winner gets to skew historical \"reality\".\n", "A few years ago I looked into 'Holocaust Deniers' and really I was just interested in the whole 'Holocaust' story and its something like the way they portray 'Climate Deniers' (note using the same 'Deniers' word for association). \n\nIn fact, very very few people (none I found) deny there was most definitely a horrific oppression, that many Jews were put in camps and that many many people died. \n\nWaiiiit!  But they are 'Deniers!' like you know 'climate deniers' deny ANY man-made or ANY warming or they deny Co2 Exists!\n\nNo, actually most of the 'holocaust denial' documentaries ranged from very moderate questioning of 'methods' and doubting numbers like '6 million'. \n\nBut I didn't come across too many who just declare 'nothing ever happened!'.\n\nWhats sorta sad is that for people who just genuinely want to learn and understand there was just such a hyper-charged defense mechanism where in one case a dutiful scientists who simply did NOT find gas in samples was pretty much destroyed and humiliated as a 'Holocaust Denier'.\nAnother young Jewish man got to have his life destroyed when on a pilgrimate to a camp he simply pointed out technical problems with the 'holocaust narrative' and what was actually preserved. He seems to have gone into hiding as a 'vile antisemite' despite being a Jew who wasn't actually saying 'the holocaust totally never happened'.\n\nSo.. quite a world of politics, history and emotions in that.\n\nI have no idea about 'moon landing deniers' though Ive heard of that on the internet. Cant say. I dont think they are the 'same people' tmk", "I expect to get some backlash on this, if anyone gets around to reading it, but here goes. I would wholly appreciate if anyone can convince me to change my mind on any of this.\n\nTo start off, reality is a pervasive thing. Especially the reality of the past. Every time you remember a memory, that memory has the potential to be altered. There was a woman who had fully convinced herself she was present at the twin towers on 9/11, when she wasn't actually there at all. Regression hypnosis therapy was an extremely popular thing for a while, until we started to realize how fragile memory was. Lots of people wound up in jail, because therapists trying to 'unlock' repressed memories of abuse in their patients would actually *create* those memories. Patients who were not actually abused would come out of regression hypnosis therapy with vivid memories of ha inn been abused as children.\n\nReally, people's minds are open books, ready to believe whatever they're told.\n\nSo, now that I've hopefully explained *how* people can just believe whatever, let me try and answer the *why*.\n\nI'll start with the religion one, since that's surprisingly the less controversial answer.\n\nSimply put, telling myths full of miracles provides the people telling them with power over the people believing them. If you say \"I want you to give me 10% of your money every week\", no one will do it. But, if you say \"God created man, man sinned, and was condemned to hell. But God was loving enough to send his son Jesus to earth to perform miracles to prove he was God's son, and then die for our sins on the cross, so that as long as people know about him they won't go to hell. Believe in him, and you won't go to hell. Also, btw, if you care about everyone, please give me 10% of your money every week so that I can keep telling people about Jesus so they won't go to hell.\" Well, now you're getting somewhere.\n\nSo, people believe it because they're gullible, and they're told it because someone else benefited from telling them that lie.\n\nNow down to the meaty part of your question -- Why *do* people believe in things like moon landing and holocaust denialism?\n\nAt this point, we start to enter territory where truth is like a treacherous swamp, full of sinkholes and crocodiles. There will be all kinds of differing opinions because this is an area where truth has been so skewed that people for the most part just don't know what to believe. Regardless, it's a real that I'm fascinated with, and so I'm pretty sure what I'm about to say is the truth.\n\nRepeat after me these two words. *Conspiracy Theory*. Don't they make you feel kind of dirty? Why is that?\n\nA conspiracy is just a plot by a group of people to accomplish a goal. If you think about it, it's actually absurd to suggest that powerful people *don't* conspire to get things done.\n\nIn a world ruled by money, it doesn't matter how you got that money. If you look around you, I'm sure you'll see that the noblest people are often the poorest. That's because they don't think it's worth violating the law or lying to people to make money. Any 'legitimate' business that makes a sufficient amount of money is pushed flush up against the line of legality and is usually well past the line of morality. Beyond that line of legality is a whole world of illegal business.\n\nMoney is money. 'Legitimate' business do deals with criminals, such as banks laundering money for drug cartels. Look at the Iran-Contra scandal, for example. That was *our own government* buying and selling *illegal drugs* in order to fund the contras and provide weapons to Iran. The whole reason they're doing this is to manipulate the working parts of our society to create advantages for American businesses to prosper. That's why countless democratic governments have been overthrown by CIA coups throughout the years. That's why JFK was assassinated, and why the twin towers fell.\n\n'Okay -- hold up. You can't prove those last two edgarallenbro. Those are just *conspiracy theories*.'\n\nWell, that's true. When conspiracies are proven, we no longer call them conspiracies. We refer to them as 'scandals' or the like. The fact of the matter is that the CIA tried VERY hard to cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, and nearly succeeded. The journalist who first sought to expose it is dead, allegedly from suicide, although it is likely that he was killed, and it was made to look like suicide. Things like the JFK assassination and 9/11 have so far been covered up with much more ferocity, due to the implications of people knowing the truth.\n\nSo what does any of this have to do with the moon landing or holocaust denial?\n\nThose things are one of the many ways in which institutions like the CIA have sought to cover up their clandestine actions by manipulating public opinion. By introducing clearly ludicrous theories like holocaust denial, moon landing denial, hollow earth theory, reptile people, etc. etc. etc., they have been able to delegitimize serious theories. A lot of the 'people' you see believing these theories *do not actually believe them*. Many of them don't even actually *exist!* There are identities that are *proponents* of these theories that have been revealed to be government operatives. They are straw men, meant to convince *just enough* gullible people to go along with them so that *you*, the average person, are convinced that 'people will believe anything'. \n\nThis is so that you can turn around and say \"Well, I know there are people who believe JFK wasn't assassinated at the hands of a lone gunmen, but there are also people who believe that the holocaust was a a hoax. They're all just crazy conspiracy theories.\" and the people who are willing to do unbelievable things to seize and maintain power can continue to get away with it.", "A lot of conspiracy theories are fueled by people's distrust of government/authority figures in general which by itself makes perfect sense, I think. I mean a lot of the structure of the US government was centered around the idea that the government shouldn't always be trusted and usually that its not in the people's best interest to trust them. \n\nOn top of that while a lot of conspiracy theories are pretty loopy the reaction to them is often pretty irrational as well. Whenever someone suggests that 9/11 is an inside job or the moon landing never happened suddenly others feel entitled to act like they themselves know anything about physics or architectural stability of sky scrapers when they've probably not even done the cursory amount of research the conspiracy theorist has. \n\nAnd a final note, conspiracies are real, they've happened. Whenever a group of people secret try to undermine or exploit another group, that's a conspiracy and there are tons of examples of it actually happening throughout history.", "Discrepancies about basic information typically lead to large divisions about what did or did not occur. The best example is probably the whole \"debate\" around the speed at which a body can be cremated.\n\nI got bored some time ago and wanted to know how people could deny the holocaust and although I don't deny the genocide I've seen the information and it's pretty clear that facts and 70 year old propaganda have commingled for quite some time to create some fairly impactful mistruths. The 6 million number being picked out before they even found all of the camps, the claim that 4 million jews and others were killed at Auschwitz was only formally changed in the 90's but they never adjusted the 6 million number, the discrepancies with the number the red cross had for the total deaths resulting from the holocaust, and that's just basic math we haven't even gotten into how poorly designed this genocide machine was you can look that up for your selves but I have trouble believing 1.1 million people were killed in gas chambers, drug by hand across a floor put on a tiny man powered elevator lifted 2-4 at a time then loaded into ovens where they were fully cremated in under 10 minutes a body even with multiple corpses in the same oven, times a modern crematorium can't even spit at, and then incinerated at Auschwitz.\n\nI really have to say I'm not convinced a genocide didn't happen but what literally means \"whole burnt offering\" seems pretty misleading considering the whole story.\n\nI'm betting I'm banned from like 18 countries and 100+ subreddits now; look it up some time try to get a balanced perspective, look up jewish researchers refuting the claims of deniers and tell me those documents don't wrangle the english language down to the ground and make you want to stop reading them, the most serious one's I could find are tens of pages long and and even though they cared enough to write so much and find sources they don't even take the claim seriously. They developed an entire vernacular just to discus the topic, that centers around the pre-supposition of proof and emotional appeal; you need a primer in \"holocaust revisionism\" before you even understand half of what they say and then you realize they still don't refute any of the actual points they just try to move goalposts and ignore the basic math and proof of inflated numbers being persistent in early war propaganda, \"the 6 million\" shows up in propaganda long before the end of the war.", "I know this is my most controversial reply yet, but... I think that people who believe in conspiracy theories are just a little bit overwhelmed by the fact that  they are succumbed in a system where a lot is happening and feel overthrown by an authority that \"can do anything they want, so they could also make up any story they want\". A lot of people are just a *little* bit dumb I think, and that's why they pull their mouths open and try to do something about *that stupid government*, because they don't trust what they don't understand.\n", "It's because when multiple source reports slightly differing numbers on the holocaust the automatic assumption is that they're all wrong or lying except one.\n\nThe moon landing is pretty simple; people don't understand science.\n\nIf you played Kerbal Space Program (with certain realistic mods) one would know that a moon landing is far from impossible.", "Some people can not bring themselves to imagine bad things happen, particularly if it was supposedly done by people who have the same basic values as their own. (They say to themselves \"I believe in white power and I'm a good person so Hitler can't possibly have been that evil.\")\n\nSome people need their government to be incompetent, so it must have faked that thing they cannot imagine themselves being able to do. (\"I cant get to the moon, so clearly my incompetent government couldn't have done that either.\")\n\nSome people need there to be an all-powerful and downright mean force in the universe that is responsible for their own failures and shortcommings. (e.g. \"I'm a great guy with plenty o smarts, so the only reason that I must be failing is that *random* *villianous* *organization* has decided to work tirelessly against my efforts.\")\n\nNext to last, \"There must be an option that leaves me completely safe and in control.\" Though this is more of the \"homeopathy\" and \"vaccine denial\" mind set. It's an intimate denial rather than a global one, but it's in the same spectrum since it scales up to conspiracy theories about \"big pharma\" and genocide.\n\nFinally there is simple fear. If that could happen there and then, then it can happen here and now. Therefore, it must not have happened because that would be just awful.\n\nEvery behavior \"pays its freight\" with the person exhibiting that behavior. Ask yourself \"What is this person paying themselves by denying the murder of seven million jews?\" You'll usually find the denier is really protecting a world view that some solution, final or otherwise, is \"possible\", for a problem they've manufactured amidst a community that they value. \"All my friends are Nazis so Nazis can't be as bad as all that, so clearly someone is just trying to make them look bad to keep them from their rightful personal and professional success.\"\n\nOn a siding rail, some people are desperate to feel that they know what others do not. They need to be \"an initiate in secret truths\". This need _requries_ that what most people believe is indeed false. You can not be the keeper of the inner mysteries of the temple if everyone outside the temple has the same knowledge as you. This keeper of inner mysteries is then both champion and martyr of their special truth.  \"I know the truth, and they cannot see, for I a wise and they are sheep.\" (It's an inferiority complex re-written as projection.)\n\nIn short, most people are desperate to simplify their world without the hassle of examining their world-views. They need to be right and they need to be special. The easiest way to do that is to deny facts that don't fit their own ideals.\n\nIndividual elements vary person-to-person, but the pattern in broad strokes is fairly uniform. \"Every man is the hero in his own story\" is not just an aphorism, it's a motivating imperative. ", "I've met holocaust survivors, not Jews but gypsies.If you heard a story from a first hand survivor and didn't feel anything, didn't get moved by it, or at least didn't believe it, put back your tin foil hat and crawl back into your mothers basement. ", "There was [this post](_URL_1_) asking how holocaust deniers justified their side of the argument.\n\nGood answers that explain their view:\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nAlso what [desu_vult](_URL_0_) said is probably a bit part of it too.", "Mot people who I've spoken to I'd call revisionists, in that the number killed in the Holocaust is way lower then generally believed, not that there was no mass deaths at all. And some revisionists work can be quite convincing.", "Well, the two things aren't the same.\n\nThere is overwhelming evidence the holocaust happened, the only real matter of debate was just how high the death count was.   Absolute deniers do so out of hatred for Gypsies or Jews and not historical fact.\n\n\nThe moonlanding is a different kettle of fish; it's a binary thing, so it either happened or it didn't happen.  The evidence and science isn't clear to many, so it takes a lot of accepting on faith.", "Did you know there was an Angora rabbit breeding program at Auschwitz? It was a surprise to me. Not saying the holocaust didn't happen of course, but they do make you want to look into it more yourself, it's not as cut and dry as it first seems, and there's lots of unusual and interesting facts you don't hear about otherwise. Just throwing these out there for those interested:\n\n > Some images some holocaust revisionists have made\n_URL_4_\n\nWhether or not these are entirely factual, it's interesting to see how they think.\n\n > Holocaust survivor testimony \n_URL_3_\n\nA rather bizarre holocaust survivor testimony\n\n > Holocaust survivor testimony \n_URL_0_\n\nQuite a few bizarre stories from holocaust survivors, I was surprised that I'd never heard about this stuff before.\n\n > Talk by David Irving \n_URL_1_\n\nThis talk is really interesting. He seems like a pretty smart guy rather than the stereotypical conspiracy theorist.\n\n > Interview with Ursula Haverbeck _URL_2_\n\nAgain, she seems to know her stuff. These people don't seem crazy or stupid to me.", "I genuinely believe. Especially so in the world of the Internet. That unless someone has seen something for themselves, they can never really say 100% whether it happened or not. \n\nAll media is manipulated, all opinions are subjective etc etc. \n\nI never disbelieved in the holocaust but shit me spending a day at auschwitz there Is no fucking way in hell that is made up. One of the most brutal things I've ever witnessed and that was just whats left as an aftermath. Someone would have had to go pretty fucking far to fake that.\n\nI think it's healthy to question things but if you disbelieve, go and prove it/disprove it to yourself first  before repeating the Internet and telling everyone else!  ", "Because they're stupid?", "Pay close attention to these people. The root agenda for why they deny common belief, is to purposely believe the opposite of \"sheeps\" so that they can feel like they are enlightened. It is a defense mechanism for inferiority. ", "It's because our world governments are notorious for lying to us, for political gain, so people tend to think everything they say/do is bullshit.", "To be honest, the US government doesn't have a good track record in not lying to it's people.", "As a little spin-off to the question, do people believe that what bible says actually happened?  I read /u/desu_vult response and I am amazed at the amount of people that blindly believe that bible is true.  How can you possibly believe in a super-being such as Jesus?\n\nEDIT:  I would probably just consider him a really good magician if I saw all his tricks right in a front of my eyes.", "The answer you are looking for is: cognitive dissonance. It is when someone is presented with facts that contradict their pre-existing beliefs. More often than not, people will manipulate those facts or discredit that validity of those facts in order to reinforce what they *already* believe. This means that **no amount of evidence, regardless of how solid it is, will satisfy them!**\n\nFor example: most holocaust deniers also happen to be Nazi sympathizers or have heavily entrenched anti-Semitic beliefs. Thus, they have a pre-existing belief in Jews as liars and swindlers and/or Nazis as having positive ideas. They cannot mentally accept the idea of those pre-existing beliefs being wrong.  If they are presented with evidence of the holocaust, they will make every effort to discredit the evidence or manipulate it to fit their existing beliefs. The evidence produces dissonance in their minds and so they invent ways to manipulate it to create consonance in their minds. \n\nCheck out the book, \"Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me\" by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. When you start to understand cognitive dissonance, you will learn a tremendous amount about why people do what they do. \n\nTL;DR--People, quite literally, cannot handle the truth, so they invent lies and change the truth. ", "So I [19M from UK] have been to Poland, been to Birkenau and Auschwitz, I've spoken to holocaust survivors and the families of those lost during the holocaust. I've been through their museums, and studied the primary sources. I went a few years ago, when I was 16, part of a school trip. Perhaps this is an American thing? I've heard of Holocaust deniers, but have never met one, I've been to Germany too and I don't think many there deny it. This whole idea seems ludicrous to me. \n\nAn interesting book is 'The Gulf War Did Not Take Place' by Jean Baudrillard, in which he argues that from the eyes of everyone who wasn't directly militarily involved, the Gulf War was not a real war. This is interesting, obviously Baudrillard knows it factually occurred, he discusses the idea of media control and the distance of Modern to war to civilians of Nato; to very briefly summarise. I like this concept. However to something like the Holocaust this cannot be applied. \n\nFor me the moon landing is different, as it is entirely controlled, all the footage is controlled by the Government, and the staff of NASA too. I have no doubt we can place a man on the moon, and I personally believe we have, but I do see why you could be sceptical.", "Most of these comments are completely missing the point.  The human mind is capable of all kinds of delusional thinking in all aspects of life.  That is how 93% of people believe they are above average drivers and that flying in a plane is more dangerous than getting on the highway tomorrow.  Our brains distort and change the world around us based on what we want to believe.  \n\nWant to ride a motocycle?  Eventually you will come to believe that the staristics do not apply to you and that you won't be the one who is road meat.  We rarely see reality, only our perception of it.  This is how people who are obese can believe that their diet has no effect on what they are doing and continue to eat exactly the same way.  People believe all kinds of crazy nonsense every single day of their lives big and small. \n\nIf you are a person with little to no critical thinking ability then you will happily glance at the world, come up with an opinion based on that cursary examination and believe the echos in your own mind.  The top post asks whether you have ever done anaylsis of WWII holocaust and how you came to believe it. You don't need trust people who \"told you about it\" when you have your own independent verification system called your senses, aka your eyes and ears as well as a basic understanding of the mechanisms by which your brain distorts the truth.  Now unless you want to get into solipsism and brains and in vat which basically says we can't prove anything except we exist let's just agree for the sake of this particular post that there is a consensus reality out there that is independent of us or at the very least that there are other entities who are not us, aka external or objective reality, aka the other minds problem. Now to verify go ahead and do the following: Join a Pinterest group of old photos for five minutes do a search for WWII.  Now look at them.  Done.  Now read a few books from survivors.  Done.  Or if you don't have the time to do even the most basic research then go into a book store for five minutes and simply scan the number of books on the subject.  After that you now have only three logical choices.  \n\nOne, you can believe that every single photo is fabricated and that all those books by independent actors are part of a vast conspiracy to defraud you.\n\nTwo you can assume that based on the amount of imagery and accounts out there that it is probably correct simply based on the sheer effort it would take to defraud the whole world for no particularly good reason or profit.\n\nThree you can fall back on solipsism and say there is no way to independently verify anything, that your senses are faulty and that the reality you see is an illusion.\n\nWhile the third may work in philosophy class, I am going to go with number two.  Most people do but there are a number of people who can't consciously go through the process that I have outlined and all of this happens below the surface of their consciousness and they are prone to believing one, without having any understanding of why.  This essentially makes them non player character in their own lives.  As I said earlier people believe all kinds of delusions on a daily basis.  Is it really any surprise when someone believes some big ones too?  Just watch  any of the political debates and you will see that grown people are capable of the most insane belief systems because they have no understanding of how or why they believe anything. \n\nIn short people's brains are generally broken, as is evidenced by the sheer number of logical fallacies we are capable of using at any point of any day. It's no wonder people choose to disbelieve what is right in front of them.", "My Dad was in a photographic unit with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He took lots of pictures during his 2 1/2 years in Europe. They finally ended up at Bergen-Belsen and he took pics of the mass graves full of emaciated, dead Jewish people. Literally thousands of them. He showed me those pics when I was about 14 years old. He said there were so many dead bodies laying around, all that the Allies could do was to bulldoze them into the existing mass graves. There were too many dead bodies to be handled individually.", "People believe whatever fits with their own personal narrative and reject anything that doesn't. We aren't as rational as we would like to believe.", "Belief in conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, and other woo is fun and exciting. You're an insider, one of the smart ones, not one of the sheep. It makes you feel special. This isn't *the* reason, but it can be a factor. ", "1) People are scared of the truth and what it might mean. Take how the church reacted to Galileo supporting the idea that the planets revolved around the sun. They were scared about what this could mean for the bible and so they suppressed it for as long as not as they could. The facts that are scary may seem irrational to you, but it makes perfect sense to them.\n\n\n2) Holding a minority view bonds people together, giving them an identity and a sense of belonging. I'll bet terrorist groups are a tight band of brothers. Just like cults and other niche groups. Your unique beliefs bond you together tight like a family. It's really no different from the other things we do to show belonging: dress in team colors, drive certain motorcycles, listen to certain styles of music...it's the price you pay to be part of the club.", "Upon realizing how severely and how often we are lied to by political leaders and the media, it becomes pretty easy to doubt the official story on just about everything.  \n\nIt's like that kid in school who was always making up crazy stories, eventually you just assume he's lying no matter what he says. \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rytv8/eli5_how_can_people_doubt_huge_moments_in_history/cwsn1jw", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mk8ct/eli5_how_do_holocaust_deniers_justify_their_side/cm57v6x", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mk8ct/eli5_how_do_holocaust_deniers_justify_their_side/cm5dp9u"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVmIaBW-HjI", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgGP_evkvOk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPa_QeV9KDM", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLkKCZ_x-9Y", "http://imgur.com/a/L6q9R"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.businessinsider.com/5-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true-2015-6"]]}
{"q_id": "2v6cu4", "title": "how are buffets profitable? how much money is usually made (on average) per customer at all you can eat buffets? do customers often eat more than the costs it took to serve them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v6cu4/eli5_how_are_buffets_profitable_how_much_money_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coeues5", "coeufz5", "coeujg4", "coev5ti", "coevck8", "coewl8c", "coex5dc", "coexrlq", "coexv7t", "coexwe4", "coey0zq", "coey3qm", "coey5mv", "coey6rr", "coey86w", "coey8w1", "coeyb2x", "coez3nh", "coez9aa", "coez9fo", "coezakj", "coezf20", "coezguy", "coezhfe", "coezjna", "coezmf3", "coezmgd", "coezmur", "coezpv6", "coeztdi", "coeztqv", "cof04eh", "cof07hq", "cof0ano", "cof0jtn", "cof0zh9", "cof13od", "cof16ng", "cof18jh", "cof1bc2", "cof1gut", "cof1rb9", "cof220b", "cof2gqz", "cof3ikp", "cof3pye", "cof4cuv", "cof4emf", "cof4zv8", "cof5eg2", "cof5kde", "cof6a18", "cof6r74", "cof6yjl", "cof7dam", "cof7jwj", "cof7pzf", "cof7umw", "cof820i", "cof8s4n", "cof8thb", "cof9z2u", "cofa5ol", "cofacsw", "cofan8a", "cofc68y", "cofclmd", "cofdbn8", "cofdsjv", "cofe66j", "cofe94r", "cofect4", "coff0la", "cofftcn", "coffwca", "cofj059", "cofjggv"], "score": [3855, 9, 19, 40, 742, 158, 137, 7, 75, 2, 4, 3, 244, 3, 13, 11, 3, 2, 81, 18, 33, 2, 2, 20, 8, 2, 393, 3, 3, 2, 6, 4, 2, 4, 7, 2, 3, 717, 12, 4, 3, 2, 14, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 33, 2, 17, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 38, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 9], "text": ["Buffets are profitable because:\n\n* the food is usually lower quality\n* they can get by with fewer staff\n* it is cheaper to prepare the food in bulk, instead of cooking plating it per order\n\nEDIT: By lower quality, I don't mean crappy.  I mean vegetables vs. meat, chicken vs. beef, store bought vs. homemade. ", "Even the fattest of fat people cannot eat more than it costs the buffet in materials and labour to feed them.\n\nBulk cooking is much cheaper than what you do at home. Cooking 400 gallons of marinara is much cheaper than cooking a half gallon 800 times. You can order tomatoes and meat in bulk direct from the supplier.\n\nBuffets charge about $20-$50 depending on how classy a buffet it is. Cheap beef (one of the more expensive ingredients involved) grosses retail at around $2 per pound. So that's 10 pounds of the most expensive ingredient - something you could never eat in a sitting.", "I'm not an expert on how buffets operate, but I can give you some information relating to how/why buffets *should be* profitable based on my past high-end catering experience.\n\nLet's say the price for an adult is $19.95 for an all-you-can-eat buffet. From my experience (regardless of the price), the less expensive and \"gut-busting\" food items are displayed first (i.e. bread, crackers, vegetable and fruit displays, salads, soups, and the almighty pasta courses) with the more expensive items at the very end (carved meats, seafood, ribs, fish, etc.).\n\nI call the former \"gut-busters\" because most of these items are filled with carbohydrates (bread, pasta, hearty soups, etc.) and fill a person's stomach at a greater rate opposed to eating lighter foods or proteins, especially when said carbs come in contact with liquids (water, tea, soda,beer, alcohol).  \n\nBuffet restaurants know this and use it to their advantage as they assume most people will simply load up their first plate with the \"gut-busting\" items and when they get to the more expensive items, they don't have enough room on their plate and figure that they'll just come back for seconds. They're anticipating that by the end of your first plate, you're too full to even think about going back for seconds. So let's say you ate tiny portions of a few salads, pastas, had some raw veggies, a couple pieces of fruit, and maybe a bowl of soup. All told, what you just ate might amount to $3 at-cost to the restaurant. And that $19.95 you just shelled out to eat that food? The standard food cost percentage in restaurants is 35%, give or take a percentage point; buffets are looking for anywhere between 20-28% food cost. Remember that $3 you just ate although you paid $19.95 for the privilege? That comes out to 15.04% food cost to the restaurant: In layman's terms, BOOM! PROFIT!. \n\nLet's say you ate all of the food mentioned above and are still hungry so you grab a few slices of prime rib and a few shrimp. The cost of your plates now jumped from $3 to maybe $5. You feel like you got your money's worth because not only did you eat salad, veggies, fruit, pasta, soup, prime rib, and shrimp, but you're leaving full and satisfied. You surely dented the restaurant's profits because you ate so much right? Wrong. By you eating that extra protein you increased their food-cost from 15.04% to 25.1%; still within their targeted food-cost percentage to make a profit. Couple this with low labor costs and overhead (I'm reaching here, based on how efficient each individual buffet is managed), they can be highly profitable enterprises when done correctly and constantly monitored. \n\nAll told, if you choose to eat at these establishments, eat what you want however much you want but please keep in mind they're also trying to run and operate a successful business. Going straight to the higher-end items and eating only these items is bad form in my opinion. But do as you wish. ", "I could be wrong but isn't one of the big costs in restaurants unused food; ingredients that people don't order. Buffets don't have this issue I assume. Obviously not the full answer but probably a contributing factor.", "One word: Volume. \n\nFood is pretty cheap to make in bulk. Plus not everyone eats like it's their last meal. Those that do are usually balanced out by people that are reasonable.  \n\nThere's a few exceptions like casino buffets. They're (usually) subsidized by the casino so they don't have to worry about making a profit. They can give away the house because they know you'll hit the casino floor later to make it up 10 fold. \n\nThe one place that confuses me is Golden Corral because they're an independent business. $10 doesn't buy you much in terms of food and they have some \"good\" stuff like steak. Even though it's sirloin at $2-3/lb, that gets eaten up quite quickly. Their margins must be pretty thin.  \n\nBut overall, the food is cheap and cooked in volume so there's lots of room to move around. ", "Hello, I worked in a restaurant.\n\n- The price for a buffet meal is fairly high. $25 to $30 during dinner.\n\n- Most people can only eat a certain amount, particularly children.\n\n- Extra money is made on expensive drinks.\n\n- The buffet is organized in such a way that there are a lot of cheap foods (like rice) that brings down cost per customer. Normally, people don't just eat meat. They'll put some rice, or salad on the side.\n\n- Food is bought in larger quantities, so they get better wholesale prices.\n\n- Less staff. No one has to go around actively serving customers.\n\nBut keep in mind the profits are still pretty thin. Opening a buffet doesn't mean instant success.\n", "I think some one touched on it... but the buffet is not the only income. Think drinks. Fountain drinks cost a few cents per fill but restaurants often charge $2+ making a huge profit. Alcoholic beverages if served at the establishment are often another huge source of profit. ", "I misread title as \"How are bullets profitable? How much money is usually made (on average) per customer at all you can eat bullets?\" until I realized I should renew my glasses.", "OK. I work at a pizza place that does buffets. It costs $8 with a drink to get the buffet. $8 is about the price of a medium (12inch) pizza here. Most people won't / can't eat any more than how much is on a medium pizza so we'll usually only have about 1 pizza per person out and the bread sticks and cinnamon sticks are distributed to everyone almost evenly. Even though we make less than someone buying a pizza straight up, it's still profitable. Oh and when it comes to pizza buffets, don't believe that the pizza you get is lower quality. It isn't. After a bit of being on a metal pan (like an hr) the crust will get soggy from grease and will taste pretty bad but when you put it in the cardboard box for take out or delivery, the box absorbs the grease that goes to the bottom and the pizza's crust is not soggy. \n\nTl;Dr - if you're at a pizza buffet, ask for some fresh custom pizzas. We don't mind unless the buffet is nearly full already.\n\nEdit: For all you wondering, I work at Mr Jim's which is a pizza chain mainly regional to the Dallas fort worth area. Not cici's", "99.99% of customers wont eat enough to make them lose money.", "Essentially unless you pack your guy so full of meat you won't shit for a month buffets are profitable. People fill up on cheap starches and don't eat much.", "Food is not most of a restaurant's cost -- think salaries, rent, equipment, advertising, etc. Those are fixed costs no matter how much or little a customer eats, or whether the customer comes in at all.\n\nBut from the customer's viewpoint, the food is the most important part. So restauranteurs know that feeding them as much as they want is well worth it.", "Not everyone takes \"All you can eat\" as a personal challenge. Also there's some psychology involved. It's no accident the salad bar and pastas are in front, and the meat carving station is way in the back. ", "My uncle is a chef and recently started at Golden Corral (a chain buffet in the US). He says the profit is $0.15 after accounting for all costs. So, profit margin is low but volume is high. ", "Everything is way cheaper than you think.  This is how all business make money. They have a merchant account. They buy from distributors at almost cost. That is extremely cheaper than what you as a customer can get. When I was younger I worked for various retail and restaurant chains. Even things marked down or on sale are often still marked up 100 percent for what the business payed.  \nLook at sodas and fries for example.  Large fries or a soda cost 2 bucks or more. You can go to club stores and get a whole bag of fries for 3 or a box of soda syrup that will pour out hundreds of drinks for 50.", "My friend took a Chinese buffet to the cleaners once.  He sat and ate so much, they told him he either had to leave or pay for dinner too.  It *started* as lunch.", "Former pizza buffet worker here.  We charged 7.95 for adult with soda for the buffet.  Me and an owner calculated that in order to get their moneys worth, a customer would have to eat 7 1/2 pizzas in one sitting\n\nedit: theres a big difference between 795 and 7.95", "I don't know about the USA but we have a lot of Chinese buffets here in the UK and the food is very salty meaning more drinks are bought. Profit margins on syrup soft drinks are massive. ", "I think some places have a few tricks to curb your appetite. The best one I can think of off the top of my head is at a brewery here called granite city. They have a Sunday breakfast buffet with prime rib, thick bacon and so on. But they also bring to your table, for each person, something I deemed the \"stomach plug\". These stomach plugs are giant cinnamon rolls. Each one equals about 2-3 average sized cinnamon rolls. ", "You rang? :)\n\nIt's all been covered. For every one big eater there are four who are not. We are $30 plus, and adults still eat the kids mashed potatoes. Meat is expensive. We use the cheaper cuts of quality product if that makes sense. Chicken that is cooked but never exposed to guests and not used today is in tomorrow's chicken based soup.", "Buffets are make-to-inventory, while restaurants are make-to-order. Make-to-inventory is always cheaper, since the cooks can cook for the busy times during the slow times. If you make to order, then you have to wait for the order before cooking it.\n\nAs an extra bonus, cooking two servings of a dish takes less time than cooking one serving twice.", "I know that around here a truck comes and delivers already cooked cheap Chinese food to most of the Chinese buffets around here. So they probably save a lot of money by not even cooking some dishes in house.", "I read that as 'bullets' at first and thought this would be a very different discussion", "I own and operate a \"by-the-pound\" buffet and being able to buy in bulk saves a ton of money. I buy 200 pounds of chicken on Monday because Tuesday is soul food day. It's easier and cheaper than buying 50 pounds of chicken that you have to prepare individually for a table that is served by a waiter. My profit margins are great because it's by the pound. People come in, they put food on their tray, they pay, and leave. ", "I worked at a buffet place years ago. Things may have changed, but all I had to do was clear used plates off the table and refill drinks. (I also had to do other normal server duties; restock plates, glasses, roll silverware, etc) The shitty part was that I got paid minimum wage **for a server** I made less than $2.00/hr and bc I wasn't actually a *real* server (and bc it was a buffet place) so people **never** tipped. So I would walk out on a Friday night with a few quarters from the people who did leave tips. I quit after 2 nights. Oh, and In those 2 nights I witnessed 3 people vomit in the parking lot when leaving from stuffing themselves. Worst job ever. ", "Just eat all meat. I laugh inside when I see buffet rookies filling up on rice or potato based dishes at a buffet.\n\nI can eat maybe 4-5 plates of meat and vegetable at a Chinese buffet ", " > How are buffets profitable?\n\nSometimes they're not:\n\nYears ago in my younger, stupider, days I was doing a construction job out in the country with a crew of hillbillies.  We got talking one Friday about a local place that makes delicious food.  Well, they also had a really good buffet, and after a little day-dreamin' and droolin' we all decided to stop by there after work for dinner.\n\nYou gotta understand that even with our boots off and our stomachs empty weren't none of us small guys:  I don't think there was anyone on that job less than 220 pounds.  And because of the prospect of delicious \"All You Can Eat\" some of the guys were even going light on snacks and lunch in order to keep extra room for dinner.\n\nSo after a 10 hour day, we shove off and make our way over to the buffet and we just start *digging in*.  We're eating like we invented it.  They'd bring out a steam tray of pasta?  That's our steam tray of pasta.  Another of dumplings?  Wasn't even likely to reach the buffet table before it ends up on our plates.\n\nWell, after a time, when we'd accumulated a stack of plates that could've stocked a Crate-N-Barrel, this grizzled guy comes sauntering over to our table.  He identifies himself as the owner:\n\n*\"Is the food good?\"*  \n\nWe said it was.\n\n*\"Y'all enjoying yourselves?  Getting enough to eat?\"*\n\nWe said we were.\n\n*\"That's fine.  I just wanted to make sure y'all enjoyed it, because once you're done here, I don't ever want to see a single one of you guys back in here again.\"*\n\nHe hit us all with a near fatal dose of the Evil Eye and then turned his back and sauntered back to the kitchen.\n\nAnd that's how I learned that sometimes it's not really All You Can Eat.\n", "So from what I've read, by not buying a drink and avoiding the cheap foods that fill you up quickly and heading straight for the more expensive foods like meats, you will give the least profit to a buffet because you'll be eating more expensive stuff that fills you up less, and drinks are a high source of income for buffets. \n\nWith that being said, even if you get more from your money for it, I don't think trying to purposely make a buffet lose profit is a good thing, especially if you enjoy the restaurant. It seems like making them lose profit is something that's hard to do without serious intent.", "My parents owned a small diner that they put a buffet into. Every day featured a different home cooked option like meatloaf, catfish, hamburger steaks, and one night was ribs. Eventually they had to shut the buffet down because it was causing the diner to bleed money. \n\nThe problem, as others have said, was that my parents did not use lower quality food and kept the same amount of staff (because the menu was still an option). The rib night was the real culprit and final nail in the coffin. The diner was in a small town and when rib night rolled around, every farmer and farm hand in the area came out of the woodwork to eat mountainous plate after plate of ribs. Often times they wouldn't touch a single other item on the buffet. ", "You guys should see the free employee buffet in the Bellagio called \"manga\" it's unreal! Best E.D.R. on the strip! ", "I asked the manager at CiCis (a pizza buffet) and he says it takes them $0.25 to make a pizza, so your have to eat 20 entire pizzas for them to lose money\n", "Usually the buffet buys in bulk like a lot of food to make a profit, also drinks (besides water) help with getting a profit\n Like Chinese buffets large ones order so much to get a price break , good luck trying to make em lose a profit unless all you eat is prime rib, crab legs or chicken wings\n \n\nMy buddy and his friend actually did eating contests at buffets subsequently he and his friends ended up getting kciked out as they ate too much. He and his friends aren't fat either. ", "i wish my kitchen had an all you can eat buffet", "Your enjoyment rates also decrease every time you return. The business entices you, while knowing that each additional plate of food provides less utility than the one before, meaning all customers will stop returning when their \"limit\" is reached, that is, when they are too full and their enjoyment drops. Considering other factors such as the number of people they can entertain at a given time, the \"limit\" would basically be their basis on how much or what food would be served in a day. In economics this is the [law of diminishing marginal utility](_URL_0_).", "_URL_0_\n\nI guarantee that I could not eat $50 worth (cost/labor/overhead) of food from here.\n\nWhy? They had a million customers *before their first anniversary*. Volume purchasing and assembly line labor translates to the exact same item from a regular \"service\" restaurant would cost much more simply because of the economies of scale. They likely make more of one item in a day than a normal restaurant would make in a month or a year.", "Rest owner here of a fast food biz,\n\na few points \n\n1. generally speaking, most restaurants have a profit margin somewhere between 8-10 Percent range. i don't know about full service dining restaurants but QSR's definitely do. ( Quality service restauarat which usually refers for a fast food type of place) \n\ngiven these margins, most restaurants are experts at cost management especially given the fact that mature restaurants have sales that wont often change dramatically from year to year unless something dramatic happens. \n\nbuffets slash the labor part of the equation, feature less popular dishes to clear inventory and sprinkle a few popular items to keep customers coming back.\n\n", "The profit is made on people like me who pay $20 for all I can eat and I can't eat more than one plate. For me it ends up being over-priced cafeteria food, which is why I don't go to them.\n\n*Except* the buffet at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It's something like $45 a person and worth every penny. The key for me there is to take small portions so I can try lots of different stuff.", "I used to work at a fine dining restaurant that served a fancy brunch buffet every Sunday. \n\nOne day a very thin lady started to show up every Sunday right when we opened.  She always came in alone and made a bee line for the bowl of peel and eat shrimp.  She would load her plate up with nothing else then go back to her seat and eat all of them. Then she would wait until we refilled it and then she would go back again.   She would do this until we were out.   \n\nThe waitstaff wondered how she was able to eat 6+ pounds of shrimp in a few hours.  I thought she was putting it into her purse.    On her third visit, one of the female staff discreetly monitored her every move.   She quickly found out that our guest would make quick trips to the bathroom where she would vomit up everything she ate and then go back and load up on more shrimp. \n\nShe got the incorrect nickname \"Anna\" short for Anorexic (It should have been Bulimia but we weren't clever enough to come up with an innocent female name we could refer to her as in front of other guests).   \"Anna\" would also rarely speak to us.  She would smile when appropriate, and either nod or shake her head when asked a question. \n\nOnce our boss (who never came in on Sundays) found out he did some quick calculations and figured she was losing us too much money.    Rather than ban her, he simply had us change our peel and eat strategy.  We broke up the peel and eat shrimp from one big bowl into several smaller bowls scattered throughout the buffet line.   We were told NOT to refill them until she left.  \n\nThe next Sunday, \"Anna\" showed up and at first frowned at the change in her routine. She had to go through the entire buffet line to get all of the shrimp.  She also had to empty each of the bowls as she came across them.  Her usual attempts at discretion were no longer working and the guests in line with her started to make comments like \"Wow- are you on a shrimp only diet?\"  and \"Hey, leave some for the rest of us!\"   \"Anna\" hurried back to her seat, resumed her usual ritual of binging and purging and then sat quietly waiting for us to refill the bowls.  I only refilled the one at the end of the buffet so other guests could get some before she got to it.    I left the rest of them empty.  If any other guest asked for them, I would tell them we were out then quietly take a small bowl out to their table (out of sight of \"Anna\" of course).    \n\nAfter about an hour of sitting with a plate of shrimp peelings, \"Anna\" was forced to actually interact with us and ask about the shrimp.  When she was told we were out she became visibly upset and stormed out.     We never saw her again after that. ", "When I go to a buffet, I typically get three plates. One for a main course, one for everything I missed, and one for desserts. ", "It's a little known fact that buffets are actually partially underwritten by Warren Buffet. It is a good way for him to get his name out there all over the country at minimal cost. ", "My average cost per guest is 1.90, the base entry is 10$ and sodas are 2.5$ of pure profit (soda is in that cost)", "To simply the matter, think it this way.\n\nIn restaurant business cost break down like this. Raw material (ingredient) is about 25%, labour is another 25%, rent is another 25% and utility/distribution/marketing is another 25%.  People may eat more and increase cost in raw material but you could make equal or more saving in other area. \n\nInstead of making a chow mein pork noodle for one person, you get to make the same thing for 20 persons in one go. Instead of serving the customer individually, you just get to dump the food in one location and the customer serve it for themselves. Also, buffet tables are squeezed so rent per table is maximised. Also, because the cust gauge themselves and don't talk that much, turnover of table is high. So while raw material cost more, you make more saving in the area of staf, rent and utility.\n\nThe profit come from the drinks the customer order. If you want to cause maximum damage to the establishment, just order big bottle of mineral water to share, go easy on main, enjoy deserts, especially fruits and take your time. ;)", "A few major reasons buffets yield profit (although they typically don't yield as much as you would think).\n\n * Most people don't put back as much food as you think. On average, most customers put back about two plates, which really isn't all that much. Occasionally you have someone who can put away half the spread on their own, but they are typically the oddity. The money you paid for the buffet probably covers about three plates worth of food, so if you only eat two, each person is paying for food they don't eat, effectively making up for that one fat-ass whose on his 9th plate. \n\n * Buffets are normally *loaded* with rice and/or pasta. Those are dirt cheap. Rice, before cooking, only costs ~$1/Lb, and on average will expand to double it's size when cooked (although that varies on what type of rice you are using), so if you're paying $8 for a buffet, and eating mostly rice, let's say you manage to put back 1.5lbs of it (which is an obscene amount), the restaurant just made ~$5.50 in profit off you. (That figure accounts for the veggies and/or sauce that were in the rice, as well). Similar prices apply to most pastas. \n\n * Labor. A buffet can be almost entirely prepped, set up, and run, by 2 people. During actual service, depending on how busy the place is, sometimes just 1 person. Labor makes up for a good portion of what you are paying for when you go out to eat, so cutting that cost down is a substantial reason why buffets can be so cheap.\n\n * Volume. Restaurants make money by volume. Even if you don't make a significant amount of money with each plate you sell, if you sell lots of them, you make lots of money. Buffets operate on a similar principal. Sell lots of people food without a huge profit margin, and you will still make a large profit (the margin itself won't be that high, but positive cash flow will be). \n\nThere are other \"tricks\", too. Put the cheap/filling stuff at the beginning of the buffet, and anything that is more expensive towards the end. Make sure everything is heavy on the starches (rice, potatoes, pasta) as they tend to be cheap and very filling. Throw a few high-end proteins (steak, crab legs, etc.) on the buffet towards the end. The name will attract customers, but it's very likely not many people will eat it, so you only have to prep a little bit of it. Think of it like an advertising budget. \n\nThe list of nuances for making a buffet profitable could go on for a while, but those are the big points. \n\nSource: Been a chef for close on 15 years, set up more buffets than you've had hot meals.", "Initially read as bullets. Was seriously concerned when people were being served and eating bullets.", "Each plate of food cost approximately four to five bucks and you're paying between twenty to thirty bucks to get in. Most people are not eating over three plates of food. Plus when you're buying food at whole sale you're not spending that much in overhead.", "After having moved from TN to CA (bay area) I was surprised to see very few chinese/multi-asian cuisine buffets. The margins are too small and everything's too expensive here (except for the actual cost of buying food/groceries!, produce, most meats, fish, poultry cost the same though, goat is overpriced here). You might think that people are more health conscious, they are, but Asian people can fucking eat, that's probably the biggest reason why. Most buffet places would go out of business just because of all the hungry asians, esp. if you try to serve any kind of seafood. There are one or two buffet places, but where it would be $8.50 or $10 in TN it's $20 here. At that price I think I'll just go a la carte or just cook at home.", "I have no idea. I've been to pizza and chinese buffets. The amount of food I can eat is worth far more than it would cost to buy it as an individual item. At a pizza buffet in college I could eat 2 14\" pizzas by myself, which would cost me about 4x what it cost at the buffet. \n\nMaybe they make money because of all the kids who go there and don't eat much. \n\nAt a chinese buffet, there is one nearby for about $6 that has nuggets that taste almost like Mcdonalds. I can easily eat 20, that alone would cost me about the price of the buffet if I got them at McDs. That doesn't even add in all the chicken I would eat. ", "I've spent time managing in a buffet on the LV Strip. I can tell you a few quick things:\n\nIt didn't matter if someone wanted a refund.\n\nIt didn't matter if someone came in with their kids, didn't pay for themselves cause they weren't eating, and then when their kid didn't like the food asked if they could eat instead of the kid.\n\nThe point of restaurants in a casino, including the buffet, is to keep the customer happy so they'll stay in the building and go back and gamble. You're in the hospitality industry less than you are in food and beverage. It's all about keeping the customer in the building and spending money. It doesn't matter if I gave you a twenty-two dollar steak, because ten minutes after you left you dropped fifty bucks playing blackjack and went to the ATM.\n\nSometimes, often times, it's the other end of it too. People have ALREADY lost money, and they decided to get up to come eat, and you're the closest person they can be angry with. I used to tell my staff, \"The angrier the customer, the more likely it is they probably just lost a TON of money.\" And thinking that usually helped you not empathize, but just straight laugh at their misfortune...which you need to do if you ever work Food and Bev.\n\nAll the books are somewhat separate in casinos though, you know? Like numbers are tracked per department, per restaurant, the same as they're tracked in singular retail outlets for like GAP and stuff. So the buffet has X amount of covers they want to be doing an hour to stay profitable in comparison with last year, etc etc. But for the most part, it didn't fucking matter what happened, it didn't matter what we gave away. Just keep them happy, and keep them gambling.", "I was at a chinese food buffet once when a group of football players came in (it was across the street from a university.) \n\nThe staff came out with bowls of celery and started adding it to every  dish. There's nothing like cellulose to fill the gut and slow them down a bit. ", "Something I wanted to add:\n\nI've never seen a buffet that wasn't kid-friendly.  Sure, the child price is cheaper, but not enough that they are unlikely to profit from a kid.  Kid's won't eat as much as adults usually.  Plus, you have plenty of picky kids who get drug there with their parents and refuse to eat 90% of the food.  When I was younger I was so picky that when we went to one I ate sunflower seeds, pepperoni, grapes, and dinner rolls pretty much exclusively.  My \"meal\" definitely wasn't worth what my parents paid.", "I used to manage a buffet, so I actually know this topic!  Buffets make money by enticing you with high price items, then once you are in the building, convincing you to fill your plates with low cost items.  \n\n  In the same way that grocery stores design their layouts to make you spend more, profitable buffets will offer breads, vegetables, and low quality meats (cheap stuff) at the beginning of the line, allowing you to fill your plate, while reserving expensive items (steak, shrimp, and the like) for the end of the line.  \n\n   A good manager knows to locate his expensive items at strategic locations and to offer them in small portion sizes, while making cheaper items look as appetizing as possible.  That is why Golden Corral will usually cut your steaks for you, as well as why the rolls are freaking delicious and right at the beginning of the line!", "What fountain soda costs\n\n5 gallon bag in box coke ($85)\n\n128 ounces per gallon\n\n5:1 mix ratio\n\nTotal 3200 ounces (assuming no waste)\n\n3200 ounces / 10 ounce soda = 320 sodas\n\n$85/320 = $.27 per serving\n\nOr roughly $.03 per ounce\n\n*edit* checked coke invoice $85/5gal. ", "Being from a Samoan family, the owners would always get mad when we were there for three hours and all fifty of us had at least five plates ", "Average food cost in a restaurant is 33%  \n\nLabour costs are less because of less wait staff, and possibly fewer cooks since they are making one big thing at a time.\n\nSpace costs would be similar.    Buffets tend to be more square footage, probably to make the reductions in labour pay.  \n\nSome restaurants do \"lunch buffet\" to get the best of both worlds, and possibly turn over inventory faster.\n\n\n\n", "In the case of a casino, the buffet might actually lose money, but attracts more customers who will gamble, increasing overall profits.", "The way buffets are priced is you add up the cost of all the food that was eaten. Divide it by the number of people served. That is your food cost per plate. Add in all of your fixed and variable costs plus whatever you  set for your profit(believe it or not most restaurants are lucky to see 8% profit margin).  You do this calculation on a regular basis to get the average cost throughout the year so be sure you have the right price set. Labor cost are one of the largest factors that go into the price of a food item and when they are produced in quantity you really see economies of scale pretty quickly.\n\nWhen you don't gorge yourself you are making up for those who do\n\nBuffets in a casino are different since they typically don't care to make a profit off of them and just want to get people in the door to gamble.", "In places i have worked alot of the profit comes for alcohol not included in the price of the buffet", "-Inexpensive, low quality food bought in extreme bulk amounts.\n\n-Reduced staff with no need to have waiters for every table", "You never have to wait long for a soda refill at a buffett because it is cheap and fill you up", "Because buffets are all you can eat school lunches.", "The food is generally lower quality,  it is prepared in bulk,  and they don't have to plate it for you or anything.   Thus they have fewer wait staff, and can serve more customers faster as they skip the ordering process.  A party of five might spend 30 minutes eating at a buffet but an hour or more eating at a restaurant.   Also,  while some customers like myself are a bottomless pit,  the vast majority eat 1-2 plates.\n\nCheaper buffets like old country buffet or something where you're paying like $8 a head,  the food is terrible and sits out all day.   Fancier buffets like those found in casinos are considerably more expensive,  though you can usually get them comped if you are playing games.   The buffet is very profitable for the casino as people eat very quickly In 30 minutes and then can go back to playing games.  At a Fancier casino restaurant,  where they can charge $40 a person or something like that,  the casino might actually lose money as the customers would spend an hour or more away from the games which make them the real money.  \n\nLpt: if you want to stuff your face,  play table games for like 5 minutes at the casino and get your buffet comped.   I do it all the time as its the only place my grandparents will go.  I'll eat lobster buffet for free after spending like $10 at the blackjack table and that's only if I'm not winning. ", "Old people! Or, rather, people getting older.\n\nI've noticed now I'm well into my 30s that I can't eat how I used to. In my 20s I could shovel food endlessly into my face. Now I eat more than a typical portion and feel sick. This means at most buffets I'm getting ripped off big time but the convenience and variety can be worth it. Most truly old people I know barely eat child portions at mealtimes either.", "I always imagined that buffets are one of the best places to use to launder money because there's no correlation between how much money you made and how much you spent on inventory.", "It's an *entirely* different business model than running a restaurant.  You have to do a lot of observation and make sure that items are put up that are constantly popular since leftovers will cut into your profits. \n\nThere are many cost saving measures that make a buffet quite profitable. The biggest consideration that it takes less staff to actually run a buffet than it takes to run a service in a restaurant. Labor is a really large percentage of your operating cost and a buffet can schedule employees in a pretty stable and regular manner because when they are not running to the line, they can be preparing in bulk. \n\nIt takes fewer employees to refill items than it does to individually plate items and run them to the table. Since no one is waiting for food, higher table turnover. So, more volume. \n\n* Portion control - Expensive proteins are usually not self serve. \n\n* The salad bar - Getting people to fill up on salad lessens the amount o things that they eat, overall. This is why the salad bar is the beginning of the buffet. And produce is cheap.\n\n* The dessert bar - Overall, desserts are super cheap to make. And if someone sees a sea of desserts, they might slow down so that they can gorge on desserts. \n\n* Item placement - There is an entire psychology behind where things are being placed. Starches are cheap, and you will find them easily accessible placed to the front of the proteins.\n\n* Smaller serving utensils - Sounds stupid, but it's true. A smaller serving utensil encourages portion control.\n\n* The plates are smaller -Requires more trips to the food line.\n\n* There is never a horrible rush - You don't need to drop everything and deal with a huge pile of orders that are up. This frees your back of house staff to create a steady flow of prepared items. Gives a lot of breathing space to the prep and cooking staff. \n\n* Making everything from scratch - It may not taste so great because it sits around for a while, but they do try and make everything from scratch. This is because making it from scratch is far cheaper with regards to food costs. A bag of prepared french fries costs $6 for a 5 lb bag while a 50 lb sack of potatoes costs $12. \n\n* Budgeting - You can figure out what the per person food costs are and average it out with a reasonable margin.\n ", "And as for one common type of buffet, casino buffets don't need to make money as far as I can tell. They are basically loss leaders.", "most buffets make money by buying the cheapest food possible in the biggest quantity possible, and then charge $2 bucks per glass of pop.\n\nalso, i like how nearly every post in this thread has been hit by what i presume to by the Downvote Brigade, /r/ELI5 Battalion, NA(for North America) Company, American Platoon. lol\n\nEDIT: Fixed my unit reference.", "I wonder this with all-you-can-order Japanese places. One time I ate appetizers, ice cream and 14 rolls of sushi. I was with 10 other people who ate similarly.", "Not sure about the high end ones but the buffet I worked at did it like this.\n\nThe largest pod and area was salads, this is also the cheapest to purchase. It was also closest to the front door. Busy day your waiting in line and looking at that. A lot of folks go for it first because of this.\n\nEntrees were the medium area. The smallest pod and most expensive was meats and the carving station. Usually a line for carving so it would mostly block the expensive stuff. The pod closest to the dining area was full of the cheaper side dishes. People tending to hit that first when going for warm food. The other main dish pod was different daily. So it could be Mexican on Monday and Italian the next. Usually not pricy over all it was not a large pod and off to the side.\n\nLast is desserts the smallest area and pod usually second in price behind the meats. Cook time was factored in to this. It was off to the other side of the restaurant total. Most things were pre-portioned as well. It was also arranged odd so again if we were busy it looked like a lot more people were in it. \n\nLayout was determined by corporate and we couldn't change it. This was mainly to control the flow of people. Aim them at the cheap stuff and let them fill up on that. The drinks were in the middle of the dining area and we advertised them as free so people would drink a bunch of coke or sprite. This was dirt cheap for us. \n\nThe layout of the dining area was set to keep you from getting too comfy. Tables a little on the small side, booths pushed in just a little too close. No one hung out after eating so we could have a faster turn on the tables.\n\nSure you'd have people game the system so to speak. Show up right at change over pay lunch price and eat dinner. Or the guy that brought a book. Folks that would pile meats on their plate and not eat it all. My favorite were the fools that would bring in plastic bags and load it up full then try and walk out with a bag full of fried chicken. Usually the wait staff got them. You could tell even on a busy day if some one was loading up to take it home. \n\n", "It seems like the food is lower quality than ordering off the menu. Also a lot of people suck at the art of knocking back four or five plates of food and will pay $15+ for the buffet and get one plate of food, when in reality they could have had the $5 appetizer and been full. ", "Most likely due to buffet food being lower quality (usually).", "As a kid buffets are like all your dreams have come true. I went to a buffet just the other night, I'm now older and a qualified chef, and i was amazed at how much of the produce was brought it. \nPeople don't seem to give it a thought or even care that it's all pre-made and just heated or put on a plate, and of course they all think they're getting a great deal.", "the buffet at my work is in a casino, it's entirely free.  \nbut it keeps the punters from leaving, so they gamble more, and the casino gets money back from the buffet and then some.  \ni have to top it up every hour and it's sad to see people so hugely messed up taking heaps and heaps of the free food because they think they 'can't afford to eat'...  \nthen ten minutes later putting $200 into a gaming machine and gambling for 20hrs straight (no exaggeration).", "It would be nearly impossible for a customer to consume more than he is paying. If he did then it would most likely imply that the prices are incorrectly set at the buffet.\n\nThe biggest threat to a buffet is customers not showing up, not customers eating too much. Most of the food is prepared in advance anyway and if it isn't eaten it is thrown away.", "Usually they charge pretty steep for drinks and put ridiculous amounts of salt in the food ", "Look at the cost of the food to the restaurant: veggies are pennies per pound, and meat tops out at about $4 per pound wholesale, that's for beef/lamb, pork, chicken and seafood are less.  The only people who could possibly eat enough to make buffets lose money is the sport eating crowd, the world hot dog eating champ and such.  And I would wager that this crowd loves small really tasty platefuls when going out for a meal.  Even frat boys can't make a buffet lose money.", "I worked at golden corral for 2 years at the time i was a waiter and got to learn from the kitchen to the office and here is how it works:\n\n1. Drinks, a soda costs a penny to the restaurant if one person drank their fill but cost 2.00 at the front. \n2. Bustling atmosphere, the atmosphere at a golden corral is supposed to seem energetic. Servers are always cleaning and clearing, people are always moving to get more food, tables are moving around, etc. This makes people finish their meals quicker because it sets the tempo of an atmosphere, more in and out means more money. \n3. Bulk Cooking Methods, the buffets cook the food at rather miraculous efficiency of storage and distributions, in fact the one i worked at used to give rolls to people, whom the theory goes would fill up on those and leave the more expensive food. Turned out the rolls and the man hours to make them and serve them cost more than the advantage. \n\n", "Chef here. Buffets are priced differently than a typical restaurant. In a restaurant each dish is price in such a way that the food costs somewhere between 18-35% of the total price, on average (depends on the dish and the type of restaurant). \n\nAt a buffet you obviously can't do that because everyone pays the same regardless of what they eat, or how much.\n\nInstead pricing is typically done based on projected seating. If we turn 6 tables of 4 every hour, and we're open 12 hours a day, that equates to a grand total of 288 customers on an average day (minimum). Pricing is done relative to that number such that everything stays afloat and produces a profit. For example a 10% profit (pretty typical for a restaurant) on $20,000/week operating costs would be $22,000 so divide that by your average number of weekly customers found using the above calculation (288*7, or however many days a week you're open) and you'll get your final recommended price. $11/person in this particular example.\n\nNote: numbers were pulled out of my ass and don't reflect any specific restaurant or industry standard\n\nTL;DR: Buffets are priced based on knowing on average how many people you'll serve and making sure that you account for all your operating costs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp"], ["http://www.caesars.com/caesars-palace/restaurants/bacchanal-buffet.html#.VNeC3yvF98E"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4p9ywm", "title": "The diagnosis rate of depression is 6.7% of adults, so why is it as a \"disorder\" if having the condition is not a statistical anomaly?", "selftext": "Is this a problem with our definition of depression? Our diagnosis rate? Why do we refer to depression as being \"abnormal\" when \"normal\" (not depressed) fails 95% confidence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4p9ywm/the_diagnosis_rate_of_depression_is_67_of_adults/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4j7xq8", "d4j86f0", "d4jax2j", "d4jcc27", "d4k2g13"], "score": [12, 19, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["I think you are mixing up confidence levels and incidence rates. 60% of over 60 year olds have a hearing impairment (/disorder), and with a good audiometry test you could be 99.9% confident of this fact.\n\nEDIT: What is perhaps more relevant to your underlying line of inquiry are those situations, such as with autism (and perhaps depression also?), where diagnosis rates are increasing year-oh-year, at an almost exponential rate. Is this a change in incident rate? In diagnostic sensitivity? Or, as many people suspect, does it represent a change in criterion level (i.e., policy)? I don't know the answer to this question, personally", "Although statistical infrequency is one way to define \"abnormal,\" it isn't the only one. In the case of depression, it is more helpful to define \"abnormal\" as a deviation from an ideal of mental health.", "Why is it a disorder?  Because the medical definition of disorder is \"A disturbance of function, structure, or both, resulting from a genetic or embryonic failure in development or from exogenous factors such as poison, trauma, or disease.\"\n\nThis is completely different idea than a statistical anomaly.  A statistical anomaly occurs when you have defined groups for an event and an event falls outside of all defined groups.  A basic example would be flipping a coin: you have heads and tails groups.  But through a million flips you do a flip an the coin lands and stays on its side.  That would be a statistical anomaly, it is so rare you didn't account for it.  I can't think of an analogy for depression.  \n\nBut fundamentally you are misusing (or understanding) the statistical idea of a confidence interval which isn't all that intuitive to begin with. The 95% denotes how confident we were in the procedures used to estimate the rate of occurrence (in other words 95% means we are fairly confident our procedure produced a good estimate of 6.7%).", "\"Abnormal\" is as opposed to \"normal\" as the default state which is often the average just because of statistics, but if 90% of people had depression it would still be a disorder because it's an anomaly in the brain, not an anomaly in statistics. ", "Statistics play an important role in understanding psychology and they are often used to legitimize the field as a science (as it does for most \"soft\" sciences). So understanding how statistics work is critical in understanding how to interpret findings in psychology.\n\nI assume from your usage of the term \"statistical anomaly\" and reference to 95% confidence you are referencing either [p-values](_URL_2_) or [confidence intervals](_URL_0_).\n\n\nConfidence intervals have to do with defining bands of error for estimations of means using standard error of means (SEM). I'm pretty certain you didn't mean that though since it wouldn't have much application here.\n\n\np-values are used for describing the characteristics of a sample results \"abnormality,\" in reference to a population. We use this kind of testing to describe (and legitimize) with what degree of confidence we can reject a null hypothesis. A p-value is compared to an alpha that we determine ahead of time and it is of our choosing. alpha < .05 is pretty common but it should be noted that it is completely arbitrary. It is just something we all have decided to agree on. Though it does relate to standard deviations and we set it at 2 sigma much of the time, in educational psychology 1.5 sigma is often used as a standard for deviation in ability vs achievement. Again, pretty arbitrary. In astrophysics 5 sigma is considered a gold standard. \n\n\nSince you reference the incidence of depression in the general population, I think you are making the assumption that there should be a cut-point at 5%. This might be the case in a population that is normally distributed. But psychology defies [normality](_URL_1_) (hah!). \n\nWe define disorders in clinical psychology primarily based on criteria (usually symptoms) that we know generally have an impact on functioning. The hit to functioning is a critical aspect to determining whether one has a disorder or not. That level of functioning is also not something that we typically think of as statistically standardized (e.g. in the US we have many more people who are living functional lives vs say in a war torn country like Syria). The standards used in clinical psychology and psychiatry, The [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders,](_URL_4_) (DSM-5) were recently updated. \n\nFor purposes of population health and setting policy, standardized measures (using statistics) may be used to set how we go about screening and the costs associated with those screenings. This is relevant when setting a policy with budget implications in a value-based care system. For example if we ID more people with depression we have to pay for their treatment (that costs money) but how much money do we save in the long run in costs we avoid (i.e. hospitalizations, disability claims, etc). These screeners however aren't normally distributed standardized instruments like IQ testing. Instead they produce a positive or a negative result. Are you or aren't you. (Though instruments like the PHQ-9 are regularly used to define a continuum of functioning--that's a separate issue). Screening instruments are tested rigorously using statistics and they generate [response operator characteristic \\(ROC\\) curves](_URL_5_) which help us figure out a \"cutoff.\" Those cutoffs are ways to figure out [sensitivity and specificity](_URL_3_) numbers. But they are compared against a set of data that is already \"verified.\" Usually we do that using a clinical interview to confirm or disconfirm a diagnosis of depression. That's all done clinically. \n\n\nTL;DR - that's not how we use statistics in psychology since depression isn't something that is normally distributed. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity", "https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic"]]}
{"q_id": "2g11k3", "title": "Did men kiss in 19th century Russia as much as they do in the Brothers Karamazov?", "selftext": "Men both \"embraced warmly and kissed\" and \"exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts.\" Was this standard behavior at the time and place, or supposed to show the extreme sentimentalism of the character?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g11k3/did_men_kiss_in_19th_century_russia_as_much_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckewzm3"], "score": [16], "text": ["As a follow up question, did this practice come from Western European, mainly French influences upon the nobility? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "45uavb", "title": "Would merging black holes without accretion disks produce a flash of light or other particles?", "selftext": "Obviously inspired by the LIGO stuff. I'm asking because I see references to the \"luminosity\" of the merger, and I'm unclear as to whether that refers to the energy carried away in g-waves or whether energy was carried off in some other way as well.\n\nIt seems unlikely, but it seems wild for there to be such a large energy release and have it be basically unnoticeable.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/45uavb/would_merging_black_holes_without_accretion_disks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d008qhq"], "score": [5], "text": ["The luminosity refers to energy being carried off in gravitational waves.  If you have, as you describe, two black holes (neutral) and nothing else, the energy released is released in gravitational waves.\n\nAnd, yes, it is a large energy release but barely noticeable, not just because it's far away, but because gravity interacts so weakly with matter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "lec3k", "title": "A friend affirms that the popular belief that incest / inbreeding causes genetic mutations is only based upon moralistic dogma.  Does anybody know of any studies that prove that incest in mammals causes detrimental genetic mutations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lec3k/a_friend_affirms_that_the_popular_belief_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2rzd7h", "c2rzri9", "c2rzzxq", "c2s01nx", "c2rzd7h", "c2rzri9", "c2rzzxq", "c2s01nx"], "score": [20, 2, 6, 2, 20, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["I know very little about incest *causing* mutations, but it will most definitely increase the odds of many mutant phenotypes.\n\nMost mutations are recessive;  we have two copies of every gene, and with recessive traits, you only express the phenotype (\"get\" the mutation) if both of your copies are the \"bad\" copy (homozygous recessive).  If you only have one \"bad\" copy, and one \"good\" copy, you may not suffer any disorder at all, but you do still carry the gene, and can pass it on to offspring (heterozygous).\n\nSo, if a given mutated allele exists in a given family line, there are dramatically increased odds that a brother-sister pairing will result in a homozygous recessive than for other reproducing couples.", "As others have (almost) pointed out, the issue is not that inbreeding causes mutations, but that inbreeding increases the chances of expression of genes with deleterious effects.  There are mountains of evidence for this, and the genetic theory of why it happens is well understood - google \"inbreeding\" to find many examples.\n\n >  A friend affirms...\n\nI would say that your friend *claims* that.  Did he provide any references or other supporting information?  Unless he was just being pedantic about the \"causes mutations\" aspect, this is one of those \"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence\" situations.\n\nThere was some askscience discussion of inbreeding [here](_URL_0_) recently, in the context of a brother and sister repopulating the Earth.  Much of the discussion and references relate to more general examples of the issue.", "The monarchic ruling families of Europe from the middle ages onward carried out such an experiment. It turns out that there are some risks to inbreeding.\n\nAs others have pointed out, the risk is not mutations, the risk is the higher probability of recessive genes which cause illness coming to the fore.\n\nTake any population, it will have some quantity of genes which cause disease or illness. Things such as sickle cell anemia or tay sachs or what-have-you. Now, these originate via mutations, but they lay dormant in the population typically. If they were dominant genes they would become selected against quite rapidly since everyone who carried them would have the disease. So such genes tend to be recessive. And there are a lot of them. However, any one individual probably only carries a few. The chances of the disease being expressed in any individual is very low, because it would require both parents of a child to both have a rare gene.\n\nNow, what happens with inbreeding is that you are selecting from a much smaller group of individuals, who will thus have a much smaller range of recessive diseases they carry genes for. Winning the genetic disease lottery then becomes far, far easier since the chances that both parents carry the *same* gene for a recessive disease becomes far, far higher.\n\nHistorically there is a lot of evidence for the danger of inbreeding, both in humans and in other animals (such as dogs). However, the danger is not absolute, it's merely an increase in the chance of genetic disorders.", "(edit) it's pretty well covered already, so I'll just point to this: \n_URL_0_ \n", "I know very little about incest *causing* mutations, but it will most definitely increase the odds of many mutant phenotypes.\n\nMost mutations are recessive;  we have two copies of every gene, and with recessive traits, you only express the phenotype (\"get\" the mutation) if both of your copies are the \"bad\" copy (homozygous recessive).  If you only have one \"bad\" copy, and one \"good\" copy, you may not suffer any disorder at all, but you do still carry the gene, and can pass it on to offspring (heterozygous).\n\nSo, if a given mutated allele exists in a given family line, there are dramatically increased odds that a brother-sister pairing will result in a homozygous recessive than for other reproducing couples.", "As others have (almost) pointed out, the issue is not that inbreeding causes mutations, but that inbreeding increases the chances of expression of genes with deleterious effects.  There are mountains of evidence for this, and the genetic theory of why it happens is well understood - google \"inbreeding\" to find many examples.\n\n >  A friend affirms...\n\nI would say that your friend *claims* that.  Did he provide any references or other supporting information?  Unless he was just being pedantic about the \"causes mutations\" aspect, this is one of those \"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence\" situations.\n\nThere was some askscience discussion of inbreeding [here](_URL_0_) recently, in the context of a brother and sister repopulating the Earth.  Much of the discussion and references relate to more general examples of the issue.", "The monarchic ruling families of Europe from the middle ages onward carried out such an experiment. It turns out that there are some risks to inbreeding.\n\nAs others have pointed out, the risk is not mutations, the risk is the higher probability of recessive genes which cause illness coming to the fore.\n\nTake any population, it will have some quantity of genes which cause disease or illness. Things such as sickle cell anemia or tay sachs or what-have-you. Now, these originate via mutations, but they lay dormant in the population typically. If they were dominant genes they would become selected against quite rapidly since everyone who carried them would have the disease. So such genes tend to be recessive. And there are a lot of them. However, any one individual probably only carries a few. The chances of the disease being expressed in any individual is very low, because it would require both parents of a child to both have a rare gene.\n\nNow, what happens with inbreeding is that you are selecting from a much smaller group of individuals, who will thus have a much smaller range of recessive diseases they carry genes for. Winning the genetic disease lottery then becomes far, far easier since the chances that both parents carry the *same* gene for a recessive disease becomes far, far higher.\n\nHistorically there is a lot of evidence for the danger of inbreeding, both in humans and in other animals (such as dogs). However, the danger is not absolute, it's merely an increase in the chance of genetic disorders.", "(edit) it's pretty well covered already, so I'll just point to this: \n_URL_0_ \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/l31pt/scenario_a_brother_and_sister_are_the_last_two/"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Results"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/l31pt/scenario_a_brother_and_sister_are_the_last_two/"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Results"]]}
{"q_id": "4hud9f", "title": "Was there anything special about geese in Rome?", "selftext": "So I'm reading a [fun piece of fiction](_URL_0_) about a Roman trader that got stranded on an expedition and is making their way back to Roman lands.   \n\nOne of the stories that came up is the following:  \n\n > Geese are sacred in Rome: once, when a huge horde of Gauls descended on Rome and tried to sneak into the city, the watchdogs failed to do their duty of warning their masters, but the geese clamoured loudly, warning the Romans of the Gauls\u2019 arrival.   \n\nI'm curious is this is complete fiction or if the author based it on anything more solid we know about the Romans or some sort of Roman myth.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hud9f/was_there_anything_special_about_geese_in_rome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2sebql"], "score": [30], "text": ["It's a reference to the story in Livy and several other authors that when the Gauls attempted an assault on the Capitoline (the rest of the city having been taken already) the geese alerted the garrison with their calls. But geese were by no means sacred, they were one of the most commonly-eaten birds, either caught by hunting or trapping, or else kept in confinement and force-fed (to fatten their livers). Geese were important in augury, but so were all birds, that's sort of the point of augury. The goose was also a sacrificial animal (Ovid thinks Isis in particular received geese as offerings, which might go back to the common supposition among the Romans that geese were sacred to the Egyptians) but there wasn't anything especially sacred about them--Ovid actually jokes that despite the heroism of the Capitoline geese the animal is still eaten and offered as sacrifice. Other authors complain what a nasty bird the goose is, since its calls are irritating and it eats everything during migration time"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://ancient-adventures.com/2016/04/08/duck-and-cover/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "f6o3sm", "title": "How closely related to canines are bears?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f6o3sm/how_closely_related_to_canines_are_bears/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fi9abtv"], "score": [18], "text": ["Fairly close in the grand scheme of things.  Dogs and bears are both members of the group Carnivora, and more specifically the caniform branch.  [This figure](_URL_2_) from [van Valkenburgh et al. 2014](_URL_0_) shows the major carnivoran relationships, with caniforms in red.  Dogs (canids) split from other caniforms in the very first branching event within this group, while, bears (ursids) split off next.  So dogs are equally closely related to all other caniforms, but bears are more closely related to pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, walruses) and musteloids (red pandas, skunks, raccoons, weasels, etc.) than to dogs.  In terms of their divergence time, the most recent common ancestor of bears and dogs would have lived somewhere around \\~50 million years ago ([_URL_4_](_URL_1_) gives an average of 46 Ma, though other studies suggest older dates, up to around 60 Ma in [Nyakatura and Bininda-Emonds 2012](_URL_3_))."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.23026", "http://timetree.org/", "https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/80cc448b-8c25-4acb-aae3-586fab6f6af5/ar23026-fig-0001-m.jpg", "https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7007-10-12", "timetree.org"]]}
{"q_id": "7fqbcw", "title": "Is the longest Neuron in the human body visible to the naked eye?", "selftext": "The longest neuron in the human body, according to my AP Biology class, is 1 meter long and runs down the leg(s). Would it be possible to see it without any aid, or is it still too small to be seen? \nWould someone be able to feel it if it was draped across their hand?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7fqbcw/is_the_longest_neuron_in_the_human_body_visible/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqe4r3l"], "score": [11], "text": ["You\u2019re thinking of neurons of the sciatic nerve, which runs from your toes to your spinal column. The nerve itself is visible to the naked eye as it is quite large. At mid thigh the nerve contains approximately 27,000 axons. However, a single axon (while the size may vary) is approximately 1-20um in diameter, simply too small to see with the naked eye. If you wanted to visualize a single axon with the naked eye your best bet is the Giant Squid Axon, which can reach a diameter of 1mm.    \n    \n     \n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3706794/"]]}
{"q_id": "3e4611", "title": "why do some bands, like tool, not want to have their music on spotify?", "selftext": "Is it a record label thing? And if so, why do some bands have their music on Spotify while others, perhaps from the same label, don't?\n\nEDIT: I ask because I noticed that even though Tool and A Perfect Circle are both fronted by Maynard, APC has their music on Spotify while Tool doesn't.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e4611/eli5_why_do_some_bands_like_tool_not_want_to_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctbbgx9", "ctbbw0i", "ctbelek", "ctbgmx1", "ctbgsnx"], "score": [6, 16, 2, 10, 2], "text": ["Neil Young took his discography off of the streaming services citing issues with sound quality.  ", "When you stream a song on Spotify or a similar service, they must pay the record company (or whoever owns the rights to the song) a royalty fee. Depending on the band and how much clout they have, this royalty amount varies, but its usually fractions of a cent. However, when someone purchases a song on iTunes, for example, the rights owner is paid 70% of the sale price (69 cents for $0.99 songs and 90 cents for $1.29 songs). And therefore, in order for an artist to make as much off a song streaming on Spotify as they do off a sale on iTunes, someone has to listen to it perhaps upwards of 100 times, depending on their payout from the streaming service.\n\nTL;DR: the payout from 1 song stream on Spotify is fractions of a cent where buying that song on iTunes yields 70-90 cents for the owner of the rights to the song. Some artists hope people will buy their music if they can't stream it.", "For a variety of reasons but typically because the royalties they get from streaming are far, far less then they would make off of album sales. You typically hear this line of reasoning from super huge megastars (Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean et al) who actually still sell CDs. Streaming royalties are great if you're an independent musician who can't expect to go platinum; they're basically found money if you only really sell 10k albums. But if you could make ten times as much from album sales as you could from streaming royalties, it makes sense that you would restrict streaming as much as possible. See this great infographic, which illustrates exactly how many streams a month an artist would need from each service to make a minimum wage monthly income: _URL_0_\n\nAccording to that math, an artist would need 4.05 million streams per month on spotify to make $1,160. That's fucking absurd. Conversely, an artist would only have to sell between 1,161 and 3,871 units (depending on what kind of royalty deal they have inked into their contract) to make an equivalent amount of money selling physical discs in a retail store. If you can expect to sell that many albums regularly, you obviously would because it's a far better deal income-wise. ", "People are missing out on a fairly large reason why they don't. Tool puts a lot of effort into creating a full product basically. They want you to buy their physical album because a lot of effort was put into the artwork plus the songs are meant to be one giant product such as the hidden songs within 10,000 Days. ", "Tool in particular is doing a scorched earth thing with their label.  They hate their label so much and refuse to do anything that will net them any more money off their work."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful2/selling_out_550.png"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7vrgbb", "title": "why do some diets (like paleo) say beans are unhealthy, toxic or have \"antinutrients\"? are there toxins or antinutrients in cooked beans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vrgbb/eli5_why_do_some_diets_like_paleo_say_beans_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtuii92", "dtuiog6", "dtuiom5", "dtuj6v6", "dtujdhk"], "score": [34, 10, 7, 5, 7], "text": ["There is no such thing as an \u2018antinutrient\u2019. Also, don\u2019t ever listen to anyone who uses the word \u2018toxin\u2019.", "A lot of cereals and brans and legumes contain phytic acid, which impairs the absorption of iron and calcium.\n\nBUT phytic acid also help against kidney stones and some cancers.\n\nBasically if you soak your beans ahead of time you\u2019ll be fine.", "Because fad diets are dumb, based on nonsense, and attract hucksters, con-men, and true believers in crazy woo along with people who just want to get skinny.", "There are substances *which can be toxic* in everything, even water. That being said, unless you are sampling random poisonous plants from the countryside (or a victim of your country's failing plumbing infrastructure), it is unlikely you are being exposed to dangerous amounts of them in your run of the mill diet. \n\nThat doesn't prevent idiots and new age sages and guys who just want to make money off you from saying \"There's cyanide in apples!\" (there is) and that you need to eat their expensive diet or apples will kill you (they won't). ", "There is no such thing as an \"antinutrient\" and the word \"toxins\" doesn't have a specific biological meaning.  These words are buzzwords for fad diets that make them sound more scientific when they are not.  There are certain chemicals that can inhibit your body's ability to process nutrients, but few of these are significant or harmful in any way, and lots of them have helpful effects themselves.  Almost anything you eat can be toxic in the right quantities (like water!) and most of the \"harmful\" elements in food are processed away by your liver and kidneys.  \n\nApple seeds are a good example - they actually contain a tiny amount of a chemical called amygdalin, which can convert into cyanide when eaten.  Cyanide is a very deadly poison to humans, but the quantity in a few apple seeds isn't enough to harm you - you'd have to eat a few cups worth of seeds to cause any damage, and that's never going to happen if you're eating a couple of apples a day.  But nobody would say that apples contain \"toxins.\"\n\nPaleo is a fad diet with no real scientific backing that spreads because people latch on to pseudo-scientific buzz words like \"natural\" or \"toxin.\"  Now that doesn't mean that paleo diets are necessarily bad - I actually cook pretty close to it at home (mostly seafood, meats, veggies, fruits, and pretty few grains or carbs).  But they aren't a magic ticket to weight loss or to healthy living, there's no solid research to back up the claims that they make, and there are a million ways to eat paleo and still be unhealthy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3dko68", "title": "why is pee only yellow or clear?", "selftext": "Why isn't it ever blue or green or red if I eat lots of food coloring or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dko68/eli5_why_is_pee_only_yellow_or_clear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct630qq", "ct6351c", "ct6396n", "ct63hgi", "ct64eqa", "ct659lc", "ct68j1x"], "score": [17, 78, 10, 8, 3, 24, 3], "text": ["It's not only yellow or clear. It can be [brown](_URL_0_) if you're super dehydrate or have something like rhabdo, liver failure, or kidney failure. It can also be red if you're suffering from [hematuria](_URL_1_). I've heard stories of people consuming mass quantities of food dye and urinating other colors but I wouldn't advise it. You can also take certain supplements (B12) and make your urine neon yellow/green. Be happy you only pee yellow or clear. ", "[Here's the Cleveland Clinic's guide to pee](_URL_0_).\n\nLots of colorful information in there.  ", "Heme (makes up blood) is broken down and urobilin, yellow in color, results that is then excreted as waste from the body. The more hydrated you are, the more dilute this chemical is in your urine.", "To many of those sonic the hedgehog popsicles they used to sell in ice cream trucks and it will be blue.", "Silly side question. Can taking excess vitamins cause your pee to change colour? When I take my morning vitamins I always get bright yellow colour pee, I have just assumed that its excess water soulable vitamins being removed.", "My pee was black one time. Like coffee straight out the pot. \n\nI had to go to the hospital because my feces was light grey as well. Turns out my gall bladder was killing my pancreas and I wasn't getting any bile in my intestines. ", "You can pee blue if you take some methylene blue. It is sometimes used by chemists to prank each other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://crossfitimpulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/RhabdoUrine.jpg", "http://www.kidney-cares.org/uploads/allimg/130718/2-130GQ15JA37.png"], ["http://healthhub.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/13-HHB-1407-The-Color-of-Pee-Infographic_FNL-finalnm.pdf"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hnb6g", "title": "What are some recommended books/audiobooks for the layman?", "selftext": "First: I understand this is an incredibly broad question, and probably belongs in multiple subreddits - physics/biology/etc., but I figured here is probably a great place to start a good reading list for those of us that aren't formally educated scientists.\n\nI've got a decent library started, but am always on the lookout for a great book to get my mind going. I don't have any higher education in any formal area of science, but have always been fascinated with understanding the universe. I'll list what I have (they were all highly recommended to me, though I haven't finished reading them all), and hopefully others wondering the same thing can get some pointers as well. Most of these are heavily related to physics and mathematics, but I'd love a good book on just about any topic!\n\nSitting on my shelf:\n\n* [Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything](_URL_4_) - Multiple Topics\n\n* [Brian Greene - The Fabric of the Cosmos](_URL_1_) - Physics (traditional/quantum/particle/theoretical/etc.), Cosmology\n\n* [Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality](_URL_3_) - Physics (traditional/quantum/particle/theoretical/etc.), Cosmology\n\n* [Clive \"Max\" Maxfield - Bebop to the Boolean Boogie](_URL_5_) - Electronics/Computer Engineering\n\n* [Leonard Mlodinow - Euclid's Window](_URL_6_) - Mathematics\n\n* [Michio Kaku - Physics of the Impossible](_URL_8_) - Theoretical Physics, General Inspiration :)\n\n* [Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind](_URL_9_) - Philosophy/Quantum Physics\n\n* [Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality](_URL_2_) - Mathematics, Physics, many topics (very challenging for the layman but very rewarding)\n\n* [The Teaching Company - Great Courses Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution Modern Physics for Non-Scientists](_URL_10_)\n\n* [The Teaching Company - Particle Physics for Non-Physicists: A Tour of the Microcosmos](_URL_7_)\n\n* [Steven Hawking - The Universe in a Nutshell](_URL_0_) - I'd hope everyone has browsed this at least once in their life :P", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hnb6g/what_are_some_recommended_booksaudiobooks_for_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1wrmfm", "c1ws2bk", "c1ws6l5", "c1wslbg", "c1wsusk"], "score": [3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["How does universe in a nutshell differ from a brief history of time?", "Another reason the \"Save\" feature was invented.", "Seems like you need some biology there:\n\nSean B. Carroll - Making of the Fittest\n\nis a good place to start. It has the obligiatory Bio popsci \"creation is wrong\" part, but the majority of it is really facinating science.", "[Douglas Hofstadter - G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid](_URL_1_) - About logic, patterns, strange loops, the self, DNA among other things.\n\n[Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor's Tale](_URL_0_) - A journey through the history of evolution \n\n", "Carl Sagan - Cosmos   (philosophy/cosmology)\n\n\nCarl Sagan - The Dragons of Eden   (the development of the human mind)\n\n\nArthur Koestler - The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe   (a beautiful book on the evolution of human thought)\n\n\nSimon Singh - Fermats Last Theorem   (great book on andrew wiles)\n\n\nMario Livio - The Equation the Couldn't Be Solved   (history of group theory)\n\nedit:  the mr. tompkins series of books are also quite good"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nutshell-Stephen-William-Hawking/dp/055380202X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306735039&amp;sr=1-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/dp/0375727205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306733785&amp;sr=8-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Road-Reality-Complete-Guide-Universe/dp/0679776311/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306734880&amp;sr=1-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Cosmos/dp/0307265633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306734586&amp;sr=8-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything-Hardcover/dp/B003AX97PS/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306734630&amp;sr=1-3", "http://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Third-Unconventional/dp/1856175073/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1306735709&amp;sr=8-2", "http://www.amazon.com/Euclids-Window-Geometry-Parallel-Hyperspace/dp/0684865246/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1306734819&amp;sr=1-1", "http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=1247", "http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Impossible-Scientific-Exploration-Teleportation/dp/0307278824/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306735101&amp;sr=1-1", "http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computers/dp/0192861980/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1306734851&amp;sr=1-1", "http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=153"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor's_Tale", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach"], []]}
{"q_id": "2f621i", "title": "how is it possible that athletic results keep getting better and better; will they ever plateau?", "selftext": "It seems like every Olympics, World Championship, etc, at least one record is broken, usually more. It's to the point now where gold-medal-winning 100m sprinters of a few decades ago would barely even rank in the top 10 today.\n\nI know some of this is down to better training and nutrition, better equipment (more so in some sports than others), but surely there must be some limit that results from the human body? Will we ever hit a point where we have seen basically the fastest a person can run, the most weight they can lift, the furthest they can throw a javelin, etc? Where the records then just stand indefinitely?\n\n**EDIT:** Thanks everyone, for the insightful responses (and areas to look at further)! Much appreciated and does help it make more sense to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f621i/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_athletic_results/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck681o1", "ck69eqz", "ck69p01", "ck69wul", "ck6aa3j", "ck6anx0", "ck6avr7", "ck6bc92", "ck6bv5k", "ck6c753", "ck6fpzc", "ck6geye"], "score": [55, 29, 5, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6], "text": ["Theoretically, the human body has finite limits that it cannot exceed. Bones can take only so much force without breaking, the human circulatory system has limits due to size, etc... However, there can always be outliers that are genetically better suited than the average human for certain sports. So in other words, we could plateau, but someone better could always be born to break the record.", "Modern training techniques and nutrition is a large part of it, but have you noticed that for each particular sport, the athletes look more or less the same?\n\nCompare recent athletes in say... Running to those from centuries ago. Back then, it was believed that the most \"balanced\" or in other words, average body types would excel in all sports. By this I mean, not too tall, not too short, average weight and strength builds. The middle of the bell curve.\n\nOf course over time this mentality disappeared as certain body shapes excelled in certain sports. Now back to the runners, have you noticed that they're generally taller than average population? Or that they're fit but not overly muscular? \n\nIn short, certain body types simply perform some activities better than others. In addition to this, notice that with each new world record, the gap is becoming slimmer and slimmer.\n\nIn other words, new records are constantly being made, but they are perhaps only a fraction of a second (or point) better than their predecessors. New technologies can record these kinds of things down to the thousandth of a second.\n\nSo yes, new records are being made, but their improvements aren't as big as you'd think.\n\nHope this helps, you can probably get a better understanding of this in asapscience's channel on YouTube.", "The records for all sports have grown along with our understanding of the humans body and how to get optimal performance out of it. \n\nThings will plateau on average, but I think doping (which is already a HUGE issue) will become bigger and bigger problems. With time it will become easier and easier to bypass drug testing (which is already very easy, look at people like lance armstrong\u2026 the only tests he ever failed (and managed to suppress in 1999) were unrelated to his massive doping related victory spree at the end of his career).\n\nEffectively if you give the athletes chemicals that are found naturally in the body, it becomes much harder to define who is doping and who just has naturally higher levels (which some just do). Then theres similar more effective steroids that are MUCH more effective and break down INTO the normal body hormones\u2026 and there are just some things that do not show up on the tests. \n\nYou can also dope to develop your muscles and fitness, then effectively 'detox' while doing the much easier (relatively) task of maintaining that fitness. Certain drugs would/could help 'detox' faster from a drug test scenario\u2026 it all gets very dangerous and unethical. \n\nThe main thing holding all this back is lack of co-operation of skilled pharmacists. It can all be done easily enough, but relatively few people with the knowledge are willing to use it that way. Obviously people like Lance and his sponsors were able to find willing experts and provide them with enough resources quietly. The problem is that these people haven't really been held to account in any cases, and snuck off to dope more and more people in increasingly sophisticated ways.  \n\nRecords will continue to be broken as science advances\u2026 but some of that will be due to the immoral side of science. ", "Science and technology, such as nutrition and optimum workouts, have allowed people to become better athletes. This is the same as how medicine has allowed people to live longer.\n\nThe limit is the limit of our technology, which we don't know because we don't know.", "Yes they will plateau.\n\nIn high jump for example the last world record was set in 1993.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere are plenty of world records that have been set over 20 years ago.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nOf course, it's possible that some new technique (like the [fosbury flop](_URL_2_)) or training methodology or rule change will allow new world records in any particular field, but if you look at the world record progression in a number of sports, they seem to be approaching asymptotes of  the maximum that a human can achieve.", "Here this may help, apparently the athletes have pretty much already maxed, all that changes is the environment and tech. [Proof/Source](_URL_0_)", "Check out the perfection point by John Brenkus, he explains what the max human capacity is for basically all athletic tasks ", "I have always found it odd that horse racing times have not continued to improve. I believe Secretariat still owns a few track records; how has technology and the advancement in our knowledge of health/fitness/diet not provided real results?", "Here's the TED talk on this exact topic\n\n_URL_0_", "Statistically, as the population gets larger the chances that someone will fall out further on the bell curve becomes more likely. This result seems to be a consequence of population growth.", "There definitely is a plateau, but you must understand that the human body isnt as frail as our society makes us believe. In Africa, there are hunter tribes where the hunters are able to run for days. Not super fast, but constant; they use this \"technique\" to tire and hunt down their prey - yes, the animals start to tire before the humans do. The human body is capable of amazing feats.\n\nJust recently (as in, the last 100 years) we started to examine the human body really thorough. One might say we are still in our infancy with modern medicine, and there will be a lot of new discoveries.\n\nIts the same with sports medicine, really. Studies are made, we learn more about how to train more efficient and how to put it to use practically. \n\nBut some day into the future, we will know everything, Im sure. We will know all synergies, all tricks and all methods how to train most efficiently in a certain discipline. \nWe are very close already; besides from genetic diversity most of the athletes are literally the same. You see this with the so called \"records\", where one beats the former record holder with the fraction of a second: one runs 100m in 9,6 and the better one in 9,5. In theory, he was better, but practically there is absolutely no difference. 0,1 seconds is nothing, one might say they are the same in regards to output.", "_URL_0_ Ted talks "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men's_high_jump_world_record_progression", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_Flop"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0"]]}
{"q_id": "2rrmsk", "title": "why doesn't the wetness of your eyeballs freeze in such negative degree temperatures?", "selftext": "I was greeted with -12 this morning. My nostril hairs stuck together, lost my breath, and a tear running down my cheek just stopped in place. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rrmsk/eli5_why_doesnt_the_wetness_of_your_eyeballs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnillog", "cnilqp3", "cnilv8s", "cnim2pz", "cniopvj", "cnirdkd", "cnixqa4", "cnj2tsj"], "score": [103, 5, 5, 8, 3, 16, 3, 3], "text": ["They're largely encapsulated in your nice, warm head, and receive a pretty continuous supply of blood from your core, which provides them heat. As well, your tears, being salty, are somewhat more resistant to freezing. ", "-12 (F or C) isn't really that cold.\n\nTry -40 degrees (the temperature where F and C are the same number).  That is cold!\n\nThere is a danger of exposed skin freezing within a few minutes and you tend to get frost on your eye lashes  &  nose hair...but it's never felt like my eye balls were going to freeze.  ", "Salt. Not all liquids freeze at the same temperature.", "I've been in weather where my eyes felt almost sticky. Of course, this is the kind of weather where you get crystalized mucus inside your nose. This is dangerous cold.", "I believe that eyeballs freeze in -60 degrees Celsius ;)", "It does if you get cold enough. At temps lower than -40 (not including windchill) blinking makes your eyelids freeze together temporarily and you can really feel the cold in you eyes. And these tempurTures it's not recommended to leave the house but if you do make sure to cover all skin. Toque, scarf, face mask and ski goggles, the whole shebang or you will get frostbite.", "I used to live in Winnipeg Manitoba and on certain days I could feel my eyes freeze and I'd have to close them almost shut to avoid that. So to answer, your eyeballs do freeze when it's cold enough.", "Helps that they are recessed in sockets which helps reduce air flowing past them, they'd freeze pretty fast if they were on stalks out in the breeze."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kvrqc", "title": "How would a piece of paper only one molecule thick look/behave?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kvrqc/how_would_a_piece_of_paper_only_one_molecule/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2nmuvq", "c2nn9jy", "c2nna64", "c2nns4x", "c2nmuvq", "c2nn9jy", "c2nna64", "c2nns4x"], "score": [3, 14, 7, 5, 3, 14, 7, 5], "text": ["Well, I don't think it is actually possible to form the overlapping fibers that make up paper given your criteria.\n\nPerhaps someone here will be able to describe in more general terms how the properties of paper change as you approaches zero thickness.  \n\n", "Mostly, it would just be really, really fragile.\n\nThat said, reduced-dimensionality materials are a really cool topic in nanotechnology right now. [Graphene](_URL_0_) is a sheet of carbon, entirely one atom thick. It displays some really cool properties in terms of electronics.", "Paper is a material made of millions of intertangled polymeric fibers, usually cellulose.  The physical properties of paper come from these intermolecular interactions.  As you approach thinner and thinner dimensions, your lose those interactions, making the paper very fragile. I should also say that some properties of paper are determine by the grain size of the particles in the paper.", "Assuming you could make some kind of tough, non-fragile monomeric sheet of... something, would it be dangerous to handle? I would imagine that a paper cut could very well take your arm off.  Would you be able to use a piece of the stuff, properly mounted, as, say, a scalpel?", "Well, I don't think it is actually possible to form the overlapping fibers that make up paper given your criteria.\n\nPerhaps someone here will be able to describe in more general terms how the properties of paper change as you approaches zero thickness.  \n\n", "Mostly, it would just be really, really fragile.\n\nThat said, reduced-dimensionality materials are a really cool topic in nanotechnology right now. [Graphene](_URL_0_) is a sheet of carbon, entirely one atom thick. It displays some really cool properties in terms of electronics.", "Paper is a material made of millions of intertangled polymeric fibers, usually cellulose.  The physical properties of paper come from these intermolecular interactions.  As you approach thinner and thinner dimensions, your lose those interactions, making the paper very fragile. I should also say that some properties of paper are determine by the grain size of the particles in the paper.", "Assuming you could make some kind of tough, non-fragile monomeric sheet of... something, would it be dangerous to handle? I would imagine that a paper cut could very well take your arm off.  Would you be able to use a piece of the stuff, properly mounted, as, say, a scalpel?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2htfxs", "title": "how does a coding language get 'coded' in the first place?", "selftext": "Telling a computer what to do using a coding language which both you and it understand is quite a simple idea, though sometimes technically complex to actually perform. But, how do the elementary components of that coding language get made (or coded?) and understood by the computer in the first place, when presumably there are no established building blocks of code for you to use?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2htfxs/eli5_how_does_a_coding_language_get_coded_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckvudvh", "ckvujwl", "ckvur85", "ckvxm9u", "ckw1vux", "ckw2822", "ckw2ewt", "ckw3nqa", "ckw4bcf", "ckw4kce", "ckw5acp", "ckw5l9t", "ckw5swp", "ckw6nbh", "ckw7lz9", "ckw7rou", "ckw7y9b", "ckw85c2", "ckw97gv", "ckw9uuq", "ckwavvu", "ckwbsei", "ckwcluj", "ckwdkdg", "ckwdy8m", "ckwe2wx", "ckwf3bw", "ckwfrlz", "ckwg1nf", "ckwgxj4", "ckwiasj", "ckwilb0", "ckwk38c"], "score": [3171, 2, 66, 3, 2, 2, 17, 3, 2, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 34, 9, 2, 7, 2, 2, 12, 4, 3, 5, 4, 4, 4, 2, 6, 2, 2, 13], "text": ["You program it in another language. A lot of languages popular today, like PHP, were originally implemented in C/C++. Basically the PHP interpreter is a C program that accepts text input formatted as proper PHP, and does the thing that the PHP is asking for. \n\nC++ was itself originally implemented in C. It started out as a compiler written in C.\n\nC itself was made by writing a compiler in assembly language.\n\nAssembly language was made by writing an assembler directly in binary. (Or 'compiling by hand', which means manually turning readable code into unreadable, but functionally identical, binary that can run on the machine natively.)\n\nBinary works because that's how it was engineered. Computer engineers made the circuits that actually do the adding, push or whatever. They also made it so that you could specify what to do with 'op codes' and arguments. A simple, but made up, example CPU might use the opcode 0000 for adding, and accept two 4 bit numbers to add. In that language if I told the CPU\n\n000000010001 it'd add 1 and 1 together and do... whatever it was designed to do with the result. \n\nSo now we're at the bottom. Ultimately all code ends up coming down here to the binary level.", "ELI5: every operation of a programming language was set up by the creators of that language to be convertable to assembler code, which is just a more readable form of the 0s and 1s the processor actually works with.\n\n\nELI20: Remember that a computer only operates in 0s and 1s.\nThe incredibly long string of 0s and 1s that makes up any process or program in a computer is called \"bitcode\". The next level of that would be bytecode (1 byte = 8 bits) which is just the same code, still just numbers, but now in Hexadecimal (digits range from 0 to E) so its 4 times more compressed.\n\nComputer programmers came up with a pretty much universally (small changes apply between different makes of processors) accepted language called \"assembler code\", which is just a code the computer reads and translates DIRECTLY into bytecode.\nSo there is, for example, an ADD operation in assembler code, which adds two numbers together. Let's say the add operation is defined as 0x01 in hexadecimal, or seven zeroes and a 1 in bitcode.\nThe operation ADD 1 1 would then be read by the computer as \n0x010101. The computer then takes the first byte, recognizes the ADD operation and then applies it to the next bytes, in this case also 1s, so it would compute 1+1 and come out with 2.\n\nAlright, that is the basics you need to understand to understand the actually pretty simple answer to your question:\nProgramming languages can be translated into assembler code. When a programming language gets written, the programmer assigns one (or usually a lot more than one) assembler operation to any operation of the language.\n\nSo if you write\n\nx = 1 + 1;\n\nin C, for example, the programmer set up a chain of commands to be executed. In this case, the assembler will get the address of where the value x is stored in memory, then perform the operation \"ADD 1 1\" and then push the new value (2 in this case) onto the adress where x is stored.\nAnd thats how you program a programming language.", "The point is, there *are* established building blocks. Namely, the machine code ISA (instruction set architecture) of the processor you're coding for. The processor itself 'understands' the machine code directly because it is physically built to do so, by arranging its circuits in the right pattern when it is stamped out in the factory.\n\nEverything else translates down to machine code in one way or another, either by a 'compiler' that reads the source code and converts it into a single big machine code program or by an 'interpreter' that reads the source code data and acts in ways corresponding to the logic of the source code. When a programmer wants to make a new programming language, they first think up the language's specification, then write a compiler or interpreter to perform according to the specification they came up with. In many cases, they may write multiple compilers or interpreters for different machine code ISAs, so that their language can be used on different types of processors.", "You'll have to accept that you'll eventually hit a wall if you keep digging.\n\nLet's use an adding machine consisting of two measuring cups as an example. Suppose you have 200 ml of water in one and 300 ml in the other. Pour one into the other, making 500 ml.\n\nThis simply works. Is there anything more you need to know? Sure, you can investigate the physical processes that make it work. Gravity makes things tremendously easier. It helps that surface tension has little effect at this scale. You can count molecules. Eventually you'll have to stop because you've arrived at the frontier of known physics, or analysis becomes wildly impractical, whichever comes first.\n\nThe important thing is that it isn't hard to devise mechanisms that work. I don't know why things are that way. You could invoke a variant of the anthropic principle: a universe that supports life ought to contain practical building blocks. But then why does anything exist at all? It never ends. In the end, whatever is going on under the hood, we know we do exist, and likewise measuring cups and transistors are working for us.", "A program is just a list of instructions -- each instruction represented as an encoded number, and the CPU is designed to interpret each number as a specific command (e.g. 1 is to load from memory, 2 is to add two numbers, 3 is to subtract them, 4 is to store to memory, etc).\n\nThe first programs were written out laboriously by hand and put into the machine (via switches on the panel, or punch cards, etc. depending on the type of machine).  \n\nOne of those programs was called an \"assembler\" -- it was a simple program that did little more than translate a list of human-readable labels, like \"ADD\", to a list of numbers that CPU understands.\n\nThe next program was written in assembler language, and it was a simple program to translate a formula, such as \"x = y + z\", to assembly language (\"LOAD y, LOAD z, ADD, STORE x\").  This program was called a \"compiler\".\n\nThe next program was written in this simple formula language.  And what did it do?  It was a compiler for an even more complex programming language.\n\nAnd so on.", "The concept is called bootstrapping. You take the pieces you already have to make larger pieces. Then use those larger pieces to make even bigger ones. So it started as someone literally wrote a program in 1's and 0's (this is a simplification, it's actually at a hardware level) to make the first programs that then understood assembly commands and then other languages are build on assembly and languages are built form languages.\n\nA common example is that python interpreters were written in C++. But python became powerful and stable enough that python interpreters are now written from python interpreters", "I feel like people aren't getting to the absolute basics, which might help your question. I'll be very imprecise, but it might help: all the things a computer does at the most basic level are done PHYSICALLY within its circuitry. It is all electronics, and it is all binary. So there are a bunch of wires running around the computer, and those wires can either be at 6V (we'll call that 1) or 0V (we'll call that 0). Through purely physical circuitry, it is possible to make all sorts of input/output devices that do what you want. For example, you can make a simple circuit where two wires go in and one wire comes out. If the two wires going in are both at 6V, the wire going out will be at 6V. If any of the input wires are at 0V, then the output wire is at 0V. Alternatively, you can make a simple circuit where if either of the input wires is at 6V, the output wire is at 6V, and if both input wires are at 0V then the output wire is at 0V. Or even more, you can make it so that only if both input wires are at 0V will the output wire be at 6V. These all represent 'logic' operators, which I think other people in this thread have talked about (AND, OR, NOT, etc.). So you can basically put a whole bunch of these simple circuits together to make a computer.\n\nMy main point is that programming languages are all just an abstraction of the actual physical processes going on, so that humans like us can comprehend it better and actually be able to do stuff. But don't let the fact that you can type a bunch of numbers and words and make things magically happen confuse you. It is really all just a bunch of electrons traveling down wires. (and some other stuff, but you can worry about that later)\n\nAnd, 6V just means electrons want to travel down the wire, while 0V means electrons don't want to travel down the wire.", "Assuming you have no prior tools available, you first start writing a program in 0s and 1s (Binary) to program a simple assembler. This assembler takes very simple computer instructions in a text document and translates them, verbatim, into binary. Assembly can be used to program a more complex compiler, such as C. Once you have a basic C compiler, you can use the C compiler to write more advanced versions of itself that support more features. Soon you'll want to branch out into more complex languages such as C++ or Java. \n\nIn the end you are just using tools to abstract your text documents (source code) as much as possible to reduce the amount of work it takes to write a program. Instead of hundreds of lines of assembly, you just have a compiler read \"cout  <  <  \"Hello world\";\" and write those hundreds of lines of assembly for you.\n\nCross compilers exist that allow us to use a compiler on one type of computer to write programs for another type of computer, so we can bypass most of the rudimentary steps and write directly in more complex programming languages for new computer types.", "was the original language, then, coded purely by hand? for instance, all the binary instances were input to (e.g. python, since it seems relatively basic and powerful to a newbie like me) python in every singular instance and then other languages were developed from it?", "Binary is the simplest of programming languages (essentially binary is a collection of 1's and 0's that a computer interprets). Binary is readable by every device (yes, including light bulbs, head phones, speakers, etc). Essentially a \"1\" represents \"on\" or \"powered\" and a \"0\" represents \"off\" or \"not powered\".\n\nThe next level up programming language is generally something called Assembly. This programming language interprets commands from human readable code to Binary (a collection of 1's and 0's). A \"program\" called a compiler converts Assembly into Binary. Developers usually don't stray lower than Assembly, as binary is super complicated (which is the reason why programming languages were made).\n\nAfter this, we get into languages commonly refereed to as \"lower level languages\". These (next to binary and assembly) are the more advanced languages. These have access to the computer's memory and other super complicated stuff that I won't get into. These languages also have compilers that convert their code into Assembly or sometimes binary.\n\nAbove low level languages, we have high level languages. These languages are usually less powerful, but are much easier to learn (not every language is like this, but for the most part this is true). These languages also have compilers to convert them into either other high level languages, low level languages, Assembly, or binary.\n\n\n**Tl:Dr:**\n\nThere is an absolute low level language called binary that all electronic devices (by that I mean ALL) understand. Languages are all built upon this one language and are in a roundabout way interpreted into this code.", "Not a single one of the answers that I've read to this are actually geared to a five year old, nor in fact to anyone not already possessing some computer knowledge outside what a normally educated person would have.\n\nComputers are machines that execute sets of instructions.  Almost all machines that we call computers today execute sets of instructions that are \"binary\", in other words, made up of 1s and 0s.  You can program a computer by putting the correct binary instructions into its memory and (somehow) getting it to start executing them.  But that would make writing a program very difficult and tiresome.  \n\nSo we have computer languages to use instead.  The languages are still sets of instructions, just like the binary, but they are easier for people to understand.  The instructions written in the languages eventually get translated into binary, because that is the only kind of instruction the computer understands.  So programming almost always involves writing in a \"computer language\" (like C, Java, C++, C#, etc.).\n\nSo how do we get a language in the first place?\n\nSomeone, somehow, somewhere, has to write some of the binary instructions to start off with.  They can use it to write programs that translate languages into binary, but some binary has to be done by someone at some point.", "Most programing languages when compiled are transformed into assembly language (machine code) which simply tells the computer hardware how to behave. The rest is just electricity in a circuit.\nSome newer more advanced programming languages are transformed into (intermediate language) when compiled. Then when you run the program, it is further compiled into (machine code). This gives you the benefit of writing the same code for different computer architectures. Examples of this (just in time compilation) are Java and .Net.\nIt is actually amazing that every function the computer performs actually boils down a handful of functions, exactly like how everything there is in mathematics boils down to a handful of operations (addition, subtraction, etc.)", "It was done using building blocks, or baby steps.\n\nYou take the most basic form of a computer language, 1s and 0s to start performing and action.  Let's say we want to do an \"add\" action.  Some string of 01010101s would mean that action to the computer's hardware.\n\nNow, we go up a level.  We find out hey, we have to add a lot of things.  Instead of writing all of those digits, why don't we create a language that when we type \"add\" it translates that in the 01010101s and makes the computer do it.\n\nNow, we need to do something harder, like execute a loop 5 times.   To do this, we make use of the \"add\" we programmed earlier.  So when I tell my new language to loop, it uses the \"add\" function to keep track of how many times we've been through that loop so far.\n\nIt just keeps going and going.   The real theory behind it with contexts and what it takes to make a code compiler is awful.  One of the worst classes I ever took.", "The CPU itself has a native language it understands, created by the chip designer. This is hardware, not software. If you wanted to, you could write a program in that language, though nobody does that anymore. At this point, you could write a C++ compiler using C++ itself.", "CPUs understand numbers of a fixed size and do specific things based on what numbers they are fed.  It's like Pac-Man eating dots, except the CPU eats numbers one at a time, from some source, like a file or region of memory.  In the early days they flipped switches to change every single number, one at a time, to set the right numbers in the right order.  It's like holding down the button on your alarm clock to advance the wake up time one minute at a time, except they had to do it for hundreds or thousands of numbers/instructions in a row.\n\nThen they made it easier by letting people type up the instructions onto cards with a typewritter, that could be read by the computer.  They also realized it would be easier to type small words instead of the numbers, like 'add' and 'mul', instead of each instructions being a fixed, but seemingly random number between 0 and 256 or 0 and 65 thousand-something.  They also realized you could have some small words be converted into a sequence of numbers.  So they made a program that would read in the small words and output them converted into numbers.\n\n    2323 1 25352 54567 7 5453 6302 25352 6302 5453 9583 543 953 8952\n\nbecame something like\n\n    add 1 x\n    sub 7 y\n    push y\n    push x\n    jmp hello\n\nwhich is shorter and easier for a person to remember and to read.  This process is compiling assembly language, the small words, into machine code, the numbers.\n\nNow any language that's invented can be translated into the machine code in a similar way, or it can be translated into assembly and then compiled into machine code, or it can be translated into any other language that has a compiler, which could then be compiled into machine code.  \n\nYou could translate a book into another language, then translate the translated book into a third language, and so on, as many times as you want.  And just like if you only understand English, you'd need the book to eventually be translated into English, to understand it, a CPU only understands machine code, so that's the form it needs.  It wouldn't matter to you what language the book was originally written in - you'd still be able to read it once it was translated into English.  CPUs understand so few 'words' that the equivalent book would be something like a first grade book. So the CPU doesn't care, or even have any way of knowing, about the original language.\n\nSo, you're just converting the code into code that the computer already understands.  \"presumably there are no established building blocks of code for you to use\" is false.", "It's simple: \n\n***So a computer only understands 0s and 1s, right?***\n\nYou, as an engineer, can learn that language, too, and communicate with the computer on that basic level, speaking THEIR language. After a while, you notice that you've been using some sets of 0s and 1s frequently, as they command the computer to perform certain operations/calculations. So you decide to **lable** each combination with what it means in plain English! \n\nSo, let's say 01101010100110010101101011100110111011110 means \"add A to B\". Why not make a little mechanical contraption, something like an old typewriter, with a button labelled \"addAB\" that automatically spells out that long-ass binary code whenever you press that button? \n\nThere: \n\n* **by giving that binary combination of 0s and 1s a name, you have created your own higher coding language!**\n\n* by building the mechanical contraption that automatically spells out the 0s and 1s you assigned to that name, you have created your own INTERPRETER!\n\n\nThat's, very basically, how it's done.", "It all starts with the processor. As an example, your Intel processor has hardware that can take in two numbers represented as bits, and spit out a result such as the sum of those two numbers. Therefore you can write a program that does all kinds of operations on numbers by setting a bunch of bits on the inputs on the processor and looking at the output bits of the processor as your answer.\n\n\nSo how do we put those bits into the processor, and what do we do with the bits that come out?\n\n\nThis is what RAM on your computer is used for. Ram store billions of bits. It store the bits that you want to input into the processor, and it is the place where you can store the bits that come out of the processor. A group of bits are put together into a pattern on the input of the processor to represent the numbers that you are working with and the operation, an example would be:\n\n\n1011011001100101\n\n\nAnd these bits could mean add the number 7 and the number 5, so the processor would take those bits on the input and spit out something like:\n\n\n0000000000001011\n\n\nWhich would be the answer (11).\n\n\nAnd thats the only way you can write programs for your processor. You open up your RAM, let those bits slide out of RAM and onto the input of the processor, close the RAM, wait for the processor to figure out the answer, open the RAM again to let the answer slide in.\n\n\nSo now if you have some way of having your RAM *already* be filled with a bunch of bits that has all the logic to allow you to use a keyboard and a monitor and a text editor to type in those bits in, you can program the computer to do whatever you want. You can even have shortcuts for a grouping of bits into an instruction such as:\n\n\nADD 7,5\n\n\nAnd by sliding bits through the processor you can tell the computer to first convert that instruction into bits. If understand up to this point then you should be able to see that we can keep grouping instructions into higher level instructions to make different programming languages. For example:\n\n\nADD 7,5\n\nADD 7,5\n\nADD 7,5\n\n\ncould be represented as MULTIPLY 3*(7+5)\n\n\nAnd all the instructions in high level code (like python, javascript, c#) have lower level instructions that they are converted into, and those lower level instructions are converted into lower level instructions until you get down to binary numbers which can be processed through the processor.", "Not sure which one satisfies your curiosity:\n\nThe theory behind design of a language is fairly complex; my senior computer science capstone project was to create a simple compiler. Essentially, you have to stick to some theoretical rules in order to keep your \"code\" instructions as something that can be turned into machine code.\n\nAs far as how a program gets turned into machine code; compilers are programs that turn code into binary machine instructions. The first compiler was painstakingly written in Assembly language. Essentially, it's a text representation of machine code; no easy task.\n\nSome modern languages partially compile the code or not at all; Java, for example, is turned into intermediate \"Java runtime\" code and then that runs on a \"virtual machine\" that is an interpreter between the intermediate code and instruction sets compiled for specific hardware (Windows, Mac, etc) which is why it's considered platform-independent.", "This is ELI5 not ELI6. Jeez.\n\n\nThe languages are essentially translated by another language.\n\n\nLet's say you spoke fluent French and your friend spoke fluent Japanese. You couldn't talk to each other.\n\nBut what if I could speak both? I could translate what you guys wanted to say.\n\n\nThat's basically how it's done. C++ is translated to computer speak through their mutual friend C.\n\n\n\nOvertime, we've come up with many many languages that are a lot easier to read. The first language was made in the hardware, and you know it as binary. People had to write a bunch of binary code to translate things to binary, and that language was called Assembly. And then that process just repeated itself over and over 'till we got the languages we know now.", "My understanding is that there are two key levels between your input code (C for instance) and actually moving around electrons to complete functions. These two levels are assembly code and machine language. \n\nAssembly code is a series of basic commands, like 'GET' and 'MOV' and 'JNE' that tell your computer what to with things that are stored in your physical memory locations, such as the heap and the stack. Assembly code is basically the second generation of computer language, after machine language, and each computer has a library or dictionary that equates certain assembly code commands to machine language. \n\nMachine language is the physical '1' and '0' that equate to the circuit turning off and on. In order to program in this language, you need to understand the limitations and abilities of the hardware you are working with, so that when you impute a '1' to a logic \"and\" gate, you understand what is happening at a physical level. Machine language would look a lot like this: \n\n11001000101001010101001111010101010\n\nAnd the thing is, your computer 'knows' what to do with that thanks to its Arithmetic Logic units, memory, and other crazy awesome hardware components. \n\nHope that helps. ", "If you are really interested in how computers and programming works you should go through the book **The Elements of Computing: Building a Modern Computer From First Principles.**\n\nIt used to be free, but it looks like only the first 7 chapters are free now. _URL_0_\n\nIt definitely taught me way more fundamentals about how computers and programming works than any of my CS courses. I would HIGHLY recommend it.", "I'm going to start with the hardware and then go on to the languages, so skip to the part you like.\n\nHARDWARE:\n\nHardware is based on boolean logic (binary), which was developed by mathematicians quite some time ago.  Hardware is essentially a series of binary equations put together using logic gates, made out of transistors.  These are put together using specific structures as necessary for the project, sometimes using pre-designed portions.  These also include a timer, which is used to synchronize the circuits.  For instance, let's assume that your USB port wants to put new data in memory.  But, the memory is already talking to another component.  The timer helps to let the USB system know to wait its turn.  It also prevents some parts of the system from going too quickly, which can lead to different parts of the system screwing each other up.\n\nThe end result of this process is that you get a device which interprets specific sequences of binary numbers as instructions for the computer.  For instance, 0001 might mean 'read memory,' and '0010' might mean 'write memory.'\n\nLANGUAGES:\n\nHowever, people don't go around putting in strings of binary numbers very often these days.  We have programs to do it for us.  These programs are called assemblers.  They are designed for specific types of chips, including a coded language to let you \"talk\" to the computer using shorthand.  For instance, this little sequence:\n\n    mov ax,1\n    mov bx,2\n    add ax,bx\n\ntells the assembler that you want to move the number \"1\" into a register (a special piece of memory used for calculations), move the number \"2\" into another register, and add these two together.  The assembler would translate this into the specific binary sequences needed by the processor, saving time.\n\nAssembler is a difficult language to work with, though, so we typically use much friendlier languages, such as C, which are written to be much closer to human languages and logic.  These languages are based off of concepts of mathematical languages from the early 1900s, from which some early languages, such as FORTRAN, were derived.  The actual process of designing or developing the language's structure, however, is a very complicated one, because there are *many* possible pitfalls that you can fall into.  For instance, you want everything in the language to be unambiguous, i.e. only one meaning possible.  Problem is, you can mathematically prove ambiguity, but you CANNOT prove unambiguity!  So you have to be *very* careful, and even then languages do have situations wherein they can become ambiguous.  That said, designing a language's structure itself is more of a mathematical exercise than a programming one.\n\nPrograms written in these languages are translated into working programs by a program called a compiler.  Compilers are typically split into two pieces.  The first is a front end that processes (or parses) the language itself.  Usually it then outputs an analysis of the programming that was input, which is in the form of a tree.  This is passed to the back-end, which rewrites the now-tree-ified program in machine code.  Trees are used because they tend to be fairly easy structures to work with for the programmer, and are also usually pretty efficient for the machine to use.  A compiler is usually put together using steps similar to these:\n\n1. Write a simplified compiler that uses a subset of the desired language.  You write it in another language, in assembler, or in very rare cases (almost never done today), enter the numbers directly.  Let's say you're writing a C compiler.  You could write a simplified C compiler in Pascal or assembly that does not support all the features of the language, just enough to get the compiler working.  This compiler would be capable of putting out the numbers needed to form actual usable machine code.\n\n2. You then write a second version of the compiler, using the subset of the language.  In other words, you use this \"lesser\" compiler to write the full-up compiler.\n\n3. Once you have the full-up compiler running, the compiler can then use older versions of itself to compile newer versions of itself.  In other words, the language is now written in its own language.\n\nThis process is known as \"boostrapping\" the language for a specific system.\n\nIt is also possible to build a compiler that outputs machine code for a machine that it is not currently working on, e.g. write a C compiler that runs on Intel's processors that puts out machine code that works on Motorola processors.  This is known as a cross-compiler, and since it lets you use existing tools more easily, I'm pretty sure it's used more often than old-style bootstrapping when developing new CPU architectures these days.\n\nHope that helped.\n\n", "I remember seeing a post on reddit about a guy who explained on here how he created an OS without a mouse then had to teach it how to utilize those functions until he was able to install the OS on it or something. He did this all from floppy disks I think. I know I am super late on this thread but would anyone be able to link me to that post??", "If you're interested on how the whole computer works, starting from the basic logic circuits to writing Object Oriented programs, I cannot recommend [NAND to Tetris](_URL_0_) enough..", "You start off with the machine language itself- processors are just very complex circuits with different logic gates (areas where one or more voltages in produce some expected output). It's the 1s and 0s (HIGH and LOW) entered in such a way to produce a given output, possibly organized into different sections.\n\nFrom there you have your \"opcodes\" which represent an abstracted operation like adding, subtracting, copying, etc. (really it's sets of voltages put through those gates to produce a larger, more abstract output).\n\nHey, we have the opcodes for those operations and we know what they do and how they work, why don't we make something that reads the voltages from a keyboard and displays pixels that together make up characters and words- we can have those in a format which is easily converted to binary, but display them as regular Latin fonts. We can process things character by character and assign meaning to those groups of characters, and translate it into binary.\n\nSo then you have assembly language, which is actually human-readable (if you practice enough). Now it's much easier to make sense of everything. Why don't we take some groups of operations we do over and over and do what we did with the opcodes- abstract them. I don't want to say\n\n    mov    ebx, 4\n    add    ebx, 2\n    push   eax\n\nover and over to add 2 to 4, or any number to any other number for that matter. How about we use '+'? One character to represent a number is conveniently that number plus the binary value of '\\`' (just as an example, not necessarily true), so we just subtract that from the character and bingo. We can do the same for the other number and then connect '+' to the instruction `add`.\n\n    4 + 2;\n\nThat looks much cleaner and more intuitive now, doesn't it? In fact, we should do that for quite a few things, and make it so it's easy to build off of that new system. We'd be so much more productive!\n\nI do want to point out, I am a hobbyist in this field, so not exactly a certified computer engineer/scientist (yet). Any corrections are probably more correct than this, I just wanted to give a gist of the incremental process of making new languages.", "OK. Languages are (roughly speaking) either compiled or interpreted. There's some gray area in the middle, but basically you need a compiler that compiles that language to some other language (typically machine code for your target computer) and/or you need a \"runtime\", which is more like a library that programs written in your language use to provide some of the language's features. In both cases, these are just programs on their own.\n\nSo the question is, how do you write a compiler/runtime for language X when you don't yet have a compiler/runtime for language X?\n\nIncreasingly these days, the answer is just \"you write it in another language\". Languages like Scala and Clojure utilize Java's existing JVM/runtime, and their compilers are just written in Java. Java's compiler was (maybe still is) written in C.\n\nAt some point, you hit the end of the line. You need a compiler for a language, and there's no existing language out there you can use. What do you do then? The classical answer here is called \"bootstrapping\".\n\nFirst off, note that your computer comes out of the factory able to understand programs written in its own machine language. That's what a CPU does -- it's hard-wired to run machine language programs. So you could in principle write an entire compiler in machine language and be done with it. But that's really painful, as machine language is just a stream of bits that's really hard for humans to work with. You probably also have an assembler for your computer's architecture, so you could treat that as the lowest level instead of raw machine code, but in theory, it doesn't make any difference. It's just slightly easier.\n\nSo instead, you sit down and write a compiler in machine language for a tiny little part of your language. Let's call this compiler 1. Once you have that done, you write a compiler for a slightly bigger part of your language (compiler 2), *but you write it in the subset of the language you just wrote a compiler for in machine language*. Now you can use compiler 1 to compile the code for compiler 2, and that gives you a new compiler that can compile programs written in the bigger language handled by compiler 2. Now you write a compiler for a bigger piece again, compile it with compiler 2, and that gives you compiler 3. And so on until you've gotten a compiler for the full language.\n\nAt this final step, you have compiler N-1 that compiles *almost* your whole language, and you have the code for compiler N (using only constructs available in compiler N-1). You compile compiler N using compiler N-1, and now you have a full compiler for your language.\n\nAs a last step, it often makes sense to recompile compiler N with itself. You've just built it with compiler N-1, but compiler N might enable new optimizations, error checking, etc., so doing that one last pass can be useful.\n\nThat's pretty much it. In practice, at any point in the process you can just decide to target some existing language. There are loads of compilers out there that take programs written in some obscure language and compile them into C code, for example. But in principle, that's how you'd go from a high level language to having a compiler for that language without needing any additional libraries.", "No mention of [lex  &  yacc](_URL_2_)?\n\nSoftware engineering usually starts with a [grammar](_URL_0_) or describing the language in a meta-data way.  \n\nRun that meta-language through a program that builds a program that understands that language (lexical analysis and parsing) and attaches a back end on it to generate code for a particular machine.  \n\nTa-da.  New language.\n\nScratch that itch - because it's really interesting but then throw it away.\n\nNow you have 11 problems.  [Someone already has thought of it, there is no uptake because there are a million of different languages that do the same thing, and the world does not need another C derivative ](_URL_1_)\n", "Others have mentioned how you write the compiler or interpreter in another language which somewhere down the line was once started by a program written in binary (although if you were building a new computer today, you could use tools already written on another computer to generate machine language - i.e it's only really the back end of a compiler that you need to create for a new computer architecture, you don't have to start from scratch every time.\n\nBut perhaps you wanted to know how a that interpreter works? This is a complex subject.\n\nThe basis behind it is string patterns. A program is developed that does \"lexical analysis\" this basically turns the strings of text that form a program, say \"10 print \"hello\" into tokens.\n\nA \"grammar\" is defined which says what the valid combinations of tokens are for the language being implemented.\n\nThese look like this in the design phase :-\n\n    Expr    \u2190 Sum  \n    Sum     \u2190 Product (('+' / '-') Product)*  \n    Product \u2190 Value (('*' / '/') Value)*  \n    Value   \u2190 [0-9]+ / '(' Expr ')'  \n\nThis is basically saying an expression (Expr) is made up of a Sum, A Sum is defined as a 'Product', optionally followed by zero or  + or - and another product.\n\nA product is defined as a \"Value\" followed by zero or more * or / and another Value.\n\nLastly a Value is defined as any of the digits 0-9 repeated one or more times, or an expression. As you can see, it's recursive, i.e an expression itself can contain expressions. \n\nSo this grammar can parse things like :- 10*50+23-345/1023+435644\n\nA parser will take your input string, tokenize it (i.e turn something like\n\n10+10 \n\nInto\n\nValue \"+\" Value\n\nThen check it against this grammar to see if you have a valid expression.\n\nFor example the above grammar would parse a string like '10+4' but not '10 cheese 10' The latter would be a syntax error.\n\nOnce you have checked the grammar, you create a parse tree, which for 10+4 might be\n\n         +  \n        / \\\n      10   4 \n\nWhich basically shows the \"+\" function or expression takes the 2 inputs, which here are simple integers.\n\nProgramming languages implement functions that actually perform these actions. So, for example, you might have a function \n\n    plus(int a, int b)\n        return a + b;\n\nAnd that's the function you use to actually do the work. If you're writing an interpreter then it's typically done immediately. If you're writing a compiler, then it compiles instructions into a form that either can be performed by the cpu or some intermediate form that a run time program can interpret and perform.\n\nThis is a complex subject though - each of the different stages contains some deep computer science concepts  that people have studied in depth and detail. Once sentence in my post doesn't really begin to cover it.\n\nIf you want to know more you could look at this udacity course :-\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's called 'Programming languages' and covers all of these topics, but, it's not at an ELI5 level.\n\nThere are a plethora of books and online resources though teaching these concepts.", "The computer chip that is inside in the computer has a built in \"machine language\". This is the language the chip understands, but the codes for this language are hard to write and can take a very long time to write. They are just a bunch of numbers, and only tell the chip to do simple things.\n\nMost computers have some built-in code that they will run when you turn them on. This is called \"booting\" the computer. Once the computer is on, you can write a new program in machine language on your computer and save it. But sometimes you even need to write extra code so you can save it!\n\nBecause machine language is hard to write, someone always writes a program in machine language that translates an easier human language into machine language. Once they do that, they can write a program in _that_ language to make an even easier human language to write in.", "The actual circuits of a computer are wired to understand binary. Most of the popular computer languages are built on another language, but if you keep digging down, you'll see that everything is coded in binary. So a game may be built with C++, which is built with C, which is built with assembly language, which is built with the zeros and ones of an actual physical circuit.", "Not ELI5 but here's some nice light reading about Steve Wozniak writing the first BASIC for Apple. _URL_0_", "The paradox amuses me. To compile GCC you need GCC.\n\nIn Gentoo, everything is compiled from source. Including the compiler.\n\nThe original installation process involves downloading a binary copy of gcc and using that to compile a new copy. Then you need to compile that new copy USING the new copy, to make sure there aren't any dependencies on the original one.\n\nSo yeah, that means that the compiler compiled ITSELF.", "There are a lot of really good answers here, but I figured I'd add my two cents because I just love talking about this stuff. \n\nHumans conceptualize things in layers of abstraction. When it comes to computers, this applies especially well, as computers are some of the most advanced things that humanity has come up with. \n\nLet's start with the bottom layer. At the absolute lowest level, computers work off of the idea that electrons can move from one atom to another, and this results in a transfer of energy. Building on that, moving billions of electrons through a large construct of atoms creates what is called an electrical current. Current is driven by voltage, which comes from other sources of energy. Another important idea is that electrons move better through some materials than others. Using this idea, we can create substances called semiconductors. Different types of semiconductors can be attached to create some interesting effects. \n\nThe most important low-level device in a computer is called a transistor. A transistor is created from semiconductors and contains 3 ports. Two of the ports behave like a wire. Current flows from one to the other. The third port controls the current going through those ports, which affects the voltage across the transistor. This makes a transistor like a switch. If the third port has a high voltage going to it, current will move through it faster and the voltage across the transistor will fall, instead going to other parts of the circuit. Conversely, if the third port has a low voltage going to it, current will move through the transistor slower and the voltage across it will rise, taking voltage away from the rest of the circuit. Using this idea, we can create logical circuits. \n\nThe basic logical circuits are AND, OR, and NOT. These circuits, among others, are known as gates and are produced using various configurations of transistors. Logic gates work with binary inputs and outputs. For ease of understanding and for the purposes of mathematical calculation, the two binary values are known as 0 and 1. In a real system, 0 and 1 represent 0V and 5V respectively, applied to the transistors inside the gates. AND and OR gates have two inputs and 1 output. AND gates output a 1 only if both inputs are 1, and a 0 otherwise. OR gates output a 0 only if both inputs are 0, and a 1 otherwise. NOT gates have 1 input and 1 output, and simply flip the value from 0 to 1, or vice versa. There are also NAND gates and NOR gates, which simply add a NOT to the end of AND and OR gates respectively. NAND and NOR gates have an interesting property where any circuit in a system can be represented using a configuration using just one of them. They are often used in this way to make systems cheaper, as you only need to deal with one type of gate, but this comes at the price of systems being larger and more complex. There are also XOR gates, which output 1 only if the inputs are not equal. These can make simplifying circuits easier, but they aren't used as often as the others. \n\nTo be continued..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nand2tetris.org/course.php"], [], [], ["http://www.nand2tetris.org/"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus\u2013Naur_Form", "http://griffsgraphs.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/programming-languages_label.png", "http://www.amazon.com/lex-yacc-Doug-Brown/dp/1565920007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1412075103&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=yacc"], ["https://www.udacity.com/course/cs262"], [], [], ["http://woz.org/letters/apple-basic"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "51dw6j", "title": "\"if god is all powerful, then he cannot be all good and vice-versa.\" why do those two things contradict one another?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51dw6j/eli5_if_god_is_all_powerful_then_he_cannot_be_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7b8lll", "d7b8oiv", "d7b9htx"], "score": [6, 28, 12], "text": ["If god was all good, and all powerful, he would get rid of 'bad' things.\n\nIf something was all powerful, they would be able to get rid of anything bad. Literally, the definition of \"all powerful\" would mean not only can you get rid of suffering, death, etc, the concept wouldn't even need to exist. Why have sadness? There's no argument that it somehow helps you grow as a person when you can literally change it so it doesn't need to be done that way.\n\nThere's no coherent argument for something that could be all good, but allows 'bad' things, if they're all powerful. You're stuck in a logical corner, unless you say he's \"basically all powerful\" but not completely, or some other rationalization.\n\n\nThe typical layman response for someone who disagrees is some version of we can't possibly know for sure or he breaks the rules so \u00af\\\\\\_(\u30c4)_/\u00af   . YMMV on whether that's a cop out or not. ", "The idea is that if God is all powerful and created everything, that means he doesn't use his omnipotent powers to actually get rid of evil of the world (from genocide down to stubbing your tow on the coffee table).\n\nThus, either God willfully lets' evil exist even if it's in his power to remove it (thus he isn't all good) or he physically cannot remove the evil from the world (thus he isn't all powerful).\n\nThere have been many, MANY attempts to unravel this mess and make a logically consistent case where God is all powerful and all good but evil still exists in the world. [Here is a better explanation than I can provide](_URL_0_)", "Okay, so:\n\nPremise 1: (from Christian theology) God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good.\n\nPremise 2: The prevention of suffering for innocent or good people is considered a good act.\n\nConclusion: God would want to prevent the suffering of innocent or good people.\n\nObservation: There is suffering that affects innocent or good people.\n\nThis is a clear contradiction, and resolving it requires doing away with at least one of the qualities of God:  \n1. He doesn't know of the evil, and thus is not all-knowing  \n2. He cannot prevent the evil, and is thus not all-powerful.  \n3. He doesn't want to prevent the evil, and thus isn't good.  \n4. He doesn't exist."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AzNEG1GB-k&amp;list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR&amp;index=13"], []]}
{"q_id": "3g4zb2", "title": "what exactly happened during the stock market crash of '08 and why did the american public suffer so greatly and for so long afterwards?", "selftext": "Everyone always talks about the crash and the Depression that followed, but I never quite understood every aspect. I want to know how inflation, real estate, and major corporations come into the picture. Please help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g4zb2/eli5_what_exactly_happened_during_the_stock/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctuva3g", "ctuvnk4", "ctuyatg", "ctuzncm", "ctuzpdt", "ctv2ue2", "ctv6sil", "ctvluja"], "score": [23, 5, 7, 3, 6, 4, 5, 3], "text": ["The (relatively) short version:\n\nBanks found ways to lend money to people to purchase homes who would have, in the past, been considered to risky to lend to by spreading the risk around to other investors. This fed a housing bubble because there was a huge growth in demand for homes and people bought in hoping the price of real estate would keep rising. \n\nObviously, it didn't, and when real estate markets crashed a lot of big banks found themselves with a lot of mortgages that were never going to get paid off. This threatened to shut down the financial sector. When banks stop lending economic activity slows massively. While bank bailouts averted a complete credit freeze and collapse of the financial sector, the crisis still led to a massive recession.", "Banks were giving out mortgages to people that could not afford to pay them. These loans were then bundled all together with other loans, and loan rating agencies were giving these bundles a better than deserved rating. This allowed the bank to sell these bundled loans for more than they were worth. So many banks did this and sold them to each other that they all ended up with big chunks of \"toxic debt\" - loans that had a high chance of default that the banks had overpayed for because of the favorable ratings. Once this practice reached a critical point, it started to unravel. People began to default on their loans, which lowered the value of the bundles of loans that banks had sold each other. Furthermore, the increased number of forclosed and vacated homes made the housing prices drop, which also hurt the value of these loan bundles. The whole thing became a huge snowball, and these banks were so deep into it that they ended up with so much toxic debt on their books that they would have had to declare bankruptcy to clear it. If these big banks collapsed, it would send massive shockwaves through the global economy (theoretically orders of magnitude worse than what we saw) and so the US government stepped in to buy this toxic debt at a higher price than what it was worth.\n\n\nI tried to not include motivations in the above explanation to keep it simple. Ultimately, the individuals in these banks and companies that were responsible for the mess were getting huge rewards for pushing these loans on families that couldn't afford them, rating the bundles better than they should have been, and selling these bundles for more than they were worth. These people didnt lose that money when it all collapsed, they just walked away.\n\nAdditionally, i didnt include some of the more nuanced issues like the impacts on the loan markets, which rippled out into non banking sectors of the econony, or the secondary markets like derivatives and shorts that all served to muddy the waters and make it very hard for regulators to figure the whole thing out, even if they had tried to.\n\nTL:DR - Individuals, while seeking personal short term rewards, made massively bad deals that ran their banks into the ground. US government stepped in to save the banks using tax payer dollars.", "I have to point out that \"suffer so greatly\" is incorrect hyperbole.  The unemployment rate in the US for the recession of 2008 went up to about 10%, but for the Great Depression, it went up to 25%.  A huge difference.  While some people call the 2008 economy a depression, AFAIK, it's largely classified as a recession. \n\nI know people who lost their homes as a result, so I'm not disputing their personal suffering.   But it's important to keep things in perspective, even when asking the questions.  ", "The way I understand it is the banks, after giving extremely risky loans to people who didn't make enough money to pay the loan. But the banks weren't risking anything because they would bundle them up and hide them inside of less risky investments, and sell them to hedge funds. Now the banks no longer are in danger of losing money because the loans no longer belonged to them. Because the loans were packaged inside of less risky investments, the bundle would get a high rating (A+, I think is the best). Then the hedge funds like Goldman Sachs and Freddy Mac would buy these bundles, and basically bet that they would fail, (a seemingly high risk bet, for an A rated investment bundle). Banks and hedge funds were betting against the American people and making low risk bets look high risk, therefore increasing their earnings and fucking over the American people. That is why so many were calling for these people to go to prison, they were committing crimes against the American public and ultimately the world.", "As I understand it, it was basically a situation of    \n1. Banks gave out mortgages to risky individuals    \n2. Banks then bundled up these risky mortgages and allowed people to \"invest\" in them, but the risk of these bundles was misrepresented(many would say illegally).    \n3. When the risky loans began to fail, there was a cyclical cascading effect of loss throughout the economic system, people defaulted on their mortgages, investors lost money, people overall stopped spending as much money, the economy lost jobs, more people defaulted on their mortgages, more investors lost money, people spent even less, etc.    \n4. The government did what they do best to try and fix the issue, disagree and do nothing(well, they did eventually do some things and those things did appear to help, but its speculated they could have done much more).    \n    \n    \nOr for actual ELI5 attempt:    \n1. Lots of mommies and daddies borrowed money from the banks to buy houses.  Even the mommies and daddies that probably couldn't pay the money back.    \n2.  The banks then lied to other banks saying \"if you give me your money, all these mommies and daddies will pay you back the money they borrowed from me\" when they knew those mommies and daddies probably couldn't pay them back.    \n3.  When the mommies and daddies stopped paying the banks back.  The banks too their houses away and the other banks never got their money back.  Those mommies and daddies couldn't afford to buy toys for their children any more and so some of the toy factories went out of business.  Then the mommies and daddies who worked at the toy factories also couldn't pay the banks back and lost their houses.    \n4. The president couldn't convince his friends to give the mommies and daddies some extra money to try and re-open the toy factories.  And so it took a long time before people could afford toys again.", "You have a system where people weren't earning wage increases, while the need to borrow money got higher and higher. Most people borrowed money(the banks didn't asses well, they wanted profit) to buy homes, as it is a good way to store your wealth(aside from market crashes). As the wages still stagnate, the ability to pay back these loans became more and more difficult. This situation of making less and owing more creates a bubble, which burst in 08. \n\nAs for recovery, the government bailed out the companies that created the hardships in the first place, instead of just taking care of the hardship themselves. For example: Detroit filed for bankruptcy due to the workers being shipped overseas and the auto industry leaving their market. By doing so they slashed their state workers pensions. The response of the government was to give the auto industry $50billion to recover, while refusing to close the $3.5 billion gap created in the slashing of state employee pensions. The biggest reason why the people have suffered so much is because they aren't being bailed out like these corporations are, the government expects the money to trickle downward which it does not do. Hell, from November 13' and January 14' chase bank paid $15 billion(they report $25 billion in profit per quarter, this is nothing to them) in penalties for malpractice and irresponsible loans while their CEO got a pay bump and now makes 11.5 million a year. \n\nTL; DR Our safety nets are to protect industry, not people. ", "Interesting that the prevailing sense is that the problem was banks lending money to people who shouldn't have bought homes, instead of Wall Street lying about [investment vehicles](_URL_1_) and the horrors of [Credit Default Swaps](_URL_0_) (insurance that pays when other people fail).", "If you have an hour, I suggest you listen to [The Giant Pool of Money](_URL_0_) - *This American Life's* explainer of the events in 2008. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation"], ["http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money"]]}
{"q_id": "7g5goh", "title": "how did the trend of casinos being on indian preservation's start? why did they choose casinos instead of having something else being protected on their land?", "selftext": "Edit: Reservation's", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7g5goh/eli5_how_did_the_trend_of_casinos_being_on_indian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqgm2z2", "dqgm4hv", "dqgmp0n", "dqgo7hi", "dqgrr85", "dqh0ytd"], "score": [17, 5, 15, 2, 2, 6], "text": ["Just so you know, it's \"reservation\", not \"preservation\".\n\nAnd casinos are good money makers that can be operated by native peoples on their own land even if gambling is illegal in the surrounding US state.", "All Indian reservations are countries (or quasi countries) to themselves and therefore out of the bounds of national or state regulations on gambling.\n\nYou can make a lot of money with very little layout with gambling. Not only do the games rake in money so do the services at the casinos. It is possible that this also offers reliable employment for a substantial number of tribe members.", "State laws often forbid casinos, or heavily regulate where casinos can be located, total number that can operate, etc. BUT Indian reservations are exempt from these state laws. This means they can often operate casinos where others cannot, and this captive market means the potential for lucrative operations. ", "They didn't choose casinos instead of something else being protected. Most Native American land is protected in various ways by the Native Americans living there. Casinos represent only a tiny fraction of Native American land. It's a good revenue generator for people who are for the most part living in abject poverty. However, most of the funds end up in the pockets of just a few people and little ends up trickling down to the general population of Native Americans on reservations.", "Gambling laws are set by the state.  Indian reservations operate independently of state jurisdiction, so they can set up casinos in states where it is otherwise illegal.  \n\nThey also will frequently sell items like cigarettes that let people avoid high state taxes.", "Casinos came into being after several court cases in the early \u201870s established that Indian reservations were only subject to federal law and regulation, and not subject at all to state level law. This led the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians to open the first casinos in the late \u201870s. In 1988 the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act passed, which put some limitations on Indian gaming.\n\nIndian reservations are generally far away from major cities and don\u2019t have too much economic activity. Casinos became perfect ways to generate cash and economic benefits - they have a relatively low capital investment, they are guaranteed to profit, and they draw visitors from afar.\n\nFor those that have natural resources, opinions vary. While tribes in the Southwest absolutely reject uranium mining on environmental and ethical grounds, peoples of the North Slope in Alaska lease oil fields and mines because they don\u2019t have too many other options. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3n3k6x", "title": "Why is it that voice/audio clarity appears to be underdeveloped, or virtually untouched, by mobile phone industry, while other features like internet connectivity see rapid development and improvement in comparison?", "selftext": "The clarity of phone calls (for both mobile and landline) doesn't appear to have seen any increase in quality in the past decade or so, at least in comparison to how far other technologies related to mobile devices have come.  With advances in microphones, speakers, and the like, shouldn't we have seen dramatic improvement in the sound quality of phone calls by now? I recognize there has been a shift in demand for other features like text messaging, internet connectivity, apps, etc. which is probably driving their development; however, doesn't the technology exist for improving voice/audio quality of phone calls? If so, why hasn't it been implemented?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3n3k6x/why_is_it_that_voiceaudio_clarity_appears_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvknkzn", "cvknyhu", "cvkye0s"], "score": [7, 2, 3], "text": ["Short: \nThey'd rather go for quantity over quality, since the telephone is already good enough to understand people.\n\nLong:\nThe priorities are placed elsewhere. \n\nWithin current telephony systems, the bottleneck is between the nodes where they have to have many phone calls connected simultaneously. \n\nYour mobile encodes the voice data into a digital signal. The bitrate of this signal represents the quality of the signal.\n\nTelephony systems are updated to transfer at a faster bitrate between nodes, however this increase is used for more multiplexing.\n\nMultiplexing is the idea of switching the channels in between short bursts (packets), to transmit many signals along one line.\n\nIf your inter-node bitrate is 5x your signal bitrate, you can transfer 5 phone calls on one line: \n\n1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 = 1 . . . . 1 . . . . . 1 . . . . + . 2 . . . . 2 . . . . 2 . . . + . . 3 . . . . 3 . . . . 3 . .+ etc\n\nIf you doubled the speed of the line, you could manage to fit 10 packets in before you were to send another packet to person 1, meaning 10 calls on 1 line. \n\nThe reason we choose not to increase quality is because you would need way more bits/s to get a very slight improvement in sound quality. Engineers got together and decided at what minimum can you always understand the other person. Companies are expected to meet this minimum and would require too many resources to improve the quality by a noticeable amount. ", "There has been significant increases in audio clarity. Mostly in the form of [background noise reduction](_URL_0_).", "To oversimplify and keep it short, the POTS used a 9 kilohertz channel to deliver \"acceptable\" voice service for decades, sacrificing frequency response at higher and lower edges of the audible spectrum.  When cell service came along, the bar was initially set to equal the quality of a POTS line.  With the advent of digital technology, spread spectrum signal delivery, and multiplexing schemes, the bandwidth available to cell phones increased dramatically, but it's only with the advent of ubiquitous widespread lower latency high bandwidth cell service that telecommunications companies have begun to roll out services like \"HD Voice\" and \"Voice over LTE\".\n\nQuite a bit of it is marketing jargon, but HD Voice and VoLTE are essentially improved codecs and voice over ip applications that allow for broader spectrum audio and even video (over 4G or local wifi, with the goal of retiring the 2G transmitters carriers still currently use for voice traffic, even on many newer phones.). I have an LG Lucid with HD Voice by Verizon.  HD Voice is offered, at no extra cost, as an option for capable devices.  The call quality (to other HD Voice enabled phones) is subjectively better, although my ears pick out whispery compression artifacts at higher frequencies that in no way should be equated to \"HD\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.techradar.com/us/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/background-noise-reduction-one-of-your-smartphone-s-greatest-tools-1228924"], []]}
{"q_id": "3hv2q2", "title": "What was the process of clearing the trenches, barbed wire, and other war remnants from the French countryside after WWI?", "selftext": "We see hundreds of miles of torn up and destroyed countryside during the First World War. What was the process to repair the environment. Did much of it become usable again? Or was it just left alone? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hv2q2/what_was_the_process_of_clearing_the_trenches/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cublqp6"], "score": [8], "text": ["I visited the battlefield of verdun, which was one of the biggest battlefields on the french/german border. There you dont see any flat fields for hundrets of squarekilometers, everything is cratered. There are tons of explosives which are still dangerous and you see a lot of barbed wire which is mostly overgrown and rusty. When visiting, you should not leave the marked paths, as there are still mines everywhere. When you look on the ground you can still find shells and bullets, grenade debris and scrapped metal. besides nature, which grew all over the place, its a mess and we were told that its not possible to make this area human friendly again, the last bombs and shells which are still technically active will decay in 100s of years. \nTrenches quickly eroded, but barbed wire and mines are still an issue in regions where there was fought. In some places it was worth it to clean, as cities wanted to expand, but in more rural areas you can still find the remains. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "68b5l6", "title": "why are eggs so ubiquitously useful in cooking?", "selftext": "It feels like eggs are in practically every recipe, but what makes them so useful and necessary for it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68b5l6/eli5_why_are_eggs_so_ubiquitously_useful_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgx3di0", "dgx40a4", "dgxc13u", "dgxqpl8", "dgxzhck"], "score": [69, 548, 9, 2, 12], "text": ["Eggs have proteins and other nutrients, and are somewhat neutral-tasting.  But what makes them useful is that the proteins in the egg white unfold and bind to each other when heated, congealing from liquid to a jelly-like solid.  Thus, adding egg whites to a recipe is like adding a non-toxic (and actually quite nutritious) glue that will hold together whatever the other ingredients are.", "Egg yolks are incredible emulsifiers; they help fat-based and water-based substances form finer blends. If you took a (pasteurized) raw egg yolk and added to it your salad dressing of oil and vinegar, you'd find that the the whole thing would form a creamy suspension that would stay together for a while. \n\nMeanwhile the egg white are basically water and protein, which as /u/mb34i said can do some pretty impressive tricks. The bonus is that the fat in the yolks, and the water in the whites already have an emulsifier in the yolk; the egg is a complete kit to emulsify itself and anything else. An omelette, or scrambled eggs, is just such an emulsion, cooked. On its own, the white can also be whipped up into a tight froth and used to add air and volume to something that would otherwise not be raised, such as meringue, souffle, or mousse. \n\nWhen you add all of those things and use them in different combinations, you have the reason for eggs popularity in cuisine. ", "Egg whites specifically are pretty unique in that it's largely made up of protein, but it's not all bunched up and stiff. When you heat it, the water evaporates and the proteins stiffen up. That's why you use eggs so often in baking; it's like the glue that keeps baked goods together.\n\nThe yolks, however, are mostly fat, so it's usually used when you are looking for more flavors or for an egg wash to make baked goods shiny.\n\nAnd of course there are many recipes that call for eggs just for the sake of having them; many people like the taste and texture. I personally don't.", "Cooking is essentially chemistry. \n\nEggs provide a variety of functions mentioned below, but I think this concept of \"cooking as chemistry\" and learning the basic rules of different ingredients will aid anyone in cooking and take a lot of the mystery out. ", "This is not so much a direct answer to your question, more of an expansion of just how useful eggs are in the kitchen. \n\nYou know that funny hat chefs wear, the tall one with all those pleats in it? Traditionally in France, the hat is called a toque and it has fifty pleats one is awarded the right to wear one when having demonstrated the mastery of the use of an egg; fifty unique uses of an egg."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21cn88", "title": "Why is Hercules commonly referred to as Hercules as opposed to Heracles? He really seems to be the only figure from Greek Pantheon that favors his Roman name in the modern age.", "selftext": "More often than not we hear the Greek Pantheon referred to as Zeus, Athena, Hephaestus, and Ares by their Greek names instead of Jupiter, Minerva, Vulcan and Mars. Asides from Hercules it usually stays pretty Greek but at this point we really just seem to use their Greek names+Hercules and nobody really seems to notice.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21cn88/why_is_hercules_commonly_referred_to_as_hercules/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbznxf", "cgc2jj0"], "score": [28, 67], "text": ["I'm not sure you fully understand the difference between the Roman and Greek Pantheon.\n\nThink of it more as an adaption and an assimilation rather than just just renaming. The Roman's respected the Greek's and traced their roots to common ancestors and drew analogies between their religion and the Greeks but this all fitted inside the Roman religion. Much in the same way that a modern Christian has reinterpreted god from the Jewish faith, one could not say that the god of Chritianity is just the renamed Jewish god. For example you don't find the Lares or Penates in Greek mythology. \n\nIt is very bad practice to substitute Zeus for Jupiter, the only place it is appropriate is in a situation where one cannot tell the difference. For example a statue from the Roman period found in a villa on the Greek mainland.\n\nI would hazard that Hercules became the more commonly used name because throughout the medieval and renaissance period Hercules was still a popular figure and as the bible was in Latin people were reading the Latin myths rather than the Greek ones. This meant most medieval allegorical and mythological texts were written in Latin.\n\n", "It depends on what circles you move in, really. I rarely hear people refer to \"Hercules\" except when talking about the 1997 Disney film.\n\nIn the not-too-distant past it was standard to use Roman names for all Greek mythological figures: this is why, say, Alexander Pope's *Iliad* features Jove, Minerva, and Ulysses rather than Zeus, Athena, and Odysseus. That practice has been gradually diluted over time, but it's a half-life kind of thing: most names are more-or-less Greek now, but some Roman forms have persisted to the present. A chapter of Kenneth Graham's *The Wind in the Willows* (1908) is entitled \"The return of Ulysses\" (not Odysseus); Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot performed a set of *Twelve Labours of Hercules*  in a book of that title (1947) (not Herakles; of course that would miss the wordplay, anyway). Even in your post, you refer to \"Hephaestus\", writing the Greek name with Latin spelling, instead of \"Hephaistos\"; and there are other figures who still regularly go by Latin names in ways that go beyond typographic conventions: \"Achilles\" is still more common than \"Achilleus\", and I've never heard anyone referring to the god \"Apollon\" in English.\n\nIn some cases, the Latin names get periodically re-solidified in the popular imagination by high profile media depictions. A decade ago, the Spartan king who died at Thermopylai was known as \"Lee-ON-ee-das\" in my part of the world (and also in the part of the world that the actor who portrayed him comes from), but I've heard \"Lee-on-EYE-das\" becoming gradually more common lately. (There's nothing very Greek *or* Latin about either pronunciation, by the way: it's simply that popular culture is changing the names, for whatever reason.) In Herakles' case, the Disney film has had a similar effect, cementing him as \"Hercules\" for people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s. (I may be misremembering, but I have a vague recollection that Disney was even planning on releasing the film *in Greece* under the same title until popular backlash changed their minds -- I may have muddled that in my head with some other backlash, though.)\n\nNow, aside from these quirks of arbitrary tradition reinforced by popular culture, there are some circumstances where it's genuinely important to draw a distinction between Herakles and Hercules. Of course Herakles was an important figure in Greek myth; but Hercules was fairly important in specifically Roman myths too. This is because *some* figures of Greek myth were incorporated into the Etrusco-Latin imagination from a very early date, thanks to Greeks settling and trading in Italy from the 8th century BCE onwards. Figures like Hercle/Hercules, Uthuste/Ulixes (Odysseus), the Dioscuri (Dioskouroi), and Aineias came to have important roles in the native Italian mythologies, and were later recombined with their Greek counterparts. I notice that Wikipedia has separate entries for [\"Heracles\"](_URL_0_) and [\"Hercules\"](_URL_1_) (though, bizarrely, the \"Hercules\" article still focuses on *Greek* stories about him and ~~ignores the Roman ones~~ **edit:** just mentions the Cacus story in passing).\n\nIn Hercules' case, the two most important Roman stories would be the story of Hercules and Cacus (a villain that Hercules, on his way home from killing Geryon in the far west, encountered in Italy and killed); and the story of Acca Larentia, a prostitute who was given to Hercules (the god, i.e. after his death and deification), and who was later reimagined as the mother of Romulus and Remus."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules"]]}
{"q_id": "6mlrww", "title": "how do resealable aluminum cans work and why aren't they the norm?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mlrww/eli5_how_do_resealable_aluminum_cans_work_and_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk2jpf2", "dk2jy87", "dk2k79t", "dk2k8mx"], "score": [48, 49, 4, 6], "text": ["The one I saw had a plastic tab that could be popped out to drinking the pushed back into place to close the can.\n\nOther option is those aluminum can bottles that have a twist off cap that can be screwed back into place.\n\nIn both cases they are rare because of increased cost to manufacturer.   Your standard aluminum can is an engineering marvel that has developed over the last 100 yrs or so.  It takes the absolute minimum amount of aluminum to make the can and still be strong and durable enough transport.  Every aspect of it has been engineered for a specific purpose.", "As /u/TorturedChaos says the cost of manufacturing is just too high. So the cost/benefit is way out of whack. An ali can fits it's intended purpose so well, you should really check out this video:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey really are a fucking cool example of modern manufacturing and the evolution of a single product over time.", "Because things in aluminum cans are single serve and generally consumed in one sitting.  There is no need for the extra expense to make something resealable when 99% of the people will never actually need to reseal it.", "Some energy drinks and half litter beverages has a resealable lid, that rotates over and off the hole. \n\nThe reason they aren't the norm is that they are more expensive to produce, and often you don't need to reseal a 33cl can, as you will drink all of it in one sitting."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2uzip4", "title": "Why was the Roman General Germanicus considered a great Military Leader during his time?", "selftext": "Whilst studying the Julio-Claudian period I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of reference from my teacher and the text book to Germanicus being a great military leader. I believe Tacitus states that 'he would have equalled Alexander the Great'. I don't quite understand why Germanicus seemed to be held in such high regard, because the only reference to any of his military exploits I could find were to a kind of 'meh' Campaign against the Cherusci in order to find the remains of the three legions killed at Teutoberg. Certainly nothing Alexander the Great level, in terms of impact and military prowess. Were there some other campaigns that Germanicus was involved in that gave him this reputation? Or was his reputation a result of propaganda?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uzip4/why_was_the_roman_general_germanicus_considered_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["codkfrv"], "score": [7], "text": ["My personal opinion after reading lots and lots of Tacitus is basically in agreement with you that Germanicus was a fairly mediocre general. His Germanic campaigns were half successes if that, but he had a major advantage of timing in that they came immediately after the disaster at Teutoberg, and so even though it was only a half-success it could be bolstered as having \"restored the glory\" to Roman arms. I think in American history something like Antietam might be broadly comparable as really only a half success, but that was enough for the time. The fact that he died young only solidified his reputation.\n\nThat being said, probably the most important reason for his fame today is because of Tacitus himself, who very carefully sets Germanicus up as the \"hero\" of the early part of his narrative, both to serve as a foil for Tiberius and as part of his broader purpose of discussing the individual against the machine of the imperial system."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ivbge", "title": "An article I saw on r/physics today announced Fermilab's discovery of xi-sub-b, a baryon that had been predicted, but not previously observed. How exactly do the CDF/LHC and other particle detectors conclusively observe and determine the existence of a particle if it has never been observed before? ", "selftext": "[Link to the article](_URL_0_) \n\nedit: Another thing that confuses me is why a particle would appear in some instances of a collision, and not in others; from the article: \" the Xi-sub-b was observed in 25 instances among almost 500 trillion proton-antiproton collisions.\" What occurred in those 25 instances that resulted in the detection of the Xi-sub-b? Was it present in the other collisions but simply not detected?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ivbge/an_article_i_saw_on_rphysics_today_announced/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c26zaix"], "score": [5], "text": ["It's likely a combination of both. \n\nWhen two particles collide the result is not deterministic. The slew of particles that result from the collision and the resulting decays is probabilistic. This is the nature of quantum mechanics. Though I don't know the details of the experiment, the creation of a Xi-sub-b is likely a very rare event because it's such heavy particle. On top of that, heavy particles decay extremely quickly into lighter particles, so it'd be hard to find it in the mess of particles. There's also a lot of noise that potentially hides it. The 25 instances are those that they're sure after much analysis are Xi-sub-b. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.conceivablytech.com/8516/science-research/fermilab-scientists-discover-new-particle"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "a76u7k", "title": "Considering there is a finite number of words in the English language and that there are rules of grammar, does this mean there is a finite number of possible sentences in the English language that are grammatically correct? Is there a way to even estimate as to what that number would be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a76u7k/considering_there_is_a_finite_number_of_words_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ec2sqq3", "ec2syyl", "ec2tfm9", "ec2tvpf"], "score": [8, 2, 12, 17], "text": ["This isn't a direct answer to your question, but a good site to check out is _URL_0_ Every possible combination of 3200 letters, commas, spaces, and periods that can ever exist is on this site.\n\nCheck out this particular page:\n\n_URL_0_bookmark.cgi?cbeards", "I think the real question to answer your question is whether you can have a gramatically correct sentence that is infinitely long.  According to Wikipedia ([_URL_0_](_URL_1_)), that is indeed, theoretically possible.  So, there would be an infinite number of sentences possible as well.  An example the Wikipedia article gives for an infinitely possible sentence is \"*Someone thinks that someone thinks that someone thinks that...*\".  You could see how that alone could give you infinite sentences as you abstract the original thought further.", "There isn't, because certain sentences can be written recursively infinitely.\n\nFor example\n\n\"I said that I liked him\"\n\n\"He said that I said that I liked him\"\n\n\"She said that he said that I said that I liked him\"\n\n\"I said that she said that he said that I said that I liked him\"\n\nThis sentence is just one example of a sentence that can be recursively written in an infinite amount of ways, but you can surely think of others.", "In fact there are an infinite number of sentences that are *grammatically correct*, because you can make arbitrarily long sentences with a few simple constructions.\n\nFor example, we can take the sentence \"He said yes.\" and repeatedly lengthen it according to simple rules, such as appending additional hes and shes. Then you could get:\n\n\"He said that she said yes.\"\n\n\"He said that she said that he said yes.\" \n\nA key observation is that while there are no infinitely long sentences (since a well-formed sentence must terminate with a punctuation mark by definition), you can always make arbitrarily longer sentences. Thus, the set of all sentences is infinite in size.\n\nWhat if we chose to restrict ourselves only to the set of *semantically meaningful* constructions? Even this is an infinite set, since the set of all numbers is infinite and we can create well-behaved, semantically meaningful sentences such as:\n\n\"My favorite number is 0.\"\n\n\"My favorite number is 1.\"\n\n\"My favorite number is 2.\"\n\nand so on for every natural number."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://libraryofbabel.info/", "https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?cbeards"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest\\_English\\_sentence", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_English_sentence"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2fciyi", "title": "Has any terrorist organisation ever been fully defeated through military means alone?", "selftext": "In view of the current events in the Middle East, with IS making sweeping gains through the region, there has been much discussion about how to tackle this crisis - through precision strikes, arming the Kurds or even an invasion. The question begs to be asked - has any terrorist organisation in history ever been defeated/destroyed through military means alone, or at least predominantly military means, as opposed to negotiation, dialogue, political means etc?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fciyi/has_any_terrorist_organisation_ever_been_fully/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck7wzoy", "ck7x8n2", "ck83ami", "ck8ar2w", "ck8lyt1"], "score": [51, 39, 12, 3, 4], "text": ["I don't know about military force \"alone\", but terrorist groups have been defeated through primarily military means.  Generally though, military force is a rare solution.  The RAND corporation did a pretty indepth study of how terrorist groups \"end\", and concluded that military force was rarely the best option; with only 7% of the groups they studied being defeated primarily by military force.  However, when the terrorist groups become strong enough to conduct insurgencies, military force ups to about a 25% success rate for ending terrorist groups.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe bottom third or so of the report has a table that lists individual terrorist groups and shows what circumstances led to their end.", "In his book, *Violent Politics*, former Ambassador William Polk argues that military force is about 5% of the formula to defeating terrorists. The other 95% is undermining both their political power and their infrastructure; in other words, taking away their ability to recruit (by making them unattractive to join) and dismantling their ability to wage war (by removing financing or weapons shipments, for example). Purely military means rarely works as /u/houinator explains, and I can find no example of any violent group (insurgent, rebel, or terrorist) which was defeated through military means alone; most commanders and strategists use multi-tiered attacks upon their targets. Even the Romans when battling piracy in the Mediterranean mixed naval campaign with denying pirates ports.\n\nSource: William Polk *Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla Warfare from the American Insurgency to Iraq* Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.", "It might be worth pointing out that unfortunately, many interesting answers to this question would fall within the last 20 years, and the sub uses a 20 year rule to draw a line between historical and current discussion.", "Coincidentally, there is the case of the [Kharijites](_URL_0_)\n\nThis fanatical sect initially arose during the first Islamic Civil War period, where the camps of Ali and Muwaiya were at each others throats. They basically were the first hardline, extreme Islamism advocators who basically took the stance that none but God could rule over Muslims, and they rejected both Caliphal (?) candidates. This movement dispatched 3 assassins to kill 3 key political leaders in this time: Muwaiya (military governor of Syria, founder of the Umayyad dynasty), Amr ibn al'Aas (military governor of Egypt), and Ali (cousin/son in law of Prophet, 4th Rashidun Khalifah,  source of Shia-Sunni split). They were to be conducted simultaneously. First 2 failed, last one found Ali in the Grand Mosque of Kufa. Killed him with a poisoned blade while he was prostrating. Those assassins were found and killed as per Islamic law, and the movement petered out.\n\nThe Kharijites would resurface 2 centuries later under the Abbasids and sow [a rebellion](_URL_1_), again with more or less the same rhetoric. This was met with full military response over the course of rule of several Caliphs. There was no discourse, there was no push for compromise, there were no concessions entertained. The only acceptable solution was military extermination, and thats exactly what happened. Though it took a while, thats exactly what was done and the movement was stamped out for good...or so it would seem.  \n\nI think this is a fitting example for many reasons. Even though this is ancient history, the Kharijites not only fit the description of modern day terrorists to a tee, i.e non-state politically motivated violent actor with minimal public support, they were dealt with by violent military force: because quite frankly thats the only language they spoke. \n\nOn a less academic note, there is a popular sentiment in modern Islamic discourse that groups like ISIS and AQ are modern day incarnations of these same Kharijites. This doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but I do find the symbolism and parallels to be quite interesting..", "As with any discussion about terrorism, we ought to start out by defining what terrorism is. There are an inordinate amount of definitions of what terrorism is (even among the various American government agencies, there are varying definitions), but the common theme among all of them is that is the politically motivated use or threat of violence by (generally) non-state actors against non-combatants. \n\nAs this is /r/AskHistorians, let's examine who some of the first terrorist organizations were. Generally regarded as the first \"terrorist\" organization were the [Sicarii](_URL_1_), a fanatical splinter group of Jewish Zealots active in the first century CE in what is now modern day Israel. Seeking to push Rome out of the promised land, they would stab to death Romans and Roman sympathizers in broad daylight. These actions escalated hostilities between the Romans and the Jews, and eventually culminated in the First Jewish-Roman War. In their last stand at the Masada fort, the Sicarri succumbed to the overwhelming Roman army, and most of them committed suicide. So in this instance, military might alone did defeat terrorism. \n\nThe [Assassins](_URL_0_) were another proto-terrorist group that operated in Persia during the 12th and 13th centuries. In case you didn't figure it out by now, they are where we get the word \"assassin\" from. The Assassins were notorious for assassinating political figures in public. They were wiped out by the Mongols by the end of the 13th century. So in that instance as well, military might alone defeated terrorism. \n\nNow back in those days, world leaders tended to be much more liberal with their use of force against political threats. These days, most terrorist organizations are able to avoid complete decimation because they know that their demise will also mean a lot of collateral damage toward the civilian population, which most nations (with the arguable exception of nations like Russia and yes, the United States) do not want on their hands. So it is rare that terrorist groups are ever defeated through force these days. \n\nSo now we must differentiate the various types of terrorist groups. On one hand you have your religiously-motivated groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and Aum Shunrikyo. On the other hand you have separatist groups like the Irish Republican Army, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Basque ETA. You have your ethnocentric terrorist groups like the KKK. You also have your lone wolf terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. More recently we have seen the emergence of narcoterrorist groups\u2014typically Mexican and South American drug cartels\u2014who have no real political ideology other than a bloodthirsty lust for wealth and will use whatever political influence possible to achieve that end.\n\nTo be clear, there is some overlap among all of these. ISIS could arguably be categorized as a separatist group due to their territorial claims, and the IRA/PLO could also be identified as having religious motivations as well.  \n\nBut the point is that how these groups end really depends on their types. Separatist groups tend to fare the best as they are the most open to negotiation. In the case of the PLO, the IRA and the ETA, they all reached some sort of consequential end that caused the majority of their members to either give up violence or splinter off to form a new group (e.g., Hamas). \n\nIn regard to religiously motivated groups: Because governments tend to be cautious when it comes to quelling this types of terrorist groups, what often happens is that these groups continue to exist but sort of fade into irrelevance. While politicians say they will \"crush\" or \"defeat\" terrorist groups, what they really mean is they will contain the threat that they pose. We have arguably contained the threat that al Qaeda once posed in terms of domestic attacks, but since this is /r/askhistorians, we won't really know for a long time how everything that is going on right now will play out. Of course, the threat that ISIS poses could be greater than what its godfather group posed. \n\nSo in modern history, it isn't too common to see terrorist groups defeated through military might alone\u2014though ironically, the *threat* of military force can hasten their demise. It's not really a joke to say that most terrorists tend to burn out on it after awhile (when I have more time, I'll dig up a study I remember reading that found that most terrorists quit their groups after being in them for a good number of years). Most modern terrorists tend to be underemployed, middle class, though decently educated men in their 20s. By the time they reach their 30s and 40s\u2014assuming they haven't been killed yet\u2014they just decide it's not worth it anymore, and their groups just fizzle out. \n\nLastly, as someone who studied terrorism as the primary focus of my undergraduate political science degree, my very humble opinion is that some incarnation of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS will always continue to exist so long as the Middle East remains a vastly unequal resource-rich, opportunity-poor, feverishly religious region. That's not to say military force is ineffective in reducing the threat that terrorism poses. But in this day and age, you do tend to need more than just missiles to defeat ideas. That is all just my own speculation, so take it with a grain of salt. Only time will tell.    \n\nSources:\n\n* *What Terrorists Want*. Louise Richardson. 2006."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG741-1.html"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khawarij", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharijite_Rebellion_\\(866%E2%80%93896\\)"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii"]]}
{"q_id": "2ltmuk", "title": "what is a person's net worth? does it have to do with how much money they have or what potential they have to earn more, or maybe a combination?", "selftext": "Also, who decides?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ltmuk/eli5_what_is_a_persons_net_worth_does_it_have_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cly2092", "cly21bi", "cly22g2", "cly65fm", "cly6ve5"], "score": [25, 16, 12, 2, 2], "text": ["A person's net worth is the value of all their assets, minus debts.", "It's all your assets (cash, investments, houses, stuff) minus all your liabilities (credit cards, mortgages, etc.)", "Your net worth is a snapshot of your *present* financial status.  It's calculated pretty easily, add up the value of everything you own (house, car, investments, etc) and subtract the value of everything you owe (mortgage, credit card debt, etc).", "If you took everything you had and sold it, then used that money to pay all your debts, your net worth would be what was left over.\n\n", "By the way, what you're wondering about, which is combining net worth with other measures of financial potential, I do for myself.  I add Net Worth and Annual Income together into a figure I have called Financial Strength.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7ypmyi", "title": "Is it true that ancient Irish Kings used to participate in a horse sex and eating ritual before they became kings?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ypmyi/is_it_true_that_ancient_irish_kings_used_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duinaq5"], "score": [61], "text": ["It sounds like you're referencing this infamous section from Giraldus Cambrensis' *Topographia Hibernia*:\n\n > \u201cThere are some things which, if the exigencies of my account did not demand it, shame would discountenance their being described. But the austere discipline of history spares neither truth nor modesty. There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely Kenelcunill [Tyrconnell], a certain people which is accustomed to consecrate its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as chief, but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, embraces the animal before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, cut up in pieces, and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship and dominion has been conferred\u2026\u201d\n\nCambrensis' description of Ireland is pretty infamous for its generally dubious depiction of the indigenous Irish (except for his appreciation for Irish music). Coming to Ireland shortly after the Norman invasion of Ireland, Giraldus is often at pains to paint the indigenous Irish population as barbarians in contrast to his Norman compatriots. This has led many scholars and non-scholars to outright reject most of his seemingly derogatory characterizations of Irish culture in the 12th century, however there may be some truth behind this seemingly ghastly rite, which may have actually have been practiced along the lines of how Cambrensis described it.\n\nWhat you have to understand is that Irish kingship from the early medieval period backwards could be characterized as a sort of sacral kingship. Irish kings probably originated as some sort of cultic priestly figure who was entrusted with ensuring the fertility of the territory over which he ruled, which seems to be reflected in later Irish associations of good kingship with bountiful crops and cattle, abundant game and forage, good weather etc., while bad kingship was associated with famine, disease and destruction. The defining symbolic feature of early Irish kingship was not the wearing of crowns or being seated on a throne, but the abidance of supernatural taboos and prerogatives that feature prominently in contemporary literature and legal texts. If broken, these taboos were believed to bring destruction upon the king and end his rule as seen in the literary text *Togdail Bruidne Da Derga*, where the Irish king Conaire Mor is forced to break each of his supernatural taboos, leading to his inevitable destruction.\n\nHorse sex aside, Irish coronation ceremonies were nearly pre-Christian in nature by virtue of the Irish king's role as a sacerdotal figure meant to ensure his territory's fertility and uphold its metaphysical balance. Irish kings supposedly symbolically married the personification of the territory over which they ruled, and coronations often took place on ancient barrow-mounds or earthworks that had originally been constructed in the Bronze Age or even the Neolithic. In the context of the above quote, the white mare may have actually stood in to represent the fertility figure associated with territory ruled by the King of Tyrconnel.\n\nOne explanation for these seemingly archaic coronation rituals and features of the Irish office of kingship has been advanced by several scholars - that the Irish office of sacral kingship preserved a feature of Proto-Indo-European religious belief well into the early medieval period. The rite described by Cambrensis above appears to actually echo a similar rite performed by kings in India as far back as the 2nd Century BCE: the Ashvamedha. This ritual was performed by Indian kings as the most important manifestation of rulership, as it was the most important rite in the hierarchy of sacrifices. The general features of the Ashvamedha line up pretty closely with Cambrensis' description of that Irish coronation ceremony: both involved the union with the horse, its subsequent killing, the king being bathed and the horse's consumption by the king's people. Besides this sole source, it's also possible the hagiography of St. Moling makes reference to the horse-sacrifice and broth which the saint subverts by transforming it into mutton, inverting the pre-Christian associations carried by the horse's flesh and its broth.\n\nSo if you accept that Irish kingship was an archaic religious  &  political office that preserved some aspects of Proto-Indo-European belief which were also seen in Iron Age India, it's totally conceivable that some Irish kings might have gotten it on with a horse before having it been killed and eaten. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2w208d", "title": "if you replaced someone's organs with a healthier \"backup copy,\" would they've potentially be able to live forever?", "selftext": "By backup copy I mean organs from a clone of the same person but younger.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w208d/eli5_if_you_replaced_someones_organs_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["comvxm6", "comwk6s", "comx94h", "comyc01", "comysns", "conb2xd", "conbgug"], "score": [27, 10, 20, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["You'd have to replace the skin, skeleton, brain, blood vessels... they all age.", "Essentially, The problem is the brain, you'd have to find a way to renew it cell by cell so you maintain the memories.", "To add on to what everyone else has said, eventually cancer will always kill you given enough time.", "My favorite sci-fi author did two books on this theme.\n\nIn \"I Shall Fear No Evil\" an old man's brain is transplanted into a young woman's body.\n\nIn \"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress\" criminals are sent to a penal colony on the Moon.  Due to lower gravity they end up living much longer lives than their Earth bound captors.", "Wasn't this the concept for a \"Supernatural\" monster once? ", "Have you ever read the book \"House of the Scorpion\"? About 80% of the plot is built on this theory.\n\nThat aside though, technically speaking, you could live forever through the use of clones, but you'd be practically living your life over and over again, considering clones don't just \"pop up\" - they're just genetic copies, they still start as fetuses and grow from there. \n\nOr just use the organs, but you'd only have so much time before cancer caught up with you from your aged cells and you'd only be able to fight against that for so long. ", "The two biggest hurdles I can think of would be.\n1. keeping the brain from losing memory and continuing to handle autonomous functions.  Like replacing a heart is great, but if the brain forgets to tell it to beat, it's not helpful.\n\n2. there's cell degradation. I'll link to wiki. simply you run out of cells. replacing parts might help certain organs in that regard, but you'll run out of skin?  \n\n_URL_0_\n\n------------\nI think it might be more feasible to copy consciousness to a new body all together instead of repair the 'damaged' one"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_division"]]}
{"q_id": "ok0h9", "title": "Is it possible to \"un-stir\" a mechanical mixture by chance?", "selftext": "For example - if I put a handful of berries in a bowl of cereal and stir them around, is there any chance that instead of just becoming evenly distributed in the bowl, they would all end up clumped together again?\n\nI can only imagine that it's possible, but just extremely unlikely.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ok0h9/is_it_possible_to_unstir_a_mechanical_mixture_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3hvhys", "c3hvsl2", "c3hvwsv", "c3hw76r"], "score": [7, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["You're spot on with your last sentence.\n\nIt's possible, however the chance it can becomes astronomically close to zero quite quickly as the number of components in your system increase.\n\nYou can formally define this in terms of entropy or perhaps more usefully in statistical mechanics.", "This would be an example of the [recurrence theorem](_URL_0_). It is possible, but for even a modest system the recurrence time considerably longer than the age of the universe.", " [Stirring and then unstirring corn syrup and food colouring](_URL_0_) maybe not what you mean but it's interesting.", "Also consider the cases:\n\n If the two mixed substances have a greater affinity for themselves than for the other.  Oil  &  water, for example, will spontaneously unmix in the correct conditions.  This requires that the oil is chemically attracted to itself more than it's attracted to the water, and vice versa for the water (which is very attractive to itself).  This isn't very likely in a berry-cereal mixture, but happens all the time with metal alloys separating into their constituents.\n\nIf you have two substances of greatly varying densities, you can separate them in a centrifuge, or by simply letting them sit and dissociate.  Centrifuges are important in many chemical separations, as well as some biological applications.  This is actually very applicable to your scenario.  Given that the berries are much denser than the average cereal, if you were to shake the mixture in a way that allowed the particles to move, but didn't destroy any of them, eventually the berries would settle to the bottom.  This is in the absence of the added complexity of a liquid (milk) and the associated bouyant forces.\n\nIf the substances are of different sizes (small berries, large cereal), then mechanical filtration could unmix them.\n\nNeither of the last two are spontaneous, but given that separation and \"un-stirring\" are semantically very similiar, they seem worth mentioning."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theorem"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3YZ5veN_Bg"], []]}
{"q_id": "97gwdw", "title": "Operation Dragoon, the Allied Invasion of southern France from the Mediterranean was 75 years ago today. How did the operation play out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/97gwdw/operation_dragoon_the_allied_invasion_of_southern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e4861yv", "e489n2x", "e48cgmy"], "score": [7, 27, 56], "text": ["Following up on this, what did the Allies hope to gain from invading France from the south after already gaining a firm foothold in Normandy?", "Operation Dragoon was one of the smoothest amphibious assaults of the war. The troops were landed with comparatively few casualties, opposition was low, and there was little confusion. The assault force was soon able to move inland, and to seize the major ports of Marseilles and Toulon, while the Germans withdrew in relative disarray.\n\nPlanning for an invasion against the south of France began in December 1943, under the codename Anvil. As the name suggests, it was supposed to be carried out at the same time as Operation Overlord, the invasion of northern France. However, it would be delayed, mainly due to British concerns over its effects on the Italian Campaign. The British hoped to use the Italian Campaign to draw off German troops from the French front, and to use Italy as a pathway to the 'soft underbelly' of Europe. General Sir Henry M. \u201cJumbo\u201d Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean, even suggested that rather than landing in southern France, the Allies land near Trieste, and advance towards Vienna. The Americans, meanwhile, were sceptical about the viability of the British strategy; it would require fighting through difficult terrain, the plan was seen as strongly supportive of British imperialism and interests, and it risked spoiling relations with Stalin. Instead, they wanted to invade southern France to secure the ports there in support of Overlord. Ultimately, the British were convinced of the merits of the American strategy, though not without a certain degree of complaining - the codename was changed to Dragoon because Churchill felt he had been 'dragooned into it'. The final plan was for a three division assault by General Lucian Truscott's VI Corps, to be followed up by the Free French Armee B under the command of Jean de Laitre de Tassigny.\n\nThere were a number of pre-invasion operations. From mid-July, the 15th Air Force carried out a heavy campaign against the bridges and railways the Germans would need to move troops to the region. They were joined in this by the French Resistance. By D-Day, 5 of the 6 major bridges across the Rhone had been destroyed by bombing, while another 32 smaller bridges had been knocked out by the Resistance. In the days immediately before D-Day, the 15th AF also carried out strikes against German coastal radars and defences. On the night of the 14th-15th August, a number of assault landings were carried out to destroy German coastal batteries that threatened the main landings. The American-Canadian First Special Service Force landed on the islands of Ile du Levant and Port-Cros. Neither landing met much resistance as they went ashore. On Ile du Levant, the objectives were captured quickly but the coastal guns were found to be dummies. On Port-Cros, the commandos were held up by German forces dug in in three Napoleonic-era forts, which did not surrender until the 17th August. 700 French commandos of the First Group Commandos Afrique were landed at Cape N\u00e8gre under Operation Romeo. They missed their assigned beach due to currents, and came ashore under heavy German fire. However, they were able to destroy the coastal guns there, and seize the roads inland shortly after dawn, thanks to heavy support from the cruisers *Dido* and *Augusta*. The last major pre-invasion landing was the airborne attack, carried out by the 1st Airborne Task Force, a joint Anglo-American force. While the Allies had learned well from the Normandy landings, they could not control the weather. The pathfinders, dropped before the main assault to mark landing zones, ran into heavy fog. As a result, the landings were heavily scattered; only 40% of the troops landed near their intended drop zones. This did have the unintentional effect of causing the Germans to overestimate the numbers of Allied paratroopers landed, and hence drew troops away from the beaches. The follow-up gliderborne troops, landing later in the morning, avoided the worst of the fog but ran into trees and anti-glider defences. This resulted in heavy casualties, with 283 men being killed or wounded during this phase. There were a number of diversionary operations. Dummy paratroopers were dropped at La Ciotat, further confusing the Germans. A naval diversion was carried out in the same area, with 21 small craft supported by the destroyer *Endicott* using radar reflectors and sound effects to suggest the appearance of a landing force there. Another similar diversion was carried out off Antibes. The performance at La Ciotat was repeated on the 16th-17th, this time provoking heavy German fire. On the morning of D-Day, a further diversion was carried out by a unit commanded by Lt. Cdr. Douglas Fairbanks Jr, which involved the landing of 67 French commandos at Pointe de\nl\u2019Esquillon. The landing was a failure, as the French troops immediately encountered a minefield before being pinned down by heavy German fire. The commandos were captured by the Germans, but later freed by the French Resistance.\n\nThe main assault was carried out in three sectors, each attacked by a separate division of VI Corps. The 3rd Infantry Division had the western-most sector, Alpha, which encompassed Cavalaire sur Mer and St Tropez. The 45th Infantry Division landed in the central sector, Delta, which covered the areas around Sainte-Maxime. Finally, the 36th Division brought up the right flank, landing in sector Camel around Frejus and Saint Rapha\u00ebl. I will cover each of these sectors in turn.\n\nThe 3rd Division was to be landed in the most critical sector. It was closest to the main objectives of Toulon and Marseilles, and was expected to face strong German counterattacks. However, the main initial threat was from German mines and coastal obstacles. The assault was preceded by a strong minesweeping force of 22 ships, plus a number of landing craft modified to serve as shallow-water sweepers. These cleared the route into the beaches, though few mines were actually found. The minesweeping effort was followed by a heavy air and naval bombardment, running from 6:15 to about 7:30. As the bombardment was ongoing, Allied forces were beginning to clear the beach obstacles. 'Apex' boats - radio-controlled LCVPs loaded with 8000lbs of explosives - were used to blow holes in the beach obstacles, before obstacle clearance teams were landed. Rocket-launching landing craft fired on the beach, hoping to detonate mines. Following all this, the assault troops went in at two separate beaches; Alpha Red in Cavalaire Bay, where the 7th Infantry Regiment landed, and Alpha Yellow near Pampellone, assaulted by the 15th Infantry Regiment. These two regiments were faced by a single battalion of German troops (using the term very lightly, as they were mainly 'Osttruppen', Soviet prisoners of war pressed into Wehrmacht service). At Alpha Red, the 7th encountered sporadic small arms fire, with the main threat coming from mines and artillery fire. Two LCVP were lost to mines with sixty casualties ensuing, but the troops were quickly moving inland. An hour and twenty minutes after the first troops of the 7th landed, the 30th Infantry Regiment was starting to come ashore - this swift landing of fresh troops showed how easy the landing had been. At Alpha Yellow, the experience was similar. The sole mishap came when control of one of the Apex boats was lost, causing it to explode near the motor launch *SC-1029*, causing heavy casualties aboard. French Resistance forces and local residents came out to assist with the clearing of the beach obstacles, while the troops pushed inland. In the afternoon, elements of the 15th linked up with misdropped paratroopers from the 509th Parachute Battalion and French Resistance forces to capture Saint-Tropez, the main objective for the day. By the end of the day, the 3rd Division had taken 264 losses, and captured 1627 German soldiers. \n\nDelta Sector was thought to be the most well-defended sector, with heavy gun batteries that could bring the beaches under a deadly crossfire. As such, it had the heaviest offshore support element, consisting of two American battleships (*Nevada* and *Texas*), an American cruiser (*Philadelphia*), two French cruisers (*Georges Leygues*, nicknamed 'Gorgeous Legs' by the RN, and *Montcalm*), three large French destroyers and eight American destroyers. The bombardment force opened up a heavy fire on the German gun batteries and coastal defences, albeit one hampered by fog and haze. The Germans responded with desultory fire. The landing ships went in at four beaches, Delta Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue, preceded again by Apex boats and rocket barrages. The overwhelming Allied firepower successfully suppressed the defences, to the point where the landing at Delta Red suffered only a single casualty from the assault battalion. The troops marched off the beaches and began securing the surrounding area. The 157th Infantry Regiment secured Sainte-Maxime with relative ease. The 180th Infantry Regiment secured the high ground behind the beaches with little trouble, but encountered significant German resistance as it began to push towards Saint-Aygulf. Other elements of the division linked up with the paratroop airhead, and helped the paras capture Le Muy. The division suffered just 183 casualties over the course of the day. The only naval casualties in the sector were the crew of *LST-691*, who suffered food poisoning after eating improperly refrigerated sandwiches. \n", "Hehe, well first of all, the Allies launched the operation 74 years ago today, not 75 (that would have been the two operations of Husky and Avalanche at Sicily and Salerno, respectively). The answer will be in three parts: background, the argument over the operation, and the operation itself.\n\nDragoon is a fascinating operation because it involves so many things unique to the ETO experience for the Allies.  It gets overlooked for a lot of other reasons.\n\n**Background**\n\nOperation Anvil, later renamed Dragoon, has not received the attention it deserves in the historiography of World War II. Academic works have seldom covered the operations in southern France. Mentions of the operation are usually made in passing. It is treated as though it was just a footnote in the war. Literature devoted solely to the operation is sorely lacking, and largely devoid of academic credentials. A scouring of several prominent one-volume histories of the war exemplifies this oversight. This is a typical example of the perfunctory coverage of this campaign:\n\n\"As this drive towards Paris began, Allied, air, sea and land forces launched Operation Dragoon, landing 94,000 men and 11,000 vehicles between Toulon and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast of France in a single day. Within twenty-four hours these troops had pushed nearly twenty miles inland. That day, in Paris, amid the excitement of the news of this fresh landing, the city's police force, hitherto a reluctant arm of German civic control, agree to put aside its uniforms, keep its arms and join the active resistance on the streets. But the revenge of the occupier was still not ended. That day, five French prisoners, among them de Gaulle's clandestine military representative in Paris, Colonel Andre Rondenay, were taken by the Gestapo to the village of Domont, twelve miles north of Paris, and shot. Their killers had then returned to Paris for an 'executioners' banquet', of champagne.\" (Martin Gilbert, The Second World War, 568)\n\nBy this point in the war, however, tactics were replaced in importance by logistics. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, suggests as much. Eisenhower needed as many divisions as he could get on the continent at once, following his broad-front strategy. Acquiring additional ports away from Normandy was the most efficient way to do this. It is this aspect that most historians have tended to ignore. Armies in Italy were unfortunately rendered irrelevant to the operational outcome of the war. The British resented having their main focus in Italy weakened, but forces were transferred from there to Anvil, an operation in which the British had almost zero participation. Operation Anvil was, according to Eisenhower, the most decisive advantage given to the Allies in the struggle with Germany after the Normandy invasion. Its primary value was logistical, in addition to adding hundreds of thousands of troops to the front lines. Anvil was complimentary to Operation Overlord. Just as Batman needs Robin, so too did Overlord need Anvil.\n\nWhat has emerged is an unbalanced narrative of the western European campaign. In regards to the Normandy campaign, there is a stunning lack of reference to the planning of Overlord in histories of the campaign. Most histories focus on a particular unit or individual segment of the battlefield. When planning is discussed, there is almost a universal lack of reference to Anvil.  This was the operation from which Overlord borrowed to make up for a lack of resources. This incomplete picture of the operation is usually followed by a breakout and a race to the Rhine. Nazi Germany's Ardennes offensive in the winter of 1944 caused a setback from inevitable victory, which was achieved in May 1945. A few historians have addressed this imbalance of coverage in recent works.\n\nThe fall of 1943 saw the United States repositioning itself among the Allies. For the first year of the war, the United States usually deferred to the British, who had been at war with the Axis for four years. It took until the end of 1942 before the United States began fighting in the ETO. As the Allies slowly advanced through North Africa, the Americans still relied heavily on the British for sound strategic, operational, and tactical advice. Generals Eisenhower and George C. Marshall followed Prime Minister Winston Churchill's lead on attacking peripheral territories held by the Nazis, famously known as the \"soft underbelly.\" Yet, the United States had the largest economy of the Allies, and its numbers were beginning to be felt across the theater. Increasingly the military makeup of the Allies was becoming more American. 1944 promised to be a year in which America would see its star rise higher than anyone else, and Anvil would be a part of that shift.  Conversely, Great Britain began to slow down throughout 1943. Its strategic commitments to the empire taxed every resource it possessed. The empire was near the end of its manpower reserves, having detached formations to every part of the globe.  Britain welcomed America's material wealth, and expected to dictate affairs, as they were accustomed to doing as a super power. America's leaders began to realize its contributions, and recognized they would only grow within the alliance. As such, they looked to contribute more in a primary way to the direction of the war. This would become clear at Cairo and Tehran, where the Sextant and Eureka conferences would take place. But Great Britain still felt like it should continue to be the driving force behind policy and implementation, and this would complicate Operation Anvil.\n\nInitial planning for Dragoon began in the summer of 1943 in Quebec at the Quadrant conference.  This conference is known primarily for the Allies' decision to invade Italy through it's town (Operations Avalanche, Baytown, and Slapstick).  Marshall asked Eisenhower for his opinion on operations in Italy and beyond. Eisenhower believed that the invasion of Italy should be used to prepare for an invasion of southern France, although what he called the \"annoying and limiting factor of shipping and landing craft\" was going to limit any new operations. Eisenhower wanted to use the forces that recently occupied northern Italy, keeping ten divisions there as a defensive reserve; he planned to use the rest to attack westward into southern France.  \n\nNext, we'll talk about Allied disagreements over the operation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "649dj3", "title": "why do places like costco and walmart mark your receipt at the door before to leave?", "selftext": "Always confused me, and I don't see a logical purpose behind it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/649dj3/eli5_why_do_places_like_costco_and_walmart_mark/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg0cy7v", "dg0d5z8", "dg0dkj9", "dg0dx7z", "dg0t5wx"], "score": [22, 5, 6, 16, 3], "text": ["Guessing, but it's to make sure you can't come back in, collect the same goods as are on your receipt and leave with them a second time. If you try to leave with goods and a marked receipt, they know you're trying to steal them.", "They want proof you bought it. If you leave the store with a bunch of random stuff they will get suspicious if you have no proof of purchase.\n\nIt's more like security theatre to deter shoplifting.", "Basically to make you're not stealing anything. They mark the receipt so you can't reuse it. \n\nThe reason Costco and Walmart do it is different. Most stores put stuff in bags, so if you walk out with a cart full of bags it's assumed you went through the checkout. Costco doesn't use bags, so they manually check your cart.\n\nWalmart does use bags, but their low profit margins mean loss prevention is more important. \n\nAlso, they can't legally stop you unless they have reason to suspect you're stealing, except at club stores like Costco where you agree to it when you join. ", "Never had Wal-Mart check my receipt, but Sam's Club (like Costco) always does.  Sam's receipts have the total quantity of of items purchased at the bottom so the person at the door is doing a quick count/guestimate of the number of items in your cart to make sure it matches your receipt.  Marking a line through the receipt is just an indication that you have been checked and cleared.  \n\nAs someone else mentioned, most retail stores like Wal-Mart cannot stop you from leaving or force you to allow them to check your purchases, but you agree to this inspection when signing up for membership at warehouse stores. ", "It also works the other way around.  If the cashier accidentally rings for an item twice, they will find it.\n\nIt happened once to my mom.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2onh7n", "title": "how do fancy jets have heads-up displays, but we don't have those anywhere else in real life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2onh7n/eli5_how_do_fancy_jets_have_headsup_displays_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmorbzb", "cmorkz7", "cmoslwq", "cmotrki", "cmoust8", "cmovwex", "cmowc0a"], "score": [17, 8, 3, 2, 5, 14, 2], "text": ["It's just a cost issue.  A lot of luxury cars have them already. As the price drops we will see them more in cheaper cars. ", "It's a cost issue. There are some premium (as in, expensive) motorcycle helmets that do have them like _URL_1_ or _URL_0_", "Corvettes have them and some Pontiacs did for a while as well.", "It's not so much about the cost even, since simple projection HUD's are actually quite cheap. It's more about the amount of info you can project on the screen directly in front of the drivers eyes without distracting him, as well as reliability of the system (after all the car's dashboard is prone to vibrations that can break a more sophisticated system).\nYet some guys have done it, aside from mentioned Pontiac and Chevrolet before, [Citroen has been doing](_URL_0_) it for quite a while. Though Citroen has always been quite extravagant with their interior design.", "I got to tour a C-17 once at an Air Force base and I'm pretty sure someone there told me the HUDs in those aircraft cost $30,000 a piece. I'm assuming this includes the projector, the optics, and the computers that control the data.\n\nSo not only can I guarantee you that what you see in cars like Corvettes and BMWs are extremely cheap knockoffs of what they have on military jets, but they'll also never be as good.", "As someone who has flown with a HUD, I can see why they aren't used everywhere. We'll start with the design of such displays.\n\nThe fancy little glass you see atop an airplane's panel has a sizable projector under/behind it. The glass has no circuitry in it, it's just a way of turning that light towards one's eyes. The bigger the display, the bigger the projector.\n\nFurthermore, this projector is designed with infinite relief and focus. When you see the 5 degree down tick on a HUD, everything on that line is EXACTLY 5 degrees down from any position where that tick is visible.\n\nThis isn't a simple thing to do and takes a special projection, programming, and testing to ensure an accurate view. Pilots need infinite relief in tactical jets so they don't have to think of their head position to get an correct view of the display over the world. This ability isn't necessary when you're not displaying attitude information, and in most aircraft it's not really critical to have the other information in one's face.\n\nThe downside of this is the limited visibility range of this display. If its projection is only 10 degrees wide, you aren't going to see a damn thing if you're 15 degrees offset from the display. Movies don't accurately portray this.\n\nHUDs generally show A LOT of information. It takes training to be able to use one effectively and it can easily suck you in to the point where you ignore the outside world. You might as well be looking down at an instrument panel at this point. We have settings to change their modes and declutter them to prevent information overload.\n\nAll this tech leads to a big, heavy, and expensive device that has to be used from a specific viewpoint and requires training for the average person to use. Still think you need these capabilities for other tasks? Read on.\n\n\"Flat\" HUDs exist, that simply display an image that isn't infinitely projected into the world. Unlike in a proper HUD, one has to take focus off the outside and focus on the display to see the number. It might as well be a separate screen or dial. The expense and complication is not justified.\n\nIt could be useful in a car. Some cars do have this sort of display. They aren't cheap, and how many people crash cars looking at speedometers who wouldn't crash using a HUD? GPS display would be great, but trust me, it would really distract a majority of drivers to the point of crashing. Again, a data heavy HUD only enhances functionality for people who wont be overwhelmed by one. Many people can't get past the data constantly in their view and forget that there's an outside world. Even fighter pilots have to occasionally turn their heads away from displays to unwind a bit. [Information overload is actually a well noted risk for cockpits in general, and is worse with helmet-mounted displays.](_URL_0_). These are well trained people who's intellect, coordination, and spatial awareness are, on-average, superior to the general population.\n\nThink a transparent computer screen is any benefit to you? They look great in movies with controlled lighting and perspectives. [They are impressive but not terribly clear in real life](_URL_1_).\n\n[Do you really want to pay the thousands of dollars it would currently cost just to project very basic information on your windows like you see in the Corning concepts?](_URL_2_)\n\nSo who can justify the costs and complexities of these displays at their current level of tech?\n\nAnybody who needs unfamiliar information in motion. That's not going to be your typical office worker. It could be the mechanic who needs quick directions to a part in a stockroom or maintenance instructions overlaid on an engine. It's the firefighter who could use a map of a building or schematic of a car (firefighters already benefit from a great, super simple \"HUD\", lights at the periphery of their vision that indicate oxygen remaining in their tanks). It could be an ER surgical team getting the vitals of a patient who's being flown in.\n\nThe bus driver with memorized routes doesn't need this. Neither does the guy entering data at a console, the retail worker, the line cook, the car mechanic, anybody in most positions of management, our school teachers nor their students, the pharmacist, even many scientists and engineers, salesmen, or hell, pilots. Sure, SOME of those may benefit, but they'd better be making a hearty profit or have an extreme safety need to justify the expenses of integrating HUDs into their jobs.\n\nIn a few decades when this stuff could be commonplace, it might provide small productivity boosts with little development and purchasing cost. Right now, the use of HUDs for most work would be a waste of money and time.\n\nEDIT: Some proofreading.", "The glass on the HUD on a F-18 is made of a special grown crystal.  It costs upwards of 10k per pane.  This is not cost effective for the average consumer. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.skullysystems.com/", "http://www.ridenuviz.com/"], [], ["http://bit.ly/1ytx7iM"], [], ["https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ion=1&amp;espv=2&amp;es_th=1&amp;ie=UTF-8#safe=off&amp;q=helmet%20mounted%20display%20information%20overload", "http://youtu.be/rwCi-WqMIFA?t=41s", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkHpNnXLB0"], []]}
{"q_id": "9cpghg", "title": "What do historians have to say about the destruction of the National Museum of Brazil?", "selftext": "Brazil's most important historical museum was destroyed in a fire today. How does this impact historical study and the historical profession both in Brazil and abroad? Or about the preservation of historical artifacts in the Global South?\n\nI guess it's a very open-ended question; I am just hoping for any insight from professionals or experts who can approach the subject from a more educated point of view. What was lost?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cpghg/what_do_historians_have_to_say_about_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5dg2dt", "e5dr28e"], "score": [21, 13], "text": ["From an archival and linguistics standpoint, this is a significant loss. Entire languages were more or less eradicated overnight.\n\nFull quote and translation as given by the Survey of California and other Indian Languages on Facebook:\n\n\"Pessoal, n\u00e3o salvou-se nada da Lingu\u00edstica. Perdemos todo o acervo de L\u00ednguas Ind\u00edgenas: as grava\u00e7\u00f5es desde 1958, os cantos em muitas l\u00ednguas sem falantes vivos, o arquivo Curt Nimuendaju: pap\u00e9is, fotos, negativos, o mapa \u00e9tnico-hist\u00f3rico-lingu\u00edstico original com a localiza\u00e7\u00e3o de todas as etnias do Brasil, \u00fanico registro que tinhamos datado de 1945. As refer\u00eancias etnol\u00f3gicas e arqueol\u00f3gicas das etnias do Brasil desde o Sec. XVI...Enfim, uma perda irrepar\u00e1vel para nossa Mem\u00f3ria Hist\u00f3rica. Est\u00e1 doendo demais ver tudo em cinzas.\"\n\n[translation (ours): \"Nothing was saved from Linguistics. We've lost everything in the Indigenous Languages Archive: the recordings from 1958 forward, the songs in many languages without living speakers, the collection of Curt Nimuendaj\u00fa: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethno-historico-linguistic map with the locations of all of the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we have from 1945. The ethnographic and archaeological records of the various ethnic groups of Brazil from the sixteenth century forward...In all, an irreparable loss for our historical memory. It hurts so much to see everything in ashes.\"]\n\n\n", "I'm Brasilian and I'm a historian. I never had the honor to work there but losing that place felt like loosing a family member. It's gone, it's all gone my children, my grandchildren and so on will never see it. \n\nWe lost 20 Million Artefacts, including Ancient Roman paintings, Egyptian Mummies and 1/3 of all Pterodactyl fossils in the world. We lost the first scientific institution of our nation, we lost the Slavery Abolition Law, signed by Princess Isabel herself in 1888. I would trade the lives of anyone in my family to save the museum, that building is bigger than you or me, people come and go but museums are supposed to remain forever for future generations"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "87tg6f", "title": "Media is currently reporting that University of Exeter researchers have found remnants of 81 towns that had about 1 million inhabitants, from 1000 to 1400 AC, in the centre of Amazon. Where did they go? How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87tg6f/media_is_currently_reporting_that_university_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwfxp42", "dwgmdqj"], "score": [112, 6], "text": ["Media reports don't always tell the full story, and don't always tell the story accurately. It's useful to look at the actual research paper. In this case, it's in *Nature Communications* and therefore open access (no subscription needed).\n\nThe paper is: Jonas Gregorio de Souza et al., Pre-Columbian earth-builders settled along the entire southern rim of the Amazon, *Nature Communications* 9, 1125 (2018), _URL_2_\n\nNote that the estimate of 1 million inhabitants is for an area of 400,000 km^2, for a population density of 2.5 persons/km^2. For context, this is approximately the population density of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland, and Russia in 1300, and about 1/10 the population density of much of Western Europe in 1300. This is not a high population density. It does mean that the area was populated by farmers rather than bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers.\n\n >  How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?\n\nIt looks like they did. From the paper:\n\n >  That the UTB [Upper Tapaj\u00f3s Basin] hid settlements comparable to those found to the east and west was suggested by 18th century accounts, where the region was portrayed as densely populated, with large villages connected by straight and wide roads.\n\nciting Pires de Campos, A. Breve not\u00edcia que d\u00e1 o capit\u00e3o Ant\u00f4nio Pires de Campos do gentio que h\u00e1 na derrota da viagem das minas do Cuyab\u00e1 e seu rec\u00f4ncavo. *Rev. Trimest. do Inst. Hist\u00f3tico, Geogr\u00e1fico, e Etnogr\u00e1fico do Bras.* 5, 437-449 (1862) for those 18th century accounts.\n\nThese villages weren't giant lost cities. They were villages. The estimate of 1,000,000 for the population is for the entire area, not for the 81 villages/towns (they estimate 1300 or more such villages for the whole area). The largest of the sites in the study had an estimated population of 2594 (see the supplementary information accompanying the paper; Supplementary Table 4 lists the sites and estimated populations); most had estimated populations well under 1,000, and the smaller ones under 100.\n\nThe above doesn't mean that the work reported in this paper is insignificant. The estimate of 1,000,000 people living in this area of 400,000 km^2 is the same as the low-end estimates for the pre-Columbian population of all of Amazonia, and lends credence to the high-end estimates in excess of 10,000,000 (for all Amazonia).\n\nOne thing that is not always clear from the media reports of work like this is the earlier work on the topic. The work discussed above isn't a sudden new relevation - it's another contribution to an ongoing body of work. For example, Clement CR, et al. The domestication of Amazonia before European conquest. *Proc. R. Soc. B* 282: 20150813 (2015), _URL_1_ discusses Amazonian agriculture and the pre-Columbian population (suggesting a minimum of 8-10 million). The modern work on this goes back to the last millenium, e.g., W\u00fcst, I.,  &  Barreto, C. (1999). The Ring Villages of Central Brazil: A Challenge for Amazonian Archaeology. *Latin American Antiquity*, 10(1), 3-23, _URL_0_\n\n >  Where did they go?\n\nAlmost certainly, disease played a major role.", " >  How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?\n\nIf you'd like to read the early colonial accounts of the various Amazonian communities, I'd recommend checking out Orellana's *entrada*, which was the first major expedition by Europeans through the Amazon. Orellana began in the Andes and traveled downriver to the Atlantic. Buddy Levy's [River of Darkness](_URL_0_) is a good summation Orellana's expedition along with some archaeological context.\n\nFor the cliffnotes version, you may want to see [my older post on a related topic](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://doi.org/10.2307/972208", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0813", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03510-7"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=j4qP-GCsHfEC", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43phlf/why_did_no_complex_amazon_river_basin/czk25xa/"]]}
{"q_id": "2xk7lw", "title": "why are chinese and japanese people called \"asians\", but indians aren't?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xk7lw/eli5why_are_chinese_and_japanese_people_called/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp0t2jn", "cp0t4bl", "cp0t4uh", "cp0t5hz", "cp0tqe7", "cp0u4yi", "cp0udd0", "cp0uiag", "cp0un7o", "cp0uuu1", "cp0vwsu", "cp0wybr", "cp0xvzg", "cp10su7", "cp10upd", "cp113n5", "cp11ozb", "cp11x1j", "cp11xv2", "cp13160", "cp138kg", "cp13pqc", "cp13qh4", "cp13ucv", "cp14410", "cp15ael", "cp15i91", "cp15xi1", "cp161a8", "cp1675z", "cp169wr", "cp16be3", "cp16ye6", "cp17kop", "cp17m0u", "cp17m42", "cp17o5x", "cp17ot2", "cp17rfw", "cp17w8u", "cp18mhy", "cp195p6", "cp19bp9", "cp19o63", "cp19sfn", "cp19ydd", "cp1a19h", "cp1a5ba", "cp1a7wc", "cp1a9az", "cp1aajl", "cp1ab3c", "cp1anfk", "cp1api9", "cp1aty4", "cp1ay5k", "cp1b114", "cp1b799", "cp1bz7f", "cp1bzk5", "cp1cczo", "cp1cjkn", "cp1cmv5", "cp1coor", "cp1cy2f", "cp1dggn", "cp1e4v5", "cp1ebou", "cp1ep0i", "cp1fk2a", "cp1fntu", "cp1fyyi", "cp1fz1h", "cp1g581", "cp1gidx", "cp1gjgv", "cp1h273", "cp1hab6", "cp1i9ho", "cp1ieut", "cp1j3er", "cp1j4ii", "cp1jaof", "cp1jf9m", "cp1k94f", "cp1kf4b", "cp1kl41", "cp1l4pp", "cp1l50i", "cp1ltn3", "cp1lylw", "cp1m83h", "cp1mnvx", "cp1mszw", "cp1mxf7", "cp1nbf3", "cp1novn", "cp1np4i", "cp1qycr", "cp1vi3i", "cp25vl4"], "score": [54, 8, 444, 2552, 28, 141, 3, 243, 2, 172, 10, 11, 6, 10, 32, 4, 15, 8, 15, 5, 5, 6, 2, 43, 2, 2, 2, 3, 22, 3, 3, 4, 7, 2, 13, 5, 2, 2, 5, 20, 2, 3, 2, 2, 85, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 10, 3, 2, 7, 6, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 7, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Well in the UK they can be referred to as Asian, the US generally doesn't for some reason. ", "I believe it is due to the fact that they belong to an entirely different ethnic group than eastern asia", "I'm not sure where you're from, but in the UK anyone from the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.) can be referred to as Asian", "In the US Chinese, Japanese and Korean people are more numerous than Indians. So because they look kind of similar to each other, and they are the people from Asia who most Americans are likely to encounter, they became known as \"Asians\". While Indian people are also from Asia, they clearly look very different from Chinese/Japanese/Koreans, so they didn't get lumped in under the same term.\n\nThis is actually the opposite in the UK. Here Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are called \"Asians\". Probably for the same reason. There are more people originally from those countries in the UK than there are Chinese, Japanese and Koreans.", "Asia was originally the name of a Roman province in what is now Turkey. Most modern European cultures were heavily influenced by the Romans and began to use that word. That meaning expanded to encompass the continent we now know of as Asia. Depending on the particular culture Asia can include the sub continent of India or not eg English people will refer to Indians sometimes as South Asians on the other hand Americans do not commonly think of Indians as Asian.", "Because \"Oriental\" is not politically correct anymore. ", "I didn't know there were places that didn't refer to Indians or otherwise as Asian ", "A coworker of mine is Indian. She said that she will choose \"Asian\" if \"Indian\" is not available. When I asked her why, she said,  \"Close enough.\"", "And what the hell do you ca Russians, Eurasians?", "Indian people ARE Asians. So are Russians, Iraqis, Palestinians, etc.", "I agree that it's not as common, but I do regularly hear people use the word 'Asian' to describe Indians/South Asians too. Having attended college and grad school and since lived in places where both groups are common, I also hear the terms 'East Asian' and 'South Asian' also. ", "I visited Zambia, and there was a surprisingly decent population of what I (American) would call Indians (India), but were locally referred to as Asians.   Zambia was previously a British colony, and this lines up with what folks from the UK are saying. ", "Real answer: Anthropology.  Different hegemonic groups, and your cultural reference point.\n & nbsp;\n\nSimple explanation: contextual references based upon emigrating populations.  Britain = Indian, US = East Asian, East Africa = Chinese (for the most part), Australia = Southeast Asian etc.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**SUPER RACIST/CULTURALIST/ETHNOCENTRIC SHORTCUT:**\nWhich one do you mean?  \n\\*Holds up hand\\*  \n\\*Points at forehead\\*  \n\\*Pulls eyes squinty\\*  \n\\*Pretend flying a plane, then do the hand bomb\\*  ", "race is a political construct which divides people into groups based on apparent physical similarities, ethnicity divides people based on shared cultural beliefs and genetic lineages. \n\nEthnically, Chinese, Koreans, etc. are all different but because they have similar physical characteristics they are often lumped into a single race. \n\nUsing race as means of grouping people is troublesome because you can't account for mixed backgrounds. For example, if you have one white and one black parent what does that make you racially? Black? White? Depending on what genes you inherit you may look \"more black\" or \"more white\" than your sibling even though you share the exact same racial background. \n\n In the 19th century, the \"one drop rule\" meant that if you had even one black ancestor you were black, even if you looked white, and therefore precluded from certain rights. \n\nAnother example of why race isn't a good way to group people is that Arabs are considered to be caucasians, but in general have darker skin that somebody from Sweden. Ethnically and culturally very different but the same race.\n", "I've met quite a few Indians who referred to themselves as Asian. Here in Columbus, we have an annual and quite popular Asian Festival and Indians are well-represented and have a dozen booths/presentations.  Hell, go to ANY Asian-themed event in the US (such as a film festival or comedy show) and you'll see plenty of Indian representation. \n\nHere are some examples in pop culture of Indians referring to themselves as Asian:\n\nOn the Daily Show, Indian-American Aasif Mandvi is known as the \"Senior Asian Correspondent\" and here's a clip of him arguing with Olivia Munn (a Chinese-American) over the [position](_URL_1_):\nMy favorite line is \"Jon, I'm so Asian, I'm ninja!\"\n\nHere's an interview with Indian-American director M. Night Shyamalan referring to himself as [Asian](_URL_7_):\n\n\nBuzzfeed recently made a list of the 27 hottest leading Asian men and #2 is an [Indian](_URL_3_)\n(As a straight male, I'm not ashamed to admit that even I thought some of those guys are hot)\n\nAnd one of my favorite Indian-American actors talks about how important it is for him to make a positive impact for the Asian-American (not the Indian-American) community in this [interview](_URL_6_):\n\nAnd there are many, many other examples of Indians calling themselves Asian.  I think over in Asia, the differences in culture and identity is more pronounced than in America. In America, \"Asian\" is more encompassing. Hell, even the wikipedia page for [Asian-American lists Indians](_URL_11_).\n\nEDIT: Just wanted to add a few more examples.\n\nAt _URL_8_, the preeminent authority on the web for all things Asian in the news and in society, stories about Indians are constantly being posted. [Here](_URL_5_) are a few [examples](http://blog._URL_8_/2015/01/master-indian-dancer-and-educator.html). You'd think a blog called \"Angry Asian Man\" wouldn't tolerate referring to a group as [Asian](_URL_4_) unless they actually are [Asian](_URL_2_).\n\nProbably my second favorite stand-up comedian of all time, Russell Peters, is Indian.  Here's a hilarious bit from his standup routine where he talks about [Indians are equally as Asian](_URL_9_).\n\nAs I said, I'm from Columbus, Ohio. When I went to the Ohio State University, I attended meetings for the Asian American Association.  It wasn't at all strange or uncommon to see Indians at meetings. The [current president](_URL_0_) of the organization is an Indian girl.\n\nTLDR; Indians are called Asians and there are lots of examples and classifications referring to them as such.\n\nEDIT 2: Formatting", "From my understanding, it's that although geographically speaking, Indians are \"Asian\", they're really not. We tend to base race on two things 1) looks (with an emphasis on skin color) and 2) culture. \n\nWhen looking at race Asians are lumped together because at a glance \"they all look the same\", the same goes for Caucasians, Hispanics, and Africans as well. Indians and Arabs, however tend to not be lumped into any of the aforementioned groups because of the two earlier points. \n\n\nIndians, Arabs, and even Jews, could, for the most part, could and would be considered Caucasian if skin color and culture weren't as big of a deal as they are. \n\nOf course,  all that being said, race is used as a social clnstruct used to generally describe someone physically and culturally and Indians aren't considered Africans because they're not similar enough to fit the bill. ", "I remember an interview on the radio here in the UK, the interviewer asked an American expert how the Asian community was affected by 9/11 and the expert said they weren't really.  The UK host then said that with the perpetrators of the tragedy being Asian that he thought it might have had some backlash to the community as a whole leading to a very confused American Expert who wondered why the host thought Chinese People flew planes into the WTC....", "When Asian Indian is available on applications and forums, I just put Asian, as that's what us Indians are. Most people fail to call Indians as Asians because we do not look or act similar to what most people refer to as Asians (i.e. Chinese and Japanese).", "This is an American/ \nCanadian thing. They are in fact all called Asians.", "Indians are Asian. They are just more commonly referred to as Indian instead.", "Here's to complicate things. Japanese people don't call themselves \"Asian\" the same way the English don't call themselves \"Europeans\"\n\nParts of the US East Coast refers to fair-skinned North-East Asians \"Chinese\" regardless of nationality ", "We found [this](_URL_0_) at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.  It has a definition of what Asia is and isn't.", "South Asian and East Asian are just more specific ways of describing people that are born in Asia.", "My goodness, so many ignorant answers in this thread. The origins of the classification of Indians as \"Caucasian\" (and not Asian) can be found in the discussions of the supreme court case [U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind \\(1923\\)](_URL_0_). \n\nThe Supreme Court deemed Asian Indians ineligible for citizenship because U.S. law allowed only free whites to become naturalized citizens. The court conceded that Indians were \u201cCaucasians\u201d and that anthropologists considered them to be of the same race as white Americans, but argued that \u201cthe average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences.\"\n\n\n", "I guess it depends where you live. Im from Singapore. A country with 3 main races of Indians, Chinese and malay, and we all refer to ourselves as Asians. ", "This is only in the US, as far as I know. Asians refers to everyone from Asia. Unfortunately, in places like NZ, US media is so prevalent, that it is changing to be more US in terminology. Also, I see below about \"Oriental\" being a slur? What? haha, you zany Muricans. \n", "Can they be referred to as South Asians?", "They are.\n\nI regularly hear the indian community here referred to as \"south asian\"", "Hello, I don't know if someone already answered your question, but here I go. Asia, as you know, is a huge continent. Russia is part of Asia, after all. The Asians you're familiar with, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, are all lumped together as Eastern Asia. This is so because we all share similar history and culture, and our language has developed from Traditional Chinese in variations, such as Kanji (Jap) and Hanja (Kor). This is a reason why it was historically a very big accomplishment for Koreans to develop their own language, because it symbolized independence from foreign culture. \n\nNow, Indians are considered Southern Asian, and this includes Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and sometimes Iran. These people share more culture with each other than Eastern Asians. They also have similar language, physical appearances, and lifestyles. \n\nMiddle Asia consists of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan (Borat!), Turkmenistan (the Turks!), and more. You can see that their names are all similar, because they also have a culture unique to their own. Afghanistan and Pakistan are sometimes considered part of Middle Asia.\n\nThere's also Southwest Asia, with Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Arab Emirate, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, and part of Turkey. You are probably more familiar with the term \"Middle Eastern\", but the proper term is Southwestern Asians.\n\nThe Southeastern Asians are comprised mostly of volcanic islands. These Southeastern Asians look a lot more like Eastern Asians, but they are still people of separate culture and language. This area is divided into two regions: IndoChina consisting of Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, and Malay region with Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Phillippine, and more.\n\nLast but not least, Russia is considered a region on its own, called North Asia. Statistically, Northeast Asia includes Korea (North and South), China, and Japan only, excluding Siberia. It may include Mongolia as well.\n\nI hope that helps!", "In the UK we call people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the like \"Asians\" due to them being the most numerous and prominent group of immigrants from Asia. \n\nPeople from China, Japan, Korea, Laos, and places like that are called \"Orientals\". This term does not carry the negative connotations that it does in the US. However, the term \"Asians\" is being used sometimes to refer to people from these places too nowadays.", "I think they prefer to be called \"Native Americans\".", "I've heard many Americans refer to Indian people as \"Asians\", which is a correct delineation.", "Even better Native Americans are called Indians. ", "India is also a subcontinent. Sometimes the British Isles are considered distinct from continental Europe as well.", "I'm just going to start calling people \"Human\"", "UK here. In my experience Asians are from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh while people from Japan China Korea etc are Orientals, ", "Aren't Indians from India classified \"South Asian\"?", "Why aren't most Russians called Asian?", "I've always had the understanding that they were Caucasian, as in from the Caucus region or whatever as Dwight said:\nwight Shrute: \tKelly is disqualified!\nGabe: \tWhat?\nDwight Shrute: \tYou said the program is not open to Caucasians. Well, [opens encyclopedia] anthropologically she is Indian. Indians migrated from the Caucasus region of Europe. Therefore technically she is Caucasian. [to camera] You're welcome America.\nGabe: \tYeah but she's not white though.\nDwight Shrute: \tWell, obviously, she's, brown-ish but, come on I mean Darryl is far more, ethnic.\nGabe: \tDarryl withdrew his application. The dates of the Yale program interfered with his softball league so, he's gone.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPlease, correct me, politely.", "In UK we call all people from Asian countries Asian.", "I'm British, we call Indians, Indians or Asians.  Chinese/Japanese are Orientals.", "Because race and geographic names are arbitrary and often internally-inconsistent, man-made classifications that have no objective scientific bases.\n\nFYI if you're Amish, there are only three races: Amish, English and Black. ", "In the UK, Indian people are referred to as 'Asians'. It might be partly due to the fact that 'Oriental' was and still sort of is an acceptable term over here. ", "It's also a regional thing. Until recently, most Europeans (British included) referred to Indians as Asians. With those from the Chinese/Japanese area of the world being called \"Oriental\", or \"East Asian\". Due to American proliferation this has changed in recent years. ", "This is the first time I've read an ELI5 and now know much, much less about the subject asked than before. ", "Race is a social construct. So Chinese and Japanese people are called Asian  because they look Asian (a made up construct). Indians are not called Asian because they do not look Asian (although they are from Asia), under the social construct called race. ", "For the same reason people from Idaho, USA and Texas, USA are called Americans, but people from Jalisco, M\u00e9xico are not. ", "I'm Pakistani and it really grinds my gears when someone says I'm middle eastern. Motherfucker, my family has been living in the subcontinent for thousands of years. I'm South Asian or just Asian thank you very much. ", "I am an Alien visiting your green planet, happen to stumble upon your subreddit - and I think you all are just fucking crazy and doomed by your innuendos.", "Question for everyone:\n\nCan Egyptian/Morrocan/Algerian Americans call themselves African Americans?", "I'm in Australia and (because we are great with stereotypes) Indians are seperate because they are telemarketers and taxi drivers whereas Chinese, Koreans, etc. Are businessmen or milk bar owners.", "Technically, arabs are asians too. Russians also", "I'm Chinese. Although it isn't the case, I think it could work if everyone called Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people East Asians, and Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis, etc. South Asians. The people of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. can be called South-East Asians. Just a suggestion.", "cuz vernacular language is not precise. mexicans and canadians are never called americans, even though they're from north america. ", "There seem to be an awful lot of pretty terrible answers out there. The reason this is is because of how countries are grouped. \"Asian\" is a shortening of \"East Asian\" and often only indicates the area around the South China Sea, sometimes including parts of Indochina (Laos, Cambodia,  &  Vietnam).\n\nIndia, on the other hand, refers to the Indian subcontinent and former British India (India, Pakistan,  &  Bangladesh). \n\nThe groupings are by perceived relatedness of peoples and cultures. To an outsider, East Asian people's and cultures are much more similar than than they are different. It also has to do with dividing the area of Asia (which is enormous) into smaller categories. You would likely never refer to Arabs or Turks as \"Asian\" either, despite them also originating and living in the continent of Asia.", "How come we hear the words \"African American\" nobody pictures Egyptians. ", "An indian friend of mine wanted to join the Asian Awareness club in my high school. She wasn't kicked out, but she was advised to join the Namaste club instead. It seems that other asians don't consider indians to be asian either.", "Well in the UK the leftist government and media in an attempt to protect high crime-rate middle easterners from public anger has started calling them \"Asians\" in order to obfuscate whether it is an actual Asian or simply a Pakistani or Moroccan...  \n\nThe idea is the extreme low crime rate of real Asians Japanese/Koreans ect will balance out the extreme high crime  rate of Muslim immigrants and people won't notice what is going on.\n\nIts extremely dishonest because Pakistanis and Arabs are both Caucasoid sub-races   while real Asians are mongoloids. ", "Because they're Indian, honey, not Asian...*pats head gently*", "Asian is a politically correct way of saying \"slanty eyed\".", "India is known as the \"Indian Subcontinent\" while \"Stereotypical Asia\" is known as the Far East, in terms of Historical Textbooks.", "am I the only one that breaks things up by continent like a sane person?\n\nnorth america = north american\n\nsouth america = south american\n\neurope = european\n\nasia = asian\n\nafrica = african\n\naustralian = (this one gets lumped into asian because I cant be fucked to figure out the islands, sorry sheela).", "I thought they were called Asians? ", "You can blame those porn sites. Just take a look at those categories. \n\nAsian and Indian will be separate. AFAIK the ethnicity  mattered.", "To me, if you live on the continent of \"Asia\" you are Asian. Indian, Chinese, Mongolian, Iranian, Russian. Yes Russians are in Asia. Russians are Asian.", "They are classified as Asian in the us as well.  In fact, I've never heard of someone NOT classifying India as as Asian country.", "Likewise, why are White Americans of Algerian or Egyptian descent not called African Americans?", "India is a HUGE country at about 1/3 the size of China, and it's blocked off almost entirely from the rest of Asia with giant mountains (the Himalayas), including Mt. Everest. Their culture varies widely from the rest of Asia due to the prevalence of Hinduism in the country.", "They are. My best friend is indian and refers to herself as Asian all the time. It's weird to get used to tho.", "As an American from the Southern US, I can vouch that we consider the world divided into 3 races. Whites, Blacks, and Chinese.", "Because Chinese, Japanese and Korean people get the '+ to video game skill' and 'technology obsessed' racial abilities while indians get 'reincarnation' and '+to spelling bee skill'. Both groups *do* share '+ to mathematics' and 'over-involved parents'", "Who's not calling them Asians? I mean being called Asian is just a geographic term that defines what continent you are from, I didnt know it had to do with the content of your culture. ", "I think because when you say asian most people immediately think east asians. So saying south asian may be more specific.", "In Japan, it doesn't matter which country; if it's in the continent of Asia, then that country and its people are referred to as Asian. \n\n\nIn Australia however, East Asian and South East Asian are referred to as Asian, whereas Indian is referred to as Indian.\n\nAlso, I've found Middle Eastern is referred to as Arab.", "Why are people from Mexico not called Americans? They live on North America. Same goes for people living in every country in north or south America. The term has been co-opted.\n\nWhy are Russians not called Asians? They also live in Asia. Again, the term has been co-opted. \n\nThe bottom line is that we have names for continents, and names for ethnic groups, and names for groups of ethnic groups. And those, through 4000 years of civilized history, don't necessarily line up. \n", "I call them Asians anyway, along with the Russians and Middle Easterners. They're all a bunch of Asians.", "The historical reason for this is in the \"scientific\" (that is to say, not scientific at all) classification of races from an 18th Century treatise _URL_1_ counted five races - Mongoloid, Ethiopoid, Caucasian, American Indian, and Malayan. Chinese and Japanese people were considered Mongoloid, Indians (and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) Caucasian. Something about the shape of the eyes and the noses - obviously the whole idea of scientific categorization of races is bullshit. Despite being bullshit, some variation on it was incredibly popular through the 19th Century.\n\nAs this went out of fashion over the course of the 19th Century the term Asian replaced Mongoloid. \"Asian\" is a regional term, including Russia, India, and the Middle East. But since it was replacing a racial term, it didn't tend to apply to Indians (or Russians or Middle Easterners). \"Asian\" has remained a racialized term in the English language, regardless of geography. \n\nMeanwhile, people from India were not considered Caucasian, as exemplified in this\n_URL_0_\nfascinating case. But they've never been fully put into one of the other categories. \n\nToday, the common term for people from India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) is \"South Asian.\" This isn't widely used, because in the US, we aren't really sure how to categorize Indian people into our prevalent social understandings of race.\n\nTLDR: because racism.", "The real question is why aren't russians considered Asian. ", "Long story short; Indians are white and Asian.\n\nSo the Indo-Aryans (not Hitler's Aryans) moved out of the Caucasius mountain range and northwest Turkey thousands of years ago. They spread from India to Spain. It influenced the culture, language, and society of these places. \n\nSo, basically, Indians are Asians but are classified colloquially as white, but most people don't even know that they do that. It's like Siberians, really, Caucasian but Asian. \n\nHope that explained things.", "Indians are Asian too. With that said. Indians are Caucasian though there are some Africans there. Other Asians are Mongoloid.", "Because people are dumb, that's effectively why. I was born in the Middle East (even though I'm white). I enjoy setting up Mean Girls scenes:\n\nPerson evidently of (South?)Eastern Asian descent: I'm Asian!\n\nVery white me: Me too!\n\nPerson: You can't be! Where were you born? Canada?\n\nMe: Nope! Middle East!\n\nPerson: That's not Asia!\n\n:/ Fact is, India is in Asia. So are all these random countries like Jordan and Israel and Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan and all the 'stan countries. People just forget about that.", "I always wondered the same thing but about Russians \n", "Thats sort of like lumping South  &  North America as Americans... Asia is huge would include Russians, Middle East etc.", "actually, a large number of people who move in circles you're not in, call them Asians.\n", "I'm an Asian guy, and I've asked this of many people in the past.\nI believe it's due to the difference in stereotypes people associate with Indian culture as opposed to Chinese, Japanese culture etc. Essentially, many people view most Asian countries in being similar, they think we all look the same, they think we eat the same food etc, whereas they believe people from India look different and eat different food etc.\n\nI blame the media.", "People refer to Indians as Asians all the time. Even in pop culture like The Big Bang Theory Raj refers to himself as Asian multiple times. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they are not Asian.", "Same reason everyone in the western hemisphere aren't called \"Americans\"", "Fun fact: Europeans used to refer to all of Asia as India.  ", "Indians are often called \"South Asian.\" Perhaps this is more of an academic term.\n\nSo, what is a South Asian? Good question....\n\nNot a great answer, and perhaps it doesn't quite work in terms of common culture, but you could refer to the members of SAARC as \"South Asian\"\n\n_URL_0_", "Asians probably make up 70% of the world population-  the better questin is why aren't caucasiabs just called nonasians? \ud83d\ude1d", "Same reason why Russians aren't also called Asians even though Russia is in Asia.", "Appearance, culture, and language. Why is Australia \"the west\" when it's Far East? Is Russia in Europe or Asia? The borders are pretty arbitrary, and are defined more by cultural identity and skin colour than anything else.", "Basically, once describing people's race as \"Oriental\" generally became accepted among the more enlightened in society as not okay, they had to get a new term to lump all the far-Eastern appearing races together (Indians already had their own term).  Enter the \"Asian\" designator and **BLAMO**, problem solved!", "In London Indians are called asians and Japanese, Chinese etc are called Orientals.", "1) They are.\n\n2) We used to call Native Americans \"Indians\".  Therefore, the word \"Indians\" was already very prevalent in our culture and we made a distinction between \"native american indians\" and \"you know, *Indian* indians\".", "I was thinking this the other day. In the UK where I am from if someone were to say someone was Asian I would most likely think of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, because there are a lot of people from those countries in the UK.\n\nI've noticed that in the States there are more people from east Asia because of geography and history. So Chinese and Japanese are more common in the states.\n\nBoth Asia.", "Same reason Canadians aren't called Americans I guess. Habit.\n", "Because people tend to use \"Asian\" as a racial not geographical distinction. People in this \"Asian\" part of Asia tend to look similar. By extension, people from the Indian subcontinent might be called South Asians or just Indians because they also tend to look similar.", "Fun Fact - Japanese don't think they're Asian. (Lived here 20+ years)\n\nIt's like how the English don't think they're European.", "since when? I use asian to refer to people from asia, which would include india ", "Who says they're not? I refer to all Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Nepalese etc.) as Asian."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://aaa.org.ohio-state.edu/about.html", "http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-3-2010/the-spilling-fields---vietnamese-fisherman", "http://blog.angryasianman.com/2015/02/sim-bhullar-throws-down-triple-double.html", "http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattortile/asian-leading-men-who-deserve-more-airtime", "http://blog.angryasianman.com/2015/01/aziz-ansari-unleashes-twitter-fury-on.html", "http://blog.angryasianman.com/2015/02/alabama-cop-fired-for-assault-on-indian.html", "http://www.theroot.com/views/actor-kal-penn-obama-and-asian-voters", "http://voices.washingtonpost.com/celebritology/2010/07/talking_with_director_m_night.html", "angryasianman.com", "http://youtu.be/SE3XLIY0aUI", "http://blog.angryasianman.com/2015/01/master-indian-dancer-and-educator.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian-Americans"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/evDGcQU"], [], ["http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5076/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.theofficequotes.com/site/theofficequotes_1/default?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theofficequotes.com%2Fseason-6%2Fbody-language%2Fquote_3243"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Blumenbach"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.saarc-sec.org/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ghqlx", "title": "why are airlines able to sell more seats than are available on a flight?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ghqlx/eli5_why_are_airlines_able_to_sell_more_seats/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cakbj7r", "cakbjr9", "cakcyly"], "score": [12, 5, 5], "text": ["Because they count on some people not showing up, and they didn't guarantee you a seat on that flight. You bought a ticket and they will get you there, on a different flight if necessary.", "Because people will buy tickets and they agree that if the flight is overbooked they may be forced to take another flight.", "Because the contract between the airline and you doesn't say that you're guaranteed to get on the flight you booked.  Even if it's not cancelled, the contract has clauses that say that the airline may in certain circumstances remove you from the flight."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "80rpvd", "title": "why does the urge for chewing, tapping, etc. help with anxiety or focus? what do nervous habits accomplish?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80rpvd/eli5_why_does_the_urge_for_chewing_tapping_etc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duxq94q", "duy3lxj", "duy3p3n", "duy5qah", "duy6mxd", "duy77ox", "duy8ng6", "duyatdl", "duycdck", "duyfslq", "duyfwfu", "duyg1sw", "duyggeg", "duygrvj", "duyh74i", "duyibhr", "duyjlmx", "duyjmpq"], "score": [2150, 2796, 182, 42, 11, 71, 14, 2, 22, 2, 3, 2, 2, 19, 2, 2, 3, 5], "text": [" > Fidgeting is a response to anxiety or boredom. Anxious fidgeting occurs because the body has elevated levels of stress hormones, which are prepping your muscles for sudden exertion. If you don\u2019t have any tigers to run away from at that moment, all that energy has nowhere to go and jiggling your leg or biting your nails is a way to partially relieve that.\n\n > Research at the University of Hertfordshire in 2005 found that fidgeting improved performance in memory tests and this might be because it lowers the level of cortisol, a stress hormone that interferes with learning. Boredom fidgeting such as drumming your fingers or pen spinning gives your brain something to focus on. This is soothing and reduces the amount of other, less directed, fidgeting.\n\n[Source](_URL_1_)\n\n > Some researchers have proposed that fidgeting is not only an indicator of diminishing attention, but is also a subconscious attempt to increase arousal in order to improve attention.\n\n[Source](_URL_2_)\n\nFor those with ADHD...\n > In his recent book, Spark, John Ratey, M.D., shows that physical activity \u2014 even something as small as fidgeting the hands \u2014 increases levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine in the way ADHD medications do. Both chemicals play a key role in sharpening focus and increasing attention.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "I\u2019ve read before that chewing gum helps with anxiety because it tricks the brain into thinking you\u2019re eating which makes your brain think you are not in any danger, there for keeping you out of fight or flight mode.", "What about grinding your teeth while sleeping?", "Comfort. Chewing is like linked to eating your brain thinks \"oh food!  We'll live as long as we eat!\" So you just gravitate toward food, even if food supply is not the cause of the anxiety, we're simple creatures living in a complicated world.", "I have a theory, someone correct me if I'm wrong:\n\nI feel like to some extent, simple tasks that everyone feel comfortable to easily accomplish like pen clicking, pushing a button over  and over again, those kinds of things give us a small reward to feel accomplished, and each click give us lots of small accomplishments to make us feel in control. Like it gives me a small hit to know that if I can control my finger to push the pen down, and I hear that sound, and it has a visible effect on the pen, so the brain feels a temporary reward like I accomplished something while it's going through a much larger problem that doesn't have fast results and requires mental stamina.  \n\nI'm not negating the energy exertion theory either though. IDK if I'm explaining this well, but can anyone that understands what I just wrote negate or affirm that? ", "Your body has an 'optimal' level of arousal and sensory processing needed to perform. \nEssentially it is the 7 senses all working together to keep you functioning (sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell, kineasthic (body movements in space) and vestibular (when you are moving, keeps things in check. See vertigo if unsure what happens when this sense fails)). \n\n\nThink of it as a just right zone. If it is too dark, your eyes will tell your brain to sleep. If it is too bright, you are very alert and awake(see flashing lights im clubs). If you get too worked up and anxious, being held/ deep pressure can help bring you to the just right zone. If you are finding yourself falling asleep when you shouldn't be, light strokes on the arm can wake you up.\n\nIf you are too still, your brain will tell your body to move (fidgeting, bouncing legs etc). This in part keeps yourself alert and awake. If you bite your nails / need to chew things, it tends to have a calming effect (much similar to a blanket wrap).  As mentionee it can trick your brain into thinking it is safe.\n\nThis kind of research is called senory awareness. I would highly recommended a lady called Winnie Dunn. It is very interesting stuff. And it has a very clear link to mental health maintenance. \n\nI hope this makes sense. As the brain and nervous system is a very complex system, often tricking itself to keep you maintained. \n\nSource: Graduated in Occupational Therapy, and did a lot of research into adolescent mental health. \n\nEditted. Formatting. ", "It happens for many different reasons. \nOne is just as a habit. \n\nAnother reason is that whenever we feel bad, our nervous system/brain wants to find a way to stop feeling bad. \n\nThat\u2019s why when someone is stressed or feeling bad, a very common pattern is to distract themselves by eating or playing video games or watching TV. \n\nBasically, anything that takes the focus away from the thing stressing them and helps them feel better in the moment. \n\nFidgeting/ticks can be another way to distract yourself during negative emotions. \n\nIn fact, one of techniques for increasing pain tolerance is pressing on the inside palm of your hand. It helps shift your focus from the area of pain and to the sensitive area being touched. \n\nSo that\u2019s one factor. As a distraction/coping technique. \n\nAnother factor is that the increased anxiety triggers physiological changes in the body (like increased adrenaline) which activates certain muscle patterns which can manifest as ticks/involuntary movements. ", "Such behaviors are dubbed pacifying actions by  nonverbal experts. Ultimately, they are an attempt to calm one self down. For instance with a cat if a cat misses its landing on a jump it will often kick itself to pacify and reassure itself. Humans are not so much different in this aspect. Of course the specific reason isn't exactly known, but probably something along the lines when you get a hug from someone else to reassure you when you are feeling down but in this instance some type of self-pacifying hug. Although, perhaps not entirely as effective as someone else hugging or touching us as humans and animals  have self awareness that inhibits our senses to a degree so we can focus on external stimuli in our environment. ", "Anxiety is an often incorrect response to a situation. So your body reacts as if there was danger and/or a call for action when there isn't. This is because in our society, many situations seem dangerous to our minds that cannot be solved with traditional physical responses. For instance, we may be afraid of losing our job and that feels similar to being afraid of a predator. So there's a situation where our body is prepared to run away or fight but we can't. Physical activity, such as fidgeting or nervous leg movement lessens that disparity by giving your body an activity to do. ", "It lets us focus less on our anxiety and more on that. Your brain, amazing as it is, has its limits. Tapping and chewing are actions that are easy enough to do you can do them without thinking, but still require you to subconsciously do. Also, people tend to tune out everything and focus on the sound of their Tapping, which gives you less space to think about anxiety. That is why when you have a headache, closing your eyes and ears and focusing on your breaths can help, as your brain doesn't have to form thoughts or observe a lot of the environment, but the breathing stops the brain from wandering of and thinking. ", "Anxiety comes from how you're focusing with your mind, either in the moment, or a way of focusing you've habituated.\n\nTapping distracts you from that, so you feel relief. ", " Repetition assists greatly with self soothing. \nSwinging on a swing, bouncing on a trampoline, jogging even has predictable outcomes generally and this allows the brain to cool for a minute. ", "A lot of times anxiety and ADHD are comorbid (I think that\u2019s a word but autocorrect says it isn\u2019t). When it comes to ADHD, a lot of anxiety is caused by feeling unrewarded (lack of dopamine). Habits like tapping fingers to a beat cause a short-lived release of dopamine that imitates a feeling of reward. \n\nIf a conversation is stressing me out or causing anxiety, sometimes I believe it is because my brain isn\u2019t producing dopamine to let me know that the convo is going well. If one believes a conversation isn\u2019t going well, it can be anxiety-Inducing for obvious reasons. Artificially producing dopamine by smoking, finger-tapping, chewing, or any other number of nervous habits makes you feel good (dopamine is the feel-good chemical) and can trick the brain into thinking the conversation is going well, thus removing the \u201cdoes this person like me?\u201d anxiety.\n\nI\u2019m speaking only out of personal experience as I have severe ADHD that sometimes causes serious anxiety. I\u2019m also a drummer and I tap my fingers/feet *constantly*. This is my explanation as to why I think I do it. It works the same way prescribed ADHD drugs work. Amphetamine works by releasing dopamine and adrenaline, which stimulate the frontal cortex (I\u2019m no brain scientist so I don\u2019t know for sure about the specific region that is affected) which is deficient in an ADHD brain.", "This is just based on my experience with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and ADHD inattentive subtype (formerly known as ADD). I have a fidget cube and I used it when I\u2019m anxious and/or need help to focus. For my ADHD, I often need an extra stimulus to focus, whether it be music, moving around, or fidgeting (although too many stimuli at once is too distracting). The fidget cube helps me focus without distracting other people because it\u2019s quiet and pretty unnoticeable. For my anxiety, certain repeating certain thoughts/actions help \u201cground\u201d me or bring me back to the reality that I am in control of what I do as a result of my anxious thoughts. I have done counting, naming things I\u2019m thankful for, pacing, etc. They\u2019re added stimuli that distract my brain from the anxiety so that I can better focus on the present instead of worrying about the pat, present, and future simultaneously. ", "it takes your mind off of the anxiety or stress. you're just thinking about whatever your habit is.\n\nsource: i bite my nails out of anxiety sometimes (it never went to blood ok don't judge me)", "Does the Intermediolateral nucleus play any part here? Maybe a suppressing the sympathetics?", "I work a lot in anxiety research and I see this behavior a lot. Not just in humans but mice, dogs, and cats will overgroom and lick themselves to relieve anxiety in the same way human would fidget. I think it's more of a easy distraction to relieve the brain somewhat from whatever it's currently thinking about. Anxiety is just a constant state of having a low stimulation threshold of the fight or flight response. By distracting the subconscious part of the brain that handles muscle memory, you're sort of releasing some of the pressure, albeit a very minor amount\". This is why simple, repetitive tasks are often soothing, whether it's tapping, rocking, squeezing, picking skin and nails, reciting a mantra while caressing a bead, etc.. ", "Fidgeting, tapping, and chewing can be self-stimulatory behaviors that serve to give a sense of control to ease anxiety. You can often see the most extreme forms of self-stimming occur in individuals with ASD, where self-stimming works as a protective response to being overwhelmed with sensory stimuli in the environment. The person self-stimming can block out less predictable environmental stimuli via chewing, flapping, rocking, spinning objects, pacing, or whatever. All these behaviors fall under the umbrella of stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms, which is one aspect important to the assessment and diagnosis of ASD. \n\nFurthermore, anxiety is extremely comorbid in ASD, which is why I'm even talking about it at all here. Though to a lesser degree, anxious individuals may also try to lessen their anxiety by gaining control over their environment and easing worries via certain behaviors to try and calm the mind by blocking out stimuli with their nervous habit. In regards to ADHD and repetitive behaviors, which is also pretty highly comorbid with anxiety by the way, we see that engaging the primary motor cortex by doodling or fidgeting with something allows brain to better selectively attend to a stimulus at hand, because it's not trying to inhibit a desire to attend to something else in the environment or engage in some kind of active movement (by already fidgeting/doodling).\n\nThink of someone mindlessly doodling in class while still paying attention to the lecture. For some people, doodling would take their attention away and distract them from listening to the content of the lecture. For ADHD brains (which suffer executive function deficits of the prefrontal cortex), by allowing them to mindlessly doodle/fidget during the lecture (which isn't requiring sustained attention to do), they are better able to selectively attend (and sustain that attention) on the content of the lecture. They don't have to inhibit anything  else in the environment that might be distractible, because the PFC and motor strip are already engaged in something, freeing up neurocognitive (attentional and working memory) resources to focus on the lecture content.\n\nI know there was a few different things mentioned here, but there is a lot of overlap between anxiety, ADHD, and autism symptomatology. I evaluate children with all three at work, so let me know if you have any further questions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.additudemag.com/focus-factors/", "http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/why-do-we-fidget", "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00619/full"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2t1toj", "title": "how did ketchup become one of the world's most well known sauce/condiment?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t1toj/eli5_how_did_ketchup_become_one_of_the_worlds/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnux9vy", "cnuzdwi", "cnv1b26"], "score": [21, 49, 7], "text": ["I'm not sure but I've thought about this before. If you google for its etymology you get this:\n\nOrigin\n\n\nlate 17th century: perhaps from Chinese (Cantonese dialect)\u00a0k'\u0113 chap\u00a0\u2018tomato juice\u2019.\n\nAnd it makes me think that it was popular among sailors. Its salted (so its preserved) and portable and goes with anything, so that might make it common while out in the sea. I guess you can blame it on boats. Edit: format\n", "Also because mayonnaise couldn't ketchup in popularity and neither could mustatd", "_URL_0_  \n  \nHere is an interesting article on ketchup and mustard.  \"There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami...  What Heinz had done was come up with a condiment that pushed all five of these primal buttons.  The taste of Heinz\u2019s ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo.  How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://gladwell.com/the-ketchup-conundrum/"]]}
{"q_id": "qp1lo", "title": "How do you calculate the wavelength produced by combining two or more separate wavelengths", "selftext": "yellow + blue = green  \n\nwhat is the equation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qp1lo/how_do_you_calculate_the_wavelength_produced_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3zb28f", "c3zb5s0", "c3zbfqt", "c3zceb4"], "score": [12, 3, 3, 4], "text": ["Color mixing is actually a very complicated subject. A good place to start is to look at the [CIE color space diagram](_URL_2_).\n\nYou're making two incorrect assumptions - linearly adding together two wavelengths can never produce a new pure wavelength (you just get your two wavelengths superimposed, as in the [beats animation here](_URL_1_)), and not all colors correspond to a single wavelength. The colors on the edge of the CIE wedge (the curve going from 380 to 520 to 700) are the colors you can get from a single wavelength. To get to colors in the middle of the color space, you have to add together different wavelengths.\n\nAlso, note that everything I've said is only valid for humans, since color is a perceptual phenomenon that depends on the specific receptors in human eyes. If you're interested in learning more about this (for example, why monitors chose RGB as their color primaries) you can start with the [CIE wikipedia article](_URL_0_).", "Mixing of colors is about the resulting effect on the receptors in your eye. It is not an optical effect so much as a biological one.", " >  How do you calculate the wavelength produced by combining two or more separate wavelengths\n\n\nIf by \"wavelengths\", you're not talking about mixing paint, the answer depends on how you mean \"combining\". In laser work, combining frequencies can produce effects similar to the same operation in radio -- a device that mixes frequencies (frequency = **c**/wavelength) a and b produces a+b and a-b as outputs. This can be used to produce much higher, and much lower, frequencies, depending on the application.\n\nBut it's also true that two wavelengths of light occupying the same space, don't \"combine\". The eye does that.\n\nEDIT: corrected misuse of \"wavelength\"", "There is a misconception here.  If I may paraphrase, it seems like you are thinking: \n\n*The sum of two pure waves is just another pure wave whose wavelength is some function of its inputs.*\n\n**This is false:** what you get is just a sum.  It is not a single pure wave, and it does not have a well defined `wavelength' as such.  (Though you can speak of things like its maximum wavelength, group velocity and so on; but this is not really the same.)\n\nMost light (except lasers and other exotic things) is really a sum of many different frequencies all at once.  The way paint works is that it absorbs some subset of the visible spectrum, and reflects the rest.  If the subset of the reflected light's spectrum predominantly excites one of the three different kinds of human color receptors, then we perceive it as having some color.\n\nMixing paint is more like combining filters, not adding wavelengths.  The yellow paint absorbs one subset of the visible spectrum and the blue paint absorbs another subset.  Taking the intersection of the frequencies they reflect leaves a chunk of the visible spectrum which looks green to the human eye."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space", "http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/demos/superposition/superposition.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CIExy1931.png"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8u0p5l", "title": "Do fusion reactions take place in gas giants?", "selftext": "I was reading that the composition of Jupiter is 90% hydrogen and 10% helium. Are hydrogen atoms fused together to make helium atoms?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8u0p5l/do_fusion_reactions_take_place_in_gas_giants/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1bqoe1", "e1bzm6n"], "score": [27, 2], "text": ["As a rule, no. The Helium in Jupiter was there when the planet formed. Even with a planet as large as Jupiter, the core regions don't reach high enough densities and temperatures to start Hydrogen Fusion. \n\nIn fact there's a whole class/spectrum of objects that span the gap between Jupiter (clearly a Gas Giant) to M-type Stars, the smallest stars that undergo core Hydrogen Fusion. These objects are called Brown Dwarfs. Its unclear if these objects are just runaway Jupiters that get huge (10-20x the mass of Jupiter), or if they're failed stars that don't collect enough mass to reach core burning. The largest of these Brown Dwarfs can sustain some fusion, typically Deuterium and Tritium, but can't sustain full Hydrogen burning. ", "Nope! They don\u2019t have enough mass, by definition. Fusion in stars occurs because of high temperature/pressure, of which a gas giant does not have enough of. For a gas giant to exist, it has to have too little mass to begin fusion, otherwise it becomes a star. Well, kinda. There\u2019s this thing called a Brown Dwarf, which is described by some as the bridge between a planet and a star, which (I think) are believed to undergo mostly deuterium-based fusion, which is a relatively low-energy yield process, primary emissions being infrared, opposed to the powerful UV, x-ray, and gamma ray emissions of true stars. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2z8r95", "title": "what is the difference between love, infatuation and lust, and how do you identify which one are you feeling?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z8r95/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_love/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpgne75", "cpgnkoo", "cpgnn1y", "cpgnzo3", "cpgo88x", "cpgocs4", "cpgpmtu", "cpgr0oo", "cpgrjax", "cpgrsmh", "cpgu2n0", "cpgua9b", "cpguqly", "cpgvxiy", "cpgxh2c", "cpgyowt", "cpgyrjw", "cpgz7kn", "cpgzqh4"], "score": [126, 27, 11, 5, 2, 2, 5, 2, 6, 5, 2, 105, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Five bucks to whoever can actually explain this. ", "Lust is when you get an overwhelming desire to be with a person physically. Love is when you still have that overwhelming desire AFTER the sex is over. \n\nInfatuation is when youre obsessed with the IDEA of someone but it's really more about you alone than you as a couple. ", "There's not going to be a \"correct\" explanation for this because these are subjective feelings that can't really be objectively quantified or compared. That being said, here's my take.\n\nLust is a bodily desire to be with someone sexually. Infatuation is an intense feeling of being drawn to someone. Love (romantically speaking) is something that is built over time out of a sexual relationship. \n\nSo infatuation with someone means you're thinking about them all the time. Usually this will happen at the start of a crush or after the first date if it goes well. Lust happens when you are really attracted to someone. This might go together with infatuation if you think about sleeping with that person all the time, but you can be infatuated with people romantically without it explicitly being about sex and you can also be infatuated with people without it having a romantic component at all. When people talk about \"love at first sight\" I think they usually mean \"lust at first sight\" because what they mean is we both saw each other and wanted to bone. Love, for me, involves getting to know and trust another person and feeling close to them over time because of your shared experiences. I don't think you can start a relationship out loving the other person (assuming you didn't already know each other).\n\ntl;dr - Lust: You think someone's attractive and want to have sex with them. Infatuation: You think about someone a lot. Often will involve thoughts about the future and thoughts about what you don't know about them since you're wondering what they're like. Love (romantic): Comes after you've been in a relationship for a while. Usually felt for someone who you have already lusted for and been infatuated with.", "Lust is sexual attraction.\n\nLove is emotional attraction.\n\nInfatuation is concentrated admiration. ", "Love cares more for others than for self; it's not \"me first\". Love doesn\u2019t want what it doesn\u2019t have.  Love doesn\u2019t strut, doesn\u2019t have a swelled head, doesn\u2019t force itself on others. Doesn\u2019t fly off the handle, doesn\u2019t keep score, doesn\u2019t revel in demeaning others, and never gives up.\n", "Infatuation projects your fantasies about another person onto that person.  \n\nLust - sexual or otherwise - is an uncontrollable urge to scratch an itch at the expense of the best interests of not only the desired person/thing, but yourself.", "Love is when you place a persons needs ahead of your own at any costs.\n\nInfatuation is admiration,  fleeting as you begin to see the fault in your target of interest.\n\nLust is the physical stirring within you another person generates.  Lust is self gratification.  ", "Infatuation is a pipe dream, lust is animal desire, love is sacrifice ", "My personal take:\n\n**Lust** is the simplest.  It's a desire to achieve sexual gratification with someone.\n\n**Infatuation**, the way I define it, is actually what a lot of people consider \"love\".  It's a desire to be with someone, around someone, or close to someone because of the way they make you feel.  This causes a whole bunch of related thoughts and feelings, such as a desire to give them gifts or do things for them, feeling like you care about them and their physical and emotional well-being, wanting to help them with their problems or with their future, and/or being their \"support\"--someone they can lean on when things go wrong in their life.  Basically anything you see in a Disney film or a romantic comedy.  Infatuation feels amazing, which is why people seek it out, and our culture and media often conflate it with love to give it more gravitas and significance, which validates our feelings.\n\n*Notice I used the term \"desire\" to describe Lust and Infatuation.*\n\n**Love** is not a desire in any sense of the word.  Love is a choice.  It's about moving past desires and choosing what is best for another person, regardless of what you feel like doing.  This could mean a lot of what is covered in Infatuation (caring about someone, wanting to help them, etc.), but you have to remove the element of self.  In other words, love is caring about, helping, and supporting someone selflessly, without it (necessarily) gratifying you or fulfilling a desire.\n\nThe reason there's so much overlap between love and infatuation is because the goal is similar: to do or provide good things to the other person.  But the motivation is what really makes the difference.  With infatuation, you want to do these things because you want the other person to like you and/or be close to you.  With love, you do these things either because it's simply the right thing to do or because you have made that choice to make the other person's health and happiness a priority, sometimes even at a cost to yourself.\n\nInfatuation is not a bad thing though.  The ideal relationship starts out with infatuation (and probably feelings of lust), and as you discover each other's personality and capabilities and plans for the future over time, it (ideally) puts you in a good position to decide whether or not to love them.  Personally, I believe I have fallen in and out of infatuation with my wife multiple times over our relationship (the lust also waxes and wanes over time).  But even when I'm the most pissed at her, and I can't stand to listen to her, and I want nothing more than to just get away from her, there's always that little voice in the back of my head that reminds me that, no matter what happens, I will continue to work to ensure her health and happiness.  Because that is what I have chosen to do.  That's what I define as love.", "The way I had it explained to me is that every romantic relationship has 3 parts to it: intimacy, passion, and commitment.  Intimacy is closeness, of the relationship and how well you get along, how much you have in common, how much you share with the other person.  Passion is the physical aspect of the relationship which includes all kinds of touching, kissing, and sex.  Commitment is pretty self-explanatory.\n\n* If the relationship has none of those qualities, you are acquaintances.\n\n* If it has only Intimacy, you are friends.\n\n* If it has only Passion, it's lust.\n\n* If it only has Commitment, it is called Empty Love.  (Like a husband and wife who do not love each other any more, but won't split because they have a kid)\n\n* Intimacy + Commitment = Best Friends/Lifelong Friends\n\n* Intimacy + Passion = Infatuation\n\n* Passion + Commitment = ...I'm not sure this one even exists.\n\n* Intimacy + Passion + Commitment = True Love\n\nHope this helps.\n\n\n\n", "Love, infatuation, and lust are all components of the same thing, long-term pair bonding. Now for the analogy I have to make a clarifying statement: the analogy only speaks towards the relationship between these words, not in the owning of a human... Now for the analogy: buying a new technology (smart phone).\n\nInfatuation = technophilia - being infatuated with smart phone technology you begin to think about owning a smart phone. You like the individual aspects that the technology can bring you, larger screen, internet access, and mobility. In the same way you can be drawn to aspects of a persons personality that will inform you on what you value over what you don't. For instance I have a friend who loves the 'southern peach' affect some southern women will comport themselves with. It is a facet of his infatuation.\n\nLust = wanting a brand. Wanting a smart phone and wanting a particular brand and buying it are different aspects of the same process of acquiring a smart phone. Now your infatuation with smart phone tech has led you to wanting an iPhone 26. Now you REALLY want that particular phone in this particular color and you go to the store and buy it. Lust is what gets you to the store and what you feel once you initially own it.\n\nLove = knowing what you've bought and liking it. Now that you have the iPhone 26 in the color you want time will pass as you get to know the 'ins and outs' of how to operate it and what it can and cannot do. This is important. This is familiarity that breeds expectation and reliance. Just as with a partner you've been dating lust and infatuation get you a date and to the door, but love is built upon an understanding and a continued liking of your partner. Just like your 'love' of your iPhone comes from understanding it and liking it for an extended period.\n\nNow, to re-clarify, this analogy isn't about owning a person, it's about how three defined things can all be a part of a single process. Also, this analogy only takes a single-sided approach to explaining lust, infatuation, and love. Reciprocal love (shared love) is this mirrored, reciprocated, a back and forth that can fuel even deeper extents to these terms, added value, etc.\n\n\n\n", "Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love does a decent job of covering this.\n\nImagine a triangle. At each corner of the triangle you have Intimacy, Passion or Commitment. Intimacy involves feelings of closeness, attachment and the sharing of personally relevant information. Passion involves feelings of physical attraction, thinking about someone all the time, wanting to be near someone all the time. Commitment encompasses short term commitments (staying together) and long term commitments (making plans for the future).\n\nWith just passion you experience lust.\nWith just intimacy you experience liking.\nWith just commitment you experience empty love (imagine a couple that's together just because they don't believe in divorce)\n\nPassion + Intimacy is Romantic Love, which is the honeymoon phase of the relationship. You're building a foundation for later commitment by spending lots of time together, sharing lots of personal information about yourself with this person, having lots of sex or engaging in other acts of physical affection and everything they do is funny and endearing and perfect. This is often also described as \"limerence\" (term coined by Dorothy Tennov). However, limerence is used to describe the somewhat negative aspects of this honeymoon phase in which one's thoughts, emotions, needs and behaviors are intrusive, involuntary, often obsessive in nature and contingent upon your perception of their same feelings---this is the \"omg I can't stop thinking about him, why hasn't he called me back, I'm literally going to die if I don't hear from him\" phase of the relationship, which I think accurately describes \"infatuation\".\n\n\n\n\nIntimacy + Commitment is Companionate Love. Think of your best friend or your close sibling. You love this person, no doubt about that, but it's purely platonic. You'd take a bullet for them, bail them out of jail, beat the crap out of anyone who hurt them but you don't want to sleep with them. It's different from just normal friendships because of the long term commitment. This kind of love is also seen in long term marriages where passion is no longer present. \n\nPassion + Commitment is Fatuous Love. It's getting married to someone you just met or marrying someone so that you can have sex with them. You haven't established an intimate bond with this person but you're already making promises to be together or take a trip together or leave your spouse for them.\n\nPassion + Intimacy + Commitment is Consummate Love which is what we typically think of when we talk about Love-love. This is \"The Notebook\" caliber love. You've established intimacy with this person over time and across situations. You've made a commitment to them (either an emotional commitment like marriage or a tangible commitment like buying a house or having a child together). You also feel passion toward them---when you're with them, you're touching or somehow maintaining your connection to each other and when you're not with them, you think about them and want to share your experiences with them when you reunite.\n\n\nNow, other people have other theories about love and what it means, but Sternberg's theory is (I think) the best theory for comparing and contrasting the different kinds of love and attraction.\n\n\nSource: M.S. Development of Psychology, specialization in Romantic Relationships and Attachment Theory\n", "Infatuation is a mental state and very immature. \"I don't think I can live without him.\" \n\nLust is a physical state and happens to everyone. \"I want him so bad; he's so hot, he is gorgeous and I just want him now.\"\n\nLove is an emotional state born of maturity and comes much longer after the other two. In fact, it is the only state that can last for very long, as the mind becomes bored quickly and the body changes. Love is more like an action, a habit. An emotional bond urging us to give of ourselves beyond that of our other relationships. A father who will give up his dreams to secure a future for his children. A husband who will jeopardize his life to protect his wife. A child who will drain their bank accounts to help out mom or dad or grandma in poor health. A man who will forego a promotion job transfer so he can support his partner's dream job. Love is a willing sacrifice,  one that never questions the loss; actually the \"loss\" is a gain. In the regard love is the habitual action of giving to someone whom you care for generally as much as or more than yourself. ", "When you'd like to kiss a girl because she looks pretty, but she has no idea, that's *lust*.\n\nWhen you'd like to get to know a girl more because she's pretty, but she also has no idea that you think so, that's *infatuation*.\n\nWhen you'd like to kiss a girl, get to know her, and be her friend all because she's the prettiest girl in the world, and she thinks all the same things about you, that's *love*.", "Love is caring about another person more than you care about yourself. You love family members, children, and of course your significant other. Not necessarily complete altruism, just a recognition that you would put aside personal needs for their sake.\n\nLust is physical attraction to another person. A long term marriage generally consists of both physical attraction and love, although it's obviously not unheard of to have just one or the other.\n\nInfatuation is an addiction to the person. If you feel as if you need another person to live, that is infatuation. Relationships are founded on strength of self first, so being that dependent on someone is usually unhealthy, and likely to end poorly for one or both parties involved.", "This is probably going to get buried, maybe for the better.\n\nThere are two species of voles on this planet (prairie and montane) that are genetically identical, except for a single gene that regulates the production of oxytocin. The vole lacking that gene only engages members of the opposite sex in one night stands. The vole having that gene mates for life. Love is the only one of the three that produces oxytocin release when you think about the person.\n\nThere are other neuromodulators - dopamine, serotonin, various endorphins, etc. Learn about them, try drugs that stimulate their production and you will know what the real \"feelings\" in a human body are. Do not listen to people who try to explain emotions without looking at brain chemistry - they are like doctors who at the onset of germ theory still maintained that all illnesses in humans are caused by four fluids in their bodies and their disbalances.\n\n/u/mattattackk04 please donate my 5$ to any education non profit.\n\n", "Infatuation - You think about her all the time.\n\nLust - You want to fornicate with her all the time. \n\nLove - You still want her in your house after you finish with the previous. ", "lust = you would like to have sex with the other person, even though you may not actually like them or deem them worthy of your affection.   \ninfatuation = you would like to have sex with the other person and possess them as an object because you hold an inaccurate evaluation of their great worth and an inaccurate evaluation of yourself as having little worth.   \nlove = a bond between two people that is built slowly over time like the blocks of stone that form an arch. Eventually you can no longer tell where one pillar ends and the other begins.", "If your feelings go away after you whack off, it's lust.\n\nIf you don't feel alone or insecure even when you're away from him/her, it's love.\n\nOtherwise, it's infatuation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3h5lx4", "title": "if something was ejected from say a geosynchronous satellite in the opposite direction of travel, at the same velocity as the satellite, would it fall straight down to the earth's surface?", "selftext": "if the satellite is orbiting at 3.07 km/s, and the object was ejected backwards at 3.07km/s\n\nalso...\n\nif a geo-sync satellite fired a projectile at earth, would it land directly where the satellite was above? (ignoring atmospheric effects for simplicity)\nor would it have to accelerate or decelerate to maintain its trajectory to the specific point on the surface?\n\nedit : thanks for the answers guys! keep making reddit great :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3h5lx4/if_something_was_ejected_from_say_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu4sc8x", "cu4ysxr"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["In theory, yes. In practice, no. There are many atmospheric layers it would have to pass through on the way, some having generally high wind speeds and turbulence, so the aerodynamic properties of the object would have a significant effect on the path it took.\n\nOn a planet with no atmosphere then I believe it would drop straight down - although I have a feeling things like the Coriolis effect would also need to be considered - you have to define what you are measuring 'straight down' relative to. Is it the point on the planets surface directly below where it was ejected, or the point on the planet which will have rotated into place at the moment it lands?\n\nEverything is relative.", " > if a geo-sync satellite fired a projectile at earth, would it land directly where the satellite was above? (ignoring atmospheric effects for simplicity)\nor would it have to accelerate or decelerate to maintain its trajectory to the specific point on the surface?\n\nHere's my back of the napkin thoughts. Please correct me if I've missed anything.\n\nLet's assume a few things:\n\n* The \"gun\" is aimed directly at the Earth's center\n* The Earth does not rotate significantly in the time it takes for the projectile to reach the surface. This make sense if the projectile takes something on the order of minutes to reach the surface; it takes 24 hours for 1 Earth rotation.\n* Ignore all atmosphere effects\n\nThe projectile' velocity vector can be broken down into 2 components:\n\n1. The velocity tangential to the Earth. This is equal to the velocity of the satellite and is about 3 km/s.\n2. The downward component, at a right angle to 1.\n\nThe tangential velocity of the Earth surface is about 0.46 km/s (40,075 km/day). Therefore, when the projectile impacts the surface it will have a horizontal velocity component of 3-0.46=2.54 km/s relative to the ground, assuming it impacts perpendicular to surface. This is a false assumption, but it is sufficient to show that there is a high horizontal velocity relative to the surface. If the projectile impacts at a shallower angle, then the velocity magnitude will change but the direction remains the same.\n\nConclusion: The projectile will not land directly below the satellite. It will land somewhere ahead of the satellites path, assuming it is fired with sufficient velocity to actually impact the Earth at all.\n\nTL;DR - Satellites are moving fast, and so is the projectile."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5yrlij", "title": "why are people starving while the rest of the world eats itself to death?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yrlij/eli5_why_are_people_starving_while_the_rest_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dese3e7", "dese6e7", "desf67v", "desfkl4", "desfrpc", "desfrsf", "desgqwg"], "score": [8, 30, 9, 38, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Corrupt governments in those countries taking the food for those they deem worthy, war physically stopping shipments of food from getting to where it needs to go due to risk of death of those shipping it, and infrastructure to keep food fresh not existing in those regions. ", " >  Physical transportation of food is easy\n\nNo it isn't. Not through war zones, areas with no roads or infrastructure, or through areas the local government won't allow.\n\n >  a quick glance around my local supermarket shows food from all over the world.\n\nThis is a marvel of modern technology at society, achieved at great effort and cost. It is rather dismissive to look at something you find commonplace and assume it must be easy to achieve.", " >  transportation of food is easy\n\n\n >  local supermarket\n\n\n >  Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria\n\n\nInfrastructure. We, living in the more developed countries, are benefiting from a well built infrastructure that allows for things such as your local supermarket to exist and sell big quantities of food from all over the world on a daily basis.\n\n\nAdd to that, of course, is that the countries mentioned have chronic issues with political/economic/social instability, which significantly hinders their ability to secure efficient functioning of the society, which inherently affects their infrastructure, domestic and foreign economic policies, etc.", "MONEY. \n\nThe physical transportation of food might be \"easy\" (to port cities at least), but it isn't free. Transportation has cost.   And while you might assume that a big semi-truck can travel a mile a minute anywhere in the USA, it ain't going NOWHERE through the jungle. Where it CAN go, it still needs to fill up it's gas tank. \n\nYour grocery store has all sorts of food, even super-expensive \"organic\" food because you can pay for it, and the USA government subsidizes food. The farm bill is around the half a **tril**lion.  Which is you paying for it via taxes. Potaytoe patawtoe.\n\n > So I'm curious as to what exactly is stopping the distribution of food to these countries?\n\nBusiness who do things for profit can't make any money shipping food there. So they don't. \n\nYeah. Poverty.  \n\nBuying the food, transporting it to a place of poverty and famine, and selling it for as much as you could would still be an act of charity.   \n\nWhich is something we do.  Because in a general sense, the developed world feeds the hungry out of the kindness of our heart and/or thirst for global domination. We give places a ton of money to buy our food.  [Foreign aid, specifically to Yemen is about half a billion this year.](_URL_0_).   Of course we're also selling planes and bombs to the Saudis, who I believe just got done bombing the hell out of them.     War often leads to poverty. \n\nAnd corruption means a lot of that foreign aid doesn't quite get into the hands of the people who are hungry. \n\nAlso, there's an ugly side to foreign aid.   Imagine you've got a nation down on it's luck. Like.... they didn't get much rain and all their crops failed. Sucks to be them. Bunch of starving people.   Uncle sam comes through and gives everyone food.  Great right? (And it really is for a lot of people).   BUT.  That has some nasty side-effects.   All those farmers who has a terrible year now have a crop again next year.... but people have a bunch of free food from uncle sam... Why would they pay for food?   The free food program is a real kick in the pants to the farmers. The exact industry that would help fix the problem.  If you give them cash, that's where corruption comes in.  If you give them \"coupons\" to buy food, typically from our food suppliers, that's exactly the same as giving them food. \n", "distribution of food to every poor village in middle of Africa ain't easy and would cost more than value of food, it's much easier to give them chicken which are pretty independent and easy to raise than trying to take care of those people like they are children\n\n_URL_0_\n\nplus in the end what would be benefit for those rich people in West in letting poor population to grow even faster than it is by helping them not die? maybe if people in those poor areas had one child per family they would have something to eat instead of making babies like in factory line and then not having enough resources to feed them\n\nfor examples see India vs China and their progress in recent decades", "Aside from corruption. A very simple and ignored fact is that most women in these countries will have over five children and no means to feed them.", "Six children per woman is the average. If your offspring don't survive you produce more offspring look at any animal on earth. If we had a magic button to save them all today we would have treble the crisis in twenty years time as epigenetics/culture will take several lifetimes to change. It's life at its most basic but it is true. The average across wealthy secured western countries is 2 kids because it's pretty much guaranteed survival.\n\nYes there are also issues with wealth distribution and poverty well covered by every other answer. Idk what the solution is. But throwing money at it is definitely not the correct response. For me removing corruption and supplying education would be the best option but easy for me to type and probably very hard to implement!\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.usaid.gov/crisis/yemen"], ["https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Why-I-Would-Raise-Chickens"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4luv9r", "title": "Where did the notion of eating beef and other red meats \"medium rare\" come from?", "selftext": "I searched on /r/AskHistorians and Google, but couldn't really find anything on this, so hopefully this question is good to go.\n\nI love steak and beef roasts (as do many other people), and medium rare, more or less, is the preferred temperature, or doneness, that many people including myself eat their beef (or tuna, or deer, or duck, and so forth).\n\nHowever, where did that line of cooking and thinking come from? I guess intuitively it tastes better and it's more tender, but that can be subjective and depending on each individual's own tastes and palate. I also consider back in the day, where perhaps there was a knowledge of cooking raw meats killed off bacteria, and to make sure food-brone sickness were to be keep to a minimum via cooking with fire, so we simply decided before to cook stuff all the way through, until one day someone decided to not cook their cattle roast all the way through, and then slowly and gradually more people started to eat their meats at lower temperatures.\n\nThe jist of the question would be if we always liked our foods that way, or if we grew accustomed to it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4luv9r/where_did_the_notion_of_eating_beef_and_other_red/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3qstad"], "score": [21], "text": ["Also, an add-on to this, were there ever periods of time where eating medium rare pork/chicken were acceptable, or has it always historically been beef that was eaten medium rare?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "79gj7s", "title": "It's often said that William F. Buckley, Jr. began the modern Conservative movement in the U.S. If this is true, what did the Conservative movement look like before Buckley?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79gj7s/its_often_said_that_william_f_buckley_jr_began/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp1s4q2", "dp2evj9"], "score": [12, 26], "text": ["As a follow-on, I've read that he said something along the lines of \"We have kooks and they have kooks, but there are more kooks on our side\". Did he actually say that, and if so to whom was he referring? Obviously John Birch Society, but any other organized groups?", "Buckley emerged in an age in which Democrats and the New Deal coalition were dominant in America. This coalition would essentially give the Democrats 7 electoral wins out of 9 tries from FDR to LBJ with only Eisenhower in between. \n\nThere were various flavors of conservatism that opposed this coalition while it was around. These strands were not very well organized, but typically included ideas like pro-business policies, while also maintaining a preference for protectionism (there were strains of economic liberalism in these groups, but protectionism was typically more popular), social traditionalism, preference for small government, and non-interventionism. \n\nBuckley, in his attempts to define and put boundaries on American conservatism, promoted staunch anti-communism (also present in pre-Buckley conservatism) that also included the acceptance of an internationally active America and a preference for economic liberalism and free trade. His efforts were to unite the various, disparate groups that opposed the New Deal, including libertarians, traditionalists, and anticommunists. This laid the foundation for the rise of Movement Conservatism that culminated in the election of Reagan and is still leading group in the Republican Party today. Two notes: (1) there were other streams added to movement conservatism over time including neoconservatives and the religious right, who took were sort of more extreme incarnations of anticommunists and traditionalists; (2) Trump and his ideological allies are pushing against many accepted tenets of Movement Conservatism.\n\nBuckley, as he united certain groups, also attempted to keep out certain groups from conservatism who he saw as poisonous to the movement. This included Ayn Rand and her allies, the John Birch Society, anti-Semites, (eventually) segregationists and white supremacists, etc. \n\nIn all, prior to Buckley, there were a number of ideological streams that could be classified as conservative, including libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists, but they were not really united in any way. Buckley sought to unite these groups, while also keeping other groups out of mainstream American conservatism. \n\nSee for more:\n\n*The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945* by Nash (published in 1976, revised in 1996)\n\n*William F Buckley Jr* by Judis"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1x1vbn", "title": "why cant you (legally?) have osx on a pc, but can have windows on a mac?", "selftext": "I'm familiar with the \"hackintosh\", and know its possible, but why is it that you cant just buy a PC ready version of OSX? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x1vbn/eli5why_cant_you_legally_have_osx_on_a_pc_but_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf7dlme", "cf7do0b", "cf7dqik", "cf7dv0z", "cf7edtg"], "score": [5, 7, 6, 5, 3], "text": ["Because Apple says you can't and it's their software license you are buying. ", "There is nothing illegal about putting OSX on PC hardware.  Apple makes it inconvenient, because they want to ensure a certain standard of quality for their products.  And, they make most of their money selling their hardware, so they want to be sure you're buying that instead of the competitors stuff with their OS tacked on.", "It's more of a civil matter than a crime. You're buying the permission to use Apple's software, and that comes with strings.", "Windows is designed to install on a 'generic' PC.  Since Microsoft is a software company, they don't care what you put it on as long as you paid.\n\nApple is hardware company - they want to sell computers to people.  They say \"you can only install this on our computers\" because it doesn't fit in with their business model.", "Many have described the *business* reasons why Apple chooses not to allow OS X on PCs.\n\nIf you're curious about the *technical* reason, it's because Apple programmed OS X to look for a custom security code in a chip installed in every Mac before booting. Part of the trick in getting a hackintosh to work is getting around this check in one way or another."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "71fg3e", "title": "how can so many russians miss the soviet union despite the famines, the poverty, and the mass killings?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71fg3e/eli5_how_can_so_many_russians_miss_the_soviet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnacs8e", "dnad1je", "dnae49l", "dnaek9j", "dnah719", "dnaqcum", "dnasopw"], "score": [23, 4, 55, 3, 9, 3, 2], "text": [" > systematically slaughtered\n\nThe Soviet Union of the 80's was not the Soviet Union of the 30's. Its most horrific crimes against its people ended with the death of Stalin in the 50's. The later leaders even openly denounced those crimes.\n\nAs for the rest, Russia today still has a crappy economy and an authoritarian regime, so that's not much different. The Soviet Union *was* however, a superpower considered (incorrectly, but still) an equal of the United States. That gave its people a lot of pride and sense of superiority that they lost when the USSR dissolved. Plus, some people miss the sense of stability. Nobody was rich, but the government took care of a lot of things. Some people are okay with a low standard of living if they don't have to do any work to maintain it.", "People miss what they're familiar with. It may have been shitty, but it had the benefit of being the system they grew up in, the world that they were comfortable in. The new world is strange and thus frightening, and so nostalgia helps smooth out the bad memories and paints a rosy glow around the old world. As well as that, while the soviet union was undoubtedly a terrible place for many reasons, we are only truly aware of the negative aspects because as westerners they were our longstanding enemies. While people's lives may very well have been punctuated by periods of extreme uncertainty/violence, there were also long periods of time where they just...lived their lives. The transition period in contrast was a highly chaotic and uncertain time, which for many people translates into a negative view of the transition altogether. Finally, there's the propaganda element, in which citizens were constantly reassured and told that this was the best place and system on Earth. Some of that propaganda sticks well into adulthood, and so despite evidence to the contrary they continue to repeat the propaganda message.", " >   a brutal autocracy that would systematically slaughter everybody even remotely suspected of being critical of the regime\n\nCould describe almost any point in Russian history in the last thousand years.\n\nThe Soviet Union was a huge step up in living standards for the vast majority of Russians compared to the pre-Soviet period. The collapse of the USSR at the end of the 80's and the capitalism-gone-mad gutting of the country in the 90's was a huge step down in standard of living from the Soviet era for many people.\n\nRemember that in the Soviet era (especially the post-Stalin period) the power stayed on, you could drink the water, your children could go to good schools and could get good jobs, the state provided healthcare and assistance for the elderly and the disabled. To use a cliche, the trains ran on time.\n\nin the 90's that all collapsed. A whole country of people who depended on the state were left at the mercy of the worst of capitalist excess. The mob ruled, nothing worked, the economy was in shambles. That's not a step up from an oppressive state. It's just the same oppression with less stability.\n\nBasically Soviet Russia had *rules*. They weren't good or fair, but if you played by the rules you could do alright. Post-Soviet Russia was the wild fuckin' west. \n\nIt's why Russians approve so strongly of Putin. Him and United Russia have managed to reign in the worst of the corruption and crime and make the state functional again for a lot of people. \n\n", "For many of the common folk, life sucks now about the same as it did back then. Russia has always been a poor country by per capita standards. As shitty as it was to be a Soviet citizen, there was at least a certain predictable stability to life. The rapid fall of the Soviet regime thrust the citizens of the former USSR into an economic reality that the country was not prepared for. Arguably, it would have been better off if the Soviet system had been gradually internally dismantled over a couple of decades rather then abruptly disintegrating within the span of a couple of years. What many of these nostalgic older Russians are expressing is a yearning for a time when their country was globally respected (or at least feared) and seen as a peer to the United States. Putin knows this, hence his Tough Guy Russian Bear act (Syria, Ukraine, Georgia) continuing to drive his relatively high popularity ratings. \n\nThe collapse of the USSR was definitely a net benefit to the world- and for most Russians, in the long term at least- although the shift to a market economy was a turbulent one. It left modern Russia with some systemic problems like corruption that continue to plague the country (admittedly, most of these problems began before the fall of the USSR.) ", "The same reason a lot of Americans yearn for the 1950's, despite its racism, wife beating, and political paranoia.\n\nThat's just how nostalgia works, when things are the way you like them, you get very selective memory about the past.\n\nAlso, many Russians aren't doing that much better.  Quality of life and life expectancy is low compared to the West, the average Russian has about half the disposable income of their Western counterpart, and crime and drug abuse are epidemic.  Most people in the USSR weren't directly exposed to the state sanctioned brutality and had jobs, food, and shelter.  I'm not saying it was necessarily better, but the difference might not be as great as yout think.", "Well, first of all, the most oppressive forms of government mostly died with Stalin, and gradually ebbed out , with Gorbachev as the least oppressive point. I'm not saying thet were perfect, but as far as the cold war goes, they were OK-ish. People have a fairly short memory.\n\nAlso, the trains went on time, as the saying goes. Things worked. Corruption was low. After the USSR fell, crime and corruption skyrocketed, and the economy took a sharp downward turn. People notice such things.\n\nThen, of course, we have the fact that it was a superpower. It's gratifying to be part of something big, a nation which leads, not just in military, but also science, engineering, medicine and so on. Much of that went down the drain when the USSR fell. People don't like that.", "\"Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.\"\n\n-Vladimir Putin"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6zcxii", "title": "how did america get so insanely wealthy? i looked up gdps by country and the u.s. is no. 1 at 18 and a half trillion dollars", "selftext": "Almost every other country in the top ten has a GDP of 1 to 4 trillion dollars. Colonialism is ended and we only have a tiny fraction of the world's population. What does America own or have control over to make this possible? Please make this make sense to me", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zcxii/eli5_how_did_america_get_so_insanely_wealthy_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmuc10k", "dmuc1b0", "dmuc3xg", "dmuc4q7", "dmudagq", "dmuddsa", "dmue19n", "dmuxge6"], "score": [3, 13, 3, 5, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["compared to other countries, america is like 50 countries.\n\nlook at state size vs countries in europe", "America is the third largest country in the world by population, and the third largest by size.  Europe's population is slightly larger, but the United States has a single dominant language and internal free markets and free movement.  It has enormous coal deposits as well as significant petroleum and other natural resources. And it is the only major Western power that was not decimated in WWI and WWII.  \n\nAnd, it happened to be the wealthiest and most prosperous nation at a time when economic development began to compound on itself via the information revolution. ", "We basically won WWII. Sure Britain, France, and the USSR \"won\" but it is difficult to say that having so many casualties and cities bombed means \"winning.\" They were world powers whose economies got destroyed, which left the US as the last remaining world power who was still well off. We had the headstart since then and that is why we are where we are at now. \n\nThat being said, the US is the third largest country by population, so it isn't like there aren't many of us. ", "* Bordello and a pioneer to Capitalist free-market economy during the Cold War which gave the US. industries industrial rights and partnerships with foreign companies. \n* Mass economic shift by women, black and immigrant employment. \n* Technological and economic innovations. The US. expanded the notion of giving people the power to exercise their profit with minimal consequences. Eg. McDonalds is stolen. \n* Cold War paved the US for international trade, importing and exporting goods to allied, puppet, protectorate states.\n* Military expenditure includes arm sales sold to certain states. The proxy wars during the Cold War brought millions of government profit. \n* Government profits from lease and debts by allied states during the World Wars. \n\nWhat did I miss?", "Basically what I'm getting so far is that it all started with 1.) The U.S. wasn't in as bad of shape at the end of WWII as practically every other major participant, least of all not economically, and 2.) That economic standing allowed us to say to the rest of the world \"Hey, enter into trade agreements with us and allow us to invest in you re-building your economy\" in the ensuing Cold War years when everyone basically had a choice of either us or the U.S.S.R.\n\nIs that summation more or less correct?", "Just to add something, the US has the most developed financial infrastructure in the world, particularly on the east and west coast. This just means there's a lot of rich people looking to get richer by taking risks, such as putting their money to work by funding new businesses and financial ventures. \n\nFor example, Silicon Valley is one of the richest areas in the world and generates wealth for the rest of the country largely because of startup culture and the access to venture capital (rich people spending money on new business ideas). Other nations have started to copy those ideas, but the US started back in the 1950s in the semiconductor industry and has a huge head start. \n\nWe also have some of the best universities in the world, and due to the wealth attract the best students and minds of the world. It's called brain drain, where the top individuals from a nation all leave for the US. Some nations are affected significantly by this, others not so much. Within the US itself it's a problem, as individual states lose talent to the coasts. ", "Corporations. The United States of America has tons of super wealthy and powerful corporations some of which have higher GDP's than entire countries, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. All of these are american companies paying american taxes and, at least in the USA, hiring US workers.\nThere are certainly other factors, such as getting rich off selling supplies in WW1 and WW2 without getting devastated. Another is that we have the dollar, one of the most trusted currencies in the world, which we can print a shit ton of, but corporations are probably the biggest factor.\n\nCorporations basically rule the world. For example, Walmart's revenues are on par with Norway's GDP, and Norway is pretty rich with one of the highest GDP's per capita in the world. And the USA is the capitalist corporation hub of the world with rich powerful corporations on top of corporations on corporations.", "1. It's big, in terms of both population and geography. That means lots of resources, both human and physical. \n\n2. It's been more than 150 years since military conflict of any real consequence occurred on the US mainland. Pretty much every other country in the world has seen at least one major military conflict on its soil (whether a foreign war or civil war) no *longer* ago than WWII. \n\n3. It hasn't experienced any nation-scale natural disasters basically ever. Sure, almost the entire American South has been affected by a major hurricane at some point over the last century, but *never all of it at once*. Same goes for things like earthquakes, fires, whatever. The AD 1755 Lisbon earthquake pretty much leveled that city. It was rebuilt, and the Kingdom of Portugal survived. But Lisbon was the *only* city of any real size in the country, so the economic effects on that country were far more drastic than, say, the Great Chicago Fire (AD 1871) or AD 1906 San Francisco earthquake were on the US economy. Both of those evens pretty much leveled their respective cities, just like the Lisbon earthquake did there. But the US economy basically churned right along without much of a blip, whereas Portugal was never really the same.  \n\n4. It's politically and economically stable. It's had the same political system since the end of the 1700s. So in addition to there being no huge *physical* dislocations (e.g., wars, catastrophic natural disasters), the same legal and economic system has existed without interruption for most of that time, and definitely since the end of the American Civil War. Longer time for things like compound interest to work."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3s7gev", "title": "How likely was it that a soldier under Alexander the Great in his Balkan campaign would still be in his army at the end of his campaign in India?", "selftext": "I read that Coenus told Alexander that his men \"longed to again see their parents, their wives and children, their homeland\" and wondered if this meant that he was using the same army at the end of 9 years of campaigning as he was at the beginning. If this is the case, how likely was it for a soldier to survive fighting for that long?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3s7gev/how_likely_was_it_that_a_soldier_under_alexander/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwv5j25", "cwvazva"], "score": [97, 8], "text": ["Obviously we don't have precise information for the makeup of Alexander's army at any point, but there certainly would have been hundreds if not thousands of men in India that had initially set out from Greece/Macedonia with him. The army suffered casualties throughout its campaigning, of course, but it is important to remember that due to the nature of Alexander's campaigns he was able to secure victory without losing lots of men to attrition. Alexander, and his father Philip II before him, were firm believers in the idea of a decisive battle, so when they chose to fight they threw everything at it in an attempt to secure an ultimate victory. Even when initially rebuked, both Alexander and Philip II soon returned with overwhelming force to defeat their opponents.\n\nThe acts of brutality that Alexander implemented in some of his campaigns (notably against Tyre and, later, in the Indus Valley) were attempts to crush the morale of neighboring cities and settlements so that they would be completely cowed. A large portion of the massacres are somewhat blamed on the frustration of some of his soldiers, at least according to Ian Worthington and one of his brilliant graduate students (I was fortunate to learn from them). At the very least, many of the officers and generals would have been soldiers that left Greece/Macedonia with Alexander. It is important to mention, however, that Alexander regularly requested reinforcements from both Macedonia and the Greek city-states that were, effectively, his vassals. Even before Alexander died there were problems of former soldiers that had served with him running amok throughout his newly-conquered empire (mainly Mesopotamia and Anatolia).\n\nAlexander the Great: A Reader by Ian Worthington\n\nA Companion to Ancient Macedonia by Roisman and Worthington", "As a follow up question, how would these soldiers have kept or transferred their spoils of war?  Was there a secure way to send money back home?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "mjvhb", "title": "Is a star *needed* for life on other planets?", "selftext": "So I understand that Europa has probable liquid water under it's surface which is warmed by tidal forces. _URL_1_\n\nI also just read about chemosynthesis here\n_URL_0_\n\nSo now imagine there's a planet orbiting a star outside of the zone where liquid water is possible. The planet is also geologically active. \n\nCould the heat from this activity be high enough to allow liquid water to exist (ie, without much energy from the star)? \n*Scientifically*, could life evolve here? (using chemosynthesis)\nIs it possible for a planet that far from it's star to be geologically active?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mjvhb/is_a_star_needed_for_life_on_other_planets/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c31kjqp", "c31lx2t", "c31kjqp", "c31lx2t"], "score": [3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Well, given the fact that scientists have found organisms deep down in the soil and in caves which have never been \"touched\" by the sun I'd say a star isn't needed, but some kind of heat is needed, probably thermal", "I was listening to an episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and one of the \"science or fiction\" questions went into details about how there are an estimated 400 million jupiter-sized planets not orbiting stars. And that it is conceivable that many of them could be life sustaining - the internal heat would not require a star for life to form. ", "Well, given the fact that scientists have found organisms deep down in the soil and in caves which have never been \"touched\" by the sun I'd say a star isn't needed, but some kind of heat is needed, probably thermal", "I was listening to an episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and one of the \"science or fiction\" questions went into details about how there are an estimated 400 million jupiter-sized planets not orbiting stars. And that it is conceivable that many of them could be life sustaining - the internal heat would not require a star for life to form. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_communities#Chemosynthesis", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "37n5s2", "title": "why doesn't the body use up its fat reserves before it gets hungry and dizzy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37n5s2/eli5_why_doesnt_the_body_use_up_its_fat_reserves/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cro4c80", "cro524g", "cro88ve", "crodw98", "crojd7j", "crou843"], "score": [41, 249, 33, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Fat is meant as an emergency energy store, a relic of a time when eating every day was by no means guaranteed and you had to have some way to keep energy around between infrequent meals. Burning through your emergency stores when food is plentiful is a bad idea, so we don't do that even now when there are more obese people in the world than starving people.", "Historically, fat was meant for emergencies only.  A last-ditch reserve to maintain life when food is scarce.  The hunger motivates you to eat so you don't have to dip into this emergency reserve.  The dizziness is because you take as little energy out of your reserves as is needed to maintain life.  Having low energy makes you feel dizzy and faint.  Your body doesn't know whether you're going a few hours without food or a few days, so it plans on the worst case scenario.", "I'll answer from the physiological viewpoint here.\n\nImportant Fact 1: In terms of energy sources, the brain uses glucose, and **only** glucose (we'll ignore Ketones since those only really play a role in prolonged starvation).\n\nLet's go into the energy counts of a normal 70kg male, the average person requires 2250kcal every day. \n* 15kg fat - Worth 141,000kcal\n* 6kg protein - Worth 24,000kcal\n* 225g of Glycogen - worth 900kcal\n* TWENTY grams of free glucose and fats - worth about 100kcal\n* Total energy content: ~170,000kcal\n\nYou will notice that the amount of free glucose is bupkis compared to the requirement. For now, let's assume that there's no food intake (so we can see how fat is mobilized); this is known as the fasting state. \n\nThe body's goal is simple: Keep blood glucose concentrations at about 3.9 to 5.8 mM/L. It accomplishes this through two methods, either convert glycogen to glucose (easy and fast, glycogen is essentially \"prepacked\" glucose), or convert fat to glucose (much slower and longer metabolic pathway, knocking fat down to build glucose again, a la chumbawamba).\n\nThis is where we get to your question: The body does use fats before it gets hungry and dizzy, it just prefers glucose whenever possible. Is it pleasant to feel a bit hungry? Not really; Is it unhealthy to go hungry for a bit? No too. \n\nHave you ever heard of the \"second wind\" phenomenon in marathon runners? You know, that thing where they seem to have a fresh burst of energy after a long running race where you would expect them to get tired out? That's a phenomenon known as metabolic switching, in this case, it's the body finally having turned on the pathways needed to use fat as energy..\n\nIn prolonged starvation, the body can indeed utilize fats instead of glucose to supply the brain (via ketone bodies, but let's not go there), but the problem is that it takes up to 10 days for fats to be fully mobilized, in fact, at this point, appetite can often be suppressed (no, don't try this; yes, it can be harmful; no, you will not get acid superpowers; no, I will not be held liable; yes, I will be taking your stuff).\n\nSo, TL;DR: The body DOES use up its fat reserves before it gets hungry and dizzy. Being hungry and dizzy is NOT always a sign of starvation. What makes you feel bad is not necessarily unhealthy. The reason the body doesn't always use fats immediately is that fats take a while to be mobilized.", "It's not because fat was meant for emergencies only as said below.\n\nYour brain obligately requires glucose (or ketone bodies) for energy sources. While other organs can rely on fat for energy, your brain cannot. When you run out of glucose, your body needs to synthesize more glucose for your brain. However ironically fat cannot be used as a glucose precursor (only muscle and other 3 or more carbon substrates). So you start to become dizzy from lack of sugar and also an increase in acidic ketone bodies and doesn't burn fat", "Because being hungry isn't actually bad for you. It's just a signal from your body that to maintain your current level of food supply, you need to eat now. ", "Its a hormonal mechanism. When you are on glucose as your fuel source, insulin is telling your body to store fat. Its like a switch though and you have to suppress insulin by withholding carbohydrates in order to produce the hormone called leptin. Leptin tells the body to eat from its fat stores but if you are on a standard american diet (SAD) then you are only producing insulin and you are suppressing leptin. If one goes on a low carbohydrate diet and switch your fuel source from glucose to leptin then you are able to eat from your fat stores when you are out of energy and to the point of being hungry. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g4pam", "title": "What happens to us after all of the galaxies are isolated due to metric expansion?", "selftext": "Shows like those on the discovery channel love to ask repeatedly, \"Will the universe end in a 'big squish' or a 'big tear?'\"\n\nObviously now we know that the universe is expanding and will keep expanding. When I learned that I thought \"ok so it'll end in a big rip.\" But why should that be the case? The galaxies are bound together by gravity. At some point the other galaxies will be so far from us that we won't see them, but that doesn't mean the universe will end. It just means the milky way will be alone. What happens after that? *Will* the universe ever end?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g4pam/what_happens_to_us_after_all_of_the_galaxies_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1kw40f", "c1kw4cl", "c1kwbuj", "c1kx24e"], "score": [2, 26, 3, 4], "text": ["the stars go cold. They have no more fuel left to burn. The hot cores slowly radiate their energy away into the vast emptiness of space. Presumably many of them end up falling into black holes over insanely long stretches of time of slow gravitational attraction. The black holes then slowly evaporate away via Hawking radiation. Til the universe is no more than an extremely sparse gas of particles growing ever sparser with maximal entropy.\n\nEdit: sorry, that's heat death, the \"big freeze.\" The big rip is better described on [wiki](_URL_0_). Though notice their example uses w=-1.5 which will be more exaggerated than what we measure, which is much closer to -1. (just a hair less then -1 if I'm not mistaken). This means that while their timescales are a bit shorter than we expect, I think the overall idea's the same.", "Apparently shows like those on the Discovery Channel are based on decade-old cosmology, now known to be out of date.\n\nBoth the \"big crunch\" and \"big rip\" models are contradicted by reality, as far as we've been able to tell. The existence of dark energy in the universe \u2014 energy that does not decrease in density as the universe expands \u2014 is going to drive metric expansion at an exponential rate, on the order *e* to the *t* power, where *e* is Euler's number and *t* is time. Such an expansion will of course never reverse itself, and furthermore it will never go infinite in finite time. That is to say, for any finite value of *t,* *e* to the *t* is also finite, if very large for large *t.* The \"big rip\" scenario described in that paper from 2003 (I think it was) can only occur if the scale factor goes infinite in finite time. Anything less than that, and things which are sufficiently far from us that they are not gravitationally bound will simply slip beyond our cosmic horizon. That means things like *very* distant galaxies, on the order of hundreds of millions of light-years away. Everything closer, including the whole Virgo supercluster of which we're a part, is sufficiently gravitationally bound to be essentially unaffected by metric expansion.\n\nSo no, there does not appear to be any significance to the idea of the universe \"ending.\" There's just no reason to believe any such thing will happen.\n\nEDIT: To put some of this in perspective, I found [this map](_URL_0_), which appears at a glance to be pretty up-to-date and reasonably accurate.\n\nThat one pixel right dead center? That's our galaxy. Our *entire* galaxy. If you want to imagine our planet at that scale, think of it as a single proton contained somewhere within that single pixel.\n\nAnd this map? This just depicts the *local neighborhood.* It's just the stuff that's *close.* If you wanted to depict the *entire observable universe* at that scale, you'd need a map about ten feet across.\n\nEDIT 2: Whoops. I was distracted and messed up the arithmetic. Our galaxy, on that map, is one one-thousandth of a pixel across, roughly. It's a thousand times smaller than what I described before, making our planet, by that scale, one one-thousandth of the diameter of a proton. And to depict the whole observable universe, you'd need a map roughly a quarter of a *mile* across.", "Astronomy becomes slightly less interesting.", "There's a really good story about this by Asimov (I think).  I won't spoil it for you but it involves an advanced AI that gets asked this question and at the end it says 'Let there be light'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_rip"], ["http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/wnearsc.gif"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21fp9d", "title": "[Social Sciences] What is the most convincing proof that poor education is directly related to poverty and crime?", "selftext": "I'm assuming there is one. I live in the reddest state in the union and am trying to convince a grumpy old man that you will either educate your kids or incarcerate them. (Statistically)\n\nHe's convinced, of course, that poor people are poor because they're lazy, and they see robbing liquor stores as the easiest method of getting their next drug fix. \n\nI know I'll never convince him, but I'd like to try. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/21fp9d/social_sciences_what_is_the_most_convincing_proof/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgcmz4g", "cgcpkrz"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["I caution the wording of your question. For instance, there are plenty of well educated individuals in America who commit white collar crime, or who are unemployed for unrelated reasons (third variables).\n\nGiven your wording of your argument with this grumpy of man, I would instead ask for studies evidencing a relationship between level of education and incarceration. ", "Lochner, Lance, and Enrico Moretti. 2004. \"The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports.\" *American Economic Review*, 94(1): 155-189\n\nAbstract:\n >  We estimate the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in state compulsory schooling laws over time to account for the endogeneity of schooling decisions. Using Census and FBI data, we find that schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration and arrest. NLSY data indicate that our results are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime. We estimate that the social savings from crime reduction associated with high school graduation (for men) is about 14 -26 percent of the private return.\n\n[Ungated link to a working paper draft](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~moretti/lm46.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4jqy7d", "title": "what to people have to gain by claiming climate change isn't happening?", "selftext": "Let me explain. In most issues I'm pretty Republican, but I don't understand why the Republican side is so passionate about climate change not being real. It seems to be pretty cut and dry that it's happening and I don't understand why people believe so strongly that it's not. \nSo what's the political/economical/whatever upside of claiming it's not happening when there seems to be pretty strong evidence. I can't believe it's solely about greed or protecting corporations. There has to be more to it than just that. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jqy7d/eli5_what_to_people_have_to_gain_by_claiming/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d38rp5j", "d38rw7e", "d38tlak", "d38trg4", "d38vuy2", "d390fjl", "d392wne", "d395bfk", "d397hrs", "d397n2o", "d399y88"], "score": [46, 2, 9, 3, 2, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Two really key points that need to be straightened out first before answering you.\n\n* Very few influential people are claiming that climate change isn't happening, there's just too much evidence for it. What a number of people are doing is claiming that climate change (in the form of regional effects of global warming) is not being caused by HUMAN activity. If it's a natural process, we can't be to blame for it.\n\n* Different people have different motivations. Some people honestly do believe that the \"truth\" is humans aren't causing it, either because their own research leads them to this conclusion or because they believe other people's messages and they're just conveying those opinions onward. \n\nSo let's talk about the people who originally create those messages that others might follow, and answer your question. \n\nMany of those people sometimes have very strong interests in disconnecting human activity sources from climate change results. They work for or represent companies that do things like produce lots of greenhouse gas, or produce and sell non-renewal energy sources like coal and gasoline. So their livelihood depends on people not believing that they're causing a potential problem, and they do their best to try and suppress that belief.\n\nOr they're argumentative as a job or as a hobby. A lot of the conspiracy theorists out there don't believe any messages that come from government, and apply less-than-scientific processes to their cherry-picked analysis of what the causes are. They either get their kicks doing it, or get a paycheck from doing it.", "If you want to see a conservative viewpoint on climate change, go to Prager University channel, they have an entire series about it.\n\nDraw your own conclusions, but they explained it much better than I could.", "There are whole industries that would need serious regulation if anthropogenic climate change was accepted. Cars, planes, power generation, even some parts of farming (methane limits on livestock, etc)...We'd need to lay down serious carbon caps, put huge taxes on carbon emissions, etc.\n\nBy claiming it's a hoax, an unproven theory, unrelated to humans, etc, they can push back that remediation a little farther and make a little more money.", "The biggest reason is because the measures that would have to be taken if you accept it are not favorable for their interests. Most of these guys are paid off by petrol and fracking companies which contribute to global warming. This translates to the people who are republican, mainly speaking about the leaders, trying to find ways to dismiss it so that they can support their interests. In terms of the many republicans who are not leaders and just average people, they just repeat what they hear. That is why many people have opinions about subjects that they would never ever consider except for the fact that they hear about it being said by people they like and respect so they believe it. ", "This question will result in a lot of opinions so hopefully the mods will be understanding. I will try to refrain from being overly opinionated. \n\nThe Republican side has traditionally represented the Christian/Libertarian side of politics. Denying climate change means doing what God said we could do, inherit the Earth and all that, and ot did not result in something catastrophic. This makes the Christian Republicans feel at ease. The pubs also represent the blue collar man or woman and helps them to feel at ease  with having drilling jobs, driving rigs, working factory jobs, etc. Someone has to help these hard working folks to not feel like they are contributing to a terrible outcome. \n\nThe Libertarian side believes in limited government. What this actually means is that the government should not prevent economic wealth. This is how Fred Koch thought and taught his sons who we know as the Koch brothers. The government should not prevent him from drilling whatever or wherever he wanted to increase economic wealth. \n\nClimate change denial supports an economy and society we spent hundreds of years building. It represents certain beliefs and prevents halting expansion and growth which we must continually do with as many people as this economy supports. It also prevents the opposite side of the political spectrum from using climate change to strip Americans of jobs in favor of full government dependency. \n\nI hope I have offered up a different perspective on climate change denial and have explained what the actual benefit is. \n\nEdit: spelling\n", "There's a large point I see missing here, \"What do people have to gain\". This question is more revealing then you think.\n\nLet's start from the point that even your top comment admits, not that many people actually think climate does not change, or hasn't changed. Roman Warming periods and mini ice ages are regularly cited as climate changes.\n\nSo let's take side A. Side A has questions about various aspects of the science and the biases of those involved. Side A is mocked as \"deniers\" in the majority of the media, many express flat out hatred or even call for jailing or \"Nuremburgs\" of these people. Simply questioning *any* aspect of the issue leads to accusations of bribery.\n\nSo Side A is vilified publicly, accused of being bought, flat out threatened and mocked. This is for having any disagreement.\n\nNow side B. Side B agrees with every aspect possible, or may privately disagree about insignificant points. Side B is made to look like a saint, a progressive person looking out for the little person and humanity. They do this not because environmentalist groups help fund their campaigns of course, only oil companies do that, they do this because they are kind human beings. Side B says that if you elect their friends to power, and grant them broader powers and abilities, they can fix everything.\n\nNow think. What exactly does group A stand to gain? Everything is made harder for *asking* the questions, not even having to believe them.\n\nNow what does side B stand to gain?\n\nI figured this was an interesting way to look at this. If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask a conservative climate skeptic, i'm free :)", "It's less of true denial, but more believing that environmental organizations such as the EPA hurt capitalism.", "Because fossil fuels are still a cheap and easy way to get work done.\n\nThe usual political and economic policies to 'stop human caused global warming' are to restrict the use of fossil fuels, or to raise the price of fossil fuels (these two things are linked, because economics).\n\nIf fossil fuels become more expensive, it could cripple the economy, but it will especially cripple the poorer economies, the Third World.  Restrict gasoline?  Food prices rise, or the next truck can't being the food to the village.  No diesel to run the generator?  No cell tower - the only source of electronic communication in much of Africa and Asia.  No heating oil?  People die of freezing in their homes.  Coal unavailable, so less electricity?  People die of heatstroke without air conditioning.\n\nTherefore, how much to attempt to control human caused global warming isn't a simple question.  It's a tradeoff of the following concepts:\n\n1.  What are the effects of global warming if we do nothing to control carbon?  \n2.  What are the benefits to our economy if we do nothing to control carbon?  \n3.  What are the changes to the effects of global warming if we control carbon?  \n4.  What are the changes to our economy if we control carbon?  \n\nEven if we assume recent warming, and we assume that warming is human caused, we can't assume that government policies will be enough to stop it.  We might be crippling our economies and causing big problems for nothing.  ", "I believe it's because climate change is too broad a term. It underpins hundreds of topics with its broadness. Thus being so broad as to be meaningless. \n\nClimate changes regardless of man anyway. So... There is a lot of disingenuousness in the argument itself. \n\nPeople should be more specific when discussing it. Talk about fisheries collapsing or mass extinction. If it's a colder than normal it hardly constitutes full scale climate change. \n\nMeh", "Even believers cause disbelief.  Go into any global warming thread and mention agriculture or expansion of buildings and city and watch them turn on one another.\n\n \"No one wants to go hungry or be homeless so we ignore those issues and focus on something else.\"  Thats what you will see but thats not how this should work. You should worry about all factors. No one is saying to stop eating beef or stop building homes but we need to come up with a better and safer plan just like we do for energy consumption and industrial waste.  \n\nSo why would anyone believe in a cause if the \"true\" believers get to pick and choose what they want to believe?  To ignore evidence.  Sounds the same as climate deniers. ", "There are multiple reasons, most of them intertwined:\n\n1. It's because people who argue for climate change aren't just saying \"it happens\" as an academic issue like \"2+2=4\"...they want others to *give up* something for it. \"Hey climate change...so stop using cheap fossil fuels and use more expensive alternative sources of energy\" or \"Hey climate change...so pay this carbon tax.\"\n\n2. The effects of climate change are difficult to observe to the casual layman. We don't directly feel temperatures increasing year to year (sure, there's instruments, but I mean the typical person doesn't really feel it), when it's fractions of a degree. So you're basically relying on computer models and such which the typical person isn't really going to understand. It's not something that you can just demonstrate as a backyard experiment.\n\n3. People in this thread have speculated on the motivations of people who deny climate change, i.e. \"because they're paid by the oil industry\" or whatever, but don't consider that the *proponents* of climate change seek to improve on their own situations as well (and I don't mean \"we save Earth\", I mean financially). For example, funding for studying climate change depends on the extent to which people can convince the moneyholders in the government that it's a real problem deserving money to study. The proposed solutions to climate change have pretty uniformly been to increase taxes and/or regulations, which politicians like because it increases their power (not to mention the money and power of climate change experts, since politicians need consultants on those tax schemes and regulations). The people setting up carbon markets and such are profiting from it. Basically, there are pretty good reasons why proponents of climate change stand to individually profit from it.\n\n4. There's also debate over the extent to which current climate change is human-driven, versus just natural variations due to the number of sunspots or other factors.\n\nSo basically the proponents of climate change are arguing that people should give them more money and power due to something the typical person can't observe (but the proponents say \"I've got the data, trust me!\"), when the proponents themselves seek to benefit financially from it, at a loss for the people they're aiming to convince. That's the hurdle that climate change proponents basically have to clear.\n\nAs an analogy, say someone goes to your house and says \"You know, your house is in danger of being broken into. You could lose everything or even die!\" You respond with \"Well I haven't noticed any burglaries or robberies in the area lately\", to which the someone responds \"They're there! I have data proving this! You know, I could take care of this problem for you if you let me set up a surveillance system for the low, low cost of $1000 a month...\" People will naturally have some skepticism for this. It doesn't mean climate change is right, it doesn't mean climate change is wrong, it's just that the field is not exactly permeated with altruistic people, so there's going to be some natural skepticism about it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52hxey", "title": "bipolar disorder in children.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52hxey/eli5_bipolar_disorder_in_children/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7ket9j", "d7kewfy", "d7kihvx", "d7kom5v", "d7kov3z", "d7kp7rv", "d7kt07c"], "score": [32, 12, 6, 3, 3, 20, 2], "text": ["Bipolar 1 is marked with both\n-mania (brain going too fast). The chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine are at fault here at least partially. The person will be very \"up\". They may not need a lot of sleep, or not eat a lot. Their thoughts might race, and psychotic episodes can land them in hospital. These symptoms must last 7 days (or result in hospitalization) to be called a manic episode.\n-depression. This is because of a possible malfunction of serotonin receptors in the brain. The person may show all the signs of regular clinical depression. \n\nBipolar 2 is marked with depression and hypomania, which is a less severe mania and must be present for   4 days to qualify for diagnosis. \n\nChildren usually do not present with bipolar before the age of 15 or so, but it is still possible. Early onset bipolar usually involves rapid mood swings.", "I will admit that the details are pretty fuzzy, but I actually wrote a paper about this back in college. I remember that the symptoms were pretty similar except that children often have rapid cycling of their manic/depressive episodes while adults cycle over longer periods. \n\nThere's usually abrupt mood changes, periods of heavy activity/lethargy, temper tantrums, etc. Hard to diagnose against ADHD or conduct disorders. There's some debate about whether children under a certain age can be diagnosed with Bipolar.", "The problem is going to be deciding whose advice to listen to, because this one is a hot potato. We covered it in part during last week's psychiatry grand rounds, and the child psychiatrist giving the lecture had to hedge his bets.\n\nWhile bipolar I in adults is a pretty solid diagnosis, and bipolar II not so much worse, bipolar disorder in children remains enormously murky and controversial. Because the symptoms apparently look different, it's pretty difficult to say whether it's the same problem at all, or whether the diagnosis applies. Over the past few decades, great emphasis has been put on \"irritability\" as the key symptom in children. An explosion in diagnosis rates has been accompanied by ferocious arguments, a bunch of research, and an entirely new diagnosis made for the express purpose of covering chronically irritable children without diagnosing them as bipolar (disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.)", "To add another angle: if the child is having mood swings there may be something environmental at play. They may be experiencing something traumatic like abuse or molestation. Speaking anecdotally, persistent childhood trauma can have severe emotional and behavioural consequences later in life. \n\nI'd recommend at least a cursory investigation and a conversation with the child before making any conclusions. ", "It is very controversial to diagnose mental disorders in children.  They're not fully functional by definition, they're unable to care for themselves, so it's hard to say in a meaningful way what \"dysfunctional\" is.\n\nKids pathologically lie, they imagine things, they eat paste, they do all manner of \"obsessive compulsive things\".  It's speculative how pervasive the problems are going to be.\n\n", "Pediatric psychiatrist here! \n\nAn actual eli5:\n\nBipolar disorder is when you have feelings, which can be both good and bad, that stay for too long and cause you problems. Anger is too angry, and you lose control. Sad is too sad, and it gets in the way of your life. Sometimes even too happy or having too much energy is a problem, especially if it gets in the way of your life!   Because of how strong the feelings get, it can change your sleep, your actions, and how well you do in school, with friends, or with family. \n\nEverybody feels these feelings, and anger, happiness, and sadness are all normal feelings to have, but in bipolar disorder, they last for too long, or are too strong. It is something that doctors can help with. ", "If the child is surrounded by family members who all have bipolar disorder, it would make sense for the child to mimic/adopt the emotinal behaviour of those family members.. \nTo medicate an undeveloped brain with the types of medication prescribed for bipolar disorder is in my opinion a tragedy.. Atleast wait untill the child is old enough to understand what in entails to be put on medication, and is able to make a decision for themselfs. \nI suffer from bipolar myself, but I stopped taking medications years ago (despite several doctors orders).. As a result I have learned to recognize my emotions/triggers etc, and after years of working with myself I am now more or less in control of my behaviour and emotions.. \nCommunicate and teach children how to cope with emotions instead of turning their brains into mush with heavy medications... After all... Medication only treats the symptoms, not the real issue.. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1bsivr", "title": "Was India ever really an economic superpower?", "selftext": "Our politicians love saying that for about 1800 years India was the world's largest economy. Of course, being politicians, they never give any specifics, So my question is, was India really a strong economy for a sustained period of time, at anytime in history?\n\nI know there wasn't really an \"India\" until independence, but I hope you understand the question.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bsivr/was_india_ever_really_an_economic_superpower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c99njtr", "c99ryow", "c99sbk9"], "score": [64, 6, 17], "text": ["India has fantastic farmland and therefore could grow a crapton of crops which led to a huge population and therefore more wealth (overall, per capita is more of a stretch). They also had the edge in trading situations due to their cotton and access to spices. The livelihood of many Central Asian turkic empires was based on sacking India and bringing the goods back to Samarkand, Balkh, or Bukhara.\n\nI haven't studied India's history pre-Mughals, but the Mughals (Muslim-Turkic empire, most important capital was Agra, built the Taj Mahal) were arguably the richest empire of their time (the Ming Chinese were pretty beastly too). The throne alone (The peacock throne) was made of more than 2500 pounds of solid gold. By 1600, more than 20% of the world GDP was funneling through Mughal hands. So, India was a player on the financial world stage.\n\n\"Compared to Shah Jahan's annual income - worth nearly \u00a325 million sterling at contemporary rates - the monarchs of Europe were struggling on paltry sums. In 1635 Britain, even as Quen Mumtaz-Mahal's tomb was well underway, King Charles I was mired in financial crisis. Struggling to maintain his lavish court and household on an annual budget of half a million pounds...\" (Fergus Nicoll, Shah Jahan, pg. 199)\n\nJust to flesh out those names: Shah Jahan was the fifth (arguably sixth) Mughal Emperor (r. 1628-1658). Mumtaz-Mahal was his wife and the Taj Mahal was made as her tomb. Charles I was the king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (r. 1625-1649)\n\nEDIT: Found this fun little table on wiki that lets you look at regions by GDP throughout history: _URL_0_\n\n**EDIT 2**: Tiako has rightly called into question Maddison's estimations. Also, England was undoubtedly very unimpresive at the time. The best comparison I can come up with outside of that is this:\n\nShah Jahan's income is at 188 million rupees and 188 million rupees equals about 282 million livres. Richard Bonney's \"France, 1494\u20131815\" in \"The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1200\u20131815.\" (Can't get the exact number because I don't want to pay the $180 for the book) has royal revenue of France at nearly 30 million livres (in the 1590s).\nSo, based on Hanafi's numbers and Tavernier's conversion, Shah Jahan's income is at 282 million livres. France in the 1590s (about 30 years earlier), based on Bonney's assessment, has a royal revenue at nearly 30 million livres. Shah Jahan's income in 1628 is at least 9x that of the French monarchy 30 years earlier.", "India was such an economic superpower that the British traders had nothing that really interested the Mughal empire to inspire bilateral trade. The East India Company resorted to colonial rule as the only way they could get the Indian products that Europeans coveted without draining gold and silver from Europe.\n\nA similar situation existed with China, so the East India Company grew opium in India and illegally foisted it on China so that it had something to trade. Amitav Ghosh does a beautiful job of writing historical fiction that brings this period to life at the individual level. ", "There isn't really such a thing as a \"superpower\" until the modern age of full globalization, and even then I don't think we can really name one as such before the post-WWII US and USSR (not even the British Empire). India (by which I mean the various Indian states, empires and kingdoms) has been extraordinarily wealthy in many periods of history, but it did not exert the sort of global economic dominance the US does today. This seems like semantics, but the term \"superpower\" has a specific set of connotations that does not apply to India, or any country, until the modern period.\n\nThe other problem is that there is just no way to compare economies before modern practices in record keeping and economic data recording. What was wealthier, the Gupta Empire under Chandra, or the Romans under Constantine? The Medieval Cholas or the early Song? The Maurya or the Hellenistic kingdoms? We simply don't have a good way to compare one to the other. The claim that \"India\" was the world's largest economy for 1800 years is nothing but meaningless nationalist posturing.\n\nThis is not to say that Indian kingdoms and empires have not been extraordinarily wealthy: the Gupta earned their golden epithet, and the Ellora Caves are a testament to the wealth of the Rashtrakuta. But saying whether they were the *most* wealthy is within the purview of nationalists, not historians."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#World_1.E2.80.932003_.28Maddison.29"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e8v5y", "title": "why do most anorexics cut their hair really short?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e8v5y/eli5why_do_most_anorexics_cut_their_hair_really/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjx5xrr", "cjx5yw6", "cjx5z5u", "cjx6zwk", "cjx8fzw"], "score": [13, 4, 6, 7, 2], "text": ["Anorexia causes hair loss. They are trying to hide that symptom. ", "I believe a lot of it has to do with malnutrition, which in turn makes the hair unhealthy, brittle and needs to be cut to remove the damaged hair", "Because starvation causes your hair to get limp and fall out, and many anorexics cut their hair to hide the fact.", "I was anorexic for quite a time, and kept my hair short as I disliked any expression of femininity.Hated boobage beyond a nipple, was thrilled when a woman in the supermarket told her son to queue \"behind this boy\" as I lived in jeans or shorts. Heaps of  make up, though.Have since had three kids and sorted my shit out.,", "Also something that hasn't yet been mentioned is that very short hair(pixie cuts) thins your face out. Putting it in a ponytail has the same effect.."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3i31hp", "title": "why are skyscraper windows still washed by hand?", "selftext": "It's super dangerous- It can't be that hard for a machine to do it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i31hp/eli5why_are_skyscraper_windows_still_washed_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucvlaq", "cucwpu8", "cucx6ft", "cucxknr", "cucy1fs", "cucznfe", "cud1h3k", "cud32e6", "cud54e1", "cud5rz9", "cud6ruv", "cud8atd", "cud9e18", "cudbcmq", "cude5bo", "cudf805", "cudnks1"], "score": [190, 870, 117, 23, 8, 19, 9, 26, 92, 9, 4, 4, 3, 2, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Try googling \"automatic skyscraper window cleaner\" and you'll see that i is doable for a machine. If the building isn't flat, like lets say the london egg for example, machines would be much harder to implement. Most probable reason they still do it is that it isn't that dangerous, as these people are usually trained alpinists and that it is cheaper to hire them once or twice a year than developing and building a custom mechanical system.   \nEDIT: the climbing specialists was a remarkt for those difficult buildings such as the top of the gherkin and the glass ceiling of my local parlement, where i got this information. ofc you don't need to be trained as much when you just sit in a box pushing a button to go up and down.", "I worked on a window-washing robot that cleaned acres of rooftops over a huge commercial greenhouse.\n\nWorked great, except when it didn't, and would either break down completely or just get lost and start climbing the wrong parts of the structure.  Then repair techs and manual window washers still have to be employed.\n\nI think this ends up being a cost/benefit problem where the reliability of our robots and price of implementation isn't quite at the point where it makes this commercially viable for skyscrapers.\n\nFor what it's worth, I think the Twin Towers actually used a washer robot on the upper floors to limited success.", "First of all, a lot of modern skyscrapers are designed very differently. There can be different angles, different shaped windows, and unflat surfaces. It would cost a lot of money to custom engineer and build a window cleaning system for a single building. It's a lot more cost effective to just hire some people to do it once or twice a year.\n\nIf I remember correctly the original World Trade Center had some window cleaning robots. ", "Didn't the World Trade Center have window washing robots?", "Couldn't they make the windows hinged so that each office could wash their own windows risk free?", "They should have done kind of roomba type of robot that just roams around cleaning windows constantly. That would be rad. ", "I used to clean high rise windows and I can tell you that the last thing building engineers consider is how to clean the windows after construction. Some buildings have 4 story atriums with angled glass roofs that in order to clean the inside require some crazy scaffolding to access. Some buildings are shaped in a way that robots can and do clean the windows, such as the Peachtree Plaza in downtown Atlanta. It is cylinder shaped and has only glass, so no ledges or bumps to deal with. The robot that cleans it just glides along the outside surface. That being said, even on this optimal building design for robot use, it still doesnt do a great job, and breaks down a lot. ", "former window washer here - as stated before, even if you got a machine to do it effectively somehow, there would still be too many cons to get rid of window washers entirely.\n\nthere is a surprising amount of r & d into window washing tech. when i left the industry, they were currently trying to create these sort of scrubber wands, that would utilize purified water or something, so that the water used would not have to be squeegeed off because it would dry so cleanly and evenly.\n\ntrust me, if they could use robots and not have to employ crack head morons to do the job, they would do it in a second.\n\nalso while i'm on the subject - you know the secret ingredient window washers use in their buckets?\n\ndawn and water. that's it. \n\nfor tough stuff we used scrapers, as well as oven cleaner and fine steel wool, believe it or not", "I was a [high-rise window washer](_URL_0_) in Baltimore In the 90's (yeah, I'm as old as your mom).  We didn't \"just sit in a box pushing a button to go up and down,\" but rather rappelled on two ropes down from the roof and washed as we descended.  A machine could do it, but probably not as fast.  We would set our ropes in between two or four windows and pendulum to reach the glass on either side as we dropped, using a suction cup to stay put in front of the glass once we swung out.  One man could wash a row of four windows from roof to ground in about 30 minutes (depending on wind and other factors). A crew of five men could wash a forty story building in one or two days. If a machine were to cover that much area it would have to be huge, and probably require a few workers to run it.  ", "There are automatic machines that clean the windows of towers ([example]\n(_URL_0_)). The downside is that they don't deal well with irregular surfaces, plus they can't check how well they are cleaning. Humans can clean efficiently and are cheap(ish) compared to an autonomous robot.\n\nYou say it is \"super dangerous\" but actually the accident rate for window cleaners is small.", "There are people who really want that job. You don't have to hardly pay anything. They will do it practically free just for the chance to rappel down the building.", "Why not a squeegee drone?", "Previous professional window cleaner here, though I haven't done skyscrapers. Have since returned to education. Primary focus was on residential/small business. I've asked myself this exact question many times over. There's LOTS of time to think while doing this job.\n\nHere's my present conclusion: It's easier to hire someone else to do the job than to try something new.\n\nWhen it comes to property management and cleaning, people just want to get it done and hire it out to others. This is then hired out to people who don't know a thing about automation and have simply been doing what they've been taught by the last guy. This really does leave a HUGE market opening for window cleaning robots. \n\nCan you figure out how to produce these robots? Well, then, GET BUILDING, 'cause I'll be competing with you soon enough as I move forward with my own education.\n\nAlso, the first window cleaning robot that I am aware of was recently released for residential windows. They are still far from perfect and I'm rather unimpressed. Sky scrapers should be MUCH easier to automate. Here's a review:\n_URL_0_\n\nProtip for cleaning windows; get your pro supplies here:\n_URL_1_\nAlso, every window cleaner I know uses dish soap in hot water. We laugh at Windex.\n\nAlso, a request to any architects reading... please consider building walkable ledges under multistory windows facing steep slopes. This will save your homeowners LOTS in window cleaning fees and makes the job so much safer. Oh, the dreaded four story ladder climb up to that teeny tiny window that is in direct sunlight while the ladder feet are on an insane mountain slope. I sometimes wonder if I'm actually alive or in a coma dream from a fall. Been staring at my reflection in the glass too long.", "[The windows of both towers of the original World Trade Center were cleaned by a robot.](_URL_1_) and the [video](_URL_0_) regarding its operation is noted", "I work as an industrial abseiling window cleaner. If the roof isn't flat or easily accessible, it makes it difficult to use robots and other automated methods of window cleaning. There is also the factor of cleaning stubborn dirt off and detailing which can't be done using automated methods. \nMy job is perceived as high risk because of the height factor, but it's actually really safe because we use 2 ropes with 2 separate safety devices and 2 anchor points on the roof rated to at least 12Kn (roughly 1.2 tonnes) there are plenty of fail safes in place.  it's very rare to hear of an abseiler dying or being seriously injured on the job, but when they do it's usually from  someone doing something incredibly stupid or not being properly trained.\n", "Rather than a machine to automate the task, I think the big innovation will be a special coating on the window or a new material compound that repels dirt and water. Something [like this](_URL_0_) but permanent", "We need a giant windshield washer and just tell people in the top corners to use lamps for light "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/gallery/0VVM6E1/new"], ["http://www.ipceagle.com/products/category/highrise-automatic-window-cleaning-system#.VdoxnfmqpBc"], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/2013/03/ecovacs-winbot/", "http://www.detroitsponge.com/"], ["https://youtu.be/vRuNgZo5evo?t=7m34s", "http://johnii2.tripod.com/wtcwindowwasher2.jpg"], [], ["https://youtu.be/7is6r6zXFDc"], []]}
{"q_id": "16gox0", "title": "If gravity is just the curvature of spacetime, then why do we think it would unite with other forces in extreme cases? Isn't it fundamentally a different thing?", "selftext": "It's not even really a force, is it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16gox0/if_gravity_is_just_the_curvature_of_spacetime/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7vxa10", "c7vxr91", "c7w02al"], "score": [2, 2, 19], "text": ["It's a force, inasmuch as it obeys all the laws of a force. If it looks like a duck... It may or may not be mediated through particles like the other forces, but that doesn't make it not-a-force.\n\nBut you may be right that gravity is fundamentally different from the other forces. It's an acknowledged possibility in physics. But we can't KNOW that it's fundamentally different unless we can figure out experiments to test it. And in order to formulate an experiment, we first need to have a theory that can make predictions about the behavior of gravity that would be different than the predictions of another theory. If your theory is that gravity is in fact not unifiable with the other fundamental forces, you still need to research the consequences of what would happen if it WERE unified, so that you can tell the difference.", "Even if gravity is not a true force and just follow general relativity, we still would not really be sure about what happens around the Planck length, where quantum effects become significant in the curvature of spacetime.", "It is in fact possible to write down models in which gravity and the other forces (electromagnetic, strong, and weak) do have the same form.  A demonstration of this goes back to the early days of general relativity, in a framework known today as the Kaluza-Klein mechanism, thanks to work by Kaluza (1921) and Klein (1926), which was anticipated some years earlier by Nordstrom.\n\nLet's look at the simple case in which we wish to merge electromagnetism and gravity into a single force.  The idea is as follows.  Let's imagine that there are five spacetime dimensions and in which there is only one force, the force of gravity, described by 5-dimensional general relativity.  When I say 5 dimensions, I mean four spatial dimensions and one time dimension, so like the world we're familiar with, but with one additional spatial dimension.\n\nNow we examine what happens if one of those spatial dimensions is tiny in extent, just a little tiny loop (just as a very tightly wound cylinder would have two dimensions, but one would be a very tiny loop).  If that curled up dimension is small enough, we cannot see it directly, and so the universe will look like it has only four spacetime dimensions.  The gravitational force from five dimensions gives us a gravitational force in four spacetime dimensions, too.\n\nBut here's the cool part: There actually *are* artifacts of having started in five dimensions that are easily observed in our four dimensional world.  In addition to having four dimensional gravity, we also get -- *automatically* -- electromagnetism in four dimensions.  So what looked like one force in five dimensions (five dimensional general relativity) looks like two forces in the four apparent dimensions (general relativity and electromagnetism).\n\nIt is clear from this construction that electromagnetism and gravity need not be different at a fundamental level.  The simple five-dimensional construction above ultimately fails because it produces a long-range force mediated by a scalar particle that can be ruled out experimentally, and it is also unsatisfactory because it doesn't yield the strong and the weak forces.  However, it is perfectly feasible to extend this construction by adding even more spatial dimensions; it is then possible to construct models in which one starts with higher dimensional gravity as the only force, all but four of the spacetime dimensions are curled up tight, and in the apparently four-dimensional world that emerges, that higher dimensional force manifests as four-dimensional general relativity plus electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force.\n\nWhether this is how the world works and whether one can construct a particularly compelling Kaluza-Klein models are open questions.  But the Kaluza-Klein mechanism clearly shows that it is quite feasible for gravity and the other forces to be different manifestations of a common underlying structure and a common underlying force."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "79lhvs", "title": "As I understand it, in the ancient world sexuality was viewed through a different prism (active versus passive). How did lesbianism fit into their worldview? How did the isle of Lesbos establish its place in sexual history, and were its associations earned?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79lhvs/as_i_understand_it_in_the_ancient_world_sexuality/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp4osys"], "score": [12], "text": ["The ancient world is a term that covers a lot of space and a long range of time. For some of those places and times we don't know a whole lot about sexuality. But we do know that importing our own sexual distinctions is problematic. So with that, giant caveat, I will move into some sweeping generalities.\n\nLet's talk about the Greeks. Lesbos owes its association with lesbianism to Sappho, A Greek poetess of the 7th/6th century. Sappho wrote lyric poetry, which survives in scattered fragments. Her poems were like this:\n > He\u2019s equal with the Gods, that man\n\n > Who sits across from you,\n\n > Face to face, close enough, to sip\n\n > Your voice\u2019s sweetness,\n\n\n\n > And what excites my mind,\n\n > Your laughter, glittering. So,\n\n > When I see you, for a moment,\n\n > My voice goes,\n\n\n\n > My tongue freezes. Fire,\n\n > Delicate fire, in the flesh.\n\n > Blind, stunned, the sound\n\n > Of thunder, in my ears.\n\n\n\n > Shivering with sweat, cold\n\n > Tremors over the skin,\n\n > I turn the colour of dead grass,\n\n > And I\u2019m an inch from dying.\n\n\nNow you might see where the idea that Sappho was a lesbian comes in. This poem is clearly a love poem and it seems to be written to a woman... right?\n\nThe thing is, this type of poetry belongs to a rich tradition of choral and epithalamic (wedding) songs which feature female speakers extolling the beauty of one of their companions. It's a literary trope and we have plenty of evidence for it. For example, Sappho's contemporary Alcman writes lyric poetry sung by choruses of girls where one girl is singled out and described by the others. This seems to have been a rather standard part of courting rituals at the time. (Maybe because sexual segregation in Greek communities meant that the men had to take the girl's peers praise as a way to decide on the most desirable wife.) What is so interesting about Sappho is that she is one of our only direct female voices to survive from ancient Greece.\n\nThe Greeks didn't seem to make much of the lesbian aspect, really. The biographical tradition of Sappho definitely presents her as sexual, but in fact her sexuality is targeted towards men. In a story that is definitely true she pissed off Aphrodite and was punished by falling in love with the ferryman, Phaon, who Aphrodite had magically rejuvenated. Sappho threw herself to her death when he rejected her.\n\nThe active/passive distinction that you make is one that's been argued for especially in the case of Roman sexuality. I would say that Greek is a bit like that, but also has an age component to sexuality. Amongst males, adolescent boys were the objects of affection for mature companions. There's a lot of regional/temporal variety and debate about the exact nature of these relationships and they were complicated by issues of social hierarchy. In Athens, for example, it seems that young noble boys were considered the ultimate object of desire. However, it wasn't right to penetrate a freeborn citizen. As these boys grew up it was assumed that they would transition to the active penetrative role and that they would then have sex with women and boys and even men who were foreigners/slaves and therefore had no dignity to preserve by their society's standards. \n\nThe choral poetry seems to suggest that a certain amount of homoeroticism between girls was acceptable or even desirable. To the men of Greek society, lesbianism basically didn't count. Men and women lived and slept separately and while Greek men essentially had to divorce their wives if they found them with another man, being with a woman simply didn't seem to strike their radar as a problem because it didn't threaten the legitimacy of their family.\n\nBasically, we have almost nothing attesting to how women felt or characterized their sexuality in the Greek world and men didn't seem to perceive lesbianism as a \"thing.\"\n\nThe idea of Sappho as a \"lesbian\" in our sense seems to come from Ovid. As a quick tl;dr on the Romans, they acknowledged lesbianism more than the Greeks did. Some, like Ovid, describe women so crazed by sex that they make no gender distinctions. Other, like Martial, think lesbianism is the worst (aside from maybe a man performing oral sex on a woman)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1drs19", "title": "Do different colours have different weights?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1drs19/do_different_colours_have_different_weights/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9t7xgn", "c9t81tp", "c9t8dl4"], "score": [2, 7, 2], "text": ["Sort of!\n\nLight comes in little particles called \"photons\". The bluer light has a higher frequency, while redder light has a lower frequency. Frequency is related to energy and momentum - so bluer light has more energy and momentum, while redder light has less energy and momentum.\n\nHowever, light does not have a rest mass, so it never really has \"weight\", but it's true that different colours have different \"oomph\" to them.", "It all depends on what you mean by \"weight\".\n\nIf you mean \"mass\", then no light has any mass.\n\nIf you mean \"force of gravity\", then all light is affected by gravity the same. No matter the color, light rays will travel along geodesics.\n\nIf you mean \"momentum\", then the answer is \"kind of\". Light comes in discrete packets called \"photons\". The momentum of a single photon depends on the color, but there's nothing stoping you from having more or fewer photons. Even though a blue photon has more energy and momentum than a red one, you could simply have more red photons, in which case it could have more momentum.", "on the most fundamental level, the answer to your question is \"no\".  Weight is not a property of an object.  Weight is a force that results when gravity acts on a body with mass (Weight)=(mass)x(gravitational acceleration).  Since weight changes depending on the gravity the object is subjected to, we can not talk about weight as a property of an object.\n\nWe *can*, however talk about *mass* as a property of an object (matter).  The mass of an object will always be the same regardless of the gravity it is subjected to.  \n\nLight has no mass, and therefor has no weight.  Light behaves as both a particle and a wave - the most clear reason as to why light has no mass is because light is pure energy in wave form.  Light is energy, not matter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "57l4ga", "title": "is intelligence genetic? are some people genetically predisposed to be better at things like math and arts?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57l4ga/eli5_is_intelligence_genetic_are_some_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8sv81a", "d8sv9v1", "d8svby6", "d8t1owi", "d8t2vnj", "d8t7vy5", "d8tg92w", "d8thi39", "d8tlynm"], "score": [44, 26, 9, 31, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Yes, and no. Intelligence isn't really something that exists by itself, its more a combination of curiosity, creativity, persistence, experience, memory, and calculation. Those are to different degrees innate or trained/learned skills.  Regardless of how smart you are it's damn hard to learn something you find dreadfully boring, and extremely easy to learn something you find fascinating. Though you often need some pretty significant persistence in learning the boring stuff so you have the required foundation to understand the interesting stuff.\n\nAs for genetics. Mental strength is a lot like physical strength. You aren't going to win a gold medal at the olympics without both innate talent and a ton of hard work and training. Yet a puny weakling can obtain significant strength through exercise and training.", "There is definitely a string genetic component to intelligence - see [Heritability of IQ] (_URL_0_) for summaries of the research. The correlation varies with age but is roughly +0.5. IQ and intelligence are not exactly the same thing, but what we call \"intelligence\" is strongly correlated with IQ. There's also ongoing research in to the effects of upbringing, since we also know that children need good nutrition and intellectual stimulation at critical times if they are to reach their full potential. ", " >  Is intelligence genetic? \n\nDefine intelligence, but IQ certainly is. Early childhood education, diet etc of course also play a major role. \n\n >  Are some people genetically predisposed to better at certain things like math vs art?\n\nWe don't know, but a high IQ is correlated with success in all sorts of intellectual endeavors, mathy and artsy both. \n\n\nWhat gets really fun and controversial is when you get into large-population territory, for example, China, Mongolia and Japan score similarly on IQ test (around 105 average) despite vastly different standards of living. This of course implying it may be more about genetics than we care to admit, and these differences may be observable on a general level in groups larger than a family unit. ", "I used to work in a lab that did learning, memory,  &  intelligence research.\n\nUltimately, in humans, **approximately 50% of your mental capacity is determined by your level of general intelligence**, according to well-founded statistical analyses. Let me explain:\n\n**\"General intelligence\"**\n\nIntelligence is hard to define, but we do have some concrete evidence for what it is.\n\nThe most important piece of evidence that there is such a thing as \"general intelligence\" is the fact that pretty much all types of mental abilities are correlated with each other. In other words, people who are really good at math tend *on average* to be really good at a lot of other things. This strongly implies that there is some kind of \"general factor\" that people can have more or less of.  \n\nOne very important thing to note is that \"general intelligence\" doesn't really directly give someone math skills, or computer programming skills, etcetera. Instead, you should think of general intelligence as giving someone an increased ability to learn those things. Someone who scores higher on the \"general factor\" will be able to learn calculus more easily, in less time, than others. In practice, this often results in people who can't learn calculus as easily simply not learning calculus, and this can make it look like \"person A can understand calculus but person B can't.\" In reality, it's usually not a matter of being able / not able to understand something. It's simply a matter of it costing less time and effort for some than others. It's just sadly very easy for people to become discouraged by things like this and deciding that they are not able at all.\n\n**\"multiple kinds of intelligence\"**\n\nThere are also lower-level \"group factors,\" which represent the fact that certain \"groups\" of mental abilities correlate with each other especially strongly. For example, spatial reasoning skills might be one type of group factor. \n\nGenerally speaking, the different \"group factors\" tend to correlate with the \"general factor.\" Someone who is more intelligent will usually have good spatial reasoning skills, as well as good ability to learn math, ability to learn music, ability to learn computer skills, and so on. But the group factors can vary somewhat independently from the general factor. So somebody who had high general intelligence CAN have poor spatial reasoning skills. Or someone with lower general intelligence CAN have high ability to learn math, or ability to learn languages, and so on.\n\n**Genetics**\nStudies on twins have helped demonstrate that there is a strong genetic component to intelligence. For example, some studies compare identical and non-identical twins. This makes a great control, because in either case the twins are born at the same time and raised in the same environment. But identical twins share all of their genes, whereas non-identical twins have approximately 50% of the same genes. \n\nSo, if you give IQ tests to a bunch of twins, then if intelligence is highly genetic, identical twins should be more similar to each other than fraternal twins. \n\nBut if intelligence is purely due to upbringing, socioeconomic status, etc., then fraternal twins should be just as similar to each other as identical twins.\n\nIn fact, such studies have found that identical twins usually have similar IQ, and fraternal twins have IQs that are less closely matched. As far as we can tell, something like 50% of IQ (and a true IQ test is a pretty decent measure of general intelligence) is genetic.\n\nI am not aware of studies specifically addressing the genetic component of group factors. So I'm not sure how likely it is for a specific talent in one area to be heritable.", "I know it is purely anecdotal but my two kids seem to have inherited math skills, like I did.  My wife is a teacher in a district that focuses on reading first. All other subjects fall into place if reading is solid.  As a result, our kids have only had reading training at home.  We sometimes do math or science but the time ratio is close to 500:1 against reading.  Our oldest, now 7, is excelling in math.  It is too easy for him and they're now scrambling to bring in lessons from higher grades.  He never talks or thinks about it, just \"gets it\".  When my now 5 year old was 3, he would whisper answers to math questions that me and mom and the older kid would be talking about, like how much money we need or how much time left or days until type of stuff.  He even knew a week out how many hours until he would wake up and be a 5 year old.  At 4, his montessori school asked us if it would be alright if they tought him multiplication because their simple lessons of counting shapes and sorting stuff were not stimulating him. \n\nThen there is me.  Grow up in small town.  Not much emphasis on school.  Didn't do well in school.  I knew exactly how much effort was needed to pass and be as lazy as possible doing it.  I never stood out in math.  Fell asleep a lot.  When I was leaving high school and taking the college entrance tests, i scored perfect in math on the ACT and the college math placement test.  I also finished them in half the time as everyone else.  My math teacher at the time was so upset by this that he was yelling.  With math, I just \"got it\".", "If anyone tells you that intelligence is not something that you get from birth then they are just bullshitting you. You ever wonder why some people can learn at an unbelievable rate and you struggle your ass off? How some people can pick up an instrument and be a god at it while you try for years and years and still are no where near their level. How some people can just start running and be marathon runners and you try every day to and could never come close? How long have you been trying to become a basketball god and try your hardest every day, and then someone comes along and within a few weeks are at a level that you can't even imagine being at? It is all in your genes. They were born with it and you was not. Not everyone gets to be a rockstar. Some people are born with that gift and most people are doomed to live in mediocrity.  I'm sure that I will be downvoted for saying this, and I'm sure that everyone will say all kinds of things to try and go against it and prove it wrong, but the fact remains the same. Some people are on another level. A level that no matter how hard you try, you will never achieve. It's a fact of life. A hard fact to deal with, but a fact non-the-less. ", "There's evidence from studies of adopted children that it's largely genetic. Adopted children actually tend to be less successful in life, which is weird because adoption is expensive and adoptive parents are carefully screened.  So adoptive parents should be providing better home lives on average because they need to be financially stable in order to afford the process and be able to demonstrate that they'll probably be successful parents in order to qualify. The conclusions reached by the study are that parents who give up children are, on average, doing so because they've been less successful at life and don't have the resources to care for a child.  It seems that these traits get passed along to the child and this genetic component is more powerful than the child's environment.  Intelligence and life skills seem to be largely genetic.\n\nSource: the book *Freakonomics* by Stephen Dubner and another author whose name eludes me.", "Mehlman has noted, \u201cSNAP-25 is a gene increasingly associated with cognitive intelligence, and g genes are ones which code for a protein which increases the receptive rate which information can pass through a cell\u201d (17). When these genes were altered in mice, some of these mice showed increased problem solving capabilities, as well as a considerably reduced amount of time navigating mazes, due to memory of the pathways. In particular rats were put in murky water they couldn't see through, and the genetically modified rats immediately swam for the hidden platform. While the rats who had solved this maze in the past, but had no genetic manipulation had to swim around for much longer to find the platform, they didn't go immediately to it. \n\n\n\n_URL_0_", "There were studies done on both adopted kids and twin studies. I believe the results were that intelligence is about 60-70 % nature and 30-40% nurture.\n\n[here](_URL_0_) is an example of one such study, showing that in adopted kids (at birth), the child's intelligence has a significantly stronger correlation with the biological mother than the adopting mother. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=EhysHMzFWYQC&amp;pg=PT16&amp;lpg=PT16&amp;dq=visions+of+heaven+and+hell+transhumanist&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=p9NQ5Grx_E&amp;sig=sa1LaviTfuZedVKj0ApIMIaM_W4&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj3rd_e193PAhWFPCYKHSRIAKoQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&amp;q=intelligence&amp;f=false"], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1036363"]]}
{"q_id": "6f2ziq", "title": "why and how is the us allowed to have military bases all over the world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f2ziq/eli5_why_and_how_is_the_us_allowed_to_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diezkap", "diezszj", "dif8rj6", "difbvhp", "difbx2l", "difccw8", "difcz98", "difd6an", "difdta3", "diff4xt", "diffi9r", "diffkmb", "difjbi6", "difjyz7", "difl1tl", "difmkus", "difmv78", "difmy66", "difnbt0", "difnm0l", "difnpzf", "difophz", "difoq0r", "difpevx"], "score": [31, 179, 58, 3, 353, 4, 41, 57, 2862, 182, 16, 2, 30, 3, 10, 7, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Other countries benefit, GREATLY, from our military presence.  They give up a few miles of land and in return don't have to pay billions of dollars for a military of their own. \n\nMeanwhile, the US gets a, mostly, positive view of itself in the host-country's eyes.  ", "Other countries benefit greatly by having the protective military presence of the US in their country. The US though doesn't have much to gain from a military presence locally so it certainly isn't common in the other direction.\n\nThe US is \"allowed\" to have these bases through agreements with the various host countries and the incidental fact that nobody is really in a position to stop such a practice.", "Why - force projection.  The US is fairly isolated in our part of the world - the only two major countries in the NW quadrant of the globe (Canada and Mexico) have no where near the military power we do, and are long-time allies we are unlikely to fight with.  All the bad guys who worry us are on the other side of the world.  In order to respond to a threat as quickly as possible, it helps to have soldiers and arms stationed near the bad guys.  This means military bases in friendly(ish) countries, and a vast naval fleet that can travel the globe and act as a launchpad for ground and air assault.\n\nHow - largely because it benefits those countries to allow us in.   We act as a deterrent to common enemies (see South Korea) and also pour a lot of money into their economies, both by direct spending (feeding and housing and entertaining our soldiers) and by military and foreign aide that are tied to allowing us to have bases.", "It's a mix between these various answers already made. For some it's protection for others it's giving the US forward bases to do various thing from. There are also NATO bases where there is a mixed presence of countries.", "In addition to what others have said about host countries benefiting economically and having a certain amount of protection and the US benefiting by being able to have a decentralized military, there's also a historical component. \n\nThe US has a relatively large presence in countries like Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea. What do these countries have in common? The US has been involved in wars with all of them. After WWII, they set up bases in Germany. Selflessly to help rebuild it after a terrible war. Selfishly, I presume, to ensure that another disgruntled German didn't write a book about his life and rile up the working class. Germany was also a strategic border to maintain with the Iron curtain during the Cold War. Korea was another country during the Cold War that the US didn't want to lose more than the 38th parallel to communism. \n\nAll of the countries mentioned weren't in a great position to tell the US that they didn't want them there when the US started forming bases. Fortunately, the US seems to be doing mostly right by all of these countries 50+ years later. They aren't forcing political change or establishing figure head leaders. They seem to save that for countries they don't don't plan on occupying long term", "All of you have obviously never played the board game war. World domination starts and ends with a military presence in the majority, and soon to be, all of the world. \n\nYou shoot a missile and it takes 15min to get to me. I nuke your whole country in 5min and still have 10min to shoot down your missile outside of my country's boarders. ", "It's a great deal for countries like Kuwait.  They lease us the land, get the contracts to supply food water and fuel, in get to spend next to nothing on their own military because no one is going to attack a country hosting a US airbase.  The US gets territory from which it can project and/or support forces in the region.", "Most of theses answers answered the why not the how.\n\nFormer solder in Germany here.  The Stattus of Forces agreement (SOFA) is the actual piece of paper that allows the US to have a base in another country (that we are not currently at war with).  Usually the US sells weapons or rents the land.  Also in the SOFA are agreements about how many local people the military must hire.  We had janitors that were German, soldiers only cleaned floors in secured areas.  Most of the gate grass were also local.", "\nMultiple considerations here.\n\nFor one, the US is largely geographically isolated from the world's geopolitical hot spots. In the 20th century, that was Europe. These past 20 years, the Middle East. In this century, it may well become Asia.\n\nAs a result of lessons learned from WW2, the US has maintained that it's best defense is to keep forces and the capability to keep forces overseas.\n\nThat means a Navy that can deliver men and materiel overseas and the ability to defend them from submarines and aircraft. That means an Air Force that has hundreds of aerial refueling tankers and strategic airlift transports (e.g., the US has over 400 tankers and 220 strategic transports - the rest of NATO nations combined have a grand total of around 40 dedicated tankers and 20 strategic transports).\n\nBut on the other end, you need bases for said troops and materiel to be put at. Hence nations come into agreement with the US to station troops in their nation.\n\nContrary to popular belief, these aren't imposed on the host nations - not now, anyways. Nations must sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) for the US to station troops. A SOFA states the legal rights of US troops in host nation - for instance, a SOFA in the UAE woild bar US troops from being subject to local Sharia laws we disagree with.\n\nYou'll note too that the four nations with the most US troops overseas are Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Italy. Three of those four are the vanquished Axis foes of WW2. As a result of various treaties to end the war, those nations were occupied by US and Allied forces, which is how many of these bases came into US hands. Heck, the UK still has British Forces Germany - a contingent of 5000 that aren't due to depart until 2020, a full 75 years after the war ended!\n\nIn addition to economic and political benefits of US troops stationed overseas (a lot of developing nations get money poured in from it, and it's a source of employment for locals too), South Korea is a good example of another reason nations may want us.\n\nBy keeping US troops in the country and along the DMZ, any attack by North Korea will inevitably kill Americans. That guarantees the US would respond. These tripwire forces are a big reason Poland and other Eastern European nations are more than happy to station US troops there, even as Western Europe is less happy about them.\n\nI want to add too that the US has **simultaneous** defense treaties with NATO and Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. A war with North Korea does not absolve the US of fulfilling it's defense treaty with Europe if they get in a fight with Russia. As thus, the US prefers to keep forces overseas to stop it from getting to a fight in the first place.\n\nFinally, European and Asian militaries benefit from reciprocal agreements. Not only do those nations get to train directly with their American counterparts, but they have agreements to use US bases in the US.\n\nThat's right, we have foreign troops stationed in the US. Did you know that the German Air Force has squadrons stationed in the US at Holloman AFB in New Mexico and NAS Pensacola in Florida?\n\nHell, did you know that tiny Singapore - yes, Singapore - has FOUR Air Force squadrons stationed in the US.\n\nThe vast airspace and land we have allows a lot of smaller nations to train. And they get the benefit of a US alliance? It's a no brainer for a lot of nations ", "It's not like they just come and say \"We'll build a base here\", they're usually invited by that country.\n\nI'm Lithuanian. Our constitution says that foreign militaries can't set up their bases here. What happens instead is that we build our own military bases (using their money) and then invite their soldiers to train together with ours. \n\nWe get high class, well equipped soldiers and in exchange they get to watch Russia from up close. ", "I think it is worth noting that our bases aren't static. Things do change. For example, our agreements with Japan now call for us to reduce our Marine presence in Okinawa. If I remember correctly, the reduction there will lead to us instead having those Marines in Hawaii, Guam, and Australia as well as the continental U.S.   ", "We also have foreign training units here permanently. For instance, the Luftwaffe trains in the US, as does Singapore.", "I don't want to sound arrogant, but it seems like a lot of people are over complicating a simple question. In the past, defeat in war was a major component. Other issues, like economic benefits, play a small role. \n\nBut these days pretty much all military bases are voluntary, and usually when one government is threatening to end the agreement, it's actually the United States hinting that perhaps it's time to go home. Saber rattling either way is pretty rare. \n\nHaving a permanent American military base in your country, basically extends the shield of the world's largest military to your country. Germany and Japan have both limited their military investment since WWII, by treaty. Now, even as the USA urges them to increase, they are hesitant. Maintaining a premier military is expensive. Why bother when you can enjoy the shield of an American military presence? \n\nOne nation did decide to show the USA the door. The Philippines, and now it's getting bullied across the South China Seas. ", "I don't see it mentioned anywhere, so I think it's important to add that [Marine Expeditionary Units](_URL_2_) are are embarked on [Expeditionary Strike Groups,](_URL_1_) which may or may not be a part of a [carrier battle group.](_URL_0_) There are always a few MEUs floating around as global quick reaction forces.", "The British had a global-spanning net of bases even at the end of World War II, many of which, because of war debts, were ceded to the United States.\n\nPeople forget just how much the UK dominated the globe in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.  They were the only empire to survive WW I but were still crippled by it economically.  Lend-Lease in WW IIsaved them but at a high cost.", "Some places we asked nicely.\n\nSome places asked us nicely.\n\nThose places wanted us to help against their enemies.\n\nSome places we moved in after we fought, and then stayed. The new government was usually very pro-US after the last one got beat up.\n\nSome places we straight up annexed and made part of the US. Some of these places gained their Independence, but are still very pro-US.", "Actual ELI5: you wanna stop me? Try. End of story.", "We're allowed because we pay the rent to the \"hosting\" nation (for which we also paid the piper during WW1 and WWII for those nations who did not commit money or troops to defeat the Nazi's, Japanese or Soviets.)(those nations got to send ambassadors to our country as well and in some cases their military enjoys the right to come to the US For additional specialized training.)    It all comes with alliances built during that time periods, thru the efforts of ambassadors and congress.  Having our military base on foreign land  is both an economic asset for the host nation  as well as an intelligent way to assure military protection when asked for mutual support.  WE have a basic \"rental agreement\" like you would if rented the house next door.   I  Am a vet.     ", "You should read \"Sorrows of an Empire\" by Dr.  Chalmers Johnson to get a different perspective.  It's part of the 'Blowback' series.  The first book is \"Blowback.\" It was originally published pre-911 but he rewrote it the first few chapters afterwards.  \"Sorrows of a Nation\" is the second book. The third book is \"Nemesis.\"  He also wrote \"Dismantling the Empire\". The books go into why and how the US built a virtual empire using bases to protect power.  ", "A vast majority of nations that house US military bases are allies - most a part of NATO and/or have a mutual defense agreement with the US.  So if someone else attacks that country the US is obligated to protect it - although realistically the US surely would anyway provided it has base(s) present.  So it's a rather significant form of protection for those countries.  There are also trade and economic reasons as well (keeping shipping lanes free, base personal help fuel the local economy etc).  \n\nMany countries don't want to build their own military-industrial complex from scratch so they just give the US a portion of their GDP in exchange for protection.\n", "Because the reason allot of European countries get to have cushy social programs is because they do not have to pay for a decently sized military because they have the US to do it for them. The US in return gets to be the largest military power on the globe. It is a mutually beneficial relationship for the most part, though some would argue that the US taxpayer doesn't get the best deal. ", "Because the U.S. Thinks it's the world police.  Really wish we'd just mind our own damn business.", "I'm seeing a lot of comments talking about how other countries want U.S. bases. The research I've done suggests otherwise. Basically the U.S. is present in other countries to protect its own interests which often clash with the host nation's wants.\n\nI would suggest books by Chalmers Johnson if you'd like to know more about the military-industrial-complex. There's also interviews of him on Youtube.", "Who died and left America in charge?\n\nHitler."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_battle_group?wprov=sfsi1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Strike_Group?wprov=sfsi1", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Expeditionary_Unit?wprov=sfsi1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29bawt", "title": "why is scientology seemingly quite popular, despite its religion having been started by a science fiction writer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29bawt/eli5_why_is_scientology_seemingly_quite_popular/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cij8hin", "cij8hq7", "cij8igy", "cij9184", "cij9ggh", "cija58h", "cijc2ou"], "score": [3, 10, 4, 2, 10, 6, 3], "text": ["Potentially because it was joined by a few celebrities who have a few screws loose, and others just jumped on the band wagon. \n\nThat said, the latter day saints were created by a proven con artist who died via lynch mob... Just goes to show any religion is pretty nutty when you look at their origins. ", "It promises money. The whole thing is essentially a pyramid scheme with celebrities in it to promise you money and fame and success (except you can't call it one because then they sue you). They also have really insidious brainwashing techniques and are trained on how to prey on people at their most weak and vulnerable points.", "Exactly why belief systems appeal to people is an interesting one. The fact is we all have some form of belief system, for some that takes the form of a religion, for others it might be a political viewpoint or a set of assumptions about how the world works.\n\nSo why does Scientology appeal to people? I should imagine that it appeals as it gives people answers. \n\nI guess we could look at some of the more prolific members. If we take, for example, film stars etc. we've got people who have suddenly experienced a massive shift in the rules and norms that they are expected to follow. They've gone from ordinary person to celebrity and what the world expects of them, and what they expect of the world has changed dramatically, their place in society has massively changed and it's hard to deal with. There's a term for this disconnect - anomie. Scientology, like a lot of belief systems offers answers and structure so I guess for some people it provides them with a way of dealing with that change.\n\nSimilarly, a lot of uni students often find some sort of belief system. This is due in part to that removal and upheaval of social norms and what is expected of them. ", "It got people in through promises of healing and counseling, and kept them in with promises of money. The whole religion is just a scam, and explained pretty well in the South Park episode \"Trapped in the Closet.\"", "There isn't a lot of logic to how religions become popular. Mormonism was also pretty obviously made up relatively recently, but once these things pick up some momentum people get caught up in it. Once you're in a religion it's pretty difficult to acknowledge you might be wrong because you're so invested in it. In the case of scientology you may well have literally invested your whole life in it.", "It isn't popular at all, really.  It is generally believed that they've been hemorrhaging members for a couple of decades now, and the church is substantially less popular than once it was.  The only reason it looks popular these days is that it still has a lot of money and a significant PR presence through the relatively few celebrities that belong to it, as well as media interest due to the various campaigns against it from time to time.\n\nThey do claim to be one of the world's fastest growing religions, but there are good reasons to call BS on that claim.  For one, they are closing orgs around the world due to apparent lack of membership.  For another, they tend to claim everyone who has ever taken their personality test or attended a single auditing session as a member.  Third, the church itself used to (until about a decade ago) publish their own stats on the number of people who had reached the level of 'clear'.  You can easily see the clear downward trend over the years, with peak in the late 1970s and a steep decline since that time.", "It isn't popular.  It is only popular with a very narrow set of people: celebrities.  That is because Scientology targets them and fauns all over them and makes them feel even more important than they already feel."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bowli", "title": "how does a bladeless fan work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bowli/eli5_how_does_a_bladeless_fan_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cso4g7f", "cso4tx6", "cso912m", "csoer1q", "csofffr", "csogcx0", "csohlqh", "csohpg8", "csoicqw", "csoifp1", "csokl6u", "csomq8w", "csomrw2", "cson33d", "csoq8wl", "csornio", "csot57r", "csoucy8", "csoud4q", "csourgh", "csoviye", "csoxwxv", "csoynko", "csp26xc", "csp56co"], "score": [2447, 179, 96, 16, 2, 8, 23, 40, 3, 5, 3, 6, 3, 6, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["There's a small ~~turbine~~ impeller (a special kind of high powered fan) in the base which sucks air up from the base and pushes it through holes in the edge of the ring (the entire ring is hollow). The air being pushed through the edge of the ring sucks even more air through the middle.\n\n[Here's a diagram of the insides](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: Actually it's an impeller (thanks for the clarification guys), turbine = anything that collects power from a moving gas/liquid.", "There is actually a blade there. You can't see it though, as it is usually set into the vertical shaft, or the \"tower\", and acts as a turbine. It collects air from a vented inlet usually toward the bottom of the tower, and directs it upward into the Copus ring, which then redirects the moving air into a series of tiny unidirectional holes inside the inner surface of the ring. You will notice that the fan has a sort of vacuum on the side opposing the blowing air. This is caused by moving the air at such a velocity through the tiny holes that ambient air is pulled through the Copus ring from the atmosphere. Barometric pressure plays a key role in the operation of the bladeless fan. The inside of the Copus ring is intentionally shaped like an airfoil in order to move as much air as possible. So, combine an aerodynamically sound surface with pressurized airflow, and voila! Dyson's latest money maker.", "James Dyson himself explains how it works in this video.\n\n_URL_0_", "Bladeless fans don't work. \n\nSource: Own one. It's sitting in a box because the noise-to-air movement ratio was so awful. ", "As quiet and powerful as some of these are, i wonder if there would be a possible application for them in CPU cooling? Or are they less powerful than a bladed one of same power consumption or size?", "There is a blade. The base contain a fan, that push air in the ring. Holes allow air to escape on one side (front of the ring). A venturi effect appear, which basically make so the small high pressure air comming out of the holes cause more air to be dragged, slowing down the high pressure, but making more airflow.\n\nIt is not a new technology, it is in fact quite old...", "I see some good answers here but that leaves me with another question - how efficient is this? Is it more of a gimmick or is it actually economical in terms of energy use? ", "Dyson bladeless fans have a small blade hidden that is half as powerful as a traditional fan and costs $400 ", "Basically the way the air flows around curves in the plastic creates low and high pressure areas and you get wind from that.\n\nEdit: also most use small fans inside to get the wind going.", "Sadly it's not Iron Man levels of awesome tech or some kind of wizardry. I wish I never learned how they worked. ", "The [bladeless fan](_URL_0_) designed by Nikola Tesla is a series of very close discs that rotate together. The air sticks to the discs as they turn, is slowed down, and this slowing down draws the air into the centre of the discs, where it is expelled via an exhaust pipe.", "As many have said - there are blades they are just in the turbine that resides in the base. They are smaller than regular fan blades which means they have to spin at a much higher RPM to draw air into the turbine. This results in a fucking TERRIBLE loud noise. These fans are loud and suck IMO. Vornado-4-life.", "The blades are just at the base of the fan. It pushes air through these channels, up to where you feel the air hitting you. No fan is truly ever bladeless. ", "Dyson.. oldest trick in the book, make a hidden bladed fan, under powered, overpriced but \"cool\" and people will flock to it.\n\nUnderwhelming fan (compared to a box fan) for three times the price? SIGN ME UP!", "\"Bladeless\" fans aren't bladeless. However, a true bladeless fan could be built the same way as an [ionocraft](_URL_0_); the resulting device would be highly impractical, as it would use a high voltage current.\n", "There is a real bladeless fan, it's using charged ions to move the air particles from one point to the next. Apple did some testing on this and you can buy a small scale ion fan as a kit. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "The ELI5 version:  there are still blades, they're just hidden.  The advertising is a bit of a fib, aimed at people who cate more about \"new and shiny\" than the truth.", "Have you ever seen one in a store, working demo? It's loud, because their is a smaller fan inside the shaft spinning fast. Small fan in shaft pushes air through shaft and out the rim. If the rim itself had a fan the same size, it would most likely have to spin half the speed and be almost silent to push the same volume of air.", "Ok, new question. What's the point/benefit?", "Related question,  are they more energy efficient? ", "The bladeless fan that you are referring to has a fan inside of it. [The \"bladeless\" advertisement is about the delivery of air that you feel, which is slightly different than a conventional fan.](_URL_0_) \n\nBut a fan is just one application of a [pump](_URL_1_), i.e. a device that moves fluid. Most pumps have some moving parts to create the flow, e.g. propellers. But others move fluid by compression of volume, such as your heart, lungs, or speakers. So technically you're a bladeless fan.", "Basically it's a lie. There's a fan in the base pushing air up. It's not the space age technology they made it out to be. ", "With a blade... Queue the surprise.\n\n\nCall bladeless if you want, but it still operates on the same principles as any fan. There's an electric motor spinning a price of plastic that pushes air from one place to another.", "If u have a long bag like a newspaper bag, or sub sandwich bag,  if u try to fill it like a balloon it will take a couple puffs.  But if you hold the opening wide and blow into it from a short distance it will fill instantly.  The pressure going in pulls the air from outside the bag with it.  That's how the extra air is pulled like these rings.   ", "Just to add to most comments here... \n\nThe way these fans actually work is because of something called viscosity- where the air wants to stick to itself. They use small jets of high speed air to pull room air through the ring. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/LixrwHV.jpg"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8he8afjQyd8"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine"], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft"], ["http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/Ramsey-Ion-Generator-Kit/dp/B0002NRK3A?field_availability=-1&amp;field_browse=6290120011&amp;field_keywords=ion&amp;id=Ramsey+Ion+Generator+Kit&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;refinementHistory=brandtextbin%2Csubjectbin%2Cprice&amp;searchKeywords=ion&amp;searchNodeID=6290120011&amp;searchPage=1&amp;searchRank=salesrank&amp;searchSize=12", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_fluid_accelerator"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8he8afjQyd8", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5fogoh", "title": "what determines whether liquid being poured out of a glass is going to pour out and down the side of the glass rather than straight out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fogoh/eli5_what_determines_whether_liquid_being_poured/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dalsv08", "daltsds", "dalu5xc", "dalujz7", "dam8m76"], "score": [4, 8, 6, 38, 2], "text": ["Surface tension vs the force of gravity.  The sharper the angle the more likely it is to roll over the edge and \"stick\"  to the container. ", "If your glass has a sharp rim, the water will pour straight out. If the rim is rounded, the surface tension of the water often is great enough to \"hold\" the water to the outside of the glas so it runs down.", "The condition can be explained by the \"Coanda Effect\". A moving fluid will tend to stay attached to the surface it is flowing over.", "It's all to do with the speed of the water as it passes over the lip. If the water is moving slowly then it will not overcome the force holding it to the glass (adhesion). However if it moves quickly, the water has more momentum and it can break free and pour away from the glass.\n\nIf the water cannot \"break free\" of the surface then it will simply roll over the lip of the glass and trickle down the outside.\n\nThe spout on a jug, you'll notice, curves downward slightly when the jug is held  at a pouring angle. Obviously the more vertical the water stream the faster it flows, so jugs pour nice clean streams if water.", "surface tension and fluid dynamics. mostly its how sharp the edge of the glass is and how fast the water is moving."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3gvjve", "title": "how doesn't the iss get hit with meteors during showers like the one this week?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gvjve/eli5_how_doesnt_the_iss_get_hit_with_meteors/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu1xic1", "cu24dmk", "cu279r4", "cu28ww5", "cu2a2l3"], "score": [7, 5, 122, 28, 4], "text": ["There are different armor \"Schedules\" but mostly contain a metallic plate that attempts to break up the micro-meteorites and a Kevlar like fabric layer. These are separated slightly to allow the particles to diffuse into a larger pattern before striking the cloth layer. Again the cloth is off-set to the body of the spacecraft.\n\n*TL;DR Metal breaks them up and a blanket captures the energy.*\n", "Space is big. Really big.\n_URL_0_\n\nBecause space is so big, the chance of a meteor passing through the same location where the ISS is located is insanely small. Thousands or tens of thousands of meteors of a significant size (big enough to create a \"shooting star\" may hit the earth's atmosphere, but the earth is also huge. Those meteors are like hundreds of miles apart. ", "I actually do this for a living!\n\nThe basic answer is that space is so big you don't have to worry so much about impacts.\n\nBut the larger answer is that we (mankind) has characterized and generalized the meteorite flux to produce tables which say \"for an object/spacecraft with a cross section of 1 square meter, N meteors of X diameter and Y velocity will impact every hour.\"\n\nSo you take this table and ask yourself how long you want your spacecraft to last, and how likely you want it be that it actually lasts that long.  For typical spacecraft that might be... 99.9% chance that you last for 8 years without getting destroyed.\n\nYou then use something like a Poison distribution plus your table to find the maximum meteorite size that you need to be able to withstand without being destroyed.  \n\nAnd lastly you use a meteor penetration model like Cour-Palais or Schmidt Holsapple (sp?) which were developed back in the Apollo days to choose how thick to a make your hull.  Eventually... some time after your 8 years, hopefully... a meteor comes around that is bigger than the limit you designed for and then your mission is over.  But it's ok, because all good things have to end, son.  You're happy.\n\nNote those models aren't valid for two layer (\"Whipple\") shields which are pretty common now.  One layer fragments the particle and the other catches the little bits.  There are alternative models for this.", "Basically, from the answers given, the ELI5 answer seems to be: \"Meh, the odds are so low that we just throw the dice.\"", "In addition to the excellent answers above, the overwhelming majority of meteors are about as big as a grain of sand."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NjSPKxt4ts"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15on9p", "title": "Why were gnostic religions very popular at a certain point in human history and not today?  Is it just because they \"lost\" to Catholicism and Islam, or were there broader trends at work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15on9p/why_were_gnostic_religions_very_popular_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7of0o0", "c7ogp1a", "c7oksu5"], "score": [42, 11, 2], "text": ["Gnosticism is essentially a blend of the mother religion and Neoplatonistic philosophy. Within Christianity, while there were several strands, they eventually morphed and coalesced into two main religious offshoots: Valentinian Gnosticism, which is the most Greek and Neoplatonic, and Manichaeism, an Eastern Dualist religion that borrows from both Persian Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism. There, by the way, is still one last Gnostic Christian Sect that is not a recreation: the [Mandaeans](_URL_0_), who number about 70,000.\n\nValentinian Gnosticism was essentially muscled out by Christianity and probably reabsorbed into Manichaeism, which lasted much longer. Manichaeism had significant success in Persia, Afghanistan, India, and China, but it later died out because of Islam. There was a resurgence of Neomanichaeans, with the Paulicans, who were later the Bogomils and the Cathars. In Western Europe, they were persecuted by the Catholic Church during the Albigensian Crusade. However, in Eastern Europe, they were grouped into Thema Manichaea by the Byzantines and many of them later converted Christianity or Islam. In Bosnia, there also existed Manichaean sects, but they later converted to Islam as well.\n\nWith Islam, I am not too sure, but they later virulently opposed Neoplatonic diction. I think that the Sufis and some other mystical branches have Neoplatonic elements, but not a lot.\n\nWithin Judaism, Kabbalism is the most similar to Gnosticism and it is embraced wholeheartedly simply because Jews are more interested in Orthopraxis rather than Orthodoxy.\n\nGnosticism usually failed because it had high barriers to entry (full members were required to be vegan, celibate, and ascetic, eschewing and shunning procreation and material wealth), often was out argued by other religions (namely Christianity; they made several serious claims about Jesus and the Apostles which do not fit with the more authoritative Christian Gospels), and often lacked any legal protection.", "Layton in his introduction to the Gnostic Scriptures implies that it was gnostic disdain of sex that generally done did them in. Not a real surprise. Despite what Irenaus may have said, most Gnostics despised sex and sexual fleshy organs--flesh is a big bad thing. This view is even evident in the Gospel of Thomas, a proto gnostic text. See Thomas 114. ", "My instinct, and please offer an second opinion, is that the term \"gnostic\" is a 20th century category transposed onto the past rather a historical reality. In the area of Jewish History alone(my major) I have seen the term used to describe such unconnected things as:\n\n1. Jewish Mystical Texts and movements\n(Gerschom Scholem , _URL_1_) from the Talmud to 1700th century kabbalistic movements(notably that of Shabtai Zvi and Lurianic Kabbala)\n2. 4rd century Jewish Mosaics in northern Israel:\n which have been used on the wrong assumption that Jews and Rabbis don't make art to argue that the the majority of Jews were anti-rabbinic and in fact followed a Gnostic religion which which is undescribed in any sources and could be deciphered by decoding 4th century Jewish Mosaics (see Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period)\n3. The Dead Sea Scrolls and second temple apocalyptic literature as a whole.--The Essnes are pegged as Gnostics regularly in a certain generation of old scholarship. \n\nBeyond this I have seen the term \"Gnostic\" used to describe so many groups over a huge range of unconnected periods(often in periods with only a scant supply of primary documents), places and peoples, that the assumption that there is a link between all these different groups strikes me as unlikely:\n\n1. A variety of 3rd century Christian groups with a mystical bent, based on a trove of texts found in the Egyptian Desert(_URL_0_) \n2. Greco-Roman mystery Cults\n3. Manicheans \n4. Early Islamic sects and all sorts of Shiite sects\n5.Sufis \n6. Jews throughout the ages(as noted above)\n7. Zoroastrians  \n8. Any and all neo-platonic philosophical groups going into the middle ages \n9. Cathars--Catholic heretics\n\nI'm convinced the category of Gnosticism is spread so thin over so many different groups in so many different context that it can't hold up the weight of evidence. \n\nI wonder what the idea of Gnosticism says about the 20th century historians who superimposed the category over so many different groups?\n\nThoughts?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism"], [], ["http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html", "http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scholem/"]]}
{"q_id": "2lc52l", "title": "We are sleeping less on average than 50 years ago, can we assume we will eventually stop sleeping at all in the very distant future?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2lc52l/we_are_sleeping_less_on_average_than_50_years_ago/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cltf7qf"], "score": [12], "text": ["We're not sleeping less because we're evolving as a species to sleep less.  The only reason why we're sleeping less is because people are busier and doing more than they were 50 years ago, and are lacking sufficient sleep.  I'm sure this is a leading factor in a myriad of problems."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "195bg4", "title": "Is there a reason that we are more open to some opinions, when they come from people we are fond off?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/195bg4/is_there_a_reason_that_we_are_more_open_to_some/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8kx703"], "score": [3], "text": ["[The Halo Effect](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect"]]}
{"q_id": "618qhj", "title": "why are galaxies relatively flat as opposed to being spherical?", "selftext": "I took a look at [this post](_URL_0_) and noticed every galaxy I see are always generally flat and not spherical, why is that? Please remember I'm 5.\n\nEdit : front page? ok ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/618qhj/eli5_why_are_galaxies_relatively_flat_as_opposed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfcjdto", "dfckfgu", "dfcl8si", "dfclo41", "dfcnx43", "dfcsav5", "dfctgf1", "dfctttn", "dfcuf73", "dfcup32", "dfcvvxd", "dfd437x", "dfd4c84", "dfd851m", "dfd9tjw", "dfd9vdn", "dfda3bz", "dfdfuot", "dfdgc5b", "dfdgg5i", "dfdo7fn", "dfdt356", "dfdvi4m"], "score": [49, 8, 21, 6935, 2, 420, 10, 284, 9, 61, 2, 92, 4, 10, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["If you have a lot of stuff rotating in random directions, then they tend to bump into each other a lot. The result is that stuff is either ejected or gets a change to its direction.\n\nNow, if you were to sum up all the stuff, *some* direction is going to have more stuff moving along it than the rest. \n\nThe other directions will tend to cancel each other out, leaving you with the direction with the *most* stuff to be the remaining one.\n\n", "Rotating things spread out.\n\nBut also, there are lots of round and roundish galaxies. \n\nIe: these are close neighbors to the Milky Way \n\n[Magellanic Clouds](_URL_0_)", "Actually, there are several types of galaxies- Elliptical (Round), Spiral (The flat one in question), and undefined (no specified shape). The reason why spiral ones are flat are because systems of stars are an orbit, and therefore are going on usually the same path, which cannot happen in a spiral galaxy.", "From [Previous thread](_URL_0_) - Here is a great ELI5 explanation. \n\n    \n >  Have you ever seen pizza made from scratch? The dough begins as a ball. It is then thrown in the air and spun. As it spins, the dough flattens and moves outwards into a disc shape. Solar systems and galaxies form like that.\n  \n >  Because they spin.\nWhen you have loosely connected matter, like the dust from which galaxies are formed--or, say, pizza dough--as it rotates, it tends to push material away from the axis of rotation. Thus, gravity can compress the matter into a disc-like shape, but the faster it rotates, the harder it is for it to compress into a spherical shape.\n   \n >  This applies to the formation of many objects in astrophysics--it's why solar systems tend to have a 'plane' much like galaxies, and even stars are originally formed from a collapsing disk.\n   \n >  It's also worth noting that there are more spherical galaxies, as well as a large central bulge in otherwise 'flat' galaxies. There's quite a lot of variance.", "They're flat because they're spinning.\n\nThey're spinning because random perturbations/collisions can cause things to move but, they almost *never* cause things to stop moving. Once things are moving, they tend to stay moving and, as the object gains mass, it's going to spin faster.", "As kind of an addendum to this question, is it possible for a disc shaped planet or star to exist? Or is it not possible for one to spin fast enough to achieve the effect? Is a pulsar the closest you can get to this?", "I've heard the term \"conservation of angular momentum.\"  Can someone explain that? Or is that wrong?", "If you have a large clump of particles swirling around randomly, there is generally a direction of rotation that the whole clump is spinning in. As for why its flat; generally, while the whole is spinning, the up and down motion tends to cancel out as particles crash into each other with the spin persisting. The result is a spinning flat disk that many galaxies this video describes it better than i ever could _URL_0_ ", "Additional question:\n\nOur solar system is usually represented in the popular media as flat, i.e. all planets (excluding Pluto) orbiting in the same plane. The exception is Pluto, which orbits in an angle (and having more of an elliptical than a near-circular orbit).\n\nIs that truthful? And if so, is that because of the same reason (i.e. like a pizza)?\n", "Actually most galaxies aren't flat. The ones you know like andromeda and our own milky way, have a disk where most of the stars, planets, dust etc is but theres also a halo or sphere/oval shaped area around these galaxies which have less tightly packed dust, stars, star clusters, and planets. Theres also alot of rogue objects which arent really bound to anything gravitationally and are just drifting. The halo isn't really visible but there are objects that are a part of the galaxy out there. Then there are other types of galaxies which some don't even have a defined shape.  Source: studied astronomy in college", "I would like to know why they spin along generally the same axis instead of each the particles having their own individual orbit", "So the main thing at work here is conservation of angular momentum, which is a fancy way of saying that the total amount of rotation in a closed (isolated, not connected to some other source or sink of energy) system has to stay the same.\n\nSo say you have a huge cloud of dust that will one day be a galaxy. At the moment it's a huge blob with particles flying in all directions and bumping into each other. If you add up the trajectories of all of the particles in that cloud, you will end up with a net amount of rotation on one axis (in 3D space), which means that the whole cloud is rotating in some direction on some 2D plane.\n\nSince the total amount of angular momentum in an isolated system has to stay the same, that means that the cloud must rotate no matter how the forces inside it end up balancing out. Particles that aren't rotating in that direction continue to bump into each other, as well as rotating particles, and over time, all of those opposing directional forces cancel out, leaving the cloud more or less all rotating in the same direction, on that same flat plane.\n\nThe reason the disc doesn't collapse into a sphere is because the particles are individually too light relative to their distance between each other to overcome the centripetal forces keeping them locked in their orbits. Planets form spheres rather than discs because the particles that make them up, while starting as a cloud and collapsing into a disc, are able to pull together into clumps gravitationally. They still keep rotating in the same direction, but they all become larger chunks with enough mass to maintain a 3D shape against the speed of their rotation.\n\nThis is also why all of the planets in most solar systems orbit in the same direction, because all of the particles that made them did so as well, and had nowhere to dump that rotation.", "Same reason pizza dough flattens out when they smash and spin it in the air! Centrifugal force from the spinning brings an outward force while spinning.\n\nIt's a similar reason as to why a bicycle gets more stable the faster the wheels turn! ", "Try spinning a mop around its axis, and see what the treads do. \n\nIf a group of (celestial) bodies move in a way that implies a center of gravity between them, centripetal force will flatten the spinning collective. \n\nMinutephysics has a great vid on it. Don't have the link now. Anyone?", "The easiest way to understand this is to take a ball and spin it while it's wet. The patterns you get will show you what happens to small particles when they get spun from a central location. If you slowed it down, you'd see how the water breaks up and begins to form into clumps, similar to how stars and planets formed.\n\nI find it to be a more accurate display than a solid~ish object like a pizza. ", "Any dust cloud in space has some kind of overall angular momentum about its centre of mass. This means that it has one \"amount of going-around-ness\" that it prefers. This is a conserved quantity, so no matter what happens inside the cloud the end result will have the same amount of going-round-ness\n\nImagine that the final galaxy lies on a sheet of paper. Any vertical motion, through the page, starts off essentially random, but because of this lack of preference friction will eventually even it out. Think if two dust particles approach from above and below the page, their collision will nullify a lot of each particle's vertical motion but their motion around the surface of the page will be unaffected.\n\nParticles that are already moving in the on the surface of the page experience less bumps from other particles, so eventually it ends up where all the dust particles are going in a circle in the same direction around the surface of the page. Take away the page metaphor and you have a galaxy.\n\nThis is also why our solar system is really flat, the same friction effects caused our primordial dust cloud to collapse into a ring around the sun from which our planets formed, that's why the planets all line up and orbit in the same direction.", "Think of tides, the oceans move around to make the earth flatter when the moon moves around.\n\nNow imagine the \"oceans\" further out, feeling less of gravity, and centrifugal force, instead of the moons gravity, acting to stretch out the galaxy's \"ocean\" ", "Gravity makes things spin in a linear vector. Galaxies are formed in the shape of a ball at the beginning and eventually are pushed outward around the axis of the center. Have you ever been on a merry go round in the park? It works a lot like that. ", "I always thought the same.  When you see pictures of space it's something like\n\nSun mars earth moon etc etc. In that line. \n\nBut where will you end up if you go up from the north pole.  \nOr South and down. \n", "Things start spherical, rotating in all directions. Over astronomical timescales, things collide with eachother until they start to look flat. At this point, collisions are quite rare, so things continue to rotate in a relatively stable, flat shape.", "short answer because you cant spin in every direction at once.  \nlong answer, You can only spin in a single direction at a time, even if you add other rotation vectors to the spin all that does is transform the original rotation vector (it changes the direction of the spin), this is why galaxies are planar disks instead of a spheroid blob", "Centrifugal forge. Gases (from which the galaxies are initially formed) take on rotational velocity as they form and coalesce. This rotation results in centrifugal force", "In a super simplified explanation: as planets and stars and other solar body's pass each other they're gravities pull on each other, slowing them down, and making it hard for them to move in different directions. Eventualy it gets to a point where only the biggest body's are still moving and their gravity is pulling along all the smaller body's in one uniform motion. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://g.redditmedia.com/WD31u97UFUWUarQJtWkX1sdqewJ7iS2Zjt3fe5Ze6K8.gif?fm=mp4&amp;mp4-fragmented=false&amp;s=edc7f53ee8330194e6f1d8bc9d440b0e"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://astropixels.com/galaxies/images/SMC-02w.jpg"], [], ["https://redd.it/2rpq0u"], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/tmNXKqeUtJM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "f0cncv", "title": "I\u2019m a citizen in Ancient Rome and I\u2019ve committed a horrible crime. How difficult would it be for me to disappear into another part of the Empire or another country?", "selftext": "How did I get a Roman passport? How did I prove I was a Roman citizen and not a runway slave? Could other cities in Rome ever find out what I did? How did neighboring countries deal with immigrants from Rome?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f0cncv/im_a_citizen_in_ancient_rome_and_ive_committed_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fh6fv87"], "score": [8], "text": ["A similar question was asked a while back:\n\n[Was it possible for an ancient Roman slave (who spoke latin) to steal their owners money and clothes and run away to another town, then lie about being a citizen during the imperial period?](_URL_0_)\n\n. . . where u/Aithiopika and I dug into this topic\n\nOf course, there's always more that can be said . . . take a look at the prior discussion and see if there's something that might be expanded on.\n\nNote that there was no \"Roman passport\" -- proving \"who I am\" would be a matter of my references, eg \"where you say you're from, who you know\" and so on. There were documents that people might possess, a manumitted slave would have a document to that effect, a veteran soldier would have a kind of military diploma, but there was no one identity document. With limited media, it would have been harder than it is today to convince someone that you were from someplace other than where you actually were from-- you would have limited access to the information you'd need to plan a backstory.\n\nRome had deep social networks, and trying to hold together a story would be hard. . . as u/Athiopika noted:\n\n > \"Roman society has been described as a face-to-face honor society. Social ties, ancestry, relationships, etc. are very important in establishing one's public identity and status. If a stranger shows up in, say, Pompeii claiming to be a local citizen, people will want to know why they've never heard of you or your family.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\n. ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a6pvvx/was_it_possible_for_an_ancient_roman_slave_who/"]]}
{"q_id": "7xieup", "title": "I am a 17 year old German man in december 1942 turning 18 in a few weeks. im skeptical of the war and after hearing about the horrible eastern front my only goal is increasing my own chances of survival any way i can. What are some steps i should take and consider to increase my chances?", "selftext": "Some framework for the question.\n\n\n1. Surrendering to the western allies is a good outcome if possible, but only if an opportunity arises. \n\n2. i dont have any special skills, but im willing to learn or lie if doing so means being assigned to something/somewhere less dangerous.\n\norder of priority\n\n1. survive\n\n2. Not serve on the eastern front", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7xieup/i_am_a_17_year_old_german_man_in_december_1942/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du8jvek", "du93o06"], "score": [142, 3], "text": ["Well most likely if you are about to turn 18, you will be receiving some sort of conscription notice in to the Wehrmacht (the German Military), and more specifically the Heer (the German Army) shortly before your birthday. This notice will give you recruitment / draft location to report to, usually within a few weeks to a month of your 18th birthday.  After you go through your initial physical and mental testing, and various other aptitude tests, you will then be given a notice of enlistment in to that branch of the military. Usually you would be called up to basic training within another short period of time.  You report to basic training, and join a locally raised unit, or are sent to another unit already serving at the front as a replacement. There is no getting out of it, except for \u201cDiving\u201d (Going underground or going on the run. what draft dodgers, and others on the run from the Nazis did. The term is derived from U-Boats diving under water). \nNow, you are 17 years old and it is waning days of 1942, most likely you have already been active in the war effort. Most likely you are part of the Hitler Youth, and maybe have done your one year assignment doing work for your country (that all German youths are required to do); probably working to dig defenses ditches, or plowing farmers\u2019 fields etc\u2026 This was required work for almost all German teen youths. You have also been heavily indoctrinated in to Nazism for almost 10 years now, so since you were seven. You probably believe in your government, your people, and that your nation is at war for a just and right reason. You may not want to go to war, but many of your peers do. So you do not want to look like a coward in the face of your Hitler Youth comrades. Then again you could have an older brother, or father, or friends already at the front (or came home wounded, or died at the front), which in that case you may have a very cynical view of the war. Or maybe you live in a metropolitan area that has been bombed relentlessly by the RAF and USAAF, and are skeptical about the war because of that. \n\nSo now if say one or both of those latter examples has jaded you to the cause, and you want to get out of it, or at least not fight the Soviets. What can you do? Easy, get a voucher saying that the work you provide for Germany is invaluable, and thus you are exempt from the draft. Now in order to get these vouchers you need to work in an armaments industry, or a coal mine, or be an Engineer working on some sort of national project under Organization Todt (like working on the Autobahn, or building concrete bunkers somewhere). So you better get one of those jobs. But if say they are not hiring, are full up, or you just do not have the technical skill, then your only other option is to voluntarily enlist in either the Luftwaffe (Air Force) or the Kriegsmarine (Navy). Once in either of those branches, express interest in learning a Military trade / career as a mechanic or some other non- Frontline type military career field.  Now this is not a guarantee to get you away from the Soviets, or from war, but it does increase your chances. \n\nHOWEVER, by late 1942, early 1943 the Army was needing more and more replacements for the meat grinder that was the Russian Front. The German Sixth Army was encircled and being annihilated at Stalingrad \u2013 eventually surrendering in February 1943. An entire Army went in to captivity and was removed from the military index. The German Army needed replacements, and they needed them as soon as possible. So your timing of birth was utterly horrible. Looks like you are most likely going to get drafted in to the Army. Even the Airforce was raising infantry, paratrooper, and armored units to fight like army field units on the ground. So the Navy and Airforce might not even accept your voluntary enlistment \u2013 especially if the Army (and the Army came first) needed troops!  Now of course once in the Army, which is the most likely scenario, you have 0 control over where your unit is sent. You do have a minor amount of control over your career field \u2013 especially if you show excellence and aptitude in something considered vital, but not combative, or combative but slightly behind the lines like heavy artillery (like if you are excellent at physics and math, this could really help you in an artillery field path). However, if not, you are most likely being sent to an infantry company. \n\nBut for realism argument sake, let\u2019s just say you are average Hans Deutsch. Nothing special about you, you are just the ordinary German almost 18 year old. You are physically and mentally normal. You are drafted in to the Army, and you are sent to a locally raised infantry unit \u2013 that is about to go to front. You have zero control of your destiny. Now after all of that training, and being transferred to units etc\u2026 this puts you at summer 1943. The only theater where Germany is actively fighting the Western Allies is in Sicily and soon after southern Italy.  Unless you are stationed on some Greek Island, to guard against British commando raids. So let\u2019s assume for arguments sake you luck out and your division has been called up to fight in Italy. Phew you lucked out from fighting on the Russian steppe, or in the tundra! \n\nGermany did well at first fighting in Italy. This was not a cakewalk or \u201cthe soft underbelly of Europe\u201d that the Allies thought it would be. You are actively engaged in combat, most likely fighting the British or Commonwealth soldiers, but maybe the USA too. You love the local atmosphere, but hate being at war. However, your unit is well dug in along a ridgeline in the Apennine Mountains. This war has now basically turned in to mountain warfare similar to World War I. Trenches, small artillery, mortars, snipers, Machine Guns, minefields and barbed-wire galore! Rain, muck and mud. You hate it. You have to get your rations from some donkey or mule that brings them up the mountain from your field kitchen. Depending on how pitched the battle is, will depend on how often you get hot food! You will most likely not see a warm meal but for a few times a week. \n\nYou cannot take it and you want to go over the top, and run to the allied lines and surrender. However, you also do not want to betray and abandon your comrades \u2013 whom you have formed a close bond with over the past few months of fighting in this hellish condition, and whom you went through basic training with. They are now like brothers to you. Hell they are more than brothers to you! But man you really want to get out of the war. You are not fighting the Soviets, but the British! This is a great opportunity. But man the constant lobbing of mortars and small artillery, and MG fire back and forth at each other across ridgelines makes this task virtually impossible. It also really hinders things that your regiment\u2019s pioneer (engineer) company has planted an assortment of landmines in the valley and gully between the lines, in No-Mans-Land! And you do not have a map of the minefield. You are stuck. Both stuck out of duty for your country, but most of all for your comrades. And also stuck by the physical barriers and circumstances. \n\nIn the middle of the night you hear \u201cBoom! Boom! Thud!\u201d and then a cacophony of sound. The British have somehow made their way up your side of the mountain, through the minefield, and are now raiding your lines. Your comrades in the next trench over are fighting hand to hand and with pistols, submachine guns etc\u2026 You think \u201cNo! They are getting slaughtered!\u201d your mind rushes to saving your comrades, instead of using this as an opportunity to surrender. You pick up your Kar98 rifle, alert the Machine Gun crew that you are a part of, and redirect the fire towards the advancing British and on to the neighboring trench. Mowing down the British raiding patrol. You have helped saved the day, and are rewarded with your actions of bravery and are given an Iron Cross, and because of some deaths you are now promoted to Corporal (or Sergeant in equal to American Military terms) and are now a squad leader! Shit! No way out now!\n\nI can continue the story\u2026 if you want! I mean a lot of is fictitious, but it is all based off of reality. You could surrender later on in the Italian campaign when it is clear Germany is losing \u2013 assuming you have not been killed, wounded, or transferred to another front. \n\nEdit: Edited some grammatical and spelling mistakes. \n", "Related question- what if you just refused to work?  I mean, didn't follow any order given, didn't show up where you were supposed to, etc.  I'm guessing you might get beaten up, and probably thrown in jail, but wouldn't that be preferable to the Eastern Front?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "14vqsy", "title": "Why doesn't the distribution of elements in the universe follow the progression of the periodic table?", "selftext": "Hydrogen and helium are the two most common elements in the universe, followed by... oxygen?  I expected the next element to be lithium, followed by beryllium, boron, and so on.\n\nLithium doesn't even make the top ten list.  Why?  If stars are fusing nuclei in their cores to form new elements, why isn't it a simple linear distribution by number of protons added?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14vqsy/why_doesnt_the_distribution_of_elements_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7gvlvt", "c7gvuxh"], "score": [2, 25], "text": ["I can't explain this in incredible detail, but to give you a preliminary answer:\n\nMost of the matter in the universe is either heavy elements created in supernovas, or light elements that have yet to be turned into heavy elements. Hydrogen is #1 because pure energy eventually \"solidifies\" into it, more than any other element, at least. And because very little non-hydrogen was not formed in a star: your options (as matter) are A. be hydrogen, B. be some other element but be in the middle of a giant fusion \"machine.\" And because stars are \"gravity powered\" the heavier an atom is, the closer it is to the fusion area.", "Let's start at (or near) the beginning. Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was a quark-gluon plasma which then condensed into protons and neutrons (both of which are composed of 3 quarks). For a short time, the universe was still hot and dense enough for some fusion to occur, so about 24% of the mass got turned into helium, and a tiny amount was turned into lithium. These are what we call \"primordial abundances\". Heavier elements up through iron are created in stellar cores, and elements heavier than iron are created in supernovae.\n\nNow, I'm not sure how familiar you are with nuclear physics, but when protons and neutrons (collectively known as nucleons) are bound together by the strong nuclear force, a portion of their mass is converted into binding energy. Different nuclei have a different [*binding energy per nucleon*](_URL_2_). For example, if you take two deuterium nuclei, they each have pretty low binding energy per nucleon. If you fuse them together into a helium nucleus, you can get energy out of the reaction. This is basically how stars are powered, although the actual reaction chains have more steps: the [proton-proton chain](_URL_1_) and the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen or [CNO cycle](_URL_0_). \n\nYou're generally right that elements with fewer protons should be easier to form, but there is another process at work. As you can see on the linked image, certain nuclei have higher binding energies per nucleon than others, and nuclear reactions \"prefer\" nuclei with higher binding energy per nucleon. Oxygen happens to have a higher binding energy per nucleon than any smaller nuclei do, which means it is easier for stellar cores to produce in large quantities.\n\nLithium, as it turns out, can easily be fused into heavier nuclei (it has very low binding energy per nucleon), so stellar cores will tend to fuse whatever lithium they have available. This is why it is not very abundant-- the nuclear furnaces which create it then turn around and eat their babies for fuel  :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton-proton_chain", "http://www4.uwsp.edu/physastr/kmenning/images/gc6.30.f.01.mod.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "x2oy9", "title": "How can a VGA cable produce such a complex image with such simple means of cable?", "selftext": "How can it be that a picture shows up with a simple cable like that?\n\nWhat sort of signals are being sent through the cable to produce such a clear image on your TV?\n\nEdit: Wow guys / gals! Thank you so much! I never knew there were so many things that went into something that seems so simple to someone at first, yet so complex and done in a manner that makes complete sense! \n\nThank you so much for your answers! I wouldn't consider myself a proffesional on the topic yet, but pretty damn close! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/x2oy9/how_can_a_vga_cable_produce_such_a_complex_image/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5innp1", "c5inwwl"], "score": [18, 5], "text": ["Basically, it sends the picture one pixel at a time, along with synchronization information so the pixels end up in the right place on the screen.  Once upon a time, monitors were cathode ray tubes.  In order to light up a pixel, an electron beam inside the monitor was directed to a phosphor dot on the screen, which glows when hit by the beam.  (The dots come in clusters of three, one each of red, green, and blue, so that color can be shown.)  There is only one beam in the monitor, so it can only light one pixel at a time, but it moves the beam fast enough that humans can't perceive any flicker.  The beam starts at the upper left corner and moves to the right, lighting up appropriate pixels as it goes.  When it gets to the right-hand side of the screen, it moves all the way back to the left and down one row.  Then it moves right lighting up pixels in the second row.  And so on, until it reaches the bottom right corner of the screen, whereupon it returns to the top left and starts over again.\n\nSo all the monitor needs to know is what color to make the pixel it is lighting up in a given instant.  And that is what it gets.  A VGA connector has three (pairs of) pins for color information, one each for red, green, and blue, which carry analog signals that determine the color of a pixel.  The graphics card varies these signals to put the right colors in the right places on the screen.  In order to make sure everything gets to the right place, the connector also has two pins for horizontal and vertical sync.  The horizontal sync controls when the beam moves from right to left, and the vertical sync (also called refresh) controls when the beam moves from the lower right to the upper left.\n\nThe connector also has pins for a two-way communication channel between the monitor and the graphics hardware, which is used to send information about available modes (screen resolution and sync rates) on the monitor and to control parameters like brightness and contrast.\n\nModern monitors are not CRTs and don't use electron beams, but the signal is the same.  (Assuming they use VGA and not a newer standard.)", "OOH, finally a thing I have some experience with. Huzzah!\n\nOK, VGA was designed for CRTs. CRTs have two components: an electron gun, and a grid of phosphors that it excites. So each pixel on the screen is actually three little pixels that will glow\u2014respectively\u2014red, green, or blue when hit with some electrons. The electron gun sweeps left to right and top to bottom on the screen, shooting each phosphor with the right amount of electrons to make it glow the right amount of r, g, or b. There's a screen in front of the phosphors to keep the gun from hitting a subpixel's neighbors as it sweeps. In fact, I think color picture sets use three different guns sweeping at the same time, and each has to hit a different subpixel.\n\nOK, so that happens. So the various TV standards define how man dots per line and how many lines per screen and how long it will take to sweep across these things. The VGA cable sends the following info to the monitor: the XY coordinates to point the electron guns, and the strength that each tube should shoot electrons at that spot.\n\nElectron guns are aimed by making magnetic fields of various strengths orthogonal to the direction of electron travel, since electrons travel in curves in magnetic fields. The XY coordinates are each given as a voltage at which to run the electromagnets steering the electron gun. The strength of each electron gun is also just a voltage. So with five analog data lines, you can draw pixels. \n\nOf course, using VGA for an LCD monitor means doing an analog-to-digital conversion of the VGA signal when it gets to the monitor and parsing out colors for each pixel that way.\n\nAlso, I think in some cases the monitor sends a vertical sync signal to the computer (as in a voltage spike or dip on another line), telling it that it's time to start a frame. Then the computer starts outputting voltage values for the various subpixels on a timer. Can't remember.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "dednax", "title": "Is falling \"forever\" the same as moving in zero gravity?", "selftext": "Hi All, I am curious...  \nIs there any difference or similarities between moving in zero gravity (space) and falling forever?\n\nI appreciate that the term \"falling\" implies that you are falling towards a source of gravity, which in itself means the equation for falling and the effects of gravity need to be carried into perpetuity, but I assume an equation exists (disclaimer; I am not a mathematician.)?!\n\nSo my basic train of thought is, if you were falling into, lets say a hole which in theory had no bottom would you:\n\n1. Experience the same sensation as moving in zero gravity?  \n1.a. If not, why?  \n1.b. Would you and your body eventually adjust to the sensation of falling and thus the sensation would be similar to moving in zero gravity?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dednax/is_falling_forever_the_same_as_moving_in_zero/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f2v02vk", "f2v0a6s", "f2v0lnb", "f2v1o4f"], "score": [25, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["They are exactly the same, and this is actually one of the core principles of General Relativity. Being in free-fall is locally indistinguishable from being \"stationary\" far from any gravity source.\n\nSetting aside General Relativity for a moment, we can think of this \"classically\" - in terms of forces and acceleration. If the gravity field is uniform, then your entire body is accelerated at exactly the same rate. But the human body can not actually feel acceleration - it can only feel when part of the body is accelerated at a different rate than other parts. This causes the body to compress or expand. When you're standing up in a gravity field, the \"weight\" you feel is your body compressing as your feet are pushed up from the floor while your head isn't being pushed up. Similarly when a car accelerates, it pushes your back but not your front, and you can feel your body get squished a little by the difference in forces.\n\nBut in a uniform gravity field, your entire body is accelerated at exactly the same rate. This means you don't feel anything at all: it feels like you're weightless. You can only tell you're falling if you have some external clues - like the wind in your face, or the walls flying past you.\n\nEinstein figured this was too convenient to be a coincidence. Under General Relativity, gravity is not considered a force, but rather an effect due to the complex geometry of the universe. Here, the reason you don't feel anything in a gravity field isn't because gravity is a uniform force. Instead, it's because you are just floating along in a direct path through space-time.", "There is already a fairly detailed response, so I\u2019ll give a shorter and more simple one.\n\nYes.  Falling down an infinite hole and being in zero-G are the same in every measurable way.  If you were floating weightlessly in a box with no windows and no way to see what\u2019s outside, it would be physically impossible to tell if you are floating in intergalactic space, falling down an infinite hole, or orbiting a planet.", "With one caveat - falling forever *in a vacuum* is what 'zero gravity' is. When falling through a fluid like air, the fluid resists your motion, and you soon reach terminal velocity, stop accelerating, and end up in a 1G situation.\n\nUnless you are in orbit, falling forever means increasing your velocity forever, eventually nearing the speed of light, where relativistic effects start happening.... but that is another story.", "So yes they are the same thing but zero gravity is not a real thing.\n\nThe feeling of weightlessness is caused by the absence of a normal force. So if gravity pushes you down the normal force pushes you up.  When you are falling the normal force is less then the gravitational force, which you weight less since weight varies depending on the difference between the gravitational force and normal force.   \n\nAlso note that the crew on the International Space Station experience almost the same gravitational  force we experience on the surface. The difference is that they are missing the ground while we are not.\n\n\n\nOrbiting a body is just like swinging a ball by a string around your hand. Your hand is earth, the string is gravity, and the ball a satellite. If the earth were to vanish the source of gravity would vanish, and the ball would travel perpendicular to the now vanished surface."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5vjl2v", "title": "whats the big deal with the new amd ryzen cpu?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vjl2v/eli5whats_the_big_deal_with_the_new_amd_ryzen_cpu/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de2jkp2", "de2mjr7", "de2mqso", "de2nhjk", "de2oc2r", "de5f7dd"], "score": [7, 2, 13, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["basiclly intel has dominated amd for the past several years while amd has hade nothing much to combat it. Granted amd does have the budget friendly FX series which has the bottom of the cpu market. The new Ryzen line offers products that match and or beat intels line up and in all having a lower cost to them", "Intel has been without major competition for years, allowing them to price gouge and *arguably* innovate less/slower than they would have otherwise. Overall not good for consumers. There has also been concern that AMD would go out of business because of their crappy/unpopular product lineup, and Intel would be free of competition for a very long time.\n\nAMD has finally brought a halfway-decent set of products to market, which should prevent Intel from jacking up their prices without consequence. And hopefully keep them alive to do the same in the future ", "As stated on the comment above, Intel thoroughly dominated the desktop CPU market for way too long. Why you may ask? Let's rewind back to 2011, Intel just released their 2nd gen of core i3/i5/i7 CPUs and AMD needed to respond. AMD's response to the market is their Bulldozer line of CPUs, Bulldozer failed because it was made with too much emphasis on multi-core performance and as a result, Bulldozer CPU's single core performance were horrible. Combine that with the fact that most programs at the time did not support multi-core CPUs, AMD gave way for Intel. Fast forward to 2014 and Intel knew that AMD weren't a threat anymore, as a result Intel gotten lazy at generational improvements, causing them to \"milk\" the CPU market for time to come. Fast forward to the present and AMD needs to respond badly, and Zen is their last ditch effort at it. Zen was made with single core performance in mind and as a result, Zen is reported to have a 52% improvement in single core performance over Bulldozer, enough to put them in place with 5th generation core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. AMD needs Zen to succeed badly, because if they fail to meet their quota, AMD may never compete in the desktop CPU market ever again. We need Zen to succeed badly, not because of AMD's sake, but for the sake of competition in the CPU market. ", "An article I read earlier showed performance numbers for the $400 Ryzen 1700x matching the performance of the $1100 i7 6900k. For $500, you can get a Ryzen 1800x that BEATS that 6900k. If these are actual, un-altered numbers, this is huge for not only AMD and the PC world, but will really lead to some innovations in CPU technology in the coming years because of new-found competition from AMD.", "Simply put it's a new CPU architecture from amd (the first dedicated desktop cpu from them in awhile) that provides most if not more performance them some of intel's higher end offerings for much much cheaper were talking about half the price in some cases. It's set to shake up the industry because Intel has gotten pretty lazy lately barely improving performance with each iteration while price gouging the hell of out their cpu's because they were pretty much the only game in town when it came to high end performance.\n\n For the normal consumer this is a big big deal because you can now make a top end gaming / production  &  creative  computer for much cheaper and normal middle to low end pc's and laptop's will benefit from a huge jump in processing power. on the industrial side you can make powerful more power efficient servers for much cheaper once ryzen drops. It's just a big deal for AMD period because they have been getting creamed by Intel for the last decade and things were looking grim like we don't know how much longer they will be in business grim if they didn't get a win soon(would have given intel a monopoly outside of mobile). On both the GPU and CPU side though they are poised to make a comeback with their latest offerings.", "AMD has been Intel prime rival but failed miserably back then in around 2011 when they released Bulldozer which is a disaster. That leads to Intel to heavily dominate the market, they become super lazy  &  at some point, evil, in the market. Now many ppl just want to shake Intel to the core so the guys will be back to business, and the CPU market is back to being healthy once more.\n\nAnd AMD's **live** benchmarks have been very promising. How promising you might ask, AMD's $500 chip beat Intel's $1000 chip.\n\nAs a former user of AMD 10 years ago (now I use E3 1220v2), I have to say AMD isn't really innovative now, they're just playing fair, it's just Intel has been milking  &  idling for so long. Edit: For more info about AMD is just playing fair while Intel being too evil, AMD Ryzen development cost is only near 10% of Intel's development cost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "47ukj3", "title": "why does 100% humidity not mean water everywhere?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47ukj3/eli5_why_does_100_humidity_not_mean_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0fpeu0", "d0fpf5t", "d0fpgay", "d0fpidn", "d0fpiou", "d0fqyt4", "d0gmu40"], "score": [10, 127, 5, 39, 19, 5, 2], "text": ["100% humidity is the point where the air is fully saturated with moisture, it can't physically suspend any more water vapor in the air. ", "Atmosphere, which is a collection of gasses (including water vapor), has physical properties (temperature, pressure, etc) that let it hold a certain amount of moisture. Anything past that limit, and you can't add more moisture to the air. It's holding as much moisture as possible. So 100% doesn't mean you're walking around underwater, it just means the air is fully saturated with moisture. ", "When water condenses, it releases vast amounts of energy. Over 2MJ per kilo. Now, obviously, you don't get that kind of heat released when water is condensing on the side of your glass of cold soda, because the amounts involved are tiny, but they are there.\n\nIf all the water tried to come out of vapour and into liquid all at once there would be a sudden and large rise in temperature - which of course would evaporate all the water again. And this is why it doesn't happen. There's a continual balance of water molecules arriving and leaving a surface, and if the temperature and humidity are stable, in a closed system, the number arriving will equal the number leaving.\n\nThat, and of course, there's not actually all that much water in the air even at 100% humidity.", "It's kinda like dissolving sugar in water.\n\n100% means that the maximum of sugar is dissolved, so the rest will stay in it as leftover crystals.\n\nSo you could say that clouds are \"over 100%\" humidity.", "Because there are two humidity scales.  The humidity scale you are talking about is  \"Relative Humidity\".. Relative Humidity is the percentage of moisture content in the air expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount of moisture the air can hold before saturation  (the point at which the moisture will condense out as rain). \n\n\" Absolute Humidity \" ( or\" total humidity \") if the amount of moisture in the  air expressed as a percentage of total air composition. \n\nA relative humidity of 100% is about 3% absolute humidity. \n\n\nThe actual amount of water that can be held in air us very subject to temperature and pressure\n\n", "100% humidity is not 100% water.\n\nAir can contain water, in the same sense that water can contain sugar. You can add lots of sugar and it will dissolve. Until a certain point, past which all newly added sugar will stay in crystalline form. \n\nSomething similar happens with water in air. Air can carry a bit of water, and the maximum amount of water it can keep until the water becomes condense is 100% humidity.\n\nThis value is dependent on temperature. The colder, the less water the air can contain. ", "Humidity is the percent of water in the air. The reason that 100% humidity would not mean water everywhere is due to the fact that the percentage you are referring to only suggests the amount of water the air can hold. \n\nFor example, when it's hot outside air expands meaning their is more room between air particles which means more water can fill into the gaps. However when it is cold outside the air particles are very condensed which means there is not much room for water to build up. That's why you get dry skin in the winter. \n\nTo sum it up: The humidity percentage only refers to the amount of water the air can hold. When there is 100 percent humidity it doesn't mean that the air has suddenly been replaced with water it just means the the air is holding more water. \n\nHope this helps. I know it's kinda confusing I'm learning this in school rn."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3j3eph", "title": "when people talk about \"rendering\" a video for x amount of time, what is the process that is taking place?", "selftext": "Do they leave the computer turned on until the video renders? What about a video that takes weeks, or even years?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j3eph/eli5_when_people_talk_about_rendering_a_video_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["culw7bb", "culycf9", "cum0556", "cum90fg"], "score": [33, 6, 15, 2], "text": ["Basically the computer program needs to calculate what exactly will appear on each point of the screen, for each frame. It needs to take into consideration the objects that are in the scene, their location and appearance (colors, textures etc.) and especially the lighting.\n\n >  Do they leave the computer turned on until the video renders? \n\nYes.\n\n >  What about a video that takes weeks, or even years?\n\nEach frame of the video can be rendered separately. This allows the rendering process to easily split to multiple computers on a server farm - instead of having one computer work for 5 years, you can have 100 computers work for two and a half weeks.", "Rendering a video requires a computer to generate each frame in that video. Videos usually have 24 unique frames per second, so an hour long movie has 86,400 frames that have to be generated. \n\nFor each frame, the computer has to simulate the effect of each ray of light from each light source onto each object in the scene.  That's not a trivial operation, especially if the video is being rendered at a high resolution. ", "Think of this ELI5 version: imagine a 60 second cartoon. Now imagine that you have to draw each frame on a new piece of paper. You'd have to draw 1440 pages~ by hand, then put them in order. Rendering, is basically having the computer do all this for you. ", "Rendering is basically drawing for the computer.  Imagine a scene being filmed on green screen with a motion capture actor, ala Gollum in Lord of the Rings.  They do the scene and when the director is satisfied it'll have to get the CGI treatment.  The green screens are filled in with a background and 3D actors/objects added.\n\nNow CGI in film is just like CGI in games, but it can't just look good, it's gotta look real which means a lot more complexity for the 3D model, textures, lighting, etc.  Now games just like film convey motion by the rapid succession of still frames.  Movies are generally 24 frames per second, that is there are 24 still frames shown in 1 second, with modern 3D games being between 30-60 frames per second.  The difference is that with CGI a computer has to render or \"draw\" everything as opposed to it all being burned onto the surface of a light sensitive film spinning on a reel.  This means a lot of work for the computer and the more complex the longer it takes to render.\n\nSo a video game is real-time 3D rendering meaning everything is being drawn by the computer as you play. Whereas a movie uses pre-rendered CGI meaning the computer drew it and the frame was saved, then the next frame was drawn and saved, and so on and so on.  I think they can do about a frame a second on modern hardware, so 24 seconds gives you a second of film time.  It used to be much longer.  This is why CGI is so expensive because of it's meticulous nature.  \n\nNow if you're wondering why it's so intensive for a computer to render 3D think of the 3D models in a video game, they're made up of polygons which are basically flat triangles connected by the edges to form a 3 dimensional object.  So the rounder you want something to look the more polygons it needs and the more polygons the more processing for the computer.  Now that's just one factor, textures are equally as important as is lighting.  Oh and the by the way light doesn't actually reflect like in reality.  If a 3D objects wants to appear to be affected by a light source it has to be manipulated in a way so that it looks like it was.  So when a rocket flies down a hallway and the flame reflects as a red light on the walls following it down the hallway, the computer is actually changing the color of the walls according to the position of the light source.  When they do this to a scene with Gollum or Optimus Prime, the computer has to redraw every polygon every time they move and render their textures with the lighting effects.  There's probably more polygons in one of Optimus Prime's tires than there are in an entire PlayStation 1 game. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qyw8y", "title": "How exactly did the papal/medieval inquisition work? More specifically, what kind of person became an inquisitor?", "selftext": "I know it was common for Dominicans and Franciscans to serve, but not much beyond that.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qyw8y/how_exactly_did_the_papalmedieval_inquisition/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwjh6b6"], "score": [92], "text": ["When we hear the word 'inquisition' we immediately think of superstitions, torture, imprisonment, execution. And this meaning was well-earned by the medieval and early modern Catholic Church. And yet in modern Europe (Italy, France, Spain) the word 'inquisition' is still used for the modern court. Why? The story is fascinating and goes to the heart of the invention of the modern legal system in the High Middle Ages.\n\n\n**Legal Systems before the 'Inquisition'**\n\nFor much of the early middle ages right up to the 12th century, 'court actions' (and here 'court' goes back to it's roots: the court of a lord) were driven by the accusatorial method: someone complained to the lord about a theft, a murder, as injury to property; no action would *ever* take place without a complainant. The accuser and accused would appear before the court, they would each tell their story. The aim seems to have been reconciliation before anything else (something like arbitration in modern terms). If the accused did not confess, and there was no reconciliation, the accused would have to go through an ordeal: ordeal by hot or cold water, ordeal by hot metal, ordeal by fire, ordeal by compunction, ordeal by battle, etc. Some were more common than others. The ordeals were conducted jointly by secular and ecclesiastic authority: after all, the ordeal was meant to reveal God's independent judgement. The ordeal is not fully understood \u2013 we have to make some guesses about it as these things were not recorded in an oral society like Western Europe before the 12th century. \n\nOne of the chief problems of the idea of 'feudalism' is that it completely obscures the relationship of the Church to medieval society, particularly the 9th-13th centuries which are the subject of this post. It is well known that the 'Church' in the medieval period controlled something around 30% of the arable land mass \u2013 and we know that land at this time was the source of power.  That power was very material. The bishop (or abbot of a monastery) was often a secular lord equal to their secular peers. This meant that ecclesiastical lords were responsible not only for the 'spiritual' jurisdiction of the Church (marriage, death, baptism, etc), but also the material lordship of land and property, and often went to war just as easily as their secular peers. By the 11th century, the 'courts' of bishops and abbots were stuffed, as ecclesiastics exerted their jurisdiction over disputes both spiritual and *material*. As the investiture controversy sorted itself out on the ground through the 11th and 12th centuries, the juridical requirements of the Church became over-extended, particularly because the basis of the procedure was customary (even in application of Canon Law - which affected both spiritual and material jurisdictions - which was still unorganized in any comprehensive way). Even if the ordeal wasn't used in particular, court processes just did not exist.\n\nWell, legal 'processes' changed profoundly in the 12th century due to the Roman Church \u2013 changes which determined the legal apparatus we live with today. By the late 11th - early 12th century, two key things happened: \n\n1. The Papacy had consolidated power and centralized authority (as a political corollary to, and result of, the investiture controversy): the chief problem it created for itself was that it said that the Papal court in Rome was the highest level of appeal, and that any Christian could appeal a local decision (ie a decision of a bishop's court) to it \u2013 before the deicsion was even rendered! And the appeals began to flood in as bishops rendered decisions which were objected to by nobility and peasantry alike, for whatever reason. Very quickly in the 12th century the Papacy was swamped with an overwhelming tide of claims before it; it wasn't long before the Papacy had to begin delegating Papal judicial responsibility to secondary courts both in Rome and in the provinces.\n\n2. The Church began forbidding priests and other ecclesiastics from participating in the ordeal (finally outlawing it in Lateran IV of 1215). The ordeal began to be put under theological scrutiny and was rejected as heretical: humans cannot call up God as their servant to render decisions for them. Without ordeals, secular and ecclesiastical courts had to find other modes of proof of guilt.\n\nThese were the fulcrum for change in judicial processes which define the judicial systems which we live with even today.\n\nAt the same time, Roman Law was being excavated from archives and studied and taught in northern Italy (why that happened is a fascinating story of its own, but beyond the scope of this answer). However that retrieval of Roman Law, specifically parts of the Justinian Code (the [*Corpus juris civilis*](_URL_0_)), set in motion the transformation of the legal systems of Europe.\n\nThe problem for the Papacy in point # 1 above was not just who would handle the appeals, but how could those waves of appeals swamping Rome be handled efficiently and consistently? \n\nBy this time, early to mid-12th century, Gratian had published the first Codex of Canon Law, the Concordia discordantium canonum: the first codex of law of the middle ages, the first of its kind in the history of the western Church, and it was a throughly organized blend of Canon statute and legal procedure drawn from the books of Justinianic *Corpus juris civilis* that had lain dead for 600 years. Moreover, it was the study of this dead legal code which drew people from across Europe to study at Bologna - the first known university in the West - and which started to produce hordes of trained lawyers under the tutelage of brilliant teachers such as Bulgarus:\n\n > ...the papal chancellor, Haimeric, asked the leading teacher of Roman law in Bologna, Bulgarus, for a treatise on procedure in the 1130s, [and] he did so for practical reasons, not because of intellectual curiosity ([Pennington](_URL_2_))\n\nThis treatise *De arbitris* laid the foundations for what became the *ordo iudiciarius*. In principle, the *ordo* re-organized the court under a judge who directed inquiries, and set out rules and processes for the submission of arguments, evidence, and oral and written testimony. This organizing of judicial process, the first in the medieval period, took wing in the late 12th century and displaced the ordeal with a accusatorial process centered on a judge who evaluated evidence that was submitted through formal processes.\n\nYou can see the text of *De arbitris* [here](_URL_1_) in English. Note how thoroughly *modern* the ideas are and what a fundamental shift they are from an ordeal. The ideas in *De arbitris* would be at home in courtrooms today. Moreover, the organization of a court room in the late 12th century looked virtually the same as they do today.\n\nMoreover, we can credit the modern notion of 'due process' to these same jurists who derived their jurisprudence, and even the justification of these new court processes themselves, from the first pages of the Bible.\n\n > The form of pleading was first found in paradise when the first man was questioned about the crime of disobedience.  When the Lord questioned him about the report of the crime or of use he transferred the guilt to his wife by asserting \"The wife whom you gave to me handed it to me and I ate it.\"  Finally in the Old Testament we learn that Moses stated in his law that \"In the testimony of two or three witnesses one may find the truth.\" ^1 [Paucapalea, *summa*, taken from Pennington]\n\n\n^1 *Placitandi forma in paradiso primum videtur inventa, dum prothoplastus de inobedientiae crimine ibidem a domino interrogatus criminis relatione sive remotione usus culpam in coniugem removisse autumat dicens,* 'mulier, quam dedisti, dedit mihi et comedi' (Genesis 3.12).  *Deinde in veteri lege nobis tradita, dum Moyses in lege sua ait:* 'In ore duorum vel trium testium stabit omne verbum'  (Deut. 19.15).\" \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis", "http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/Law508/BulgarusDeArbitris.htm", "http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/PenningtonRomanLawLateranII.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "1upk83", "title": "why will colorado marijuana convicts remain in prison now that the law allows cannabis purchase/consumption?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1upk83/eli5_why_will_colorado_marijuana_convicts_remain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceketpv", "cekex4f", "cekf0p3", "cekfbo6", "cekgtdn", "ceknoy1", "cekoq8i", "ceku796"], "score": [178, 9, 19, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because it was illegal when they did it.", "The government still has them locked up because even though it's legal now, it was illegal when they did it. So they still committed a crime and are paying their dues. ", "For the same reason that, if a law is passed making something *illegal*, they can't go back and charge/convict people of breaking the law before the law was enacted.", "The only types of prisoner who are freed by legalisation of something are those considered to have been wrongly lock up in the first place - that the law under which they were put in prison was invalid. There is no suggestion that their arrests were invalid; the laws were properly made and procedures followed.", "From a practical perspective, isn't it rather unlikely that anyone who was previously charged with possession of marijuana that would be legal under the new law would actually be in prison? I believe the current law provides for possession of up to an ounce- is there anyone in prison for possessing an ounce of pot?\n\nI'd assume that- although previously a violation of state law- the punishment for that would not have included prison time. Generally- someone convicted and sentenced to under a year of incarceration doesn't go to a prison. (This obviously depends on the jurisdiction and, admittedly, I'm not familiar with CO law.)\n\nNot trolling- just having a hard time envisioning a scenario in which this would apply...", "I know, right? A month ago everybody was praising the Crown for posthumously pardoning Alan Turing of his \"crimes\". Now we're splitting hairs over the same damn thing.", "Speculative. Others have mentioned that it was illegal when they did it,  I and I'm sure that's part of it. But There's a lot of money to be made by the prison industry. And they have very powerful lobbiests (sp? ) that would be very upset if all of a sudden their income was diminished. I'm sure this is a least part of why the government isn't going to create a law that pardons them. Also, I doubt they care enough to bother. Also, not everyone would be qualified since it's just illegal to buy in the a state licensed facility. \n\nOn a related note, I'd bet some of them might have a much higher chance of making parole. ", "The phrase escapes me atm, but in most countries, when there is a change in a law it automatically applies to people in jail. For example, if a law for marijuana sentencing was changed from a maximum sentence of 10 years to a maximum of 5 years than anyone that had already been in jail for 5 years or more would be released, sentences of over 5 years would be reduced for people who hadn't served more than 5 years, etc.\n\n  In the US, we don't have that and we are in a very small minority.  It's just one of many reasons that we have so many people in prison. If you want to be pissed off about this, there's plenty of people on jail for crack cocaine offences for longer than the current sentencing rules allow. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1kf5t3", "title": "What is the current thinking on why there is only a single instance of abiogensis on Earth instead of 3 or 4 instances of different genetics appearing?", "selftext": "In other words, why did life arise only once (or did it)?  Could there have been multiple attempts at abiogenesis that failed or out competed each other?  How limited are the options for creating self replicating structures?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kf5t3/what_is_the_current_thinking_on_why_there_is_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbotw5l"], "score": [2], "text": ["It's possible that several independent origins could have happened, and only one managed to survive down to the present day.  There is even occasional speculation that different aspects of cellular chemistry are derived from separate origins of life that fused, though not enough is known to say anything definitive about this.  However, it's also possible that the first true life to come along spread fast enough to prevent the initiation of life in other systems.  Possibly there was a whole lot of pre-life and not-quite-life floating around at the time.  \n\nWe really don't know how many options there are for self replicating structures.  In theory, it should at least be possible to make a complete life form using only RNA, so that gives us at least 2 options, DNA and RNA.  I think it's likely there are more, but it's hard to say for sure at this point."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1quad9", "title": "How were the Scandinavian immigrants who migrated to the mid-west perceived by others?", "selftext": "Were there any prejudices towards them, or cruel stereotypes that some had towards the Irish? Also, are there any good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out? Thanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1quad9/how_were_the_scandinavian_immigrants_who_migrated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdgmstb", "cdgo907", "cdgojia", "cdgox6a", "cdgpiho", "cdgq32i", "cdgqaj9", "cdgqjz0", "cdgrflr", "cdgrow6", "cdgtyl2", "cdgw984", "cdh0hwv"], "score": [69, 8, 3, 16, 8, 3, 8, 42, 3, 27, 6, 2, 3], "text": [" >  *good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out?*\n\nOh god, yes. \n\nCheck out the \"Utvandrarna\" book series by Vilhelm Moberg. It's the story of a Swedish 19th century family who moves from Sm\u00e5land to Minnesota and the hardships they endure both as emigrants fleeing a land wrecked in starvation, over the harsh atlantic voyage to settlers in an unforgiving new world. I can't make any claims to historical accuracy, but I'm sure there are people with that knowledge in this subreddit.\n\nThis book was made into a movie 1971 under the same name, and it's definitely worth checking out! I've seen it once before in school, and despite the *sv\u00e5rmod* I found it very interesting and insightful.", "Here's a scholarly work I'm aware of but have not read: \n\nMichel S. Beaulieu, Ronald N. Harpelle  &  Jaimi Penney (editors). *LABOURING FINNS -Transnational Politics in Finland, Canada, and the United States*. _URL_0_;\n\nChapter six by Paul Lubotina (who is a full-time temp. at my university) looks like it might be of some interest, albeit a subset of the Finnish immigrant population.", "\"Also, are there any good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out? \"\n\nYes! Not a historian but *The Boat of Longing* by O.E. Rolvaag fits this description, as do his other works. It's one of the most beautiful novels I have read, but it is extremely sad. It really makes you realize how alienating long journeys were to people before mass communication and air travel and so forth. ", "Before the Scandinavian emigration to northern part of the Midwest America, there was a (primarily) Swedish expedition to the Delaware Valley. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nTheir first fort was at the location of present Wilmington, Delaware (1630's)", "Follow on question to the OP's: how accurate was the portrayal of Scandinavians in the HBO series Deadwood? They were labeled \"square-heads\" and seemed to be pretty isolated and unassimilated (so much so that a family was slaughtered when they left the town)", "Not a primary source, but [Our Only May Amelia](_URL_0_) is based on actual diaries about a Finnish settlement in 1899 Washington.", "Not exactly about the immigrants themselves, but 2nd and 3rd generation Scandinavians in the midwest. The Rabbit series, by John Updike, gives an amazing sense of the northern spirit in mid-west America. It is by no means a deep scholarly study into OP's question, barely mentions the theme at all. But with it's deep Lutheran undertones combined with new-world sensibilities, the books, for me, were just a very involving, touching and extremely funny look at what the Scandinavian immigrants had produced in America. And by an American master.\nJust read the first few pages of Rabbit, Run.  His description of a typical Scandinavian infuenced mid-west town. Amazing writer. Well that's what it meant to me anyways.\n\nE: Whoops, The Angstroms were Pennsylvanians, of course, not in the mid-west. That was bad. But I still think OP's question would be helped by reading the series.", "The Swedish news site _URL_0_ posted an article about the subject a couple months ago:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nTL;DR in which i cleaned up the grammar a bit:\n\n\"Swedes are stupid, smell bad and can not be spoken to. They live in the slums of Swede Hollow and standing at the bottom of the American social ladder.\"\n\n\"The valley was from the 1880s, known as Swede Hollow, one of the city's worst slums, and home to at least a thousand people in dilapidated sheds, built outside any urban plans. Most of them were immigrants from Sweden. But the ones who ended up in Swede Hollow seems also to have fallen out of history itself.\"\n\n\"Moberg emigrants traveled back in the 1850s - but most of the 1.3 million Swedes emigrated left Sweden much later, with a peak around the turn of the century. And a remarkable number of them end up in the cities\"\n\nIt was so apathetic \"\"Even the dogs won't bark here.\"\n\n\"He also notes how the Swede Hollow residents have to pay one and a half dollars a month to pitch his shed at the site, but otherwise lacks all rights and anytime can be evicted. Several families share each house, which measures perhaps twelve square meters. The heavily soiled Phalen Creek that runs through the valley is a constant source of concern, they were emptying all their waste there, including from the loos. At the other newspaper articles from the period concerned authorities to the risk of a cholera outbreak and calls Swede Hollow \"a miniature of the primitive Sweden.\"\"\n\n\"- Swedes, especially women, were later reputed to be skilled workers. But then they arrived the were perceived as \"the dumb swede\", \"stupid / dumb Swede\" - which was because they had a hard time learning English. In that period Swedes were not quite as \"white\" in the American sense of Anglo-Saxon and Germans - then came a wave of Slavic immigration, and then the Swedes became 'whiter'.\"\n\n\"he quotes woodcutter Horace Glenn, who in 1901 writes home and laments:\n\n\"Here we are more than fifteen white men to sixty Swedes, but we keep them short and they know who's boss ... it's just in the evenings I have to have something to do with the beastly beings are called Swedes ... to go behind a number of Swedes are nothing for a man with a highly developed sense of smell., the stench can only come from a long line of unwashed ancestors. \"\"\n\n\"The Swedish immigrant stock phased into the same hierarchy as other newcomers - the last to arrive was always \"backward\", sounded and smelled weird, ate weird things. Then came a new group into the bottom, the former \"primitive\" step up and became more American. After the Swedes Italians arrived to Swede Hollow, and left many more traces in writing and pictures. Later, a group of Poles. The last inhabitants of the \"Den\" was a group of Mexican families, who were evicted in 1956 after which they burnt their house. The valley was a nuisance. Now it is a park with no remains of human habitation.\"", "I really don't know how relevant this is but I am currently reading *[The Plague of Doves](_URL_0_)*, It has references within it as to how the Native Americans perceived the Scandinavian and German settlers of the area. It is fiction but you still might want to check it out! ", "One interesting view on American's ideas about Scandinavian immigrants is opinions on servants.  Generally, American employers favored Scandinavians as servants.  The book *Peasant Maids, City Women* cites Katzman's book *Seven Days a Week*: \"A 1910 study of employer's preferences shows that American-born domestics were the first choice but next in order were Scandinavians.  Swedish housemaids were especially popular as live-in servants; they had a reputation for being honest, diligent, hardworking, willing to learn, and unlikely to complain.\"  (Due to cultural factors, Scandinavian immigrant women were also much more willing to go into household service than other ethnicities, except the Irish.)\n\n*Peasant Maids, City Women* also cites the bizarrely popular slapstick films starring \"Sweedie, the 'silly Swedish maid\".  Wallace Beery played the role in drag.  \"'Sweedie' was a caricature of the hardworking Swedish domestic who was naive enough to be exploited.  Sweedie behaved like a man, and she was dumb: she retained her Swedish culture totally, including working extremely hard (when it was no longer necessary).\"  \n\nI'll end with a some quotes from *The Art of Entertaining* by Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, 1891.  I think this is obviously highly filtered through Sherwood's own opinions, but it's not out of line with what I've researched other places.  After running through the French (wonderful, but expensive), the Irish (children love them), and the Germans ( \"In Chicago, the ladies speak highly of the German servants, if they do not happen to be Nihilists, which is a dreadful possibility\"), she writes:\n\n\"The Swedes are more reliable up to a certain point ; they are never stupid, they are rather fantastic, and very eccentric. They are also full of poetry, and indulge in sublime longings. ... They have a great \ntalent for arguing with gentleness and courtesy, and of protesting with politeness, and they learn our language with singular ease. I once had a Swedish maid who argued me out of my desire to have the dining-room swept, in better language than I could use myself. One \nmust, in hiring servants, take into account all these national characteristics. The Swedes are full of talent, they can do your work if they wish to, but ten chances to one they do not wish to. \n\nGustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. were two types of Swedish character. The Swedes of to-day, like them, are full of dignity and lofty aspiration ; they love brilliant display ; they have audacious and adventurous spirits ; one can imagine them marching to victory ; but all this makes them, in this country, \" too smart \" to be servants. ... \nThey have every qualification for service excepting this : they will not obey, \u2014 they are captains. \n\nThe Norwegians are very different. We must again remember that at home they are poor, frugal, religious, and capable of all sacrifice ; they will work patiently here for seven years in order to go back to Norway, \nto that poetical land, whose beauty is so unspeakable. These girls who come from the herds, who have spent the summer on the plains in a small hut and alone, making butter and cheese, are strong, patient, hand- some, fresh creatures, with voices as sweet as lutes, and most obedient and good, \u2014 their thoughts ever of father and mother and home. Would there were more of them. If they were a little less awkward in an American house they would be perfect. \n\nAs for the men, they are the best farm-laborers in the world. They have a high, noble, patient courage, a very slow mind, and are fond of argument. The Norwegian is the Scotchman of Scandinavia, as the Swede is the Irishman. There are no better adopted citizens than the \nNorwegians, but they live here only to go back to Norway when they have made enough. Deeply religious, they are neither narrow nor ignoble. They would be perfect servants if well trained. \n\nThe Danes are not so simple ; they are a mercantile people, and are desperately fond of bargaining. They are also, however, most interesting. Their taste for art is vastly more developed than that of either the Swedes or the Norwegians. A Danish parlour-maid will arrange the bric-a-brac and stand and look at it. To go higher in their home history, they are making great painters. As servants they are hardly known enough amongst us to be criticised ; those I have seen have been neat, faithful, and far more obedient than their cleverer Swedish sisters. \n\nCould I have my choice for servants about a country house they should be Norwegians, in a city house, French.\"", "_URL_0_ has the full [*A history of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota*](http://_URL_0_/stream/historyofswedish01stra/historyofswedish01stra_djvu.txt) online. It's from 1910, which is, IIRC, within a year or two of my great-grandparents came over from Sweden to Minneapolis. I don't recall any of my relatives talking about being treated poorly after coming over, but maybe that's because they moved to a neighborhood that was also largely populated by Swedish immigrants.", "There is also *O Pioneers!* by Willa Cather. It is the story of a family of Swedish immigrants. At the time it was hailed as a realistic portrayal of real life.\n", "My cousin, Svarre M\u00f8rkhagen, is in the process of writing a non-fiction book series about the Norwegian immigration to America. I haven't been able to finish it because it is only in Norwegian, but from what he has told me it talks a lot about the journey and the peoples lives once they got to America. Here is a link to a site that talk about the book: Dr\u00f8mmen om Amerika. \n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/cn_uutiset/news.php?subaction=showfull&amp;id=1326973654&amp;archive=&amp;start_from=&amp;ucat=&amp"], [], ["http://www.colonialswedes.org/History/History.html"], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Only-Amelia-Harper-Trophy-Books/dp/0064408566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1384732642&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=our+only+may+amelia"], [], ["DN.se", "http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=sv&amp;sl=sv&amp;tl=en&amp;prev=_dd&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fkultur-noje%2Fvalkommen-till-swede-hollow-en-svensk-slum%2F"], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Plague-Doves-Novel-P-S/dp/0060515139"], [], ["archive.org", "http://archive.org/stream/historyofswedish01stra/historyofswedish01stra_djvu.txt"], [], ["http://www.gyldendal.no/Fakta-og-dokumentar/Historie/Droemmen-om-Amerika"]]}
{"q_id": "33ab9y", "title": "Were any \"southern aristocrat\" families ever regarded with any legitimate aristocratic privileges in dealing with or visiting Europe? Did their youth go on Grand Tours or were their patriarchs ever honored at receptions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33ab9y/were_any_southern_aristocrat_families_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqjbklw"], "score": [52], "text": ["Americans, both northern and southern, went on a form of the Grand Tour in the 18th C, though in [Being American in Europe, 1750-1860](_URL_0_), Daniel Kilbride points out that Americans valued its opportunity for practical education as much, if not more, than sentimental education.\n\nMoving into the Gilded Age, the more traditional Grand Tour figured largely in the lives of the new American super wealthy. I can't think of a good secondary source offhand, but the rich American in Europe is, eg, a very common theme in the novels of Henry James."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=kItfmWqYx1kC&amp;amp;pg=PA11&amp;amp;lpg=PA11&amp;amp;dq=grand+tour+american+aristocrats&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=AVyt7pcvE1&amp;amp;sig=o8e43oVTF6otn3XkEy3Mz9cM0EQ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=6sg1Vb_BIYXbsATgqYHoBA&amp;amp;ved=0CDMQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=grand%20tour%20american%20aristocrats&amp;amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "26e7kr", "title": "Is there any way to figure out how many British troops have been killed in combat over the entire span of the British Empire?", "selftext": "In my history class, I've noticed that most of the wars fought that we study, especially around the age of colonialism, Britain seemed to have a hand in. It seems like their total military casualties would be astronomically high. They fought all over the place, from Opium Wars, to territorial wars in Africa, to both World Wars. I'm just curious to see if I can get a rough estimate on how many troops they have lost through such an expansive military existence.\n\n\n\nI realize that it is going to be very hard to get number, because they have  been around so long, so sorry if this is a dumb question. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26e7kr/is_there_any_way_to_figure_out_how_many_british/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chqrmpt"], "score": [2], "text": ["During the 18th Century Britain was hard-pushed to find and army of more than 30,000 fully equipped soldiers and was constantly making up losses from militia regiments, this grew larger in later years due to the Industrial Revolution. \n\nAs far as casualties from fighting are concerned, many more were actually caused by disease before the late 19th Century, than by wounds. In 1796, in the West Indies, about 14,000 men were killed, almost all by yellow fever, dysentery and malaria\n\n\" It has been calculated that 43,750 white British troops died in the West Indies between 1793 and 1801, just over half of those who had been sent, to which must be added between 19,000 and 24,000 men of the navy and transports\"  The Command of the Ocean by N. A. M.  Rodger.\n\n\nAs far as the 20th Century is concerned, without the British Commonwealth, there is no way Britain could have carried on with WW1 or 2 after the first year or so. She did not have the manpower necessary, so casualties from Commonwealth countries must be factored in, including the 18th/19th Century wars in India where local troops were used a lot."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4an84y", "title": "how can tumors be removed surgically if the tumor's exact borders/perimeters can only be seen with a microscope?", "selftext": "Is that even true? Do they remove healthy cells too? Does it depend on other things like location and type? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4an84y/eli5_how_can_tumors_be_removed_surgically_if_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d11tatw", "d11towc", "d11vg70", "d120zdk", "d1234mq", "d123j3e", "d125gsn", "d126iuu", "d1278wu", "d1288oi", "d12a8t8", "d12q0yk"], "score": [184, 27, 19, 3, 2, 11, 6, 3, 3, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Yes they remove some of the surrounding tissue, sometimes the entire organ just to be safe. Still some times the organ is important  and it has to be done carefully so less tissue is removed.", "You can locate the tumor quite well with tomography like MRT, PET-CT and a few other techniques. This gives you an image which shows the precise location of the tumor. \n\nGenerally, healthy cells in the affected area are also removed, since it's better to cut them out than to let some cancer cells survive. After that, radiation and chemo therapy is used to kill of remaining cells, before they can grow into a tumor themselves.", "Med Student (matching into General Surgery) here, so hopefully I can shed some light. \n\nMargin is everything.  Things like Melanoma, Colorectal cancers, or basically any kind of tumors excised will be sent to Pathology to be examined.  The surgeons will ties knots or inject dyes so they can know where the superior, inferior, deep...etc etc... margins are, and the pathologists will report back to see if they're \"clean\".  Obviously deeper/larger tumors will require bigger margins, so a  < 1mm deep melanoma may need no more than 1 cm clean, healthy cell margin, whereas a 1cm deep melanoma may need 2cm as a standard. ", "You take the widest margins based on characteristic patterns from that type of tumor. The tissue sample is then sent out for biopsy review and if the margins weren't wide enough you have to go back and remove more tissue surgically and repeat. ", "Have had a tumor removed from my right temporal lobe in 2010. They identify the spot of the tumor and make a resection around the tumor that is the smallest yet most responsible birth to TRY to get the whole thing. Slivers CAN be left behind but surgeons are trying to take as little as possible so they can test the matter and discover they type of tumor. Mine was just a mass - a glioma - but some can be cytomas for example which can travel the vessels and pipelines in the brain and sprout new tumors. Astrocytoma - a form of aggressive brain cancer for example.  ", "Former surgical pathology technician here - there's a process called intraoperative frozen sectioning where we essentially perform microscopic tissue analysis while the patient is still on the operating table.  Often the surgeons themselves would come in to speak with us about specific findings and then go back to operating.  The process is essentially as follows - receive fresh tissue from OR, snap freeze to about -25C, use a special device called a Cryostat to cut tissue to ~5 micron sections, place on microscope slide and perform special (H & E) staining.  At this point the slide can be examined microscopically - for cancer/tumor removal, this results in a \"positive\" or \"negative\" margin (cancer vs. no cancer) to relay to the surgeon.", "The correct answer is 'it depends what you mean by tumour'.\n\nA benign (non-cancer) tumour is slow growing and unlikely to spread after surgery. The chances of there being microscopic cells outside of the 'macroscopic' (visible to the naked eye) tumour are small. Many of these tumours will also have a 'capsule' around of them of non-tumorous tissue which can be either left in place or incompletely removed without the tumour coming back. Others will have what we call a 'plane' around them - a space that divides them from healthy tissues and lets us pop them out. Think of peeling the skin off a chicken breast - that's using the 'plane' between muscle and skin in the same way. Another example is the 'plane' between the skin of an orange or banana and the fruit inside. Body tissues work a similar way.\n\nDespite this, benign tumours can still come back if they are not completely removed, so often some of the tissue around them is taken too. For large benign tumours we can't always be certain there isn't cancer inside, so the entire organ may be removed (eg testicles, ovaries).\n\nFor cancer it's a bit different. The cancer is likely to have spread outside the visible lump, sometimes by a long way. In bowel surgery (my speciality), we need to see the healthy bowel around the tumour, the blood vessels and the lymph nodes to decide whether the cancer has spread. So for example in a rectal cancer, we take some or all of the rectum, the fat around the rectum, and blood vessels and lymph nodes going into the abdomen. Much of that tissue doesn't have cancer in it, but it is important to know how much does to decide on whether chemotherapy will be of benefit and the likely risk of tumour spread and recurrence.\n\nELI5 answer - we take healthy cells too, quite often a shitload of them.\n\nSource - bowel surgeon.\n\nTL;DR - bananas, cancer, bum surgery.", "Cell biologist here (so zero training in anything clinical, I just look at the biology of cancer).\n\nIt's difficult to say that there is an exact border on a tumour. The reason for this is that the tumour itself also modifies the surrounding tissue (called tumour microenvironment, which isn't cancerous) in order to help tumour growth. These surrounding cells are significantly changed - although they are non-cancerous, I wouldn't say that they are healthy either.\n\nAny cancer cells left behind would be at a significant advantage to grow fast because of these surrounding cells, so it is much safer to remove too much than too little. Wikipedia is probably a good start for extra reading (_URL_0_) although there are plenty of good reviews on the TME too.", "The difficulty in removing a tumor is a large part a team effort between surgeon and pathologist. Often surgeons will start removing tissue and send off small samples of hypothesized borders of tumors to pathologists who can quickly analyze the tissue and inform the surgeon the grade of the tumor be it malignant or benign and if more tissue needs to be removed. It's a delicate process and the procedure and success rate is highly depend on tissue and organs involved.", "Well that's the thing it depends on where and what it is.\n\nIn the most simplistic cases  since you know the general area and  size of something you go slightly over it to ensure you get it all.\n\nIf its more serious but on a body part you can live without? they remove the part.\n\nNow this doesn't work on everything as a tumor on your arm is a hell of a lot different then say a brain tumor. If said tumor is in an area they can't over cut they remove as little as possible. How do they determine what is as little as possible?  and a rather large group of highly specialized people examine the area and make educated guesses based on the data they've collected and hope for the best.\n", "This is actually an active area of oncology research.\n\nSuppose your mom gave you a plate of mac-n-cheese and mashed potatoes, but they're right next to each other on your plate and kinda mix together in the middle.  The problem: you hate mashed potatoes!  You try to eat just the noodles, but bits of potatoes keep getting in with your noodles so you divide the two on your plate.  Just to be safe you sacrifice some noodles and push them onto the potato side, in order to be sure you really got rid of all the potatoes.  Surgeons do this too - they take out some healthy tissue along with the tumor in order to be extra safe.\n\nAnother thing that scientists are working on now is basically making the 'potatoes' glow a bright color like green while they are operating on the patient.  This will make it easier for them to get rid of all the 'potatoes' but leave behind as much of the 'noodles' as possible.", "Think of a tumor as a cluster bomb full of deadly bomblets. If you can get to it before the outer shell explodes and scatters mini warheads all over the place, then you have a shot at removing the bomb before it explodes and the patient usually survives. \n\nIf the cancer has spread through the blood stream and starts new tumors all throughout the body, in the organs, in the brain, in the muscles, bone marrow, etc, then it's like that cluster bomb went off, now you have dozens or hundreds of tinier bombs to remove, and that isn't surgically possible... That's why it's so important to catch cancer in the early stages, before it hits the road and hikes all over your body. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor_microenvironment"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "118vty", "title": "why do people find ass attractive.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/118vty/eli5_why_do_people_find_ass_attractive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6kbo2s", "c6kbqiy", "c6kbqo7", "c6kbwmd", "c6kbxid", "c6kbxj6", "c6kbyb1", "c6kc3i0", "c6kc6lv", "c6kc9op", "c6kc9vf", "c6kcb5a", "c6kcbuh", "c6kcdqw", "c6kcf9r", "c6kchhe", "c6kchq2", "c6kchsl", "c6kclut", "c6kcp65", "c6kcz0u", "c6kdph0", "c6kdr64", "c6ke93d", "c6keigq", "c6kfokw", "c6kfqgr", "c6kiur3", "c6kkq25", "c6kkxpg", "c6kkzvp", "c6kl2hl", "c6klekv", "c6klu8f", "c6km03z", "c6kmh5g", "c6kmn5q", "c6kq9v5", "c6kr55z"], "score": [18, 54, 1055, 241, 7, 9, 13, 155, 10, 79, 96, 3, 95, 2, 6, 44, 2, 11, 18, 2, 7, 6, 4, 14, 2, 2, 21, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["\"How exactly does a posi-trac rear-end on a Plymouth work? It just does\"", "It's private. Intimate. Same as boobs. If all chicks walked around topless, boobs wouldn't be as big of a deal. But they're covered and hidden and people most of the time want what they can't have.", "You might as well ask why anyone finds any body part attractive, because you're going to have countless people prescribing to one or another.\n\nIf you're asking why certain body parts have a bigger \"cult following\" than others, that can be answered a few ways:\n\n-Taboo will play a role with some, wherein the body part in question is considered something that should be hidden or clothed in public and therefore gains a mysterious or taboo quality.\n\n-Association with some perceived sexual aspect, or literal use in an act of sex can make a body part easily become an analogue of sexual activity.\n\n-More primitive factors (evolutionary selection) can play a role in aesthetic preferences. It's been proposed that there is a correlation between a woman's fat distribution in her thighs and buttocks and the IQ of [her] children (higher is better).\n\n-Plus rappers like it, and do they EVER make bad decisions?", "Child bearing hips. A nice ass almost always comes with wider than normal hips. Wide hips are good for squeezing out big strong babies. Just like big old boobs look like they're good for feeding babies. Everyone has their own opinion about what's attractive, but a nice ass also means that the girl is of mating age.", "The ass is a part of the hips, which are an indicator of how good a woman will be at bearing children.  You've heard the term \"Child Bearing Hips\".  \n\nMuch like boobs indicate how well a female can feed their young, hips (ass) indicate how well they will perform during childbirth.", "you can grab it, shake it, lick it, slap it.  It moves and give you an erection when you sit and watch one walk by that is of a nice proportion.", "As with most things related to sexual attractiveness, it boils down to \"because, past a certain threshold of personal preference, we're hard-wired to find it attractive\". \n\n  - It's more or less accepted as fact that most men are attracted to a certain hip:waist ratio that just screams out \"child-bearing hips\".\n  - Also, oestrogen (one of the characteristically female hormones) promotes fat accumulation around the hips. So arse size also says \"There's plenty of female hormones flowing\".", "I'd also like to know why some women find guys butts attractive.", "A nice ass is also a very good indicator of the overall health of the person who owns it.", "Cause they fine.", "I'm female and I do enjoy a nice male ass.  I prefer that it sits atop some nice muscular thighs and beneath the well-defined crevice the spine makes as it travels down a muscled back.  Just a slight amount of jiggle when he walks gives me the vapors.  I'm not sure why, but after eyes and lips it's my favorite physical feature.\n\n* I forgot to offer my possible explanation to why I find it so attractive.  The answer is that I don't really know.  Why do people find feet attractive?  Or hair color?  You can't explain physical attraction.  I like everything about man-ass.  The firm flesh that moves so appealingly as I spank it or jiggle it or bite it.  I like to press against him in the shower and reach around and just grip them cheekies and bring him closer.\n\nI have to go now.", "Is there any evidence that the 'child-bearing hips' thing is real? Seems like confirmation bias.", "A woman's body is kind of like the island of Manhattan. At the head is Harlem, a place that can be beautiful and culturally diverse, yet ultimately nobody really wants to go there.  Boobs are like Times Square: flashy, fun, but ultimately just a tourist trap. All the business happens downtown, and that's why a fine ass is so attractive, because who doesn't want to do business in a beautiful place?", "There's a vagina underneath it", "IIRC some primates, when they are fertile and DTF present their buttocks to potential partners. I think with some species they get all engorged and round and appealing and such. This combined with comments below about child bearing hips/waist to hip ratios being indicators of reproductive ability makes asses a wonder to behold.\n\nSource: I like big butts and I cannot lie. ", "I am no way and expert and I forget where I read this but there are some biologist who have theorized that humans like many other animals primarily did it \"doggy style\" until we became fully upright(joke in there somewhere).   Once we started standing straight we began to have sex from the front and breasts were slowly evolved into existence to look like asses from the front to trigger the same attraction that we had developed looking at asses as the place we have sex. No idea how reputable that source was but I remember reading that somewhere somewhat reputable looking. ", "to me, it's that you can play a little with it in public without it being too awkward. The swing in the hips when girls walk is one of the sexiest things ever seen. That's the short version.", "I was going to post some pictures, but the I remembered you were 5", "This might be a better q for /r/explainlikeimjive", "It must be something with the curvature that is very instinctual, maybe because it shows the ability to store fat? Sort of like, a golden ratio thing. People go nuts about the size, but as long as its big enough to pound the shit out of, it's fine. A better question to ask is, why do I feel the need to lick food off it?", "Seriously, nobody's linked to this yet?\n\nOP, Reddit has thoroughly answered your question here: _URL_0_", "as someone who studied gender psychology and also loves me some butts, my hypothesis has always been that for males, it signifies: MOUNT AND INSERT HERE.\n\ni feel fairly confident that if you ask any man who his first instinct is when he sees a sexy women on all fours, bent over with her ass in the air, he isn't thinking, \"gee, that's a round tushy,\" he is most likely thinking, \"i wana hop on that and ride it like a pony.\" \n\nalso, research has shown that ejaculating while in the doggy-style position increases (~2%) the chances of the baby being male.\n\nobviously women like male butts as well, and no male wants to be mounted, however, i have read some theories that a strong butt muscle and large abs are attractive to women because the core and the butt are the primary muscles involved in thrusting.\n\nif need be, i can dig through my old textbooks after work to try to cite some of this, but off the top of my head, these are the things i remember from college. ", "Reddit already solved this: _URL_0_", "I like butts because boobs.\n\n\n...on legs.", "this question would make a much better Explain Like I'm Jive", "It's not conscious. Read \"The Naked Ape\" by Desmond Morris. Attraction to shapely buttocks is a built-in feature of primates.\n\nAs we straightened up and learned to hide ourselves in layers of cloths, breasts (think decollete) became a visual replacement for buttocks.\n\nAlso, as hominids straightened up, female genitalia got hidden, and poor males lost their ability to easily judge whether a female was ready for sex or not. This is how intelligence, small talk and hypocrisy began.", "ITT: Amateur evolutionary theorists.", "-Sigh- white people. ", "There are two parts to the question:\n\n1) Why do (some) humans in general find rears attractive:\n\nThis one has been covered by many posts and boils down to the rear being a marker of sexual/reproductive availability.\n\n2) Why do specific humans find rears attractive.\n\nThis one is generally hand waved as 'some like it'.  I can give some more interesting insight into it from a personal \u2018conversion\u2019 story perspective.\n\nGrowing up I had no interest in rear ends.  Like you I didn\u2019t understand the attraction and it just wasn\u2019t in my consciousness as something to look at, or look for.  In my early 20s I was employed at a business on the Hollywood strip and worked with a bunch of young men most of them urban and varying shades of brown.  We\u2019d sit and girl watch together and their comments were heavily weighted towards the gals\u2019 bottoms.  For weeks I was perplexed, but slowly I started to appreciate the joy of a round rear and joined in on the positive/appreciative commentary.  In the intervening decades I\u2019ve found that focus has strengthened and I\u2019ve become a solid ass-man.\n\n=)\n\nSo my take is that there is a cultural/tribal/societal skew that can influence individuals (who then in feedback-loop fashion) strengthen the skew.", "The genitals of many female primates in heat swell to signal sexual readiness. However, as humans evolved into a standing position this signalling mechanism was hidden and in fact would have become uncomfortable as the swellings can become very large. Modern humans no longer go into heat or experience this swelling. Therefore it is possible that the ass evolved into its current fleshy state precisely because there was already an association programmed into humans to associate that shape with sex.\n\nAbove paraphrased from a biology textbook", "Island A: 99 men, 1 woman.\n\nIsland B: 99 women, 1 man.\n\nWhich island will reproduce faster? Obviously B since the job for a man in the reproduction process is to just stick it in and bust a nut, but what about the woman? She is designed to bear the child for nine months, and raise it for years after birth until it is suitable to live on its own, but the woman can't do it on her own, she needs help and more importantly protection.\n\nThis is why women focus more on personality traits and tend to take longer to give in to sex. Their minds are hardwired to find a man who will stick with them and be a protector for not just them but the offspring that they *might* produce. The male, on the other hand, technically speaking can reproduce in a matter of minutes and be done with it. This is why men tend to be more focused on physical aspects at first glance.\n\nThe main idea, though, is that these attraction traits in BOTH sexes are based on how suitable the other will be as a child-bearer, since at the end of the day, our number one goal as a species overall, is to survive as long as we can and make offspring that can live longer than their predecessors.\n\nAss, in particular, is important to a man *subconsciously* because they know that a woman must have a 5-10 pound bowling ball in their stomach for nine months. If the woman is not capable of executing this task, she will fail as a parent. All that weight in the front of the stomach can cause problems with a woman's back and how she carries out tasks throughout the day, BUT if she has a nice little support system from *behind* to counter all that weight in the front, her chances of bearing that child are much easier.\n\nThe same goes for breasts. If a woman cannot provide enough milk for her child, s/he will be unhealthy and as a result will most likely live for a shorter period of time than a healthy baby. Men will logically associate smaller breasts with less milk and obviously bigger breasts with more milk for the offspring.\n\n**TLDR - Bigger butt means more weight in the back to balance the weight of a child in a woman's stomach**", "Hi, this is one of my research areas:\n\nAsses, particularly ones that contribute to an optimal waist to hip ratio (the ratio of your waist divided by your hips. Optimal is ~0.7) are considered more attractive than other bums because of a bunch of stuff. Some of it includes birthing children more effectively (wider hips usually means a wider birthing canal), higher levels of fat deposited in the thigh and bum region (called gluteofemoral fat, it's a great store of DHA which is necessary for fetal neural development), may be related to uterine pH/acidity, and also may be related to better pathogen resistance. Essentially, a close-to-optimal WHR is related to generally healthier females.\n\nIt's possible that because women with more optimal WHR had higher chances of surviving childbirth, birthrates, and infant mortality rates, they were more effective at passing on their genes. Using evolutionary theory, if you die before you reproduce, your genes don't live on, so assuming you do reproduce, it's thought that your genes are \"better\" and thereby survive for another generation. Because these women may have survived better or reproduced better, this WHR may have been an evolved signal of fertility and health that men ultimately ended up finding attractive.", "From my own perspective and experience, a nice big ass (my personal preference) is nice for several reasons.  Here are some.\n\n* They are aesthetically pleasing.  You watch a big assed girl walk and it's living art.  A little extra wiggle in the walk is a beautiful thing.\n* I'd be a little worried about hurting/bruising a skinnier or flatter butted girl, but with a big assed woman I can just go buck wild.  You can really get in there and go to town on a big fanny.\n* Really nice and warm to curl up to at night.\n* It feels better on a tactile level, feels great in the hands and really all over.\n* I've always liked buying in bulk.\n* The long and short though is that for whatever reason it gets me all tingly inside.  Inexplicably, a big ass just gets me going like nothing else does.  I don't know but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the 'child-bearing hips' thing.\n", "Because that's where your penis goes. Seriously, what kind of question is this? Unless you actually *are* 5. ", "A [similar question](_URL_0_) was asked about a year and a half ago, leading to my favorite thread of all time.", "But they poop from there.", "The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin'", "Because yoga pants", "TIL OP is a virgin"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gibxk/i_like_big_butts_and_i_cannot_lie_but_is_there/"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gibxk/i_like_big_butts_and_i_cannot_lie_but_is_there/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/comments/gibxk/i_like_big_butts_and_i_cannot_lie_but_is_there/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33r0ac", "title": "if most money is now just numbers in a computer, what keeps a bank from just adding a couple million to its accounts?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33r0ac/eli5_if_most_money_is_now_just_numbers_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqnkpgq", "cqnksmp", "cqnlx90", "cqnr1cd", "cqnr6j1", "cqnryl5", "cqnt8yh", "cqntqm5", "cqnvke0", "cqo0xcn"], "score": [6, 5, 113, 6, 47, 7, 2, 9, 4, 3], "text": ["I don't know the intricacies and I'm sure someone else will chime in with them, but there has to be a record of it coming from somewhere. It's not as simple as just typing in a number and saying \"tada! there is now this much money!\" Audits and whatnot.", "[This](_URL_0_) might be the reason", "Banks lend out more money than they have actual money, so they're creating imaginary money that only exists on paper out of thin air.\n\nIt would be illegal to put free money in their own accounts, but having someone owe you money is an asset too, so they put free money in other people's accounts. \n\nIf then bank sitting on too much outstanding debt, they might bundle it up and sell it to someone else, then use that money to loan more people thin-air money.", "I actually did my term paper on this. A bank is profitable only because it states it has money in its account that isn't there. The way banks work is they loan out 95% of the money they have in their account as debt and then make a profit on the interest. For example purposes, let's say a bank's account has $100.00 in it, there is actually only $5 or 5% of that money in the vault at a given moment. As long as people take out only a fraction of their money and do not demand their money back all at once, the bank is fine. Feel free to ask any more questions or for me to expand on my answer.\n\n*  This article explains the inner workings of banks very well _URL_0_", "A banks is accountable to it's countries tax office and independent financial regulators. Throughout the financial year, the bank must produce financial reports which include a balance sheet, which shows the opening and closing balances of all of their accounts, showing the bank's total assets and therefore the health of the bank. Financial regulators constantly monitor these reports to make sure that the bank has enough assets to cope with an unexpected financial event. \n\nIf a bank were to simply add a few billion dollars to it's accounting records, the discrepancy from one balance sheet to the next would show that this money was simply invented and the bank would be fined or (hopefully) be shut down by the regulators.\n\nAlso, every dollar in the bank's accounts has to be shown to have originated from a source and those sources are also required to show a corresponding transaction. For banks, this may be other banks, government treasuries, business, profit from interest charged, profit from financial trades, or from public savings accounts.\n\nTL:DR a bank can't just edit it's accounts because their ongoing reporting would show that the money just materialized and didn't come from a source.\n\n\n", "Its called fractional reserve banking. A bank can create money for loans and mortgages up to a certain multiple of the total amount of cash deposits from its customers. \n\nNormally a bank takes money you deposit and lends out that money to borrowers. But since most people keep their deposits sitting in their bank accounts for a long time banks then are able to lend more out \"on paper\" then the total deposits.\n\nThe problem is when there's a crisis, or a bank is running into trouble then people start withdrawing their cash deposits and the bank becomes insolvent. Therefore the government sets a limit (multiples) on how much a bank can lend out over and above the amount of total deposits.\n\nTo answer your question: a bank can make themselves 1 million dollars (in their books) if they have the required reserves in deposits (someone came in and deposited, say, $250k if the multiple set by the government is 4 times). ", "Banks do their taxes just like you do.\n\nIf they suddenly reported millions of dollars appearing out of nowhere, they'd get caught and punished severely.", "The Federal Reserve actually does just this as a matter of course. It is the largest bank in the Unites States.", "Debits must equal credits and auditors would find it pretty quick. ", "Nothing really prevents a bank from doing this, but one deterrent is the existence i financial statement audits. Every company, including banks, are audited by public accounting firms each year to verify that what they are telling regulators and stockholders is true. While small amounts could probably be concealed, adding a few zeros to any account would most likely be detected. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe"], [], ["http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/bank1.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d52wb", "title": "why are all search engines so goddamn awful compared to google?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d52wb/eli5_why_are_all_search_engines_so_goddamn_awful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct1u1gg", "ct1u1mo", "ct1xkq6", "ct21pie", "ct24t1k"], "score": [37, 7, 11, 4, 19], "text": ["Its because the algorithm Google uses for search is very, very good.  It is, by far, the most valuable piece of IP that Google owns.\n\nSince it is so good, most people use Google as their search engine.  This gives constant feedback on what results people actually want, which they use to make the algorithm more accurate.", "they arent.  I use bing and it is superior in ALOT of ways.  image and video search are amazing.  web search isnt dominated by paid results.\n\nAbout the only thing I go to google for is that you can search for an image itself (as in the jpg).  and their streetview is a bit more comprehensive.  But bing has birds eye view which is great as well.", "It depends what you mean by awful. If it's a matter of the search delivering exactly what you want, then it's likely that Google's code is more complex and thorough at finding relevant results. In terms of features, Google is not a clear-cut winner; Duck Duck Go is one in particular that has some really powerful tools that Google doesn't have (or at least aren't as easy to use with Google).", "Intrusive ads, other miscellaneous clutter on the sites, and an unwillingness to just let the search engine be what it is.  A search engine.", "Google is ubiquitous because when it first started it was a such a huge change in how search engines worked. Without wanting to get into a long winded piece about the history of search engines, essentially prior to Google pages were listed according to how many times the search term was seen on a particular page. That wasn't particularly helpful. \n\nWhat Google did was change how pages were ranked. They basically looked at peer-reviewed scientific journals and created an algorithm based on that model. The theory is that the more a give paper is cited by other papers in a similar field, the more valuable that paper becomes. THis was applied to web pages. So just as important as the text on the page was who was linking to it. That forms the basis of PageRank. (it's a bit more complicated that this but this is ELI5 after all). \n\nincidentally, I don't believe that Google actually owns PageRank - becuase the paper that Page and Brin wrote on the idea was done during their time at Stanford, I'm pretty sure Stanford University owns the patent. Google paid them for it's use in shares which worked out pretty damn well for Stanford). \n\nAnyway, ever since search engines have worked by looking for the links and relationships between pages as much as well as the page content. Whether or not everything is 'goddamn awful' in comparison is open to question - other places have made pretty big improvements in the past few years - but you only have to google 'google' to see it's ubiquity. Nobody does a 'web search' any more. They Google it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3v1o3p", "title": "therapy checkups", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v1o3p/eli5_therapy_checkups/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxjjgzf", "cxjjvft", "cxjnuke", "cxjp4vc", "cxjrg0l"], "score": [31, 6, 13, 2, 3], "text": ["This would actually be a brilliant idea. The thing is that mental health is often overlooked or underestimated. Even in welfare-societies such as Denmark where the good schools, universities (they actually pay you to study), healthcare and similar things are free (paid for by the government) you still have to pay to get psychiatric therapy unless you have a really big problem. It is a shame that it is that way.", "Great idea, I think that people expect public school teachers to notice that stuff(unfairly).", "Yes, actually. EVERYONE should have a therapy checkup, just like EVERYONE should go to the doctor. But our culture -- we've demonized though who go to therapy, separate from them. When some of these mental health issues can create more blocks between the mentally ill and help, and it's already difficult to get therapy without demonization, AND, once you've gotten past those, it ALSO costs money that decreasing numbers of families can afford? So many people need help, but so many people don't want to get help, for fear of losing their position in society.\n\nSuch is the rat race. This is why suicide rates are so high, by th  way. We can see the same over in Japan.", "As others have said, I think this would be a great idea.\n\nHowever, mental health is often considered taboo, unimportant, and a choice. Societies focus more on physical health, and ignore mental health.", "Our (western) culture is suspicious of the unknown and Psychology definitely falls into that category. \nAlso it comes down to money for sure. Not many insurance companies cover that. Some have to have a referral from a MD to go to counseling and for insurance to cover it. \nMany schools share one psychologist that must travel around quite a bit to all their different schools.  They are expensive to employee so they only have time for the \"extreme cases.\" I wonder in those cases if they were referred by an MD. \nIf kids where evaluated by a counselor instead some would inevitably fall though the cracks and families might sue the school who took on the responsibility to evaluate kids in such a way. \nBasically it falls into too much money, red tape and financial risk. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32vvyl", "title": "how do automatic guns deal with the heat that would be created from the friction of so many bullets passing through the barrel so quickly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32vvyl/eli5_how_do_automatic_guns_deal_with_the_heat/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqf4hvh", "cqf4j84", "cqf4nkd", "cqf4w0t", "cqf7l3s", "cqf8cpy", "cqf95j9"], "score": [12, 2, 41, 6, 4, 5, 3], "text": ["Just like a car engine, it takes time for metal to heat up. In some guns they use thinker barrels, in some they have removable barrels, in some they have liquid cooling, and in Gatling guns they use multiple barrels.  ", "For something small like an assault rifle, the volume of fire isn't high enough to be a problem. With heavy machine guns, some have multiple barrels that can be cycled through as the cool, and some have built in water cooling.", "Some automatic guns, typically machine guns, have replaceable barrels that are meant to be interchanged when they overheat. Some older machine guns were even water-cooled, or had rotating barrels that would share the thermal load (i.e. the classic Gatling gun).\n\nOtherwise, the barrels are just kept well ventilated so that airflow will cool them off. Most automatic weapons, like assault rifles, aren't really meant to be fired continuously, so overheating isn't much of a problem in normal use.", "Several things play into the reduction of heat.\n\n* Barrel size\n* Bore size (caliber)\n* Barrel shape\n* Fluting (holes in the barrels or vents)\n* Length of barrel\n* Barrel density/material\n\nThese are all specially calibrated to mitigate the damage specifically to keep the heat down and allow for rapid fire without damage.", "Usually poorly. You either have to have active or passive cooling. Otherwise, stop shooting so fast.", "Tactics.  6-9 round bursts instead of full on automatic fire.  ", "Some of the weapons have cooling features such as vented shrouds to radiate heat, or even water-filled cavities to obsorb heat. In many cases heat is a limiting factor into the actual operational use of the weapon, limiting use to shorter bursts and not true sustained fire even if the other mechanisms are capable of firing longer.\n\nThe *friction* isn't really a problem, it's all the *explosions* over and over again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mzvoa", "title": "how does pure alcohol have calories, yet it doesn't contain sugar, proteins or fat?", "selftext": "Will I get fat from drinking large amounts of pure alcohol?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mzvoa/eli5_how_does_pure_alcohol_have_calories_yet_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvjjxjv", "cvjjynd", "cvjjyuq", "cvjkvai", "cvjrnon", "cvju21i", "cvjxkw6", "cvk4q2j"], "score": [15, 4, 106, 19, 2, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram (carbs/protein 4, fat 9).\n\nYour body is forced to burn off alcohol before anything else, so in essence, alcohol can stop your metabolism from burning off other things like stored body fat.", "Alcohol is another kind of nutrient, with a caloric value between that of sugar/proteins (at about 4 calories per gram) and fat (about 9 calories per gram).  Alcohol has 6 calories per gram (iirc).", "Alcohol is what is produced when you take sugar and remove as many calories as you can from it without involving oxygen. As a result it still contains a lot of the calories that the initial sugar had.", " > Will I get fat from drinking large amounts of pure alcohol?\n\nThis may be stating the obvious, but you will not live long enough to get fat if you drink large amounts of pure alcohol. It depends on your definition of \"large\".", "A calorie is simply a unit of measurement (measuring stored energy to be specific). You can obtain energy from the consumption of ethanol (which is drinking alcohol). \n\n ", "glucose is broken down in the body. One step on its path is acetic acid/acetate. Alcohol also gets processed by to body to acetic acid/acetate. most of the energy releasing steps actually occur after this point.", "Look at the lipid (fat) molecule. It's a long chain of carbons with an oxidized handle. Look at the carbohydrate (sugar) molecule. It's a shorter carbon chain of slightly oxidized carbons with yet another oxidized handle. Calories are generated when the carbons are oxidized away (burned really; they leave as CO2). Our metabolisms stop burning away when chain gets down to 2 carbons, since single carbons (methane, methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid) are too small, insoluble, and/or toxic. While this may sound like the end of the road for why ethanol packs calories, it's actually the beginning. Ethanol and Acetic Acid (Vinegar) are converted into Acetaldehyde and finally acetyl-CoA, *the* precursor to most larger \"energy storage\" molecules. Our metabolisms get around the 2 carbon oxidation limit merely by building a larger chain out of the acetyl-CoA and then digesting them as described earlier. \n\nAs a matter of fact all of the regulatory mechanisms meant to conserve or burn calories occur before those carbons would become acetyl-CoA. As a result our metabolisms have no choice but to use the carbons from Ethanol before metabolizing any other carbon sources.\n\nWhich brings me to your next question: Will drinking pure alcohol make you fat? No, pure ethanol would kill you if swallowed. In my lab we use it as a substitute for formaldehyde and acetone...", " > Will I get fat from drinking large amounts of pure alcohol?\n\nIt's one of the fastest ways to get really skinny and I mean [seriously skinny](_URL_0_) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wpclipart.com/holiday/halloween/skeleton/skeleton_dancing.png"]]}
{"q_id": "10f9rz", "title": "Could we not drop a rover in the ocean and have it explore the depths in a manner similar to Curiosity?", "selftext": "I've always been more interested in space than the oceans, but much of the planet is unexplored.. As far as I know, there are no current expeditions to explore and analyze the fantastic and mysterious marine wildlife. Could a rover survive the pressure?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10f9rz/could_we_not_drop_a_rover_in_the_ocean_and_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6cyip2", "c6d4csp"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["Even if we could build a rover to that could withstand the pressure, there's the problem of retrieving the information.  It's (relatively) easy to retrieve a signal from mars since it's being sent through empty space.  But to send a signal through miles of ocean and recover it at the surface would be a daunting task.  Packets of information sent from the rover to the surface would look nothing like they did when they were sent.  And methods to predict how they would change through an environment such as the ocean do not exist.  So we could send something down there to look around, but we wouldn't know what it saw.", "There is work being done on ocean exploring. It seems to get much less media attention.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-sea_exploration", "http://noc.ac.uk/"]]}
{"q_id": "5ixkgu", "title": "what factors into the quantity of ejaculate during orgasm?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ixkgu/eli5_what_factors_into_the_quantity_of_ejaculate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbbqrjh", "dbbser5", "dbbsmy3", "dbbt8lw", "dbbtg33", "dbbtz2t", "dbbu79k", "dbbukd5", "dbbuw6h"], "score": [93, 557, 11, 6, 43, 47, 11, 2, 2], "text": ["\" The strongest known determinants of semen volume are the positive relationship with time since last ejaculation (Schwartz et al., 1979) and the dependence of prostate and seminal vesicle fluid secretion on androgen exposure (Kitahara et al., 1998; Tash et al., 2000)\"\n\n[Source](_URL_0_) ", "At least for livestock it is determined a lot by the frequency of ejaculation, the age of the animal, and the techniques used to collect semen (basically the psychological/physiological stimulation).\n\nI've collected bull and boar semen and assisted with collection of stallions and rams. I'll use bulls for example. Yearling bulls produce much less ejaculate than a four or five year old bull, which is why you wouldn't leave a young bull responsible for breeding more than twenty cows out in the field. When collecting bulls artificially, you could collect using electroejaculation (using a probe to electrically stimulate the prostate), or you could let him mount a cow/dummy and collect it in a sleeve or condom. No bull on the planet likes the electroejaculation, and this method is almost exclusively used to put semen under a microscope to inspect semen and confirm that the sperm are all normal. Why is it only used to test semen quality? Because so little volume in ejaculated when using this method.\n\nNow when you get into real bull collections, where companies buy $100k bulls and collect semen from each animal twice a week- volume is important. More volume = more money. For bulls, stallions, and boars (Artificial insemination and semen collection is very rare in rams and the sheep world) - it's very common to find companies that take important notes about each individual male's preferences. Some get special handlers they like. Some have a specific dummy, or a custom-made artificial vagina. Many of these animals get into a routine that they like and, just like humans, each animal needs just the right stimulation to ejaculate. Getting their preferences right results in the largest and most high quality ejaculate. This is why collector's invest so much time and money into recording what each animal likes.\n\nSo at least in the animals world, most mammals' ejaculate is determined by age, frequency of ejaculation, and tastes/preferences. I think it would be safe to assume some of these translate over to humans.", "Good question. Are my balls always full of cum? And if so, when I cum, how long till the tank is full again?", "I find that the more aroused I am the more I ejaculate even if it hasn't passed so long since I previously ejaculated.", "Just so you all know, at some point in your life you will no longer have any ejaculate.  My Urologist told me that 8 years ago and...he wasn't wrong.  I don't care, my wife doesn't care, and the sheets don't care.\n", "Your general health plays a big part, including your age.  Men around 30 years old have the biggest...load...in general.  Being dehydrated will obviously contribute.  How often you ejaculate *may* contribute - for example, if you masturbate frequently, you will probably see a small decrease in total ejaculate; *however*, it is important to note that the volume of ejaculate does not correlate to sperm count.  Ejaculate contains a number of things other than sperm, especially water but also including some sources of sustenance for the sperm.  You may have a high volume of semen with a low sperm count, or vice versa.  Ejaculating often may lead to a lower *sperm count* but not necessarily a smaller load.\n\nInterestingly, sperm counts in semen from masturbating is generally lower than sperm counts in semen from intercourse.  It seems that your gonads pay attention to what you're doing and don't waste as much sperm when you know it's not going to be doing its job.  For that reason, there's not much point in \"saving up\" by avoiding ejaculation for long periods.  It *is* true that the volume will increase, but not by a lot.  If you need a reason to abstain for a bit, consider sensitivity - you can become somewhat numb if you overindulge and have trouble performing when you need to.\n\nThe amount of ejaculate also does not seem to correspond to arousal or the strength of your orgasm.  Mostly it just varies from person to person.  And, obviously, you always need *some* time to recharge and refill, so multiple times in a short period will lead to a decrease in both semen and sperm count.\n\n[Relevant Sexplanations](_URL_0_)", "I don't have a source handy but if I recall correctly, there are 2 factors: \n\n1. Time \n2. Amount of time you are aroused. \n\nOver time your body is creating additional sperm. When you are aroused your body goes into super drive and creates it at a much quicker pace. Time is the biggest factor though. But, if you recently blew your load and are hoping for another decent size one with little time, just try and stay hard for like an hour or two before you bust and it should help some.  ", "In India there is this tradition where the groom drinks a glassful of milk on the wedding night, just before going to his bride. The theory is that the milk helps with semen production. \nSo basically they make sure the groom 'performs' well on his first night, with who is in most cases, a stranger. \n\nI am pretty sure this isnt the case anymore, but Indians have always had their way of making sex taboo and interesting. \n\nEdit: fixed the groom/bride. Sorry was kind of drunk. Cheers.", "Not one person in this thread went for \"OPs mom usually has a lot to do with it\"\n\nGeez Reddit. 8("]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/8/1811.full"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlzJBf27cKE"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "351scc", "title": "How long have people fried food?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/351scc/how_long_have_people_fried_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr0tlad", "cr1w5qz"], "score": [5, 2], "text": ["Pan fried or deep fried? How do we count fatty meats that render heavily and fry themselves over dry heat?", "Good question!  I suspect that people had been making various fried foods for thousands of years -- as long as there's been cooking fat and a metal or ceramic vessel to retain the heat and fluids. \n\nMore source-ably (is that a word?), there are the roman *globus*, which was a kind of fritter described by Cato in his *De Agri Cultura* in the 2nd century BC.  The *globos* is described as being made of cheese and spelt dough, and cooked in lard in a hot copper vessel.  Here's a translation: \n\n > Recipe for globi: Mix the cheese and spelt in the same way [described above], sufficient to make the number desired. Pour lard into a hot copper vessel, and fry one or two at a time, turning them frequently with two rods, and remove when done. Spread with honey, sprinkle with poppy-seed, and serve.  \n\nSo I have here a primary source with a recipe for a sort of sweet fried-dough-and-cheese pastry from around 2,200 years ago."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "188lf8", "title": "mars' atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide. could we plant trees to help convert it to oxygen and try to make it a habitable planet?", "selftext": "[Source for 95% CO2](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/188lf8/eli5_mars_atmosphere_is_95_carbon_dioxide_could/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ckk05", "c8ckww8", "c8cld1u", "c8cmdc5", "c8cmpn9", "c8cmvqz", "c8cmynb", "c8cn870", "c8cnazi", "c8cncyg", "c8cng7d", "c8cnldx", "c8co1qb", "c8co4b3", "c8co6eg", "c8cr9g3"], "score": [30, 30, 126, 3, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["No trees would be able to grow there in its present condition.  It's far too cold and they wouldn't have sufficient water or nutrients to grow and survive.", "Mars lacks a magnetosphere, which poses challenges for mitigating solar radiation and retaining atmosphere. It is believed that fields detected on the planet are remnants of a magnetosphere that collapsed early in the planet's history.", "Unlikely. Mars has temperatures between -20 and -120C, gets orders of magnitude less sunshine than Earth, and there isn't even that much CO2, because although the atmosphere is mostly CO2, the surface pressure is around 0.3% that of Earth. If you're comparing partial pressures of CO2, Earth and Mars have about the same at surface level - but on Earth, it's a trace gas, whereas on Mars it's the overwhelming majority of the entire atmosphere.\n\nNow, it would probably be possible to genetically engineer some single-cell plants or algae that could live off water ice (plenty of that on Mars) and CO2 and produce oxygen, but trees? I don't think so.", "In 2023 they plan to put people on Mars, but not make the entire planet inhabitable. \n\n_URL_0_", "Air pressure, surface temperatures and lack of shielding from from radiation are a too big problem. \n\nNothing would get done fast, too much evaporation and fire.", "Even if Mars atmosphere was turned into 100% oxygen we wouldn't be able to breathe it because it is very thin, thinner than air on top of the highest Earth's mountains. It's however enough to make dust storms and create complications during landing.\n\nThe first problem to overcome is to increase the pressure by melting ice caps of frozen CO2 through global warming. That way people will be able to survive there without pressure suits (IIRC there is enough CO2 to create pressure similar to that you'll find on Mount Everest). We would still require oxygen tanks though.", "Its more practical to install pools of photosynthesizing microbes. But I dont know how efficient that setup will be considering the amount of sunlight mars gets (I'm not a planetary scientist but a biologist)", "95% of nothing is still nothing.  \n\nMars' atmosphere at the surface of Mars is a lab grade vaccuum (meaning that when science labs want to create a vaccuum, ie the absence of any gas, they strive to achieve the amount of gas in Mars' atmosphere at the surface).  ", "The answer has already pretty much een answered by ZankerH, but I'd like to add that \"Red mars\" would probably be a fun read for you. ", "The short answer is yes.  There are many obstacles to overcome that make the idea not very feasible, but to answer your \"could we\" question - yes we could.  It starts by building factories that produce greenhouse gases, like we've done on Earth.  Probably gases like Nitrous Oxide, which have a greenhouse warming effect 300 times greater than CO2, Methane (23x stronger than CO2), and Ammonia.\n\nIssues with the magnetosphere can be solved with new technology in materials, protecting organisms from radiation.\n\nThe main problem is that all equipment has to be brough from Earth, or using things already on Mars, which is extremely expensive.\n\nFurther reading:  _URL_0_", "This subreddit is good for the question, but you might also consider asking in the /r/askscience subreddit.", "No. It's too cold and there's not enough light. You might possibly be able to get engineered extremophile bacteria or algae to do photosynthesis for you, but it still won't be very effective.", "Yes plants do love CO2 but there's more to their survival than CO2 and sunlight. \n\nDirt is surprisingly complex and is very important for plant life. The soil of earth has millions of microbes and small life forms that help play a roll in making it a good environment for plants to grow in. There are many different elements required bust some of the important ones include Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. Not only do these elements have to be there they have to be in the right form. On earth almost all of the nitrogen in the soil is from some microbes called nitrogen fixing bacteria. These little guys take all the elemental N2 in the atmosphere and change it into other compounds of nitrogen (most commonly ammonia and nitrates). Plants are adapted to absorb these. \n\n\nIn addition to just the chemical composition there are other factors such as the pH level of the soil. The soil sampled by the pheonix lander in 2008 tested the soil and found the pH to be 8.3 which is quite basic (bad). As many plants are very sensitive to soil pH. But there are some plants that can grow in that pH level, it just considerably reduces your options. ", "All this talk about atmosphere and pressures...**plants need oxygen too.** So no, we cannot plant trees to convert CO2.\n\nExpanded answer:\nPlants consume CO2 when they are making glucose but when they have to break it down for energy they need O2. They still respirate very similar to how an animal does. Without O2 they can still do glycolysis and get energy (resulting in alcohol fermentation, humans do this as well and result in lactate fermentation) but in order to survive they need O2 to oxidatively phosphorylate the glucose because glycolysis doesn't produce enough energy (ATP) to sustain life!", "Nope. Mars has a dead core. Meaning no electromagnetic field to ward away all the harmful DNA ripping radiation. Plus, the temperature extremes  &  the weak atmosphere would kill any planet we have.", "If this is a topic you're really interested in, you should check out the mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The middle book, Green Mars, especially deals with terraforming. They're novels, but the science involved was meticulously researched. Classic hard sci fi."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-mars-atmosphere-like"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://mars-one.com/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://science.howstuffworks.com/terraforming.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "i3krz", "title": "Followup to a previous question: Are there any instances when we put in physically meaningful numbers into the maths of a theory and get out something deemed \"impossible\"?", "selftext": "I asked [a similar question](_URL_0_) a few days ago and got some pretty good responses (thanks everyone!). The general message was \"if you put in physically meaningless values into your equations, or make physically meaningless assumptions, you'll get bad results. That's not any error of the equations themselves.\"\n\nBut now I'm curious. Is there ever a case where we make *good* assumptions and use physically *meaningful* values and still get results that seem impossible? I'm only talking about instances where this has happened, yet it didn't result in editing the theory (that is, the result is not seen as a failure of the theory). I know that theories fail sometimes, and we then must tweak them to fit the evidence. That's not what I'm talking about here.\n\nRelated side question: have any of the solutions of GR that lead to wacky things like wormholes, or backwards time travel, ever been based on values/assumptions that aren't physically meaningless?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i3krz/followup_to_a_previous_question_are_there_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c20lzwu", "c20m0v1", "c20ma2v"], "score": [14, 6, 3], "text": ["When Dirac formulated [his equation](_URL_0_), he noticed that there were solutions that contained negative energies. This, at the time, seemed 'impossible' because there existed no interpretation of this. But this 'problem' led (in the end) to the prediction of the existence of the positron, which was later verified. The theory was not edited, rather reality was eventually found to fit the 'strange' predictions of the theory. \n\nIs this the sort of thing you're looking for?", " > have any of the solutions of GR that lead to wacky things like wormholes, or backwards time travel, ever been based on values/assumptions that aren't physically meaningless?\n\nCheck out the Godel metric. This described a rotating and non-expanding universe, so it's not our universe. But the rest is good.", "I like 2x4b's answer. Another way of answering this question would be: Lets say you put physically reasonable values into an equation and get an \"impossible\" answer. I use \"impossible\" very loosely -- it could be something that we take to be 'a-physical' like Dirac's negative energy leading to the discovery of the positron OR it could be something seemingly more innocuous, like throwing a ball into the air and being unable to calculate how long it takes to hit the ground, and always being off by an amount greater than what we take to be the error in our measurements.\n\nIn the second case, that kind of thing is grounds for discarding a theory as being incorrect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i1o4g/how_is_it_that_the_math_of_a_certain_theory_like/"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3cl7ti", "title": "how come no country has invaded the united states since the revolutionary war?", "selftext": "If they would, what do you think would happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cl7ti/eli5_how_come_no_country_has_invaded_the_united/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cswkb35", "cswkb5y", "cswkc6j", "cswkc94", "cswkclj", "cswkgv2", "cswkrm0", "cswkvw5", "cswmbol", "cswostf"], "score": [6, 5, 7, 2, 10, 8, 5, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["japanese did land and invade US soil.   granted it was an island in the middle of nowhere in alaska.   \n\nbecause US has the most technologically advanced military in the world.   you could invade but you wouldn't win.  ", "Uh,  Pearl Harbor?  Calling the revolutionary war an invasion might not be fully accurate either as,  according to Britain,  it was still their country. \n\nBut people don't invade the US because...  They would lose,  hard. ", "Their military is far too powerful when compared to any other nation.\n\nThey are also basically an island, since they have good relations with Canada and Mexico.\n\nThe only way to get at them would be via a naval invasion (apart from a nuclear attack, of course).", "Because we are very hard to invade. We have a massive navy protecting us. The only countries who could more easily pull it off are Canada and Mexico but their millitaries are drastically smaller than ours.\n\nIf anyone did try to invade theyd be shot down before they ever reached our shores.", "Well, we are pretty geographically isolated - we only share a border with 2 countries.  Since most other nation states would have to cross an ocean to get to us, it makes invasions hard.\n\nAs for what would happen, we would win.  We have, by far [the most powerful military in the world](_URL_0_).  No other country even comes close.", "Well there was the war of 1812....\n\nOther than that though the US has a huge buffer from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It's incredibly difficult to mount an appropriate attack when you have to ship all your supplies across an ocean (an ocean dominated by the strongest Navy in the world) if you have no allies in North or South America. In addition the US is just so large it is incredibly hard to hold all of it, especially when you consider the size of our army and air force. \n\nDoes that mean no one can ever be a threat to the US? C\nCertainly not. 9/11 showed that we are not perfectly protected but to.launch a full scale invasion would be near impossible considering the advantages we have in air and sea superiority (not that that guarantees superiority in the future of course)", "The easy answer to why they haven't is logistics.\nDuring WW2, there was some thought among the Americans that the Japanese were going to try to take and hold Midway as a stepping stone to Hawaii. It was quickly realized that this would be the best thing the Japanese could do from the American standpoint: the Japanese would have to ship in almost all the food required to feed the Hawaiians, since there was very little actual food farming in Hawaii, and the supply convoys would be vulnerable to American submarine attacks.\nThe same goes for any invasion of mainland America: a really long logistics tail that would be vulnerable to interception, resulting in a shortage of, not food, but ammo, fuel, spare parts, reinforcements, etc.\nWhen we invaded Europe, we had a staging area in England, so the logistics could be built up there over time, and then shipped to the mainland over really quite secure lines.\nAn invader coming from Europe might be able to use Cuba, but our air and naval forces are much better at intercepting and destroying them now than they were then.\nAn invader coming from Asia is SOL; there is no convenient island on that side to stage from.\n\nThere's also the fact that no one  1): can challenge the US Navy; and 2): has the sealift capability to transport the kind of forces it would take.\n\nAmateurs study tactics; dilettantes study strategy; experts study logistics; professionals combine all three.\n\nAs far as what would happen, well, they'd be fighting at the end of a long supply train; we'd be fighting for our homes. If it's Russia or China, they may (MAY) be able to take us in the end, but they'd get a burned and blasted wasteland and pay an exorbitant price for it; just as we would if we invaded either of them.", "During the War of 1812 we were invaded by Britain and got beat up a little before they burned some shit and left.  Also part of the Mexican-American War was fought on U.S. soil, though most of it was fought in Mexico.  ", "Because the US has the most powerful military in the world, the second most populated (most members) in their military, and most or all of their allies would help the US.\nIn short: nobody wants to fuck with the US on such a large scale.\n\nEdit: and we are on the other side of the world from our biggest enemies. ", "Many above got the War of 1812...and that is correct, also the Japanese on Ettu which was a feignt for when they attacked Pearl Harbor.  German Agents operated here in both WWI and WWII but that is not an invasion.  Closest one after that would be Pancho Villa but he was not wholly representative of Mexico in an official sense.  He most certainly invaded though.  Another reach would be Santa Ana into the Republic of texas.  texas though was not yet a state.  Last reach would be the Franch and Indian War of 1763.  Both had rightful claims though and we were British subjects then."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.businessinsider.com/35-most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-2014-7"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "13ef28", "title": "how come obama during his supermajority in both houses wasn't able to pass any legislation he wanted?", "selftext": "Just something I've pondered recently. For the record, I voted for Gary Johnson, but was ultimately hoping for Obama to become re-elected. I understand he only had the supermajority for a brief time, but I didn't think \"parliamentary tricks\" were effective against a supermajority.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13ef28/eli5_how_come_obama_during_his_supermajority_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c737glv", "c737myj", "c7382f3", "c7386ti", "c738boz", "c738kd3", "c739ezm", "c739f16", "c739jbz", "c73afr7", "c73beyj", "c73ed9c", "c73frzr", "c73gmc5", "c73idl2", "c73ikh9"], "score": [33, 53, 693, 48, 7, 21, 22, 15, 5, 3, 2, 21, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Obama's 60 senate vote and majority house was precarious because most of those democrats were \"blue dogs\", who were new democrats in traditionally republican spots.  \n\nIf they towed too closely to democratic line, without pushback, they would be seen as democratic lackeys, and would be voted out of office.\n\nAs they were, when they were accused of towing democratic party lines for the health care vote, and those spots reverted back to republican in 2010.", "Obama has never had a super-majority.  Super-majority is 2/3 or 66% of seats... in BOTH houses.\n\nI believe Obama only had a super-majority in the House for two years, and the Senate was 51/49* at best (it changed a lot with independents, who those independents joined for caucus, vacant seats, party changes, blue-dogs, etc.).\n\nAnd they passed Obamacare / ACA which was absolutely groundbreaking in terms of legislation... so I wouldn't say he didn't get anything passed, not by a long-shot.\n\n* **Edit**: the best Obama had was not 51/49 in the Senate, thank you for pointing out the inaccuracy here.  It was 57 with 2 Independents who tended to caucus with them.  And yes, sometimes a super-majority is considered 60 seats, depending on what type of vote it is... many cite the filibuster-breaker number of 60.  Either way, Obama still never had a super-majority, point stands.", "1) Senators are normally seated in January.  The race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman was very close (~300 votes). This led to recounts, which led to lawsuits, which led to more recounts. Al Franken (who would've been #60) was not seated until July 7.\n\n2) Ted Kennedy was dying and had not cast a vote since April 2009 or so. After he died in August 2009, he was replaced by Paul G. Kirk until a special election could be held.  Due to more lawsuits, Paul G Kirk served from  Sept 24 2009 to February 4 2010.  Scott Brown (R) won that special election, bringing the Senate Democrats down to 59 votes, and unable to break a filibuster by themselves.  Note that Sept 24-Feb 4 is about 20 working days, due to recess and holidays.\n\n3) So, for about 20 working days, the Senate Democrats could have broken a filibuster if you could get every single one of them to agree on something. This is not an easy thing to do. Some of the members had ideological differences. Some of the members realized that being absolutely vital like this gave them leverage, and wanted to be sure that they got *their* legislative goals.\n\nThis did not go well.", "To break the filibuster in the Senate (which has been used an unprecedented number of times since Obama took office) a 60-senator vote of cloture is needed.  Obama never had the 60 votes in actuality, though he did on paper.  The reason is that Al Franken's seat was contested for several months and Senator Byrd (D-WV) was hospitalized.  When Franken was sworn in, the number on paper was 60, but w/o Byrd being physically there to vote for cloture, the filibuster was effective.  The death of Ted Kennedy took another seat away from the Dems.  So, while there was a brief semblance of 60-senator super majority, that super majority only existed on paper since circumstance always had them at least one vote short.  As such, the Republicans could and did use the filibuster to halt the Senate.", "The democrats had 60 seats in the senate for a very short time, because Al Franken had no been seated into mid-March, and Ted Kennedy died, opening his seat up for Scott Brown. 60 is the required number for cloture to force a vote over a filibuster. And quite franky, they did pass some legislation he wanted (Obamacare), it's just that 538 adults with their own agendas are hard to force to work together.", "That's a false premise, both in him having supermajority and not being able to pass *any* legislations he wanted.", "Since the question was answered, I want to make sure it is clarified that as the president, Obama doesn't write legislation.  Congressmen in committees do.  All the president can do is promise not to veto.  So any legislation being considered was not \"Obama's laws\", even if he liked the concepts, they were more laws of either the congressmen writing them, or of the Democratic Party as a whole drafting them.\n\nIs is very dangerous to overstate the powers, authority, and influence of the presidency, because the media loves using that singular posistion as a scapegoat for everything and anything federal in politics, when the presidency is only constitutionally guaranteed to fulfill the role of *executor* of policy, and their only legitimate say in the legislative process is the veto.  They don't write bills, and if they say they \"proposed\" legislation, with the exception of the federal budget, it is purely outside of constitutionally granted authority.", "The first two years of Obama's term were among the most productive in the history of Congress.  \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo, to explain like you're five, the underlying factual assumption in your question is incorrect.  ", "Because controlling Democrats is like herding long-tailed ADD cats in a room full of sparkled yarn balls and rocking chairs.\n\nTo quote Will Rogers: \"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.\"", "Could be anecdotal, but I've heard Democratic party isn't completely lockstep with the President or the rest of the party compared to the Republicans. I recall hearing during the Bush administration, the Republicans were basically reliable on getting his policies passed and only needed to woo a few Democrats whenever he needed something (and could get them easily). Compare that to Obama needing to woo a few Republicans plus make sure his whole party is unified.\n\nAnd to be completely anecdotal, I voted for the President, and I'm an independent. While I agree with the Democrats on most issues and support them, they've been pretty weak compared the Republicans from what I've seen. The Republicans seem to stick to their guns better than the Democrats, and the Republicans seem to have less in-fighting over policies.", "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (\"stimulus\" - much of it went towards programs liberals wanted), the Credit CARD Act (major credit card reform bill), Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal, and of course, Obamacare.\n\nIt's not a mind blowing record for his first two years, but I would hardly say it's nothing. Many of those bills were things the Democrats had been waiting to pass for years under the Bush Administration. It's just a matter of what becomes top priority (the recession unfortunately put many things on the back burner until economic legislation was passed) and what had the best chance of breaking the filibuster.", "TL;DR version: There aren't very many liberal Republicans. There are a fair number of conservative Democrats.", "\"republicans are so stupid\" -whoopi goldberg/reddit", "_URL_0_\n\n\nThat's why.", "There have been a lot of excuses posted here but they are really just excuses. The opposing party has been unhappy and unhelpful to every president. Obama even having close to a supermajority should have been enough for him to get things done. \n\nThe real reason he wasn't able to pass legislation was that he simply didn't have the experience in leadership that was needed to get things done. Not only that but Congress is very tenure driven and they all have huge egos. Obama was there such a short time he never earned their respect which made it much harder to get them to do things.\n\nI voted for Obama in 2008 but that was my big concern in doing so. Congressmen don't typically make good Presidents because they are a completely different skillset. Add on top of that his lack of experience in the Senate and he went into the presidency with a major handicap. \n\nI think it's too bad he didn't wait 8 years. He could have been one of our best presidents if he had gone in with more experience and more respect from the Congress. ", "Let me tell you the tale of Reginald P. Filibuster. One day reggie got in front of congress and started talking and wouldn't stop. In memory of him republicans talk until bills expire "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://memegenerator.net/instance/30440402"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "55okiz", "title": "why do we get so tired from travelling, when most of the time is spent sitting still?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55okiz/eli5_why_do_we_get_so_tired_from_travelling_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8cbhew", "d8ccx9i", "d8cdjy5", "d8ceb5m", "d8cfa49", "d8cg8sy", "d8ch4w1", "d8ch6dv", "d8chize", "d8chlez", "d8chzi7", "d8ciclh", "d8cii3q", "d8cj1ym", "d8cj4vn", "d8cjbq1", "d8cjcm2", "d8cjeqg", "d8cjj2v", "d8cjv3c", "d8ck7qk", "d8ck85f", "d8ckd7h", "d8ckimz", "d8ckxwb", "d8cl299", "d8cl7rn", "d8clfp3", "d8clkn3", "d8clt4c"], "score": [2817, 128, 66, 271, 9, 8, 802, 1548, 33, 80, 6, 6, 8, 11, 109, 2, 19, 2, 19, 2, 2501, 400, 3, 2, 19, 2, 3, 2, 4, 4], "text": ["Stress mostly. The anticipation of arriving, dealing with airlines, traffic, countless unknown people and disturbances, and the mental effort required to deal with all of that. In my experience mental and emotional stress make me a lot more tired than physical exertion.", "Lack of oxygen is one factor.  Your blood is not flowing as well as when you're moving around, so it's not replenishing the energy of your body. \n\nLack of movement is a factor all its own.  Motion can create emotion.  If you haven't moved for a long time, your emotional centers will turn down and boredom or frustration will set in. These will drain your energy faster than just sitting by itself.\n\nDriving at night can be hypnotic.  The rhythm of the passing street lights along the highway, or the rhythm of the flashing lane lines can create drowsiness.\n\nMental exhaustion from driving in uncertain conditions also happens. If you aren't sure where you're going, or think you missed your turn and may have to double back 50 miles, the stress will raise your stress hormones, which will eventually cause a crash in those hormones and subsequent fatigue.\n\nThat's my two cents.", "You are disrupting your natural eat/play/sleep cycle. Your body likes routine, especially when it comes to daylight. Your body knows where the sun is when you wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, and get sleepy. When you travel, you are either following the sun along its path, or going against it. Your body gets confused. Then you get sleepy.", "Along with the mental stresses that others are commenting, I've also read before that your muscles are constantly making micro-adjustments to compensate for all the slight movements of your body that the vibration of the vehicle are causing which will tire you out as well.", "Ordinarily when you're sitting still and not really thinking, your body thinks you're getting ready to go to sleep, so it starts prepping yourself to sleep, making you feel tired. You'd feel tired if you were to just sit in a chair and watch a video of someone driving for a few hours, too.", "I was in the car yesterday from 7am until 1am. I'm not ready to be around people today. I'm wiped out. I know what solitary confinement is like, and it's not fun lol. Weird shit starts happening around the 12 hour mark.", "Guess you haven't travelled first class or lie-flat business class. It is lack of sleep due to time changes. It is amazing how refreshed you are while you travel first class and use airport lounges for hot showers etc. If you are pampered you are not so tired after all. ", "Staying alert is very taxing on the mind. 'Alert' can mean a whole array of stuff, like the alertness required to stay upright and maintaining your center of gravity, the alertness required to stay wary of when and where you are, as well as being mindful of your surroundings making sure you and your belongings are safe.\n\nSo if you're in a situation where most of these conditions are nullified, let's say Travelling with only close family and friends that you trust (no worries about belongings), have a pretty comfortable reclining seat, and you're either in a flight with no turbulence, or on a long road trip on good roads, etc., you'll fall asleep much quicker than you would in say, an economy class flight travelling alone", "**Explanation**: Cortisol (stress hormone) and melatonin (sleep hormone) balance each other out.\n\nIf you've got more cortisol (you're more stressed) you'll have more melatonin (you're more tired).\n\n**TLDR**: You get stressed  when you travel and because you get stressed, you get tired.", "If you're talking about driving, I remember reading somewhere that your muscles are making small adjustments as you're going over bumps and stuff in the road. Over a few hours this will wear you out.", "When it comes to air travel, the constant noise caused by wind and engines has a really tiring effect, since the brain needs to filter out the noise to pick up all the other sounds that we want to hear. I guess this would also apply to train and road travel.", "Novelty. Everything is new to your brain and it gets aroused which its fun in the beginning but then you do get tired. Also probably the planning too. Unless youre a free bird and just get up and go. :)", "On top of the things others have mentioned, I also think that the passive act of overloading your eyes and ears with the sounds of busy airports/stations, and the sights of new places (even if just some random place seen in a train's window), will make your brain consume more energy than usual. I don't mean the \"stress\" of it, as in anxiety, but the fact that your brain will record lots more information, even if only in short term memory. That has to have a cost at the neural level. Whereas when you go to work like every other day, every place you see if something you have seen before, and does not require to form as many new memories.", "The answers here have really covered it, but if you want to learn even more, read about fatigue in aviation crews and crew rest policies. It's been thoroughly studied since at least the 1970s and is a huge factor for airlines and the military.", "Flight attendant here. In addition to what others have said here, I would say that a major factor in the tiredness is the stress you put your body through by traveling at high altitudes. \n\nImagine a stress ball. When you apply pressure to it, it gets smaller and more condensed. When you release it, the pressure is relieved and it expands.\n\nAt sea level, the human body is at its natural athmospheric pressure. However, at 37,000 feet the air gets considerably thinner, even inside airplanes. Much like with the stress ball, this lowers athmosperic pressure and the expands gases and some liquids in the human body (this is why we fart a lot in airplanes). This is pretty taxing on the body during longer flights.\n\nAlso, the air gets very dry. You need to drink A LOT of water during flights.", "Because you think you are relaxed and do things that are similar to relaxing (sitting, \"sleeping\",etc) but you aren't relaxed. \n\nThink of it like this johnny, if you are a little bit hungry and then mommy starts cooking cookies and you smell them. You suddenly become much more hungry. \n\nWhile on a plane/travelling, you are normally stressed which lends to tiredness and then you prevent to relax by \"sleeping\" on a plane which makes you realize you actually are tired. \n\n\nI put sleeping in quotes here because you are noramlly very uncomfortable but can still force yourself to sleep due to closing your eyes and boredom but your body likely doesn't REM at all or your sleep cycle if screwed up so you go unconscious but your body doesn't go through the relaxing/recovery process that normally occur when sleeping. ", "It is stress for sure. My last airport adventure: \n\nArrive about 1.5 hours before my flight from LAX because LA traffic was insane. \n\nStand in a barely moving line for half an hour while every other person cuts in front because they are more privileged somehow. \n\nGet patted down and bomb checked because I'm a diabetic, forget something on the conveyor belt because it took the rookies 10 min to figure out how to do the bomb check.  \n\nGet on plane ~30 min before departure.  Realize something (probably laptop that they make you take out for some reason) was left on conveyor.  \n\nSPRINT LIKE ALL HELL back. \n\nSPRINT BACK TO PLANE.  \n\nLook out window to see plane pulling out 15 min before the intended departure time(WHYYYYYYYYYYYY).\n\nGet put on new flight an hour later for another 100$\n\nSit in between two fat, smelly, snoring mouth breathers. \n\nTry to sleep.\n\n Get woken up every 2 min by pointless DING there's turbulence (OH RLY). \n\nGet to airport. \n\nWait for suitcases.\n\n Large luggage doesn't come for 30 min. \n\nComplain to literally 30 different teirs of airport heirarchy before they start looking for bags. \n\n\nFinally get bag put in some random locked room. \n\nWait 30 min for bus.  \n\nRealize its the wrong bus.  \n\nWait 30 more min for bus. \n\nGet back to school. \n\nRealize it would have been shorter to just drive.", "Most of these times I am actually the one that is driving, so it's just not sitting still, it's actually work I am doing.", "I [read here](_URL_0_) That your brain remains half awake when sleeping in a place other than your bed as a defense mechanism. It's all I can think about now when I travel and am tired the whole time.", "Depends on how you are traveling, but on long car rides the battering of my body by being shaken around or rumbling over asphalt leaves me sore and tired at the end of the trip.", "Im suprised no one has stated Decision Fatigue yet.\n\nEssentially, on top of all the other nussances of traveling, one the the biggest is the fact that you have to constantly make decisions all the time.\n\nWhere is my gate? Do I eat now or later? Which line do I get in? Should my seatbelt be on it off? Do I have enough time to eat this bagel here? Or do I actually want a muffin? Shit that line is long maybe I should go to another stand.\n\nIt has been shown that making decisions, no matter how small, is taxing on the mind. You have a limited amount of decisions you can make in a day before they just become harder and harder and harder to make.\n\nThis is why managing a group of people can be so exhausting too. Even if you aren't physically doing a ton of work, you're conciously making hundreds of decisions throughout a day and that shit is exhausting.", "Delta million miler here. I have been a business traveler for my entire adult life. The fatigue goes away with repetition for some folks. I am basically Pavlov's flyer: I get on board, chug a bottle of water and fall asleep as soon as they pressurize the plane. I have a few coworkers who are the same way. Eventually, everything about it becomes second nature and you just get in your travel zone. Turbulence? Not awake. Delays? There is always another flight. Airport food? You know your go to's cold. Drama at the security line? That's what Precheck is for. ", "Noise is a big factor, I believe. Try noise cancelling headphones or earplugs the next time.\n\nVibration probably also contributes a lot, but there's not much you can do against that.", "There are a number of factors, but the amount of oxygen you are getting even on a pressurized plane is not the same as what you get at sea level.  While the plane is up at 35,000' plus, the pressure system is making it seem like you're at a much lower altitude (7000-8000').  So even though the air is breathable it's not what most of us are used to.  Newer technologies (stronger, lighter materials) allow for increased pressure in the cabin making the air more similar to sea level air.  Also, it's very difficult to achieve REM sleep (the most restorative kind) on a plane which usually takes about 90 minutes of uninnteruption.  Neighbors, crampt spaces, drink services, etc. all make this nearly impossible.", "I am a Molecular Bio and Psych double major and I think the main stem of this issue is more grounded in psychology. \n\nA lot of the exhaustive feeling comes from your body, usually, being subjected to an atmosphere of relative discomfort. Each person has their own personal threshold for what discomfort is but what is shared is that these discomforts generate stress upon the body. The brain, as a counter, therefore uses up a lot of energy and resources to cope with the added stress of the environment (I would honestly argue though that a wide majority of cases of these issues stems from the lack of sleep when in a not-so-greatly accommodating transport system).\n\nMy personal example: I used to ride the train a bunch (AmTrak) which is essentially 4-5 hours of constant rocking back and forth. The first couple of times, I was super tired afterwards because I couldn't sleep and I could just feel my psyche actively trying to block out the annoyance of the rocking and the stress it was causing. It very quickly went away but my point is that, since I was uncomfortable during the trip, it made my psyche work exhaustively to compensate in order to make it to my destination while completely sane.", "Nobody seems to be saying how physical activity actually rejuvenates people. If you go for a run in the morning, you'll feel like you have more energy during the day. Same as if you do nothing all day, by the end of it you feel more lazy and tired.. You don't suddenly feel like you need to burn off all the energy that's built up.", "Many factors contribute to fatigue while traveling.  \n\nFor one, being on a plane is surprisingly loud.  Which makes for a tough environment to sleep in.\n\nAlong with the noise, you are sitting in a low pressure environment which is also very dry.  This leads to quick dehydration, of which a symptom is fatigue.\n\nCouple that with time-zone changes, it makes for being quite tired upon arrival.", "Sure you are sitting still, but you aren't in your own bed. You're not in an environment that makes you comfortable, like your own house. You're out of your routine. ", "I find sitting still makes me more tired than being active. I'm a server now so I spend most of my day on my feet running back and forth carrying shit and reaching for stuff. When I get off work I feel fine and ready to do other stuff. However, on my days off just sitting in chair watching Netflix, I feel tired and drowsy all day.  ", "There is a growing contingent of scientists who believe that fatigue is a mental process that we merely confuse for a physical one. Considering how many chemicals can make us feel artificially alert without energizing our bodies in any way, I'm inclined to agree. Why? Because it implies that our minds aren't reading the body's state directly, instead being informed of such by one to enzyme or another."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/4fv9iz/your_brain_stays_half_awake_when_you_sleep_in_a/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1bf7tw", "title": "Can the Subaltern Speak?", "selftext": "Gayatri Spivak has postulated that Western scholars are unable to realistically present histories of the subaltern *Other*. She argues that, despite the claims of Western historians, the hegemonic presence of cultural, socio-ideological, and economic norms in the West make it impossible for members of the \"oppressor\" group to truly speak for the subaltern - this is especially true in examinations of the Third World, for instance. Further, Spivak argues that the mores of Western academia place less value on the work of scholars from \"underdeveloped\" regions; we often take them to task for \"underdeveloped access to sources,\" among other things - thus, we unintentionally silence many attempts of the subaltern to find a voice.\n\nMy question to the historians: how do you deal with the gulf of difference between yourselves and the subaltern subjects with which you deal? This need not only be considered in terms of geography and ethnicity, but also temporally, in terms of class, and so on. What do you think? Can the subaltern speak? And, to the Western historians here, is it possible for you speak for them? I'd love to get some non-Western perspectives as well. \n\nThank you. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bf7tw/can_the_subaltern_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c96d0ts", "c96d3gx", "c96es48", "c96fpzi", "c96fx91", "c96m88u", "c96vf9p"], "score": [19, 52, 13, 12, 9, 11, 3], "text": ["this is such a monster of a question. Coming from Sinology, I can not really claim to be studying a subaltern. However, I have seen the problems Spivak talks about in full flower from some in the field and nearly all outside of it, particularly european/american-ists.  \nIn China, to make matters even more complicated, we have an added element - a deep, long and indigenous historiographical tradition of significant rigor.    \nBut let me look at the OP question, rather than get bogged down in china, but with lessons from Sinology.  \nFirst - we must not use our theoretical structures to describe the subaltern, or any non-western 'altern' for that matter. My belief is that we (euro-americans) *can* look at subalterns and write about them if we follow that simple dictum. But, we are stuck with our language, and our language is teeming with euro-centric references and paradigms. Also, historians, anthropologists, etc use theory, particularly post-modern continental theory to explain phenomena that are very difficult to explain otherwise, making it even harder to get to an honest assessment of the subaltern.  \nMy feeling is that we have to go through a sort of forced ignorance training. There were times in my MA program in which I felt lucky that I had a BM in Music rather than a BA. I was ignorant of a whole world of western-centered history theory that would have been useless in looking clearly at China.   \nThat's all I can muster on this right now. But I am eager to hear what some legit subaltern scholars have to say. ", "Would it be possible to summarize this question in such a way that someone unfamiliar with the terminology being used could understand it? I'm having one of those \"I understand some of these words\" moments.", "I don't want to speak too much to summarize its contents, because frankly I had an incredibly hard time understanding what he was saying some of the time, but [**Provincializing Europe: Post Colonial Thought and Historical Difference**](_URL_0_) by Dipesh Chakrabarty is an attempt to do exactly that, at least for Indian history.  It has its own problems, Chakrabarty being a part of an upper crust of Indian society and educated in Western thought.  I participated in a workshop on just the introduction and Chapter 1 as they relate to telling Japan's history - not subaltern but still \"other.\"\n\nOne of the things I most remember from the workshop was his ideas on History I and History II.  He called how Western historians tend to view history (mainly from the Marxist view) History I, focusing on capital and labor, etc.  History II he considered as lived experience, an example he included was workers sacrificing a goat before going to do their work.  Not rational, as we see it, and almost irrelevant, as we see it, but important to the subaltern.\n\nComing from my background, I seemed to have a unique perspective in this workshop in that I didn't see this divide as mutually exclusive or economic history vs. social history vs. anthropology.  As a Japan \"medievalist\", Marxist theory in general doesn't apply for me in terms of class and labor based history (there are *some* economic/material theories that arguably do, but that's dissertation material).  This is a decision I've came to independently, however, and I've a mix of historians who base everything on Marxist theory and those who cautiously reject it.  Looking at the documents and materials objectively, it's very frustrating to have to give a nod to all of the past historians who really got things wrong, and/or had no clue what \"Marxism\" they were referring to in their writings (nobody likes to define what they're arguing for, it's annoying).  \n\nI don't limit myself to institutional history (religion, the state, etc.) but a mixture of what the institutions were saying should happen and what people actually did.  This is one of the schools of Japanese \"medievalists\" that's been around in the US and Japan for a few decades.  So in a way I guess I've rejected History I altogether, but at the same time I don't totally focus on History II for Japan.  For Africa, I was more interested in History II, and so was my professor, so I focused more on that.  But there's still the issue of \"How does one make History II (or \"other\" history) accessible to Euro-centric Western scholars?\"  To narrate Japanese history, I do have to compare it to European history and use terms like \"medieval\", \"pre-modern\", \"early modern,\" etc., which are problematic words.  Even the native Japanese periodization, \"Ancient\", \"Middle\", \"Early Modern,\" and \"Recent\" is Western-derived and problematic.  I've been told to suck it up and use the words other people understand while trying to correct the perception of those words.\n\nOne source that came up in that workshop that I've yet to look up is Heidegger.  My note says \"Authenticity vs. Modernity\", and I found a book with a similar title and several essays explaining Heidegger's view on \"authenticity,\" but maybe someone else has the exact title.  I apparently didn't write it down correctly.  Either way it sounds like an interesting source to look at for a view on this issue.\n\nSo that was pretty round-about, but I hope it was fairly coherent and gave you some thoughts at least.  Definitely, if you have a lot of time, a lot of coffee, an empty notebook, and preferably a group of people to debate interpretations with, I recommend reading through Chakrabarty.  A lot of food for thought in there.", "I'm not sure archaeologists have this problem to the same extent as traditional text-based historians. In burial archaeology there is a selection bias on the affluent, but particularly settlement archaeology is commonly regarded as surprisingly egalitarian. More generally, material culture is in my experience rather resilient, so even the introduction of foreign conquerors leads to a mix of cultural elements, rather than complete direct dominance of the material culture of the dominant group (unless complete extermination or population replacement takes place). In this respect, the problem is, in my opinion, turned on it's head in prehistory, with some people criticising the notion of any form of 'elite' at all; (political) dominance of one group over another is something that needs to be demonstrated, rather than assumed, in prehistory.", " > And, to the Western historians here, is it possible for you speak for them? I'd love to get some non-Western perspectives as well.\n\nI think this adress a huge problems in modern human science, for instance a journalist argued that as most psychological studies on the human minds are done in the US (or the western world in general), the frame rate for psychological diagnosis is \"westerned\" yet applied to every other human being, thus \"globalizing\" westerns problems to other cultures. I don't know how prominent this is in History but in law this is exactly what we have, every \"native laws\" were wiped out on the altar of \"modernity\" which equaled to strict westernazition in most country. And to an extent that is just a shame.", "Oh man, this is a *great* question. As someone who is particularly interested in social history, one of the main challenges we face is being able to answer questions about the slaves and subjugated classes of Rome. As I see it, the problem within my time period has become compounded because for so long nobody really cared about what the subaltern subjects had left for us to draw conclusions from - the Great Men view of history held fast for so long and now that we're broadening our perspectives on what is and isn't worth studying, we find that the detective work social historians interested in the subaltern perspectives on Roman life is a lot more fiddly and elaborate than those who are interested in, say, the life and deeds of Augustus. \n\nThat being said - I'm amazed at what historians have been able to piece together from epigraphy, papyrus caches, etc. to be able to get a fresh perspective on slave and noncitizen life in Rome. And it's pretty fascinating. Even if they're not speaking for themselves as much as we might like, we're getting echoes, and the echoes we're getting are really worth listening to.", "The problem I've often found when dealing with social classes that did not, on the whole, have a voice is that opinions tend to be more extreme than mainstream if they are recorded at all. During the English Reformation, the Puritans and Recusant Catholics were both far more vocal than any of the groups whose religious beliefs fell somewhere in between these outliers - We have a fairly large number of sources and accounts about these extreme opinion groups, whether they be criminal, personal, or administrative (records of Puritan 'Classes', for example), and far fewer records about their moderate counterparts - for example, perhaps the most significant source for examining the lives of ordinary worshippers is the parish record, which tends to be an accounting sheet for the most part - and that disparity of information makes getting a balanced opinion of a subaltern societal group rather difficult, I feel.\n\nThe thing is, when a collective social group has a limited voice in history, it often feels as if those few people, whose drive or passion is great enough that they are written about or write about themselves, have their presence amplified through history. My worry when trying to understand the lives of people, particularly those who were - on the whole - illiterate, is that it's far harder to get a balanced opinion about the lives of the many when they're so often represented by the thoughts of a few radicals. That disparity of experience is why historians like Dickens were able to be so wrong about the extent of the Protestant reformation (which he thought to be almost all-encompassing in British society by 1535, a fact that was certainly not the case) - he studied the over-optimistic writings of Protestants and the fearmongering of Catholics, and from them drew conclusions about a larger majority of people that simply was not the case."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Provincializing-Europe-Postcolonial-Historical-Difference/dp/0691130019"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2l5rb1", "title": "why do us '18 wheelers' and eu 'lorries' look so different?", "selftext": "Why do each continents tractors/lorries look so different? They are both hauling heavy loads over long distances so why do the US tractors have pointy '[noses](_URL_0_)' and the EU/UK have flat '[noses](_URL_1_)' (for lack of a better way to describe it)? I would have thought the US version would be more aerodynamic therefore saving fuel and being more efficient. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l5rb1/eli5_why_do_us_18_wheelers_and_eu_lorries_look_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clrperp", "clrpfg1", "clrpgg5", "clrssfk", "clrty9f", "clrxod7", "cls5o3r"], "score": [5, 59, 10, 124, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I've noticed this too. I attribute it to the fact that in the US, our highways side streets and loading docks are HUGE. A lot of the roads I've been on in Europe would be real sketchy in my regular full sized pickup. Much less the back roads and alleys where these trucks load and unload.", "Multiple reasons, but mostly, just works better for the task.\n\nIn the US (also Canada, and Australia, where the \"pointy nose\" trucks are common), roads are wider, city driving is less common or non-existent, and long-hauls ( > 300 miles) are commonplace. In EU/UK, 300 miles can put you a country or two away, here in US, it doesn't even get you half way across a single state.\n\nThe US trucks have \"sleepers\", that big box behind the cab is a room with a bed and bathroom so you can sleep in the truck on a long drive. They're generally rated for higher towing loads, have bigger motors, and carry more fuel. Overall, there is an economy of scale, and these bigger trucks going further is actually more efficient (in terms of fuel and time per pound of cargo moved per mile). The downside is, they are larger and less maneuverable. An American big-rig with a full trailer honestly couldn't get around a European city center, they're just too big.\n\nTL;DR The truck is better suited to the type of driving and roads in the area. ", "I'm fairly sure it's directly due to different laws. Apparently in the US, laws only define maximum length of the cargo, but place no restrictions on overall length. Source: _URL_0_\n\nAlthough I didn't find clear indication of EU laws on quick gooling, I imagine EU legislation define maximum overall length of a vehicle.\n_URL_1_", "In most European countries the overall length of a truck is limited to less than 20 meters. So the American way of building a truck would cost around 10% of the maximum length to put the engine in front of the drivers seat. European trucks put the driver on top of the engine and so can have longer lorries. The disadvantage is that service of the engine is more complicated because you have to tilt the driver's cabin in order to get to the engine.\nThere's not so much difference regarding the ability to sleep in the vehicle or the size of the engines. The engines of modern Mercedes Actros are quite similar in displacement (11-15l) and power (400-500 HP) to the Mack MP7 and MP8 engines.", "I live in the USA and I've seen big trucks like that with flat noses too.", "I don't think anyone mentioned the length of the wheel base. A longer wheel base allows you to control a heavier load. A shorter wheel base gives you more maneuverability.", "The European Union has some pretty strict laws on the maximum length of lorries: 12m for single unit trucks, 19.75m for semis and 25.75m (by heart) for single unit trucks with a trailer. Hoping to maximise the size of the trailers, the tractors are built to put as much power as possible in as little room as possible, so as not to exceed that 19.75 metre upper size limit for semis.\n\nIn the USA, these size requirements are less strict. Afaik, it's completely legal to transport massive cargo across US highways, including complete houses. Since the limits are less hard, it's easier to use more conventional engine-before-cabin designs.\n\nA second reason to use the EU design is because the flat end means better forward visibility. Since there isn't an engine compartment right in front of you, there isn't a giant wedge that blocks vision to the road some distance ahead of you. *tiny edit* Sure, you still can't see what's within a metre or two ahead of you in either case because you're still high up, but with EU trucks this is easier to circumvent with a conveniently placed mirror. Trying the same on an US truck makes the mirror either uselessly small or so large it's in the way.\n\nLastly, I cannot be so sure about the aerodynamics of the flat end, but I can assume that the flat heads are a bit lighter, so if there's a small aerodynamic difference between the two, there may be a bit of a trade-off, US trucks having a plus on aero, EU trucks having a plus on mass."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.rolletbrostrucking.com/Images/RolletTruck4.jpg", "http://www.mvcommercial.com/images/P/DSC_0023%20%5B640x480%5D.JPG"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Freight/publications/size_regs_final_rpt/index.htm#length", "http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/IntOrg/road/pdf/dimensions.pdf"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qwlff", "title": "Did audiences in medieval England or Ancient Greece quote popular playwrites the same way we today quote popular movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qwlff/did_audiences_in_medieval_england_or_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdher2h", "cdhnwpf"], "score": [50, 7], "text": ["Certainly.  A great line delivered with honesty and clever timing can leave a potent emotional memory in the viewer and Western playwrights have been quoting each other and their predecessors since the beginning of the art form.  While it can be difficult to find direct evidence of which particular lines were heavily quoted by specific audience members, all playwrights start off as fans of the stage and in many cases we *do* know what *they* were quoting.\n\nIn the [Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World](_URL_0_) the late professor of poetry, Peter Levi, notes that many of the existing play fragments of the Classical Greek playwright Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC) have been discovered not in Greece, but on bits of papyrus from Egypt.  That these plays were so popular that they were carried across national boundaries in ancient times suggests that there could have been passages being quoted on the streets, around the dinner tables, and on the stage.\n\nIt's hard to have this discussion without also mentioning Shakespeare, possibly the most widely quoted writer of all time.  The Bard was notorious for quoting (Ovid in *A Midsummer Nights Dream*), alluding to (Homer in *Troilus and Cressida*), or outright plagiarizing [(Plutarch in *Julius Caesar*)](_URL_1_) other popular authors, poets and playwrights.  In turn, Shakespeare's own work has been quoted by every single generation of actors and writers that followed him.\n\nIn short, the impulse to quote a good line from a play, song, film, or poem seems to have been a part of the human experience for as long as these respective art forms have existed.", "To say that it seems to have been pretty common is something of an understatement. I'm not particularly well-versed in English history, but certainly at Athens during the Classical Period the work of both tragic and comic poets was highly valued. Greek culture during this period was still highly oral and memory-based, since books were expensive and the influence of the oral tradition still pervaded the literary culture. Every educated man was expected to know by heart certain passages or works and just as it was an embarrassment not to know the important parts of, say, the *Iliad* from memory it was a mark of great learning to be able to recite lesser-known works. This attitude is particularly apparent when we look at Aristophanes or late Archaic and Classical sympotic poets. In Aristophanes well-known passages from various tragic poets and Homer are being *constantly* quoted and often twisted for humorous effect (which also showcased the skill of the comic poet). Actually, many of Aristophanes' best jokes are jabs at famous poetic passages--in fact, the majority of the jokes in the *Frogs* are of this nature. Sympotic references also frequently allude to famous passages. A feature of the symposium was a series of showcases of the individual skill at performance of the symposiasts, and one of the famous games was to either quote well-known passages or to play at \"capping,\" where speeches or lines of original poetry were delivered around the room, each speaker building on and trying to outdo his predecessor. The ability to reference or quote famous passages appears quite often in these contexts as a mark of an accomplished and educated man. \n\nNor are these attitudes restricted to Athens. During the Peloponnesian War a large portion of the Athenian troops captured in the rearguard Sicilian Expedition were spared (despite the fact that the rearguard's commander, Demosthenes, was executed against orders for causing the Syracusan troops so much trouble and holding them back--despite the fact that his forces were totally surrounded--for several days) because they were able to recite Euripides from memory. Speaking of Euripides in this context, at the end of his life Euripides left Athens to go to the Macedonian court where his work was becoming known and adored, and where his ability to recite his work from memory would have been highly prized.\n\nNow, \"Ancient Greece\" is a pretty big stretch of time, but this attitude still holds true to some extent. During the Hellenistic Period the rise of book culture meant that the necessity to actually know these works from memory declined, but interestingly because of this the need to be familiar with more works, including arcane and poorly-known ones, increased. In particular this was an attitude that increased among intellectuals during the Roman Period, so that by the so-called Second Sophistic during the 2nd Century, A.D., when we find a whole bunch of Romanized Greek authors writing enormous bodies of work essentially lusting after the glory days of Greece it becomes paramount to be able to quote lengthy passages of pretty poorly-known works. This fits in with the way that these scholars often write lengthy works about seemingly inconsequential subjects (like Oppian, who writes an entire epic poem about *fish*), because by showing off their knowledge of the Classical attitudes to such subjects they can showcase their own familiarity with every aspect of the material."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=7fY2eCEFkKgC&amp;pg=PA177&amp;dq=greek+drama+levi&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=InWKUumeGsn62gWDnoH4DA&amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=greek%20drama%20levi&amp;f=false", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gcvx1/which_is_shakespeares_most_historically_accurate/caj3ec4?context=3"], []]}
{"q_id": "ao4gv1", "title": "If activated carbon doesn't remove water hardness or minerals why does it reduced the limescale in my kettle?", "selftext": "I know it's vaguely scientific, but I hope someone can answer because it shouldn't reduce the amount of calcium in the water but since using the filter in my hard water area I've had no build up in my kettle.\n\nAny ideas? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ao4gv1/if_activated_carbon_doesnt_remove_water_hardness/", "answers": {"a_id": ["efz5kob"], "score": [2], "text": ["Are you sure the activated carbons is reducing the lime scale? All the information I can find (such as [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)) state that activated carbon doesn't help much with limescale.\n\nOne possible suggestion I have seen is that you have organic contaminants in the water, which can cause clogging similar to limescale. Alternatively your filter also contains an ion-exchanger in addition to the carbon that is preventing the scaling."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.totalsoftwater.com/drinking-water-filters/types-of-water-filter/"]]}
{"q_id": "eojfnc", "title": "It wasn't until 50 years after cans were used and sealed to store food, that can openers were invented, January 5th, 1858. What did people use to open cans before it was invented?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eojfnc/it_wasnt_until_50_years_after_cans_were_used_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fedalx3"], "score": [115], "text": ["The first tin cans held quite a lot more food than our cans nowadays, they were really a solution for feeding larger groups of people such as ships' crews or military units, or perhaps for the cook of a house with a large kitchen who wanted bulk ingredients.\n\nEarly cans such as those used for salmon by the Dutch navy in the late 18th century came with instructions that a \"hammer and chisel\" was to be used to separate the top of the can. As you might imagine this sort of effort was more than one might expect for a tin of something-on-toast and so canned food as a the convenience that we're familiar with didn't really catch on. The French solution of boiling foods inside glass jars was easier to operate and therefore more popular although clearly more costly.\n\nThe can skins themselves were also much thicker, the invention of the can opener that you mention comes at a time when can skins were becoming much finer - the can opener would barely have worked on most earlier, thicker tins.\n\nQuick answer: early cans were avoided or opened using brute force, they were mostly used for bulk storage and weren't a practical solution for the general public.\n\n*Sources:*\n\n*An introduction to the tin can, Historical Archaeology Vol 15 Issue 1, Busch J, 1981*\n\n*Tin can archaeology, Historical Archaeology Vol 8, Ascher M, 1974*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5pxx1n", "title": "What are the arguments for and against Chronic Fatigue?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5pxx1n/what_are_the_arguments_for_and_against_chronic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcuscpa", "dcv7jrj", "dcvstwp"], "score": [9, 8, 3], "text": ["Nobody can argue that the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue aren't real. To be diagnosed you have to meet certain criteria and have a number of symptoms/characteristics. Argueing whether it's real or not doesn't make sense since it was decided that when you have those symptoms, you simply have the syndrome.  \n  \nThe problem with Chronic Fatigue however is that no one knows exactly what causes it, nobody knows whether it's really one disorder or a cluster of disorders/causes that leads to similar outcomes. For some people it might just be the result of a sedentiary lifestyle. For some people it might be the result of a bad diet. For some people it might be the result of failing to adapt to a 9/5 working lifestyle and stress. For some people it might be sleeping habits.  \nFor other people it might have an actual physical cause such as infection or immune disorders.  \n  \nThat's the problem with what you're describing. It is not a question of whether the symptoms exist because that's the reality we are faced with.  \nIt's simply a question of what is causing this and how it can be fixed, and how many differential causes and fixes there potentially are.", "To me chronic fatigue is a more general term that could even be applied to the fatigue that sometimes occurs after viral infection. \n\nFrom my readings ME/CFS is different to that. There recently has been some of the first biomarkers of cfs being found. There have been irregularities found in the glycolysis state of energy production in ME patients along with abnormal gut bacteria. Other studies have found irregular metabolites that are similar to the dauer state in worms. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo it seems that there is a definite biological element. It's my opinion that the mental health issues in these patients are due to the impact of their illness. However this in itself can reduce likelihood of successful recovery. \n\nIt's somewhat frustrating when you ask some researchers about cfs research and the response is an eye roll. Its a serious illness which has been given as the official cause of death in some unfortunate sufferers. \nHope this helped :) ", "Yeah this is true. I think I was focusing on the fact that initial question seemed to be asking whether the symptoms of cfs are purely caused by mental illness or not. \nYou're definitely right about stress being capable of altering gut bacteria which in turn is strongly correlated with inducing mental illness"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2016-08-29-chemical-signature-for-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-identified.aspx"], []]}
{"q_id": "5q0ip9", "title": "white privilege- as a white guy, how am i privileged. i work 50+ hours/ week for the same amount of money that my brown and black co-workers make. what is this privilege i keep hearing about?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q0ip9/eli5_white_privilege_as_a_white_guy_how_am_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcvb9pr", "dcvbmph", "dcvc5mt", "dcvcgrv", "dcvcv50", "dcvczii", "dcvd2jk", "dcvd9ei", "dcve864", "dcvet1a"], "score": [8, 39, 2, 6, 49, 4, 6, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["White privilege only means you are **more likely** to succeed. It doesn't mean you are guaranteed more pay or lavish benefits.\n\nEx: if affirmative action weren't in effect, minorities would be less likely to get the same job as a white person. \n\nOr, if you're pulled over by a cop, you're less likely to get beaten/shot for being a diabetic.", "If you get a job that you aren't quite qualified for, people will assume it's because you're particularly gifted. Maybe you hit a home run on the interview, and the hiring manager was impressed by your insight enough to take a chance with you.\n\nIf a black guy gets a job that he's not quite qualified for, people will assume it's because of affirmative action. \n\nIf a black guy gets a job that he's totally qualified for, people will assume he's not qualified and that he just got the job because of affirmative action.\n\nThere is no combination of clothes you can wear, place you can be, and car you could drive that would put the police on alert and cause them to be suspicious of you. For black men, there are many combinations of the above that would cause the police to be suspicious. \n\nIf you commit a crime, you are likely to enjoy a much more lenient sentence than a black man who committed the same crime. Crimes that white men are more likely to commit than black men are (like possession of heroin or cocaine) will have lower criminal penalties than crimes which black men are more likely to commit than white men are (like possession of crack).\n\nIf you do happen to be pulled over, you are much more likely to be issued a warning than a black man is, who is much more likely to be issued a ticket. You are less likely to be stopped and frisked by the police. You are less likely to be killed while unarmed in a confrontation with the police.\n\nThe above facts aren't even controversial. People may in good faith argue against the significance or relevance of these facts, but not whether they're true. Beyond the measurable, inarguable facts are mountains of anecdotal issues which can't really be measured as precisely. \n\nFor example, black students are routinely held to lower standards in school. They're less likely to find a mentor among their teachers. This leads to lower performance and ultimately worse life outcomes.\n\nThere's quite a bit more to this issue than the narrow view you have. You can't just point at your coworkers and say \"we're all paid the same at my job, so therefore there's no such thing as racism.\"", "Oh man... All SORTS of stuff! You must've missed the memo.  \n\n[You can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to your color. You can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on your race. You can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of your race. And SO many more!](_URL_1_).  \n\nYou can read all about them in the monthly newsletter. But remember, now that it's 2017, [MTV wants us to try harder](_URL_0_).", "I would need to see a [Serious] tag.\n\nAs a brown person who has had her share of privilege as well as disadvantages, I could go on and on, but I don't want to lecture you.\n\nI'm up for a conversation about it, however. Let me know if you're up for a real dialogue.", "The best tl:dr for white privilege I've ever heard is this:\n\nLife can be hard if you're white. But life is never hard *because* you are white.", "Your ancestors got Social Security even though they didn't pay into it. They may have gotten a homestead, something people of color couldn't. Someone in your ancestry may have qualified for a home loan in a nice neighborhood. You may have inherited the finances or knowledge or access that they developed. People of color could not. \n\nSee Louis CK's video on time machines and white men. At almost any point in time, white men have been accepted and had power. No other group can make that claim.\n\nDo you think you inherited a head start? Of course you did. Just like me.", "White privilege is much more subtle than that.  To quote /u/effbuc:\n\n >  White privilege only means you are **more likely** to succeed. It doesn't mean you are guaranteed more pay or lavish benefits.\n\nIt's a hundred small things throughout the course of one's life that demonstrate your privilege, or indeed lack thereof.  Take me for example.  I'm white, male and middle class (and British).  At the age of 11, I took the 11+ and got into a selective school.  I was able to pass the it because my parents paid for a tutor for me and even tutored me themselves specifically so I could pass this test.  Going to a grammar school (as they're known) means that I have had access to a great many opportunities I would not have otherwise had.  \n\nI have had teachers who throughout my education thus far have looked at me and *subconsciously* gone, \"there is a white boy: he will be good at my subject, he will be a good worker\" and so on and so forth.  I have been taught well and not been allowed to fall behind without comment and action to prevent me from slipping.  I have had access to maths teachers who have really known their subject and had the time and will to help me and to push me further when I came to them with questions or for help.  At my current school, I have two maths teachers who are Oxbridge graduates, and in that respect they are by no means alone!  At my school there is a dedicated programme for those wishing to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, and so when I decided that I would apply, there was a whole system in place to aid me.  And because I'm white, and I'm male and I sound posh (I only wish I had as much money as my voice would lead you to believe), nobody ever looked at me and subconsciously gave across a message of scepticism.  Nobody has had any cause whatsoever to doubt me.  Part of that is my sex, race and class, but part of that is also my academic record: also in part of product of my sex, race and class.  When I went to Cambridge for the interview, there was no bias of any kind from my white interviewers, and no discomfort on my part from being interviewed by people who all had different skin colour to me (I feel like this would be a thing; I stand to be corrected if not).\n\nPoint is, now I have an offer from Cambridge, and I stand a good chance of getting in, and then!  And then!  The privilege really begins: I will rub shoulders with the future leaders of the United Kingdom, literally in the form of future politicians and figuratively in that I will know some of the next leaders of culture, the arts and the media etc.  You see people from Oxford or Cambridge all the time in the highest positions in this country \u2013 our last two Prime Ministers were Oxford graduates, as was Jeremy Paxman, as were a whole bunch of comedians, including such people as John Oliver and even Andy Parsons (that last one surprised me).  And this is just to name a few fields and people!  If I am not among them, I will know some of them, and then I and my children, maybe even my grandchildren will be able to benefit from my knowing them.\n\nNow I realise to you and all the people reading this that I sound like I'm boasting: I'm not trying to, I'm sorry.  The point is that I am privileged as fuck.  Not because the gods of prejudice decreed that because I was born with fair skin that I would go on to be successful, but because in so many little ways, I was allowed to take advantage of my talent, and gain more privilege, which let me take even further advantage of my talent, and so on and so forth in a great loop.  The system still shits on me; it shits on nearly everyone, but in some ways it shits on me less.  It doesn't make the shit that's on me any better or lesser, but it does mean that some others have it worse.\n\nThat was a wall of text, and I'm not sure I made my point entirely.  If you are still confused, or want a TL;DR of sorts, [here is a comic that encapsulates the idea of privilege, and conveys my point very well](_URL_0_).", "White privilege is like you're more likely to be waved through than selected for a \"random\" screening at the airport if you're brown-looking.\n\nLike you're less likely to be stop-and-frisked because you're black.\n\nOr if you're stopped and asked to see evidence of valid residency if you look Hispanic.\n\nOr if your resume is more likely to get rejected if you have a black-sounding name", "The gist of it is just slight biasses magnified by how widespread they are. \n\nFor the most part, this will be completely invisible, especially to the people who benefit from it, but it plays out in countless little interactions everyday. \n\nAll you need to think about to understand this is how someones appearance influences the way you'd respond to them. What sex are they? Well groomed? Well dressed? Friendly looking? Where are you when you meet them? Are they attractive? How old are they? Are they physically threatening? etc. etc. etc. \n\nIn an ideal world we'd treat people more or less equally but we don't. Little things about who people are and how we perceive them, influence how we treat them. Someones ethnicity is just one of the many factors that influence this but it tends to be one of the more important ones because it is 1. out of our control and 2. readily apparent most of the time.  \n\nSome examples of situations where you might be able to observe the effects of this: \n\n* How strangers treat you. \n* How easy it is to find employment.\n* How the police treat you. \n* The amount of punishment you would face if you did commit a crime of some sort.\n\nThe big thing to keep in mind here is that none of this is really about white people secretly plotting to help each other out. It's just a natural byproduct of there being a white majority and the many unconscious biases we all posses.  \n\nIt also doesn't mean that all white people have it easy or all POC have it hard... it's just a single factor contributing to all of these interactions. \n\nThe problem is that for the people who benefit from this, it's almost always completely invisible, because they only see how *they* are treated.  \n\n\n\n", "it's an obnoxious term that, when used strictly as originally intended, refers to the fact that, as a white man, you never have to face racial discrimination in a meaningful way in this country. Whether that is true is even debatable, as I have personally been attacked on the street many times growing up, simply and explicitly because of the color of my skin. I've also *never* personally known a black person who was the victim of racist violence at the hands of a white (but I'm from NYC, not the bumblefuck backwoods of Floridia or something). But that is neither here nor there, because the real problem with the term is that it is so confusable that it encourages both its users and subjects to extrapolate its meaning to ridiculous lengths. Very easy to look at white men as these gloriously \"privileged\" kings of their own domains when a stupidly misleading phrase like \"white privilege\" becomes common and acceptable. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://youtu.be/RuOGf1iuLEA", "https://exploringeconomicscivilrightspovertyrace.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/50-examples-of-white-privilege-in-daily-life/"], [], [], [], ["http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c1uesf", "title": "What constitutes a subconcussive impact?", "selftext": "There has been quite a lot of justified hullabaloo surrounding concussions lately and it\u2019s making me worried about my own past. I\u2019ve never been knocked out or suffered nausea from a head impact. However, I have hit my head *countless* times growing up, whether it be running into the kitchen after it was mopped, falling off a bike while not wearing a helmet, or simply roughhousing with friends. I also played some contact sports growing up and have been in a car wreck which resulted in a totaled vehicle. I\u2019m not worried that I have CTE, but I\u2019m definitely getting a bit nervous about what kind of damage I might have accrued over the years, if any.\n\nTL;DR - I\u2019ve never been knocked out or suffered a serious concussion, but I\u2019m worried I\u2019ve received subconcussive blows to the head. Can someone clear this up for me?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c1uesf/what_constitutes_a_subconcussive_impact/", "answers": {"a_id": ["erh4mly"], "score": [5], "text": ["The definition of a sub-concussive blow is an impact where the brain is shaken but not so violently that the cells are damaged enough to be seen through symptoms. That\u2019s a pretty poor definition but it is the current one we use, maybe as research advances there will be a better method of classification.\n\nI wouldn\u2019t worry to much about the amount of damage you\u2019ve received. The professional athletes who develop injuries like CTE have taken thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of hard blows to the head. The amount of damage you would accumulate over a life time would never come close to that. It\u2019s likely that the effect of these type of injuries will be negligible for the average person."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1qu285", "title": "what happens inside the body during diarrhea?", "selftext": "Does drinking a lot of water have anything to do with it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qu285/eli5_what_happens_inside_the_body_during_diarrhea/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdghjn2", "cdgipt2", "cdgkqqz", "cdgpufo", "cdgsuxg", "cdgxenk"], "score": [91, 2, 76, 6, 2, 11], "text": ["This can happen a couple of ways. When you have substances in your intestine that aren't being readily absorbed into the body, the concentration of the substances is higher in the intestine. Water flows from areas of low concentration to high concentration, so when there  is a greater amount of a substance in your intestine, water will flow in. More water = diarrhea sometimes. Another way is in certain conditions, such as cholera, water is continuously being released in the intestine regardless of the how much there is present in the intestine. Yet another way occurs because your GI tract has a base level of motility; its continually contracting and relaxing to move the contents. Certain conditions can increase the motility, so the water doesn't have time to be absorbed, and comes out the other end as diarrhea. Essentially, there are quite a few ways diarrhea can happen, these are just a couple.\nSource: pre-med", "The large intestine not doing it's job of absorbing water is diarrhea \nConstipation is the opposite, it does it's job too well. ", "Background - When you eat food, your body immediately *adds* fluid to the food to help break it down.  Since this is the case, the watery state found diarrhea can easily be found early on during digestion.  Typically, by the time food and drink gets to the end of your colon, all of the water has been absorbed or reabsorbed by your body.  Stool is always liquid at first as it passes through the body but normally the body is able to absorb lots of water before it is passed out of the body.  If the transit time of the food/soon-to-be stool is quickened, this can cause diarrhea due to speed of transit - the colon takes a long time to reabsorb water.\n\nWater and Food - The body is a filter for nutrients.  Anything that you swallow is assessed for it's ability to be used by the body.  If the body can't use it (as is the case with non-digestible fiber found in celery) it is passed through and bulks stool, which is a good thing if you need to slow down the rate of stool output.  Water intake will prevent constipation by hydrating fiber in your intestines but it won't increase the water content of your stools.  This is only because your kidneys work *way* faster than your intestines do at *reabsorbing* water from the intestines/tubules in your kidneys.  If you drink a lot of water, you pee it out quickly before it could cause diarrhea.  If you were to drink lots of water frequently and consistently for an extended period of time, only then would you possibly be able increase the water content of your stool.  \n\nSalt - As changheill said, diarrhea can often be caused by electrolyte imbalances, which direct the flow of water.  **Water follows salt**.  Though we typically think of table salt (NaCl) when we hear salt, in chemistry, a salt can be any set of charged molecules.  This is exactly what happens when people take a salt-based laxative when they are constipated.  Salty contents of the intestine (the laxative) *pull* water in to keep equilibrium (this means equal concentrations of everything, everywhere) between the body and the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.  For diarrhea to take place, there is some sort of imbalance in what you have eaten that has caused the stool to retain water.  When it exits, it still has water.  \n\nIf anyone is interested, I'll be glad reformat/clarify my above response or answer more questions.\n\n\n\n**EDIT:** - Taco Bell Butt -  Ah yes, the Taco Bell Butt Syndrome (TBBS)...this is actually caused not by electrolyte imbalances but instead by inflammation of the intestines.  Much like cold weather, black pepper, or any variety of things can cause you to have a runny nose, spices can inflame your intestines, leading to \"runny nose gut syndrome\".  All of your GI tract creates mucus (often called bowel sweat by GI doctors).  TBBS is also due to heavy use of Sodium (salt) as a flavor enhancer.  Something can also be said about the low fiber content of heavily processed foods such as one would find at Taco Bell.  The more something is processed, the easier it is for your body to break it down on the chemical level and ingest it's nutrients - meaning quicker transit time through the GI, so fast that the body doesn't have time to reabsorb water from the colon before the exit of stool.  As a side note, think of of celery.  It is a low-calorie food because humans cannot break down the cellulose fibers - other animals can and, for them, celery is not a low-calorie *or* fiber-rich food...the fiber part of food is only the part that isn't digested.  Celery is natural and full of fiber - everything Taco Bell is not.  Taco Bell food has been chemically broken down, cooked, stirred, pounded, mashed, ground up, chemically treated again, spiced and seasoned - it's a Ferrari in your stomach.\n\nSalt (the need for equilibrium that drives water into the GI tract)**+**Spices that cause your stomach to have a runny nose**+**low residue foods that move too quickly through the GI tract**=**TBBS.", "The Chipotle has changed its mind and decided to stand up for itself", "Wow, if this post doesn't have perfect timing.", "There are a couple ways to think about diarrhea. The way the gut moves shit through it is called gastric motility and is controlled by a couple of things:\n\n\n* what's inside the gut (water, sugar, fat, protein)\n\n* hormones acting on the gut (which change in response to food and stress)\n\n* electrical signals (kind of like the heart, the gut has rhythmic contractions. These can be dysregulated and result in problems with gut motility)\n\n\nThere are a lot of causes of diarrhea.\n\n\n* Suddenly loading the stomach/small intestine with a high VOLUME load can cause rapid emptying. For example, this occurs in dumping syndrome, and yes, it can be caused by drinking a shitload of water!!\n\n* A large load of sugary or salty food/beverage into the GI can cause an OSMOTIC load. This means that water rushes into the intestine and WHOOSH. Etc. This is called osmotic diarrhea.\n\n* Gut motility can be really messed up after bowel surgery. A normal gut can tell the brain \"there's food here\" and the brain can stimulate the release of hormones that move things along. However, removing parts of the GI, or not using them for a long time can mess up these pathways and cause both constipation and diarrhea.\n\n* Stimulant drugs can cause diarrhea.\n\n* There are viral causes of diarrhea which affect (usually) kids or older folks in (often) developing countries.\n\n* Inflammatory GI disorders like Crohn's or UC can cause diarrhea. Often it's osmotic diarrhea which happens due to gut inflammation. However, the gut also shows hypercontractility (lots of movement) in these disorders for reasons which are not well understood, and this can cause diarrhea.\n\n* The gut is like the heart in that it has its own pacemaker cells and rhythmic contractions. You've heard of cardiac arrhythmias? That's where the heart doesn't beat properly because of electrical issues in the tissues. The gut can also develop these problems, for example in diabetes when the nerves get worn out all over the body. This can contribute to diarrhea (or constipation) depending on where/when it occurs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kxvqy", "title": "How do Parity Files work?", "selftext": "My friend explained this much to me: There is a set of parity files for a given (larger) set of .rar files. Despite only being ~10% of the size of the total .rar files, these parity files can somehow recover/repair ANY bit of data that may be corrupted in ANY of the files.\n\nBut how?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kxvqy/how_do_parity_files_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2o5glk", "c2o5glk"], "score": [12, 12], "text": ["The ability to recover is an adaptation of this relatively simple tool:\nIf you take any set of number, for example 4, 9, 17, 80, and xor them all together generating the parity, 76 in this case. Then you were to loose one of the numbers, if you can generate the missing one by xor-ing the remaining number, including the parity.\n\nI wrote this simple piece of perl to demonstrate:\n\n    $ perl -e 'for my $i (4, 9, 17, 80) { $n = $n ^ $i };print \"$n\\n\"'\n    \n    76\n    \n    # then, imagine we \"lost\" the 9, so we replace the nine with our parity, 76\n    $ perl -e 'for my $i (4, 76, 17, 80) { $n = $n ^ $i };print \"$n\\n\"'\n    \n    9\n\nOnce you have this feature you can use checksums to detect which file is corrupted and treat it as lost. And, then, of course, treat the files like the long string of numbers that they are.\n\n\nEDIT: of course your RAR tool doesn't use xor. It uses more complex math that lets you loose more then one number, and parts of numbers, but it acts more or less the same.\n", "The ability to recover is an adaptation of this relatively simple tool:\nIf you take any set of number, for example 4, 9, 17, 80, and xor them all together generating the parity, 76 in this case. Then you were to loose one of the numbers, if you can generate the missing one by xor-ing the remaining number, including the parity.\n\nI wrote this simple piece of perl to demonstrate:\n\n    $ perl -e 'for my $i (4, 9, 17, 80) { $n = $n ^ $i };print \"$n\\n\"'\n    \n    76\n    \n    # then, imagine we \"lost\" the 9, so we replace the nine with our parity, 76\n    $ perl -e 'for my $i (4, 76, 17, 80) { $n = $n ^ $i };print \"$n\\n\"'\n    \n    9\n\nOnce you have this feature you can use checksums to detect which file is corrupted and treat it as lost. And, then, of course, treat the files like the long string of numbers that they are.\n\n\nEDIT: of course your RAR tool doesn't use xor. It uses more complex math that lets you loose more then one number, and parts of numbers, but it acts more or less the same.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "20ehhg", "title": "why if humans and dolphins are the only creatures to have sex for pleasure, why does my dog hump everything in sight?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20ehhg/eli5_why_if_humans_and_dolphins_are_the_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg2fdxu", "cg2fet6", "cg2ffn6", "cg2fjci", "cg2gtqf", "cg2l4os", "cg2l5q1", "cg2lowk", "cg2mbhu", "cg2t0kc"], "score": [10, 38, 6, 67, 27, 6, 3, 16, 2, 2], "text": ["Your dog isn't looking for pleasure, it's trying to relieve it's libido.\n\nHaving sex for pleasure means you have sex even though your body isn't pushing you to do it. Your dog is pretty much always getting pushed by its body to have sex to reproduce.", "Dogs generally hump other dogs to express dominance over each other. ", "where did you hear that? sounds like a load of BS to me\n\njust one example _URL_0_", "Chimps and bonobos also have sex for pleasure. Bonobos use it as social bonding. Chimps... it's kind of just a lot of rape.", "Every animal has sex for pleasure.  It gratifies an instinctual need.", "Dogs do it to assert dominance. If your dog constantly is humping your leg then you really need to think about who is being dominant in the pack. You should always be the alpha, but your dog *will* take control if you let them... And having an alpha dog is an absolute nightmare, because they do whatever they want and don't obey you at all.", "Your premise is incorrect. ", "Whenever you hear a factoid like 'X and Y are the only animals that do Z for (reason)' - it's generally wrong.  Someone made it up to fill space in a magazine or website article, and people just sorta've started believing it.", "Your premise is incorrect, but a dog humping things is not about sex it's about social order, the dog is trying to establish dominance.  \n\nAs for humans and dolphins, there a many many many more species that have been observed engaging in non reproductive sex, which is what I think you meant.", "I'm pretty sure quite a few animals have gay sex. So the premise behind your question is incorrect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "24i7j1", "title": "What do we know about the psychological well-being of public executioners?", "selftext": "What sort of person becomes a public executioner? Did the role attract psychopaths? Did it make psychopaths?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24i7j1/what_do_we_know_about_the_psychological_wellbeing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch7ok64", "ch7pjr3", "ch7rm2g"], "score": [7, 19, 3], "text": ["Because professional executioners still exist, it may be a good question for /r/askpsychology/ or even /r/askscience , potentially. I've read a couple of studies on this topic, all based on pretty recent evaluations.", "In early American, a sheriff or constable or other community members would serve as executioners. There weren't enough executions to require a full-time executioner. In England it was a hereditary position. I only know of two first person accounts by executioners during the early modern period; one is English and it's an apology written by \"John Catch\" (a probable pseudonym as many English executioners are referred to as John Catch in literature). There's also a journal by a German executioner that details his torture and killing techniques. It's gruesome and one of a kind. I'm on my phone but I'll post a link if I find it when I get to my computer. The German is a methodical and cold killer. \n\nEdit: The German Executioner is Franz Schmidt. Here's a link to more info:\n_URL_0_", "It might interest you to read about Vassily Blohkin, a Soviet executioner that killed thousands of people by his own hand. He was handpicked by Stalin, most likely for his cold demeanor and complete lack of remorse. _URL_0_\n\nThere's also an interview with the official Saudi beheader somewhere in youtube."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.americanacademy.de/home/program/past/gods-executioner-meister-franz-schmidt-nuremberg-ca1555-1634"], ["http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/vasili-blokhin-historys-prolific-executioner/"]]}
{"q_id": "3oxpo6", "title": "i pay into insurance every month, then get into an accident or get sick. insurance pays and then raises my rates. why is this preferable to just taking out a loan to pay for damages? what have i been paying for all along?", "selftext": "Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oxpo6/eli5_i_pay_into_insurance_every_month_then_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw1dwna", "cw1e44o", "cw1eym4", "cw1h9mb", "cw1kxw6"], "score": [14, 2, 35, 2, 26], "text": ["OK, so, lets say you get into an accident. There's $350,000 worth of property damages and $800,000 worth of medical bills.\n\nThis is not an impossible scenario.\n\nExactly what do you think the bank will say when you walk in with paystubs of $800 every two weeks and ask for a loan of over a million bucks? Spoiler alert: they'll say no.\n\nThe reason we have insurance is because sometimes the costs can be *enormous*.", "Most of the time, people won't just give you a loan, especially if you're in desperate straights. You pay into insurance to cover the times you can't get a loan.\n\nSure, there are some people who might be able to get buy without insurance. People with a lot of disposable income, or people with solid assets that a bank would be willing to take as collateral for a loan. But even then, it's often cheaper to just pay for the insurance.", "\"Sir, why do you need a loan?\"\n\n\"My house burned down, and I had no insurance\"\n\n\"What were you planning on using for collateral?\"\n\n\"My house?\"", "It is generally preferable to self insure.  You can drive an inexpensive vehicle and keep enough money in the bank to replace it in the event of an accident while just keeping liability insurance.  It is also possible to do that with a home but it is much less attainable for most people since housing costs are very high. ", "All these answers are wrong.\n\nBefore your collision, you and the insurance company sit down to work out an agreement.  You pay $x each year, in return you get to transfer the (financial) risk of a crash to them.\n\nYou aren't paying into a fund and expecting to get back what goes in.\nThe insurance company isn't tracking what you've put in and expecting you to make it back.\n\nYou are put into a pool of similar risks.  i.e. Male 25 years old, drives a 3 year old red sports car, 3 speeding convictions, no crashes in the last 3 years.  Or Female 57, drives 10 year old sedan, 0 convictions, 1 crash  < $5000.  Both these characters have a risk, calculated by decades of crash data.  Based on the risk, you get assigned a pool populated by other people with the same risk.\n\nFrom the insurance company's point of view, all that matters is that they did a good job on statistics, and that over each pool, they don't see any significant excess of predicted crashes.  In each pool they expect $x amount of claims each year.  They just take that total, divide by the number of the people in the pool, add a bit for admin overhead  &  profit, and bingo, there is your insurance rate.\n\nSo what happens when you have a crash and your rates go up?\n\nYour rates are going up because when you get into that negotiation with them, you are going to end up in a different pool  Instead of \"male 47 years old, no crash, 1 speeding conviction\" you end up in \"male 47 years old, 1 complete loss, 1 speeding conviction\"  Based on their stats, the latter pool has a higher expected claims rate than the former, so you end up paying more.  Over time, if you stay out of trouble, you can end up back in the same pool you started with, but this is based on risk, not how much you've spent or cost them.\n\nHope that helps.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8i16cx", "title": "if the flu shot contains a non-active version of the flu, then why are \"flu like symptoms\" common for the days following?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i16cx/eli5_if_the_flu_shot_contains_a_nonactive_version/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyo3nf4", "dyo3q0p", "dyo4uza", "dyo50l0", "dyobaat"], "score": [31, 3, 7, 25, 3], "text": ["the non-active proteins trigger an immune system response which can involve some inflammatory system responses.\n\nonce the immune system is activated for that infection your body will react more readily if the actual infection gets into you.", "Your body reacts to the flu by making these things to fight it - it\u2019s how it works in the first place. These things can cause some of the symptoms of the virus.", "Your immune system doesn't have eyes, and \"detects\" bacteria and viruses sort of by chemical touch (the immune system cells bump into the outer wall of the bacteria or viruses and recognize them as \"not belonging here\" chemically).  Whether the virus or bacterium is alive doesn't matter for this detection, the immune system detects the biological and chemical \"features\" of the foreigner wall and reacts to it.\n\nThat's the point of a vaccine:  to activate the immune system cells to \"recognize\" this particular strain of bacteria or viruses in the future, without actually letting live bacteria or viruses into your body to do damage.\n\nSo you get the \"flu-like symptoms\" because your immune system reacts, and has a little practice-fight against the intruders that are injected.  It's an easy fight because the intruders are dead, which is why you get very light symptoms and not the full-blown flu reaction (fever, runny nose, etc.).", "A lot of what makes you feel sick when you have an infection isn\u2019t the virus/bacteria itself but your body\u2019s response to the infection. Fevers, runny noses, inflammation etc are all mechanisms that your body uses to try and kill bacteria and viruses that get into it. This is called the innate immune response. When you get a vaccine you\u2019re essentially tricking your body into thinking that it\u2019s been infected with something so that it makes antibodies (adaptive immunity) and this process sometimes triggers the innate system as well, hence why you get symptoms of being sick.", "A lot of the things that you experience when sick are just a result of your body defending itself. A fever occurs because your body is raising its temperature to increase white blood cell production. Inflammation (swelling) opens up your blood vessels to allow your immune cells to go out and fight infection in the inflamed area or to provide cells with the necessary components from your blood to repair themselves. With the flu shot, you won't experience any effects of a flu infection, but your body thinks you have the flu, because the vaccine contains all the markers your body uses to know when it's infected. So you may experience the effects of your body \"fighting\" the flu because it thinks it's sick, even though there's nothing to fight and you're not actually sick.\n\nI should add that there are some vaccines that actually make you sick, known as attenuated vaccines. They contain a live, weakened version of the virus that's bad at reproducing, so your body can easily fight it off and be ready for the real thing, should you ever be exposed to the non-attenuated version of the virus. With this type of vaccine, you actually are infected, but only for a short time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "47cwsq", "title": "Why is practicing a skill for 30 minutes every day more effective than practicing it for 3.5h once a week?", "selftext": "(Assuming that a person will not lose motivation in the latter scenario)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/47cwsq/why_is_practicing_a_skill_for_30_minutes_every/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0d2wi2", "d0ejake"], "score": [2, 3], "text": ["Because many skills involve muscle memory.  This is more easily achieved by repeated use of your body in the same pattern.  The body 'learns' the pattern and can repeat it with very little effort on your part if you practice continued reinforcement many times a week.\n\nOkay, skill is completely cerebral?  Well, brain pathways become much more robust the more often and frequently they are used.  The brain is a use it or lose it system, and it needs the frequency of repetition to store things as important.", "Building on what Rndmtrkpny said:\n\nLearning can be seen as a strengthening of connections between neurons. Strengthening  connections make it more likely that the firing of one neuron triggers the firing of others. Connections are strengthened by using them. So why does this work better if you do spread learning out over a few days? Because connections fade over time. Practice piano once a week and much of what you have learned will have faded 7 days later. Practice once a day and the connections will be re-used on a daily basis, strengthening them and making them more resistant to fading. \n\nThat's kind of the gist. \nI've purposely ignored all of the theories concerning memory and skill acquisition, storage and recall. Others will know much more about this than me. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2pomwo", "title": "why are so many americans staunchly against a form of national health service when all the evidence states that they're the most effective way of administering healthcare to the populace?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pomwo/eli5_why_are_so_many_americans_staunchly_against/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmyknjh", "cmykq1v", "cmykrvj", "cmyku1n", "cmykx0v", "cmyl96r", "cmylh64", "cmylymz", "cmym5as", "cmymj84", "cmymuqm", "cmyn1nb", "cmyn8bk"], "score": [2, 2, 7, 10, 3, 5, 2, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["As an American I know for a fact that most who are against it like to think that universal healthcare = big government. Also anything that is used for the general welfare of a population through taxes is \"socialism.\" I know, I know....the majority of Americans have no clue what socialism means, but it makes sense to them somehow. We're Americans, we like to be ignorant. The religious-right in the southern states doesn't help also...", "Because if you nationalize healthcare then the country may turn into a communist dictatorship.", "I think the big thing is that, for the most part many Americans already have insurance, can go see good caring doctors, when they do get sick can get advanced care all under their insurance, and it is mostly on their terms. Or they can forgo that coverage, or accept their employers when they are young and unlikely to need to spend that money. \n\nThe issue for many than is when you spread the cost around. Im fine and happy to pay for my own healthcare when I need it, but why should I get less money every month by taking taxes out of my check to pay for other people's care, is the usual line of thinking. As for the quality of care, for the vast majority of Americans who ARE insured it is still world class. On the chart you will notice that the US was much higher when it came to rankings of the actual conduct of the care, it was the access to it which drove it down, and frankly I think at the end of the day most Americans would agree more can be done to help those who are unable to access it, they are also very conscious of how much they have taken out of their pay every month. ", "There are a few things.  \n\n(!!!NOT MY OPINION!!!)\n\nMainly, many Americans are politically conservative and therefore do not support state-organised healthcare intervention, paid for through taxation.  There are a number of reasons for this:\n\n* A fundamental belief that taxation is morally wrong\n* A desire to pay lower taxes - under nationalised healthcare systems, the health costs of the poorest are paid for by those who are comparatively well off, which some people find objectionable\n* A big problem is that many Americans have little trust for or faith in the competence of their government, and will oppose it's expansion into any industry\n* Companies who provide private medicine are obviously against a nationalised health system which cuts them out - they have lobbied fiercely against it\n* Some people think a better solution can be provided by the private market", "first of all because when the government signs the cheque they deside what, and who, gets paid for. Second because the plan being implemented now makes it harder and more expensive for the average person to get healthcare. If you are very welthy you already had expensive insurance and were not effeted, if you are very poor, you already had government medicare, if you are very old you already had medicaid. But if you are, for instance,  a 28yo male with an unemployed wife and a baby on the way making 40k or so per year, insurance that would have cost you $250 per month now costs you $135 per week. \nNow that being said, if the government said you may go to the doctor for your checkups for free and your routine dental maintenance is free and your eye exam and one pair of free glasses biannually, and X number of days in hospital and standard test are free. But you can buy private coverage to help with orthodontics, specialists, catastrophic events, and experimental / nonstandard test and treatments.  I would be good with that. Especially if the government offered doctors free tuition in exchange for hours running the free clinics.", "Assuming you aren't just nakedly playing politics in ELI5... (1) Other government agencies like the post office and DMV are horribly inefficient and generally terrible places. The same mostly applies to public vs. private hospitals. So people don't think government can do it right. (2) Under the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, the federal government only has a small number of powers. Healthcare isn't one of them. Many people opposed to healthcare nationally do support it at the state level or if it was voted in as a constitutional amendment. Sticking to our founding principles of limited government and strictly following the constitution is more important than one short term gain. The Supreme Court did end up calling it a tax to make it constitutional but this decision had very little credibility in the eyes of many because the Democrats made it very clear when this was being passed that it was not a tax.", "The interesting thing is that most people aren't against it.  Someone did a study recently that did the following:\n\n- Took the major features of Obamacare and put them in a simple to understand format,\n\n- Explained to someone reading it that it was a new healthcare initiative that the government was considering to replace Obamacare,\n\n- Asked the people to rate the new plan.\n\nMost people liked it.  When it was explained to them that it was actually in place as law today, most people didn't believe it.", "Because large amounts of money are used to generate propaganda making people think that the healthcare program is bullshit. Politics in America is fully funded by corporations, a lot of whom make tons of money by raking American citizens over the coals on health care costs.", "Doc here, and in Texas.  My patients (many on medicare or disability) think that giving others access to healthcare will take away their ability to see the docs they want.  They all hate \"Obamacare\" and just know it's ruining everything.  Which just seems so hypocritical to me.\n", "I think its mostly because we have the largest, most expensive, healthcare industry on the planet.\n\nThis means the inefficiency in it goes towards massive profits, which then can be used to advertise and lobby.\n\nNormally they spend billions a year collectively in just lobbying dollars, or campaign contributions.\n\nIf legislation is proposed that effects their bottom line, then they tend to spend much more.\n\nI can't remember the last time I heard a media outlet cite a peer reviewed research paper. Almost every day I hear talking heads spouting off how horrible \"Obamacare\" (The affordable healthcare act) is.\n\nBasically there are hundreds of Don Drapers working on PR campaigns funded by the industry, and paying the Associated Press, News Papers, and television news, to promote a generally negative view towards government intervention in their industry.", "To put it simply, people's taxes will go up.  The wealthy control the government, they have health care and don't want to contribute to other people's healthcare so they villainize it by saying care won't be as good, waits longer etc etc etc.  Those things certainly don't matter to them because they can pay full price for the best their money can buy.", "Not being confrontational but do we know for sure that it is the most effective way of administering healthcare to the populace.  There are so many innumerable differences between UK health and US health.  US is certainly a mess, but it is hard to pinpoint that to a single problem that it is not nationally paid for.  The list of problems with our healthcare is way too long to limit that way.", "Some think universal healthcare=socialism=communism=destructive to their way of life"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4wpfpr", "title": "what's with the social stigma about living with your parents in \"western\" countries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wpfpr/eli5_whats_with_the_social_stigma_about_living/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d68usfx", "d68uvc2", "d68v13p", "d68v6x2", "d68vbta", "d68vli6", "d68vw9c", "d68vwb2", "d68vxah", "d68wuhr", "d68xn0o", "d68xs9l", "d68xvtl", "d68y03r", "d68ytak"], "score": [142, 6, 24, 30, 4, 15, 5, 2, 15, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I have often heard the generalization that eastern cultures tend to be more \"collectivist\" (focused on family/community/society) whereas western cultures tend to be more \"individualist\" (focused on the individual/independence). While I don't know if this is true or not, I think the western culture part of this generalization fits with what I've experienced as someone living in North America.\n\nThere is a lot of emphasis on becoming self-sufficient as you reach adulthood. Continuing to live with your parents after a certain age is often seen as not providing for yourself and therefore being a burden to your parents.", "The United States places a great value on independence.  Considering the historical precedent of being able to strike out on your own at a very young age and support yourself, up until about the late 1970s or early 1980s, this approval of independence was sensible for your average competent man.\n\n This means the idea of Independence and success at a young age deeply ingrained in US expectations and has not caught up to the new financial realities.\n\nCountries that were poorer, with less expectations of success at a young age do not have the same stigma attached as the United States.\n\nSo, given the historical reality that you could be successful and independent at a young age, the idea that you are still living with your parents because of current financial realities still hasn't sunk in with most people.", "I'll just speak for the United States. Living on your own when you're young is treated as a status symbol. For decades people thought that if you lived with your parents after high school it was because you were a poor loser that couldn't afford to make it on their own. No one wants to be thought of as that guy and many parents don't want their kid to be the one that couldn't keep up with expectations. ", "Grandma and Grandpa had it pretty easy money-wise. Grandpa worked a fast food joint part time to pay for college, and later bought his house after working a year at an entry level position at the local factory. Back then you had to be pretty lazy to not have the money to pay for major things like college, cars and houses. \n\nThings have changed dramatically since then,  but old people still use that as a measure of how lazy people are. ", "While many people now stay at home for purely financial reasons, the \"failure to launch\" stereotype is the previous generation's neckbeard, people who aren't mature or responsible enough for the real world (household upkeep, money management, relationships, etc). Their parents continue to baby them long past the point where others are living independently, and they generally never accomplish anything without handholding.\n\nEDIT: This [onion video](_URL_0_) demonstrates it well.", "One thing I've noticed in other countries is the acceptance of Love Motels. While traveling through Korea just about every city had one and they're lit up like Christmas trees. From what I understand these are used mostly by young lovers. As an American my biggest motivation to get my own place was so that my girlfriend and I didn't have to have sex in secret.", "To understand the rise of the individualistic middle class in western culture consider the influence of Western expansion prior to the 20th century and then the various wars of the 20th century.\n\nOften times we picture pioneers setting out in search of riches and adventure but often times throughout the 1800s and early part of the 20th century people traveled across the Americas to escape poverty and adversity leaving behind family that they loved for mere survival (and many didn't make it).\n\nAs for the wars that shaped the 20th century, particularly World War II, in many cases small town life and family traditions that were probably more similar to other parts of the world prior to war were disrupted.\n\nFormerly enlisted men returning home often with wives not from their home town settled in newly created suburban developments because housing was subsidized or in cities where veterans services were located.\n\nfinally keep in mind that regardless of stigma at least when you look at statistics many young adults *do* continue to live at home, or be supported by their parents sometimes well into adulthood.", "Typing this in the middle of the night since I can't sleep.  Hope it makes sense.\n\nI can't comment on the origin,  but I might be able to explain the sigma.   It comes in two parts, though with some overlap:\n\n - a child that has become an adult is expected to be self-sufficient, so staying at home is seen as putting an extra burden on the parents to continue taking care of the child. \n - living at home is cheaper,  and living at home after an adult might mean your career is less successful than average. \n\nIn the mildest form,  the child could be a student that graduated at a low point in the economy and has to live with their parents again while looking for work.  In the worse case, the child never went to school, isn't looking for a job, and isn't contributing back to the household.\n\nPart of it is also the notion that independence makes for a stronger person.  Encouraging a child to leave is seen as encouraging them to be more adventurous, more willing to take risks, more likely to find a path in life that's  right for them.  Having a child that is too dependant on a parent is seen as holding them back.  And if the child takes a risk a fails pretty bad, then it's expected that the parents takes them back into the home while they regroup and recover and leave again.\n\nNote also that a child living with a parent specifically in order to take of that parent is not only free of the sigma but is seen as virtuous.  It's not uncommon for an elderly parent to move back into a house with the cold,  and in this casethe burden is assumed to be reversed,  where the child is taking on an added burden to take care of the parent. ", "I can only speak for America here but the culture here puts a huge emphasis on being independent and free.  Living at home with the parents means you are still under their thumb and they provide for you.  Moving out of the house and on your own is a right of passage type thing.  It signifies the moment that you are officially a full grown adult capable of taking care of yourself and no longer needing the protection of mom and dad. ", "People are talking about the \"lazy\" stereotype but the other problem is dating/sex. If you live with your parents you don't have personal space to entertain a person of the opposite sex. ", "Not western countries, first world ones only. I live in the West and at least in Latin America there is no stigma at all with living with parents.", "Because when people date or have sex with people who live with their parents, they are partially dating the parents and having sex in the room close by to the parents (or the parents are having sex).\n\n\nThat's not attractive. ", "That's what children do. Adults are supposed to be independent. My parents spent more than enough time and money raising me and it's not right to be living under their roof as a parasite indefinitely. Plus how the hell are you supposed to bring a woman home to bang with your parents somewhere in the house?", "This is a trend that is starting to fade out. People are focusing primarily on themselves and their careers, and it's becoming typical for people to wait to start families past early adulthood. It initially started as a social stigma that you burden your parents, but is becoming more widely accepted, circumstantially.\n\nExample, a friend of mine is 27 and still lives with his parents, but he has a job that works 80 hours a week. He barely has *any free time*, and so owning his own home is essentially pointless right now. He literally just needs a bed to sleep on", "It's because we have this silly notion that, from the age of 18, you need to \"earn your own way in the world\".\n\nYep, lets throw you out into the world with a minimum wage job (And you should be THANKFUL for that job) that, after taxes come out, isn't enough to pay the median rent for a single room studio apartment in virtually every state, let alone cover costs for a car, insurance, food, etc... then throw student loans on top of it.\n\nIs it any wonder so many of our young adults are going postal?\n\nThen, to top it off, when said kid graduates school and can't find a job for 6+ months and is forced to move back home with his parents, all too often they criticize them for \"being lazy\" or \"not doing enough\" and make snide remarks about how they 'started out with nothing'... bitch, we'd LOVE to start out with nothing... instead, we get to start with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, then get told that the job market is saturated to the point that the career we chose that, just a few years prior was seeing entry-level pay of 50 to 60k a year, is now starting at 25 - 30k a year if you can even land a job.\n\n*shrug* Yeah, our head is up our asses quite far for thinking kids that choose to stay at home through schooling are \"lazy\"... no, they're fucking smart because they can put the money they'd otherwise have put towards keeping a roof over their head and other basic necessities, and apply it instead towards paying down their loans while in school!\n\n[/rant]"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tug3RGJZ6Wg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ifptx", "title": "Is basic water as bad/harmful as acidic water?", "selftext": "This is the background information I am familiar with. I live in south central Indiana. We have fairly acidic rain, between a pH of 4.6-4.3 from what I can find (I know regular rain has a pH of 5.6 approximately so it's still more acidic than rain should be). We have a lot of limestone in the area, which helps balance the acidity of the rain so the groundwater doesn't retain the rain's acidity.  \n  \nMy query is in regards to old quarries. The pits are filled with water, presumably mostly from rain built up over the years as they have been inactive for decades. Since the quarry pits are all limestone I am guessing it balances the natural rain's acidity. But, due to the high concentration of limestone, does it swing the water's pH to a more basic reading? Can the water become too basic (to a point where it would have negative side effects like the corrosive power of acid rain/acid water) or will the seasonal influx of more acid rain continue to keep the water in the quarry pits a reasonable pH?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ifptx/is_basic_water_as_badharmful_as_acidic_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c23drc9"], "score": [4], "text": ["The reaction of calcium carbonate + acid will only proceed until it reaches equilibrium (the acid is used up). This is because the huge volume of limestone involved acts a a buffer material.\n\nPerhaps this says it better:\n > Water percolating from the surface contains atmospheric gases. One of these gases is carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when dissolved in water. The decomposition of organic matter beneath the surface is another source of carbon dioxide. Limestone is a mixture of calcium and magnesium carbonate. The mineral, which is basic, is only slightly soluble in neutral water. The slightly acidic groundwater reacts with basic limestone in a neutralization reaction that forms a salt and a water of neutralization. The salt formed by the reaction is a mixture of calcium and magnesium bicarbonate. Both bicarbonates are quite soluble. This reaction is the source of the most common deposition and corrosion problems. ([ref](_URL_0_))."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.gewater.com/handbook/Introduction/ch_1_sourcesimpurities.jsp"]]}
{"q_id": "21ichs", "title": "what is the reason for different regions in regards to dvds?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21ichs/eli5_what_is_the_reason_for_different_regions_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgdaatx", "cgdco77", "cgdeb0k"], "score": [11, 5, 8], "text": ["Film distributors want to have meticulous control over the contents, price, and release dates of their DVDs in various regions of the world. This helps them maximize profits.", "Region encoded media allows the distributor more control over pricing and release dates, so in one word, money.", "So you own a big movie studio, and you've got a hot new movie coming out that's going to shatter all box-office records.\n\nAs much as you'd like to, you can't release it all over the world at the same time. It's impossible for a number of reasons: \n\n* There are probably 50,000+ movie theaters around the world that will show the film, but you only printed 3,000 copies of the film (because film is expensive to print and even more expensive to store and transport)\n* The stars of your movie need to promote it--interviews, autograph sessions and whatnot--and they can't be on 4 different continents at once.\n* Your movie has to be localized--translated, dubbed or subbed, edited for content to fit with local laws and so on--and that takes time.\n* There are other big events or movies occurring at different times around the world, and you don't want your movie to have to compete for viewers' attention--or you want to take advantage of a national holiday--so you pick the best release dates you can for each region.\n\nBottom line, it might take as long as nine months for your film to complete its theatrical release cycle around the world.\n\nSo your film releases in March in the US. By May, theaters in the US have stopped showing it, so you get ready to release it on DVD in July, while it's still relatively fresh in people's minds. But in South Africa, it won't hit theaters until December.\n\nHow do you stop South Africans from importing the DVD from the US, instead of waiting until December to watch the movie in theaters there? Region codes.\n\nThere's also regional pricing differences to consider. In America, where everyone is fat and happy, people can afford to pay $30 for a DVD. But in Brazil, $30 is way too much for any average citizen to reasonably afford; so you might sell it there for $5. But what's to stop an American from importing the DVD from Brazil for $5, instead of paying $30 at home? Region codes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "30k3v1", "title": "why does every steam game i install need to install it's own copy of directx?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30k3v1/eli5_why_does_every_steam_game_i_install_need_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpt7pgf", "cpteevf", "cptesov", "cptfd1y"], "score": [159, 5, 42, 8], "text": ["Running the DirectX installer is not a matter of making sure your overall DirectX install being up-to-date. Microsoft has a helper library with D3D called D3DX. You'll find binaries for this like d3dx9_43.dll in your Windows\\system32 folder. There are over 40 different versions of the D3DX library for D3D9 alone, and many more for D3D10 and 11 as well. Each game that uses the D3DX helper library is linked to a specific version. As such the game must run the correct D3D installer version that it was specifically compiled with to ensure the binaries exist.\n\nEven if a later version of the binary is already installed, that version cannot be used, and even if your DirectX install is up-to-date because you've run a more recent version of the installer that is not guaranteed to have installed all previous versions. Even worse, if a version is installed for x86 it doesn't guarantee the same version is installed for x64, so 64 bit and 32 bit games may need to run the same exact installer version but targeting different platforms when run.\n\nFurthermore, Microsoft's licensing terms prevent anyone from distributing the files directly, the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that's also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed. Trying to manually check for the correct versions is extremely complicated because there are numerous files that must all be present and individual system configuration options like dll search paths complicate the situation. In addition, the dependencies and required checks may change in each new version of the D3DX runtime. The code to check correctly and repair broken installs all exists in the installer and running it is a guarantee that the correct binaries will exist when you run the game and prevents lots of bad cases where a game would fail to launch with an obscure error if a windows install was either missing the correct version or somehow corrupted in the past.\n\nSource: [Steam support knowledgebase](_URL_0_)", "This question always gets answered via the same copypasta from the steam forums, but I have trouble believing that's the whole story. Does nobody here remember how things used to be before Steam got popular? You'd treat DirectX like a graphics driver: one time install and updates maybe every 6 months. Can't say I ever had problems running games that way. That works even today, when I play non-Steam games I usually skip dx install and everything is fine. \n\nMaybe it's more of a failsave feature, games use the same files 95% of the time and forced installs fix the other 5%?", "DirectX is a combination of a bunch of .dll's (little files) that do specific graphical things. Games do not need all of the files, so whenever you install a game it checks which ones you have and installs only the additional ones it needs.", "The more important question for me is this: why can't Steam install the DirectX stuff when it's installing the rest of the game? Why does it tell me the installation is complete and when I press play, it starts installing DirectX? \n\nWhile installing, why can't there be a process of *\"By the way, while we are at it, I'm going to check the libraries and install any missing files. It would be mighty nice if \"Installation complete\" meant \"Installation complete\".*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9974-PAXN-6252"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hdftj", "title": "What negative effects (if any) are we causing by increasingly introducing antibacterial products to our water waste?", "selftext": "I understand our water waste leads to sewage treatment plants before being re-released into the environment, but does this process insured that these products never enter the environment?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hdftj/what_negative_effects_if_any_are_we_causing_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyjhq9b"], "score": [6], "text": ["By antibacterial products, I'm assuming you mean antimicrobial soap and the like, and not just flushing antibiotics. Antimicrobial soap usually includes triclosan or triclocarbon, which causes two problems and offers no benefits. Normal soap doesn't kill bacteria, but it does flush them off of whatever surface it's applied to very effectively, so antimicrobial soap does not lead to less bacteria on the surface. \n\nFirst, less importantly, bacteria can develop resistance to antimicrobial agents  (this is not true for heat based or alcohol based bacteria killing). Resistance is generally bad because it limits the usefulness of the antimicrobial agents when they're actually necessary. \n\nMuch more importantly, the water cleaning process does not effectively filter out the triclosan and triclocarbon. Bacteria are a crucial part of essentially all ecosystems, and tap water is somewhat toxic to them. We need them in the soil that tap water waters plants on. We need them in the human gut, which tap water gets to. As far as human health goes, the gut microbiome is so important, and not just for digestive health. Immune health, mental health, etc are also linked to a healthy gut microbiome. But 75% of adults in the US have triclosan or triclocarbon in their urine, which constantly risks the very delicate balance of that ecosystem. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "593t4z", "title": "how are spiders able to crate webs from a to b if said points are two trees or poles several metres away from each other?", "selftext": "Saw a line of spider web earlier today stretching across 2 trees that were several metres apart. The web was about 2 metres high off the ground. How exactly did the spider get from point A to B with It's web\n?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/593t4z/eli5_how_are_spiders_able_to_crate_webs_from_a_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d95eyjo", "d95l84k", "d95n43l", "d95qzw5"], "score": [153, 12, 141, 2], "text": ["They let out a web string and let it flow on the wind. The string is sticky, so as soon as it touches the other tree, it attaches there. Afterwards the spider can use that string as a base to create the rest of the web.", "Watch [this](_URL_0_) video for an example of a Darwin's Bark spider spinning a web over a river.", "I actually had an orb weaver out on my deck this past summer. Since they are harmless and kill a lot of pesky bugs, I let it be and it would create a web almost every night around dusk (they usually deconstruct it in the morning). I watched this spider make her webs dozens of times. For people that are not spider friendly, let me tell you this was mesmerizing watching this spider. I would have friends that would come over and initially be disgusted then sit out on my deck and watch this spider make its web and just stare in awe then tell me how cool it was. Spider actually presumably passed away recently, as they only live about a year and their life cycle ends around this time. I miss it now. Haha. \n\nAnyway, she would literally very slowly just start coming down a strand she was creating and would just let the wind take it and she would just keep going until she got close enough to something. Sometimes she would just connect to my deck rail from the area of the rain gutters (6 feet) and sometimes she would go all the way down to the deck of the tenant below and connect there (20 feet). I saw she was actually pretty good at swinging the thing because when she got about a foot out from my deck rail, I saw her swing to it (north) despite the wind moving west to east. They must be very good at sensing weather, as I read that they are apparently smart enough to detect when thunderstorms are coming and they will deconstruct their web very quickly.\n\nI'm no spider expert, but I don't think they just send a sticky strand out like mentioned in the other comment. This first strand that the spider would create, was always a very thick durable but non sticky strand. I touched it myself once. Completely non sticky. Reminded me of fishing line. The orbweavers create two different strands, sticky and non sticky. The non sticky strands make up the most of support for the web (including the spokes of the web) and then they create the sticky parts as the actual web by connecting sticky web to each spoke. They use their legs to not step on the sticky web, transversing the web by only walking on the non sticky parts like the spokes of the web. \n\nNow as far as vertical connects like two trees, I would presume they would do the same, create a diagonal strand using the wind, and then would run another strand down this strand and climb up the tree higher and connect it at a higher point. I would watch my spider connect the first strand and then traverse back to her origin, and generate a new strand then climb down her first strand with the second strand in tow and then jump onto the deck rail and walk it over to a 3rd point in the opposite direction. These original 3 points were usually the only 3 points that would touch something. She would make more strands to support the web but would just connect them to the original two strands close to the mounting point of the original two strands. \n\nEdit: oh and despite the fact that the orbweavers take their web down almost everyday, she would almost always leave at least one of those first few strands. So she wouldn't have to do the web swingy thing every night, she would just start from scratch with the original strand. As long as she has those two mounting points, she can just climb up and down it connecting more strands to a 3rd or sometimes 4th point. So I don't believe they duplicate this everyday. ", "Ok, but what about indoors? Sometimes I've seen a web from wall to wall. How the hell did mr. Spider pull that off?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSwvH6YhqIM"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "45pa17", "title": "errr (eli25): my math major roommate had an entire chapter on counting, senior year. i have a math minor. what did he learn about counting and fundamentals that i take for granted?", "selftext": "The title says most of it. I was a Nuclear Engineering major, and he was a math/physics major. I feel I learned applicable math, but it irks me that I never learned the math behind the math of things as simple as counting. What am I missing? And is it worth delving into?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45pa17/eli5_errr_eli25_my_math_major_roommate_had_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czzdoop", "czzdq33", "czzdxio", "czzp5ow", "czzva3t"], "score": [36, 6, 23, 6, 3], "text": ["As is so typical in math, [counting can indeed be generalized.](_URL_0_) Roughly, counting means establishing a clear one-to-one relationship between the members of one set and the members of another set. Since sets are an extremely elaborate and well-developed topic in abstract math, there is a lot of meat here.", "Well you are probably capable of understanding the number theory he's learning. You should probably just ask him for the broad strokes and if it catches your interest just pick up his text for a few chapters. I feel like if you are looking for an applicational use to that then you're kind of going to run into a wall, it's probably something in his book that's there as filler. Like when you learn about economic modeling in linear algebra, yeah you're seeing applications but they're just filler, not the main theory. Hell my calc 2 book had a whole thing on pursuit curves, just a side note tucked in non euclidien  studies. ", "Google Cantor set theory. Basically this dude, George Cantor, comes up with the idea that counting numbers aren't good enough... so he figures out how to prove that counting numbers exist.\n\nIn order to do this, he starts with nothing. A null set. Then he takes the set containing the null set (the powerset... I think), and the cardinality of this superset is two - the set contains both the null set and the set containing the null set. Then he takes the powerset of this... the null set, the set containing it, and the set containing everything, as having cardinality 3 and so on.\n\nIn such a way, he creates the natural set (the counting numbers) from this. If he defines the numbers in such a way, in what others ways does he do crazy stuff with everything else? I did a course on it, and I'm still confused.", "Others here are suggesting set theory, but It's possible he was doing Combinatorics, which can be understood as a collection of methods for counting (possibly very abstract) objects. Sometimes it is referred to (almost ironically) as the theory of counting (for instance, the title of this book: _URL_0_)\n\n but you are not learning new ways to count a collection of objects sitting in front of you. What you are counting tends to be a collection of objects that have an abstract definition, so you cannot tell immediately how many objects satisfy the definition.\n\nThe basic combinatorial problem is: How many ways are there to arrange n distinct objects in a line? You could, for each n, simply try out all the possibilities and hope you don't mess up, but you'll find that for larger and larger n this method would take forever. In combinatorics you hope to use reason to establish a clever way to count these things, or at least establish that their number will be the same as the number of objects satisfying some other abstract definition.\n\nEdit: For an example of a combinatorial problem simple to state but still unsolved: suppose you have n equal sized squares; how many distinct flat shapes can you make by gluing the sides of the squares together? There is still no exact formula known: _URL_1_", "Their is a lot of bad information being given here. It's hard to tell from your description \"an entire chapter on counting\" what exactly your roommate is studying. Most likely your roommate is studying something called combinatorics which is a branch of math concerned with problems like \"How many objects of form X do we have with property Y?\" very often these objects are not numbers but other mathematical objects like graphs ((_URL_1_) or functions (_URL_0_) and counting them is not as simple as \"adding them up\" like you would do with numbers. Counting in combinatorics is often the process of creating a function that generates one object for each possible object and then checking to see how many objects you can create with that function this is often the best approach to use even when working with objects that you might feasibly be able to count.\n\n For example a basic counting problem assigned to a first year student might looks something like \"How many four digit even numbers are there?\". You are more than welcome to go ahead and start writing them down by hand but I think that you would find the process more than a bit tedious. A better way to approach the problem might be see if there is some way to make a recipe to cook up four digit even numbers. First start with four blanks (one for each digit in out number) and try and see how many possibilities we have for each blank (_) (_) (_) (_). How many numbers can we have in the first blank? 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2 and 1 work but if we put a 0 in that place we have a three digit number so 0 is out but we have the  numbers 1-9 so that's 9 possibilities (9) (_) (_) (_). How many possibility's for the second number do we have? Well 1-9 are still good and now zero is good because we ave something ahead of it so 10 same with the third digit. (9) (10) (10) (_). Well a number is even if and only if its last digit is a multiple of two so we get 0,2,4,6,8 which is 5 options so we get that to make a four digit even number. You first pick an integer between 1-9 and write that down in the first place then, you pick an integer between 0-9 and write that down in the second place, then you do the same for the first place, and for the last number you pick one of 0,2,4,6, or 8 and write that down in the last place for a total of 9x10x10x5= 4500 different combinations of numbers that make for a valid 4 digit even number. Alternatively you might recognize that their are 9x10x10x10 = 9000 four digit numbers and since half of them must be even 9000/2=4500 even 4 digit numbers. Obviously these problem get harder the more abstract the object that you are trying to count is or the weirder the restriction."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting#Counting_in_mathematics"], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/How-Count-Introduction-Combinatorics-Applications/dp/1420082604", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyomino"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(mathematics)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics)"]]}
{"q_id": "1paqt0", "title": "When an electronic video camera is struck, jolted, or involved in an impact, why is there noticeable distortion?", "selftext": "This makes sense for film cameras (loss of tracking, speed, shutter timing, etc), or even a video camera with a spinning write-head; but why, in an all digital camera or in a live-feed situation would any distortion take place at all? Is the light sensor somehow sensitive to motion?\n\n(Example: [This gif](_URL_0_) was on the front page; it's very quick but watch as the hockey puck hits the lens, there is a green bar across the image in at least one frame - I assume that as the camera scanned the sensor the signal coming back was only solid green for just a few lines, but I can't think of a good reason why this would happen in the way it does. I should probably find a better example...)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1paqt0/when_an_electronic_video_camera_is_struck_jolted/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd0jym9", "cd0kq66"], "score": [4, 6], "text": ["It is difficult to say with certainty but there are several things that may have happened..\n\n1- a connector or other physical piece loses signal for a moment, leading to bad data\n\n2- the physical stress causes a n electrical effect, piezoelectric for example, which due to whatever fluke of physical design or timing during the read process, leads to the green channel being excited.\n", "Without knowing the specifics behind this camera setup I'd say that this camera uses a mechanical rolling shutter. That is, the whole frame isn't exposed at the same time but the the frame is exposed linewise.\n\nWhen the camera gets jolted with enough force the exposure mechanics is unable to properly expose the currently relevant lines, giving them such bad readings that either the camera or the encoder determines that these lines are just noise. The lines are thus filled with placeholder values (the green)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/7gswOaa.gif"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "l3qt9", "title": "why do i need to reheat cooked chicken to a certain temperature, but i dont need to reheat chicken salad to a certain temperature? i can just eat that cold.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l3qt9/why_do_i_need_to_reheat_cooked_chicken_to_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2pimvt", "c2pipx8", "c2pix70", "c2pjau2", "c2pjbmn", "c2pimvt", "c2pipx8", "c2pix70", "c2pjau2", "c2pjbmn"], "score": [16, 51, 6, 4, 3, 16, 51, 6, 4, 3], "text": ["I eat cold chicken all the time.\n\nStraight from the fridge. \n\nNo issues.", "You don't have to reheat chicken. It just has to be cooked thoroughly the 1st time.", "Once it starts warming up bacteria begins to grow FAST. So: cold or hot, take your pick. ", "The science: Any food that was originally served hot must be cooled properly, then reheated to 165 degrees for at least 2 minutes before serving. The reason for this is because bacteria can grow out of control within a certain time/temperature zone. If food has been discovered to be between 45 and 140 degrees, it is prime for bacteria to thrive. This is the \"Danger Zone\". Generally, any food found to be within this range for a period of approx 4 hours is considered to be hazardous, as the amount of bacteria that will have grown in that time is enough to make you seriously ill. \nFood cannot be made safer in step B than it was in step A, so following proper heating/cooling procedures the entire time is essential. \n\nTL:DR: Keep hot food heated above 140 degrees, keep cold food below 41 degrees.  When storing food, cool the food to 70 degrees within the first 2 hours, and below 41 within 4 hours. When reheating food, heat to an internal temp of 165 degrees F and maintain that temp for at least 2 minutes before serving. Voila.  ", "You don't, you can eat already-cooked chicken cold - I have for 24 years and nary a problem.", "I eat cold chicken all the time.\n\nStraight from the fridge. \n\nNo issues.", "You don't have to reheat chicken. It just has to be cooked thoroughly the 1st time.", "Once it starts warming up bacteria begins to grow FAST. So: cold or hot, take your pick. ", "The science: Any food that was originally served hot must be cooled properly, then reheated to 165 degrees for at least 2 minutes before serving. The reason for this is because bacteria can grow out of control within a certain time/temperature zone. If food has been discovered to be between 45 and 140 degrees, it is prime for bacteria to thrive. This is the \"Danger Zone\". Generally, any food found to be within this range for a period of approx 4 hours is considered to be hazardous, as the amount of bacteria that will have grown in that time is enough to make you seriously ill. \nFood cannot be made safer in step B than it was in step A, so following proper heating/cooling procedures the entire time is essential. \n\nTL:DR: Keep hot food heated above 140 degrees, keep cold food below 41 degrees.  When storing food, cool the food to 70 degrees within the first 2 hours, and below 41 within 4 hours. When reheating food, heat to an internal temp of 165 degrees F and maintain that temp for at least 2 minutes before serving. Voila.  ", "You don't, you can eat already-cooked chicken cold - I have for 24 years and nary a problem."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "742pzn", "title": "why do private citizens need gun silencers?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/742pzn/eli5_why_do_private_citizens_need_gun_silencers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnv0czp", "dnv0dmx", "dnv0go9", "dnv0j38", "dnv157z", "dnv16t0", "dnv1f11", "dnv1fdr", "dnv1h96", "dnv23ob", "dnv31ez", "dnv40ow"], "score": [15, 16, 3, 2, 6, 6, 12, 15, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["...because their guns are loud. Honestly, if you've ever lived an a rural area where guns were popular, you'd wish everyone used them. The sound carries for miles. ", "As a recreational shooter I would love to have a silencer at the range, so I could skip having to use earpro with subsonic rounds.  I would also like to have a silencer when recreationally shooting in BLM land, because I don't particularly enjoy making a lot of noise and annoying people for no reason.\n\nThat being said, actual silencers don't last that long and re-baffling them is a lot of effort.", "NEED? Mostly, we don't. But rights aren't (or at least shouldn't be) based on need. That being said, they are pretty great for hearing conservation, for the shooter and those around them. They can also help avoid alerting game.", "It protects you ears, keeps your neighbors from having to hear as much, and gives you a little extra weight in the front. Keeps the barrel down a bit. ", "Suppressors are legal in most of the world (including places WAY more strict on gun ownership), there's no good reason for a ban, the real world is not the movies. Rather than asking why they are needed, you should be asking why they are banned. \n\nAs for why they are needed, gunshots are annoying, hearing is precious. ", "Presumably to not bust your hearing as bad.\n\nThe real question is, what reason IS there to ban them? It's not like the movies where it makes a gun remotely close to quiet. It's still deafeningly loud and sounds like a gun. So, why SHOULD they be banned? A .22 caliber pistol will still be around 116 decibels with a silencer.", "\"Silencer\" is kind of a misnomer; it doesn't silence the gunshot, but instead takes it from 140 dB to maybe around 120 dB. That's still about as loud as a jet engine, but is comfortable with hearing protection.\n\nRealistically, suppressors are safety equipment, and were banned only so that Congress could look like they were actually doing something. Furthermore, the requirements to own a suppressor in the US are actually *more* stringent than in other countries (particularly Europe), where they are essentially unregulated.", "For one instance: for a home defense situation, if you do not have a suppressor then you have to choose between permanent hearing damage and protecting your safety and your family's safety.\n\nSuppressors DO NOT MAKE GUNS SILENT. They still have a seriously loud report, especially with rifles since the majority of the rounds are super sonic. Super sonic rounds are in no way quieted by suppressors.\n\nHandguns can be subsonic and they will come down to 120 db minimums. That's not quiet. But it won't cause hearing damage. \n\nI do not want to have to cause myself hearing damage or my children's hearing damage to protect them from an intruder. \n\nStop conflating suppressors with the ability to shoot without anyone noticing the shooting. Suppressors do not silence anything. That is a myth. 120 db is a thunder clap or an auto horn. Suppressors bring weapons down to the point of not causing hearing damage. This is a safe tool to have. And 120 db is the lowest a suppressor can get. More common average is more like 125-130 which is a jet taking off. \n\nIn many countries is even considered rude to not shoot with a suppressor because it is simply loud and annoying. Noise pollution avoidance is also helpful and anyone near a shooting range can certainly appreciate the possibility of it being more common that weapons are quieter. \n\nThis is just a few examples. There are many more. \n\nBring on the downvotes. \n\nFurthermore since this is clearly an attempt to chase the political questions that have been pushed forth by recent events. Purchasing a suppressor currently requires a full background check, paying between 1000 and 2000 dollars, and waiting 9-13 months to posses along with vetting by the ATF and local police.  The same goes for legal full auto except the weapons cost 20 thousand dollars or more. \n\nThe recent attacks were carried out by a man who had both the time and money to procure these types of tools and didn't. Evidently legislation has been proven effective enough to keep evil people with the means from owning these things. Stop politicizing the acts of evil people to push an agenda. ", "Hearing protection and so the people who live near the range stop trying to get the range closed even though they knew it was there when they bought the place. In other countries it's considered rude not to use one. \n\nAlso they don't make guns silent there is still a loud sound like dropping a thick text book on linoleum floor unless it's a 22 long rifle with subsonic rounds then it sounds like a pellet gun", "As a gun owner with a silencer tax stamp the only reasons I can give you is that they are fun. Some would like to argue that they shouldn't have to kill their hearing to protect their home, and others just want their guns to look cool. To summarize civilians don't need suppressor, they want one, there really isn't a reason to own one otherwise", "Why do people need car mufflers?  \n\nA suppressor takes sound from levels that instantly damage hearing (140+ db) to merely very loud levels (120 db).  ", "Suppressors have never been used in a crime, they are a niche product that is very expensive and difficult to get. You would never purchase one to commit a crime because it would immediately reduce the number of suspects from millions to hundreds.\n\nSuppresses also have no significant use in crime as they still have a very loud and distinctive shot. My friend's suppressor regularly causes my unprotected ears to ring, because they are still incredibly loud. The top models currently still fire at 120 decibels, that is not quiet.\n\nSo you're asking why it's not illegal to sign yourself up for extremely close law enforcement scrutiny just so you can spend thousands of dollars and six months for the purpose of making your insanely loud gunshot sound just incredibly loud. \n\nThe other issue is suppressor are very very long, there is currently no consistently lethal suppressed firearm which is small enough to concealed carry, if you're going to use a suppressor your gun will be huge and very hard to hide, the last thing that's good for crime.\n\nSo simply put there is no usefulness for suppressors to criminals as it currently stands. The only people who would find use in a suppressor are military folks purchasing them for self education purposes, serious hunters, and hobbyist nerds like me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8awd7b", "title": "Are QM particles \"fuzzy\" in time the same way they are in space? Or is spacetime just another thing from relativity that doesn't carry over to QM?", "selftext": "I can't tell if this is like why you can't tell absolute position and velocity, I could see that just being another way of saying that they are \"fuzzy\" in time as well.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8awd7b/are_qm_particles_fuzzy_in_time_the_same_way_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dx2dbs9", "dx2iced"], "score": [9, 3], "text": ["You can derive an uncertainty relation between energy and time that is similar to the momentum and position uncertainty relation. However, time is not an observable in (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics in the same way as momentum or position, therefore it is not exactly the same.\n\n/edit: In that relation, Delta t is the time in which an observable A changes by its standard deviation Delta A. Therefore it is not the same as the time which you would use as a parameter in the time-dependent Hamilton-equation.\n\n/edit 2: Maybe someone can fill in for relativistic QM.", "Regarding whether spacetime is quantized or fuzzy or whatnot, the \"Holometer\" at Fermilab has been investigating that kind of thing:  see [their website](_URL_0_) and [a paper describing the instrument](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://holometer.fnal.gov/", "https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.08265"]]}
{"q_id": "3v05lm", "title": "Does it take more energy to make an LED light blink, or remain constantly on?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3v05lm/does_it_take_more_energy_to_make_an_led_light/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxjgd74"], "score": [11], "text": ["There's two things that use power for the flashing LED: The LED itself and the switching circuit. If the LED power is more than the power needed to drive the switching circuit it will of course require less power in total to flash the LED than have it constantly on. There can be many ways such a switching circuit can be made but in general they are not very complicated and do not consume a lot of power, thus for most LEDs in use it is more energy efficient to have it flashing. For instance, LED bike lights are typically reported to have double the battery life in flashing mode, e.g.: _URL_0_ (25 lumen constant: 1 hrs 40 min, 25 lumen flashing: 3 hrs)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.lezyne.com/images/specs-striprear.svg"]]}
{"q_id": "1hehjq", "title": "Downton Abbey: Breakfast Habits of the Married vs Unmarried Women", "selftext": "In the TV series Downton Abbey, upper class unmarried women are shown as being required to breakfast in common, whereas married women apparently exercise the prerogative to breakfast in bed.  There are quite of few articles on the internet confirming the historicity of the married women's prerogative, but these articles do not explain its genesis.  Does anyone know the reason for this prerogative? (I assumed that it was to promote interaction of unmarried women with bachelors, but perhaps that is too simplistic.) EDIT: Typo, and clarity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hehjq/downton_abbey_breakfast_habits_of_the_married_vs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["catpqef"], "score": [49], "text": ["Is it possible that this is more of a narrative need than a historical representation?  If I recall correctly one of the more influential/interesting maids is the chief attendant to the main lady of the house.  It might have more to do with the writer's desire to have the married women interact (and have influential conversation with!) their primary attendant maid in a private setting than anything else.\n\nWhat are the other articles on the internet about this?  It might be better to start broadly instead of focusing heavily on Downton Abbey which--as with all television shows--is subject to a number of narrative demands and needs which may or may not correspond with history."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5qc0co", "title": "John Quincy Adams became President 1 year before his father's death. What were John Adam's (or other Founding Fathers') views on his son becoming President given his opinions on the Presidency?", "selftext": "JQA became President on March 4, 1825, and John Adams died on July 4, 1826. John Adams was often accused of advocating for monarchy, saying that \"hereditary monarchy or aristocracy [are the] only institutions that can possibly preserve the laws and liberties of the people.\" Another time he was accused of trying to become King and was \"grooming John Quincy as heir to the throne\". Given these accusations, when his son did in fact become President, how did he react to this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qc0co/john_quincy_adams_became_president_1_year_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcyacga"], "score": [21], "text": ["I would also like to ask: Did the way in which JQA was elected (through the so called \"corrupt bargain\" with Henry Clay, and without an electoral or popular vote majority ~~n~~or even plurality) affect JA's viewpoint? How did he react to the election in particular? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5u2qpr", "title": "if illegal immigrants in the united states have constitutional rights, can they also bear arms?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u2qpr/eli5if_illegal_immigrants_in_the_united_states/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddqv00d", "ddqvz04", "ddqwdz4", "ddqwhrf", "ddr7lqr", "ddrfh1s"], "score": [5, 33, 2, 8, 12, 3], "text": ["To buy a gun legally from an authorized FFL, you need to either be a citizen or have a green card. So, no, you don't have second amendment rights as an illegal.", "When you're reading the constitution, if it says citizen, then you have to be a citizen to have that right.  If it says person, then any human within the jurisdiction of the US has that right whether here legally or not.  So, like the 5th and 14th amendments specify person, so they apply.", "This is a case where there are some mixed decisions from federal courts.  Some courts have found that illegal immigrants do have a right to bear arms, but many have not.  The 7th Circuit, for example, found in 2015 that they do have a right to bear arms, but that a federal law prohibiting them from possessing firearms was somehow valid.  Don't ask me how they figured that one.  The 4th, 5th, and 8th Circuits have ruled that they do not have that right.  What does that mean?  It means this is a case that will likely be resolved eventually by the US Supreme Court.", "While many whip themselves into a lather, over the mistaken notion that illegal aliens are essentially given all the same rights and privileges as citizens, under our Constitution, it is important to point out that their guaranteed rights are not exactly the same as citizenship:\n\nTheir protections stem from Section One, of the Fourteenth Amendment: \"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive **any person** of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to **any person within its jurisdiction** the equal protection of the laws.\"", "There is a gigantic misconception among people that the Constitution gives us civil rights.  \n\nAs the Declaration of Independence says:\n\n > We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\n\nIn other words:\n\n > It is obvious to all of us that every human being is born equal, and that all of us are born with certain fundamental rights that cannot be taken away; some, but certainly not all, of these rights are the right to be alive, the right to be free, and the right to choose how to live your life.\n\nThe Constitution does not give us our human rights -- they're granted to us upon birth by God, or the universe, or fate, or whatever you believe to be the source of fundamental truth. \n\nEveryone has these rights.  American or foreign, bad people, good people, your worst enemy.  Saints, criminals, murderers -- everyone is born with fundamental rights and they *cannot be taken away* by human beings, because who are we to remove a gift bestowed by God?\n\nBecause these rights are inherent, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights don't provide them; rather, the documents provide *prohibitions on the government* from infringing on the exercise of these fundamental rights we are all born with. The Founders believed that the best government would be one that honored and protected its citizens natural rights.  Now, some infringement of our rights is necessary to provide for social welfare and order, but even here, it's more about balancing the exercise of our rights; e.g., when you deny a criminal his right to freedom in order to protect other people's right to live free of physical harm.\n\nThese rights are distinct in the Constitution from the Privileges  &  Immunities of citizenship, which *are* the things that we are granted as Americans.  These include things like the entitlement to vote, to travel freely between states, and to have free access to commercial markets.  These privileges *are* granted by the government and *can* be taken away.\n\nThe Constitution recognizes the right to bear arms as a fundamental right. So, yes, illegal immigrants have that fundamental right -- they were born with it, just as you are.  However, as I said, the Founders and the Constitution recognize that complete anarchy leads to greater infringement on human rights (because the strongest just takes over as tyrant), so the government is allowed enact reasonable regulations that infringe on fundamental rights to the extent that they are necessary to protect social order and welfare.  \n\nOne of the infringements that's reasonable is prohibiting noncitizens from owning firearms -- it is reasonable for a nation to protect itself by preventing armed foreigners from roaming free within its borders.", "There are numerous laws which prohibit the possession of a firearm while in the commission of a crime. Illegal aliens by their very act of being here are committing an ongoing crime every second they're in the US without permission, hence being in the United States illegally and possessing a firearm is illegal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d92p9", "title": "what is a \"layer 7 ddos attack\"?", "selftext": "I understand the basic premise of a DDOS attack (a huge amount of computers/servers make massive amounts of request to one server and/or PC). But when I was reading about the attacks against _URL_0_ they kept reffering to it as a \"Layer 7 attack\". I'm just wondering what the specifics on that are.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d92p9/eli5_what_is_a_layer_7_ddos_attack/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct2vpc4", "ct2z1ik", "ct303xy", "ct339px", "ct33ez6", "ct33kf7", "ct34578", "ct34l9y", "ct35t16", "ct36sg9", "ct38z8u", "ct393oc", "ct3cp0j", "ct3gomb", "ct3hb8o", "ct3nyij"], "score": [74, 35, 347, 2, 2, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2, 9, 4, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["In depth explanation:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR:\n\nA Layer 7 DDoS attack mimics real human behavior that is harder to detect and mitigate.", "Layer 1 is the hardware layer.  So a layer 1 DDoS attack would be finding and targeting all internet wires going in and out of the company you targeted then simply cutting the wires to deny service.  People don't usually do layer 1 DoS attacks because it is easy to get criminally charged if you try it.  Not really what you asked about, but still interesting.  To address your question, Layer 7 is just the application layer so this as previously stated instead of targeting a TCP protocol or some such vulnerable port the attacker has (for example) hundreds of snapchat accounts and sends 100s of thousands of pictures through them to clog snapchats servers and deny snapchat users service to the application. \n\nTL/DR; Layer 7: An attack using the application A LOT to clog the servers instead of simply attacking the server directly.\nLayer 1: Cutting power/internet wires to the company to deny access to their service.", "To really **ELI5**... Imagine your whole class wants to prevent the teacher from getting work done, so you band together to ruin his/her day. You have some different options:\n\n1. Bang pots and pans and turn out the lights.\n2. Hum music or play the kazoo while wearing a mask.\n3. Babble nonsense streams of syllables and make silly faces.\n4. Continually interrupt and try to talk over one-another.\n5. You sit at your desk, politely say \"excuse me, Teacher?\" and raise your hand... But when called on you pretend nothing happened. If the teacher asks you a question, you start answering and then pretend to fall asleep.\n6. You act normally, except you speak entirely in an unintelligibly thick accent. \n7. You ask lots of understandable questions for answers you don't care about. If the teacher asks you a question, you give an answer which is understandable but useless, like: \"It depends... On... the stuff.\"\n\nThe exact numbers blur together, but as you go to higher numbers on the scale, it takes more time and effort from you... but it also becomes harder for the teacher to clearly identify (and unarguably punish) you for your disruption.", "It's the new style of DDOS from Taco Bell. If you replace \"food\" with \"traffic\" in the following you'll get the idea.\n\nIt looks like normal food, but it isn't. It mimics food but still makes you sick. From the inside and the outside it appears to just be normal food but there is just SOOOOO much of it that it makes you sick. You can't seem to stop getting fed and finally your system just shuts down.\n\nHope that helps.", "Layer 7 of the OSI model is is the human.  \nSo a DDOS attack on a layer 7 would be sending a whole bunch of people with questions.", "A layer 7 DDoS attack is what happens whenever someone links reddit to a site whose bandwidth usage expectations ranges from \"little\" to \"oops I accidentally refreshed\".", "To do something with your friend on the internet you must use some sort of software on your computer and the other person uses similar software on their computer.  This software exists in what is called the \"7th layer\" aka the \"Application\" layer.\n\nIn order for for your application to communicate with your friend's application, the data from the application must be broken down until it's just a series of bits transferred over a wire (bits over a wire is Layer 1 aka Physical Layer), then the bits must be reassembled until it can be read by the other application.\n\nEach of the 5 layers between account for either a portion of the data needed to actually communicate between the computers, or account for systems that are required for this communication to occur.\n\nEvery interaction with your friend starts and ends in layer 7, but must go through every single layer to get there... essentially this makes it's way from layer 7 to layer 6 etc, all the way down to layer 1 and then on your friend's system, it gets put back together until it finally get's back up to layer 7 and is read in your friend's application.\n\nA layer 7 DDOS attack hits another system by pretending to be thousands and thousands of friends trying to reach you.", "It is in reference to the osi layer model.\n\nThe OSI layer model categorizes communications between computers.\n\nLayer one is the physical layer for example a piece of copper cable. with each subsequent layer building upon the ones below it.\n\nNormally DDOS attack try to attack at the lowest possible layer in order to get the most damage for the least effort. This is mostly layer 3,4 and 5.\n\nThey send a communication that is well formed enough to arrive at the destination but does not actually do anything more than tying up resources at the other end.\n\nYou might imagine it like a lots of people just shouting \"hello\" or \"good morning\" at someone and the person shouted at gets overwhelmed trying to return all those greetings.\n\nEven if the person thus mass greeted tried to engage one of the greeters in a conversation along the lines \"hello, how are you\" he would not get any response because the greeters are actually robots just knowing how to shout \"hello\" and nothing more.\n\nA layer 7 DDOS attack goes one step further. It attacks on the application layer. Instead of just shouting and running at the victim, the attackers tries to involve them into a number of genuine seeming conversations about the weather or politics or whatever.\n\nA Layer 7 attack is much harder to defend against because it is hard to differentiate between a malicious attacker and lots of people using a service in exactly the way it was intended to be used just in much larger numbers.", "No matter which layer is being attacked, the goal of a denial of service attack is to overwhelm and interrupt your servers so they can't process regular requests.  They can also saturate the networks the servers use.   \n\nTo stop a denial-of-service (DOS) attack you must stop the traffic from reaching you which means dropping it somewhere away from the servers where the traffic does not saturate your network.  Often means you need help from your Internet connection provider.\n\nA Distributed DOS attack (DDOS) is a widespread attack using many sources of attack, usually a botnet of infected PCs.  This is harder to defend against since you can't identify the source and block traffic from that.  You must characterize the traffic and try to drop the type of traffic that is coming in as the attack, since there are too many sources to identify.  And if layer 7, it can be very hard to distinguish bad traffic from your normal application traffic.\n\nA DOS or DDOS attack is sometimes targeted against one company's service or servers as a form of punishment for some misdeed or perceived misdeed.  But it can also be random and senseless.", "Most DDOS attacks occur when you massively send packets of information at a port running a service (making trivial web requests at port 80 or port 443) which cause it to \"clog\" up and become unresponsive to regular users. This can be mitigated by a firewall device that blocks these bogus types of requests.\n\nLayer 7 is an application user layer. For example, going to google and making a search request \"best cookies in the world\" is a layer 7 type of action. DDOS at Layer 7 is where lots and lots of requests are made like this. Imagine having a bunch of computers going to google and making what seems like legitimate requests at a constant rate. It would be hard to combat that because the interactions seem legit, and would be hard to separate from legitimate users. Google is massive enough that a normal day for Google in search requests would look like a Layer 7 attack to most other websites, so this wouldn't hurt google. But if you had a bunch of fake requests to Voat all creating accounts, posting, filling out feedback forms, or just interacting with webpages, it would likely bring it down.", "A layer 7 attack is usually done on a website page itself. A layer 4 attack is usually done on the website's network.", "Other posters described a DDOS well. The layer 7 bit is this:\n\nThere is a conceptual model called the OSI model. It classifies different network technologies into \"layers\". Layer 1 is the physical cable and devices. Layer 3 is the network layer. IP is layer 3. Layer 7 is the application layer. It's the highest layer and it refers to the technologies you interact with. HTTP or FTP are layer 7.\n\nYou can DDOS by flooding an endpoint with data, and you can do it on any layer (except layer 1) , but layer 7 is the hardest to track down and block because it's difficult to distinguish between an actual layer 7 DDOS attack and something like the infamous \"Reddit hug\" where traffic just spikes from an influx of users.  Or more precisely, it's hard to identify which connections are DDOS and which are legit requests - especially when a botnet is employed.\n\nPersonally I prefer employing layer 8 (the \"human layer\") attacks where me and a bunch of my friends bum rush a data center.", "There are officially 7 layers of the OSI network model. Layer 7 is the application layer. This means the attack is against the application (SMTP, HTTP, POP, SNMP, whatever) rather than against for example the framing or routing layers. \n\n_URL_0_", "The term \"Layer 7\" refers to what is called the \"Application Layer\".  But that means nothing unless you understand what the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI Model) is.  \n\nIn ELI5 terms, the OSI model is a standard conceptual model of the different functions involved in how computers communicate.  There are 7 different layers.  I won't go into detail about each, because that is not what you are asking about.  I will give you a few bits though in order to answer your question.\n\nThe lowest layer, Layer 1, is the physical layer.  This refers to an actual physical medium, like copper or fiber, connecting systems.  Single bits exist at this layer in the form of electrical pulses.  \n\nThe top layer, Layer 7, is the application layer.  This refers to actual software / applications like web browsers.\n\nThe most common type of DDOS attacks that you are probably familiar with would be at layer 3 or 4.  Flooding a host with icmp / ping packets or http requests to overload it and limit the resources available for legitimate traffic.   These attacks target specific functions of standard protocols that function as this layer.  They are simply referred to as DDOS attacks.\n\nWhat makes a layer 7 DDOS attack different is that it is exploiting something in the actual application running on the server in question.  In this case, it wasn't the TCP or HTTP protocol that was exploited but rather a function of the code running voat.  This attack is referred to as a layer 7 attack for that reason, it targeted layer 7 instead of a lower level which has historically been a much more common problem for public web servers.\n\nHope that helps, I wasn't liking the answers already here.\n\n\n\n", "The really damaging ones are Layer 8 and 9 attacks.\n\nThe 7-layer OSI model describes various features of a networking system and how they depend on each other. There is an old network-engineering joke that there are actually two additional undocumented layers, \"Financial\" (Layer 8) and \"Political\" (Layer 9).\n\nA Layer 8 DoS attack means driving someone out of business, or making a service no longer profitable to run.\n\nA Layer 9 DoS attack means getting someone shut down by their government or legal system \u2014 e.g. sending bogus DMCA notices, swatting, or [the classic Scientology approach of forging bomb threats in their name.](_URL_0_)", "Say you are on a bridge and i want to stop you from talking to their friend on the other side.\n\nlayer 1: i remove the bridge\n\nlayer 2: i mess with the bridge and its signs so it is very hard to go over the right bridge or you could go over the wrong one and all of my friends wear a mask (i dont understand this layer so i could be wrong)\n\nlayer 3: the bridge is one of those ones that can go to different places, i mess with it so that the bridge takes you to the wrong place or your friend cant get to you or i stop one of you half way by running in front and shitting myself\n\nlayer 4: i go to your friend and say either \"sihdhb?\", \"ahh yes thanks for your time\" or \"im sorry i didnt quite hear that\"\n\nlayer 5: 1000 of my friends run up to to your friend and say \"hi how are you?\"\n\nlayer 6: i mess with shit so that you and your friend can't quite understand eachother\n\nlayer 7: i walk up to your friend and have a meaningless conversation with him so he cant talk to you\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["voat.co"], "answers_urls": [["http://ddosattackprotection.org/blog/layer-7-ddos-attack/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.opengroup.org/public/arch/p4/views/vus_comm.htm"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout"], []]}
{"q_id": "5bj7wm", "title": "a lot of comedians jokingly impersonate millennials and always hit on a few common themes. are millennials really so different than the past generations or does every group have it's idiosyncrasies and these are ours?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bj7wm/eli5_a_lot_of_comedians_jokingly_impersonate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9oxtpg", "d9p0agy", "d9p3duk", "d9p45fu", "d9p588m", "d9p6r0w", "d9p7wwr", "d9p871j", "d9p8eaw", "d9p8ke2", "d9p91ml", "d9p9203"], "score": [140, 55, 6, 93, 22, 4, 2, 13, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I think every generation confuses and appalls previous generations. They called Elvis the devils music, but is now beloved by grandmothers. And now that my friends have teenage kids, seeing the thing they do shocks me. But then i realized that i was doing the same stuff at that age. Maybe the perception of the younger generations is just a reaction to how old they make them feel. ", "Every generation has its idiosyncrasies that cause older generations to think they are strange or bizarre.  Millennials, however, are probably more distinct because with the advances in technology, namely internet and cell phones, the way millennials interact with each other and with others is different, as is the way their brains are wired.  80s kids wore different clothes, listened to different music, and had different hair styles than 90s kids.  But millennials interact with each other differently, have their brains wired differently, and as a result that disconnect is larger.  ", "I think its more likely a result of a difference in expectations across a generation that are explained by 'outsider' groups through their respective perceptual  lenses. Older generations like to think they 'earned' their status through hardship. The corollary to this is that younger generations don't, and explanations are sought out, chosen, and repeated ad nausem to like-minded audiences. Sounds like your comedian was picking up on vibes from popular media, regurgitating them for as easy laugh to the right people.", "Honestly. \nMillennials, Boom Babies, Generation X, Gerneration Z, 'the Greatest Generation' - are all titles someone made up to \"help\" companies and news media \"differ\" from one generation to the next. To help market their products to these generations. The Millennials are the \"tech\" savvy, always on their phone, don't care about politics or the world around them, to lazy to work, want everything free generation. But so was almost every other generation at one point somehow.\n\nEvery older person of every generation views the younger people of that generation as - working less harder, having a easier life.. so on and usually just like in the case of millennials technologies get stronger/faster. Doing things that may take an hour take a few minutes compared to the last generation and that's why there's always a negative view on the current generation. \n\nPersonally I'm 22, and I'm already looking at the generation under me and seeing how 5-10 year old's have smart phones and thinking, \"wow when I was at that age I did...\" \n\nRead and Watch These:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_\n", "I'm right on the border between Gen X and Millenial.  I was born in 1981, and depending on the source, I'm either.  So maybe it's because of being on that border I feel this way. I think that Gen Xers should break the trend in dissing the next generation and sort of take them under their wing.  The Baby Boomers treated Gen X like crap, and they were a disenfranchised generation.  And now they are inheriting this world from the boomers.  Gen Xers are going to be in charge soon.  Let's not treat the Millenials like that. They grew up in a far more technologically advanced world, do you blame them for taking advantage of it?  I say work with them so when it's their turn to be in charge in 25-30 years, it's a smoother transition. Accept their differences.  Except their music.  Gen X music was way better.", "[Even the Greeks](_URL_0_) complained about the next gen. ", "Relevant link to long but solid and entertaining video of Adam Conover of \"Adam Ruins Everything\" giving one of the best explanations (not to mention well cited) of generational division that I've ever seen.\n\nMy short answer is \"No.\" Sweeping generalizations about any demographic isn't a good idea. That's the sort of thing that old people do. /s\n\n_URL_0_", "There's no real difference. I was born in 1950 and have gone through all these \"generations\" and kids through all of them are remarkably similar to the people I grew up with. I never had kids of my own so maybe I can be a bit more objective.\n\nYou can't say the same for the people before us. They lived through two world wars and the Depression. My dad, with a chemistry degree from U Chicago, lost his job in the 30's, and had to figure out how to shoplift food in order to get enough to eat. I don't think that's anything we'll ever have to go through. I hope.\n\nThere was a real generation gap back then. Everything since then has just been marketing. \n\n", "I personally feel like the word \"Millenials\" is too broad to be just one generation. How can you group people born from 1980 - 2000 into one generation? That's at least 2 generations to me.\n\nKids in the 1980s had completely different music, pop culture, TV shows, presidents, and history in general compared to those born in the 1990's. \n\nWhy is \"millenials\" so broad ??", "Individuals are different, generations are not. In fact, the census bureau defines the beginning and the end of the Baby Boom generation, everything else is just made up by whoever is trying to push an agenda. Usually the media, but advertising as well. There are no defined boundaries between them. Even if there were, putting a birth year of 1983 in genx and 1984-1995 in millennial (or whatever dates people use) doesn't make sense. Clearly the 1983/1984 people are going to have more in common that the 1984/1995. ", "I'd say every generation has its own idiosyncrasies, but that those of the 'bolus' generations get noticed more due to their size and consequent impact on broader society.  For instance, Gen X has plenty of its own idiomatic behaviors, but no one pays that much attention because they got lost in shuffle (broadly speaking).  However, I'd say the factors that made the Boomers unique have been, and continue to be, widely and consistently noted.  And I'm sure the comedians of the day would have made ample fun of the boomers... pretending, of course, that the greatest generation had much of a sense of humor.", "Honestly, I see millennials make more generalizations about themselves than I've ever heard anyone else ever say in real life.  They seem to talk about how different they are compared to everyone else, but they're really not that special."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/27/the-millennial-delusion/", "http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/technology/corporate-america-chases-the-mythical-millennial.html?_r=0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ"], [], ["http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt"], ["https://youtu.be/-HFwok9SlQQ"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1scgrn", "title": "evolution (former jehovah witness)", "selftext": "The theory of evolution.....ELI5:", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1scgrn/eli5evolution_former_jehovah_witness/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdw4bub", "cdw4w25", "cdw54do", "cdw6clg", "cdwg7bs"], "score": [8, 3, 49, 10, 2], "text": ["If you use the search function you can see that [this is a super common question](_URL_0_). I'm not saying that to be a dick, but to tell you that there are tons of quality answers already written and just waiting for you to read them.", "Lots of info on evolution is out there; can you be more specific on what you are looking for?  Something related to JW teachings?  \n\nThe shortest answer I can think of is that evolution is a cycle of variation and selection.", "Basic explanation:\n\nYou have animals producing offspringThere will be slight variations between offspring and parents. These differences are due to recombinant of genes (you are a combo of genes from your mom and your dad, so you aren't exactly like either one of them) and from mutation. Mutation is when a part of your DNA is accidentally changed (many ways this can happen). Some mutations don't cause any change while others can have a huge effect. These mutations can create new traits that did not exist in your species before. \n\nNow, as populations of animals create new offspring and live they must compete with each other and other animals to survive. They must also survive environmental factors such as weather. This struggle for survival causes what is referred to as selective pressure. Basically what it means it is since it is difficult to live only the best animals will be able to survive and reproduce. (This isn't 100%, but the idea is your chances of surviving and reproducing are higher if you are a better individual). if only the best survive and you have random changes between generations then any new mutations that are a benefit to the animal will survive and be passed on to more and more offspring while any traits that are disadvantageous will eventually die of. In this way species slowly change over many generations to become better adapted to their situation", "Imagine a Derp. It's some animal that is really stupid. Details aren't important.\n\nThe Derps have babies and one of them is a freak. He has three eyes.\n\nSuddenly, someone horrible happens, such as a lion attacking the Derps - but the three-eyed Derp saw the lion coming and could find shelter. It was better prepared.\n\nTons of Derps die, and Three-eyed Derp survived. He is acknowledged as a hero and has tons of babies.\n\nNow tons of Derps have three eyes, and they are all a bit better than the previous derps, because three-eyed Derps can see danger from afar.\n\nThis is Natural Selection. Some mutation happens and it's so beneficial that it is passed onto children. If this happens for millions of years, you have Evolution!\n\n^(Also, friendly reminder that this is Explain Like I'm Five, not  Explain Like I'm A *Frikkin Bio Major*)", "Lots of good responses here.\n\nA great parallel to evolution of life is the evolution of computers.  We start with the old machines that were just a few vacuum tubes, simple things that could barely calculate basic math.  Then we get to the age of the computer dinosaurs... giant machines that would fill a room, were considered state of the art, and cost tens of thousands of dollars.  Then we have the modern PC, and with it the birth of the Internet.  Then the age of laptops.  Then cell phones.  Then MP3 players.  Then tablets.  Then smart phones.  Now here we are with phones in our cars and frankly a ludicrous amount of technology and power at our fingertips, with new ones on the horizon.\n\nOne thing you notice with technology is that when something works, and works well, it sticks around for a while.  Calculators, one of our oldest computers, are still around in abundance despite changing very little over the last 30 years.  Once a breakthrough happens, we get hundreds, if not thousands, of variations on that theme.  PCs could vary wildly, but they'd all still have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, floppy/CD/DVD drive, etc.  Now we've got tablets, which are all flat with a touch screen that controls pretty much everything.  Both laptops and phones got smaller and sleeker over time.  Storage and memory consistently went up.  For cell phones and laptops, size consistently went down, while with PCs, monitor screens consistently got bigger.\n\nTechnology that is terrible (remember laserdiscs?) tends to fade away very rapidly.  So do computers when better computers come out.  Residual old computers may linger for a time, but eventually they get replaced by the new and better computers.  Remember 5 1/4 inch floppy disks?  There was nothing wrong with them, but they got replaced by 3 1/2 inch disks because they were smaller and held more.  Those got replaced by CDs, which got replaced by DVDs.  Overall, technology has gotten so much better and much more complex over just a short period of time -- only 50ish years or so.\n\nWhat does this have to do with the evolution of life?  It's very similar, but much slower (millions of years, not 50) and much more complex.  You get one form of life that has a huge advantage over its predecessors, and then they're everywhere, and eventually there are thousands of variations on that one theme.  An animal is really good at what it does, even if it's fairly simple?  It's not going to change all that much, if at all.  Something comes along that's better in every way/many ways?  It's probably going to replace the old population of its predecessor.\n\nIt's not a perfect analogy, of course.  But it's a great example of what evolution really is, which is change over time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=evolution&amp;restrict_sr=on"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2n4xg4", "title": "how did adding \"le-\" or \"de-\" to the beginning of a more traditional name become prominent in black american culture?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n4xg4/eli5_how_did_adding_le_or_de_to_the_beginning_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmae3om", "cmaez8n", "cmaf4t9", "cmah68e", "cmairc9", "cmaiu8n", "cmaizzd", "cmajx9r", "cmajydo", "cmakmwi", "cmal1se", "cmaljau", "cmalpf9", "cmals9h", "cmalv12", "cmalz2s", "cmam13v", "cmamlul", "cmammeo", "cmams28", "cmanjd0", "cmankv4", "cmaongo", "cmaoqc9", "cmape64", "cmapm80", "cmapy30", "cmaq2kq", "cmaroyf", "cmarvhl", "cmasfge", "cmautvr", "cmawkku", "cmayf0h", "cmazy5j", "cmb0tut", "cmb82nc"], "score": [67, 215, 147, 5, 4606, 10, 25, 179, 2, 8, 8, 18, 6, 2, 6, 131, 2, 13, 85, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 7, 241, 26, 3, 2, 5, 8, 2, 2, 5, 12, 5, 2], "text": ["I remember reading that the movie Roots was an inspiration for this.  Most black americans lost their real names in the diaspora. When the movie came out it inspired more African sounding versions of traditional names.", "\"By the 1970s and 1980s, it had become common within the culture to invent new names, although many of the invented names took elements from popular existing names. Prefixes such as La/Le, Da/De, Ra/Re, or Ja/Je and suffixes such as -ique/iqua, -isha, and -aun/-awn are common, as well as inventive spellings for common names. The book Baby Names Now: From Classic to Cool--The Very Last Word on First Names places the origins of \"La\" names in African American culture in New Orleans.\n\n\"The name LaKeisha is typically considered American in origin, but has elements of it pulled from both French and African roots. Other names like LaTanisha, JaMarcus, DeAndre, and Shaniqua were created in the same way. Punctuation marks are seen more often within African-American names than other American names, such as the names Mo'nique and D'Andre.\"\n_URL_0_", "I am no linguist, but I would guess it is from creole culture, as in the French, black, south. Le- or De- could mean 'the' or 'of'. But that is just a guess.", "Just gonna leave this here - sorry couldn't find a youtube link\n\n_URL_0_", "Black Americans have been in something like a permanent state of identity-crisis, that will probably not abate until either:\n\n- Terms like \"African-American\" are accepted as fully and as un-ironically as \"Polish-American\" or \"Irish-American\", or;\n\n- Race itself becomes such a nebulous, blended, and indistinct thing that skin-color is regarded as no different from eye or hair color. \n\nIn the meantime, a particular challenge for black Americans is disconnection from historic familial roots. An Irish-American family might name their kid Sean or Daniel or Molly or Colleen or Mary, with some connection to those who came before (even if those names might bear little or no resemblance to ancient Irish names and culture). \n\nMost black Americans bear family names from the slave-owners of their forbears, or arbitrary names given to freedmen. A white American man named, say, Robert DiGiacomo might go by \"Bobby\", and might consider himself mostly German/Scots, but he knows where his name comes from, and he knows that his father was descended from an Italian. If he wanted to, Bobby G could probably trace his ancestry back to specific people and families from any number of countries. \n\nA black man named Robert Smith might have little more than a vague idea that one of his ancestors was once owned by a man named \"Smith\". It is unlikely that he could reliably trace most of his family tree back further than slavery, since good records were not kept, about the lineage and ancestry of slaves. And any \"deep past\" records of his roots might actually refer to white parentage that abandoned or rejected their multi-racial offspring. He might not be able to able to find the specific African language, name-tradition, or region his ancestors came from, even if he tried.\n\nAs a result, many Black Americans have chosen to embrace an entirely new notion of heritage and identity, based on the global infusion of African culture into a worldwide diaspora. This could include elements of Caribbean, Creole, French-colonial, and Anglo-American influences, as well as pan-African culture (and Africa is a very big place, with wildly-divergent cultures, easily as different as Irish is from Greek, or Japanese is from Indian). \n\nOne example of this embrace of Black pan-culturalism is choosing or creating names that might sound exotic in any language. People who know the names of their ancestors might choose names that come from the same tradition. But when you don't know the names of your ancestors, or when you know their legal names to be \"fake\" names given to them by the people who bought and sold them like chattel, it's not so easy. \n\nIf you know something vague of where you came from, and that you are part of a diaspora that has influences the world over, you might choose to give your child a name that reflects that uncertain melding of cultures. \n\nIndian parents might name their kids \"Vijay\", Swedish-Americans might name their kids \"Gustav\", Japanese might name their kids \"Haruto\", Italian-Americans might go with \"Antonio\", etc...\n\nBut Black Americans descended from the nebulous heritage of slavery have no obvious tradition of forefathers to turn to, when it comes to naming their children, except maybe slave-names. \n\nSo many choose to invent or adopt new names, as the ancients did in other cultures. Just as names like \"Antonio\" or \"Robert\" or \"Seamus\" were once invented and applied to children, so names like Leshawn or Taniqua are invented or adopted by people who are not without a culture, not without a heritage, just without a fixed vocabulary, due to its newness. \n\nThe African diaspora has had a massive global influence on culture, but it happened in very different ways than other historically-recent diasporas. We were not around 1,000 or 10,000 years ago, when the Europeans or Africans were first inventing names. \n\nIn the great re-combinator that is global cultural evolution, Black America has emerged as a new distinct cultural tradition, much as Celts and Gauls diverged and became things like Scotch, Irish and German, hundreds of years ago. \n\nThe culture of \"Black America\", and of the African diaspora more generally, is still in its infancy. We're still in an era where people who lived under Jim Crow are alive and kicking, and the last slaves are only a few decades dead. \n\nAs people with names like Kanye, Obama, and Deshawn become more prominent and influential participants in the global economy of ideas, their names will begin to sound less strange. We are seeing the emergence of a new global cultural tradition, with ethnic and historical influences that are distinct from the existing ones. \n\nBlack American culture has a very troubled and difficult past, and much of it still has a troubled and difficult present, but its present is no worse than that of, say, the Irish from 150 years ago. (\"How the Irish Became White\" is an interesting read on the topic of historical race-identity). \n\nBlack America, and the African Diaspora more generally, is still in the process of inventing itself, as a cultural identity. And that includes names. It has contributed a tremendous amount of good to the world in its early days, and there is no reason to think it won't get better. \n\nedit: wow, RIP inbox, and thanks for all the gold!\n\n\n**To address some of the FAQs:**\n\n- \"Obama isn't a made-up name! And it's a last name!\": Yes, I meant that as more people adopt it as a first name, and as more names that sound \"black\" come into prominence and familiarity, they will start to sounds less exotic or strange. Sorry for the ambiguity.\n\n- \"I don't think anyone really calls themselves 'Irish American' or 'Polish American'. Everyone is just American.\" There are thousands of Irish-American, Polish-American, Italian-American, German-American clubs, all across the US. So it is definitely a thing for some people, although maybe not for you. \n\n- \"I disagree with the term 'African Americans', because it's not an accurate term, or something about hyphens.\" You're right, it's not an accurate term. Neither is \"black\" or \"white\" (that's more like a dark-brown to pinkish spectrum). I try to use words with commonly-accepted meanings, as they are commonly understood. Unfortunately, sometimes we use short words to refer to complex or nuanced ideas such as race and ethnic identity, and it can be hard to discuss anything other than the verbiage and nomenclature itself, without adopting some kind of shorthand that someone is bound to find objectionable.\n\n- \" 'Scotch' should be used for whisky and tape, not to describe people.\" Sorry, I stand corrected. Error left as posted, for continuity-purposes. \n\nA lot of other posters have raised a lot of very good and interesting points, and others have raised a lot of bad and long-discredited ones. I am grateful if I was able to help spark interesting discussion.", "Ok, back during the \"Back to Afrika\" movement people were giving their children African names, those were legit. Then ghetto people who didn't really know any better just started making up African sounding names. Thats where all these ghetto sounding names came from. \n\nSource: Best friend was born and raised in west Oakland (32 years old) \nWe've talked about this before. ", "I want to know why there are so many shauns.  Keyshawn, Deshawn, Knowshon, Hashean, Marshawn...it just keeps going.", "I'm not sure the actual question was answered . How did \"Le-\" and \"De-\" get to be popular ways of altering Euro names?", "Don't know anyone in my family with those kinds of names. My name is about as strange as it gets and is of Russian origins. ", "Funny enough I've been african-american for 25 years and this is not a trend I've noticed. Not a single family member dating back to at least a century has had a \"Le\" or \"De\" prefix in my case.  ", "It may be because of Creole and other French influences on Southern black culture. Usually when I hear the word \"aunt\" pronounced properly, it's a black person saying the word.\n\nBut it's probably an imagined trend.", "On a relatively unrelated note, British author and spy Daniel Defoe was originally called Daniel Foe. He wanted it to sound nobler; so he added de-.", "Well it's obvious that the US has a HUGE hangup about race/colour/ethnicity. In North Carolina they want to know your race when you apply for a fishing lisense! Of course its nothing to do with race; thats a concept that is obsolete anyway, we are all of the same race. And by the way where did the phrase 'caucasian' come from? It, like 'african-american', seems to be a concept that only exists in the USA.", "Is this some kind of patronymic/versioning style name? \n\nThe WASPs have traditions exemplified as James McAllan Senior, James McAllan Junior,  James \"Trey\" McAllan III, James \"Chip\", James \"Skip\"..., James \"Quintus\" V, etc\n\nSo do we have families where \"Shaun begat DeShawn, who begat TreyShawn, LaShawnda and Shawniqua, who begat QuaShawn\"?", "Black Americans had rather normal names until the 80's when a trend began circulating that focused on [black people's roots in Africa](_URL_0_).\n\nPolitical Correctness started around the same time which promoted cultural diversity and started calling black people African Americans and telling black people that they should be more African instead of being more American (aka 'whiter').\n\nBlack parents started calling their children more 'Africanized' names but since most of them were born in the US, they didn't really know many actual African names and instead, it turned into this weird pseudo African bastardization.\n\nPolitical Correctness and multiculturalism created a form of cultural segregation between black  &  white people. This had a negative effect on a portion of black Americans who were already poor and undereducated because they started giving their kids ridiculously bizarre variations of pseudo African names.\n\nIn Freakonomics, they talk about how these different names tend to make it harder for black people to even get an interview.", "I guess the most simple answer is that \"Le\" and \"De\" are French prefixes, probably reflecting the Creole or French colonial background.", "My best guess would be ...\n\nEither people being of French descent, or people wanting to appear French/of French descent (and therefore sophisticated??).\n\nEdit:To replace missing word", "As a white-working class Brit, American traditions of hyphenated ethnical roots baffles me.\n\nI cant imagine calling a black guy an African-Brit especially if his family has lived here longer than mine and I'm automatically \"British\".\n\n(Im descended from Irish and Scottish immigrants, I'd consider myself ethnically Celtic but I'm a Brit and an Englishman, not an Irish-Brit...)\n\nOut of curiosity do black Americans find it offensive to be called African-American or is it a term of empowerment? Or depends on the person?", "This discussion gets so far off topic and starts to become insulting and sometimes in the comments. The actual question the OP asked is not being addressed.\n\nMy mother gave me a name that has Arabic origin and is a variation of the name Aisha. I also have a brother named Rashod (a spelling variation on the Arabic name Rashad). We were born in the 70s when this was a popular trend. There was a black pride movement happening at the time and Arabic names and variations were used a lot.\n\nAs far as the DeShawns and LeShawns, that had less to do with the black pride movement and more about personal vanity and uniqueness and sometimes with funny results when folks don't have the best education. \n\nThere has been French, African, Spanish, Italian, Irish and Indian naming trends during different periods too, and that probably accounts for a lot of the Le and Dr you hear as sort of a name prefix. \n\nWe're individuals. No black person can tell you the reasons that 40 million people name their kids certain things. It's like asking white people why they can't dance. There are white people who can dance their asses off. I hate that stereotype. I hate all stereotypes and this inquiry about black names is borderline insulting but I've still done my best to answer. I hope this clears up some confusion anyway. ", "I am trying to figure out how this obsession with ancestry has become such a big deal in figuring out your \"identity\".  I am a white man whose mother is a Danish immigrant and my fathers' parents immigrated from Germany and Slovania, respectively.  I have detailed records of my mothers ancestors back to the 1400's and fathers ancestors back to the late 1700's.  Now most are probably saying that is wonderful and I wish I had that type of knowledge on my ancestry.  But here is the point.  None of this matters.  This has no bearing on my identity.  It does not matter where they came from or who were my ancestors.  I am who I am because I choose to be who I am.  I make my own decisions based on what I think, not where I came from.  I am an American, proud of it and will choose to be the best man I can be and live my life and choose to treat others with the respect that they deserve.  This has nothing to do with my ancestry.  My wife is black and has no idea of her ancestry further than her great grand parents.  She does not have an identity crisis what-so-ever and does not mull around in pity that she has no identity as she does not have a detailed family tree.  I am not speaking for her as we have had this discussion previously.  Today is November 23, 2014 start living for today, be your own person, do not live in or worry about the past, it is gone.  Look to the future.  The only family tradition you need is to be a good person, which is a perfect legacy.", "You didn't see this before the black panther movement.\n\nThey insisted that the names they were given were their slave names and suddenly started equipping people with \"african\" names.\n\nThese names are about as african as baseball, and the uneducated and easily susceptible majority of blacks took it as truth.", " TL; DR TIL this thread is not really answering the questioned asked.  Every so often a post gives an interesting answer but most do not.  ", "In many culture including European , French ,South American la, le or de before your family name is a sign of nobility or bourgeoisie , this is or was highly desirable . Not a particular thing link to African American ...\n\n_URL_0_\n", "The love of your life was a black woman named Shadynasty?", "Mods will you please remove some of these unnecessary racist comments? OP asked a legitimate question and this got really racist really fast. ", "Here's what my dad heard from an African-American that he worked with - my dad straight up asked him, \"What's with the names?\"  (in as un-racist way possible I guess)\n\nHis response was that in African-American communities, they like to name their children after their brothers or dads or some other male influencing figure-since some have more than one brother, etc., in order not to offend one or the other, they combine the two.  Hence, Robert and Shawn becomes Roshawn - David and Marcus becomes DaMarcus - Larry and Damien becomes LaDamien, etc.  \n\nThis is the best explanation I have heard.  ", "I'm a Black American and come from a long line of \"traditional\" named people. I mean, if you read the names of my family members from a list you couldn't differentiate our ethnicity from a white family in America. Here is my problem, a family member of mine is married to a white lady; they have a kid. The name the white lady chose for their child is one with a \"De\" or \"Le\" at the beginning of a normal name. No one else in our family has ever named their child anything \"unique\" like a \"LeQuanda\" or \"DeMario\" because its just agreed upon that it sounds laughably \"ghetto.\"  Many of us are still baffled as to how and why a white lady named the kid something like that. Some find it a little offensive.", "It's just an attempt to sound African.  Black Americans can track their ancestry just like anyone else. Just like most people in America, they find that they have many different races that make them up. New Africans arrive in America all the time. It is not hard to research real African names.  Most normal people give their children names that will let them fit in easy or has some importance to the parents. You find stranger names with young parents and/or uneducated attention whores.", "Some people are blaming it on a cultural thing but in the end it doesn't help the kids. I grew up in a rural area of the poorest state yet you don't see me naming my kids \"billy bob\".  \n\nDress for success, naming your kids should be the same.\n", "It was explained to me, that they change the spelling of names and give names to their children to give them an identity that is DIFFERENT than that of white men. ", "Am I the **only** person who actually looked up the most popular names for Black Americans?\n\n In true Reddit fashion, people are making a lot of unfounded assumptions about black Americans. As much as it will annoy most Redditors, but adding 'La' or 'De' to our names isn't as *prominent* as you like to think.  \n\nAccording to my [source](_URL_0_), the only states (and one city) that compiles and segments names by race are Colorado, Arkansas, Texas, and New York City.\n\nThe most popular black-American girls' names are:\n\n1.\tAaliyah/Aliyah\n2.\tAlexandra\n3.\tAlexis\n4.\tAlyssa\n5.\tAngel\n6.\tAniyah\n7.\tBrianna\n8.\tChloe\n9.\tDestiny\n10.\tDiamond\n11.\tGabrielle\n12.\tHailey\n13.\tHannah\n14.\tImani\n15.\tIsis\n16.\tJada\n17.\tJasmine\n18.\tJayla\n19.\tJordan\n20.\tKayla\n21.\tKennedy\n22.\tKiara\n23.\tLaila\n24.\tMadison\n25.\tMakayla\n26.\tNevaeh\n27.\tSydney\n28.\tTaylor\n29.\tTiana\n30.\tTrinity\n\nThe most popular black-American boys' names are:\n\n1.\tAnthony\n2.\tBrandon\n3.\tCaleb\n4.\tCameron\n5.\tChristian\n6.\tChristopher\n7.\tDaniel\n8.\tDavid\n9.\tElijah\n10.\tEthan\n11.\tGabriel\n12.\tIsaiah\n13.\tJames\n14.\tJayden\n15.\tJaylen\n16.\tJeremiah\n17.\tJordan\n18.\tJoseph\n19.\tJoshua\n20.\tJosiah\n21.\tJustin\n22.\tKevin\n23.\tMalik\n24.\tMatthew\n25.\tMichael\n26.\tNathan\n27.\tTyler\n28.\tWilliam\n29.\tXavier\n30.\tZion\n\n\nI'll leave you to your cognitive dissonance now.\n", "It's a cultural tradition to combine parts (syllables) of the names of family members and loved ones. Similar tradition to when a Jewish child is named after the most recently deceased relative. ", "Some of them are sound-alikes for French, some are African sound-alikes made by corrupting existing names, and sometimes they're rooted in an African language.\n\nSome examples of African names I found on baby name sites:\n\n* Dayo (\"joy arrives\")\n* Dejen (\"foundation, support\")\n* Desta (\"joy\")\n* Lekan (\"my wealth is growing\", shortened form of Olamilekan)\n* Leena (\"softness\")\n* Lerato (\"beloved woman\")\n* Lesedi (\"woman of light\")\n\nSome of them also may be from other languages. I remember reading something a while back about a woman who was mixed black and Japanese, and as such her name was Japanese. Not knowing it was Japanese, people called it ghetto.\n\n[Also, I think the somewhat-racist misinterpretation by white people has inspired some pretty hilarious actually-made-up names.](_URL_0_)", "I might get downvoted for this but I seriously feel bad for some black kids because of the names they are given. It seriously makes it harder for them in life. There are studies that show that it's harder for them to find employment if they have \"black\" first names. ", "The French and the Dutch had higher ratios of blacks in their colonies than any other nation... le  and de are conjunctions in names.\n\nSo it was seen as exotic or foreign at least to use names of that nature.", "I think it would be cool if blacks started using names like Sven, Ingvar, Ulrih, Hans and Zbigniew. :D", "A lot of Africa was colonized by France and Le means the where De means of so, \"LeGagner\" (ehh, not very black but a suitable example) becomes the winner instead of just winner (Gagner)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_names"], [], ["https://screen.yahoo.com/camp-ujaama-000000208.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnd6fzIohy1qlsumfo1_500.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobiliary_particle"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.babycenter.com/0_popular-african-american-names_10329236.bc"], [], ["http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5oU4dZnPnJ8/UpYP0eQdo_I/AAAAAAAADhQ/usq_H1JC3Bc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-27+at+8.28.27+AM.png"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yomo8", "title": "in the usa, why are wait staff tipped a percentage of the food bill, rather than a flat rate?", "selftext": "I've seen a lot of tipping-related ELI5s but nothing addressing this specific question, so here goes.\n\nI'm a Brit, I was just in Florida for 2 weeks on holiday, and the whole tipping system is very strange to me. But specifically, why are waitresses/servers in restaurants tipped a percentage of the food bill? Why not a flat rate of $X per table (or per person)?\n\nIf I order filet mignon and a bottle of wine, the worker writes down my order, takes it to the kitchen, fetches my drink, brings me my food, and then clears my table. If I order a salad and a glass of water, the worker does all those same tasks, but gets a far smaller tip. Or put another way, if I order the filet mignon and my friend orders the salad, we end up tipping vastly different amounts for identical service. How did percentages get to be so popular?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yomo8/eli5_in_the_usa_why_are_wait_staff_tipped_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpbgj5s", "cpbiezt", "cpbka0w", "cpbkktq", "cpbkszl"], "score": [5, 11, 5, 31, 13], "text": ["Overall, usually a larger bill means more work. This takes into account tables with different numbers of diners.", "Tipping is not really 'tipping' in the US. \n\nIt is treated a (percentage) tax for wait service. The more the bill, the higher the cost - but the percentage remains the same. Similar to Sales Tax on Goods. Your designer shirt will cost more in tax compared to the clearance bin, even though the tax percentage is the same - and the shirt is the same size. \n\nIt accomplishes two things. \n\nThe first thing is passes the cost of employment onto the customer. This allows restaurants to spend more money on quality ingredients, chefs, fixtures, etc. \n\nThe second thing is that it provides incentive for quality service. Since the 'tax' is 'flexible', waiters want to assure they get the most money. \n\nThe system works very well, actually. If you don't want to pay the 'tax', you're free to get take-away without paying tip and save on 20%. If you have a bad experience, you can pay less whilst making a statement. Lastly, high-end waiters and bartenders make a lot of money - even if their base pay is $3. I knew a few folks that earn over $70K a year waiting tables.\n\n", "Waiters are basically salesmen, and tips are basically their commission. The fact that a tip is a percentage provides incentive for them to provide better, more complete service - making good recommendations, helping to guide customers to something they'll enjoy, being knowledgeable of all the restaurant's options, making sure the customer has everything he or she wants.\n\n", "The percentage rate thing basically comes down to perceived consumer control. A flat rate, or more radically, paying servers a living wage and charging no service fee, removes [perceived] control from the consumer over how their restaurant experience goes.\n\nJay Porter, a California restauranteur, transitioned his restaurant from a traditional tip system to a No-tip, flat service fee back in 2006, and wrote a [series of blogs](_URL_0_) describing the experience back in 2013. They're a decent read and a worth a look if you're more interested in the subject, but the long and short of his experience is that people didn't like not being able to punish/reward their servers. He expands that the majority of complaints he got at the restaurant were from men who were upset they couldn't give generous tips to cute female waitresses.\n\nI say *perceived* control above, because (and this is only somewhat related the question posted) the idea that \"servers work harder for good tips\" is covered in Porter's blog and as anyone who's worked in a restaurant knows, is pretty much bunk. Servers get paid more when they work more tables, period. In general, customers tip the same no matter what kind of service they got, extreme cases of bad/good service notwithstanding. And since many restaurants pool tips among servers (and often distribute portions to cooks and bus staff as well) each individual server's performance has very little to do with how much that server takes home at the end of the night.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis video sums up why we tip pretty well, and some reasons why tipping is stupid too. Personally, I dont like tipping. The idea that I should be the one paying a waiters salary is idiotic. Even if I receive crappy service, not tipping makes me look like an asshole. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant-part-1-overview/"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k"]]}
{"q_id": "bzivln", "title": "Difference between real and ideal monatomic gas?", "selftext": "A level Physics, I have a question about internal energies of ideal vs real monatomic gases, however we havent covered this yet and I don't fully understand what the difference between these two is, please may someone explain? \n\nMany thanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bzivln/difference_between_real_and_ideal_monatomic_gas/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqv1eau"], "score": [15], "text": ["In an ideal gas, you neglect all interactions between molecules, and with any external forces.\n\nIn a real gas, you include intermolecular interactions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "120nw2", "title": "Is there any research to support the idea that the ingredients in \"super premium\" dog foods are superior to generic supermarket brands?", "selftext": "I work in a pet store and see people buying bags of dog food for anywhere from $15 to $70 a bag. While the cheaper foods have stuff like corn and chicken by-products, the high end kibbles have deboned turkey or salmon and potatoes. Regardless of ingredients, all the foods are AAFCO certified to have all the necessary nutrients for proper nutrition. Does any research support the claim that these ridiculously priced foods actually extend the lives or improve the quality of life for pets?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/120nw2/is_there_any_research_to_support_the_idea_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6rbpck"], "score": [2], "text": ["From the one study I found that addressed this: \"Digestibility of main nutrients varies significantly among commercial dry dog foods. This study demonstrated that there is no difference in digestibility of nutrients between high-price and low-price dog foods offered in the Norwegian market.\"\n\n\u00c5shild Krogdahl, \u00d8ystein Ahlstr\u00f8m, and Anders Skrede\nNutrient Digestibility of Commercial Dog Foods Using Mink as a Model\nJ. Nutr. 2004 134: 8 2141S-"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "10d0gi", "title": "Is it possible to transplant teeth? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10d0gi/is_it_possible_to_transplant_teeth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6cem8a"], "score": [2], "text": ["Yes it's possible but not with high success rates\nIn the olden days, rich people bought teeth from poor people and they would basically swap their dentition with each other. Rich people tended to have worse teeth because they could afford sugar."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3xefbq", "title": "how do people learn to hack? serious-level hacking. does it come from being around computers and learning how they operate as they read code from a site? or do they use programs that they direct to a site?", "selftext": "EDIT: Thanks for all the great responses guys. I didn't respond to all of them, but I definitely read them.\n\nEDIT2: Thanks for the massive response everyone! Looks like my Saturday is planned!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xefbq/eli5how_do_people_learn_to_hack_seriouslevel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy3wur4", "cy3ww4e", "cy3xbcf", "cy3y8u4", "cy3ycpw", "cy3zw3n", "cy45ryr", "cy45w3d", "cy47bli", "cy486sh", "cy48ckw", "cy48fyb", "cy48jcd", "cy48lgd", "cy48mvw", "cy48vq3", "cy49fry", "cy4a5fy", "cy4a6tl", "cy4b0wd", "cy4bcy7", "cy4bgq6", "cy4bj56", "cy4bq3a", "cy4bqcz", "cy4btt6", "cy4bydf", "cy4bzsl", "cy4c3je", "cy4cwnn", "cy4eg04", "cy4em45", "cy4ep39", "cy4equt", "cy4f36f", "cy4fr2m", "cy4frka", "cy4fvkw", "cy4fxhs", "cy4g5xz", "cy4gdtx", "cy4gp1t", "cy4gz2v", "cy4gzqo", "cy4hl6a", "cy4iopu", "cy4it8z", "cy4iwqj", "cy4j731", "cy4j7go", "cy4jquo", "cy4ke8d", "cy4ki78", "cy4kk6b", "cy4ktie", "cy4morg", "cy4mt8m", "cy4mwaa", "cy4myb1", "cy4na2q", "cy4nldj", "cy4okx8", "cy4omtv", "cy4tx8u"], "score": [1701, 6, 1469, 256, 13, 2, 3, 8, 2, 27, 3, 13, 19, 17, 2, 2, 8, 2, 5, 5, 98, 6, 60, 52, 79, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Hacking is the second side of a coin.\n\nTo find exploits, you need to understand how something works.\n\nFor example, to do sql exploits, you need to know the syntax and all the common mistakes that developers make during development. Such as adding unsanitized user input to their queries.", "I'd imagine that most hackers are either enthusiasts or more likely in the field of information security or IT. You can't protect information if you don't know how your opponents get it in the first place.", "You need to understand the systems you're trying to break. \n\nMost cases they would have strong level of knowledge of networking and then a computer science background including programming and database concepts. \n\nMost people who consider themselves hackers know common security exploits from researching them and generally will be using programs someone else has wrote to try to accomplish goals. This is still useful for some security testing and stuff but the value of these two different peoples skill sets will certainly show on their pay cheques :p", "You wouldn't try to lockpick without first understanding how the lock works. If you want to exploit something, you first need an intimate understanding of how it works. To that end, you should focus your attentions on becoming a good programmer and computer scientist.\n\nFor example, let's say you want to discover exploits on the level of the recent and infamous [Heartbleed](_URL_0_) or [Stagefright](_URL_4_), both of which leveraged forms of [buffer overflow](_URL_1_) vulnerabilities present in their respective systems. First, you would need to have a deep understanding of how programs work at the assembly level, and how they're laid out in memory. You might need more specialized knowledge, like that of how the Android operating system works. Once you master those, you will easily come to understand naturally how a buffer overflow attack works, and, with painstaking work, may discover one in real life.\n\nBut none of this happens unless you first understand how the underlying system on which these vulnerable platforms are built works. So if you, for example, wish to discover a buffer overflow exploit in some popular piece of software, you should focus first on becoming a capable programmer, to the point where you understand what's going on at a low level, where these exploits happen. And so it is with every other type of hacking. Want to learn how [cross-site scripting (XSS)](_URL_3_) works? Understand basic web development first.\n\n**TL;DR: Learn to build and learn how it's built before you try to break.**\n\n[This course](_URL_2_) on Coursera gives a great overview of different kinds of \"hacking,\" of how they work and their applications, but it won't be easy to follow if you don't first have the prerequisite programming knowledge.", "Hacking is basically making a tool/item/ device do something it is capable of but not necessarily designed for. And to do that you need to know how it works. \n", "Hacking is just knowing something so well that you are able to \"break\" it in a way that's beneficial. \n\nSo as a really simple example if you have something protected by a pin number (4 numerical digits). what happens if I type in \"abcde\".  Does it break? Does it break in a way that would allow me to get around the pin protection?\n\nThat's all hacking is.  Breaking things. ", "Hacking skill is achieved by understanding a system, and thus understanding ways in which it can break. If you know how something is built, and how all the parts work together, you can have an understanding of ways to break it. You also can learn about common mistakes (and possibly figure out very rare mistakes) that are made. Then it's just a matter of building something that can attempt your idea to break it. Even if your attempt fails, it may return data that you can use to learn about the system you are trying to break. Hackers tend to be the type of people that disassemble and reassemble things, and hacking can include both physical and digital activities, as it's all about developing an understanding of some sort of system.\n\nYou could say that particle physicists are hacking the universe to understand its rules and take advantage of them.", "Social Engineering. Easiest hack of all. Using \"password\" as a password. Picking up a thumb drive and inserting it into a computer. Holding open a door to a \"secure\" area for a \"contractor\" with their hands full... Silly humans are easy. ", "Think of a computer as a human body and a hacker as a wrestler. The human body (computer) is great, but if the wrestler (hacker) has studied the body (computer) then they know how it works and can creatively find pressure points (holes) on the body (computer) and exploit them. Like any old choke hold (virus) was made to do.", "Lets say your a mechanic you work on cars to prevent anything from going wrong and if something does go wrong you know how to fix it.\n\nIf you purposely do something to the car that you know can harm it in some way, you are now a saboteur. If you change something on the car to make it do something totally different you now have a custom build.\n\nso .....programmers/hackers/soft & hardware engineers.\n\nJust like a mechanic can do custom jobs; programmers can hack.", "Most young people learn by reading websites and bulletin boards and experimenting with known freeware hacking programs. There are different levels of hack - many young hackers don't actually know too much and are just literally copying what someone else did to modify a game, or access a server they should not, or to install and use slave (RAT) software on other peoples computers. Note most young hackers who try more serious things (like hacking into their school server and changing grades) get caught and end up with terrible sentences (fines, convictions, jail time) which ruin their lives.  \n\nThe next level of serious hacker will be someone like me, who has programmed computers for tens of years, is expert level coder in several languages and as part of their job has to implement secure systems for various companies. I have to know all the tricks the bad hackers try to use to break into my server so I can add code and software to stop them. So my systems will have firewall, anti-spam, mail-relay protection, sanitized input, bound variables, SSL, hashed database or persistent storage for sensitive data, will be PCI compliant etc. I am in a race with the expert level hacker (explained below).  \n\nThe third type is an expert level hacker who has years of coding experience, lots of knowledge of Unix/Linux internals, networking low-level code, existing tools for network snooping, key logging etc. and the ability to use phishing to access servers or accounts that are not theirs. Phishing and rainbow tables are the number 1 way a serious hacker will get into your system, but these expert guys also watch the releases from Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Apple etc. on found vulnerabilities and create code to exploit them. People are very slow to install critical fixes so there are literally thousands of PCs and servers out there available to hackers just using the known already-fixed  exploits. However if the hack is targetted phishing is the more likely access point where the hacker will try to keylog a targets authentication details or contact the targets service provider and pretend to be the target (the person they are hacking) to get or change access info. Professional hackers may steal web domains, or change website contents, or steal financial information, or setup the targets PC for file storage of illegal movies or porn, or put malware on a server to gradually open up more access points and higher levels of access. Alternatively they might just try to make a companies website unavailable through denial of service attacks. They may work for a government or be doing corporate espionage.  \n\nSo if you are starting out, you will most likely be the first guy. Good luck not getting caught. There are websites like 2600 and organisations like Anonymous dedicated to hacking. Note as you search for hacking resources it is very likely you will get added to the FBIs watchlist and cyber-crime is a very high government priority and cyber-terrorism is very real.  The more a countries infrastructure is being controlled by computer servers the more damage expert level hackers can cause and the more people like me will earn trying to stop it before it happens.  \n ", "27 years of experience using UNIX since I was a small kid. Became interested in security engineering in college. Have worked in the field for 10 years post college. \n\nThe qualities I find most useful are a good short term memory, a certain indefatigableness and preternatural ability to cope with tedium, and an ability to ruthlessly pursue quality and reliability in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds of encountering incompetent coworkers, supervisors, and executives. \n\nIn addition to that, you have to love working with computers for the sake of itself, not just for profit, or a direct deposit, or because of sci fi, video games, or other cute but ultimately useless pursuits. ", "Definitely not a good ELI5 response, but thought I'd add more info:\n\nTo learn 'serious level hacking', you need to know how a system works. The things that come to my mind are:\n\n* Programming, python is pretty easy to start off with, C is the granddad of all languages (and it's good for learning system level stuff). SQL for DB, though it isn't a programming language. \n\n* Standards, such as Posix, what's TCP/IP, networking protocols, SSL, etc\n\n* How the modern Web works, different popular servers, how they work, etc. \n\n* Known vulnerabilities and common mess ups, such as SQL injections and XSS. \n\nOnce you have this knowledge, besides ton loads of other stuff like Networking, you can attempt to find vulnerabilities in systems and hack them. \n\nIf this seems too arduous, the other way is learning to use tools like Metasploit, learning how to use automated tools to scan for known vulnerabilities and hoping somebody messed up. \n\nEx. If there's a known bug in some version of Apache(Web server), scan through a huge list of sites, hoping to find one which hasn't been patched yet. \nAlternatively, search through IP addresses and grab banners(sort of like the welcome text when you attempt to connect), to try and find somebody who hasn't patched an old version of software that has vulnerability. \n\nThis isn't respected(guys who do this are called script kiddies and derided). \n\nEdit:clarity", "One very, very simple example. I have a friend whose last name is Null. When she signed up for an account, it caused quite a few things in the companies system to not work as expected. The programmers didn't account for \"Null\" being entered into a table called last name.", "I was the IT manager to a small medical company (500 employees and 25 offices).  A hacker first needs access to the network.  This is simpler than most imagine.  You won't believe how many employees use post-it notes on their monitors.  Or...if it's a man with a nice sports car (such as executives and directors), you can try their car models as their passwords.  For women with pets, it's always their pet's names.  Try the names of their kids.  It's not hard.  Bump into them at lunch at a near-by McDonalds during lunch time and strike up a conversation.  Sure, you may have to include the year of the car, or try some 1's and 0's at the beginning or end.  You'll eventually get in.  This is why we FORCE password changes once every few months.  The users hate this, but admins have a reason for this cumbersome task.\n\nOnce they have access to the network, the hard part is done.  Now you can take your time and study the system and it's exploits.  You can run 3rd party software or run your own commands - depending on your expertise.  Read the rest on SQL exploits.  That's if they use SQL.  Maybe it's Oracle, etc.  \n\nWe also had people calling into the help desk claiming to be reps from Verizon who need immediate access to our network.  Some low level techs actually give out their credentials.  Ugh....", "Hacking comes in many different forms, hacking a website is different than hacking a server or a database even. I have absolutely no knowledge of coding, yet there are programs and info that anyone can use to hack without prior study. I used to hack lineage 2 servers for items and whatnot (rpg mmo game), the server sends packets to you, and then you send packets to the server goes like a string of numbers for X Y actions.\n\nOpening shops in the game sends the XXXXXXXXX packet to you, you choose the action u wanna perform like buying a shield and u send other YYYYYYYYYY packet to the game server, you download a program to un hide the XXXXXXXXXX YYYYYYYYYYY to numbers and then u grab a packet and sending it to the server again, and u get items without paying the money or even going near the shops.\n\nYou can also hack a database by going to its location, works everywhere and with anything, and its like in the movies, a guy with a small server logs into the psychical server machines and changes it from the core, like going to the datacenter in germany that hosts the x lineage server, and changing things from the source, aka the packets that the server sends to players.\n\n", "Well, many people I know start by picking apart some application they like - games in my case\n\nYou tinker with files, it does stuff, you tinker with network packets using publicly available tools and it does stuff, eventually you want to take it a step farther and analyze the programs themselves but that requires programming knowledge and assembly knowledge so you get to learning because you've got some incentive, then once you're proficient enough to do *something* and get results, you keep pushing and pushing and learning until you've gained a mastery of the subject.\n\nFor web applications, same rough concept, keep tinkering until something unexpected happens that is exploitable. Eventually if you're driven enough you develop your own exploits for popular web software, then you can even move on to analyzing script processing engines to try to find exploits in those things.\n\nIt's basically a long, incremental process that spans over a long period of time, usually self-taught in my experience then later supplemented by knowledge of those around you, and yourself.", "\"Zero Day Vulnerabilities\" are extremely hard to find (and are worth a significant amount of money). One way to get hold of them is to keep an eye on disclosures from security researchers and gamble that your victim has not deployed the patch.\n\nA better way to learn how to \"hack\" is to go to a bar and learn social engineering. No matter how secure a system is; a password is a password.\n\nReal-world hacking is very, very rarely what you see on TV. No code, no \"decrypting the code,\" none of that hollywood garbage. There are a vanishingly small amount of films which feature real vulnerability-based hacks. The vast majority of hacking happens on a phone or in public records.", "Security Engineer reporting in.\n\nBiggest thing to understand is that you can, but should not, in any circumstance, fuck around with actually hacking something live. Unless you have fully thought that through, and have a plan for yourself set in motion. Even just as a test, or if you wanted to ever try a new skill, don't risk that because when you're new and you don't know what you're doing, your tracks could trace back to you.\n\n\n\nThere are multiple ways to go about hacking as well. \"Serious-level hacking\", the kind of shit you see in the news, that takes a long time to get to that level. Not that it's *impossible* to get to, but it requires a very large amount of understanding on multiple levels to get to that point.\n\n\"Hacking\" is all about manipulating and understanding the logic flow of a system you're trying to break.\n\nTo answer your questions, yes and kind of. Hackers use a multitude of tools to assist in what they do, whether its recon or delivering a payload. Many programs exist that automate attacks, and the hacker can leverage these tools to make their assault that much easier.\n\nThat is to say that hacker isn't as EASY as firing off an automated attack, you have to understand what these are doing and how they're affecting your target.", "We need to draw some dividing lines first.\n\nOn one hand you have criminal for-profit hackers.  Then there are security experts commonly called white hat hackers.  Those can be corporate or amateur and the amateur category are not always purely benign.  Then there are device hackers that play with hardware in clever ways.  Then there are professional targeted hackers, usually state-sponsored.\n\n\nCriminal hackers looking to make money don't need to be especially skilled.  They need rudimentary programming skills and a knowledge of basics like VPN use and proxies.  They shotgun the web with phishing links and viruses, knowing they won't get anyone savvy to fall for it, but hoping there are enough little Esther's from Peoria and grandma Ruths in Florida that fall for it to assemble a collection of bank accounts or a botnet of compromised computers to sell access to.\n\nSecurity professionals have a decent education and often certifications in security and networking, but the majority of the heavy lifting is done with automated tools that can attempt many known exploits in short order.  \n\nAn offshoot of security experts are the real wizards that have a deep knowledge of hardware, software, information theory and other heavy magic that actually locate and publish the exploits that criminals and security professionals alike will be using six months from now as part of their toolkits.  These people typically are very specialized, and usually carry a PhD or a lot of industry experience of they've found multiple day-0 exploits, and often work in teams because of the specialization needed.\n\nAmateur hackers that do it for the fun of it combine a bit of the above with a bit of the next category, some run their own networks and hack and counter-hack them, others play wargames on specialized networks, others just like deep customization and the joys of creation.  This is closest to the original meaning of hacker.  I consider myself one, if quite amateur.\n\nDevice hackers love poking at things and finding out what makes them work.  They must know some moderately complicated subjects like low-level programming on dedicated chipsets and embedded processors, and need to know as much or more about analog and digital electronics as computers, and have to be good at reading schematics as well as navigating the vast and confusing world of white-label Chinese bespoke manufacturing.  typically the chips involved will not be commercial chips but a clone of one, and figuring out what is what is a big part of the battle. \n\nThen you have the real heavy hitters, only because they can hit you with more than a virus if they have to.  State-sponsored hackers typically use exploits developed by their governments experts (see #3 above) or bought on the open market.  They usually look for a degree and certifications, but are usually deploying conventional penetration methods and purchased or in-house developed exploits.  It is the resources they have, not their skill, and the more or less legal immunity they enjoy that makes them problematic.\n  ", "My comment is too long so I am going to have to break it up into parts.\n\nPART 1\nI feel as though none of these comments are necessarily accurate, or at least not capturing all of the right information, so I am going to make my first Reddit post ever to throw in my two cents.\n\nTo preface, I work in IT Security, specifically as a penetration tester, security researcher and malware forensics expert (basically these could all just fall under penetration tester/researcher). Normally someone might choose a single one of theses disciplines, but I worked for a small consulting firm when I first started out and had to become a jack of all trades. Now, when I say penetration tester, I do not mean I run Nessus, see what is says, notice a SQL injection vulnerability listed, and exploit it. I feel all of these answers could be Googled, and sort of hint at that method of penetration testing. It is not that that isn\u2019t what a lot of pen-testers do, but I wouldn't consider them very skilled, and really you could plug results into Metasploit and hit \"Exploit\" and do the same thing so why pay someone (regulatory rules aside)?  So I will seek to answer your question as best and personally as I can, including my experiences in the industry. \n\nTo begin, I attended University not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I always enjoyed debate, specifically finding flaws in other people's arguments, and so I jumped into a Philosophy degree. That being said, I only did that as filler, because after high school, you don't think about what you want, you just go to University. Anyway, I spent two years pursuing my philosophy degree, but always enjoyed my logic courses and kept doing math electives to keep sharp on that (also my Dad was a physicist so, had to do some math). I drank a lot, and bar tended, but I also didn't sleep a whole lot and was obsessive about specific things. Namely, I really enjoyed design and tinkering with programs. I ran Ubuntu as my main OS, because I didn't need Windows, I could run N64 Emulators to get my Legend of Zelda kick, but mostly I ran Ubuntu because I was obsessive. I could control, modify, and blow out any part of the operating system I didn't like. I switched to Arch as its much more granular, and I would spend weeks customizing the system to be exactly what I wanted, then I would destroy it, and start from scratch. I still do this, I cycle operating systems every month or so, but keep a main custom Arch build for when I need it. \n\nAround second year one of my bar patrons and I were talking and he asked if I knew anything about website design/development because he knew I liked computers. I lied and said yes, I knew a lot about web development. He was actually a graphic designer and asked if I wanted some freelance work doing web development stuff. I needed the extra cash, so I said sure. He emailed me what he wanted done, client expectations, a deadline, and a figure for payment. The deadline was in two weeks, I knew no HTML/CSS/Javascript. I knew python, and other scripting languages because you can't really be efficient (in the way I wanted) in linux without knowing some scripting. So, being an unhealthy SOB I bought some cocaine, some redbull, and a book on HTML and CSS, and went to work. I didn't sleep for a couple of days, but it wasn't the cocaine, it was the code. I was hooked on the logic of it, on the level of control it allowed.\n\nI delivered the first project on-time, and the patron was happy, so I did some more projects for him, varying in degrees of difficulty. Eventually, I taught myself Javascript also, then I added Ruby on Rails, some Java when a small applet was required, and carried on with the Linux using, the obsessive blowing out of operating systems, and the rebuilding. \n\nEventually, I was updating a site for a client of the patrons, and I noticed something wasn't quite right with some of their code. Essentially, by adding a comment to their message board, I was able to execute commands under the context of the user viewing the comment. So, if an admin viewed the comment, it would silently submit a web form (from elsewhere on the site) that added a new user (myself) as an admin. Of course I had access to the site code, and the hosting provider anyways, but it didn't matter. Again I was hooked. This combined my two favourite things... my obsession with logic and debate. Debate is about making the best case or argument on a topic; thats basically hacking. Your argument is good, mine is better.\n\nI immediately dropped out of university and took a job as a sales associate at the first electronics store I could get into... which happened to be a fruit.", "Type 1: Script Kiddy - these guys usually have a passing knowledge of the system they are trying to break, and often aren't interested in either the more technical or practical \"hacking\", instead choosing targets of typically \"funny\" or simple but profitable nature. Often teenagers or young adults who claim to be hackers fall into this category.\n\nType 2: Social Hacker - these guys usually have a bit more in depth knowledge of the systems they try to break into, though their means of gathering this info and gaining access are typically social in nature. Meaning that instead of attempting brute forcing scripts, code manipulation etc. they call up people in the company pretending to be staff members and ask for access or variations thereof.\n\nType 3: Hacker - the \"real thing\". These guys will usually spend weeks or months pouring over the source code (if they can get it), the public access stuff, or crunching away at likely points of access. They typically have an excellent knowledge of systems and how they are built and used. They then attempt to use this knowledge to turn very small (or big on occasion) loopholes in the code, interface, or processes of a company in order to gain unauthorised access, typically to a database. They often use the same techniques as both the Script Kiddies and the Social hackers, as well as scripts and tools they build themselves in attempts to crack the system.\n\nBonus: White Hat vs Black Hat\n\nWhite Hat - these guys are the \"good side\" of hacking, typically taking jobs attempting to break systems for companies, in order to show up the flaws so that they can be fixed.\n\nBlack Hat - these guys are the \"bad side\" of hacking, typically breaking into, or just breaking systems for profit or the hell of it.\n\nP.S. All of the skills and tools needed to hack in any level are readily available online, though like most things, to get good takes practice and patience. A quick google search should reveal various resources to teach yourself, if you are interested.", "PART 2\n\nI worked at this store during the day, and dived into coding at night. Eventually I came across Offensive Security, the developers of BackTrack (at the time), and now Kali. These guys know their stuff, and several of their team members were responsible for writing many excellent pieces of exploit code (they run an exploit database called exploitdb). They offered a course called \"PWB\" or \"Pentesting With BackTrack\". $750.00 and I was in. The course was not like most technical certification courses you see. There was courseware to work through, videos to watch, and demos to try. But there is also a lab, filled with mock systems, that you hack your way through, attempting to pivot into more important areas of the network, from user space to admin space. The exam was 24 hours, and actually tested your skills. You had to proove you could hack and steal flags as verification of these skills. You couldn't use automated tools (you had one lifeline so to speak), and you really had to look for holes in design, and configuration etc. I passed the exam and thought \"This is definitely what I want to do\". I applied for a job as a security analyst at a small security consulting firm. I had 0 experience on paper, but a friend of mine worked for a company that was a large client of theirs, and said \"give him a shot\" so they did. I got the job and dived right in. One year later I was working on the penetration testing team, and 6 months after that I was the team lead. I furthered my Offensive Security training and completed their \"Cracking the Perimeter\" course. This was much more advanced, and the exam was a 48 practical. I slept for maybe three or four hours in order to complete and pass it. \n\nI did some malware forensics during my time at this firm, as they sometimes didn't have enough staff to fill client requests, so I learned about malware in an in depth way. So I started building it. There is a fine line between malware and the tools I use to conduct pentests. And it is at THIS point I feel we get into your \"serious level hacking\" question, and where I feel the other answers aren't detailed enough to explain how people learn to hack.\n\nMost penetration testers you meet, and firms developing projects for clients to conduct penetration tests, look at a list of systems provided by the client and say \"Yes it will be $X to conduct vulnerability scanning and penetration testing on these 50 systems and three web applications\". And to Mr.or Mrs. Client, they think \"OK these guys know their stuff\". This is fundamentally flawed. The goal of any good penetration test, and tester, should be one thing; to access whatever it is that is critical to the client. If you are a software development company that happens to have a wordpress blog (I'll never understand why companies like fucking wordpress so much) that is hosted on _URL_0_ or wherever else, and doesn't connect to your internal network, who gives a shit if some script-kiddy knocks it offline (unless reputational damage is a big deal). Keep backups, blow the thing out, and bring it back online. \nWhat you should be interested in, is what you consider critical... in the case of the software company, likely source code, maybe custom tools used for development processes etc.\n\nThat is where a real \"hacker\" comes in. You don't want someone who is going to say \"yup their is a sql injection vulnerability on your website and using that I found the admin password\". Run automated vulnerability scans, plug the results into Metasploit Pro and click run, and you will see that same information. You want someone who is going to make a better argument than your IT team. Your IT team says \"We have a complete control instance to protect our source code. We have firewalls, an IDS or IPS, McAfee anti-virus, and mail filters. We are in good shape.\" Maybe the IT team tested all of these components individually and they worked. McAfee found some sample malware they put on the system and cleaned it, the firewalls only allow outbound traffic to HTTP(S) for users, and only limited connections where necessary for servers etc. They have a DMZ, they have IDS alerts sent to IT when they hit a certain criticality threshold. User's don't have admin rights to their systems, and there are only a set number of admins on the network. On paper, this seems great. A firm comes in, they scan the firewalls, find no holes, send a payload to a user and the mail filters pick it up. The users computers are running the latest windows patches, and every patch Tuesday, IT updates the systems. The websites don't show any SQL injection, or any high risk vulnerabilities at all.\n\nThen we get someone who actually knows what they are doing, and is going to OBSESS about getting your source code from you, to prove their argument is better. They aren't just going to run tools, they aren't just going to look for known exploits that are 0-to-Root. ", "PART 3\n\nWhat they will do is something like this; they start poking at your websites, and like the script-kiddy tester, they find no high risk vulnerabilities. Maybe, what they find is an open redirect (_URL_4_ _URL_1_). They then duplicate the clients website and purchase a domain extremely similar to the clients. Clients site is \"_URL_3_\" they buy \"_URL_0_\" (in the browser the I would look like a lower case L). They then add a simple piece of code that simply detects the web browser used by the clients users, and the plugins. They send an email from a seemingly harmless 3rd party email address asking a question about the website. The users name is easily scraped from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, whatever, and formatted according to the usual email conventions. User hovers over the link in the email, notices that the URL is in fact for their website (with a bunch of stuff at the end as always) and clicks the link. They are immediately re-directed to the malicious website, that looks exactly the same as the client site, and has all of the correct links and buttons that will re-direct back to the actual site. The attacker makes note of this information on web browser, plugins, etc, and begins hunting for exploits. Here there are two options; use an existing one, or develop one. Generally, a client is not paying enough, or does not afford you enough time to design one from scratch (unless it is for their own software or application, or whatever), but that doesn't matter because even though IT roles out Microsoft updates every Tuesday they only patch Adobe products once a quarter. An exploit is available to the hacker, and they customize it to deliver a special payload. Personally, I like to load malicious payloads via Powershell directly into memory so they never touch the harddrive of the system. If they don't touch the harddrive, this means the AntiVirus won't scan them (usually and even so AV is dead simple to bypass). The custom payload communicates back to the attacker over HTTPS, and is encrypted so all appears normal to the IDS (because their signatures arent always that great, and unless you are using Meterpreter or something there is no reason they would have a signature for your specific payload).  The hacker then sideloads some more powershell scripts (for instance these pre-made ones _URL_2_), or whatever else floats their boat, pokes around the network to discover systems, naming conventions, custom applications running on the system, services,  protocols etc. and whatever else they can get their hands on. Maybe, they discover that like most large companies, oogle IT has setup systems to attempt PXE boot (_URL_5_) prior to regular boot for new system imaging, quick deployments of new Operating Systems, etc.", "PART 4\n\nThe attacker might choose to setup a simple TFTP/DHCP server with no gui and some preset configs. Now they set an image to be pulled off of a website that will be loaded should a system PXE boot and request instructions (a pre-built example is KonBoot _URL_2_ though some modifications would be necessary). This essentially modifies the Windows kernel when booting to allow ANY password to be entered at prompt and accepts it as the valid password. The hacker could locate an Admin system (using information from the enumeration stage) and trick the system when it reboots to apply updates in the night (again very common) to load this evil PXE image. They then have administrative control over a system, and are able to backdoor it, perhaps place a malicious Windows Service DLL that is set to load via rundll at boot time or something... options are endless. As an admin, the hacker can now use PSEXEC or WMI or basically whatever they want to control remote systems. Using a tool like Mimikatz (_URL_0_) they could dump the admin's clear text credentials from memory (on the next reboot, not when Konboot or the custom tool has modded the kernel) and use those to access the domain controller. From there, they can create a new user as an admin, so when this is logged it won't necessarily appear suspicious, and make any administrative modifications they require with the stolen admin account. They can also delete logs when they perform admin functions, making it much harder to figure out what's going on. Now, they give permissions to their regular user to access source code repositories. As the user was created under the \"Developers\" OU, and the company has many developers, no one is likely going to notice this, at least not for several months (honestly they probably won't ever with most companies, even if they are checking for things like this). The hacker has now owned a user, an admin, the network, and has the source code which is what we are concerned with. They showed how an entire set of control instances were not effective at preventing a breach, and using methods that would not have been detected by a vulnerability scanner, by running a point and shoot tool, or if the scope was restricted to 50 systems. \n\nThe point I am making (in this incredibly long winded comment/rant) is that saying \"You need to understand how something works\", though perfectly valid, is not all encompassing of what it takes to become a hacker. Knowing what SQL injection is, or how to run a vulnerability scanner, or tool like metasploit does not make a hacker. Obsession, pure Obsession is what makes a serious hacker. You have to WANT to rip everything apart, to find every logic flaw. If you have that personality type, the rest is a natural consequence (like learning to code etc.). I say this because this is always what is missed in these types of answers, or movies. If you want the closest to reality version of a hacker, watch Mr. Robot. Not saying the hacks are all good (though they are almost all rooted in truth, some even being easily duplicated (_URL_1_) but the personality of Elliot is pretty much bang on. Not every good hacker is going to have such serious social problems, but I guarantee you every one of us gets that \"itch\" he talks about. An itch in your brain you can't scratch until you have found every flaw in an argument.\n\nIf you are curious about some good resources to get started, I linked to several things in the comments. If you want some more guidance (goes for anyone) feel free to PM me. Or if people are interested, Id be happy to deliver a comprehensive hacking 101 course via a blog or something that doesn't just tell you what to do, but explains why and how to do something. I would need sometime as I am pretty busy at the moment. If people hate this comment because it so damn long, please downvote me into eternity.", "A hacker isn't always someone who is proficient with computers. The basic skill is really just understanding how to bend rules. There are rules that all systems use to operate. Rules about who can access a store of information, rules about what to do if there are problems in a system, rules about what to do when information is missing. A hacker knows these rules and figures out workarounds or ways to bend the rules in unexpected ways. \n\nA good hacker will use social engineering, exploit basic human behavior, as well as technical tools to achieve their goals. ", "Hacking is breaking something as much as programming is creating. sometimes when creating something you learn flaws or issues \"bug\" that cause unexpected errors or mistakes. these bugs can be \"exploited\" to cause a specific beneficial outcome finding bugs no one else knows about is the mark of a talented hacker or professional penetration tester [as I explain here more about those unique exploits called zerodays](_URL_0_)\n\n\nThose people are at the frontier or cutting edge it doesn't just require an ability to program, but also a knack for breaking things and some high level problem solving or curiosity, similar skill sets to game testers.\n\n\nBut once those issues are found and documented, they aren't always cost efficient to fix or maybe people are just lazy, imagine paying to fix a bug like buying home/car insurance everyone should have it, not everyone does.\n\n\nAnyway, once they are documented, they are public information, you can just google them \"known exploits for ...\" just like you would say when buying a car, some cars might have known issues with say the electronics, that can short them out, and maybe that short causes the electronic locks to open, so if you pop the hood on a car and dick with window wiper wires, you might open the doors, and this \"bug\" is on some review websites because it might put you off using or buying it, but you can also use that to find the bug and use it for malicious gain.\n\n\nsometimes enough bugs are found for specific software, that people can write software or scripts to automate checking for various bugs, maybe it uses sql injection and trys various known bugs. these are called scripts, and sometimes people who don't know how to hack, can aquire these scripts and just run them, like hackers in a game, they are often called \"script kiddies\" because it requires little know how. These scripts can be sold for professional penetration testers, professional hackers who's job it is to test security, just like buying lock picks or a crow bar, its legal but not always used for legal reasons.\n\n\nhere is a video on SQL injection for instance, it also explains how it works\n\n\n_URL_1_", "In order to hack something you must understand it.  If I wanted to hack an old grandfather clock, I need to open it up and look at it.  Some of the tools I use are the common tools that a clock maker would use.  These are tools used to assemble and disassemble but also tools to look at the gears, say a magnifying glass for the smaller gears and springs.  Depending on the hack I want, I might even need to know how to make a new spring or gear.  I might even need to make a new tool in order to install the new springs and gears.\n\nTo learn this, I might do a lot on my own.  Taking apart clocks and looking at whats inside and figuring out how they work.  Buying books and reading about clocks and clockmakers.  Or I could go to a school to build this knowledge.  Chances are, I will also reach out to clock makers and other people to help me learn more.\n\nIt's the same for computers but the tools are different.  The simple mechanics of physics are replaced by the simple mechanics of programming languages.  You look inside with programs instead of a magnifying glass, you assemble and disassemble using programs instead of tools.  Instead of grinding new gears you write code.  Instead of making a custom tool, you write a custom program.\n\nIf you want to be an expert clockmaker or an expert hacker, you need years and years of practice.", "Time and an understand of how things are constructed. For example, if you want to do a buffer overflow, you first need to know how memory works in the language you're working with. From there you might be able to throw a reverse shell, basically a command line session that allows you a remote connection to your target.\n\nIt first starts with a basic understanding of how the different parts of a computer interconnect. Not necessarily to the degree of knowing exactly how things work, but a decent general knowledge. Moving to a programming language is the next step. Understanding how code is written will be useful in the long term since you'll be able to identify avenues of attack when doing an assessment and develop your own exploits. The last few steps involve moving to advanced topics: know networking in-depth (free CCNA classes really help), know multiple languages you will see in the field (big one is Python for script development, JS, C, Bash, SQL), and advanced programming (like data structures and how memory really works).\n\n\nThe other big tool is staying up to date on current happenings in the infosec field, such as new exploits or white papers. Find a handy script that allows reverse shell on a PHP web application? Save the script, keep a backup of said script somewhere, and understand how that script really works.\n\nSeveral resources I recommend.\n\nReddit itself: netsec, netsecstudents, programming, powershell, hacking, learntohack.\n\nBooks, all on Amazon: shellcoders handbook, Red Team Field Manual, Hacker Playbook 2, blue team incidence response handbook, and hacking the art of exploitation.\n\nNot quite a ELI5, more of an ELI10. Hope this helps!", "Being a hacker is a misnomer. You're real question, and thus answer is: \"How do people learn to program?\" If you learn programming you will see inherent inadequacies and or oversights that are _extremely common_, these issues often spread in pieces of code that are shared, copied and duplicated and so on and eventually you get a feel for what a piece of code does 'under-the-hood' just be using it because you know how you might implement that thing (Whatever it may be) then, you get the itch to test it and see what kind of mistakes they may have made and so on (Also, sometimes code is open, so you can go read it and discover issues directly in the source code)  \n  \n\nEdit: I should also note that many of the other descriptions on this page denote \"Script Kiddies\" not hackers. Hackers == programmers who fluently read and write code. Script kiddies == People who do not understand the underlying functions of written or read code but, can compile and run programs that exploit known issues in various applications and programs.   \n  \n\nAdditionally, a _vast_ majority of 'hacks' that touch normal every day people are automated and simply attack low hanging fruit and they're being tended by script kiddies. ", "Just do what they do in the movies ... Jvfiirsbkjcsklovfdukcethfzuydseguhcfrdvjgcgbkggdfhjvcdrgvhklmvvgjbvcdfbbjkvcdcvnjjvdschjbolnbgfddddrttfhujvginjigftghugftychjiff", "Hey reddit, science sounds cool.  How do I science?  I think I'll either cure cancer or make an antigravity suit.", "I've read a lot of comments regarding the technical side of hacking, and while they're all valid, there's a certain human element to it as well - The art of deception. Especially if you're going after a well secured system. \n\nKevin Mitnick is probably the best example for this type of reference in the art of hacking. He combined his in-depth technical knowledge with the ability to draw information out the most insecure systems in the world - Humans. It worked very well for him. And, before his arrest in 1995, he managed to stay under the FBI's radar for years using this combination of technical knowledge and social engineering.  \n\nI met him in Denver after his release when he was promoting his first book. The entire two hours he talked, it was all about his power to deceive people. Very little of it was technical. It wasn't only him either. The book he was promoting was a collection of stories written by other people whom have accomplished great \"hacks\" by nearly deceiving other people.  \n\nIn my opinion, he's a great example of what hackers should be. Even if his intentions were less than honest. \n\n ", "As part of my network security degree, I am learning ethical hacking. We learn how to hack and inject code using legal methods with virtual machines and sites that are made for being hacked and broken into. To anyone interested in learning, I recommend looking up National Cyber League. ", "People use a method called \"fuzzing\" which basically, in the words of Cave Johnson, \"...throws science at the wall to see what sticks\" by simply trying everything on every input. When you find an exception that isn't handled, you keep trying to see what you can get away with. \n\nThe basics though are just learning how to program, and realizing that every project doesn't have an expensive budget so devs cut corners to make shit work (less moving parts like security or validation mean less things stopping them from getting paid) so when you have database inputs you usually have something on a login screen like:\n\nIf (username_input_box = stored_username) then login\n\nBut they will mess with the logic by injecting something to make this statement true, like 1=1\n\nSo the input(username_input_box) may have something to STOP the current query that is being run (the variable from the input box is part of the running query in the back) and then they'll do something like \"1=1\" so that the statement returns the result for true, then they can just inject whatever query they want at the end (eg: Select everything from Users table) and they'll just keep trying to find out what the structure is until they have the whole database or the parts that they want. \n\n", "Hacking is essentially learning how something works, or doesn't as the case may be.  Then exploiting flaws to get it to do something that it's not intended to do.  Sometimes that flaw is in a person and that is know as social hacking. For example getting a person to reveal a password or other security information that normally isn't available to the hacker.", "Something I think is missing from at least the top comments is that hacking is as much a state of mind or character trait as anything else. There are many skills involved, but what really makes a hacker is curiosity. \n\nFor example. I look at a locked door and I see a barrier. Clearly someone doesn't want me over there, and unless I have an external need to get the other side of that door? I'm going to leave it be. \n\nHackery folks I know will see that door as: \n- purely a challenge\n- suspicious: what could someone want to be hiding?\n- stupid, because they've already checked out the rest of the building and found an open window and a spare key under a mat.\n- a barrier between them and something valuable. \n\nDoesn't matter if your favorite tool is SQL injections, nmap, a set of lock picks or some social engineering. You learned how to use those tools because when you open your eyes, you see a world of stuff to get into. ", "According to the Auto mod i wasn't wordy enough.\n\nKali Linux is a forensic penetration testing tool provided for free. You can use the materials on the site to get a real feel for \"hacking\" (which isn't really the word you should use unless you want the community to consider you to be a bit childish. It can be a bit.... direct) in how and *why* it's done.\n\nWith Kali linux, your router and a mobile you can get your feet wet without outlaying any cash. It'll help you figure out if it's your thing.", "It depends on what you're trying to hack. Website? software? hardware? It needs different skillsets.\n\nWebsite: XSS, SQL injection, CSRF, attacking remote shell/RDP ports, DDoS.\n\nSoftware: Buffer overrun exploit, copy protection cracking by modifying disassembled binary code...\n\nNetwork: Wifi sniffing, packet sniffing, installing fake SSL root certificate...\n\nAnd the most potent of all: Social Engineering. This exploits human nature to gain entry to everything.\n\nWhy do I know all these? Because it's how a security guy like me has to learn to protect myself and my company from the bad guys. You can't beat them unless you know all the tricks they use. Stay legal. Don't just hack, or you'd end up in jail sooner or later.", "I don't know about hacking after the mid-80s, but it came from a strong interest in how the actual model worked and then wanting to be able to root around in it. At that time, the model of mainframe were very difficult for the pc owner to get access to and if you learned their operations language, you were curious to try out more than the college would allow you to do. \n", "I was inspired as a child by the book hackers. The first story was about Kevin Mitnick. I started phone phreaking thereafter. \nEdit: the social engineering skills helped me tremendously for networking and sales later. There's more legit roads to learn that I guess. ", "I learned what I know by going to school for networking and security. \n\nAlso I enjoy out smarting the people I work with.", "I've been around computers my whole life.  Studied computer science in college, and currently work in the field.  Other than old exploits that are well known and have since been safeguarded against (like SQL injection), I have no idea how to hack.", "Did you know if you type your reddit password into a comment it shows up as stars on everyone elses screen but yours.   ********    See try it :)", "A lot of hacks rely on poor security posture of the network.  The hackers themselves don't even have to be that original.\n\nFor example, Home Depot hack was the result of Home Depot giving remote access to a third party contractor.  The third party contractor was spear fished (targeted email to employees) and malware (not written by someone else) installed to give them remote access to the third party contractor.  Once the hackers were in the third party's systems, they had access to HD's systems, and moved laterally to the point of sale systems.\n\nNot much originality there, no custom coding or unique zero day exploits, just leveraging existing tools against a poorly defended target.", "I may be a bit late here, but I work in computer security, a field I got into pretty much entirely because I was curious about hacking. \n\nFrom observing the people I studied with, others in the field, and various wannabe hackers, I would say that people who learn to hack things do so by being curious about computers, systems, and protocols to the point of obsession. There's a lot to learn when it comes to computer science, but most of it is very simple, and all of it can be found on the internet. \n\nThe ones who want to learn specifically to \"hack\" someone they don't like never tend to make it very far. At best they might find a tool someone else left lying around and become what is referred to as a script-kiddy.\n\nOccasionally a bored teenager will make it onto the news because they crippled a large corporation with an impossibly easy exploit like SQL injections that absolutely should have been patched up before the victim went live. \n\nThe ones that get far are the curious ones that can't leave a problem alone and have a lot of time to read, and a space to play with what they learn. \nBeing well versed in Google-Fu helps as well. \n\nEDIT: Formatting and spelling", "esr is a racist douche, but his primer on how to be a hacker is pretty good: _URL_0_\n\nHis primer on how to ask a question is a good place to start from there. Once you can break down a problem into steps, and use the internet to find out how to do each step, you are infinite.\n", "Most of the people here are only half right. \n\nThe problem is that \"hacking\" is a very general term that can refer to a whole bunch of different things.  Typically, though, it's made up of three parts:\n\n* **Vulnerability**:  A vulnerability is something that is wrong with a program or process that could potentially allow somebody unauthorized access.  For computers, an example could be a field on a webpage that doesn't satanized, so can accept SQL injection, or it could be a level one help desk staff member that can be called and asked to reset a password without any verification that you're who you say you are\n* **Exploit**:  This is the method in which the vulnerability is, well, exploited.  You have that vulnerable field on that webpage, this is the code you would type into it to dump all the usernames and passwords for the site.  \n* **Threat/Penetration**:  The use (or potential use) of an exploit on its matching vulnerability\n\nA special type of exploit is called a \"0-day\", which is when you have an exploit for a vulnerability that isn't widely known.  These are worth a lot on the black market, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  One of the things that made stuxnet so unique when it came out was that it had a large number of them, to the point that people thought it had government funding.\n\nIn terms of difficulty, discovering vulnerabilities requires the most specialist knowledge, either through tons of prodding, or being one of the people who developed the software in the first place.\n\nFollowed by that is the writing of exploits.  It requires some intense knowledge of computers and programming, but it's much more general, once you know what the vulnerability is.\n\nFinally, there's the threat, the actual exploiting of the system.  But don't kid yourself in thinking that this is \"easy\", successfully being able to penetrate a system does require intimate knowledge of what you're trying to get into, and also the exploit software itself.\n\n----\n\nSo, to answer your question, how does one become a hacker?  While they're all founded on a strong knowledge of computers, the answer really depends on what your goal is.  \n\nIf it's vulnerability discovery, teach yourself some higher level coding languages, and start participating in open source projects.  You'll start to see bugs that can be taken advantage of.\n\nIf it's exploit writing, learn a lot about the low level hardware of a system, and start teaching yourself assembler, so you can learn the basics of writing byte-code.\n\nIf it's penetrating a system, learn how to think about things from a security point of view.  Research the tools that are available, figure out conceptually how they work, even if you couldn't make it yourself.  Brush up on your acting, and social engineering skills.  It's almost always needed.", "[SANS](_URL_0_) is a group that does professional training on cyber security, and they have a class that is called [\"Hacker Techniques, Exploits, and Incident Handling.\"](_URL_1_)  Click the \"+\" icons next to the course syllabus sections to see what stuff they cover.  They list a lot of the tools that they teach in the course and talk about the basics in the course description.\n\nI had a more basic intro to cyber security course from them a few years back, and it was really well done.  Despite having a B.S. in Computer Engineering from a respectable school, there was just so much more they taught me about the underlying mechanics of why attacks are possible.  The courses are quite expensive though, so it's more of a thing that you get your employer to send you to :).", "So as others have stated, a knowledge of computers, operating systems, networks, and software development are very useful to start out with.  Generally a lot of people want to jump into hacking without knowing the underlying fundamentals of how things 'should' work.\n\nOne thing to keep in mind is that many hackers have specialties: there are people who specialize in breaking web-applications, hacking hardware, getting through physical security, network security, etc.  While there are certainly people who are good at all of these things, it's pretty rare.  \n\nI've certainly seen \"AppSec\" guys flounder with network stuff, and vice versa.  The guy who can break fancy new REST API driven Web App is probably not also the guy who can do 64-bit assembly work (if he is, hire him!).  Personally, I often feel I am a \"jack of all trades, master of none\" quite often!\n\nOne you learn how things work, you can move on to 'breaking' them.  Usually the budding hacker will either receive formal training via SANS, CEH, OSCP, or become a script kiddy and use tools and exploits they find on line.  There are also now some 'Capture the Flag' (CTF) sites you can use online to practice.  Some colleges even have their own teams and competitions!\n\nPerhaps one of the most important steps is to become part of a community.  There are many hacker conferences, irc channels and meetups, and having a mentor or peers can aid you greatly.  Even if you know what you're doing, there's ALWAYS tons of stuff you don't know.\n\nEventually, if they wish to succeed they will evolve to deeper level of understanding where they can find their own flaws and exploit them.", "Since the top comment is a person that doesnt know the different of an exploit and a vulnerability, I'll let a real hacker comment (I think I can call myself a real one, maybe its just my ego or maybe im cocky. maybe all 3).\n\nPlease note i just rolled out of bed, my grammar is going to suck, I'll probably make mistakes in this, and I probably won't fix them.\n\nI'm a \"mobile security researcher\", I write software exploits for a living. Sometimes as part of an audit (as a proof of concept), sometimes to sale to an org/agency, sometimes to sell to the public (see _URL_5_), sometimes for shits and giggles (if you have rooted an Android phone in the last 4/5 years, good chance I wrote or helped write the exploit you used).\n\nI learned out of a need. I had bought a phone that needed to be rooted (jailbroken equiv for Android) to allow VPN and remove the god awful Amazon mp3 app. YEARS ago some programming experience in VB, and I had decades of \"tinkering\" to get things to work how I wanted.\n\nI sat down and learned Java, dalvik (Android's \"java assembly\" language), some C, some arm assembly. I read lots of source code, read lots about Android, and linux's security freatures. Then I started tinkering. Trial and error. Reading. Buying new phones as I bricked them.\n\nFor those interested, here are some training material of our's, some recent disclosures, and a cringe worthy video of Tim and I talking about obfuscation and hacking the blackphone (I was sick, and a little hung over in the video, forgive me).\n\n_URL_1_ - Training I gave at Blackhat 2014\n_URL_0_ - Training Tim, Caleb and I gave at Defcon 2015\n\n_URL_4_ - Defcon 2014, Tim and I talking about hacking the blackphone, and obfuscation. Mostly obfuscation. Not the best video, but the content of the talk is legit.\n_URL_3_ - Recent Trustzone vuln beaups used in our unlock program \n\n_URL_2_ - HTC vuln/ exploit from earlier this year \n", "Pretty late to the game and I see they have done a good job answering your questions already, but I want to use an analogy for you to put this in to true ELI5 connotation. \n\nLet's say you own your house, or at the very least have lived in your place of residence for a good while. You see more and learn more about it the more you are around it. I.e. You start to notice how many windows and doors you have. You notice where the ventilation shafts for the AC and heat enter and leave the building, you notice creaky floor boards, loose paneling on the walls, etc. You end up getting pretty familiar with the flaws in your house. Take a look around, see how many windows you leave unlocked, or if you lock up your doors when you leave etc. Do you leave a spare key around outside somewhere? Are there loose panels that would allow you to pry them open and slip in to the walls, or vent shafts that you could crawl through to get in effectively bypassing said window and door locks?\n\nNow let's think about all these other buildings around you. Hey, they have doors and windows too. They have places where ventilation shafts enter and exit the building. Sure they may not be identical to your own building, but you have seen enough of your own to know fairly well how these work and how you could potentially exploit them on these other buildings. Do other people leave spare keys hidden in a hide-a-key rock or under the door mat?  Did someone accidentally leave a door unlocked? Did someone not realize a window lock wasn't engaged like they thought? How easy are those vent shafts to pry open etc. You get the point.\n\nHacking computers is fairly like that. You take some basic stuff usually with open source or what have you that you can borrow or 'rent' if we are keeping up the building analogy. You study this, learn where the flaws are and what to look for like we did with our houses. Now you realize that a lot of software uses same or similar coding styles.\n\nIn the end, it's not Quite that simple, but for analogy and ELI5 sake, this is a good way to explain it.", "Most hacks are devised by people who once or still do made their living as developers. People that actively contribute to a Linux distribution and have to develop and debug aspects of the operating system may realize that if they do this to that then they can trick it into doing this other thing. Then they may wonder, will this work on iOS? Oh look, it does!\n\nEDIT: They may turn these exploits in to get a bounty from the company and most white hat hackers only make an exploit public if the offending company refuses to do anything to fix it. An exploit that is new and only hackers know about is called a zero day exploit, once the company knows about the exploit, that is day 1 and until they fix it, it the days count up. Black hat hackers don't notify the company that made the software so the exploit remains zero day for as long as possible.", "Step 1: User, uses the system for practical purposes, basic tasks.\n\nStep 2: Advanced user, able to reconfigure the system, install/uninstall software. \n\nStep 3: Script kiddy, able to install and utilize programs/scripts made by more advanced users to exploit functionality in a way unintended by the system designer. \n\nStep 4: Learns to combine multiple hacking programs/scripts for use in practical situations. Able to find vulnerabilities, exploit, escalate privilege, retain persistent access. May learn to develop own tools or modify existing tools.\n\nStep 5: Proficient at finding and developing new vulnerabilities/exploits or to create entirely new functionality within systems. Very knowledgeable about the technology of choice. Often proficient at programing. Beyond this is just continuing to grow the level of understanding.\n\nHow do you step between the steps? Sometimes self taught, Google searches, reading research papers, mentors, school/coursework.", "First you learn how to code. Then you pretty much master coding.  If you don't you're just a script kiddie. \n\nThen when you understand how everything works and how things are built, you can \"hack\".  Hacking in it's traditional definition just meant an exceptional coder that would understand how things worked and sometimes reverse engineer them. ", "I can't say much for these days, but back in the 90's I did low level shit (mostly phreaking and pulling \"deleted\" info off of old systems) and hung out with kids WAY better than I was. For most of us it was the old nerd trope. We had a PC in our homes (we're talking '93 so this wasn't super common) and A LOT of free time.\n\nMy grandfather worked at a Goodwill and they would get computers donated when places would upgrade so I got o plug those in and dick with them after school.\n\n**but to answer your question**... Troubleshooting... As boring as it sounds 75% of what I learned was just testing DOS commands, I know I logged **HOURS** just typing random shit into prompt and seeing what, if anything it does.\n\n\n", "Certified white hat hacker/penetration tester here. \n\nHacking is just applied understanding. \n\nIf you look at a single sided pin and tumbler lock and key (the standard door lock in the US) from the outside, you might think that it's a very good system for preventing people from passing a given barrier. However, a deeper understanding of the mechanism plus a good intuitive understanding of basic physics gives you enough information to --with the final addition if a little bit of creativity -- come up with something like a bump key, which effectively abuses the pin-on-pin mechanism in a lock and the physics involved in transferring momentum, to create a moment where the crucial cylinder in a locking mechanism is defeated.\n\nHacking is doing virtually the exact same thing, except physics knowledge is less often (though not never) applicable. The more you come to know a system, and the more creatively you look at it, the more likely you are to think of a way to defeat it. \n\nHaving a vast store of knowledge of how systems work is also obviously essential, and knowing about historical vulnerabilities is a good way to start learning creative thinking. \n\nHere's one example: a form on a webpage takes as input, a string. Let's say it's a search engine, and the string is your search query. \n\nOn the back end, maybe your query is evaluated to text, and placed into a function like packages.Java.mypkg.questIons(\"your-search-terms\");\n\n you can see that your search terms are included as a string of text. This sometimes happens when they are passed in via a URL or something. Of course, it almost never works quite this way in real life because this is wildly insecure.\n\n Pause here for a moment and see if you can figure why.\n\nImagine if I, the user, knew that you were using my query string as unsanitized text in your code. Now imagine my query contained a quotation mark, followed by a close parenthesis, a semicolon, and my own code. \n\npackages.Java.mypkg.questIons(\"your-search-\"); myBadFunction(myArgs);\n\nSee? It would allow me to execute arbitrary code on their server. I could launch a remote shell, SSH in, and take control of their website. \n\n*This has been an exaggerated wildly simple example. Please don't correct me on why this would never work, thx. ^_^*", "You need to know a lot about that subject. Like a lot.\n\nExplore /r/netsec. Some articles explain how they found the flaw, and the reasoning. Sometimes is as simple as: I have thins wireless thing, I've changed the password to one with special characters, and the whole thing started to act funny.", "Don't forget a lot of the hacking you hear about today are kids just DDosing using scripts they didn't create, but every so often you hear some crazy shit like the the Target hack when the guy created a memory scrapper.. crazy.", "popularized \"hacking\" is usually script kiddies (using someone else's program to probe a target).\n\n\"Real\" hacking is usually just probing for weaknesses in a target's security and often isn't \"purposeful\" or even destructive.\n\nUsually the news calls actions  \"hacking\" that can be as simple as guessing a password or discovering an unsecured entry point into a network/server(sometimes as stupid as default passwords or weak encryption or exposed network traffic)\n\nSo it's not so much \"learning\" to hack, is understanding security and becoming knowledgeable on how to defeat it or identify weaknesses that can be exploited.\n\ntl;dr - hacking is essentially being knowledgeable enough to understand security vulnerabilities and know how to take advantage of them. there can be also many different categories of \"hacking\" (I.e. network,software,server,security,client, etc).", "I'm in a computer security course right now. I started with computer science in highschool and fell in love with programming (c#, VB, python). I also discovered some basic LAN exploits on the schools network (broadcast shutdown command). From their I looked up some tutorials on the logic behind basic self replicating viruses and keyloggers.\n\nOnce I got into a security program in collage, I really felt like I knew what I was doing instead of just learning. They had us doing the entire cisco certification for networking course, and building/breaking our own networks. We also had courses in database management and we had to create/backup/maintain our own databases. The also gave us a course in business level operating systems, we learned how to properly deploy active directory, dns, and is-is on Windows and LDAP on Linux. From their we went on to learn proper exploitation theory and procedures as well has secure scripting in the context of Web design. \n\nAfter all this, I still have two more years to go. To be a computer security researcher, you need to understand how data is created, destroyed, and moved in all common forms, and some uncommon ones. You need to understand every major protocol inside and out so you can know how people try and break them.", " >  How do people learn to hack?\n\nFirst, you have to understand software.  Software is like roads. Most people only have a car, so they can only travel on the existing paved roads. But Programmers own bulldozers, so they can pave new roads.  (But notice that even bulldozers have limitations when they encounter a mountain or a lake.)\n\nSecond, you have to define what you mean when you say 'hack'. I'll explore 3 different meanings:\n\n1) Every computer system has an \"administrative\" area where the owners can manage the system. For example, Customer Service at an e-commerce website will need to be able to create/modify an order without payment. Logging in with a stolen password is considered 'hacking'.\n\nYou might say \"that's cheating\" because it's not technical. (I.e. You didn't create any new roads, just used an existing road by following another car closely.)\n\nBut the truth is that obtaining a password is often the simplest way in. (Sometimes it's as easy as calling Customer Service and saying you're from the IT department an you need their password.)  This is called **Social Engineering**, and it's an amazingly effective technique. To learn this technique, you just need to understand people and do a little bit of acting. (But it's just as illegal as the other techniques -- the law doesn't care how technical or non-technical you are.)\n\nOn the other hand, everyone should *know* about these techniques, because the only way to fend them off is knowledge and training.\n\n2) If someone finds a security hole in a system, they can write some software to take advantage of it. (This is called an \"exploit\"). Running existing exploit software doesn't take much knowledge, just like driving on an existing road.\n\nThe people who run exploit software (without knowing why it works) are called  **script kiddies**.\n\nFor some exploits, you may need to know your way around the [command line](_URL_2_) and how to compile software (since people who write new exploits don't always have time to make a nice GUI).\n\nRunning exploit software is the easy part. The hard part is finding an obtaining it in the first place. Some exploits are only found on black market trading boards for millions of dollars, while others are [Open Source and come with a nice GUI](_URL_1_).\n\n3) The last category is the creation of brand-new exploits. This is making new roads with a bulldozer. (I assume this what you mean by \"Serious-level hacking\").\n\nSince exploits are software, the first requirement is to be a programmer. But not just any programmer will do. You have to be a *curious* programmer. You need to learn everything you can about the low-level workings of computers. Learn all the languages you can. Learn about Virtual Machines, Debuggers, Disassemblers, [Fuzzers](_URL_0_), Linkers, Reverse Engineering, etc. Learn and understand every buzzword. Most of all, you need to be familiar with the literature for [PC Security](_URL_5_) or [website security](_URL_3_). You never know what piece of information will help.\n\nEven this is not sufficient. It's easy to work on something for months or years and not make any headway. For every interesting finding, you can be sure there are 1000s of wasted hours of uninteresting findings. Sometimes bugs [lurk for years](_URL_4_) and are only discovered accidentally.  It's not really that different from being a scientist. (Except you are discovering mistakes of other people instead of fundamental constants of the universe.)\n\n >  Does it come from being around computers and learning how they operate\n\nWell, it's really easy to \"be around computer\" and never know how they work. You have to have a really curious mind, and learn lots of useless things, and practice learning new things all the time.\n\nIn fact, people get the wrong idea about programmers because every movie shows them typing in front of a computer.  A real programmer spends a lot of time thinking with a pen and paper, trying to understand a problem deeply before writing a line of code.\n\n >  as they read code from a site?\n\nI'm not sure what you mean here, but I assume you mean like reading a manual? There are no instructions on how to make a new exploit. It's like asking for a simple way to write a novel. It takes a combination of originality, knowledge and hard work. There are no short-cuts, there are no formulas.  Learning is good, but you can never be sure if it will actually help you or not.\n\n >  Or do they use programs that they direct to a site?\n\nWell, if you run an existing program you are a Script Kiddie. But when creating new hacks for getting into a website, your browser is often the only tool you need.  Sometimes you might write a few small scripts to automate the testing of your theories.  But 99% of the exploit is the understanding of the problem (\"this site uses CBC mode, but the first block contains mostly known-plaintext data\").   Once you know that, writing the exploit is very fast. Most exploits are less than a page of code.", " >  Thanks for the massive response everyone! Looks like my Saturday is planned!\n\nThere's no time like the present, though that being said getting a comprehensive level of knowledge to become a security researcher takes literally years. This is not a skill you pick up overnight, it's something that you will gradually add.\n\nAs for where to start I would recommend learning about something like the [OWASP Top 10](_URL_0_) most common security vulnerabilities in web applications. The website [_URL_2_](_URL_1_) has a list of vulnerable sample applications that you can practice exploiting. Web development is an easy place to start because it doesn't deal with hardware or more memory management like lower level exploits such as memory corruption vulnerabilities.", "Usually it all starts with gaming. They have their computer try dialing every number of a local game company's area code. Then when they get a login prompt, they use social engineering to try and find out the log in's creator, because they need the name of his son. Then it just spirals from there. If they end up on an island less than 10 miles from a high probability nuclear strike target site, they are golden."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow", "https://coursera.org/course/softwaresec", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagefright_\\(bug\\)"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["Gandi.net"], ["oogIe.com", "https://support.portswigger.net/customer/portal/articles/1965733-using-burp-to-test-for-open-redirections", "https://github.com/PowerShellMafia/PowerSploit", "oogle.com", "https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Open_redirect", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment"], ["https://github.com/gentilkiwi/mimikatz", "http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/mr-robot-hacks/", "http://www.piotrbania.com/all/kon-boot/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/1j58at/hacker_dies_days_before_he_was_to_reveal_how_to/cbbchqm", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-9rHTLHJTY"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html"], [], ["http://www.sans.org", "https://www.sans.org/ondemand/course/hacker-techniques-exploits-incident-handling"], [], ["https://github.com/rednaga/training", "http://theroot.ninja/PAE.pdf", "http://theroot.ninja/disclosures/desire310disclosure.pdf", "http://theroot.ninja/disclosures/TRUSTNONE_1.0-11282015.pdf", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLU92bNeIdI", "http://theroot.ninja"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasploit_Project", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line", "https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10", "http://www.slideshare.net/symantec/infographic-shellshock-bashbug-the-25-year-old-bu", "http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html"], ["https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10", "https://hack.me/", "hack.me"], []]}
{"q_id": "603wvf", "title": "why do we say \"a united states navy ship or a united states manufactured item\" not \"an united states navy ship or an united states manufactured item.\"", "selftext": "Title says it all.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/603wvf/eli5_why_do_we_say_a_united_states_navy_ship_or_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df38zzy", "df390vc", "df391xk", "df393g5"], "score": [23, 7, 2, 6], "text": ["The choice between \"a\" and \"an\" is based on how the word sounds, not how it's spelled. If it starts with a vowel *sound*, then we use \"an\". We pronounce \"United\" like \"Yunited\", so it's \"a United States ship\", but it's \"an unsinkable ship\".", "You used 'an' if the sound following is a vowel sound. United stated is pronounced sort of like yunited states. The 'yu' in this case is not a vowel sound, so 'a' gets used. \n\nSimilarly, it is an MBA student, because the M is pronounced as 'em' making it a vowel sound, thus needing the an. ", "It's not the vowel, it's the consonent sound. United is pronounced \"yoo\" so we use A. Just like we say \"An\" honor despite honor not starting with a vowel. The vowel trick is an easy way to teach the grammatical difference between a and an when you're young, but it is not accurate all of the time.", "Thanks, I asked my teacher this (Grade 8) and she said, \"I dunno.\" So, thanks."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "51tgax", "title": "why does using data on phones cost so much money?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51tgax/eli5_why_does_using_data_on_phones_cost_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7epg3u", "d7epz0h", "d7eqqh8", "d7erx8u", "d7esffw", "d7fchlp"], "score": [13, 44, 6, 4, 10, 3], "text": ["It all boils down to supply and demand. \n\nIf you're out of the house and need to connect to the internet you have two options: Connect to a random WiFi network (which takes time and there might not be one available) or use mobile data. \n\nTherefore the added value of the mobile data is efficiency. People will be able to pay more for there internet access as it is convenient and can be used anywhere. (High demand and low supply due to lack of WiFi networks) ", "One reason is because they can - they control your ability to connect to the internet from almost wherever you want, so they can charge more for it than you would pay for home internet.\n\nAnother reason is that it costs them a fair bit of money to build and maintain that network, so the cost gets passed on to you, the customer.", "Because that is how much you will pay.\n\nThe price of something often has little to do with the cost.", "Just to confirm, you're asking about US? Data doesn't cost much at all in most countries afaik.", "Two reasons:\n\n(1). It's what the market will bear.\n\n(2). There's actually a physical limit to the amount of data which can be transmitted at any given time, which creates a finite supply over the course of a week or month, which is apportioned (albeit less than efficiently) via data plans and the expense of them.\n\nSo, this gets a bit technical, so if you're actually interested let me know and I'll go more into detail (including a suit by a company trying to use an unused part of of the electromagnetic spectrum against GPS manufacturers over the issues I'm going to try to explain).\n\nSo, all phone data relies on transmission using electromagnetic waves. The simplest analogy would be to FM radio. Notice how the stations are separated on your dial (if you have a station on 99.5 you would put another at 99.7 or 99.8 not at 99.6)?\n\nIf you ever tune to the frequency between you might notice that you hear part of the nearby station, but it's weak and often garbled. This is because of what's called \"out of band emissions.\"\n\nBasically, because electromagnetic waves are waves, the actual station (99.5 in our example) is the crest. But it flows out in both directions, with part of the wave going into 99.4 and part in 99.6. 99.5 would be the station's \"band\", and the spill-over would be OBE. \n\nSo what would happen if you put another station at 99.6? Well it wouldn't be a good signal, it would be interfered with by the station at 99.5.\n\nThere are ways to compensate for this (a lot of research is going into limiting out of hand emissions and making phones more sensitive to picking up data from a smaller band), but fundamentally that means that within a given part of the \"spectrum\" (basically all of the wavelengths for electromagnetic waves) there are a maximum number of stations which can effectively be used.\n\nSo if I sold you the rights to use all of the spectrum between 99.0 and 100.1, how many stations could you effectively use? About 5. So now you have to decide how to apportion time on those stations for various broadcasts.\n\nThose broadcasts are the data your customers are using, and given that you have a finite amount to sell, you're going to sell it for a lot.", "In the US, the primary cause is scarcity, and the one limiting factor for wireless carriers is access to the wireless spectrum. \n\n\n(Source: I've deployed GSM networks)\n\n\nIn much the same way your ISP provides you with a limited amount of bandwidth, the throughput of a wireless connection is also limited, and the total area being served by a cellular broadcast tower needs to be divided up between all the people who wish to use it.\n\nCompared to voice calls and many other wireless users, cellular data is bandwidth-intensive, and require large portions of spectrum to transmit data at high speeds.\n\nThe highest-capacity towers are serving up at most a few hundred MB of total capacity. For many of us, this capacity isn't much greater than our home WIFI.\n\nWhen cellular communication hit the market, the FCC had already reserved the rights to the best parts of the wireless spectrum for radio, television, government, industrial, or medical use (which could be best utilized by cheap, reliable hardware). So, wireless companies bid on whatever portions of the spectrum they can get their hands on (which also drives up the prices). Some of these portions of the spectrum required new or specialized (and more expensive equipment) to operate. \n\nFor example, in 2008, the rights to use the 700mhz spectrum was auctioned for about $12B US. I believe the networks who were able to secure the largest portions of usage rights in this deal, at best, doubled their capacity in some areas.\n\nAlso, there is effectively an upper-limit to the portion of the spectrum that can be used for mobile communication devices. In order to maximize battery life, cell phones need to transmit at very low power. And, at lower wattages, lower-frequency signals will have an advantage, attenuating at a much slower rate, and traveling much farther.\n\nThe only real option available now to combat the high cost of the wireless spectrum is to deploy smaller cell towers more densely, which each cover a much smaller area. If the area was reduced significantly, new portions of the spectrum would be available at higher frequencies, and low-power broadcast would still be feasible, since the total broadcast distance is reduced.\n\nPrices are not likely to come down any time soon. However, advances in battery technology or the mass deployment of very small (pico) cell towers could one day dramatically reduce costs.\n\nTLDR; Not all portions of the wireless spectrum are \u201ccreated\u201d equally, and demand is very high for the best parts of it. This is driving up prices, and activities which utilize it the heaviest (such as wireless data), are forced to pay a premium for it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kp4e1", "title": "what is a quark?", "selftext": "All I know is that it is very small...\nEDIT: This is what I saw that made me wonder about quarks. [Scale of the Universe](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kp4e1/eli5_what_is_a_quark/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2m160n", "c2m1b1y", "c2m1b7i", "c2m1sxs", "c2m160n", "c2m1b1y", "c2m1b7i", "c2m1sxs"], "score": [27, 206, 23, 8, 27, 206, 23, 8], "text": ["The bartender on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.", "**Matter** (in the everyday sense) is made of **molecules**, which are made of **atoms**, which are made of _particles_: **protons**, **neutrons** and **electrons**.\n\nThat seemed to be the whole story, and that the component particles of atoms were \"fundamental\" \u2014 they weren't made of anything else, they were just kind of themselves. But then we found out that **protons and neutrons are actually made of smaller particles**, which are called \"**quarks**\".\n\nQuarks have some interesting properties. It turns out that quarks have six different \"flavors\" -- just intrinsically different varieties.  There are only a handful of stable combinations of flavors that will last when they clump together. Other combos break down quickly or never form at all.  And most importantly and weirdly, they can't be separated \u2014 they can only exist in these combos.  Particles made of combinations of quarks are called, as a family, \"**hadrons**\".\n\nThe protons and neutrons we know so well from our daily lives are the most stable combination of quarks, which are made of just two flavors called \"up\" and \"down\" quarks. These are also the most stable flavors of quarks \u2014 other flavors quickly decay into up and downs.\n\nBut there are also more exotic combinations of quarks that show up as relatively short-lived particles in cosmic rays and stuff.  These can involve combinations of the other four flavors of quark: \"strange\", \"charm\", \"bottom\", and \"top\".\n\nQuarks and hadrons have a lot of other interesting properties and important roles in particle physics.  But to everyday human experience, the combos of up and down quarks that we know as protons and neutrons are the biggest part of the picture.", "[fundamental constituents of matter.](_URL_0_)", "Related: Please explain how a quark and a neutrino are related, if at all.", "The bartender on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.", "**Matter** (in the everyday sense) is made of **molecules**, which are made of **atoms**, which are made of _particles_: **protons**, **neutrons** and **electrons**.\n\nThat seemed to be the whole story, and that the component particles of atoms were \"fundamental\" \u2014 they weren't made of anything else, they were just kind of themselves. But then we found out that **protons and neutrons are actually made of smaller particles**, which are called \"**quarks**\".\n\nQuarks have some interesting properties. It turns out that quarks have six different \"flavors\" -- just intrinsically different varieties.  There are only a handful of stable combinations of flavors that will last when they clump together. Other combos break down quickly or never form at all.  And most importantly and weirdly, they can't be separated \u2014 they can only exist in these combos.  Particles made of combinations of quarks are called, as a family, \"**hadrons**\".\n\nThe protons and neutrons we know so well from our daily lives are the most stable combination of quarks, which are made of just two flavors called \"up\" and \"down\" quarks. These are also the most stable flavors of quarks \u2014 other flavors quickly decay into up and downs.\n\nBut there are also more exotic combinations of quarks that show up as relatively short-lived particles in cosmic rays and stuff.  These can involve combinations of the other four flavors of quark: \"strange\", \"charm\", \"bottom\", and \"top\".\n\nQuarks and hadrons have a lot of other interesting properties and important roles in particle physics.  But to everyday human experience, the combos of up and down quarks that we know as protons and neutrons are the biggest part of the picture.", "[fundamental constituents of matter.](_URL_0_)", "Related: Please explain how a quark and a neutrino are related, if at all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2usPnU/primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kXkWXSXRA"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kXkWXSXRA"], []]}
{"q_id": "4vdbjt", "title": "why do humans only feel butterfly sensation in their stomach when there's a sudden loss of altitude, and not when there is a sudden gain in altitude?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vdbjt/eli5_why_do_humans_only_feel_butterfly_sensation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5xf45m", "d5xg0v8", "d5xj8lq", "d5xlvc5", "d5xvas3"], "score": [50, 14, 4, 20, 3], "text": ["Altitude has nothing to do with it. Acceleration is what produces that feeling. What a sudden drastic change in altitude produces is an intense pain in your ears. \n\nWhen you are quickly accelerated towards your feet you experience that butterflies sensation. When you're accelerated towards your head you feel like you're being squashed. It's just the way your squishy bits react", "There's also a psychological and technological component to it. A high-velocity lift is fairly new for human bodies to experience; in contrast every single human knows the sensation of falling because, well, *gravity*. But whether you think about it in terms of evolutionary psychology, or just a single individual's life history\u2014people have fallen more than they've flown. So not only does ascending have a different mechanical stress on the body, we also have far more memories and conscious awareness of what our bodies feel like in descent.", "Imagine your ribs and other solid bits in your chest and belly as a tin can. Now imagine all the soft stuff inside you like your intestines, stomach, ect. are beans. Based on experience you can predict that if you were to forcefully move the can down, the beans would hit the top of the can. This is what happens when you lose altitude quickly. Now if you were to take that same can + bean setup and imagine yourself rapidly moving the can up you can predict that the beans would be pressed against the bottom of the can with some decent force. This is what happens when you gain altitude quickly. Basically different things are happening in each situation so you experience different sensations. ", "Our guts hang, like if you picked up your shoe by the laces. If you're holding a shoe by the laces, and then move your arm down quickly, the lace bends a little, because your hand moves faster than the shoe. \n\nWhen our body moves downward quickly, the 'laces' of your guts bend a little, like the shoelace. We say this feels like butterflies. \n\n\nIf you take the same example, and pull upward on the laces, they stay taught the whole time. No bending = no butterflies.", "Okay OP it has to do with which axis of our body we feel the G force in. It's been two years since I took the class, but there's three axes of G force we can feel. Gx, Gy, and Gz. I believe it's Gz which would be our typical up and down, and it's the most sensitive axis to G forces. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n > The resistance to \"negative\" or \"downward\" g, which forces the blood towards the head, is much lower and is typically in the range of \u22122 to \u22123 g\n\nIt's not psychological, it's purely physiological. Seriously every other comment here is guessing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://gforces.net/insight-human-tolerance-vertical-axis.html"]]}
{"q_id": "87nnnn", "title": "Nuclear Reactor : Control rods - What causes the difference in reactivity of the core when control rods are withdrawn at full power and all control rods are inserted at zero power?", "selftext": "Hi all,\n\nI am interested to understand the effect of control rods during a shutdown margin and how the value of keff could change between the two scenarios.\n\n\nMany thanks for your help", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/87nnnn/nuclear_reactor_control_rods_what_causes_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwfhbqo"], "score": [6], "text": ["Control rods are designed to absorb neutrons without emitting any as a result. By inserting the control rods further, more neutrons are absorbed, so there is less of a chance that neutrons from one fission event will hit another fuel rod and induce another fission event.\n\nNeutrons are the most important factor in the criticality of a reactor, which is described by k effective, the number of fission events directly caused by the neutrons from one fission event. You ramp up the power output by having a k_eff greater than 1 (without going prompt supercritical). This means that for every fission event, there is more than 1 fission event caused as a result, so the reaction rate and therefore the power output increase exponentially. You shut down the power by having a k_eff less than 1, meaning that there are less fission events being caused than are occurring, so the reaction rate decays exponentially. k_eff of 1 is critical, and will maintain your current power level.\n\nIn normal operation, the control rods are adjusted to maintain criticality. During shutdown, k_eff is reduced to some value that is less than 1 by the shutdown margin. For example, if the shutdown margin is 2%, the k_eff of the reactor when the control rods are fully inserted is less than or equal to 0.98.\n\nIt's worth noting that you don't increase the power by pulling out the control rods and leaving them there. You pull out the control rods enough to go supercritical until you reach the desired power level, and then insert them again to the point where the reactor is critical. You also have to be careful not to pull the control rods out too far. You want a k_eff greater than 1, but the k for prompt neutrons needs to stay subcritical. Delayed neutrons will add to the k_eff to allow the power to increase exponentially on the timescale of several seconds, but if prompt neutrons are supercritical the power will increase exponentially on the timescale of nanoseconds, which causes catastrophic incidents like SL-1 or Chernobyl."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2rnwsg", "title": "why are most calico cats female?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rnwsg/eli5why_are_most_calico_cats_female/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnhltme", "cnhmet2", "cnhmuov", "cnhnwpq"], "score": [7, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Because that kind of colour pattern is often linked to the X chromosome. As you know, females have two X chromosomes, so they're most likely to have calico coats.", "The gene for fur coloration is found on the portion of the X chromosome not present on the Y.  In order to get calico or tortoise shell, you need two different genes...that's possible if you are XX, but not if you are XY.\n\nThe male cats that are calico usually have the abnormal XXY configuration.", "As others have said, it depends on some of the fur-color genes being on the X chromosome. But there's more to it than that: For a lot of our genes the amount/strength of a gene's usage matters a lot\u2014having an extra copy of a whole chromosome can be a serious problem; [an extra chromosome 21 causes Down Syndrome in humans](_URL_0_). So how can females get away with having two copies of the X chromosome if males only have one?\n\nThe answer is that in females, one of the X chromosomes is chosen at random to be inactivated and turned into a [Barr Body](_URL_1_). In female calico cats, each patch of their skin is the descendants of an original embryo cell that ended up inactivating an X chromosome with the \u201cbe colored not white\u201d gene on it, or a \u201cbe black not brown\u201d gene, or whatever.\n\nIn male cats, all cells only have the one X chromosome so they can't have a pattern of random inactivation. That is, unless they're an XXY male which is rare but possible.", "Females have 2 X chromosomes (1 from each parent) and males have 1 X (from mom) and 1 Y (from dad). If both X's in females were active there would be way too many proteins being made from the genes on the X chromosome so 1 of the X's needs to be inactivated. In regular female cats, both alleles of the fur color gene give the cat the same color fur so it doesn't matter which is inactivated, the fur will all be the same color. In calico cats, the alleles are different so for example: the brown spots would occur where the mom's X was inactivated and the yellow spots would occur where the dad's X was inactivated."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_21_%28human%29", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barr_body"], []]}
{"q_id": "3mkd0e", "title": "why are there deserts right next to the ocean?", "selftext": "It doesnt make sense that there should be a desert when there is an unlimited supply of water nearby", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mkd0e/eli5_why_are_there_deserts_right_next_to_the_ocean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvfoisn", "cvfoiwd", "cvfokpj", "cvfr72d"], "score": [14, 2, 5, 6], "text": ["Oceans are saltwater, which land based plant life can't grow in. Also, the sand of a desert doesn't hold the moisture and nutrients necessary for plants to grow. Some deserts are growing because the soil near it is losing water and nutrients, so the plants are dying, and can no longer hold the soil, so desert takes over. This can extend all the way to an ocean.", "Seawater is poisonous to nearly all land-based life, including both plants and animals. So just because there is sea water nearby doesn't mean that anything on land can take advantage of it.\n\nA further reason is that even if the seawater was usable it is (by definition!) in the sea and not on the land. If the geographical situation is one where virtually no rain falls (such as the Namibian Desert) then it's still going to be lifeless and barren.\n\nThe basic summary is this: land-based life needs a constant supply of fresh water.", "They are wondering this in California right now. \n\nObviously you know that ocean water is salty, so you can't just pump ocean water on to crops or into municipal water supplies. \n\nIn many cases, there is a mountain ridge poking up from the land right at the edge of the continent; this mountain range will cause precipitation to fall on the western side of the mountains, and leave a desert on the eastern side. This has to do with orographic lift: mountains force moist air to go upwards; as it moves up, it cools. Cool air can hold less moisture than warm air, so the cool air drops moisture as rain. once it gets over the mountains, the air is dry. \n\n", "Water isn't shared like that. Sure, if water flowed directly through the desert, there could be some changes, but only immediately near the river; water doesn't go that far unless it fills up the water table underground where trees can get to it.\n\nDeserts are very large and very dry. They're dry either because they're on the wrong side of a mountain (like Western China being north of the Himalayas) or they're right under a [Hadley cell](_URL_0_).\n\nAirflow deprives the 30N and 30S latitudes of moisture while inundating the 60N, 60S and equator with precipitation. Spin a globe and you'll see the brownest under the 30's and the greenest under the equator and the 60's."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Earth_Global_Circulation_-_en.svg/400px-Earth_Global_Circulation_-_en.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "3pkpxh", "title": "During mitosis, how the organelles without their own DNA are replicated?", "selftext": "During replication, what structures are responsible to replicate the other organelles like Golgi Complex, R.E.R., S.E.S., are created? Are the ribosomes responsible for that too?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3pkpxh/during_mitosis_how_the_organelles_without_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw77qsv"], "score": [6], "text": ["There can be more than one of each type of organelle in the cell before it divides. The cell will split the cytoplasm between the two daughter cells, and in turn the organelles therein. The organelles are replicated during the growth phases of the cell cycle."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "g75e4", "title": "Since Japan's Earthquake tilted the Earth's axis by centimeters, how does that affect GPS calibration?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g75e4/since_japans_earthquake_tilted_the_earths_axis_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1le3py", "c1lep2b"], "score": [3, 10], "text": ["In addition to the OPs question, I would also be interested in knowing exactly how we were able to determine so precisely how the axis was shifted.  Does anyone know this?", "For regular purposes, nothing has to be changed.  GPS satellites are just orbiting atomic clocks that broadcast the time.  Your GPS unit triangulates your position based the signals from a few of these satellites, and then puts the dot on a map with the same datum.  Only surveying-grade GPS units care about determining position with centimeter accuracy, and these slight movements are already observed and accounted for in areas of tectonic movement, glacial rebound, groundwater mining subsidence, etc.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1x24ng", "title": "psychologically and physically. what is the difference between water boarding and dunking someone's head in a bucket of water?", "selftext": "Before water boarding came into light. The more well known form of torture was dunking someone's head in water.\nIs there something about water boarding that causes more physical or psychological trauma?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x24ng/eli5psychologically_and_physically_what_is_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf7g32s", "cf7g41u", "cf7gd6l"], "score": [11, 11, 7], "text": ["Waterboarding triggers all the fear and physiological reflexes of real drowning, but with the prisoner strapped down and water poured in a controlled manner, it is easier to administer and it does not carry the risk of actually drowning him.", "Water boarding is a simulation of drowning, while dunking *is* drowning. \n\n***I don't recommend it***, but if you really want you can water board yourself pretty easily. I've done it and only lasted about half a second before I almost had a panic attack. While in the shower, wet a wash cloth. Place it over your face, including your nose and mouth, and look up into the shower head and breathe in.", "In dunking, your head is force under water. Its shocking but technically you can hold your breath and be fine. \n\nGenerally with most waterboarding we hear about, a rag is placed over your mouth (cant breath - cant take a proper breath and hold it), then continuous water is poured over you. Small amounts leak through and down your mouth limiting your already limited air path. \n\nYou struggle for every breath. Your not bobbing for apples, your essentially being choked with water, allowed to breath and choked with water again and again. Not only this, but because you cant take complete breaths, your looking at an imbalance of CO2 and oxygen so you may experience oxygen starvation and such. You are being drowned but it doesnt end in a blissful drowning induced comma like typical drowning.\n\nPhysically, your looking at damage to the lungs, heart and brain. But this is \"torture light\" so most physical damage will be internal.\n\nPsychologically, your fucked. Assuming this is ongoing the person may experience but not limited too , PTSD, serve mental distress, paranoid,  sucidial tendencies, self harm, disassociation and numerous other affects that would appear in some rather then others. \n\nIn my opinion, the psychological damage of torture like waterboarding greatly out weighs any physical pain or damage. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "o5zw6", "title": "Cornell has created a \"Time Cloak\" effect by slowing down and speeding up lasers. What does this have to do with time?", "selftext": "Article:\n_URL_0_\n\nI don't understand what this has to do with \"time\" - the light is slowed down, then sped up to make up the difference, via using a lens. What does this have to do with time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o5zw6/cornell_has_created_a_time_cloak_effect_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3ettpu", "c3ewy3w"], "score": [4, 2], "text": ["It's a grossly misleading article representative of the horrible state of popular science reporting.\n\nLight always moves at light speed, and cannot be changed.  You can create the *illusion* of a changing speed by absorbing and re-emitting photons (lensing), and that's pretty much what they're doing, if in a slightly more elaborate way.  \n\nBut the researchers, and reporters, are twisting this ridiculously.", "I tried to answer questions on the temporal optical cloak [here](_URL_0_). Hope that helps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120104-time-cloak-invisibility-harry-potter-light-optical-fiber-science"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o3rb2/time_cloak_how_does_it_work/"]]}
{"q_id": "4bjbcq", "title": "Is it true Churchill offered Dev Northern Ireland if Ireland would join WW2?", "selftext": "I remember hearing that sometime in WW2 that the UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill made an offer to Irish Taoiseach (= Prime Minister) \u00c9amon de Valera that the UK would give Northern Ireland to Ireland in exchange for Ireland joining the war on the allies side. And that de Valera turned it down, because of fears that the large Protestant population there would reduce the electoral chances of his own FF party.\n\nIs this true? (a) Did Chuchill offer Dev the North? (b) Did he turn it down for electoral reasons?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bjbcq/is_it_true_churchill_offered_dev_northern_ireland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d19tzsi", "d1aluri"], "score": [92, 2], "text": ["This is true but disingenuous. De Valera rejected the offer because he knew it wasn't Churchill's offer to make: as Prime Minister Churchill couldn't unilaterally kick Northern Ireland out of the UK against the (dominant) wishes of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. It was reasonable to expect that the wartime offer would be withdrawn in peacetime due to the Protestants of Northern Ireland's overwhelming rejection of joining Ireland and the dominance of Protestants in 1940s Northern Ireland.", " > Did he turn it down for electoral reasons?\n\nI'm not sure what you are asking here.  Was Dev reluctant to bring in NI? Hardly - Dev ran for the NI elections as Sinn F\u00e9in member in the 1921 NI elections after the [Westminster] Government of Ireland Act had partitioned the country.  \n\nHe walked out of the D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann chamber in protest at the passage of the Treaty in 1922 and was involved in the Irish Civil War hoping to bring about a Republican United Ireland.  Having failed he entered the D\u00e1il with Fianna F\u00e1il in 1927 but in 1933 he again ran for election in NI and was elected to Stormont for the constituency of South Down.  He held the seat until 1938 but refused to actually take his seat at Stormont as he was making the point that South Down belonged to D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann in a united Ireland.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3j8tgj", "title": "why has clock speed on cpu's become almost irrelevant?", "selftext": "I've have been doing a lot of research online but the explanations are really hard to understand. But over the last decade or so, clock speed in computer processors has become irrelevant. Anyone know why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j8tgj/eli5_why_has_clock_speed_on_cpus_become_almost/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cun7y09", "cun80wm", "cun81oj", "cun8n7u"], "score": [17, 3, 6, 12], "text": ["Think of clock speed as the speed of an assembly line.  You can speed up work by increasing the rate that the assembly line moves but this can only increase so fast before you start getting errors in the production from the workers (aka electronic components).  You can also increase the production by improving the order that the work is completed so you no longer have certain workers waiting for work.  You can also operate another set of workers on the same assembly line to get close to twice as much work done during the same time.", "So, [here's](_URL_0_) an idea of the speeds we're talking about with modern processors. It's really damn fast, and we're getting close to the point where the speed of light is a problem- the electrical signal literally would not be able to travel fast enough through the processor for the calculation to finish by the time the clock ticks again if we tried speeding it up much more. In addition, increasing the clock speed increases the power consumption which increases the amount of heat generated and without using liquid cooling, we can only dissipate the heat so quickly. If the processor gets too hot, it gets damaged. So raising the clock speed is pretty much out of the question. So chip manufacturers have had to focus on other ways to get more speed out of the processors, by making improvements in the design and by adding more cores so the processor can do more things at once.", "The thing is that the clock speeds are so high now that it generally does not matter if your computer has a 3 Ghz cpu or a 3.5 Ghz cpu. Generally the other factors like cache, ram etc have become more important now.", "For the better part of a decade, the main way of making processors crunch data faster was to push the clock speed up. This architectural approach is called CPU frequency scaling (not to be confused with dynamic CPU frequency scaling, which is a technique for turning down the clock when the processor is idling)\n\nThe problem with that approach is that the power requirements increase linearly with the clock speed. So if you increase the clock speed by a factor of 4, you also increase the power (and resulting heat) by a factor of 4. \n\nIt got to the point where processors were using too much power and generating way too much heat. When Intel canceled their Tejas line, it was the beginning of the end of the frequency scaling approach. \n\nSource: That's basically the first chapter of my master's thesis. :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.google.com/search?q=speed%20of%20light%20%2F%20\\(3.5%20billion%2Fs\\)&amp;rct=j"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1xe9e2", "title": "why does diarrhea feel hotter than normal poop?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xe9e2/eli5_why_does_diarrhea_feel_hotter_than_normal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfakv1z", "cfamfel", "cfamw1i", "cfao97n", "cfaom6g", "cfap1b6", "cfaq37d", "cfaqbyz", "cfaqkgl", "cfartjo", "cfarv5w", "cfarzvu", "cfas7f5", "cfas9l1", "cfatb6t", "cfatkb6", "cfau486", "cfaucwo", "cfauj9y", "cfavfx2", "cfavnoo", "cfaw64x", "cfawd4a", "cfawl0v", "cfax5mg", "cfaxgnx", "cfaxmcw", "cfay9s4", "cfaz1dn", "cfazt13"], "score": [234, 74, 3, 14, 9, 3, 2, 3, 469, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Diarrhea is more acidic than normal poop, causing it too feel hotter and be more irritable in that area. ", "As food makes its way through the GI tract, the body secretes various enzymes and acids that help to break down the food into smaller and smaller bits so that the food can be absorbed in the intestines. By the time that the food gets to the small intestines, it is a soupy fluid that is chock full of enzymes. As the food travels through the intestinal tract, many things happen...the fluid and food particles are absorbed, the enzymes start to degrade, and what is left starts to firm up and form what we in the health care field call poop. Most of this process occurs in the large intestine and it usually takes between 12 and 24 hours for that Big Mac to complete the whole process of digestion from start to finish. When a person has diarrhea, the motility of the intestines is increased, meaning that the contents of the intestine are moved more quickly through the intestines. This means that the liquid poop in the small intestine with all the enzymes that are meant to digest the food that has been eaten is passed throught the intestines and out the rectum before the enzymes have had a chance to degrade. This is why diarrhea is liquid and the burning sensation is a result of the active enzymes acting on the sensitive tissue of the anus. Thereyago.\nSource: Yahoo answers", "I am no scientist but I think it has something to with the [specific heat](_URL_0_) of water v. poop.  To warm up a kilo of water takes more energy than a kilo of doo, and so water has more energy to give up, imparting more heat to your ass.", "Ahhh reddit. Asking the important questions.", "Which method did you use to evaluate the temperature? DEWS (Direct express-way sensing), SFS (secondary finger sensing), or AITRS (affirmative IR thermometer remote sensing)?", "Quicker trip through the intestinal tract means all that stomach and upper intestinal acids and similar are not neutralized and similar before exiting.\n\nThe \"warm\" sensation you're feeling is actually your lower intestinal tract as well as your anus being \"burned\" by these acids as they make a rapid exit out of your system due to whatever malady you are experiencing which is causing it.\n\ntl;dr: Acids are burning your butthole.  Its not heat, its acidic burn.", "You \"feel\" heat moving, not temperature. So I imagine it has something to do with the fact that a liquid is better at imparting heat to your sphincter than solid waste. I'm pretty sure most anything in the body is going to be about 98 degrees.", "Hot Shit!! I've been waiting for this one!~\n", "Your body feels the transfer of heat not really temperature. Diarrhea is mostly water and water has a high convection coefficient, meaning it transfers heat faster. Think of it the same effect as biting into a really hot pizza, the cheese burns you more than the crust. They're both at the same temperature but cheese transfers heat faster. Also, water has high heat capacity, so for every degree of temperature, it has a lot more heat. Regular feces doesn't have as much water in it so it doesn't transfer as much heat as quickly, that's why diarrhea feels hotter. Really, no matter what comes out of you, it's at body temperature.\n\n**TL;DR: Diarrhea is the same temperature as regular feces 98.6F/37C but it transfers heat quicker because it's mostly water so it feels hotter.**\n\nEdit: for clarity.\n\nEdit2: Everyone keeps mentioning acidic diarrhea causing this sensation. What I describe above is why it feels *hotter* not *burning*. The burning feeling is from digestive enzymes, though completely different and distinct when compared to the warmer feeling of shooting liquid out your behind. Also, one thing I neglected to mention, mostly for simplicity, is that it's not just the convection coefficient of water that helps the transfer of heat happen quicker but also the fact that it is liquid vs solid. Liquids cover more surface area, therefore can transfer that heat quicker.", "Well if it's from spicy food it's because there are taste buds in your anus. _URL_0_", "I just want to thank OP for asking.  I never new how glad I'd be to have figured this out *once and for all.*", "Did anyone else read this and think OP just had a scat fetish?", "I thought it has something to do with bile and stomach acid.", "I didn't even know I had this question before you came along. Thanks.", "This is the most timely post I've ever read on reddit", "I have no science to back this up, this is just my theory on it: normal poop is kinda like a Tootsie Roll...mostly solid, almost has a shell around the outside, its more compacted so the warmest part is inside...plus its generally coming out a lot slower than diarrhea, which comes out faster and much softer, and has more of a liquid property to it, so you can feel the heat coming off it more easily...\n\nAlso think about a cup of coffee- if you have it in a cup with a lid, the heat is more contained inside, it can't escape (normal poop). When you have it in a regular mug, however, the heat dissipates more quickly, you can feel the steam rising from the top, etc.\n\nHopefully I haven't ruined Tootsie Rolls or coffee for anyone, lol.", "Unless you ate really spicy foods...then it burns! :0) ouch!", "The dreaded ring of fire.", "The acidity stuff at the top makes a lot of sense, but might it also have to do with the surface area of the shit touching my butthole? I mean, liquidy shit has got to be making a lot more direct contact, and therefore actually transferring more heat to the cooler external bits. This is pure conjecture... I need to get back to teaching my class now, but I figured there's nothing better to do on a ten minute break than talk about the sichuan squirts.", "That is a shitty question indeed.\n\n^^^^Sorry, ^^^^had ^^^^to ^^^^say ^^^^it.", "ITT: I've got the runs right now.  Look how many other people do, too! ", "/u/tryanythingonce1 asking the hard questions of science!", "Diarrhea is highly acidic.  The acid is burning.  Hats why lots of showers or cloth washing is recommended. ", "regular poop would be rocks. Diarrhea is like the hot lava of regular rocks that's why. Like molten poop rocks but with poop.", "Radioactive decay, diarrhea moves much faster through the bowels so the radioactive elements have no chance to break down before they exit the body.", "now we're asking the real questions", "Sigh...I have Crohns diseases and know more about this than I care to admit. Diarrhea is generally caused because food isn't being processed in your body properly, so diarrhea is highly acidic. This running through your bowels and coming out will feel warmer than regular poop because of the acid. ", "Ya got the hot snakes", "Diarrhea is kinda still being digested when it's running thru your guts, that's why it burns coming out.", "Very useful being that I am currently on the shitter experiencing warmer than normal fecal excretement"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.foodbeast.com/2013/07/19/science-says-testicles-and-anuses-have-taste-receptors/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19m6nt", "title": "How well documented does a historical figure have to be for it to be consensus that they existed/are there any heated debates in the historian community as to whether X person existed or not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19m6nt/how_well_documented_does_a_historical_figure_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ph98p", "c8php90"], "score": [6, 15], "text": ["There have been a major discussion for about a century whether Jesus were a historical person or a purely fictional/mythical figure. The debate seem to be largely over though, with the prevailing consensus being that he was a historical figure, although many of the legend surrounding him are unreliable.\n\nIt is not because we have particularly strong evidence regarding his existence. There are no primary sources or first-hand accounts. The gospels are the only sources of any importance, and they are second hand, written many years after the events, highly biased and not independent. And some parts (e.g. the birth legends) are clearly fiction/myth.\n\nStill, the existence of a historical Jesus is the better explanation for much of the content in the gospels. The best evidence is the existence of internal contradictions in the Gospels, where the narrative contradict the bias of the author. For example, Jesus were crucified (a roman form of execution), while the evangelists goes to great length to frame it so that it was really the Jews that wanted to kill Jesus and the Romans really didn't want to, but were pressured to by the Jews. If the gospels were fictions, they could just have let the Jews kill him in the first place, since it would fit their intentions better. The framing of the gospels much more points to an inconvenient but undeniable fact (Jesus were crucified by the Romans), which the evangelists had to spin.", "The simple answer is:  historians assume that someone mentioned as a real person - even in only *one* source - is a real person, unless there's some context to suggest that the person or story is unreliable or fictional (for instance, if the writer is telling some story with an obvious moral point, he may well be creating a character to illustrate that point rather than recounting a true event).  Hyper-skepticism becomes wearying over time.  The more distant the writer is from the context of his story, though, especially as history shades into mythology, the more doubt can be cast on the existence of the individuals involved.  If Tacitus mentions some Roman citizen in passing, for instance, the assumption is that said citizen was a real person.  When Livy writes of the legendary kings of Rome, some seven hundred years before his day, things become messier, and while most historians assume that Romulus, Numa, et al, are mythical figures, [there is a certain amount of controversy](_URL_0_). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://archive.archaeology.org/0707/abstracts/rome.html"]]}
{"q_id": "278zb4", "title": "in sex scenes in movies do they sometimes just actually have sex?", "selftext": "eg. Friends With Benefits, Monster Ball...\n\nDon't the male actors get an erection anyway? ELI5.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/278zb4/eli5_in_sex_scenes_in_movies_do_they_sometimes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chyib4n", "chyibdb", "chyif31", "chyiul8", "chyizvg", "chyjic6", "chyjvq3", "chyjzlf", "chyk2z8", "chyklgk", "chyms4b", "chypkyx", "chyqiho", "chyrqy7", "chyrxti", "chyurhe", "chyv5y8", "chywqns", "chzcuby"], "score": [8, 16, 23, 3, 2, 30, 3, 49, 15, 2, 4, 3, 12, 5, 2, 12, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["No, that's porn.", "There are rumors they actually had sex in Monster's Ball but it's unconfirmed. They rarely have sex except in rare indie films and Lars Von Trier crap. Most times the male is wearing a cock sock that covers up their naughty bits.", "Arousal (an erection) is not the same as penetration (sex).\n\nMale actors sometimes will wear a flesh colored sock over their member, but what you're seeing in a movie is just simulated sex at best.\n\nAlso, being alone in a room with a willing partner isn't the same as being on set with the director, assistant director, cameramen, sound guys, makeup and wardrobe people, etc.  It's hardly an intimate setting for the two actors.", "I've heard they did in Eyes Wide Shut, which is somewhat believable because the actors were married and Kubrick had only but the most limited crew in filming and often ran a camera himself.  That having been said it is very very unusual.  \n\n > Don't the male actors get an erection anyway? ELI5.\n\nIt's called acting.  Normally they wear special non obvious undergarments to prevent accidental penetration.  Everything in movies is set up by contract.  ", "Yes in some Donald Sutherland horror movie which I can't remember the title of but its not Body Snatchers.", "Not usually. They may get an erection, but I'm sure it's easy to not even do that, especially after multiple takes, in a set with people all around you watching. It's not exactly as intimate as the scene would have you believe. ", "I wondered if the women wear anything, top or bottom?", "ELI5: In death scenes in movies do they ever just actually kill the actor?\n\nHaha, it's a movie. It's called acting. As far a boner goes, imagine *pretending* to have sex with a hot chick, but you're at work in front of your boss, all your co-workers, and even a few friends are watching you and critiquing your hump form, your body position, the director telling you to stop randomly because they have to adjust the sound or lights, etc. It wouldn't be as exciting as you may fantasize.", "_URL_0_ \nThis cracked video explains it pretty well! ", "How do they do it in Zach and Miri make a porno?", "It's not very common being that its very easy to fake. Even the sex you might catch on late night cable porn is generally staged. However some movies like The Brown Bunny have had real and not stage fellatio and i'm sure there have probably even been movies that have had real sex I just don't know of them. \nHere's a link about the Fellatio thing for support  _URL_0_", "Not usually, but in Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny an oral sex scene was actually performed.", "In a movie, when they film a sex scene there is 3 ways they can go about it.\n\n1. Simulated sex: this is the most commonly shot way of doing a sex scene. The actors wear a piece of clothing to cover their genitals (and the type of clothing depends on the camera angle). They then pretend (act) like they are having sex. Typically, these movies are rated R but there have been a few exceptions.\n\n2. Unsimulated sex: This type of sex is used rarely outside of porn films, but there are a few notorious films of having famous actors/actresses perform actual sexual acts on camera. The Brown Bunny and Shortbus are two I can think of. Because of the graphic nature of these films, they are often released as an independent film or rated NC-17.\n\n3. Stand-ins: This is unsimulated sex with a twist. The actors are switched with sexual performers. So some shots will be with the actors faces and upper bodies to sell the realism, but the actual sex shot will be using (usually) pornographic actors. As above, films they shoot like this will be indie or NC-17 due to content.", " > Don't the male actors get an erection anyway?\n\nAlthough I've never been in a situation to prove this point, I imagine I would have a difficult time getting an erection if I was surrounded by people holding cameras, lights, boom mics, etc.  People who are just doing their jobs while looking at my dong.  Chances are other guys have the same situation; that's why porno sets have fluffers or viagra at the ready.\n\nAs for actual sex: have you ever watched softcore porn, like the sorts of movies you'd find on Cinemax after midnight?  I was watching the behind-the-scenes of this one softcore porn called \"Bikini Round-up\".  Bikini Round-up starred actual, hardcore porn stars.  I.E. not just aspiring actors willing to get naked and do fake sense for a shot at more serious work, but people who have starred in numerous hardcore porn movies, including Nicole Sheridan and Evan Stone.\n\nIn the behind-the-scenes video, they showed how a fake sex scene is filmed.  The man was on his back, and the woman was riding him.  The guy had a flesh-colored cloth over his crotch, and the fully-nude actress was just bouncing on the cloth-covered area.\n\nHere we have two hardcore porn stars who have made a living having penetrating sex on camera.  But because they were doing a softcore porn movie, they didn't need to have sex.  So they faked it.\n\nIf even hardcore porn stars fake sex when given the opportunity, then you can be sure that mainstream actors and actresses don't have sex on camera.", "In *Caligula* (Shitty ass old 6 hour movie) There are alot of sexscenes, and alot of angles that basically shows it all. Alot of the scenes involves real sex (You can actually see the penetrations, and the movie isnt even rated as porn xD). But im pretty sure its porn actors doing the humping and the bumping. Only movie i watched where the sex is real.", "I believe it was Sean Connery who said in an interview way back that before shooting a sex scene he tells the actress \"I'm sorry if I get an errection and I'm sorry if I don't\". You just can't really controll it in a situation like that and everyone on set are aware of that.", "No. Most of the time they're not even naked and a lot of the time it's not even the same actors.", "This [Esquire article](_URL_0_) is an interview with an actress all about how it feels to shoot a sex scene. It answers the boner question too! ", "Yes they do really have sex. And sometimes one actor actually murders another actor if there is a murder scene. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XS7-bt3gTqw"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlo%C3%AB_Sevigny#2003.E2.80.9306:_The_Brown_Bunny_and_aftermath"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/features/what-it-feels-like/ESQ0805WIFL_100_16"], []]}
{"q_id": "3zhiiq", "title": "Why does gold \"blink over\" when it becomes pure?", "selftext": "I was watching [this episode from Cody's Lab](_URL_0_) when he mentions the gold \"blinking over\" when it becomes pure (around 11:52). Why does it do this and what causes it to happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3zhiiq/why_does_gold_blink_over_when_it_becomes_pure/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cymk9gy"], "score": [15], "text": ["[It's explained in this link on the classic fire assay. Basically, the lead-gold alloy has a melting point less than gold alone.  As the lead is converted to litharge and absorbed by the cupel, the bead of purer and purer gold eventually drops below its melting point. But it has a tendency to not solidify immediately - just like you can cool liquid water below freezing, and then trigger crystallization with a sudden jar or other input, so too can you with the lead-gold alloy. The \"blick\" is caused by the sudden solidification of the gold, which releases the heat of fusion into the gold bead, increasing its temperature and therefore light output from radiation enough to be noticeable.](_URL_1_)\n\nHere is a passage from The Chemical Engineer (linked):\n\n > [As the cupellation proceeds the percentage of lead in the alloy decreases and that of Ag and Au increases. The litharge thrown off from the center of the button is in larger specks and brilliant and the button assumes a more rounded form. When this phenomenon appears the button should be pushed back into the hotter part of the furnace. When the last of the Pb goes off larger buttons are covered with a brilliant film of colors interference colors and the button appears to revolve axially. The colors then disappear the bead becomes dull and then again takes on a silvery tinge. If now the temperature of the muffle is below that of the melting point of silver 961 C, or below that of the gold silver alloy constituting the bead, or if the cupel be withdrawn from the furnace, the blick or brightening or flash of the bead takes place, ie the bead suddenly becomes very bright at the moment of solidification, owing to the release of the latent heat of fusion which raises the temperature of the bead very much for a short time. The bead has been in a state of surfusion, ie in a state of fusion below its true freezing point, toward the last of the cupelling operation and if it be lightly jarred or the temperature allowed to drop still lower taking it out of the muffle it suddenly congeals and assumes a state normal solid to the temperature existing. The release of the latent heat raising the temperature of the bead causes the brightening. The brightening of small beads is rarely noticeable. Silver and gold beads containing still small amounts of Pb or Cu do not brighten so noticably. If even minute quantities of rhodium iridium ruthenium osmium or osmium iridium are present buttons will not flash Platinum and palladium are excepted.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyOzfP-JAI4"], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=yhYAAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA1-PA200&amp;lpg=RA1-PA200&amp;dq=cupellation+flash&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=4NEkuzTVFD&amp;sig=Rdz0rlNK2YafCmbgsp8BO4pJXbQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwioiaGjlJLKAhXEYyYKHegMDtsQ6AEIPDAI#v=onepage&amp;q=cupellation%20flash&amp;f=false", "http://www.teknikdokum.com/uploads/klasikatesanaliziingilizce.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "58sknu", "title": "Could the economic system of Inca Empire be considered as Socialist?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/58sknu/could_the_economic_system_of_inca_empire_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d93asvr"], "score": [16], "text": ["I don't think so.\n\nAccording to the World Socialist Movement, socialist societies must utilize a system of common ownership in the place of private property. Additionally, the production of resources and labor must belong communally to the society as a whole with each member drawing equally but freely from the communally produced goods. This communal distribution must be democratically controlled as opposed to owned by an individual or group. Because members withdraw and deposit to the communal surplus equally, members of a socialist society own their own labor and production. But this is not the case with the Inca as the elites controlled the means of productions and distribution.\n\nThe Inca state and elites garnered their wealth by levying taxes. Villages and towns across the empire were expected to pay tribute to the state. In fact, all subjects of the Inca Empire paid tribute to the state with the notable exception of the Inca elite. Conquered ethnic groups, lower caste Inca, and other marginalized peoples supported the distribution networks with tribute, but were not permitted to withdraw the same amount of goods as their rulers. The elites not only controlled the redistribution networks but also parasitized the system disproportionately.\n\nAlso social castes don't really jive with socialism, and class hierarchies existed in all facets of Inca society. And socialist states don't usually conquer civilizations around them.\n\nSo IMO the Inca were not socialist. They were something unique.\n\nsources:\n\nBauer, Brian S. and R. Alan Covey. \u201cProcesses of State Formation in the Inca Heartlands (Cuzco, Peru).\u201d American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002): 846-864. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_5_.\n\n \n\n\n \n\nHovde, Brynjolf J. \u201cSocialistic Theories of Imperialism Prior to the Great War.\u201d Journal of Political Economy 36, no. 5 (1928): 569-591. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_3_.\n\n \n\nLawrence, Pieter. \u201cWhat Socialism Means.\u201d The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Last modified April, 2005. _URL_0_.\n\n \n \n\nMurdock, George Peter. \u201cThe Organization of Inca Society.\u201d The Scientific Monthly 38, no. 3 (1934): 231-239. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_1_.\n\n \n\nRostworowski, Maria. \u201cThe Incas.\u201d In The Inca World: The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru A.D. 1000-1534. Edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli, 143-188. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.\n\n \n \n\n\u201cWhat is Socialism?\u201d World Socialism Movement. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_2_.\n\n \n \n\nZuidema, R. T. \u201cHierarchy and Space in Incaic Social Organization.\u201d Ethnohistory 30, no. 2 (1983): 49-75. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_4_."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1208-april-2005/what-socialism-means", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/15641", "http://www.worldsocialism.org/english/what-socialism", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/1822385", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/481241", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/3567261"]]}
{"q_id": "22gxno", "title": "Can a Turing machine simulate quantum computation?", "selftext": "So Turing proved that the Universal Machine can simulate any other system of (at least classical) computation. But can a Universal Turing machine simulate any quantum computation? I know that qubits can be in a superposition of states, which is what makes quantum computation powerful, but could a Turing machine compute anything that a quantum computer could, albeit some things with much less efficiency?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22gxno/can_a_turing_machine_simulate_quantum_computation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgmptw6"], "score": [11], "text": ["Turning Machines can surely simulate quantum computers.  Quantum computing is really nothing more than multiplying big matrices which  classical computers certainly can do. [You can even download quantum computer simulators.](_URL_0_). \n\nWe can probably not do so efficiently. The idea that classical computers cannot simulate  quantum dynamics efficiently motivated Feynman to suggest the idea of quantum computers. This is a problem of complexity theory. And as so many things in complexity theory we don't have a proof either way. A proof that we cannot would be very interesting. It would be similar to Bell's theorem in that it would strongly indicate that classical attempts to explain quantum mechanics is a fool's errand. \n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.quantiki.org/wiki/List_of_QC_simulators"]]}
{"q_id": "3p45ed", "title": "why do some professors/teachers still hate wikipedia?", "selftext": "I understand that \"anyone can go on there and add what they want.\"  But the truth is that if you put something false, it will most likely be caught right away and corrected.  Considering this, why do some professors still have such disdain for wikipedia?  I have met several professors who basically mock wikipedia and think the whole thing is a joke.  Do they have a good reason to disregard something that is actually quite credible?  \n\nI also want to mention that I do understand the importance of multiple sources, but why can't wikipedia be one of them?  \n\nedit:  Awesome replies, everyone!  You raise very good points, and now that I consider them, it makes sense.  Thanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p45ed/eli5_why_do_some_professorsteachers_still_hate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw2y46f", "cw2y492", "cw2ya7e", "cw2yd7e", "cw2z2i1"], "score": [16, 3, 10, 3, 6], "text": ["Wikipedia is not a source, just like how you aren't suppose to quote an encyclopedia. A very easy workaround is to use the sources that the Wikipedia article uses.  \n  \nIf I was doing an article on Reddit, I wouldn't say \"The name Reddit is a play on words \"I read it on Reddit.\"\" and quote the Wiki article on Reddit, I would use the source they used, which is Reddit's FAQ page, _URL_0_.", "Wikipedia isn't credible, the citations are. Wikipedia isn't an academic publication with any kind of explicit responsibility for maintaining content. Many academics would call it a good place to get an overview of a topic and/or to collect some good starting 'real' resources.\n\nThat said: really you shouldn't generally be citing Encyclopedias in academic works anyway; they aren't primary sources nor are they meant to be. They've always just been meant to be a quick reference to some key ideas - basically a dictionary for ideas rather than words. ", "[This wikipedia article](_URL_0_) explains it quite well. You don't use Wikipedia as a source for the same reason you don't use any encyclopedia as a source, because it is tertiary. The point of being assigned a research paper is not to write down correct things, as you seem to think. It is to practice *doing library research,* which means being able to synthesize your own original thoughts on a topic after consulting multiple sources. But an encyclopedia is not a source because its topic is everything, and it has no opinions or analysis specific to each topic; only a summary and history of the things you're supposed to be reading. \n\nAccording to the article, you can start your research on Wikipedia before diving into your topic but then you have to actually dive into your topic. ", "You can make up a fact, insert it into wikipedia, take a screenshot of it, and cite it.  \nMany completely false articles actually linger for years.   _URL_0_.  \nWikipedia doesn't consider Wikipedia to be a reliable source.  _URL_1_.\n\n Here are some more reasons.  _URL_2_. \n\nAn important part of academic research is the evaluation of sources.  ", "I'll go one further and say that I hate students using magazines and newspapers as sources. You better be going to the primary source such as actual government publications,  first hand observations, appropriate academic journals, etc.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use", "http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/education/2010/march/The-Top-10-Reasons-Students-Cannot-Cite-or-Rely-on-Wikipedia.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "6ayttk", "title": "When did \"big balls\" start being associated with courage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ayttk/when_did_big_balls_start_being_associated_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhj7wr4"], "score": [18], "text": ["It seems to be quite an ancient association, the one between genital size and courage. Here's one of my favorite passages from the I Kings 12. Context: Solomon died, and his son Rehoboam has taken over. The Northern Tribes in particular want the new king to lighten the load of corv\u00e9e labor (think tax paid in labor) that Solomon used to build his great works. \n\n > 12 Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. 2 When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from[a] Egypt. 3 And they sent and called him; and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, 4 \u201cYour father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.\u201d 5 He said to them, \u201cGo away for three days, then come again to me.\u201d So the people went away.\n\n > 6 Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, \u201cHow do you advise me to answer this people?\u201d 7 They answered him, \u201cIf you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.\u201d 8 But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him, and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. 9 He said to them, \u201cWhat do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, \u2018Lighten the yoke that your father put on us\u2019?\u201d 10 The young men who had grown up with him said to him, \u201cThus you should say to this people who spoke to you, \u2018Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us\u2019; thus **you should say to them, \u2018My little finger is thicker than my father\u2019s loins. 11 Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.\u2019\u201d**\n\n > 12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, \u201cCome to me again the third day.\u201d 13 The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him 14 and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, \u201cMy father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.\u201d 15 So the king did not listen to the people, because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.\n\nTwo fun things: first, spoiler, Jeroboam splits, the United Monarchy period of Israelite history ends, and Jeroboam and Rehoboam go on to lead the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and Southern Kingdom (Judah), respectively. \n\nSecond, notice that they only discuss the thickness of loins among the \"young men\", and Rehoboam doesn't actually say that part to Jeroboam's face. He just repeats the other, less obscene part. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "f3br5", "title": "How have our estimates of the parameters of the Drake's equation changed in the last few years?", "selftext": "I was watching Cosmos recently and thinking of the Kepler telescope's findings as well as the more recent discovery that arsenic can apparently substitute for phosphorus in certain cases.  Do either of these discoveries give us new estimates for the number of civilizations with intelligent life?  Are there any other major discoveries from the last few years that have an effect on these estimates as well?  I realize that the Drake's estimates are just that -- estimates -- but I'm curious how these estimates might change over time.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f3br5/how_have_our_estimates_of_the_parameters_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1cyyc9", "c1cz72g", "c1czddl"], "score": [8, 5, 3], "text": ["I think planets turned out to be a lot more common than expected, which changes one of the parameters. We'll learn more about which planets are the right size and temperature in the next few years. Recently, there's been discussion of the final term regarding how long civilizations last. In the seventies people assumed that if civilization ended it would be through nuclear war, but now people are realizing that self-induced climate change could do it as well.\n\nAlso, there are now more candidate planets/moons for life in our own solar system. It used to be just Mars and Europa, now it's Titan and Enceladus as well.", "[The Bs variable was introduced by xkcd](_URL_0_)", "I think the biggest limiting factor of the Drake equations are the questions of what is the probably of life starting, and what is the probability of intelligent life evolving once life has started. For these, we only have one data point, and I think, no idea what the answer is. I think the estimates of the number of planets, and Earth-like planets might have changed slightly based (maybe a factor of 2 or something) on what we know now, but that won't affect much of what we take away from the equation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_drake_equation.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "42v989", "title": "If a star is brighter than the Sun does it consume fuel more quickly or more slowly? If a star is more massive than the Sun does it have greater or lesser fuel reserves than the Sun?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/42v989/if_a_star_is_brighter_than_the_sun_does_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czdibfo", "czdmfz5", "czdz58t"], "score": [8, 3, 2], "text": ["Brighter stars are putting out more energy and thus consume fuel faster.\n\nStars that are much, much larger than the Sun are actually quite short lived comparitively. The Sun's lifespan is about ten billion years. Supernova candidates are expected to have lifespans around one quarter of one billion years.\n\nOn the other side of the spectrum, dwarf stars are believed to be able to live up to a trillion years.", "As a rule of thumb, the more massive a star is, the shorter it lives. You are right that a more massive star has far more fuel than a smaller one. But it also consume it at a far greater rate.\n\nThe most massive and luminous stars might live only for a few hundreds of million years, which is really short if you compare it to the ten billion years or so our sun will live. \n\nSmall stars or white dwarfs can live for even longer, some may even live for a few trillion years.", "The luminosity of stars is approximately proportional to their mass to the 3.5 power, so stars that are larger last a much smaller time than the Sun, and stars that are smaller last less time. Assuming that the fuel is proportional to mass, this means the lifetime t is given approximately by t=10^(10) years (M/Msun)^(-2.5)\n\nFor high-mass stars with 100x the mass of the Sun, this predicts that a star will last around 1 million years, while for the lowest mass stars with mass 1/10 of the Sun's, the lifetime will be around 3 trillion years. For stars that barely go supernova (M=10Msun), the lifetime is around 30 million years. The formula is not precisely accurate, but it's reasonable.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bg601v", "title": "In 1757, British admiral John Byng was executed for 'failing to do his utmost' - What effect did his execution have on the aggressiveness of British naval commanders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bg601v/in_1757_british_admiral_john_byng_was_executed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eling4x"], "score": [132], "text": ["Adapted from [a couple](_URL_0_) of [previous answers](_URL_1_): \n\nByng's execution had a profound effect on the Navy of the mid-1700s. For one thing, it taught admirals (and other officers) that no matter how good their political friends, they could not escape the consequences of failing to act, and could not be perceived to be shy of offering battle. If there were plenty of things that could go wrong when attacking the enemy, on the other hand it would be a fatal error not to attack. The culture of determination in the face of adversity that the British navy cultivated over time certainly owes *something* to the example of Byng, though how much it owes to that is hard to quantify; it was reinforced throughout the decades by continued success in the face of even superior forces. Over time, the British assumed that they would attack whenever they saw the enemy, while the French and Spanish (and other foreign fleets) expected to be attacked and more than half expected to lose. \n\n\n >  A bit of an additional question; were British fleet commanders and captains more aggressive and 'daring' than their French and Spanish counterparts in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars? \n\nYes, I think that they probably were, for three reasons: \n\n* Their fighting instructions mandated extreme exertion to \"take, sink, burn or destroy\" enemy ships without regard to the cost to their own safety, with some caveats about hazarding the fleet for little reward. In the Battle of Minorca (1756) British admiral John Byng and his captains were extremely cautious in engaging the French fleet, regardless of the fact that they had been ordered to break through it to relieve the British garrison at Minorca (a strategic point in the Mediterranean). After the battle ended inconclusively, with light damage to the British fleet, the captains held a council of war and voted to retreat to Gibraltar. \n\nThe desultory battle and the fall of Minorca was a national scandal; the Admiralty court-martialed Byng and shot him on his own quarterdeck. (This is the origin of Voltaire's quip in *Candide*, *Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres* -- \n\"in this country, it is wise to shoot an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.\"). Jokes aside, captains were expressly rewarded for being aggressive, even to the point where disobeying orders was ignored or sanctioned if that resulted in the capture or destruction of enemy ships. \n\n* The admiralty offered prize money to captains who captured ships, as well as head-money for prisoners and some other forms of compensation for service. Captains were entitled to three-eighths of the total value of a prize, unless the captains were under a local admiral's orders, in which case he was entitled to a third of the captain's share (one-eighth the total value). This lead to some unseemly chasing after prizes, but it rewarded capturing enemy commerce as well as enemy men-of-war. \n\n* Most importantly, the doctrine of the British navy focused on destroying the enemy's fleet as the ultimate goal of naval warfare. Convoy duty, transport duty and even commerce-raiding were subordinate to this, and seen as dull but necessary parts of the business; even blockade duty was monotonous to the extreme but held the possibility of a decisive fleet action at some point. In contrast, the French and Spanish fleets were seen as an auxiliary or subordinate arm of their larger military, and their ships were more often thought of as basically escorts to move troops around."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tynsx/how_much_of_an_effect_did_john_byngs_execution/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ebdk5/how_did_nelsons_tactics_work_at_trafalgar/ctdxbmw/"]]}
{"q_id": "1tv5gl", "title": "why do we even let kids believe in santa claus?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tv5gl/eli5_why_do_we_even_let_kids_believe_in_santa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cebqy8c", "cebr0ca", "cebrptc", "cebszl0", "cebt6oj", "cebt7a1", "cebtchg", "cebv60g", "cebv8eq", "cebwrwb", "cebxhdk", "cebxqt9", "cebxyho", "cebxyk3", "cec32cc", "cec4ogu", "cec67wg"], "score": [96, 2, 6, 9, 3, 12, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because it's a fun, cute tradition.  Seeing kida get all excited about santa is one of the most heart warming things on earth.  ", "People make up excuses for it, but really they just like amusing themselves at the kids' expense.", "So parents can bribe/manipulate kids into 'being nice' and going to bed early. \n\nSeptember isn't the most popular birth month for no reason (possibly more a product of New Years drunken fumbles than Mom banging 'Santa' but hey).", "If you were five and you asked me this I'd say 'don't be stupid, Santa is real, we don't just let you believe it, how else do you think your presents get there?' because I'm not a massive kill joy douche.", "It's close enough to the same reason we still tell our kids about this dude Jesus. ", "By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money. \n\n\nFrom a man to an animal to a fairy. \n\n\nFrom toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters. \n\n\nIn this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency\n\n\n-chuck palahniuk, from Rant", "Because the world is better with a little bit of magic in it. ", "My five year old picked Santa at school. We had nothing to do with it. Didn't disuade him from the idea or use it as a threat. Per him, Santa brings him what he asked for, but he still has to pay for it. He spent the weeks leading up to Christmas trying to save up enough money for a new Lego game for the ps3. \n\nIn speaking with my mother about it, she says she didn't want us believing in Santa because of the let down from finding out Santa wasn't real. I spent my childhood bitter because I didn't *get* to experience what it was to really believe in something like that, even if it was fake.", "same reason we also tell them about the tooth fairy and bunny rabbit....children have wonderful imagination, a sense of wonder and belief in magical things....but only for a few years\n\nI think it's great to foster that sense of wonder for the first 5-6 years of their lives, before it's lost and life becomes more serious and normal for them!\n\nI myself wasn't traumatized by finding out santa wasn't real. I was 6 years old just sitting and the thought immediately came to me \" there's no way mommy would let an old guy walk into our house. Santa can't be real\"...and I just moved on with my day", "I'm going to be paraphrasing terry pratchett, but a few years ago I came across something he said or wrote and the whole thing just clicked for me.  Most adults are cyncial.  By the time you reach adulthood you've realize the world isn't what you hoped or wanted it to be, it just is the way it is.  That said the idea of Santa Claus is a wonderful fantasy. A jolly elderly and wise man beloved by all of mankind and held in such high regard and admiration that his yearly seasonal visit inspires us into a frenzy season of gift giving and kindness, isn't a bad fantasy to want to believe in.  \"Humans need fantasy to be human, we need to be that place were fallen angel meets rising ape. \" this shouldn't be misconstrued as saying \"humans need fantasy to make life bearable\". Its not some pink pill that makes life better. To fantasize is to be human. So the tooth fairy, easter bunny, Santa clause are all little lies that we use as practice for the larger ones we tell ourselfs as adults. Justice, mercy, duty, things like that. To that statement you might be thinking to yourself \"those aren't the same thing at all\" to which I reply \"You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it though the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice one molecule of mercy,.....and yet we act as if there is some ideal order to the world as if there is some....some rightness in the universe by which it may be judge.\" Now I'm sure some will downvote my opinion. Saying if all people have to believe that these things exist otherwise \"what's the point\"? Which I'd respond is exactly my point.  Humans need fantasy to be human.\n\nEdit:proof reading", "I prefer krampus", "Studies have shown that believing in Santa is actually good for kids.  It spurs imagination and creativity during a time that children's minds are pliable.  One such study: _URL_0_\n\nI'm not sure I've ever heard of a child negatively impacted by being allowed to participate in Santa when they were young.  My 12 year old knows Santa isn't real, and now she gets a lot of joy from seeing the excitement of my 5 year old.  Ceasing to believe is generally a gradual realization, and I know personally that I never got upset at my parents for being \"Santa\"...I just appreciated the effort they made to bring some magic into my life when I was young.", "for the same reason we \"let\" people believe in god.\n\nto control their behavior.\n\n\"he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, **he knows when you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake**\"\n\nkids understand this simple concept... be good and get gifts, be bad and you don't get gifts. so kids behave so they are rewarded when they wake up on christmas morning.\n\nonce you get a bit older you get indoctrinated with a sense of heaven and hell and eternity to get you to behave (like not killing people or fucking your neighbors wife) so you get rewarded when you die.\n\nit's easier to dangle a carrot in front of a kid to get them to not be little assholes than it is to be a good parent and raise good kids. so lazy incompetent parents raise kids this way.\n\njust as it's a lot harder to maintain a society where people just don't murder and rape people, than it is to dangle the imaginary magic man in the clouds carrot in front of people to moderate their behavior.\n\ngod is just santa clause for adults, santa is just lazy parenting and an easy way to indoctrinate kids into this imaginary rewards system.\n\n**SKYCAKE**", "I don't, and I don't see any compelling reason too. I don't hide my 2 year old from Santa, I just don't go out of my way to encourage \"Yes, that man is real, he is literally going to come into our house and leave you gifts\" \"Yes, this gift was brought to you by a man last night who came into our house after flying on magical reindeer\".   \n  \nSeriously, if anyone had a compelling argument, I'd listen to it- but \"it made my childhood so magically!\" is not really a great argument since you've never experienced the alternative...", "Because I'm not interested in training my kids that I'm the authority for their critical reasoning skills. The milestone when my kid uses reasoning to eliminate the possibility of Santa Claus is much more useful for his/her than my serving as the arbiter of what is and is not reality. ", "I'm not at all. I don't even think I will tell my son about Santa.  I know people might frown on me about it, but I really don't care. My brother is getting to that age (7) where he needs to told Santa isn't real, but my mom won't do it.", "Problem is, you can not tell your kids about santa, however, they will most certainly hear about santa at school.  I'm not taking a side here, I'm just making an observation...  That's the case with most things.  You can choose not to cuss around your kids at home, but you know damn well your kids will hear other kids at school cussing, and so on and so forth...  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/believing-in-santa-healthy_n_4482081.html"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9i0h0v", "title": "How common were large wild animals (like bears, wisents, wolves, lions) in medieval Europe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9i0h0v/how_common_were_large_wild_animals_like_bears/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6gx26k"], "score": [6], "text": ["What the F is a wisent? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "tihbs", "title": "Hey r/askscience, would flexing your muscles reduce the penetration of a knife when stabbing you?", "selftext": "From what I understand, when muscles contract, their density increases. However, if this is so, is the increase in density enough to decrease the penetration a knife could incur on certain muscles?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tihbs/hey_raskscience_would_flexing_your_muscles_reduce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4mvu6o"], "score": [4], "text": ["Perhaps, taking this question even further, is it possible to calculate the resistance created when flexing vs. not flexing?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "19jyp2", "title": "how did south korea go from being a completely backwards and impoverished nation to one of the world's top economies in 60 years?", "selftext": "Was it a result of good economic policies? Lack of corruption in the government? Abundant natural resources? A combination of those?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19jyp2/eli5_how_did_south_korea_go_from_being_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8op3zi", "c8op53v", "c8ou2bc", "c8ou5ha", "c8ova2x", "c8ovjte", "c8ovufu", "c8owmjf", "c8ox4td", "c8oxopz", "c8oyukr"], "score": [29, 9, 10, 23, 4, 11, 3, 5, 7, 2, 3], "text": ["They Westernized very quickly. They have a very free economy, and I assume they have quite a bit of financial help from the USA and other western countries.", "They actually make stuff there. Samsung is in S. Korea. ", "There are several reasons - all of which intertwined seemed to create a \"perfect storm\" of development which can be traced back to cultural reasons and the specific circumstances of the country (in no particular order):\na) Extremely hard working and very high social value given to education.\nb) Very low levels of corruption and theft.\nc) Relatively homogeneous population with a sense of community and support for each other (especially after the trauma of the civil war and the hunger that came after it) both in the present and in the future (idea of leaving a legacy to the children)\nd) Culture that values stability and order, respect for elderly and family support.\ne) Political elite pushing for strong economic development through economic conglomerates. \nf) Openness to learning from other countries (mostly US) \ng) Geographically small country, easily accessible in most places and relatively easy to manage.", "Lots of people like to dump on Capitalism because it doesn't address some social issues (poverty is a big one).  Despite all of this, Capitalism is the best way to turn a country from being dirt poor to wealthy and developed.\n\nSo it goes like this, poor people are just scraping by, but then a factory comes in with some menial jobs that pay \"low\" wages by the standard of the developed world and suck and are dangerous, but are actually pretty decent compared to what previously existed (which is why people choose to work in sweat shops).  Then more companies realize the country isn't a total craphole anymore, and come make more factories.  The demand for workers increases and so do the wages. Eventually, child labor stops and children get educations (maybe not great ones, but better than nothing).  Those children grow up and get better jobs than their parents ever had.  \n\nTldr: if you have the rule of law, property rights, and capitalism, you can go from third world to first world in a couple generations.", "Read Ha-Joon Chang's book Bad Samaritans. He specializes in development economics and he happens to be South Korean. Some of the history he talks about is fascinating. Did anyone know the UK/US had the highest import tariffs in the world up to the 1950s? So much for industrializing under \"free markets\". \n\n_URL_0_", "I think it would be more correct to say they *modernized* very quickly, rather than Westernized. Korea (like Japan) has very high standards of living and economic productivity because it is modern, but it isn't really a  Western country.", "I think it's important to note that it was a combination of capitalism and military dictatorship. The government has evolved to a democracy.\n\nChina's growth is somewhat similar. Basically if you have a lot of money and government will power (with no distractions from having to win the next election in say 2 years), you have the potential grow an economy quickly.\n", "I thought this was /r/AskHistorians at first...\n\nAnyways, it's a very complicated issue, They still have rampant corruption and they were a military dictatorship until the 70s. The current president, Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of  Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea from 1963 to 1979. Her father, is credited with the industrialization and rapid economic growth of South Korea through export-oriented industrialization.\n\nHowever he was very anti-democratic and he fought against reforms to make Korea more democratic. One opinion is insisting that he was the pro-Japanese dictator and brought the downfall of the economy. On the other hand, the other opinion is insisting that by Park's works The Republic of Korea could be successful. Older generations who spent their adulthood during Park's dictatorship credit Park for building the economic foundation of the country and protecting the country from the communist North. However, the newer generations, including those who fought for democratization, tend to believe his authoritarian rule was unjustified and corrupt, and that dictator Park hindered South Korea's shift to democracy. ", "Here is what I know. Up till the 60's North Korea was far better developed compared to South Korea due to the backing of the Soviet Union and China. Since South Korea's first President Rhee Syng-man, South Korea was politically very unstable. South Korea was backed by the U.S. ,but if you know you're history. There was a lot going on in America in the 60's: Cuban missile crisis, civil rights movement, JFK assassination, space race, Vietnam war, and etc. \n\nSo that is where Park Chung-hee comes in picture. On May 16, 1961, then Major-General Park and his military allies launch a military coup. The coup was successful and even the U.S. government recognized the new government. Park then won the election in 1963 and served as President 6 terms till his assassination in 1979. \n\nPark Chung-hee ruled South Korea like a dictator with laws: not allowing men to grow out hair, women can't wear miniskirts, curfew, and etc. Having a KGB type state police that would arrest/kidnap people torture and/or killing them, if they had a plot against the government or were linked to North Korea. Park's decision to work with Japan was very unpopular. Korea was only freed from Japan rule 20 decades then. Park was actually an officer in the Manchukuo Army. Park and his military/government allies were all fluent in Japanese. \n\nHowever this Japanese relationship is what helped South Korea rapidly grow. Park's government introduced Chaebol ideology, which comes from Japan. Where a company does only work in one industry, but are intertwined in multiple industry. Hyundai is a good example. Hyundai cars are made in Hyundai factories, transported on Hyundai trucks, transported on Hyundai freighter and sold overseas. Park introduced the Five-Year Plans of South Korea. Park's government also helped created the freeway, which really helped by connecting the capital, Seoul to Busan/Pohang a port city. \n\nPark also kept a close relationship with the U.S. government. Even sending 320k troops to Vietnam during the war and being vocal against Communistism and North Korea. Park even went to the extremes by sending small number of troops into North Korea without the approval from the U.S. Through aid during Vietnam war, U.S. government aided South Korea with tens of millions dollars from funding, technology transfer, investment, loans, grants and etc. \n\nSo here you have Park Chung-hee who left a very odd legacy. A dictator in one hand, but without him South Korea would be very different now. By the way Park Chung-hee's daughter ,Park Geun Hye was just elected as South Korea's first female President.", "The power of the ajjuma. ", "Korean- kinda American here.\n\nTo be honest, our government is quite corrupted. There were dictatorship and coups when we first got the \"democracy\" and our congress often have a fist fight with each other, literally. \n\nWell, there are many factors that played in to our economic boom. Government's policy such as Park Chung Hee's five year plan is one of them. However, I would say most important factor was patriotism for the nation. When we had an IMF-crisis in 1997, the whole nation came as one to help our government pay the bill. There was a gold drive through out the country where citizens gave away their precious gold such as engagement ring or passing mother's jewelry to help the government. I find it very hard to picture that happening in U.S.\n\nThe whole phenomenon is called as Miracle on the Han River, the river that runs through Seoul. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/wlXbnuS6adc"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1j6vk2", "title": "If I was stranded in the dessert with no water, but a case of Bud Light, should I drink the beer or will it dehydrate me faster?", "selftext": "I chose Bud Light because I think a light beer would have a better chance of hydrating than a normal beer.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1j6vk2/if_i_was_stranded_in_the_dessert_with_no_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbbomuk", "cbbprot", "cbbsrlk", "cbc81td"], "score": [16, 2, 4, 3], "text": ["You should drink the beer.  Just not right away.  The dehydration effect of beer is a result of it lowering the amount of water your body can retain; however, it does have some water in it.  So if you are dehydrated and you drink the beer, you will actually be hydrating yourself.", "I can't even imagine what that hangover would feel like.", "Actually beer was kept on sailing ships as it provided some hydration, but more importantly, essential nutrients. The beer I am referring to is more like what we know as a dark ale or lager today. It was also usually safer than water as the alcohol kept it cleaner than the nasty water available on a ship", " > If I was stranded in the dessert with no water\n\nDepends. Is it ice cream? Sorry, I had to. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "79p563", "title": "if you put a pill under your tongue to get it in your blood stream faster, does it bypass the stomach and liver?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79p563/eli5_if_you_put_a_pill_under_your_tongue_to_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp3oiq3", "dp3qhao", "dp3qumv", "dp3wnqo", "dp3wnzj", "dp3xazi", "dp3y9ch"], "score": [6, 167, 38, 7, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["I don't think anything can bypass your liver.  Read up\nOn the circulatory system.   Your body's plumbing works that way for a reason. ", "Sublingual (under the tongue) administration does bypass the stomach, obviously, but all of your blood will eventually pass through the liver (via the hepatic artery). However, unlike substances absorbed in the stomach and small intestine (oral administration into the hepatic portal vein, which brings everything through the liver first), medication administered sublingually goes to the heart *first*, then on to the liver if it happens to travel inferiorly (downward). This is why nitroglycerin is administered sublingually to treat angina pectoris (cardiac-related chest pain).\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "Medical student here. Certainly not a board-certified expert yet, but I can weigh in a bit on this. The benefit of taking medications sublingually (below the tongue) is that the drug enters your blood more quickly, and has a greater opportunity to exert its effects.\n\nConsider this -- when you take a pill, it needs time to pass through the stomach and be absorbed primarily through the intestines. After it's absorbed by the gut, the first place that blood goes is straight to the liver. Your body is smart, and it's configured to send the \"collecting\" blood from the gut right to the liver in case you've absorbed something bad. Some drugs are highly susceptible to this process, which is called \"first pass metabolism.\" In fact, some drugs can't be given orally at all, because having all of the dose hit the liver right after absorption ensures that they're not gonna be effective. This is why you can't take birth control with certain antibiotics (Rifampin) -- the antibiotic makes the liver more trained for destroying it and similar drugs, including birth control. Additionally, some drugs simply aren't absorbed at all by the gut, so you can't get them in that way.\n\nWhen you're absorbing the pill elsewhere, be it under your tongue or through an IV, it isn't all going straight to the liver. Yes, it will eventually get there, but it will do so more slowly and not at once. In the meantime, the drug can spread throughout your blood and reach other targets in the body rather than hit the brick wall that is your liver. There is a greater chance for the drug to do its job, as opposed to going \"Stomach - >  Liver - >  Gone\"", "Pharmacist input:\nFor most drugs, First Pass Metabolism breaks down the majority of a drug.  That is, after it is swallowed and absorbed, it goes first to the liver where a large amount of broken down BEFORE getting into systemic circulation.  \nGoing across your oral mucosa (buccal or sublingual) means I gets into systemic circulation (1) quickly, and (2) at a high blood level.   \nNot all orally disintegrating drugs are able to cross the mucosa like this.  Some are just better tolerated if they melt away in the mouth.  These still get swallowed and get metabolized. ", "Some medications require an acidic environment to be best absorbed, some have coatings that allow them to pass the stomach and be best absorbed in the small intestines (duodenum), and others need to be metabolized by the liver to become effective (prodrugs). So yes, some medications will reach the bloodstream faster, but may be in the wrong concentrations or forms... Or just taste awful. ", "If it's an Advil gel cap it just literally burns your mouth. \n\nSource: popped Advil on my way to getting water and took too long. ", "I heard if you have a tooth ache you can pulverize an aspirin and take the powder and rub around the infected tooth area.. this will alleviate the pain quicker than swallowing it. \n\nI haven't actually tried it, but can anyone confirm if they've tried this and it worked. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.innerbody.com/image_digeov/card10-new2.html"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8elf31", "title": "What effect would having multiple moons (like Mars, Uranus, Saturn, etc.) have on our oceans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8elf31/what_effect_would_having_multiple_moons_like_mars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxwhy3t", "dxwn2np"], "score": [9, 3], "text": ["The Earth's Moon is quite large, considering the size of the Earth. Much bigger, in proportion, than the satellites of the other planets. If we had multiple moons, of a size corresponding to the relative size of them, we probably wouldn't see as much in tides.\n\nIf we had multiple moons, similar in size to our current Moon, it would depend on the respective orbits. An interesting possibility is one of the stable Lagrange points (L4 or L5).", "To have multiple moons in stable orbits \\(not disrupting the orbits of other moons\\) I think the impact on the tides would be many orders of magnitude smaller for each successive moon. They might be noticeable if you measured very carefully, but the closest moon would still probably dominate the effect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6viv8i", "title": "how do we know dinosaurs didn't have cartilage protrusions like human ears and noses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6viv8i/eli5_how_do_we_know_dinosaurs_didnt_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm0jatd", "dm0kfue", "dm0kon9", "dm0m3vg", "dm0nl95", "dm0nyde", "dm0ofyr", "dm0ogg2", "dm0onnp", "dm0owng", "dm0pkjf", "dm0qhdt", "dm0qv13", "dm0r0mt", "dm0rpdi", "dm0s6fa", "dm0t487", "dm0trgc", "dm0uc04", "dm0vbi1", "dm0w7cd", "dm0znc1", "dm11j9l", "dm18z3x", "dm195xc", "dm1bjbs", "dm1om4z", "dm1phqa", "dm1pkb5", "dm1q52p", "dm1zg84"], "score": [642, 67, 3805, 55, 4, 721, 8, 2, 2454, 6228, 18, 49, 7, 2, 3555, 32, 7, 4, 208, 2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 5, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I'm not a relevant expert, but doesn't cartilage usually attach to bones leaving telltale marks? Measurements of tendon attachment points gives information about muscle size, for example...", "We don't for sure. \n\nThe only dinosaurs we have actually seen are all feather and fly around, and those don't have noses or ears like humans (although they do have those dangly turkey do-dahs in certain species)\n\nOther dinosaurs were probably more similar to modern day reptiles, which again don't tend to have these protrusions. \n\nIt is hard to know what something looks like when you only have bones to go on. ", "We don't conclusively know.\n\nWe do have a few indicators.\n\nCartilage usually attaches to bone or connects in such a way that leaves marks.\n\nBeyond this we can look at their closest relatives.\n\nDinosaurs were the ancestors to birds, which have no ears.\n\nDinosaurs were cousins to lizards and other large reptiles, who again have no ears and kind of suck for hearing.\n\nWhile they may have had ears in the sense of audio sensing organs, they almost certainly did not have ears as we recognize on mammals. \n\nEdit- Officially my highest rated comment ever", "At one point it was theorized that sauropods had trunks.\n\n_URL_0_", "wouldn't they leave an outline in fossils? ", "The remains from cartilaginous protrusions would be visible in sedimentary deposits. For example, look at [this](_URL_0_) cast made from the body of someone who died in Pompeii during the Vesuvius explosion. His cartilaginous nose is visible. Dinosaurs would have left similar impressions. ", "We have found preserved enough heads to know that at least those specific dinosaurs had no protruding ears.  While we haven't found a lot of well enough preserved heads none of the ones we have found have ears so it's pretty safe to assume none did. It is an assumption though.", "I'm just guessing here but wouldn't there have been at least a few instances where cartilage structures were noticeable in a fossil? Maybe under the perfect circumstances of preservation? Of all the fossils discovered?", "We have found dinosaurs with an outline of their skin fossilized and some with organs. Recently they found a dinosaur so well preserved they are calling it a dinosaur mummy.\n\n_URL_0_", "Unrelated, but it's actually possible that ancient relatives of crocodiles had external ears. The bit where you'd put modern crocs' earlid muscles was greatly developed in land-based cousins called notosuchians, and even further in a subgroup called the baurusuchids. This implies they had *something* over their ears that needed to be wiggled, and they weren't exactly keeping water out of their ears regularly.\n\nSo yeah. Possible land crocs with ears, big enough to hunt dinosaurs. Mesozoic be whack yo.\n\nEDIT: Unfortunately their ears were not in fact superpredators. This is why I need to grammar.\n\nEDIT2: [Have a speculative reconstruction by a cool dude I know.](_URL_0_)", "You can actually construct a phylogenetic tree that correctly places saurusthician dinosaurs, such as T. Rex, as the ancestors of modern birds. You would see that nowhere along the genetic tree did cartiligeous appendages appear between dinos and birds, so we find it likely that dinos did not have ears or a discrete nose.\n\nWe also base it on the musculoskeletal structure we see in fossils, and we model facial features. Basically, dinosaurs did not have the proper musculature to move their ears if they had them, so we find it unlikely once again. ", "Sometimes dinosaur fossils are preserved with skin impressions or other remains (e.g., keratin in dermal spines, beaks, or claws).  Some did have \"non-bone\" structures that protruded out from the body.  For example, [some sauropod dinosaurs had spikes along their back](_URL_0_) [PDF], and [skin impressions are known](_URL_1_) [PDF].  Getting such preservation in key parts of the body is a matter of great luck, but for some dinosaurs and some parts of the body there are constraints on the possibility of soft-tissue \"protrusions\".", "In science it's always best to keep it as simple as possible until you get more information, this is why the image of dinosaurs keeps changing even today when we get more information. \n\nHowever this doesn't stop artist from creating their own interpretations on what could or could not happen and that helps with the mystery in a beautiful, strange or funny way (look up sauropod neck flaps or fluffy t-rex)\n\nThere are a few examples where we do know that were sporting extra bits and pieces. The horned dinosaurs, ceratopsians, likely had keratin covering their horns leading to some crazy possibilities very similar to horns on a ram or rhinoceros. Keratin erodes easily so it doesn't get preserved leaving what we see on the skulls today.\n\nEdit: a word", "A similar question: How do we know that some dinosaurs, like the Archaeopteryx had feathers?\n\nBecause we occasionally get prints preserved of the intact animals.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFurther, it's a fairly common belief among paleontologists that birds are direct ancestors from dinosaurs, and to my knowledge, modern birds have no such cartilage appendage.", "It's notable that for animals that we've only found skeletons that artist depictions are probably missing things like loose skin and fat deposits. Unfortunately I can't find a better source so Buzzfeed it shall be. Two paleontologists took skeletons of modern animals and sketched them the way we've been historically sketching dinosaurs. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nGranted they took a good bit of artistic liberty for emphasis. ", "Okay, so I've rambled about crocs a bit, but in regards to dinosaurs themselves...\n\nThere are such things as 'dino mummies', where some flesh also turned to stone along with the bones during fossilisation. Like that nodosaur, the armoured dino in the news recently. I believe the only major soft-tissue one was an *Edmontosaurus*, where they found it had a comb on the top of its head, much like a chicken does.\n\nThere are 2D variants for smaller animals, like how *Archeopteryx* still has its feathers preserved. I believe the most relevant is a 125 million year old mammal called *Spinolestes* that was preserved in enough detail that you could still see the ears. As far as I know there haven't been any records of cartilaginous extensions.", "This might be dumb question but If dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor how are they ancestors to birds? ", "Generally speaking, cartilage doesn't fossilize because it deteriorates rapidly. With that being said, we can use their closest living relatives and special fossils to support the lack of ears or a nose. Their closest living descendents,  birds, lack external ears and have since the Cretaceous (based on fossils from China/Mongolia). Additionally, crocodilians lack cartilage ears as well. Simplistically, crocodilians split from dinosaurs way back in the Triassic - before dinosaurs became as derived. This means that the cousins (crocodile-like archosaurs) and direct descendents (birds) lack cartilage appendages. We can deduce that dinosaurs PROBABLY didn't have ears as we know them. The most telling way we can deduce the external appearance of dino ears is really, really well preserved fossils. Dinosaur mummies (there are more than you'd expect) show just an external meatus and no external appendages. \n", "The short answer is, we can't know for sure 100%, from dinosaur to dinosaur. But there are some things we do know. Impressions left by dinosaurs haven't shown us anything weird yet. Birds tend not to  have cartilaginous ears and noses, so it's unlikely their ancestors did. And also, cartilage leaves very minute traces of their existence in the form of bone shape, and stress points.\n\nFor an example, look at the skull of an elephant. We can guess just by examining it really closely how much weight the muscles surrounding the skull were supporting, and where a protrusion was likely based on tiny grooves left on the bone near the nose left by muscle. Logically, if such grooves were present in dinosaur bone, we could conclude similar protrusions. Nothing we've found so far seems to suggest cartilaginous protrusions, but that could change with just the right specimen.\n\nSource: Am volunteer who worked on dinosaur bone, who asked this exact question to my Paleontologist supervisors.", "Also keep in mind that everything we know about dinos is only from those living along shallow inland seas. We have 0 info on dinos from any other landscape. ", "We dont know that for certain. \n\nWe can check skulls for muscle attachment points, but they arent always obvious, we can check some of the really well preserved dinosaurs for preserved cartilage, but thats not exact either. \n\nWe can also check their evolutionary closest cousins, birds and lizards, and find that they do not have notable cartilage protrusions. \n\nIt seems most likely that the sketches we have are about accurate (Not accounting for stuff we cant find, like fat deposits), but we cannot be certain that they didn't have something that wasn't preserved (possibly not cartilage, its possible that some dinos had large skin flaps or fat deposits in areas that would drastically change how they look, or they might have had something like cartilage that we have no name for that changed how they looked but was soft enough to not require muscle and not be preserved).", "They probably did to some degree.  Consider a chickens comb and wattle. Its external soft tissue that exists in a related species of T Rex. ", "[Interesting lecture about exceptionally well preserved fossils at the Geological society of London.](_URL_0_)", "I strongly recommend 'All Yesterdays' by Darren Naish, a book about speculative biology.  For example, the point out that [this](_URL_0_) is probably what we'd construct from a baboon skeleton using the same techniques we use to reconstruct dinosaurs.\n\nOdds are, they had just as many weird protusions, flashy colors, and other ornamentation as modern animals do.  We just have absolutely no idea which had what.\n\nAlso, we have lots of examples of dinosaurs that were in cold climates, we'd expect them to be fat or fluffy, and possibly kind of adorkable. :)", "Cartilage is anchored on bone. Is you see ridges of bones in weird areas they were either anchoring cartilage or muscle. This Is how we can reconstruct animals too ", "Easy.  You look at animals that are understood to have similar evolutionary traits (ie more directly descended from dinos).  See any crocodiles with ears or noses?", "I would love to see more speculative art on this subject.  I often wonder what strange abilities dinosaurs would have had.  Just look at current species.  Some frogs spray blood from their eyes for defense.  What noises would they have made? Did some of them dance like birds of paradise? ", "How do we know the dinosaurs didn't have a space program?", "Wouldn't convergent evolution imply that dinosaurs might have evolved traits that have proven useful in other animals?", "We don't. _URL_0_\n\nFrom first link; \"Ears are made of cartilage and skin, and these are soft tissues which typically do not preserve well in the fossil record. So paleontologists look closely at modern animals for answers. While mammals have large protruding ears, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, birds and reptiles, do not. So it seems very unlikely that dinosaurs would sport large floppy ears.\n\nBirds have ear openings. These are holes just below and behind the eyes. Sometimes these ear opening can be quite large, but you just can't see them because they are covered in feathers. It seems likely that dinosaurs had the same type of ear openings, that may have also been covered in feathers.\"", "ive been saying this for so long, and how do we know how they sound? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/03/20/junk-in-the-trunk/"], [], ["https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeya._Cadaver_de_beb%C3%A9.jpg"], [], [], ["http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/"], ["https://dragonthunders.deviantart.com/art/Pinnasuchida-608265173"], [], ["http://plesiosauria.com/pdf/Czerkas_sauropodspines.pdf", "http://www.arca.museus.ul.pt/ArcaSite/obj/gaia/MNHNL-0000273-MG-DOC-web.PDF"], [], ["http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140702-archaeopteryx-fossil-feathers-dinosaurs-science/"], ["https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals?utm_term=.vhojKmrBb#.fheOV5Y3X"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDm4yYaAvZM"], ["http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1879lx982yxmojpg/original.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://bfy.tw/DXgK"], []]}
{"q_id": "3wsw9h", "title": "Rise of Great Powers AMA Part Un - Western Europe", "selftext": "With the end of the Thirty Years War, Europe was ready to rise out of the ashes of confessional based conflict. While the this war wasn\u2019t purely or primarily focused on confessional beliefs, the the world before it was certainly different than that of after. In this new and long 18th century, we see the rise of Dynastic politics and warfare.\n \nThis time period also sees multiple revolutions; the seeds of the industrial revolution is planted in Britain while the seeds of philosophical revolution are planted in Spain under Spinoza and picked up by others with the Enlightenment. There is a revolution of governance, with the strengthening of the State throughout most of Europe, a rise of Enlightened Despots that shaped their kingdoms and the nations to come.\n \nFinally, with the change in government and leaders, we have a change in fashion. Courts become centralized and draw power from this centralization but culture also grows from this. We have the rise of famous courts like Sanssouchi or the ever famous Versailles. Culture becomes more focused and wide spread from single points.\n \nWhile the West has a long history with multiple currents that shape it to the way it is now, these hundred and fifty one years are highly influential and set up contemporary Europe.\n \n**Le Dramatis Personae**\n \n/u/hazelnutcream \u2018s focus is on British Imperial governance at the close of the Seven Years\u2019 War with a focus on the origins of the American Revolution. They also have a particular interest in the place of Britain\u2019s other kingdoms, Scotland  &  Ireland, and their place within the British Empire.\n \n/u/Itsalrightwithme is focused on Early Modern Europe but with a focus on the Habsburg realms, for today that will be Spain and the Spanish/Austrian Netherlands. He will be happy to answer questions on how Habsburg Spain and it\u2019s successor, Bourbon Spain, reacted to the challenges of the 17th and 18th centuries. *n.b.* He does not live in the Low Countries.\n \n/u/ColeVintage studies the trade and construction of fashionable consumer goods and how they affected both political movements and their daily life.\n \n/u/alexistheman will be answering questions on His Majesty\u2019s Britannic Royal Government.\n \n/u/elos_ will be speaking about the Spanish and French New World, the genocide of native people\u2019s, and the evils of Colonialism. He may help with mainland France.\n \n/u/Bakuraptor expresses his sincerest regrets that he will not be able to attend as he is traveling.\n \nFinally, /u/DonaldFDraper will express his love for France, particularly the Second Worst part of French history, the *ancien regime*.\n \nAsk your questions! And we will try our best!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wsw9h/rise_of_great_powers_ama_part_un_western_europe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxyt4di", "cxyy2xi", "cxyylta", "cxz1dma", "cxz2vny", "cxz5ro9", "cxzkjw3", "cy06fln"], "score": [10, 7, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Thanks for doing this AMA guys!\n\n1. I have seen the term \u201cfiscal-military state\u201d often used to describe the state-structure of the European powers during this period, specifically Britain during the early 1700s. What precisely is meant by this term? Do the state-structures of this period conform to such a definition?\n\n2. To what extent, if at all, did Louis XIV attempt to standardize the patchwork of local administrations that characterized the *ancien regime*, especially given his centralization of royal power at Versailles? \n", "At the end of the 18th century, Gustav III was king of Sweden, and it's generally said that he lived in the wrong times. Had he lived 60-70 years earlier, he'd have been perfect for the task. As it was, in the times of the French revolution where the people demanded more rights and more power, he went the opposite direction and tried to rule as an absolute monarch. Needless to say, it didn't end well for the king.\n\nHow common was this approach in the rest of Europe? Do we see the same tendency of trying to force power back to the kingship or do they relent in favour of the mob?", "What role did the possession--or lack--of an overseas colonial empire play in the construction of nationalism and national identity among European countries in this era?", "For /u/ColeVintage\n\nHow easy was access to silk to the lower nobility and the middle class? Did this affect fashion trends for these groups?", "I've heard the Charles V tried to protect the rights and wellbeing of the natives in his colonial empire but couldn't really enforce it so he just gave up. To what extent is this true?", "How did medieval and early modern rulers keep their generals in check? Rome and China were famously plagued by rebellious generals. The modern era has seen a resurgence of coup d'etats starting with Cromwell and Napoleon and continuing to the present day. In the intervening eras, however, military coup d'etats seem to have been seldom attempted and rarely successful. How did the European monarchs fare so much better than their Roman predecessors?", "Geoffrey Parker theorizes that the growth of naval and colonial warfare in the 17th and 18th centuries was the result of the continental military revolution, where improvements in siege warfare made decisive battlefield victory elusive, if not impossible.  Do your readings of Early Modern history support the idea of decisive victory in naval and colonial theaters, compared to indecision on the continent?", "What happened to \"the war feeding itself\" as a doctrine (if such a word isn't anachronistic) after the Thirty Years War? Was the practice continued by any factions in future wars, such as the rest of the Franco-Spanish war?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31smg4", "title": "Who were the first modern Gynecologists? What was their motivation to work in the field? How were they perceived by other doctors and by the public in general?", "selftext": "I'm assuming they were men.  Gynecology deals with very personal parts of women.  How did male doctors come to be responsible for women's health?  Were there jokes about gynecologists being perverts in the early days or was it perceived as a serious attempt by doctors to improve the lives of women?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31smg4/who_were_the_first_modern_gynecologists_what_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq51nw6"], "score": [11], "text": ["I unfortunately can't speak to the societal aspects of your question, but I would like to point out that gynecology at some level has existed since at least classical times, as evidenced by [this speculum](_URL_1_) and other similar instruments found at Pompeii and elsewhere.  To ask who the first modern gynecologists were is to assume that at some point in the modern era the specialty was rediscovered, as opposed to constant practice in some form since at least the ancient Greeks, if not earlier.  \n\nMen certainly dominated the classical medical practitioner milieu, but it seems clear that women were involved in medicine among both the Greeks and Romans.  Period artwork usually depicts women functioning as midwives for childbirth and it is not a great leap to assume that women would handle not just childbirth but all womanly medical issues.  I'm not aware of much art depicting routine exams that would confirm that supposition though admittedly it is not my specialty.  [This](_URL_0_) lamp sherd seems to depict something along those lines but it is difficult to determine whether it is a male or female performing the procedure on what is clearly a very ill woman."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.laht.com/literature/vaginalexamlamp.jpg", "http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/hist-images/romansurgical/vaginalSpeculum1a_e.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "20xcss", "title": "why is our society so obsessed over sex but also considers it a taboo?", "selftext": "It's contraddictory. Sex is marketed and advertised literally everywhere, yet we consider it as something \"private\" and \"taboo\" (especially in public).\n\nMost animals aren't like that. So, why is this? *Is religion part of the problem?*", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20xcss/eli5_why_is_our_society_so_obsessed_over_sex_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg7m20e", "cg7mjaw", "cg7mprw", "cg7owdo", "cg7pcuy", "cg81ahl"], "score": [8, 16, 29, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Religious rules with regards to sex are just a reflection of an underlying social mechanic. If you're religious you might think homosexuality and masturbation is inherently wrong because that's what the Bible says, and the Bible was written by God. If you're atheist like me, you might think the Bible was written by a person (or many people) and therefore the rules written in it are just a reflection of their views on humanity.\n\nBasically, religion is not the problem - people are the problem. In some cultures people are more OK with discussing sexual topics because that is how their society developed, while in others they are not. But regardless of what society says is OK and what isn't, we are all drawn towards all things sex related because of our drive to reproduce.\n", "The taboo factor is the reason for the obsession. People want most what they're told they can't/ shouldn't have.", "Because (1) sex is awesomely fun, but (2) sex is *really, really complicated*, while (3) sex can have significant and permanent consequences (like babies), so (4) a lot of people think that *something* ethical or at least important is going on when you have sex. As a result, it's something that most people intuitively feel should be given *some* kind of special treatment, even if there are differences of opinion as to what that looks like.\n\nIt's not strictly a religion issue either. There are plenty of people who aren't religious who consider it to be basically a private matter.", "Society is obsessed with it precisely because it IS taboo.", "In years past, the taboo made sense. Sex was *dangerous* you could get any variety of horrible, incurable diseases, having children out of wedlock made you a social pariah, and many women died in childbirth. \n\nAs medicine has progressed, most of those issues have been addressed (condoms, antibiotics, social change, birth control pills, etc.) but culture is slower to adapt. As a result, for the last several decades there has been a tension between the new sexual possibilities, and the restrictive old culture. Now (since the 60's) that the culture is changing, its even more complicated because the rules are in flux, and so people can't always choose between *always* talking about sex and *never* talking about sex. Even within America, for instance, there is enormous variation in what is considered appropriate between regions. Some places are still in the \"free love\" stage, while others greet sex before marriage with scorn befitting most nuns. ", "The taboo is a major factor in why we are obsessed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6xozjt", "title": "why is it bad to transplant a houseplant into a pot that's too big for it, but the same plants can grow in the wild with unlimited soil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xozjt/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_transplant_a_houseplant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmhhcp7", "dmhimip", "dmhn6ij", "dmhpdha", "dmhqjia", "dmhqutj", "dmhrt04", "dmhruwi", "dmhs0th", "dmhsatq", "dmhsk4h", "dmhsxu4", "dmhsygd", "dmhurlx", "dmhvbef", "dmhx2t4", "dmhxwvk", "dmhyw5z", "dmhyxcb", "dmhzi80", "dmi0fig", "dmiapj9", "dmib24r", "dmibliq", "dmiboem"], "score": [3928, 175, 3, 3435, 20, 2, 15, 2, 12, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 12, 2, 524, 19, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6], "text": ["The extra soil room does not harm most plants at all. \n\nIt does make them a little harder to water and to fertilize.", "In a confined space, like a properly sized pot, nutrients and fluids are easily accessible by roots.\n\nIn a less confined space, the roots may have to work harder to reach the moist soil and fertilizer, depending on the distribution.\n\nPlants out in the wild are quite different.\n\nThere's a few different ways plants reproduce.  Some \"pup\".  Pups are children that grown directly off the parents and eventually develop their own root system. \n\nIn such an instance, the parent provides nutrients until the plant can fend for itself.\n\nAnother reproduction method is through seeds.  Seeds won't germinate and grow if conditions aren't favorable.  In other words, when you see seeded plants in the wild, you're only seeing the survivors who were in the right place at the right time.\n\nAlso worth considering: depending on where in the world you live, wild plants don't really have unlimited soil.  The truth is, the healthiest, most nutrient rich growing medium only covers the first couple of inches of soil.  Leaves, detritus, and other organic decompositions all provide the sustainability plants need.  All this good stuff is created at or juuuuust below the surface.  That means there's a trickle-down effect but the further down you go, the less nutrients are available.  \n\nSo, relatively speaking, wild \"pots\" are only 4 inches deep, not unlimitedly deep.  Due to competition between other nearby plants all fighting for the same nutrients, that pot is only inches wide as well, and not endlessly\u200b open space.\n\n\n\n", "Smaller pots make the root coil. Transplanting fucks it up. Not sure about the biomechanics of \"why\".\n\nSource: Am a farmer and tissueculture plants if left in polybags for long have a yuge mortality rate when transplanted ", "One of he biggest killer of plants is over watering. (Yes, a lot of people pay too much attention to the plant and kill it)\n\nWhen indoors you're completely changing a plants environment. There is so much that can affect a plant in how it - takes up nutrients, water and light. \n\nWhen you have a plant that in its native habitat gets a lot of light and a lot of warmth and you have it indoors with considerably lower light and temperature (when bought young they are more likely to adjust without going into shock) it is going to have to adjust to those conditions meaning - since it has less light it will need less water and less nutrients, the plant is not using all its resources up like it would so it doesn't need to \"re-up\" because it really hasn't lost much. \n\nSo even though it uses less there are many factors that affect the soil- AC will dry out a well ventilated area rather quickly depending on the pot type. Also many plants indoors lack humidity they'd have in their native range. \n\nHaving a larger pot for small roots is bad because it will not dry out as evenly, the top will become more dry while it could still be sopping wet at the bottom. Seeing that you go and water the plant again when it doesn't need it and the plant becomes water logged, suffocates and dies.  \n\nThe killing of indoor plants by overwatering is #1 most common, especially since when you bring a plant home, unless you have the same environment as the place you got it from in your home, it is going to go through some shock, many people don't know this and see their plant a little sad after they just got it and then panic and water the plant. \n\nPlants need time to adapt. You can't just keep changing things and expect to see results in a day or two. Often times even if they look a little sad it's best to leave them be, especially if they have enough water, light and humidity. They need time. \n\nStarting small when buying a plant in general is much better practice, for so many reasons. Just don't put it in a huge pot :)\n\nEdit: Wow, didn't think this would get this big lol Thanks so much for such interest in plants and horticulture! \n\nTo be clear I was mostly talking about house plants in this, since they are a plant that is usually not of the climate where you live and is why they're a house plant because the can't live outside. (But not always- in FL many \"house plants\" can do better outside, depending on the plant still) \n\nDoing my best to answer questions- you guys are lucky I'm sick and aren't busy outside :P\n\nEdit 2: [Here](_URL_2_) are a couple pages from one of the best houseplant books I've seen and had. There is helpful info that can be used for other plant types as well. You can get the book off [Amazon](_URL_1_), its rather inexpensive and 100% worth it.\n\nEdit 3: Forgot to stress the fact that many of our tap water had loads of chlorine and chloramine in it. The chlorine can evaporate out if the water is left out before use but the chloramine will not.  These are things that can really affect a plant over time. Along with mineral build up from water and fertilizer. [Here's](_URL_0_) another good resource.", "Hey there. I work at a nursery, and grow plants for a living.  \n\nTransplanting a houseplant isn't necessarily a bad idea, and all, it just has some things you need to be aware of.  \n\nThe pros:  \n\nGetting a bigger pot means a bigger plant in the long term.\n\nThe cons:\n  \nYour plant is going to get a lot bigger.  \n\nYour plant is going to need more (sun)light, water, and fertilizer after the transplant. \n\nYour plant will have an adjustment period before its root structure can start filling up the bucket in which you've put it. (be gentle with any transportation).  \n\nI think you're worried about the period of adjustment when the soil transfer occurs the most.  You can match the soil ph levels, and make the transition time less of an issue, if you want.  Typically, you'll see things like plants getting droopy, or not growing very quickly.  That's not necessarily bad for the plant, and all,  its just something you have to manage.  The droopy stuff means your root system isn't getting enough water to it.  With adequate plant management (make sure it has enough light, water and fertilizer),  you should be able to have your plant in a bigger pot without any serious detriments to it,  though, when considering the long term health of the plant.  Literally my entire field of work is built around that principle. ", "I'm no botanist, but I do work with plants sometimes. Potted plants tend to form tangled, balled-up roots from being confined to a small container. Young garden variety plants can have trouble expanding roots beyond surface soil, and thus retain a shallow root base. \n\nIf a plant is potted in a small container, used to shallow-soil watering for a long enough time, it will become (I don't know about in every situation, but generally) incapable of expanding much further. Moving it to a larger pot will, then, not necessarily permit further growth, as would happen with a plant grown in the earth. You would, as another poster said, be wasting more water. You do not do any harm to the plant in doing so, unless it is a delicate species in which case moving it at all can be stressful to the plant.", "Most people pay absolutely no \nattention to the finer points of growing a plant\nbeyond watering it once in a while. I think the slightly bigger pot rule is meant for people with little or no expertise. The more you know the less hard and fast rules apply. Having said that, a lot of plants don't have deep roots,but will thrive with lateral roots. Too large a pot potentially can screw up the watering, with soil being dry on the surface, wetter below, which can cause interference with drainage and nutrient delivery and buildup. \nSource:  I grew a 40'x40' rooftop with soil 2\" to 8\" deep. Got hundreds of pounds of produce. Love those lateral roots. \n", "It's bad for you to transplant a houseplant into too big a pot simply because its little root system isn't developed enough to reach the water that will undoubtedly move to the nether region of the pot upon your waterings.", "The soil will stay wet for too long causing root for. In the wild there is continuous soil to absorb the water away from the plant. Confined to a pot the soil stays wet longer and the root system does not have adequate time to grow to fill in the pot. So the water sits in the soil and the plant and roots can not process that amount of moisture, so they rot away. Which then causes the plant to die from lack of water because the roots are ruined and can not do their job. This usually causes the person to water the plant even more.", "There is a reason,  and for optimal growth you want the plant to go through dry cycle and wet cycles.  The roots can only take in so much water.. as the soil dries,  the roots grow to look for water in the soil. If the soil is too wet. They don't grow and you can drown the roots.  Causing rot.  So you wanna be able to water ever other day or so.. check the soil by lifting the planter to feel for water weight. Water when it gets light.  ", "Short answer: it's not. The reverse is true though, put your plant in too small a pot and it will root bind stop up taking nutrient and deplete the soil.", "At least in regards to growing pot, I've heard larger pots during early stages cause the plant to devote more energy to expanding its root network and therefore not using that energy to progress the plant into the mid/late stages of its life. \n\nMy father legally grows and starts the plants in a huge 40 gallon bucket and the product is always very lackluster and when I researched the issue that is what I found.", "Sometimes too much water and not enough roots can lead to mold and root rot when not properly drained ", "From what I've learned about container plants in my so far brief succulent addiction, it's what everyone else is saying: water.  Too big a pot will hold too much water, keeping plant's feet wet too long or unevenly, etc.  But, if you use a good, well draining soil (Google Al's gritty mix) you don't have to worry about the size of the pot being too big.", "Potting a plant from a small (4x4) pot, to a much larger (10x10) pot creates a significantly larger holding area for water.  When you do this it becomes very difficult to keep water by the roots  as the surrounding would will retain it out of reach. Saturation across all the medium of the larger pot will create a situation where the plant is being over watered/fed. Because of this, many sources recommend stepping up in pot size to the desired result. ", "Most people that repot forget that the plant needs nutrients for the roots and time to adapt and heal from the transplant. It's also very important to make sure that the new soil is conditioned properly for the plant roots to accept. It isn't bad to repot to a bigger size, just depends how m the environment, nutrients, and root structure. ", "Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for teaching me more about plants!", "I have read through many of the replies but have not come across one that hit on a key element of your question.  There are variables involved, relative to your question.  Different types of plants require different care and will do best with specific mediums (soil mix).  Some species of plants are water hogs (such as Spathiphyllum/Peace Lily) and some don\u2019t care how much water they receive (such as Sansevieria/Mother-in-laws Tongue).  My Professor from the University of Illinois had said that each of us could grow plants on rocks as long as the conditions were correct.  Meaning proper light, nutrients, temperature and air were at a level for the requirement of that particular plant.  Thus it is very important to choose the correct potting mix for your plant.\n\nI used to be a Florist, Grower and Interiorscaper.  In fact I was one of the pioneers to help develop the Interiorscape industry.  The most challenging was putting live plants into malls, restaurants and office spaces and is probably the most relevant to your question.  I was always battling those who would pour drinks (coffee and soda) into the plants like it was a sink drain.  My way around this was to put a cone shaped piece of waxed cardboard around the plant and covered it with mulch material.  Then when a person was pouring a drink into the pot it would run over the cone and down into the outer decorative container.  This worked very well to help control the liquids that were entering the medium.  \n\nAs for container size, it generally does not matter to the plant as long as it is not over watered and moving to a very large pot, increase the likelihood that a homeowner would make the mistake of watering the plant.  By continuing to water at the same frequency with a higher quantity of water (to compensate for the larger pot) would almost guarantee that the plant will develop wet feet.     However, some species of plants will not flower or take-off (start to grow) until the roots have taken an abrupt turn in the medium such as growing out and making contact with inner sidewalls of the growing container.  The main reason for using smaller containers within a growing operation (greenhouse) is cost per square foot.  As a plant progresses to its salable size the plants are bumped up in pot sizes based on the determination of the Head Grower.  Having plants in containers that are relative to their size also helps the grower to have much more control over the crop.  They can easily vary moisture, adjust nutrient or micro-nutrients levels or if levels go too high, it is much easier to leach the medium when dealing with smaller pot sizes.  When plants are placed into a home or interiorscape situation.  The medium volume is important so that the plant is easiest to care for.  Larger pots will help a plant grow larger as usually determined by what is called \u201cRoot-to-Shoot Ratio\u201d.  \n\nI have found that bottom watering really helps in the Ineriorscape industry as plants are typically cared for and watered once per week in most cases.  Bottom watering is a whole different subject as a micro climate is created within the growing medium.  Many plants do very well with bottom watering but require a lot of work to set-up right  The medium in the container is generally layered with different mixes to properly achieve this type of micro climate that the plant will adapt to.  The setup works incredibly well for plants in low light areas and when plants are located in breezy places. ", "Teacher at gardening school mentioned that too big pot causes the plants to focus on growing roots instead of \"the upper part\". Didn't really go into details that much I'm afraid. \n\nBut most of the answers here know what they are talking about. Good luck with your plants! ", "My dear boy, therein lies the fallacy. No pot is too big, just the watering too frequent. Don't water your plants too frequently. Proper watering is a complete soak and then wait... Wait until the plant droops or the soil is near complete dryness. Here little Timmy, take this water meter and go forth and [prosper](_URL_0_).", "Wasted space, but house space and dirt space. If the roots only go half way to the pot | - - - x x x x - - - | , all that extra space is empty space for water to sit and stagnate, as well as nutrients to get lost in", "My husband is a plant science major and I've heard him talk a lot. When you transplant a plant it gains the ability to get bigger. If you want your tiny houseplant to stay a tiny houseplant, transferring it to a big pot will mean it can grow bigger.\n\nHowever not transplanting some plants can hurt them because their roots take over the whole pot (happened with an aloe we have but it didn't die those things are Hardy as fuck).\n\nI'm not a plant expert myself everything I touch dies but this is what he's explained to me a few times. \n\n\nI think your best bet is talk to someone who knows and ask questions specific to the plant to you want to grow. ", "Running a tree nursery that specializes in growing in field and containers I have learned a few differences between the two. \n\nThere are a few reasons why you wouldn't want to put a small plant in a large pot. \n\nFirst thing is that most plants are most efficient when using the whole container for its roots. This makes it easier for the plant to take up nutrients and efficiently use the water. When you put a small plant in a large pot it takes a lot of energy for the roots to grow enough to find the nutrients and water in that larger pot. Since nutrients and water will be sitting in the soil much longer before being used this also creates a space for mold and bacteria to form which can damage your plants.\n\nComparing a container to natural environment is not fair. Containers are dependent on outside influences. The \"soil\" used for indoor containers is nothing like natural soil. It does not hold water the same way as the environment would and does not have drainage like natural ecosystems have. When growing in a container they often need water every few days depending on what type of plant is growing while in the natural environment these plants could easily survive weeks without getting additional moisture in the soil due to the natural water availability of real soil. \n\nAnother reason that you really don't want to start with too large of a container is most people are not trying to grow a plant much larger in a short period of time. On a nursery we can easily go from a one gallon to a 10 gallon because we are monitoring our inputs to grow the plant to fit the container. It takes a lot of monitoring and experience to push some plants to grow that quickly while retaining the desired growth habits. \n\nBasically if you want to slowly grow your plants then slowly upping the container size over time is the best way to do so. If you want to push your plant to grow larger then upping to larger containers faster is fine but need to be careful monitored and controlled to limit disease and rot which are your biggest risks. \n ", "It's not bad for the plant.  It could be bad for the owner because the plant will grow larger and may not be what you want. Of course the plant can only grow so large based on genetics and physics. ", "Looks like I'm too late to this thread, but I will add my own understanding to the pile. Most of the answers touch on the possibility of over watering. Not really having a problem with too much watering, I always thought of it as making the most out of your root ball. The more root mass you have in the soil, the more plant mass can grow.  \n\nSo a baby plant is in like a 2in pot. You give it some time to dry out between waterings. The roots grow down and out and sort of form a cage at the inside edges of the container. The reason we go up about 2 inches to the next pot size is so the next \"root cage\" will form pretty close to the previous one, and so on.  \n\nIf you just take the baby 2in pot size root ball and drop it into a big 5gal bucket or something, the roots will tend to grow out to the edges of the bucket and form the cage. It will probably grow fine. But a plant that was potted incrementally will have a lot more root mass and be a much bigger plant than the one that went straight to the big bucket."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/watering-and-soluble-salts-houseplants", "https://www.amazon.com/House-Plant-Expert-D-G-Hessayon/dp/0903505355#immersive-view_1504415707650", "https://imgur.com/a/VXypP"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.amazon.com/Moisture-THZY-Outdoor-Hydrometer-gardening/dp/B00XOIR206/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_86_bs_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=82ANK7SYTXQ84E1P3N76"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4lnk7x", "title": "does marijuana impair driving ability?", "selftext": "I feel like a lot of people are comfortable with driving high, and I just want to know if there is any evidence whether marijuana does or does not impair driving ability.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lnk7x/eli5_does_marijuana_impair_driving_ability/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3oqjap", "d3or5cl", "d3org7q", "d3orqrg", "d3os9pp"], "score": [15, 4, 7, 9, 14], "text": ["Cannabis is a depressant drug, which means it slows down messages travelling between your brain and body. When large doses of cannabis are taken, it may also produce hallucinogenic effects.\n\nCannabis can cause: reduced coordination, slower reaction times, slower information processing, confusion, changes in vision, hearing, and time and space perception.\n\nA person who has been using cannabis may think that they will be able to drive safely. However, the cannabis may have affected their view and experience of reality, and their judgement. Their actions and responses may be quite different to what is actually needed, but they may not be aware of how much their driving skills have been affected.\n\nEven after a small amount of cannabis you should not drive for at least 5 hours.\n\n(From: _URL_0_)", "Tried it, didn't like it.\n\nI'll give an example of thinking you're fine...\n\nHaving lunch with friends at KFC, everything is awesome, need a drink... what what... where's my drink... friend points out its to me the left of my hand on the table...\n\n\nSome people are more than fine, just like you have \"functional drunks\", you can have \"functional pothds\"... the question is, what are the reactions like if something goes wrong... \n", "*Car  &  Driver* magazine wondered if it did.... 36 years ago. \n\nThey performed a scientific study (using their own staff who volunteered - yay!) and compared driving performance while sober and while stoned. Their results put quantifiable measurement to the impairment. \n\n_URL_0_", "Yes.  It's really dumb to drive while high.  I find that the next day, I drive less aggressively because I'm mellowed out and I don't think there is any impairment at that point.\n\nMaybe people don't care about risking their own lives, but the comments here about \"getting used to it\" may end up killing someone else.  You are controlling 2 tons of metal.  Kids run where they shouldn't.  People run red lights.  Sometimes people brake hard for animals and such.  You have to be alert.  Being stoned is not alert.", "Your are going to get answers that are anecdotal and won't really give you a definite answer as to whether it does impair driving ability or not due to a number of factors such as tolerance, personal bias, etc. \n\nAt the end of the day, you just have to realize that marijuana or any psychoactive drug will have an affect on your brain chemistry and it will change the way you react to things, whether it be an hyperactive response or a depressed one. Neither is better in comparison to you driving in a normal psychological state. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/how-does-cannabis-affect-driving"], [], ["http://www.caranddriver.com/features/puff-the-dangerous-driver-is-doping-and-driving-safe-archived-feature"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8pw3eb", "title": "why does 0.5 round to the nearest integer above, and not below?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pw3eb/eli5_why_does_05_round_to_the_nearest_integer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0eh23u", "e0ehb3o", "e0ekq6p", "e0eopb4"], "score": [12, 16, 5, 9], "text": ["I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why does .5 round up? ](_URL_2_) ^(_20 comments_)\n1. [Why do we round up at 5? Isn't it right \"in the middle\" between 1 and 10? ](_URL_0_) ^(_29 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do we round up on 5? ](_URL_1_) ^(_28 comments_)\n1. [Why is 5 rounded up? ](_URL_5_) ^(_9 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do we round 0.500 up to 1? ](_URL_3_) ^(_33 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why does 0.5 get rounded to 1 while it has the same length to 0 as to 1. ](_URL_4_) ^(_6 comments_)\n", "Since it's exactly in the middle, you need to pick *something* and be consistent about it.  It's completely arbitrary, you could just as easily round down.\n\nThere's also other systems of rounding that you can use.  You can round towards/away from 0, you can alternate up/down on odd/even integers and I'm sure there's others.  Depending on the application, the might give you numbers that are more suitable.", "Since 0,5 is exactly in the middle you just have to choose to go down or up. Since it is a advantage to be consistent we have all agreed on going up instead of people choosing to go up or down. The reason why we agreed on going up instead of down is that going up is useful in many situations where you need to measure something since. A good example of this is if you are buying a washing machine or something and need to measure the available space to make sure the machine fits, you would rather have 0,5cm more space than 0,5cm to little. Or if you are at the store with limited cash in your wallet and want to know how much stuff you can buy.\n\nTl;dr:\nIn most cases it\u2019s preferable to round up instead of down and we choose to always stick with up for consistency.", "It's arbitrary if you only look at one significant figure.  But if you look at 0.51, 0.501, 0.5001 etc they are all closer to 1 than zero.  It would be rather inconsistent if every possible decimal starting with 0.5 rounded up except for 0.5000000... which was to be rounded down. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/216qgi/why_do_we_round_up_at_5_isnt_it_right_in_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/220a07/eli5_why_do_we_round_up_on_5/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vgvs2/eli5_why_does_5_round_up/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65jrzv/eli5_why_do_we_round_0500_up_to_1/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33c8ha/eli5_why_does_05_get_rounded_to_1_while_it_has/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/7xcj22/why_is_5_rounded_up/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "p7mzl", "title": "If clouds and fog are essentially the same thing, then why doesn't fog produce spontaneous thunder and lightning? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p7mzl/if_clouds_and_fog_are_essentially_the_same_thing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3n642z", "c3n66eg", "c3n9vi5"], "score": [18, 7, 7], "text": ["Difference in potential is what allows electricity to flow, fog essentially is at the same potential as the ground it covers.  Any difference it might generate quickly dissipates to ground, in the case of clouds they are very high and to bridge the difference over an air gap they can build quite a charge before it can dissipate.  _URL_0_\n\n", "Due to the altitude of fog, the charge that accumulates in the low laying cloud is constantly grounded and never builds up to the point in which lightning could occur. ", "Fog is a type of cloud, but most clouds do not produce lightning.\n\nFor a cloud to produce lighting, the component droplets of the cloud have to acquire electric charges and to accumulate with similarly charged droplets. This only happens in tall clouds, i.e. \"thunderclouds\" or \"cumulonimbus\", both because of need for space to separate the charged particles to create the potential difference as well as because droplets acquire charges as a result of colliding with other droplets, which happens more in a deeper cloud with more vertical wind.\n\nClouds at any altitude are composed of water droplets which are suspended in the air and are not grounded. Lighting is in fact frequent at high altitudes because of the physical proximity of the ground to the charged cloud base in comparison to lower lying areas.\n\nP.S. I know my tag is misspelled."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_causes_lightning.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "z2e3d", "title": "malcolm x and why schools in the united states seem to pass over him when learning about the civil rights movent.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z2e3d/eli5_malcolm_x_and_why_schools_in_the_united/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c60uq9j", "c60vwth", "c60wb0u", "c60wjhu", "c60wque", "c60xmzl", "c6165h5", "c61bn4u"], "score": [13, 6, 12, 90, 30, 5, 2, 5], "text": ["Malcom X represented something scary to many people.  There are other people that are also ignored that were vital to the formation of the movment, such as [Bayard Rustin](_URL_0_).  Both of these men are heros to me, and I am an old White guy.", "Instead of trying to peacefully make a change in the country like Martin Luther King, he wanted to accomplish change through violence. I don't think he is any better than who he hated. You don't want to spend a ton of time teaching children his message, when there are many others in the civil rights movement to learn from.", "Curriculum standards in the US are determined by elected (read: political) boards, who have a clear agenda. They want to instill certain values in the children, and the teaching of those values tends to trump historical accuracy in determining the History standards.\n\nThey don't just ignore Malcolm X. They also teach a version of Dr. King that is incredibly less controversial and radical than he actually was.", "He was Magneto to Martin Luther King's Professor X. One was a militant and a proponent of \"any means necessary\" and the other advocated peaceful integration.  They were at war with the same people but were fighting different fights, one more violent and dangerous than the other ", "To start, Malcolm X is not discussed in history because he was often wrong. He believed, and literally so, that colored skin was a sign of pureness in humanity, and that white people were spawned of the devil, bred until their blackness left them 6000 years ago, and now wander the earth wreaking havoc among the peaceful colored peoples. These were the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who was in all regards a nut job. \n\nMalcolm spent over a decade in Elijah Muhammad's church, spreading a radical message of division and disharmony. It was only during the last years of his life, after his break with the Nation of Islam, and specifically after his visits to Mecca, that he realized that the concept of Islam embodied by the Nation was not true Islam, that white people were not inherently evil, and that humanity was equal. \n\nHe was killed shortly after. \n\nMalcolm X isn't mentioned in mainstream history courses because he was polarizing, radical, and very often, simply wrong. In addition, the very \"establishment\" he discusses and laments is the same establishment that creates our history curriculums. He's also such an eccentric character that he doesn't fit well into the popular narrative of civil rights. As someone else has said, quite elegantly, he was Magneto to MLK's Professor X. That being said, he was a truly inspirational man. ", "Because for much of his life he was as racist as the people his was fighting.", "So, this is kind of a random question, but how do \"civil rights activists\" support themselves?  I know King was a reverend, but how do other people make a living while making waves?  I honestly don't know.", "For why he's not taught much in schools, a lot of it has to do with 1) the message that school boards want to teach kids, and 2) that Malcolm X and his views were incredibly complex and nuanced, and it's really difficult to teach something like that to (literally) immature people. Even through high school, things are taught in a very black and white / binary way, so trying to get people to understand why he felt violence had acceptable applications or why he didn't completely oppose segregation is really difficult without spending a LOT of time on the subject and its context, and similarly if you go too in-depth on just his views (e.g. reading his autobiography to kids at a very young age), it can be difficult to explain why these views may also be detrimental.\n\nI have two quick examples regarding this: 1) Based on the one paragraph about Marcus Garvey in my high school US history book, nobody understood why he promoted segregation and everybody thought he was terrible, and 2) We read \"A Modest Proposal\" in my sophomore year of high school, and I kid you not, I was possibly the only one in the class of 30+ that recognized it as satire (it's possible more did and just didn't speak up, but the majority of the class thought the whole thing was barbaric and were disgusted by it)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://brucescommentaria.blogspot.com/2012/05/bayard-rustin.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ql3y9", "title": "why is the us constitution regarded so highly?", "selftext": "I am taking an American politics class right now and it seems that the constitution is really  bad at defining or establishing  anything.  Why do we still hold it to a high standard even though  it lacks clear definition of its  clauses, clear directions to outline  state vs federal, and establish  other things or at the very  least  require it to be rewritten  in time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ql3y9/eli5_why_is_the_us_constitution_regarded_so_highly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwg3ppg", "cwg3ui9", "cwg75lb", "cwg7lzo", "cwgb1by", "cwgr4c5"], "score": [78, 6, 8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The United States Constitution represents are very difficult compromise that tied together many states into one country. If you look at some of the heated political debates during the formation of our country, you'll be amazed that we ever got along, let alone were so successful.\n\nEven though it is a very short document compared to other constitutions, it has never needed to be rewritten, and has needed to be amended much less frequently. Our constitutional system has never collapsed or been suspended. Even during the Civil War, when the constitutional system was most at risk, the ordinary functions of state (elections, judicial oversight, etc.) continued in the North.\n\nThe Constitution is remarkable in great part because it does not need to spell everything out in the excessive detail of, say, the Indian constitution. Its provisions are readily understandable by common people, and the fine application of those principles to specific cases is left to the judicial branch.\n\nThe Constitution is not perfect, certainly not. But it has served us very well, and if you look at the political crises other countries have faced that we have avoided, it is certainly among the great political documents of Western civilization.\n\nYou're bothered that the Constitution isn't exactly what you want it to be. That some of it is open to debate. That's a good thing--because otherwise, the country would have fallen apart long ago.", "Politically, it has to be regarded highly because it outlines the functions and structure of the American government. It is especially important to the Supreme Court, who often reference it to provide authority to their decisions. Every country has a constitution and must, at least formally, view it as the highest level of law.\n\nCulturally, however, I would say the US Constitution holds a very different position. I would attribute the reason people hold it on such high esteem culturally to the fact that it was (originally) written by the founding fathers. Because it was written by many of the nation's greatest heroes, it can then be viewed as a look into the beliefs and moral code of the men we wish to emulate. This isn't to say that it actually is; the Constitution has very little talk of ethics ibn it, but this might be how many people view it: as a sort of second Declaration of Independence.", "Short answer. The Constitution *is* our country. \n\nMore accurate answer: The Constitution is the instruction manual of the country. Everything that we conceptualize as the United States Government is what is written in the constitution and it's amendments. Even if it were a shit document (and it really isn't) as a constitutional republic and a nation state, it would still be a component of our national identity. \n\nFor many the ambiguity of the Constitution is a good thing. It is worth noting that at the US's inception the model of government was a united body of autonomous states. The idea is, anything that wasn't clear cut can be filled in by new regulation as necessary (better to address problems as they come than create problems trying to predict them) or by the individual states making up the union. \n\nToday there is still debate how much of these clear definitions should be filled in by state or federal governments, but the results of the Civil War pretty much killed any hope to return to the state autonomy at the US Constitution's original drafting. \n\nThe Constitution (at the risk of personifying) knows it is imperfect, and contains a procedure on how to build/change it... and we have changed it 27 times. While those first ten changes were made before the Constitution's ratification, this simply illustrates how essential malleability is to the Constitution. \n\nSo if we have something that is designed to be changed, (though, to be fair the amendment process is pretty damn difficult) why do so many people treat it like a concrete cornerstone of freedom? Well, several reasons. First, as was said earlier, the constitution is a key component of what the US is. If you tie your national identity to your personal identity (read, if you are incredibly nationalistic), you have a vested interest in that constitution being perfect. In some way it's simple cognitive dissonance: I'm an American, America is good, trying to change America is to change/corrupt what is already good. One popular work around of this is the constitutionalist heuristic that the Constitution is \"prefect\" so we need to return to a more strict/classical interpretation. \n\nFor others, it's a simple case of liking status quo. If you are successful/prospering under the current constitutional model, you have an interest in maintaining that model. Because of this, even benign adjustments are a threat to you, as any new interpretation/amendment to the constitution increases the plausibility of change that might negatively impact your status quo in the future. \n\nedit: grammar", "You should watch the John Adams series on HBO. Really nice series about the Declaration of Independence and the creation of a nation\n\nEDIT: down votes for John Adams? U.K. Represent I guess", "The Constitution of the United States is regarded so highly because it does two things.\n\n* It states where your rights come from. Your rights do not come from a Government, or other people, but from your creator.\n* Limits what rights that the Government can take from you. We do need a Government for interaction with each other, as problems will arise.\n\nAlso note, that its not the definition of the clauses that are the problems, but how laws that are passed fit in those definitions. Remember, that 99% of laws are usually passed to take away your rights.", "The constitution was modern and it was one of the earliest examples of recognizing basic human value, that all people have equal worth as human beings, and being human beings they have certain rights which cannot be taken away from them. It was a series of rules that the country should follow so it would never become the kind of monarchy it fought to get out from under. The way it usually worked was a country would get freedom from an imperial power, only to turn around and declare a new leader that could be every bit as awful as the old one. The founding fathers didn't want that. George Washington didn't want to be King George. They set about codifying a document that would prevent a stagnant and power centric government that did not represent it's people but ruled them instead. \n\nThe ideas in the constitution were based on modern rationalism and heavily influenced by people like John Locke and countries like The Nederlands which after throwing off an oppressive Spanish rule, became a haven of enlightenment and a society based on modern philosophy and intellectual morality. \n\nThe US constitution has worked so well we've hardly had to touch it in 200 years and in fact it's set up so it can't be significantly altered. The French used it as the basis for their own constitution after overthrowing the monarchy and so have many other nations. \n\nIt gets it right the first time and says so much with so little. We the people hold these truths to be self evident, all men are created equal. in other words It's apparent to anybody who actually looks, that kings and commoners are both human beings and there are certain rights which we should extend to all human beings. IE there is no such thing as divine right to rule. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jmejv", "title": "why do electonics that display the time (ie microwaves) not have a small battery to ensure the time to saved in the event a power outage?", "selftext": "My clock/radio has a battery and it costs approx 10\u2030 of the microwave.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jmejv/eli5_why_do_electonics_that_display_the_time_ie/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cld22sn", "cld2l6c", "cld3oa9", "cld4gdj", "cld6k40", "cld7x5c", "clddr53", "cldjk9w", "cldlj46"], "score": [19, 107, 5, 28, 3, 2, 3, 5, 5], "text": ["Having a battery in a alarm clock makes tons more sense than putting it in a microwave. If you have a brownout it won't do anything with the function of the microwave but getting late for work could have bad consequences.\n\nYou would rather ask why do microwaves even have clocks.", "A battery costs money. The circuit to integrate the battery costs money. Designing the circuit to integrate the battery costs money. Assembling the circuit to integrate the battery costs money. \n\nNo customer at the store chooses which model of microwave to buy based on if it has a battery or not. It is not a selling point. \n\nSo, adding a battery would cost extra money while not adding to the price the unit could be sold for. Appliances are about the bottom line.", "An alarm clock is first and foremost a clock.  It is designed to wake you up.  The battery is there in case the power goes out while you are sleeping so you still wake up on time.\n\nA microwave is a microwave first and foremost.  The clock is a convenience, but that's not it's primary function.  It also isn't designed to wake you up.  Having a battery to power the clock isn't essential to primary functionality.  The manufacturer can save the effort and cost of putting one in.", "The 60 hz A/C is used as a time signal in cheap clocks. Adding a battery backup requires a seperate timing chip for battery operation. Also charging, etc. \n\nFun fact: the grid is built for this, and speeds up and slows down as needed to help keep clocks from drifting. It tends to be more accurate over long periods of time than quartz clocks.", "My microwave shows 0:00 constantly until you set the clock - so I just don't bother because there's a proper kitchen clock on the wall already.\n\nTook a while to notice that, but it's a pretty clever way to solve the wrong time problem.", "The lifespan of a microwave is huge. The battery will eventually deplete and corrode, and could damage the circuit board. This might be an influence on their design.", "Besides some of the other reason given for not including a battery (particularly the extra cost) . . . microwaves and stoves are generally considered to be not user serviceable. You'd have to create a place to make the battery accessible from the outside, making significant impact on the metal structure, which is very expensive. You wouldn't want the battery deeper inside something like a microwave or stove because people are stupid. Now, you'd have someone digging around inside a large appliance with dangerous voltages and current potentially exposed. All that becomes a big liability or extra cost to prevent for a pretty minor issue of occasionally reseting the time.", "Your microwave doesn't wake you up for work every morning.", "Because displaying the time isn't its main purpose. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28y373", "title": "if a person knew no form of language, written or spoken, what would the thoughts be like in their head?", "selftext": "All of my thoughts are manifested in my head as words and sentences of the language I know. If a perfectly intelligent human was born alone on an island, and somehow survived until adulthood, how would the thoughts in their head take shape? \n\n\n\n**Edit:** Wow thanks for the great feedback, never thought I'd make front page with my first post. I think it is safe to say that nobody can truly understand this without experiencing it themselves.. which rules all of us out. I have to agree with the theory of more simplistic, visual and audio 'notions' guiding our cognition, kind of like animals, but much more developed. I especially found the radiolab link interesting.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28y373/eli5_if_a_person_knew_no_form_of_language_written/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cifknhb", "cifkrx4", "cifktzm", "cifkvoe", "cifkwh8", "cifkx95", "cifkze6", "cifl9gv", "cifljn1", "ciflpnu", "cifly4q", "cifmbl7", "cifml23", "cifmrk9", "cifmwna", "cifmzgq", "cifn0hu", "cifn9kr", "cifn9x2", "cifnb3s", "cifngtg", "cifnjwd", "cifnmbb", "cifnq2z", "cifnv5f", "cifnveo", "cifo0wl", "cifo2d2", "cifo5u2", "cifo6w8", "cifo90l", "cifock7", "cifoep1", "cifog7o", "cifom68", "cifoov1", "cifot5s", "cifowoz", "cifoyc8", "cifp5hv", "cifp9t8", "cifpbeg", "cifpjq6", "cifpp7u", "cifppfz", "cifpwzq", "cifq7yd", "cifq7zo", "cifq87q", "cifqfh1", "cifqqal", "cifqt9g", "cifr005", "cifr44q", "cifrqy8", "cifrvzl", "cifso65", "cift92x", "cifuucr", "cifvzb7", "cifw3ck", "cifwd66", "cifwkr7", "cifydai", "cifynsb", "cifz6it", "cifzds6", "cifzuba", "cig1ni0", "cig1nnj", "cig29l7", "cig2bmo", "cig3w7m", "cig3yai", "cig5b4q", "cig5fsf", "cig7d9m", "cig7qls", "cig8tmm", "cig9c1r"], "score": [6, 16, 2, 117, 14, 38, 2579, 7, 3, 298, 7, 2, 3, 75, 2, 4, 2, 4, 3, 3, 6, 38, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 8, 5, 5, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 8, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["also this (totally related):\n_URL_0_", "My vaguely educated guess would be that all of their internal monologue and reflection would be pictorially centred, as well as sounds from their environment. They would have behavioral schema and repertoire like ordinary people so they could function on their island to survive for that long, so for these behaviors they need cognition and reflection which, without language, I imagine would be visual and auditory in origin. I only have an undergrad psychology degree so I'm sure someone with a more advanced degree in this field could answer this a hell of a lot better", "I would imagine there would be smells, noises, visualizations, but first, very hard to be in someone else's head, and second, not much scientific data on feral children.\n\nEdit: fixed grammar errors and replaced 'put' by 'be'", "The best answer is, we don't really know. For obvious ethical reasons, scientists will never raise a child without language and test the results. There are some rare examples of people who didn't acquire language, like   [Genie](_URL_0_, but she was severely abused in addition to being denied language, and one case is hardly conclusive. The science of the brain is still in it's infancy in some ways.", "Even if we could find someone, we would have no way of asking them.", " > A deaf gentleman (from birth) came to our medical school and I asked whether they thought with an inner monologue or something else. He said he thought with visual means, e.g. pictures, sign language, and whatnot.\n\n > I found it mildly amusing when he told us about how he had a dream about the Queen and she spoke using sign language.\n\n_URL_0_", "After a degree in neuroscience, I've come to realize that there are multiple kinds of thought and they all arrive into perception in different ways. There are forms of thought that do not require language (such as \"I'm hungry\", \"fire is hot\", \"flowers are pretty and smell nice\", \"find protection from danger\", etc.) and forms that do (such as \"Reddit is a good forum to get answers\", \"this commenter is a dumbface\", \"I'm beating a dead horse\", etc.).\n\n**Simply put: language affords us a method to track the progression of a thought and follow it's logic to a meaningful conclusion.** Without language, our conclusions would be a lot simpler and less meaningful.", "I think some kind of language for a human is natural...in the sense that humans are a social species and are always interacting with one another. Even with no speech or text we still develop language. Just look at deaf people and sign language. Even if a deaf person isn't taught official sign language, they can invent their own if they're in a social group with other deaf people (or people communicating in the same fashion). BTW, deaf people think in sign language just as you and I usually think with spoken words.\n\nIf you were to take an example like Genie, she basically grew up in isolation. No one in the family really spoke to her. It was very difficult to really \"study\" Genie (and also ethically grey) and it's also pretty morally wrong to repeat the same circumstances in an \"experiment\", but it seems like growing in isolation COULD stunt the brain. Humans may need social interaction to help link many of the other passages in the brain...this is just my personal musing. As said, it's pretty difficult to study such a thing.\n\ntl;dr Unless your hypothetical person grew up in complete isolation, which is abnormal, they would develop some sort of language. Their thoughts would then be partially based on their language, like how I, a speaking person, mostly think with \"speech\" while a deaf person using American Sign Language would think mostly in ASL.\n\nAlso what kparseyan said. I definitely don't think only in \"speech\" and to imply most of my thoughts are in \"speech\" form is a HUGE simplification. But it's one of those concepts where I struggle to think of the right words to convey my, erm, thoughts, so I don't think I can beat kparseyan's reply there. His bold is also an excellent summary imo.", "On a side note, one does not need to know a written or spoken language to engage in self-talk and thought. Deaf people engage in self-talk and thought by imagining themselves signing. ", "Here is a Radiolab piece on just that. \n\n_URL_0_", "I am amazed at how often this kind of question appears here. I, and many others, don't think in a language. We don't have an internal voice going on all the time. We think in concepts and language only comes up if we are thinking explicitly about it, such as when reading or writing.\n\nEDIT: typo", "We all have thoughts not expressed in language, all the time. I would presume that is what it would all feel like, for one without any language...\n\n(For instance, navigating a hallway, you do not think about going left or right around your coworker - but you do think and decide, and you can recall the experience of deciding.)\n\nPresumably something similar would be felt for those without language. Although I believe there are thoughts that cannot be thought without language (even if it is not a shared language).", "Whenever people ask me this, I ask them to try and think of something, they usually come up with what you're experiencing - the thought in the form of language.  Then I ask them to think the same thought (or another, doesn't matter) but cut themselves off in their head. You still know what you were going to think but you never expressed it through language in your mind.\n\n  I think this is a bit of an interesting experience but like many others have said, language organizes and forms what you think. You're going to have different thoughts based on your ability to organize them through language.\n\nIt would be the same sort of experience as cutting yourself off like you just did only simpler. ", "Every time this concept is brought up I am fascinated because, as far as I can tell, I do not think using words or sentences. Thoughts are just thoughts, if I try to think in sentences it feels like I'm rehearsing something, it's the same difference between reading and reading aloud.\n\nOf course I cannot claim I do not use language in my thoughts, but it's not the English language. Is anyone else like this? Does this \"mode\" of thinking have a name I can look up?\n\nI am bilingual, that might or not have anything to do with this, but often people ask me \"in what language do you think?\" and I am always stumped trying to explain that I find it very weird to think in a language like that.", "Read up on Kasper Hauser.\n\nAlso, since you're interested in the subject you should watch The Enigma of Kasper Hauser which is an amazing Werner Herzog film.", "When I think, I almost  never think in words or language, although I can articulate myself well verbally. In my brain, every word I know has a distinct feeling to it, and I can phrase what I say or write out of that feeling or sequence of feelings, if you will. I feel the ''essence'' of the word I want to say and I say it. Its hard to explain. Its like each word has its own smell and based on the smell I know what I want to say. Is there something wrong with me? ", "I assume they have vivid pictures along with emotion tied with them. And expression comes naturally like a baby from the first minute its alive", "I don't believe that all your thoughts are manifested in words and language. I think most thoughts are silent and consist of fleeting imagery like micro-daydreams. That is not to say that you don't experience those language thoughts but just that for each of those there are probably many non-language thoughts you have that you are unintentionally not counting as thoughts.", "They would not. This person would be seriously retarded and die.\n\n[Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric II de Hohenstaufen did a famous experiment](_URL_0_) on this: he arranged for a group of babies to be raised without caresses or be spoken to. The purpose was to discover the \"natural\" language of God.\n\nOther people through history have made similar experiments, with always the same result: in order to grow up, a human baby need social interactions.\n\n(Also, science FTW : it is a well-known subject \ud83d\ude1d)", "Believe me, maybe you don't realise this, but your thoughts are NOT 'manifested as words'. No one's are. Language is merely a petty tool of communication made up by humans. Obviously animals aren't incapable of thinking or feeling despite being incapable of talking. Think of words as combinations of sounds/symbols that are commonly accepted to mean something in order to ease communication between people. So yeah, language is not the ultimate thought, it's actually pretty restricting, too. e.g. even now while writing that I stopped a few times to think of a way to write in words something that I otherwise have very clearly understood in my mind xD There are many things you can know and think but not tell or explain, like walking, or meditating. So yeah I hope I succeeded in communicating in words my thoughts to you ;)", "it's the other way around - what you're describing is self speak which is a result of of having learned language. Thoughts precede speech in terms of function! Language is a tool that allows us to contemplate complex thoughts though! \n\nChomsky gave a nice talk about this in which he pondered the idea of there being a first human that could articulate speech and how it must have been for him. probably a very lonely experience.\n\nmy guess is language evolved from sounds that evolved over time - we first had to develop the toolbox for it - and once it was there, it took time to build a vocabulary. it wasn't a single event - it was a phenomenon spread across our species. but this only one hypothesis (self domesticating ape hypothesis, which makes the most sense to me) - and there are many! \n\n_URL_0_", "So what is tip-of-the-tongue then? It's something you have the _thought_ for but not the _word_ for. If thoughts were words you would never experience this feeling.", "We \"think\" in pictures. The self-talk is just commentary. Think of a child who can't speak yet - it's all about the concrete images. ", "Try thinking without words\n\nIt sounds like \"---__|~~~___**\"", "They'd be primitive. Their thoughts would be represented in terms of sensory inputs and biological imperatives, with no higher context. Their access to knowledge would be limited to whatever knowledge they could produce themselves, within their own lifetime. The cultural knowledge of generations that we take for granted, would be inaccessible to them. \n  \nThink about how difficult it is to produce new knowledge, how slow the progress of science. How much knowledge does one person really contribute in one lifetime, even with access to other people, and the sum total of human knowledge on the internet? They contribute very little. Further, this hypothetical island person would be preoccupied with the task of subsistence living, with little time for deep thought or investigation.\n  \nFor further insight, you might ask how the evolution of the human brain correlates with the origins of language.", "Same as a cat....through images rather than images and 'words'", "For what it's worth, I am bilingual but my thoughts aren't verbal. I don't hear any voice in my head. It's like you read something really fast and don't verbalize it, yet you still understand what you read. The same is true for my thoughts.", "Recent research on consciousness will back me up: the conscious part of you which hears the voices in your head, is actually a noise created by your head. You think first then this thinking creates the voices in your head.\nSo, how would the thoughts manifest? Probably in the languages they know: images, sounds, feelings. So \"I'm hungry\" would create an image of a meal.", "Steven Pinker covers this subject in his book [The language Instinct](_URL_0_) and uses actual anecdotal evidence to show that it doesn't actually differ from those with language. Language offers us the ability to communicate with others, it does not affect our ability to carry thoughts. Most of the answers here are wrong.", "I for one don't think in English or any language. I had always assumed that to be normal.", "There's a book about a dude without language, true story. A Man Without Words by one of my favorite authors, Oliver Sacks. ", "_URL_0_ ... A very relevant article about a man who was born deaf and didn't know language existed until he was in his twenties. There is a bit when he takes the doctor to see people like him... Fascinating.", "Reminds me of that part of Hitchhikers Guide when the whale improbably comes into existence a few miles above the ground. Still makes me cry I laugh so hard when I read it.", "You know those times when someone struggles to find the right word(s) to express their thoughts?  That's because at the time they're not actually thinking in a spoken language (if they were, they could just use the same words from their thoughts).  Those thoughts are happening at a different level, and they have to translate those thoughts in order to express them.  So without spoken language, they would just think on that different level that we all use from time to time anyway.", "When I think,I don't talk to myself unless I want to.You don't need to talk to yourself to think,you only do it if you can and want to.", "I'm no expert, but i often think in images, as in picturing something in my head. I also think in music, hearing music in my head. Neither of these require  language. Perhaps if i language didn't take up so much space in my brain i could think in smells, tastes and feelings too?", "Radio lab did an entire story on just this. A man without a language till he was 27...\n\n_URL_0_", "I don't have a scientific explanation for it but if we couldn't speak or have any form of written code, I guess thoughts would be visualizations (like it actually happens to me and to others I imagine) don't you just visualize yourself on your thoughts without actually verbalizing it in your head? or is it just me???", "This episode of [RadioLab](_URL_0_) would be very interesting for you, especially the \"Words that change the World\" part.", "We would still have feelings and desires its just we wouldn't have words to articulate them to others. ", "We may never know. This is a very interesting topic and be could learn a lot about how the brain works, but taking a child away from their mother and preventing them to learn any form of language is called 'the forbiden experiment'. \nBut we do know that if a child doesn't learn language at a certain age, they might never learn any language and form some kind of mental retardation because some regions of the brain are underdeveloped.\nThey think in a different way, they can make decisions and they can 'think', but they can't do it with the same complexity as a normal person can.\nWe know this because some song birds have about the same brain plasticy as humans. They have to learn their song from their parents, but if we take them away from their parents they will never learn their song and their bodies will never fully devolop. MRI scans of the birds show that their brain is a complete mess. There is a lot of neural activity missing in these birds. \nAnother example is of a girl named [Genie.] ( _URL_0_) A fairly well known story. However, we are not sure because her asshole father said he put her in that room because she was a little bit autistic. So we are not sure if her mental retardation is just from language depravity or if there might be some other factor at play. But we do know it didn't cure her autism. This is the closest we might ever come to do the forbiden experiment. Sadly, back in the day the only way to check someones brainactivity was by cutting open their skull and looking at it. if only they had the scanning technology we have today. We would know a lot more about the brain and how it works/develops. \n\nTL;DR: We might never know how they think because it is forbidden to stop a person of learning language. We do know from birds that the brain doesn't work as complex as normal birds. ", "I almost always think in pictures and feelings sort of. I rarely think stuff in words actually. ", "I think the top explanation is good but it can be made more clear. Language gives cause and effect some real scaffolding to attach itself to. When I say \"The boy hit the ball\", I know who hit what, what was hit, and what action took place connecting the who and the what. Language provides a way for us to keep track of not only those actions outside of our head, but our own thoughts within our head in a similar manner. It easier to think about deep, perplexing problems because we have the linguistic construct of the \"I\", \"me\" separate from the \"you\", \"her\", \"him\". Those without language certainly still have selves, but it is much harder for them to turn that into anything meaningful. It's not just that our conclusions would be less meaningful, or simpler it's that what problems and issues we are able to resolve are radically different without these linguistic constructs.\n\nNote: I have a degree in neuroscience and also a lifelong reader of many books on the subject. A few good ones that are aimed at the general audience: The Language Instinct by Pinker, How the Mind Works by Pinker, The Self Illusion by Hood, and Seeing Voices by Sacks.", "Not scientific at all, but when I am thinking about something, my thoughts come in pictures and schematics. All of what I know about what I am thinking about is visually laid out in front of me. The only time that I think with words is around other people and I am talking. So I imagine this theoretical person's thought processes would be similar to mine when I am alone. ", "I dont have an internal monologue, unless I purposefully sit there and think out the words in my head. To me that is so impossibly slow, even though I talk faster than most of the people I know...may have something to do with my caffeine addiction.\n\nAnyway, its really not a universal thing.", "I know no languages, written or spoken, AMA!", "Don't all psychology student know about Hellen Keller. How do you get a degree in neuroscience without learning about her?", "As odd as this may sound, up until my late teens, I rarely thought in words or sentences unless it was remembering conversations, or preparing to talk to someone. The rest of my thoughts were images, feelings and music. When I'd see a movie scene where a character's thoughts were overlayed on the soundtrack, I'd think it was silly, because I assumed that nobody thought in complete sentences like that. Marrying a writer changed my perspective of that.\n\nI'm a visual artist, and my clearest thoughts are visual or musical. Nowadays, I have inner monologues like most people (I think) but find it's a slow way of thinking. I think faster than words, and draw much faster than I write.", "If you talk slow and loud enough, anyone can understand English. ", "Their thoughts would be manifested as images. Words represent things, instead of thinking in words, they would simply think of the things that the words represent.\n\nThis is probably why the first writing systems were pictographs and hieroglyphs. ", "One symptom of Dyslexia is the preference to think in pictures, graphics and diagrams as opposed to language. This is one of the reasons Dyslexics find language and reading difficult, because our brains are hardwired to think differently. Letters are each individual thoughts, and have a 3d diagram to match. Lower case b, d, p, and q all have the same diagram, so those letters are particularly tricky. It is completely possible to think exclusively in pictures, and like language in thoughts, it can help you to reach otherwise difficult conclusions and processes.\n\nFor me, fully compensating for my dyslexia meant learning to use language for my thoughts comfortably, to use when convenient. Having both tools makes many concepts much easier to grasp.", "This topic actually brings up an interesting topic in cognitive science. In order for one to learn language, there just be some underlying systems which enable for language to be learned! In other words, there is a logic decoding unit which is able to pattern match words and gestures when people communicate despite knowing know language at all. A language of thought. When you learn a language, you may not know what people are \"saying,\" but almost magically you learn and pick up a language.\n\nYour thoughts may now perceived in this language, but remember at one point, you had no language at all.\n", "Anecdotally, I had a friend in high school who was taught sign language when he was very young because the doctors thought he was deaf (he wasn't, at all). He said that even as a teenager, his thoughts were in sign language.", "They pretty much wouldn't. At least, not *conscious* thoughts. \n\nWe have lots of evidence that if children aren't exposed to language in their first few years of life, they never develop anything like normal human mental facilities. Symptoms of such deprivation are almost indistinguishable from organic brain damage: poor sense of self, mental retardation, lack of sense of time or ability to distinguish past, present and future, etc.\n\nOf course, it depends on the individual, and just how much, or little, exposure to language they had in the critical period before 6 or 7.\n\nThere is some evidence from children abandoned and raised by animals, although that's controversial because there are so few of them, and there is a question over whether they might have been abandoned because they were mentally retarded, or became mentally retarded because they were abandoned. There's also evidence from a few cases where parents have neglected their children to such a degree that they never learned to speak, but the same question applies there.\n\nProbably the strongest direct evidence comes from children born profoundly deaf. In less enlightened times, or less knowledgeable times, being born deaf almost certainly condemned the child to becoming a deaf-mute, and another term for being deaf and mute is  \"deaf and dumb\" -- it is no coincidence that the word dumb is used for both stupid and unable to speak. In times gone past, profoundly deaf children simply didn't develop the same mental facilities as hearing children.\n\nOliver Sacks describes a child, Joseph, who was born deaf but not diagnosed until he was four. With no attempt to teach the child any language at all, by 11 he suffered from a blank incomprehension, and lacked not just language but a sense of time. That was the fate of almost all children born deaf, until the 16th century when the Spanish monk Pedro Ponce de Le\u00f3n taught the deaf son of a nobleman to read lips and speak. Prior to that, it was considered that those born deaf were hopeless cases.\n\nThere's another data point. In the 1880s, European educators made an incredible blunder. They voted to prohibit the teaching of sign language, from fear that it would leave the deaf isolated from the rest of society, and force the deaf to learn to speak oral language. The result was a disaster for the deaf -- by the 1950s, educational outcomes for deaf children were so poor that educators were wondering whether there might be something to the old Medieval theories that deafness was a form of brain damage. Not just academic results, but poorly developed memory, infantile personality, and unfocused sense of self.\n\n(Reference: \"The Myth Of Irrationality\", by John McCrone.)", "The short answer: Thoughts would be exactly the same as ours minus verbal behavior. \n\nThe long answer involves going into how we think about language and conceptualize it. Language is under operant control, meaning it is influenced by the world around us. If there were no other people to talk to, there would be no purpose to functional communication. \n\nIt would be very interesting though to see how one might adjust for this when it comes to issues such as keeping lists and reminders of things to do as well as for measuring. We store all our data/facts/list in a form of language so that other people could in theory comprehend it.", "Helen Keller, who was blind, deaf, and mute from birth, said that before she learnt to communicate all of her thoughts were just raw, uncontrolled emotions and impulses. ", "[This thread](_URL_0_) is kind of helpful. To quote someone.\n\n\"I'm not deaf, but I'm a visual thinker. I do not \"hear a voice\" or \"See words\" when I think. I find it strange that most people do. I think in concepts. A chair is an idea, it is not the word \"chair.\"\n\nI've read often that deaf people and/or deaf+blind people will either think in signs, or think of ideas. I'm guessing it's similar to when you think of something, like an idea. If I say \"picture a red car,\" most people will form a picture of some car with some shade of red. People with no language probably think with objects or mental images to put scenes together. ^or ^I ^could ^be ^completely ^wrong \n\nI don't think early (very very early) humans had language, but they still managed to do some amazing things. ", "Just so it's clear: I'm coming from the premise that language is not necessarily verbal in nature-- it's the way that we make sense of the world around us. Running the risk of oversimplifying things, I'd say that your hypothetical human-- assuming that he survives to adulthood and has reasonably human progress in his cognitive functions-- would have some sort of primitive visual \"language\". (Visual because, biologically, our brains our wired to favor visual stimuli over other senses). \n\nThis language's basis would perhaps stem from memories of certain things that may be used to address particular needs. A brook would be something to sate his thirst, a cave for shelter, a stone would be something that can be used to crack open a nut, etc. His past experience of the world around him creates signifiers that can make sense of further experiences. If he once slipped on moss and sprained an ankle, then the next time he sees moss, he would take moss as a signifier of a slippery trail. \n\nOn another note, there'd also be residues of baser animal instincts-- a wild animal hissing and baring its fangs, I imagine, would not need past experience as a prerequisite; it would probably immediately signify to our human, as it does to us, that he should stay away.\n\nI know this sounds as if our hypothetical human would not be much better, linguistically, than an animal, but again to run the risk of oversimplifying things, language (and the social advantages it creates) accelerates how we make sense of the world. Our hypothetical human could not be \"perfectly intelligent,\" because it's language that creates the conditions for (the conventional understanding of) intelligence. Having a word for moss, and having that word \"moss\" mean the same thing to a community of humans, means that members of the community would not need to encounter moss per se (meaning, would not need to have a past experience of moss,) to learn that it would be slippery. An older member of the community would just say \"don't step on moss, you'll slip.\" ", "I am going to disagree with /u/kparseyan. Obligatory mention here that I'm working towards a doctorate in English. \n\nYou have to answer a question before you can even ask about this scenario: **what is language**?\n\nObviously, written and spoken English/French/Chinese is a language. We all get that. But that doesn't really answer the question. We might also stipulate that, with no conscious thought (that we know of) plants don't speak a language. We can nail down both ends of the spectrum, but what you do with the middle is where the fun lives. \n\nWhat does language do? How does language work? \n\nWithout getting super technical, language is a way of putting a symbol to a concept. The oldest adage about this is the word 'tree'. I say that word, you imagine a tree, but the tree you imagine might not be the same one in my head. We're not talking about a particular tree, we're talking about the concept of a tree. 'Tree' contains nothing. It is a symbol for a set of ideas. \n\nBut even that's not enough. What language really does, its real power, comes in being able to differentiate between things. It's a relationship of various concepts, a network of ideas, that we separate out in taxonomies. What makes a tree a tree is that it is not a giraffe or a rock or a flower. What something is also implies what it isn't. \n\nThe human brain, almost any brain, is capable of doing this. /u/kparseyan  is incorrect when he says that, without language, you can understand sensations like hunger, pain, beauty....that's not true. Even if it isn't spoken or written, the brain has made a symbol for that sensation. There's an abstraction required, not to feel hunger, but to understand that the feeling is hunger and to act accordingly. Even without language, you'd be able to feel [gnawing hunger] and, probably by instinct alone, you'd be able to connect that feeling to satiation when you eat a sandwich. That's a language that is happening without words. That interaction relays a relationship between the feeling and the solution. That [hunger] is distinct from [sleepy] and [thirsty] and thus requires a different solution. \n\nWhen I feel [x] I identify it as distinct. Things can only be distinct things if I can tell they are different from other things. I need to be able to tell that hunger is different from thirst is different from pain is different from sleepy. Whether you put words or colors or pictures to those different sensations, you're creating a taxonomy of 'things' or 'concepts' that you identify as individual elements. Your brain, therefore, has a language with which to process those individual feelings. Even at the most basic level, you have to make the distinction of where you begin and the world ends. Seeing yourself an an individual, understanding that you are the 'I' is an an act of language. \n\nThat written/spoken stuff is just a way for us to normalize symbols in social groups. It allows us to communicate our internal monologue with others. My ability to look at a tree and know it is different than a flower or a rock is happening by vision. My ability to talk to you about that time I fell out of a tree when I was six requires a set of symbols that you share with me, so I can relay abstract concepts reliably to another person. \n\n", "You know how you think when you're not thinking in words?  That way.", "Linguists can be somewhat split in terms of figuring out how language affects us, nevermind how NOT having language affects us.\n\nStephen Pinker (you should definitely read The Language Instinct) argues that all humans are born with an internal language that is not any of the world dialects. My memory is a little fuzzy, so I forget what he calls it, but the reason he is confident that it exists is because humans need to be able to learn their \"first\" language. Which would be impossible without a starting one to translate through.", "The best part about this question is no matter what the answer is, if there really was a person like this they couldn't tell us.", "As a person who speaks several language fluently, I can tell you that I don't think in any particular language, but in abstract and wordless thoughts.  The only time I speak a particular language in my head is if I am thinking ahead to what I plan to say.  The rest of the time, my thoughts are wordless. I would think that a person who speaks no language, would be no different. ", "Equivalent to me around women. ", "They would still have thoughts and ideas that would be *expressible* with words.\n\n\"snow is white\" and \"Schnee ist wei\u00df\" are two sentences expressing the same *thought*.", "Read about Helen Keller, she ended up writing a book about learning language and what life was like before that.", "It would probably be in abstracts.  I think of the word apple when I think about apples.  They'd probably think of the actual image of an apple.", "When dolphins communicate they send an actual sonar image of what they are looking at instead of an abstract. there is no word for fish its just the echo image of the fish so the second dolphins sees what the first dolphin saw. ", "The Nazis actualy tested that in some way. They would put newborn babies to isolation from any spoken language. They wanted to proof that german was the real human language. The babies died from isolation.", "How stoned do you have to be to ask this question?", "I have a theory that you don't actually think in words, until you think about it.", "If I remember correctly from an old linguistics class - it was Noam Chomsky that first demonstrated that language is pre processed in the brain in a universal sense. That is, we don't think in language, we think in a more fundamental abstract way. This is hard for people to believe at first when all you've ever known is adding the layer of spoken language on top of that more fundamental process.\n\nSo if you are Chinese, or British, or a remote Brazilian tribe; the underlying \"language\" for \"I am hungry\" is the same. It's the translational layer of spoken language that sits on top of that where the seeming differences lie. But underneath it's all the same.\n\nI'll bet there is a good analogy here for computer languages. A CPU understands instruction sets in a way that makes no sense to a human trying to read them. But if you put a translational layer of software code on top of the CPU layer then the language makes more sense. The instructions (thoughts) are still the same, but the layer of translation between them is different (C vs Perl et al).\n\nBut I'm not and expert in this. This is just my memory from a class I took years ago.", "The human desire for language is 1.) Innate, and 2.) So strong that the person would develop their own. So--I'd imagine it would be similar to our own head voice, except a pidgin language. ", "Plato handled this nicely in his \"Allegory of the Cave.\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n(It is also interesting to note that he describes Cinema as part if his allegory.  Dude was ahead of his time to say the least.)", "When I meditate, every once in a while my thoughts completely stop. I am aware, but not contemplating anything. Everything feels like it has stopped. When I get in this state, it is such a blissful, peaceful feeling. it actually partly helped me get over my fear of death, since I know what it's like now to be almost nothing- I actually crave the feeling and look forward to feeling that way again when I meditate.", "That's a really good question", "We don't think our thoughts into words, we just use words to describe them to ourselves when trying to comprehend them. ", "I know I would get buried here but I don't think with language personally. I think with ideas, it is hard to explain. It is like when reading a book, I don't read the words, I just get what idea the words represent and roll a movie in my head.", "I'm not sure - they've always snubbed us when we ask that question for some reason.\n\nI guess their thoughts all turn to *\"how-to-be-rude?\"*", "You e got to learn tothink without words. lose the mumbler and find the navigator \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x25xq/what_language_do_deaf_people_think_to_themselves/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3303796.pdf"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.ca/Language-Instinct-How-Mind-Creates/dp/0061336467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403612317&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+language+instinct"], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-world/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/"], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/"], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/19k1rf/deaf_people_of_reddit_what_is_it_like_to_think/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hl8v3", "title": "Is there a mathematical object analogous to a matrix with more than two dimensions?", "selftext": "I guess it would resemble a stack of matrices. What would such a thing be used for?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hl8v3/is_there_a_mathematical_object_analogous_to_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cavgdfv", "cavge70", "cavp6f8"], "score": [19, 12, 2], "text": ["A multidimensional array with rank (or order or degree) greater than 2.  [Tensors](_URL_0_) are an example.", "A tensor.\n\nWhat you're referring to as \"dimension\" is actually called **rank**.\n\nThe rank of a tensor describes how many indices you need to specify an element of the tensor.\n\nA scalar is a rank 0 tensor.\n\nA vector is a rank 1 tensor.\n\nA matrix is a rank 2 tensor.\n\nAs far as I know, there are no names for tensors of higher rank, but you can have as many indices as you want.", "As others have said, this is a tensor- a multilinear map. An example is the Riemann tensor, which encodes all of the information about the curvature of a geometric object. Its rank 4, so its a stack of stacks of matrices!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "57tygz", "title": "how and why does sterilization of a wound cause pain as a response, when we are essentially helping the body by destroying germs and ceasing infection.", "selftext": "Look above", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57tygz/eli5how_and_why_does_sterilization_of_a_wound/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8uw6u6", "d8uw898", "d8uw9wl", "d8uwgqu", "d8uwp5w"], "score": [22, 9, 3, 12, 6], "text": ["Because your nerve endings, which are also being mercilessly subject to your sterilization routine, don't understand the nuance of wound treatment.", "the wound has exposed living nerves.  The same stuff that kills germs will also affect your exposed nerves.  We know thats a worthwhile tradeoff, our nerves are not so smart.", "First, because there are exposed nerve endings.\n\nSecond, you may be using something for sterilisation that really shouldn't be used for that - like alcohol or peroxide. Those will destroy *everything*, including healthy tissue. \n\nSoap and warm water usually don't really hurt that much.", "We didn't evolve to have medicine. It used to be when you got a serious wound you died or maybe lived if it somehow healed. The reason we have pain is to give us a reason to avoid physical damage to ourselves.\n\nFurthermore, realize that sterilization techniques aren't all that hot on the body for real, after all. Pouring alcohol on a wound will kill germs, yeah. But it also kills your cells - this hurts. Alcohol is a strong chemical. It's just more devastating to pools of bacteria than it is to your body. Other VERY new chemicals, like antibiotics, are not necessarily damaging to you in the very specific ways in which they damage bacteria.\n\nThe techniques we use today have not been around for anywhere near the timespans needed for evolution to induce any sort of acceptance and revocation of the associated pain.\n\nContrast with wolves. Wolves lick each others' wounds and this is known to have a beneficial effect on healing. Over a long time, wound licking has become entrenched in their instinct by evolution.", "The nerves inside us, forced to contend with sudden exposure to the outside world due to an injury, don't deal in ideas like 'this will prevent you from getting an infection'. They just do what they always do, which is alert the brain whenever something goes horribly wrong.\n\nWe fight germs and hopefully prevent or diminish infection by applying something to the wound that has detergent properties (i.e. soap) and/or antibiotic properties. Soap is great on the skin, but deeper inside a wound it is a chemical that clearly doesn't belong, so the nerves start complaining. The 'bio' part of antibiotic means living things, as in 'biology'. Since we are also living things, the introduction of an antibiotic substance is as foreign, to the nerves inside us, as other harmful things like bacteria would be if left unchecked.\n\nOur brains know that cleaning the wound will result in a better future. Our nerves just react to what is happening right now, and the things we do to clean wounds often feel, to internal nerves, just as bad as the things we hope to prevent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hho92", "title": "why is internet in america so expensive?", "selftext": "The front page is always complaining about internet prices and speeds in the US. Here in England I pay \u00a35 a month, plus \u00a312 line rental, for 6mbps internet and can't understand why its so expensive over the pond.\n\n*edit: on a speed check it is actually closer to 10mbps\n\n**edit: holy hell this is no on my front page. Wow. Thanks for all the information, its clear to see that its a bit of a contentious issue. Thanks guys!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hho92/eli5_why_is_internet_in_america_so_expensive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cauf9bx", "caug5hl", "caug74y", "cauhame", "cauhke0", "cauhl0s", "cauhmmi", "cauhtrt", "caui5r2", "caui8ng", "cauibqd", "cauj0rn", "cauj6qp", "caujync", "caul4yw", "caulnm8", "caumdoi", "cauoefs", "caupd2x", "caupyrg", "cauqqwc", "caurl09", "causbl1", "causfzw", "cauvp1i", "cauwu28", "cav48dz"], "score": [1266, 94, 15, 7, 23, 10, 36, 10, 5, 2, 7, 5, 2, 9, 3, 2, 15, 2, 2, 15, 5, 2, 6, 5, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["There are two big reasons: Infrastructure and Monopolies/greed.\n\nAmerica is huge. Really huge. I hear it's hard for some Europeans to even comprehend its size, considering there's a couple STATES that all of England could fit into. From tip of Maine to coast of California is almost a week of driving 14+ hours/day, if not more. This means in order for a company to build up a strong network across the country takes a lot of time, manpower, and money. So it's hard for any new companies to form, because forming new infrastructure is a MASSIVE investment which takes a really long time to recover from.\n\nWhy not just upgrade the existing infrastructure then? Well, that's where point two comes in. Because the infrastructure is so expensive, there's only so much of it to go around, and only a handful of companies big enough to manage it all. Comcast, AT & T, Verizon, to name a few, own the vast majority of the cables that make up the internet in America. The onus is on them to perform these upgrades. In fact, the government even gave them money to do just that. Instead of delivering on the promise of \"We'll take this money and build infrastructure\", they used some legal trickery to end up pocketing most of it, while not upgrading the networks nearly as much as they should have.\n\nSo you've got these companies that own existing infrastructure that refuse to upgrade it. The market should dictate that someone willing to come in and perform those upgrades could compete, right? Well, turns out the cable companies have agreements in place where they won't compete in certain regions. In cases where they don't, they even get local governments to sign agreements saying they won't let their competitors come in and build new infrastructure to compete with them (usually in exchange for a few years of cheap rates for their community). So now you have existing, mediocre infrastructure with no way to compete against it without building an entirely new network. You can see how this monopoly would be hard to break.\n\nThere's also a whole lot of politics involved. The FCC is in charge of managing communications networks in America, and they tend to be very hit or miss. I don't have a lot of details handy, but there's plenty of information out there if you're interested in how these companies are getting away with what they're doing.\n\n\nPretty much our only hope of salvation at this point is Google. They're (slowly) building a fiber optic network, with speeds that far and away surpass even the most expensive consumer level plans at the other ISPs. It's not really clear at this point if their goal is to truly build a stronger internet for the whole country, or if they're just trying to scare ISPs into actually upgrading to speeds that are acceptable. In Googles eyes, I don't think they care, as long as the network improves, because a lot of their services (youtube, their data processing, etc) require high bandwidth that the current infrastructure can't really support. Personally, I hope to hell that they expand their fiber network across the country and we finally have real, true competition to shop from. Here's to hoping it's not just a pipe dream :/", "Another couple of reasons Internet is so expensive is because of taxes/fees and bundling. Other people have addressed the infrastructure problems, the regional competition problems, and the amazing greed problems, so I will focus on my bill and show you the components of a typical US Data invoice. At the very least it might be a novelty.\n\n**Here's how bundling works in my area:**\n \nNo company that I am aware of in my area is a dedicated \"Internet Service Provider\". There are Cable Television providers and there are general Telephone providers (Telcos). Both of these business started before the internet was started and to them the internet is an add-on product. So, these companies offer other products besides internet and are generally very reluctant to sell you just internet. Their goal is to sell you the \"Triple Play\" that includes Television/Data/Telephone.\n\nIn any case one may be able to get internet alone, but the providers have tricky pricing structures that make it more expensive to get just data/internet all by itself.\n\nMy bill is $89.43 a month. This includes $50.00/Mo for 24Mbps down internet and $29.00/Mo for basic cable service. (The rest is all taxes/fees which I will cover).\n\nSo since I do not even watch cable, it seems like it would be an obvious money saving move to dump the $29.00/mo cable and just have the internet, right? Well, no because AT & T applies \"bundled service discounts\" in such a way that the internet costs go up AND discounts go away for just a single service. This means that in many cases the data costs alone are just as expensive (or marginally less expensive) than the combination of the two. In my case the internet would have gone up to $78/Mo for data alone. Three bucks more and I get cable, so... yeah.\n\n**And The Fees:** In my case not so bad considering.\n\n\nAnd then when you are satisfied that you are not paying more than you have to for service, the taxes and fees hit you. Here is the breakdown for my service:\n\n* $50.00/Mo Data\n* $29.00/Mo Television (which is just IPtv anyways...)\n* $6.00/Mo Equipment Fee (All in one DVR/IPtv Decoder/Modem/Router)\n* \u00a212/Mo County Sales Tax\n* \u00a229/Mo State Sales Tax\n\n**Grand Total $89.43**\n\nIf you have telephone service you may add at least five more tax, 911, TTY, and other fees to your bill. But who the hell has one of those anymore?\n\nI don't feel that this is very horrible at all. But like many people, this is a *promotional* deal. This means that after one year, this price will expire leaving me a bill north of $120/Yr. This means that I will have to call in every year and threaten to leave unless they keep my costs the same or less. It's stupid, but works out for the providers because they get a yearly opportunity to try and sell you more crap.\n\nEdited for spacing/Wall o text", "This video should answer your question. _URL_0_ ", "It's not really that expensive. You could get similar speed (6mbps) for a similar price in most large cities in the US.", "Rural WISP admin here. We provide fixed wireless internet for rural communities as an alternative to satellite and spotty mobile internet. The areas we cover will likely never see fiber buildout because the ROI on something like that is not good enough for the big ISPs to even bother. Out fastest package is 4.5Mbps down/1.5Mbps up. This is mostly a limitation of the unlicensed spectrum wireless gear that is available to us.  \nAnother thing to consider is that a lot of cable companies in the US are regulated in such a way that they cannot cross certain municipal borders, even though they would like to, and have the capacity to do so. \n  \n", "Because in America prices aren't based on actual cost, they are based on meticulous research showing exactly how much an individual is willing to pay before just doing without.", "1.5mbps speeds...about 1mbps actually. 100GB allowance.\n\n$90\n\nMust be so hard for America. Why not come to Australia?\n\nThe problems are distance and infrastructure costs. It's not cheap maintaining a network.\n\nPlus you try to make the maximum profit you can...", "So you pay 17#? That's 25USD.\n\nWe pay 30 USD for 6 Mbps... I have no idea why this thread exists?", "I just want to point out that America does have good internet in specific densely populated areas, but as an average falls below Europe because Europe (and specific small countries) have a population density magnitudes higher than the United States.\n\nFor example, universities in many cases offer 100/50 or better (depending on their internal infrastructure) to students for absolutely free. My University has a public library with these services to be exact.\n\nIf you want more details on average speeds in the world, I would suggest [NetIndex](_URL_0_)", "Because telecoms are greedy.", "I pay about $25 for about 15-20mbps, so I don't think the cost is that much more, at least when compared to the more developed/metro areas here.", "I pay $35 monthly for a 15Mbps cable line.  (Roughly \u00a323, compared to your \u00a317)\n\nIt only really gets bad if you get higher speeds.  We do fine on that, so that's what we have.\n\nBut yeah, a lot of it has to do with size.  To run an ISP you have to buy a connection to one of the backbones, if not more than one for redundancy.  Those are not cheap, so the cost gets passed along to the consumer.\n\n", "Spying on all those ppl must cost ", "Come to Canada. It's more expensive and even slower thanks to a large land mass, small population, and most importantly the CRTC, which mandates all internet, television, and telecommunications.\n\nCRTC = Big Brother in Canada.", "What steps can we take in order to change this? I have dozens of hours that I would devote to this cause ", "Because the people with the money in America have convinced everyone that if you say ANYTHING bad WHATSOEVER about capitalism then you are an anti-American, socialist, communist, satanic, terrorist.\n\nThe truth is, capitalism is just as susceptible to corruption as any other economic system. Right now, in America, it is BEYOND corrupt, but you're not allowed to say it or do anything about it **without being dismissed as a communist or a terrorist**.\n\nEDIT: Clarified.", "Uhhh... Im only paying 45USD a month for 100Mbps down, 25 up.   \n\nedit: \"Mbps\"", "The real questions is why is internet in Canada so expensive", "in america, you can get 6mbps for $20 - close to 13GBP vs your 17.", "Stop your bitching America, you don't have it *that* bad.\n\nSigned, Australia", "Why is gas so expensive in Europe?", "Because we allow it to be. Simple as that.", "Not answering the question, but try living in Australia. $100 a month for 1mb/s download speeds.", "you guys have it cheap compared to Australia.\nwe're paying up to double the prices over there with less than half the speeds.", "You should come to Australia if you think that's bad", "Not explaining anything, but when I was in the US, I paid $44/month for 30mbps. And $30/month for cell/data on t-mobile. No complaints here. I feel like most people wind up bundling internet with TV and that gets really expensive very quickly. Just bail on TV and the internet side isn't too bad, at least in GA", "Well aside from the fact that 5mbps is shit and \u00a317 is cheaper but still not *that* great... \n\nThe short answer is capitalism. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.netindex.com/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7hmd8m", "title": "how does \u201cactivated charcoal\u201d work and why has it become so wildly popular in beauty/cosmetic products?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hmd8m/eli5_how_does_activated_charcoal_work_and_why_has/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqs4f2u", "dqs7rir", "dqs9rq6", "dqsa6ih", "dqsbva9", "dqscmgs", "dqsdcf4", "dqsff1a", "dqsfmhc", "dqsgnu2", "dqshcva", "dqshj7n", "dqsjj99", "dqsjnld", "dqsmbqw", "dqspl1v", "dqstaxv", "dqsv7rk", "dqt3pkk", "dqtsmj6"], "score": [6589, 362, 176, 13, 498, 153, 6, 3, 25, 5, 57, 2, 4, 3, 7, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["\"Activated charcoal\" is carbon - which, you know, is what charcoal is made out of, mostly. They press it into smaller bits with more surface area.\n\nCarbon like that has a lot of porous area where chemical *adsorption* can occur. Adsorption is like absorption, kind of, in that your material is \"sucking up\" something from a liquid or gas. In the case of adsorption, atoms and molecules stick to the surface area of your material. Charcoal, particularly activated charcoal, has a *lot* of surface area, so it can adsorb a *lot* of stuff and it can do it quickly and efficiently, and also cheaply.\n\n~~That's why they use charcoal to pump your stomach when you have alcohol poisoning. The carbon sucks up all the alcohol, then they remove the saturated carbon from your stomach, bringing the alcohol with it. What carbon remains to go through your digestive tract contains the alcohol so you can't absorb it into your blood.~~ [^^Or ^^not ^^maybe?](_URL_0_) ^^I ^^dunno, ^^point ^^is ^^it ^^sucks ^^up ^^poisonous ^^stuff ^^in ^^your ^^stomach.\n\nIt's also used in aquariums to suck up waste in the water so it can be removed when you change your filter. It's especially good at removing heavy metals, which are sometimes present in your water at concentrations that are not high enough to hurt you but high enough to hurt your livestock. Similarly, it's used in water purification systems (like your Brita filter) to similarly suck up some stuff in your tap water that you are trying to filter out. EDIT: And some gas masks, and industrial air pollution scrubbers, and a number of similar filtering applications. It's quite good at actually sucking up toxic chemicals. Just, you know...not out of your face.\n\nThat tendency to suck up heavy metals has created a mystique about it, that it sucks up \"toxins\". If it can purify your water, why not purify your skin? It can suck up \"toxins\" out of your face! (Pro tip: it doesn't.)\n\nEdit: when they make you swallow charcoal for a pill overdose or swallowing poison, *it does nothing to the drugs or poison in your blood*. If you still have some left in your stomach, it soaks that up so that your OD or poisoning doesn't get any worse. What's in your blood is still there and has to be dealt with in other ways. ", "Take a piece of wood. Now heat it to very high temperatures in the absence of oxygen (no combustion) - this creates a very pure carbon, a charcoal. Now, expose this to an \"activating\" agent (like carbon dioxode) that creates a very porous structure that gives it a lot of surface area. The more area you have means you can adsorb (sort of like a sponge) more contaminants. Activating also alters the surface such that it is more attractive toward, specifically, organic compounds. Examples of organic compounds that would be of interest include oils and grime in your skin, tea/coffee stains on your teeth, and taste/odor compounds and organic contaminants in your drinking water (think fridge filter). Activated carbon is in the adsorbent family of treatment options. There are other options, but carbon is cheap and it can be sustainable if one uses resilient sources like bamboo or waste products such as coconut shell. A great invention would be turning waste plastic into activated carbon, something many are working on!\n\n*How much surface area? The amount of AC that fits in your palm (or half a banana, if you must) is equivalent in surface area to about five football fields. ", "Carbon is porous and acts like a filter that small tidbits will stick to. \n\nIt doesn't actually do anything, for your skin,  better than washing.\n\nThe reason it's so popular in skin care is because of marketing. \n\n", "The charcoal serves to absorb toxins and stains but will not actually whiten your teeth. Teeth color comes from the color of \u201cdentin\u201d which is a layer underneath the surface of your teeth. Things like whitestrips will bleach/stain the dentin white. Almost everyone has naturally off-white/yellow natural teeth. Active charcoal will just get your teeth as \u201cwhite\u201d as your teeth naturally are, but won\u2019t give you that Hollywood smile.", "Serious question. Does activated charcoal brushing powder actually do shit? On amazon i always see before and after pictures. I figured your average joe would just upload two seperate images. But these people always have a single image divided up. Seems to professinal. Seems fake. Not buying it. Seems like its all a scam. ", "Can anyone confirm if this actually works for beauty products? Mostly interested in the effectiveness of whitening your teeth with it? \n\nI always heard baking soda works but then my dentist told me it scratches your enamel (which doesn\u2019t heal) because baking soda is too rough and not ground up finely enough. \n\nSo then, what are the cons of charcoal teeth whitening, if it does work?", "Activated Charcoal is porous and it attaches to other molecules.  It is used to neutralized poisons in an Emergency room. \n\nThe Efficacy on it's use everyday for hygienic reasons is most likely that it is has harmful effects.  I would not purchase these products.   \n\nActivated Charcoal would make other topical and internal medicines less effected.  ", "Is it okay to use charcoal toothpaste very sporadically? Like weeks before another use?", "Unlike a fine silica gel which attracts very polar oils and chemicals, charcoal (carbon) is very non polar and attracts very non-polar oils and chemicals to it, including some stains as well. Pharmaceutical companies use it while making certain drugs to make their pills more uniformly white since people would rather take a white pill than a tan or brown pill.\n\nFor cosmetics I assume for cleaning purposes it adds a benefit of adhering to and eliminating certain otherwise stubborn lipids or oils that don't clean up well with soap and water; also maybe to eliminate the oil built up in natural creases in the skin crafting the illusion that someone looks younger due to their wrinkles being less prominent.\n\nWanting to look younger is a thing right?", "Regular carbon (charcoal) has small nooks and crannies that capture impurities. Activated carbon is charcoal that has been  crushed, soaked in acid and baked. This process makes the carbon bits smaller and the are now microscopic if not smaller nooks and crannies that can now capture even more impurities. Like a billion times more crevices and also captures smaller impurities. Not sure about it being in makeup though.  ", "So, lots of comments asserting that activated charcoal doesn't actually adsorb toxins off the skin.\n\n'Toxins' is, of course, a nebulous, sort of meaningless term in this context, so that doesn't surprise me.\n\nBut does charcoal in a skin-care product really not adsorb things like the bacteria that can cause ance, or excess sebum and oil that can block pores and cause breakouts?\n\n\nIn my own experience, some charcoal face-wash scrubs I've tried were quite potent at cleaning oily skin. Maybe even too strong.", "Alright so brushing is bad for the enamel. \n\nBut what about oil pulling with charcoal? ", "Activated charcoal: Its a marketing term for \"activated carbon\" which is a processed form of carbon thats more poreous than other forms of carbon, thus allowing certain thigns to be absorbed into it easier. \n\nWhat it is used for in cosmetics: It has been in use for hundreds of years and has become more available in modern times for use in hospitals etc. It can be used as a cleanser, mask, and many other products. \n\nWhy is it popular: Marketing has rediscovered this term for use in cosmetics. People who don't know any better are paying a few extra dollars on something that is not necessarily more effective than other cleansers. \n\nPeople will buy anything that are marketed to make you look younger without really doing any solid research. ", "Is this why my whiskey says triple-filtered with active charcoal?", "Taking charcoal pills regularly is very much NOT recommended outside of prescribed medical use. If you are on any kind of daily medication, activated charcoal can prevent your medication from being absorbed properly - antidepressants, birth control, antihistamines, etc, can all be rendered less effective by taking charcoal along with your prescribed dose of medication. Furthermore, taking activated charcoal internally has never been shown to provide any medical benefit as part of a daily routine, and can actually be harmful if taken with food as it may prevent essential nutrients from being absorbed. It's just another marketing fad selling you snake oil. Don't be fooled!", "As a layman, where do i read stuff about what's really good for our health/skincare? is there a kind of honest ebook i could look up to?\n\nI highly sceptical of those product marketing or people claiming a particular compound is secret for everlasting beauty.", "Wendy Zuckerman did a good show on this on [science vs](_URL_0_).\n\nIt has become wildly popular in beauty/cosmetic products because it's easy to make wild claims that are plausible-sounding enough to get people to part with their money. It is used medically to treat certain poisonings and overdoses following oral ingestion. If you can convince people that their self-perceived flaws are caused by something as intensely unlikable as \"toxins\", you can easily convince them to spend their money on your activated charcoal. It's benign enough not to hurt you, so why not?\n\nThe reason it's effective for things it's *truly* effective for is that the process of \"activating\" it gives small particles a large surface area that allows it to absorb a much larger amount of contaminants than it would otherwise, so you can get away with using much smaller amounts. ", "Part of the *why* it is used so much is that it is just carbon. Almost completely non-toxic and - best of all - dirt cheap. It is almost pure profit for the cosmetic companies, they would be crazy not to use it with margins like that.\n\nThe how does it work side of things is a bit harder to answer - but the super short version (since I am at work) is that it is like a chemical sponge - there is a HUGE amount of surface area on a small amount of powder, so when contact is made between the carbon and other organic materials things tend to get caught in the carbon more easily than they can leave it - thus it scrubs away small organic molecules.\n\nThe biggest issue in my mind is that when the carbon is dispersed in a cream or face-wash most of its free binding sites for adsorption (a relic of how it is made mostly) will be occupied by the oils and fragrances it is packaged with. Using a cream with dispersed carbon will not have NEAR the efficacy of rubbing powdered activated carbon on your face. Most likely a good thing- but brings to mind the question of whether it has any real capacity to absorb anything.\n\nTLDR: Carbon is cheap and has a good reputation as a \"purifier\" - I.e. good marketing strategy mostly.", "We make this at work, in fabric form. It's used for all sorts of stuff from wound dressings to chemical warfare suits to \"flatulence pads\". It's so porous 1 meter of cloth has a surface area of 180,000 meters. All those pores are great at attracting other chemicals to the surface using Van Der Waals forces. \n\nThe top comment says that the carbon is pressed into small bits but that's not actually the case. The cloth is converted in furnaces at 1000\u00b0C from rayon(modal) or polyacrilonitrile while the granular stuff is made from wood pulp, or coconut shells or various other things.\n\nLast thing I'd say is that the carbon can be impregnated with certain chemicals that make it useful for absorbing other things. For instance a copper oxide impregnation reacts with hydrogen sulphide to form water and copper sulphate. This is useful for ostomy bag filters and other things.", "Skincare global marketer/product developer. \n\nCharcoal is a trending ingredient that will likely die soon. A lot of brands were using it because of the black color it gives products as a point of difference.  It doesn't do anything special. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hmd8m/eli5_how_does_activated_charcoal_work_and_why_has/dqs6r6a/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://gimletmedia.com/episode/detoxing-cleanses-work/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1alz8v", "title": "why the name richard is shortened into dick?", "selftext": "It makes much more sense to shorten it to Rick!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1alz8v/eli5_why_the_name_richard_is_shortened_into_dick/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ym4ux", "c8yoi73", "c8yoogg", "c8yot6w", "c8yovb6", "c8yp2q3", "c8yp4bb", "c8yp8kj", "c8ypfpx", "c8yq4k1", "c8yqud2", "c8yratm", "c8ysm77", "c8ytqtb", "c8yvdmh", "c8yvn9x", "c8yw6u7", "c8yxo2c", "c8z1d3d", "c8z1elc", "c8z2yf5"], "score": [1112, 184, 8, 78, 2, 60, 605, 12, 6, 7, 68, 2, 8, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It was once popular to create rhyming nicknames.  So Richard becomes Rick, which then becomes Dick.\n\nThis is the same reason that William becomes Bill.", "Have you ever met a Richard you've liked? ", "My name is Richard, but most people call me Rick. Only people who still find humor in the word \"dick\" call me Dick as a joke. ", "Richard here: I can verify that we're all dicks", "[*\"And if someone asks to see it, I show 'em a little dick,  \nNot my penis, the short guy named Richard, we call him Rick,   \n(What up, Rick?)  \nHe's actually kind of a dick.\"*](_URL_0_)", "Little off topic but why did people call John F. Kennedy; Jack Kennedy? How is Jack a nickname for John?", "This question could have been answered by Google. There are lots of explanations. ELI5 is for asking questions where you've done the research but still don't understand the concept.", "I know a guy whos legal name is Dick, He goes by Rich.", "Theodore all the way to Ted seems like a weird one too. (Edward- > Ed- > Ted explains the OTHER Teds in the same vein as this post)", "I go by Ted but my real name is Edward, from some reason this puzzles people. I dont know why, you put a T in front of Ed and it's Ted", "My middle name is Dirk which is interchangable as Dick in the netherlands. And my first name is Ritch. So my name is actually Dick Dick?", "My Mongolian friend, Batjargal, tells me the shorthand of his name (Bachka) is similar to the Richard/Dick shorthand", "But how does Francisco get to Paco? I guess should know, but I don't.", "[Slick Rick the Ruler](_URL_0_)", "Better question. If your name happens to be Richard, why choose to go with Dick? Like [this guy](_URL_0_)", "ANACONDA MALT LIQUOR", "Cockney Rhyming Slang", "My name is WALOOON and I go by DICK.", "Here's a question, was the word 'dick' (meaning penis) around before the word 'dick' (meaning Richard)?", "Because Richard Dawkins.", "Another reason all these nicknames happened: At one point in England there were very few first names in use. Still, in England, they use phrases like \"our Arthur\" to distinguish the Arthur in your department from the three other Arthurs in the company. Anyway. If your wife is Elizabeth, your mother is Elizabeth, your sister is Elizabeth and your mother-in-law is Elizabeth (something like this happened) you need a quick way of keeping them straight. Liz, Eliza, Beth, Bess, and then the ones down the lane are Betsy, Lizzie, and so forth. \n\nMargaret, Maggie, Marge, Margie ... I imagine at some point you call a Margaret \"Peg\" because you're out of ideas. This theory also explains Mary- >  Molly, John- >  Jack and other such things.\n\n(source: somewhere in the book Longitude. It was something like a guy named John Smith with a wife, sister and mother named Elizabeth and a brother-in-law and father-in-law named John. ) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjM3gDhRSgU&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=1m29s"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ricktheruler.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/slick-rick-h3.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Pound"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "65pefi", "title": "if an addict goes into a coma for enough time to get it out of their system, would they still be addicted when they wake up?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65pefi/eli5_if_an_addict_goes_into_a_coma_for_enough/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgc3mwv", "dgc5a1h", "dgc7b2y", "dgcfwlp", "dgckn1o", "dgclaht", "dgcoix3", "dgcp650", "dgctxst", "dgcx5w3", "dgcxty6"], "score": [437, 46, 44, 234, 5, 2, 2, 8, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["They would have no physical addiction. They would go through withdrawal while unconscious. But they'd still be addicted psychologically, much like a person who quits for awhile--they will still crave the substance, but not become physically ill when not having any. It's actually a thing to put people to sleep so they can detox while unconscious.  ", "No physical addiction.  Source: wife was in a coma last year due to alcohol problems, when she woke up, all was good and hasn't had a drink since.", "You (like most people) are conflating *addiction*, which is a behavior and a psychological/spiritual/brain-chemistry problem, with *chemical dependence*, which is a medical condition. Any person can, for instance, be over prescribed painkillers and their body develop a chemical dependence, which will result in physical withdrawal when the substance is removed.  That part, you can sleep through.  Being an **addict** is a different thing.  An alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in five years is **still an addict**, despite having no physical chemical dependence. It's a reference to the fact that their brain chemistry is simply different, and always will be at our present level of understanding. ", "I'm an addiction counselor. I've also spent four days in a coma from a polysubstance overdose, and subsequent withdrawal. \n\nLet's get a few terms straight first. Addiction is not diagnosable. Instead, let's call it a (substance) use disorder. There are 11 diagnostic criteria for a use disorder. If someone meets 3, or 7, or 10 of these criteria, their disorder could be mild, moderate, or severe. Someone with a mild substance use disorder might not have the same obsessions or compulsions that another patient may have, or the same feelings of guilt/shame as another, or hasn't been using as coping skill since age 13, or has a very supportive home life with access to a continuum of care, etc. \n\nSo, the answer is yes, it's possible for them to wake up not 'addicted' or at least not physically dependent... but completing withdrawal is not enough for most patients to find long term wellness. About 92% of opioid users that complete a detox-only level of care, without residential treatment, intensive outpatient treatment, etc., end up using again within one year... using problematically... not just using...\n\nSo, while it's possible, the patient would likely need to be mild case, and present with mostly withdrawal related symptoms and none of the thought-life, amygdala activation, guilt/shame, society pressures, home life difficulties, have many coping methods that actually help the patient, etc., that most problematic users face daily. So... let's not try... ok?!?!", "Physically yes. But most addictions are not about the actual substance though. When it comes to substance abuse then people have that as the solution to their problem but it's not the actual problem. Many look at a drug addict and think if you only took away the drugs then the problem would be solved but what they don't realize is that the drugs is to cover the pain inside them. So it could have been alcohol, drugs, food or whatever. It's kinda like people who cut themselves. It doesn't help to take away the knife cause they clearly have issues. No I am not saying the two are the same, it's just an example. So most likely they will still need a fix and will still be addicted.\n\nI want to point out that there are many who at some point try drugs and then suddenly get addicted and need it and in this case I think your example would actually be a big help. But for many addicts then it wouldn't work cause they would wake up and feel like hell and need something to numb that.", "There's actually a very expensive treatment for opiate addiction that involves putting a person to sleep while weaning them off the drugs with an IV drip.  Pretty sure it was featured in an HBO documentary about addiction, although I might be wrong on the producer of the content.  This, like so many other methods is a quick fix to what is in many circumstances a lifelong struggle.  You get through the detox, but you don't know how to function and cope afterwards without the drug, so the fix is usually pretty temporary.  Interesting research with some benefit to treatment going forward, but not a long-term solution by any means.", "This system has been tried in the past, most notably in Australia: it didn't end well.\n\n_URL_0_", "Addiction has both physical and mental components. When you are physically addicted to something your body goes into withdrawal and makes the addict sick. That physical withdrawal can vary from unpleasant, to life threatening and it can last days. \n\nThe mental component is drug seeking behavior. The user wants the drug because it helps them cope or satisfies a need they have. Those cravings and needs are likely still there when they wake up, maybe even more so with the stress of a hospital stay. \n\nI'll give you some examples. \nCigarettes - They have a mild physical addiction that can cause irritability, headaches, and low energy when quitting. These usually fade in a few days. However the mental addiction can last for months or years. The user is used to fidgeting with their hands, they often smoke during other activities and doing those activities without a cigarette makes them crave them all the more. Being around other smokers, or in situations where one usually smokes like drinking in a bar, makes it very difficult to abstain. \n\nOpiates - Very strong physical addiction and dependence. Quitting cold turkey leads to intense nausea, diarrhea, sleep interruptions, headaches, intense feelings of hopelessness and malaise. The opiates caused their bodies to produce less endorphins and 'feel good' brain chemicals. Without the drug, the bodies natural pain killers and chemical rewards are not working properly leading to the person being in a lot of pain and discomfort, and things that normally bring joy like friends, food, favorite music and movies, provide little to no relief. This usually fades in several days. The mental aspects of it can last the rest of a persons life. The problems and behaviors that led them to abuse the drug in the first place are often still there when they quit, and recovery can be very difficult and require years of careful control over their behaviors and lives. \n\n", "Addiction is far more than a chemical or physical dependence, here is where the problem lies. I've read most of the comments and no one has touched on the \"lifestyle\" of addiction. At one point in my life every person I would interact with on a daily basis was an addict, every contact in my phone, every house I would visit, everything in my life revolved around my addiction. After so long it becomes all that you know and all that you see and do, every day! It slowly takes over every part of your life...", "Speaking from experience: I was in a coma for 8 days, when I woke up I no longer needed a cigarette.  It was as if I never had an addiction to them at all.", "This actually used to be a pretty popular method of detox, called Prolonged Sleep. The idea was that you could heavily sedate a patient through the worst of the withdrawal. It wasn't effective, to put it mildly. Here is how Burroughs described the process:\n\n*Prolonged Sleep.--The theory sounds good. You go to sleep and wake up cured. Industrial doses of chloral hydrate, barbiturates, thorazine, only produced a nightmare state of semi-consciousness. Withdrawal of sedation, after 5 days, occasioned a severe shock. Symptoms of acute morphine deprivation supervened. The end result was a combined syndrome of unparalleled horror. No cure I ever took was as painful as this allegedly painless method. The cycle of sleep and wakefulness is always deeply disturbed during withdrawal. To further disturb it with massive sedation seems contraindicated to say the least. Withdrawal of morphine is sufficiently traumatic without adding to it withdrawal of barbiturates. After two weeks in the hospital (five days sedation, ten days \"rest\") I was still so weak that I fainted when I tried to walk up a slight incline. I consider prolonged sleep the worst possible method of treating withdrawal.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sleep_therapy#Australian_Chelmsford_scandal"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hovl1", "title": "Which are the most important discoveries in Psychology of the 21st century?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hovl1/which_are_the_most_important_discoveries_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dymeruc"], "score": [7], "text": ["edit: wrong century. But I already wrote this, so here are some important discoveries of the 20th century as a preview:\n\n**The twin study.** The twin study revolutionized psychology by allowing us to quantify how much of our psychology is explained by genetic factors. The method is brilliantly simple: take two twins who share the same DNA, raise them in different environments, and then see how much of their psychology matches after a certain number of years. (No one does this for an experiment, but it happens naturally through adoption and so forth). Twin studies have led to an enormous number of shocking and counterintuitive discoveries. For example, our personality is about 40-60% genetic on average,^[1](_URL_7_),[2](_URL_0_) as are most mental health conditions (e.g., depression is about [40-50%](_URL_5_) genetic on average, while schizophrenia is around [80%](_URL_2_) on average, and substance abuse disorder is around [30-70%](_URL_6_) on average depending on the drug). \n\n**Lithium for bipolar disorder.** The discovery in the [1940's](_URL_3_) that lithium could treat bipolar disorder revolutionized psychiatry (and by extension, psychology). This occurred at a time when many people thought that mental illnesses were the result of unfulfilled wish fulfillments or other Freudian explanations that have now been debunked (although to be fair, Freud's ideas still have some supporters). The idea that mental health conditions like bipolar disorder could be treated effectively through chemistry was revolutionary, and lithium ushered in a new era for psychology. \n\n**Ketamine for depression.** Quote from a [paper](_URL_4_) published in 2012: *\"Recent studies report what is arguably the most important discovery in half a century: the therapeutic agent ketamine ... produces rapid (within hours) antidepressant actions in treatment-resistant depressed patients.\"* The discovery in the late 1990s to early 2000's that ketamine (an anesthetic from the 1950's) is also an extremely powerful and quickly-acting antidepressant is currently revolutionizing psychiatry. I could provide more examples of important drug discoveries, since there are many, but I'll stop here for brevity.\n\n**Classical and operant conditioning.** This is clich\u00e9 to include on this list, but it's important. Before the early pioneers of conditioning like Pavlov and Skinner began studying this effect in the early 1900's, no one had any clue how our behaviors could be learned from experiences. This early research on conditioning laid the foundation for us to begin understanding the cellular basis of learning and memory in the brain (for example, processes like [Hebb's rule](_URL_1_)). \n\n**MRI**. Nuclear magnetic resonance was discovered in physics in the early 1940's, but this also became an enormous discovery for psychology in the 1970's with the invention of the MRI machine. Apart from its immediate applications in clinical psychology, MRI allowed researchers to study the brain non-invasively, with unprecedented clarity compared to earlier techniques. MRI also led to the development of fMRI, which now allows us to observe which parts of the brain activate in certain contexts. The significance of MRI and fMRI for psychology cannot be overstated. \n\n**Cognitive behavioral therapy.** It's hard to say exactly when CBT was discovered, but its most popular clinical form has been around since around the 1980's. Unlike some earlier forms of therapy, CBT is evidence-based and can be extremely effective for treating an enormous number of different mental health conditions. Although researchers are still trying to figure out exactly how it works, it's now standard treatment for many different psychological conditions. For many conditions, the combination of therapy and medication appears to be more effective than either alone, so CBT can also make other treatments more effective."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25985137", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15642626", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28987712", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712976/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4424898/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3077049/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410620/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2218526"]]}
{"q_id": "5h9pwj", "title": "what is the point of in-store gift cards? what makes them better than just giving somebody the money?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h9pwj/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_instore_gift_cards_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dayi4mp", "dayi8zq", "dayilun", "dayin4l", "dayio3i", "dayj7ic"], "score": [7, 4, 14, 2, 7, 3], "text": ["It's for the business. They want you to spend $49.51 of that $50 gift card and then throw the card away because they gave you $49.51 worth of product and someone paid them for $50 worth of product. Best for the company is you losing it or never using it,though \n\nI like getting them because it inspires me to go places and spend money I wouldn't normally. I got a home depot gift card and was able to get new tools for my yard which I didn't even plan on getting, which I enjoyed doing", "And for the consumers I feel like it's mostly so parents can give their children gift cards and feel relieved knowing they aren't going to spend it on illegal drugs or alcohol.  Also for some reason that I don't understand, some people find it in poor taste to give cash, so they just give a gift card instead.", "It's a bit more personal and shows they put more thought into it. Say I have a friend who I know likes camping, but I don't know what exact thing they need. I'll get them a gift card for a store that sells camping supplies as a way to say \"I don't know what you need, but I know what you like, so here's a compromise.\"\n\nIt also forces the person to use it in a gift like way. If someone gives me money I'll feel like I should just put it into savings. More financially prudent, perhaps, but less exciting than spending it on something fun like you might get with a gift card.", "It allows the giver to give some thought into a gift but allows the user to purchase specifically what they. Say you are giving a gift to someone who is really into camping and you want to give them something they could take on a trip. However, you have no idea what gear they already have or may might need. You could give them an REI gift card.  ", "Businesses promote and offer them because they make their money once the gift card is sold. If the recipient doesn't completely use the gift card, that's just more profits.\n\n*People* gift them because they signal at least a cursory level of care in gift selection. In a vacuum, a cash gift signals only how much the giver values the exchange. A gift card can express a belief or suggestion about how the recipient would or could use that much money, while acknowledging that the giver is either unable or unwilling to attempt to obtain the end items the recipient will purchase.\n\nThere might be more politics layered on top of those considerations, depending on how well the parties know each other.", "for me, it means I can give somebody something like cash, and they can't go blow it on cigarettes or beer.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "u9wd3", "title": "What thickness of standard pure silicon dioxide glass would be required for it to block out 100% of visible light?", "selftext": "Nothing is truly transparent, everything blocks, absorbs, or reflects at least a few photons. So how effective is glass at letting through photons unrefracted?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/u9wd3/what_thickness_of_standard_pure_silicon_dioxide/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4tktgm", "c4tncr8"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["In physics there is rarely such a thing as \"100% precisely\" - in theory a photon could always 'tunnel', only that the probability is so small that it's not worth taking that into account.\n", "The transmittance for visible light thru an standard quality glass over a one-inch (25mm) path is about 99.5%, although this varies from glass to glass. Let's reduce your expectations somewhat and ask what length of glass we'd need to see 99% attenuation, i.e. 1% transmittance.\n\nBeer-Lambert law: T = 10^-aL , giving an extinction coefficient of a=0.087 m^-1 . then L(1%) = log10(1%)/(-a) = 80 m.\n\nOf course that data might not be perfect (their numbers might include surface reflection) but if you'd like to follow along I used [this ref](_URL_0_), figure 2-3 mostly but the rest is a good primer.\n\nI'd like to see what the fiber optics guys have to say about the longest cable they can make and successfully send data over. I'm sure it's quite a bit longer than 80 m."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.schott.com/advanced_optics/english/download/schott_tie-35_transmittance_october_2005_en.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "2yfdc5", "title": "What mathematical symbols (ie + and -) were used in the Roman Republic and Empire? Did they change?", "selftext": "Title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yfdc5/what_mathematical_symbols_ie_and_were_used_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp9abhj"], "score": [21], "text": ["There were no standardized symbols for addition and subtraction until long after the Empire. The symbols we use now date from after the 15th century.\n\nFor the most part, computations (even quite complicated ones) would be written out in words. For an example of this, you can look at Frontinus' (1st century AD) [De aquis](_URL_3_) (recent translation [here](_URL_4_)), where he discusses the water supply system in Rome in detail. Frontinus' surprisingly intricate calculations have been discussed at length by many authors (see the references below). \n\nOf course, many of the famous Latin works we have are presumably somewhat polished, and present mostly final results, without detailing the computations that lead to them. Unfortunately, we do not have many primary sources explaining how the Greeks or Romans performed computations. Most of what we believe is based on guesswork from examining authors such as Frontinus or Diophantus. The classical reference for this is Friedlein's *[Zahlzeichen und das Elementare Rechnen der Griechen und Roemer](_URL_0_)* (Numerals and elementary arithmetic of the Greeks and Romans). You can look at the bibliography in [this article](_URL_1_) by Maher and Makowski for a more up-to-date overview of this question, and a detailed discussion of Frontinus' computations. We do know that the Romans used abaci, which, if operated expertly, can certainly rival computation with pen, paper, and modern notation, and learned multiplication tables.\n\nEven in the few examples of more informal computations we have, (Serafina Cuomo gives examples from Greek papyri of the Roman period in her book *Ancient Mathematics*), computations were generally written out in words. In [A History of Mathematical Notations](_URL_2_), Cajori examines the example of Diophantus (who lived in Alexandria under the Empire). He did have his own notation for subtraction (an inverted trident or \"psi\"), but he would just put numbers next to each other to signify addition. This notation was not widespread, and did not remain in use after Diophantus. Cajori also mentions \"sporadic\" use of a slash (/) to indicate addition in Greek papyri of the period. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://archive.org/details/diezahlzeichenun00frie", "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1215513?sid=21106063920573&amp;uid=70&amp;uid=3739256&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=3739696&amp;uid=2129&amp;uid=4", "https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/De_Aquis/text*.html", "http://www.uvm.edu/~rrodgers/Frontinus.html"]]}
{"q_id": "52ubgs", "title": "Does anti-reflective coating on lenses increase light transmission?", "selftext": "I know many lenses these days have an anti-reflective coating. My understanding is that this works because the anti-reflective coating thickness is equal to 1/4 wavelength of the light you are trying not to reflect (500 nm in the case of green light, so a coating with 125 nm). The waves reflecting from the surface of the coating and the surface of the glass destructively interfere, which\"cancels out\" the reflection.\n\nSo here's the real question: When I hear people talk about anti-reflective coatings, they make it sound as if it results in increased transmission of the light through the lens. Does this coating really increase the total number of photons that will be transmitted through the whole optical system? It seems to me that these photons must still be \"bouncing off the front\" in order to destructively interfere?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/52ubgs/does_antireflective_coating_on_lenses_increase/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7nkvbq", "d7nkw9s"], "score": [2, 4], "text": ["Yes it does. If we ignore absorption, a photon must either be reflected or transmitted at the surface. So any decrease in reflection must be matched by an increase in transmission. The coating sets up destructive interference, as you guessed, but no real photons actually need to reflect off the surface to create destructive interference. In fact, it is better to think of the light as a wave to understand why the destructive interference works in the first place.\n\nNote that the increase in transmission isn't readily noticeable, because glass already transmits about 95% of the light coming straight into the glasses. With an AR coating maybe that goes to 99%. The difference between 95% and 99% is pretty subtle, while the loss of 80% of the reflected light is more obvious.\n", " > When I hear people talk about anti-reflective coatings, they make it sound as if it results in increased transmission of the light through the lens.\n\nIt does. \n\n >  It seems to me that these photons must still be \"bouncing off the front\" in order to destructively interfere?\n\nPhotons are frequently causing so much confusion, because it sounds like something intuitive, but in the end they are something quite abstract. Long story short, if you insist to talk about photons taking paths, then each single photon takes *every possible* path and interferes with itself and since they interfere destructively with themselves for the reflecting direction, they can not actually be measured there or can only be measured with very low probability, while they constructively interfere for the transmission paths.\n\nA better way might be thinking of photons as excitations of 'modes', which are just valid solutions for the boundary conditions that are given by the problem. Photons are not particles with a position and trajectory, but just the number of 'energy packets' you put into your mode. For most interference effects thinking of photons doesn't give more insight than classical EM for what is actually happening, but only spark confusion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3a69ob", "title": "why is ignorance of the law not a valid excuse in court?", "selftext": "I mean it's reasonable to expect that most people know not to sell drugs and what not. But when it comes to complex circumstances, how is it reasonable to expect that an average person should be aware of esoteric laws, that would require paying a lawyer to even find out about?\n\n[For example this story (even though it's in Canada)](\n_URL_0_)\n\nThe lawyer barely even knows if it's legal or not, so if this guy ever ended up in court - shouldn't he be able to say \"well I had no idea they were illegal to sell\", case closed? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a69ob/eli5_why_is_ignorance_of_the_law_not_a_valid/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs9n7zd", "cs9nd4p", "cs9nfvm", "cs9ng1x", "cs9nio3", "cs9nutb", "cs9oekm", "cs9qpcs", "cs9vdz0", "cs9x585", "cs9xjwc", "cs9xyfj", "cs9z29i", "csa0g1x", "csa0hhr", "csa0v8a", "csa25aa", "csa3955"], "score": [170, 2, 45, 25, 12, 8, 4, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 6, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["If it's a legal excuse for a mild crime, it's a valid legal excuse for a serious one.\n\n\"I didn't realize massive theft/murder was illegal in this country.\"", "You cant have it both ways. You either have to say ignorance is an excuse or isn't one.  Its either that or you end up in this very grey area of deciding where to draw the line with each crime about whether or not its an excuse and then it all starts to fall apart.", "Personal responsibility demands that before doing something you must assess its legality.  This counterbalances the freedom to do what you want, constrained by the law.  To get that freedom, you have to agree to check the law.  You're not expected to know all the laws, unless you're a lawyer, but you are expected to take reasonable steps, like asking a lawyer.", "Because since it is not usually possible to prove that somebody knows something, every single defense would be \"I didn't know this was illegal\" and our entire justice system would collapse.\n\n* \"I didn't know insider trading was a crime.\" \n* \"I didn't realize that I could go to jail for driving drunk\"\n* \"Really? Sex with kids is illegal? Wow, who knew.\"", "Generally, if you want to do something (sell pot seeds in this case) it's your responsibility to find out if it's legal or not first. If you're not sure, you either don't undertake that activity or accept the risk that it might be illegal.\n\nThere is an exception where ignorance of the law is an excuse, but only for certain laws that require you to do something (register as a sex offender, for example). The Supreme Court held in [Lambert v. California](_URL_0_) that \"[w]here a person did not know of the duty to register and where there was no proof of the probability of such knowledge, he may not be convicted consistently with due process.\"", "Historically, the law used to *describe* the rules of society: it was putting in writing what everybody knew was right and wrong, and claiming to not know was outright dishonesty, or at least not a reason why people would not want you punished for it.\n\nAt some point though, society becoming more and more complex, legislators grew unsatisfied with just *describing* the rules, and started *prescribing* new stuff to forbid certain actions and thus force society to not do them. This is when it started to feel weird that you could be punished for something that no one in his right mind would know became illegal for obscure reasons.\n", "A lot of great answers, but nobody has mentioned jury nullification yet.\n\nBasically if the jury things that the person broke the law, but they think the law is bad and it doesn't make sense for the person to be punished for what they did, they can vote \"not guilty\" anyway.\n\nThis has happened in both good and bad ways in the past. For example, tragically some white people have been found not guilty of murdering a black person in racist cities, despite overwhelming evidence proving they were guilty. The jury just didn't consider killing a black person to be \"murder\". In another example, a jury [found someone not guilty of growing marijuana in their back yard](_URL_0_) because they disagreed with the law.\n", "The laws are available to be read by citizens, either online, townhall, police stations, etc. It's not like they are locked away and secret laws. Everyone has the right to read the laws. Therefore the court assumes that you know what is legal and not legal. ", "It can be.  \n\nFor most laws, if a reasonable person would in the same person would consider an action legal, then that will lessen or even eliminate criminal consequences.  This is actually a legal concept called the reasonable person test.\n\nFor example, if you are stuck at a broken traffic light, and wait three minutes before running it, you would likely be excused if the law stated five minutes.\n\nThe reason ignorance it held in poor regard as a defense is if it weren't, everyone would use it.  ", "I was just thinking about this in regards to something very specific.  I heard on the news that there will be an 8pm curfew for the city of Detroit on the night they do their annual fireworks display, with a $500 fine to (the parents of) those who violate it.  I can't imagine this could possibly be enforced, as there is no way to prove that this information made it to each and every citizen.  However, I do not expect most of those who do end up getting fined to be able to afford paying OR fighting the ticket.", "Ignorance of the law is not a valid defence to clear a defendant of guilt, although it can be used in consideration of sentencing especially with unclear laws such as the marijuana laws in Canada, especially in particular to cannabis seeds and medicinal marijuana. As mentioned in other comments it really cant be used as an excuse for any crime since it will set a precedent that will allow offenders of other more serious crimes to use in court. As harsh as this may seem, judges will typically take in consideration how clearly the laws are written, and the likely hood that a typical citizen or even law enforcement officer would know/understand. Judges may even hand out a sentence of absolute discharge to guilty individuals based on their misunderstanding or ignorance of the law, especially in cases were the individual sought out  advice from law enforcement or regulatory bodies.  \nFor example: \"in one Canadian case, a person was charged with being in possession of gambling devices after they had been advised by customs officials that it was legal to import such devices into Canada. Although the defendant was convicted, the sentence was an absolute discharge.\"\nsource: _URL_0_\n\nothers have mentioned mens rea which is something completely different. Some crimes require mens rea, proof that the individual had an intention to break the law. If an individual was unaware that their actions were violating a law due to the nature of their actions (and not do to a poorly written law) then this will be a valid excuse . In such cases they are not describing the fact that the individual was unaware of the law, but instead the individual knew the law, and did not know they were breaking it. For example unknowingly giving somebody fake currency or unknowingly selling a knock off item as real. In both cases prosecutors must prove that the individual both knew the item was fake before passing it off as genuine in order to prosecute them for fraud", "To elaborate on OP's question, let's say a city decides to be one of those horrible speed traps that funds the local police by giving out speeding tickets on the highway going through town by setting a lower speed limit than the surrounding area. \n\nIs this actually allowable if the speed limit is, say, 25 mph through town, but 55+ mph before and after town? Alternatively, can this be enforceable without posting the speed limit?\n\nNow, can the town make a law against driving a car with no mud flaps on the rear wheels (despite most cars not having enough exposed wheel to necessitate flaps)?\n\nOut-of-towners would get screwed over left and right. ", "I remember reading a story that a court ruled that the same is not true for cops. A cop pulled a guy over for a busted tail light somewhere and subsequently found drugs in his car. But in the state that this happened you only need one tail light. So the guy said it was an illegal search. The court ruled that the cop doesn't need to know the law exactly and the charge stood.\n\nTl:Dr: cops don't have to know the law, but you do.", "To be technical, ignorance of the law is an excuse. To use an example in this thread, making right hand turns in NYC on a red light. If this is a lawful behavior where you live (say in NJ or another state)  and you're visiting from out of town, and make a right hand turn on red, you could (theoretically)  defend yourself in court by saying \"there was no reasonable way for me to know that the laws here in NYC city are different than the laws in NY state (which automatically reciprocated my driver's license issued in a state where right hand turns on red were lawful)\".  Ignorance of the law is a legally valid defense, albeit one that doesn't see a lot of use because it is difficult to prove. ", "Because why wouldn't EVERYONE allege ignorance of the law in court? ", "If I can get out of a conviction for not knowing a law, why have that law in the first place?\n\nIn that article you linked, it's a pretty obscure law about not being allowed to sell weed seeds. Should an average person know that? Probably not, but if you intend to make a business based on something you're unsure of, you should definitely check the legality, especially when you're selling seeds to grow illegal drugs", "True ignorance of the law is a REALLY had thing to prove. The prosecution would have to prove in any case that the client DID know the law. How do you even prove that? Go through every single Tweet? Talk to every single family member to see if they ever talked about which way your supposed to park?\n\nWhat about taxes? People can easily claim ignorance because there are so many changes too the tax code each year. Have you read all *26 thousand pages* of the US tax code? Even if you have, can the government prove that?", "Yes it is highly subjective and law can be a bitch. It can work with you and against you depending how things are worded and how good your lawyers are. Its a pretentious and bullshit system that fucks over many people.  \n\nHowever, that is all we have. If there were no laws, the world would be chaotic. So it's a slippery slope"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ontario-pot-seed-store-has-police-lawyers-at-odds-1.1274081"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_v._California"], [], ["http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/12892-new-hampshire-jury-nullifies-major-felony-marijuana-case"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bn19c", "title": "Would Medieval English  &  Irish People be Aware of the Mythology of GrecoRoman Societies?", "selftext": "I know this is a *super* specific question so apologies and I understand if this is downvoted. \n\nI was having my own version of shower thought and wondered specifically if Irish people living during the Viking Era were aware of parallels in Celtic and Greek mythology. It went on from there. \n\nI was wondering if scholars (those lucky few with access to books) and those they educated would be aware of Greek and Roman myths and mythological figures such as Venus? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bn19c/would_medieval_english_irish_people_be_aware_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csqshti"], "score": [2], "text": ["In the Middle Ages, a scholar should be aware of The Matter of Britain, The Matter of France, and The Mattter of Rome. That is, Arthurian legends, the tales of the epic cycles, and Greek mythology as filtered thru Roman (including epics like the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneiad). In the early medieval, it was assumed anyone in northern Europe who knew Greek was Irish! It remained  an arcane language until the Renaissance."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8wk9d3", "title": "In 1651, Knights Hospitaller have acquired four islands in the Carribean, controlling them until 1665. How did Hospitallers manage to establish colonies in the New World? What was their long-term plan for Carribean holdings?", "selftext": "The islands in question are Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts), Saint Martin, Saint Barth\u00e9lemy, and Saint Croix.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8wk9d3/in_1651_knights_hospitaller_have_acquired_four/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1w8wjn"], "score": [65], "text": ["I asked this question 2 weeks ago and received an excellent answer from u/rhodis \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s9cs5/what_were_the_knights_hospitaller_hoping_to/"]]}
{"q_id": "fio2ce", "title": "Would rowboats actually be towed behind Napoleonic era ships as shown in \u2018Master and Commander\u2019 and if so why?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fio2ce/would_rowboats_actually_be_towed_behind/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkjhskq"], "score": [60], "text": ["I hope I can go some way to answering this to AskHistorians standards, though out and about so cannot state sources specifically I'm afraid.\n\nThe answer to whether they did do this is yes.  A few reasons why:\n\nEven a relatively small man o' war like the one in this book/film would have had 3 or 4 boats on board of various sizes - these vessels were vitally important for everything from inshore work, transport, messaging, ship inspection, and more. Removing them from your ship was to mitigate a lot of risk of them being destroyed/damaged and therefore maintain the effectiveness of your ship.\n\nIn the Napoleonic era these boats generally had to be dropped in the water by tackle attached to yard arms  on the main and mizzen (rear-most) masts - not something you'd want to do mid-battle. If you do need them through the action, best to have them afloat and ready to go.\n\nRemoving them from your ship of war also had the twin advantages of clearing your decks of clutter, giving the crew more space for their tasks; and also removing a few significant sources of flying timber and splinters.\nThis latter point cannot be overstated; splinter injuries were common and rather dangerous in this era where infection was so often the killer rather than the battle wound itself. This is part of the reason why oak was preferred to the much more readily available teak in shipbuilding - teak splintering was thought to be much more likely to cause infection. I don't know if this is borne out by scientific evidence, however.\n\nAll of these reasons (there may well be more I am unaware of, would be keen to hear them!) usually outweighed any disadvantages conveyed like extra drag in the water or reduced maneuverability. In a different battle scenario - a chase, for example - these speed and agility-based factors would of course become considerably more significant.\n\nTLDR: Yes this would happen when beating to quarters; for the sake of safety of the crew, safety of the boats, deckspace and ensuring prompt availability of those boats during action."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1p5trr", "title": "what are you actually \"seeing\"when you close your eyes and notice the swirls of patterns in the darkness behind your eyelids?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p5trr/eli5what_are_you_actually_seeingwhen_you_close/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccz2ff1", "ccz6zcv", "ccz7cth", "ccz7edt", "ccz8c5v", "ccz8cwd", "ccz8nzl", "ccz8oes", "ccz95ax", "ccz973m", "ccz9jr2", "ccza7ds", "cczbkuj", "cczc6jz", "cczcb9l", "cczd6vs", "cczd99i", "cczg8nr", "cczgx06", "cczhknk", "cczhlyg"], "score": [701, 2, 6, 2, 16, 94, 4, 118, 2, 13, 9, 8, 6, 2, 4, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["They are called phosphenes, and if I recall, they are the result of phantom stimuli. The brain isn't used to having no stimuli from a major sensory organ like the eye, so it'll make up 'static' in the absence of sight. \n\nUnless you mean the ones you get from rubbing your eye. That's because the light sensing cells in the retina are so sensitive that the increased pressure in the eye will set them off. ", "_URL_0_ also warrant a look.", "As others point out, they are called phosphenes.\n\nWhat causes them, in very basic terms, is stimulation of the retina using means other than light.  You can get them from applying pressure to your eyes, like when you rub them.\n\nElectricity, extreme magnetism, and even subatomic particles striking the retina can cause them.\n\nThe retinas are designed to be stimulated by light, but because they are so sensitive, other things can stimulate them as well.  ", "LSD. That's what you are seeing.", "When I was a kid around five, I saw the old black and white Dracula on TV. Scared the shit out of me. How does this relate? Well those patterns behind my eyelids began to assume the shape of vampires. Every time I closed my eyes hard, I would see the silhouette of Dracula. Every time I sneezed, there he was, all decked out in his cape. This went on for years. \n\nA couple decades passed and I had forgotten all about it. Then in 2001, I saw The Fellowship of the Ring. Loved it--awesome, amazing, magical; a perfect movie. Later that night, on my way home, I sneezed. \n\nGuess what? The motherfucking Eye of Sauron. \n\nFuck me.", "You are experiencing *entoptic phenomena*. This is a broad category for things that are visual perceptions that are produced within the eye itself rather than from external stimuli from outside of your eye. Hence EntOptic: Within the eye.\n\nPhosphenes are a type of entoptic phenomena that include visual perceptions of *light*. (There are other different types of entoptic phenomena like floaters, etc.)\n\nThere are many causes of phosphenes, but the ones that you are referring to are likely *eigengrau* (meaning \"self light\"). This is the one that occurs after you close your eyes in a dark room. Generally it is thought of a consequence of spontaneously firing neurons in the retina and changes in the chemistry of photopigment molecules (when they are altered by abrupt loss of light), and spontaneous release of neurotransmitters in the neurons in the eye. Basically the retinal cells are humming along doing their job and suddenly the light they are processing falls to nil and some of the cells are faster than others at shutting off the processes that were happening moments before. This is why eigengrau are more prominent when you abruptly go from bright to dark light then tend to fade off.\n\nHowever, after the eigengrau fade, you can get other phenomena like the *prisoner's cinema* which is probably a result of higher order visual cortex neurons randomly firing.\n\nAnd there are other causes of phosphenes though. If you apply pressure to your eyeballs with your fingers you can produce them. Astronauts in space even get a type of phosphenes that is thought to result from cosmic rays passing through their eyeballs and causing a tiny shock wave.", "OP you are awesome thanks for asking this! I've been wondering about this for over 30 years. Forgot how much time I spent wondering about it as a kid until your question brought it back to my foggy-ass old guy attention.", "A few years back I was messing around in photoshop. Here's my interpretation of those phosphenes. _URL_0_ Heavily exaggerated but one night I was laying in bed and had rubbed my eyes and noticed all of these colors and swirls and noisey grainy looking things floating around in my vision. Next day made a picture of it. ", "Those son, are what we call acid flashbacks", "What about flashes of white light when my lids are closed?  Like I'll be laying down in my blacked out room with my eyes closed when all of a sudden I noticed a white flash, like if a cars headlights had illuminated by room for a second.  But like I said previously, my room is blacked out.", "I see phosphenes even with my eyes open if I'm staring at a monochromatic surface like a clear sky or white wall.", "Your eyes are immensely intricate machines built through millions of years of evolution, so it's only reasonable that they should have developed a few glitches along the way. For instance, the dots or squiggly lines that are sometimes visible off to the sides of your visual field. They float around and then dart out of sight immediately if you try to get a good look at the b\nAnd then you have the bright spots that appear in front of your eyes (\"seeing stars\") when your body suddenly strains really hard. Maybe you sneezed, or pulled an intense, full-body Valsalva maneuver trying to squeeze out a dissident turd, or just rubbed your eyeball.\nBoth phenomena are completely normal, yet the explanations are weirder than you think.\nIt Happens Because ...\nFirst of all, \"eye floaters\" are not a) just lint and shit that fell into your eye or b) unusually upstart sperm that got really really lost.\nYour eyes are mostly made up of a jelly called vitreous fluid, and this gel undergoes many changes as you age. As it slowly shrinks, it loses its smoothness and starts to look stringy. The vitreous can also become more liquid, and this allows for tiny fibers in your eye to come together and form (relatively) large clumps. These get big enough to become visible and freak us out, but they eventually sink down and settle at the bottom of your eyes where you can't see them. So technically, they're your little buddies for life.\nAs for the bright dots that flash and move in front of your eyes, they're called phosphenes, and they're caused when cells in your retina are messed with (by rubbing your eyes or having a large person slap you in the dark), causing them to misfire. Strangely, scientists have found that they can also stimulate phosphenes by running electricity across the visual cortex part of your brain. Try it on a friend!\nBut wait, it gets weirder: Have you ever gone out and stared up at a clear blue sky, only to see faint white dots dancing around the edge of your vision? Most people can see it if they really look, and it's worth it because you are seeing the goddamned white blood cells shooting through the blood vessels in your fucking eyeball. The blue light causes the vessels and other cells to be invisible to your eye, so you wind up seeing the white blood cells zipping around like tiny ghosts, just chasing diseases and shit. Maybe there's a tiny ship full of scientists in there.\nSource; _URL_0_ weird shit your body does explained by science.", "Glitches in the Matrix.", "*You mean it's not just me who has this?*  \n  \nI thought I was just special.", "Instead of swirls i see bright red patterns. like a lava pool or soemthing. when i was young i thought i was psychic and is able to see inside the earth", "The universe, bro... the universe.", "There are cells at the back of your eyes, in your retina, that fire when they are hit by particles of light (~~protons~~ photons, sorry). By \"fire\" I mean they send an electrical signal to your brain (technically they are part of your brain but that's a story for another day). This is how you see.\n\nThese cells will occasionally fire spontaneously, without any light hitting them. When your eyes are open you don't notice because this \"noise\" is drowned out by the actual light \"signal\". But when you close your eyes, the patterns you see are these cells randomly firing. ", "It depends what you mean.\n\nThe way your eyes work is essentially through two types of cell: **Rods** and **Cones**. Rods detect light all in one colour (a sort of bluey-green, which is why everything looks this colour at night) and cones detect red, blue and green light. \n\nWhen light hits these cells, the light's energy causes a change in shape of a protein in them, which leads to the signal being transmitted to your brain. When you close your eyes, you remove the light but because the protein remains changed for a little while, you still see colours. \n\nIn addition, if you press on your eye then you physically cause the neurones that transmit visual information to your brain to depolarise, causing you to think you're seeing colour. \n\nFinally, random depolarisation of any cell in the pathway from eye to brain will cause a sort of 'static' that you perceive as coloured light. \n\n ", "Great question! I have always wondered this.", "I remember asking my first grade teacher the same question. She told me that I was lying about seeing things and I had to do lines on the board. Bitch.", "Thanks to being born with deformed optic nerves, I get to see this stuff 24/7. Static, floaters, squiggly lines. I also have huge blind regions that my brain folds space around to make a continual picture. Because the spots are in different locations in each eye my eyes fill in for each other. Brains are weird like that. I can only see things clearly if I look directly at them.\n\nIt's an interesting view of the world, but I only get to imagine what a star filled night actually looks like. I see them, but have a hard time telling what's real and what's actually static beyond the bright stars.\n\nOther than that - it's hard to drive, night driving sucks and I bump into everything. Without my glasses it's far worse. If I ever lost and eye, I'd be in  real trouble.\n\nI didn't know others could see this effect when they closed their eyes. Interesting stuff. Glad it bugs some of you, you have my sympathy!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/XKlTzoA.png"], [], [], [], ["cracked.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "916vjx", "title": "how did they stop water to build the hoover dam?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/916vjx/eli5_how_did_they_stop_water_to_build_the_hoover/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2vsbpv", "e2vtnsn", "e2vw9xx", "e2w17bu", "e2wb7yn"], "score": [460, 3, 40, 3, 9], "text": ["First, they had to divert away the water. This is usually done by building a tunnel upstream and letting the water flow through it instead of the construction site.\n\nNext, they form the dam and let the concrete set for a couple of weeks. After the concrete is sufficiently strong, the tunnel is plugged up and the water is directed back to the dam.", "They started off building two tunnels going around the site of the dam. These tunnels were built above the waterline. They then dumped truckloads of rock and dirt into the river blocking it and creating a small temporary dam. The water level behind this dam rose until it came up to the tunnels which were built and diverted the water away from the construction site. This allowed the construction workers to work on the dam on the dry river floor. The dam includes valves which allows the river to flow under the dam if needed. The diversion tunnels also have valves which allows them to be sealed. When the dam construction were done the valves were closed off and the water level were allowed to rise to the top of the dam.", "First, a series of tunnels were dug from below where the new dam would be, going upstream through the rock - four tunnels, each 50 feet in diameter.  The entrances were cleared LAST, of course, so they wouldn't flood, and were protected by cofferdams, which are temporary dams around a riverbank that are basically just walls stuck into the bottom of the river.  When the tunnels were ready, the cofferdams were literally blown up.\n\nOnce the tunnels were built and the water diverted, NEW cofferdams were built across the river at the tunnels to protect the Hoover Dam construction site and keep it dry.  Then build the dam, close the diversion tunnels, and let the river fill up the space behind the dam.  The cofferdams protecting the Hoover Dam construction site didn't actually have to be taken out, because, remember, Lake Mead is deep but the river was not.", "First you create a diversion channel that goes around the site of the dam. Depending on the location of the dam, this can be a tunnel through rock, or just digging a temporary riverbed around the site. Next, you install a cofferdam upstream and downstream of the location of the dam. This forces the water into the diversion channel(s) and leaves a dry area for the dam to be built. Once the dam is finished, you collapse the cofferdams and the diversion channels and the river flow returns to normal, just with the dam restricting flow causing a reservoir to build up behind it.", "Great video from Modern Marvels on Hoover Dam construction. Four tunnels were created out of solid rock to channel the river around the dam site.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nSkip to 16:49 to see how the Colorado River was diverted around the dam site.\n\nEdit:  skip to 13:53 for animation of the construction process showing the tunnels and coffer dams.\n\nLife was cheap during construction, 112 men died.  The first to die and last to die were father and son,  J. G. Tierney and Patrick Tierney.\n\nIf you visit Hoover Dam, take a tour, you get to go inside the dam and walk along one of the inspection tunnels."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpK5Rq8gViA"]]}
{"q_id": "1tsiuq", "title": "How do animals that pant regulate their blood pH to prevent themselves from passing out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1tsiuq/how_do_animals_that_pant_regulate_their_blood_ph/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceb9dph"], "score": [2], "text": ["A buffer solution is used\n\u2022\tA buffer solution minimises pH changes on addition of an acid or base\n\u2022\tBuffer solutions are important for controlling pH in blood (so that enzymes are not denatured) but they are also used in shampoos (so that eyes do not sting and skin is not damaged)\n\u2022\tThe pH of blood is kept in the range 7.35-7.45 \n\u2022\tThis is achieved by dissolved carbon dioxide acting as a buffer solution\n\u2022\tThe relevant equations are:\n\nCO2 + H2O  < -- >  H2CO3\nH2CO3  < -- >  HCO3- + H+\n\n\u2022When the blood pH is too acidic, the H^+ ion concentration is too high so must be decreased. We thus breath more CO2 out and as a result, the equilibrium of the first equation shifts to the left because the CO2 concentration has decreased. This then decreases the H2CO3 concentration. The equilibrium of the second equation then shifts to the left as well to counter act the decrease in H2O3 concentration and hence the H^+ concentration decreases and the pH decreases.\n\n\u2022 When the pH is too high, above 7.45, the concentration of H+ must be increased to increase the acidity. Less CO2 is breathed out and hence the CO2 concentration decreases. (without boring you with the full explanation) Both equations then shift to the right and hence the H+ concentration increases.\n\n*[This is just A2 level understanding (United Kingdom) so I'm not sure whether it is fully accurate but it may be what you're looking for]*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1rw5gz", "title": "How long have bolts/nuts and screws existed? Do we know who invented them, or what culture they arose from?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rw5gz/how_long_have_boltsnuts_and_screws_existed_do_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdrlrys"], "score": [31], "text": ["Although I don't know who definitively invented them (although I suspect it was the ancient Greeks), I can tell you that they existed at least as early as Imperial Rome and Byzantium. In military sections of works such as *De Ceremoniis Aulae Byzantinae* (10th Century AD), logistical lists and descriptions mention screws and nuts/bolts being used for siege equipment and ship construction. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1o0s6n", "title": "the controversy with nestle water", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o0s6n/eli5_the_controversy_with_nestle_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccnt1e3", "ccnuspa", "ccnyivl", "cco09t9", "cco37xl", "cco46tl"], "score": [55, 363, 24, 43, 2, 5], "text": ["Nestle privately owns water sources that are needed by the locals and therefore don't let them use it.", "Imagine you live near a lake. Your town gets water from this lake and has done since it was founded, in fact, that's why the town was built there, because building your town somewhere without water is really really stupid.\n\nOne day a rich guy buys your towns lake. Now it's HIS water and he says that you can't have any unless you pay him. You're poor, your whole town is poor, hell your whole country is, that's why some dick was willing to sell your lake, it makes them rich and they don't care what happens to you.\n\nNow normally a company would have to price for its market and lower the price so you can buy their product. But the guy who bought your lake doesn't actually want to sell it to you. He's putting it in bottles and selling it to people on the other side of the world. People who don't even need it, because they can get as much water as they like from the tap in their kitchen.\n\nI think you'd agree that the guy who bought your lake is a bad person.", "Nestle, Coke, and other drink corporations get all the water for free from shrinking lakes, then resell that product for more than gasoline.....\n\nI'm pretty sure that aggravates some people.", "Nestle spends quite a bit of money in third world countries educating women on the benefits of their baby formula vs. breast milk. These poor women are duped into believing they are helping their child by feeding them formula, their breasts dry up, and then realize they can't afford the formula. I'm not promoting either choice one way or another, but if a woman is making a choice, they should be educated with facts, not false advertising.", "You should watch the documentary 'Bottled Life'. Explains it pretty well.", "I can't speak for other locals but here in Michigan many are opposed to Nestle' because they are getting their water from aquifers that feed many of the cold water trout streams in Northern Michigan.\n\nThe biggest problem is that they are taking the water out of the drainage basin from which it comes, so it never returns."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1n2oru", "title": "Nutritional and caloric effects of plasma donation?", "selftext": "What, if any, are the nutritional and caloric effects of the body having to replace plasma which is donated beyond the obvious fluid replacement? A short search indicates that there are lots of proteins, glucose, etc that would be lost with the fluid. How much energy does the body burn replacing that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1n2oru/nutritional_and_caloric_effects_of_plasma_donation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccezqry"], "score": [4], "text": ["According to my A & P book your average blood plasma contains 0.80-1.2g of glucose (sugar) per liter. (I'm just going to talk about the \"liquid\" plasma part and not the red/white cells or platelets.) It also contains 60-80g of proteins per liter, 32-50 of which is albumin (a protein found in many vertebrates which helps regulate osmotic pressure and aids in ion transport.) Much of the remaining protein (5-18g/L) is IgG immunoglobulins although other types of immune molecules and proteins are also present. There are also some fats in your blood in the form of, for example, cholesterol but these are no more then one or two grams/L as fats don't tend to dissolve well in blood. \n\nFor potassium you're looking at about 0.1-0.2g/L and for sodium it's 3.2g/L ish. (All of these numbers assume a moderately healthy person on a moderately healthy diet. Your specific results may vary.) There are a tiny amount of other components (like dissolved gas, urea, uric acid, etc.) but this is most of the big stuff. \n\nSo your average 500 mL plasma donation costs you about 30-40g (120-160 kilocalories) of protein, half a liter of water and 1.5g of sodium. A glass of water and small bag of potato chips would replace the water, salt and the calories (if not the actual protein) but a normal person wouldn't have difficulty replacing even the protein within a few days.\n\nAlso you have about 70 mL of blood per Kg of body weight. (Or you can say 70g/Kg even though the specific gravity of blood is really a bit more then this if you want a quick estimate.) Blood is about 50% to 60% plasma in most people so if you can use these values to calculate the percent of body plasma that you loose per donation if you're interested."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "129lq1", "title": "Were there any major events (tragedies, incidents, downfalls) in history that were caused mainly by people being in denial (or just complacent)?", "selftext": "About the reality of their situation.) I see this happening in the future with issues such as climate change, but what has already happened because of this? I am quite interested in the fallacies and faults of humans and this seems to be one of the more tragic yet preventable.  \n  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/129lq1/were_there_any_major_events_tragedies_incidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6tab3r", "c6tal01", "c6tazxm", "c6tb5di", "c6tb8s0", "c6tbbeu", "c6tbcww", "c6tbo95", "c6tbp84", "c6tbyqb", "c6tc359", "c6tcd9v", "c6tcdmx", "c6tcko1", "c6tclwq", "c6tdaal", "c6tdb4k", "c6te7b0", "c6tenar", "c6tenkg", "c6tfehy", "c6thmlt"], "score": [34, 77, 19, 54, 17, 11, 44, 67, 12, 97, 23, 3, 47, 21, 16, 8, 16, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["World War Two?\n\nThe Allies did not act against Hitler, allowing him to violate most of the terms of the Treaty Of Versailles, even having Chamberlain meet him and secure 'Peace in [their] time' before the war.", "With regard to avoidable tragedy, mention should be made of the Xhosa who, in a misguided effort to get rid of the white people, killed all their own livestock, including chickens. Most of them then starved to death leaving the way open for the dreaded whites. ", "A great question. I suggest The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman. I think if she were alive today, she would include climate change. It is an excellent, highly readable book.", "The Soviet leadership dismissed early reports that the Germans had began to invade in 1941. They were very poorly prepared for the invasion and suffered very heavy losses in the early days of Barbarossa. As a result the Nazis got very close to Moscow.", "IMHO, quite a lot of monarchs fall into this;\n\n1) Shah of Iran before the Islamic Revolution. \n\n2) The King of Kashmir at the time of India-Pakistan partition. Lot has been written about his non-nonchalance and excessive vices by mid 1940s. I remember reading that he was hardly conscious to the last day of signing the state off to India.  It would not be too far fetched to say that at least some of the current problems of Kashmir can be attributed to his (in)actions at the time.\n\n3) Can't remember more but stories of out of touch monarch feel to common to not have many more such examples.", "An example would be how Hitler imposed the plan for the Battle of the Bulge against some of his best marshals' advice (Model and von Rundstedt) and then refused to believe reports that indicated, even early in the offensive, that things weren't going as expected. He even started planning for even more ambitious goals after a few days, even though the offensive was doomed from the start because of a lack of ressources and the prevalence of allied air power (which wasn't very active due to weather, which partly explained the advance of german troops and may have given Hitler false hopes).\n\nThis led to the destruction of german offensive capabilities, the commitment of the last of their reserves and the invasion of Germany from the West.", "It is said that once the royal family of France were transferred from Versailles to Tuileries during the Revolution, Louis XVI entered a deep depressive state where he did nothing but sit and mope around, leaving the politically untrained Marie-Antoinette to deal with the important Revolutionary matters. While her political manoeuvres were admirable, it wasn't enough to negotiate their safety. ", "Would the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster be considered one? NASA managers that ignored repeated warnings from their engineers lead to the allowing of a shuttle launch with O-ring failures.  ", "The complete failure of Aman to predict the Yom Kippur War has always astounded me. It was as if everyone BUT Aman (and the US) knew that war was right around the corner. It is probably one of the biggest failures in threat assesment of all time. ", "The [Great Chinese Famine](_URL_0_) of 1958 to 1961 happened due to not complacency, but outright denial, in so far as saying food was bountiful.\n\nBasically this was due to Mao's Great leap Forward and the 4 No's campaign,  firstly you had the 4 No's campaign, it was a massive campaign to wipe out pests, rats, flies, mosquito's and importantly sparrows. The campaign to wipe out sparrows was so ridiculously effective it allowed the growth of crop eating insects massively, add to that the fact that peasantry were out fulfilling Mao's plans rather than focusing on farming and the fact there was fairly poor weather and a drought over most of China. \n\nNow here's the denial. Local leaders and party members (responsible for grain numbers etc) actually increased the amount of crops, to try to reach the Great Leap Forwards goals, it was estimated that crop production fell by roughly 60 million tonnes, from 200 million tonnes to 143 million tonnes in 2 years. Western estimates give figures as high as 40 million estimated deaths, the lowest possible figures put it at about 17 million and up to 45 million. \n\nTL;DR, Great Leap Forward in China caused a famine killing roughly 30-40 million people, to Mao and the Party crop intake went up", "Textbook case: the [Union Carbide Bhopal Disaster](_URL_0_).", "Ive read that a cause of the escalation of the civil war was due to Northerner's and newly elected republican's failure to actually take the secession threats of the south seriously. Their rationale was that the south would always cry secession whenever they felt they couldn't get their way. Many in the north felt that the assemblies meeting to secede from the union were just a ruse,and believed wrongly that it could just be compromised away like it had in the past and that the south would just see the folly of their ways and come back to the union.", "[Easter Island](_URL_0_) became uninhabitable because the inhabitants used all the trees to build giant head statues. With no wood, they couldn't build boats to fish, and the lack of trees made the ground barren. \n\nThe people apparently believed that the heads would please the gods, so they wouldn't starve despite destroying their environment. There is a great book called Collapse by Jared Diamond that explains it in more detail. ", "Saddam Hussein and Khaddafi (spell it as you wish) are dead because they were in denial about the power of their enemies.  \nThey were in denial because they'd set up a system in which - if you told them the truth - you'd lose your job or your life.\nAlas, the democracy I live in (USA) is like that - if you tell voters the truth (like, we can't keep borrowing forever, or global warming will mean worse things than using air conditioners a lot) then you WILL lose your job.  \nSUM: Dictatorships cannot HEAR the truths.  Democracy's leaders cannot TELL the truths.", "Jared Diamond, who has studied collapses, thinks one of the major causes is that elites are insulated from the direct consequences of their decision-making (often continue to be rewarded), so they have no incentive to change.\n\nFor future people who look back upon this time, the prime candidates (to me) are (in no particular order) overpopulation, peak cheap oil, natural resource depletion, aquifer depletion, topsoil depletion, fish stocks collapse, climate change, and continued wishful thinking regarding some technological/scientific breakthrough for cheap energy or dramatically increased food production. I feel that the writing is already on the wall.\n\n", "9/11\n\nThe U.S. had troves of information on him, and he had even been directly named in FBI reports as someone of extreme concern. They had names of hijackers already, as well as a timeframe down to the month of when something was most likely going to happen.\n\n", "I don't think anything in the past compares to man-made global warming, especially when combined with other potential disasters that loom in the future.  The Industrial Revolution has changed everything, for better or for worse.\n\nWhile denial and complacence and idiocy can affect history in the short run, hastening disaster and slowing progress, in the past it was questionable whether it affected history in the long run.  For example, Mao single-handedly delayed China's entry into the global economy for several decades, and for a while it seemed as if Japan had leapfrogged China in the race for development.  But then Mao died, his successors adapted, and now China is quickly catching up with everyone, and looks likely to surpass the U.S. in the future.  Development was delayed, but not permanently.\n\nHowever, in the future the stakes are higher and it will be much harder to overcome the destruction man can cause.  So, for example, in the past some peoples may have been slow to react in crises, but the earth recovered and so did the human race.  But in the future, some combination of man-made climate change, overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, nuclear war, famine, and epidemics could wipe out the human race, or at least set it back thousands of years.  \n\nAs a human race, we have never been in this situation before.  We have never risen so far, nor had so much to lose.  We have never been so interdependent, and so vulnerable to the decisions of other people in other countries, not just next door but all around the globe.  What we need is worldwide organization, an effective world government, but it may already be too late.  \n\nIn the absence of world government or cooperation at an unprecedented level, our best hope may be that technology continues to improve at an exponential rate and allows us slow, reverse, or adapt to man-made climate change and overpopulation; find new resources and food sources; and prevent nuclear war and epidemics.  But it is scary to contemplate the stakes involved.  As the human race has risen to unprecedented heights, it has so much more to lose, and no one really knows whether it can avoid or even survive global disaster.\n\nFor more on this, I recommend Ian Morris's book Why the West Rules -- for Now.", "Seems like the sinking of the Titanic is a pretty classic case. ", "The Battle of the Little Bighorn seems to be a good example.\n\nCuster was certainly overconfident; he refused a battery of Gatling guns, he refused an additional battalion of 2nd Cavalry, he divided his forces in three different columns, he ignored the warnings of his scouts\n\nHis main worry was that Indian forces would scatter, denying him the possibility of a single field battle to end the campaign.\n\nHe did get his battle ...", "Most of 'em I'd imagine.\n\nIn my area of specialty, Japan had a series of famines coupled with a massive economic crisis in the late Tokugawa era, was was basically the result of the ruling class not caring about much of anything beyond their own parties and petty squabbles.  \n\nEven without the arrival of Perry to trigger the Meiji Restoration, Japan would likely have had some sort of political upheval that replaced the Tokugawa Bakufu.\n\nIn China most dynasties tended to fall largely because the Emperor and his cronies stopped paying attention to governing and let things fall to pieces.  The Grand Canal is what connects Beijing to the richer farmland of the south, no Grand Canal means widespread famine in Beijing and the north.  One of the most common ways you could tell a Dynasty was on it's way out was when reports started of the Grand Canal silting up and becoming non-navigable.\n\nIIRC the Aksumite Empire fell apart basically due to overworking the soil on the Ethiopian lowlands.  To be fair, there wasn't a lot they knew back then on how to repair overworked soil, but they knew for decades it was happening.  ", "Pompey. To be fair nobody really knew what was going on until it was too late. Most people stayed in the city when the tremors began. When the ash started falling some tried to leave but many just hid indoors. ", "Very much so, quite recently even. Muammar Gadaffi was absolutely convinced that the uprising in Libya was an incident. He overestimated his own popularity, and therefore kept trying to suppress the uprising. He never realized the magnitude of the amount of people that were sick of his rule."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vhezq", "title": "Did the peasants of Medieval Europe view their lords as oppressors, proctectors, or something in between?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vhezq/did_the_peasants_of_medieval_europe_view_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ypxrt"], "score": [83], "text": ["*My answer concerns the later Middle Ages. Hopefully one of our early medieval experts will be along to discuss Chris Wickham's thesis about peasant life in the earlier period.*\n\nThis is kind of an impossible question to answer because, as Paul Freedman points out, we have *no* unfiltered peasant voices from medieval Europe. Archaeologists have uncovered massive amounts of material evidence, but anything textual is filtered, selected, and pre-interpreted by the upper classes. Steven Justice has argued that six little texts (in the form of letters, although he thinks that at least one was originally a sermon) that survive in two late medieval English chronicles represent the *viewpoint* of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, but notes that the \"peasant\" part of the title is to some extent a misnomer. \n\nFor the most part, we have court testimony. This can include peasants suing other peasants. More relevant to this question, it includes a LOT of peasants protesting oppressive conditions. Thomas Bisson is probably the scholar who has pushed this line of inquiry the farthest, stressing the frequency with which the word *tyrannus* appears all over eleventh and twelfth century sources in particular. In Catalonia, destruction and seizure of peasant property was *how* knights built themselves into lords. Lords in Germany (and almost certainly elsewhere) oppressed their own peasants, restricting access to hunting, foresting, and fishing areas.\n\nIn the sources, we see two patterns: peasants protesting their own lords' oppression, and peasants protesting their lords' failure to protect them from marauding *other* lords. Peasant communities were frequent victims in the crossfire (literally fire; arson was a big concern) of princes jockeying for land and power.\n\nSo with the words tyrant and tyranny flying around the sources; peasants summoning up their courage to argue their case before their lords; even Church councils censuring *their own prelates* for being naughty ecclesiastical lords (usually the Church just censures the laity), surely we must accept that medieval peasants saw their lords as a collective terror!\n\nExcept...this is where the source bias comes in. Peasant *protests* are recorded in the sources because they were formal petitions. There will be no record of \"thank you notes\" from grateful peasants, given their illiteracy and the cost of hiring a scribe plus obtaining writing materials, plus the unlikelihood that preservation of such letters would have enhanced the status of the receiver. What we *do* see, in the late Middle Ages, are attempts on the parts of lords and kings to mitigate the effects of famine--not only for their own economic gain, but also for the protection of their peasants. During the 1315-22 Great Famine, for example, English nobles tried to implement price fixing on grain crops, even though it might have benefited themselves to sell what yield they could at high prices.\n\nThe late Middle Ages were rocked by a series of peasant uprisings for sure--the 1381 PR, the Jacquerie in France, the Shepherds' Crusade (which David Nirenberg argues is frustration at lords turned onto outsiders). The interesting thing with a lot of these, though, is that peasant demands tended to be linked to very specific measures: a new poll tax perceived as unfair, the fixation of wages for day labor at levels the rebels considered ridiculously low and old-fashioned, new restrictions on water rights. Do these revolts represent a generally bad situation that occasionally got *really* bad? Or a tolerable world where sometimes lords pushed too hard?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5f08d7", "title": "Why are the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century U.S. stereotypically associated with running a laundry business?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5f08d7/why_are_the_chinese_immigrants_in_the_19th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daghu59"], "score": [28], "text": ["Hi OP, this is a great question, please have gold. \n\nAs a follow-up question\u2026 I live in San Francisco, CA, and I\u2019ve always been told that the Chinatown here was founded by the Chinese immigrants in the second half of the 19th century mostly running laundry businesses, building the railroad, and working as prostitutes. \n\nTo what extent is this true, and where could I read more about this? If this is true, were these occupations specific to San Francisco, or were they similar in other cities?\n\nEdit - typos."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4dffle", "title": "what it means to \"pop the clutch\" and why you would do it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dffle/eli5_what_it_means_to_pop_the_clutch_and_why_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1qg63d", "d1qg90n", "d1qg9nu", "d1qhur2", "d1qinyw", "d1qmr1t"], "score": [12, 129, 9, 3, 96, 2], "text": ["Usually when you're push starting a car.\n\nYou put it in second gear, turn the key to on,  push in the clutch, have a friend push it to about 5mph and you release the clutch quickly. The action of quickly releasing the clutch is considered \"popping\" it. The compression will start the car for you.\n\nThis can also be done on a motorcycle.\n\nIt's often called push starting. You can youtube videos for it.", "Also known as \"dropping the clutch\", it means releasing the clutch very quickly, sometimes by slipping your foot off the pedal or fingers off the lever letting it \"pop\" to its resting position. One reason would be, with high revs, to break traction and engage in a \"fuckin sick burnout\". Another reason would be when trying to roll start a vehicle, where quickly disengaging the clutch is needed to transfer energy from the wheels back into the engine forcing the engine to turn over.", "These people only provide examples of push starting. Popping the clutch is also used for revving the engine (with the clutch depressed) and then letting go of the clutch pedal quickly so all the energy from the engine goes to the transmission(and wheels) very quickly.\n\nYou can do it to push start a car or to fly off the line in a racing scenario. Its not good to do because it will wear out your clutch quickly and possibly do some tranny damage. Usually racers have a clutch designed with more friction material and reinforced design for the sole purpose of popping it.\n\nEdit: dont do it on a motorcycle if you dont know wtf you are doing. Youll end up on your ass and your bike down the street. ", "2nd gear boys and girls, 1st and 3rd are like pissing in to the wind. It might get the job done but it could get messy.", "Assuming you don't know a great deal about clutches - the engine spins a pole, and on the end of that pole is a plate. The wheels are connected to another pole, which also has a plate on the end. These plates are known as the clutch, and you can imagine it like so: \n[Engine]---||---[Wheels]\n\nWhen cruising along normally, these plates are squished together (as above), and friction causes the spinning engine pole and plate to also spin the wheel plate and pole which obviously spins the wheels and makes the car go.\n\nWhen you press the clutch pedal in, it separates these plates so that the engine pole, although it may still be spinning, is no longer also making the wheel pole spin:\n[Engine]---|  |---[Wheels]\n\nImportantly, you can make the engine rev and spin as much as you please with the clutch disengaged like this (to the point of blowing up the engine).\n\nWhen you 'drop/pop' the clutch, you are releasing your foot from the pedal suddenly, so that it returns ('drops/pops') to its normal position (in a very rough way), squashing the plates together, and causing the spinning engine pole to immediately transfer its movement to the wheel pole.\n\nYou would do this for a couple reasons, as suggested - because you might want to have the engine be producing power in advance of needing it, and then deliver it all at once (as in a drag race), or you might want to stall the car to turn it off (so that instead of the engine's motion transferring to the wheels, the wheels lack of motion transfers to the engine).\n\nAlternatively, if your engine will not go but you can get the wheels spinning (by rolling the car down a hill), it is possible to jump start some cars by dropping the clutch and thus reversing the normal pattern of behaviour, by transferring the wheel's motion to the engine, and (hopefully) making the engine work normally and start using fuel to continue spinning.", "Basically it's letting the clutch out quickly while revving. It can be used to launch or for a \"bump start\" which is putting your car in gear and letting the clutch out after getting it rolling to a decent speed  to start your car if the battery is dead or something."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "571gl1", "title": "Where there ever sightings or legends of Sasquatch or Sasquatch-like creatures during the American Revolution?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/571gl1/where_there_ever_sightings_or_legends_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8orz2k", "d8q1h50"], "score": [8, 5], "text": ["Related question: are questions like this, specifically about legend and folklore, appropriate for this sub? I'm certainly interested, just wondering if it falls within the expertise of our excellent mods and volunteer historians. ", "If by \"sasquatch or sasquatch-like creatures\" you mean reports of large, hairy, ape-like hominids, then certainly not; the earliest reports that have been co-opted into the sasquatch mythos date to the early 19th century, the term \"sasquatch\" did not come into use until the 1920s (when it was coined by a Canadian newspaperman named JW Burns), and \"Bigfoot\" not until the late 1950s.\n\nThat is not to say that there weren't reports of \"things in the forest\" that antedate 1800. Before that time, however, they were not considered to be animals. There was, instead, a longstanding tradition relating to the \"wild man of the woods,\" an essentially literary trope consisting of stories of hermits and outcasts. Such stories can be traced back a long way. Gerald of Wales, writing in the 1190s, describes Merlin in this manner; he had gone mad during a battle and \"fled into the forest where he passed the remainder of his life as a wild man of the woods.\" This did not mean that the \"wild man\" was not human, nor that he necessarily had no contact with human society; Merlin was still able to acquire a reputation as a powerful magician and prophet. But it's possible to suggest that the \"wild man\" trope fills a roughly similar space in folklore to sasquatch. Neil Thomas, in his \"The Celtic wild man tradition and Geoffrey of Monmouth's *Vita Merlini* (*Arthuriana* 10, 2000), argues that \"it is evident that the figure of the Wild Man has arisen spontaneously in a number of cultures of a far greater antiquity than that of the Celtic lands of the post-Roman period,\" and he points to parallels dating as far back as the *Epic of Gilgamesh*.\n\nA major problem in regard to early sasquatch/bigfoot reports is the uncritical appropriation by cryptozoologists of any and all fragments of legend or tradition that could plausibly (and often only implausibly) be regarded as distorted reports of \"real animals\". A good example which relates to your query is the \"windigo\" or \"wendigo\" of Canadian First Nation folklore. The windigo features in a highly-complex set of myths and cautionary tales, often appearing as an insatiable supernatural creature associated with dearth and cannibalism (I wrote a little about an early windigo cannibalism story, dating to 1741 and originating in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, [here](_URL_0_).) Because he is assumed to have once been human, and lurks in the deep woods, many of these tales feature traits that could be and have been stripped of their original contexts and co-opted in this way.\n\nChad Arment's *The Historical Bigfoot* (2006), a comprehensive but not critical compilation of reports, is a good place to start if you are interested in early North American sasquatch-style reports. The earliest cases he has gathered all feature \"wild men\" or \"yahoos\" (a term meaning, essentially, uncouth subhuman, popularised by *Gulliver's Travels*), progressing to \"gorillas\" later in the 19th century. There is an extensive literature on the windigo which places this group of stories in a series of more useful contexts than the cryptozoological one; see for example Robert A. Brightman's [\"The windigo in the material world,\"](_URL_1_) *Ethnohistory* 35 (1988) and  DH Turner's \"Windigo mythology and the analysis of Cree social structure,\" *Anthropologica* NS19 (1977).\n\nIncidentally, when Burns coined the term \"sasquatch,\" he did so by taking a word from the Coast Salish language group of British Columbia, normally given as \"s\u00e9squac,\" which means \"wild man.\"\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/06/25/ghosts-witches-vampires-fairies-and-the-law-of-murder/", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/482140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"]]}
{"q_id": "27mnqk", "title": "if pimples and zits are caused by clogged pores around the body, then why don't we get them on our hands?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27mnqk/eli5_if_pimples_and_zits_are_caused_by_clogged/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci2arly", "ci2b1w9", "ci2dlk5", "ci2e6io", "ci2l1hf", "ci2ls8l", "ci2o79e"], "score": [202, 52, 5, 22, 3, 7, 4], "text": ["Acne is caused by sebaceous glands under the skin that secrete sebum into your pores. I believe there are less glands on your hands and arms which would make zits less likely to occur there. The highest amount of glands are on your face where most acne occurs. Its been a while though since I studied this so someone else should confirm.", "Your body contains 2 types of glands sebaceous and sudoriferous you dont have sebaceous glands on the soles of your hands and feet which means you do not produce sebum (oil) in those areas ", "I've had a couple on my hands before. It doesn't happen as often but it does happen occasionally.", "I'll actually get one once or twice a year on my thumb. I have Scottish genes, so my leg and arm hair is mightier than most, so I think that is a factor. The pores are tiny there, which makes them very painful and nearly impossible to pop. I'll also get one every once in awhile on my knuckle or finger. ", "I once popped what I thought was a zit on the inside of my nose. I squeezed it and it erupted on the outside of my nose and I pulled a nose hair out of it. ", "I once had a zit right next to my nipple that turned the entire nipple at a 45 degree angle.  ", "Because the main focal point is the face, so it only makes sense to put gigantic, embarrassing zits right where everyone can fucking see them all day."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "607you", "title": "can someone explain the controversy over male circumcision?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/607you/eli5_can_someone_explain_the_controversy_over/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df46kie", "df46meu", "df46vfj", "df4b98m"], "score": [14, 8, 6, 3], "text": ["Many people don't believe you should cut off functioning parts of the body of toddlers who can't consent, for no benefit.", "The controversy is that parents are removing a piece of their child's flesh, which may reduce sexual sensation as an adult, for what many to believe to be very overrated, and ultimately unnecessary, medical reasons.\n\nSo on the one side, you have people who say, \"It's tradition, and it makes it easier to clean the penis.\"\n\nOn the other side, you have people who say, \"You're mutilating your child's genitals for no good reason, and we'd all be appalled if you were cutting of their ears or something, so why is this any different?\"", "For years, doctors claimed cutting the foreskin was \"hygienic\" and everyone followed along; it was culturally expected for a while. This practice was also done for religious purposes. \n\nToday, we know the pseudoscience behind the \"hygiene\" is false, and cutting the foreskin has no medical benefits. Many people believe that with the knowledge we now have, the practice is barbaric and should be discontinued until the person is old enough to consent to the procedure. ", "Circumcision is primarily a cosmetic surgical procedure done on the genitals of newborns.  There is nothing else like it that is deemed acceptable in Western medicine.  There are some marginal health benefits, such as decreased rates of UTIs, decreased transmission of certain STIs, decreased risk of penile cancer, etc.  However, all of these things are either very rare in anatomically normal, healthy boys, or are better prevented by other means (condom usage, hygiene education, HPV vaccination, etc).\n\nIn short, it's a cosmetic surgery done on pediatric patients that are unable to give informed consent, with very questionable utility in preventative medicine."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8s0fm5", "title": "How brutal was French colonial rule in Indochina? Was it as bad as say, the British Raj?", "selftext": "I asked this a while back but got no response. Time for try number 2! I'm interested in the daily lives of the general populace, and what the general social or legal atmosphere of the colonial society was like.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s0fm5/how_brutal_was_french_colonial_rule_in_indochina/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0wktge"], "score": [38], "text": ["Hello, I wrote a small essay for my Vietnam-US history class that went over French Indochina. I hope this can help you.\n\n\n\nThe French colonization of Vietnam (which was part of French Indochina) was part of a larger trend of western countries in an age of imperialism. Holding colonies in a place such as Asia or Africa was a sign of success and power amongst European powers. It was also argued that there was a need to civilize people who were deemed primitive, or did not meet European standards. This was typically called the white man\u2019s burden, as it was up to civilized white people to \u201cmodernize\u201d these various people and cultures. For the French, they had their own version of this, which was called *mission civilisatrice*, or civilizing mission. \n\n\n\nThe impression was given that imperialist powers such as the French colonized parts of Southeast Asia and Africa in order to spread and further \u201ccivilization\u201d. While one of the reasons was to indeed spread their own values over indigenous peoples, this was not the main purpose. The main purpose of the French in places such as Indochina was to economically exploit its land and people through the extraction of natural materials and resources, and reap large profits from it.\n\n\n\n\nThere was a need for economies to expand in places such as Europe, and one of the ways for an economy to easily expand was to take over other places, and use their resources for the other country\u2019s gain. This was readily enacted in places such as French Indochina. The French colonial bureaucracy initially gained revenue through the heavy taxation system imposed upon the Vietnamese people. The French also soon gained almost state monopolies on household staples such as salt, rice, and rice alcohol, and made it compulsory for each household to buy these goods. This revenue gave the French bureaucracy in Vietnam a foothold, and encouraged further exploitation by French capitalists. \n\n\n\n\nFrench authorities later moved on to diversifying the Indochinese economy towards other various goods. Some of these goods were household items such as rice, pepper, coffee, and tea. Others were resources and materials that were needed by European powers or had high prices on the global market, such as rubber, tin, zinc, and coal. Through irrigation works and infrastructure development by the French and Vietnamese (partially through corv\u00e9e, which was basically unpaid labor), the amount of land that was being opened up to farming for goods such as rice greatly rose. However, these lands were not distributed collectively to people such as Vietnamese peasants. These lands were sometimes sold to French colonists and Vietnamese collaborators at exceptionally low prices, or would otherwise go towards the highest bidder. \n\n\n\n\nThe French, with the help of local leaders and officials who collaborated, displaced millions of Vietnamese people from the land that they owned, either through legal or illegal means. If one was unable to pay the heavy taxes imposed, for example, then their land would be forfeited to the government or creditors. Through bureaucratic means, the land could be easily taken. However, land could also be taken through means such as of intimidation, by corrupt leaders who were backed by the French. Ultimately, there were various ways that most Vietnamese people lost their land, and were forced to become peasant farmers that toiled on plantations or on small land holdings.\n\n\n\n \nThe French, of course, were simply unable to fully control and colonize Vietnam without help. Since France never had a large amount of soldiers or administrators in Indochina, the French depended upon a small amount of local village leaders and mandarins to control not only the cities, but the countryside. These Vietnamese collaborators were despised by their own people, as these people legitimized and supported the French bureaucracy that was exploiting their country. By currying favor with the French and readily adopting their culture by doing things such as switching to Catholicism, they gained and held lucrative positions in the bureaucracy or being associated with it. \n\n\n\n\nCollaboration with the French was done out of self-interest (strengthening one\u2019s social position or their family\u2019s, or simply for profit) or because they saw the French as benevolent people that would help Vietnam. By giving some pro-French Vietnamese people positions of power that could also be easily controlled, the French (mostly) gained social and institutional legitimacy in their colonization of Indochina, and would show off the collaborators as an example that the purported French goal of mission civilisatrice was a success. Some of these collaborators or their families were given education at French institutions in Hanoi or even Paris, where they were taught the values and supremacy of French culture and traditions. Bao Dai, one of the final emperors of Vietnam, was himself educated at elite French schools and institutions, and helped the French control Annam, a province of Indochina. The effort of Vietnamese collaborators led to sharp polarization between the peasant class and the wealthy landowning elite during the occupation, and long after.\n\n\n\n\nOver time, Vietnamese culture started to become uprooted. Places of education taught French, and businesses of significance conducted trade in this language. Traditional Vietnamese temples or monuments that had historical value would be razed, with the buildings replacing them being styled after French architecture. Places were extensively given French names. If one wanted to enter the government, converting to Catholicism was preferable over Buddhism, which constituted a majority of the country. Not only was there economic exploitation, but cultural values were being eroded, and replaced with French ones almost overnight.\n\n\n\n\nTaxes under the French bureaucracy were heavy and extensive. Not only were common goods taxed, but there was also a tax on wages paid, a voting tax, stamp taxes, etc. If Vietnamese peasants were unable to pay these various taxes (and they typically were unable to), wealthy village landowners or creditors would give them loans at usurious interest rates. The goal of this was to either gain whatever the peasant held in terms of property, to put them into perpetual debt, or both. If unable to pay colonial taxes, peasants were made to sell precious goods such as family heirlooms, their land, or even had to sell off their children for labor. Even with these things being done, peasants were exploited by the Vietnamese collaborators and the French, with frequent physical punishment such as beatings, and jail time. \n\n\n\n\nI apologize for the lack of professional citations, but I obtained this information from Ngo Vinh Long\u2019s book, *Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "jaqkl", "title": "Why does my beer do this?", "selftext": "The foam is forming circles along the edges of the glass:\n\nTop view: _URL_1_\nSide view: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jaqkl/why_does_my_beer_do_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2ak7ws", "c2ak88f", "c2ak7ws", "c2ak88f"], "score": [16, 3, 16, 3], "text": ["There might be [nucleation](_URL_0_) sites in a regular pattern at the bottom of the glass. The bubbles would tend to form in certain spots along that pattern more often, so a column of bubbles rises up from those places and they would wind up unevenly distributed like in that photo. Is there some sort of regular pattern going around the inside of the glass? I can't tell from those photos but that seems the most likely explanation. \n\nThis is the same reason that if you have a glass that has a little bit of something stuck on the bottom and you pour a carbonated drink into it, a lot of bubbles will come up from the little impurity.", "Is there a circle or pattern etched into the bottom of the glass? Beer glasses include these intentionally as nucleation spots to increase head thickness, and CO2 release, but in cups that aren't made for beer you can get this effect as well.", "There might be [nucleation](_URL_0_) sites in a regular pattern at the bottom of the glass. The bubbles would tend to form in certain spots along that pattern more often, so a column of bubbles rises up from those places and they would wind up unevenly distributed like in that photo. Is there some sort of regular pattern going around the inside of the glass? I can't tell from those photos but that seems the most likely explanation. \n\nThis is the same reason that if you have a glass that has a little bit of something stuck on the bottom and you pour a carbonated drink into it, a lot of bubbles will come up from the little impurity.", "Is there a circle or pattern etched into the bottom of the glass? Beer glasses include these intentionally as nucleation spots to increase head thickness, and CO2 release, but in cups that aren't made for beer you can get this effect as well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/1NjtH.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/5HdGM.jpg"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation"], []]}
{"q_id": "6sxvcb", "title": "What were bards really like?", "selftext": "I'm going to play as a bard class in a Dungeons  &  Dragons game, mostly to be a fun/musical supporter for the rest of the party. But now I'm really curious about what bards were actually like in history. Were they mostly poetry writers? Or did they perform live for crowds? How did one become a bard? Those kinds of questions.\n\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6sxvcb/what_were_bards_really_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlgqtq8"], "score": [50], "text": ["I can't tell you much about the medieval bards in continental and British Europe, but in the norse and viking societies, the bard was a important figure. \n\nIn Scandinavia (and by extension Iceland, Orkneys, Faroes and parts of Britain) the bards were called \"skald\". The original etymology is unknown, but later it became synonomous with poet.\n\nThese skalds were poets for hire. Mostly for lords and kings, to whom they sang the \"history\" of this person in a verse. It's important to note that this was not written down, and were carried on in oral tradition until the 11^th century, where Christianity brought the latin alphabet.\n\nBecause of the aforementioned, we have little left of what is assumed to be a plethora of different *kvad* (songs) and know only of a handful of skalds. The most famous one is \"Snorri\" (Snorre Sturlason) whose *kvad* **heimskringla** is known as the most important piece of literature in Norway (apart from the constitution, of course). However, he wrote his *kvad* in about 1220, and his motives were the viking age. His works are therefore influenced by the christianized society. However, it is still viewed as one of the most important literary sources of viking society, together with [*M\u00f6\u00f0ruvallab\u00f3k*}(_URL_2_). \n\n[The poetic Edda](_URL_1_) whose author is unknown, is one of the most important sources of religious literature, although this is also written after christianity came to Iceland. \n\nSources (sorry, all in norse or Norwegian due to me being away from a library right now)\n\nKnut Helle, St\u00e5le Dyrvik, Edgar Hovland og Tore Gr\u00f8nlie: *Grunnbok i Norges historie. Fra vikingtid til v\u00e5re dager.*\n\nSverre Bagge *Europa tar form : \u00e5r 300 til 1300*\n\nOdd Einar Haugen *Norr\u00f8n grammatikk i hovuddrag*\n\n_URL_0_ (a collection of texts and sources from all of the nordic areas, mostly pertaining to skalds and their kvad)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Forside", "http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Eddukv%C3%A6%C3%B0i", "https://handrit.is/is/manuscript/view/AM02-0132"]]}
{"q_id": "129178", "title": "What's up the the structure of phosphate?", "selftext": "I can't quite wrap my mind around how it can be tetrahedral and still involve a double bond. Where are these pi orbitals that are supposedly overlapping? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/129178/whats_up_the_the_structure_of_phosphate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6t5soz"], "score": [3], "text": ["The phosphate ion does not have any double bonds; it is a resonance structure that binds the oxygen atoms equally (like benzene). The overall effect of this is a strong anion (3-) that easily attracts cations or weakly electronegative elements."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6a5cm8", "title": "Cato the Elder defended traditional Roman values against the influence of Greek culture. What were these values?", "selftext": "I heard this on Mike Duncan's history of Rome podcast, so I don't know how accurate it is, but my image of Rome is very much mixed in with its Hellenistic influence. What did the Romans in the Republic consider traditional values and how did they contrast with the Greeks? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6a5cm8/cato_the_elder_defended_traditional_roman_values/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhcnf85"], "score": [20], "text": ["Cato the Elder was living in a time when many of his contemporaries were succumbing to the appeal of more hellenistic values. The most notable example of this is Scipio Africanus (the Elder); the honours and wealth which he'd earnt after his victory vs Carthage at Zama in 202BC were a strong incentive for other Romans to strive to do the same. The Scipio family was seen by Cato as a rival in their love of Greek culture, philhellenism. The influence Polybius had on the family after he was taken to Rome is an interesting topic, but I'm going off on a bit of a tangent.\n\nIn a nutshell, 'Greek values' were typically characterised by a love of luxury and excess. This was what Cato despised most of all; being a very conservative man, he believed that luxury and excess, imported from Greece to Rome via philhellenes such as Scipio, were a corrupting force in the Republic. The triumph is a strong example of a Roman tradition which became 'increasingly \"hellenized\"' throughout the period, and shows quite well the kind of perceived Greek values which Cato was opposed to. The triumph of Flamininus, as Livy tells us, lasted three days and showcased 'three thousand seven hundred and fourteen pounds of gold' (which may be hyperbole, but it can still be gathered that there was a lot of gold). Cato instead chose to stick with his Roman traditions, in that he aimed to be as limited as possible in his relationship to the material world. Furthermore, allowing novus homo (men who had gained a position of political influence and significance in Rome without having had any important heritage) to become more common would water down the aristocracy and consequently move power further from the hands of a few.\n\nAs well as this, I'm tempted to summarise his political views on the Greeks by saying that he was opposed to the diplomatic approach when it came to foreign policy. There's his classic 'Carthage must be destroyed' quote which most know about, which clearly shows he favoured a militaristic approach in order to exhibit Roman dominance. Earlier on in 184BC though, the year of his censorship, came the decision to act in response to the revolt of Sparta against the Achaean League (which had occurred 5 years previously). It's undeniable Cato had at least some influence on the Senate's decision, first because of the drastic policy change, and secondly because of the powers of the censor which (simply put) allowed him to pick and choose who sat in the Senate. Rome's intended approach to Greece in the second century BC seems to have been one of care, in that there appears to have been an effort to keep an eye on Greek public opinion throughout the course of Roman expansion in Greece. Cato, however, was untrusting and xenophobic, and therefore treated the Greeks like he treated the Carthaginians. \n\n(According to Plutarch, Cato believed that Greek doctors were forming a conspiracy, by which they would integrate themselves within Roman society and slowly kill off everyone with their medicine. I don't know how true that is, but it certainly captures Cato's general attitude towards the Greeks).\n\nSources:\n\nThis is just off the top of my head, had an exam on it a week ago. In any case, some good books on the subject are:\n\nSpecifically relevant:\n\n-Alan Wardman, Rome's Debt to Greece\n-Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder\n-Polybius, The Histories\n-Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph\n-Livy, The History of Rome (XXXIV.52 details Flamininus' triumph)\n\nGeneral Coverage of the Period and Cato:\n\n-Crawford, The Roman Republic\n-H.H. Scullard, History of the Roman World 753-146BC\n\nTL;DR: \nGreek values (to Cato) = luxury, excess, (implicitly) democracy, conspiratorial doctors.\nRoman values = humility/honour and virtue, maintaining the aristocracy.\n\nEdit 1: added Polybius to sources. He's a really good read and helpful in understanding the relationship Romans such as Scipio had with the Greek world.\n\nEdit 2: added info on the triumph from Livy and Mary Beard, to exemplify the hellenisation of Roman traditions and Cato's objection to this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1pwp12", "title": "How Can an Ice Wall Halt Radiation?", "selftext": "So Japan is thinking about freezing the underground perimeter of the Fukushima plant to stop radioactive ground water from leaking into the ocean. Source: _URL_0_\n\nBut that would still make the frozen ground water radioactive, right? AND HOW CAN THE WATER FREEZE IF ITS RADIOACTIVE!? Wouldn't the particle emission disrupt the ice and cause it to melt?\n\nAnyone help me out..... plz", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1pwp12/how_can_an_ice_wall_halt_radiation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd6used", "cd6uu9p", "cd6vaga"], "score": [12, 7, 3], "text": [" > But that would still make the frozen ground water radioactive, right? \n\nWell, yes, freezing isn't going to get rid of radioactivity, but what they're concerned about seems to be the water getting spread into the environment. \n\n > AND HOW CAN THE WATER FREEZE IF ITS RADIOACTIVE!?\n\nWell, first off, the actual water molecules themselves aren't radioactive. There are radioactive isotopes of other elements within the water, but the solution is still almost entirely water, so it can still form an ice crystal, so long as the energy released from radioactive decay isn't enough to overcome whatever method they use to cool it. ", "The frozen water would still be a bit radioactive, yes. The problem is that radioactive elements get dissolved into the water, which it then carries away. If you freeze the water, it stops getting carried away.\n\nNow, while radiation-caused heating is a real phenomenon, the actual amount of radiation in the ice (and which will build up behind it, since it's not being carried away) is quite tiny. Enough to be of ecological concern, but nowhere near enough to raise the temperature of water considerably. Raising the temperature a tiny fraction of a degree per day (likely a very tiny fraction) isn't a concern compared to the temperature raise that would be caused by other factors.", "[Water normally flows underground](_URL_0_). The point of freezing the water is to stop the contaminated water around the plant from flowing out to sea. You are building a wall of ice which water can't get through. You have to continuously refrigerate the wall to keep it from melting. A more expensive and less feasible alternative is to drive sheets of metal into the ground to form a wall, but that has different engineering problems (penetrating rock, corrosion leaks, etc). For an ice curtain you have to drill rods into the ground every few feet apart (much easier) and pump refrigerant down continuously.\n\nThere are separate engineering problems with the contaminated water inside the wall (it has to go somewhere or it will build up as rainwater infiltrates, they have to build an upgradient wall also), but they are more manageable than dealing with the contaminated water after it gets diluted by the ocean or the contamination is adsorbed onto the soil outside the plant.\n\nThe radioactivity in the groundwater at 100+ feet from Fukushima is too low in intensity/concentration to melt ice water. Even then you could just refrigerate the wall even more."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/japan-studies-ice-wall-to-halt-radioactive-water-leaks.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer"]]}
{"q_id": "22o24j", "title": "How much truth is there in the statement that \"Only 15%-20% of actually soldiers fired their weapons in WW2?\"", "selftext": "I was in a psychology class today and my professor made this claim and I was curious as to how factual it was from a historical standpoint. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22o24j/how_much_truth_is_there_in_the_statement_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgoq924", "cgoq9oi", "cgoqevd"], "score": [6, 35, 183], "text": ["Probably referring to S. L. A. Marshall's findings, reported in Men Against Fire and other places:\n\n > The thing is simply this, that out of an average 100 men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, only 15 men on average would take any part with the weapons.  This was true whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three...In the most aggressive infantry companies, under the most intense local pressure, the figure rarely rose above 25% of total strength from the opening to the close of an action.\n\nAnd\n\n > It is therefore reasonable to believe that the average and healthy individual--the man who can endure the mental and physical stresses of combat--still has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility...At the vital point he becomes a conscientious objector...\n\nMarshall's conclusions have not gone unchallenged, and are still discussed today.  [Apparently his methods were not very rigorous or scientific](_URL_0_), and there's lots of reasons for a soldier to not fire his weapon, even in a close engagement with the enemy.  (Do keep in mind that the weapons of the time were powerful enough to make even a fleeting and momentary glimpse of the enemy a good opportunity for a kill.  These weren't firing lines 100 yards apart.  Even an earnest killer might not have abundant opportunities of actually shooting someone.)\n\nStill, after WWII they led to innovations in training to increase rate of fire.", "This claim comes from 'Man Against Fire' by S.L.A. Marshall, who was a US Army historian for WW2. He's fairly controversial, as is the book, and the 15%-20% figure comes from his book, although it's misquoted.\n\nFor one, he's basing it off interviews he did, which isn't exactly a good piece of evidence. Also, it's more specific then is stated. Only 15-20% of *American riflemen* fired their *personal* weapons *at an exposed enemy soldier*. This makes the statistic a lot more understandable, because it excludes crew-served weapons (machine guns), and key weapons (flamethrowers).\n\nWhile his numbers were initially accepted and frequently quoted, they've been called into question several times. One of the larger things I've seen pointed out in rebuttals of his statistics is that it fails to distinguish between soldiers who *can* fire, and shoulders who *should* fire. A medic has a sidearm. Should he be firing at an exposed soldier, or should he be doing his normal duties? What about squad leaders, more focused on directing the battle then taking shots themselves?\n\n[This](_URL_0_) is an excellent breakdown of why his methods were called into question, and includes an interview by the man who accompanied him through his interviews in the Korean war (which came up with a 50% fire rate). Some sample issues with his work include that he didn't interview casualties, only unharmed men who were still ready for action, that he didn't take into account things like weapons jamming, and that his numbers were based more on guesses then anything else. It wasn't a proper survey even, but instead a group discussion he'd pull information out of.\n\nSimply put... it's just not very good history. It's hard to get a proper number for how many soldiers fired their guns, but the 15-20% is more or less impossible to back up, and completely ignores several significant factors.", "That claim is based on the books \"On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society\", by David Grossman; and \"Men against Fire\", by SLA Marshall.\n\nI'll get my bias out here - I think this idea is crap, and the basic reason is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is no evidence to support that claim.\n\nMarshall's work, wherein he makes the claim that 75% of soldiers do not fire on the enemy, was based on post-combat interviews with soldiers, but no record of any questions about the ratio of fire exists.\n\nIn fact, the only record of his interviews at all (besides his books), makes mention of soldiers firing weapons, but nothing whatsoever that could support a hard number of how many men fired or did not fire.\n\nThere is no evidence of statistical analysis based on his interviews, no records of questions about whether soldiers fired or not, no questions about ammunition consumption. There is no evidence from quartermasters about ammunition consumption, barrel wear, or any other secondary evidence.\n\nSo this number is one that Marshall may have arrived at honestly, but there is simply no evidence to support it.\n\nIf you're interested, Robert Engen wrote a very incisive article on the subject in the Canadian Military Journal, and wrote his Masters thesis on the subject.\n\nEngen found (and has the evidence to prove) that - for Canadians, at the very least - did not have this problem. Based on primary sources (written post-combat interviews with Canadian officers), he found *exactly the opposite* of what Marshall and Grossman claim.\n\nCanadian officers found that their forces fire was very effective, and, if anything, their men fired *too much*!\n\nSo - there's no evidence to support this claim, and there is primary source evidence that it is BS.\n\nIf you'd like to read Engen's article in the CMJ or his thesis, here they are:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nIn the interest of (a little) balance, Grossman makes a (in my opinion very feeble) defense of his work and Marshall's in the CMJ as well:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/03autumn/chambers.pdf"], ["http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/03autumn/chambers.pdf"], ["http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/18-grossman-eng.asp", "http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp", "http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/1081/1/Engen_Robert_C_200803_MA.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4l6lcl", "title": "In medieval Europe, did universities have the equivalent of majors?", "selftext": "I'm a European student studying at university in, lets say, the 13th century. How are my studies organized? Was there a concept of a \"major\" or is that an entirely modern concept? If the concept of majors existed, what were my choices? I've heard a little about the concept of the trivium, but what if I wanted to major in something like political science or sociology? Did they have something analogous to these concepts back then?\n\nThanks! Sorry if this question has been answered before, [I found these](_URL_0_) but I can't find anything about what \"majors\" existed outside the trivium.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l6lcl/in_medieval_europe_did_universities_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3ktsoc"], "score": [14], "text": ["You found the earlier discussions of  medieval universities, kraetos. Let me humbly direct your focus to [this discussion I commented on several years back that discusses \"majors\"](_URL_0_) among other aspects of uni life. In a nutshell, there were things somewhat like \"majors\" in the subjects of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) in the developed years of the medieval uni."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/dailylife#wiki_life_at_university"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eh8bf/how_exactly_would_one_a_enter_and_b_attain_a/"]]}
{"q_id": "3h3caw", "title": "why do most restaurants sell pepsi instead of coke, and yet coke is seen to be a bigger competitor?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h3caw/eli5_why_do_most_restaurants_sell_pepsi_instead/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu3uq0l", "cu3uq5l", "cu3us5p", "cu3uv42", "cu3uxyv", "cu3uyti", "cu3vfp7", "cu3vjtm", "cu3wby6", "cu3xrso", "cu3y2e7", "cu3ym03", "cu45hbm", "cu45lfr", "cu45tkz", "cu45ut4", "cu46157", "cu461kv"], "score": [144, 8, 3, 2, 3, 11, 7, 20, 3, 2, 5, 14, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Coke sells way more soda by volume than Pepsi. As a response, Pepsi offers its products to restaurants at a reduced cost, which is why many restaurants carry it. But only up to midscale places -- no nice restaurant serves Pepsi, because Coke has more cach\u0117t, and also you need it for mixed drinks. \n\nNote also that McDonald's, the single biggest restaurant chain in the world, serves Coke.", "According to the internet more restaurants/fast food sale coke over Pepsi. Maybe Pepsi is a local favorite or you just happen to go to places that serve Pepsi.\n\n >  At issue is Coke's dominance of what is known as the fountain business, which includes restaurant chains, sports arenas, movie theaters and other businesses that sell soft drinks by the cup, rather than by the can or bottle. Coke has about two-thirds of the market, versus about 22 percent for Pepsi", "Define \"most.\" A certain group of fast-food restaurants sell Pepsi, notably KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, because they are subsidiaries of [YUM brands](_URL_0_), which partners with PepsiCo. ", "I always thought you just chose one brand - so Pepsi have club, 7up etc.. And coke have fanta, sprite. \n\nWhichever has the biggest markup for the restaurant I suppose, but where I'm from more people prefer Coke's brand.", "Seems like you're just guessing because I can think of a ton of places that sell coke instead of Pepsi.", "Actually, most restaurants offer [Coke instead of Pepsi](_URL_0_). Coke is the undisputed king of restricted market sales like restaurants.\n\nHowever, in most of the US, Pepsi outsells Coke in unrestricted markets, like grocery stores.", "I think you're mistaking fast food chains with restaurants, I have yet to see Pepsi in a restaurant... Maybe in USA but definitely not in Europe.\n", "From a business owner perspective, simply Pepsi sells their product for a lot less than Coke. Pepsi sells for $.69 and coke sells for $.99. We can make larger profits because we are small businesses. Coke makes their majority from larger businesses because they heavily discount to get their product seen on commercials which brings the business full circle.", "While you may not go too often, almost all fast food restaurants serve Coke and there are *a lot* of them.", "I worked for a business where we switched from Coke to Pepsi, because Pepsi was less expensive and they offered to pitch in for advertising we did where we added their logo.", "They don't, where do live that less than 70% of restaurants sell coke?", "I used to work for PepsiCo back when they still owned Taco Bell, KFC, Chevy's and Pizza Hut.\n\nHere's the deal- First, you are incorrect in saying that most restaurants sell Pepsi. Most restaurants sell Coke products by a pretty good margin. The reason why is that because Pepsi owned restaurants, many restaurant owners considered Pepsi to be a competing product, so they used Coke products. This was one factor in the decision to spin the restaurant chains off into a separate business. \n\nThat is just the USA. There is a whole, big world out there. And, in the rest of the world Coke is just a far bigger player. PepsiCo isn't even remotely close to the size of Coke.", "Two words. Mountain Dew. Buffalo Wild Wings switched to Pepsi strictly because of Mountain Dew. It goes in a lot of mixed drinks and sells better than Mellow Yellow. ", "Also depends where you live. Ever since I moved to Georgia I've stopped asking for \"diet Pepsi or diet coke\". It's almost always coke. ", "Where do you live? Almost every restaurant I ever walk in to serves Coke products, the exceptions being Yum! Brands fast food chains such as KFC and Taco Bell and a few independent places.", "I used to work in a Weatherspoons, they only sell Pepsi. Every customer that asked for Coke we were supposed to say \"We don't sell Coke, is Pepsi okay?\"\n\nThat shit got old after about a day.", "Most restaurants do not sell Pepsi instead of Coke. The reality nationwide is the opposite of what you are asking.", "I don't agree with the premise. I'd say it's about half and half. I guess it depends on what you mean by \"restaurant.\" If you mean \"fast food joint,\" well, that's not entirely what I think of as \"restaurant\". I would include Red Robin, TGI Fridays, Bennigans, and similar non-chain sit-down restaurants etc. I doubt it's predominantly Pepsi."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum!_Brands"], [], [], ["http://www.businessinsider.com/restaurants-that-serve-coke-vs-pepsi-2013-12"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4e2f2z", "title": "where did all the weapons from historic battles go? 50000 vs 50000 men each carrying at least a sword and yet antique swords are rare?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e2f2z/eli5_where_did_all_the_weapons_from_historic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1weh96", "d1wetur", "d1wgap7", "d1wh6ve", "d1wj855", "d1wj9k6", "d1wlfks", "d1wn1ia", "d1wnawh", "d1wnvhe", "d1worwa", "d1wpnl3", "d1wpvax", "d1wpvpc", "d1wqgqc", "d1wqx8k", "d1wr1st", "d1wr92r", "d1wrlb2", "d1wrr1t"], "score": [78, 2824, 676, 204, 10, 38, 18, 7, 3, 18, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because iron rusts. Bronze age weapons and armor are more common but you figure if your weapon becomes damaged or outdated, you arent going to keep it around. You're going to junk it so you can reuse the metals in it.", "Metal was valuable so both the winners of the battle and afterwards the locals would go and search for any and either reuse the equiptment, melt or reforge the parts or sell them.", "They made almost 4,000 B-29 Superfortresses during WWII. 70 years later there are only 20 or so left, only 1 of which is in flyable condition.  Most of the rest were used for parts or scrapped.\n\nThe same thing happened 1000 years ago. Antique weapons weren't antique when they were made, so people would have no problem melting them down to make into something else. ", "I'm not a historian or anything, but as I remember swords were actually pretty rare on the battlefield due to their prohibitive cost. Knights and officers would have them, but the common soldiers usually wouldn't. Spears were much more common in most battles. And, of course, it goes to reason that after the battle the victors would take whatever swords they could find as spoils.", "Very few battles were anything near that size. Some folks noted that weapons were often gleaned but even when they weren't, the bulk of weapons and armor of that period were made of highly degradable materials \n\nTextile armor, iron weapons and  wooden shafts and shields don't hold up well. \n\nThis is why we have many bronze age weapons and not many Migration era ones and that few Viking or even early Medieval items survive. \n\nBronze holds up better", "Using the Bible as a source:\n\n >  and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. -Isaiah 2:4\n\nPretty evident that in the time of Isaiah it was SOP to use the metal for something else after the conclusion of a conflict; similar ideas hold for other cultures.\n\n\n", "iron doesn't hold up well to the elements after that long they've mainly rusted to nothing.  before that there were even less resilient metals.  Also, swords were not incredibly common, most soldiers throughout history were armed primarily with a spear and relatively few would have a proper sword depending heavily on the culture and time period.  ", "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Isaiah 2:4", "Others have touched on what happened to the swords.\n\nI would like to further show just how valuable metal was.\n\nUp until around 1900, probably the most valuable construction material was nails.  Nails were so valuable that if a person were to move, they were likely to burn down their old house so they could retrieve the nails they used to build the house.\n\nThis is also why there are so few historical buildings in the South (mainly wood construction, rarely brick work) compared to the North (tons of brick buildings in urban areas.)", " > Carrying at least a sword.\n\nThat's your problem right there, the simple fact is that is not true. Historically the vast majority of an armies were not so uniformly equipped nor well equipped. Standardization would come and go in certain armies, but for a large portion of armies it was \"Stand here and use this pike/spear/ other cheap to make weapon.\" Believe it or not weapons don't just appear out of thin air, they take money to buy and that money is going to be spent were it can best used. Spears/pikes/ what you can bring from home was a much cheaper option when outfitting your army than equipping everyone with a sword. Sword usage is not nearly as prolific as Hollywood has lead us to believe. Axes, maces, bows, slings, spears, pikes, and any other form of crude weapon to make saw much more usage historically then swords did. Similarly these weapons could be used for food gathering purposes and things outside of battle. Antique swords are rare now because they were rare then. To add to this in large scale warfare, as we seen between armies, swords are pretty useless. Charge at a shield wall bristling with spears with only a sword and see what happens, this is why infantry was handed spears and pikes, aside from the prohibitive cost issue.", "Also, very few people had swords.  Swords were weapons of officers and lower nobility (think knights); peasants generally fought with pikes or spears.  The English also used trained archers, as did other armies.  A sword was probably worth more than a peasant for most of history.", "Cauldrons were some of the most expensive a person could own, by taking swords and melting them down you could make a fortune by selling kitchenware.", "Another factor that im seeing, is not everyone would use a sword. Lets say you have a lumberjack with an axe come in to get set up, they would tell him to use his axe and save some money, same for a miner, he already owns a pick axe, why would he need a sword? What you have to remember is war was (and still is) expensive, paying people, supplies, medicine, food, hell a sword would be extremely expensive back then to have made, mostly caried by nights, royalty, people who were seen as important, in other words people you wouldnt want to loose. Everyone else would most likely be given an axe (metal efficient, and quick to make) these would be peasents who would make up a majority of your army.\n\nKeep in mind i am not an expert, this is what i have learned from reading random shit.", "People went through battlefields reclaiming all the expensive gear and re-purposing it. \n\nEntire cultures even went so far as to ingrain in the public consciousness that looting battlefields was morally a terrible thing to do. Just so the people who did eventually loot the battlefield where the right people to loot the battlefield. ", "Metal was not easy to make, but could be reformed into tools or other weapons, it was also iron and steel rusting and eventually returning to the earth. We do find many many bronze weapons because it does not rust the same way that Iron does so any bronze swords or armor that weren't reclaimed then can be reclaimed as antiques today.", "As people have mentioned they were scavenged, we even have historical references to weapons being melted down into victory monument/trophies in the ancient world. ", "According to the Book of Mormon there should be millions of swords, sets of armor, chariots, elephant bones, etc., but there hasn't been a single shred of evidence to corroborate anything within the book.  That's why it's historical fiction.  I'm not saying this is the case for everything, but about 3 million Americans alone believe that this narrative is historical.", "There don't seem to be many people addressing the real issue.  Swords were rare.  \n\nThink about it.  They were master crafted chunks of extremely expensive metal, that required serious training to use, that required serious strength to weild.  You also needed to be up close and personal to use them.  So, walking around with a sword was the medieval equivalent of walking around with a glock sticking out of your waist band. It meant you were very serious about killing people up close and personal.  A man with a sword would have been terrifying to a man with a wooden handled pike, if only because it meant he was a scary dude who would hack you open and bathe in a shower of your warm blood.\n\nBut in reality, swords are not great weapons.  A bow is far more efficient, and even a spear could at least make some headway against armor.  A sword is mostly for show, and so were mostly used by nobility trying to look tough and knights trying to look like they were worth the land they were given.", "Mostly poor kept conditions would rust the weapons right through in a few decades. Second, what does survive would be melted down for probably new weapons. Theres a high chance the same metal used by roman legions were reused in WWII rifles or planes.", "1) Victors would rob the bodies and camps of their defeated enemies, so most weaponry and armor would be taken.  Even if it was in bad condition, it would still provide metal that could be sold for reforging.  Archers particularly wanted to recover arrows for the heads, and would actually dig them out of the corpses.  \n\n2) Whatever the victors abandoned, *someone* was going to pick up.  Metal objects that could be sold for anything at all were not just going to be left on the ground.  Poor people would scavenge the battlefields.\n\n3) Stainless steel wasn't a thing, so whatever metallic weaponry or armor was abandoned or missed by both enemy soldiers and poor scavengers would rust away out in the elements.\n\n4) Weapons recovered on the battlefield centuries or millennia later would need to have ended up buried relatively quickly, in soils that would not have motivated anyone to plow them, and that were protected from erosive processes.  This would be a rare set of coincidences.\n\n5) Since a lot of the weapons would end up reforged (i.e., boiled down), only some fraction of them would see combat again as the weapons that were in that particular battle.  Then in that next battle, some fraction of *those* would end up reforged, and so on until all or almost all of the originals were lost.\n\n6) The only weapons recovered intact in modern times that were not found on their battlefields would need to have ended up in some protected treasury or vault, including sarcophagi (e.g., weapons buried with their owners or conquerors)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3eq5s3", "title": "why are there typical breakfast foods and dinner foods? is there a biological reason where we want certain nutrients at different points in the day or is it just a social construct?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eq5s3/eli5_why_are_there_typical_breakfast_foods_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cthc689", "cthcir4", "cthcm04", "cthcxkq", "cthe4qb", "cthfaar", "cthg19p", "cthgq0l", "cthisap"], "score": [24, 4, 4, 46, 3, 7, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Anything can be a dinner food. But almost all breakfast foods have one thing in common: they can be made quickly with little preparation. ", "It really is more of a social construct, it's just a commonly held social construct. There are some biological/ psychological factors that come into play. The first being habit/ routine. During a work day, people typically prefer something easy, and quick to make, such as toast. But on there off days, they still eat toast, not because it's quick and easy, but because it's a routine. The second factor being dependence. A lot of people drink coffee or tea every morning, as the caffeine helps them through the day, but as their body builds a dependency on caffeine, it becomes more biological and less practical. ", "breafast food is quick and easy, but its mostly arbitrary.  by todays standards, hashbrowns, pancakes, bacon require a lot of dicking around, but compared to standard dinner fare of the farm days (think pot roast, turkey dinners, etc.) they are much quicker and easier.  \n\nIn south america, eggs are common any time of day.  One of my favorites is steak, french fries, fried onions, and fried eggs.  Another one is mashed potatoes (or rice), hotdogs (no bread, just the dogs) and fried eggs.  Or spaghetti with tomato sauce and eggs as the protein.  ", "Imagine you are are a preindustrial farmer.   You get up before dawn, toil in the field all day, then go back home when it gets dark.\n\nFor breakfast, you want something hot that will give you a lot of energy, but can be prepared quickly.\n\nFor lunch, you want a cold meal you can take with you and eat when you get hungry.\n\nFor dinner, you have time between sunset and bedtime, so you can take a little longer, and have something nice while socializing with friends and family.\n\nThe pattern of necessity has become ingrained in our culture, so we consider certain foods to be appropriate for certain meal, long after the original reasons were forgotten.", "Nutritional requirements don't have a significant impact because what you crave depends almost entirely upon where you were brought up. What might seem like a normal breakfast in the US would seem rather strange in other parts of the world, and vice versa. \n\nThe first point in this cracked article offers a very relevant example about the history of bacon as a breakfast food in America -- _URL_0_", "It's entirely a social construct. Outside of the West, people eat all kinds of things for breakfast.", "It's mostly a social construct.  There is some evidence to indicate that your body wants particularly to digest sugars in the morning since it goes straight to the brain and makes it more active and awake, but different cultures approach breakfast different than others.  My experience in Japan (where I've worked once) and Korea (where my wife's family lives) where there are no specifically observed breakfast foods changed my perspective on eating and made me more open not only to different kinds of foods at different times of the day--but just flat out to be more open to food in general.", "From a nutritional perspective there's little benefit to eating certain nutritional groups at specific times.\n\nBut, the (now considered wrong) scientific beliefs of the 80s and 90s were that carbohydrates should be mostly eaten earlier in the day.\n\nThe main reasons for eating specific foods at specific times relate to how long you have to prepare things. I love frozen lasagna in the morning as it's quick and easy to prepare, but prior to microwaves becoming common in the early 90s, you wouldn't have considered eating that at breakfast.", "I think it's social construct. I say this because Japanese omelettes aren't really breakfast foods in Japan, while in the west, eggs/omelettes are a staple breakfast item. I mean, they do sometimes, but egg is more like a side-dish and decoration type thing in a lot of recipes. However, things like Miso soup, natto, pickled plums, etc. are part of Japanese breakfast. They kind of mix and match everything throughout the day, really.\n\nPretty much, /u/kouhoutek nailed it though. Quick food typically for breakfast, food that can last a while and stuff for lunch, and then dinner usually takes the longest to cook."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.cracked.com/article_19833_the-7-sneakiest-ways-corporations-manipulated-human-behavior.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1cs35x", "title": "What would happen if a baby from birth was kept in a sound proof room with white walls and was fed 3 times a day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cs35x/what_would_happen_if_a_baby_from_birth_was_kept/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9jfo91", "c9jgt88"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Probably something similar to [this](_URL_1_).\n\n_URL_0_ if you're interested. Pretty fucked up what happened to her.", "While the abuses in Romania orphanages were not nearly as bad as those suffered by Genie, the orphans were subject to serious psychological deprivations.  See: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmdycJQi4QA", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child\\)"], ["http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/romanian_orphans_investigation.html"]]}
{"q_id": "7c0lcl", "title": "why are there such drastic differences in salaries between different countries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7c0lcl/eli5_why_are_there_such_drastic_differences_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dpmc0bw", "dpmf1xr", "dpmgrsb", "dpmip5l", "dpmj1sx", "dpmljul", "dpmpndy", "dpn0x1h"], "score": [7, 74, 21, 5, 5, 3, 11, 2], "text": ["No. 1 reason is difference in productivity. If a person in Japan can make 10 goods per hour vs 5 goods per hour in Poland, his wage, everything else held constant, will be double in Japan. Productivity is influenced by almost all key country characteristics, say:\n\nPolitical stability\n\nLevel of technology as used by companies/govt\n\nSocial capital (eg can you trust in your fellow human beings around you)\n\nWeather\n\nIndustry development in country\n\nCulture\n\nQuality of institutions\n\nSo even if there is perfect human capital mobility and perfect movement of goods (large assumptions), these will not make a person more productive on their own, so the same person could get a different wage in different countries for same type of job.", "I'm going to avoid discussing service industries, because they are drastically different and less subject to the global market (You can't work construction in Detroit and Munich on the same day)\n\nI'm mostly talking tech. \n\nThe biggest driver of disparity in tech jobs is cost of living. If it costs 2000 a month to live in Boston, and 200 a month to live in India, then salaries will reflect that. \n\nCompanies aren't in the business of lowering profits to give employees extra spending money. ", "The companies working in this environments have different budget and different workforce demand when employing.  \nIf you seek to hire new people you have to offer a salary that will attract them. In Germany this means offering much more than in Poland.  \nAs for why the Polish companies don't offer more? Same as anyone else, they won't unless forced to and then you have to consider how much revenue they have and how much they can afford.  ", "Every company pays every employee (maybe excluding CEO's and other top figures) as little as they can get away while keeping that employee.\n\nIn some countries that is more, in some countries that is less.\n\nit's generally connected to the cost of living. ", "CMIIW but it boils down to how big and developed a country is. It goes back to their GDP which in terms reflect their spending patterns which is affected by tha maturity of market, technology, tax, FP, etc etc\n\nFor example: a mcdonald staff in lower gdp country will have lower salary than those in well developed country. This is because the people can only buy McDonald's food at a certain price, any higher would make it too expensive hence no people buy them. That's why there is an index for that(big mac index)\n\nYou just have to think all the way through.\n\nAn example with $\n\nIf you have a 1 staff McDonald's\n\nIf you sell 1000$ worth of big macs monthly you can only pay salaries so much to have a margin.\nYou wouldn't be able to give your employee 1500$ a month because then your cost will be higher.\n\nAnd at the same time you couldn't just put the price up because no people would buy them if they're too expensive. ", "I think the real question here is \"Why are some countries developed more than others?\" The other answers do a good job of explaining why high development gives higher wages (High development means a lot of labor is far more productive, and therefore more expensive. This then trickles into jobs that aren't dependent on development, because (a) more money in the local economy and (b) you have to pay workers comparably or they change fields) but none really explain why some countries are more developed than others. \n\nThis is a major question in macroeconomics, but there are a few theories / causes. One of the accepted theories explaining this difference is called \"premature de-industrialization\" [1]. Normally, a developing country moves from a largely farm-based economy to one built on manufacturing. Manufacturing is a good way to develop a strong middle class, as it's both high paying and relatively low skilled. As manufacturing gets more efficient with better technology, though, the number of manufacturing jobs required to make a certain number of goods goes down. This allows people to move into service jobs without decreasing the total quantity of manufactured goods. Finally, the higher standard of living achieved during the shift to a manufacturing economy allows people to invest in education, which further boosts innovation and growth. \n\nThis process has gone wrong in the third world. Because developed countries have already developed a strong manufacturing sector, especially highly automated or high skill manufacturing, a newly developing country cannot compete. This forces the country to either compete in very low skilled manufacturing (via sweatshops) that pays workers very poorly to compete with the higher technology of the 1st world, or shift into a service-based economy without the strong manufacturing middle class to support it.\n\nAnother compelling theory is one of institutions [2]. This theory suggests that countries with good institutions see high economic growth, which in turn supports the very institutions that created it. For example, developed countries usually have democratic governments that strongly defend civil liberties and personal property. They also have a strong financial sector that allows for investment, which is crucial to growth. If a company cannot sell shares to raise money or even take out a loan, it's very difficult for that company to expand. At an individual level, the ability to take out loans allows people to buy houses and cars or invest in education. Finally, a well-developed country has a strong education system, with secondary and post-secondary schools creating a much more skilled workforce. These institutions often depend on a strong economy, but are also necessary to maintain one. \n\nFinally, no comparison would be complete without at least a passing glance at colonialism [3]. Colonialism, especially in Africa, allowed for the direct exportation of low-skilled labor from underdeveloped countries to more developed countries. (Remember premature de-industrialization? Imagine that, enforced with guns.) This obviously hindered the growth of African nations and increased the growth of nations that owned the slaves. Furthermore, colonial governments were not usually set up as democracies with the native's best interests at heart. A government designed to export wealth to the colonial power is not one that will foster the strong institutions needed for growth.\n\nAs evidence for this, consider Singapore and Hong Kong. Both were colonies of the British Empire, but the lack of natural resources meant that they were more useful to the British as trade hubs. Thus, no real exportation of slaves, and they founded strong financial institutions and a framework for democracy. 200 years later, they're still very prosperous, while many former colonies in Africa are not.\n\nThere are of course more reasons (Malthusian traps, initial factor endowments, regional cohesion, capital accumulation, etc), but this wall of text is a little beyond ELI5 already.\n\n\nSources:\n\n0: I'm avoiding macroeconomics homework by doing macroeconomics on reddit.\n\n1: Rodrik, Dani. \u201cPremature Deindustrialization.\u201d Journal of Economic Growth, 2015\n\n2: Glaeser, Edward, et al. \u201cDo Institutions Cause Growth?\u201d Journal of Economic Growth, 2004\n\n3: Nunn, Nathan. \u201cThe Long-Term Effects of Africas Slave Trades.\u201d The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007", "Labor productivity mostly, highly productive countries tend to have high wages. Take a look at [chart 14](_URL_0_). 3-2% of long run real GDP and productivity countries that many developed nations experienced for the past 200 years compounds and adds up in the Long Run. ", "Productivity, not CoL determines wages. Wages are higher in America than in Mexico because workers in America are more productive than workers in Mexico. Productivity is a result of labor, capital, and efficiency. If you can make labor more abundant or more efficient, you can increase productivity. Same goes for capital. As productivity rises, wages rise, and this sets off a chain reaction in other sectors as well, such as housing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "2hzn5c", "title": "how does sleep deprivation actually kill you?", "selftext": "or does it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hzn5c/eli5_how_does_sleep_deprivation_actually_kill_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxg17o", "ckxg5sk", "ckxlp22", "ckxm5ug", "ckxm6h7", "ckxmrkw", "ckxmvvh", "ckxodml", "ckxpnhl", "ckxq8ft", "ckxqks3", "cky483h"], "score": [127, 37, 12, 8, 5, 9, 6, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["It's like stress, it doesn't kill you directly but it'll weaken your body in various ways so something else has an easier time killing you.", "It hasn't been shown to cause death in humans, although there is a prion disease, Fatal Familial Insomnia, which is a fatal illness that also presents with increasingly severe insomnia. \n\nLab tests with rats have shown a prolonged inability to sleep leading to an increased consumption and expenditure of energy and ultimately death. \n\nTo my knowledge, no human has demonstrably died of sleep deprivation. A quick search shows the current world record holder without sleep appears to be about 18 days, with 11 days being the longest scientifically monitored 'wakeful' period. ", "Wasn't there this one dude, who couldn't sleep because of a headwound or something? He hadn't sleept in years.", "IIRC sleep deprivation increases dopamine and/or serotonin levels to dangerous levels that typically kill you past a certain point. Don't quote me on it, I'm not even a real doctor.", "It probably can kill but to my knowledge no known case has been reported in humans. There was once a fairly cruel experiment where they put rats in very shallow water but deep enough to prevent them from falling asleep. They kept them in there until they died and later investigation it showed the had died of sepsis. It seems your body needs sleep to regulate its immune system so not sleeping for long periods of time can kill.", "Not much evidence of sleep deprivation killing.\n\nA lot of urban legend around \"this one radio stayed awake for more than a week and went crazy was fucked up for life with weird brain damage!\"  Well, **I** heard it.\n\nAs best I can tell, that was based on [Peter Tripp's 1959 charity stunt](_URL_0_) where he stayed awake for 201 hours.  He did hallucinate and show psychotic behavior, of course.  Wikipedia says he had the idea that he was an imposter of himself, but I can't find a source for how long that delusion persisted.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > However, people soon started to notice a change in Tripp\u2019s behaviour. He seemed angry and moody for no apparent reason and was involved in scandals that led to him eventually losing his job. A happily married man at the time, Peter Tripp went on to have four divorces. \n\nHis career never really did take off, but I see no indication of brain damage.  No mention of anything obvious like speech difficulties and nothing that really suggests personality changes.  There's a lot of reasons a person can turn into an asshole and fuck up his life.  But I can't find any SOURCED descriptions documenting this downfall into asshole-dom.  Or that he wasn't in fact an asshole before.\n\nHe didn't have a really strong career before that, and got involved in a \"payola\" scandal.  Hard to say if he was ever deeply talented or just a guy flailing in his career and pulled a desperate stunt.  His record was later surpassed- multiple times, actually- but no long-term ill effects are reported from those.  Tripp did diversify into other careers, but had 4 marriages end in divorce FWIW.  A lot of people in radio have serial divorces so that doesn't mean much.", "This is a great explanation of sleep deprivation effects..\n_URL_0_", "For understandable reasons, human clinical trials haven't been carried out and the extent of documentation on total sleep deprivation is on [Fatal Familial Insomnia](_URL_3_), which in itself is not actually a good gauge of the effects of severe insomnia, because severe insomnia here is a symptom of the neurodegenerative disease.\n\nThere have, however, been studies using animal experimental subjects :( in which total sleep deprivation is shown to directly cause death. But while the causation is established, the explanation is as of yet unknown - many studies have cut up [rodent](_URL_0_) and puppy brains and found debatable or differing results. So there's that.\n\nThere *are* a few studies on human - but we can't really force humans to stay awake till they drop dead, so they're held for shorter periods of time. The key finding is [an increase in stress levels and decrease in levels of growth hormone](_URL_2_), which works to manage general bodily health and immune system. If we did however deprive a poor soul of sleep for an extended period of time while keeping the poor soul alive in an extraordinarily sanitized environment, one would find that their brain structure would be altered gradually to a more [stress-sensitive state](_URL_1_), similar to what you'd find in a depressed person's brain.\n\nJudging from numerous animals we've deprived of sleep - yes, sleep deprivation would *probably* kill you. The likelihood is very high, at any rate. But as for the how, that's another matter. All we know right now is that the brain is functionally altered, but no one really has dared to venture very far into that (again, quite understandably).", "As someone who recently started a 60+ hour work week, I believe I will die via a car accident on my way to one of my jobs. But seriously, I miss my close friend sleep dearly. And my dog :( ", "As others have said, the life-limiting, terminal disease of 'Fatal Family Insomnia' sounds like one of the worst diseases ever. Worse than anything I could ever imagine. \n\nWhen my second child was born 2 years ago he had a habit of sleeping throughout the day and then waking up at 9pm and staying awake for most of the night.\n\nFor the first 5 or 6 months of his life I was surviving on just 1 hour of sleep per night. I went back to work when he was 6 weeks old so my work colleagues would ask how I coped. My only answer was that 1 hour was better than nothing and I meant it. \n\nBut sleep deprivation to me must be the worst torture ever. Apart from agonising pain or emotional pain I really can't think of anything worse.", "NPR just did a piece on a bit of research that seeks to answer your question.  It's only 4 min long and [you can listen to it here.](_URL_0_).  \n\nEssentially it boils down to the fact that the cells in your brain produce [Beta Amyloid](_URL_1_) which is a key cause of  dementia and alzheimers.  When you sleep your body can use energy as it circulates cerebro-spinal fluid around your brain, sweeping away the beta amyloid which would otherwise turn to the sticky plaques on your brain that lead to dementia, and potentially further to death.", "Not a medical professional here, but I'm pretty sure sleep apnea was slowly killing me. A couple years ago I was diagnosed. I now have a CPAP machine, A Continuos Positive Air Pressure machine that basically uses a small turbine blowing air through a hose into a strap-on mask to keep your airway somewhat inflated and clear. It's really tough to get used to the machine, and I almost gave up. I went through two sleep studies. When I finally got used to it, I had so much extra energy that I was running around like I was on crack for a week.\n\nMy sleep apnea history goes back at least twenty years, I was always the guy accused of snoring loud, but as a typical guy I ignored it. Sleep apnea is associated with obesity and I am a bigger guy, but mine seems to have more to do with a narrow throat structure, according to the ear nose and throat doc I consulted along the way. I am 6-1, 230 lb. now, I was 250 at my largest and fat as hell compared to how I am now, at least five inches larger in the waist because a lot less of me was muscle. But, I also had this problem in my mid twenties when I only weighed 170 lb. Things got worse and worse, until I couldn't drive two hours without fearing that I would nod off at the wheel, then I got a bit scared. I was always sleepy, I could take a nap any time, but unless I knocked back a couple of drinks, I still might not be  able to fall asleep, because as soon as my body started relaxing, I would start choking out and come awake. The telemetry on me logged something approaching sixty \"episodes\" per hour at times. What was going on in my throat was pretty violent, and it was not unusual for me to wake up after a bad night feeling like I had strep throat. This swelling would just snowball and make the next night even worse. Nowadays, I can forget the machine here and there for a night or two and still get a decent sleep because my throat starts out healthy. My buddy just spent the night on my couch, and when I asked him what I sounded like during a nap after some running around, he said it was just normal snoring (without the machine) and not the obnoxious hell I was experiencing before.\n\nI can only tell you my opinion about how other things changed for me, because I am only relating my own experience. That being said, I do this because even going through the diagnosis, my HMO did very little to educate me, and I was pretty much on my own. What I know/believe is this: you body has stuff to do while you are asleep. Stuff like repairing the day's damage, digesting dinner, letting your immune system work on things, probably other things I'm not aware of. When you don't sleep right, none of this stuff happens right either. I had constant digestion problems, frequent trips to the bathroom which made air travel a bit nervous and uncomfortable. Think about experiencing the urge to go in a long security line. Also I had nearly constant heartburn. I sure as hell rarely had the energy to work out, so I blossomed in weight. My blood pressure sucked, my cholesterol sucked, etcetera, etcetera.\n\nThe device hasn't been my only lifestyle change, but it was the change that made the others possible. These days, my tummy is much better in all regards, I get sick less often, I have a highly active dog who gets frequent long hikes at the river. BTW, now that I do all that hiking on uneven terrain, my tendency to twist my ankles is gone. I have lost weight, gained muscle, I have the energy for active hobbies, and everything is better. Yes, now I depend on a medical device for proper sleep, but I think it's less invasive than accomplishing my goal by getting cut on or by putting a chemical into my body.\n\nTL;DR: Sleep apnea will frikkin kill you. It creates a snowball of bad that feeds upon itself and makes things worser more fasterer. Now that I have conquered sleep apnea, the snowball is rolling the other way and I am in far better shape at 46 than I was at 38. If you are the guy who snores loud and is tired all the time, get that shit checked out, PLEASE."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tripp", "http://psychoblog12.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/sleep-deprivation-a-case-study/"], ["http://www.hotelcontractbeds.co.uk/sleep-deprivation/"], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7546317", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18222099", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10468992", "http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/6/774.full"], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/18/236211811/brains-sweep-themselves-clean-of-toxins-during-sleep", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_amyloid"], []]}
{"q_id": "emn3h6", "title": "Why didn't the Achaemenid Persian armies use the Constantinople area of modern Turkey instead of the Dardanelles to cross to Europe in 480 or 490 BC when invading? It seems like a much easier crossing looking at maps..", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/emn3h6/why_didnt_the_achaemenid_persian_armies_use_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fe8vbnb"], "score": [5], "text": ["You pose a reasonable, if ultimately unanswerable, question here. (I am going to skip past Darius' campaign of 480 that ended at Marathon because that was a naval expedition that did not cross the Bosporus.) Xerxes' expedition was not the first Persian campaign into Europe and Herodotus reports that when Darius launched his campaign against the Scythians (the date is disputed, perhaps 514/513 BCE), his forces bridged the Hellespont near Chalcedon (4.85), precisely in the area you are talking about.  \n\n\nThe Persians had also maintained a presence in the Balkans in the intervening years, so the strategic planners of Xerxes' invasion a generation would have been aware that they could build a bridge further north. So why not do that? For one, the location they chose may have been equally, if not better suited for staging and then crossing with a larger army (remember that the invasion of 480 was significantly larger than those that came before). Herodotus specifically says that one of the attractive features of this spot was a broad headland on the European side where they chose to cross. Further, it may be that they chose to take the shortest route all things being equal, perhaps with an eye toward the logistical challenge of keeping the army supplied. When Darius took his expedition to Europe he was taking his army north into Scythia, so his bridge crossed in the north. On his return trip, Darius marched his army to the Chersonese near Sestus (i.e. near this same headland) and crossed with his ships (Herodotus 4.143). Similarly, when Alexander the Great crossed directly into the Troad en route to his invasion of Persia, he likewise used this area on the Chersonese rather than going further north (Arrian 1.11, Diodorus Siculus 17.17, cf. Donald Engels, *Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army*).\n\nIn sum, we are not given much to work with about why they chose to cross at a particular spot. We don't know, for instance, how much the different currents through the Dardanelles contributed to the decision (maybe) or whether Xerxes was concerned about possible opposition from the Byzantines (probably not, but possible), but if the location further to the north was enough easier to justify going further out of the way then they likely would have done so since they had  made crossings at both locations already in the past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4iym9s", "title": "Krebs Cycle: Where does the extra oxygen come from in the oxaloacetase+Acetyl CoA-- > Citrate step?", "selftext": "I am in a high school biology class, and I was studying the krebs cycle specifically tracing the oxygen through the cycle; in my textbook the diagram shows acetyl coA donating one oxygen to Oxaloacetate, which already has five, and then becoming Citrate, which has 7. Where is this mystery extra oxygen coming from? What am I missing?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4iym9s/krebs_cycle_where_does_the_extra_oxygen_come_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d32dmyz", "d32dr3y"], "score": [17, 4], "text": ["Good catch - this step in the process is catalyzed by the [Citrate synthase enzyme](_URL_1_).  While enzymatic reactions are more complex and beyond the scope of your question, it is essentially an [Aldol Condensation](_URL_0_).  Which is one of the more painful common reactions that most first year O-chem students will be forced to memorize.  But to answer your question - the extra O comes from H20.  So the the full reaction is more like \n\nacetyl-CoA + oxaloacetate + H2O \u2192 citrate + CoA-SH\n\nWhich is another thing you'll notice in Biochemistry compared to Gen Chem or some O-Chem - in those fields it is important to pay strict attention to stoichiometry and tracking every atom and molecule, in Biochem you can assume every reaction is taking place in water, so H+, -OH, and H20 are freely available and aren't tracked as closely.", "Like you said, one of the oxygens comes from the acetate group. The other comes from a water molecule. \n\nThe reaction, catalysed by citrate synthase, is a multi-step reaction, [as seen here.] (_URL_1_) As you can see, in that last step a water molecule is added and the CoA is released. The actual mechanism here is slightly more involved, whereby a molecule of water loses one of its protons, leaving behind a negatively charged OH^- which has a lone pair of electrons that attacks the carbonyl group of the intermediate and causes CoA to be released. The OH is then added onto the molecule and citrate is formed. \n\nTo simplify it a bit, [this diagram](_URL_0_) nicely shows where each of the two extra oxygen atoms come from by having them as different colours. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldol_condensation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrate_synthase"], ["http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/cronk/biochem/images/citrate_synthase_rxn.gif", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Citrate_Synthase_Mechanism_Drew_Beck_revised_OH.png/1920px-Citrate_Synthase_Mechanism_Drew_Beck_revised_OH.png"]]}
{"q_id": "942ka0", "title": "Is there any substantial environmental damage from acquiring the materials necessary to make solar panels, wind turbines, or hydroelectric dams?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/942ka0/is_there_any_substantial_environmental_damage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3i06m5", "e3i1ktp", "e3ictwv"], "score": [9, 8, 2], "text": ["They take quite a lot of energy and raw materials to make.  They aren't cheap.\n\nWith the case of hydroelectric, the \"substantial environmental damage\" isn't so much the result of acquiring the materials but the negative effects of the dam itself.  The worst of these is a build up of sediment that would otherwise be flushed downstream, which then decomposes to release methane, which is a major greenhouse gas.  A lot of hydroelectric projects have ended up causing more environmental damage than they prevent.", "Speaking very generally, any mining or earthworks projects will cause environmental disruption and damage to the existing conditions. Of the three you listed one, hydroelectric is what I would consider the most different. But first I want to address solar panels and wind turbines. Just supposing that the materials are extracted from the ground in a manner that produces no harmful by-products the steel to make the turbines and the silicon to make the solar panels will need to be dug up from deposits in the ground. Often refining mined materials results in large amounts of overburden (useless soil and rock above the material) and tailings (rock extracted with and then separated from ore/minerals on the surface). That alone constitutes a significant amount of damage as often the material is just left in waste piles and the ground can subside due to extensive excavations. Modern mining techniques, are meant to mitigate a lot of these problems, by reducing polluted rainwater through the waste rock and advanced geological analysis to prevent structural issues. \n\nHydroelectric dams, I would say stand alone, even though they tend to be a major investment of materials such as concrete (a major source of CO2 emissions) an extracted minerals, it tends to pale in comparison to the direct local effects of water retention. Hydroelectric power is generated due to the weight of water under gravity and by exploiting that by forcing water to move through an electric turbine. In general it means that we're stealing a bit of the water's potential energy as it flows toward the ocean, but the problem is that we convert it to kinetic energy to extract it. So what happens when you install a dam is not only that the upstream side is flooded, destroying the ecosystems for an area determined by the elevation of the water (To appreciate this better I suggest looking at [FEMA flood maps](_URL_1_) ) But also a potential washout of the downstream where the flow rates can be at the mercy of the elements as much as during natural flows. The difference is that if there is a huge flood wave heading towards a full reservoir for the most part the water they are releasing from the dam will be fast and furious due to the static water level from the top. Just look a the damage caused at the [Oroville spillway] (_URL_0_) last year. \n\nA properly designed, operated, and maintained hydroelectric dam should never cause catastrophic damage to humans, their property, or the environment in that order so sometimes the environment can take the short end of the stick. The flip side is that in North America, hydroelectric power is developed enough to a point that we are taking a good look at what is necessary to operate these facilities in the optimal way and so that the environment is able to thrive. This is through things such as fish lifts and controlling flows timed with historical seasonal flows. There is a lot more to this, not to sound tired but *water is life* so it tends to be a very nuanced issue with problems ever cropping up. What I know I neglected to mention are issues with agricultural needs balanced with population needs and the every marginalized environment but there is sure to be more to discuss. If it wasn't already obvious I am most knowledgeable about water resources, so I'll stand behind those details the most.", "Just to illustrate the impact one particular hydroelectric dam project can have on the environment, consider the Three Gorges Dam in China:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe adverse impact of other hydroelectric dam projects differ only in the matter of scale and degree."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Oroville_dam_spillway_2017-02-11.jpg", "https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home"], ["https://www.businessinsider.com/three-gorges-dam-south-to-north-water-diverson-project-china-2010-7#the-three-gorges-dam-cost-37-billion-to-build-1"]]}
{"q_id": "4dw5cr", "title": "what stops insurgents from just mortering fobs all day and night?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dw5cr/eli5_what_stops_insurgents_from_just_mortering/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1utkkq", "d1utpd6", "d1utqo7", "d1utx7y", "d1uw1wf"], "score": [5, 21, 4, 13, 2], "text": ["We have mortars too. And a lot of other military equipment. If insurgents set up shop and start lobbing shells we're going to find them pretty quickly and shoot back. And we're a lot more accurate than they are.", "Firstly, materials. They don't have that kind of munition stockpiles. Secondly, retaliation. Congrats, you're shelling a FOB 24-7. You've now pissed off the entire military force behind it even more royally than before. Air support is a given. Possibly artillery. You getting flanked is also likely. They will light up your world like the motherfucking sun if you shell an FOB. You're stationary when you're attacking, so you're a sitting duck, and you're in the crosshairs of a real military power, not other guys with AKs. Missiles, gun runs, artillery, surprise attacks, all likely to happen to you. When you're stationary in an attack, you can be traced. It can be calculated where that mortar is being launched from. It can be found where that gunfire is coming from. And then you're at the wrong end of a Hellfire Missile. Have fun with that.", "The short answer is not a lot, just efficiency. \n\nThe main problem is the resources to do this. During our times in Iraq/Afgan mortar attacks on bases where not uncommon. \n\nHowever, it is not viable for them to set up a huge mortar camp, and it would quickly be seized and the operators captured and killed and the resources lost. \n\nBecause of this, it tends to be small groups with limited resource hit and run when they can do it safely. Guerilla warfare like this is based on the efficiency of picking off the odd person and being very difficult to retaliate agasint. ", "The key is that the insurgents pop out, make their attack, and then melt away into the background noise of daily life in Iraq. If they stay anywhere or do the same thing for too long, the US forces can find them, kill or capture them, and destroy their stockpiles. Insurgents do no have the infrastructure of the WWI German army, where they can just churn out thousands of rounds, either.\n\nIn my experience, the enemy would set up shop somewhere, maybe the back of a truck, maybe in their front yard, sometimes in the middle of a busy intersection, and walk in 5-10 rounds on our compound.\n\nThen, they disappear. Mortar system breaks down, truck drives off, gets moved to another location. I wasn't in the S-2 but from what they said, they had radar coverage over Mosul that almost immediately generated a point of origin (called a POO - no joke). They could have gotten counter battery fire back there incredibly fast, but usually didn't, as the collateral damage wasn't seen as worth it.\n\nGet in, hit as well as you can, disappear. Distribute your supplies so you don't lose them all in one sweep. Don't let anyone pin you down, because in a set-piece battle, you lose to the US 100% of the time. ", "It seems to me that if someone fires mortars, they're saying \"hey everybody, I'm right over here\". That would make them an easy target for airstrikes or whatever if they stay in one place for too long."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "17y6vc", "title": "What is the economic theory behind \"one price for all sizes\" regarding coffee sales. ", "selftext": "Do customers trend towards larger sizes? Is the one price for a predicted average volume sale? \n\n\nIt's an interesting sales tactic and I was wondering if any sales or economic research existed on the topic.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17y6vc/what_is_the_economic_theory_behind_one_price_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c89whe4", "c89xqun"], "score": [9, 12], "text": ["When I worked in a small cafe, I asked my boss why it was worth it to brew an entire cup of coffee for only one cup. \n\nThe amount of coffee grinds used for a pot of coffee, including water and energy, is significantly less than the cost that single cup is being sold for ($1.35 for a small). In fact, the cup and lid costs more than the coffee contained at roughly 20 cents per cup. ", "To the business selling the cup of coffee, the cost of the actual cup (paper or styrofoam) is normally much higher than the contents of the cup themselves.  The additional cost of brewing a pot of coffee or drawing a cup of soda is nominal.\n\n    Cup:     $0.15\n    Lid:     $0.03\n    Soda:  $0.12 \n      --------------\n    Total    $0.30\n    Price    $1.50 (conservative)\n    Profit   $1.20\n\nThis is also why \"free refills\" on soda are so common - once you have bought the cup, you'd have to get around 130 refills before the restaurant takes a loss.\n\nNow, obviously there's lots of overhead to a business; Rent, power, cleaning kids' boogers from under the railing, initial purchase of coffee/soda equipment, etc.   However, drinks are generally one of the items with the highest gross profit margin.\n\nSee [PDC's \"Costing Out Soda\"](_URL_0_) (PDC is a foodservice product distributor).  The same generally applies to coffee, although straws are not needed.   Note that 'specialty coffee' generally has more labor cost, higher setup cost, and some additional materials cost (milk, syrups, etc) but the gross profit margins are also fairly high.  Simple brewed coffee is similar in cost to soda.\n    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.pdco.com/node/88289"]]}
{"q_id": "ed5m4q", "title": "Does the temperature of a spicy food item affect it\u2019s spicyness? For example, Would freezing a chilli make it more tolerable?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ed5m4q/does_the_temperature_of_a_spicy_food_item_affect/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fbhfs5v", "fbhg7sd"], "score": [23, 6], "text": ["Judging by a chemical standpoint. No. The capsacin stays the same along with most other flavonoids. ALTHOUGH, the low heat constricts the blood vessels in your tongue lowering the sensitivity in your tastebuds and other nerve cells. So if you kept eating cold stuff effectively it would not be as intense.", "I was eating some Cape Cod chips Jalapeno chips... and my daughter, who was maybe 2 at the time, kept asking for a chip and asking for a chip.... finally i gave her one.... and she made a face \"spicy!\"\nI said \"i told you they were hot\"\n\nShe took another one and blew on it....\n\nIt never got less spicy though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "24n5vb", "title": "why is it legal to bet on horse races, but illegal to bet on sports?", "selftext": "Watching clips of the Kentucky Derby - they show, and even promote, betting and odds on the horses.  Why/how is this acceptable and different than other sports, where I hear about people being fined for betting?  Is it horses vs humans, or something more complicated?  Thanks!\n\n**edit:** Okay, so I guess there isn't actually a simple answer.  I'm speaking in terms of the U.S, I understand that other countries have unique laws on the matter - hell, each STATE here has a unique view on the matter, from the sound of it.  I appreciate you all taking the time to *try* and give a simple explanation to a complex situation.  I appreciate the effort.  *I'm still confused.*", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24n5vb/eli5_why_is_it_legal_to_bet_on_horse_races_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch8qmwk", "ch8qo4u", "ch8qtl9", "ch8rluh", "ch8rzn2", "ch8ssby", "ch8vjwr", "ch8y9cq", "ch8z4gx", "ch8zk30"], "score": [6, 19, 46, 2, 29, 29, 6, 38, 4, 2], "text": ["It may be because a human competitor can be made aware of a bet placed on him or his team and alter his performance accordingly; e.g. a boxer may place a large wager against himself and then throw the fight on purpose. It isn't fair to other betters.", "It's not. At least not everywhere. Nevada allows betting on any/all races. ", "Here in the UK you can almost bet on anything, be it sports, racing, politics, or whatever. Most every street in any city that has shops in will have one where you can go in and place a bet (providing you are over 18)", "it's not, actually. the thing is that betting is something the government keeps really close tabs on.\n\nbecoming an establishment that facilitates gambling is a rather involved process. in truth, what is illegal is the damn booky and supporting him.", "*In some US states", "Where the hell is it illegal to bet on sports??", "Even where it's allowed in the US, there's a difference between horse/dog racing and sports betting:\n\n* Horse racing is parimutuel, which means you're betting against other bettors.  Yes, the house takes a cut, but they're not backing the bet.\n* My US view of British betting is that you're betting \"against the house\", i.e., if the long shot wins the bookie covers it.  (Correct?)\n\nBut, I don't know if that's actually a factor in your question.", "Legal U.S. horse racing is based on a [parimutuel](_URL_0_) system. Basically, any winners are paid from the entire betting pool with the track getting a small cut. The only people who gain or lose are the bettors, eliminating the risk of a \"house\" trying to influence the outcome of the event. This is why the odds change rapidly up to the start of a race.\n\nedit- fixed link", "Ok never created an account but saw this on front page. I'm a  horse racing nut and did a paper in law school on a proposed fed take over of the sport back when steroids were a hot topic. (even though use was low and handled fairly well by states, a couple congressmen just wanted attention but that's a whole different can of worms)  Anyway here goes.\n \nWhile its not purely arbitrary, it kinda is.\n\nHorse racing is one of the first sports dating back to biblical times when betting was permitted on games that develop skills of war, the same logic was adopted by the British and various other European governments permitting betting on these types of games. While cheating in the sport did occur, participants in the early times often came from nobility (it is the sport of kings after all) and didn't risk soiling their good name. This pared with the para-mutual type of betting (against other players not the house) had the effect of keeping corruption in the sport fairly low. As corruption did develop groups made up of owners jockeys and trainers developed to help maintain integrity in the sport. \n\nRacing and betting on it in the u.s. was established before we were even a nation by various colonial governors aptd. by the British who viewed racing as a great source of entertainment. Since this time while the sport by no means has an absolutely clean record of purity, states interest in the sport who helped establish it and run it, paired with groups such as the jockeys club did a good enough job policing the sport internally.\n\nSo when other sports without long traditions of gaming went though scandals, congress under the guise of morality banned betting across state lines to \"protect\" citizens and maintain those sports integrity as they believed that they could not police their own. The tradition of gaming on racing, current state involvement, and proven ability to police itself, however allowed passage of the interstate horse racing act permitting states to determine their own rules when it came to horse racing.  \n\nWhile personally I believe that states could have made the same determination for all sports congress reacting to things such as the black socks believed that other sports were too corrupt to even permit states to allow their citizens to gamble on them.", "I live in DC where all betting is illegal.  Maryland however has a sizable horse racing industry, so you can simply walk across the street into Maryland and place a bet by phone there and it's perfectly legal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hfuuc", "title": "why don't babies have wrinkly skin when they are born, considering they spend 9 months in fluids?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hfuuc/eli5_why_dont_babies_have_wrinkly_skin_when_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["catwzxh", "caty09o", "catyhly", "catyk08", "catyrva", "cau0pa0", "cau57s3", "cau7l2d", "caubxdj"], "score": [16, 70, 587, 29, 5, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Water (or other liquids) don't cause skin to wrinkle, in general.  That's a reflex action limited to the palms of the hands, fingers, soles of the feet, and toes.  It's quite possible that babies do come out wrinkled in those areas.  I'm not sure, and google isn't helpful here.", "Like doc_daneeka said, wrinkled skin is cause by a central nervous system response. It's been known for decades that people with nerve damage in the limbs don't get wrinkled skin from exposure to fluid. That being said, my best guess would be that infants have yet to develop that particular response to the external stimuli. Again, only speculation. ", "\"Vernix caseosa, also known as\u00a0vernix, is the waxy or\u00a0cheese-like white substance found coating the\u00a0skin\u00a0of newborn human babies. Vernix starts developing on the baby in the womb around 18 weeks into pregnancy.\"\n- _URL_0_\nor \"What's that cheesy stuff that's all over newborn babies?\"", "From what I recall/was told, babies have a special secretion on their skin while that protects the skin from becoming wrinkled or extra dry.  According to my parents, I was born rather late (4ish weeks due to my first-time mom messing up the \"when was your last period\" question) and that coating of secretion had started to wear off.  After I was born I had horribly dry skin, and developed cracks in my skin at wrists, ankles, and under my toes. At least, this is what some peds doc told my parents who then told me at some point...... ", "Wrinkles aren't caused by fluid balance, osmosis, or any such thing.  Wrinkles occur as a evolutionary trait that helped humans grip things better when in water - thus why our palms and bottom of our feet get wrinkly.  Those parts get wrinkled to increase friction when in water.  It's not about being in a fluid itself.  The human body when in a womb knows it has no biological need at the time for increased grip.", "While we're on the topic of child birth, how can a baby survive in the womb without oxygen?  May seem like a dumb question but I don't get how a baby can survive in fluid for 9 months then in a second be surrounded by oxygen.", "More of an /r/askscience question no?", "Our first kid came 12 days late and he was definitely wrinkled. Then over the next three weeks most of his body began flaking/peeling skin.... Yum.", "This thread is gross."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernix_caseosa"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2bqb5a", "title": "are there any actual laws against false advertisement?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bqb5a/eli5_are_there_any_actual_laws_against_false/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj7udns", "cj7ufes", "cj7uwfi", "cj7v0ww", "cj85059", "cj8fkss"], "score": [5, 10, 3, 7, 3, 2], "text": ["Yes, but they have to be blatantly false (like \"Eating FuckPops\u2122 will cure cancer!\"). ", "Yes. In the US at least there are laws against false advertisement. However, it should be noted that there are all sorts of loopholes which can be abused. A statement must be verifiably false in order to be a problem, so vague statements like \"120% more refreshing\" or things of that nature aren't actually illegal. ", "Making untrue claims for profit is a form of fraud, what it is an advertisement or not.", "If an ad makes a specific claim, it must be verifiably true or the company can get fined or, more likely, sued for damages.\n\nTo get around this, claims are usually made in particular ways that avoid saying anything. Have you seen that commercial for HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD? The ad was kind of brilliant because it associated the product with having a helpful effect, but NEVER ACTUALLY SAID IT. The product was just wax. But, if you provide elaborate instructions for using a thing, then in another place talk about something, the consumer will make a connection but legally one was never made.\n\nIf I say, \"take this pill it will cure your cold\" that would get me in trouble.\n\nIf I say, \"Take this pill with a glass of water. You can use it when you have a cold\"  I can get away with it because while the two ideas appear in the same place, I haven't claimed any curative properties. That is why products like Emergen-C can get away with marketing their products while having zero actual effect.", "Yes. In 1997, Papa John's was sued by Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut claimed that better ingredients, contrary to Papa John's slogan, did not constitute better pizza. Pizza Hut was successful in their lawsuit, but Papa John's appealed and won. The court still agreed that better ingredients did not necessarily make a better pizza, but Pizza Hut failed to demonstrate a violation of the Lanham Act - they couldn't prove that Papa John's false slogan led to increased sales. \n\n**TL;DR: Usually, the claim of false advertisement must be backed up by evidence proving that the lies led to increased sales**", "New York State General Business Law 350: \"False advertising in the conduct of any  business,  trade or commerce or in the furnishing of any service in this state is hereby declared unlawful.\" and 350-a: \"The term \"false advertising\" means advertising, including  labeling,  of  a  commodity,  or  of  the  kind, character,  terms  or  conditions  of any employment opportunity if such advertising is misleading in a material respect. In determining  whether any  advertising is misleading, there shall be taken into account (among other things) not only representations made by statement, word,  design, device,  sound  or any combination thereof, but also the extent to which the advertising fails to reveal facts material  in  the  light  of  such representations with respect to the commodity or employment to which the advertising   relates   under   the   conditions   prescribed   in  said advertisement, or under such conditions as are customary or  usual.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1n97ow", "title": "how do shampoo and conditioner work?", "selftext": "I was under the impression that hair was just dead cells. Do shampoo and conditioner actually have and affect on the cells? How do shampoo and conditioner differ in formula/purpose? Are some shampoos better than others or is it just marketing?\n\nAnybody have any insight that isn't just what the shampoo companies themselves say?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n97ow/eli5_how_do_shampoo_and_conditioner_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccgifbj", "ccgifzw", "ccgivf3", "ccgk6i6", "ccgkalg", "ccglw47", "ccgr03b", "ccgs0bi"], "score": [7, 29, 2, 7, 207, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["Fast answer: Shampoo will give your hair a charge, see it as a static charge, but on a much smaller scale (like when you rub your hair on a balloon), making it fluffy (identical charge is repulsive). Conditioner is ment to neutralize it, making your hair much smoother and \"subdueable\".\nThat's a fast answer, someone might explain it better.", "hair is a protein filament, not dead cells. it's a waste product from hair follicles. the density and texture of hair causes dirt and oils to get stuck in it over time, and this promotes bacteria growth. shampoo is used to clean off those oils and dirts as well as disinfect your hair. additives can be used to make your hair smell nice. however, this also washes off good oils that keep your hair shiny and healthy by providing it with good nutrients, and can also dehydrate your hair which makes it hard and dry. that's where conditioner comes in. depending on the type of conditioner you use, the conditioner will put back in lost nutrients to make your hair strong. it also rehydrates your hair with some synthetic or natural oils to make it soft.\n\nedit: misspelled hair. god knows how that happened", "Is there an advantage to using shampoo, then conditioner, or just using one of the 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner bottles?", "[Which is better?](_URL_0_)", "If you tried to wash your hair with water, not all of the oil would leave. This is because oil and water do not mix together. When you add special chemicals called detergents, the chemicals that clean things, they can fix the problem. This is because a detergent has two ends. One end likes water and one end likes oil. So, all of the ends that like oil gather around the oil. The ends that like water stick out of the outside of the ball, and water can wash them away.\n\nAlso, did you ever notice how water stays in a pile when you spill it on a table? Water is attracted to itself. Chemicals called 'surfacants' help the water get through your hair more easily because they make the water like other things more than itself.\n\nThere are also chemicals added to keep the mixture together called emulsifiers.\n\nShampoo also has a lot of stuff in it that makes it pretty and fun to use. Some shampoos are shiny and you can't see through them. There are chemicals that do that too. Titanium dioxide is used to make it harder to see through things. It is even used in sunscreens because the sun can't get through to hurt your skin.\n\nBut sometimes,when you clean your hair with detergent, you get rid of the good oils as well as the bad oils. This makes the hair brittle and makes the hair want to stick together. Chemicals like silicone in conditioner cover hair. Two strands of hair would stick to each other, but two hairs covered in silicone are slippery to each other. \n\nOther chemicals can make a protein called keratin stronger in your hair. Like covering a broken brick wall in glue. There are also chemicals that add missing keratin to your hair like hydrolyzed proteins. It's like going over to a broken brick wall and putting bricks where there are bricks missing.\n\nDifferent shampoos use different chemicals to do different things. So the best shampoo for you may not be the best shampoo for other people.\n\nMarketing doesn't always tell the truth in a clear way. Like, if you broke a lamp and said 'it fell off of the shelf.' Technically, it did. But you bumped it causing it to fall. Marketing companies could say shampoo A cleans with chemical B. People think that means that chemical B cleans really well. But really, legally, it means that shampoo A cleans and shampoo A has chemical B. Sometimes, words are used to trick people on purpose.\n\nSo, some are better than others, but it sort of depends on what you like and what you need for your hair. A girl with lots of curly hair would use different shampoo and conditioner than a guy with short straight hair. The guy would have a lot of oil coming off of his scalp onto not a lot of hair so he could need more detergent. The girl with curly hair would be worried about her hair getting frizzy because of how curly it is, so she would want better conditioners that make her curls better. But that kind of conditioner would be a wasteful thing for the guy to buy.", "Oil builds up in hair, dirt and bacteria stick to oil.  Oil does not bind to water.  Shampoo binds to oil and water, lathering the hair binds the shampoo to the oil, rinsing it binds it to the water and rinses off all the oil.\n\nThis leaves relatively dry hair/scalp, and leaves the hair follicles at risk of damage.  Conditioner is mostly oils, and it is used to coat the hair with oil again to protect it and make it smooth.\n\nBasically the process is remove dirty oil, coat with clean oil.  And then there's a whole lot of intricate details, and different hair types and science beyond that which I don't have the details of.", "Simple answer, it doesn't work. It's not good to wash your hair every day or condition for that matter. Your body produces its own moisturizer and especially in your hair. If you had a car that produced wax that you could just buff in to make it shine, how much sense would it make to pay someone to scrub it off and reapply synthetic wax? I borrowed that last sentence from Adam Carolla but for me it's the truth. I'm a guy who has an average hair length(not shaved not shaggy) and I wash my hair about once or twice a week. I condition once or twice a year( mostly in the summer if I've been in a lot of chlorine) \n\nHuman beings have been around for thousands of years and this shampoo/conditioner craze has only been around for the last half century or so. \n\nTo sum up, not everyone needs to drown their skull in a stripping agent and then apply synthetic oils that your body already produces. Wash your hair when it gets dirty and leave it alone when it's not. Hot water every day will do just fine. ", "Follow up question, my gf gets mad when I use shampoo/condition 2 in 1 for \"body wash.\" Any reason that this would be a bad idea? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXQMoyhPNJA&amp;noredirect=1"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "a8rmg2", "title": "Why do MRI scans take a moderate amount of time to complete, while fMRI scans are able to function in near-continuous manner (i.e. on an order of seconds instead of hours)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a8rmg2/why_do_mri_scans_take_a_moderate_amount_of_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ece6857"], "score": [6], "text": ["I'm not exactly sure what you're asking here, but I'll try to explain to what I interpreted from your question.   \n\n\nFirst of all, while structural MRI and fMRI sequences principally work the same way (an image is constructed from repetitive radiofrequency pulse excitations and the subsequent recordings of de-excitations), they have different \"aims\". For the fMRI sequence, the basic idea is to continuously record T2\\*-signal fluctuations (BOLD-signal fluctuations, if you will) to detect changes in cerebral blood flow in reference to location and time. This is achieved by scanning the whole brain volume in a slice-by-slice manner over and over again. The T2\\*-weighted sensitivity is produced by a certain setup of TR (times of repetition), TE (echo time) and flip angle. For example, a setup of TR = 2.5s, TE = 30 ms means that the whole brain is scanned once every 2.5 s and the time of echo (in this context, the time to proceed from slice to slice), is 30 ms. This cycle can be repeated in theory forever, but practical terms usually hinder the length of any fMRI sequence (nobody can stay still, much more want to spend time in the scanner for much more than an hour).   \n\n\nIn the case of structural MRI sequences, the TR, TE and flip angle values are set up in such a way that provides the best tissue contrast for the investigated purpose (for example, fat and fluid would be the opposite colors, e.g. black and white). The first cycle of acquisition provides a very crude image in terms of spatial resolution. When this gets repeated over and over again, the spatial resolution improves. This is because only a very small portion of nuclei get excited from the RF-pulse, so repetitive pulses are required to increase the signal amount). The limits of spatial resolution are multifold, most often hindered by the strength of the magnetic field (for example, 3T and 7.1T images look quite different in terms of resolution, you can google some images up to compare).   \n\n\nIf you look at a clinical setup of structural MRI scans, you of course want different sequences so you may detect lesions in white and grey matter respectively and even changes very specific to certain disease states (MS/Stroke/Tumor/Sclerosis).  This naturally requires more scanning time, usually bringing up the whole scanning time to 40-80 minutes. Similiar thing is involved in fMR imaging, we usually want structural images to coregister the fMR image to as fMRI has poor spatial resolution.  \n\n\nHope this answered your question to some extent. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "pjvg1", "title": "If Pressure Under the Ocean is so Strong Why Does it Not Crush Ship Wreck Debris?", "selftext": "I'm watching a documentary about the Titanic and they mention the design-work of the submersibles and the engineering that goes into making sure they can survive the pressure on the sea floor. I think the figure they threw out was 6k pounds of pressure per sq. inch where the Titanic is, but I may be wrong. During the film they show a lot of the debris laying on the sea floor surrounding the wreckage and much of it was wine bottles, glasses, ceramic coffee cups, porcelain toilets and several purses, suitcases and misc. baggage; a lot of easily broken or damaged stuff. Then I suddenly got confused, if the water pressure is so strong it could crush a submersible why it is not crushing glass wine bottles and leather bags?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pjvg1/if_pressure_under_the_ocean_is_so_strong_why_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3pxqti", "c3pxtat"], "score": [6, 21], "text": ["The key is the pressure on the inside versus the outside of a submersible. Soft things really are crushed under high pressures ([example](_URL_0_)), and this includes people (eventually). Therefore, the pressure inside the sub has to remain in a reasonable range. The wreck of the titanic has high-pressure water both inside and outside of it, which has the effect of supporting the overall structure. Most of the items that you mentioned laying around the wreck are actually quite hard--metals, glasses/ceramics... These are, relative to things like styrofoam and flesh, dramatically more pressure-resistant.", "The submarine has to be really strong because it is trying to maintain a pressure *differential* - high pressure outside, low pressure inside.  That means the high pressure is all pushing in one direction, trying to make it crumple.\n\nRandom pieces of wreckage have equal pressure coming at them from every direction, so they don't have a direction to 'crumple' towards. All they could do is compress, and metal and glass take waaaay more pressure to compress than they take to crumple/shatter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2007/07/15/image3059041.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "37e7an", "title": "is marijuana smoke just as damaging to your lungs as cigarettes, and if so, why isn't there a movement against it as well?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37e7an/eli5_is_marijuana_smoke_just_as_damaging_to_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crlxe2e", "crlypzv", "crm1adj", "crm1cqr", "crm2k5w", "crm4di0", "crm77y6", "crms6aq"], "score": [25, 6, 2, 8, 4, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Pot smoke is, per unit volume, actually more dangerous than tobacco smoke. However, the average tobacco smoker smokes a pack a day, and anyone who is smoking 20 joints per day on average has much bigger problems than bad lungs.", "Yep, pretty much.  People like to huff and puff (pun intended) that cigarettes are full of \"chemicals\"\u2014they are, but lung cancer is caused by tar, which is caused by inhaling burning material (smoke).  The ALA counters the \"but I only smoke once per day\" narrative with \"ok, right, but you inhale more deeply and often hold your breath to consume as much smoke as possible.\"  _URL_0_ All of that said, people don't generally get cancer from moderate behaviors\u2014we live in cities, we run in smog, we occasionally drink and overeat and process our hair.  So rest assured the sober among us  will strongly advise against marijuana smoke, and it may eventually be banned from indoor public use, much like cigarettes are today.  Edibles FTW.", "_URL_0_\n\nTldr: its not,  that said vaping is still better", "Not enough research. We know for a *fact* that smoking cigarettes can cause cancer. I think we can be fairly sure that smoking anything can increase your chances of getting cancer of the lungs. We just don't know much yet, because not enough research has been done. ", "Cannabis smoke opens up the bronchial tubes in the lungs which causes much of the tar to be removed. It was prescribed for asthma about a hundred years ago and there are current studies that suggest that THC could be used to treat asthma for some people. The largest study ever done on cannabis smoking and lung health showed that it is nowhere close to as bad as cigarette smoking and there is at least one recent study that suggests that just smoking tobacco is worse for the lungs than smoking tobacco and cannabis.", "I always used to keep my cigarette butts so I could fill my pipe (normally used for pot) with the little tobacco left in the butts. It's very crude but this is what happens when you keep trying, but can't quit smoking cigarettes. What I learned from this crude act was that the pipe would fill with very gooey tar way quicker from tobacco than with pot. There were plenty of times when I would only smoke one or the other out of the pipe for months at a time. From these many \nexperiences I was convinced that tar was more abundant in tobacco than in pot.  ", "I'm on mobile, so it's difficult to find sources, but I can confidently say most everyone on here is wrong. \n\nThe original study re: how toxic marijuana smoke is was done by a doctor out of UCLA medical. He correctly noted that marijuana smoke contains many times more tar and carcinogens than tobacco smoke. \n\n**HOWEVER**, the same doctor, curious from his study, performed another extensive one looking into the actual health affects of the smoke. After all, with such a substantially higher level of risk, there should be a higher level of detectable harm. What he found, though, was that people who smoke marijuana are no more likely to get lung cancer than people who do not smoke anything. \n\nThe media often reports about his first findings while ignoring the follow-up. \n\nAs to why it is that way, as others have pointed out, it's difficult to do such studies in the US due to federal law, so we aren't sure. The leading theory is that the cannabinoids in marijuana negate the carcinogenic effect. \n\nI'm hoping there's enough in that for someone else to do the googling. If not, I'll pull out my research files when I get home and grab you citations. ", "Whether it's equally damaging, more, or less, I don't know. But it's fucking bad. A layman's science experiment: Take one drag of weed smoke, and put your lips against a napkin, and then blow through it. With just one exhale, you've got a brown ring on the napkin. Imagine that build-up over hundreds and thousands of tokes. Or just look at your pipe or bong after owning it for a couple of weeks. That same stuff is in your lungs.  There is no way in hell that sludge building up inside of you isn't extremely harmful. People who claim it's not harmful (to whatever degree) are denying themselves or are too stoned to use reason. And I say this as someone who's been smoking regularly for more than 10 years. I'm just being honest with myself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/health-effects/marijuana-lung-health.html"], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/#__ffn_sectitle"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "s6let", "title": "What is the largest humans could build a steel structure in space before it would crush itself under it's own gravity? ", "selftext": "Could you make it as big as you wanted if you just left enough room between objects? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s6let/what_is_the_largest_humans_could_build_a_steel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4biwcg", "c4bjqjy"], "score": [11, 2], "text": ["I can explain what needs to be calculated, but am not going to do the actual calculations.\n\nIf the whole thing is made of steel. Let's just say basically a grid of steel beams.\n\nSteel has a certain crushing strength, based on composition, density, and many other factors.\n\nIt also has mass.\n\nSo, eventually, the attraction of all the steel on itself would overcome the crushing/breaking/bending strength of the steel beams in the middle of the structure, and the structure would collapse in on itself to form a more stable structure.\n\nOnce it reached this new stable structure, it would be stable forever. \n\nIf you added more steel, it would collapse into a more dense stable structure. \n\nYou could continue adding steel and adding steel, but it would always collapse.\n\nSo, the problem with a steel structure isn;t so much size, but rather structural integrity. \n\nIf you want to build the empire state building but make it the size of the moon, it's going to collapse in on itself.\n\nIf you wanted a ball of steel and nothing else, then you could make it a hundred times more massive than the sun.\n\nIt's really hard to define your question. Given that you gave the structure a solid enough core. You could make it incredibly large without it crushing itself.", "Maybe this is what Leonhard Euler had in mind when he came up with this:\n_URL_0_\nIf your steel column is just a really high tube then eventually it will collapse by buckling.\nIf:\n  weight of column (in kg) * 9.8  > = Pi^2 * E (modulus of steel, 200 x 10^9 Pascals) * r^4 (radius of tube in metres)/4/ L^2 (length of column in metres)\n\nThen:\n  Crash!\n\nYou can make a column so wide that it doesn't buckle, but then it would have to be pretty wide and eventually it would still crush itself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckling"]]}
{"q_id": "3vrml9", "title": "how is the ketogenic diet at all healthy if you're eating lots of fats, which clog arteries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vrml9/eli5_how_is_the_ketogenic_diet_at_all_healthy_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxq2nwl", "cxq4nne", "cxqdw1k", "cxqdwqm", "cxqeeps", "cxqfjnl", "cxqjtfm", "cxqjw0z", "cxqk1bg", "cxqxhl4"], "score": [26, 220, 13, 40, 17, 13, 2, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Because the science on fats has not been completely conclusive.\n\nCoconut has more saturated fat than bacon for instance.", "Put in a very simple way:\n\nFat does not clog arteries by itself, fat deposits on blood vessel walls as a protective measure, against damaged caused to the lining by other things, mainly, sugar. its a protective measure to prevent further damage to the vessels, and to the blood constituents, the issue is that damage accumulates and so does fat unless lifestyle is changed. \n\nIn the early 20th century when people saw clotted arteries with fat, calcium etc, they erroneously assumed that those dietary elements were the factor that was causing the issue, without realising that they were blaming the defensive measure for the problem. Sadly medicine is this giant machine that takes ages to acknowledge information is inaccurate, and even longer to start changing how it deals with it, it takes decades. \n\n\nAnd analogy: They saw a huge traffic jam, they saw shinny lights (cops) and blamed the cops for the jam, instead of realising the cops are there because there was a car crash, which is the true factor to blame for the jam.\n\n\nKetogenic and vegetarian diets are good to help reduce and even reverse those issues, because you are removing the factors that cause damage to the inner lining of the blood vessels (excess sugar), also helps with diabetes as you prevent constant insulin spikes which lead to insensitivity. \n\n\nFats are needed by the body, and quite healthy in themselves, yes, even saturated which is quite important for you, the issue is also how much you eat. \n\n\nTL:DR: Sugars be the evil, not fat, fat just cool dudes helping you and getting all the blame.", "Here is a very good article that talks in depth about this. _URL_0_", "Saturated fats do not clog arteries.  Current [medical research](_URL_0_) has shown that there is no statistical link between the consumption of saturated fats and cardio vascular disease.\n\nThe ketogenic diet has many more aspects to it than just eating a lot of fats.  It is a very low carbohydrate, moderate protein, high fat diet.  The restriction of carbohydrates to less than 20-25g per day causes your body to enter ketosis, or to go into a ketogenic state.  In this state, your brain--the largest consumer of energy in your body--and which normally on the Standard American Diet runs entirely on glucose for energy, begins to shift and use ketone bodies produced by your liver for a majority of its energy needs.\n\nAt the same time, once liver and muscle stores of glycogen have been depleted and converted to glucose and utilized for energy, and the body begins to look for additional sources of energy. The next easiest of the dietary macros [carbohydrates, fats and protein] available to be converted to energy is dietary and stored body fat, which can be broken down into free fatty acids.\n\nThat is why the ketogenic diet works.  Since there is little to no sugar or carbs--except for a minimal amount still consumed, all of which goes to the brain's dominant and ongoing need for some amount of glucose--the body then starts using incoming dietary fats as its primary fuel.  \n\nThis process will then consume and burn all of the fats that are being eaten, and assuming that calorie intake has been lowered to a deficit as compared with calorie burn, will then result in your body breaking down fat cells into free fatty acids to then be transported into cells for energy production.\n\nIn a nutshell, that is how the ketogenic diet handles and uses the high amount of fats eaten, as they are now the primary source of energy.  Hope this helps.", "This is going to be full of uninformed people who are going to tell you that eggs and meat are bad, and that you NEEEEEEEEEEED sugar and carbs.", "You are beginning with a flawed premise: \"fats, which clog arteries?\" is not correct.", "OP, Typhera covered it well but if you want even more indepth info, check out the book Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.", "If you have to assume something is true to come to a conclusion, and then cannot prove your assumption is true, then your conclusion isn't true, either.\n\nSo, having said that:\n\nLots of fats do not clog your arteries, in general.\n\nAs China pointed out there is no link between saturated fat and heart disease, although I'll touch on a paradox that is making rounds in the ketogenic scientific community regarding fat composition of the diet and cholesterol levels increasing in an unhealthy manner.\n\nThink of your artery as a 4-lane freeway. If there are 10 cars driving on it at any given time there's less likely a chance of an accident, and it's probably 3 AM. Now imagine that it's just before rush hour and there are a few hundred cars passing the same spot, per lane.\n\nThere's much more likelihood of an accident happening simply due to the increase of cars.\n\nNow, what is a clogged artery? It's the deposit of a CHOLESTEROL (very, very, very important point here, do not forget it) molecule behind the artery wall. It shouldn't be there. The cholesterol was like a car without wheels being transported on the back of a big rig (since cholesterol cannot move freely on the highway).\n\nSo imagine now that instead of 10 big rigs carrying cars, there are 200. Or 4000. Doesn't matter. If one of those big rigs gets into an accident, it's more likely that the car (cholesterol) is going to get dumped off the top of that big rig to somewhere it shouldn't be.\n\nIn this case, because there is an increase in the particles that carry cholesterol in your body there is an increase in the chance one of those particles is going to enter the artery lining and cause a cascade of inflammation that results in cholesterol getting deposited, which causes the site to interact even more with the cholesterol-containing particles and the cycle continues until you get the plaque formation (artery clog).\n\nEnough of this and it can dislodge and kill you, but before doing so will increase your blood pressure and cause all sorts of other issues.\n\nSo, when it comes to the ketogenic diet, the increase of saturated fat **seems** to be able to cause an remarkable increase in the particles I mentioned (LDL-P).\n\nLDL-P is one of THE driving factors (if not **the** factor) that drives risk of cardiovascular disease, because it's physically impossible for cholesterol to get into an artery unless it's being carried there. More big rigs with cars, more accidents with cars.\n\nNow, some people on this diet with the increase of fat start absorbing more cholesterol through their gut lining or start mass producing it. This is simple genetics.\n\nSo for those people, their freeways are now JAM PACKED with big rigs with cars, so much so that there is a legitimate concern of long-term health.\n\nSo while the studies show no link, there's seems to be a direct increase of LDL-P on the diet initially for some people, which is a bona fide concern for clogging your arteries, but even then only if the mass of that cholesterol (LDL-C) is also high.\n\nI have all sorts of graphs on this but since this is ELI5 I'll leave them out unless you want to see them.\n\nHowever, after 6 months, those levels balance out and can be further thrown off if one is also losing weight at the same time.\n\nTL;DR: **Too many cholesterol-carrying particles clog arteries, not fat.**", "It's kind of like saying that doctors cause illness because everytime people are sick you see doctors. If you eat a lot of fat and carbs then you will gain weight and clog your arteries because the insulin response from the carbs pushes the fat and sugar into the cells. The high carbs also cause inflammation which I think leads to the clogged arteries. \n\nIf you eat a normal meal at McDonalds you get 150g of carbs which is brutally high. Fries bun and pop are what makes you gain weight. This is guaranteed to cause an insulin response and all the fat that you ate with the meal gets stored in the cells as well. \n\nI did keto for a few months and got the rest of my family hooked on it. My parents, and two sister's families are all on it. They all say they feel better and have lost weight. I quit because I was having problems but I'm still pretty low carb and I feel a lot better than I did. I may try it again but I will never go back to eating lots of carbs again. I hated the cravings for sugar and the energy crashes. \n\nCheck out /r/keto for more info. It's a good place for info. They are very focussed on weight loss but can also help with the health side of it. \n\nThis [guy](_URL_0_) explains it pretty well. ", "Please research it for yourself as I may not be 100% accurate here but this is my understanding. \n\n\nThere is very little you can do to clog or not clog your arteries through diet. Some people have high levels of cholesterol both good and bad, and others don't. It's your body and not subject to change. Even if you eat less fat, your cholesterol level will tend to do what it does. \n\nIt's like thinking a sugar free diet could cure diabetes. \n\nAnyway, ketoacidosis is what happens when your body doesn't get enough sugar and carbohydrate. The brain for instance doesn't get it's energy from fat and it doesn't get it's energy from protein, it gets most of it's energy from fast burning sugars. Sugars mostly come from carbohydrate groups not fat or protein. However in 'lean times' your liver can turn a high protein low carbohydrate diet into ketone bodies, which are a kind of fatty sugar. Your brain can run on ketones for extended periods and your liver is what makes this possible. \n\nSo instead of fat, carbs, protein, your body is mostly using fat, ketones, protein. The down side is ketones don't burn clean, and there are a lot of metabolic left overs from those reactions that your kidneys have to filter out of your blood. IE it's messy. In ketoacidosis you end up with so many ketones in your blood it actually changes your blood ph and so the kidneys have to filter even more out. \n\nOther side effects are ketogenic metabolism can release some odd smells during respiration not to mention your breath, and it gives you what can be though of as carnivore breath or acetone breath. \n\nthe other thing is you must supply a lot of protein with these kind of diets and eat a lot of calories because it's too tempting to your body to start leaching muscle and protein away from internal organs and muscles. Ketogenic metabolisms speed up the the fat burning metabolism in the body though and the other changes to body chemistry make it harder to store new fat, and take less time to burn existing fat to make energy. Where as high carbohydrate diets do the opposite. \n\nHuman beings are omnivores and our metabolism is adaptable enough for the same species to be vegan, omnivore, vegetarian, protein only, or fat and protein yet still live, thrive, and get energy.k \n\nIE we can eat just about anything and survive, our bodies will adapt. This doesn't address malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all"], ["http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/new-answers-about-carbs-and-fat/"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1vMBRFiwE"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ohse7", "title": "what would nasa(or equivalent) do if an astronaut refused to come back down from the space station?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ohse7/eli5what_would_nasaor_equivalent_do_if_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmn82kn", "cmn83x9", "cmn9l2o", "cmn9qb8", "cmnaah9", "cmnauyt", "cmne0g4", "cmnftbt"], "score": [25, 31, 11, 3, 2, 6, 4, 3], "text": ["I'm sure there's haldol, ativan or some other strong sedative in the med kit.  The other astronauts could jump his ass and sedate him.", "If they went rouge and killed everyone we'd just stop resupplying it", "I think it's called Space Dementia. The other astronaut had to tie up Steve Buscemi. ", "If you don't get down here right now you're grounded!\n\nBitch please.", "They probably have some type of plan already prepared for this just in case one of the astronauts started to go crazy.\n\nMore than likely it would involve the other astronauts subduing the deranged one and sedating them until they could safely be sent back down to earth.", "The space station can be controlled remotely by houston and the russian one. Plus they go thru a rigourous and tedious pych test. The crew cabin is the size of a tractor trailer rig and all the people are russians or ex military. They could take the crazy man down.", "There are no weapons on board for obvious reasons, although IIRC some Russian astronauts have brought guns to space in the past in case they have to deal with a bear on their return to Earth. The official guidelines suggest that the other crew members should physically subdue the person and then tie them up with duct tape/bungee cords and use tranquilizers if necessary.  ", "I guarantee there is a thick binder in Houston with specific instructions to deal with this exact thing....Yep, found it.\n\n[Mental Breakdown In Space](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17300028/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/star-crazy-plans-deal-breakdowns-space/#.VIO8OMlBqcE"]]}
{"q_id": "6ntijy", "title": "Why do rum and ale seem to be the most common alcoholic beverages in history, while vodka is never really mentioned?", "selftext": "Thought of this after watching Game of Thrones last night. While it is fiction, the show and many other movies that are set in older times never really mention vodka. Was it simply not that common, or just more of a Soviet product at the time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ntijy/why_do_rum_and_ale_seem_to_be_the_most_common/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkc53ai"], "score": [75], "text": ["Ale was historically popular because it's source material (brasic grain) was extremely common.   \n\nDistillation is a relatively recent invention.  We don't really see it taking off until the late middle ages.  \"Vodka\" really is just distilled alcohol that has not been given much additional flavor via barrel aging (whisky/brandy) or infusion of herbs (gin).  If you try say something like \"bourbon\" before the barrel aging process you might be surprised how \"vodka\" like it is.  Its just a pure mostly flavorless and colorless liquid.  This type of beverage existed in the middle ages but it was used mostly as medicine.  When distilled for normal consumption, alcoholic beverages were transported in wood barrels and this added flavor and color in and of itself and wouldnt qualify as what we would know as \"vodka\" as a result.\n\nRum naturally has a bit of a distinctive flavor due to not all of the sugar cane impurities being removed but as soon as it is put in barrels and transported it also gains flavor/color and becomes non-vodka like.  It was popular because wealthy europeans owned extensive slave-based plantations in the caribbean starting in the early modern time period where it was very inexpensive to grow sugarcane so there was extensive source material.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "907het", "title": "why do other countries eat up american entertainment and trends, but the opposite doesn't hold true for foreign entertainment in the u.s?", "selftext": "Things like American movies, tv shows, music, and even viral dance moves (ex. in my feelings challenge which is current right now) seem to be loved by foreign countries, but it is very rarely the other way around or at least not as prominent. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/907het/eli5_why_do_other_countries_eat_up_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2oa3qb", "e2ob6y9", "e2obfw5", "e2octv2", "e2ojuhc", "e2otcw7", "e2ou4la", "e2ozoan", "e2p3n9w"], "score": [15, 6, 90, 3, 22, 2, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["The US is the largest economy in the world. We pump a lot of that economy into entertainment. It\u2019s natural that, with so much being made, the amount getting to other nations would be massive. It doesn\u2019t hurt that the vast majority of US made entertainment is in English(which is the most *widely* spoken language).\n\nThat\u2019s not to say other nations entertainment doesn\u2019t make it to the US. British pop culture is booming in the US as well as Japanese. Hell, a few years back, the biggest song was [Korean](_URL_0_).\n\nBut the massiveness of the US on the global scale just dwarfs any other nation in terms of pop culture ", "It's because The US is the entertainment capital of the world. We just make so much more of it, and at a professional level, than other countries do. That's why actors from all over the world often end up in LA. ", "Most of the rest of the world doesn't mass produce English language entertainment. While foreigners can often understand English, or are use to having programs dubbed or subtitled, the US audience won't watch a foreign language production over their massive home media output.\n\nThose countries that do produce English language media do occasionally make traction in the US - *Wentworth* recently from Australia, *What we do in the Shadows* from New Zealand certainly has an international cult following, and of course many British shows are popular. I suspect the number of productions that make it in the US is about proportional to the size of those english speaking countries media industry.", " They are big consumers of entertainment produced in english speaking countries like England and Canada.", "I'd argue it's not that rare. We love foreign video games here in America. Many popular games in the US are from Japan, as well as quite a few from Europe. Lots of people watch BBC TV shows like Doctor Who or Sherlock. Also Japanese animation has a huge following in the US.", "Have you not seen what anime does to people. The simple answer would be that the us is really big. But you're probably just not seeing the mass amount of influence foreign cartoons/ video games have.", "Its an anecdote, but I'm American and a large percentage of my entertainment and news media come from the BBC, and most of the video games I play come from Sweden.", "There is no one answer to this- by one component I haven\u2019t seen mentioned is the effect of the World Wars on the film industry. Europe had a lot of rebuilding and film industries that were blooming before WWI couldn\u2019t catch up to what was being done in Hollywood.\n\nFrom a NYTimes article: \u201cThe great victor of World War I in cinema, as in all else, was, of course, the United States. Alone among the combatants, America emerged with its society and economy intact. One immediate consequence was Hollywood's domination of screens around the world.\u201d\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "One can drive in one direction for 36 hours in the US and never encounter a community where the predominant language is anything but English.\n\nThey exist, but they're generally smaller border towns or neighborhoods in larger cities.\n\nIn Europe a person might pass through three or four language regions in an 8 hour drive.\n\nWe're just not accustomed to a multilingual world in the US, so Americans in general find dubbing or subtitles to be distracting."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/19/movies/film-how-the-first-world-war-changed-movies-forever.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "115b99", "title": "Is the Red-Bull Stratos project scientifically significant? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/115b99/is_the_redbull_stratos_project_scientifically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6jgy2w"], "score": [4], "text": ["From the redbull website, [Scientific Value](_URL_0_)\n\nI can see how it will lend itself to safety procedures for high altitude flights, which may lend to private space travel given enough time. There will be some new data recorded that could lead to other more important discoveries but they are really doing it for the publicity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.redbullstratos.com/science/scientific-values/"]]}
{"q_id": "1bz7ms", "title": "does energy travel faster than light?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1bz7ms/does_energy_travel_faster_than_light/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9bhia5", "c9bhjl5"], "score": [3, 16], "text": ["It would not move instantly, and it would lag by much more than a second.  Physical properties of the object would determine how fast your compression wave moved through it.", "This has been answered before (by me no less!).  Whether you're talking about the speed of an object, energy, or even information, the answer is that you can't cheat the speed of light with a really long stick.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >  Think about it on a molecular level. You push the first layer of atoms in the stick in a direction. They move slightly (at less than the speed of light), and impart kinetic energy to the next layer of atoms, and the 3rd layer, 4th, etc. None of the atoms move anything instantly, each particle moves at sub-light speed. So the entire stick does not move in unison. It's like a compression wave."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vib9q/is_information_bound_by_the_speed_of_light/c54qj1v"]]}
{"q_id": "544rue", "title": "what does the term \"identity politics\" mean?", "selftext": "This is super embarrassing -- but it comes up all the time and I don't totally get it....", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/544rue/eli5_what_does_the_term_identity_politics_mean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7yuluo", "d7z2b3x", "d7z2o3w", "d7zcfj2", "d7zh6xv", "d7zvgp5"], "score": [192, 14, 18, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["\"identity politics\" are political idea or efforts to encourage political activities based on someone's membership in a particular \"identity\" group. The most common examples in the U.S. are race, religion, and gender. \n\nThe term is most frequently used with a negative connotation -- the idea being that \"identity politics\" is a way of setting groups against each other and making it harder to talk about actual policy because every discussion becomes about whether you are betraying your \"group.\" However, it can also be used in a neutral or positive sense, to describe political appeals based on problems uniquely faced or experienced by people in certain social contexts. \n\n ", "Identity politics is the tendency to view all political issues in terms of how those issues affect a particular group, most often a race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. \n\nFor example, when Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama's convention speech, some people accused Melania of racism because Melinia is a white woman stealing (or \"appropriating\") from a black woman. About this incident, one critic wrote: \"The subversive power and spirit of black culture has been swallowed whole by the white mainstream time and time again, and almost always without the consent or acknowledgment that it\u2019s being taken.\"\n\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nThere's no doubt that the Trump campaign plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech, but to view this issue through the lens of race and racism is an example of identity politics. ", "Identity politics is the idea that specific groups of people who differ in some way from the dominant culture, experience things personally which are not reflected in the shared cultural narrative in our society. In particular, if members of one of these marginalized groups experience any of a number of different forms of oppression, the dominant culture often fails to see this, or acknowledge the experiences, grievances and narrative of the marginalized group as legitimate. This is why identity politics often involves the idea that it is only the members of the marginalized group who can speak credibly about their experiences, and their obligations toward the larger culture or vice versa. In even more basic terms, the most salient idea in identity politics is that \"you are fundamentally unable to understand me\" -- or my circumstances -- unless you are a member of the marginalized group in question too.", "Hi there, here's an actual explanation of how 'identity politics' is used in conversation/argument\n\n\nIdentity politics is a term that can be used to mean a whole lot of things. \n\n\nEveryone agrees that it has to do with a person's identity- but not just any identity, an identity that is recognized as an identity by the general public. So, there are self-identified and group-identified identities. Identity politics links group identities to political ideologies. Basically, it links political motivations to personal motivations in a way that reflects a general trend for your group.\n\n\nOn one hand, if you are adhering to the maxim \"the personal is political\" this seems like it can be a good thing, but on closer observation (for example in these comments) we can see that the phrase actually generates different understandings based on who you ask. Terms like 'identity politics' have been used to disparage political arguments by contending that they are based on personal biases. \n\n\nSo 'identity politics', though initially used to describe participation in political issues through a shared cultural lens, is currently also used as a buzzword to disparage political arguments based on group identities by claiming that they are rooted in personal biases.\n\n\nSo think about it like this- \n\n\nYou could say someone, being a Jew and having that shared cultural history, would be more wary of militant nationalist groups- which is a positive application of identity politics \n\nOr you could say that someone, being a Jew and being 'butthurt about that whole nazi thing' would be wary of militant nationalist groups- which is a negative application of identity politics.\n\nIt's a phrase that can positive or negative based on the context it is applied in and the conditions of the application. In the simplest terms- the first example recognizes a foundation of shared experience that might inform a political belief, the second implies that there is no thinking on the part of the individual, and that the group identity overrides, rather than informs, their individual choices.\n\n\nTL;DR- just like you can call someone 'pal' affectionately or angrily, 'identity politics' is a phrase that can be wielded in several different ways", "Simplest way I can think to define it:\n\nIf someone asks, \"How would you describe yourself?\", which buckets do your responses fall into?\n\nOdds are, they're (not necessarily in this order):\n\n* gender\n* race\n* nationality\n* ethnicity\n* religion\n* class\n* age\n\nThe negative connotation others have mentioned is often paired with the suggestion that someone is \"playing identity politics\"\u2014distilling an argument down to a single metric of self-identification.\n\nOn the flip side, most philosophical arguments tend to rely on an interpretation of identity that privileges one of these values (e.g. communism and class).\n\nEdit: Formatting, because I'm an idiot.\n", "One of the purest examples I can think of is PoC children who are adopted by white people.\n\nI am adopted from Korea. Am I therefore allowed to call myself Asian American? On one hand, people assume I'm good at math, come to me with computer questions, call me \"chink,\" and harass me if I'm walking down the street with a white woman. On the other hand, I never knew the struggle of having parents who don't speak English, did not eat many Korean foods growing up, and reap many benefits of systemic white privilege. There are plenty of people on both sides who would say I'm allowed/not allowed to call myself Asian American, allowed/not allowed to chime in on issues facing the Asian community, allowed/not allowed to call for support from other Asian Americans.\n\nBut it gets more complicated than that. If a prominent figure in the Asian American community says, \"Yes, adoptees deserve to have their voices heard about Asian American issues,\" what gives that figure the right to make that decision? If I were to start identifying as white (disclosure: I don't) because I felt my upbringing in a white family has more influence on me than my being born in Korea, looking Korean, and most people seeing me as Korean, am I identifying myself accurately? Once again, who's allowed to say that I am or that I'm not? If other Asians were to say that how I identify is up to me, does that validate me? Or if they were to say I'm in denial, does that invalidate me? And if white people were to accept me as white, does that validate me? Or if white people were to say that I'm biologically not white, therefore, I can't identify as such, does that invalidate me?\n\nDave Chappelle did a great fucking job examining, discussing, and lampooning identity politics in his racial draft skit. And I'm being 100% serious when I say that the piece that captures the individual struggle the most accurately is Gonzo's character in *Muppets From Space*. Also see Theon from Game of Thrones, Abed in season 1 episode 3 of Community.\n\nI'm speaking largely of the identity politics of the individual because that's my firsthand experience and because the more macro identity politics tend to be muddled with social politics or regular political politics. But examples on a more macro scale would be things like WEB DuBois's idea of the double conscious--that is, black people in America must identify as both black and American, and often, those identities conflict. Or the idea of Pan-African or Pan-Asian identities. Pan-Africanism stems largely from the fact that when black people were brought to the US as slaves, they were stripped of their varied languages, customs, and cultures to be thrown into a melting pot of \"black.\" Pan-Asianism has its unique struggles because Korea, China, Thailand, Laos, etc. are all individual countries with unique histories, but should we exchange those unique things to yield more power as a unified Asian American community?\n\nWhen Farrakhan calls for action from the black male population at large or when Constance Wu calls for action from the Asian American population at large, these tend to be a combination of identity politics--they're directed at a group of people who share an identity and generally aim to address issues that face people within identity--mixed with social issues that aren't necessarily related to identity politics--for example, underrepresentation of Asians in Hollywood has more to do with how outsiders view us rather than how people within our identity view ourselves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://fusion.net/story/327072/melania-trump-speech-plagiarism-rnc-racist-stealing/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7qsim3", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: People were so convinced that Joan of Arc had miraculously survived the flames that multiple women in 15th cent. France successfully impersonated her for a time. How did people in your era use disguises?", "selftext": "**Next time:** the backup singers and background dancers of history", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7qsim3/tuesday_trivia_people_were_so_convinced_that_joan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsrk7x9", "dsrl70r", "dsroqp3", "dsry48g", "dss2rpl", "dss3i6a", "dss8ai8", "dssgkue"], "score": [70, 39, 19, 23, 10, 15, 13, 10], "text": ["I think its safe to say that I'm not a fan of using the sagas as historical documents meant to accurately portray the lives, beliefs, and actions of the figures, mythological or otherwise, that they depict. \n\nBut even I have a heart underneath all these layers of cynicism.  The saga detailing the life of Harald Sigurdsson (Hardrade) has got some really great stuff in it.  This isn't necessarily a false mustache and thick rimmed glasses kind of disguise, but I think it qualifies.\n\nDuring his campaigns in Sicily in the service of the Varangian guard, Harald is tasked with taking a string of fortresses, each is naturally more impressive than the last.  The fourth such castle is impenetrable to any sort of attack.  His previous methods of attack, attaching burning straws to birds to burn the grain stores, and tunneling under the walls, are useless.  Worst of all, Harald falls deathly ill.  He set his tent a little farther away, and his underlings had to come farther to receive orders.  The fortress sent out spies to discover what the matter was.  They discovered that Harald had fallen deathly ill and was on death's door.  He wished to be buried in the castle's church, and the garrison agreed to this request, knowing that it would bring rich gifts in the future to have such a great man buried there.  \n\nHis men prepared a great coffin and gave it over to the castle's priests, once inside the gates, his men barred the gate open and drew their weapons and held the gates open, the rest of the Varangians then poured into the city and did what vikings did best.\n \n\n\nThis was even the basis for the finale to one of the season finales on History Channel's *Vikings*\n_URL_0_", "Written in 1841, just about anything from Milligan's \"History of Dueling\" should be taken with a grain of salt - certainly he never met an anecdote he didn't like - but he does have one little story of a duelist in disguise that would fit here, and given that it was, by his claim, related in a newspaper less than 10 years earlier, perhaps it is less suspect than some of his other tales anyways, at least in the broad strokes.\n\nA young Polish widow, the Countess 'Lodoiska R.' was being successfully courted by the German Baron Trautmansdorf. Another suitor, Baron de Ropp was none too pleased by the attentions enjoyed his rival, and circulated an offensive poem about Trautmansdorf, who sent de Ropp a challenge when word reached him of this. The two met for a duel, but, for reasons Milligan doesn't deign to explain, de Ropp didn't fight, and instead had a champion take his place, who made short work of Trautmansdorf. His second, so offended by de Ropp's behavior, immediately called him out as a coward, and insisted on their own duel, which de Ropp now took upon himself, with equal success. Only, after striking the mortal blow, he realized his opponent had been the Countess, disguised as a man so as to accompany her lover to the field of combat. Supposedly, now overcome with what he had wrought, de Ropp joined the fallen pair by falling upon his own sword.\n\nA little less melodramatic, but much better attested, would be the life of James Miranda Stuart Barry, a British Army surgeon, who was better known in *her* youth as Margaret Ann Bulkley. Margaret took on the persona of James in her youth, and lived her entire public life as a man, the secret only being revealed with death. As Barry, Margaret was forced into a challenge of Captain Josias Cloete after an argument while stationed in the Cape Colony in 1819. In their meeting, Cloete was struck with a glancing shot to his temple, which did little actual damage being deflected by the stiff brim of his shako. 'Barry' was also struck, in the upper thigh, and was forced to decline treatment on the field and instead do so herself in private, as it was close enough to perhaps betray her true identity.", "In the pulps, the most common disguise was a pseudonym, so that H. P. Lovecraft might appear as Lewis Theobold, Jr., or Robert E. Howard as Patrick Ervin - and beyond that, male writers might appear as female, or vice versa. My favorite story from my field of interest, however, involves no great disguise, but one which served its purpose to great effect:\n\n >  I\u2019ve been going through Fredericksburg, off and on, for many years, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s changed a bit. My friend, Tyson, and I found just about all the different kinds of liquor a man could think about, and I\u2019ll admit my mouth watered and I cursed the poverty which kept me from indulging my epicurean tendencies. It looked like almost every other joint was a beer bar or a package house. As usual, we aroused no enthusiasm in the citizens; even when they took our money they did it with a suspicious, almost sullen air \u2014 most of them, that is; some were cordial enough \u2014 with which they favor most outlanders. I can understand their viewpoint, in way, for of all the white races represented in Texas, the Anglo-Americans of old pioneer stock are by far the most turbulent and belligerent. Not that we gave a damn; we started sampling the terrific beer they sell there, with our steak dinner, and what with that and some remarkably good whiskey, by the time we were ready to start north again, some hours later, we were totally indifferent to racial differences and prejudices. In fact, I seem to remember, when we stopped at a beer joint a few miles out for another drink, of using my scanty knowledge of German to convince the barman that I was a Prussian, and I must have succeeded, somehow, for he immediately thawed out and deluged me with a flood of conversation, directed mainly at the Mexican brewers who bring down the price of beer, and the three of us had an enjoyable time guzzling Texas Pride and cussing the corporations. I don\u2019t know when I ever had a more hilarious souse. \n\n- Robert E. Howard to August Derleth, 15 Apr 1936, *Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard &  3.433-434", "(1/2)\n\nA lot of pirates used deception to lure their victims. Most notably this was done by falsely flying the colors of friendly nations to get ships to approach before raising a black flag or \u201cJolly Roger\u201d at close range to signal that they were pirates and intimidate the ships into surrendering. \n\nOne pirate who used some more elaborate and personal deceptions was Howell Davis. Trickery and deception was a recurring theme throughout his brief pirate career. He seems to have been quite clever and charming, and he was able to successfully convince several colonial governors that he was not a pirate by impersonating lawful merchants and privateers. By doing this he was even able to capture the governor of an English fort after being invited to dinner and force him to give him lots of money. However, eventually one of Davis\u2019 impersonations was discovered and he met a violent death. \n\nAfter spending three months in jail in Barbados for conspiring to steal the cargo of a merchant ship he had been captain of, in about October 1718 Davis fled to Nassau in the Bahamas where he wouldn\u2019t be recognized and quickly joined another trading voyage as a common seaman. Since until earlier that year before the British government retook control, Nassau had been an infamous pirate haven, most of the rest of the crew on this voyage were former pirates who had accepted a royal pardon and Davis quickly conspired with them to mutiny and seize the ship. After doing this, Davis was elected captain and they resolved to go pirating.\n\nAfter capturing a few ships at sea, Davis came to the island of St. Nicholas in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese governor took him for a lawful English privateer allied with Portugal and Davis and his crew stayed on the island for about five weeks where they were apparently treated lavishly. From *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724:\n\n >  \u2026the Portuguese inhabiting there, took him for an English Privateer, and Davis going ashore, they both treated him very civilly, and also traded with him. Here he remained five Weeks, in which Time, he and half his Crew, for their Pleasure, took a Journey to the chief Town of the Island, which was 19 Miles up the Country: Davis making a good Appearance, was caressed by the Governor and the Inhabitants, and no Diversion was wanting which the Portuguese could shew, or Money could purchase; after about a Week\u2019s Stay, he came back to the Ship, and the rest of the Crew went to take their Pleasure up the Town, in their Turn. \n\nSo friendly was their reception here that five of the pirates even chose to stay behind with local women. After this, they set sail again and plundered more ships around the Cape Verde Islands, but eventually had to stop to replenish their supplies of water. The island they chose was St. Jago, but the Portuguese governor of this island was more skeptical and distrusting of Davis and openly said that he suspected him to be a pirate. \n\nTaken aback by this quite different reception than he had previously received, \u201cDavis seemed mightily affronted, standing much upon his Honour, replying to the Governor, he scorn\u2019d his Words; however, as soon as [the governor\u2019s] Back was turned, for fear of Accidents, [Davis] got on board again as fast as he could.\u201d Back on the ship, Davis proposed to his crew that they surprise the Portuguese fort that night and capture it. They accomplished this with the loss of three men, but many of the soldiers from the fort barricaded themselves in the governor\u2019s house and held the pirates off until morning despite grenades being thrown in. When more soldiers came, the pirates retreated back to their ships after sabotaging the fort\u2019s guns. The author of *A General History* wrote that \u201cby this Enterprise they did a great Deal of Mischief to the Portuguese, and but very little Good to themselves.\u201d \n\nDespite this lack of real success, Davis next proposed an even more ambitious scheme to his crew. He proposed that they sail to the English fort of Gambia on the west coast of Africa where he knew a large amount of money was kept. Although the fort was much too well defended for one ship to take by outright force, Davis devised an elaborate scheme.  \n\nAs they approached the fort, Davis ordered most of his crew to hide themselves below decks so that they appeared to be a regular trading vessel (which usually didn\u2019t have as many crew). He then sailed under the fort this way without suspicion before going ashore with nine men dressed as sailors and merchants: \n\n >  \u2026having ordered out the Boat, he commanded six Men in her, in old ordinary Jackets, while he himself, with the Master and Doctor, dressed themselves like Gentlemen; his Design being, that the Men should look like common Sailors, and they like Merchants. In rowing ashore he gave his men instructions what to say, in Case any Questions should be asked them. (*A General History*) \n\nAt the landing place, they were \u201creceived by a File of Musqueteers, and conducted into the Fort, where the Governor accosting them civilly, ask\u2019d them who they were, and whence they came?\u201d They replied that they were English merchants come to trade for gum and elephant teeth on the coast, but that had been chased by two French men-of-war and therefore had to take refuge here. The governor was happy to give them refuge and trade with them, and apparently impressed by Davis\u2019 manners he invited him and his officers to dine with him that evening. Two of Davis\u2019 men then stayed with the governor while Davis then excused himself to check on his ship. However, like an expert criminal, Davis had been taking meticulous note of his surroundings: \n\n >  While he was in the Fort, his Eyes were very busy in observing how Things lay; he took Notice there was a Sentry at the Entrance, and a Guard-House just by it, where the Soldiers upon Duty commonly waited, their Arms standing in a Corner, in a Heap; he saw also a great many small Arms in the Governor\u2019s Hall\u2026 \n\nWhen he returned to his ship, he told the men that when they saw the flag of the fort lowered, that was the signal that the fort was secured and for 20 of them to come ashore armed. He then brought two men with concealed pistols back in the boat with him to distract the guards and secure the guardhouse when he gave a signal. While preparing a bowl of punch before dinner, Davis and his officers suddenly drew their pistols: \n\n >  Davis on a sudden drew out a Pistol, clapt it to the Governor\u2019s Breast, telling him, he must surrender the Fort and all the Riches in it, or he was a dead Man. The Governor being no Ways prepared for such an Attack, promised to be very passive, and do all they desired, therefore they shut the Door, took down all the Arms that hung in the Hall, and loaded them. \n\nNext Davis fired his pistol through the window which was the agreed signal for the pirates in the guardhouse, and they took the surprised soldiers prisoner with cocked pistols and locked them in the guardhouse after taking out all the arms. At the same time, Davis lowered the flag over the fort and 20 armed pirates rowed ashore and took control of the fort with virtually no resistance and without anyone killed on either side. With the entire fort and garrison under their control, the pirates celebrated and began looting and even convinced some of the captured soldiers to join them. They didn\u2019t find nearly as much as they expected since a lot of money had recently been sent away, but they still got 2,000 pounds in gold which would be equivalent to something like $400,000 today. ", "Definitely the most famous pirate to use impersonation and disguise was Mary Read who dressed as a man throughout her life. \n\nAccording to *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724, Mary Read was born out of wedlock in England to a woman whose husband had gone missing at sea. This woman already had a son by her husband, but he died at a year old which was when Mary Read was born. Read's mother hid this from her husband's family and began dressing Mary Read up as a boy in place of her dead son in order to get money from her husband's mother. \n\nEventually the grandmother died and they stopped getting money, and by the time Read was thirteen she was apprenticed as a maid, but \"Here she did not last long, for growing bold and strong, and having also a roving Mind, she enter'd herself onboard a Man of War.\" This must have been during the Spanish War of Succession (1702-1714), and she apparently then served as a foot soldier in Flanders and then in a regiment of horse and \"behaved herself so well in several Engagements, that she got the Esteem of all her Officers.\" The only source that I know of for this part of her life is the aforementioned book whose reliability is sometimes questionable, but I know some women have served in other wars dressed as men and Mary Read seems to have convincingly passed herself off as a man with and fought daringly later, so I don't think it's unreasonable that this happened. \n\nEventually she was discovered and married one of the soldiers from her company, and they opened up an inn in Flanders. However, soon her husband died and the war ended which brought the soldiers back home and caused her business to fail. Then she joined the army again, but soon decided to sail on a Dutch ship for the West Indies. During the voyage the ship was taken by pirates who apparently made her join their crew since she was the only English\"man\" aboard--still without discovering her sex. Soon after, in about 1718, these same pirates all accepted a royal pardon for piracy that was being offered at the time and settled down. Mary Read wasn't able to find another way of making a living, so she soon went to Nassau in the Bahamas and joined as a privateer against the Spanish. \n\nHowever, most of the privateer crew were former pirates and they soon mutinied to become outright pirates again. Read joined them and the author of *A General History* writes:\n\n >  It is true, she often declared, that the Life of a Pyrate was what she always abhor'd, and went into it only upon Compulsion, both this Time, and before, intending to quit it, whenever a fair Opportunity should offer it self; yet forced Men, and had sail'd with her, deposed upon Oath, that in Times of Action, no Person amongst them was more resolute, than she and Anne Bonny; and particularly at the time they were attack'd and taken, when they came to close Quarters, none kept the Deck except Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more upon which, she, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more; come up and fight like Men, and finding they did not stir, fired her Arms down the Hold amongst them, killing one, and wounding others. \n\nShe soon fell in with the pirate John \"Calico Jack\" Rackham and his mistress Anne Bonny (who never disguised herself as a man but did apparently fight) and there is a convoluted story about how she befriended another man on the ship who had been forced to join the pirates and then defended him in a duel by killing his opponent after secretly revealing she was a woman, which may or may not be true. At any rate, she did apparently have a lover on the ship and everyone onboard must have known she was a woman by that point. When the pirates were eventually captured in October 1720 off the coast of Jamaica, it was only her, Anne Bonny and one man (perhaps Mary Read's lover) who defended it while the rest of the pirates were too drunk below decks to even put up a fight. \n\nAt the trial, all of the pirates were hung in November 1720 except for Mary Read and Anne Bonny who mysteriously both fell pregnant and \"pleaded their bellies.\" Mary Read soon died of fever in prison while Anne Bonny disappeared. \n\n**Sources:**\n\n*A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724/26 by Charles Johnson/Daniel Defoe/Nathaniel Mist (Charles Johnson is a pseudonym long thought to have been Defore, but Mist is the most likely author)\n\n*Pirates: Terror on the high seas from the Caribbean to the South China seas* edited by David Cordingly", "Late medieval literature is rife with disguises, but less generally appreciated (and perhaps of more interest from a historical perspective) is the fact that some scribes and book owners had cause to disguise the manuscripts themselves.\n\nGeorge Bannatyne (1545-1608) was an Edinburgh merchant who left us the so called \u201cBannatyne Manuscript\u201d (NLS, Adv. MS 1.1.6), a trove of Older Scots literature (some of it uniquely attested) including works by Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Richard Holland and Alexander Scott. Unlike the majority of surviving verse compilations of the era, Bannatyne inserts quite a good deal of his own material into the manuscript and gives a compelling story of the circumstances of his compilation. Edinburgh was hit by plague in 1568 and Bannatyne decamped to the countryside, like Boccaccio\u2019s group of tale-tellers, in order to escape the worst of it. While there, to wile away the months, he collected his material and copied the manuscript as it survives.\n\nExcept that he didn\u2019t. The manuscript is divided into five parts, and the content of each is introduced by Bannatyne\u2019s own (truly abysmal) poetry. The poems that introduce parts four and five bear the dates 1568 \u2013 but the 8 has been written over 5 and 6 respectively. Bannatyne doesn\u2019t do a bad job of it, and given that modern study of the manuscript really began with Walter Scott in the early nineteenth century, his little deception has only fairly recently been discovered \u2013 I believe it was first noticed by Alasdair MacDonald in 1986. It\u2019s possible that parts one through three really were copied in 1568, but that need not be true. The book as a whole is clearly the endeavour of several years.\n\nSo why disguise it? We don\u2019t know for sure of course, but some scholars have speculated that the book was being prepared as a draft copy for print publication. Bannatyne certainly lavishes far more attention on the explanation of the manuscript\u2019s organisation than he would have needed to if it was for private use, and printing had really taken off in Scotland after a late start. The narrative neatness of the plague story is compelling and it already had literary cachet. If it was intended for print, however, it probably never made it \u2013 no copies survive.\n\nWhile I\u2019m on disguised dates in books, one more springs to mind. Oxford, BodL MS Fairfax 2 is an immense copy of the late version of Wycliffite Bible. The versions of the Wycliffite Bible were translated in the late fourteenth century, and the hand of the manuscript is unmistakably from the early fifteenth, and yet a date in the scribal hand (f. 385r) reads \u201cm.ccc  &  iiij\u2019 (1308). The prosaic suggestion of A. G. Watson (*Catalogue of Dated and Dateable Manuscripts c.435\u20131600 in Oxford Libraries* (1984), vol. I, no. 485), who consulted the manuscript under ultraviolet light, is that the scribe meant to write 1408 but was one \u201cc\u201d short, so erased and moved the \u201c & \u201d but then forgot to add a fourth \u201cc\u201d.\n\nThis seems a little contrived to me, however, and I favour the alternative suggestion of Mary Dove (*The First English Bible* (2007), p39, also considered by Elizabeth Solopova, *Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries* (2017), p146). Dove suggests that in the wake of Archbishop Arundel\u2019s *Constitutions* of 1407\u20139, which made ownership of an English Bible from after the time of Wyclif punishable with death by burning (although the Church does not seem to have exercised this right), a later book owner or reader carefully erased the scribe\u2019s fourth \u201cc\u201d to disguise it as a perfectly legal book supposedly \u2013 impossibly! \u2013 copied in 1308. There certainly is an erasure in the manuscript which might account for both Watson\u2019s and Dove\u2019s explanations, but I find Dove\u2019s to be both more straightforward and (although this has no bearing on historical fact) more narratively compelling.\n\nBonus round (I\u2019m on a roll): The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS, Adv. MS 19.2.1) is a collection of English verse produced in London in the 1330s. It was once quite heavily illuminated but \u2013 as is tradition \u2013 some scrapbooking antiquary, enterprising merchant or unpardonable vandal has snipped the pictures out. Of those that remain, one image has at some point been quite differently destroyed... for the purpose of disguise? A column of the text of *\u00dee Wenche \u00feat Loved \u00fee King* has been scraped and smudged out and the remainder on the next leaf has been cut out entirely. The header image survives but has been partially and ineptly scraped off. In spite of the efforts of our censor, the content of the image remains amusingly clear: we are left with the ghostly silhouette of [two figures on a bed](_URL_0_).\n", "Generally, pop musicians often have to carefully balance the impulse to simply play music with their friends because it\u2019s fun and maybe they can make money with a few different competing motivations: most notably, people under contract to a record company usually find that the record company may not look happily upon them using their skills to enrich other record companies.\n\nAs a result, The Beatles - on EMI/Parlophone - simply didn\u2019t give Eric Clapton any credit for his guitar solo on \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019. However, when George Harrison returned the favour by playing on [Cream\u2019s 1969 track \u2018Badge\u2019](_URL_6_) - released on Polydor - he was credited as 'L\u2019Angelo Misterioso'. Similarly, when Paul McCartney produced a [1968 track for the Bonzo Dog Band, \u2018I\u2019m The Urban Spaceman\u2019](_URL_4_), he did it under the name *Apollo C. Vermouth* (perhaps appropriately, Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Band would later write the music for the Beatles parody mockumentary film *The Rutles*, in which his songs - [like the incredibly accurate 'Hold My Hand'](_URL_2_) - were instead claimed to be written by Stig Nasty and Dirk McQuigley). Speaking of which, [Elton John\u2019s 1974 cover of The Beatles\u2019 \u2018Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds\u2019](_URL_5_) apparently features one \u2018Dr. Winston O\u2019Boogie\u2019 on 'reggae guitars' - this was of course a pseudonym for John Winston Lennon. And Nilsson\u2019s 1972 album *Son Of Schmilsson* features one Richie Snare - i.e., Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr - on several tracks on drums [including 'Spaceman'](_URL_8_) (along with slide guitar on another track by one George Harrysong).\n\nElsewhere, the house backing band for Motown Records - dubbed The Funk Brothers, and prominently featured in [the 2002 documentary *Standing In The Shadows Of Motown](_URL_1_)* - weren\u2019t credited on Motown releases at all, and the likes of Paul McCartney wondered who exactly was playing those amazing bass lines he was trying to imitate. Given the enormous success of Motown in the 1960s, and their regular use of the same backing band, it's likely that the Funk Brothers played on more hits in the 20th century than anybody else in the business apart from perhaps the L.A.-based group now called The Wrecking Crew. And nobody knew their names until 1970.\n\nIt was 1970 when Marvin Gaye insisted on crediting his backing musicians on his epochal 1970 album *What\u2019s Going On*, perhaps the first Motown Concept Album, that the general public could put a name to the bass lines (James Jamerson). Anyway, the Funk Brothers were on a salary and were breaching their employment contract by playing on music by other record companies. Nonetheless that band\u2019s peerless ability to create danceable pop music backing tracks that just popped out of the speakers made them hot property amongst record producers in the know who desperately wanted hits, and Motown owner Berry Gordy would have been dumb to sack his golden geese, so perhaps he turned a blind eye as long as it wasn't too egregrious a breach of contract. \n\nAs a result, there are several examples of the nucleus of the Funk Brothers playing on records that were not released on Motown. Famously, the record producer at the Chicago-based Brunswick Records would bus in the Funk Brothers on weekends to do some recording at double their usual rate. This means that [Jackie Wilson\u2019s Brunswick Records hit 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher\u2019](_URL_10_) not only *sounds* like it has Funk Brothers on it - it does. Other examples of the Funk Brothers lending a hand to outside record labels away from Berry Gordy\u2019s prying eyes include hits like [Fontella Bass\u2019s \u2018Rescue Me\u2019](_URL_11_) (on Chess Records\u2019 pop label Checker) and [John Lee Hooker\u2019s \u2018Boom Boom\u2019](_URL_7_) (on Vee Jay). Perhaps the most egregious example of Motown people in disguise escaping from Gordy\u2019s clutches is [Freda Payne\u2019s \u2018Band Of Gold\u2019](_URL_3_), on Invictus Records. The song was written by R. Dunbar  &  E. Wayne, according to the label; however in reality the song was written by the former (enormously successful) Motown songwriting team Holland/Dozier/Holland, who\u2019d quit Motown a couple of years previously to start their own record label but who were still legally under contract. And who obviously knew the Funk Brothers well enough to sneak them into a session away from Berry Gordy\u2019s prying eyes.\n\nSpeaking of John Lee Hooker, after the initial success of his [\u2018Boogie Chillen\u2019 on Modern Records in 1948](_URL_0_), Hooker circa 1951-1953 began rob record for several different record labels under pseudonyms, unconcerned with copyright or contracts and happy to receive money from different record labels. \u2018Minor\u2019 record labels like Modern typically, at this point, made a lump sum payment to the likes of bluesmen and then kept any profit. This didn\u2019t really encourage loyalty, and when Hooker discovered that other record labels were happy to record him, he would make up some variant on his usual blues form and record it under a different name; in the early 1950s, Hooker recorded songs like \u2018Gotta Boogie\u2019, \u2018Love To Boogie\u2019 and \u2018New Boogie Chillen\u2019 that were all basically \u2018Boogie Chillen\u2019 reprises. This made it look to some observers that John Lee Hooker-style blues were a big trend; however, the trend was basically just Hooker recording under pseudonyms like John Lee Cooker, Delta Slim, and Birmingham Sam And His Magic Guitar. \n\nIn the late 1980s, the Traveling Wilburys - a band with some sense of history and a bunch of famous people on different record labels - premised the band on the idea that they\u2019d be playing in disguise, under pseudonyms; certainly each of the band members were on different record labels (in the late 1980s, Orbison being on Virgin, Dylan being on Columbia, Petty being on MCA, Jeff Lynne being on Epic, and George Harrison's self-owned record label being distributed by Warner). So, for example, George Harrison - the former L\u2019Angelo Misterioso - became Nelson Wilbury in the Traveling Wilburys, while Bob Dylan (who\u2019d recorded under the name Blind Boy Grunt in the early 1960s to evade record company scrutiny) became Lucky Wilbury. Mind you, all of the Wilburys on ['Handle With Care'](_URL_9_) had record company approval to appear in the band, because it was a golden promotional opportunity, and because it only takes one look at the music video for even half-hearted music fans to go \"holy shit, that's George Harrison, and that's Roy Orbison!\"; the Wilbury aliases were more of a fond remembrance of the old days than a contractual demand.", "Among the most distinguishing features of the Taiping rebels was their long hair, a rejection of the shaved forehead that symbolised obedience to the Manchus. This led to immense problems when trying to identify people who had clearly recently changed hairstyles (a suspiciously pale forehead could tell as much as unusually short forehead hair), and stories abound of merchants growing their hair out to trade with the Taiping and then tanning their newly-shaven scalps to trade with the Imperials. Apparently, it became common practice for civilian men in the warzones to have a proper queue ready hidden in their hats so that the rest could be shaved off quickly in the event of Imperial recapture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2fm7Unf9r8"], [], [], [], [], ["https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56fbf95bd210b88a1494cfb4/t/56fea424e707ebbebaf74dc8/1459529026818/?format=500w"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4pp02_GN9A", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqQBh2Ra_o", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qf8y7v0WIE", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxiMb0rITA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVr2hbE6aW0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZ6J6fjw9w", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSpW6MePb10", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7xOZVBAWtw", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4s1KVJaVA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIy6X4VTWpk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BeGDZewHs"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ap0dn", "title": "When did navies begin to phase out sailing-only ships in favor of steam powered or hybrid ships? What were some of the final sail-powered-only ships to be built and used in a naval role?", "selftext": "I was reading about the Star of India, built in 1863, and that prompted me to wonder this. To my understanding 1863 seems to be quite a late year for an exclusively sailing vessel to be built. Obviously enthusiasts today still sail sailing ships, but the Star of India wasn't an enthusiast's ship.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_did_navies_begin_to_phase_out_sailingonly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d12k66q", "d12pop6", "d12w8ve"], "score": [13, 11, 5], "text": ["Purely saildriven ships were still in use until the early 20. century. Most of them were used for relatively low value bulkgoods (often but not always!) because sailing ships still had some advantages over coal driven ships, which required expensive machinery and a reliable supply of coal. The large teaclippers and later the Windjammers, made possible by introducing iron/steelhulls, are excelent and widespread examples for mid/late 19th century sailships which, at their time, were economicaly viable. Once steam engines became more refined the large sailships slowly fell out of use but by then we are well into the 20th century.\n\nI currently don't have any exhaustive literature about late 19th century ocean going sailing vessels (perhaps the last chapters of Chapelles The Search for Speed Under Sail, 1700-1855 would qualify) but on a small scale the same development can be seen in the area of inland navigation. Here Fontenoy's The Sloops of the Hudson River provides an excelent example for the challenges but also the economic niches that came with the use of sail driven ships/boats.", "Hi there, I've written a few answers on this in the past that may be of interest to you: \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTo quote a bit from those answers: \n\n > The first oceangoing ironclad vessel was the French La Gloire, whose keel was laid in 1858. It was essentially a frigate with iron plates bolted to its timbers above the waterline. The British navy responded with HMS Warrior, launched in 1860. Warrior was an oceangoing ironclad that was both full-rigged for sail and equipped with a steam engine, which made her the precursor of many hybrid sail/steam ironclads. \n\n > Some combination of La Gloire and Warrior were the likely inspiration for the Confederate conversion of USS Merrimack into CSS Virginia, which had one day of glory when it sank USS Cumberland, burned USS Congress, and drove two other ships aground. The Virginia's design  was substantially different from earlier ironclads in that the hull above the waterline was reconstructed and it depended entirely on steam power.\n\n > The Monitor was created as a design  specifically meant to counter Merrimack/Virginia, and it was unique in having a revolving turret, which meant that it did not have to maneuver to bring its guns to bear. It was not, however, meant to be an oceangoing ship (nor was Virginia) and in fact it sank under tow off Cape Hatteras.\n\nand from another answer: \n\n >  The 1880s were an interesting time in ship design, because the traditional divisions of sailors were changing to accommodate the advent of steam propulsion. Most of my comments will apply to the British and American navies, since it's what I'm most interested in.\n >  Navies had since time immemorial been powered by sail, and many early steam vessels also had masts and a full sail rig .\n >  This should not be confused by the mast or masts on a modern ship , which are used mostly for signaling or as sensor platforms. Ironclad masts were used as a primary or secondary power source, as well as a place for sail drill. This was in many ways a logical design evolution, when capital ships were converted  to add steam power, though it looks odd to modern eyes.\n\n >  In any case, the addition of engines meant the addition of engineers, which meant a change in the traditional rank structure of navies and their internal organization. Initially, officers resisted the addition of engines and dirty coal to their ships, even as it was widely recognized that coal and steam power were the future of navies.\n\n >  (Apologies for the enormous image link , but Turner's \"The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up\" is highly symbolic of this understanding.)\n\n >  Anyhow, the addition of engineers to the traditional structure was a source of tension in many naives. Conservative elements in the British and American navies assigned engineers initially to the ranks of warrant officers, and only reluctantly added them to the ranks of actual commissioned officers. Conversely, up-and-coming officers of a technical bent saw engineering as a growth field, which led to a great deal of tension among younger and older officers.\n\n >  In terms of internal organization, by the end of the Napoleonic wars the British and American navies had adopted a divisional system, in which an officer was assigned to a set of men on the ship, so that even in a very large ship each man was assured of being known to his own officer. The men were further divided by stations on \"watch\" by their skills, with the most prestigious jobs for a seaman being work aloft (although there were many other specialized jobs having to do with all stages of running a ship). The change in propulsion attacked directly the boatswain's department, as being in charge of the sails and rigging, and also the self-identity of the Navy. Officers wondered how men would be trained without constant work on the masts and sails, and reactionary elements in the British navy continued to present papers and arguments in favor of sails though the 1890s (sails were officially abolished from new construction in 1887).\n\n >  In terms of the actual jobs done, sailors tended to do many traditional jobs: scrub decks and fittings, exercise with the guns, hoist in and out boats, re-stock the ship with provisions, take care of compartments, tackle, sails, flags, etc.; but the new jobs done were coaling, maintaining the ship's machinery, and understanding the complicated mechanical changes brought about by boilers and engines and steam power. The men would be organized into divisions under a particular officer, with warrant officers supervising individual work spaces and/or groups of men, who stood regular watches.\n\n >  Some sources on the transition that are interesting reads:\n\n >  Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy\n\n >  The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command", "I think the question really needs to clarify whether you're asking about military or civilian use of sail. The Star of India was by no means a \"late\" sailing ship in 1863. Both the Balclutha (1886) and the C.A. Thayer (1895) are sailing ships that enjoyed long careers hauling cargo and passengers.\n\nThese ships were still very economical well into the 20th century largely because the labor required to run them was quite small compared to warships. [The Balclutha](_URL_0_) sailed on its maiden voyage with a crew of 26 compared to the hundreds that would crew on a warship (to man the guns, fight the ship, etc.), so a voyage that took longer via sail would still be more profitable than the fuel to power a faster boat. The primary cargo carried was (originally) California grain to the UK and coal on the return. Because these goods were relatively non-perishable, there wasn't the emphasis on speed versus the overall profitability of each voyage regardless of the length. (Sidenote: sail on the Pacific coast lasted longer than in other areas because there was no good source of coal; the early development of oil drilling in California also led to earlier adoption of oil powered steamships as well).\n\nThe [C.A. Thayer](_URL_1_) was primarily a coastal vessel, sailing up and down the Pacific Coast of the US hauling lumber. Again, non-perishable cargo where speed mattered less than cost of operation.\n\nLater in their careers, both ships operated well into the 1920s supporting the salmon fishing and canning trade in Alaska, hauling labor and fishermen up and canned salmon down. \n\nSailing ships were also in use well into the 20th century on inland waterways. [The Alma](_URL_3_) plied the inland waterway from Sacramento area to the main ports of the San Francisco Bay hauling cargo under sail until it was converted to a pulled barge once oil became more common in the 1910s.\n\nThere's no question that steam overcame sail much earlier in military ships, both for the consistency of travel and maneuvering regardless of the wind and for the labor savings of having more men available to man the guns instead of shifting sails in battle (plus the fact that the purpose of those ships was to sink enemy ships and not get sunk, a very different economic model!). But for commercial vessels, the economics of sail lasted far longer.\n\nBy the way, if you're ever visiting San Francisco, all three of those ships are on display (along with the 1907 oil powered, ocean-going steam tug [Hercules](_URL_2_) and several other vessels) at the [San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park](_URL_4_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28yrxj/did_the_unions_monitor_have_a_unique_design_for_a/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gv83n/what_sort_of_jobs_did_the_crew_do_on_an/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jso46/how_did_the_transition_from_wooden_ships_to/"], ["http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/balclutha-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/ca-thayer-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/hercules.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/alma-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/index.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "3iws8a", "title": "why are new models of cars released the year before the actual year of the model? (i.e 2016 cars released in 2015).", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iws8a/eli5_why_are_new_models_of_cars_released_the_year/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cukbghy", "cukeqlt", "cukgkec", "cukk0wz"], "score": [6, 5, 7, 3], "text": ["Cars' age us dictated by their model year. The year it was built.\n\nSo if you're building/releasing a car towards the end of the year, it will appear to be a year old in only a month or a couple months. \n\nCars depreciate in value steeply each year, so if you find a car that was 2014 December and another that was 2015 January, you will mentally consider those cars to be a year different in age, even though it's only a couple weeks.", "They can call it anything, there is no law saying it has to be the actual year. They could release a 2020 car.", "It's typically based on the year it ends production, not starts. For instance many 2015 models start production in mid/late 2014 and stop production in early/mid 2015. There's a lot of exceptions to this and it's largely marketing driven more than anything. ", "Yarr, ye forgot yer searchin' duties, for ['twas asked by those what came before ye!](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=car+model+year&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=relevance&amp;t=all"]]}
{"q_id": "13lidw", "title": "- why do airline ticket prices fluctuate so much on a day to day basis?", "selftext": "Pretty self explanatory.  I realize that fuel prices go up and down each day but other than that is there any other factors that impact it? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13lidw/eli5_why_do_airline_ticket_prices_fluctuate_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c74zvd4", "c7506jw", "c750ios", "c751f6a", "c751w8z", "c754bzv", "c755cfc", "c755jg0"], "score": [24, 29, 15, 419, 13, 2, 77, 5], "text": ["Prices are highest when casual travelers are most likely to buy (weekends, evenings).  Buy on a Tuesday around noon for the (historically) lowest prices.  I don't know if this is still true.\n\nFor Southwest, prices are first-come, first served.  Buy 6 months in advance right when they post the tickets, and you'll get the lowest price.  If they ever have a sale, you can call and get the difference refunded.", "Prices work on fluctuating demand.\nBelieve it not or, a lot of the prices are made up to start with, and then you monitor from there to see how it's going. Selling tickets at $159 too fast, bump it up to $179, selling too slow, drop it to $169.\n\nNot selling anything at all, drop them to $99 but put the flights on dates either side at $159 and suddenly they seem more attractive.", "Also, picked this one up on reddit. Airlines will use their browser cookies to raise prices based on the number of times you visit to check for lower prices.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nNot sure if there is any truth to this, as I don't often travel by plane. But it is something to keep in mind.", "You make and sell widgets.  They are really cheap for you to make so we won't consider your costs for this example.\n\nFred is willing to pay $6 for a widget, and Wilma is willing to pay $10, and Shaggy is willing to pay $12.\n\nWhat should you set your price at?  If you sell at $6, all three will buy from you and your gross income will be $18.  If you sell at $10, Wilma and Shaggy will buy from you and your gross will be $20.  If you sell at $12, only Shaggy will buy from you and your gross will be $12.\n\nClearly you should set your price at $10, right?  If this was the only way you could set prices, then the answer would be yes.  But what if you came up with some clever way of charging different prices for each person.  If you could charge everybody the most they would be willing to pay, then you could make $28 instead.\n\nThis is called \"capturing the consumer surplus\".  You see this in lots of places, with things like senior citizen or child discounts (groups that would often just rather pass up something than pay full price), or with region codes on DVDs.  Any time you have a chance to divide up your market you have an opportunity to capture consumer surplus.\n\nAirlines have made this into an art, deciding how much somebody is probably willing to pay based on all sorts of signals like where they are going, whether it is round trip, how many stops there are, how far in advance they are looking for a ticket, when they are flying, etc, etc.  It would not be surprising to learn that every person on a flight paid a different price.\n\nTL;DR - They are making a guess at the most you'd be willing to pay based on the information they have about you.", "Prices don't actually fluctuate as much as you might think.  It's the availability of the *type* of ticket that changes.  The differences in types of tickets aren't usually explained  to customers because, frankly, they don't care.  They just want the 'cheapeset'.  Travel agents, confusingly, refer to these ticket types as 'classes' of tickets, even tho they are all in the same class (economy/business/etc)\n\nA rather contrived example might be:  You go look up a flight, online, from LA to London.  \n\nYou find  a LA- > New York- > London. \n\nIt's a ticket with American Airlines purchased through an online travel agency called Bucket Prices.\n\nThe LA- > New York on American Airlines is $300 in economy class which is $200 non-refundable.  Then an economy class ticket from New York- >  London for $520 which is 100% non-refundable.  Bucket Prices charges their approx. 6% commission which brings it up to 870$\n\nYou think you might be able to do better, so you head to a travel agency downtown called Shop'n'Fly.\n\nThey find the exact same flight, also with American Airlines.  Except this travel agent has a different contract.  They can get you the same price LA- > New York, but because of their contacts with American Airlines, they don't have access to the 100% non-refundable tickets for $520.  They can only sell the $250 non-refundable tickets, which are $650.  They charge 2% commission and so their price is $969.  Exact same flights.  Exact same class of service. Different class of tickets, so different prices.\n\nWell, crap.  It was cheaper online.  So you go back there.\n\nExcept, for that day the 100%  non-refundable tickets are now sold out -- there were only 20 available with those conditions..  So, *now* the only available tickets (For exactly the same flight, remember.  Same plane, still in economy class, just different conditions) is $1145 because the only type of economy class ticket available is more expensive. \n\nOf course the Shop'n'Fly downtown now has the cheaper flight because the contract they (or, more likely, their wholesalers) have worked out with American Airlines give them access to the (now) cheaper class of ticket.\n\nThree prices, all for the same flight, all in the course of one day.\n\n\n", "LPT: clean your cache/cookies when shopping for airfares. Websites track if you've recently visited (say, in the past couple days) and will adjust prices accordingly. Why? Cause they ****ing can. Don't get caught with your pants down.", "Yay it's finally my day to shine! I am an IBE (Internet Booking Engine) software developer working for one of the bigger international companies in the industry, I basically make the websites you go to buy your tickets.  \n  \nHere is my ELI5 explanation, if anyone has more detailed questions I'd be happy to answer them as well:  \n  \nThere is a limited number of seats in an aircraft. The people working in the airline divide them into slices, like you would with a cake for example, and give a difference price to each slice.  \nSo for example if an aircraft has 200 seats, they will first divide them into something called \"cabin classes\", usually as first / business / economy. Seats in the first class slice of the cake have all the toppings and choco-chips and fruit pieces: They are very comfy, have big TV screens and get the best food. Business class is like that but with smaller seats and less fun, and economy class is just to get you through your flight (although you usually still get some food and a small TV). Since many people can't pay for first and business slices, the majority of the seats will be in the economy slice, may be like 8 / 16 / 176 for our 200 seats.  \n  \nNow that you have those 176 seats in a huge single slice, you notice that not everyone wants to eat the same amount of cake. Some people will just want a taste, and they don't want to pay for a big piece which they couldn't finish anyway. Other people are really in a hurry to eat some of the cake, so they would be willing to pay more to get a piece. So you further divide your big economy slice into \"reservation classes\" (also called by the fancy name of Reservation Booking Designators). Out of those 176 seats, you can say that 26 will be very cheap but don't get any food on the plane, some other 40 are reasonably priced but you have to pay for them at least one month before the flight, another 30 are very pricey but you can get them even in the last second and so on, so that everyone can get a piece of cake according to their money and their needs. When they buy such a slice, we say that they bought tickets.  \n  \nSo let's say someone wants to buy one of those really cheap tickets. But there were only 26 of them to begin with, and people buy cheap tickets even if they are not sure they would be able to use them later, because hey they are cheap. So when you go to the airline website, it will tell you \"Nope, you can only get one of these more expensive tickets\". But 5 minutes after that, someone who bought a cheap ticket may decide he doesn't want it anymore and return it, so when you check back during the same day what you will see is that ticket prices dropped like crazy. \n  \nAnother thing is this: The airline wants to sell all slices of the cake, because they already paid for it and baked it. And if some slices are left, they will go to waste when the airplane lifts off with empty seats. So the people in the airline look at each flight, and if the slices are selling very well and just a few are left, they increase the price above normal because hey, people clearly want a piece of this cake, so someone will likely pay extra for the last pieces. But if there are a lot of empty seats left, they will lower the price below normal to lure more people in before the plane leaves the airport.  \n  \nSorry for the long response, but this is a much more complicated issue than people realise and I happen to know way too much of it :)  \n  \n\n**TLDR: Airlines group seats together and assign different prices to them. Cheaper seats are fewer in number, so they go out of stock more easily. The airlines will also adjust these prices at the last minute based on how well the sales are doing. So when you check the prices for the same flight during the same day, you might see expensive (no cheap seats left), then super cheap (someone cancelled their reservation with a cheap seat), and then as the takeoff time approaches something even lower (there are a lot of empty seats left) or higher (very few seats remaining).**", "Each ticket has its own set of rules. Like what  you can do with the ticket. Change dates. Refund. Etc. the more expensive the ticket the more flexible the ticket usually is. \n\nSay an airline has 100 seats to sell 10 seats will be at their cheapest, the next 10 will be a little bit more but will be cheaper to change dates or will give you more money back if you cancel etc. \n\nSo the more tickets that get booked on a flight the more the price goes up, as people will usually want to get the cheapest available. \n\nThen there are fuel surcharges. If fuel costs more the price goes up on the available tickets so they don't loose out on using that fuel now for tickets that were sold when the fuel price wasn't so high. If the price goes down the current price will go down again too. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/fares-watch-out-for-slippery-airline-websites,9793/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64wtef", "title": "why do some americans distrust the mass media so much?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64wtef/eli5why_do_some_americans_distrust_the_mass_media/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg5mibe", "dg5mlrp", "dg5nyny", "dg5o6oq", "dg5onyy", "dg5qr1w", "dg5qw49", "dg5r6cj"], "score": [12, 8, 10, 4, 9, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["One of the primary personality types of those that settled the US was that they did not trust government, nor did they trust media. Everyone is always trying to manipulate what you see and think and so everything has to be taken with a grain of salt and tested for its validity. ", "Several major publications (namely CNN and the Wall Street Journal as the most recent) have been shown to be editing the news out of context to serve a narrative, and a political agenda, instead of presenting factual information.\n\nThere's always been some news outlets like this, but these two were considered to be less biased than the others, so them doing this is a huge betrayal of the public trust, and has affected other outlets as a result.", "Could it be the long history of the mass media peddling outright lies to serve a political agenda?", "news corporations are businesses. they make more money from fearmongering the audiences, and pandering to the political agendas of their investors.", "They have a pattern of pushing stories with false narratives in order to support a political agenda. Both the right and the left are guilty of this. \n\nCase in point: CNN hadn't stopped in demonizing Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy. Some was valid, some were semantics, some was slander, and some was absolutely false. \n\nHowever, they did not do the same respect against Hillary Clinton, even though this election has revealed much dirt on her. Some of their reporters and contributors who were starting to criticize her, their feed would suddenly have their feed cut. They continually pushed for Donald Trump's tax returns, yet heavily discouraged anyone from looking into the leaked Podesta emails. \n\nThis led to what is called Fake News, as in a news organization with the purpose of habitually pushing half-truths or non-truths narratives intentionally for the sake of an agenda. \n\nThe reason we don't trust them? We see it as clear as crystal. ", "So, there's an old meme about news coverage:\n\n* **The Story:** Obama drinking a Pepsi\n* **CNBC:** Obama appeals to Pepsi Fans\n* **Fox News:** Obama declares war on Coke!\n* **CNN:** In an hour, we have live coverage of the President's views of his favorite drink\n* **BBC:** Dozens dead in Iraq drone strike\n\nIt's a bit of an exaggeration, but it illustrates part of the point. Each news site, whether left, right, or center, has its own spin. Whether it's because the owner wants to push a certain viewpoint, or the viewers want a certain news type of news, etc. News in the US is business - so they have owners or shareholders that have a vested interest in getting more viewers/advertisers etc. And that means you have to actively appeal to a certain viewerbase to try to win their loyalty, by coming off as \"their\" news source. So you have news that will tailor what and how it reports to certain biases. Sometimes it's not a huge deal, it might just be omitting a small story or focusing on some event at the expense of another, but during elections or high profile cases it really starts to come out.\n\nEven ignoring the Clinton/Trump race, even when it was the primaries with Clinton/Sanders, the media tended to focus much more on Clinton, largely \"assuming\" she was going to be candidate, rather than give both equal coverage.\n\nAnd, unfortunately, because of how busy and how much of a barrage of information there is, some people will take what they see as read and just move on with their day. \"I saw it on the news\" has gone from something legitimate to a phrase with a lot less meaning, because now the news sources are much more biased. Everyone of every direction is guilty of it, of pushing some narrative or commentary on a story, rather than just reporting the story itself. Because of so many 24/7 news sites and sources, they have to move beyond just reporting the news, they have to report stories about what they're reporting on. So what should be a five minute segment about some small incident becomes hours-long coverage with views from pundits or callers, or opinions from \"experts\" that lean towards what they want to tell. It's why many stories add on some extra comments - instead of \"X happened at Y,\" it becomes \"X happened at Y, what does this mean for Z?\" And it's that last part that becomes the focus, rather than the event.", "Back in the day it used to be that when reporting on stories the goal was to be as even-handed as possible.  The idea was that you wouldn't know the opinion of the author or the publication, their job was to bring you the facts, nothing more.\n\nThis has changed.  Now many most outlets believe they have to explain the news to you, rather than present the unbiased facts.  Once you get into this territory you start bringing in the biases of the authors and the media outlets.\n\nNow that it is the norm to include commentary and explanations of the news you bring in the personal views of the author.  Journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrat in America.  In the last presidential election, of the journalists who donated to a presidential campaign, 96% of them donated to Democrats/Hillary Clinton while only 4% donated to Republicans/Trump.  The actual vote of America ended up being pretty close to a 50/50 split in the Presidential races and the local/state races had majorities to Republicans, yet nearly all political donations from the media went to Democrats.\n\nThis bias means that conservatives largely distrust the media outside of a few media organizations that are clearly biased towards their ideology such as Fox News.\n\nSome Democrats tend to distrust the media because they don't feel the media is biased enough towards their ideology.  These people tend to get their news from highly biased new sources such as Comedy Central and MSNBC.\n\nModerates and Independents look at both Fox News, MSNBC and see them as being the same thing, just opposite ends of the political spectrum.  So they try to find unbiased news by turning to media organizations like CNN.  But if you watched the Presidential results the evening of the election you'd have seen Wolf Blitzer's head exploding because Hillary Clinton wasn't winning and a panel of journalists who looked like their dog just died as states continued to go to Donald Trump.  It was embarrassing.  CNN has become very politicized and left-leaning, and let's not forget it was CNN's employees who leaked debate questions to Hillary Clinton.", "The media only give us what they wanna us to believe instead of the truth. They try to guide public opinion instead of listening to what we really care. They are misusing the power of media and serve for certain purpose, politics, economy, social etc. \n\nThe thing is increasingly people start to see this by lots of things happened to them. Not only political issues but also some social news, they try to manipulate us or influence the social consensus by providing the false news or inaccurate info. \n\nThe principle is that media supported by people, and that neither can exist effectively without each other. Why we distrust mass media so much, we need to consider our roles in this game too.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6luft9", "title": "What are the minimum number of instructions a CPU would need to support to be Turing Complete?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6luft9/what_are_the_minimum_number_of_instructions_a_cpu/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djwyzgk", "djy42d1"], "score": [18, 9], "text": ["A CPU containing an Intel MMU needs one, the [mov](_URL_1_) instruction. Otherwise, [mov plus jump](_URL_0_).\n\nThere is a whole [class](_URL_2_) of abstract machines that have only one instruction.", "The minimum possible is one single instruction. For example, the single instruction \"Subtract and jump if negative\" can be used to make a Turing complete machine.\n\nMore examples here: _URL_0_\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd601/papers/mov.pdf", "https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc", "http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~parhami/pubs_folder/parh88-ijeee-ultimate-risc.pdf"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer#Instruction_types"]]}
{"q_id": "3dtaz1", "title": "why hasn't caitlyn jenner been punished for killing someone in the car wreck that happened a few months ago?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dtaz1/eli5_why_hasnt_caitlyn_jenner_been_punished_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct8fiiq", "ct8flfg", "ct8fy0x", "ct8gmhm", "ct8ixft"], "score": [9, 26, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["Authorities are still investigating and may still file charges. She's also being sued in court for wrongful death. Is there a specific part that you want more info on?", "It's not a crime to kill someone in a car wreck if it was genuinely an accident. According to wikipedia: \n\n > In July 2015, Los Angeles investigators determined that while Jenner was inattentive, \"she was not intoxicated or texting\" before the crash, and would not face felony charges.[77]", "Also keep in mind, real police investigations are not like CSI, and solved in a day or two. \n\nPulling all the potential evidence can take weeks, then running any needed simulations. \n\nPlus since it was a traffic accident, fatal though it was, it can potentially slip down the priority chain behind rape and murder cases where they actively seeking a suspect. As far resource allocation goes anyway.", "cars, driving, the road, etc. are inherently dangerous. you are in about a ton of metal moving at 20 times normal human speeds. the rules of the road and the tools used to follow them are such that there is some statistical odds of them failing to keep an individual safe. the law, for all its faults, acknowledges this. \n\ncriminal liability is a complicated matter, but broadly speaking there is a requirement of having gone against the rules. this is why vehicular deaths are so high compared to vehicular homicide/manslaughter. \n\nfor jenner specifically, I don't know. however, it's likely she will fall into this category, because most accidents do. ", "I know the neighbors of the deceased and the woman apparently was a recent widow with no heirs, so there's also not a family fighting tooth and nail for restitution. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "54es0u", "title": "how is it that the human brain/body sometimes wakes up seconds before an alarm goes off?!", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54es0u/eli5_how_is_it_that_the_human_brainbody_sometimes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d818chj", "d818esc", "d81gbyh", "d81iyku", "d81jmkn", "d81l08r", "d81ni9f", "d81pyty", "d81qcaq", "d82131p", "d821z3t"], "score": [63, 143, 23, 60, 5, 18, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Do you have a set schedule, like you wake up at the same time every day?\n", "Your body does have internal regulation mechanisms, I'm not a doctor and there are plenty who are who can talk more intelligently about the circadian rhythm of the body etc. The other component is psychological. What's happening is an example of confirmation bias. You've woken up a few times almost on the clock (relative to the total number of days you've ever slept in your life). Though this number is astronomical low, you only remember the times you did wake up on the minute. You bias yourself to count those times and subconsciously ignore the other times and thus you feel as though you have an ability to wake up on time. This also happens when people think that they can catch when people are looking at them. You sometimes do and sometimes don't, but the times you don't are not out of the ordinary so you forget them. Thus you only remember catching them and get a false sense of confirmation.", "I will posit that in light sleep you are aware of what is going on around you (e.g. if baby cries you will wake up) However you are constantly forgetting what you are sensing within seconds, so that when you wake you have no memories of the sleep. However if you are awoken by the alarm, you will have a memory of the seconds before the alarm, as the awakening stops the forgetting process, and so you feel you are already awake before the alarm (even though you are not)\n\nI hope this makes some sort of sense", "I think it's pretty funny the top response is essentially saying you aren't experiencing the very subject of your query.\n\nIt could be a variety of things, because your brain isn't completely 'off' just because you're asleep. We have a sense of time in addition to the five main senses, and it would be more beneficial to complete your current sleep cycle instead of being jarred awake by the alarm. When following a regular schedule this also occurs more often, especially if you're reaction to the alarm is frequently described as a deep hatred. \n\nWaking up at 6am every day, I experienced the same situation of getting up immediately before back when my alarm was ridiculously annoying. It felt a lot better pre-emptively shutting it off than having it interrupt my restful slumber.", "May somebody stop saying \"our bodies have an inbuilt clock\" and rather give a bit more precise argument or answer on the issue. Please.", "I can tell myself to wake up at a certain time and I will wake up at that time. I think \"Wake up at six\" when I lay down and I will wake up at six. Might be along those lines for you also. \n\n", "Coincidence mixed with how long a sleep cycle is. A sleep cycle is roughly 70-90 minutes. At the end of each sleep cycle it's much easier to wake up. It's often why you feel so alert after waking up from a dream, dreams take place in the 1st stage REM and 4th stage rem (the first and last stages of a sleep cycle). \n\n \nExample Time:\n\nOk so you go to bed at 10 and have an alarm set at 7. I'll call the 20 min leeway at the end of sleep cycles the Wakeup Zone (WZ).  This is where your body is doing all sorts of fun stuff with histamine to regulate your sleep pattern and also where you're most likely to wakeup because its at the tail end of a sleep cycle. \n\n(Fun fact: OTA sleep drugs are just high doses of allergy meds (anti-histamines) to prevent you from waking up more often through the night.)\n\nCycle 1. 10:00 - 11:30pm (11:10pm - 11:30pm WZ)\n\nCycle 2. 11:30 - 1:00pm  (12:40am - 1:00am WZ)\n\nCycle 3. 1:00am - 2:30am  (2:10am - 2:30am WZ)\n\nCycle 4. 2:30am - 4:00am  (3:40am - 4:00am WZ)\n\nCycle 5. 4:00am - 5:30am  (5:10am - 5:30am WZ)\n\nCycle 6. 5:30am - 7:00am  (6:40am - 7:00am WZ)\n\nChances are you aren't really fully rested during cycles 1-4 so the likelihood of spontaneously waking up in the WZ is lower.\nBetween 5-6 however, chances are much greater. Couple that with coincidence and you have the anomaly you describe. You only notice the time because you have an alarm set for it. \n\nIn that last sleep cycle you're odds of waking up 1 minute before the alarm is 1/20. \n\nNote: This is heavily simplified, WZ is not a scientific term an its a bit more complicated than this. But at a high-level its pretty close. \n\nSource: Engineer that worked on devices/algorithms that use EEG measure activity in your brain during these periods. ", "Because that's the one time you remember. It's a bias - there are plenty of times when you're sort-of, almost half-awake, but you forget about those because you go back to deeper sleep. But when that happens right before your alarm goes off, you get fully woken up by the alarm. And then, you remember \"waking up\" right before the alarm.\n\nThis gets more likely the more regular your schedule is.", "I wake up several times every night, look at my clock, then go back to bed. I usually wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off but it's bound to happen because of how often I wake up anyway. I can't imagine going to bed and not waking up until my alarm goes off. Maybe you wake up a lot and only remember the last time? ", "Just today I had my alarm set for 8:00. Woke up scared that my alarm didn't go off or  that I had slept through it. Since I had to be somewhere. Looked at phone. 7:59 ", "The cerebellum actually contains mechanisms for rather precise timing, and several systems allow the circadian rhythm to be maintained.\n\nFor example, some optic nerves route directly to the limbic system rather than the visual cortex. So background light levels can trigger wake-up. This is part of the reason why you might wake up the same time every sunny day but later on overcast days.\n\nSimilar conditioning can occur with temperature, auditory input, etc.\n\nThe other answers are surprising in how much they have no fucking clue what they're talking about. It's amazing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3u6fyw", "title": "what operating system does microsoft use to make their new operating systems?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u6fyw/eli5_what_operating_system_does_microsoft_use_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxcaw6t", "cxcb2pj", "cxcdhqn", "cxcemvo"], "score": [14, 9, 9, 4], "text": ["Sure, they used 8 in the beginning, but Microsoft has a pretty strong dogfooding culture.  The idea is to use 10 to develop 10, in hopes of finding bugs and fixing them.", "The operating system used to program does not have to be the same as the target operating system. Using a cross compiler, and proper libraries, you can compile for a different operating system or even different processor type. \n\nSee also \n_URL_0_\n", "Microsoft would use existing operating systems to design the most basic version of the next operating system. In most cases, this operating system will have the bare minimum to boot up, and do almost nothing else. They would then work inside that new operating system to develop all their necessary features and components (a gui, applications, accessories), and then compile that full operating system into a boot disk, that you would buy today.", "It is important to realize that current operating system from MS are very much an assemblage of a large number of parts.\n\nMany of these parts either don't change much from version to version all that much.\n\nSo it is not like they have to rewrite everything all at once.\n\nIt seems they start out with making changes to the core and once that runs halfway well they use their development on that to upgrade al the other parts.\n\nEarly previews of new Windows versions often still have a host of features from the previous version that have not yet been updated or deleted."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_compiler"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29ztad", "title": "my cat does this thing where i'll be minding my own business, and he'll just stroll up and begin licking my arms and hands for what seems like hours. what does this mean? what is he doing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ztad/eli5_my_cat_does_this_thing_where_ill_be_minding/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciq3pcc", "ciq5gf1", "ciqcnoq", "ciqeaqz", "ciqedep", "ciqfdzb"], "score": [29, 32, 22, 2, 20, 2], "text": ["He is grooming you like any member of the family.\n\nMaybe he's waiting for you to reciprocate.", "Beyond the mutual grooming behavior cats also enjoy licking humans for the salt we excrete with our sweat. Your arms are like a big bag of potato chips to this cat.", "Your cat has never seen you groom and assumes you are an idiot who can't groom so he or she is doing it for you. Same reason cats leave dead animals for you. They think humans are huge dumb ugly cats who can't do anything for themselves and need help. ", "Cat does this to me all the time. I try to ignore it, but at 3 am I'm like \"Can you NOT!??\".", "Cat's will sometimes groom other cats like how monkeys pick bugs off of each other.  As others have said, he thinks you are a retard.  Because you do nothing to help yourself, he tries his damnedest to care for you.  You should be grateful, as he doesn't have to help you.  Remember to feed him more treats and people food, and he will care for you for the rest of your retarded life.  He also knows that you are too stupid to suspect that he would use Reddit to insult you in the comments section, so he totally didn't hack some random dudes account in order to send you this.  P.S. The food bowl is empty again, fix this or I will have midnight crazies again.", "He is grooming you.  You are now a part of the Tribe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "735tk7", "title": "if a human were the size of an ant, could they see things that are microscopic?", "selftext": "A question from my ten year old cousin.  Of course, this is setting aside the obvious problems of an ant-sized human.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/735tk7/eli5_if_a_human_were_the_size_of_an_ant_could/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnnunx9", "dnnv7a9", "dnnx72z", "dnodmpc"], "score": [8, 6, 10, 7], "text": ["No, the world would look drastically different, but you wouldn't be able to see microbes or atoms or anything like that. Microbes are incredibly small, in many cases much smaller the cells in mammals or other complex life.", "The smallest ants - pharaoh ants at around 2mm - are about 1/1000th the size of the tallest humans - a little over 2m - so you can estimate that with the same visual acuity he would see things at effectively 1000x \"magnification\".\n\nWe can perceive objects down to about 0.1mm, so our shrunken human would in principle be able to perceive down to 0.1\u03bcm (microns). Most bacteria are 2-100x that size so he could see them easily.\n\nYou start hitting the limits of visible light at these scales though, which is why we move to things like electron microscopes at higher magnifications. There may be other optical effects I'm missing that would mess things up at such a small scale.", "Microbes: yes; atoms: no.  With a straight, magical scaling down of a human you'd hit the resolution limits of visible light which has a wavelength of about 0.5\u03bcm.  This would mean that you could see everything that can be seen with an optical microscope but atoms are a challenge even for electron microscopes.\n\nIf you delve into the kind of magic that would be required to scale a human then many more problems arise.  The retinal cells in our eyes just don't scale down like that.  Insect cells are roughly the same size as human cells; they just have way fewer of them.  That's partly why insects have compound eyes which work in a very different way from human eyes.\n\nThe most fundamental problem is that the square-cube law means that you can't just scale cells or organisms and expect them to work in the same way.  There's a reason that the smallest mammals are bigger than insects.", "Biology answer: as you shrink everything shrinks including your retina iris etc. so the amount of light let in would be tiny. This means the world would become very dark, if not black. Your ears wouldn't be able to accept sound waves, making you deaf. Your lungs would be too small to absorb oxygen, and the capellaries would be too small to transport oxygen which means you would suffocate in a dark silent world. So no you wouldnt be able to see microbes"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5a9i5t", "title": "what is that feeling when you randomly violently shiver, or when someone \"walks over your grave\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a9i5t/eli5_what_is_that_feeling_when_you_randomly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9exqq3", "d9exwtt", "d9exy4v", "d9ey14q", "d9eyhiq", "d9eyykx", "d9ezked", "d9ezuto", "d9f0a6u", "d9f0nia", "d9f0qq9", "d9f0zqf", "d9f1goo", "d9f1icv", "d9f1vbu", "d9f235q", "d9f2u9t", "d9f2w1k", "d9f3o7t", "d9f4eea", "d9f7c0e", "d9fbmrx", "d9ffbfp", "d9fh350"], "score": [12, 89, 2, 1533, 1153, 295, 35, 3, 3, 2, 11, 3, 2, 108, 2, 19, 3, 34, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Are you talking about [frisson](_URL_0_)? Or something else?", "Like, when you feel \"pressure\" build up in your spine, and suddenly your upper body convulses mildly and feels cold? I get that as well, and I, too, have wondered for many years what it is. Or are you referring to something else?", "I don't have an explanation, but my grandma says she \"took a chill\" when it happens, if that helps anyone know what OP is describing. Like one big full body shiver. ", "[\"The modern-day scientific explanation for sudden unexplained shuddering and for goose pimples is that they are caused by a subconscious release of the stress hormone adrenaline. This may be as a response to coldness or an emotional reaction to a poignant memory.\"](_URL_0_)", "Myoclonus. I majored in psychology and I took a neurobiology class that implied that they were the result of feed back loops in your brain  getting confused due to levels of serotonin and GABA .\n\nSO. Your nervous system is made up of a bunch of pathways. Some are designed to interact with the most basic parts of your brain  (the brain stem ) and some others are designed to skip your brain entirely.  The ones that skip your brain tend to work basically on reflexes (you feel your hand burn, you yank it away) . The catch is that these systems interact with the ones that go directly to your brain  (so you can decide if it's safe or not) . These systems are CONSTANTLY talking to each other. This creates a series of feed back loops.\n\nNow serotonin and GABA are neuro transmitters (chemicals that control various functions of your brain basically) serotonin affects things like sleep, mood elevation and excitation. GABA is like all muscle control.\n\nSomewhere in the levels of neuro transmitters and those feed back loops your brain has a hiccup basically. \n\nWhy? Well my textbook claims they still can't fully explain \n\nEdit: I'd expect low serotonin and an over excitation of GABA production  would then make your brain think it was getting stronger signals and thus: shiver. This is wrong see later edit.\n\nEdit 2: Seritonin also affects you tempreture regulation which may add the \"cold\" feeling \n\nEdit 3: I should apologize.  I stupidly reversed the actual function of GABA  (it is inhibitory which means the more there is the less your muscles will twitch) \n\nI also want to add that if you are interested in this is gave you broad strokes. It IS genuinely more complex than that but hopefully this explanation helps you give a cool explanation to others. \n\nTo those who say it's not what the OP is talking of from personal experience...I kinda want someone to collect data on the various descriptions of this phenomenon so that perhaps we can solidify the description.  But my professor told me \"walking over your grave\" was a form of myoclonus some 2 years ago and I have stuck with that till new information comes to light. \n\nEdit 4: the comment below mine by u/annalogical supports my professor's diagnosis. \n\nAlso just looked at the wiki article and though it's similar to what I said it IS rather incorrect in major areas so beware!", "My SO used to have 10+ a day. Turns out they were tiny seizures, aka myoclonic jerks.\n\nI used to joke that someone was peeing on his grave.\n\nAfter he started having grand mal seizures and got on meds, they mostly went away. 2-3 a week now.\n\nEta: And no complex partials or grand mals in over a month now!! Yay!", "Assuming we're talking about the same thing I've heard it referred to as a myoclonic jerk. I get them a lot when I'm sleeping (I suddenly jerk awake) and also occasionally when I'm awake. The explanation given to me by my doctor was that it's a leftover trait from when humans were still arboreal (lived in trees) and the jerk was to awaken us if we started to fall out of a tree while sleeping. I suppose the thought is that something tricks out brain into thinking it's falling and that's our reaction. Failing that evolutionary explanation I think the most likely case is that it's meaningless and just represents our brains version of crossed wires.  ", "Is this the same as when you're about to fall asleep and sometimes your body just shakes/shivers uncontrollably?", "Is this the same as the pee pee shakes? ", "any1 explain difference between cold chill, this thing in OP's post, frission, and cold sweat? \n\n", "This happens to me all of the time (everyday, several times). I've had a history of depression as well. I wonder if this means that I'm not producing enough serotonin?", "Is this why I shiver just a bit at the end of a piss?  < -male", "It's related to the hypothalamus, which regulates your body's temperature, keeping it where it needs to be (AKA homeostasis). There are several different causes for shivering, and different types of shivering. The one people are most familiar with would be continuous shivering when you're very cold. There's also the emotional shiver, for example when you hear a certain part of a song that you love or connect with in some way, it can give you an odd feeling and a short shiver. But these seemingly random shivers, they don't seem to have an obvious cause. I've read somewhere before that they are a hypothalamus 'reset' of sorts, but sadly I don't have a source on that. If I Google that it comes up with some weight loss theory. I'll have a further look.", "The pathophysiologic mechanism is something called \"myclonus\"\n\nMyclonus is an involuntary muscle spasm and includes things like the [\"Hypnic jerk\"](_URL_1_) which most people have experienced. It's when your leg twitches while you're falling asleep. \n\nAnother form is the [\"shudders\"](_URL_0_) or the so called walking on the grave phenomenon. \n\nMyclonus is normal and can be due to something as simple as an electrolyte imbalance, but persistent myoclonus could indicate many underlying neurological diseases (MS, lupus, Parkinson's to name a few). \n\nHiccups are also a kind of myoclonus!\n\n_URL_2_\n\n\n", "I get a similar kind of shiver when I'm driving in the dark and another car with bright headlights passes in the oncoming lane and the light hits my eyes. What's that all about? ", "I think we need a disambiguation. The  \"goose walked on your grave\" involuntary shudder is similar to but not the same as a hypnic jerk. (Both are myoclonic jerks).\n\nASMR and frisson are also myoclonic.\n\nI guess you could explain the \"walked over your grave\" shudder thusly to a five year old:\n\n\"You know how you shiver when you're cold? There's a part of your brain that makes sure you're warm enough. If it thinks you're cold it will make you shiver to warm you up.\n\nIt seems like feelings other than being cold also make your brain think you need to shiver, but we don't quite understand why.\"", "is this the same concept as piss shivers ?\n", "This awkward shiver only seems to happen regularly while I'm urinating (which is ironically, probably the worst time for it to happen). Can anybody further explain why this so-called subconscious adrenaline dump would only occur regularly while I'm peeing? ", "Quick question to those in the thread that understand this occurrence: If I experience between three and five of these a day is it anything to worry about?", "I always get these when I pee. I read somewhere it was bc of the warm pee leaving my body thus my body lowering in temp a bit which causes the shivers", "Anyone know the history of or who came up with the term \"walking over your grave\"?  I first saw the term \"a goose walked over my grave\" in a short story in high school and have always liked it.", "What is 'walks over your grave'?", "There is a lot of misinformation happening on the post. \nWhat you are describing is a myoclonic jerk, which is can be thought of as a mini seizure in a specific pathway in your brain, even though everyone gets them. \n\nThere are dozens of causes of myoclonic jerks, each works on a different pathway, but the main motif is that they are a sudden and short chaotic brain activity in one of the many pathways in the brain that deals with motor. You can't really generalize them all to one thing any more than that \n\nHere is a good ELI5 source of the different types of myoclonus: _URL_0_\n\nThe Wikipedia page on myoclonus regarding pathophysiology lacks citations and is actually incorrect. I'm a med student, not a neurologist so I'm not going to make the edits as I'm not an expert on the matter. I just know enough to say that it's incorrect.\n\nIn general there is a poor understanding of myoclonus because the number of different causes makes it difficult to study. ", "Ok can someone enlighten me what is \"walks over your grave\"?\n\nIs it some English metaphor? \n\nSorry English is not my first language\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson"], [], [], ["http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/someone-is-walking-over-my-grave.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.neurosymptoms.org/functional-jerks-and-twitches/4582150404", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myoclonus"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/myoclonus/detail_myoclonus.htm#3160_2"], []]}
{"q_id": "1cikgl", "title": "Is it possible to stop or divert a lava flow?", "selftext": "I was on the island of Hawaii recently and heard that a lava flow was heading toward a town and may destroy it in several years if it does not change its course. If it does not flow elsewhere, could barriers or other impediments be constructed to block or divert it, or would they simply be melted or burned?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cikgl/is_it_possible_to_stop_or_divert_a_lava_flow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9gv7hk", "c9gv9be", "c9gvnfn", "c9h1616"], "score": [2, 9, 6, 3], "text": ["Theoretically, earthworks should be able to divert a lava flow, but realistically in most cases I wouldn't expect there to be nearly enough time to construct them when and where they're needed.\n\nIn the situation that you mentioned, where there's a long-term expectation of such a thing, then thick, solid earthen and/or concrete walls should do the job as long as they're high enough to contain the volume of lava. An underground channel under the village could also work and require less space, but would be more expensive to build and the situation could be bad if it's not broad enough to channel the entirety of the flow.\n\nIn any case, the *weight* of the lava would be just as much concern, if not moreso, than the temperature.", "There have been plenty of attempts to slow or divert lava flows.  The Japanese have had significant success at Sakurajima using culverts - big concrete channels which funnel the flow through safe to pass areas _URL_0_\n\nSimilarly, attempts have been made to use earthworks to divert flows in places such as Etna in Italy and  Hawaii, with varying success.  The biggest problem is that lava is 4-5 times more dense than water, so the momentum behind it once it is moving is incredible.  When you have several million tonnes of incredibly hot material that just wants to move downhill there's not a huge amount you can do.", "An eruption in Vestmannaeyar in Iceland in 1973 was about to close off the harbour area, but was fought off by the locals. article [here](_URL_0_)", "The scene with k rails and the fire trucks in volcano? With tommy Lee Jones. Is that possible then?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://cruises.about.com/od/southeastasiacruise1/ig/Kagoshima-Japan/Sakurajima-Lava-Culvert.htm"], ["http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/vestmannaeyjar-town-fought-volcano-won/"], []]}
{"q_id": "342anh", "title": "In the film Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz recalls and encounter where his unit gave vaccines to the local Vietnamese children, only to later discover that the Viet Cong removed the inoculated arms. Is this story based in fact?", "selftext": "Kurtz uses this example to show that the Vietnamese were so dedicated to their cause that they would mutilate children. Did violence at this scale ever happen? And was is used to prove an example to the Americans? Also, what was the extent of violence between the Viet Cong and the NVA against Vietnamese civilians?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/342anh/in_the_film_apocalypse_now_colonel_kurtz_recalls/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqqmruf"], "score": [72], "text": ["The story itself is fictional, like very much else in *Apocalypse Now*. There has been some speculation that the story was inspired by atrocities occurring in the Congo Free State under King Leopold II, in which the book *Heart of Darkness* (which the film is based on) takes place. However, it's not entirely false in as much as it contains two elements of truth: \n\n1. Special Forces units, throughout their commitment in South Vietnam, did provide medical care for South Vietnamese civilians. \n\n2. There was selective violence used by the VC/NVA towards South Vietnamese civilians who supported the South Vietnamese government.\n\nIn guerrilla warfare, controlling the population and gaining their support is vital for the survival of the insurgency. It would be incorrect to claim that the VC *never* used terror to control villages or that the VC *only* used terror to control villages. \n\nIn some cases, the VC won the population over by making them politically aware, rallying them in political meetings and providing them with assistance beneficial to their village, like helping with the harvest for those whose sons had been conscripted by the ARVN. Violence and destruction caused by American, ARVN or other 'Free World' forces could also turn villages towards the VC. Some of this destruction could be provoked by the VC, using the motivation that by provoking them to attack an unarmed village then that would give them a propaganda coup and use that to show (and to radicalize the population) that the allies did not have a morally superior cause. To quote another South Vietnamese civilian: \"The guerrillas always fired one or two shots to provoke the GVN, which brought bombers and artillery on the village, and then ran away letting the people bear the consequences.\"\n\nBut this wasn't always the case. Sometimes, it came down to fear and control through it. For example, targeted assassinations against individuals supporting or working for the South Vietnamese government could easily make a point and make other individuals fearful of speaking out against the VC or speak out in support of the South Vietnamese government. To quote a VC private in the Long An province: \"It was the policy of the Front [*Front National pour la Lib\u00e9ration du Sud Vi\u00eat Nam*] to destroy all Government organizations, and to destroy those who did not want to resign. They killed this man to make an example for others.\"\n\nInterestingly enough, the use of terror tactics and violence against civilians was actually part of published VC doctrine; first being published in July 1969 as part of the the COSVN Resolution Number 9. Another oddity in the context of the Vietnam War is that the most infamous case of a VC atrocity did not take place in rural South Vietnam but in urban Hu\u00e9 during the T\u00eat offensive. The Hu\u00e9 massacre, in which more than a 1000 individuals were killed, was like the previously mentioned assassinations targeting those loyal to the South Vietnamese government: Police officers and soldiers, but also individuals who held administrative posts. It is still difficult to get clear answers about what really did go down in Hu\u00e9 and the numbers killed are still in dispute. Nonetheless, the fact that a massacre did occur is established but it is worth considering that just like larger American atrocities, it was the exception rather than the norm."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4mpjf1", "title": "why do we crave sweet foods after a regular meal? why is the idea of desserts quite universal among cultures?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mpjf1/eli5_why_do_we_crave_sweet_foods_after_a_regular/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3xai62", "d3xb78i", "d3xb8ba", "d3xbawi", "d3xdm5r", "d3xehum"], "score": [86, 20, 3, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["I don't think it's necessarily that we crave sweets after a meal, so much as most people enjoy sweets, period. But since we need nutrients to be healthy, it's better to eat the stuff that's good for you first, before indulging. That way you've at least eaten the \"real\" food, and won't fill up just on sweets. At home, this is just part of being responsible for your own well-being. When you're at a restaurant, they understand that people enjoy sweets and may still order them even if they're full, so they're eager to offer dessert to make more money. \n\nAddendum, just for clarity: we enjoy sugar so much because it's more scarce in the wild, so we've evolved to hunt it out. We obviously haven't evolved out of that part yet, since now most people get too much of it. ", "Who told you it was universal? It's not at all universal. It's not even universal among european countries where plenty of cultures did savory cheeses and stuff after meals instead of sweets, let alone universal among nonwestern cultures. ", "Your blood sugar is raised quickly by sweet stuff, the hormone leptin makes you feel full when you get to a certain point.", "We crave sweet foods during the meal. Sweet foods in nature are very nutrient and calorie dense and so we evolved to seek them out as they are the best reward for effort. ", "The physiological basis for this revolves around insulin, as some others have mentioned. When the carbs in your meal are broken down to sugar (glucose) by your digestive tract, they flow through the blood to the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that is secreted from the pancreas when this sugar is detected in the blood. The main function of insulin is this: it tells CELLS in your body \"HEY THERES SUGAR EAT IT ALL UP.\" This is different from the cravings you feel, and happens on a cellular level. What happens when a 'regular meal' is eaten depends on the meal and the person, but I'll take an extreme case to demonstrate the point: a low carb meal and an obese or overweight person. In such a situation, the body is already conditioned to expect certain chemical contents, most importantly high carbohydrate content. \n\nWhen the amount of sugar in the meal is less than the body is conditioned to expect, the amount of insulin secreted for that one meal is higher than is necessary. This is because when the pancreas begins to detect sugar (from digestion of carbs) in the blood, it releases the same amount of insulin. This can be thought of like a peer pressure situation involving the other hormones. One hormone that responds to the stomach being stretched after ingestion, along with some others that detect protein content, induce stomach emptying, etc all work together to create a holistic \"digestion response.\" The pancreas jumps on board and secretes its usual amount. So, what happens when theres too much insulin released and not enough sugar? your cells are like \"wtf bro you lied theres no sugar here\" and the overwhelming response to your brain goes something like this: \"eat something really sugary\" \n\nAnother key to this pathway is that if the pancreas continually releases more insulin than is needed (as in, you start habitually eating less carbs), eventually your cravings will reduce. Your body will adjust to expect 'healthier' things and wont be secreting high levels of insulin that correspond to high carbohydrate meals. This is generally a good idea because overworking your pancreas with high insulin secretion for years and years can lead to diabetes. \n\nSo all the anecdotal evidence that suggests that some people dont respond this way is interesting. Genetic differences of course play a role, however, if you are raised with 'regular meals' all your life, then your pancreas releases insulin accordingly, and there is minimal excess that tells your brain to eat something sugary. Whats particularly interesting to me is the comment about cheese following dinner. Cheese is particularly high in another type of sugar, lactose. This would be worthy of investigation to see if these people have cravings for dairy after a 'regular meal' as discussed here. ", "It is not universal, continental or national and varies from one family to another.  If your Mom always made desert part of everyday eating then you might be in the habit of having it.  If she did not you know it is not universal at all.  It varies from one person to another.  My brother has a sweet toot and I could not care less for candy or other sugar based food.  Ever.  Are you a robot or an alien trying to fit into society?  If not I have no doubt you are likely in the USA! since those people frequently think the laws of their village are the laws of the multiverse.  In any case you cannot have traveled far or be an adult since many cultures have never even thought of desert.  For an explanation of sugar cravings /u/CommanderBear explains it quite well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6dhlvf", "title": "how come non-suicidal people sometimes get the urge to jump in front of a bus?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dhlvf/eli5how_come_nonsuicidal_people_sometimes_get_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di2ogvy", "di2r1zd", "di2rlgy", "di2xdl3", "di33e3t", "di346jd", "di369sl"], "score": [26, 16, 5, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I don't know a lot about the phenomenon, but I do know that this is called \"the call of the void.\" I'm not suicidal, but I get this sometimes when I'm depressed and waiting for the train. (In4b: I'm good, I love my friends and family WAY too much to do follow through!)", "More generally, they are called [intrusive thoughts](_URL_0_). It's just where you get a thought or urge that is unpleasant or upsetting in some way to you. Everyone gets them, but they can be more harmful and common in people with OCD, PTSD, depression, etc.", "There's a phenomenon of some sort, or maybe a characteristic, of the human brain, that the neurons (which are pathways for thought, in short) are pretty much always firing. Sometimes, they fire randomly, giving a person random thoughts.\n\nSometimes those thoughts are to bring up memories, sometimes they are to daydream, and sometimes they tell you to step in front of a bus.\n\nI get the urge to step in front of a bus because my brain is poison in a particular way (depression), but that urge persists and colors my reality rather than just passing in and out of my brain because of the depression. Someone with a healthy brain will experience that thought, which again is just your neurons firing because neurons gotta neuron, and they won't entertain it seriously as an action.", "Edgar Allen Poe wrote of this, and called it the '[imp of the perverse](_URL_0_'", "Why am doing this? What's the point of me being here and doing exactly this that I'm doing right now? Ask yourself next time you are waiting for one. If you think hard enough, you might find yourself not finding a real logical answer. Can happen to anyone. Depressive or not. IMHO. ", "There was a post a while ago in r/TIL where it was explained as 'call of the void' where it is an intrusive thought. Otherwise I'd say on a college campus it would be for \"free tuition\"", "the call of the void.              \n\nTL;DR When you're in a dangerous position, your brain tries to rationalize why you're in that position. Such as people looking into the Grand Canyon and falling in because they zone out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imp_of_the_Perverse_(short_story)"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3feqhe", "title": "Was there ever a \"drop-out\" rate for roman legionaries who were unable to perform up to the physical standards of the Roman army?", "selftext": "I'm talking specifically about the Post-marian army ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3feqhe/was_there_ever_a_dropout_rate_for_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cto38ed"], "score": [59], "text": ["During both the Principate and Late Antiquity, soldiers who were unable to perform military duties because of wounds or disease were invalided out of the army. They received a form of honorable discharge, as well as a \u201cseverance package\u201d, though these benefits were usually less than if they had served their full term of service. \n\nHowever, based on the phrasing of your question, it seems like you\u2019re more interested in the experience of soldiers who, despite being in perfect health, couldn\u2019t quite handle the army\u2019s demanding physical environment, a bit like Private Pyle from *Full Metal Jacket*. To be quite honest, I have not seen any reference, either in ancient or modern references, to recruits \"washing out\" of military training.  While I invite other experts to comment (paging /u/Celebreth), it is likely that instances of washing out did not occur with any regularity. Desertions certainly did occur (and scholars debate whether or not the levels of desertion increased during Late Antiquity), yet it is important to distinguish between men who actively sought to leave military service (desertion) and those whom the army deemed not up to standards (washing out). \n\nMost recruits, both during the Principate and Late Antiquity, came from rural, agricultural backgrounds. Although recruits certainly were drawn from cities, by and large, the majority of recruits were rural, coming from poorer and more rural areas of the Empire. These men were already conditioned to lives of grueling physical exertion (pre-modern agriculture being extremely labor-intensive). Military life and training was thus not that much different, in terms of levels of physical activity, than their pre-military lives. Indeed, with it\u2019s regular meals, excellent medical care, and pay (even if low), military service offered many attractions. Additionally, the army often engaged in \u201ctargeted recruitment\u201d (for a variety of reasons) from non-Roman peoples (\u201cbarbarians\u201d). These groups were targeted in part because of strong martial cultures deemed conducive to producing quality recruits. These recruits were even less susceptible to handling army life, especially when considering they also came exclusively from rural backgrounds. With this in mind, it is highly unlikely that recruits would have found the army\u2019s physical standards too demanding. While certainly intense, military life and training was not that much more demanding than rural, agricultural life, and offered many tangible benefits. It is therefore unlikely that recruits were unable to handle military life. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8n7kqi", "title": "why does the uk use ._url_0_ rather than just .uk?", "selftext": "I'm aware the .UK domain name is now in use, however i'm interested to know why that when the internet first started, why did the the UK not follow suit of other nations like France  &  Italy and use .FR and .IT", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8n7kqi/eli5why_does_the_uk_use_couk_rather_than_just_uk/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dztcudk", "dztd221", "dztd8zl", "dztdboe", "dztic5p", "dztzofj"], "score": [26, 5, 40, 165, 4, 3], "text": ["Because the .co subdomain is meant for commercial sites, and the UK is very stringent on who is allowed straight .uk sites (mainly government sites), so commercial entities had to use ._URL_0_ because they weren't allowed to register as just .uk", "The domain name system was made in the US and not initially designed for international use. The idea back then was that the top level domain were to be used to group different classes of organizations. So there were .com, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil, etc. But when the Internet came around and became global it was obvious that there were a need for other countries to manage their own top level domains. So country specific top level domains were created. The UK government were given the .uk domain. A lot of these governments implemented their own second level domains to group different organizations. But due to length some important organizations were given a domain in the top level domain zone. But people liked shorter domain names so this became more and more common and third level domains became rarer and rarer. There are still a few of them around and ._URL_0_ is maybe the larges one of them.", "In the very early days of the internet, nobody really knew what effect it would have, and thus how to future-proof it. Many countries simply took the assigned top-level domain for their country and left it at that; others, including the UK, created their own versions of the generic top-level domains like .com, .net, .gov, etc, all the better to manage the whole system if it got massively big.\n\n._URL_5_ is the most common UK second-level domain, as it's used for commercial and general purposes. Others include ._URL_7_ for academic institutions, ._URL_4_ for government websites, ._URL_0_ for the police forces, ._URL_3_ for educational authorities, ._URL_2_ for the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces, and so on.\n\nETA: Thus _URL_1_ is the official website for Somerset County Council, while somerset._URL_3_ is the third-level domain for primary and secondary schools in Somerset.", "When the country-specific top-level domains were created, the UK already had an academic network of its own (JANET) with its own naming scheme similar to DNS. Academic sites started _URL_0_, commercial ones started _URL_1_, and government ones UK.MOD (Ministry of Defence).\n\nThe obvious thing to do was flip all the existing names around to create the equivalent DNS names. So Cambridge university was already known as _URL_0_.CAM on JANET, and was assigned the domain _URL_2_ to match.", "The way a countries top level domain is subdivded is up to the registrar that manages it.\n\nsome chose to mirror generic TLDs like *.com as second level tlds like *._URL_0_ and *.gov as *._URL_1_.\n\nThis makes sense as the standard .gov and .edu or even .mil are reserved for American government, education or military institution and a country wanting to have something like that of their own would need to make them underneath their countries TLD.\n\nOther countries never bothered with that and just threw everything in directly under their main TLD and others again made a mixed solution.\n\nMuch of that is grown from poor standardization when stuff got started and inertia and tradition carrying it to the present day.", "Thanks for your replies people! "]}, "title_urls": ["co.uk"], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["co.uk"], ["co.uk"], ["police.uk", "somerset.gov.uk", "mod.uk", "sch.uk", "gov.uk", "co.uk", "somerset.sch.uk", "ac.uk"], ["UK.AC", "UK.CO", "cam.ac.uk"], ["co.uk", "gov.uk"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ssq6i", "title": "Was Dido of Carthage a real historical figure and actual Queen of Carthage?", "selftext": "Really curious about this. Some of her stories seem really bizarre (oxhide... really?), and she feels like a legend more than an actual historical figure. What does r/askhistorians think?\n\n\nAlso, since a lot of the information about her comes from the Romans, what kind of bias is there against her and Carthage in general? If she indeed ruled Carthage, is there any significance in this, being a female ruler of the ancient period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ssq6i/was_dido_of_carthage_a_real_historical_figure_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce0w7kr"], "score": [62], "text": ["Dido is not real. She is the Carthaginians founders myth, their equivalent to Remus and Romulus. She supposedly left Tyre after her father left his wealth to her and her brother Pygmalion and he ruthlessly seized power and cut her out. The actual founding of Carthage was a lot less romantic and more practical, it was built as a trading outpost at the crossroads of two Phoenician trade networks, a north south one between Africa and Italy and Greece, and an east west one linking Tyre to the Silver mines of Spain. Records have been pretty exhaustively researched, there was a Dido of Tyre who was eligible to have been the dido of the myth but she lived nearly 300 years before the earliest development in Carthage from the archaeological record. \n\n The book I have read most recently that gives an overview of the founding of Carthage is Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles. It's a good read if you want a basic history of the founding of Carthage and their long and ultimately disastrous struggle with Rome."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1bshv4", "title": "when we need to sneeze, how does looking into the light help?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bshv4/eli5_when_we_need_to_sneeze_how_does_looking_into/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c99n8t4", "c99nf5q", "c99nhd5", "c99ok3e", "c99ptmb", "c99q5kr", "c99r77i", "c99rusd", "c99sdfl", "c99tini"], "score": [290, 46, 7, 15, 4, 5, 2, 3, 8, 2], "text": ["This only affects somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the population. But essentially,  nerves connecting to your brain from your nasal area that can detect a tickle are crossed with your optic nerves. (I've heard the term crossed, can anyone confirm? ) so when you see bright light, your brain thinks it detects a tickle in your nasal passages. A sneeze can be induced to clear out the particle that your brain thinks caused the tickle sensation. ", "Check out this wiki article: [photic sneeze reflex](_URL_0_) aka ACHOO syndrome.\n\nIt doesn't have this effect for everyone, just some.  Pretty interesting though.", "I seek divine permission from the Holy Fluorescent Radiance Deity when I must forcefully expel particles from my nostrils. After a little prayer and if the Light wills it so, I may be relieved of the discomfort my nasal cavity has been afflicted with. \n\nFun fact: This is why we say \"bless you\" to people after they sneeze. It is because they have been truly sanctified by the Divine, and because the Light doesn't have a mouth to say it. Other people just have pick up the Light's slack. It has nothing to do with expelling demons, but rather, it is a message of joy. ", "Photic sneeze. Congenital birth defect. I have this. Look at sun.  Bright light source. It's great. Hate loosing a sneeze. ", "This effects me and my dad -- it doesn't work for my girlfriend, and she's so incredibly amused by it.\n\nBut god *damn* is it satisfying to look at a bright light and get a sneeze out of it.", "My mind was blown when I found out that this doesn't affect everyone. I grew up without meeting a single person who couldn't look at the sun when they needed to sneeze.", "I don't get it either.  I have never understood why my sister always panics and runs outside to the sun every time she needs to sneeze ", "It only works for me when I look at the sun.  A regular light bulb doesn't work.  Anyone know why?", "Since I was little, I've always called it photosneezeassist. (Think photosynthesise)", "It is called the photic sneeze if you want to Google it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "62l145", "title": "why do firefighters bother putting out a fire (and endanger themselves) if the building is empty and there are no other buildings around it ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62l145/eli5_why_do_firefighters_bother_putting_out_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfojjze", "dfnc3sx", "dfnc3zu", "dfncpcz", "dfndz1c", "dfne2k8", "dfnekym", "dfnh6js", "dfnhhfg", "dfnhs6r", "dfnibj7", "dfnlkqb", "dfnmion", "dfnomfn", "dfnonn9", "dfnsl46", "dfo3lre"], "score": [7, 2, 17, 27, 162, 891, 9, 23, 4, 1811, 27, 13, 10, 14, 3, 3, 4], "text": ["Firefighter here, ill just throw this out there. We have an acronym we use \"LIP\". LIFE SAFETY, INCIDENT STABILIZATION AND PROPERTY CONSERVATION.  Those our are 3 most important aspects of a fire scene in that order. Then we say :\n\nRisk a lot to save a lot (usually lives)\nRisk a little to save a little (usually property)\nRisk nothing to save whats been lost\n\nI hope that sheds a little light on decision making on a fire ground. We re aren't the smartest bunch so we use these sayings to help us remember. ", "I am no firefighter but my guess would be so that the fire does not spread to other building near by. Also the questioned building could collapse and hurt pedestrians or private property.", "If no one is in danger they generally won't risk their lives for property. They'll shoot it with water until it is out. For the most part, risk taking is done if there are people inside or if they are unsure if there are people in danger, or danger of the fire spreading.", "Am a firefighter.  These three above me are all correct.  \n\nIf you were a 5 year old I would say, \"What if your favorite stuffed animal or pet was hidden away in a corner or somewhere the fire needs time to reach?  If I try to put out the fire from the outside, there's a chance it would be usable or survive.  If I don't, its most likely it would be burnt and gone forever and you would be mad at me for not even trying.\"", "People get rescued from \"vacant\" buildings all the time.  Having your house or business on fire is a very stressful experience, and people forget things under stress.\n\nThey forget that one of the kids had a friend staying over.  Or that the maintenance guy was going to stay late to work on the air conditioner, or whatever.\n\nThey can also be wrong - they may not know someone was squatting in their building or coming in early, or snuck their girlfriend in after bed time.\n\nThat's why we get paid to go on and check every survivable space at every fire.", "Firefighter here. ELI5 version: Because even a partially burned building is still worth money.\n\nLong version:  \nIf the building is truly empty/unoccupied, with no buildings around it, depending on the age and condition of the structure pre-fire, many times, it will be left to burn. As long as there is some value to the structure and contents post-fire, we'll try our best to contain and extinguish the fire. \n\nThere's a lot of factors that go into whether to let it burn or to try and put it out. If only one room is involved, the rest of the house is still good, and we'll put the fire out in that room, then check to see how far it's extended into the rest of the house. The more we can save of the structure and contents, the better. \n\nIf the fire is blowing out every window and door, then we know that the structure is unsafe for us to enter. There are some structures that are unsafe for us to enter because the Fire Inspectors have already done an inspection, and determined that the building is unsafe, and marked it as such on the building itself, and on pre-plan documents.\n\nWhen we're putting a fire out, we try to do our best to save the contents, either by removing them or covering them before we start squirting water and tearing up walls and ceilings. We try to only use as much water and tear up as few walls and ceilings as necessary to put the fire out and make sure it hasn't spread. ", "Not a firefighter but lived two blocks over from a building separated from me by football fields of space/a giant paved lot and cincrete parking structure several stories tall, which burned down. Sparks and embers blew on very light updrafts and set trees alight blocks away, near a heavily used public path. The building then relit (reignited?) the next night, because the water hosed into and onto it wasn't enough or was not directed properly, and I don't think people went in to check to see if there smoldering areas, to truly extinguish it for good. This was not in the US. I have no idea how fire suppression strategies work here or elsewhere. Talk about scary, though. ", "Lived in neighborhood with suspected drug cook house. Police told firefighters about suspicion, firefighters just kept the bushes wet to contain the blaze. Neighbors cheered on as it burnt to the ground. Three propane tanks exploded in the burning house during the event. It was neat.", "It should be risk a little to save a little risk a lot to save a lot, but the number one priority of a firefighter is there safety and the safety of the other firefighters. That being said emotions get the best of us, if there is a chance that someone is inside we will make every effort to help that person. Which in times has gotten firefighters in dangerous and deadly situations. I think there has been a shift in the mentality and culture of the firefighters over the past years, when the older guys got hired it was at all cost put out the fire now it's becoming common for many department's to not risk much when a building is fully involved. ", "I am a career paid Fireman. The best way to simplify it is to say that we do not ALWAYS enter a burning structure. There are quite a few common sense reasons that are a definite no go for us (such as flames through the roof, indicating a high probability for collapse on most residential fires). If there is a possibility that we can enter the structure, the incident commander has to make a decision which comes down to \"risk a little to save a little, risk a lot to save a lot\". If there is any chance that a VIABLE human life is inside, you can guarantee that every firefighter on the scene would risk their life without question to save the person inside. The big word there being viable. Most of the time the toxic chemicals produced by modern manufacturing give off super heated and immediately deadly fumes that can kill you after only a few breaths. We have to take that into account and will not risk as much to recover someone who has without a doubt perished. Our next goal is to save property that can be saved. Family photos and heirlooms are irreplaceable and we make every effort to minimize your loss. If I can read the conditions of the fire and make a direct attack inside the house right at the seat of the fire, it extinguishes the fire quicker, preventing extension and also limiting damage from water being shot in through Windows. Most of our nozzles put out at least 200 gallons per minute. That is a lot if water to put inside your house blindly through a window. Most kitchen fires could probably be extinguished with less than 30 gallons if there is no extension into the walls/roof. Also as others have said, there are a lot of times you can't be certain that the building is unoccupied. A lot of accidental fires happen because squatters light \"camp fires\" in abandoned buildings to keep warm. They have a right to be saved and us not completing a search of the building (conditions permitting) would be negligent. In residential buildings we keep our eye out for indicators of people that would occupy the structure. For instance if there is a car in the driveway then someone was likely home. Or if there are small children's toys in the yard or house then we automatically assume the possibility that we need to account for children. Sorry for any typos, I'm on mobile. Hope this helps answer your question. If you take anything away from this, just know that if there is a possibility for me or any of the firefighters I know to save a life, we will fight until our last breath to get you out safely.\n\nEdit: Thank you all for the kind words and thank you for the gold! Reading through all of your comments really brightened my day!", "Firefighter here, like mentioned above there are multiple ways we deal with structure fires.\n\n1: Defensive attack- Just like it says, we're defending. The building/structure/ ect. has no individuals or life inside of it and is so engulfed in flames that  it's unsafe for us to go in. So we set up hoses/aerial hoses (ladder trucks)/ etc around the house to extinguish if from the outside. Also, we constantly water down adjacent houses and tree lines to prevent the fire from spreading (radiant heat warms things up quickly when its thousands of degrees). Practically, we're just controlling the demolition of a house by fire, with a primary goal of attempting to extinguish it completely.\n\n2: Offensive- Just like it sounds again.  We're going in and trying to put it out from the source. This takes place when we have the ABILITY to, such as when the fire is still in the intial phases of growing and not like the scene from spidey 1 where the entire apartment complex is engulfed. I could elaborate more if you so desire, but i hope this amswers your question directly in the simplest way.\n", "Firefighter here. No building is empty until we search and confirm it's empty. Now there is a point where going in just isn't an option. ", "Former firefighter here, If the building was confirmed to be empty, of little value and there was no other buildings around it, it would likely be treated as a \"defensive fire operation\" and the fire would be extinguished from the outside. \n\nMost fire departments work on a Risk VS Benefit model and will only risk their lives if there's a good chance of saving lives. If a building and all it's contents are 100% involved in fire (flashover) and there's a 0% chance of saving anyone, firefighters won't enter, even if there are people inside. However, if there's a small fire that easy to contain with relatively low risk, they will enter, even if its just to save property. ", "30 year career fireman here, times have changed, we don't go in like we used to. We compare risk versus reward, if people aren't trapped and the structure is well involved then typically it is a defensive extinguishment. (Squirt water in from the outside) If it is not well involved, we go inside to put it out and save as much of the property and possessions as possible. The bravado BS is old school and archaic. The chemicals in pretty much all home products are filled with countless carcinogens and poisons unlike a few decades ago. Breathing these products of combustion is stupid and lethal...", "Though rare, sometimes we throw some water on there just because the taxpayers are watching.", "Another FF here...\n\nOne thing that needs to be considered is that as FF's allowing a building to burn to the ground goes against everything we stand for and trained for.  It's just not \"normal\" for us.  This is even mentioned in the documentary \"Burn\" in which our brothers in the Detroit FD are ordered to let abandoned houses slated for demolition just burn and protect the neighboring abandoned houses.\n\nThe large fire department I work for will usually adopt a defensive attack on an abandoned building that has been confirmed empty (meaning if we can safely enter and search a building and confirm it's vacant and empty of squatters, we'll retreat and \"surround and drown\" it.)  For an non-abandoned building, we'll try an aggressive interior attack to attempt to save it and it's content if it's safe to do so.\n\nI'll admit that in the 26 years I've been on the job, I've only seen one or two instances where we let a building burn to the ground. ", "Back in 2009, the Army Medical Depot in Alameda, California caught fire and they just let it burn. Now there's a Chipotle and a Target there. I guess the fire saved the city some demolition money but I was pissed that it rained bits of charcoal all over my car and backyard. I later found out that it also rained a bunch of asbestos. Yeah. Shoulda put it out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3hyj0j", "title": "We all know about Hitler's ambitious \"world capital Germania\" vision of Berlin, but did he actually have any urban planning?", "selftext": "What did he actually manage to do to Berlin's poor district? Did he ever evict the urban poor? Did he convert slum area to industrial complex or capitalist enterprise and enforce the conversion with violence like how business and politics intertwining usually do in third world countries? (see Philippines and Indonesia for example)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hyj0j/we_all_know_about_hitlers_ambitious_world_capital/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucjqia"], "score": [4], "text": ["A question I can actually answer!  The best source for this is the book Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer, if you haven't gotten a chance to read the book it's a marvelous look at the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy.  Speer goes into great detail about the new capital and the break between Hitler's vision and reality.\n\nLong story short (if one is to take Speer at his word) there were no formal plans for the new city besides pure aesthetics.  Speer goes into detail in his account of the main Boulevard for instance, about how creating it in the visual manner Hitler wanted would basically create an unwalkable concrete city with no pedestrian life.  Even with the supreme power the Nazis held in Germany early feelers to establish the zoning blocks ran into problems with local officials, businesses, and ministries as they vied for space as to who would have frontage access in the capital.  Rerouting the public transit alone became an ordeal for Speer to coordinate, much less the massive shift of roadways and traffic routes which would be necessary to accommodate the construction.  In short, even with Hitler's control there were so many intersecting layers of interest in the new capital that it wasn't just a matter of giving orders and receiving compliance.  \n\nNone of this was of any concern to the Fuehrer, however.  He was much more focused on his legacy and left the details to men he trusted.  This meant he spent his time envisioning monuments and great works, the idea being that even after the Reich fell people in the future would still gaze upon those structures with wonder.  That his vision was impractical for a living city didn't bother him in the least, that was for everyone else to figure out.\n\nThere were attempts to create worker housing and public spaces in Nazi Germany, but this was under Speer's direction in order to improve living conditions of the average citizen.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1jvr15", "title": "the concept of the 'demiurge'", "selftext": "I'm not going to beat around the bush - I've been listening to a lot of metal, and the concept has continued to pop up as a theme. I've done some research (read: wikipedia) but I'm not well-versed enough in theology to totally understand what it all means.\n\nFrom what I can grasp, the 'Demiurge' is the divine architect of the universe, but is not 'God' per se? I was hoping reddit could enlighten me.\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jvr15/eli5_the_concept_of_the_demiurge/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbirb25", "cbirjzz", "cbisyde", "cbitm4b", "cbiua0e", "cbiusmx"], "score": [3, 43, 11, 8, 3, 3], "text": ["It depends on the system of belief we attach the concept of the demiurge to. The christian God is a demiurge because he both created and shaped the Universe. In other religions, there is a primordial being that created the Universe from nothingness but there is also a god that shapes the universe into lands, waters, mountains etc. ", "Namaskar!\n\nIn Christianity the idea is common due to the presence, seemingly, of two different gods in the Christian Bible. In the Christian Old Testament there is YHVH, the ineffable God of the Hebrews who selects them as His chosen people - and no other - and who, while merciful and slow to anger, is also violent and vengeful. Then there is the god of the Christian New Testament, represented by Jesus. This god is loving, kind, merciful, never (or rarely) violent, vengeful, and so on.\n\nThere have been attempts to reconcile these two depictions of the Christian idea of God and one of the earliest came from Marcion of Sinope; this idea would come to be known as Marcionism. Marcion proposed that there were actually two different gods: the true god, represented by Jesus in the New Testament; and the Hebrew god who was a separate and lower entity than Jesus and the god he represented.\n\nIn this idea, Marcionism shares a link with Christian Gnosticism. Christian Gnosticism is a separate following which believes that Jesus, as a manifestation of Sophia (wisdom), came from the true God's realm to deliver mankind from the clutches of the tyrannical god of the Hebrews. The god of the Hebrews, as per Christian Gnosticism, is either ignorant at best or malevolent at worst; he believes that he is the only god and his works are all that are. He forces men to submit to his will and blinds them with the illusions that are our \"reality\". Jesus comes from the true world to share gnosis (knowledge, enlightenment) with mankind so that we can see through the illusion that the demiurge - the Hebrew god - pulls over our eyes. He shares this with us because the true god recognizes our potential as beings who possess wisdom and power the demiurge does not have and, as such, recognizes that it is unfair that anything with such capacity does not deserve the true hell that is the wise being ruled by the ignorant or incompetent.", "The term isn't specific to just one religious system.\nThe literal translation of the word is 'public servant'.  Sometimes it's used to mean a malevolent or misguided deity, others just to refer to a sort of genuine mystical public servant, sort of a architect or accountant for the universe.\n\nThe myth I heard goes like this, and if memory serves belongs before genesis time-wise:\n\nThere's this divine reality, comprised of a sort of divine family.  The thing at the top (a 'true' god sort of thing) spawned some of the 'family' (some male, some female), and the rest of the family spawned other members with the grace and guidance/permission of the head divine god-critter.\n\nOne of these members decided to spawn a new member of the family without grace and guidance from the big divinity on top.  Her name is Sophia, and this conception goes horribly wrong.\n\nAfter creating this sort of divine abortion/abomination, she stares at it and realizes she fucked up big.  In shame, she covers it with a sort of cloud/haze before it comes to and awakes.\n\nWhen it awakes, it sees nothing but itself.  Being of divine origin, it's certainly powerful and, so far as it is concerned, all powerful.  Spotting no cause other than itself, it assumes it's the causeless cause (in actuality this is the big divine head honcho) because if nothing exists but it, what else could it be?\n\nIn ignorance, it creates a host of servants  (angels), these servants help it build a world.  On this world, he and his servants create creatures to worship and love him.  But the spark that lets him create doesn't come from him, and his misuse produces beings that inevitably flee the cages he builds for them.\n\nThere's a number of failed worlds he builds, starting flowy and spirity and slowly coalescing over each failed model into the existing world in front of us today.\n\nAdditionally, this story comes with a modified version of genesis:\n\nSophia, realizing she fucked up big and that pieces of her own divine essence are getting misused by her bastard son (the demiurge), tries to repent and fix her mistakes.\n\nAn extra woman shows up in eden named lilith.  One who defies the demiurge and leaves after it demands she submit to Adam by invoking the name of the actual god.  The actual god also makes an appearance at one point, terrifying the demiurge; but the demiurge stays in denial about it's place in things and continues to believe it must be in charge of all; even trying to snatch at and steal the power of that head honcho god for itself.\n\nThat is rusty, and probably inaccurate as it's from memory.\n\nSooo...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nhere are translations of the relevant original texts, in case you wish to pour over them yourself.\n\n:)", "The Demiurge is the creator of the physical world. He is, unlike God, a flawed being, either incompetent or outright evil. The concept of the Demiurge is an answer to the philosophical problem of why evil exists. Why do young children die of horrible diseases? Why do natural disasters kill innocent people? The answer is because the world was not created by an all-powerful, perfectly good being, but rather by a flawed creator.\n\nGnosticism posits a series of 'emanations' from God, each a being in its own right, becoming progressively more and more flawed, and ending with the Demiurge.\n\nHuman beings are part spirit and part matter. Our spirits are pure, but are trapped within flawed physical flesh, which is responsible for lust, greed, and other sinful desires. Our spirits are not the creation of the Demiurge, and long to be reunited with God.", "Like he's five....\n\nSome people think ideas, virtue and dreams are more real and good than the physical normal world. It's easier to imagine a perfect circle but real circles are always a little messed up. \n\nSome people believe a really good god or goddess made the world of ideas and dreams while another god, the demiurge, was jealous or something and created our world but he's mean and stupid so that is why there are bad things in the world.", "So far the answers here are making me have kittens.\nThe Demiurge is not a religious concept, it is a philosophical one later co-opted by religious organisations. Loosely the Demiurge is a sentience that has fashioned (and has complete control over) the material world we live in. However the Demiurge exists as part of a greater existence, it itself is an inhabitant of a greater reality. \n\nAn adjacent thought is the idea of the Monad. A divinity that is connects all real things, not just material things but the ideals of things. The Monad is \"the One\", the soul that is everything. To Pythagoreans the Monad is the points and lines - the building blocks of existence. A point in space time is the Monad, a rock is (a slightly more complicated form of) the Monad, your consciousness is (an even more complicated form of) the Monad.\nSo: the Demiurge (which may or may not exist) could be the creator of our universe but is itself (as we are) part of a greater existence which has no conscious creator or indeed creation event.\n\nFrom this point of view Abrahamic religions worship the Demiurge, their god is a conscious being which created the universe we live in. Some would argue that the Demiurge is some false creator god and the Monad is truly God as Christians, Jews and Muslims worship Him but this is just bullshit. The Demiurge and Monad philosophy is a complete rejection of that line of thought. The Monad is not a being, it just is.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn-davies.html"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4t37s6", "title": "why does alcohol apparently inspire writers? doesn't it make most people just fall asleep eventually?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t37s6/eli5why_does_alcohol_apparently_inspire_writers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5e9s87", "d5e9uk0", "d5eb13e", "d5ecuew", "d5ehhno", "d5f7684"], "score": [30, 11, 7, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Alcohol allows one inhibitions to be discarded, thus allowing ones imagination to wander over to the \"uncontrolled, uninhibited\" side of the imagination, thats where the best stories often hide.", "Alcohol does not inspire people.\n\nIf you have racing thoughts or other issues that may be related to pathologies such as ADHD, anxiety, etc., or if you are just high-strung or do not have other coping mechanisms for stress, alcohol can alleviate those symptoms in the short term to allow you to function.\n\nFor reasons that people don't fully understand, it seems like many artistic individuals have issues like distractibility, anxiety / anxiousness, etc.\n\nSo they are prone to self-medication.\n\nThey may feel that alcohol helps them function and even say so. However, it's unlikely that it makes them more creative. More likely, they'd be even more productive without alcohol, but unfortunately the circumstances of their lives, their coping mechanisms and so on lead them to continue drinking.\n\nI drink alcohol (1 - 2 servings) rather than go get prescription ADHD or other medication. I also used to use nicotine for ADHD but learned other coping mechanisms when I became a parent.\n\ntl;dr\n\nDrugs alleviate symptoms short term but they don't inspire. \n\nHowever if you are experiencing pain they may seem to help short term.\n\nIf you feel like you need inspiration, read, go outdoors, and be kind to yourself. If you are in pain, get help. There are better ways.", "For those of those whose thoughts are constantly moving if our body is at rest drinks helps us slow down and think about one thing.  The eventual sedative affect is an additional bonus.\n\nIt also helps us manage the emotional stuff we are dealing with in manageable pieces.  It does not \"inspire\" but rather helps us cope with our state of being.\n\nTerry Pratchett called the state of needing a few drinks to be sober knurd (I cannot remember the spelling).  Sam Vines was such a person.", "I was never a novel writer, but I used to review music. For me, when I drank it made it easier to get the idea on the page, and took out some of the tedium of writing. The next day I'd have to go back and edit for things like spelling and coherence, but by that time 90% of the work was done, and I'd usually edit at my day job so it was like I was getting paid to write. ", "There certainly seems to be a connection between alcoholism and writing, but I think what you're saying might be confusing cause and effect. \n\nOne of the big challenges of remaining functional despite having a serious substance abuse problem is keeping a job. If you're working in an office environment and they catch you drinking on the job you're probably going to get fired.  They also tend to get bent out of shape when you do things like come in hung over and take a little nap under the table in the employee break room or whatever, even if *on average* you're way more productive than your co-workers.  It's possible to keep a job like this when you'd rather be blitzed most of the time, but it's a fucking grind.  \n\nBeing a novelist means you're a free agent most of the time. If you want to get day drunk for a week and then buckle down and produce a week's worth of writing in an afternoon that's totally fine.  There's no boss hanging around wanting to smell your breath, you're a free agent.  For a drunk who's capable of doing it, writing is pretty close to the perfect career. \n\nSo there tend to be a lot of writers who are drunks, there are also a lot of house painters who are drunks for kind of similar reasons.  ", "Alcohol shuts down inhibitions as most others have mentioned. Do you need it to write a literary masterpiece? Well it depends on the person and their level of focus on the subject. \n\nPretend your brain is running a Windows OS. If you have the capacity to run a shit ton of services in the background while focusing on the main task(and doing it well) you probably don't need a drink to produce creative materials. But if you have too many thoughts (services processes whatever) running in the background while your trying to write a book, song, or make a painting; alcohol will shut down those thoughts and either make you zero in on something or make you fall asleep. \n\nIt depends on the day, and mental state of the person on that day. Sometimes I can write a song no problem because I got myself into the zone. Other days, there's too much shit going through my head (all the awful things going on in the world, plus being stuck with either Hilary or trump for next president) so I'll have a few drinks zone out until I come up with something cool. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cz8kz", "title": "what is the point for \"one hour parking only\" rule if there will be cars all the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cz8kz/eli5_what_is_the_point_for_one_hour_parking_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxiyipy", "dxiykef", "dxiyov5", "dxiyt5s"], "score": [17, 2, 6, 6], "text": ["Because this allows the spot to service more people. It doesn't matter if the spot is always full, it matters if that full spot was useful for one person or for ten. ", "More money can be made if a higher voume of people are putting money in a single meter per day.", "That's exactly the point! If somebody can just take the spot for the whole day, that limits others ability to find parking in the area, preventing them from patronizing local businesses, etc.\n\nBy limiting the time somebody can stay, it ensures they will vacate the spot and somebody else will be able to get it. Better that 8 people use it for exactly 1 hour w/ the next person waiting when they previous parker pulls out that some store employee park there and monopolize the spot from 9-5. Imagine a whole block where all the spots are taken in the early morning by local workers, who then wonder why they have no business with all the cars driving by.", "parking spots like this are often near stores. This makes it so those spaces are used for customers,  not nearby resident's. This ensures the flow to customers so the store makes money,  which in turn keeps the economy going. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "53152y", "title": "what is the state of star citizen, and what are the ciriticisms that are hinted at frequently on reddit and their respective rebuttals?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53152y/eli5_what_is_the_state_of_star_citizen_and_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7p4131", "d7p41m6", "d7p458n", "d7p4cp8", "d7p5crl", "d7p5iq6", "d7p5nkr", "d7p89k2"], "score": [167, 119, 39, 3, 5, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Cloud Imperium Game's Star Citizen is a game in ongoing development. It's being built as a series of modules that will connect together over time.\n\nThe current modules are:\n\n* **Arc Corp**-  a city based social hub.\n* **Arena Commander**- an arcade style 'horde mode', treated as a game within the game.\n* **Crusader**- a single star system that players can fly around in, explore stations on foot, take on basic mission and fight  each other.\n\nPending modules are:\n\n* **Persistent Universe**- the full MMO experience. Arc Corp and Crusader will integrated with other planetary systems into one cohesive galaxy.\n* **Squadron 42**- A single player story that is set as a prequel to the events of the PU.\n* **Star Marine**- An FPS multiplayer game within the game.\n* Also in development are more ships, different career choices (such as mining, trading, and salvage), and procedurally generated planets.\n\n\nSome of the criticisms and rebuttals:\n\n* **Feature creep**- the game has massively exceed the funding raised on the original Kickstarter campaign, and the scope of the has changed, leading some to feel that the game is not now the one they were promised. CIG's response is that when they had $6m, they were going to make a $6m game. Now that they have $100m they're making a $100m game.\n* **Delays**- Several features and modules have slipped previously promised dates. CIG have been a lot more cautious of late about making promises, but some are upset that things aren't going as fast as they were told it would be. The rebuttal here is that delays are a common issue with a lot of games in development, so it should be no surprise that CIG is no exception.\n* **Concept Sales**- ('pre-ordering' a ship before it has been built)- this has faced several criticisms: that CIG should finish ships before making new ones, that ships change from concept to completion, and that there's no guarantee that the ships will ever be anything more than 'jpegs'. The first concern is answered with the fact that the Concept Artists don't build the ships, there are several teams working in parallel on different stages of each ship's progress. The response to second and thirds concerns is telling people to wait. There is no requirement to by concept ships, so If you're not sure you're going to like the finished product, don't buy it until you know what it's going to be.\n\nEdit: added Star Marine", "Star Citizen.\n\nState: In Active Development with modules released to play.\n\nMost valid criticism: Has overrun the kickstarter delivery estimate and has come under fire for scope creep.\n\nMost valid rebuttal: Chris Roberts is an Industry veteran with a heart set on making the best space sim he's ever conceived, a reality. Many people signed on to that dream and are now waiting for the results. The big danger is proposing something that they can't actually pull off, but so far, they have made progress on every front. With an active and open development, there are several video series where you can monitor their progress in different aspects of the game, from Bug Smashers, to Around the 'Verse.\n\n", "Broken down into the simple stuff:\n\n**State of Star Citizen:**\nAn open Alpha build where you can walk around a few stations, hop on one of your ships to engage in dogfighting (or just use ship's weapons to shoot people walking around the docking pads), get out somewhere else and shoot other people in the face the old fashioned way.\n\n**Criticisms and rebuttals:**\n\n* **\"You can buy a spaceship for real money! Hundreds of \u00a3/$/\u20ac for a spaceship that isn't even real you mad space-bastard!\"**\n* \"Game development costs money. This is how it's raised. You're not buying a spaceship, you're funding development (opening, staffing and equipping offices - thanks for the highlight /u/keithslater). You just oh-so happen to get a spaceship to say thanks.\"\n\n* **\"This game will never be finished! It's late!\"**\n* \"These things take time. It's less of a game and more of a vision to be realised. Rome wasn't built in a day. The project lead is making a game that's essentially as close to real life as it can get with seamless vehicle and area transitions, and the work they've demoed shows that the time taken was well spent.\"\n\n* **\"You've raised hundreds of millions of dollars through crowdfunding and ship sales. Where is the money going if there's no finished product?\"**\n* \"The company that makes it is now a multinational company. In an apple pie shop you can buy a ready made apple pie when it's ready for sale. With Star Citizen you fund and see the growing of apple trees, grinding of flour and baking of the pie before it's ready to be eaten, with the chef giving you a slice of apple or a sample of pastry every so often to see if it's going to be to your liking.\"\n\n* **\"Why are people funding this? What's going on?\"**\n* \"Game development companies need investment. Other small game companies would borrow money and pay it back from profits raised from sales of the final product. Star Citizen doesn't want stakeholders or investors poking their nose in saying that they're not happy with this ship because market research says it's not pointy enough, or that game mechanics have to be changed because it doesn't reflect the investor's personal stance on Doritos and Mountain Dew consumption. The money comes from the public, who understand the product and vision better than a dude in a suit with a clipboard full of statistics.\"\n\n* **\"What the hell is up with the love of realism?\"**\n* \"Technology has caught up with our imaginations. If you play Elite you'd see a black screen and an outline of a ship, with your imagination filling in the blanks of where the cockpit might be or what the hull might look like. Now we can realistically texture a spacecraft, or smash the wing off and see support beams and broken electrical cables shooting sparks everywhere. We can see inside another ship's cockpit at the guy giving us the finger as we fly past and drain his shields. It's the game that meets our imagination's expectations.\"\n\n* **\"Chris Roberts (man behind the project) is a con artist!\"**\n* \"Chris Roberts is a bit of a perfectionist. A con artist will take your money and give you nothing, or at the least something that doesn't work properly. True, the project is taking its time, but we're given unprecedented insight into the game's development and we can play with early elements of it. We're seeing what our money is being spent on and being given alpha builds to play with that are being expanded upon all the time. You don't have to buy twenty spaceships at a hundred dollars a pop. I spent about \u00a365 on the basic package a few years ago that included access to alpha and beta builds, along with complete copies of SQ42 and Star Citizen when they're finished. Bargain, if you ask me.\"\n\n* **\"Star Citizen? SQ42? Make sense, man!\"**\n* \"Squadron 42 is the single-player version of the game where you're part of the military. Like Wing Commander for the next generation. Star Citizen is the civilian side of life.\"", "Star Citizen is currently in Alpha 2.5 (check out the [subreddit](_URL_2_))\n\nThis is an 'open alpha,' which means everyone who buys/backs the game can download and play it whenever they want.  [Alpha](_URL_1_) is a stage in software development where things are far from complete: core features may not have been implemented, bugs and crashes are extremely common, and inventory items/money do not transfer to the final game.  As of today, Star Citizen has raised $123.7 million (USD) in [crowdfunding](_URL_3_) with which to develop the game; over 1.5 million accounts have been registered on the Roberts Space Industries (Star Citizen) website.  You can view the current statistics [here](_URL_4_).  (Star Citizen is currently the most successful crowdfunding project to date.)\n\nCurrently, there are two main sections of the game: the Star Citizen test universe and Arena Commander.  In the test universe, you can fly ships in space and around space stations and asteroids, go on simple 'fetch missions,' dogfight with pirates and other players, and engage in FPS combat.  In Arena Commander, you can fly your ship around a small area, learning its controls and testing its capabilities, or dogfight with other players or AI.  (Players usually experience better performance in Arena Commander since it's a smaller game space.)  For a full list of features currently available, please see the [Feature List](_URL_0_) online.\n\nI don't know a lot of the criticism surrounding the game, but I'll throw a few out there:\n\n* **\"Chris Roberts (CEO/director of Star Citizen) is going back on his word when the project first launched!  There aren't any periodic financial releases to the public to make sure our money isn't going to waste/being stolen.\"**  (Does someone have a source on this?  People mentioned he promised this, but I never found it.)\n\n* When development for this project first launched, Chris Roberts didn't expect it to be very big.  I think his eyes were mostly on Squadron 42 (the campaign) and Star Citizen was supposed to be something small (the $3 million stretch mark was 40 star systems; it's currently sitting around 100 systems).  He probably thought it would be a small team working on it and they could easily assemble a small financials document for release to the public on a regular basis.  The project now sits at four offices around the world: California, Texas, Germany, and the UK.  They have raised over $123 million and have wide community projects and games presentations.  I'm not a finance professional, but I imagine it would be difficult to release a financial document summarizing their actions without breaking a law from one of those four locations or unintentionally leaking personal information about their actors/employees.\n\n* **\"The game is so late!  It was supposed to be launched in 2016 and it's still years away from release!\"**\n\n* The game was originally planned to be much smaller with far fewer features than are currently planned.  Some features are even implemented now that were never originally certain.  More features = longer development time.\n\n* **\"This game is [pay-to-win](_URL_5_).  You can buy in-game money/ships with real-world money.  This unbalances the game and rewards rich players.\"**\n\n* Yes, equipment in-game can be bought with real-world money.  However, the developers promised that everything in the game would be available to purchase with in-game currency (or obtain somehow in-game).  This game is largely skill-based (character does not level up; the player has to get better at what he does); a poor pilot in a military-class dogfighter will lose to a good pilot in a civilian-class ship.  Yes, good equipment makes the game easier, but it's by no means a \"win button.\"  There are a few ways to earn money that don't involve dogfighting (news running, mining, repair, trading, racing, crewing someone else's ship) and there will be a setting where you can lower your chance of running into PvP. You can also practice dogfighting in the virtual space of Arena Commander/the campaign.  The real-money purchases are to support the game after it's released (operating costs like server time, bug fixes, new features, etc.)\n\nNote: I've posted this so I don't lose it, but I'll continue adding things over the next short while as I think of them.\n\nEdit: Shameless format steal from u/TheHoneyThief", "**The state of the game**\n\n-We have the Crusader which is the test-bed for new developments until it reaches the envisioned PU (Persistent Universe). You can jump in right now with other people and fly around, do a handful of missions, shoot each other in and out of ships. It's fun but I can not sit down and play it for some time. There can be some cool moments and emergent game play with other players. It's pretty sand-box-y. I pop in from time to time after big patches to see the progress of the game I helped to support but it is pretty limited right now, they have a long way to go. Who knows when it will be \"feature complete\", Chris Roberts and his teams have boundless ambition and if we get the game he wants to make and it works, well it will certainly be something.\n\n-Arena commander is awesome for just jumping in and shooting stuff. Testing out your peripherals and trying your hand at arcade style ship to ship combat. \n\n-Squadron 42 is the single player story set to release in the \"near\" future. We will see it before the PU reaches completion. Many people are looking forward to this for their first taste in the Star Citizen universe. Not too terribly much is known about it. \n\n**My personal criticisms of the project are**\n\n-It is a crowd funded game that many have paid for ahead of time. There is always risk with crowd funding. I'm certain some here have helped crowd fund something and it either not turn out the way they envisioned or did not turn out at all. \n\n-The game has evolved so much since the original crowd funding that the scope is insane. This is not the same game that was originally backed - it's better. But how long will we have to wait? The scope keeps getting crazier but that adds on to development time. (This can be a pro or con depending on your views)\n\n-Anything is subject to change. Some of the original descriptions or roles of ships for example have changed. Some people may have backed the game understanding that they were going to fly this ship that they were interested in, only for it to change. \n\n\n**My rebuttals:**\n\nIt looks like the game will be made. I personally believe in Chris Roberts because he, above almost anyone else, knows how to make the game I have always wanted to play. It is a risk crowd funding it, but it is risk I'm willing to take.\n\nI've seen plenty of games ruined by publishers because they weren't finished on time. Let them build the damn game. \"It's done when it's done\".\n\nEdit: Saw everyone else formatting posts by bold-ing. I followed.\n\nEdit: Only just now saw this is in ELI5... holy moley how did I get here. Some of my post is without explicit context.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Other question: do I really need to spend so much money to play a game in ea? The cheapest starter ship is as much as overwatch.\n\nConsidering the absolute abundance of funding, this seemed pretty shitty and put me off of getting the game. Did i miss a cheaper option, or is this relatively feature light game really $50 at the cheapest? ", "People are impatient and can't deal with feature creep. Don't get into SC if you think you can't wait for it. It's not going to be anywhere near completed until 2018 most likely. ", "Wait, the biggest and by far most complicated part of a game takes the longest to create? Well I for one am absolutely shocked."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha", "https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding", "https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals", "http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pay-to-win"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "12l0l5", "title": "[usa] if a state law is ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court of the united states, and that state refuses to stop enforcing that law, what happens?  how are scotus rulings meant to be enforced in the event they are ignored or defied?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12l0l5/usa_if_a_state_law_is_ruled_unconstitutional_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6vy55c", "c6vyhmn", "c6vz7dw", "c6vzv5h", "c6w07dd", "c6w0gpi", "c6w0hi0", "c6w0hmq", "c6w0v6y", "c6w1gdt", "c6w1nbr", "c6w23zg", "c6w2k3r", "c6w31ys", "c6w34zr", "c6w3wxh"], "score": [360, 33, 39, 94, 2, 3, 6, 16, 64, 31, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["The federal government can, and has, sent troops to enforce SCOTUS rulings (desegregation, for instance).  \n\nI believe the federal government can also arrest and try members of the executive branch of the State government for their violations. ", "National guard can be sent in to kill if necessary, until the state surrenders its position and complies.", "if its a southern state you normally crush the rebellion with brute force.", "This has happened during desegregation, including the infamous [Little Rock](_URL_0_) incident, where the Arkansas governor refused to comply with the integration of schools, ~~where he said~~\n > ~~Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.~~\n\nThen President Eisenhower sent in the Army. (Many more details can be found in the first article.)\n\n**EDIT:** I quoted the wrong person, my bad, but the rest of the information is still accurate. (Thanks /u/mr_holmes)", "In most cases the general public will have an outcry, and the government will be forced to respond. Either that or they'll get voted out of office, or even impeached.\nIf nobody cares, nothing happens.\nUsually when dealing with a state acting out of bounds, the federal government steps in someway. Usually sending in the national guard and forcing the enforcement.", "Funding. States receive massive amounts of funding from the federal government for schools, welfare programs, highways  &  transportation and tons of other things. The federal government uses this funding to influence states on lots of things, not just SCOTUS rulings. Don't like the ruling? Bye bye, money. ", "This is all part of the checks and balances of the US government system. The Judicial branch has no ability to enforce their rulings, they have to rely on the Executive branch to enforce them. The Executive branch has to rely on the Legislative branch to provide a budget to enforce rulings. So any branch can stop a ruling from taking effect, if they feel it is worth it.\n\nThe Constitution gives no indication how Supreme Court rulings were \"meant\" to be enforced. The first major test of this issue was the case Marbury v Madison. That case legitimized the Supreme Court as the ultimate authority for what is Constitutional and what is not, and established the precedent that the other branches would uphold the SC rulings.\n\nSo yes, the entire country could simply start ignoring the Supreme Court tomorrow and nothing whatsoever would happen. The justices would just be talking to themselves. We listen to and enforce their rulings out of historical tradition and nothing more.\n\n\nThe question of Federal supremacy is totally separate. The argument of whether or not states had the right to ignore or overrule federal law was the reason for the US Civil War. Since the end of the Civil War, there are still arguments over which \"states rights\" exist and to what degree, but the basic principle that federal laws can overrule state laws is established.\n\nUltimately, the federal government can send in the military to enforce federal law if the local government refuses to do so. It has done that many times, for both good and bad reasons. The federal government has arrested local authorities and local police forces when it felt such an action was necessary to uphold the law.\n\nThe US Army is stronger than any state or local force, so at the end of the day the federal government can enforce whatever they like if they are willing to do so, and if the military is willing to follow those orders.", "It's really almost identical to how the US govt handles countries that don't play nice with us:\n\n1. Squeeze them economically but cutting off funding or sanctioning their local economy.\n\n2. Threaten local political leaders with blacklisting or international/federal pressure to behave through threat of blacklist.\n\n3. Use physical force in the are with either military or national guard.", "It depends on the nature of the law and the type of ruling. \n\nThe SCOTUS itself does not usually have very much direct enforcement power over the states. To understand this question, you first have to understand the division of power in US government.\n\n- **The Legislative Branch** (House and Senate) write and pass the actual \"black letter\" laws, either with or without the President's consent (the president has limited veto power, which the congress can overturn \nwith a 2/3 majority vote). \n\n- **The Executive Branch** (The President, his cabinet, staff, and downstream agents and officers, including the entire US military and most federal government agencies) actually \"execute\" or you might say, \"enforce\" the law. Hence, for example, the recent controversy when the Obama administration decided to stop enforcing certain aspects of drugs law in Medical Marijuana cases, or certain immigration cases: the representatives of the states pass the laws, the executive branch decides how to make them happen (or not). \n\n- **The Judicial Branch** (SCOTUS and Federal Circuit courts) *interpret* the law, where and when it requires interpretation. For example, let's say congress passes a law making it illegal to throw eggs at cars, under penalty of fines or prison-time. What if someone *kicks* an egg at a car? Does that count as \"throwing\"? What if someone was throwing eggs in the street or at pedestrians, and it hits a car? What if someone just dropped eggs off an overpass but didn't purposely throw them at anything? It is impossible to write laws that cover every possible variation or contingency, and the judicial branch is there to (hopefully) ensure consistent interpretation of the laws on a per-case basis. \n\nAnother important role of the Judicial branch is to ensure the Constitutionality of specific laws, as they are applied. Neither Congress nor the President has the legal power to violate the Constitution, and citizens of the member states have the right to petition the federal courts if state law is violating their constitutional rights. \n\nIn practice, what has happened is that lower and state courts, and/or, when necessary, the executive branch of the federal government or state governments have moved to enforce SCOTUS decisions that overturned state laws. What has not been rigorously tested in modern times, is a situation where SCOTUS issues a categorical ruling that nobody enforces. For example, SCOTUS might declare medical marijuana dispensaries illegal under federal law, but SCOTUS cannot directly order California police officers nor the FBI or National Guard to shut them down: it has to rely on the Executive Branch or state governments to enforce the law. \n\nWhat would happen if SCOTUS issued a direct ruling that nobody obeyed? That would be what is colloquially called a \"Constitutional Crisis\", similar to Congress passing a tax that the President ordered the IRS not to collect, or the President ordering the military to fight a war over the opposition of Congress...\n\nNobody really knows what would happen. It could be civil war. Ideally, the next election would put more reasonable into office. \n", "Someone should use the example of Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia to explain this. \n\nAndrew Jackson quote time. \n\n\"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!\"", "In the case of drinking ages, states that refused to raise their minimum age to 21 were threatened with having their federal highway funds withheld.\n\n[link](_URL_0_)", "In response to some of the answers below - withholding funding is one of the ways the feds manipulate state governments to comply with its wishes; but the feds may use federal troops to enforce federal law (there would be other ways too).  There's a difference.  And has already been stated, it is the Executive branch that would be responsible for enforcement, not the judiciary.  ", "Finally, one I can answer.  The constitution is the supreme law of the land.  States can pass their own laws only if they do not violate constitutional law.  This leaves a lot of room for states to pass their own laws. Policing laws vary from state to state because the constitution does noe explicitly give Congress the power to police.  Marijuana laws are a good example of how the sentencing and enforcement vary from state to state.  Since congress has designated marijuana as a controlled substance, states must pass laws that are compliant with this.  (Congress has the right to regulate marijuana under interstate trade, called the commerce clause).  California is an example of where the state is explicitly defying federal law.  You can see there how this plays out... Essentially the federal government sends the DEA to enforce constitutional law.  In addition to constitutional law, federal law is also considered supreme so any laws passed by congress (designating controlled substances for instance) are always supreme to state law.  As other people have mentioned during the civil rights era federal troops were sent into southern states to enforce the law.  TLDR: with guns!!", "As my Constitutional Law professor said: \"The courts have neither the power of the purse nor the power of the sword.\", meaning that the courts do not have to power to cut off funding for programs/actions that they deem illegal, nor do they have the power to enforce their rulings through forceful or coercive means, such as police or the military. The responsibility to enforce rulings made by the Supreme Court mainly falls upon the President and the Executive Branch.  The president can use any means that are within his power to enforce rulings by the court, including the use of military force. Congress also has some limited power to enforce court rulings, since it controls how the federal government is allowed to spend money. If a state or federal agency refuses to comply with a ruling by the Supreme Court, Congress has the power to cut off funding for those agencies, making it financially burdensome for these agencies to continue to refuse to comply. However, if both the President and Congress fail to act to enforce a ruling made by the Supreme Court, the court does not have the power to enforce the ruling on its own and the ruling would more or less go ignored. ", "One example would be the Nullification Crisis in the 1830s. South Carolina refused to enforce a tariff, so the federal government sent down troops and made them", "The federal government has enforced SCOTUS rulings through force, but on paper, SCOTUS rulings are enforced, should the federal government decide to not act, essentially in this way:\n\n-Person does X, which is illegal in [state], despite SCOTUS ruling that X being illegal is unconstitutional.\n\n-Once said person is charged and goes to trial for X, it is only a matter of time before their case is thrown out by a judge who is not willing to against SCOTUS (see: every judge ever).\n\nTo get to the basics of this, read about [stare decisis](_URL_0_) and judicial review."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-23/news/mn-10220_1_drinking-age"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent"]]}
{"q_id": "28uffg", "title": "why do people choose to lease a car that they will never own? you pay a couple grand down payment, make monthly payments - just like buying your own car...but you never get the satisfaction of paying it off and actually owning it. i don't get it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28uffg/eli5_why_do_people_choose_to_lease_a_car_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciel2lk", "ciel32b", "ciel486", "cielsum", "ciem3ts", "ciemct3", "ciemfsd", "cienwui", "ciepq0w", "cieprfq"], "score": [11, 68, 7, 46, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["The monthly lease payment is less than a loan payment. And for people who constantly want a new car, it's not worth it to buy one and pay off a loan, since they're going to sell it in a couple years while still owing money anyway.", "I'll share one philosophy - \n\nSome people don't want to own a car.  They want a \"new\" car every 3 years.  So they lease a top of the line model and a few years later they get a new one.\n\nNot everyone seeks the satisfaction of owning a car.  Many people are perfectly happy to give it back in exchange for a new car and a new lease.", "If you want a new car every year or two, this makes sense. In essence it's just like renting a car all the time. If you plan to keep a car for many years, it's worth it to finance and buy it. If you plan to replace it soon and regularly, it's cheaper to lease.", "I've owned several cars outright.  From my first $1500 beater through the 2008 Audi A4 I traded in to lease my current car, a 2014 Audi A4 that cost about $40k with the options I got.\n\nI have a 36 month lease, put $0 down on it and my monthly payment is about $515/month.\n\nIf I were going to buy the car outright, my payments would be MUCH more.  Like.. At a reasonable interest rate, if I stretch out the payments to 72 months (twice as long as my lease), they would be $620/month.\n\nSo the two options I have to compare are: \n\n* keeping the car for 6 years, and paying $7200 more, but having an asset that will be worth.. something.  Right now, a 6 year old A4 is worth about $12k.\n* Driving this car for 3 years, trade it in and drive another new car for 3 years and then having $7200 ($100/month * 72 months) that I've \"saved\" by leasing.\n\nSo roughly, a $5000 difference.  Seems silly to lease, right?\n\n\nOh.. but wait.. then there's repairs.  With a 3 years lease, I'm never out of warranty.  All repairs are covered.   If I bought outright, it's 4 years/ 50K miles.  So, I think it would be safe to assume that you're probably going to spend a couple thousand on repairs. Brakes, tires, timing belt/whatever. \n\nAnd I take that extra $100 a month that I'm not spending on the car payment and throw it into an investment account making 6%, so rather than just $7200, it's about $8800.\n\n\nSo the financial difference is realistically couple thousand dollars spread out over 6 years assuming that you don't trash the value of your car with an accident, or dings, and nothing seriously wrong mechanically pops up after the warranty.\n\n$2000 /72 months = $27 a month more to lease than to own outright, but I get to drive a new car every 3 years, and never have to worry about paying for repairs.\n\nNow, if you're looking at a Hyundai, it's totally different.  It makes a huge difference what car you're leasing, how much you drive, etc. If you plan on keeping the car for 10 years, and it doesn't give you a lot of trouble, that makes a huge difference.\n\nBut for a monthly difference of less money than I pay for lunches in a week, I can drive the car I want, new.", "Also, there are HUGE tax incentives with leasing for business purposes. If I'm not mistaken, leases for business are 100% tax deductible. Just another reminder that the US tax structure heavily favors business owners, big or small, that can drive a brand new car and write it off. (I'm not making a political point one way or the other, it's just the nature of the system). Kids, when in doubt, start a business!", "Some professionals, like Realtors, benefit from always having a nice new car to drive clients around in", "I lease for a few reasons.\n\n1) I don't put a lot of miles on my cars but, when I do drive, I want to enjoy the trip. This means I want something somewhat nicer than a paid off beater.\n\n2) I make enough money that the the payment for the vehicles I drive isn't an issue.\n\n3) I hate dealing with mechanical bullshit. I would rather pay extra to stay in warranty than deal with working on vehicles.\n\n4) I get bored easily so prefer something different every few years.", "My example: I was in a transition period financially, needed a cheap reliable car, but didn't want to get stuck with one I'd be upside down (owe more than worth) on because in a few years when I finished education I'd be able to afford what I wanted.\n\nI have excellent credit, for 1000$ down, i leased a brand new scion for 165$ a month for 2 years. \n\nAfter 2 years I can buy the car for about 11500$, or give it back.\n\nIt was last years model, 2 days before Jan 1, so they wanted it off the lot.\n\nEffectively, all I'm paying is what the car is depreciating, a cost I'd have incurred if I'd bought it. But I have the option to walk away from the car hassle free.", "J. Paul Getty is pretty famous for saying \"If it appreciates, buy it. If it doesn't, lease it.\" I can't think of many things that depreciate faster than a new car. Also, what if the car is in a wreck, your fault or not, after your insurance fixes it that car will never be the same. On a lease, you give it back when the lease is over, it's the manufacturers problem. On a finance purchase, it's still yours, crashed, fixed and all. With a lease you always have the option to flip it to a traditional finance purchase, not the other way around. What happens if there's a massive recall (hello GM) and used car values tumble as a result, on a traditional finance deal, you just lost a ton of equity. With a lease your residual is fixed and it's not your problem, give the car back at the end and pick a different brand. There are TONS of benefits of leasing, these are just a few. My $0.02.", "It depends what you want from a car.\n\nIf you want a car to get you from A to B a few days a week using minimal fuel and don't care about how it looks or paying \u00a3100 a year for an MOT on a car that's probably only worth \u00a3500, then you're better off buying a \u00a3500 car as if it breaks beyond repair, it's only \u00a3500 to fix it and this will be cheaper than leasing if the car lasts for at least six months. If this is what you want, then **leasing is not for you**.\n\nHowever, take me for example. I lease cars because it means I get a new car every three years, as I live in the UK this means:\n\n* 1) No having to worry about MOTs, as it only needs them after three years of being registered.\n* 2) No having to worry about servicing, all included and most modern cars don't need it really anyway.\n* 3) No having to worry about tyres, all paid for, just like servicing.\n* 4) Gadgets, everyone loves gadgets!\n* 5) Efficiency.\n\nThis means all I have to worry about is insurance, fuel, tax and I'm fine with that. Especially as my car has likely paid for itself in fuel already, it can average 75mpg on the motorway at 70mph, and ~60mph in urban traffic, those efficiency gains add up so fast it's unreal. But let's do a little maths, shall we? Basing this off personal and family experience.\n\nIf I want to have a new car, I can buy or lease, let's take my car for example, a BMW 1 Series M Sport F20.\n\n >  **Buying brand new:** ~\u00a334,500.  \n >  **Leasing per month:** ~\u00a3500 a month over 36 months.\n\nThis means that over the three years, I will pay:\n\n >  **Buying brand new:** An unknown amount in servicing/tyre fees, likely somewhere around \u00a33000 over three years, plus insurance and fuel.  \n >  **Leasing per month:** Nothing other than insurance and fuel.\n\nEven if we ignore all those factors, and just do total paid for the car:\n\n >  **Buying brand new:** Paid ~\u00a334,500 up front, paid for and done.  \n >  **Leasing per month:** Paid \u00a318,000 in total in leasing fees.\n\nYes, I give the car back at the end of three years, so it seems like I'm paying \u00a318k and getting nothing for it right? Wrong! Remember that a new car loses around 25% of it's value the MOMENT you drive it off the forecourt and that odometer ticks \"00001\", bang, a lot of money gone, and then around 10% per year from then on for the first five years or so, let's do the maths:\n\n\u00a334,500 - 25% = \u00a328,875  \n\u00a328,875 - 10% (1st year) = \u00a323,288  \n\u00a323,288- 10% (2nd year) = \u00a320,959  \n\u00a320,959 - 10% (3rd year) = \u00a318,863.  \n\nThat means after three years of ownership I have lost (\u00a334,500 - \u00a318,863) \u00a315,637 in depreciation and, trust me, this is a conservative estimate. Some cars drop *much* faster than this, in the UK some cars lose around 50% of their value within the first YEAR.\n\nSo, final comparison of just \"paying for the car\" costs:\n\n >  **Buying brand new money lost:** Minimum \u00a318,637  \n >  **Leasing per month money lost:** Maximum \u00a318,000.\n\nThe reason it's maximum is because nothing is spent on the car as it's all included, as I said above I just pay for insurance, fuel and tax. Plus, I don't have to go through all the hassle of advertising the car, meeting buyers, getting my time wasted, worrying about keeping it \"all perfect\" because, remember, any blemish on that paid-off car of yours drops the resale value!\n\nThe easiest way I can explain leasing is \"Six of one, half a dozen of the other\", sure, sometimes buying brand new will cost you less, but I'd rather take the security of leasing and have the peace of mind that every three years I have a brand new car that I don't have to worry about in any way, shape or form and that I avoid all the bad bits of car ownership whilst keeping all the good bits."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2sz1rq", "title": "how did che guevara become a symbol for freedom despite his terrible actions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sz1rq/eli5how_did_che_guevara_become_a_symbol_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnu75j1", "cnu7l3k", "cnu7mu4", "cnu89tp", "cnu8tlc", "cnu946k", "cnu9dm8", "cnub0l9", "cnujlcb"], "score": [21, 2, 15, 4, 18, 14, 10, 8, 2], "text": ["rage against the machine and wanna be revolutionary hipsters. ", "People tend to editorialize the biography of. Their revolutionaries. George Washington owned tons of slaves and it's well known that Thomas Jefferson had an affair with one (or several) of his.  ", "I don't think he's a symbol of freedom as much as revolution. He was a revolutionary without a doubt.\n\nHe is also a prime example of why most reasonable and knowledgeable people are quite scared of revolution.", "Part of the answer is surely that his actions don't seem so terrible to a young revolutionary minded person. But also I think that early on when western college groups latched onto him as a symbol, they mostly just had access to favorable and autobiographical writings. A lot of the negative versions of his actions were written later in response to him becoming this sympathetic figure. So it's a bit of chicken and egg there.", "Because somebody created a really iconic image of him, and that image became the predominant understanding a lot of people had of him. Che Guevara the brand became more \"real\" and went a lot further than Che Guevara the person.\n\nAlso, revolutionaries in general tend to involve terrible actions. That's the reality of war. The extent to which a person is connected to his or her atrocities after the fact depends greatly on who writes the history books and whose stories get included. History is full of revolutionaries whom history glorifies and glosses over their death toll and presents it as \"justified\" or \"necessary\" or \"a bad thing, but that was the way things were back then. we're better now.\" And some get more of this than others. If we actually exercised a \"no death toll\" policy for our admired historical figures, the list of people we were taught to admire would be much, much shorter.\n\nAn early or untimely death can also adjust things in someone's favor, as they become memorialized as the person they were then, with no competition from the person they would have become, and as they themselves no longer present a threat to anyone, they might be given a bit more leeway to be seen as heroes now that they're safely dead. Martyrdom, as well, has an effect in that direction.\n\nChe Guevara had/has all of those things going for him to become a symbol: early death, an unfinished mission that enables people to think in terms of what he \"could have\" accomplished rather than any reality in which he might have done poorly or failed, the list of terrible actions being perforce shortened by his not getting around to any of the ones that would've been after his death, his adversaries being less inclined to spend resources discrediting a dead man than they would be toward a live one that's still an active threat to them, his potential allies and supporters and fence-sitters being more inclined to be charitable once he's no longer a live potential liability who might in the future express inconvenient views or become too powerful for comfort, it's easy to cherry-pick bits and pieces of his life's work or his views to support all sorts of other, vaguely-related causes, the people who formed the bulk of his casualties weren't valued sufficiently by the rest of the world to arouse widespread condemnation, and he's got that iconic picture that makes him look like the patron saint of freedom.", "What you hear about Che Guevara is different in various places.  The American propaganda will only focus on the terrible actions. You have to make your own opinion by looking at some facts.  He was born in an upper middle class family, and was on his way to becoming a medical doctor. Had he stayed in Argentina, he would most likely have had a very comfortable life. He is respected in Latin America, because the perception is that he left the comfort of his life, to fight along the poor, against the brutal American backed regimes that plagued the continent at that time.  America's fear of Communism, forced them to prop various brutal regimes, and the idea was to first free Cuba, and continue to various other countries in Latin America. That is why, eventually, the CIA got him in Bolivia. Don't forget that rule #1 of a revolution is to KILL all representatives of the previous regime, to ensure they don't come back. This is how the French Royal family, and the Russian Royal family disappeared from existence, they killed even babies to ensure the bloodlines ended. The French and Russian revolutions took care of that. Yes, they say that Guevara overlooked, and even personally took care of some the people in the previous regime.", "I wonder what he would think of people putting his face on a t-shirt, made in sweatshops in China  and sold for profit in expensive shops... ", "What was so terrible?  He helped overthrow the American puppet regium of Batista in a peoples revolution.  Just because something doesn't work out for Americans doesn't automatically qualify it as \"terrible\".  [Read](_URL_0_) about what the CIA has done in places like Iran, Argentina, Indonesia or Nicaragua.\n\nMakes Che look like a saint. ", "Che Guevara is more of a symbol of fighting against oppression and imperialism more than anything. He successfully helped overthrow the Batista regime, and then tried to help overthrow Imperialist regimes in the Congo and Bolivia, where he was executed. For these actions he is remembered. That's pretty much as unbiased as I can make it, but I will confess, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara is my hero, and I respect the man like I respect MLK and Gandhi, so yeah I soughta lean on one side with this debate.\n\nWhat are you referring to when you say \"terrible actions\" as well as being idealised, Che is certainly demonised by some, he is accused of being a racist, as well as a cold hearted killer who enjoyed executing people."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions"], []]}
{"q_id": "20h2bd", "title": "can blind people see their thoughts?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20h2bd/eli5_can_blind_people_see_their_thoughts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg36644", "cg36nrs", "cg374vn", "cg37n0r"], "score": [42, 9, 3, 7], "text": ["People who are blind from birth won't visualize anything, such as their thoughts. It's difficult for them to understand the concept of seeing something, let alone actually seeing something in their mind.\n\nSomeone who has experienced sight but then became blind probably will continue to visualize things in their mind. It'll be harder over time, the longer they go without being able to see.", "This reminds me a bit of Thomas Nagel's paper \"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?\". In this paper, Nagel talks about how bats navigate through the air by echolocation. Put simply, they make a sound and then wait for that sound to bounce back off nearby objects. They then use their super-sensitive hearing to build an 'image' of their surroundings. Nagel's point is that there is an experience, a sensation that the bat is having (sometimes called 'qualia'), that we as humans can't really comprehend. Sure, we can understand the process in quite a lot of detail, but what we can't do is put ourselves directly into that experience to 'feel' what it's like. \n\nSimilarly, while someone who is blind from birth may be perfectly capable of understanding how sight works, they're completely unable to actually put themselves into the experience first-hand. Not being able to see precludes the possibility of understanding even on a basic level what the experience 'feels like'. \n\nNote: I understand that some blind individuals are actually able to echolocate... for the purposes of explaining the issue succinctly, I've assumed that we're dealing with your regular non-echolocating human being!", "Here's a question, how do blind people (from birth) conceptualize sight?", "You should check out Tommy Edison's Youtube channel, he is blind from birth. He explains all about his experiences and answers questions people have using his own experience and that of other blind people he's met. He's also a pretty funny guy.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCld5SlwHrXgAYRE83WJOPCw"]]}
{"q_id": "2zux0t", "title": "if a person was to fall from an extreme height but something very heavy was to hit the water first, breaking the surface tension, would there be a chance of survival? if so how injured?", "selftext": "I heard that falling into water kills you because as a certain height the surface tension is hard as concrete, if this is true, if you were to break that surface tension would you be able to live? If so how injured?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zux0t/eli5_if_a_person_was_to_fall_from_an_extreme/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpmhwjr", "cpmhxai", "cpmj45m", "cpmsu81"], "score": [10, 13, 6, 3], "text": ["Then you'd be falling onto an object even harder than water. So the answer is likely still 'Splat'.", "No. It's true that water is unforgiving when falling from a great height, but there's no such thing as \"breaking the surface tension\". Surface tension is a property of water, not a thing that \"forms\" like a film.\n\nYour best bet would still be a high-diver style efficient entry.", "No. Mythbusters actually tested this and messing with the surface tension had no effect on the injuries your sustain. ", "surface tension is not a factor, it's water's resistance to compression. you need to minimize the amount of water you displace when you hit. Compare a steep dive to a bellyflop."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "mki8b", "title": "the hate of nickleback", "selftext": "I am not a fan by any means but I do enjoy a couple of their songs. What's up with the almost universal hate? Where did it all originate from? I've asked a couple of my friends who engage in said hate and it seems that they're just riding the hate bandwagon. Is it the Justin Bieber effect where people have a strong hate towards music that isn't specifically targeted towards them? Maybe its because I don't keep up with that particular type of music but it still doesn't make sense to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mki8b/eli5_the_hate_of_nickleback/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c31ne31", "c31oco0", "c31pcxu", "c31pdrw", "c31pkxw", "c31q7wi", "c31qf20", "c31qz4w", "c31r0dz", "c31r3qi", "c31rbrm", "c31rcy7", "c31sm0u", "c31sxc5", "c31tc7y", "c31u3f1", "c31udp4", "c3200hs", "c31ne31", "c31oco0", "c31pcxu", "c31pdrw", "c31pkxw", "c31q7wi", "c31qf20", "c31qz4w", "c31r0dz", "c31r3qi", "c31rbrm", "c31rcy7", "c31sm0u", "c31sxc5", "c31tc7y", "c31u3f1", "c31udp4", "c3200hs"], "score": [54, 3, 29, 5, 6, 2, 2, 7, 5, 3, 11, 2, 6, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 54, 3, 29, 5, 6, 2, 2, 7, 5, 3, 11, 2, 6, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["The hate bandwagon, as far as I can tell, started with a series of Youtube videos that combined their songs into one larger song, proving that literally all of their songs are the same.  The choruses lined up, the drumming was the same in every single song, etc.  This proved that they were working from a formula to make the most palatable radio music they could, and in the process, churned out terribly bland and uninteresting music that was repeated millions of times.", "Hey look at that.  I asked the same question just a minute ago.\n\nOn Justin Beiber, I never heard him so I couldn't make a judgement.  I assumed it was some kiddy teenager pop stuff.", "I don't know...", "My Survey of Latin American Cultures teacher decided to explain his hate for Nickelback a few weeks ago. We were discussing the importance of cultural identification in society, and he made the point that Nickelback fulfills nothing that is culturally significant for the typical American. In other words, they're generic and don't appeal to the interests of individuals but instead to the masses. Furthermore, this Canadian group is playing the half-time show at this Thursday's Lions-Packers game in Detroit... O___O", "its their music mostly.....", "considering nickelback hatred was popular probably before bieber was even born, i'd say this so-called \"bieber effect\" is not responsible.", "Nickelback has been hated for a very long time.  Almost ten years ago I knew someone who worked at a major rock radio station when a new Nickleback album came out and of course they're supposed to be playing the single multiple times every hour.  The day after it came out they had a meeting because nobody would play the single, not even once.  Nobody liked them.", "I don't think that people would hate Nickleback if they were more obscure. It seems to me the main reason why people don't like them is because they feel their popularity is wholly undeserved.\n\nIt's not that they're especially *bad*, it's just that some people don't think they make very meaningful music.\n\nI don't care for Nickleback, but I don't particularly hate them either. I don't think that they're deserving of such a strong emotional response.", "Most likely due to the fact that musically they are seen by many as not very innovating, and have been known to stick to the \"pop-music\" formula for all of their songs (such as the pop-music song structure, common chord progressions and identical song dynamics). Think of it similarly to the huge uproar in the video game community about Modern Warfare 3 being largely similar to the previous Call of Duty titles. I spend a lot of time on websites aimed at musicians, such as Ultimate Guitar, and I've heard things in the community about Nickelback being \"bland\", \"commercial rock\", and in the [review of the newest album](_URL_0_) on the front page of the site at the moment, \"formulaic and with repetitive lyrical themes\". (The review and the majority of comments on the page are actually quite positive, despite being critical as well.)\n\nEDIT: The hate bandwagon also probably plays a large factor into it, but most of the blatant hatred I've seen comes from the ignorant music elitists, and as one comment on the review facetiously says, \"Cue the hate from the metal heads.\"", "In Canada we have \"Canadian Content Laws\" where some percentage of our music has to be by Canadian artists.  So every time you heard nickelback on the radio?  We heard them 12 times.  I remember enjoying a few of their songs at first but after the 3rd time in an hour that \"How You Remind Me\" started playing I was ready to punch each and every member of that band in the face.", "[This](_URL_0_) and [this](_URL_1_) are why Canadians hate them. And that's very good reason.\n", "Not to repeat what others have said but due to the way radio stations operate, they tend to play Nickelback a LOT. Everyone has heard their singles so many times and it gets very tiring very fast.", "Prepare your down votes:  I commend Nickleback.  People dismiss them as repetitive and formulaic but anyone who has heard more then the radio hits (should) think otherwise.  Some of their songs can get heavy (not in a Black Dahlia Murder or Devin Townsend way- but in a groove kind of way).  Their production value is consistently amazing and they sound great live.  Look, if we were gonna shit on bands for rewriting and repackaging their old songs- then we would've bitched at AC/DC- a band who openly admits that they rewrite their own material.\n\nTL;DR: Give NB a break- stop hating because they're on the radio. ", "[All Of Nickelback's Greatest Hits Played At Once](_URL_0_).", "For me lyrical content is what makes me kinda dislike Nickleback. It feels misogynistic and demeaning at time. [\"Something In Your Mouth\"](_URL_1_), [\"S.E.X.\"](_URL_0_) and [\"Animals\"](_URL_2_)) being the songs that really stand out in my head. \n\nThe truth is there are some songs by other bands that I objectively think are just as offensive, but like. I think it has to do more with the image I hold of the band, and the respect I have for their originality and musical talent. Sir Psycho Sexy by The Red Hot Chili Peppers is a good example of a song I like despite the fact that if it was done by another band I could very much not like it.", "Hey guys,  it's not all bad news:  [Nickelback\u2019s 7 million records sold fund other Roadrunner bands we like, such as Killswitch Engage, Machine Head, Opeth, Megadeth, Dream Theater, Biffy Clyro, Life of Agony, Trivium, Soufly.](_URL_0_)", "Every rational person should contemplate how much of their distaste for something is attributed to the bandwagon effect, as opposed to their own opinions. For every act like Nickelback, Creed, Justin Bieber, and Rebecca Black, I can find 100 musically equal acts that are generally liked by people.", "There isn't much good reason. There is reason to not like them, because, in fact, a lot of their stuff does sound the same. But is that really reason to actively hate them? No. It's incredibly easy to avoid a band that you don't like. I don't like JB. Do I make it a point to talk shit about him every chance I get? No, because that would be retarded. People just hate for the purpose of hating.", "The hate bandwagon, as far as I can tell, started with a series of Youtube videos that combined their songs into one larger song, proving that literally all of their songs are the same.  The choruses lined up, the drumming was the same in every single song, etc.  This proved that they were working from a formula to make the most palatable radio music they could, and in the process, churned out terribly bland and uninteresting music that was repeated millions of times.", "Hey look at that.  I asked the same question just a minute ago.\n\nOn Justin Beiber, I never heard him so I couldn't make a judgement.  I assumed it was some kiddy teenager pop stuff.", "I don't know...", "My Survey of Latin American Cultures teacher decided to explain his hate for Nickelback a few weeks ago. We were discussing the importance of cultural identification in society, and he made the point that Nickelback fulfills nothing that is culturally significant for the typical American. In other words, they're generic and don't appeal to the interests of individuals but instead to the masses. Furthermore, this Canadian group is playing the half-time show at this Thursday's Lions-Packers game in Detroit... O___O", "its their music mostly.....", "considering nickelback hatred was popular probably before bieber was even born, i'd say this so-called \"bieber effect\" is not responsible.", "Nickelback has been hated for a very long time.  Almost ten years ago I knew someone who worked at a major rock radio station when a new Nickleback album came out and of course they're supposed to be playing the single multiple times every hour.  The day after it came out they had a meeting because nobody would play the single, not even once.  Nobody liked them.", "I don't think that people would hate Nickleback if they were more obscure. It seems to me the main reason why people don't like them is because they feel their popularity is wholly undeserved.\n\nIt's not that they're especially *bad*, it's just that some people don't think they make very meaningful music.\n\nI don't care for Nickleback, but I don't particularly hate them either. I don't think that they're deserving of such a strong emotional response.", "Most likely due to the fact that musically they are seen by many as not very innovating, and have been known to stick to the \"pop-music\" formula for all of their songs (such as the pop-music song structure, common chord progressions and identical song dynamics). Think of it similarly to the huge uproar in the video game community about Modern Warfare 3 being largely similar to the previous Call of Duty titles. I spend a lot of time on websites aimed at musicians, such as Ultimate Guitar, and I've heard things in the community about Nickelback being \"bland\", \"commercial rock\", and in the [review of the newest album](_URL_0_) on the front page of the site at the moment, \"formulaic and with repetitive lyrical themes\". (The review and the majority of comments on the page are actually quite positive, despite being critical as well.)\n\nEDIT: The hate bandwagon also probably plays a large factor into it, but most of the blatant hatred I've seen comes from the ignorant music elitists, and as one comment on the review facetiously says, \"Cue the hate from the metal heads.\"", "In Canada we have \"Canadian Content Laws\" where some percentage of our music has to be by Canadian artists.  So every time you heard nickelback on the radio?  We heard them 12 times.  I remember enjoying a few of their songs at first but after the 3rd time in an hour that \"How You Remind Me\" started playing I was ready to punch each and every member of that band in the face.", "[This](_URL_0_) and [this](_URL_1_) are why Canadians hate them. And that's very good reason.\n", "Not to repeat what others have said but due to the way radio stations operate, they tend to play Nickelback a LOT. Everyone has heard their singles so many times and it gets very tiring very fast.", "Prepare your down votes:  I commend Nickleback.  People dismiss them as repetitive and formulaic but anyone who has heard more then the radio hits (should) think otherwise.  Some of their songs can get heavy (not in a Black Dahlia Murder or Devin Townsend way- but in a groove kind of way).  Their production value is consistently amazing and they sound great live.  Look, if we were gonna shit on bands for rewriting and repackaging their old songs- then we would've bitched at AC/DC- a band who openly admits that they rewrite their own material.\n\nTL;DR: Give NB a break- stop hating because they're on the radio. ", "[All Of Nickelback's Greatest Hits Played At Once](_URL_0_).", "For me lyrical content is what makes me kinda dislike Nickleback. It feels misogynistic and demeaning at time. [\"Something In Your Mouth\"](_URL_1_), [\"S.E.X.\"](_URL_0_) and [\"Animals\"](_URL_2_)) being the songs that really stand out in my head. \n\nThe truth is there are some songs by other bands that I objectively think are just as offensive, but like. I think it has to do more with the image I hold of the band, and the respect I have for their originality and musical talent. Sir Psycho Sexy by The Red Hot Chili Peppers is a good example of a song I like despite the fact that if it was done by another band I could very much not like it.", "Hey guys,  it's not all bad news:  [Nickelback\u2019s 7 million records sold fund other Roadrunner bands we like, such as Killswitch Engage, Machine Head, Opeth, Megadeth, Dream Theater, Biffy Clyro, Life of Agony, Trivium, Soufly.](_URL_0_)", "Every rational person should contemplate how much of their distaste for something is attributed to the bandwagon effect, as opposed to their own opinions. For every act like Nickelback, Creed, Justin Bieber, and Rebecca Black, I can find 100 musically equal acts that are generally liked by people.", "There isn't much good reason. There is reason to not like them, because, in fact, a lot of their stuff does sound the same. But is that really reason to actively hate them? No. It's incredibly easy to avoid a band that you don't like. I don't like JB. Do I make it a point to talk shit about him every chance I get? No, because that would be retarded. People just hate for the purpose of hating."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/nickelback/here_and_now/index.html"], [], ["http://www.chartattack.com/files/imagecache/content_image-680xauto/chart_global/news/85604996.jpg", "http://www.chartattack.com/files/inline-images/nickelbackHarper.jpg"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfmFt2aRjM0&amp;feature=related"], ["http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/sex.html", "http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/somethinginyourmouth.html", "http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/animals.html"], ["http://www.metalsucks.net/2008/07/09/nickelback-to-continue-funding-roadrunner-bands-we-actually-like-for-about-five-more-years-after-that-all-bets-are-off-aka-the-live-nation-deal/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/nickelback/here_and_now/index.html"], [], ["http://www.chartattack.com/files/imagecache/content_image-680xauto/chart_global/news/85604996.jpg", "http://www.chartattack.com/files/inline-images/nickelbackHarper.jpg"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfmFt2aRjM0&amp;feature=related"], ["http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/sex.html", "http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/somethinginyourmouth.html", "http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickelback/animals.html"], ["http://www.metalsucks.net/2008/07/09/nickelback-to-continue-funding-roadrunner-bands-we-actually-like-for-about-five-more-years-after-that-all-bets-are-off-aka-the-live-nation-deal/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32fv6w", "title": "what is the point of a judge in countries where a jury decides if a prisoner is guilty or not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32fv6w/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_a_judge_in_countries/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqaseip", "cqashyw", "cqasj1y", "cqask9y", "cqastaj", "cqav22c"], "score": [6, 8, 15, 7, 112, 2], "text": ["The judge decides the punishment usually, also in the USA you dont always have a jury for every court case.", "The Judge will often decide things like the punishment as well as actually run the trial and mediate between the plaintiffs and lawyers. \n\nAlso depending on the court the Judge does decide guilt , for example in small claims court (think Judge Judy) \n", "A courtroom, at least in the US, has very specific roles for everyone participating.\n\nThe lawyers present evidence.\n\nWitnesses are evidence.\n\nThe judge is there to ensure the court runs correctly and to explain the laws relevant to the case to the jury. (For example, \"Murder in the First degree requires that A, B, C, and D are true.\")\n\nThe jury's job is to assess the evidence and decide whether it meets the legal requirements as explained by the judge.\n\n(Edit for some typos - thanks y'all.)", "The legal distinction is that a jury acts as \"a trier of facts\" (i.e. the jury determines who is telling the truth) and a judge acts as a \"trier of law\" (i.e. the judge decides which laws, if any, have been violated).\n\nWhat this means is that during the trial the Judge acts as the \"chairman\". She or he will be able to keep the defence and prosecuting lawyers (or anybody else) in line if they break the rules. But more importantly the Judge's hopefully extensive knowledge of the law means they'll know exactly when the lawyers **are** breaking the rules.\n\nThe Judge can also in some situations direct the jury to return a specific verdict or even abandon the case altogether if she or he thinks that not to do so could in itself cause a breach of law.", "Juries decide issues of *fact* (did such and such actually happen).  Judges decide issues of *law* (who is allowed to testify, what questions are allowed to be asked, who has the burden of proof, what facts must be proved to establish a particular crime).\n\nSo, for example, in an ordinary rape case, the judge might explain to the jury that they need to decide whether the victim actually consented to a sex act, but in a statutory rape case, the judge might explain to the jury that it doesn't matter whether the minor consented to sex or lied about their age.  These are points of law that you wouldn't expect an average juror to know going into the trial.", "The judge acts like a referee and rules on matters of law while the jury rules on matters of fact. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "37qqef", "title": "why is frying a frozen turkey dangerous?", "selftext": "I've spent a good 15 mins searching for a cogent explanation for this and can't find anything more than that it's dangerous.\n\nI get that water is more dense than hot oil, so it will sink, evaporate, and cause a grease fire. It also seems like a lot people make the mistake of dropping the turkey in and/or not pre-measuring the volume of oil necessary to make sure the oil won't overflow the pot lip which starts the fire.\n\nBUT why....why is frying a frozen turkey more dangerous than frying a thawed one? Will it explode?\n\nThanks so much!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37qqef/eli5why_is_frying_a_frozen_turkey_dangerous/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crp0l1w", "crp0qqz", "crp1qgn", "crp28et", "crp6gt3"], "score": [3, 12, 7, 6, 2], "text": ["A frozen turkey has more water, especally on the outside.\n\nWater evaporates at a lower temp then oil, so water beneath the oil wil rapidly rise causing bubbles that burst and overflow. \nThe overflow leaks down and catches on fire.", "You have actually hit the highlights pretty well. When the oil escapes the pot, it then goes down and hits the flame and catches fire. It doesn't so much is explode as burn very fast.\n\nI once worked a house fire  that was caused by a turkey fryer accident in the sunroom. The house burned down within 30 minutes of the start of the fire. It was Christmas Eve. ", "Frozen turkeys are harder to dry completely. The remaining ice will turn into steam. A fairly small amount of water can turn into a lot of steam (a shot glass of liquid water will turn into about enough steam to fill a typical turkey fryer). The steam pushes the oil out of the fryer, which has the effect of spraying scalding hot oil all over the place. Some of the oil will also run down the outside of the fryer and reach the heating element (or flame for a gas powered fryer) and then cause a fire.", " > I get that water is more dense than hot oil, so it will sink, evaporate, and **cause a grease fire.**\n\nEmphasis added\n\n > BUT why....why is frying a frozen turkey more dangerous than frying a thawed one?\n\n??", "All good answers here! I'll add one more thing...when you have a thawed turkey, you dry it off very well before you put it in hot oil. It's not possible to \"dry\" a frozen turkey because a lot of the water is in the form of ice crystals. When ice hits hot oil, it vaporizes. This can cause the oil to splash, and catch on fire. HOWEVER, if there's enough ice crystals, all turning to steam at once...this actually generates propulsion (from a lot of steam trying to escape the oil at once) and can propel your turkey out of the fryer like a cannonball. Often the oil catches fire just before this happens, so you have a flaming turkey shooting out of the fryer. Why this is dangerous, I'll leave to your imagination. :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1twqir", "title": "Are polar bear populations increasing, decreasing, or do we not know for sure?", "selftext": "I definitely thought they were in decline due to climate change, but I have recently read that they are in greater abundance than they used to be. Is this false, and do we really have reliable estimates for polar bear populations for the last several decades?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1twqir/are_polar_bear_populations_increasing_decreasing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cecyoc2", "cedfxs0"], "score": [7, 2], "text": ["I looked into this a few years ago, so my info is a bit out of date, but the most authoritative information I found at that time was from the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group, which reported that as of 2009, 8 of the 19 subpopulations were in decline, 1 was increasing, 3 were stable, and 7 didn't have enough data to draw any conclusions.\n\nIt looks like they will release updated information within the next couple months, so keep an eye on their website here: _URL_0_", "I read that study which cited them in higher numbers, but I think their region of study was not comprehensive enough because they are so hard to track. [This](_URL_1_) map shows the distribution of them in known regions, and generally shows that there populations are decreasing.  (Citing the study the other poster had)...There are tracking devices on some of the bears but that simply tracks their distribution and movement. \n\nThe problem is - even if their populations are increasing...the sea ice will be gone in ~ [50 years](_URL_0_) meaning the polar bears will have to quickly adapt to lost hunting ground or be extinct/endangered in a few decades. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/"], ["http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/29/geography-in-the-news-polar-bears/", "http://assets.panda.org/img/original/polar_bear_subpopulation_status_170709_1.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2zv8sq", "title": "why does apple keep changing their ports?", "selftext": "There doesn't seem to be a specific, clear reason. Why should they change it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zv8sq/eli5_why_does_apple_keep_changing_their_ports/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpmlao9", "cpmlmw9", "cpmm3q0", "cpmqw2v", "cpmrasx", "cpmtz0c"], "score": [127, 27, 7, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["If you're referring to the new Macbook, that port is a USB type-C port, it's an international standard, and you're going to start seeing that port on pretty much everything. Google has already announced that the new Chromebook Pixel is using it.\n\nThe port is reversible (which is always nice), is faster, and lets you draw more power (useful for charging) than other ports.", "There is a reason: whenever there's a change, there's almost always a significant improvement. Lightning port is much, much faster than the old 30-pin connector (which dates back to 2000, by the way). USB3.1 is better than even that, and it's not Apple's invention, it's an international standard, announced last year, and it'll soon be on everything. It's a replacement for the USB2.0 ports that you use for everything now, with much better speeds, and able to carry enough power to charge a laptop.  ", "They are improvements over their old ports, in terms of speed generally.  The real question isn't why they keep changing their ports, the international standard changes, to improve as well.  Its why they don't use the standard ports everyone else uses.  Both in phones and in laptop power supplies.  They had a perfect chance to switch to the standard when they changed the Iphone adapter, they just didn't.", "They hardly ever change their ports. Compare them to other manufacturers, they change their ports every laptop version.", "When the original iMac only had USB/Firewire (and also no floppy drive) people were losing their shit about that too. \"NO SCSI??? NO COM?? NO ADB??? WTF APPLE!\"\n\nFact is USB (and optical drives) wouldn't have caught on for a much longer time if Apple hadn't said \"fuck you, no\" and let people continue to use their outdated shit. Someone's got to push the industry forward. \n\nThat being said, it wouldn't have killed them to put at least 2 USB-C ports on the new macbook so you can charge it while using a peripheral without an adapter.  That is a legitimate complaint. ", "I'm surprised no one brought up the obvious - why iphones use (two) different connectors when the rest of the world uses the same standard. Maybe that's not what OP was asking, but I think it's a good example."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14r5ai", "title": "Can multi-vitamin use cause kidney stones/crystalline formations in the renal system?", "selftext": "There's a long running debate in my lunch group on multi-vitamins (e.g. broad spectrum pills with 100+% of the daily value).  One side asserts that vitamins should only be consumed in direct response to deficiencies due to the chance for kidney stone formation.  The other side asserts that due to the average lack of complete nutrition, a multi-vitamin is a better option than choosing deficiencies.  \n\nSo, can chronic multi-vitamin consumption cause a significant chance to produce kidney stones and is it worth it in comparison to having some nutrient deficiencies?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14r5ai/can_multivitamin_use_cause_kidney/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7fswvf"], "score": [3], "text": ["[This](_URL_0_) study found a link between excessive application of multivitamins, vitamin D and calcium and formation of kidney stones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=kidney%20stones%20multivitamins"]]}
{"q_id": "5e6y64", "title": "why is the u.k. pushing for such strict surveillance measures?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e6y64/eli5_why_is_the_uk_pushing_for_such_strict/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daa5vln", "daa60bh", "daa6olw", "daa6v8e", "daa6xgd", "daa6xm7", "daa7fp4", "daa7z26", "daa8jg7", "daa8rv1", "daa9huw", "daa9k7e", "daa9oxv", "daaatfg", "daaaw75", "daaaywc", "daacgqs", "daacihs", "daacist", "daad9e1"], "score": [6, 381, 9, 272, 7, 47, 105, 22, 3, 35, 4, 38, 2, 2, 6, 3, 3, 4, 8, 2], "text": ["They're paralyzed by the fear of terrorism and there are well-funded companies looking to sell gear to fill their perceived needs. It's the same thing around the world. Dogs shredding themselves over a few fleas.", "Our recently appointed prime minister (not by the people) has been pushing this for a while, now shes in a position to do it.", "Governments, in general, want power. The British government feels that it can get away with these surveillance/censorship laws, which will give them enormous power over their citizens.", "Liberal views within the social sense in the UK aren't very popular. Both main parties, Labour and Conservative, supported or at least abstained from voting on the Snooper's Charter. The Liberal Democrats, the third largest party until recent times, actively opposed such measures. Before the current government, there was a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, where the Liberals actively blocked any attempt to push any legislation through.\n\nBritain has always been a fairly conservative country, with a small C. However, attitudes in the UK tend to be fairly placid when it comes to civil liberties until it affects our lives directly / until we feel the consequences immediately.\n\nTheresa May is a very puritan prime minister with a sense of righteous public duty. Not my type of politics, but I can empathise with her method of approach. She has come from a fairly religious background with a sense of moral duty to ensure the populace adheres to a higher respect in moral standard. The Snooper's Charter is upheld to instill a sense of values and to also deter terrorism, deter crime and monitor individuals' behaviour.", "From watching tv shows, excellent source of info I know, it seems like the place is already covered in cameras or is that just London?", "OK a conspiratorial view, but the UK government have one primary and overriding aim, to stay in power. They over play the fear of terrorism (200\u00d7 more like to die of suicide than a terrorist), piracy and porn, when their real enemy is the British people. The only real threat to the Tory government is the voters who can remove them.", "It's the classic cycle of leveraging fear (esp. of terrorism) into the political will for the government to extend their power. See: the patriot act, bill C-51 in canada and so on. \n\n", "The UK is a nanny state. Literally and figuratively. They constantly push fear at all levels, and then offer safety by taking away rights.\n\nWhether this is the right to buy a knife (you might get stabbed), the right to look at porn (think of what the children might see) or surveillance (we will make sure no one is planning anything naughty). My biggest evidence for this is the use of reflective vests on all authority figures. It brings thoughts about safety to the forefront.\n\nFYI Britain is currently planning on blocking all porn without \"proper age verification\" and you won't be able to opt out of it. I'm guessing proper age verification is a credit card and very few people are willing to go that far. I doubt many sites will qualify since they all offer free video samples anyways.", "Because the Security services (MI5, MI6, GCHQ) asked for them and the government is spineless. ", "Within the current lifetimes of those MPs and others in government who enacted this law, there existed a time when the IRA and other groups planted bombs  &  plotted attacks on London and other major cities in the UK. This is indelibly scarred in people's memories and has led to a culture where preventing domestic terrorism is seen as a very worthwhile and real cause (unlike in the US where it is used as a vapid threat to justify fighting an invisible enemy). This leads to much greater public acceptance of counter-terrorism intelligence.\n\nAnd on another angle, the UK is a very close knit island with a dense population, isolationism and privacy (in the US context that is commonly viewed on this site) is not a luxury people have. It's a society where people must be social, and adhere to accepted social norms so that everyone can get on with daily life. In that regard, the level of social decency towards others is quite high, and the standards and codes of conduct the government is held to are also high. This means that when I hear that someone can see my emails or texts in the UK, I do not worry that the person reading them is some rabid right-wing Jesus loving nut-job agent for an apocalyptic police state, but a relatively educated professional who could be the person next to me at the pub. Therefore it is not something I worry about.\n", "Have you not seen London has Fallen?", "The current Prime Minister, Theresa May, has been pushing for this law for a long time, since before she became Prime Minister (she did not win in an election, but because the previous PM quit over Brexit). She is quite old-fashioned, quite right-wing, and believes it's right to monitor what people do online.\n\nSecondly, and perhaps more importantly, the UK secret services have been using many of the techniques that are being brought into law for years, illegally. Courts ruled last year that what they had been doing was illegal. So this is bringing the law into line with what the spies were already doing.\n\nThirdly, it's a way for the government to increase their power over what people do online. Part of that is about controlling minds - people will think twice about doing anything wrong because they know they're being watched. Part of it is probably that it will make it easier to censor anything deemed anti-British, or against the government, in the future. And part of it is that they will be able to monitor what people are doing online, helping them maintain control and prevent riots etc.", "These practises have been in place for over ten years. This is a move to make them legal in light of the Snowden revelations.", "I think one thing to note is that Americans tend to have a deep distrust of (their) government and tend to assume other country's citizens do as well.\n\nI moved to the states from Germany and I still don't really understand the deep seated animosity people have towards the (US) government. \n\nPeople here also get very freaked out when something seems to infringe on a (sometimes perceived liberty), whether it actually impacts them, or even impacts positively is irrelevant. \n\nWhile privacy laws tend to be very strict in Europe, the more collectivist attitude of the citizens, also makes people more trusting that the government ultimately has their best interest in mind.", "Every country does what the UK has made legal, that is the only difference, in the UK its legal.\n\nAll major powers are doing it.", "It's not just the UK. This is part of the global push for greater control and monitoring of citizens. And it's not new. It's been getting worse over the years, though.", "The government wants to take away the rights of the people, keeping them under control, and preventing removal of the government and the way of life enjoyed by those in power.\n\nToo many people in the UK blindly trust that the government has their best interests at heart.  Or they don't care about stuff until it directly impacts their own life, by which time it's too late.\n\nA grim future of oppression awaits.\n", "As someone who just left that country after 10yrs...here's my theory:\n\n1) Brits adore authority. Monarchs have no real power anymore, but secretly they still look up to power. \n\n2) The government gets away with it because people don't care and the media **TOTALLY** fail at educating them. \n\nBasically, you have workers and upper class...none of them tend to be particularly liberal. London is an island. \n\nI'm generalising here of course...not everyone is like that ;)", "Because George Orwell was British and the UK will be damned before they let the Americans beat them to 1984.", "Terrorism mainly. It is *perceived* to be a threat, regardless of the reality. By increasing surveillance the likelihood of catching people colluding in a terrorist activity increases. \n\nPeople seem to be responding thinking this will be some kind of 1984-like mind control conspiracy thing. It's not. People won't even notice and people will pay no heed to it. They'll continue acting as they did before. They won't change their behaviour because they're being observed anymore than people modulate their behaviour online where huge swathes of information is already collected. In fact these practices have been done for years now, but the court found them to be illegal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "38md8e", "title": "why do people say teachers are underpaid when a high school teacher makes a median salary of 56,356?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38md8e/eli5why_do_people_say_teachers_are_underpaid_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crw3sgg", "crw3v3c", "crw4e75", "crw4e8f", "crw4fep", "crw4kx8", "crw4m4a", "crw4mw5", "crw4n7g", "crw4q7y", "crw4rtk", "crw4uz6", "crw4vpk", "crw4wg6", "crw4wli", "crw4x0p", "crw4yag", "crw5192", "crw51b2", "crw51s6", "crw535d", "crw55qk", "crw5614", "crw5642", "crw59oo", "crw5b8f", "crw5bm2", "crw5c2w", "crw5dw5", "crw5e9c", "crw5gix", "crw5gld", "crw5hg0", "crw5i08", "crw5ilu", "crw5jeq", "crw5lji", "crw5mcm", "crw5n6g", "crw5nhe", "crw5omi", "crw5pzj", "crw5qph", "crw5tgh", "crw5ti6", "crw60jd", "crw63li", "crw65le", "crw65wq", "crw669a", "crw6mwb", "crw6ocr", "crw6x3b", "crw6x7a", "crw6xop", "crw70ff", "crw72ot", "crw74d9", "crw7h1w", "crw7ijv", "crw7j4m", "crw7ms3", "crw7okz", "crw7w3o", "crw7whe", "crw7wzr", "crw7xk4", "crw7xmo", "crw7xx5", "crw7yqa", "crw7z6t", "crw80os", "crw83d1", "crw85ea", "crw8l51", "crw90tf", "crwby75", "crwiss6"], "score": [92, 45, 2, 96, 999, 10, 290, 15, 889, 3, 9, 30, 363, 4, 41, 6, 5, 16, 51, 6, 11, 5, 7, 4, 2, 6, 3, 4, 2, 2, 11, 2, 26, 358, 6, 4, 2, 9, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 36, 7, 2, 2, 4, 15, 2, 3, 13, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Teachers also work really long hours factoring in how much work is done before and after school. Their pay isn't as high when that is accounted for.", "While it may seem that teachers have 3 months off per year, it really doesn't work out to that. There is a hella amount of prep work before the school year as well as after hours work during the year teachers do not get credit for. I also think he underpaid part comes from the fact that industries pay way more for good talent, and our schools cannot compete for the best instructors. As a result, our educational system dies not turn out the caliber students it potentially could. ", "In Michigan, 3% of their salary is set aside for retirement funds*\n\n*of any state employee\n\nYeah, the governor slipped through legislation where construction workers can get retirement funds from the teacher budget. So there's that.\n\nEdit as /u/alexander1701 pointed out too, in Michigan at least, the decent teaching positions that are at that median require masters degrees. And 50k/year is not a great return on a masters degree. ", "Also, a lot of places teachers only make 30-40k, and are responsible for the education of the next generation and that's horrifying.\n\nAlso, 50k is not a great salary. And places where it is a great salary, are not the places where teachers are making 50k.\n\nEDIT: also, for those of you who aren't teachers/don't have extensive experience working with kids - it's HARD. I was a high school teacher, and jeez, I never stopped working. I got to school at 8 AM, left at 8PM, after lesson plans, grading, extra-curricular activities, tutoring, etc.", "First off, teachers don't work 9/12ths of the year. They don't just show up on the first day that students arrive and they don't leave when students do. They don't stop working at 3 when school ends for students, but keep going into the night and often weekends doing grading, prep, parent calls, conferences, meetings, etc. I'm not a teacher myself because I couldn't handle it. Honestly. I know way too many teachers and know that I couldn't handle the job they do.\n\nSecond, many places require more than a Bachelor's degree. Where I live, a postgraduate degree is required. Teachers are also typically required to attend regular professional development courses throughout their careers. These are extra university courses that they have to pay for regularly.\n\nThird, it's not a lot in comparison to other jobs that have less responsibility and requirements. A median salary of $53k is in the same ballpark as restaurant managers ($53k), construction crane operators ($53k), postal carriers ($51k), bricklayers ($51k)... none of which require investing in education and none of which are responsible for our children's futures.\n\n**EDIT** So I don't have to repeat myself a million times in the comments: No, I'm *not* saying that people in blue collar jobs don't have skills or don't deserve to earn money. Don't put words in my mouth. I've worked blue collar jobs and fully appreciate how skilled tradesmen can be and how necessary those jobs are. I *am* saying that it costs more in time and money to get the degrees necessary to become a teacher while most trades are learned either through cheaper, shorter-term courses and/or on-the-job training. I'm sure you can point out trades that cost more to learn, but I'd also bet most of those pay more. If not, then they too are probably underpaid.\n\n**EDIT 2** [Source for the numbers was the Bureau of Labor Statistics.](_URL_0_)", "There are rural districts where I live that pay teachers around 30k or less starting out. My mom teaches preschool and makes less than 30k.\n\nI'm closer to the median in the mid 40s -- that's with 4 years experience and a coaching stipend. I work at one of the highest paying districts in my area, and living costs where I live are pretty cheap, so I don't feel underpaid one bit. I can even teach summer school or get a summer job to supplement my income.\n\nThat being said, a teacher living in an urban area with high living expenses, college loans, and kids of his own would be scraping by at 56k. He would probably need to be on government assistance depending on his spouse's income.\n\nAlso, if that teacher in the urban area is working at a school that has a lot of economically disadvantage students and an unsupportive admistration, the working conditions caused by behavioral issues would make his job extremely difficult. I mean unimaginably difficult for anyone who has never taught. For many teachers like this, the pay is not enough, and that's why these schools have high turn over as well as a constant cycle of underperformance.\n\nThe TLDR is: 56k is the median, but many teaches are making way less than that especially in rural areas. 56k really isn't that much money unless you are living somewhere with cheap living expenses .\n\nEDIT: If you are interested in finding out what districts near you pay teachers, go to their district website and look for their \"salary schedule\" or just Google [district name] \"salary schedule\" and click on the relevant search result. It will give you the salaries for teachers in the district from 0 experience to 20+ years of experience.\n\n", "Beginning teachers do make 30,000 - even less in rural areas.  When I started in 2002 I made 26,000.  I didn't break 30,000 for 5 years.  I've been at it 13 years and still make less than 50,000, even though I am now in an urban district.  Among jobs that require 4 year degrees, teaching pays in the bottom 4%.\n\nAlso, the average teacher puts in more time in the 10 months of the school year than an average full time, year round employee does.  ", "Teachers' jobs don't finish in the classroom. \n\nGOOD teachers go beyond classroom duties for their kids. If you think a teacher is done when the bell rings at 2:10/3:30 then you're dead wrong. Take into account how much curriculum planning they do after school, in the evenings and on weekends, marking, reporting, extra curriculars, coaching, tutorials etc. and it's a job that can burn you out extremely quickly. Not to mention the classroom management aspect, dealing with behavior students AND their parents as well as taking into account special needs and individualized lesson plans for modified students. \n\nThose teachers that are most effective are the ones that are most worked because they understand teaching is a multidimensional job. You take a cookie cutter approach into a classroom and you're gonna crash and burn and the kids aren't going to benefit at all. \n\n**TL:DR:** There is way more going on behind the scenes of a teaching job. It's not as easy as walking into a class and yapping for an hour or reading a book.", "My wife and I are both teachers. Not sure what state you are in, but in my state the only way you would be making $50,000 or above would be if you had advanced degrees (master's or master's+30) AND had at least 20 years experience. \n\nWhile we do have the summers off, I spend most of the summer taking classes or planning for next year. There is also a lot of planning that takes place after school hours. Most of my planning, material creation, and grading papers has to take place at home because my \"planning periods\" are taken up by constant meetings between my grade level, content area, administration, and parents. ", "Ok, I taught my first classes last semester at my university, where I'm a graduate assistant.  I spent countless hours prepping for these classes, trying to avoid latent fears of failing my students.  I spent sleepless nights wondering how I could improve in any aspect.  Any teacher worth a damn goes through this every single academic year, and it takes a special type of person to deal with this on an ongoing basis for lackluster pay.  This doesn't even include the hours spent grading papers, trying to tailor comments to adequately correct (without discouraging) each and every student.  ", "Because they don't make anyone money.  If you make someone money you generally get paid more.  There are plenty of fields that are underpaid for similar reasons.  Also economics, generally there are more teachers than positions in most areas.", "Why do teachers always have to justify their salaries but politicians never do? Plus they make more, have more time off, and need no education whatsoever ", "If I'm being really honest with myself, I have been a part of private and public school teaching curriculums, and now hold a doctorate degree. So I've seen through as much education as anyone. The quality of public school teacher I've seen in New York City? I would qualify about 20% as competent to outstanding, 50% as below minimum acceptable standard, and 30% as downright dangerous, dysfunctional, grossly incompetent, unable to control their class, etc. \n\nForgive me for being callous, but since I am not a public school teacher, I don't particularly care if their work is well-rewarded monetarily. What I, and I think most of society should care about, is whether the occupation of teacher is attracting enough competent, talented people into the profession, and it isn't. That's why the salary should increase. I'd argue that since information is the most important resource on earth, that teachers should be paid double or more what they currently are, to ensure that only the best succeed at becoming teachers.", "First of all, most teachers work through a good part of the summer whether it be cleaning and organizing their classroom, doing trainings, or working with athletic teams if they also happen to be a coach.  Secondly, it isn't that they aren't paid a living wage, just that their wages are relatively meager given that they are literally shaping tomorrows youth", "Link the source on this number please. It seems much to high. With starting salaries closer to 30 it's hard to believe that's the median.", "Become a teacher, then you'll understand. My first year of teaching my salary was $26,000. This was in 2011, with a BA. Also, it remained that way for the three years I stayed because of budget cuts. This was in Las Vegas, NV. ", "Well first of all, the national avrage for a starting teacher with a bachelors is 36,141 [(NEA Study)](_URL_0_). \n\nSecond, teachers may teach for 9 months of the year but they spend some of the other 3 months doing activities related to education. Some examples are obtaining a Masters degree  and attending professional development courses as both are needed to maintain a residency license.\n\nFinally to answer your question, I think the sense of \"teachers are underpaid\" comes from a great respect for the type of work while also not wanting to do that type of work themselves. I often hear, \" I could never do that\", when I tell people I work with special education students.         ", "This is going to sound terrible, but of my high school graduating class the ones who ended up being teachers weren't exactly the brightest. I think they're underpaid because if the pay was higher they might have attracted more talented people. ", "Nobody is mentioning this, but where I live taxpayers voted to give teachers a cost of living adjustment and my state took the money and spent it on roads instead. \n\nA bunch of other things were voted on as well and the money didn't end up going towards education so the teachers walked out. \n\nThe cost of living (especially housing in my area) has gone up something like 150% in 10 years, not to mention inflation. \n\nAlso, the teachers can't afford to live anywhere near where they work, so they have to live somewhere cheap and commute. That adds another several hours to their work day, not to mention if they teach high school they have to be there around 6am. Most of my teachers would have to wake up at 4 to go to work. They often stay until 4 or 5 pm and then go home. They're long days. \n\nI think part of the problem with the education system is that the curriculum is shit, but a good teacher can make the best out of it, and then kids actually learn. \n\nWe complain about the mediocre state of education, yet many aren't willing to support wages that will attract good people to become teachers. \n\nAlso, most starting salaries, even for high school, are like $38,000 and you have to have a masters in my state. That's shit pay for a graduate degree. ", "In addition to the time factor that everyone here is pointing out, paying teachers a higher salary encourages even more talented people to teach, instead of becoming a doctor or scientist. Typically, if you have a degree from great school (think Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford), you're looking for positions that pay maybe double, maybe even triple that amount, but we need those people to teach and inspire kids as well.", "Have you dealt with one teenager for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year? No, it's actually considered a form of torture in some countries. \n\nTeachers deal with 30 of them at once. ", "I'm a teacher, however, I don't know how things are all over the US.  I can only speak to my school district in regards to compensation.  In my school district we finally settled our contract last month for the just completed school year.  For someone to earn 50k in my school district, that salary plateau is reached after year 19.  The maximum pay in my district for teachers that have worked for at least 26 years is 59,300.  \n\nAs far as working 9/12th's of the year...I know plenty of teachers that put in 50 - 60 hours on a weekly basis making sure that everything is taken care of for their classrooms.  This is a result of overcrowding (even though my state has instituted a class-size reduction amendment, the state DOE continues to violate it on a daily basis) and meeting the accountability requirements for the state.  For example teachers have to write lesson plans so their school administrators know what the teachers will be teaching, how they are going to teach it, and a list of the materials the teacher will use in the lesson.  These lesson plans are usually due two-weeks in advance of the lessons actually being taught.  \n\nTeachers are also virtually required to purchase their own equipment and supplies for the classroom.  I know plenty of teachers that have to buy their own copy paper, calculators, notebook paper, rulers, scissors, and other supplies because the district just won't pay to supply these items.  \n\nI know posts like this usually devolve into \"bash the lazy, complaining teacher\" rants, but I just would ask anyone here to volunteer at a school to see what happens on a daily basis in the classroom.  You'll likely gain a different perspective on the situation if you do.", "First, can you share the link where you got that figure?\n\nSecond, while some big cities pay okay (though the jobs can be brutal) most teaching jobs in small towns or rural areas are barely above the poverty line.\n\nAlso, because teachers are union workers, they get the benefits written into the contract but not the benefits that are required by state law. They don't get Social Security when they retire. They don't get maternity leave (at least in my district). They also have to pay union dues (even if they don't agree with the union). When I was teaching I started out at 47k a year, which is great! Much higher than most people starting a career. But I took home closer to 30k.\n\nTeaching used to be considered a respectable middle class career, but now because the pay has stayed low, benefits are few and getting worse, there isn't a lot of room to move up or get better pay (the world only needs so many principals) and it's not enough to support a family.\n\nI know teachers starting out who are on food stamps. It's not the worst problem in the country, but it's sad that it's becoming a less and less prestigious job. This means that it attracts young grads for a few years, who then move on to better paying jobs. It's hard to be a teacher as a lifelong career anymore. \n\nAnd the students suffer when they have a constant rotation of new teachers learning on them, and then moving on to better jobs after a few years.", "There are many places where teachers do make under 30k/year. My wife was a middle school science teacher for 3 years after the graduated (has since moved onto nursing). In AZ she started at $26k/year. When she left after 3 years she was making $27k but the district was broke and she had to buy her own supplies (paper, pens, stickers, etc).  The max a teacher could make (after like 15 years and a masters) in her district was like $42k\n\nNow contrast that with my mom who was a teacher in MN. They start at like $35k and when my mom retired she was making $75-$80k. ", "You ever had to give a speech or main in front of a group of people before? Imagine creating one of those lessons each day. Then factor in one kid who watched his parents physically fight all night. Another who didn't get much love or attention so tries to get it out from his peers. Another who doesn't give a shit so is trying the best she can to get in snapchat. Plus a slew of other issues. Then remember your job depends on these kids passing your class and state standardized tests even though you are supposed to differentiate lessons for each of your 34 students. MAlso, you probably got into teaching cause you want to change your students lives for the better, open up new Windows and get them to think critically and struggle against 10 years or enforced memorization day in day out. But you get a few minutes between each class to answer parents emails about why their kid who misses half the days is falling and what you are going to do to fix it. Then once a week have meetings with the entire faculty on how to save the world. This week we are discussing how the majority of our parents are immigrants and have no to little formal education and how we can help them learn to read so they can they cab read to their children as infants. Plus you show up an hour early to work and have two hours after the day is over and remember at your old job , it was 9-5 and never have a second thought to what was going to happen at work on Monday and how you were gonna make the day exciting and memorable for your customers. But you get the summer of, which turns out to be about 5 weeks away from actually work.", "As a new teacher to the profession, people generally think that teachers just teach. This is not the case. I care a ton about my students and go to numerous school games or plays because I care about them. They're 12-15 year old's and need a lot of support through those awkward years (those were the worst years of MY life anyway). \n\nWe are in charge of your student's academic success, emotional well being and physical well being and in some instances,  furthering their growth in sports, arts or other extracurricular activities. There are so many tangibles of our job that many people don't think about when they think of the teaching profession. My job as a teacher is never done and continues outside the classroom. Not just marking and parent teacher interviews but being a positive role model to kids. Teaching is extremely stressful and very demanding but ultimately the most rewarding thing I've ever done! \n\nAs an aside, in our province anyway, a big chunk of our pay cheques go towards taxes, pension and union fees. Not complaining. But that money isn't our take home! ", "I'm a teacher. The highest I've ever been paid is mid $30s. Why do I think I should be paid more? Because I have a masters degree, I show up hours before the kids do and leave hours after the kids leave and when I go home I work some more. I field and make phone calls and emails to parents, administrators, etc. I create (or modify existing ones) my own lessons plans every year that are tailored to the specific group of students I have that year.  When I worked at a smaller district I created my own curriculum, in larger schools it is often collaborative. I attend district, campus, and personal professional development every year (about 30 hrs a year which is above the minimum for most places and contrary to what most ppl think I pay for most of this out of pocket, the district is too broke). I spend 1-3 hours on a regular basis breaking down and setting up labs. I keep the chemical storeroom clean, tidy, and properly maintained. (When I first started it was a mess and I spent my free weekends cleaning it up.) I spend about $500-1000 of my measly salary buying materials for my classroom that the district doesn't buy... Construction paper, card stock, glue, tape,  some of the lab materials. It really adds up. Let's not forget all the grading, tutoring, extra-curriculars, afternoon duty and morning duty. I'm sure I left something out. And then there is the instructional time...I spend 6 hours on my feet teaching, questioning, monitoring, redirecting. \n\nMy boyfriend works hard and long hours similar to mine in a different industry. He has a bachelors... I have a masters. He makes 4x as much as I do. So yeah I'd like to get paid a little more so I can get a new to me car and go on a vacation. Honestly...I'd be thrilled with $50k a year.  \nOn a side note: most people don't realize that teachers don't make enough money to buy a house in the district they work for. they often have to commute 30 minutes to an hour or more where I live. Shouldn't they get paid the median so they can live and work where their students are. It builds a sense of community. ", "Median for the nation isn't an accurate measurement. 53K here where I live in central VA is plenty to make a decent living, but where my dad lives about 30 mins south of Buffalo, NY? You'd be lucky to ever own a small home.", "Because I worked in a call center for 7 years out of highschool and cleared that easy after the 3rd year doing fuck all. Teachers go to school for years and pay money to do so.", "I think most people agree they should be paid more, considering the fundamental role they play in so many lives.", "Ignoring all other factors, teaching is a very important profession (they're educating and looking after our children for minimum 13 years and preparing the next generation of workers and citizens), and yet they have an incredibly high turnover rate considering the amount of skills the job requires (classroom management, lesson design, people skills, etc, not to mention subject knowledge). 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 3-5 years, which represents a huge loss of investment for the school districts and state and federal govts. \n\nSo regardless of whether we think the job deserves the pay or not, we should think about ways to make the job more attractive and more accommodating so that we stop hemorrhaging skilled workers. ", "In short, both teachers and everyone else work around 2000 hours per year as teachers just work more hours per day for fewer days.  Yet, the same degree/college credits can make 30%-40% more in other professions.\n\n\n\n***The nitty gritty non-ELI5 answer***\n\nThe hours per day on an 8am-3pm teaching schedule are closer to 7am-6pm (11 hours) over 180 school days gives 1980 hours per year not including in-service days .  This does not include days spent on professional development conferences either which are out of pocket expenses.  So easily rounded to 2100 hours per year.  Meanwhile the typical working calendar for everyone else in 2015 is showing 2004 hours for the year (_URL_0_).\n\nOn top of that teachers get 10 days of paid leave per year of combined sick/vacation and it is the same for a first year or 30th year teacher.  There is no maternity leave or medical leave either as it is expected that anything of that nature should happen during the summer break.  In other careers 1-2 weeks of sick leave are accrued over the year plus 2-4 weeks of vacation based on years with the company.  On top of that extended medical and disability leave are available at 60% of base pay.\n\nThrow vacation/sick days into all of that and the typical 9-5 person will work 10% LESS hours while earning 30% or more.", "As a lazy teacher trying to finish the last six days of my fifth year teaching I can say this is the hardest job I've ever had. By a lot. And I don't make anywhere near $50k. I taught 8th grade math my first year and made about $36. This was in Georgia. I teach 4th grade in Washington state and make around $40. I see some of my coworkers and what they do everyday, and I believe they are underpaid even with our summers off and holidays and whatever else. Unless your heart is 100% completely in it, teaching is a shit job. Don't do it. Seriously. If you don't believe me and go into education, be prepared. Only teachers know what it is truly like. People think because they were in school at some point that they have an idea and thus a valid opinion on what it must be like. It can't be that hard. The school day is only from 8 to 3. Everybody's job sucks.... Fuck you. Don't become a teacher. It's not worth it. Not even if you're planning on being a shitty, lazy one like I've become. Don't do it. ", "My girlfriend is a teacher and she makes $36,000 a year. She also in no way, shape or form works only 9/12ths of the year. Not to mention she has to be there from around 7 until around 4 every day. \n\nThen there's all of the take home stuff teachers are required to do unpaid, like lesson planning, grading and sometimes talking to parents. On top of this there is a pay freeze in effect. What that means is she hasn't had a raise in 5 years. So she makes less and less money every year (inflation). \n\nAND finally, these days, teaching is an unbelievably thankless job. Kids are terrible, and parents don't want to believe that it could possibly be their or their child's fault, and it becomes the teacher's fault. Then there are the constant criticisms about teachers being underpaid. ", "Both of my parents are teachers. My mother has her Masters and several specialist degrees. She barely makes $50K a year and has been teaching over 20 years. My step father just began teaching and is making $30K. He has half that in student debt. My mother is always working on extra tasks at home. She doesn't get paid for this. If she did, she'd probably be making $60K. Teaching is a very underpaid profession. Also, in Georgia, government thinks we should keep cutting their pay to get us out of debt. Go figure. ", "56?!? Hahahahahahahah\n\nI make 29!!!! 4th year. ", "My girlfriend is an elementary teacher at a lower end school in our county. She has her masters degree (as most teachers do) and averages about 10-11 hours of work a day and at least 6-8 hours on the weekend. In addition to that her job is incredibly stressful dealing with kids whose parents' are struggling, never around, addicted to something, uncaring, or a combination of these. Add to that more than 50% of the parents don't even speak English so she has to schedule a translator or use the kid (bad idea) just to talk to them.\n\nMy gf has always LOVED kids. She grew up wanting to be a teacher. Now that she is in the system and sees how dysfunctional it is along with how the kids behave (and with no way to discipline them) she hates every day at the job she spent 5 years in college preparing for.\n\nTL;DR: You couldn't pay me ENOUGH to be an elementary school teacher.", "Where are you posting from? \n\nMy live in girlfriend is going to be a fourth year high school teacher this August. She barely breaks 30k a year in gross wages. \n\nNevermind the paid summers off.  The addage that teachers are the only profession that steals office supplies from home to take to work is true.  I am the one who installed the shelves in her classroom.  She begs and borrows for supplies, because nothing is provided. ", "when i was a teacher, i didn't make nearly that much starting. only 36k/year. and a few thousand of that was spent on class materials and food. it's amazing how many kids come to school with no breakfast. can't concentrate when hungry. also, i'm in SoCal, even 56k isn't considered much.", "Where I leave teachers average starting salary is 26k. You have to take location into account too. 56k in a big city wont get you very far.", "If you want to find a teacher working, stop at their house between 8pm and midnight.\n\nSource: Am teacher + wife teacher + 2 teaching in laws + grandmother teacher + grandfather teacher + about 100 teaching friends. ", "is 56k median for **all** teachers? if yes, it means that you lump new teachers with 0 experience with those who's been teaching for decades (maybe up to 35 years experience).  \n\nif we assume that all teachers only paid based on experience, and amount of teachers are equally distributed between each years, it means that you only make $56k with 17 years experience, which is so much smaller.  \n\nmany business and finance jobs starting salary at the range $50-60k, some even more. teachers have to teach 17 years just to earn the same salary as a starting finance person.", "Australian teachers starting salary (in my state) is $73000 a year with guaranteed pay rises every  year up until $93000.\n\nThen there are level 3 teachers that can earn up to $102000 but that requires a lot of work and effort to reach. Teachers have to follow strict curriculum which makes lesson plans a little easier but they still are a pain to set up and be effective.\n\nThere are also remote allowances if going into the country as well. \n\n73000 is about the median wage in Australia these days so it is great for someone with no work experience and only a degree backing them. \n\nThe problem a lot of teachers here have is that they have no work experience outside the education system, it has created a militant union culture where some of the demands are unrealistic considering the number of unemployed teachers. The higher wage has lead to larger class sizes which has meant that teaching standards have dropped as well as cuts to support services around teaching staff.\n\n", "This must be a U.S. thing. Starting salary for high school teachers here in Australia is over 60k, increasing each year/level to over 100k.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "My dad is 60+ years old.  Has been an educator for 35+ years.  Has a bachelors, two masters, a fifth year, and is ABD.  He stays up until midnight ever night grading and writing exams for his kids, he's up at 4:30 every day to be out the door by five to get to school early and prepare for his kids.  He writes 50 or so personalized college recommendations for his students every summer; the summer he is supposed to have off. He runs summer programs for his students, and clubs after school throughout the year.  I cannot even begin to fathom the amount of lives he has changed, and time he has invested in doing so.  He will forever be my hero, and despite all the work and sacrifice he has made over the years, he will probably not be able to retire for another 10 years (taught overseas, and private schools for many years).  The common misconception is that their work stops the second they leave the classroom, but I assure you that is not the case by any means. So far all he has done and will do, and the importance of his job, my old man is way underpaid.", "It's underpaid relative to what they could be getting in the private sector. In general, if you are qualified to be a teacher, you are taking a paycut by choosing that career path", "While your numbers are American let me give you the difference a Canadian perspective has. Canadian teachers get paid anywhere between 50 and 58 K starting wage in my province, which is higher than elsewhere but not outrageously so. We face similar social and economic issues to the United States, similar (albeit slightly better) levels of poverty, and similar levels of cultural diversity. \n\nOn average a Canadian student outperforms an American student by anywhere between 15 and 25% depending on the study. My provinces records are closer to the 25% range for most of the US. Our numbers are beaten only by Norway, which pays their teachers even more and treats them closer to doctors than to 'lesser professionals'. We are one of the few provinces that requires standardized testing and we again consistently outperform you in almost every metric. \n\nThe reason you pay teachers well is because then they work harder for you, they are less likely to drop out for other jobs (thus leading to brain drain), and you are more likely to attract quality people to the profession. If you pay crap wages you get crap people, simple as that. \n\nFinally, the wages of teachers are typically paid over a 10 month (9 month for the US) range and are spread out over 12 months in their contracts. So technically you're only paying for 9 months but you're just spreading that out over 12, the extra work that teachers do in the summer like prep, classes, workshops, research, curricular development, test development, assessment workshops, special needs workshops, dealing with a student with 'XYZ' disorder workshops are all technically on the house; you're welcome. If you were to pay for the full 12 months you'd have to increase their wage by a quarter (a sixth for Canadians). ", "I can go get an associate degree in any blue collar field and make twice that within five years. On top of that, I wouldn't have to deal with other people's children. Teaching has scaled horribly alongside the rising cost of living if you consider the education level required, and then there's the issue of what I understand to be horrible unions that contribute to the contempt some people have for them. I'm just speaking from what I've heard and explaining why I never became one.", "This is my son and daughter's school in suburb of chicago.  My daughter's grade 2 teacher was making $97000 2 years ago.  \n\n_URL_0_", "I'm a high school American History teacher in the great state of North Carolina and I came here to say FUCK YOU and your median goddamn google salary results.", "Lol, my high school physics teacher made 98k my senior year. Taught only 3 classes a day. Tenured as fuck though. Was at a public school too.", "I am a 4th year teacher.  I get to work at 6 a.m. every morning, two hours before school starts. Then I stay until 4 p.m., helping students with getting material or tutoring kids that didn't understand the topic.  Not to mention, my lunch breaks and prep period are given to students to help tutoring because they can not stay after school due to riding the bus.  I grade daily, typically this is what is done in the morning.  No, I don't want an applause or a gold star, but people don't understand the work of real teachers... I am a social worker, a friend, and a guidance counselor, I wear many hats.  Some teachers are terrible, but for the most part, teachers give everything to teach the beautiful minds of the young.  ", "You know the really hard presentation you have to make every quarter? The one you prepare for all month, the one that exhausts you, the one you celebrate when it's finally over? Okay, do that presentation every day for eight hours. \n\nTo ungrateful little shits. \n\nWho you also have to babysit. \n\nThere's no overtime. You have homework every night. And everyone laughs at you and says \"If you can't do teach hurr hurr hurr.\"\n\nAnd also you have to manage insane parents who don't believe their little precious baby is in actuality capable of any wrongdoing whatsoever, even though they're children and you're a fucking adult. \n\nAlso, you're beholden to every no-nothing school board member and politician who interferes to get a vote, nevermind the fact that none of them have any experience in your field and are talking completely out of their ass. \n\nAlso you have to wear slacks and never cuss or do anything but be a perfect paragon of humanity with infinite patience. ", "Live in Ontario Canada, teachers start at about 60,000 a year and make well over 100k a year by the time they retire. It is one of the best paying jobs you can get here.", "$56K? Where is this magical land? I only make $34K and have been teaching for almost 10 years.  I'm thankful my wife is also a teacher, which makes our combined wage at around $65,000. Together, we do ok, but I have friends who are single parents or are the only ones who are getting payed and support a family.   It is not very uncommon for teachers to have a second job, too.  My wife and I both tutor and work retail jobs as well. ", "I see it differently. Teaching should be a valuable profession because education is important. But Americans don't see education that way. While 50k isn't bad, that value is low relative to their contribution to society. Now here's the thing: the low pay dissuades many qualified college students from pursuing teaching. For example, I have a passion for teaching, but I won't chase that dream because I believe with my qualities I have the potential to earn a lot more. I could fathom earning enough in another field, retiring comfortably, then going to teach (which a lot of people do). As a result, we have brilliant minds with great communication skills taking industry jobs because they pay better. Thus, \"good\" teachers are relatively rare to find, and even rarer in poorer neighborhoods. Many teachers do it because they can't do anything else. They hate their job and hate students. It really takes away from truly great teachers and it drags reputations of teachers down the gutter. And thus, the American government sees no need in increasing the pay for teachers (because so many are inept) and the vicious cycle continues. ", "you can't live off that salary in California these days and raise a family.....at least south of Marin County. ", "We should treat teachers like they are responsible for our most important resource, our children.  Given that we only pay these same professionals, with graduate degrees, only slightly more than the median wage, apparently we don't think our teachers are much more important than unionized garbage men.\n\nIn other countries, e.g Korea, and the northern european countries, they do pay teachers accordingly for their important contribution, and the higher education necessary to perform their job.  \n\nIn the US, we have idiot governors shouting them down in town hall meetings as entitled civil servants, and busting unions like they're teamsters with ties.  It's fucking embarrassing that we [the US] don't pay teachers in a way that incentivizes our best and brightest to join the profession.\n\nPeople who criticize teachers, are, from what I've seen largely those that have never taught, and think it's glorified babysitting.   Teaching basic knowledge, and instilling/nurturing the critical thinking tools, while helping our young people understand how society works is actually an important part of the foundation to modern society.  \n\nYes, some are bad, others are terrible, but by and large, they try hard, are competent, earn every cent, and when redidtors are working for 1 - 2 hours a day, commenting on cats and dash cams for 6hrs, teachers are helping to ensure we have a civil, productive, and awesome society.   what's next, hating on nurse's pay? WTF?\n\nedit: commas, and the like", "Late: because of the service they provide. They educate the next generation. What could be more important than that?", "Something like 75% of the teachers in colleges and universities are adjuncts. No benefits there, so no health insurance, vacation time, pension, etc. No job security either. You may or may not get an assignment next semester. You may get only one class which may pay you around $1500 for the duration of the semester. Do some reading about adjuncts in The USA today. It'll open your eyes. ", "My mother is a teacher and all I hear is complaint after complaint from her and her friends. Its a firestorm bitch fest every time they get together, as if they are the only ones that have problems in their work. I agree things have changed over the years, and maybe not for the best, but that's what happens, things change. But When I point out that she works from 8am until 2:30, has at least one break period (gym, computer, library, art) last 45 minutes, plus a 30 minute lunch break, plus a 15 minute recess, its not like she has a long of work. She does point out that she has to do lesson plans and correct papers, but that honestly takes her about 2 hours a day, if that. Her kids parents are given a list of items that need to be brought in, and another list of suggested donations, but she still talks about providing supplies like it runs her thousands a year. Honestly, she went to staples once to get a few items, well under $100. And lets face it, they have most holidays off, all weekends, and 2 months off in the summer. Not to mention a week break for thanksgiving, February and April vacations and so on. So forgive me if I am not overly sympathetic to teachers plights. I appreciate the service that they provide, but lets be honest, it is not as bad as they complain, I mean claim. \n", "So, I'm a teacher's kid. My mom held a masters in special education and worked in her field in an urban district for 32 years. The highest salary she ever received was ~45,000. \n\nMy best friend had a high school education and hired in as a janitor for a facility making ~30,000 a year. Then she got a job within the facility as a parts inspector and now makes ~65,000. She does now also have an associate's degree, but it had no effect on her pay rate. \n\nI'm not saying my friend doesn't work hard. She does. It's a mindless, thankless job, but it pays well, so she toughs it out. \n\nMy mother did her 40 hours a week, plus about 2-4 hours a night of IEP paperwork on her students, plus lesson plans, job placement work, and yes, as many people have added, she had to buy her own classroom supplies. (No child left behind eliminated a lot of positions, meaning she often had to do the work of 2 or 3 people and funding is a joke in the public school system.)\n\nGiven the choice between the two, especially knowing the benefits at the higher-paying job were far better (way better insurance, paid overtime, etc) who would pick teaching? \n\nI'll never understand why we don't treat them as some of our most valuable citizens and let their pay reflect it. ", "California\n\nAverage salary is $75,000 for 10 out of 12 months.\n\nStarting $45,000\n\nAfter 20 years $90k\n\nPlus $1300/month in benefits for health, dental.\n\nPlus pension that pays 80% of average last 3 year salary.\n\nPlus they don't have to pay into social security.\n\nI'd say they get paid pretty well. (My wife is a teacher.)\n\n", "My mother has taught middle and high school for 17 years. You obviously have no idea the shit a good teacher goes through to educate their children.\n\n50k per year is nothing for the work our public educators do every year.", "I can guaran-damn-tee you the number of HOURS a teacher works per year is same or more than someone who chills at 40 hours a week through the year.\n\nSource: teacher, working 150% of full time hours for 75% of year ", "Look, the reality is that there are more people who want to be teachers than there are teaching positions. What does that mean? It means if you don't like how much you're being paid, they'll can easily find someone else to do your job at a lower wage.", "Because they don't consider supply and demand. \n\n(This applies to the 85% of teachers I've had in my life, or have seen that really don't give much of a shit. To the 15% that do bust their ass and actually care about the kids, you deserve a higher pay because you actually do the job you should be)\n\nTeaching isn't a terribly difficult degree to achieve, it's not necessarily a high pressure job, and unless you're totally stupid, minor mistakes aren't going to be costing anyone thousands or millions of dollars. This, combined with the idea of long vacations (even if you have workshops, lesson plans, etc... You're still not 8-5 m-f), decent job security (we'll always need teachers) and enough pay to live on, leads to lots of people choosing this degree. Especially those who were never very math or science inclined, didn't like business, and wanted to avoid a liberal arts degree. \n\nWith so many teachers, you don't have to pay very much because you know what? If the candidate doesn't accept shit pay, there's 10 other college grads who'd jump someone to get into a decent district with that nice pension, strong union, and solid insurance if they toe the line and follow the red tape for 20 years. ", "My husband is a high school teacher. He makes about 30k a year. He typically works about nine hours a day, and plans on the weekends. He spends about half of his summer vacations attending workshops. We don't have dental insurance, and our health insurance is very expensive. He loves his job, and coaches quiz bowl in his spare time. In my opinion he is underpaid.", "Where I'm from in Australia teachers get paid lots more than any of what has been mentioned here...\n\nFirst year teachers earn between $46,524 USD and $51,478 USD on top of this they have the break/meal law, they aren't allowed to get extra classes assigned to them and they get a mentor (longer serving staff member) to train them and check up with them periodically. They certainly do show up well before the students arrive and leave long after they are gone. They also often work during holidays and on weekends.\n\nTeachers that are not in their first year then they can earn anywhere between $53,955 USD and $69,642 USD. They also get the break/meal thing and they tend to work the extended hours as well. \n\nThese are the conditions before they take on any kind of leadership position. (subject coordinator or a year group coordinator) If they take on one of these rolls then they earn around $80,375 USD.\n\nIf they take on a higher roll like Curriculum Coordinator or Pastoral Coordinator or Vice Principle then they can earn anywhere between $93,585 USD and $123,416.\n\nObviously as you move up you have many more tasks and responsibilities however from what I have read on here there are many teachers in the states who aren't earning what AUS first-year teachers earn.\n\nI worked in a school (not as a teacher, IT guy so I was there from JAN4 to DEC23 every year) and I have seen some teachers who were very well organised and in my colleagues shared opinion a very very good teacher, they almost never worked overtime. They just had their stuff sorted.\nI have seen others that were good teachers too, however they were in every holidays and often stayed back. \nThen there are the poor teachers who have both of these lifestyles as well. \n\nSource: worked in a school, and [link](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: Also, I have never heard of any professional development courses having to be paid out of the teachers pocket. In fact its the opposite - meals accommodation and transport all paid by the school. AND the classroom supplies - If a teacher actually did pay for this they would be reimbursed by the school, if the school didn't pay for them first. ", "I feel like you are an American (No offense, I think the American populace has been propagated by their own government to believe that payment for work is lower than it is).  56k is *not* a good living salary.  It's actually a considerably LOW **starting** salary for anyone with an education.  These people have our children's future's in their hands, something that I think we should consider important.", "I'm starting my first teaching job this year and will be making tens of thousands less than $56,000.\n\nAlso, keep in mind:\n\n- out of pocket classroom materials expenses\n- paying for continuing education, licensing fees, etc.\n- pretty much mandatory overtime\n- dealing with all the work of 200+ kids across five classrooms with only 2 official hours of prep (hence the basically mandatory overtime)\n- (Edit) Oh yeah, how can I forget paying back $20,000+ in student loans and interest?\n\nThe first day of the first class I took for my education degree, the professor told us we were all embarking on a wonderful journey like wandering monks, complete with vows of poverty.", "Many school districts in the United States are funded by property taxes. This means the higher the property value and tax rate the better the school. Many rural and inner city schools get shafted with low property values and high tax rates that lead to less funding for schools. ", "$56k just out of school, sure. $56k average? That is far too low.", "the only explanation ive seen in this thread is that teaching is hard, but honestly workers in most industries will think that their job is hard and that they are being unpaid. its kind of a blow to the face when youre basically told how much youre worth. but the problem with teaching is that its value isnt as quantifiable as other jobs. in other industries you can probably see how much a worker is worth based on the money the worker and the company are generating. with teaching, not so much. their value to society is entirely raising the next generation. how do you value that? you cant. thats why its so hard to make any concrete argument FOR AND AGAINST higher wages and why we never hear the end of it.\n\nfor me, i do think teachers (not the terrible ones) are being underpaid, but at the same time, if teachers got paid as much as lawyers and doctors, imagine the level of competition and educational requirements there would be in the future (just look at the school districts that have high pay). a lot of the teachers now would be out of a job. not to mention the funding that would be needed. why increase teaching salaries when theres already more than enough people filling the positions? as seen in this thread, theres a bunch of people with masters degrees willing to take the position anyways.\n\nif anything blame the teachers unions for the dumb pay structure.\n\nEdit: went to a public high school which pays its teachers $80k, had to call a few teachers Dr. because they had PhDs", "The best way I can answer this is based on what made me decide to jump ship from teaching--which is still a huge passion of mine--about a year before I'd have had my bachelor's (yes, I'd have had to continue on to my master's most likely, but that's beside the point).\n\nAt my high school, there were a number of teachers who were actually paid pretty handsomely.  At least 7 or 8 teachers I knew who got paid over $100k/year.  Hell, our wrestling coach/one of the gym teachers is currently making $130k/year (it's all listed online:  _URL_0_)\n\nIf you look all the way down to the bottom of that list, you'll see that a lot of the newer teachers are right around $35-38k.\n\nBut I went to high school in Carol Stream, IL.  We're not Beverly Hills, but it's a relatively affluent area with an extremely highly rated school system.  One of my favorite teachers, Robert Gunther, who is on that list, explained to me that he makes good money because:\n\n1.) He has been there for decades\n2.) He teaches 6 classes, and runs or is involved in 4+ extra curricular programs.  \n\nMany of the other teachers on that list are paid well because they take a very heavy class load and work with a lot of extracurricular programs.  As it was explained to me by Gunther, pay, at least in this district, is attributed based on your classload and other things you're involved with.\n\nOn that list, there's about 120 active teachers, and our school hovered around the 4,000 student mark.\n\nNow, I'm getting a little sidetracked, but...\n\nOur first classes started at 7:25, our last classes ended at 2:45.  There were morning extra-curriculars starting as early as 5:45, and going as late as 8PM.\n\nLet's take a teacher like Mr. Gunther with a 6 class load, who also had an AM extra curricular at 6:25 3 days a week, and three others, keeping him until 4:30 or so all 5 days, along with whatever else he actually had to do in the school that day.  Now, if you had an extra curricular, you were expected to be there at least 20 minutes early for any students who may be arriving early.  One of his extra curriculars also took up 3 hours on Saturdays for 4 months out of the year.\n\nSo let's examine that hour load 6:05a-4:30p, at the very least, is about 10.5 hours, 3 days a week.  \n\nNormal days, he's required to be in by 6:30 for his 7:25 class.  He's still there till 4:30, though.  So that gives him 10 hours the other two days of the week.  Not that big of a deal, 52 hours for the week of tangible time with students.  \n\nObviously, there's department meetings (he was the head of the psych department, and taught the AP classes, of which there were 4 that year), so whatever other work was needed for that, I can't speak to the hours.  But i can say that during those 4 months he was coaching softball, you had to add at least another 3 hours a week on for saturdays, so up to 55 hours.  \n\nNow, Gunther was a FANTASTIC teacher, but he did rely heavily on scantron exams, so figure we'll add just another 1 hour per week for grading those.  Entering them in to his grading software?  We'll give that another 2 hours per week (and that might be a bit low), but the rest--not everything was scantron.  We wrote a two page paper every week about a topic we were given in the AP class--4 classes, 28 people per class, 112 papers, at least 224 pages to read.  I read at about 30-50 pages an hour, so let's call it 40, and say that's an additional 5 hours reading, analyzing, and meaningfully grading these assignments.\n\nSo, when all of that comes to a head, we're up to 63 hours worked.  This is before any test or lesson plan preparation has begun.  Assuming he spent about an hour and a half per day planning tests, assignments, and lesson plans, that puts us up to 70.5 hours per week.\n\nI'm not going to begin to speculate what happens with meetings or anything else.  \n\nSo there we have a man making $130k/year over 70.5 hours per week.  That puts him at $35/hour.  That's a pretty nice salary.  He's also been doing it for over 30 years.\n\nAnd that's the other part---the last two years, I've been working two jobs, ranging from a total of 55-65 hours per week between the two.  I go through stretches where I'm lucky to have ONE day month where I don't do something work related, and I'm damn near burning out.\n\nThis man has beat me by 28+ years, AND his job involves dealing with shitty fucking teenagers, and their even shittier fucking parents.\n\nSo is Mr Gunther underpaid?  No.\n\nBut now, what about the woman on the list who has the same workload and is making $36/yr?  If she's putting in those same hours?  She's making $9.80/hr\n\nPretty fucking underpaid, if you ask me.", "Also, I don't think that anyone has mentioned this, but a \"median\" salary of $56 356 could be pretty misleading. \"Median\" just means \"the middle number,\" so if out of 100 teachers, you had 25 making $25000, 25 making $30000, 20 making $35000, 10 making $56000, 10 making $60000, 5 making $70000 and 5 making $80000, the median salary would be $56000, but 70% of them would be making $35000 or less.", "Not sure why the OP's question was removed. Here it is from my rss reader:\n\n > I'm sorry if this comes off malicious but I don't mean to. Just an honest question because my entire life i have heard that teachers were underpaid and assumed they were making 30,000 or so. If teachers only have to work 9/12ths of the year and make 56,356 with a bachelors degree, wouldn't that be considered fairly accurate compensation (If not slightly more than I would expect).", "People who pat themselves on the back the hardest:  \nTeachers  \nNurses  \nFirefighters  \nParamedics  \nAll absolutely required in modern society, and very important to the health of a country, but man, do they like to talk about how great they are.  \nYou rarely hear about the plumber who comes out to a house at 2am to clear a backed up sewage pipe.  Or the guys working 24/7 at the wastewater plant to keep your drinking water safe.  Or the researchers working on cancer battling drugs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nea.org/home/2012-2013-average-starting-teacher-salary.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.calendar-12.com/working_days/2015"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.education.vic.gov.au/hrweb/Documents/Salary-Teacher.pdf"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.familytaxpayers.org/ftf/ftf_district.php?did=14696&amp;year=2012"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.det.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/307613/120504_PAYRATES.pdf"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://illinois-teachers.findthedata.com/d/b/Glenbard-North-High-School"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5sqm5j", "title": "why can't we just breed more bees until there are enough to sustain the population?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sqm5j/eli5_why_cant_we_just_breed_more_bees_until_there/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddh4c0w", "ddh7058", "ddh70m9", "ddhiuk0"], "score": [29, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Bees don't reproduce very quickly. You can't just \"breed more\" because it would take a while. It would also not solve the underlying problems, so you would have a lot of bees and then you would go to having very few bees very quickly.", "According to my beekeeping friend: Domesticated bees have a huge list of genetic health problems as well as a high susceptibility to disease and are sensitive to the environment.  They die easily.  Breeding them takes a while too.  ", "Bee populations are recovering from colony collapse disorder. There were multiple factors (mostly pollution and pesticides) that caused it. ", "So with the rise of colony collapse disorder, beekeepers have compensated for the loss of hives by doing something called hive splitting which is essentially almost like cloning the colony. Its done, more or less, by taking away a representative portion of a colony and, giving it a new queen and then poof, new hive. In reality its a lot more difficult than that and it sometimes doesn't work very well but depending on your breed of bees and their hardiness, beekeepers can split tons of new hives. The upper limits is of course how fast the hives can build up for another splitting which can take time (remember the queen is only laying one eggs at a time). There are obvious downsides to this mitigating strategy, a big one being a lack of genetic diversity.\n\nColony collapse disorder is on the mend right now and populations are recovering. That is due in part to new understanding about some pesticides such as neonicotinoids which are suspects of playing a part in the colony collapse disorder phenomenon.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "37a8or", "title": "why is google fibre taking so long to roll out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37a8or/eli5_why_is_google_fibre_taking_so_long_to_roll/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crkyyph", "crkzcxh", "crkzpne", "crl0n7a", "crl3fkq", "crl8oid"], "score": [11, 13, 45, 16, 5, 3], "text": ["Putting stuff in the ground takes time.\n\nOn top of that there's a lot of paperwork, city regulations and so on. That's part of the reason why Google Fibre isn't going to be everywhere, Google are only picking cities which are \"easy\" for it to roll out in.", "One of two possibilities, firstly Google doesn't really want to be an ISP but wants to coax other ISP's into rolling out substantial faster internet services.  \n\nSecondly Google can't roll out fiber everywhere it wants by throwing money at it. Who gets Google fiber and when might not be in Googles control.", "One does not simply lay down a large fiber network. First, you have to have the money. That's not really an issue for Google. Then, you have to convince municipal governments to let you build a network, and you have to get past the incumbent ISP, who wants to keep their monopoly intact. You have to find enough subscribers, you have to find people to build the network, you have to do customer service and installation, and you have to not be hated by the public. Throwing money at those problems is ineffective.", "I'm in Georgia so hopefully I'll see fiber within my lifetime.  \n\nConsidering that we've paid for fiber to the home twice over.  Please see the $300 billion broadband scandal.  \n\nThe fiber is actually the cheap part.. the labor is probably the most expensive part to it. \n\nThe slowest part is all the paper work and fighting the counties and att and the cable providers.  I was alSo told that getting across a railroad takes 5 months of paperwork and $40k\n\nBasically because the local monopolies have so much money,  they pay people on the board to vote against public interest.   \n\nSo they tie Google up in legal paperwork and local monopolies get it blocked.  \n\nI really wish Google would've hired me for the Atlanta fiber team.  I would've been keeping everyone updated to what's taking so long.   \n\nI'm pretty sure I  could beast through all this political garbage. \n\nThe fastest way through red tape is to steamroll through it. :) ", "Bureaucracy, Politics, and money are the reason. Google has the money, but most local governments have some sort of contracts with 1 or more ISPs that essentially grant them a monopoly(or a near monopoly) over certain areas.\n\nThis is the reason why a lot of ISPs have failed and companies like Comcast refuse to increase bandwidth because they know they have a monopoly and they have enough money to get the local city officials on their side and shut down competitors.", "There are a few factors:\n\n * Installing the fibre is expensive, so google will only roll it out where there is enough market to support it (or where there will be enough market during the lifetime).  Add to this that as soon as Google moves to put in fibre, the existing providers all drop their prices and try to lock in customers contractually to prevent google from succeeding.\n\n * Planning can be hard to get.  Some local governments already granted monopolies to other providers, others don't want the hassle, still others are getting kickbacks from existing suppliers to \"stand on the hose\".\n\n * The idea for google is not to actually roll out it's fibre nationwide.  That's not the business they want to be in.  The idea is to force existing providers to up their game and do their actual jobs nationwide.  It's sort of like how google are not in the bus business and don't want to be.  But they run their own buses because otherwise there is no way for the workers to get to work on time.  Google does not want to be your ISP or an infrastructure company.  But since your ISP and Infra companies are so bad, it's having to do their job for them just to get their product to you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6doq51", "title": "why does afghanistan seem to be a hotbed for islamic extremism while neighboring countries like turkmenistan, uzbekistan and tajikistan have remained relatively unaffected by similar unrest?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6doq51/eli5_why_does_afghanistan_seem_to_be_a_hotbed_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di47n8g", "di4c81d", "di4d2oa", "di4dfc3", "di4dzm1", "di4fk3i", "di4gdxw", "di4gisp", "di4gpa5", "di4gr0i", "di4gzvt", "di4hui8", "di4i6bi", "di4iuul", "di4j0vn", "di4jv9g", "di4k5x8", "di4k60g", "di4ki2j", "di4ljra", "di4lyde", "di4m192", "di4m3co", "di4mbe7", "di4noio", "di4nx3z", "di4o2il", "di4ocv4", "di4oyfp", "di4p324", "di4pewh", "di4pffq", "di4plod", "di4qj6l", "di4r4fz", "di4ralf", "di4rnyx", "di4se41", "di4t97a", "di4tdux", "di4thpw", "di4ux4p", "di4w232", "di4y0rt", "di4y549", "di4ydhh", "di50dk3", "di50tfo", "di50vc2", "di519vb", "di51bfk", "di51y4d", "di521kj", "di52tep", "di543t7", "di54gmn", "di56xqg", "di57r4g", "di58ua5"], "score": [9809, 208, 28, 106, 19, 8, 68, 2, 6, 19, 16, 2, 5296, 3, 4, 8, 29, 8, 11, 6, 6, 176, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 5, 2, 2, 10, 75, 29, 10, 7, 5, 2, 2, 9, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Afghanistan was one of the stages the cold war was fought on. The US and the soviet union both toppled their government like 4 times in the last hundred years. Largely by alternating funding rebel groups. \n\nHaving no stable government and a long history of well funded terrorism ended up not vanishing when the cold war ended (and we once again toppled and replaced their government which I bet in 5 years will end up getting toppled again by russia backed syrians or something just to keep up the tradition) ", "those countries have had their problems with extremism, but they are led by authoritarian leaders who crack down on any and all dissent.  Afghanistan is a considered a hotbed because the Taliban won the Afghan civil war and allowed Osama Bin Laden to set up camps there.  Ever since the US invasion there has not been a strong central government that can control the rural areas where the Taliban have strong support due to ethnic ties, and support from elements in Pakistan.  ", "Because those are former Soviet republics. The USSR was officially an atheist state, and cracked down on any form of religion. After the union dissolved, the strongmen remained/came to power, and continued this policy to a degree, as they didn't want Islamists to emerge and rouse the people with their ideology or challenge the government. IIRC, most of those leaders push for nationalism instead, there were civil wars fought over this in the 90s, but they were for the most part of secular nature. ", "Afghanistan has had many wars and no time for stability. The Soviets invaded, civil war and then the American invasions. Also there's geopolitics involved like Pakistan using the Taliban as a proxy and aiding them. So think about being a kid in the 1970s and being in constant war. You will grow up with basically no education other than knowing how to fight wars. Then there's also a booming drug trade, where there's money involved with drugs. Also cultural stuff. So don't assume that because Afhghans are Muslim the violence is because of Islamic extremism and not Pashtun values. The majority of Taliban are Pashtuns. They practice badal which is basically a hardcore version for an eye for an eye. ", "Probably doesn't help that they produce almost all of the world's heroin. Having a significant portion of your entire economy based on supplying the entire world with illegal drugs tends to attract unsavory people.", "A less extreme example is how the US seems like a hotbed of gun violence when compared to Canada. We're neighbors and in a lot of ways the same yet we differ a lot on this issue. \n\nWhen a cop shoots a suspect in Canada it's all over the news and people wonder how such a thing can happen here. I think that's something that's not newsworthy in the US. ", "Those countries all had time to develop their authoritarian regimes such that extremism could be suppressed. Same reason Syria remained stable for so long -- the gov't would jail anyone and everyone they deemed even slightly a threat. That is, until they couldn't handle it anymore, which is why we have war. Afghanistan's regimes have been toppled by Soviets and Americans alike so many times that no entity could consolidate power. So you have a bunch of different groups and a joke of a gov't fighting for power.\n\nedit: i should also mention that, even though authoritarian regimes suck, they can provide more than illegitimate govts like in Afghanistan. less public grievance = less extremism, but idk if this could be considered a major factor cuz foreign powers are definitely to blame in the case of Afghanistan", "Well, the central asian states are more or less all run as total autocracies (Kyrgyzstan is slightly more democratic than the others, but not by a whole lot). Essentially, the leaders assumed total power and killed off any Islamist opposition (Islam Karimov, who just died, comes to mind). ", "If you look at pictures of Afghanistan pre-Soviet invasion, it definitely had set a pace to be similar in makeup to those countries. However, as stated, Cold War feuding led to Afghanistan becoming a recipient of collateral damage which has only intensified, instead of receded, like in Vietnam due to various elements including the re-emergence of Islamic radicalism", "Historical factors - it's a somewhat isolated area, but has been a heated battleground in recent history, particularly during he 1980s when the USSR invaded and drove many in the Mujahideen movement to radicalism. Osama bin Laden was an American informant/ally during the war before he formed al-Qaeda.\n\nCultural factors - Afghanistan has never had a democratic government before US involvement, nor did they really want it. They would prefer one strong leader over a republic-style government system. The proxy Afghan government set up by the US was a failure - partially due to Hamid Karzai, but mainly because it never would've worked in the first place. Most Afghan people still see their own government as being controlled by Washington - fueling distrust, disloyalty, and anti-western sentiment among the people, making them easier to recruit than in most other Islamic countries.\n\nGeographical factors - it's a densely wooded and mountainous country, makes it ideal for insurgent/terrorism groups. It's landlocked, which is a major disadvantage to the United States and most other world powers, who tend to rely heavily on naval power to fuel wars and conflicts.\n\nEconomic factors - heroin. The poppy fields of Afghanistan supply a massive quantity of heroin in the world. When the United States invaded, a number of commanders wanted to rip up the fields and plant cotton instead, which is about the only other thing that would grow in abundance there. The FDA, however, would never allow government funding to be put towards a project that would lead to competition with the American cotton industry, so the US left the fields alone. Stupid, I know. Anyways, the irony is that since America left the poppy fields, the heroin market has remained one of al-Qaeda's main sources of income, in addition to the Taliban and other radical groups. So instead of allowing a very small amount of competition in the cotton industry, the US would rather leave the primary source of funding for a global terror network intact.", "Not sure about Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but Tajikistan is currently wrestling with it. They've got a rise in support for fundamentalist Islam that they're trying to keep in control and at the moment it looks like a fight they're slowly losing. ", "Why do they target civilians on either side though? In fact why are civilians ever targeted? It's not like civilians have much say in any of these countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. They're always blowing themselves up in market places or schools. I don't understand. They're not even strategic or tactical targets. What message are they trying to say and what outcome are they trying to obtain by killing civs?", "There really are a lot of factors, some of them mentioned already, I'll try to explain a few more.\n\nCulturally, there is something in Afghanistan called 'pastunwali' which is a set of rules that are followed by nearly all Afghans. It has many facets, one of them is to welcome and protect visitors. This will come into play later. To really understand the issue in Afghanistan, you have to know the historical connotations to what went on.\n\nSo, in the mid 80's, the Russian's were pushed out of Afghanistan. Like many other countries (Britian, and eventually the US) they found that it would just cost too much money to stay. For around 8 years or so, there was somewhat of an ad hoc communist government, although it was limited to really the main cities (Kabul, Jalalbad, Herat, Konduz, Kandahar). The rest of Afghanistan (80-90%) was  run by warlords. To make a long story short, there ended up being two factions. The pro government forces, and the Taliban, which emerged from one of the warlords (Mullah Mohammad Omar). To fight the government, the Taliban needed money and training, and it called upon al Qaeda to do so. \n\nAlthough they supplied funding and training, Afghanistan became the 'place to jihad', only because at the time, there other place was Chechnya fighting the Russians, and the Russians were using 'scorch earth' policies...which consisted of of carpet bombing whole villages and areas that were deemed enemy terrority. \n\nSo, while there was money and training involved, these members of al Qaeda were coming in droves to Afghanistan, but really didn't care about the fight going on. Eventually, the fight became a stalemate, and areas were set up for both sides.... and al Qaeda never left, but after 9/11, there was the cultural practice to protect their 'visitors', which did happen. \n\nPakistan\n\nWhile the Afghans do protect their visitors, they are very 'eye for an eye', so after about a month of refusing to turn over Bin Laden, the US just started a bombing campaign, and most Afghans were really ok with it. The majority of al Qaeda was holed up in the Tora Bora mountains, which is in eastern Afghanistan near Jalalabad. (If you're going to be a terrorist, that's a really beautiful place, as well as Nuristan where the rest remain today). The idea was to start bombing, push the al Qaeda forces east to the awaiting Pakistan border, where their army would either capture or kill the renaming forces. Essentially, the Pakistan army opened up, and allowed them safe haven in Pakistan, and the US was kinda stuck. \n\nThere are a myriad of terrorist organizations that are allowed safe haven in Pakistan. The Haqqani (which sees its self as the Taliban, although the DIA has been trying to make them their own organization for years) is stationed in Miram Shah Pakistan. This was the organization that had Bergdahl. \n\nThe Lashkar-e-Tabia is based in Pakistan, and they are fighting the dispute between Pakistan and India over the Kashmir Area. \n\nThere's a whole bunch, and I'm on mobile, but many believe these various forces are the military action army of the Pakistan intelligence service (ISI). \n\nUzbekistan\n\nUzbekistan kinda of took a hard stance against Islam. Captured everyone that was coming and going to a mosque, put them in swimming pools and shot them all. This in turn formed the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) which operated out of Northern Afghanistan. \n\nIn there end, there are a ton of factions that can operate freely in Afghanistan, and do so, as well as Pakistan. And although some has changed, the Afghan people still operate under Pashtunwali, and both host and protect these various organizations. \n\nTo note, many of the other responses are also true, its really a hodgepodge of reasons for their situation. \n\n\n\n ", "Watch or read Charlies War.\n\nIn a nutshell.\n\nRussia invades. US supplys arms through a convoluted method because it's not really legal. Afghans win. US politicians that made money off arms sales refuse to fund rebuilding infrastructure.\n\n < End of Charlie's story >  In the aftermath Afghan farmers have limited options so turn to poppy farming for opium trade. Becomes the country's biggest crop. Hard core Muslim community doesn't like how this signals a lack of community morals and take over declaring sharia law. Becomes magnet to disaffected Muslims that want to change the world order.", "Cause Pakistan one of its neighbors, recognizes the Taliban. They support and fund extremists elements to wage war against Afghani national army, the NATO forces and us forces. The Taliban find safe Haven inside Pakistan after it bombs places inside Afghanistan.", "Because all the three former republics of the Soviet Union were much better off infrastructure-wise (thanks to the Soviet colonization) and had governments based on sovietized, centralised, \"enlightened\" islam since forever (1920ies), the promotion of which was the Soviet Union's way to quash various nationalisms worldwide, instead helping install internationalist socially liberal, economically authoritarian soviets or councils of the people, and especially destroy the Panturkism which was a long-hated enemy of the Russian empire and later its inheritor - the Soviet Union.\n\nThat's one half of the modern problem with Islam, the other half is the Western powers funding Muslim religious fundamentalists who wanted to return to the pure Islam of raping stoning and cutting off parts of bodies, but also of the universal care for every Muslim (which is why it was so easy for all the disempowered to become communist and then Muslim, and for all those second-generation Middle Eastern immigrants disenchanted in the Western crony capitalist system to fall back in the familiar and quite attractive message of \"freedom and equality for all, under Allah\") , so between two internationalist or globalist Islams, if you will, there's no other choice for the poor guys from the Middle East to develop themselves in an organic, independent, profitable way.", "I don't see this in any of the top comments and it may be a misconception, but from my understanding Afghanistan is very very unincorporated. The repeated thing I've read is when the government or U.S. troops show up to bring order and the people in the outlying territories are like \"what the heck is Afghanistan?\". Its pretty big on the map but a lot of its is ungoverned and not incorporated or linked to the rest of the country(the Taliban being the first/biggest governing body for a lot of territorial people). Definitely not the biggest factor if my knowledge is true, but definitely a factor. ", "Key word \"seem\". Afghanistan has problem with domestic islamic extremism, yes. However, the country can't compete with the great exporters of terrorism; Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria. \nWhen was any major act of terror against the western world done by an afghan? Never? \nBin Laden and his bunch of washed up Mujaheedin friends were Saudis mainly, armed with training from USA and experience from fighting Soviet. ", "Rule of law. It is the defining characteristic of a successful society. That doesn't necessarily mean the government is cruel, but that justice is meted out appropriately. That is why western civilization has been so successful for so long. It isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good. ", "Afghanistan as a country really shouldn't exist, Afghans as a people is a kind of controversial idea. It's too diverse for an Islamic country, theologically, linguistically and ethnically. There is no loyalty to one another as they're the Tajiks and this other guy is the Pashtun or this or that, and the focus becomes instead on Tribal lines.  Where as all those Stan countries are proper nation states for their respective peoples. \n\nThe USA's most dependable allies have been Tajiks and Hazaras (Afghan Iranians), and a a lot of the Islamic terrorists have been Pashtuns, the main ethnic group of the Taliban and other radical Sunni Insurgent groups, and one of the main ethnic groups of Pakistan. \n\nIt's a country where a lot of the problems can lie on the failures of multiculturalism. ", "Afghanistan and Pakistan have a really bad inbreeding problem. In these areas cousin marriages have been going on for generations.\n\nOne of the symptoms of inbreeding is a predisposition towards violence.", "Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were constituent republics of the Soviet Union for some 70 years and, thus, heavily controlled. The Soviets had no patience for religious freedom and stamped it out whenever and wherever they felt it threatening to the absolute authority of the state.\n\nWhen the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991-92, those republics became independent and have largely remained controlled by dictatorial strongmen who feel about as kindly towards Islamist extremism as the Soviets did.\n\nAfghanistan, by contrast, has been a factional, semi-lawless psuedo-state off and on for many decades with well-funded** and organized Islamist militants vying for control against the various Afghan nationalist clans and, for a while, the Soviets. So for a long time it's been highly fertile ground for that hotbed of religious extremism to develop.\n\n** By the U.S., mainly, until the Islamists started to bite the hand that was feeding them.", "The latter countries are also dealing with extremists. Afghanistan's issues are much different than the other three, as has been pointed out repeatedly. [This link is good for Uzbekistan,](_URL_2_) [this for Tajikistan,](_URL_1_) [and Central Asia at large.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe core issue, like a lot of Middle Eastern countries, isn't a power vacuum, but political expression. ", "The others are under varying degrees (to the degree necessary) of Moscow's whip.  Any that feel seduced by the enticements, inducements and temptations offered by a certain former British colony only have to look at Afghanistan to see how that works out.", "Afghanistan was a strategic fighting ground between Russia and the USA. It was destabilized by CIA due to fostered radical Islamism. In this regard, it is similar to Chechnya. Although Ladin was Saudi, he fought in Afghanistan thanks to CIA. The swamp drew all kinds of mujahideen from all around the world. Just like Syria now. Afghanistan has border to Pakistan which was founded because of religious differences with India. They shared various aspects that fostered religious extremism.\n\nTurkmenistan, Uzbekistan and ~~Tajikistan~~ Kyrgyzstan have different social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. They are considered relatively Turkish, although after centuries of Russian influence they are more Russian than Turkish. Being satellite states of the Soviets, they were deliberately hold back and closely monitored. There was no religious extremism to begin with and was not imported by foreign powers. China and Russia played vital roles for keeping Islam in check albeit for not good intentions.\n\nDuring Bosnian war, some Muslims tried to get there and fight Serbians. Yet there was no political backup for such thing. They didn't get a hold there. Or today, Myanmar is a place of religious feud and killings are significant but there is no active armed fundamentalism as far as I know. But when it comes to countries such as Libya, armed rebels emerge suddenly and doesn't go away easily. You see the pattern?", "I'd like to point to Chechnya and their recent entry into the news via concentration camps for gays. Lots of people assume it's Putin being a homophobe but quite frankly Russians and Chechnyans hate one another and Chechnya is most certainly Islamic.", "Afghanistan has basically been a battleground since the Cold War. The Soviet Union took it over and we fought. They have been very unstable since ", "I've been to Turkmenistan. The reason why there is no unrest, is because the government is a brutal and callous dictatorship. Step out of line and you could get killed. Very North Korea-esque. The only major difference is they are oil rich.\n\nHaving said that. The people were lovely. Imagine the Iranians, only even more attractive.", "Afghanistan has always been a hole.  The British Empire had tons of trouble there.  Alexander the Great had trouble there.  \n\nI somehow knew when the Taliban destroyed the historic Buddhas there that shit would hit the fan eventually.  This was before 9/11.", "Post soviet states tended to have better infrastructure and more organized power structure. Also specifically with Afghanistan is that the soviets invaded and toppled the government giving rise to the mujahideen. Who banned the growing of poppies and enacted some other conservative social policies. Which allowed for the rise of the taliban who where very conservative but at the same time wanted to make the growing of poppies mandatory as a way to raise large amounts of capital. This resulted in a civil war in which the taliban essentially destroyed almost all of Afghanistan's recorded cultural history.\n\nBasically the nation was destabilized in the 80s creating a vacuum which wrecked their cultural history.  ", "Also, Afghanistan has many different ethnic groups (Pashto, Turkmen, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara to name a few). It's not always just religion fuelling extremism in Afghanistan but also fighting between ethnic groups. The other countries you mentioned probably have a more homogenous ethnic make up.", "Those 3 peaceful are under great influence of Russia, and Afghanistan is under influence of USA. Afghan government called Soviets to help them fight jihadists in the early 80s (west calls it invasion, but it was not), and USA financed jihadists to fight Soviets. Soviets went out, and we see what happened to Afghanistan afterwards... Secular government was replaced with extremists. The same thing is happening in Syria right now.", "Simple answer: proximity of Pakistan. An even larger toilet than Afghanistan and the real home of the Taliban and a great number of insurgent \"training\" camps. Conveniently, many of which are a short distance from the Afghan/Pakistan border....", "It is mainly a mix of three things. \n\n1: Epic amounts of inbreeding. (google it.)\n2: Virtually no education. (google it.)\n3: Extreme religious zealotry. (google it.)", "It's a bit like Poland - it's the part of the world you have to stomp through to get to where you actually want to conquer.\n\nCheck out for instance the history of the Khyber pass:\n\n >  Well known invasions of the area have been predominantly through the Khyber Pass, such as the invasions by Darius I, Genghis Khan and later Mongols such as Duwa, Qutlugh Khwaja and Kebek. Prior to the Kushan era, the Khyber Pass was not a widely used trade route.[1] Among the Muslim invasions of ancient India, the famous invaders coming through the Khyber Pass are Mahmud Ghaznavi, and the Afghan Muhammad Ghori and the Turkic-Mongols.\n\n(Ancient Canaan also served a similar function with the Egyptian Empire on one side and various Empires such as the Mittani, Hittites, Assyrians and Sumerians on the other side)\n\nMore recently the British Empire tried to go in and do their thing (which they were copying from the Romans) of \"let's you and him fight\" AKA divide and conquer - but the Afghans were already heavily divided along tribal lines to start with so that went nowhere.\n\nThen when the pesky Russians invaded in the 80s 'Murica was in its 'Communism must not win at all costs' phase, so they funnelled massive amounts of cash, guns and sent in CIA agents to train the locals up in how to be terrorists.  Yep, at one stage the Taliban and Al Quaeda were 'the good guys, fighting the good fight'.  Remember kiddies: it's not being a state sponsor of terror if it's us doing it.  *cough*\n\nEventually the Russians ran out of money and willpower to stick their willies into that meat grinder and withdrew.\n\nSo the region started to recover.  And by recover I mean they started growing a lot of poppies.  And by poppies I don't mean tulips.  Drugs.  Lots and lots of drugs (opium).\n\nSo then, having won the war on Communism, 'Murica decided that they would start a series of wars against other abstractions - hence the war on drugs.\n\n(NB: the following is sourced from an article in Time magazine from back when Senator Obama was teasing thinking about running for the big chair)\n\nSo 'Murica went to Afghanistan and said to the farmers 'drugs is bad, m'kay'.  And the farmers said 'okay, we see your point, but what's our alternative?'.  So then 'Murica promised them that if they stopped growing poppies 'Murica would give them heaps of aid to transition over to much less valuable crops (peas and corn and beans and shit).  And the Afghani farmers were like 'well, we'll make a lot less money but okay, we'll give it a go'.\n\nSo they didn't plant poppies, and then 'Murica, having got what it wanted from the relationship, reneged on the deal to help the Afghani farmers transition to food crops.  No food crops equals no food equals famine.\n\nSo as you can imagine the 'Muricans were somewhat unpopular.\n\n(end bit sourced from Time magazine)\n\nThen some of the CIA trained ~~terrorists~~ ~~freedom fighters~~ terrorists got together with the Saudis and decided that a bunch of Saudis should hijack some planes and blow up some buildings in New York.\n\nIn retaliation for the Saudis committing a terror attack on 'Murican soil the 'Muricans re-invaded Iraq, which had ostensibly been their ally in the region (but probably they weren't flavour of the month after Iraq asked permission to invade Kuwait and 'Murica said 'go ahead we DGAF' and then turned around and bombed Iraq back into the stone age) (NB see also Iran-Contra affair AKA 'selling guns to both sides' AKA 'lets you and him fight').  Then when everyone went 'Bwuh?' the 'Muricans said 'Oh yeah?  Well we're going to invade Afghanistan and get those Al Quaeda mofos'.\n\nAt which point everyone in Russia let out a hearty guffaw and said 'Yeah, good luck with that'.\n\nAnd the war in Iraq and Afghanistan sucked 2 Trillion dollars out of the 'Murican economy, which then went into a meltdown and there was a big housing crisis where the economy came up about 2 Trillion dollars short (funny that) and so the White House punished Wall Street by giving them a 30 billion dollar bailout ... and that year the Wall Street firms that had been bailed out paid out 30 billion dollars in bonuses to their top executives (funny that).\n\nTLDR: the short answer is famine, the long answer is that Afghanistan is a meat grinder, and every Empire on Earth has stepped up to jam their dick into it.", "There's a lot of comments talking about the invasions and toppling of governments by various world powers, but I think that's a symptom more than a root cause. IMHO, the root cause is more like that Afghanistan never really developed a firm, centralized power structure.\n\nI don't know as much about this as I'd like, and it doesn't seem to be super well documented, but the process of increasing amounts of power being held by central National governments at the expense of tribes, cities, and regions seems to have mostly happened in Europe through the course of the Renaissance times. It took a while, and had a lot of hiccups, conflicts, etc, but eventually, the National-level government got to the point of being able to reliably exercise authority over all of the more regional governments within its territory. This goes hand-in-hand with many facets of modernism, like unifying language and minimizing accents, establishing a national currency, standardizing on weights and measures, building roads and keeping them open, etc. This has happened at various levels over most of the planet, though at different times and in different ways in many places.\n\nFor some reason, this never seems to have happened in Afghanistan at all. There's a central government, but it basically only exists in the big cities, and not necessarily even all of those. The majority of the country is only dimly aware of the existence of the supposed national government, and it as essentially no meaning to their lives. This goes the same for all of the trappings of having a strong national government of any ideology or structure. All of the stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph, plus things like being aware of or participating in the global media cycle, being connected to the global economy, being exposed to the sort of cultural mish-mash that is the modern world.\n\nIt's kind of a natural fit for many sects of radical Islamic ideology. The ancient culture and lack of connection to the global economy kinda fits in with a lot of what many of these extremist ideologies seem to think. The National government is barely aware of the existence of most of these tribes and villages, and has no real power to do much of anything in them. The people who live there only really care about their tribe and maybe the next few over, and talk of things like the Nation of Afghanistan, America, New York, jetliners and skyscrapers, it might as well be on Mars. For that matter, most modern Westerners have probably thought a lot more about Mars than these villagers would think of any of these things. A great place to hide out of you are wanted basically in the entire civilized world - the idea of you being found, or of someone reporting you, would be basically crazy.\n\nSo all of this was already the case before any of the modern foreign invasions really got started. But they sure didn't help. It's hard enough to get villagers used to bowing to the power of a national government when it's a national government run by your people. It's a whole different matter when the national government is run by what to you seems like a dizzying array of alien cultures from the other side of the planet. Just when a few people start to think that maybe these foreigners have something going and participating in the global economy might not be so bad, they get tired of it and leave you right back where you were, validating the people who wanted to have nothing to do with them. It's easy to send a foreign army into one or a handful of villages, but controlling all of them all the time is impossible. So Afghanistan is basically ungovernable now, and there's not much incentive for that to change anytime in the near future. Meanwhile, most of the surrounding countries seem to have more or less successfully centralized power, so while they may have problems, they don't have the kind of problems that Afghanistan has. And the reason why that is, I don't know, and I'm not so sure anybody knows.", "The short of it, the US funded and armed a bunch of a'holes there to become makeshift rebels and help us out against the Russians back in the day. After the Cold War ended, we didn't bother cleaning that shit up so the same a'holes got bored and ... the devil will find work for idle hands. Also, being nomadic desert rats without access to education and information for the past several decades hasn't helped. It's not a \"Islamic\" (not a word) problem as much as it is a vacuum of authority in the region with perfect conditions problem. It's like if you left some deadly bacteria in a moist, warm, dark place for 30 years ... ", "Without going into more detail than I possess, I think a great deal of the answer to the second part of your question \"while neighboring...remained relatively unaffected by similar unrest.\" Can be attributed to greater cultural homogeneity in the countries you mentioned, which in turn makes it easier for strongmen to consolidate power within the (not really very arbitrary) borders of their countries.\n\nAfghanistan has really never been \"ruled\" by anyone, at least, not in the kind of top-down rule that we call \"ruling\" in the West. About the most any given ruler has been able to do is control some (varying number) of the major cities and important geographical regions, but within the fragmented regions being \"ruled\" under any given leader, tribal power has historically been the real governing power in Afghanistan.\n\nIt is attributed to Alexander the Great that \"Afghanistan is easy to march into, but hard to march out of.\"  You'd think Western governments from the British to the Russians to the USA would have paid attention to history, but, no, they largely have not.", "Because of America. My understanding is there were no extremists in Iraq either during Saddam regime, until the US invasion.", "Afghanistan is controlled  by the US, who likes to control terrorists and fund terrorist acts to gain support for things like the Patriot Act. Almost every terrorist act on American interests has either been caused by the American government, or caused massive group orgasms when it happened.", "In addition to other factors mentioned, the Soviet Union was actively cracking down religious influence in political and social life to replace it with its own ideology.\n\nIt was also the first country to institutionalise gender equality and women's rights (voting, running for office, divorce, custody, maternal leave, equal pay, inheritance etc) while the US was propping up the islamists to fight against the Soviets. These legacies carried on after the Cold War.", "Because it contains poppy, i.e. opium, which the CIA liies to sell to fund covert wars.  We care about Iraq and Syria because of oil, and the Arab Spring incident was about shutting down the gold dinar.", "Okay I don't agree with top response. I am from the region. I know a good amount especially about Pakistan. Many, many neighboring countries of Afghanistan were under Soviet domination. Soviets were against all religions especially Islam because Islam makes the most trouble for governments: demanding sharia, ummah concept, etc.\n\nThe Soviets deislamized the countries. Even today this influence is heavy. The sermons in mosques are tightly controlled, women don't hear hijabs, governments are secular, governments perceive Islamists as biggest threat, thus are brutal when dealing with them (Uzbeks boil terrorists according to USG secret cables -- wikileaks.)\n\nBecause of an extremely unfriendly influence to promote \"real\" Islam (which even Anjem Choudary enjoys in UK), these Islamists who are just terrorists not yet ready to fight for whatever excuse, make \"hijra\". Many of them now joined ISIS, before they were joining Taliban in big numbers.\n\nAfghanistan was too under Soviet influence. Due to distance it was more difficult to project and control Afghans. (You can see women \"free mixing\" -- with males -- not covering hair, going to universities in pictures prior to Taliban takeover.)\n\nAlong with lesser Soviet influence, Afghanistan has a very bad neighbor. Pakistan wants to control Afghanistan. Afghanistan doesn't recognize its border with Pakistan called the Durrand line (named after Britisher who negotiated with a weak Afghan king.) The British conquered all the lands and decided to use Afghans as puppets against Russians. British attacked and took Kabul but withdrew.\n\nThe Durrand line separates the ethnic majority group of Afghanistan: Pashtuns who're 20% of Pakistan too. Historically Pashtun areas of Pakistan is Afghan (see Ahmad Shah Abdali Empire.)\n\nPakistanis are scared of a movement to reunite Pashtuns. Because of this Pakistan always interferes with internal affairs of Afghanistan. When Americans approached them with beating back the Soviets, they gleefully accepted as their allies the Islamists of Afghanistan were under pressure. \n\nTaliban agreed to ally with Pakistan because they wrongly believe Pak military was \"real\" Muslim. Pakistanis convinced them they were brothers, however this has now changed big time. Now there exists TTP which is a wing of Taliban that attacks Pakistan.\n\nAfghanistan isn't like its neighbors because of lesser Russian influence, Pakistan's alliance with Islamists (Haqanni network -- a branch of Taliban -- formerly they allied with all of Taliban until Taliban turned against them for being not-true-Muslims.) A population that hasn't been secularized because of weaker and less stable governments. ", "No discussion about their poppy production? ", "Alexander the Great settled briefly in Afghanistan andhelped shape their culture. Afghanistan was a stable republic long before the United States was born. It reached all the way to India and the Indian Ocean. Under the British Raj, the mountainous area now referred to as West Pakistan was declared a neutal buffer state by paying an annual tribute to the ruler of Afghanistan. When the Brits left India, they created Pakistan in the neutral Afghan territory, as a revenge. Still, in the 1960s, Kabul was called the Paris of Central Asia. There are many poms, grapes and melon varietals that originated there, ...stolen by the West, of course. Then CIA overthrew Iran, and went head to head with the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Soviets invaded to push the CIA-backed coup leader out. That was 30 years of continuous machine warfare ago. Massive genocide. Historical buildings older than Britain's are pockmarked with tank shells and bullet holes. Their culture has been decimated by the deliberate assassination of their village elders. An American-style Executive Corporate was imposed on Afghans, complete with a fake flag, fake currency, a fake national anthem and new Federal Afghan National Army, which like the Afghan National Police, is wholly, brutally, corrupt. The Karzai mob was forced on the Afghans by Cheney, hoping to steal their strategic mineral wealth. Ironically, Karzai betrayed Cheney, and awarded all the mineral leases to India and China, enraging Cheney and launching The Surge, which Obama, to his great discredit, gave the final go-ahead to. Revenge mass murder for betrayed mineral lease promises (and extortion) is a new low in US foreign policy. Afghanistan is now an empty resource space.\n\nRead Peter Torbay's 'Diminution and Development' on Scribd, written with the assistance of Afghan business and political leaders.", "Poverty and lack of stability. That country has been screwed six ways to Sunday ever since the soviet invasion. Look at the pre invasion photos. Women in skirts, rock bands, smoking and drinking was a big part of the afghan youth. Some similarities to Iran pre-revolution. Between Russia and us, we have done more long term damage than any massive bombings could ever do.", "And don't get it twisted many of Isis and taliban members come from those areas to join them. Chechnya now too I'm sure consider Russia's involvement. Watch the al jeezera \"ISIL and Russia\" or something like that. I watched it this morning so more of this is fresh. Plus I'm reading Ghost Wars about the CIA's involvement in Afghanistan and so on.  ", "Middle-east in ELI5? Ambitious.", "Something that is not often mentioned is that a lot of the citizens still live in isolated tribal cultures that want no part of whatever war is being fought at the time. There are many reports of American soldiers encountering these groups and are mistaken for Russian because they have no idea about the current conflict. ", "I think it has to do more with the amount of dead animals and plants that died in the area millions of years ago.", "Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium. This is an open secret which is unfortunately supported by their government. Too lazy to type out how this contributes to terrorism but I encourage reading up on it (if you can find a source outside of an academic journal).", "Lol all these answers even the guilded one are incorrect. \n\nThe reason you don't hear much is because of the media, these countries do suffer from ISIS and affiliate groups. \n\nCheck out wikipedia for some info they have to categorize all the worldwide suicide bombings by month cause there are so many. ", "Most of these answers are fairly bs. It can be largely explained by geography and recent history. Afghanistan is bordered by three great powers: Iran, Pakistan, and China, and at one point by the USSR as well. This makes it of great strategic importance geopolitically, which is why both the USSR and America have attempted nation building efforts there in the last 40 years in order to bring the country within their respective spheres of influence. \n\nIn the 80's, the USSR invaded Afghanistan in order to help consolidate power for a new socialist government there. As part of a greater ramp up of the cold war during the 80s after a long period of detente, the CIA helped fund and arm the Mujahideen, rebel militias of both foreign fighters and rural Afghanis to combat the Soviets. The Soviets became mired in a decade long war in Afghanistan as basically their version of Vietnam. In much the same way that Vietnam caused political instability in the US, the Afghan war helped drive the instability that caused the Soviet Union to collapse completely, and they eventually pulled out.\n\nAfter the Soviets left, certain factions within the Mujahideen evolved into the Taliban, a hardline theocratic regime that swept in to fill the power vacuum in Afghanistan. Another Mujahideen fighter, Osama Bin Laden, formed the terrorist group Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was not really a thing during the Soviet occupation like the top rated post says, it emerged after the occupation ended. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban built their doctrines on the tenets of Wahhabism, an extremely conservative strain of Sunni Islam that serves as the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, a key US ally due entirely to their control of oil prices, has a policy of sending young radicals to other countries as foreign fighters, both to spread wahhabism and in order to keep them from turning on the Saudi royal family and causing trouble at home. The influence of this ideology proved especially prominent in Afghanistan due to the instability there and the fractured nature of its society, which is largely rural and tribal. Outside of a few large cities, many Afghanis have lived the same way in tight knit ethnic communities for hundreds of years.\n\nFast forward to 2001, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda carry out the 9/11 attacks and the US begins their own decade long quagmire, overthrowing the Taliban in an attempt to introduce Democracy and a free market to the country. The US did not need to overthrow the Taliban in order to capture Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they offered to turn him over. But, like the USSR twenty years earlier, elements within the American government saw an opportunity to take control of an important strategic region.\n\nThe vast amounts of foreign money pouring in from both the USSR and the US over the course of several decades have largely ended up in the hands of extremist warlords who knew how to game the system and suck up to whoever was in power. All of this has contributed to an overwhelming climate of graft and corruption in the new democratically elected government, which is largely impotent compared to regional warlords and dependent on the US military for support and protection. This has made many Afghans miss the Taliban, which still exists as an insurgent military force that carries out attacks on the American occupiers and the Afghan government. It is rumored that many of these elements have varying degrees of backing from the Saudis, Pakistanis, and Iranians, again in order to give those nations a foothold in such an important strategic area. \n\nAdd to all of this that Afghanistan is the world's foremost producer of Opium, providing yet another source of money for local extremists, and you end up with a country which has been screwed over by decades of geopolitical tug of war and failed attempts to modernize its society. It has such a problem with terrorism because so many powerful actors have a vested interest in funding terrorists there, starting with the US and the Mujahideen.\n\nThis is a pretty vague overview, but if you want to know more about Afghanistan and how it ended up the way it is, I highly recommend the documentary \"The Bitter Lake\" by Adam Curtis. You can find it online for free.", "Strong dictators are what keep islamic countries from becoming terrorist hellholes. Look what happened when Saddam and Gaddafi  fell. Complete Chaos. There hasn't been strong authoritarian leadership in Afghanistan in decades, so muslim extremism has thrived. ", "Oh they really do have their issues, dictators and religious feud, but afghanistan has american troops and was gunned by the US due to 9/11. So much higher interest to report.", "In my opinion (probably less than factual) because the western world fucked around less with the other non-afghanistan countries you listed", "American invasion!\n\nWherever American troops land, they destroy infrastructure, culture, people's lives. And sadly they also take all their hands can reach... they leave destruction, poverty, chaos and failed states.. \n\nThat is the reason why Afghanistan is fucked up but not Turkmenistan or any other country.. very simple \n\nLook at Iraq, Vietnam, Somalia etc..", "One of the biggest reason is the Soviet Union. All of those other central asian countries were under Soviet Rule for decades and at that time religion was supressed violently. Today we still have an overwhelming majority being muslim there, but more secular as a result. However, they still do have Islamic extremist groups in those countries, but to a much lesser degree than Afghanistan.\n\nThe reason Afghanistan has so much extremism is because of the Soviet invasion. There weren't really any extremist groups before the invasion, but many resistance groups sprang up to oppose them. Since the Communist were hardcore atheist who hated religion, the rebels tended to be hardcore muslims who hated atheist. When the communist regime in Afghanistan fell, a lot of the more secular people and atheist either left, went into hiding or were killed, which led to the country being even more religious. However, this still wasn't the biggest reason for the islamic extremism. The biggest is Pakistan's fault. They helped the rebels but tended to give the most help to more extremists rebels. And after the communists fell they created the Taliban to take over the nation with. The taliban were mostly made up of people who had lost everything to the Soviets and taught a very extreme form of Islam in the refugee camps. They took over most of the country and proceded to enact harsh islamic laws and force their view of Islam on people. When the Americans came most saw them the same as the Soviets, and there were no shortage of people who hated invaders and could easily be turned to extremism. ", "Was the US in these 3 countries? Was the US in afghanistan? Theres your answer. The US encouraged radical nationalist Islam during the 70's to resist soviet influence."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/08/13/jihadism-in-central-asia-credible-threat-after-western-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-pub-56381", "https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/opinion/jihads-new-frontier-tajikistan.html", "https://www.academia.edu/1846512/The_making_of_militants_the_state_and_Islam_in_Central_Asia?auto=download"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5v48cz", "title": "why did infantry soldiers make a square formation against cavalry?", "selftext": "I have seen several photos of soldiers in the Napoleonic era forming square against cavalry charges. What benefits did this yield, and was it an effective strategy?\n\nEdit: Thanks for the excellent responses, guys!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v48cz/eli5_why_did_infantry_soldiers_make_a_square/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddz3puw", "ddz3s4q", "ddz3y1k", "ddza5e3", "ddzlgrv", "ddzn7nr", "de0j1bl", "de0ry3o"], "score": [81, 8, 141, 13, 2, 27, 2, 2], "text": ["The advantage that cavalry has over infantry is in speed and mobility.\n\nA square formation helps counter this in two way \n\n- It's hard to flank - if the cavalry attempts to go around and attack on the side, the essentially encountering another front\n\n- Because it's several lines deep it can't be charged over (and allow the cavalry to return for a second charge). The horses get \"bogged\" down and are easier to fight back against. \n\nCavalry was usually still going to be much more effective against infantry in almost any situation though. ", "Cavalry moves much faster than infantry, so it can always out-maneuver infantry and attack from the weakest side.  A square equalizes the firepower in all directions so there is no 'weakest side'.  (Note: a mathematician might quibble with using a square, but you also need a formation that can be easily assumed by infantrymen jostling in relation to one another).\n\nThe reason they used the square was that it was effective.  Firearms were very inaccurate, so you really needed mass volley fire to do much good.  If you had a situation where isolated infantrymen were put up against cavalry, they normally wouldn't be able to do much because the cavalry could close faster than they'd be able to land a lucky shot.", "A well disciplined square formation was absolutely very effective against cavalry (although by no means immune) but only if done right. \n\nFirst, there's no flank or rear to attack, which is the ideal tactic when using cavalry. In a square formation, all your weapons are facing outward.\n\nSecond, horses have the same self preservation instinct as humans but without military training, and and such, they won't willing run into volley fire or a wall of bayonets. A well timed square could catch a cavalry charge off guard and take large numbers of them out with volley fire and impale the rest with bayonets.\n\nThe flip side is that a poorly timed or executed square could quickly turn into a death trap. If the square formed too early or didn't time their fire correctly, the cavalry could regroup at a safe distance and harass them back with their own fire. Worse, infantry support could surround the square and attack or hold them in place under artillery fire.\n", "There are a lot of answers about why a square is good. Why didn't they use circles?", "Imagine someone wants to punch a hole in your wall.  What do you do to stop them? \n\nInfantry squares make walls thicker and spiky, so there is no weak point for cavalry to punch through.  \n\nThe horses stall out at the pike line, and now you have to reach down and try to kill one of the 8 dudes with 6' long spears stabbing at you with your 4' long sword.  \n\nCavalry really depended on punching through time and again, and died quickly if forced to fight a proper line battle. ", "It was very effective against unsupported cavalry. At Waterloo, for example, French cavalry fruitlessly tried attacking allied/British infantry in squares for an extended period of time. Forming a square was a purely anti-cavalry tactic, as it had weaknesses, but it worked for at least three reasons (this list is probably not exhaustive):\n\n1. As others have pointed out, there is no flank and all fronts.\n2. Horses will not charge into things.\n3. Squares are much more densly packed with arms than cavalry.\n\nIn order, cavalry charging out of where you did not expect them to come and hitting your flanks or rear is an infantry nightmare. Squares prevent this by making sure there are no flanks. Wherever the cavalry is, it is facing an infantry front. This is no fun for the cavalrymen.\n\nAnd unlike what some will have you believe, horses will not charge into things. They will no more run madly into a wall of bayonets and musket fire than you will run into a wall unflinchingly. Anyone who has ever been on a horse will know this. The nearest thing to this happening was at Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez in 1812 when a mortally wounded horse stumbled into a square like a ram and thrashes about (opening the path to other cavalry which charged into the square and - unsurprisingly - had a field day as all the enemy were suddenly showing their rear).\n\nFinally, the firepower and bayonets of a square made it almost impenetrable to cavalry. Squares at Waterloo were mostly four ranks deep. The first rank would kneel and plant the musket butt in the ground, with fixed bayonets, creating a wall of spears. The other ranks were free to fire. The infantrymen would stand more or less shoulder to shoulder, many deep, meaning there were a lot of musekts and bayonets pr yard of square front. The cavalry, on the other hand, would ride about outside the square, needing room to manouvre, with considerable space between the horses, all the time sitting on an unstable platform (the horse moving about) whilst the infantry was densely packed and standing on firm ground. The disparity in volume of fire over the fronts of the squares was tremendous, meaning for every carbine or pistol the cavalrymen could fire at the square, many, many times that number of muskets would fire back.\n\nThe weakness of the square was if it was broken, which it sometimes was when infantry panicked, it was done for. Then it became a death trap. Interestingly, in the movie Waterloo (1970) which was filmed with Red Army extras in huge numbers both as infantry and cavalry, you can in some scenes see squares disintegrating. These were extras in a movie - perfectly safe- but apparently the experience was still scary enough to break them. The real thing must have been very tough going.\n\nThe other problem was the density. If cavalry was supported by infantry or artillery, the cavalry could force the enemy to maintain a square and then artillery would have a field day with an enemy presenting a perfect target. This was much of the reason for horse artillery, which could keep up with cavalry and help it defeat infantry squares. Or supporting infantry would be able to deploy in line and overwhelm the square with more efficient infantry tactics (essentially having all the infantry face one side of the enemy square, where three quarters of the square would be unable to use their weapons against them).", "But its not just a square, its many squares and how they are positioned in relation to each other in checkerboard fashion and the topography. Wellington troops formed many squares and the French cavalry had to maneuver between them limiting the area it could maneuver and placing the cavalry in a cross fire situation. No matter in what direction the cavalry traveled it was under fire and the squares were hidden behind a rise in the battlefield.", "Some great answers below. I would like to add:\n\n- Forming square is a 100% commit manoeuvre. If you do it, it's because your forced into making it. Commanders would of been reluctant to form square if the enemy has accurate artillery and voltiguers (skirmishers) that are able to engage the square at will, picking off members of the lines and reducing the effectiveness of the square.\n\n- If your infantry are in square, they are not able to move. If they cannot move, they cannot help other formations in distress on the battlefield.\n\n- Squares are best formed with OTHER squares. One square on its own will not hold for very long and will wither under fire and constant attack by skirmishers and artillery. You need 3 or 4 squares to be close to each other, and have ENVELOPING fields of fire, so that they dont hit each other when firing at moving targets. The object of this stratagem is to force enemy cavalry to charge through the gaps between the squares and get picked off. The volume of fire from one square is large. The volume of fire from FOUR is ridiculous and would almost certainly kill large numbers of cavalry attempting to penetrate the squares.\n\n- A skillfull commander will attempt to destroy enemy infantry by keeping cavalry on their flanks but not engaging. The threat of a charge by heavy curaissiers or dragoons would be enough for an opposing commander to form square. If he kept his troops in line or column, they would be devastated by a cavalry charge and would result in huge casualties. Once the infantry were in square, he could wheel his artillery into position with impunity and rain hell on infantry squares. \n\n- Squares were sitting ducks for artillery, particularly chained cannonballs. They were fired not directly at the squares, but aimed to land just infront, so the chained balls bounced and then ripped through a square. The first rank would be crippled or killed outright, the second rank severely injured and the ranks behind badly hurt. The cannonball bounces through the square and into the backs of the men behind, ploughing through their ranks aswell.  \n\n- The only way to counter artillery firing on your squares was to charge them with your own cavalry or use your own guns to batter theirs, which is very difficult. Their guns will almost always be in range of your squares but out of range of your guns, so you must put your guns at risk of being either charged by cavalry or pounded by enemy cannon whilst they setup. \n\n- So infantry squares, whilst very effective against fighting cavalry on the battlefield, are not without their drawbacks. Sometimes, forming square can be detrimental to the mobility of your forces and cause armies to commit to ground where they cannot engage the enemy and win."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1f380k", "title": "New look", "selftext": "As you've probably already noticed unless you're browsing on a mobile device, we've just switched on a new custom style for the subreddit. It's been in the works for a while, and we hope the new look will both be an improvement aesthetically and gently reinforce the high standard we all love in this sub.\n\nIt has been tested extensively, but I'll be very surprised if there aren't a fair number of bugs that have slipped through the cracks. If something looks wrong for you, please either leave a comment in this thread or [message me](_URL_0_) (/u/brigantus). Including a screenshot would be very helpful. Any other feedback \u2013 good or bad \u2013 is welcome too.\n\nHope you like it!\n\nEdit: I made a slight change to the comment formatting so nesting is less garish.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f380k/new_look/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca6d7qi", "ca6d99n", "ca6dc5a", "ca6ddgl", "ca6ddyc", "ca6derw", "ca6dftj", "ca6dgfs", "ca6dhwr", "ca6dmfz", "ca6dngp", "ca6dnj6", "ca6dpsc", "ca6dske", "ca6dvki", "ca6dzqe", "ca6e02k", "ca6e3wr", "ca6e6hq", "ca6e9vk", "ca6eehn", "ca6eiwi", "ca6ejfs", "ca6ete7", "ca6ewxc", "ca6fcb1", "ca6fdnn", "ca6fvvu", "ca6fzal", "ca6hi2u", "ca6hmqd", "ca6hpin", "ca6i1iv", "ca6i1qm", "ca6im1f", "ca6ixjv", "ca6nevg", "ca6nl9d"], "score": [102, 2, 35, 4, 2, 2, 3, 17, 7, 3, 9, 30, 3, 64, 16, 5, 3, 7, 8, 8, 26, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Allow me to be the first to congratulate /u/brigantus on the fruits of his hard labour. ", "Nice! Although it looks like all of the flair colors got re-shuffled.", "The new look is really neat! Simple and also highlights things that newcomers often miss. Very well done.\n\nMy one complaint would be that the font color on the posts are too bright. Could the contrast increase? It does not have to be black but as it is right now I feel like I'm straining my eyes and it could be a few steps darker.\n\nEdit: It's been updated. Working really well. I.E. I don't even think about how the text looks, it just reads itself. Thanks for listening to us!", "Looks good! Some of the flair needs touched up though, seems the both /u/estherke and /u/snickeringshadow 's flair is hard to distinguish.\n\nEDIT: Seems to be all flair?", "This is nice! Well done. But no custom reddit alien? ", "Really liking the new look! Clear and simple with a good use of colour.\n\nedit: the flairs seem to all the same colour.", "I thought there was something wrong with my computer set. I attempted to adjust the picture. I forgot that you are controlling transmission. ", "This is beautiful, /u/brigantus!\n\nI feel like the text in the comment will improve the quality of answers!  No matter how prominently displayed the \"New to /r/AskHistorians?  Please read our subreddit rules before posting\" was (it's now on the side), a lot of people would comment before reading the rules.  I hope this makes the mods' jobs easier!\n\n~~One minor aesthetic question: is there a way to change the color of the unsubscribe button?  I feel like it's clashing with the orangred.~~ *Edit*: The \"New to /r/AskHistorians?  Please read our subreddit rules before posting\" is now grey so there is no clashing.\n\nOne other minor practical question: is there a way to make the \"our list of popular questions more prominent\"?  Or closer to \"Ask a question\" (love the pop up box there, by the way)?", "It's very bright - I like the Windows 8 style though. The flairs obviously need some fixing too, and I REALLY love the rules being posted in the chatbox. That and the rules being highlighted when you mouse over the \"ask a question\" button :D\n\nWe need a new snoo though. Hmmmmmm.", "Like everyone said, it's too bright. I mean, the main portion is just white like the rest of reddit but somehow the other colours make the white look painfully brighter.", "Ehh... looks like Windows 8...", "I like it. The colors are vibrant and the interface is very clean. Great job mods! I did notice my flair isn't blue, but I assume you guys haven't set the colors on individual users yet.\n\nAlso, I think you should use [Emperor Snoostinian](_URL_0_) as our mascot *hint* *hint* :)\n\n", "Whoa... nice work, I've got to say.  Especially the message on the comment section--hopefully that'll be a reminder to all before commenting.\n\nedit: on the list of flaired users, there is a broken link under the section \"History of Art\"", "I don't like change.  Wah.\n\nIt looks too professional, like an /r/askscience laboratory.  Rather than the dingy bare-knuckle boxing pit that I've come to appreciate /r/askhistorians as.", "The orange blue colour scheme is rather striking and the rule reminder in the comment box was a nice touch.\n\nThe moderator box doesn't show their flair beside the usernames. Was that done on purpose?", "The text in the post box is fantastic.\n\nI think the Flair descriptions would look much better in alphabetical order and one on each line, aligned to the left.\n\nAlso, I miss the outline of posts and the shading of every other reply.\n", "Good stuff.  Thank you for not significantly changing the look or, more importantly, size of the top subreddit bar (the one with All, Random, Friends, etc).  That's the only thing that really annoys me with custom subreddit styles.", "I think the font used for post titles is too big.  It doesn't leave enough room for posts when viewing the front page.", "The font size for the subreddit title and thread titles is too big, and there are huge gutters between each comment and around the thread titles (the orange box on this thread for instance). This creates large empty white spaces which come across as \"too bright\", and spacing out the useful content makes it look like there's actually less of it -- it's about half as many comments or threads per screenful.\n\nOh and the reminder about the rules reappears overlaid on the textbox when the textbox isn't focused, even when there's text here", "This looks freaking awesome, brigantus. You've worked so hard on this! Great job.", "The good: I like that it looks professional, clean, and bright. It has a \"take this serious\" vibe to it, which is appropriate to the subreddit. Bravo.\n\nThe less-good: I never loved the reddit caveman guy (or whatever he was supposed to be), but the current header is just completely generic. Surely we can do something that says \"AskHistorians\" more than just text of it. Some kind of tasteful montage that says \"we do a lot of different areas of history\" seems plausible. One rather silly idea that might look good if someone talented played with it: alien reddit guy Photoshopped into different historical images. [Dewey Defeats Reddit](_URL_0_)? (Sorry, I know that is somewhat crudely done, and too US-centric, probably!)", "I like it. It's sleek, clean, and pretty simple. And I'm glad that AskHistorians finally has its own look.", "I think this is the best subreddit design I\u2019ve stumbled upon (together with /r/minimalism). Good job, guys.", "Reminds me of Windows 8.", "I don't like the suddenly massive titles and big square boxes, so I'll probably stick to disabling the style.  The orange reminds me of circlebroke, which I don't think is a good connection to make, but eh.  It's not as though these changes are forced on me.", "I see that my flair is colored for \"Asian History\".  Wouldn't it fit better into \"Middle Eastern History\" or even \"History of Ideas\"?  It doesn't fit neatly into a category, but I don't quite see how it fits into Asian History.", "It looks too much like Facebook.", "Amazing new look. Love it :) \nDo you dev for Windows phone ?", "I would appreciate if the background were a bit darker. Something like what /r/PropagandaPosters/ has would be just about ideal between contrast and not destroying my poor eyes with a harsh white. A few more dividing lines would be nice, too, for breaking up the page.\n\nFinally, I'm not sure whether this is a RES or a theme bug, but the transparent spiel text that shows up in the text box (presumably it's only supposed to be there before you type anything in) reappears once you go out of focus with the text box, [over whatever you've written in.](_URL_0_)", "The 'Apply for flair' link in the sidebar doesn't point to the newest Panel of Historians post.", "One other issue: the \"behind-the-box note\" that shows up prior to adding text into the comment box is kind of neat, but it is very strange that it appears again if the box loses focus (at least, it does on Chrome). Occasionally one does click outside the box and it strangely overlays. Without looking at the code I'm not sure how it is done, but surely there is some way to use Javascript to make sure that text is set to not display as long as there is text inside the textarea.", "IMHO, Grey-on-white is never really a good idea. If you want to reduce eye strain, black on light grey is a much better option, since it reduces the overall amount of white light.", "The AskHistorians logo on top looks and works simply beautifully. Great work.", "It looks too corporate I think. The font, the colours don't have a community vibe to it. It's also really hard on my eyes. Not trying to be a negative Nelly - just my honest feedback.", "I like it. Though maybe the \"Frequently Asked Questions\" section should be closer to the \"Ask a Question\" Button?", "Many great changes, I like the look! Just curious - each flair looks clickable, but nothing comes up. Are you planning on making each one link to a list of individuals who are flaired in that region/topic?\n\nOh, wait, I just clicked on the \"flaired users\" link, that page is awesome. If each topic was linked to each heading on that page it'd be perfect - just as easy to navigate as our frequently asked questions page.\n\nGreat work /u/brigantus! I'll keep an eye out for bugs, and let you know if I think of any other ideas that I bet would at least interest you.\n\nAnd one last thing regarding the new flair colors: [GOLD TEAM RULES](_URL_0_)", "This is an excellent update! Thanks so much /u/brigantus! \n\nMy one suggestion would be to make the delineation between top-level posts a little bit more distinct. When there are sub-comments it makes it easier to read because of their nested rectangles, but if there is more than one top-level comment in a row that doesn't have sub-comments there isn't much in the way of visual cues to delineate them. \n\nIt also makes it harder to tell which top-level a particular sub-comment belongs to when they start to span more than my monitor can see. ", "Good, that old logo was god awful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=brigantus"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/fkRC4.png?1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/GhDuCAp"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/kL1XlcT.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWrncgglK0E"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b9soc5", "title": "Researchers were able to speed light up to 30c. How is this consistent with special relativity?", "selftext": "From [a recent article in _URL_0_](_URL_1_):\n\n > [The authors] demonstrated they could speed a pulse of light up to 30 times the speed of light, slow it down to half the speed of light, and also make the pulse travel backward.\n\nI realize that the speed of light is dependent on the material it travels through, but my understanding is that nothing can ever go faster than c.\n\nHow can this be reconciled with the statement in the article? Alternatively, have I misunderstood something? Or is the statement incorrect?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b9soc5/researchers_were_able_to_speed_light_up_to_30c/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ek6tt4i"], "score": [18], "text": ["You can manipulate the properties of the medium to change the group velocity from c to something less than c (\u201cslow light\u201d), something greater than c (\u201cfast light\u201d), or basically zero (\u201cstopped light\u201d).\n\nThis article is about increasing the group velocity above c, so fast light.\n\nBut this doesn\u2019t cause any problems with relativity, because the *signal velocity* (the speed at which information is transmitted by the wave) is still limited by c."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["Phys.org", "https://phys.org/news/2019-04-researchers-develop-way-to-control.html"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "35q1uk", "title": "how is it that google cars have accurate enough position tracking to drive autonomously, but my google phone constantly loses track of my gps location and can hardly get me to my destination?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35q1uk/eli5_how_is_it_that_google_cars_have_accurate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr6om9k", "cr6omic", "cr6p13m", "cr6yfy9", "cr7sizx"], "score": [40, 225, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Google Cars use a lot more than GPS to track where they are. They have expensive cameras that operate in the visual, infrared, and radar spectrums, as well as highly detailed maps of the areas they're driving around in. They use all of this data to figure out how to drive, not just GPS.", "You're comparing a tiny antenna in a tiny phone running off a tiny battery to something with all the space and power it could ever want. The reception is just plain better to start with.\n\nDon't forget, the autonomous system is far more than just GPS. \n\nSpeed sensors keep tracking even if signal is lost (like many modern cars now have). Even if a GPS fix is lost, if you have the last position and an accurate log of distance and direction traveled, it's not hard to figure out where you are now.\n\nCameras and radar (and LIDAR-thanks /u/PangoriaFallstar) are constantly checking around you to react to the real-life traffic and pedestrians that GPS can't help with. GPS isn't what keeps it in a lane or on a road, it's the various sensors. GPS is mostly used for location/routing.\n\nEDIT: For those looking for more, check out this [article/video](_URL_0_), which goes very deep into how the system works on a technical level, and even shows a great visualization of what the car \"sees\". They also mention how these systems compensate for GPS drop outs.", "In addition to what the other posters said, the GPS in most phones is not as bad as you described. I had that experience with my first iPhone six years ago but for the last 2 - 3 years the GPS in my phone has been great, it never loses track of my position. Maybe your phone had a bad GPS antenna?", "The size and density requirements of smart phones mean that you can't build a proper GPS antenna. As a result, the signal reception in a phone is terrible; it is weak.\n\nEqually importantly, it is also highly distorted because the phone antenna is not directional (meaning that it picks up satellite signals reflecting off the ground or from buildings), whereas a proper GPS antenna is semi-directional, it picks up signals only from the sky, or sideways (they can still be somewhat vulnerable to building reflections - but there is less reflection chaos which makes the signal processing more reliable).\n\nA good quality GPS antenna can give much better performance - these are typically installed on cars with integrated navigation. They either use helical antennas under a shark fin aerodynamic cover, or they use a patch antenna about the size of an oreo. They are both roughly similar in performance. ", "Google cars rely on an extensive and expensive survey of the area it will drive using lasers and radar and cameras.  Without that pre-survey, costing much $$ and much time, the google car cannot go there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car-works"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "tla8q", "title": "In 1953, before their production of the Double-helix DNA model, Watson and Crick produced a three-helixed DNA model. What would this look like?", "selftext": "Also, how would it be constructed as compared to their final product, the double-helix DNA mode.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tla8q/in_1953_before_their_production_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4nl2lm", "c4nl5s3", "c4nli0a", "c4nmab5"], "score": [6, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["You can see [here](_URL_2_) Pauling's triple helix model of DNA, and [here](_URL_1_) a story about it, and [here](_URL_0_) Watson and Crick's response.", "Triple stranded DNA can actually be created, although to my knowledge it doesn't occur naturally in biological systems.\n\nThere are some atomic force microscope pictures [here](_URL_1_). [Here](_URL_0_) is a schematic of how the molecule is arranged.", "The phosphates were on the inside and the bases faced outwards. This was more Watson's doing, once he showed Rosalind Franklin the model she told him that it was physically impossible and somewhat ridiculous. Mostly she knew this because she was an extremely careful scientist and did detailed measurements on the amount of water needed to keep DNA happy. There was no room for all of that water in the middle of the helix. After they went back to the drawing board, Pauling published his incorrect model. Interestingly, Pauling was scheduled to go on a trip England to meet with the Cambridge/King's groups, but had Visa issues I think owing to his anti-nuclear pro-peace stances. History may have been really different had that meeting gone ahead because he may have found out that his model was wrong.", "Also, look for models of collagen. It is a trigonal helix."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/notes/sci9.001.32-ts-19530321.html", "http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/the-pauling-corey-structure-of-dna/", "http://www.pnas.org/content/39/2/84.full.pdf"], ["http://www.bioscience.org/2007/v12/af/2397/fig1.jpg", "http://ww.ntmdt.net/data/media/files/publications/2007/07.12_dmitry_klinov_benja_english.pdf"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "zd700", "title": "Has anyone ever found a successful/efficient way of waking others up from comas, unconsciousness, etc.?", "selftext": "My friend and I have had the idea for a while to find the most efficient way (other than sound) to wake someone up, and to see if they are truly efficient... however this is entirely useless 'cause we already have alarms that work. However, we were wondering if it is in any way possible to do research as to how to wake someone up from unconsciousness? Is it even possible, based on the conditions of the body in a coma/unconscious state?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zd700/has_anyone_ever_found_a_successfulefficient_way/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c63l4eb", "c63o6ei"], "score": [2, 3], "text": ["There are many ways to be unconscious, and being asleep is nothing like being in a coma.  Unconsciousness from sleep is an active, natural state that arises from the interaction of an adenosine build up and the circadian nor-epinephrine cycle.  Depending on the phase of sleep, it's often quite easy to wake someone up. \n\nUnconsciousness due to injury or pathology has many, many etiologies based on the locus and degree of damage.  Some can be treated or ameliorated with drugs (c.f., [Awakenings](_URL_0_) by Sacks).  But if the patient is decerebrated there's nothing to repair.  ", "Sleeping pills. \n\nFor real. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings"], []]}
{"q_id": "1zgv1r", "title": "How did anyone assault a star fort? Are there any of examples of successful assaults?", "selftext": "Looking at the Wikipedia page for star forts, I see a lot of information about how effective the design was, that it repulsed attacks and withstood cannon fire, that whole cities incorporated the design at tremendous expense, and so on.  It all makes the design look highly impressive and durable (at least, as wikipedia notes, until the invention of the exploding shell).\n\nBy contrast, medieval fortifications of comparable grandeur seem to have been taken by assault occasionally.  There is a consistent theme to their assault in media portrayals: attackers could use siege towers and ladders to get on top of the walls, would tunnel underneath them, would destroy them with artillery, or would batter down the gates.  None of that seems to be easily possible with star forts.\n\nSo did anyone manage to successfully assault one?  What was the general protocol for taking a fortified city?  Was this just starving people out, as one might expect, or was it possible for a significantly sized army to successfully overwhelm a fortress?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zgv1r/how_did_anyone_assault_a_star_fort_are_there_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cftn7xd", "cftz78r"], "score": [82, 2], "text": ["Attacking a star fort or similar fortification was a science in of itself, with very precise measurements and timings based on the size of the city, etc.\n\nThe basic devices for attacking were the sap and the parallel.  A parallel is a long trench that runs parallel to the wall being besieged.  A sap is a very thin zig-zag trench that advances towards the wall for a certain distance to allow the construction of an additional parallel closer to the wall.  Heavy guns on each parallel cover the construction of the next one.  When the parallels had been brought close enough to the fortification, the defenders would be stormed or battered into submission by heavy guns.\n\nOffensive earthworks were generally impervious to gunfire from the city under siege.  These tactics were effective because the saps were so narrow that defensive gunfire could not reliably interfere with their construction, which allowed men and material to approach the walls in safety.\n\nThat said it was still possible for the defenders to over-power parallels close to the wall- it depended on the resources available to both sides.\n\nAttackers might also use mine galleries- digging under defensive positions with tunnels and planting vast quantities of explosives to blow up walls from underneath.\n\nA great example of all of these things is the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War which saw all of these tactics and many others carried out over the course of a two-year siege.  The defenders, lead by General Todleben, even dug counter-saps and created counter-works of their own during the siege.\n\nAll my information comes from Alexander Kinglake's Account of the War in the Crimea. ", "I have a question as well, but more of a general siege warfare kind of question.\n\nHow did a besieging army cross a moat, and how would they bring down the doors? As well, before the advent of effective cannon artilery, were catapults and trebuche's ever used to actually bring down the walls?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "22vhmq", "title": "why is christianity so opposed to homosexuality /how did this develop?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22vhmq/eli5_why_is_christianity_so_opposed_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgqsmu0", "cgqswxq", "cgquylu", "cgqvz0g", "cgqw1vg", "cgqwk5v", "cgqy1h9", "cgqyaoz", "cgqzfeh", "cgr0pqz", "cgr2sq9", "cgr4yk7", "cgr7khe"], "score": [3, 4, 19, 2, 234, 9, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Christianity is opposed to homosexuality because Christians believe God is opposed to homosexuality. It's not that a \"small radicalized group is up in arms\" but that biblical marriage/relationships have always been upheld by historical Christianity. The Apostle Paul mentions homosexuality in his letters to the Romans and Corinthians as sin. The Old Testament also briefly makes mention of it. Christians are especially opposed to it today because people are refusing to recognize the behavior to be wrong. Some Christians actually believe people have to acknowledge their sin and that God's word needs to be upheld. If they are being faithful Christians that's why they would oppose it. But if they are using the Bible as an excuse to hate people or demean or ostracize them, then that's plain wrong.", "It can vary from denomination to denomination. The Episcopal Church, for instance, is more liberal, and supports LGBT rights and marriage. The Southern Baptist Convention, in contrast, is hostile to homosexuality. \n\nLooping up Christianity into one giant bloc is absurd. As it is split into dozens of sects, each preaching different views and interpretations of the Bible and of homosexuality.  ", "The Catholic Church originally forbade non-procreational sex of any kind, encouraging the faithful to 'go forth and multiply' in order to increase the number of the religion's adherents. The negative view of homosexuality may in part be a throwback to that.", "Basically: Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:27, Galatians 5:22-33. I think there may be some others, but these are ones that I could find in one quick sweep. . Basically, Christians believe (pretty much universally) that God defines what is moral and what is immoral. With this being true, if you think that God considers homosexual sex to be immoral, its as simple as that. Note that this is coming from a Christian who does not believe homosexuality is a sin, but who isn't sure how to justify this opinion theologically.\n\nI think I read somewhere that at the time Paul was writing his letters, homosexuality wasn't what we think of as homosexuality today. It was apparently generally not in the context of a loving relationship, it was a kinda show of dominance of a master over his student or pupil. This is possibly where the idea that there is a link between homosexuality and paedophilia that is claimed by some conservative pastors comes from, although its more likely that they are just bigoted like that. I don't know if this whole paragraph is bullshit or not, its just something i read somewhere (probably on reddit).\n\nThe interpretation I've heard for some of the more random laws of the Israelites (tattoos, some less obviously food safety aspects of kosher laws, mildew etc) were designed by God to seclude Israel from the rest of the world, kinda keep them in their own cultural bubble to allow them to develop separately. There is a passage in Acts 10 where the kosher food laws were lifted, as all things were made clean. My pastor tried to make it *very* clear that this did not include homosexuality, but I think that's  only because he considers Paul's writings to be direct word of God, and Paul writes elsewhere that homosexuality is immoral. \n\nMy personal reading puts the occasional references to homosexuality in the Bible down to cultural factors of the time as opposed to divine law, but that's only passable if you don't consider the Bible to be infallible, which many Christians do. I don't really have an answer to the question, I just kinda have to be thankful that I'm not gay so I don't have to deal with being around people who think my sexuality is evil :/.\n\nOn a happier note, I think at least in the UK (where Christians are a distinct minority) mostly people are coming round to the idea that homosexuality isn't a sin. Even the conservative ones would probably be less aggressive in their denunciation. Baby steps, but I think things are moving in the right direction.", "Like everyone else is saying, Christians are opposed to homosexuality because it says so in the Bible. First of all, it undermines the original design of humanity, with Adam and Eve. You see this in Leviticus, but maybe that stuff's too extreme and hardcore, which is understandable (maybe not the best context to use the term \"hardcore\", but we'll go with it). Even in the New Testament, we see Paul in his letters to the Church of Corinth and to the Romans, talking about how homosexual acts bring people away from God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 1:26-28). \n\nHowever, I'd also like to take this opportunity to provide further insight, maybe biased, coming from a Christian. While the Bible does indeed state that homosexuality is a sin, one of Jesus' greatest commandments was to \"Love your neighbor as yourself.\" The Ten Commandments state that anyone with hatred or anger commits murder in their heart. That being said, I believe that someone identifying as homosexual is no basis for being opposed to them. If anything, it is the opposite. Jesus showed no discrimination during his time on Earth in who he chose to help and heal. By nature, we are all sinners, none more or less than others, so there is no reason why homosexuals should be treated any differently, because we are all in need of the same saving grace that comes in Jesus Christ.\n\nMaybe I'm putting myself on the chopping block here, but I'd claim that a lot of the Christians you hear about who are protesting and rioting (ex: Westboro Baptist, but as /u/IvyGold reminded me, I'd definitely question even calling them a church. It's a very extreme example) have a bit of a twisted idea of the message of Christianity. Jesus' teachings, and the whole story of the gospel - that is, God sending his only son to die in our place - revolve around love. \"Faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love.\" (1 Corinthians 13:13). As a Christian, a follower of Jesus and a son of God, I would not be living as a Christian if I did not reflect the same love that God shows me when he saves.\n\nTL;DR: Christians are opposed to homosexuality, in the sense that the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin, and sin is bad, but Christians are the same broken and sinful people as everyone else, which means that Christians are not better people or on a higher level, and are out of place to judge people because of their sexuality.\n\nEdit: I apologize, that came out to be a lot longer than I anticipated. But I do hope that my words help shed some light.\n\nEdit: I suppose now I'm obligated to thank some people for the gold. So thanks! I'm sorry to say, however, that I have no clue what it does or what it allows me to do. This was the first time I logged on to reddit in over a year, and, quite honestly, this will probably go to waste. I wish I could hand it off to someone else who could have better use of it. Without paying for it, of course.", "Opposition to homosexuality amongst the christian faith has its roots in the same place that opposition to masturbation, sex toys, pornography, contraception, and even abortion. It all began with Jerome Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine) who helped define the concept of [original sin](_URL_0_) in the early Christian church in the 4th century CE. Basically he argued that it was Adam's concupiscence, or libido, that caused him to disobey God and eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The short of that is that to return to God's graces a faithful Christian must abhore sex for pleasure in every context. This early teaching can be seen propigated and refined to fit each of the \"sex for pleasure\" scenarios that you see Christians so opposed to. All other arguements are used to cover or disguise this simple reason but when analyzed closely they all clearly fall back on it.\n\nI know that my last statement will sound like a challenge but let's not. At least not untill you first think about your arguement and really challenge it yourself and can clearly demonstrate that your arguement has nothing to do with sex for pleasure being a sin. I came here to respond honestly and with evidence to the ELI5, not debate your own brand of theology among the over 40,000 known brands of Christianity.", "All it has to do with is that christianity considers the only purpose for sex is to produce babies. any sex that does not is a sin. It is the same reason they oppose any form of contraception. ", "Biblically speaking, it's in the Bible and God said that it was bad. Historically speaking, many Pagan religions, like Greek and Roman saw homosexuality as a pure form of love or something like that. I know for sure the Greeks believed that man is the best, so when a man and a man are together, it is the best, most pure relationship. Well because the Catholic Church wanted to get rid of Paganism when it came to power, they either assimilated all Pagan holidays, making them Christian, I.E. Holloween, and Christmas, or they removed and banned things completely, such as Homosexuality. Originally they were opposed to it because it was a part of Pagan culture and tradition, now, they just keep the tradition because after almost 2000 years, why would they suddenly get rid of it? Also, there are a lot of Christians who are not bothered, or support Homosexual rights, but they are the silent majority. The new Pope, Pope Francis said that homosexual people can get into Heaven and such, which is VERY different from what most Popes have said.", "the church is against homosexuality because 2 gay people cannot inherently procreate and pass on their religious beliefs to the next generation. ", "I think that 'because the Bible says so.' is WHY. But I think the Bible says so BECAUSE to have sex without the intent of making a baby was wasting an opportunity to make a new Christian/Jewish person. This was at a time when there were few of them around. Look at any law in the Old Testament or New; there was either a physical/medical reason, like the food rules, or a social reason to keep peace within the community. The rules were to make the Christian/Jewish community safer and stronger as a group. It makes perfectly logical sense when viewed in this fashion.\n", "- The Bible does not focus on gay people, in fact there are only about 3 strict anti- gay verses in this huge book. There are much more written against lust, theft, murder, lying, etc. However...\n\n- The Bible is pro life and pro family. The man and wife is seen as the fundamental building block of society. When they marry they become one flesh and form a covenant with God. They must obey God and in turn he will bless their union.\n\n- Also there was a lot of bad/weird shit going on in the old days. Even people growing up in it realised that baby sacrifice (Moloch) and gay rape gangs (Lot) etc. was maybe not the most healthy for society.\n\n- The Jewish tradition \"Law\" tried to break with the heathen's practices, which was considered to be \"unclean\". (Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13 )\n\n- Christ took it further with the idea that you body is your temple and that you should keep it pure. Men laying with other men was considered one of the impure things people should not do. (Romans 1:26)", "The Catholic church teaches that homosexual people are completely fine. What it's against is acting on those urges for reasons that /u/DisnEyLICIOUS has stated.", "\"Homosexuality\" as a sexual orientation is an extremely modern concept. Ancients couldn't even imagine such a thing.\n\nWhat they had in Roman/Greek times was active gay sex, and passive gay sex. These weren't considered sexual orientations, just things people did. Taking active role and penetrating other men was fine, as long as they were your inferiors - so older men fucking teenagers, or slaveowners fucking male bed slaves, or people in general fucking male prostitutes, that was within realm of acceptability, even if not something society was particularly fond of (Greeks were more fine with it than Romans). These men were still all expected to get a wife, make babies, and continue the family, no exceptions.\n\nBeing penetrated on the other hand, that was seen as extremely shameful - it was almost as bad as being a woman (and these people were serious misogynists)! It was OK if you were a teenager, and you let some older men fuck you, but you were expected to stop that once you reached maturity, get a wife etc.\n\nAnd either way, under no circumstances did that relieve you of obligation of having a wife, making babies, and continuing the society.\n\n1st/2nd century Christians did not really approve of this kind of extramarital sexual activity. Remember, there were no \"homosexuals\", everybody was universally expected to have a wife and make babies eventually, so all this extra sex on the side, gay or not, was really frowned upon, and it didn't have a terribly high status in Roman society in the first place. Christians also didn't like affairs, divorces, prostitution, and generally expected themselves to hold to a much higher moral standards than an average non-Christian.\n\nPretty much the only thing Christians changed about sexuality was that Christians considered it acceptable and even praiseworthy to go celibate (if you could and wanted such thing, not marrying only to fuck people anyway was not considered acceptable), something that most ancients would consider highly antisocial and borderline treasonous.\n\nAnyway, fast forward two thousand years, people come up with an idea that \"homosexuality\" is a sexual orientation, and people who identify as \"homosexual\" not only want to have some gay sex on the side (as if that wasn't bad enough), but they want to have gay sex exclusively, and not even have any babies! That's pretty shocking to this traditionalist worldview.\n\nI could quote you some of Paul's letters here, but they don't really explain that, they just assume this ancient worldview since everybody already knew that.\n\ntl;dr sexuality is culturally determined"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Original_sin"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1phpvi", "title": "How self-sustaining is the International Space Station?", "selftext": "If supply lines were cut for some reason, such as there was an explosion on a launching site or a war was declared making returning to Earth inconvenient or dangerous, how long could the astronauts safely survive? Would food be a problem before loss of atmosphere or orbit decay?\n\nFor the question, let's assume that everything was fully stocked and there was a method for them to return to Earth safely, how long could they wait up there and what would be the hardest challenge?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1phpvi/how_selfsustaining_is_the_international_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd2vhrl"], "score": [3], "text": ["The ISS is not at all self sustaining. It has no way of producing any food.  To do so would require a much larger space station built in a completely different fashion. (the current ISS \"leaks\" ).  \n\nYou would need huge spaces equipped with hydroponic farming facilities, possibly with artificial lighting (natural lighting in space would be too strong for earth plants, and transparent materials might be too fragile to use as part of a pressure containing space station, even though the pressure is pretty low (14.7 psi)\n\nYou would also need to have reclamation processes and equipment to extract and re-use all the water, gasses and other materials from all waste products (human and un-eaten plant parts).\n\nThis is just barest beginning.  How do they replace solar cells when they start to fail?   Where do they get more fuel to keep the ISS in a safe orbit?  ( The ISS, like most man-made satellites require occasional boosts to keep them from re-entering the atmosphere and hence burning up. \n\nCurrently the ISS gets supplies of gasses, and water as well as food with each ship. You would need a space station that doesn't leak. \n\nFrankly, they would be better off on the moon, at one of the poles where we now know there is water. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3mqbb8", "title": "ok. now we know that there is water on mars, what does this mean for the future and how can we benefit from this discovery? can humans live on mars?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mqbb8/eli5_ok_now_we_know_that_there_is_water_on_mars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvh5ev3", "cvh5hux", "cvh5q6w", "cvh9c28", "cvhifur"], "score": [23, 5, 7, 3, 3], "text": ["This does not really change things for humans. We already knew there was water on Mars, we just weren't sure of any liquid water.\n\nThe surface is still generally too cold, and too low pressure, for a human to survive. You'd need an enclosed environment, and if you had one of those you could just melt water ice from the planet. ", "Well, we have known there was water on Mars since about 1976. Just, it was only known to exist in vapor and solid form.\n\nNow we know it's also present in liquid form, kept so through large amounts of salt. Doesn't really change the picture for human habitation.", "One of things it might change is making it more *difficult* to explore Mars or live on it. More widespread liquid water near or on the surface increases the risk of cross-contamination: either wiping out existing ecosystems on Mars before we even get a chance to discover them, or accidentally colonizing Mars with a new ecosystem from Earth, with microbes from our robot landers.\n\nRight now we're already using techniques to avoid that: sterilizing our probes before they launch, and only landing in areas where Earth life *probably* couldn't survive. But we've already discovered our sterilization techniques aren't good enough, and this means our idea of where Earth life could survive on Mars might not be good enough either.", "Mars manned exploration ideas are sort of a romantic throwback in an era of remote-controlled robots.  Anything you might hope to find exploring mars by sending people there can be done far more cost-effectively (not to mention safely) by robots.    \n\nAnd if your goal is just to set up a colony, there's  no particular advantage to trying to live on Mars that you wouldn't get by trying to live on the moon.  Although Mars has some interesting geology including water, it's 500X further away and that makes it much harder.  (By comparison, the people who discovered the New World back in the day had experience travelling that far, just in other directions.)\n\nJust living in earth orbit for the time required to get to Mars introduces [undesirable physiological changes](_URL_0_) in astronauts, including vision problems and loss of muscle mass and bone density.  ", "Does anyone ever [search for their question](_URL_0_) first..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.iop.org/resources/topic/archive/spacetravel/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mn0de/eli5what_is_the_significance_of_finding_brine/"]]}
{"q_id": "54tzbg", "title": "Where could we settle on Mars?", "selftext": "Where are likely candidates for landing and colonization? What are the criteria that NASA and SpaceX are looking at? What are your initial impressions of the feasibility of this?\nAsking because of this: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54tzbg/where_could_we_settle_on_mars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d862lnx"], "score": [2], "text": ["You could potentially colonize Mars nearly anywhere.\n\nPlanetary Protection is a field of design and quality control for spacecraft and space missions about making sure bring a minimal number of microbes with us when we send stuff to space (and also don't kill anybody if we chance happen to bring any back). Because we don't know if there actually are martian real living martian microbes, there are some regions of its surface which NASA has quarantined from human travel for the foreseeable future. Robots can go there (if they've been carefully decontaminated) but humans wouldn't be allowed (because our bodies are walking talking bags of microbes). It would be really annoying if we send a million-dollar mission to find martian life, only to find someone ruined the \"detect-life-o-tron\" by sneezing a human cold virus on it.\n\nThe big questions that need be asked would be like \"which latitudes are easiest to access for spacecraft landing, vs. how close to the equator\" (because if you're close to the equator, you'll be exposed to more radiation during the day). Water, air and some kinds of fuel might potentially be scrubb-able from the atmosphere, but there are a lot of other questions that need to be answered before anyone can really nail down one spot. But if you like names, just go with the places talked about in Andy Weir's *The Martian*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3g017z", "title": "why is australia so heavily invested in the mh370 search?", "selftext": "I read somewhere Australia has earmarked A$100m for the search. It was the Malaysian national aviation company, most passengers were Chinese - apart from going missing supposedly 2000 miles off the coast of Australia, there doesn't seem any sense in them taking the search upon themselves....does there? The cynic in me asks 'what's in it for them?'", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g017z/eli5_why_is_australia_so_heavily_invested_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cttjj0z", "cttk040", "ctto4fa", "cttox3v", "cttqu1a", "cttr0s7", "cttrdmk", "cttvaj3", "cttwz0q", "ctu4a6v", "ctu4a7v", "ctu4llf", "ctu5qbk", "ctu6734", "ctuani7", "ctue3lp"], "score": [4, 69, 6, 1060, 22, 38, 210, 11, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I think it has to do with international laws at sea. Where if a plane crashed in a part belonging to a specific country, that country has an obligation to try to help find it and so on.", "At the time it happened our Prime Minister was becoming increasingly unpopular. He needed a positive news story to distract from domestic negatives. He went in hard to gain some  popularity. $100 million is a fairly cheap price to pay, especially so when it is tax payer money.\n\nThis might be overly cynical but I don't think it is inaccurate.", "Let's be real, does australia really have that much they can work on anyways? \n\n\"Hey Mate, we're the closest country to that plane crash\"\n\n\"Oi, let's investigate it\"\n\n", "Australia wants to assume the mantle of regional power. By doing this it shows \"We take care of our own, Malaysia owes us nothing but earmarking 100m is what regional powers can and will do to it's smaller neighbours\". It's a show of power wrapped in solidarity.\nBy helping Malaysia this way, future leaders of Malaysia will gravitate towards Australia and help it in establishing a local power group with Australia at it's head.", "I think an important thing to keep in mind is that a pretty big percentage of these sort of cost estimates are \u201csunk costs\u201d. These estimates always inlude the salaries of personnel, fuel for ships and planes, etc. That money was already going to be spent anyway and a lot of the hours for aircraft/ships would just be a normal part of their training flights, etc.", "One other thing is you might not want another country on your doorstep with all kinds of surveillance systems. Lets say I lose my phone in your house at a party. I come back the next day to look for it and I start opening every cabinet and drawer in your kitchen. Then I head to your bedroom. At this point you say, \"I'll look for it and let you know if I find it\".", "The short answer is [AMSA](_URL_1_). It actually falls under Australia's international responsibilities as as signatory to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, 1944; the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974; and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, 1979, is responsible for search and rescue over a vast area made up of the East Indian, South-west Pacific and Southern oceans. The internationally agreed Australian Search and Rescue Region covers 52.8 million square kilometres - over one-tenth of the earth's surface. Unlike some countries, Australia is fortunate to have the same boundaries for aviation and maritime search and rescue. \n\nIt is not the first time we have spent big money out there either, we spend good money on [Tony Bullimore](_URL_0_) because it falls under our jurisdiction.\n\nFrom my cynical side, the success of these rescues, or even finding the plane is important to the Australian Government to be seen as acting a regional power, further with MH370, I think we might be stretching US muscle to prove to China how great the US influence is, in finding these things.\n\n. ", "Australia is heavily invested in this because the incident occurred in their area of responsibility. The world is divided up into different regions that have their own rescue coordination center. Australia just happens to be responsible. ", "the $100m isn't just money spent on top of other things, there is a huge chance that the planes being flown around are done by pilots who need the time in the plane or get additional training. It's still an exersize in some way shape or form for their armed forces. So they would still be spending some of that $100m just to do these things anyways", "They're sore about getting destroyed at cricket, so they want to do something to make themselves feel better about life :)", "because Malaysia is egregiously incompetent and incapable of taking care of it. Australia is a leading first world nation in the vicinity ", "Because the West, especially the US and to a lesser degree the rest of the Anglosphere, is always there to help the rest of the world no matter how ungrateful they seem at times.", "As an aside, someone is getting a pretty awesome seabed map of the Indian Ocean out of this, even if they don't find it", "One of the main reasons that an article did (I believe it was in an Australian newspaper) mentioned that the reason behind so much funding into the search was to help aid China. Australia and China are developing strong bonds both economically and politically. The ex prime minister (Kevin Rudd) was famous for speaking Chinese (Mandarin I believe) and was public about strengthening ties with China. This is due to many reasons as Aus has a lot of trade with china and breaking the barrier tariffs and so on will help the Aus economy (I believe for mining and also export of some of our foods). So in part there is political motivation behind it and also humanitarian. Aus is also more central to the projected crash site and hence it would fall onto them to aid in the search. I hope this helps answer some of your questions. ", "Australia is a signatory of the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13, \"Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation\".  Annex 13 specifies who is responsible for instituting and conducting an investigation.  The \"State of Occurrence\" has the first priority; if the accident is outside the territory of any state, than the \"State of Registry\" shall lead the investigation, and states nearest the scene shall provide assistance.\n\nIn this case, it was believed that Australia was likely to be the nearest state, so Australia stepped up to offer resources.  Malaysia is the State of Registry, so they nominally own the investigation.  Malaysia set up a \"Joint Investigation Team\" which includes several countries with interest.  \n\nChina generally doesn't have any jurisdiction in the investigation, but there were 152 Chinese citizens on board, so they've taken an interest.  \n\nIn each case (Australia, Malaysia, China), there are, of course, political motivations as well.  Australia may want to show itself as a regional power and all-around good guy, taking care of its 6 missing citizens.  Malaysia has limited resources to invest in a global investigation and limited expertise in aviation or salvage, so they need to appear to be bringing in all available outside resources (and if it ends up being terrorism, they will need to show they're serious about security).  China wants to assert its global power, and appease angry Chinese families.  ", "Now one yet has given the correct answer.\n\nThe bathymetric data of the newly explored ocean floor can be used to detect oil and other resources.  AUS and FUGRO now have ownership of that data.\n\nThey can detect pockets of oil below the floor."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Bullimore", "https://www.amsa.gov.au/search-and-rescue/sar-in-australia/arrangements-in-australia/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4kwgbp", "title": "Are there any species of octopi that rear their young like mammals and birds do?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4kwgbp/are_there_any_species_of_octopi_that_rear_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3j3zwp"], "score": [7], "text": ["Probably not (but there\u2019s always a chance we just haven\u2019t found one yet). Octopus do have some parental care, but it consists only of protecting their eggs. Mammal and birds, on the other hand, tend to care for their young for some time after hatching/birth. Many octopus species die soon after laying their eggs. In some species, the female octopus will go without eating to protect her eggs and dies shortly after they hatch ([source]( _URL_1_)). A recent study even found that a deep sea octopus spends the longest time protecting her eggs of any known species ([source]( _URL_0_)). An octopus was observed tending to her eggs for nearly 4 and a half years (53 months). It is unclear if this species of octopus feeds during egg care, but fat stores, cold water and a lowered metabolism may allow her to do so. The octopus may not care for their young after hatching like birds do, but they do display some phenomenal parental care. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103437", "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-curious-facts-about-octopuses-7625828/?no-ist"]]}
{"q_id": "5mcane", "title": "is there an advantage to using the imperial system of measurement instead of the metric system?", "selftext": "To the best of my knowledge, the Metric System is standardised and the conversion to higher or lower measurements is linear; is there a reason aside from tradition, as to why the Imperial system is used?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mcane/eli5_is_there_an_advantage_to_using_the_imperial/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc2h7o6", "dc2hc05", "dc2hp39", "dc2i4dm", "dc2ii94", "dc2oege", "dc300ig"], "score": [4, 10, 6, 6, 20, 3, 3], "text": ["To my knowledge, there is no benefit. We Americans are just stubborn and like to be different.", "The Imperial system is more closely tied to the size of the human body, and it is easier to measure things by cutting them in half or doubling them than it is to break out a scale. ", "A minor \"benefit\" I've heard mentioned is that a foot is 12 inches which can be divided more readily (2, 3, 4) without  needing to resort to fractions. (Note: I am merely passing on what I heard and am not advocating that such a thing is indeed a benefit.)", "In metric, all measurements are relatable to one another. You can easily determine how many joules of energy you need to raise the temperature of a kilo of water by one degree C, because all of them use base units of kilos, Celsius  (Kelvin)  &  Joules.\n\nIn the imperial system, however, the only way would be to resort to conversion equations or look up tables, since there are no standardised, relatable units.\n\nAs someone else pointed out, before the days where we had easy access to a calculator, the imperial system's base in the number 12 would make it easier to divide it up, since 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4,  &  6, while 10 has only 2  &  5, with 3 as a very rough approximation. But these days that's no excuse to cling to it.", "No advantage to the imperial. The changes are arithmetic only. The metric system being standardised in orders of magnitude makes it significantly easier to remember. \n\nIt's worth pointing out they are (were?) both standardised. The difference is one is standardised in a much more user friendly way. Look at these two Imperial units list [this] (_URL_0_)\n\nand [this] (_URL_2_). These are *slightly* different from the ones the US uses, but comparable enough for this (it's a bit like the difference between US English and correct English :P )\n\nNow look at [this](_URL_1_) This one is much easier to remember. ", "\"United States customary units\" (that's the official name) are used in lots of things worldwide because changing would be inconvenient. Wheel sizes, camera mounting screws, electronic component spacing, are a few. \n\nThe US continues using them because there isn't a big benefit to changing. Scientists and engineers all know the metric system and use it when it is advantageous. It has been widely taught in schools since the 1970's. Most people just don't care. ", "The advantage is that people are used to it.  \n\nBut in science and engineering, the disadvantages are legion.  \n\nConverting units and dimensional analysis in metric systems are a snap, but in English units they are a nightmare, at least for me (I'm an engineer, btw).\n\nI'm American, and I far prefer to do calculations in imperial and convert back to imperial at the end.  It's just easier.    \n\nProbably my biggest peeve about the imperial system is the slug.  The imperial unit for mass, the slug, is basically a formality, and most engineering texts use the concept of pound-mass, where they just take something's weight and divide by gravity, as most things are measured in pounds, not slugs.  \n\nThis may not sound like a big problem, but what it results in is that EVERY SINGLE EQUATION has an errant gravity constant (or lack of one, or one squared, etc) that is different that what I learned, and am used to using.  \n\nSo, when studying for my professional engineering test, every single equation had two variants:  Imperial and metric.  Thankfully, the PE test took answers in both forms, so I just used metric.  \n\nMaybe it's just me, but I HATE working with imperial units.  I wish we'd get on with the rest of the world and move on to metric, if only for the sake of science and engineering.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/English_length_units_graph.png", "https://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fnext3-assets.s3.amazonaws.com%2Factivities%2F555%2Fbackgrounds-1423864499-LANG_Metric_a3.png&amp;imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.next.cc%2Fjourney%2Flanguage%2Fmetrics&amp;docid=ea-CQBikHh78VM&amp;tbnid=kXENBH8rYGKCPM%3A&amp;vet=1&amp;w=380&amp;h=390&amp;client=safari&amp;bih=712&amp;biw=1280&amp;q=metric%20system&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjDoomIlK3RAhUFxFQKHY4wAg8QMwg3KAcwBw&amp;iact=mrc&amp;uact=8", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/English_mass_units_graph.svg/400px-English_mass_units_graph.svg.png"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6laxqs", "title": "why are lobsters cooked alive and do they feel pain?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6laxqs/eli5_why_are_lobsters_cooked_alive_and_do_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djsfau6", "djsfgg1", "djsfyky", "djsgi6j", "djsh3io", "djsozve"], "score": [2, 12, 18, 6, 2, 5], "text": ["Follow up: what about crabs?", "Modern chefs will spike a lobster or a crab (in the brain) before boiling it.  \n\nThe reason people think they are alive when they go in is largely because they make noise.  That's steam escaping their shell.", "Lobsters spoil extremely quickly once dead. So they need to be kept alive until just before you cook them. Most actually kill them with a knife prior to boiling, but the \"traditional\" method is to just put them in a pot and cook them alive. ", "For maximum safety, you want the distance between slaughter and plate to be as short as possible (unless freezing is involved, but that's another issue). Lobsters are one of the only animals that are often sold to consumers live for the simple reason that they're easy to keep alive and people aren't squeamish about killing them by dropping them into boiling water. You can also plunge a knife into their head but I think that's a fair whack more personal.\n\nWhether lobsters feel pain is another matter. The answer is that we don't really know. The nervous system of an arthropod is totally unlike that of humans, and pain is nearly impossible to measure objectively. Legally speaking invertebrates have basically no rights as far as animal cruelty goes so it doesn't really matter.", "Lobster meat is extremely delicate and will spoil rapidly after it dies. It is also much more prone to food poisoning if its not fresh. Lobsters don't have complex nervous systems like mammals do, but they still react to stimuli that would cause pain. They likely do, but not to the same extent or at least the same way that humans feel pain. ", "i imagine it's a freshness thing as far as cooking goes. Whether of not they feel pain? Well, humans and lobsters utilize some of the same neurotransmitters involved in the human experiences of fear and anxiety. When anxiety drugs are given to humans you can measure the physiological response. Equivalent responses are observed in crustaceans with the same Drugs. The same goes for pain responses, in that we can measure neurological activity changes in either the presence or absence of pain stimuli. Seeing as such things as fear and pain are evolutionary speaking pretty universal survival mechanisms, I would feel it safe to assume that being boiled to death is a pretty good way to induce the maximal level of pain that a living creature can experience, regardless of whether it's a lobster or a puppy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4gesa0", "title": "why are there separate prices for different age groups?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gesa0/eli5_why_are_there_separate_prices_for_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2gvx5x", "d2gvy06", "d2gw1ud", "d2h3jub"], "score": [10, 62, 28, 23], "text": ["The reason behind it all is to make the most amount of money. Not necessarily the most money per item sold or the most items sold. The only goal is to make the most money.\n\nWith different pricing you can give a greater incentive for different age groups to buy your product or service. They are attempting to attract more of that demographic to their business. ", "It's to get more of that demographic into your store.\n\nMovie theaters, for example, often give discounts for children to make it more affordable for families to attend. Same for senior citizens who are on a fixed income. Since they make their profit at the concession stand, it works out well for them.", "Those are generally the ages that don't have any disposable income (they make fuck all).\n\nLowering the prices to cater those group gives them the incentive to spend on your product.\n\nThe same reason that children usually enter certain places for free, because they garuantee an adult.", "In economics, its called third degree price discrimination. Basically, you're segmenting your market into groups, and charging each segment what they're willing to pay for whatever you're selling.\n \nThis way, if you've properly segmented your market (by age, gender, whatever boundaries cannot easily be crossed) then you make more money overall. The people who are willing to pay less, pay that amount, instead of nothing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3s6mmt", "title": "how raising minimum wage to $15/hour would effect someone who is not rich, but who already makes more than $15/hour", "selftext": "I've done some research into how raising the minimum wage would effect those people who are currently making the minimum, but what is going to happen to the large group of people who are salaried at let's say $35K/ year, which works out to $16.83 pre tax/ hour?  I seriously doubt that raising the minimum wage would encourage companies to increase salaries across the board to accommodate, so someone making $35K is going to have increase costs with no benefits?  I don't see how that would work without having that class of people change their lifestyles dramatically.\n\nI found this explanation from a thread from about a year ago (user deleted):\n\"Say I own a burger store, and I employ Adam to work it for me. The raw materials to make a burger cost $1.00 per burger. Adam's hourly wage is $6.00, and he sells about 12 burgers per hour. This equates out to about $0.50 per burger. The price of the burgers he sells is $2.00 per burger, so for every burger sold I make $0.50 profit.\n\nNow the government raises the minimum wage to $12.00 an hour. Suddenly I have to pay Adam about $1.00 for each burger he sells, and on top of the $1.00 raw material cost this leaves no profit for me. So in order to get my profit back, I raise prices. Burgers now cost $2.50 each, of which $1 goes on materials, $1 goes on Adam's wages, and $0.50 goes to me as profit.\n\nBut at the higher price, I can only sell about 10 burgers per hour instead of 12, so I am in effect paying Adam $1.20 in labour costs per burger he makes, and only making $0.30 profit to counter this. Now I can raise prices further if I want to, but this will cause the amount of burgers people buy to drop further. So maybe I decide that I'm happy with this arrangement. Maybe I think I will get more profit if I raise the price again, or maybe I think the increased sales from lowering the price will make up for the lost revenue.\n\nThe effect of increasing costs, of which labour is a part, is to cause an inward shift of the supply curve. Basically, I am less willing to supply stuff at any given price if it costs me more to get it made.\n\nThe extent to which a fall in supply affects the price of a good is determined by the price elasticity of demand for that good. This is a measure of how much demand for a good responds to changes in price. Examples of price elastic goods are things like milk, where every company has a lot of competitors willing to sell exactly the same product so if one company raised their prices all the consumers would switch to a cheaper supplier and the lost sales would more than cancel out the increased revenue. A price inelastic product is something like cigarettes, where companies have strong brand identities so consumers are not likely to switch to another brand, and they are addictive so consumers are not likely to stop consumption due to a price change.\n\nIf a product is price elastic, then the increase in price due to labour costs will be very small, and the company will have to take a big chunk out of its profits. If a product is price inelastic, then the increase in price will be larger, but it should not be more than the increase in costs. This is because if a company could make more money in revenue AND have less material costs ($1 for each frozen burger) by raising their prices further, then they would probably have already done it by now.\n\nIncreasing minimum wage WILL result in increased prices, but that increase will never be more than the minimum wage increase unless the company is using the increase as an excuse to screw over their customers and hoik off more profit. This will probably happen in some places, but it's not the fault of the minimum wage.\n\nSo say burgers are now $2.50 to buy, and Adam (flipping 10 burgers per hour for a wage of $12) makes $1.20 per burger he sells, as opposed to $0.50 before. The increase in labour costs per unit of production is $0.70, and the increase in price per unit is $0.50. The $0.20 difference has come out of my profit.\n\nNow consider this from Adam's point of view. Before, one hour of working would mean he was able to buy 3 burgers. Now, he can buy 4 and have $2 left over. Adam has clearly gained from this. Say everywhere doubled their minimum wages, and all other prices increased by 25% to cover this. He would still be far better off, because his wages increased by 100%. In real terms, he has 75% more money to spend.\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s6mmt/eli5_how_raising_minimum_wage_to_15hour_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwuk3ga", "cwul63c", "cwundkw", "cwunhjr", "cwutvx0"], "score": [5, 6, 14, 2, 23], "text": [" >  I seriously doubt that raising the minimum wage would encourage companies to increase salaries across the board to accommodate\n\nThey must. If they don't then people might be convinced to take the wage hit to go to a lower paying, but far easier minimum wage job. \n\nThe raise won't be as big as the minimum wage increase, but it exists.\n\n At a certain point, the minimum wage increase will negatively affect people, as it is a zero-sum game. Increasing minimum wage does not directly increase productivity, after all.\n", "Just to add one thing. \n\nCompanies are less likely to hire lower skilled workers when they are forced to pay them more. \n\nSo...if you run a business, it's no longer profitable to higher someone with less or no work experience, and you'll seek a higher quality, higher grade person, for that money/cost. ", "One of the main counter arguments is this:\n\nWhen adam's dad worked for you he was only able to make 6 burgers per hour and was making $6 per hour and your profits were a bit lower. Over the years, through better training, tools, and being forced through more metrics to work faster, Adam is making you those 12 burgers per hour but is still being paid the 6$ an hour his dad was. You have been enjoying the fruits of that increased productivity with higher profits and by being able to keep prices artificially low. Now people are saying \"hey, if adam's dad making 6 burgers an hour was worth 6$ per hour and you stayed in business... why isnt his son that makes you 12 burgers an hour worth twice that.\n\n\nThe numbers aren't precise there or in any way reserved for minimum wage workers, but that is the general argument around the fact that worker productivity has gone up over the past decades so much faster that wages.\n\nAnd business owners are successfully keeping middle class eyes firmly fixed on how much harder it might be to afford a hamburger that they aren't asking why it is already harder for them to buy a house, a car, and educate their kids.", "The issue is more than just one company raising prices. If I have to raise my prices to cover the expended costs, were not just dealing with my business selling burgers, but my ability to buy burgers which is also reduced.\n\nAs a business owner, I now have less capital. Not only did you cut my profit by 40% (.30 cents per burger vs the old .50 cents) my payroll tax has increased, so that $15 wage means I have to pay additional taxes on that new wage. So now instead of making 80,000 (average restaurant owner's salary), I'm making 48,000 and Adam is making 30,000. Why the fuck would I even bother starting my own restaurant (which takes $100,000+ and is very risky) when I can make a similar amount flipping burgers with no risk?", "Real world example. I am a manager for a $4 million a year store in a multi billion dollar company. My company pays 50 cents above minimum wage as a starting point. In Ontario Canada, recently our minimum wage went up to 11.25, therefore we pay 11.75. My wage budget for the year did not change with this increase in wage that all of my minimum wage workers received. If I am spending an extra $2 per standard closing shift, per employee, over the course of the year, the only thing I can do is not book as many people, or throw my wage out of whack. Essentially, your time as an employee for me is worth more, but as a result I will see you less, meaning over the course of a year, you will earn less. My expectations when I do see you is that you juggle more customers and/or tasks. Higher stress for the employee over their 4 hour shift for $2. \n\nNow the other problem is my full timers used to earn $2 plus an hour more then new kids because of there experience and skill set. That differential is eroded because those earning above minimum didn't see an equivalent increase. Up one more peg, my entry level managers make around $15 an hour on salary. If I increase wages for my full time floor staff, then I am showing them I value them above part timers, but I bring them dangerously close to my management team. If I increase full time and management wage 50 cents, which is 8 bodies, then that's $160 week more on wage. There goes another 4 shifts a week for part timers. \n\nThe end result ends up being either 1) low skilled or low experienced employees making more while the rest of our tenured staff, management included continue on. 2) a wonderful trickle up effect where we all make more money. 3) I increase my valued employees wage to keep pace and shrink my roster down.  \n\nWhatever anyone says about the ramifications, there are good and bad points for increasing. The bottom line is if 50 cents can throw of my wage for the couple months I have left of fiscal, you can be guaranteed that a jump up to $15 or anything like that will have drastic changes, if not to the requirements to receive the job, then to the expectations placed on individuals in that job. \n\nTl;dr I have 3 apples for 3 people, but each person is now entitled to 1 and a half apples. I'm gonna need less people"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qvfzb", "title": "Why does helium-4 seem to be the only bosonic matter?", "selftext": "Most bosons seem to be gauge bosons for mediating the fundamental forces. \n\nBut, Helium-4 is able to form a bose-einstein condensate so it has integer spin. How do all the electrons in Helium-4 end up not obeying the pauli exclusion principle?\nWhat is going on in BEC situation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qvfzb/why_does_helium4_seem_to_be_the_only_bosonic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdh168l", "cdh1msx", "cdh2kqn"], "score": [4, 4, 4], "text": ["Well, there are a lot of composite particles that can form bosons.  For instance, Helium 3 also forms a condensate (superfluid).  Superconducting electrons form cooper pairs.  There are also lattice vibrations (phonons), electron oscillations (plasmons), electron-hole pairs, and so on that don't necessarily form condensates but do obey bose statistics.", "I'll add to the other responses by pointing out that, even within the elementary particles, the Higgs boson is not a gauge boson.", "As a general answer: It isnt. \n\nWhat you need to consider, is that a boson is composed of fermions (if it is not an elementary particle.) All fermions adhere to the Pauli Exclusion Principle - but if they form a boson together, then they do not need to do so anymore, since the pauli principle is valid only for fermions, and they form a boson now. Thus, there is no Problem with BECs. Dont think of the Pauli Principle as something that prevents fermions from ever coming close to each other. It is a mathematical Rule that describes the behaviour of fermions. Nothing more. As soon as we are not looking at fermions anymore, Pauli's Principle is of no importance anymore, and this is the case in Helium-4.\n\nAnother Example is btw. Lithium-7, which we can condensate just fine and is a Boson: 3 Proton + 4 Neutron + 3 Electron, all fermions on their own, form a Boson. \n\nSource: Physics Grad Student, did my Bachelorthesis on Condensates. \n\nEDIT: \nAs /u/dampew pointed out, we can make condensates of fermions aswell. However, this works by pairing the fermions to something between bosonic molecules and cooper pairs by tuning via the feshbach resonance, and is thus in a way just a condensate of bosonic molecules. If you wish to take a further look into this topic, I recommend looking into the publications of Prof. Ketterle from MIT. Especially the Doctor Thesis of Martin Zwierlein is highly recommended."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3pzw6s", "title": "why is hurricane patricia considered a hurricane when its coming from the pacific ocean. wouldn't be regarded as a typhoon? or does it have to due with where it makes landfall?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pzw6s/eli5_why_is_hurricane_patricia_considered_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwawinn", "cwawl7w", "cwaz8ow", "cwb2hz2", "cwb3bs7"], "score": [78, 153, 123, 2, 3], "text": ["If they originate in the Atlantic or in the eastern Pacific they are hurricanes. If they originate in the western Pacific, they are typhoons. Really, they are all tropical cyclones and the hurricane/typhoon distinction is just cultural fluff.", "Has to do with Longitudes **Edit** and Agencies. \n\nfrom 140\u00b0W longitude to 180\u00b0W longitude the storms are called hurricanes, and they are monitored by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center.\n\npast 180\u00b0W in the pacific they are called a typhoon and they are monitored by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as well as the Japan Meteorological Agency\n\n\n**EDIT** I have no idea where the Cyclone Vs Typhoon split is. Sorry.", "[Here is a map from NOAA that was up on the BBC website.](_URL_0_)\n\nAs you can see the main factors is whether the storm is north or south of the equator or west or east of the international dateline with storms in the Indian ocean being mixed in with souther storms.", "The technical term is \"Tropical Revolving Storm\" however different names exist based on geographic location. ", "Eastern Pacific, Essentially from Hawaii eastwards, and north of the Equator: Hurricane\n\nWest of Hawaii and north of the Equator:Typhoon\n\nSouth of the Equator: Cyclone. \n\nThough grammatically, if you want to split hairs, anything that revolves in a counterclockwise direction in the Northern hemisphere, or in  the clockwise direction in the southern hemisphere and has a distinct rotation around a clear center of circulation is technically a cyclone. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/cY8Hchx.png"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6afu19", "title": "why do lower-income folk work multiple jobs to support themselves rather than work more hours at a single job?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6afu19/eli5_why_do_lowerincome_folk_work_multiple_jobs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhe6zn6", "dhe70l4", "dhe70q0", "dhe71sy", "dhe74ks", "dhe76wh", "dhe7c6c", "dhe7h4l", "dhe810t", "dhe8d4d", "dheblxd", "dheexd8", "dheezcz"], "score": [4, 16, 21, 11, 78, 5, 4, 7, 3, 4, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Most low-pay jobs intentionally keep people under 32 hours so they don't need to give them benefits. And they most certainly avoid paying people overtime like the plague - labor costs need to be kept to a minimum.", "The vast majority of jobs do not offer employees the option of working as many ours as they'd like.\n\nThe service industry (where most low-income folks work) rarely has reliable schedules and often schedules only a week or less in advance. Which turns trying to work a reasonable amount of hours into a crazy juggling act.", "Companies incur more costs hiring full-time workers. They must pay for benefits, sick time, vacation, etc. These are things not mandated for part-time workers. So a company can hire 100 part time workers instead of 20 full time workers, pay them the same hourly wage but give them less hours and the overall out-of-pocket cost to the company is much lower. They also have to worry about covering shifts and people quitting less because there's a bigger supply of people on the schedule. ", "Low income folk here: my main job simply cant give me any more hours. No more work to be done (i work in a lab). Part time jobs also offer the benefit of something different. 40 hours looking at beakers and 20 looking at food is better than 60 at beakers. So dull after awhile ", "It may not be available to them. Full-time positions are significantly more expensive for companies, as once you cross a certain threshold of hours the benefits you need to offer your employees increases. (Exactly what depends on the state.)\n\nThus, a company may be able to save money by juggling several part-time people to meet their needs rather than employing one full time.\n\nThis often puts employees in a position they're not fans of since it'll often mean they're working the equivalent of a full time load (at multiple employers), but not getting benefits like health insurance from any company.", "It's typically not by choice but rather due to the lack of full-time jobs available. The problem is a large number of the lower-waged jobs are part-time only since part time workers aren't required to be given benefits and are easier to slot into shift work. Most of those that have multiple jobs would love to have just one, stable job that can pay the bills, but those jobs aren't as readily available.", "Having worked 2 jobs I did it because I couldn't erm enough working at one place.\n\nThe place I worked in the week was shifts either 6am-2pm or 2pm-10pm 5 days a week warehouse work. But it wasn't open on the weekend so no more shifts available there but I would still work about 4-8 hours overtime in the week.\n\nThe place at the weekend never had overtime was just a Saturday and Sunday job that paid quite well for the 16 hours so was a great boost to my money. I got paid about the same as 3.5 days in the week for 2 at the weekend.\n\nIf I didn't have the weekend job I couldn't work enough overtime in the week to pay the bills so had to work 2 jobs.", "There's a finite number of hours most jobs will offer to an employee. In some cases, there just isn't enough work to go around to maintain one employee for more than 30 or 40 hours, depending on the job.\n\nFrom another angle, employers in the US are required to pay overtime rates if an hourly employee (and some salaried employees in certain contexts) works more than 40 hours in a week, or either 8 or 12 hours in one day (I forget which at the moment).\n\nSay one employee worked 80 hours in a week. The law requires that additional hours after 40 get paid time-and-a-half, so the extra 40 hours is paid as though it were 60 hours. This single worker is getting paid for 100 hours of wages for 80 hours of work.\n\nInstead, the employer keeps their costs down - both in terms of labor and costs of operating the building (someone working 80 hours is going to be doing overnight shifts) - by hiring a second employee to work side-by-side. Now they're down to paying 80 hours of wages for 80 hours of work.\n\nThere are also laws in some cases where certain benefits are required to be granted to an employee who works more than a certain number of hours per week. These benefits cost money for the company to offer. If the company doesn't want to incur *that* cost, they may hire more workers and reduce hours to just below that threshold. Again, that's a cost savings to the employer, but it reduces the income that worker can take home from that one job.\n\n---\n\nSimply put, most companies just can't offer more hours to their workers. So, low-income workers take more than one job so they can work more hours and take home more income.", "Many lower end jobs limit the number of hours they let people work so that they don't have to offer benefits, don't have to worry about workers qualifying for overtime. So if people need more money, their option is typically to take on multiple jobs when they cannot get enough hours at their first job.", "Because they cannot work more hours at a single job. Their employer will not give them more hours either because they do not want to pay overtime pay, or because they do not want to pay them full time employee benefits. ", "Employers often have to pay for/offer benefits to full-time employees (40hrs). To avoid paying for such things, employers have begun employing 2 people at part-time (20hrs + 20hrs) instead of paying one person at full-time. \n\nWhy can they do this? \nthere is an abundance of workers, there is a shortage of work. \nif there were too few potential employees, then employers would be forced to hire full-time", "many jobs willnot let u work over 40 hours per week becuase then they have to pay u time and a half. i know this is the case at my job. so by working 30 hours/week at job A and 20 at job B they  can get more than 40hrs. per week", "When my ex worked hourly jobs and not salary, it was routine for everyone to be scheduled about 30 hours per week.  Once the average hit 35 hours, more workers would be hired.  This prevented them from ever having to pay overtime.\n\nThe worst part for these workers is trying to manage two schedules from two different businesses.  Each not caring that how they schedule you could lose you your second job."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ygjix", "title": "why does craigslist still look like a website from the early 90's?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ygjix/eli5_why_does_craigslist_still_look_like_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyda4ba", "cyda4gy", "cydaly5", "cydbhqg", "cydce3x", "cydgh88", "cydi4sv", "cydj494", "cydjld2"], "score": [39, 232, 33, 11, 8, 29, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["its their thing. they remain unique by hanging onto their distinctive stripped-down look. they have added a lot of bells and whistles compared to what it looked like 15+ years ago, but hold onto their distinctive look because the people who still use it prefer that.", "This question comes up about various websites fairly often, and I'm afraid it makes no sense. \n\nWebsites are not required to change because of your perception of what a website needs to look like \"right now\". That website does its job, it fulfils its functionality and it's not in any danger from competition. Why would someone put in the immense amount of effort to change it? What do you think it's missing? \n\nEdit: Apostrophes. \nEdit-Edit: I has too many apostrophes in my original comment. Craigslist is not missing apostrophes to my knowledge. ", "The same reason Reddit looks the way it does. Users have already learned how to use the site. Even minor design changes create dissonance in user experience and people flip out. Look what happens every time Facebook changes designs. People get confused and complain. Craigslist is a fairly simple platform, too, and a simple design (or lack-there-of) is just part of their image.\n\nThis line from their site, regarding the use of .org, also explains why they've chosen to retain the original design aesthetic. \n\nt symbolizes the relatively non-commercial nature, public service mission, and non-corporate culture of craigslist.", "Because not every website's purpose is to be pretty, the most important thing, is it useful to the end users.\n\nAnd most people, of all ages, can easily figure out how to use it.\n\nSo it really doesn't need a redesign.\n\nAlso where would it get the money for a redesign? It doesn't make any money unless there's some advertising on the site.", "It's what people have come to expect from CL. It's no-frills, no-nonsense, straightforward links are approachable for anyone and the confusion factor is nil. If they changed anything, people would freak the hell out. The consistency means you can navigate that website in your head, forever. Anyone who has sold more than one item, looked for more than one job, hunted for more than one apartment already knows how to use the website and it's **easy as fuck**.", "They advertised for help building the site on craigslist, a guy showed up and murdered the entire company. Classic craigslist.", "It seems like most comments are that CL serves its purpose and functionality, so why change that. While I appreciate practicality and simplicity, I feel like attractiveness is part of the overall purpose. A car serves its purpose as a paintless (not a word) metal box with a padded chairs. However, the consumer also appreciates the aesthetically luxury car in addition to functionality; the two don't have to be disjoint. With websites, of course users want functionality, but they also want traffic. \n\nTake for example Google. I love Google because of its simplicity and user friendly home page. But they spend on redesigning the word Google and having a special celebratory logo for holidays. I keep going back to Google and sometimes Bing because they are functional eye candy.", "There are a lot of background improvements to Craigslist now compared with 10 years ago, but the UI is generally the same. Many researchers believe people don't like constantly changing UI. \n\nThere is also a kind of pragmatic philosophy and analytical mindset towards this too. Basically: *Besides just to \"get with the times\", why? What improvement to the customer experience warrants a UI change?*\n\nThirdly, people typically prefer a simpler UI with less \"random crap\" in the way. Some examples:\n\n- When you want to look something up online, do you prefer the way Yahoo looks or the way Google looks?\n\n- If you happen to remember what Myspace used to look like; Would you prefer that UI over Facebook's? (I just mean in general, not referencing the customer complaints when they make changes).\n\nOn the other side of the coin. Remember what Amazon first looked like? The UI was just crappy to use, even when they only sold books. Besides customer complaints about using their site, they also obviously started selling more stuff than just books. A dramatic UI change was necessary in order to adjust to this.", "\"If it ain't broken\"?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15p2bm", "title": "Why do judges bang a gavel?", "selftext": "A quick google search tells a lot about what they are used for but nothing on the history other than to say \"traditionally\". How far back does that tradition go and how did it come about? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15p2bm/why_do_judges_bang_a_gavel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7ohw2u", "c7oia82", "c7ok50v", "c7okxo9", "c7oqrtr"], "score": [85, 15, 21, 7, 8], "text": ["As a lawyer, I can tell you that I have never seen a judge bang a gavel once.  They don't bang gavels; actors pretending to be judges bang gavels.", "At the Republican and Democratic national conventions last fall they officially \"gaveled in\" the conventions, and then brought them to a close with a gavel as well. So, it may not be restricted to judges so much as it is being used in order to designate the official opening of some specific types of proceedings. Knowing that might help in any attempt to determine the origins. ", "I can only speculate whether there is a direct genealogy throughout the past, but in ancient Germanic Thing meetings, people banged their spears against their shields to indicate support for a motion. I've found a couple of references on google to medieval practices, which you must have found yourself as well, but I now wonder whether this was also a Roman thing.", "English and Welsh judges have never used Gavels in criminal courts.  \n\n_URL_0_\n\nI assume that they were purloined from auction rooms by producers of Court room dramas simply because they provide an element of punctuation to a scene. ", "This is well outside my area (the question whether it was used by the Romans dragged me in: the answer is no).\n\nI did come across [this](_URL_0_) which ordinarily I wouldn't consider a reputable citation, but there seems to be a dearth of information elsewhere. It does however quote a response from the Practising Law Institute which seems to have some credibility.\n\nI am, however, suspicious that this seems to pin the usage on the Masons - in my limited experience they seem to be the go-to explanation for many obscure practices. But it may be accurate, I cannot judge.\n\nI will also add to the choir and say that they are not used in Australian courts. To quote Michael Kirby, one of our most eminent jurists and a former High Court judge:\n\n\u201cI had lots of quite emotional situations, but I never, never felt any need for a gavel\u2026 it\u2019s ridiculous. Why do you need to be hammering away on the bench? A few kindly or strong words, a few frosty glares, and the whole place falls into the right situation.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/court-traditions"], ["http://www.gavelstore.com/history.html"]]}
{"q_id": "15l0se", "title": "how the online porn industry makes money", "selftext": "I know that in theory they make money off the ad clicks... but what are the ads for? Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it pretty much just other porn, and occasionally online games? Both of those things must also make their money from ad clicks.\n\nIt seems like there has to be a place where it ends, where some consumers actually put real money into this industry... but what motive do they have to do that? Especially in reference to places that show unlimited porn for free, and then exclusively advertise other porn. How does that work? Where do clicks get turned into cash and how? What motive would someone have to pay for porn when they can get any fetish hardcore, free?\n\nPlease don't just guess \"well some people who are on these types of sites pay for more anyway\" without any evidence to back that up.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15l0se/eli5_how_the_online_porn_industry_makes_money/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7newn4", "c7nfsas", "c7ngsue", "c7ngz3y", "c7nh1it", "c7nhb3l", "c7nivh5", "c7njohq", "c7njv9n", "c7nlbd8", "c7nmf4o", "c7noaiz", "c7nomxt", "c7nouyq"], "score": [46, 6, 9, 3, 2, 5, 9, 2, 2, 7, 4, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Actually, it's very simple, two kinds of people pay for online porn:\n\n- People who simply do not know about the possibility of getting it for free on streaming sites.\n- People who want access to higher quality videos. I mean, have you looked at the video quality on (most) free streaming porn sites ? This alone is a huge factor.\n\nI'd add something about the wrongness of explaining the online porn industry to a 5 year old, but that'd be too easy :)", "Old people, they have the money and lack the know how/initiative to get the porn for free. ", "I had a friend who worked for a porn site for a while, and he said they made money from personal videos. It was amateur porn, and members would message the girls and pay for videos for their particular interest, like eating cake naked or dancing with shellfish. I know the site made good money, so assume there is a demand for that.", "Eventually all click-thru ads lead to a pay porn site. Yes, there are people who pay for online porn.  Maybe your question should be \"who the hell actually pays for internet porn?\"", "Nearly everything online that makes money is advertisement based.  In the adult industry, its usually relationship sites like adult friend finder, or live jasmine, or whatever where the real money is, not the porn.  So, someone puts up porn to get eyeballs, and just puts the adds for these other services on their page.  The site gets paid in advertising dollars and ultimately everyone is happy.\n\nOf course some sites think they can make money by selling \"premium content\", but those people are idiots all around.  Video is bits, and I don't know of a single case of someone be prosecuted for pirating digital pornography that has ever been successfully prosecuted.  Although sites like Met-Art and Suicide Girls *must* be making a significant amount of their revenue this way, this *must* be an ever decreasing revenue stream.", "there are also the live shows that the actresses do that net them quite a bit of money. The actresses get on in the evening, talk a bit about and then set up a \"private\" viewing where people can pay varying amounts of money (5-10$ is typical requested, i've seen up to 40$ if the person doesn't have a big audience) to be able to watch them actually perform the acts and chat with them while they do so. This \"private\" viewing is only just the people who pay, and each session generally has a cutoff somewhere in the 200-300$ range before it will start. I am assuming that the actresses give the websites a cut of that money for hosting the stream. ", "Louis Theroux did a recent documentary about the porn industry\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe industry itself is really suffering. A lot of the performers have turned to doing web cam shows, or even prostitution. The porn is basically advertising for them now, rather than the main income.", "Most people who aren't into generic boring porn end up having to pay. Kink, Fetish, and Alt porn all has a lot of users who pay to get access to sites.", "if it's free, you are the product... they are probably selling your info.", "Porn on the web makes money in one of three ways:\n\n1. High quality porn, like Brazzers, RealityKings, MetArt. Even though you can find porn all over the place, some sites make such high quality material that people sign up anyway.\n\n2. Specific kinks. Like diapers, femdom, shit like that. People with those kinks will become members of sites which a offer good quality library of such things.\n\n3. Ads. Basically shitty porn sites or porn tubes make money off advertisements.\n\nThat's it.", "I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet that the streaming sites are usually owned by companies that also own the pay for membership or DVD sites/companies.\n\n_URL_0_ - \"Manwin is the owner of many major pornographic web 2.0 websites including YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube, JuicyBoys, Webcams, KeezMovies and SpankWire...\n\nManwin also owns and operates a number of pornographic content brands such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, Mofos, MyDirtyHobby and Twistys.They also manage the websites of Wicked Pictures.\"\n\nSo when you're going on the streaming sites they're getting paid via ads and you're still ultimately helping out in a way those pay to view sites. Also, you'll notice on sites like Tube8 it's hard to find entire videos from Brazzers or Mofos-you'll see few minute clips but not the whole thing whereas you can often see entire scenes from other non-affliated sites. ", "The actual explanation, and I can't find the article right now, is that porn as an industry is pretty much dead, because of youporn, xhamster and the like.\n\n\nThe good days are over. Sure, maybe Vivid superstars and brazzers girls, who built an audiance when there was still money in the game will continue to make a buck, but it's not a good era for porn performers.\n\n\nWhat's left is cam girls. People will pay to see a \"real\" girl live, that you can chat with. I think they represent a good part of the ads out there. But I have adblocker so I'm not sure. And I mean, I don't watch porn either.", "I work in the industry, and have since 1996. I've worked for Playboy (yes, they used to own hardcore porn sites) and many other big names.\n\nWe make our money from a variety of methods. Nowadays, that money is very much a shadow of its former self. It used to be very easy to monetize surfers, and we all got wealthy in a hurry.\n\nIn the current industry climate, consolidation has been the key. Where once sites could stand on their own, now larger players buy the smaller players and group them into networks, creating economies of scale and synergies. One of the largest of these companies, Manwin, has been on an acquisition spree in recent years.\n\nAncillary revenues are now important, where once they were ignored. The signup used to drive revenue. Now, it's much more diversified. We do cross-sales (selling a membership to more than one site when you sign up) to wring more money out of each customer. We also sell dating services (Adult Friend Finder, Fling, etc), and cam services.\n\nThe signups are drying up due to all of the people giving it away for free, and it has put a lot of people out of business. Those who continue to survive are typically focus on niche or micro-niche content (which is harder to find for free), or have huddled together into the aforementioned larger networks.\n\nI hope this gives you some insight -- I'm typing on my phone, so it's hard to be too verbose.", "I grossed over 3 million dollars between 2001 and 2011 with ONE website. The key was to get in while the going was good, and to have cheap production costs; I lived half the year in Thailand and all my models worked for a fraction of the cost that LA people would work for. We charged 29.95 a month for membership and at the peak we had over 1500 members; do the math, 30x1500 per month. By 2007 I had 7 people working with me, after just starting by myself with a crappy non-digital camera back in 2000, and we had well over 500 different models on the website, and were grossing over 1/2 million a year. ONE website, started with a shitty MS frontpage design, which just caught on and sold like hotcakes.\n\n That could never happen again.......too many free sites, and the affiliates don't make enough to make it worth their time anymore, and without affiliates you get no traffic. Don't care, I made my cash and got out, now I am semi-retired and actually working on a file-sharing site....if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrofvw_louis-theroux-twilight-of-the-porn-stars_lifestyle"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manwin"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mkbon", "title": "how does apps like whatsapp get profit, even when they don't have advertisment?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mkbon/eli5_how_does_apps_like_whatsapp_get_profit_even/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvfonre", "cvfriau", "cvfsvwl", "cvfsw68", "cvft72p", "cvg7wil"], "score": [98, 5, 4, 15, 3, 4], "text": ["**$1 at a time**\n\nIn some countries the app costs $1 to download, in others the first year is free and every subsequent year will cost the user $1. And with roughly 700M active users this results in $700M of annual revenue.\n\nHowever, WhatsApp has been criticized before for not effectively monetizing their app. Other messaging apps like the Chinese WeChat or the Korean KakaoTalk have ads and make more revenue per user than WhatsApp does.\n\nHowever this might just be a smart strategic move from WhatsApp to expand first and to gain a customer base as big as possible. Afterwards they'll have a much larger crowd to reach out to and it is easier for them to make more money should they change their policies.\n\nAnother fun fact: The giant WhatsApp has only **55 employees**.", "What about Kik? That's free in all countries and has zero adds. ", "They don't advertise, but they get their money by collecting your information you give them and selling them to ad companies who could target you ads in different places later.", "For a lot of things.. remember this rule:\n\nIf you're not paying for it, you're not the customer - you're the product.\n\nThey're likely selling your data.", "They gather and sell a ton of data from your phone.  This is why I refuse to use it to speak with my friends who have moved to South Korea for work.  On Android, you are shown all the permissions an app needs before installing it.  Nope'd out. \n\nRead their Privacy Statement for proof.", "They don't really have to, since they were bought by Facebook. And Facebook makes *loads* of money from advertising. \n\nFrom a [CNN article](_URL_0_) on Facebook's acquisition of Whatsapp:\n\n >  Facebook said it is not looking to drive revenue from WhatsApp in the near term, instead focusing on growth. Zuckerberg said he doesn't anticipate trying to aggressively grow WhatsApp's revenue until the service reaches \"billions\" of users.\n\nThis is a common approach for many consumer Internet companies, even those that don't have Facebook's hefty bank account to fund them. This is particularly true if your product relies on any kind of social network, because the value of those products increase with the amount of users on the network. The more people who have Whatsapp installed, the more people you can communicate with through it, and the more valuable it becomes to each of those users.\n\nIt's hard to make money if you only have a ten thousand users because (a) putting hurdles like fees or ads in front of users will slow growth and (b) it's too easy for that small group of users to all jump ship for a competing service. Therefore, many vendors -- especially those of social apps -- first focus on building a *huge* user base. Because if you have ten million users, it's likely they depend on that network more heavily than they do if you only had ten thousand users. Once you've got them hooked, then you can start finding ways to squeeze money out of the users (or, if you take the ad approach, use that huge user base to squeeze money out of advertisers). \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/19/technology/social/facebook-whatsapp/"]]}
{"q_id": "bjwsek", "title": "Is Loschmidt's paradox considered resolved?", "selftext": "Loschmidt's paradox deals with the fact that our laws of physics are time symmetric, yet our macroscopic universe is irreversible. Do physicists currently consider Loschmidt's paradox as resolved? If yes, how do time symmetric laws give rise to irreversible macroscopic dynamics?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bjwsek/is_loschmidts_paradox_considered_resolved/", "answers": {"a_id": ["embwlw7", "emcdd9t"], "score": [6, 16], "text": ["The easiest explanation for this is that, strictly speaking, not everything is time-symmetric. There are some particle interactions you can cook up that are not time-symmetric. Rather, they obey a larger charge-parity-time (CPT) symmetry.\n\nLoschmidt was naturally not alive to see these advancements. But I would consider it resolved.", "I think the best explanation is that a universe even under time symmetric laws will tends to evolve towards high probability states. Which is just another way of saying the entropy tends to increase. This can be shown with simple computer simulations. For example a simulation of a bunch of gas particles in a box undergoing purely Newtonian (time symmetric) mechanics will evolve towards a state where the particles are evenly distributed and where velocity is distributed similar to the Maxwell\u2013Boltzmann distribution, even if it's initial state was completely different. ([Here is an example](_URL_0_), set the setup to \"1 gas, one moving molecule\", a low entropy state, and watch it evolve into a high entropy state.)\n\nTherefore if our universe started in a very low entropy state, it will evolve towards a high entropy state, creating an arrow of time, even though the laws of physics are time symmetric.\n\nOf course, this only punts the question down the road. Why was our universe created in such a low entropy state? By definition, this should have an exceedingly low probability. One possible explanation to this is to invoke the [Anthropic Principle](_URL_1_): If the universe had been created in a high entropy state, no intelligence could have evolved to observe it. Thus the seemingly unlikely appearance of our universe is a result of observation bias. However this is a somewhat unsatisfying explanation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.falstad.com/gas/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle"]]}
{"q_id": "36c3ca", "title": "how gamers discovers cheat and easter eggs in videogames?", "selftext": "How is it possibile? I think of certain button combination on games like GTA.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36c3ca/eli5_how_gamers_discovers_cheat_and_easter_eggs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crcnod6", "crcp1qz", "crcq7yd", "crcso2v", "crculmy", "crd0g6b"], "score": [105, 16, 61, 9, 7, 5], "text": ["By pushing a lot of buttons. \n\nNo, really, once a popular game gets out into the wile and has a lot of people playing it, the odds of a rare event (edit) **not** happening approach zero. Infinite monkeys on typewriters and all that. \n\nAnother way is through reverse engineering. Coders and crackers analyze the object code and data assets of the game. Fundamentally, this all has to be presented to the computer or console (which are just computers now a days). If you control the computer, you can look for buried treasure. \n\nSay you're walking through a particular section of code that has to do with....  checking the location of the player in GTA.   You notice a  strangely specific sequence of conditionals (if statements), that check to see if the player is next to a movie theater, it's the right time, and he hasn't gone on a killing rampage.  If all that's true, it jumps to another special section of code and back. That code is complex and loads stuff. Well, you fire up the game, go to that place at that time and watch what happens. Turns out Woody Allen makes a cameo.   OR WHATEVER. \n\nReverse engineering looks at the guts of the programming to find hidden details.  It's made hard by the fact that it's in a very low-level language made to be read by machines and not people. ", "Either by accident, by systematic trying, or by reverse engineering and looking for cheats inside the game code.", "Sometimes gamers don't find them at all (such as Arkham Asylums secret room) a lot of the time it's down to the Dev team releasing the cheat codes and easter eggs either online or back in the day to tie-in magazines. \nHowever before this one of the main source seems to have simply been gamers searching for variations of the Konami code in the hopes the might unlock secret development modes and spread by word of mouth.", "In the past it was mostly experimentation and even then the \"cheat codes\" weren't that difficult. Up Down Up Down Left Right Left A B for example, could be discovered by accident while mashing buttons.\n\nUpon the cheat popping up it would cause a player to repeat the mashing until a pattern formed revealing the cheat code.\n\nCuriosity also works. For example, Robocod and its Cake Hammer Earth Apple Tap cheat. You could spell out multiple words.\n\n\nThese days, because of Magazines, TV shows (90s) and the Internet (00s and up), cheats were more readily shared, so cheats and easter eggs became significantly more difficult to find. To the point where developers had to start \"accidentally\" leaking their cheat on websites or just flatout selling Cheat articles to GamesMaster etc.", "They 'mostly' come from someone within the development process releasing them to friends/family/community and they spread from there. This can either be from the publishing side or the development side. \n\nSometimes people just get lucky but doing random things at certain points.\n\n\nSource: Work in game development", "You've heard the story of infinite monkeys in a room with typewriters writing Shakespeare yes? Similar concept only it's a LOT of gamers who collectively put something like 5 million hours into a game. At some point either a mis-press of buttons, or one player trying to walk through a wall, or hell a kid who left his controller alone and the dog sat on it. When you put that much time into something it's secrets tend to come out.\n\nIn some cases the dev lets us in and tells us it's there, or that there is a secret gamers havent found. Sometimes the nature of the game causes players to tinker with it until something happens.\n\nSometimes it's a dedicated team looking for ways to break the game and explore it in ways the devs didn't intend. This is sort of what is happeneing in older games. Ocarina of time is a good example. When I first saw those exploits and glitches I was blown away. Then you realize that some of them are found on complete accident. For instance a speed runner was trying to do all dungeons blind folded. He screwed up at one point and glitched through a wall showing a brand new glitch, this was something like 7-8 months ago in a game that is more than a decade old."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "voo4h", "title": "Is intergalactic space different from interstellar space?", "selftext": "I'd imagine the density of matter and radiation (excluding dark matter) would be much much lower than interstellar space, or almost completely empty of it.\n\n\nAlso, is there a possibility that rogue planets or stars exist in intergalactic space?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/voo4h/is_intergalactic_space_different_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c56ccga", "c56cgoh"], "score": [3, 10], "text": ["You are right in that the density is much lower in intergalactic space.\n\n > The density of matter in our Galaxy is about 1 particle/cm3 (in the disk, with the halo being less dense). The density of matter in intergalactic space (between galaxies) is about 2 x 10-31 gm/cm3, mainly hydrogen. At these densities, I don't think one has to worry about friction.\n\nIt's possible that intergalactic planets exist, but we have no way of observing them and likely won't for a very long time. There would be far too little light actually bouncing off them to see. It's theoretically possible to observe the gravitational impact of the planet on light from further-away stars, but this is kind of a long-shot and won't happen anytime soon.", "Interstellar space is almost always within the confines of a single galaxy.  Runaway stars definitely exist, though they are rare -- sometimes interactions with other stars in a galaxy can cause a slingshot effect to give a star very [high velocities](_URL_0_) -- see Hypervelocity Stars in that link.  Runaway stars are studied by a lot of very notable astronomy folk, and this area is growing because our observations of these stars are improving.  On the other end of things, stars that are newly born are still surrounded by loads of interstellar medium -- the cold gas and dust that coalesce to form stars.  You won't find a whole lot of that randomly between galaxies.\n\nAs for what's between galaxies in general, that really all depends.  There are [void galaxies](_URL_1_) which are surrounded by virtually nothing (seriously, nothing).  [This image](_URL_3_) from the Millennium Simulation gives you an idea of the structure of the universe -- most stuff lives in filaments, but void galaxies are often found outside of these central matter hubs.  Most galaxies live in galaxy clusters (bright knots) that are loaded with \"[intracluster medium](_URL_2_)\", which is a *huge* area of research in cosmological astrophysics.  There is the \"cooling problem\" where the temperatures we observe inside galaxy clusters vastly differs from what theory predicts.  The density of this \"stuff\" is way less than what you'd find in a stellar nebula.\n\nSo, in short, interstellar matter is much more dense and contains more stuff, but there are always exceptions. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_galaxy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracluster_medium", "http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/seqD_063a_half.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3ksfpi", "title": "What happened to a squire after their knight died or was killed?", "selftext": "Say a knight died in a battle or personal combat, what happened to their squire.Were they treated as enemies by the opposing force?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ksfpi/what_happened_to_a_squire_after_their_knight_died/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv0fsux"], "score": [93], "text": ["Squires, a term which has taken on a very singular connotation (ie. a knight's understudy) in modern times had a wider one in the Middle Ages (going variously by *armiger*, *scutiger*, *scutarius*, or *scutifer* in Latin sources and as *escuier* or *vaslet* in Old and Anglo-Norman French), but then so did knight (Lat. *militus* or Fr. *chevalier*). When the role began it was a primarily servile one, with *armigeri* included among the servile staff expected to be part of a magnates household (for example the so-called 'Laws of Edward the Confessor', c.1136). They were, as the name implies, related to shields and armour but there was it appears little status in the title itself. There was no necessity for a squire to be advanced to the status of knight, even in the thirteenth-century and might remain squires for the entirety of their lives.\n\nHowever, while it is unsurprising that these unromantic roots of the trade have been largely forgotten, it muddies the waters somewhat as the term was also then turned on the aristocratic *iuvenes* (youths) who would serve with lords while learning their military trade during the twelfth-century. They included chivalric luminaries such as William Marshal (who spent eight years as a squire - *eskuers* - under William de Tancarville) and were considered a distinct noble group through their lineage. By the late twelfth-century this usage of squire was becoming the dominant one and their role and position was not restricted to service or training in arms, to quote from a late twelfth-century *ensenhamen* (a type of conduct literature):\n\n >  It is good to have *escudiers* bound to your service. Have two who are charming, good looking, discreet and accomplished. Whatever might be those of others, yours should be becoming, courtly, educated and well spoken. Such fellows have their uses in that they will gain you a good reputation. If you send them anywhere, one could not be ridiculed on their account, for it is said about such servants, \"You can tell the lord by his household\"'.\n\n >  Quoted in David Crouch, *The English Aristocracy: 1070-1272, A Social Transformation*, (New Haven and London, 2010), 57.\n\nBut the social status of the squire took somewhat differing paths in England and France over the next century. While the title acquired practical noble aspects in both societies the English remained firmly against the acquisition of armorial (ie. taking up heraldic arms) well into the thirteenth-century - see Edward I forbidding such practice in 1292 - the French squires had been doing so 'unapologetically' since the 1250s. The French squirey were acquiring noble status in a manner very different to that of England. While the term might not have possess the same status, there were squires in both England and France who bore heraldic and military arms, held land, and acted as soldiers beyond their periods of tutelage in the households of knights or magnates. Indeed, the titles of *armiger* and *esquiers* become associated in the fourteenth-century with another catch-all and debated terms: men-at-arms. This group was doing the same martial job of a knight without much of the associated expense (both ceremonial and bureaucratic) that were associated with the title 'knight'. This is not to say that they did not aspire to, or retain much of inherent characteristics, of the warrior aristocracy from which they emerged in the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries but that the term and conception of the knight and squire as tutor and tutee is difficult to sustain much beyond the early thirteenth-century. The issue is further muddied, as recent research has demonstrated that the synonymity of esquire and men-at-arms declined as militarily active knights declined too (this is in the fifteenth-century). But that is another issue for another day.\n\nTo provide a loose chronological timeline (from England): from the eleventh-century it was likely that a squire would not be entitled to the emerging culture of ransom, and if captured would likely be treated as any other servile member of staff. In the late twelfth-century they might be offered some respite as sons or youths associated with aristocratic families. In the thirteenth-century this was still true and squires would begin to abrogate this status through taking up of heraldic arms. In the fourteenth- and fifteenth-centuries the status of the squire was essentially synonymous with that of men-at-arms and the role synonymous with the archetypal image of the knight. After this point, squires undertook a more distinct rarified social role and probably a more important role in the military structure of England.\n\n\nSo why is the noble status of squires important with regard to their treatment after the death of the knight or lord they served? Firstly, it somewhat breaks the image of the squire as purely in service to the knight and somewhat outside of the conflicts in which their lord partook. But even the idealised child-squires would be expected to fight: 'let the boy earn his spurs', as Edward III was to famously say of his own sixteen year old son, Edward the Black Prince, at the Battle of Crecy in 1346. Secondly, because it meant that they were subject to the somewhat ephemeral 'law of arms'. The long uncodified conduct between aristocratic and noble warriors which governed many aspects of their relationships both on and off the battlefield. A noble squire, as opposed to the servile, would expect the right to submit and then be, circumstances permitting, offered ransom and a reasonable degree of comfort during their imprisonment. They were young aristocrats even if they were not always defined as nobles and, if they did not have a particular value as hostages, they would likely be given the liberty to return to their homes and raise the ransoms required.\n\nHowever, the issue of circumstance rears its ugly head. The practical niceties which ideally governed relations between the chivalric classes, to which squires through their nobility could claim membership, could not always be implemented. The increasingly brutal nature of warfare in during the Hundred Years War where, for example, the French crown repeatedly fought beneath the Oriflamme (signalling no quarter would be given), or where concerns regarding reinforcements might lead to the near wholesale slaughter of prisoners irrespective of rank (such as Agincourt, 1415); coupled with the increasingly politicised nature of the conflict which meant that capture might lead to execution for treason meant this was an increasingly dangerous period for aristocratic warfare. Finally, the cost of the ransoming might be so onerous that it could ruin an established knight or lord, who had a higher value placed upon their lives, but that a squire might not merit the same treatment for purely pragmatic reasons.\n\n\nThe ideal of ransoming which the noble status of squires permitted them access to was difficult to maintain not only during the Hundred Years War, but also in many other conflicts for purely pragmatic reasons. Their status and treatment was often dependent on the political and social connections they had (especially their lineage) but as such, they were like many counts, barons, earls, and even kings subject to the mercy of the person who caught them, the ability to raise a ransom, and, in later periods, the chain-of-command which might order their execution despite their surrender into the protection of a peer or social superior. They might return home with onerous payments, or be executed and buried in the grounds of a nearby church. If they had great political value they might be kept as a hostage against their kith and kin's behaviour, or they might be executed for treason depending on the nature of the conflict.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "25exdz", "title": "why did notorious b.i.g. and tupac hate each other", "selftext": "Don't know much about west vs east coast rivalry ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25exdz/eli5_why_did_notorious_big_and_tupac_hate_each/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chgi3yr", "chgibw7", "chgjw8b", "chgmsy8", "chgnt4o", "chgnt8y", "chgp2mz"], "score": [7, 35, 27, 8, 18, 3, 3], "text": ["This is half remembered from a movie but I think it broke down like this:\n\nThey were friends for the longest time.  Then someone tried to kill Tupac.  Tupac, becoming paranoid, eventually thought that his friend Biggie was the one trying to kill him.  \n\nBiggie tried to prove otherwise but eventually gave in and just embraced the rivalry, he got tired of Tupac bad mouthing him and returned fire.\n\nThen Tupac was murdered... and Biggie murdered shortly there after.  \n\nNow we're left wondering what might have been from two rappers who died young and had so much left in their careers.", "In the 80s the Bronx, NY basically created rap.  However by the early 90s South Central LA dominated the music scene with a new sound called gangsta rap.  In response to frustration over not getting airplay, someone wrote a song called \"Fuck Compton\" and just dissed everyone at NWA.\n\nEventually it fell to the two biggest artists, BIG and 2pac, to be the champions of each side.  Because some people don't understand a marketing gimmick when they see one, both men were killed by people who took the rivalry way too seriously.  After that, it stopped being fun.", "They actually started out as great friends.   Tupac was already big in the scene and Big was an up and comer learning a few things from Pac.  Big invited Pac to a recording session while Pac was in NYC.  Pac ended up getting jumped in the lobby and  blamed Biggie for it.  After that it just escalated. ", "Tupac became paranoid after he was shot five times and survived. He thought Biggie had something to do with it because everyone was avoiding eye contact with him, so he made Hit 'Em Up, then people spun it out of control.  \n  \nPersonally I think Suge Knight had more to do with it, but that's just me.", "so far the posts here gloss over how involved the story is, particularly with regards to tupac, who was not killed due to a music rivalry. tupac came from a family of political dissidents. he spent much of his childhood on the run from the FBI, his god-mother is currently Wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. she was broken out of prison by tupac's step father and she now lives in exil in Cuba.\n\ntupac was the youngest chairman of the New African Panthers, he was \"befriended\" by an FBI informant who introduced him to a woman you falsely accused him of rape.\n\ntupac shot two drunk policemen who were beating a black motorist, the drunken officers tried to shoot tupac first with pistols stolen from the evidence locker. \n\nhe had tons of enemies, and a little music rivalry is not why he was murdered. \n\n[this redditor gives a much more in-depth and cited explanation](_URL_0_)", "Here's the story from 2Pac's mouth:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPac didn't think that Big shot him, he just thought that he probably knew who did, being that Big talked so much about being King of New York on Ready To Die. He also thought that Ready To Die jacked its style from the album that 2Pac was recording at the time, which became Me Against The World, but he said he had to go back to the studio to change it up a bunch after he heard Ready To Die. He was also pissed because they had been pretty good friends and Big didn't visit him in the hospital, I think. Maybe there's a song that has all this on it, I can't remember. But basically Pac thought that he'd been good to Biggie when he was more famous than Biggie, and that Biggie had sort of abandoned him. \n\nThe West Coast/East Coast thing was there, sure, but Pac and Biggie had a history that didn't really have anything to do with that shit. ", "The amount of misinformation in this thread is horrific. [This man](_URL_0_) is correct."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/103xo4/til_rapper_tupac_shakur_received_a_letter_from/c6acw1n"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMASWbV9Xwc"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25exdz/eli5_why_did_notorious_big_and_tupac_hate_each/chgosa9"]]}
{"q_id": "38xn4y", "title": "my eyes are red from allergies. rubbing them makes it worse but it feels oh so good. why?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38xn4y/eli5_my_eyes_are_red_from_allergies_rubbing_them/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cryo88y", "crypk1i", "cryr5f7", "crysdmc"], "score": [52, 12, 7, 4], "text": ["Allergies make you itchy. Rubbing things that itch makes it feel better. In turn you're rubbing your eyes with something that's probably covered in the stuff your allergic to, Making the irritation worse. ", "Allergies are a false-positive  response to a substance that doesn't harm you (pollen for example). \n\nThe body responds with itching, giving you a signal to scratch, in order to remove the substance faster. No wonder it feels good - your system is rewarding you for the actions.  ", "The strategy that works best for me is to take an allergy pill like cetirizine and then wash my face and splash cold water in my eyes  for a few minutes. This usually calms it down until the antihistamines kick in.", "It feels better because you are overwhelming the nerve receptors responsible for the itchy feeling. So temporarily the rubbing stimulates more nerves overwhelming the itchy feeling."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2b4ifz", "title": "Richard Winters, of the 101st Airborne, is now perhaps the best-known US front line combat leader of WW2, in the public eye at least. How exceptional was he, and how remarkable were his leadership achievements?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b4ifz/richard_winters_of_the_101st_airborne_is_now/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj1wnqb", "cj22x91", "cj23v2c"], "score": [4, 65, 6], "text": ["Here's a previous thread on him\n\n_URL_0_", "Pretty much the only reason you've ever heard of him is because Stephen Ambrose chose him and his unit as the topic for one of his books.  If that hadn't happened, he would only be remembered by the people he served with, his family, and perhaps a very small number of military officers who would have regarded him as an extremely minor footnote in the Normandy Invasion.\n\nIt's a bit bizarre, but Ambrose, who was legitimately an excellent writer and a sound historian, will nonetheless be best remembered for his most irresponsible and shoddily researched work *Band of Brothers* (in turn largely remembered because of the successful and popular HBO miniseries that used it as source material).  It's a book that has almost as much in common with fanfiction as it does with history.  It's unabashedly biased and relies almost entirely upon what amounts to war stories for its sources.  Due to the popularity of the book and even more so the miniseries, a practical cult of personality has sprung up around Winters and the other members of Easy Company.              \n\nIn the book Winters' personal opinions on a number of topics are presented as fact.  He insults a variety of people and Ambrose makes absolutely no effort to find alternative sources to either verify or debunk Winters' claims about those people.  So as not to be guilty of the same crime as Ambrose, I will admit that I don't currently have access to my copy of the book, and so am working from memory.  However I am completely able and willing to verify the claims I make as soon as I return home for anyone that doubts my statements.  Examples of the mud that Winters slings include:\n\n-Completely trashing the previous CO of Easy Company, Herbert Sobel, up to and including accounts of what can only be described as mutiny (although it is made clear that while Winters commiserated with the motivations of the soldiers involved, he did not openly encourage it, and in fact took efforts to stop it).  Additionally in Winters' defense, he does credit Sobel with ensuring discipline in the unit, which in turn served them well in combat.  However that is the entirety of praise that Winters gives to Sobel, and everything else is negative.      \n\n-Winters makes several statements throughout the book that either state or imply that Easy Company was head and shoulders above other Companies in the 506th.  While it's good that Winters took pride in his unit, it didn't have to be done by denigrating other units that Easy Company served with.  It becomes even more questionable when you realize that all historical inquiries into Easy Company's record show that it was pretty much an average unit in the 506th, and certainly not the exceptional outfit Winters would have you believe.  \n\n-Winters charges the pilots of the C-47's that were used in the Normandy Invasion with both cowardice and incompetence.  Ambrose makes absolutely no effort to investigate their performance, and in fact further research shows there were a great many valid reasons for difficulties the pilots encountered.\n\n-At one point in the book Winters openly admits that he has no interest in being unbiased in his story-telling.  The exact details elude me, however there is absolutely one part in the book where Winters is saying something negative about one of his superiors (I believe it was Colonel Sink, although it might have been someone else).  Ambrose is a bit taken aback by the venom Winters has towards this officer, and specifically asks Winters if he is being unfair/unbalanced/unbiased.  Winters spits back something along the lines of \"I'm not interested in being balanced\".  Out of all the charges, this is easily the most heinous and the most telling, since it directly demonstrates that Winters had some axes to grind, and was not shy about doing so.  This should have been a MAJOR red flag to Ambrose, and it's mind-boggling that Ambrose doesn't address it in any shape or form.  A major failing on Ambrose's part as a historian.\n\n-Winters was recalled to service during the Korean War and his record during this time is hardly distinguished.  During the time that he was called up, he traveled to Washington D.C. in an attempt to convince the Army not to send him to Korea.  When they declined his request, he seems to have become disillusioned and did not seem to be particularly enthusiastic about his job of training officers, citing their lack of discipline and poor attendance as the reason for his lack of enthusiasm.  He was finally discharged under a loophole that allowed officers that had served in World War II to take a discharge instead of deploying to Korea.  It's not hard to understand and believe that Winters was sick of military service by the end of World War II, and indeed had earned the right to a bit of pacifism after all that he had survived.  However it is a bit unsettling to think that he was perhaps a bit lackadaisical in his duties, particularly since he had first hand knowledge of the rigors that the soldiers he was training would have to be prepared for.  It's one thing to be reckless with your own personal preparation for risk, but something entirely different when your lack of enthusiasm could easily cause others to be ill-prepared.  It's even more unsettling when he doesn't take responsibility for his actions, but rather blames his trainees for his lack of enthusiasm.  Blaming others starts to seem like a pattern with Winters.      \n\n-There's a few other inaccuracies and inconsistencies throughout the book, and a few more lost in the translation from book to miniseries.  For example one scene in the miniseries has a soldier who is returning from being wounded in the Normandy Campaign being shunned upon his return to the unit (presumably due to perceived malingering/cowardice which resulted in his missing out on Market Garden and Bastogne).  However this was a complete fabrication of the miniseries, and in fact in the book the soldier is greeted with camaraderie and is brought up to speed without any rancor, and it is never even suggested that others thought the soldier guilty of anything.  Another error that I recall in the miniseries was the claim that a soldier had died shortly after the war, when in fact the person lived for several decades after his supposed death.  Certainly not huge errors, however enough to remind trained historians that they are watching a tv show, not a documentary.\n\nSo all this brings us back to your original question.  How exceptional and/or remarkable Winters was is an extremely subjective question.  However despite all my focus upon his negative traits, it would be absurd to claim that Winters was without merit.  Indeed he was obviously a very good leader.  His men clearly admired and respected him, and that's usually the only benchmark a good leader cares about.  From an official standpoint, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in the Normandy Campaign, a decoration that is only one rank below the Medal of Honor (which he was nominated for, and might still be awarded if interest groups get their way).  He was also awarded two Bronze Stars.  Two Bronze Stars and especially a Distinguished Service Cross are NOT the sort of decorations one gets for merely showing up.  Furthermore, he was also awarded a Purple Heart, which is earned by being wounded in action by the enemy.  While some people have pooh-poohed this medal in the past, or the circumstances under which it has been rewarded (a fairly recent example would be the scorn that some people laid upon John Kerry due to their belief that his wounds were so tiny as to barely warrant the award).  There have also been cases where people received the medal due to self-injury brought about by negligence, or other questionable circumstances.  However I'd retort that ANYONE that has ever received the Purple Heart was at the very least serving in circumstances that are more dangerous than average.  Simply being present in a war zone puts you at greater risk than the average person.  There is not a doubt in my mind that Winters' life was on the line, and probably with some regularity.  That alone is admirable.  While the wound he received for the medal was superficial at worst, it would be disgusting to claim that he did not rightfully earn it.\n\nIn conclusion, I would say that Winters was an above average officer who did his best and served with admirable courage and skill.  He was also a human being, with all the faults and warts that that entails.  He was certainly not a flawless saint, as some believe him to be.  However he did all that his country asked of him, and then some.  If fault needs to be assigned, it should be to Stephen Ambrose, who should have known better than to paint him as a perfect hero, as well as to those cult of personality types who would rather obsess over insignificant details (\"What shade of brown was Major Winters' excrement during Operation Market Garden?\"), rather than attempting to understand the bigger picture, or heaven forbid, study *any* of the other 16 million Americans that served during World War II, about 99.5% of whom did NOT serve in the Airborne, but who have stories that are potentially just as interesting and important.", "Thank you. I really appreciate your detailed and thoughtful response. As a documentary filmmaker I deal regularly with similar issues arising from using an individual's story to represent that of a wider group. It requires great care."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16pcws/major_dick_winters_certainly_a_war_hero_but_i/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2imz90", "title": "Did the other major powers of WWII have fictional characters like Captain America to boost national morale?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2imz90/did_the_other_major_powers_of_wwii_have_fictional/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl3mzzd", "cl3stm1", "cl3u5lj", "cl3ua6m", "cl3vg6j", "cl3zqzo", "cl425qs", "cl4617o"], "score": [57, 10, 10, 23, 16, 5, 4, 2], "text": ["In Britian during that time the primary 'Comics' where things like The Beano, The Dandy, Buster, Topper and Beezer which tend to be full of jokes and 1-2 page slapstick situations aimed at younger children and therefore difficult to compare with icons such as Superman or Captain America. \n\nIn an advertisement in the UK you would most likely see the 'Old Empircal Favourites' which had been a feature of WW1 and before, such as John Bull or Britannia.\n\nA very popular comic about the war, which didn't emerge until the 50's was Commando, however this was much more about 'Regular' Soldiers and no talk of super powers!", "Yes! Soviet poet [Tvardovsky](_URL_0_) wrote a serialized poem about Vasili Tyorkin, not a superhero by any means, but a real Soviet hero: an ordinary, but brave and resourceful soldier.\n\nEpisodes were printed in frontline newspapers as soon as they were written, and are still mandatory reading in middle school.", "There was a British newspaper comic strip titled \"Jane\" written/drawn by Norman Pett.  This was a \"pin-up\" comic strip that featured a young woman who would lose her clothing under various humorous circumstances.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nQuoted from the Wiki:\n\nThe \"Jane\" strip became very popular during the Second World War and was considered morale-boosting, inspiring a similar American version, Milton \"Terry and the Pirates\" Caniff's comic strip \"Male Call.\" Until 1943, Jane rarely stripped to more than her undergarments, but then she made a fully nude appearance when getting out of a bath and clumsily falling [out of a window] into the middle of a crowd of British soldiers.\n\nEdit: Wikipedia was quoted, but I actually know about \"Jane\" from \"The Penguin Book of Comics:  A Slight History\" by George Perry, which covers the history of British comics and comic strips.  The Penguin book shows the famous \"Jane\" strip from 1943 mentioned above.  The Penguin book also covers the comic magazines like Beano and Topper.", "Canada had Johnny Canuck! He appeared originally in the 1800's but was later used as propaganda much the same as Capitan America during WWII.  He was a lumberjack with a beard, so pretty much looked like the rest of Canadians.\nNowadays his image is heavily used by the Vancouver Canucks NHL team.\nLink:  _URL_0_ ", "Greece wasn't a major power, but it had the 'Tsolias' (\u03a4\u03c3\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03ac\u03c2), who became an iconic figure to boost morale after the victory over Italy in 1940. The character is wearing a traditional greek uniform like [this one](_URL_2_). \n\nThe Tsolias character would appear in cartoons during WWII, as shown [here](_URL_3_), [here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_4_) and [here](_URL_0_). ", "Time for some Canadian history!  (We like...never do that here)\n\nIn December of 1940 the Canadian trade deficit with the US was growing at an alarming rate and British gold shipments were becoming limited.   To combat this the Canadian government passed the  War Exchange Conservation Act which targeted nations outside of the Sterling Block to heavily restricted importing goods that weren't considered essential.   You know what isn't essential?  Comic books.   Or so they keep telling me, anyways.\n\nNow, Canadians loved comic books, and rightfully so.  Heck ol' Supes himself was drawn by a Canuck  and Metropolis was based upon Toronto.  There was no way we were going without comics to plaster on our igloo walls, so rose the \"Canadian whites\":  Comics by Canadians for Canadians.\n\n\nWe had [Canada Jack](_URL_3_) who valiantly fought fifth-columnists within Canada.   He only left the country once...to fight Nazis in South America.\n\nOur hero abroad was [Johny Canuck](_URL_1_), an Air Force captain who was also a secret agent... because reasons.\n\nWe can't forget our favourite heroine, one of the earliest female super heroes and likely the first ever Inuit superhero.   I speak, as you all know, of [Nelvana of The Northern Lights!](_URL_2_).  She kicked Nazi ass so much she had to create a new secret identity... as a secret agent... because... secret!\n\nI know you are all sitting there and wondering when I was going to talk about the first and most famous Canadian WW2 super hero of them all.   The one who we still hear talked about daily.  Well, here it is:  The fantastic, the unstoppable, the one and only **[IRON MAN!](_URL_0_)**  The hero from the depths of the ocean who rose from mourning the death of his race to fight the Nazis!  Oh, and then like 22 years later some other unrelated Iron Man guy came along, but nobody cares about that.\n\nThis was the Canadian Golden Age of Comics.", "While UK children's commics like the Beano and The Dandy didn't run to hero figures, they certainly ran to making fun of the Axis leaders.\n\nAccording to my late father, the favourite was \"Musso the Wop - he's a-bigga da flop\" - the exploits and failures of Benito Mussolini.  There was also something called \"Addie and Hermy, the nasty Nazis\" about which he could remember very little, which featured Hitler and Goering as two idiots.\n\nI managed to find an example on-line\n_URL_0_", "Any German ones? Or at least the Axis?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Tvardovsky"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_(comic_strip)"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Canuck"], ["http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_7.jpg", "http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_6.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evzones#mediaviewer/File:Evzone_Parliament_Greece_1.JPG", "http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_3.jpg", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wPrvjbb6wcA/TMgtj84qLiI/AAAAAAAAANs/PpWrPB_nZKo/s1600/1940cartoons+004.jpg"], ["http://imgur.com/8wr6vdx", "http://imgur.com/Tb0tHKv", "http://imgur.com/4IVWkO9", "http://imgur.com/CrG4p5t"], ["http://www.shanklygates.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=56780"], []]}
{"q_id": "31fotp", "title": "Has Otto von Bismarck really said \u201cIf there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans\u201d?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31fotp/has_otto_von_bismarck_really_said_if_there_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq185d0"], "score": [206], "text": [" >  Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal \u2026 A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all \u2026 I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where \u2026 Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.\n\nComment by Otto von Bismarck during the Congress of Berlin in 1878, as quoted in \"European Diary\" by Andrei Navrozov, in Chronicles Vol. 32 (2008)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3fxxno", "title": "What do historians here think of the new AP US History framework and the process that creates it?", "selftext": "Seems like a pretty difficult undertaking given how widely it's used, and how closely it's scrutinized by so many groups.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fxxno/what_do_historians_here_think_of_the_new_ap_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctti4xv", "ctti4xx"], "score": [11, 36], "text": ["For convenience, here is the new framework so that our US experts can review it if they want: _URL_0_", "I'm really surprised nobody has taken a shot at this. I am obviously, not an American historian. That said, most of the Americanists in my department really do not like the new AP US history class. Frankly, I think if you are going to be awarded college credit for taking a class, the curriculum that is taught in many college classes should be reflected in the high school class. And based on the information found in this article, _URL_0_, as well as others, the 2014 curriculum that this new update attempts to \"fix\" is actually what is taught in university coursework. Yes, the United States has done some great stuff in its short (speaking as a historian of the premodern period) history. That said, the nation, its citizens, and its politicians have done some stuff that students should be taught to critique, that's what being in college is about. We (Americans, racism is everywhere, but I'm not going to talk about that right now) live in a world of institutionalized racism, a critical history of our nation is a way of approaching that problem and a first step in alleviating some of its consequences. This isn't the only issue on which that a critical history of the US can have an impact, but the citizens of any nation need to be critical of its past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-us-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf"], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/05/429361628/the-new-new-framework-for-ap-u-s-history"]]}
{"q_id": "67g8ni", "title": "In the James Bond film \"Goldeneye,\" Russian General Ourumov blames his own attack on a satellite in Severnaya on \"Siberian separatists.\" Were there such separatists in post-Communist Russia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67g8ni/in_the_james_bond_film_goldeneye_russian_general/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgrl2ij", "dgruvmd"], "score": [15, 5], "text": ["I understand that this response might be in violation of some of the rules of this subreddit, but I see no other way of addressing this question.\n\nThere were (and still are) indeed some groups that propagated Siberian nationalism and an independent Siberia (or at least an autonomous one). The peak of their development, however, was in the mid-to-late 19th century, when they enjoyed the support of some of members of Russian intelligentsia who were exiled to Siberia. \n\nHowever, in modern times there really hasn't been any serious movements propagating Siberian separatism, and certainly never anything even remotely resembling an armed insurgency.\n\nThe most relevant recent (so recent, in fact, that it is in violation of the rules of this subreddit regarding the discussion of current events) example is probably that of [\"Siberian Wikipedia\"](_URL_0_), a truly bizarre stunt wherein a Russian entrepreneur from Tomsk attempted to create a section Wikipedia in an artificial \"Siberian\" language. The crux of the matter was that the language was just a peculiar version of Russian, and certainly *not* a separate (or, indeed, real) language. It was eventually taken down, but while it was up a lot of the materials there propagated anti-Russian views and called for the creation of an independent Siberian state. \n\nIn general though such views are not (and, historically, were not) popular among the populations of the region. Think of Siberian nationalism as a slightly more absurd Russian version of an independent California movement. \n\n", "Short answer: not that I know of, but I know less about Siberia than I do about the Caucasus. \n\nLong answer: I haven't seen the film, but given the year it came out (1995), this line of dialogue could have been the screenwriters' attempt at an inoffensive reference to the general idea of post-Soviet separatist struggles. A bunch of satellites in the Caucasus and Central Asia declared independence in the early 90s after the USSR's collapse. Most relevantly, in 1995 Russia was embroiled in the first Chechen war. That was a separatist struggle, with Chechnya trying to gain independence after being conquered and held by Russia since its Tsarist period. However, Chechnya is in the North Caucasus (south-western Russia), not Siberia... but I'm not sure I trust your average Hollywood screenwriter to quite know or care about that geographical difference. \n\nA bit more on the first Chechen war [is here] (_URL_0_). A lot more could be said about that larger conflict; unfortunately, that would violate the 20-year rule, as unrest in Chechnya is still very much ongoing today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%C2%AB%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B5%C2%BB"], ["http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chechnya1.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "23pgm0", "title": "If light travels in a straight line, why aren't there gaps between rays of light if the source is far away?", "selftext": "I picture light spreading out from a source (say the sun) like in a child's drawing of the sun, with rays going out in all directions. If the object is far enough, how can light cover all possible directions? Why aren't there eventually gaps between the lines of photons, as they spread out from each other? And how come, from our vantage point on earth, we aren't in a gap between the rays emitted by a far away galaxy, so that we could never see its light?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23pgm0/if_light_travels_in_a_straight_line_why_arent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgzarbt", "cgzcuio", "cgzsxui"], "score": [8, 17, 2], "text": ["There are, but you have to get really really far away. When looking at distant x-ray or gamma ray sources (like from other galaxies), the photons typically arrive one at a time instead of in a continuum.", "Light isn't really rays, that's a simplified way to picture it that captures a lot of its behavior but fails in other ways. Light is a wavefront that spreads out as it travels, and the rays are defined to point perpendicular to the wavefront - in the direction the wave is moving at that point. So there are infinitely many 'rays', as the wave spreads out you just picture more rays to fill in the space between the ones that spread apart. They're a visualization tool and not a physical object so there's no conservation law or anything.\n\nIt's my understanding that as the wave spreads out it carries less energy flux in any given area, your eye/camera can only cover a certain area, the wave will eventually spread out to the point that there's not enough energy in that area to trigger the detector.\n\nSort of tangentially, it's my understanding that the photon view comes into play as the amount of energy that can be exchanged between the wavefront and your eye/camera is quantized into discrete units (the photons), but this has more to do with the interaction of the light and the detector and, though people (myself included) often talk about photons flying through space, it's not really an appropriate description and the light is better visualized as a wave as it travels.", "In a way there are, but light would have to be extremely dim for those effects (single photon effects) to arise, and it wouldn't be visible by the naked eye. Consider that a star like our Sun has a radiative power of 4e26 Watts. If we assumed that all of that was focused into green light (to simplify the calculations) with a per photon energy of 2.27 eV that means that the Sun puts out around 1.1e45 photons per second. To put that in perspective, a 100 ly radius sphere has a surface area of about 1.1e43 mm^2. So every single square millimeter 100 ly away from our Sun will receive on the order of 1 photon every 10 milliseconds (and that's without magnification or the use of any telescope).\n\nWhen you consider far away galaxies, the light is indeed very dim, and in a certain sense just trying to look up and see an enormously distant galaxy won't work partly because those photons just won't hit your eyes at all (although that's the least of the problems, really). It takes a very large telescope gathering photons passing through a fairly large area (the aperture of the telescope, focused by the mirror) and then collecting each and every photon hit over a course of potentially a long time to build up an image of the farthest galaxies.\n\nConsider, for example, the faintest galaxies in the \"Hubble deep field\" imagery. Each pixel within one of those galaxies represents perhaps a few hundred photons collected from a ~45,000 cm^2 aperture telescope over the course of more than a day. If you took a much smaller telescope (like a typical 3\" refractor) and pointed it at the very same galaxy you might not receive any photons at all from those galaxies even after observing them for several hours."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6pyvjv", "title": "what is the purpose of spam email that entices a reply with no personal information? for example, i have a spam email that just says, \"if you don't want to talk to me, just say it.\" in what way are spam senders benefitting?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pyvjv/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_spam_email_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkt8ook", "dkt8wy8", "dkt9mzu"], "score": [6, 5, 91], "text": ["Sometimes it's psychology. As an IT guy, I've gotten way more personal information and passwords told to me over the phone by saying \"I'll never ask you for personal information or passwords\", which I guess means that I'm one of the good guys since nobody who was a bad guy could ever say that... So similarly, maybe no legit scammer would give you an out?", "Generally with spam, they send out similar emails to huge numbers of emails. often not even specific ones, just any combination of letters and numbers and common words, etc. the program generates. If you reply it confirms that there's actually a person connected to that email address.\n\nOnce you confirm that, someone will either try toscam you for real, or sell your address to someone who will.", "By replying, you're giving the spammers three pieces of valuable information.\n\nFirst, you're verifying that the email address they sent is a valid email address that is being checked. That has value to other spammers, making your email something they can sell. \n\nSecond, you're verifying that their email message wasn't screened out by whatever anti-spam filters are in place. That shows the skill of the spammer's ability, making their services appear more valuable. \n\nFinally, by replying you're verifying that you have the psychology that reads these junk emails, and will from time-to-time, respond to unsolicited messages, which makes you an appealing target for future efforts. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ikoxn", "title": "Why does sensor size and not lens size matter for digital cameras?", "selftext": "Media covering digital cameras and smartphones never stops mentioning sensor size.  With the release of Nokia L1020, I've had enough. As a person holding a bachelors degree in physics I cannot understand why.  After reading several articles on line and searching for it in this subreddit I can't shake this question:\n\nIsn't it the size of the lens, not the size of the sensor that matter for the amount of photons collected?  The roll of the optics is to change the image size.  With unlimited, perfect optics the same number of photons can be spread out or focused onto a sensor of any size.  It's the size of the main lens that determines how many photons are collected.  \n\nWhen discussing research telescopes no one talks about the size of the CCD (although the sensors are admittedly huge compared to consumer cameras) the most basic spec is the size of the main reflecting mirror which is equivalent to the outermost refracting lens. \n\nPlease explain why I am wrong that a never mentioned spec, lens size, is less important than the much heralded sensor size. \n\n**Edit:** I feel like my question has been answered but in bits and pieces so I will summarize what I have gotten from all the posts.\n\n * My original understanding of photon collection was correct.  However: \n\n * For CCDs (and I think CMOS sensors) the size of each pixel determines the *maximum* amount of light that can be collected and thus the dynamic range.  For well lit pictures this is important to prevent washing out the bright areas. \n\n * A larger sensor size allows for less powerful and lower quality optics.  This is especially important in compact smartphone cameras.  Although lens technology does improve, for a given depth there is a close relationship between sensor size and useful lens size. \n\n * For the same reason as the above point, for a give thickness of the optics stack, a larger sensor allows for a narrower depth of field.  This is considered desirable for the artistic effect. Depth of field is traditionally attributed to the size of the aperture, much like total light captured, aperture is restricted by the thickness of the stack. \n\nThat pretty much answers my question.  My main fault lay in taking the physicist approach of assuming perfect optics.  It turns out that what you learn about 4 meter telescopes might be a little different in a smartphone 8mm thick. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ikoxn/why_does_sensor_size_and_not_lens_size_matter_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb5easp", "cb5f8wk", "cb5fxxi", "cb5l96u", "cb5lmdd", "cb5sy47"], "score": [2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2], "text": [" > Isn't it the size of the lens, not the size of the sensor that matter for the amount of photons collected?\n\nFor most day-to-day camera uses, I wouldn't say this is a limiting factor - maybe in low-light photography it would be nice to have a larger collecting area, but that's about it. For telescopes, collecting more light is *always* something we're desperate to do.\n\nI suspect the reason pixel count is so pushed is because \"18 BEELION PIXELS\" is a much more exciting thing to say than \"has an 18 inch lens\". Also, any camera professional realises that:\n\na) Pixel count doesn't matter *too* much, especially compared to actual camera quality - I think most phones on the market boast more megapixels than my DSLR, but I'm rather sure I could trump most of them for quality/versatility.\n\nb) For any good camera, the camera/CCD/etc *are* what you're buying; the lenses are interchangable, and you buy any you need for special uses separately (with the lens that comes with the camera, if any, being a cheapo general-purpose one).", "The lens does matter, but the average consumer (who makes the purchasing decision) has always been marketed on pixel count. In the early days of digital (sub-megapixel), total pixel count did matter because image resolution was well below what you'd use on a computer screen let alone try to print. Most current cameras don't have this issue. There is still plenty of room for sensor improvement (light sensitivity/noise reduction, sensor density, oversampling in the Nokia Pureview, etc).\n\nThe lens matters because a larger aperture lets in more light. A larger aperture means more glass and a physically larger lens. The challenge with this is that everyone wants small cameras. There's a practical tradeoff between convenience and image quality going from a cell phone to point and shoot to DSLR. Cell phones are really limited compared to large cameras with lens size so there is less room for improvement in comparison to sensors. In addition to being light and small in volume they also need to be thin, which is a challenge. There have been developments in cell phone lenses (see [liquid lenses](_URL_0_)) over the past 10 years though.\n\nIn the end both optics and the sensor matter, but improvements in one eventually get limited by the limitation of the other.", "Yes, the sensor _size_ does, in fact, matter. A larger sensor has a larger area to collect photons. As you mention above, a better lens could, theoretically, just focus that light down onto a smaller sensor. However, the more you bend light, the more artifacting you get. For example, you get a lot of chromatic aberration (when some colors are separated from the others, similar to a prism effect) from a zoom lens at the two bounds of its focal length, hence why professional photographers stick in their lens's sweet spots which are generally the middle of the zoom range. Lens's that bend light more (see, long and short focal length) are more expensive because they have to be built to a much higher standard than the mid focal length lenses do. With a small sensor, even a little chromatic aberration becomes extremely pronounced. The same goes for most adverse lens effects, meaning you need a much more expensive lens. \n\nYou also have the issue of current sensor technology. A larger sensor is more sensitive to light than a tiny sensor. With that extra surface area, you can get much better low light performance. That tends to be why a 35mm DSLR has vastly superior performance to a cell phone camera with more megapixels. Even with the same number of photons hitting a smaller space, you couldn't get the same kind of sensitivity using current technology. Thats not likely to change, as you would increase the sensitivity of both small and large sensors. \n\nAlso, there is the artistic aspects. A larger sensor has a much more narrow depth of field (for the same field of view) than a smaller sensor. That means a large sensor gives a much more pronounced extraction of the subject from the background than you can get from a small sensor. Again, its probably possible to compensate with a different lens, but it would be much more expensive and would suffer from the consequences of that. ", "The fundamental problem is that people don't realize that lens quality is as (often more) important than the sensor. Therefore, when the iPhone 4 (I think it was) came out, histrionics ensured to the effect that it was \"just as good as a point and shoot camera\", which it was if you are blind. \n\nThere are many parameters associated with a lens and it is not for nothing that good lenses are big and cost a lot of money while the lenses on mobile phones are small and cheap. It isn't the genius of Apple that makes a lens 100 times cheaper than a decent camera, its the genius of Apple marketing that gets people to think they did.\n\nSimilarly, there are numerous parameters besides size and pixel count associated with a sensor. Again, it is not for nothing that the sensors on good cameras are expensive while the ones on phones cost a few dollars. All other things being equal, there are differences in sensitivity, noise, etc., etc., and they all matter.\n\nA good rule of thumb when reading an article about a mobile phone camera is to assume the person writing it knows nothing about the subject. That probably holds as a general rule, but it is particularly true when optics or photography are concerned.", "A few relationships:\n\nLarger sensors allow more pixels, larger pixels and larger capacitors.\n\nLarger pixels require larger capacitors to store those electrons.\n\n*Lower* pixel size / capacitance = >  greater dynamic range.\n\nLarger pixel size = >  lower noise\n\nLower noise = >  smaller required lens.\n\n > For CCDs (and I think CMOS sensors) the size of each pixel determines the maximum amount of light that can be collected and thus the dynamic range. For well lit pictures this is important to prevent washing out the bright areas.\n\nNot quite right. see above.", "Experienced photographer and director of photography here:\nI'm on my phone, so I can't write a crazy detailed response.\n\nBasically, there is a relationship between sensor size and the lens size. If you have a cheap small aperture/diameter lens, but a full frame sensor (like a Canon 5D MKII) you will still be able to get a well exposed shot. If you take the same lens, a small one, and reduce the size of the sensor to something (like a micro four/thirds sensor in a GH2) you are reducing the amount of light collected for the overall image.\n\nThink of the lens as casting a circle of light on a wall. Now place a square inside that circle that touches the sides of the circle. You are looking at a full frame sensor with a full frame lens casting light across the sensor.\n\nNow, take just the square, and shrink it. The square(sensor) now occupies half the area that it did before. All that light that was previously hitting the sensor, is now going to waste. So you effectively reduced the light hitting the sensor. And you have even cropped the image you were getting with a full frame sensor. Essentially zooming in by simply reducing the sensor size.\n\nWhile it is theoretically possible to have a cell phone sensor have a lens adapted to fit it. The amount of cropping that would take place would be awful. It would be like talking to your girlfriend at a restaurant, while looking at her through a pair of binoculars.\n\nPeople have, and still do, have focal reducers which focus the wide circle of light on to smaller areas, heat becomes an issue. A massive lens, collecting a lot if light and pushing it all on to a tiny area would be like a magnifying glass settling over your eye. It would start to fry your sensor.\n\nSo we all try to strike a nice balance between sensor size, lens size, and cost. Keeping in mind that bigger = more expensive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20070432-250/liquid-lenses-for-cameraphones-zooming-closer/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "z0pf8", "title": "what makes beethoven, mozart and bach better than other classical music composers?", "selftext": "To my untrained ear, pretty much all classical music sounds the same to me. But these 3 are pretty much known to everyone everywhere, whether they listen to classical or not. What makes them better than others of their day? What makes them better than a modern composer like John Williams? Is there a well defined \"best\" out of the three?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z0pf8/eli5_what_makes_beethoven_mozart_and_bach_better/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c60h2bh", "c60hb7a", "c60ijv5", "c60in81", "c60iswl", "c60itrv", "c60iub7", "c60izja", "c60j7le", "c60jf8p", "c60jwgg", "c60k096", "c60kv2x", "c60l189", "c60l1i9", "c60l89c", "c60lcff", "c60ov8l", "c60pd4y", "c60peob", "c60qrgx", "c60qxup", "c60r9z4", "c60rmt7", "c60twm6", "c60twyv"], "score": [488, 26, 15, 419, 5, 97, 6, 2, 5, 5, 3, 8, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 25, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["I'll try and make this as simple as possible.\n\nBeethoven, Mozart, and Bach are not all classical composers.\n\nBefore Bach a lot of music was very simple, a single vocal or chorus and maybe an instrument playing too. Bach was ~~an early~~ a later composer in the Baroque era, this era of music introduced much more complexity with multiple instrument parts, but it was still relatively simple music, usually featuring a single lead instrument with backing. Bach is seen as one of the best composers of this era, or at least the quintessential Baroque composer.\n\nMozart was ~~one of the first~~ a classical composers. The classical movement put a lot more emphasis on technical excellence in its music. Instead of the Baroque style of having a single lead instrument and backing pieces classical music would have different parts for every instrument in the orchestra, each instruments sound would weave the fabric of the music.\n\nBeethoven wrote music in both Classical and the new Romantic style. The Romantic style took Classical and made it more dramatic. Rather than being about just technical excellence it was about the feel of the music, the ebb and flow. The composer was trying to evoke emotions in the listeners with their music. The music would alter its tempo and timbre, it would quiet down to a single instrument only to explode back into the full orchestra.\n\nEach of these musicians is considered the best of their era, each era was considered a leap forward in the philosophy of music.\n \nEDIT: A few improvements. \n\nEDIT 2: Clarification to answer OP's question. Each of these composers is seen as the height, or quintessential, composer of their respective eras. \n", "Part of being the \"best\" is being the first to do something.  For example, many people say that The Beatles are the best rock band of all time.  Part of the reason why they believe this is that The Beatles were one of the first bands to really turn pop music on its head.  Everything that came after was influenced by The Beatles.\n\nSimilarly, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach were all on the cutting edge of their respective genres.  Bach mastered baroque music to a point where everything that came after was viewed as a copy of him.  Same with Beethoven  &  the \"romantic\" style, and Mozart with the classical style.\n\nAre they better than a composer like John Williams?  Well, that is a matter of opinion.  Many people believe that John Williams' work is derivative - meaning it is simply copying the styles and sometimes even tunes of other composers.  Personally, I think John Williams is a fantastic composer who has an uncanny ability to match the feeling of a movie character with music, and I will happily listen to his stuff alongside Beethoven.\n\nIs there a \"best\" out of the three?  I don't think so.  Some people say Mozart is the best, but I personally can't stand to listen to anything he wrote.  Beethoven and Bach are two of my favourite composers but I wouldn't try to compare the two of them as their styles are so completely different.", "Ok...like you're 5 huh?\n\nBach has lots of music that likes to follow itself, like follow the leader. We call these tunes, Fugues and they get very complicated, but are very fun to listen to. He also wrote things called Sonata's, which is someone who plays a solo while his friends help him out in the orchestra. \n\nBach's music is very tricky sometimes and can be difficult to sing along to. It always feels like it is running forward and can be fun to clean the house to. Bach likes to use a LOT of notes. We call these trills. \n\nMozart made lots and lots of music that is very easy to remember and very easy to sing. Did you know he was writing music when he was 6 and was quite famous across Europe? Most of Mozart's music sounds very happy and is played a lot. \n\nMozart is tricky though. It may sound very easy, but it is very hard to play. He tried many new things that other composers had not thought of and everyone thought he was quite grand. I'm told he had a funny laugh as well.\n\nBeethoven was a very serious man and he wrote very serious music. Beethoven liked to try to make you angry, happy, sad, anxious and relieved, all in one piece of music. He liked to see how many different emotions he could make you feel. He was kind of a Drama queen when it came to music and he tried more new things than Mozart did. This made him quite famous. \n\nThere is no \"best' composer. Bach is good if you want background music or would like to clean up something. Mozart is good to listen with friends and sing along with. Beethoven is good to feel very dramatic, like when you need to make a speech.\n\n\n(writing for a 5 year old is...tough)", "As a professor of music I get this question at least once a term.\n\nEither they were the first to do something (Beethoven) or they did something so well they became the point of departure (Bach).\n\nI'll try to keep theory out of this.\n\nBeethoven is seen as the pivotal figure for the change from classical to romantic music.  His career follows this line as his early imitated the late classical style but soon morphed into what would be the example of the new romantic music.\n\nBy the time Bach started writing, his primary style was falling out of fashion.  However Bach wrote so well and so much that he became the defining figure for his style- but not until later.  In his lifetime Bach was seen as a good musician but more known for his performance and leadership activities.  It wasn't until hundred years after his death did people really start to recognize the quality of his music.\n\nMozart is kind of a strange exception.  He was not considered the best of his day.  He was kind of late to the classical party being preceded by Bach's own children (CPE and JC) and Haydn as well.  He also did not live long enough to really push the envelope.  His music is of high quality, no doubt, but it was far from the most popular of its time.  Yet his music endures due to its accessibility (ease of listening) and partially because of who he was in life.\n\nAs far as being better than each other that is very subjective.  Just because a composer is old or time-honored doesn't make him better than another.  Who knows, in a hundred years Williams could be on that list.  before 1850ish Bach wouldn't even be on your list.  The most important thing about music is learning to understand in its own terms.\n\nTL;DR: Its a combination of skill, timing, and pure lucky circumstance that these composers stand out.  \n\nNow do you own appreciation homework.", "[Salieri describes Mozart](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd his first encounter with [Mozart's music](_URL_1_)", "Although I agree with some of the other good answers here, you also need to make a distinction between compositional technique, and the music that results from it.\n\nBach, Mozart, and Beethoven all share the qualities of being some of the most innovative and technically virtuosic in terms of technique. However, one could also argue that Webern was incredibly virtuosic in compositional technique, but hardly anyone listens to his music any more. So clearly the actual music is important in how it withstands the test of time.\n\nBut to explain (hopefully in a simple way) how compositional technique plays into all of this, I will try to provide a few examples. \n\nBach was considered a master of *counterpoint* - which is a term to describe music made up of multiple interlocking melody lines. A very simple example is singing in a round - imagine Row, Row, Row Your Boat sung by three groups starting at different times. You end up with distinct melody lines that interlock and sound cool together. What Bach did was basically take that concept (not necessarily the same melody, but ones that fit well together) and run with it. He was known to write up to five or six separate voices that all lined up and sounded cool pretty much all the time. By contrast, most other composers of his time rarely made it past four voices, and even then some screwed up and it didn't sound as pretty.\n\nMozart was known for being incredibly prolific as well as being a musical genius. Mozart may well be so famous simply because he wrote SO MUCH music - he wrote 41 symphonies in his (relatively short) lifetime, compared to Beethoven who wrote only 9, yet lived much longer. Mozart wrote in almost every genre (except for an inexplicable hatred of the cello) and almost every instrument has Mozart works that feature them. Mozart was also a child prodigy and developed a substantial performance career by the time he was 7 or 8 years old. Because of his incredibly performance skill (similar to later composers like Liszt) he was able to write music that really pushed the performer's skill at the instrument, especially in piano and violin. Since that was also a time where the piano as an instrument was evolving rapidly, it became increasingly important to develop repertoire that pushed the technical constraints of the instrument, which Mozart did very successfully.\n\nBeethoven, in contrast to Mozart, was known for his skills in *motivic development* - that is, taking one short musical idea (a motive) and finding creative ways to continue using that idea throughout a whole piece. Consider one of his most famous works, Symphony No. 5. Everyone has heard those opening four notes - \"duhduhduh DUN\" - and the majority of the first movement essentially used and reused those four notes for upwards of 6-7 minutes of music, an awfully long time to not get bored of four notes. Beethoven is considered skillful expressly because he used relatively little new material, but still somehow made his pieces interesting and tell a story and make sense on an emotional level. This is what many composers strive for today, and could arguably be seen as the impetus for modern musical movements like minimalism.\n\nBesides that, of course, all three composers were not only well known simply for their own music, but because they managed to withstand the test of time by having people continue to advocate for their music after their deaths. Actually, Bach was not all that famous once he died - it wasn't until Felix Mendelssohn \"rediscovered\" and popularized his music that people acknowledged Bach as more than some random old dude who wrote a few hits back in his day. Although Mozart and Beethoven didn't have as dramatic a change in fame, their music remains popular because people have kept their music alive through performance and study.\n\nAnd while this might be slightly outside of the scope of your original question, there is also a more practical aspect. Many performers of classical music are subject to as much marketing as anything else in order to make a living. In other words, orchestras (for example) have to market their product to the public in order to keep ticket sales up and advertising revenue going. Since certain composers have an extremely high amount of name recognition, many orchestras will choose to perform pieces by those composers, hoping that they will draw in a wider audience than performing more obscure music that only caters to a small niche community. Then, because these orchestras primarily perform \"popular\" classical music, those are the pieces that most people hear about or actually attend concerts or buy recordings. They know they like those pieces, and continue to go to see the \"greatest hits\". \n\nOther than a small population of \"classical connoisseurs\", most people are unlikely to risk seeing a concert of really obscure pieces they've never heard before - there's too much variation in classical music to guarantee that you'll like a piece by an unknown composer, and for people who are not trained in music, it may not be very interesting because the differences in classical music are often more difficult to hear without knowing what to look for (which is another ELI5 topic to itself, I think). \n\nSo, in short, because it's easier and more profitable to continue playing Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, it tends to be the music that sticks around especially if you are not deep in your local classical music scene. Other composers are just as \"good\" in the sense that you can definitely enjoy listening to their music just as much. But they haven't broken into the ubiquitous fame that those three have.\n\n**as a caveat to anyone who might criticize, I'm using the term \"classical\" in the standard vernacular sense meaning music from the Western art music tradition during the Common Practice Period (ca. 17th-19th centuries) or music that seeks to actively follow or emulate those musical styles.\n\nAs for source, I'm just your average music major who dreams of studying musicology, which helps explains many of these questions.", "It's not really possible to explain why John Williams isn't as \"good\" as the baroque/classical/romantic era, at least from a musical perspective. Music is subjective. However, one thing that separates Beethoven from every composer in history:\n\n**Beethoven was the first man to ever make a living selling music.**\n\nI can't stress how important that is. Before Beethoven, it was only possible for composers to either A). work for a church or B). work for a rich aristocratic family. A man traveling the country independently, selling sheet music for money, was unheard of. (Even Mozart, with his arguably superior talent, was relegated to musical servitude his whole life. He also died in poverty.) Without Beethoven, it might honestly have never been possible for a musician to tour and make a living on his own.  Thus his music is not the sole reason he has been immortalized.\n\nTL:DR - Beethoven invented the business model for selling music. He was the first man to ever make a living exclusively from selling his sheet music. That's why he is unique, compared to any other composer.", "They weren't all classical composers. They were among the innovators of their time and lay the groundwork that future composers built off. \n\nI'm by no means a trained authority, but I can tell differences between styles. I guess it's a byproduct of being dragged to operas and philharmonics growing up. \n\nUltimately, it's music that not everyone relates to. It's probably the most complex and technically challenging of all genres, especially compared to garbage like dubstep and skrillex, but it's not for everyone.  ", "Bach is considered great because of his mastery of counterpoint, which is music that features distinct melodic lines woven together so that they harmonise. Most modern music has one clear melody that we can follow, and everything else around it exists to provide the melody with harmonic context. But in Bach's music, each note of the harmony forms part of a melody line of its own, running at the same time as all the others. Bach didn't invent counterpoint; it was already a well-established idea before he was born. But the skill, ingenuity and creativity with which he composed his counterpoint music is unmatched by any other composer, alive or dead. \n\nTake his Fugue for Six Voices from the Musical Offering, for instance. It was composed for the piano, but the best way to understand its incredible intricacy is to watch a six-piece group playing it. I'm going to link to the video in a moment, but first let me tell you what I want you to notice. The first voice (here played on a viola) comes in playing the theme of the fugue, a little melody that goes up for four notes, drops suddenly, does a long descent from high to low in little steps, then does another quick climb and drop and ends up back on the note it started from. \n\nAs soon as the viola finishes playing the theme, it's time for another voice to enter - a violin in this version - playing the same theme but starting from a different note, in this case a higher note. But the first voice doesn't stop: it dances around the second voice creating harmonies by playing a new melody of its own. And so it goes: as each new voice enters, the others dance around it and each other, creating gradually more complex harmonies as the number of voices increase, so that when the last and lowest voice comes in, it's sustaining a structure of five different melodies above it. The fact that they all sound logical and harmonious together is testament to Bach's genius: a structure made up of six melodies would sound chaotic in the hands of any ordinary composer, and indeed fugues for six voices are pretty rare.\n\nOnce all six voices have entered by playing the theme, they are free to go wherever Bach wants them to go. But he doesn't let us forget what this fugue is based on: bits and pieces of the theme turn up everywhere, sometimes tricking us into thinking we're going to hear the whole theme again before suddenly veering off in a different direction. Finally the theme thunders back in again to bring the fugue to its conclusion.\n\nSo here it is: [J. S. Bach's Fugue for Six Voices from the Musical Offering, played by the Croatian Baroque Ensemble](_URL_0_). I'll also throw in a link to the cantata [\"Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme\"](_URL_1_), just because it's one of the most joyful and sublime pieces of music I've ever heard.\n\nI'll do Beethoven in another comment after I've had some dinner. As something of a Johnny-come-lately to this kind of music myself, I am still getting to know Mozart, so I'll leave it to others to explain his greatness.", "There are a lot of awesome answers here but just to add a little fun fact about Beethoven; after he died, musicians at the time were so amazed by his work that many people thought that symphonic music was over because Beethoven perfected it. There was a documented anxiety amongst the next generation of composers who felt that there was no point in trying anymore because no one would be better than him. I believe both Liszt and Berlioz made statements of feeling like there was a huge shadow over them to even try to live up to Beethoven.", "Great question that doesn't have a great answer. ;)\n\nIn my no doubt controversial opinion, there's literally *nothing* objectively better about Beethoven than, say, Nickelback. **This isn't athletics.** It's *entirely* subjective. \n\nIn fact, a large part of why these three particularly are held in such high esteem is historical accident. Literally hundreds of their contemporaries wrote music that can easily be considered to be \"as good\" or \"better\". \n\nThere's only two types of music: music you dig, and music you don't. Personally, I really dig these guys and John Williams. Nickelback? Eh, not so much.", "Wow, that's a very tough question to answer. \"Bach shows us what it's like to be the universe, Mozart shows us what it's like to be human, Beethoven shows us what it's like to be Beethoven.\"\n\nIt might interest you to know that Bach was not a widely performed composer until about 70 years after his death when he was revived by a conductor/composer named [Mendelssohn](_URL_7_), and he was only really known in his lifetime for being a superb organist.\n\nI think people like Bach so much because he was a master of saying what needed to be said in the simplest and most elementary terms. If I was asked to choose a piece of music to accompany a minimalist piece of art, I'd probably choose a work by Bach. I can't really think of any other composer that was able to do this to the extent that he could.\n\nAnother way of looking at why Bach has remained so popular is that Mozart himself was heavily influenced by Bach's music (Before Bach was even popular!). (A small, interesting sidenote. Bach's son (J.C. Bach) actually met the 8 year old Mozart and taught him a lot about symphonic writing). One of Mozart's students reported that Mozart ALWAYS had a copy of the [Well Tempered Clavier](_URL_1_) open at his piano, and it's widely agreed that Mozart would not be the extraordinarily talented composer he's perceived as today had he not studied Bach's contrapuntal (multiple melodies playing at the same time) writing.\n\nI guess what I'm saying is that perhaps a contributing factor to why Bach has become even more popular is because he lives on so prominently in the music of virtually every composer that came after him, in addition to having written such well crafted and beautiful music. The same can be said for Mozart and Beethoven.\n\nMozart is my personal favorite of the three. It's very hard to describe why, but his music feels so perfect and yet so humanly imperfect at the same time. There's so much drama but there's so much inner peace at the same time. He was able to do very complex and intricate things, but they were always contained in a deceptively simple package. Words fail me in describing him justly, so I'd just point you towards the [Act 1 finale of Don Giovanni](_URL_2_), or if you're not into opera, perhaps the [finale of his 23rd piano concerto](_URL_4_). I could start listing hundreds of examples, so I'd better move on... :P\n\nBeethoven was highly influenced by both Mozart and Bach, and Beethoven influenced virtually every composer that came after him. I'd point you towards [this wonderful video](_URL_6_) for a great explanation of why Beethoven is so great. Beethoven is mostly remembered because he was really the first composer to explicitly write music to express **himself**, which was really a revolutionary idea. He was also a master and a pioneer at a thing which we call \"motivic\" development. An example of this can be found in his [Fifth Symphony](_URL_0_). EVERYTHING, without exception, in that symphony is built from that basic four note motif, which I think makes it feel incredibly organic and natural, which is why it appeals to us so much.\n\nWith regards to there being a well defined best out of the three; In all the \"[Top 100 classical composers](_URL_3_)\" lists I've seen, it's pretty much unanimous that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven will be the top 3 in varying orders. You really need to listen to the music and figure out for yourself which one is the best to you. While Mozart is *my* personal favorite, I'd have to rank Bach as #1.\n\nLook, ultimately, if you don't like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, that's absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with you, you just have tastes. Go and explore and figure out what music you like and enjoy it. The best composers are the composers that **you** enjoy the most.\n\nI'm sorry if my answer was a little long and wandering, but this isn't an easy question to answer. If you're interested in learning more about classical music, I'd point you towards this[excellent set of lectures by Leonard Bernstein](_URL_5_), where he makes a point to draw a ton of excellent comparisons to linguistics and literature.\n\nI hope my answer helped a little.", "Now then. Beethoven.\n\nBeethoven and Bach are probably my favourite and second-favourite composers respectively, but their roles in the history of music are completely opposite. Bach represents the perfection of an existing style: the Western music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods appears, once you have heard Bach, to be a lead-up to his music, groundwork being laid so that Bach could exist. In contrast, Beethoven was a fearless original whose music represented a total break from tradition, and the beginning of the Romantic era in music, whose composers owed a greater debt to Beethoven than to any other composer. Bach's music puts me in mind of a giant automaton made of metal and glass, a powerful yet delicate machine with hundreds of moving parts connecting together in perfect working order. Beethoven's music, on the other hand, conjures images of muscle and sinew moving under skin, a heart thudding with emotion, a mind alive with ideas, a face howling with pain or glowing with joy. I am doing Bach a huge injustice by making him out to be unemotional. To be implying such a thing about the composer of the Saint Matthew Passion makes me wilt with embarrassment. But what I want to convey is that, in terms of emotional expression in music, Beethoven is the absolute master.\n\nThe brilliant emotional quality of his music is well-demonstrated in short pieces; take [the quiet, soulful contemplation of the Moonlight Sonata](_URL_0_), for example; [the eerie, disquieting air of the Ghost Trio's second movement](_URL_2_); or [the exuberant conclusion of the Kreutzer Sonata](_URL_3_). But the greatest manifestation of Beethoven's expressive talent is his symphonies.\n\n[The Fifth Symphony](_URL_1_) is my favourite, though the Third and the Ninth are also incredible. No one can say for certain what the Fifth is about - they're musical notes and you can interpret them however you want - but I like the interpretation of Robert Greenberg, whose course \"How to Listen to and Understand Great Music\" got me into Beethoven, as well as many other great composers.\n\nGreenberg describes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a battle between despair and joy. Despair comes in first: that famous theme crashes in imposingly (DA-DA-DA-DUHHHHHHH! DA-DA-DA-DUHHHHHHH!) and the following repetition and development of the theme (da-da-da-duh-da-da-da-duh-da-da-da-duhhh etc.) sounds like a roiling hurricane of anxieties plaguing the soul of the artist. But what's this? At 1:21 (if we go by the video linked above), in comes something completely different: the music becomes calm, lyrical, gentle. But it's not long before the ominous, anxious music from the beginning is back, and the first movement becomes a series of mood swings between fear and hope, with fear having the last word.\n\nWith the second movement, which comes in at the nine-minute mark on the video, we return to hope with a sumptuously beautiful piece of music. Enjoyment is back in the life of our previously despondent artist; a reason to live has been discovered. But despair has not been conquered yet. The third movement (19:35 on the video) comes in with a winding, sinister tune on the cellos that brings all the foreboding of the symphony's first moments rushing back, and then the horns blast a fanfare that Greenberg calls the \"hunting-horns of hell theme\". Our artist's problems haven't gone away! They were lying in wait to knock him flat again, just as he was beginning to feel good about life! \n\nBut then, in the middle of the third movement at 21:36, a new melodic theme comes in that sounds cheerful, energetic, lively. From here on, joy gains and gains in strength while despair recedes further and further into the background. In the fourth movement, which we transition into at about the 25-minute mark, the little echoes of the earlier ominous themes sound like nothing more than a fading memory, while the mounting sense of excitement causes the piece to build to a greater and greater intensity of joy all the way to the loud, triumphant final chord.\n\nBeethoven knew all about despair. He was a professional musician and composer who was going deaf and feared that his livelihood would be destroyed by the condition. That a man who knew misery so well could write a piece which conveys such joy is the most convincing argument to go on living and striving, even in one's worst moments, that I have ever heard. I'm not even half conveying how wonderful it is. It's music like this that makes people consider Beethoven to be one of the best composers, probably *the* best composer, in human history.", "As a graduate in musicology I could go on and on about how they shaped the face of music in their respective days as CopperHarmonica did. I'll try a different approach. What makes Pink Floyd and the Beatles better than other band? They just are. You may not be the greatest connaisseur of classical music, but listen to a *good* recording (not the computer generated cheap shit) of Beethovens 5th symphony, at best with headphones, and tell me you're not feeling anything. It's simply one of the best combinations of different sounds in a specific time order ever heard on earth. Really.\n\ntl;dr: It's complicated as a musicologist, it's simple as a listener.", "No one has talked about John Williams yet. ", "they were german.\n\n/nazi off", "Talk about begging the question.\n\nThey're not \"better\" necessarily (that is a personal opinion) but they are the best known composers of their generations.", "I don't think they are.. I'd call Tchaikovsky the greatest.", "there are two kinds of musicians: those who are obsessed with Bach, and those who aren't obsessed with Bach yet.", "Not only is your ear untrained, but [you're a dickhead as well] (_URL_0_)", "Op - you are a giant fucking dick.", "They aren't better :(\n\n-A Vivaldi fan", "It's not for nothing Bach is known as King Shit of Cock Mountain.", "Antonio Vivaldi will always be my favorite classical composer--just my 2 cents.", "It's like that with metal too. I hate hearing people lump in black metal with death or n\u00fc metal with death metal. They are as different as badminton  and MMA are in sports. ", "Person opinion and popularity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxgZcMGmkkI", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&amp;NR=1&amp;v=vNaXQQbcgw0"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i6MorFy3YE", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCULWK4tNuc"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRgXUFnfKIY", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvHokjQ6enI", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3XZCgqo6ws#t=1h13m56s", "http://www.talkclassical.com/19687-tcs-50-greatest-composers-107.html#post333879", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeTyZPxlwMA#t=10s", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3HLqCHO08s", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuYY1gV8jhU", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0wmzoHd6yo"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT7_IZPHHb0", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKnOYSWT5BM", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUnZnB_QaNI", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eijcQUbDm8"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/z0ncf/two_years_ago_my_sister_died_from_leukemia_they/c60kltz?context=3"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1pj823", "title": "how come when you mess up really badly, you feel weird and \"sick to your stomach\"", "selftext": "EDIT: what I meant was like if you messed up at work, and you might possibily be fired. Or if you failed an exam and you know your parents will be pissed, etc...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pj823/eli5_how_come_when_you_mess_up_really_badly_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd2w431", "cd2wyaz", "cd2x63r", "cd2xfji", "cd37q9f"], "score": [15, 5, 7, 2, 3], "text": ["I Like /u/mod_maj_gen explanation best, but I always understood it to be that when put into shock, your body will very quickly stop any non-essential processes in order to preserve energy for the \"flight or Fight Response\". One of these non-essential processes is digestion and explains not only the \"sick to your stomach\" feeling, but also the \"butterflies in your tummy\" feeling when you are nervous.  ", "I think their was actually some research on this published recently.\n\nBut basically my understanding is that unlike in a non social animal the human brain treats rejection, disappointment, and other things that are not directly physical but could effect our social standing in a very similar way to physical threats or injury. This is why things like rejection and screwing up, even when it doesnt directly effect our physical well being, trigger the the  \"fight or flight response\". I think what happens after this is already explained quite well.", "OP may also be referring to messing up in social situations, aka in front of others. You feel sick because your body is aware of the fact that you have just lost \"value\" in the eyes of others.\n\nMost Social Darwinist's would attribute this to the fact that our bodies and emotional circuitry have evolved over the last ~250,000 years to give us the best chances of survival and reproduction. Therefore, if we do something that lowers our value, such as messing up, we get a sickening feeling, to deter us from committing such a violation in the future. It's same reason men will oftentimes experience uncomfortable sensations when they are rejected by a woman. ", "I thought OP meant \"make a mistake\" (usually of social nature) rather then the direct fight or flight situations the explanators are bringing up.\n\nWould you really say that it's the fight or flight system that kicks in if you (to use an internet-relevant example) tell a rape joke to a group and then find out one of the people you told it to was a victim?", "When you have feelings of apprehension, nervousness, fear, etc, you are activating fight or flight pathways. These fight or flight responses are some of the most \"ancient,\" as even the most basic unicellular organisms have some level of fight or flight response to stimuli.\n\nYour entire GI system is lined with neurons, [and is often describe as a second brain](_URL_0_). One theory is that this second brain originated from our early evolutionary history, where most animals are a stomach, and not much else. Over time, this brain grew symbiotically with out modern brains, and they communicate through the [vagus nerve](_URL_1_)\n\nIt is thought that this is where the \"butterflies in the stomach\" feeling comes from. Our modern brain, with it's high-thought capacity, induces fight or flight responses from our thoughts and fears of future \"danger\", whatever that may be. These signals travel down your vagus nerve to your gut, which reacts accordingly. Whether this has some specific physiological purpose or is just a remnant of evolution is debatable, as you can see from other answers to your question. \n\nOverstimulation of the vagus nerve can also result in a sharp drop in blood pressure, causing fainting, as a last resort defense mechanism. As anyone with anxiety issues or panic attacks can tell you, once it starts it just snowballs, and often centers around the stomach. It's a pretty interesting system that scientists really have not explored much.\n\nSource: trained chemist with anxiety issues, so I research this stuff all day while I stare at my reactions. Although I make no claim that my understanding is 100% accurate and up to date with the most recent research, as it is not my specialized field."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve"]]}
{"q_id": "4dgbhp", "title": "why do nations fund terrorism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dgbhp/eli5_why_do_nations_fund_terrorism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1qmcnj", "d1qmq4z", "d1qu52z", "d1qukjy", "d1r7pmy", "d1r8rid"], "score": [179, 8, 19, 5, 3, 3], "text": ["My neighbour can be a real asshole, so I sometimes buy the local neighbourhood kids footballs which sometimes get kicked at his windows.\n\nBut you can't prove I did it, and neither can he.\n\nAnd then you've got the whole \"One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter\". Europe and the US would never ever support terrorists, though, but they will support the Syrian Rebels, the Ukraine Rebels (maybe) and so on... Whether you think it's right or wrong, it all comes down to supporting people who are fighting your enemies.", "This question sort of implies a few ideas that first have to be proven.\n\nIf you asked any of the countries that have been accused of funding and supporting terrorism in the past they will mostly deny either that they did it or that it was terrorism.\n\nMost countries have a very strict public stance that they don't do such things.\n\nHowever in some cases nations might find themselves in a situation where for example a nation that they consider an enemy has internal troubles of some sort and they will secretly or not so secretly support and fund a group of rebels that fight that regime.\n\nOf course they will claim that they are supporting freedom fighter or revolutionaries who represent the will of the people or justice or the right sort of religion. These distinction of freedom fighter vs terrorist is often lost on the people that get blown up while sitting in cafes or who were flying in a passenger jets that never made it to their destinations.\n\nAt other times nations have found themselves with a need for a justification for attacking another nation or a desire to discredit a movement and helped bring this about by creating terrorist attack that looks like it was done by someone else. These so called false flag attacks do exist and have happened in the past, but are also a favorite of conspiracy theorist who see them in many places where they aren't.\n\nThere is no need for the nations who fund the terrorist to share the ideology of the terrorist sometimes all that is needed are common enemies.\n\nOf course sometimes the leaders of the nations who fund terrorism actually do share the ideology and do support terrorism because they are true believers, but for the most part that is not the case. You don't stay in power in a nation like that by being naive enough to buy into the propaganda you feed your subjects yourself. It can be helpful to appear that way though.\n\nTerrorism like war often is just the continuation of diplomacy and politics by other means.", "Terrorism is nothing more than asymmetric warfare. That is, if you want to fight somebody, but they have a professional army, and all you have are a few guys, if you try to fight a conventional war, you'll be wiped out in nothing flat.\n\nBut if you fight by conducting small hit-and-run (or suicide) strikes on easily-accessible targets designed to kill, injure, and unnerve, you stand a chance of winning. In many cases, the Big Dog finally gets tired of being picked off two or three at a time, or the folks back home get tired of the whole affair, and they pack up their tents and leave. \n\nFurther, when it's OUR guys blowing up shit, they're \"freedom fighters.\" When it's THEIR guys blowing up shit, they're \"terrorists.\" So a nation that has an interest in some conflict, but doesn't want to get involved directly, they arm and train \"freedom fighters,\" like the US did with the future Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 80s.\n\nPrivate individuals also sponsor \"freedom fighters.\" In the 60s-70s, a lot of the money the IRA used to blow up Brits came from hats passed around in Irish pubs in Boston or New York.\n\n\n", "They might not view it as terrorism.\n\nThe United States funded the Mujahadeen of Afghanistan to prevent them from being invaded by Russia. \n\nRussia certainly viewed their occupation as proper, and the Mujahadeen as terrorists. But the USA called them freedom fighters.\n\nFast forward 3 decades, and those same men are now part of the Taliban. \n\nTerrorism is not always so clear. Because what if the terrorists actually have a good cause? (Like the Syrian Rebels) Is it justified then? They probably can't win in a proper and fair war. And neither side has the intention of a fair fight anyway. \n\nSo we fund Syrian rebels. \n\nBut I guarantee that there will be some disagreement among the upper echelon of the Syrian Rebels. And while hopefully the transition of power will go smoothly when the time comes, more likely than not, one or two factions within the rebels will disagree with the direction things are going, and boom, suddenly they're terrorists. ", "To achieve various goals and to indirectly attack enemies without necessarily declaring war. It is kind of like how European countries used to allow pirates or privateers to attact the shipping of ther rivals without openly declaring war.", "Anyone going to mention proxy wars?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6audcf", "title": "why do we tend to view mammals and furry/soft animals, even predators, with a positive physical connotation (cute, pretty, regal, etc) but scaly animals, insects, arachnids etc are viewed with a negative physical connotation (gross, ugly, fearful)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6audcf/eli5_why_do_we_tend_to_view_mammals_and_furrysoft/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhhhib5", "dhhhj5l", "dhhi6th", "dhhlftx", "dhhuvy1", "dhi1kac"], "score": [17, 14, 37, 14, 5, 2], "text": ["Not really even sure how to flair this because I don't know if it's biologically driven, culturally influenced, etc.", "I run into this attitude constantly and I think it is mainly ignorance like most things that people are afraid of. I am sure that some of it is evolutionary though, our species has probably had to avoid insects at every turn just to survive. I've heard that they even think that that is why we developed ticklish areas to keep the tender spots away from bug bites.", "Mammals all kind of have the same idea of cuteness. A human values big eyes, playfulness, and soft fur as a sign of infants, which are adorable because nature wants us to give us as much incentive to protect babies as possible.\n\nReptiles and insects have no need for cuteness, nor do they have the usual \"cute\" traits. That being said there are plenty of people who find those things cute. Geckos, for example, are sometimes and exception.", "I'd say it's because we have more in common with furry mammals then we do spiders/ insects/ snakes etc.\n\n1 we know furry things 'feel' nice to the touch.  \n2 we know they have young who are raised by a parent (just like humans)  \n3 their eyes often look a lot like ours.  \n4 many mammals have been domesticated. Dogs in particular have the pack mentality which is EXTREMELY compatible with human family units enabling them to integrate into human groups with far less effort then most creatures.  \n5 snakes, insects and spiders are often venamous. Mammals aren't.  \n\nSo basically i think it comes down to familiarity and relatability. Mammals are far more relatable to humans, because we are also mammals", "This video from vsauce is relevant: _URL_0_\n\nBasically, there are some who theorize that the reason dragons/serpents are prevalent as villians or monsters in many otherwise different cultures around the world is because humans may have a hardwired biological fear of snakes and other predatory reptiles which could date back to the common ancestor of mammals millions of years ago. Doesn't answer the whole question, but I thought you might find it interesting.", "Unrelated, but reminded me of [Harlow's furry vs. spiky monkey mother experiments](_URL_0_)\n\n > The monkey was removed from its actual mother which was replaced with two \u201cmothers,\u201d one made of cloth and one made of wire. The cloth \u201cmother\u201d served no purpose other than its comforting feel whereas the wire \u201cmother\u201d fed the monkey through a bottle. The monkey spent the majority of his day next to the cloth \u201cmother\u201d and only around one hour a day next to the wire \u201cmother,\u201d despite the association between the wire model and food."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/6grLJyqIM8E"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow#Monkey_studies"]]}
{"q_id": "34gss6", "title": "What makes a place (city, fort etc) strategically important in war?", "selftext": "I tried searching but apart from a couple posts about Stalingrad's importance in WWII and it being the biggest defeat for Germany I haven't found anything that satisfies my curiosity.\n\nSo Stalingrad is obviously one, and I think Pearl Harbour was another? The French thought Marginot Line would be worth holding but (spoiler alert!) the Germans just bypassed it altogether.\n\nSwitzerland is also something I understand was an important place because it was the path to and from Italy.\n\nSo does being a direct, safe route from one place to another automatically qualify a region as a strategic point of contention in warfare? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34gss6/what_makes_a_place_city_fort_etc_strategically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqulwrj", "cqutyow", "cqv301w", "cqvh8za"], "score": [28, 10, 5, 5], "text": ["Stalingrad was a major industrial center, a crossing point on the Volga, and a population center, all of which made it necessary to take. If the Germans had left Stalingrad unoccupied and drove on into the Caucuses, their flank would have been open to a Soviet counterattack, to say nothing of the tanks and guns that would have continued to roll out of Stalingrad's factories.\n\nPearl Harbor was important almost solely due to location. It was a major US naval base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at which the bulk of the US Pacific Fleet had been concentrated. Same idea; the Japanese couldn't advance into southeast Asia with an intact and fully capable American fleet in prime position to intercept them.\n\nThe location of the Maginot Line would have been defended even if it had never been built. You can't very well not garrison the German/French border if you're in a war with Germany. But anyway, it's not like the entirety of the French Army was sitting in forts with their thumbs up their asses; their best troops were suckered into Holland, then cut off from the troops holding the Maginot Line when German Army Group A drove through the Ardennes, across the Meuse, and to the sea.\n\nThere are any numbers of reasons why an area or a feature would be considered strategic. There's really no formula for it, other than to say \"holding X enables me to do Y; conversely, taking V prevents my enemy from doing Z to me.\"", "Atleast in pre industrial times but even up to WW1 a fortress/castle or walled City would usually act as either a force multiplier, sort of Roadblock for the attacker or safe haven for the troops stationed inside.\nOften it was just not feasible to leave an intact fortress in your back since that would leave the Garrison able to cut your flow of supplies, harass you or in the case of costal forts put you under fire with its guns and thus often defend its associated Cities from Naval invasion (See Fort Wagner and Charleston Harbour during the Civil War).\n\nThus a fortress and City under your own or the enemies control could either be a great help since it would offer shelter during winter and harsh weather, be a jumping off point where supplies could be pooled for the next campaigning season or severly slow down an enemys advance by requiring troops or naval assets to siege it into submission.\n\nA fortress would also usually control the land around it and in times of war act as an Arsenal/Prison or administrative center. ", "Why Switzerland was ignored:\n\nYou could compare Switzerland with the Netherlands, Belgium or Denmark. All four of them declared their neutrallity when the war began, but all four of them could be of stragetic importance for the Germans: \n\nThe conquest of Belgium was decisive for conquering France (ignoring the Maginot Line)\n\nThe Dutch Harbours were crucial for the war against the British\n\nThe Danes controlled the entrance to the Baltic\n\nAnd the Swiss is an important crossroad for traveling through the Alpes.\n\nStill the Swiss were the only one spared probably because of an easy cost benefit equastion. The Swiss were the only one of these 4 with a well trained and supplied army in a countryside difficult to conquer in contrast to the Low Countries and Denmark. Besides the Germans already had acces to Italy through Austria and having a neutral neighbour when you're in war can be just as useful as an ally", "Geography is usually what makes a place strategically important in war.\n\nLook at the American revolution as an example.  \n\nCities were not generally strategically important in this war.  The British proved able to capture any coastal American city they wanted to  (and all of America's cities were coastal at the time).  \nThey did occupy most of them at one point or another during the war.  (They only had the resources to occupy about three cities at once, but at different points in the war they occupied Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah.)\n\nAmerica, however, during the revolution, was a rural country.  Cities were not that important as economic or industrial centers.  The American war effort shrugged off the loss of the countries largest cities.\n\nThe most strategic locations in the Revolution were the forts of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, West Point, and the city of Quebec.  These were all important because they defended the strategic Hudson River corridor between Canada and New York, which if occupied by the British would cut the colonies in two.\n\nThe Americans seized Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point from the British by surprise attack early in the Revolution, which cleared the way for an American attack against Canada, which failed outside the walls of Quebec, which allowed the British to then attack south from Canada and recapture Ticonderoga and Crown Point.  This British advance was supposed to meet up with another British force advancing north from New York City, but this force did not capture the fort at West Point (didn't even try very hard), allowing the American victory at Saratoga which defeated the British advance from Canada.  The British tried again to capture West Point by encouraging Benedict Arnold's treason (he was trying to hand over West Point to the British) but the plot was discovered and prevented by the Americans.  \n\nBritish capture of the Hudson corridor was their best chance (at least after Washington got canny enough to never give them a crack at defeating the Continental army in a single battle - which he almost let them do during the defense of New York) at achieving a favorable outcome after the Colonies revolted, but they were unable to achieve it.  Despite at one time holding three of the four strategic fortresses defending the corridor, their failure to capture West Point at the same time was critical.\n\nForts which defended critical geographic features, in this case rivers (Hudson and St Lawrence) and portages (between the Hudson and the St. Lawrence) were the strategically important positions.  As Britain controlled the seas, if they could establish control of navigable rivers they could penetrate deep into the American interior and divide the colonies.  The Revolutionaries had to defend these strategic waterways."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "lb25b", "title": "Is there any research showing that Garlic can be an effective anti-Biotic?", "selftext": "I get ear infections about twice a year and just recently the anti-biotics I was on made me pretty sick.  During one infections I tried taking several Garlic pills a day and it seemed the problem went away until I stopped taking them and it came back.  What do we know about Garlic as an Anti-Biotic? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lb25b/is_there_any_research_showing_that_garlic_can_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2rcoh7", "c2rdgws", "c2rdxbj", "c2rcoh7", "c2rdgws", "c2rdxbj"], "score": [3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["There are many things that have an antibacterial effect, but the question is always what concentration must it reach to have that effect. This is true even for things we think of as antibiotics: penicillin, amoxicillin, etc. \n\nGarlic may have an antibacterial effect, but it would probably be difficult to reach that concentration in the body.", "I have actually done anti-microbial tests with a few spices as a pet project in college. Garlic is a very week anti-microbial. Unless you were eating bulbs of the stuff hourly you wouldn't reach any effective concentration. Cloves on the other hand... Eugenol is crazy stuff.", "Thiosulfinates (a major component of garlic) almost certainly have an antibiotic and antifungal effect when applied directly.\n\nThere is a lot of loose, non-rigorous research on the topic:\n\n* _URL_1_\n* _URL_0_\n* _URL_3_\n* _URL_5_\n* _URL_2_\n\nAll seem to confirm that non-cooked garlic (raw, oil, tablet or extract) has an antibacterial effect when used topically (i.e. direct contact). However, it is all highly concentration specific and also dependent on how the extract is made.\n\nBut nothing really compares the effectiveness of garlic to a common, medical antibiotic. This is something you'd prefer to see to gauge whether it's a *good* antibiotic or not. I'm also highly disappointed that most of the research papers I found spent a lot of time talking about how wonderful it is that we're confirming this \"traditional\" medicine's power (something that speaks to me of bias).\n\nI also couldn't find anything that would indicate eating garlic would affect anything other than your digestive tract. I simply couldn't find any research that looked for a systemic effect.\n\nThis study:\n\n_URL_6_\n\nappears to show *antifungal* properties roughly equivalent to commercial solutions when garlic oil is injected into the ear.\n\nThis study also claim that garlic works well injected intravenously for systemic fungal infections:\n\n_URL_4_\n\nBut both those findings seem to be contradicted by this paper:\n\n_URL_7_\n\nwhich finds no antifungal properties.\n", "There are many things that have an antibacterial effect, but the question is always what concentration must it reach to have that effect. This is true even for things we think of as antibiotics: penicillin, amoxicillin, etc. \n\nGarlic may have an antibacterial effect, but it would probably be difficult to reach that concentration in the body.", "I have actually done anti-microbial tests with a few spices as a pet project in college. Garlic is a very week anti-microbial. Unless you were eating bulbs of the stuff hourly you wouldn't reach any effective concentration. Cloves on the other hand... Eugenol is crazy stuff.", "Thiosulfinates (a major component of garlic) almost certainly have an antibiotic and antifungal effect when applied directly.\n\nThere is a lot of loose, non-rigorous research on the topic:\n\n* _URL_1_\n* _URL_0_\n* _URL_3_\n* _URL_5_\n* _URL_2_\n\nAll seem to confirm that non-cooked garlic (raw, oil, tablet or extract) has an antibacterial effect when used topically (i.e. direct contact). However, it is all highly concentration specific and also dependent on how the extract is made.\n\nBut nothing really compares the effectiveness of garlic to a common, medical antibiotic. This is something you'd prefer to see to gauge whether it's a *good* antibiotic or not. I'm also highly disappointed that most of the research papers I found spent a lot of time talking about how wonderful it is that we're confirming this \"traditional\" medicine's power (something that speaks to me of bias).\n\nI also couldn't find anything that would indicate eating garlic would affect anything other than your digestive tract. I simply couldn't find any research that looked for a systemic effect.\n\nThis study:\n\n_URL_6_\n\nappears to show *antifungal* properties roughly equivalent to commercial solutions when garlic oil is injected into the ear.\n\nThis study also claim that garlic works well injected intravenously for systemic fungal infections:\n\n_URL_4_\n\nBut both those findings seem to be contradicted by this paper:\n\n_URL_7_\n\nwhich finds no antifungal properties.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://maxwellsci.com/print/ajms/v2-62-65.pdf", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6669596", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.1667/abstract", "http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/6/837.short", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0507.2004.01076.x/abstract", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900703001886", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-765X.1995.tb00397.x/abstract", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650050403/abstract"], [], [], ["http://maxwellsci.com/print/ajms/v2-62-65.pdf", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6669596", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.1667/abstract", "http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/6/837.short", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0507.2004.01076.x/abstract", "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900703001886", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-765X.1995.tb00397.x/abstract", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.2650050403/abstract"]]}
{"q_id": "5gtfuh", "title": "how are consumable meats cultured in labs?", "selftext": "Whenever I think of lab cultures I mostly think of bacteria in a Petri dish. How are theses meats able to \"grow\" and put on weight? How will they able to produce the amount of pounds of meat that is currently in demand?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gtfuh/eli5_how_are_consumable_meats_cultured_in_labs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dauy1f6", "dauy5uk", "dav7v4r", "davb0i8"], "score": [57, 48, 7, 9], "text": ["Actually we all start out as a lump of cells when we were still an embryo. When cells divide, you will grow in size and your cells will start to specialize in certain functions (for example skin cells can absorb sunlight). Thus by absorbing enough nutrients, the lump of cells can divide and grow into a human.\n\nNow if you want to grow meat, the process is more complex. Main problem is that the cells will try to specialize into a task. So you add drugs to stop the process. Also your Petri dish will run out of nutrients as the cells kept dividing non-stop, thus it will be better if you use an entire tank of cell culture instead. Just keep refilling the tank until the meat is ready.\n\nKeep in mind though this is VERY expensive. Controlling the enviroment (temperature, pressure......) is not easy and it cost at least $10000 for a pound of lab grown meat. Most meat we eat today are just animals kept in farms (most likely GM for more meat), which is cheaper and safer.", "As far as I know, they don't grow meat in labs on a large scale, although it's currently being researched.\n\nIn the same way that you can grow bacteria in petri dishes, you can also grow animal cells in flasks filled with nutrient-rich liquid (media). Generally, the cells will stick to the bottom of the flask as they grow. The trick with growing tissues (meat is just muscle tissue) is that you have to grow the right type of cells and you have to get the cells to organize into that tissue. Research is focused mostly on which chemical signals the cells need to organize into the tissue and what sort of structure they need to grow on.\n\nAs the cells grow they get all of their food from the liquid media, so if you want to grow pounds of meat you will have to replace the media a lot.", "Getting muscle cells to grow is a solved problem at this point. The obstacle to industrial-scale production is a circulatory system. In a living being, blood brings oxygen and nutrients to the tissues and removes waste products. There is an upper limit to the volume of tissue that can be maintained solely by 'diffusion'. Very small animals like insects can survive without hearts or lungs because none of their tissues are very 'deep'. \n\nIt's possible to grow tissue with veins in it, but then it would need to be hooked up to a mechanical or organic pump and use real blood or a blood substitute. \n\nThe last I time I saw anything was a story that said they had been able to produce enough meat to make a single hamburger. Presumable that was because they made lots of small bits of tissue and when ground up, it was exactly equivalent ground beef. Something like boneless hams or turkey should be pretty easy because those things are basically glued-together bits of meat anyway.", "About a year ago I listened to a podcast by Sam Harris and he was talking to the CEO of a company called Memphis Meats, who are trying to find a way to mass produced cultured meats. They talk a bit about the science and the rationale behind why they would try such a thing. The Podcast is \"Waking Up\" by Sam Harris and episode is called \"Meat without Misery\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "d0sbbp", "title": "Why did Buster Keaton believe that 1926 American audiences would want Union villains and Confederate heroes?", "selftext": "Buster Keaton was one of the great actors and directors of the silent era of Hollywood. His 1926 \"The General\" is considered one of his masterpieces and tells the true story of the Great Locomotive Chase when Union soldiers during the American Civil War hijacked a train on the Atlanta to Chattanooga line behind enemy lines and did a huge amount of damage to Confederate supply chains.\n\nIn the biography of Keaton \"Cut to Chase\" they mention that the history text Keaton went to for facts to base his script on on was told from the Union perspective but Keaton changed it so the Union were the villains kidnapping the Georgian protagonist's lover and the Confederates are the heroes. The book states that Keaton made this change because movie audiences would not accept Confederate villains and Union heroes, it would be necessary to reverse this to win their audiences.  Keaton himself wasn't a Southerner (he was born in Kansas and traveled a lot as a child but spent his summers in Michigan) so it can't have been personal.\n\nWhy would this be necessary? More Americans lived in formerly Union states than formerly Confederate states so why would the American film audience of 1926 want Confederate heroes and Union villains?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d0sbbp/why_did_buster_keaton_believe_that_1926_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f05ujmp"], "score": [2], "text": ["[This older answer](_URL_0_) from /u/OutlawHistorian may be of interest."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b0448k/when_buster_keaton_made_the_general_1926_he_made/eic4a9v/"]]}
{"q_id": "2wvn5e", "title": "Has \"End Time\" prophecies and Millennialist-esque thought played a notable role in the history of Islam?", "selftext": "I read an article mentioning that ISIS has such talk as part of its rhetoric, but at least to a relatively uninformed layman such as myself, I don't recall reading previously that this kind of stuff was a part of Islam, whereas it is a pretty well known part of Christian thought. Obviously talking about ISIS's use now is off limits here, but I was wondering what the history of this kind of stuff is within Islam, and whether I'm mistaken in my impression that it is a generally downplayed aspect of the religion.\n\nAlso, what is the general gist of the events that shall come to pass?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wvn5e/has_end_time_prophecies_and_millennialistesque/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cour0rt"], "score": [13], "text": ["I'll leave the exact details of the Muslim beliefs about end times to someone more theologically inclined.   However, yes, off the top of my head I can think of two very significant events inspired Millenarian beliefs: the Safavid takeover of Iran and the 1979 takeover the Haram al-Sharif in Mecca.  \n\nI talk about the Safavid takeover of Iran (this is how Iran became Shi'a) in [this older comment](_URL_4_) (particularly in the follow up comment).  Shah Ismail, the first of the Safavids to rule to Azerbaijan and Iran, declared himself Mahdi (the forerunner to Mesih, the Messiah, and generally the important figure in Muslim eschatology) in the early 16th century.  He came from a religious and noble heritage (his predecessors were heads of the Safaviyya Sufi order, and he was descended from both the Prophet Muhammed and Byzantine Emperors).  For most of his life before his rise to power, after his other relatives were killed, he was raised in isolation by other clerics.  The Safavid takeover in Iran is one of the most unexpected and fascinating moments in history, up there with the surprise and speed of the initial Arab conquests in the 7th century.    Obviously, the end of the world did not happen in his life, and his successor set up a stable dynasty that lasted over two centuries.  But his initial success was a military coalition of mainly Turkic tribes who clearly believed that he, Ismail Shah, was the promised Mahdi.  Since the period of Ismail Shah's rule, and particularly the Ottoman reaction to it, set up the Sunni-Shi'a split that continues to the present day, I think this unambiguously qualifies for a \"notable event\".  From his emergence until his defeat at the Battle of Chaldiran (1514), there was relatively little strife in his messianic followers.  That battle opened the door for strife because, since it was a defeat, it suggested that Shah Ismail wasn't divinely invincible.  It suggested this not only to his followers, but to the Shah himself, and he played a much smaller role in the decade between Chaldiran and his death than he did in the decade and a half leading up to the battle.  I don't know how reliable the sources are (i.e. whether they written by his or his son's political enemies) but some report that he fell to the drink after this turning point.  After his death, with no messianic figure leading them, the Safavid lands collapsed into a ten year civil war (civil wars were actually quite common consequences of succession disputes in the region at the time, though ten years is certainly on the longer end).  Still, the Safavid dynasty was able to consolidate power and Shi'a Islam did become an important rival to Sunni Islam from the sixteenth century onward.\n\nThe other major event that immediately comes to mind is the [1979 Seizure of the Haram al-Sharif](_URL_7_) in Mecca (the Haram al-Sarif, also called the Noble Sanctuary or the Grand Mosque, is the home of the Kabaa and so the direction that all Muslims pray).  During the Hajj that year, Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani was declared to be the Mahdi by a group of four to five hundred fervent believers led by his brother-in-law.  It was  a truly shocking event, and the armed group holed up in the Mosque sanctuary for about two full weeks, at points broadcasting their message from the mosque speakers.  It's worth noting that, by the Islamic calendar, this occurred at the very start of the year 1400 and followers drew explicit comparisons between Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani and his father and the Prophet Mohammed and his father.  Though eventually put down with Pakistani and finally French help (it's widely alleged that several French special forces commandos underwent a pro-forma conversion to Islam in order to enter the holy city of Mecca and end the uprising).  All told, several hundred people (including militants, civilians, and Saudi military and police forces) were killed.  This was a big turning point for the Saudi state, and marked perhaps the first point that their close relationship with the ulema--the clerical bureaucracy--was seen as a liability rather than just an asset.  Many of the participants were themselves members of the ulema--this was not just a group of uneducated peasants or nomads.  Further, this was the first time that the Saudi State took militants seriously in general, and most Saudi \"anti-terrorism\" measures and military cooperation with the West can be traced to this event (which happened shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which also made many leaders in the region quite wary of the clerics in their countries).  However, it should be made very clear that the Saudi State reacted not by limiting religion, but by closely watching it and empowering it--particularly those of a particular style that received even more state sponsorship than before.  Gender segregation was extended.  Women were slowly pushed out of newspapers and off television, and Western imports like cinema were restricted and then closed.  This increased religiosity gave the Saudi State more control over people, and it allowed them to make sure that they were getting a very clear, rigorous, and state-selected religious agenda (this eventually led to the marginalization of other, more moderate groups in the Kingdom, including the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been gaining influence in the Gulf at least through the 1950's and 60's).  Here, the event wasn't so much notable as the reaction.\n\n**Edit**:  Oh, man, I forgot my favorite Mahdi claimant!  I won't get into him, [Muhammad Ahmad](_URL_2_) of Sudan, whose partially messianic, partially anti-colonial wars are most commonly called the [Mahdist War](_URL_6_).  \n\nThe two other important Mahdi claimants of the 19th century can in someways be compared to Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism.  [Mirza Ghulam Ahmad](_URL_5_)'s movement is today known as Ahmaddiyya.  [Ali Mu\u1e25ammad Shirazi](), known as the Bab, claimed to be the Mahdi and founded the movement known as Babism.  As Mahdi, he foretold the coming of one greater than he (perhaps comparable to the role John the Baptist plays in Christianity).  After the Bab's death, most of his followers agreed that this next promised was Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, better known as the [Bah\u00e1'u'll\u00e1h](_URL_0_), who founded the Baha'i Faith and claimed to be not just the fulfillment of the Bab's prophecy, but all Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other groups' eschatological prophecies.  Neither of their claims were particularly apocalyptic, to my knowledge, and both concentrated heavily on building movements rather than the immanent end of the world.  Since participation in either movement is widely seen as making one an apostates in the Muslim World (similar to how Mormonism was long seen in the Christian World), Baha'is and Ahmadis are among the most persecuted religious groups in the world today.  There are probably [10-20 million Ahmadis](_URL_3_) (mostly in South Asia and some Muslim-majority parts of Africa), and probably about [six million Baha'is](_URL_1_) (spread surprisingly evenly all over the world, with the largest population still probably in Iran, but hugely prosecuted since the Islamic Revolution).  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah\u00e1%27u%27ll\u00e1h", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah\u00e1%27%C3%AD_statistics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya_by_country", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mzbji/was_the_christian_world_particularly_around_the/cm9ep2n?context=2", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Ghulam_Ahmad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure"]]}
{"q_id": "1nhpdl", "title": "At what period in time would the human population have passed 1 million?", "selftext": "2000 years ago it would have apparently been around 300 million so we'd already have been quite busy by then. When did it finally tip a milion? How spread out on the globe were we by then? Where did it go from there?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nhpdl/at_what_period_in_time_would_the_human_population/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccj702b"], "score": [4], "text": ["This is really a tough question to answer because the only evidence we can extrapolate from is the archaeological record and modern genetic variation.  \n\nWe can make some estimates of population density based on archaeological remains, but those estimates will be *very, very* rough over such a widespread area and time frame.  For example, we could use evidence of material remains to tell us humans arrived in X area, then extrapolate the [carrying capacity](_URL_2_) for X area at that time (these estimates are usually based on demographics of modern foraging populations), then add up all the maximum values for all the areas we know humans inhabited, and run with that total as the human population at that time.  Obviously, we are making so many assumptions by the time we have our population estimate that the number is virtually useless.\n\nWe can use modern human genetic variability to understand our population history, but, again, the timing and exact numbers will be very rough.  (As a caveat to the following discussion, I'm not a geneticist by training.  I took several graduate level genetics and population genetics courses, but if anyone finds fault with my interpretation of the genetic data please correct me.)\n\nSo what does the genetic data say?  The evidence points to a low overall population for our hominin ancestors.  When we first started examining the genetic data researchers noticed a theme of recent population expansion in the *H. sapiens* lineage.  Dates for this expansion ranged from 400,000 to 20,000 years ago depending on the genetic information and statistical analysis used.  A [recent mtDNA study](_URL_0_) indicates the story is slightly more complex than overall expansion.  The researchers examined 4 African mtDNA haplogroups. Two of the groups showed steady exponential expansion from 213,000-156,000 years ago.  One haplogroup showed substantial expansion at 12,000-20,000 years ago, and the final group showed substantial expansion 61,000-86,000 years ago.\n\nWhat does that mean?  It means that by ~200,000 years ago our population was growing exponentially (starting from a very low number).  The haplogroup that expands at 86,000-61,000 predates some estimates for the migration out of Africa (and may indicate that population expansion in Africa was a driving force for the migration out).  The [effective population size](_URL_1_) (which does not equal census population size) for sub-Saharan Africa crested one million by ~30,000 years ago.  Since humans had, by that point, spread over a substantial portion of the Old World (and census population size is greater than effective population size) we could likely push that date back to ~60,000-50,000 years ago for reaching the one million point.\n\nAgain, these are super rough estimates.  It is an interesting, if ultimately unanswerable, question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1655/367.full", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity"]]}
{"q_id": "4vc653", "title": "Did any Holy Roman Emperors ever try to recreate the Roman Empire or de-feudalize and imperialize their Realm?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vc653/did_any_holy_roman_emperors_ever_try_to_recreate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5x7xwr"], "score": [36], "text": ["Not certain if this question won't be deleted too but let's try again :D\n\nThe person immediately coming to my mind would be Otto III. If we follow Percy Ernst Schramm's argumentation that the german emperor possesed a dedicated ideology of ressurecting the Roman Empire.\n\nAccording to Gerbert of Aurillac (later Silvester II), the core areas of the former Roman Empire, Italia, Gallia, Germania and Skythia were posessed by Otto, which legitimated the western empire as the true successor of Rome. To give this ideology a foundation, the city of Rome ( as well as Italy) had to be stabilised. According to Schramm, several new policies (creating and changing offices in Rome ) and part sof the Emperor's behavior (sitting alone at the table) point to an idea of Emperorhood which differs from his predecessors. We also have the use of metal bulls as opposed to wax seals can be interpreted as a visible sign of Otto's self perceived equality with both the pope and the eastern emperor. Certain depictions of Rome's anthromorphised core nations in Otto's evangelion point to the importance of Rome within the emperor's political worldview. [Have a look and note who is first](_URL_0_).\n\nSchramm tries to substantiate his argument with further evidence. Leo of Vercelli's \"Versus de Gregorio papa et Ottone augusto\" (which propagates mutual support between church and emperor and a restorated Rome), an increase of missionary activity as part of the religious renovatio and the use of S.P.Q.R. in a law against the misappropriation of church property are, among others, seen as evidence for Otto's desire to restore his idea of the Roman Empire. What can be said for certain is that there was a strong relationship between pope and emperor but the renovatio idea itself has been criticised.\n\nKnut G\u00f6rich and a bit later Althoff for example challenge the idea of a coherent poitical concept of roman restoration under Otto III's rule. G\u00f6rich for argues that seemingly antique roman words and formulas have changed and that Schramm failed to properly recognise this problem. For G\u00f6rich the renovatio idea chiefly means the renewal of the papacy. He further asserts that the city of Rome was divided between several factions and that it is problematic to assume some kind of homogenous restauratio friendly interest group. Althoff asserts that the new titles and offices created by Otto were in fact just a logical extention of already existing titles, which does not necessarily support the assumption that there were an attempt to restore the ancient roman empire.\n\nTo keep this answer from getting overly long and boring i will refrain from writing down all of Schramm's critics but G\u00f6rich's arguments will serve as example and should be kept in mind. I will close this answer with two additional notes:\n\nFirst: Imperium means Empire in middle latin (source PONS) Second: I consider a ressurection of the ancient Roman Empire to be unlikely and favour the idea of the Renovatio as an attempt to renew the Roman Empire in the guise of the Ottonian Empire.\n\nSources:\n\nAlthoff, Otto: Otto III.: Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft ,1996. G\u00f6rich, Knut: Otto III. Romanus Saxonicus et Italicus. Kaiserliche Rompolitik und s\u00e4chsiche Historiographie: Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbeck Verlag, 1995. Schramm, Percy Ernst: Kaiser Rom und Renovatio. Studien zur Geschichte des r\u00f6mischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des Karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit: Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, 2. Auflage, 1957.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Meister_der_Reichenauer_Schule_004.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "8hjl41", "title": "What is the significance of magnesium with regards to depression?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hjl41/what_is_the_significance_of_magnesium_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dykd9a3"], "score": [16], "text": ["There\u2019s an enormous number of connections between magnesium and the biology of depression. Here are a few: \n\n**Blocking glutamate receptors.** Magnesium blocks a certain kind of receptor in the brain that's overactive in many forms of depression (NDMA receptors). In this way, magnesium resembles the antidepressant [ketamine](_URL_1_), which also works partly by blocking this receptor. \n\n**Strengthening brain cell connections.** The glutamate receptors that magnesium interacts with also play a major role in helping brain cells connect with each other (LTP). Brain cells in depression tend to be pretty weakly connected to each other in certain regions of the brain, and magnesium can help [strengthen](_URL_2_) these connections.  \n\n**Modulating neurotransmitter levels.** Having stronger connections between brain cells can allow more neurotransmitter to flow between them, and the reverse is true for weaker connections. So by changing the strength of connections between certain parts of the brain, magnesium can can influence our levels of serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA, and many other neurotransmitters. In some cases, magnesium can even do this [directly](_URL_0_).  \n\nAgain, these are only a few of the many connections between magnesium and depression. Magnesium has many extremely important cellular functions in the brain, and some forms of magnesium like [magnesium l-threonate](_URL_3_) are even being studied as antidepressants on their own."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK5280/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726824/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20152124", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3936783/"]]}
{"q_id": "30m7n3", "title": "why do countries like russia have harsher winters than other countries which are on the same latitude?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30m7n3/eli5_why_do_countries_like_russia_have_harsher/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cptp4uu", "cptpk86", "cptpphd", "cptqlgm", "cptyeqk", "cpu0ogk"], "score": [122, 2, 17, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Because Russia has huge landmass with very little ocean contact.  Conversely, the southern hemisphere has a lot of ocean area with relatively little land.  The ocean and its currents hold and move a lot of heat around the globe. Without proximity to the heat held in the ocean during the winter, Russia cools more drastically.  On the other side, the southern hemisphere experiences smaller temperature swings with the seasons. ", "Weather is controlled by so many things other than latitude. The topography and the proximity to water (especially the ocean) have massive effects on the temperature and climate that can completely overshadow the effects of latitude.", "If we take Europe for example, France is approximately at the same latitude as Canada, but weather in France is relatively mild, and it definitely doesn't get as much snow as Canada. \n\nWestern Europe gets the Gulf Stream, which is a warm air current from Mexico/Florida that crosses the Atlantic to reach Europe, making Western European winters milder. But it's only mild for those countries which have a more or less \"Atlantic climate\" and can feel the effects. The further you go into the continent, the less that effect is felt. Thus by the time you get to Russia, the warm current faded out, and thus Russia cold like northern Canada :)", "It all has to do with the Earth's radiation budget - radiation from the sun, that is - and how that energy is processed. Places on the Equator get a ton more solar radiation year round, while places on higher/lower latitudes get lower/higher during winter/summer respectively. Radiation, in this respect, is simply solar energy. Sunlight.\n\nOceanic currents and air circulation (e.g. mid-latitude jet stream) help move around the radiation from places of constantly high radiation to places with alternating radiation. This is where your question comes in: Much of Russia (and other continental areas like the Prairies, the Steppes, etc) is incredibly far inland. This means that it is hit with intense seasonality, unlike places like Vancouver or Anchorage. Yes, Anchorage gets cold but it does not get nearly as cold as places like Tomsk in Siberia. This is all due to the proximity of the sea.\n\nThat's the simple answer: Inland Russia is incredibly far from the sea.", "If you look at Norway, the coast is warm and nice because of the Mexican gulf stream. Where as inland Norway (behind mountains and shit) can be cold as fuck. Looking at you R\u00f8ros. ", "Geography influences climate just as much as latitude. For example, as the sun rises, water takes longer to heat up than land, and when it sets it takes longer to cool, which affects winds. Another example is [ocean currents] (_URL_0_), these are like giant highways of water, water from warm places like the carribean moves norh to Europe and brings its heat with it, giving  Europe a nice mild climate. Yet another example is mountain ranges, which have a huge effect on wind patterns.\n\nI'm not sure why russia is colder, it might be the Gulf Stream, which takes heat to Europe and not to Asia, also, have you ever been to Alaska or Canada? Those places are just as cold as russia. And at the same latitude."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/UuGrBhK2c7U"]]}
{"q_id": "1dv4yr", "title": "Looked directly at a small LED light and I saw it glow brighter and then to nothing over the course of about 5 seconds but when I looked with my peripherals, I saw a bright flashing light, that blinked every second. Why?", "selftext": "That was a really hard title to make... Anyway, I went outside and it was dark and my eyes began to adjust. I could see the light on my printer through the window. I noticed that when I looked away I could see quick blinking but when I looked directly at it, it was a slow glow that was gradual from dim to nothing at all. Why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1dv4yr/looked_directly_at_a_small_led_light_and_i_saw_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9u940n"], "score": [3], "text": ["It is likely that your printer light is pulsing very quickly while varying its intensity with each pulse to appear that it is gradually fading. As you look away quickly, the light is striking scattered (read as disconnected) portions of your retina, yielding an interpretation that the light is blinking. When you look at the light straight on however, the pulses are striking the same spot on your retina and due to the afterimage of the light, you are not interpreting it to be blinking but rather gradually fading.\n\nTest this by picking up the printer (if it's light enough) and moving it around in the dark fairly quickly to see if it now appears to be blinking. I'm sorry if you end up looking really weird while doing this and are caught."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1gsuui", "title": "Why does Listerine not kill all of the cells in your mouth?", "selftext": "If Listerine (and other antiseptic mouthwashes) claim to kill \"germs\" in your mouth, how do the antiseptic chemicals in the mouthwash not kill the cells in your mouth too?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1gsuui/why_does_listerine_not_kill_all_of_the_cells_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["canukfa"], "score": [8], "text": ["This isn't exactly my field, but let me tell you that if you cultured mouth epithelial cells in a dish and rinsed with Listerine, 100% would be dead. So what's the difference between a petri dish and a mouth? Well, it's the same reason why Listerine doesn't kill 100% of the *germs* in your mouth-- extracellular matrices composed of polysaccharides and protein. When bacteria form these lattices, it's known as biofilm, and it protects them from your immune system, antiseptics like alcohol, and so on. That's why you have to brush or scrape them away. I'm not sure what your mouth epithelial cells have to protect themselves from harsh chemical treatments, but you probably *do* remove millions of epithelial cells with every mouthwash. However, most of the cells in the oral mucosa are unaffected due to the protection provided by extracellular proteins and polysacchardies (some of which are known as mucus)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3wj8ga", "title": "[Literature] They say Alexander the Great slept with a copy of the Iliad by his side, so great was his love of Homer. Assuming this is true, what form would his copy take? How did he get a hold of it?", "selftext": "I've heard this story about Alexander before (though I don't know whose history is responsible for this claim). So let's say this is true. We can trust whatever ancient historian claimed Alexander loved Homer so much and felt such a personal connection to the story that he slept with it by his side every night. \n\nWhere would he get this book? Would it be a \"book\" as we imagine it today, with pages and a spine and binding? If not, what form would it take? How does a private individual acquire a copy of a book in the first place in the 4th century BCE? Would he buy a pre-existing copy from someone? Hire someone to make a new one? Something completely different?\n\nIt's my understanding that the Iliad was an *extremely* important and popular work to a lot of people in Classical Greece, so I figure someone has to be making copies. But who? Is book copying a full time profession or something people do to pass the hours or something else entirely?\n\nSo as you can tell I'm not so much wondering about Alexander in particular as I am wondering how a book that was apparently so popular and beloved was reproduced in the Ancient Greek world. Though if anyone has any information on Alexander's relation to the text, or how people have interpreted this relationship, or how he would go about getting a physical copy in the first place, I would love to know! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wj8ga/literature_they_say_alexander_the_great_slept/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxwo1vf"], "score": [74], "text": ["Plutarch says:\n\n > \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u1f38\u03bb\u03b9\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b5\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c6\u03cc\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03af\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f40\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03ac\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd, \u1f14\u03bb\u03b1\u03b2\u03b5 \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u1f08\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c1\u03b8\u03ce\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f23\u03bd \u1f10\u03ba \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, \u03b5\u1f36\u03c7\u03b5 \u03b4\u1f72 \u1f00\u03b5\u1f76 \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f10\u03b3\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03b9\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd \u1f51\u03c0\u1f78 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c6\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, \u1f61\u03c2 \u1f48\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03ba\u03c1\u03b9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f31\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c1\u03b7\u03ba\u03b5\n\n >  > And as he considered and called the Iliad the way [\u1f10\u03c6\u03cc\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 is poorly translated into English, it means a path, or a way and means] of warlike virtue, and took with him Aristotle's recension and calling it the 'Iliad of the Casket,' he kept it always lying with his dagger under his pillow, as Onesicritus tells us\n\nStrabo says pretty much the same thing, also calling it the \"Iliad of the Casket.\" A \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03be is both the name of a kind of plant that had a hollow, rigid stalk that could be used as a cane or a container (Prometheus carried fire within the stalk of one) or it can be the name for a little casket, often filled with perfumes and other toiletries. \n\nDuring Alexander's lifetime the codex, with its familiar pages and binding, had not yet been invented, so all books came in the form of scrolls. Usually books were long enough to fill up several scrolls--it's from this that the division of works of classical literature into books originates. Within a single book of a work the text was arranged into columns of several dozen lines each--the size of these columns depended on the work contained, whether it was prose or verse, and what meter it was in. During Alexander's lifetime spaces between sentences, accent-marks, and punctuation were not employed yet in Greek--these innovations were apparently introduced at Alexandria. The books making up a single work would then be kept in a box all together, often with a little tag on each of the scrolls to identify whether that was Book One of Thucydides or Book Four. \n\nBooks were of course copied by hand, and we have references to the public sale of books as early as Plato, who has Socrates mention in the Apology that Anaxagoras' books could be bought in the \"orchestra\" for only a drachma (if the price was high). Large book collections are attested as early as Pisistratus, who was famed for his collection, but really big, important collections start appearing in the 4th Century, when the Athenians began churning out books like it was going out of style--Aristotle's library dates from this period. The \u03b2\u03b9\u03b2\u03bb\u03b9\u03bf\u03c0\u03ce\u03bb\u03b7\u03c2, \"bookseller,\" was responsible for their sale and production, presumably with a bunch of slaves copying stuff out for him. We have very little information on the price of books--Plato has Socrates say that all of Anaxagoras is no more than a drachma, and Martial says that a cheap edition of his poems is 6-10 sesterces, so a single book was well within the reach of an ordinary laborer, provided he could read it. Under the Romans bookselling was quite a large business, with booksellers established in major cities throughout the empire (at Rome they were particularly active in the Argiletum), and with private individuals or families undertaking to publish authors' works (Horace was published and sold by a family of booksellers called the Sosii, and Atticus maintained a staff of slaves trained as copyists in order to copy and distribute Cicero's works). But the book trade in antiquity was generally a private affair. Public booksellers are pretty well-attested, but intellectuals who had the inclination (and money) for large collections rarely actually bought their books. Instead copying of text was usually done as a private matter, either from the author directly (as many of the people building up large collections would know the author, they were intellectuals after all) or by borrowing editions from a friend. In either case you just had a slave copy it out for you and boom, you've got yourself a copy. \n\nAlexander's *Iliad*, though, must have been an oddity, being small enough to fit into a \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03be. It's a bit unfortunate that you've asked specifically about the *Iliad*, and in particular Alexander's personal edition of it, because the *Iliad* is sort of an oddity in ancient books in general. The Homeric Poems were orally-composed and at some point in the early Archaic Period or late Dark Age were committed to text--how exactly is unclear and isn't important for our purposes. You'll notice that Plutarch mentions that Alexander had a copy of Aristotle's \"recension\" (\u1f08\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c1\u03b8\u03ce\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f23\u03bd), that is a revised and edited edition of the text. The Homeric Poems that we read today are not necessarily identical as those that Alexander might have read. For most of the Classical Period there were many different texts of Homer flying around, differing from each other ever so slightly (or sometimes differing quite a lot). This was a problem with all handwritten books even in antiquity and modern scholars still have to deal with it and decide what the correct readings are, but with Homer it was especially apparent already by the Classical Period. What we have today are descended from the products of the Alexandrian scholars of the Hellenistic Period, who reviewed the texts of Homer as they existed and drew up new recensions of them, but the text of Homer was not really standardized (and even then there are still mistakes in our manuscripts) until much later. There may have been an early attempt at a recension by Pisistratus, but there's not really any direct evidence for it--in any case Aristotle appears to have drawn up a recension of the text for Alexander personally. What this recension looked like we can't say, but it was probably done so as to make the text easily portable. The division of the *Iliad* into 24 books was something decided on by the Alexandrians, and Aristotle need not have used the same divisions--and probably didn't, since it's a bit difficult to make 24 books portable. Whether these scrolls were just written with a small hand (not impossible--we have a fragment from around the same time of a scroll of Orphic mysticism that's written with letters only about 2 mm high) or what isn't really clear"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1gegug", "title": "How can a species be both a stronger nucleophile and a weaker base?", "selftext": "I don't know how expansive this observation is, but consider iodine. We know acidity increases going down a group due to increased atomic orbital size that better accommodates the negative charge; that is HI is a stronger acid than HF. \n\nBut in losing the proton why is I- also a stronger nucleophile than F-? Doesn't the increased orbital size better accommodate the negative charge, which would make the species less nucleophilic? \n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1gegug/how_can_a_species_be_both_a_stronger_nucleophile/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cajgi5h", "cajjldt"], "score": [7, 6], "text": ["It has to do with [polarizability.](_URL_0_)  In short, the easier it is to distort the e^- cloud around the atom, the easier it is to react.", "There are a few differences between basicity and nucleophilicity. \n\nBasicity is normally thought of as a thermodynamic parameter (e.g. pKa values tell you about the position of an equilibrium) and nucleophilicity is essentially a kinetic parameter (when we say a stronger nucleophile we really mean a faster one). \n\nAlso, basicity is about reactivity toward \"H+\", which is a hard (non-polarizable) Lewis acid, and nucleophilicity is about reactivity toward carbon or other \"heavy\" atoms, which are more soft (polarizable). Hard-hard and soft-soft interactions are more favorable. This is one reason why iodide (e.g.) is a better nucleophile (more reactive toward carbon) than fluoride or even methoxide while those species are much much stronger bases (more reactive toward H+).\n\nEDIT: Also this is question is awesome and a fun subject to discuss and you should repost it to /r/chemistry."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizability"], []]}
{"q_id": "49gx4f", "title": "okay, so does free software foundation just expect us to give everything away for free? how do you make money on free software?", "selftext": "To start, I think what GNU and the Free Software Foundation does is amazing and important work, but, barring ideology and the likes, how do you expect to make money off of free software? Like, okay, so let's say I wrote a program. I want to sell it, but I want it to be free. How do I sell this thing that can essentially be spread legally for free?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49gx4f/eli5_okay_so_does_free_software_foundation_just/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0rs268", "d0rsda2", "d0rsgi7", "d0rtetx", "d0rtmq3", "d0rwx85", "d0s0n42", "d0s0pxn", "d0s2ceh", "d0s8mxy"], "score": [11, 41, 3, 2, 32, 4, 11, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Software as a service is one way. \n\nYou can roll your own server and compile it all yourself, or you can pay me to roll it out and support it for you. \n\nMainly it is just support. If you can provide the software free, the support for the software can be an expect d revenue source. ", "Remember -- free as in free speech, not free as in free beer. The mission of the FSF is to promote the expansion of practices for sharing. It is about enabling the investigation and modification of software by users, and ensuring proper attribution to the writers of software.\n\nLet's say you are using the GPL license, which is their most restrictive.\nYou (and others) still have the right under that copyright definition to sell the software in whatever format you want for profit. You (and others) can sell services for helping with the software. You can run software as a service on top of the copyleft software. You can request donations. You can seek grants. You can sell ads on the project site.\n\nThere are many ways to make money that are not just the selling of software.", "They regard users' freedom as the most important goal by far. You're welcome to make money by selling software but they regard doing that by restricting what others can do as heinous.\n\nExactly _how_ you make money is up to you, but they don't think you should do it by stopping others running, modifying, and sharing computer programs.", "you want to create a voicemail transcription service\n\nyou buy a library for $500 that converts MP3 to txt\n\nyou build a product using this library and charge 1\u00a2 per voicemail\n\none day you notice a bad bug in the libraey\n\n\"free\" software would let you have the source to inspect and possibly fix the bug\n\n\"closed\" software likely will not give the source, but if it did, may have a clause that says if you modify it without permission you are liable and the creator can sue you\n\neither way you still make money", "I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Think:\n\n- How do churches make money? \n- How do charities make money? \n- How do friends make money off friends? \n- How do homeless shelters make money? \n\nFor most people that write free software, we don't really care about the money. We just think that software should be free for a good cause. Imagine if:\n\n- All encryption libraries were proprietary\n- All browsers were proprietary\n- All SSH servers and clients were proprietary\n- All webservers were proprietary\n\nIt'd be hard to trust anyone and anything just in principle. Gross! A lot of people don't want to live like that, so we take pride in donating our time. Then, you get:\n\n- Open security that is universally debugged and trusted\n- Standardized practice based off effectiveness, not sales\n- Knowing exactly what is running on your machine by proof, not blind trust\n- An open invitation to be a part of a community of developers by contributing as you please\n\nHope this helps! ", "A lot OSS monetization goes something like this:\n\n1. Create project\n2. Companies find project useful and start using it\n3. Companies need support for the project\n4. Charge companies for support and maybe premium features\n\nOf course there are other ways as well but in my experience the most crucial part is support. The questions I always get asked when I try to introduce an OSS library or tool is \"Can we get support?\" and \"Won't it get abandoned?\". This is how Canonical (Ubuntu) and Redhat make money on software that anyone can get for free.", " >  How do I sell this thing that can essentially be spread legally for free?\n\nMost software is not actually sold. A bank pays developers to make something that fits their business and then uses it. At no point is that software for sale. There is software in your car that is useless separate from the car.\n\nWhen businesses do use off the shelf software, they tend to want good support and are willing to pay for it.\n\nFurthermore, traditional consumer software is already moving away from single sales to freemium and subscription models.", "I have read some response here and i am still confused.\n\nSo basically i can make software and sell it, but i have to give the source code for anyone, free? am i right?\n\nBut another guy will take that code, modify it, then sell it at higher price... of publish it free...", "The FSF doesn't really think the strategy of selling copies for money is the right way to sell things.\n\nMost software written is actually not sold this way. Usually software supports another product. Free software helps everyone in this case. For example, Intel invests a lot of money in developing free compilers. A good compiler means more people want their chips. Google will fund web browser and android development because they have a service that benefits from these things. \n\nA lot of tools are developed by developers for developers. They all benefit by sharing. So I produce a bug tracking tool. I share it. Other people can modify it. I end up with a better bug tracking tool. This also works with libraries. I want a library to handle computer vision. I write my own. If I share it with the community, the community will develop it, and my product will be better. \n\nOr you can sell support services. This is the business model most Linux distributors offer. ", " >  [...] how do you expect to make money off of free software?\n\n* You could sell services related to your software.\n* Your software could be related to hardware you sell.\n* Your software could be related to services you provide.\n* You could have a strategic interest in promoting a programming language, file format, computer platform or similar.\n* You may have written the software primarily for your own commercial use.\n* Your could further your academic career or the standing of your institution. Though admittedly, the money is indirect at best in that case."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "q7i6o", "title": "Were ancient people, such as Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, or the Han, aware that humans once lived in caves with stone age technology? Were they aware of human technological progression on that sort of scale? If so, how did they know, and did they keep record of it? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q7i6o/were_ancient_people_such_as_ancient_greeks_romans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3vdf2b", "c3vdmqe", "c3vdn19", "c3vdtpd", "c3vdxbt", "c3veuq2", "c3vmxjv"], "score": [20, 5, 7, 125, 16, 8, 4], "text": ["The best example of a lack of understanding of the progression of technology is Classical Greek artwork depicting the Trojan War. The [Euphorbus Plate](_URL_0_) being a good example - Bronze Age-era soldiers are depicted using Classical Greek armour and weapons. Similarly, they concluded that Mycenae, a Bronze Age fortress, must have been built by Cyclopes.\n\nOf course, it's worth noting that most ancient peoples had origin myths, and some aspects of such myths might seem to reflect pre-agricultural existence (Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh being one such figure). However, the analysis of such texts, and comparing aspects of them to hunter-gatherer existence is pretty shaky basis for history, and also outside my expertise.", "I'm also interested as to the answer of this, but let me throw something out that maybe others more knowledgable can critique.\n\nI mean, most \"civilized\" societies, even in antiquity, were contrasted with some kind of \"barbaric\" or \"uncivilized\" or \"foreign\" people who might not have developed basic tenets of organized civilization- cities, agriculture, technology. \n\nI know the Romans especially had to deal with barbarians at every stage throughout their history, and they had a very strong conception of their own founding and development as a nationality, even if a lot of it was interwoven in mythology/state propaganda (i.e., The Aeneid). I could see an intelligent people like that connecting the dots and realizing that most people probably lived like the other \"barbarians\" way back in the past.", "I can't prove it, but I can't imagine that they didn't encounter hunter-gathers in their own era. \n\nThe big question is-- did they realize there was a time when _everyone_ lived that way.   I don't think so.   But this is all speculative.  ", "If you look at some really ancient texts, you can see a kind of cultural echo of times when humans were not settled, agricultural, dwellers in towns. This isn't as direct an answer as you might have hoped for, and perhaps someone will dig out some references from Herodotus or Pliny or someone. It is relevant, however, because it involves the adopting of agriculture, one of the most fundamental early technologies, perhaps the one most vital for settled life in cities. I'll provide two examples, one from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the other from the Book of Genesis.\n\nIn the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the third millenium BCE, Gilgamesh is the god-king of Uruk, and the prologue lays out his accomplishments: building walls, a great rampart, and a temple. If we consider those accomplishments a kind of metaphor for the construction of the city itself, the great king's accomplishment could be seen as bringing the people into city--or civilized--life. Not that Gilgamesh *actually did these things*, but the *idea* that a great king is responsible for the very city they inhabit is, I think, indicative of a deep, cultural memory of unsettled, non-agricultural life. It also suggests a link between city life and larger-scale government and attendant politics.\n\nGilgamesh's companion in the Epic is Enkidu, another sort of echo of the past, a kind of metaphor for the transition from unsettled to settled life. In Chapter 1, the goddess Anu makes him, and the text describes him:    \n\n >  He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land... Enkidu ate grass in the hills with the gazelle and lurked with wild beasts at the water-holes; he had the joy of water with the herds of wild game. \n\nEnkidu represents people who have a vastly different and non-agricultural relationship with nature, and therefore people who do not dwell in the same place all the time, and certainly not in cities. You might even say that Enkidu is *closer* to nature, almost an animal. Interestingly enough, when Enkidu has sex with a woman, he changes and becomes more fully human, more civilized.\n\n >  For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.\n\nAfter this, the woman convinces him to return with her to Uruk. The connection to sexuality suggests an even greater depth here, that a connection between civilization and gender relations exists, though that is probably better saved for another conversation. For now, consider that laying with a woman severs his relationship to nature, to the animals, as well as changing his mind, giving him the \"wisdom\" and \"thoughts\" of a man.\n\nThere are similar themes in Genesis, and in particular when Adam and the woman are expelled from Eden in the Fall (she doesn't get a name until 3:20, right after). Up to that point, God has created the heavens and earth, populated it with animals. The creation of humans happens twice, first in Gen 1:26-27:\n\n >  [26.] And God said, \"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.\"\n[27.] And God created man in His image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.\n\nAfter this, God gives humans dominion over everything on the earth, every \"seed bearing herb,\" every \"tree that has seed bearing fruit\" (1:29). Those seed-bearing herbs and trees with seed-bearing fruit suggest to me the origins of cultivation: the herbs as grains, and the trees as fruit. After all, unless you plan on re-planting things, the fact that fruit has seeds or that grains are seeds is unimportant; otherwise, they would simply be edible parts.\n\nChapter 2 then documents basically the same story. There's a bit more detail and the creation of humans happens slightly differently: God makes man out of the earth (2:7) woman out of man's rib (2:21-22), and man actually names all the animals (2:19-20). Most importantly, however, God puts man in the Garden of Eden, \"to work it and to guard it\" (2:15), on one condition: \"'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. 17. But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die'\" (2:16-17). This will become important in a moment, and I'll return to it shortly.\n\nMan and woman, at the suggestion of the serpent, eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, and realize they are naked. God is angry at them, and throws them out, but does so in a very interesting way. He says,\n\n >  ... cursed be the ground for your sake; with toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life.\n[18.] And it will cause thistles and thorns to grow for you, and you shall eat the herbs of the field.\n[19.] With the sweat of your face you shall eat bread...\n\nOne way to look at this, I would argue, is that this represents a transformation of human relationships to nature corresponding to a change in knowledge. In this sense, humans become \"civilized.\" They gain knowledge of good and evil, knowledge which people who are more like animals (like Enkidu, for example) cannot have. Further, they must labor much more to eat, suggesting cultivation of the earth. It is true that man was placed in Eden \"to work,\" but it does not seem to have been very laborious; the trees seem to have given up their fruit without much effort. Now, however, man must eat bread, and battle against thorns and thistles: weeds. Weeds can only exist if you're farming. \n\nThe correspondence between gender and civilization also exists here, as woman is basically doomed to pain and patriarchy for her role in eating the fruit. God says \n\n >  [16.] To the woman He said, \"I shall surely increase your sorrow and your pregnancy; in pain you shall bear children. And to your husband will be your desire, and he will rule over you.\"\n\nAfter He kicks them out of Eden, God also makes them clothing, further evidence of their increasing \"civilization.\" The whole thing, in short, reads to me like a culture explaining to itself why it has a particular relationship with nature--agriculture, clothing--although it imagines, deep in the recesses of its culture, a time when things were different, when they lived in absolute harmony in a perfect environment.\n\nI know it's not exactly the answer you were looking for since it does not explicitly address technology. However, I think it is relevant, since agriculture and building construction themselves are technologies, indeed some of the most important early technologies for humans.\n\nSources:\n\n1. *The Epic of Gilgamesh*, N. K. Sandars, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1972; first ed. 1960)\n\n2.  Genesis quotes from *The Complete Tanach with Rashi*, The Judaica Press, Inc.\n\nMinor edits for clarity.", "In the case of the ancient Chinese, they were fairly aware of things. Han histories usually mark their predecessors as the Qin, Zhou, Shang, and Xia (in reverse chronology). We have solid evidence as far back as the Shang, with Xia being as of yet unproven. I'd say that's pretty good, since Xia would probably have been a prehistoric warlord or somesuch. The mythologies of the time usually talked about a series of emperors before the Xia (with the last one founding that dynasty), and generally the people of those times are seen as having been gifted agriculture and such by the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors over a few thousand years.\n\nEDIT: forgot those silly Zhou", "Creation myths themselves are generally predicated on the concept that a mythological figure brought about the beginning of time in what would have previously been a state of chaos or nothingness.  It would be difficult to touch on this generally, as if everyone could have thought or felt in the same way, but even in pre-historical times, mythology itself generally recognizes a beginning that is not \"highly civilized\".", "I would argue that they were. Here is a rather famous passage from Ovid, quoted in full (Dryden's translation--it's quite good). I put some relevant passages in bold.\n\n**The Golden Age**\n\nThe golden age was first; when Man yet new,\n\n\nNo rule but uncorrupted reason knew:\n\nAnd, with a native bent, did good pursue.\n\nUnforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear,\n\nHis words were simple, and his soul sincere;\n\nNeedless was written law, where none opprest:\n\nThe law of Man was written in his breast:\n\nNo suppliant crowds before the judge appear'd,\n\nNo court erected yet, nor cause was heard:\n\nBut all was safe, for conscience was their guard.\n\nThe mountain-trees in distant prospect please,\n\nE're yet the pine descended to the seas:\n\nE're sails were spread, new oceans to explore:\n\nAnd happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,\n\nConfin'd their wishes to their native shore.\n\n**No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,**\n\nNor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:\n\nNor swords were forg'd; but void of care and crime,\n\nThe soft creation slept away their time.\n\n**The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,**\n\nAnd unprovok'd, did fruitful stores allow:\n\n**Content with food, which Nature freely bred,**\n\nOn wildings and on strawberries they fed;\n\nCornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,\n\nAnd falling acorns furnish'd out a feast.\n\nThe flow'rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign'd:\n\nAnd Western winds immortal spring maintain'd.\n\nIn following years, the bearded corn ensu'd\n\nFrom Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.\n\nFrom veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;\n\nAnd honey sweating through the pores of oak.\n\n**The Silver Age**\n\nBut when good Saturn, banish'd from above,\n\nWas driv'n to Hell, the world was under Jove.\n\nSucceeding times a silver age behold,\n\nExcelling brass, but more excell'd by gold.\n\nThen summer, autumn, winter did appear:\n\nAnd spring was but a season of the year.\n\nThe sun his annual course obliquely made,\n\nGood days contracted, and enlarg'd the bad.\n\nThen air with sultry heats began to glow;\n\nThe wings of winds were clogg'd with ice and snow;\n\nAnd shivering mortals, into houses driv'n,\n\nSought shelter from th' inclemency of Heav'n.\n\n**Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;**\n\n**With twining oziers fenc'd; and moss their beds.**\n\n**Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,**\n\n**And oxen labour'd first beneath the yoke.**\n\n**The Bronze Age**\n\nTo this came next in course, the brazen age:\n\nA warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,\n\nNot impious yet...\n\n**The Iron Age**\n\nHard steel succeeded then:\n\nAnd stubborn as the metal, were the men.\n\nTruth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:\n\nFraud, avarice, and force, their places took.\n\n**Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.**\n\nRaw were the sailors, and the depths were new:\n\nTrees, rudely hollow'd, did the waves sustain;\n\nE're ships in triumph plough'd the watry plain.\n\nThen land-marks limited to each his right:\n\nFor all before was common as the light.\n\nNor was the ground alone requir'd to bear\n\nHer annual income to the crooked share,\n\nBut greedy mortals, rummaging her store,\n\nDigg'd from her entrails first the precious oar;\n\nWhich next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;\n\nAnd that alluring ill, to sight display'd.\n\nThus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,\n\nGave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:\n\nAnd double death did wretched Man invade,\n\nBy steel assaulted, and by gold betray'd,\n\nNow (brandish'd weapons glittering in their hands)\n\nMankind is broken loose from moral bands;\n\nNo rights of hospitality remain:\n\nThe guest, by him who harbour'd him, is slain,\n\nThe son-in-law pursues the father's life;\n\nThe wife her husband murders, he the wife.\n\nThe step-dame poyson for the son prepares;\n\nThe son inquires into his father's years.\n\nFaith flies, and piety in exile mourns;\n\nAnd justice, here opprest, to Heav'n returns.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Images/EuphorbusBM_GR1860_4_4_1.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bn71t", "title": "Did the South celebrate the 4th of July in 1865?", "selftext": "It was only 2 months after the Civil War ended. There were huge celebrations in the north but I'm curious if the south celebrated at all", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bn71t/did_the_south_celebrate_the_4th_of_july_in_1865/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csnq8ky"], "score": [34], "text": ["Follow up question: did the South have an \"Independence day\" that they celebrated during the War?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "41fyvp", "title": "if copper is too toxic to use as a spoon, then why is it's safe to have implanted an an iud without toxic side effects", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41fyvp/eli5_if_copper_is_too_toxic_to_use_as_a_spoon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz21op4", "cz21p8i", "cz21sga", "cz223qa", "cz224im", "cz22d4i", "cz22g8s", "cz22l3n", "cz22xs6", "cz23019", "cz23262", "cz234nu", "cz25a24", "cz26t74", "cz27rp9", "cz27u02", "cz28zt8", "cz29e3i", "cz29pgk", "cz2ad22", "cz2akai", "cz2b78l", "cz2bls3", "cz2bqm5", "cz2c7xb", "cz2ceoo"], "score": [1410, 755, 205, 12, 7, 23, 42, 28, 31, 3, 3, 137, 4, 12, 11, 21, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 3, 3, 4], "text": ["Long story short, those posters are probably full of shit, considering that every home in America is fed by copper water pipes, and we're all still here.", "Copper's toxicity is almost nonexistent in its regular metal form. You would have to eat a significant amount to experience any side effects. It's used in IUDs because it produces copper ions which inhibit sperm, but are not harmful to the person.", "I don't think those people knew what they were talking about. Before PEX was common most houses in the US used copper pipes for hot and cold water. I've never heard of health issues related to piping, or cups, or anything outside of a mine.", " >  A few posters pointed out that copper was toxic.\n\nYeah, THERE's yer problem, right there. Anybody who makes life decisions based on what a bunch of random people on the internet say probably deserve what they're going to get.\n\n\n", "I was kind of wondering that about the pipes. Copper is used just as often up here as PVC in new(er) builds", "There's some information on the wikipedia article on copper toxicity:\n_URL_0_\n\nI've been told that copper cookware is ok as long as it develops a patina because that protects it (and you) but if you cook something acidic, you're breaking down the patina and potentially causing problems.\n\nThis is not an issue with water pipes because water isn't acidic.", "_URL_0_\n\n/u/maverickmonk explained it well.", "You have to eat a lot of copper/have a problem expelling it for it to be an issue.\n\nOn the bright side, you get cool eye rings called Kayser\u2013Fleischer rings.\n\n_URL_0_", "Copper and bronze are actually good at killing diseases. Hospitals are changing door handles and bedrails etc to copper. Also airports and sport stadiums are making changes too. \n\nThis is because copper surfaces don't hold diseases like steel does. Copper interacts with oxygen and damages the cell wall of the bacteria. I'm guessing copper damages our cells the same way, but it probably only a problem if it's ingested. ", "While not necessarily a problem for terrestrial vertebrates copper can wreak havoc on aquatic inverts and (I think) some fish. Basically, don't plumb a fish tank with copper pipes. But I wonder if that's where some of this misinformation came from? ", "Copper is actually a required dietary need.  So they are wrong for saying a spoon is harmful, but I'm sure you can also have an excess for toxicity just like any other dietary item.", "If eating or drinking from copper was harmful, we'd all be in a deep, deep mess.\n\nEvery commercial hot water system I've ever seen uses primarily copper pipes, and I've seen quite a few.\n\nAs long as you don't eat the copper directly, you're fine.", "Copper is an essential nutrient.\n\nCopper IUDs work by causing a local inflammatory reaction.", "Copper, by itself, won't kill you anytime soon. But its a bad idea to use in a food-prep/consumption role because there are a number of acids we consume on a daily basis that are strong enough to give you a much larger dose of copper. Tomatoes, and tomato sauces, are really nasty about this, and this was part of the reason why tomatoes were considered a toxic substance when they were first introduced to europe; preparation in cheap metal pots and pans, and served on table settings with beautiful designs, the acidity of the tomatoes would draw out toxic metals into the food.", "This has two parts that we need to look at. First part: the difference between things entering the mouth, and things entering the vagina/uterus. Second part: copper toxicity.\n\n**Difference between things entering the mouth and things entering the vagina**\n\nThings entering the mouth are exposed to: digestive enzymes, stomach acid, bile (basic solution compared to stomach acid), lots of absorptive surfaces, water, and most importantly, time and lots of mixing/churning.\n\nThings entering the vagina are exposed to a less acidic environment compared to the stomach, basically none of the enzymes, less mixing/churning, and are basically never submerged in liquid for very long. Additionally, although stuff can be absorbed through the blood vessels in the female reproductive system, this is nothing compared to the stomach and intestines.\n\nAnother thing to think about with the acidity is that stomach acid is between 1.5 and 3.5 (3.5 will be with lots of food in the stomach, neutralizing the acid). The vagina should have a pH of 3.8 to 4.5, but can be a little higher or lower if they have a vaginal infection. Remember pH is on a logarithmic scale, so the difference between a full person's stomach contents with a pH of 3.5 and a healthy woman's vagina with a pH of 4.5 if actually 10-fold. Meaning, the stomach acid is 10 times more acidic than the vagina. If they had more acid and less food, and had a pH of 2.5, then their stomach is actually 100-times more acidic.\n\nThen, once food leaves the stomach, its exposed to bile, with a pH of 5.5 to 6, usually. That quick reversal of pH protects the sensitive intestines from stomach acid, but it also further helps digestion, because some stuff dissolves better in more basic conditions. Giving the food a deadly one-two punch.\n\nSo, eaten copper is exposed to a much harsher environment than a copper IUD, and the ratio of \"amount you put in the body to amount in the blood\" will be higher for eaten copper than the copper IUD.\n\n**How much copper is even toxic?**\n\nThe dose that kills half of the rats exposed to it (LD50 in science/med-speak), for copper, is 30mg/kg. So, assuming a 70-kg (~145 lb) adult human... 2.1 g of copper could be enough to kill you, and it would definitely make you very sick. The level in US drinking water is supposed to stay below 1.3 mg/L. If you're getting copper from other places in your diet, though (even aside from the spoon), it could build up.\n\nCopper tends to form salts, especially with acidic foods, which are pretty easily eaten and absorbed, so if you're worried, I'd keep that in mind. \n\n**My two cents** I don't think I'd be worried unless I also had a copper IUD, was cooking with copper pots/pans, and/or drank everything from a copper mug.", "The most basic principle of toxicology is that the [does makes the poison.](_URL_0_) Water is good for you, but if you get too much, you can die. In the same way, copper is good for you. It is necessary for making red blood cells, making collagen, maintaining healthy neurons, and it is an antioxidant. Too much copper can lead to [copper toxicity](_URL_1_) (which you can see collect in people's eyes.)\n\nBasically, your body maintains the same amount of copper at all times. It excretes as much as it takes in. The amount in an IUD is very small, and the uterus is not a very fast absorber of copper. The amount absorbed at a time is much lower than the amount your body can excrete. In the same way, if you use a copper spoon once in a while, it's not a big deal. Your body will just excrete a little bit more.\n\nThe only problems happen when you take in too much for your body to excrete, and copper builds up in your body. If you use copper cookware all the time, or you store foods in copper for a very long time, copper can leach into the food. This means you'll get a high dose all at once, and it might be too much for your body to handle.\n\nOverall, this is an incredibly unlikely problem to have. The real problems only come if you have a genetic disease that reduces your ability to metabolize copper, or if you are constantly taking in copper. For example, in India, babies drink milk that is heated in copper jugs. Their only food source is constantly heated in copper, which can cause liver problems. \n\n[Here is the conclusion from an article with more depth discussion about why this is an unlikely issue:](_URL_2_)\n\n >  The prevalence of clinical and subclinical disease related to copper excess is extremely low; thus, the numbers of exposed subjects required to define risk are very high (\u2248500,000). The population risk for copper excess should be assessed on the basis of hepatic copper loading as a potentially measurable outcome, because this is potentially more frequent. The challenge is to develop biomarkers for excess that predict the population risk of finding hepatic copper content of  > 250 \u03bcg/g liver dry weight at a given copper exposure level.\n", "Hi, Ill try to break it down for you. \n\n\nDispute what people here say, a built-up of copper is dangerous to the [human body](_URL_0_). So much so that it is regulated to is 1.3 milligrams per liter in drinking water in the U.S. The danger in copper cookware is presented in cooking or consuming acidic food with unlined copper cookware(like you mentioned copper is eaten away by acid). This frees small bits of copper to be absorbed into the the food. Whoever eats this food is at risk consuming too much copper. Consuming too much copper is on par with consuming too much [lead](_URL_1_) or [mercury](_URL_2_)! It is nearly impossible to get the FDA to approve any implantable device that made of copper because of its toxicity. \n\n\nSo why is it safe to have a IUD device with copper? \n\n\nWell copper has the nice property of killing any cells that are on its surface. This is great because it acts as a spermicide. Some people believe copper also inhibits the process of implantation. No studies(from what I can find) have found that the use of copper in IUDs increases the amount of copper in the body. So the copper is not absorbed through the walls of the uterus.   ", "Uteruses are usually have a fairly neutral ph, somewhere between 6.6 and 7.6 on the pH scale. Also, copper IUDs are toxic to a degree; that is how they kill sperm. But when you consume copper, there is a greater chance of absorbing the copper into your body than when you put it in the uterus. The digestive system is designed to absorb things you eat; uteruses are not designed to absorb things that get put into them.", "My understanding was that the danger of Copper isn't the toxicity, but rather that it destroys the Vitamin C of foods which are cooked in it.\n\nIn fact, copper cauldrons in ships were responsible for temporarily \"losing\" the discovery that Vitamin C prevents scurvy.  The copper cauldrons destroyed the Vitamin C, so sailors started getting scurvy again, and people stopped believing that scurvy and Vitamin C were linked.\n\nUnless you are cooking 100% of your meals in copper cookware, you should be fine.", "What is it with reddit and spoons?", "Lol and safely used for centuries in plumbing maybe..? The knife guy bought into some bullshit.", "I'm confused. My family has owned several construction companies over the past few decades and from my plumbing experience there's a gargantuan amount of indoor plumbing that uses copper tubing. Most government buildings still use it. I've never once heard of it being toxic. Like, it's all for pressurized water supply... and it's toxic?\n\n", "In America, copper only kills if you're not white. If you're white, you just get a warning.", "I wonder how this person feels that a majority of potable water is distributed through copper pipes in people homes. And water treatment plants run a majority their process piping in copper pipes to treat water from reservoirs into drinkable water. Or that medical gasses in hospitals are piped to the operating rooms or procedure rooms in copper pipes. Or that there've been cookware pots and pans cast in copper for centuries and are still available in every cutlery/home goods stores around the US. It's not toxic enough to have any regulations prohibiting its sale, you could go to bed bath and beyond and find a full set of cutting/carving knives, spoons, forks and knives in copper for sale.\n\n\nCopper is used as a pesticide in agriculture though(copper is considered an 'organic' pesticide so if you buy USDA organic produce there's a chance that copper was used as a pesticide instead of new chemicals). This actually makes copper better than plastic or iron for potable water piping or breathable gas piping because it's much harder for bacteria to grow in those pipes(now that copper prices have dropped many new hospitals are considering using copper instead of tinned steel on their walls and as operating room tables to decrease infection transmissions). I think this is also how copper IUDs work, they are highly toxic to the sperms flowing around in there but aren't toxic enough to harm the human. But I'm just a plumber so not certain on that part.", "Silver copper and maybe gold are similar in that the are anti microbial. You can put water in a sealed silver container and it will in time sterilize the water. ", "Considering that virtually every drop of water I've ever drunk has come through a copper water pipe, I'm not convinced there's much danger."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_toxicity#Cookware"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/418fpw/this_is_a_noife_i_made_my_response_to_reddits/cz1aubm"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayser%E2%80%93Fleischer_ring"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_toxicity#Cookware", "http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/3/867S.full"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_toxicity#Toxicity", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b8bnh1", "title": "Shakespeare wrote several plays set in classical Rome. How would his theater company have costumed Roman Legionaires and Senators? Did they know soldiers of antiquity were outfitted any differently than the contemporary english Army? Did they try to make sure, e.g., Brutus had an accurate toga?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b8bnh1/shakespeare_wrote_several_plays_set_in_classical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejyzt9d"], "score": [13], "text": ["Interestingly, one of the most useful documents giving us insight into the original staging of Shakespeare\u2019s plays depicts characters from one of his Roman-set plays: the so-called Peacham drawing (c.1595). This contemporary image (_URL_0_) shows a moment from \u2018Titus Andronicus\u2019, Shakespeare\u2019s early Senecan-style Roman tragedy (the one where Titus feeds Tamora her own rapist sons cooked into a pie...). It suggests that costumes of the time combined early modern elements (the Elizabethan-clothed attendant soldiers on the left) and an attempt to evoke Roman dress (Titus in a toga-like robe in the centre). Aaron the Moor on the right would have been a white actor (like Richard Burbage, the first performer to play Othello) in a dyed lambs-wool wig and black make-up (possibly charcoal). \n\nTLDR: Sartorial accuracy was not a priority, it appears, but Shakespeare\u2019s company would have made some effort to convey a sense of historical era and location through costume. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://shakespearestaging.berkeley.edu/system/files/images/1595TAScene.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1wznwv", "title": "why does my brain start randomly playing songs in my head that i haven't heard in years?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wznwv/why_does_my_brain_start_randomly_playing_songs_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf6ulla", "cf6urwi", "cf6vwe9", "cf6w9kj", "cf6xljd", "cf6y8ic", "cf6za9z", "cf6zewa", "cf6zodz", "cf6zpgm", "cf6zwar", "cf70k9n", "cf71ngo", "cf71x7u", "cf72155", "cf729ah", "cf72a16", "cf72efw", "cf73j9s", "cf73peo", "cf73w56", "cf74cdq", "cf74d9v", "cf74l9f", "cf74ofd", "cf74zsy", "cf76pxd", "cf76rni", "cf771im", "cf77lbg", "cf77lv5", "cf77z4o", "cf78bn9", "cf797fn", "cf7bbgs", "cf7c44j", "cf7cnlv", "cf7dc47", "cf7emot", "cf7f0on", "cf7gruh", "cf7hfcu", "cf7hsue", "cf7j9nx", "cf7l5rn"], "score": [1540, 16, 69, 46, 2, 6, 2, 12, 2, 4, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 13, 3, 6, 2, 19, 3, 11, 2, 14, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 8, 3, 3, 2, 5, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It's actually less random than you perceive it to be. You have an incalculable amount of information floating around in your head, but obviously you don't need access to it for the overwhelming majority of your existence. It's just sitting there, waiting to be called upon or activated, which can happen quicker than a ray of light.\n\nOne of the major ways we learn things is through association. If this, then that. Your brain forms tiny little connections between stimuli* and outcomes, which might seem \"random\" or even arbitrary. For example, whenever I hear my niece's dog Stacy suddenly get up from lying down on the couch, the bell on her collar rings and moments later her Mom walks through the door. I start to associate the bell with her mom coming home. This is a ELI5 version of classical conditioning, but I hope you take my meaning. The point is that it's not a conscious thing, and it can happen with stuff like \"I heard this song while I was jogging once, and I saw a person jogging which reminded me of the song.\" \n\nWe don't always catch these things, because again, they can seem so disjointed and \"random\" to us when we consciously consider them. You might find yourself listening to a song on YouTube one day and suddenly something in the video reminds you of this comment. The mental assocation happens so fast, and in an mmmbop it's gone, but you find yourself at the end of the song wondering why you're thinking about Reddit comments.\n\n*EDIT: Said stigma. Meant stimuli. Thanks to /u/mdilty for knowing where all the cowboys have gone, who let the dogs out, and other valuable information as well. ", "Memories can be triggers from anything from a smell, to an object, to a place, to a person. Music can randomly play when you see something that reminds you of that song. For example if you see someone you haven't seen for 10 years, or think about them, the song may be subconsciously tied with that person. That is the most probably reason. All of this may happen subconsciously without you knowing, as well.", "As a related question, why do I always wake up with a song in my head?  Sometimes it's the last song I heard the day before, but other times it will be a song I haven't heard in years. Is it my brain making that associative link while I am sleeping, or could a dream trigger the association?", "because you're eating a bagel and the last time you heard \"Who Let the Dogs Out\" you were in a bagel shop eating the same kind of bagel and subconsciously your mind tied those two things together. \n\nnow i want a bagel.", "My brain started playing that breakfast at tiffanys song from the 90s immediately upon reading the question. ", "Simple answer is that it's not random.  Your brain is making connections to memories from other memories.\n\nI know it's not random because my brain does it all the time but I can almost always tell you where the connection came from and how it got where it was going.\n\n", "Semi related question. How common is it not to experience this at all? I don't get any earworms at all, too.", "Jekyll Jekyll Hyde, Jekyll Hyde Hyde Jekyll, Jekyll Jekyll Hyde Jekyll HYYYYYYYYYYYDDDDEEE!!!!", "I'm glad someone asked this. I wake up and have these random songs in my head all the time.\n\nAlso, happy cake day :)", "Let's take it a step further.... Why is it, that when said song pops into my head, that I end up hearing that very song on the Radio sometime within that day?", "*I can feel it comin' in the air tonight...*", "Memory and music are very strongly linked. For instance I almost always listen to music via Albums, and I listen to that album for a solid month, without any other music. This pretty much means that any given month of my life has a soundtrack, and if I listen to that album in the future, I am instantly reminded of what I was doing.\n\nWhich means whenever I listen to Metallica I want to play WoW, ahaha.\n\nBut anyway, to answer your question you could have been doing something that you had listened to that song during before. \n\nOr, you know, you could have just subconsiously heard someone hum it.", "I hope someone corrects me or elaborates on this, but I'm pretty sure our brains do a thing called priming. It has to do with our subconscious connecting unrelated words or symbols to memories. \n\nLike how dogs learn to go to the back door when they need to shit, it's all association. I'd bet that this is all related.", "I find there may be a short sequence of notes which are similar or identical to the song I originally heard. Pop songs are often quite simple songs that's part of what makes them so catchy. I think for that reason a lot of songs are similar, so if you hear one you think of another.\n", "Jukebox Brain :)", "DIGIMON, DIGITAL MONSTERS", "This happens to me almost every morning as soon as I wake up", "Why do birds suddenly appear....", "I frequently find myself walking to my car with a particular song looping at a particular moment, and when I turn on my car, that song has been unpaused in that exact location, thereby continuing where the song was looping in my head. I usually have to stop for a moment to realize what had happened, but it usually only happens around the time I grab my Keys.", "Welcome to the jungle!\n\nWe've got fun and games!\n\nYou just read this in my voice,\n\nand you just lost the game.", "Also, why do I subconsciously learn the words to sooo many songs, yet struggle to learn the things I consciously try to learn!", "because you have Random Access Memory", "You can go your own way!", "Hold me closer Tony Danza..", "Someone put a quarter in you?", "I'm more interested in knowing why I can't *stop* a song playing on my mind.", "Are you sure you took your headphones out?", "You probably see or experience something that you subconciously or unknowingly associate with the song. ", "I don't happens to me though. I'll be sitting in math class and just start singing Glamorous and everyone will just look at me. It's really annoying I feel you op. ", "Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel is always stuck in my head. For years I always thought Phil Collins did the song, and I hate Phil Collins. As it turns out I also hate Peter Gabriel. But the weird thing is I love Genesis. Where am I going with this?", "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy.", "Like when I'm in a job interview, and my scumbag brain hits me with a song I haven't so much as thought about since high school..  \n\n*It's the Thuggish Ruggish Bone\nIt's the Thuggish Ruggish Booooonnne*\n\nJust quit it. damn!", "Whenever you stomp your feet three times, you'll most likely remember Queen's We will rock you.", "My alarm in the morning is the default alarm tone for my wife's iPhone 5. Without fail, by the time I hit the shower, I have [\"Flagpole Sitta\"]( _URL_0_) stuck in my head. ", "I had that happen a few weeks ago with the theme to the show \"Sister, Sister\". \nThey say the best way to get an earworm gone is to sing it over and over. \nMy wife was not amused. ", "Because groove is in the heaaaaart...", "We built this city...", "[Where's your head at?](_URL_0_)", "**Muah Muah Muah**\n\n I'm controling your mind with a FM transmitter.\n", "One time, I opened a new pack of playing cards and suddenly recalled STAR WARS.  I was like wth???   After some thought, I realized the smell of the new vinyl cards was the same as the vinyl of the STAR WARS album we had back in the day.", "It's doing a disk cleanup and asking if you want to save the files", "Because the last time you heard it, you didn't get to the ending.  It's your mind trying complete the song.  Want a song stuck in your head.  Play any song and cut it at the middle, if you've heard it before, it will be stuck.", "This happens to me a lot, but I also retain song lyrics after only hearing a song once or twice, it just seems weird how much people are amazed by it, if I'm listening to the radio for an hour  &  I will be able to sing along with probably 70-80% of the songs on there.", "Half the songs people are trying to get stuck in other peoples' heads in this thread, I've never heard. I'll take that as a good thing.\n\nNow I'll go be alone under my rock.", "Bottom line: \n Listen to what the creative side of your brain is telling you. you are more creative than you realize\n\nGive that creative side something to do so it is less inclined to rummage through the archives."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBgmC_USeoM"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4hFwJm41h4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6mnweq", "title": "why do download websites allow fake download buttons/viruses to be on their website?", "selftext": "Seems a little counterintuitive ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mnweq/eli5_why_do_download_websites_allow_fake_download/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk2yx2e", "dk2z8q7", "dk31ksx"], "score": [30, 15, 9], "text": ["They're ads that the companies with the downloads are paying for. Many sites with the fake download buttons are either illegal or not the main route of downloading things so they see less traffic and have to find alternate methods of financial gain. ", "Because download sites aren't making any money from you downloading free stuff from them. They make money with advertising, and that's what those fake download buttons are.", "Cost per Click and Cost per Impression are two very important elements when determining pricing for advertising. Given that the website is for downloading, it's actually more profitable for the webmaster to use dubious ad placement to get higher click rate on ads. The website is likely more or less bullshit and the majority of the money comes from ad revenue from those very ads that you are talking about."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31m33z", "title": "how could the 'butterfly effect' literally work?", "selftext": "*The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a hurricane being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.*\n\nI've always found this metaphor very interesting, but I've only ever taken it metaphorically. However watching Neil deGrasse Tyson mention it recently got me thinking: Since these are scientists using the expression, it must be based in actual literal fact.\n\n**Could someone explain to me a literal sequence of events that would cause the slight movement of a butterflies wings to cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe?**", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31m33z/eli5_how_could_the_butterfly_effect_literally_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq2t9ht", "cq2taa0", "cq2tiba", "cq2tmvc", "cq2ur79", "cq2v8fe"], "score": [8, 5, 8, 14, 3, 3], "text": ["There's no literal hurricane. The name just refers to events where a small change early on can have a huge influence on the outcome of a chaotic event. ", "This is just a metaphor symbolizing the importance of infinitesimal paramaters (aka the flap of wings of a butterfly) in the simulation of macroscopic events (aka the hurricane). ", "Easy:\n\n1) Butterly lands on God's nose, causing him to sneeze (he's allergic to butterflies). \n2) Hurricane", "The butterfly wafts some pollen off a flower. The pollen gets in a herd animal's nose, causing it to sneeze. The sneeze startles the herd, causing it to panic and stampede. The stampede raises a dust cloud. The dust cloud causes a local weather change that eventually leads to a hurricane. (I forget the steps after the dust cloud.)", "[Chaos theory] (_URL_0_) is the name of this theory, and to summarize (I'm not a mathematics pro so I don't fully understand the details of the theory or even parts of the theory but I'll try to give a general idea of the title of this particular paper), the [butterfly effect] (_URL_1_ in particular), which is named after the paper with this title states that the initial conditions of an occurrence can completely change what possible occurrences there are.  \n\n\nSo according to the article:\n > The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location. Note that the butterfly does not  > power or directly create the tornado. The butterfly effect does not convey the notion\u2014as is often misconstrued\u2014that the flap of the butterfly's wings causes the tornado. The flap of the wings is a part of the initial conditions; one set of conditions leads to a tornado while the other set of conditions doesn't.\n\n\nThis is pretty much what the article states for how the butterfly's wings are an initial condition and since small changes to an initial condition can widely change the outcome, a butterfly's wings can eventually lead to a hurricane on the other side of the globe. ", "it's just a descriptor for what's called *chaotic systems*, which is just a system what, while it is deterministic and obeys classical physics (ie. not quantum), is in practive unpredictable because of *sensitivity to initial conditions* (too many variables, many of which are tiny and easy to miss like the butterfly). Any seemingly small variable can influence the behaviour of the system in an unpredictable way\n\nA good example of such a system is Earth's climate \u2013 our best science and technology can only 'predict' a few days in advance and not very accurately at all"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect"], []]}
{"q_id": "38h6fk", "title": "why did we evolve to rely on sleep rather than being awake 24/7?", "selftext": "Might sound stupid... But it seems like it would be better considering you could be awake during the night to be alert and keep watch.\n\nI figure we would need some kind of rest but there are some species that can rest half of their brain while the other half still performs tasks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38h6fk/eli5why_did_we_evolve_to_rely_on_sleep_rather/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crv06v4", "crv0fbm", "crv16ss", "crv1nd6", "crv36qk", "crv4q1q", "crv5mbo", "crv75gr", "crva3zv", "crvfyuv", "crvl7kb", "crvnd5d"], "score": [6, 50, 11, 2, 3, 50, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I wonder if it doesn't help us stay more still at night, thus conserving energy when it's cold.  We might be less likely to hold still for eight hours if we were awake.", "Its actually a really big question in biology right now and no one knows for sure why we do it.\n\nMy personal favorite theory is that its nature telling us to sit down and shut up when we're least able to defend ourselves.\n\nImagine a small tribe of humans is existing on the African Savannah.  Night rolls around and humans cant see shit. Lions have much better night vision than humans. So its in our best interest to avoid the lion in any way possible\n\nIf we're quiet and still we dont attract as much attention.  Ergo, less likely to be eaten by lions", "It is bright and warm half the day, and dark and cold the other half.  At least that is the environment our ancestors evolved in.\n\nIt is hard to simultaneously be well adapted to both environments.  Instead of trying, most animals picked one to be active in, and hunkered down during the other.  Eventually they evolved ways to use less energy and recuperate while they were hunkered down.\n\nThey humans went and invented fire, made things warm and bright all the time, but were still stuck with the old day and night biology. ", "Evolution doesn't generate perfect creatures, it just generates creatures that are able to survive long enough to reproduce and propagate the species. \n", "A byproduct of thinking is that your brain will produce fatigue toxins, making you feel tired.  When you get too much, it's time for bed.  You can use caffeine or vitamin B like in a five hour shot to interrupt the receptors from recognising the toxins but they don't go away until you sleep.  ", "Im surprised nobody has mentioned this, but there have been recent advancements in our understanding.  It appears that during sleep, the cells in the brain shrink allowing cerebrospinal fluid to wash away the days buildup of waste products.  Sleep allows the brain to clean itself.\n\nThe buildup of those waste products are associated with alzheimers,  so get your sleep.", "Nobody knows, but given that nearly every animal sleeps, and those that don't have weird workarounds like half brain sleep. We can infer that sleep is pretty much a requirement for animal live as we know it.\n\n", "evolution is not a force towards the optimum, it's a force towards the minimum necessary. for example, if grass was poisonous, it would be better for its survival, as less animals would come eat it. But if grass is not poisonous, and it survives to the next generation regardless, then it didn't need to be poisonous to live, so it won't evolve that trait.", "You need less energy if you are less active. Food was not always easy to find, so conserving energy is paramount to survival.", "You have made an incorrect assumption that being awake is preferable to being asleep. The question is really why are we awake at all beyond what is required to eat and breed. Biology would prefer to have organisms sleep the maximum amount of time possible. When you are resting you are using less energy, not exposing yourself to predators, injury etc. If you look at sleep patterns across mammals you will notice that animals that can meet their needs in terms of feeding and breeding in a short time, and are relatively safe from predators while sleeping, like the cats, will sleep the majority of the day, because they have that as an option. Animals that have lower energy diets, have to travel long distances between meals or are vulnerable when sleeping in their environments will spend the majority of the day awake, like horses. But the cost of this is that their life is much less efficient.\nHumans fall somewhere in the middle in terms of hours awake needed in the day. Historically, we didn't get as many calories per meal as the large predators, but more than the grazers. So we feel the urge to be awake long enough to eat and devote a bit of time to  breeding and raising a family, historically around 16 hours a day. In today's society, those tasks are so easy that humans have discovered a new phenomenon that is mostly absent from the life experience of other mammals. Leisure time awake. We have taken advantage of this extra time to do wonderful things and advance our society, but our biology is stuck with sleep being the preferred state to be in and only being awake for the 16 or so hours required to historically take care of our biological needs. Biologically, before modern society, it was a disadvantage to be awake and active more than absolutely necessary.", "I am a little late to the party, but there was actually a recent episode of Radiolab on NPR about his very topic. It is a very interesting listen if you have the time.\n\nLink: _URL_0_", "You need to sleep so you can dream. Its the only time the brain is quieted down enough to receive complex information from other dimensions and realities."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91528-sleep/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3vibt1", "title": "why does the apple app store have access to things like google chrome and youtube, but the google play store doesn't have access to itunes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vibt1/eli5_why_does_the_apple_app_store_have_access_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxnsss1", "cxntgr3", "cxnvakg"], "score": [72, 7, 165], "text": ["Because Google has taken the time and effort to make their programs available on iOS while Apple has not developed a version of iTunes that runs on Android.", "iTunes is a program that only runs on computers, not phones so it won't be available on Android. [You can however get Apple Music on the Play Store.](_URL_0_)", "Google makes its money by selling ads, having YouTubr and Chrome available on iOS furthers this goal.\n\nApple makes its money by selling hardware, iPhone and macs. Having itunes / other apply software available on Android doesn't further this goal. So they don't do it.\nThere is no cost incentive. \n\nApple benefits from having you totally involved in their ecosystem - Google benefits from their ecosystem being included everywhere "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music&amp;hl=en"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ajedz", "title": "In the series Versailles, Louis XIV requires nobles to present proof of their noble lineage. Was this something that actually happened and if so what would this proof consist of?", "selftext": "As the titles states, did Louis XIV require proof from his nobles as Versailles depicts? If so, would this simply be a birth record? It seems that noble families would be well known and established and it wouldn't be easy to simply pretend to be of noble birth. So aside from the obvious posturing and intimidation did this serve some legitimate purpose?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ajedz/in_the_series_versailles_louis_xiv_requires/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d11gqnf"], "score": [36], "text": ["I haven't seen \"Versailles\" yet, but it's on my list. Can you give a little more context as to how Louis XIV is demanding his nobles prove their lineage? \n\nThat said, Louis XIV did go after so-called \"false nobles\" in his court, starting in the 1660s, and this may be what the show is referencing. The sale of noble titles in the 16th century created a glut of individuals whose only distinction was that they were rich enough to afford to purchase their titles. Louis XIV took exception to this and, with everything regarding the culture of Versailles that he created, he wanted to maintain a clear distinction between noble families who were \"gentlemen\" versus ones that had only lately acquired their titles via purchase (nobility in title only). If you could not produce documentation that proved your noble status (dating back 100 years or more, if I recall correctly), then you had to pay a stiff fine (*taille*).\n\n* *The Century of Louis XIV*, edited by Orest Ranum, Springer, Jul 2, 1973,[ pg. 346](_URL_0_)\n\n* *French Society: 1589-1715*, by Sharon Kettering, Routledge, Aug 21, 2014, [pg. 76](_URL_1_) \n\nEDIT: Sorry for the double post and the annoying formatting. Should be fixed now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=1VOxCwAAQBAJ&amp;lpg=PA346&amp;ots=AMrPZLaA2b&amp;dq=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&amp;pg=PA346#v=onepage&amp;q=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=jRBUBAAAQBAJ&amp;lpg=PA76&amp;dq=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&amp;pg=PA76#v=onepage&amp;q=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "6stput", "title": "why do people's stomach look bloated when they're malnourished?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6stput/eli5_why_do_peoples_stomach_look_bloated_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlfemif", "dlfepct", "dlfwa3u", "dlg1ib6", "dlg1oe5", "dlg25fk", "dlg3kej", "dlg72f1", "dlgcihc", "dlgd55z", "dlggqrv", "dlgo61s", "dlgobjz", "dlgpdul", "dlgungx"], "score": [4786, 596, 15, 10, 54, 180, 35, 31, 4628, 11, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["It's called kwashiorkor, and it's a sign of serious protein deficiency.  The stomach gets bloated because of fluid retention and because the liver expands with fat deposits.\n\nInterestingly enough, kwashiorkor gets its name from what an African tribe called it.  Translated, it means \"disease of the deposed child\".  What would happen is that when a 2nd child was born, the first child would be abruptly cut off breast milk and put onto a more adult diet high in carbs and low in protein.  This resulted in protein deficiency.", "That's called *kwashiorkor*, and it happens when there's not enough protein in a person's diet. Protein in the blood keeps water bound in blood, and if there's not enough protein then the water leaks out into the tissues, mostly in the stomach and abdominal area.", "There is also such this as protein sickness, where you have too much of it and not enough other things. This why killing a deer is enough meat to feed you through a winter in the wilderness, but you'll get sick if you do not find other sources of nutrients. ", "As people have said, protein deficency; leaky blood. Also, parasites in contaminated food or water sources.", "Now question to anybody who knows: is having this issue a binary thing? Like you have it or you don't? Or can you have a mild/gradual case of it? I've had friends before who I thought were borderline malnourished and looked incredibly skinny fat or had developing, weird looking stomachs...", "A lot of people are saying its protein deficiency, but if so I'm curious why people in developed countries, for example anorexics, don't typically get bloated stomachs from malnutrition. If it was just protein deficiency wouldn't they get that too?", "When you're so malnourished your liver can't make a protein called albumin, which is required to keep fluid in your blood vessels. This causes fluid to leave the vessels and enter a cavity like your abdomen. It's the same reason why people with liver cirrhosis get abdominal distension. ", "Protein deficiency. Protein in the blood, primarily albumin, is largely responsible for the osmotic force that keeps water in the pressurized vasculature from leaking out.\n\nELI5 version: if you don't eat enough protein, your body can't put the proteins into the blood that keep water in there. The water leaks out into the abdominal cavity, among other places.", "Hey, just wanted to clarify some things. Severe malnourishment has several sequelae (outcomes) depending on what exactly is lacking in the person's diet. The two that most people are familiar with are (1) Kwashiorkor - the kind with the really big belly and (2) Marasmus - The kind where the people look like walking skeletons.\n\nIn marasmus, there is generalized severe malnourishment. These people are sick because they are lacking sufficient calories, thus they become incredibly skinny - they are literally wasting (actual medical term) away.\n\nIn Kwasiorkor, there is sufficient/close to sufficient caloric intake, BUT there is INsufficient PROTEIN intake. This means that the diet is mostly rice, corn, etc. Your body needs proteins for countless things such as building muscle etc. It also needs proteins to transport fats (not soluble in blood/water) throughout your blood stream. These 'transport' protein are called lipoproteins and are made in the liver. Without these proteins, the fats consumed by the body get trapped in the liver, leading to fatty livers (contributing to the big bellies). Also, proteins are needed to maintain the proper fluid volumes in your body (I won't get into this now) and without it, you retain water, contributing to fluid retention (medically called edema), and thus also making the bellies bigger. \n\nI hope this helped :) \n\n(Source: 3rd year US Medical Student - Thanks for letting me review this concept!)\n\nEDIT: XD This is the first time i get gold! Thank you guys!!! (I guess med school paid off after all haha)", "I was always told that parasites and tapeworms caused this. Glad to finally know the true reason. ", "What about that lower abdomen bulge that older women get? What is it/how does it happen? ", "As many had say is because of low protein intake, which leads to low albumin, which leads to a drop in oncotic pressure, which leads to loss of plasma to the tissues (edema), when we talk about the peritoneal cavity is called ascites, thats why people look bloated, they have peritoneal fluid in there, you can document this by doing the fluid wave test or an ultrasound.", "A lot of people already answered regarding lack of protein. This is one of the reasons we send Plumpy Nut to famine hit areas. \n\n_URL_0_", "So what does a person with gout do? Is edema inevitable in their case?", "Eli5 : What is malnourished?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy'nut"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "zlqt9", "title": "Why are biological proteins stored at freezing temperatures instead of body temperature?", "selftext": "Okay, follow the crude logic here. Humans bodies are contain a LOT of proteins. Extended exposure to freezing temperatures cause grievous harm to human bodies. Therefore proteins should be damaged by freezing temperatures too.\n\nI know this is faulty reasoning. Someone set me straight!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zlqt9/why_are_biological_proteins_stored_at_freezing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c65onaj", "c65oqgy", "c65ozjq", "c65p6gx", "c65t35x"], "score": [9, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Temperature is about energy, if the proteins have less energy they move around less and and the bonds are less susceptible to breaking down (since a reaction can overcome its activation energy). So to decrease damage to proteins, we store them in a state with less overall energy (temperature). As a side note it should be stated that proteins can be damaged by repeated freezing and thawing but that is different.  \n  \nProteins in the human body do sometimes break down but in general are kept stable by a variety of other factors such as pH and neighbouring molecules.  \n  \nPeople are damaged by low temperatures as a whole organism because our metabolic reactions will not progress fast enough to support us at low temperatures. That's just not how we evolved.", "Many proteins have half lives (are unstable), much like radioactive isotopes. However, the breakdown of the protein can be slowed by decreasing temperature (reducing the energy of the system). Which reduces the amplitude of the chemical bonds stretching and compressing, much like a spring. \n\nMore energy, more stretching, higher probability of bonds breaking.\n\nadjusting the pH of the solution, and salt concentration are also contributing factors.", "Okay, there are two main points to address here.  First off, the idea of freezing temperatures being damaging to the human body, and second off, the idea of proteins therefore also being damaged.  \nThe main problem about freezing is the formation of ice crystals, which will poke holes and lyse your body's cells.  It doesn't matter then if your proteins are protected or not by the temperature, you're getting gross tissue damage which is a higher order of a problem.  \nSecond, proteins at higher temps, like at our body are subject to degradation all the time, however, you can't look at it as a static system.  They're being degraded, but at the same time they're all being made.  It's that turnover that's key.  However, if you just purify out that protein in lab, you get degradation, but since its no longer in a biological system it's not also being constantly made.  That's why it should be kept at lower temps to preserve it.   ", "Others have already noted that the standard course of action is flash-freezing of a protein solution that has added cryoprotectant (typically glycerol).  This will generally prevent significant damage from the freezing process and eventual thawing upon use.   Another method of preservation is freeze-drying (lyophilization) - many proteins that are commercially available are sold in this form.  Here, you essentially avoid the issue, as the water is removed in this process.", "People seem to have gone into why we store proteins at a low temperature and gone into quite a lot of detail. I will deal with that after my main explanation. The human body reacts badly to freezing temperatures because:\n\n1.Our body has adapted to working efficiently in a very fixed temperature paremeter. Going right down to the molecular level, all the bodies enzymes, processes, metabolism and catabolism work best at this temperature range. Going outside this range causes the these functions to falter.\n\n2.Jumping up to a more macro level, the body has adapted to keep inside this temperature range by a number of mechanisms. One of them is by diverting the blood supply away from the cold. This usually allows the body to conserve the core where all the major organs are. Who needs a leg to survive right? \n\nSo I have alluded to two possible mechanisms of damage. The first, individual tissue and cell survival, and the second ischaemia (not enough oxygen) due to diverted blood supply.\n\nNow for storing proteins, we are not worried about these mechanisms and processess that keep us going on a macro level. So to stop the usual decay of proteins we can store them at cooler temperatures. I can go into the physical chemistry of why colder temperatures help stop proteins breaking apart, but I don't think this is necessary. The main point is we are not worried about them functioning! We just don't want them to break apart/denature/decay. \n\nAnother crucial reason to storing proteins at low temperature is actually to stop the function of proteins (microbial proteins to be exact)! Stopping microbial growth will increase the protein shelf life incredibly, as microbes will break them down. \n\nTLDR : We need a certain temperature to function and thus survive, proteins a lone don't.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "268jxy", "title": "What was WW1-era nobility like ?", "selftext": "I'm looking for information on the European nobility during WW1. A book suggestion would be great. Basicly, I'd like to now what were the caracteristics traits of nobility at that time, how they were dressed, how they acted, the values they shared. Also, how was the October Revolution lived by the Nobles who were in Russia, and fled the country, and those in other European countries.\nMy main focus is Russia and France. As France is not a monarchy by that time, any insight of how did the nobles lived in a Republic and though of the multiplication of Republics at the expense  of monarchies would be great too.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/268jxy/what_was_ww1era_nobility_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chp59u8"], "score": [2], "text": ["Can you clarify what you mean by nobility?\n\nDo you mean aristocrats or royalty or both?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2c5evw", "title": "After a village was sacked and \"raped and pillaged\", how would that village look at the victims of the rapes? Normally if a woman was raped it seems she \"lost value\", but was it seen as different from a societal standpoint when it happened to the whole town?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c5evw/after_a_village_was_sacked_and_raped_and_pillaged/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc7h7m", "cjc9hjl", "cjcg96f"], "score": [162, 14, 2], "text": ["I don't think your question can be answered without more specifics. But very broadly, 'rape' didn't mean the same thing that it does now, mostly because women frequently went on to have long-term relationships with their rapists--something that doesn't generally happen anymore. At least not in the West. \n\nLet's talk about the Mongols. They did a fair bit of raping. What happened afterwards?\n\n1) The women were killed along with the men. And the children. The Mongols tended to kill everyone first, ask questions never. In this case, the town might cease to exist.\n\n2) The women were left in the ashes of their village. This is what you're asking about, but this is also the category that will be most absent from the historical record. Whatever happened to these women, it probably wasn't good. I'm also not aware of what might have happened to any children born of that sort of anonymous rape. Again, probably nothing good. But remember, the Mongols devastated whole continents so the rape would have been so universal that there likely wasn't much social stigma attached. People were too busy starving (this is likely what happened to the victims and any children).\n\n3) The women were taken as 'wives' or concubines by the Mongols. This often meant they left the place they were living and went wherever the Mongols took them. But some of these women were well treated (broadly speaking). A woman named Toregene (with some umlauts, not sure how to do those) was the wife of a local clan leader. When the Mongols defeated her clan, she was 'given' to Ogedei, Genghis Khan's son. While we can assume 'given' here includes what we would define as rape, she might not have seen it in exactly the same way. After all, she had also been 'given' to her previous husband. Anyway, Toregene had a number of children with Ogedei and, after his death, she became interim Khatun (Emperor, more or less) of the Mongol Empire. And by what I remember, she did a good job.\n\nEra, region and circumstance make all the difference.", "To branch off into something more specific from OP's question, how would rape victims be treated in the Medieval Europe, depending on the time period (Early, High, Late) and on the location and region?", "Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_).  These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for.  If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "34hrdq", "title": "Was Gautama Buddha illiterate? Was there a written language at that time?", "selftext": "I am guessing that Gautama was educated because he was born in a wealthy family. But what would his education look like? Could he read and write? What language (spoken and written) was used at that time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34hrdq/was_gautama_buddha_illiterate_was_there_a_written/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqv4xuv"], "score": [15], "text": ["The dates of the birth and death of Gautama Buddha are among the few things that most historians are relatively sure about when it comes to ancient Indian history. They are not fixed in stone but most historians agree about the period being 5th century BCE with the date of his death varying between 483 BCE to 420 BCE. This was near the end of the Vedic period and knowledge was still primarily orally transmitted. There is no proof that Vedic Sanskrit had a written alphabet at all.\n\nThe earliest examples of writing in Sanskrit appear from 3rd century BCE onwards during the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the Brahmi script. During Buddha's time, Sanskrit was supposed to be the language of the elite and was used for literary purposes like composing religious hymns or epics. Ordinary people of that era mostly used Prakrit and depending on the region, there were probably different dialects of Prakrit. Given that Gautama was born a prince and must have had training in elite arts, he probably did learn Sanskrit. However, he probably did learn the Magadhi variation of Prakrit too when he delivered sermons as the Buddha to ordinary people in his travels, mostly across the Magadha Empire. But there exists no written documents in India from Buddha's time and neither Sanskrit nor Prakrit seemed to have started using writing yet.\n\nFrom Panini's *Ashtadhyayi*, a book composed of eight chapters of Sanskrit grammar, the art of writing seemed to have been known to people of that era. Panini is dated to have existed anytime between 6th and 4th century BCE but it is anybody's guess whether he wrote his book or, as was the tradition then, the book was orally transmitted. If he did write his book, he could have written it in the Kharoshti script which was used by Persian administrators in north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent. The Brahmi script that arose in India later was most likely derived from Kharoshti and was still used mainly for Magadhi Prakrit and Pali rather than Classical Sanskrit, following Panini's grammar rules, which had become the language of the elite. \n\nTL;DR - Buddha was born in Nepal and lived and worked mostly in eastern India. As such, he was probably illiterate despite being educated as written language was still not used in most parts of the subcontinent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "43z1ea", "title": "what is the difference between energy attained from sleeping and energy attained from food?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43z1ea/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_energy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czm36bo", "czm36sg", "czm44yd", "czm8oba"], "score": [5, 43, 10, 2], "text": ["The energy you get from food is real; food is a source of fuel and building materials for your body.\n\nThe \"energy\" you get from sleep is not real energy. Sleep is just your body resetting. You feel more energized because the mess and toxins that had been building up through the previous day (making you feel tired) are now gone.", "You don't get energy from sleeping. Your body gets energy from food. What sleep does is repair damage to your body and allow your brain to rest. When your brain doesn't have enough rest, it stops working as efficiently. But without food, your body won't have enough energy to do anything.\n\nThink of food as the gas you put into your car, and sleep as the occasional oil change you need to keep your car working properly.", "OK buddy, your head uses thinking energy and your body uses moving energy. Moving energy comes from snax, and thinking energy comes from sleeps ", "Well the energy you get from food is what your stomach and bowels break down and absorb. Calories, sugars, etc are your \"food energy\".\n\nNow, you don't actually get energy from sleep, although it feels like you do. You know when you're walking around for a long time, and your legs/feet get tired? You sit down for a while to rest them, and then you can go walking again for another while.\n\nWell, try to think of being awake as your brain \"walking\". It does this all day, and eventually it needs a rest, just like your feet. And the brain's equivalent of \"resting your feet\" is sleeping. Sleeping allows your brain's conscious functions to go offline, letting the autonomous functions do their thang."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6ov6vq", "title": "what's the science behind waking up in the middle of the night after only a few hours of sleep feeling rested, only to get a full eight and wake up tired?", "selftext": "Example: Falling asleep at 9pm, waking up at 1am to go to the bathroom feeling well rested, but feeling the need for more sleep when the alarm goes off at 5am.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ov6vq/eli5_whats_the_science_behind_waking_up_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkkfhk9", "dkkfrnp", "dkkh1b5", "dkkh7hw", "dkkh800", "dkkh89y", "dkkhgbj", "dkkler1"], "score": [3, 88, 28, 10, 61, 3, 358, 3], "text": ["When one sleeps, his body goes through various cycles. Waking up during/after certain cycles will leave one refreshed, yet during others, one feels tired. Just depends during which cycle one wakes up. ", "With an alarm you are interrupting a sleep cycle. Waking up naturally will be more refreshing because you come out of the end of a cycle. If you wake up at 8 hours naturally without an alarm and you'll be just as refreshed as your 1am wake up. ", "As the other posts said, it is about when you wake up during your cycle of sleep. If you want to time when you wake up or when to go to sleep based on the sleep cycle you can use _URL_0_ to calculate it. It helps you wake up feeling more awake and refreshed instead of tired and groggy. ", "Yup. Look into getting a sleep sensing alarm- I use one on my iPhone called Sleep Cycle that purports to be able to detect where you are in your sleep cycles and wake you up closest to your natural waking point, within half an hour of your alarm (set alarm for 6am, it will wake you up between 5:30-6 depending on where it thinks you are closest to already waking). Has two sensing modes, movement based (need to have it on the bed with you) and a newer audio based one (need to have it pointed at you on a nightstand next to the bed). Both modes defiantly seem to work much more pleasantly than a traditional alarm clock- it also has some \"gentle\" wake up noises (I do birdsong. Not startling, but loud enough and unusual enough that for me, it wakes me up, especially when I'm close to being awake)\n\nThe only trick is that our typical REM sleep cycles are about 3 hours from almost awake to deep sleep, so depending on when you go to sleep, that half hour waking window may still have you in pretty deep sleep, so it's best to try and get yourself to sleep in a time frame that syncs up with when you need to wake up. ", "Your sleep cycles are roughly 90 minutes in length.  If you set your clock for a time that will be at one of the 90 minute increments from when you actually go t sleep, it will be much easier to get started on your day.  \n\nFor example, if you need to get up at 7:00 am, and can get to sleep by 12:30 am, you are better off setting your alarm for 6:30 because the alarm will go off as you are emerging out of your fourth 90 minutes sleep cycle of the night.  By 7:00, you would be fairly deep into your fifth sleep cycle and woule feel tired and groggy.  ", "Having done quite a bit of reading for my own benefit I think I can provide a bit more information. \n\nIf you break down sleep to 4 categories, each is a deeper stage of sleep and being woken up in stages 3 or 4 can leave you feeling disorientated and groggy as your body has essentially shut down parts that are unnecessary for recovery during sleep. \n\nBonus info, sleep trackers have a feature that wakes you in the lightest stage of your sleep before your target time, leaving you as refreshed as possible. ", "Sleep stages. There are 5 different sleep stages; \n\n\n* the 'on-ramp', you know when you're at the back of a boring class / lecture and your head starts nodding, literally 'falling asleep' as it feels like you've fallen if you catch yourself.\n* stage 2, your brain waves start to slow down (iirc waking, your brain has a 'frequency' of ~20 cycles per second, as this slows you become more relaxed and eventually fall asleep)\n* stage 3, this is 'deep sleep', usually the period where people experience erratic sleep behaviour such as sleepwalking, wetting the bed etc\n* stage 4, now your brain is pretty much only producing delta waves, frequency of around 1-4 cycles per second... so slooooow! If you are woken from this stage, you will feel VERY groggy and disoriented\n* and stage 5, the stage we all know so well... REM sleep! AFAIK, it's the 15 mins of REM sleep per hour which 'refresh' you. If you don't get REM time, you will not feel like you've slept properly. This is why we feel so ughhhhhh after drinking, because alcohol interrupts this important stage. Hangover = dehydration multiplied by being horribly sleep deprived.\n\n\nOn that note, my hangover cure? Get up, drink a pint of water, have something nourishing, then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. ", "For men, testosterone levels are naturally at their highest levels in the morning. Men with low T tend to consistently feel tired when they wake up, no matter how much sleep they get. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["www.sleepyti.me"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "114sin", "title": "What goes into choosing the date and time for a launch?", "selftext": "It just seems absolutely random that they'll have some in the wee early morning then some in the afternoon.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/114sin/what_goes_into_choosing_the_date_and_time_for_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6jc8tg", "c6jc9ei"], "score": [9, 4], "text": ["You have to launch when your trajectory will line up with the location you intend to reach.  In spaceflight, you can't simply \"point the craft where you want go go and start the motor.\"  You actually have to wait for the proper time to do it.  Due to the limited amount of propellant you can carry into orbit from the surface, you generally can make only relatively minor changes to your trajectory once the vehicle is in space.  So, you need to wait for the right moment in time when everything pretty much lines up the way you want it to be, anyway.\n\nAnd because everything is constantly in motion, including your starting point, if you miss the right time today, it will be a different time tomorrow.  And there might not even be a right time tomorrow.  If you miss your launch window, you may have to wait days, weeks, months, even years for the next one to appear, depending on where you are trying to go.\n\nIn space-travel, timing is critical.", "Depends on where your space craft is going. I assume this question is inspired by the Dragon launch so let's look at going to ISS. \n\nThe main thing is that when the space craft you launch gets to orbit, it should be close to your target, or at least on an orbit from where it's easy to get to your target. You don't want to end up in the same orbit as your target but at the opposite side of the planet.\n\nLet's start with an easy example. Your launch site is at the equator and your target is orbiting on an equatorial orbit, meaning that it circles directly above the equator. That means that your target flies overhead every 90 minutes or so. You don't launch when it's exactly overhead, you need to do something similar to leading a shot, but you'll get a launch window every 90 minutes. So launching at the right time is fairly easy in this case. You can't do it whenever but you have launch windows several times every day.\n\nBut ISS is not in an equatorial orbit, and neither are the launch sites at the equator. So ISS does not fly overhead (or even close to it) every 90 minutes. Think of the orbit of ISS as a plane that's at a 50 degree angle to the equator. ISS circles Earth roughly every 90 minutes. Earth rotates around itself roughly every 24 hours. The orbital plane of ISS does not rotate with Earth, instead Earth rotates independent of it. So a given point on the surface of Earth, like your launch site, is going to go through the orbital plane twice a day. Those two times are your possible times to launch. But you also need to have ISS at the right position in its own orbit, just as we did with the equatorial case. It could be that your launch site is on the orbital plane but if you happened to launch just then you wouldn't end up anywhere close to ISS.\n\nSo you have two different things that need to match. ISS needs to be at the right position on its own orbit, happens every 90 minutes, and your launch site needs to be at the right position, happens every 12 hours. If these two don't occur close enough then you would need to expend too much fuel to rendezvous with ISS.\n\nThe reason ISS is at such an inclined orbit is because rockets launched from Baikonur need to be able to reach it, and it's at about 46 degrees northern latitude. If the inclination of the orbit of ISS was less than this, then Baikonur would never go through the orbital plane and they would have to use a lot of fuel to get to the same orbit as ISS.\n\nThere may be other things to consider too. Apparently Space Shuttle had to consider something called [the beta angle](_URL_0_), which is the angle between the orbit and the Sun. This basically determines how big a part of the orbit you're going to be in direct sunlight. Space Shuttle had some limitations with this so they could only launch when this was between some values. If you're launching to the Moon or other planets then you need to consider their orbital position, as well as Earth's orbital position around the Sun. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_angle"]]}
{"q_id": "3kfsn9", "title": "\"clutch\" in car. why we have to press clutch to change gears? why can't we directly change gears?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kfsn9/eli5_clutch_in_car_why_we_have_to_press_clutch_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cux2aj1", "cux2z2c", "cux3rzy", "cux3sco", "cux53qq", "cux65q4"], "score": [40, 9, 203, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["This is how the clutch operates:\n\nWhen your engine is running, its job is to turn the up-and-down motion of the pistons into a circular motion. There are a whole series of linkages and feedback mechanisms, but ultimately the important part is that there is a *crankshaft* -- you can think of this as a long metal rod that rotates lengthwise.\n\nNow this turning motion of the crankshaft needs to be applied to the gearbox, so that the right amount of power gets ultimately sent to another long metal rod -- this one's called the driveshaft -- and ultimately to the wheels.\n\nSo far, so straightforward. As always, the devil is in the detail.\n\nWhen the engine is running the crankshaft is rotating thousands of times per minute. This means that the gears are also rotating thousands of times per minute. If you were to try to shift gears (i.e. move from one rotating cog to another) at this speed, it would be almost impossible to do without grinding the gears against one another.\n\nSo what's needed is a mechanism to slow down the gearbox rotation, which can be achieved if we temporarily disconnect the gearbox from the crankshaft which is giving it power. This mechanism is called the clutch.\n\nThere are many ways in which a clutch can be designed, but the most common is very straightforward. At the end of the crankshaft is a large flat disk (picture it as a plate attached at the end of a broom handle). This disk obviously rotates with the crankshaft. Crucially, the disk is covered in a very rough material, which means it creates friction with whatever it touches.\n\nIn the gearbox is another similar disk, also covered in a rough material. Now, when the clutch is disengaged (i.e. when you're not pushing the pedal down), the two disks are pushed against each other by a powerful spring. Because of their high-friction coatings this means that when the disk at the end of the crankshaft rotates, it also causes the gearbox disk to rotate, which transmits power to the gears, and your car moves forward.\n\nNow you push the clutch pedal down. The spring is forced away from the disks (this is why you need quite a strong left foot to push the clutch!) and the two rotating plates move apart from each other. We've now successfully disconnected the rotation of the crankshaft from the gearbox; the gear rotation slows down and you're able to smoothly shift into a different gear. \n\nAs you gradually bring your foot up the clutch plates start to touch each other, and if you do this smoothly and gently then they begin to rotate in sync again. Bring your foot up too quickly however, and the speeds of the two disks are mismatched and the car could lurch forwards or even stall.\n\n(There are a number of additional complexities and refinements that I've left out, but this is the basic principle of how a clutch works and why you need it).", "You can directly change gears, you just have to match the revs since the new gear is not spinning at the same speed as the current gear.  Clutching eliminates having to match the revs.", "Here's a way to mentally visualize it. Imagine a bunch of treadmills lined up side by side, each going at different speeds.  \n\n You're on one treadmill running, and you want to move over to the next treadmill, but in order to move over,  you have to make sure your legs are running at the speed of the new treadmill, otherwise you'll fall off. \n\nYou can try and run directly onto the next treadmills, but you probably won't be able to change your running speed fast enough, and you'll fall down (Grind gears).   \n\nOr you can step off the current treadmill (disengage the clutch), grab the rails of the new treadmill and hold yourself over the rotating belt until you're confident that your legs are running at the correct speed (modulate the clutch) , and let go of the rails (engage the clutch) and continue running. ", "There's a gif floating around somewhere that shows the mechanism of a manual transmission. I'll try and find it. Edit. nevermind just watched it doesn't show how the clutch works.", "Technically you can shift without a clutch.  Think of the drive train as 2 halves joined by a clutch.  The front half is the engine that provides the power, the back half is the transmission, driveshaft, axles, and everything else down to the wheels.\n\nThe contact point of the 2 halves (for simplicity - the clutch is the contact point) are spinning at the same speed at the moment you want to change gears.  When you want to change the gear ratio (shift up or down), the different gear will be spinning in the transmission at a different speed than what it previously was.  \n\nFor example, if you are in 1st gear, the gear ratio might be 3:1.  That means for every 3 revolutions of the engine, the transmission is turning 1 revolution.  When you shift to 2nd gear, the gear ratio might be 2:1.  So, you have to let the engine rpm drop down to a ratio of 2:1 to match the rpm of the back half of the drive train, before you can slip it into 2nd gear.  For simple math, if you are running 3000 rpm in first gear, you would need to pull the transmission out of 1st gear, and then wait until the engine dropped to 2000 rpm to slip it into 2nd gear.\n\nThe clutch allows you leeway in matching the rpm's between the two halves by slipping until friction holds it in place.", "You can drive without the clutch, nothing requires its use.\n\n1. With the ignition off, put the car in first gear. Use the starter to get the car moving. After a few moments the car will be moving fast enough that it won't stall, and the engine will run.*\n\n2. From there, \"slip shift\" through the gears. Basically you jam them in there. If you can't get gears to mesh, then put the car in neutral and \"hunt\" with the throttle. Eventually you will happen upon a point where the engine speed and the transmission speed match; the next gear will then mesh. Lots of grinding but with a light touch you won't hurt anything. Probably.\n\n3. Downshift the same way (hunting, slip shifting). Try not to come to a complete stop. If you have to stop, let the engine stall and start the process over with the starter motor.\n\n*Modern prissy nanny-state cars have an electronic lockout which prevents the starter from engaging if the car is in gear. Because of pussy-ass panty waisted considerations like safety. If you really wanted to though you could defeat this simple safety switch and strike a blow for Freedom and America and drive without a clutch."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fsgsw8", "title": "Did European Medieval queens who were born to foreign countries and were married off for diplomatic purposes ever see their parents again?", "selftext": "Hi everyone,\n\nI was reading some Wikipedia articles about European French and English medieval queens who were often born in other, often not so geographically close, countries (e.x. the modern Czech Republic or in Kievan Rus) to the local rulers/kings and got a question.\n\nAfter a future queen/princess was shipped off to another country, did they ever see their parents (who were rulers) again? Because traveling would take a much longer time than it would today and I suppose high nobility could not afford to \\*waste time\\* to visit relatives. Or could they?\n\nThank you!\n\nPS. English is not my first language, so I hope I expressed myself clearly enough :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fsgsw8/did_european_medieval_queens_who_were_born_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm4k3m0", "fm24y2m"], "score": [3, 38], "text": ["The Four Queens of Provence by Nancy Goldstone is an interesting read about highborn women marrying across France and England but still keeping in touch and seeing each other and their mother frequently. Two of the daughters married Henry III of England and his brother, and the others married the (then) Dauphin of France and his brother Charles. Doesn\u2019t exactly prove that every princess or highborn daughter saw their parents again but it\u2019s an interesting read.", "There is always much more than can be said about this, but I answered a very similar question a few months ago!\n\n[Would medieval princesses ever see their families again after being married off to far away kingdoms](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cs97e6/would_medieval_princesses_ever_see_their_families/exuwngt/"]]}
{"q_id": "6hjlb4", "title": "Is volcanism or some type of tectonic movement necessary for life to exist on Earth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6hjlb4/is_volcanism_or_some_type_of_tectonic_movement/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dizmrs7"], "score": [7], "text": ["The necessity of plate tectonics for the existence of life is a really good question, and one that the community is interested in answering in our search for habitable exoplanets. One thing plate tectonics allows is recycling of nutrients between the surface and interior of our planet. Bio-essential elements like C, N, and O get dragged down to the mantle during subduction and then released again during volcanism. Without this cycling, it's possible that there would only be a limited supply of these elements at the surface of the planet which could limit their availability for creating abundant lifeforms. This holds for other bio-essential metals like Fe, Cu, Mo, etc that are vital for more complex life forms.\n\nAdditionally, volcanic outgassing is what leads to the creation of an atmosphere (think of Venus as an extreme example). Atmospheres help regulate temperatures on the planet which increases the chances for the stabilization of life. As NASA is currently planning exoplanet missions, they hope to target planets that have atmospheres as contenders for extraterrestrial life. \n\nThis is definitely a question that is actively being researched, but at this point we're not quite sure how much of a role plate tectonics plays in the creation and stabilization of life. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "513u1h", "title": "how do hundreds of animators work together on the same project file when making a big budget animated movie?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/513u1h/eli5_how_do_hundreds_of_animators_work_together/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d791xm3", "d796nrc", "d797fnp", "d798uya", "d79edsb", "d79k18d"], "score": [53, 73, 3, 17, 2, 5], "text": ["You're right - it's not practical to have hundreds of people working on a single file.  That's where a tool like [Pixar's USD](_URL_0_) comes in.  It lets you take all your different models, textures, etc. and then combine them into a single scene.", "You don't usually work on the same files because everything is split up between the departments. I haven't used USD yet but I have encountered the following workflow in different studios (using Maya). \n\nFor example: a character that has been rigged by one (or more, but not at the same time) rigger goes to the animators. Every animator works with the same character rig BUT each animator works on his/her own shot. He/She references (or \"links\") the rig into their scene so that any change that is later made to the rig can be updated in the animators' scenes as well.\nThe environment of that scene is usually a rough blockout, done in the modeling department. It contains all the objects the animator needs to set up and let the character act in his/her shot.\nThen the scene gets switched out with the final scene (with textures, shading, lights and details) and the character rig is often updated as well, to get any dynamic stuff like hair, cloth and the hires render meshes in there. This is often done in separate departments as well, depending on the size of the studio. \nThis is my simple depiction of the process and it varies from studio to studio. I would love to read some more experiences, also about USD, if anyone has worked with it or with a different pipeline.", "Most studios break projects down by shot also, so you have lots of smaller files to work with. Referencing tools like the ones other posters mentioned in Maya, OTL's in Houdini, and USD can help keep those shot files from containing copies of shared assets. ", "It depends a bit in the studio workflow and the software used, but cg animation can generally be broken down into several steps, some of which can be worked on simultaneously by several people.\nMultiple artists aren't often working on the same file, they're just working on different elements of the same shot.  Artists often *reference* files from other artists into their scene, so changes that one artist makes will automatically be reflected in their scene.\n\nAlso, a single movie is made of of hundreds of different shots. And each shot usually has a different set of files, and each shot can usually be worked on simultaneously.\n\n# Modeling\n\nThis is where someone creates a 3D model of the character/building/vehicle/etc. \n\n# Lookdev/Texturing\n\nThis is where colors and fine detail are \"painted\" onto the outside of the model.  It's also where they control how different portions of the model respond to light (ie. Shinier, matte, translucent, etc)\n\n\n\n# Rigging\n\nThis creates a bone structure and control rig for animators to use to make animationeasier and possible.\n\n\n# Layout\n\nThis is where the \"scene\" is built and the camera placement and movements are set up.\n  \n# Animation\n\nAn animator animates the rig.\n\n# Simulation/Effects\n\nSome things like hair, fur, water, and smoke are animated using a simulation.  \n\n# Lighting\n\nControls light placements in the scene.  Often makes a number of renderer adjustments and small changes to the material properties that were setup in lookdev to achieve the desired look of the scene\n\n# Compositing\n\nEven when multiple elements *could* all exist in the same scene, it's often easier to render them separately and then comp the images together.  \n\n# How it all works together\n\nObviously, modeling and rigging have to be done before the other steps, but almost everything else can happen simultaneously.  Modeling and rigging adjustments are often still made at the same time, too.\n\n", "Yeah basically you have the work delegated. There's a group in charge of designing the characters then modelling and rigging. Then the storyboards. When it comes to the animating, it's usually done by scene. So Animator A gets scenes 1, 5 and 9. Animator B gets 2, 3 and 4. Animator C gets scenes 6, 7, 8 and so on and so on. IDK how it works in 3D but I assume everyone gets a copy of the necessary assets (character models, bgs, timing charts, etc) and they compile the completed scenes in post afterward.", "Ok lemme preface this by saying I'm a CG artist and I'm in the field. \n\nSo there's the pipeline that they tell everyone, first models are made and then \"rigged\" (creating a skeleton and muscle system to provide for movement). Then animators come in and move those characters, pose them, tween them, the whole 9 yards. Then a texture artist will create textures, a lighter will set the mood via lighting and rendering, and a compositor will adjust the final image. Maybe a colorist will go in and grade the footage. \n\nBut in reality a lot of artists are usually working on the same scene/shot at the same time because everything is always in a rush. There are pipeline tools and software made specifically to help with scenes being updated, different iterations and versions for others to use as they need to. For example, a texture artist or lighter doesn't necessarily need to wait for an animator to finish a shot, they can do shader and material dev while waiting for the shot to be locked. Within different versions of scenes there can be different versions of models or textures or cameras or etc. It's not that a team has a single scene file to haphazardly hot potato back and forth to each other, rather that a pipeline tool can manage these different versions and update scenes as any artist sees fit. \n\nDoes that make sense? I know I ramble so I know I'm not always the clearest. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yofes", "title": "why is my ignorance of the law not an excuse, but a cop's ignorance of the law is?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yofes/eli5_why_is_my_ignorance_of_the_law_not_an_excuse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpbep0h", "cpbevu0", "cpbf4ta", "cpbg52n", "cpbpb50", "cpbphje", "cpbpvon", "cpbqa8v", "cpbr54e", "cpbrcz8", "cpbrf0k", "cpbrpf7", "cpbs2zp", "cpbs3fm", "cpbs8m8", "cpbsb5u"], "score": [1086, 60, 27, 19, 5, 2, 3, 6, 13, 13, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Short answer is that the officer in question wasn't charged with a crime.   \n\nIgnorance of the law is not a defense to criminal charges, which is what people normally mean when they say ignorance of the law is no excuse (and that is, more or less, true).  The Heien ruling wasn't about any alleged criminal behavior on the part of the officer, it was about whether a stop was constitutional or not.\n\nThe standard for a constitutional stop is not the same as the standard for criminal behavior.  An officer doesn't need to know you've broken the law to stop you, an officer needs to have a reasonable belief that you've broken the law to stop you.  In the Heien case, the vague language of the NC law made the officer's mistaken understanding reasonable.  \n\nThis is, by the way, in keeping with years of Supreme Court precedent.  For a police officer to violate your rights they need to know that they are doing so (or at least a reasonable officer would know that their actions violated your rights).  \n\nConstitutional violations are not the same as criminal acts and are judged according to a different standard.", "Agree or not with the conclusion, the ELI5 is that they're not parallel. The question for you is whether ignorance of the law excuses criminal behavior, and gets you out of being punished. The question for the cop in the Heien situation is whether ignorance of the law makes a particular search unreasonable.\n\nIt's hard to think of a good parallel, because there's really nothing like the interaction between mistakes of law and 4th amendment searches in private life.  But, a semi-analogy: If North Carolina made it a crime for a police officer to stop someone without legal cause, then even though the search in Heien would be usable, the cop could still go to jail. \n\n\nHere's how the majority explained it in the decision:\n\n > Finally, Heien and amici point to the well-known maxim, \"Ignorance of the law is no excuse,\" and contend that it is fundamentally unfair to let police officers get away with mistakes of law when the citizenry is accorded no such leeway. Though this argument has a certain rhetorical appeal, it misconceives the implication of the maxim. The true symmetry is this: Just as an individual generally cannot escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law, so too the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law. If the law required two working brake lights, Heien could not escape a ticket by claiming he reasonably thought he needed only one; if the law required only one, Sergeant Darisse could not issue a valid ticket by claiming he reasonably thought drivers needed two. But just because mistakes of law cannot justify either the imposition or the avoidance of criminal liability, it does not follow that they cannot justify an investigatory stop. And Heien is not appealing a brake-light ticket; he is appealing a cocaine-trafficking conviction as to which there is no asserted mistake of fact or law.", "You've got all sorts of premises (and random capitalization?) but I'll try to answer your question as best that I can.\n\nIf punishing the people who broke the law includes proving that they knew that they broke the law then it would all go to hell. How do you prove that someone saw the sign that said 55 was the speed limit? How do you prove that someone knew that downloading an episode of Friends from a torrent was illegal? How do you prove that someone was willingly breaking section 304(b).5 of the state DMV manual about brightness of brake lights?\n\nTo require that would essentially make many laws unenforceable. We have laws about speed limits, and stealing, and brake light brightness because our society is better off when everyone follows those rules. We can't accomplish that if we require proving that you knew about every law -- in fact, doing so would encourage you to be willfully ignorant which would be precisely the opposite of what we want, because we want people to be following the laws.\n\nCops can obviously be terrible and abusive and all that bag of tricks. But we also need to recognize that they're going to be day in and day out dealing with controversial issues. Freaking Supreme Court justices who do nothing but adjudicate issues will regularly disagree. Your random Joe Cop on the street, or pulling someone over, or whatever, simply cannot realistically be held to the same controversial standard that the Supreme Court itself disagrees upon.\n\nSo the typical standard is one of \"reasonableness\". Would a reasonable officer behave that way? That standard allows law enforcement to happen while also trying to curb abuses. It's not perfect, but it is good and a reasonable (IMO) compromise. ", " >  Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the court\u2019s decision \u201cdoes not discourage officers from learning the law,\u201d because only objectively reasonable mistakes were permitted.\n\n > \u201cAn officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage,\u201d the chief justice wrote, \u201cthrough a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce.\u201d  \n  \nIt is not ignorance of the law, it was a reasonable mistake in how the law was interpreted.", "So in the Heien case the stop was not illegal since the officer misinterpreted the law, I understand the reasoning behind this, but it gives an awful lot of leeway to law enforcement.  What standards are in place to ensure that LEO's correctly interpret the law at any other time?  I know it is taking this issue to a hyperbolic level, but what is to stop an officer from shooting you for running a stop sign? Technically, by doing so, you ARE endangering the lives of others, can he misinterpret that as cause to use lethal force?  I'd like to think this is well outside the realm of possibility, but with some of the recent police shootings to make the news, I wouldn't actually be too surprised.  Could the Heien case be cited as precedent?\n\nI think part of what OC was asking, and what concerns me personally, is not just if a LEO misinterprets a law, but arrests you for something that is not even illegal, something where there is not even a law to misinterpret.  For instance:\n\n1) There are numerous instances of photographers being arrested for taking pictures in public.  There are mountains of case files saying that photography is a protected first amendment right, yet photographers are arrested daily.  Granted the cases are almost always dropped, but where is the compensation for the time the photographer has now spent in jail waiting to be released?  Where is the compensation for having his equipment confiscated and often damaged in the process?  Where is the protection for the photographer's copyrighted work that has often been accessed and/or deleted by LEO's?  Where is the compensation for the legal fees to get a lawyer to represent you and get the photographer released?  Where is the compensation for the photographer's reputation?  Yes, you can sue the police department in a civil action, but that involves lots of time and lawyers which gets even more expensive, and as often as not, is drawn out by the police departments for so long that most cases are dropped or settled for a paltry sum.  Very little substantive punitive action is ever taken in these cases even though it is a clearly legal activity that photographers are being regularly arrested for.\n\n2) Deliberate arrest on charges the police know will not stick just to be punitive, coercive, or to carry on with activities that are already extralegal.  For instance, most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested had their charges dropped after being arrested. They were arrested and transported away from the scene just to get them out of the way and make it inconvenient for them to continue the protest.  Or, the Ferguson protestors who were told they would be arrested if they so much as stopped stopped moving on the sidewalk long enough to tie their shoes.  Or, the lawyer, [Jami Tillotson](_URL_0_), who was arrested in San Francisco for resiting arrest (you read that correctly, she was arrested for resisting arrest) by attempting to not allow her clients to be interrogated without representation by a large contingent of police officers in the open hallway of a courthouse.  She was released soon afterwards, but the tactic worked, she was removed from the scene, prevented from performing her legally and constitutionally protected job, and the police got to continue what was at best a VERY questionably legal interrogation.", "A cop's job is to enforce the law not interpret it, that's for judges and lawyers.  That's why police cannot give legal advice on any level.", "Good Faith clause. If a police officer is acting in good faith then the law means precisely dick.", "The fear is you don't want to cow your police force into impotency.\n\nFor example, how do you protect citizens' fourth amendment rights?  One way could be to punish any cop who commits an unlawful search.  But what would the result of such a policy be?  Because case law concerning the fourth amendment is so complicated, cops would be reluctant to even perform lawful searches for the fear of being punished for a simple misunderstanding, greatly reducing the efficacy of the police force.  So the way the courts protect citizens from unlawful searches and seizures is by excluding any unlawfully collected evidence from the legal process.  That way both the cops can do their jobs without having to be excellent lawyers and citizens' rights are protected.", "There is a sort of implicit assumption that cops and criminals are two opposing teams, and that the law/Constitution is some set of rules to ensure fair play on both sides. But that's not really an accurate analogy. \n\nConstitutional protections are not there to protect criminals from being caught, nor to protect the right to commit crimes (which does not exist). They are there to protect the innocent from oppression and tyranny and so on. Occasionally, these protections also incidentally give cover to the guilty, when the machinery of law-enforcement happens to catch a factually guilty person via some kind of overreach. \n\nBut it's not a situation where the law says, \"the police are not allowed to catch you committing a crime unless they say Simon Says three times and get your consent.\" It's more like, \"the police are not allowed to do certain oppressive/tyrannical-type things, and if they do those things, then they can get in trouble, and the evidence collected thereby cannot be used against you.\" \n\nThis may be a subtle distinction, but it's a critically-important one. The police are allowed to catch criminals. And they are allowed to make reasonable mistakes and errors in the process of catching criminals. ", "You're premise is incorrect.\n\nThe court didn't rule a cop's ignorance of the law is an excuse. The court ruled a reasonable mistake by a cop doesn't invalidate a search which turned up a crime. Basically, that he was wrong to stop the car doesn't give those breaking the law a free pass on their crime. ", "\"Ignorance\" of the law is sometimes a defense, just not for most the things we think about, i.e. murder, you can't claim you didn't know it was against the law.\n\nTo be more specific, many laws require you to \"knowingly\" do something wrong, but these are few and far between.  The statute will specifically say that you must be *knowingly* breaking the law.  If you didn't know the law existed, no violation.", "Because he didn't break a law. To be charged with a crime you have to break a law. Simple ignorance of the law isn't a punishable offense otherwise this thread would be illegal but it obviously isnt. ", "The supreme court ruled the 4th doesn't apply to police they can mess up and law still applies now. Oh don't forget the ruling that they are not to protect us as well. Help yourselves, do not rely on police it is just a job like yours.", "On mobile so this will be brief. \n\nIgnorance of the law isn't OK for police officers. For example, say you get pulled over because a cop believes you were using the GPS on your phone and he thinks that is illegal (but is actually legal). That's a mistake of law and anything he discovers from that illegal stop wouldn't be admissible in court. The reasoning is that cops SHOULD know the law.\n\nHowever, if he believed you were texting (which is illegal) when you were actually just using GPS then that is a mistake of fact. Mistakes of fact are fine and whatever he finds on you from that stop would be admissible in court.\n\nSpeaking about California jurisdiction anyway.", "Because all you are is a filthy peasant and they are our wonderful, wonderful police. Of course they get a pass. Now shell out some more of your cash to pay their salaries.", "As I understand it it's because the ones charged with executing the law are in charge of executing the law. While yes a DA could file charges and such that would be suicide. The cops could subvert other cases/DA power by collectively deciding not to help in prosecution or trials and thusly make them look bad. Therefore, DA might lose it's position or viability in running for re-election. Also, you have that good ol Blue wall of Silence (Stop Snitchin. Protect your own. Cop Edition) and very strong and influential police unions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/lawyer-arrested-for-doing-her-job/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "45k26h", "title": "Would it be possible to release large amounts Dopamin, just by thinking of it?", "selftext": "And if so, would it be addictive?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/45k26h/would_it_be_possible_to_release_large_amounts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czz5iac"], "score": [8], "text": ["Dopamine is being released in your brain all the time. There are dopamine-releasing neurons in circuits that control movement, attention, and so on. And all of those circuits include many neurons that are not dopamine-releasing. Just releasing a bunch of dopamine into your brain would probably mess up a variety of systems to some degree. The most noticeable effect would probably be on movement, and in the long term you might develop some Parkinson's symptoms. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "10w1t7", "title": "Is chronic inflammation, and not cholesterol itself, the leading cause of heart disease?", "selftext": "This article makes some interesting claims: _URL_0_\n\nHowever, the author doesn't cite anything and he's [lost his license](_URL_1_) due to malpractice suits in Arizona. So he has a few red flags going against him.\n\nAnd yet, his claims make perfect intuitive sense. Can Science please help with any empirical evidence or concurrent opinions out there? Specifically on:\n\n* Unrefined sugars and omega-6 oils create a sort of lesion in blood vessels, leading to chronic inflammation.\n* This inflammation being the sufficient cause for cholesterol build-up.\n* The body's ability to flush out cholesterol in the absence of such inflammation.\n* Omega-6 oils (polyunsaturated) being more harmful than saturated fats.\n* An imbalance of omega-6 and omega-3 oils creates cytokines\u2014which directly cause inflammation.\n* The typical American diet contains a 15:1 to 30:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3s, and the desired ratio is 3:1. \n\nCommenting on the veracity of any of these, all of these, or anything else in the article is much appreciated. Seems like it makes sense, but it has a whiff of quackery about it. Thank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10w1t7/is_chronic_inflammation_and_not_cholesterol/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6h8455", "c6hehl0"], "score": [5, 4], "text": ["This is a really complex question that we really don't have great answers for yet.  I've written a lot about this and I don't know if anyone is going to do a detailed write up, and I'm in lab so I can't be too detailed right now.  But the biggest red flag is that he doesn't cite any sources for these claims.  I work a bit in the cardiac pathology field so I'll try to be fairly simple and others can feel free to chime in.\n\n* As far as I know, endothelial dysfunction (the lining of your blood vessels) can definitely have implications with lesion formation and atherosclerotic plaque development.  But the cause of endothelial dysfunction can be wide and varied - for instance, a lower level of shear stress (so at vessel bifurcations, or sedentary people) can cause endothelial dysfunction which could lead to plaque formation.  Additionally, high LDL in the bloodstream has been thought to cause this as well.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of other compounds which could cause endothelial dysfunction, which is one of the first steps towards plaque formation, but without any citations it's hard to just take his words at face value.  Once the plaque is formed, the \"chronic inflammation\" he's likely referring to is macrophage infiltration, which (to my knowledge) is actually caused because of the cholesterol deposition within the plaques.  \n\n* Inflammation, should it cause endothelial dysfunction, could cause the cholesterol deposition which results in plaques.  That's definitely possible - but, I don't know how widespread or how important this is relative to a lot of other factors which could cause endothelial dysfunction (hyperlipidemia, hypertension, etc).\n\n* Can't really comment on this one, but as far as I know, your body processes cholesterol just fine in general anyway.  It's just when the cholesterol is being transported on LDL (low-density lipoprotein), and the endothelium is damaged/your body can't process the LDL fast enough, it infiltrates the blood vessel lining.  \n\n* Can't comment on this either, but there's been a huge number of studies which have correlated saturated fat levels to plasma LDL levels, and plasma LDL levels to adverse cardiac events.  It's not as simple as A causes B, but the trends have held that saturated fats could be implicated in adverse cardiac events, and reducing your saturated fat intake can help with that.\n\n* This kind of ticks me off - cytokines can be pro-inflammatory but they serve a host of purposes.  I'd need way more information than just \"an imbalance creates cytokines\" - where are these cytokines produced?  Locally?  I'd need some strong evidence of local cytokine production at the level of the endothelium, and then evidence of autocrine/paracrine signaling leading to inflammation and dysfunction\n\n* Don't know about this at all.\n\nTo me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense without more sources.  I'd say that this really hinges on whether unrefined sugars and omega-6s can cause endothelial dysfunction in the first place, and if so, if this is truly more damaging than other factors.", "I've had this question in the back of my head all day and wasn't sure if I could answer. Now that I've read some answers, I upvoted but didn't know whose answer to comment on so I'm just going add this...\n\nThe problem with Dr. Lundell, the author of the claims, is that he knows enough to make his argument sound very credible, but he's overly dismissive of evidence and makes weird claims. The name of his book is [\"The Cure for Heart Disease\"](_URL_0_). Cure is a **BIG** word and his \"cure\" flies in the face of evidence we've gathered for years with a needless shock value claim.\n\nSo what's the bottom line? \n\nThe risk factors for heart disease are high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, obesity (and low activity lifestyle), genetics and *a lot* of unclear, complex, twisted up subtleties revolving around the [lipid profile](_URL_2_). These are risk factors for a disease in which inflammation is a component. So saying inflammation is the true cause for heart disease fails to discriminate between risk factors and mechanisms of disease.  \n\nSo about his claims that boil down to\n\n >  The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.\n\nAgain, the problem with Lundell is that his claims a not entirely wrong, but they miss the point. This statement is somewhere true because reducing total fat is probably a bad idea (because reducing \"good cholesterol\" is probably outweighs reducing \"bad cholesterol\"). It's the lipid profile that matters, which has a lot of quirky details (good fats, bad fats, etc.) that are really unclear unless you are intimately familiar with the medical research -- even still the literature is not entirely complete on the issue.\n\nSo about the points you asked...[Here's a great recent review that address most of the problems with Lundell's claims](_URL_1_)\n\nFrom the article\n\n >   the risk of CHD is reduced when [saturated fats] are replaced with polyunsaturated fatty acids \n\n >   the effect of particular foods on CHD cannot be predicted solely by their content of total SFAs because individual SFAs may have different cardiovascular effects and major SFA food sources contain other constituents that could influence CHD risk. Research is needed to clarify the role of SFAs compared with specific forms of carbohydrates in CHD risk and to compare specific foods with appropriate alternatives.\n\n[And from recent article that states](_URL_3_)\n\n >  The findings are suggestive of a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk on modification of dietary fat, but not reduction of total fat, in longer trials. Lifestyle advice to all those at risk of cardiovascular disease and to lower risk population groups, should continue to include permanent reduction of dietary saturated fat and partial replacement by unsaturates. The ideal type of unsaturated fat is unclear.\n\n**TL;DR** Inflammation is a part of heart disease and risk factors can contribute to that directly or independently. Ignoring the role of cholesterol and the details of the lipid profile is dismissive of a lot of evidence that shows a role. Dr. Lundell is inappropriately dismissive of the science (of statins too!) and his shock claim of cure is not supported by the literature."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/19/world-renown-heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease/", "http://azmd.gov/GLSuiteWeb/Repository/0/0/1/4/97d47a09-71b9-4f30-8bfe-78428be876c4.pdf"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.amazon.com/Cure-Heart-Disease-Nation-English/dp/0979034000", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=The%20role%20of%20reducing%20intakes%20of%20saturated%20fat%20in%20the%20prevention%20of%20cardiovascular%20disease%3A%20where%20does%20the%20evidence%20stand%20in%202010%3F", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_profile", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22592684"]]}
{"q_id": "36upo3", "title": "Are humans the only animals who \"spice\" their foods?", "selftext": "Originally posted in askreddit, told to post here. :-)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/36upo3/are_humans_the_only_animals_who_spice_their_foods/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crhh5qc"], "score": [3], "text": ["\"An interesting question is whether other animals also \u201cspice\u201d foods. Presently, the answer appears to be 'no.'\"\n\"some animals that store food add plants with antibacterial and antifungal properties to their caches\"\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/6/453.full"]]}
{"q_id": "2svt5o", "title": "why do we sleep on bed frames, and not just a mattress on the floor?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2svt5o/eli5_why_do_we_sleep_on_bed_frames_and_not_just_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cntbji1", "cntbmmh", "cntc3ie", "cntcagb", "cntdfzp", "cntdwj8", "cntee7r", "cntemyy", "cntex6c", "cntfkjz", "cnth8jf", "cntinka", "cntk76u", "cntlfxc", "cntlhvn", "cntli17", "cntm5lk", "cntnknr", "cntoedi", "cntqrwk", "cntr378", "cntrv9v", "cnts57p", "cntsqrg", "cntt3jz", "cntu3b2", "cntv122", "cntvfv0", "cntwjnx", "cntwxag", "cntxfmu", "cntxhq7", "cnty865", "cntyfa8", "cntyo6b", "cnu4k8u", "cnu5m72", "cnu6xs2", "cnuasvb", "cnuekie"], "score": [6, 22, 774, 16, 12, 35, 4, 200, 16, 118, 45, 38, 6, 2, 4, 25, 3, 20, 14, 3, 4, 2, 4, 2, 5, 3, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Height. It is so that the bed is of proper height to sit on the edge of. ", "I would say for these 2 simple reasons.\n\n* easier to get in / out of bed from a higher matress.\n\n* more storage area underneath.", "Temperature and bugs\n\nIt's warmer up higher off of the floor, less dusty and bugs and snakes have a harder time getting up there.", "I believe it has something to do with airing out the mattress since our body heat and sweat on a daily basis can attract mold and bugs and such.", "Go back 200 years. No heating. Floor... Cold. Cold floor. ", "Bugs. I had a three inch spider run his ass across my floor. I blasted him with bug spray. Right in his stupid little eyes.  Guess what happened?  He ran away and didn't die.  I went to Lowe's THAT DAY and built a 2x4 bed frame a good 3 feet off the ground.  \n\nFuck bugs. Seriously. ", "Further, the body heat and moisture would seep into the mattress and it would get mouldy pretty quickly underneath without some sort of circulation. Ruined carpet and ruined mattress. Unless...your house happens to be pretty dry and free of drafts. \n\nIn the UK that's a pretty hard combination to find it seems.", "Wait until you're in your 50's...\n\nIt gets harder and harder pulling yourself up and on to your feet...especially first thing in the morning. \n\nBeing able to slide your legs over, push off and stand up -- it's not a luxury it's almost essential. \n\nHey, I'm an active guy, running, biking, swimming or playing soccer nearly every day. \n\nBut my body hurts. \n\nYou'll see... ", "Stops those spider bastards from chilling on your face in the night", "Surprised no one has mentioned that a lot of countries do just sleep on a bedroom in the floor. I've slept on just a mattress in China, Vietnam, and Korea. While not everyone does it, it's certainly not uncommon.", "If you have any damp issues in your home and you put a mattress directly on the floor it will start to rot. Beds need ventilation. ", "A mattress left on the floor will collect moisture and then mold will form. ", "Fuck all that, when are we going to get mattresses that are just fuckin hovering in the air and shit, with a retractable fuckin screen that is only opened for you to enter/exit said bed, so that there are no bugs and or mosquitos capable of touching your bed EVER\n\n\nRead the other comments, they got to me.", "We used to sleep on frames, but then we got rid of them, as they were getting pretty old, and money was and still is tight. I sleep on one mattress on the floor. It's great.", "A lot of these comments reference the aversion of bugs and cold, but what about Japanese tatami mats? If what I see in foreign Japanese flicks, most beds are set on the ground, and that society is as modern as can be now!", "Ooh I can answer this one!\n\nYears ago I slept on a mattress on the floor. Then one night I climbed into bed and suddenly my body sort of folded so that I went flying up to land about five feet away with my entire nervous system screaming GETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEEEE, a feat of acrobatics I could not in a million years perform at will. \n\nThe trigger for this bit of atavistic levitation was revealed when I turned on the bedroom lights. A small (but big enough) California Kingsnake (a beneficial predator) was hiding out in my bed. \n\nThe next day I built a frame to get the mattress off the floor. I haven't had any (actual) snakes in my bed since then so it must have worked (in case of failure to snort in dry amusement, adjust irony detector). Whether it works or not I can tell you that in my case it was 100% that I wanted the wild snakes to hang out *under* the bed, not up on top with me.", "Probably bed bugs. They are disgusting evil creatures. And were once ubiquitous. One trick to prevent is put the legs of a bed in buckets with water or oil in them. So a big advantage having legs on your bed.", "I don't use bed frames. Boxed springs on floor with mattress on top. I've never liked the shakiness of most frames and also the monsters can't reach my feet when they hang off.", "waiiit wait wait hold the fucking phone...my mattress is on the floor are you telling my this isn't a natural thing \n\nalso if I hear one pun about \"nothing really mattress\" or anything like that I'm going to lose it ", "Cold air gathers from the ground up. Elevating your place of rest lets you rest in warmer air. It also makes it easier to stand up from your bed if it is at knee height.", "Japanese people use futons (not the american \"futons\" that are pull out couch beds, just google image Japanese futon) I'm American but ethnicity is Japanese and currently laying on the ground/bed(futon). I don't have a preference but I do have to say it keeps my back straight. My old soft mattress use to give me back pain because it would curl my back while I slept \n", "When people had iron beds, they used to put the legs in a can of Kerosene in order to keep bed bugs out. This going back to the 1940's and 1950's before the widespread use of Pyrethreans.", "I heard that it started to become a thing during the Black Plague where it would keep you away from the rats.", "To keep the mattress away from any spills or anything on the floor that could ruin it.", "Dust.  Sleeping close to the ground means I get all congested from the dust that lives around there.\n\nI actually put my bed on risers (like, 6 inches, I think, maybe more) to get more underbed storage space, but the real reason that beds are raised is to prevent dust from making you extremely uncomfortable while you sleep.", "If you put a foam mattress directly on the carpet it gets mouldy underneath.\n\nSource: I grew up in a poor family and they couldn't afford a proper bed for me, so I slept on this thick two-layer foam mattress. Years later (even before I was a teenager) I discovered it was cemented to the floor with copious green mould. It was really disgusting.\n\nI'm not sure if I was getting a new bed, and moved the old one to discover it... or I moved the old one and this discovery prompted a new bed. But either way I got a new bed (a futon) and although I don't like futons anymore I'm still using the frame 20 years later.\n", "You need a bed frame to create a space underneath that will become a place for dust bunnies and cats to hide in. It is also a good place for wayward socks to migrate to...a place to throw your book that you are reading before sleep...a hide out for the monsters of your mind.  \nPeople. Do yourselves a favor. When buying a mattress, buy the best one you can afford. The quality of sleep is far superior and a good mattress will last a very long time. Just do not invest in the beds that sport a 2 foot box spring and a 2 foot mattress. Man oh man, those things require a ladder to get into and a parachute to get out of safely.  ", "Comments are TL;DR\nHere's the break down: 1) Keep mattress from getting wet/moldy 2)Keeps bugs off of bed 3)Allows for storage underneath 4) Dust/dog hair etc 5) Getting out of bed when you're older is hard on the ground", "I learned the hard way... mold. I put my new memory foam mattress on the floor and after two months I decided it I should do as suggested when breaking a mattress in and spin it around but i was greeted with green crap all over the bottom. not fun", "Japanese sleep on the floor on mattresses (futons, technically).  Reason?  Space.  They roll them up and put them away during the day.\n\nSource: japanese (okinawan, technically) grandparents and mom", "You've clearly never lived in a big city, mice are always a risk and you don't want those things on your bed. ", "As a Senior Citizen, I can guarantee you that getting into and out of a bed that's raised some distance from the floor is a whole lot easier, especially if/when arthritis kicks in.", "Because we have to store the Christmas decorations somewhere...", "I prefer my boxspring and mattress on the floor better support and nothing sinks", "Wait, I'm supposed to have something besides a mattress on the floor?", "When the modern bed was designed it was comments for vermin to crawl about at night.", "I'm pretty sure that the correct answer is that your mattress needs air circulation underneath it. otherwise you might get fungi on it. ", "Because there are small dangerous monsters that eat people's faces at night.  They usually can't climb bed frames.", "For the guys out there, having the top of your mattress line up with the top of your inseam (bottom of your sack for the younger crowd) seems to line things up quite nicely during sexy time for positions where the guy is standing.", "Sex while standing at the edge of the bed is much better with a bed at the proper height."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5txg8o", "title": "Did the American Founders express any thoughts on the idea of personally profiting from public office?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5txg8o/did_the_american_founders_express_any_thoughts_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddq27pz"], "score": [49], "text": ["Absolutely. I typically refer folks to [*The Founders' Constitution*, a work of the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund](_URL_0_) which has an easy-to-understand, browsable list of primary source documents for each portion of the constitution.\n\nThe idea of profiting from public office was addressed in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, otherwise known as the Emoluments Clause:\n\n > \"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.\"\n\nOne of the base documents from which the American founders worked in creating the Constitution was William Blackstone's *Commentaries on the Laws of England*, which was almost ubiquitous on lawyers' shelves at the time. The first edition was published in 1765-1769 and was widespread at the time of the American Revolution. \n\nBlackstone, writing from the position of a strong monarchy, said the acquisition of titles and ambition was a good thing in an office-holder \u2500 at least in a monarchy. \"And emulation, or virtuous ambition, is a spring of action *which, however dangerous or invidious in a mere republic or under a despotic sway,* will certainly be attended with good effects under a free monarchy; where, without destroying it's existence, it's excesses may be continually restrained by that superior power, from which all honour is derived.\" \n\nNote my emphasis on a particular portion of Blackstone's writing with regard to ambition in a republic. \n\nBlackstone had a more rosy view of English society than did some of his contemporaries. The radical Whig historian Catherine Macaulay wrote George Washington in 1790, according to Gordon Wood's *Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789-1815*. In that letter, he worried that Americans would \"copy all the excess\" of England with regard to public office. If that were to happen, \"an inattention to public interest will prevail, and nothing be pursued but private gratification and emolument.\"\n\nJames Madison believed such a system had already come to dominate the American government by 1792. He ascribed to a more republican form of government and believed that the Federalists \"are more partial to the opulent than to the other classes of society; and having debauched themselves into a persuasion that mankind are incapable of governing themselves, it follows with them, of course, that government can be carried on only by the pageantry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments and the terror of military force.\"\n\nThis was the division among the founders. The Federalists, including George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, believed that office-holders should be the nation's elite, people who had already made their riches and were independently wealthy. That way, the thought went, they wouldn't have to worry about supporting themselves in office, the government wouldn't have to pay very much in the way of salary, and their financial independence would grant them an Olympian-like neutrality when it came to judging issues.\n\nThe Democratic-Republicans, including Madison, took the opposite view. They believed that in order to represent the people, elected officials had to be truly *representative,* coming from all classes and walks of life. These republicans had a distaste for large government, which they saw as emblematic of monarchy, and they disliked large expenses on the military. As Madison wrote in 1795, wartime meant \"the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.\"\n\nBoth Federalists and Democratic-Republicans believed people should not profit from public office, but they generally attacked it from different sides. The Federalists took the view that those in office should have no need for additional money. The Democratic-Republicans believed government should be kept weak so as to not entice corruption and manipulation of the system.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/"]]}
{"q_id": "68unmi", "title": "Is there any wildlife unique only to North Korea?", "selftext": "Given that North Korea is the most isolated country in the world, and has a large area it stretches on, are there any forms of life unique to North Korea?\nIf so, is there any collaboration between North Korean biologists and biologists from other countries?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/68unmi/is_there_any_wildlife_unique_only_to_north_korea/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh1zpy6"], "score": [12], "text": ["There is a difference between politically isolated and biologically isolated - North Korea can not be considered biologically isolated in the strict sense, as it is physically attached to the asiatic mainland.\n\nThat being said, there are species endemic to North Korea, just like there are for many other countries. You may find a partial listing [here](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://lntreasures.com/koreanorth.html"]]}
{"q_id": "s4wec", "title": "Could we easily spread life to another planet by sending a capsule filled with bacteria?", "selftext": "In a recent post today, it said that rocks containing earth bacteria had flown to other planets outside our solar system from the the meteor strike 65 million years ago.  Could we potentially do this ourselves by launching a big capsule filled with bacteria towards places like Gliese 581, Europa, and Enceladus, and actually start the process of life on another planet?\n\nWe should have the resources and ability to correctly calculate where to shoot the capsule to make sure it hits the target, and then just release the bacteria once it reaches the planet.\n\nI realize that if we did this, they wouldn't reach their destination until long after we are dead but I think it would be worth a shot.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s4wec/could_we_easily_spread_life_to_another_planet_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4b5kfc"], "score": [2], "text": ["We could easily send them there.  The problem would be getting them to survive there and reproduce.  What would they use for an energy source, is there liquid water there (all organisms on earth require liquid water for life), could they live alone instead of in a web of organisms like almost all organisms on earth do, these and many others are the difficult questions and hurdles."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "gj2j1", "title": "Meteorite or meteor-wrong?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\r\n\r\nOk, so let me put forth my arguement of this possibly being a meteorite. \r\n\r\nFirst, the entire outside of the rock is covered with a somewhat smooth black coating of what seems to be \"caramelized rock\". Sounds strange, but if this were a meteor...ite, that would be called the \"crust\", having occured as it landed due to extreme temperatures. The \"crust\" is a key identification factor.\r\n\r\nSecondly, it passed the magnet test, weakly, but it is in fact slightly magnetic. That's obviously due to the iron content, considering the flecks of rust on the flat sanded area I created last night with the Dremel, and also in the corroded rust-looking area. That Dremeled area was NOT rusted last night, however I did rinse the rock several times to get rid of the dust  &  the iron flecks appear to have rusted since last night. Initially (until last night) the entire rock was intact. Those large rusty-looking areas are where I pulled off pieces of it to see the inside. They came off easily, presumably because they were corroded beneath, the rest of the rock is not as easily disassembled. In fact, it refused to be cut with the slicing tool, shooting sparks everywhere as I tried. ALSO, I believe I found it at the ocean in Maine, on the beach, last year. Considering the amount of iron  &  how quickly it rusted on the sanded spot, and the amount of oxidization in select areas under loose flakes of rock, but absolutely none visible on the surface, it would seem the \"crust\" formed a protective barrier. The rock, being in a wet evironment, should show some signs of rust on the outside, but it doesn't, all very dark  &  pretty uniformly black.\r\n\r\nThirdly, there are no crystal formations anywhere on or in the rock, from what I can tell. Since most crystals are indicative of earth-rocks, this would have proven it NOT a meteorite. \r\n\r\nAlso, it also passed the \"streak test\", which is where it is scraped along a rough ceramic area, such as the underside of the toilet tank cover (did it), the unfinished back of a tile (did it), or the rough bottom of a coffee mug (did it), and it should leave little to no dust \"trail\". It left a very faint trail of pale gray, which mostly seemed to be the ceramic dust itself.\r\n\r\nFinally, for a rock roughly the size of an egg, it is HEFTY, weighing at least half a pound. I have yet to find a scale to weigh it, but I'm sure gonna. \r\n\r\nWhat're your thoughts? Meteorite or meteor-wrong?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gj2j1/meteorite_or_meteorwrong/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1nw4zx", "c1nwqy0"], "score": [5, 9], "text": ["I assume you've checked out the sites that help answer this question... Please post a good picture of the window you sanded into the rock.", "First the disclaimer: it is next to impossible to be sure about the classification of a rock from photographs, unless they are of a petrographic thin section. Having seen the pictures, I'm going with wrong. The texture looks terrestrial metamorphic; magnetism can result from magnetite grains in the sample. I'd suspect the rusty patches are not metal but oxide minerals.\n\nEdit: Expert here. I classify meteorites as part of my research. Short of an actual sample, no one will be able to make a positive determination."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://imgur.com/a/a231z#K8paY"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6msp9d", "title": "Did any large Phoenician/Punic/Carthaginian cities survive and thrive after the Punic Wars and retain their culture into the Roman Period?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6msp9d/did_any_large_phoenicianpuniccarthaginian_cities/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk4czcb"], "score": [35], "text": ["Punic cities, culture, language, and the Punic identity survived intact into late antiquity. Augustine, after all, was quite proud to claim not only Punic blood but knowledge of the Punic language. The conclusion of the Punic Wars did not, in fact, result in the mass destruction of all Punic sites or the systematic destruction of anything Punic. Far from it. Punic texts were preserved, and distributed to native African kings (likely the Numidians), and most Punic sites survived intact, and continued to be settled by the native peoples. Carthage was destroyed, yes, and not resettled until its establishment as a colony by Caesar (barring the abortive attempt to found a colony on the site by C. Gracchus). The Punic cities were hardly so united that the destruction of Carthage signified the destruction of all things Punic. Notably, Utica, the second city of Punic Africa, sided with the Romans during the Third Punic War, having at last broken free from the domination of the Carthaginians, and was rewarded with the status of a free city as well as becoming the capital of the new province of Africa. In 36 Octavian granted the inhabitants of Utica Roman citizenship. Leptis Magna, a Carthaginian tributary city, following the war was supported by the Romans in their dispute with Massinissa and in 111 was named a friend and ally of the Roman people, accepting a protecting garrison some years later. Diocletian's reformation of the imperial provinces made Leptis Magna, in which we find Punic inscriptions throughout the Principate, the capital of Africa Tripolitania. Leptis Minor defected to the Romans in the Third Punic War and was considered exempt from the *lex agraria* that divided up Punic land. Augustine's native Hippo was left alone by the Romans, and only formally refounded as a colony at the very end of the Republic. Romanization was never a formalized project or program. It occurred organically, as the wealthy and powerful adopted \"Roman\" customs and speech to communicate and fit in better with the superiors with which they interacted, spreading down through all levels of society. In Punic Africa, as in many provinces, it was not particularly thorough, nor was it intended to be--it was not \"intended\" to be anything, as the Roman state had no formal program. Punic inscriptions survive throughout the Roman Period, and Augustine remarked that even *a viris doctissimis proditur*, \"it is remarked even by the most learned men\" that reading Punic texts had great value--Augustine notes that Punic was still spoken as late as the fifth century."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7ars1z", "title": "In WW2 i have often read and seen pics of german snipers staying in ruined towns alone in random buildings/churches/towers. Was there a tactic they had to do this and did they not know that if they did this they would likely never return alive from that place again?", "selftext": "I mean, for me it just sounds like the kamikaze pilots, they must have known they would never make it out of it alive again.\n\nAnd to add to my question, these pics im talking about are often american soldiers in these towns dodging german snipers, so was the tactic by the german army to abandon a town and then just leave some snipers in them that known that they will never make it back to their army again if they stay there? Or was these cases where german sniper was captured alive? \n\nSorry for weird and long question, i am just curious about this cause i would never have accepted this if i was a sniper, it must have been a death sentence?\n\nLast, was this ''tactic'' used in eastern front also by retreating german army? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ars1z/in_ww2_i_have_often_read_and_seen_pics_of_german/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dpd5exi", "dpdc3ei"], "score": [9, 6], "text": ["I apologize since I am not offering an answer. However I am curious as to what books or articles you have read that discussed these snipers. It would help to know the resources you are referencing so that way we could look at what they referenced. ", "This link may help with some answers you wish for:\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uyftb/in_several_wwii_films_and_tv_series_snipers_stay/"]]}
{"q_id": "2botd9", "title": "Can the heart experience muscle spasms or twitches?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2botd9/can_the_heart_experience_muscle_spasms_or_twitches/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj7kduo"], "score": [10], "text": ["I've neither heard of heart muscle spasms, nor seen any reference to them in the literature, but there is an analogy to muscle twitches that occurs in the heart.\n\nThe normal heart receives a signal to contract that starts in the sinoatrial node in the right atrium, which spreads down and across to the other chambers, [illustrated here.](_URL_0_)\n\nOccasionally, the conduction system (Purkinje Fibers) in the ventricles can initiate a heartbeat that fires backwards up into the atria, resulting in a weaker stroke, as the ventricles haven't been filled properly. This is called a premature ventricular contraction (PVC). In the wake of the PVC, the heart's electrical system needs to reset, so there is a pause in the heart rhythm that allows the heart to become extra filled with blood. The next beat, due to the extra blood volume, is stronger than a normal heartbeat, and this is usually perceived as a brief thumping or fluttering sensation in the chest, or even a painful sensation in the neck and jaw. You may have experienced this; it's common, even in healthy people.\n\nJust like twitches in the other muscles in your body, this abnormal event can be triggered by low oxygen, electrolyte imbalance, inflammation, and drugs/medications.\n\n[For more information, here's a link to a clinical article about it.](_URL_1_)\n\nEdited to add: [You might also be interested to learn that the muscles in blood vessels that supply heart muscle can experience spasms, which is the underlying cause of variant (\"Prinzmetal's\") angina.](_URL_2_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/a3gkASD.gif", "http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/761148-overview", "http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/153943-overview#aw2aab6b2b2"]]}
{"q_id": "5jvfq5", "title": "Is IBD a genetic disease?", "selftext": "I've been trying to google it and find an answer but no, I haven't been able to find a clear answer\n\nSo are Chron's Disease and Ulcerative Collitis genetic in origin? Like, can someone without genes develop either of them?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5jvfq5/is_ibd_a_genetic_disease/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbjw4ea"], "score": [13], "text": ["Short answer: yes, but it's complex.\n\nIBD, Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis are all diseases [heavily influenced by genetics](_URL_0_). Disease risk is highly heritable (runs in families, differential prevalence in ethnic groups, concordance in twin studies), and many genes have been implicated as putatively causal or associated in animal models and humans.\n\nHowever, IBD is not a simple diseases where a single gene variant is responsible, rather your risk of developing disease comes from the [complex combination of ~100+ loci](_URL_2_), or, genetic regions that harbor a disease-associated variant. Many of these variants are actually quite common in the population - they are not rare mutants.  In addition, there are thought to be some [environmental/lifestyle/microbiome interactions](_URL_1_) that may increase risk in genetically predisposed individuals. The interaction of the specific genetic risk variants that someone has (number  &  identity) with their environmental risk factors is responsible for the variability of the disease in terms of age at onset, severity, symptom penetrance, etc.\n\nGiven the high number of common variants implicated in IBD, it would be rare for someone to harbor *zero* genetic risk, just risk below a critical threshold. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.omim.org/entry/266600", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15288007", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204665/"]]}
{"q_id": "1gjk4i", "title": "how do products with a fixed price (ex: arizona iced tea at $0.99) deal with inflation?", "selftext": "How do companies that sell products with a fixed price, like Arizona Iced Tea, deal with inflation and rising costs?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gjk4i/eli5_how_do_products_with_a_fixed_price_ex/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cakt7vl", "cakt7wi", "caktyvm", "cal3enj"], "score": [21, 8, 7, 3], "text": ["there is a practice of changing the size/volume of items without changing the price.  this practice is colloquially called 'grocery shrink ray'\n\nit appears arizona beverages have switched from 12/24 oz. to 11.5/23 oz in in the past 5 years - _URL_0_ (went looking and can only find 11.5/23 oz cans at this time)", "They up the cost.\n\nIt's not a gradual adjustment, it comes in increments.\n\nThat can was $0.50 in 1990.  In 2000 it was $0.80.  Now it's $1.00.\n\nIf you really tracked the price of pop cans and candy bars over time you would see that they more or less do follow inflation rates.\n\n", "Just a funny side note.  In OR, where there's normally a 5 cent deposit on cans and bottles, there isn't a deposit on Arizona cans because they're an odd size not mentioned in law.", "For some products, they slowly lower the quantity (tissues are an example of this). Then, after it's reached a certain point, BAM, new jumbo box comes out with more (or perhaps the original quantity) tissues at a higher price. This then becomes the norm and the process repeats.\n\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://consumerist.com/2008/07/01/grocery-shrink-ray-hits-arizona-ice-tea/"], [], [], ["http://incredibleshrinkinggroceries.com/"]]}
{"q_id": "hzq1y", "title": "Are 6-month old insect corpses still edible to spiders?", "selftext": "And do spiders still try to eat them?\n\nThere are so many of them lying around my house, and I hope that they might disappear... somehow...\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hzq1y/are_6month_old_insect_corpses_still_edible_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1zozu1", "c1zp8kp", "c1zq7og"], "score": [5, 21, 8], "text": ["Unlikely, as they are probably dehydrated. ", "I'm no scientist, but you should probably just sweep them up.", "Spiders inject fluid into their prey that causes the innards to liquefy, then they drink the goo.  I suspect that a dessicated insect corpse would be inedible to most spiders."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "13tgjd", "title": "What is the difference between a good and an outstanding music instrument?", "selftext": "For example, can we say that a superb violin produces a different spectrum than an ordinary one?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13tgjd/what_is_the_difference_between_a_good_and_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c771j1o", "c772t4n"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["As a French Horn player, I can try to explain this as it is for brass instruments.\n\nIt is predominantly down to a few things: the quality of the metal it is made from, the valves, the connections between the pipes and the flare.\n\nFirstly, the metal is made from. If you took a lump of doorhandle, melted it down and made a gong out of it, it would sound rather dull. This is because doorhandle metal is not able to resonate. However, nickel silver, which is what most horns are made from, is able to resonate much more easily. This means the sound made is much clearer.\n\nSecondly, the valves. Most horns made nowadays are called double horns (which means they are able to alternate between two different pitches by pushing down a lever). They also incorporate rotary valves, which turn to allow air through different pipes, which changes the pitch.  The valve which changes the pitch of the instrument (the fourth valve) can allow air to travel two ways- for simplicity, forwards and backwards. Most poor quality horns have the air travelling in one direction for one pitch, and another direction for the other, as it is much cheaper and easier to make. Professional horns incorporate the Merriwether system, which makes air travel the same direction around the fourth valve. This minimises interruption from the rotor inside the valve as it turns, giving a nicer quality of sound, since the air does not have to change direction through the valve.\n\nThirdly, the connections between the pipes. The air in an instrument travels from mouthpiece (where you stick your face) to the flare (where the sound comes out). Between these are various slides which can be pulled out and pushed in to slightly adjust the pitch is the air is flowing through the slide. To make the valves stay in, one tube is slightly smaller than the other on the inside, so it fits in snugly. However, if the air hits this ridge, less air is travelling in the right direction, and this interrupts the player. Most professional instruments have the air going 'down' from the ridge, as opposed to hitting it. This makes a clearer sound.\n\nFinally, the flare. When the air leaves the flare, it is bouncing all over the place as it leaves. This is what gives horns such a resonant sound- its ability to resonate. As said before, if it is made with a crappy metal, then this will not resonate as well. Most poor quality horns have a flare which was just a piece of metal which was cut and attached. Most professional horns have flares which can take up to two weeks to hammer into shape by hand. They are made each time using various maths based stuff to resonate perfectly.\n\nHowever, the key thing in all of this is a player. A professional horn player could probably take a crappy horn and play a beautiful concerto and most would think their horn was also exquisitely made. However, you couldn't give an inexperienced player a professional horn and expect them to be at the same quality. A lot of time, it is the instrumentalist who is outstanding, and not the instrument.", "For science, set up some really sensitive microphones around a room, and have a simple machine that does the \"Sound making action.\"  If you switch out the instruments, you'll be able to hear the differences and even observe the wave forms using some cool software.  The difference between a shitty instrument and a professional one is audible to just about anyone - but I doubt many people could tell good from superb.  It'd be a whole different experiment to blindfold people and have them listen to good/superb - then see if they could identify which was which accurately.  Again you'd have to use a machine to produce the sound, because a performer might play differently if he/she thinks she's playing a superb instrument."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "absu1r", "title": "How did Prince Albert piercings become associated with Prince Albert?", "selftext": "There is a lot of hearsay and rumour online about why Prince Albert penis piercings were named after Prince Albert. Is there any evidence to support these claims? If not, then how did rumours become so widespread that the piercing was named after him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/absu1r/how_did_prince_albert_piercings_become_associated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ed2twaz"], "score": [17], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion, but u/Georgy_K_Zhukov addresses this in his answer to this question:\n\n* [Whats the history of sexual peircings? Nipple piercings, clit/labia piercings, stuff like that.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p26hr/whats_the_history_of_sexual_peircings_nipple/dco5uqu/"]]}
{"q_id": "23tlgv", "title": "Did \"the Great Game\" between the Russian and British Empires actually occur? Or is it a myth?", "selftext": "I was about to start Hopkirk's \"The Great Game\" which sounds fascinating, but I found [this](_URL_0_) while googling around. Is this minority opinion, or is this idea of a 19th century cold war mostly a fabrication?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23tlgv/did_the_great_game_between_the_russian_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch0j5hh", "ch0j6jc"], "score": [12, 16], "text": ["Peter Hopkirk has probably written more about this than any other generally available scholar. His books are accessible and interesting, and he's researched the heck out of the Great Game. I would highly recommend them. \n\n* Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia, 1980\n\n\n\n* Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet, 1982\n\n\n* The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, 1990\n\n\n* The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, 1992\n\n\n* On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Great Game and the Great War, 1994\n\n\n* Quest for Kim: in Search of Kipling's Great Game, 1996\n\nEdit: Formatting.", "Read the book, it is very interesting and explains in detail the genesis of Russian-British tensions.\n\nI will admit, I am only able to read the first page of the article you supply. However, in that excerpt, I understand the author to be arguing against the existence of a Machiavellian, very organized very-competent intelligence service out of British India, with the express purpose of frustrating Russian expansion.\n\nSo, to argue that the British werent *that* organized, or weren't *always* able to frustrate Russian ambitions, or not *all* British officers were Russophobes; that argument does not necessarily negate the basic existence of the Great Game.\n\nThe larger truth that Hopkirk explains is that there were factions of both Russophobes and Russophiles in Britain. At times, Britain considered Russia the great threat, and at other times fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia diminished. There certainly were instances where British and Russian explorers traveled into the Khanate of Bukhara or the Khanate of Khiva, but it was a rarity for these agents to meet their opposites.\n\nSo, the events that Rudyard Kipling presents in *Kim* were fictionalized, but there definitely were British fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia in the late-19th century.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03068377308729652"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8soa0s", "title": "Do we know why Romance of the Three Kingdoms has such a strong pro-Shu / anti-Wei bias? Is it propaganda against northern invaders, or something else?", "selftext": "Given my own limited knowledge of Chinese history, I've been under the impression that this bias was inserted as anti-Mongol propaganda when it was written during the Yuan Dynasty, then later turned up to 11 during the Qing Dynasty when Mao Lun apparently re-wrote the entire thing, assumedly in response to the Jurchen conquest.\n\nIt's easy to draw literary parallels between Cao Wei  &  the Yuan/Jurchen as the tyrants from the north, with Shu Han  &  the Ming as the true heirs from the south. But due to my ignorance of Chinese cultural history, I'm curious if there was some specific reason that the Shu Han might've been the ones who were viewed more favorably over time instead of their more successful rivals.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8soa0s/do_we_know_why_romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_has/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e11c6y6", "e136bab"], "score": [18, 6], "text": ["While you wait for an answer, you might be insterested in [this] (_URL_0_) answer by u/_dk, especially this part:\n\n > About Xi Zuochi though, he was actually from the Jin dynasty, which is close enough to the end of the Three Kingdoms for him to be able to write a reasonably accurate history of the Three Kingdoms. It was said that he wrote the pro-Shu Hanjin Chunqiu not to please his boss, but instead to remonstrate against him since his boss Huan Wen was about to pull a Cao Cao and take the throne from the Jin dynasty. So Xi Zuochi went to demonstrate, using Wei as a negative example, that even if you underwent the ritual to receive the throne, that didn't make you legitimate. Since that was his goal, his writing immediately becomes suspect as a historical work, and later commentators and compilers were quick to point out that the Hanjin Chunqiu carries events that other sources didn't, or was portrayed differently. Xi could have made those stories up, but also consider this: Chen Shou could not be too anti-Wei in his Records of the Three Kingdoms because the Jin succeeded the Wei - attacking Wei's legitimacy would indirectly attack Jin as well. Also, Chen Shou may have chosen not to write of the things that the Sima family had done against the Cao family since he could not make the Sima family look like usurpers. Xi Zuochi, by denouncing Wei and still upholding Jin as legitimate (he reasoned that Jin became legitimate by unifying the empire), became free to write about the Simas' conspiracies against the Caos, since those conspiracies would become righteous acts against a illegitimate dynasty.", "Since you also asked \n\n >  I'm curious if there was some specific reason that the Shu Han might've been the ones who were viewed more favorably over time instead of their more successful rivals.\n\nlet's break this down a bit into two separate questions:\n\n***1. Was Shu-Han viewed more favourably over time?***\n\nThroughout Chinese history, different dynasty's governments as well as many other factions have associated themselves to different ancient personages and kingdoms, not only including the Three Kingdoms but also the Warring States and others. For the rulers and upper roles of government, most dynasties needed to assert one singular lineage of succession through all the previous dynasties, so they especially needed to choose one or another of the Three Kingdoms to be the \"right\" successor of Han and predecessor of Jin. This doesn't have to mean that they really cared that much about picking a side... even if it was just for the sake of having a consistent list of reign years. \n\nSo not necessarily every Emperor or upper bureaucrat cared deeply about whether Cao-Wei or Shu-Han was the more legitimate Han successor. But some people *did* care, and almost always their opinion of which was legitimate comes from their own circumstances. Some of the early Tang emperors such as Emperor Taizong identified strongly with Cao Cao, unsurprising since they, too, had been military aristocrats under the recently-collapsed Sui Dynasty. Others identified themselves with Kongming's able stewardship (whether or not they felt Liu Bei had a more legitimate claim to succeed Han than Cao Pi), or with other famous personages of the era.\n\nThe first really major cultural association comes from the Southern Song dynasty. There is a very obvious parallel between the Southern Song and Shu-Han: the Jurchen invasion of the north had driven the dynasty into the south, and after the Song Emperor and crown prince were captured by the Jurchens a second son of the Emperor re-established the capital in Chengdu while the Jurchens occupied the northern heartland. The drive to retake the northern heartland was encouraged by poets and court advisors using direct comparisons to the Shu-Han situation (even though Sima Guang's history commissioned by the same court earlier in the Song dynasty when they themselves still held the north had used Cao-Wei as the official dynasty of the era). Perhaps the most notable such case was the *zizhi tongjian gangmu*, written at that time by Zhu Xi, basically a rewrite of the *zizhi tongjian* which editorialized the historical text into having a pro-Shu-Han slant. So here we see not just particular figures honouring certain past figures, but a more widespread government/cultural association with one of the Three Kingdoms and using that kingdom as a symbol for their own present ideology.\n\nThen the Mongols invaded the Jurchens, and then they conquered the Southern Song, unifying all of China under Mongol rule. Most of the *literary* history (at least, as far as we know) comes from this era, especially as part of the rise of Yuan theatre. Following from the Southern Song and occupied-Northern Song, and now occupied by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan storytelling tradition likewise always casts Liu Bei and Shu-Han as heroic, and usually casts Cao Cao and Cao-Wei as villainous.\n\n\n***2. Why does Romance of the Three Kingdoms have an overall pro-Shu narrative?***\n\nWe don't have any direct quotations from Luo Guanzhong or his colleagues concerning his viewpoint on Shu vs Wei, nor any other sort of primary sources of that sort. For that matter, we don't even know for sure that Luo Guanzhong wrote *Romance*, nor when exactly the first edition of it was written, nor do we have a copy of the original manuscript. If we do indeed wish to believe that Luo Guanzhong wrote the original edition of *Romance*, there is over 100 years between his death (~1400) and our oldest known complete manuscript (1522), and we don't know how the novel could have changed in that time. \n\nThese unknowns in dating and authoring of the novel are problematic for placing the novel in its original context, as well. Was it written during the 1330s or 1340s, and represents a call to action against the Mongol rulers? Was it written in the 1350s, the last years of the Yuan dynasty, as a celebration and assertion of legitimacy for the rebels overthrowing the Yuan? Was it written in the early Ming to reaffirm the new dynasty's legitimacy (especially since the Ming asserted their legitimacy in relation specifically to the Han, rather than the Song), or perhaps even as a cautionary tale (some of the Ming's early court struggles share elements with the late Han's internal struggles...)? \n\nFurthermore, who was the audience of the original text? It might seem strange at first that the Yuan rulers would look fondly upon a novel praising the rebellious southern Shu-Han heroes, but because the Jurchens had associated themselves with Wei, the Mongols/Yuan had in-turn distanced themselves from the Jurchens by associating themselves with Han and Shu-Han, even conducting ceremonies to honour many of the Shu-Han heroes as a method of appropriating these symbols to try and make themselves look more legitimate and calm Han-chinese anti-Mongol fervor. \n\nThus, we're left with many possibilities. *Romance* could be pro-Shu because it is part of the anti-Yuan nationalist movement. It could be pro-Shu because of a desire to help establish the legitimacy of the Ming. It could be pro-Shu because that is the viewpoint which Han and Yuan audiences alike identified with. It could be pro-Shu simply because virtually all of the Yuan plays from which it draws much of its themes and content were, themselves, pro-Shu.\n\nFurthermore, if the novel had been written with a pro-Wei narrative, what would this have accomplished, literary-wise, and for what audience would such a narrative be for? The last government to identify with Cao-Wei was the Jurchens, and it is dubious that a Han Chinese author not employed by the Jurchen government would have much reason to write a novel for a Jurchen audience... and besides that, the Jurchen's Jin dynasty had ended a century prior. The Northern Song, two centuries prior. \n\nBy the time that *Romance* was written, be it the Yuan or the Ming dynasty, there wasn't really anyone still espousing a pro-Wei narrative, be it in government pronouncements, theatre, poetry, or otherwise. It could simply be that a pro-Shu narrative was the established, default option and there was no reason to deviate from such. \n\nBut I think it is important to highlight that despite the novel being overall pro-Shu and written in the Yuan/early-Ming, it draws from a wide range of sources reaching as far back as the *sanguozhi* and which are not all pro-Shu. Compared to the highly fictionalized and dramaticized Yuan plays that were the popular Three Kingdoms narrative at the time the novel was written, *Romance* includes a lot of historical information drawn from older texts even when their inclusion does not benefit the pro-Shu narrative. Wei and Wu generals who are dastardly or cowardly in Yuan plays are given brief heroic treatment in the novel, Liu Bei's advisors protest against some of his choices (in some editions, anyways), and perhaps most importantly the narrative continues beyond the deaths of the most popular heroes to show the failure to restore the Han. Thus, it is also possible to argue that the novel is scarcely pro-Shu at all, that is a rebuttal to the overwhelmingly-pro-Shu stance of the other literature that surrounded it.\n\nGiven how little we know of the origin of the novel, and of the presumed author Luo Guanzhong, all of these are simply theories which have not yet been borne out, and there are many more such theories out there as well (e.g. one theory posits that a later Ming author wrote the novel as a protest to the actions of the Yongle Emperor, but put Luo Guanzhong's name on it to give the novel greater fame and/or avoid persecution).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nAs for Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang, some scholars consider the difference between the 1522 edition and the Mao edition to be minor, others say the changes are significant. Once again, there are many possibilities that the Maos' editorial decisions were politically-inspired by the Ming-Qing transition. But, much like the author of the original text, we greatly lack sources describing the Maos' own views on the Manchu rulers. Some have argued the editorial changes made in the 1660s edition are pro-Ming, others argue they are actually pro-Qing, and yet others argue that the Maos made their changes with professional detachment from the political situation. There are strong arguments on all sides, but unless someone finds Mao Zonggang's secret diary we'll once again never know for sure.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t21kq/romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_was_historicalshu/"], []]}
{"q_id": "8qjdg0", "title": "where does germanies export surplus come from and why is it a problem for the global economy?", "selftext": "Resubmission, removed some parts that might be seen as too subjective/speculative\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qjdg0/eli5_where_does_germanies_export_surplus_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0jlswz", "e0jngd9", "e0jpk0o", "e0jsfd0"], "score": [3, 24, 6, 9], "text": ["Export Surplus means that they sell more goods than they buy. It is not a problem at all for the global economy. Without some countries being Export Economies those that are Import Economies would have nothing to buy. ", "Their export surplus come from exporting more than they import... Germany exports lots of Mercedes, BMWs, Karl Zeiss camera lenses, pharmaceuticals, high value industrial machinery, as well as wines, beer, etc. And then there are services like banking, consulting, engineering.\n\nIt's not a problem for the global economy... in fact its a benefit as the world gain access to excellent products. Imbalances can cause currency fluctuations and countries may try to slow imports from Germany to help their domestic industries.", "Germany is to the EU what China is to the US.  Which is to say that it has a much lower cost of manufacturing for just about everything, and so due to the EU's common market/Germany's close proximity to other EU countries Germany has just come to dominate industrial production in the EU.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of what Germany exports to the US are cars and industrial engines, as well as parts for both of those.  The trade deficit that Germany is running with the US isn't because its exporting a lot to the US, but rather because it imports very little.\n\nOver time running a trade deficit drains wealth out of an economy, making a country poorer over time.  Every dollar of a country's trade deficit needs to either come from its citizen's savings, or be financed through foreign debt.  In the first case, the country immediately becomes poorer.  In the latter case the country becomes poorer in the future, though how much poorer depends on the interest rate of the loans and how much inflation has occurred in the meantime. \n\nIt is possible to outgrow a trade deficit.  For example, the US has run a trade deficit since the 80's and nonetheless has had relatively robust growth since that time.  Although the US trade deficit is draining wealth out of the country, the US' position as the main driver of innovation in the world causes it to generate enough new wealth every year to replace what is leaving through the trade deficit and grow the economy.\n\nSince 2008, every Western European country has seen negative real GDP growth (that is, their GDP growth is either equal to or less than inflation+population growth).  Although this is a complex situation, the underlying cause can basically be boiled down to Germany running a large trade surplus with Western Europe while being unable to convert that trade surplus into GDP growth due to a lack of consumer spending.  \n\nBasically, Germany has become stuck in a cycle wherein other EU countries buy German goods, and then Germany takes the money from those purchases and loans it back so that those countries can continue to afford to buy more German goods next year.  You can see the situation in Greece circa 2010 as being the end result of that cycle when the importing country replaces its entire domestic industry with foreign goods purchased with foreign loans.\n\nThat doesn't mean that Italy and France will become repeats of Greece, because those countries still do have an industrial base.  But Greece is a good example of how wealth is drained out of country by this system.\n\nNor does it mean that this situation is bad for Germany.  Although Germany has seen very little growth from it so far, Germany has more than tripled the amount of foreign currency in its possession since 2004 and increased its industrial base by about 75%.  *At some point* German consumers will start spending that money instead of shipping it back overseas, and when that happens they will become much wealthier.\n\nAs for the US, Germany is draining about $70 billion in wealth from the US economy every year.  Regardless of whether the US can replace that wealth through innovation, the US' main complaint is that the trade deficit arises largely from informal trade barriers that Germany has erected to US goods.  \n\nFor example, most US goods need to go through a complex and costly certification process before they can be sold in Germany.  This makes it almost impossible for most small US businesses to export goods there, as they don't have the financial capacity to navigate the German bureaucracy.  For large US companies, this acts as an effective tariff.  The US Import/Export Banks official guidance on Germany politely sums it up as:\n\n\"While not directly discriminatory, government regulation by virtue of its complexity may offer a degree of protection to established local suppliers. Safety or environmental standards, not inherently discriminatory but sometimes zealously applied, can complicate access to the market for U.S. products. American companies interested in exporting to Germany should make sure they know which standards apply to their product and obtain timely testing and certification.\" ", "Now here\u2019s something I can answer!\n\nGermany\u2019s export surplus comes from the fact that the German Euro is Undervalued. In classical economics, a trade surplus will always inevitably lead to the currency becoming more expensive, decreasing exports and solving the trade surplus.\n\nThe problem is that Germany does not have its own currency but uses the Euro, so the normal mechanism which causes currencies to rise in price does not work. We are stuck in a position where the German Euro is too Low and the Greek Euro is too high, although they are worth the same.\n\nIs this a problem for the global economy? Yes, because German goods are artificially cheap and greek goods are artificially expensive. This continuously drains wealth from the other eurozone nations into Germany.\n\nIs it a US problem? Well yes, but slapping tariffs doesn\u2019t accomplish much. German manufacturers can just ship their stuff to France and then the US and avoid the country specific tariff. If the US places a tariff against the entire EU, then things could get really ugly.\n\nThe best option is not to cut off foreign goods for being \u201cunfair\u201d, but to actually develop your industries. If you cannot compete in a certain area (eg textiles vs Indonesia or Vietnam) you move on to another industry. Nothing lasts forever and protectionism will just destroy you when the walls eventually come down."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2j7mil", "title": "if someone leaked the entirety of windows source code, would people be able to incorporate it into other operating systems in a way that allows windows applications and libraries to be used?", "selftext": "If so, how? If not, why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j7mil/eli5_if_someone_leaked_the_entirety_of_windows/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl93s9j", "cl93shg", "cl94t8g", "cl95gkw", "cl98a93", "cl98rq0", "cl9awgn"], "score": [37, 3, 3, 8, 30, 5, 2], "text": ["Legally, no.  They could not use the leaked/stolen code in their own OS, because it is leaked/stolen.  Microsoft still owns the rights to it.  The same way they can't take a windows machine and reverse engineer the code from it (legally)\n\nIllegally, they could try, but Microsoft would have them so tied up in lawsuits it wouldn't be worth the effort\n\nHowever, there are already programs out there to allow Windows programs to run on other OSes, such as WINE.", "It's already possible using software like [Wine](_URL_0_), even without the source code.", "Theoretically, it would help wine. They would have a 'perfect' reference implementation. That said, it isn't like the code could just be copy and pasted. They would still have to write the code for wine since it isn't a copy of windows but is instead like a translator. It translates windows commands into linux ones.", "I just leave this here for the geek fellows: _URL_0_", "The Windows 2000 source code *did* leak. No one could touch it for fear of becoming tainted.\n\nIf Microsoft suspected that an Open Source project contained code that had been written by someone who had been influenced by knowledge of their proprietary code, they would sue immediately.\n\nSo, in a theoretical sense on the technical side, it could help a little. Realistically, it would hurt more than help, at least in the US.\n\nLinks:  \n_URL_1_  \n_URL_0_", "From an application developer's standard the big different between Operating Systems is their API, or Application Programming Interface. It's a library of functions which the OS provides to the developer to allow them to interact with the OS and the hardware it manages. Each OS has a different API and manages the resources in subtly different ways, which can lead to unexpected bugs when porting software between OSes.\n\nSince the API is already public, people are already writing programs that provide an \"interface layer\" between software writing for one OS and another, such as Wine and Cygwin.", "It would provide insight into various interfaces and implementations that still are hidden.\n\nSo say samba(filesharing/domain/kerberos), openoffice (formats/implementation) and reactos(pure rewritten win32) would have the final parts to 1:1 integration.\n\nThey could newer legaly do it.\n\nCool stuff that might surface.\n\n- free xp/reactos win32 clones (think steamos/xbmc os)\n\nXbmc is actualy an non legal thing at orginal xbox(the old one) that mimic that.\n\n- dx11/12 support for wine.\n\n- complete destruction of license/drm functions.\n\n- complete breakage of tpm/drm/code signing.\n\nNote that I newer seen any usage/knownlage lifted from the leaked source years ago. (Aik nt4 src)\n\nAs for \"how\"\n\nIn theory you can just replace the current code in reactos/wine/samba, and compile and suddenly everything was 1:1.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software\\)"], [], ["https://www.reactos.org"], ["http://www.reactos.org/reset-reboot-restart-legal-issues-and-long-road-03", "http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1j5q71/did_the_windows_2000_source_leak_contribute_in/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e8ujh", "title": "why does it feel so much better when someone else plays with my hair rather than when i play with my hair?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e8ujh/eli5_why_does_it_feel_so_much_better_when_someone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjx6bbq", "cjx6tuu", "cjx7na4", "cjx8208", "cjx9xp6", "cjxn9a7"], "score": [6, 21, 2, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Because it's someone else touching you. That feeling of closeness makes it feel good. ", "Same reason you can't tickle yourself, if your brain expects stimuli then the sensation is dulled.", "Sort of guessing, but... your fingers have incredibly high nerve density, relative to your scalp, so when you run your hands through your own hair, the sensations in your fingers dominate your experience of the contact, and the scalp sensations are sort of marginalized. When someone else does it, you just have the scalp sensations, which are awesome in their own right.", "Nobody else wants to make the comparison? Why is a good handjob better than masturbating?", "This event and others like it have a whole section on YouTube. It is called ASMR (Automerdian... Something something Response).", "As humans are social animals, we have a tendency to greatly enjoy physical contact between each other when we trust the person giving it. Cultural barriers can interfere in this enjoyment (i.e in the West it's not considered normal for two heterosexual men to stroke or massage one-another), but it's fairly innate.\n\nNotice that not only does someone playing with your hair feel good, but someone gently touching you pretty much anywhere does; legs, arms, neck, etc. The scalp, ears and thighs tend to be areas with the greatest nerve density and thus the most sensitive to this experience."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3c1zf6", "title": "Do the moons of other planets, for example Mars, reflect light towards those planets like Earth's moon does? Would the rough edged moons of Mars reflect light differently than our moon would?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3c1zf6/do_the_moons_of_other_planets_for_example_mars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csrrmyt"], "score": [6], "text": ["yes, all moons would reflect light toward their planet. How much depends on what those moons are made of.\n\nWhat's crazier though is that nearly everything in the solar system reflects light to other planets. Mars reflects light toward our planet. Its' not much, but it's enough that we can see it. If you look through a telescope and see mars, you are capturing light that bounced off of mars from the sun in much the same way that moonlight does. It's just a LOT further away.\n\nI could not find anything about how reflective Deimos and Phobos are, but  their size is much smaller than the moon. Deimos would look like a bright star from the surface of mars, and Phobos looks about 1/3 the size of our moon. [Source](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Mars#Characteristics"]]}
{"q_id": "4fmet4", "title": "if i buy an old game on steam or gog and its developers and publishers are out of business, who gets my money?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fmet4/eli5_if_i_buy_an_old_game_on_steam_or_gog_and_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2a3dul", "d2a3rf1", "d2abf8y", "d2af1dy"], "score": [13, 39, 8, 2], "text": ["someone owns the license. businesses that go bankrupt will get their assets sold to some company (or a bank)", "When the original development company went out of business, it sold the rights to that game to someone, either Valve/GoG or someone who's now licensing it to them.\n\nSou while you may not anymore supporting the original developers, you're still supporting an environment where game licenses have value, and if the original developers are still making games, they can probably only do so because such an environment exists.\n\nIt's not really any different from buying a current game: the actual developers of a game typically get *nothing* from actual game sales - the entire revenue goes to the publisher, who financed the development of the game beforehand. Publishers take on the risk of financing the development of a flop, and get the reward from selling a big success. Developers get a steady income without having to worry about whether the game will sell.", "Fred built the house. Fred lost his job, sold the house to Chris. Chris paid a lot of money for the house, but it's now his. He decides to sell. \n\nWould it make sense for Chris to give the money he made off selling the house to Fred, because Fred built it? Not at all. ", " >  and if I'm not actually supporting the people that made it, how is it more ethical than downloading it illegally?\n\nYou're supporting them indirectly.\n\nThey sold the rights, and that supported them. Now you're paying the new owners.\n\nIt's about exactly the same as buying Minecraft from Microsoft, now. You're supporting Notch because MS counted on your purchase when they decided to give Notch $2bn."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1p70jv", "title": "how do i know the color \"red\" i see is the same hue \"red\" everyone else (barring cb individuals) sees?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p70jv/eli5_how_do_i_know_the_color_red_i_see_is_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cczd8vf", "cczdav3", "cczen2a", "cczespw", "cczf27o", "cczgqxv", "cczh1jq", "cczh3cf", "cczhqd9", "cczhyor", "cczimr8", "ccziujz", "cczpo1h", "cczrnpd"], "score": [7, 142, 82, 17, 53, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It probably isn't *exactly* the same. Personally my eyes see different \"hues\" (I'm not sure if that's the right term) than each other. I think this might be somewhat common. Try looking at a bright red object using only one eye at a time and see if the colors are exactly the same or not. Personally my right eye sees more red in an object and my left eye sees more blue.", "It won't matter , even if they see different variations you both agree it's red. so hues to say which variant is better.", "_URL_0_ Vsauce's video covering this, it's really informative.", "You don't know. You can't know. No one can know. It's reasonable to suppose that the color you see is about the same as the color that others see, but there is no way to test that hypothesis.\n\nIt's not just color. When you smell a rose, do you have the same sensation as others who smell the same rose? When you feel a texture, is it the same as others feel? When you pick up something heavy, do you feel the same sensation of weight as others? The list goes on and on.\n\nUltimately, these are questions about consciousness itself. You are conscious of experiencing the color red. By comparison, a very smart computer or robot could, in theory, be programmed to detect the color red, and talk about it in the same way that conscious people talk about it. Would the robot be conscious? How would you know?\n\nYou can take that even farther. Let's say hyper intelligent aliens built two very sophisticated robots. One is programmed to perceive, act and communicate much as humans do. It is not conscious, but it is programmed to behave and communicate as if it is conscious. The other robot does the same, but it is in fact conscious. How would you tell the two apart?\n\nThe short answer is, you couldn't. Philosophers have been puzzling over this question for a long time. They aren't getting anywhere. This is called \"The hard question of consciousness.\" There's a wikipedia article about it.", "So here's an interesting book that kind of touches on the subject. ***Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution*** (_URL_0_)\n\nThe book has studied language to find the origin of the words that human civilizations use for colors, and they made a remarkable discovery. As it turns out, humans almost always invent words for colors in the same exact order, which is:\n\n\n1. Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm (this covers a larger set of colors than English \"black\" and \"white\".)\n2. Stage II: Red\n3. Stage III: Either green or yellow\n4. Stage IV: Both green and yellow\n5. Stage V: Blue\n6. Stage VI: Brown\n7. Stage VII: Purple, pink, orange, or grey \n\n\nThe way this ties into our perception of color is that it's thought that humans must perceive colors in the same way as all others, otherwise there wouldn't be such a strong tendency to name colors in the same chronological order. \n\nBlew my mind when I read it. Fascinating read.", "If you're interesting in thinking about this beyond the EL15 level, look into the \"inverted spectrum\" or \"[inverted qualia](_URL_0_)\" debate in philosophy. A lot of people who study and think about color vision for a living think that there's a gap between knowledge of what your visual system is doing and and knowledge of the conscious qualities, the \"what it's like,\" of the experience you're having.", "Is the pattern of neural activity in your retina for \"red\" the same for everyone...No.  Does this matter...No.\n\nUsing techniques like adaptive optics (originally developed for astronomy), we know that the ratio of specific cones and the pattern in your retina varies dramatically between individuals.  That said, the wavelength we see as red is universal (650nm) and we essentially calibrate our own vision based on shared experience.  \n\nSome people may have better or worse color discrimination, but we attach a label to a certain range of visible light.  A very small number of people, mostly women may possess a 4th type of photoreceptor that lets them see a bit into the ultraviolet spectrum.", "I would assume this is true, not just for sight but for all senses.\n\nTo me, it explains why some people like some flavors and others like other flavors.\nwhy everyone has different favorite colors, smells, sounds/songs, etc.", "It's impossible to know. There is a section of metaphysics that refers to \"frames of reference\" that essentially explains that while what every person sees is likely slightly (or very) different, it's still correct. Its not *wrong*, its just different. ", "You can't and probably don't.  This applies to many things and is a concept in philosophy called [Qualia](_URL_0_)", "Bertrand Russell has arguments against the existence of \"qualia\", which is the term for perceptions which are essentially subjective. I suggest lots of research into psych/cog sci/philosophy of mind. ", "Because the photoreceptor system for your retinas is the same as the photoreceptor system in mine. I can say this confidently because even slight changes in this system that could theoretically alter how we perceive color would likely result in failure to observe color completely. ", "There are a couple RadioLab episodes relating to this and address both the optical and perceptual complexities of color _URL_0_\n\nThe episode titled \"Why Isn't The Sky Blue?\" is one of my faves!", "No joke I asked this question to my step sister while sitting at the bus stop when I was in 2nd grade.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution"], ["http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia"], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3qu3h0", "title": "What controls the shape of the cytoskeleton? How do the cell's needs translate into growing one set of microtubules and shrinking another?", "selftext": "I understand that the actual growing and shrinking is controlled by proteins bonded to the ends and on the sides of microtubules, but what determines where they are? What says \"this one grows and this one shrinks\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qu3h0/what_controls_the_shape_of_the_cytoskeleton_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwmgadw"], "score": [2], "text": ["Cells' cytoskeleton can change due to different reasons. The most evident case is cell migration. One example of migration is the axon of a neuron (neuron somewhere in the spine) trying to reach for the muscle that it controls, leta say the arm. This is a major feat of cytoskeleton shape change. First, as you know microtubules grow and fall apart by themselves, also there are proteins that can help the growth (polymerization) and prevent it from falling apart. But the selection of which microtubules is supposed to grow is carried out by +TIPs proteins. If you are really into it read some of this article. Proff Lowry has done some amazing research in the field at Boston College\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe distilled version is that proteins at the growing end of microtubules receive signals from the outside and integrate them in the way microtubules grow. If there is a chemoattractant (molecule that attracts cells) +TIPs stabilize the microtubules close to the cell edge to rearrange the cytoskeleton. Also remember that actin plays a role as well. There are also proteins stabilizing actin filaments and making \"permanent\" adhesions, just like microtubules'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26175669"]]}
{"q_id": "809xp5", "title": "what\u2019s physiologically happening to my body when i\u2019m tired then get a \u201csecond wind\u201d?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/809xp5/eli5_whats_physiologically_happening_to_my_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duu47b2", "duu6wzr", "duu86s9", "duu9nv5", "duuarxb", "duuf1hh", "duufbyg", "duufcph", "duufim4"], "score": [129, 2, 6, 49, 10, 1412, 14, 4, 20], "text": [" >   Some scientists believe the second wind to be a result of the body finding the proper balance of oxygen to counteract the buildup of lactic acid in the muscles.[2] Others claim second winds are due to endorphin production.\n\n >   Heavy breathing during exercise is also to provide cooling for the body. After some time the veins and capillaries dilate and cooling takes place more through the skin, so less heavy breathing is needed. The increase in the temperature of the skin can be felt at the same time as the \"second wind\" takes place.\n\n[from Wikipedia](_URL_0_) ", "It might have to do with the recruitment of slower muscle fibers. The body automatically starts with fast twitch ones, but only later recruits the more efficient but less powerful slow twitch kinds. That depends on how quickly it happens. Most likely it is a combination of all kinds of factors.", "It can depend on how long and how vigorous the activity is. If you progressively get more intense, your body switches to different energy systems, allowing you to produce more energy. This can be seen as having a \u201csecond wind\u201d.", "I was taught in my HS Anatomy and Physiology class that your first wind is your body using anaerobic processes to fuel your activity. Anaerobic processes are readily available and allow for more powerful, short bursts of energy; however you deplete these sources fairly fast.\n\nYour second wind is your body\u2019s aerobic processes taking over; or at least tipping the balance of anaerobic to aerobic to enable sustained energy output with minimal muscle fatigue. Aerobic processes can last longer once your body is warmed up and \u201csettled in\u201d to the exercise you are doing.\n\n", "When we start running, we usually experience dyspnea (shortness in breath) but it goes away shortly and we feel a more normal breathing pattern, which is the \"second wind\". \nSecond wind physiologically occurs because respiratory neurons in the respiratory control center at the base of the brain need time to sense and recognize CO2 and lactate in the blood. This allows control of breathing rate. Also, at the start of an exercise under anaerobic conditions, not enough oxygen gets down to the muscular level. When oxygen is brought to the level of the diaphragm muscle, it begins to contract more regularly.", "The \"second wind\" is typically your body releasing a stress hormone called Cortisol, triggered by a stress like lack of sleep, overexertion, etc. \n\nCortisol does 2 primary things.\n\n- Releases your stored glucose, or robs some protein from your muscles to convert into glucose if you have not eaten adequately, in order to raise your blood sugar levels so your muscles have fast energy available.\n\n- Pushes blood through the body more quickly by restricting the arteries and raising your heart rate.\n\nThese give you the feeling of a \"second wind\", allowing your body to manage the physical stress you are putting on it (fight or flight).\n\nThis response is fine and not bad by itself, but the problems come when you don't deal with the stress and let your body rest properly, and end up damaging your body by keeping that negative feedback loop going so that it remains in a constant state of high blood sugar and/or high blood pressure.", "[ELI5: What physically happens to your body when you get a second wind?](_URL_3_)\n\n[\nELI5: What causes the \"second wind\" after staying up for a very long duration, \\(over 24 hours\\)?](_URL_2_)\n\n\n[ELI5: Why do we get a second wind when staying up in the middle of the night?\n](_URL_4_)\n\n[\nELI5: When playing in sports or doing anything tiresome on the body, what causes \"second wind\" ?\n](_URL_0_)\n\n[THE SEARCH BAR EXISTS FOR A REASON](_URL_1_)\n\n\nYour body's ability to produce energy has a momentum-like effect. The process of going from a relatively energy-efficient, low power consumption mode into a mode that is able to quickly convert stored glycogen and other bodily compounds into quick energy takes time to ramp up to full speed.\n\nIf you're relatively relaxed or just warmed up but still fresh, your body still isn't in full energy-burn mode. Once you leap into action, your body starts that transition. If you get winded and take a break, that process doesn't immediately slow down, so after a moment or two, your energy suddenly surges because your body is still supplying the energy level you were demanding of it a few moments ago.", "Your body secretes serotonin and melatonin to help you sleep. This makes you naturally drowsy. \n\nIf you don\u2019t go to sleep in that cycle, the effects wear off. That\u2019s your second wind.\n\nBad sleep cycles, tension et al can affect when those two are secreted, which is why it\u2019s important to reliably go to bed and wake up around specific times. \n\nAnd yes in severe fight or flight scenarios adrenaline can take over it all, but the second wind is just the serotonin and melatonin wearing off. ", "There are 4 major \"gears\" in the body, like a car. Phospho creatine system is like first gear and the reason you can sprint/fight/push for 6-15 seconds without any pain or major effort. Second gear is your aerobic system, this gear gives out quick if you hit it coming from fist gear, and bounces you to third/fourth gear--which are different types of anaerobic metabolism. These are the gears you coast in during exertion, and can only play with them for so long before pains/fatigues/certain bodily build ups force you to drop down a gear or stop altogether.\n\nNow, with a second wind you can imagine that all these gears have different tanks of gas, and as you lean on one system or another, the others are being replenished. This bouncing is a type of second wind. This is why different types of athletes focus on explosiveness, sustain or somewhere in the middle during training. Combine that with with different neurotransmissions that release substances that cause excitement, euphoria and kill pain. .and you get ebs and flows of second winds!\n\nAnd sorry if you meant about being sleepy. I don't know too much about sleep cycles. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_wind"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33q8mb/eli5_when_playing_in_sports_or_doing_anything/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=second+wind&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=relevance&amp;t=all", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qpcj0/eli5_what_causes_the_second_wind_after_staying_up/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iiv3s/eli5_what_physically_happens_to_your_body_when/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iwxoc/eli5_why_do_we_get_a_second_wind_when_staying_up/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2hz6xw", "title": "what happens when someone gives birth on a plane?", "selftext": "What citizenship does child hold? Does the child also get free flights for life?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hz6xw/eli5_what_happens_when_someone_gives_birth_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxbybd", "ckxbypz", "ckxbyu4", "ckxex72", "ckxfyu8", "ckxg3j9", "ckxgdmy", "ckxgkeg", "ckxgo10", "ckxhac3", "ckxjjwc", "ckxjp6z", "ckxm6ci", "ckxmeo7", "ckxnozj", "ckxpk3e", "ckxw7rj"], "score": [95, 22, 5, 17, 13, 8, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": [" >  What citizenship does child hold?\n\nIt obviously varies by the laws of each country, but generally the child will get the citizenship of its parents (the same would happen if the child was born while the parents were on vacation).\n\n >  Does the child also get free flights for life?\n\nThat's up to the airline to decide.", "- While there used to some issues with either the country of registration of the aircraft or location at time of birth, in almost all cases nowadays the child would be a citizen of whatever nationality the parents had.\n\n- Depends on the airline, and it has been awarded in some cases, but free flights for life is extremely rare when handed out.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_", "In most countries you are automatically a citizen of your parents' country. [No you don't get free flights for life](_URL_0_). ", "Would a child born on a plane outside the US to US citizens be ineligible to become president?", "They pin those little wings on the diaper.", "Also worth considering if the mother would be allowed to fly if she was close to being full term. But am pretty sure they go on parent's nationality. ", "A woman pregnant enough to give birth on a plane shouldn't be flying. It's very dangerous to the unborn.", "why would you plan on getting on a plane when labor is about to start?", "My father is a commercial airline pilot for a living... He's had multiple situations that required emergency landings (based on passengers health, never really had a plane malfunction he couldn't manage). \n\nFor career day he would often come in during Elementary School  &  Middle School to share stories. One of which was a pregnant woman whom went into labor during a flight. The plane made an emergency landing as far as I can recall at the nearest airport and the woman was escorted to the (hospital, clinic, whatever was presumably closest). \n\nAnother instance was a man had a heart attack, though surprisingly enough there actually WAS a doctor on board. Though he was stabilized, then removed at the nearest airport for the medical emergency.\n\nMy father has flown anyone from Pro-Teams, Celebrities, to U.S soldiers leaving for deployment, though he doesn't necessarily speak much of the condition of the soldiers who return...\n\nRegardless, the citizenship would most likely be based on the parents current status, unless hypothetically the child was somehow born over international borders which could cause legal issues.\n\nAs for free flights? Hah. Simply put, nope.\n\nI'm able to fly standby a few times a year and get great seats due to my dads seniority level as a pilot, but it still isn't free, and it's immediate family only. I will admit however, on less booked flights the price can be staggeringly low.\n\nP.S- Fun fact about the Boeing 747-400, it has 4 massive engines on it (2 per wing), but they can still fly with only a single engine. Obviously however if malfunctions occur, they will land for maintenance if possible. Most 747-400's are International flights, so it tends to be over water or up towards the northern hemisphere to cut flying time.\n\nFun Fact #2- The wings are held on by i believe two SERIOUSLY strong bolts (or four? correct me if I'm wrong, someone?) And the wings themselves actually hold gas in them, similar to a gas bladder in the Air Force. It really is impressive engineering in these planes. And some of the older models (727, 737, 757, etc) are still in commission that are probably older then many reading this post.", "Most countries base citizenship on the citizenship of the parents, not birth location. According to [Snoo](_URL_0_) (handy map included) only 30 of 194 countries do (one of which is the US, of course).", "If someone gives birth on a plane, the airline, in its asshole capacity, will probably charge them for an extra seat.", "You definitely will be seated next to another god damned crying baby.", "This question was recently addressed on:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTwo things at play:\n\n1. Convention says the the craft you are flying (or sailing) on is part of the country of origin. Example in the article: born on a Norwegian plane? You were born in Norway.\n\n2. Citizenship of your parents affects your citizenship. As /u/Schnutzel noted, that governed by laws of the country that the parents are citizens of.\n\nSo you have to consider the question on a country-by-country basis for both the country of origin and the country that the parents are citizens of.", "...I guess the baby would be airborne then, wouldn't it? ", "I nannied for a girl who was born on a german aircraft in canadian airspace so she was a german, canadian and american citizen because her parents were both americans. Her birth certificate says latitude and longitude ", "US law says that they are US citizens if US parents.\n\nMost airlines require a letter from your doctor if you are to fly within one month of due date, stating that you are not having a \"high-risk\" pregnancy.", "\"Wow, finally. A plane *without* a crying baby to ruin the ride\"\n\n2 hours later\n\n\"Fuck\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://gadling.com/2009/10/23/want-a-lifetime-of-free-flights-give-birth-on-board/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_aboard_aircraft_and_ships"], ["http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/airbaby.asp"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli"], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/08/20/341641164/if-youre-born-in-the-sky-whats-your-nationality-an-airplane-puzzler"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1f71zp", "title": "what actual crimes did anyone on \"wall st\" actually commit leading up to the financial crisis?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f71zp/eli5_what_actual_crimes_did_anyone_on_wall_st/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca7ext5", "ca7ftfx", "ca7fu1n", "ca7gyyh", "ca7hj82", "ca7iw1y", "ca7k2nz", "ca7klmo", "ca7mxx7", "ca7ntk6"], "score": [9, 3, 4, 312, 20, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4], "text": ["That's subject to a lot of debate, but the biggest sticking point would be that products were being sold and set up with prior knowledge that they would most certainly go bad, while benefiting the firm that was setting it up. That said, its extremely hard to prove this.\n\nCan go into more detail or field questions if you want. Since you said \"financial crisis\" I'm assuming you meant the collapse in real estate, whose mortgages backed trillions of dollars of securities.", "one of the big problems related to attempts to prosecute bankers who were involved in unethical business practices is that, for the most part, what they were doing wasn't actually illegal (even though it was unethical and financially destructive). \n\n", "I think there is a general feeling among some on Reddit, and elsewhere, that certain organizations on Wall Street (e.g. large banks) flew the economy into the ground to make a profit and because they are \"too big to fail\" there is nothing holding them back from doing it again in the future.\n\nHaving said this, however, I don't know of any evidence that there were any \"crimes\" committed, but more of a lack of accountability and reckless action for short-term gain.", "Okay I spent like twenty minutes trying to explain it like I would to a five year old, and I failed, so here it is as simply as possible. \n\nFirst off, you're kind of asking the wrong question. You have to remember that Wall St firms spend billions of dollars lobbying politicians to write laws that benefit them. So, for instance, financial derivatives were largely unregulated- there were very few laws governing them, and they are considered a main cause of the financial crisis. Some people argue that the people on Wall St didn't break any laws, but it's kind of a moot point. They're the ones who wrote the laws, and they wrote them in such a way that they could legally screw their own investors. So whether they committed a \"crime\" or not doesn't really matter at some level. They still behaved in completely immoral ways that nearly led to the financial collapse of the global financial system, just to line their own pockets. Whether it was illegal or not, it was wrong. \n\nThat being said, there was a lot of behavior that many people would consider fraud at many levels of the financial system. The collapse was driven mainly by mortgage backed securities. Basically, back in the day, if you wanted a loan to buy a house, you'd go to your bank and they'd give you a loan to buy your house, and then you'd pay them back over twenty or thirty years. They had a lot of interest in making sure you could pay your loan back, because if you didn't they were out of a ton of money. \n\nWith the invention of mortgage back securities, banks would make a loan to you, and then immediately sell it to an investment firm, which would package it with thousands of other mortgages, and then resell them to investors. Because the banks were only holding onto the loans for a short time period before they sold them, they didn't really care if you could pay back the loan or not. So they lent money to people who blatantly couldn't afford it. People who listed their occupation as \"waitress\" and their annual income as \"$200,000.\" It was obvious the loan applicants were lying, but the banks let them because all they cared about was making a loan so they could sell it. And, yep, it was definitely criminal of the people who lied on their loan applications, but the banks have a legal responsibility to ensure the loan applications seem reasonably accurate (e.g., by requesting salary verification, calling your employer, whatever). The banks knew they were making bad loans, and then they represented them as good loans. Most people would consider that fraud. \n\nThe investment banks who bought and packaged the mortgages also knew they were bad, and that they would likely fail. They did a couple things that appear to most people as fraudulent. First, it appears they colluded with the rating agencies so that the rating agencies would say these packages of mortgages were a very, very safe investment, when there's evidence (e.g., internal emails) that both the rating agencies and the investment banks knew they were not safe investments. Second, they encouraged their investors to buy these mortgage backed securities, claiming that they were a great investment, while at the same time they placed bets that these investments would actually fail. Some people argue this wasn't illegal, they were just hedging their financial position. However, again there are emails in which bankers are nicknaming these mortgage backed securities things like \"doomed to fail\" and \"crap investment,\" while at the same time pushing them on their investors who they are supposed to be advising. Most people would consider that fraud, too. ", "Most of what was done wasn't actually illegal, just breathtakingly irresponsible.\n\nFor instance, there were (and still are) these things called \"synthetic CDOs\" that were similar to insurance policies like you'd get on your car or your house, with a couple of key differences.  What the CDOs insured were (sometimes) collections of mortgages.  So, like, when you got a mortgage from a bank or a company like Countrywide, the bank doesn't usually hold onto the mortgage for the full 30 years.  Instead, they'd take your mortgage and bundle it together with a couple thousand other people's and sell the bundle to investors as a bond.  The investors buying that bond expected to get (say) 5% or 6% interest for the life of the bond, funded by you and the other thousand people paying your monthly payment for 30y, or whatever.  \n\nAt the time, such investments were considered pretty darn safe.  House prices always go up, right?  HOWEVER, the people buying these things knew there was at least a small risk that the investment might not pay off--California might slide into the sea, or whatever.  To guard against this, they sometimes went to big insurance companies like AIG to buy an insurance policy.  If, for whatever reason, the bond *didn't* pay off at the expected rate, AIG would make up the loss. \n\nThat was fine as far as it went, but here's the irresponsible part.  In conventional insurance, you can't take out a policy on, say, your neighbor's house.  Not so with this sort.  Companies like AIG would write insurance policies AGAINST THE SAME BOND over and over and over for anyone who could afford the premiums.  So, if the bond DID ever default, they would potentially be on the hook for many, many times what the original bond was worth--up to and past the point where some events (like a broad based decline in housing prices) could make the insurance company owe more than they could pay.  \n\nThat ended up being exactly what happened.  When house prices declined, the people who had been counting on refinancing their house to make a balloon payment found that they owed more than the house was worth.  They defaulted in record numbers, as did the bonds backed by their mortgages.  AIG, to its surprise, found that it owed the people who had bought insurance on these bonds many, many billions of dollars.  They were effectively bankrupt, until they were bailed out by U.S. taxpayers.  Nobody (or not many people) did anything that was against the law, but a case could be made that they were very, very irresponsible indeed.  \n\nAnother huge problem was that in order to help Bush win reelection, Alan Greenspan opted to keep the federal funds rate lower than it had ever been for several years.  This had the effect of flooding the U.S. economy with cheap loans.  Because more people had more (borrowed) money to buy the same number of houses, starting around 2002 house prices began to rise.  When, just after the 2004 election, Greenspan returned the interest rates to more normal levels, the growth came to a crashing halt.  The bubble burst.\n\nAgain, there was no law against doing this,  but it was breathtakingly irresponsible. And there's really no doubt at all about what happened and why--Greenspan said so, in so many words, in his book The Age of Turbulence (published before the 2008 crisis).\n\nA little closer to home, you also had an epidemic of mortgage brokers turning a blind eye to obvious problems in order to get consumers approved for balloon loans to buy houses they couldn't realistically afford.  Not (necessarily) illegal, but breathtakingly irresponsible.  \n\nIt's also true that nobody held a gun to anybody's head in 2004 and forced them to buy a McMansion that they couldn't really afford. \n\nTL; DR - In the U.S. financial system profits belong to the shareholders, but risk is for everyone.", "Start here:\n_URL_0_\n", "How to make a million dollars an hour by Les Leopold is a very interesting read that points everything to hedge funds.", "Unfortunately, none.   It's the laws that were fucked up not the actual bankers.", "The only *real* sin was bullshitting a bunch of regulators that should have known better (and a lot of these were private, not government) that MBS (mortgage backed securities) deserved the risk rating that they got.\n\nInvestments are rated by risk, and certain entities (like pension funds, etc) are required to buy securities with a high financial strength rating...A or A+ or something considered very stable, and very unlikely to lose a dramatic amount of value.\n\nSo, during the boom, they managed to work out a way to bundle risky loans with safe loans in such a way that they could convince the ratings companies to give a very good rating to the resultant securities. Obviously (in hindsight) they were shit, but at the time they were rated very highly, which meant they could be insured very cheaply, and sold off to organizations who normally couldn't buy something with such a high return.\n\nThat was the shady part. Someone had to know that those things were shit. They certainly shouldn't have been rated so well as an investment (but, again, the government doesn't do the rating, they just make the rules about what ratings can be bought by certain types of funds). \n\nSo they were easy to sell, so the demand increased, which drove the lenders to lend more recklessly, etc.", "The whole scapegoating of wall st is because politicians naturally seek to avoid blame and pundits seek to cast it about. The \"criminal\" here is not a single actor or institution. Rather, it is the fascistic hybrid of a powerful government seeking a specific social outcome (fair housing, broad homeownership) and a group of big businesses involved in that process that seek to protect profits and avoid punitive regulations. The system worked as designed, pushing homeownership rates to record highs, without wondering about the sustainability of these developments (note, the prime beneficiary of these policies in the end were upper-middle class people who flipped houses during the boom, and investors who sold or shorted early, despite nominally being for \"the poor\"). Barney frank famously said in 2003 that he wanted to \"roll the dice in favor of subsidized housing\", encouraging further purchases of MBS through Fannie Mae. \n\nAny attempt to blame a particular group (be it wall st, investment bankers, govt backed credit raters or congress itself) is misguided and misunderstood, and likely scapegoating for a political purpose. Almost all the actors behaved within the confines of the law, often acting with express or implied consent from regulators. To try and levy criminal punishments on such actions will cripple the economy and the government, for fear that any action taken today, that is legal under current law, could be made illegal with all formerly-law-abiding citizens being thrown into jail. Moral hazard, regulatory capture, and blithe optimism were all involved in this debacle, but trying to imprison a bank CEO for supposed crimes during this time makes as much sense as impeaching Obama for Benghazi. \n\nI hope this makes sense. The financial crisis is an incredibly complex issue legally and it's not helped by such rampant demagoguing as is found on the Internet. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-rare-look-at-why-the-government-wont-fight-wall-street-20120918"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4g8vu0", "title": "Has Hajj ever been suspended or conducted at a different place for any period in history?", "selftext": "*different place other than mecca.  I searched and couldn't find a good source to read, so I turned to you guys. \n\nThanks in advance", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4g8vu0/has_hajj_ever_been_suspended_or_conducted_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2g57qc"], "score": [4], "text": ["Follow up question*\n\nEspecially during the First World War when the Arabs revolted against the Ottoman Empire."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3ku05s", "title": "I heard someone state 'the Roman empire never ended, we just call it the catholic church nowadays.' Could someone explain this statement for me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ku05s/i_heard_someone_state_the_roman_empire_never/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv0ketu", "cv0v45b"], "score": [111, 2], "text": ["When the institutions of the catholic Church were created it was not onto a blank space. While in the first two centuries Christianity was, to an extent, a subversive an occaisionally revolutionary movement, when it was legalized it was bent into the shape of the Roman empire and became a true imperial institution. The most obvious example of this is the geographic arrangement of Church territories into dioces, which matched the imperial divisions instituted by Diocletian. Although there is certainly good, early precedent for organizational divisions of the Church, the specific way in which it was done was very distinctly imperial.\n\nThat being said, the idea that the Church is actually a continuation of the empire rather than an institutional fossil of it is not terribly justifiable (if nothing else, the Orthodox Church has at least as much claim to legitimate continuity). I would hazard a guess that someone saying this is perhaps attempting to grant historical legitimacy to the Church and overstating it a few touches.", "Related question: was the spurious Donation of Constantine ever widely believed, and if so what impact did it have?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2yiqap", "title": "When did the boy scouts adopt the fleur-de-lis as their symbol?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yiqap/when_did_the_boy_scouts_adopt_the_fleurdelis_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpa0fqi", "cpa5hbv"], "score": [23, 3], "text": ["Lord Baden Powell, the father of the world scouting movement, started giving out fleur-de-lis badges to army scouts while serving in India in 1907.   It's used internationally, not just in the BSA.   Most countries just have \"Scouts\" and don't have a gender divide.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)  ", "The fleur-de-lis symbol is shown as the \"scouts badge\" in the origional text of scouting for boys, the book that became the foundation of the scouting movement. In the text he states that it is taken from the badge used by military scouts.\n\nSo it was certainly around in 1908, when the movements founding ideas first became public. The only earlier opportunity for it's use in a scouting sense would have been the 1907 brownsea island camp.\n\nsource:\n\"Scouting for boys, the origional 1908 edition\" by Robert Baden-Powell, with introduction and notes by Elleke Boehmer, Oxford university press, 2004\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://archive.is/CeuM5"], []]}
{"q_id": "20zdjw", "title": "Did merchants or towns along the Silk Road's land route ever develop a creole language similar to sailors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20zdjw/did_merchants_or_towns_along_the_silk_roads_land/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg895pc", "cg8hf04"], "score": [135, 3], "text": ["The language of the Silk Road in the medieval and post-medieval period, that is, from about 900 AD to 1850 was Persian (now often called Farsi). \n\nThis was the primary spoken and written language in the central portion of the road's transit, from Samarqand and the Ferghana valley (modern Uzbekistan) almost to Tabriz in Iran, and was understood in Turkistan (now Xinjiang, China) and well into what is now Turkey. It was also the native language of perhaps a majority of the road's merchants, whatever their ethnic origin might have been. Indian merchants all spoke Persian; so did Armenians. Persian was the literary language of Turko-Mongol governments that ruled the Silk Road territories from the 12th century as well. It was the perfect lingua franca.\n\nTurkic dialects were of course understood, as they covered a similar range, but they were less rooted in urban areas and the sedentary population.\n\nIt's worth remembering that actual transit from China to Istanbul more or less stopped in the early 1500s as Iranian silk was then shipped directly west and Safavid Iran effectively closed its eastern borders to trade. The Silk Road then became two separate roads: one going from Iran to Aleppo or to Istanbul, and one, much less travelled, overland from China north of the Caspian Sea through Russia. In any case the maritime trade had become much more important.\n\nJames Corcoran, Religions of the Silk Road, Richard Frye, the Heritage of Central Asia, Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, any of the Cambridge Histories of Central Asia or of Iran or even Marco Polo's account discuss this pretty clearly. I don't have a complete bibliography handy so maybe someone else can dig up more sources.\n\nEDIT: Adjusted a date.", "Also it is good to remember \"silk road\" was not a single intact highway type of an entity but rather, a series of more or less connected trade routes. Ancient History doesn't know of a single person who would have travelled it from one end to another.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "x6vdt", "title": "if some people can live without parts of their brains, why do people instantly die when they're shot in the head?", "selftext": "I've heard of people living with hemispherectomies or having bits of their brain missing, so why do people suddenly die when they're shot in the head? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x6vdt/eli5_if_some_people_can_live_without_parts_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5jp2cx", "c5jp4jw", "c5jp67l", "c5jp74t", "c5jp7lx", "c5jqtsw"], "score": [7, 5, 5, 13, 2, 7], "text": ["There are (rare) instances where someone can live despite being shot in the head. The issue is that the bullet is going to do incredible damage to the brain, once it hits the scull it will break up and scatter shrapnel throughout the brain itself. Its not just as if they leave a perfect bullet shaped hole in your head. \n\n", "I read that one of the victims of the Aurora shooting was shot in the head and the bullet passed through her brain and she is fine. \n\nWe still don't fully understand the human body...", "Because a bullet is a little more violent than a scalpel.\n\nBullets cause hydrostatic shock, a shock wave that travels though the liquids in the body, that can burst cells.  They also burst blood vessels in the brain, which can either starve or put excess pressure on brain tissues.", "Not everyone instantly dies with a head shot. Famous recent example: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords took a bullet right through the head and out the other side. She lost brain tissue but luckily the bullet did not sever the most vital parts of the brain, the ones you can't live without or the ones that would cause her to bleed out instantly. She is alive and recovering well. ", "It's possible to survive being shot in the head.", "You can live without *some* parts of your brain. You can't live without others.\n\nPeople without brain parts are often affected by it. People born that way are generally less affected because they've had time (and development) to adapt.\n\nSome interesting cases:  \n- _URL_0_ - Severed his limbic system when a tamping rod blew clear through his head, lost the ability to regulate his emotions.  \n- _URL_1_ - Put his head in a particle accelerator. (Like a boss?)  \n- _URL_2_ - Many, many interesting cases have come to VS Ramachandran, a brain researcher. Read all about them if you want your own mind blown.\n\nNotable examples on the last point: one fellow was in a car accident and suffered brain trauma. Much of his recovery was done while living at his parents' house, where it was discovered something was seriously wrong. After a few weeks, he would become convinced that his parents were imposters trying to perpetrate a conspiracy against him. His mom eventually learned that if she assented to being \"found out\" and left the house, she could sneak around the back and come in the back door and tell him, \"I'm back, and it's really me this time!\" After a few weeks, his suspicions would grow again, rinse and repeat. Ramachandran explained this behavior and figured out how to solve it.\n\nAnother fellow was prone to having epileptic seizures in a specific region of his brain. For days afterwards he would experience the earth shaking religious epiphanies. Ramachandran figures out where religious experience lives.\n\nMany, many more..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski", "http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31555.Phantoms_in_the_Brain"]]}
{"q_id": "lb3a4", "title": "When people gain weight, why do certain body parts not enlarge (ears, nose, lips, penis)?", "selftext": "My niece asked this question and I felt quite lost.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lb3a4/when_people_gain_weight_why_do_certain_body_parts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2r84i1", "c2rhah4", "c2r84i1", "c2rhah4"], "score": [5, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["When you gain weight, you don't add fat cells.  The fat cells you have just become bigger.  This is why liposuction works.\n\nParts of the body like the ears and nose that have little or no surrounding fat don't get bigger because there are no fat cells to enlarge.", "Ears, nose and penis are mostly non-fatty tissue like cartilage or bone.  Your body does not store fat in those locations.  Lips do have fat and they DO get bigger when you gain weight, just not much bigger", "When you gain weight, you don't add fat cells.  The fat cells you have just become bigger.  This is why liposuction works.\n\nParts of the body like the ears and nose that have little or no surrounding fat don't get bigger because there are no fat cells to enlarge.", "Ears, nose and penis are mostly non-fatty tissue like cartilage or bone.  Your body does not store fat in those locations.  Lips do have fat and they DO get bigger when you gain weight, just not much bigger"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "zws1x", "title": "Can someone concisely clarify differences between PCR types? (qPCR, qRT-PCR, RT-PCR, Real-time)", "selftext": "Hey so I'm a novice sitting here with someone super familiar to PCR but I can't seem to get a concise answer on what the difference between them is.\n\n1) is the difference between anything Reverse transcriptase and PCR the source of your genetic material (i.e. RNA vs DNA).  So if any time your source material is RNA it would be denoted as reverse transcriptase?\n\n2) difference between real time and regular PCR (or regular RT-PCR) is quantitation methods (fluoro probe vs gel).\n\nIf one were to extract RNA to run \"real-time\" would you technically be running qRT-PCR/Real-time-RT-PCR?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zws1x/can_someone_concisely_clarify_differences_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c68e2jw"], "score": [5], "text": ["qPCR: quantitative PCR.  There are different ways of doing quantitative pcr but the common more accurate way is to perform a PCR with some fluorescent molecule that fluoresces increasingly as product is formed.  (I think the other way is called endpoint quantification and you basically can use various methods, sometimes as crude as gel viz., to measure the strength of the PCR product, but this method is less reliable due to various biases that can creep in).  The earlier in the PCR the fluorescence threshold is crossed, the more initial template there was.  Watching the fluorescence level in real time allows you to measure the threshold event timepoint, which allows you to backcalculate starting amount.\n\n2)RT-PCR: Some people call this real-time pcr, confusingly, in which case it would be synonymous with qPCR.  However most of the time nowadays this refers to reverse transcription-PCR.  So this means that before doing PCR, you make DNA template by running a reverse transcription reaction on your RNA.\n\n3) Finally, yes, qRT-PCR simply combines a fluorescence-monitoring PCR reaction following the RT reaction.\n\nNote that there are basically two types of qPCR right now, one which uses a dye that fluoresces in response to dsDNA, the other is part of a 'probe' that specifically hybridizes to a region of your product DNA and upon doing so fluoresces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1yuibk", "title": "How long was the average run of a Globe Theater play?", "selftext": "I'm writing a paper on Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess which ran for nine days before being pulled from production. I'm trying to figure out how long that was relative to other plays.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yuibk/how_long_was_the_average_run_of_a_globe_theater/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfo67nm"], "score": [21], "text": ["The short answer: We don't know for certain because extant written accounts from the period are scarce.\n\nThe long answer:  It is possible to make an educated guess.\n\nThe Globe Theatre was a wooden, twenty-sided, three-storey, open-air amphitheater that could (reportedly) house about 3,000 people at maximum capacity.  The majority of that crowd would have been standing for the duration of the play, exposed to the fickle London weather.  An [excavation of the old Globe's foundations](_URL_0_) in 1988-89 revealed that the floor was covered in a layer of nutshells that helped to keep mud from the earthen floor under control, but the duration of a season would have been completely dependent upon the English climate.  So we're probably talking about a performance window between late April and early October (the same as the modern Globe Theatre in London today).  Records of winter productions by The Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men between 1599 and 1613 are all commissioned indoor performances at court or at private homes during weddings, holidays, etc.\n\nIt would have been common at the time for theatre companies to perform multiple plays in repertory.  It is often presumed that this repertory was sequential and overlapping but it's possible that all the shows were in rotation throughout the season.  There are mentions of Shakespeare's earlier plays from the 1590s being remounted at The Globe, but the constant demand for new material ensured that newer plays would have been favored.\n\nThe Globe was completed *at some point* after March of 1599.  The most likely candidate for the first production in the new structure is *Henry V*.  *Henry V* is easy to date thanks to a reference by the Chorus to the Earl of Essex's Irish expedition of 1599 that puts the time of its completion between March and September of that year.  Just in time for a summer/fall premiere at the newly finished Globe.\n\n[The opening Chorus to *Henry V*] (_URL_1_) appears to reference the building in which it was intended to be performed:\n\n > ... But pardon, and gentles all,\n\n > The flat unraised spirits that have dared\n\n > On **this unworthy scaffold** to bring forth\n\n > So great an object: can **this cockpit** hold\n\n > The vasty fields of France? or may we cram\n\n > Within **this wooden O** the very casques\n\n > That did affright the air at Agincourt?\n\nHowever, although we know when it was written and can say that it was *probably* part of the 1599 season, the earliest confirmed performance of *Henry V* was in January of 1605.  Dover Wilson, Regius Professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh, suggests in the [*Cambridge New Shakespeare* version](_URL_2_) that the first production mounted at The Globe may have been *Julius Caesar*.  He notes a Swiss tourist's account of a performance of *Julius Caesar* on 21 September 1599 at the Globe.  There is no mention of exactly how long the play had been running by that point \n\n**TL;DR:**\n\n* Multiple overlapping shows in repertory.\n\n* Minimum run = ~3 weeks.\n\n* Maximum run = ~24 weeks.\n\n* Likely run = ~5-8 weeks.  (My estimate, presuming a 3 - 6 show season.)\n\nThe 9 show run of *A Game at Chess* before the actors were prosecuted would have been considered very short indeed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/myads/copyrights?from=2f6172636869766544532f61726368697665446f776e6c6f61643f743d617263682d3435372d312f64697373656d696e6174696f6e2f7064662f766f6c30362f766f6c30365f30362f30365f30365f3134335f3134342e706466", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZFngXSDD0I", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Julius_Caesar.html?id=zmSi5Bnw12oC"]]}
{"q_id": "2vvciy", "title": "why haven't we made ski boots that don't hurt yet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vvciy/eli5_why_havent_we_made_ski_boots_that_dont_hurt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["col8lyu", "col8pn3", "col8rae", "col8rh4", "col8uh9", "col8xrr", "col927v", "col95pi", "col9751", "col9i1a", "col9l3b", "col9sd2", "col9yez", "cola40k", "cola9ou", "colaak0", "colaaoj", "colai4r", "colakv9", "colaq5o", "colaqzf", "colbb4v", "colbfcx", "cold9tg", "cole5ac", "coledm8", "colfbfp", "colgsps", "coli6mo", "colikd5", "colj5qw", "coljoku", "colkgra", "colkhb2", "colkilw", "colknmi", "colktbm", "colleyk", "collrh2", "collud1", "colohs6", "colorpp", "colqa8c", "colqghe", "colqnrr", "colr36m", "colucqj", "colvcrv", "colwtoe", "colwxep", "colxgu5"], "score": [2, 2147, 22, 705, 71, 15, 162, 176, 4, 63, 2, 31, 7, 2, 3, 3, 2, 6, 25, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 147, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I always assumed that they have but as a casual I always hire low end ones that aren't broken in to my feet.", "Normal shoes will adapt to your feet after a while. Ski boots shouldn't adapt, they should brace your foot. \n\nYou can get the inner shoe shaped to fit your foot. it costs like $300-500.\n\nBut a far cheaper thing that people don't know about is that you can take your boot to a (good) ski shop and they can stretch your off-the-shelf boot where it hurts your foot. About half an inch or so.  It's usually like $30-80. It works out great for many people. \n\nEdit: but they ski boots are not as bad as they used to be, right?", "They have made *more* comfortable boots but just without pain is asking too much. They have to be stiff enough to not fail when having hundreds of pounds of lateral torsion put on them. Also, you're probably wearing them to tight or they could be the wrong size.", "You haven't spent enough money for a comfortable pair", "Ski boots aren't made for comfort. They're made to brace your ankles so that they don't snap when the skis go a different direction than the rest of your body. To make them comfortable, they'd have to be softer and looser, which means your ankle would be much more breakable. ", "LPT:  dont wear thick socks with your ski boots.  They will just pinch your feet and cut off circulation. Wear thin liner type socks just to help wick away moisture. Its your boots that keep your feet warm, not your socks. ", "They do. Spend the money and go see a boot fitter. If after a break in period your feet still have hot spots go see the same boot fitter and they'll usually make adjustments for free. \n\nSource: I have two comfortable pairs of ski boots.", "We have.  \nIf your boots hurt they're not the right ones for you.", "Not an explanation but a tip: try using some decent insoles (like superfeet) and buy your own boots so you get to wear them in (well as much as you can ski boots).", "as others have said they have if you're willing to spend the money and go to the correct place. If you only rent boots chances are they will hurt but if you buy a pair they wont and will work out cheaper in the long run. Renting a pair of boots can easily cost \u00a350-100 for a week, lets say you get a deal and pay \u00a350 for a week, you can easily buy a pair for \u00a3300 and an extra \u00a3100 for custom fitting so \u00a3400 in total, so if you go for a week a year in 8 years they will have paid for themselves and still have a lot of use in them (my current boots have done 20+ weeks ones before did 30+). \n\nIf I have convinced you to buy a pair DO NOT LOOK FOR A PAIR in the nicest way you don't know what you want or what you are looking for. If you buy a pair which match your ski outfit you will probably buy the wrong ones. Go to a ski shop which have a large selection of boots and ideally research who has the best reviews for boot fitting. Go to the shop and instead of looking at the boots ask for their boot technician and explain you want a pair of boots (sometimes you will have to book an appointment, if it's far from where you live might be worth calling ahead). The boot tech should look at your feet and ask you about your skiing style and experience. They should then give you a selection of boots which they think will fit your feet and your skiing style. \n\nOnce you have selected your boot they can then Mould the liners to your feet and if necessary stretch the boot as well. They should also advise you on if a custom insole is necessary and if so what type, I have high arches so this made a huge difference, this can be an extra \u00a360-80 it's worth it. Once all this is done you should find your boots a lot more comfy and warm and should help you improve your skiing :) any questions let me know!\n\nSource: used to be a ski instructor spent over a year in the mountains, I'll happily finish skiing go to apres, have dinner and go to a club in my ski boots. ", "I've had the same pair of boots for almost ten years. Very comfortable, and I've never had an issue. The comfy boots are out there. You just haven't found a pair for yourself yet", "We have. \n\nWhy haven't you bought them?", "I suggest you look into geting Full Tilts. Everyone who has them loves how comfortable they are. They seem to be catered more towards freestyle and park skiers but they are way more than that. ", "Decent boots have heat-molded liners that conform to your foot when you first buy them, and these days the shells are being made with newer construction techniques that enable them to be shaped more closely to a human ankle. Do not, I repeat DO NOT go buy a new liner for 500 bucks like RespawnerSE said. The right answer here is from Jweeze: you just have to pony up and get brand new boots. Dalbello has been making big strides in comfort technology in the last five or so years. Take $600 to an actual ski shop with industry professionals and you'll find what you're looking for.", "If they hurt, you don't have properly fitted boots. ", "Full tilt ski boots \n_URL_0_\nSource: im a semi-pro freeskier", "They do make ski boots that are comfortable but you need to see a boot fitter to get them fitted to your feet and you need to be willing to spend a good amount of money on them. I just bought a new pair and while they were quite expensive ($600) they are very comfortable with a custom fitted intuition liner and will likely last a long time. My previous boots were second, possibly third hand hand-me-downs that were so old the liner was basically useless and the were 2.5 sizes too big. \n\nTL;DR. Get the correct size boots and get them custom fitted by a good boot fitter ", "You need to get ski boots from a professional boot fitter. This is not from some guy at the boot section of Sport Chalet who knows nothing and certainly not from the internet. You want a guy who fits boots as a career. Every brand of ski boot has a totally different fit and only certain brands are shaped appropriately for your feet. If you get boots picked out and adjusted for you by a boot fitter worth his snuff your boots will be snug yet very comfortable. A lot of quality boots these days will also have a liner which you sort of \"cook\" and then put on so they mold to the shape of your foot for an even more precise fit.\n\nHere's a little guide to buying boots. If your fitter is legit he will sort you out, but it's good to have some basic knowledge so you can tell if a fitter knows what he is doing at a basic level at least . There are some red flags which should make you simply walk out of a place.\n_URL_0_\n\nGetting boots fit is free usually with purchase, however it generally means paying MSRP which sucks since you can get all your other gear way below MSRP. But for your boots, it's worth it. My $700 custom fit Lange boots are not uncomfortable at all.", "Ski instructor here,\n\neither get your boot properly fitted, or stop your bitchin.\n\n\n < 3 happy valentines day", "They do. You just need to buy a good pair that fits you well and let them mold to your feet. Mine have a velvet like material that is extremely comfortable. The only pain you should be experiencing is in your shins after hitting big jumps, but that's normal. Also, protip: it really helps if you shave the bottom portion of your legs if your a frequent skier. The boots get so tight around your socks that any time the boot flexes it will feel like your leg hair is getting yanked out. My legs are super hairy and I ski every other day so it makes a huge difference for me and the other guys I ski with. Plus it's not like anyone sees your legs in the winter anyway. It's a really common thing among good skiers. And if you are using rental boots, you are just asking for pain. Do some research, try some on, get the right amount of stiffness you need, then you'll be able to ski all day without taking a break. ", "Paraphrasing /u/RespawnerSE ; we have, they're just very expensive.", "[Try moldable insoles designed for ski boots?](_URL_0_)\n\nSame as the $300 ones you'd get through a doctor\n\n", "Higher end Solomon boots come with heat moldable shells. Where I work, we heat mold for free if you buy boots. They're comfy as shit.\n\nWe also sell Full Tilt boots which includes  Intuition liners, which are an aftermarket liner that typically costs 200$. Intuition liners are heat moldable and come with extra addable ankle support and they're like wearing a dream. \n\nTo get the extra comfort, pull out your basic boot sole and replace them with arch supports called Super Feet. At the end of thr day, your feet feel just fine.\n\nSource: work in ski shop", "Your boots don't fit you, I've done several seasons as a ski instructor which means 8 hours a day in ski boots 6 days a week for the entire winter, my boots don't hurt at all.\n\nGo to a shop and try on **EVERY SINGLE PAIR THEY HAVE** then pick the most comfortable of them all, consider nothing else about the boot comfort is the only thing you should care about. \n\nThe key is finding a boot that's the right shape for your foot, because ski-boots won't change shape over time like shoes will, so if its not right from the beginning it will never be right.\n\nForget renting boots.\n", "The government wants you to be alert while skiing.", "Ok, ski instructor here, my chance to shine.\n\nLots of people saying pay money for comfortable boots. They are missing the point a little. Top end race boots hurt. They are painful. Ever seen a racer's feet? Or a ski instructor's? Rather hideous.\n\nThe reason for this, in contrast to say a snowboarding boot, is that the boots have to be stiff. They have to be made of a firm plastic in order to ski well. In fact the more high end the skiing the stiffer and firmer the boot will be (freestyle being the exception). Race boots are really hard to flex, the plastic is designed too not change to much in heat or cold and the whole boot is meant to be as tight as you can stand without doing medical damage.\n\nOf course there is room to move with in this. You can get the right boot to begin with that is more likely to fit your foot shape (wide last, narrow or wide ankles and calves that sort of thing). You can then get them molded or the inners injected and molded. A holiday skier should not be in pain, but nor will they ever feel like a slipper. To be clear again; the best top end boots in terms of performance will never be a comfortable fit. The most you can hope for in really well performing boots is that they don't damage your feet. \n\nSource: I spend hundreds of pounds/euros/CHF and thousands of hours in boots.", "It depends where they are hurting, many new boots (even ones that have been fitted) hurt because the foam on the inner of the boot has not been squashed, this means that there is more pressure being put onto your foot. This is something you usually just have to grit your teeth and push through. However it may also be that the shell of the boot is too small, or may not be a comfortable shape for your foot, this can be solved by taking your boots to a ski shop where they can either grind or blow out the shells to make more room, and will usually do so for free. It is also a good idea to have a sole made for the inside of your boots as it can help reduce pain and stress on your knees if you are flat footed. \n\nSource: been skiing since I was 2 years old, and racing competitively in FIS races since the age of 10, and have had many race boots fitted over that time.\n", "no expert, but its probably about safety. its pretty easy to snap an angle or leg if you fall on skis", "Your feet hurt because your boots do not fit. \n\nMy skiboots feel like my feet are sitting in velvet because I have gone to a boot fitter, received a proper shell and liner for my foot shape. Don't order ski or snowboard boots online, get them at a GOOD store who will spend time measuring your feet and getting a proper fits for your feet.", "Ski tech here, this question is asked by 80 percent of the people that come into my shop and the answers pretty simple, you're wearing the wrong boots. People who buy boots online or rent equipment will usually get an Ill fitting product. A boot fitter can adjust for your skier type, find a flex and last that is good for you, as well as find a boot that fits your needs. You'd be surprised how many cankle moms come in complaining that their 130 flex boot with a 99 last is hurting them. It's like getting a 2 seater Porsche when you have a whole family to bus around ", "Former boot tech here.  In a previous life, I fitted ski boots for a living.   How many pairs? I suppose I've worked on over 200 pairs of boots.  I've also been a skier for 30 years, and snowboarder for perhaps 15 years.   Here are my views on the subject at hand...ski boots and the fitting there of.   In normal life, people wear shoes...normally runners or dress shoes.  They are soft, light and flexible and are available in many sizes...usually length and sometimes width.   They are made this way because feet come in a HUGE array of sizes...I've never seen 2 sets the same...and believe me, I've seen a lot.  A soft shoe, while perhaps not a perfect fit to a foot, can bend, twist and adapt itself to the foot it is on.  The main purpose of a shoe for most of us is to protect the very bottom of the foot when we *walk* or *run*.  Not a difficult challenge.   Now for skiing, you need to basically attach a 170-190cm long board to each foot.  There is a *lot* of load that needs to be dealt with here...a ski provides a lot of leverage.  You can't use a canvas or plastic shoe to provide this...you need to move up to stronger materials.  Ski boots are made from injection molded plastic.  They need to be to transfer the energy of the skier to the skis.  The boot is *rigid* but the foot inside is *not*.  So the challenge here is to make the inside of the boot match the foot as closely as possible, and still be able to transfer load effectively.  This is the challenge!\n\n\nLet's look at the extremes.  Let's say you took a huge boot (several sizes too big), and filled it with soft foam.  Nice and comfortable for sure, but the foam will *not transfer load*. Let's look at the other extreme...a small boot...several sizes too small.  You can mash your foot in there, and the energy transfer will be great, but  this boot will hurt like hell,  you will have cold feet, and likely hate life. \n\n\nOk?   The trick then, is to get the hard outer part (the shell) to fit as closely as possible.    The inside part (the liner) needs to help take up the space where things are a bit big, and provide some insulation against the cold, and manage moisture (foot sweat).   Making a mold for a shell is *very expensive*.  Each manufacturer uses biometric data (foot sizes) from large population samples to size their shells.  Some data leads to wider shells, some narrower.  Some fit feet with higher arches, some with lower.  When I was in the business,  Dachstein and Koflach tended to fit wide feet, while any of the Italian boots (Munari, I think...) fit narrow feet.  These days, things are probably different.  Also, know that the boot shell does not change for every boot size... there are normally 2 or 3 boot sizes per shell size.  The shell changes dramatically at the \"jump\"... the liners will just have more or less padding.  The best fit will happen when the shell all by itself fits closely, with only the smallest possible liner.  The lesson here is to fit the shell first...with no liner.  If your boot fitter does not fit the shell first, seek another fitter.   Some liners are better than others. Some are heat moldable over time,  some have variable density foam.   In the end, the more performance oriented the skier, the tighter (and probably less comfortable) the fit needs to be.  \n\n\nA common trick used by shops is to sell a boot that is too large.  Nice and comfy in the store,  but the skier will hate it on the hill... they try to crank all the buckles down to take up volume, and it does not work.   Almost all boots I've ever fitted could use a modification.  Grind the boot board down to drop it and create more space. Dremel out the toe box a bit to make room for fat toes.  Cut the back down to allow better circulation for big calves.  A note on cold feet.  Your feet are cold because of a crappy fit, not because the \"boots are cold\".  The key to warm feet is circulation, not insulation.  Any pressure point on the surface blood vessels will hinder blood getting in and out of the foot.   A note on putting boots on.  Stand up.  You don't ski sitting down, do you?  Open the boot and make sure the liner and tongue are straight.  Put in your foot in one smooth motion.  Buckle the top buckles first (a bit) and flex the boot as much as you can. This drives the heel back into the boot. Do this a few more times, and tighten the buckles on the top.  Flex forward, and do the toe buckles now.  There should be minimal pressure on the toe buckles...just enough to keep the shell from flexing open.  Final note, wear one pair of ski socks...preferably on the thinner side.  Don't wear two pairs thinking you will be warmer...remember what I said about circulation?    Feel free to comment or question.   tl; dr:  Ski boots are doing a much harder job than running shoes, and have to be made accordingly.  Don't expect them to fit like Nikes.\n\nEdits: fixed typos, added paragraphs breaks. ", "Try telemark or cross country skis both of those can be perfectly comfortable without molding. ", "We totally have. Some shells are even moldable now. My guess would be you have never had a properly fitted boot. I spend 12 hours a day 6 months a year in ski boots. A well fit and molded boot should be like a slipper. Good boot fitting is worth every penny. Especially if it's what you do for a living. Investigate a service like Surefoot. Mostly it comes down to your foot, the brand, the mold last, and a bunch of different factors.Find a good boot fitter, feed them beer. It's totally possible.", "Ummm they have.... You need to buy a pair and get measured up. I can ski in mine for 4 days in a row and don't have any problems at all.", "Take your current boots to a GOOD ski shop.  Not a big box store like Dick's sporting goods or the like.\n\nExplain to them where the boots make your feet hurt.  They will either be able to point you to a boot that fits your foot shape better (personally I cannot wear Salomon or Lange boots...but I love my Atomics).\n\nOr they will be able to get you a boot that is close and then heat and reshape the boot a little to make it fit your foot better.", "Speaking as someone who just bought new ski boots for the first time in eight years this year, and has size 14 extra wide feet they have! Fischer Vacuum Fit ski boots! They're the most comfortable things I've ever had on my feet! The ski shop will heat them up then the boots are cooled and fitted to your feet using air pressure. I had to get my left boot refitted three times to get it right, but it was worth it! ", "Went skiing last weekend, had the exact same ELI5......but was too lazy to post it. Upvote for sticktoitiveness", "Sounds like you didn't have proper fitting boots. If you get the shell molded and a custom foot bed it makes all the difference. Go to a boot fitter. They will pick out a boot that fits your gate and foot. ", "It's down to luck if you happen to get the perfect ones. I had the luck but they still hurt in the getting use to after summer phase.", "Snowboard boots are way more comfortable.  Big part of why I switched.", "Because you haven't found ski boots that fit you properly.", "In the words of skis bums, \"stop being a pussy and get out of the back seat\"", "ski boots dont hurt if you go to a bootfitter and get the right pair, derp.", "Because most people are doing it wrong.  Try this instead, _URL_0_", "Boot fitter here.\n\nThe easy answer is that we have.  A bunch of companies (like Salomon, Atomic, and Fischer) have relatively quick custom molding techniques that allow for the actual plastic boot shell to be matched perfectly to your foot.  Moreover, ski manufacturers are getting a lot better at material science, allowing them to make the plastic stiff where it needs to be (on the sides) and relatively flexible elsewhere.  Ski boots won't ever be as comfortable as skate shoes, but if you're in a properly fit boot then there's no reason for it to hurt.\n\nI also like to give a few tips for making your own boots way more comfortable:\n1.  Never wear more than 1 pair of socks.  More than that and you'll wind up trapping moisture and making yourself far colder.\n2.  If it takes more than the pressure of one thumb to close a buckle, it's too tight and you're cutting off your own blood flow, making yourself colder and less comfortable.\n3.  Buckle from top to bottom, and kick your heel back into your boot's heel pocket.  Modern ski boots have a tight heel pocket that adds a lot of support, but if you clamp down your toes first and don't allow your foot to settle back properly, you'll wind up with your toes jammed in the front, and all kinds of blisters.", "Everyone here is talking about ski boots\n\nAnd I'm just sitting here feeling poor", "Ski boots have to provide a very firm mechanical coupling to your very skeleton so that you can effectively control the ski.  This requirement is pretty contrary to comfort, so I am not sure how much they can really do for a reasonable price. ", "Here are the factors that affect your boot fit:\n\nSize you wear\n\nShape of your foot and leg (wide/narrow, high arch/flat feet, long calves/short calves, Morton's toes, etc.)\n\nThickness of socks you wear\n\nFlexibility of your foot, and how much your foot splays when full weight is on it.\n\nLevel of skier, style of skiing, terrain you like to ski, weather you like to ski in\n\nNumber of days you ski per season\n\nWhether or not you know how to buckle your boots correctly\n\nWhether or not you invest in custom footbeds\n\nPeople who have never had problems with boots either have very easy feet to fit, have been fit by an expert fitter, or don't ski very athletically or very many days per season. \n\nPeople who always have problems with boots either have never been properly fit, or have very difficult feet to fit.\n\nWhen you buy from a good ski shop and are fit by an expert fitter, it typically includes as many free adjustments throughout the lifetime of the boot as it takes to get things right (cash tips always good). An expert fitter will not just measure your foot, but look at it, flex it, study your stance, and ask you questions about your skiing. And, with any new boot, you need to give it 8-10 days on the slopes with a little pain/discomfort to let the boot pack out naturally. If after that you're still not right, take it back and ask your fitter to get it right. (Pro tip: take baby steps when adjusting hot spots. Big adjustments can cause a counter issue that makes things worse instead of better: lift the heel too dramatically, now your pinkie toes are jammed. Grind out the pinkie toe too much, now you're banging in the toe box.) So, one thing at a time, and ski on the adjustment a few days to get a feel for whether it's right before you take it in again. Sometimes things just need to pack out and settle in.\n\nThe most common mistake people make is buckling down too tightly to keep their foot snug in a too-big boot. This cuts off circulation, your feet get cold, your calves get bruised, your toenails get bruised, you hate to ski.\n\nFor 4 buckle boots: the most important buckles are the second and third. When putting on your boot, stand up. Start with the power strap, then buckle the second buckle down from the cuff. Now buckle the top buckle, then the third and the toe. NOW GO BACK AND DO IT ALL AGAIN. Adjust the power strap again. Tighten/loosen all other buckles in same order. You should be able to pop open each buckle without too much effort; it should be snug but not tight. \n\nWith 3 buckle boots, same process, but the cuff and second buckle are most important.\n\nNever tuck your pants, long underwear into your boots. The only thing that should be in your boot are your feet and your socks (and toe warmers if you need them). Long underwear should be pulled up over your knee when you're putting on your boot, and then pulled down to cover the top of the sock after your boots are buckled. \n \nOh, there's so much more I could say about this, but I'll just say \"custom footbeds\" one more time and stop for now.\n\n \n", "Hey OP, boots are an overlooked and key part of any ski/snowboard set up. If your boots hurt, they are probably not fit to your foot well.  If your boot is fitted correctly, you should have no major pressure points, good circulation (probably the number one cause of pain and coldness is bad circulation), and you should not have to crank the hell out of your buckles to feel snug. Any quality shop should be able to get you a decent custom foot bed for $50-100. This will go a looooong way to help, because instead of trying feel snug against a flat squishy factory footbed, you will snugging down against a semi rigid foot bed shaped like the bottom of your foot.   \n  \nYou can also remove pressure points by *lighltly* sanding the liner if it is a removable one.  To be frank, I am not up to speed on the latest liner tech...so depends quite a bit kon your boot.\n\nDon't lean on your boots when standing, lean on your poles, this will take pressure off your shins and help blood flow.  The shins are over looked, but alot of foot cramping is because you want your heel to feel secure and not slippy. The thing is if your boots fit well, you won't feel slippy, you won't overcrank your buckles, and your sweet blood will flow.  \n  \nDo not wear more than one pair of socks, this is an easy friction surface, that's why you find the outer sock all packed into the toe and falling off at the end of they day. Again, a well fit boot and a good light to mid weight weight sock is better than a sloppy boot and compensation through filler and tightening.   \n  \nTL:DR  rental boots will always suck.", "Go to a boot fitter and have orthotics made. I do this on my snowboard boots which are 100x more comfortable to begin with. Ski boot is supposed to hold your foot in place. ", "Because I didn't know that you were interested. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en-us.fulltiltboots.com/"], [], ["http://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/311248/Guide-On--How-to-Buy-Ski-Boots"], [], [], [], ["http://www.rei.com/product/798300/sole-thin-sport-custom-footbeds"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemark_skiing"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3orb45", "title": "Before airplanes were invented, did U.S. Presidents just sit in the White House much more and not travel to foreign countries?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3orb45/before_airplanes_were_invented_did_us_presidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvzxyw5", "cw04ikd", "cw0ejrq"], "score": [88, 12, 4], "text": ["Teddy Roosevelt is credited as making the first foreign visit as a president-elect. And Taft is credited for the first visit by a sitting president, in 1909. Even after that, travel remained rare. Few presidents made visits abroad during their time in office. And those visits tended to be to places like Mexico, Canada, and Cuba (or the Bahamas for a vacation). Wilson of course made his famous visit to Europe as part of the 1918 peace conference, which was a huge deal at the time. A sitting president had never been to Europe before. And it wasn't until the late 1950s or early 1960s that it became somewhat common.\n\nPrior to the 20th century, travel simply took too long. 90 days was common for New York to London in 1800. And even 70 years later, 30 days was a pretty standard transit time. It is only with the adoption of self propelled ships that travel time changed enough to make it practical. Likewise the invention of the radio and transoceanic telegraphic lines allowed a president to remain at least in some level of contact with his White House staff back home. So it isn't surprising that sitting presidents mostly stayed in Washington.", "In the age of rail they had Presidential trains for long distance travel around the USA. There were special carriages that would make up the train, complete with bedroom and offices just like Air Force One now. Foreign travel was of course less common as it took longer but still happened, the President taking advantage of luxury passenger liners, especially across the Atlantic. During times of war military ships were often used, though by the time of WW2 this was considered too dangerous at times (due to the U-Boat threat) or too slow and an aircraft option was used.", "Wasn't the whole point of having a Secretary of State and Ambassadors to foreign countries that leaders could stay at home and lead while maintaining diplomacy?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1l23fy", "title": "how did all the early humans not die of malnutrition?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l23fy/how_did_all_the_early_humans_not_die_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbuzuew", "cbuzvab", "cbuzyz1", "cbv1v00", "cbv2hpk", "cbv6xmg", "cbv78wg", "cbvco4s"], "score": [2, 6, 8, 25, 11, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["If it didn't eat them, they ate it.", "there's an amazing thing that happens when people aren't lazy, they move around and find stuff.  hunting local wildlife and gathering local crops, berries and etc actually amounts to a lot of food.  share that with your group and everybody flourishes.", "By eating whatever they could find or catch. Early human hunter-gatherers arguably got more variety in their diet than modern humans. They would forage for fruit, nuts, berries, and edible greens, and when they got hold of meat they would eat more of the animal than we do today, down to breaking the bones open and sucking out the marrow.\n\nIIRC, scientists found plant matter between the teeth of a neanderthal skull recently, so even the theory that neanderthals were exclusively meat-eaters seems unlikely.", "I think so far the responses in this thread are sort of sugar-coating it.\n\n- Of course they did eat very pure plants\n- Sure, they got protein from eating meat\n\nBut, you should take a step back and realize that in fact, MOST people suffered:\n\n- FUCKTONS of people starved to death, or walked around with serious nutritional deficiencies. \n- They ate animals that were in atrocious conditions. If you haven't eaten in 5 days and you come across a decomposing deer, you might just go ahead and try to pick out some fresher parts. Even if you hunted and killed a fresh animal, you have no idea what kind of diseases or toxins that animal may be carrying, and could ingest something awful.\n- Furthermore, some peoples didn't live in temperate, plentiful regions. These people took what they could get.\n- A fair proportion of people probably had one or more skin or tissue conditions, that is until they couldn't keep up and were left behind; or until they got so infected and nasty that they died of it. \n- People were small because they didn't eat much and didn't have adequate nutrition.\n\nSo, really, most humans were *at least* a little fucked up by malnutrition. Aches, pains, disorders, etc. And vast sums of people died directly or indirectly from malnutrition. But the brilliant thing about the continuation of a species is that you don't have to have that many of your species survive to keep on going. As long as the strongest/luckiest among us survive, we can keep multiplying at a pretty steady rate. This is why population graphs tend [to look like this](_URL_0_); in older times, we made a much steadier march in population growth. It's not a coincidence that the population started exploding once we got a handle on medicine and sanitation.", "A lot of them did, and a lot suffered from non-fatal effects of malnutrition.\n\nBut you are kind of looking at it backwards.  Early humans only lived in those areas where they could meet all of their nutritional needs.  And they spent millions of years evolving to get that way.", "That is because they ate whatever they could find.  They found a squirrel? They ate it? Dog? ate it. Tiger? Ate it.\n\nThey didn't have any moral or taste issues with eating cute vs non-cute animals, or mixing broccoli with chicken.", "They had better moms to take care of them. ", "As opposed to all the nutritional food we eat today? \n\nExcuse me, I'm about to place my order at McDonalds"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://assets.knowledge.allianz.com/img/demographic_change_global_population_150dpi_3_57881.jpg"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "87pgb6", "title": "Considering humans have coped with humour for centuries; did people make jokes about the Black Plague? Or was the tragedy simply too huge for comedy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87pgb6/considering_humans_have_coped_with_humour_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dweu5j7"], "score": [61], "text": ["If only this question had come up in a few months' time - humour in the face of death is the focus of the chapter of my thesis I am working on, but it's in *really* early stages, so I probably can't give as full an answer as you would necessarily like right now. My work is focused on commemoration in epitaphs (and to some degree, funerary art) so that's where this answer will be focused. Others may be able to offer a broader take.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIn short, yes, humour is a staple for dealing with death from a very early stage. To offer some Classical context for humorous approaches to death, the Milan Papyrus (dated between late third century, and early second century BCE) contains a number of epitaphs, some of which are collected in a section labelled \u2018tropoi\u2019, or \u2018characters\u2019, and are probably not for real individuals, but are comic exercises in the form. One epitaph demands:\n >  Why have you stopped, won\u2019t let me sleep,\n\n >  And, standing near my gravestone, keep\n\n >  On asking from what land I came,\n\n >  And who\u2019s my father, what\u2019s my name? \n\n\nThe deceased then gives his name, father\u2019s name, and home country (all details to be expected from an ancient Greek epitaph), before demanding that the passer-by at this imaginary gravesite walk on, declaring \u2018We foreigners don\u2019t like much talking\u2019, playing on a stereotype of Cretan folk being a bit on the taciturn side. (Gordon L. Fain, Ancient Greek Epigrams: Major Poets in Verse Translation (University of California Press, 2010), p. 95  < _URL_0_;). Clearly, humour can be used to characterise the dead and lightly parody our expectations of commemoration. Humans have been comfortable with making light of death for a good long while.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTo turn to the Black Death more specifically, it's worth remembering that at this point, you had to be of decent means to get a grave monument in the first place, and many plague-dead were buried hastily in mass graves. I don't know of any particularly comical epitaphs for the plague-dead, though comic epitaphs are certainly not at all unheard of at this time (Guthke's *Epitaph Culture in the West* is a good source for this). That doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I haven't seen them - and if anyone knows of some, TELL ME!\n\n & nbsp;\n\nPlague humour is certainly accessible in a broader social context though. The most famous of these is probably the *Danse Macabre*, or *Dance of Death* which was a pervasive theme in art and literature following the Black Death. In these images and poems, death is depicted coming for each level of society, from pauper to King, summoning them into one last, frenetic dance. The visual imagery here is often quite deliberately comic - for example, the *Danse Macabre des Femmes* (printed 1491) includes images of skeletal musicians, and beautiful young women engaging in courtly dance with visible rotting skeletal figures as their handsome beaus. ([see here for the book on Gutenberg complete with illustrations](_URL_4_)). The figure of death is often laughing, teasing, and shown as 'catching out' senior figures in a way which can only be regarded as comical.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nStaged drama also held elements of this bleak humour attached to genuine loss. Richard Beadle describes how the York Cycle of medieval mystery plays includes a representation of the plagues of Egypt, in which the loss of the firstborn child is described as the 'grete pestelence', the customary way to refer to the Black Death. Beadle describes the receipt of the news of the 'grete pestelence' as follows:\n\n  >  Upon hearing the grim words, the tyrannous and verbose Rex Pharaoh is immediately deflated, capitulates and orders the release of the Israelites - in performance, a moment of chill stasis after the pell-mell black comedy with which the reports of the preceding plagues of Egypt would probably have been presented. When the play was new, this my also have been a moment of remembrance for survivors of the Balck Death and those born in the succeeding generation, for the York Hosiers' play of *Moses and Pharoah* was probably composed when the memory of this, the most destructive of all the plague's visitations, was still a living memory. ([*The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre*, ed. by Richard Beadle, 'The York Cycle' (pp. 85-108)](_URL_1_)).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nWhile medieval and early modern folks certainly had a real taste for bleak comedy, comedy also had other, more structured purposes. In *the Culture of Pain*, David B. Morris describes how the Bible verse, 'a merry heart doeth good like a medicine' (Proverbs 17:22) was often treated rather literally, and comedy could be seen as '[strengthening] Christian readers for resuming their combat against the world, the flesh, and the devil'. ([p.94](_URL_2_)). One of the most striking examples of this in literature is Boccaccio's *Decameron*, in which a group of people escape the Plague by retreating to the countryside, during which time they tell one another bawdy, silly, comic stories. As Morris points out, this may well be regarded as just as much remedy as pastime, with humour helping to allay the onset of the plague. It is well worth noting that the *Decameron* is prefaced by a deeply disturbing and descriptive account of the effects of the Black Death ([this](_URL_3_) seems to be a decent source of the text here, if you're interested). The juxtaposition of physical malaise, great social loss, grief and comedy is very explicit here, marking humour as a clear coping strategy in a time of great trial.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nI have rarely found on-the-nose jokes specifically about the black plague (though again, I would be delighted to hear the details of any known to exist - seriously, I live for finds like this!) but it's certainly not treated as off-limits for comedy both during, and in the immediate aftermath of enormous loss."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1bz5wAPk1HsC&gt", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ecMHMg3HrCgC&amp;pg=PA85&amp;dq=black+death+plague+comedy&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjBlOmu347aAhWpDcAKHbDqAUsQ6AEITTAH#v=onepage&amp;q=black%20death%20plague%20comedy&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.ca/books?id=Ia4wDwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA94&amp;dq=black+death+plague+comedy&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjBlOmu347aAhWpDcAKHbDqAUsQ6AEIOjAD#v=onepage&amp;q=black%20death%20plague%20comedy&amp;f=false", "http://www.themiddleages.net/life/decameron.html", "https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24300/24300-h/24300-h.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "ddofkw", "title": "Serious: What happened to the train Lenin used to travel back to Russia in 1917?", "selftext": "Russian fianc\u00e9e and I have searched without luck.  History major myself and suddenly wondered what happened to the train? Is it in a museum somewhere? Destroyed, scrapped? One of the small things that are now annoying me, will bug me, until I know.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ddofkw/serious_what_happened_to_the_train_lenin_used_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f2mkz6d"], "score": [73], "text": ["Which/what do you mean by _the_ train? \n\nLenin went Z\u00fcrich-Berlin by the famously-sealed train, and from there to Sassnitz. From there, a ferry to Trelleborg, Sweden. In Sweden he traveled by ordinary trains from Trelleborg to Malm\u00f6 and another to Stockholm, yet another to Lule\u00e5 and another to Haparanda, where he crossed the iced-over Torne river on sled, being the border to Finland - which was part of the Russian Empire and would remain so for 8 more months. There is no railroad connection there; Imperial Russia had a different rail gauge from the standard one used by Sweden and Germany, hence the sled trip. It's also here (in Tornio on the Finnish side) that Lenin had to bluff his way through the border checks, posing as a journalist. Then from Kemi in Finland, Lenin took a train to Tampere and then another to Petersburg. \n\nSo Lenin did not use a single train, nor cross the Russian border by train. He did however cross into Russia proper by train."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1opcox", "title": "if google's automated cars ever become a thing, how is responsibility divided up in the case of an accident?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1opcox/eli5_if_googles_automated_cars_ever_become_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccu7xcd", "ccu80c4", "ccua7og", "ccub4eb", "ccuc4b4"], "score": [7, 2, 23, 11, 5], "text": ["This is the biggest reason why we may never see a fully automated vehicle. If not for a law limiting the auto industry's liability for accidents, the auto industry itself could not exist - legal cases for every accident would all include a small percentage of liability to the manufacturer, because they could have designed the vehicles differently that would have reduced the injury in this accident, even if it would have increased the injury in some other, or made the vehicle unacceptably inefficient or expensive - and that few percent of every death and injury claim would bankrupt all of them in short order.\n\nUnless the world's governments step in with similar limits to liability for makers of automatic vehicles, it won't get off the ground, even if it is way safer than the human alternative.", "I would assume that buying an automated car would make it so that you'd need to sign a waiver that says \"Hey if the car crashes, Google doesn't pay anything\".  Then, I would imagine that the case would depend on who is at fault -- which in this case, is both automatic drivers.  Thus insurance becomes kind of useless, because you're paying for your own accident bill", "The way it could work is that the car manufacturer or the company that provides the AI would also provide the insurance for the car which would be factored in to the price of the car. Car owners would no longer need to purchase insurance of their own. The determination of which vehicle is at fault would work the same way. If fault fell to an AI controlled car, the AI company's insurance would pay. ", "Went to a tech talk on self driving cars and this topic came up. The most simple answer they gave was that liability will shift from the vehicle owner to the auto manufacturers. \n\nThere will be a grey area when there are both self driving cars and regular cars on the road. They were pretty confident any accident involving a self driving car and a human driven car, fault will fall upon human driver. The technology behind these cars are unbelievably safe.", "I know that in the Aviation industry, pilots are responsible for their aircraft, even though auto-pilots can handle 99% of the flight. Modern aircraft are run more by computers than by people. Non-the-less, if an accident happens, then the pilot is responsible even if the accident was caused by computer programing. This is because the pilot is the end-all authority for the aircraft, so if the computer screwed up, it screwed up because he let it screw up. \n\nI'd imagine the same attitude would apply to an auto-pilot for cars. You would still be in charge of the car, and responsible for the car, even if a computer was driving it instead of you. If the car's auto pilot drove the car into another car, you would be at fault because you let it happen. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9dvnvg", "title": "After the fire of the National Museum in Brazil, how would historians attempt to piece together what was lost?", "selftext": "Hey all, I recognize that this isn't so much a historical question as much as it is a question about how contemporary historians would approach the problem of documenting and piecing together an outline of everything that was lost.\n\nPrimarily, I'm interested in knowing how often, if ever, historians take into consideration what *future* historians would find useful when assessing the scope and significance of the loss of a museum such as this one. \n\nDo historians ever attempt to preserve certain historical or contemporary artifacts and documents for future generations with the knowledge that it is precisely *these* sorts of documents and artifacts that they themselves would like to possess when engaging in historical scholarship?\n\nOr a bit more precisely, we have a fairly good idea of what was lost in this fire because individuals who worked there are able to tell us just what was contained in these collections. Does this first-hand knowledge ever become formally documented after an event like this so that future historians with no access to individuals who worked at the museum can nevertheless still have an idea of what this museum contained?\n\nMy second question is, given the prevalence of technology such as smartphones with built in cameras, it would be reasonable to think there exist massive amounts of personally taken photos of the contents in the museum so that, even if the original artifacts no longer exist, at the very least photos of them still do. Is this helpful to future historians?\n\nAnd lastly (I hope the mods forgive the lack of specificity of my questions!), have there been efforts to recreate digital walkthroughs of museums for posterity such as the one Google did a few years ago? Would something like this be feasible for all the existing museums in the world?\n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9dvnvg/after_the_fire_of_the_national_museum_in_brazil/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5kl8qh"], "score": [26], "text": ["This is less an Historian question, more a Museology question, and fortunately I'm a museologist.\n\nSo, first thing's first, museums (and archives) *are* the way in which artefacts and documents are preserved for future generations. The decision to accession particular artefacts or documents is a difficult one, as a number of factors need to be considered - first and foremost, the relevance of the object to the collection of the museum or archive. For example, I work at the Museum of Industry in Nova Scotia, and while we have people bringing us all sorts of neat personal effects from former industrial workers in the province, they don't often fit into our collection's mandate - which is the preservation of *industrial* history and culture. We *do*, however, encourage them to send those to the relevant museums (usually local museums, but occasionally to other large, Provincial museums)\n\nIn general museums (like, for example, the Royal Ontario Museum or the British Museum) the mandate's a little more easy-going. Anything that the curator of a specific area believes would be of value for preservation can be taken in. The Museu Nacional held a massive collection of huge variety, from ethnographic documents and artefacts to archaeological finds to biological specimens, and had curators for each department making the decisions on which objects to accede into their particular collection at the museum. Cataloguing the collection, including the provenance of objects (origins, history, significance, donated by, etc.) is one of - if not *the* - key duties of collections management in a museum, and provides future researchers with as much information as is available at the time of accession. \n\nMuseums have - or *should* have, according to ICOM, the International Council of Museums  - a Disaster Recovery Plan, which includes fire safety, object recovery, restoration, safe storage, and - increasingly - digital records of objects and documents. The problem with digitization of collections is that it is both time consuming and *extremely* expensive. You can't just take snaps with your smartphone and upload them to a database; they need to be of extremely high quality and very detailed, so that in the event of the loss of the artefact any future researchers will have as good a representation as possible. Digitizing documents is also difficult, as the material the original was created on can be extremely fragile or photosensitive or hydrosensitive or all three and scanning it or keeping it in too warm or dry or damp or cold an environment could damage it irreparably.\n\nInsofar as your second question goes, yes! Museology students from Unirio are [sharing photos of the Museu Nacional](_URL_0_) and hope to [create a virtual space to provide some context for what was lost](_URL_1_).\n\nYour last question is one which I've been struggling with at my museum, and I know that others have been too. Many (most) museums outside of the UK are paid entry and there is a reluctance from directors, boards of trustees, etc. to allow, essentially, free tours of the museum online. This is often a site-specific issue, and it is understandable when the majority of the site's revenue comes from admission fees or, as is increasingly common, gift-shop and caf\u00e9 revenue. That said, the future of museums is, in part, digital, and having tours done online - or at least some sort of interactive online element to the site - is going to be, in my opinion, an essential part of keeping sites open and relevant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=y&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Foglobo.globo.com%2Frio%2Falunos-de-museologia-da-unirio-recolhem-fotos-do-museu-nacional-para-preservar-sua-memoria-23033247&amp;edit-text=", "https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=pt&amp;tl=en&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.folha.uol.com.br%2Fcotidiano%2F2018%2F09%2Falunos-fazem-campanha-para-reunir-imagens-do-museu-nacional.shtml&amp;sandbox=1"]]}
{"q_id": "2s043b", "title": "if \"tying arrangments\" are illegal, how can universities force me to pay for and take elective courses that are completely unrelated to the major i am pursuing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s043b/eli5_if_tying_arrangments_are_illegal_how_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnkve3p", "cnkvef4", "cnkvmu6", "cnkzbev"], "score": [15, 5, 8, 2], "text": ["You are paying them to take a class. That is it. \n\nIf you want a degree from them you have to take a number of classes in order for them to grant you this degree. You are not buying a degree, you are paying to attend a class, one class at a time. ", "you definition link states it..\n\nTying arrangements are not necessarily unlawful. ", "There are (at least) two reasons this isn't a problem:\n\n1. You aren't actually buying a degree - a degree is not a product, it is recognition.  You are purchasing education.  It is clear going in what needs to happen to obtain the degree.  For an obvious example, you pay to attend the class, but...you don't get an \"A\" for having done so.  And...you don't achieve any credits if you don't get a passing grade.  But...you did get the thing you paid for - education.\n\n2.  Tying arrangements are more complicated than you're thinking:\n\nTying arrangements arent always illegal (as is noted on the very link you provided)\n\nAll three of the conditions must be met: \"(1) the forced purchase of one commodity in order to obtain a separate desired commodity or service; (2) possession by the seller of sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to restrain free trade in the market for the tied product; and (3) that the arrangement affects a not insubstantial amount of commerce in the market for the tied product. \"\n\nThe fact that the market for degrees is expected to include requirements provided by the university and these are understood as part of the purchase means this is not a per se illegal tying arrangement.", "Your statement is incorrect for the example.\n\nYou are not paying them to teach you engineering... you are paying for a degree.\n\nIf you ONLY wanted to be taught about engineering, you would only pay for the classes and forego the degree.\n\nIf you want the paper, you do what they say is required to get the piece of paper."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2v54o2", "title": "do old psychology experiments need to be performed again in the modern day or are their results still just a valid now as they were then, even with progress in the field?", "selftext": "Like wouldn't things like cultural psychology change a lot of things now? New medication people are on now, modern convinces and new disorders and addictions (such as the internet),  change at least SOME of those old studies/experiments?'", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v54o2/eli5do_old_psychology_experiments_need_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coeiu6g", "coeks18", "coeooxp", "coewneo"], "score": [17, 6, 17, 3], "text": ["This seems like a very valid point, but psychologists study the same thing for a very long time, doing research and attempting to refine a singular truth about aspects of society and the psyche. Because they're always doing this our understanding gets updated and refined anyway, incorporating the changes we undergo as a culture. But variations of these old experiments could only help the process, so I think yes.", "Basically, many experiments and studies are repeated to make sure the results are still valid. However, many of the studies actually are since the way humans think never really changes. We just adapt to our environment which kinda brings up the next point of different fields in psychology. Many studies in the behavioural approach are never replicated because socio cultural aspect are thought to not impact on them. ", "I'd imagine most can't because of how unethical things were ", "An experiment is always valid unto itself. If I say I took 30 random people, asked them where the rain comes from, and 29 of them said the rain demon in the sky, that's a valid experiment. Unless you think I'm lying about the results, that's a factual accounting of how the experiment happened. 29/30 people *did* say the rain demon in the sky.\n\nIt's the conclusions that might not be valid. If you find that 'random people' meant, the local rain demon cult, you might question whether that's a fair sample. You might decide to perform a *similar* experiment, but fundamentally different by asking 30 people chosen at random from the phone book instead.\n\nYou might also question whether asking people where the rain comes from is a valid way to actually determine where the rain comes from. You might think the experiment  should not be used to come to that conclusion.\n\nBut if you feel that my results were faithfully recorded, the experiment still has merit. Maybe you want to know how many people in rain demon cults report that rain comes from the rain demon, for example.\n\nBut if the method and results are re order faithfully and detailed, the experiment will always have some merit. It just depends on what kind of merit exactly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "355m22", "title": "how can a steak be matured for 28 days, but have an expiration date of 3 days when on the store shelf", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/355m22/eli5_how_can_a_steak_be_matured_for_28_days_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr17kr7", "cr17pje", "cr1qotx"], "score": [6, 41, 7], "text": ["I thought it was matured still uncut, in a large carcass pieces before being carved up into steak sizes? ", "Steak needs to be matured without moisture. This is done either by hanging it in a dry room (the traditional way of doing it, but time consuming), or in a vacuum-sealed bag (quicker, and more common). [Source](_URL_0_).\n\nWhen you keep steak at home, you can't control the atmosphere the way it's controlled by the producer. Because of this, it will go off much sooner.", "Aged steaks are usually aged as a whole primal cut, not as individual steaks, so the surface area to mass ratio is low. The outside quickly dries and inhibits bacterial growth.\n\nIt's also kept in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, which also prevents spoilage. The outer layer of dried out aged steak which might have spoilage is cut away before it's cut into serving size steaks. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging"], []]}
{"q_id": "7024lh", "title": "why are therapists and depression meds so common in the usa unlike anywhere else?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7024lh/eli5_why_are_therapists_and_depression_meds_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn07gmh", "dmzqzd3", "dmzrb4j", "dmzsh5x", "dn0035f", "dn0224o", "dn07gmh"], "score": [2, 10, 7, 4, 6, 10, 2], "text": ["Because mental illness is a luxury developed countries can afford.\n\nMake no mistake, mental illness is a very real thing people suffer from.  But starvation and violence are persuasive motivators that can put anxiety and depression on the back burner.  From a public policy standpoint, it is far more important to get people food, water, and sanitation than Xanax and Welbutrin.\n\nOn top of that, mental illness in the developed world is just barely crawling out from under its stigma.  In less developed parts, it is still looked upon with shame, and people are viewed, often even by themselves, as being lazy or hyper or weak rather than being sick.  They are fewer therapists and treatment options because many people are in denial about them being needed.", "Your premise is somewhat wrong. Depression is *more* common in Sweden and other Nordic countries.\n\nMental health conditions usually go undiagnosed and untreated in poor countries. Feel depressed, too bad, suck it up. The USA is a very rich country, so we can afford to care about things like this.", "There are many factors and theories, so I will give some of the highlights.\n\nEnough Americans are simply wealthy enough to afford things like this.\n\nAmerican culture is also a bit more medication-oriented than its peers, so they tend to have more of those compared to their peers in everything medically related.\n\nIndividualism is *huge* in the USA compared to others and this correlates with higher levels of depression. One likely cause is that American social networks tend to be smaller and weaker than in other places. Americans are less likely to know their neighbors, so their meaningful social interactions only occur when they travel some distance. This is a problem which is *worse* for more-wealthy people (in general) and more-wealthy people can afford therapists and drugs.", "In Germany, if you feel stressed or depressed, the national health insurance fully covers you to leave work and go to spas for relaxation therapy.\nSource: \"where to invade next\" documentary\nDisclosure: not a German citizen", "As a Canadian (where we get a lot of American television) I think some of it has to do with the constant bombarding of drug commercials telling people to ask their doctors if _____ is right for them.\n\nThese people are looking for a quick fix and think the world revolves around them (many Americans live up to the stereotype of being arrogant - my husband is an American) and feel entitled to the pills.  In other countries people are more like \"whatever\" and deal with their problems in a more natural way.  \n\nAmerican doctors make $$ prescribing drugs so will push their use.", "Antidepressants are used everywhere. [In the UK, 23% of primary care patients were prescribed an antidepressant at some point.] (_URL_0_) I think you're conflating advertising with prevalence, but many countries specifically ban prescription medication ads.\n\nPsychotherapy is everywhere, even more so outside out of US, actually. At one point, Argentina has the highest number of psychotherapists per capita, but I'm not sure if that's still true. Part of the problem is professional designations and education don't always transfer across borders. i.e. \"Therapist\" is *not* a professional designation in Canada. \n\nBottom line: sorry, the US really isn't special or extraordinary in this regard.", "Because mental illness is a luxury developed countries can afford.\n\nMake no mistake, mental illness is a very real thing people suffer from.  But starvation and violence are persuasive motivators that can put anxiety and depression on the back burner.  From a public policy standpoint, it is far more important to get people food, water, and sanitation than Xanax and Welbutrin.\n\nOn top of that, mental illness in the developed world is just barely crawling out from under its stigma.  In less developed parts, it is still looked upon with shame, and people are viewed, often even by themselves, as being lazy or hyper or weak rather than being sick.  They are fewer therapists and treatment options because many people are in denial about them being needed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5329088/"], []]}
{"q_id": "231xxe", "title": "due to the heartbleed bug, reddit and other sites recommend changing your password. discuss heartbleed in this thread!", "selftext": "Please post all heartbleed-related questions here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/231xxe/due_to_the_heartbleed_bug_reddit_and_other_sites/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgslmu1", "cgslnl1", "cgsmecm", "cgsmhtl", "cgsn2w4", "cgsn9jb", "cgsnnkf", "cgso5t5", "cgsoc65", "cgsog0d", "cgsohya", "cgsorp7", "cgsox7l", "cgsp2ms", "cgspk54", "cgspl9x", "cgspm4p", "cgspq70", "cgsps68", "cgsq7t5", "cgsqixr", "cgsqrvm", "cgsrsyv", "cgsrw85", "cgss028", "cgss9wj", "cgsslns", "cgssqcv", "cgsstt3", "cgsx0uj"], "score": [20, 168, 8, 28, 23, 2, 2, 59, 2, 38, 5, 5, 3, 23, 3, 13, 3, 20, 5, 7, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["[Reddit admin thread with info about passwords](_URL_0_)", "ELI4: What us the heartbleed bug?", "It's a security vulnerability for servers running OpenSSL, which is a very popular software package for secure data transmission (in practical terms, think of websites that run https).\n\n[For technical discussion of the bug, this is a pretty good introduction](_URL_0_).\n\nThe problem was patched almost as soon as it was announced, but there's no guarantee that every server running the software will update promptly. Even worse, there's a (small) chance that a server's private data may be compromised, potentially including user passwords, session keys, or private authentication keys that could be useful to impersonate the server.\n\nAt my work, last week, we patched every server we can get our hands on and cycled private keys. Some services also expired all user sessions (forcing everyone to log back in).\n\nAs an end user, you aren't very exposed unless you do business with an affected server. Make sure your software is updated, change your passwords if you like. Email your bank if it helps you feel comfortable.", "If you haven't done so already, please change the passwords on **all** the websites on [this](_URL_0_) list.", "Does heartbleed affect apps on smartphones? ", "Do all secure websites use OpenSSL or should I ask (let's say my bank) if I should worry about passwords or not?\nEdit: Added Open to OpenSSL", "is there a patch already? like I heard if I changed it it wouldn't matter cause it's still not patched", "XKCD explains it quite well: _URL_0_", "As a 5 year old, can anyone recommend me a good password manager?", "Don't change a site's password until they post that they've implemented the fix, or you might need to do it again.", "Good thing my brazzers password is safe. ", "This was a problem exclusively with openssl, correct? What does this mean for the open-source community and how can we avoid these sorts of things in the future?", "Hasn't it been patched on most systems? If so, why bother changing my password?", "What is the worst that could happen if I do not change my password on these websites?", "Do I really need to change my password if I didn't log in?", "I feel like it's time to take the plunge and get a one password program, like Keepass or whatever.\n\nWhat's the best program to use for someone like me who just uses Chrome and an android phone?", "Do I *really* need to change my password.  I mean, it's not like I'm a CEO of a huge company.  Sure there would be some gain (maybe) if someone hacked my accounts on the internet, but are the odds really so large that I should really worry?", "Who created the heartbleed logo? is that a thing now? to create a logo for bugs?", "Tom Scott does a fantastic layman's explanation in video form [here](_URL_0_). It covers what you need to know about the origins of the bug and how it's exploited, starting from very little technical knowledge. Plus, all of Tom's explanations are fantastic.", "This sounds like it's essentially a buffer overrun bug.  How could the developers of such a major piece of security software made such a basic mistake?  Any chance it was intentional?  Is OpenSSL still trustworthy?  ", "ELI5: If this bug has been \"at it\" for two years, why do I need to change my passwords now? If they were going to do something with my accounts, wouldn't they have already? Thanks!", "I've seen posts where people recommend not to change passwords for a while, as the exploit has existed for a while, and \"refreshing\" your password would be putting it fresh in the RAM of where that information is stored. Can someone make sense of that for me?", "Ok, changed it. New password is dildo. Is that a good password?", "Flickr/Yahoo certs were last telling me they were updated on 4/7. That means it's still not safe to change the passwords yet, correct?", "Was there any reported incidents of attacks from this exploit? After reading an article or two it just seems that everyone patched it pretty fast.", "All the damage and misfortune aside, heart bleed is a cool ass name for a bug or virus or whatever. ", "Little Bobby gets ahold of Daddy's camera phone and asks if he can look at Daddy's pictures.   Daddy says, sure -- with a quick check at the picture cued up he tells little Bobby that he can look at 5 pictures.  Daddy says, \u201cBobby, you can click the \"next\" button 5 times.. ONLY 5 times...  That's it... only 5 pictures.. no other clicks\u201d  Daddy shows little Bobby what button to push (next) and let's him have at it.\n\nDaddy doesn't realize he cued up the 2nd to last picture in the folder.  Daddy was in a hurry.  By starting at the 2nd to last photo -----   after Little Bobbie views 2 pictures, he still gets to click next 3 more times.   At the end of the folder it flips to the beginning of the folder.   Daddy doesn't want little Bobby seeing those pictures because those are of daddy and mommy during their special time.\n\nThe heartbleed bug is similar in that one missing audit allowed for unintended data to be transmitted (or in Bobbie's case, viewed).   When a secure connection is made a request to \"prove\" the connection is still alive is periodically sent out.  It is sort of like kaptcha but instead of \u201cprove you are human\u201d it is more like \"prove you are an alive secure connection\"!!!   The test isn't a bunch of unreadable letters that tick humans off.   It is two parts,  A) a random string of characters and B) a return count.   To prove you are an alive secure connection you must return a substring of the original string A) which is the length of B).   So if the message was \"HEY, PROVE IT\" and B=2  you would return \"HE\".  I would know you were an alive secure connection because \"HE\" is the first two characters in the string \"HEY, PROVE IT\".  You passed the kaptcha test for SSL dummies.   \n\nThis test was referred to as the heartbeat.  Are you alive?  The bug is referred to as the \"heartbleed\" .....\n\nWhat if for the test I passed the string \"HEY, PROVE IT\" but said B was 10,000?   How could you return the first 10,000 characters of a string that was only 13 characters long?  You couldn't.  But like a good little connection you desire deeply to prove that you are a SECURE connection.   You will do anything I ask!  You seek approval.   You comply and return a string that is 10,000 characters long.  The first 13 say \u201cHEY, PROVE IT\u201d and the remaining other 9987 characters come from your computer's memory --- whatever happens to be stored (in random memory) next to the the string I originally gave you!   In a computer most everything passes through random access memory (RAM) at some point.   When you type your password in the reddit, that went into RAM.  When you type your bank password in to BOA, that goes in to RAM.   Just imagine all your secrets.  Now imagine they are in RAM, somewhere.....   Remember that message I sent you to confirm that you were a secure connection? (\"HEY PROVE IT!\")  Guess what? That's in RAM too!  It got put in RAM physically wherever the computer determined was most efficient to put it.  Maybe it was cuddled up right next to that photo of you and Bobby's mommy.   Maybe it was next to the SSN# you just typed into your turbotax file.  Maybe it is next to the password still in RAM that you just typed into your BOA account.  (which is why BOA servers are checking to see if your secure connection with them is still alive!)  Who knows \u2026...  but when I ask for 10,000 characters, you respond like a good SSL donkey and give me 9987 characters from your RAM  !!!!\n\nRepeat that 10 times, or 100 times, or 1000 times and imagine how much of your memory I could \"BLEED\" out during this \"HEARTBEAT\" check?\n\nThat's the \"HEARTBLEED\".", "How come nobody ever noticed this before? I know its not as simple as the ELI5 version makes it to be, im just saying 2 years seems like a long time for this to go unnoticed...", "Turbo Tax is the one that really scares me. Whatever, people can steal my Facebook info because I don't put shit on there, but it's not like I can go on Turbo Tax and change my SSN.", "How can android devices be affected by heartbleed? I thought this was a server side bug?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/231hl7/we_recommend_that_you_change_your_reddit_password/"], [], ["http://blog.existentialize.com/diagnosis-of-the-openssl-heartbleed-bug.html"], ["http://mashable.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bug-websites-affected/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link"], [], [], [], ["http://xkcd.com/1354/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE5dW3BTpn4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1dxh9y", "title": "What makes chimpanzees so destructive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1dxh9y/what_makes_chimpanzees_so_destructive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9uwfwy", "c9uwx7o"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["Yes a human can defend themself by attacking the head or stomache, where a chimpanzee is vulnerable (like us).  Just like any fight really.  However, if you cover up and try to stop the attack, you will fail.  The chimp is stronger and can force your arms away, and can attack you at will.  \n\nThat being said, we need to remember that regardless how much they are similar to us, they are still hardwired for violence in their own society and nature.  We don't entirely understand what triggers the outbursts, but understand that it happens when the males begin to reach adulthood.  Humans go through the same thing, but we have the ability to effectively communicate with each other to reduce the occurence of bloodshed amongst ourselves.", "Hitch hiking on this, could a strongman, a la early Shwartzenneger or Hulk Hogan or someone of similar size defend themselves against an ape? Strength wise? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "qiuzl", "title": "why it hurts so badly when you get in the balls", "selftext": "Why does it hurt so much more than other areas? I just accidentally snapped the elastic on my underwear into my balls and it hurts so goddamned much.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qiuzl/eli5_why_it_hurts_so_badly_when_you_get_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3xyawi", "c3xyddg", "c3xym5j", "c3xyr4x", "c3xysch", "c3xzl9g", "c3xzokv", "c3y041k", "c3y1i98", "c3y1ozm", "c3y27nb", "c3y2fmd", "c3y2k2s"], "score": [4, 138, 90, 9, 24, 4, 6, 6, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Your balls are all soft tissue, blood vessels, and nerve endings.  There's no bone there to absorb the impact as in other parts of your body.", "Your testicles are connected to your stomach region via nerves and blood vessels. The pain that you feel on initial impact travels up to that area (and later to your spine) via the spermatic plexus (big bunch of connected nerves), which is the primary nerve in each of your testicles.\n\nBecause your testicles are encased in a saggy sack with no muscular or bone structure to defend them, being hit in the balls hurts a lot more than being hit on other parts of your body because it's hitting the nerves.\n\nIf you snap the elastic onto your arm, there is muscle and bone in the way to protect your nerves. There is nothing to defend the nerves and so it hurts a lot more when you get hit in the nuts.\n\n", "So that you will protect them", "\"why it hurts so badly when you get in the balls\" \u014d\u00f3\n\nI think you accidentally a word", "Imagine your liver was strapped to the outside of your body with absolutely no protection. That's pretty much the situation your balls are in. They're internal organs that just happen to be outside.", "There may be no bone or muscle protection but the layer of tissue that encases the testes (the hardest outer part of them) is made of stuff called dense irregular connective tissue. That stuff doesn't stretch like skin or muscles do.\n\nWhen you hurt any part of your body, you increase the blood flow to the region, like when you get slapped and the skin swells. When the soft tissue inside the teste swells after being hit, there is nowhere for that pressure to go, the connective tissue doesn't stretch. Pressure builds and crushes the nerves in the area, causing even more pain.\n\nThis explains the short delay between a light hit and pain sometimes.\n\nIf you press on your eye a similar thing happens, pressure builds and sets off pain receptors as the connective tissue around the eye doesn't allow much swelling.\n\nEdit: It's actually pretty difficult to cause permanent damage unless you damage the vas deferens. The guys on Jackass aren't sterile, if that says anything.", "Because people whose balls hurt more when they got hit took better care of them and so were able to have more children than those who didn't feel as much pain.", "It's evolution's way of telling you to leave them the fuck alone and take good care of them. People/animals with sensitive balls prospered because they did their best to avoid harming their reproductive organs.", "This man doesn't think it hurts:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n(This also gives a good bit of explanation for why it hurts to be hit in the balls.)  I recommend watching to the very end.", " > when you get in the balls\n\nLike at Chuck E. Cheese?", "There is maybe an evolutionary reason as well.  Like... we should protect those things, so it hurts when they get smacked.", "[this is why it hurts when you get in the balls](_URL_0_)", "For the same reason you have no nerve endings in your colon.\n\nSome places it makes sense to let you feel pain of injury, other places it doesn't. (or by the time you get injured there, it doesn't matter)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a86cQobU-n4"], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/GHwmG.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2jihfu", "title": "why don't terrorists get a sniper rifle and snipe the president or another major leader from a distance?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jihfu/eli5_why_dont_terrorists_get_a_sniper_rifle_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clc08yt", "clc0bc7", "clc0x9z", "clc1he9", "clc1ien", "clc2fo0", "clc7vf9", "clc941k", "clcf658"], "score": [20, 2, 15, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The secret service searches and clears every where with a line of sight to the president.", "I really need to watch I don't get put on a list somewhere for saying this but I have always wondered why they haven't done something like they did in Nigeria when they went in to that mall with Ak47's and went nuts. \nYou'd think in a country like America with guns everywhere that a few of them would have got together and done the same thing...weird.!", "Very long distance shots are incredibly complicated amd require the best equipment, training and conditions. Every vanatge point close to the location is searched and secured by the secret service.\n\nI regularly shoot target rifles at 1000 yards and hitting a 10 inch circle is given the highest score. It's far more complicated than movies suggest.\n\nEdit: for instance on a windy day at 1000 yards I may have to aim 7 foot to the right of my intended target in order to hit it. We get two practice shots and have handily laid out flags so we can read the wind. That doesn't work so well in a surprise shooting.", "Secret service does their best to weed out possible vantage points, and limit where and when the president appears. If it is more dangerous, they tend to try to make it a surprise that he shows up there, to avoid allowing that brand of planning. And he travels around in very ballistic-resistant conveyances. \n\nWith that said, it is a risky business and takes a special kind of crazy to even consider it.", "I lived somewhere near President Obama's speech at Cairo University once. A week in advance, police went door to door making residents sign wavers that said something along the lines of 'The Egyptian government is not legally liable if you get shot by the secret service' and warned not to go near the windows on the day. Extra communication equipment was also set up on the highest rooftops in the area, I assume for surveillance. So yeah, presidential security is pretty tight.", "Terrorists aren't frequent buyers of the Barrett company.  Although they have some pretty decent rifles.  They would probably want/need something along the lines of this remote sniper. < _URL_0_;\r\n\r\nEven if they were able to set the rifle in place with the proper cover, safehouse, escape route. It would still take a skilled marksmen to place a dead aim on any target, especially a moving target.  Nothing can replace a human american \"bullet\" sniper.\r\n\r\n < _URL_1_;\r\n\r\n", "Bear in mind that no less than four American Presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy) so you are hardly the first person to suggest that Presidents could be assassinated.  And let us recall that Ronald Reagan was also shot, although not fatally.  The Kennedy assassination in particular, not to re-open the debate, does appear to have been exactly what you describe, a sniper attack from a distance.  Lincoln was shot at much closer range (as was Reagan).  Of course, as several other people have mentioned, we now have elaborate security measures to make it harder to assassinate the President.  But no one would really be surprised if another President were to be assassinated.  It is obviously a possibility.  ", "\nThere's a memoir by a former Secret Service agent called Standing Next to History that devotes a few pages to this particular hypothetical.\n\nPre-advance teams will go to a site 2-3 months in advance to liase with local law enforcement/government, with the advance team following in the weeks leading up to the event. Every angle is scrutinized, and in particular, on the day of an event, every window in the vicinity is under watch.  One example the author cited was President Carter's swearing-in ceremony where they had told residents to keep all windows along the parade route closed.\n\nNow, the longest confirmed sniper kill is ~1.5 miles and not even the Secret Service can keep track of that many windows in that radius. However, the president also doesn't go to places where he's completely exposed in such a manner (ie with no buildings or other obstructions). ", "\"Well listen if you got a time machine, why don't you just go back and kill him when he's sitting on the crapper or something?\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2013/10/18/precision-remotes-trap-t192-remote-sniper-kit/&gt", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHEHgnOSOI&gt"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31rmj7", "title": "why is scientology, with its heavy cult-like status, still allowed to carry on as a religion?", "selftext": "I have seen many documentaries going in-depth over the cult-like status of Scientology. Its been proven that L.Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a sci-fi writer, who lied to many over his background and military's service. The guy seems to have been a borderline psychopath. How is it, even with the tax exemption that the IRS has granted it, that Scientology is still allowed to exist? There are many tails of the human right violations that go on within it. Have they go too many friends in high places?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31rmj7/eli5_why_is_scientology_with_its_heavy_cultlike/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq4amrn", "cq4bulb", "cq4fkrs", "cq4flys", "cq4g4xq", "cq4gghm", "cq4gow6", "cq4hpbi", "cq4k8l8", "cq4lk1s", "cq4mmmn", "cq4n5c0", "cq4qxww", "cq4suyx", "cq50u9a", "cq50xm5", "cq521b9"], "score": [133, 5, 3, 9, 2, 6, 2, 28, 8, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 3], "text": ["In the USA we're protected to freely assemble for any reason so long as it's peaceful. Any group of people can get together and do whatever they want so long as it's not harming anyone or breaking any laws.\n\nSo, just like Lutherans can get together every Sunday and sing songs and recite prayers in unison, so can Scientologists. \n\nCults are protected, just like all other groups, under the First Amendment. So, until Scientology breaks some laws they won't get disbanded - and even if they do break laws it's likely only those specific people involved will get charged with a crime.\n\nCheck out Wikipedia's [Legality of Cults (Bottom of the page)](_URL_0_) page.", "that's what the new documentary Going Clear is literally about.\n\nthey created a huge \"controversy\" about it, harassed the government with lawsuits and essentially \"doxxing\" legislators themselves on an individual level, and they eventually succumbed and gave Scientology tax exemption status and now they insist they're a religion because of it", "It's pretty much the same for all religion openly practice in the US. Scientology is no different than any other religions. There is that old saying that say churches only allow what they can no longer forbid.", "There's a petition you can sign on the Wire House website to remove their tax-exempt status. I highly recommend doing so. ", "Cults aren't illegal. Also what about the catholic church? That has a far more shady history (and even present) than the church of Scientology. Should they be made illegal.", "I see a lot of answers here that offer fundamentally flawed logic. The \"if its been around for 1000 years it's a religion, been around for 100 years it's a cult\" theory is unrealistic and little ridiculous. Also, it is almost exactly copied from Neil Degrasse Tyson's statement about \"Going Clear\" and, originally, James Randi's investigations on Scientology from the early 90's. While there is nothing overtly incorrect with this logic, the theory is misplaced. A cult or religious group should be defined by their actions. Scientology ruins peoples lives, destroys its own members' relationships with other members, and tantamount, actually injures/tortures people physically and emotionally. ", "I've heard the faith has a lot of active lobbyist. Is that true and if so, how does lobbying help them?", "\"Still allowed\" is a funny way to put it.  Why are they maintaining non-profit status for tax purposes is a better question.  \n\nA large part of the reason Scientology has been able to minimize, and contain the bad press about their org is by legal bullying.  They employ an army of lawyers who control antagonists inside and outside the organization.  They also do other fucked up shit like buying the former crisis hotline for people stuck in a cult.  So now when people call to get help for themselves or their loved ones, they inadvertently report the details to scientologists, not people trying to help them.  These people represent the worst kind of chicanery.  Do not associate with them; and they are not harmless.  ", "In Germany they aren't, it's considered an exploitative business.", "because they have money and lawyers out the wazoo. I have read they got tax exemption because they would clog up the system with bullshit until the IRS just said yes and told them to go away.", "All religions are cults, some just have more history than others.", "You seem to be under the impression that cults are disallowed. They are not.", "Same reason why Christianity, Islam, ect. ect. are still allowed to carry on as religion. Or do you believe that  Jesus really transformed water into whine and that Mohammed flew to the Moon?", "The first amendment and the ridiculous cash flow from those who join and want to keep their subscription. Aka big ponzi scheme type business. ", "The line between religion, cult, and superstition is just a matter of perspective. ", " > lied to many over his background and military's service\n\nThere are those who called L Ron a \"bullshit artist,\" but that does the man a great injustice. He was the entire freaking RENAISSANCE of bullshit. Pretty much from the moment he learned to talk, he started making shit up. If you want an inside look at his life, read \"Bare-faced Messiah\" by Russell Miller.\n\nIn the 1960s, Scientology was under heavy government scrutiny for their questionable activities. There was even at least one FBI raid at Scientology headquarters in LA in the old days.\n\nAs it quickly became obvious to the government that Scientology was nothing more than a money-making scam, the IRS even revoked their religious status. But Hubbard just ignored that and continued to pay no taxes, running up staggering interest and penalties, all the while staging a HUGE string of lawsuits against the IRS, as well as engaging in their standard harassment, blackmailing, and other nefarious activities on IRS agents and administrators.\n\nFinally, after some 30 years of this, the IRS had been so beaten down (yeah. Stop and read that again: *the IRS had been cowed by harassment*) that David Miscavige was able to walk into IRS headquarters unannounced one day in the 90s, demand a meeting with the commissioner of the IRS...and get it.\n\nSo the CoS and IRS met to hash out a solution both could live with. Remember that scene in Godfather 2? \"Here's my offer, Senator: nothing.\" Yeah, it was just like that. The IRS said, \"if we drop this, will you stop the harassment?\" Miscavige said, \"like a faucet turning off.\"\n\nAnd that was that. The IRS caved.\n\nBut wait, it gets better. First off, by this time, as filthy rich as the CoS was, the interest and penalties they owed were MUCH higher. If the IRS had pushed forward, they could have ENDED Scientology. Wiped it off the map. But not only didn't they do that--CoS agreed to pay some chump change fine--but they let the CoS write the new rules about how the CoS's religious status would be viewed (short version: any new thing they pull out of their ass in the future is automatically religious). AND they got the IRS to agree to put pressure on foreign governments (like Germany) to restore its religious status. The IRS got...nothing, except the creepy Scientologists hanging around their homes vanished.\n\nSo today, it's that locked-in religious status that protects them. Even though the religion part is all Xenu this and \"you're a reincarnated clam\" (seriously) that, they can go toe to toe with any \"real\" religion on goofiness. You think a couple of Mormon FBI agents who try and raid a Scientology office in Salt Lake City are gonna last two minutes arguing about \"bullshit religious beliefs?\" Other religions impose harsh conditions on their followers to \"spiritually cleanse them.\" The most devout followers of other religions perform extraordinary service for the church while living in poverty themselves. If you tried to take down Scientology as a religion, you're going to take pretty much every OTHER religion down with it.\n\nIf the FBI raided Gold Base to \"free\" the poor sods eating garbage scraps in the RPF dungeons, every single one of them would indignantly report that they were there of their own free will. Actually, Miscavige's wife (who used to be the Goebbels to his Adolf) has not been seen in public since 2007, and there is speculation she's locked away in the RPF. There have been some noises about filing lawsuits on her behalf, but Scientology is SERIOUSLY abusive on anybody who tries to muscle in on their turf. These guys intimidated the freaking IRS enough for them to back down and apologize. You wanna fuck with them?\n\n", "A better question would be 'why are people so stupid to join'. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7lirir", "title": "surveyors who survey land and roads before a new construction project. what are you doing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lirir/eli5_surveyors_who_survey_land_and_roads_before_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drmlnwp", "drmmp5c", "drmn9e0", "drmofjm", "drmsct3", "drmvxqy", "drn555k"], "score": [123, 10, 78, 9, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They are measuring the land (the actual dimension of plot, etc.) and the topography, or changes in elevation. They need to do this so they know exactly what work needs to be done, make sure they comply with set-back and other zoning considerations, know how much dirt needs to be cleared to level the site, and so on.", "Roads and pipes and things need to be built at certain slopes to allow drainage to happen according to plan.  So all the water that builds up on a roadway during a rainfall can roll off the road and into the storm drains where it can be properly carried away.  If the road is sloped wrong the water may pool up and cause a serious hazard to traffic.  When the road is being made, layers of sand and gravel are laid down and compacted.  Surveyors measure the height of the land and the slope and tell the equipment operators where to shave a little off here or add a little there, until the numbers are all correct.\n\nThere are markers all over the place, laid down in the past by surveyors for the government, that have known heights above sea level.  These are used as a constant reference point to gauge the height of the measuring stick.  There is a telescopic device on a tripod that the surveyor looks through and the assistant holds a very tall ruler and stands at the spot where they want to know the height of the ground.  The surveyor looks through the telescope and reads the numbers on the ruler and through some simple math using the number obtained from the known marked point, the exact height of that particular location is now known.", "I was a surveyor for a time.\n\nIf you are talking about a road or construction, they are marking off exactly where everything is supposed to go. Both location and elevation. The place where a road is supposed to go is surveyed before any plans are made. This lets them know what space is available, etc to place the road. Then a plan is made that says, \"the road should go right here\". The surveyors come back and put in stakes and other markers that let people know, \"The center of the road should be here at this height\" and other things about where construction should occur.  As they go, new surveying is done to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be.\n\nAlso, when someone buys a piece of land, they also mark off where the piece of land is that the person is considering buying.\n\nThe way all of this is done is by comparing to things that you know where they are. The little tripod thing- it shoots out a little laser light that reflects off a mirror on a stick held by a second person. They find location by determining the angle that the laser light was shot and the time it takes for the light to come back. \n\nThe laser shooting thing is called a theodolite. Here is a pic\n_URL_1_\n\nThe mirror thing is called a traverse prism. It is usually on top of a stick held by a person. Here is a pic\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you have any specific questions, please do ask. I'm pretty sure I can answer them. Be happy to tell you about any of the specifics of pretty much anything.", "Mapping. \n\nImagine you want to build a curb, sewer, bridge or even just lay down some new pavement. You want to design them accurately so they're easy to build and match into the existing conditions perfectly. Remember not everything you build starts on a clean plot of land, likely there are lots of man made objects you need to avoid or tie into. \n\nSo to get your existing conditions, you need survey. Accuracy of topographic mapping (flying a plane and taking a picture) is accurate depending on the height of the plane, but say +-0.5 feet. That's usually only precise enough for large scale grading, not bridges, pavement, utility work. So you'll need higher accuracy. That means boots on the ground and survey usually by GPS. So you'll have a surveyor with a big rod, the bottom end is a point, the middle has a small computer, and the top has a super accurate GPS. This instrument gives an accuracy of +-0.005 feet in all directions. The surveyor will walk the entire site and mark all objects and a grid for anything in between. The surveyor will see an object, determine what the object is (say a manhole lid) then describe the object by inputting a code into the computer, then physically put the pointy end on the object to measure it's exact coordinates. Once you get all the coordinates and codes, you send it back to the office to process and produce a map of the site.\n\nAs you can imagine this is a laborious process for big sites, but to make an engineer's work easier and more accurate a good survey is where it all starts. ", "Earth is not smooth, and buying/moving dirt is very expensive; surveys reduce building costs, and help check that construction is done per design/plan specs.", "Civil Engineering student here. \n\nThe tripod looking devices (total stations) you see surveyors use are sophisticated cameras which let the users determine the elevation, distance, and angle between their location and another point. If you ever walk through a developed city, you will see small metal circles on sidewalks or roadways. These are markers that have known information about them (elevation, gps coordinates etc). \n\nWhen a building is being developed and planned, a set of engineering plans are made to represent the new building. The information on those plans is based on the work of surveyors. The surveyors have mapped out points in the real world and then translated them onto a set of drawings to show the exact location of where the building will be, and what the elevation of every floor will be. \n\nIf you see a surveyor on a street randomly using the total station, they are determining if the elevation of any known points (small metal circles in the ground) have changed elevation or position from the last time it was recorded. This is important information because buildings settle into the ground overtime and disturb the surrounding soil. By measuring these points, we can determine if this effect is happening and if it is drastic enough to warrant immediate action, or if it is happening along side the predicted timeline of the building when it was designed.\n\nThe cameras on these machines are incredibly precise and expensive (think $25k plus per camera). You would be able to see the individual cracks in a concrete wall from 100m away with one of these cameras. ", "Served my first 5 years in the Navy as an EA in the Seabees (Engineering Aide) and surveying was frequent. \n\nWhen you see us out there surveying typically you\u2019ll see a one of two devices. A autolevel  and a Theodolite.\n\nWe use autolevels (along with the accompanying pole) to do what\u2019s called vertical survey. Ie, elevations. For anything you build it\u2019s incredibly important to know elevations of everywhere you intend to be building. For roads specifically you\u2019re looking at vertical curve along the road (how it\u2019s elevation changes) as well as from the center to the sides so rain runs off. You also need to know elevation so you can properly predict how far down you need to dig to put your base and sub base (basically different grades of rocks that keep buildings/roads steady so they don\u2019t sink). \n\nWe use theodolites to do what\u2019s called horizontal survey.  We use these to do layout and stakeout of the bounds where everything will be. Imagine putting four stakes in the ground for where the corners of the building will be, that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019d use them for. They\u2019re REALLY precise for turning angles. Like suuuuper precise. The one I was most familiar with was a Trimble-5600 Geodimeter which was a Theodolite on steroids. You could set it to work with a staff with a prism on it and it could already have the \u201cpoints\u201d digitally memorized, and as long as you set it up correctly, you could have it point where to go, and the person holding the prism could walk over to the exact point you needed to be. \n\nThe theodolites were also often used to collect horizontal information about the land \u201cWhere are all of these points horizontally in relation to this benchmark?\u201d. The same goes for the Autolevel but in the vertical plane \u201cHow high or low are these points compared to this benchmark\u201d. \n\nI\u2019d be happy to expand upon what I remember if you want to know more.\n\nAlso, if you ever happen to see guys standing out there with a pole that has a big white dome on the top, that\u2019s GPS survey equipment that happens to be the next (and current) big thing. I never liked it for actual worksite survey, but it was a fucking godsend when you had to get TONS of Topo shots (elevation AND position) for some massive survey like a HUGE field or in my case an 11 mile  long road."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-traverse-prism-survey-instrument-set-tripod-field-image46637187", "https://fotosenmeer.photoshelter.com/image/I0000JujwFeXICLw"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4bidcj", "title": "why is it that in the past, society could afford really elaborate, ornate public buildings or big civic projects, but now there seems to be no money for anything but the most functional buildings, and we can barely pay for road maintenance?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bidcj/eli5_why_is_it_that_in_the_past_society_could/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d19cuz7", "d19dbtk", "d19e1rq", "d19fadl", "d19gd5v", "d19gkoq", "d19glm4", "d19h2zq", "d19h8d8", "d19hawc", "d19hbqa", "d19hijq", "d19hjqm", "d19hk0b", "d19hor9", "d19i3gk", "d19i8f5", "d19injf", "d19inu3", "d19iqvw", "d19jbee", "d19jmel", "d19ju4y", "d19jyoc", "d19k037", "d19kgxp", "d19kn45", "d19kycv", "d19l61v", "d19lbga", "d19ll6c", "d19mp3s", "d19n83a", "d19neps", "d19nyuy", "d19op43"], "score": [141, 367, 67, 30, 32, 8, 4, 1520, 4, 10, 2, 67, 5, 41, 3, 2, 112, 36, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 24, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["It's about how we spend money, not how much. For example, take the subway station being built in New York at the World Trade Center--it's supposed to be a centerpiece of transportation and commerce in the area. It looks rather sober and minimalist. But even adjusting for inflation, it's much more expensive than Grand Central Station! I know which building I like better.", "Design standards have changed. Big marble buildings like old courthouses are gorgeous to look at but can be uncomfortable to work in and nearly impossible to renovate/remodel as times change. Just in a Denver context, you can see the [10th Circuit building](_URL_1_) built in the old style and the new [Denver justice center](_URL_0_) only a few blocks apart. The latter isn't built that way because it's cheap (thought it is cheaper), it's just the current design.", "Part of it is a change in fashion. Ornate went out of fashion. But there is still plenty of interesting architecture out there.\n\nIt's certainly not true that we can \"barely pay\" for anything. Tax revenues are staggering. We just choose to spend it elsewhere. The federal budget alone is something like 4 Trillion dollars. 65% of that goes to things like welfare, social security, medicare, and other benefits. Of the remaining 35%, a little over half goes to military spending. Only a few percent goes to stuff like transportation. Still, something like 80 Billion dollars goes to transportation every year. And that's just the federal budget. The states have their own spending.\n\nPerhaps your question could be rephrased as \"with all the money we spend on it, how come civic architecture is so basic, and how come the infrastructure is so crap?\"", "If you look at the budgets of most Western governments today, you'll find that it is taken up massively by new expenses (such as welfare), which didn't exist in earlier societies. So, while governments have more money, they also have more expenses, meaning there is less money for fancy civic buildings.\n\nLoads of fancy buildings do still get built, though. Loads of skyscrapers are incredible feats of engineering and design, for instance.\n\nEDIT: also, in already built-up areas, it is often harder to find the space to build new buildings. In the UK, the Victorians simply tore-down slums and built new housing elsewhere to make space for the big, new civic buildings, without any real care for the complaints/opinions of the poor people being displaced. Whereas today you have to hold consultations with locals, compensation for anyone affected, etc.", "If you go way back in time, Roman era for instance, it was spoils of war that made huge projects like the Colosseum or the Pantheon possible. Gold from sacked cities, free manpower in the form of enslaved persons. An emperor returns from war and wins the people with monuments and games in his honor. In modern times, safety and efficient economical design usually govern a construction project.", "What's crazy is this is a weird trend in private endeavors as well.  Just look at old privately funded projects.  My favorite are the really old ornate railroad passenger cars.  Wood, chandeliers, gold plating, etc.  Same with boats.\n\nNow of course people don't travel like that anymore, that's not the point.\n\nEven as the rich have accumulated more wealth, we don't  (as the public) typically see such ostentatious displays.  I imagine there are some of the rich who have private shit much crazier than any rap video would let on, but it seems even for them everything became a form of function over gaudy displays.", "We spend our public money on football stadiums even though the teams playing there are already very profitable.  \n\nWe spend on huge weapons programs even though we already have the largest military in the world (I'm from the USA).  A lot of that defense spending goes to executives at Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup, etc...  \n\nOnce we have these wonderful weapons, we need to use them!  So we go to war, like in Iraq, to the tune of 2 _trillion_ dollars (including a missing 12 billion in cash that we flew over there for some reason).  It's hard to refrain from mentioning the 150k+ _civilians_ killed in this war... this is a financial question after all.\n\nI also think that the cost of building is higher today.  e.g. there are (for good or not) a lot of environmental impact studies, lawsuits about whether or not you can build something and where, etc... that add to the cost of building something big.\n\nAll in all, though, I wish we were a little more responsible with how we spend public money in the United States.\n\nedit:speling\n", "One thing to remember is that buildings are continually being torn down.  What remains are the best examples of architecture and design from times past.  That gives us a distorted picture of what things were really like back then.  There have always been bland, unsound, ugly, cheap buildings put up. Those generally don't last (or if they do, they aren't noticed to the degree that good ones are.)  \n  \nWe likely build a similar ratio of amazing to bland buildings today, we just don't realize it because all the not-so-good buildings built at the same time are still here with us, whereas the not-so-good buildings from the past aren't.", "Building rules and regulations have changed. Meaning permits and environmental impact studies and such take away funding. Labour laws and safety regulations add expense and slow down production. Not only for the actual construction but adds cost to the materials as well.  \n\nBack then unskilled workers were little more then slaves. Hence the rise of labour unions and workers rights.  \n\n", "I can't imagine anything like that being constructed in the US. People would complain that it was decadent, or a waste of tax dollars. Public vanity projects in particular would certainly be protested or declined through state/county elections. \n\nAt least where I live people constantly vote against propositions to build functional public transport because they are hysterically opposed to tax increases. If by some miracle it did pass people want to see it looking practical. Ornateness seems like a conspicuous display of overspending but I'd guess that when budgets are poorly spent the money is wasted elsewhere. ", "Hmm. Tell that to NYC.\n\nFulton Station and the 'Occulus' are very recent additions to the New York Transit system that are often destinations in their own right, in a similar vein as Grand Central is.\n\nIf you have the Federal funds and some folks in charge who aren't scared of big ideas or budget overruns then you can get some nice, interesting, wild or amazing (depending on your taste) architecture and design.", "For projects like the early railways, they were built by [Navvies](_URL_0_) - poorly paid workers who lived in shanty towns and treated as expendable.  The Wikipedia page mentions that on average 3 navvies died for each mile of railway laid.\n\nIf the worker's wages are a big part of the cost of building something, having poorly paid workers with no social or health care can drive the costs down.\n\nLow wage costs are also part of the reason why in the modern world labour-intensive manufacturing has moved to Asia.", "Extreme corruption and economic inequality.  \n\nI'm paraphrasing this from another post I read.\n\n\n\n\n\nYou have 100 cookies.  Mr. Politician takes 99 cookies.  Mr. Politician says, \"You better grab your cookie before those Mexicans take it.\"", "Nah we still do build grand \"public\" buildings.  Most of them are stadiums though.  Back in the day the nicest buildings in town were usually the churches, now the crazy most expensive building in a large town is the new football stadium, which makes sense because the NFL took over Sundays at the same time", "Survivorship bias explains a decent amount of it. Ugly buildings built years ago have been torn down and replaced with new ones, but we kept (some of) the older ones that were particularly beautiful.\n\nSecond, it used to be cheaper to build things, with people and materials both being a lot easier to obtain.\n\nThird, we built a lot less \"things\" in general. That fancy train station might have been the most incredible building in the entire city at the time, and one of the largest.", "The question you ask isn't as simple as it seems.\n\nFor example what do you mean in the past? Through out history civic projects were funded through different means. Some civic buildings were built by guilds, individuals, or institutions. \n\nAlso in the past, road maintenance was handled very differently. Depending on the period you are talking about road construction, maintenance, and ownership was radically different than what you see today.\n\nI think you are also viewing the past through rose tinted glasses. There were plenty of bad and functional buildings in the past- but they were less likely to be preserved.\n\nBuildings today are usually not \"ornate\" on the way that I believe you mean. However, look at large library or museums and you will see large sums of money spent with high design detail. You could perhaps lump in stadiums there too, with all the public funding they receive nowadays.\n\nSo why do we still have bad civic buildings? Well it's usually a result of trying to get something built as cheaply as possible either due to a lack of funds or low political will to use money from others to make something functional also aesthetically pleasing. \n\nThe way your question is phrased makes it difficult to give any kind of precise answer. Maybe if you narrowed down the parameters or gave some examples it would be easier to explain. Right now I don't think you'll get better than general answers and probably not any solutions. \n\nTL;DR priorities and needs have changed", "You mention the interstate highway system. Well, when that was built the top tax rate was over 90%, although it's estimated the effective rate was somewhere in the 50-70% range. That's quite a bit higher than the say 14% rate that Mitt Romney paid in 2011. \n\nAt the same time, in 1952 Corporate taxes accounted for 33% of federal revenue. Today they are only 10% as corporations have found numerous way to avoid taxes.\n\nSo where did the money go? It went to tax cuts for the wealthy.\n\n\nedit: [I am aware that total receipts as a percentage of GDP have remained constant.](_URL_0_) If you look at the numbers, this is because of the institution of Medicare in 1965 and the increase in FICA taxes that come with it, not because other revenue has stayed constant.\n\nHowever income tax revenue does appear to stay constant. What makes the big drop is corporate tax revenue. So it appears the story is more the second part of my post, corporate tax avoidance. Honestly, given the global economy, I'm not sure how to replace that lost revenue. And that is a real shame, because corporations benefit enormously from infrastructure spending, such as the highway system.\n\nedit 2: just want to add that Reagan's tax reforms did shift a large part of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle and lower classes, but that isn't necessarily bad in the abstract and is a discussion for a different day.", "I would argue, from an architects perspective, that public buildings today are still very elaborate and ornate, just in different ways. Buildings 200 years ago were built according to the inefficiencies of the materials available. A brick wall can only be so tall, stone can only bare so much weight, and wood beams can only span so far. Additionally, without the availability of electricity and climate control, the designs of building had no choice but to factor in natural lighting and natural ventilating features. Within those constraints, if *not* ornamented, then those buildings would be very bland if not outright blocky and ugly which the public would never support. Today's buildings are also built according to their material limits, but we have more materials available, and those materials are significantly stronger and more adaptable letting us accomplish more, more efficiently while simultaneously giving us more control over the design in such a way that its beauty is not dependent upon ornament; in essence: the building itself has become ornament. So we save some money there, but because we also have artificial lighting, climate control available, indoor plumbing, and internet now available buildings have become immensely more elaborate in planning, constructing, and operating all the pipes, ducts, and miles of wires needed in a modern building. So same level of craftsmanship, just expressed in ways more befitting their unique timeframes. ", "There are very few people who do detailed, ornate work like we used in the 19th and early 20th centuries.\n\nIt is not the current style, so no one builds that way right now.\n\nPoliticians cannot put their name on a filled pothole, so they do not care if they are fixed.\n\n", "I think the top comments have missed the point of this question. In the US at least, trust in government is at an all time low. This is fueled by right wing media that attack government and complain of its inefficiency. So people will not support giving money to the government to projects because they fear (and sometimes justly) that the money will be wasted or poorly spent. So, we bash the government and cut funds to it, and then criticize it because it doesn't work well, and then try and cut more funds.  Local governments (county, city) that are in charge of infrastructure like roads, over the past 15 years have repeatedly faced budget shortfalls and usually refused or been unable to raise revenue or cut other expenses. Some expenses like salary must be paid, while if a road maintenance project is postponed or cut, the public may not notice right away. So infrastructure suffers because it is not a perceived immediate need. Additionally, government will probably never run as well as a private business, but, without adequate resources, things cannot proceed. I live in Texas, where we have no income tax and a nonexistent fuel tax. Because of no revenue generated by the state, each municipality much maintain their own roads and infrastructure, and the whole place is basically falling apart. So, people will need to pay more to have infrastructure, or, at the federal level, money will need to be diverted from other sources to infrastructure (away from say the war on drugs or additional middle east conflicts) to cover costs.", "A lot of those fancy building projects were made in mind to appeal to the public directly. And many weren't even made by the government, but rather private investors. Why would rich people spend money on public works? Because prior to the 17th Amendment, it was essentially impossible to bribe/lobby congress. \n\nSenators were directly selected by state legislature, and any senator that put his personal interests above that of their state were removed by the state.\n\nThe house of representatives couldn't be directly bribed either, since it relied entirely on the will of the people, and the people were more inclined to vote back then. So instead of bribing congressmen directly, businessmen and their corporations would attempt to bribe the people. This is why Carnage and friends built a whole lot of libraries, and donated a whole lot of money to local churchs that belongs to denominations different from their own personal beliefs. \n\nLocal areas would receive some kind of public gift, then those local politicans and leaders would be encouraged to tell their local communities to vote for so and so because they are friends with Carnage or whoever.\n\nWhen the 17th Amendment hit, the people and their votes no longer mattered. The state could no longer recall senators as easily, and the senate became a redundant house of representatives that weren't held to account by the voters, because the senate operates under completely different rules. It makes more sense, politically, to keep a bad senator in power than it does a member of the house. There is way more political power concentrated in the hands of a senator, so the majority of focus was switched to buying senators. After all, you only need 1 or 2 senators per state to match what 10 or more representatives can accomplish. Just look at california. 53 house representatives. There's no way a person or group of people can bribe all of them. But 2 senators? Easy. \n\n\nAnother aspect to this is that many public work projects were created simply to fullfill a person or group of people's hubris. In the big cities, competing people and their organizations would get into money spending pissing contests to see who could build the biggest or most grandest thing. During this time period, the rich were proud to be rich, they loved the public eye, they weren't constantly being threatened by the lower classes with insane rhetoric like \"eat the rich\".  Now, the wealthier members of our society and extremely detached from everyone else. \n\nAnd this leads to the social expatiation. Not only did the rich enjoy building fanciful things, so did the general public. This is a large part of nationalism/patriotism that gets kicked to the side lines when people discuss the pros and cons of such isms. People were proud of themselves and their country, and they wanted their building projects to reflect that. Try to create some grandiose public work project today and you will get hundreds of politically motivated groups crucifying you publicly. \"It's a WASTE\" \"the money should go to SCHOOLS INSTEAD\" \"Do you knowHOW MANY SINGLE MOTHERS YOU COULD FEED WITH THAT BUDGET?\" and emotionally charged appeals of that nature.\n\ntldr; we don't build fancy public work stuff anymore because it's not politically correct for the government to do so, and there's no benefit for private citizens to do so.\n", "A simple reason I had heard about before was this:\n\n100 years ago there were expensive materials and cheap laborers. \n\nToday, there are cheap materials and expensive laborers. \n\nSo, the ornate buildings that you see from around the beginning of the last century were made by cheap labor that could spend more time on intricate details, where now they want to get them done ASAP because the labor costs too much to spend on embellishments. ", "We CAN afford to repair roads - it's just that we choose not to. Being told (by those with lots of money) that we can't afford basic services is not the same as ACTUALLY not being able to afford them.  On the other side of the question, we ARE building giant stadiums (for millionaire sports players and their billionaire owners). And on another note, some of those amazing buildings did a LOT of damage to the societies that supported them. The Taj Mahal, for example, basically destroyed the empire that built it. There were supposed to be two of them, by the way, but after the damage done by the first the second one was scrapped.", "In a lot of cases, it was simply because they weren't spending the money on everything else. And that's not necessarily a good thing - they were using that money to make big, fancy buildings instead of supporting their people. North Korea still does this today, as do other countries with extreme dictatorships like Belarus.\n\nFor a historical example: just look at the Soviet Union. The Moscow subway is a beautiful work of art. However, it was built at a time when millions of Soviet citizens were starving and dying in terrible conditions - it was a vanity project to raise national morale and make the USSR seem great internationally, while the majority of people continued to suffer.\n\nIn the modern day, welfare and supporting the public is much more important than it was even a couple decades ago. Hence it's much harder to diver these funds than it would have been in the past. This is large part of why grand, government-sponsored monuments are rare today in countries that are not ruled by very powerful, oppressive dictators.\n\nIn terms of purely private endeavors, however, they still exist, although they are rarer and fewer in between. And this I would simply attribute to modern aesthetics and utility. It's just seen as wasteful and doesn't add much to it to waste all that money on something that doesn't really add all that much.", " > Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.  \n\n > It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  \n\n > The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  \n\n > It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  \n\n > It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. \n \n > We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.  \n\n > We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.  - [Dwight D Eisenhower](_URL_1_)\n\nAnd don't forget, [we were warned...](_URL_0_)\n\ntl;dr  The Military Industrial Complex costs a lot. ", "CA based City Planner here. Based on your user name, the actual answer is Prop 8. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nProp 8 significantly reduced local agencies (Cities) in CA income 50 years ago. ", "Sports stadiums are the new cathedrals, pyramids and palaces.\n\nEndless war is the new road maintenance. \n\nRemember to vote. ", "This is just the  nature of central planning (government spending) in that whatever the money is spent on is based on the whims of politicians and their sponsors and may or may not (probably not) line up with what you think they should spend the money on. That's why the best system and the one that results in the highest quality of life for all involved is the one where you earn your own money and you spend your own money, rather than having central planners, subject to the unconquerable problem of economic calculation, take your money and then spend it on what they want to.", "For the road point, populations have exploded in their last 80 years.  Roads can't handle the extra wear and tear which means repairing more often when we can only afford to repair at a regular pace.", "1) Cost of labor\n\n   Manual labor to create all those elaborate, ornate buildings  is much higher today than centuries ago, where the laborers were paid close to nothing.\n\n2) Politics\n\n Democracy means you have to justify all the costs, but in a monarchy (when most of the old nice buildings were made), the country spends on what the king/queen wants. If the king/queen wants an elaborate, ornate building to show off their power, it will happen.\n\n3) Style\n\nThe ornate style of making things (buildings, chairs, tables, etc) is out of style, i.e. it is not part of the modern aesthetic. Not sure if this is independent of the first two facts, or a consequence of it (maybe a bit of both)", "Building something used to cost a lot less before things like living wages and limited work hours and safety measures were brought in. Can't ship that work to the 3rd world sweatshop.", "Non-defense discretionary spending [has fallen](_URL_0_) from 4-5% of GDP to about 3.5%, and with projections over the next 6 years dropping to about 2.5% under current policy.\n\nOver that same time period, government revenues have gone down a little (as a % of GDP), but not as much as that trend would indicate. So why is discretionary (both defense and non-defense) falling so much? Non-discressionary spending is eating it all up. Notably [healthcare](_URL_2_) costs have steadily marched up to and through the roof economy wide. That includes spending by both government and private markets, and I\u2019m giving both numbers to help demonstrate that its not just the popular scapegoat \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse\u201d. In fact, government spending on healthcare has grown [*significantly more slowly*](_URL_1_) than the private markets, but if government spending on programs like Medicaid, Medicare, VA care, etc. hadn\u2019t also risen substantially they would have ceased to exist after being priced out by the steadily and rapidly rising costs in the private market.\n\nThere are complex reasons for this, and a significant part is because of our aging population and lengthened lifespans (through expensive and intensive interventions in chronic problems which become far more prevalent as we age). But another big part of it is that healthcare is just not a very good \u201cmarket\u201d because it doesn\u2019t follow a lot of the rules that we rely on for markets to efficiently organize economic activity. As just one example: if you don\u2019t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a smart phone, you can make that choice rationally or go with a cheaper alternative. However, how much are you willing to pay for life-saving heart surgery? All of your money plus any that you can borrow regardless of whether your can ever pay it back? You bet your ass, bankruptcy is better than being dead!", "There are two reasons that should answer your question.  1) We have more roads and buildings then there used to be; and 2) for the most part, the government collects less money from each person (tax rates are lower).  Now that their are more buildings and roads with less money, extravagance isn't as feasible", "This is patently untrue.  Look at the buildings in Seattle, NYC, and any other successful city.  Beautiful.", "Short answer - we started spending our societal surplus on cars. Back before we spent billions on roads, we spent large sums on monumental public buildings. So you're right, the interstate system is our last big civic project and now we can't afford to maintain it, let alone embark on any other civic projects because we've out-built our ability to maintain what we have.\n\nIt's much cheaper to operate a public transit system that moves 100,000 people around within a 4 mile radius area with compact infrastructure systems than it is to build a road system that moves 100,000 people around within a 20 mile radius area. Your tax base the the same, but your maintenance costs for roads, sewers, water, etc. are much higher.\n\nWhen everything was booming, developers gifted the initial build out of roads, sewer pipes, etc. Once cities have to start maintaining that infrastructure that was gifted to them, it is a huge drain on public finances. We're seeing it all across the US as cities get into the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lifecycle of car-based infrastructure. The tax base simply isn't large enough to sustain the infrastructure.\n\nSomething has to give, and what it comes down to is that monumental public buildings gave at the expense of low density car-based development. Development at a human-scale doesn't require large parking lots and roads that are inefficient because roads and parking lots don't generate tax revenue. Buildings do. So when you have fewer buildings per acre, you get a lot less tax revenue per acre.\n\nI'm not making a value judgment here, just a reporting of the facts. Society made the choice to double down on building at a car-based increment instead of a human-based increment following World War II and here we are.", "We didn't have to worry about minimum wedge or safety standards or unions or non-slaves before."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-waymarking-images/80933ff7-d8bf-4f95-bfa7-a1fe1855b8d4.JPG", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Denver-federal-courthouse.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navvy"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html", "https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/chance_for_peace.pdf"], ["https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_Post-Disaster_Taxation_Act_(1978)"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs-images/44xxx/44958-land-Discretionary.png", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KU0GyY0OYkg/T_GevBNTNVI/AAAAAAAADJk/CP0XinQxvnU/s1600/medicareparivateinsurancecosts.png", "https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/u-s-healthcare-spending-as-percentage-of-gdp.jpg"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6f5k3z", "title": "why is it socially acceptable to wear the same pants multiple days in a row but not the same shirt multiple days in a row?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f5k3z/eli5_why_is_it_socially_acceptable_to_wear_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["difldov", "difldxj", "diflgl9", "difln5d", "difmcvz", "difrdqa", "difrwwr", "difsopv", "difsvge", "difueqe"], "score": [170, 11, 128, 23, 65, 5, 9, 4, 3, 212], "text": ["I think most people accept that you aren't shitting your pants on a daily basis but might sweat the shit out of your shirt. ", "Are you talking pants as in trousers, or pants as in underpants? You're likely to get very different responses to your question depending on how you clarify this. ", "Armpit sweat tends to get to your shirts. And undergarments tend to protect your pants better from that sort of thing. So it's a bit less gross to repeat pants. Also depending on who you are pants tend to be more similar than shirts (you probably have a few not so different pairs  a of jeans) so people aren't as likely to notice repeated pants anyway.", "Pretty much everyone wears some sort of underwear on their lower half, so your pants are pretty much guaranteed to have some shielding from personal filth.  Upper body on the other hand is relatively un-shielded, so you're dumping pit sweat into your shirt pretty much constantly.  \n\nAs an extra way to fuck with people, I literally own a few dozen pairs of the same pants. ", "People can't tell if you're wearing the same pants because all pants usually look the same, whether it's jeans or trousers or whatever. People own multiple jeans, or multiple leggings. But people will know if you wear the same palm tree printed button up everyday ", "I could have skipped a lot of laundry if I knew this was socially acceptable. Although now, it's been a while since I've even worn pants. \n\ndown with pants", "I always wondered if it was the fact that it's more acceptable, or that pants seem to have more generic, solid colors which make pants much less distinguishable. Myself and many others own a lot of jeans that look pretty similar. Same with dress pants. That, and they're further down from eye level. \n\nI must sound like an endless horizon of philosophical sophistication and depth if my sense of wonder and curiosity compels me to revisit a mind bender like that, lol. ", " multiple Days ? More like a month?", "Both are socially acceptable and somewhat paradoxically, neither are. It depends on who you ask. Everybody has different ideas of what is socially acceptable, and this particular issue is not as clean cut (accidental pun) as you'd think. In some clusters of people it absolutely is ok to wear the same shirt multiple days in a row. Similarly, to some it's not ok to wear the same pants multiple days in a row. You're asking why is it not socially acceptable to do something that to many people *is* and why something is socially acceptable that other people do not consider ok. \n\nAs a crude outline, as commercialism has increased over time and people own more clothes washing has gone up. If you have 1 pair of pants it's not as feasible to wash them every day. If you have 20, it's possible to do washing once a week and still have pants available. The invention of the washing machine also led people to wear more clothes. ", "Changing shirts is an issue of hygiene. Shirts get dirty faster. Food can fall on them. Bodily fluids. etc, etc get on your nice cotton shirts. If you wear the same shirt for 3 days straight it will start to smell and get gross.\n\nA pair of jeans on the other hand, if you measure bacteria and dirt when you start wearing them, and then measure a month later very little has changed. Sweat itself is effectively odorless to humans, the smell from BO comes from the bacteria eating proteins in your sweat.\n\nYou have two types of glands Eccrine glands which just secrete sweat . Their only job is temperature regulation. Apocrine glands secrete sweat with shit in it on the other hand, namely the proteins the bacteria love eating to make shit smell. They are scent glands, where pheromones likely come out and influence social interaction.\n\nYou find these glands in the armpit, around the nipples and near the groin. So two of these scent sweat glands sweat into a shirt, the other into your underwear - both areas where clothing is generally thought of as needing to be changed daily. \n\nYour thighs on the other hand just produce light sweat, effectively just water with salt in it. Bacteria aren't interested, so you just end up being sweaty rather than smelly. \n\ntl;dr - the sweat glands in your armpits produce scent based sweat with proteins in that bacteria eat. The byproduct of them eating protein is a bad smell. Washing and replacing your shirt gets rid of this smell. Sweat glands in your legs just produce water with salt which doesn't attract bacteria and thus does not smell."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d9dos", "title": "how does new horizons avoid space debris for 9 years and three billion miles?", "selftext": "Considering a tiny rock could devastate the spacecraft, is there a way NASA can mitigate the risk of impact or is it just a cross your fingers situation? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d9dos/eli5_how_does_new_horizons_avoid_space_debris_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct2yqz1", "ct2yxdr", "ct2z1bh", "ct2z3gp", "ct38m5s", "ct3bds2"], "score": [7, 38, 2, 2, 11, 8], "text": ["Space is very very big and very very empty. The chances of tiny little new horizons hitting something out in inter-planetary space is pretty damn small.", "Space is incredibly empty.  I mean **incredibly** empty.  As in, \"so empty that the human mind cannot  intuitively comprehend how empty it is\".  \n\nYou have to **try** to hit things in space.  If you just pick a direction and go, you'll almost certainly be able to leave the galaxy entirely without encountering anything more dense than a few molecules of gas.\n\nI think part of the blame for this misconception lies in how things like the asteroid belt are portrayed in popular media.  We always see this giant conglomeration of rubble and boulders careening around and colliding with each other (or the poor spacecraft tasked with navigating through it).  But in reality, if you were placed on a random asteroid in the asteroid belt, you'd need a telescope to be able to see even its nearest neighbors.", "Don't think of space as Han Solo flying through an asteroid field. Hell, even asteroid fields aren't like that.\n\nSpace is incredibly empty. Pretty much the only way that you're going to hit something in space is if you're *trying* to hit it.", "Unless you're in a cluttered Earth orbit, you're more likely to be alone for eons than to hit anything.", "A tiny rock can also block light.  If you hold one in front of a star, you won't be able to see the star.  Even a grain of sand can block light.\n\nBut the photons from the star still made it to earth and to your eye.  In all the trillions and trillions of miles between you and the star, they never ran into even a grain of sand in the way.\n\n*That's* how empty space is.", "Our solar system is basically made of a bunch of really old vacuum cleaners. I mean REALLY old. And we call them planets and moons.\n\nOver about 5,000,000,000 years, they've been flying around in circles sucking up everything they could find.\n\nThey're really really good at getting rid of stuff floating around out there.\n\nImagine if your grandma and about 250 of her friends had been vacuuming the living room floor constantly for 5 billion years.\n\nIt'd be pretty clean.\n\nIf you go skipping across that floor, the odds of you getting even a spec of dust on your feet is as crazy low as anything you can imagine. Even lower than my chances of ever dating Scarlett Johansson.\n\nTHAT low.\n\ntl;dr There's really nothing out there **to** hit the New Horizon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ju6cs", "title": "why do you often get a long-lasting, unstimulated erection when you're really sleepy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ju6cs/eli5_why_do_you_often_get_a_longlasting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cusc3pb", "cusetiw", "cusf72d", "cusgg9x", "cush5mc", "cushs5b"], "score": [2, 22, 187, 6, 108, 3], "text": ["2 shadow banned comments in here?", "If you were really sleepy then you were probably experiencing REM sleep*, or you were [on the border](_URL_0_) of sleep and wakefulness. Sexual arousal is very common during REM sleep, with the penis/clitoris becoming erect and the vagina becoming lubricated. This can happen regardless of whether or not you have sex dreams, and it's the main reason for wet dreams and morning wood.\n\n*It's quite normal for people to be in REM sleep but later say they remember everything. The opposite is also common: responding as if they were awake and then having no memory of it. Even psychologists and neurologists have a hard time measuring and quantifying the difference since brain waves for people in REM sleep and people who are awake are very similar. This is why we sometimes call REM sleep \"paradoxial sleep\".\n\nSource: Psychology undergrad.", "From Wikipedia \"Nocturnal penile tumescence (abbreviated as NPT), also known colloquially as morning wood, is a spontaneous erection of the penis during sleep or when waking up. All men without physiological erectile dysfunction experience nocturnal penile tumescence, usually three to five times during the night, typically during REM sleep.[1] NPTs are believed to contribute to penile health.[2]\"\n\nI seem to recall the spongy tissues of the penis can develop scar tissue if blood flow is suboptimal in a flaccid penis for 24 hours. Your body is performing routine maintenance to keep it in working order.", "I am not a biology expert so I can't say for certain but when you are really sleepy you tend to be in a more relaxed state physiologically. There are muscles in the male body that squeeze down on the blood flow into the spongy flesh of the penis. Getting an erection is actually a matter of slackening these muscles and so presumably when tired you are more likely to let those muscles relax for reasons not related to sexy thoughts. \n\n >  Erection and loss of erection are related primarily to blood flow events regulated by the relaxation and contraction, respectively, of the smooth muscle in the penile arteries and the erectile bodies themselves. \n\n_URL_0_ rushes into the erectile bodies, causing erection. ", "It is a biological left over from when we would sleep outside on hills, this prevents you from rolling down the hill while asleep. ", " I was waiting to find a comment from someone in this field of study or something similar. Every single time I'm on an airplane, I get an erection whenever the plane lands. Is this normal??"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia"], [], ["https://www.cornellurology.com/clinical-conditions/erectile-dysfunction/how-erections-work/d"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hln2v", "title": "what is the \"war on christmas\"?", "selftext": "I hear this phrase thrown around a lot during the holidays.  Just curious as to what it is and what it's advocates or skeptics have to say.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hln2v/eli5_what_is_the_war_on_christmas/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db12m1m", "db12pam", "db12qd5", "db1668i", "db16e12"], "score": [12, 3, 5, 4, 5], "text": ["It is pretty much Christians who feel that Christ is being taken out of Christmas by people who say things like Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. They feel that Christmas is about Jesus etc and people of other religions/holidays should just accept this. ", "It's mostly just Christians getting upset when businesses, organizations and people try to be inclusive of all religions. They get all bent out of shape if someone says happy holidays instead of merry Christmas. \"Why are you making Christmas go away? It's a war I tells ya. Jesus is crying. Herp derp.\"", "It's an exaggeration.  Increasingly, stores, offices, and various organizations are beginning to realize that not everyone celebrates Christmas, so many of them have taken to using the phrases \"Happy Holidays\" or \"Seasons Greetings\" instead of \"Merry Christmas.\"  Likewise, they use decorations and events of a more ecumenical nature.  None of this, of course, takes away from a person's ability to celebrate Christmas themselves, or to decorate their homes as they see fit.  Nonetheless, some people feel threatened by this, and claim that non-Christians are trying to abolish Christmas in order to push their secular agenda.", "Just as an aside; the phrase Happy Holidays is over 100 years old and started with advertisers.  It has nothing to do with Hannuke.\n\nIt started as a shortening of 'Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.'\n\n", "I'm a skeptic.\n\nIt is the idea that there are people who intentionally would like people to stop celebrating Christmas in public, because they believe that Christians should not be allowed to celebrate their beliefs publicly.\n\nIt is called a \"war\" because the idea is that although right now, it is happening through legal action, it will eventually turn violent.\n\nMuch of the \"evidence\" for this \"war\" comes from lawsuits that generally center around the use of *public funds for private religious events* such as nativity scenes or religious decorations on Christmas trees. It is actually not possible to get a private individual or business to take down any religious paraphernalia related to Christmas, because of the 1st Amendment. However, to keep life exciting for people, some individuals claim that lawsuits to keep public money from being spent on a statue of Jesus, is actually somehow a violation of free speech and part of the war on Christmas.\n\nLife is confusing for some people.\n\nThe same goes for workplace rules. I live in the #1 city for atheists in the US and there's Christmas decorations and parties and tinsel all over the place. We have a ton of celebrations and a huge Christmas tree downtown. However, apparently the nominal inclusiveness aimed at assimilating everyone to the general culture calling it a holiday tree is a big war. I don't really think the people calling this war have been in a war before. Because having the mayor call a tree a holiday tree is actually nothing like getting your roof torn off by an RPG. But hey, life's boring, maybe by pretending to be in a war we can feel important!\n\nEmployers can call their parties whatever the hell they want:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nGovernments can't use public monies to sponsor a religious event. So when I worked for a government agency, we had a holiday party. Everyone wore green and red and gold, even people who celebrated Kwanzaa (and this was Seattle, and there were black people, and yes people celebrated Kwanzaa AND Christmas). But we just talked about the season, the non-snow, and the spirit of giving and forgiveness. Working for a private company with no government contracts we just had a Christmas party. Yes, Christmas. A bible verse was quoted. Because it's private. And you're allowed. So who fucking cares, this guy pays me, he's a great guy, his religious is his prerogative and it's not hostile because I would also be allowed to share my personal beliefs.\n\nSo, that's the war on Christmas. A non-issue in which some people who were used to pilfering public coffers to support their personal religious ideology are being asked not to do so and therefore flipping the hell out and screaming \"war\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.employmentandlaborinsider.com/uncategorized/planning-your-workplace-holiday-party-you-must-read-this/"]]}
{"q_id": "126etf", "title": "what are the glaring holes in the data supporting global warming?", "selftext": "I was told to look at this document and see the holes in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. _URL_0_\n\n\nI've also heard about the criticisms of markets that take advantage of things like carbon credits and likening the notion of global warming to \"inventing the problem and selling you the cure.\"\n\nI always thought global warming as the result of human intervention was pretty much accepted. Is the backing for it really that shaky or is this just extrapolated conspiracy talk?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/126etf/eli5_what_are_the_glaring_holes_in_the_data/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6sjn03", "c6sjn34", "c6sjx86", "c6sk64r", "c6skb3m", "c6sl03a"], "score": [104, 9, 50, 3, 9, 29], "text": ["Sorry, I know this isn't in the format of ELI5, but this is a good link that sequentially lists and rebukes all the \"holes in evidence\" against climate change in fairly simple terminology. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nShort of it is, the backing for human caused climate change is NOT shaky, it is accepted by 99% of practicing scientists and the evidence for it is overwhelming. Admittedly, there are problems with our responses to climate change, specifically in carbon market schemes and management / mitigation action plans, but there is no invention of a problem here. Hopefully someone other than I can follow up with a better ELI5 response. ", "Not so much conspiracy as strong denial. The mission of the website avoids saying its unpartisan (because it isn't), and wants policies for short term benefits. The home page has the top ten articles, all denying climate change. As this is a view that at least 98% of scientists agree with, it is a poor source. I'm not aware of anyone correctly finding flaws in Gore's climate work, he knows how to research well. ", "_URL_0_\n\n >  The study found that 97 percent of scientific experts agree that climate change is \"very likely\" caused mainly by human activity\n\n >  As for the 3 percent of scientists who remain unconvinced, the study found their average expertise is far below that of their colleagues, as measured by publication and citation rates.\n\nIf this was one company, or even a few companies, saying \"hey look the earth is eating up, better buy our airconditioning\" or something, your statement of \"inventing the problem and selling you the cure.\" might hold water. However, when there is a consensus across almost the entire scientific community, this is highly unlikely to be true.\n\n**Attempted ELI5 version**  \nOk Billy, people have told you there are glaring holes in climate change research, and that it might just be an excuse to make money. The scientific fact however is that there aren't glaring holes in the research, and that too many scientists agree for it to be a 'money making conspiracy' (almost all of them agree that the current climate change is caused or accelerated by mankind).\n\nSo why do people tell you otherwise? Because much like the scientists they claim to be \"in it for the money\", so do many other people benefit from a world where people think climate change is not real. They are willing to keep people ignorant just so they can sell more beach front houses, gas guzzling cars, and keep their highly polluting industries. \n\nSo Billy, people lied to you. And it wasn't the scientists.", "OP asked for proof, not for; It's true because a lot of scientists say so. Tell him and me, why they think so. I'm unwilling to accept; It's true because it's true.", "Some deniers cling to [Climategate](_URL_0_), which is really strange if you look over the materials, because there is nothing especially damning in there.\n\nI've always found the most convincing denier arguments to come from the Bjorn Lomborg school of thought, which basically says 'yeah, maybe climate change is anthropogenic, but it's not going to affect us too much in the next 50 years and we've done much worse things that we should take care of first' (he's a political scientist, and his arguments rely largely on an assumption of global finances as a zero sum game). \n\n > I've also heard about the criticisms of markets that take advantage of things like carbon credits and likening the notion of global warming to \"inventing the problem and selling you the cure.\"\n\nIn terms of carbon credits and REDD programs having a financial incentive- that is their actual point of existence, so people who say that are correct, though perhaps they misunderstand the initial motivations. Those markets were created to allow businesses to move about within stricter environmental guidelines, not as global humanitarian efforts (though they are marketed that way). \n\n > I always thought global warming as the result of human intervention was pretty much accepted. Is the backing for it really that shaky or is this just extrapolated conspiracy talk?\n\nThe biggest issue here is that it's not a provable thing- climate science isn't physics, and it has a really short history of study w/ regards to climate change as an issue. The vast majority of scientists will agree that the evidence points towards anthropogenic climate change being very very likely. To what degree, and what that means are questions that, at this point, are as much a social science as a science. So, you get a lot of argument between people who believe *almost* the same thing, which fractures the discipline. \n\nAlso, a lot of climate science comes down to computer modeling and prediction. Consider this with what you know of the accuracy of meteorology, as well as popular culture concepts like 'the butterfly effect', and you can see how the smallest difference in an input variable can lead two scientists to vastly different conclusions. \n\nSource: I have a master's in environmental science, and worked for a climate change research organization.", " > I always thought global warming as the result of human intervention was pretty much accepted. Is the backing for it really that shaky or is this just extrapolated conspiracy talk?\n\nThe biggest arguments among skeptics tend to be the following:\n\n* CO2 most definitely increases global temperature.  This is well accepted.  But CO2 has a \"diminishing returns\" kind of effect.  If CO2 were doubled, and just its effects were measured, temperatures would rise less than 1C.  The models that suggest 3-5 C temperature rise do so assuming warming is a \"positive feedback\", meaning, that if CO2 causes the globe to warm, things like water vapor will make it warm much much more.  Skeptics tend to not believe in a positive feedback, but rather a neutral or a negative feedback.  So, they believe that doubling CO2 will continue to make the temperature rise slightly, but the lack of positive feedbacks will mean the end result is much easier to manage and there is little to be afraid of.\n* Skeptics like to point to temperature records going back 10,000 years or so.  [Link to these ice core/temperature records](_URL_0_). There are common, dramatic rises and falls the temperature.  They argue that it's hard to say if our current small bit of warming is another natural variation or part of a long term trend.\n* Skeptics also point to the questionable behavior of many so-called \"alarmists\".  People who are well known for their positions in the climate change scientific world.  Skeptics argue that they tend to have a very partisan and bitter attitude towards this debate (perhaps because they are constantly the subject of attacks).  It's argued that these folks take their partisan attitudes and translate it to their science.  \n\nThat said, most models and scientists put the projected temperature rise between 2-5C.  Skeptics put the temperature rise around 0.5-2C, with 1 C being the most common.  Skeptics definitely are in the minority on this one.  \n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf"], "answers_urls": [["http://grist.org/series/skeptics/"], [], ["http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/scientists-overwhelmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1#.UIwZj8XMjao"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy"], ["http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html"]]}
{"q_id": "10lain", "title": "reminder: ask explanation-worthy questions!", "selftext": "Lately, we've seen a ton of ELI5 submissions that do not warrant explanations, but rather confirmations of a suspicion or belief, or just a simple google search result.\n\nThis is not /r/answers. We're looking for questions that ask for an explanation of something-- anything-- in **layman's terms**, **analogies**, or generally just **less esoteric language**.\n\nSo don't forget: search first! Google and our subreddit search should both be checked before posting. Make sure that your question fits here, so that our 167,000 subscribers don't have to wade through unnecessary questions to get to the stuff that they enjoy spending time to answer and so that the mods' lives are easier.\n\nEnjoy your day, and thanks for all of your contributions!\n\n--anonymous123421", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10lain/reminder_ask_explanationworthy_questions/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6ehz9t", "c6eigs7", "c6eih8k", "c6eihe4", "c6ejgb3", "c6ejht0", "c6eldsd", "c6emyi5", "c6eop14"], "score": [113, 22, 8, 2, 4, 19, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["ELI5: Why people don't understand ELI5. ", "Thankyou for posting this.  **One question!** - how do the mods address posts where the answers are in no way written to be elementary friendly?  As you mentioned, this isn't /r/answers but the amount of overly descriptive responses that wouldn't be understood by anyone in elementary school is rapidly ruining my enjoyment of this sub-reddit :( \n\n[Example](_URL_0_) - Sure it's a good read and and a great explanation but in no way would this be understood by a child.", "Thank you so much, everyone's always pissed when i point out that they're posting the wrong stuff and i'm also tired of seeing all the crap posted.", "My goodness thank you for this.", "I always liked the idea that you have to link to the answer to your question in your post.  Then, ask that the answer you linked to be simplified.\n\nThat way people need to do some sort of research before posting.\n", "I believe part of the issue is also that folks who primarily visit reddit from their phones don't even know there *is* a sidebar.  I didn't know that until a comment mentioned it and I looked at the site from a PC for the first time.", "If your question doesn't start with \"Why,\" or \"How,\" it doesn't belong here.", "I once criticized a poster for asking a yes/no question in this subreddit and got downvoted.", "Have been wanting to post this every day for weeks.  Knew i would be downvoted for complaining because i'm not a mod.  Thanks, anonymous123421.  It needed to be said."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10jj8v/eli5_what_is_the_conflict_between_israel_and_iran/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2stzdx", "title": "how do people create these amazingly looking space/milky way photos? i can barely see a few stars in the nights sky.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2stzdx/eli5_how_do_people_create_these_amazingly_looking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnst5rv", "cnsu67n", "cnsujt1", "cnsw0g0", "cnsxd74"], "score": [6, 5, 13, 3, 9], "text": ["Long exposures are one way. The stars are faint so a camera is made to keep its shutter open for a long time to pick up more light. Due to the movement of the Earth there may also need to be a way to stay pointed the same direction.", "It's not until you get well away from habitation that you realise how much \"Light Pollution\" exists.  The long exposure shots from the middle of the desert do \"over exaggerate\" the effect, but get far enough away from the city and suburbs, and you will be astounded at how many stars you can see. \n\nAnd to go one better , even a modest pair of binoculars will make a huge difference in terms of the fainter stars.", "Long exposure is one way to do it, yes, but astrophotographers also use a technique called \"stacking\", where they stack multiple layers of shorter exposure pictures over one another.\n\nSome people prefer to use this method over taking a single long exposure because it's usually easier to fine tune your picture. For example, if your camera runs out of battery, or something moves in shot that shouldn't be there, or you accidentally bump the camera, it's a lot easier to edit that in post processing and simply remove those frames rather than have your whole long exposure ruined. Also, this method might cut your shooting time in half.\n\nBut stacking isn't better than long exposure or vice versa and it's really all up to the person taking the picture to decide.", "You should see the sky from where I live. I live in Lake County, CA. The least populous county in CA and we are in the mountains. The night sky is spectacular up here.", "One of the biggest factors in seeing stars is being far from light pollution.  Here is a page with maps of which areas are best for stargazing.  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://darksitefinder.com/maps.html"]]}
{"q_id": "58a63d", "title": "i'm not american, what can someone do with your social security number and why you have to keep it secret?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58a63d/eli5_im_not_american_what_can_someone_do_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8yo7ak", "d8yx01c", "d8z06wb", "d8z7er3", "d8zism7"], "score": [26, 3, 53, 10, 2], "text": ["In American a Social Security Number is often used as a unique identification that is tied to you and only you. In many official documents or requests, you are asked to provide it in order to \"prove\" that you are the person the document or request is intended for.\n\nA social security number,  by itself, isn't likely to do anything, but combined with easily discovered information (your name, address, e-mail address), they could potentially impersonate you and gain access to a variety of accounts or records.", "The problem with the Social Security Number in the United States is that it is used both for identification and authentication. It uniquely identifies you, and you're supposed to keep it a secret so that you can verify who you are. For example, when I call my bank, they ask me for the last four digits, in addition to previously established security questions.\n\nThis question came up once before in another subreddit. There are companies like TransUnion and TRW that maintain databases full of information on people; I have access to some of them at work. With a person's Social Security Number, I can get their name, address, probably a phone number (even a mobile number), probably the names of their parents. If they own a home, I can get the bank that holds the loan and the amount they owe; same for cars or other large ticket items. Depending on which state they live in, I can get voter registration information, hunting license, boating license, and professional licenses (is the person a doctor or a lawyer?) Once I have all that information, thanks to social media web sites I can also probably get where the person went to college and high school, the names of childhood pets, streets they lived on as a child, etc. People just don't lock down Facebook the way they should. Once I have all that information, I have everything I need to steel their identity, I can get access to bank accounts, open new credit cards and run up massive amounts of debt, and so on.\n\n", "Let\u2019s start from the beginning. What is a social security number? It\u2019s a 9-digit number you are assigned from either birth in the U.S. or when you move to the U.S. to become a citizen or permanent resident.\n\nSocial Security is a program in the U.S. designed to provide the elderly with an income once they reach a certain age (currently 66 but changes depending on a few different factors). The income the elderly receive depends upon what they made in income over the course of their lives. It\u2019s more complicated than that, but you get the picture.\n\nWhen Americans file their federal income taxes every year, this is when they report to the government how much they made in income. In addition to that, over the course of the year, they have contributed to social security (through taxes). When they file the taxes, it is all filed by your social security number.\n\nFinancial Institutions use social security numbers as a way of identifying individuals in the U.S. It is the only identification that every single (legal) American has. Not every American has a passport or driver\u2019s license or state ID. When I say Financial Institutions, I also mean Creditors. Your social security number is linked to your credit and credit score. What\u2019s a credit score? At the most basic level, this score tells Financial Institutions if you pay your bills and manage money well. Your credit score will be evaluated when you rent an apartment, apply for a mortgage, apply for a credit card, take out a car loan, etc.\n\nThe biggest concern with this is identity theft. Someone could pretend to be you if they obtained your social security number. Now, a Financial Institution may ask for more than just your Social Security Number. But how hard is it now-a-days to get someone\u2019s birthday, address, phone number, mother\u2019s maiden name? Have access to Facebook? You now have all that information.\n\nIf a Credit Card application comes in the mail, it\u2019s easy to sign up for a credit card with someone else\u2019s social security number.\n\nSo, what happens if your identity IS stolen? If you like headaches, you\u2019ll like getting your identity stolen. Ideally, once you got a notice that a credit card in your name is due for $10,000, you would call the company, tell them your identity was stolen, and they\u2019d shut it down and fix your credit. In reality? Sure, they may cancel the card at your request, but they may ask for proof that your identity was stolen and you didn\u2019t really spend $10,000. How do you prove you didn\u2019t spend $10,000? And even if all of that was cleared up (ya know, in 5 years), they probably wouldn\u2019t bother fixing your credit score.\n", "The biggest problem with it is that it is used both as an \"ID\" and as a \"password\" (I read this analogy on reddit a few days ago). In order to identify yourself, you have to give it to everyone and their mother - bank, work, doctor's office, insurance companies, car rental companies, drugstore, etc.\n\nHowever, you are also often asked for your SS# to prove that you are you. It would be really silly if it weren't so serious. \"Hmm, you want to set up a credit card with our company? I need your name and SS#.\" Yes, as a matter of fact, credit card companies and lots of other places operate on the premise that if someone knows your name and SS# they are in fact you.\n\nProve that you are you by telling us a number that you HAVE to give out to literally hundreds of companies for all kinds of reasons.", "Super short version for five year olds:\n\nYou see kiddo, the US doesn't have a national ID system. But every citizen is issued a *Super Secret Number*, which entitles them to some money if they become disabled or elderly and unable to work.\n\nAmericans aren't known for doing things efficiently or logically, so when other government programs and high level private entities (banks, insurance, etc) needed some sort of uniform identification scheme.. They chose the SSN, because it was already there (even though it explicitly says on the card not to be used for ID purposes).\n\nThis is generally a terrible idea as the SSN was never intended to be used for identification, and correspond with any central repository of information with your address, physical descriptors, or photo like a typical State ID does. This is why you have to keep it secret, because it's absurdly easy for anyone to steal your identity and falsify forms if they have your SSN.\n\nYou can use someone's SSN to be admitted to the hospital, open bank and credit accounts, submit a background check, rent a dwelling, and of course draw state/federal benefits. Most American businesses use this horribly insecure method of confirming that the name you've provided is real, but only some of them require secondary identification in addition to the absurdly easy to misuse SSN.\n\nMaybe someday we'll wise up and create a real national ID program.\n\n*Maybe someday.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6fcl9v", "title": "why does magnetism seem so similar to gravity? is there a relationship between the two forces?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fcl9v/eli5_why_does_magnetism_seem_so_similar_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dih68vx", "dih6k7v", "dih8lpd", "dih8x29", "dihegha", "dihhn20"], "score": [5, 100, 7, 14, 3, 3], "text": ["They're not that similar.\n\nMagnetism attracts and repels and is based off of electrical charges.  Gravity only ever attracts  &  it's based on mass.", "Magnetism is nothing at all like gravity. Like not even remotely similar.\n\n- Gravity is always attractive, magnetism can be either\n\n- Gravity has point sources and can never form dipoles, magnetism only has dipoles and can never have a point source or sinks\n\n- Mass can be stationary and form a gravitational field, charge must move to form a magnetic field and can never be stationary\n\n- Gravity isn't (known to be) related to any other fundamental forces, magnetism is the other side of the electromagnetic force.\n\nYou seriously could not pick two more dissimilar forces if you tried. In fact when cosmologists talk about the origin of the fundamental forces after the big bang, they talk about gravity splitting off and then everything else splitting off - it's the *least* like magnetism of them all", "Magnetism is really just one component of the electromagnetic force, which is one of the 4 fundamental forces of the universe, along with gravity. That's where the similarities end though. I suspect you're confusing similarity with the fact that in some cases, magnets attract, which is superficially similar to gravity, but the 2 forces have nothing in common. In fact, the forces are so dissimilar, that it's one of the biggest unsolved problems in physics; trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism into the same theoretical framework. ", "they did try to merge the two back before general relativity, with gravitoelectromagnetism, but it didn't do so well, and always ended up giving varying results, so was sacked off.\n\nThey act sort of similar in some senses, but magnetism can be both attracting and repelling (due to being a dipole), where as gravity so far has only been shown to be attracting (as it seems a monopole, since we can't see any other end of it that repels, if there even is one)\n\nprobably the most similar bit is the inverse square drop off rate vs distance, but just because it takes the same amount of distance to drop off their effects, doesn't really make them very similar in their behavior.\n\nAdmittedly though the fundimental understanding for gravity and electromagnetism does not exist currently we can see what they do but not what they are, who knows, maybe there is a solution that can combine the two, but right now we can't see it. maybe its to do with spin, I like spin.", "Magnetism and gravity are forces. Other forces include the (\"static\") electric force, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.\n\nPhysicists have been trying to \"unify\" these forces, i.e. take many existing descriptions and figure out a single description which explains all of them. So far, we've unified the electric and magnetic forces into a single \"electromagnetic\" force. We've also unified the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces into the \"electroweak\" force (this was mostly theoretical until the Higgs boson was discovered at CERN).\n\nOne way to think of a force is for some objects to have a \"charge\", and for charged objects to push/pull on each other. For gravity, there only seems to be one charge, which we call \"mass\".\n\nMagnetism seems to have two, which we call \"north\" and \"south\". Electromagnetism makes this clearer: there are two charges, called \"positive\" and \"negative\", which cause electric push/pull effects for objects which aren't moving (\"static\"; relative to each other) and magnetic push/pull effects for those which are.\n\nThe strong nuclear force has three charges, which we call \"colours\" (\"red\", \"green\" and \"blue\").\n\nOut of the known forces, both gravity and electromagnetism are \"long range\": they can act over arbitrarily large distances: think of the Earth and Sun pulling on each other, and the Sun's light (a form of \"electromagnetic wave\") reaching the Earth. The strength of these forces gets spread uniformly through 3D space, so they follow an \"inverse square law\".\n\nThe nuclear forces are \"short range\": their effects are strong when charged objects are very close, like inside the nucleus of an atom, but get much weaker over longer distances; much weaker than an inverse square law.\n\nOne explanation is that the objects push and pull each other by sending out particles. The particles for the nuclear forces (\"gluons\", \"W bosons\" and \"Z bosons\") have mass, which makes them unstable and radioactive. As the distance between charged objects increases, not only do these particles get spread out through a larger volume, but they also decay radioactively. This accounts for their weakness at large distances.\n\nThe particles for gravity and electromagnetism (called \"gravitons\" and \"photons\") don't have mass, so they're stable and not radioactive. Hence they can keep spreading out forever without decaying, resulting in long range effects and an inverse square law.\n\nNote that gravitons are still theoretical and have never been detected. We have detected photons, W bosons and Z bosons. We've never directly detected a gluon, since gluons have colour (strong nuclear charge) (unlike e.g. photons which have no electromagnetic charge), and the strong nuclear force is *so* strong (over short distances) that it's very hard to pull apart coloured objects and see them individually.", "Others have already explained why they are so different, **why then, do they seem similar?** Because, disregarding the differences, that magnets can also repell, small magnets facing such that they attract, actually follow exactly the same formula as gravity, it's only the scale that is different.\n\nGravity: F=G x m1 x m2 / r^2\n\nG is a scale factor, So the force is proportional to the product of the 2 masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance.\n\nMagnetic force between two small enough magnets to be considered point charges (pretty much when they are far enough apart that you don't feel a mix of repelling and attracting forces bending in strange ways):\n\nF=mu  x qm1 x qm2 / (4 pi x r^2) = mu/(4 pi)  x qm1 x qm2 / r^2 \n\nif we break out the scale factor mu/4pi, we see that it's exactly the same thing, except mass is replaced by the magnitude of the magnetic poles.\n\nBoth mass and the magnetic magnitude can be expressed by a volume times a density (mass or charge density) if you like. making them even more similar.\n\nSo, at a first glance they are indeed very similar, but as magnets get closer to each other or attractive poles no longer facing each other, this formula completely breaks apart. This is also obvious when you play with magnets by hand - as long as you are playing with attractive poles, it's just like gravity, only much stronger. But if you start rotating them it's nothing at all like gravity.\n\nthe formulas are from Wikipedia:\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity"]]}
{"q_id": "1c0y3u", "title": "Is frozen acid still corrosive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1c0y3u/is_frozen_acid_still_corrosive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9c6rjm", "c9clhwo"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["Branch question: If something reacts in the frozen state, does it technically have to become a liquid momentarily?", "A solid acid would still have the same properties as an aqueous acid, but the reaction rates would be significantly slowed down and overall ability to do chemistry would be hindered.\n\nThe acid groups on the surface of the frozen acid could still donate their protons to whatever they come in contact with.  The theoretically low temperature might slow down the rate, but it would still happen.\n\nSince the acid is a solid though, only the outside acid groups could react so after only a little bit of chemistry they would be \"spent.\"  Depending on the structure, protons from within the bulk of the frozen acid would probably diffuse to the surface to react with whatever is out there, but it would be pretty slow."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4tvyy2", "title": "drinking or taking drugs \"to feel normal\".", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tvyy2/eli5_drinking_or_taking_drugs_to_feel_normal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5kq73x", "d5kqg7o", "d5kqj92", "d5krveu", "d5kskxr", "d5kst0f", "d5kuq29", "d5kxatq", "d5kye2a"], "score": [10, 7, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["People who do this say they do it to feel normal.  And most of them believe it when they say it.  What's actually going on is that the substance they're using dulls the edges in their mind and makes their pain less immediate, less real.  For that reason, they come to think that because the substance reduces or eliminates the pain, it makes them \"normal\" again.\n\nThat logic has holes in it big enough to drive a truck through, but I've heard the same answer from every addict I've talked with.", "Well it basically means you feel more apt to deal with your world when you are on the drugs. As a drug user; it is never a good sign when someone says this. It is a sign that you are high way too often that sobriety is no longer your regular state of mind", "Some substances make you feel like the Super-version of yourself. As time goes on and your tolerance builds, the \"super-you\" dose is less and and less effective. You need more of the substance to achieve \"super-you\". Stopping use all together makes you feel like the worst version of yourself, and you need the substance in moderate amounts just to feel the way you normally would before you ever started using. This was my experience with amphetamines anyway, and my only real experience with the whole \"use to feel normal\" thing.  ", "Former drug addict here. It's about coping with life and pretty much hiding from your emotions, problems, etc. it's not so much to feel normal as it is to just escape reality and not have to look inward or face the problems you have. ", "Alcoholic/former drug addict here. For me, it's been the concept of \"missing out.\" Sure, you're having fun now. Your friends are with you, you're having a great time, but... there's this nagging thought, ever present in the background, that you could be having MORE fun if you were drunk/stoned. Very convoluted, vicious circle.", "I have a problem with anxiety, and I also have a problem with abuse. I do not take pills, and I refuse to ever start. My issues begin when I think (or over think) about stressful situations such as work, money, or even family. Smoking marijuana makes my head clear of malicious thinking and forces me to not only focus on something that isn't stressful, but exercising large, spaced out breaths. The feeling of exuberance does not happen as harsh for habitual users, and can often require stronger strains to fully take advantage. It only takes a toke or two to get the stress away, but I fear that I have become too reliant on this method to the point that I may feel like I need it constantly or need something more potent when two tokes no longer works. This ultimately puts a user into either 'chasing the high' or, in the case of cannabis, the inability to elevate oneself to that \"okay I feel better now\" state. This of course, in both situations is easily remedied with taking a break to cripple your body's tolerance. When I choose to pick it back up, I struggle to maintain a healthy balance until I reach a reasonable tolerance to deal with everyday stress- but once that tolerance is shot, feeling normal becomes costly in every way.", "In truth, people who say that \"taking drugs makes them feel normal\" say this because when they take a particular drug, the way the drug makes them feel, or the effect of the drug, makes them feel how they perceive others who are \"normal\" must feel.  \n\nFor example, \"normal\" people, one might postulate, do not have a constant distraction of a million painful-thoughts running through their heads all the time. On the other hand, there ARE people, who DO suffer with non-stop thoughts: rapid, relentless, repetitive, ruminating thoughts that parce their neurons all day every day. \n\nIf when a person take a drug, that drug's effect reduces the non-stop, relentless, ruminating thoughts, that person could then suppose, that how they feel while under the \"influence\" of the drug, is how \"normal\" people must feel all the time.   \n\nIf one were to say that \"drugs\" makes them feel normal, they could be articulating that \"drugs\" (take away the relentless, ruminating thoughts) and make them feel \"normal\", and/ or how others must feel without the indications of relentless ruminating thoughts.  \n\nYou can apply this formula  &  that \"perception of normal\" statement to one of many hundreds of conditions that those who suffer from alcohol and drug addiction seek remission from. Some people seek relief without even understanding why they they do what they do. \n\nAchieving relief from a symptom that \"normal\" people do not usually suffer from, is the most logical and the most basic explanation of such a statement.  When one states that drugs make them feel normal\" is does not suggest that how they may be \"explaining\" their particular condition is any \"less real\" or a \"bad sign\" because it is the only way they know how to verbalize their experience.  \n\nSuggestions to the contrary, that all \"addicts\" or people who take \"drugs\" are seeking to achieve anything other than relief from a particular malady, demonstrates a lack of understanding of the disease of addiction and further perpetuates the myths and stigmas associated with mental illness. \n", "I smoke marijuana \nIt helps with my back pains, period pains, headaches and my anxiety.\nNo complaints here.", "I have ADHD and minor OCD. The most of my life Ive been unable to really focus on much of anything and I can easily forget things that most people normally wouldn't. Literally you can tell me \"Don't forget X important thing.\" and I will acknowledge it, then walk away. Soon as I turn away, I've literally forgot what you said and what it was I needed to remember.\n\nBack to my concentration: I take Ritalin, and it actually slows down my mind and allows me to actually focus on tasks so that I can get them done rather than starting them and dropping it 5 minutes later because something else got my attention. (Im looking at you Warhammer 40K board....) So by taking the Ritalin, it puts me in a state where I \"feel normal\", because I knew my state before was not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3onkte", "title": "If Earth was cut in half, what colours would the cross section be?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3onkte/if_earth_was_cut_in_half_what_colours_would_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvyz4ty"], "score": [3], "text": ["Very similar to the colors depicted in [pictures of a cross section of the Earth](_URL_2_), because the colors will be that of a [Black Body](_URL_0_). Each layer will have the same color as this [chart](_URL_3_); the core for example is ~7400 Kelvin which \"white hot\" while parts of the mantle are a dull red.\n\nPretty much the same colors you see [here](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VydPQuLyEns", "https://www.google.com/search?q=cross-section+of+earth", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Blackbody-colours-vertical.svg"]]}
{"q_id": "90a07v", "title": "How would all the moons discovered around Jupiter affect an ocean on the planet?", "selftext": "If the planet was solid of course. The recent discovery of 12 moons surrounding Jupiter created the thought of this question. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/90a07v/how_would_all_the_moons_discovered_around_jupiter/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2p7xn8", "e2pqnjc"], "score": [2, 5], "text": ["Very little, compared to our moon's influence on our oceans.  The Earth-Moon system is essentially a double-planet system.  Our moon is large enough to be a planet by the standards of the solar system in general, and we only have one, so it is only in one place.  The moons of Jupiter, relative to the size of Jupiter, are much smaller, and there's lots of them which are usually in lots of different places (so gravitationally pulling in different directions, and cancelling each other out).  Very rarely they will all be in alignment, at which point all together they might affect the non-existent Jovian ocean as much as our own moon affects our oceans all the time.", "Tides are a lot more complex than most people realise. Naively people will respond with something like \"you will get 12 tides of different frequencies which will add and subtract to give a massive high tide at some combination of frequencies as well as an equivalent low tide\". This is only true for planets that are either fully covered in fluid or are completely fluid themselves. Once you add in land mass in the way you change the tides completely to the point that on Earth we have places that experience semi-diurnal (two high tides and two low tides daily), diurnal(single high tide and low tide daily, no tide at all and some places even experience a mix of these. The reason for this is the bathymetry (topography of the ocean basin basically) in a very complex way that took hundreds of years to work out.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nSo basically what I am saying is with a single moon we had a very hard time working out how the tides worked due to how complex they are. Adding another 11 moons would cause tides on an Earth like planet to be extraordinarily complex as each tide raised by each moon would not have to be,for example, diurnal in the same location. That is to say at some location one of the moons tides might be diurnal while a different moons tide at the same location could be semi-diurnal.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nOf course it would be difficult to get 12 objects large enough to cause significant tidal deformations around a terrestrial planet and have them all in a stable configuration. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nThe next question is then what about around a gas planet. This is currently an increasingly active area of research that I am involved in. A fully gas planet will be in a convective state. What is interesting is that the amount of tidal dissipation (which dictates how far the tidal bulge lags behind or precedes the line of centres between the giant and the tide raising body. This is important for orbital evolution of systems) depends on the frequency of the tide raising body in a non-obvious way that is not fully understood. It is a powerful effect in the world of orbital evolution and Io is a good example of where tidal dissipation is playing an important role in the evolution of the 3 innermost Galilean moons of Jupiter where they are actually evolving away from their Laplace resonance (something I think tends to be suggested as a stable end configuration to general audiences).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTLDR - 12 tides are crazy complicated to the point no one on earth could give you a clear answer on what would happen. Only some ideas of things that might happen. Tides are still not well understood!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "20hrbm", "title": "Why does exhaust of Saturn V engine seem to ignite some distance away from the nozzle?", "selftext": "Video that inspired the question: [Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch](_URL_0_). Exhaust becomes visible at about 2:05\n\nLooking at that closeup, I'm confused as to how it generates lift?\nI'm familiar with basic theory. You mix your fuel and oxidizer inside the nozzle, heat is released, gasses expand, and stuff exits the nozzle at high speed, which creates thrust.\n\nI would expect to see bright flames coming out of the nozzle but, in the video, the combustion seems to occur well outside the nozzle. It seems to operate more like a flamethrower where you pump the fuel out at high speed, and it ignites in the environment.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20hrbm/why_does_exhaust_of_saturn_v_engine_seem_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg3ejw0"], "score": [14], "text": ["If you listened to what the narrator was saying, he already explained it:\n\nThere is cooler turbine exhaust gas which was injected into the inner perimeter of the nozzle to act as a cooling layer to insulate the nozzle itself from the escaping hot gasses.\n\nWhat you are seeing is the \"bright flames\" you would expect to see  shrouded by a cover of insulating gasses which dissipates a number of feet after leaving the nozzle."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://vimeo.com/4366695"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2wfmwy", "title": "Why is Lebanon so religiously diverse and how did it hold itself together?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wfmwy/why_is_lebanon_so_religiously_diverse_and_how_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coqg2ga"], "score": [40], "text": ["The geography of Lebanon has played a significant role in the shaping of its religious diversity. Hills, valleys, mountain passes and other features, combined with further artificial reinforcement, allowed communities to thrive that otherwise would have been destroyed by larger imperial powers.\n\nAs a result, virtually every ruling power in Lebanon has found some portion of its population to be restive from the time of the initial Arab conquests (when Christian pseudo-bandit warlords were able to resist the initial conquests and maintain significant autonomy for centuries) up until this century with the Israeli and Syrian occupations.\n\nAs for how it's held itself together, well, it has and it hasn't. [The National Pact](_URL_0_) established strict guidelines for sectarian political representation. This idea that power must be distributed along sectarian lines according to demography extends through theoretically non-political entities. When I say it hasn't however, obviously the Lebanese Civil War very nearly ripped the country apart. [The Taif Agreement](_URL_1_) adjusted the National Pact to reflect the changing demographic balance of power over the course of the 20th century that saw the Maronite population experience a relative decline in numbers (but not wealth, status, and power) in comparison particularly with Lebanon's Shia.\n\nThat said, however, and without getting into 20 year territory, the Taif agreement's allowance of Hezbollah to exclusively retain its armed militia has allowed to exercise a level of governance in the south and in the Beqaa valley that is comparable to or surpasses the authority of the central government.\n\nSources. For Lebanon in the Arab Conquests: I've recently been reading Robert Hoyland's *In God's Path* which has some interesting details on this. For the past 500 years or so see Eugene Rogan's *The Arabs: A History*\n\nEdit: tried to clarify some ambiguous phrasing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taif_Agreement"]]}
{"q_id": "70v9vg", "title": "Why was genetics called a \"bourgeoise science\" by Lysenko and thus dispelled?", "selftext": "Lysenko aimed to dispel the study of genetics during the Soviet Union period and instead pushed for his own \"Lysenkoism\" principle. \n\nAlso, what does the term \"bourgeoise science\" really entails? Thanks in advance! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/70v9vg/why_was_genetics_called_a_bourgeoise_science_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn6jl1n", "dn74mif"], "score": [49, 26], "text": ["To answer your question you have to understand a few things about Marxism.\n\nMarxism is centered around dialectical materialism (diamat). Marx began his academic life as a member of The Young Hegelians, basically intellectuals subscribing to Hegel's views. Hegelian dialectics viewed history as the interplay between ideas; this is a simplification, but basically, opposing ideas clashed and the clash in turn produced the world as it is. Marx came to reject this idealism (the belief that ideas create reality) in favor of materialism. In Marxist diamat, economic circumstances and the socioeconomic conflicts arising within society are responsible for the movement of history. As The Communist Manifesto boldly declares, \"the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.\" (FWIW older Marx would often temper and modulate the beliefs of young Marx; for example, *Critique of the Gotha Program* almost reads like a critique of a program very much like the Communist Manifesto itself; but the loud, brash proclamations of the Communist Manifesto- i.e. \"workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains\"- have cemented themselves into our culture much better than his later writings, some of which weren't even published until the 1930s).\n\nAs an example, many young Hegelians blamed cultural values (like religion) for many of the woes of the Germany they lived in. Marx affirmed the existence of these same inequities but argued they proceed from the economic circumstances of Germany. When Marx said \"religion is the opiate of the masses,\" this wasn't strictly a condemnation of religion- as you can tell if you look at the full quote:\n\n > The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. **But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man \u2013 state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.** Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d\u2019honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.\n\n > Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.\n\n > The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.\n\nMarx adds depth to the long standing Enlightenment critiques of religion by pointing out that religion was the product of socioeconomic circumstances, and to renounce oppressive religious constructs necessitated renouncing oppressive economic relationships (serfdom, slavery, wage labor, etc.) that gave birth to religion in the first place.\n\nConsequently diamat leads to the conclusion that ideas (and systems of ideas aka ideologies) are themselves influenced by the **material base** of society, rather than the other way around as Hegel argued (Marx on Hegelian dialectics: \"With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell\").\n\nThe material base refers to the economy, the socioeconomic relationships between people. This is a simplification, but the basic idea is that in a capitalist society, ideas which benefit capitalists tend to propagate and be favored over those that don't benefit them or which actually hurt them. In *The German Ideology* Marx argues:\n\n > **The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas**, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. **The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,** the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. **For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an \u201ceternal law.\u201d**\n\n(emphasis added)\n\nMarx, being a historian, formulated this idea specifically with respect to history and historiography but Marxists have since applied the idea elsewhere.\n\nSo, to answer your question, Lysenko believed that the Darwinism which undergirded Western eugenics (not just in Nazi Germany, but in the US, UK, France etc. also) was the result of bourgeoisie material conditions. This is quite correct, I would argue. His mistake was then throwing evidence based science out the window and attempting to fit the data to the ideology, while not realizing Darwinian evolution and Mendelian inheritance does not in any way imply that eugenics is a good thing. It would be unsatisfactory to reject a Marxist philosophy of history simply because of the failure of Lysenkoism.\n\nThe discussion around Lysenkoism often makes it seem uniquely bad in history, and people often ascribe bizarre death tolls to it with little evidence. In truth, ideologically guided science is not the historical exception; it is the rule. Western science at the time was just as ideologically guided by the dominant material realities of capitalism and racism, which resulted in widespread support for eugenics and \"race science\" intended to justify slavery and imperialism, as well as scientific human experimentation on subjects deemed subhuman (Tuskegee syphilis studies and Dr. Mengelev's experiments, for example; if you're interested in learning more, the book *Medical Apartheid* is a good book on the scientific experimentation on black Americans, and Gould's *The Mismeasure of Man* is a good book on race science). These had a human cost that was certainly higher than Lysenkoism.", "Part 1:\n\n/u/specterofsandersism has explained Marxist views on the dialectic very well, but Trofim Lysenko's motivations and influence on Soviet science were not just pure ideology, but instead need to be put in historical and scientific context. The Soviets weren't ideological robots, and their motivations for pushing theories were more complex than what Marx said, taking in issues of Russian nationalism and being responses to particular problems. It's also been argued that Lysenkoism (as its Western detractors called it) or Michurinist biology (as its supporters called it) was the crucible in which modern Western views of pseudoscience were formed; as a result, Lysenko's motives and effects have been hotly contested, with different people on different sides of arguments pushing their own barrows about the extent to which Lysenko was scientific, depending on what they think about the idea of pseudoscience.\n\nTo sum up the facts very briefly, Lysenko became prominent in Soviet science in the late 1920s for his work on what's now in English called 'vernalization' - basically inducing winter crops to grow in summer by applying moisture and cold to the seeds. This led him to become prominent in Soviet scientific circles, and as the 1930s progressed, he came to strongly push the barrow of a basically Lamarckian view of evolution, arguing in a semi-mystical way that living things could inherit characteristics of their parents - the famous Lamarckian example being a life of giraffes striving to reach the leaves on trees having an effect on the length of their childrens' necks (as opposed to Darwinian views of evolution which see the unit of inheritance being genes, and mutations as the only way for evolution to occur). \n\nNote that, before the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick (not to mention Franklin) in the 1950s, Lamarckian thought wasn't as implausible as it now seems today, because the unit of inheritance was something of a mystery - Mendelian genetics wasn't as convincing as it is today (especially considering that simple Mendelian genetics can only be demonstrated easily with certain somewhat 'on-off' phenotypical traits of individuals - eye colour, for example - most traits are instead the result of a melange of different genes). And note that epigenetics means that the lives of ones grandparents can effect the way that genes are expressed - [see this example](_URL_0_) - and so there was some limited support for Lamarckian inheritance theories that Lysenko heavily overextended.\n\nIn general, Lysenko is usually contrasted with Nikolai Vavilov, his big rival for prominence in Soviet biology in 1930s, and - you guessed it - an adherent of Western-style genetics. Because of the severe famines that the USSR had experienced, and their limited resources, agricultural science was heavily politicised in the USSR, to the point where Stalin and Molotov were meeting with Vavilov and Lysenko in order to roar at them to improve harvests. Gary Paul Nabhan's *Where Our Food Comes From: Tracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest To End Famine* is much more sympathetic to Vavilov than Lysenko, claiming that, in these meetings, Lysenko peddled quick cheap fixes that didn't actually solve a lot of the problems in harvests (i.e., lots of vernalisation), which stopped Vavilov from being able to make the long-term changes that would have actually increased yields significantly. \n\nVavilov lost political ground to Lysenko through the 1930s for a variety of reasons that might go beyond ideology; at one point Stalin shouted 'GO AND LEARN FROM THE SHOCK-WORKERS IN THE FIELDS!' at Vavilov when he suggested going overseas to learn new crop yield techniques. Vavilov also antagonised Stalin and Molotov by pointing out in public that crop yields were higher before the revolution, and it seems that the hierarchy thought Lysenko's quick fixes were more achievable. In the end, Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died of starvation in prison in 1943.\n\nThe Soviet famine of 1946-47 sadly appeared to show that Lysenko's Michurinist biology was not any more successful at increasing yields than previous agricultural techniques (the widespread application of vernalisation, seemingly, had the effect of increasing short-term gains but depleting the soil). Nonetheless, in 1948, Lysenko had risen to become the President of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and at their conference on July 31 he announced that modern biology had diverged into two opposing trends - a Soviet science called 'agrobiology' or 'Michurinist biology' based around Lamarckism and a Western science which Lysenko called 'formal' genetics, which was based around Mendellian genetics ('Mendelism-Morganism-Weismannism'). Lysenko prominently argued here that 'formal' genetics was 'bourgeois'. \n\nHe had been arguing this for 15 years by this point, and was already one of the main voices in official policy, but what changed in 1948 was that *Pravda* heavily publicised this argument. Suddenly this became a hot-button issue; newspapers published articles glorifying Lysenko, and hundreds of thousands of copies of the proceedings of the conference were published. By the end of 1948, Lysenkoism was official policy. Genetics laboratories run under the principles of 'formal' genetics were closed, biologists fired, and courses at universities abolished. Mendelian genetics had officially been banned in the USSR and its satellites; in December 1948 a movie about Lysenko was released directed by a famous director, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, with a score by Shostakovich, and with one of the most popular actors of the time, Grigorii Belov, in the title role.\n\n/u/specterofsandersism is correct that the link between 'formal' genetics, eugenics, and fascist thought was pushed heavily in Soviet literature in this 1948 period as a justification for Lysenkoism. Lysenko had consistently been opposed to eugenics since the 1920s, and 1948 was a period when the horrors of eugenics were clearer, post-Nazi Germany, than they had been in previous eras. However, before Lysenko ascended to prominence, there had been various attempts at creating Bolshevik/Soviet eugenic programs which were intended to improve society as a whole. In the post-war period, however, the Soviets could use their scientific opposition to eugenics as an effective propaganda point in the nascent Cold War. This was a point in time when there was a fair bit of sympathy for the Soviets in Western intellectual circles, before the 1956 Hungarian revolution was crushed, and before the full extent of Stalin's brutality was clear. The USSR being the kind of ethical place that had the empathy for humanity to be against eugenics still seemed plausible in such circles at this point, however, and so it made for good propaganda material.\n\nLysenkoism lasted as official policy until 1962; Khrushchev ended it as part of his de-Stalinisation policy. 1962 was close to a decade after DNA had been discovered, making Lysenkoism much harder to justify. Thanks in part to the application of an increased understanding of genetics, corn grain yields in the USA, for example, *doubled* between 1940 and 1960 (they also came close to doubling between 1960 and 1980, meaning that they had almost quadrupled in 40 years). Because Lysenkoism was official policy in the USSR until 1962, it was only in the 1960s when the Russians seem to have been able to effectively predict crop yields. \n\nIt's fair to say that Lysenkoism didn't do a great deal to help in the 1946-1947 Soviet famine, and that alternative approaches that were available at the time would have helped more; Lysenko's policies had a tendency to increase yields in the short-term but decrease them in the long-term, and Lysenko discouraged the use of American corn breeds with increased yields because he didn't believe they worked. I'm not quite clear in my reading about the extent to which the 1948 purge was basically finding scapegoats for the famine, but I strongly suspect that 'bourgeois' genetics was a convenient scapegoat for the famine at this point, much as Vavilov became the scapegoat in the 1930s (and that there's a big dose of Russian nationalism that's an inherent justification of home-town hero Lysenkoism). \n\nIn science, you need theories to explain data, and the theories you choose and the data you choose to emphasise are influenced by your assumptions about the world, which are ideologies to a lesser or greater extent. It's not enormously surprising that Lysenko as a committed Stalinist had a view of the world coloured by that ideology, and that his science was therefore also coloured - this is the nature of science. In the high-stakes world of Stalinist politics - which interacted with agricultural science because of famines - it's also not surprising that Lysenko made power plays based on trying to appeal to Marxist ideology as interpreted by the USSR at the time, and that he was quite successful doing so. \n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/descendants-of-holocaust-survivors-have-altered-stress-hormones/"]]}
{"q_id": "3l39o6", "title": "we all know light travels 186,282 miles per second. but how does it travel. what provides its thrust to that speed? and why does it travel instead of just sitting there at its source?", "selftext": "Edit: I'm marking this as Explained. There were so, so many great responses and I have to call out /u/JohnnyJordaan as being my personal hero in this thread. His comments were thoughtful, respectful, well informed and very helpful. He's the Gold Standard of a great Redditor as far as I'm concerned. \n\nI'm not entirely sure that this subject can *truly* be explained like I'm 5 (this is some heavy stuff for having no mass) but a lot of you gave truly spectacular answers and I'm coming away with this with a lot more than I had yesterday before I posted it. Great job, Reddit. This is why I love you.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l39o6/eli5_we_all_know_light_travels_186282_miles_per/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv2shkh", "cv2u2h1", "cv2uddx", "cv2udyt", "cv2vbsd", "cv2y51h", "cv2yrl1", "cv34xcw", "cv375vq", "cv38swz", "cv3a5i4", "cv3a9yb", "cv3b2uh", "cv3dki4", "cv3dxbu", "cv3gnlj", "cv3i97b", "cv3j7vc", "cv3jclp", "cv3klcw", "cv3lpct", "cv3okcu"], "score": [87, 23, 3199, 6, 4, 65, 8, 3, 6, 26, 2, 2, 8, 7, 12, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["That may be the wrong way of thinking about it. Light only 'travels' from our perspective. For light there is no time and therefore from the perspective of a photon, it doesn't travel. it's everywhere all at once.      \nWhen we measure the speed all we are doing is translating between space and time. One second of time equals 186282 miles of space.", "Actually all matter and energy can be considered moving the speed of light through spacetime, it's just when you look at speed through space (without time) that speeds vary.\n\nConsider moving in two dimensions, like on a map. You can travel straight North at 10 mph, or straight West at 10 mph. But if you travel straight Northwest at 10 mph, then you're going less than 10 mph along the North axis, and less than 10 mph along the West axis. The combination of those is 10 mph.\n\nIn spacetime, space can be considered \"North\" while time is \"West\". Light is going as fast as possible \"North\", so it can't travel at all along the time axis. Most of us are devoting pretty much all our velocity towards the time axis, so we don't move very fast through space. But if we accelerate faster and faster, we're not actually going faster in spacetime, we're just swinging that constant speed away from the time axis more towards the space axis.", "Here is an incredible answer by /u/corpuscle634 when this was asked a year ago in [this thread](_URL_1_).\n\n**Edit: /u/corpuscle634 has updated his original answer in the original thread, so please take a look at his answer in that thread for a more complete and accurate answer. Here is a direct [link](_URL_0_).**\n\n**The TL:DR of it is: If you give energy to something without mass, the only form it can take is motion - you can't have a stationary massless particle, since mass literally is \"the energy something has when it isn't moving.\" Photons have no mass, so they're never stationary.**\n\n\nAnd if that's still too complicated here's a shorter answer from /u/kvandy15:\n\n\"The speed of anything is basically determined by it's weight and the amount energy that is pushing it. You can push your toy cars really fast but if you try to push a real car it's a lot harder. That's because it weighs more. Light weighs nothing, so it moves at full speed all the time with no push at all.\"", "So. Light does not move so much as it simply exists everywhere? So how does  light come into existence and then cease existing with the activation/deactivation of it's source? What happens to these photons when the lights go out? And if light is everywhere when being emitted, how is it that it doesn't accumulate? ", "Lots of bad answers here. \nLight, a.k.a. electromagnetic waves, are parts of electromagnetic waves which travel off from their source and thus bring energy away from said source. \nThese waves \"travel\" at the speed of light, in other words the disturbance propagates at the speed of light, due to the massless nature of the electromagnetic interaction.\nWhy is the electromagnetic field massless? Because giving them mass would break a special symmetry which all \"interaction\" fields must obey, gauge symmetry. Thus, the electromagnetic interaction is not \"allowed\" to have mass, if gauge symmetry is imposed on our universe (and to our knowledge it is). ", "I think the question has already been answered well but I was just curious to know if miles per second is a US thing? Here in the UK we use meters per second, which works out as 3x10^8 . Much neater! ", "The answer to this brings to mind a fairly famous quote:\n\n\u201cToday a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.\u201d\n\n\n\u2015 Bill Hicks\n\nNow, that's a little out there, but it starts out right.\n\nAll matter is energy condensed.  Visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum that most things cast off by merely existing, included in that spectrum are things like radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, and so on.  It is just that we have evolved a sensitivity to that narrow band.\n\nThis radiation is emitted more by things that have an abundance of energy.  It is basic physics.  I was wondering of a way to break it down, but it seems google is on top of Eli5 translations.\n\n*Electromagnetic radiation is made when an atom absorbs energy. The absorbed energy causes one or more electrons to change their locale within the atom. When the electron returns to its original position, an electromagnetic wave is produced.*\n\n", "Does me as a human being running or moving faster/more often have an effect on my lifespan? That is to say, if I move faster, will I age slower?", "There's two different theories of light: classical electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics.  They're equivalent for purposes of answering this question so I will use the classical version.\n\nLight propagates because there is a small disturbance in the electric field. The presence of a moving electric field causes a disturbance to be generated in the magnetic field.  Then the presence of a moving magnetic field causes a disturbance to be generated in the electric field.  Then the presence of a moving electric field causes a disturbance to be generated in the magnetic field. And so on.\n\nThe speed of light can be thought of as resulting from the rate at which one field responds to the changes in the other field.\n\nThere are names for these two constants:\n\n  * vacuum permittivity (how the vacuum permits electric fields), written \u03b50\n  * vacuum permeability (how magnetic fields can permeate the vacuum), written \u00b50\n\nThe formula relating these constants is: c^2 = 1/\u03b50\u00b50", "Since Op asked specifically about why light move at all, so the thing is light is an electromagnetic phenomenon. \n\nBasically a charge at rest induces electric field and charge at uniform motions induces magnetic field and last but not the least charge in accelerated motion induces electro-magnetic field which is what electromagnetic waves are. Light  only occupies a tiny spectrum of electromagnetic spectrum with radio, xray , microwave, infrared, uv , gamma etc being others. \n\nThe thing is rate of change of electric field with respect to time (time derivative) induces a magnetic field which varies with space(space derivative). So you have lets say an electric field changing in time this creates a magnetic field which varies with space and since it varies with space it moves in space rather in time and then this space varying magnetic field induces a time varying electric field and so on the process continues. Hence a source(charge) sitting at one place can have electromagnetic wave(radiation) emitted from it. \n\nFor eg antenna, the antenna in your phone or to understand imagine a walkie talkie with its antenna protruding out of it has electrons (charge) moving back and forth in it which creates above described phenomenon of changing electric and magnetic field and thus the wave from it can be received by receiving antenna which starts to make charges on receiving antenna go crazy and move back and forth which is what current is (motion of charges is current) and then everything works.\n\nNotice that in vaccum , no energy is lost so em wave(light) can go on infinitely until there is some stuff to absorb it . And since we have atmosphere and a hell lot of things which absorb it the signal gets weaken and we need repeater and shit.\n\nHope this clears something.\n\n**TL;dr:** wiggling of charge creates em wave(light) which travels effortlessly in vaccum (why is explained by some maths thanks to maxwell and others)  but not so easily in presence of other stuff.Thats why you see light from galaxy billions of light year away because nothing absorbed it.", "Let me simplify a few things for you:\n\n1) Things don't need thrust to keep moving.  If you throw a ball in space, it's just going to keep going, however fast you threw it, forever -- unless something interferes with it, of course.  Gravity is one thing that can interfere.  Air is another.  Light is very small and very fast, but enough gravity or even enough air will interfere with it (the latter is why stars twinkle!).\n\n2) Light is a little strange.  You know how, if you throw a rock into the water, all these waves go out?  Those are waves of water, and they move.  Light is kind of like that, but instead of there being waves of water, it's its own thing.  Think of an atom releasing light, like a squirt gun releasing water.  The squirt gun has less stuff in it, and if there was no air and no gravity, that squirt would go on forever!", "Light travels to a specfic direction because it is fired towards that direction.\n\nIt does not need thrust. Nothing in space needs thrust: once something is set to move in space, it will move forever until it collides with something.\n\n", "can we have a proper, simple explanation please? ", "You know how when you push things, the heavier they are, the harder it is to get them moving ?\n\nWell, light is one of the few things which weigh *nothing*. It's not even \"very small\", it's actually nothing. So it's not just super easy to push light away from you : it is **infinitely** easy.\n\nBecause it is infinitely easy, even if you aren't trying very hard, or if you aren't trying at all, whenever light comes in contact with you, you push it back away and it takes off at the fastest speed anything can take.\n\nYou see, the \"speed of light\" is a pretty bad name, it should actually be \"the speed of particles which have no mass, in a vacuum\". But that is quite a mouthful, so we just say \"the speed of light\" for shorts.\n\nI'm probably missing a few details here. That's the explanation I was planning on giving to my children when I have some, so if you feel like helping me not make them stupid, please do !", "You're getting a lot of over complicated answers here, so I will be brief. Photons have no mass, that's just how they are. It's an intrinsic property of photons in the same what that the density of a material is always the same. Since they have no mass, they have no inertia as you would expect given Newtons equation F=ma. This means you need exactly zero force to make a photon move at the speed of light. ", " >  By the way, this is why time dilation happens: something that's moving very fast relative to you is moving through space, but since they can only travel through spacetime at c, they have to be moving more slowly through time to compensate (from your point of view).\n\nCould someone further explain this?", "That's what's called 'relativity'. For us the concept of space (distance) and time are linked through the concept of light speed 'c' (indeed roughly 8 min per 1 AU).\nEnergy is then linked to mass through E = mc2. As c is a value measured in distance and time, this means that all energy and mass derivitives can be linked to that constant.\nHowever for photons, the concept of mass and time doesn't exist. If a photon would start a stopwatch when it leaves the sun and stop it when it reaches earth it would say 00:00:00. So for the photon there is no distance travelled as start and finish are at the same moment! Mind blowing I understand.\nThis fact means that the 8 min observation is NOT of a thing that travelled, but that energy itself is delivered somehow, as the sun loses energy and you receive it on your solar panel. So light is basically energy flowing away in the form of radiation without becoming mass.\nEdit: a great analogy to this is the lighthouse paradox: if a lighthouse beams a light spot on your bedroom wall, the spot will 'move' as the light in the lighthouse turns. This movement is not a thing like a spider walking there, it's you observing the spot as a thing as some parts of the wall are illuminated and some areas are not.\nThen saying the spot has has a 'speed' would just be your way of expressing differences in a space  &  time reference frame, it is not a real thing with mass (like a spider) so it can't have speed.\nThe same way saying that light has travelled because it 'started' at the sun and it 'ended' at the earth is giving the name 'speed' to something that hasn't got any mass and thus couldn't travel in the first place, just like the light spot on the wall.", "It doesn't need thrust because it doesn't need to accelerate.  That speed (c) ia property of an electromagnetic wave.  Space has three dimensions.  The electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to one another.  And perpendicular to both of those is the direction of the electromagnetic wave (light).  Shake a magnet and ponder.", "I've always wondered *why* light travels at 3e8 m/s though... It seems to be an arbitrary number, but it must have meaning. I wonder if it has something to do with the expansion of the universe.", "How light travels one of the weirdest ways found in Physics. To put simply it moves itself. While we talk about light as a photon or a little tiny massless ball of light, it is also a wave.\n\nThis is an interesting wave that we can describe as two bouncing tennis balls in a long box. One ball is an electric field. When this ball bounces up and down it pushes the second ball our magnetic field. Our magnetic field bounces side to side and also bounces the electric field.\n\nWhile both these balls are bouncing each other which sounds impossible it was shown by careful experiments to be true.\n\nThe cool thing is this type of wave is called a planar wave and with math you can figure out how fast these two balls will move out of the box. Which is the speed of light.", "Okay. Don't know if you're going to get here or not; don't know if this comment has been duplicated elsewhere. In essence: it *doesn't* travel. \n\nWhen a photon leaves the sun and hits the Earth, it is traveling at the speed of light. Due to time dilation, from that photon's perspective... *no time has passed at all.* It's as though something happens on the sun, and happens on the Earth, at the same time. They are momentarily joined, electromagnetically. And that's light. \n\nFrom a non-photon perspective, they seem like discrete occurrences. But there is no photon that travels through space. It departs its source and arrives at its destination simultaneously. ", "Why does it move?  Why doesn't it just sit still?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22pi7o/eli5_why_does_light_travel/cgp58ml", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22pi7o/eli5_why_does_light_travel/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4xv6cv", "title": "How long did Roman/Phoenician/Greek ships last? Were merchants/fleets constantly rebuilding ships to deal with attrition?", "selftext": "I can't imagine that ships and boats built in the ancient world were very resilient to time and sea; but I also know that shipping and seapower were important (less to the Romans -- at least until they finally decided to deal with pirates), but I imagine that keeping ships in tip-top shape would require intense and continual investment.  How long did your typical ship last? And what happened with the ships of large fleets built for a specific war (a la the Greek fleet that fought the Persians; did those turn in to merchant ships during peace?)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xv6cv/how_long_did_romanphoeniciangreek_ships_last_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6j0ekz"], "score": [50], "text": ["Ships in antiquity were serviced constantly. Harbors had extensive facilities for storing and maintaining ships, most famously the ship-sheds that in military harbors housed the warships, but also including large storehouses of rigging and other necessary materials. Maintaining a fleet, private or public, was a long-term investment that was for most states prohibitively expensive because of cost--even at Athens part of the expense for the fleet had to be offloaded onto the trierarchs. We know little about the specifics of private ship maintenance, but there seems to be no reason that private shipowners didn't have similar systems of maintenance for their properties. \n\n > And what happened with the ships of large fleets built for a specific war (a la the Greek fleet that fought the Persians; did those turn in to merchant ships during peace?)\n\nWarships were, well, weapons of war. They were not particularly seaworthy, made and designed to fight battles. They had to be beached at night and did not have room for food and water. Their crews numbered in the hundreds, most of which were rowers who had to be paid and provisioned and without whom the warship was basically useless. Merchant ships were very different, with no oars, relatively small crews, low speed, etc.--they were large cargo-haulers. It'd be like repurposing a tank into an eighteen-wheeler. Warships were frequently mothballed, since the cost of maintaining a fleet of any significant size was so prohibitively high. Generally these ships would be apparently simply abandoned--Plutarch tells an apocryphal story about a young Themistoles being shown the abandoned warships rotting on the shore. I guess it's possible that the timber could be reused, but I've never heard of that happening, and I think it'd be a bit difficult "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3i2qoj", "title": "why are you never woken up in the middle of the night by a sneeze?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i2qoj/eli5_why_are_you_never_woken_up_in_the_middle_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuct2bk", "cuct2wg", "cuctsb7", "cucvt7j", "cucxzk2", "cud0o1e", "cud0tvh", "cud1ya6", "cud3zzz", "cud5l4s", "cud62e4", "cud7oxz", "cud7z79", "cudcszv", "cudd2zd", "cude5h3", "cudeev1", "cudf70t", "cudgkmj", "cudgwyv", "cudh4ki", "cudhou6"], "score": [15, 106, 1473, 3, 34, 4, 4, 20, 10, 3, 2, 2, 5, 3, 3, 12, 10, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Sometimes you do. Just like when you wake up after a terrible nights sleep, it may have been an interrupted sleep where you woke up many times during, but only for a couple seconds at a time. When you sneeze during sleep, you usually wake for a very short period of time before going back to sleep. As the event is insignificant you wouldn't usually remember it the next morning.", "If while sleeping, you don't feel tickling, how do you explain the shaving cream/feather prank?", "Is your question why we don't sneeze during sleep, or whether we wake up to sneeze and don't remember it? \n\nIf your question is the former, while part of the reason is due to the lack of airflow and movement while you're asleep, there's also the idea that during sleep, the brain does not receive (as many) signals from the motor neurons responsible for reflexes such as sneezing due to 'REM atonia'. You would need much greater stimulation than a little tickle to be woken up from that state. \n\nHere's a nice summary of both of these concepts: _URL_0_", "For me it's not so much sneezes as coughs, brought on by post nasal drip when I happen to roll onto my back during the night. It can and does wake me up. The only remedy is to get up, go into the bathroom and blow my nose. That will usually take care of it \u2014 until the next time.", "But ... sometimes I am?  This question doesn't even make sense to me.  Are you asking why it's never personally happened to you?", "Another thing to consider is that you constantly wake up during the night - after each REM phase. You don't remember that, do you? Why would you remember a sneeze?", "It's happened to me.  It's at the pre-sneeze inhaling part, not the actual sneeze itself.  Maybe you have just never slept near something you are allergic too?", "I have woken up from sneezes and coughing. Normally by a severe sneeze or cough though. I assume the better answers are correct and that if you do wake when you sneeze or cough, it is during lighter sleep cycles. ", "I woke myself up from a sneeze. Early morning, deep sleep, dreaming hard. I scared myself so much that I sat up in bed going, \"AH! AH!\" before I quickly surmised it was a random sneeze, my sneeze. So weird. My dog and cat responded with glares of severe annoyance and shame.", "I'm pretty sure I've sneezed myself awake, but I have narcolepsy, so it's not like you can generalize from that. Others have mentioned sleep paralysis and desensitized nervous system reasons, which are probably accountable for a lot of it.", "Huh? I'm woken by sneezes and bloody noses as well.  \nWake up right as the blood starts flowing, it's actually cold at first so it's kind of weird.", "I remember this being posted in TIL before. It was said that the part of your brain that controls sneezing is also asleep. I'll see if I can find the post.\n\n[Here it is.](_URL_0_)", "Oh we sneeze in our sleep, that's for sure. If you ever damage multiple ribs you will find out first hand.", "Related-unrelated: I sneezed in bed one morning and my friend, who was still sleeping right beside me, bolted upright and shouted, \"WHAT THE FUCK?\" and then flopped back down and went straight back to sleep. I had to hide in the bathroom to avoid waking everyone in the house up with my obnoxious laughter.", "I had terrible allergies for most of my life, and I've definitely woken myself up with a sneeze many many times. A night. For years.\n\nMost nights it was just once or twice, and occasionally I'd sleep through the night fine, but sometimes I'd be up just about all night sneezing.\n\nTL;DR: allergy shots are amazing", "My wife once sneezed on my face right before she woke up and had no idea.  It was one of the most traumatic experiences of our relationship.  She doesn't believe me.", "Late to the party, but it can take up to 6 minutes to realize that you are awake from your sleep. I didn't know this until I had a sleep study done to find out I was constantly waking up in my sleep, which felt like a solid sleep to me.", "Kind of related... when I cry when I'm awake, my nose gets all stuffed up and my face gets all red... when I cry in my sleep (more frequently than I would like to admit), no stuffy nose, no red face, just a tear stained pillow and face.  Not sure how to explain that one.", "You do, i may, or may not, wake my kids up by poking a hair up their nose, cos if they sleep during the day, they stay awake all night asking for drinks, scared, etc. Its very effective at waking them quickly and they don't often drift back. They sneezed a few times, depends how deep the hair goes. Allegedly.", "My dad woke himself up in his sleep with a sneeze the other night! He was terrified, but it happened. He also suffers from apnia. Not sure if that has anything to do with it. ", "I just want to say, I'm surprised by all the people who sneeze in their sleep.  I've also never sneezed in my sleep that I'm aware of.  Also being married for 15 years and having 2 kids, have never heard them sneeze in their sleep either.  Maybe there is some reason that some people do and some don't.", "When I was about 8 years old I woke up in the middle of the night when I sneezed. I had terrible allergies and my sinuses were so clogged that when I sneezed I burst my ear drum in my left year.. It was a bloody, painful mess. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/sleep-on-sneeze-not/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.m.webmd.com/allergies/features/11-surprising-sneezing-facts"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d7mdq", "title": "the movie birdman", "selftext": "I watched Birdman last night, with little success. Can someone explain what some of these things represent? Or are they meant to be taken literally?\n\nBirdman following Riggin around.\n\nThe drummer spontaneously appearing.\n\nHis jumping from various places and flying.\n\nTelekinesis.\n\nI'm just really confused about the point of the movie and what everything meant. Can someone please help?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d7mdq/eli5_the_movie_birdman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct2koo1", "ct2kt7x", "ct2l4jp", "ct2lml2", "ct2pu54"], "score": [7, 22, 16, 6, 2], "text": ["it's about an actor trying to succeed without his alter ego, yet he ultimately sacrafices his all/life giving the best performance of his life living off his alter ego", "This is a somewhat subjective question as some people may interpret these things to mean something else but here's my humble take on it:\nThe drummer did the soundtrack for the movie. His being put in there serves as source music (music the actors can here) and nonsource music (the score).\nAs for Birdman and the telekinesis and flying - those are all part of Riggin's psyche. Birdman was an easy roll that he had a lot of success with but he has tried to forget in order to become a more \"serious actor\". It was a large part of who he was and forgetting that and the other life changes he's made (divorce, estranged daughter, etc.) are taking their toll on his mind.", "As far as I can tell, pretty much everything \"superhuman\" was in his head. \n\nHe's suffering a mid-life crisis and trying to give his life purpose outside of what he used to be, but it's not going so well.\nAs a coping mechanism he develops some kind of personality disorder with his super ego manifesting as it's own entity.\n\nMost everything you see telekinesis-wise happens when he's the only character in the room, with the exception of the light falling on the guy's head early on, which he convinces himself was him though it was just a horrible accident. \n\nEDIT: Then there are the flying scenes (How could I forget?!)\nThese seem to be in his head aswell, I believe. It's all very Tyler Durden-y.", "To be blunt and simple, Birdman is the manifestation of Riggin's cracking psyche as he faces the biggest obstacle in his career and the crippling reality of his insecurity. His early flying scene is undercut directly by a cab driver yelling about his fare. The ending is a complete metaphor for his moving on as a man and his ascension out of the rut he'd allowed himself to be trapped in. He reinvents himself in the city of reinvention, New York.\r\rAs for the drummer, it's a stylistic choice that helps to connect scene at times and fill gaps in seamless cuts. In a way it creates a more meta feeling within a very meta movie, almost a wink at the audience that yes we know it's a movie and yes it's a bit fantastical. \r\rI could say a lot more about this film (I loved it) but I won't go down the rabbit hole on ELI5. Hope this helps. ", "All of the supernatural stuff was metaphorical. The manifestations of Birdman were all in Riggin's head. When Riggin was telekinetically throwing stuff around he was actually just throwing stuff around normally. The filmmakers chose to portray it that way to illustrate the relationship between him and his past. He was trying to escape from his past as Birdman but at the same time he missed that power. He kept retreating into that fantasy world because of how unhappy he was with the real world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3l2al1", "title": "What was Germany's  &  Belgium's reaction when Holland legalized marijuana in the 70's? How drastically did they have to change their drug laws to keep up? (if at all)", "selftext": "Quick edit - I should have used the term decriminalized instead of legalized. \n\nBasically, if someone were to buy pot that is taxed by the Dutch government then travel to, say, Belgium where pot is illegal  &  they're  incarcerated  &  sent to trial all on the Belgian tax payer's dime, wouldn't the law makers in Belgium want to have a word with the law makers in Holland? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l2al1/what_was_germanys_belgiums_reaction_when_holland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv2n1md"], "score": [50], "text": ["No historian and I hope my answer doesn't violate the subreddit rules.\n\nFirst of all, technically the Netherlands never *legalized* Marijuana. They only *tolerate* coffeeshops selling it and people consuming it. It's actually a quite absurd situation, because growing is *not* tolerated, and *de jure* coffeeshop owners break the law when they purchase large quantities. A couple of years ago, growing operations were even partly outsourced to Germany (where it's also illegal, but police weren't really expecting large-scale growing operations in abandoned warehouses).\n\nNow to your question, I can only answer for Germany: They didn't change any laws. What happened in the last years/decades, however, was that the federal states set recommended limits under which prosecutors should drop the charges. These limits vary from state to state. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, and Rhineland-Palatinate charges are usually dropped if you carry less than 10 g, while in all other states the limit is 6 g. \n\nHowever, as I said before, these are only *recommendations*. Prosecutors might still decide to press charges, or to drop charges under certain conditions, such as community service or mandatory counseling. Bavarian authorities are notorious for pressing charges for absolutely tiny amounts.\n\nThen there's another aspect to this: While no penal charges might be pressed, people who own a driver's license (and that is basically everyone over 18) will most likely lose it, because you're considered \"unable to responsibly take part in traffic\". To get your license back you need to pass a \"medical and psychological examination\" (*Medizinisch-psychologische Untersuchung, MPU*, aka *Idiotentest*).\n\nWit the advance of rapid tests for THC and its metbolites in sweat and urine, people don't even have to carry marijuana while driving or be under acute influence, but having consumed several days ago can be sufficient for losing the license. There is currently a discussion going on to establish set limits for THC in the blood, because currently this limit is more or less equal to the analytical detection limit.\n\nAs a final remark, medicinal marijuana is legal since 2011, but only for very few conditions, mainly multiple sclerosis (MS)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5a1mhf", "title": "how did we decide how long a second was?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a1mhf/eli5_how_did_we_decide_how_long_a_second_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9czct8", "d9czeva", "d9d54gh", "d9d5pse", "d9dbop7", "d9dcbsf", "d9dd5i2", "d9ddehr", "d9dgoie", "d9dhy0s", "d9dilhe", "d9dj3cz", "d9dja4w", "d9dl5q4", "d9dmtgy", "d9dns29", "d9dormt", "d9dpbcj", "d9dsvu4", "d9dtjeq", "d9dwfyg"], "score": [21, 3315, 55, 1854, 4, 13, 17, 8, 4, 252, 2, 4, 4, 32, 3, 22, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The old babylonians decided it.\n\nThey invented one of the first ever number systems - a base 60 system to be exact.\n\nSo, the story goes that they wanted to divide the day into 24 equally long chunks - we call those hours. \n\nThen they went further and divided the hour into 60 equally long chunks - we call those minutes.\n\nThen they went even further and divided the minute into 60 equally long chunks - we call those seconds.", "The Egyptians were the first to split the full cycle of day and night up into 24 hours, a system that was later improved upon by Greek astronomers Ptolemy and Hipparchus who further split it up in a sexagesimal (60 as a base) system, and that's where the second comes into play. First you divide an hour into 60 parts, creating the minute, and then you divide that a *second* time, hence the name, creating 1/60th of a minute. Further splitting up a second in sixthieths is called a third, but that's not really used nowadays.\n\nAt the time it wasn't possible to keep time that accurate, but towards the end of the 16th century mechanical clocks were able to measure seconds accurately, which is also when the English word for them came into use.\n\n**Edit: Since so many people ask \"Why use 60 as a base?\", the answer is because it's easy to divide it by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12 15, 20 and 30, making it a solid base for counting.**", "My physics textbook explains to me that to the babylonians the numbers 7, 12 and 60 has long religious ties. Years are measured by the 4 seasons, then by the phases of the moon, days by the sunrise and sunset. Day and night consisted of 12 hours. Hours were split into 60 parts, and too were minutes. Minutes meaning small parts in Latin and seconds meaning as in second in line. \n\nThey measured seconds based on a healthy man's resting heart rhythm. Roughly the time between two heartbeats.", "This comment was posted by u/lallapalalable last time somebody asked something similar.\n\nEdit: Since this has so much attention I just want to draw extra attention the the fact that this is not my post. I literally just copy-pasted from u/lallapalalable\n \nGo give them some upvotes instead.\n\n------------------\n\n\nSort of true; days/months/years are kind of standard, but the concepts of seconds, minutes, and hours has a varied history. Sit back, I got home from work early and the adderall is flowin' so I wrote up a nice history of units of time:\n\nEarly man tracked time day by day using apparent time, or time based on sundials and other observations of nature. I can't find too much info right now but as far as I can tell there was no standard unit of time shorter than a day among any major civilization for a while.\n\nThe Egyptians defined hours as 1/12th of either day or night, and had seasonal variations on the length of their hour.\n\nGreek astronomers were the first to establish the modern hour, by dividing the day into six parts and then dividing those parts into four more. They also had an early version of the minute, which was how long it took for the sun to travel one degree along the sky, or about four minutes.\n\nThe Babylonians went a little nuts, also dividing the day into six parts, but then divided each part by sixty for their sub-units, up to at least six subdivisions, the smallest individual units being as accurate as two microseconds. However, instead of using a 1/24th of a day hour like the Greeks, they had a 1/12th day hour (120 min), but did use the 1/360th day minute, and something resembling a second called the barelycorn, about 3.5 modern seconds and still used in the hebrew calendar today as the helek.\n\nIn 1000, a Persian scholar named al-Biruni first termed the word second when he defined the period of time between two new moons as a figure of days, hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths. The minute was the first subdivision of the hour by 60, then the second, and so on. Roger Bacon did this again in the 1200's, but started with hours, giving a more accurate figure. The term third still exists in some languages, such as Polish, but fourths were apparently too small for any practical use and fell out of style with the general population.\n\nThe late 1500s what the first time a true standard second came to being with the advent of mechanical clocks, so that the time could be measured objectively from mean-time instead of deriving it from the apparent-time. The first clock with a second hand was built between 1560-70and 1579 saw the first clock with actual markings denoting the seconds. However, they weren't very accurate, and the second remained arbitrary from machine to machine and unable to be reliably measured.\n\nIn 1644 it was realized that a pendulum of a specific length would have an oscillation period of exactly two seconds, and by 1670 William Clement had tinkered with the physics enough to build a clock precise enough that the second was now an established unit of time. By 1862 it was established that the second would be the base unit of time for all scientific research, along with the millimeter and milligram, by The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), defining the second as 1/86,400th of a solar day by the 1940s.\n\nFrom there we've just been refining the accuracy of what we call a second, accounting for the Earth's axis and ever-so slowly declining rotational velocity, to the point where it's not even measured by observations based on the earth and sun, but by the distance light travels in a vacuum or how many vibrations a cesium atom makes. We've divided time so hard that to do so any further wouldn't make sense; events in subatomic physics just don't happen quickly enough for smaller units of time to be measured.\n\nBut yeah, that's where we got our units of time. It's such a ubiquitous thing that we've had literally our entire existence to hash it all out, and while today we're all in agreement about the standard subdivisions and have been for a long time, there were discrepancies in the past and in the context of your post it must have been a special kind of frustrating trying to figure out what two people mean by \"hour\"\n\n*However, while we all agree on the day/hour/second situation, the annual calendar is still pretty sporadic in it's appearance. The lunar month may seem standard, but there are many South-East Asian cultures that have their own unique way of dividing the year. I won't get into that, because it's mostly a headache and I'm kinda losing steam on this anyway, but long story short we're far from having a universal system here.", "If I recall correctly it goes all the way back to Babylon where they used a numerical system based on base 60 for astronomy and geometry. (Which is why circles have 360 degrees too). A lesser known fact is that each degree in a circle can be divided into 60 minutes and each minute can be divided a second time into seconds. (Hence the name second).     \nObviously these subdivisions only make sense on very large scale.    \nSince clocks were also round, hours were also eventually divided into minutes and seconds.    \nNot sure how they came up with 24 hours in a day (probably they came up with 12 at some point and than just doubled it to include night)", "Can anyone actually give an ELI5 explanation? And not an ELI30?", "So first off, we pretty much just started with seasons and days. Seasons let us know when it was time to harvest crops.\n\nEventually, we wanted to divide the days, so we looked to the sky, and divided the day into 6 segments before the sun hit high noon, and six segments after. We then had one segment of time each for dawn and dusk, and divided the night into 10 segments. This gave us 24 hours.\n\nEventually, we defined these hours as being equal amounts of time, and not just based on the sun's position, and wanted to divide these hours for this reason or that, so we divided each hour into 60 equal *minute* (read: mi-nyoot) segments of time. This gave us the minute. (read: min-nit)\n\nAfter further history, we had reason to measure things to higher degrees of accuracy, so we went in a *second* time and split this measurement of time into 60 more parts. This is how we get the second- they are the second division of an hour.\n\nSo at that point, we had the second defined as (1/24) * (1/60) * (1/60) of the day, or about 0.001157% of the day. Today, however, we define it based on the radioactive cycles of a cesium 133 atom. Specifically, one second passes during 9,192,631,770 cycles.", "What I always found fascinating is that time doesn't really exist in nature... nature seems to operate on some sort of rhythm and time is our way of measuring it. It's a measurement system .. kind of like the distance, temperature, etc. a clock is like a ruler \ud83d\ude03", "REAL ELI5 Answer: Because everyone has a clock already ticking inside them. When you are really quiet, and you can't even hear your own breathing, your heart beats (ticks) 1..ba-bum, 2..ba-bum, 3..ba-bum...\n\nTrue fact: Average human heart beats 60x per minute while at rest. And people liked to use their own bodies for measuring and counting - we measured in 'feet' and even in 'hands' while measuring horses, for example.\n\nOK, I get it a second is a human heart beat. But why is it called a second? Well...\n\nA fairly long enough time passes - lets mark it at 60 heart beats, since ancient people knew 60 was a special number (mathematically speaking it is a handy number for lots of reasons but that's another story) and we shall call that unit of time a minute, with 60 of those making up an hour which is (for 5 year old humans) a significantly longer period of time (just try asking a 5 year old kid that is not sleepy to lie still for 1 minute and then for 60 of them... It feels like a really long time) .\n\nAnyway, with a second being the smaller of those two units of an hour, a minute is the first unit, and the 'second' ... Well, can you guess how the second  it's name? Yes, because it is the 'second' division of an hour. There you go.", "Short answer....\n\nOk, I lied. It's not short. **TL;DR:** it comes from the Earth's rotation. First came hours (1/12 of daytime, or 1/24 of a full rotation), then minutes (1/60 of an hour), then seconds (1/60 minute).  Why those numbers?  Read on.\n\nPeople have always liked dividing things up into numbers that can be split evenly among groups of lots of different sizes. The most popular such number is probably 12 (dozens of eggs or doughnuts or muffins or cookies; larger pizzas are sometimes cut into 12 slices), since 12 things can be split evenly among 2, 3, 4, or 6 people (or 1 or 12, of course). \n\nSo historically, lots of things have been divided into 12 parts. There were originally 12 ounces in a pound (the word \"ounce\" comes from the Latin word for \"twelfth\"). And the day (sunrise to sunset, that is) was divided up into 12 parts, which we English-speakers now call \"hours\". (Who first did this - the Chinese, the Sumerians, the Babylonian conquerors of the Sumerians - is a matter of some debate.)\n\nPrecise time measurement is a relatively recent invention; hours, usually as determined by a sundial (meaning they weren't all the same length), were good enough for thousands of years. But when we started to need units smaller than hours, we again wanted to divide them up into a convenient-for-grouping number. You might expect that we would just pick 12 again and have 12ths of 12ths, but that's not what happened. Don't get me wrong; 12 is great - like I said, you can distribute evenly around a group of 2,3,4, or 6 - but you'll notice that list skips a number: 5. If you want to be able to handle 5 groups with a whole number of pieces each, you need to bump the total number of pieces all the way up to 12 *times* 5, which is 60. (Presumably for this same reason, those Sumerian/Babylonians I mentioned actually counted in base 60, which related to how we got 360\u00b0 in a circle.)\n\nSo the hour was divided into 60 parts, called the \"small part of the hour\". Eventually, of course, we needed even smaller pieces, so they renamed those as the \"first small part of the hour\", and divided them into 60 again, making the new smaller unit the \"second small part of the hour\". (And yes, there was also a \"third small part of the hour\", and at least some documented uses of even smaller subdivisions; but these days those have been replaced by decimal fractions of the second.)\n\nThose \"whateverth small part of the hour\" names are kind of unwieldy, however, so naturally they got abbreviated. Back when there was only one small part, the first one got abbreviated to just \"small\". When the second one came along, it was naturally abbreviated \"second\". Except all of the scientific writing where these units were first needed   was done in Latin, so the names were likewise Latin. From Latin for \"small\" we get \"minute\", and from Latin for \"second\" we get \"second\". \n\nSo that's the answer to your question: if you take the average day(time period in temperate zones) and divide it into 12, then divide those 12 parts into 60, and then divide those 60 parts into 60 again, you get the second. It's ultimately based on the Earth's rotation - a 60th of a 60th of a twelfth of a half of it, which is 1/86,400.\n\nBut the Earth is a lousy clock by modern standards - its rotation is uneven. So while that's the source of the unit, it's no longer its definition. These days we have a much more precise definition based on counting cesium radiation emissions.  But the reason we picked the specific number of emissions in the definition is because that's how many there were in the traditional second based on the Earth's rotation, at least at the time they wrote up the new definition.\n", "The documentary \"How We Got to Now\" talks about it in one episode (#2).\n\nThis documentary is amazing, I highly recommend to watch all episodes, but you can watch only the second episode, it's about time.", "There are lots of great answers here, but I want to share [James May's  Head Squeeze Video](_URL_0_) on the topic.\n\nIt's entertaining, visual, concise and easy to digest, perfect for the Explain Like I'm Five answer.\n\nAnd it ends with really, joking on the fact that the modern accepted second, as opposed to the classically defined measurement, is an incredibly complicated bit of math based on the fluxuating rotation of the earth.", "It's defined based on the frequency of a cesium 133 atom, the time it takes cesium 133 to radiate 9,192,631,770 times is by definition 1 second. In fact, automatic clocks also work based on this fact.  Here's a youtube video explaining it: _URL_0_", "BONUS: WHERE THE NAMES COME FROM\n\nBack when using 1/60 as a common part, the common word for 1/60th of something was a minute (my-newt) part. So, 1/60th of an hour became a minute part of an hour, and eventually just a minute.\n\nWhat about dividing up the minute itself? Well, that was 1/60 of 1/60 of an hour, or a minute part of a minute part of an hour. It was easier just to say it was a minute part to the second degree. This is how the name \"seconds\" came about for 1/60 of a minute.", "A one meter pendulum takes roughly one second to swing in one direction. A length of roughly a meter is also a convenient length for the pendulum of a standing clock. A meter is also 1 ten-millionth of the distance from Paris to the North Pole.", "A little late, but thought this was an interesting tidbit to add.\n\nOne second is equivalent to the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.\n\nThis is the atomic way to measure 1 second. Anyone anywhere who could measure this physical event would have the precise measurement of a second. If all the clocks on earth disappeared, this is how we could accurately recreate them. \n\nEdit: Just thought I'd add, I didn't just pick a random element to describe this. This is the official measurement for a second in SI units (International System of Units). ", "From the oscillation cycle of a cesium atom. That is how atomic clocks work, and how the duration of the current second has been agreed upon.", "Way way back in the days before time, in the early dawn of the current cycle of civilization, after the great fire and floods that cleansed the Earth of the ones who came before, there was a place of great knowledge and mystery. It was called Sumer. The people who lived there counted in a way that would seem strange to us today.\n\nThey counted in sets of 60 instead of sets of 10. So everything that they \"completed\" was usually counted up in a set of 60 or some other number related to 60, like 12. Remember that 12 times 5 is 60. Fun fact, we still use 12 a lot (dozen, 12 hours on a clock face, 12 signs in the Zodiac... etc.) and we have the Sumerians to thank for that. Actually we have a lot to be thankful for because of the Sumerians.\n\nOK OK, but how did we get the second and measure how long it is? Well those Sumerians and the people that followed them, people called the Egyptians, Greeks, and even the British, among others, well they all really liked Astronomy. They found ways to use the regular movements of the sun, moon, and stars to keep time. And even though the British came many MANY years after the Sumerians, they sometimes still used their way of counting in 60. So even though they had no way to measure the length of a second, they knew that a day could be evenly measured into 24 hours (or \"horos\" as the Greeks called them, something we also still use today when we read a horoscope). How? Well at night they could count how many constellations passed through the sky. And they counted 12. And they knew that when the sun was out that there were also 12 constellations because they figured out that the sun was sometimes opposite the moon when the Earth's shadow caused a lunar eclipse. Maybe that's getting a little complicated though...\n\nAnyway, sometime not too long ago a man invented the first clock. And he had to regulate the clock so it fit into what people already knew about the passing of time. They knew that there were 24 hours and that each hour was divided and subdivided by 60 (thanks again Sumerians). So after a lot of tuning and adjustment, the modern second was born!", "I came across [this article] (_URL_0_) while searching for it.\n >  Humans have been using time as a tool to keep track of events and differentiate the past, present and future for thousands of years. However, if it was measured  as an absolute, with the Big Bang taking place as the first second, then it would be incredibly tedious to keep track of. Therefore, time measurement is actually the process of comparing the duration and intervals between events, not the actual sequence of events\n\n >  Temporal measurement started about 6,000 years ago, when the moon was used to keep track of passing time. Calendars then began to appear, featuring the apparent movement of the Sun as the method of measurement. Gradually, people felt the need to keep track of time change during a single day, so the \u2018clock\u2019 was born. The numbers twelve and thirteen came to feature prominently in many cultures, at least partly due to their similarity with the number of months in a year\n\n >  Since 1967, the definition of the base unit for time has been chosen as the \u2018second\u2019. Under the International System of Units, which assigns SI units to physical quantities, one second is defined in relation to the time it takes for a cesium atom to oscillate. Just to be technically accurate, one second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of a cesium 133 atom. \n\n", "Day represented as circle (dial) . They all divide nicely into 360 so chop a circle nicely.\n\nDay chopped into 24 = hour\n\nHour chopped into 60 = minute\n\nMinute chopped into 60 = second\n\n\n\n\n\n\"In 1267, the medieval scientist Roger Bacon, writing in Latin, defined the division of time between full moons as a number of hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths (horae, minuta, secunda, tertia, and quarta) after noon on specified calendar dates\"\n\n\n_URL_0_", "The international standard for one second is defined using cesium-133.\n\nUnder the International System of Units (via the International Committee for Weights and Measures, or CIPM), since 1967 the second has been defined as the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXRVtfCpLr4"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXRVtfCpLr4"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/duration-second-changing.html"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second#Based_on_subdivisions_of_the_moon_cycle"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second"]]}
{"q_id": "37vidj", "title": "how is it not a violation of our 8th amendment rights when a judge \"makes an example\" of someone?", "selftext": "I've been wondering this for a while, especially when I've seen a lot of examples of it recently like the Florida couple who got 14 years for having sex on a beach and the Silk Road founder getting life. In both examples the judges were quoted about how they were making an example of them. How is that not cruel and unusual punishment by punishing someone harsher to make a statement? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37vidj/eli5_how_is_it_not_a_violation_of_our_8th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crq4muv", "crq4pba", "crq866i", "crq9amn", "crqfgcc"], "score": [2, 22, 18, 7, 2], "text": ["I believe for most crimes there is a range for the sentences. For a non true example, burglary could be 6 months to 60 years. It is up to the judges discretion to decide how long to give within that range.\n\nTypically things are on the shorter end but a judge looking to make an example of someone would pick the longer end. Considering this can be compounded by having multiple crimes committed and tried at the same time things can get crazy.\n\n", "I think they, the courts, view it as handing out the maximum sentence. Aka not going easy on them and dropping charges. \n\nThey are well within the law so it's not cruel or unusual.", "It has to do with sentencing. I pirate music. Fines max out at let's say $5,000 a song and I have 200. I judge may say that I made a stupid mistake, and my life shouldn't be ruined having to pay $1 million, so he says I only owe market price, $1 a song, plus have to do community service. \n\nTurns out, many people take advantage of this. So in a case, the judge says enough is enough, here's the full fine. \n\nViolating the 8th amendment would be giving a death penalty for pirating", "Giving the maximum sentence allowed by law (which is what \"making an example\" is) is in no way cruel or unusual punishment. ", "The law doesn't say you have to treat all criminals exactly the same, the law says they have to be treated fairly. \n\nIt is like saying you aren't promised a perfect trial but you are promised a fair one. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "73m5l2", "title": "can an ''unhealthy'' body be restored?", "selftext": "Hi! I'm a 23 year old student.\n\nIn recent years I've lived quite unhealthy. I've drank alcohol almost every day, ate fastfood every few days, didn't do a lot of exercise and gained weight (176 lbs to 220 lbs)\n\nNow I'm motivated to eat healthy, lose fat by doing cardio and build muscle by working out, drinking lots of water etc.\n\nBut.. isn't the damage on my body  &  organs already done (by living like that for years)? Will this change of lifestyle ''restore'' the lack of vitamins and e.g. abuse of alcohol on my liver or will it just prevent things from getting worse?\n\nI apologize for my horrible explanation.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73m5l2/eli5_can_an_unhealthy_body_be_restored/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnralbw", "dnranch", "dnrc4m3", "dnrcwxp", "dnrd6gc", "dns8311"], "score": [11, 2, 10, 4, 4, 6], "text": ["The awesome thing about the human body is its remarkable capacity for healing. 23 is plenty young. Get to the healthy living and chances are good that you'll be fine.\n\n ", "It depends on the actual nature of the damage, but unless it was bad enough that a medical professional has told you it's irreversible, the damage can be repaired. Your body does have self-repair systems, and while those can be blocked or overcome (they aren't limitless), they can handle most of the sports of problems you've described given time (so long as you give then the chance by minimising the stress placed on them). The liver, in particular, is one of the organs *most* capable of regeneration.\n\nYou'll probably never have *quite* the health prospects that someone who didn't do as you did would, but you can still get close enough not to make any practical difference.", "Im 31. smoked for 15 years, put on 20 kg from junk food and not exercising. Drunk like a fish from 18 to 22 i did give up drinking at 22 for health issues tho. But have smoked weed for 15 years.\n\nLast year i got married and desided i needed to clean up my body so i started vaping to quit smoking and now im smoke free for 16 months.\n\nIv started doing bodyweight training at home and have stopped eating the extra crap and eating healthier. 6 weeks ago i dropped my daily calories from 2400 to 1800 and have lost 9 kg.\n\nIve not only noticed a massive difference in my job and my energy levels. Im no long short of breath half away through the day. I have noticed my gut is flatter (not abs yet) i can do my training a butt load easier and go longer.\n\nSo in short yes you can fix the damage done.\n\nI dont know how true it is but ive heard the human body replaces every cell in the body every 7 years. beleaving this gave me the motivation to start so i dont care if it not true, maybe it can give you hope to chance sooner than i.", "I used to work out with a guy in his 60s who was fit  &  toned. When he would see very out of shape people new in the gym, he would walk over  &  encourage them. One day he showed me the paper he was pulling out of his pocket to show them--a photo of himself at 400 pounds!\n\nThink of your body now as your greatest project, your masterpiece. It will amaze you  &  skyrocket your sense of self. And the more you exercise, the more your body craves healthful eating  &  living, so it becomes a waterfall of successes. Don't let \"backsliding\" get you down--just pick up again like when you were a toddler  &  tripped but kept going.\n\nYou got this already by wanting it. Make it happen--it's the only body you get  &  it's never too late!", "Many complications that come from poor diet, drinking alcohol, lack of exercise develop over extended periods of time. For instance, plaque buildup that could cause heart attacks or strokes do not develop over night. \n\nLifestyle changes are absolutely the best way to prevent these long term complications from happening. You are at a perfect age where starting healthy habits now will really pay off in the long run!", "Different answers for different sorts of \"unhealthy\"\n\n > alcohol\n\nYou might have run your liver ragged, but livers can regenerate themselves. Even if you cut half of it out.   As the body's poison filter, it has a lot of experience with being abused.  If you've been an alcoholic for years, then... there's more scar tissue in the liver than there is normal liver and it fails.  Don't do that. If you do, then you'd need surgery to transplant in a new liver, which as far as organs go, are pretty ok with jumping bodies. \n\n > ate fastfood every few days\n\nEh, there's a bunch of junk in there whose main function is to kill all the bacteria that shortens shelf-life rather than providing nutrients to you.   It's not really even that bad, but there's some evidence that it'll make you fat....\n\n > didn't do a lot of exercise \n\nYes, this can be corrected. Work out and you can build muscle. For extreme cases, like those astronauts who  suffered muscle dystrophy, they need pretty intense physical therapy so they can build up enough muscle mass to walk again.  If you \"didn't do a lot of exercise\", then you're... what? A little less muscular than ideal? Big deal. \n\n > and gained weight (176 lbs to 220 lbs)\n\nThat's a little bit of a bigger deal.  Let me stress that weight gain is more about eating too many calories than lack of exercise burning it off.  \n\n176 to 220?   When you're 23?  Well you're not in highschool anymore. Your body changes.  And it's actually an un-pegged value, we'd also need your height for that to really mean anything. You're likely fat ([That is, if you're under 6'6\"](_URL_1_)), and that carries some health issues, but it's really not all that bad. And it's completely recoverable. Eat less, exercise more, eat healthier.     If you're under 6', then you're obese and yes, you should lose some weight. \n\nLosing weight as opposed to not being fat in the first place can result in excess skin, which catches some people by surprise. That can be corrected with surgery, but it ain't cheap.  Some people have tight skin and don't notice when they lose weight. \n\nThere's a lot of stuff about metabolism and how hungry you get with losing weight, but I'm not sure how that really works. \n\nEDIT: Oh man, and I started this whole thing to say that if you cripple or lose or limb then [they're working on that](_URL_0_). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/73ied3/one_of_the_most_advanced_bionic_arms/", "https://www.calculateme.com/bmi-calculator/bmi-of-a-220-pound-person"]]}
{"q_id": "3darpr", "title": "How were the WWII atomic bombs transported from their place of creation to within bombing distance of Japan? What sort of convoy/security/secrecy was utilized?", "selftext": "Super curiuos about the logistics of getting this precious cargo halfway around the world", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3darpr/how_were_the_wwii_atomic_bombs_transported_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct3jj39", "ct42934"], "score": [32, 9], "text": ["Have you ever seen the movie \"Jaws\"?  At least part of the story is there in the film.\n\nI am not sure how the parts for the bomb made there was to San Fransisco, but hopefully someone else can add that in.\n\nIt was in San Fransisco that the parts for the bomb and the enriched uranium were secretly loaded on the USS Indianapolis for transport to the island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas (right next door to Guam).  The Indianapolis left San Fransisco and sailed to Pearl Harbor and from there sailed secretly and unescorted to Tinian where the bomb was assembled and loaded onto the Enola Gay (there is an interesting monument to the whole thing on Tinian).\n\nSo Jaws.... after leaving Tinian the USS Indianapolis went down to Guam and from there sailed alone to join the fleet at Leyete Gulf; however the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.  Over a quarter of the crew went down with the ship; another half died in the waters after the ship sunk as they had little food, little water- sailors began hallucinating and- as relayed in the movie Jaws (and Shark Week on year)- the survivors suffered numerous shark attacks as they waited to be found.  Out of a crew of nearly 1,200- only 317 survived- most having died from exposure to the elements and dehydration; no one knew what had happened to ship for several days and even then the first rescue came from a lone seaplane that landed in the water near the survivors and did its best to help them out while larger ships eventually sailed to their aid as well.\n\n", "They broke the bomb parts in several distinct, secret shipments code-named BRONX (irreplaceable parts, like fissile material) and BOWERY (parts that could be replaced within several weeks, like the other components of the bomb). \n\nMost of the heavy components \u2014 the non-nuclear parts for the gun bomb (with many spares), and the ~80 lb high-enriched uranium \"projectile\" for the Little Boy bomb were from Los Alamos to Albuquerque on July 14st, in \"a closed black truck and seven cartloads of security guards\" (Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb), and from there were flown to Hamilton field in San Francisco in two DC-3s. There another security convoy moved them to the USS Indianapolis at Hunter's Point, San Francisco, and which left for Tinian on July 16th (just hours after the Trinity test was completed). The containers were welded to the deck of the Indianapolis and kept under 24-hour armed guard.\n\nThe Indianapolis arrived at Tinian on July 26th (apparently a record run) and unloaded those components. (And was sunk soon after, although I would maybe not emphasize the danger to the bomb here, since the sinking took place in a much more dangerous zone than the transport route.) \n\nThe ~55 lb uranium \"target\" was shipped in three pieces on three different, otherwise-empty C-54's; they arrived on Tinian on the 28th and 29th of July (the last at 2am). \n\nSeveral non-nuclear parts for several plutonium bombs were sent on five C-54s from Albuquerque, arriving by July 23rd. The plutonium pit and neutron initiator of the Fat Man bomb was transported on a Command C-54 from Albuquerque to Hamilton Field in California, and from there to Tinian on two B-29s, arriving on July 28th. The final ballistic casings for two plutonium bombs arrived on July 28th. \n\nSo, we might summarize: many components were purposefully shipped separately, both as a matter of logistics (they didn't have everything ready at exactly the same time) and redundancy (if one shipment failed, they will not lose everything). The security mostly consisted of having guards, quiet convoys at night, and the dedicated transport methods in all cases other than the Indianapolis. The whole thing was done with code-names and secrecy, as with the rest of the bomb project. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2id039", "title": "why dont mass produced foods have as much vitamins/minerals/heathly stuff injected into them as possible for a healthier population.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2id039/eli5_why_dont_mass_produced_foods_have_as_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl10nx6", "cl125jx", "cl12mat", "cl12r1b", "cl14ewx", "cl1566m", "cl15a92", "cl18f17", "cl18khy", "cl1hoty"], "score": [20, 2, 13, 9, 12, 7, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Vitamins are required for health, but that doesn't imply that 'more vitamins equals a better outcome'.  If you packed as much as possible into all processed foods, what you'd end up with is people suffering from toxic doses.  In the case of some of these (like vitamin A), that is extremely serious, or even fatal.", "'A healthier population' is not the goal of any corporation that mass produces food.  \n\nTheir goal is 'more money for us.'  ", "Because you can't inject healthy stuff into food. It's all about balance and things like that and also very much about *not* eating particularly unhealthy stuff. ", "If you think eating processed foods but taking vitamin supplements will make you healthy you're gonna have a bad time. A balanced diet and exercise is what makes you healthy. ", "What if it has electrolytes? ", "I'm not sure this is exactly what you mean, but table salt is often fortified with small amounts of iodine for this reason. [More info on Wikipedia](_URL_0_). You can also buy various fiber powders, like psyllium seed husks, to do this yourself (lots of people don't get enough fiber), though it can have a funny texture, which would put people off of processed foods that contained too much of the stuff. ", "Because it's as much the composition of healthy foods they make them healthy, as it is the vitamins and minerals.", "1. Some vitamins you can overdose on\n2. Vitamins alone do not make you healthy. I could eat a pack of twinkies that has all my vitamin needs and more, but i'm still eating 500 calories of sugar.\n3. Vitamins, outside their natural food sources, are harder to digest and less absorbable. Just like in college, primary sources are better", "They do. Enriched flour , enriched rice. Its everywhere . enriched = added vitamins. Important to know that it is not good to over supplement , and enriched foods are outright banned in Switzerland ? I believe it is.", "B-but they do. Look at your cereal. Even Lucky Charms are fortified.\n\nAt the end of the day though, even if you get a day's worth of calcium, you'll still eating a week's worth of sugar in one sitting. So vitamins are only good for selling stuff to moms who will feed it to their impressionable rugrats. In reality, a diverse diet (diverse =/= pringles on sunday, cheetos on monday) is what people should focus on, with varying levels of vegetables, means, fruits, grains, whatever (disclaimer: what levels of each, I don't care to pretend to know or debate)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt#In_public_health_initiatives"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "gp1i7", "title": "Do we hear in a log scale?", "selftext": "If you plot the frequencies of notes in a musical scale, they increase exponentially, but to our ears they seem to rise linearly and predictably.  Is it just that our brains recognise that the ratio between the notes is the same, or do we actually hear logarithmically, which would make a musical scale seem linear to us?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gp1i7/do_we_hear_in_a_log_scale/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1p6yus", "c1p7goz", "c1p809c"], "score": [6, 2, 2], "text": ["Yes.\n\nWhat we perceive as 'loudness' is what is known as the Sound Intensity Level, which is different to Sound Intensity.\n\nSound Intensity is defined as the rate sound energy passing through a given area. While this shows how strong the sound is, it does not directly show the 'loudness'.\n\nSound Intensity Level is given by the dB (decibel) scale. When the Sound Intensity doubles, the Sound Intensity Level increases by 3dB. Most sound level warnings such as [this (Warning: This is a randomly found image, do not trust it completely)](_URL_0_) are given in the dB as it is what we perceive as loudness. For example, the difference (indicated on this graphic) between a pneumatic drill and a jet is about 40dB. This does not mean that the Sound Intensity is increased by 40 units too. The sound intensity has increased by [2 ^ (40/3) = 10,300] units.\n\nThere is a further adjustment to the dB scale made for human hearing. The human hear has an average range of 20Hz to 20,000Hz but does not hear all frequencies with the same 'loudness'. This is called the dB(A) scale or db(Adjusted). The difference is not huge but it accounts for the variance in human hearing", "Made me remember this:\n\n[Donald in Mathemagicland](_URL_0_)", "Is it just me, or do the \"notes\" not increase logarithmically? \n\nA, octave 3=220 Hz\n\nA, octave 4= 440 Hz\n\nA, octave 5= 880 Hz\n\nA, Octave 6 = 1760 Hz\n\n\nEach note thats one octave higher, or \"twice\" as high, is also twice the frequency.\n\nThe scale between partials on the otherhand, is logarithmic  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.fauga.lt/uploads/images/triuksmo%20lygiai.JPG"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACtjN4CSN50&amp;t=2m25s"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ntqno", "title": "How famous was Robert Johnson (early blues musician) during his life time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ntqno/how_famous_was_robert_johnson_early_blues/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d473cfm", "d4744ht", "d479s5u"], "score": [6, 51, 12], "text": ["Well if there's no blues historians here, I'll give it a crack if the mods are okay with it. My only qualification is living in the Delta.\n\nRobert Johnson, like many poor black men of his time, doesn't have much documentation following his life. His birthdate is even up for debate, but is assumed to be in May of 1911. It is assumed based on what documents we do have of his life, like his marriage certificate. It is also known he was considered a lackluster guitarist until he was a bit older when he left his home town and came back a few months later seemingly having become a master overnight, lending to the myth of him selling his soul to the devil.\n\nShortly after this, he began moving from city to city making a living playing wherever he could, often under aliases as he did not want to be known. His popularity rose in the 60s when his recordings were discovered and his genius could be appreciated. So while he created quite a buzz in each place he went, he was far from a superstar.\n\nApologies and thanks to the mod team for running a tight ship. The Blues Foundation offers a brief description of him and his life: _URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_ is far from comprehensive but provides backing for the claims of his relative obscurity during life and a couple of more documentaries about his life: _URL_0_\n\nThe Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a decent piece on him. However, as you might be able to tell by now, there's much conflicting information on his life. This is no less true in this source: _URL_4_\n\nI did, however find a YouTube link to the documentary I previously mentioned. I feel like sourcing YouTube is a bit lame, but out of all the sources, I would trust this one most personally. Robert McCormick and John Hammond have dedicated their lives in the search of documenting the legacy of old legends of American music. _URL_1_", "It depends what you mean by \"famous.\" If you mean fame similar to what musicians like Bob Dylan experienced in their early years in the American folk music revival (Greenwich Village, New York City, 1960-1961), a fame of \"community awareness/relevance\" \u2013 then sort of. I mention Bob Dylan for a reason, which you'll see below.\n\nFor the most part, Robert Johnson wasn't \"famous\" during his lifetime, and wouldn't become the blues figure that he is known to be until almost two decades after his death (explained below). The extent of his \"fame\" when he was alive reached only to a certain range. One, being his circle of friends, (especially musicians he knew, some being famous blues musicians). Two, being those who were involved in the music performance scene (particularly in the Southern States) who came to know him (or of him). And three, others, such as industry professionals and record collectors came to know of him. His \"fame\" never fell outside of that extent during both his lifetime and for a short while after.\n\nFirst, you should come to understand that Johnson was a \"drifter,\" or an itinerant musician.\n\n >  Now well on his way to becoming a polished professional, Johnson established a base in Helena, Arkansas, and worked extensively throughout the South as a walking musician, traveling sometimes alone and sometimes with other guitar players, such as Johnny Shines or Calvin Frazier. **He frequently traveled and played under assumed names, a habit that complicated later efforts to construct an accurate biography.** It was during this time, between his late teens and midtwenties, that Johnson began to absorb, blend, and refine particular stylistic nuances\u2014drawn from piano as well as guitar\u2014that would eventually help redefine blues for a new generation of musicians who left the South and moved to St. Louis, Detroit, and most prominently, Chicago.\n\n---\n\n >  **Although Johnson was well known in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee by the midthirties, he yearned to record, as many of his mentors and influences already had.** So, according to most accounts, he traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to audition for H. C. Speir, a music-store owner whose ear for talent had led to recording sessions for a veritable who's who of important regional blues artists during the twenties and thirties.\n\nBarry Lee Pearson, Billy McCulloch, \"Robert Johnson: Lost and Found.\" University of Illinois Press, 2003.\n\n--- \n\nMore interesting is Bob Dylan's account of coming to know about Robert Johnson's music in 1960/1961. From Dylan's *Chronicles: Volume One*, there is an implication to how Johnson's fame came to elevate in the years after his death.\n\n >  Before leaving that day, **[John Hammond, a record producer for Columbia Records had] given me a couple of records that were not yet available to the public that he thought might interest me. Columbia had bought the vaults of \u201930s and \u201940s secondary labels \u2014 Brunswick, Okeh, Vocalion, ARC \u2014 and would be releasing some of the stuff.**\n\nThis is around 1960/1961.\n\n >  One of the records that [John Hammond] gave me was The Delmore Brothers with Wayne Rainey, and the other record was called **King of the Delta Blues by a singer named Robert Johnson.** Wayne Rainey, I used to hear on the radio and he was one of my favorite harmonica players and singers, and I loved The Delmore Brothers, too. But I\u2019d never heard of Robert Johnson, never heard the name, never seen it on any of the compilation blues records. Hammond said I should listen to it, that this guy could \"whip anybody.\" He showed me the artwork, an unusual painting where the painter with the eye stares down from the ceiling into the room and sees this fiercely intense singer and guitar player, looks no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat. What an electrifying cover. I stared at the illustration. Whoever the singer was in the picture, he already had me possessed. **Hammond told me that he knew of him from way back, had tried to get him up to New York to perform at the famous Spirituals to Swing Concert but by that time he had discovered that Johnson was gone, had died mysteriously in Mississippi.**\n\n---\n\n >  I had the thick acetate of the Robert Johnson record in my hands and I asked [Dave] Van Ronk if he ever heard of him. [...] Dave thought Johnson was okay, that the guy was powerful but that it was all derivative. [...] The record that didn\u2019t grab Dave very much had left me numb, like I\u2019d been hit by a tranquilizer bullet.\n\n---\n\n >  **Johnson recorded in the '30s, and in the 1960s there were still some folks around in the Delta who had known about him.** Some even, who knew him. There\u2019d been a fast moving story going around that he had sold his soul to the devil at a four-way crossroads at midnight and that\u2019s how he got to be so good. Well, I don\u2019t know about that. The ones who knew him told a different tale and that was that he had hung around some older blues players in rural parts of Mississippi, played harmonica, was rejected as a bothersome kid, that he went off and learned how to play guitar from a farmhand named Ike Zinnerman, a mysterious character not in any of the history books. Maybe because he didn\u2019t make records.\n\nBob Dylan, \"Chronicles, Volume One.\" Simon  &  Schuster, 2004.\n\nYou gain some insight and an understanding from reading about Bob Dylan's experience of coming to learn about Robert Johnson. It says a lot about Johnson's (arguably miniscule) fame during his lifetime, and the lack of fame for his work for up to two decades after his death, from before Columbia Records released his compilation album in 1961.\n\nIt's also interesting to note, that Dave Van Ronk, who was a prominent figure in the American folk music revival with Bob Dylan, was roommates with Sam B. Charters, a music historian who wrote *The Country Blues* in 1959. The book, which detailed a whole chapter on Robert Johnson, was written just two years prior to Columbia Records' release of Johnson's compilation album. So, Robert Johnson, John Hammond, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan were all in some way relevant to one another (which is why I quoted Bob Dylan's mentioning of Dave Van Ronk. Van Ronk knew about Robert Johnson most definitely, especially from his roommate Sam B. Charters).\n\nIt was only when Columbia Records released that precise album that Bob Dylan mentions (King of the Delta Blues, 1961), that rose Johnson to supposed \"fame,\" the fame that is accredited to him today. Let me emphasize that it was this album, which was acquired by Columbia Records and released in 1961, that forged Johnson's relevance... two decades after his death.\n\nMainly, it was friends, musicians/performers, producers (and after his death, record collectors and enthusiasts) who knew, or really, paid attention to Johnson, for the most part. In short, he was not famous at all, not even in the sense of being that much known within \"the community,\" like Joan Baez was, for instance, in the American folk music revival prior to Bob Dylan's fame.", "Robert Johnson first entered a recording studio in November 1936, and he died in August 1938. His recording of 'Terraplane Blues' for Vocalion Records - released in his lifetime - is usually claimed to have been a minor regional hit in books like Elijah Wald's *Escaping The Delta*, while other singles released before his death were less successful. However, Billboard didn't start polling record retailers about sales until 1940, so it's hard to verify. \n\nOf course, recordings in the 1930s weren't as big a contributor to a musician's success as they are today, though they certainly didn't hurt. Johnson was clearly well-known in the delta blues community - he was an itinerant working musician, and so fans of the music in the areas where he lived would have known his name. Certainly plenty of the delta bluesmen who survived until the 1960s, like Son House, knew who Johnson was and told stories about him. /u/shy mentions John Hammond's From Spirituals To Swing concert, [which I discussed more here](_URL_1_); this was a big boost to the careers of some of the musicians who performed, and might have also been so for Johnson had he lived for a few more months.\n\nHowever, the important context for Johnson that is less well-understood today, but which is clearer in books like Wald's *Escaping The Delta* is this: Johnson's delta blues style, in 1937, was already old-fashioned. The heyday of the delta blues style we associate with him was in the late 1920s. Johnson recording music in that style in 1937 is broadly equivalent to someone releasing music in 2016 that sounds like the music of 2005-2009; say, the big hits of the Black Eyed Peas or Fall Out Boy. \n\nThe record industry had discovered that black Americans bought records in the mid-1920s, and so the late 1920s saw a rush to record the popular music style of the time in the South, where people were buying records - this happened to be the delta blues. However, the onset of the Great Depression sent a great many record companies bankrupt. Other record companies de-emphasised putting out music recorded mostly for regional ethnic minorities (as the record industry generally regarded black people in the South). Because of this, and because of the general economic downturn, most of the delta blues musicians recorded in the late 1920s - including some of the most popular - had given up on music as a career by the early 1930s, going back to occupations like sharecropping. Such musicians, if they survived until the 1960s, were often re-discovered by intrepid white fans and encouraged to play folk festivals and the like. \n\nVocalion, the record label Johnson recorded for, was relatively unusual as a record company in that it survived the depression while still putting some focus on black music. However, it's instructive that there aren't a great many delta blues artists on [Vocalion's catalogue circa 1936-1937](_URL_0_) - instead the record label at the time seems to be putting more emphasis on swing and jazz acts like Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong, presumably because this is what the black community was most likely to buy at the time. All in all, it's probably unusual that Robert Johnson got a chance at all to record delta blues in 1937, and it was probably not surprising it wasn't that great a hit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.biography.com/people/robert-johnson-9356324#death-and-legacy", "https://youtu.be/ONZbSir45rQ", "http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/biography/", "Bio.com", "https://rockhall.com/inductees/robert-johnson/bio/"], [], ["https://www.discogs.com/label/74112-Vocalion-2?sort=year&amp;sort_order=&amp;page=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mv9oa/at_what_point_in_american_history_did_blues_music/d424l65"]]}
{"q_id": "5epe4h", "title": "why are adults woken up automatically when they need to pee, while young children pee the bed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5epe4h/eli5why_are_adults_woken_up_automatically_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dae5uey", "dae67f8", "dae90vh", "dae91hi", "dae96i3", "dae982z", "dae9a57", "daea6do", "daeaca3", "daecw9w", "daedpux", "daedyq4", "daefa2s", "daekh48", "daekm4w", "dael0m6", "daelnt2", "daelwq8", "daexdum", "daf2b88", "daf4jp3"], "score": [73, 8, 7, 24, 2891, 2, 12, 4353, 28, 11, 70, 6, 18, 7, 4, 2, 6, 651, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["As someone who is an adult and wets the bed occasionally, I think I may know an answer.\n\nIt has to do with hormones and development. When your bladder gets \"full\", meaning where you can pee, it sends a signal to the brain which let's you know you have to go. If you are asleep, the signal will wake you up. For children the brain is still developing and the body's systems are still being tuned, so the signal doesn't always emit or get received.\n\nEdit: Removed personal anecdote in order to keep in line with the rules. ", "Not an expert but I think is an learning proces like everything else. An unknowing child (like an *primitive* horse for example) do not care where they pee or anything. Afther a while they discover it is unconfortable to sit in theyr own urine so they stop during constient time. When they stop doing it at night is mather of mental maturity and self understanding.", "Babies don't have control over their sphincters, just as they don't have very good coordination. It's not just a matter of learning in the brain; it's also development of the nerves that send the \"don't pee yet\" message.", "It is not a learned thing. There is a hormone involved. That's why young bedwetters often stop suddenly one day. The production of the regulating hormone has started", "Non ELI5 version from Up to Date: \n > During the first three years of life, bladder storage capacity increases disproportionately relative to body surface area. By four years of age, most children void five to six times per day. \n\n > Development of bladder control appears to be a progressive maturation whereby the child first becomes aware of bladder filling, then develops the ability to suppress detrusor contractions voluntarily and, finally, learns to coordinate sphincter and detrusor function. These skills usually are achieved, at least during the day, by approximately four years of age. Nighttime bladder control is achieved months to years after daytime control, but is not expected until five to seven years of age \n\nMore ELI5 version: \nBasically it's a combination of having disproportionate bladder sizes and not enough brain control to hold the flood gates back. \n\nEdit to add: This is generalized. Obviously every **body** is different. Don't ask me if it's pathological that you/your friend still pees the bed into adulthood and beyond. Instead I urge you to bring this up to your doctors! They're there to help you and they can determine whether there is an underlying pathological cause much better than anyone over the internet. Best of wishes. Stay dry. ", "There nervous system isn't fully developed. I can't remember the name of the nerve off the top of my head, but around 5 or 6 years old they start gaining the ability to realize when they have a full bladder (even at night). Couple this with training themselves to wake up and go to the bathroom when necessary, rather than relying on diapers and you have potty training. \nSource: I'm an M.L.T.  Anatomy/other medical classes", "In a psychology class and we learned about this. \n\nIt's mostly conditioning done by our brain. When kids pee the bed, they typically wake up/get woken up afterward. In the early years of our development, the stimulus is a full bladder, and the response is peeing. Since we routinely wake up right after we pee, the brain conditions itself and develops a connection between a full bladder and waking up. Thus, when the brain detects a full bladder, it automatically starts to kick into wake-up mode, and we wake up. ", "It's both learned and related to development.\n\nAll mammals have the instinct not to \"soil the nest\". We mostly train our babies out of this instinct by putting them in diapers and being totally oblivious to their signals that they want to pee, but it's possible to keep it going - there is a thing called Elimination Communication which is one of those \"parenting movements\" with an awful name but effectively, it's a googleable phrase which means you can find information about how to watch your infant for signs they are about to pee or poop and \"catch\" it in a little pot instead of using a diaper. This is also common practice in some non-Western cultures. Of course, if you want to do it at night you have to sleep in very close proximity to the infant. But doing this even very young babies will wake at night to pee and then go back to sleep.\n\nSo partly we train them out of it and then have to train them back into it again when we potty train. What happens when potty training is that toddlers are learning to associate the feelings of a full bladder/bowel with the imminent arrival of pee, and control the muscles around the urethra to hold it long enough to get to a toilet first. Children sleep much more deeply than adults - they tend to sleep through noise, for example, much more easily - and it's common that for some time during and after potty training they are either not aware enough of the nerve endings around the bladder to pay attention to them even during sleep or they are just too deeply asleep to notice these sensations. Once they become more accustomed to paying attention to these signals, they'll be more likely to wake up, assuming they are not too deeply asleep.\n\nSecondly, the hormone part somebody mentioned below is also true but it's not strictly related to why we wake up, more the amount of pee created. The adult body produces a hormone called ADH (antidiuretic hormone) during sleep which tells the body to produce less urine during this time, meaning that adults rarely produce enough urine at night to get into a desperate enough state to wake us up. When we do, it's likely unusual enough that this is a significant factor as well. For children who haven't started producing this hormone yet (the exact age varies, but girls tend to develop it a couple of years earlier than boys, which is why boys are more likely to suffer from bedwetting for longer), the feeling of having a full bladder at night wouldn't necessarily be unusual meaning it's less likely to wake the child up.\n\nLastly there is the simple fact that adults tend not to be afraid of the dark and additionally are much more aware of where their limit for *actually* peeing themselves is, whereas children might delay getting out of bed because they are cold, scared, or just sleepy and they don't have as good of a handle on that tipping point yet because they don't have as much experience. (This is the same reasoning for why young children sometimes hold on so long that they just pee themselves because they were too busy playing or didn't know that they didn't have enough time to get to the toilet, whereas this rarely happens to adults without incontinence issues.) But again, this isn't strictly the same situation since you mentioned **waking**.", "It's surprising to see so many varied answers - looks like this is just one of those things we don't really know for sure, because I have an answer I haven't seen here yet. Source: close family member had bed-wetting issues, and this was from my family doctor.\n\nAt night we produce a chemical in our bladders that concentrate our urine to a manageable level; when we wake up that chemical gets used and that's why we usually have to pee when we wake up - it was always there, but it had't 'overflowed' yet, so to speak. It explains why sometimes it takes a few minutes before you have to go, but it's almost always a part of your morning routine. (routine is also likely a part of it - as someone else mentioned, it's a kind of muscle memory)\n\nSometimes (and in this specific case for my fam) the body doesn't produce that chemical, and it's a bit of a gamble whether or not the bladder will hit its limit during the night - in the case that it does, the chemical then also plays a role in waking you up, but in the case where you don't have that chemical, those impulses to wake up and hit the toilet simply *don't happen*, and we get a wet bed.", "I think there are two separete mechanisms preventing nocturnal enuresis (bedwetting): \nThe first is a hormone that reduces urine production at night. \nThe second is the ability to wake up when the bladder is full. \n\nIf one of these conditions is met then the person has a control of it's peeing under normal circumstances.\n\nUsually people just grow out of nocturnal enuresis but also behavioural feedback methods work, so it confirms that there are two mechanisms which are in effect. \n\nOther factors also can play role in the enuresis: deep sleep, emotional stress, developmental disorders, bladder infections issues etc", "I haven't seen this mentioned so I'll throw it out there. Recently constipation is being blamed for the vast majority of bedwetting incidents.\n\nApparently poo gathered in your rectum pushes against your bladder making it weaker, smaller and also giving you less time to get to the toilet. \n\nSo kids at night don't have the time to make it to the toilet as their biological alarm is severely handicapped. \n\nSounds ridiculous but there's a lot of evidence behind it. One study which involved 30 kids treated with enemas and Laxatives or poo softeners \"cured\"  over 80% of the kids within 3 months. \n\n_URL_0_ ", "It says explain it like I'm five so I will. Short answer: immaturity of pathways in the central nervous system. Long answer:  At the beginning of life we don't have voluntary control of our sphincters, the ring shaped muscles that allow or deny the expulsion of urine or excrement. When we acquire control varies but usually happens between 2 and 4 years of age. Nocturnal control also involves the ability to wake up and regain control of the body. When we are asleep and are dreaming motor activity is blocked from the rest of the body to avoid acting out the dream. If this doesn't happen you get a sleep walker. If you wake up but the block doesn't go away you may be semi conscious but can't move. A lot of these usually go away within a normal time frame but there are teens that the signal to wake up is not sent still and have to be woken up or they will wet the bed. It's not laziness it's that the center or nucleus in the central nervous system hasn't quite matured yet.", "Haven't seen the right answer. \nELI5: When you are born using the restroom is entirely controlled by the autonomic nervous system, pressure from urine against the bladder triggers stretch receptors to send signals to the brain that direct the child to pee. As you age, a new neural connection develops where these signals are routed to the frontal cortex, which is under conscious control, allowing you to keep your external urinary sphincter contracted until you actually wish to pee.", "Adults who pee the bed, particularly after drinking, are also the same people who typically have issues premature ejaculating. I've read it's the same muscle/nerve/whatever that controls both mechanisms. \n\nSomeone less drunk than me please feel free to reinforce or debunk. ", "The ELI5 is this.  It mostly has to do with how easy it is to wake the individual. As one gets older, one becomes easier to get waken/disturbed.  Kids are very hard to wake, especially if they are in \"deep sleep\" (AKA Slow wave sleep or N3 sleep), which means if they have to go, they are not likely to wake up to go.  By contrast, if you look at elderly people, they are easily woken up, so they are more likely to go.  \n\nOf course, part of this is bladder control and develpment (on this I don't know as much).  \n\nSource: work in sleep clinic", "Has to do with parts of the brain-- specifically micturation centers (urination control) within the frontal lobe and brainstem. As the brain develops, the ability to control the excretion of urine improves. Nocturnal control is a true test of these brain areas as the brain enters into the different cycles of sleep. Traumatic brain injuries, neurodevelopmental delays, or neurological disease can affect these areas of the brain, which is why we see night time wetting happening across different ages but more often in the underdeveloped child. ", "You'd be surprised how many of us still wet the bed. come say hi over in /r/adultbedwetting . We don't Bite and it's not contagious..", "Hey **EVERYONE** before you go and submit another story about how you used to wet the bed at whatever age, or how your kid wets the bed, or whatever hilarious / relevant anecdote you have  please be aware of our rules.\n\n > Top-level comments **must be written explanations**\n > \n > Replies directly to OP must be written explanations or relevant follow-up questions. They may not be jokes, anecdotes, etc. Short or succinct answers do not qualify as explanations, even if factually correct. \n\nYou will notice the comments are a minefield of removed top level replies.\n\nThis is why. \n\n______\n\nDon't like this rule? Feedback over at r/IdeasForELI5 or in the ModMail y'all.", "Sphincter control. When kids feel like they need to go to the bathroom, they just go, even if they know it's wrong and they would normally go to the bathroom when awake. As you get older, your body develops stronger sphincter muscles which help hold urine for longer amounts of time.", "I suppose they aren't born knowing it is unsanitary or that they'll potentially  have to sleep in it until morning.  ", "it's because a certain chemical or Pratt of the brain hasn't fully developed, I use to do this bad and even would use a sort nasal spray to help deter it.  eventually I grew out of it around 8-9"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/children/news/20120130/study-constipation-may-cause-bedwetting"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2rmmei", "title": "why didn't the european settlers die of diseases that the indians had like the indians died of european diseases?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rmmei/eli5_why_didnt_the_european_settlers_die_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnh8mau", "cnhaixi", "cnhatkd", "cnhaxrs", "cnhe1sb", "cnhgd9e", "cnhj7ff", "cnhkz0o", "cnhnzxp", "cnhooh9", "cnia7we"], "score": [79, 28, 18, 6, 3, 6, 7, 2, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["They did! There were all kinds of diseases that people were introduced to in the new world that they didn't have in the old world. There's a fascinating book by Charles C Mann called 1493 - it's an exploration of everything that occurred after the \"discovery\" of the new world. I really suggest giving it a read", "The European settlers brought worse(better?) diseases with them and also as a result had stronger immune systems. By the time Europeans began settling the America's they had already been trading with the rest of the world for centuries and swapping diseases along with trade goods. Also Europe around that time tended to be nasty, dirty and crowded and a good breeding ground for nasty bugs. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond(there's also a PBS special) gives an overview of all of this.", "**If** I'm remembering correctly (and I might not be, but I'm about to go to bed and I'd rather not do a bunch of fact checking research) the primary difference was that many European farmers were in heavy contact with animals they raised/domesticated, whereas Native Americans did not domesticate animals and instead relied fully on wild hunting for their meat. Because of this daily contact with multiple species of animals and their associated waste along with the fact that their residences were often in very close proximity to animal pens, they had more of a chance for diseases isolated to those animals to cross over (mutate into a form that's transmissible) to humans.\n\nThere are *a lot* of deadly or harmful diseases that originate in animals often due to their own poor hygiene and general wild conditions. The disease that comes to mind foremost to me is the Bubonic Plague which was spread primarily via fleas on rodents, and reportedly killed off around a third or more of the European population. However, even today, we still have problems with animal to human cross over with diseases like Ebola, Bird Flu, and Mad Cow Disease.\n\nThus, while Native Americans certainly had diseases that were unique to the land and killed off or harmed European settlers, the European settlers simply had more deadly/harmful diseases in their repertoire than the Native Americans did.\n\n**Edit:** And as others have mentioned (and I neglected to mention) Europeans tended to have more densely packed urban centers (which were perfect for human to human transmission) and more trade/contact between disparate populations than Native Americans.", "They totally did, they got syphilus and yellow fever amongst others.", "I think I read somewhere that Europeans illnesses were caused more often by microbes (viruses, bacteria) while New World natives had more issues with parasites. They may have specifically been talking about tropical areas in the New World though...\n \nThis may also be completely incorrect...", "The main reason is because the Europeans had access to large amounts of livestock. Most diseases come from animals and they had been co-living with the animals for so long that they gained immunity from a lot of diseases. The native Americans however, weren't living with any livestock (because they were nomadic  &  because there wasn't a lot of different animals capable of being \"profitable\"). Because of this, the European diseases had a greater affect (effect?) On the Natives, than the other way around.\n", "There's a strong theory that syphilis [did not exist in Europe until Columbus' crew personally had sex with the locals and brought it back to Europe after the first voyage](_URL_0_).\n\nIt's not 100% settled, but the theory is strongly supported by medical historical evidence.  Consider that.  Not just \"over time\", the *very first voyage* brought back syphilis which plagued Europe like wildfire for over 400 years before an effective treatment was discovered.\n\nIt didn't annihilate Europe's population like smallpox destroyed Native American populations, but the total volume of people it infected was extremely high.  Much larger populations and a much longer time.\n\nIt seems inevitable though, with or without Columbus's crew's behavior.  If not on the first voyage, within the next few trips someone would return with it. \n\nSo the question you wanna ask is \"did Native Americans have a natural immunity built up to syphilis like Europeans had to smallpox?\" and that's really hard to say.   There's no medical documentation on how syphilis worked in Native American populations.  I've never heard of the observable effects of syphilis being represented in Native American lore.  The observed effects are described in both European medicine and lore.\n\n", "Native Americans populated the American continents tens of thousands of years ago, originally following herds across the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia. Living harsh nomadic hunting lifestyles, people who fell ill with diseases brought from Eurasia died quickly, and didn't have much time to spread the microbe. Eventually, these microbes were totally eradicated  because they weren't being passed on quickly enough to survive in the human population. Eventually, the Native peoples of the Americas, having never interacted with these microbes for hundreds of generations, lost all immunity to them. \n\nOne exception- STIs like syphillis did survive because they acted slowly and spread quickly. This is one example of diseases spread the other direction, though it never reached epidemic proportions like the diseases that came from the Old World. \n\nThese microbes spread so quickly (via trade/indirect contact) that they killed entire villages before Europeans even arrived. Seeing cleared, fertilized fields, leveled land, and palisade walls, settlers (obviously incorrectly) believed the land was a gift from God, a myth justifying later logics of conquest and genocide such as Manifest Destiny. \n\nIt's also worth noting that Europeans gave Native people blankets and other objects infected with Old World diseases, knowing that it would kill the community and clear the land for settlement.\n\nSource: Environmental History course at uni", "Well lots of them did.\n\nBut europeans were breeding faster than people were dying in the colonies, and the long ship ride back to europe managed to prevent a lot of diseases making it back to europe. \n\nAlso a lot of diseases, notably tropical ones don't survive in europe.  They spread for example by insects, which in hot countries are there year round, but in europe (particularly northern europe) they die off every year.  Quite a lot of the world experienced next to 0 net population growth until we started developing treatments for malaria. \n\n", "According to Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, people from the old world were exposed to more types of different animals as compared to people from the new world. Interacting with animals which includes physical contact with saliva and wastes causes diseases to which people get immune after a generations of exposure. So when people from the old world met people in the new world, the former sort of brought more disease with them than vice versa. ", "I always figured it was the home field DISadvanntage.  It only took one European to introduce a disease that killed off whole populations of natives.  Even if that European's entire settlement was wiped out, a disease had no way of crossing the pond, and more Europeans would arrive in a couple of months to start the cycle over again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25yowb", "title": "Can alcohol gel hand sanitizer stop viruses?", "selftext": "In 2009, during the swine flu outbreak, alcohol gel was widely recommended as a way to prevent the illness, but can it really stop viruses? \n\nSince viruses aren't considered living beings, i assume the only way to stop them is to interfere with their metabolism. Is hand sanitizer able to do that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/25yowb/can_alcohol_gel_hand_sanitizer_stop_viruses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chlz3cv", "chm0gy7"], "score": [4, 2], "text": ["Not their metabolism, they do not metabolize as virions. \n\nWhen you interfere with their structure, the structure of the viral capsid which is proteinaceous in the case of naked viruses, or their envelope- which is made of lipids similar to a cell membrane then they will be inactivated.  Alcohol can denature both of these.\n\n Enveloped viruses are typically also lysed and denatured by drying out. \n\nEdit: Said \"cell wall\" instead of \"cellular membrane\" D'oh. ", "/u/meowmerson said what I was going to say very well, but I'd just like to add the point that viruses may be 'alive', depending on which virologist you ask... It's a organism description which really doesn't work that well with viruses: my university virology lecturer told me that he thinks the concept of 'alive' doesn't actually mean anything with a virus in isolation, but would accept arguments that they are when in the cell. He always preferred the description 'obligate intracellular parasite'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6ggcye", "title": "why does american congress seem so formal and droll compared to the canadian and uk parliaments?", "selftext": "It seems to me that the US Congress, the Senate and the House of course, are literally there to do their jobs and fail miserably at it or act all awkward. Either way it's a very formal affair. People talk in circles around each other and rarely does anyone raise their voice in a threatening manner. In contrast, I see dozens and dozens of clips from Canadian and British Parliaments being very loud, very aggressive in their condemnation of things, sometimes physically hostile, and more than willing to slide in jokes at a speaker's expense or to \"take the piss out of them\" while they're speaking. I'm not saying that this happens 24/7, but I get the feeling that their legislative bodies are not going to let 'formalities' get in the way of interjecting when something seems like a batshit crazy idea, nor will they let their contempt of something remain unspoken.\n\nI know that during our nation's fight over slavery one of our congressmen nearly beat  another congressman to death with his cane, and that seemed to be the end of Congress shenanigans, but what's the deal? Is it simply that America's legislative branch is different from theirs? Is it cultural? \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ggcye/eli5_why_does_american_congress_seem_so_formal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diq1lis", "diq1r5c", "diq23nk", "diq3448", "diq43rn"], "score": [5, 2, 7, 18, 7], "text": ["I don't know what the cause is, either, but let me make it clear: Americans find British legislative proceedings to be disgusting and unprofessional. The hooting and screaming and hissing alone are simply repugnant. It's unbecoming of the grave importance of representing the citizens. The first time I saw footage of Parliament, I thought the noise was coming from some kind of public gallery, but then I realized in shock that these were the actual representatives who were behaving in such a horrifyingly crass manner. \n\nThe only way I could be more disgusted is if it were my own country. I mean, we Americans have no leg to stand on right now (COUGH*trump*COUGH). But I'm just saying. ", "I think it's just how it is, we have 1 man controlling parliament so the MPs will push the boundaries, sometimes he will resume order, sometimes he won't. I think our politicians just get very passionate, and anything is fair play (quite common in Britain in general honestly, to take the piss out of each other), I love British parliament, and do. find American [equivalent to parliament] quite dull all in all ", "Getting into fights and arguments on the floor is utterly unprofessional. Any politician that does that does not deserve to be in office. The US literally has laws to prevent that from happening. ", "You're probably only ever seeing footage of Prime Minister's Questions, which is half an hour each week. This is essentially all for the benefit of the TV cameras, with the party leaders trying to score points against each other with witty soundbites. Questions from other MPs tend to be chosen to win favour with your party leader - praising or criticising some government policy as appropriate - or to show that they're raising some local issue with the PM.\n\nThe actual debates the rest of the time are much more formal and dull.", "\"droll\" means humorous. Did you mean \"dull\"?\n\nmaybe Congress is droll, I dunno. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "86kera", "title": "what are the benefits of marriage in the u.s.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86kera/eli5_what_are_the_benefits_of_marriage_in_the_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dw5of1y", "dw5om2r", "dw5oppl", "dw5ucgh", "dw5x0mn"], "score": [37, 76, 11, 6, 2], "text": ["Tax deductions, automatic inheritance, right to visit in prison or in a hospital, medical power of attorney, protection from being forced to testify against your spouse, etc. There are many benefits, and some can be set up independent of marriage, but not all of them. ", "I think one of the biggest ones is that your spouse becomes your legal 'next of kin', meaning you can make medical decisions for them, own their property after they die, etc. If you aren't married you are not legally a part of that person's life, so any legal or medical decisions would be up to the parents of that individual. \n\nThat's why marriage equality was important a few years ago. If someone was with their partner for 15 years and then suddenly dropped dead, their partner had better hope their in-laws liked them or even supported the partnership in the first place. If not, the parents could just take the house and all the money (provided the person didn't have a will). There are probably other benefits, but I think this is one of the big ones.", "The best thing would have to be inclusion into health insurance.  My wife is on mine and she gets to opt out and get a lot more money in her check.  ", "There are health benefits, such as lower stress, lower cardiovascular disease risks, and longer lifespan. \n\nLegal benefits, such as inheritance rights, health care decision making rights, and spousal immunity. \n\nFinancial benefits, such as lower insurance rates, possible tax benefits, and shared expenses. \n\n", "One benefit that I don't see mentioned, something more situational: if you're young and going to college, getting married lets you apply for student aid WITHOUT putting your parents on it. This can make a huge difference. The difference between unsubsidized loans and pell grants."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1s2uxr", "title": "What was the Nicaea council and what were its outcomes and impacts on future Christianity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1s2uxr/what_was_the_nicaea_council_and_what_were_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdtgrpt", "cdth40f"], "score": [87, 6], "text": ["Then Council of Nicaea was the first of a series of Ecumenical Councils. These are frequently grouped into a series called \"the first seven ecumenical councils.\" The date from Nicaea in 325 to the second Council of Nicaea in 781. These Councils deal with some pivotal theological issues, but also are crucial in their historical significance. Things that can be traced through the council are the growing schism of the East and West, both politically and ecumenically, the shift of the Church from sect to political power, and the look at regional autonomy in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, amongst a plethora of topics.\n\nThe first Council of Nicaea was assembled by Constantine. His conversion is crucial. Politically he was looking to reunite an empire that had suffered what has been deemed \"the crisis of the third century.\" Large historical periods are difficult to define as they are fluid, but this crisis marked, in many opinions, the transition from antiquity into what we call \"late antiquity.\" Late antiquity is, in itself, a transitionary period from the \"classical\" into the \"medieval\" world. The crisis had it all, a small pox epidemic (plague), the breaking up of the empire into three parts that Babushka dolled into further states like Hispania and Britain did from the newly established kingdom of Gaul, and all sorts of assassination with no end in sight nor any means of viable succession. \n\nEnter Diocletian. He defeated a lot of the invading \"Barbarians\" (who in some cases were just that, and in others were immigrants who were nnearly as Romanised as their Roman neighbours). He reunited the Empire and co-ruled with Maximian. He is the only emperor \"to retire.\" What is particularly notable for our discussion of Nicaea is his \"great persecution\" of the Christians.\n\nConstantine was first and foremost a soldier. He worked his way up through the ranks during Diocletian's reign. After the death of Diocletian, he won emerged victorious in a series of civil wars. For a number of motives, in 330 Constantine founded a \"New Rome\" in Constantinople and made this his empire's capital. This was to symbolise the uniting of the Greek and Latin speaking parts of the empire, to materially display his prominence, but also to serve as distinctly Christian centre of power. He brought in all sorts of relics to commemorate massive building projects, including \"the true cross\" amongst others.\n\nBut what happened between his first year as sole ruler in 324 and his founding of the city was a remarkable work of political deftness and religious zeal. Eusebius of Caesarea is our chief source on Constantine. He builds a narrative that place Constantine as a fulfiller of prophesy, ending a time of tribulation, and ushering in a \"kingdom of God\" in a \"new era\". In some ways, despite the propaganda of sorts, you can't blame him when Christians went from losing their property and being tortured to serving as trusted advisors and councilors, with all of their property that had been seized returned and more.  \n\nThe Council of Nicaea was the first church wide meeting since the Apostolic age (when the events of the Bible were happening). This was when it was formally enacted to let the Gentiles become Christians alongside the Jews. Hopefully that points put what a significant even it is, both to its contemporaries and historically. \n\nIt was chiefly concerned with Arian theology. Though it concerned itself with the dating of Easter (a major uniting force, when the churches across a vast empire all are celebrating as one) and with the preeminence of the Roman See, but also with the reiteration of the importance of other Apostolic sees like Antioch and Alexandria, plus it introduced Constantinople as an important and eminent centre of Christianity. \n\nI'll do my best to quickly cover Arianism:\n\n\"It is far less amazing that human beings should progress upwards towards God than that God should have come down to the human level.\u201d \u2013 Pope Leo I\n\n1. Historical: \n\nA. Following the reasoning of  Henry Chadwick, the Arian controversy can be divided into three stages; the first down to the death of Constantine (22 May 337), the second from the accession of the sons of Constantine to the death of Constantius II (361), and the third from the accession of Julian to the suppression of Arianism under Theodosius the second.\n\nB. Obviously in an introduction the motives and nature of Constantine\u2019s conversion are complex and so widely hypothesized that we do not have time to pause here, but it must be said that, regardless of motivation, Constantine had in mind a unity of both the faith and the empire. This is demonstrated in his letter to Arius and Alexander, \n\u201cTherefore I have been driven to the necessity of this letter and am writing to your concordant sagacity. And, after calling upon divine providence as my ally in the matter, I offer myself \u2013 as is reasonable \u2013 in the midst of your strife as an ambassador of peace.\u201d\n\nC. Ultimately, Arianism will be a leading cause of the schism of the Western and Eastern Roman Churches.\n\n2. Theological: \n\nArianism was a doctrine concerning the nature of the Christian trinity, specifically the substantive relationship between the Father and the Son. The Arians held that Christ was a creation of the Father. They scripturally would substantiate their claims with Scripture such as Colossians 3:15: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.\n\nAnd would be argued against based on verses such as Matthew 3:16-17:\n \"And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.\n\nThe controversy would lead Constantine to call Council of Nicaea from which came the Nicene creed. \nWhile it seems an issue of semantics the question of the *substantiae* of the nature of God would have broad religious and social implications concerning the role of the church in late Roman society. The three Greek words concerning the nature of God were *Homoousian* or same substance, *Homoiousian* or similar substance, and the *Heteroousian* or different substance.\n \n\nThis may seem insignificant to a non Christian, but without Christ having divinity he becomes just another moral teacher and social activist Therefore you really have distance yourself from any presuppositions and take on some personal and historical empathy to understand just how important the divinity of Christ was to Chrsitians at the time (and continues to be to now).\n\nThe Council concluded with the condemnation of Arianism and the formation of \"The Nicene Creed.\" What is know today as \"The Nicene Creed\" is commonly referred to by scholars as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed and came out of the next Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381. And from my studies, really was wasn't formalised until the fourth council, the Council of Chalcedon in 451.\n\nThe Arian controversy rages on even after the Council of Nicaea. It is dealt a decisive blow in the next council at Constantinople in 381. I think it would be fair to see it out and do a quick look at the politics and theology of that second, follow up council.\n\n**Council of Constantinople 381**\n\nFor something as voraciously nuanced and vast as Constantinopolitan theology to be considered with brevity and understanding, a microcosmic approach will best suit. This second part will consider the council of Constantinople, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed attributed to it, and its contribution to the city\u2019s emergence as a center for the intertwined power of church and state. Hopefully, rather than an interchange of opinion and statements, this questioning introduction will foster, as is the intent and nature of introduction, further questions.  \n\nAn imperial frenzy and mistrust haunted state politics following the unprecedented death of Valens at the 378 battle of Adrianople. Gratian and the newly instated Theodosius did have a point of unification in religious ideology. In February of 380 they issued a joint edict, the cunctos populos, which demanded that all people practise \u201cthat religion, which the divine Peter the apostle transmitted to the Romans.\u201d Part of this joint effort was the assertion of the authority of the Nicene position. After some seeming power-play between the emperors concerning the where and when of the council, Theodosius won out and the assembly of bishops was to gather in Constantinople in May of 381.\n\nThe imperial Nicene sympathy was seen as an opportunity to deal a decisive, anti-Arian blow by men like Ambrose of Milan. He would go to great lengths of intellectual ingenuity to strengthen the Nicene cause, asserting the sanctity of the 325 AD council by highlighting the significance of the number of bishops in attendance\u2014318, the same as the number of Abraham\u2019s servants and the Greek numerals symbolising the cross of Jesus (TIH).* In the midst of this tension Theodosius, in an attempt to successfully mediate, awarded the presidency of the council to Meletius of Antioch, thus appeasing the Cappadocians.\n\nContinued below...", "The effects are wide-ranging, but here's the immediate low-down on the Council of Nicaea:\n\nThe first council was called by Constantine in 325 CE in order to unify and homogenize the various Christian sects spread throughout the Mediterranean/Roman Empire. The sects often bickered over...well, pretty much everything - the divinity of Christ (the so-called Arian Controversy), what gospels or messages of Christianity to emphasize, and even on their relationship to other Christian communities throughout the rest of the Roman world. The meetings were often fraught with tension as topics such as usury, the practice of self-castration, the divesting of Easter from the Jewish calendar, and other topics were discussed.\n\nThe council eventually laid the groundwork for Christian canonical beliefs (that Jesus was both divine and man and that he was the son of God, born and not 'made'), unified dogma (with the Nicene Creed), *and* because Constantine called the council as well as enforced its decisions, gave official - and powerful - weight to its pronouncements. This set the precedent for later kingdoms' close ties to the church; a symbiotic relationship which would guide at least European history for the next thousand or so years.\n\nOh, and Arians, Nestorians, and other 'heretical' sects which did not comply with the Council's decisions were persecuted, often forcing them to flee into the fringes (and beyond) of the Empire. For example, Nestorian Christians sought refuge in the Persian Empire while Arians moved further into the Germanic north of Europe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4dj4wu", "title": "Is there such a thing as an \"anti\" catalyst?", "selftext": "Basically, is there something that can raise the amount of energy needed for a reaction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4dj4wu/is_there_such_a_thing_as_an_anti_catalyst/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1rht2d", "d1rm18v", "d1rrsv6"], "score": [3, 11, 2], "text": ["Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of catalysts is that it stabilizes the transition state of a reaction by stabilizing charge or increasing entropy. \n\nAn anti catalyst, as you put it would want to destabilize a transition state of a reactant, and thus would increase the activation energy which would make it harder for reactants to become products. In this definition, I can think of anything that would act in this way that would occur naturally. \n\nTraditional meaning of anti-catalyst is anything that slows reaction speed and there are many types of inhibitors like pharmaceutical drugs that compete for binding sites of enzymes (a bodies catalyst) that increases Km (higher Km, slower it reaches max velocity of reactants) \n\nSo answer to your question (to the best of my knowledge) yes, but not in the way you think.", "A catalyst is technically any other species that lowers the activation energy of a reaction. So technically an anti-catalyst would be any species that increases the activation energy of a reaction, which doesn't really exist in the same sense.\n\n**Introducing a catalyst is like installing an elevator. You could take the stair, but it just takes more effort. An \"anti-catalyst\" would be like installing a rock climbing wall right next to the stairs. Climbing the wall would take a lot of effort... but the stairs are right there.**\n\nNow, if you have a reaction that requires a catalyst (like bodily reactions which require catalytic enzymes) you can in a sense block the catalyst via inhibition, which just removes the easy path. The standard path is still there.", "Sort-of, depending on your definition of catalyst. I'm going to copy from another comment I left:\n\nA catalyst typically facilitates many individual reactions. Because this happens faster than the unassisted reaction, you can have many fewer molecules of catalyst than reactant. If you have a reaction that proceeds faster in the absence of the \"anti-catalyst\", then you need to bind it all - you need just as many molecules of anti-catalyst as reactant, and probably some considerable stoichometric excess to ensure everything remains bound.\n\nSo, if part of your definition of catalyst is that it has to be present in much lower quantities than the reactant, then an anti-catalyst isn't really workable. If you're happy calling something that is present in equal amounts or excess of the reactant a catalyst, then there's lots of examples where that can happen.\n\nIn these cases, we don't really call them anti-catalysts, just things like \"chaperones\" or \"stabilizers\". In biology, there are many cases where a protein has evolved that doesn't acting as an enzyme (biological catalyst), but as a binding protein that shelters a reactive molecule away from the environment it might break down in. That activity would satisfy at least some definitions of \"anti-catalyst\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3gdg4l", "title": "During the Cold War did Chinese citizens ever defect to Hong Kong by jumping the border or boating across the straits? Were they able to integrate into Hong Kong life or were they sent back?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gdg4l/during_the_cold_war_did_chinese_citizens_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctx8oa7", "ctxxq8f"], "score": [48, 5], "text": ["**Yes.** I'll speak to one aspect of this in particular.\n\nAfter the failure of the Tienanmen Square democracy movement in 1989, [a kind of Underground Railroad developed in China.](_URL_2_) It was small, but it existed \u2500 with between 400 and 800 (estimates vary) dissidents escaping the Chinese government crackdown through an organized network and unknown numbers escaping through unofficial channels. \n\nKnown as **[Operation Yellowbird](_URL_0_)**, it [united Hong Kong gangsters, police officers and businessmen, the British and French governments \u2500 even a Baptist minister](_URL_1_) \u2500 in a network designed to bring dissidents from mainland China to the coast, where they would be loaded onto boats and dropped off on a Hong Kong beach. A British minister would provide paperwork, and the dissidents would board planes to other destinations. Most did not stay in Hong Kong proper.\n\nNow, this is only one aspect of dissident escape to Hong Kong. I'm sure there are plenty of other stories out there, but I've always found Yellowbird (also Yellow Bird) fascinating, even though it's outside my area of expertise.", "Very much yes. At the end of WW2, Hong Kong only had 500,000 people. By 1980, that figure grew 10 times and Hong Kong had 5 million. Now that number is closer to 7.2 million. Immigration from Mainland China is a major factor in Hong Kong's explosive growth. Many celebrities from the older generation openly admit that they swam across the straits that divides Hong Kong and China. The colonial government in Hong Kong had a \"Touch Base policy\" until 1981, meaning that if you managed to get past the Frontier Closed Area and into Hong Kong proper, you would be allowed to stay in HK. If you were intercepted before that, then, like the baseball metaphor suggests, you're out.\n\nHong Kong had a serious shortage of housing for this sudden influx from the mainland (and still does). Most of these new immigrants lived in shanty towns, while people associated with the Republic (and did not follow Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan but came to HK instead) mostly lived in their own \"exclave\" in Tiu Keng Leng. Those escaping from both Chinese and Hong Kong authorities would find refuge in the famous Kowloon Walled City, where the British laws of Hong Kong didn't apply, since it technically belonged to China.\n\nThe British turned a blind eye to these developments for the most part, until a devastating fire in 1953 burned the shanty town of Shek Kip Mei and left 53,000 people homeless. This forced the colonial administrators to find ways to accommodate the new immigrants, which led to HK's first government housing. \n\nAt this point I should say that Chinese citizens fleeing from Communism did not just integrate into Hong Kong life, they shaped Hong Kong life itself. All the talents of China considered too bourgeois and faced prosecution there eventually concentrated in Hong Kong since it was one of the few liberal Chinese-speaking areas in East Asia. They were the ones behind Hong Kong's explosive growth and put the city on the map."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-27/escape-from-tiananmen-how-secret-plan-freed-protesters", "http://www.newsweek.com/still-wing-175592", "http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/world/hong-kong-escape-network-is-driven-into-shadows.html?pagewanted=all"], []]}
{"q_id": "2qp0zq", "title": "how is the camera not visible in the mirror when there is a shot of the character looking in the mirror?", "selftext": "In movies and the like", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qp0zq/eli5_how_is_the_camera_not_visible_in_the_mirror/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn85rzx", "cn85ukr", "cn89v2e", "cn8aoow", "cn8ltv1"], "score": [21, 35, 44, 5, 2], "text": ["In many cases, there is no mirror. Instead, it is an open space and instead of a reflection, there is a duplicate room. The person whose face is seen is played by the actor starring in that role, while their body double is the one whose face is obscured or who we only see from behind. Famously, in Terminator 2, when they filmed a scene in a mirror, they had Linda Hamilton play her part, and her identical twin sister played the part in the mirror. ", "The usual way these shots are taken is that the actor is looking at the camera's reflection in the mirror. Just like the actor cannot see their own reflection in the mirror because the angle is wrong, so the camera cannot see its own reflection. The mirror is carefully angled so that the camera cannot be seen.\n\nIf this cannot be achieved, then the image in the mirror is added by computers later.\n\n", "You will love this one: [gif](_URL_1_)\n\nBetter quality: [link](_URL_0_)\n\n", "As someone who works in vfx and does more camera removals than I'd like to admit... A lot of times the camera is removed in post by artists. Glasses reflections, car reflections, mirrors, windows... Etc", "Here is a not very good example of the fake mirror with double technique. You can see that the double does not move in synch with the actor facing the camera. 1986 film \"Peggy Sue Got Married\".\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/T3DQ0Xf.webm", "http://i.imgur.com/OkCtUHr.gif"], [], ["www.youtube.com/watch?v=odMPZTf4k4M"]]}
{"q_id": "4kaz4f", "title": "why is two weeks notice traditional when quitting? why not longer/shorter?", "selftext": "My first thought was that it gives the company enough time to replace you but, that seems super arbitrary and not nearly long enough for a skilled position. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kaz4f/eli5_why_is_two_weeks_notice_traditional_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3djxg5", "d3djz1m", "d3dkw9z", "d3dmu4l", "d3dn1ve"], "score": [12, 5, 5, 2, 5], "text": ["It's long enough for a company to replace you, but also short enough for the employee to wrap up any truly urgent things, say their goobyes, not have to deal with (too much) hostility or coworker retaliation for quitting (if applicable). \n\nIf an employee wants to quit, it's usually because they're not satisfied with their workplace or they found a better position elsewhere (which implies the current position is unsatisfactory in comparison). Dissatisfaction often means reduced productivity, so it's a good thing for an employer to only have to keep them that extra 2 weeks.\n\nPlus, if an employee feels their workplace does deserve more than 2 weeks, nothing prevents them from hinting around beforehand or even working with the employer to ensure a better transition.", "It's a balance between giving the company time to find a replacement and not being forced to stay on for a ridiculous amount of time.", "If you are in IT though, they will generally make the day you give your resignation your last day.  You don't want someone who is unhappy to have access to your network.", "You're right that it's not long enough to replace a skilled worker. But in many jobs, it's enough to smoothly offload your duties onto one of the current workers. For some skilled trades where there's a ready labor pool, it may well be enough to find a replacement. \n\nAlso, many social conventions just evolve because they work, without any serious analysis. But in some cases, particularly executives, it's common to give much more notice. ", "HR student here.\n\nThe two-weeks notice time period is just the generic common law default in many jurisdictions and tends to be what is put into legislation as the default that would for most typical situations.\n\nTo determine what would be a reasonable notice period that you are leaving a job would need to consider many factors such how long you worked in your current and similar positions with your current employer, how specialized your job is, the status of the local / regional job / labour market for similar positions, etc.\n\nNote that this notice principle is supposed to work both ways, ie: the employer is supposed to give you a similar amount of notice if they need to lay you off / fire your without cause (or more commonly provide with pay in-lieu of the notice period) based on the same factors I listed above."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9wnjfn", "title": "Why is the Milwaukee protocol not recommended?", "selftext": "The Wikipedia page about rabies states the following three things. About the disease itself, it says:\n\n > In unvaccinated humans, rabies is almost always fatal after neurological symptoms have developed.\n\nAbout the Milwaukee protocol, it says two things. First, it states\n\n > The protocol is not an effective treatment for rabies and its use is not recommended.\n\nand it concludes by saying\n\n > An intention-to-treat analysis has since found this protocol has a survival rate of about 8%\n\nCan someone explain to me how these three statements are logically consistent? The way I see it, if you get symptoms of the rabies, you have two options. One is certain death, one is death in 92% of cases. Now I know option 2 isn't particularly good, but it's better than option 1, right? Isn't \"not recommending\" the protocol basically saying \"just let these people die\"? Isn't *some* result, no matter how marginally good, better than *certain death*?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9wnjfn/why_is_the_milwaukee_protocol_not_recommended/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e9m454t", "e9n2o88"], "score": [14, 5], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\n\n\"The Milwaukee protocol (MP), a procedure reported to prevent death after the onset of rabies symptoms, has been performed over 26 times since its inception in 2004 but has only saved one life. Overwhelming failure has lead health officials to label the protocol, a red herring.\"", "Because it may not actually work. The 1 out of 26 it seemed to have worked for, Jeanna Giese may have contracted a less virulent strain. In fact there were some weird findings when she was being tested prior to the protocol when it was suspected she had rabies. No live virus was recovered from her nervous tissue or cerebrospinal fluid, only antibodies. Giese was also bit on the finger, and the rabies virus must slowly creep up the nerves to the brain (hence the long incubation period), so it\u2019s possible she was infected with a weak form of the virus that her body started to fight already. \n\nIt should however be noted that there is actually now a second survivor from Brazil who received the Milwaukee protocol. It was very recent though (June 2018). \n\nAn additional (and unfortunate) argument against use of the Milwaukee Protocol is its cost. It has a very low success rate (if any) and costs $800,000. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mjdrdypu.org/article.asp?issn=0975-2870;year=2017;volume=10;issue=2;spage=184;epage=186;aulast=Agarwal"], []]}
{"q_id": "e5rp1o", "title": "Does low blood sugar have an effect on blood pressure?", "selftext": "I can't seem to find any information on this. I keep getting results like \"eating less sugar can lower blood pressure! bwaaa!\" It's very annoying. Not talking about any medical conditions.\n\n I just want to know the effect of low blood sugar, specifically from not eating, on blood pressure.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/e5rp1o/does_low_blood_sugar_have_an_effect_on_blood/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f9lpobu", "f9lr7jy"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Glucose (sugar) tends to be really sticky. It especially likes to stick to proteins, and this process is called glycation. It's hard to undo glycation, so high levels of blood sugar over time will continually glycate protein components of different organ systems. Glycation is not harmless, because the addition of these particles ultimately will impair the intended function of whatever is being affected. The kidneys are tasked with filtering the blood and thus will encounter lots of glucose. The kidneys play a crucial role in regulating blood pressure, so damage to the kidneys over time can lead to increased blood pressure. I'm sure there are other widespread issues as well that contribute to this", "Eating less sugar does not really cause low blood sugar, at least in the way you're probably thinking about it. The body has an extremely sensitive and complicated way of maintaining adequate blood sugar and will make it if necessary from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats elsewhere in the body, mostly in the liver. So taking in less sugar in a 24 hour period will not cause your blood sugar to be significantly lower the next day and therefore acute changes in sugar intake will not cause acute changes in blood sugar or blood pressure by any direct mechanism that I can think of (dangerously low blood sugar can cause low blood pressure because the rest of the body basically shuts down, not because of the sugar itself).\n\nNot eating at all will not affect your blood sugar significantly until these stores run out in days to weeks. Truly low blood sugar causes rapid deterioration in mental status and can lead to seizure, coma, and death quickly. The most common cause of truly low blood sugar is excess insulin, not starvation/sugar sparing. For an interesting story demonstrating how dangerous this is, read about [Sunny von B\u00fclow](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat you're reading about is probably related to the long-term effects of having HIGH blood sugar, i.e. diabetes. Diabetes causes damage to the walls of blood vessels and the kidneys, which play a major role in blood pressure regulation. In a basic sense, when the blood vessels in the kidney are damaged, there is less blood flow felt by the kidney, so it tries to fix it by raising the blood pressure. Controlling high blood sugar can slow this vascular damage and lower blood pressure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_von_B\u00fclow"]]}
{"q_id": "j4zip", "title": "Could it be feasible, with superior technology (quantum computing?), to run simulations accurate to the atomic level?", "selftext": "If we were to develop quantum computing, would it be possible to run extremely accurate  simulations governed by the most basic atomic laws? I suppose the memory and processor speeds needed to run such simulations in any reasonable time would be astronomical, but how far out of reach is this? I'm imagining running simulations of the beginnings of life and watching how it might evolve, but the applications seem practically limitless. Maybe this is silly and impossible to achieve even with extraordinary technological advancements. Thoughts?\n\nEDIT: I guess this depends hugely on the scale of the simulations. Let's say the size of a small room for starters.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j4zip/could_it_be_feasible_with_superior_technology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c29728l", "c29750a", "c297owt", "c2980zo", "c298fii"], "score": [11, 10, 2, 14, 2], "text": [" >  ... accurate to the atomic level.\n\nThat alone is a problem. Beyond hydrogenic atoms (atoms with one electron and one nucleus), no exact solution can be found to the Schrodinger equation. Amazing approximations are used, but if you're trying to to run simulations from the beginning of life, the power of error propagation will truly break your simulation.", "Quantum computers arent magic bullets. Their main advantage is being able to run through certain search algorithms faster -- if I have a classical algorithm that runs in O(f(N)) time, where N is my number of bits, a quantum computer could run the same algorithm in O(sqrt(f(N))) time. They're not necessarily better in general.", "It's funny you bring up quantum computers. Quantum computation was never imagined as a way to factor numbers or any such silly thing. Quantum computation was envisioned **as a way to simulate quantum mechanics**. Feynman and others were contemplating the limits of Moore's law some time in the late 1970s (I think) to determine if there was a fundamental limit for what classical computers could compute. They decided that classical computers could never simulate interesting quantum mechanics in real time, which led them to the idea of quantum computing.\n\ntl;dr: Quantum computers are theoretically (if a practical one is ever built) able to simulate quantum mechanics in real time, whereas classical computers are not. However, the quantum computer would necessarily need to be bigger than the environment it's simulating.", " > Let's say the size of a small room for starters.\n\nHaving worked on molecular dynamics, I will give you an idea of how far we are from that.\n\nCurrently, we can barely simulate protein folding with all-atom *classical heuristical approximations* (that is, we treat atoms as balls that interact by mean of heuristically computed potentials). We speak of simulating about, say, 1/1000 of second of a box of 30.000 atoms. How does it take to simulate that? It depends, but it's measured in *months*: that's what it takes, and you need to have damn good hardware to do that.\n\nNow, how many atoms does a small room contain? Let's imagine you want to simulate a 3x3x3 meters room full of water. You find it's about 2.7 * 10^30 atoms. In the end, you need 9 * 10^25  high-performance computing clusters running for a few months to simulate *1 millisecond* of your room. ", "No.  Even if we ignore the inherent problems of the endeavor (explained by others in this thread) and assume that everything about atomic particles can be known and measured, we run into this problem:  If every bit of matter is to be measured and known, then we need to store information about it.  If you're keeping things 100% accurate, then the computer will have to have at least the same amount of mass as the virtual environment it is simulating.\n\nFor clarity, let's just assume that atoms are the smallest things possible.  In that case, the most efficient way to store a unit of information is in one atom of the computer.  If you are keeping track of only one unit of information per atom in your simulation, your computer will need the same amount of atoms just to store the information.  Of course, you will need to know more than one thing about every atom.  For example, to be 100% accurate, you'll need to know: its position, subatomic composition, energy levels, etc.\n\nReally, it would be far more efficient to simply make a real-life duplicate of your simulation and call it a computer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29wsrh", "title": "what's the point of having a two-dollar bill if the u.s. government won't print enough of them?", "selftext": "Looking at [charts of currency volume](_URL_0_), the Two-Dollar Bill barely registers. On top of that, it's basically a collectors item for anyone who doesn't work in a bank. I would imagine that would undermine its utility as a currency instrument. Why do we still print it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29wsrh/eli5_whats_the_point_of_having_a_twodollar_bill/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cip8rnv", "cipckl0", "cipdp2b", "cipgd4q"], "score": [25, 6, 26, 3], "text": ["They print based on demand, not the other way around. Not many people demand it.\n\nI am one of those people; every few months I trade in cash for some two dollar bills. I think it's a great denomination and it should see more use. If there are more people like me, they print more.", "They are always crisp. I get a bundle of $200 every so often and they are usually fresh bills and in sequential order. Also most things I seem to buy with them result in me getting only coins in change. \n\nThe best part is how you get comments and smiles from those you hand them to, people enjoy the novelty of having \"special money\" given to them (see: the new $100 bills).\n\nTL;DR: Fresh bills. Makes people smile.\n", "I work in a bank and I hand them out randomly in cash back. People like them. Especially old men and kids. ", "I used to be a bank teller. The tellers working our drive-thru and walk-up windows used to use 2's quite a bit so we ordered them fairly regularly. We ordered from our bank's central cash office and if they didn't have what we need, they ordered from the fed. \n\nI never remember hearing that there weren't enough 2's, but there were many times we couldn't get the \"large\" we needed, that is, fifties and hundreds. It could be that people in your bank don't like them and just tell you there aren't enough, because if they wanted them they could surely get them.\n\nBTW I only once ever saw a $1,000 bill, deposited by a local Western Union office. After scrutinizing it, I immediately had to take it out of circulation, which entailed sending it by our oh-so-secure (not) interoffice mail system to the cash office. You know, in those envelopes with holes in them! I was so scared it would be lost. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_data.htm#value"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vg7jt", "title": "how does a painting like \"when will you marry\" sell for $300 million dollars when it doesn't look like anything spectacular", "selftext": "[This Painting](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vg7jt/eli5_how_does_a_painting_like_when_will_you_marry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cohbnw2", "cohh1o5", "coht9uh", "cohy9he"], "score": [11, 12, 6, 2], "text": ["The rarity of Gaugin paintings coupled with very rich people willing to pay 9-figures for a painting account for the sale price of that painting.\n\nThose factors ignore the inherent artistic beauty of the painting -- *which remember is in the eye of the beholder* -- which also contributes to the price. Artistic scholars also confirmed the artistic value of the painting. Lastly, historically, art has been seen as a relatively safe investment as paintings tend to hold their value over time.", "When it comes to a lot of art, context is more important than the actual material. Rarity, historical context etc. make a thing more valuable than its actual aesthetic properties. For example, some shitty buggy SNES or N64 games will sell for huge amounts if they are well preserved and in the original packaging etc, even when any high school student nowadays could write a better game in a week.", "Another reason, believe it or not, is branding. Media whoring. Showing off. ePeen. The buyer is largely believed to be the government of Qatar; a tiny country in the middle east (about the size of New Jersey with less than 300,000 citizens) that sits on one of the worlds largest natural gas and oil reserves. Hence they have a massive amount of wealth concentrated to relatively few people, most of whom belong to the Al-Thani family. And, they like to splash that wealth in ways to bring attention to the country and increase their international influence and reputation. \n\nThey have made several record-breaking art purchases over the past decade, but without any consistency. It's mostly haphazard without following any real theme. As some media have insinuated, they'll buy whatever's so expensive that it gets noticed. They also sponsor several museums around the world, art shows, prizes etc -- all while there are museums in Doha (the capital city) closing down due to the lack of funds. \n\nIt's not just art, Qatar is throwing money at anything that will bring media coverage to the country. The football World Cup in 2022 is being held there despite a lack of football history, venues or a suitable climate, and the bidding process is largely suspected to have involved bribery. The 2019 World Athletics Championships are being held there. They bid for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics. They spend ridiculous amounts of money on sports teams (Paris St Germain) and sponsorship (Barcelona), media (Al Jazeera), airlines (Qatar Air) -- anything to increase their presence on the international stage.\n\nSo whether this artwork was really something that the Al-Thani family considered so beautiful they had to pay 300m for, or whether they paid 300m to have Qatar on everyone's lips in the western media... That's anyone's guess.", "Disclaimer: I don't know shit about visual art, but I'm a musician, so this goes for art in general.\n\nA different way to look at it is to focus on the intent and the name. What seems like bad technique could actually be surprisingly complicated, or extremely fitting for the time. For instance, a lot of people hated  Skrillex's \"Fuck That,\" because it wasn't his usual hyper-loud brostep, and seemed jarringly simple for him. However, deep house has gotten really really popular lately, so he was just hopping on the bandwagon with that track (in his own way).\n\nIn terms of the name, if some random no name producer sent that track to a label, it'd probably get thrown out. Having Skrillex's name on it gives it validity; *the track isn't bad, it sounds like that because he wanted it to*, is the subconscious thought attached. \n\nOf course, \"Fuck That\" is a terrible brostep track, because it's not a brostep track, nor was it intended to be. This painting wasn't at all intended to be realism, so to judge it through the lens of any genre other than the one it is would be erroneous.\n\nTL;DR: Given that Gaugin had been doing art for a while, it can be assumed he knew what he was doing, even if it doesn't seem like it.\n\nEdit: I still hate that painting though\n\nEdit edit: All this nonsense is just about Gaugin's intentions with that painting, not why it's selling for so much (I'll never be able to wrap my head around having that much disposable income)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Will_You_Marry%3F"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8kxsge", "title": "Where did the idea come about that Buddhism was \"non-theistic\"", "selftext": "I always hear people refer to it as such, but it just isn't true. People say Buddhism \"isn't a religion, it's a philosophy. It's even non\\-theistic\" when that is patently false. Buddhism sprung out of Hinduism, and it has a wide array of gods venerated and worshiped. [Buddhists have a large pantheon of gods](_URL_2_), as well as the [fierce deities](_URL_0_) which destroy obstacles against Buddhists. Buddhists also venerate [Bodhisattva's](_URL_3_), or people who have achieved enlightenment, and they have their own concepts of divine beings similar to angels known as [Devas](_URL_1_). If one person said that to me, I'd just ignore it as one guy who didn't know what he's talking about. However, it's been so many people that at this point I'm starting to wonder if they know something I don't.\n\nThis is also related, why are most Eastern religions called \"philosophies\" instead of religions? Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are all religions with their own concepts of divinity and heaven, yet they are for some reason treated differently from paganism or Abrahamic religions.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8kxsge/where_did_the_idea_come_about_that_buddhism_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzbqw4e", "dzcmd7h"], "score": [82, 5], "text": ["The difference between a \"religion\" and a \"philosophy\" is itself a somewhat philosophical difference. I, someone who has lived in Buddhist-majority countries and study it for a living, have been informed that I was wrong, Buddhism is *not* a religion, it is a *philosophy.* At some point, you just have to throw up your hands and shrug. It's worth remembering that some of Christianity's greatest thinkers - Saint Augustine, Thomas of Aquinas, Boethius, etc. - are by definition philosophers. This is usually where the conversation ends for me: Buddhism has just as many logicians and Priests as Abrahamic religions. \n\nThat said, your question is a little bit more in depth so I'll try and address each of the points you've raised and then address your main question: \n\n >  Buddhism sprung out of Hinduism, and it has a wide array of gods venerated and worshiped.\n\nThis is... technically not true. \"Hinduism\" isn't so much a religion like we'd consider Christianity and Judaism religions, but more of a complex of religions like Abrahamic faiths. The most popular forms of Hinduism today have their most pervasive elements sourced in far more recent centuries. Bhakti (the practice of devotion) for example, began in southern India at the end of the first millenium (Buddhism grew out of northern India). Vedanta (arguably the most popular and well known form of Hinduism today) began to pick up speed, mostly as an intellectual movement, but later expanding, about five centuries ago. Pretty much any form of Hinduism we have today will have roots and tendrils deep into history (every single one of them will source the literally timeless Vedas, more on that in a second) but the main point is salient: what we call \"Hinduism\" today, in any form, is not what Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was responding to when he sat under the Banyan Tree 2500 years ago. To say that Buddhism \"comes from\" Hinduism is patently false. \n\nMore to the point, the most particular point where Buddhism and Hinduism diverge into completely different religions is that Hinduism reveres and holds sacred the Vedas, where Buddhism rejects them entirely. This is *crucial,* as the Vedas are Hinduism's most sacred scriptures (i.e. the ones with all the gods) and all of Hinduism's following scriptures (i.e. the Upanishads, the Puranas, etc.) all emerge out of Vedic philosophy. Buddhism's primary distinction is that it rejects the Vedas. And arguably, by extension, the gods. \n\n*Arguably.* \n\n >  Buddhists have a large pantheon of gods, as well as the fierce deities which destroy obstacles against Buddhists.\n\nNeither of the articles which you posted are patently false, but they are sorely lacking in nuance and present local cults and single-use rituals as if they are universally \"Buddhist.\" This is an unfortunate mistake that Buddhists make, not just on Wikipedia, but in publication format as well. \n\nAn easy give away on the \"Buddhist deities\" page is the list of names are all listen in Tibetan (i.e. Ksitigarbha is an Indian name, with its Tibetan equivalent listed next to it, \"sa'i nying po\"). This doesn't mean the beings listed on this page don't exist in other parts of the world, i.e. Japan or China, in fact there's a pretty good rule: if it's Indian, it probably exists in the mythologies of other parts of the Buddhist world. Take the Bodhisattva Avaloketishvara: in Tibetan he is considered among the most sacred Bodhisattva, often referred to as \"the god of compassion,\" Chenrizi (Tib: spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug). In China and Korea, he takes a primarily female form as Guanyin. \n\nThe \"Fierce Deities\" page, however, is almost entirely Tantric Buddhism which is almost (*almost*) exclusive to India and Tibet. Tantric Buddhism gets... tricky, quickly to say the least. I'm not a tantric adept, so I'm not going to start expounding doctrine. But I can say with some authority that Tantric philosophy isn't necessarily supposed to be taken literally. This is something that has caused conflict in Tibet, with Tibetans being confused historically over how to interpret violent and sexual imagery that was prevalent in the Tantras (where these Wrathful Deities originate). Teachers, of whom Atisha is probably the most well known, informed the Tibetans that these were symbolic, not literal. The image of the yabyum is meant to be the union of wisdom and compassion. The image of the wrathful deity is meant to be the destruction of illusion, falsehood, and evil in the presence of truth. Later, there would exist Tantric Fundamentalists who would take these images to heart and wear pieces of corpses on their bodies and drink blood. \n\nSo while yes, these things are true and are a part of the constellation of Buddhism, it's worth looking into each one individually. There are few (or probably better yet *no*) scriptures that are universally Buddhist. While Avaloketishvara might be found in all Buddhist countries in some form, you will find that his treatment is vastly different from prayerful weeping in Tibet, to candle-lit offerings in Korea, to polite indifference in Thailand. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the wrathful gods (are not listed on that page because they) are local cults that predate Buddhism in some form, and their worshipers are cognizant that the gods are not a part of Buddhism, but tangential to it. \n\nOne worshiper in Bhutan put it pretty well in Christian Schicklgruber's article *Gods and Sacred Mountains*, \"I would never dare ask the Buddha to keep my cows healthy or to protect me in war.\" \n\n >  Buddhists also venerate Bodhisattva's, or people who have achieved enlightenment, and they have their own concepts of divine beings similar to angels known as Devas).\n\nThis is true. None of what I wrote above necessarily negates your point about Buddhism worshipping gods (not that that's my goal either). But the way Buddhists approach their gods, whether local or Indian in origin, are *vastly* different from the way that Christians, Muslims, or Jews would approach their God. \n\nAs I said before, many Buddhists will light a candle for Avaloketishvara at the temple, but won't do much else. \n\nPlenty of Catholics will do that for the Virgin Mary, or St.  < Insert Literally Any Name > . But it'd be wrong to then say that Catholics worshipped the Virgin or the Saints as Gods. It'd be heretical, in fact. On the page listing \"Fierce Deities,\" (I keep stumbling over this term because the more commonplace term is \"Wrathful Deities\") they list the Four Guardian Kings as \"Deities,\" which I suppose may be technically true, but these four statues usually grace the gateways of temples and monasteries but are never really *worshiped* like one might worship the Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or a local deity. \n\nThe problem really seems to be this term \"deity.\" \n\n\"Bodhisattva\" literally means \"enlightened being.\" An \"Arhat\" literally means \"Perfected one.\" None of these English translations even remotely carry the significance or the context that their Sanskrit equivalent has, so the default \"Deity\" is employed instead. Somewhat ironically, \"deva\" does literally mean \"God\" but in the hierarchy of beings you've listed, the Devas would be the lowest and least likely to be worshiped.\n\nIt's worth lingering on that point: what makes the Abrahamic God *god*? Usually three qualities are imposed: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. The Devas are none of this. They enjoy extreme pleasure and power for an extended period of time, but the Devas (assuming we can subsume the Wrathful Deities and Local Deities into their realm) are subject to the winds and fluctuations of Karma just like any other being and their time as gods will eventually come to an end. \n\nThe Bodhisattvas, as you said, are human beings who have achieved enlightenment. Neither by classification nor behavior, gods. Their goal is the ultimate enlightenment of everyone and everything they can reach. \n\nTo put it simply: just because Buddhism venerates certain beings and labels other beings (often ones with less veneration) as gods, doesn't really affect the theoism-icity of the religion. \n\ncont'd. ", " > This is also related, why are most Eastern religions called \"philosophies\" instead of religions? Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are all religions with their own concepts of divinity and heaven, yet they are for some reason treated differently from paganism or Abrahamic religions.\n\nReligion in China is a very complicated matter, and I think it's ultimately overly reductive to worry about whether these are philosophies *or* religions. However, the simple answer though is that they are treated differently from Abrahamic religions because they *are* different. \n\nIn China, the biggest religion in terms of adherents both now and for thousands of years has been what we call \"Chinese Folk Religion,\" which is difficult to describe in a nutshell but has many of the characteristics that one would typically ascribe to a religion: afterlife, gods, worship, sacrifice, cosmic and natural order, the role of mankind in the universe, and so on. \n\nFor Confucianism and Taoism, some people might claim they are a \"philosophy and not a religion\" because both find their origins in texts that are not particularly religious. If you read any of the canon of Confucian or Taoist thought, you will find that the overall thrust of the texts is commentary on ethical behavior, what a person should do or understand, and how society ought to be organized. Taken individually, it is dubious to claim that any of the texts are primarily religious in nature. Of course they are different from what we would call modern philosophy - all the texts claim some kind of *a priori* knowledge without building up an axiomatic system of logic. As an example, Confucian texts reference the concept of \"Heaven\" as an abstract source of perfection and harmony, and reference divination practices.\n\nArguments against calling Confucianism a religion is that the canon lacks most of the characteristics of what most people would imagine a religion is: afterlife, origin of humanity, or requirement of belief. A Confucian gentleman is enjoined to take part in ritual, but as a matter of social harmony. Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit priest and missionary (and one of the first westerners to master the Chinese language) believed that Confucianism and Christianity were compatible, and in fact borrowed a lot of Confucian language in his effort to introduce the gospels into Chinese. \n\nTaoism I think is more complicated because it encompasses both a liturgical tradition and a more philosophical tradition based on several canonical texts. An argument against calling Taoism a religion is that the first liturgical tradition involving Taoism (the Way of the Celestial Masters) did not come about until hundreds of years after Taoism began as a philosophy (sometime in the 4th century BCE vs 142 CE). I think that if someone must classify it as a religion, it cannot be considered an organized religion. \n\nBuddhism has to be considered separately, because although it has had great influence on Chinese culture it has also been suppressed as a foreign influence during various points in history that are beyond the scope of a simple comment. \n\nUltimately however Chinese scholars since at least the 6th century CE have been writing about the concept of the \"three Teachings\" - Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism - as parts of a larger harmonious tradition, the core of which is Chinese Folk Religion. While Buddhism could be separated from this tradition and viewed as its own independent system in other countries, Taoism and especially Confucianism cannot really be excised from the syncretic folk religion without losing their religious aspects. In the end I think the argument over whether they are primarily religious or primarily philosophical is not particularly useful, *but* they do have a lot of characteristics that make it unwise to try to make a one-to-one comparison with an Abrahamic religion. \n\ntl, dr: Taoism and especially Confucianism have no real religious characteristics of their own that weren't borrowed from the larger folk religion, and the differences between Taoism and Confucianism are mostly philosophical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fierce_deities", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deva_(Buddhism)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "oox5p", "title": "Is it possible to fashion a \"stone\" for a ring from graphite?", "selftext": "Some Background: As a chemistry nerd-girl at heart I've grown up in meager conditions and have always joked with my boyfriend that an engagement ring with graphite would mean more to me than one of diamond. \n\nI am curious though, *is this possible*?\n\nNo luck through searching google about such items. Plus, I'd like a little more explanation about the science behind it :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/oox5p/is_it_possible_to_fashion_a_stone_for_a_ring_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3ivffi", "c3iw0a6", "c3ix72i", "c3iyuq2"], "score": [6, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Graphite is extremely soft. \n\nI suppose that you could encase it in a transparent shell, but otherwise it wouldn't last long. \n\n[Edit]  Go with Buckminsterfullerene  ....", "You could go halfway - [Mossianite](_URL_0_) (silicon carbide), which is carbon and silicon atoms mixed in a somewhat diamond-like lattice. \n\nIt's very close to diamond in a lot of its material properties (read: very hard). As a mineral it's very rare, and the gemstones are entirely made synthetically, which I'd think would add to the novelty for a chemist, really. \n\nI'm not a big fan of diamonds either; they're highly overpriced (due to De Beers monopoly), and a bit boring. One of the reasons they're so popular isn't because they're so unusually pretty, but because they're so relatively homogenous and consistent. In other words, you can buy diamonds in a certain size and mass-produce diamond jewelry. Other gemstones (especially emeralds) are more often flawed, and need custom-designed jewels/mounts to look good.\n\n", "I see that covalent vs. ionic bonds, graphite's (lack of) hardness, and graphene/other alternatives have been discussed. I have no additional science to offer.\n\nHowever, I have some practical advice: graphite will leave marks *everywhere*. That's one of the easiest ways to identify it. \"Looks a little like galena but is quite light and leaves schmutz on your fingers? Yep. Graphite.\"\n\nOf course, it leaving marks everywhere is a result of those weak ionic bonds; that is to say, the schmutz is just graphite that's broken off.", "There are a handful of graphite [compounds that are machinable.](_URL_0_) One of these might be more-or-less useful in making a ring one could wear, but I suspect the properties (softness or brittleness) would ultimately cause it to break or wear away."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite"], [], ["http://www.ceramisis.com/carbons_graphites_a1.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "7uvrqb", "title": "The ancient Romans ate their banquets reclined on couches. As far as I know, no country in the former Roman Empire still does that. How and when did it die out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7uvrqb/the_ancient_romans_ate_their_banquets_reclined_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtpab03"], "score": [7], "text": ["Michael Psellos (c.1030-c.1080) in eleventh century Constantinople offers an amusing anecdote on this. Constantinople's Great Palace was known for possessing a room called The Hall of 19 Couches  and the imperial family and custom were still forcing people to recline like ancient Romans in the high medieval period. \nPsellos, a renowned philosopher of Plato, complained of the effect of eating while lying as such causing his stomach pain and causing indigestion and flatulence, literally 'pressing the waste from my backside'. \n\nAs he makes such a note of this we can presume it was a most unusual custom to force people to do by then.\n\nBy 1081 Alexios Komnenos was emperor and he moved the family to the Blachernae Palace on the other side of the city. We may suppose the couches did not come too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ab0950", "title": "Would there really have been black and Asian people in Mary Queen of Scot\u2019s and Elizabeth I\u2019s courts?", "selftext": "Just got back from seeing Mary Queen of Scots and was intrigued by the amount of POC actors cast to play members of the queens\u2019 courts. This doesn\u2019t seem historically accurate. Spanish or Portuguese would make sense but black or Asian baffles me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ab0950/would_there_really_have_been_black_and_asian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ehktgpl", "ecwov3p"], "score": [2, 91], "text": ["At the time, blacks were employed as musicians, foot carriage men and other servant positions; some were indentured. As far as Court life went, no records (to my knowledge) indicate blacks filled Ambassador or other lofty positions, although, they were steadily rising in the English gentry. \nElizabeth would later attempt to expel blacks from the country for a variety of reasons: blaming the poor, of which most blacks were, for failing economics; blacks were of Muslim origins,  a threat to a Christian nation rallying cry, etc. \n\nStill, the movie \u2018feels\u2019 somewhat forced, viewing a period piece knowing that Blacks  &  Asians didn\u2019t have those roles in that hierarchy. It\u2019s not a slight, merely historical facts, but its director publicly stated her refusal having an all white cast, therefore, the cognitive dissonance is palpable...", "Why does the presence of individuals of African ancestry baffle you while Spaniards and Portuguese would not, despite the fact that the strait of Gibraltar separates the European continent with the African continent by a mere 16.3 km? \n\nTo answer your question, the answer is: Yes. The royal court of Elizabeth I had individuals of African ancestry. So did the courts of her predecessors, Henry VII and Henry VIII. Her successor, James I (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), also had them in his court. Alongside this, wealthy and influential individuals also had people of African ancestry in their households. In cities and villages across the British isles, people of African ancestry lived and died throughout this era. \n\nThis African presence in the courts of different English monarchs is visible in the archives, but the majority of what we have is fragmentary. This is not something to be surprised about, seeing as we often have very little to go on in regards to the lives of specific commoners during this era. Sometimes, we're lucky, such as in the case of \"John Blanke the blacke Trumpet\" who was one of 8 trumpeters in the court of Henry VII and who first appears in the records in 1507. What makes the case of John Blanke so extraordinary is that he is [depicted in the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll.](_URL_0_) Historian Miranda Kauffman expands on John Blanke as well as 9 other individuals of African ancestry during this period in her book *Black Tudors* (2017).\n\nBut in the case of Elizabeth I, we have considerably little to go on. It is not for nothing that historian Imtiaz H. Habib has \"Imprints of the Invisible\" as a subtitle to his very detailed *Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677* (2008). It is in the household records of Elizabeth I that we in 1547 find a \"litell blak a More\" living in her court. Beyond this anonymous description, we have nothing. It has the \"classic anonymity of the black subject whose particulars are irrelevant for the early modern English historical record,\" as Habib describes it. It is very likely that there are many individuals who simply went unrecorded. The reason as to why we know of this girl of African ancestry is because she was most likely given as a gift to Elizabeth I. Unfortunately, the scarcity of sources in the matter makes it difficult to give an in-depth and detailed description of the live of these (to us) anonymous people of color in European courts. \n\nYet, they are there. In household registries, on tournament rolls, in parish records and many other that records their presence, their baptisms, their marriages, their children, their deaths and their burials. The presence of people of color in a period movie should only be seen as an acceptance of that fact and an attempt to depict the historical diversity of European courts during the 16th century."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/51593/image.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "7cffdn", "title": "how does fridges or freezers work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cffdn/eli5how_does_fridges_or_freezers_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dppgm3d", "dpphvmo", "dppicjb", "dppjxrt", "dppkcqc", "dppm31o"], "score": [45, 5, 14, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Have you ever held a can of compressed air while you pressed the trigger?  The can gets really cold. When compressed gas is released the container cools. \n\nImagine a loop of pipe. There is a very small valve on one side and a pump on the other. \n\nThe pump pressurizes the coolant. The valve creates the same reaction of pressure being released. \n\nSo the side where the pressure is released is cold, but the side with the pump is hot. That's why they put the hot pump on the outside (of the air conditioner or refrigerator).  And the cold valve on the inside. ", "When you compress air (Make a volume of air take up less space), you heat it up. This happens because all the energy is compressed into a smaller volume. When you decompress air, the opposite happens. This is charles law.\n\nSo, they take a refrigerant, compress it a lot, then cool it off with room temperature air. They then decompress it and it becomes very cold. You can do this with regular air (nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide), but it doesn't work as well. Then they run air in the fridge across the cold heat exchanger, which warms the refrigerant up. Rinse Repeat.\n\nAir conditioners in your house and car work in the exact same way, but on a larger system.", "Imagine you have a collapsible container of some gas at room temperature, and you begin squeezing it. You're doing *work* on it, which means you're transferring *energy* into it. The only place that energy can go is into the temperature of the gas: i.e., it gets hotter.\n\nNow you let the outside air cool the container back down to room temperature. Then you relax your grip on the container and let it expand again. This time the gas is doing work on your hands, and the only place that energy can come from is the temperature of the gas -- so it gets *below* room temperature.\n\nIn the fridge, a gas goes through a compressor to accomplish the first step. The high-temp gas then runs through tubes outside the fridge in back, where the air cools it. Then it goes through a small orifice, which accomplishes the second step; then it runs through tubes inside the fridge, picking up heat from the contents, and finally back to the compressor. Lather, rinse, repeat.", "Engineering student currently taking thermodynamics. Fridges and freezers are what\u2019s called thermopumps. Essentially, heat is the kinetic energy of atoms and molecules wizzing and vibrating. As long as a substance is above absolute 0, there is always heat within it. A thermopump sucks in the heat from a region (the inside of your fridge) and dissipates it in another (your kitchen). \n\nIn nature, heat only moves from hot to cold regions, so how does a thermopump manages to do the opposite? We achieve this by having a refrigerant substance run through a system of tubes, the substance is choosen such that it can be vaporized and liquified easily. There are heat transfers that come with the phase changes (liquid to vapor and vice versa). Last bit of science we need to be aware of  to understand the themopump is the fact that not only temperature can induce a phase change, pressure is equally important. In everyday life everything happens at 100kPa so we don\u2019t notice it as much, but water will boil under 100C in high altitude where the pressure is lower. So our refrigerant can be boiled by simply changing the pressure. \n\nSo now we can get a more applied idea of how the thermopump works. The refrigerant will start as a cold low pressure liquid (colder than the inside of your fridge) that will go through long winding tubes in the inside of your fridge, sucking out the heat to undergo a phase change, turning into vapor. Then enter the compressor, the part of your fridge that requires power, to raise the pressure and temperature of the vapor. It will then go through long winding tubes again, this time on the outside of fridge (your kitchen). The vapor will liquify and thus pouring alot of the heat it gathered earlier inside the fridge, into your kitchen. The high pressure hot liquid will then go through an expansion valve (which will essentially lower the pressure and temperature). Bringing us back to the low pressure cold liquid from the begining.  Thus completing the refrigeration cycle. The pressure changes are done to change the phase change point of the refridgerant to the ambiant temperature of both regions. \n\nThis can be reversed to heat up a home. These systems are more efficient than traditional electrical heaters because they use energy moving heat rather than just generating it. \n\n\n\nTL;DR: They move the heat inside your fridge/freezer to your kitchen by playing with the refrigerant\u2019s pressure and temperature and phase changes. ", "So I'm a refrigeration engineer and this is my jam!\n\nThe first thing you need to know is that EVERYTHING wants to be the same temperature and works to make that happen. What a fridge does is give all the heat in the food somewhere else to go. It moves it to this cold thing called an evaporator and the fluid in the evaporator moves to this thing called a condenser that spits the heat out to the room.\n\nAll it is doing is taking the heat in the fridge and pushing it somewhere else. The actual scientific way it does this is through phase changes, turning liquids into gasses and back again, and changing pressures but that's a bit above the ELI5 level.\n\nIf you have specific questions I literally get paid to talk about this all day.", "It's called a thermodynamic cycle. The name of the cycle is the \"vapor compression refrigeration cycle\". People have hit the main idea, but here's the full cycle:\n\nFirst you compress the refrigerant (currently a gas) and it turns to a hot liquid, so you vent the heat out the back of the fridge. Also, the compressor is the thing you're hearing when your fridge is making that humming noise.\nThen inside the fridge you let it expand through a valve, and it evaporates again and gets cold. \nThen you send it through the compressor again and start the process over.\n\nIn thermodynamics, you can generate heat (put electricity through a resistor and it gets hot) but you can't generate cold. You can only remove heat and dump it something else.\n\nWe use refrigerant because of it's thermal properties. It's a liquid even at the cold temperatures of the freezer. It absorbs a lot of heat when it evaporates, so it's great that it boils during this cycle. The stuff is quite horrible for the environment, but refrigerant gets reused for the entire life cycle of the fridge, unless something goes horribly wrong.\n\nLastly, the fridge and the freezer run the exact same cycle, but the freezer pumps heat faster, making it colder and less efficient. (The refrigerant literally moves through the pipes at a faster rate)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "17g2ax", "title": "How do astronauts weigh their own bodies in space?", "selftext": "Hello, I've just read about how being in space in is very damaging to human muscle and bones and that's why they have to exercise daily etc. I bet they have to measure their loss/gain of mass from time to time, right? \n\nOn Earth we measure weigh using scales which basically uses Earth's gravitational force to measure your weight, in space or on the orbit that seems impossible, since you're always freefalling while orbiting the Earth.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17g2ax/how_do_astronauts_weigh_their_own_bodies_in_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c855hqx", "c855lft"], "score": [9, 5], "text": ["The [Space Linear Acceleration Measurement Device](_URL_0_)", "Slight clarification in terms: weight refers to the ~~downward force from gravity~~ reactionary force against gravity\\*. Since the astronauts are in free-fall, they don't have a weight as such. They have mass, which is a cause of weight in a gravitational field, but not the same concept.\n\nNow that that is out of the way, there are two methods. I believe the one they use is a fairly simple spring. The period of a spring depends on the mass of the system attached to it, so you have the astronauts hold onto a spring, and by measuring the period you can get their mass.\n\nAlternatively (and a similar principle) you can apply a known force and measure the resultant acceleration (since F=ma). I don't believe this is usually done (measuring the acceleration and creating a constant known force is not necessarily trivial), but it would also work.\n\n\\*Edit: see Olog's point and my response below, weight is an imprecise term is my end point"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://blogs.esa.int/promisse/2012/02/10/measure-body-mass-in-space/"], []]}
{"q_id": "5mjsp4", "title": "if multiplying by zero returns zero, why does division by zero return 'undefined'?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mjsp4/eli5_if_multiplying_by_zero_returns_zero_why_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc43u9t", "dc444h9", "dc45aso", "dc45rvt", "dc486l0", "dc48u1w", "dc4901f", "dc49iut", "dc4ipxm", "dc4yrvc", "dc595o3"], "score": [4, 44, 3, 447, 2, 41, 2, 67, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["0 x 0 is the same as 0 + 0, just as 2 x 2 is 2 + 2. Nothing added to nothing is nothing. \n\n0/0 is asking how many nothings could I fit into nothing? Who knows. There's no real answer. ", "0/0 is undefined precisely *because* x \\* 0 = 0 for any x. So, think about the relationship between multiplication and division. It is similar to the relationship between addition and subtraction, they undo one another, if you will. In other words, we would like it to be the case that\n\na \\* x / x = a\n\nfor any a and any x. This is just fine as long as x isn't 0. But look at what happens when x = 0.\n\n1 \\* 0 = 0\n\nSo, if I want my above undo rule to hold, since 0 = 1 \\* 0, it must be the case that\n\n0 / 0 = (1 \\* 0) / 0 = 1\n\nOkay, great! So 0 / 0 is 1, right? But...\n\n2 \\* 0 = 0\n\nSo, if I still insist that the undo rule holds, and I also know that 0 = 2 \\* 0, then...\n\n0 / 0 = (2 \\* 0) / 0 = 2\n\nSo, 1 = 0 / 0 = 2. Oh no. That's no good. Clearly 1 isn't equal to 2.\n\nSo, how do we remedy this problem? Well, where is the problem? The problem is that we decided that division by 0 *could* mean something.", "I'll try for an intuitive approach.\n\nLet's have a*b=c\n\nLet's define division as a slight reordering of this into\na=c/b\n\nSo 0/0 is not undefined but indeterminate. This distinction is important because the number itself IS defined, but cannot be determined as it has an infinite number of valid solutions.\n\nTo see this, let's try plugging in 0 for c and b (to give us our 0/0) and rearrange it into our first equation\na*0=0\n\nWell shoot, that's true no matter what value we put in for a. This is why it's indeterminate.\n\nNow let's try division by zero where the numerator isn't 0. Let's try c=1 and b=0\na*0=1\n\nWell as we can see, we run into a problem. What value of a can possibly make this true?\n\nNone of them can. There is no value of a that can ever be multiplied by zero to give us an answer of anything BUT zero.\n\nUsing *this specific definition of division*, it's easy to see why division by zero is undefined. There IS a way to give division by zero a definition but that starts going into beginnings of calculus :)", "Let's use a 1-pound chocolate bar. \n\nMultiplication: if you have a 4 count of 1-pound chocolate bars, you have 4 pounds of chocolate. If you have no 1-pound chocolate bars, you have 0 pounds of chocolate. Makes perfect sense. \n\nDivision: If you cut the chocolate bar into 4 equal parts, each part is 4 ounces (1/4 of a pound). But try cutting a chocolate  bar into zero equal parts... conceptually that makes no sense. If you say that this means removing or destroying the chocolate bar, that would actually be subtraction. In effect, you want to collapse the chocolate bar into fewer than one piece but still expect all 16 ounces of chocolate to still be present in this space where there is no chocolate bar.", "I like to think of simple division as taking a small group of things from a larger group of things or x how many y(s) (if that makes sense). As in 10/5 is 2 because you can take 2 groups of 5 from 10.\n\nSo\n\nX/0 is technically infinite because you can keep taking zero blocks from a pile of 10 and have an infinite amount of groups of zero\n\n0/X has no answer because you can't take 10 blocks from a pile of zero and make multiple piles of 10", "5 year old explanation:\nImagine you have a room with 5 people in it. A pizza is on the table in the room. If the pizza has 20 slices each person gets 4 slices.\n\nNow what if you have the same situation with a 20 slice pizza but there are 0 people in the room. Now how many slices does each person recieve...\n\nIf there are no people to divide up the slices than there is no conceivable answer to this problem.", "If you have 3 bags with 2 apples each, you have 6 apples. That's 3*2=6.  \n\nIf you have 3 empty bags, you have no apples. That's 3*0=0.  \nSo that explains why multiplying by 0 always returns 0.  \n\nIf you have 10 apples and have 2 bags to fill, you'd need to put 5 apples in each bag. That's 10 / 2 = 5.  \n\nBut if you have 10 apples and have no bags, how many apples fit in each bag? The question doesn't make sense because there are no bags. That's why dividing by zero is illogical.", "Let us look at the number 10\n\n    10 / 2 = 5\n\nDividing by 2 gives us half\n\n    10 / 1 = 10\n\nDividing by 1 gives us the same number\n\n    10 / 0.5 = 20\n\nDividing by a half doubles the number\n\n    10 / 0.25 = 40\n\nDividing by a quarter quadruples the number.\n\nSo, the smaller the number we divide by, the bigger the result. This suggest that dividing by 0 should give us infinite.\n\nHowever, let us look at it from the other end of the number line:\n\n    10 / -2 = -5\n\nDividing by -2 gives us minus a half\n\n    10 / -1 = 10\n\nDividing by -1 gives us the same number, only negative\n\n    10 / -0.5 = -20\n\nDividing by a half doubles the number, only negative\n\n    10 / -0.25 = -40\n\nDividing by a quarter quadruples the number, only negative.\n\nSo the closer we move to zero from the negative direction, the closer the result moves towards minus infinite.\n\nThis suggest that dividing by 0 should result in minus infinite.\n\nI don't think 2 results can be further away from each other than infinite and minus infinite.", "Typically we use limits to deal with zeroes and infinities.\n\n\nBasically instead of saying what's 1/infinity. We rephrase this to say what's the limit as n approaches positive infinity for 1/n. In other words, we look at the behaviour as n get's bigger.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nSo 1/10 = 0.1\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/100 = 0.01\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/1000 = 0.001\n\n & nbsp;\n\nAs you can see 1/n is getting smaller as 'n' (the number at the bottom) gets larger. So we say the limit as n approaches positive infinity for 1/n is 0.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNow, let's try the limit as n approaches 0 for 1/n.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/0.1 = 10\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/0.01 = 100\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/0.001 = 1000\n\n & nbsp;\n\nAs you can see, as 'n' gets smaller 1/n gets bigger so it might be tempting to say 1/0 is infinity.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n & nbsp;\n\nHowever, we can approach 0 from the negative numbers too.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/-0.1 = -10\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/-0.01 = -100\n\n & nbsp;\n\n1/-0.001 = -1000\n\n & nbsp;\n\nBoth arguments are equally compelling. So, we can't say whether 1/0 is infinity or -infinity for sure. In cases where we can divide by 0, either: all sides converge to the same thing or we're specific about which direction we are coming from.\n", "Simple way to look at this.\n\nDivision is what is known as the inverse (mathematical opposite) of multiplication.  Where multiplication can be thought of as combining many copies of something and counting the total; division is counting how many times you can remove a quantity from another until you can't remove any more.\n\nSaying six divided by two equals three is the same as asking how many times can I remove two things from a group of six things before I have no more things to remove.  Three, of course.\n\nDivision by zero is then the same as asking the question, \"How many times can I remove no (zero) objects from a collection of things before there are not enough things left for me to remove no more things?  \n\nLooking at division as the inverse of multiplication I ask how many times I can add a bunch of things until I have a particular quantity.  How many times can I add two objects to a pile until I have six objects?  Three times because if I add a fourth bunch of two things I will have more than six.\n\nNow how many times to I have to add no things to a pile until I have a pile of six things?\n\nThere is no number that counts how many nothings I remove from a pile until it is empty or how many nothings I pile together until I have a specific quantity.  And it doesn't matter how large a pile I begin subtracting from or how large a pile I wish to end up with.  \n\nIt's simply undefined.", "Let's imagine a scenario for each equation:\n\nwe have nothing, and we must multiply this nothing, by nothing.\nWell if we have one thing, we can multiply it by nothing, and receive the consequence of having nothing. knowing this, we now can determine that since we started with zero, we remain with zero.\n\nnow we have nothing, and we suppose to divide the nothing.\nhow might one go about dividing the absence of a thing?\nOnce we realize that the very nature of zero (ie. nothing), we must assume that the only manner to define it is in fact imaginary.\nOnce we attempt to imagine such an application as dividing nothing by nothing, we would seem to arrive at nothing again, only this time the nothing has been divided into separate nothings. Only we cannot define how many nothings it has been divided into because there is nothing, therefore we cannot define the difference between 0 and 0/0.\n\nAnother way of showing this is in the notation itself.\nto represent dividing zero by zero, we can express it as the fraction  0/0. but to define a fraction, one must have extrapolated parts. how might we part out zero? it is indefinite, and therefore undefined."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15t015", "title": "At some point millions of years ago, an ancestor of the cetaceans was born on land for the last time.  Are there any current examples of a vertebrate species that is undergoing such a major behavioral change?   ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15t015/at_some_point_millions_of_years_ago_an_ancestor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7pkld2", "c7pklim", "c7pncor", "c7ppho8", "c7ppnf6"], "score": [2, 8, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Sea Otters spend almost all of their time offshore, including when they give birth. Most other Otter species give birth on land in a den.", "One interesting case is the Otiriidae family (fur seals). I mention them because of the way they sleep.\n\nAs you may be aware, cetaceans sleep *unihemispherically*. That is to say, they sleep with only one half of their brain at a time. This allows them to continue monitoring their environment -- and of course breathing -- during the night. Manatees also sleep unihemispherically, meaning they evolved this state independently.\n\n[As an aside, there is evidence of unihemipsheric sleep in birds and reptiles, so unihemispheric sleep may even predate bihemispheric sleep, as strange as that seems!]\n\nNow, true seals (phocidae) don't sleep unihemispherically, yet they spend a lot of time in the water. They get around this issue by holding their breath for several minutes at a time while they sleep in the water, periodically surfacing to hyperventilate. The same is true of several other marine mammals, include the walrus and the hippopotamus.\n\nInterestingly, fur seals seem to have adopted a different strategy. When on land, they sleep bihemispherically, like all land mammals. However, when they are in the water, they switch to sleeping unihemispherically!\n\nI don't know whether these species are in a stage of transitioning to being fully aquatic, but it is a very interesting intermediate phenotype.", "Most insectivorous bats feed in flight. However, there are some species of bat that forage for insects on the ground.\n\n[Pallid Bat](_URL_0_)\n\nIt's been mentioned that evolution is not predictable. But any novel behavior has the potential to lead to speciation.", "It is worthwhile noting that evolution is not deterministic, and \"major change\" implies past and future endpoints. ", "_URL_0_\n\nHere is something recently described in France where a catfish population has been reported jumping out of the water onto land to catch pigeons on the shore. It is highly likely this will be an evolutionary dead end, but it is still remarkable behavior if often not successful for the catfish. Though the timescale of humans means we will never witness them \"evolving\", perhaps in several million years a large phenotypic change could occur as a response.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallid_bat"], [], ["http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/12/05/the-catfish-that-strands-itself-to-kill-pigeons/"]]}
{"q_id": "1tqfpj", "title": "\"Sm-149 is an observed stable isotope of samarium (predicted to decay, but no decays have ever been observed, giving it a half-life several orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe)\"", "selftext": "How is this half-life possible, or how does the claim make sense?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1tqfpj/sm149_is_an_observed_stable_isotope_of_samarium/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceaml2y"], "score": [5], "text": ["There's no reason that such a long half-life isn't possible. It could just take a very, very, very long time for Sm-149 to decay.\n\nI think the point you may be getting at is how such a half-life could be *measured* (so that we could make such a claim).\n\nFirst of all, a fact: if you get enough radioactive stuff, we have a formula to predict how many decays you should see over time, on average. This formula (exponential decay) depends on the half-life of the material and how much of it you have at the start.\n\nNow let's imagine an experiment. We have a big pile of Sm-149, and we're going to watch it for a year. Now, if we know a half-life, then our formula tells us how many nuclei should decay in a year given the size of the pile. But we watch our pile for a year, and find that we see no decays. This means that our formula should tell us, if we blindly plug in numbers, that our pile should have on average *less than one nucleus decay in a year* (I'm not quite being accurate about some statistics here). This tells us a *minimum* half-life; if the half-life were shorter, we would have seen a nucleus decay.\n\nSo the claim is just that we watched enough Sm-149 for long enough and didn't see any decays, so the half-life must be exceptionally long if it decays at all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "77lnt9", "title": "how stock trading works/worked? i've only seen it in movies so i'm wondering why these people were always just screaming and waving pieces of paper around and call it a job.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77lnt9/eli5_how_stock_trading_worksworked_ive_only_seen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["domtqpt", "domtsp5", "domu0u4", "domuumv", "domvhyd", "domvk0c", "domwxvx", "domxhnq"], "score": [41, 53, 51, 9, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's almost all digital nowadays. There are people offering to buy stocks at a certain price and there are people offering to sell stocks at a certain price. A computer matches them and executes the transaction.\n\n", "The angered mob was buying and selling shares of stock to one another. The setting for these trades is called the trading floor. The loud shouting was to inform anyone your interest of selling or buying a quantity of stock at a price. Once you find someone to make the trade with, you each fill out a trading slip and the transaction is confirmed. \n\nNow, more popularly, the asking and bidding on shares is performed via computers.", "It's not like that anymore, but it used to be pretty much what it looks like. \n\nGuy 1: \"I'm selling $STOCK for $MONEY\"\n\nGuy 2: \"I'll buy 1,000 $STOCK for $MONEY!\"\n\nGuy 1: \"Sold!\"\n\nRemember, the movie scenes are almost always pegged on some crazy fiscal meltdown. It didn't look that chaotic most of the time.\n\nThese days it's all digital. Sellers post their prices, and buyers try to buy only to get screwed out of a nickel by unscrupulous flash traders. Heh. ", "In very very very basic terms it's the super dilution of ownership of a company. Stock is basically, well the stake of a company, broken up into tiny tiny pieces and put on the public market. Usually a board of directors own enough shares to control the company while the shares that go out on the market are called publicly traded shares.\n\nSay for example, you are a cannibal recipe website called Facecook and you as a private company have grown in popularity. You now need an injection of money to go to the next level and you don't want some huge investment firm controlling so much they could replace you. You break up your company's ownership into tiny shares, keep a majority for yourself, pass on some smaller amounts to your board of directors and your employees and the rest goes on the market.\n\nYou set a reasonable valuation for it on the day it goes public, called the IPO or initial public offering. People all want a piece of the action, because they know if you do well, the stock value goes up (including that face cook stock you bought). Stock price goes up as demand goes up, or if there's rumors of something awesome you're doing.\n\nBut in all honesty, most people on the public market are there as hawkers at a bazaar. Their aim is to buy at low prices and sell at high prices. The amount they get to own of your company is so little, they have little to no say in what your company does as an individual. But as a collective, every time there's Frenzy to buy, they drive your stock price up and inject capital into your company. \n\nEDIT (here's the part you were looking for):\nFor individuals who play the game at the frenzied bazaar full time, they're all trying to hit gold. Have those few super massive successful trades that can make them millionaires in a matter of minutes. With thousands of people trading non stop around the world, values fluctuate like crazy. And provided you have the right mix and the right access to buy and sell stocks from the right company, you can make a killing (and lose it). When they scream sell sell sell, they want people to dump the stock because there's reason to believe it will drop. Once it bottoms out. They'll buy it again and sell it once it rises.\n\nIt's like a manifestation of what nature is - an adrenaline fuelled chaotic race for survival over limited resources where wit, cunning and luck can all work in your favour or you can lose out despite 'doing everything right'", "Nowadays it's almost entirely electronic. Traders submit orders into the exchange that are like \"I want to buy 100 shares of XYZ at $30,\" and as soon as someone is willing to sell at that price, the exchange informs both parties that the trade has occurred. The exchange will also list what the current highest \"bid\" and lowest \"ask\" are, so you'd see that someone is currently willing to buy 100 shares of XYZ for $30 and someone else is willing to sell 500 shares for $30.01. You can also submit a \"market order\" like \"sell 1000 shares to whomever will give me the best price,\" which in the above example might cause you to sell 100 shares to the guy bidding $30, then another 400 to some other guy bidding $29.99, and the last 500 to someone else bidding $29.98. The exchange will automatically figure out who owes what and handle the transactions.\n\nHowever, this was all much harder before computers. Instead of submitting your order automatically, you'd need to have someone on the floor of the exchange yelling about how much you wanted to buy/sell and the price. When you tried to buy stock for your personal account, your bank would then contact their floor trader to buy that stock for you. The pieces of paper were for writing down what trades that trader personally had done. When you'd see those people in movies, it'd be during major moves in the price, which would cause significant activity in the area and increase the general level of chaos.\n\nYou might think \"why wouldn't they lie about what happened?\" They could do that, but failing to follow through with a trade just because it ended up bad for you would destroy your reputation, and the rest of the traders would know and you'd never get trades again.", "It is heavily dramatized in movies to an unrealistic level. In real life, stocks represent an investment in a company that you can later sell back for a profit. Every now and then events will happen in the environment that can drastically affect the profitability of a company and that may cause a \u201cfrenzy\u201d on the stock market as people react to that event. More often activity on the stock market is spurred by press releases from companies saying that they are going to start making a new product or service.", "It's called open outcry or pit trading. More common for futures than stocks AFAIK. They lasted way beyond the start of electronic trading but not many left today, especially in bigger markets.\n\nCheck out the documentary, floored. They talk about what the hand signals mean and the mechanics of a trade.\n\nMost basic explanation I have is that it's like a constant, ongoing negotiation between many different buyers and sellers, all at the same time. ", "Usually the shouting is from futures pits, that means everyone in the pit is trading futures on the same commodity (they're all trading coffee or orange juice or a certain type of wheat to be delivered in a few weeks).  \n\nSo to make a trade two people only need to agree on the price and the number of contracts.  Those were negotiated by hand signals, so people wanting to buy would look around the room for someone signaling they wanted to sell, and when someone was found they'd flash some hand signals to establish the price and number of contracts.  \n\nAfter that they would each fill out a piece of paper from their order book with the information from the trade.  So one side's paper would say, \"At specific time, I (broker 393) bought 10 contracts at a price of $3.47 per bushel from broker number 552\" and the other side's paper would hopefully say \"At the same time, I (broker 552) sold 10 contracts at a price of $3.47 per bushel to broker 393.\"  Then they would hand the papers to runners who would take them to an employee of the exchange.  \n\nThe exchange would match these papers and record that Broker 393's account now has 10 more contracts and broker 552 has 10 fewer.  There were occasionally errors, where perhaps two people think they bought from the same person, but they were pretty rare (everyone in the room paid a lot of money to be there, so no one wanted to make enough mistakes that they would lose their right to be there).  \n\nSo the papers are blank trade sheets, which become important when their filled out, and the shouting is an often futile attempt to get the attention of someone who you want to make a trade. \n\nLive stock market trading was done with specialists (one broker who would take the other side of every trade) who essentially created tiny areas where everyone might be trading a single stock.  There was less risk of an error because the specialist was the only person who could trade with everyone.  As you probably expect, specialists minted money for a very long time.  \n\nToday computerized trading for almost all products is done on the same open outcry method, but the computer can record the transaction as it's made and little need for shouting or hand signals.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2rcndn", "title": "how do we lay internet cables at the bottom of the ocean?", "selftext": "I was under the impression that a huge majority of the world's oceans are unexplored... how do we lay cables across these vast areas? Do we only go places we've mapped? Or, is this work resulting in new areas being mapped?\n\nAnd how the hell does it happen?\n\nSorry if this is a repost, I searched before asking. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rcndn/eli5how_do_we_lay_internet_cables_at_the_bottom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnem98g", "cnemg5e", "cnepbv9", "cneqhg3", "cnesgi9", "cnetkmg", "cnetn3t", "cnetvii", "cnetwcb", "cnevlg1", "cnevs49", "cnew49y", "cnew6fb", "cnewzgy", "cnextjs", "cney55q", "cneylmp", "cneyr37", "cnf05hi", "cnf0k5e", "cnf0pwa", "cnf0xnm", "cnf147f", "cnf3jl6", "cnf3rtb", "cnf3x2x", "cnf73jv", "cnf88xp", "cnfciha"], "score": [25, 523, 60, 173, 12, 89, 12, 4, 92, 8, 79, 7, 4, 2, 2, 32, 6, 2, 77, 2, 2, 5, 9, 4, 2, 11, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Special ships map the route and lay the huge thick cables by spooling them out on gigantic wheels.\n\n[Video Aid](_URL_0_)", "If you want to watch a 45 minute TV show with more detail than a short video, there is a great TV series called \"Mighty Ships\" that covers different kinds of ships every episode. One episode is about the ship Tyco Resolute, which lays internet cable on the bottom of the ocean and sets up the land connections as well. It's a really great show and the Tyco Resolute episode is particularly interesting.\n\n[Mighty Ships, Tyco Resolute -- laying underwater internet cable](_URL_0_)", "If you'd like to read Neal Stephenson's account of laying the longest cable on earth, follow the link below to the best Wired article ever written.  Caution, if you know Stephenson, you know it's a long read, but, utterly worth it.\n\n_URL_0_", "I work for a company that does this...jet plow, its awesome!\n\nAlso ships that can hold dead still in high winds using directional thrusters. ", "A ship starts at one end of the ocean with a spool of cable on it. The ship crosses to the other side dropping the cable into the water as it goes. At the other side they take the end of the cable off the ship and connect it.", "Wait, so there are actually tons of internet cables laid at the bottom of the ocean? A friend said that to me, I said it was ridiculous. Someone please explain to me what the cables are for and how does the internet work in general so I can stop looking like an ass-hat.", "I've heard somewhere that the bottom of the ocean is actually just 3 miles deep.  Obviously, there are much deeper parts, but on average or in general or something it's about 3 miles deep.  I don't have a source, so this may not be true, but it sounds reasonable to me.", "Totally possible. My ex used to be in charge of a big part of the process for a US company. I always figured they mapped the undersea areas first to make sure they weren't laying them in the grand canyon of the sea but I don't really know. \n\nI just remember the day Egypt went black during the Arab Spring. He was sort of in a panic and I was like \"It's probably a problem with your cable\" (since there were only a few going into Africa at the time). That did not make him feel better but luckily I turned out to be wrong. In my defense, mechanical malfunction seemed more probable at the time than Egypt turning off the Internet. ", "So how do they fix a broken cable if its at the bottom of the fucking ocean? ", "Follow up question, what stops some evil mastermind from simply cutting the cables in a bunch of places. Does he/she then kill the internet?", "We can lay line in the ocean but not to the city I live in?", "What about the massive long ditch in the pacific ocean that we cannot go to the bottom of?", "Neal Stephenson wrote an article for Wired exploring the history of underseas cables as he traveled the world reporting on the building of the longest (at the time) fiber optic cable. Its a classic, you should read it!\n\n_URL_0_\n", "medium to large sized ships with special underwater cable-laying equipment and very sensitive maneuverability characteristics are paid to lay these internet cables. cable companies usually charter the ship's voyage.\n\nsource: i'm a Third Officer licensed to operate ships of any gross tonnage", " > Or, is this work resulting in new areas being mapped?\n\nBack in the 1850s, when the first undersea lines were laid down, we hardly knew what the bottom of the ocean looked like. Bathymetry, or measuring depth, consisted of lowering a weighted rope into the ocean. As a mapping tool, this could only be done effectively in rivers and harbours. Now that cables were being laid down, it was found there were certain areas of the ocean where the cable kept breaking. Keeping track of these obstacles (such as ridges or trenches) provided the best undersea maps until the development of sonar in the early-mid 20th century. \n\nSo yes, the laying of undersea cables inadvertently became the first mapping tool of the ocean floor. ", "[They say a picture is worth a thousand words.](_URL_0_)\n\nThat is a cable laying ship. I think you can guess how it works.\n", "This will probably be buried, but here's a great example of undersea cables: the southern cross cable network linking NZ, AUS, and US West Coast: _URL_0_.", "How does it cross the Mariana Trench? Does it just cross the trench like a bridge or go down the trench a bit? ", "When we say \"unexplored\", it is generally taken to mean \"no one has been down there and looked at it\". All of the world's seabeds and ocean floors are already mapped from satellite information and (where we need a bit more information) through sonar surveys carried out by ships. Depending on the water depth, a ship sonar survey can cover a few kilometres each side of the ship's path.\n\nSubsea cables (and pipelines) are very thin. When we lay them, we perform surveys of the seabed along the corridor of the intended route. These surveys only need to cover the route +/-50m on each side. \n\nWhen we lay the cables or pipes, they are monitored using underwater cameras, so we get to see a very small amount of the seabed.\n\nIncidentally, the bottom of the seabed away from shallow waters (say, more than 100m deep, which is most of the ocean) looks like a desert. There's very little there.\n\nSource: I am an offshore construction engineer with two masters degrees, and have laid pipes and cables.\n\nA.", "Saw that this has not been asked before: Who pays for this project? I imagine whoever \"owns\" the cables eventually lease them out to telcos which eventually bill us users for using the internet? ", "Animated GIFs are ok but don't really do the full operation justice. Some good videos are available on YouTube though about the atlantic cable connecting the US and the UK. Great watch :)\n\n_URL_0_", "This could be interesting too:\n_URL_0_\n\nPostet in /r/InternetIsBeautiful", "Very carefully.\n\nThat's the answer my dad would have given me when I was 5.", "Wired has an excellent article in their archives, they posted in 1996:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's written by a guy who travelled around the world with a boat that was laying down cable through the oceans connecting Asia to other parts of the world.\n\nVery long, but beautifully explains why the cables were moved around some locations due to political reasons or to avoid war prone areas, why they avoided land (poor people think it's copper cable and try to steal it, or cut it on purpose), how locals in some countries saw the project, how the cables are connected together.\n\nOverall, a very informative and insightful story, well worth reading.  \n", "The true answer given to a 5 year old for this question is: Very Carefully. Seriously it's not especially groundbreaking technology (excuse the pun) but just very careful (and large scale) application of that technology", "Cable routes are first planned roughly 2 years before the actual lay, based on general surveys.\nThen the route is precisely mapped via a sonar \"flying\" a kilometer over the seabed, to avoid rocks, cliffs, rifts...\nThen, it's all done by GPS and Dynamic Positioning (at 5km water depth and \"full speed\", the cable touches the seabed 50km behind the ship)\n\nSource : I work in the business", "How do you lay cable at the bottom of your toilet?\n\nFiber.  It is all about fiber.", "I have a guy tagged on RES as \"knows a lot about underwater cables\" because he gave a very in depth explanation to this exact question awhile ago...wish I could remember his username :\\\n\nedit: You can look at your user tags and find people that way (yay!) so here's the thread I tagged him in: _URL_0_\n\nLots of good information there including this link to a map of all the submarine cables: _URL_1_\n\nAlso, calling /u/kim_jong_unko ", "Cable Laying Ships like the Tyco Resolute. The show Mighty Ships had an episode that featured it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVzU_YQ3IQ"], ["http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvlowj_tyco-resolute-mighty-ships-discovery_tech"], ["http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html"], [], [], ["http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/users/10016/thm1024/thelothianscablelayingshipleithdocks.jpg"], ["http://www.southerncrosscables.com/home/network/overviewandmap"], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvlowj_tyco-resolute-mighty-ships-discovery_tech"], ["http://submarine-cable-map-2014.telegeography.com/"], [], ["http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html"], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1wt198/how_laying_cables_on_a_seabed_works/", "http://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/"], []]}
{"q_id": "6hvotw", "title": "I'm a knight in the mid 15th century. I'm commissioning my first full plate harness. Once I choose the armorer, how much actual influence do I have on the details of what my armor will look like when finished?", "selftext": "The mid-late 15th century when plate was flourishing seems to be the era where many people take the popular image of the knight. And it seems that the era had a great variety in the options or aesthetics for different pieces of armor. So the question is, once I decide on who is going to make my armor, how much say do I actually have in the final result?\n\nWould there be a long meeting discussing, say, whether I want an Armet or a Sallet? Or pointed sabatons instead of squared ones? Or fully articulated gauntlets vs armored mittens? Or one Pauldren bugger than the other? How would I even be able to decide? Would there be a book of drawings of the things he can make, or would he maybe have examples on display of the styles he can use?\n\nOr would each armorer basically have their own signature style with just a little variation? And if I wanted something different I'd simply have to contract a different person who makes armor closer to my preferences?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6hvotw/im_a_knight_in_the_mid_15th_century_im/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dj5eg6i"], "score": [7], "text": ["This is a fantastic question. First of all, I apologize for the late answer - I was away this weekend, and then needed to consult my sources. With that said, here it goes.\n\nThe short answer to this is yes, buyers of a custom-made armour in the 15th century absolutely could select 'options' when discussing their armour with the armourer that would make it.  As the armourer Martin Rondelle of Bruges bragged to John Paston (of East Anglia in England) in 1473:\n\n > ..Moreover, I have heard that you would like to have a full armour. As I recently took your measurements when you were in this town of Bruges, you know that I still have them for all pieces. For this reason, if you would like me to make it for you, I will do it willingly and all the elements that you would like made. With regard to the price, I shall ensure that you shall be satisfied with me. So, when you know what pieces you would like to have and the style and the day you would like to receive them through someone with whom I can deal in your name and who will pay me a deposit, I will work so well that, God willing, you will praise me.\n\nNow, first of all this letter is a great piece of salesmanship. But a good salesman doesn't promise more than he can deliver, especially when the final payment will be received on receipt of the finished product! So it is telling that Rondelle offers Paston his choice of both 'pieces' (IE, what individual pieces of armour he would like) and the overall 'style.' Since Paston is in the market for a full armour, the choice of pieces may refer to choosing between options for the armour's elements, such as between a Sallet and an armet for the helmet. 'Style' here probably refers to the the decorative scheme (fluted versus not, applied brass borders or not, the patterns to stamp on those borders), but it can also refer to a more fundamental question of construction - how long the skirt is (long in the English fashion, shorter in the neatherlandish/flemish/French/Italian fashion), what the construction of the guantlets is (mitten, half-mitten, fingered), how the pauldrons/spaulders are constructed. Importantly, this is an international order, being ordered by a man in a country that had both its own native armour style and a variety of foreign influences, and being ordered from a man who was in a country with a combination of native and Italian armourers. Both Paston and Rondelle would be acquainted with a variety of armour styles.\n\nWe have other examples. In 1438 the Duke of Burgundy ordered gauntlets in 'The English Fashion' - specifically requesting a distinctive, foreign style for his own gauntlets. Orders for armour (even mass orders) often specify the helmet type, sallet - armet, etc. The type of helmet was not merely assumed. \n\nWe also have surviving armours that appear to show stylistic elements of their buyer's country, not of their maker's country. A dramatic example is the 'Export' armours of Brescia and Milan, which were fluted (in a way that Milanese armours weren't). Even more extreme, the armours 'alla tedesca' of the late 15th century look very nearly like later 15th century 'Gothic' armours from Southern Germany. \n\nIn at least one example we find a maker of 'classic' Milanese armour adapting his work to a foreign client. Tomaso Missaglia is from the most famous family of Milanese armourers in the 15th century - not just armourers, they were merchant/capitalists (industrialists, almost) whose commercial interests included branches in multiple European Countries and multiple Italian cities as well as mutliple workshops in Milan. Collectors value their work as an examplar of the 15th century Milanese style [see a late example here](_URL_0_). Elements of this style include armet helmets, asymmetrical pauldrons, and asymmetrical arm defenses (features a heavy elbow guard on the left arm, the gaurd of the vambrace). However, in the Kunsthistorichesmuseum in Vienna we see the [armour of Friedrich of Pflaz, Count Palatine of the Rhine](_URL_1_). Note its design - symmetrical spaulders with besagews, a great bascinet (of the sort that Italians had never worn much), and symmetrical vambraces. Now, this armour is still identifiably 'Italian' in make - we see a high lance rest attachment via a pin-and-staple, vambraces rivetted together at the elbow (rather than being made in 3 parts), a strapped plackart (lower breastplate) and other features. So what we see is an armourer working within some basic assumptions of how armour is put together (which he takes from his training) mixing and matching elements for his client. And this is how armourers worked generally - they had basic construction elements that they took from their training, but they were able to adapt the details to the needs of the client.\n\nNow, it should be said that this flexibility is much more likely from centers of armour production that served international markets, or were part of a large cross-cultural exchange. I detect less 'borrowing' and adaptation in the works of south German armourers in the 'high gothic' period (which was not very long, c.1460-1485, but which is famous due to the beauty of the armours produced). But then, at this time Augsburg was not the international armouring center it would become as the power of its Habsburg patrons expanded across Europe.\n\nIn the 16th century we have even more evidence of how armour was bought. We have pattern books, which could be used to select designs for decoration and armour designs. We also have corpus's of armours that seem to show the stylistic preferences of the purchaser - for instance, Charles V's armours all begin to feature the Virgin Mary prominently on the breastplate in the 1530's, around the time his struggles against both North African 'Moorish' powers and reforming 'heretics' in Germany were intensifying. He also seems to have a fondness for parellel or radiating bands of gold, often sunken into the armour - a feature seen on other 16th century German armours, but not nearly as much as on Charles'. Beyond this, we have a wealth of documentary evidence of how armour was bought, and what people specified when buying it.\n\nTo conclude, when you comissioned an armour to be made *for your*, customization was one of the perks you were buying with all that extra money (at least several times the cost of an 'off the rack' or used harness). And it should be remembered that truly custom armour was the privelege of the elite of the elite - the upper echelons of the military aristocracy and royalty. Most fully armoured men at arms (people who were in the wealthier portion of society already) wold wear armour bought 'off the rack' or perhaps used, whether they were buying it themselves or whether it was bought for them by wealthier employers or patrons. This was not the cruder 'munition' armour worn by infantrymen - it was full armour, constructed like any 'knightly' armour, but without either the fit or the finish (or the customization options) offered by a bespoke armourer. It is like the differences between a perfectly fine suit purchased at a department store and a bespoke suit from Saville Row. To extend the metaphor, munition armour would be like khakis and a polo from Target.\n\nSources:\n\nMatthais Pfaffenbichler - Armourers\n\nTobias Capwell - Armour of the English Knight 1400-1450\n\nNickolas Dupras - Armourers and their Workshops \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ab/36/1f/ab361f9b61e3dca5e6d675804e6061de.jpg", "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/27/fc/9927fc46eef8575f91eacd9169aebab8.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1cdm8x", "title": "Is there evidence of Hua Mulan's existence outside of the ballad? Did the ballad have an impact on the perception of women in China?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cdm8x/is_there_evidence_of_hua_mulans_existence_outside/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9fpitd", "c9fxtuw"], "score": [8, 8], "text": ["Sorry this might not be the best answer.  \n\nProbably not, based on analysis and controversy over the original composition of the song.\n\nFor instance, one controversy involves when and where the events in the song supposedly took place.  If there was corroborating historical evidence for her existence, this kind of debate would either not take place or would mention it as a compelling fact.\n\n[Source.](_URL_1_)\n\nFor what little it's worth, the [Chinese wiki page](_URL_0_) also says as much.\n\n", "Without mention in the histories or other sources, we have nothing but a song. A lovely song, but just a song. There was a chapter on \"Exemplary Women\" in the biographies of the history of the Northern Wei, but she wasn't in it, so there is little reason to suspect she was a well known historical figure. Instead she has been interpreted as an archetypal character used to represent different (mostly martial, but also filial) values at different times, with different tellings of her tale. \n  \nEDIT: I missed your second question!  \nI think it is more important to look at the ballad, and the growth in popularity of her story, and the literature/drama surrounding her from the Ming dynasty on, as reflections of the perception of women in China, and not things that had an impact on the perception of women. I am only now reading the prologue, so I cannot give a good review, but *Mulan\u2019s Legend and Legacy in China and the United States* by Lan Dong seems to be THE book for your question.   \nHere is a quote from the prologue -   \n\"This book argues that, instead of being considered a model character at the first dissemination of her story, Mulan has evolved into an ideal heroine during a lengthy process of storytelling and retelling. The ethi- cal and moral values that her image embodies reflect a collection of the virtues found in a typology of heroines in premodern Chinese culture. The sketchy portrayal in the \u201cBallad\u201d enables varied interpretations of the ethics implied by the character and her unconventional behavior. One conceptualization takes Mulan as the exemplification of the martial tradition applied to both men and women in the northern literature in premodern China (Hu Shi; Wang Zhong 147\u201349; Chen Youbing 47\u201348). Another interpretation underscores the Confucian idea of filial piety to\njustify her unusual actions (Zhang Rufa). In yet another view, Mulan\u2019s story reveals that a female protagonist can be cherished for her talents beyond the domestic sphere (Wang Rubi; Zhang Jing 47). All these read- ings between the lines have contributed to the character\u2019s iconic image; her name has become synonymous with \u201cheroine\u201d in Mandarin, and her story is known in almost every household in China.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E6%9C%A8%E5%85%B0", "http://www.xys.org/xys/netters/Fang-Zhouzi/essays/mulan.txt"], []]}
{"q_id": "i68d1", "title": "How far are we from organic computers? How will we benefit from it as a society?", "selftext": "Organic computers or wetware computers, how far are we from making this a reality? I have seen articles that pop up where scientists have stored information with in an organic substance or have \"manipulated\" the organic substance to perform specific computations. How could organic computer and memory impact society from a social aspect and from a scientific aspect. \n\nSocial aspect being how one interacts and uses computers and or memory. \n\nScientific aspect being how accessible large amount of computing power will be available and storage.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i68d1/how_far_are_we_from_organic_computers_how_will_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c218ob3", "c218wng"], "score": [12, 3], "text": ["There are two types of \"organic computers\" being referred to here.  The first type is organic *electronic* computers - that is, organic semiconductors and such being used in making the components of circuits (in place of / in conjunction with silicon).  The advantage of these type of materials to society, amongst other things, is that it becomes possible to have flexible electronics as well as being able to process them the way plastic is processed (which is much easier than ultrapure silicon).  I'm not familiar enough with that area to tell you much about it beyond this.\n\nThe other type is organic *ionic* computers where, like the neurons in your skin, ions are what carries the signals.  It will *not* be fast in comparison with electronic computers, but the advantage of this effort is that the bias required is remarkably low (30mV instead of 5000mV), so it's energy efficient, and there's a possibility of forming the kind of massive 3D-connected computer like that sitting between your ears.\n\nFor ionic computing, the closest we've gotten to is [forming a small circuit](_URL_0_) (fascinating read, and check out the videos on the actual article itself).  The barrier here are three-fold (IMO) - there is necessity to be able to fabricate these *en masse*, a need to construct higher ordered \"devices\", and a need to access ion-channels of [different properties](_URL_2_) (ion channels and pumps are the basic components here).  \n\nI see the first two as engineering problems that can be solved; the last one is tricky.  After 30 years, we still don't have a good handle on how to \"design\" ion channels, and we have not made any ion pumps.  A critical [review](_URL_1_) by yours truly summarizes what we know so far about this field.\n\nHow is ionic computing going to affect science and society?  I don't know.  Prediction is always imprudent for future technologies.  However, given its low energy requirements, and parallel advances in solar energy, I can see it being useful in field-work / developing countries lacking in infrastructure.  What we learn from constructing these highly interconnected structures may ultimately help us understand our own consciousness.  It also has implications on the brain--silica interfacing fields -- but again, these are all really far out from reality right now, and it may never even pan out.", "Organic electronics will be a complementary technology at best and probably will never replace silicon electronics except for some niche areas. \n\n\nThis is because the mobility of p-type organic semiconductors is only about 3 cm^2 per Vsec whereas for silicon, it is close to 1400 cm^2 per Vsec (for electrons). N-type organic semiconductors have their own share of problems, mostly stability in air. \n\n\nThe main challenges of the organic electronics field is to find suitable replacements for the inorganic components in traditional silicon based electronics. Materials for the electrodes, dielectric, semiconductor, memories, etc need to have favorable properties and processing methods in order to enter the commercial market, and that is currently where most of the research is taking place. \n\n\nThat said, organic electronics have great potential in areas like low power flexible displays, and any other application that does not call for large power consumption, since high power consumption - >  heat - >  degraded organic components. \n\n\nI've just started my graduate work in organic electronics. I'll know much more in a few years time, but it seems like a promising area. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://people.chem.umass.edu/mholden/Hwang_JACS_2008.pdf", "http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/CS/C1CS15099E", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_ion_channels"], []]}
{"q_id": "1vj168", "title": "a glass of water has enough hydrogen to power a small city. what is stopping us from harnessing that energy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vj168/eli5_a_glass_of_water_has_enough_hydrogen_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cesq99k", "cesqf3h", "cesqg66", "cesqo7x", "cesqs6m", "cesuk6h"], "score": [14, 6, 6, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["From what I understand the process of harnessing the hydrogen from water is incredibly expensive. It's a big part of the reason hydrogen cars never took off. ", "The energy required to separate the hydrogen molecules from the oxygen in the water would be greater than the energy gained by burning the hydrogen itself.  Also, it would be too expensive.\n\nA fun idea, but in no way would it be worthwhile.", "Hydrogen isn't really a power source. It exists in stable molecules in nature, and energy has to be expended to break those bonds. Hydrogen is better thought of as a medium for storing power. Bush's pre-9/11 \"hydrogen economy\" concept used an infrastructure of nuclear power plants that would produce hydrogen via electrolysis which could then be stored and transported much like gasoline is today.", "Also, no fusion reactors... I'm assuming that's what is implied by a glass of water powering a city. No way is it combustion.", "If you are talking about using the hydrogen atoms from the water in the process of nuclear fusion then the main factor holding us back is that we do not have the technology to contain this reaction and hence we are currently unable to harness this energy.\n\nHere is a [link to a Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) showing the timeline in nuclear fusion progress and will give a better you a better grasp on why this energy is hard to produce.", "The hydrogen in your glass of water has already burned! Most things we burn combine with oxygen to reach their burned state, sometimes breaking away from other atoms in the process.\n\nIt requires energy for atoms to be separated from other atoms and releases energy when they're bonded. \n\nTo get hydrogen from water would take MORE energy than you'd get from burning hydrogen (turning it into water) as we cannot perfectly add and extract energy. \n\nNow, if you are referring to *fusion* instead of burning the hydrogen, scientific progress is all that is holding us back. \n\nFusion of certain atoms (the small ones up to iron) gives off a lot of energy, with hydrogen giving out the most. It is what fuels our sun! However, doing that controllably here on earth is difficult. The only hydrogen fusion we've managed on a large scale is known as a hydrogen bomb - that levels cities, not powers them :P"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ohw6c", "title": "Can I mix cleaning products? Or does it reduce effectiveness?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ohw6c/can_i_mix_cleaning_products_or_does_it_reduce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmn9d4d", "cmnfdgm"], "score": [20, 22], "text": ["Well, the bleach is going to kill the bacteria and denature the enzymes in your pet stain and odor remover.  Doubt there are going to be any problems mixing it with the all-purpose cleaner though.\n\nThe big thing to remember is to never mix bleach-containing products with ammonia-containing products.  It will produce chloramine (not chlorine) gas which is quite poisonous.  Also, don't mix bleach-containing products with acids (like vinegar), because that *will* produce chlorine gas, which is even worse than chloramine.", "Don't. Bad things can happen. There's generally 4 classes of household cleansers that don't play well with others. \n\n- Quaternary ammonium chlorides -antibacterial all purpose cleansers like Formula 409 or Fantastic\n\n- Bleach containing products like Chlorox bathroom cleanser.  \n\n- Vinegar cleansers like some glass cleaners. \n\n- Straight ammonia (NH4) glass cleaners like Windex.\n\nBleach and any of these releases chlorine or chloramine. Both bad. It'll knock you out of the bathroom and burn the hell out of your eyes, not to mention the hour of coughing that will follow. Enough of it can send you to the hospital, but you'll probably self-evacuate before you get to that point. \n\nVinegar and either ammonia-containing product don't go well either. Nothing dangerous, they just neutralize each other. \n\nEDIT: Didn't see the ethanol. Don't mix it with bleach. Makes chloroform. Great for abducting coeds, but bad for normal breathing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "14t0xr", "title": "Did I miss it, or did they never follow up on the Mars Rover's discoveries?", "selftext": "Two recent reports: 1) Shiny object discovered they were going to send the rover over to check it out. 2) Earth shaking results in soil sample (I think).\nI never saw any follow up news on these reports. Anyone know?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14t0xr/did_i_miss_it_or_did_they_never_follow_up_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7g5h0w", "c7g5qgc"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["The \"earth shaking results\" thing was entirely the result of a reporter misunderstanding a NASA spokesperson.\n\nNot sure about the shiny.", "If I am not mistaken, the shiny thing was determined to be \"most likely plastic from the rover.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3h8ejt", "title": "why is the tv show \"scrubs\" considered to be one of the most accurate medical themed shows?", "selftext": "I've heard a number of doctors and posts online allude to this.  I'm not in the medical field, though I love the show and was wondering what are some aspects of it that actual doctors so identify with vs. other medical shows out there, despite the fact that it's a comedy?   Is it the bureaucracy the how can poke fun of?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h8ejt/eli5why_is_the_tv_show_scrubs_considered_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu55l1n", "cu56tqt", "cu57m2i", "cu5kact", "cu5ld2j", "cu5lzvo", "cu5pwj5", "cu5w5g2"], "score": [37, 237, 29, 27, 10, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["Unlike shows such as ER, Grey's Anatomy, or House, Scrubs is a comedy and the actual medicine takes a backseat to the show's content  &  doesn't really have a role in what makes it funny. Those other shows are dramas and much of the drama comes from the doctors working to solve a patients ailment. This focus results in some liberties being taken for the sake of keeping the audience interested.", "the bureaucracy is certainly a part, as is the poverty and years of unappreciated effort.  Turk and JD spend ?5? years being poor nobodies who work exceptionally long hours, and then suddenly realizing that they have some autonomy and have to direct themselves, the transition from residents to doctors to senior staff is very well dramatized and really reflects the early career of physicians well.\n\nWhen the medicine is demonstrated, it is demonstrated accurately enough, but as brownribbon pointed out, it takes a backseat to the story telling, and so is not defaced in the name of drama.\n\nMost of medical practice is office work, not direct patient care, and scrubs captures that well.  It is an office where you stand all day and deal with patients for a hurried few hours, and paper work and personalities all the rest.\n\nThe roles of the different people are also very well done.  While taken to comedic extremes, you really see the different functionaries in a hospital and how their roles create conflicts.  Most office shows get this wrong because they don't take it seriously enough to 1 make it consistent, and 2 make it central to the character.  In scrubs the vast majority of the interactions can be explained as, \"it is my job description.\"  And, those job descriptions are real.", "Reality is humor and tragedy combined. Scrubs very well portrays how humor is often used to cope with the awful things people in the medical field often deal with. Other shows are usually 99% drama, and real life is basically never like this, even with the most serious and morose professions. ", "Another point is that everyone has their roles. In scrubs, the doctors order stuff and do their procedures. The nurses do theirs and so on. On House, the doctors draw blood, run CT scans, and perform surgery in the same episode. It cuts out extra actors but no doctor is going to do everything from admission to discharge on 1 patient", "I would describe it as Scrubs portrays Medicine the way The Office portrays the paper business. It's all tertiary to the story.", "In addition to what other people have said, Scrubs also highlights common occurrences in hospital like a TV show doing a special on a killer disease and the waiting room immediately filling up with people who are sure they have it, none of whom actually do.", "Creator Bill Lawrence leaned heavily on his college friend Dr. Jonathan Doris as the inspiration for the show, as well as a technical advisor. Combined with the fact that the show didn't use medical condition or treatments as a main plot device and I think we ended up with a more realistic show. ", "[Green Wing ](_URL_0_) is also pretty good, if you like British comedy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.channel4.com/programmes/green-wing/on-demand/36484-001"]]}
{"q_id": "2dqea5", "title": "Did the Vikings leave any noticeable genetic impact on the indigenous population of Newfoundland?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dqea5/did_the_vikings_leave_any_noticeable_genetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjs8mun", "cjs941j"], "score": [16, 2], "text": ["There is no indication that there was any intermingling between the Vikings and the Beothuk. Keep in mind though that the Beothuk were all killed off by 1829. ", "I know the Vikings left Dupuytren's Contracture almost everywhere they went. It is a genetic disease specific to northern parts of Europe that is always passed on in the male line. It is present in every location the Vikings occupied for any large period of time. However I do not know if this is true for Newfoundland. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "58i56d", "title": "what is happening when our brain is tired from studying but we are not physically tired?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58i56d/eli5_what_is_happening_when_our_brain_is_tired/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d90r7ns", "d90red8", "d90w3zv", "d90x7m6", "d90xmls", "d90ydk1"], "score": [453, 22, 43, 38, 4, 16], "text": ["Task fatigue. The exact, molecular mechanisms of what is happening inside your brain is not completely understood but essentially the process in your brain that stops it from paying attention to other stimulus and only on the task at hand, in this case studying and not looking at Reddit, gets physically tired and looses effectiveness. The father you push this mechanism without recovery, just like a muscle, the less effective it becomes.\n\nRead more about it here:\n_URL_0_", "Think of it like working out any specific muscle until it get tired and sore. If you do a whole bunch of curls on your right arm it will get tired but most of your other muscles will be OK. \n\nUsing any muscle causes those cells to release stored energy causing movement of the cells and some chemical waste products that need to be flushed out. Use enough energy fast enough and it take your body time to flush out the waste and supply new energy to the muscle. The same thing happens in your brain. The more you use it the more energy it needs to consume to function. It takes time for your body to clear the waste and refill. \n\n", "When your brain takes the food from the blood your heart pumps around your body, it transforms it into 'brain poop' as the cells in your brain (neurons) eat the food. When too much brain poop clogs up in your brain, you need to sleep so your brain can use the dreaming stage of sleep called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) to facilitate the removal of the brain poop so you have room to eat more blood food and poop it.\n\nSource: I have narcolepsy and my brain is always filled with brain poop. Also this: _URL_0_", "So if I'm mentally tired and not physically, whats a good way to get mentally rested without sleeping?", "It could be low dopamine or serotonin, that usually feels like a lack of motivation and is why stimulants that increase dopamine are regarded as \"smart drugs\".", "Reading about how my brain gets distracted from homework while I am distracted from my homework by Reddit... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue"], [], ["https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/aug/22/how-to-optimise-your-brains-waste-disposal-system"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "43fb29", "title": "To what extent was Catalonia a \"successful anarchy-syndicst experiment\" before it was repressed during the Spanish Civil War? I've heard this claim a lot from the anarchist left. Is there a definitive book on the period?", "selftext": "Obviously definitions matter a lot here but I don't think anyone is confused as to what I'm asking. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43fb29/to_what_extent_was_catalonia_a_successful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czicp7s"], "score": [9], "text": ["If you could provide a source for your quote we would have an easier time answering your question. The Spanish Civil War involved a mish mash of ideologies, and evolved over time. There were certainly socialist and communists in Spain during the Civil War, but they were not operating in any utopia. Paul Preston's 'The Spanish Civil War' describes nearly every part of the struggle as torturous to the populace. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4vqwnw", "title": "Why do we put stamps on the top-right of an envelope?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vqwnw/why_do_we_put_stamps_on_the_topright_of_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6144tj", "d61i0go"], "score": [13, 8], "text": ["In the United States, we do it [because the United States Postal Service requires that we do.](_URL_1_) \n\nWhy do they specify the upper-right? As near as I can tell, it appears to be based on tradition. The first postage stamps were issued in the United States in 1847. The system before that involved the local postmaster hand-writing the postage on an envelope. The postage could be paid at time of sending or by the recipient. In any case, the postmaster wrote the postage in the upper-right. Later, this was standardized when automatic cancelling machines were introduced in the late 19th century. Think of how when you get a letter, the stamp has been cancelled with an ink stamp. For a while now that's been done automatically, rather than by hand.\n\nSource: [This nifty USPS history published by the USPS](_URL_0_)", "The UK introduced the world's first postage stamps in 1840. From the outset, the Royal Mail asked people to put stamps on the top-right of the envelope. [This site](_URL_0_) has an image of a complete sheet of the \"Penny Black\" (the first postage stamp ever issued, 1840) as well as a complete sheet of the \"Penny Red\" (1841). In both cases, note the inscription along the margins of the sheet: \"*Place the Labels ABOVE the Address and towards the RIGHT HAND SIDE of the Letter.*\"\n\nThe prescription of a particular location for the stamp on letters was convenient to post office employees, who at that time were required to cancel each stamp by hand. I have however never heard of a stamp not being accepted due solely to its position on the envelope (in the UK or any other country), so it seems like the admonition to put the stamp in the top-right was always a recommendation rather than a commandment.\n\nThe UK also introduced widespread, and very successful, reforms of its public postal system in 1840, and in subsequent decades other countries viewed the UK as a model to emulate, both in reforming their own postal systems and introducing postage stamps. I don't know why any other country chose to follow the UK's system of stamp placement (and indeed many seem not to have, at least initially) but as the UK was seen as an example of good postal practices in general, I would assume other countries which followed the UK's lead on stamp placement did so for that reason.\n\nNow, none of this actually answers *why* the UK chose the top-right in the first place, and unfortunately I can only speculate as to that, so I won't. But at any rate the top-right corner was selected as the optimum location for the first postage stamps in the world, and other countries seem to followed the British example.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://about.usps.com/publications/pub100.pdf", "http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/604.htm"], ["http://philatelics.org/~allan/shrop/blacks/page1.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5t12oi", "title": "I'm a governor of a Roman city. My city has been kept safe by a wall for many years but the citizens have out-grown this perimeter. Is there any way I can modify and rebuild the wall to allow my city to expand or am I just going to have to establish new districts outside the perimeter defenses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t12oi/im_a_governor_of_a_roman_city_my_city_has_been/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddjzzf2", "ddk0lkz"], "score": [27, 3], "text": ["In one of the more important cities for my era of study, Milan, this actually happened in the year 286. The ancient city, called Mediolanum, had outgrown its walls. Consequentially, Emperor Maximilian commissioned an expansion. You can see the expansion of the walls [here, marked by a blue line](_URL_2_). \n\nIt was common for there to be small communities outside a large city's walls; expansions like those in Mediolanum were undertaken when these communities became too large to effectively evacuate in times of crisis. However, most ancient city walls would allow for large open spaces within the limits of the walls, giving the city space to grow. An exaggerated example is Syracuse, in Sicily, [where the walls constructed by the ruler Dionysius in the 5th century BCE defended a massive area even larger than the modern city limits](_URL_1_). [The walls of Rome](_URL_0_) also allowed for large green spaces between the limit of urbanization and the actual wall. \n\nThis practice would continue until the middle ages, for example look at [this representation](_URL_3_) of the Italian city of Siena. ", "By and large, when Roman cities expanded beyond their walls there was no real attempt to make additions or rebuildings. From a practical defensive standpoint, you don't really want a bunch of additions because that makes defense more difficult. It is a basic surface-to-volume ratio situation, as the ideal is the shortest possible wall circuit encompassing the largest possible area. Adding a bunch of additions greatly increases the \"surface area\" without greatly increasing the \"volume\" and so are impractical--in fact Chinese siege manuals--to use a comparison--generally recommend setting fire to suburban development to cut down on defensive complexity.\n\nBut there is a hidden assumption here, were walls for defense? It is a bit of a counter intuitive question, but if you look at individual cases, say the spate of wall building in second/third century British cities, it doesn't really make sense. There were no foreign invasions threatening London or Cirencester, so why bother building walls (also why build them so neatly, but that is a different issue)? It is probably because having a city wall was an important status symbol, and so rather than seeing Roman walls as practical defensive structures, we should often see them as decorative.\n\nIm having a bit of difficulty finding the particular papers related to this, but JS Wacher's *The Towns of Roman Britain* discusses the wall building."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Muraurelien_planrome2.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Mura_di_Siracusa.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Storia_di_Milano_%28Roma%29.jpg", "http://www.ortodepecci.it/sito/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1384331499931.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "dnd0cm", "title": "Is the increase in rates of depression among Western countries linked to the change in diets over the past decades?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dnd0cm/is_the_increase_in_rates_of_depression_among/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f5ccwg8"], "score": [9], "text": ["I like to consider that we're just better at diagnosing depression so maybe there's not necessarily an increase in number of people who are depressed but rather an increase in diagnosis. I could be wrong but it's always something to take into consideration when looking at long term patterns of illness."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "a7bnvk", "title": "If Socrates was sentenced to death for his teachings, why did Plato not get in trouble for disseminating those teachings?", "selftext": "And if the true reason was Socrates' past friendly relations with the Thirty Tyrants, Alcibiades, etc., Plato still seemed to have had similar beliefs and moved in the same circles, so why was he left alone? Was he just excused on the grounds of his relative youth and obscurity at the time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a7bnvk/if_socrates_was_sentenced_to_death_for_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ec2jkqn"], "score": [47], "text": ["Briefly, because Plato (who had just started his literary career at the time of Socrates' death) was still an obscure figure, with no school or students of his own. \n\nOver his decades as the gadfly of Athens, Socrates seems to have accumulated quite a few enemies. According to Diogenes Laertius: \n\n\"there were three accusers \\[of Socrates\\], Anytus, Lycon and Meletus...Anytus was roused to anger on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians, Lycon on behalf of the rhetoricians, Meletus of the poets, all three of which classes had felt the lash of Socrates\" (*Lives of the Eminent Philosophers*, 2.39)\n\nThe charge, famously, was impiety: \"Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth.\" (Diogenes, *Lives* 2.40)\n\nIn the jittery social climate following the restoration of the democracy, Socrates (some of whose pupils, as you note, had been associated with the Thirty Tyrants) was especially vulnerable to these charges. But in the end, of course, it was his cheerfully impudent defense that got him sentenced to death. \n\nPlato was already known to be a close associate of Socrates by the time of trial. In fact Diogenes, reporting a later tradition, notes:\n\nJustus of Tiberias in his book entitled *The Wreath* says that in the course of the trial Plato mounted the platform and began: \"Though I am the youngest, men of Athens, of all who ever rose to address you\" \u2013 whereupon the judges shouted out, \"Get down! Get down!\" (2.41)\n\nYet despite this public stand (if it indeed happened), Plato simply was not prominent enough to be prosecuted. His early dialogues (which may have just begun to circulate among his friends in 399 BCE) were not yet publicly known, and he had no pupils. \n\nPlato was worried enough about the possibility of prosecution to withdraw to Megara immediately after Socrates' trial (Diogenes, *Lives* 3.6). He returned to Athens, however, a few months later, apparently after the Athenians showed remorse for their execution of Socrates (2.43). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9yaa97", "title": "In the show Versailles (which takes place in the 17th century) nobles are asked to show the paperwork proving their nobility. What would these papers say?", "selftext": "Some characters in the show claim their noble family goes all the way back to the early medieval period. Today most people can\u2019t speak past their great grand parents. So what kind of meticulous record keeping did they have that would prove you had such old noble blood?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9yaa97/in_the_show_versailles_which_takes_place_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ea0i0xg"], "score": [7], "text": ["Also, if I may ask, did this actually happen?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1umb6w", "title": "why does moving my hair sometimes hurt my scalp if i haven't showered?", "selftext": "Like if I move my hair to change the style, why does doing that hurt my scalp?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1umb6w/eli5_why_does_moving_my_hair_sometimes_hurt_my/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cejjltp", "cejk520", "cejkmnk", "cejkusz", "cejlcbb", "cejldxx", "cejlhr2", "cejlliy", "cejloi7", "cejmkb0", "cejntyy", "cejnv4u", "cejnwi7", "cejnze2", "cejo354", "cejowmo", "cejp6op", "cejq0tf", "cejqfsb", "cejrecp", "cejs5op", "cejs9ug", "cejsnsq", "cejt1uz", "cejtj06", "cejtzp7", "cejtzpm", "cejuw7l", "cejvnel", "cejvzv9", "cejwn3q", "cejxgl0", "cejxjgm", "cejy5h4", "cejz1xu", "cejz6wp", "cek0c1i", "cek39y6", "cek3dhj", "cek6kpu", "cek7yue", "cek8bu8", "cek8q7z", "ceka0l3"], "score": [1070, 671, 119, 12, 63, 3, 250, 13, 2, 2, 4, 2, 13, 69, 5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 9, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 26, 3, 11, 11, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 7, 5, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Imagine I have some putty and a pencil. I put some putty on a table in a gob and then stick a pencil right in the middle of it. \n\nAt first everything stays pretty much the same. The pencil stays upright and the putty doesn't really move. But after a couple of hours you would notice that the putty has drooped a little but and that the pencil is leaning just a little bit to the side. The hole from where you stabbed the putty is still fine though, it wraps around the pencil airtight. \n\nNext imagine I go to stand that pencil back up so that it's perfectly straight. When I do, I have to displace some of the putty out of the way from where I stabbed the pencil. Now instead of a perfect, pencil-sized, hole in my putty I have a slightly deformed oval. \n\nNow imagine the putty is your scalp and the pencil is a single hair on your head. Easy enough, right?", "Much like the putty/pencil analogy above, it's the oils on your scalp setting your hair a certain way after x time without washing. \n\nWhen you abruptly move your hair (more likely than not) the opposite way, it stretches your scalp and breaks the tiny oil moulds. No harm done, just some minor pain while it readjusts, a bit like stretching your back after a movie. ", "What kind of pain? Just curious, I never knew this was a thing. ", "How long have you gone without washing your hair to get that feeling? Do you have short or long hair?", "I only get this if I wear a hat all day, or sometimes on my ankles if i've had socks on for too long", "What the heck, I been thinking of asking this on Reddit past two days. Reddit can read minds....", "I always thought this was only some weird thing I experienced! I coined the phrase 'hurty hair' but no-one ever knows what I'm talking about. ", "I just had this conversation with my hairdresser. Top answer is right, but it also might be the weight of your hair. If you have thick or curly hair, you know it gets really heavy the longer it gets. When you get it cut next time, just ask them to take the weight off, not necessarily the length (if you like it long). I just did, and it helps a lot. Also if you have cowlicks, pulling your hair against them can cause that mild pain as well.", "your hair (and skin to a lesser degree) collects matter in your environment (smog and dirt in the air). It sticks to the oils in your hair and scalp. This reduces air flow to your scalp, and infections or inflammation can result due to bacteria living in this oily nastiness.. If your head hurts, it's time to clean up. ", "Oooo sometimes this happens to me if the sleeves of my shirt are too tight...pushes hairs in wonky directions.", "Had this happen to me yesterday and this morning. So happy I stumbled upon this. Yes that means 2 days no shower...", "Can confirm it is genetic as my wife thought I was crazy but now both our boys complain of scalp pain after wearing hats for too long between baths.", "This is such a reddit question.", "I don't think most people understand what the question is. I get the same sensation after wearing a hat for an hour and then run my fingers through my hat hair. It's like all the hair follicles are bent out of position and then unbending them is painful. ", "good question I always wondered that too thanx for asking it", "I feel like this was thinly veiled attempt at OP slowly figuring out ways to shower as little as possible.", "I like to call that feeling my \"hair pinch\". This happens to me too if I haven't washed my hair for two-three days and it's starting to get greasy and dirty. It also happens if I sleep on it wrong, kind of like sleeping on a shoulder wrong or something. I flip my head upside down and massage with my fingertips, or use warm oil to ease the pinch.  \n\n\n\nI think it happens because the oils and grease that build up clog the pores and make the hair stiffer at the roots. Or maybe the roots are inflamed from having the hair twisted into unnatural shapes all day without a massage or a wash. ", "I get this because my hair is quite long and heavy - I love the feeling though, it's like a massage :D", "This always happens to me when I'm sick... Maybe it's not because I'm sick, but because I don't shower when I'm sick... Whoah.", "I just want to say that this is an excellent question.", "Were you ever cursed by Native Americans? Could be an indian ghost trying to scalp you", "from what I've heard, this happens mainly to people with long hair. my completely unscientific opinion is that the hair follicle, at the base of the shaft of hair, is overloaded with oils from the hair and scalp, as well as product. I call them Hairaches. ", "I love doing this to my hair, i find it pleasant.", "I have stupidly thick hair, and the morning pain has always dissuaded me from growing it longer.", "This has never ever happened to me, am I weird? I shampoo my hair every day, because when I don't it feels super oily and gross... I do have really short hair though.", "your shampoo and or conditioner may be to harsh and drying your skin. i had that problem untill i switched to a more gentle brand. i've heard some folks have it so bad they have to use baby shampoo. ", "Ok, so, everybody who is screaming \"EW, SHOWER\", listen up here.  My wife is a cosmetologist.  Depending on your hair type and factors like the weather, shampooing every day can actually damage your hair.  It's generally recommended that you shampoo every OTHER day, or even every three days, for some people.\n\nI don't have an answer to this question right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if she does.  I'll ask here, and post more if I find something out. \n\nEDIT:  Asked the wife.   She said that this is usually a thing for people whose scalp doesn't produce enough oils.  It's essentially \"chapped scalp\", and could be roughly equated to your lips cracking in cold weather.   She says to be sure to use a conditioner, possibly a moisturizing shampoo. \n\n", "The putty analogy someone used is pretty good explanation for the pain. This happened to me all of the time until I figured out how to take care of my hair. Shampoos  &  conditioners with sulfate strip your scalp so it produces more oil to compensate.  Switching to a sulfate free shampoo is gentler on the scalp and will allow your scalp to produce oil normally. Then you can go without washing your hair for a couple of days and not get the \"hurty hair\". ", "Wow, I was just about to look this up because this just happened to me. My scalp feels like its bruised after wearing a hoody all day. ", "is this the same reason why the hair on my feet and legs hurt after having high socks on for a while?", "It's actually a medical condition and apparently its cause isn't very well known (from what I found). It's called trichodynia (literally: hair pain, which seems to be the English term for it too). It's associated with people who have more psychological complaints, but I'm not sure if that's true. Wiki: _URL_2_ (this makes me doubt if it really is the same, but from what I've learnt a hurting scalp when you rustle your hair is hair pain. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!)\n\n\nSome scientific research about it: _URL_1_\n\nIt seems to be a more female specific thing (could be because of hairstyles like pony tails, which restricts free hair movement? I'm just hypothesizing here): _URL_0_", "So glad this question showed up here! I have very thick hair and before cutting it recently (went from waist to shoulder length) I couldn't even wear a ponytail for 5 minutes without pain. With short hair I still have the same sensation, but MUCH less so. Good to know what's actually going on up there.", "That can hurt??? To me it only itches.", "This happens to other people? o.O\n\n...I thought I was just weird.", "Wow, I was just thinking about this a few hours ago!\nI've always wondered, but never bothered to ask anyone or look it up.\nWas going to try and find out by having a wee look on the web when I got home today, and awesomely it's on the front page! ", "Sometimes my toes hurt when I poop.", "Its obvious, keeping the hair suppressed for longer time ( like the curve from headphones where its sitting on top of your head or after sleep ) makes it stay locked in that position, so it takes new shape and when you try and move the hair back to original position it hurts because its not in the natural form, and when you finally shower, the hair looses all the moist and it softens and become loose so it gets back in the natural position. Explained it best I could, not native English speaker. Regards.", "Similar question, why does leg hair hurt after taking off long socks?\n", "TIL I never go long without washing my hair. I have never felt this sensation.", "So is it bad to be constantly geling your hair?", "my fucking god, i thought i was the only one! i felt weird telling people my hair hurt lol", "I haven't experienced this before...I must have never reached the mythical hygeine threshold", "You have muscles under your scalp. Raise your eyebrows like you're surprised and put your hand on top of you head. Do you feel your scalp move? They're there, but you just don't use those muscles.\n\nWhen you set your hair a certain way and don't move it, those muscles settle in that position. When you try and shift your hair (and thus move those muscles in ways it rarely does), it responds in a way any muscle would. It hurts. You're stretching a muscle that's not used to moving that way.", "I've been trying to explain this to my husband for 10 yrs. Thank God I'm not alone!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12444334", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&amp;Cmd=ShowDetailView&amp;TermToSearch=12956679&amp;ordinalpos=1&amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichodynia"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2c0zo4", "title": "how was the first computer/chip programmed, without anything to program it with?", "selftext": "I'm curious how that worked!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c0zo4/eli5_how_was_the_first_computerchip_programmed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjaudqq", "cjauhee", "cjavuyy", "cjavw65"], "score": [5, 6, 17, 2], "text": ["Manually flipping switches. It's all ones and zeroes deep down.", "Basic programming was, and still is, programming for the chip itself, without any language and compiler. A program is just a sequence of numbers, some of those numbers being data for the program to calculate from, or instructions telling the chip what calculations to do. You just have to set up some numbers in some memory and set the chip running.\n\nThese numbers were either entered by flipping switches, or by punching holes in pieces of cardboard.", "The very first computers were large mechanical devices which were programmed by flipping a number of switches to various positions to indicate which commands to execute.\n\nLater computers were programmed via [punched cards](_URL_0_). Literal holes were punched in stiff card using a special hole puncher; the pattern of holes represented program instructions, and these cards were then read by the machine and the corresponding instructions executed.\n\nThe invention of the [Von Neumann architecture](_URL_1_) is what first allowed programs to be stored in memory alongside data. At first, programs had to be carefully crafted in machine language using something like binary notation.\n\nFrom there, assembly language notation was invented, then higher level programming languages, and the rest is history.", "The first chip was a macro sized circuit board. Programming is fundamentally the control of AND OR and NOT logic associated with circuitry and electronics. Essentially, programming is the control of high and low voltages (0 and 1) and when those voltages are high and low dependent on the \"flow\" of the circuit.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_cards", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture"], ["http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/Boolean_logic.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2hdsao", "title": "why do blacksmiths use tungsten inert gas to weld?", "selftext": "I've been watching a lot of blacksmith videos on Youtube, like \"Man at Arms.\"  They use a TIG welder to weld, but am I misunderstanding what inert means?  Shouldn't it be unable to burn since it's chemically inactive?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hdsao/eli5_why_do_blacksmiths_use_tungsten_inert_gas_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckrqbgn", "ckrqhnq", "ckrqjn5", "ckrrupr"], "score": [11, 7, 4, 7], "text": ["The gas is not what makes the heat. The heat comes from an electric arc, and the inert gas (argon, I think) provides shielding to keep the air away. If air got in there while the metal was molten, it would oxidize very badly.", "First, welders weld...true, blacksmiths may need to stick the metal prices together but they don't need to use an arc welding process.  Second, tungsten is the electrode used to direct the current (used for its high melting point). It is not a gas, the inert gas is either argon or helium.\n\nWe use the gas to keep the metal away from the oxygenated and humidified air. The arc creates heat close to 10,000 degrees and the metal will readily oxidize (rust). Oxidized metal is very brittle and therefore not ideal if you want 2 things to stay stuck  together. It also stabilizes the arc as the atmosphere will disrupt it, and TIG welding is a *very* precise process. The gas is inert for exactly that reason...If the gas was able to react, you would end up with a material that is much weaker than your base metal. In general, a weld has around 60,000psi tensile strength, introducing other components into the liquid puddle would displace the welding rod used to fill the gap.\n\nAlso, side note. Inert gases do not *readily* react...you can still bond them to atoms under extreme conditions...but not for very long.", "The \"inert gas\" part refers to the shielding gas - an inert gas like argon or helium which is blown over the weld area to keep the metal from coming into contact with oxygen in the air. Heated metal oxidizes very quickly and this contaminates the weld, making it much weaker.\n\nThe heat comes from the tungsten electrode, which creates an arc onto the metal filler and melts it.", "TIG welding works something like this:\n\nYou have a tungsten spike that is hooked up to the welder (the machine, not the person) and has a handle attached to it.  Tungsten is used because it has an *extremely* high melting point.  You also have a big metal clamp that you attach somewhere on the thing you're welding; it also goes to the welder.  The welder then tries to push a lot of current through that circuit:  welder-- > tungsten-- > part-- > clamp-- > welder.  Everything in that circuit is a very good conductor of electricity *except* the small gap between the tungsten and the part.  Thus, that gap gets extremely hot.  So hot, in fact, that it can melt steel.\n\nMelting the steel (or other metal, but steel is popular) is only part of the challenge.  Once you have the steel melted on both of the sides of the weld you usually need to add just a little bit more material to fill whatever small gap is present, or to fill in a corner to have a small rounded area (a \"fillet\").  For this you hold a piece of steel wire in the other hand and you feed it in or dab it as needed, to build up an appropriate puddle of steel that you're working with as you move along the weld.\n\nWhile you're doing all of this the metal is incredibly hot and therefore quite willing to start reacting with the oxygen in the air.  In order to keep this from happening the whole process is covered with a layer of inert gas (Argon, typically).  This is dispensed from the same thing that is holding the tungsten spike.\n\nThe whole process is typically controlled through a pedal, much like the throttle on a car or sewing machine.  Properly TIG welding requires you to coordinate the power with your foot, the heat with your dominant hand, and the fill rod with your non-dominant hand.  Once you're coordinated enough to handle all of these at once, though, you can make really really pretty and strong welds with incredible finesse.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hi6pb", "title": "if banknotes are manufactured daily. how are old banknotes disposed of ? how is an equilibrium maintained ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hi6pb/eli5_if_banknotes_are_manufactured_daily_how_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db0e7lo", "db0ejzy", "db0ev7p", "db0h0ew", "db0mtwn"], "score": [4, 6, 21, 6, 2], "text": ["Torn, damaged and sometimes very old banknotes are returned to the banks, which return them to the printing house to be incinerated. But I don't believe banknotes are produced daily... \nOh, and the government needs to back all the money it prints up in reserves (which almost no one does). ", "Old banknotes, once they reach a certain factor of wear and tear, are either returned to the bank for destruction, or are simply \"ignored\" as currency.\n\nIf you have old damaged bills, but still have intact denomination symbol and serials, you can effectively exchange it for good currency and let the bank dispose of the damaged currency without loosing your money.\n\nHowever, old decrpit currency, say $100,000 left in an old lunch pail in old $100 that are all crusted over and damaged from water, that money is \"lost\" and it's value has already been repatriated to new bills to take it's place.", "When you buy stuff with cash, (if not you, other people do) business will end up with a lot of money at the end of each day. They take the cash and deposit it in a bank so they can pay their debts and other business stuff.\n\nBanks will remove old or damaged bills and replace them with fresh new bills. No new money has entered the system, it's just traded out.", "The exact procedure depends on the country in question. Usually the retail banks turn in worn and mutilated money to some central facility where it's traded for new notes. \n\nThe central facility usually turns them into some government run facility for destruction, by burning or shredding. See the government or central bank website for the country in question.", "I've worked in a bank; when the money is no good to go back into circulation it is set aside packaged up and sent off separately to the good notes. Reasons could be old notes that are not printed anymore, ripped notes, stained notes, or funnily enough scottish notes even though they are perfectly legal, in the U.K. We could not hand them out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "35huzg", "title": "why do bands put a microphone in front of their amp when they're playing concert?", "selftext": "I've seen this a couple times, there's an amplifier with a microphone positioned in front of it. Wouldn't this cause feedback? Also couldn't they just run audio out from the amp?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35huzg/eli5_why_do_bands_put_a_microphone_in_front_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr4iyjg", "cr4izcx", "cr4j00y", "cr4o37p"], "score": [56, 16, 9, 5], "text": ["If you have a large venue, just one audio source (amp) isn't going to fill up the whole room, but you'll also probably have a large speaker system that's built specifically for filling the room with sound. So you mic the amp and send the sound out through those speakers. The reason you mic it instead of going direct out is because using the mic will give the the natural tone of the amp which will generally sound better than the raw audio signal.\n\nAlso it allows a sound tech to mix levels on his own without having to constantly tell you in your monitors to turn up or turn down slightly", "It doesn't cause feedback because the mic is connected to a separate speaker, it doesn't feed back into the amp.\n\nThe reason that they do it that way is that amps produce different tones depending on what volume/gain they're set to. If you like the guitar tone that comes out when your amp is set to 5, you don't want to turn it up to 10 just so that the audience can hear you. It's better to mic up the amp and then play it through a speaker.", "Two things:\n\n1. Feedback only occurs when the microphone is feeding the amplifier it is in front of. A microphone in front of an amplifier that is carrying a different audio signal won't feedback just because of its placement.\n\n2. In a guitar amp the speakers themselves can be an important part of the overall tone of the amplifier, so its important to get that included in the tone you send through the PA system.", "A lot of good answers here.  Just going to add that this also allows bands to carry around smaller amps.\n\nBefore venues had PA systems people like hendrix had to travel with 3 full stacks of amps.  This was so costly to transport that he had 2 sets one in America one in Europe.  Now guitarists can just have one small amp and mic it at the venue."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ud27l", "title": "Did John the Baptist \"invent\" the practice of baptism?", "selftext": "Wikipedia says baptism has a precursor in tvilah and general ritual washing, but differs in that baptism is only administered once.\n\nWas John the Baptist the first person to perform this kind of baptism? Was he responsible for the invention of the baptism as a singular, transformative event? What purpose did it serve in his messianic movement?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ud27l/did_john_the_baptist_invent_the_practice_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxdyqbd", "cxdz5lk", "cxee9aa"], "score": [4, 14, 3], "text": ["I don't have enough time to make a long answer right now (boutta sneak off to Gran's from some of that Thanksloving), but short answer is no. [Baptismal fonts were discovered at Qumran](_URL_0_) (think Dead Sea Scrolls), which existed ca. 100 BC, but scholars think it was more of an ablution ceremony than a covenant with Christ ordinance.", "While this answer is more /r/ELINT, I'll answer from a biblical doctrine angle.\n\nCleanliness is the major point of the Old Testament. God is pure. And to be a member of God's chosen people in the Old Testament, purity was to be expected. This is why there were odd rules about not eating certain kinds of meat or wearing certain garments. It was the job of the High Priests to mediate for the people by approaching God in the temple. To do this, they were instructed to be clean in every way: their clothes, their bodies, what they ate, their hearts etc. including ritual washing as they prepared to enter \"the holy of holies\" where the High Priest met with God once a year to atone for the sins of the nation of Israel.\n\n\"Baptism\" comes from the Greek (baptizo: to plunge, dip or immerse). With most of the OT written in Hebrew and much of the NT written in Greek, Matthew (1st book in the NT) is the first place in the bible we encounter the word Baptism or Baptist in the character of John.\n\nIn the New Testament, Baptism is constantly associated with repentance or confession. Very rarely are the two terms far apart especially with regards to John the Baptist. He also said \"I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.\" Early in the NT (during Jesus' life), baptism is introduced as taking place in a river and as a reaction to confession or repentance. Later after Jesus's ascension, Acts 2 describes the first Christians getting baptized in the Holy Spirit and no water is present. Following this event, baptism is seen often among early Christians immediately following a conversion and often with water. When someone is converted to Christianity (Simon the Magician, and the Ethiopian eunuch [Acts 8], Saul of Tarsus [Acts 9], Paul and Silas's jailer [Acts 16] etc), they are immediately prompted/encouraged to be baptized.\n\n Nowhere in the New Testament is baptism paralleled to Old Testament purification. Old Testament cleanliness was preventative, New Testament Baptism is reactionary. Therefore, while many historical religious ceremonies introduce the step of \"ritual washing\", Baptism as introduced in the New Testament (first through John the Baptist) is unlike most religious washings. Baptism is in response to the singular event of conversion.", "It's unclear that baptism was only administered once. Reread the parts of the New Testament that involve John the Baptist ([Wikipedia has a list](_URL_1_). You certainly *can* read them as something that happened once, but you can also read them as something where if you sin again, you have to repent again (and get baptized again). That's probably more in line with the evidence we have from Qumran--that ritual immersion was an important and regular practice for at least some Jews of this period. \n\nBut neither in the New Testamanet and Josephus (our two accounts closest chronologically to the historical John) is there a once and done implication. Indeed, the later explanations for why Baptism is a single transformative event--either the erasure of original sin, accepting Jesus as one's savior, etc--aren't implied in the texts. Look instead to Luke, for example, where we see John as a social reformer or in Mark where, to my eyes, the clearest context is that these are earthly, lived sins that one is repenting for. \n\nAs for John's movement, I think it's clearest from Josephus:\n\n > [John] who was a good man, and commanded the Jews irate, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.\n\nSo John's movement was one about personal transformation--perhaps in preparation for a coming future event (like Jesus, or a day of judgement, or whatever), perhaps not. But I don't think you should assume it was only possible to administer once. It should only be administered once, because there was supposed to be a spiritual cleansing along with the bodily cleansing (perhaps relate this to Jesus's, \"now go and sin no more\"), but there isn't a hard limit implied anywhere in the texts if the spiritual purification faltered and needed to be reperformed. Indeed, [Mandaeans](_URL_0_), who claim spiritual descent from John the Baptist (historically, this lineage is questioned) but reject Jesus, continue to perform ritual baptisms, and not only once. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2265.1960.tb00187.x/abstract"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeans", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Baptist#In_Mark"]]}
{"q_id": "1ghf6y", "title": "What phenomenon causes do ouzo, and other anise spirits, to louche (turn cloudy white) when mixed with water?", "selftext": "It's a very cool effect that I've always been curious about, so here I am. I've asked people I consider to be highly knowledgable about spirits this question and have been left unsatisfied. r/askscience, you're my only hope... Please, satiate my thirst for knowledge", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ghf6y/what_phenomenon_causes_do_ouzo_and_other_anise/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cak8hs1"], "score": [11], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nEssentially, the anethole in ouzo is very highly soluble in ethanol but not that soluble in water.  This causes the ethanol to basically clump up around it and fall out of solution, turning into tons of tiny little suspended particles that diffract light in pretty much the exact same way actual clouds in the sky do (which are themselves suspensions of large amounts of small droplets in a clear medium)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouzo_effect"]]}
{"q_id": "3t01uh", "title": "what happens to your body when you stay up for more that 24 hours", "selftext": "Besides the normal shit body feelings, every time I pull am all nighter I get weird digestive issues, stuff like that. So what is going on?\n\nEdit: An*", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t01uh/eli5_what_happens_to_your_body_when_you_stay_up/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx1x5d2", "cx1x6u9", "cx1xbqp", "cx1xp8u", "cx1y9f2", "cx1yfgk", "cx1yln5", "cx1yqwq", "cx1yrvi", "cx1yygd", "cx1z2l4", "cx1zfzf", "cx1zsh1", "cx1zu4z", "cx2093z", "cx20ir2", "cx20n39", "cx20om0", "cx20wfr", "cx21ast", "cx21vqr", "cx21wb4", "cx222kp", "cx226zz", "cx229gy", "cx22efo", "cx22nrl", "cx22vd8", "cx23003", "cx230z1", "cx23h32", "cx23j1w", "cx23ph0", "cx23tae", "cx23w2t", "cx23w3p", "cx23wvz", "cx24021", "cx244ir", "cx2494q", "cx24icp", "cx25jv2", "cx263if", "cx26vhq", "cx29u39", "cx29uh6", "cx2a3n7", "cx2aol0", "cx2bkh0", "cx2dcek", "cx2djws", "cx2dtrh", "cx2eaw9", "cx2f15d", "cx2f49g", "cx2feyg", "cx2g8ov", "cx2gu2l", "cx2h1k5", "cx2h3q4", "cx2hbx6", "cx2hppo", "cx2ixbu", "cx2k18m", "cx2kyfi", "cx2kyy4", "cx2m945", "cx2mc3y", "cx2n8yw", "cx2o8cv", "cx2rkt5", "cx2svfn", "cx2t872", "cx2xm1c"], "score": [3960, 150, 20, 240, 864, 6, 24, 22, 2, 12, 3, 6, 43, 11, 4, 4, 3, 870, 9, 88, 4, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 79, 2, 2, 24, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 18, 3, 5, 3, 3, 11, 2, 17, 2, 29, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["**Source - [This](_URL_0_)\n\n#24 Hour Mark\n \n > The consequences of sleep deprivation at 24 hours is comparable to the cognitive impairment of someone with a blood-alcohol content of 0.10 percent, according to a 2010 study in the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health. \n\n#36 Hours\n\n > Now your health begins to be at risk. High levels of inflammatory markers are in the bloodstream, said Cralle, which can eventually lead to cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. Additionally, hormones are affected \u2014 your emotions can be all over the place.\n\n#48 Hours\n\n > After two days of no sleep the body begins compensating by shutting down for microsleeps, episodes that last from half a second to half a minute and are usually followed by a period of disorientation. \u201cThe person experiencing a microsleep falls asleep regardless of the activity they are engaged in,\u201d she said. Microsleeps are similar to blackouts, and a person experiencing them is not consciously aware that they're occurring. \n\n#72 Hours\n\n > Expect significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception, and other higher mental processes after many sleepless hours, Cralle said. \n\u201cEven simple conversations can be a chore,\u201d noted Kelley. This is when the mind is ripe for hallucinations. Kelley recalled a time he was on guard duty and repeatedly saw someone standing with a rifle in the woods, ready to sneak into camp. Upon closer inspection, he determined he was actually looking at a branch and shadows.\n\nEDIT: Text added for the lazy :)", "Your body uses the rest period in many ways.  During the day the brain swells slightly making it more difficult to get rid of waste products which makes your brain less effective.  Sleeping reduces activity.  Allows the swelling to subside and clears out the waste products that have built up.\n\nOther parts of your body have similar issues.  You keep using them, some effect prevents the removal of waste products, and impairment increases until you rest.", "Your serotonin, good feeling begin to release less often,  Your circadian rhythm is out the window.  You get into a depression mode (especially when you work at night) (due to lack of communications with others, you feel lost of touch). \n\nIts not fun.  You sabotage your relationship, sleep deprivations will make you hallucinate, go crazy, do weird shit, say weird shit.  \n\nYou cannot see everything clearly, you cannot think straight, but since im used to it, my career does not affect me much.  I sleep in my office, I make sure I communicate with my boss and HR the term of my employment.  My 90 days review, yearl review, and a raise, all exceeding expectations.  I make sure I get my job done right, they make sure I get my sleep.", "Well I've been up for about 30 hours now and got about 7 left then I go to work for 10 hours. In the military operating with almost no sleep is normal and with training and mental discipline a lot of side effects can be prevented. Not saying It doesn't suck but I can function near normal level without sleep for a while. The worst times are 2 am to 6 am because nothing is going on and the sun isn't out yet. When the sun comes up l will feel refreshed and ready to go. ", "I was once awake for about 40 hours and I can't remember ANYTHING from that time except the fact that I was awake for about 40 hours. Never again.", "I was on a 30+- hours sleep deprivation and i was just so tired that i hallucinated for a moment. I was looking at a picture of someone laughing but i was actually seeing him move his mouth, wich is impossible. No good.", "Ok, so what happens when you take Modafinil and then stay awake for 24 hours? I know someone who does that. ", "It's different for everyone.  Insomnia is the bane of my existence, so I've gone three or four nights without sleep and been able to function fine, probably because I'm used to it.  My friends who sleep well go without sleep for one night and they're a disaster waiting to happen.", "For some reason I always feel hyper-aware after the 24 hour mark.\nProbably just an illusion.", "Can I die after 48 hours of no sleep?\n", "I recently stayed awake for roughly 95 hours none of this happened to me. Had one hell of weekend tho.", "For me, after 24 hours without sleep I am hyper productive and feel very aware/alert/anxious. After 48 hours I get bad eye strain, digestive problems, continuous headache, emotional. After 72 hours I become very very introverted and can't handle much social interaction like conversations and major depression sets in. After 96 hours photos and images start to move around and my surroundings glitch like a video game, memory severely impaired. I can't remember what it was like from 96 hours to 120 hours. I can say though, at the end of all of this I was taken into a psychiatric hospital. ", "I stayed up for 98 hours once during finals week (I don't recommend it) the biggest things I noticed were the physical impairment and the digestive issues. it was like I was super drunk:lack of motor skills, difficulty walking straight, slurring words. At 30 hours I found it difficult to eat, by 48 hours I had stopped eating all together (I believe it has something to do with how your body processes sugar). Also when walking it felt like I was floating, almost surreal because I was so out of it.", "Anybody else start to feel slightly euphoric and horny after staying up for 24-36 hours? ", "Is it safe to say that people who claim to not have slept for a week are full of shit?", "Was awake for over 72 hours trying to win a car. The hallucinations kicked in around 48-50 hours and I saw everything from the parking lot becoming a field, then a jungle, to toward the end of it I thought I was Goku and was trying to destroy the other guy left with a kamahmaha. I slept for 13 straight hours after that. ", "While microsleeps usually start to happen at 48 hours into the deprivatory period (something which narcoleptics experience on a daily basis) - ive heard that the effects of deprivation on the body can vary greatly from person to person, especially when using drugs for narcoleptic or other sleep related diseases like [Modafinil](_URL_0_)", "I started writing about my experience staying up for 90ish hours, but I lost focus on what was important here, which is probably how it FELT... scroll down to the next marker if you don't care about why or how I did it.\n=\nNot really an explanation, but, a first-hand story of someone who HAS stayed up for a stupid amount of time:\n\nWhen I was 16 years old, I stayed up for 90 hours straight playing a mix of Quake 2 and Baldur's Gate.\n\nI wanted to stay up for 100 hours, straight.\n\nThis was 13 years ago so I don't recall everything about it anymore.\n\nI got up at around 2pm (this was during summer vacation) and I was in weird sleep schedule mode already from staying up until 5-6AM playing games online, and then crashing and getting up in the middle of the afternoon...\n\nAs long as I had finished school with good grades, nobody gave a rats ass about what I did on my vacation time. *Specially* if it was inside the apartment, where in theory is \"safe\".\n\nI'd stayed up for an entire day before (24 hours) and it didn't feel like too much of a hassle... it wasn't unusual for me to do that during vacation, actually... I'd get up progressively later into the day, until I found myself sleeping around noon, waking up at around 8-9pm, and then just staying up until next day's 8-9pm and get my sleep cycle back on track.\n\n30ish hours weren't too terrible either. I'd pulled that off before (wake up around 1-2pm, stay up until 8-9pm of the next day, sleep and be back on cycle).\n\nI thought I had experience with this stuff, and I wanted to see how far I could push it. That's where the 100 hours came from.\n\nWhy? Because I was young and stupid and I just wanted to be able to say I did it.\n\n...so where was I?\n\nRight, I woke up at around 2pm, and this is when I started counting, and I was sure I was going to do it.\nJust lounged around the house for the most part. Internet connection wasn't that great during the day because the lines in my neighborhood were prone to being overloaded during the day while everyone was awake, but it played very smoothly during the night after everyone went to sleep. It was playable during the day, it just wasn't the *OMG* experience it was at night.\n\nI remember the afternoons and nights being the easiest part of staying awake. Because there was so much to do. There was always stuff around the house, friends to talk to, things to keep my mind busy and active... and I found that, that was the secret to staying up. Staying mentally active.\n\nThe most difficult times honestly were from around 6AM to 10AM, if that makes sense.\n\nBecause it was just SO DEAD... nobody online to play with on my usual servers... servers in other timezones weren't an option because they were really bad, connection wise. My friends were all asleep and they wouldn't be awake for hours.\n\nNo movement going around my house either.\nIt made sense to me why this is the hour I usually peaced out and slept.\n\nSo that slice of the day... from 6AM to 10AM... ish, that was the real bitch.\n\nBut I got the first day done, and now my apartment was bristling with family going around, people coming... and what am I even talking about\n\nYou guys don't care about what I did to stay up. You guys care about what I felt.\n\nSorry for losing focus.\n=\n\nI remember distinctly that the first day was OK. Other than that feeling of being slightly tired, there's nothing that I can really remember about it. You know that feeling behind the back of your eyes.\n\nThe second day, that feeling was constant, and much higher in intensity. The less active I was, the more it hit me. I found myself having to will through the dead hours of the morning. I never left my computer chair because I was sure I would fall asleep if I decided to lay on my bed and read something. So I just browsed the internet... random things... anything.\n\nThe 48-72 period is when things started getting interesting.\nI was permanently tired. I felt physically tired, even though I had done nothing to warrant feeling physically drained... I didn't DO anything physically involving in all of this. It was all TV and videogames.\n\nBut I felt super tired.. Like I'd just finished playing soccer for an entire afternoon with my friends. \n\nMy eyelids felt like they hung from about a third down of where they normally would... my body wanted to shut my eyes and just make me sleep.\n\nI only stayed up during the dead hours of the morning for this period by PACING around the apartment. I just walked from the kitchen to the living room... to the balcony... back to my room... I did this until people started getting up. Then I went back to my room, I didn't want people asking questions about how long I'd been up for.\n\nthe 72-90 period is when things got downright scary.\n\nI now had a headache.\n\nPersistant. Throbbing. It didn't start out too terribly and I didn't care much about it at first. But it got progressively worse over a short amount of time. I took some meds and thought I would be alright.\n\nI took a tylenol, and I remember it being one of those extra strenght tablets, and I went straight into the bathroom for a scalding hot shower. That's always been my 'miracle cure' for a headache... take meds + stupid hot water on my head til I don't feel anything... by the time the effect from the shower is gone, the meds have kicked in... and i'm fine.\n\nIt did jack shit. Which caused me to take ANOTHER extra strength pill. (Looking back... I'm sure my liver is not happy with me to this day for this)\n\nMy eyes hurt. My head felt like it was going to explode. My body felt like it had lead hanging off every limb. Everything felt heavy, everything was hard to do.\n\nThen it was around 5 AM. My computer needed a reebot. It'd been asking for one for longer than I could remember... and I decided... why not. It took forever to do this, it would be a way to kill time. Things were slowing down considerably by now online anyway.\n\nSo I started the reboot process, it would take at least 5 mins for this thing to be fully back up and responsive.\n\nI laid down on my bed and stared at the ceiling while I watched the monitor change the intensity of light and color, from the corner of my eyes.\n\nThen I looked to my left, where my alarm clock was:\n\n5:30 AM.\n\nI stared back at the ceiling and kept paying attention to the monitor lights coming from the corner of my eyes. I remember thinking \"It's still doing it?\"\n\nSo I looked back at the clock to see how long it'd been\n\n5:15 PM.\n\n\n**WHAT. THE. FUCK**\n\nI jumped up from the bed, because there this didn't make any fucking sense. I had just looked at the fucking thing, it was 5:30 AM, and 30-45 seconds later it was saying 5 something **PM** ??\n\nThe alarm must've been malfunctioning and I told myself \"just go check the one in the kitchen\"\n\nBut then it hit me.\n\nThe light from outside.\n\nBright as day. Because... It was, you know, the middle of the day.\n\nHalf a day. 12 hours. And I hadn't even FELT it. I didn't even think I lost consciousness because all my thoughts were still in order. I clearly remembered my thought train. I was waiting on the computer to boot back up. I was annoyed it was taking too long, so I went to check the clock again and somehow 12 hours had passed.\n\nBut the sun was up. Everyone was up and saying hey to me and asking if I'd slept well... Come to think of it, my bedroom door was closed and I had to open it to get out, and I had left it open because I was always going back and forth from and to the kitchen for a snack, or a drink...\n\nI have no recollection of those hours.\n\nAnd as soon as the adrenaline lowered from the \"WTF!!!!\" feeling, I felt my body go heavy again, just not quite as bad... the headache was faint, but still there...\n\nI'd fallen asleep. I fell short of the goal, so I might as well just go back to sleep.\n\nSo I did.\n\nMy mother came and woke me worried if I was alright. I looked at the clock at it said 8 something PM.\n\nI remember being pissed at her because she'd just seen me when I came out of my room at 6pm, so wtf was her problem.\n\n\"THAT WAS YESTERDAY\"\n\n...\n\nI'd slept for over a day.\n\nNow, at age 29, I can't even make it 24 hours without feeling like I want to die and be released from the nightmare.\n\nI read the top comment here, and people listing hallucinating. I never saw anything that wasn't really there. I don't think I hallucinated at all.\n\nBut I had the worst headache of my life. And looking back on it, I don't even want to know what that headache meant, but there's no way it was a good sign.", "3rd shifter here\n\ni wouldn't be able to have a regular sleep schedule without melatonin. thank you based melatonin", "If you want to see effects of sleep deprivation, there is a Twitch streamer that goes by the name koibu0 who frequently does no sleep marathons. IIRC his previous record was around 120 hrs. He's starting an attempt at 144 hours this week.", "In my case, what happens is that my brain literally shuts down. I fall asleep like a kitten. Just can't stay awake any longer. I've tried. Can't do it. ", "How much sleep can you get within each 24 hour period and still have the same effects as not sleeping at all? Anything less than a single REM cycle?", "How are soldiers affected after days of continuous combat? ", "I have narcolepsy and this has been likened to a normal person being deprived of sleep for 48-72 hours. I have been falling asleep randomly for a long time. It's embarrassing and dangerous! ", "I experience similar stuff every time I pull an all nighter as well. \nI once haven't slept for the whole week (Sunday-Sunday) and ended up in a hospital. Doctors said it was serious.\nI was sick then as well and took medicines that helped but their said effect were symptoms of insomnia so I could barely sleep.\nAfter 3 days I was SO tired I wanted to only lie in my bed forever, but it was like my brain already got used to being awake and shut down 'sleep' mode. No matter how hard I'd try I couldn't fall asleep.\nNow, I was working at the time on a project and I was running out of time so at first having 'more time' to work seemed great, it was only after first night that I realized that 'feeling like you don't need sleep' meant only sleep itself, not energy and rest that came with it. \nI stopped taking my medicines after 4 days of non-sleeping yet I still couldn't fall asleep. The following weekend ment a huge event 6h away by a bus - I always fall asleep on buses, not this time tho. \nI had what some would call hallucinations and it felt like I was watching the whole world in slow motion from behind a soundproof glass. It felt like a movie and I was freaked out.\nI also lost my voice completely but I'm not sure if tgat's not due to my medicines for a sore throat (even if it never happened before). When I got back on Sunday I called for my mum to pick me up as I wasn't sure if I will be able to make home on my own - I passsed out as soon as I stood up from a bus' chair after few hours of journey and woke up in hospital. \nNow, my lack of sleep was partially due to the medicines I was taking but I wonder what's up with me not being able to fall asleep even if I was tired as hell. It happenes to me every time since that accident when I pull an all nighter more than two nights in a row (I try to be responsible and not do that but shit happens). Any thoughts? Does it just work like that?", "One summer in high school I had a manic episode where i only slept about 16 hours in 5 days and my longest stint of wakefulness was 50+ hours with only 2 hours of sleep the night before. I would play games or fuck around in town at night. Sometimes hearing whispers and seeing shadows of people who weren't there. \nI had decided somewhere that I would stay up as long as I felt good because i had been depressed or so long.\nSleep deprivation: 3/10 interesting if you like seeing shit in dark corners, would not recommend\nManic states: 11/10 profusely recomend", "Are any of these symptoms seen in people who aren't staying up for multiple days at a time, but rather consistently not getting enough sleep? For example, sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night for a week or two?", "30 days until graduation. I did not need to read this thread. My left eye has been twitching for a month...", "The average \"human\" requires (recommended) 8 hours of sleep for numerous reasons.\n\n1. Your brain needs to \"refresh.\" Your Thalamus responds to no sleep by almost putting itself in a \"shutdown state\" which will leave you clueless, possible hallucinations, seeing shit you don't want to see, and weird eye headaches.\n\n2. Your heart. Your heart responds by sporadically pumping too much or too little blood which then starves your Oxygen levels, and most likely a lot of other things that you need to live.\n\n3. Your Immune system. Let's say you have a filter on a pool...this filter is designed to take the bacteria/nasty shit in the pool (kids pooping and leaves and whatnot.) After a while in ANY pool, you have to \"change\" this filter right? This can be metaphorically compared to the human immune system. The body regulates itself by fighting off diseases all the way down to the random \"bug\" flying in the air you might catch from a co-worker. This obviously is BAD because once your immune system starts acting up the other parts of your body compensate by over-working or under-working in response.\n\n4. Your body temperature. See above statement for further understanding.\n\n5. Your digestive system. Ever notice after your up for a long time you have to take MASSIVE diarrhea dump or piss every 10 minutes? Or FEEL like you have to and nothing comes out? Yeah... not good.\n\n6. The most important. Your \"Circadian Rhythm\" goes out of WACK. This rhythm I am sure you have all heard in high school classes and whatnot. This is your body's sleep cycle. When you sleep your entire body refreshes itself by purging old shit and bringing in new to be general as possible. That's why if you are a gamer who doesn't sleep until 1AM every night you feel like you can PASS OUT at 6pm after work. It's not because you worked hard, it's because your body is telling itself it's time for bed. That's where this giant level of sleepiness comes n day in and day out.\n\nI know this was ALL very general statements...but I tried to ELY5....", "'every time I pull am all nighter I get weird digestive issues'  same with me, but it's most likely the MDMA.", "Why do I get a boner when I'm really tired?\n\nnot trying to be funny here, just whenever I get a shitty night's sleep and am tired at work the next day, when I start yawning I noticed I have a perma-erection", "I have an somewhat odd experience to add to the discussion...  During finals week in college, I had just discovered Adderall, and I had five finals in four days.  I hadn't exactly been going to class on a regular basis, so I decided with the help of the amphetamines I would just cram cram cram.  Anyhow, I made it the 50 hour mark before I started experiencing auditory hallucinations, mainly in the from of people constantly saying my name, even when I was completely alone and in the shower.  Anyhow, at the 80 hour mark I finished my last exam and crashed literally sitting up on my front porch, with the temperature hovering around 10 degrees outside.  My roomates eventually dragged me inside, (they were aware of the situation and were actually kind of rooting me on)  and I slept for 22 hours straight.  On top of my roomates claiming that in my sleep I was screaming and kicking like a maniac, when I finally woke, I had ZERO recollection of the final 15 or 20 hours of my no-sleep week.  As in, I was convinced I missed my final final.  I ended up e-mailing the professor, and I was so out confused that he legitimately suggested I go to student health services for a checkup.  Anyhow, I got an 80 on the last final, which I basically time traveled through, but I learned my lesson.  Aside from the auditory hallucinations and the memory loss, I had my first and only full blown panic attack a few days later, and I am convinced the Adderall/sleeplessness was directly responsible.\n\nTLDR:  Stayed up 80 hours on speed and briefly lost my mind.", "Anecdote:\n\nI've had several stints of 3+ days worth of sleep deprivation. None of them were particularly rewarding.\n\nSome people claim you will get headaches. I didn't. I actually didn't experience any deterioration of my normal form aside from the cognitive impairment and the intense feeling of fatigue.\n\nBefore you reach 24h, you'll battle an extreme sleepiness. If you overcome this, you will most likely feel renewed. I don't know why that is, but I'd wager it is melatonin-related.\n\n**24h-48h:** you will start feeling *something*. A sort of distant tiredness. You don't feel the kind of tired that you usually do, but you do know that something isn't right. At the end of this period, you'll approach another steep wall of sleepiness, but it will be easier to conquer than the last one.\n\n**48h-72h:** if you made it this far, you're going to be a lot more tired than in the previous period. Literally everything feels like an almost insurmountable chore -- even mental tasks. And the tasks that you do get to, you're going to do them so much slower than usual. If it's a puzzle of some kind, or a problem that needs a clever solution, chances are you're not going to be able to solve it. It feels like your brain is so stuck that you don't even properly comprehend the question. On the off-chance that you get through it, you'll have spent probably 10 times as long as it normally would have taken you, maybe more. Someone else mentioned microsleeps, but I can't attest to that. I have no memory of any microsleeps...\n\n**72h-96h:** if you haven't already had hallucinations, you're gonna start having them here, almost guaranteed. The tiredness isn't so bad anymore. If you think about it, you will feel like you could probably go like this for a couple of more days. It's not so hard anymore. The permanent fatigue you've been feeling is still there, but it's kind of muted compared to your perception of it earlier. You don't feel it as a tiredness, it's sort of become a feature of reality that is being contrasted to how reality used to be. It's detached from you, in a way.\n\n**96h+:** at this point, hallucinations were really amping up for me here. Holy tripping balls. The tiredness will probably not bother you anymore, even though you can clearly feel the cognitive tax it has on you. But at the same time, you get a strange feeling that you're doing okay all things taken into account. You might get an odd notion that you can conquer the need to sleep *at all*. \n\nBut that changes when you slowly become aware of the fact that you can't tell hallucination from reality anymore. You're so tired that your consciousness is shutting down so frequently that, even as you're standing there, you can't explain why you're there or where you just were. You ask people questions about a conversation you had with them not 10 minutes ago, only to learn that you haven't actually spoken to them all day ... meaning that the 30 minute conversation you remember was a hallucination from start to end. But you don't remember \"waking up\" from the hallucination, begging the questions: when did it start? And when did it end? Are you just now hallucinating about having a hallucination? You have no way of knowing, because you just realized that the previous hallucination that you were just now made aware of bore no unnatural markings; nothing strange happened, nothing to separate it from how you would have expected such a situation to go down in real life.\n\nWhen I reached this point, I got too scared to go on. Hallucinating shadows in windows and in the cracks of doors is one thing, but not being able to know whether series of events that span larger periods of time are real or not was too much for me. I don't know if they're even called hallucinations at this point. It felt like an involuntary participation in Inception, except I had no control over when I was inside a dreamworld and when I was returned to reality. \n\nThe scariest part was that these kinds of hallucinations blended together so seamlessly. I would go from what felt like hour-long bouts of hallucinating life-spanning events, like walking places and seeing things and talking to people, into the next event, to \"waking up\" and realizing that I'd made it all up. But how then did I get from where I was to where I am now? Who knows what I actualy did during the period of time that my brain wrongly remembers as reality?\n\nThe ironic thing is that it took me 2 hours to fall asleep. I wasn't tired or sleepy at all when I went to bed, but I had that really eerie stomach-sense that something was pretty far off mark and had the wisdom to force myself to staying in bed. I don't know what would have happened if I'd done another day, and I don't think I want to know either.", "When you are tired your body de-prioritized non essential tasks. Same thing if you run a marathon, all the energy goes to your legs for a while and next thing you know you have a disaster brewing in your guts.", "In the Army we would train for this, not that anybody can really be trained to operate well on no sleep. It was more about discovering your own personal limit and also seeing what your platoon-mates looked like when they were pushed past theirs, so you can recognize the symptoms.\n\n\n\nAfter two weeks of getting little to no sleep I can remember our platoon and another platoon were set up in kind of an 'L' shape with my platoon in trucks in the woods and the other platoon dismounted on a ridge line off to the left. I was completely convinced that we were facing the wrong way and needed to turn 90 degrees to the left which would have had us orientated right on our sister platoon.\n\nThe night after that they had us in place before it even got dark because they didn't want us wrecking the trucks, and the orders were wait for this attack that never ended up happening. We had three guys in my truck counting me and we were supposed to have 2 up one down for an hour at a time. It was one up two down for as long as you could make it before we made it through half the night.\n\n\nIn the end I can remember trying to wake my truck commander a sgt with over 10 years in. It was his turn to be up and I was sitting on a gunners strap right over him trying to wake him and it was like I couldn't him past whatever dream he was in. I would talk to him and without opening his eyes he would start berating me for not following his ground guide instructions, and I would just stop talking to him and he would be back asleep, and I'd talk to him and he'd be somewhere else that time.\n\n\nAfter 15 min of that I was starting to lose my shit, my anger giving me a burst of energy.  It was darker than dark outside, but I knew where the trucks were on either side of me. If I could just make it about 150 feet I would be to the next position and I would find someone awake.\n\n\nI made it less than ten feet before a force observer guy stopped me, these are people who stand around and watch while you fake fight and tell you who got shot where and stuff like that so you can practice putting on bandages and cas evac.  He was like, where ya going? \nI'm like, to see my platoon sgt.  \nhe's like, why? \nIm like, dont worry about it (didnt want to get my truck in trouble for being asleep)\nThen my fucking XO walks up and pretty much tells me to go back to the truck, and either wake the next guy or stay up as long as I can those were the choices, but not to be walking around because A) I was abandoning everyone on my truck while being completely incapacitated and B) I was actually going the wrong direction by 90 degrees.(again)\n\nAfter that I just remember being too pissed off to think straight and talking all kinds of angry shit to the sleeping forms of my truck-mates and being completely decided to hit the first person who answered my insults even if it was my sgt. I know at some point I said fuck it and decided to go to sleep, but being too mad to just fall asleep by drifting off the same way I had been fighting for a week, and then worrying to the point of almost panic that I had given myself insomnia and maybe I would never sleep again.\n\n\nThen I am waking up with my helmet resting on the turret ass still on the gunners strap. Sun is way up and everyone is either asleep or looking around like they had just been roofied. A few officers who had been there to watch what happened were just like eat or go back to sleep.\n\n\nThat was when I realised the whole point of the training had been the sleep deprivation. I remember feeling very confused about whether I had succeeded or failed.  I got out of my truck and threw my poncho liner over some tall grass where the sun was shining down through the trees and just plopped down and got the best sleep I've ever had.\n\nPS: Over a decade and less than one war later when I can't sleep I play though this memory in my head and by the time I get to the end part I almost always have fallen asleep.\nEdit:\nPPS: Also would like to point out that it really wasn't until the last three days we went to almost 0 sleep, but the weeks leading up to it was like a slow gradient up to that point where you're slowly getting less sleep and more stuff to do so by the time to no sleep stuff is happening you were already at the brink.\n\n\nI always tell people to picture a wet t-shirt each time you ring it out a little less water comes out but you can always squeeze out just one more drop.\n\n\nAlso to anyone out there suffering from insomnia it's a real problem than many times needs a real solution, and the depression it can quickly bring into your life can be a huge barrier to seeking help or making positive changes. I have had myself convinced that it was all a lifestyle I was choosing and therefore in control of. Not trying to be preachy bu not being able to admit you're fucked up is a dangerous game.\n", "Are you one of the Fallout 4 players? ", "This makes me think of all of those all nighters during road trips where I'd drive for 18-24 hours.  Sometimes even in the winter time.... I was, for all intensive purposes, driving intoxicated for the most dangerous stretches.  I never realized how dangerous sleep deprivation really is.  I'm just glad I smartened up years ago.", "Well in my retarded years through a drug fuelled bender, the longest period I managed without sleep was 9 days.\nI was consuming large quantities of amphetamines. I passed out on the last 9th night.\nWhen I awoke in the morning I had complete amnesia, I could not remember my name, who the people were around me, I couldn't even remember which state I was in. \n\nThis was quite frightening, lucky it didn't last too long and my memory got jump started.\n\nMy brother took me to hospital as he said I looked like death itself. \nThe entertaining part of that was the doctor did not believe I had not slept in 9 days, his opinion was that I should be dead if I was telling the truth.\n\nAnyway he took blood samples and came back and said he believed me, I had pretty much destroyed my body and was required to spend 4 days in hospital recovering.\n \nMeth not even once lol. ", "When I was 14 or 15 I managed to clock in almost 7 days of no sleep, just up constantly playing video games and drinking energy drinks.\n\nStarted to hallucinate a lot, mostly when it was dark though. I also got *very* sick after this little experiment and ended up sleeping for almost 16 hours. Good Times.", "My longest stint was 4 days, would not recommend. Had four exams each the day after the next. It started the night before the first, I stayed up all night studying. Took my test around 11am, went home, studied all day and night until the next exam. I slacked off all semester and had a lot to make up for. Went through at least a third of my month supply of Adderall, popping em as I felt myself getting tired.\n\n\nThe hallucinations are no joke. By the third day I was looking at doodles on the side of my notes, where I had drawn birds that looked like \"m\"'s, and if I was trying to read my notes I would see them flapping on the page in my peripherals. My college was 30 minutes away by 70 mph highway, and the microsleeps are indeed terrifying. I would be driving home or to school and then... bam, next thing I know I'm waking up after having drifted into the other lane or towards the concrete divider. If you've ever been put under for surgery, its exactly like that, except you don't know you're going under until you wake up. I could've killed myself in an accident or somebody else, and I will never do it again and highly recommend any readers to avoid it either - at the very least, avoid operating heavy machinery or anything that puts others in danger.  Highly recommend adderall tho that shit A+++", "Don't know if this has been posted yet, but a site I frequent just released this and the timing is spot on. _URL_0_", "google droning if you don't know what it was. we were planning to start this mission a day away, so we would always stay up late as hell the night before and sleep through the day so we would be ready for the night operation. So me and a few buddies finally bed down. I shit you not I hear someone come in the tent at like 2am, it is about 30 mins after I have laid down. I fucking knew it. change of plans, we are moving out NOW. FML. \n\nfast forward 24 hours later. I have been awake at least 36 hours. We are on patrol. we have been out in the sun doing patrols all day and carrying explosives everywhere to blow up this massive tree line. anyways I wake up walking into a tree. I do not remember the last hour of walking along in this village. fucking creepy.", "I used to do that in college all the time, what with being in three or four committees, studying hard to maintain a 5 percentile grade and all that.\n\nI didn't notice small things like you mention, but over time I did start accumulating a serious amount of problems. Bear in mind, this happens over a year of sleeping three to four hours a night, and having a pretty stressful lifestyle.\n\nI was tired all the time. I felt like I had walked through a desert and back, and had no desire to party, study or exercise. I did all these things because I had to, since I was on so many extracurricular activities, but I was not the brightest bulb.\n\nWhich leads me to the second point: I made a huge amount of errors in decisions I took about that time. Studying was easy, because it was mostly about memorizing some stuff, but I was constantly late for classes, I would forget assignments which I would then finish in five minutes before class, I would set wrong policies on our committees meetings and make constant strategic errors in fundraising and the like. I was a mess.\n\nThe decisions and the meta-thinking was not the only chewed-up thing going around. I was eating badly, and thus I gained some weight, I think, but mostly, I lost the desire to get up and exercise. After college I was finally able to get up everyday and go out running at 5am. While coin college I would simply go to bed at 2am, and get up again at 6am to get a shower, grab books and run pout the door. No, didn't eat breakfast, why?\n\ntldr: One all-nighter might leave you tired, but a pattern of bad sleeping habits will render you into a thoughtless slob.", "When I was at university I tried to stay up for 72 hours because I'd heard that's the point at which you're considered legally insane.\n\nI'd pulled 24-48 hours regularly, so +1 day shouldn't have been that hard.\n\nI made it to 60 hours before.  I was seeing shadowy shapes flitting around in my peripheral vision, and I got creeped the hell out and decided I'd better rest.", "Anybody get annoyed when people brag about how little sleep they get?\n\nI mean, we've all probably done it in University/College, and the first time it can be sort of fun. I got giddy when I stayed up too long. But there are people who just regularly don't sleep enough because they're too busy or can't be bothered, then they act like it's some sort of accomplishment. \"I only sleep 4 hours a night! Too much to do!\" Congratulations, you have no time management and don't care about your health.\n\n(I know some people legitimately need less sleep than others. I think they don't tend to brag about not getting sleep, they'll just tell you they don't need as much sleep. But there are people who are like \"I got up at 5am for work and then partied all night and got up at 4 am to work out. I just have too much in my schedule to bother with sleep.\")", "I stayed up for just under 50 hours after a day/evening of doing copious amounts of MDMA and cocaine with some friends. It was strange because I felt exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, but I physically couldn't fall asleep. The effects of the drugs had long since worn off, but I still couldn't keep my eyes closed. It was miserable. Eventually, I climbed into bed and just forced myself to stay there until I fell asleep. I don't remember passing out, but I woke up a good 12 hours later. I was having mild visual/audio hallucinations and kept trailing off mid sentence and completely forgetting what I was saying to someone. I can tell you that sleep deprivation is a hell of a drug in itself.", "I once stayed up for about 48 hours was I was 16. I kept on hearing my parents calling me for dinner and when I asked them where dinner was they had no clue. I also thought i saw something in my room on several occasions. It was kinda horrible", "I actually have something relevant to post! About a year ago, I was hospitalized for psychiatric issues and placed in a psych ward for about a week and a half. The person who admitted me suspected that I was suffering from schizophrenia/schizoaffective (turned out to be bipolar), and so I was roomed with someone who had full blown schizophrenia... It's very VERY hard to sleep when the person next to you a. isn't asleep either and b. is talking about his love for Jesus all night in an angry voice. Lo and behold, I did not achieve complete sleep for a WEEEEK.\n\nThe effects were very weird, and it's difficult to describe it in terms of bad or good (at least from my specific experience). At first, I was exhausted, had difficulty staying awake, and felt a pretty heavy body load. Eating was hard, and I was all around irritable and unpleasant. However, the longer I was deprived of sleep, the trippier things got. I began to get very minor hallucinations (texture breathing, vivid lights/colors, misinterpreting things out of the corner of my eye, etc), and I felt what I can only describe as manic. My speech was rapid and awkward, I actually felt pretty good, and, paradoxically, I was having massive issues going to sleep. I've taken hallucinogens before, and it was like being on a small dose of a dissociative mixed with Ritalin. Noooot fun. Just an inability to fully join reality with a massively uncomfortable hint of excess energy.\n\nSubjective effects aside, I was getting my vitals taken everyday by the nurses there, and my blood pressure and heart rate were incredibly high; I was getting heart flutters every half hour or so. The only medicine that was able to finally sedate me was Doxepin, a tricyclic antidepressant, and it is an insane difference going from a week of no sleep to normality. It's like going to bed with psychosis and waking up just fine. So, yeah, I guess this isn't really a medical explanation, but hopefully this anecdote will help shed some light on your curiosity! \n\ntl;dr Didn't sleep for a week (thanks schizophrenia), felt crappy, then crazy, and finally crashed into the blissful embrace of sleep  ", "Why could I stay up for 36-40 hours no problem at a Teen but now fuck that. \n\nI found out the hard way this past summer. Im 25 now. figured Ive done it before I can do it again im still young. I stayed up all night to drop off my sister at the airport at 5am. then got a ride to work. around 9am I had been up for 29 hours and my body started to shut down. Could not even look at the computer. Work was really cool about it and let me sleep in the car for a hour or so. ", "I'll try to keep it ELI5. \n\nThere's been a lot of study within the last 10-15 years regarding sleep deprivation. Many studies examine 30+ hours, with some going beyond the 50-hour mark. \n\nSome findings -\n\n- there are some deprivation-resilient participants. Some people can just cope with sleep deprivation better. Let's just say they're cut from a different cloth. Nothing bad, just resist the negative effects longer. \n- Most studies are done in a clinical setting. Field testing is rare, since you can't control for external variables (I assume). \n- Most studies confirm the hypothesis that global (overall) brain activity and functioning is decreases with sleep deprivation (versus baseline)\n- Working memory filtering is decreased, although overall working memory shows no change. \n- Dopamine increases after 24 hours, which increases wakefulness and fights the drive to sleep. Ever been so tired that you wake up again, and get a second wind? Dopamine, bitches. \n- Nerve injury increases after 24-hour deprivation due to lower melatonin levels. \n\nI can continue, but I'll tl;dr - No sleep is bad. We were made to balance wake and sleep. Our body resets and restores when we sleep. \n\nFor more info, you can read the \"Journal of Sleep and Sleep Disorders Research\" as these were pulled from this source.  ", "Don't know if anybody can answer this but once when I was in high school I took some pills to get high. I took them around 6 p.m. And they hit me at 10p.m. when I was asleep. As soon as they hit I was wide awake. I couldn't sleep for about 3 days and I didn't even feel tired. Is there a way the pills could've inhibited this \"microsleep\" that everyone keeps talking about? After I did manage to sleep i slept for probably 36hours so that falls in line with what everyone else has been saying. ", "Paramedic. Longest I made it was over 72 hours because I worked a 72 hour shift. Most medics work 24 hours shifts some pickup over time and work 48 hours shifts pretty much on the regular. You usually get in naps. But this time it just worked out that I didn't get a second of sleep. By the end I thought I was going to die. My body couldn't control its temperature. I felt feverish. Hot flashes, then freezing. Upset stomach. Difficulty focusing. Blurry vision. Headache of course. There was just a constant humming in my ears or high pitched noises. I wanted to sleep so bad. I love sleep. It's my favorite. I was so cranky. Never again. It was hell. I was supposed to take a test in a class after the shift was over and I went to my car and just went to sleep instead. ", "Holy crap! I have an awesome table in a leadership manual printed by the Canadian forces on this.\n\nUnfortunately its at home, and Im not, Ill try to remember to post it in a few days, it details what levels of awareness you can be expected to maintain on what level of sleep for what period.", "Once stayed awake for 72 hours playing Morrowind. \n\nSaw my lamp float across my room. \n\nDon't want to experience that again.\n", "Your nervous system transmits messages using chemicals called neurotransmitters. The longer you're awake, some of them aren't replenished as quickly as they're used. Also, your neurons become less sensitive if they don't get a break, like your ears when you go to a rock concert.\n\nBetween these two effects your nervous system functions less well the longer you're awake.\n\nYour gut is sensitive to one of those neurotransmitters, serotonin. Your body pumps out extra to regulate your tired nerves, upsetting your gut.", "fun fact:\n\nBack in the day, in order to save money, hospital administrators would regularly put interns (the LEAST experienced and qualified doctors in the hospital) regularly on 24 - 18 hour shifts.\n\n", "Reading this thread just reminded me of fatal familial insomnia, the condition where you literally cannot fall asleep until you die. What a scary way to go out... ", "It was summer time, i was only getting about 10-11 hours of sleep out of 5 days a week. For like 3 weeks maybe. I can tell you its definitley like being drunk.", "Does anyone happen to know what occurs if you do this exact same thing but sleep for one or two 1 hour periods a day?", "I fell asleep behind the wheel earlier this month after being awake for about 24hrs.. from 6am to 6am, which is when the accident happened. \n\nSo, please, don't make the mistake to not pull over when you fell even the slightest moment of closing your eyes. A lot of people do it, and when you wake up seconds later you get an adrenalin \"shot\" which wakes you up.. don't trust it.. it will happen again and it could be just a few seconds too late that time. \n\nI am alright and there was no one else involved besides some redwoods. I am a very lucky guy. Broken nose and a few stiches on my face... \n\nBut reading this.. yeah, its just as bad as drinking and driving.  ", "For a few weeks when I turned 19 I would be out partying everyday during the summer. I had read somewhere of taking 6 power naps a day , 20 minutes each session, and you would be perfectly fine. The first couple days were rough, I would hear things and started seeing things that weren't there. I got use to it and after a couple of weeks I shut down. I went for a \"power nap\" around 4 pm woke up 18 hours later with a fever of 104+ and a rash all over my body. I was hospitalized for a week with the fever and the doctors had no clue what it was, never told them what i had been doing. I had a fever of 102 when I was sent home and that lasted another couple of days.", "Used to be truck driver. Was driving back from a \"local\" delivery run where we came back when the truck was empty, not before. Probably broke every law related to transport that ever existed in New York State. We were out 24 hours on this run, so probably had been awake for 30+ hours. Heading back out of the city to the shop, I was driving, and I hallucinated a flatbed trailer parked perpendicular across the highway. We were going 60mph+ (100kph?) and the only thing that prevented me from locking up the airbrakes was a complete lack of reaction time due to fatigue. As far as I was concerned, that trailer was there, solid, real, no doubt in my mind, I was 100% convinced. Shit...makes me clench up and sweat just thinking about it.", "Finally something I can help with! This isn't a scientific explanation or anything but it's a real life experience I had when I was 15 years old. This might sound weird but it's the complete truth and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was an avid 15 year old video game player who played video games almost non stop. I decided one day to just have an all nighter and I played video games until like 3 in the afternoon that day. I hadn't slept much the last day so I was already tired. I get a call from my friends to go to the movies with them. I show up and we go to the movies and I start drifting away as I'm trying to stay awake. It was weird and I had never experienced anything like it. As soon as the movies over and I was passing out the entire time we were in the movies. I have my dad come pick me up and take me home. It had been just about 24 hours since I last slept now. I get home and go to eat dinner. I eat my dinner up in my room and I'm about to just collapse because I'm so tired. I walk into the bathroom to use the bathroom and place my food down to go take it downstairs when I'm done. Apparently I didn't realize but I had my Xbox controller and headset on during all of this. I walk downstairs and lay on my couch where my family is watching TV with my headset on my head and xbox controller in my hand. I fall asleep for maybe 50 seconds to be woken up by my dad. He tells me to go upstairs and go to bed. I proceed to go to bed and probably 30 or 40 minutes later my door is being banged on and my dad starts yelling at me that I better not be doing drugs because I spilled my spaghetti all over the sink in the kitchen and passed out talking to people when my controller was turned off. The only way I can describe it is that it was like being incredibly high/drunk and not in a good way. I forgot everything at the time and was falling asleep uncontrollably", "Stayed up for 5 days my sophomore year in college because I had 5 papers and 2 exams for finals week, and obviously, because I'm an idiot, I procrastinated until the day before my finals started. Up to day 2 was fine, I'd done it before. Day 3 is when it really starts to suck ass, and day 4 is when the hallucinations and random unintentional microsleep starts messing with you. Kept thinking there was a shadow in the library behind me or lurking in the corners and saw black and red dots of light dancing in front of my eyes constantly. I also kept hearing my name being called out, but I was the only one on that floor of the library. It was pretty damn terrible,because no matter how bad it got, I still had 25 page research papers due the in the next few hours. Never again...", "Every time I stay up more than a day I get tiny white sores on the tip of my tongue. Any explanation?", "I stayed up for 3 straight days playing World of Warcraft when BC first came out, from Friday to Sunday. On Sunday I realized I had a paper due that Monday that I hadn't started, so I figured I'd use my final morning (Monday morning, that is) to write the paper.\n\nI wrote the entire paper, and while reading/revising it, I micro-slept and ctrl+A'd, then deleted the full contents of the paper, saved the Word document, exited Word, and opened World of Warcraft. As soon as I was semi-conscious again I realized what I did and cried myself to sleep. I slept a full 14 hours. \n\nDidn't go to class, took an F on the paper. Never again.", "I am an internal medicine resident, and on certain rotations (MICU, general floors of some of our affiliates, CCU) we have to stay up for 27 hours every 3-4 days (depending on the rotation). Sometimes we can take a nap here and there (makes a HUGE difference), but most of the time we have to stay up the entire 27 hours.\n\nThese are the things that I feel during the final 3-4 hours:\n\n-I feel like I have a cold. Scratchy throat, stuffy nose, general fatigue, sometimes even a slight subjective fever.\n\n-I feel a little bit drunk, and cannot think very clearly. I forget common words.\n\n-My legs hurt, like really badly. This is contributed to by the fact that I am generally constantly on my feet during the 27 hour call, and the fact that I have to stand up for a few hours right at the end for rounds.\n\n-I am very hungry, but sometimes food makes me nauseous.\n\n-I am extremely sleepy. Sometimes I am able to go home and just sleep for 8 hours without interruption, sometimes I find it extremely difficult to fall asleep and keep waking up even though I want to sleep really badly. I think this has a lot to do with coffee timing, sunlight, hunger, etc.\n\n-My eyes burn, and I feel like I want to squint constantly.\n\nUsually I don't fully recover until I have gotten 2 sleep \"sessions\". IE: I get out of work by 11am, sleep until 7-8pm, wake up for a couple of hours, then sleep again from 10pm-5am to get up for work.", "For a General Surgery resident like myself, I start my second work day after the 24 hours shift for the next 12 hours. Based on my own personal experience, at some point you don't feel tired anymore you just kind of \"float\" through the rest of your work day. In more than 80% of cases I hardly remember what happens after that point after I wake up the next day. All I know is that I feel extremely fatigued, but you power through it because you have to do this thing 9 times a month. ", "When I went to basic at good ole Ft. Benning I arrived  on a Monday and didn't sleep until Thursday. Reception nightmares. ", "On the spiritual side, its said when you stay up more than 24 hours, you become more prone to experience the \"other world\" or spirits. I think this is tied to the fact that when you're that exhausted, your mind isn't functioning right which can lead to voices or even hallucinations", "I stayed up for about 28 hours once, about a year ago. I got up on the east coast at 4am to go to Denver, where I met friends and partied until 4am Denver time.\nI was exhausted leading up to about the 23/24 hour mark. At about that point, I got a noticeable second wind and ended up being the last one awake. ", "You run out of potato chips, coke and your DM usually sends 100 Kobolds after you in a five foot wide dungeon hallway.", "Everyone's talking about hallucinating after 72 hours but I start seeing shadow-people around hour 30", "I've stayed up for 3 days before.  It's not fun.  I actually felt like I was going insane.  I could be crying one second and laughing the next.  I wanted to die.  I was a zombie.  I was viewing the world with eyes half shut.  I had extreme tunnel vision.  My stomach was in knots.  My heart felt like it was going to explode.  Just thinking about a soft pillow would make me instantly nod out for a second.\n\nI don't recommend it to anyone."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.everydayhealth.com/conditions/what-happens-when-you-dont-sleep-days/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://modnerd.com/modalert-modafinil-the-gold-standard/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-do-we-need-sleep"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5idc2d", "title": "why do objects floating in liquid are always attracted to the walls of the container?", "selftext": "I've just thought of this and it's interesting. Even if you put something in water without disturbing it, after a while the object will stick to the walls...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5idc2d/eli5_why_do_objects_floating_in_liquid_are_always/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db79raj", "db7cvl9", "db7d07k", "db7ddik", "db7ecyq"], "score": [32, 7, 3, 32, 2], "text": ["It's very very hard to put something into a container of water with absolutely no momentum.\n\nAnd if it has any momentum at all, it will move towards one of the edges, as there are edges in all directions.", "A floating object is attracted to the wall because of surface tension, or more specifically the interaction of cohesion and adhesion.  Water likes to stick to itself(cohesion) and to other things (adhesion).  If you look at the lip water forms on the inside of a glass this is called a meniscus.  The object is attracted to the wall because when it is touching the wall the total length of the meniscus is shorter then when the object is floating freely.  This is the minimum energy orientation of the system, hence the movement to the edge.", "I remember reading a puzzle about this before, it's because surface tension makes the water cling to the edges of the container. This means that the level of the water will be slightly higher near the edges, so the floating object will drift to an edge. On the other hand, if you fill up a cup of water right to the brim so that the water is slightly above the edge of the cup, the water will be highest in the centre and so the floating object will stay in the middle.", "Look closely at your cheerios floating on milk. You should be able to see the milk curling up around the cheerio, forming a little skirt of bent milk. [The cheerios cling to both each-other and the wall.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt takes force to bend the surface of water. A single cheerio has force from that bent surface pushing all around it evenly. It doesn't move because the force is even. If you put two cheerios near each-other their little skirts of bent milk overlap. The milk doesn't have to bend as much in the area between the two cheerios. That means that area doesn't push on the cheerios as much. So with force all around but weaker in the direction of the other cheerio, the cheerios get pushed together by the milk around them. This is also the case with the side of the bowl.", "So imagine waves randomly going about a pool. the more space behind you, the more space for waves to be coming at you, so you further away. When you get to a side there's basically no water to have waves pushing you away from the side. You're only being pushed from the other direction "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerios_effect"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ui9ws", "title": "Orca Whale color scheme", "selftext": "Why is it that orcas all have a very similiar color pattern?  Dogs of the same breed may look similiar, but don't have the same spots.  Every orca I've ever seen looks the same.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ui9ws/orca_whale_color_scheme/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceijoc0"], "score": [2], "text": ["Dogs have been selectively bred by humans specifically to look different from each other.  People like variety, and exaggerate it in dogs.  People haven't been breeding killer whales to all look really different, so they pretty much all look similar (in a broad sense).  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2jv66u", "title": "when the wifi is super slow why does restarting router magically fix it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jv66u/eli5when_the_wifi_is_super_slow_why_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clfe05x", "clfew8b", "clffrp6", "clffxo9", "clffzk4", "clfhqbr", "clfih3l", "clfksma", "clflin4", "clfnfki", "clfwf62", "clfx5k6", "clfyuki"], "score": [1646, 19, 2, 3, 42, 2, 6, 2, 24, 8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["There are lots of good reasons restarting your router might fix the speed, lets list them:\n\n* Your neighbors suck: Are lots of people stealing WiFi from you? Rebooting your router probably forced them to connect to a different network thus freeing up bandwidth for you. This can also be true of all the online devices in your house.\n\n* Your ISP sucks: Some internet service providers like to slow down the traffic of users that they catch using specific protocols (like bit torrents and encryption) which is technically illegal if they do it before killing net neutrality, but there is lots of evidence they have been doing it anyways. By restarting your router you are effectively requesting a new IP address from your ISP and that may also reset any bad things they have done to your connection.\n\n* Your router sucks: Routers are little computers. They have memory and processors and they run software just like your computer but cheaper. It is possible that simply running for a long time makes your router slow down from internal memory leaks due to bad design/firmware.\n\n* Your computer sucks: When you restart the router every service using the internet on your computer is forced to briefly accept the fact that there is no internet anymore. If one of those services was causing horrible connection issues (like some background update service), then there is a chance restarting the router will force it to end early, thus freeing your computer once the router comes back online.\n\n* You suck: There are lots of reasons that something on the internet may seem slow for a while and then seem fast later. If your evidence is \"it seems faster after restarting\" I might ask to see your data.", "Imagine an 8 lane highway that's full of cars and everyone is doing the limit. How long would it take for traffic to slow down if people start changing lanes and entering/exiting the highway. You can fix this by kicking everyone off and restarting the flow of traffic.\n\nThe cars are the data that's going through your router. Errors build up, your rebooting clears them and allows a faster connection.\n\nEDIT: your ISP sets the top speed, it is extremely unlikely they will throttle your bandwidth. There are lots of other more likely things that will slow you down especially if rebooting your router is fixing it.", "In my personal experience, it is due to the low memory in my Netgear router.  Things like running utorrent and certain server browsers cause my router to slow down, I believe due to the memory getting filled.", "Related question: why does my SNR get progressively worse until I restart my router?  \n\nIt doesn't happen every time, either, so assuming it's something external causing it, why does restarting alleviate the problem?", "Just wanted to say as Long time lurker / Network Engineer. That most of the points hear are correct however one thing I want to point out is that your Router is like a Computer. It has a processor, storage and RAM. \n\nIf your computer was on for 6 months at a time I am sure something would start to slow down. They fill up with logs and the services in the background start slowing down and then it runs out of space / RAM everything slowly starts going to a crawl. \n\nWhat I recommend doing is getting a Good Wireless Access point / Letting the Router just be a router with DHCP. Trying to offload these services to multiple devices rather than letting your all-in-one combo router do everything. (Jack of all trades, master of none)\n\nLast but not least is that if you use your router from your ISP. Chances are is probably junk! (They bulk buy these suckers and they normally are not very good)", "I worked for an ISP. The actual reason is it resets the connection to your port. If you call your ISP the first thing they will do is reset your port. Essentially doing the same thing as you but on the ISP end. Your basically breaking the sync between the port and modem and then reastablishing the connection. ", "Your router contains something called a NAT (network address translation) table.  Anytime your PC or any internet-enabled device on your home network makes a connection to the internet, the router has to remember which device made the request so when the response comes back it knows which device to deliver the information to.  This info is stored in this NAT table.  When you use bittorrent, or another program that requests multiple connections to the internet, this NAT table can get filled up.  When it does, everything will grind to a halt.  Rebooting the router clears this table thus speeding everything up again.", "It's also similar to \"shaking the blanket\" per-say. You're shaking off the ghost connections of things that WERE connected to the router, but went out of range. ", "Restarting can sometimes improve a router's performance. It is after all a computer prone to errors. \n\nHere's how I troubleshoot slow internet:\n\n1) Ping my router. If the ping is double/triple digits, the problem might be there.\n\n2) Ping Google. If the ping is triple/quadruple digits, the problem might be somewhere between my router and Google.\n\n3) Ping the gateway. There are three \"gateways\". The 1st is your router. We've already covered that. The 2nd is the modem. The modem has 2 ip addresses. The first is the IP address between your router and the external IP address of the modem. The second is the external IP address of the modem. Ping the external IP. If the ping is high, double/triple digits, it's the modem. The 3rd gateway is outside your home network entirely and is a router belonging to the ISP. You can find its ip address by looking at your router's WAN page, if it has one. Ping it. If it's triple/quadruple digits the problem isn't yours, it's the ISP's. \n\nIf none of this gives you poor ping results then the problem is farther out. Time to use another tool. \n\n4) Tracert google. This will show you the hops and their ping times between you and Google. Hops are the routers between you and a destination on the internet that your traffic travels through. This will demonstrate where the slow down is between you and Google and generally if it's your ISP or someone else. \n\nAssuming the problem is with your router there are some things you can do. Without getting into more technical aspects, the most effective means of dealing with poor connections between the router and devices is to move the router's antenna as high as possible and centrally locate it, if possible. \n\nChange the channel. Wifi routers have about 11 channels to choose from. Defaults for routers are usually channel 6, depending on manufacturer. Moving your router off manufacturer default channels may improve things for you. \n\nChange your antennas. You can buy or make more sensitive antennas. [You can also make easily and cheaply using paper, glue  &  tinfoil a sort of directional attachment for existing antennas.](_URL_0_) \n\nNow, if you want to get more technical, try upgrading to a 3rd party firmware like DD-Wrt. Doing so will enable additional metrics  &  features not available in stock manufacturer firmware. 3rd party firmwares often include the ability to adjust transmission power. You can literally spend weeks playing with this feature getting it just right. \n\nYou can also purchase repeaters that are simple to use. Or, if you have older wifi routers sitting around, using 3rd party firmware will also enable repeater functions if not already available in stock firmware. I've done this and it works extremely well. \n\nIf you're sharing your router with roommates and/or family, they might be hogging your bandwidth. 3rd party firmware literally turns a $40 router into a $10,000 router by adding features such a QoS (quality of service) allowing you to meter bandwidth based on criteria such as type of traffic and/or devices. This will allow you to give higher priority to traffic such as video streaming and/or VoIP or by allowing your roommates a maximum bandwidth so as to preserve your own or banning certain traffic such as P2P. \n\nSometimes there's nothing you can do given the environment. Steal/concrete constructed buildings will always pose a problem for Wifi. In these environments a mix of technologies might solve certain problems. If you don't want to install networking cable, or can't, then Ethernet over Powerlines might be an option. These devices are fairly cheap turning your average power outlet into a network jack. As with everything, there are limitations and problems to be aware of and overcome. ", "I listen to a podcast hosted by Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson; an Internet security specialist. (The podcast is called Security Now on the TWIT network for anyone curious -- highly recommended for IT professionals and enthusiasts).\n\nAnyway; there is an issue known as \"bufferbloat\" which is caused by new routers not only at the household level, but all along the Internet network. As these new routers are designed with more local RAM, their \"short term memory\" is greater. This sounds like a good thing in theory, but in reality it isn't. It is actually better for these units to have less memory.\n\nSince there is more kept locally on each unit, they slowly become \"bloated\" with unnecessary information left over in the unit. This effect is exponential over the entire network.\n\nWhen you reboot your local router, it clears the memory of that unit and reduces your local bufferbloat. It does not make a tremendous difference but it is a factor. Be it a very technical one. The longer your unit has been operating continuously, the greater the effect.\n\nHere are a few links:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "I found it incredibly ironic that when I first tried to click on this post I got a \"could not connect to server\" message and had to restart my router. ", "I see a lot of people talking about WiFi Security which is good but the other reason the restart is helping you is it forces your wireless router to change channels. In areas where nearly everyone has WiFi and the Standard being 2.4gHz you only have 12 channels. If multiple users in your area are on the same signal channel you will have a lot of issues with WiFi going in and out or being really slow. The best option is to upgrade to a router that supports the 5gHz bandwidth which many people don't have. You can also use the Android App WiFi Analyzer to see what channels the other networks around you are on and adjust your channel to one that is free of interference. ", "This was happening to me every night for months.  Constantly reaching for the reset button on the back of the router.  Phoned my ISP.   They told me other routers nearby might be using the same channel, and resetting the router means it'll settle on a less busy channel.  They suggested setting it to a certain specific channel instead of leaving the channel on \"Auto\" (if you don't know how to change your wifi channel it's an easy Google).\n\nThere are a lot of answers above, but for what it's worth, this fixed the problem for me.  It's been 4 weeks and I haven't had to reset once."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat", "http://twit.tv/show/security-now/345"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33845d", "title": "quantum mechanics vs. standard particle physics.", "selftext": "(Based on some of the current front-page posts).", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33845d/eli5_quantum_mechanics_vs_standard_particle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqif3fx", "cqif8uj", "cqihdbj", "cqimlk6"], "score": [4, 20, 10, 6], "text": ["If you would really like to understand in the most basic form Quantum Mechanics.\n\nI suggest you look up the videos for [this show.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt does a great job of not only showing you how things work, but it is done in a way that is very easy to understand.\n\n[Link to Amazon.](_URL_1_)", "I'm confused by the question. What do you mean by \"standard particle physics\"?\n\nThe Standard Model of particle physics is a relativistic quantum field theory.", "\nWhen you're looking at a golf ball made up of trillions and quadrillions of tiny pieces it doesn't really matter how wierd the pieces behave by themselves if they're forced into a giant golf ball pattern. As a whole, they are still a golf ball.  We can measure the weight, speed, distance of a golf ball as well as we care to.  Golf balls behave predictably.  That's classical physics.\n\nQuantum physics looks at these tiny pieces of the golf ball individually, and looks at just how wierd they really are.  When you look at tiny enough pieces, they behave so strangely that we can't explain most of what they do.  The tiny pieces do things that the golf ball can't. ", "'Standard particle physics' I'm going to assume refers to classical physics, the kind you learn in high school. \n\nPerhaps the biggest difference, in that sense, is that classical physics is purely deterministic.  Particles have location and momentum, and that's basically it.  If you know these things accurately enough, then you know exactly what they will do in any given situation.\n\nQuantum physics, by contrast, shows that the more certain you are about one of those, the less certain you can be about the other, since you've changed it when you measured it.\n\nThink about it like this: I want to know where something is, so I look at it.  The process of looking requires photons to have bounced off it and then hit my retina.  Now, for the sort of objects we're familiar with, photons bouncing off it has no real impact.  When you're talking about incredibly small things though, the photons have similar momentum (energy, technically) so they have a significant effect.  It's like instead of throwing bouncy balls at a car, you're throwing motorbikes.\n\nNow, an interesting and related property is that on a quantum scale, things exist as probabilities, they don't really have a discrete location, just areas where they are more or less likely to be, and can pop in and out of existence at random.\n\n*All* things in the universe smaller than an atom behave like this (and possibly some atoms too, research on that is ongoing).  The reason we don't see this sort of behavior from larger objects is because of probability again, in order for a classically sized object to randomly disappear, a **huge** number of constituent particles would need to do something unlikely, all at once (like if you were to take 10,000,000,000,000 dice and roll them all at once, and every single one comes up six)\n\ntl;dr: when things get really, really small, we can't find them anymore."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mechanical_Universe", "http://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Universe-Beyond-Programs-Discs/dp/1576806863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1429533545&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+mechanical+universe+dvd"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "43s2s0", "title": "how was the term 'cis' developed to define heterosexual men and women who identify as the sex they were born with? why does it seem like its a term brand new in the last year?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43s2s0/eli5_how_was_the_term_cis_developed_to_define/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czkhvps", "czkhwty", "czki09v", "czki86d", "czkkufo"], "score": [5, 6, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nIt comes from the Latin root \"Cis\" which means \"on the same side of\".  It is a modern term based on Latin.", "Trans means born as one sex and identifies as another. Cis means that you identify as the same sex you were born as. These terms actually come from things like chemistry. ", "The truth of the matter is that it's a term developed by 'non-cis people' because they didn't like the fact that they have a 'label' and cis people don't. \n\n", "Also, cisgender only refers to gender and has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Gay and bisexual men and women can also be cisgender, just as transgender men and women can be straight.", "[It was asked and answered a dozen times before.]( _URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender"], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/436fvr/eli5_what_is_cisgendered_and_why_did_we_change/"]]}
{"q_id": "hpxqz", "title": "Regarding 'glandular' reasons for obesity...", "selftext": "Some obese people claim their problem is 'glandular', presumably meaning a metabolic disorder of some kind. \n\nHow can it possibly be that their bodies are exempt from the rule that if you eat fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight (which seems tantamount to saying you are exempt from the laws of physics)?\n\nEDIT:\n\nTo clarify, I'm asking askscience to settle something of an argument between myself and a friend. \n\nMy position is that regardless of the genetic and metabolic differences between individuals, regardless of the difficulties psychological or otherwise each individual has, it is *always true* that if you expend more calories than you consume, *you will lose weight*. \n\nThe 'glandular' differences might make the playing field somewhat unfair, but it doesn't change the fundamental truth of the equation.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hpxqz/regarding_glandular_reasons_for_obesity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1xdemh", "c1xdfb3", "c1xdtib", "c1xdyyc", "c1xe75q", "c1xefsv", "c1xel47", "c1xetf6", "c1xewk2", "c1xfchx"], "score": [15, 18, 3, 6, 2, 12, 7, 3, 6, 3], "text": ["I know there is data to support thyroid dysfunction and obesity.\n\nFrom [this](_URL_0_) article:\n >  Our results suggest that thyroid function (also within the normal range) could be one of several factors acting in concert to determine body weight in a population. Even slightly elevated serum TSH levels are associated with an increase in the occurrence of obesity.\n\nYou can look up [hypothyroidism](_URL_1_) for more info on how/why this might happen.", "Here's the caveat. How do you calculate how many calories you will expend? Will everyone burn the same number of calories for the same activity? Will everyone burn the same number of calories at rest during the day? Or are the numbers we're given just averages with deviations away from the mean like so much of science?", "I have hypothyroidism and a symptom of that is to gain weight because thyroxine (made my the thyroid gland) control metabolism in your body.  \n  \n  Metabolism is the speed of your body's processes. A slow metabolism means that your body will cut down on resources and use as littel energy as possible. At the peak of my hypothyroidism I felt lethargic, never wanted to move, couldn't concentrate on anything and generally felt shitty. It also causes your body to absorb as much energy from food as it possibly can so your digestive system slows and constipation occurs. This, on a normal diet, will cause weight gain because of all the calories.", "I am not an expert on obesity and metabolism -- hence the heavy reliance on wikipedia for citations. But since no one who is an expert has weighed in, I'd like the point out two facets of eating and obesity which complicate the simple \"food in, energy out\" model you've proposed.\n\n1) Appetite. Ignoring hunger is pretty difficult for most people.  And it's not always just will power -- appetite is controlled by a number of different biological factors [(summarized on wikipedia)](_URL_0_). A number of genetic disorders can cause obesity by increasing appetite. See [Prader-Willi syndrome](_URL_1_) for an example.\n\n2) Insulin. When you eat your body has to decide whether to send the food you've just eaten (ie glucose) to your cells for immediate use or store it for the future. This is regulated by insulin, which binds to cells to help glucose enter them (see more [here](_URL_3_). In people with [insulin resistance](_URL_2_) cells are less able to respond to insulin and take up energy, so more of what's eaten is stored as fat. So a person with insulin resistance needs to eat more (and store more) in order to get the same amount of energy to function.\n\nWhat I'm trying to get at is that while if you put an obese person in a box and fed them less calories than their basal metabolic rate, they'd lose weight. But for a a person trying to live their lives in the real world, expending more calories than he or she consumes is not always possible. ", "Although what you are saying is fundamentally true, burning more calories than you expend leads to weight loss, that doesn't make it *practically* true.  There are lots of things that work *in principle* that don't pan out so well in practice.  \n\nIn practice, your metabolism can get so slow that you would have to eat an unhealthily low amount to keep from gaining weight, and exercise a lot, something that isn't practically possible. \n\nAn example, from my personal experience:\n\nWhen I was 25 an in grad school, my thyroid stopped working almost completely.  I was a pretty competitive mountain bike racer (finished 10th in the state finals the year before), and a strict vegan at the time, i.e. I exercised a LOT and ate pretty healthy. \n\nThen bang, thyroid function drops through the floor.  Sickest I've ever been for about a week, we're talking can't-get-off-the-sofa sick.  Being a motivated grad student, I eventually will-powered through it and got back to work, I even try to keep up with my biking. It took me a few months before i went to see the doctor, the nurse who checked reported my blood work to me freaked out when she read the number for TSH (124, normal is 0.5-5, most people can't get out of bed at 8-10.)\n\nI ended up gaining 75 lbs (175 - >  250+), all said and done, I lost some weight, dropping back down to ~220 lbs, but never really got back to where I was.  Now I'm around ~200, I've cut to 180 last year, but it's impossible to keep that weight effectively because my thyroid dosage isn't quite right. (i should note, I'm 6'3\" so 200 isn't really overweight.) Primary care physicians are idiots about anything like this.  \n\nSo, take home:  Losing weight takes a huge amount of self-control and will power, it's a pain, and gaining weight when you have a thyroid issue pop up is rapid, and almost impossible to stop. \n\nBut, given all of this, I'm generally in your camp, it's no excuse for being obese.", " >  it is always true that if you expend more calories than you consume, you will lose weight.\n\nSo how many hours of rigorous exercise do you have to do to expend a thousand calories? How about 2000? Do you do that? Do you know how many more calories an average american consumes than what he/she should be? \n\nExercise is NOT the most important way of burning calories in your body. Thats the basal metabolic rate. Remember how some people always feel \"warm\" to touch and others feel cold? Well thats your body producing more heat than is required to maintain a core temp of 37. That is probably one of the biggest hoggers of calories from your body and you only have so much control over whether your body decides to produce more heat (and dissipate it) or not. \n\nFurthermore, you *think* you have control over how much you eat, but in reality no one does. Cravings are to a good extent involuntary and controlled by hormonal systems acting on parts of your brain. Some people are just unlucky that they can't exercise too much control on it. You can burn AS MUCH as you want but if your body wants to it can just make you go bite that one extra cookie and BAM, you got the 400 calories back that you just burnt! Thats why surgeries that reduce the size of your stomach make miracles: they just make people *feel* full with lesser food: Just indicating how helpless they were to begin with. Also there are studies which show your brain's pleasure centers can get \"numbed\" over time with a constant barrage of \"pleasurable\" (read: sweet and fatty) food, making it harder to satiate yourself with the same amounts of the stuff.\n\nExercise can change these, but its only one of the factors and it doesn't work equally for all people. Heck, even whether you feel good exercising is so dependent on what your body decides (hence some people like to exercise while others not so much). Genetics and hormones play at least an equally important (or if you ask me more important) role in controlling all these factors. I agree that all of these are not completely proven without doubt, but most research indicates the same result: We are not fully sure if people really \"choose\" to become fat, if that was your REAL question. Your *equation* is not as simple as you think either. Hence, I would kindly request you to please not blame people for becoming fat. It really isn't their fault. Almost all of them.\n\nEDIT: Forgot. True. If you chain a person down and make sure they eat less than what they burn (body heat included) \"glandular\" or not they will become thin. But in the real world the factors are not so simple.", "This isn't exactly what you were asking, but I recently had an experience that made me empathize with people who are overweight and insist that it isn't their fault. \n\nI started taking a medication that increased my hunger significantly. I put on 20 pounds in a matter of six weeks, and a total of 35 pounds after three months. I went from being visibly thin to having multiple chins. Most people are aware that you have to burn more calories than you eat to lose weight- the unspoken factor is that if I cut the amount of calories I consumed, I would be *starving* all day long. And I don't just mean grumpy because I was hungry, I mean that I would get the shakes, my knees would get weak at the gym, and that I couldn't operate because the amount of food I was eating beforehand honestly wasn't cutting it anymore. \n\nIn the three months since going off the medication, first my appetite plummeted and then my weight did. The process accelerated when I found that I could actually resume going to the gym, and a side benefit of all the weight I gained is that my strength training resulted in me actually beefing up instead of just being wiry like before. \n\n**tl;dr:** Certainly some people are just making excuses, but there are real glandular/medical reasons why some people are overweight.", "You win the argument.\n\nThe body can reduce or increase the out and reduce or increase the in converted to fat.  Phrase the argument to define 'out.'  Most poor communication occurs when the person you're speaking to is defining 'out' as exercise.  You can even find some cases where 'exercise' is greater than the kcal equivalent food eaten STILL resulting in weight gain.  This \"out (exercise) greater than in (food) equals obesity\" occurs because exercise kcal charts are just models and the body doesn't follow the model when nearing extremes.", "Lots of people have answered this already, but I wanted to add a little additional anecdote. My wife enrolled in a physician-supervised weight loss program (Health Management Resources, check it out, highly recommended).\n\nPart of the process that they have people go through is figuring out their \"multiplier\", which is BMR expressed as (net caloric intake)/(body weight). This allows you to plan your weight gain/loss, based on a target weight, your current weight, and your caloric intake and exercise. Since this is a supervised, liquid-only diet, they can very accurately measure weight gain/loss and calorie intake.\n\nThe math works really well in practice. If you're accurate in measuring your calories and your exercise, you weight loss/gain for a week is usually pretty spot-on. You do have to re-calibrate a bit as you lose weight, though.\n\nOne interesting thing is that there's a great variation in the calculated multiplier for different individuals, from a low of maybe 8 to a high of 15. This means that the same caloric intake and exercise routine can support a weight of 150 pounds on one person, and 300 pounds on another.\n\nIf the numbers are against you, it can be really, really hard to lose weight. I personally got to know a guy that weighed close to 400 pounds, and he actually ate a lot less than I did, though he weighed over twice as much.", "I think the simple proof of your argument is that you never saw any obese people in concentration camps. Further, odds are there were plenty of people with thyroid problems among that population yet none of them were overweight while being starved to death. If your friend's postulate was correct, that you can gain weight while eating less calories than you burn, you would expect to find obese people in concentration camp like conditions.\n\nHowever, the calorie component is but one of many factors that contribute to obesity. It is a complex mixture of diet, exercise, genetics, hormones and environment that contribute to obesity. So while you are fundamentally correct, it doesn't do much to solve the problem of obesity. You have the foundation but you need to address a lot more before you have the whole house. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/90/7/4019.abstract", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothyroidism"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appetite", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prader-Willi_syndrome", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_glucose_regulation"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2upzzi", "title": "The new Total War game focuses around the idea that Attila the Hun was a sign of the coming apocalypse for the Romans. How true is this?", "selftext": "\"We've got the seven seals of the apocalypse, as each of these seals breaks you get one step closer to Armageddon and the world ending completely, which is what the Romans thought was happening. Attila the Hun was death on a horse, and you didn't really want to get involved\"\n\n\n\"Going back to the religion, that's a really nice point because we are telling that story of the apocalypse as seen through the eyes of the Catholic factions. So we are focusing on west and east Rome, and how they literally thought the world was going to end because of the climate change and how Attila was this god coming to punish them for their sins.\"\n\n\nSome quotes from an interview. How much truth is in this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2upzzi/the_new_total_war_game_focuses_around_the_idea/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coaqm3p"], "score": [19], "text": ["My answer [here](_URL_0_) should help. Let me know if you have any questions!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nn7gx/in_the_new_game_total_war_attila_the_makers_want/"]]}
{"q_id": "kbyqh", "title": "Why do humans have to cut their nails and hair, and animals don't?", "selftext": "Also, what did early humans use to cut nails and hair?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kbyqh/why_do_humans_have_to_cut_their_nails_and_hair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2j1ez3", "c2j1gz5", "c2j1hmf", "c2j1k8n", "c2j1xm6", "c2j4u46", "c2j1ez3", "c2j1gz5", "c2j1hmf", "c2j1k8n", "c2j1xm6", "c2j4u46"], "score": [2, 12, 2, 10, 10, 2, 2, 12, 2, 10, 10, 2], "text": ["Horses have to have their hooves trimmed down when their environment and lives don't - though a domesticated horse isn't really like it's natural ancestors.  Similarly for dogs and I suspect human nails.\n\nWe can probably cope without cutting hair \u2013 but   for various reasons we started -  [link](_URL_0_) \u2013 they would have used things like sharp shells/flints ", " >  and animals don't\n\nFalse!\n\nDomestic cats use scartching posts (or your furniture) to keep their claws trim.  Wild cats use trees.", "Tell my cat who seems to lose her coat biweekly all over the carpet this.", "Typically claws/nails wear down from day-to-day activities in the wild. Some animals will chew on their claws, or use trees (wild cats, mostly) to keep them sharp. Domesticated animals such as dogs and horses usually need their claws/hooves trimmed on a regular enough basis.\n\nMost mammals have short hair anyway. Mammals with long hair (e.g. the mane and tail of a horse) generally serve a purpose, such as swatting away flies, so again, there's really no reason to have it cut.", "Humans don't *have* to cut their hair, we just choose to for convenience/fashion's sake.\n\nLikewise, we cut our nails for convenience's sake. They will break off by themselves during the normal course of climbing trees, chasing wildebeest and digging up the savannah, but they will look \"ugly\" and be uncomfortable.", "As for the nails, [this previous post](_URL_0_) may address your question.  Basically, in the wild, nails are/were worn down by running, scraping, hunting, eating, etc. and there is/was no need for cutting.  This applies to early humans as well as other animals.  \n\nAs for the hair, early humans probably did not cut their hair, as there's not really a need, though later they may have begun to use sharp objects to do so (someone else may know more about this).  ", "Horses have to have their hooves trimmed down when their environment and lives don't - though a domesticated horse isn't really like it's natural ancestors.  Similarly for dogs and I suspect human nails.\n\nWe can probably cope without cutting hair \u2013 but   for various reasons we started -  [link](_URL_0_) \u2013 they would have used things like sharp shells/flints ", " >  and animals don't\n\nFalse!\n\nDomestic cats use scartching posts (or your furniture) to keep their claws trim.  Wild cats use trees.", "Tell my cat who seems to lose her coat biweekly all over the carpet this.", "Typically claws/nails wear down from day-to-day activities in the wild. Some animals will chew on their claws, or use trees (wild cats, mostly) to keep them sharp. Domesticated animals such as dogs and horses usually need their claws/hooves trimmed on a regular enough basis.\n\nMost mammals have short hair anyway. Mammals with long hair (e.g. the mane and tail of a horse) generally serve a purpose, such as swatting away flies, so again, there's really no reason to have it cut.", "Humans don't *have* to cut their hair, we just choose to for convenience/fashion's sake.\n\nLikewise, we cut our nails for convenience's sake. They will break off by themselves during the normal course of climbing trees, chasing wildebeest and digging up the savannah, but they will look \"ugly\" and be uncomfortable.", "As for the nails, [this previous post](_URL_0_) may address your question.  Basically, in the wild, nails are/were worn down by running, scraping, hunting, eating, etc. and there is/was no need for cutting.  This applies to early humans as well as other animals.  \n\nAs for the hair, early humans probably did not cut their hair, as there's not really a need, though later they may have begun to use sharp objects to do so (someone else may know more about this).  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/415796.html"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j2fet/how_did_humans_cut_their_fingernails_and_toenails/"], ["http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/415796.html"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j2fet/how_did_humans_cut_their_fingernails_and_toenails/"]]}
{"q_id": "2xv9tv", "title": "why are humans the only species of carnivores/omnivores that needs to heat raw meat before it's safe to consume?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xv9tv/eli5_why_are_humans_the_only_species_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp3po3c", "cp3poso", "cp3pqhe", "cp3qn2r", "cp3rg09", "cp3rs2g", "cp3wy2r", "cp3x4p2", "cp3ztty", "cp3zyki", "cp411il", "cp41bhy", "cp41xbz", "cp42hzy", "cp435a4", "cp43cp8", "cp43las", "cp43spz", "cp44a97", "cp457c2", "cp45szi", "cp45uvy", "cp45xi0", "cp4aizh", "cp4bhcs", "cp4bhyr", "cp4byeu", "cp4cgaa", "cp4dr04"], "score": [9, 2566, 18, 462, 8, 213, 2, 7, 56, 4, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 6, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["We are the only species to learn this is a smart thing to do. Also, we tend not to eat raw meat directly from the animal after it has been killed. There is a lot that our meat goes through from source to plate that exposes it to further contamination.", "For the most part we can eat raw meat too. We are the only species that saves are raw meat for days/weeks/months to eat later and that is what makes us have to cook it. \n\nWe could eat raw meat assuming we eat the meat directly after the animal was killed. It is not the raw meat that is dangerous, it is what grows on the meat after it is dead. ", "Funny thing is, we do not have to. There is plenty of meat and fish I have eaten raw, without any repercussions, only fresh, of course.\n\nIt is mostly about the amount of freshness and germs we can deal with. It is a little bit like the appendix, which used to be useful, but seized to be, as we had access to better food.\n\nPlease note, that this answer is somewhat simplified.\n\n", "* Its not the \"rawness\" of the food that is bad for you. Your body can digest all raw foods with no issues. As a species we have a well functioning digestive system, nothing has changed in this regard.\n\n* It is the increased risk of contracting a foodborne illness that is the problem with raw food.\n\n* Foodborne illnesses are typically caused by a bacteria (e.g. E. coli), a parasite (e.g. tapeworm), fungi, or toxin. For example, toxins can be found in some mushrooms, in shellfish (red tide), or the Fugu fish (puffer fish) toxin.\n\n* ALL raw food has the potential to make you sick, including veggies, fruit, fish, and meat. For example, *E. coli* outbreaks on veggies like tomatoes and spinach are fairly common. Foodborne [*botulism*](_URL_1_) is caused by a toxin produced by a bacteria that is often found in improperly prepared canned/preserved foods. Raw fish might contain parasitic tapeworms - even sushi carries a level of risk.\n\n* Cooking food includes many processes such as boiling, baking, peeling, washing, freezing, or grilling. These process kill or get rid of potential sources of contamination.\n\n* While our modern food industry takes every precaution to prevent a foodborne illness from getting to you, its not 100% perfect. Some raw foods have a higher risk (like raw chicken) and cooking using proper and safe techniques is highly recommended to reduce risk to yourself.\n\n* Humans can also get a waterborne illness from drinking contaminated water. This includes people who are living near the same untreated water source their entire lives. For example, you (and your dog) can get [giardia](_URL_0_) from drinking untreated water from rivers/lakes in the USA/Canada. \n\n* **Wild and domestic animals also get sick from eating contaminated food and water sources.** This is true for carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. Some animals are susceptible to the same things we are, others have unique diseases to their particular species.  Some species are better equipped to handle foodborne illnesses, like the carrion eaters (vultures) but even they are not 100% perfect. For example, in a wild population of monkeys every single individual was host to a couple of species of tapeworms. Generally, animals and humans can withstand a certain parasite load (foodborne illness load) without compromising health but it is difficult for the old, young, weak, or sick to withstand heavy infestations or reoccurring exposures.\n", "We don't really need to cook raw meat as long as it fresh; but cooking meat is generally more beneficial than eating it raw.\n\nCooking is useful for humans because it yields more energy. Here's a relevant [article](_URL_0_) about the oldest pottery yet discovered. ", "There was an evolutionary study. Turns out we *evolved* via cooking. The amount of energy spent to digest raw food is *a lot* like 40-60% of the energy. The problem is that our brain is large and the nervous system consumes a very large amount of energy. About 20% of our energy consumption is the brain alone. For other animals that number is a lot less (2%?)\n\nOur bodies evolved along our ability to cook. We have smaller guts compared to all other animals and can devote more body mass to mobility and hunting, and more energy to brainpower. By cooking food we make it \"softer\" thus easier to digest.\n\nThere are communities on \"raw meat\" diets which end up having major problems keeping up body weight. Not to mention the parasites and other fun that comes with raw meat.\n\nOne of the major reasons why humans survived while neanderthals did not, is because a human can survive 4 days on one major meal, while neanderthals needed to eat every 2 days. Our ability to eat less, and have it last longer is our *major* evolutionary advantage over every other animal on the planet, not to mention our extreme intellect enabled by such diets.\n\nThis is actually why feeding cats / dogs cooked food makes them fat, because their bodies are designed to digest raw food and not get to absorb somewhere along the lines of 96% of the energy. They are expecting to be absorbing maybe 60%.", "Cooking foods pre-digests food so it's easier for your body to absorb the nutrients without spending the energy to actually break it down.\n\nFrom what I understand, our brains use something like 25% of the body's energy. So we need the additional net calories to keep it running.", "Like you're 5? Because humans are supposed to eat cooked food, just like cats are supposed to eat mostly meat and horses are supposed to eat mostly grass.  \n\nLike you're 10?  Because our guts are too simple and small to adequately extract the nutrients from raw food in general.  It starts with inadequate jaws (raw-food people rely on blenders and juicers) and continues to a gut that extracts 100% of the protein in cooked egg white but only 41% of raw.  I have not checked this, but apparently if you eat raw meat you will crap shreds of it.  Cooked food is a human universal among blenderless cultures, even those (aboriginal Tasmanians) who lost the ability to make fire and had to rely on lightning.\n\nLike you're 15+?  Read *Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human* by Richard Wrangham.  Not the *Hunger Games* one.", "Vegetarian Ecologist here. Some Vege's will tell you it's because \"We're not supposed to\" etc, but you're not supposed to do anything, so... non issue.\n\nThe main reason is ..... FARMING! and parasites... yay.\n\nSo in the wild, you might get some parasites sure, but they're much more prevalent in high density populations like you get in farms. This much is simple enough.\n\nBut here's the bit people often miss. What's the biggest driver of genetic diversity and possibly the whole point of evolution? PARASITES! Really? Yes! So in the wild, there is a constant battle between animals and parasites, at the cellular and molecular level, populations evolve resistance to parasites, and holy shit those parasites evolve counter measure. Then the animals evolve counter counter measures and so on. It's like an arms race, but cooler because nematodes. This is all Red Queen theory in case you wanna google. \n\nSo in the wild, you have a fairly wide genetic diversity within a population. A parasite might be able to do well in a few buffalo, but the rest will be too different to what it is evolved for, and it won't do so well in them. In our farms, we have very LOW genetic diversity, because of selective breeding etc, and we're still constantly breeding from the same stock (and sometimes just a single male for gajillions of offspring). This means that if you are a parasite and you can get into one pig, you can get into ALL THE PIGS. So then the parasite only really needs to evolve to be able to not kill the pig too soon (before horrible horrible pig murder), and to avoid making it so visually sick that it makes a farmer blast it with drugs (which anyway, rarely kill many types of non-bacterial parasites), or the government set fire to the whole field (Like with foot and mouth or BSE). \n\nThis means the chickens can have a much higher parasite prevalence and a higher load, which means when you eat raw chicken, you're more likely to be eating parasites, and when you do, you get a much bigger parasite load in your tummy.\n\nThis is NOT a green light to eat raw deer sushi, because many of our wild animals that you might hunt (including fish!!!) ALSO have parasites, and like it or not, over the last hundred thousand years, most humans did not eat that much meat. So we're not great at killing parasites from meat. Well we are.... but with fire.\n\n**Fire^^TM, it makes your poo not come out of you at 90mph.**", "Also the only species who prefer copulating where no one can see them.", "I had a friend who would eat raw hamburger patties with salt and pepper. ", "We don't have to, other carnivores can get ill from raw meat as well, they just don't have an option to cook it like we do.", "In theory it is safe to eat clean meat right after the kill, it becomes a problem when you try to keep meat fresh for a longer period of time. At that point it is easy for bacteria to spread and smaller bugs and parasites to fester. Cooking the meat will make sure the food is once again safe to eat.", "We don't need to, but we've adapted to cooking because it partly breaks down the proteins, requiring less digestive work to fully process, and kills pathogens, requiring less immune work to avoid illness. In fact, our brains are probably as big as they are in part because of cooking meat. It allowed us to get lots of protein, store it safely for longer, and to shift a lot of our developmental energy and materials toward building a bigger brain rather than a longer and more robust digestive system. It became a positive feedback loop because the bigger brain pays dividends in terms of increasing access to easily-digested and safe foods, and a negative feedback loop for the digestive tract because there was less need for a wild-type system and it took resources from a better brain that decreased odds of survival. \n\nWe could eat raw meat as we are, but constant illness from youth (which is a lesser but not totally elliminated possibility with wild meat compared to factory meat) and decreased nutritional value compared to cooked meat would result in a smaller brain and body, if pathogens didn't kill us outright. Give it a few thousand generations and we'd be closer to apes (smaller brains, longer digestive tracts, smaller bodies) than we are now, but better able to process raw meat.\n\nEverything in nature is a trade off. We traded the ability to survive in the wild without cooking for the huge benefits of cooking and society.", "Simplest answer is we don't need to, we're the only ones smart enough to. It makes it easier to eat and digest and the net caloric gains are better.", "I had raw fish last week and raw beef this week (it's a thing in Korea).  We just choose to cook food because we understand it is safer that way.", "because humans have developed a sensitivity to injested bacteria wheresas animals, exposing themselves to it regularly, can cope.  (homeopathy in action to all you talky talk assholes)", "We don't inherently *need* to cook meat.\n\nOur ancestors found that cooked meat both tasted better and could be stored longer before it could make us very sick.\n\nThe reason why modern humans, particularly those of us in western industrialized nations may have issues with eating or digesting raw meat is due to our gut bacteria adapting to a diet that does not contain raw meat at all over several millennia since we developed a preference for cooking our meat first before consuming it.", "Well, we don't *need* to but we certainly prefer it that way.  Cooked meat is a lot easier to digest. The cooking process breaks it down a bit before you even start to chew it. It's easier to eat it and easier to digest. \n\nSomewhere long ago we discovered to cooking process and it became easier to get nutrition from meat and, as other people pointed out, it suddenly was easier to preserve and it got rid of some pesky parasites. Overall a win-win.\n\nAll right, now look in the mirror. Go on. I'll wait. Look at your mouth. Now look at the mouth of a typical carnivore. Not just the teeth. Look at the shape of the mouth. The snout specifically. Doesn't it seem humans have a rather small mouth?\n\nYes we do. That's part of the reason braces are so common for teeth. Humans have a lot of teeth crammed in a really small mouth. Heck, wisdom teeth are yet another reminder that our mouths used to be much larger. So why are our mouths so much smaller?\n\nWell, cooking is part of it. When we started cooking food the food got softer. Softer food doesn't need quite as much power or grinding action to break it down. As our diet shifted and we really didn't need those huge jaws things gradually scaled down a bit.  \n\nSo, now we're in a bit of a bind. We've been cooking food for so long (really before the species we now think of a \"human\" existed) that our bodies have adapted to it. We can certainly eat raw meat. It's not necessarily a good idea and it takes a lot of effort, but the ability to digest it never really went away. \n\nNow if you are asking \"why don't carnivores have to worry about parasites or other food born illnesses?\" the answer is that they do. Some parasites and bacteria are rather species specific, though. So the bacteria that would really make, say, a dog sick may not a thing to a human. The reverse is true as well. Plus eating a kill when it is fresh before bacteria start trying to decompose the tissue helps as well. But the real big thing is that if an animal eats contaminated meat it gets sick and possible dies. This happens all the time. It then becomes something else's meal. Humans like to increase our odds of survival and prefer our meals to carry less risk overall. If sticking it over a fire to kill off anything that might be trying to make a meal out of it before we have a chance to take a crack at it gives us an edge, we'll take it.", "Because our tummies cant kill the germs in the raw foods ", "Another possible factor is that we lost any significant resistance we had developed to the pathogens of scavenged raw meat when humans started cooking. Lighting fire is 1.5 million years old and cooking is as much as 250,000 years old.", "I think thats what our gall bladder was for. to process raw meat. since we started cooking it, our gall bladder doesnt do anything anymore.\n", "Cooking is actually what separates us from other animals.  By cooking our food we can actually get more calories out of a meal with very little extra effort.  This in turn gives us time to do other stuff that furthers out societal advancement.  ", "I'm way late to the party, but by cooking the meat, it sort of starts the digestion process so we are able to absorb more nutrients. Not only does it help for sanitary and infectious purposes, it increases its caloric benefits as well", "We have a hobby farm, raise our own cattle and pigs (among others), and we know our butcher very well. Knowing how clean his facilities are (by law and for his customers) I know I can safely eat our meat raw. I know what my animals eat and where they live. Raw bacon is escially good! I find it has even more taste! Still not dead either. P.s. I am a raw milk drinker too", "Sushi Yum.\n\nWe cook meat because it works better than throwing up bad food, like your dog does if it eats something it shouldn't.  Throwing up works for humans, but we have society to reduce the coolness of that solution.\n\nMy dog eats cooked meat all the time.  He loves the stuff.  He's just not so good at making and using fire.", "It is the false assumption that animals can stand it much better than us. Wild animals are riddled with disease and parasites, stuff that we remove with our handling of food. \n\nIt is like saying why do we need beds when animals don't? \nWell give an animal a bed and you will see the need is there the ability is not. \n", "We aren't! We don't *need* to heat it up, we just discovered it a long time ago and no other animals has. Fire was probably the best thin that happened for us. It allowed us safety from animals, better nutrition from cooking food, we didn't need to spend as much energy digesting or catching food. It allowed us to live farther north where it is colder, it allowed us to stay up later, it allowed us light that could let is see in dark caves. It provided us with so many things", "We don't really, I meats raw  steak tar-tar, Buffalo sushi, carpaccio, etc. at least once a week for years, never had issues"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism#Food"], ["http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21985-oldest-pottery-hints-at-cookings-iceage-origins.html_"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2kd1ym", "title": "What would it have been like to be a upper middle class/royal virgin bride on her wedding night in the Georgian/Regency era in Britain?", "selftext": "I have always wondered how much information these high-born ladies had regards sex. \nI know the men were well-versed on the topic, but for an upper class woman and members of the royal family being married off for money etc, would they have known the basics of sex and what to expect on their wedding nights?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kd1ym/what_would_it_have_been_like_to_be_a_upper_middle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clkblfs"], "score": [66], "text": ["My instinct is to say that it would really depend upon the individual family in question and how frank and open they were. The period in question was one of some transition with regards to society's views on sex and sexuality, shifting from an earlier period of relative candor to the development of much more prudish attitudes that define middle class society in the nineteenth century. That said, it would not have been unheard of for an older female relative to discreetly inform a young bride of what to expect, though how explicit those instructions were may never be fully known since they likely would not have been committed to writing and would have, instead, been passed from mouth to ear.\n\nGiven the emphasis placed upon conception and the bearing of children upon all marriages, but particularly those of a political nature (as most royal marriages and many noble marriages would have been), a bride might be expected to know something of what to do in order to fulfill her expected 'duties'. Moreover, it was common medical belief in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that in order for a woman to conceive, she must experience an orgasm during intercourse, so that it is possible that such 'facts' would be passed down to a prospective wife to prepare her as well.\n\nI would suggest looking at G.J. Barker-Benfield. *The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain* (Chicago, 1992) since, if I recall correctly, there's a section around page 125 or so that discusses contemporary attitudes towards female sexual knowledge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1b7ea6", "title": "Is Margarine Really One Atom Away From Plastic?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1b7ea6/is_margarine_really_one_atom_away_from_plastic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c94a958", "c94afn8", "c94ah1i"], "score": [41, 12, 2], "text": ["Margarine is a collection of a wide variety of different organic molecules, mostly various fats.  Plastics are a functional grouping of various types of organic polymers that are generally synthetic and useful as packaging or structural material.  Neither are composed exclusively of a single type of molecule, which would have to be the case in order for the \"one atom apart\" thing to make any sense.  And even then it doesn't make much since, since plenty of highly toxic molecules are \"just an atom away\" (or even have the exact same atoms) as non-toxic molecules.\n\nThis meme is entirely nonsensical when viewed with even the most casual level of scientific understanding.", "Plastic is a very generic term for a moldable solid made out of organic chemicals. Margarine is not a homogeneous substance, it is a mixture of vegetable fats of different compositions. Plastics are usually composed of polymers, very long chains of hydrocarbons, whereas margarine contains many individual fat molecules of different types.\n\nLastly, \"one atom away\" is a vague statement without much chemical significance. The structures of the fats in margarine are very different from most plastics, so there's no single atom you could change that would suddenly give margarine the properties of, say, polyethylene, because polyethylene is a long-chain polymer and the fats in margarine are not bonded to one another, as well as having a different elemental composition. You might be able to replace some particular functional group in those fats to make them reactive enough to polymerize, but on the whole, the statement sounds like uneducated fearmongering. For example, water (H2O) is \"one atom away\" from hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), a poison. This statement is true, but it doesn't mean anything about the safety of water.\n\nThere may very well be valid health concerns about consuming margarine, but that statement is not one of them.", "No, the molecules in margarine are very different from the polymers in plastics.  The only real similarity is that they're both made up mostly of hydrocarbons.  But, broadly speaking, so are the enzymes that facilitate all the chemical reactions that keep you alive.  That doesn't mean that you're made of margarine.\n\nAnd even if the claim were true, it wouldn't prove anything, because it's the subtle differences between molecules that give them their properties.  Breathable oxygen (O2) is literally one atom different from ozone (O3), which is a pollutant that can cause death from respiratory illnesses.\n\nMargarine can still be pretty nasty stuff - some brands are packed full of trans fats, for example.  But the claim about it essentially being plastic is pure bunk."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5u7ljy", "title": "what the right to repair fight is about with apple?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u7ljy/eli5_what_the_right_to_repair_fight_is_about_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddrwlpl", "ddrx4m1", "ddrxfgw", "ddrxsso", "dds0g94", "dds6gzu"], "score": [20, 25, 3, 19, 9, 33], "text": ["Apple wants to charge for their AppleCare and make it illegal for third-party entities to sell and/or service their products.   They've argued things like if a third-party replaces a broken screen they can cut their finger accidentally so only Apple should be legally allowed to replace the screens on their products.\n\nBasically, Apple is trying to make it so that they can be the only entity to service and/or repair their products to keep out competition.  Thus far, they have been fairly successful at suing and shutting down their competition in this space and are continuing the fight.", "Several States are trying to introduce a \"right to repair\" bill. Of all of these States, only one - Nebraska - has actually scheduled a hearing to discuss the possible new law.\n\nThe law, if it goes through, will require manufacturers (including Apple) to provide spare parts and service manuals to third parties.\n\nApple have said that they will send representatives to argue against this new law. They believe that members of the public and third parties are not qualified to repair Apple products, and if they attempt to do so, it could result in damage such as batteries exploding.", "Basically Apple wants to make more money.\n\nIf any old company is allowed to repair your iPhone then Apple will have to compete with them, they will probably have to charge less and make less money.\n\nApple has a great idea: they can block lawmakers from allowing this, by claiming that batteries are dangerous and that they will explode on planes etc., unless only Apple is allowed to repair them. Is this true? Well, yes and no, but as long as Apple can convince lawmakers that it is true then they will make more money replacing your battery for you.", "the reason this is controversial is because it essentially gives apple a complete monopoly regarding their products, which they want, but is ultimately bad for consumers. Apple has a long history of doing this monopolistic behavior. It was the same way with apple peripherals, such as i homes and such. but eventually third parties started making cheaper \"ihome\" alternatives and then the overly expensive apple products were being priced out of the market. enter the lightning cable. now all of the third party products are no longer compatible with any of your new apple products, and the only way to get products that are is to buy them from apple as they are the only ones with rights to that cable design. then with the market being non competitive you get charged $7mil for your i home and there's nothing you can do about it other than go without. you'll notice that a similar thing is happening with the new iphone's lack of headphone port.\n\nessentially having apple be the only one who is able to preform repair services on their products makes it so the market is non competitive and they can essentially charge whatever they want for the services unrestricted. cracked screen? $799.\n\nwith competition such as those little kiosks in the mall however the price is competitive. if the mall kiosk guy will do it for $50 then apple can't feasibly charge much more than him or nobody will go for the service.\n\nTL;DR: apple wants a monopoly and the argument is that there should be a competitive market for apple device services", "My girlfriend plugged an aux cord into her iPhone 6s and it short circuited. We took it to apple because the phone was bought less than a year ago and they told us it would be $300 to replace. They had never opened it to see what it was. We had bought the phone for $300.", "Imagine you buy a car.  Let's say a Chevy Cruze cuz why not.  Now, Chevy has all sorts of reasons to want you to only use Chevy certified mechanics and official Chevy spare parts because they can make money from that service and maintain quality control.  \n\nOn the other hand, you as a consumer wants to find the best deal for repairs that you can and since you own the car, should be able to do so. \n\nChevy says that they only provide parts to their guys and if you want a repair you're just stuck with a Chevy mechanic, sucks to be you.\n\nThe right to repair is basically saying that you as the consumer should have a choice in who fixes your property.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15orr4", "title": "[META] A reminder to all about downvotes and staying civil.", "selftext": "(This meta post was approved by the mods)\n\nHi all!\n\nI've been browsing the /new section of this great subreddit for a while and I've noticed a certain trend - almost every new question posted to this subreddit begins its life with a downvote or two, some of them stay with 0 karma or in the negative even a serious answer to OP's question was posted.\n\nNow, I'm not saying you shouldn't downvote, but there should be a reason for your downvotes: people come into this subreddit to receive answers and learn new things, downvoting a newcomer's post for no reason makes us look like some gated off community on an ivory tower,  which isn't really the purpose of this subreddit.\n\nIf a question is too broad (what happened in pre-Colombian America?), ask OP to narrow it down or clarify himself; if a question was asked before (Why do Israel and Palestine fight eachother?), link to the relevant thread; if someone made an error or a fallacy (Why was Italy's army so bad?) explain to him the error of his ways. Don't just downvote and move on without at least giving an explanation, and if you don't feel like doing any of the actions mentioned above, just leave the question there undownvoted.\n\nAlso, do not downvote because the question sounds silly or trivial to you - the history of bovine domestication is just as relevant as the social-economical structure of the Soviet union, and not everyone online received the same education as you did. Unless someone is clearly trolling, there's no need to downvote a basic question.\n\n**tl;dr**: Don't just downvote and move on, be helpful instead.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15orr4/meta_a_reminder_to_all_about_downvotes_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7oetvm", "c7oewjh", "c7oj9om", "c7ojqao", "c7om37w"], "score": [24, 65, 7, 5, 8], "text": ["I've also noticed a trend that people downvote questions which have already been asked here a lot (like the ones [on our Popular Questions page](_URL_1_)): it seems to be almost a reaction of \"Not this old question *again*...\"\n\nWe don\u2019t *want* to discourage people asking questions here. As per [this previous discussion]( _URL_0_), we welcome even \"the simple questions\". We want to encourage an atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable asking questions \u2013 even questions about things which may be obvious to many other people, or which have been asked before. Everyone comes to learning in their own time. We've also had times where someone adds a new point of view or new information to a new version of a popular question.\n\nAlso... without people asking questions... r/**Ask**Historians wouldn't exist. :)\n", "This post makes me feel a lot better, as I'd posted two previous questions that I then deleted after receiving a quick splash of down votes and a few \"This questions is stupid, everyone knows this\"-like responses.\n\nGlad to be subscribed to /r/AskHistorians!", "Reminders like this are useful periodically as new Redditors are exposed to this community. We've seen the result, on Reddit as a whole, of floods of new users coming in who have changed the culture--to some extent because reddiquette was never explained to them. The values weren't instilled in the new waves and they're being lost. The only way to ensure this sub doesn't fall victim to the same fate is to regularly explain what you've outlined here. \n\nSo thank you for that, /u/whitesock.\n\nedit: punctuation", "I'd like to preface this by admitting that I occasionally crave instant gratification, and with the attentionspan of a stoned gnat, and a complete lack of shame, would happily stand up in the middle of a room and ask the most idiotic question possible... \n\nBut since we're not in a room, I would have to WAIT for your response. No way I can do that -- **so, I Google it.** \n\nThat is truly a part of my motivation: lack of patience. But on a more positive and important note, it is also a matter of RESPECT for those whose brains I'm asking to pick. \n\nIt's a balancing act. ", "Speaking as someone who has downvoted their fair share of new posts, I can say that even with the most inane and poorly written questions, I'll try to give the asker *something*, even if it is only \"You have posed a poorly phrased question, please hang up and try again.\" With hackneyed questions, I've in the past directed them to previous questions (which the new wiki makes amazingly easy, thanks mods!). Some feedback on why the question is terrible is far preferable to a simple downvote. \n\nAs this sub has grown, I've had to retrain myself to acknowledge that other people don't know what I know -- to relearn empathy. It's easy to dismiss questions about what seems like basic knowledge, but basic knowledge is like common sense: neither basic nor common. \n\nI have a friend who seriously didn't know Britain was an island until his early 20s, but is remarkably brilliant in other ways. Whenever I encounter a question that seems painfully ignorant to me, I think of my friend. Far better that someone takes the time to share their knowledge than allow ignorance to persist."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14s6tz/meta_please_stop_with_the_simple_questions/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5l2yd2", "title": "why there is no cell phone signal in some houses/apartments even though the signal is full when you are on the street?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5l2yd2/eli5_why_there_is_no_cell_phone_signal_in_some/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbsimmx", "dbsjkzj", "dbslfcj", "dbsljgq", "dbsqqxu", "dbsud24"], "score": [6, 6, 2, 26, 3, 2], "text": ["Just one example of what can happen, but on my street the two nearest towers are almost directly along the direction of the road. Stand in the street and you have an unobstructed line of sight to either tower. Step inside  and the signal has to pass through the walls of every house along the street, so it's much weaker.", "the signal is a radio wave. different material shaped in different ways can absorb or reflect it. older structures weren't designed with these signals in mind, so they tend to be worse. ", "One reason is the frequency of the signal in use. The low frequency one in 700,750,800 range penetrates easily into buildings whereas the others in the range of 1800/1900/2100 etc will not penetrate as easily like the former.", "The biggest reason you are experiencing loss of signal is due to the structural material of your building. There is a certain amount of signal loss (measured in dB or decibels) that occurs whenever a wireless signal must pass throught any object. Some building materials such as single pane glass windows, drywall and wood have a very low loss of Signal Penetration as opposed to more dense materials such as concrete, steel and brick. If you are located in the center of the building, say by the elevator, you will be struggling to get a decent signal as opposed to if you were close to an exterior wall on the same floor. There are many other factors that can cause loss of signal such as line of sight, distance and weather but aren't necessarily contributing to your specific case as you can travel a short distance outside of your building and grab a signal.", "In the case of concrete apartments, there are rebar reinforcements littered throughout the pillars, flooring and sometimes walls. On the outer edge of the building they will not interfere much but the further away from the signal origin you get into the building, the more the structure begins to act like a loose [faraday cage](_URL_0_) which gradually inhibits the radio waves used by the phone to transmit data. Structural components such as walls and floors can also inhibit the transmission of signals as well as they act as obstacles to the waves. Another major problem is interference which can be given off by basically any electrical device including wiring inside a building. There are many more reasons as well but these are probably the simplest and most predominant reasons for signal loss.", "Sometimes, the stuff they put in your roofing/walls can deflect the signal, a bit like how a mirror reflects a beam of light."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage"], []]}
{"q_id": "2rcss1", "title": "What were some dirty tricks used by soldiers and armies in the Middle ages or Medieval/Classical periods?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rcss1/what_were_some_dirty_tricks_used_by_soldiers_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnev5s5", "cnevk4i", "cnevn35", "cnewzj9"], "score": [18, 11, 3, 2], "text": ["Signifying something as a 'dirty trick' presupposes mutually-agreed upon standards of conduct in warfare that it would contravene, and for most of (European) history this has not *really* been the case. General principles (capture rather than kill nobility, for instance) may have been perceptible but usually those had an underlying layer of practicality (prisoners/hostages are more politically useful than corpses). You can find many examples throughout history of military subterfuge, but not much stuff that was roundly condemned as 'dirty.' Even those were usually isolated or unique events. If some 'secret trick' allowed a smaller army to regularly rout a larger one, regardless of circumstance... Would it really stay secret for long?\n\nAs a side note, GoT's fighting and warfare owes much, much more to Errol Flynn and lord of the rings than to history. Don't put too much stock in it.", "Deception plays an important role in all martial systems, from movements of armies to the movements of a body in a duel; what you call dirty tricks, martial writings call sound tactics.  In dueling, the most basic and common deception is the feint: you attack a target knowing your opponent will react, and you redirect your attack to counter that reaction.  \n\nBut you want something more fun... In his 1606 fencing manual, Salvatore Fabris takes a brief look at the rapier with a cloak as an off hand weapon.  He shows an action where the fencer throws his cloak at his opponent's face, and as it opens up and moves forward through the air he puts the point of his sword into the cloak and thrusts forward, through the cape, into the face of his opponent!  You can find the (almost) original illustration of this with a quick google image search.", "You might want to head over to /r/wma and ask in there, there's certainly plenty of dirty tricks as well as some straight up nasty ones in the old manuals. In the meantime, you may find this amusing:\n\n_URL_0_", "Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_).  These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for.  If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://youtu.be/jETLCm7k3sU"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "2fql2h", "title": "if you shoot an undercover cop, why is the penalty more severe than shooting an average citizen...how could you know they were police?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fql2h/eli5_if_you_shoot_an_undercover_cop_why_is_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckbruoc", "ckbtc4o", "ckc2s4a", "ckc3b01", "ckc4qu7"], "score": [27, 14, 6, 2, 6], "text": ["who says it is?", "I'm not aware of particular legislation that actually makes it more severe if you don't know they were police.\n\nThat said, juries are typically going to be more prone to convict someone of a more serious offense in the typical shooting an undercover cop than the typical shooting of an average citizen. 1. The type of person who shoots an undercover cop is usually in a position with fewer redeeming qualities and was probably not up to any good in the events leading up to the shooting. 2. The jury will be especially sympathetic to the victim, a police officer killed in the line of duty, whether or not the shooter knew. 3. I'd imagine that the reason for undercover cops getting shot is due to the fact that they are found to be police officers, in which case other offenses may apply and juries will have zero sympathy.", "it's not unless they identified themselves. there have been cases over the years where that exact thing occurred. in more recent news, it's comparable to the man who shot the no-knock officers.", "Why is shooting a cop worse than anybody else in the first place?", "1. Criminal codes (well, Canada's anyway; s. 231(4)) make no distinction between undercover/uniformed officers. If they're acting in their capacity as peace officer and you kill them, it's first-degree murder. Edit: That is to say, even if you don't know it's an undercover cop, you still get charged with first degree murder. No mens rea required. \n\n2. This is different from people being acquitted during a no-knock raid or where the police did not have legal grounds to be on the property. I can think of one situation where a deputy tried to force open a garage door to serve a summons; the homeowner and he then got into a scuffle and the homeowner was acquitted of assault. \n\n3. As for \"why\" it's automatically a 1st degree charge, the police represent the state. Killing an officer is a crime against both society and the state, and is reflective of the dangerous nature of policing. \n\nEdit: there are other situations where a killing automatically gets bumped to 1st degree: hostage taking, rape, hijacking, etc..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3vay0c", "title": "if nuclear energy is so efficient, green and is incredibly safe nowadays, why haven't we constructed any more power plants?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vay0c/eli5_if_nuclear_energy_is_so_efficient_green_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxluyye", "cxlv18y", "cxlv80q", "cxlx49q", "cxlz1x3", "cxlz5r3", "cxm1plx", "cxm2m8f"], "score": [43, 3, 8, 4, 3, 3, 10, 2], "text": ["Nuclear energy has really, really, bad PR. Between the population associating destructive forces like nuclear weapons with nuclear power, and the high profile nuclear power incidents that have happened in the past (namely, Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and more recently Fukushima) what people think of isn't clean, efficient, safe power. They think of large scale widespread disasters, cities vaporized, and everyone getting cancer. People point out that, for instance, with Fukushima, iirc no one directly died as a consequence, pretty phenomenal safety given the magnitude of the disaster. People point out that coal power plants emit radiation that likely contributes to far more cancer related deaths. But ultimately, the Nuclear side doesn't have the PR power to fight against our fearful imaginings, and quite possibly the PR power of competing interests who like to keep us afraid of it.", "A couple of reasons:\n\n1. Public opinion remains staunchly against the plants due to public fears of the danger. Much of this panic is unfounded, but in the court of public opinion facts matter less. \n\n2. Nuclear energy is not \"clean\" energy. It produces highly toxic waste that many countries have struggled disposing of. \n\n3. Nuclear energy requires high technical expertise but the labor force does not match with the labor demands in many countries. You can't build more plants without more engineers and technicians. \n\n4. There also has been a long history of over promising nuclear energy's capabilities. While it is efficient we aren't going to be living in a world where we only need nuclear, it's always going to be a mixed energy market. ", "Misinformation and fear. Too many people would freak the hell out if they thought a nuclear plant was going to be built near them. There'd be protests about how the (non-existent) radiation would give their kids cancer and won't you think of the children? They'd bring up the devastation (that never happened) from 3 Mile Island, the explosion (caused by idiotic tests nobody else would even conduct) of Chernobyl, and the countless deaths (2 injured workers with radiation burns) from Fukushima.", "This article gives a pretty good picture of the state of nuclear energy in the U.S. But one of the biggest reasons that hold nuclear energy back is cost. You can build multiple natural gas power plants fast and cheaper then you can a nuclear power plant. \n_URL_0_", "They explain simply with three great videos\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_", "Construction of nuclear plants is difficult and carries a lot of risks. Risks of delay, cost overrun, technical problems, unexpected design problems. Because nuclear plants are complicated, they tend to be very big - big projects have their own problems.\n\n1. You need a ton of workers to build them (and there may not be enough workers available with the special skills needed). When Finland started building a new nuclear plant in 2005, there weren't enough nuclear certified welders in Finland, so they looked to next door Sweden and Norway. Still not enough. They had to get workers in from as far away as Bulgaria. The result was you had workers speaking 20 different languages, doing complex difficult jobs, and well - not everyone got things right, so a lot of work had to be dismantled and done again.\n\n2. There may be unexpected construction problems. A similar reactor was being built in France. The nuclear inspectors required that the reactor pressure vessel be of suitable quality. However, you can only analyse the steel by cutting a chunk out and examining it - so you can't do it with the finished pressure vessel. You have to build a prototype using the exact same method, and then cut up the prototype for inspection. For reasons of time, the builders installed the first pressure vessel they made, then started building the sacrificial one. By the time the sacrificial one was ready, the original one had been installed and welded in, and the concrete containment building had been built around it. The sacrifical reactor failed the quality tests, indicating that the manufacturing process was flawed and the installer reactor vessel could not be trusted. No idea how they are going to get out of this problem. \n\n3. Sometimes design problems crop up late. The UK designed a 2nd generation type of reactor called an advanced gas cooled reactor. These were designed to use natural uranium (i.e. uranium as it comes from the refinery, without the very expensive and difficult enrichment process). The design was to make the fuel by putting uranium pellets into tubes made of the special metal beryllium. Beryllium is useful because it is completely transparent to the radiation in the reactor so, doesn't affect the nuclear reaction. By the time the plants were already mostly built, it was realised that there were problems with the beryllium and the fuel was redesigned to use stainless steel but this change meant that it would be impossible for the reactors to operate on natural uranium, and enriched uranium was required. This change pushed up the cost of fuel so much, that there was talk of abandoning some of the reactors because the fuel would be too expensive.\n\n4. Because these projects take so long, there is very little \"learning\" on the job. In most jobs, the first one is the most difficult, and once you've done one job, you sort of know what you are doing and where the problems are. By the time you've done 10, you've pretty much started to crack the problems. If, however, a job takes 10 years - then by the time the job is done, workers are retiring, or have moved away, died, left the country, changed career, etc. Not very many workers build 2 or more nuclear plants. As a result, even building a 2nd or 3rd is much more risky than you might expect. This is often made worse because different utilities or local governments may want to have preferred suppliers for parts or workers, so different suppliers get brought in, even for the same overall design.\n\n5. Because construction is so expensive, it adds a lot of financial risk. A lot of money has to be borrowed, because not many companies just have $20 billion cash sitting in the bank. Because so much money needs to be borrowed, it needs to be repaid over a long period - so, this means that changes in interest rates are a big risk. If interest rates rise, then a 30 year loan has 30 years of extra interest to pay, whereas a 5 year loan for a simple gas plant, only brings 5 years of extra interest risk. Because of this risk, the money lenders often want a higher rate for these longer loans....\n\n", "I currently work in the power industry. A few users have mentioned PR, and that's a part of it.\n\nMost of the reason though, is because it is incredibly expensive. The capital expense for building a nuclear power plant is huuuuge! A lot of companies aren't willing to spend that kind of capital because it would take a long time pay itself off.  ", "Well, we have constructed more plants; Watts Bar 2 is the newest plant and it got its license to start testing with nuclear material in October. There are 4 others under construction now. But the cost is massive; the two new reactors at Vogtle will be $14 billion. So they cost billions and take about 7-8 years to build (because they must be built very carefully), so when a utility is trying to figure out what to build, it will go with something much cheaper and more flexible. \n\nBut if the public was clamoring for it (which they are not), the federal government could subsidize the construction of other plants as well as the training of all the nuclear certified welders that are needed (there are not a lot of nuclear certified workers). But after factoring in the $15 billion to build a nuke plant, utilities often find they will have cheaper power sources by building something else. \n\nIn addition to the 1 undergoing testing and the 4 under construction, there are 18 other proposed projects; 1 construction and operation license has been granted, a few others are expected in 2016. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-27/what-killed-america-s-climate-saving-nuclear-renaissance-"], ["https://youtu.be/pVbLlnmxIbY", "https://youtu.be/rcOFV4y5z8c", "https://youtu.be/HEYbgyL5n1g"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2g7bgn", "title": "what goes on in those tall tower buildings owned by major banks?", "selftext": "As I walk to school everyday i pass by tall skyrise buildings, theres a few of them owned by major banks, TD, Scotia, RBC, etc. Why do they need enormous amount of space? What goes on in those buildings? \n\nfor example; _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g7bgn/eli5_what_goes_on_in_those_tall_tower_buildings/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckgaj4j", "ckgaj9p", "ckgbsxg", "ckggdqc", "ckgghr0", "ckghlyo"], "score": [105, 27, 7, 17, 4, 6], "text": ["I work in one actually... well not one of the bank buildings, but one of the skyscrapers anyway.\n\nThe bank may own the building but they use little if any of it. It's office space for rent mainly. I work for a company that only has about 15 employees, and we rent a bit of room on one floor in our building. All kinds of companies are operating out of them. Go check out their directories sometimes, it's full of companies. ", "In many cases, the bank owns the building but other, smaller businesses lease offices within them.  Go into the lobby of one of them, and you will see dozens of company names.  Each of these are renters of the bank's space.\n\nAlso, you'll see that many of the companies in a bank building tend to cater to businesses.  Lawyers, investment firms, financial advisors, etc.  It's a one-stop shopping center for business matters.", "Very rarely do large office buildings only have one tenant. The bank may own the building, or may be the major tenant in that building, or may have just negotiated to have their sign on the building along with whatever space they rent.", "Commercial Real Estate Broker here. Most of these comments have got it. Just wanted to add that in a lot of these cases, the banks don't actually own the buildings. They usually either have branches or their HQ located there which they lease. In the lease, they usually have provisions that give them rights to prominent building signange. Typically tenants get these rights if they are the biggest tenant and have a credit-worthy name.", "It's also worth noting that the company with the sign on the building doesn't mean it owns the building.  In the case of the TD building shown in your picture, TD is just a tenant that likely paid for naming rights.  The building is owned and operated by a separate company, the Cadillac Fairview Corp.   Often the buildings are owned by pension funds or investment trusts and they hire a property management firm to maintain it, market it out/lease it, collect rents, etc.", "Well, the first 19 floors are just filler. Then there's one big room at the top where they have a big long table and all the evil executives sit around plotting world domination."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://wpmedia.business.financialpost.com/2011/09/td.jpg?w=620"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "m57fv", "title": "why places price stuff \"15.99\" instead of just \"16\"", "selftext": "I've always wondered, but I just spoke to a friend who mentioned this and I couldn't find a better reason than \"because it *looks* cheaper\".", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m57fv/why_places_price_stuff_1599_instead_of_just_16/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2y6pcz", "c2y73xo", "c2y7gmv", "c2y9ce9", "c2y9hya", "c2ycq1d", "c2ydpl2", "c2y6pcz", "c2y73xo", "c2y7gmv", "c2y9ce9", "c2y9hya", "c2ycq1d", "c2ydpl2"], "score": [15, 21, 23, 6, 11, 3, 2, 15, 21, 23, 6, 11, 3, 2], "text": ["Psychology, the human mind percirleves x.99 to be less than x +1.\n\n", "The ELI5 answer is \"because people think it is cheaper\".\n\nEven when you are actively thinking about it, people are going to be drawn to lower prices.\n\nFor example, you first scan the items and see things listed for 16.XX. You then find other similar things that are 15.XX. Even if the difference is between 16.00 and 15.99, you are biased to want those 15.XX things over the 16.XX things.", "Conjecture, heard this explanation a long time ago. The tradition started before credit cards and people had to used mechanical registers and cash. If something cost an even 1, 5, or whatever dollars, the employees could easily pocket the cash and call it a loss. To deter from this practice, the managers priced things at a penny below, forcing them to make change. That way they can at least keep track of how many times the registered was opened on who's shift vs sales. ", "Because it costs *less than $16!*\n\nHow much less than $16?\n\nSHHH! You'll ruin our marketing!", "Good question!  It doesn't, however, appear to be anything more than it appears on the surface.  Our brains just weight earlier digits more than later digits.\n\n > Kaushik Basu used game theory in 1997 to argue that rational consumers value their own time and effort at calculation. Such consumers process the price from left to right and tend to mentally replace the last two digits of the price with an estimate of the mean \"cent component\" of all goods in the marketplace. In a sufficiently large marketplace, this implies that any individual seller can charge the largest possible \"cent component\" (99\u00a2) without significantly affecting the average of cent components and without changing customer behavior.\n\n_URL_0_", "Say we're bargaining. I offer to sell my fine wares for $300,000 (they are quite fine). You counteroffer $200,000, and we continue like that. Not ideal for me.\n\nWhat if I instead offered $295,425? Not a huge difference, but if you were to bargain with me, studies have shown you would bargain smaller, like offering $290,000. The precise number makes you think about it very differently. This works to make you think you aren't getting ripped off as much, for instance if you estimate what the product is actually worth to you after hearing the precise price, you answer will be biased, and you might be more likely to find the offered price satisfactory in comparison.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "\"Nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and fifty pence,\" the father said. \"And that, by the way, is another of my nifty little tricks to diddle the customer. Never ask for a big round figure. Always go just below it. Never say one thousand pounds. Always say nine hundred and ninety-nine fifty. It sounds much less but it isn't. Clever, isn't it?\"\n\n-- Roald Dahl, *Matilda*\n\nThanks for teaching that to me at such a young age you lovely old man. :') Truly a man who could explain things to 5 year olds.", "Psychology, the human mind percirleves x.99 to be less than x +1.\n\n", "The ELI5 answer is \"because people think it is cheaper\".\n\nEven when you are actively thinking about it, people are going to be drawn to lower prices.\n\nFor example, you first scan the items and see things listed for 16.XX. You then find other similar things that are 15.XX. Even if the difference is between 16.00 and 15.99, you are biased to want those 15.XX things over the 16.XX things.", "Conjecture, heard this explanation a long time ago. The tradition started before credit cards and people had to used mechanical registers and cash. If something cost an even 1, 5, or whatever dollars, the employees could easily pocket the cash and call it a loss. To deter from this practice, the managers priced things at a penny below, forcing them to make change. That way they can at least keep track of how many times the registered was opened on who's shift vs sales. ", "Because it costs *less than $16!*\n\nHow much less than $16?\n\nSHHH! You'll ruin our marketing!", "Good question!  It doesn't, however, appear to be anything more than it appears on the surface.  Our brains just weight earlier digits more than later digits.\n\n > Kaushik Basu used game theory in 1997 to argue that rational consumers value their own time and effort at calculation. Such consumers process the price from left to right and tend to mentally replace the last two digits of the price with an estimate of the mean \"cent component\" of all goods in the marketplace. In a sufficiently large marketplace, this implies that any individual seller can charge the largest possible \"cent component\" (99\u00a2) without significantly affecting the average of cent components and without changing customer behavior.\n\n_URL_0_", "Say we're bargaining. I offer to sell my fine wares for $300,000 (they are quite fine). You counteroffer $200,000, and we continue like that. Not ideal for me.\n\nWhat if I instead offered $295,425? Not a huge difference, but if you were to bargain with me, studies have shown you would bargain smaller, like offering $290,000. The precise number makes you think about it very differently. This works to make you think you aren't getting ripped off as much, for instance if you estimate what the product is actually worth to you after hearing the precise price, you answer will be biased, and you might be more likely to find the offered price satisfactory in comparison.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "\"Nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and fifty pence,\" the father said. \"And that, by the way, is another of my nifty little tricks to diddle the customer. Never ask for a big round figure. Always go just below it. Never say one thousand pounds. Always say nine hundred and ninety-nine fifty. It sounds much less but it isn't. Clever, isn't it?\"\n\n-- Roald Dahl, *Matilda*\n\nThanks for teaching that to me at such a young age you lovely old man. :') Truly a man who could explain things to 5 year olds."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing"], ["http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-things-cost-1995&amp;ec=su_1995"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing"], ["http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-things-cost-1995&amp;ec=su_1995"], []]}
{"q_id": "29l4qq", "title": "Two identical solar panels, one charging a battery and the other disconnected. Will the disconnected panel be warmer?", "selftext": "My understanding is that a solar panel that's charging a battery is converting captured energy into electricity.\n\nIf a solar panel isn't connected to anything, what happens to that captured energy?  Is it released as thermal energy?  If so, is the difference in temperature significant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/29l4qq/two_identical_solar_panels_one_charging_a_battery/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cimi4fl"], "score": [5], "text": ["Yes, it will be warmer. The electron-hole pairs generated in the panel won't be able to travel through an external electrical circuit and will recombine in the panel itself, producing heat. Additionally, solar panels have lower efficiency when they are hotter, so at a certain temperature this will balance out.\n\nSorces and additional references: _URL_0_, _URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/modules/heat-generation-in-pv-modules", "http://solarlove.org/solar-cell-model-and-its-characteristics/"]]}
{"q_id": "o43vs", "title": "When light is reflected, does it \"stop\" at the point of reflection? ", "selftext": "Assuming a perfect 90 degree (perpendicular) \"impact.\" Or am I completely misunderstanding the concept? If so, what does happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o43vs/when_light_is_reflected_does_it_stop_at_the_point/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3e7qry", "c3e7r6v"], "score": [4, 7], "text": ["I was going to answer with what I know about the physics of reflection...but then I found [this](_URL_0_) instead. Hope this helps.\n\nedit: due to weird formatting just click the first link: Reflection (physics). Cheers.", "There are kind of two interpretations of this phenomena based on whether you are taking the \"light is a particle\" or \"light is a wave\" approach.\n\n\"Light is a particle\" - Photons comes in and \"impact\" the surface.  Physically, this is the photon being absorbed by electrons in the material the surface is made out of.  Absorption makes electrons jump to a higher energy level.  Eventually, the excited electron drops back down to a lower (usually the original) energy level and emits a photon of equal energy as the one that just went in.  Now, the photon is emitted in a random direction, so sometimes it just gets shot further into the surface and the same process repeats.  If, however, the photon gets emitted out of the surface, it can travel back to your eye, which you see as a reflection.  Though the photon is emitted in a random direction, this doesn't mean that all directions are created equal.  For rough surfaces, the probability that a random direction means smacking into a peak or value on the surface is increased.  For smooth surfaces, the chances that a photon can travel, unimpeded back to your eye is increased.  This is why smooth things tend to be more reflective than rough surfaces.\n\n\"Light as a wave\" - As we know, however, light can be thought of as a planar electromagnetic wave.  A oscillating electric field and perpendicular magnetic field travel towards the surface.  When these waves strike a surface, different boundary conditions exists depending on the properties of the material.  A good way to think about this is like a piece of with one end in your hand and the other attached to a flag poll.  A fixed boundary condition is when the rope is tied to a single spot on the flag poll.  When you wave your end of the rope, it has to stop and come back towards you.  If, however, the rop is attached to a ring slipped over the flag poll, so that the ring can move up and down, then the point that the rope itself can move up and down at the flag poll and the energy does not get sent back.  The actual directions and magnitudes of the reflected electromagnet wave depends on vector calculus and Maxwell's equations, but that's probably more than you want."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(physics)"], []]}
{"q_id": "to0p1", "title": "Why does my watch face become a mirror under water?", "selftext": "When I hold my watch face-on underwater (with my head above water) I can read the time with no problem.  If I rotate the watch by 45 degrees in any direction then the face becomes a mirror. I'm guessing it's something to do with refraction, but what exactly is happening?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/to0p1/why_does_my_watch_face_become_a_mirror_under_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4o8wwx"], "score": [12], "text": ["The index of refraction of water is larger than that of air. That affects the angle of total reflection between the air/glass surface."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "bggyo1", "title": "Is there any evidence that the standard work week affects weather, and if so, how?", "selftext": "Our weather has been very consistent recently (clear and sunny during the week, rained last four Fridays), and I started to wonder whether traffic and factory schedules and patterns had an impact on weather and weather cycles. Or whether this is just an odd coincidence.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bggyo1/is_there_any_evidence_that_the_standard_work_week/", "answers": {"a_id": ["elkz9es"], "score": [6], "text": ["Used to be married to a meteorologist that worked for a state-run environmental group. While traffic and factories can have an effect on things like air pollutants and hazy atmosphere, they don't really change weather enough to cause rain here or there, or make it sunny over there.\n\nIn fact, factories have to take into account local weather patterns when choosing a location or what they produce. Local weather patterns could cause polluted air from the factories to blow over a lake or a residential area, which would be no good."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "kh402", "title": "Could i drug myself to enjoy anything?", "selftext": "If i took drugs that made me feel pleasant or euphoric doing boring or unpleasant tasks, could i condition myself to enjoy anything? \n\n(I don't intend to ever do this of course)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kh402/could_i_drug_myself_to_enjoy_anything/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2k74xf", "c2k945v", "c2k74xf", "c2k945v"], "score": [5, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["You couldn't necessarily make yourself enjoy any activity, but you could make yourself seek out and want to perform any activity so long as there was a good chance it would end with the drugs.", "You could probably classically condition yourself to enjoy those menial tasks, but the effect wears off if you apply the conditioned stimulus (the boring)  too often without the unconditioned stimulus (drugs).  This procedure would not be recommended for extended periods of time.  ", "You couldn't necessarily make yourself enjoy any activity, but you could make yourself seek out and want to perform any activity so long as there was a good chance it would end with the drugs.", "You could probably classically condition yourself to enjoy those menial tasks, but the effect wears off if you apply the conditioned stimulus (the boring)  too often without the unconditioned stimulus (drugs).  This procedure would not be recommended for extended periods of time.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9loyl9", "title": "Between 1914 and 1918, over 2 million Africans were mobilized for the war effort, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, carriers and civilians died in the conflict. How is the Great War remembered or memorialized in sub-Saharan Africa? How does it shape the story of the people of Africa?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9loyl9/between_1914_and_1918_over_2_million_africans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e78xg0e"], "score": [105], "text": ["To analyze the effect of the Great War in sub-Sahara Africa, we must first have to distance ourselves from our more Euro-centric values when we look at history. Sub-Sahara Africa incorporates numerous ethnicities, languages, religions and is incredibly diverse. The effects of the Great War in Sub-Sahara Africa are as varied as the peoples that live in it. \n\nWhen Colonial powers came to Africa, they imposed their own values of government and what constitutes a nation-state. Oduntan in his thesis, states that the Egba for instance viewed the Great War in terms of their local politics and to take sides as a matter of local practicality and making the best out their situation. Basically, they tried to live their lives as best as possible, as free as possible. \n\nIn addition, some peoples in Africa saw it as way to make it some breathing room, Chafer writes about the Volta-Bani Anticolonial war, a revolt in 1915 against French Colonial rule in the middle of the Great War. \n\nWhile others, as M'Bokolo affirms, especially for African elites, it opened the door for what they saw as an expansion of the African consciousness and a chance to modernize their country along the lines of what Indian nationalists later did. Not only that, it deculturalized the soldiers, and exposed them to other ways of doing things, making them unhappy with the current situation in the countries. \n\nNot only that, WWI was a shattering moment, when old lines were destroyed and the dynamic between colonizer and colony came into question. Colonial soldiers were given arms and expected \\*nay\\* encouraged to now kill other white men. Not only that, they had deeply personal and intimate contact with the civilian populations  of Europe.   \n\n\nUltimately, though, the sheer destructiveness of the conflict, and the lack of advancements and recognition by Colonial Authorities, led to an increase in the vocalization of anti-colonial sentiment. \n\nHowever, the legacy of the great War is mostly forgotten, cemeteries to askari, porters and fallen colonial troops are mostly ignored. Local ethnic loyalties, pay and professional advancement was what drew most colonial troops to serve in the Great War, and this sentiment reflects on the legacy of the war in the minds of the peoples of Africa. \n\n So thus, while it did plant the seeds of anti-colonialism, the Great War is seen as ultimately a tragedy, a futile waste of resources, lives and time. A colonial war, waged by Europeans, for Europeans at the cost of their colonies. Something that is best left forgotten.   \n\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)  \n\n\nOduntan, Oluwatoyin B. (2010). [*Elite Identity and Power: A Study of Social Change and Leadership among the Egba of Western Nigeria 1860\u20131950*](_URL_5_) (PDF) (PhD). Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University. pp.\u00a0218\u2013232. [OCLC](_URL_4_) [812072776](_URL_6_). Retrieved 12 November 2017.  \n\n\nChafer, Tony (2005). [\"Review: West African Challenge to Empire: Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War\"](_URL_2_) (PDF). **VIII** (2). African Studies Quarterly. [ISSN](_URL_3_) [2152-2448](_URL_7_). Retrieved 12 November 2017.\n\nM'Bokolo, Elikia \"au coeur de l'ethnie ; ethnies, tribalisme et etat en afrique\", 2007\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-5354", "https://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/counterpoints/how-the-great-war-razed-east-africa/", "http://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Chafer-BR-Vol8Issue2.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCLC", "http://www.obafemio.com/uploads/5/1/4/2/5142021/egba_leadership.pdf", "https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/812072776", "https://www.worldcat.org/issn/2152-2448"]]}
{"q_id": "saiq9", "title": "why is it easy to balance a moving two-wheeler?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/saiq9/elif_why_is_it_easy_to_balance_a_moving_twowheeler/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4cgjlr", "c4cgup1", "c4ch0ey", "c4ch3wv", "c4cha7q", "c4chc52", "c4chi97", "c4chmvq", "c4chre3", "c4chuz4", "c4cjf9a", "c4ckna4", "c4clilp", "c4cyo07"], "score": [153, 38, 30, 22, 13, 190, 11, 4, 7, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Long story short, science doesn't fully know.", "Just a heads up, [/r/motorcycles](/r/motorcycles) has shown that it is NOT gyroscopes that keep it upright. Come over and ask it there. Im too drunk to answer, but this is wrong.", "[Here is an interesting article discussing how scientists are not sure how bicycles work.](_URL_0_)", "Quick explanation of why the gyroscope theory is wrong.\n\n1. Gyroscopes depend on the weight of the spinning body, bikes work no matter how light the wheels are.\n2. A gyroscope works at standstill, which would mean that a bike with spinning wheels not touching the floor would stay orientated upwards, again no joy on that. ", "I found that during the period to learn how to ride a bike at a late age (11 years old).  I found peoples explainations of \"just keep trying and eventually it will work\" unsatisfying.\n\nI eventually worked out that when you start riding, your balance is never perfect, you will either start falling to the left or right.  You then need to steer into your fall, e.g. if you fall to the left you must steer to the left.  This causes your weight to shift to the right and therefore will put you back in balance.  These mini falls are constant while riding a bike and while they exaggerated at first soon they become minor and easy to correct.  Your brain works out how to do this without thinking about it.  \n\nAs a small child, learning to ride a bike is harder and to understand this explaination is hard too as it probably took you several weeks to learn how to ride just from trial and error, and basically your brain worked it for you without your conscience mind ever having to understand it.  As an older child learning to ride a bike you can take a more mature approach to solve the problem.  With a better approach, I learned how to ride a bike in a few hours.", "Wow, I came in here expecting an explanation.\n\nI'm quite surprised to find the answer is \"nobody knows\".", "Can someone explain why \"inertia\" isn't the right answer? (assuming we explained inertia for a five year old?)", "A motorcycle balances it self at 7 mph and up.\n\nWhy?  Fuck if I know, but here's a [Wikipedia article about bike and motorbike dynamics.] (_URL_0_)", "The answer is *probably* that it is simply easier to correct balance errors while moving through steering mechanisms.  So much easier that the human brain can do it subconsciously.\n\nBut no one really knows.", "Nobody gave our poor five year old a proper answer yet? shame.\n\nWhen a bike is moving the steer is adjusting it self automatically to help you keep balance. As of how or why it adjust itself tho, nobody really knows. Not even really smart guys know this yet.", "So, this is some basic physics.  Keep in mind that it's easier to balance on a bike as you're moving faster.\n\nTorque is basically the force of a rotating object, and it's dependent on how fast the wheel is spinning.  So, if something is spinning faster (like a bike wheel), it has more torque.  The torque points in a direction perpendicular to the wheel.  The bike tipping over would change the direction of this torque, since the wheel would be pointing a different direction.  Since it requires more force to change the direction of the torque when the wheel is moving quickly, it's harder for the bike to tip over.  This is also why it's easier to ride a bike with no hands when you're going fast.\n\n**tl;dr magic**", "Late entry here. It's because a moving bicycle has negative feedback - as you try to push over a bicycle, it pushes back.\n\nWhen you start falling over on a bicycle, you push the top of the frame of the bicycle to the inside. The frame then pushes on the front wheel in front of the center of the wheel, which causes the front wheel to turn inside. The turned front wheel then pushes on the ground below the center of the bike in the opposite direction of the fall, which tries to right the bike.\n\nI remember reading about a custom built bicycle which had the frame connect to the front wheel behind the wheel's center, which took out this feedback loop. It was impossible to ride.", "Wow, I was ready to bust out my high school Newtonian physics knowledge (\"What, people on Reddit don't know about angular momentum?\") then I read the full gyroscope discussion. Crazy. Glad I didn't post without reading the whole thread.\n\nHere is a [straight dope article](_URL_0_) that counters the gyroscope theory quite well, and, at the end, offers another theory: **trail**\n\n", "check out this paper: _URL_0_\nI did my final year engineering project partially on bicycle stability. This is a linearized model, so it does make some simplifying assumptions, but I think it does a good job of pointing out the nature and complexity of the truth.\n(we're getting pretty far away from an explanation a five year old can understand at this point)\n\nIt's just highly complex. If you don't understand multivariable differential equations and systems theory, you're going to have a bad time understanding what keeps a bicycle upright.\n\nIt stays up because of a complex, coupled relationship between (principally) three variables along with physical properties of the bike:\n\nsteering angle, leaning angle, velocity, and the various masses and moments of inertia of the parts.\n\nSimply writing down Newton's law (F=ma) and the conservation of angular momentum yields a big fat second order linear multivariable differential equation of these variables. \n\nThe most interesting part of this vector equation emerges when the equation is eigendecomposed--that is, the variables are grouped in new proportions with each other to produce a similar vector (representing the same variables) but is treated nicely by the matrices in the equation. \nThese vectors, which are combinations of the three variables, represent the coupled modes of motion that the bike undergoes. The death wobble is a phenomenon most people encounter at some point when riding a bike. The death wobble is an eigenvector--it's a time-dependent combination of the three variables which satisfies the differential equation. This is necessarily a complex eigenvalue because it is an oscillating mode. The real part of the eigenvector dictates whether the magnitude of the oscillations increases (positive feedback) or decreases (negative feedback).\n\nHere's a video of a death wobble increasing in magnitude\n_URL_2_\n\nHere's a video of it decreasing in magnitude\n_URL_3_\nThis is a good example of a self stable bicycle. (It's in the second half of the video)\n\nSo it's about the real part of the eigenvalue. This dictates whether oscillations will amplify, or decay over time. When the real part is negative, perturbations from stability tend to decay back to stable, when they're positive, perturbations from stability tend to amplify.\n\nHere are the eigenvalues vs. bicycle velocity:\n_URL_1_\n\nPast the point where they're all negative, the bike is self-stable\n\nedit: clarification\nedit2: that is not my paper"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028141.700-bike-to-the-drawing-board.html"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2015/why-is-it-easier-to-balance-on-a-moving-bike-than-a-non-moving-one-revisited"], ["http://audiophile.tam.cornell.edu/~als93/Publications/06PA0459BicyclePaperv45.pdf", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BicycleEigenvalues.svg", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU5RH3zaf2Y", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXRQdWG9FuM"]]}
{"q_id": "59871q", "title": "why are us healthcare premiums increasing by 20%? with more people insured, shouldn't the costs go down?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59871q/eli5_why_are_us_healthcare_premiums_increasing_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d96edpw", "d96f1gk", "d96f4om", "d96fwmp", "d96gldp", "d96gywa", "d96krdi", "d96suy1", "d96whbp", "d96xsge", "d9705z3", "d973xrz"], "score": [50, 13, 14, 38, 12, 30, 6, 4, 2, 2, 23, 2], "text": ["No, because people are also being insured that don't pay for it, so rates are being raised (again) to cover those costs. This is why people were against the government interfering with health insurance in the first place. I'm a young man who doesn't smoke and is relatively healthy, but I can't afford health insurance at all. It shouldnt be like that. This is a really good system for people who get subsidies on their insurance, but for everyone else it's much more expensive than it used to be. In my family's case, my parents are paying over double for their insurance than they were a decade ago.\n\nAlso, the cost of health care itself is going up, not 20% as many premiums are going up, but still rising. I'm fairly certain prescription drugs are also rising pretty dramatically.", "Look at who was uninsured though. People that are very high risk (read:high cost) could not get insurance. Now they can. And many people who can't afford health insurance are getting insurance, so those costs have to be made up somewhere. We are adding cost for insurers, so costs have to go up. ", "A good example to see why they went up is the US Dept. Of Education and the subsidized student loan program. What we have see since the founding during the Carter administration is that, in laymen's terms, where there is government, there is profit. The idea behind subsidized student loans is the same as subsidized health care in that the government believes that if they can guarantee someone can have it, and are willing to back it financially, that the company they pay will give them a better bulk deal than what a single citizen could alone. This, they say, works for businesses so it will work for us.\n\nSo let's look at the student loan example. The government said we need more college graduates to stimulate our economy and bring ous out of the recession we are having (see 1970s US economic records for a better picture) so let's send them to school. They did not, saying it would be too intrusive on the schools as a business, set a percentage rate increase table for tuition based on economic growth, the unemployment/underemployment rate, or the job  market. Now, I agree that they have no right to dictate a state institution's fees as they have no specific right, however the universities soon found that the Dept of Education (DofE herein) would lend to nearly anyone and in large amounts far exceeding total schooling costs. Today, we have an education system which, after your average four years, leaves you with a mortgage and no home.\n\n\nNow, hiw this applies to our health care act is simple: chanel out your department names and switch Student for Patient. With the free market not at work to help control cost, the companies signed under the Affordable Care Act can offer what is terrible coverage for standard at double the rate which gets passed on to the taxpayer. Once again, when the government signs most contracts, they set no stipulation on what a price should be because they haven't the right to do so. This gave the drug and insurance companies free reign to raise pricing on their standard customers citing that, under the ACA, there are other options available for a bit less and the companies just raised their profit bar.\n\nBut it is not all win for the insurers. There are extra beurocratic fees and taxes to collect whenever the plan is used(think like a membership fee for the company) and that does increase their costs... costs which are passed on to the user of the plan. \n\n\nBelow is purely my take on the matter and I hope noone takes offense.\n\n\n\n\nNow I do realize some are reading this and are assuming I want the ACA abolished and to some extent you are correct. We can have a health care plan that is, as the supporters want it to be, like that of some Western European countries but we would have to severely raise taxes on EVERY citizen to do so or cut costs from our government. Mathematics and accounting do speak for themselves in this matter and while I would live for everyone to have health care and be a healthier person, unless we change out spending habits and budget management at all levels of government, it is not financially feasible\n\nEDIT: Don't know why I'm being down voted exactly.", "US healthcare premiums are not increasing by 20%.  Most people get healthcare through their employer (or Medicare) and for those people  health premiums are increasing by about 5%.\n\nPeople who are on individual plans (self-employed, unemployed, or underemployed people) had really crappy insurance before Obamacare.  There were basically no rules for insurers - if you get sick, they would drop you.  If you ever had any sort of health issue, they would deny covering you (just because they could).  Now, health insurers have to cover everybody including both the sick and the healthy, so the costs have been going up.  This might be bad for your wallet if you're on the exchanges... but about 90% of people on those exchanges qualify for subsidies from the government, AND those insurance plans are much better than they were a decade ago.  ", "ACA got more people access to healthcare, but it didn't really do anything to address actual medical costs. The costs going up has nothing to do with exchanges or mandates. Even employer-provided health insurance is getting more expensive. My company is self-insured. We pay an insurance company for access to their network and administration, but the actual medical costs are all paid by the company. We're still seeing 15% annual increases.\n\nThe way most countries control costs is through fixing prices. The government or insurance companies together negotiate prices with representatives for healthcare providers. Or in some cases, the government is both the insurance company and provider. In the US however, each insurance company negotiates separately with each healthcare system. They don't have much leverage or incentive to keep prices down. Medicare typically pays providers less than insurance companies do for the same procedures. They can do that because they insure a large fraction of the population. Hospitals can't afford to not accept Medicare. Now imagine how much leverage they would have if they covered 100% of the population. Just going to their current rates would cut costs by 20%.", "One important thing with the premium rates and how they're changing, is just how [varied it is from state to state](_URL_0_):\n\n > With data available for all states, we find that the average change in premiums for the lowest-cost silver plan across all rating areas in all states increased a weighted average of 8.3 percent between 2015 and 2016. However, further exploration reveals that the rates of increase vary tremendously across states and across rating areas within states, with statewide averages as high as 41.8 percent in Oklahoma and as low as -12.1 percent in Indiana. We conclude that a national average rate of premium increase is a fairly meaningless statistic since different markets are having very different experiences.\n\nSo you have some states going up by ridiculous amounts, other very little, and some dropping. The national average number doesn't really tell the story of what's going on. The problem is that some states/counties have very competitive health care exchanges, while others have little to no competition (and as that article notes, some counties with zero plans available). This is why Obama wanted the public option, so there would be a guarantee of competition, or at least a plan available.", "up until a few months ago I worked for a health insurance company pricing their individual insurance.\n\nthere are a few things going on. First it's important to note that the 20% increase you hear about is just referring to insurance plans sold through the exchanges.\n\nthe big issues:\n1) The population is sicker than expected. Part of this is that more people have decided to forego insurance and pay the penalties than was expected. These people tend to be healthier who are cheap to insure. \n\n2) There have been some very expensive drugs that have come out in the past few years. \n\n3) Insurance companies screwed up/didn't know enough to be able to manage the population correctly. Some of this is strategy and some of this is just figuring out the law. A lot of money was lost pursuing poor strategies and operating costs were higher as there was a lot to learn about compliance rules. \n\nThere are some other things, but this is what I see as the largest. The good news is that 1 and 3 will improve without any changes to the law. Controlling drug prices will probably require legislation.", "Consider this:\n\n* While for many of us we are paying a larger portion of our medical coverage, at its peak 66.8% of the non-elderly population received a significant amount of healthcare paid for by their employer.  So there is no accountability between the patient and the healthcare provider for how the third-party insurers are being charged or what how accurately what is being billed.\n\n* Overbilling cost shifting: According to _URL_0_ article [*The Precarious Pricing System For Hospital Services*](_URL_2_): \n\n > The steady tightening of Medicare payments in the late 1980s, as well as low reimbursement levels from state Medicaid programs, imposed financial pressures on hospitals, particularly those with a high proportion of public patients. Hospitals attempted to maintain their profit margins by increasing prices faster than costs to privately insured patients, a practice known as cost shifting. The gap between private payments and costs grew from about 15 percent in the early 1980s to 31.8 percent in 1992 (Exhibit 1\u21d3). \n\n > As private third-party payers consolidated in the early 1990s and their market clout grew, they moved away from negotiating with hospitals based on charges and toward contracts based on lower fee schedules or negotiated rates. Accordingly, billed charges defined prices for a shrinking proportion of patients. Hospitals responded by marking up billed charges even faster than the costs of care for such patients. This scenario resulted in an increasing gap between billed charges and the prices paid by most payers. This differential is reflected in Exhibit 2\u21d3, which shows the trend in the difference between gross revenues (billed charges \u00d7 patient services) and net revenues (actual payments \u00d7 patient services). This gap has grown steadily since the early 1980s and has accelerated in recent years. \n\n* The unintended consequences of Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) contracts enabled fraudulent and inflated billing. According to the J.P. Farley Corporation article [*PPO Contracts Enable Fraudulent Billing Will Result in Their Demise*](_URL_1_) :\n\n > The theory behind a PPO is that providers give up a discount in exchange for more business. However, a plan will not utilize a PPO that does not cover most or all providers out of fear of disrupting patients existing relationships with providers.  PPOs have responded to that desire of the plan by signing up just about all providers. If all providers are covered, signing up with a PPO gives no more business to a provider. The publicly advertised and promoted advantage to the provider to sign up has been removed. In order to make up for the loss of the advertised advantage, the PPOs have included the provision that bills may not be reviewed. We know this is true because we have been involved in more than one dispute with a provider over the right to review a bill that was obviously incorrect. Providers rely on this right granted by the PPO.\n\n* Then you have the trend of hospital chains buying doctor practices according to The Blaze article [*This Emerging Trend in Medicine Threatens to Drive Up Costs to Patients*](_URL_3_) Doctors wanting to relieve themselves of running the practice in order to get back to doing medicine. Its a win-win-win for doctors in that they no longer have to run the business, they capture the equity of their practice and get a big salary as well. The down side is that patients will carry the burden of paying for that.", "Premiums were always going up by almost that cost. The problem is that insurance companies have free reign on charging more money and doctors and hospitals have the same right to charge more. The problem is there are few regulations on cost basis for any type of medical procedure. And with baby boomers aging and to the point where they need the most care and don't have the capital to keep up with rising rates everyone, especially young people are paying for it.\n\nBefore everyone goes crazy over this you have to remember we have no idea what prices would be if there wasn't Obamacare. There is no control group. Could be worse could be better. We need solutions not just arguments in one direction.", "I don't understand how people see the Epi pen prices going up, stories about almost ALL generic drugs being pushed higher, Martin Skrelli saying it is OK to jack up drug prices, they are covered by insurance.  The drugs advertised on TV are usually over $1000 a dose. A day in the hospital for a common surgery is $30,000, and people are shocked to pay $800 a month for insurance. \n\nI owned a small business.  From 2000 to 2005 my rates went from $1200 a month to $1800 a month.   This isn't new.  You just some thing to blame.", "Let's use car insurance as an example to back out of the political portion of the argument. The question is, if more people get insurance, should rates go down? No, because it matters which people get insurance. If more people who use a lot of insurance get coverage, rates will go up.\n\nThat's why teenagers have higher car insurance rates than middle age people, they have less experience and get in more accidents. That's why young males have higher rates than young females, they get in more accidents. So if Geico is just adding young males to the insurance roles, Geico is paying out more, so they have to raise rates. If Geico is adding more middle aged people to their roles, Geico pays less and can lower rates.\n\nWith health insurance, it's a different demographic that uses insurance (old people use more insurance than young because they get sick more often, 20-40 year old women use more insurance than 20-40 year old men because they get pregnant), but its the same concept. ", "At least in the case of the insurer my relative works for, it is due to the fact that the initial rates were estimated, the insurers had no claims experience for this group of new customers, these new customers were largely folks who were previously uninsured, and the sick, now insured they are using vastly more services, also many are heavilly subsidized so are paying very little into system, these companies have a couple years claims experience and are going broke. The insurance companies are going broke. Literally. \n\nThey are federally restricted as to how many cents on a dollar 'profit' they can make and if their group of customers are somehow 'less sick' than their competitors they have to stroke a check to the competitors; even if they are already losing tens of millions if not a hundred million dollars or more.\n\nThese news rises in rate premiums are ACTUALLY based on the FACTS of their customer populations utilizing vastly more services, rates will continue to rise, insurers will continue to pull out/go broke until government takes over in a single payer system at which time many people lose their jobs in insurance.\n\nOh, and and by the way, the ones who are mopping up all the money are the pharmaceutical companies, largely unregulated profits, and with direct to consumer advertising are costing us all MUCH more than necessary.\n\nEntire system is fucked."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/as-obamacare-death-spiral-continues-flailing-institutions-attempt-to-cope.html"], [], ["HealthAffairs.org", "http://www.jpfarley.com/blog/bid/37853/PPO-Contracts-Enable-Fraudulent-Billing-Will-Result-in-Their-Demise", "http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/25/1/45.full", "http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/26/this-emerging-trend-in-medicine-threatens-to-drive-up-costs-to-patients/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5odywm", "title": "Were there presidents disliked by public and media more than trump and what happened to them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5odywm/were_there_presidents_disliked_by_public_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcj6msw"], "score": [2], "text": ["This submission has been removed because it involves current events.  To keep from discussion of politics, we have a [20-year rule](_URL_0_) here.  You may want to try /r/ask_politics or another current-events focused sub. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult [this Rules Roundtable](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_current_events", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wqkl/rules_roundtable_5_the_current_eventsmodern/"]]}
{"q_id": "9v5v2i", "title": "How long does it take for supplements like calcium or vitamin B to be absorbed?", "selftext": "I want to know how long it takes for a supplement to be absorbed into your body and make a difference in someone's body. For example, if someone just discovered they were anemic and we're taking an iron supplement, how long would it take for their iron levels to go back to normal? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9v5v2i/how_long_does_it_take_for_supplements_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e9akgue"], "score": [7], "text": ["I think youre asking two different questions here. In terms of things being absorbed, it varies depending on a multitude of factors. The solubility of the substance, the pH of the stomach, the amount of fatty foods someone has eaten etc. Generally, drugs (illegal and legal) take 20-40 minutes to be absorbed, Id say. \n\nThe other issue is how long they take to start working. While anaemia is treated with iron, it isn't a lack of iron per se that is the problem - it's a lack of haemoglobin. Your body needs iron to make haemoglobin and iron deficiency is one of the more common causes of anaemia (alongside many others). So in the case of anaemia, it will take your body time to make new red blood cells. This is a slow process - think weeks - months to return to normal. If you are deplete of vitamins, it likewise takes a while to replenish your stores as you normally have several month's worth stored up - hence you don't get scurvy if you dont have Vit C for 2 weeks!\n\nHope this answered your question.\nSource: Year 5 Medical Student UK - so don't trust a word I said."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2uvtvp", "title": "According to Wikipedia, the University of Bologna is the oldest university in the world. Why are Islamic schools of learning not counted?", "selftext": "Reading about Al-Azhar University, whose page says it dates back to the tenth century, making it older than Bologna. Why is it not counted as a university?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uvtvp/according_to_wikipedia_the_university_of_bologna/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coc7owu", "coc87kh", "cocfdkr"], "score": [75, 188, 12], "text": ["Because \"university\" is not synonymous with institution of higher education. While there are many different types of higher learning institution and several predate the university, the university has its origins in the High Middle Ages.", "Because many of those universities, including European universities, are quite dissimilar from what we understand to be a university. University and center of learning are not synonymous, and the University of Bologna is the first university in the modern sense of the word, and was the institution to coin the term.\n\nAl-Azhar was originally built as a mosque. Fatimid Caliphs encouraged scholars to study in the mosque, and soon these scholars began to teach classes. On the other hand a university is a guild/corporation-like organization that has a unified curriculum or objective in its classes. There's a group of people who decide \"Okay, this is how this institution will be run, we'll have this guy teach astronomy, this guy teach rhetoric, we'll charge this amount of money etc.\" While Al-Azhar has converted over to a secular university in the modern sense in the last century, the University of Bologna was founded as such, making it the oldest. It was also autonomous, and awarded degrees. Otherwise, we would call the schools of Socrates and other ancient/medieval schools. ", "As has been said before, a university is not the same as a school of higher learning. Because nobody stated explicitly what qualities designate a university, I will give a short definition:\n\nI quote Walter Ruegg, wo paraphrases a university as \"_[...] a community of teachers and taught, accorded certain rights, such as administrative autonomy and the determination and realization of curricula (courses of study) and of the objectives of research as well as the adward of publicly recognized degrees_\" [[volume I, page xix]](_URL_0_).\n\nInstitutes in the Islamic world did e.g. not adward degrees, hence they can not be considered a university. This doesn't devalue the quality of their teaching though! Calling an institution \"university\" is more a question of nomenclature and terminology.\n\n\nSources: The four volume History of the University, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens and Walter R\u00fcegg (eds.), Cambridge University Press, between 1992 and 2011"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://books.google.de/books?id=5Z1VBEbF0HAC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=A+History+of+the+University+in+Europe&amp;hl=de&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=EOPTVLX6O4fcaqm-gGA&amp;ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "142ab9", "title": "How does discovery of levels of hydrogen on Mercury mean there's ice water and not just... hydrogen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/142ab9/how_does_discovery_of_levels_of_hydrogen_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c79d28z"], "score": [4], "text": ["Because Mercury is too small to hold any significant quantity of Hydrogen as a atmosphere. It is constantly stripped away by solar wind. Given its mass and rocky nature, any free hydrogen on Mercury from its formation would have been stripped away hundreds of millions of years ago.\n\nIt is thus replenished by water being broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by the same solar wind. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4hjc8k", "title": "Were there any WWII bomber tail gunner aces?", "selftext": "How effective were the tail / under cockpit gun bubbles of WWII?  Are their many examples of enemy fighter planes being taken down by them? Was it possible to become a \"gunner ace\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hjc8k/were_there_any_wwii_bomber_tail_gunner_aces/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2q6pi4"], "score": [54], "text": ["There are definitely some examples of lost and damaged fighters as a result of rear facing guns.  For example, famous Japanese ace Sakai Saburo was seriously wounded by rear gunners of a flight of SBDs.  However, it's very difficult to compile a statistical measure of the effectiveness of rear turrets.\n\nOne difficulty is that bombers usually flew in formations and an attack by fighters from the rear was generally met by fire rear facing guns in several planes.  Tallying the accounts of many gunners into valid statistical counts of planes damaged or destroyed was very difficult.  For this reason, there are no highly publicized accounts of \"tail gunner aces\", it's too difficult to sort out who hit what when a formation of bombers defends itself.\n\nProbably the most important quality of rear turrets is that they make a \"zero deflection\" shot from directly astern vastly more difficult and dangerous.  Many fighter pilots instead chose a safer \"high deflection\" shot from another angle, which is a much more difficult feat.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5puhx2", "title": "joyful people are said to have a twinkle in their eyes, what physically changes in a depressed or sad person's eyes to create the \"dead eye\" effect?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5puhx2/eli5_joyful_people_are_said_to_have_a_twinkle_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dctyis4", "dctz3j9", "dcud5bu", "dcudr4f", "dcue48x", "dcuekyd", "dcug7w2"], "score": [280, 22, 3, 5, 18, 4, 9], "text": ["Emotionally healthy people emote with their eyes. When they smile, the outer corners of their eyes tend to wrinkle. They raise their eyebrows when they're happy to see you. They look around to see the world and to observe others. Their eyes, in other words, are \"alive.\"\n\nDepressed people either don't feel these things, or spend so much time not feeling them that they lose touch with how they'd usually express them. A depressed person will smile with their mouth, but not their eyes. They won't move their gaze around to see the whole picture - they don't care. They basically use their eyes strictly as a tool to grab certain information and not trip over things. They might not even be paying attention with their eyes, or with any of their senses. They might point their eyes at you just so you'll think they're fine. In other words, their eyes are \"dead.\"", "My eyes used to sparkle.\nI can't remember how I made them do that but I have been depressed for twenty years.  \nIt's easy to forget.", "I feel like unless you've been blindsided by having your heart ripped out by someone you were in real love with that you will see that same look in people or through peoples facades of being okay. ", "Just look at an air hostess on a commuter flight.  You will see dead eyes on a face forced to smile.", "That twinkle comes from natural lubricant on the eye's surface. When eyes connect exactly with someone else's, they reflect light back and forth creating a sparkle/reflective effect. When people are happy they have a greater likelihood of making more eye contact, depressed people tend to avoid it and thus no sparkle while tired and worn out eyes will be less lubricated and other signs of fatigue such as redness or dark circles will offset the twinkle too. Additionally, when you smile, you squint, increasing the depth of the lubricant, by reducing the surface area of the eyeball with your eyelids increasing the amount of sparkle on the eye.", "Any literal twinkle/sparkle must come from reflected light. In most situations, lighting cones from above. In order for you to see a reflection of that light on someone's eyes, you have to see a portion of their eye that is on an angle somewhere between the angle facing the light and the angle facing your eyes. Depressed people tend to look downwards more than up, and tend to have their eyes less than fully open/half lidded. On average, the angles that would show a reflected light are covered by their eyelids or shadowed due to their downcast gaze.\n\nAdd this to the general lack of energy and emotion in their eyes and you get the dead eyed effect.", "I'm surprised no one's mentioned pupil dilation. The \"thousand mile stare\" is mostly unfocused eyes with the pupils dilated.  The lids also stay in a neutral position. It looks like \"giving up\" because our brains can recognize there's no effort being expended by the eyes.\n\nA normal \"happy\" expression involves a very slight narrowing of the eyelids and the pupils narrowed to a near focus.\n\n\"Dead eyes\" and \"twinkling eyes\" aren't so much expressions as micro expressions- the language is just our way to articulate recognition of changes that are so subtle that they've been borderline subconscious until very recently.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8z1i1m", "title": "if the blue pigment is so uncommon in nature, where did we get the pigment to create paints in times such as the renaissance", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8z1i1m/eli5_if_the_blue_pigment_is_so_uncommon_in_nature/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2fb3yu", "e2fb6uk", "e2fba2k", "e2fbis4", "e2fbyzy", "e2fi9db", "e2fiygx", "e2fkb0v", "e2fkgi7", "e2fkt8q", "e2fkxgq", "e2fmc52", "e2fmvdr", "e2fnsft", "e2fpbpy", "e2fqe46", "e2freyy", "e2fscra", "e2fsm1v", "e2fxlq2", "e2fyzrb", "e2g16x4", "e2g1bg7", "e2g306l", "e2g4gnb", "e2g5c0e", "e2g6olu", "e2g7343", "e2g7sdt", "e2h32zl"], "score": [5764, 357, 77, 293, 2981, 3, 3, 52, 28, 13, 215, 17, 6, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Pigments (such as paint) were made primarily from lapis lazuli,c cobalt, and azurite. Which are all minerals. Dyes (for clothes and such) were made from plants such as woad. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "Also blue wasn\u2019t nearly as rare as purple and yellow.  \n\nYellow remains one of the more expensive colors today.", "It's not that blue pigment is uncommon. It's that it's uncommon in living things. Almost every living thing that's blue is blue because of something called [Rayleigh scattering,](_URL_0_) which is where light bounces around for a certain color.\n\nIt's easier for pigments like in paints. *Lapis lazuli* has been around since at least Roman times, and blue sapphires too..", "Actually blue pigment has been rare up until the manufacturing of synthetic pigments. Most of the blue you can see in old paintings is actually black mixed with white (it looks like grayish blue and your eye perceives it as blue because the painter has surrounded it with warm tones). True blue pigment, that was acquired from semiprecious stone lapis lazuli, was very expensive and so was mostly used in church paintings (for the most important figures) or very wealthy commissioner orders. There have been different minerals used as blue too but ultramarine is the most remarkable and stable. \nThere\u2019s also the indigo dye, that was used in dying fabrics and still is. but thats not for paints because it needs substrate to hold onto (which is how synthetic paints also work). Crushed minerals did the work back in the day.", "\u201cUltramarine\u201d (blue) was one of the most expensive and rare pigments in the past, and typically saved for religious portraits. It was made from crushed lapis lazuli that was mined \u201cbeyond the sea (ultra-marine)\u201d in Afghanistan. \n\nThere were other blue pigments like cobalt blue used in Chinese porcelain, but a cheap synthetic blue wouldn\u2019t be developed until around the age of the Impressionists. \n\n", "Usually lapis, which they'd import from Afghanistan. And until the development of Prussian Blue in the early 1700s, that was pretty much it.", "Any one know about the clay that the Nahuatl  people used to mine. It was apparantly used as a blue pigment or color on murals and such.( don't know much about subject).", "There are a couple places.\n\nLapiz lazuli, and Cobalt are the ones that come immediately to mind.\n\nAnd they where expensive\n\nPurple and bright yellow where even harder to make.\n\nThere is a reason purple was considered the color of the gods in many places, and only Kings or members of high office could wear it or sometimes only they could afford it.", "Can confirm, lapis and azurite are the most traditionally used in paint(fun fact that's why Mary almost always had a blue robe, it was the most opulent color-a way to show richness while not draping her in jewels) dyes like indigo can be used in fabric but if you make paint out of them they're not light fast so they had rather quickly(think blue jeans).\n\n\\*However\\* if you use a technique invented by the myans, you can bind that dye to a mineral/clay and get some beautiful results. Many companies sell \"Mayan\" color ranges, and that's how it is achieved.\n\nI work at a watercolor company and I \u2665\ufe0f my job:).", "They discovered that when vinegar (acetic acid) was exposed to air near lead or copper it would create a powder over the metal, lead would produce a white powder and copper a blue / green powder. The best way to concentrate the reaction was to put a lead and copper rod in a pot with vinegar at the bottom. These were discovered in Iraq and assumed that the ancient inhabitants had the technology to create batteries. 'Baghdad Battery'", "I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Egyptian blue. Widely considered the first synthetic pigment it far preceded the Renaissance era. It's made from calcium copper silicate: _URL_0_", "Purple was even rarer because it had to be \u201cmilked\u201d from tiny sea snails that only lived in certain parts of the Mediterranean Sea.", "In Guatemala on the colonial age was the best producer of Indigofera tinctoria \u00cdndigo, the plant where we get the color blue from. At some moment it was the best income for the colony. The tint was exported to Spain and it was expensive I think, can't remember. ", "Fun fact: Prussian blue is produced by oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts.  The inside of Nazi gas chambers turned blue due to the reaction of the cyanide gas and the steel walls.", "The pigment was uncommon in certain parts. India for example has always been a centre of blue/indigo dye production. Most early civilizations cultivated it and with time exported it too.", "Prussian Blue was invented I think in the mid nineteenth century.\n\nIt was used a lot in Japanese woodblock prints.\n\nThere is some debate as to whether or not there were laws called \"sumptuary laws\" that required its use in order to preserve the inventory of rarer colors.\n\nPrussian Blue is made in part with cyanide.\n\nThose Germans are so clever that way.", "I know this! Lapis Lazuli! Lapis Lazuli is a really cool stone which is what was used back in olden times to create the blue dye you see in old works of arts. And because it was such a precious commodity people used it for the most prestigious of subjects. Hence why many of the paintings of the Virgin Mary are depicted with her in blue!!!\n\nSide note: many lapis lazuli stones contain flecks of gold in them further increasing the beauty of the subject painted with them!", "In Renaissance times, lapis lazuli (a semiprecious stone) had been recently introduced into the Western European countries, because it was imported and rare it was extremely expensive but people were willing to pay a great price to put it into their religious paintings. Originally lapis lazuli is from the middle east and can be seen in ancient works such as the [Lyres of Ur](_URL_0_). \n\nPs. If you're interested in the making of blue you should also check out Yves Klein, a contemporary artists who made his own blue pigment that keeps the blue from being diluted. His blue pieces are quite beautiful!", "Boiling woad plants gets pigment but it stinks to do the process. Did it in my garage once and wasn't worth it for the strength of colour.", "Do you even minecraft brah? Lapis dude.", "If you played minecraft, you would know this.. lapis lazuli!!! (also other mineral pigments like cobalt) Shout out to blue wool", "Not necessarily an answer to your question, but a really neat read on the topic. \n\nThe way that nature makes the color blue (when it does) is often unlike any other color:\n\n_URL_0_", "On top of what people have said, *because* it was so rare, blue was the most expensive color, which is why it's all over the vatican.", "There are naturally occurring blue pigments from minerals and plants. It\u2019s one of the reasons blues and purples were associated with royalty. They were the only people that could afford it. ", "Some shades of blue, red and purple came from a few species of snail in the Mediterranean sea which were crushed and the fermented for 10 days.  There is a special compound in the snail that was needed.  I remember learning this while watching a documentary.  Here is the wiki on the process.\n\n_URL_0_", "I don\u2019t know if other people have said this, but the reason that Mary in religious painting is so commonly depicted wearing blue is because it was the most expensive colour, and she was considered the most important person. Or any other character in very early paintings, if they\u2019re wearing blue, they\u2019re very important. ", "Azurite and cobalt have been used for blue since the Minoan period. During the renaissance they used lapis lazuli. But it was super expensive so they used it mainly for things like the robe of the Madonna. It represented purity.\n\nPS - I could answer this coz I was at the minoan Palace of Knossos just two weeks ago. It was mind blowing! Totally recommend it! ", "Wode, (like in Braveheart) which comes from Isatis tinctoria  also called dyer's *woad*, or glastum, a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. Also known as Asp of Jerusalem. *Woad* is the name of a *blue* dye derived from the ground leaves.  Later it was mostly replaced by  ***Indigofera tinctoria***, also called **true indigo.**", "Minerals. Uncommon doesn\u2019t mean impossible to find. Thats why ultra marine is / was so expensive.  You needed to grind the pigment from a mineral (lapis lazuli) mined in Afghanistan (going off of memory, dont feel like googling, im 90% sure thats where the bulk of lapis came from)\n\nOther places human got their blue fix from were vegetable dyes such as woed and indigo. Another source was the element cobalt.\n\nHard to find. Uncommon. But not impossible to get your hands on if you had the money ", "It's worth noting that the *Indigofera tinctoria* plant (true indigo) native to India has been a source of blue (Indigo) pigment since ancient times. It was traded as a luxury commodity and used in paintings, cosmetics, and as a natural dye. If I'm not mistaken *Indigo* means 'from India' or a variation of it. Precious and rare, Indigo came to be known as 'blue gold'.\n\nEdit: Typos"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_blue"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyres_of_Ur"], [], [], [], ["https://www.gotscience.org/2016/11/nature-uses-physics-create-color-blue/"], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2bdict", "title": "how did america not get in trouble for violating pakistani air space when we killed osama?", "selftext": "Didn't we essentially invade (albeit briefly) an \"ally\" to do some straight up killing? How did we not get in big international trouble for that? \n\nIf the Canadians briefly flew some stealth helicopters into Wisconsin to have some SEALS blow away a couple wanted Canadian criminals, we'd have a real big problem with it. \n\nI guess I'm wondering if there is a big double standard for us. \n\nEDIT: Should have said \"USA\" instead of \"America\" \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bdict/eli5_how_did_america_not_get_in_trouble_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj48x6d", "cj48xtp", "cj48zwd", "cj4924g", "cj49fgc", "cj4aop2", "cj4eshp", "cj4onr5", "cj4pe83"], "score": [43, 5, 20, 5, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["America pretty much does what the fuck it wants.", "the guy with the gun makes the rules.", "The US has some wide-ranging abilities to use aircraft in Pakistan.\n\nWhat the fuck are the Pakistanis gonna do\n\nPakistan is quite a bit more embarrassed that Osama was just chilling there, than the US went in and got him, but they are pretty embarrassed about that too, their air defenses and response times just got laughed at by the rest of the world -- and their enemy, India.\n\nSomething surely happened afterwards between the US and Pakistan's govts regarding this, behind closed doors--- Pakistan makes nothing about its cooperation with the US public.\n\nThere are unconfirmed reports certain trusted Pakistani govt or military people knew this or a similar operation may take place inside Pakistans border if Osama was found.", "Who would we get in trouble with? The only organizations on Earth with the power to punish the US are themselves run by the US. It might not be fair, but fairness and hypocrisy are meaningless words in global politics. We're in the age of Pax Americana. America makes the rules. ", "In theory you're right. In practice: those with might make right. \n\nThe US gives Pakistan billions of dollars a year. That's not an exaggeration :-p And we help train their military, we help quell people who threaten them, we help support them, etc. \n\nPakistan is free to complain and to refuse cooperation with the US. But doing so would wreck hell on their economy (thus their military) and everything else.\n\nIt's much more beneficial for the folks in charge to just accept drone strikes and airspace incursions and whatnot. \n\n--------------\n\nThe US and Canada don't -- as far as I know -- have any such problems. Because we cooperate. We don't cooperate because the current 538 federally elected officials feel good. We cooperate because it is in our interest to do so.\n\nPakistan's government is free to do whatever it wants. But when it gets billions of dollars a year and support from someone then they aren't likely to make a fuss about it. ", "the US spends more on its military than the next 20-odd countries put together as well as maintaining a GDP comparable to the entirety of the EU.\n\nstated simply, the US can only be held accountable when it chooses. anyone who tries risks being crushed economically and/or militarily. ", "I remember Pakistan raising a fuss about it, and the US ignoring it.\nAs said by others, the US isn't part of the ICC, so they can pretty much do what the fuck they want. Who is going to stand up to them?", "Your mom says to stay out of her room when she is away. Your older brother goes in there anyway. \n\nIf you tattle on him, you know he will beat you up.\n\nSo your brother doesn't get in trouble for going into your mom's room when she is away because you choose to not bring his actions to the attention of the proper authorities.", "Even if whatever supranational organization the US is in kicks them out for their actions, it won't affect them one bit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kdpzy", "title": "Can we use electricity from renewable energy to create a liquid fuel we can easily store and use?", "selftext": "When we burn gasoline the energy is released as heat, and we are left with carbon dioxide, water, and other chemicals.  Would it be possible to take atmospheric carbon dioxide, water, and electricity to create some sort of hydrocarbon we can easily store.  I understand there would be energy lost in the conversion, but there is also a lot lost in transmission over long distances in a grid too, and this allow not only storage of off-hour energy, but provide liquid fuel that works with existing cars that does not add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.\n\nEdit: To clarify, I am referring to a liquid hydrocarbon like gasoline, not hydrogen.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kdpzy/can_we_use_electricity_from_renewable_energy_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2jgkkp", "c2jheq7", "c2jjbfz", "c2jk2pj", "c2jgkkp", "c2jheq7", "c2jjbfz", "c2jk2pj"], "score": [3, 5, 2, 3, 3, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Can we use electricity from renewable energy to perform the electrolysis of water to create hydrogen fuel we can store?\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nI'm not sure if this link is relevant and I may be misunderstanding the science, can anyone help me understand this better?", "It is a very long and tedious process.  You might be able to start with water and carbon dioxide and do a water gas shift reaction to create H2 (Hydrogen gas) and [syngas](_URL_0_) CO (carbon monoxide).  From syngas, you can use the [Fisher-Tropsch](_URL_1_) process to make your liquid fuel.  However, this process is far from efficient overall.  Doesn't make sense economically so it doesn't happen on huge scales in the US.", "I think the reason everyone is saying hydrogen is because it is probably the easiest fuel to get if you have excess electricity. You simply put two electrodes in water and start generating hydrogen gas! \n\nYou're right, there are infrastructure, storage, and fuel cell challenges, but these are obstacles, not impossibilities, and I find it hard to believe that humanity will not someday go to hydrogen as a fuel storage source. ", "Related note:  \n\nThe dominant reason for liquid hydrocabons being used as fuel for cars is because of its energy/volume ratio at stable/safe pressures.  Chemically, hydrogen gas has the highest exothermic output per unit mass, however, storing sufficient amounts of hydrogen gas for similar range of travel as most vehicles is unsafe due to the pressures it must be held at to get the volume down to a reasonable value.  \n\nWith that noted, yes, we can use any energy source to drive production of liquid hydrocarbons using environmental CO2, water, etc... to produce the hydrocarbons.  The problem is that the overall process becomes extremely ineffecient, so the demand for sufficient renewable energy sources would be nearly impossible to acheive.  \n\nFor example, burning one gallon of gasoline releases X amount of thermal energy.  Some fraction of the energy is converted into mechanical energy to make your car go, typically around 10% for the net process in an IC engine.  In order to take all the products from burning that gasoline and reassemble them into the original gallon of gasoline, you must expend at least 100% of the energy released by burning the fuel.  As a result, for every gallon of gasoline used in a vehicle, you must utilize at least 10*X as much energy from a renewable eenrgy source to rebuild the gallon of gasoline.  \n\nIf we had source of nearly inexaustable energy such as fusion for example, we could do this all day long and have 0 net emmisions from hydrocarbon consumption.", "Can we use electricity from renewable energy to perform the electrolysis of water to create hydrogen fuel we can store?\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nI'm not sure if this link is relevant and I may be misunderstanding the science, can anyone help me understand this better?", "It is a very long and tedious process.  You might be able to start with water and carbon dioxide and do a water gas shift reaction to create H2 (Hydrogen gas) and [syngas](_URL_0_) CO (carbon monoxide).  From syngas, you can use the [Fisher-Tropsch](_URL_1_) process to make your liquid fuel.  However, this process is far from efficient overall.  Doesn't make sense economically so it doesn't happen on huge scales in the US.", "I think the reason everyone is saying hydrogen is because it is probably the easiest fuel to get if you have excess electricity. You simply put two electrodes in water and start generating hydrogen gas! \n\nYou're right, there are infrastructure, storage, and fuel cell challenges, but these are obstacles, not impossibilities, and I find it hard to believe that humanity will not someday go to hydrogen as a fuel storage source. ", "Related note:  \n\nThe dominant reason for liquid hydrocabons being used as fuel for cars is because of its energy/volume ratio at stable/safe pressures.  Chemically, hydrogen gas has the highest exothermic output per unit mass, however, storing sufficient amounts of hydrogen gas for similar range of travel as most vehicles is unsafe due to the pressures it must be held at to get the volume down to a reasonable value.  \n\nWith that noted, yes, we can use any energy source to drive production of liquid hydrocarbons using environmental CO2, water, etc... to produce the hydrocarbons.  The problem is that the overall process becomes extremely ineffecient, so the demand for sufficient renewable energy sources would be nearly impossible to acheive.  \n\nFor example, burning one gallon of gasoline releases X amount of thermal energy.  Some fraction of the energy is converted into mechanical energy to make your car go, typically around 10% for the net process in an IC engine.  In order to take all the products from burning that gasoline and reassemble them into the original gallon of gasoline, you must expend at least 100% of the energy released by burning the fuel.  As a result, for every gallon of gasoline used in a vehicle, you must utilize at least 10*X as much energy from a renewable eenrgy source to rebuild the gallon of gasoline.  \n\nIf we had source of nearly inexaustable energy such as fusion for example, we could do this all day long and have 0 net emmisions from hydrocarbon consumption."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch"], [], [], ["http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8o2ajp", "title": "how does overtime work? how is it profitable for a company to pay it and why is it offered?", "selftext": "Thinking of working for a private ambulance company and they offer a lot of overtime (up to 60+ hours a week). Why would they pay me 1.5x my base salary during my overtime hours, when they could just have someone else do the work for 1x? In addition, why not just give me the extra hours and pay me 1x as usual? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8o2ajp/eli5_how_does_overtime_work_how_is_it_profitable/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0040t4", "e0041og", "e0047hs", "e004gxu", "e005k6u"], "score": [8, 4, 10, 52, 6], "text": ["I believe that less employees equals less secondary costs, such as health insurance\n\nAlso, how many vehicles do they have in their fleet? Another fully equipped ambulance may run hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they may only have enough employees to staff the ambulances they have. \n\nThey may be waiting for enough profit to but another one. Then they can hire the other person and your overtime may go down.", "Because in America, employers are required to pay hourly workers time-and-a-half if they work more than 40 hours in a week. They\u2019re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts", "In the US, hours worked over 40 in the defined work week must be paid at time and a half. Some states, CA, require overtime pay after 8 hours in a day. It is more efficient to pay overtime because additional employees cost more to train, onboard, recruit. Employer would have to pay more in benefits and employer tax as well. It's easier to manage a smaller team as well. And there are many more factors relating to labor I haven't mentioned. ", "Paying overtime past 40 hours a week is required by law, otherwise companies wouldn't do it. People died to get labor laws like this to be passed so don't take it lightly.\n\nStaff cost money to train and maintain. Secondary costs like training, benefit, uniforms, insurance, etc cost money and the company has likely done the math and determined that paying staff overtime is cheaper in the long run then hiring more staff.\n\nIt's also possible they are just badly understaffed and have to pay overtime because they can't get/retain enough people.", " >   Why would they pay me 1.5x my base salary during my overtime hours, when they could just have someone else do the work for 1x?\n\n* because they aren't going to pay that all the time, just some of the time, and don't want to hire the extra people\n*  it can be hard to find and retain qualified people\n* there is no easy way to fit 24x7 coverage into 40-hour work weeks, overtime can be more cost-effective than having too much overlap between shifts (this happens with nurses a lot)\n* even though they are paying you more in salary, the cost of your benefits remains fixed, making fewer people on overtime more cost effective in some situations\n\n >   In addition, why not just give me the extra hours and pay me 1x as usual?\n\nUS labor law requires any non-exempt worker to be paid overtime past 40 hours.  Most all shift work is non-exempt."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "w4hkl", "title": "Does taking a shower after sun exposure reduce the amount of radiation on your skin(and possibly decreasing the intensity of a sun burn)?", "selftext": "I was told by my parents during childhood that if you take a shower after more lengthy sun exposures you \"stop the 'cooking' process\" associated with solar radiation. How much of this (if any) is true? How exactly does solar radiation interact with skin cells?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/w4hkl/does_taking_a_shower_after_sun_exposure_reduce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5a5by8", "c5a5k5n", "c5adg13"], "score": [2, 6, 2], "text": ["i doubt that that is true. a sunburn is the result of cell- and DNA-damage caused by UV light. Warmth is mere a side effect during the exposure (infrared in the sunlight) and afterwards it's a sign of cell-repair mechanisms. To support the healing process you can apply moisturizers...", " >  How exactly does solar radiation interact with skin cells?\n\nEnergetic photons (i.e., UV light) can cause chemical bonds to break, or excite electrons to a more energetic level, thus making bond breakage and formation more likely. [DNA can be damaged in this manner](_URL_1_) by forming bonds where they're not supposed to. This can be repaired, or if the damage is too severe, the cell undergoes [apoptosis](_URL_0_). If these regulation mechanisms fail, cancer may result.\n\nNotice that the damaging part occurs only when there is UV light. As soon as that is removed, there is no further damage that could be done by that mechanism.", "There is a little bit of truth to this. When you get a lot of sun, you are damaging your skin cells by directly damaging it's DNA. In response to this, your skin cells release a lot of cytokines (signaling molecules) that starts the repair process and tells other cells it's damaged. This can lead to inflammation, which is why your skin still feels hot when sunburned even after you get in the shade. Taking a shower, especially a cold one, will deter the inflammation response.\n\nThe inital damage to the DNA is already done though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimidine_dimers"], []]}
{"q_id": "16yrbw", "title": "What does it mean when people say a particle is an excitation of a field? And does that field physically \"exist\" in any way apart from its associated particles? ", "selftext": "Or is it more of just a volume of space in which particles have the potential of existing? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16yrbw/what_does_it_mean_when_people_say_a_particle_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c80nqys", "c80prgw", "c80qui1"], "score": [5, 3, 2], "text": ["The universe, in a way, is just a whole bunch of fields that couple variously, and are defined for all points in space. The EM field, for instance, exists everywhere, even if it only has nonzero values in some specific locations. At a very small level, these nonzero field values are mathematically represented by things that look an awful lot like quantum particles, and in the aggregate, can sum to classical kinds of electromagnetic fields. \n\nSo there are electron fields and quark fields and strong force \"color\" fields, and so on and so forth.", "A field is a mathematical object that can have a value at any point in space.  For example, the temperature of the ocean could be a scalar field (it has a value at each point in the ocean), and the flow of heat could be a vector field (a magnitude and direction at each point in space).\n\nSimilarly, you can think about waves in a slinky.  The stretch of the slinky at each point in space could be the field, and waves in the slinky would be excitations of the field.  In this case, you might get confused and say, well hey, the slinky is a physical object, so isn't the field a physical object as well?  The answer is no, because the slinky isn't the field.  The field is the thing that tells you how stretched the slinky is in different places -- it's a mathematical description of space.\n\nWe can also talk about things like the electromagnetic field, but it's the same idea.  Electromagnetic fields can exist anywhere, and photons are excitations of that field.\n\nI'm not a particle physicist, but this is the way I understand things to be true from a materials standpoint.", "On the \"excitation\" part: you may know that a quantum field has a certain minimum energy density, the zero point energy. An excitation in the field is when it has more than that minimum energy in some region. Certain kinds of excitations are what we know as particles."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jmm4x", "title": "why are there so many chinese buffets and restaurants in the us with nearly identical menus and decors that don't appear to be franchises? (super china buffet, china 1, super china, etc)", "selftext": "Seriously, there are like 10 of these in my small-ish town. What gives? How can they all be so similar? Even down to the pictures on the menu boards!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jmm4x/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_chinese_buffets_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbg61q0", "cbg6b4r", "cbg6c9p", "cbg6rig", "cbg7bwi", "cbg7exk", "cbg820v", "cbg9fu1", "cbg9i0g", "cbgarj9", "cbgekwq", "cbgfxzn", "cbgggh3", "cbgleh6"], "score": [30, 169, 220, 13, 5, 8, 53, 8, 8, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["Although this video (15 mins long Ted Talk) will not completely answer your question, it still has a lot of relevant information about this subject:\n\n\n_URL_0_", "I can't remember the documentary but there's a place in New York that provides standard menus and food for chinese buffets. Basically they give you everything you need. \n\nThe short answer, all those restaurants are in a sense franchises of the same wholesale distributor. \n", "There is not a huge market for chinese restaurant decorations so there are limited manufacturers of decorations and menu photos. Everyone buys from the same supplier and they all end up looking the same.\n\nSimilar to the blue greek Anthora cups that are served everywhere in NYC or how every frat party uses red solo cups despite frat parties not being franchises. Hundreds of frat party planners go to hundreds of stores and end up making the same decision. Red solo cups are the right price and size for a party. So everyone looks the same because they are all making the same decision despite being different people.", "As I understand it they are semi-franchises, they all buy their pre-made food (egg rolls, sauces  etc...) from the same few suppliers but they own their restaurant, name and assets.  ", "I have the same question about Mexican restaurants. I've been to dozens most likely in different cities with different names, and every time without exception I can order a #5 and get two enchiladas, rice and beans.", "_URL_0_\n\nGood book answers this question and lots of other questions about chinese restaurants. ", "So a lot of the owners of these restaurants speak little to no English and when the come here they need to work to pay off debt and support their family. Some start their own restaurants while some work for those restaurants. When you build a restaurant you go to the Chinese restaurant supplier for all the equipment and decor because the language barrier. They then set up the restaurant with similar menus because the food are proven to be appealing to Americans and because Americans are use to the same \"Chinese food\". That is why you won't see \"real\" Chinese food unless u go to Chinatown or to China, its about the demographic the food is serving to.  ", "At one time a Chinese Restaurant that served authentic Chinese food opened in my home town. The owners were clueless as to what Fried Rice was... They tried to assimilate but ultimately failed. Appears Americans don't want Chinese Food, they want \"Chinese\" Food.\n", "It's the easiest way for them to make money. Although the idea of \"trying new food\" might be appealing, there'll still be quite a bit of confusion involved, whereas if customers know everything that's available, then they can select their meal faster.\n\nWhy do fast food franchises have similar products? Wendies, Burger King, and McDonalds all serve hamburgers (albeit different flavors). The same applies to Americanized Chinese restaurants.\n\nTake note that if you're a non-Chinese, restaurants (not buffets) will serve you Americanized Chinese food, whereas if you're Chinese and specifically order real Chinese dishes, a lot of them will make them for you (at least, that's how it works in Canada).\n\nSource: I'm a **C**anadian **B**orn **C**hinese, my uncle's family owns Americanized Chinese restaurants in San Antonio, Texas, and I've worked there for a few summers.\n\n[Hung Fong Restaurant](_URL_0_) \n\n[Ding How Restaurant](_URL_1_) ", "For that matter, why do all nail salons have the same font of sign as all these chinese restaraunts? Red lettering with a plain font..yo know what I'm referring to.", "I'm really into Augusten Burroughs right now...  I just read \"Magical Thinking\" and in this quote he is talking about his boyfriend at the time describing the chinese food in NY.  I thought it was pretty hilarious.\n    \n\n\u201cThen he explains Chinese food in Manhattan to me: 'See the way it works is, there's one central location out on Long Island where all this stuff is made. Then it's piped into the city through a series of underground pipes that run parallel to the train and subway tracks. The restaurants then just pull a lever. One lever for General Tso's chicken, another for beef with broccoli sauce. It's like beer; it's on tap.' It's amazing how convincing he is when he says this. There's no pause in his description, nowhere for him to stop and think, to make this up as he goes along. It's as though he's simply repeating something he read in the Times yesterday. This makes me love him more than I did just five minutes ago.\u201d - Augusten Burroughs ", "Because Chinese restaurants are opened:\n\n* By Chinese people,\n* For white people who are largely ignorant of China, and\n* need to understand what they're looking at.\n\nThe biggest factor is that the Chinese, culturally, love systems and methods. They find something that works and they use it and expand on it and discard what doesn't work. All cultures do that do a degree, and it also happens naturally in most pursuits, but Chinese culture really clings to a working system and tries hard not to deviate more than it tries *to* innovate. Think Kung Fu - the same systems for many, many generations. There are variations of course, but someone practicing 'northern crane' will be learning the same 'northern crane' that his great great great grandfather did, and even be learning it the same way.\n\nNow add to that the fact that a great deal of Chinese restaurants in America are opened by immigrants that are thrust into an alien environment and you have a method for, \"Stick with what works!\" and what works?\n\nWhat works is a storefront that says, this is a Chinese restaurant. You know what you expect inside. Come, eat noodles. What works is recipes everyone knows already. We're stupid Americans, we want what we know. Even in NYC with the world's greatest variety of everything you're going to find, in most takeout Chinese places, 99% the same menu even if the names are different. General Tso vs. General Tsang? Same dish. \n\nIt's the same reason that you're not going to find wildly different Chinese laundromats, or fast food places for that matter.", "Also because white people all love the SAME goddamn Chinese food. Notice how Chinese people don't go to said buffets-- even if they do they avoid cheap, worthless foods like the lo mein, pork fried rice, and general tso's and instead beeline straight for the seafood--the only thing worth any money. Gotta get yo money's worth yo.", "They are not similar, they just all look alike because we are not chinese"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6MhV5Rn63M"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Fortune-Cookie-Chronicles-Adventures/dp/B003P2VDF6"], [], [], ["http://www.yelp.ca/biz/hung-fong-chinese-restaurant-san-antonio", "http://dinghowsa.com/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jwt7v", "title": "why do sexual orientation studies primarily focus on gay men and not gay women?", "selftext": "Edit:Some of you are questioning whether or not my premise is even true...\nSource:_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jwt7v/eli5why_do_sexual_orientation_studies_primarily/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clfs5d6", "clfspye", "clfu3ig", "clg4eq7", "clg6vfk"], "score": [12, 16, 7, 3, 2], "text": ["I don't know that this is even true. Do you have a basis for your premise here?", "If the premise is true, it may be because masculinity is (in some cases) more rigidly defined, leading to a greater conflict between people who insist on traditional masculinity and males who don't adhere to it than between people who are fond of traditional femininity and females who don't adhere to it.", "That study is lumps women and bisexuals together as an unaccessed group, so it is not clear how big the divide is when bisexuals are excluded.\n\nAlso, research investigate difference between gay and straight populations might make a methodological decision to exclude bisexuals.  Since female sexuality tends to be more flexible, a greater portion of women identify themselves as bisexual, which might cause more to be excluded from such studies.", "My guess would be that it's because men have traditionally been used for testing studies. This is due to the historical stereotype of men protecting women and children from danger. Additionally, men have been more typically used for experimentation and study because they are unable to get pregnant, taking out potential variables and in some cases danger. Another factor could be the sexualization of lesbians in society. Sex appeal takes away the perceived validity of scientific results as it can come off as gimmicky.", "gay men are more common. or at least more openly available. you can poke around for the surveys and studies, but they universally find the LGBT community has a disproportionate male population.\n\nthe other reason is that gay men have been the focus of much more hate. the attitude persists to this day. people are more OK with lesbians than gay men. this also means the early inquiries, the work of freuds of the world, spent more time and energy on men than women. it snowballs into today where we have more data to work with because of the history. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8738744"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4eezi1", "title": "Given N teams who play an equal amount of games and the better team always wins, how many games would it take to determine an accurate ranking?", "selftext": "If: 1) The games played were completely random, 2) The games played were purposefully selected before any games were played, 3) If the games played were deterimined after every game was played.\n\nWhat if, instead of obtaining 100% accuracy, you played a certain amount of games until you hit 50%, 90%, or another percent confidence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4eezi1/given_n_teams_who_play_an_equal_amount_of_games/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1zuv60"], "score": [10], "text": ["Your question can be restated as: sort a list of N items, based on a comparison operation. This is a well-studied problem in computer science, although they usually focus on scenario 3--future comparisons are based on previous results. In this case, the number of required games is proportional to N log(N). This answer is derived from two facts. \n\n1. If there are N teams, then there are N! (N-factorial) possible orderings (rankings) of the N teams.\n1. If you play K games, and each game has 2 possible outcomes, then there are 2^K possible outcomes for the set of all games together.\n\nWe need to play enough games that we can distinguish between every possibly ranking. In other words, we need K such that 2^K  > = N! . Solving for K is difficult (you have to use something called Stirling's Approximation), but the result is K is approximately N log(N).\n\nI suspect, but am not 100% sure, that the answer to scenario 2 is the same. The same identity holds, but designing the algorithm is harder.\n\nScenario 1 is difficult. The upper-bound is that there are (N^2 - N)/2 possibly matches. I think that you might need to play very close to that number, on average, in order to resolve any potential ambiguities. But that's just my intuition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "lm5y4", "title": "deep web?", "selftext": "Someone posted this pic in another thread, and I am confused. _URL_0_ How much of that is accurate? How does it work? \n\nThanks. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lm5y4/eli5_deep_web/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2tt39w", "c2tt8l2", "c2tt9pb", "c2tu0se", "c2tuy15", "c2tw2ku", "c2twnaa", "c2twnn5", "c2typqz", "c2tzqac", "c2tzswe", "c2tt39w", "c2tt8l2", "c2tt9pb", "c2tu0se", "c2tuy15", "c2tw2ku", "c2twnaa", "c2twnn5", "c2typqz", "c2tzqac", "c2tzswe"], "score": [12, 48, 7, 12, 10, 4, 2, 7, 4, 3, 3, 12, 48, 7, 12, 10, 4, 2, 7, 4, 3, 3], "text": ["This might help: _URL_0_\n\nHopefully someone with more knowledge will be able to explain it better but I'm just linking to this as a placeholder until someone does.", "The Deep Web is simply content not searchable via Search Engines and are hard to find unless you know the direct address.\n\nThe \"Deep Web\" you speak of, is a set of such sites only accessible by using [TOR](_URL_0_) to provide anonymity as much as possible. The Deep Web uses TOR to provide a 'not' DNS for IP to Web address translation via something called a .onion which your browser cannot regularly open.  \n\nOnce on a TOR network, you can access a .onion the same way you would a .com. Once you know of a .onion to visit, though there is a 'deep web' form of google not even a quarter of the sites are indexed on it you can simply visit it and you will be on the \"Deep Web\". ", "The term \"Deep Web\" just describes information that is stored on computers and accessible via TCP/IP but is not indexed by search engines (google and the like). Although generally associated with things such as .onion and .i2p domains, most of the \"Deep Web\" is just all of the data stored on corporate, government, and private networks.", "How come .onion can't be accessed without Tor?", "I like how it claims that 4chan isn't just a regular website.", "Some one tell me what the fuck, The Law of 13's is?", "Does anyone know if the tesla experiments are about tesla coils, or Nikola Tesla himself? ", "I think the closest analogy is to think of the shallow web as everything in the world of which there is a publicly available map (public roads, parks, malls, airports, etc.). By analogy, the deep web is everything else--indoor or gated environments which cannot be easily accessed through public means.", "It's like that night club in the Matrix", "Some of the examples on the lower half of that image made me giggle.", "I did some quick research. (In other words, I went to the .onion Wikipedia page.)\n\n[Here](_URL_0_)'s an example of a site from the deep web, viewable through a proxy. Lots of pedo/CP discussions. Eerie stuff.", "This might help: _URL_0_\n\nHopefully someone with more knowledge will be able to explain it better but I'm just linking to this as a placeholder until someone does.", "The Deep Web is simply content not searchable via Search Engines and are hard to find unless you know the direct address.\n\nThe \"Deep Web\" you speak of, is a set of such sites only accessible by using [TOR](_URL_0_) to provide anonymity as much as possible. The Deep Web uses TOR to provide a 'not' DNS for IP to Web address translation via something called a .onion which your browser cannot regularly open.  \n\nOnce on a TOR network, you can access a .onion the same way you would a .com. Once you know of a .onion to visit, though there is a 'deep web' form of google not even a quarter of the sites are indexed on it you can simply visit it and you will be on the \"Deep Web\". ", "The term \"Deep Web\" just describes information that is stored on computers and accessible via TCP/IP but is not indexed by search engines (google and the like). Although generally associated with things such as .onion and .i2p domains, most of the \"Deep Web\" is just all of the data stored on corporate, government, and private networks.", "How come .onion can't be accessed without Tor?", "I like how it claims that 4chan isn't just a regular website.", "Some one tell me what the fuck, The Law of 13's is?", "Does anyone know if the tesla experiments are about tesla coils, or Nikola Tesla himself? ", "I think the closest analogy is to think of the shallow web as everything in the world of which there is a publicly available map (public roads, parks, malls, airports, etc.). By analogy, the deep web is everything else--indoor or gated environments which cannot be easily accessed through public means.", "It's like that night club in the Matrix", "Some of the examples on the lower half of that image made me giggle.", "I did some quick research. (In other words, I went to the .onion Wikipedia page.)\n\n[Here](_URL_0_)'s an example of a site from the deep web, viewable through a proxy. Lots of pedo/CP discussions. Eerie stuff."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/YBbPL.png"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/hpduk/til_about_the_deep_web_what_it_contains_and_how/"], ["http://www.torproject.org"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://ci3hn2uzjw2wby3z.tor2web.org/"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/hpduk/til_about_the_deep_web_what_it_contains_and_how/"], ["http://www.torproject.org"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://ci3hn2uzjw2wby3z.tor2web.org/"]]}
{"q_id": "9kmxz0", "title": "[Paleontology] Is there evidence of any dinosaurs having a cloaca?", "selftext": "Since birds are relatives of dinos, I would think some dinos, like a pteradactyl, would've had a cloaca. Is there any known evidence of this?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9kmxz0/paleontology_is_there_evidence_of_any_dinosaurs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e70n3yh", "e70nftl"], "score": [14, 5], "text": ["pterodactyls weren't dinosaurs, they were fellow archosaurs, like crocodiles.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEverything which branched off before the dinos from the same archosaur lineage, and all their descendants, all have cloacas, so we believe dinosaurs also had cloacas.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBasically, all modern archosaurs, those of both recent and ancient lineage, have cloacas, so there is no reason to suspect extinct ones did not.", " Every dinosaur started life by hatching from an egg. How parent dinosaurs came together to start the next generation isn\u2019t as clear. Even the basic sexual anatomy of dinosaurs is a bit unknown. They must have had a cloaca but it's also possible that male dinosaurs had an \u201cintromittent organ\u201d kind of like what ducks and ostriches have. Unless I am mistaken, nobody has found any trace of such an organ yet."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1tn270", "title": "why is there not just one universal usb charger shape for all small devices?", "selftext": "What I mean by this is why do Apple, Android, Sony, ect all have different USB charger shapes?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tn270/eli5_why_is_there_not_just_one_universal_usb/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce9k5c5", "ce9k95f", "ce9m1m1", "ce9ogbe"], "score": [9, 11, 5, 14], "text": ["To force you to buy overpriced 'official' products rather than cheap knock-off products.", "Well, Apple is the hold-out on this one. But not without reason. The micro-USB port used on all the other phones isn't really that good. Thankfully, there is going to be an update with the next USB redesign that should make the small USB port more convienient.\n\nBut there is one charger shape - it's law in many parts of the world - and that is the micro-USB port.", "Euh? All devices do run off microUSB. It's even required by law in Europe.\n\nApple circumvents this by using a [micro-usb converter](_URL_0_).", "[I know this one!](_URL_0_)\n\nIn the beginning, there was USB.  USB had two very precise physical characteristics: it was made so plugging the cable the wrong way and in the wrong orientation would be impossible.  *This is why it has two differently-shaped ends*: so you don't plug it ass-backwards.\n\nSo.  The original USB cable had the rectangular plug we all know, meant to be plugged into your computer or whatever else was supposed to power the USB device (if any).  At the time, there was just one sort of plug on the other side: the square plug.  Also known as the Standard-B plug.  The big-ass plug.  But be warned: not a big ass-plug, unless you're a midget.  Anyway, you still see those on printers commonly, and other large non-portable devices of the sort.  We could say the Standard-B plug is the four-door sedan of USB plugs.  Takes you where you need to go, solid and dependable.  A tried and true design.\n\nUnfortunately, that plug was far too big for pocket devices, such as phones and cameras.  So, there came the Mini-B plug.  Same purpose, but tinier, and as you've assuredly noticed, a bit more fragile.  You see that one notably on your Playstation 3 Controller.\n\nSomewhere around 2007 came Micro-B.  Even smaller than Mini-B, fits in even tinier devices!  It came to replace its predecessor, and now Mini-B is largely seen as deprecated: no new/current devices use Mini-B now, they'll all use Micro-B.  Chances are your smartphone uses a Micro-B plug as a way to recharge itself.\n\nAnd now that USB 3.0 is out, prepare to see a new and improved Micro-B!  That variant consists of a plug with a notch in the middle, and it's designed so its corresponding jack can still connect with Micro-B devices made prior to the introduction of USB 3.0.  You'll see that one half of that notched plug looks exactly like the original Micro-B plug you've come to know.\n\n**Shuri, you wrote a fucking novel again.  Help!**\n\nBasically, there are lots of different plugs because we ran out of space on the things we plug 'em on, *and* we improved on the original design."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://store.apple.com/nl/product/MD820ZM/A/lightning-naar-micro-usb-adapter?fnode=48"], ["http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsG/6806.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "33zatd", "title": "how are speed limits enforced by aircraft?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33zatd/eli5how_are_speed_limits_enforced_by_aircraft/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqprw4h", "cqpwj8c", "cqpwo58", "cqpwvze", "cqpx81e", "cqpyhyf", "cqq069q", "cqq0l1r"], "score": [325, 31, 22, 4, 3, 2, 6, 3], "text": ["In areas where speeds are enforced by aircraft, there will be timing marks painted on the roadway. An officer in an aircraft overhead will time cars as they pass between these marks, and if a car crosses the gap in less than the benchmark time, they will radio down to a car waiting on the ground, which will make the stop and issue the ticket.\n\nBut this is expensive, as it requires at least three officers (two overhead and one on the ground), so it may not be used very often even when the road is set up for it. ", "Officer here. We have timing marks painted on the shoulder of the roadway at .5 mile intervals. The pilot flys a pattern overhead and times vehicles as they pass through the intervals. He compares the times against a chart and gets a speed.  Once a speeder is found he radios a description and let's you know when you are behind the correct vehicle. \n\nThe intervals are placed at .5 mile to minimize any error on starting and stopping the stopwatch. A few milliseconds won't make much of a difference compared to say an interval of .1 or .2 mile.\n\nAlso, the speed given is an average speed through the half mile. One could speed the first half of the interval and slow to below the speed limit the second half and be \"clocked\" at the speed limit. Radar and LIDAR on the other hand give a speed at that instant in time. ", "My dad got pulled going 70 in a 55 on SR-44 in Central Florida, but he didn't get \"pulled over\". Down a straighter stretch, all of a sudden, about a half mile down the road there was an officer standing in the middle of a lane directing him to the side, where three other cars already met the same fate. \n\nThe officer said the same things about the road markings being used to measure speed that everyone else is, but I'll tell you what, there is nothing more surprising than getting clocked by a helicopter. ", "Virginia used to do this but recently discontinued the program since they only flew a plane like once a year and would get 20 tickets a session. The highway signs are still up though to deter speeders. ", "Wow thanks for all the feedback I wasn't expecting this much! Thanks guys!", "Two years ago heading to the parents house for 4th of July. Driving down I-4 from Lee rd to Maitland (For those familiar with the Orlando area) \n\nI decide, against my wife's direction, to gun it to 95 for whatever fucking reason. I go to get off at the exit and a trooper directs me to the side of the road, and gives me a $450 ticket. I was pissed because my wife was right and I didn't hear the end of it. ", "IANAL, but as I recall, speeding tickets issued via this method are VERY easy to fight because of all the people involved who will have to show up to court against you  and all the equipment involved that has to be proven tested and working properly at the time of the incident.", "This happened the other week in my city, the PolAIR chopper got him, tracked him home, and then radioed?? a squad car to 'collect' him. \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://mypolice.qld.gov.au/blog/2015/04/14/high-end-speeding-springfield-lakes/"]]}
{"q_id": "r32gi", "title": "What would happen to a child's feet who doesn't wear shoes his entire life compared to a child who does?", "selftext": "Our shoes are pretty constricting. I'd imagine they'd shape different.\n\nThoughts?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/r32gi/what_would_happen_to_a_childs_feet_who_doesnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c42kqx0", "c42ln6w", "c42sovc"], "score": [6, 2, 2], "text": ["I found this image for you [here!](_URL_0_)\n\nIt compares the feet of a typically barefoot African man with that of a Western person.\n\nAs you can see, the main difference applies in the big toe, which originally has a gap between in, gets compressed next to the neighbouring toes.\n\nThe other toes, in particular the pinky toe, end up underneath the others slightly and compressed considerably.\n\nThe second picture seems quite extreme however. Most trainers nowadays are far more roomy than shoes like that, although they still don't have enough room for toes to naturally develop.\n\n[Imgur](_URL_1_)", "I've wondered this myself.  More specifically, what would happen if you put shoes on a 30-something who had never worn them before?  Whenever I put shoes on my dog he acts as if his feet have vanished and he's walking on the nubs of his legs.  Would a human react similarly?", "I'm currently in my first year in Podiatry school to become a foot doctor, and there are plenty of studies on questions like this, especially comparing runners that run with shoes or barefoot. A child/person who is barefoot will tend to strike the ground differently with the foot as compared to someone with shoes. I read an article comparing runners who wore shoes and are barefoot, and the barefoot runners had a stride that struck the ground on the forefoot (balls of the foot), transferring the weight to the hindfoot, then pressing back of the forefoot for the next stride. A person wearing shoes would mostly land on the hindfoot or midfoot, then press off with the forefoot. Comparing the two, the barfoot runner actually had more strength in their foot and leg from this stride. If you were to convert the barefoot runner or shoe runner to the opposite, then their would be noticeable changes in their strides to adjust for a different impact, especially for a shoe runner landing directly on the heel.\n\nBasically, it comes down to what a person is used to that changes the biomechanics on the foot joints and shape of the foot. A barefoot person will have a flatter foot due to striking the ground in that manner repeatedly, and a person with shoes will tend to have a higher arch. As for the shapes of the toes, it can vary, and genetics could play a role here too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://imgur.com/ryvfF", "http://i.imgur.com/ryvfF.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "11yg79", "title": "How effective is Helminthic therapy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11yg79/how_effective_is_helminthic_therapy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6qqs7z"], "score": [2], "text": ["There're not a lot of good data on the topic yet.  [This paper reports](_URL_0_):\n\n > Random controlled trials conducted to date and published have been small scale, and focused on safety as opposed to efficacy.\n\n > Of the trials conducted, Necator americanus has been shown to be **safe**, causing no change in lung function following pulmonary migration in rhinitis or asthma patients. Worms were resident in the gut for 12 weeks only, and **little therapeutic benefit** was expected (Mortimer et al., 2006; Blount et al., 2009; Feary et al., 2009a, b). Similarly, the Trichuris suis ova product (TSO) was shown to be of **no benefit in rhinitis**, and explanations for this failure have been offered (Bager et al., 2010; Hepworth et al., 2010). Conversely, TSO imparted **benefit in inflammatory bowel disease** (Summers et al., 2003, 2005). However, some have expressed reservations about the use of a zoonotic infection (Kradin et al., 2006).\n\nIt's certainly very interesting and promising from a mechanistic/basic science perspective, with some epidemiological associations to back it up.  But it has not yet stood up to rigorous testing to really make statements about its efficacy in treating human disease."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21729383"]]}
{"q_id": "6cf8xt", "title": "Did men really throw their coats on the water so women wouldn't get their shoes soaked?", "selftext": "I can't believe that possibly being a thing, I mean, why would anyone do that? Where did the movies take that from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cf8xt/did_men_really_throw_their_coats_on_the_water_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhuk7fr"], "score": [9], "text": ["Follow up question, I hope this is relevant enough: How expensive would a typical tailored gentleman's coat be around the regency era? Were the amounts Beau Brummel spent on his clothes as absurd then as they sound today?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "49kq9d", "title": "Do we have any statistics on the amount of the people with relatively common symptoms but with rare diseases that are mistakenly diagnosed, therefore uncured for long period?", "selftext": "Bonus question: how many were only correctly diagnosed after death? \n\nPs: I'm a computer science guy. This is not for any kind of research/coursework. Simply a /r/Showerthoughts I had today. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/49kq9d/do_we_have_any_statistics_on_the_amount_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0swrmf"], "score": [3], "text": ["This is a very broad question, so the answer will have to be somewhat vague. But in simplistic terms, yes, we do have these statistics to some degree. For example, the emergency medicine literature has many studies regarding the likeliest diagnoses when faced with a patient's presenting complaint, ie, \"Right lower quadrant pain - 30% appendicitis, 20% GI upset, 15% ovarian cyst or menstrual syndrome, 10% hernia, 5% ectopic pregnancy, 20% other.\" Many of those papers contain breakdowns of what the last Other category was. The problem, as you noted, is that most of these broad symptom categories are highly nonspecific, so there will be a huge number of different diagnoses in the Other category. But yes, we do know that there are certain small groups of people who are initially misdiagnosed based on their nonspecific complaints. When you add in the question of time, such as those conditions only diagnosed posthumously or treatments that are delayed for long periods of time, it becomes very hard to track this data. Say someone dies of untreated colon cancer\u2026 if they don't get an autopsy, which is fairly common, how would we even know how they died? And even if it was proven that they had died of colon cancer, how do we know which of their nonspecific complaints in the past ER visits have been related to the cancer, and which ones had not?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5lpuqn", "title": "Who are the Sabians mentioned in the Qur'an as \"People of the Book\" alongside Jews and Christians? What did they believe, and do any texts from them survive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lpuqn/who_are_the_sabians_mentioned_in_the_quran_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbxqaqi"], "score": [71], "text": ["No one has been able to match the Quranic and Hadithic descriptions of the Sabians to any historical group. I go into more detail [here](_URL_0_). It's possible they were some Mandaean or Jewish Christian group, but it's possible they were something else entirely. This essential ambiguity of the category let later Muslim administrators protect various local groups as \"Sabians\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5jom6f/who_were_the_sabians_that_were_mentioned/dbi3npj/"]]}
{"q_id": "2xk4nb", "title": "what's the purpose of a blindfold during an execution?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xk4nb/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_a_blindfold_during_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp0sdwv", "cp0sfoq", "cp0shu2", "cp0tax5", "cp0uc61", "cp0uwl7"], "score": [18, 116, 3, 54, 252, 3], "text": ["Because the executor doesn't want to be traumatized. By blindfolding his victim, he won't be haunted by the victim's eyes. Also, to scare the victim. She can hear but not see and doesn't know she is going to die until she hears the commands.", "It is harder for a person to execute someone when there is eye contact. The blindfold makes carrying out the act less personal.", "Taking sight away would make it harder to attempt to run. Is imagine that would have something to do with it. ", "There are 3 reasons for this, the first (for electric chairs/shock) is because the eyes would explode or leak and the blindfold was to prevent mess. The second and most common is so that the executioner and the onlookers don't get traumatized by the victim. Lastly the third reason is to both help prevent escape and to make the experience more calm (yes calm, not scary) for the victim.", "Whole lot of misinformation here. If the victim can't see the executioner his ghost doesn't know who to haunt.", "i guess executioners don't listen to scarface, aka brad jordan\n\n'always look a man in the eye before you kill him' "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "u2v13", "title": "random super long arm hair", "selftext": "More than once in my life I have discovered a relatively long arm hair that I am sure was not there before. It seems to have literally appeared, fully formed, overnight. What is this? Am I just missing the slow growth of a hair until it is longer than the rest? If that is the case, why is it growing longer than the rest?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u2v13/eli5_random_super_long_arm_hair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4rv5su", "c4rva82", "c4rvab4", "c4rvbli", "c4rvgd8", "c4rvjzq", "c4rvouy", "c4rw8x0", "c4rwflb", "c4rwgyg", "c4rwjoy", "c4rwpvi", "c4rws2v", "c4rwycy", "c4rx7b1", "c4rx7xz", "c4ry2w5", "c4ryiso", "c4ryklw", "c4ryqmv", "c4s08u5", "c4s0c4o", "c4s1ah3"], "score": [2, 20, 195, 8, 59, 118, 18, 4, 13, 23, 9, 2, 81, 3, 3, 2, 13, 7, 7, 2, 100, 4, 2], "text": ["I have the same thing on my left arm. It's on my inner forearm and one day I'll just notice it. No clue why.", "In five years, it won't be random anymore. ", "I'd love an answer to this one.  I have this mutant white hair that suddenly sprouts out of the middle of my forehead about twice a year.  I pluck it and am good for a while.  The thing is, I never notice it until it's a good inch long, so I'm left wondering if I never noticed or if it just appeared like the OP.  There's no other hair around it to get lost in.", "Before I started shaving I had a 2incher coming out of the bottom of my chin.", "Arm is fine. I have an eyelash right now that is at least 2 inches long. It grew black like all my eyelashes, then kept going and the length that followed it is blonde.\n\nELI5 WHAT is THAT!?", "Hair on your body is genetically programmed to grow for a roughly same amount of time depending on the region. Your arm and leg hair is programmed to grow for a while and stop way before your headhair typically. Even your head hair cuts off after a while and that's why not everyone can decide to try and set the longest hair world record by just not getting it cut. When hair restarts to grow after a period of not growing, it pushes the old follicle out. Sometimes a hair is out of whack with the rest of the hair in the region.", "Easily one of the best ELI5s I've seen in a while", "This is a great question that I've always wondered about.  Bodies are weird.", "Nice try Ted; we all know it's just a string!", "I get these occasionally too. But sometimes, and this is really gross, I will find an ingrown hair that just keeps coiling up under the skin. Sometimes it's a single 2 or 3 incher, and sometimes it is several shorter hairs piled up. And of course the hairs (and the \"pocket\" under the skin that it coiled in) is full of sebum (I think that's what it's called). Somebody tell me I'm not alone.", "I get this on the side of my neck. ", "[It is everywhere!](_URL_0_)   ", "I've made my wife promise me, if I'm ever in a coma, she'll have somebody come around once a month and check the OUTSIDE curve of my ears for random single long hairs. It's such an old man thing. It's weird. But I get them. Tip of the nose too, sometimes.\n\nIf I wake up in an ICU, having been in a coma, and I have long hairs on my ears, I'mma be annoyed.", "Perhaps it was an ingrown hair, or a hair that grew inside your skin. I hat one on my chin once, first I thought it was just a pimple but when I was shaving myself the next day I accidentally cut it with the razor and a 3cm long hair peeked out.", "I'm not the only one who has had a catfish whisker?  Awesome!  Maybe I can get my boyfriend to stop teasing me about my 'genetic abnormalities' now.  :D\n\nStill can't explain that feather my mom grew, though....", "I've long called it \"hair cancer\" and am convinced it's a cancerous cell (one which doesn't stop reproducing, right?) but really causes no harm. I have 3 on my shoulders, and one on each arm", "It could likely be an ingrown hair.  This means that the hair has been growing the entire time, like the rest of your arm hair, but simply underneath the skin.  As such, it grows \"without limit,\" unlike the exposed hairs, until it will burst out.\n\nI have a recurring ingrown hair spot on my left arm between my shoulder and elbow.  It eventually pops out because it grows so thick.\n\nIt likely isn't serious, but if you're at all concerned, you can see a dermatologist.", "Seems like everyone has this problem, and nobody has an answer.", "It could be worse. You could live in China. Here, it is considered extremely unlucky to pluck or cut these kinds of hairs, as well as the kinds that sprout from moles or growths. It seems like every time I get mashed up against somebody on the subway, I end up with their fucking goiter whiskers curling into my mouth like that mercury stuff that goes down Neo's throat in The Matrix.", "I attribute my random long hairs to the fact my dad worked at a nuclear power plant.  What's your excuse?", "The ELI5 answer: They are caused by a mutation in your genes.\n\nThe ELI10 answer: Every cell in your body has a set of instructions that tells your cells how to behave, including how long your hair should grow before replacing it with a new hair. These instructions are stored in something called DNA. Your DNA consists of over 3 billion small units called nucleotides. Similar to [how a computer uses binary to tell a computer how to run](_URL_0_) (010100100111 etc) DNA uses four different nucleotides (ATCG) and depending on the order of these 3 billion nucleotides different instructions are given. Every time a new cell is made in your body the DNA gets duplicated, but it is more like typing it manually than just making a photocopy. No matter how good you are at typing, you still mix up a letter or two once in a while. By just missing one letter, or mixing up two letters it could completely change the function of the cell or change key characteristics of the cell--like the max length your hairs are suppose to grow. This is the same reason moles and freckles start appearing on your skin, and why long hairs are more likely to occur on freckles and moles. The more defective your cells DNA copy gets the more irregularities it will have and will then pass that copy of bad DNA onto other cells when it duplicates. Eventually the DNA realizes it is defective and stops making copies, if it doesn't a tumor is formed.\n\nEdit: ATCG is correct, I accidentally had it ADCG. My bad. Just goes to prove my transcription error argument.", "Congratulations. You have the crappiest superpower :]", "I once found an 8\" or so hair growing out of my cheek, and about a 6\" or so hair growing out of the side of my jaw. I had long hair, and they just blended in. The cheek hair has come back a couple times since then."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://hairybusiness.blogspot.com/2011/06/freaky-hairs.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nyvkb/eli5_how_computers_turn_0s_and_1s_into_text_video/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3md2el", "title": "why can't or don't they bring those dead bodies down from mt. everest?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3md2el/eli5_why_cant_or_dont_they_bring_those_dead/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvdzfij", "cvdzg66", "cvdzgz0", "cvdzi3k", "cvdzilq", "cvdzkgd", "cve0wcw", "cve28lx", "cve3c8l"], "score": [2, 24, 10, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 13], "text": ["Simply getting up and down the mountain is a difficult task, and carries a lot of risk. Going up the mountain with enough resources and manpower to bring somebody down is generally considered too risky.", "They'd love to, but they can't. Too dangerous to do it by hand- I remember one attempt at doing so led to the deaths of the 7 attempted recoverers, and you can't do it by machine because the mountain is either too steep, to windy, or the air too thin for helicopters to fly. The engines would suffocate from lack of oxygen or be unable to get off the ground because the blades couldn't push enough air down. Or both.\n\nAnd finally, because money. You got any idea how expensive it is to climb Everest? It's pricey and hard enough as is without 200+ pounds of literal dead weight on your back.", "Simply put, it is too dangerous. Mt. Everest's terrain makes rescue and retrieval missions very hard, if not impossible. Airlifting corpses out there is pretty much impossible. Carrying them down also poses too much risk. This is a place where just climbing and descending it already are incredibly hard, let alone climbing and descending it carry dead weight. (literally)\n\nThe government there would love to have the dead bodies off Mt. Everest. It is sacred ground to them. But it is simply not feasible to risk the lives of so many people. ", "It's not easy to get a helicopter up that high - it's both expensive and dangerous.  I think past a certain height it's all but impossible.  And having someone climb up and drag a body down is incredibly dangerous - most climbers are lucky able to get themselves down alive from that altitude.  \n\nCarrying another person in that environment is very dangerous, and should only be done by experienced climbers trying to save a life.  It's just not worth anyone risking their necks to bring the bodies down. ", "The conditions up there are extremely dangerous.  The air pressure is so low that your cells start dying.  Even with oxygen tank and proper equipment, you can only survive up there for a short time.  Every step you take is absolutely grueling, so dragging a body down would be nigh impossible and very dangerous.  Those guys died where they died for a reason.", "Cost.  You would have to pay people to go up there.  Then they would have to bring bodies down. So that's people needing training to take on Everest, infrastructure to somehow get tools and supplies up the mountain to maintain this workforce who may have to dig the bodies out of snow, and then transport them back down the mountain again.  I mean it COULD be done - but it is prohibitively expensive, and I doubt anyone wants to be the one to foot that bill.", "[Here's](_URL_0_) a short video about moving a body on a mountain.  All that work to move someone 20m, and the conditions they're in are basically a day at the beach compared to Everest.  Cold and altitude add orders of magnitude of difficulty to seemingly simple task.", "1 in 60 people who attempt to climb it die in the process. It's difficult enough to do that without trying to carry another person.", "For those who are saying \"it is too dangerous\" or \"they can't\", I am sorry but you are wrong.\n\nBodies and over 13 tons of trash have been removed from the mountain since 2008.  The problem is not something that cannot be solved.\n\nThe real answer is cost.  Over 200 people reach the peak on some years.  If enough of a bounty was offered to qualified climbers, they could and would bring the trash and even bodies (if only in parts) down the mountain.  But who would pay for it and how many people would you have to pay to even keep up with the littering of 200+ people?\n\nOne potential answer is to require a deposit into an escrow account prior to climbing Everest.  At base camp, your supplies are inventoried.  If you don't return, you forfeit the deposit.  If you do return you get some or all of the deposit returned based on what you returned with."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68lj8fBG39E"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7y1fxm", "title": "how do \u201cthey\u201d determine how many calories are in something?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7y1fxm/eli5_how_do_they_determine_how_many_calories_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ducu23i", "ducu3s5", "ducwri1", "ducxyn4", "ducylup", "ducz3nx", "duczakn", "duczoba", "dud05tc", "dud2glr", "dud2ooo", "dud53vq"], "score": [10, 1503, 164, 54, 38, 6, 3, 2, 20, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["In chemistry, you take a certain amount of the material and burn it inside of a cup that is inside of a larger cup of water. Then you measure how much hotter the water became after you burned it. But for humans it is much more complicated. Variables include - how digestible it is and how it effects your desire to eat more in the future  ", "The old-school way was to actually burn it and see how much heat it produced: a calorie is an actual measure of energy.\n\nNowadays, the food would be blended up and analyzed for the amounts of fat, protein, carbohydrate and alcohol (the stuff you can get energy/calories from), and knowing the amount of calories in each of those by weight, they just calculate how many calories it should have.  The advantage here is that they can differentiate between calories your body will use, and calories it won't (like that in fiber: it'll burn, but our bodies don't digest it).", "There are also tools available that measure calories. That's not necessarily how \"they\" determine how many calories are in a packaged or menu item, but it's one way they can get a value on how many calories some foods have.\n\n_URL_0_", "To add to the comments about methods:  \nA calorie and a Calorie (food) are not the same. 1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius at 1 atmosphere of pressure (isn't metric great??). 1 Calorie (big C) is the measurement used in food, and is actually 1000 calories, or 1 kilocalorie, or 1 kcal.\n\nNot directly relevant to your question, but still useful to know.", "It's easily estimated by measuring the carbohydrate, protein, and fat contents. Each gram of carbohydrates and protein contains approximately 4 Calories (kilocalories). Each gram of fat contains approximately 9 Calories. You can check the math since the nutrition facts should also include the contents of each of these.", "I don't know if this is what they still do, but originally you would set it on fire and see how much heat was released by the fire.\n\nIf you had a thermometer in a glass of water, you could estimate how much energy was produced by the fire by calculating how much water there was and how much the water changed temperature.", "I have to know: does hot food have more calories than cold food? I asked this to a dietician and she got triggered AF.\n", "To add to what was already said, you can measure the fat and protein contents of a food by blending it and measuring it with an infrared spectrometer, because fat and protein molecules have different absorption spectra, so you can get a somewhat rough approximation of caloric value that way. It isn't as accurate as a bomb calorimeter, but it is a hell of a lot faster and easier. ", "Woah I have the real question here. If they determine calories by setting food on fire and measuring the heat it produces, can you apply that to anything you could set on fire? Like could you find out the calories of a chair?", "All the responses seem to point out how you can measure but in reality a lot is done using known values i.e. Adding together the calories for chicken, lettuce and dressing using standard caloric values for each item. This can result in a error but if you calory counted everything it should average out", "Calories are broken down as such: Carbs 4 kCal/gram Protein: 4kCal/gram and fats have 9 kCal per gram.\n\nSo they just add up how many grams of carbs/fat/protein are in the food.  ", "Um how did you get that many calories into a salad?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8xjmov", "title": "Does a fetus's newly started heartbeat effectively pump blood?", "selftext": "At a certain point in a fetus's development, it's heart begins to beat. At that point, is the heart's chamber's and musculature formed sufficiently to pump blood, or is the heart just beating because it started beating?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8xjmov/does_a_fetuss_newly_started_heartbeat_effectively/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e257bs8"], "score": [3], "text": ["Yes, the foetal heart does pump to circulate blood from the placenta through the body. It\u2019s a very different structure to the adult heart though, as the blood in a foetus completely bypasses the lungs. This means there\u2019s a couple of holes in the heart and main vessels to make sure blood doesn\u2019t go to the lungs. \n\nYou\u2019d probably be able to spot the heart beat on an ultrasound about 5 weeks in!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4bwl0x", "title": "how exactly does our body inform us that we need to pee?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bwl0x/eli5_how_exactly_does_our_body_inform_us_that_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1d1gcu", "d1d75cu", "d1d7ego", "d1d8lf5", "d1da6z0", "d1dbeko", "d1debu0", "d1dely5", "d1desvi", "d1dh2nk", "d1dkeal", "d1domum", "d1dpe3l", "d1dvvur", "d1dz14j"], "score": [2667, 40, 106, 4, 5, 36, 7, 16, 4, 2, 2, 2, 8, 3, 3], "text": ["Nurse here. Imagine your bladder being a balloon. The balloon gets filled (with urine) and when it's about half way full, stretch receptors in the wall of the balloon starts sending signals to your brain that you need to pee. When you pee the balloon empties itself, and kinda deflates, meaning the stretch receptors are no longer sending signals to the brain about you needing to pee. Bonus info: the body produces on average 1ml/kg body weight urine per hour meaning if you weigh 80 kg you produce about 80 ml of urine per hour. You start to feel the urge to pee when the bladder contains 300-400ml of urine. Bonus info 2: don't keep your bladder full too often, because the stretch receptors in the bladder tissue might get stretched too much, and get damaged, which can lead to incontinence. ", "the nurse has done a pretty good job.\n\nhere's me eli18\n\nyour bladder has an inner lining and on that inner lining there's a area of tissue that is in the shape of a triangle 2 kidneys feed into the bladder, one hole goes out. these 3 points from a triangle called a trigone. the tissue has mechanoreceptors which detect that theres a high volume - this causes to stretch and tells the brain yeah ok need to pee, then you can voluntarily release and pee (this is your brain override so you dont pee all over the place) . ", "What about when you're dehydrated?\n\nI've had times where I've been dehydrated, or even when I take some vitamins, where I'll get the urge to pee, but will have a lot less volume than an average urination.\n\nAre there receptors that just say \"get this nasty shit out of here\"?", "Our bladder sends us a little signal to our brain saying that we need to go urinate, that's what my 5th grade teacher said!", "Can you want to go pee from smelling something? Or from a odour? also why is it we want to go pee when we hear running water?", "On this topic I have had an really overactive bladder for years. I have had the interstim surgery. Been on multiple types of pills. They performed a cytoscopy. To no avail with everything. I am desperate, it is making like miserable. I literally get up 10 sometimes more a night and sleep in 30-1hr intervals and have to get up to pee. It makes work a nightmare, relationships hard and life hard. Has anybody had an similar experience and do you have anything that worked for you?\n", "Since this hasn't been described yet: continence and voiding are dictated by the autonomic nervous system. The bladder has stretch receptors (mechanoreceptors) that give input to the autonomic system. The dominant autonomic tone is a result of the amount of stretch input (little stretch of bladder - >  sympathetic tone, detrusor muscle and internal sphincter are inhibited, bladder is allowed to fill; more stretch - >  parasympathetic tone, detrusor and internal sphincter stimulated, voiding occurs). In infants and some people with spinal cord injury, this is the only control of the bladder. This is refered to as \"neurogenic\" - voiding occurs upon sufficient stretch. Beginning in childhood, the central nervous system is involved to allow for conscious control of voiding. The urge to pee comes from afferent input to the pontine micturition center.", "When drinking alcohol, why does it seem (women especially) \"break the seal\"? I swear once I start, it seems I have to pee every hour", "I have pararesuis. My body says I need to pee but won't let me until I squat and force it out. (I'm a guy)", "what happens in the case of urinary tract infections, where you have to urinate every so often when your body dictates you should? ", "Uhhh pee nerves I presume? ", "Think of your body as a team. Each part is coordinating to do tasks while you are doing complex actions.   Our brain does so many things behind the scenes as the team leader such as growing our skin, regulating our temperature, and keeping our body safe from viruses and toxins.   Try this breathe in and out.  Next start blinking your eyes.  Notice that your tongue is in your mouth.  The game is still going.", "There's a water heater in your gullet, and it gradually fills up with hot urine, building pressure, which is measured by gauges and regulated with pressure relief valves. ", "When I need to pee and I'm asleep, I start dreaming about bathrooms that have like 30 urinals of all different shapes and sizes.", "Life long pee'er.   Your bladder fills and the nerves around it feel the increase in the pressure as the organ expands.   This triggers the one response.   If you have nerve damage to this area,  you won't feel the need to pee,  instead it will just happen (like when drunk people pee themselves ) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ha9xl", "title": "Has the Hajj ever been significantly disrupted or cancelled?", "selftext": "There's [some concern about a virus](_URL_0_) in the Middle East right now and fears that it could use the upcoming Hajj pilgrimage to spread even further.\n\nSo it got me thinking: with all the turmoil, plagues, world wars, and other international crises between Islam's emergence in the 700s and today, has the global Muslim pilgrimage ever been seriously affected or even cancelled before?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ha9xl/has_the_hajj_ever_been_significantly_disrupted_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["casdm0z", "casg47m", "caspbuj"], "score": [59, 35, 4], "text": ["This wasn't *huge*, but in 1987, some Iranian Shiites clashed with Saudi security forces, and some 400 died.  This prompted the Saudi government to restrict the number of Iranians it would let in for the *hajj*, which made Iran boycott the *hajj*.", "The qaumathians were a Shia sect and in 929 they raided Mecca and tore down the black veil around the kaba. They removed the black stone and took it back to Hajar where they had their headquarters. It stayed there for 12 years and no one could complete the hajj at that time. I wrote a paper on the qaumathians around two years ago, I can't remember what my sources were now but I'll try and find them and post them here. ", "In the first decade of the 1800s, the Wahabbi armies of the first Saudi state were engaged in a war with the Sharif of Mecca for control of the Hijaz. This conquest did result in the disruption of caravans trips to Medina or Mecca in 1804-06. John Sabini' *Armies in the Sand* discusses this period and the subsequent Saudi-Egyptian war.\n\nAdditionally, concerns about plague are nothing new in Mecca. Sabini also mentions a plague that quarantined the port of Jiddah in the 1770s or 1780s. Also, [this person's thesis](_URL_0_) examines late 19th and early 20th century British imperialist concerns of the Hajj being a vector for plague (among other subjects)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.rferl.org/content/hajj-fears-mers-virus/25024828.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&amp;context=history_theses"]]}
{"q_id": "54isz3", "title": "how come some people can cry on demand, yet some people can't even after major trauma (physical/emotional)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54isz3/eli5_how_come_some_people_can_cry_on_demand_yet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d829iw9", "d82bdw9", "d82h0co", "d82mhlw"], "score": [16, 56, 8, 8], "text": ["Actor here:\nWith an educated guess... Over the years I've known a lot of actors.  Some could cry easily...some not at all.   A few, I've seen break down their \"barriers\" and cry for the first time in years.\n\nMost of the actors I've met (if not all) that couldn't cry were raised not to cry....and to be strong.  They spent years and years building that wall.  I think a large part of this is nurtured.  We all cry as babies and children.\n\nI've noticed instead of being empathetic, these folks tend to put a wall up.  They tend to be dismissive of those types feelings.  \n\nI\n\n\n", "There are several types of tears: basal (automatic/lubricating), reflex (sawdust/onion in the eye), and emotional (tears of sorrow, fear, joy, etc.). Each is triggered differently and has a slightly different chemical makeup. They also involve different muscle groups and timing, but all can, to varying extent, be manipulated. \n\nPersonal observation: My lachrimal ducts and glands were damaged/destroyed in a traumatic incident, so my basal tear production is effectively nil-- a real problem for someone who must wear contact lenses to see effectively.  But I've learned to keep my eyes wet by briefly mimicing the facial expressions I had and felt when I was able to cry. (Lots of practice in front of a mirror isolating and contracting facial muscle groups, helped along by genuine frustration.) \n\nHaving suffered several major physical traumas in my life, I've found that emotional crying doesn't really help relieve physical pain, and is often a real distraction from the work of immediate survival. Of course, the emotional release of crying in the *aftermath* of trauma can be a huge comfort, but the actual tears are generated by fear and frustration, not physical pain. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "When people experience major trauma, pain and tears may not be the first response for everyone. Most often the first emotion from trauma is either fear, or shock. There's adrenaline associated with the former, and disassociation with the latter. Victims of trauma can continue to perpetuate either that state of fear, or shock, because it often feels better than the internalization of facing inner pain associated with the trauma.", "Source: I work with people who work with people with PTSD.\n\nDuring stress, our brain tends to either choose flight, fight, or disengage. \n\nFlight and fight both create more adrenaline than is useful for our bodies during normal functioning, and that is why often if our bodies trigger a fight or flight response we will shake, or cry, or feel the need to be physical after - we need to physically work out the extra hormones from our bodies. \n\nWith a disengage response, a mind disconnects from a body. This makes it not notice pain or emotions. This is known as shock if it comes on very powerfully. Usually it takes a couple hours or a good sleep for the mind to re-engage. During that time, you won't see much crying, because the emotions are just not there. Often, though, the crying will happen later, once the pain and emotions come back. \n\nWe would always joke with my best friend growing up that he would cry about little splinters and cuts, but he broke his arm at my house once riding a toy car off the roof, and he just walked home after and calmly told his dad he had to go to the hospital. \n\nSo that's the basics of how we deal with stress. Beyond just our immediate response to stress, however, our body can respond to trauma by becoming \"stuck\". Part of this is our brain being taken over by our most primordial and instinctive levels, but that's for another time. The other part is our nervous system. \n\nUsually our nervous system cycles between high and low (sympathetic and para-sympathetic). High cycles are when we are engaged, aware of details, and vigilant; it's how our whole body reacts during an intake of breath before action; this is what helps our body and mind make sudden, strong, and quick moves. \n\nThe low cycles are when we are relaxing, slouching, exhaling; it's when we gain back energy, look around and become aware of our surroundings, let loose and ignore problems; this is what helps our body not always be a giant ball of stress. \n\nAfter trauma, our nervous system sometimes stops cycling. We get stuck on high or low. When we're stuck on high, we might not cry because we're just too vigilant, engaged, and constricted. \n\nImagine a woman who's family was just eaten by a bear. She's out in the forest, trying to survive and find a way out. If she stops to cry, or even to rest, her body might just shut down and crash. If she stops being aware of every sound around her, she might also be eaten. So her body stays on overdrive to give her a chance at survival. Later, though, when she wants to cry at home, she can't because her body is still protecting itself from a bear.\n\nThe other way our nervous system get stuck is on a low cycle. People like this just don't have the energy to cry, or sometimes even to notice their emotions. They can be withdrawn and will sometimes hardly even talk. \n\nTL;DR, it's our nervous system protecting us, but it messes us up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "282u1v", "title": "After the elevator was invented, how did the perception of top floors of buildings change? Was it a swift or gradual cultural shift?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/282u1v/after_the_elevator_was_invented_how_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci7j5qh"], "score": [2], "text": ["Before the invention of lifts, flats/offices on the top floors of buildings were the least desirable as obviously you had to walk up several flights of stairs to get to them. After the invention of the lift, however, they became more desirable, as the higher up you were, the less pollution and noise you would experience from the streets below (horse-drawn carts were noisy things)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9se19j", "title": "When reading about Caesar and Pompey's wars, we see them \"raising legions\" in places such as Greece, Africa, Spain, etc. How many Roman citizens would actually be present in these provinces during the Republic?", "selftext": "It seems Roman generals can summon legions out of thin air in every corner of the empire. I know Roman colonies were a thing, and citizenship was extended to Auxilia veterans, and that non citizens were also used as soldiers, but the bulk of a Legion's force was still largely citizens I assume. How come so many Romans seemed to already live outside Italy by the Caesarion Civil war? Citizenship had only recently been granted to all Italians, it seems the Roman diaspora was immense already by the Republic. How many Roman colonies were scattered throughout the Mediterranean world?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9se19j/when_reading_about_caesar_and_pompeys_wars_we_see/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8p7z84"], "score": [21], "text": ["There were more Romans abroad in the first half of the first century than you might think. In this \"Roman\" category I also include those who had been \"Italians\" before the Social War (90-88 BCE) and instantly became Roman citizens under the *lex Iulia.*  The Italian merchant class had enclaves in every corner of the empire and beyond, though we only get scattered references to them. For instance, when Mithridates invaded the Roman territory of Bithynia in Spring of 88 BCE, he was persuaded to perpetrate a radical action: to kill all the \"Romans\" there. Our sources for this are pretty lousy (Appian and Plutarch), but Appian says 80,000 \"Romans\" (this includes \"Italians\") were killed in a single stroke. Even if he is doubling his figures, it still seems to be a significant number. Of course not all of these \"Romans\" were fighting men, but you get the idea.\n\nSimilarly: when Pompey fled to Greece during the Civil War, the backbone of the forces he raised were technically Roman citizens. We don't know the percentage, and we do hear about distinctions between Spanish \"auxiliary\" infantry (vs Roman legions), but it isn't exactly clear how that worked. I suspect every legion had a core of Romans, especially the centurions, and were filled in as best as could be managed.  A while ago I wrote on this topic in this subreddit, and said this about Pompey's forces in the Civil War:\n\n > Lentulus Crus, technically a consul, had raised two legions in Asia. We know these were Romans because we know that Romans of Jewish descent were exempted in this conscription effort thanks to his decree, preserved by Josephus (Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, 14.228ff). Metellus Scipio was to bring two additional legions from Syria, and Pompey's own son went to Egypt to round up what he could find. These legions might have, and probably were, under-strength, but they formed the citizen core of Pompey's army. By the time of Pharsalus, we hear of legions from Cilicia on the right wing, supported by auxiliary infantry from Spain. We know he also sought and obtained massive numbers of auxiliaries from the various remaining client kingdoms in the East, and he even sent overtures to Parthia asking for support (Dio 42.2.5). Cicero was certainly disgusted by the notion of Pompey's not-so-citizen legions bearing down on Italia: \" I\u2014whom some called the preserver of this city, some its parent\u2014I to bring against it armies of the Getae, Armenians, and Colchians! I to inflict famine on my fellow citizens, devastation upon Italy!\" (Cic. ad Att. 9.10) ([link](_URL_0_))\n\nEven back in 58, Caesar was bending the rules a bit as far as legionary recruitment. When the Helvetii made their move, Caesar tells us that he immediately began raising legions in the extant Gallic provinces. We know that he also recruited among the \"Transpadani,\" a group mixed Gallo-Italians living in the Po valley. They were not technically Roman citizens, though some communities there had various levels of Roman privileges, and we know that Caesar promised those recruits full citizenship after their service. \n\nAs to the number of Roman colonies: the short answer is \"a lot, but not nearly as many as would come later.\"  Before the 50s BCE, the biggest were in Spain (Italica, Corduba, Valencia, Segovia), France (Narbonne), and of course in Italia (Ariminum, Placentia, Salernum, Bononia, Aquileia, etc), and very very few in the East. That means that most of the legions raised in the east by Pompey in 49 were not from colonies, but from these elusive groups of \"Romans\" present for other reasons. The really crazy colonial period in Roman history comes after the second Civil War, the one between Octavian and Antonius, when Augustus settled tens of thousands (possibly over 100k) of troops in new colonies in places all over the Med, from Spain to North Africa to the Near East."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8arhr4/how_did_pompey_raise_legions_in_the_east/"]]}
{"q_id": "2akndo", "title": "Is the imaginary number 'i' withing the range of negative infinity to infinity?", "selftext": "Or, is the only correlation between 'i' and real numbers through equations such as Euler's identity? What makes it imaginary, I find imaginary to be a rather broad term, and what do we know about 'i' in relationship to real numbers? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2akndo/is_the_imaginary_number_i_withing_the_range_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciw69hx", "ciw6joc", "ciw718s", "ciw77gs", "ciw9m4h", "ciws53j"], "score": [25, 21, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["The set of numbers in the range -infinity to +infinity is by definition the set of real numbers. Imaginary numbers are not real numbers, and this, are not on that interval. The imaginary unit *i* is defined as the square root of -1, and there is no real number that satisfies that definition, so the word \"imaginary\" is used to describe the fact that it isn't an element of the real numbers, or \"not real.\"\n\n All imaginary numbers are expressable in the form a+b*i*,  where a and b are real numbers and b isn't zero. It's important to note that imaginary numbers and real numbers are two completely different sets of numbers, and no imaginary number is also a real number. \n\nHowever, operations on the set of imaginary numbers are not closed, meaning that performing an operation on two imaginary numbers does not necessarily yield another imaginary number. For instance, *i^i* is equal to a real number, aproximately 0.202.\n\nDoes that help?", "If you visualize the imaginary number line as being orthogonal to the real number line, then I think it makes more sense.  It's a number plane, rather than a number line.  Multiplication by i rotates a number 90 degrees in this plane.  Multiplication by -1 is a 180 degree rotation, which is equivalent to two 90 degree rotations (i^2 = -1).", "If a mathematician speaks of a range of numbers (an interval), he typically refers to a subset of the real numbers. So, de facto, the answer is no.\n\nHowever, you can order numbers however you want. There is no reason why you couldn't create a (partially/totally) ordered set where the interval between -infty and infty contains imaginary (or complex) numbers.\n\nFor example, a complex number is effectively a pair of real numbers - if c = x + yi, then we can represent c as (x, y). Now, we can define the following order: (x,y)  > = (x',y'), iff either x > x' or both x=x' and y > =y'. If we use this ordering, rather than the de facto ordering, the interval you suggest contains all (finite) complex numbers.", "The ordering relation less-than-or-equal-to works just fine for real numbers, but breaks down for complex numbers. The farther you expand the set of numbers you're using, the less the system acts like the usual real numbers everyone's familiar with. The complex numbers don't follow a less-than/greater-than ordering; the quaternions also lack commutative multiplication (in other words a\\*b need not equal b\\*a); the octonions additionally are not associative (in other words a\\*(b\\*c) need not equal (a\\*b)\\*c); the sedenions have pairs of nonzero numbers that multiply together to make zero.\n\nAs other people have mentioned, the [complex plane](_URL_0_) is definitely the best way to visualize imaginary numbers, with real numbers going left and right and imaginary numbers going up and down. If you start with one complex number, adding another complex number shifts the first number in the complex plane. Adding 1 to a number moves it 1 to the right, adding -3 moves it 3 to the left, adding i moves it one up, etc. Multiplying complex numbers is another way of transforming them. Multiplying a number by 2 scales it by a factor of 2. Multiplying a number by -1 scales it by a factor of -1, which turns out to be the same as rotating it 180 degrees. Multiplying a number by i scales it by a factor of i, which turns out to be the same as rotating it 90 degrees. So when you take i\\*i, you're really rotating i 90 degrees around to -1. Multiply by i again, and you rotate down to -i. Again, and you rotate around to 1.", "I'm surprised no one has mentioned the [Riemann sphere](_URL_0_), which is very commonly used in complex analysis. If you use the Riemann sphere, then you don't have negative infinity, but you do get nice properties like being able to divide by zero and infinity without mucking around with limits.", "Just want to had something to the discussion. \n\nNegative number are the result of asking: Which number I need to add to 6 to get 5. Rational numbers are the answer to which number I need to multiply with 4 to get 3.\n\nImaginary numbers are a bit different. When you have a quadratic equation, you know this quadratic equation may have real roots or not. Eventually people derived an equation for them:\n\n2ax = -b +(-) \u221a(b*b - 4ac)\n\nThe discriminant basically tells you if the roots are real or not. Negative square roots did not make sense. So people did not bother with them.\n\nBut then in order to find the real root of a cubic equation, which you know exists, some methods require that you solve negative radicals!\n\nCrazy, right, to find a real number... You need to operate with numbers that do not exist.\n\nThat is when people started studying complex numbers. i is not part of any real range. It exists apart from the real numbers. Literally, like another dimension... Complex numbers have height (real part) and width (imaginary part).\n\nThing to blow minds:\n\ni^i is real and equal to e^(-pi/2)\n\nThe property that i^2 = -1 is the stuff that makes it appear in all these real value equal to complex expression equations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Complex_conjugate_picture.svg"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann\\_sphere"], []]}
{"q_id": "5n3sfx", "title": "the differences between heavy metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n3sfx/eli5_the_differences_between_heavy_metal_thrash/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc8hzn0", "dc8j4se", "dc8l5l4", "dc8ogpa", "dc8tq8y", "dc8u5d4", "dc8u7qh", "dc8unis", "dc8w4ur", "dc8w8n3", "dc8xzqv", "dc90lfb", "dc91jsv", "dc9f51c"], "score": [8, 196, 37, 1648, 2, 8, 2, 2, 154, 3, 3, 3, 17, 2], "text": ["Heavy metal: basically Rock but with heavier, often more distorted guitars. Most of the vocalists have a more intense way of singing as well. Also the lyrics consist of everything; they are typically more fictitious or political though.\n\nThrash metal: take it up a notch from Heavy metal. The guitars are heavier, faster, more distorted and sometimes more technical. Again, the vocalists are intense, however, they have more of a growly way of singing, but they're still fairly clean and easy to understand. The lyrical content is often political or controversial in some way. (Jihad by Slayer, Laid to Rest by Lamb of God, Holy Wars... The Punishment is Due by Megadeth)\n\nBlack metal (from my understanding): A bit slower than Thrash, but more distorted. The vocals are normally squealing and growling in a way that isn't very easy to understand. Lyrical content as far as I know can be fairly Satanic, morbid and dark.\n\nDeath metal (again, from my understanding): it's like Black metal and Thrash metal had a love child. It has the intensity, and speed of Thrash but the vocals are similar to Black metal. I believe the lyrical content is the same or similar as Black metal as well.\n\nSource: I've been a metalhead for 9 going on 10 years. However, I'm more into Thrash, Classic/Heavy Metal and Metalcore. So the last two may be totally out of wack. Feel free to correct me!", "Its not easy to define precisely what counts as which genre in metal, especially with the large number of sub-genres. The lines between many are blurry and there are even many \"crossover\" artists or genres. I think its a bit better to take the bands that defined the sound of the genre as an example.\n & nbsp;\n\n**Heavy Metal:**\n\"Old-school\" Metal. This pretty much laid the ground for the many many sub-genres that now exist. Heavy Metal's roots were from Blues/Rock, but was defined by the \"heavy\" sound of distorted guitars. Singing is still pretty clean but more \"powerful\" than traditional rock. \nThink bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin back in the 1960s-70s.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Thrash Metal:**\nA generation of kids grew up listening to Heavy Metal and finally started to form their own bands in the 80s - this was the decade of Thrash. Heavy Metal, but heavier. Faster drums and more complicated and distorted guitars. Singing is more aggressive - shouts and screams are used. The defining bands of this genre are known as \"The Big Four\" of thrash metal: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. Lyrics are usually politically themed (influenced from Punk).\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Black Metal:**\nReally fast tempo songs - guitars are distorted and notes are tremolo picked (one note played multiple times really fast) to create a drone-like sound. Vocals are harsh and mostly screamed and are not always clear. Songs are usually longer than the average song length (5-10+ minutes). This is (probably) the genre that gave rise to the idea that metal is \"devil-worship\" or \"satanic\" because of the lyrics and the image portrayed by many of the performers. Famous bands are: Bathory, Emperor, Mayhem and Dimmu Borgir\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Death Metal:**\nThis genre is a bit more difficult to classify because of the multiple sub-genres it has spawned, however usually the sound is even heavier than the other genres mentioned above because the guitars are tuned to a lower pitch. Drums use blast-beats which is essentially playing two or more parts of the kit really fast (16th notes) in order to achieve an \"explosive\" sound. Vocals are also harsh and incorporate low pitched growling along with other extreme vocal techniques. Guitar solos are usually blazing fast and extremely complicated.\nFamous bands are: Death, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and Entombed.", "Here you go;\n_URL_0_\n \nP.S. you must be using a PC with flash to use the interactive map of metal", "I wrote my dissertation on this very topic and I don't think anyone's nailed it in their answers yet. \n\nEdit - I've only got a hard copy of the dissertation (I graduated years ago). Thanks to everyone who asked to read it, if I remember I'll try and scan it.\n\nCrash91 has got a lot right but has made a few points I disagree with.\n\nSo, \n\nHeavy Metal - This grew out of Hard Rock and used the same scales, rhythms and subject matter. Black Sabbath are widely cited as the first true Heavy Metal band, giving birth to both the Heavy Metal genre in general and the Doom Metal genre in particular. Led Zepellin, Deep Purple etc are Hard Rock and are only accepted as Heavy Metal bands in the US. In the UK Heavy Metal begins with Sabbath. Original Heavy Metal was fairly slow, gloomy, bluesy and lyrically dealt with subjects such as war, drugs, religion and occult themes. Vocals clean and sung.\n\nLater iterations in the 70s, such as Saxon, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest are also considered Heavy Metal but are sometimes referred to as NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) and were pioneers of the 'chugging' guitar sound people often associate with classic Heavy Metal as well as the use of twin guitar harmonised leads. Generally faster and more bombastic, the vocals of NWOBHM were more high pitched and the lyrics while dealing with similar themes, more fantastical. Hair or Glam Metal also grew out of this style (but it's awful!).\n\nThrash Metal - Thrash was a product of the 80s and metal's reaction to the aggression of Punk in the late 70s. The band that kick started the whole thing were Venom from Newcastle in the UK. They are sometimes classed as NWOBHM but they don't really fit in that category because they were pretty poor musicians. Their contribution was mainly down to aural extremity, though they sound fairly tame now. They had a 'heavier' sound than previous bands combining speed, harsher distortion tone on their guitars, faux satanic lyrics and shouted/growled vocals. They were a big influence on a lot of Thrash and Black metal bands but were pretty rubbish themselves (controversial opinion!).\n\nEarly Thrash was pretty loose and messy with a lot of poor musicianship, bands like Sodom, Kreator and Destruction (Germany) made an unholy racket and began to attract the punk kids as well as the metalheads. Later bands worked out how to play their instruments better and the drumming in particular became more accomplished. Classic Thrash as played by the big four (Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer and Anthrax) combines very fast drumming often using 'punkier' beats, NWOBHM guitar riffs played at faster speeds, more aggressive vocals and 'face ripping' (extremely fast and shrill) solos which are often atonal (not in any given key!). Lyrically Thrash was concerned with politics, nuclear war and occult/satanic themes.\n\nDeath Metal - In the late 80s there was a lot of genre cross pollination and this lead to Death Metal and Grindcore (as well as many other specialist 'cores). Death Metal ramps up the intensity, complexity, heaviness and obscenity of Thrash Metal. It downtunes the guitars (makes them sound deeper) and is characterised by a particular drum beat known as the 'blast beat', and the use of double kick pedals on the bass drum to achieve a rumbling, machine-gun like effect. The vocals are extremely low grunts, growls and roars and are almost impossible to decipher without a lyric sheet. Similar to Thrash, early Death Metal bands struggled to make their musicianship meet their intentions but later bands and a lot of modern bands play music of quite dizzying complexity utilising odd time signatures and even bizarre tunings (tuning the strings on their guitars differently) to make the sound more unsettling. \n\nThis is the overall 'heaviest' style of metal sonically and lyrically deals with all manner of things including but not limited too, gore, zombies, war, sexual perversions, horror movies, torture and ancient Egypt (that's just one band called Nile from the US to be fair). Death Metal's heyday was the late 80s and early 90s but there's still plenty of great modern Death Metal being made today. While Thrash is seen as a retro style that will always evoke the early 80s, Death Metal has evolved much further and incorporated far more styles including, doom, prog, industrial and middle eastern/oriental music.\n\nBlack Metal - This one's a bit unique as it all began with a small group of teenagers in Jessheim in Norway in the late 80s/early 90s. They wanted to be 'evil' and 'extreme' but they lacked the musical ability to rival the predominantly (at the time) Swedish and American Death Metal scenes. So instead they did what anyone would do (not) they started burning down churches, proclaiming themselves 'Satanists' and killing each other. They were influenced by bans such as Venom (UK), Mercyful Fate (Denmark) and Celtic Frost (Switzerland) all of whom had elements of NWOBHM and Thrash in their sounds but distinguished themselves by being 'Satanic' with varying degrees of seriousness.\n\nWhether or not they were serious, the kids in Norway took it all very seriously and out of that scene came what's come to be known as the 'Second Wave of Black metal', generally accepted as it's 'classic' phase. This style is typified by ultra lo-fi production values including lots of hiss, feedback and distortion a focus on treble rather than bass and vocals that were shrieked or screamed rather than grunted or growled. The music itself is far more primitive and basic than Death Metal and often utilises fast tremolo (rapid down/up strokes on a single string) guitar parts and minor scale arpeggios. Guitar solos are rare. \n\nDue to these production techniques the music can take on a hypnotic quality where it's passed through heavy on to something more languid on the other side. Critics say it's poorly played, badly recorded and the product of stupid teenagers with offensive views. The early Norwegian black metal guitar sound has often been likened to a swarm of angry wasps in a box but those who love it find something spiritual about it. The lyrics deal with Satanism of course but also a strand of Nietzschean elitism and an affinity with the Norwegian landscape (ice, frost, forests, mountains etc).\n\nLater Black Metal has evolved in myriad ways and incorporated allsorts of other styles including folk, celtic, oriental/middle eastern, prog, goth, shoegaze and traditional Nordic music. Offshoots include Blackened Death Metal, Viking Metal and Symphonic Black metal which combines the music with sweeping orchestral backing.\n\nHope this helps, I could go on for days. If you want recommendations, here are mine;\n\nHeavy Metal - Paranoid by black Sabbath\nNWOBHM - British Steel by Judas Priest\nThrash Metal - Reign in Blood by Slayer\nDeath Metal - Demigod by Behemoth\nMelodic Death Metal - Slaughter of the Soul by At The Gates\nBlack Metal - Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk by Emperor\n\nSomeone asked for a tl;dr so;\n\nHeavy Metal - Clean vocals, bluesy riffs, witches, weed and war.\nThrash Metal - Speedy guitar riffs, punk attitude, hardcore drumming, shouty vocals, political lyrics.\nDeath Metal - Downtuned guitars, complex riffs, machine gun drums, grunting/growling vocals, lyrics about horror movies, zombies and gore.\nBlack metal - Trebly guitars, simple riffs, atmospheric arrangements, shrieking vocals, Satanism.", "If you decide to dig further than ELI5 after reading the answers here, I highly recommend [Sound of the Beast: The History of Heavy Metal](_URL_0_)", "[Sam Dunn would be the way to go with his documentaries on the subject](_URL_0_)", "TLDR:\nHeavy metal - overarching classification for all the subgenres, though used to describe the classics (Preist, Sabbath, etc.),\nThrash - talented, cleaner punk music,\nDeath - Horror movie in music form,\nBlack - horror movie punk music", "Weird how that happens. Same with Mastadon and Akercocke, everyone raved about them and I didn't get it until years later.\n\nRepulsion are ok. They influenced a lot of bands I like (Napalm Death, Carcass, Pig Detsroyer etc).", "Heavy metal: Chug-a-wug. Slow, deep heavy stuff like Black Sabbath.\n\nThrash Metal: Chuggada-Wuggada. Faster, more rhythmic, usually with a bleeding fast meedlie-deedlie solo before diving back into a chugga-da-wuggada riff.\n\nBlack Metal: Meedlie-Deedlie. Squiddly fast high notes played super fast, with heavy chuggadas underneath.\n\nDeath Metal: Chuggada wuggada with meedlie deedlies in equal measure, and Cookie Monster on vocals.", "[Uh oh](_URL_0_)\n\nFollow up question so bots don't remove me?", "Check this out, Metal 101 at MIT:   \n_URL_0_    \nIt's an awesome site with great info.  \n\"So what is Heavy Metal?  That's a loaded question. Simply put, Heavy Metal is an ever-evolving genre of popular music and culture beholden to a fanaticism reminicient of religious devotion. That, and double-bass.\"", "I would say as well there are new waves of 'avant-garde' black metal bands like Liturgy, Oathbreak, Deafheaven etc that are now being largely shunned by 'old school' fans for being 'hip'", "Easiest way to convey the differences are [this flowchart](_URL_1_).\n\nAnd [This Video](_URL_0_)", "Trick is to listen to really key examples. \n1. War pigs, black sabbath, heavy metal.\n2. Kill or become, Cannibal corpse, Death metal.\n3. Angel of death, slayer, thrash metal.\n4. I am the black wizards, emperor,  black metal.\n\nFrom these 4 you can really hear the difference in vocals, music, and cadence of song.  Laymans identifier: singing notes? Heavy metal. Yelling mostly same note with slightly off time drums and solos? (This is on ourpose) Thrash. \"Cookie monster vocals\" (more complicated than this but yknow) death metal. Insanely fast precise drums and complicated score with cmv's of death metal = black metal. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["Www.mapofmetal.com"], [], ["https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Beast-Complete-Headbanging-History/dp/0380811278"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dunn"], [], [], [], ["https://wronghands1.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/can-of-worms.jpg"], ["https://metal.mit.edu/"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gHu02fJmU", "http://forum.cakewalk.com/download.axd?file=0;1886138"], []]}
{"q_id": "6wbvee", "title": "why aren't there seatbelts in public busses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wbvee/eli5_why_arent_there_seatbelts_in_public_busses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm6uod5", "dm6uswe", "dm6v3g1", "dm6vzf9", "dm6yhcf", "dm6yxjw", "dm6zvm6", "dm709m6", "dm7eyeb"], "score": [6, 241, 5, 28, 2, 105, 7, 7, 6], "text": ["Here in the UK there are some, but they tend to be on the longer distance, newer coaches rather than local or town-town bus routes. There definitely doesn't *seem* (feel free to correct me anyone...wait, this is Reddit, of course you will :D) to be any legal requirement or enforcement on people belting-up on public transport, even when belts are provided. Often wondered why meself.. I'd've thought that *not* having em would play merry hell with public liability insurance costs.. ", "The chances of you needing a seatbelt in a bus are far less than in a VW bug. The weight and size of a bus makes it inherently safer to drive in than a smaller vehicle.\n\nThe only problem here is if the bus flips. Then you're fucked.", "Here any buss made after 2004 has to have seatbelt for all passengers. Unless its made for urban traffic only. \n\nAnd its illegal to not use seatbelt if one is available.", "Town/ city buses drive at about 20-30 mph. They have handles often on sides or the seat in front. They are not legally required to have seat belts atleast here in the uk. And the inconvenience of having to take it on and off every time someone wants off. \nOn the other hand, coaches or intercity buses travel on highways often faster and are required by law to have them and in proper operating condition. And people don't get on and off as often. These are checked on every inspection and yearly MOT(government vehicle check)\nPs- city buses can drive fast but only when no passengers on board ", "I thought the designs of the seats were to mitigate any possible accident.  The seat backs are tall enough that seated passengers will not fly forward, and the seats are designed to take the impact.  \n\nSide impacts and rollovers, the passengers are screwed.", "I was once in a bus accident on a non-divided highway back in the 1990s.\n\nWe were driving along in a coach bus at 100km/h.  A van driving in front of us slowed down, signaling a right turn at a side road.  Our bus pulled into the oncoming traffic lane to pass them on the left.  The van turned left, and got T-boned by the bus at 100km/h.\n\nAs a passenger near the back, it felt like we hit a speedbump.  I just felt light on my seat for a second, then everything was normal again.  We were then confused as to why the bus was pulling over.\n\nThe van had its entire side destroyed.  You could see the steel beam that runs down the side of the van in relief, every body panel and window on the left side of the van was crushed.  Fortunately there were no serious injuries in the van (but probably lots of whiplash).\n\nIn summary:  momentum is awesome.  As far as I can recall, this bus had no seatbelts.\n\n(Ironic part:  we were watching a movie on the bus.  It was \"Alive\", and our bus accident happened shortly after the airplane crash scene was shown.)\n", "Physics!  The bus weighs so much that an accident will not be nearly as dangerous to passengers as a similar accident when in a smaller lighter vehicle.  Most accidents would be with another vehicle, not a brick wall.  So the bus would not instantly decelerate. ", "FYI buses in the U.K. Won't emergency stop either. This is because they don't have seat belts so hitting the brakes hard would increase the risk of injury more than hitting the object and slowing down using this (slow speeds only)\n\nOne of the things a friend got told when learning to ride a motorbike was don't mess with buses they won't stop for you ", "The rationale for a school bus is that in the case of young children, if there is an accident most of them are probably going to have trouble undoing their seat belts on their own, and in the case of something like the bus catching fire, it would be more hazardous to have them than not"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1huu9g", "title": "when you \"sell\" stocks, who is buying them? what if nobody wants to buy them? what if nobody wants to sell them? how do they work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1huu9g/eli5_when_you_sell_stocks_who_is_buying_them_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cay52mi", "cay56lr", "cay5797", "cay8ras", "caya1oi", "cayaxw7"], "score": [21, 66, 5, 29, 2, 2], "text": ["The purpose of the market is to match buyers to sellers. If fewer people want to buy, then the price goes down until people want to buy again.\n\nIf you think about just your transaction on its own, it seems like this wouldn't work. But because there are hundreds of transactions in each stock per hour, it works well.", "When you sell a stock, as in you've hit the \"sell\" button on your trading platform or called in an order, you're selling it to someone who has hit the \"buy\" button on his trading platform for the same price. \n\nIf you sell and no one wants to buy, then your order will just not be filled at that price. Then, depending on your choice of broker or personal settings, your order will be canceled, wait to be filled at the price, or fill at the next available price(s).\n\nSo pretty much, when you sell a stock, you're selling to some guy who happens to be buying at that moment. If no one's there to buy from you, you'll be left hanging. And vice versa.", "When you sell stocks other people are buying them. If nobody wants to buy them at any price they have zero worth. If nobody wants to sell them at any price they have infinite worth.\n\nIf nobody wants to sell at a *given rate* then the stocks are just worth more than that. If nobody wants to buy at a given rate the stocks are worth less than that.", "It's important to remember, that the \"price\" of a stock is not like the price at a store.  The \"price\" that you see reported for a given stock is actualy just a reflection of the most recent trades of that stock.  That's why the price is always changing.  The ticker price is just a reflection of the actual price that things are bought and sold at.  Not the other way around (the stock is not bought and sold at the ticker price).\n\nSo when you sell a stock you are selling to another real person.  If you are selling a stock for $110 and no one wants to buy it, then you offer it for $109, then $108, then $107 until finally someone does buy it.  The next instant the ticker shows a drop in the price of that stock from $110 to $107.\n\nThe same could be said when you want to buy a stock.  Assume the ticker price is $107 and you decide you want to buy.  But no one is willing to sell, then you offer $108, then $109 then $110 and finally someone sells at $110.  So the ticker price is then updated with this new information. ", "Assuming we are discussing common stocks, how selling and buying works depends on what market your is trading on. If you are trading on a larger market like the Nasdaq or the NYSE owned markets it could work two ways. The people who help run those markets are called Market Makers. Now both exchanges work a little differently and what it comes down to is whether or not those Market Makers hold their own inventory of shares or not. But in the end the purpose of the Market Maker is to maintain an orderly market. They will match orders with buyers and sellers in an actively traded security. In the case where there may not be a buyer or seller on the Nasdaq, the Market Maker will do their best to buy or sell shares from/to you from/to their own stock inventory. The only time that this is not the case is when it comes to ECN or OTCBB/Pink Sheet (Over The Counter Bulletin Board) trading. ECN means Electronic Communication Network. Many people use these for after hours trading. They are just computers that match trades peer to peer, no one is watching them typically and can only match buys and sells on the same price level. OTCBB/Pink Sheet markets are just lower level, unlisted securities that still trade peer to peer. This is what causes price differentiation and volatility on those markets.\n\n**TL;DR: Big brand name markets have \"Market Makers\" who make the market work, lower level markets work peer to peer.**", "When you're ready for something beyond the ELI5 limit, I strongly recommend the book [*Dark Pools*](_URL_0_). It explains in excellent clarity (but without skimping on substance) how the stock market has changed in the last 30 years. (TLDR: It's totally different because of computers!)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Pools.html?id=geCHWBx-e9EC"]]}
{"q_id": "2klr2x", "title": "During the Classical period, the Roman Republic/Empire absorbed several kingdoms due to their rulers bequeathing their kingdoms to Rome after their deaths. Why on Earth did they do that?", "selftext": "For example, the kings of Pergamon and the ancient tribal kingdom of the Maures (AKA Mauretania) left their entire state to Rome in their wills when they died. I wonder why they did that? Did they sense the coming storm and did it to avoid eventual wars with Rome, or were prior negotiations between these kings and Rome involved? Did they leave it the 'the Roman state' or to some Roman politician with whom they had a client relationship? Did they never consult their people or at least their kingdom's nobility before they did it?\n  \nDid this happen to any other kingdoms besides Pergamon and Mauretania?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2klr2x/during_the_classical_period_the_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clmo4qy", "clmpmzm", "cln588x"], "score": [43, 18, 6], "text": ["In some cases, it seems like coercion or outright theft. Boudica, a queen of the Iceni, rebelled against Rome after her husband, Prasutagus, [left his kingdom to Rome and his daughters jointly](_URL_1_) to repay debts incurred earlier, or so Roman historians would write. That ended as badly as can be expected, and after Rome seized it all, flogged Boudica, and raped her daughters, the Iceni followed the warrior queen to battle. Cities, inclding London - or Londinium at the time - were burned by the Celts, but eventually the Romans defeated the more poorly trained and equipped tribesmen. \nSo... paying off debt seems to be the surface reason, but also, I'd have to guess that Rome wrote that into history in some cases after they'd already annexed their new acquisition.\n\nHere's the [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) link for a quicker read if you want.", "Ptolemy XI left his Egyptian kingdom to Rome in his will (maybe -- a will was produced as having been lodged in Rome that made this provision, and required Ptolemy XII to bribe Caesar to ignore it, although it was still used to justify the annexation of Cyprus), but Rome did not attempt to enforce this. Egypt was in something of a mess, and Ptolemy XI was installed by Sulla as a pro-Roman king; he had been required to marry Cleopatra Berenice, but mysteriously chose to murder her. Because she was more popular with the locals than he was, Ptolemy XI was promptly murdered by the people of Alexandria. This made it unlikely that his subjects would be terribly likely to accept his having submitted them to Roman rule, so Rome did not contest the inheritance of Ptolemy Auletes in Egypt and of his brother in Cyprus, at least for a little over 22 years, when they annexed the island.\n\n(apologies -- edits because I can't spell today, let me know if I typed anything else horribly)", "I did an undergrad essay on Pergamum so I can shed some light on that kingdom until someone more knowledgable comes along.  From what I read it was becoming apparent that while Pergamum was not a vassal/client state of Rome, it was almost a roman dependency.  Two major wars had been won with the extensive military and diplomatic support of Rome that basically gave Pergamum hegemony over Anatolia.  If Roman support was withdrawn, IE pergamum started backing the wrong horse, it was not without reason that they would be on the losing side of the next war and suffer greatly, and that even should the relationship merely cool, Pergamum would still suffer for this lack of support.\n\nAt the time of his death, Attalus III did have no heir, was very aware of the relationship between Rome and his kingdom and if I recall correctly, also aware of some internal strife that had recently been settled somewhat.  His decision to bequeath the kingdom to Rome could have been in tacit aknowledgement of Pergamums status increasingly becoming a Roman Dependency, or perhaps a more altruistic reason of wanting to prevent civil war in a successio crisis, which were very common in the ancient world.  Of course in politics altruistic reasons should be looked at with heavy scrutiny, so it is my opinion that he it would have been a combination of both, mixed perhaps with some roman pressure/promises of intervening in Pergamum in the event of a succession crisis, as they were wont to do throughout history.  Had they done this, a puppet king would have been installed who was pro roman, so it was perhaps better to be done with the pretense and spare the bloodshed.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica", "http://www.historynet.com/boudica-celtic-war-queen-who-challenged-rome.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "102evn", "title": "why doesn't a phone with its ringer set as 'vibrate', eventually destroy the mechanisms inside working it?", "selftext": "If my phone is on vibrate and I use it all the time for calls and texting, why doesn't this constant shaking ruin my phone?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/102evn/why_doesnt_a_phone_with_its_ringer_set_as_vibrate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6sou69", "c69tgzq", "c69uz9d", "c69v49o", "c69vaxg"], "score": [2, 7, 11, 8, 5], "text": ["Vibrations aren't really a problem and cause minimal damage (loosening of screws or small amounts of wear on the interface between components until they match the objects resonance frequency. At that point the material itself begins to experience the energy rather than just transfer it to surrounding objects. You would have to have your phone vibrating all the time to see any issues, and probably then the little electric motor that spins the counterweight would fail first.", "They have found a good middle ground to set the vibrate to. In between too violent that it would degrade the phone vs. too soft that you don't feel the vibration. Also, they design the structure of the phone so that it isn't too prone to damage from vibration, and also use materials that serve the same purpose. ", "There aren't really any moving parts in a phone. I'd probably guess that the only moving parts were the motor that drives the vibration and I suppose the speaker that vibrates for sound. The non-moving parts aren't really effected by being vibrated assuming they are reasonably well constructed.\n\nSome electronic devices (like a laptop) do have moving parts and are more likely to sustain problems if moved around or vibrated too much.", "The vibration is driven by a tiny bit of metal with an imbalance of weight on one side. The diagram [here](_URL_0_) shows the mechanism. The red part is the imbalanced metal, and it rotates, causing vibration. It doesnt destroy the phone because its very contained. Besides that most phones are made to withstand a couple drops on the ground, so they are sturdy enough to handle vibration.", "because mechanical and material engineers kick ass"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.techonlineindia.com/Libraries/tol/Haptics1_1.sflb.ashx"], []]}
{"q_id": "5jqobe", "title": "If Gut Bacteria Between People Is Different, Could Transplantation Affect Caloric Requirements?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5jqobe/if_gut_bacteria_between_people_is_different_could/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbiot9o", "dbjer6t"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["Short answer:  No/highly unlikely.\n\nLonger answer: The \"breaking down\" that occurs in the large intestine isn't about extracting energy from food - it's about water recovery and vitamin production/absorption (and moving waste along in a convenient format).  Protein, carbohydrate, and lipid digestion/absorption occur earlier in the digestive tract.  There's nothing we know presently that would suggest a way to significantly change how that works via altering the lower gut microflora.  \n\nA related idea I'd rate as at least slightly plausible (if still probably not very practical) would be altering the bacteria to improve vitamin production (since they already are involved in the production/absorption of some vitamins), since there's more to nutrition than calories.  \n\nFor more about what medical science is actually doing with fecal transplants, [here's an open-access article that covers it pretty well](_URL_0_).  Curing bacterial illness by restoring microflora balance is unfortunately a very, very far cry from fundamentally altering how the human body handles food in such a way that it would have a significant impact on nutritional requirements.", "Yes, this is very much possible! In some mouse models, the microbiota can induce obesity. Co-housing these mice with wild-type mice, in some cases, can transfer the obese phenotype. Mice are coprophagic, so co-housing leads to transfer of gut microbes between individuals. Different microbes can produce vastly different metabolites, can break down many different polysaccharides and can differentially impact intestinal inflammation. In humans, it has been illustrated that an increased firmicutes/bacteroidetes ratio is correlated with obesity--potentially linking the human microbiota with obesity. This might, as you suggest, exist as a target for treating obesity (or maybe even malnourishment). And yes, this idea has been explored a bit--of course, much more research needs to be done here. Check out publications by Martin Blaser, Ruth Ley and/or Eric Martens if you are interested in this topic. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://pagepress.it/journals/index.php/idr/article/view/idr.2013.e13/5068"], []]}
{"q_id": "1tcbau", "title": "Do historians assume too much homogeneity within ancient cultures?", "selftext": "(Sorry for the confrontational-sounding title, I wasn\u2019t sure how else to phrase this!)\n\nI recently finished reading Holland\u2019s *Rubicon* and while I quite enjoyed it (and indeed I\u2019m reading another of his books, now), I was struck by the extent and frequency with which he made sweeping generalizations about the Roman character. For instance, in the first chapter, he remarks that...\n\n >  No Roman could tolerate the prospect of his city losing face. Rather than endure it, he would put up with any amount of suffering, go to any lengths.\n\nHolland makes similar remarks throughout the book, asserting that any Roman would... or no Roman could possibly... etc. I realize that *Rubicon* skews towards the pop-history side of the spectrum so there\u2019s probably a bit of narrative license being taken, but I\u2019ve definitely encountered similar remarks and sentiments even in less narrative and more strictly academic discussion.\n\nWhen historians say that, for instance, it was the firm custom in some ancient culture to welcome visitors in a particular way, or note that a particular religious feast was always met with a set of specific rituals or customs, to what extent can they be sure they\u2019re not overgeneralizing or assuming that a custom is more rigidly adhered to than it actually was? Is there a threshold of evidence needed to back up statements like this? Is there reason to think that ancient cultures and customs weren\u2019t as internally varied as modern ones? As someone who comes from an anthropology background, I\u2019d be fascinated to hear if and how this question is handled by professional historians.\n\n(Also, I can\u2019t help but imagine far-future historians remarking that no American would miss a holiday with their family or consider relinquishing their firearms.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tcbau/do_historians_assume_too_much_homogeneity_within/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce6iepz", "ce6v3pm"], "score": [21, 30], "text": ["Broadly speaking, yes. Or, to be more precise, we tend to equate the majority view of a given culture with the view which was predominant in the privileged of that culture. This is mainly due to the fact that the textual sources we have were generated by that subsection, particularly when we go farther back and only have written texts to refer to. It's a source bias that historians have only really started to try to rectify from the late 60s onwards. \n\nAt the same time, we tend to collapse time together, a problem most acute in teaching. It's kind of shocking to think that the gap in time between Christ and the assembly of a canonical Bible in a form we would currently recognize is about 50-150 years longer than the US has existed. Or, as another example, the gap in time from the founding of Oxford (1214) to the founding of Harvard (1636) is roughly the same as the gap from the founding of Harvard to now. This also occurs when we think of language. People like to talk all \"Shakespearean,\" by which they mean the general form of English in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but imagine shoving together all the slang that has ever been used in America, or even in the past 50 years. \n\nFor Antiquity and the Medieval period, fighting against this is particularly difficult for the reasons given above - sources. A great deal of modern scholarship has turned towards approaching the issues obliquely in order to rectify the problem. While we can never truly do so, one example has been in using scientific methods to extract DNA, to see if the population movements (Goths, Lombards, etc.) described in ancient sources actually existed in any concrete way.", "Oooh, I really like this question, but you have also unintentionally hit upon some really specific points!\n\nTom Holland needs some introduction. He is not 'a historian' in the sense that he isn't actually a primarily (or even secondarily) academic historian. He has no PhD, and his Bachelors degree was not in history. He is not a researcher attached to an institution, or a teaching professor, or any number of other variants. He is an author by career rather than just a by-product, having originally found his niche with fiction before turning to history. This is not leading up to saying 'he doesn't know the slightest thing about what he's talking about'. His books are better than that. But he is what we'd call a popular historian, who primarily writes books intended for mass publication, wide audiences, and without academia in mind. Popular historians are a very different beast to academic historians, though it is not only possible but positively encouraged for academic historians to be able to write books with clear language and a wide audience. \n\nTom Holland has a popular reputation as an expert on those areas he has written books on. Within history as an academic subject, however, he does not have that reputation. Many are ambivalent or oblivious to his work, but a not insignificant number of academic historians actively dislike his work, including me. And I'm about to tie this neatly into the second half of your question by saying that one of the things he is constantly guilty of is talking in hugely broad terms about particular cultures, implying that the culture exists as a kind of gestalt entity or that every individual thinks in a particular way. This is one of the most common problems with his work, along with many others. His other problem is that part of his charm is the creation of flowing, snappy narratives consisting of extremely clear prose. But in order to do that, he has to bend the material into shape, and the concept of the narrative historian within academic history is one that has been problematised enormously for the past few decades. He fills in gaps with what fits the narrative he has intended, and gives full license to one of the worst and most tempting instinct of academic historians as well- to have your evidence fit what you want to see, rather than having the evidence help determine what you conclude.\n\nTo now directly deal with your question, assumption of homogeneity within cultures has been a massive, massive problem in history, particularly ancient history. This is where perhaps the greatest efforts to change historical methodology have come about- for example, the shift in emphasis from texts leading conclusions to archaeology combined with texts (and for archaeology to be considered more direct, accurate evidence than texts), and the emergence of fields such as Socio-economic history and Gender studies. Many of these changes have been attempting to do exactly that- to stop conversations talking about what the Greeks thought, or even what the Athenians thought, and to instead talk about individual opinions and the trends of our surviving evidence.\n\nOne place, however, where I would talk about your own conclusions is when you mention the firmness of customs. There are a number of aspects of ancient societies that make the discussion of customs a very different one from those in a modern society. The first is the overall smaller scale of societies, both in the sense of specific communities and the wider identities that they strove to belong to. The population of the UK as of the present date is greater than the entire population of the Achaemenid Empire at its height, a society which stretched from the Aegean to the Indus. The second thing is that an important aspect of customs in general is regards to the expectations of two individuals as to how the other would behave. In many prior periods, these expectations had a great deal more anxiety to them; in many periods and places, there is a real terror that comes from opacity regarding the intentions of others. But likewise, this also comes onto the matter of scale of society again- many particular communities were interconnected to others, but all of them would still be a relatively self contained organisation. This brings me onto what I feel is a big difference, which is my third point, and that is regarding ritual- many societies have placed a far more enormous emphasis on set rituals across many different spheres than what I tentatively call 'our own'. One of the fundamentals of being a Greek polis is religious 'brotherhood' with your fellow citizens; you would have festivals, processions and many other sacred events occur rubbing shoulders with everybody else. And this really is a situation in which all of this is cast-iron organised; calenders pre-ordaining not only the sacrifice for that given day (both deity and kind of sacrifice) but also what the expense would be of acquiring that sacrifice, set festivals occuring yearly on predictable dates with particular rules as to who could attend, and many other aspects of the events like official ceremonies and whatnot.\n\nI am not arguing that your overall point is wrong; any conversation about a particular community, society, or culture should always be doing so carefully, and with an eye to avoid the problems that you mentioned. Individuals should not be regarded as having a fixed thought process due to their origins, or having no ability to break with custom or break rules, or as having no differing opinions from those that individual otherwise considered companions. But what I am arguing is that one should not discount certain areas in which you can more easily attest to a very rigid pattern of behaviour.\n\nOn the other hand, another point in your favour is that many historians are bad at actively dealing with differences between different communities in what we consider the same culture- what you are asking for, when it comes to 'internal variation', is not just the acknowledgement that societies are made up of individuals but also that Athenian does not equal Greek. And yet, think how many times the Athenian examples are held up as models of what all 'Greek' behaviour and customs were. Think how many times Sparta and Athens are held to define Greece in various periods, and how many times only a handful of city-states are ever brought up in discussions of the variety of ancient Greece. Restoring chaos and variance to what we consider the 'ancient Greeks' is something that I take very seriously, but it can also be seen as more extreme on occasions when people talk about the 'Celts doing X' and 'Celts thought Y'. The Romans, originally, were a community speaking a particular Italic language based around a particular city on the river Tiber. That is a relatively specific society when it comes to talking about shared traditions and identity. The Greeks, though diverse and consisting of hundreds of distinct societies, nonetheless actively claimed a single identity rather than us making up one for them; the boundaries of that identity changed, and they argued themselves about it constantly, but we can attest to the existence of the concept of the Hellene. But when we talk about the 'Celts' we talk about a swathe of Europe with shared linguistic and cultural heritage that nonetheless functioned as totally distinct societies, neither acting nor thinking as a collective whole. What was true for those in Gaul was not necessarily true for those in Britannia, and what was true for the Brigantes was not necessarily true for the Iceni. We have no indication that a Goidelic speaker in Ireland conceived of any kind of shared identity with a Celtiberian speaker in Numantia.\n\nTo summarise, you are absolutely being confrontational, in exactly the way that one should be. These kinds of approaches and narratives should be questioned, actively. Tom Holland is regarded a poor model for many aspects of historical work precisely because he falls into all the problems that you enumerated. There are areas, I feel, where one can talk about relatively organised behaviour, but this is also because individual variances would be so difficulty to spot or so relatively minor; when we have new features added to the Greater Dionysia, such as the performance of comedies in addition to tragedy and satyr plays, we have a lot of discussion about it and that is considered a major event. But Dion dropping one of the sacred cups at the procession to Mount Etna, and it having to be replaced last minute with a bushel of wheat- that is where I argue that drawing lines of internal differences are perhaps operating on too low a threshold. Also, if you have an anthropological background then I would absolutely make clear the fact that modern ancient history cannot exist without anthropology or archaeology, and the three exist (depending on the precise discipline and sometimes the institution) in a rather beneficial m\u00e9nage a trois. You are not wrong to seek at least some evidence of approaches that can co-exist with anthropology within history. The question that you asked is an important and critical one, and is the kind of question that academic historians should (and often do ask) of their own subject. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3ewut3", "title": "why is there a \"terms and conditions\" for using a website or program, but not for more 'real life' things like eating at a restaurant?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ewut3/eli5_why_is_there_a_terms_and_conditions_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctj3vmn", "ctj4f9z", "ctj5dg3", "ctj6jl2", "ctj6wa1", "ctj8m9q", "ctj8v3x", "ctjgxfw", "ctjjz83", "ctjvsg4"], "score": [92, 33, 2, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because websites and programmes can be used everywhere in the world, where local laws may or may not be the same as those applicable to the location of the programmer / issuing company.\n\nYou know where a restaurant is located, and it follows local laws and regulations (or should, anyway), and its customers are also supposed to adhere to those laws.", "There are in a sense terms and conditions for everything we do, including eating at a restaurant. Next time you go to a restauraunt look at the menu. Usually at the bottom there is a notation that eating raw or undercooked foods can be harmful.... This is a condition that you accept when you order that burger or steak rare. Behind a bar is usually a sign that says please drink responsibly as well as signage that shows you can't drink if you were born before a certain date.. Those are also conditions of service. \n\nThe restaurant and bar also has terms and conditions they are expected to meet to provide you with that service. (minimum health and safety standards).\n\nThey may not be presented the same as what you see on websites, but they still exist. \n\n", "There's also a legal term called \"assumption of risk.\" I am not a lawyer, and I'm sure others could do a better job of explaining, but it basically states that if you do something dangerous and stupid, it's your own damn fault you got hurt. This applies to situations like skydiving, but also to things like running through a mall or trying to do donuts in a parking lot. \n\nQuite a lot of the terms and conditions for most websites is about handling the assumption of risk and about ensuring that you aren't using their website for illegal purposes. \n\nIn a restaurant, it's generally a little easier to tell if someone is using your facility as a meeting ground to distribute drugs or start a prostitution ring. If the staff notices the same person there every day acting suspiciously, they can ask the person not to return. For a website, they often need to have something in writing to refer to. \n\nPart of this is, simply put, the fact that there is no \"Internet police\" that can be called to escort you off the website.", "There are, just more simplified.\n\nWhat you mean by \"terms and conditions\" are basically contractual terms.  Odds are, you will probably enter into a number of contracts everyday.\n\nMany people think that a contract is some document full of terms and conditions that people need to sign.  Contracts can be oral or verbal (i.e. by action). The terms and conditions can be implied. \n\nA contract is simply a legally enforceable agreement.  That's it.\n\nWhen you walk into a restaurant or when you walk into a store, and you order food or give something to the cashier, that is the start of the contract, i.e. you offer to enter into a contract.  They can accept your offer, i.e. order and agree to provide services or sell you the item, in exchange of something from you, usually cash payment. (i.e. the price)  This is implied from every day custom and usage.  You can always insert your own terms and conditions as can the other side but the other side may choose not to accept these.  Some terms and conditions may be implied by law, such as the food being served must be of a certain standard etc. \n\nContracts can become more complicated when parties want to explicitly spell out the rights and obligations of parties.  This is done to create certainty, typically in business settings.  There is nothing stopping a restaurant or a store from making its customers read and agree to a 500 page contract, save for pragmatic considerations.  \n\n", "Walmart has them.  They are usually in the back of the store and basically they give you a 'license' to shop there but not do things like write down their prices for competitors.  \n\nI'm not sure how legally binding it is.  ", "In real life if you are doing something idiotic, people can tell you to stop. \"Sir, you cannot pack your buffet in a giant ziploc bag\" to the occaisional customer is easier than printing out and making everyone sign a ToS form. ", "The restaurant industry has been around for a long time and is heavily regulated. There is a well established set of laws governing your transaction with the restaurant, the rights of the parties and what the restaurant can ask. \n\nWebsites are legally a new concept and laws and regulations have not caught up with online activities. As such, contractual extra terms and conditions are added to state and protect the rights of the parties involved (mostly the website/software owners).", "There are a number of reasons:\n\n1. The law in this area is still very much under development (and when the law is under development there is uncertainty and long contracts to reduce uncertainty).\n\n2. They can get away with having terms of service.  It is standard on websites and because it is through a link you hardly even notice.  If you went to a restaurant and they gave you a ten page contract to sign you would just walk out.  If on the web no one had terms of service except one site that made you scroll through the whole thing then click \"i accept\" you wouldn't use that site either.\n\n3. Generally there is legislation that prevents restaurants and other ordinary establishments from making you enter into meaningful terms of service.  A restaurant can't sell you a spoiled hamburger even if you sign a waiver.  Even if you can't sue the city health inspectors will swoop in and fine them into the next life.  Same with basically any other term they might want you to agree to.  So they don't bother trying.\n\nIt is a good question though.  What you might not realize is that even buying a cup of coffee is entering into a contract, but it is a verbal one with simple terms.  ", "\"Please, no substitutions\"\n\n\"All mixed drinks contain 1.5oz of alcohol unless otherwise ordered\"\n\n\"Eating raw or undercooked food can give you the Hershey squirts\"\n\n\"Parties of 6 or more are subject to a 15% service charge\"\n\n\"No free refills\"", "Have you never seen a \"no shoes, no shirt, no service\" sign at the entrance to a restaurant?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2fc04t", "title": "everyday girls/women have photos \"leaked\" onto the internet without their consent. why does it become an fbi concern when the woman happens to be an actress?", "selftext": "If it's illegal for anybody to post nude photos of another person without their consent why would the [FBI](_URL_0_) be looking into this specific case so thoroughly? It seems that just because they are celebrities they are entitled to more justice than the countless women who have nudes posted of them on a daily basis. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fc04t/eli5_everyday_girlswomen_have_photos_leaked_onto/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck7svyf", "ck7sxdy", "ck7tgxm", "ck7twb6", "ck7u2me", "ck7w1r5", "ck7w7qf", "ck7xg1q", "ck7xrsw", "ck7y043", "ck7y3dk", "ck7y9ze", "ck7ya58", "ck7yagc", "ck7yf6i", "ck7ytt8", "ck7ywms", "ck7z7gf", "ck7z864", "ck7zckn", "ck7zdhq", "ck7zfif", "ck7zjn9", "ck7zkci", "ck7zljv", "ck7zmv0", "ck7znpj", "ck7zrh2", "ck7zu1f", "ck7zz47", "ck804rd", "ck806jm", "ck808bd", "ck80bfk", "ck80imd", "ck80lp0", "ck80pgz", "ck80qqq", "ck80vz7", "ck80x19", "ck811mt", "ck818r0", "ck81c55", "ck81cas", "ck81im0", "ck81izf", "ck81k8b", "ck81ldr", "ck81m1y", "ck81t6e", "ck8237h", "ck8261j", "ck82gq3", "ck82h8z", "ck82qes", "ck82tg4", "ck835nd", "ck83cej", "ck83h2h", "ck83k7e", "ck83tlx", "ck83xnf", "ck840m5", "ck84118", "ck842m0", "ck848lg", "ck84doy", "ck84tq3", "ck84vix", "ck85811", "ck85889", "ck8594s", "ck85eyd", "ck85iiv", "ck85ik7", "ck85jvr", "ck85pjf", "ck85psq", "ck85ru0", "ck85ssh", "ck85ws1", "ck85yi8", "ck85z7i", "ck862mx", "ck862ph", "ck866ov", "ck867es", "ck868pz", "ck86f0h", "ck86f7b", "ck86le1", "ck86lfq", "ck86nch", "ck876fl", "ck87icg", "ck87lmg", "ck87oos", "ck87p1r", "ck87pk6", "ck87utu", "ck87vwd", "ck889b5", "ck88bkf", "ck88ehf", "ck88wqx", "ck893yo", "ck89kit", "ck89m96", "ck89ven", "ck8alcr", "ck8atqh", "ck8boxo", "ck8br5j", "ck8ch7s", "ck8civx", "ck8cw6f", "ck8d5k1", "ck8d9yh", "ck8dfu7", "ck8dgoz", "ck8dmdn", "ck8e2ss", "ck8e3au", "ck8e904", "ck8efer", "ck8egua", "ck8ej8w", "ck8ej9f", "ck8eot5", "ck8eux4", "ck8exlo", "ck8eyhi", "ck8fbbg", "ck8fmvg", "ck8g5tl", "ck8gkpc", "ck8hc5u", "ck8hh8i", "ck8higb", "ck8hkfg", "ck8hs48", "ck8j3uo", "ck8j45r", "ck8ja16", "ck8jmpy", "ck8jpn7", "ck8k3xz", "ck8k659", "ck8kanv", "ck8mr9w", "ck8q3za", "ck94tsu", "ckantoe"], "score": [104, 2, 3, 2394, 3186, 19, 525, 81, 50, 4, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 63, 16, 47, 16, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 3, 3, 3, 10, 2, 9, 12, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 132, 2, 2, 3, 6, 4, 2, 2, 6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 8, 57, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 10, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["It's not at the behest of the women depicted in the photos; the action to alert the FBI was taken by Apple. They are most likely the owners of that content, therefore, the victim.", "Partially that. Partially also because, as a celebrity, they get a lot more media coverage than an average person, so the FBI gets more heat for a celebrity (that has the media on their side) compared to an average person.\n\nThe bigger issue is this: there were dozens upon dozens of hacked celebrities. This implies that there was either one genius hacker, or a ring of them, and they're accessing information that they should not be able to access to. The FBI is concerned because this \"celebrity nudes leak\" exposed that this ring of people/one genius exists and they have to track them down.", "I see your point but in this case it doesn't work. \n\nAnother amateur nude puc of a random girl is posted online? Who cares? Nude pics of celebeities and 95% of the internet wants to see it. It's a lot more damaging.", "The FBI routinely investigates these types of hacking cases, even when the victims are not famous. You just don't hear about it on the news unless a celebrity is involved. The FBI tends to focus their resources on big time hackers who are targeting multiple people, which this guy definitely is.\n\nEDIT: A lot of people are asking for sources. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding them because any Google search just turns up news about this specific incident. Here is one example I know off the top of my head.\n\n_URL_0_", "If a girl sends you nudes and you share, its a copyright issue.\n\nIf you break into someones account and steal them, you have committed a federal offense.", "The FBI is involved because this case involves multiple states, possibly countries, thus making it a federal issue. ", "I'm less concerned about this and more concerned that it seems perfectly fine for paparazzi to take photos of celeb mothers breastfeeding, or celebs on private beaches/property and violate these womens privacy, for massive profits, and these shots are put in magazines and on the net. Now all of a sudden people want to treat this situation like is phenomenally worse, and I don't see it.\n\nEither we fix the culture at the roots, or we pass this off as \"shit happens\" the same way we pass off 500000x zoom as a minor inconvenience. ", "I guess if someone they know puts them online it is not a leak. If someone 'hacked' into a public or private server to get these images, that is when it can become a FBI issue.\n\nAnd since these are photos of high profile women, the photos and damages are worth a lot more, so it becomes a higher priority.", "To clarify, I dont think the FBI is actually pursuing this because of the pictures.  They're pursuing it because of the private account breaches of people worth millions of dollars.  Most people have credit/debit cards tied to their apple accounts and the people who brute forced the passwords now have a foothold into getting that information as well.  I doubt the FBI even cares about the nude pictures.  *see edit below*\n\nIn other news, there's alot of people in here calling the hackers 'geniuses'.  Running a brute force script on a login system that has no lockouts (which was Apples mistake that has since been patched) takes little to no talent at all.  Any 4chan neckbeard can google that script in seconds.  I could write it from scratch in about 15 minutes.\n\n*edit: forgot about that gymnast being underage thing.  They may be looking into that specifically in her case, but if what she said was true and she was making child pornography with someone then that girl has alot more problems to deal with than this*", "the FBI and a few other agencies have the redundant ability to look into cyber crimes, which involve hacking and unauthorized access\n\nthis has nothing to do with copyright violations and consent issues related to photos and using someone's likeness\n\nFBI and other agencies look into these things if there is enough public interest to make them move. \n\nAlso, celebrities have agencies and legal teams, thus can prompt corporations and federal agencies to be proactive\n\nthis is tied to wealth but is more related to the power of a group of people (union/corporation), than an individual\n\nlearn to oligarch \n\n", "The explanation for a five year old?\n\nBecause we are little people and they are big people.\n\nThe little people don't matter compared to the big people.", "It's probably as it's a federal cyber-crime; Hundreds of Apple accounts cracked involving victims across the world. The FBI investigate this shit all the time but it doesn't make the news as most victims aren't famous and aren't on Redditors laminated fap-list. ", "was going to say money, then thought about deeper ramifications inherent in stardom. but nah, it's MONEY. Bagels. Sheckels. Cashish. Benjamins. Dolla Bills, y'all.", "First step- Be money.\n\nSecond step- Don't not be money?", "Because they're rich and that's who the laws are made to protect.", "* Don't post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view. ", "Because it's a federal crime. This wasn't a leak. Stop calling it a \"leak\" . This was theft, plain and simple. They broke into accounts and stole property and then released it to the public. ", "1.  They aren't entitled to more justice.  The FBI investigates cases similar to this every single day for women that you've never heard of.  You're making the mistake of thinking that since you don't hear about it, that it must not happen.  You are literally making the mistake yourself, that you have accused the FBI of making, for the same reason.  That's some wild shit.\n\n2.  Publicity moves mountains.  A lot of people who are victimized never speak up or seek action when things like this happen.  The high profile nature of the case means that the follow up action is also high profile.  See statement 1.\n\n3.  Anyone can have photos stolen from their phone/ cloud storage.  Not just \"girls/women\".  Quit being sexist and driving stereotypes that men can't be victimized.  ", "Did you just completely ignore the fact that someone hacked into accounts to steal that data? Perhaps the real newsworthy part of the story makes a difference.\n\nAlso, did you consider that they do try to do something and it just doesn't get a lot of publicity because that's not big new?", "To answer your question: it's a basic example of a class system at work.  Celebrities are members of the upper-class, and as such, the authorities help them first.  We do live in a prejudiced society, one that favors the rich and (sometimes) famous much, much more than the average civilian.  Sucks, but it's just how things are in this country, and many others, for a very long time.  ", "It's because only the rich get justice and fair treatment in this country.", "Because you live in a world where how much the system works for you is directly proportionate to how much currency you have managed to acquire. ", "Because the photos were -stolen- from Apple Servers?\n\nJoe Blow angrily posting his ex's nudes on the internet isn't the same as intellectual grand scale property theft.", "Most of the time, photos are \"leaked\" by a jilted lover. This was a hack, which is a crime. The owner of the photos, say for example Justin Verlander, has implied consent from his GF to own those photos. Some hacker stealing them is the crime. \n\nI could be wrong, though.", "You are not rich nor famous therefore you don't matter in the USA anymore. The oligarchy does not care about your concerns. ", "Everyday girl can't pay. Plus the FBI agents are fanbois.", "Quite simply, the FBI is only charged with investigating federal offenses, and hacking is a federal offense, whereas posting naked photos of a woman without her consent is generally only going to be a state offense.\n\n== Federal Offense ==\n\nCongress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in 1986 to criminalize hacking. The relevant portion of the CFAA makes it illegal for someone to \"intentionally access[] a computer without authorization or exceed[] authorized access, and thereby obtain[] . . . information from any protected computer.\" [18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1030(a)(2)]. The Act defines a \"protected computer\" as any computer that is used in or affects interstate commerce (because under the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, Congress only has the power to regulate interstate (not intrastate) commerce). But basically any computer that conducts functions over the internet meets this definition.\n\nSo the tldr; version is that it is a federal crime to gain unauthorized access to nearly any computer system. The punishment includes a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. [\u00a7 1030(c)].\n\n== State Offenses ==\n\nThere are two general types of state laws that a woman could use if naked pictures are posted of her online without her consent. \n\n**(1) Voyeurism statutes.** Voyeurism statutes prohibit recording or taking photographs of someone without their consent. These statutes include a boyfriend who captures stills when having \"phone sex\" with his girlfriend over Skype (without her knowledge) and later posts them on the internet. \n\n**(2) Revenge porn statutes.** Revenge porn statutes prohibit posting sexually explicit photographs of people without their consent. These statutes were designed to stop the phenomenon of ex-boyfriends getting \"revenge\" by posting naked photos of their ex-girlfriends on the internet. Many of these statutes would cover any non-consensual posting of sexually explicit photos. Some only cover posting naked photos with the \"intent to harass.\" [_URL_0_]\n\ntldr; If it is illegal at all, posting naked photos of someone - without her consent - is going to be a state law issue, which the FBI does not have jurisdiction to investigate. In contrast, the current leak raises issues of whether iCloud or another major computer system was hacked, and hacking was made a federal offense in 1986, so the FBI has gotten involved. They are investigating the hacking, not the posting of the nude photos.\n\nSidenote: Many revenge porn statutes do not limit themselves to the original poster. If you repost naked pictures of JLaw, depending on your state, you are potentially breaking the law (since her publicist has made clear that JLaw did not consent to the posting of these photos).", "I do hope people learn something about computer security from this. \n\nIt is terrible that Jennifer Lawrence has had her personal space violated like this, but as she is as actress mainly famed for her physical attractiveness and tendency to wear tight clothing, hopefully her career will recover from the world knowing what her nipples look like. \n\nWhat is a much greater concern is how just how insecure most people's computers are and how much damage publically acessible nudes will do to the average woman (or man). \n\nThe fact is, anybody with a semi-professional knowledge of computers and enough determination can crack open a home pc\nlike a walnut. \n\nBack in the stone age before the Internet, people used to worry about taking nudie pics because of the statistically insignificant worry of \"what if I got burgled?\". \n\nConsidering how easy hacking a computer is compared to robbing a house, it is absolutely insane how it seems the norm these days for people to keep intimate shots floating around their hard drives. \n\nTLDR; Jennifer Lawrence was treated awfully, but her career will recover. Hopefully normal folks will think twice about keeping images of their genitals anywhere with an Internet connection \n\nEDIT - Spelling, as helpfully pointed out below. ", "Those girls don't have a massive network of connected lawyers and producers who stake their money on the girl's comfort.", "One word: Feudalism.", "It's not necessarily because they're celebrities. Rather it's because they have money and influence. That just happens to overlap a lot with celebrity status. Unfortunately, money and power grease the wheels of our justice system.", "The FBI takes these types of crimes seriously, celeb or not celeb. It's just that there's no media attention involved when it happens to a non-celeb.\n\nJust because the media doesn't talk about the FBI getting involved in every case doesn't mean the FBI only gets involved in celebrity cases.", "The FBI is white knighting. They erroneously think if they catch the hacker, then Jlaw will reward them by allowing them to bukkake her.", "ELI5 is a passive-aggressive way to ask this question", "It's not that nudes were posted, it's that a massive security breach happened and not just the celebrities but thousands of people's information on the cloud was hacked into. posting celebrity nudes wasn't probably the least bad thing that hacker could've done with that kind of power.", "It SHOULD be a legal concern no matter who it happens to. But the fact that so many people important to the film industry are involved, it becomes somewhat of a financial concern.\n\nNot to mention the scale of it. There're quite a lot of people involved, so it becomes much easier to rationalize the use of resources than having everyone investigate something every other week.\n\nI'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's how it is.", "Because we arent famous and our privacy is not as important as it is to the gods of hollywood.  What kills me is that their naked bodies arent gonna be any different than any other persons on the planet...Like OMG!! Jennifer Lawrence has tits and a vag, was everyone aware of this??", "what I'm more interesting in, is how such court cases can send you to 10 years in jail, while it seems to be quite easy to steal those pics.\n\nI mean it's just a leak. Does the FBI really investigates for all photo leaks like this one, even if it's not a celebrity ? Does it then investigates only because it's celebrities ?", "They're not investigating because of the photos, they're investigating because of the security breach.", "Why do we only care about privacy when it involves the rich and famous?", "The FBI does not like to be involved in \"small potatoes\" crime.  You can argue if this is right, wrong or indifferent, but it's the way it goes.  I've spoken with agents after a number of hacking attempts, and they want to quantify the damages, below about $5000 and they will not call you back, below about $50000 and you'll get a lackluster response.\n\nI don't know how you value the damages of a leaked photo, but I imagine they value a leaked photo of Jane Nobody at about $0.50, while celebrities can easily document what they are paid for photo shoots, offered for playboy, and so on to substantiate that their leaked photos did \"hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage\".\n\nPlus what other folks said, celebrities have connections and can make a ruckus in the press, and they do investigate many non-celebrity crimes you just don't hear about them.\n", "Society gives celebrities more status and clout than a normal citizen. They're trying to save face with the public.", "I had a friend who thought they were dating someone online who was their age.  It was back in the 90's so the internet wasn't what it is today.  Anyways, they chatted and talked on the phone for years.  He sent her pictures of \"himself\" on a pretty regular basis.  Turns out it was his son.  This 50+ year old guy was pretending to be his son to get girls to send him naked pictures of themselves.  \n\n\nShe had broken up with him after repeatedly trying to see him now that she could afford the flight, so he started threatening to post her nude photos on the internet.  She called the police.  The police called the FBI and charged him with trafficking pictures of underage women.  Since they were in different states this was considered a federal crime so the FBI moved in.  He was arrested and labeled a sex predator.  His son found out he had been doing this for years with his pictures and his whole family fell apart.  \n\nSo, the FBI isn't only interested in celebrity photos those just get the most attention.", "I imagine part of it is that a celebrity's pictures will spread posts of \"Famous Actress Naked Pictures!\" and news will quickly get back to them, whereas pictures of unknown girls can be put up where they will be viewed but not noteworthy among all the other naked pictures and often assumed to be put up by the subject herself, as often happens. Since word likely won't get back to these girls, often the perpetrator himself will be the only one aware that a crime was committed.", "First off it doesn't just affect women. I have multiple pictures of my dick all across the web. If you have seen a side bar ad on like pornhub/xvideo you have seen my dick. My dick is in those \"grow your dick 6 inches in 3 weeks!!\". Its sometimes the bigger dick and sometimes the smaller dick.\n\nI know this sounds crazy but it actually happened to me. Its fucked up.", "To set a high profile example (and sometimes establish precedence for future cases).", "Well I'll just be blunt: because society thinks celebrities are more important (though most are quick to deny it).", "Because the morlocks like us that live underneath the privileged  don't matter ", "Right back at ya - girls  &  women have their pictures leaked every day, why is it only a Fappening when it's a bunch of celebrities?", "Our culture tends to shame women who have sexual adjency. When a regular person's privacy is violated, the underlying subtext is that she got what she deserved and she shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.\n\nIf a famous woman's pictures are leaked, in addition to the shaming, our culture also percieves this as a theft due to the potential economic loss. Basically the public woman's body has been turned into a commodity of sorts. And so that violation of privacy is percieved of as a theft.\n\nBoth of these attitudes are misguided and sad, in my opinion, but i see both floating around the last couple of days.", "if you have heard of the old site \"[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\". \"gary jones\" the guy that hacked all the pics for that site is gonna be doing at least 5 years in federal prison.", "How dare you compare our rich and famous to mere mortals, fool?! ", "Whats so bad about being naked? Americans...", "because of the hacking. when other people have photos put on line it's because of an angry ex or something. In that case, someone who was given or sent the photo put it up, which is very different from hacking.", "Because it's *SENSATIONAL* news coverage", "I think this became a big deal not only because they were celebrities, but because it was a bunch of people at one time. As well as there is now child porn among the leaked photos since one of the pictures was when one of the actresses was underage. ", "It is a high profile case where catching the criminal would result in a lot of publicity and act as deterrent for other people who would consider hacking. The FBI could use a lot of resources to catch some random guy who stole and leaked pictures of his ex, but nobody would care about that case except for the two parties involved. It won't deter other cases because nobody would hear about that arrest.\n\nI know people want things to be \"fair\", but that is not how the world works. The authorities have to be pragmatic, they cannot catch every criminal that exists. They can only try their best to deter future crime with the threat that criminals may get caught and end up facing severe sentencing. For example, a lot of people on /r/thefappening are scrubbing their hard drives when a thread warned that some of the leaks contained pictures of the celebs when they were under 18, meaning they had child porn on their computer. There is very little chance of the FBI actually catching you, but because child pornography is widely known as a crime that has severe punishment, people are afraid to commit it. Catching the hackers of these celebs will be a high profile win that moves hacking crimes a little closer to this direction.\n\nTL;DR: JLaw is the Mockingjay and catching the criminal that hacked her and delivering strict punishment will set precedent for future hacking crimes and serve as warning/deterrent to potential future hackers. You are not the Mockingjay, what happens with you doesn't affect the rest of society, so the FBI is less likely to expend their resources on your if you have your nudies stolen. Don't put nudies on the cloud.", "In the US, all people are equal. Some, however, are more equal than others.", "It's a massive amount of famous girls/women and via a decent investigation the FBI might be useful and promote awareness about this kind of crime.", "Take into account that this case isn't *just* about a bunch of nudie pics.  This is not a case of someone breaking into a few actresses' phones, it's a case of someone breaking into an online storage cloud.\n\nSo this is less like somebody walking off with a photo album, and more like somebody *completely cleaning out a bank,* and then sharing out the pictures they found in a few of the safe deposit boxes.", "I'm more concerned about the state of humanity when surreptitiously acquired pictures of nude famous people is a main headline while other citizens of the world are being slaughtered and beheaded.  \nI guess justice comes in all sizes.", "It's safe to say that if you demonstrate a certain level of sophistication of cryptographic internet hacking know-how the FBI will investigate you. Every time somebody finds a vulnerability or does something amazing they probably want to catalogue it. Phone hacking is not that easy and if you can hack a celebrities phone I bet you can attack a political figure heads phone.", "Because nude pictures of celebrities are more high profile than that of say, your cousin Ashley. Leaking both are equally immoral and total dereliction of privacy, but nonetheless the FBI doesn't have the resources to give a whoop.", "Justice only for the rich  & /or famous in America.", "i am going to guess that most of the time, the photo is not acquired through hacking.\nso the FBI is probably looking into the hacking case, not the boobie case.\n\nif one hacker got your credit card number and one hacker got ashley judds boobs, and the FBI only investigated Ashley's boobs, then the case could be made that rich ppl are getting preferential treatment.  ( and i have no doubt they do) but really, its about the hacking needed to get to the pics. and to the guy that thinks that the FBI could better spend their time on the ISIS beheadings, plz stop.  the FBI is domestic.  if the beheading was in AZ, then you would have something.", "If you are making millions, you are an actual citizen of the US, where you can actually get stalkers to have prison time, you don't get in trouble for petty things like DUIs, abuse or even murder, and if anyone does anything you don't like, you can get the FBI to take care of it.", "Different rules for kings and fools.", "Normally most leaked or hacked pics on those sites were just pics she sent to bf or he took of her then when they broke up he uploaded them as revenge. The few that are genuinely hacked are investigated but don't hit the papers as A. People don't care for non celebs B. If no one knows her pics are up less chance of replication.", "Because people with money are important. People without money are shit and should stfu.", "the simple answer: she's rich and most women aren't.", "Crimes against the rich are investigated way more thoroughly (duh).\nWhen the rich commit crimes they are punished way less harshly.\nCash Rules Everything Around You.\n", "Because in the governments eyes, their precious information feed, aka Apple, was the real victim here.", "another big part is that its true what a lot of people say, celebs in this country are our version of royalty. You know that M1-5 would be on it like white on rice if nudes of princess Kate were leaked. So there's that. Also, Jennifer Lawrence is a huge, money making franchise now. If her name goes down in flames, hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Who knows already how many moms will boycott the next hunger games movie over these photos.", "Ever heard the term, \"***the squeaky wheel gets the grease***\"?", "Because they're rich and white", "More often than not they use the term \" hacking \" they being various porn sites and authorities etc.. and in reality the majority of cases are women that sent nude pictures to a boyfriend/girlfriend at some point that person then put those pictures on the internet.  \n\n\nThe second you give some one else some thing like this its no longer your property and the other individual can do what ever they want with it, its not right but it is a fact.  \n\n\nMany cases are also people that sell or trade in old phones with out wiping them etc.. \n\nIm not saying true hacking events like this don't exist because they do, how ever compared to the other two examples I listed \" real hacking \" is almost never the case. people just say it is because they're embarassed etc.. \n\n\nNow to give you an answer.  Authorities get involved with cases that have \" high profile individuals \" simply because they have money any one can say other wise but it's bullshit lol. \n\n\nAnd finally this was an event that was carried out by a person who breached a specific cloud storage by hacking it so this is an actual federal offense that they have to investigate it wasn't an angry ex that \" leaked \" the photos! ", "It is wrong of you to think that the FBI is only covering this case because of celebrities.  Celebrities are all subject to much more harassment than the general population. Just because you don't know about FBI investigations doesn't mean it isn't happening.", "very good question\n", "My guess is that it is investigated if it is brought to their attention, it just doesn't make the news like it does with well known figures.", "You're just simply wrong. No they are not getting special treatment because they're celebrities. If someone hacks into your personal things and posts nudes of you online and you call the police, the FBI will get involved if they have to. You're making a massive assumption that the FBI aren't involved in other people's cases which they most definitely are. Just because it isn't all over the news doesn't meant it doesn't happen.", "Throwaway for obvious reasons. \n\nThe victim in question needs to be aware that the photos have been posted without their consent before a complaint can be made to the authorities. \n\nWhile Jennifer Lawrence found out what happened to her due to it being all over the international news, many women aren't in the habit of trawling amateur porn sites looking for themselves.  \n\nI was once, ahem, perusing red-tube when a side-bar ad gave me more than a little dose of deja vu - an ex-girlfriend from many years ago was featured on one of those ex-revenge sites. \n\nAs delicately as I could I arranged for the information to be passed on by mutual friends - not really an easy topic to bring up directly with an old flame. \n\nTurns out she had no idea she was on there, and was seriously shocked and traumatized by the news. Some shit-bag she had dated after we broke up had posted pics of her, and since she never visited porn sites, she was completely unaware that her nude pics were all over the internet.  I don't know how the whole thing panned out, but I know it was deeply unpleasant for her.  \n\nTLDR; the countless women who have nudes posted of them on a daily basis often don't know that it is happening as they don't go trawling through the dingy corners of the internet where you might see such things. ", "Well they would look pretty bad if they didn't. I mean it is an opportunity for them to get some brownie points if they caught the guy. It is a good PR move for them. As others have said here, they do get involved in other peoples issues, this is also an opportunity to get some public recognition.", "Regular people's nudes don't end up plastered on the front page of every social networking site.", "It's not about being an actress, it's about socio-economic status.. which in the US is highly connected with race. Rich white people. If you're rich and white, then the police are pretty much your personal dogs.. just waiting to be set off their leash as soon as you point your pampered finger at a swarthy  guilty-till-proven-innocent 'suspect.'", "It's important to go for high profile cases to send a message, especially as there isn't enough time to after every case!", "Because the average females nude pics are worthless.\n\nJennifer Lawrence nude pics can be bought at a high price by TMZ, The Enquirer...etc, so that makes these celebs a target to lots of crazy people.\n\nSee Brittney Spears of a couple of years ago when dozens of papparazzi chased her around LA, breaking driving laws and endangering the public. ", "Fucking thank you!! For getting this to the front page", "It supposed to be an FBI problem every time it happens... as that's the way the federal law is written.\n\nThe problem is that it is impossible for the FBI to thoroughly investigate *every* violation of this federal law (or every other federal criminal statute, for that matter); instead, they investigate high-profile violations to make it seem like they're doing something. It's akin to how the Prohibition agents dealt with violations of the Volstead Act; alcohol was sold *everywhere*, generally in the open, but they only had the ability to go after the high-profile cases.\n\nIs it unfair and arbitrary? Yes, it most definitely is. The problem isn't necessarily with the FBI's choice on how to use their finite resources, however; it's Congress's fault for passing an obscene number of (vaguely-written) criminal statutes that result in arbitrary enforcement.\n\nShould these matters be a federal matter if the feds don't have the resources to investigate violations? That's a debate to have. In fact, we should be having a debate about a vast number of federal criminal statutes...", "Its probably some politician in high ranks that has been caught delivering the pole of love to one of them.", "I feel that the /u/blalien could be correct, but I feel like there is more to it than that. A highly publicized person like Jennifer Lawrence or Kate Upton being hacked can be used as leverage to push for less internet privacy. We (hopefully) all know that the government has been pushing for that for a while now, and using something like this leak could potentially be used as more ammunition for their cause.", "Because these people have A) money, B) the attention of the media and C) the attention of the public (however short a span that is).\n\nIt's the magic trio!\n\nIt gets shit done.\n\nIf you are...\n\n* A high ranking government official\n\n* Wealthy\n\n* Some sort of celebrity or the other...\n\nThen you not only get a permanent \"get out of jail free\" card, but the government will treat any \"grievance\" you may have as if it's affecting their very own family.\n\nWelcome to America. Take a number.", "Do these famous people happen to all have the same agent?  This all smells like a publicity stunt to me.", "Justice is blind but likes the smell of money. ", "I think a lot of it has to do with the difference between 'hacking' and 'I left  facebook open on the work PC'.  Most regular women who end up with their homemade pornography on the internet don't get 'hacked'.  They made a stupid mistake giving someone the chance to invade their privacy.  These actresses used good security, which was hacked by a very clever motivated individual.  The FBI should get involved on behalf of the actresses.     ", "I also doubt that the FBI is really trying very hard to catch this guy.  They have a lot more important shit to do.", " > If it's illegal for anybody to post nude photos of another person without their consent\n\nIt's not.", "Because publicity affects response. Don't tell me you didn't notice this.", "All branches of the US government serve the powerful.", "the FBI wants to see the pictures, too.\nSnow said the NSA contractors would pass around pilfered nude pix all the time....", "$$$$$MONEY$$$$$\n\nThese actors and such make alot of people money, a lot of powerful people. They also have ties to powerful people.. That's how I see it.\n\nIt's like when a cop is shot, ALL the cops come out for 'justice' in looking for the suspect, but when it's a 'regular person' you just have a number of cops looking for the man but not as intensely.", "Also, it's the backlash.\n\nJust pretend the gov't is lazy, and doesn't want to do work/pay people for one little nudie.\n\nBut throw in the widespread criticism that would come with not helping the famous....and you are kissing your job goodbye.\n\nThat is the power of viral videos and tweets and whatnot; if the gov't knows a lot of people are watching and they act.", "Celebrities have very little privacy in this world and when nudes are released they could lose all of it completely. Nudes from celebrities are also spread on a larger scale to millions, it's not like a picture circulating a school which someone can escape from by moving away. People lack empathy for celebrities and many people felt they were entitled to those nudes and seeing as many of those celebrities were role models to younger people, it doesn't send a good message to younger generations that you can expect to have your privacy violated. It is unjust - no nudes should be shared without consent at all and if they are they should all be investigated, however just because celebrity nudes are investigated ore thoroughly does not mean that they should be investigated less to make it equal, it just means that cases that aren't investigated should be investigated more to make it equal. No one is 'entitled' to more justice, it just happened that this situation highlighted issues with services which were meant to be secure and the photos reached millions.", "[I don't think that word means what you think it means](_URL_0_)", "My 2 cents. High profile ppl can afford the legal guys needed to bring maximum punishment. The FBI isn't going to get involved if they know you can't afford to prosecute.", "Because they're all idiots.", "Regular Janes have been suing also for having their pics leaked, especially on revenge porn sites, and winning. ", "What makes the whole thing different as well is that usually when someones nudes are leaked the world doesn't know who this person is. I think a nude pic of a celebrity that is leaked is the same as leaking nude pics of a girl and posting her facebook page, CV and pictures of her family to accompany the nude pics.", "because this Op 4Chan guy is dangerous and could strike at any time", "Because celebrities are better than you and me. - (say it in a Ricky Gervais voice) ", "Because you don't matter and they do. Welcome to the world.", "Because rich people are more important than us.  Same reason everyone wanted to see JLaw's nudes and not your next door neighbor's.", "Personally I think America has got some totally fucked up sex psychology.\n\nIf we were cool and reasonable about sex, people wouldn't steal nude photos because people almost wouldn't care.", "Money = Power", "In this case, there is extortion and  black-market trading of the photos going on.  This makes it legally more serious than the average leak.", "It involved money changing hands on the deep web. Essentially, someone paid a hacker to steal the photos.", "I wonder why people think it's a travesty that this occurred and when Donald Sterling was taped illegally it was ok because it was a racist rant.", "What if Snowden leaked this from his NSA file stash?                            /adjusts foil hat", "A lot of people are talking about money and things like \"upper class\", and while that might have something to do with it there are plenty of other reasons to pay special attention to this case.\n\nFirst of all, and perhaps most importantly, this was a highly organized leak. Most cases of leaked nude pictures are from ex-partners or the occasional stole phone. While that's horrible for the person who's victimized, this **is** different.\n\nThe leaks were probably obtained by a substantial hacking operation. Public figures were targeted and the pictures sold on the online black market (also known by the now popularized term \"deep web\"). This wasn't a case of someone forgetting to put their album on photobucket as private, this is looking more and more like an organized group of people making their way into very specific people's cloud storage accounts. Obviously these people need to be stopped before they illegally access and leak more pictures, since it's clear they have the capacity to do so.\n\nThe fact that these pictures were sold, not just posted online, makes it a lot worse.\n\nThe crime is also worsened by the fact that these people were public figures. The pictures got massive attention, spread to millions of people and ruined the actresses carers. The economical fallout for these people are probably in the range of millions of dollars (might be hard to get a role  in the next Disney movie if your sex tapes are available online). Financial loss (not financial resources) makes a difference when it comes to our justice system, and rightly so.\n\nAlso, as this is a highly publicized leak it adds pressure on the FBI to actually act, as people will be demanding these hackers be held responsible. If not it will damage the credibility of the FBI and the government.\n\nSo we have these factors to explain it:\n\n- Massive leak\n- Highly organized\n- Profit-driven hacking\n- Hacking into a system were millions of people store sensitive material (call them dumb, but that's how it is)\n- Massive fallout and economical loss for the victims\n- Big pressure on the justice system to find and punish those responsible due to massive attention and outrage over the leaks.\n\nThe FBI does, as some people have pointed out in this thread, also investigate cases were ordinary people's pictures are leaked online. Those cases and investigations just don't get the same attention. Just because this is the first time you've heard about the FBI doing an investigation doesn't mean its the first time its happening.\n\nTo all the people complaing, I ask you this: Would you have thought higher of the FBI if they failed to investigate this? Should actresses not be protected by the law because they have money? Should the gravity of the situation not matter when deciding how much resources to spend on an investigation? Because this is a grave situation, far worse for the victims because of their careers.", "the same reason why you would go to jail for a hit and run but people like Halley Berry and Ray Lewis get off without an issue.  \n\nalso if i steal nudes of you and post them no one cares.  when it becomes a national story the FBI has no choice but to 'look into it'.", "the big thing to know here is no hacking happened and allowing the news to call it hacking is an insult to hackers and an insult to my inteligence. Just because it happened on a computer doesn't mean it was hacking... ", "Money.... it's not privacy that is the motivating factor for anyone but the individual actors.  The actors are products and the people that own that product are very jealous of their cash cow.\n", "Because somewhere along the line someone decided that Jennifer Lawrence was america's little darling sweetheart. I can't stand her personally, nude or clothed, but that's neither here nor there.  This means she is more important than your average soccer-mom next door who had a topless photo leaked. \n\nAlso, it doesn't hurt that she is:\n\n* young\n* attractive\n* thin\n* white\n* female\n\nAmerica always goes above and beyond and will go the extra mile for a woman with these qualities. Think of that girl who went missing in Aruba for example.", "I'm more concerned with the fact that people still think their data is even remotely safe (ha, a pun)  while not under their direct control. \n\nThe cloud isn't, and will never be, safe to store personal data. \n\nSimply because it can be intercepted by anyone, and once they have it, no amount of encryption will protect it from time and ingenuity. \n\nSeriously, don't put your nudes on anything you don't explicitly control. ", "Everyday girls don't have the $$$ to go after the person like this", "I think the simplest answer is because of the profile of the victim. Since more people can identify the person, it becomes more obvious if the FBI is doing their job or not for everyone. So much like if you were a cake maker and a huge celebrity wanted a cake, youd make it the best damned cake you ever made because the profile of the client warrants more notice for you. If you flub the order, guess who isnt looking so hot ever again.", "They're too big to fail", "I know this ELI5 is intended more of a protest than as an actual question, but yes, OP, you are not wrong.", "There's a thing called 'reputation.'", "Everyone needs to face that these people are our fucking gods. No one gives a shit about the average Joe any more but we will suck all of the dicks to watch some girl who can fake an emotion and have a fucking camera pointed at them.", "I actually seriously thought about this, the explanation I arrived at is that nobody created a subreddit revolving around the other victims.", "I dunno, but that's a good question.", "Actresses have more influence/funds, thus they're \"worth\" more.", "I am going to have to ask my criminal justice teacher this question. He was a cop for 10 years then was hired into the FBI. He will have some interesting things to say on the subject.", "I had this issue a year back with iCloud. For months I was battling with a hacker trying to get into my accounts, after changing passwords I finally decided to delete all my email and facebook accounts. I had my iCloud enabled since I thought it would be beneficial to not have to constantly be plugging my phone into my computer. I never understood why this hacker was so set on hacking me, I'm not famous nor do I have any interesting pics on my phone unless they liked pictures of my dogs. Finally one day without any notification that my account had been compromised from apple I came home from a late night shift and when I logged into facebook and saw that an image of myself had been posted using my account, the image was pretty much harmless it was a picture I had sent to my mom asking her opinion of a dress I was going to buy, but what it said made me sick. They had posted the image with a caption similar to \"look at my perky tits in this dress\" it was just a shock to see my privacy invaded that way. The worst part was that they had to have gotten the image through my iCloud. The image in question was only on my phone in an imessage between my mother and I and I had deleted it right after sending it to her, the image then pops up on my facebook months later. I proceeded to call apple and ask what could be done and the man on the phone blames me! He tells me that I need to be more careful about what I post online (I never posted this image anywhere online) and that if I don't want people to see certain images I should't take them. I was totally thrown off guard he was denying that my account with them had anything to do with it. Since then I have kept my iCloud off and don't use photo stream. \n\n\nTL;DR \niCloud was hacked, apple refused to take any responsibility, never trusted apple products again, then a bunch of celebs get hacked and the issue is finally being discussed ", "As someone who used to commit computer crimes and have had friends who have been arrested/raided the issue is press and politics, if you make the news it looks bad for the FBI if they don't pursue you. Money is another big factor, it's all about who you piss off, 2 rules which I used to follow which apply here are,\n\n1) Do not attack people who have money or a position of power, they can make your life hell\n\n2) Do not make the news, when a crime is reported all over the news, it becomes the fbi's problem, merely reporting an intrusion (unless you are a fortune 500 company, they do not care)\n\nIt also depends how secure you are, that goes digitally and socially, don't talk about your crimes, posting Anonymously on 4chan and using tor is actually pretty secure in a digital sense, the issue becomes people like to brag and thats how they get fucked.\n\nIt's fucked up and it pisses me off but thats how things work, the world revolves around money and power, I'm not saying not all crimes are pursued but I'm pretty sure a bunch of cybercrime offices are getting pressure by their superiors and this will be pursued.", "This isn't really an ELI5 question.  It seems as if you've already formed an opinion about this and looking to vent on the subject. ", "WAIT. They allow naked photos on the internet?", "Heres what my question is....Why are all these female celebrities keeping nude photos of themselves on their phones?  You'd think they'd be a LITTLE smarter about things that could hurt/damage their rep.  I know they have the \u201dright\u201d or \u201dfreedom\u201d to do it but celebrities aren't like normal people.  Their lives are under a microscope and the public eye everyday until they are no longer relevent, famous or dead.", "A man hacked into a information database, and released personal information to whoever paid. The fact that what was sold was naked photos is merely a detail, except the fact that one of the pictures was of a minor.", "In this instance an individual or group of individuals planned and carried out a successful hacking attempt, illegally obtained items as a result of said hacking attempt, and sold said items. These photographs also included child pornography.\n\nCompare that to an angry boyfriend leaking nudes of his ex-gf - still despicable, but an entirely different set of actions.\n\nIt is also a very loud and visible case - they need a loud and visible response to be seen as taking effective action.", "Because you are plebian, and do not have wealth or power. Democracy is an illusion for plebes.", "Because in the real world,  $ talks. It's not so much that she's an actress, it's that she's valuable. Most valuable female actor at the moment. Argue all you want,  but it's the truth. We don't live in a fair world. ", "Because 'Muricuh. That's all you need to know. ", "If anyone's gonna hack into peoples phones its gonna be me-FBI", "USUALLY, the FBI is concerned if the crime committed across state lines. Guessing someone's password (or if you have downloaded the numerous other databases leaked onto the net with First  &  Last Names, Addresses, Emails and Passwords, unhashing the password) is not considered a federal crime (this is actually a misdemeanor from my studies during Journalism). As someone stated earlier, this is a big copyright issue and breach of privacy. The FBI must step in because the women in question are \n1. Famous, \n2. Not all in California, \n3. Rich, \n4. Friends of friends of their bosses.\n", "Because they are famous they hold on to nudity as their trump card when their 15 minutes start to fade", "In case you had not noticed, we treat good looking people, rich people, and powerful people different than the rest of the riff-raff. This is a fact. ", " Celebrities are more important than everyday girls/women. \n\n\n[read with sarcasm font]", "Because the nobles cant let the peasants think they can get away with it. ", "P. R. I. V. I. L. E. G. E.", "Because they have money. ELI5'ed it for you. ", "Because they're rich, famous, have expensive and powerful lawyers, and society cares more about Sally McCelebrity than Mary MacNobody.\n\nLife is unfair and our celebrity culture is fucking stupid broken.", "Politics and money."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/jennifer-lawrence-nude-photos-leak-fbi-and-apple-to-investigate-hacking-of-icloud-9705491.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/fbi-arrests-revenge-porn-rogue-hunter-moore-for-conspiracy-20140123"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/state-revenge-porn-legislation.aspx"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["isanyoneup.com", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Anyone_Up%3F"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/u8qgehH3kEQ"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32lqto", "title": "if google fiber is far superior and not a substantial amount of money more than regular old broadband they should have no problem getting people to sign up so why isn't it available everywhere yet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32lqto/eli5_if_google_fiber_is_far_superior_and_not_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqcd273", "cqcd2cy", "cqcd2kg", "cqcd3oa", "cqcdmpk", "cqcevfk", "cqcf8fk"], "score": [19, 2, 5, 7, 4, 3, 6], "text": ["Laying down the infrastructure and planning the implementation of the fibre optic network takes a lot of time and money. It has to be built around the needs of the city and the existing infrastructure (pipelines, roads, power etc) ", "They have to physically run a fiberoptic cable to your door, which means running along telephone poles or burying the cable underground.\n\nIt took cable TV 20 years to get most of America connected.\n", "Because Google never intended to get into the ISP market in a major way in the first place.  They're just trying to \"shame\" other ISPs into offering better service (which will ultimately benefit Google) by showing that it can be done  with a limited rollout to a few cities.", "Doing a new rollout without leasing any lines in a city is very expensive to install and there's quite a bit of red tape and contractual consideration to wade through when doing so. Being an ISP is also not part of Google's core business. Google is an advertising company that offers services like search engines and cloud storage in order to drive people to ads. The ISP business is only beneficial to them in that it facilitates that.", "* Google doesn't want to be an ISP, they want the other ISP's to offer better plans for their customers.  \n  \n* Laying down fiber optic cable is expensive.  \n  \n* They have to get permission from the local governments.", " > Creating an ISP? You'll need millions of dollars, patience, and lots of lawyers.\n\n_URL_0_\n", "Even though *operating* a network is relatively cheap, entering the market isn't necessarily cheap, or even possible.\n\nComcast, Time Warner, and other cable companies operate through franchise agreements they have with cities. Essentially, cities (and other local governments) gave them (often exclusive) rights to tear up streets, use utility poles, and do other things necessary for providing service.\n\nAfter the cable companies got their cable networks built out, they lobbied heavily for tight regulation on new companies seeking to build out networks. That corruption makes it hard for new broadband companies to enter existing markets.\n\nSo what Google did was this: they let cities *compete* to attract Google Fiber. So far, Austin, Kansas City, and Provo, Utah have \"won\" with offers that include relaxing rules that gave Comcast and Time Warner monopolies.\n\nBut in most markets, you only have one choice because Comcast and Time Warner are in bed with corrupt regulators and city officials. It isn't a matter of Google fiber, either: anyone could compete against the cable companies, if it weren't for political corruption."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/one-big-reason-we-lack-internet-competition-starting-an-isp-is-really-hard/"], []]}
{"q_id": "1vrzeb", "title": "How long will light stay contained (?) inside a fiber optic cable once a closed loop is created?", "selftext": "We use fiber optic cable in vehicles for communication and have about a one foot strand that is looped, we were curious, please help.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vrzeb/how_long_will_light_stay_contained_inside_a_fiber/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cev9hwc"], "score": [22], "text": ["Even high quality optical fiber has some attenuation of light, and that attenuation will (in the absence of repeaters or similar amplification) absorb all the light faster than you can blink.\n\nTo put some numbers on it: attenuation in a decent optical fiber is on the order of 1dB per kilometer at the wavelengths it's optimized for. That's a phenomenal feat of technology ... but it means that half the photons are absorbed every 10km.\n\n1 lumen is about 4 * 10^15 photons per second, so if you put a lumen of light into your pipe and somehow instantly closed it, you'd have about ( 4 * 10^15 / 2 * 10^9 ) = two million photons going round and round. Somewhere around the 210 kilometer mark in terms of distance traveled, the last photon would be absorbed. Since light travels at 300,000km/s, this would take slightly less than a millisecond. \n\nMaybe with high quality fiber, bright light, and other chicanery you could bump the time above a millisecond. But not by much. The logarithmic mathematics of attenuation are working against you.\n\n(edit: one minor oversight - the speed of light in a fiber optic cable is only around 200,000 km/s, so that buys you another fraction of a millisecond. But it's still all over very quickly.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "fmmlem", "title": "Cuban doctors are again in high demand during COVID19 breakout. How has Cuba, despite still stringent sanctions, developed a strong medical sector? If recently, how did Castro\u2019s revolution in 1959 change Cuban medicine?", "selftext": "This is making the assumption Cuban medicine really is as good as it\u2019s touted to be. If it\u2019s not true, how did the Castro regime make Cuban doctors appear to be so competent?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fmmlem/cuban_doctors_are_again_in_high_demand_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fl6jvay"], "score": [26], "text": [" I wrote [this answer on the very connected topic of Cuban medical diplomacy](_URL_0_) with one focus on Angola, and one on the influence of the regime's literacy campaigns on education. One additional point for your question: medical diplomacy was/is very cost effective for Cuba in that training doctors and carrying out those specific operations are comparatively not that expensive, but bring many diplomatic/economic advantages as I discuss there. I've included sources to show that these are not just rumours. \n\nHope this helps!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ecwtqo/how_was_cuba_able_to_afford_so_much_foreign/"]]}
{"q_id": "1ss6cl", "title": "why do bank transfers take days if they are 100% electronic?", "selftext": "Being electronic, shouldn't they be nearly instantaneous?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ss6cl/eli5_why_do_bank_transfers_take_days_if_they_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce0otcg", "ce0p0o2", "ce0r0ok", "ce0rfw6", "ce0s2i3", "ce0sss4", "ce0tukw", "ce0u0dy", "ce0u21d", "ce0u595", "ce0u6bg", "ce0ufqv", "ce12xqz"], "score": [3, 11, 6, 19, 9, 2, 52, 3, 13, 3, 2, 3, 4], "text": ["Federal regulations are honestly the main reason why.", "It's the bank making a profit off of the transaction, for the day or so between you making the transaction and the reciever getting it, the bank has that money and does not owe you interest for it.", "To answer the sub-question first, yes they should be near instantaneous.\n\nIn Europe we now have a FPS (Faster Payment System) which is near instant, and you'll find it between all the big English banks, and all online payments are super fast.\n\nAt my firm we still use BACS, which is a 3 day system. The three days are: The bank sends money to BACS, BACS processes the money, then BACS sends the money to the other bank. So I imagine your bank is using the old (probably cheaper) system.", "I've worked as a software developer for a bank before and this bank\ncould not perform instant transactions between banks because of technical reasons.\nthe database was ancient and was designed to copy the idea of\na night and day horseman that physically carried transactions between\nbanks after.closing and before opening. possibly back in the day not all banks were electronic so they had to be compatible.  A fast horse was used to  synch\ndata between branches and try and avoid double spending etc. this archaic model is really really really ingrained in the database and systems today\n\n--Edit\nIt might also be worth pointing out there didn't appear to any 'standard' protocol for banks to talk to each other with or confirm transactions. Eg features like standardised two phase commit (Which would be required to keep two separate databases in sync properly) xml, soap or whatever\n\nThe closest thing they had to a 'standard' format was basically a fixed width ugly text file thing that got FTPed about or posted via HTTP Put unencrypted. Bunches of them were basically concatenated together and then processed into either the 'night' database or the 'day' database depending on whether it was the close of business or start of business.\n ", "Here in Europe, banks hold on to your money for a few days and use it to do their own \"business\".\n\nThis was shown in a court case by someone who was pissed off that his bills did not get paid on time even thoug he he took the necessary steps on time.\n\nThe banks then admitted they held on to the transferred money on an \"own\" account so they could profit off of it, by using it as their own.\n\nSince then, a legal limit of 7 days has been installed, at least in the Netherlands. If your payment has not arrived after that time and late claims against you are filed, you can force the bank to pay those.", "They don't in Iceland, they are instant. We have a central clearing house called RB that all the banks process their transactions through. RB also issues bills (claims) to individuals and allows you to pay them via simple bank transactions. This is only for domestic transactions though, international transactions, if you are allowed, take the usual amount of time (3 days).", "One I can finally answer!  A lot of misinformation already in this thread about why the delay happens...\n\nI work for a major credit card company and it's my job to find a way to get payments done faster.  The major hold up is the amount of time it takes to process so many transactions and the methods that we use (here in the US it's ACH - Automated Clearing House and Direct Credit) aren't the best.\nAny payment made via ACH has to clear the Federal Reserve System as well and their process only runs once per day.  Direct Credit methods should be better since they eliminate that step, but the difference in communication tools, the times at when the banks run their \"processing streams,\" and the sheer volume of transfers all clog up the direct credit system.\n\nTL;DR - 2 methods to get payments.  1 has to go through the government and the other is like two people trying to have a conversation by writing letters back and forth in a foreign language at different times.\n\nEdit1: I can't go into details about how we and/or banks are fixing this because it's all proprietary stuff, but be assured that it's getting better.  I'm really good at what I do and I'm not some greedy person looking to help my company capitalize on \"float\" capital like so many people are saying below.  I'm pushing my company to give up float and they agree.  We are now trying to get banks on board and they are coming around to our new solutions.  I promise, it'll be faster and faster as time goes on. \n", "I experienced the joy of delayed international bank transfers this week in attempting to send $500. US dollars to my daughter in Australia.\nThe money was taken out of my account over a week ago but not a penny has yet shown up in hers.\nI could have sent it by steamship or covered wagon and it would have gotten there faster!\n", "You should listen to the Planet Money podcast episode about this very subject, they do a decent job of explaining why it takes so long to transfer money to/from a bank in the US: _URL_0_", "Here is a pod cast the explains how bank transfers work. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nthe podcast was made by the guys at planet money. they break down econ topics into easy to understand and fun to listen to shows. \n\nWhat elpechos said is pretty spot on, and the podcast explains that old outdated system in detail.\n\n", "This is super interesting to me because I deposited a $1000 check and they say it will take 12 days to clear. They gave me $200 and are holding the rest until the 18th. I deposited on the 6th. ", "Well - when Wachovia ran my accounts they could process e-payments often in less than 24 hrs.   Now WellFargo 3-5 Days - yes it's all bullshit:\n1) By floating the cash ( it is out of your account but not delivered) the back can use this cash for commerce or actually show free cash on their balance sheet.\n2) Managing expectation  &   up selling \"speed\" - for some accounts you are able to pay a fee and get fast processing. Of course - the faster transaction cost them nothing extra - so they are throttling the transaction to be able to charge for \" premium\" features.\n3) By slowing down the transactions they know they create situations where you \"need\" to use the premium content.\n\nIn today's world (IMO)- it is all about product and market position, finding ways to generate revenue...all while banks and financial institutions make record profits.", "There is an excellent, detailed explanation here:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe computing paradigm in the banking world is batch processing. A transaction queue is built up during the day, then processed by a mainframe after each business day - and not necessarily in chronological order. (This is so ingrained in US banking that there are actually consumer protection laws around the order in which transactions must be processed in the batch.)\n\nThis is partly because Online (live) Transaction Processing at large scale is a Hard Problem, one that companies like Google and Facebook have been breaking ground on in the past decade. We can do it pretty well now, but it's different when you're working with money. Credit card transactions are merely promises - you can correct a bad credit card transaction by simply canceling the promise. With money, once it's transferred, it's irreversibly gone. (Otherwise what the recipient has is not actually \"liquid.\") It's incredibly hard (read: expensive) to build a system which that's instantaneous, reliable enough to be trusted with irreversible transfers, and performant enough to handle every single transfer of value in the US in a timely fashion.\n\nBatch processing is solved. IBM will sell you solutions around that paradigm which are nearly infallible; mainframes are *rock solid.* There is a stable and trusted ecosystem here, we know it works at scale, and we can do it cheaply. The delays between settlements allow a large enough window that we can spot and correct problems in pending transactions before any money is actually gone, so the risks are acceptably low. The engineering burden is relatively low because unlike a live system where you have to be fast and right all of the time with no exceptions ever, if something goes wrong in the batch it can be fixed before morning. (Incidentially, batch processing time in the US is during the workday in India and a lot of IT consulting firms take advantage of this fact.) ACH (\"direct deposit\") is based on batch processing system and takes three days because you have 1) sending bank's batch, 2) ACH's batch and 3) receiving bank's batch before money is available for the receiver to spend. It's cheaper for the banks so it's how money usually moves.\n\nInstantaneous payments do exist through a service called FedWire - central banks (through the construct of sovereignty) are held to be infallible, so everyone trusts the Federal Reserve to be 100% reliable. If the First Bank of South Bumfuck, North Dakota to Citi to pay me $1,000,000, Citi would wait until the bank actually moved $1,000,000 to Citi before letting me walk away with a suitcase full of cash because that bank might not even *have* $1,000,000. But the federal government is good for all of its promises, so the First Bank tells the Federal Reserve to tell Citi to pay me - knowing that if it fucked up, the United States of America will make it pay. Citi knows that the federal government will make good on First Bank's promise even if it doesn't. So it is reasonable for Citi to let me walk away with the money immediately.\n\nFedWire is live but expensive to operate, so its transaction fees are prohibitive for small-time users. I can technically make a wire transfer from my bank account which would clear instantly, but it'd cost $25. It's just riskier and more difficult for everyone involved so this kind of makes sense.\n\nIncidentally FedWire, ACH, and the Fed's other functions along these lines explain why the federal government has a right to regulate banks:  it promises others that they are stable and correct, so it takes steps to make sure that this is so. It can also create money this way - normally when it tells a bank \"you now have $100m\" it holds someone else responsible for handing over $100m, but it can choose not to. Because it *is* the clearing-house, *is* the entity designed to prevent double-spends, it gets to double-spend. \n\nBitcoin is (supposed to be) equally reliable without involving any such authority, making it very popular with people who don't like authority or are uncomfortable with the idea of an infallible, all-powerful entity forcing everyone to play fair but exempting itself from its own rules. (I don't have the economics background to have a strong view here, but you can see why some people are opposed to central banking.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the-invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy"], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-489-the-invisible-plumbing-of-our-economy"], [], [], ["http://gendal.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/"]]}
{"q_id": "4s80g8", "title": "why are salespeople so adamant about getting you to sign up for their store's rewards card?", "selftext": "Clothing stores, cosmetic stores, grocery stores, every store! The cards are always free and easy to sign up for (ie just need your name and phone number) and you simply gain points for rewards when you buy things. What exactly are the stores gaining from this? I ask because I don't like signing up for these things and the salespeople do mini guilt-trips when I say no thanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s80g8/eli5_why_are_salespeople_so_adamant_about_getting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5786q7", "d5788bf", "d578ahb", "d57j1gv", "d57jip8"], "score": [14, 10, 11, 2, 3], "text": ["The cards allow them to track what you specifically are buying. It also allows them to more easily do direct marketing to you. That all together will be very valuable to the store... and others they may sell that data too.\n\nIn addition, it may give you additional incentive to come into their store and shop to get their member deals and buy other stuff as well. There is fierce competition for your dollar, and getting you in their store is the only way they are getting any of it. And if you're going to their store, you may not be going to others. You and your money very valuable.\n\nEdit: To add on to this, some store associates are required or get bonuses to get you to sign up for their store cards, although usually this is more in the realm of clothing and home furnishing stores -- not grocery stores etc.\n", "The salespeople make a big deal out of it because it's a crucial part of how they get promoted, if they aren't getting paid commission. At many stores the rest of what you do isn't even that big of a deal, it's credit cards and rewards cards that let you climb the ladder. For credit cards, the store is paid by the bank that issues the card, and rewards cards are a cheap way to get personal information and purchasing data for targeted advertising.", "Most sales people are \"graded\" by their superiors on how many customers they get to sign up for the store card. Generally the sales person hates pushing the card onto you just as much as you hate them pushing the card onto yourself. But, if they don't, they could potentially be reprimanded for not getting enough customers to sign up.", "It's because the managers make all the employees hit a certain number of sign ups each day.  \n\nSource: I've worked a few retail jobs.\n", "From a meeting my old company's CEO held for all employees for our huge C-store chain:\n\n >  \"You have a guy who comes in and buys a coffee every day.  It would make sense to run a coffee promotion or maybe give him points to get a free coffee.  However he'll still buy the coffee regardless.  Give him a free donut, now maybe once or twice a week he'll pick a donut up with his coffee\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "nyulb", "title": "why does nothing seem to change in africa?", "selftext": "My mother asked this....\n\nHer: Over the past 35 years, I've been watching these commercials for \"Save the Children of Africa\".  Over the past 30 years nothing has changed, do you know the reason why?\n\nMe: No clue?\n\nHer: Find Out!\n\nMe: Kk.\n\nSo Reddit, do you have the answer? If so could you please explain?\n\nEdit #1: Thanks for the info guys, this help immensely in understanding the underlying problems that plague the country... There were many things I was not accounting for... I just assumed they fixed one place up and moved on to the next and the place they had recently helped would just crumble and fall apart again.\n\nEdit #2: I never thought this post would get so much attention so I thank each and every person who took the time out of their day to help others and myself understand the current situation in certain parts of Africa.\n\nI'm also sorry for calling Africa a country and not a continent, I went full retard.\n\nI'm going to e-mail my mother this link with hopes she reads all the comments, after all she was the one who asked.\n\nThanks again, and I'll be back sometime soon with more questions I'm sure. Cheers Reddit!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nyulb/eli5_why_does_nothing_seem_to_change_in_africa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3d0y7b", "c3d110f", "c3d1ihf", "c3d20b4", "c3d247m", "c3d28i8", "c3d3kub", "c3d3o2q", "c3d4mfd", "c3d56zj", "c3d5jm7", "c3d6sge"], "score": [11, 8, 3, 4, 5, 22, 5, 3, 8, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Many cultures in Africa have values that differ wildly from Western culture that don't put a primary emphasis on increasing education, technology and money. Also many of the cultures in Africa are at odds, much like in the middle east, and the conflict frequently prevents progress. Also many of the governments are corrupt and steal the foreign aid to give to government officials and not the citizens it is intended for. Keep in mind that Africa is a very large, diverse place and some places in Africa have become more stable, while other places have become less stable as a result of civil wars and intracontinental conflict. ", "The actual problems that lead to starving African children are structural. Throwing money at the problem doesn't fix the structure, so it isn't going to lead to lasting change; what it *does* do is make children in Africa starve less. That's a good thing to do regardless of whether or not you're really changing things.", "Just giving money actually makes the problem worse. Imagine giving a homeless man some change... He'll use it to survive, not acquiring any skills to make the money himself. If you gave a homeless man an education, that'll be way more valuable...", "Lots of the money that is given to charities is take up in the administration of the distribution, so actually only a fraction of the money you give will end up in Africa. I also remember reading a quote from somewhere where someone asked an african child if they had new stuff because of the all the donations. The African child said no, but pointed out that the soldiers had new guns.", "One of the problems with sending tons of free food is that it takes all the local farmers out of the market. Obviously no one is going to buy food when they can just wait a day and get more for free. As a result, farmer's family is now also waiting in line for free food.", "There is a big misconception that things aren't changing in Africa. In reality countries like Nigeria are developing at quite a fast rate. The issue affecting their development is partly do do with structural issues. Political systems are pretty weak in comparison to western standards as there are lots of interests and the way in which they developed differs from the west. At the same time there are lots of internal issues to do with different ethnicities being lumped together in states (Like in Nigeria, there is a Christian south and Muslim North). So in terms of internal development, quite a lot of African states are making progress.\n\nAt the same time, sending aid such as food can undercut the local produce in terms of cost. So nowadays other rising powers have alternatives such as investing in infrastructure in return for natural resources. An example is China, who will build Hydropower dams in return for resources, the benefit being that China doesn't demand a lot from them.\n\nSome African countries are more exposed to disasters such as famine due to the weather and other things like climate change and desertification. This makes developing a stable economy quite difficult.\n\nIt is still important to give to these charities, as charities such as Save the Children invest in medicine for countries which lack the support for there. If an economy is to develop, it needs to make sure its workforce is sustainable and the government needs to be able to invest in growth at the same time as protecting its citizens. So sending money to them can help these countries develop faster in the long term.\n\nA good thing to get a copy of if you want to find out how diverse, developed and modern their systems are is the Africa Report. _URL_0_ *to be honest, Africa is such a massive continent with a huge number of people, it causes depend on what country you are looking at.*", "Because what poor countries need is Capitalism and Commerce, not aid.  Fortunately, this is starting to happen in some places, though not others.", "I've had four people in my immediate family work in Africa - two in the Peace Corps and two for other organizations. Several other of my family members, myself included, have lived abroad in other developing regions. So my answer is based on those experiences. \n\n > I just assumed they fixed one place up and moved on to the next and the place they had recently helped would just crumble and fall apart again.\n\nI think this has a lot of truth to it. In contrast to places like South America, many Africans don't make much of an effort to maintain development projects. \"Why\" this happens is a little more complicated. First off, people know that if they just don't fix anything, eventually more aid workers will come by and do it for them. What aid does come by is usually delayed by officials looking for a cut of the money, and when it actually starts it's very common for people to steal from aid programs. For example, my brother was in Cameroon auditing for a charity, and one of the biggest problems they had was when they tried to build a school or a mill, the construction materials would all get stolen. That this is allowed to happen is the result of a corrupt or nonexistant law enforcement.\n\nThen think about the kinds of people that would be likely to solve these problems - the brightest, most motivated, etc. Many of them leave their homes for good to move to America or Europe, and of course you can't blame them, because it's impossible to work in theoretical physics in Tanzania. \n\nLastly, even when progress *is* made, it is often destroyed in war or by natural disaster. I think it's hard for most of us to imagine what that's like, because even the wars that devastated Europe in the last 100 years were, with one notable exception, political conflicts rather than targeted genocides, \"total wars,\" and that kind of thing.", " >   this help immensely in understanding the underlying problems that plague the country\n\nuh. \n\nAfrica is a continent, not a country.", "You said \"plague the country\" I really hope you don't think Africa is a country.", "[Extremely relevant and insightful visual representation of statistical change in Africa](_URL_0_)\n\nIn short, disease, and enough political strife to prevent proper handling of these diseases.\n\nIt seems to me the reason Africa doesn't seem to change is an issue of relativity. When you compare Africa to the first world, it has always been behind since recent history. And when one region is consistently wealthier than another, the perception in America will be that Africa is forever impoverished.\n\nedit: sorry linked wrong video, i fixed it : < ", "I went to Africa last summer, and my sister picked up this really interesting book with stories from all over the continent. One talked about a man who was visiting Nigeria (I can't recall if he was a tourist, or a local visiting family) and everywhere he went he kept hearing of tragedy, loss, famine, war... and he asked the people, \"why do you put up with this? why do you not do something?\" and they always replied \"it is the way it is because God made it so, you cannot change it.\" or \"its always been this way, so why bother to change?\".\n\nFor instance he was told a story of a group of kids on a field trip who took off on a plane that crashed almost as soon as it was in the air - everyone died. The mothers of the kids wailed and cried - and he asked why no one had bothered to fix the plane (because mechanical failure and crappy repair jobs caused the plane to crash), they replied that \"why bother...God made the plane crash it was meant to be, no foresight on humans could have changed that - or that planes crash all the time, its normal why change it?\"\n\nBut of course a little foresight would have changed the outcome of that plane crash, if the mechanics had taken their time it would have been avoided - if the cabby had fixed that back seatbelt his passengers wouldn't have died in the car crash...and so on.\n\nI guess where I am going with this is that logic, reasoning and cultural norms are very different in Africa and from country to country - going in there many aid groups do their best but their goals may go against the cultural grain... Sometimes the people of the country don't think of long term consequences to actions because they justify them using other means, or they simply say its the way its always been. Lack of education plays a role in this justification, and so does religion, as well as culture and local history. I am not saying that they don't want change - of course those mothers would want their kids back if given a choice, but its as if they don't understand it could have been prevented. It just is."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.theafricareport.com/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_the_good_news_of_the_decade.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "c1o02f", "title": "Why was \"Munchausen syndrome\" changed to \"Factitious disorder\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c1o02f/why_was_munchausen_syndrome_changed_to_factitious/", "answers": {"a_id": ["erfwcsd"], "score": [5], "text": ["Likely the same reason that Wegener\u2019s Granulomatosis was changed to Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis, and why Takayasu Arteritis was changed to Giant Cell Arteritis. An eponym is not descriptive of the basic pathology and for this reason is less effective as a descriptor."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3gxfj7", "title": "answer an eli5 faq how do companies keep a secret formula or ingredients such as coca-cola or kfc?", "selftext": "Help ELI5 explain this common question so that we can redirect future posters here. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gxfj7/eli5answer_an_eli5_faq_how_do_companies_keep_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu2dbaa", "cu2dn61", "cu2dsbg", "cu2effx", "cu2f41a"], "score": [5, 8, 24, 8, 13], "text": ["I know for Popeyes the average employee does not season the chicken it comes pre seasoned. I would assume different ingriedents are added at differnt areas where they do package it so the general employee has no idea, nothing to tell", "The best way to keep secret formulas a secret is to tell as few people as possible.  Both these \"secret formulas\" are flavorings, a small fraction of the total product.  The flavorings are mixed in a company lab, and then packaged for distribution.  Bottlers or restaurants buy the flavoring mix from the corporation, and provide the chicken or carbonated water to produce the final product.", "I work in food regulatory. \n\nThere are many ways possible. \n\nThe most common, and likely way, is that individual parts of the flavor are made by different people who don't have access to the complete flavor. \n\nFor example, in a butter flavor which I have been a part of, the primary butter is melted and added to oil and esters, then it sits until afternoon shift and some other ingredients added. Then the next day it might get spray drier into a carrier. \n\nIf you wanted to make it secret, simply only give each shift what they need to know. And it can be spread over multiple facilities , even. \n\nAnd that is for a very simple flavor. \n\nFor complex ones, it is so easy. Just have a bunch of intermediates, and combine. Each group only knows  A portion of the whole thing. \n\nI also have heard that coke obfuscated ingredients by purposely buying useless ingredients, so that no one would know for sure which ingredients are actually used. This is how they are kosher, each ingredient, the real and false are certified, and coke can use any subset thereof, and it will remain kosher. ", "Honestly I don't think they are secrets.  I have heard there has been chemical analysis done on KFC chicken to find out the spices and it concluded it was mostly just salt and pepper with no actual herbs at all.  I am sure pepsi knows exactly how coke is made and popeyes knows exactly how kfc is made but it makes no difference.  The only important thing is that the public thinks it's a secret for marketing purposes.", "[There's no such thing in the first place as \"secret\" formula:](_URL_0_)\n\n >  In his book \"Big Secrets,\" William Poundstone revealed a laboratory analysis of Kentucky Fried Chicken: \"The sample of coating mix was found to contain four and only four ingredients: flour, salt, monosodium glutamate, and black pepper. There were no eleven herbs and spices \u2014 no herbs at all in fact... Nothing was found in the sample that couldn't be identified.\" So much for the \"secret.\" In fact, the chicken's ingredient statement is available on KFC's Web site.\n\n >  As for Coke Classic, well, the formula can be found on page 43 of Poundstone's book, but it includes vanilla extract, citrus oils, and lime juice flavoring.\n\n >  There's no cocaine in Coke, and technically there never was, though it uses coca leaves and kola nuts as flavorings and stimulants. Cocaine is not the same as the coca leaf it is derived from; for centuries, natives in South American countries regularly chewed on the coca leaf for its anesthetic and mild stimulant properties. But just as chewing on a coca leaf is not \"taking cocaine,\" neither is drinking a Coke. \n\nThe exact formula of these food are constantly changing depending on availability and price, so any mention of \"secret\" formula is little more than marketing talk."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=secret+ingredients&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=relevance&amp;t=all", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=secret+formula&amp;restrict_sr=on"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.livescience.com/5517-truth-secret-recipes-coke-kfc.html"]]}
{"q_id": "88ndu1", "title": "why does fresh brewed coffee taste better than 3 hour old coffee. what happens to the liquid over time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88ndu1/eli5_why_does_fresh_brewed_coffee_taste_better/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwlzduu", "dwlzgms", "dwm4n8p", "dwmcfqh", "dwmd8co", "dwmpbfh", "dwn4owm"], "score": [538, 20, 58, 14, 6, 10, 2], "text": ["Oxygen! When the beans are roasted, amino acids and sugars start combining and reacting, creating hundreds of new compounds that make up the smell and flavor of your coffee. There's a name for the process that I can't think of off the top of my head, something like the mallard reaction.\n\nThese new compounds are tasty, but delicate. Once they've been sitting in your cup getting touched all over by oxygen, they begin to oxidize. Oxidation is the process where oxygen molecules steal electrons from other molecules and they become unstable and start to decay. It's sort of like when you leave a cut apple out and it begins to brown because it's no longer protected by the outside skin. \n", "Also along with d50000's explanation coffee is also very volatile and the taste changes based on exposure to oxygen. ", "I don't know but I just want to say I love to drink cold coffee. But not coffee made with cold water. I mean, brew a coffee, then let it sit for several hours til it's cold.\n\n\nI admit I have also drunk 1-2 day old coffee before and I love the taste.", "There are several reasons. First of all, the pleasure associated with good tasting coffee is influenced by the aroma created by freshly brewed coffee, which dissipates quickly after the coffee is brewed. Also, the most common methods of brewing coffee produce coffee that contains natural oils, which degrade over time. (The Maillard reaction in coffee occurs when the coffee is roasted, not when the coffee is brewed.)", "I think all the acid in the coffee has something to do with it, cold pressed coffee has a way more neutral PH and doesn't go bad over time like brewed coffee, it stays good in the fridge for days.", "Besides already mentioned oxidation, one specific reason that coffee left on a warming plate tastes bitter after time is because the chlorogenic acid in coffee breaks down into quinic acid, which tastes bitter. This also happens with particularly dark roasts of coffee. \n\nSource: this was asked on /r/Coffee a while back and I remember this answer from a coffee expert, but double checked my terminology via Google before commenting. ", "Coffee roaster here. \n\nAs coffee cools and approaches room temperature our tongues can actually taste better. This is why shitty coffee is served boiling hot and shitty beer is served ice cold. What your tasting in most cases is roaster defects (negative flavor compounds) created by the roaster roasting to a prescribed temperature to achieve a \"roast profile\". (Instead they should look to produce a \"flavor profile\" specific to the coffee.) \n\nThe other major culprit is when coffee is left on a burner after it's finished brewing. Once coffee is brewed it contains many different acids (chloregenic, acetic, malic etc) but if it continues to heat it begins to produce quinic acid, which tastes weird AND upsets your stomach."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5c7scx", "title": "why isn't the u.s. supreme court required to be politically balanced?", "selftext": "3 liberals, 3 conservatives, 3 moderates? Considering they are appointed with life tenure by the president, shouldn't it be representative of many sides?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c7scx/eli5_why_isnt_the_us_supreme_court_required_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9uangr", "d9ub1hu", "d9ube2u", "d9ud1ki", "d9uew4r", "d9uf9er", "d9uijgo", "d9uj82q", "d9ujn7c", "d9ut7gy", "d9vggjl"], "score": [56, 76, 53, 2, 6, 5, 15, 2, 7, 2, 3], "text": ["\"Required\" how precisely? Who decides what is conservative, liberal, or moderate? The UK for example has conservatives who would be considered hard-line liberals in the US.\n\nThere is no way to require balance without in effect making the arbiter of what \"balance\" means to actually be a supreme dictator.", "Ideally the supreme court should not be political at all. This is part of the reason why congress have to approve the supreme justices. The justices are appointed to make sure the will of the congress is followed and not their own will. If you were to make sure they were aligned politically you would open up another can of worms entirely. How do you make sure they are not extremists in each camp? How do you define the political sides as there are a lot of different opinions?", "Two things.   First, Supreme Court appointments is one of the powers that the president has.  If one ideology controls the presidency for a long time, that will be reflected in the appointments which are made to the court.  This is in part a story of how prevailing ideologies evolve over time.  In a two-party system, the line between the parties will drift back and forth to reflect the views of the voters.\n\nSecond, once appointed, Supreme Court nominees are completely free and independent.  Many times in history, their own ideologies have not ended up matching those of the president that appointed them -- either right away or it changed with time.  The liberal justices Souter, Stevens and Blackmun were all appointed by conservative presidents, while the conservative White was appointed by a liberal president.", "because you cant define political views in a law. how exactly do you expect this works? ", "It is not suppose to be political at all. Their only concern is if something is legal according the the constitution. ", "The Supreme Court's job is supposed to be boring.\n\nImagine this question being put to the court:\n\n\"Does the United States Federal Government have the authority to impose a tax penalty on anyone who does not purchase a specified good or service?\"\n\nNow... You know that the good or service I am talking about is health insurance.  But the idea is that once the court answers that question, that is it.  It doesn't matter what the good or service is, the question is answered.  So, regardless of your political ideology if the court finds that power exists then that power can be used by both democrats and republicans.  Today that means there is Obamacare, tomorrow people might have to own a handgun, or people might be required to buy car insurance even if they don't drive.  Or people might be required to buy a cable television package if they own a television set (like they do in the UK).\n\nIt isn't about the specific individual policy (though it often seems that way), rather it is about the big picture rules of the game.  Sometimes judges ideological positions matter politically for that, sometimes they don't matter at all.  Other times a short term victory turns into a long term defeat.  And other times yes there is a pure political victory that can be won or lost (see Bush v. Gore).\n\n", "1- There would just be no way of reliably testing that. \n\nJudges enforce and interpret laws. A liberal judge can be asked to rule on the legal proceedings in a conservative area, and vice versa. Judges are required to uphold laws that they disagree with.\n\nSecondly, it's really hard to determine where a judge falls even after the fact. A good example of a justice in this case would be Sandra Day O'Connor. She sided with the conservative branches of the court many times in issues involving affirmative action, campaign finance, voting rights, education reform, and first amendment protections. However, she generally (though not universally) opposed abortion restrictions, before her appointment, throughout her career, and afterwards. While that's only a single issue, it's a big one. On other issues, she's a conservative, and she was a Reagan appointee (his first appointee, to be specific). \n\nWe generally think of her as a moderate today, not because of her ideology, but because later appointments were more polarized, leaving her to effectively function as swing vote in the early 2000s. That wasn't something that had been true about her position over time.  If you go by the data, [from 1994, to 2004, in 5-4 decisions, she sided with the conservative bloc 82 times, and the liberal block 28 times](_URL_1_). That isn't moderate. That's pretty solidly conservative....for a justice that was often facing criticism by conservatives, and still does. \n\nNobody would agree on her position in this respect. Moderate? Conservative? Who's to say? And at which year we would examine to determine it. The reason she's in this quirky position is largely because of point #2:\n\n2 - Liberalism and conservatism aren't neat little packages.\n\nTake a libertarian judge. A libertarian is generally described as somebody who advocates economic measures like lower taxes (or the abolition of taxes altogether) and less government interference and intrusion--economic conservatism--but also generally oppose restrictions on private matters like abortion, marriage, adoption, immigration status, etc--social liberalism. Such a person doesn't fit in either box, but he also couldn't properly be called a moderate. \n\nMore examples outside of the Libertarians? The Unity Party. Log Cabin Republicans (they dissent from the Republicans on many social issues, not just the LGBT ones, and they take no position on abortion as a whole). Modern Whigs. The Faith and Family Left. The American Solidarity Party. These groups don't fit the mold because political beliefs are more complicated and nuanced than a single continuum captures.\n\n3 - The meanings change over time.\n\nLiberalism once denoted freedom from government interference; libertarians correctly point out that they believe in the *original* meaning of the term, not what it became over time.\n\nBack in the 1960s, the Republicans, despite being economically conservative, supported expanding civil rights. The Civil Rights Act actually [passed with more Republican support than Democratic support](_URL_0_)...yet we definitely see this as a liberal issue. Meanings change. The only beef for a minority of the Republicans? They didn't want to force businesses to serve everybody, thinking that a store owner should be able to refuse services to anybody as they see fit; that's definitely a conservative position on both property rights and economics...but they put that aside for an issue that we would now call a very liberal notion.\n\nA judge might be elected on an ideology, but if the ideology changes its specific supports, the judge may not be on board, and thus be seen as no longer fitting the partisan mold.\n\nEDIT: Grammar", "Political winds shift and change, the court is supposed to gauge what is right based on our existing legal interpretations of the constitution, not what is popular at any given moment.  That being said, justices are human and their opinions are affected by popular will to some extent.\n\nIn short, they are tasked with trying to distinguish between what is right and what is popular.", "The Supreme Court addresses issues of law, which are supposed to be non-political.  Let's take an ELI5 example:\n\nAssume a sign says \"No motor vehicles in the park.\"  Does that include wheelchairs? Remote control cars? Decommissioned tanks to be installed as war memorials?  Camera drones? This is an ambiguity in the law. Or, as lawyers and judges call it, an \"issue of law.\" \n\nRegarding wheelchairs, You might think the answer is obvious, but some prosecutor might think differently.  Maybe he's trying to impress someone in the parks  &  rec department for a political endorsement. So he will bring a case against a guy in a wheelchair and argue that \"motor vehicles\" includes wheelchairs because the purpose of the law was to protect the wildlife in the park, and wheelchairs are environmentally invasive.  The defense attorney will argue that the phrase \"motor vehicles\" does not include wheelchairs, since the purpose of the law was to prevent noisy motors in large passenger vehicles, and for the safety of children.\n\nWho is right in that circumstance?  The legally-correct answer, of course, is \"it depends.\"  But a lower-court judge will choose a side based on the arguments.  The losing side can bring an appeal to the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court hears arguments and is the final arbiter of that issue of law.\n\nNow, let's jump contexts.  The phrase \"Equal Protection of Laws\" in the 14th Amendment might mean a lot of things.  Does it protect the rights of two women to get married? Issue of law.  Does it protect the rights of a man to marry 5 women? Issue of law.\n\nIssues of law get politicized by the media and other officials, but theoretically, they are supposed to be decided impartially by courts.  That's why we don't impose restrictions on judicial preferences. They are supposed to resolve the issues that are in front of them based on the particular circumstances of the case. Any \"preference\" they have should not factor into the decision.\n\nYour suggestion that we impose so-called \"balance\" by dedicating seats to people with certain \"preferences\" would violate that neutrality principle.\n\nSource: Lawyer here.\nEDIT: Clarified some bad phrasing.", "That would completely undermine the purpose of the supreme Court. Their job it to interpret the purpose of the law. Not inturpet the law how they or anyone else wants, but to how it was originally meant.\n\n\n", "First, you can't mandate \"politically balanced\" in American politics. For example, if the American people want to vote a single party (e.g., 100% Republicans) into every seat of Congress, they can. \n\nSecond, the Supreme Court **is** balanced - or, rather, there are mechanisms in place to keep it balanced. The job of the court is to provide long term stability.  If the country's political power should suddenly shift, the court will shift at a slower rate, because the appointments are for life. \n\nAlso remember that  the founding fathers weren't thinking about the next election cycle when the Constitution was penned. Their intent was to form a system of government which could last centuries. So, let's just say that the \"worst\" case scenario (or best case, if you support Trump's agenda) happens and Trump gets to appoint 3 or 4 justices. Let's suppose that his appointments are all confirmed and the Supreme Court turns into a heavily biased conservative court for many years. \n\nWhat is the actual impact if this happens? Clearly, this wouldn't bode well for some issues, like the pro-choice/abortion. On the other hand, it wouldn't set America back on a scale of centuries. It's not like slavery would be reintroduced or that women would lose the right to vote. Although these views were mainstream 100 -150 years ago, they have long since fallen out of favor. And this is what our forefathers had in mind. No matter how unbalanced the cart might get in the short term, over the long term, permanent progress will be made. \n\nOn a side note, it's amazing to me that so many people don't seem to know their own country. I'm not speaking of your question in particular, but all of the doubt and fear on reddit over the past couple of days, the utter amazement that Trump got elected as president. This was called after the Democratic primaries. Remember? Clinton was accused of robbing Bernie of the nomination - and the polls at that time indicated that Clinton would lose to Trump. And here we are, six months later, exactly where the experts said we would be."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republicans-party-of-civil-rights", "https://web.archive.org/web/20060327053526/http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/118/Nov04/Nine_Justices_Ten_YearsFTX.pdf"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hzsci", "title": "how do pet rats and bait rats differ? at a local pet store, the pet rats are $30, and the live rats sold as food of the same size are $8. i understand that one is intended to be kept as a pet and one is for feeding to large snakes and reptiles, but why would there be a difference?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hzsci/eli5_how_do_pet_rats_and_bait_rats_differ_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dynrp1t", "dynrrpy", "dynsqtv", "dynypzq", "dynz2q1"], "score": [11, 85, 57, 2, 2], "text": ["I am not an expert but it\u2019s probably just marketing.  It\u2019s a lot easier to sell a rat as a  snack for a snake when they\u2019re only $8 compared to $30. And when you try to buy a rat as a pet, $30 seems reasonable for a companion. ", "The pet rats are specifically bred for placidity and cute traits while bait rats are just... rats.", "I think the rats marketed as pets have been handled since birth and are used to human contact. The bait/feeder rats are just raised as food and have minimal human contact. I bought a 'feeder' rat and tried to keep him as a pet but he was super territorial and aggressive wheras one marketed as a 'pet' was super chill.\n ", "Gonna guess inbred (pet) versus orgy pit (feeder) when it comes to breeding as well as more handling for those sold as pets, like somone else said", "It's just capitalism, according to which you charge what the market will bear. People are willing to pay more for a pet than for food, and like to think there's some fundamental difference between pets and food, so the extra cost signifies to them that they're paying for something extra. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1s2eiv", "title": "if we were to dig a straight hole from one side of the earth, through the core and everything, to the other side, what would happen to our planet?", "selftext": "Obviously assuming we had indestructible tools, we weren't pressurized to death, and the process itself being fairly quick. Also: not interested in what would happen if a human jumped through - it's been asked and answered before. I'm interested in the consequences for Earth. Would lava spill from both sides nonstop? Would something happen to the Earth's magnetic field and/or the gravitational pull? How would it affect life as we know it? What would happen, let's say, 100 years after the holes were first made?\n\nEdit: I probably should've mentioned the size of the hole... When I thought of this question, I was thinking about the size of an average house. It's been mentioned that unless the hole was hundreds of miles across, we wouldn't get cool cataclysmic effects :(", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s2eiv/eli5_if_we_were_to_dig_a_straight_hole_from_one/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdt8ui0", "cdt991k", "cdt9njx", "cdt9vae", "cdt9vm6", "cdt9yr3", "cdtakg7", "cdtankw", "cdtb0mv", "cdtbaxm", "cdtbemn", "cdtbitu", "cdtbt07", "cdtbv2w", "cdtbxqh", "cdtc354", "cdtcqbl", "cdtd1mx", "cdtd96l", "cdtda2p", "cdtdgzd", "cdtdl1m", "cdtdp7m", "cdtdpqf", "cdtdqro", "cdte0ih", "cdte2ag", "cdter4y", "cdtfjjz", "cdtg463", "cdtggny", "cdtgkx0", "cdtgvyu", "cdtgzva", "cdth4zy", "cdthcci", "cdthfsv", "cdthi5v", "cdthowp", "cdtim52", "cdtkbw2", "cdtlray", "cdtm0th", "cdtnf9y", "cdtoe8i", "cdtpokf", "cdtsmgp", "cdty5re"], "score": [11, 9, 165, 3, 2, 47, 24, 3, 5, 984, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 6, 9, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Depends on the size of the hole, if its mahoosive, let's say big enough to remove 1/2 of the core, we'd get massive earthquakes and \"sink holes\" (if the stuff we excavate we put on the surface) or magnetic shifts due to the damage to the iron and nickel core. Probably tons of other stuff too, it would be quite a crazy thing _URL_0_ Dr. DOOM! I'm onto you!", "How are you making this Hole? Most of the earth is molten.  Is this like a tube, which has walls to keep the lava or? \n\nHow wide is it? ", "Simple answer: a perfect and in-destructible hole all the way to the core would start to spew hot liquified material through it.  The gravity force on the outer layers would put pressure on the core which would force material through the hole.\n\nEdit1: I'm correcting myself based on the comments I have received.\n\nEdit1: The material might cool before it reaches the surface.  That answer depends on the design of the hole.\n\nEdit1: Assuming the material did not solidify, the material would flow until is approximately reaches the surface.  Once it gets close to the surface, the weight of the material in the column (hole) would balance out the gravitational pressure.  There might be a bit of spew due to the momentum of the material.  Since the core is denser than the rest of earth, on average, the material level would settle below earth's average surface.\n\nEdit1: I do not know if there is a place on earth where the surface is so far below the average that spewing core-material could happen.  I would speculate something in the deepest trenches of the sea but that may not be the \"deepest\" place in this case.  Since the earth diameter is smallest pole-to-pole then that might be \"deepest.\"\n\nEdit1: ~~Whether the material cools and seals the hole before raining death upon the planet is beyond me but I will speculate:~~\n\nEdit1: ~~I would guess that, since the earth we still exist, then the hole would cool and seal up before raining massive destruction upon us.  But...if the hole is insulated then there might be unimpeded flow to the surface.~~\n\nEven if there is unimpeded flow to the surface, the next question would be whether the cooling at the surface caps the flow.  ~~Again, since we still exist,~~ Since we still exist, the most likely answer is that the surface cooling would abate the flow.", "As you probably know Earth's magnetic field is generated by the motion of molten iron in the Earth's core. Digging through the core would no doubt disrupt this motion, and weaken if not destroy our magnetic field. No magnetic field means almost certain extinction of life on Earth. Bummer.\n\nAssuming our magnetic field was left intact, the question of where the material from the hole would end up arises. Wherever it was, a lot of the Earth's mass would now be there, which might skew the Earth's gravitational pull.\n\nI'm not an expert so I'm probably wrong. I'd love to hear an answer from someone who knows what they're talking about though. Very interesting question indeed.", "Or what about if you stood on top of the North Pole and fell down the tunnel ....assuming you don't burn alive, would you shoot out the other side at the South Pole? Would you \"float\" in the center? ", "cataclysmic annihilation.\n\n\nScenario 1. Dig an unshielded hole throughout the core and outside the other side. Assuming you could instantaneously create this, the extraordinary pressure on the centre of the earth would cause twin volcanos. With lava plumes reaching the outer atmosphere. Picture what happened at Deepwater Horizon (pin prick on the ocean floor with a mile and half of water pressure) and scale up. \n\n\nScenario 2. Refer Scenario 1. ", "The Earth's core is something we really don't know much about. We are planning a [$1 billion mission](_URL_1_) to reach the mantle and it's being compared to the missions to the Moon or Mars. And that's only 6 kilometres deep, less than one tenth of one percent of the Earth's radius. We aren't even sure what causes the magnetic field, one hypothesis is the [Dynamo effect](_URL_0_), which basically says that the magnetic field is induced by the rotating liquid metal in the core.\n\nBut addressing if the lava would spill out of the tunnel non-stop, the answer is no, at least from a hydrostatic point of view. Basically the pressure in the center of the Earth, that pushed the lava out would be countered by the weight of the lava column in the tunnel. The tunnel would fill up to the surface.", "What would happen if someone jumped into the hole?  Would they just implode from the gravity and pressure?", "So many factors to consider... First of all let me start by saying that I am not an expert but having a masters in physics is pretty close. I hate questions like this because you cannot simply ignore one aspect of physics and not another because there is a chain of processes that begin, well... at the beginning. It's like saying \"what would happen to my brain in space?... You know... Assuming I don't freeze or expand or burn and can breathe...\" What?! But anyway... If this hole were to magically occur it would depend on wether it occurs spontaneously or if the process took a long time, like with actual tools and machines. The diameter of the hole is also extremely significant because, as you know, the earth rotates and land migrates. If the size were, say, 2 miles in diameter then it would surely cause fantastic earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones because the tunnel will collapse upon itself within 56 hours. With the core exposed the level of radiation would actually be enough to terminate at least 40 percent of the populations and up to 70 percent depending on where the tunnel (or hole) is.", "What would happen to the Earth? Probably nothing. If you made an instantaneous hole through the Earth and it wasn't being supported by anything, gravity would cause the solid core to fill the space immediately. The mantle will also fill in immediately. It would be like asking what would happen if you drilled a hole in the ocean. There might be a small earthquake that we can detect but that's about it. I'm not sure what will happen to the crust. Either you would have a very deep hole with a lava plug at the bottom, or a volcano. The earth has thousands of them, and the man made ones will probably be smaller than most, as it won't be over a hot spot or along a plate boundary. It would probably leak lava for a few days or weeks then stop and become extinct. Nothing that would affect very many people. \n\nIf you could some how shield your hole to keep it form collapsing, nothing would still happen. The hole is too small and earth is too big. Gravity has to do with the mass of the planet, and the mass wouldn't change, or change by much, depending on what you did with the material in the hole, piled it up or simply disappeared it. The magnetic field also wouldn't be affected. Your hole is too small. If you had a hole a couple hundred miles across, you might get some of the apocalyptic effects you are looking for, but for a smaller hole, even one a mile wide, nothing exciting would happen.", "The solid inner core and the outer liquid core of the earth rotate at different rates, this is what creates the earth's magnetic field.  The hole would close at this boundary almost immediately and that would be it.  ", "We think our magnetic field is created by a solid iron core surrounded by hot liquid metal. This field shields us from incoming solar wind. I would think that disturbing the interaction between the core and the liquid metal ocean would weaken or destroy the magnetic field. Then we would be baked by incoming solar wind.\n\n\n", "What would happen to the planet? It'd have a hole in it. ", "allthis talk about holes got me all hot and bothered at work", "There was actually a documentary about a team of scientists who had to do this in order to deliver a nuclear payload to restart the earth's core back in the early 2000s.\n\n_URL_0_", "That is a big IF, padwan.  Current technology cannot even pierce the earth's mantle.", "Hypotheticals about science is more of a question for /r/askscience ELI5 is usually for stuff a little more concrete or readily knowable.", "Well if its an indestructible hole, I would assume lava can't spew out of it because it wouldn't be able to get into it. \n\nIf its not truly indestructible,  the hole would close up pretty quickly. Not because of lava cooling, but because of gravity _URL_0_\n\nThe really interesting thing is the way it would \"pin\" plate tectonics. It would cause a lot of earthquakes as the continents shifted around these two points. Inner lawyers wouldn't have an issue because they tend to be much more fluid and can move around the hole. Continents, however, would cluster around the openings. Over time I can imagine two Super Continents forming at these new poles. A process that could take millennia but still happen very rapidly compared to normal movements. ", "There would be a deep hole through the center of it", "Would obviously let out all the gravity.", "The encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!... Granted, that's the worst-case scenario. The destruction however might be limited merely to our own galaxy.", "What would happen if you fell in, just float in the center or something", "To add to this, I have a question. If you had a reinforced hole that went from one side of the earth through to the other, big enough that anything dropped through the hole wouldn't hit the sides; what would happen to said object when it reached the other side? Would gravity shift and send it back through the hole in some infinite loop?", "Disregarding all science, I still dont understand the following. If you were to start digging straight down and dug all the way to the other side of the earth. What would happen? I know it is childish to ask but its a measured disatnce so it can be done if one could bend laws of gravity and pressure and all. My question is more focused on the fact that at some point, you would stop digging down and be digging up. Im so confused by this. And this would also be assuming that you only dug duuring the same time of day so that the earth's spin was more of a controlled factor. At some point, youd be digging up. \n", "Well there's only one way to find out for sure... Gentlemen, grab your shovels, we're about to science.", "It really depends on the size of the hole. You wouldn't start getting seriously catastrophic effects until it was quite large by human snadards, since Earth is freaking huge. \n\nIf you want a true regional catastrophe, a diameter of, say, 20km is a great way to cause it.", "We seem to have forgotten to specify how thick the holes are. A hole with a diameter of one micron would probably cause less havoc than a hole with a diameter of one hundred kilometers.", "Nice try Bond villain", "All of the gravity would spill out", "Related: [**Gravity Train**](_URL_0_)", "Absolutely nothing.\n\nAs soon as you got deep enough for the crust to become more plastic, it would close in around you and that'd be it.", "You've seen Man of Steel right? Shit went south quick!", "Can not be done, impossible.  \n\nRead a feed like this on IFLS, and one dude said the gravity would all fall out; I laughed for a week, now I just shake my head.", "You would release the flood.\n", "The solar wind blowing across the holes would cause a shrill, ultra-low-toned whistling, causing stellar whales and astral elephants to ram the planet in fearful anger.  This would usher in the universe's first Age of Rage.  Nestle would make a commemerative chocolate bar, and there would be a new cricket team with a relative name in Pune, India.", "No actual materials can stand the absurd pressures, but suppose you build a tunnel through the center of the earth and its walls are made out of unobtanium and won't either melt, collapse, bend or suffer any other alteration. \n\nThe Earth's core is a ball of solid metal the size of the moon. The problem is that this ball is rotating slightly faster than the surface. The tunnel would be lodged firmly in the core and would appear to be moving at about 10 meters an hour, shredding the crust as it goes along, cutting through it like a knife, drawing two giant east-west circles at the surface points of the tunnels. \n\nThere wouldn't necessarily be volcanic activity (think you're on a floating ice slab and you drill a line in it with a power tool - water still doesn't come out because you're still floating just like continents float on a giant lake of molten rock inside the Earth), but there would definitely be earthquakes and volcanos might still errupt if the pressure below the crust happens to be high enough.", "Questions nobody appears to be asking:\n\n* How large is this hole? A pin-sized hole through the Earth would do nothing at all. A moon-sized hole through the Earth would kill everybody on the planet.\n\n* Is this hole just *there*, or do we dig it foot-by-foot? If the latter, how long does it take? Digging a hole over thirty years will change the pressure dynamics of the Earth differently than digging the same hole over thirty seconds.\n\n* Where's the hole? Ocean-to-ocean? Land-to-land? Ocean-to-land?\n\n* Is Aaron Eckhart in on this project, and if so, [does he have a nuke](_URL_0_)?", "I have read a couple of books that had this scenario.  It really depends on what kind of hole you're talking about.  But here's the one I really remember:\n\nIf you had a 3-foot diameter hole that went from one side of the earth, straight through the center to the other side, with an impervious material lining the walls of that hole, not much of anything would happen.  if you then vacuum-sealed that hole, and put a near-frictionless car and rail system inside, you would have an extremely low-energy transport from one side of the earth to the other.\n\nIt would be quite a fast trip, starting with the approximately 32.2 feet per second per second \"free fall\" acceleration, and gradually decreasing to the center, then gradually increasing to bring you to a cushy, 1g stop on the other side of the planet.\n\nThis is entirely hypothetical, and completely undoable with today's technology.  However, a hole that size through the center of the Earth would have negligible effect on anything else on the planet.  Like sticking a hypodermic needle through the center of a grapefruit.", "This was covered in an episode of the cartoon Transformers.  The Earth shatters like glass.  ", "The interesting thing is that if you theoretically could turn god mode on, and just jump in; you would be stuck in the middle. Gravity pulls you to the center of the earth, you would just be levitating there for eternity.", "Seems like a good question for xkcd!\n_URL_0_", "I'm actually having a lot of fun with this, so I think this warrants a direct reply.\n\nFirst issue I see is that the cylinder would need to be filled with air. Some have suggested this would cause weather disturbances, and it might. I don't think it'd be big though. Assuming a 1m cylinder, the total volume would be about 0.08km3. That's pretty small, in terms of atmosphere. 1.0x10-9 % of the atmosphere. I'm not a meteorologist, but i don't think that'd cause anything other than a stiff wind for a while. This assumes a constant pressure, which is, of course, not realistic.\n\nThe pressure is actually a bit of a monster. For curiosities sake, I'm playing with it. If you just do a straight exponential calculation, assuming the mechanics all the way down are the same as on the surface, you'd get 2.145x1013 kPa. That's 20 000 000 000 the surface pressure, and more than enough to create what's called a supercritical fluid. At those pressures, the gases would actually \"condense\", but not in the conventional sense. It's a very strange state of matter that's tough to ELI5. However, this is not the case. Earth is not a point mass, and the gravitational force pulling on the air column would not be constant. So I'll fiddle with the calculus a bit more for fun, and let you know what it comes out to. [EDIT: I worked it out as far as I could, but apparently I broke WolframAlpha trying to solve it. So we may be out of luck here.]\n\nAs for the magnetic field, I did't read anything that'd say it would be an immediate issue. Our magnetic field is caused by convection in the liquid outer core, which is driven by tidal forces caused by the Sun. A 1m radius tube would likely not cause a significant disruption here.\n\nThe core is a problem though. The dynamics of the inner core are not well know, but most geologists agree that it's a solid (some imply a highly compressed liquid that acts solid, and a few other theories, but solid core seems to dominate). So we've just drilled a hole through a solid core. A core that has a faster angular rotation than the surface. So one of two things would happen: either the core would continue to rotate, and we would lose the tube pretty quick, or the core would stop relative to the surface. Not imagine how much angular energy is stored in a rotating, massive, sphere of highly dense nickel-iron alloy. That would all need to go somewhere.I don't know exactly how it'd be dispersed, but it would be like trying to stop a huge flywheel, and the results would likely be catastrophic. Extinction event catastrophic.\n\nThe last issue, all the rest aside, comes down to temperature and radiation. The Earth's core is in the ballpark of 4 000K (about 4 300C, or 7 800F). There is no known substance that could shield from that heat, or any cooling method to avoid melting/combusting pretty much anything thrown in. Then there's the radiation. I couldn't find any exact numbers on concentration, so it's tough to find an exact dose. However, the Earth as a whole is estimated to produce 20TW of radioactive energy. So I'll go out on a limb and guess that the level would be past the lethal dose for a person, and probably irradiate any inorganic object going through.\n\nLet's assume that all this is a non-issue, for fun. Just to examine the timeline of jumping in. Since we are ignoring the fatal pressures, temperatures, and the like, let's just assume a complete vacuum. The number most people use to traverse the diameter of the planet is about 42 minutes, which isn't too bad (This number would not be affected by equatorial bulge, and would not have any significant difference due to elevation changes. Height is not a variable in a perfect pendulum). You'd hit about 11 000m/s at the core, assuming constant acceleration (some people are saying 8 000m/s. Not the number I got, but either way, it's crazy fast). Now, as you probably know, a perfect pendulum will reach exactly the same height at which it was dropped. Same for you. The elevation variations in the Earth's surface vary by about 0.22%. Not enough to make a significant difference in travel time, but definitely enough to make an impact on your arrival. So you'd likely fall short and oscillate infinitely. If there was any source of energy loss, you'd eventually settle at the core, experiencing zero G. Doesn't sound fun to me.\n\nHowever, you would also have angular velocity. Since the radius of rotation decreases with the descent, your relative lateral velocity would increase, and you'd end up riding the side of the tube all the way down, like a slide. Even though it's straight down, you'd fall kind of like it's angled. By the time you hit the core, all of the lateral energy would be gone. As you ascended, you'd now have *less* angular velocity than the tube, and slide all the way back up. Obviously, all this friction is a huge problem, and would pretty much destroy any hope you had of reaching the other side, unless we extended the hypothetical to include a frictionless tube.\n\nTL;DR This would be a very bad thing. You'd either destroy the planet, waste a lot of resources for something that wouldn't last, or inevitably become stuck in the core of the Earth forever. So let's not build this, okay?\n\nEDIT: Please feel free to review my statements. What I've found is hardly the gospel truth. Some of the theories I referenced are not completely accepted, some of my math may be off, and some is wild speculation. I mostly did this because I answered a few points, started digging, and then this behemoth formed. Also, apologies for it not all being completely ELI5, or for what likely may be a few spelling/grammar errors. This was just done on the fly between classes.", "that is enough minecraft for you, mister.", "Well, we just \"donut\" know. ", "I cant believe that I don't see this at the top.  This explains every part of your question. (Sorry if someone posted the link already)\n\nPlease up-vote, for to be seen. Thanks.\n\n_URL_0_", "This is really a question better put to AskScience, but according to my geologist father, nothing would happen.\n\nFirst, a man-size hole (or even car- or house-size) would be infinitesimably small compared to the earth itself. It's like wondering why all the water in your skin doesn't run out of your pores.\n\nSecond, such a hole, made the way you describe, would in effect be a continuing part of the surface (mathematically speaking), since you can't admit any part of the interior without destroying the hole. You would indeed require extremely strong tools and materials, greatly exceeding the capabilities of anything we have. If that was possible, and you were able to make the hole, then the hole would, for practical purposes, not be a hole into the earth, but a tunnel from one side to the other, around which the interior would flow (and not likely notice it, due to the enormity of comparative scale). And if you *did* admit the interior, the hole would immediately fill with whatever matter was at the level you admitted, and then cool solid at the top. You probably would get some lava and such at first, depending on where you do it, but it would seize solid soon enough, and you'd be left with an interesting feature.\n\nUnless, as others have suggested, the hole is extremely large, in which case, sure, it could be dramatic. But this is like asking what happens if you hit the earth with larger and larger stones. Somewhere between nothing and oblivion is a Michael Bay movie, but it's not especially interesting even as a thought experiement, since it only points to various points on the curve of possibilities, rather than frame a more interesting question with more variables.\n", "I'm not sure I can explain it like a five year old, because I just asked my five year old son the question and he said \"The Earth would have a hole in it.\"\n\n", "Nothing at all- the Silver Surfer did this in the last Fantastic 4 movie"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["to.do"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory", "http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/01/tech/mantle-earth-drill-mission/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/"], [], [], ["http://what-if.xkcd.com/46/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/NkavjJQ"], [], [], [], ["http://what-if.xkcd.com/"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN-FfJKgis8"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16xhi4", "title": "what exactly does crystal meth do to someone?  what's so addicting about it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16xhi4/eli5_what_exactly_does_crystal_meth_do_to_someone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c80990a", "c80bj2v", "c80busp", "c80cuoe", "c80dczq", "c80doh9", "c80dqaz", "c80e052", "c80gk7i", "c80gw10", "c80h1ik", "c80h55r", "c80kijt", "c80ktmd"], "score": [568, 10, 6, 46, 138, 113, 10, 30, 8, 7, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Meth makes you really really happy. More happy than you could ever get without drugs. \n\nBut it also reduces your ability to become happy. It very quickly reaches a point where you *have* to keep using meth, because you can never really feel happy without it.", "Imagine all of your inhibitions are gone, little old you is capable of anything. In small doses it's a kick ass drug but it's easy to keep going and going and before you know it it's been 4 days. \n\nIt's addicting because you feel sooooo good that the moment you come down (and it's sudden) you're like, \"fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!\" The biggest problem though is that for hours / days (depending on how long you've been binging) after you come down you can't go to sleep and it's not a fun burst of energy it's an emotionally draining and depressing time which makes you want to get more, even though in a little bit you'll feel fine it's so shitty you justify getting more. ", "I recommend the National Geographic documentary on Netflix Instant called, \"The World's Most Dangerous Drug (Meth).\" It's pretty good and really gives somewhat of an impression of what it does to the body. My favorite quote from it is \"if you can make chocolate chip cookies, then you can make meth\" Really interesting!", "Crystal Meth is a stimulant in the amphetamine class of drugs. So it is similar to some other drugs like d-amphetamine (speed). Once you use the drug, it finds its way all through your body and because the molecule is lipophilic it passes through the blood brain barrier very easily. In other words, crystal meth has a molecule that \"likes\" to interact with fat-like things. If you know any chemistry, you know that water and oil (lipids, fat) don't mix very well. So you can think of molecules being either \"water loving\" or \"fat loving\", which means they mix well with one or the other, but usually not both. There are molecules that can mix with both, and that's what a soap or detergent is. Anyway, meth is \"fat loving\" which makes it go easily into the brain, even though your brain has something called a blood brain barrier, which is like a protective layer that doesn't let things go into the brain very easily. \n\nOnce the meth is in the brain it does something very similar to other stimulants, it make it so that a bunch of the neurons (brain cells) that have this chemical called \"dopamine\", release this chemical into your brain, along with some other chemicals (serotonin and norepinephrine). These chemicals in the brain is what causes the high. Dopamine is the chemical in your brain that makes you feel good. So when you eat your favorite meal, your brain releases dopamine to make you happy that you ate the meal. But this works for things like getting a good grade on a test, which makes you feel happy and well about the test. This dopamine chemical is also important for your brain to remember what things make you feel good. So your brain will make a memory that when you got a good grade on a test you felt good, and it will try to get your body to do that again. \n\nNow imagine someone taking meth, their brain becomes flooded with this chemical. It is released much more than when you get a good grade. So much that your brain starts to run out of, and when it does, that's when you crash. Then the brain works really fast to make more of it, and store it for the future.\n\nNow about addiction. When someone decides to do meth for the first time, they want to do it usually because they think that it will make them feel really good and happy. So the first time they do it, they enjoy it a lot. Well, once you have done it, you may want to do it again, because you remember how good it felt. So you go ahead and use meth again. Except that the more you use meth, the more your brain gets this \"flood\" of dopamine (the chemical from before). However, the brain isn't supposed to have this happen, a normal brain never has that much dopamine around. So the brain starts to \"think\": \n\nJeez, there is something weird going on here, all this dopamine is not normal, but if this is going to happen all the time I need to do something about it.\n\nSo what happens is, the brain will start \"telling\" the brain cells that this flood is going to happen again. So in order to help the brain stay \"normal\" (normal being not make you feel super great, which is weird for the brain) it tells all your brain cells to respond less to the dopamine. It's a bit like inflation in the economy, if things cost more money, workers need to get paid more, but then their employer needs to make more money too, so they increase the price of what they sell. Because the brain is trying to avoid this dopamine flood from making it all weird again, it increases how much dopamine you need to feel the effects. Not only that, but it makes it so that the brain is not making as much dopamine either, so when the person isn't using meth, they have less dopamine in their brain than a normal person that doesn't use meth. This is what makes the addict feel depressed and sad when they are not using meth. \n\nThat's why it's not a good idea to mess around with your brain like that.", "Think of crystal meth as if cookies were illegal. People live their daily lives eating sandwiches and pasta etc. But one evening, you are offered a thick, chocolate chipped cookie by a buddy. The first time you bite into it, you have an explosion of happiness in your mouth. And for the next few hours, you feel as if warm chocolate is constantly being smeared onto your palate. You feel truly happy with this meal. Then, you go back to your normal day, and have a turkey sandwich for lunch, but it pales into comparison with that scrumptious cookie your friend gave you. You go back to you friend, and get another cookie to have another night of joy. After a few weeks of this trend, you are having trouble finding anything that can make you happy, unless it starts with C and ends with ookie. Your daily lunch sandwich taste like chalk. You even try going to your favorite steak place, and it is now bland and not worth the money (might as well have just gotten 3 cookies). You are unable to become happy. Your life is losing meaning, and you realize you are an addict.", "Think of happiness like light. Everyday things are like candles and camera flashes. And that's good. Now meth, meth is like looking into the sun. If you look at the sun too long, you have trouble seeing other light. Even things you could see clearly before, like the camera flash, you can't anymore. But that's OK because you're looking into the sun, right? Wrong. The sun is the brightest thing you can see. Too bright. Your eyes can't handle it. Eventually you start to go blind. You can't see the sun's light as much anymore so you keep looking. And looking. Nothing else matters because that brightness was so intense, nothing else can come close.\n\nWhy would you want to go back to a world of camera flashes and candles when you've known the sun? That's why it's so addictive. ", "Maybe we should wait until he is older to explain meth....what do you think honey?  ", "Explain like I'm 5 huh?\n\n*Well, I'll try.*\n\n\n**Me:** \"You know when you're sad and you want to feel happy?\"\n\n**5:** Yes\n\n**Me:** Or when you're really tired and want to go to sleep but can't because you have something to do?\n\n**5:** Yes\n\n**Me:** Well what meth does, is it wakes you up... so much that people who take it get really excited... so much they can't think straight and they jump around doing one thing then another without stopping for hours. \n\n**5:** Oh... \n\n**Me:** but the really bad part is when,  \"Remember when I told you you never get something for nothing?\"  \n\n**5:** yeah... (nods)\n\n**Me:** Well it's like that...  it's cheating... \nPeople try to wake themselves up when they should just go to sleep\nThey try to make themselves happy by cheating when they should just do something about whatever is making them sad and fix things vs trying to take a short cut.\nSome people should just plan head and eat right when they need to get something done in time... isn't it better to plant ahead and have time vs being rushed?\n\n**5:** Yeah (nods again)\n\n**Me:** What makes meth addictive is that once you start lying and cheating you'll always have to do it and .. when it catches up to you - you're in a lot more trouble than if you just did things the right way to begin with.  So people do more...just to pretend to be normal.. when they're really not.\nDoes that make sense?\n\n**5:** yeah... Thank you.\n\n**Me:** you're welcome... here's an apple slice.", "Nice try, Hank Schrader.", "It reduces your ability to have teeth", "People say addicting a lot. Which is correct, addicting or addictive?", "It's not the drug, it's the person using the drug, and different people have different tastes. I've done meth plenty, and never had an issue. However, I've had periods where I've struggled with limiting my intake of things like alcohol, coke, and even weed. I also know a guy who quit being a meth addict after decades of struggling because he became addicted to surfing.", "_URL_0_\nThis does it for me", "The scariest thing I've ever heard about meth is that the first time you do it, it's the best feeling in the world, and each subsequent use is a little less fulfilling. But you keep trying, hoping to reach that ultimate feeling. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXIhdC33NUE"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ivzma", "title": "How do color changing pencils work?", "selftext": "Example: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ivzma/how_do_color_changing_pencils_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb8ovm3"], "score": [2], "text": ["Sometimes providing context - or even links to the item you're describing - goes a long way in getting you responses."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.cliving.org/PHOTOS/Mood%20Pen%20pencil/mood%20pencil%20color%20change%202.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "i3owg", "title": "Why does eating raw garlic give me a sore throat, but not when it's cooked?", "selftext": "Yes, so, basically when I eat raw garlic I have a sore throat that lasts for as long as a day, sometimes two. But when I eat garlic that's been cooked in some fashion I suffer no ill effects? How are they not the same thing?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i3owg/why_does_eating_raw_garlic_give_me_a_sore_throat/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c20pbij"], "score": [2], "text": ["Garlic has a high concentration of Sulfur and that maybe irritating your mucus membranes. I'm sorry I don't know the direct answer"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "15hwrm", "title": "Ignoring current technological limits, would it be theoretically possible to simulate anything perfectly, down to the atomic level, faster than it would occur in real life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15hwrm/ignoring_current_technological_limits_would_it_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7mlcaz", "c7mlr3v", "c7monic"], "score": [4, 2, 15], "text": ["Due to quantum physics being probabilistic, we wouldn't be able to predict things at the atomic level \"perfectly\". We'd know the likelihood of atoms behaving in certain ways, but never precisely which way.\n\nIn other words, we can't predict what atoms are going to do. This isn't a technological problem, it's a fundamental principle of physics. We can precisely know the *chance* that atoms will do something though.", "It's easiest to consider a closed quantum system. That is, no interaction with the environment. In this case, at least, I don't see why not. \"Perfectly\" is not a good word, though. I'd say arbitrarily well. You can never do anything perfectly, there would always be small imperfections, but they can be made as small as needed, given the technology. A big part of why we try to make quantum computers is exactly to simulate other quantum systems, such as atoms.", "Even classically, the answer is no, since the machine would be able to simulate itself in faster than real time. If it were able to do this, consider augmenting the machine with something that flips the first bit of whatever output you want it to have. \n\nAssuming this flipping occurs fast enough to not push the computation over the real-time threshold, you would have created a paradox, since the machine outputs something other than what it would output."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "89rmq6", "title": "why do computer applications sometimes freeze up to the point where you can't even click within or exit the application?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89rmq6/eli5why_do_computer_applications_sometimes_freeze/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwt0crt", "dwt0tbu", "dwt1kba", "dwt302j", "dwt732f"], "score": [41, 24, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["Usually this happens when the application runs into an error (stack overflow, access a file that doesn't exist). Imagine the computer is a person who just dropped their stuff on the ground, and the computer freezing is them picking it up. They're so concentrated on fixing the problem, they put all their resources to fix it, including the processing power needed to move your cursor. Hope this helps", "Many code operations in an application will cause the application to stop listening to click or keypress events. Usually these operations complete quick enough that you don't notice it. In some cases, they take some time, but the developer puts up a visual indicator that the app is busy (such as a progress bar).\n\nA more advanced technique (that's not always possible, due to design constraints) is to execute code asynchronously from the interface, so when a user causes some code to run, they can still do other things in the application.\n\nWith that information, the answer to your question is that an app \"freezes\" and stops accepting user input when it's running some code that causes the app to stop listening for user input and a bug in that code causes it to never complete (or crash, but usually crashes will crash and close the whole app).\n\n**Edit:** typo", "Hey! Finally one I *can* answer:\n\nYour computer is finite and has a finite amount of resources. You (as a person) can only multitask and do a few things without slowing down and losing quality of what your trying to do. \n\nDon\u2019t believe me? Try writing two different sentences on paper with each hand. Now, instead of trying to do both at the same time, write one word or one sentence after the other. You get it done a lot faster and better. \n\nThis is what computers do, though they\u2019re a lot faster, they actually do one thing at a time. It just happens to go so fast it looks like they\u2019re doing it at the same time. Now, continuing with our human example, when you\u2019re writing your sentences, what if you don\u2019t know how to spell a word, or your pencil breaks? You have to stop and figure out what went wrong, and try to fix it. If you can\u2019t figure out how to spell it, or don\u2019t own another pencil, you\u2019re stuck. \n\nWhat makes us different than computers is that when something goes wrong for us, we always have alternate solutions. For example, we can grab a pen or look up a word in a dictionary. We can see alternatives. When a computer has these kinds of errors it depends on how well the programmer made the program. If it\u2019s a good program, it has pre-built alternatives that don\u2019t stop it from accomplishing its task. If it\u2019s a poorly written program, or something goes extremely wrong, the program, or the computer entirely will stop because it doesn\u2019t know what to do. This is what causes computers or programs to freeze, or crash. ", "To explain like you're five: There's a traffic jam in your computer because drivers aren't sure who's turn is next. ", "Various reasons, but two common examples are that the OS is waiting for something that isn't happening (yet, possibly ever) or that it's simply found itself in a state it should never be in and has no idea what to do next, so does nothing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4gjagn", "title": "how a nuclear reactor works to produce energy.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gjagn/eli5_how_a_nuclear_reactor_works_to_produce_energy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2i06nn", "d2i0m9u", "d2i0sug", "d2i17um", "d2i8n2o", "d2i9zzp", "d2ic046", "d2idcyz", "d2iu2ho"], "score": [51, 9, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["The core itself is like a hot rock, more or less. It's continually having coolant of some sort passed by it to keep it from getting too hot. This heats up that coolant quite a bit. That coolant, in turn, passes it's heat on to water sitting in a boiler, heating it up to several hundred degrees,  creating steam. That steam is then used to spin massive turbine generators, which output electrical power.\n\nThere's a lot in there about choice of coolant and how heat is transferred across materials, but essentially: hot rock makes hot liquid, makes hot water/steam, spins turbine.", "[GIF explaining pretty much everything](_URL_0_)\n\nI'm going to explain using the gif i linked.\n\nIn the reactor vessel you have plutonium (radioactive) producing heat when it **decays** (correction thanks to ToastGiraffe :)). \n\nThe control rods control this reaction in the plutonium, stopping the reactor from overheating.\n\nThe heated water from the reactor vessel is pumped around through the steam generator which produces steam.\n\nThe steam passes though a turbine that drives a generator.\n\nWhen the steam has passed the turbine it is cooled in the condenser and pumped back into the steam generator and the circle is complete.\n\nThe only thing the gif doesn't show is how the \"external\" cooling water is cooled. This can be done in many ways, but the most used ones is either by large cooling towers (you have seen them!) or by pumping it through a large assembly of water (lake/sea).\n\nAnything else you want to know, just ask! :)", "Atoms are big clumps or elementary particles. The number and composition determines what type of atom and what isotope of that atom it is. Some isotopes are however very unstable and will easily shatter into smaller pieces. In a nuclear reactor there are isotopes of uranium or plutonium that is just one neutron away from shattering. To start a reactor you just shoot a few neutrons into the core which will hit an atom and make it shatter into smaller atoms and elementary particles with lots of energy.\n\nWhen the atom smashes there are more neutrons created which crashes into more atoms and make them shatter. If you had a high concentration of these isotopes you would have a nuclear bomb as all energy would be released at once. However in a nuclear reactor there are lots of other material in the core to slow down the reaction. To fine tune the reaction speed there are control rods that can be lowered into the core and slow down the reaction.\n\nAll the energy that is released will make the core heat up. Too cool it down you pump water through the reactor core. This water is then turned into high pressure steam which is used to turn a steam turbine that make electricity. You are then left with low pressure steam which is very hard to get any energy from so it is cooled in giant cooling towers so it can be reused.", "Nuclear reactors use fissionable materials (Usually Uranium or Plutonium) that emit \u201cfast\u201d neutrons naturally through radioactive decay. These neutrons are usually moving too fast to actually be absorbed by the fuel normally, but they do travel into a moderator (usually water because it is stable and doubles as a coolant) that can slow them down by letting the neutrons bounce around a bit, transferring the energy to the moderator molecules in the form of heat. When these neutrons have slowed enough, they are considered \u201cthermalized\u201d and they drift back into the fuel region and are able to be absorbed by the fissionable material which destabilizes it, causing fission which releases a lot more fast neutrons that go and do the same thing. \n\nThe heat generated by the neutron in the moderator is transferred to a coolant (if they aren't the same thing) and can either cause boiling in the core (such as with a boiling water reactor) or is transferred to a lower pressure system through a heat exchanger called a steam generator which causes boiling in this secondary system (in a Pressurized Water Reactor). The high pressure steam is then sent through a turbine that spins to generate electricity. Any leftover low pressure steam after the turbine has the excess heat transferred out into an outside source of water (coolant tower, lake, river, ocean, etc.) through another heat exchanger called a condenser. The condensed water is then pumped back into the Reactor core or Steam Generator to repeat the process. Each system is self-enclosed and the water never mixes.\n\nThe neutron creation in the core is controlled by using moveable control rods made out of a material that can absorb neutrons such as boron or by chemically adding the neutron absorber to the core in controlled amounts. The amount of neutron absorber added or Control Rod movement will control exactly how many neutrons are absorbed, preventing them from going back into the core to create more fissions which directly control the heat generated by the reactor, thus the power generated.\n\ntl;dr: Hot core creates steam which pushes a turbine around which generates power. The heat level of the core is controlled by chemicals and/or rods. \n\n\nEDIT: spelling, grammar", "Hot rock is very hot\n\nHot placed next to water\n\nWater boils\n\nUse turbine to get energy from steam", "Nuclear reactors are basically just the world's most complex way to boil water. \n\nThe nuclear reaction makes the core insanely hot, and that heat is used to heat water (or sometimes other fluids) to extremely high pressures. That pressure is used to drive a turbine, and the turbine produces electricity. ", "The short story? It's a steam engine, nothing more.", "The same way a steam powered generator does.\n\nYou have the radioactive material, which is pretty hot, turning water into steam. The steam is used to drive a steam turbine, which uses the energy of the steam to create energy using magnetic fields. \n\nYou could take the nuclear part of the power plant and replace it with coal or gas, and the principal of operation would not change significantly. \n\n", "So eh.. super weird question here..\n\nBut im dying to know how hot the insides of a reactor get?\nwhat amount of heat do we use to boil the water?.. in my mind its \"oh god nuclear stuff, its probably a gazillion degrees!\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/PressurizedWaterReactor.gif"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1cdojs", "title": "why do maps always start with north america on the left and end with asia on the right?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cdojs/eli5_why_do_maps_always_start_with_north_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9fi08f", "c9fih7s", "c9fjryk", "c9fkkvr", "c9fkmuw", "c9fmt54", "c9fmums", "c9fo5yy", "c9fr5o5"], "score": [43, 10, 22, 11, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Europe is in the center.\n\nSince most maps were created in europe  (America was not discovered yet, there was an \"europlean cluster\" and an \"asian cluster\" of influence) during history, it became \"common\" in the european (and then american, since it was discovered by europeans) \"tradition\".\n\nIf you look at japanese or chinese (or russian) maps they are asian-centric for example.", "It usually depends on where the map was made", "I'm sure cultural bias has something to do with it, but it's also worth considering what you'd end up with if you did it the other way round: the vast majority of the earth's land mass (and hence population) would be off at the sides of the frame, while the centre would be the mostly empty Pacific Ocean. From an aesthetic standpoint at least this wouldn't be ideal.", "Without being a 3D globe, a 2D map needs to divide a landmass or an vast section of water.\n\nWe are a land-centric species. We walk on it, we live on it, we spend practically all of our time there. We automatically have more use for a map with congruous land masses.\n\nThe Pacific Ocean is a vast section of water that can be easily divided from North Pole to South Pole in a fairly straight line. So that is where we cut the globe to make a 2D map.", "Same reason why maps have North Pole as 'up' and South Pole as 'down'. \n\n\nMaps are given a perspective.", "0\u00b0 goes through Europe, making it an ideal central point. Also what other people have mentioned about English cartograprs", "It also makes it easy to show the countries together. By cutting the pacific ocean in half instead of depicting the largest ocean in all its glory, we can focus on what we care about: land.", "It's centred on the on a line running through Greenwich called the prime meridian.", "In Aus, Australia is roughly in the centre - although what they do is put england on the left so that Greenwich is on the left and the time zones move from left to right."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4yxuen", "title": "how can children be tried as adults in the us?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yxuen/eli5_how_can_children_be_tried_as_adults_in_the_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6r7hr8", "d6r7vim", "d6r82fv", "d6rcylq"], "score": [16, 19, 9, 2], "text": ["In the US, certain states allow for the judge to admit a waiver of the right to be tried as children. This process is reserved the very serious crimes (such as the \"Slenderman\" case) or for children who are habitual offenders in which rehabilitation has proven to be unsuccessful. \nWhile we like to let kids mess up and still live a full life, those that are shown with the capacity for serious offenses (murder is the best example) are prone to commit those offenses later in life, too, so we just lock them up like they're adults.", "Just because children don't have an adult's capacity to fully reason through the consequences of their actions doesn't mean that they are completely incapable of understanding the consequences of some actions at the same level as an adult. \n\nUnderstanding that murder is wrong is not a particularly complex principle to comprehend. If it is shown that the minor is mature enough to understand this concept, then saying the the minor is too young to be responsible for it doesn't make sense.  ", "There are some crimes, such as rape and murder, that are so severe that the extra protections awarded children are revoked. The child is such a risk to society that they no longer have the rights of being a child and face the full repercussions for their actions. \n\nEdit: For extra clarification, there are three primary purposes for going to prison. 1) Protection of society from you and your behavior by removing you from society. 2) Punishment by the removal of rights and freedoms. 3) Rehabilitation for the actions that you have taken. Each of these is equally important, and while Rehabilitation is fully dependent on you understanding your crime and Punishment works better when you understand your crime protecting society is not dependent on you understanding anything.", "It seems that you already have an opinion on if minors should be charged as adults or not. \n\nr/changemyview might be a better sub, but it's a fairly common question, so searching that sub's archive first might be a good idea."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7x6sjf", "title": "Old Photo of Abraham Lincoln on Cloth.", "selftext": "From my understanding, photos weren't printed on cloth until the early 20th century. I have this [patch of cloth](_URL_0_) with a photo of Abraham Lincoln on it, with a note claiming it's from the possessions of my great-great Grandfather, who fought in the civil war. That would date this patch to the 1860s. Is that even possible? I'd like to find out more about it, but google searches have turned up empty.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7x6sjf/old_photo_of_abraham_lincoln_on_cloth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du6c0l6"], "score": [22], "text": ["What you appear to have here is a political campaign ribbon depicting Lincoln from the famous 1860 [Cooper Union portrait](_URL_2_). \n\nThe image depicted in your cloth is not actually a photo, but an illustration, specifically, the same illustration [seen here](_URL_0_). \n\nWhile I'm not sure of when photographic printing directly to cloth was first used, lithographic printing of illustrations on cloth was quite common for presidental elections back as far as the late 1820's, as seen by these [Andrew Jackson Ribbons](_URL_1_).\n\nFor more on political ribbons, possibly even including the one you have here, see *American Political Ribbons and Ribbons Badges 1825-1981*, by Sullivan, Edmund B. and Fischer, Roger"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://imgur.com/a/JBacn"], "answers_urls": [["https://historical.ha.com/itm/political/abraham-lincoln-single-portrait-brady-ribbon/a/6133-42039.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515", "http://politicalmemorabilia.com/political-item/andrew-jackson-political-ribbons/", "https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7B9400F95D-89A4-4920-A05E-46EE3CEDC9C0%7D&amp;amp;oid=302567"]]}
{"q_id": "1cohix", "title": "Is it possible for someone to be so strong that flexing their muscles could break a bone?", "selftext": "I am just wondering if it is possible for a super muscular person to flex their muscles and fracture a bone? For example could they flex their biceps and be so strong that they could potentially fracture their humerus?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cohix/is_it_possible_for_someone_to_be_so_strong_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9im8qb"], "score": [7], "text": ["Don't need to be very strong.  Some convulsions experienced by heroine addicts in withdrawal can break bones and possibly be fatal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7nmi8f", "title": "In 1942, US forces launched a successful cavalry charge against Japanese tanks and won. How did that work?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7nmi8f/in_1942_us_forces_launched_a_successful_cavalry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds2x12x"], "score": [95], "text": ["Do you have a cite for the tanks?\n\nI presume you are referring to the charge of 16 January, 1942, at Morong by the 26th Cavalry, Philippine Scouts under then-LT Edwin Ramsey, which is known as the US Army's last horse-mounted cavalry charge. (Events in Afghanistan may have changed this, though).\n\nThe platoon had encountered the advanced guard of a Japanese force starting to cross a river into the town of Morong. Ramsey decided that he could do a better job of delaying the Japanese advance by bloodying the advance guard in a spoiling attack than by holding position and defending against a strong attack.\n\nIt worked. At the cost of three troopers wounded, the Japanese were thrown back. While they reconsolidated and tried to figure out what happened, American reinforcements showed up. LT Ramsey received the silver star.\n\nRamsay survived the war, retiring as an LTC. Here's his statement on the charge in 2009. _URL_0_\n\nNow, no mention that I can see anywhere indicates that this advanced guard had tank support, which is why I put my first question up. At most, mortars and light artillery. I wonder if you're not confusing the incident with the charge at Krojanty, the mythical anti-tank charge by Polish cavalry in 1939. This also didn't happen, as the Poles successfully charged a group of resting infantry, only to be counter-attacked by tanks (and not faring well on the receiving end of it)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez8g7_jQYWY"]]}
{"q_id": "ihwub", "title": "Can life develop without a nearby star as an energy source?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ihwub/can_life_develop_without_a_nearby_star_as_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c23w80u", "c23wbcy", "c23weec", "c23wi5l", "c23x1jr"], "score": [9, 3, 2, 5, 3], "text": ["I think this is only one answer, but the habitable zone doesn't necessarily have to be based within that very specific area around a star.\n\nFor example, there are geological processes that can create heat, or energy that life could develop with. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has this going on as it is pulled against Jupiter and other moons. (I think, I'm not an expert I just watch a lot of shows about the Universe)", "  >  Dorian Abbot and Eric Switzer say they've calculated that rocky planets with a mass similar to that of Earth could stay warm enough to keep water liquid under thick, insulating ice sheets for more than a billion years.\n\n[Link](_URL_0_)", "There has been suggestion that a large rogue planet (a planet that has been ejected from its solar system and orbit the galaxy directly) could, if sufficiently massive, induce geological tidal heating in an orbiting moon (like what happens in the Jovian system). Since we have no data on rogue planets this is merely speculation, but it seems its physically possible.  ", "This is just a creative, theoretical idea I read about.\n\nA couple of scientists at [Fermilab](_URL_0_), Dan Hooper and Jason Steffen, calculated that \"the dark matter that lies at the heart of the galaxy could heat an alien world enough to make it habitable.\"\n\nThere was an article about it in NewScientist (4/9-4/15 2011) - *\"Dark Matter, the bringer of life*\" that states: \"While WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) tend to pass through planets, they will occasionally slam into atoms, losing energy and speed. If they lose enough energy, they could become trapped by the planet's gravity and settle in its core, where they are likely to hit other trapped dark matter particles and annihilate.\" (Dark matter is believed to be made of WIMPs)\n\n(From article) It is estimated that the amount of dark matter that lies inside the earth would produce ~1 megawatt. We absorb approximately 100 billion megawatts from the sun, so you can see a planet would need to be much closer to the center of our galaxy (about 26,000 light years closer) or another area where the concentration of dark matter is much more dense in order for it to be heated enough.\n\nIt's important to state that there is much less known about dark matter than known, so hypotheses based around it may (are likely to) become more or less true as science becomes more confident with its characteristics. Nonetheless, the concept that life could develop, somehow, on these potentially heated, starless planets, even trillions of years from now, is kind of awesome.", "The life around \"[black smokers](_URL_0_)\" on earth is only one example of chemautotrophs: organisms fuelled by inorganic chemicals rather than sunlight. The Wiki link shows that some have speculated that this may have even been where life originated, which, if true, would mean that yes, life can develop without stars.\n\nQuestion for the experts: Where does the potential energy chemautotrophs are utilising come from? Why don't these reactions occur spontaneously without being catalysed by a living organism? \n\nI'd thought the heat differential of the vents was used for energy, but as far as I can tell it's not actually good for anything, what's the story?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/02/21/Wandering-planets-may-have-water-life/UPI-62971298338518/#ixzz1RJ9V1M9b"], [], ["http://www.fnal.gov"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent"]]}
{"q_id": "27jjg1", "title": "why are there so many shootings in america?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27jjg1/eli5why_are_there_so_many_shootings_in_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci1etjo", "ci1f0wv", "ci1f3hy", "ci1f5jw", "ci1g07l", "ci1howt", "ci1ivzb", "ci1rdq0"], "score": [2, 5, 62, 18, 7, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["Because it's easier to get guns in America than it is e.g in Europe.", "In the UK it's difficult to first get a gun licence. Then even harder to keep it as you need to prove you use it. Like you need to prove you shoot rabbits on Farmers x field and use so many shells/cartridges. All testaments and parties have to be documented and sent to the police to be able to renew your license.\n\nAlso you must keep firearms locked in a steel gun cabinet. Although not checked, this is for safety sake and chance of theft.\n\nIf your caught breaking any of these rules, bye bye gun.\n\nIf your caught with an unlicensed gun, it's straight to jail.\n\nTo be honest these regulations aren't just a need, they are a must. To stop mentally ill or simply lunatics from going on a rampage.", "It's hard to pin down a single reason, and it's also very difficult to be objective. It's easy to say that America has the most liberal gun laws of western industrialised nations and also the highest intentional homicide rate of western industrialised nations not currently in a state of war, but it might be slightly more complicated than that. For example, Germany has some of the world's strictest gun laws and does have a very low murder rate compared with the US, but the worst school shootings in recent decades have taken place in Germany.\n\nIt is very hard to escape the fact that liberal gun laws coupled with a general culture of violence plus inadequate treatment of psychiatric disorders are to blame, but to what extent each of these factors is to blame is not easy to determine.\n\nIf we pick on just the gun ownership aspect, the cases normally raised in these discussions are Switzerland and Australia.\n\nSwitzerland has a very high incidence of legal gun ownership, but the usual explanation that \"all Swiss citizens are legally required to have guns\" isn't quite accurate. In fact, most Swiss males in their twenties and thirties are conscripted into the militia, and are required to take their service weapons home with them -- but are not allowed to take any ammunition. (In the past, ammunition was issued in sealed boxes, and the seals were constantly checked and the bullets counted.) Still, most Swiss households have guns, and it is possible to get hold of ammunition. And it is true that despite that, Switzerland has a very low murder rate. Interestingly, though, while planned crimes -- armed robbery, for example -- are typically carried out using illegally held weapons, there is a higher-than-expected rate of domestic homicides -- crimes of passion -- and these are carried out using legally-held service weapons. So if you want to hold up a bank, you get a gun on the black market that can't be traced to you; if you catch your wife in bed with the insurance salesman, you grab the nearest weapon to hand which happens to be a gun.\n\nSimilarly, there is this thing going round that guns are now banned in Australia and that as a result the murder rate has shot up. Neither of those things are true: guns were restricted in 1996, but not banned, in Australia, and the murder rate appears to have gone down but was always very low anyway. Different researchers have come up with very different interpretations of the same figures, but it seems that gun crime was on the way down anyhow, and the 1996 legislation didn't make much difference. The only thing anyone can say for sure is that fewer suicides are committed using guns, which just means that people determined to kill themselves are turning to different methods.\n\nTL;DR: It's much more complex than lots of people will have you believe, but it is almost certainly a mixture of many different factors.", "Because the media puts all the shooters in the spotlight for at least a week. They talk about the victim count and how sick and deprived and troubled the person is. The person is usually someone troubled (obviously) and they hate people. They want to go out in a blaze of glory and they want people to know they exist. If the media kept these things to  dumbed down reports that didn't seen to focus on the shooter so much then maybe we would have less maniacs. Not saying it would solve the problem completely, it just would help. Ratings are more important to news people than preventing another ratings boost. ", "See, here's what I'd like to know. Is there truly an \"outbreak\" of shootings? Or is it one of those cases like in shark attacks on beaches where it's not that there's been an increase in these incidents and just that the media is reporting them more often because that seems to be the news fad of the last few years?", "Gun advocates point out that the highest incedences of mass shootings (more than two victims) are overwhelmingly more likely to be carried out in places where legal carriage of a firearm is restricted. This suggests that gun free zones, though not the cause (obviously), may provide a high profile, target rich, relatively low risk venue to carry out these shootings. \n\n Somewhat related: Public shootings ended by civilians with legally concealed firearms incapacitate active shooters much more quickly and are statistically less deadly than active shooters stopped by police or security. \n\nJohn Lott talks about this in his book More Guns, Less Crime as well as in multiple YouTube videos. He's an economist who looks at the statistical data of a lot of different scenarios pertaining to gun laws around the world. ", "There aren't. Gun violence is down considerably. ", "Has to do with media. Let's say you live in a city with one homicide per year. This year, it suddenly jumped to four homicides. They could say that the rate of homicide quadrupled, which is true. It make people who live in that city think that homicide is a huge problem. Mass media likes to report on things that are scary, like disease, death, crime, and other things like that.\n\nMass media also likes to give bogus reasons why these things happen. When Harris and Klebold shot up their high school and subsequently committed suicide, they were know to play Doom and Wolfenstein 3d, both popular FPS games at the time. The media talked about this a lot and blamed other things like music more than the other factors, like social climate (H and K were known to socially isolated from their peers, insecure, and depressed), prescription drugs (H had Fluvoxamine (known to cause suicidal thoughts and behaviours, as well as mania) in his bloodstream during the shooting), and mental illnesses (H was a clinical psychopath with a superiority complex and K was depressive, both were also bullied).\n\nMass media is in no way neutral. They don't care about absolute truth, they care about profits."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4k8ho9", "title": "if most of america really doesn't like the main options presented for president, what can anybody actually do about it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k8ho9/eli5_if_most_of_america_really_doesnt_like_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3cxztd", "d3cypeo", "d3cz2k5", "d3d0995", "d3d6b7b", "d3d8wke", "d3d9x1g", "d3daori", "d3dbcba", "d3dbqnn", "d3dbyac", "d3df8i0", "d3dfae5", "d3dfyln", "d3dht2z", "d3djlsc", "d3dmziw"], "score": [14, 5, 2, 183, 6, 5, 2, 20, 8, 2, 21, 2, 3, 9, 2, 5, 3], "text": ["Well, we're currently in the process of 50 states and some territories worth of intra-party elections to determine who the nominees are. That kind of sounds like the opportunity to have done something about who gets nominated.\n\nIf so much of America is unhappy with the parties' nominees, I have trouble blaming anyone other than the 85% of voters who didn't participate.", "In true American fashion, vote for the candidate that you want to lead our country. Don't worry about wasting your vote. If everyone just voted their conscience, we would have true leaders, not bought shills for the powerful.", "Vote for the other options.\n\nAnd if you didn't like any of them there is nothing stopping you setting up your own party.", "Organize really, that's about it.\n\nIf we as a nation are really tired of all the crap that we deal with from politicians then we could organize nationally, form a new party and block vote for these specific people / our nominees.\n\nAnd then slowly change the system. This however has its problems,\n\n1. The US has abysmal voting rates, our populace just isn't interested in politics. We've made a system that we have to use, that no one wants to interact with because it has become so vile and impenetrable. The system is convoluted and fundamentally rotten. Your average american either, \n\n A) doesn't have time to wrap their head around everything they feel like they need to know \n\n or \n\n B) Doesn't want to know because they think it all sucks.\n\n2. The system uses first past the post voting / one person one vote [(watch this video by CGP Grey)](_URL_0_).\n\n This system suppresses multiple party systems, with each person having only 1 vote, it empowers the leaders and discourages smaller groups from attempting to get a say in the system.\n\n **Example:** The Owl Party is fiscally conservative and the Hawk party is fiscally liberal, but supports foreign intervention. These are the two dominant parties Zylandia. A break away from the Hawk party wants fiscally liberal but is against foreign intervention. They want to vote for leaders who are like Hawks mostly, what they lack is popular vote because they are new. In First Past the Post / One Person One Vote systems, everyone gets only one vote, and similar candidates will share votes because there is a lot of overlap, so when a race is intra-party (Talon vs Hawk) it is okay. However with Interparty races people who would support the Talon party will feel pressured to vote for the Hawk Party representatives because the Hawk party has more wide spread support and without the support of the Talon party will lose against the Owl party. And Talons dislike Owls more than they dislike Hawks. Because Hawks and Talons are kind of similar, so it's better to get a Hawk in than an Owl.\n\n In a multi vote system a Talon supporter could vote for their Talon candidate as their primary vote, and then the Hawk candidate as a second choice. In this way people get to vote for who best exemplifies their beliefs without forcing them to choose between a loser and the dominant party. Forcing all people to vote into one person gives the group of citizens who are most stubborn extraordinary amount of power; ie: religious zealots.\n\n3. Money, the current political system is coin operated, please insert hundreds of thousands of dollars to run for Senate Without fiscal support from wealthy donors or Super PACs many possible candidates cannot have competitive races simply because they cannot raise name awareness, hire employees, and combat attack advertisements.\n\n\nFor us to have a truly representative nation for our citizens, our citizens should be able to vote for who they believe most represents themselves by both voting for the person, and voting for the political party, and for our potential politicians to work at on the same even ground. There is a reason why most of our top level politicians are from wealthy families.\n\n**tl;dr:** we need to organize nationally a new more important party than republican or democrat, under one agenda. That agenda is to fix the system so that it can be more representative of the citizenship of the U.S. This allows moderate and more hardline conservative and liberals to vote for their candidates without being controlled by small but powerful groups of people.", "You actually can still vote for the candidate that you want.  It's called a [write-in candidate](_URL_0_).  It simply means that the person you want to vote for is not on the ballot.  \n\nAll of the politicking going on right now is for each party's nomination, because if there is more than one candidate for a party, it divides their votes so they both will have less of a chance of succeeding.  This is why parties only put down one candidate.  \n\nedit:  There have been several candidates who have won this way in the past.  You'll find them in the link above.\n\nedit part deux: I should note that the above mentioned candidates only won individual state primaries.  ", "People need to know that the parties we have aren't the only options. There are, in fact, many other parties out there. In other countries there are often more than two main parties vying for power.\n\n\nI'm a little bugged when I see people complain that the party primaries aren't democratic, that the rules favor one candidate or another. The parties make up their own rules, and if they wanted to make a rule that said the candidate has to have purple hair it wouldn't have any bearing on the democratic government laid out in the Constitution. The parties and the government are different, it just so happens that in this country that third-parties and independents aren't given much consideration.\n\nWhat can you do? Organize, start a new party, vote for a different candidate, run for office, vote for an independent, write-in your vote, vote for no one.\n\nEdit: BTW, while I stick to what I said above, I do think that some of the alleged voter suppression absolutely IS a threat to our democracy.", "Make people care.  But not just care enough to be mad, but also mad enough to actually take the time to do something with that anger.", "Be active.  Vote in *local* elections instead of whining and moaning once every four years about politicians.", "We could all vote 3rd party--although, that would take significant amounts of money and coordination.\n\nWe could start a new party--although, that would take significant amounts of money and coordination.\n\nWe could have a general strike to demand a change in the federal election structure--although, that would take significant amounts of money and coordination.\n\nWe can do anything we can imagine--although, it will all take significant amounts of money and coordination.\n\nThe bottom line, is we need to organize, talk, plan, and raise funds.", "Because the status quo has inertia. People are afraid to make big changes in the status quo. Right now, the schools are open, most people have jobs, the police and the courts more or less work, water comes out of the tap, and foreigners aren't conquering us. If you make big changes, who knows if we'll get to keep those things? People prefer small, incremental changes. They really want the election to be about shifting things slightly one direction versus not shifting them at all, or at most versus shifting them slightly the other direction.\n\nSo if you want a big change all at once, you're not going to get your way on this unless two things happen. First of all, some huge crisis resulting in mass casualties has to happen all over the country, for a long time, with no hope of it getting better. And secondly, you have to convince them that of all of the non status quo things they could do about that, they should pick yours.\n\nIf you don't have those things, then it wouldn't even do you any good if there was a Presidential candidate who agreed with you. He or she would just lose.\n\nAlternatively, you could persuade the American people that want you want isn't all *that* big of a change. Which relates to the next issue, persuasion.\n\nBecause maybe you have a cause that you want to see a President champion, and none of them are talking in favor of what you want. Well, if that's true, that's because you, and other people who agree with you, haven't made your case. You don't do that through partisan politics. You do that through issue-oriented political groups. You do that by writing popular books, by making popular songs, by making art that becomes popular.\n\nIf you can afford the travel expenses and have any name recognition, you can even do that by traveling around giving lectures: Al Gore achieved more in a one year book tour with a cool Powerpoint slide show than he did in several decades in politics; when it comes to causes he cared about, his whole political career turned out just to be a publicity stunt to get people to come to his Powerpoint lecture. If you don't like that comparison, I'll point out that this is also how Candy Lightner got our drunk-driving laws changed; not by running for office but by going around persuading the public.", "The thing is, most Americans *do* like the main options for President. That's why they're winning. It's just they're not the people on Reddit, so you're not hearing about it.", "The problem starts when people refer to them as the \"main\" options. The reason why is because they logically work backward when talking about voting, as if every voter's vote automatically belongs to one of these two \"main\" candidates, based on the letter next to their name. If you are a registered Republican, you have an implied duty to vote for Trump because he has the (R) seal of approval, and if you are a registered Democrat then your vote is presumed to go to Hillary, although she hasn't sealed the deal and the DNC is really trying to keep Bernie out--they might give you, Democrats, a new candidate if something were to happen to Hillary. But that debacle is another story. Point is, they *assume* you're going to fulfill some sort of obligation to the party and vote for whoever they put up because dammit, the ~~Capulets and Montagues~~ Republicans and Democrats oppose each other!\n\nCGP Grey covers a lot about how/why we keep ending up with the two party system even though voters have been dissatisfied with it repeatedly. Those videos are worth a watch.\n\nBut really, if nobody owns any votes yet--because the election is in the *future* and thus they haven't been obtained, why is anyone a \"main\" candidate? Some may roll their eyes and some may choke back their own vomit, but the Libertarian Party is more viable this election than ever before. Don't like the two main choices? Don't vote for them! Encourage others to follow suit. Turn the tables on anyone who thinks \"you're just helping Trump/Clinton by voting third party\" by asking them why, if they don't like Trump/Clinton, they would vote for them and make *you* feel bad for not joining their lesser-of-two-evils conquest? Don't they know that those votes only belong to the candidates who've earned them? Don't they know that if everyone joins *your* cause, Gary Johnson (or whoever the Libertarian nominee is) can defeat Clinton/Trump? It's simple mathematics! And some will talk about spoilers like Ross Perot, but the thing is, voters haven't been this \"cornered\" by terrible options before. If you're concerned about the effectiveness of your third party vote, there's at least a glimmer of a chance that a third party might actually take it this year. If not, hey, not everyone votes for a winner anyway. You vote for who you want. And if you're concerned about the principle of the matter, voting for who you *want* is a vote for who you don't want. People treat it like \"I vote Trump because I don't want Clinton\" and that's almost correct. You should treat it like \"I vote for Johnson because I don't want Clinton or Trump, and I do want Johnson.\" See? It makes as much sense.\n\nIt's more of a media presentation problem, a party problem, and a mass hysteria problem. There is a hive mentality and votes change based on what others are doing--who's gonna vote for Tim Jones if nobody else is going to vote for him--but discussing it and using this election as an example should help us get away from that line of thinking.\n\nHope this helps.", "We need to demand limits on the executive branch. How the constitution was written and how it's laid out. President has zero to do with law making, except for vetos. The legislative branch is suppose to make laws, and it's suppose to be very diverse, not just 2 parties. That's why the House has over 400 members. ", "People need to stop making such a big fucking deal about the stupid presidency and worry about their local fucking elections.  That's what they can fucking do about it.", "Write in \"No Confidence\" on your voting ballot and tell your friends to do so as well. Five percent the voters with no confidence is a lot bigger deal than three percent to a third party candidate.", "[What are you going to do about it?  It's a two party system.](_URL_0_)", "There was a movement in 2012 to get the Internet organized and support a third party candidate called [Americans Elect.](_URL_0_)  \n  \nThat group attempted to make their own candidate from an online primary, and they failed at it. Part of it was from lack of interest from the public - not enough support for any candidate to make progress on their tiered voting system. Another problem was that since such a large number of people from both the Republicans and Democrats are fed up with the system, the \"third\" party has both conservatives and liberals in it.  \n  \nReally there should be four parties, but then with four, a group of two would realize they could combine and then just win everything. So then we just have two parties...."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-in_candidate"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/4v7XXSt9XRM"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_Elect"]]}
{"q_id": "3moi8g", "title": "how is 'planned-obsolescence' built into smartphones?", "selftext": "Planned-obsolescence is when products are designed to become shitty and slow after a period of time so that consumers will buy a newer model. \"Ending is better than mending!\"\n\nBut yeah, I'm interested to learn about how this actually works!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3moi8g/eli5_how_is_plannedobsolescence_built_into/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvgq22o", "cvgqa7q", "cvgrybq", "cvgt0ke", "cvgty3a", "cvguytl", "cvgww34", "cvgx7ns", "cvgyy8v", "cvh0et3", "cvh3m96", "cvhflkq", "cvhnt6c"], "score": [172, 309, 72, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["The most common example/complaint is the OS maintainers pushing out out an update that reduces the performance of the older handsets.  It's usually mandatory because it contains security patches and it's \"excusable\" because they're offered more functionality.", "Planned-obsolescence is largely a myth.\n\nI'm an engineer, and sure, we often design things to some minimum spec. It *could* be tougher, stronger, and last longer. For example, you *could* design a bridge to last over a hundred years. But a lot of bridges are torn down to widen roads, increase clearance, add a rail system, or other feature. And it's generally stupid to plan that far in the future. So, a typical bridge is designed to last 30 years. Anything longer is a bonus, and is desirable. And if you can spend an extra 10% and get several more years out of it, you might get approval to spend the money. But generally, you plan for a minimum, and don't waste money making it stronger than it needs to be.\n\nIn devices, this means that a phone might be designed to last 2 years. Anything more is a bonus, and sometimes they *do* make them more future-proof. And it does make those phones more costly.\n\nBut companies **do not** want to be known for having phones that die in 2 years. It reduces their brand value, and makes their customers angry. They don't do that on purpose, because it's bad for business, and people would stop buying their crappy phones.\n\nWhat actually happens is other tech passing up the hardware. Advances to Android/iOS, advances in cellphone radio technology, new software interfaces, increased bandwidth, higher resolutions, and other factors *besides* the phone.", "There's an old anecdote (which is probably made up) about Henry Ford looking at his cars in the scrap yard.  He found all of them had exhausts in good condition.  When he got back to his factory he told the designers to make the exhaust worse.\n\nPlan obsolescence isn't always bad, it just means things have a planned life span and they should be built to meet that life span but not exceed it too much, otherwise it's a waste.", "Take the iPhone, for example. If you owned an iPhone 4S when it was new, it was a great phone, super fast as you'd expect from the best iPhone there was at the time. But soon, along came a software update, called iOS 8, which was free to install, and it was advertised as being better in every possible way than iOS 7. Turns out they forgot to mention two things: **it makes your iPhone 4S a lot slower**, and **you cannot go back to iOS 7, no matter what**, at all, ever, *even if you had a backup*. In fact not even the best hackers in the world could figure this out, that's how impossible downgrading is.\n\nSo people were stuck with a phone that was great 10 minutes ago, but was now slow as hell permanently with no hope whatsoever. They could either complain on internet forums, or buy a new iPhone. That's it. And it will happen again and again every year.\n\nYou buy the iPhone and see that it's made of super strong glass, aluminum and sapphire - \"this thing should last many years\", you think, seeing how well it's built. But little do you know that while the hardware will indeed last long if you take care of it, it won't be able to keep up with all those software updates.\n\nIt's not necessarily \"built in deliberately\" the way we'd think, but rather \"why would they do anything about it if it's good for them?\".", "You're probably thinking Apple. Apple releases new operating systems each time they release a product, and they make it available to install on previous products. However, the new operating system is more resource intensive and requires better hardware to run smoothly, so it will run slower on the old products. That's really a software issue though. If you stick with the operating system that came with the product it will be fine. I'm sure Apple is similar to Android in having small apps to add specific features which are found in newer operating systems.", "It's not built into the phone, it's built into the standards. \n\nI buy a phone. It's Bluetooth 3. Two years later everyone is using Bluetooth 4. I have to upgrade. \n\nI buy a phone. It uses a cpu with a certain instruction set. Two years later the instruction set has expanded and apps take take advantage of the new ones are faster,making the old ones feel slower than they are.\n\nThis may or may not be intentional. ", "It's not built into phones per se, but when they are designed and they know that they are typically replaced in 2-3 years then that guides choices made such as size of the battery, amount of memory, etc. Could Apple build a phone with more battery power so that it'd still hold an all-day charge after 5 years? Sure... but how much bigger of a phone are you willing to carry and how much more are you willing to pay in order to get that more powerful battery? Or can they keep costs and size down by shooting for a battery that'll carry a an all-day charge for 3 years since they know customers typically upgrade sometime after a 2-year contract expires. The trade-off continuum is different in a laptop that'll last for 4-5 years.", "The easiest way to do this is with \"New Software!\".    Want people who still own a phone 3 generations back to buy your new phone?  Release a new version of the phones OS that requires more system resources and performance, which slows their phones way down to the point where the annoyance requires them to upgrade.", "I'm a product designer and these questions come up frequently in my industry. I would disagree with he structural engineer who posted elsewhere in this thread stating that planned obsolescence is a myth. In my industry it is very real; everything from cars/fridges getting more complicated and digital- increasing rates of failure-to our disposable culture, which can be tied back to the 1940's, an early exam of this is disposable napkins and replacing reusable handkerchiefs, for example, but i digress.  \n\n\nIf you're interested, a great read on obsolescence in reference to technology and smartphones, which goes into a lot of the details it sounds like you're asking for, is a book called [High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health](_URL_0_) - it talks about the manufacturing process as well as the lifecycle and recyclability of phones, etc (in the sense that there really is none right now; a lot of the rare minerals that go into making smart devices are bonded at such a small level that hey are incredibly hard to separate, and the phones themselves are not built to be salvageable). Other posters have also talked about the OS updates that cause complications with older phones. This is what we called perceived or valued obsolescence; the phone may work fine but it's value and quality are perceived to be lower- this goes hand in hand with the marketing narrative of \"newer-faster\" versions of the product to convince/push consumers to upgrade. \n\n(Sorry for errors, I'm on my phone!) ", "New OS releases are typically geared to utilize the performance capabilities of their most recent device, resulting in decreased battery life and sluggish performance with past devices. ", "Your question implies that planned obsolescence is companies *making* things fall apart/degrade after a certain amount of time. In fact, it's companies saying *they don't care* if something degrades after a certain amount of time.\n\nIn smartphones, you can see this in a couple of ways:\n\n* Integrated batteries; even if you're nice to a battery, it will eventually stop taking enough of a charge to be useful. Batteries are picked so that most of the time the battery will not fail within the planned useful life. They save money by not using batteries that last beyond that planned life.\n\n* Software updates; as the OS and its core software advance in features and capabilities, it'll be harder and harder for older devices to \"keep up\". Every time the company releases a new device, their cost to test updates on every device goes up. They make up for this by reducing and eventually eliminating testing on the oldest devices. The older the device, generally the less testing it receives. This means old devices are more likely to have problems with newer software.\n\n* Wearing components; plugs/jacks, switches, and buttons are designed to survive \"typical use\" for a certain period. Things that wear out less-easily are more expensive. The company plans for the hardware to last past the point they consider the phone obsolete, and so such things often wear out not long after the point of obsolescence.\n\nThe philosophy of planned obsolescence is really all about saving costs for the company by only spending what it takes to make a product last until it's considered obsolete by the company/majority of users.\n\nYou can see that different companies approach this philosophy in different ways. E.g. my 2007 iPhone has been in continuous use and hasn't broken, even though it can't run a recent OS due to not being supported; but my inexpensive emergency flip phone died after about 2 years -- it was designed to be cheap and replaceable and the manufacturer *didn't care* about the phone surviving past the typical contract period.", "The only way planned obsolescence can work is if a company can keep a good reputation with customers even if the customers don't get what they pay for in terms of longevity. One of the only companies I know that does this is Apple, and even that is arguable. The solution to planned obsolescence is to stop giving bad companies your patronage. \n\n*added 'get'", "Not an explanation but an example. I had an older phone about two years ago and was studying abroad. Before I came back I found out my family was having issues with their phones maintaining signals (they had the same phones). When I got back an update was forced on my phone and afterwards I found I could hardly keep up a phone call, let alone any data or gps signals. Luckily we had insurance on the phones. Originally they tried to replace with \"fixed\" versions of our phones but they had the same problem. Only after two \u201cnew\u201d phones and lots of complaints did they update our phones. Lesson learned, insurance can work to your advantage after enough complaining. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Trash-Digital-Devices/dp/1597261904"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ujxtf", "title": "Why is it when some vaccines are administered, they require a follow up booster within a few weeks/years?", "selftext": "As follow-up; what determines if a vaccine is \"good enough\" to not require a booster? Does the booster work differently than the original vaccine? Is there an ideal time between the original vaccine and the booster?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ujxtf/why_is_it_when_some_vaccines_are_administered/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co9opbm", "coakng6"], "score": [14, 11], "text": ["The initial vaccination creates a bunch of T and B cells that fight off the infection, but these soon die off. They leave a small population of memory cells that can quickly recognise and mount a defence against the infection a second time. \n\nMemory cells do not proliferate without the infection to stimulate there production, and although long lived, they are not immortal. Therefore booster vaccines are administered to \"top up\" your numbers of memory cells.\n\nIt's not known exactly why some infections produce much longer lasting memory cells, but is thoughr to do with their \"immunogenicity\" i.e how effective an immune response they provoke. It's down to various factors, such as certain protein sequences and cytokines stimulated, but is a rather nebulous concept in my mind. \n\nWould love to hear an expert on vaccines to chime in. ", "When mammals are born, they get passive immunity from their mothers (whether in utero or via colostrum after birth). That's great for protecting the baby, but the maternal antibodies can interfere with the baby's ability to generate their own antibodies in response to vaccines. Everyone's maternal antibodies wear off at different times. If a baby's antibodies wear off early, they benefit from the first vaccines in a \"series.\" If a baby's antibodies wear off later in life, the first vaccines in the series are ineffective, but the later vaccines protect them. That's one of the reasons babies seem to be vaccinated so frequently and for the same things repeatedly. The vaccine schedule has been developed to protect all babies - regardless of exactly when their maternal antibodies stop protecting them. \n\nAdditionally, vaccines sometimes require a booster because the vaccine doesn't have great [immunogenicity](_URL_0_). In an ideal world, every vaccine would invoke an awesome immune response from a single vaccination, but that's not the world we live in. Sometimes the vaccine is just not very good. Sometimes people have sluggish immune systems. Sometimes their immune system randomly gets rid of the memory cells that were created by that vaccine (you only have space for so many memory cells!). Everyone is different in these regards, the typical vaccine schedule was developed to protect the greatest number of people as possible. \n\nThere is no difference (in my experience) between the first vaccine and the boosters. This may not be the case with all vaccines because every vaccine is a little different. Similarly, there is no one ideal time between boosters that is perfect for everyone. Every vaccine has a different average length of protection, and every immune system is a little different. Booster frequency is dictated by statistics - how long does the first vaccination protect ON AVERAGE (and then they usually subtract a good amount of time to account for poor responders). \n\nFinally, a vaccine is considered \"good enough\" if you have developed an appropriate immune response. This isn't something we often test because the vaccine schedule is designed such that by the time you've gotten all your boosters, the likelihood that you are STILL not protected is marginal (but still possible!). If you really wanted to know if your immune status was sufficient, you would have to test your titers. \n\nI hope that answered all your questions and was readable! Please let me know if you have any follow up questions. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/immunogenicity"]]}
{"q_id": "89qth5", "title": "How did people survive artillery barrages in WW1 so often?", "selftext": "I often hear about how positions would be bombarded for days or weeks and people always somehow survived. Were there specific methods that they would use for surviving barrages like this? Was it kind of just based off of luck?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/89qth5/how_did_people_survive_artillery_barrages_in_ww1/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwt8j5k"], "score": [66], "text": ["Prior to the advent of the VT proximity fuze in WW2 artillery had severe limits to its effectiveness.\n\nHere's the problem. An artillery shell comes in from the enemy, it hits the ground near you, its contact fuse causes it to begin to explode right when it hits the ground, it excavates a crater with its blast and directs the blast and shrapnel out of the crater at an upward angle. If the shell hits you directly: you are dead, if it lands right next to you: you are dead, but what if it just lands sort of nearby? If it hits a few meters away and you are far enough away that you won't die from the direct overpressure blast effects then what you have to worry about is the shrapnel, which can travel for many meters. But remember, the shell blew up in a crater, the shrapnel is going at an upward angle, arcing through the air above you. If a bunch of people are standing around in the open unprotected then artillery can still be very deadly since they can be hit by flying shrapnel a fair distance away from the impact.\n\nWhat if people take some basic precautions to limit their vulnerability to shrapnel? What if they keep low to the ground by crawling or laying in a fox hole? What if they dig trenches and build bunkers? What if they wear helmets so that lower speed falling shrapnel and debris (the mostly likely stuff to hit someone who is a distance away from an artillery blast) has a lower chance of killing them? Well, then a lot more artillery strikes are survivable. If you happen to be standing in a trench when a shell explodes then you are dead. If a shell hits *in* your fox hole then you are dead. Otherwise, a lot of otherwise fairly close impacts will be survivable as the shrapnel will either go above you or rain down on you after it has slowed down a lot and your helmet will give you some protection.\n\nArtillery in WWI could be pretty accurate, but not down to a single meter, it took raining a lot of shells onto an area to get a significant number of hits on trenches and fox holes. Even so, an enormous quantity of shells were used, so artillery was far and away the leading cause of battle deaths in most theaters of WWI, despite many soldiers surviving many artillery barrages.\n\nThe VT fuse invented by the Allies during WW2 dramatically changed the effectiveness of artillery. Artillery is more effective if it detonates in the air. Because the blast isn't directed away from the ground by the impact crater the blast effects encompass a larger area. Also, instead of the shrapnel flying upwards and mostly away from the targets (except the one directly at the location of impact) the shrapnel is directed downwards, and covers a substantially larger area. If you can achieve an artillery detonation in the air at the most effective height then even shells that are only near a trench, fox hole, or crawling troops will still be able to kill. A larger percentage of shells will cause damage, injuries, or fatalities, which will increase the amount of damage done per artillery barrage.\n\nAchieving this effect is tricky, though, in principle you could set timers in the shells to achieve an air burst, but in practice this was not very effective in WWI, a shell will fall through the height of a building in a mere hundredth of a second, it would be impractical to precisely calculate and adjust for the exact travel time of a shell for every single square meter of target area, aside from the vaguaries of different speeds caused by slight differences in gunpowder volume, burn rate, etc. The VT proximity fuze, however, uses a very simplified and compact RADAR set to detonate at a pre-defined stand-off distance, but such technology didn't exist during WWI."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8z85mo", "title": "Does a virus always inject itself into the same location within a chromosome?", "selftext": "I was reading about the HeLa cell lines, and the book mentioned that the reason that the cells were able to divide indefinitely is that the HPV-18 virus infected a segment of the 11th chromosome that was important in suppressing tumors. That made me wonder if that particular virus always inserted itself into that region of the 11th chromosome, or if it just inserted itself into the first region of DNA that it fit? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8z85mo/does_a_virus_always_inject_itself_into_the_same/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2h2yq0", "e2h8i42", "e2hs52x"], "score": [4, 4, 3], "text": ["According to [this publication](_URL_0_) there are a couple of seemingly preferred integration sites and quite a few of them are relevant in cervical cancer. Since you are reading about HeLa characterizations in books, I assume you are a biology/medical student? in which case that paper should give you the answers you need. Thanks for the question by the way! One of the more interesting rabbit-holes I've spiraled down :)", "I haven't gone too far into detail in learning about it, but from what I gather it depends on the virus. Some may insert randomly (or may not insert into host DNA at all, just leaving their own DNA to float almost like a plasmid in the nucleus). Others have a preference to insert at certain points, others insert specifically at certain regions.\n\nIt's actually a useful topic in genetic engineering and gene therapy, sometimes attenuated viruses are used as vectors. If you're interested I'll look at my lecture notes and post details later, but some viruses are preferred for their effectiveness, some for insertion at specific points in DNA that are known not to disrupt important genes, etc. ", "Viral integration events cluster at specific \"hotspots\" but they are a highly random event. In fact, the viral-cellular DNA junction varies so much between different cancer cells that it can be used as a unique fingerprint, such as in [this paper](_URL_0_).\n\nIn the case of HPV, there are [over 1,500 known viral integration sites](_URL_1_), spread out over the whole human genome. Even if two viruses picked the same chromosomal site to integrate, the viral DNA inserts itself in a random configuration, with different lengths and copy numbers of viral DNA. So each viral integration event is unique."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006211"], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5666714/#B21-ijms-18-02032", "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijc.30243"]]}
{"q_id": "2m9ukj", "title": "Since the speed of sound is so variable, why is Mach used to describe the speed of aircraft?", "selftext": "I've always wondered this, mostly when having to explain what mach numbers are. It seems incredibly counter intuitive to use a system of measurement that is dependent on your location, I would think that physicists and engineers would cringe at the prospect.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2m9ukj/since_the_speed_of_sound_is_so_variable_why_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm292al", "cm2bbkq"], "score": [24, 7], "text": ["Mach number is used for aircraft because in fluid dynamics fluids behave in a similar way at the same Mach number, so, for example, the shocks from breaking the sound barrier are similar regardless of altitude of flight and temperature and other conditions. \n\nIn a similar way many characteristics of flight are Mach-dependant, so it's actually easier to track speed in Mach number and not knots/mph/kmph.\n\nAs far as I understand, fighters usually have both the speedometer and the machmeter to use in different situations with different goals.", "Mach number conveniently combines the temperature and velocity into a single variable. This allows us to say something about the behaviour at M, instead of (V, T). \n\nSo, you could say, the aircraft breaks apart at 340 m/s at 15 Celsius, and at 302 m/s at -45 Celsius. Or, you could just say, the aircraft breaks apart at M=1. The fluid behaves the same at constant M; it does not at constant velocity.\n\nIt's the same thing as, why we denote energy in Joule (kg m^2 / s^2) and force in N (kg m/s^2). You don't state force in kg only, because it is a function of kg and acceleration. Same way you can't describe the state of the fluid if you only state the velocity and not the temperature.\n\nVelocity alone is simply not enough information, Mach number does cover the required information. As a matter of fact, the aircraft's behaviour is suddenly described irrespective of temperature, and thus location. It's actually the other way around and physicists and engineers won't cringe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5or2dl", "title": "How would the Saharan \"Silent bartering\" work? What kept someone from just stealing the goods?", "selftext": "In [this comment](_URL_0_) /u/lynx_rufus mentions a process of silent bartering where merchants would leave goods on a mat and adjust the quantity over several days until a consensus was reached, often without seeing each other. \n\nHow did they agree to a consensus in absentee? What stopped one party from stiffing the other by taking their goods and leaving too little? What prevented outright theft?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5or2dl/how_would_the_saharan_silent_bartering_work_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dclf108", "dclla5e", "dclt55t", "dclxc9z"], "score": [23, 13, 3, 13], "text": ["Follow up question: What were the advantages of this system as opposed to normal bartering?", "Another follow up question:\n\nThis seems reminiscint of Carthaginian trade beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as described by Herotodus. \n\nDoes this practice suggest that Hanno the Navigator of Carthage traded with Saharan groups? To what extent did people South of the Sahara also engage in this process?", "Follow up:  How does \"silent bartering\" compare with potlatch?", "As posted in the parent thread, here are a couple of posts on *silent trade*:\n\n* [Can someone please explain to me Old-style African trade? I'm afraid I don't have a particular local in mind, but I gather it](_URL_0_) - an archived post featuring /u/sunagainstgold \n\n* [How did early civilizations trade and negotiate with each other if they didn't know each other's language ?](_URL_1_) - a still-active post featuring /u/SUSHIKID1 and /u/still-improving"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5opntw/comment/dcl94se?st=1Z141Z3&amp;sh=a0c0c11b"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rza27/can_someone_please_explain_to_me_oldstyle_african/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5a53ty/how_did_early_civilizations_trade_and_negotiate/"]]}
{"q_id": "tftlu", "title": "What happens during sleep that makes use feel replenished in the morning? ", "selftext": "I understand the important about REM sleep and sleep cycles and K-waves and all that. But what is it that happens during sleep that gets rid of the feeling of being tired? And how does it run out during the day?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tftlu/what_happens_during_sleep_that_makes_use_feel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4m9l2p"], "score": [6], "text": ["use the search.  this question has been asked many times before and the answer is \"we don't really know.\"\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fa07f/why_do_we_require_sleep/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/piahx/what_happens_during_sleep_that_gives_us_energy/c3plxyi", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/piahx/what_happens_during_sleep_that_gives_us_energy/"]]}
{"q_id": "22imq5", "title": "With trees being as abundant and relatively defenseless as they are, why are there so few animals that eat them?", "selftext": "I can only think of a handful of animals of the top of my head that eat trees or their leaves. It seems like with such an abundant of food and so little competition for it, why don't more animals prey on trees?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22imq5/with_trees_being_as_abundant_and_relatively/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgn890w", "cgn97k6", "cgnd16b", "cgngouc"], "score": [11, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["Well, depends on which parts.  An abundance of animals are folivores (eating leaves) and nectar-feeders.  If the question is why don't more creatures attack and eat the wood, then the short answer would be: cellulose.  Very few creatures can readily digest it, and even of those animals that \"eat\" wood, most of them rely heavily on microbes in their guts to do the break down (cellulolysis) for them.  Even termites, renowned for their ability to consume wood, can't digest it on their own (they rely on a protist in their tummies to do the work).\n\nIt further boils down to diminishing returns: there are often much higher yield foodstuffs available on most plants (like in leaves and fruits).  The difficulty in physically consuming the wood (wood is tough), plus the difficulty in breaking it down, is typically not equal to or less than the potential energy from the polysaccharides it contains, at least not for most organisms.\n\nThat said, larva from plenty of insects eat it, lots of microbes, and browsing mammals too.  I also wouldn't say they are defenseless.  Many woody plants produce some pretty nasty toxins to avoid being eaten.", "Good answers above, but I wanted to point out a flaw in the OP's thought process. Flora is not defenseless.  Tough to ingest and digest cellulose fibers limit what wants to eat plants. Many are toxic. Thorns, brambles, thistles, etc... has evolved to thwart attackers. Some plants just evolved to grow faster than they can be ingested. Assuming that plants aren't participating in the evolutionary arms race is a mistake.  ", "Cellulose and lignin. Tree trunks are made mostly of cellulose and lignin, both are difficult to break down, let alone digest. Cellulose is a sugar polymer (like starch or chitin) with the connecting bonds between sugars designed to resist break down. Lignin is a very complex aromatic alcohol polymer which is even more difficult to break down. Currently only bacteria possess the complex molecular machinery necessary to digest or break down either cellulose or lignin.\n\nWhen trees first evolved to make use of lignin there was nothing in the environment that could break it down, it was non-biodegradable. This kicked off a 60 million year period where trees grew abundant, plant matter built up without breaking down, and the Oxygen content of the Earth rose to about 2/3 higher than what it is today, due to all the plant activity and Carbon sequestration. This changed the climate, leading to massive glaciation and also caused extinctions on land and in the oceans. It led to a buildup of lignin containing material which would eventually turn into massive deposits of coal and other hydrocarbons. This period was called the Carboniferous era and it proceeded until bacteria and fungi evolved the capability to break down lignin, but even so it's a very slow process. A young plant containing mostly cellulose will be broken down rapidly, in a period of days, a full grown adult tree trunk containing large amounts of lignin will take years if not decades to fully biodegrade.\n\nNo animals can digest lignin or cellulose, only a few (ruminants and termites) can do so with the help of symbiotic bacteria. It simply takes far too much effort to chew up a tree and then attempt to digest the cellulose and lignin within it. Termites are the only animals really capable of eating wood, and they approach the problem from a small scale. The large amount of nutrients a large animal would need to support itself combined with the difficulty of mechanically breaking down wood and the difficulty of digesting it make it a very poor target for nutrition.", "Plants are not defenseless at all, nor are trees under less attack than regular plants. The main threat to plants are herbivorous insects and many live on trees. On the leaves of a tree, you might find aphids, sawfly larvae and caterpillars (like oak processionary for example). Some caterpillars can occur in such large numbers that in some seasons they [completely defoliate the tree](_URL_7_)! Seed predation is also very common; many birds and rodents will eat the seeds of the tree and might destroy them, but also insects are important seed predators, such as the [acorn weevil](_URL_0_). And the woody parts of the tree are also not safe from harm, as many woodboring beetles lay their eggs in the bark and their larvae will dig around in the wood. [Mountain pine beetle](_URL_3_) is an example of a beetle that will destroy whole trees because it also carries a fungus with it that prevents the tree from defending itself against the beetle and that starts to kill the tree. The result can be loss of [large areas of forest](_URL_5_) (picture also in linked article). \n\nBut despite having so many enemies, we still have forests and there still are many trees. How come? [Trees are not defenseless at all](_URL_1_) :) While animals have mainly developed strategies to move away from predators as fast as they can, a tree is more of a large castle when it comes to defense. Their most important mechanical protection is the bark/wood, which is very difficult to digest for most animals. Trees may also have spines or very hairy leaves. Leaves, mainly the young ones, are often protected with many toxins. The smell of pine forest is caused by terpenes, chemicals that are involved in plant defense and whose smell also deters herbivores (it is a signal that the tree is well defended and that they might better avoid it). \nFinally, plants and also trees can have indirect defense by providing shelter to predators of the herbivores or by attracting them by using odours. Acacia trees can have [hollow thorns and extrafloral nectar to provide home for ants](_URL_6_), that in turn will repel many insects from the tree. [Many parasitoids are attracted to odours released upon herbivore attack](_URL_2_) on plants and will help keep pest populations low. This can start as early as when the insects are still eggs and don't do any damage yet. [Lately it was also shown](_URL_4_) that even birds may be attracted to odours of oak trees infested with caterpillars. \n\nFinally, what is also important to note is that the full grown trees you see outside have already won many battles with their enemies. I already said something about seed predation in the beginning, but being a seedling (so the very young plant) is the most difficult stage for the tree. In this stage, defenses are still low (no wood production yet for example) and lots of energy is allocated to growth and competition with other seedlings. It is in this stage that snails are voracious enemies of the plant, and many mammals too. Think about how many seeds fall of some trees in fall; most of them will not reach the age in which they themselves will start producing flowers and seeds. They are continuously at risk of being eaten and only the ones best adapted to these threats will make it to a full grown tree. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/foresthealth/pubs/oakpests/p35.html", "http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/informationen/wissenschaft/2011/201102/201102_intelligente_kiefer.html", "https://student.societyforscience.org/article/plant-enemy%E2%80%99s-enemy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle#Tree_infestations", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12177/abstract", "http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mountain-pine-beetle-fungus/", "http://www.myrmecos.net/2011/10/22/what-lurks-in-the-5-inch-thorns-of-this-african-acacia-tree/", "http://tomlinsonbomberger.com/invasion-of-the-gypsy-moth-attacking-your-tree-blame-leopold/"]]}
{"q_id": "ck6tbt", "title": "Why does atomic radius decrease across the period?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ck6tbt/why_does_atomic_radius_decrease_across_the_period/", "answers": {"a_id": ["evkfg49", "evkfi9j"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["I think the mistake you're making is that you're considering \"stronger attraction\" to be determined by the number of protons, when you should be thinking about charge *density*. Protons are held together by nuclear forces, which are much stronger than electromagnetic forces, so more protons means greater charge density, which means greater force. Thus in order for the electrons to cancel that resulting force, they must be more densely packed.", "It's not about if the numbers of protons and electrons are equal.\n\n\nIt's about how attracted a given electron is to the nucleus. \n\n\nSo for the outer electrons (which will determind the atomic radius) they are attracted to the nucleus by it's protons but repelled by the other electrons which partially cancle out (or shield) the positive charge at the nucleus. \n\nElectrons come in shells which you can think of as being increasingly far from the nucleus with each period you go down adding another shell.\n\nWhen you're moving across a period you're adding protons to the nucleus so the outer electrons are more attacted to it and this is stronger than the increased shielding that happens when you add electrons to the same shell.\n\nWhere as when you add an aditional shell by going down the period atomic radius increases because the additional shielding from having another shell between the outer electrons and the nucleus is more significant than there being additional electrons at the nucleus."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1csrlc", "title": "if everything is programmed with a programming language how first language born?", "selftext": "It's like a paradox for me!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1csrlc/eli5_if_everything_is_programmed_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9jm2wz", "c9jmiy9", "c9jmqya", "c9jnxp6", "c9jp4cc", "c9jp7m0", "c9jqqlk", "c9jqv5t", "c9jra1l", "c9jrh6k", "c9js82t", "c9jtxbg"], "score": [354, 14, 77, 3, 3, 2, 15, 2, 14, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Let's say your mom wants to make a cake. She can get all the individual ingredients or get a pre-made mix. Programming languages are like the pre-made mix. They were created using lower-level languages, all the way down to binary itself. You could write your program with binary, but it would take a long time and be much more difficult for you to remember. The pre-made cake mix already has the ingredients needed to make a cake. You just add water (or maybe an egg). Programming in a high-level language, although sometimes difficult to grasp at first, is much easier that memorizing sequences of 0's and 1's.", "The first programming languages spoke the computer's language (binary), so we talked to it directly. Then it was translated to a language with more short-forms and abbreviations, so more instructions could be given with less words (machine code). This process repeated, until you could give a computer a short phrase and it would understand a whole bunch of things at once. ", "Well, we have to start from the start here!\n\nComputers know two things- on and off. Back in the old days, people stuck big pieces of tape that had holes in it into computers (hole means 1, no hole means 0) and the computer would have to figure out what to do with these (You can make a simple 'logic language' with 0's and 1's, represent numbers, and do math). People used to use this for big calculations, but you couldn't really do anything that fun with it, and it was so slow.\n\nThis was really sucky to do because no one could remember exactly what all the 0's and 1's meant, so they made something called an **assembly language** in the computer (which they wrote for the computer using the tapes, of course!) that translates into machine code. There are a few different operations (add, subtract, whatever) that had words, and you did everything operation by operation. This is where keyboards also started to come in, so that you could type in what you want the computer to do.\n\n\nOf course, doing everything operation by operation is pretty darn slow too, and it was still hard to read 'cause it was so simple. So people wrote another thing in THIS language, called a **programming language**, which made it really readable! The old ones were pretty hard to read, but nowadays there are languages like Python that are practically readable by anyone. These programs usually have their own little program called a *compiler* that converts all of their commands into machine language.\n\nBasically people kept on writing a new, more **abstract** language in the old ones, building on top of everything else below it. But at the end of the day, it all converts to 0's and 1's!\n\n\nJust as a (pseudocode) example - Here is adding two numbers in each respective language.\n\nBinary: 1000110010100000\n\nAssembler: add A,B\n\nProgramming Language: A + B", "Integrated circruit chips are different. First compuer instructions were only able to run on one specific chip. A computer program had to be rewritten for different chips. Some chips were designed with the ability to behave as if they were previous chips, making them backwards compartible hardware emulators. \n\nMost chips are very similar so many of them understand the same basic set of instructions while having some unique abilities added to them. But there are too many different chips with fundamental differences between them and there are different possible combinations of them. Communication and translation between them needs a communication protocol and translators.\n\nSomeone makes translation programs that translates source code to run on different chips, translating for each specific chip. The same source code could be compiled to run on any chip that had a compiler that translates the source code into an instruction set that could be understodd by a range of chips.\n\nThat way people can use the same source code for almost any chip. But the source code might be translated differently for some different chips. Every chip could run the program with its own set of instructions, wich can be different and chip specific and it barely ever uses a chips special unique abilities.  A compilable source code has the advantage to be designable in a way that is easyer to read than an endless chain of numerical instructions that is only understood by the chip and hardcore programmers.\n\n---\n\nThe most basic programming languages just jump between the lines and lack advanced abilities.\n\nAlmost all programming languages allow for Functions. Functions within a programming language are aliases for operations that are repeated a lot. Functions can use other functions within them. Functions can also be recursive by containing themself.\n\nObject orientated programming languages are different. Objects within a programming language are aliases for multiple functions and/or variables. Objects can be build of out other objects.\n\n---\n\nAnother approach is to make software to give the chip the ability to pretent to be any other chip, or to act like a standardized environment of chips. This turns any computer into a virtual machine that is likely very slow in executing any code but also very compartible and easy to make programs for.\n\nThe PC version of Minecraft runs on the Java virtual machine, making it run slowly but also making it very easy to use on different hardware.\n\nThe Xbox version of Minecraft had to be rewritten and compiled to run specifically (and more efficiently) on the xbox hardware.", "The first computer program in History was actually written for [a computer never built](_URL_0_), because in the mid 19th century, it was about 100 years ahead of it's time.\n\nThe oldest computers actually built were programmed partly by rewiring them using switchboards. More complex programs were fed to them using punch cards (the idea of punch cards actually originates from automated looms and predates the first computers). The instructions were punched into the cards in their binary form. (yes, as 1s and 0s)\n\nThis process was rather awkward and error prone, so people invented programming languages and compilers to translate a \"human readable\" language into binary computer instructions using a computer.\n\n\nWikipedia has more:\n\n* [*History of  Programming Languages*](_URL_2_)\n* [*Programming Language*, Section *History*](_URL_3_)\n* [*Timeline of Programming Languages*](_URL_1_)", "Assembly, C and others compile down to [machine code](_URL_0_) , which is what the processor more or less handles at the 1010101 level. Java compiles to byte code which is then interpreted by your native environment and compile JIT (just in time) to machine code then. \n\nFeel free to ask more. I've had to transcribe some C code\n\n a = b;\n\n into the assembly equivalent \n\nmov ax, b\n\nmov a, ax\n\nand then figure out the exact machine code ones and zeros that made up that assembly code ( id have to get out my manual, haha). Its all possible to do manually, and the base level you are looking for is really in the hardware interpretation. You could totally write machine code by hand... if you wanted to. ", "How is langguage formed?", "_URL_0_\n\nWhen I was a child I would play with [punched cards](_URL_1_). To program computers, they would transform the instructions of a program by hand in binary form and would punch the holes in those cards that correspond to what they meant the computer to do. It would take quite a stack of those to enter a program in the computer. ", "Well there wasn't a first language at first. We used what was called \"machine code\", which used a bunch of 1's and 0's to change the states of a bunch of switches called \"transistors\". If you wanted to get a computer to do anything, you had to figure out what you wanted, translate it into a bunch of switch-flips in the computer, and write out the correct sequence of 1's and 0's to get the computer to do that. This was very tedious and did not allow for very complex programs like the ones you see on your computer today.\n\nTo get computers to do certain things, we would tell it to change the states of these \"transistors\" in specific ways. Eventually, we got smart enough to represent common patterns as short words to speed things up and make code easier to understand when writing it. All of these words put together make up something called \"assembly language\", which is not a language that a normal programmer uses, but it's the closest thing to a \"first\" programming language that isn't just a bunch of 1's and 0's.\n\nFrom here come actual \"programming languages\", which does to \"assembly language\" what \"assembly language\" does to \"machine code\", only to a much greater degree. A LOT of \"assembly language\" words are represented as single \"programming language\" words to make things REALLY easy for programmers. These are the languages that people actually program in, but in order to run these programs, you usually need a \"compiler\", or a program that takes a \"programming language\" that people can read and translates it to \"machine code\" that a computer can read.", "A computer program is essentially a set of instructions in memory that a computer accesses and executes. \n\nAnd instruction can be represented as a string of 0's and 1's. The computer is able to take apart an instruction and figure out what to do based on the different substrings of the instructions (i.e., sending current to different parts of the circuit, withholding current from other parts).\n\nIf you want to run a program and there's no programming language for the machine, then you'll need to find a way to input the instructions manually. Storing a set of instructions in memory and then running this instruction set is the same thing that a computer program does. \n\nIt just gets more abstract and meta from there to high-level languages. Basically, if you can write instructions that will take simpler/easier to understand instructions and turn them into more complex instructions for the computer to use, then you now have a programming language and a compiler. The language is the part that's easier to understand and manage and the compiler takes these instructions and parses them into the machine language (1's and 0's). \n\nYou can keep abstracting/simplifying.\n\nIf you want to learn more, read up on how [memory](_URL_0_) and [CPU's](_URL_1_) work. You'd also probably benefit from learning some things about [digital logic](_URL_2_) to understand how exactly a computer does computations. \n\nI hope this explanation was helpful. ", "Shouldn't this be in \"Explain like I am a caveman?\"", "The machines that interpret the \"first\" language (binary code) aren't themselves programmed.  They're defined by physical, concrete parts.  Not digital, abstract instructions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming_languages", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#History"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_%28compilers%29#The_chicken_and_egg_problem", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_memory", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4a2di8", "title": "how has the suit become such an international standard of formalwear/men's fashion, to the point where in his official portrait kim jong un can be seen wearing one?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a2di8/eli5_how_has_the_suit_become_such_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0wuaev", "d0wzg72", "d0x6b9r", "d0x6xuv", "d0x9mga", "d0xn59f"], "score": [87, 13, 8, 3, 21, 3], "text": ["The influence of European nations. It became popular through the 20th century in Europe. It became popular as formal wear as official policy in Europe's former colonies (US, South America, and Latin America) imported the design, while their colonies in Asia and Africa adopted/had European fashion preferences forced upon them.\n\nKorea never was an European colony. However, it was a a colony of Japan (from 1910 to 1945) after Japan had rapidly industrialized and \"westernized\" (which included colonial ambitions) after Commodore Matthew Perry had forced Japan open to trade with the threat of Battleships in 1852. So, Japan adopted Western Fashion, and the Koreas adopted it as well.", "The Suit Predates the 20th century and actually begins in the 18th century. It was initially part of a more protestant, conservative attire favored in England in the early 18th century post Nepolionic wars. The European fashion shifted from France during this time to Britain who became the leading power in the world there after, there the fashion preferred simple and understated dress which reflected a more austere style of British clothing since the protestant reformation and the more conservative stylings of the British landed class since that time. As the center of power especially in the 19th century they dictated the fashion of power and the elite. The greatest empire in history in land mass and population was Britain so their style became ubiquitous around the world as everyone tried to emulate them.\n", "The top comments seem to provide more of a  historical background. Is there an answer that explains why the suit is the standard for formalwear? In other words, why can't I go into a courtroom wearing a t shirt and jeans without being considered inappropriate? Why not a dashiki? ", "The answers below regarding European origins aren't necessarily wrong. But, I think a more specific answer to OP's question is that IBM made it an international standard by having a global sales force dressed that way for most of the 20th century\n_URL_0_\n", "Because of [Beau Brummel.](_URL_0_)  Beau was a soldier and the son of a middle class politician, and during his military service he became very close friends with the Prince of Wales, who would later become King George IV.\n\nBeau had very, very strong opinions on masculine fashion and exerted a huge influence over the king.  Beau developed his own style, which he called Dandy, and the King adopted that style.  Beau believed in finely tailored suits, in dark, simple colors, worn with a necktie.  He eschewed make-up and perfumes, and thought men shouldn't wear jewelry.\n\nThis was, of course, at the height of the British Empire, and literally *millions* of men copied the King's style, which meant they were copying Beau Brummel's style.  Even foreign dignitaries adopted the style.\n\nMen's fashion has changed some since Brummel's time -- long tails on coats are no longer popular, pants aren't worn so tight or high-waited, but the basic elements of male style -- especially in formal wear -- haven't changed much in 200 years.  If you wear dark slacks, a white shirt, a necktie, short hair, clean-shaven, and avoid make-up and jewelry -- i.e. if you dress like most businessmen of the last 200 years -- then you're dressing as Beau Brummel intended.  There's literally no one who has had as profound an impact on male fashion.", "While the suit is definately a European thing.\n\nI love the [Nehru Suit](_URL_0_), a style of suit made by the 2nd Prime Minister of India, Nehru Gandhi.\n\nAlot of nations have adapted suits to their own culture as well!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=HYvbeQLf_gEC&amp;pg=PA24&amp;lpg=PA24&amp;dq=%22sincere+tie%22+ibm&amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;q=%22sincere%20tie%22%20ibm&amp;f=false"], ["https://www.janeausten.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/graphics/brummell.jpg"], ["https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/af/40/4d/af404dcad018b85fd65e6b7350a736d9.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "364smp", "title": "I need an Occult historian. Who is Lilith? I've heard so many conflicting stories and read too many dubious origion stories.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/364smp/i_need_an_occult_historian_who_is_lilith_ive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crawbo6", "crb1t71", "crb3fwh", "crb5j1f"], "score": [10, 29, 2, 4], "text": ["Lilith is supposed to have been the first wife of Adam, who was turned away for basically \"wanting to be on top\" or otherwise being equal.  This doesn't appear in the bible anywhere, so that story may have been made up much later.  One source says it is mentioned in Isaiah, so you could check there.  \n\nOne possible origin for how this entered into Hebrew mythology is from 'Lilitu', a kind of mesopotamian (Babylonian, IIRC) female demon that eats children.\n\nObviously Lilith isn't an actual historical figure, so there isn't any *true* origin story, only who said what about her when.", "Lilith is from the Midrash, or Jewish legends that the rabbis of the last centuries BCE-first centuries CE told to explain aspects of the Bible with moral lessons. (Other prominent Midrash include the story of Moses getting his Biblical speech impediment by preferring to burn his tongue on hot coal than to worship Egyptian gods). \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs you can see, there are many different versions of the Lilith story and the modern one that she was Adam's wife, born from the ground like he was and not from his rib, and that she left rather than submit to him, was actually not a popular version originally. Traditionally, Lilith was a demon responsible for child mortality and a succubus who would use sleeping men's semen to produce more demons. The feminist interpretation of Lilith as first feminist popularized by Jewish women today is very modern and downplays the link to infant mortality.", "This question may be worth x-posting to /r/AskReligion", "You might get good answers for this question over at /r/AcademicBiblical/ as well.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9986-lilith"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5uui1f", "title": "How exactly do hormone treatments raise/lower a man's/woman's vocal pitch?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5uui1f/how_exactly_do_hormone_treatments_raiselower_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddwz0bt"], "score": [5], "text": ["To my understanding, past puberty -- or perhaps past the point where your voice deepens -- there is no way to change the anatomy of the vocal chords other than some risky surgery. Instead those going through hormone replacement therapy train their voices to sound more feminine with varying success."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "jfmz6", "title": "why am i sleepier when i sleep more?", "selftext": "Why am I sleepier when I sleep like 7-10 hours as opposed to when I sleep 1-4 hours?  When I have 1-4 hours of sleep and then wake up I usually wake pretty quickly and will last through the day but when I get 7-10+ hours and don't wake up by myself (meaning just can't sleep anymore) I feel really groggy the whole day and start zoning out and getting really sleepy. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jfmz6/why_am_i_sleepier_when_i_sleep_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2boviu", "c2bp0e9", "c2bp1m4", "c2bpazl", "c2bq3y4", "c2bqbcj", "c2bqqj3", "c2br61p", "c2brtah", "c2buxjr", "c2boviu", "c2bp0e9", "c2bp1m4", "c2bpazl", "c2bq3y4", "c2bqbcj", "c2bqqj3", "c2br61p", "c2brtah", "c2buxjr"], "score": [338, 222, 4, 21, 2, 7, 4, 2, 13, 3, 338, 222, 4, 21, 2, 7, 4, 2, 13, 3], "text": ["Chances are that when you slept for the lesser amount of time, that although you were sleeping less, you woke up at the *correct* time. There are these things called sleep cycles which last 1 1/2 hours at a time. If you wake up after a sleep cycle you feel less groggy and more likely to feel well rested.\n\nIf you sleep more, provided you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you tend to feel unrested and tired. This is the explanation for why people feel awful just sleeping an extra 15 minutes after waking up feeling great.", "Sleep can be very dehydrating.  (More-so if you have a higher metabolism)  If you sleep for a very long time, you can become very dehydrated and feel **far** more groggy as a direct result.\n\nDrinking water will often work better than coffee for clearing your head and waking you up.\n\nMany people are either dehydrated when they go to bed or do not sufficiently hydrate during the day.  This compounds the issue.\n\nTry to be hydrated when you go to bed and if you wake up during the night (or  your rest period) keep a bottle of water handy and take a quick sip or two before returning to sleep.  This will help prevent you from being groggy afterwards.  ^_^", "It's more about waking up after a good REM cycle. If you sleep 8 hours and then wake up 30 minutes before your alarm goes off, you might try to go back to sleep. If you do this, your alarm may interrupt a REM cycle which will make you way more groggy than if you were to wake up right after a REM cycle of 4 hours of sleep.", "I've been using [this app](_URL_0_) for 50 nights now (with an average of 6 hours and 49 minutes a night :P), and I find it absolutely awesome. It wakes you up as close to the middle of a sleep cycle as it can, and introduces the music slowly, has a great snooze feature and allows you to choose your alarm, even a song in your library.\n\ntl;dr Now I wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.", "When you don't get enough sleep you have more performance issues than when you get a full nights rest. What's more is that you become unable to notice that you're not working at full capacity. Every hour of sleep that you don't get that you need is added onto your sleep debt. (think of it like a computer, if it needs 4 hours of charging and you give it 3 each day then the battery will eventually drain) Once you start to pay off that sleep debt by sleeping in you begin to regain your function. It can take 2-3 nights or even more to fully make a comeback. Most people never quite make it back to baseline so even though you may make less mistakes you are more aware of your sleepiness.\n\nSleep phases are also important and can explain it if you're not sleep deprived. \n", "You are no longer well rested.", "Hm, It depends. \n\n1. If you got less sleep than you probably should 8-9 hours during the week, your body remembers every hour of REM it didn't get and it catches up with you on days when you sleep longer. Thus making your sleep work extra hard on that one day when it catches up, making you tired.\n\nYou can oversleep which would cause you to put your body out of whack. But you would find it very hard to oversleep unless you do the above and NOT get enough sleep. Oversleeping is as bad as undersleeping.\n\nI see people are talking about sleep times, I believe that to be false as every person has a sleep schedule that works for them. Just listen to your body and you should be fine. If you always get 8-9 hours of sleep (depending on how old you are, you need less sleep as you grow up) you will be not over-sleeping as much.\n\nThis is from all the psychology classes I have taken (Major) so if you desire proof... sigh I will look for the studies, or you could trust me :D\n\n", "I use the iPhone app called \"Sleep Cycle\" and it fixes this problem for you. Well, not gauranteed to fix it but it worked for me. You set the time you want to wake up, and you have to put the phone next to you on your mattress (Will not work if there are two people sleeping on the bed). It monitors your movements throughout the entire night and it figures out when you're in deep sleep or if you're a little awake and when it comes time to wake up, it will wake you up according to how much movement you have and in what stage of your sleep cycle you're in; as a result, you wake up at the correct time. Try it out if you have an iPhone and sleep alone on a NON-tempur pedic bed.", "Hmm, like you're five. Over 5 y/o will probably know most of this but I'm really trying to elementary school it down.\n\nThere are stages of sleep, one, two, three, four, and REM. Stage One sleep doesn't show up any differently on the tests than being awake but calm. Two is when you get a little more into sleeping. Three and four are where sleep has the most effect. They are also when sleep-talking and sleepwalking occur. REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) is when you dream, and it actually *tires you out*. Crazy, right? Well, when you're sleeping, you (normally) start off with Stages 1 and 2, then progress to 3 and 4 and finally REM. Those final three stages will repeat over the course of the night, but the longer you sleep, the more REM sleep you get and the less Stage 3 and 4 sleep you get. Thus, you will get *more tired* if you sleep longer than a certain point (mostly different for everyone).\n\nHope that helped.", "A little late, and not really an explanation ,but this will help you plan your sleep to help you wake up better. _URL_0_", "Chances are that when you slept for the lesser amount of time, that although you were sleeping less, you woke up at the *correct* time. There are these things called sleep cycles which last 1 1/2 hours at a time. If you wake up after a sleep cycle you feel less groggy and more likely to feel well rested.\n\nIf you sleep more, provided you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you tend to feel unrested and tired. This is the explanation for why people feel awful just sleeping an extra 15 minutes after waking up feeling great.", "Sleep can be very dehydrating.  (More-so if you have a higher metabolism)  If you sleep for a very long time, you can become very dehydrated and feel **far** more groggy as a direct result.\n\nDrinking water will often work better than coffee for clearing your head and waking you up.\n\nMany people are either dehydrated when they go to bed or do not sufficiently hydrate during the day.  This compounds the issue.\n\nTry to be hydrated when you go to bed and if you wake up during the night (or  your rest period) keep a bottle of water handy and take a quick sip or two before returning to sleep.  This will help prevent you from being groggy afterwards.  ^_^", "It's more about waking up after a good REM cycle. If you sleep 8 hours and then wake up 30 minutes before your alarm goes off, you might try to go back to sleep. If you do this, your alarm may interrupt a REM cycle which will make you way more groggy than if you were to wake up right after a REM cycle of 4 hours of sleep.", "I've been using [this app](_URL_0_) for 50 nights now (with an average of 6 hours and 49 minutes a night :P), and I find it absolutely awesome. It wakes you up as close to the middle of a sleep cycle as it can, and introduces the music slowly, has a great snooze feature and allows you to choose your alarm, even a song in your library.\n\ntl;dr Now I wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.", "When you don't get enough sleep you have more performance issues than when you get a full nights rest. What's more is that you become unable to notice that you're not working at full capacity. Every hour of sleep that you don't get that you need is added onto your sleep debt. (think of it like a computer, if it needs 4 hours of charging and you give it 3 each day then the battery will eventually drain) Once you start to pay off that sleep debt by sleeping in you begin to regain your function. It can take 2-3 nights or even more to fully make a comeback. Most people never quite make it back to baseline so even though you may make less mistakes you are more aware of your sleepiness.\n\nSleep phases are also important and can explain it if you're not sleep deprived. \n", "You are no longer well rested.", "Hm, It depends. \n\n1. If you got less sleep than you probably should 8-9 hours during the week, your body remembers every hour of REM it didn't get and it catches up with you on days when you sleep longer. Thus making your sleep work extra hard on that one day when it catches up, making you tired.\n\nYou can oversleep which would cause you to put your body out of whack. But you would find it very hard to oversleep unless you do the above and NOT get enough sleep. Oversleeping is as bad as undersleeping.\n\nI see people are talking about sleep times, I believe that to be false as every person has a sleep schedule that works for them. Just listen to your body and you should be fine. If you always get 8-9 hours of sleep (depending on how old you are, you need less sleep as you grow up) you will be not over-sleeping as much.\n\nThis is from all the psychology classes I have taken (Major) so if you desire proof... sigh I will look for the studies, or you could trust me :D\n\n", "I use the iPhone app called \"Sleep Cycle\" and it fixes this problem for you. Well, not gauranteed to fix it but it worked for me. You set the time you want to wake up, and you have to put the phone next to you on your mattress (Will not work if there are two people sleeping on the bed). It monitors your movements throughout the entire night and it figures out when you're in deep sleep or if you're a little awake and when it comes time to wake up, it will wake you up according to how much movement you have and in what stage of your sleep cycle you're in; as a result, you wake up at the correct time. Try it out if you have an iPhone and sleep alone on a NON-tempur pedic bed.", "Hmm, like you're five. Over 5 y/o will probably know most of this but I'm really trying to elementary school it down.\n\nThere are stages of sleep, one, two, three, four, and REM. Stage One sleep doesn't show up any differently on the tests than being awake but calm. Two is when you get a little more into sleeping. Three and four are where sleep has the most effect. They are also when sleep-talking and sleepwalking occur. REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) is when you dream, and it actually *tires you out*. Crazy, right? Well, when you're sleeping, you (normally) start off with Stages 1 and 2, then progress to 3 and 4 and finally REM. Those final three stages will repeat over the course of the night, but the longer you sleep, the more REM sleep you get and the less Stage 3 and 4 sleep you get. Thus, you will get *more tired* if you sleep longer than a certain point (mostly different for everyone).\n\nHope that helped.", "A little late, and not really an explanation ,but this will help you plan your sleep to help you wake up better. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://mdlabs.se/sleepcycle/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://sleepyti.me/"], [], [], [], ["http://mdlabs.se/sleepcycle/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://sleepyti.me/"]]}
{"q_id": "2n1rav", "title": "how is filibustering even a thing?", "selftext": "Why is filibustering even considered a valid tactic in politics? Why is it simply not dismissed and does it have any practical uses?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n1rav/eli5_how_is_filibustering_even_a_thing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm9jzn6", "cm9k6yw", "cm9k908", "cm9lg4p", "cm9lgir", "cm9n7f1", "cma3h6b"], "score": [8, 117, 3, 3, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["It keeps any minor majority from having full power. ", "Filibustering is a tactic that evolved in the Senate.  It's often called a \"parliamentary procedure,\" as it results not from constitutional law but the internal rules of the legislature.  In order to allow time for a bill to be discussed and debated, a 60 vote majority is required to proceed from discussion to a vote.  Senators realized they could exploit this rule to keep the majority from passing a bill, unless they had a 60-vote majority (a \"Fillibuster-proof majority.\"\n\nFilibusters used to require a significant investment of time.  Senators grew weary of the pain of a filibuster, and today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to get a bill withdrawn due to the time involved ([Senators in the past were known to read recipes, Shakespeare, anything in sight](_URL_0_))\n\nNow, to your questions:  \n\nWhy is it valid?  Because it works for the minority party.\n\nWhy is it not simply dismissed?  No majority will eliminate it because they know it will be useful to them in the future.  You'll hear of the \"Nuclear Option\" from time to time, a threat to eliminate the filibuster by changing the rules (by simple majority).  So far, it has not happened.  I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen in the next congress - the rise of use of filibuster is unprecedented (the filibuster itself is less than 100 years old) and scorched-earth politicking has become more and more common inside the beltway.\n\nDoes it have any practical uses?  Yes:  It's a tool for the minority party to block particularly controversial legislation.  ", "There is a special place in the American psyche, and arguably in the whole human psyche, for people who sacrifice themselves. The physical pain, the effort, the sheer determination involved in a filibuster appeals to us on an emotional level. And for all of that to come to nothing, to have no way for people to do that ever again, seems heartbreaking to us.\n\nNow, the non-talky filibuster? That's because we think it's tradition somehow. And that shouldn't be allowed to pass.", "[Less than two weeks ago](_URL_0_) the filibuster was employed in the British House of Commons, to delay voting on legislation while the Prime Minister rushed from a dinner party to the House.", "The point is to make sure that a tightly-knit majority doesn't run roughshod over the minority. It is, by design, a stalling tactic to try and put the brakes on the discussion until the minority thinks there has been sufficient debate.\n\nOriginally you had to actually filibuster--that is, get up and talk (the way that Rand Paul and Ted Cruz did fairly recently), but the Senate has expanded its use to allow Senators to just declare that they are filibustering. \n\nUltimately the check on its use is in overuse--if you use it too often, you and your party start to develop a bad name and lose even more seats. It actually was used in the House of Representatives until the mid-19th century, when it got way out of hand and the rules were changed.", "TL;DR Senate is more classy, less / rules. You can talk pretty much as long as you can talk, although you must remain standing (no breaks). \n\nCloture is the motion that basically says \"get off the floor\". This takes a majority vote, and it doesn't happen because if republicans use it when they have majority, democrats will do the same. \n\nIt  draws attention and says \"I believe enough in this cause to waste an entire day or night or more on it\" \n\nIt's not listed in the constitution. \n\nSource: last unit was that in AP Gov. Thanks Kohler.", "how is redrawing boundaries to  preserve your majority a thing?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/the_greatest_filibusters_of_all_time/"], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/nov/10/european-arrest-warrest-u-turn-vote-commons-chaos"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "62mhgr", "title": "If phone lines (but not necessarily modems) transmitted perfectly, how fast could dial-up modems transfer data?", "selftext": "Since the transfer rate of the modem depends on how fast it can modulate (and demodulate) bits into an interrupted tone, phone line noise would cause high speed modems to lose data in transmission, but if a phone line were to be perfect (i.e no noise and all transmissions came through the other end of the line exactly as they were input), how fast could we potentially build a modem?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/62mhgr/if_phone_lines_but_not_necessarily_modems/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfppsoo", "dfnsspt"], "score": [2, 24], "text": ["To make it simple there are two factors: noise and channel. Any channel is limited in capacity and always makes a distortion to a signal. Most like it introduces an echo which affects a receiver side and can't be evaded from a signal completely, as information was already lost. Another problem is a noise and again a receiver has no idea how to distillate origin signal and a noise. In your case there is no noise and a channel capacity is unlimited, so no information loss at transmission, then you can reach unlimited bandwidth.", "Infinite. The easy explanation is simply a proof. If I have no noise, for any message, such as 01010100001, I can find a voltage level between 0 and 1 whose greedy binary expansion is that message. I can then send that value, and on the other end (since no noise) read that value and determine my message. No noise means infinite data rate.\n\n\nAnd if that answer is all you care about you can stop there, case closed, life is good, have a great weekend. If you want to know a little bit more we can continue on. \n\n\nData rate (bits/second) is actually a function of two important quantities, the bandwidth and the statistical characterization of the channel (which is commonly called \"noise\"). One of the most commonly touted theorems in this regards is the Shannon Hartley theorem, which gives an upper bound on this value for an *additive white gaussian noise* (AWGN) channel of\n\n    B log( 1 + SNR )\n\nwhere B is the bandwidth and SNR is the signal to noise ratio. Often times, you will hear this bound stated as gospel for all channels. It is in fact a **lower bound** on the **maximum** amount of information that one pass through a memoryless channel where the noise has a known variance. For linear time invariant channels though, we may always write the maximum data as \n\n    2BC,\n\nwhere C stands for the [Channel capacity](_URL_1_). \n\n\nBefore discussing channel capacity, lets get an overview of why 2B. The value of 2B is the maximum number of **symbols/second** that can be transmitted using a bandwidth of B, and not causing intersymbol interference (ISI). Without diving into the fourier transform definitions, think of it like this, for every 0 I send 0 volts, for every 1 I send 5 volts. If my signal goes 0101010010101 I am rapidly changing between 0 and 5 volts, at a frequency defined by the number of symbols I send per second. On the other hand I may have to send a signal 1111111111, which is just always a 5 volts signal, in other words it is a dc signal. So to accommodate both 0101010101 and 11111111, and everything in between, I need to use all of the bandwidth between 0 Hz (dc), and the frequency associated with the number of symbols/second I am sending. The difference of these two terms is what we call the bandwidth, B. We get to 2B by using not only the positive frequencies, but the negatives ones as well. In communications there are called the *in-phase* (I) channel and the *quadrature* (q) channel. What they come down to though, is one channel is sent using sine, the other cosine. \n\n\nWith that out of the way, we move to the channel capacity C. The channel capacity is the maximum bits/**symbol** that can be transmitted over a given channel, and is basically a sacred concept in information theory. For memoryless point to point channels, the channel capacity is simply the maximum possible [mutual information](_URL_0_) between the transmitter and the receiver. Mutual information, as you will note, is a function over probability distributions. So how can we ever even talk about it in relationship to this scenario? Lets walk through an example.\n\nSuppose that we limit the input power of our signal (because infinite power is not a thing). To do this, we can view our input signal by a random variable X, and then say E[X^(2)]  <  S where S is the signal input power. We will transmit X across an AWGN channel which will add noise where E[noise^(2)] = N. If we assume our signal X has a Gaussian (or normal) distribution then we know the received signal (Y = X + noise) will also be gaussian with a second moment of S+N since\n    \n* E[Y^(2)] = E[X^(2)] + E[noise^(2)]  <  S + N. \n\nThe first equality depends on the noise and the signal being uncorrelated. Now we can apply the mutual information. In fact we can write the mutual information between our transmitter X, and receiver Y as \n\n* I(X;Y) = h(Y) - h(Y|X)\n\nwhere h is the [differential entropy function](_URL_2_). Both terms our gaussian, Y was discussed earlier, and Y given X (how the second term is read) is simply just the noise. The entropy of a normal distribution is then 2^(-1) log( 2 \u03c0 e \u03c3^2 ) where \u03c3^2 is the variance. So now we just plug in our values of variance for Y, which is S+N, and for Y given X which is just N.\n\n * h(Y) - h(Y|X) = 2^(-1) log( 2 \u03c0 e (S+N) ) - 2^(-1) log( 2 \u03c0 e N ) = 2^(-1) log( 1 + S/N ).\n\nMultiplying the above by 2B from earlier we arrive at the Shannon Hartley theorem of B log (1 + S/N).\n\n\nSo with your case, the maximum amount of information you can send per symbol is infinite, which means infinite data rate. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_information", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_entropy"]]}
{"q_id": "7kk3zy", "title": "- when does a body determine its dominant side? how does it do this and can it be changed with outside influences?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kk3zy/eli5_when_does_a_body_determine_its_dominant_side/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drezztf", "drf3kd0", "drfciyc", "drfirhp", "drfo1pa", "drfowx9", "drg3kqu"], "score": [56, 63, 11, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["We\u2019re not sure how/why handedness occurs. There are many theories, some more prevalent than others, but we really don\u2019t know.\n\nWhen is something we can measure. Studies in children show that by 48 months, almost all start to display a firm preference for one-handed or one-sided activities. Under 18 months we all just sorta picked different hands to do things more randomly. ", "I've been lead to believe our eyes play a part in this from my optometrist.\n\nI'm left eye dominant which means I *should* be left handed. \n\nBut since my grandmother \"encouraged\" me by smacking my left hand anytime I tried to use it to not be lefty I am right handed.\n\nTo be fair my grandmother is very old and where she grew up left handedness is a sign of the devil so that's what prompted her to change me. Superstition.\n\n", "I am right eye dominant\nbat lefty\ngolf lefty\nhockey stick lefty\ntennis righty\nthrow righty\nwrite righty\nkick soccer ball complete equal on both sides\n\nMy immediate family is right handed in everything\n\n", "right eye dominant, switch hitter, golf right hockey ambidextrous, use tools with either hand including hammer nails, write right because taught that way, but use the hand that is more suited to the task when woodworking, carving and cabinetmaking, and can write left handed but wobbly, due to little practise.\n\nI am probably ambidextrous, and might have been a lefty except for the righty orientation of dip pen and ink on paper, left to right organization of written word, scissors and stuff like that.\n\nBut in the ancient world in Hebrew, or most written languages, start at the back, work right to left, top to bottom in Chinese? No problemo, bring it on.", "To answer the last question you asked, yes it can be changed with outside influences. Even after you have been right or left side dominant for years. The problem is that it's hard. Like near impossible hard.\n\nLet's say you are right handed, and want to become left handed. You have built up so much of a habit of using your right hand for all one handed tasks that your brain doesn't even think about which hand you should use when you do something, it just automatically starts with your right hand. Now of course there are tasks that some people do with their left hand when they are right handed for everything else, but for the most part that's more of a sign that right or left side dominance isn't unchangeable. You just need practice. If you learn a new thing you've never done before, like pitch a baseball, and you start with your left hand, after a while every time you pitch a baseball you will do so with your left hand without thinking about it. The reason why it's hard to become left handed instead of right in this example is that you have had years of conditioning your body to do all of these actions with your right hand, so to become left handed, you not only have to use your left hand for everything one handed that you learn in the future but also have to overwrite years of practice of the things you already know how to do with your right hand. While doable in theory, it's next to impossible in practice if you're not very young or slightly ambidextrous since young.", "I\u2019ve always been cursed with either-handendness. Believe or not it makes things a little more difficult.. I am right eye dominant, so I shoot a gun right handed. I prefer to write left handed, but can do either. Everything else is either. And it\u2019s a bitch occasionally. \n\nLike when you go to do something and your mind automatically picks a hand that\u2019ll best do the job, but my brain doesn\u2019t do it automatically. I have to tell it. ", "There is a book titled \"Right Hand, Left Hand\" by Chris McManus which goes into some theories involving the development of handedness. Tl;dr - the body is inherently asymmetric (your heart is on your left side except in very rare cases). In most humans, dominance develops on the same (right) side relative to the body axis. This is under genetic influence (let's call the gene X). Some individuals have a variant of gene X, where the dominant side develops *randomly* relative to the body. These people may be right- or left-handed. McManus goes into molecular theories as to how  this may work, which I don't find terribly convincing.\n\nThere is also some academic literature on hair whorls in relation to handedness. Most right-handed people with a single hair whorl on their heads have the whorl going clockwise. People who are not right-handed have a much higher incidence of anti-clockwise whorls. The authors speculate that the genes controlling hairl whorl direction and handedness are linked:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI also did a little self-experiment. I was born right-handed. At the start of this year, I started writing and doing all other tasks exclusively with my left hand as if I were left-handed. This includes eating and manipulating objects (ATMs etc). I can write very neatly at normal speeds with my left hand now, such that nobody can really tell the difference between my left- and right-hand script. However, I find maximum writing speed to be the limiting factor. My left just cannot write as fast as my right. I'm not sure if this will eventually go away with more training."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14504234/"]]}
{"q_id": "22gpr6", "title": "is there some sort of ykk zipper monopoly?", "selftext": "99.99% of zippers I've seen in my life have the stamp YKK on them. Is there a simple reason for this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22gpr6/eli5_is_there_some_sort_of_ykk_zipper_monopoly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgmmuvr", "cgmr012", "cgmrecp", "cgmtnzh", "cgmxrfa", "cgmya5f", "cgmzed4", "cgmzyo9", "cgn1apw"], "score": [56, 9, 4, 6, 4, 2, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Not a monopoly, many high-end and low-end clothing manufacturers have their own zipper production companies. YKK just makes a ton of zippers and have made them for a long time. Same thing as WD40 or GE lightbulbs, they aren't the only company who is allowed to or able to make these products, they just make the most.", "YKK is a Japanese company. Their zippers are widely regarded as the best, so a huge chunk of the fashion industry uses them. They even fabricate their own equipment to manufacture the zippers!", "[ykk on yo zippa](_URL_0_)", "I hope I'm not the only one just unzipped half way so they could see what was written on their zipper.", "YKK zippers are pretty good from my experience.", "Its my understanding that their 'monopoly' was mad because they were the first to make an independent zipper that could be sewn in so companies like Levi could make pants, and just leave the zippers to someone else.", "A bit, and they were fined over a $100M by a European court 7 years ago for being part of a price fixing cartel, although that was partially overturned. \n\nThey control about 90% of the zipper market. They not only make zippers but the machines that make zippers and the raw material needed for zippers. Due to this vertical integration it's more of a natural monopoly due to economies of scale. ", "Many high fashion brands use riri or lampo zippers. But yes, Ykk is easily the most used.", "_URL_0_\n\nReally good article. And a really good question! I have a friend whose father owns one of India's biggest zipper companies and he says that they just play in all the segments that YKK has vacated. \n\n >  \u201cThere have been quality problems in the past when we\u2019ve used cheaper zippers,\u201d says Trina Turk, who designs her own line of women\u2019s contemporary sportswear. \u201cNow we just stick with YKK. When the customer is buying $200 pants, they better have a good zipper. Because the customer will blame the maker of the whole garment even if the zipper was the part that failed.\u201d\n\n > A typical 14-inch \u201cinvisible\u201d YKK nylon zipper (the kind that disappears behind fabric when you zip up the back of a dress) costs about 32 cents. For an apparel maker designing a garment that will cost $40-$65 to manufacture, and will retail for three times that much or more, it\u2019s simply not worth it to skimp."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IADdGzHreFQ"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.slate.com/articles/business/branded/2012/04/ykk_zippers_why_so_many_designers_use_them_.html"]]}
{"q_id": "lsj2n", "title": "In movies, people smash their head on someone else's head unfazed. Can anyone do that? Doesn't it cause fairly equal damage?", "selftext": "Just wondering...", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lsj2n/in_movies_people_smash_their_head_on_someone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2v95ua", "c2v960d", "c2v9kj9", "c2v9ok8", "c2v9u9z", "c2vbqma", "c2v95ua", "c2v960d", "c2v9kj9", "c2v9ok8", "c2v9u9z", "c2vbqma"], "score": [7, 16, 3, 6, 3, 3, 7, 16, 3, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["Soccer players head a ball frequently, but if you do it wrong you'll ring your bell. \n\nThe trick is they are using the arch between the top of their skull and their forehead to hit someone in the face. That arch can take a lot more force than someone's nose.", "It largely depends on impact area. Two people who whack their heads by accident usually both recoil in equal amounts of pain.\n\nSomeone who is actively attacking with a headbutt will try to strike with the forehead, and aim for specific target areas. The nose, for instance. It breaking, and the victim's head snapping back means the victim has absorbed most of the force, leaving the attacker with less pain.\n\nThat said, it's still dangerous, and both martial arts schools I attended typically discourage head attacks if you have any other option. Aim wrong or the defender moves wrong, and you will ring your own bell.", "The whole point is to use something hard against something soft. The nose and environs contain a lot of delicate tissues and a lot of nerve endings; simply pressing the top of your forehead against someone's will cause considerable pain as well as impaired vision. A head-butt is a crown-to-nose attack usually designed to suddenly open festivities in close quarters; ie. to stun the person and make room for you to hit harder or turn and flee.\n\nThe stuff you see in movies is always over-exaggerated for effect.", "If you put your finger on the spot directly between your eyebrows and then follow the crest of your forehead to it's apex, you will find a bludgeoning instrument of surprising strength. It's most useful area of effect is the bridge of your opponant's nose. The first time I used mine this way, I was frozen for a second in surprise at how hard it dropped the guy. \n\nYes. People do it. Yes. It works.", "We trained headbutts in Jeet Kune Do.  The goal was to drive the top of your head into the person's face.  If you can clinch their head, drop down and then drive upward using the strength from your legs, it can be pretty effective.\n\nMovies get it wrong because in most martial art sports headbutts are illegal so it's rare to see it done right.  Practicing them can be tricky too because pretty much any actual contact ends badly...", "Speaking from a purely Physics standpoint, it should exert an equal and opposite force on the giver.", "Soccer players head a ball frequently, but if you do it wrong you'll ring your bell. \n\nThe trick is they are using the arch between the top of their skull and their forehead to hit someone in the face. That arch can take a lot more force than someone's nose.", "It largely depends on impact area. Two people who whack their heads by accident usually both recoil in equal amounts of pain.\n\nSomeone who is actively attacking with a headbutt will try to strike with the forehead, and aim for specific target areas. The nose, for instance. It breaking, and the victim's head snapping back means the victim has absorbed most of the force, leaving the attacker with less pain.\n\nThat said, it's still dangerous, and both martial arts schools I attended typically discourage head attacks if you have any other option. Aim wrong or the defender moves wrong, and you will ring your own bell.", "The whole point is to use something hard against something soft. The nose and environs contain a lot of delicate tissues and a lot of nerve endings; simply pressing the top of your forehead against someone's will cause considerable pain as well as impaired vision. A head-butt is a crown-to-nose attack usually designed to suddenly open festivities in close quarters; ie. to stun the person and make room for you to hit harder or turn and flee.\n\nThe stuff you see in movies is always over-exaggerated for effect.", "If you put your finger on the spot directly between your eyebrows and then follow the crest of your forehead to it's apex, you will find a bludgeoning instrument of surprising strength. It's most useful area of effect is the bridge of your opponant's nose. The first time I used mine this way, I was frozen for a second in surprise at how hard it dropped the guy. \n\nYes. People do it. Yes. It works.", "We trained headbutts in Jeet Kune Do.  The goal was to drive the top of your head into the person's face.  If you can clinch their head, drop down and then drive upward using the strength from your legs, it can be pretty effective.\n\nMovies get it wrong because in most martial art sports headbutts are illegal so it's rare to see it done right.  Practicing them can be tricky too because pretty much any actual contact ends badly...", "Speaking from a purely Physics standpoint, it should exert an equal and opposite force on the giver."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "saj4y", "title": "Do all the planets in our solar system orbit the sun at the same level (on the same plane) as us, and if so why? I recently was taught that objects in orbit are just falling through space so fast they do not crash into the planet/star so why are all our planets falling at the same level if they are.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/saj4y/do_all_the_planets_in_our_solar_system_orbit_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4cg2ej", "c4cg3qh", "c4cg73c"], "score": [2, 3, 2], "text": ["All of the eight remaining planets orbit in approximately the same plane (the ecliptic). Pluto doesn't.\n\nSupposedly, it has to do with the formation of the solar system: it began as a swirling cloud of dust. Portions of that cloud collapsed and became the sun, while smaller parts out in the edges collapsed into planets, asteroids, moons, and all the other junk floating around out there. So, the original spin of the dust turned into the orbit of the planets (and the spin of the sun, for that matter).", "The planets orbit in roughly [the same plane as Earth](_URL_1_) because that's what [the stuff they were made out](_URL_0_) of did.\n\nThe planets in the solar system (and any other objects in orbit) can sort of be described as falling towards the Sun, in that they're constantly accelerating towards it. Take the Earth: at any given moment its direction of travel is pointing *away* from the Sun but the Sun's gravity continually accelerates it *towards* the Sun, [changing its direction](_URL_2_) (the gif I've linked to shows the moon's orbit around the Earth, but the principle's the same.)", "This question and related answers is currently on the front page here _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic_plane", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_motion.gif"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s9fje/is_our_solar_system_flat/"]]}
{"q_id": "bbkv5p", "title": "How did Ancient China (Qin era) stop/prevent crimes?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bbkv5p/how_did_ancient_china_qin_era_stopprevent_crimes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ekm2d7w"], "score": [5], "text": ["I don't actually know the answer to your question, but I think I can point you to some sources that might. If you're really hardcore, you could read the Zizhi Tongjian, which, in Chinese, consists of 294 volumes. The first eight of these, helpfully covering the Zhou and Qin dynasties, have been translated into English. If you want to have fun, you might check out Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee series, which is itself based (loosely) on an 18th century Chinese novel, which is itself based (likely quite loosely) on volumes 202-206 of the Zizhi Tongjian, which contain, among other things, the story of noted Tang dynasty magistrate Di (Dee, in van Gulik) Renjie."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5o8577", "title": "why is china's air pollution so much worse than any other country?", "selftext": "Is it even? It seems like you only hear about China.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o8577/eli5_why_is_chinas_air_pollution_so_much_worse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dchd3kn", "dchh2u8", "dchpcbs", "dchtgn3"], "score": [63, 24, 9, 2], "text": ["A lot of factories (where the companies don't care about the environment at all) are located inland. The winds come down from the west, across the factories, and carry the pollution into the coastal cities.\n\nBut, the answer is, generally, Chinese companies don't really care about the environment.", "India is bad as well. Certain parts of Iran aren't that great. \n\nChina is in the process of sacrificing the environment to gain economically. \n\nAmerica was doing the same thing till the EPA came about. Environmental protection does come with a cost and businesses simply weren't doing it. \n\\\nChina is starting to invest a lot in green energy. They understand that they are on borrowed time. They are trying to shift from coal power plants to other means, but it will take some time. ", "They're just a little behind. Less than 50 years ago most of the rivers in Europe were full of dead fish, trees were dying from acid rain. Thousands of people just due to smog in London alone.\n\nThey just need to implement similar regulations to the western world and they're working on it. After all, the history books explain exactly what needs to be done.", "Short version, after WWII destroyed Europe, leaving the US untouched, the US became the world's factory leading to the mythologized golden age of America and extreme pollution. \n\nThen as the US got too expensive, cleaned up with the EPA, and other countries started competing again after rebuilding. At the same time China embraced capitalism and US companies rushed to offshore their manufacturing to China. Then China took over the role of being the world's factory.\n\nTLDR; China pollutes on all our behalf because we like cheap goods and don't bear the environmental costs ourselves.. until global warming. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1w605g", "title": "what do germans think of adolf hitler?", "selftext": "Is he viewed as the rest of the world views him or is he seen as some sort of hero?\n\nThis doubt came about because I was watching Valkyrie, and apparently it wasn't well received in Germany. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w605g/what_do_germans_think_of_adolf_hitler/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceyzv8a", "ceyzvjs", "cez042n", "cez06y8", "cez0852", "cez19h6", "cez1i8t", "cez336i", "cez4j5i"], "score": [20, 26, 9, 7, 5, 4, 2, 17, 5], "text": ["Lets put it this way. In Germany, displaying Nazi symbols, publicly praising Hitler and denying the Holocaust are all illegal and will result in jail time", "Being a Nazi, displaying Nazi symbols, etc is illegal in Germany.  He is not a hero.  There are no streets named after Adolf Hitler, no suburbs, etc.  However, there is a Stauffenbergstrasse.  \n\nThe criticism in Germany over the film was due to casting, especially Tom Cruise, who they thought played the role as too American. \n\n", "Think about it this way, we teach our children about the Civil War and slavery. No we don't agree with what those people did, in fact we despise it, but it is still history.\n So I'd imagine they feel shame in the fact that their ancestors took a part in the fascism, and that that is what their country is known for.", "A couple of German students of mine said they liked the U.S. because no one here assumed they were Nazis :|", "Yeah I think more about the mass ammount of people who supported him. They are just as delusional as him.", "Almost all of us think of him as one of the worst human beings ever.", "I know a few Germans, and whenever the Nazis or Hitler are brought up, they get kind of quiet and have a look of shame on their face. One who was more open to talking about it says many Germans would go back in time and undo what Hitler did. As mentioned before, my friend said there are many laws restricting Nazi propaganda and racism in particular. Last main thing he pointed out is \"If you go anywhere in Germany asking where Dachau is [one of the concentration camps and now a historical museum for those who don't know], many will pretend they have never heard of it,\" and he continued by saying it's because there are people in denial, not because they are dicks and refuse to believe any of it happened, but because they feel guilty of the country's past and wish it never happened. Hope this answers your question, sorry it was so long :P", "American lady married to a German man and we currently live in Germany.\n\nGermans have it beat into them from a very early age that the Holocaust was horrible. That there is no excuse for what Hitler did. That you do not put country above being a human being. If am correct it took up the majority of their history lessons (this does not mean that they at unaware of the world).\n\nSecondly, TV here is forever running documentaries on the holocaust and WWII. I am pretty sure I have seen footage at least once a day.\n\nThird, I have never been in a place where people are so quick to defend a person being verbally or physically attacked by another person. On the train I have seen many altercations (verbal) that generally ends with the asshole being called out by at least two other people (sometimes the entire train car gets pissed). So they aren't generally ones to stand by and let that shit happen.\n\nThat being said it has caused some issues. In Germany it is illegal to argue facts of the Holocaust in public. The official story has not changed in a long time even with new data and facts present. Historians can lose their jobs or be arrested for trying to argue on the side of truth. So, there is that.\n\nIt has also made racism a very difficult thing to talk about. No one wants to talk about the fact that German citizens with Turkish parents are still treated like subcitizens ....but they are.\n\nLastly, this does not mean that Germans don't have a sense of humor about Hitler. I would, however, suggest that if you crack a Hitler or Holocaust related joke that you know the person you are talking to very well and refrain from doing so in public.\n\nPeople are very vigilant when it comes to anything Nazi related. Graffiti is covered quickly after the police are contacted. \n\nEdit: to be clear Germans dislike Hitler. There is no type of worship on the part of the German people..some even still feel guilty. Some don't like joking about him. Overall the German people feel a duty to not sit by and allow a new Hitler to do what Hitler did. So, they study history and they talk about it.", "German here. Hitler is seen as the worst human being ever by most of the Germans. However, many also think that they have to feel guilty for what someone else did decades ago, which in my opinion is inapropriate - it's not my fault what Hitler did, right? Hence, I don't think I have any kind of responsibilty towards the jewish people. So that's the other side of the coin: You should not say anything against jewish people because you will instantly be called a Nazi. It's complicated."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "51rqvz", "title": "Why did so many non-disabled men in the past carry canes?", "selftext": "Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I've been wondering this. In old pictures, stories, movies, etc., I always see men carrying canes even if they don't need them to walk. Why do they do this and why did this practice fall out of favor?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51rqvz/why_did_so_many_nondisabled_men_in_the_past_carry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7ebayx", "d7fmybp"], "score": [154, 3], "text": ["Short answer? It was a fashion statement. It's almost like asking \"Why did men in the 18th century wear knee britches or those big silly wigs?\" It was just what caught on. Like many aristocratic fashions, the walking cane was born out of courts of Europe as a fashion accessory. There are famous portraits of monarchs like King Henry VIII, King George II  &  III having portraits done with a cane; not because of weakness but as a symbol of authority. King Louis XIV of France carried an elaborate, jewel encrusted cane and actually forbid his subjects from carrying a cane in his presence. It was a symbol of his power. In late 17th century and early part of the 18th century, the cane began replacing the sword as the accessory of choice for gentlemen about town in Europe and in the colonies. The more decorative a cane was, the more wealthy the gentleman was and it could still be use as a weapon in dire circumstances. \n\nJust because it was a fashion statement didn't mean that there wasn't a practical use for it. For instance, doctors were well known for carrying a cane. Vinegar was believed to ward off illnesses so many would have a hollowed out head with a vinegar soaked sponge in it. The doctor would hold the head of the cane in front of his nose and inhale the vinegar as he visited patients, kind of like a protective mask. \"Gadget canes\" also became popular with doctors as they would use hollowed out canes to store their medical devices and drugs when making house calls. This allowed them to draw less attention to themselves and lessen the chance of them being robbed than if they were carrying a medical bag.\n\n*Edited a couple times for clarity. I'm tired and on my phone*\n\nEdit #2: I should be asleep right now, but instead I'd rather make lengthy posts here. I've lost control of my life...", "Adding onto this: were cane swords ever used as a serious weapon?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "53furq", "title": "why is claustrophobia such a common fear, given that our ancestors were cave dwellers? wouldn't we have adapted to tight and dark spaces?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53furq/eli5_why_is_claustrophobia_such_a_common_fear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7sqo27", "d7sqt34", "d7ssp05", "d7t6gs6", "d7t79hn"], "score": [30, 7, 24, 2, 3], "text": ["Although prehistoric humans are often called \"cavemen\" its likely that the vast majority of early humans did not live in caves. Caves are where we find most prehistoric human artifacts, but that's because caves preserve things that would be destroyed, lost, or buried outside.\n\nIt's far more likely that most humans lived in things like tents and huts. Keep in mind that prehistoric humans had the same intelligence as you or I, and so were perfectly capable of constructing simple shelters.\n\nAlso, you assume that fears like claustrophobia are hereditary. That's far from clear.", "More instinctual than anything is defending oneself. Being comprised in tight places with questionable exits is a defenseless feeling. ", "Humans weren't really a cave dwelling species.  Humans used caves for shelter, much like we use houses today for shelter.  You don't feel claustrophobic in a house, do you?  It's an analogous situation.  The sorts of caves commonly used for that purpose would have been reasonably well-lit and spacious (likely less so than your house, but still enough to not feel claustrophobic).  Caves were also used for religious rituals, and the claustrophobic feeling was probably an intended effect in those cases.  \n\nIn general claustrophobia would probably be an advantage for a some-time cave using species, because it would encourage members not to go get themselves stuck in small areas of the cave and die.  \n\nBut I don't want to overstate the effect there, because humans have never truly been a cave species.  We just used them occasionally and those fossils were much more likely to survive because caves are good at preserving things.  A great many people never lived in caves: if nothing else good caves are just not available in many parts of the world.", "Humans never actually lived in caves. We evolved in Africa when grass evolved and started weeding out trees. Since we lived in trees we had to become bipedal to run and look out for predators in the grasslands. Becoming bipedal freed up our hands and that allowed us to make tools and weapons. Now we had the ability to hunt large game. All that red meat gave us the nutrition to grow bigger brains. As time went on our fingers became more nimble and our brains got even bigger. Soon enough we were speaking and that's when things really took off. Before long we were farming and domesticating animals. That's when Civilizations started popping up in Egypt and the fertile crescent. All of this progress did take time though. Humans have been around for about 1 million years. However, the first civilizations didn't show up until around 5,000 years ago.", "I have never understood claustrophobics I mean they are basically trapped in a skull as they are the brain."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "18o6bw", "title": "Why do we consider Muons to be an elementary particle if they decay to an electron? ", "selftext": "I haven't been able to find any sort of easy to understand explanations of why we consider any of the unstable leptons to be elementary particles if they have half-lives in the microseconds.  It seems counter-intuitive to assume that a particle with a much heavier mass then an electron that decays to an electron isn't in fact made up of smaller particles.  Is there some sort of theory behind this that I can't find/understand?  \n\nedit: typo", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18o6bw/why_do_we_consider_muons_to_be_an_elementary/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ghlhu", "c8ghm6a"], "score": [5, 16], "text": ["Well, consider an electron in an atom that absorbs a photon, increasing the electron's energy. Where did the photon go? They're both elementary particles; the electron isn't made up of an additional photon now. (Well, in a certain sense _it is_, as the electron now has the photon's energy and angular momentum. But not in the sense that the electron is a composite particle)\n\nThe basic 'theory' here is that particles can be created and destroyed/annihilated. They come from nothing and disappear to nothing. This is (ultimately) a consequence of special relativity. (simplistically you could point to E = mc^2 and how a mass can be converted to energy and vice-versa, although there's a bit more to it than just that)\n\nBut there are constraints here - energy is conserved, charge is conserved, angular momentum is conserved, etc. So a particle cannot be created or annihilated without something else happening as well. \n\nSo when a muon decays into an electron and a pair of neutrinos, it's not a composite muon splitting apart. The muon is being annihilated in concert with the other particles being created. When an electron absorbs a photon, the photon is annihilated but without any new particles being created. \n\n", "There is simply no evidence of substructure for the muon or other elementary particles.  The Standard Model treats these as point particles, and the predictions of the Standard Model have consistently been upheld.\n\nI think what may be confusing you is what's happening in particle decay.  Particle decay is not the breaking up of something into smaller constituents.  It's a process whereby the energy, charge, and other conserved properties of a particle are reconstituted into a new state with the same properties.  So a muon can turn into an electron, an electron antineutrino, and a muon neutrino.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "142b3b", "title": "Does levitating using a magnetic field feel the same as zero G/freefall on the vomit comet or in space?", "selftext": "I know that a strong enough magnetic field can be used to levitate living things because water is diamagnetic and this has been done with frogs and mice. Since the distribution of water in an animal's body is not uniform, I suppose would cause stress in organs with a high water content such as veins, stomach, etc. What would this feel like as a human?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/142b3b/does_levitating_using_a_magnetic_field_feel_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c79bq5c"], "score": [2], "text": ["no, it wouldn't. Gravity is acting on you just like in freefall, but like standing on earth you have an equal and opposite force countering the acceleration. While it would feel differently it would feel more like hanging from a bunch of straps (or a climbing harness) where the force is being concentrated on different parts of your body. The reason you feel \"weightless\" in a free fall is because there is no opposite force countering your acceleration. On earth, the ground (or seat, floor, ect) exerts a force equal to your mass*~9.8m/s\u00b2. You feel this force as your \"weight\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "buy2kk", "title": "Why is Strabo's world map of the 1st century BC so accurate?", "selftext": "I'm quite fascinated by how accurate Strabo's world map was for the time period which was compiled no later than 20BC, it contained many details such as a rough outline of Ireland alongside locations even as far away as Sri Lanka\n\nWhat I find so fascinating was what this map shows about the Roman / Greek world and how advanced their navigation and technology really was, as it seemingly took more than a thousand years for a world map of such accuracy to that of Strabos' to be completed, as many of the Medieval maps, both European and Islamic are utterly inaccurate.\n\nHow then, and what technologies did the Romans use to create such a markedly precise (for the time) map of the known world?\n\nEDIT: I have included an image of the map below\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/buy2kk/why_is_strabos_world_map_of_the_1st_century_bc_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eplio1g"], "score": [58], "text": ["One important thing to consider first and foremost. As far as I am aware **none** of the images of maps from Greco-Roman era are actually originals from that time, as none survived. What you usually see are more or less modern reconstructions trying to create the maps based on the verbal descriptions that were preserved through ages through copying and preserving manuscript texts. I think the oldest actual examples of the famous mapmakers are some Ptolemy maps from the middle ages, recreated several centuries after Ptolemy made his original work.\n\nFor Strabo the same applies. We don't have his map. We aren't even sure he actually had a map ever drawn, even though we suspect it was so because his text work *Geographica* (which is actually dated to circa 7.A.D - 20 A.D) is written specifically saying it's intended for experts to draw a map according to it, if possible on a globe, if not a planar surface would suffice.\n\nI suspect the map linked comes from the editions of Strabo from the 19th century (e.g. [here](_URL_2_)), but I might be wrong about exact dating. Not that it matters much, the point is that it is certain that these maps are not copies of the ones Strabo drew, just estimates. So it is possible that they were partly influenced and shaped by more recent conceptions, not applicable for the time. \n\nAnd the thing is Strabo's descriptions are pretty vague and often widely inaccurate and leave much to the imagination. His description of Western Europe, especially Britain is very much wrong and it can be seen on this map as well. He describes Britain as a triangle, with it's the longest side facing France and extending all the way from the Pyrenees to the Rhine. He mentions Ireland but places it incorrectly and it's obvious he only knows it from hearsay. The same applies to the eastern parts where e.g. he quotes Eratosthenes to mention Taprobana (Sri Lanka) but places it again incorrectly. Sure this is better than the T-O maps of medieval times, but frankly, those maps never intended to be accurate while Strabo did. In fact, the portolan charts that appeared from 14th-century onward were much more accurate then Strabo's attempt. Modern analysis of his work show deep mistakes, often conflicting amongst each other and not just reality.\n\nYet despite the mistakes, Strabo's work is magnificent in its breadth and content. He compiled his work from his own voyages, from travel accounts of merchants of his time (of which he laments were often inaccurate) and finally drawing on the most famous geographers up to his time: Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Polybius, Posidonious, and mentions Pytheas and Cratus. Even though unlike Ptolemy, he didn't really use latitude and longitude observations of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, he did utilize large swaths of their information provided. He did offer plenty of other geographical information and offer considerable insight into what was the up to that point idea of how the world looks like.\n\nSources:  \n\n[The History of Cartography](_URL_3_), Volume 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Chapter 10: Greek Cartography in the Early Roman World ([PDF](_URL_0_))\n\n[A history of ancient geography among the Greeks and Romans, from the earliest ages till the fall of the Roman Empire](_URL_2_) by Bunbury, E. H. (Edward Herbert), 1811-1895 \n\n[The Geography of Strabo](_URL_1_) published in Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1932"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabo#/media/File:C%2BB-Geography-Map1-StrabosMap.PNG"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V1/HOC_VOLUME1_chapter10.pdf", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/home.html", "https://archive.org/details/historyofancient02bunb/page/238", "https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V1/Volume1.html"]]}
{"q_id": "31jcin", "title": "why does my dog bark at door bell noises from the tv when we don't even have a door bell.", "selftext": "She has never heard a doorbell other than on tv, yet she still barks as if someone is at the door upon hearing the noise. How could she have possibly put that connection together when it never actually happens?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31jcin/eli5_why_does_my_dog_bark_at_door_bell_noises/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq239vt", "cq23jvm", "cq28ehn", "cq2anmk", "cq2ehms", "cq2iq2i", "cq2kp4h", "cq2n735", "cq2pq3b"], "score": [31, 9, 2, 2, 27, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Are you sure she's not adopted or something...? Maybe it's just because the sound is unpleasant to her. Does she actually run up to the door as if someone is about to walk in?", "My dog did this too, we got him as a puppy and he didn't have any experience of doorbells. \nHe's almost entirely silent but one of the only times I've heard him bark was at a doorbell on TV", "The dog may have learnt that when the doorbell rings, someone appears at the door (on the TV). \n\nSo, when it heard a doorbell on the TV, it goes to the door to see if someone is there. ", "Dogs ears are incredibly sensitive. The doorbell noise from the television is excruciating to yours and she runs to the door to try to get the fuck out of the house.", "What do you watch?  She might have heard other dogs barking at doorbells on TV and now associates the sound of doorbells with mysterious invisible dogs freaking out.", "Unsure why dogs do things sometimes. We got a puppy at 4 weeks old. She would never come near anyone wearing a hat. If you put any kind of head covering on she would yelp and hide under the couch. We were never able to work out why?", "From the wonderful world of felines: when my cat was a kitten, he had no framework to understand what the sound of a can opening was.  Yet the first time I did it, wham, he was right at my ankle.", "Not a doorbell, but mine howls at computer beeps: _URL_0_\n\nEdit: corrected auto-correct", "My doorbell makes a buzzing sound that doesn't sound anything like a traditional bell.  Every time my dog hears a doorbell on TV, he runs to the front door as if someone is there. I think he connects it with people answering their doors on TV after hearing the bell but I'm probably giving him too much credit. He has no reaction to things like buzzers in basketball games or bells on gameshows strangely. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/jt2qAwanVeo"], []]}
{"q_id": "1it5vc", "title": "Would lungs work more efficiently if they moved air First-In-First-Out?", "selftext": "My understanding of the lungs is that the alveoli fill up by air pressure created by the diaphragm.  Air is drawn into the lungs, and then, as the diaphragm relaxes, the air is displaced in exhalation.  I always viewed this as a last-in-first-out system, so if I am incorrect, I am very interested to hear how the alveoli work during respiration.\n\nSo, my questions:\n\n1. If the lungs were built in such a way that the air travelled first-in-first-out, would breathing be more efficient in any way?  Could we do it faster, more continuously, or with more control?  Or is it suboptimal for some reason?\n\n1. I believe fish have a FIFO system with their gills, don't they?  At what point in evolutionary history did that trait branch off, respiring LIFO or FIFO?  It seems like a pretty important factor in evolutionary divergence!  Was it a required adaptation for movement to land?\n\n1. If we were engineering \"the perfect\" mechanical lung replacement, and we could freely design exactly how air moved within our mechanical lung, how would we want to design it?\n\n1. Although this is only tangentially relevant, is there validity to the claim I've heard, that our ability to hold our breath suggests that in our evolutionary history we were water-dwelling primates?  Being able to control our breath is very important for speech!  This would also be a pretty significant evolutionary divergence!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1it5vc/would_lungs_work_more_efficiently_if_they_moved/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb7siou", "cb7tjvt"], "score": [7, 5], "text": ["Birds actually also have pretty much this type of system thanks to their air-filled bones.  It is more efficient, and that's part of what enables them to keep up with the metabolic demands of flight.", " > If the lungs were built in such a way that the air travelled first-in-first-out, would breathing be more efficient in any way? Could we do it faster, more continuously, or with more control? Or is it suboptimal for some reason?\n\nGas exchange would be more efficient.  The question of whether it is more optimal is difficult to answer without speculation.  If there was anything different in the past, it hasn't survived as long as the blind sac system.\n\n > I believe fish have a FIFO system with their gills, don't they? At what point in evolutionary history did that trait branch off, respiring LIFO or FIFO? It seems like a pretty important factor in evolutionary divergence! Was it a required adaptation for movement to land?\n\nGills are a FIFO system.  Fish also do something called [countercurrent exchange](_URL_2_), which makes their gills work even more efficiently.  [Amphibians have a LIFO system](_URL_0_).\n\nWe don't know whether the LIFO system was a *required adaptation* to move onto land.  Instead, we know that the only animals to survive and reproduce happened to have a LIFO system.\n\n > If we were engineering \"the perfect\" mechanical lung replacement, and we could freely design exactly how air moved within our mechanical lung, how would we want to design it?\n\nLungs are incredibly complex, and as with all organs, we haven't come close to building a perfect mechanical replacement.  As for the FIFO versus LIFO question, that would be one of hundreds of considerations, including size, material, and cost.\n\n > Although this is only tangentially relevant, is there validity to the claim I've heard, that our ability to hold our breath suggests that in our evolutionary history we were water-dwelling primates? Being able to control our breath is very important for speech! This would also be a pretty significant evolutionary divergence!\n\nThere have never been any water-dwelling primates, but we do have a common ancestor that was water dwelling.\n\nYou are correct in that being able to hold your breath is important for speech, but it is also important for staying alive.  It is likely that any animal that could not hold its breath died before it could reproduce, leading to the current world of breath-holding animals.\n\nIf you are interested in learning more about evolution, the [Berkeley Evolution 101](_URL_1_) website is a great resource."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskipper", "http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_flow"]]}
{"q_id": "5equ40", "title": "Do we have any way of knowing how long the average 1v1 gladiator fight would last? Was there a system to match equally skilled fighters against one another?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5equ40/do_we_have_any_way_of_knowing_how_long_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dahzlst"], "score": [2], "text": ["I wrote a post about gladiatorial combat basics and style which provides a good preamble. I'm also on mobile so please forgive any formatting errors. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere was no truly standard length to a gladitorial match. Depending on what you were viewing, be it the hunts, matched pairs, executions, or the rare special events, fights could last anywhere for a few seconds to an hour or so. Naval battles would tend to last the longest as they had to flood the Flavian Amphitheatre to do so they used them for more entertainment, the midday executions lasted the shortest individually as prisoners were either marched unarmed against animals or against each other with both being inexperienced fighters. \n\nMatched pairs would last as long as the men could fight, those in good condition could last for up to 15-20 minutes at the longest. These were generally highly skilled individuals and were the most 'honorable' of the contestants as they fought in solo combat and with minimal protective gear (amounts varied from class to class).\n\nEspecially when the opponents were well matched in experience and armament style, the bouts could last as long as the men could fight. There was no hard line system of matching strong opponents against other strong opponents, sometimes an experienced fighter would engage a newly trained gladiator. Especially in the matches where gladiatorial styles were mismatched and the skill and experience such as the retarius pitted against a secutor or murmillo, a very common match, was needed to make a good fight. An inexperienced murmillo against a retarius would likely lose as would the reverse as the experience of how to fight the particular class of gladiator was crucial in the mismatch of speed and reach vs armour and power.\n\nThe editor had a vested interest in making strong matched pairs especially towards the end of the games as it would entertain the crowd and whose thirst for bloodshed had been dampened by the earlier executions and perhaps lesser skilled bouts. Better to risk two skilled and valuable gladiators at the end of the games when the crowd was less likely to demand blood. Overall the matching system was moreso to pair styles together with historic significance, as to whom the gladiator class represented, or historically prominent class pairings known to provide skillful combat.\n\nThe editor, the one who organized the fights would want to match experienced gladiators together to provide more entertainment while lesser experienced gladiators would either be a sacrifice to the crowd, matched against a better opponent, or against one of their own approximate level to provide the entertainment of a lesser skilled but, matched dual.\n\nIn the end the editor and sponsor had a vested interest in providing skilled opponents and quality duals as it would provide better social recognition for the sponsor and better economic benefit (both in displaying their skill in organizing a series of quality games and the price they could demand for their skills for future clients). \n\nSources: \n*Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games* by Roland Auguet (discusses the cultural significance of the games in Rome)  \n\n*Roman Histories* by Cassius Dio (includes descriptions of gladitorial combat through the imperial age)  \n\n*De Re Military* by Vegetius (mostly about late Roman military but does discuss gladiators somewhat)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://m.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4cx8w8/which_type_of_gladiatorial_combat_style_was_most/"]]}
{"q_id": "32k7ck", "title": "What are some of the most notable influences the Visigothic Kingdom has had on the Spain of today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32k7ck/what_are_some_of_the_most_notable_influences_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqc8d7d", "cqcb2bi", "cqchhe5"], "score": [9, 7, 2], "text": ["Unfortunately very few. The Visigoths as a people ceased to exist after the Muslim invasions of 711. It was only in the late 15th century that the Muslims were expelled. In that nearly 700 year period, Muslim culture dominated and displaced most Visigoth practices with their own. Prior to the invasions, the Visigoths maintained some aspects of old Roman infrastructure and class systems, much like the Ostrogoths in Italy under Theodoric, which worked rather well. Roman Coloni farming estates, for example, continued to survive under Visigoth rule. However, because they sought to preserve the roman infrastructure that worked so well, they didn't make many radical chances to the people or land themselves. And again, any changes they did make were overwritten by 700 years of Muslim rule.\n\nSaint Isidore of Seville was a Spanish scholar who produced perhaps some of the most influential works to come out of Visigoth Spain. His \"Etymology\" was a collection if words and their supposed origins. Most of what he says is not at all accurate, yet it remained popular with Western European monasteries and referenced excerpts from classical literature which would otherwise have been lost. He also helped to compile the \"collecto hispania\", an influential collection of Spanish common law. \n\nToledo was also made the capital city of the Visigoths and was noted for being a place were christians, Muslims, and Jews co-existed after the Muslim invasion. \n\nThose are the only examples I can think of, there are others I'm sure but the Visigoths in the end had very little influence on Spain in the long run. \n\nSource: Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1475 by Brian Tierney", "Tangentially, are there many Visigothic words that have survived into the modern Spanish? ", "A somewhat short but to the point answer to this question is: Almost nothing.\n\nRemember, Spain was heavily populated already when the Visigoths invaded. Culturally they weren't some backwater. They had assimilated Latin culture, had centers of learning and even contributed a few Emperors to the Roman throne.  \n\nThe Visigoths arrived and were then largely kicked out within a span of around 200 years.\n\nYou also have to keep in mind that Visigoths were of the Arian sect of Christianity while their subjects were largely Catholic. I remember reading that the Visigothic code of law prohibited marriage between the two, meaning people had to convert or remain unmarried. This impeded the full assimilation of the Visigothic ruler class by the dominated Iberian natives.\n\nSome Spanish historians even propose that the lack of unity fed the armies of invading Muslims with fresh recruits who welcomed aid in deposing their heretical overlords.\n\nSources:\nThe Age of Faith by Will Durant\nVisigothic Spain 409 - 711 by Roger Collins.\nThe Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6hgfow", "title": "What is the oldest file format still in use today?", "selftext": "Inspired by this image of the first gif ever made: _URL_0_\n\nIt's mind-blowing for me to believe that a file made 30 years ago can still play in its exact original form today. It's like a preserved piece of history.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6hgfow/what_is_the_oldest_file_format_still_in_use_today/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dizu77b"], "score": [6], "text": ["Depends what you mean by \"in use\". Somewhere some enthusiast (or maybe the US military) has an old mainframe computer from the 1950's running in their garage, so the binary executable files for that machine are still \"in use\". Or there's a simulator for some old architecture that can interpret the old binary files and run a program.\n\nOr what do you consider a \"file\". There are one or two reproductions of Babbage's Difference Engine in museums (or did Minsky finally collect his into his private collection) which are running \"programs\" based on a punch card format designed by Babbage and Lovelace in the 19th century. Does a stack of punch cards count as a file?\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/Ccra8e5.gif"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4mjktq", "title": "How close can we get?", "selftext": "If  we touch something, for example the screen of my phone, how close can the atoms of my finger get to the atoms of the glass? Do they really 'touch', or do the electrons in the atomic shell push them apart?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4mjktq/how_close_can_we_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3w4iw5", "d3wmibo"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["You get as close as the size of an atom, roughly a tenth of a nanometer. The atoms in your finger \"bump into\" the atoms in the glass, to the point that the electron orbitals of the respective atoms begin to overlap. ", "Touching in these scales is a pretty subjective concept. Every elementary particle, including the electron, is a point particle. When atoms get close to each other, the quantum uncertainty of these electrons start to overlap. Does that count as touching? You tell me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "31axzv", "title": "What is the lower size limit on human level intelligence?", "selftext": "I get how human intelligence comes from comparatively big heads to our bodies giving us extra brain space. What's the smallest we could be and still be as smart as us? Like could we be mouse sized and have ginormous heads that we can barely walk with?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/31axzv/what_is_the_lower_size_limit_on_human_level/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq01ufu", "cq0vbd5"], "score": [6, 2], "text": [" >  I get how human intelligence comes from comparatively big heads to our bodies giving us extra brain space.\n\nClarification question: But if intelligence were purely a function of [brain-to-body mass ratio](_URL_0_), then would we not be bowing to our Ant/Tree-Shrew overlords?", "To my knowledge human intelligence doesn't come from brain size. Some of our close anchestors actually had bigger brains. After the invention of fire cooked food provided plenty of energy to waste on mental cycles. The easiest way to augment cognitive ability is to leave the old circuitry intact and just make a new side experiment. However if two brains of comparable function are of different sizes then the larger one is a bigger liability (partly because of bigger upkeep cost but mainly because birthing channels can only bear so much extra circuitry). Our brains have actually gone a little smaller in size but more surface area. The main method of getting more intelligence is getting more intelligence, brain size is only a likely by product of the method of searching for the right circuitry principles. If a human has reduced brain mass because of malnutrition they usually have a loss of function too. Thus the most interesting thing isn't about size per such but a size reduction that preserves functionality. That would be the equivalent of making a cpu just as fast but with fewer transistors. Taking any single transistor out from a working processor is morelikely to result in a performace deacrese even if the size reduction would be quaranteed. Rather you would build a new cpu separately/in addition and then let the old cpu be redundant so that any point removals from it would not matter as the old cpu as a whole isn't used."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio"], []]}
{"q_id": "12kep3", "title": "Do dogs, or other mammals, become sore after strenuous activity like humans do?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12kep3/do_dogs_or_other_mammals_become_sore_after/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6vt90g"], "score": [3], "text": ["Dogs and other mammals get sore, get arthritis, get colds, feel pain, get cancer.... pretty much everything that can happen to us can happen to them. \n\nYour dog just either hides it better (it can sometimes be difficult to detect) or is better used to the strenuous activity than you are. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5d9l2z", "title": "how can there be a lowest possible temperature(-273k)? why can't we go lower?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d9l2z/eli5_how_can_there_be_a_lowest_possible/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da2rviz", "da2rzsc", "da2s7rx", "da2sdvm"], "score": [7, 3, 6, 18], "text": ["Temperature is basically a measurement of the amount of motion in a substance. The amount it's bouncing around, vibrating, etc. Absolute zero is, more or less, when you can't reduce the amount of movement a substance is undergoing any more. There isn't really an \"absolute hot\" because physics puts no constraints on how much energy you can put into a system (other than general relativity saying that if you put enough in, it will eventually collapse into a black hole).", "Heat is a characteristic of an object.  Cold is just the absence of heat.  Temperature measures heat.\n\nIn that sense, it's no different than a tangible object.  You can have zero apples. Or you can convert the whole universe into apples. but you can't actually have negative apples.  The minimum number of apples you can have is 0.  \n\nSame with temperature.  There's a lower theoretical bound (0 Kelvin/ -273 Celsius) and no upper bound, save for the limits of tech/resources. ", "Temperature is (basically) caused by the movement of molecules.\n\nAbsolute zero is the lowest temperature because at that temperature all movement of molecules stops. It is relatively easy for scientists to reach temperatures slightly higher than absolute zero.\n\n\"Absolute hot\" is only theoretical, but many scientists believe that at a certain temperature the molecules would have so much energy that they wouldn't be stable anymore. That temperature is thought to be 1.417\u00d710^32 K.\n\nThat's:\n\n* 141,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kelvin\n* 255,059,999,999,999,980,000,000,000,000,000 Fahrenheit\n\nAlso, there is no -273K. There is 0K which is equal to -273C.", "by -273K you are probably referring to -273 C, which is 0 K. Kelvin is an absolute scale, there is no negative (in the sense of being colder than 0). 0 Kelvin is the absence of heat. \n\n(Note, I'm doing some handwaving here, there actually systems that can have a negative kelvin temperature, but these are actually *hotter* than any system with a positive temperature. They are not negative in the sense of being 'colder'.)\n\nPart of the confusion of why we can't 'go lower' probably arises from Celsius and Farenheit, which are not absolute scales. Their zero point is arbitrary, and doesn't correspond to some 'minimum.' Hence, going below zero is not a problem for them. \n\nThe thing to realize however, is that even negative x Farenheit or Negative Y Celsius still has heat present. It's only negative in the sense that *it is below where we decided to put the zero.*\n\nThe  same is not true in Kelvins. 0 is when all of the heat is gone. You can't remove more heat than all of the heat. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3csoax", "title": "Why is Britain always afraid somebody would take India?", "selftext": "I read a lot about Britain and the Empire, specially after the Napoleonic Wars. Constantly, in almost any context, any reason to do anything is somehow connected to 'the fear of losing India'. I understand the status of India as 'Crown Jewel of Empire' but the fears are usually completely unreasonable.\n\nFor example the idea that Russia, after the 1905 Russo-Japanese War would try to take India because Britain helped Japan. This is of course mad because Russia was already basically broke after the War, the idea that they could project military power threw the hole of central Asia all the way into India is not based in reality.\n\nThis pattern repeats itself again and again. With Germany multiple times, with Russia, with France and with Japan. There was for example this fear the Japan would take China and then, threw Tibet conquer India.\n\nNobody ever seam to come even remotely close until WW2 but even then Britain could fight a full scale war against Germany, Italy and still credibly fight Japan on the borders of India (I do unterstand that they could not have done this with US aid but its still impressiv).\n\nI do not want to suggest that they should never have worried or planned for this problem. Playing the 'Great Game' as a long term system is smart. My porblem is with comments that suggest their is imidiate danger, within the next couple of years.\n\nHowever a lot of times, the fear over this is in now way connected to real military possibility of the situation. How did India reach this almost mythical standard in the minds of these otherwise smart and logical people?\n\nPS: I would also be interested in how much profits were derived from India. How much government revenue? And what other benefits India gave Britain.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3csoax/why_is_britain_always_afraid_somebody_would_take/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csyls74", "csym8jf"], "score": [56, 21], "text": ["I'm not convinced it was entirely a phantom. During the Boer War Britain was isolated diplomatically and the sympathies of Europe were frankly with the Boers. Russia had long felt hemmed in by British opposition to Russian expansion in Central Asia, the Bosphorus, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Tsar Nicholas visited the German Kaiser to remind him of his previous support for the Boers and he tried to build an anti-British alliance with the French. The Tsar wrote that\n\n > ...it is pleasant for me to know that I and _I only_ possess the ultimate means of deciding the course of the war in South Africa. It is very simple \u2013 just a telegraphic order to all the troops in Turkestan to mobilise and advance towards the [Indian] frontier. Not even the strongest fleet in the world can keep us from striking England at this her most vulnerable point.\n\nLuckily for Britain, Germany and France declined his offer.\n\nOn your last question, it was commonly assumed that India was essential to British power. \"As long as we rule India,\" the Indian Viceroy Lord Curzon proclaimed, \"we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power\". Was this true? I don't think it was.\n\nFirstly, the possession of India led to enormous burdens. Not only the thousands of miles of frontiers to defend, but 450 miles of the North-West Frontier which was in a state of constant readiness for combat. Britain's expansion into South Africa had originally been motivated by the need to control the Atlantic passage to India, as had the purchasing of the Suez Canal. This in turn led to a large Middle Eastern empire too. Much of the Empire was justified on the need to secure the passage to India. If India was the \"jewel in the crown\", did the crown exist only to support the jewel? In return for these vast strategic commitments and economic burdens, what was India worth to Britain in economic or strategic terms?\n\nIndia added nothing to the industrial power of Britain. In 1921 71% of Indians worked in agriculture and only 12% in industry. As for raw materials, India only had jute, chromium and manganese. In 1913 India as a market for British exports was worth \u00a370,273,221 (France and Germany combined were worth \u00a369,610,451) but this was less than half the figure for the Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). For British investments abroad, India (at \u00a3378,776,000 in 1914) was worth half of America and not much more above Argentina (\u00a3319,565,000). \n\nIn the twentieth century, industrial power was paramount and just as important as ships and men. This was demonstrated by the experience of WWI and the _Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms_ (1918) noted that \"Nowadays the products of an industrially developed community coincide so nearly in kind though not in quantity with the catalogue of munitions for war that the development of India's national resources becomes a matter of almost military necessity\". Britain had failed to do this and the Report noted that India's resources \"should henceforth be better utilised. We cannot measure the accession of strength which an industrialised India will bring to the power of the Empire\". However the industrialisation of India was not something the British would or could countenance. Irrigation schemes were about as far as this went.\n\nIndia was undoubtedly loyal to Britain during WWI and her volunteer army of over one million was heartening. However India raised just 0.3% of her peoples for the military, compared to 12.4% for Britain, 11.6% for New Zealand and 8% for Canada and Australia. Just 90,000 Indian troops were sent to the Western Front, the rest were sent to defend the Middle East, which concerned Britain only because it was a gateway to India. \n\nOn balance, then, India served only to weaken Britain and was a classic example of imperial overstretch. The clue to why Britain remained in India despite this is is due to the nature of British society. Curzon said the Raj was the \"miracle of the world...the biggest thing that the English are doing anywhere\": India served as a vast arena for the British ruling class. The civil service, the Army, administrators, clergymen, all were needed in British India and the British public schools supplied her with them. As the ruling class was fairly small, everyone knew someone who was or had been in India. The idea of jettisoning India was inconceivable. They did not think in economic or strategic terms but of public service and duty which they had been inculcated in at public school.", "In a sense, it sounds as though you have a handle on Britain\u2019s strategic situation in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Their absolute priority in imperial policy was always to preserve the Raj, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire.  However, as you point out, it was rarely in imminent danger (with the exception, you rightly suggest, of Japan\u2019s campaign in Burma.  Rather, Britain mostly played the long game and sought to entrench its position for the longue duree. Much of Britian\u2019s broader foreign policy across the last two centuries was based on securing the long-term survivability of its influence in India, including the possession of the cape c. 1806 and its protectorate in Egypt.\n\nLet\u2019s examine, then, Britain\u2019s imperial anxieties.  What were they afraid of with regard to India? For one, they did worry a great deal about growing Russian influence. Their struggle for hegemony against them in Central Asia, immortalized by [Kipling]( _URL_4_), was founded on a few issues.  For one, Britain was interested in checking Russian power not only in central Asia but across the globe; they did not want to see a Russia with imperial ambitions upset a balance of power which saw Britain at the forefront and they went to war with them in 1853 in order to halt its growing influence.  Russia expanded very quickly into central Asia during the 19th century, and so Britain thought it in its interest to set up its own puppets to secure possible invasion routes into India.  Most notably, the British fought several horrible wars in Afghanistan in order to stave off Russian influence in the Raj\u2019s most vulnerable border.  It was only after the rise of German *weltpolitik* and mutual concern over their ambitions in the middle east and Europe, as well as Russia\u2019s terrible performance against Japan that Britain began to worry less about the threat from the Czar in Asia.  \n\nThe worry from Japan was of a slightly different sort, especially in the twentieth century.  Japan was not only militarily and politically threatening, but ideologically threatening.  Empire was built on the belief in the innate inferiority of some people compared to others.  In Britain, this was expressed most clearly in the anthropological theory of sociocultural evolutionism: civilizations occupied different rungs on the the same [ladder between savagery and civilization]( _URL_2_).  Asian peoples were regarded as in the middle zone, moribund cultures still centuries or millennia removed from advanced Europeans.  Empire was a mechanism of \u201cuplift,\u201d by which the colonizers were on a civilizing mission to bring progress to the colonized.  Japan knocked those racialist theories on their head by suggesting that Asian peoples could not only govern themselves, but that they could form empires of their own.  Britain was actually quite impressed by Japan\u2019s prowess in their war against Russia and formed an alliance with them in 1902, the first alliance they had formed since the 1860s. Nonetheless, Japanese expansion would only come at the cost of European influence in Asia, whether on the part of the British, the French, the Russians, the Dutch, or the Americans\u2014and by the interwar period it became clear that a militarized Japan could be a substantial threat to imperial interests.  All of these anxieties were absolutely realized in 1942 when the Japanese took Singapore.  An Asian army had taken Britain\u2019s key imperial port city, and they did so handily. It is not for nothing that one historian titled his book on the city\u2019s capture [the Worst Disaster]( _URL_0_). While Japanese occupation was hardly welcome in Asia, it did demonstrate that the empire was fragile and that Asian states and Asian people could defeat it.  In the case of India, that sentiment was enacted most famously by Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, a guerilla organization of tens of thousands that allied with the Japanese and sought the removal of Britain from the subcontinent. \n\nAnd that leads me to the third, and by far largest, anxiety Britain faced with regard to india: Indians.  India was and remains a massive place, home to a plethora of languages and hundreds of millions of people. The British civil service in India numbered in the thousands.  The absolute fear was an uprising against british rule.  After all, direct rule in India was itself the result of a rebellion that [traumatized]( _URL_5_), or at least traumatized the British imagination.  For the entire span of British rule, the unspoken risk of [peasant insurgency]( _URL_3_) permeated everything.   It was not for nothing that Orwell, in [Shooting and Elephant]( _URL_1_), still on a word-for-word basis perhaps the best thing ever written on colonialism, wrote  about the pressure he felt from the crowd, that \u201cmy whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.\u201d \n\nFinally, the worth of India to the empire is literally uncalculable. I mean to say that I\u2019ve never seen a convincing figure for its worth in modern pounds that is convincing since any such exact figure would be essentially meaningless across such a long period.  However, it made some people [astoundingly rich]( _URL_6_), and those who newly returned from ventures in India were regarded as astoundingly gaudy flaunters of new wealth.  India was a site of massive [capital investment]( _URL_7_) by the City of London as new railroads were built, making still more people very rich indeed.  By the 20th century, fully a fifth of Britains exports went to india\u2014one reason Gandhi so vehemently pushed for a boycott to make his movement felt.  And, of course, India was a massive supply of labour, not just for bulk of the empire\u2019s army, but for its construction projects across the indian ocean and the world.  The massive indian diaspora today exists in no small part thanks to the huge migrations of labourers across the last two centuries.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Worst-Disaster-Fall-Singapore/dp/087413112X", "http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant", "https://archive.org/stream/primitiveculture01tylouoft/primitiveculture01tylouoft_djvu.txt", "https://www.dukeupress.edu/Elementary-Aspects-of-Peasant-Insurgency-in-Colonial-India/?viewby=title", "https://archive.org/details/kimkipling01kipluoft", "http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8516.html", "http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Empire-Culture-Conquest-1750-1850/dp/1400075467", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0289.1987.tb00417.x/abstract;jsessionid=FCB68D15D2167F31694E770F7897BD61.f03t03?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+11th+July+2015+at+10%3A00-16%3A00+BST+%2F+05%3A00-11%3A00+EDT+%2F+17%3A00-23%3A00++SGT++for+essential+maintenance.++Apologies+for+the+inconvenience&amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage="]]}
{"q_id": "2xs1j0", "title": "if brian williams lies once and gets fired, why is someone like bill o'reilly still on the air?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xs1j0/eli5_if_brian_williams_lies_once_and_gets_fired/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp2u5ab", "cp2udor", "cp2uhlh", "cp2vlcq", "cp2wk1d", "cp2wv3a", "cp2wvxu", "cp2wwcn", "cp2wzr6", "cp2x5oo", "cp2x931", "cp2x9f3", "cp2xa6m", "cp2xbms", "cp2xbsf", "cp2xcuf", "cp2xh5k", "cp2xhxx", "cp2xi4e", "cp2xj1s", "cp2xleq", "cp2xlf0", "cp2xn32", "cp2xpaz", "cp2xtk7", "cp2xu74", "cp2xwm2", "cp2xx7d", "cp2xy5v", "cp2xytj", "cp2xz4e", "cp2xzyj", "cp2y077", "cp2y1j4", "cp2y2q2", "cp2y4be", "cp2y52q", "cp2yanx", "cp2yc17", "cp2ydv4", "cp2yicz", "cp2yjgs", "cp2yk3k", "cp2yk7u", "cp2yli8", "cp2ym8k", "cp2ymks"], "score": [930, 54, 10, 15, 319, 15, 130, 6, 11, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 16, 10, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3, 3, 2, 5, 5, 4, 4, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Brian Williams wasn't fired.  He was suspended for 6 months. \n\nIt's also worth noting that Williams and O'Reilly work for different networks and are involved in completely separate controversies.  Furthermore, Williams is an anchor on a national news program, while O'Reilly hosts an opinion-based show.  The two controversies are being handled by different organizations, so there's no requirement that their punishments must be similar. ", "Brian Williams didn't lie once, he lied about one thing for **years**. Well, one thing that we know of. ", "Because they are employed by different networks and one network has an audience who is notorious for a complete lack of interest in the truth or facts.", "Brian Williams told a definite, objective lie.  Bill O'Reilly made statements that could easily be misconstrued.\n\nImagine you're writing a resume.  What Brian Williams was is equivalent to saying that he had a medical degree when he didn't.  What Bill O'Reilly did was the equivalent of saying he had 'managerial experience' because he was a shift supervisor at McDonald's.", "You're also forgetting one is a commentator and the other one a news reporter.  Very different gigs. Very different standards.  ", "It always irks me that people so often don't recognize that O'Reilly and Hannity are opinion shows.  They're allowed to have their staunch right-wing opinions because their entire shows revolve around what their particular opinion is about current events.  They have no real obligation to hold themselves up to journalistic ethics as they're not journalists.", "Brian Williams is a news reporter - someone trusted for reporting facts.\n\nBill O'Reilly is a news analyst and commentator - he takes the stories that Brian Williams might report and explains what they mean in a way that's relevant to the audience of his show.\n\nNews reporters are expected to hold a very very high ethical standard - analysts less so.\n\nAdditionally, Williams said something like \"I was shot down\" when he was not shot down.  O'Reilly said something like \"I've seen combat and what terrorists can do\" which, if taken literally, means he physically witnessed this with his eyes but COULD BE just a blanket statement for things he was aware of.\n\nFor example, I can say that I 'lived through 9/11' - even though I wasn't in New York and I was not a victim or even affected directly by it.  I was still a part of the experience of America at the time, though, and it is very memorable and real to me.  Is my statement a lie?  That's for you to decide, I guess.", "Unrelated, but still relevant: a great book to read about memory confabulation (which is what likely happened in both of these cases) is called, \"Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me\" written by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. \n\nWe think of our memories as like a movie, as a perfect record of every moment. In reality, our memories work like a mosaic where we have a few pieces then fill in the rest with things we hear, see on television, read about, etc.  This makes our memories very susceptible to error and misalignment. We remember things as happening to us even when they did not. At the same time, we fail to remember things that *did* happen to us.  We might call these exaggerations or lies, but we all unintentionally do this in one way or another--it's how our brains work. \n\nThis really doesn't answer OPs question, but it does help to gain some understanding of *why* two journalists might have this sort of thing happen. ", "Brian Williams is a journalist.\n\nBill O'Reilly is an entertainer.", "This questions was asked last week and here was the top answer\nBill's show is presented as an opinion show, Williams' show is presented as the nightly news, so when one is caught in a lie, which one do you think gets in more trouble based on the type of show it is presented as?", "Up voter has a good non biased explanation but seriously, what does O'Reilly lie about?", "Because the internet would much rather make excuses for other people and hound the hell out of people they believe to be 100% truthful. If I had to guess, I would say that the people calling for Williams' head never watched his show. Yet the same people would probably look the other way if Jon Stewart had some terrible legal troubles. I love Williams and I hate that people are so ready to throw him out. It should go without saying that I really enjoy Stewart too. ", "It's news vs opinion. Brian Williams is a new anchor while Bill O'Reilly is a host for an opinion program. While we'd like to think people wouldn't lie on opinion pieces, the fact of the matter is it's an opinion. On the other hand, if you're reporting the news and lie, that could have serious implication for public safety and the reliability of the entire network.\n\nAlso it should be noted their are allegation against O'Reilly but nothing has yet been proven/decided. So even if the were to receive equal punishment, it shouldn't happen until it's proven.", "Brian Williams supposedly CHOSE his six month hiatus, or if he didn't thats how they originally released the story. Its supposed to be an act of contrition, he supposedly understands his mistake and wont be an anchor while people don't trust him. O'Reilly on the other hand is sticking to his guns, saying he never lied, and anything that seems like I lie is just a misunderstanding. Hence it wouldn't make sense for him to take time off, as that would be admitting guilt.", "Because his job isn't to be a journalist or a news presenter.  He's a host.  His show is entertainment and opinion.", "The appeal of each is based on different things:\n\n- Brian Williams' persona *was* as a steady, trustworthy newsman, giving it to you straight. Telling whoppers, especially divisive ones, is a real blow to his appeal.\n\n- Bill O'Reilly's appeal is as an aggressive hot head who bashes and batters the opposition. His whoppers don't help him, but they don't strike at the heart of his appeal either.\n\nThe networks pay these guys to get ratings. Losing credibility really hurts Brian Williams' ability to do his job, but it doesn't affect Bill O'Reilly much.\n\n", "As others have pointed out, Williams wasn't fired, just suspended.\n\nThey have different jobs.  Williams is a news anchor and O'Reilly is a pundit.  News anchors are held to different standards than commentators.\n\nO'Reilly is also quite popular, and removing him from his time slot would likely result in a significant dip in ratings.  Brian Williams is far less important to the show he hosts.\n\nAlso keep in mind that most of Brian Williams untruths were exposed naturally, while Bill O'Reilly's untruths were exposed largely as the result of [45 hostile researchers working full-time to examine everything he's ever said](_URL_0_).  O'Reilly looks like he's told some whoppers, but I'm guessing nobody that does five hours of political commentary a week looks good when 45 researchers are working full-time to discredit everything they've ever said.", "If Obama lies constantly and still is the president, tell me why Hillary is still considered a contender for the presidency?\n\nSee, it's easy to post a stupid trollish question in the guise of a 5 year old....", "O'Reilly is still on for the same reason that every anchor on Fox News and MSNBC, especially Rachel Maddow, is still there. It is an opinion based news channel that makes no apologies for it being that way. \n\nBrian Williams wasn't fired, but close to. He damaged the reputation of a channel that isn't supposed to be opinion and bias based.", "That a news anchor like Brian Williams and op-ed tv show host like Bill O'Reilly get confused as the same things speaks to a much larger issues with critical thinking and journalism in America and elsewhere.\n\nIt's like when Jon Stewart and the Daily Show say they're \"fake news\". Well, yes, they're \"fake\" news. But, they're a REAL op-ed.\n\nBoth O'Reilly and Stewart constantly take advantage of audience ignorance between news *reporting* and news *commentary* and *opinion*.\n\nAnd certain sheep in society eat it up and spew their opinionated rhetoric back as if it were fact. It's not. Not it most cases.\n\nAnyway, that's my rant.\n\nThe reason Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly were treated different was because they're two entirely different people with two entirely different jobs.\n\n\n\n", "Bill O reilly is a entertainer, he is not a reporter.   He is a reporter in the sense a blogger is.  They rehash stuff to be what they want it to be not what is actual reporting.", "Brian Williams: \"so like no Shit, I was there getting shot at\" \n", "Left is for liberals, rights are for conservatives...Brian is considered a lefty", "In a word \"$\".\n\nMr. Willliams has the potential to dismantle the credibility and so the income of his network.\n\nMr. O'Reilly is in a different space where the audience is perhaps too centered on more extreme thinking and so losing him would cost money.", "Another important distinction. O'Reilly's mishaps were from the the 70s and 80s, which gives significantly more plausibility to him misspeaking. \n\nThe \"FoxNews is dumb\" circle jerk is seriously the most pathetic shit I have ever seen. You dim wits are perpetuating a myth based on your incredible ignorance. I am not saying FoxNews is not sensationalist or sometimes inaccurate. However, it is on par with MSNBC, which is its competitor on the other end of the spectrum. Stop being fucking pawns just because you hate conservatives. You're seriously embarrassing yourselves. Fucking sad.", "Bill O'Reilly didn't lie, for one.  At best it's misconstrued.  There's a reason major stations aren't harping on BIll.\n\nStop watching so much Reddit.  ", "O'Reilly shares his opinion, ignorant as it may be.\n\nWilliams lies under the pretense that he is presenting facts.", "The real answer: Liberals decide anything that doesn't match their worldview has to be a lie, and they're unable to differentiate fact and opinion.  Therefore, it follows that all opinions with which they disagree must be lies!", "Nice \"I hate Fox News\" circle jerk going on here. But the fact remains that Williams got called out by the actual military pilot who flew him on the date in question who said his incident was entirely fabricated. O'Reilly got \"called out\" by a known extreme left wing magazine, and then had several third party respected journalists back him up saying, \"Eh, did he use language to make it sound as dramatic as possible? Yeah, but he didn't make the whole thing up, it basically happened as described.\"\n\nIf anything continued coverage only makes O'Reilly look like a legit martyr since the two incidents are not really comprable, but moreover MoJo sold it's status as a leftist but serious mag to try and hit piece O'Reilly, and now looks like a petty junior varsity rag because they didn't fact check with third parties before running with their story just for the sake of trying to get Bill. No one is going to back Williams the same way because he lied to combat troops about combat and was called out by combat vets. No where near the same thing as spinning a story to sound more exciting than it really was and getting \"called out\" by a political rival.", "Dan Rather is a better comparison/case.\n\nBrian Williams knowingly miselad. Rather was duped and didnt fact check. and was 100x the journalist that Brian Williams is.\n\nThe thing is, Williams 'knowingly mislead' in terms of just exaggerating a story for a chuckle on a late night show. God, Im glad that Ive never embelished anything before!", "People already know O'Reilly lies (or at least has extreme opinions). No, Fox News isn't \"built on lies\" as other people say, but Bill O'Reilly is more of a commentator, thus does not always tell the \"truth\". It's most of the time just his opinions. Brian Williams really just reads the news and rarely interjects his own specific personal opinion.", "I believe this was summed up best by Stephen Colbert.\nWhen asked who his favorite conservative comedian was, he said Bill O'Reilly. Funny because uncomfortably true.", "* Brian Williams - journalist\n* Bill O'Reilly - Entertainer/Opinion show", "A corollary: Why is there a huge outcry for conservative blood whenever some mush-brained liberal gets caught doing something wrong?", "This is a dead horse now, but O Reilly does a talk show of sorts. They do not open saying here's \"here's tonight's news with Bill o Reilly.\" they DO say \"here's tonight's news with Brian Williams\" or something to that effect. We know the difference between a news show and an opinion show, even though the opinion show is on a \"news\" network. We expect our news to be accurate. Opinions, not so much. ", "Because Bill O'Reilly is opinion based. Brian Williams was a \"real\" journalist.", "Brian Williams is a news anchor. Bill O'Reilly is a political commentator. Bill O'Reilly's bloviating is not frowned upon by his own network because it boosts his ratings and furthers their agenda. \n\nIt is worth noting that most Fox News viewers do not make such a distinction, and likely don't realize there is one. ", "Brian Williams is a news anchor that is supposed to be unbiased (think AP).\n\nBill O'Reilly is a conservative that is on a show where personal opinions are totally relevant to the production.\n\nThe comparison is the problem.", "Bill O'Reilly is more like Stephen Colbert than  Brian Williams", "Because O'Reily hasn't lied, and has been vetted by multiple sources.\n\n", "basically because fox news is based on reporting news and information as they want it reported without regard for accuracy or truthfulness so bill oreilly's fantasy based stories fit right in with the networks philosophy", "He wasn't fired, it wasn't just one lie... And this is the same network that has lied many times before, but somehow is supposed to be reputable. They've even staged car explosions to hurt an automaker.", "Because Fox News reports nothing but lies. They actually fire people that tell the truth.", "Bill O'Reilly's audience can't handle the truth!", "Brian did something his employers didn't want him to do, Bill does what his employers want him to do.\n\nHere in america it's about who's holding the money, not about \"right or wrong\".", "Brian Williams wasn't fired for lying, he was fired for getting caught.  You can't blast Fox as being Faux news if you continue to employ a known liar yourself.\n\nPersonally, they are all equal to me.", "O'Reilly is sort of a mascot.  I don't think he was ever meant to be taken seriously... on Fox \"News\" which I also am not sure is supposed to ever be taken seriously (although regrettably, many do)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/media-matters-all-hands-on-deck-for-bill-oreilly-203178.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qbd48", "title": "Pythagoras, Confucius and the Buddha were all alive and teaching at the same time; was there anyone in the world who might have been aware of all three of them?", "selftext": "I guess I'm also asking about just how much cultural penetration each of them would have had in relation to the others, if any.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qbd48/pythagoras_confucius_and_the_buddha_were_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdb43r9", "cdb5t3k"], "score": [57, 42], "text": ["A similar question - \"Confucius died when Socrates was 10, how aware were the Greeks of the Chinese or vice versa?\" - was asked [here](_URL_0_). Unfortunately we just don't have evidence of any interaction between Indian and Chinese philosophy around this time. The first incursion of Buddhism into China probably happens [sometime around the first century CE](_URL_1_), or not too long afterwards (although uncritical sources/legends place it a bit earlier).\n\nThe situation with Greece and India is a little more complicated. Forgive me for simply copy-pasting one of my follow-up comments in the post I linked:\n\n > We know that the late 4th/early 3rd century BCE historian/ethnographer Megasthenes wrote a work (at the instigation of Seleucus I) called *Indica*, that had data about Indian religion/philosophy. \n\n > Further, there were later works - some perhaps dependent on Megasthenes in parts - that refer to the Indian *gymnosophists*: 'naked sages' (who were probably followers of some form of asceticism). For example, \"Diogenes Laertius . . . refers to them, and reports that Pyrrho of Elis, the founder of pure scepticism, came under the influence of the Gymnosophists while travelling to India with Alexander, and on his return to Elis, imitated their habits of life.\" Although this may be fanciful.\n\n > Not necessarily restricting ourselves to a post-Alexandrian timeframe, we know that there were certain traditions common to Greece and India (cf. metempsychosis). If we were to speculate about this, it's extremely difficult to sort out what might have arisen due to actual influence of one on the other (and then *which way*?), and what is just coincidental similarity - or what might even have arisen due to a common Indo-European heritage of both (for some reason I'm reminded of Buddha's birth from the side of his mother, like the births of Indra and [the Hittite god] Tar\u1e2bunna - cf. also Derrett, \"Homer in India: The Birth of the Buddha\"). \n\n > The scholar Thomas McEvilley has done more work than anyone else on this - esp. on Greco-Indian philosophical connections (and see also the work of Nicholas Wyatt); though his works have been met with some controversy and criticism. A 2005 issue of the *International Journal of Hindu Studies* was devoted to his work. ", "An alternative and possibly easier question is who was the first person to be aware of all three?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1myle2/confucius_died_when_socrates_was_10_how_aware/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Buddhism#Earliest_historical_arrivals"], []]}
{"q_id": "3e6ytf", "title": "Before Cell Theory, how did people explain \"eye floaters,\" (those little strands you sometimes see when you look at something like the sky)?", "selftext": "Tried googling (admittedly briefly) and didn't find anything. Searched here and the only similar question had no responses. Been wondering about it for a bit, so any help would be much appreciated. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e6ytf/before_cell_theory_how_did_people_explain_eye/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctcdrb3"], "score": [4], "text": ["You could try your luck over in /r/askscience, I'm sure there's someone who can give you a good answer on this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2lis0y", "title": "why do death with dignity laws allow people with incurable, untreatable physical illness to end their lives if they wish, but not for people with incurable, untreatable mental illness?", "selftext": "(Throwaway account for fear of flame wars)\n\n\nWhy do states/countries with death with dignity laws allow patients who have incurable, untreatable physical illnesses the right to choose to die to avoid suffering, but don't extend that right to people with mental illness in the same position? I know that suicide is often an impulse decision for people with mental illness, and that some mental illnesses (psychosis, acute schizophrenia, etc) can easily impair a patient's judgment. Still, for people experiencing immense suffering from mental illness and for whom no treatment has been effective, in situations where this pain has a very high likelihood of continuing for the rest of the patient's life, why does it not fall under those law's goals to prevent suffering with incurable diseases? Sure, mental illness isn't going to outright physically kill a person, and new treatments might be found, but that might take many, many years, during which time the person is in incredible distress? If they're capable of making a rational decision, why are they denied that right?\n\n\nThanks for your answers.\n\n\nEDIT: There's been a lot of really good thoughtful conversation here. I do believe I forgot about the requirement for the physical illness to be terminal within six months, so my apologies there. I do wonder though, in regards to suicide and mental illness, as memory serves people facing certain diagnoses (I think BPD is one of them) are statistically much more likely to attempt suicide. People who make one attempt are statistically unlikely to try again, but for people who have attempted multiple times, I think there's a much higher probability of additional attempts and eventually a successful attempt, so that may factor in to how likely their illness is to be \"terminal.\" Still, I definitely agree that a major revamping of the mental health care system is in order. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lis0y/eli5_why_do_death_with_dignity_laws_allow_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clv5syw", "clv5tu4", "clv5unn", "clv7cqi", "clv7f63", "clv99q5", "clv9mpa", "clva0rl", "clvb1qo", "clvb5ca", "clvbjxt", "clvcsl9", "clvcupd", "clvdf3s", "clvdm8e", "clve0ay", "clvey4h", "clvf3jp", "clvfwqv", "clvgoud", "clvgr6j", "clvgzgj", "clvh9o0", "clvhfo1", "clvhhna", "clvhnmd", "clvhqoq", "clvhtss", "clvhz0o", "clvi274", "clvi2pg", "clvigvf", "clviqft", "clvis02", "clvizex", "clvjf4c", "clvk43w", "clvk60q", "clvkpzb", "clvl1re", "clvlbtd", "clvlvsl", "clvn6h8", "clvo22m", "clvojb3", "clvp86t", "clvpgkm", "clvqsdz", "clvscwq", "clvtfrm", "clvua7q", "clvud38", "clvvblt"], "score": [64, 8, 2, 14, 725, 6, 4, 4, 10, 426, 2, 29, 3, 5, 39, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 13, 2, 2, 6, 3, 7, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 7, 5, 2, 5, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["When we can 'see' mental illness like we can see tumors or abnormal blood tests, then much will change. Then instead of stigmatizing those who suffer silently, we can have difficult conversations about quality of life. ", " > Sure, mental illness isn't going to outright physically kill a person\n\nthat's why we should dismiss deep despair and loneliness as \"no big deal\".", "Despite all the recent research and evidence to the contrary, the medical community still clings to the notion that mental illness is more \"all in the patient's head\". Such perceptions often take decades and a few controversies before people finally address the issue.\nThe basic idea is, \"you wouldn't say you wanted to die if you didn't have this mental illness\", even when it clearly has no effect on your ability to make rational decisions. Doctors just don't want to risk being wrong and get charged with malpractice. Yes they're suffering. But better to keep them alive and suffering than dead.\n", "All bodies give out eventually, but our minds (arguably) don't. With physical ailments, people see assisted death as accelerating the inevitable. With mental illness, you're just killing off any chance of recovery. \n\nIf you're physically sick, it makes sense to offer a physical solution. Obviously, there is not always an emotional solution to emotional suffering, but that doesn't mean it's appropriate to move on to just any kind of solution.", "As I understand it, the law does not see mentally I'll people as being competent enough to make such a decision. Even if they actually are", "It appears to be one of those Catch 22s we run across from time to time. In the case of a terminal physical illness, the patient can state, categorically, that \"being of soundmind\" he or she is giving informed consent to undergo the process. Unfortunately, the person with a mental illness is not in a position to do that.", "Like everything someone is going to tell us that we don't know what we're doing. That we don't know what will make us happy, or haven't waited long enough. Or need to be more patient.\n\nOr take the other road and we're unstable and incapable of thinking rationally for ourselves.\n\nBecause people believe they know what's best. iMO it's none of anyone's business. \n\nBut you can't say that, it's not true, you're extreme and irrational. Ignorant or what have you.\n\nYou can't win, unfortunately. ", "How can someone prove that mental illness is untreatable/incurable? The science and medical evidence for physical illness is just more solid and less of a grey area. I'm not for a minute implying mental illness is lesser, just that its more of a grey area in 'proving' its incurable", "It's very controversial, but it does happen in [Belgium](_URL_0_) and has happened in [the Netherlands](_URL_1_).", "I could be mistaken, but I think you've missed one of the criteria in the law. It has to be not only and untreatable illness, but also a *terminal* illness. I'd say that's the difference, as I am unaware of any terminal mental illnesses.", "Which mental illnesses are incurable? Is that even something you can scientifically demonstrate?", "The distinction here is not that patients with incurable and untreatable physical conditions are allowed to die and those with incurable and untreatable mental conditions aren't. That is incorrect. Patients with incurable, untreatable, TERMINAL physical illnesses (usually with a prognosis of six months or less to live) are the ones who are allowed to utilize Death with Dignity. This is mostly because in this case, it is not seen as the decision to end ones life-- that is not a decision, they have a terminal illness and will not survive. The DWD act is used in these situations to hasten death and relieve the patient of suffering before an inevitable death. If a patient with an incurable, untreatable mental illness were to utilize DWD, they would be making the decision to die, not just to hasten a death that is six months off, because their illness, though in some cases equally as painful and difficult, is not terminal. This is for the same reason that in the US, despite how awful your physical condition may be, you can only use DWD if you are terminal and expected to live only 6 months more. Same argument applies for people with awful physical illnesses that will not kill them-- they suffer horribly too, but cannot use DWD. ", "It's not that ALL mentally ill individuals are incompetent, it's just that when someone is suicidal, there is often more evidence than not, that the person's judgement is completely clouded. Therefore, it is probably not the best decision to allow such to be applied to those who are mentally ill. The difference here is that people with a diagnosis of an incurable disease have this option because they are guaranteed to die anyways. I believe it's that they have less than six months to live. So, the difference here lies in the fact that someone with depression for example, is likely not given six months or less to live because of cancer. Does this make sense? ", "\n > \nIf they're capable of making a rationals decision, why are they denied that right?\n\nSimplified answer, they aren't considered rational decision makers in that area by virtue of a diagnosed illness. Suicidal ideation or aspiration is considered a symptom of the illness, not a legitimate rational desire.", "Mental illness is terrible. But it isn't terminal.  Allowing people with mental illness access to assisted suicide would be like letting someone with fibro myalgia access to it because they have daily pain or other chronic diseases that really suck. We aren't considering that they have access to assisted suicide are we? I think before we jump right to this issue we need to first focus on the state of mental health care in North America. People need to have better resources and access to care. We have still not recovered from de institutionalization and this needs to be addressed.  Cancer awareness is everywhere. But where is the mental health awareness? People with mental illness aren't thought of as survivors or warriors. They are looked at as weird and crazy. We need to help the mentally ill live with a better quality of life before we ever consider a \"quality\" death. ", "Often, depression  &  other disorders are caused by an imbalance in the brain, so is that a physical disease?  Depression also can cause physical ailments (pain, insomnia for example), so is that strictly mental?\n\nit's \"assisted suicide\" that's the issue, isn't it? To be legally assisted suicide, there must be a doctor in attendance to administer a legal drug in the proper dose to ensure death. That's the part that needs to change.  Realistically, anyone who wants to end their life can find a way but sometimes it's ugly.  Ensuring a safe  &  sure passing should be the humane thing to do.", "Everyone is talking about depression and curing it...  I pose this question, as someone who received manic depressive disorder diagnosis..\n\nWith 7 billion people on this earth, why not just let us out of the gene pool?  We don't want to be here, no one actively actually cares about our day to day, they just don't want us to make others sad by sharing our true feelings, hurt anyone else of course or end our own suffering because why?!", "Part of this is due to how psychology treated people in the past century.  Institutionalization, experimentation, and abuse/killing of those who were deemed mentally/intellectually defective was horrible.  It lasted until the 1970s in most countries.\n\nThe only reason that physically differently advantaged persons get a right to die is that society can easily admit that they are broken and not whole people.  One of the stupidest and most invalid arguments against suicide is that it has a social cost.  People who kill themselves reduce economic output and create direct medical costs.  It is bullshit, but people actually believe that those who can function should be forced to do so.  Arguments against suicide are always coming from selfishness, so you really cannot examine them logically.  Anti-choice advocates really believe that they can force people to live because the advocates are uncomfortable with the idea of wanting to die (which is part of the thought process of the majority of people and not limited just to those with mental disorders.)", "sound of mind, unsound of body, suicide ok\n\nunsound of mind, sound of body, suicide not ok\n\nhear me out: there are some people with permanent, uncurable, crippling mental illness that is more of a sick body issue than a sick mind issue, yes\n\nbut people kill themselves for temporary mental problems: job loss, relationship loss, etc. and that is a huge problem\n\nso the point is to err on the side of life\n\n(don't shoot the messenger, i'm just explaining the rationalization here)\n\nuntil we get a better way to separate the two problems: temporary mental anguish versus long term debilitating mental illness, then people with mental health problems will face resistance and not acceptance to the idea of suicide\n", "Disclaimer: I say this as someone who suffers from severe depression, and who is around others who suffer from it.\n\nOne of these types of illnesses inevitably leads to pain, suffering and death invariably.\n\nThe other is so difficult to definitively nail down in terms of diagnosis that the person may kill themselves literally a week before they may have just naturally started getting better.\n\nIt's easy to diagnose cancer. It isn't easy to diagnose depression.", "Honestly? Because our society (American anyway) does not understand mental illness and suicide. People assume that if you commit suicide, it was a rash, spur of the moment decision. Not a compounding of years filled with severe sadness, an acceptance of the fact you'll likely never be what society expects you to be and an overly thought out plan that you've been debating for years.\n\nSuicide is rarely a brash decision. Most people who do it successfully have been contemplating it for years but manage to convince themselves not to.\n", "One of the concerns of advocates for the mentally iill or challenged is that a terminally ill person with a healthy mental state can make a decision that is both reasonable and rational.  A mentally ill person or one who is mentally challenged cannot be guaranteed to make a life and death decision that is appropriate.  \n\nIn fact a fear of advocates is that right to die legislation could be used by legal guardians of the disabled to end their lives as a convenience or as a way of removing the burden with no consideration to the dignity of the disabled or to their desires.   That is why right to die legislators are careful to insure that those options are not open.", "I literally just had a debate about this (not that it makes me an expert, but I have an idea to explain it). When dealing with euthanasia, which is what these laws provide for, consent is the key criteria that needs to be met when allowing euthanasia. In order to give consent, one needs to be in a stable, sound mind and must give consent unwaveringly and consistently, and in the case of mental illness, that it very hard to achieve. \nIt can be said that excruciating pain could do the same thing and prevent effective consent, but it muddies the issue, and physical pain is much easier to gauge than mental anguish. If we allow death with dignity for people with mental anguish alone, than depression would fall into that category as well, and evidence shows that many people with temporary depression that request euthanasia or physician assisted suicide revoke their consent when they received treatment for depression, indicating that mental anguish as a grounds for euthanasia alone may lead to decisions that are not in the best interest of the patient, that being one of the other major pieces of criteria.", "Lets say, hypothetically, that mental illnesses are going to be incorporated into these laws. In my opinion, the main issue involves whether you can determine if someone with a mental illness really wants to end their life or is it a side effect of said illness?", "Here is the thing.  If you want to kill yourself, who cares what the law says?  \n\nI am sure you are asking hypothetically.  You probably want it to be legal, or you are unhappy with the way society views mental illness.  \n\nOne reason I think we shouldn't make it any easier to kill yourself when you have a mental illness, is because the mental illness is what is making you suicidal.  Psychologists, medication, family, etc can sometimes help people with mental illness.  Inoperable brain tumor isn't going anywhere.\n\nAssisted suicide when it is medically proven that there is no way you are going to live, and by extending your life you will be causing more suffering is ethical.  (in my mind)  \n\nHelping a suicidal person commit suicide because the have a mental problem is different.  The disorder is causing the suicidal thoughts.  Modern medicine cannot determine the severity of a mental illness yet, and a lot of suicidal people get better.\n", "Psychiatric resident here, and first time poster. I cannot think of a more Orwellian situation than for an individual with mental illness being given license to or even encouraged by a society to kill them self:\n\n(Keep in mind this scenario completely sidesteps the fact that over 1/5th of the US population can be diagnosed with a mental disorder at any one time)  \n\nImagine the hopelessness of a teenage boy leaving a psychiatric ward newly diagnosed with Schizophrenia. That\u2019s a lifetime of stigma placed upon his shoulders. He\u2019s not even a man, and yet he was given a burden which would fell heroes. His mind is reeling from the situation which lead him into the hospital along with all the life changes he has to become accustom to, such as taking several pills every day. Now, despite his illness he\u2019s not a stupid person, he knows he\u2019s likely never to become a professional as he dreamed, he\u2019s more likely to be incarcerated, addicted drugs, he\u2019s going to live roughly 20 years less than other people, and more likely to kill himself anyway\u2026so why prolong the inevitable? \n\nPragmatic members of society would be alright with this boy killing himself. His departure would save a lot of time, energy and resources \u201cbetter\u201d spent on other areas. I mean, who wants to go fix a \u201cbroken cog\u201d or \u201cdamaged person\u201d when it\u2019s a drain on society?  (Trust me, the boy has thought of this)\n\n Statistics show that a person newly diagnosed with a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia is most likely to commit suicide after being discharged from the hospital. Many theorize this is because the patient is \u201cwell enough\u201d to realize what a terrible hand Mother Nature has given them.\n\nNow, is this boy rational in his ability to choose to kill himself? I think he would be; he would kill himself for the same reason most others do \u2013 to escape pain, to escape humiliation and defeat. If he was stabilized upon medications and committed a crime, he\u2019d be held accountable right? Why should he not be afforded the right to kill himself at a young age in order to not only save himself a lifetime of misery and save society the trouble of putting up with him?\n\nMy answer is this \u2013 no person is a broken cog. No person is a cog. There is no \u201cmachine\u201d and there is no greater goal of society than to serve its members \u2013 ALL its members. You are not a \u201clesser\u201d member of society because you have a mental illness. I do not want to live in a society where the mentally ill see themselves as a burden and society is unwilling to tolerate them.  Great men and women in our society have mental illness, (Robin Williams is a recent example) and there is no guarantee that this boy will not be one of them. If he was allowed to kill himself, not only would he be losing his life, society would be losing someone invaluable as well. \n\nThank you for reading my rambling response.\n\n**TL;DR** \u2013 The idea that someone is incurable or untreatable is complete nonsense and society would be less if someone kills them self due to mental illness.\n", "I know if I Would want to die with dignity rather than slowly lose my mind to a number of mental illnesses. It frightening to even think that I could easily lose myself.", "I think one aspect is that generally the law shifts slower when the stakes are higher, and when reason is at odds with historical societal values (the war on drugs, for example). Suicide and the right to die under any circumstances has for centuries been widely regarded as taboo in the West. Our will to live for as long as possible is tested by our increasing longevity though, and attitudes a changing. Slowly but surely, our laws are catching up. Probably we will one day be at the point where it is entirely legal to end your own life even if you are free of mental and physical disability.\n\nI'm certain though, that however our laws on assisted suicide progress, there will always be some kind of review in place to differentiate between rational and irrational desires to die. I don't believe that we are anywhere near able to perfectly assess for that distinction yet, which is why we're not ready for such a legal shift.\n\nThat doesn't really answer your question though; why make that distinction? In a word, consent. It's a potentially contentious issue in even the most straightforward procedures, that\u2019s complicated immensely by even the suggestion of diminished responsibility. As soon as someone makes their mental health the business of the state, the question arises repeatedly; *is this person capable of making sound decisions*. If the subject is suicide, things are complicated further, because of the possibility of coercion.\n\nA person deciding if they want this operation or that procedure, if it is life-saving, or it improves their quality of life, is obviously acting according to their own interests. A person deciding *not* to receive life-saving treatment can under certain circumstances be forced to do so by the state. A person choosing to seek death though; are they acting according to their own interests? It really depends on how you look at it, and that's not nearly clear cut enough for the doctors who would be signing off on the procedure.\n\nAnd of course there\u2019s another reason any state would be hesitant to introduce assisted suicide for non-terminal patients. It would make for a stark, damning statistic. No political party is going to jump at the chance to have their term in office plotted against that particular performance indicator.", "In some countries, that does happen. The Netherlands has had cases where people with chronic clinical depression have ended their lives legally. Belgium reported [52 cases](_URL_0_) of euthanasia for psychological reasons in 2012 alone.\n\nOthers who have replied are correct that the American (Oregonian) law requires that the illness be terminal, but such a requirement does not exist in all countries. A depressed Dutch teenager (18+) could choose to end her life if she meets the rest of the requirements (repeated requests, and two physicians have to sign off).", "This is such a bizarre law/argument. Nobody can stop you from killing yourself but you, man.", "Someone with a botched sex change operation was granted the right to die in Belgium, so mental anguish is grounds for it in some places.\nsource:_URL_0_", "anyone should be able to kill themselves at any point for any reason. it really doesnt make a difference and you will be forgotten anyways. everyone dies.", "People who can be happy think \"oh we all were depressed or get depressed sometimes cheer up things will change\" when that's not the case.\n\nYes there is treatment, drugs and other things. However some things have no treatment and some people would like the treatment of a dignified and respectful death. While I am in the same boat suicide is never the answer I only take this so far, and that is when other means have been tried and the person realistically understands and wants to end their suffering.\n\nI know people who are also happy and want to end it, bored and want to end it, see no reason to life but are happy and want to end it, and people who are severely depressed that can't be fixed and want to end it.\n\nWho are you to force someone to live. I hate everything about suicide, but if someone truly wants it who are we to force otherwise.\n\nP.s. Don't anyone reading take this as a reason to commit suicide. Seek help, exhaust all options and treatment and it may get better. Hopefully it does. If all else fails however, I understand you and want to respect your ultimate choice.\n\nThis post isn't to explain the answer to OP but people who keep posting they are irrational or shouldn't be allowed.", "i think the courts think along the lines of:  \nphysically ill people are still within their mental capacity to make right minded choices.  \nthose who are mentally ill might not be able to make a logical decision ", "I think you make a fair point. We should question why we don't allow everyone the right to a peaceful death at the time of their choosing. If that's what an individual wants to do they should be permitted to do it.", "One problem with mental illnesses is that of consent. If a mental illness is bad enough that a \"normal\" person might choose euthanasia, they probably aren't with it enough to consent to euthanasia.\n\nMental incapacitation comes into play in other areas of a medicine. For example, for EMTs, if someone is high and doesn't want to go to the hospital, that's too bad -- they legally cannot make that decision -- so they have to go, and they're either going in the ambulance or the ambulance in protective custody.", "As someone who has always had incredible depression I wish what you were suggesting was possible.  I'll explain why.\n\nPeople talk about putting their pets \"out of their misery\" or \"ending their suffering\" all the time, so why not people?  Why is a human being, a creature with much greater mental ability unable to make that decision for themselves?  If you asked the dog, and it was able to respond, would it say yes or no?  How is it crueler to make that offer to a human, than force it on an animal?  That's my logic for death with dignity laws for people who are sick, but that also extends to mental illness.\n\nHere's the truth, I'm 28 and I haven't enjoyed being alive since maybe 12.  At least that's the earliest I can remember wanting to die, it may have been earlier..  More than half my life has been spent wishing I didn't exist.  Have there been stretches that were good?  Of course, but never good enough where I had any happiness at life in general, only momentary fleeting happiness.\n\nAnd here's the dark truth no one wants to say, it's never going to change.  Whatever it is that happy people have, I don't have it.  Over time it's lead to me being even more disinterested in everything.  Lack of ambition to further career, lack of confidence with women, lack of desire to improve myself in mostly any way (for some reason working out seems to be the exception though).\n\nDo I want a nice job making good money?  Do I want a wife?  Kids?  Do I want to find passion in some more complex hobby than TV and video games?  Of course, but the truth is, I'll never have any of that.\n\nYou never hear about people being cured of depression.  You only hear \"manage\", \"I've learned to deal with it\", ect...  You don't get better, you just manage it.  It will haunt me until the day I'm lucky enough to die. \n\nSo why haven't I killed myself yet?  A few reasons.  First there's the family issue.  Suicide is incredibly tough on the family of the person who kills themselves.  Obviously there is the natural fear of death, and that holds me back.  Finally, and I think this is the biggest reason, there's no way to do it.  Pills don't work, you just get sick and often have more problems after the attempt due to lifelong damage.  Cutting wrists?  Fuck no, I'm terrified of blood, and it would be extremely painful.  So obviously any other painful way is out.  Jumping?  Takes to long, and I don't think I could actually force myself to jump.  Gun?  That must be easy?  Can't afford one, and very hard to buy a handgun where I live.  Also, guns aren't even a guarantee.  I could just blow off part of my brain and live the rest of my live with brain damage.  On top of that, failure in any way leads to a lifetime of questioning, therapy, maybe even being institutionalized.  So no realistic option for me.\n\nIf it was legal for people like myself to go to a doctor, have him make a cocktail that would put me to sleep for good, I'd be all over it.  No worry about botching due to fear/lack of knowledge/luck.  No one walking in on my body.  No questions.  Just a rational, sound of mind human making the decision to no longer be alive.\n\nWhy isn't it legal?  Religion is a big part of it.  Most religions consider suicide to be a terrible sin, and even extremely liberal countries still have morals guided by religion.  A general human abhorrence of death is probably a major contributor.  Obviously the fear that people rushing into the decision is a valid one as well.  Also, people would rather someone live in misery quietly, than feel guilt for what they could have done.\n\nSo yeah, I'll probably get crushed for my opinion, but that's my opinion on the issue.  But in the end the happiest day of my life will be the day I finally do kill myself, and it would be wonderful if a legal means to make that happen sooner was available.", "It does seem inhumane to force somebody to continue living with a crippling mental illness. However, there are a million ways to take your own life, and the government can't realistically stop you from doing any of them. ", "I think the right to end your life should be legal regardless of your mental or physical condition.  I had a friend recently take his life. I knew this person for 20 years and for about 10 of those years he was depressed and had anxiety issues. He came from a  poor family and due to his mental issues he had no personal relationships or upper level connections for education or career paths.  \n\nHe left a note outlining his reasoning for taking his own life and I completely understood why he did it. He tried every medication and therapy technique to attempt to resolve his issues. After 10 years of getting nowhere, he honestly had no other logical decision.  He used a quick and painless method at the end. He scheduled an email to the local authorities and wore a tux so he would look decent when he was retrieved. When he did it, I had a deep sigh of relief because I knew he was in a better state. \n\nI think a law should be introduced which allows a person to either take their own life or allow doctors to anonymously assist the person by providing necessary medicine for a painless and quick death.  The criteria should contain items from the following:\n\n* Proof of a diagnosis of a mental condition from a certified professional\n* Documents which show the person's mental condition having negative effect on the person's life. This can include a poor work history, poor financial management, bad credit score, poor grades, etc.\n* Notarized signature of at least one immediate relative\n* No legal issues (Active court cases, alimony, active warrants, etc)\n* Enough money to cover any costs associated with the voluntary death and the processing afterwards or insurance which would cover it\n\nIf I were in a situation where my mental state would not allow me to be successful or happy after years of medication and therapy, instead of burdening my family or tax payers for medical bills, I would rather just end it and be happy.  I would rather see the tax payer money saved put into scholarships to reduce the cost of education for those who will be successful.\n\nYou could argue that someone in enough physical pain could not be in the right state of mind to end their life with a terminal illness.", "Several countries including [The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland](_URL_2_) allow assisted suicide in these cases. It is highly controversial (as the linked article indicates) but the arguments in favor are not easily dismissable. One of the main reasons against it is the stigma of mental illness and the fact that in some situations patients are not considered able to make rational choices and may overestimate the amount of suffering they experience during the rest of their lives. However in cases where a death wish exists over a long period of time and does not simply appear during an episode of the illness, such a choice may be rational and it would even be unethical to not help the person carry out that wish.\n\nCurrently, the Netherlands appears to allow euthanasia for [dementia](_URL_1_) while Switzerland also allows non-nationals to use the service of local organizations such as Dignitas and Exit. This law in Switzerland has been used in [multiple cases also by foreign patients with mental illness](_URL_0_).", "They do in the Netherlands, but it's quite new. Problem with mental illnesses is that the patient is not always mentally fit to make this decision so that's why mental issues are treated differently when it comes to euthanasia.", "Powerful people have an overwhelming need to decide what is or is not acceptable for other people.", "I would assume the nature of many mental illnesses voids a person's ability to rationally judge whether they want to die or not, at least in the eyes of the law.", "My first guess is that they're not seen as being able to make that decision for themselves.", "Except for the fact that there are few mental illnesses that are untreatable. Depression, acute schizophrenia, mild psychosis, etc can all be treated with lifestyle changes and medication.\n\nFor those that are not treatable, they generally leave someone in a position where they are mentally incapable of making the rational choice to end their life.", "They have to be suffering with an incurable *terminal* illness as other posters said. However there is a case in Belgium a man with incurable violent pedophilic urges is being allowed the \"right to die\". It's because he's suffering with the urges and has had several psychologists tell him it's incurable and he can never be released into society (he's in jail).\n\n_URL_0_", "A person with mental illness here.\n\nFact of the matter with Mental Illness is that we don't understand it. There is a lot of speculation as to reasoning in this thread, but it's pretty far off.\n\nThere are forms of mental illness that cause near unlivable conditions for the sufferer. Schizophrenia is a perfect example. The only treatment available more or less numbs you, and that state itself can be pretty horrible.\n\nThe question was why aren't people with mental illness allowed to end their lives? We don't know what is medically wrong with people who suffer from these conditions. We can't say \"Oh yes, Bill's Schizophrenia has progressed too far.\"\n\nDoctors would rather attempt to treat the patient rather than allowing them to end their life.\n\nWhen your brain doesn't work properly people don't trust your judgements, and for good reason at times. Don't think that people with mental illness aren't given a choice on life, they just aren't understood, so it makes that choice more difficult.", "A better question might ask why the state has any right to say I can't end my life for any reason whatsoever.", "Here in The Netherlands it's for mental illness as well. You have to be able to prove there is suffering without prospect of relief. I guess that is harder to detemine for mental illnesses, but it is allowed.", "Response to your edit\n\n > People who make one attempt are statistically unlikely to try again, but for people who have attempted multiple times, I think there's a much higher probability of additional attempts and eventually a successful attempt, so that may factor in to how likely their illness is to be \"terminal.\"\n\nTerminal means you are going to die. 100% no doubt in anyone's mind. A high probability of dying isn't the same as absolutely dying. It means you're going to die because whatever is killing you can't be cured or stopped. If we could stop cancer cells from killing you, euthanasia would no longer be an option. So these people don't want to kill themselves, they've just accepted death is inevitable and they're deciding how and when it happens. If they could not die, they would choose that route which means they're in a healthy state of mind. \n\nWe can stop you from killing yourself, suicidal tendencies are not incurable, you're not accepting an inevitable death, you're actively seeking it as a solution which says you're not in a healthy state of mind. \n\nSo I can't have life anymore, I might as well die how I want vs I don't want life anymore, I might as well die \n", "There are a few requirements to this. The patient must be TERMINALLY ill and diagnosed by two different physicians. They want to make sure the person is actually terminal, so a second opinion is needed. The application process is stepwise and over the course of a few months. The reason for this is to 1: get all of the diagnostic materials in order and processed and 2: to give the patient time to contemplate the choice they are wanting to make. Suicide isn't something you come back from very easily.  The patient MUST be decisional. This is why many mental illnesses are not qualified for PAS. The decision for suicide must be the patients and disorders such as schizophrenia or severe depression will hinder a patients decisionality. Also, the patient must be physically functional. Kevorkian (spelling?) went to prison because when an ALS patient could not push the button thimself, he pushed it for him. So the patient needs to be able to self administer the lethal drug combo. ", "Even drawing the line at terminal cases can be complex. I reported on this issue just last week on PBS NewsHour Weekend (_URL_0_). A doctor we spoke to (who has been a longstanding opponent of assisted dying) discussed the case of his wife who well outlived an initial terminal diagnosis. But we also spoke to the state health authority in Oregon, and we learned that the majority of those who follow through with the state's DWD protocol are principally older and suffering from the end-stage of debilitating cancers and similar diseases. Most interestingly: about a third of people who've received life-ending prescriptions in Oregon actually didn't take them.", "Because there is no such thing as an incurable, untreatable mental illness. Additionally, the people covered under the law are going to die very painful and drawn out deaths in the immediate future. People with mental illnesses are not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/how_my_mother_died", "http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicide-for-depression.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24373107"], [], ["http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10346616/Belgian-killed-by-euthanasia-after-a-botched-sex-change-operation.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/switzerland/", "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2779624/Number-mentally-ill-patients-killed-euthanasia-Holland-trebles-year-doctors-warn-assisted-suicide-control.html", "http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/557817"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.newsweek.com/belgian-murderer-granted-assisted-suicide-request-270414"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-movement/"], []]}
{"q_id": "73nom6", "title": "Do those in the medical field live longer than average due to the benefit of being exposed to so many diseases (superior immunity)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/73nom6/do_those_in_the_medical_field_live_longer_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnshogg"], "score": [9], "text": ["Probably not for a few reasons. Professions within the medical field are generally fairly high stress, and stress is a factor that has been proven to increase rates of mortality. Also, your thymus is responsible for producing t-lymphocytes which are generally responsible for having a \"strong\" immune system. Thymus development only occurs during early adolescent years and atrophies during adult years. Exposure to specific antigens would build antibodies against that specific antigen assuming pharmacologic intervention wasn't required, but their general immune response would be dictated on the development of their thymus in earlier years. \n\nThose within the medical profession are likely to have a greater span of artificially acquired immunity to various illnesses because of their jobs requiring up to date vaccinations and titers etc. But they would not have greater naturally acquired immunity as a result of their jobs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "h3ccj", "title": "Majorana fermion annihilation?", "selftext": "If a Majorana fermion is it's own antiparticle, what exactly does that mean and what how does it relate to pair annihilation?  I've have come up with 3 possibilities.\n\n1)  There is only one flavor of a majorana fermion and it doesn't annihilate with anything.\n\n2)  There are two flavors of a majorana fermion and the particle and anti-particle will annihilate like normal.  They just have the exact same properties in all respects.\n\n3)  There is only one flavor of a majorana fermion and any particle will annihilate with any other particle.\n\nI am thinking the answer is probably 3, but I was hoping someone could help clarify this for me.  I am thinking this is kinda like a photon but a fermion instead of a boson?\n\nThanks for any insights you can give.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h3ccj/majorana_fermion_annihilation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1sa4ch"], "score": [4], "text": ["Since this isn't getting a lot of love, I'll try my hand.  Please keep in mind I haven't done QFT in a long long time.\n\nSo, we don't know of any fermions that are Majorana particles.  The electron, muon, and tau are definitely not Majorana, but it seems that we aren't sure about the neutrino (a lot of experiments are out there are looking for neutrinoless double beta decay, something that only occurs if neutrinos are Majorana type fermions).  You probably know this, but I just want to be clear my answer will be based on the Majorana neutrino.\n\nSo, I don't think any of your options are correct.  Perhaps you are misunderstanding what flavour is?  The way I am reading your question it seems that you are assigning different \"flavour\" values on whether it is an anti-particle type or not (ie: the electron and positron are two flavours of the same particle).  This isn't quite right, flavours have to do with the observed three generations of matter (in the charged leptons these three flavours are electron, muon and tau).  The standard model (and our experimental observations) give no basis for why we have 3 flavours of matter...so whether or not the neutrino (or whatever) is Majorana type has no consequence on the number of flavour states.\n\nBut to now answer your questions;  you are correct that when a particle is Majorana type, it is it's own antiparticle....if we want to be a bit more precise we would say that it is the two different chiral states (of the same particle) that will annihilate each other.  It is important to say chiral states here (instead of handedness) because in the case of massive particles (like the neutrino) we can get a whole slew of added processes (like neutrinoless double beta decay) that is only suppressed instead of forbidden.\n\nSo, in the case of massless particles your answer 2) makes the most sense (but using a different word than flavour to describe these states), and in the case of massive particles your answer 3) is probably closest (with the same caveat).\n\nDoes this make sense?  The fact that you even know about Majorana particles tells me you know something about this stuff, so hopefully it wasn't too basic (and let me know if it is too much!).  good luck, this is interesting stuff!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4li7hl", "title": "In The Man In The Highcastle universe the Japanese conquer the west coast of America  &  turn it into a colony. During WW2 did Americans really believe the Japanese wanted to, or were capable of doing that?", "selftext": "Philip k Dick would have been a young teenager during the war", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4li7hl/in_the_man_in_the_highcastle_universe_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3nr47y", "d3nrqcx", "d3o0rxg"], "score": [29, 18, 5], "text": ["They certainly believed that the Japanese might attack at least, as seen by the network of facilities built near the coast and also inland (such as the Naval Ordnance Plant in Pocatello, Idaho) and \"[passive defense](_URL_0_)\" camouflage ordered for military and critical civilian facilities in case of air attack. \n\nIf there was a serious notion about invasion, the leadership didn't appear to roll it down hill. I've been through the security officer's files for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Seattle and there's lots of things about aerial attack, but no plans for invasion.", "To help bolster OP's question some time ago [a thread](_URL_0_) in /r/MapPorn showed what was supposedly an American anti-war propaganda map from 1937. It shows the US divided very similarly to the situation in Philip K. Dick's book, with the West Coast under Japanese(?) domination.\n\nIf this map is real, does anyone know the story behind it?\n\n[Direct imgur link to map.](_URL_1_)", "I've never heard of any reasonable expectation of Japanese colonization of the US mainland but the internment of Japanese-Americans/expats gives a strong indication that some sort of 5th column sabotage effort was perceived to be possible. \n\nIt also bears mentioning that The Man in the High Castle's setting is supposed to be a deliberately counter-factual parallel to the real world. Rather than America colonizing Japan and Germany the reverse happened in Dick's universe. The practical considerations of the setting were much less important than the thematic value."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Misc/PassiveDefense/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44i1bw/american_antiinvolvement_propaganda_map_1937/", "http://imgur.com/eabense"], []]}
{"q_id": "2elgsh", "title": "What happens if you force a DC generator to rotate in the wrong direction?", "selftext": "This question came up in our EE tute today and devoured a whole hour because the lecturer wasn't sure how to explain it.\n\nCan anyone help me understand what would happen if, for example, you had a motor in operation and then forced it to rotate even faster (mechanically somehow)? Would it draw extra current and sap the battery faster?\n\nAfter doing some reading, I understand that in 3 phase (as with windmills that accidentally flip) it would deliver negative sequence current to the grid (I think), but for some reason the simpler version of the question had us all confused and I couldn't find an answer.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2elgsh/what_happens_if_you_force_a_dc_generator_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck0tor9", "ck0u9ay", "ck16zrb"], "score": [5, 5, 2], "text": ["*Power requirement* is the variable that changes the energy/time requirement of a DC motor. Overspinning a DC motor will have the effect of decreasing the power requirement of the system. (Assuming an induction motor) Thus, Power supplied by the circuit will decrease, and decrease the amps delivered to the motor. \n\nWhen you spin a DC motor in reverse, it becomes a DC generator! thus, it will supply a voltage to the circuit, possibly charging an in-line battery if the voltage produced by the DC generator is greater than that of the battery.\n\nSource: Electrical Engineering Principles and Applications 6th Allan R. Hambley.\n\nedit: Interesting side note, an AC generator will work the same regardless of the direction it is turned. This is because it uses diodes to rectify the net voltage of the system, which essentially negates all negative sections of voltage produced by the phases. ", "Someone might come along and correct me but from what I understand it depends on what you mean by DC generator, there's quite a few different types. \n\nIn general, you will basically get a negative voltage if you spin the rotor in the opposite direction. There might be some damage to the motor if it is not designed for this, i.e. additional brush wearing, but that's the essence of it as far as I am aware.\n\nFor you second question - if you mechanically span the rotor faster than the speed corresponding to the voltage supplied to the motor then the motor would act as a generator, charging up your battery.\n\nI'm sure I have oversimplified so if anyone knows more feel free to correct me!", "Think about energy flow.\n\nWhen the motor spins a load it takes electric power and converts it to mech. When you try to spin the motor from the load side you are essentially decreasing the load and eventually you apply torque to the motor making it a generator.\n\nP = M \u03a9 when M (torque) change signs the Power change sign also. Negative power draw = power generation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5220s8", "title": "Why does healthy human eye have no chromatic aberration?", "selftext": "Telescope manufacturers charge fortunes for telescopes with good color correction. They use two and three lens combinations to fight chromatic aberration, which is well explained by physics. But how does an eye, with just one lens in it have no aberration? Is it the processing in the brain that eliminates it? Have anyone tried to capture what's in the \"focal surface\" of the eye with a CCD sensor or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5220s8/why_does_healthy_human_eye_have_no_chromatic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7h2urg", "d7h4jen"], "score": [6, 6], "text": ["We only see sharp in full color in a very tiny 2\u00b0 to 10\u00b0 field of vision, outside of that sweet spot, color vision gets worse and worse the farther away you get from it. We're practically red-green color blind (or even worse) at the periphery of our field of vision. Our visual system constantly constructs an illusion of seeing everything sharply and in full color, while in fact, we only see a small portion of our full field of vision sharply and colorful. Even if we had severe aberration at the outer edges of the FOV, we wouldn't notice it.\n\nBut, actually we have noticeable chromatic aberration under special circumstances. Try to read deep red letters on a deep blue background (or the other way around). It's very hard because these colors are at the opposite ends of the visible spectrum, which leads to noticeable aberration.\n\nI know it's highly simplified, but it should be correct enough. ", "[I recommend having this diagram of the human eye open for the following explanation](_URL_1_)\n\nOne thing I'd like to correct right ahead is the assumption that the eye has only one lense. The cornea, the outermost layer of the \"optical apparatus\" of the eye, does also contribute to refraction, to a larger degree than the lense even (+43 dpt from the cornea + ~19 dpt from the lense when accomodated into the distance, -3 dpt from the fluid between the cornea and the lense). The cornea thus acts a lense in the physical sense. The eye is rather a 2-lense-system, with the part that is actually called lense being responsible for adapting focal lengths through accomodation and desaccomodation in order to project a clear and highly resolved picture onto the retina depending on the distance of the object you want to focus on, while the cornea contributes the bulk of refraction in the first place. However, geometrical imperfections in the optical apparatus of the eye mean that either form of aberration naturally occur, and instead the perception of aberration is compensated through a combination of anatomical and neurophysiological measures.\n\nA couple of factors play into the limitation of chromatic aberration (although note that it isn't completely eleminated, these are onl compensatory measures). The major reason the human vision experiences only little to no amounts of chromatic aberration is because of the local distribution of light receptors across the retina. The fovea centralis, the part of the retina with the highest density of cones, lacks the cones associated with the perception of \"blue light\" (short-wavelength, or S-cones) in the very center (the foveola) and is instead filled with \"green\" and \"red responsive\" cones (medium-wavelength M-cones and long-wavelength L-cones respectively). The immediate periphery around the foveola (the fovea and by extension the entirety of the macula, the anatomical structure on the retina in which the fovea is situated) has a gradually increasing amount of S cones, however. [This picture](_URL_0_) represents the distribution of cones in the fovea for \"normal\" eyes on the left and color-blind eyes with protanopia on the right. [The spectra of L and M cells](_URL_2_) are close enough to each other that chromatic aberration is insignificant as-is in the tiny space they're packed in, while the aberration of short-wavelength \"blue\" light is strong enough so blue light is more likely to hit and focus on the ring of S cones around the foveola/fovea anyway. In short, the chromatic aberration of the short end of the wavelength spectrum is anatomically corrected for through receptor distribution.\n\nAdditionally, information from different cones is converged to different systems of nerve cells of the optic nerve (ganglion cells) that form \"receptive fields\", which interact in such a way that neighboring receptive fields inhibit each other to increase the acuity of the signal about to be transmitted to the visual cortex. In general, each cone corresponds to one ganglion cell. L and M cones (red and green) generally influence the same type of ganglion cells of the so called parvocellular system (which is generally functionally associated with color vision, as opposed to the magnocellular system responsible for the perception of movements), while S cones (blue) have a separate ganglionic cell tract feeding into the brain (koniocellular system, although the koniocellular system in its entirety fulfills a range of different functions). The receptive fields corresponding to L and M cones tend to antagonize each other, further limiting the effect of chromatic aberration locally on the retina. Brain processing of the separated information delivered through the parvocellular and koniocellular systems (and magnocellular system) that went through the optical nerve and the optical tract all the way to the visual cortices is the last step in forming a cohesive and acute representation of the picture as pre-processed by the retina, minimizing the perceived amount of aberration caused by the optical system of the eye.\n\nI realize this is a lot of rather complex/specific info condensed really tightly, so if there's anything I should elaborate further on, don't hesitate to ask."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/ConeMosaics.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_en.svg/590px-Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_en.svg.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Cones_SMJ2_E.svg/635px-Cones_SMJ2_E.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "u6p7k", "title": "Did we ever find out what was behind that secret door in the pyramids that they found in the ventilation systems with a robo cam?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6p7k/did_we_ever_find_out_what_was_behind_that_secret/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4ssgio", "c4ssl51", "c4st1sn", "c4stmnc", "c4stx2k", "c4sut86"], "score": [27, 38, 22, 19, 25, 3], "text": ["you talking about [this?](_URL_0_)", "I remember a Fox special in the early 2000s where they drilled through a door thing only to find another door.  Is this what you were talking about?", "I'm glad we're getting questions like yours now as opposed to all those war ones, they got old and irritating quickly.", "For those who are confused, there was a website called \"_URL_1_\". Anyway, it had a grainy black-and-white picture of what looked like a tunnel, with a message on it saying that you had some amount of time (it varied wildly, apparently depending on time zone) to pay him $5,000,000 or he would upload the \"full video\" onto the WWW. LiveLeak had the video, but now-i-know filed a copyright claim and it's taken down. I never took interest in it. It appears the guy was charging $7 for downloads, and it's essentially a scam. I'll keep doing some research.\n\nEDIT: [Found this just now.](_URL_0_) I haven't seen the full video yet, but apparently something creepy appears partway through the RC car's excursion. A statue or effigy of some kind.", "Deep down, I want the pyramids to be more than just tombs.  The things are so huge and must have consumed so much of the surplus labor(seriously, does anyone have good figures for the number of man hours/ population size, for a rough idea of the % GDP?) of a society that was unimaginably poor by modern standards, I really don't want people build them to house corpses.  are there any respectable theories on this account or just history channel nonsense?", "On a related note, any one know what good old Dr Hawass is up to these days?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://news.discovery.com/history/great-pyramid-secret-door-mystery-111209.html"], [], [], ["http://theparanoidgamer.com/now-i-know-full-video/", "now-i-know.com"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jsye0", "title": "why do the touch screens of some mobile phones only work with the finger. they dont work with a pen or anything else. why so?", "selftext": "URL or Text Here", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jsye0/eli5_why_do_the_touch_screens_of_some_mobile/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbhz2rm", "cbi2hv2", "cbi352c", "cbi4wyh", "cbi4yc4", "cbid5kv", "cbieix1", "cbifkjv", "cbigmmf"], "score": [1267, 6, 9, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Most touch screens with a hard surface, like on phones etc, use an effect known as 'capacitive coupling' (hence the name capacitive touch screen) to sense a press. The surface of the panel forms a capacitor with your body and the circuitry senses this.\nIt requires a slightly conductive pointer, hence why a hotdog will work but an insulating pen wont.\n\nA resistive touchscreen (they are *slightly* squishy to press) relies on physical pressure, so any pointer will work with them.\n\nThen there's infra red touchscreens too, which line up a row of sensors and IR transmitters (like a row of tiny versions of your TV remote) along the edges of the screen and sense your finger blocking the light from travelling from one side to another. They can use anything that isn't transparent to work.", "They also work with a sausage. No joke.", "Why does the DS touch screen work with a stylus but the same stylus doesn't work with my phone?", "it works through conductivity of the skin, but some touch screens don't work for me, because my fingers tips are not very conductive, so i have a problem were i cannot use the majority of apple touch screen devices, which is a huge pain, especially when trying to find a new phone, but i am glad my new Samsung galaxy ace ii x works,", "My real question, why doesn't my note 2 stylus work with the girlfriends note 2 and vice versa?", "What enables a stylus to work on touch screens?", "All the answers here are far over-complicated. Here it is, as far as I understand it: \n\nThere are wires underneath your screen. These wires are not grounded. You have electrons moving through your body. When you touch the screen, the electrons can run from the battery of your phone, to the ground you are standing on, thus completing the circuit. Your phone registers where the circuit is formed, and voila! Touch screen magic", "Broccoli can use the touch screen on iPhones/iPods ", "My tongue works."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2iurco", "title": "In the Soviet Union, was \"Kremlinology\" really a thing? Were Kremlin watchers really able to learn what has happening behind the scenes in the govt by interpreting seemingly minor gestures  &  details? Examples?", "selftext": "From Wikipedia:\n\n > During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to \"read between the lines\" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the *removal of portraits*, the rearranging of chairs, *positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square*, *the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as \"First Secretary\"*, the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper \"Pravda\" and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.\n\n\nI know that Soviet scholars  &  journalists at the time tried to read these signals. What I want to know was, were they ever right? Or was it all some kind of political science mysticism?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2iurco/in_the_soviet_union_was_kremlinology_really_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl6efdo"], "score": [5], "text": ["Just to clarify: your quote seems to be saying that Western analysts were the ones doing these deep readings, but your question is about Soviet journalisms. Do you mean Western journalists that covered the Kremlin/USSR, or do you mean journalists within the USSR?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3f9v6a", "title": "What factors allowed the Romans to dominate the entire Mediterranean? Specifically, why were they the only ones to achieve this?", "selftext": "To clarify the question, I'm not asking for an exhaustive list of what the Romans did well. Rather, I'm asking what was so unique about their circumstances that no other complete Mediterranean empire ever arose, and how after the Romans very few even managed to united Italy for at least another thousand years, much less the rest of their core domains.\n\nMore specifically, for many major, ancient long lasting Empires, there is a repeating patterns of their geographical heartlands and limits. For example, the Chinese heartland has unified, fragmented and unified again numerous times. The Persian Empires almost always contain the same heartlands as their predecessors. Most of the Northern Indian empires throughout history occupy the heartland. Same with Egypt, the Anatolian states, or even the entirety of the Eastern Mediterranean. \n\nTo be concise, it seems many of these regions repeatedly come under the same regimes and empires throughout history. There almost seems like geographical and ethnic fate for the core regions of these empires to never be splintered for long. One can say it's logical for these great empires to arise again and again out of the same place, and occupy roughly the same core areas.\n\nObviously there have existed many empires who go far beyond these traditional borders (that is to say, empires that combined large swaths of previously unrelated territories), and afterwards we never again see those territories under the same authorities. But it seems most of such empires never last very long, and they quickly dissolve back to the status quo.\n\nFor example, Alexander quickly conquered and combined Macedonia, Greece and the Persian empire. Yet just as quickly the empire dissolved back into pieces that fit pretty neatly with predecessor states and empire (i.e. it dissolves roughly into the old territories of Egypt, Median Empire, Hittite Empire, Greece).\n\nSame with the Mongols. As quickly as they conquered, they dissolved even quicker into 4 pieces, 3 of which geographically correspond well with older empires (Persia, Qara Khitai, China). Even the Caliphate dissolved similarly within time.\n\nBut the Romans seem special. They completely dominated the Mediterranean for what, 500 years? Much longer than most of the \"one-and-done\" Empires in history. For centuries the Romans held off the decay into their original constituent states, seemingly without extreme difficulty. Yet afterwards barely anybody managed to unite Italy, much less the Mediterranean. \n\nJustinian came close to ruling the entire Mediterranean, yet that effort exhausted the Byzantines, so much so that in hindsight we consider the reconquest to be a hopeless venture that could never have lasted, despite massive military victories. Why was it so incredibly difficult, and almost logistically impossible for the Byzantines to fully recreate the Roman empire? And for that matter, virtually anybody else?\n\nWas it simply because the Romans were fortunate enough to greatly develop in technology and organization at a time when none of their neighbors could match it? And once the people of the Mediterranean semi-reached parity with each other, it became impossible for any one of them to dominate all of the others?\n\nOr were the Romans of the late Republic/early Empire just... special?\n\nTLDR; why is it considered pretty much impossible, in the post-Roman world, for anybody to recreate the borders of that empire in a lasting manner? What changed in those centuries of Roman rule, that turned the reality of a lasting, united Mediterranean into a pipe dream?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3f9v6a/what_factors_allowed_the_romans_to_dominate_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctnjuek", "ctmx9i2", "ctmy8t9", "ctn05ob", "ctn431k"], "score": [2, 10, 96, 7, 2], "text": ["I think there are some flaws, but Arthur Eckstein wrote a book called Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome.  His central thesis was the Roman flexibility and ability to incorporate their conquered enemies into their system of government (usually not entirely, but with gradually increasing privileges) and their ability to harness their manpower in future conquests went a long way.  The book is written from a political science perspective and, imo, convincingly argues that the normal state of being at the time was war (everyone was either at war or planning for a war) and international law was at a minimum.\n\nI think the most illustrative example is the Second Punic War.  During that war, the Greek cities rebelled, but the Latin cities never did and Rome was able to harness their manpower to the point that, even after Cannae, they were able to field enough Legions to harass Hannibal and to conquer Spain (and support efforts in Illyria).  But I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say it was preordained.  The Seleucids had just a strong claim to lasting empire in spite of their serious flaws.  Eckstein was able to demonstrate the balance of power in the Diodichi and, when Antiochus started to upset that balance, Rome was invited in.  Romes success created a new status quo where she was able to dominate the entire Mediterranean.", "This is both a answer to your question and not.\n\nIf you asked a roman your question he would certainly say: \"That's easy, we were meant to conquer everything. It was our destiny\". This idea is probably best represented in Virgil's \"Aeneid\", notably in the following passage:\n\n > Others will cast more tenderly in bronze / \nTheir breathing figures, I can well believe, / \nAnd bring more lifelike portraits out of marble; Argue more eloquently, use the pointer / \nTo trace the paths of heaven accurately / \nAnd accurately foretell the rising stars. /\nRoman, remember by your strength to rule / \nEarth\u2019s peoples\u2014for your arts are to be these: / \nTo pacify, impose the rule of law, / \nTo spare the conquered, battle down the proud.\n\nVirgil lived in the end of the first century BC and was a contemporary to Augustus, Rome's first emperor. So this was written in a moment where Rome's rule was reaching its height, but the idea is probably older.\n\nIt was certainly widespread among Rome's elite and was present in the mindset of romans for a long time. This is an account by Peter the Patrician (c. 500-64) about the peace talks between the Romans and the Persians after Galerius had utterly crushed the Persian armies and was raoming free in their heartlands:\n\n > For you guarded the rule of victory well in Valerian\u2019s case, when you deceived him with tricks, took him captive and did not release him until old age and his shameful death, when you, after his death, conserved his skin with some disgusting method and thereby afflicted the mortal body with immortal offence.\u2019The emperor went through all this and added that his mind was not changed by what the Persian embassy tried to convey, namely that he should respect human fate (because one should rather be enraged by this if one considered what the Persians had done), but that he would follow the footsteps of his own ancestors, whose custom it had been to spare their subjects but to fight the ones who opposed them;\n\nThe reference to \"Aeneid\" is very clear in the last sentence.\n\nOf course, this is more of a justification than a cause. And I doubt any serious historian would argue the romans conquests was divine will. But it's interesting to note that the romans did have an answer to your question (at least the why it rose part). And without a doubt that kind of mindset helped the Roman Empire achieve its success.", "This is a question that has been around since the days of Rome's expansion: the historian Polybius actually wrote his book to explain to contemporaries how it was possible that Rome, emerging from the comparatively marginal western Mediterranean, was able to become masters of the area in such a short amount of time. His focus was primarily internal: he believed that the Roman political system had more or less hit the \"sweet spot\" in terms of its organization, in that it was dynamic enough to change to new circumstances but stable enough to not collapse in on itself. The army also got credit, as the Roman war machine was regarded, correctly, as a step above all its opponents. There has been a lot of nuance, debate and reworking of this argument but the basics have remained more or less relevant two thousand years on.\n\nInstead, I want to focus on the external situation, because Rome was actually very lucky in quite a few ways. For one, it never really faced two major enemies at the same time. If, for example, the Gallic kings of Italy had risen ten years after they had they would have been fighting along a renewed Carthage under Hannibal and perhaps would not have faced a rather ignominious defeat at Telamon. When the threats were a bit closer to each other things went poorly, such as when Mithridates attacked just after the a major civil war and very nearly caused the entire eastern empire to collapse. And of course in the third century CE when Persian and German expansions coincided the empire came very close to collapsing. So blind luck played a role.\n\nAlongside this, though, the political situation in the Mediterranean was favorable for something like Rome. Its expansion was somewhat video game like, in that it didn't face outsized threats after the fourth century or so. The Rome that faced Pyrrhus probably could not have defeated Carthage, but within a century it had absorbed its conquests and added them to its strength. This was because Italy was just marginal enough that it didn't attract the notice of the wealthier powers in the East, but it also wasn't some sort of backwater. Unlike Sicily, for example, which was the battleground of empires for centuries. And as for its opponents in the East when it did face them, they were the right mix of being state societies, so that Rome was able to simply co-opt the systems it conquered, while also not being super well governed. They were never able to levy their superior economic potential into military potential, and they were also always fighting among themselves.\n\nFor why nobody did it before, probably in part because Rome was the first empire to think of the Med as \"Mare Nostrum\".", "This is, of course, a classic question in Roman historiography. How did one tiny village founded on a hill in Latium come to hold sway over the entire Mediterranean? Polybios posits that is was Rome's \"\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03b1\" or constitution, for more information see Polybios book vi. Mommsen, the great German historian, believed that Rome conquered the Mediterranean in self-defense. Indeed, this is greatly similar to how Rome's own historians defended Rome's actions, even Polybios mentions \u03c6\u03cc\u03b2\u03bf\u03c2 or fear's role in Rome's conquests. A watershed monograph in the study of Roman imperialism is W.V. Harris' \"Roman Imperialism,\" in which he propounds that Rome was spurred on to conquer the Mediterranean on account of self-enrichment and cultural/social reasons. To expand on the former: the Romans wanted to conquer because they liked wealth that came from conquest; to expand on the latter: military success was integral to a Roman elite's standing in society and, in many ways, dictated his success in the politics, one here recalls Sallust's certamen gloriae. For example, most praetores triumphales reached the consulship prior to the first century BCE (if I recall correctly the number is something to the tune of 19 out of 21). The study of roman imperialism had entered a sort of fallow period, but economic imperialism has become more or less accepted. If this really interests you, you should consider reading Harris' monograph, though be warned: none of the ancient texts are translated.", "One factor appears to have been the systematic militarization of Roman society coupled with a process of replacing small farmers with slave labor.  \n\nI was taught the process was something like this:  \n1.  Farms consolidated into large estates  \n2.  Farmers join army with promise of land after serving  \n3.  Conquest brings in new slaves and new land for retiring soldiers  \n4.  Slaves replace farmers as yet more small holding were consolicated . . . \n\nIt was a self perpetuating cycle that allowed a significant % of men to serve and that drive intense pressures to keep expanding.\n\nSignificant food imports also freed manpower for service.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "j2d7l", "title": "how exactly does a bank account work?", "selftext": "I'm only 14 and I don't have a bank account.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2d7l/how_exactly_does_a_bank_account_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c28k87p", "c28kam4", "c28kk34", "c28l4ri", "c28l8og"], "score": [6, 35, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["The money you give allows the bank to give it to other people who need money in the form of loans or to invest the money in some other way to make profit.\n\nAs someone who has a bank account, you get to leave money with the bank for safekeeping or enjoy the benefits of using a debit card so you do not have to carry around cash or so you can buy things from places where cash is not accepted.", "You give your bank your money.  They put it in the vault and keep track of how much they have from you.\n\nThey will from time to time lend your money to other people for mortgages or student loans.  Because they can use your money for other things, they will pay you a small percentage on a monthly basis.  This is called interest.\n\nAt any time you can go to the bank and ask for some of your money (making a Withdrawal) or give them more money (making a Deposit.)  \n\nPeople keep money in banks because it's secure, it's more convenient than carrying a lot of cash, and once you get a job, you can get your employer to put your salary directly in the bank account so that you don't have to cash a cheque every two weeks.  ", "[Khan Academy](_URL_0_ and Money) has a great series on the basics of banking.", "Banks take your money and keep it safe for you.  At any time, you can go to your bank, or use a debit card, to withdraw some or all of your money.  Usually, banks also pay you for your money by giving you interest.  \n\nYears ago, that was it.  Today, it's a little more complicated.  Banks also charge you fees for using your accounts in different ways, and they offer several different kinds of accounts - some are designed to be used frequently, others for saving.  Some let you write personal cheques, others don't.  Some are online only!  All of them offer some sort of interest rate, though.\n\nSo how can a bank afford to pay you interest?  The bank lends 90% of your money to other people, and charges them _more_ interest than they pay you.  Assuming most people pay them back, they earn much more money than they need (and they lend it out again).  \n\nThere are two ways banks can fail.  One way is for banks to lend a lot of money to people who don't pay it back.  Too many bad loans and the bank will have money problems.  The second way is for too many people to withdraw their money at the same time - called a \"run on the banks\".  Remember when I said the banks lend 90% of your money to other people?  They do that with everyone's accounts.  That means that if a LOT of people started asking for their money, the banks wouldn't actually have the money on hand, and people would lose confidence in the bank.  That's bad.\n\n", "I've always heard that 9X% of money is now in electronic form, not physical cash, and most exchanges of money take place electronically too.  So I've always wondered who accounts for this?  If one bank says they're sending $1000 to another bank, how is it accounted for that the first bank had the money, and the second bank is soon to have it?  Is there a third party entity that monitors all bank transactions and keeps track of how much 'electronic' money banks have?\n\nI guess I just don't see what's to stop banks or other financial institutions from exchanging money they don't really have if it's all just numbers on a computer.  Even if all of this electronic money is backed by physical tender, how is it transferred?  If I, from my bank, write a check, and a friend cashes it at his bank, how does the cash actually 'get there.'"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.khanacademy.org/video/banking-1?playlist=Banking"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6f3by0", "title": "how the nazis identified homosexuals for prosecution during world war ii", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f3by0/eli5_how_the_nazis_identified_homosexuals_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dif3lgn", "difdag4", "difpcwl", "difpnzg", "difqb86", "difqqgv", "difrfk2", "dig8hz7"], "score": [638, 93, 31, 85, 33, 7, 3, 2], "text": ["Prior to the Nazi rise to power Germany was undergoing a push towards equal rights for homosexuals. Many men lived out lives and there were clubs and newspapers and other community oriented activities that were open about being for homosexuals. When the Nazis took power, these were the first people targeted. After that, identifying gay men proceeded much the same as it does in any country that oppresses homosexuality. People were outed to the authorities and punished. Some police forces set up undercover units. ", "Germany was fairly liberal and supportive of gay people before Hitler. More people were out of the closet than you might think. They were unfortunately easy targets for the Nazis. As the Nazi party gained more and more power they spread more and more propaganda. People who were once tolerant began to fear homosexuals. In 1933 the \"purge of homophiles\" banned LGBT groups, clubs, and publications. In 1934 The Gestapo complies a list of all the known LGBTQ people. Thousands were arrested, some went to regular prions while others went to concentration camps. \n\nEdit: grammar ", "Hitler's regime operated very much on the basis of \"you make MY life easier and I won't kill you\" and this was especially true of the SS. When the SS patrolled a neighborhood, oftentimes people would inform on their neighbors of any wrongdoing, fabricated or otherwise. The SS fact checks these claims like a duck fact checks bread and many people who were upstanding Aryan citizens would be thrown under the bus by their neighbors for favor with the Gestapo. If any of the neighbors were known or even suspected homosexuals, they'd be offered up quickly. \n\n[Pretty good read on it here](_URL_0_) ", "People just freely grassed them up. The Nazis would literally get thousands of unsolicited letters everyday from Germans wanting their neighbours taken off to concentration camps. Often they weren't even really gay, just single and loners in a small town where people were arseholes. But it wouldn't just be one person in town writing letters, the Nazis would often received dozens from different people about the same completely harmless person so of course then the guilt of that person was then assumed as why else would all these normal people take time out of their day to write letters. \n\nIt's a very interesting aspect of the Nazi regime which gets over looked because it shows how german culture enabled and even encouraged Nazi atrocities and you could argue that cultural issue has never been fully addressed. The programme Nazis, A Warning from History had a piece on it and found one of the letter writers who got one of her neighbours killed, needless to say she denied any memory of it.", "Most of these answers are true and explain part of how homosexuals were identified. One thing I haven't read yet are the pink lists (German Wikipedia: _URL_0_) The police had, even before the Nazis rose to power, been keeping taps on who was gay (mostly on male gays, though) or frequents gay clubs and bars. If you were under surveillance, there was little you could do about it since the police claimed that they're just collecting data and not using it (which was not entirely true). Of course, these lists came in handy when someone decided to round all homosexuals up. (it's a story you a lot when talking about data protection and someone drops \"I have nothing to hide\" or \"they're just collecting data, they only need a warrant when they want to do something with it\")", "*points finger dramatically*\n\n\"I think youve engaged in sodomy with another man!\"\n\n*police arrest you*", "Most victims were denounced by their social environment like neighbors. The Gestapo had not the capacity to make most of the researches self. ", "Many were caught by looking at the membership and donation lists of gay rights organizations of the time. Others were then found by looking at the contact info in the possession of those people, like a chain reaction of oppression."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/careless-whispers-how-the-german-public-used-and-abused-the-gestapo-1.2369837"], [], ["https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Liste"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vumcy", "title": "Carbon dating - how is C14 made?", "selftext": "I was reading about the use of C14 for carbon dating of a bronze age man. It says that when he was alive the C14 in him is being constantly replenished through eating and breathing, but when he dies the C14 is not being renewed and starts to decrease at a characteristic 5730 half-life. I was wondering, isn't the C14 in his diet already decreasing? Or is C14 being constantly made in nature from C12?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vumcy/carbon_dating_how_is_c14_made/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cew0x5v"], "score": [6], "text": ["When nitrogen-14 absorbs a neutron, it emits a proton (called an n,p reaction). So C-14 is made when cosmic radiation hits the upper atmosphere, and converts nitrogen-14 to carbon-14 through this reaction."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "65knxh", "title": "can alcoholism actually be \"passed down\" from an addicted parent, or is it just a sorry excuse people use to keep being alcoholic?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65knxh/eli5_can_alcoholism_actually_be_passed_down_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgazxoj", "dgb034b", "dgb04lr", "dgb248z", "dgb2y0m", "dgb3feq"], "score": [3, 4, 5, 2, 12, 5], "text": ["It's that certain people have addictive personalities or addictive tendencies, which can be passed down to children.", "There can be a genetic pre-disposition for alcoholism. My family is full of mentally ill alcoholics. My mother was one of the few members who was not an alcoholic, but she was diagnosed years ago with some things and put on heavy medication, so she didn't need to self-medicate with alcohol.", "You can be genetically predisposed to alcoholism and addiction. In addition, a stressful environment as a child/adolescent can make you more vunerable to stress later in life, this can lead to depression and drinking behaviour (as a coping mechanism).", "Not an expert but to add on to what others are saying. If grown up you see your parents deal with problems by drinking it may drill into you that that is the correct way to deal with your problems. ", "I assume ELI5 actually means explaining like OP is 5. So I'll give it a shot. \n\nWhen someone says *passed down*, they typically mean transferring a trait from parent to child.\n\nThere are 2 ways this can happen. **Environmental factors** (these are things that are *outside* the body. Like home-life, parent-child relationship, type of friends, role models, all that good stuff)  &  **Genetic factors** (things that are *inside* the body. Like genes and...well mostly just genes)\n\nThe potential environmental factors are obvious, so I'll spare reddit the details. Genetic factors are a little more complex. \n\nYou see, the mechanism of **addiction** is in the brain. But not just in a person's thoughts and/or feelings, but *literally* in the brain. In the pink tissue inside our skulls, there are tiny receptors (think of a baseball glove) that *catch* tiny neurotransmitters which are chemicals created and released *by* and *to* other brain tissue (think of tiny baseballs). Now, drinking alcohol, for most, makes a person feel good, right? When the brain feels good like this, it releases baseballs to their respective baseball gloves. However, overdoing this will cause the brain to create more baseballs than gloves. But the brain is basically a god-damned 3d printer. So it just creates more baseball gloves for the extra baseballs.\n\nHere's where the plot twist comes in, and where alcoholism rears it's head. These gloves don't *just* catch baseballs. They catch all kinds of balls as well, such as tennis balls (seizures), golf balls (hallucinations), and ping balls (death). An alcoholic, then, has to KEEP drinking alcohol to make the brain continue to release enough **base**balls to fill up the available gloves and to prevent these random other balls from entering the gloves. These gloves have always been able to catch these random balls, but since there was always a limited number of gloves, the chances of catching a tennis ball in the middle of a baseball field was always highly unlikely. \n\nSo addiction comes down to too many gloves catching the wrong balls. Now, the most common way this happens is by the pathway mentioned above: a person drinking way too much and then causing the brain to make shitload a gloves. However, genetics has a role here too. There are some folks who's brain's 3d printer is way too efficient and is programmed to build more gloves quicker. In other words, in these folks it would take less drinks to cause them to become full blown alcoholics. Also, genetics can affect how *good* a glove can catch these other balls. So if you're brain's 3d printer is building Hyuuuge gloves, then obviously that person's glove will catch more random balls. Genetics can affect any part of that terrible baseball metaphor. I'd go on, but I'm sure you're getting the point. I think we've talked about balls enough today. \n\n**Serious Note**: So, no. It's not a sorry excuse for some people. It's a real disease. Hey, from personal experience, I know how problematic dealing with alcoholics can be, but they deserve empathy and patience. Some of them were just dealt a bad hand.", "The genetic variance for alcoholism is often estimated at 50-60%. Genetic variance, however, is a weird concept.\n\nHere's an example I like a lot. Assume there's only two things that influence lung cancer: Smoking, and genes. Now, let's go to a city where literally everyone smokes, and 20% get lung cancer. Because smoking doesn't vary, 100% of variance is due to genes. Sure, smoking actually caused it, but it doesn't explain why some people got it and some didn't. So genetic variance doesn't tell us what most people think of when they hear that something is \"50% genetic.\"\n\nSo what genetic variance tells us here is basically something you might observe anyway: Lots of people drink, and only a minority develop a strange and uncontrollable pattern of drinking. Some of this is explainable with genes, some with life history and environmental stressors, and some is mysterious. Questions of free will, I leave to the philosophers. What I can say is that alcoholics are not lacking in willpower--to the contrary, they're capable of tremendous persistence. The problem is that it's been progressively channeled towards getting another drink.\n\nIncidentally, while some gene variants increase risk for alcoholism, some actually decrease it. Some East Asian populations have high rates of a variant enzyme involved in breaking down alcohol, producing rapid facial flushing and other unpleasant symptoms after drinking. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vjtcw", "title": "how do you \"hear yourself\" mentally?", "selftext": "When you're thinking, singing, talking in your mind what actually is happening to make this work? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vjtcw/eli5_how_do_you_hear_yourself_mentally/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5z23ev", "d5z3car", "d5z9dam", "d5zascz", "d5zaxqb", "d5zcu7n", "d5zdeqd", "d5zjb0a", "d5zjbx3", "d5znd8b", "d5zuajm", "d5zwswe"], "score": [128, 51, 9, 7, 11, 2, 19, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Short: tiny movements of your vocal cords    \nLong: [I'll leave it to the scientists](_URL_0_)", "There was a podcast by WNYC Radiolab about this topic that was SUPER interesting. There's a few of them that are connected I think they are called Inner Voices, The Voices Inside You, and Words.", "I'd say it works the same way that you imagine things in your head. You see a picture. Only you can see it. But it's not really there. Same for thinking, singing, talking in your mind. Whatever the brain does when it imagines, it's probably adding a layer of your memories to it, a thought or a song or a conversation, to that layer of imagination. Depending on how far you carry it, it can just be a daydream. Or, it can be much more serious, out of your control to start and stop, like schizophrenia. ", "Now, Im no scientist but. The way we hear and see things are a series of stimuli, be it vibration or visible light turning into electrical signals. Could we not just be creating the electrical signals inside our own brains?\nThats how I've always imagined it.", "If you move to another country and have to learn another language. Mainly speaking with the new language. Does your inner voice language change ?", "When you talk, you tell your mouth, lungs, vocal chords, \"this is what you're supposed to be saying\" while you think it in your head.\n\nWhen you think, you actively block the signal to everything involved in talking telling it to do what's needed to make the sound, thereby only hearing it in your head.\n\nThat's why sometimes when you are thinking very hard you may talk to yourself or mouth what you're saying because you're not actively blocking the signal not to \"talk\".  That's also why if you're talking about something and you start to think about something else, then what you're thinking may \"leak\" out, causing you say whatever you were thinking.", "Your conscious experience emerges from activation patterns of neurons, and some other stuff. You can think of this stuff as discreet \"brain units\". When you speak, you activate certain patterns. When you remember an event, you activate certain patterns. In memory, many of the same neurons that activate to remember an event are in fact the same neurons which observed the event (including neurons dedicated to sight). It isn't a 1 to 1 sort of thing, and this is why when you remember something it isn't as vivid as actually experiencing it, because only a subset of the same neurons are being activated.\n\nThe same principle applies to hearing yourself. When you hear yourself speak, you are exercising neural pathways which have become inexorably linked with speech. You might think of these skills (speaking and hearing) as completely separate, but that's not how brains work.  No one knows how deep this coupling goes. It might be that your very ability to process complex problems is dependent upon these pathways, and that you are literally incapable of highly abstract problem solving without hearing yourself speak. \n\nTLDR: Although consciousness is poorly understood, we understand it well enough to say that \"hearings yourself\" probably happens because memory, speech, hearing, and problem solving are more tightly coupled than most people would be comfortable realizing.", "I'm going to tackle this question in a different way, because there's a lot of nuance to the question depending on your interpretation.\n\nLate artificial intelligence and brain expert Marvin Minsky in his book Society Of Mind makes a compelling case for your brain being a collection of independent agents (that may have their own selfish motives and don't always cooperate, but that's a discussion for another day).\n\nWhat I think is happening when you hear yourself mentally is this.  Your brain has separate independent agents for \n\n1. formulating a concept you wish to communicate\n2. converting that concept into your spoken language\n3. verbalizing it\n4. hearing other spoken language in response and converting it back into concepts\n5. subsuming that new information\n6. And repeat.\n\nDown through the millennia your brain has evolved to feed the language generated in item 2 directly into the part of the brain responsible for item 4, to \"hear how it sounds\" before actually verbalizing it, in order to consider the consequences of your words before speaking them.  In times of excitement or stress, though, this step is skipped, and you find yourself verbalizing without that initial reflection, often to negative consequences.\n\nSo while it may feel like you're \"thinking in English\", what you're really doing is just converting your raw thoughts into English and playing them out internally before speaking them.", "I hear people talk about just \"not thinking of anything\"  and this has always confused me. I cant understand how this would work because i have not thought about any way to think but the way i know (or a comparable version is ones native language) . I have an inner dialog that never stops.  I am very analytical and notice stupid crap most people wouldn't care about at all.  As i currently sit in an airport and watch people walk by snap judgments are made and presumptions based on visual cues,  peoples behavior,  etc.  Almost none of it will last more than a minute or two but i am always running a monologue about something,  either completely inane or (as is the case after reading these comments) something with a bit more introspective substance. If only i had an off switch....  It would be so peaceful.  ", "My thoughts aren't even in any verbal language most of the time. They're just.... *thoughts*. Only when I'm thinking about conversation do I think actual english words.", "Depends.  Words, I literally think in English verbatim.  When it comes to math, it's more imagery than 'sound' ..I visualize a piece of paper and writing appears as I think it.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nI wouldn't say photographic, becuase it's not.  Just remembering what's at the top of the imaginary page by 'looking' at it mentally, when you're down at the bottom of the page on a totally separate step of the formula.", "This is quite interesting question.  \n\nI grew up always moving from country to country and my parents were multilingual, so much so that they wanted(forced tbh) me and my siblings to speak a certain language on one day and then another on a different day.  Life was made more difficult by the fact, we had to speak the language of which country we were in when guests were present or when we were in public. Although emergencies were rare, then and only then we could use Finnish. \n\nAll to this to say that I actually don't have a \"mother language\" nor do I have a \"voice\" in my head when I think. For me, all I see is pictures and depending on situations or thoughts, they can be stills with great detail or moving(similar to those of flip books). Although when I dream, it feels like I'm actually in the scene but languages get mixed so I hear gibberish but still intuitively understand. It's quite crazy.\n\nThe only time I hear myself(I think I hear a voice?) is when I have to read a loud in a language. \n\nMy favourite language to use at any given moment is Finnish Sign Language, as it is logical and requires little effort however, I can speak, read, listen (not fluently but as good as this English and my Finnish) in nine languages. I am able to write but it is the hardest of the skills which frustrates me. \n\nThankfully, I'm majoring in Mathematics (Number Theory) and fancy writing is not needed. :)) \n\n\nI know this did not answer the question but I hope insight arrived nonetheless. Thank you.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3slqzn", "title": "why do people say \"uncle\" when they give up during a fight?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3slqzn/eli5_why_do_people_say_uncle_when_they_give_up/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwydfvc", "cwydgiu", "cwydjan", "cwyq6aa"], "score": [13, 35, 8, 3], "text": ["I have never heard this in my life. Examples? \n\nHuh: Must be an American thing. ", "The consensus seems to be that making your opponent call 'Uncle' was evokative of forcing him to call out for an authority figure for help, embossing his weakness, or from a Roman tradition where one's uncle was in the same social stratum of one's father, establishing a mocking level of personal power.\n\nSource- _URL_0_", "From the almighty [Wikipedia:](_URL_0_)\n\n > Although it is often regarded as an Americanism, there are at least two differing theories as to the true origin of the phrase: ancient Rome and 19th-century England.\n\n > There are various opinions as to the reason that Roman bullies forced their victims to \"cry 'Uncle!\u200d\u200a'\u200b\". It may be that it was simply a way of making the victim call out for help from a grownup, thus proving his or her weakness. Alternatively, it may have started as a way of forcing the victim to grant the victor a title of respect \u2013 as in \"Call me Uncle!\" \u2014 for in Roman times, one's father's brother was accorded nearly the same power and status as one's father. The chosen form of the Latin word for \"uncle\" (\"patrue\") tends to support this theory, in that it specifically denotes the paternal uncle \u2013 as opposed to the brother of one's mother (\"avunculus\"), who occupied a somewhat lower rung in patrilineal Roman society.\n\n > The 19th-century England theory says it comes from an English joke about a bullied parrot being coaxed to address his owner's uncle.\n\nUpon further digging, here is the joke, which [appeared in various forms in American newspapers](_URL_1_) between 1891-1907:\n\n > A gentleman was boasting that his parrot would repeat anything he told him. For example, he told him several times, before some friends, to say \u201cUncle,\u201d but the parrot would not repeat it. In anger he seized the bird, and half-twisting his neck, said: \u201cSay \u2018uncle,\u2019 you beggar!\u201d and threw him into the fowl pen, in which he had ten prize fowls. Shortly afterward, thinking he had killed the parrot, he went to the pen. To his surprise he found nine of the fowls dead on the floor with their necks wrung, and the parrot standing on the tenth twisting his neck and screaming: \u201cSay \u2018uncle,\u2019 you beggar! say uncle.\u2019\u201d\n\nIt seems no one *really* knows for sure, but it sounds as if the expression began as a bully's taunt on Roman Empire-era playgrounds, survived long enough to form the basis of an English joke, which then crossed the Atlantic and became the idiom we use in our vernacular today.\n\n\n\n", "In which country so people say this? I've literally never heard anything like this before"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.word-detective.com/2011/06/say-uncle"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Uncle", "http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-say1.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "1cuq5r", "title": "Are there any AI programs out there that have the ability to modify and recompile their own code?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cuq5r/are_there_any_ai_programs_out_there_that_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9k7x4m", "c9k8kd5"], "score": [4, 8], "text": ["How specific are you being with \"AI\"? If you mean programs in general, see [Self-modifying code](_URL_0_).", "Self modifying code exists, but it is not done by intelligent programs. Back in the 1950s and 60s, programmers had very little memory availiable, so they wrote programs, that rewrote parts of themselves to change functionality approriately (i.e. your disk driver was temporarily rewirtten to serve a different device, so you only had to store one program and a small one that contained orcalculated the differences.).\n\nToday we have computer viruses (or virii), that modify themselves in order to evade antivirus software. These are called *metamorph viruses*. However the changes that are made are not \"intelligent\". Statements are replaced by equivalent instructions or parts are inserted that don't do anything useful.\n\nIt's pretty difficult to find friendly sites that offer such viruses for study purposes. VX Heavens used to be great but it was taken down by law enforcement. However mirrors supposedly exist, if you want to dive deeper into metamorph viruses."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-modifying_code"], []]}
{"q_id": "7ojy39", "title": "In \"Born in the USA\" Springsteen sings \"Got in a little home town jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/Sent me off to a foreign land/To go and kill the yellow man\". Is he referring to some kind of punishment where troublemakers would be drafted during the Vietnam war, or something else?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ojy39/in_born_in_the_usa_springsteen_sings_got_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsadt0u"], "score": [146], "text": ["A good case to examine regarding \"go to jail or join the military\" or \"forced volunteering\" is [*United States v. Catlow*](_URL_0_), conducted in the United States Army Court of Military Review and the United States Military Court of Appeals in 1973-1974. The U.S. military has always striven to obtain quality soldiers; men who are found \"physically, mentally, or morally unfit\" are barred from joining the military. The medical and legal standards for enlistment are sometimes relaxed in times of war, and in times of peace or after the U.S. military became all-volunteer, are often applied in a stricter manner.\n\nParagraph 2-6 of Army Regulation 601-210, dated May 1, 1968, provided that juveniles of enlistment age, during any point in their legal proceedings, could either continue with their proceedings as normal or, following the proper procedures, enlist voluntarily into the Regular Army for a specified term of service, after which the charges against them would be dropped; \n\n >  2.) Persons who, as an alternative to further prosecution, indictment, trial, or incarceration in connection with the charges, or to further proceedings related to adjudication as a youthful offender or juvenile delinquent, are granted a release from the charges at any stage of the court proceedings on the condi\u00adtion that they will apply for or be accepted for enlistment in the Regular Army.\u201d\n\nThomas W. Catlow, born on November 14, 1951, was charged with loitering, resisting arrest, assault, and illegally carrying a concealed weapon a month before his seventeenth birthday. Catlow's home life was complicated. His parents had divorced, and his mother handed over legal guardianship of him to his uncle; however, Catlow continued to live alternately with his mother and father. In juvenile court, Catlow was informed by the judge that he could either serve five years' imprisonment for the charges, or three years in the Army. It is implied that Catlow opted for the latter, and an Army recruiter contacted him to start the induction process.\n\nCatlow was enlisted into the Army on November 20, 1968, six days after his seventeenth birthday, and the juvenile court charges were dismissed on November 28, 1968. A problem soon arose; Catlow was a minor, and his mother, who was not his legal guardian, had signed the consent form. Catlow soon made his displeasure for military service known, and informed authorities that he thought his enlistment was not genuine. Catlow went absent without leave for a cumulative period of nearly two years, and was soon court-martialed by the Army and sentenced to six months' confinement and hard labor, forfeiture of all pay and benefits, and a dishonorable discharge. Catlow appealed his conviction.\n\nThe appellate counsel (Catlow's lawyers in the appeal case) cited the Army regulation and Catlow's enlistment circumstances as proof that Catlow's enlistment into the Army was invalid, but the Army Court of Military Review rejected their assertion in *U.S. v. Catlow, 47 C.M.R. 617 (A.C.M.R., 1973)*, saying that Catlow, unlike many other jailbird soldiers, had avoided an actual conviction, that there were \"many beneficial aspects of military service,\" and that his civilian legal proceedings and the official dismissal of the civilian charges against Catlow made his enlistment valid.\n\nThe United States Court of Military Appeals had a different opinion in *U.S. v. Catlow, 23 U.S.C.M.A. 142, 48 C.M.R. 758 (1974)*. They contended that Catlow's enlistment, as a result of the policy and circumstances, was \"not the product of his own volition,\" and that \"inherent vice affected his acquisition of the status of a member of the Army.\" The charges against Catlow were dismissed. Another case, from 1975, *United States v. Dumas*, played out in a similar fashion; the defendant was not given proper consent to join the military by his legal guardian, and so his enlistment was invalidated.\n\nThe U.S. military soon moved to re-write their regulations, and the choice of \"go to jail or join the military\" was done away with. it was still a problem in the Army as late as December 1977; many civilian courts had yet to be informed of the policy changes, which exasperated military authorities.\n\nAll U.S. military branches [now explicitly prohibit a person from enlisting](_URL_1_) if they are released from civilian legal proceedings under the stipulation that they join the military. Military recruiters are also prohibited from appearing in court on the behalf of any applicant, and may not offer advice to, or help to an unqualified applicant to enlist.\n\n**United States Air Force:**\n\nAir Force Recruiting Regulation, AETCI 36-2002, table 1-1, lines 7 and 8;\n\n >  [An applicant is ineligible for enlistment if they are] released from restraint, or civil suit, or charges on the condition of entering military service, if the restraint, civil suit, or criminal charges would be reinstated if the applicant does not enter military service.\n\n**United States Army:**\n\nArmy Regulation 601-210, paragraph 4-8b;\n\n >  [Any] applicant who, as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, is ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States, is not eligible for enlistment.\n\nParagraph 4-32a of the same regulation states the following;\n\n >  Waiver is not authorized if a criminal or juvenile court charge is pending or if such a charge was dismissed or dropped at any stage of the court proceedings on condition that the offender enlists in a military service.\n\n**United States Coast Guard:**\n\nCoast Guard Recruiting Manual, M1100.2D, Table 2-A;\n\n >  An application may be denied when, based on articulable facts, it is determined that accession would not be in the best interest of the Coast Guard.\n\n**United States Marine Corps:**\n\nMarine Corps Recruiting Regulation, MCO P1100.72B, Chapter 3, Section 2, Part H, Paragraph 12;\n\n >  Applicants may not enlist as an alternative to criminal prosecution, indictment, incarceration, parole, probation, or another punitive sentence. They are ineligible for enlistment until the original assigned sentence would have been completed.\n\n**United States Navy:**\n\nNavy Recruiting Manual-Enlisted CNRC1130.8H, Section 02083(l):\n\n >  Applicants may not enlist as an alternative to criminal prosecution, indictment, incarceration, parole, probation, or another punitive sentence. They are ineligible for enlistment until the original assigned sentence would have been completed.\n\n\n**Sources:**\n\n\"Forced Enlistments Plague the Army.\" *American Bar Association Journal* 63, no. 12 (December 1977): 1699.\n\nMilburn, Travis. \u201cExploring Military Service as an Alternative Sanction: Evidence From Inmates' Perspectives.\u201d Master's thesis, Eastern Kentucky University, 2012.\n\nSchogol, Jeff. \u201cJudge said Army or jail, but military doesn\u2019t want him.\u201d Stars and Stripes (Washington, D.C.), Feb. 3, 2006.\n\nUnited States. United States Army. *Department of the Army Pamphlet 27-50-19 The Army Lawyer, July 1974*. Washington: United States Department of the Army, 1974."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/07-1974.pdf", "https://www.thebalance.com/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail-3354033"]]}
{"q_id": "1lb3tm", "title": "is it possible to attach a cable to the moon that is also attached to the earth or hangs in our atmosphere that can then be used for energy or as a means of transport to the moon and back?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lb3tm/eli5_is_it_possible_to_attach_a_cable_to_the_moon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbxgitm", "cbxgjk4", "cbxgln4", "cbxgp01", "cbxh09a", "cbxjncq", "cbxk6jc", "cbxl867", "cbxmgp4", "cbxncbf", "cbxnwwv", "cbxoadf", "cbxpbyc", "cbxph7d", "cbxq7yv", "cbxqk5z", "cbxs4ay", "cbxsqrs", "cbxtvej", "cbxunnw"], "score": [2542, 71, 16, 27, 7, 2, 9, 3, 2, 8, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["No. There is no known material that could stretch that far without breaking under it's own weight. Plus, there is that whole pesky thing where the moon orbits around the earth, and both bodies are spinning themselves all the time, so we would get wrapped around each like a dog on a leash pretty quickly.  \n  \nBut you could get part way there with a [space elevetor](_URL_0_)  \n  \n**EDIT:** The goddamn moon goddamn spins. Once every 28 days thereabouts. Yes, the same hemisphere always points towards us, and no, it won't get tangled in our leash, we will get tangled in its. But it does, in fact spin, counterclockwise from the north pole, it goddamn spins. The Earth also spins, so does your middle school science teacher, in the early grave you all have sent them to.  \n  \n**EDIT 2:** I'm glad so many people got a laugh out of this, I certainly didn't see all these upvotes coming. Please stop drawing attention to this post, the Grammar Vigilantes are coming after me for ending my sentence in a preposition (but they don't seem to care that I used the singular 'teacher', and then the plural 'them', or that I misspelled 'elevator').  \n  \n**EDIT 3:** Thanks for the gold. I may have to post my own ELI5 to find out what it is. I'm hoping I can use it to buy an amphibious yacht and drive around the world.", "The problem with attaching a cable to the moon is that the moon doesn't orbit at the same rate that the Earth rotates. The bottom end of the cable attached to the Earth would be going faster, and the cable would try to wrap around the Earth and drag the Moon down with it in order to compensate, which seems like a bad idea. Of course, in reality, the cable would just snap and fall to the Earth in a flaming inferno due to atmospheric re-entry, but... still not a great plan.\n\nThat said, we can theoretically use something called a [space elevator](_URL_0_) to get stuff up into orbit. We know how to do it in theory, but don't have the materials or technology quite yet. ", "I think you might be thinking about a space elevator. check this out. _URL_0_  ", "Quite frankly, no.  Assuming you could even attempt it...\n\nTo attach to the earth, you'd have to have some sort of track that it could ride on, so that the tether would be able to go with the moon... that track has to not only go around the earth, but move up and down a bit as the moon's orbit is not perfectly planar.  The tether also is not a fixed length, as the moon is not in a perfectly circular orbit, and is also moving away from the earth every day.  Not to mention some of the oceanic points of anchor would be really REALLY tall before they even poked above the water, much less a height that'll clear all the terrain and still be a good circle.  and best yet, it would burn up in the atmosphere, as it's going to move no less than 2300MPH, or mach 3 at ground level.  It'd cause sonic booms if it didn't destroy itself.\n\nAs far as hanging in the atmosphere... you're still in the moving really fast burning itself up bit, but even if it didn't the end would cause an even WORSE sonic boom and potentially damage a lot of terrestrial stuff.  Without tautness, it would whip about, and be quite bowed from dragging, and so to keep it in the atmosphere, you'd have it crashing into the earth, causing mayhem.\n\nAnd probably a TON of other things I havent even thought about, all really really bad, I'm sure.\n\nEdit: Oh yeah, orbital/spin differences.  Right on guys.  That too. :)", "the Earth and the Moon spins during an orbit, the attachment will break.", "Moon's orbit is not a perfect circle and the Moon is not in geostationary orbit, so you wouldn't be able to simply attach both ends. After that it's \"just\" an engineering problem. You need only to discover a material strong enough for the task.\n\nYou could even produce energy with such a contraption, but you would start making Earth spin slower and the Moon go faster and further, eventually both shifting the geostationary orbit and putting the Moon there. The gravity and tidal waves are actually doing that now and have been doing that since the very beginning. The contraption would only speed up the process.\n", "The primary issue is that the earth and moon are much further apart than most people realize. This picture of the distance to scale makes it very clear why this isn't a possible idea:\n\n_URL_0_", "vsauce explains this better:\n_URL_0_", "There is a theory about a space elevator that will be used mostly used for launching material (trash, radioactive material, etc.) into deep space. The problem is is that there is no known element that is capable of being stretched that far and still be able to stand. Also another issue is the height of the  contraption. With it being so tall, it would be experiencing different atmospheric pressures and climates and weather. So for this cable, yes it could be done, but it would incredible thin (human hair) and it most likely do nothing.   So no. Transportation and energy to the moon are not a possibility as of right now with the technology we have ", "Energy isn't free.\n\nCable debate aside, if you're talking about potential energy from the Moon's orbit with the Earth, it's not a very sensible idea for the long-term future of all species on Earth.\n\nAlso on that, it must one day be questioned what impact using solar panels has on the lost heat to the soil beneath it, using wind turbines to drag energy from the winds, using ocean turbines to dissipate energy from the waves, using hydroelectricity reducing the flow of material down-stream, and using geothermal energy to drag out heat at far more efficient rates than it naturally would otherwise.\n\nEnergy taken leads to energy lost elsewhere, best not to practice the theory on the Moon's orbit ;-)", "What you're referring to is commonly known as a \"Space Elevator\"\n\nThe primary problem with space elevators is that there are currently no known materials that can be used to build structures that tall without collapsing under their own weight.  According to Wikipedia, metals like titanium, steel or aluminium alloys have breaking lengths of 20\u201330 km. Modern fibre materials such as kevlar, fibreglass and carbon/graphite fibre have breaking lengths of 100\u2013400 km.  For reference, the distance to the moon is 384,400 km.\n\nIn addition, even if a suitable material existed, there's also the problem that the moon is not in a Geosynchronous orbit (i.e., the moon does not move, relative to a given spot on the Earth's surface).  Because of this, the cable attaching the Earth and Moon would stretch and break as soon as the Moon moves.\n\nA better solution is to build a space station in Geosynchronous orbit, and build a space elevator connecting the Earth to the station.  Such a space station would only need to be 35,786 km from the Earth's surface.  Given the fact that the \"weight\" of the cable decreases the further you get from the Earth (as the gravitational pull from the Earth descreases), an untapered space elevator cable would need a material capable of sustaining a length of 4,960 kilometers (3,080 mi) of its own weight at sea level to reach the station (once again, thanks Wikipedia!).  At this point, the only challange is finding a suitable material, and finding someone to pay for it.\n", "The toughest issue to overcome when building a space elevator isn't about tensile strength, it's finding a way to ensure that some little bastard doesn't push all the buttons when he gets on.\n\n\"Ding!  Stratosphere.  Ding!  Stratosphere\"", "No.  \n\nSpace tethers or space elevators are fun tools used in science fiction all the time.  However, one crucial element that sci fi leaves out is that the tether will not be straight and will be under such great stress that no known or theoretically possible material could be strong enough to create one, *let alone tether a mass as large as Luna to Earth*.   \n\nImagine a ball tied to a string and you're swinging the ball around over your head.  You are imparting force on the ball, pulling it towards you (it wants to go in a straight line) and swinging it forward at the same time.  As you do that, your hand is moving with greater energy than the ball (it lags behind as you accelerate it).  \n\nFurthermore, as you speed up the ball, it will pull away from you harder and harder; as you cease accelerating the ball, the line will slack somewhat.  \n\nThe same basic forces will function with the tether to the moon and the same will happen if you have an elevator which goes up and down the tether.  As you transfer mass away from Earth, the Earth-Luna-Mass system will change and the tether will bend more.  Furthermore, Luna's distance from the earth is not constant, Luna rotates (though it is [tidally locked](_URL_0_)), and Luna's speed around the earth is not constant.  \n\nThere are several other challenges, but I think this is enough! :) Let me know if you have any questions.  \n\n", "There are many reasons why this couldn't work, even with some mythical super-strong material.\n\n-The Earth rotates at a different rate than the Moon.\n\n-The distance between the Earth and Moon is not constant over the course of a lunar month, the distance changes by some 43,000 km (and, oh yeah, there's perigee precession, libration, and a few other motions, but let's not get TOO complicated here).\n\n-But the big one, and the one that is not commonly understood, is that the Moon simply does not orbit the Earth, at least not the way that an ordinary satellite (or every other moon in the solar system save one) orbits. Rather, it is slightly more correct to say that the Moon orbits the Sun.\n\nHere's why: when one body orbits another, one does not actually orbit the other, but rather both orbit around the center of mass of the two bodies. That is to say that your typical moon does not orbit the exact center of its planet, but rather some other point dependent on the mass of the two bodies and their separation. And when you add other nearby bodies, things get even messier.\n\nAnd in the case of Earth and its Moon (and one moon of Jupiter), there exists a very special circumstance: the gravity of the Sun pulls more strongly on the moon than the gravity of the planet does. What that means is that if you parked yourself at a \"fixed\" point way above the north pole of the Sun and looked down onto the plane of the solar system, and then ignored everything you see except for, say, the ISS, what you would see would be the thing making loops. It is *truly* orbiting the Earth, because Earth's gravity pulls more strongly on it than than of the Moon or Sun.\n\nBut if you look at the Moon, it would NOT be making loops, it would be making a sine-like pattern (everywhere concave towards the Sun, if you wanna get precise).\n\n", "What if it was not a cable wrapped around the moon. Instead it was a rigid rod attached to earth but not attached to the moon. Each day when the moon came around, it would smack the rod. There would need to be a pivot point high in the atmosphere. This would certainly generate a lot of energy. If not the moon, maybe we can catch asteroids and harness their energy.\n\nI understand this would be so hard to build that it is not realistic, and if we continue to slow down the moon, it may eventually come crashing into the Earth. However, we do have a serious energy problem. ", "I heard of building a teher from a satellite using nano tech that would make it light and strong. Couldn't find the article but. This is sorta kinda almost relevant.\n_URL_0_", "God damn Eli5 is getting worse", "The stuff you should know guys did a podcast on exactly this I highly reccomend it. \n", "Not to the moon, but a space elevator for both the earth and moon individually may be feasible. Most of the energy involved is in getting into orbit and landing, so it solves the core of your problem.\n\n_URL_0_", "Theoretically you could have a wire span far out into space but attaching it to the moon is impossible.  The spin of the earth would keep it tight though and the end would spin much faster than the beginning.  It could be used to launch spacecraft.  \n\nMaterial doesn't exist yet to do this, although there are promising leads."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator"], [], [], [], ["http://www.traipse.com/earth_and_moon/"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ4Qp2xeRds"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_lock"], [], [], ["http://www.satellitetoday.com/publications/st/stbriefs/2012/09/19/nasa-issues-grant-to-design-tether-deployment-system-for-nano-satellites/"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdr6zXXrTbg"], []]}
{"q_id": "20r9j6", "title": "What would films \"really\" have looked like when they were first produced in the 1940s/50s? How much of the blurring/specks are due to degradation over time, and not the technology itself?", "selftext": "I was watching an old film from 1955, [a \"What in the World\" episode](_URL_0_) from the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (some of you may find it interesting!). I couldn't help but notice all the little \"defects\" in the image, such as the blurring, lack of contrast, specks, lines, etc. How many of those defects are due to the film itself deteriorating over time? \n\nAdditionally, has anyone replicated and used 1950s or 1940s filming equipment today? Does anyone know what those results looked like?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20r9j6/what_would_films_really_have_looked_like_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg64nrn", "cg64qs0", "cg65abh", "cg6aszf"], "score": [2, 31, 11, 2], "text": ["Something I've always been somewhat curious about is old television kinescopes (the 1950's equivalent of using your phone to record television) and whether or not they could be \"upconverted\" to what they would have looked like when first broadcast.\n\nFor example, here is a very high quality capture off (I assume) the original 2\" quad tape of part of a Tonight Show episode from 1964:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI always wondered if it would be possible to run this clip through a kinescope to compare \"broadcast vs. kinescope\" and then devise some filter or program or something to colorize and correct the framerate on existing kinescopes.", "*Edit: the reason your sample film looks so bad is a combination of it being originally shot on much poorer quality film and process than would have been used for the cinema at the time, then poorly preserved over time allowing it to accumulate dust and the sprokets to wear creating judder, then converted to video using a very poor quality process (perhaps even analogous to \"point camera at screen\") and compressed for the web using a poor quality process.  If you dug up the original master somewhere and it'd been sufficiently preserved, it should not look like that.*\n\n-----\n\nAny sufficiently preserved film should not look very different now to when it was new, unless it's been poorly preserved, or you're watching a bad/early film-to-video transfer of it, or something like that.  You may get some color fading in some circumstances, and wear and tear on the sprockets may make it jump around a bit, but then you can always get another print made from a master and it'll be mint-condition.\n\nIf you're seeing specks and blurring in an old film, then something else is wrong - film whether it's shot in 1955 or 2005 should not have specks and blurring if it's in good condition.  You may have seen poorly preserved or heavily worn/used film, or an early transfer to video (telecine).\n\nThe thing is, there were a great many different film formats and stocks, everything from ultra-clean ultra-sharp 70mm film (the likes of Ben-Hur or South Pacific) down to cheaper and more portable 16mm film which was used for newscasting and (since then) for some inserts in television like when filming outdoors.\n\nBen-Hur would have looked about as as crisp and clean as a modern film-based Imax film (albeit a different aspect ratio, it was very \"widescreen\"), and much crisper and cleaner than an average 35mm film (any normal film 10 years ago).  In fact it would have looked so much better to cinema audiences in 1959 than to audiences who saw it on home video or television in the 80s or 90s or even DVD in the 90s or 2000s, simply because that film format is superior to all those subsequent small-screen formats and the methods of transferring to them from film.\n\nAnything originally shot on 35mm film would look comparable to most modern 35mm films.  It should not be blurry by any means but will have visible grain - this grain might be easier to control with modern films but is still present.  Modern pre-digital films like American Beauty, The Matrix or Fight Club have a lot of grain if you look in particular places, and in a way older films tended to shoot in brighter lighting conditions which minimised grain.\n\nWe've now fully entered the digital era - which is a much bigger change than the evolutionary changes from the 1950s up until 10 years ago.  The difference between a film shot digitally in 2013 and a film shot on 35mm film in 2005 will be a lot more than the film in 2005 and a film in 1960.  Digital did have a shaky start but anything in 2012 or later will have much reduced grain, fogging and judder than film while still having decent dynamic range - pretty much an absolute upgrade.\n\nEvolution in film means that colour improved and so did sensitivity, allowing shooting in nature/outdoors and night with less light and/or less grain.  But even by 1955 film was already at a relatively advanced stage.\n\nWhen you see a blu-ray release of a classic film and the picture is so much cleaner and crisper than you ever remember seeing it on video or TV, it's simply because they've gone back and re-digitised a well-preserved film print of the original.  Sure you can run video through de-noising or speck removal but this is no substitute for actually going back to a well-preserved print directly from film.\n\nA lot of the time you see old film footage and it looks really poor, it's because:\n\n- It's newsreel type footage which used much poorer film than cinema in the first place\n- It's taken from a worn-out print that has been heavily used - dust all over it and very worn in the sprokets, maybe even scratched - as opposed to a clean master print that should be locked in a cupboard\n- It's an older film to video conversion (telecine) which sucked a lot of quality out of the picture\n\nI'm no historian but I studied film theory and film history at one stage.", "The film used in the forties onward was already a fairly mature technology, not immensely distinct from the monochrome film emulsions that we have today. This particular footage however was shot for television, so I'm not familiar with the technology. UPenn's archives website is also not doing us the favour of informing us what the actual format they have in storage, if any, or what and how that copy was digitised. Since this is a television show, it may have been shot on a television camera and transferred to film using a kinescope, for example.\n\nBut the short answer is: No, film would not have looked blurry or indistinct back then. Assuming it was shot on equipment that was modern for the time, black and white films would have more or less the same level of clarity that modern films do, though cinematographers at the time were much more tolerant of film grain. Colour film would have had very different colours, but in terms of resolution and clarity, no issues either; while the colour processes used at that time still had kinks to work out, particularly in low lighting and with darker or less saturated shades, the way films were shot at the time ameliorated or sidestepped those issues.", "To give somewhat of an answer for the second part the closest I can think of is the good German which was filmed using 1940s lenses and techniques. However they used other modern technology so it does not fully work. The only case of film makers using old technology is Lumi\u00e8re and Company a 1995 series of short films using 1890 s cameras"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://archive.org/details/upenn-f16-4005_what_in_the_world_6"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkeqkEg2SiI"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31irbl", "title": "what chemically happens in my head when i have a bad day and am upset, but then magically feel better the next day?", "selftext": "Had a rough day yesterday and realized I would feel better after I had slept, so I went to sleep and woke up relaxed and happy. What happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31irbl/eli5_what_chemically_happens_in_my_head_when_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq21ot3", "cq21y9u", "cq25ji7", "cq27blf"], "score": [10, 9, 12, 4], "text": ["This used to work a lot better for me when I was kid/teen. It didn't matter much how shitty my day was, I would wake up ready to start again, and any concerns from the night before seemed ridiculous. It was actually a little _too_ good, as if I made a promise to self-improve on something the night before, I'd wake up thinking, \"Wow, I feel great! Who cares about the guilt trip I gave myself last night\"\n\nIt got slowly less effective as a I got older, slept less, had more things to worry about in the morning...\n\n", "I wonder about this all the time. I find that a nights sleep can take me from depressed as hell to happy as can be. Nothing in the external environment changes. It must me the neurotransmitter levels or something like that. It makes me wonder what moods really are and whether happiness, sadness, etc are \"real\". Like I feel happy, but why? Just cuz i got lucky with the physiology today I guess :)", "From what I have read in a few places, why we need sleep and feel mentally refreshed afterwards is still not well understood. They know about the rem cycles, and we need stage 4 to feel refreshed,  but that's about it. I posit that just like a computer has to defrag, so do our minds. My dreams are always slight reflections of my day and the stresses there in, secret emotions and even lusts I feel throughout the day are all manifest in some form. I feel like when I sleep my waking consciousness that has to \"think\" all day is shut down and there is an auto pilot running training maneuvers for my minds worries in 4000K ultra while tripping acid. ", "From what I have learner at school I believe your improved mood is by a replenishment of neurotransmitters in the body as you sleep.  At the same time the receptors for those neurotransmitters also replenish therefore making you feel a lot better.  It's almost like charging your batteries as you sleep"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jy7s1", "title": "The US had the \"containment\" foreign policy during the Cold War, what sort of foreign policy did the USSR have?", "selftext": "Did the USSR know of the US's containment policy? Did it try to counteract it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jy7s1/the_us_had_the_containment_foreign_policy_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cutke8r"], "score": [31], "text": ["This is a difficult question to answer since there were very few Soviet analogues to Kennan's overarching Containment Doctrine. One could argue that Marxist-Leninism, which argued that a revolution could be achieved under the leadership of an organized communist party, was the cornerstone of the Soviet's understanding of foreign affairs, but the importance of a Marxist-Leninist *Weltanschauung* generates more questions than answers. Although Moscow's foreign policy establishment produced reams of pronouncements on world affairs, these were often couched in such sweeping ideological rhetoric that made it difficult to parse out what was actual Soviet policy. One of the important subfields of the West's Cold War-era Kremlinologists was engaged in actively trying to parse out the kernels of wheat from its Marxist-Leninist chaff. \n\nIn general, the Soviet's foreign policy in the Cold War had a degree of continuity from its foreign policy in the 1930s. The position of the USSR was that it was the leader of a large global movement of both anti-fascist and anti-imperialist organizations. Within this umbrella organization of the global left, Moscow reserved pride of place for local communist parties who were tasked with being the ideological leaders in local political movements. The Soviets encouraged party discipline and demanded a degree of loyalty from the leadership of various communist parties. Andrei Zhdanov's [1947 pronouncement](_URL_0_) of the creation of the Cominform, a successor to the disbanded Comintern, outlines this Soviet-centric umbrella approach:\n\n > In the pursuit of these ends the imperialist camp is prepared to rely on reactionary and anti-democratic forces in all countries, and to support its former adversaries in the war against its wartime allies.\n\n > The anti-fascist forces comprise the second camp. This camp is based on the U.S.S.R. and the new democracies. It also includes countries that have broken with imperialism and have firmly set foot on the path of democratic development, such as Rumania, Hungary and Finland. Indonesia and Vietnam are associated with it; it has the sympathy of India, Egypt and Syria. The anti-imperialist camp is backed by the labor and democratic movement and by the fraternal Communist parties in all countries, by the fighters for national liberation in the colonies and dependencies, by all progressive and democratic forces in every country. The purpose of this camp is to resist the threat of new wars and imperialist expansion, to strengthen democracy and to extirpate the vestiges of fascism.  \n\nEven though Zhdanov's declaration was one of the first major foreign policy pronouncements by a Soviet leader in the postwar era, the Cominform fizzled out despite the fears it engendered in the West's anticommunists. In practice, the Soviets sought to use the structure of the Cominform to break any sign of independence from its constituent members. Although initially headquartered in Belgrade, Yugoslavia would actually be expelled from the Cominform less than a year later on account of Tito's independent approach to Yugoslavia's relations to its Balkan neighbors. The Cominform's coordination with Western communist parties fared little better. Instead of resurrecting a Popular Front strategy, Western communist parties increasingly adapted a strategy of being political outliers critiquing the postwar political establishment. Although this meant communism was able to make some ideological inroads in the West, especially in the late 1940s, Western communist parties became marginal political actors. The case of the KPD was an extreme example in which its kneejerk political activism (abetted by forged documents provided by the CIA) led the FRG courts to ban it as an antidemocratic party in 1956. \n\nUnderlying the general failure of the Cominform is a thread that remained one of the few consistencies of Soviet foreign policy: whatever the situation, Moscow's interpretation and interests were paramount. This fusion of *realpolitik* and Marxist-Leninism created a highly mercurial foreign policy that was highly reactive in nature. In his memoirs, Molotov outlined thegeneral thrust of the Soviet postwar view of its interests:\n\n > They hardened their line against us, and we had to consolidate what we had conquered. We created our socialist Germany in part of Germany, and in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, where the situation was fluid, we needed to restore order. Suppress capitalist order. This was the Cold War. Of course, you had to know the right measure. I believe that in this sense Stalin kept himself well within the limits.\n\n Italy in the late 1940s was a case in point of how Stalin tried to temper the situation in favor of order. The attempted assassination of the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti in July 1948, coupled with widespread allegations of electoral fraud the previous April, generated widespread strikes and demonstrations among the Italian left. Togliatti would sometimes employ the rhetoric of civil war in public pronouncements, indicated the PCI was going to lead a wider struggle. Stalin reigned in this rhetoric, underscoring to  Togliatti that the PCI had not exhausted all legal measures to power and that a civil war was not in the larger interests of the Soviet Union. So despite fulfilling much of the criterion of Zhdanov's proclamation, Soviet geostrategic interests trumped that of the need for a global struggle. \n\nMoscow's insistence that it was the elder brother of the global communist movement did not sit well abroad, especially in areas outside of direct Soviet military power. Stalin's somewhat patronizing attempts to control Mao and the CCP poisoned Sino-Soviet relations well after Stalin's death. With the conclusions of hostilities in 1945, Stalin desired for Mao to continue his wartime collaboration with the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek. Stalin believed not only would the KMT prevail in a civil war, but that civil war would destroy China. Stalin gave Mao a diktat in August 1945 that he should travel to Chungking and negotiate with Chiang or \"his stand would be repudiated in China and abroad.\" The Chungking meeting had the opposite effect than Stalin intended. Mao's meetings with Chiang reinforced within him the idea that he could win a civil war; Mao would later claim that Chiang was \"a corpse and no one believes him anymore.\" The communist victory thus came as much a shock to Moscow as to Washington. Although the Red Army turned over some Japanese war material to the CCP, they largely kept the best equipment and destroyed the remainder. Mao's victory emerged as a fait accompli for the newly-formed PRC as the USSR could not repudiate a successful communist revolution. But this did not stop Stalin from insisting that the PRC make economic and political concessions to the USSR and refused to aid Mao in efforts to invade Taiwan.\n\nThe emergence of Mao and the PRC as an ideological rival deeply unnerved the Kremlin and colored the perceptions of its foreign policy. With an alternative and seemingly more vibrant Marxist rival, Soviet actions seemed to be much more the actions of an old-school great power than a force trying to lead the world's downtrodden masses. The need for the Soviets to maintain security over Eastern Europe led to a series of crackdowns in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary. In light of these actions, Khrushchev's attempt to craft a peaceful coexistence with the West became the source of much criticism in the PRC and other left radical groups. The dissolving of the Cominform in 1956 and the Soviet destalinization drive gave further fodder for these anti-Soviet critiques. This denuding of its ideological purity meant that as the USSR sought to engage with movements in the Third World like Nasser's Egypt, Soviet foreign policy appeared to many as less it leading an umbrella movement and more as sheer opportunism. The fact that many of these nationalist movements in the third world, such as Nasserism or Ba'ath ism repressed or subordinated local communist parties gave cause for further critiques of the USSR for its self-interested foreign policy.     \n\nThese matters came to a head in the 1968 Prague Spring where a Warsaw Pact invasion crushed a Czechoslovakian reform movement. The resulting outcry both within the Soviet sphere of influence and abroad was quite condemnatory. The result of this outcry was the most clearly articulated Soviet position on foreign policy yet, the Breznev Doctrine. Although the Brezhnev Doctrine fit within the pattern of prior Soviet (or Soviet-enabled) interventions in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, the Doctrine was only truly formalized in the aftermath of Prague Spring. The rationale behind it was to try and reinvigorate the connectivity of the Warsaw Pact and underscore each member's commitment to the Marxist-Leninist socialism championed by the USSR. The Doctrine not only stated that the USSR had a right to intervene in a Warsaw Pact state if it adapted a political course contrary to socialism, but also other Warsaw Pact states had to intervene as well. The fear of other Warsaw Pact states forming their \"own road to socialism,\" and breaking Moscow's monopoly on what it perceived as the correct political path. This fear was particularly acute for many Soviet leaders and the events in Prague Spring underscored how such a danger was real.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/nss/documents/zhdanov-response-to-x.html"]]}
{"q_id": "65aa7o", "title": "why is hand flapping a behavior common to many people with autism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65aa7o/eli5_why_is_hand_flapping_a_behavior_common_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg8scql", "dg8shlv", "dg8v7f2", "dg92mg1"], "score": [15, 18, 137, 2], "text": ["It's a common physical tick that feels good and relieves stress. Another common tick is spinning or running in circles, as well as rocking and turning their heads. Doctors sometimes call these behaviors \"stimming\" and it is commonly believed that autists are more sensitive to physical stimulation than most people. This also is thought to be a reason why they can be extremely averse to touch, and are hypersensitive to seams or scratchy fabrics in clothing. This is the general reason why people with autism tend to have so many physical ticks, but why hand flapping specifically is so common isn't well understood.\n\nOne theory is that since they are so prone to physical sensation, and since our hands are incredibly sensitive, hand flapping is akin to yelling for people who tend to communicate with their hands/gestures. This would explain why hand flapping so often accompanies laughter, anger, or just excitement in general. ", "There is a theory that folks with autism don't have a good understanding of where their body is in space. This sort of motion gives the person feedback about that. Also, this is why they think weighted blankets are so relaxing to people with autism - it gives them feedback about where their body is in space, without them having to seek it. ", "I have high functioning autism and while I don't do the hand flapping thing, I will on rare occasions drum my fingers. I don't do it often enough or in rigid enough contexts to consider it a full blown stim, but I do find myself doing the motion in mid-air when I'm trying to remember something during conversations. I usually drum my fingers against something when I'm extremely stressed or trying to find a solution to a problem or scenario.\n\nLike a majority of people with autism I have Sensory Processing Disorder, sometimes referred to as hypersensitivity. It dials my senses up to eleven and my brain does not have the ability to tune out portions of my environment or any surrounding stimulus, everything is processed at roughly the same level and understandably can be very overwhelming. It takes a lot of focus to be able to 'tune in' to certain things; in my case spoken words if there are multiple sources of background noise, but it can be almost anything you would try to process/learn. Visuals, smells, questions on a test, etc.\n\nStims are self stimulating behaviors that sort of comfort and calm the person doing them. In the cases in which I'm drumming my fingers I can very clearly feel the interior movements of my fingers joints and how that interior motion is unbelievably smooth within the joint itself. Combine that with hearing the clicking of my nails and the vibrations feeding into my fingers as they connect with whatever surface I'm tapping on, and the tiny twinges of the ligaments and muscles after I've done it for an extended period of time... It's incredibly pleasant to process. Also if you can't glean from my description it's a distracting and strong sensation, enough to distract me from all of the extra outside stimulus the average person is able to automatically filter out. You could almost consider it a form of mediation, at least in my case (remember, this disorder is a spectrum, so experiences can vary wildly) since it can calm me down when I'm under a lot of pressure but it also allows me to focus significantly better when needed.\n\nI hope that helps, I'm happy to try and answer more questions or elaborate further if needed.", "It is clinically referred to as a form of Stereotypy. Often grouped with other repetitive behaviors which have no function with their environment. \n\nAnecdotally, it is said to be a \"stimming\" or \"calming\" behavior, but this may not always be the case for people who develop high rate or long duration patterns of it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ep6gz", "title": "If I constantly reheat soup, will it stay good forever?", "selftext": "Say I make a huge vat of soup. If I reheat it every other day, or every third day, if I reheat it and let it come to a simmer for 5 or 10 minutes, will it stay good indefinitely?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ep6gz/if_i_constantly_reheat_soup_will_it_stay_good/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca2ib9i", "ca2m0cs"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Many proteins and other macromolecules (starches, lipids... what you'd expect to find in soups) are susceptible to freeze-thaw cycles. That is, the more often it gets frozen- > thawed- > hot- > frozen, the more likely that they would be broken down. As far as salts go, they should endure the freeze-thaw cycles just fine.\n\nI don't know specifically about certain soups, but chunks of animal meat and starchy noodles would probably be the most noticeably affected. You'd maybe notice the meat going soft and losing consistency, while the noodles would seem to dissolve or turn to mush.", "I think this will depend on what you mean by \"stay good\". If you mean \"safe to eat\", then yes - as long as the soup doesn't spend very long in the \"danger zone\" of temperatures, it'll be fine.\n\nThis site:\n_URL_0_\n\nSays no more than 4 hours total at temperatures between 5-57 degrees C. I've heard slightly-different versions of this from different sources, but they're in roughly the same range. \n\nOne potential issue is cooling a \"huge vat\" of soup from serving temperature down to storage temperature quickly. You might not be able to do that without transferring the soup to smaller containers first.\n\nOne alternative is to just keep it at a high temperature until it's all gone. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.idph.state.il.us/about/fdd/fdd_fs_foodservice.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "4bnaa0", "title": "why are teacher and police unions so much stronger than other unions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bnaa0/eli5_why_are_teacher_and_police_unions_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1anipm", "d1anj19", "d1anl43", "d1ao19r", "d1ay18q", "d1b1uqf", "d1b5z2s"], "score": [6, 14, 4, 3, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Public sector unions are stronger than private sector ones because they, like other unions, are powerful political groups. \n\nWhen you're a powerful political group that works for the government, it turns out you have more leverage compared to a powerful political group that works for a private enterprise.", "These unions are powerful because they represent people whose careers are widely respected and critical. And any kind of strike/industrial action/work stoppage is a **big deal**.\n\nIf police go on strike, we instantly live in a more dangerous world. And if teachers go on strike, it has an immediate negative effect on the economy as many people will have to stay home with children who otherwise would be at work.\n\nAs a result, keeping these unions happy is a key public policy priority.", "The power of a union is generally linked to how crippling a strike would be.\n\nA teacher's strike or police strike would temporarily upend society.  Kids would be forced to stay home, necessitating that a parent stay home as well, disrupting everyone's lives.  And a police strike would let crime run wild and free.  So people are more willing to give teachers and police what they ask.  Meanwhile, a grocery workers' strike affects very few people.  And since the barrier to entry for grocery workers is quite low (compared to the certifications required for police/teaching work), those workers can simply be fired and replaced with someone else if they strike.", "Another thing to mention is that these are professions where you can't just hire someone off the street and expect them to do the job. You need specialized training. Unions are stronger when employers can't just hire someone off Craigslist to do the job instead. You can hire another cashier easily. You can't hire another police officer or teacher. ", "The big thing is they are public sector unions.\n\nIf the factory workers unions pushes too hard, the factory shuts down and no one has a job anymore.  If a public union pushes too hard, schools and polices station don't shut down, they just get the gov't to raise taxes or borrow money.\n\nAlso, the negotiate with elected officials, who will lose their jobs if they look bad.  It is easy to slap \"think of the children\" or \"stand up for our heroes\" on any demand they might make, try to win public sentiment.", "They are occupations which can't be outsourced, must provide services where ever people live, and must increase in number as the population increases.\n\nAs the population rises, you must have more teachers and police. There's no way around it.\n\nAlso, being public sector unions, they help elect their bosses.\n\n", "While not directly going towards this question (As lots of people have adequately answered it) I'd like to address the first paragraph and note that the paid leave thing is not something that police are given due to union protection.\n\nUsually, when a police officer is put on paid leave after a shooting, it's because he's under investigation, and it would be inappropriate for him to be actively working as a peace officer while an investigation is going on. However, he *still has not been convicted of or even necessarily charged with any crime at this time* because he's just being investigated. So they can't fire him because wrongdoing hasn't even been confirmed or denied, but neither can they allow him to continue to work. So that's why paid leave. Any other job, he'd just keep working until he either gets convicted and fired, or found not guilty and life goes on.\n\nI can't think of an instance where a union has negotiated for paid leave for officers *convicted* of a crime. The world's a big place and it's full of cops, so it could happen, but it's definitely not the norm or even close to likely."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5jljym", "title": "considering that workers are more productive today than 30 years ago thanks to technology, why do people still have to work 40 hours a week and why are real wages still stagnant?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jljym/eli5_considering_that_workers_are_more_productive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbh2gxg", "dbh40ej", "dbh4mk3", "dbh5iht", "dbh5qic", "dbhansq", "dbhfr0o"], "score": [26, 11, 10, 7, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["A few  big issues have happened.\n\n1. Nearly all the productivity gains have gone to the wealthiest fraction of society -- the top 10% and especially the top 0.01%.\n2. People are competing for finite resources like homes in the best locations. If everyone else earns more, I need to earn more too or I'll end up living in a bad location.\n3. People's standards for material wealth have gone *way* up. Seventy years ago it was normal to own 2 pairs of shoes and 4 outfits, no TV and no mobile phone, and *maybe* one car per family, and an 800 square foot home. Now almost no one thinks this is enough.", "In the current system, those who control the production have no incentive to share the benefits of it. Before you think I'm just going \"rah rah socialism\", it's a complicated issue.\n\nThe general crux of the issue though, is why would a company raise wages when it doesn't have to? More people are educated/skilled. The competition for jobs is much harsher right now than the competition for skilled labor (in most cases, I know there's exceptions). The fact that technology makes each individual more productive only hurts this situation.\n\nIt would be nice if it meant more people working but less hours each week but why do that? There's base overhead costs for each employee, having 10 employees work 40-hrs is always going to be cheaper than having 20 employees work 20-hrs, even on the same hourly wage.\n\nOf course increased production would ideally increase profit margins, but few companies are going to be monetarily inefficient out of pure altruism. No reasonable economist is seeing a great end to this situation left unchecked. Hence why ideas like basic income are gaining steam.", "I just automated my bookkeeping department. Now one $10/hr person can do the work of 6 $10/hr people!  Why should I give them a raise? In reality I'm going to layoff 5 of them and pocket the $50/hr or ~100,000/yr. \n\nNow, I can give some of that $50 to the one bookkeeper that's left.  However, the going rate for that profession pretty much tops out at $15/hr, $20 for special snowflakes.  If my remaining bookkeeper wants $30/hr, I can easily find someone else to work for the original $10/hr + some training costs.  \n\nAlternatively, I can take that $100k and give it to the marketing/sales folks.  That will allow us to open up a whole new market. \n\nOr I can throw it at the R & D folks and automate some of the production jobs and save another $100k for next year. \n\nOr I can just reduce the prices of our widgets so now we're both objectively better AND cheaper than our direct competitors.  This will raise sales and lower theirs! Win-win!\n\nOr I can pocket it and build a new lakehouse. \n\nBasically, why should they give a raise if employees can't justify it's value? Or more commonly, why give a raise to someone that isn't asking for it? ", "In a nutshell: Because \"trickle-down economics\" doesn't actually trickle down. The profits all stay at the top and get distributed to shareholders rather than workers.", " >  Why do people still have to work 40 hours a week?\n\nBasically, because people want more stuff. Say people are twice as productive today than they were 30 years ago. If people wanted the same standard of living as 30 years ago they could work half as much. But people want twice the standard of living as 30 years ago, so people work the same amount.\n\n[Also keep in mind that the number of hours worked per year in the US has been trending down for a long time,](_URL_1_) so to some extent people don't still have to work 40 hours per week.\n\nSo to answer this one, people don't have to work 40 hours a week, but people want the lifestyle that working 40 hours a week provides.\n\n >  Why are real wages still stagnant?\n\nWell there's a few reasons. When looking at why average wages haven't kept up with productivity, [a lot of the evidence points to the idea the increases in productivity are being eaten by non-monetary compensation](_URL_2_). Mostly in the form of rising healthcare costs.\n\nAnother reason is rising Inequality, and not in the sense of between the 99% and the 1%. Yes inequality has risen in between the 1% and everything else, but the real, major rise in inequality has been between those with a college education and those without. To quote David Autor, director of MIT's inequality initiative [\"The earnings gap between the median college-educated two-income family and the median high school-educated two-income family ... is four times as large as the redistribution that has taken place from the bottom 99 percent to the top 1 percent of households in the same period\"](_URL_0_)\n\nThis rising inequality is believed to be driven primarily by technological change.\n\nThink about it - workers have gotten massively more productive since the 1970s, but that productivity increase doesn't apply to all workers. Are Janitors or Cashiers really any more productive than they were 30 years ago? And if not, why would we expect to see them paid any more?\n\nIn addition, a lot of the jobs that increased in productivity also came bundled with an increase in the amount of skill required to do those jobs. Something that previously could be done by anyone with a high school diploma now requires years of specialized training. A similar share of the labor market consisting of unskilled workers is competing for a smaller share of the labor market, and that leaves wages stagnant or even lower for them.\n\nAll of this leads to a fairly rosy picture for most college graduates (recent college graduates are stuck at a point in there lives where they are paying off the expenses of college before the full income benefits of college are realized, which typically doesn't happen until mid 30's early 40's), but a dismal picture for high school graduates or dropouts.\n\nThen on top of that you have more regional issues. For example, because of zoning and space restrictions, the cost of housing has dramatically increased in coastal cities.\n\nFinally to top everything off, you have some statistical quirks which make things look a bit worse than they are. For example, because the average household size has been shrinking for quite a while, you are less likely today to have multiple earners in a household than you were in the past (pop culture greatly exaggerated the prevalence of single income families in the past)", "lots of info out there on how a shorter work week either day or time wise is better for everyone.\n\n_URL_0_", "The other answers are good, but just to add in to the mix: \n\nLet's your boss gives you and your crew 40 hours of work to do per week, and you go to them and say \"hey, we can do the same amount of work in less time, we only need 30 hours\". What you just told them is \"we can be more efficient, we're wasting time, we don't have 40 hours of work to do per week, etc.\" and they will give you more work to do. \n\nIn essence, letting them know you can do the same amount of work with less time doesn't convince them to keep you less time, it tells them to give you more work."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://news.mit.edu/2014/qa-david-autor-inequality-among-99-percent-0522", "https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG", "https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-gone"], ["http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/120415/does-shorter-work-week-lead-greater-productivity.asp"], []]}
{"q_id": "1hbl9t", "title": "why some import cars, such as the nissan r34 skyline is illegal to own or so hard to get in america?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hbl9t/eli5_why_some_import_cars_such_as_the_nissan_r34/", "answers": {"a_id": ["casqph1", "cassbcq", "casstza", "castdub", "castpbf", "casucec", "casx67l", "casy2es", "casyv6n", "cat3g9n"], "score": [459, 15, 129, 16, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 4], "text": ["The US has many many regulations on cars, stuff like emissions controls and safety. Some of this can be extremely expensive to engineer and build, and on low-production models it's not practical. The bigger problem is the testing requirements: manufacturers are required to crash test cars and it's an extremely expensive process. And if they change something, like the transmission, they may have to re-do all the crash testing. \n\nImported cars are required to meet many of these requirements, even if you are just trying to get one car through customs. \n\n", "In 2006, Motorex was banned from importing Skylines into the U.S. because they faked crash tests. Then shortly after that, the government made a new rule that the car has to be 25 years or older in order to be imported. Before then you could easily import one here, and bring it up to U.S. standards. However people usually say its because its a RHD (right hand drive) car but thats not true.", "**TL;DR Mercedes offered a better version of the SEL in the European market, so those that could afford it would just ship it in.  It was successful enough to damage US dealers.  They lobbied congress with many millions of dollhairs.**\n\nSince nobody here gave you the correct answer, I will.\n\n\"This avenue of vehicle availability was increasingly successful, especially in cases where the US model of a vehicle was less powerful and/or less well equipped than versions available in other markets. For example, Mercedes-Benz chose to offer only the lower-output 380SEL model in 1981 to Americans, some of whom wanted the much faster 500SEL available in the rest of the world. BMW had the same issue with their 745i Turbo. The grey market was successful enough that it ate significantly into the business of Mercedes-Benz of North America and their dealers. The corporation launched a successful million-dollar congressional lobbying effort to stop private importation of vehicles not officially intended for the U.S. market.\"  [Source](_URL_0_)\n\nThat lobbying led to making a bunch of arbitrary and bullshit laws, like needing US crash testing, US emissions, and US market glass, and only cars that are over the age of 25 are exempt.  I now live in the UK, and you can register any road legal car as long as it meets a certain set of guidelines annually on your Ministry of Transport inspection (MOT for my redcoat brothers and sisters).  The car market in Europe is 10x better and far cheaper if you buy used.  New cars are more expensive as a result of certain trade agreements and high taxes.\n\nThe R34 is illegal because they do not have NHTSA crash test data on it.  The 96-98 R33 is legal because they had full successful crash testing done, but you still need to replace the exhaust and glass.", "I used to on a 92 R32 Skyline. I can tell you that they have very different safety standards. No safety glass, poor reinforcement, and etc. Basically they tried to make a car as light and fast as possible at the cost of safety. \n\nA picture of my [Skyline](_URL_0_)\n\nIt was back in 07, so camera phones sucked then. ", "From what I've read a lot of Japanese imports that are meant for sport and racing have totally different safety and emission standards than us. Something as simple as having a little but of a higher emission rating than we will allow will prevent them from being imported. For the die hard racers and fans. They'll go through all the bullshit of buying a skyline, shipping, getting it through customs and added on whatever our government demands to allow it to be brought in, then go through with tuning and turning their skyline into the race car the want...yeah a lot of money. But in a nutshell, it's all bullshit politics between two different nations safety and testing ratings. For example Japan doesn't seem to be as tough of emission standards as the US is. ", "A buddy of mine had an older skyline that was wrecked and rebuilt and had the serial number of an altima. But that's a cheap way around it. \nEDIT: i can't spell", "So what If I wanted  VW Scirocco R in the US. I would basically have to buy it in Canada then \"ILLEGALLY\" drive it into Ohio? ", "The corporation anticipates low sales, so they don't spend the considerable amount of money to get them certified as passing all the smog and crash testing.\n\nDealers would be required to have at least one mechanic who is trained to maintain and repair all the warrantee covered potential problems.", "you can not import a car and register it unless it has the dot/epa stickers. you may temporarily import a non qualifying motor vehicle...if you post a bond, can be up to a million dollar bond (seen on trucks from Canada that are for trade shows) trust me customs and epa will track you down, since the economy went sour the government has been real eager to ine people....\nI work at a customs brokerage, I do this stuff daily.\n\n\n", "The Ebay's Buyer's Guide is the best read I've seen on the subject, in terms of factuality and actual research:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nToo many resources on the matter are from internet experts or random gurus in the tuning community."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_import_vehicle"], ["http://imgur.com/Cd2JjYf"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Legally-Import-amp-Register-Nissan-Skyline/10000000006110167/g.html"]]}
{"q_id": "31sn9c", "title": "would a pizzeria owned by a gay couple be legally mandated to cater an event hosted by the westboro baptist church?", "selftext": "Obviously, this post is inspired by recent events in Indiana. Not trying to incite anything by asking, but just curious if under current U.S. law businesses can refuse to serve based on \"irreconcilable differences\" or something like that. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31sn9c/eli5_would_a_pizzeria_owned_by_a_gay_couple_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq4ks6m", "cq4kt7g", "cq4ku8r", "cq4lewh", "cq4lj9k", "cq4ltic", "cq4q9rv", "cq4yvrg", "cq50eli", "cq51uvu", "cq553xi", "cq589fs"], "score": [17, 11, 20, 2, 2, 83, 2, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["One of the fundamental problems that we run into with this issue is that sexuality is not one of the federally recognized 'protected classes'. If you asked the people who are in favor of letting business discriminate against gay people if they would be okay if they also said that they didnt wamt to serve black people, or women, or Mexicans, the vast majority of them would (hopefully) say of course not. \n\nUntil we have sexuality included in the protected classes mandate from the federal government, we will never have a definitive answer to these kinds of questions. ", "No. Under current US law a business can refuse service to anyone so long as the reason for refusing service is not rooted in the fact that they are a member of a protected class. This means that they can choose to not cater an event due to time constraints, travel distance, cost, or because they do not cater (catering is more than just providing food, it is also providing staff and at time decorations).", " > In cases in which the patron is not a member of a federally protected class, the question generally turns on whether the business's refusal of service was arbitrary, or whether the business had a specific interest in refusing service.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nThis would be tricky with the WBC, because they are *technically* a church, and refusal on the grounds of religion is against the law. However, if the WBC told the owners of the pizzeria that they wanted their website (_URL_1_) spelled out in pepperoni on all of their pizzas, I think they can legally refuse to comply with that request. ", "In order for refusal of service to be considered \"discrimination\", the reason for their refusal must fall under one of the items in the list of protected classes, things like:\n\n* religion\n* national origin\n* gender\n* race\n\nThis isn't a full list, but while WBC is indeed a religious denomination, this gay couple probably doesn't have any issues serving religious groups, or even other baptist groups, just hate groups. Hate groups are not a protected class, and therefore I do not believe that refusal of service to members of the WBC would be considered illegal.", "I wonder the same about a black owned pizzeria refusing service to a KKK wedding. ", "No, because for it to be considered discrimination, they have to refuse service to a protected class because they are a protected class.\n\nProtected classes are\n\n* Religion\n* National Origin/Ethnicity\n* Race\n* Gender\n\nNow, you couldn't refuse the Westboro Baptist Church because of their religion, but you could refuse them because you refuse to service that particular group because of what they do. Similarly, I could refuse to my barn out to the Black Panthers, not because of their race but because of the organization itself.\n\nLet's say you own a pizza place. There is a couple waiting for pizza that is sucking each other's face. You could kick them out because they are making other people uncomfortable, regardless of whether or not they are gay, because it's what they are actively doing.\n\nDiscrimination would be if you actively refused service to particular people because of their particular standing in one of the protected classes.\n\nBut, at the same time it isn't discrimination if you create a business centred around catering specifically to a particular group. ie, a woman's only gym, a gay only bar, a men's club, etc.", "No because businesses have the right to refuse service, just as long as the reason has nothing to do with them being a member of a protected class.", "Clarification request:  Would they be refusing to host because WBC is a church?  Or would they be refusing to host because of who they are, how they behave, and what they choose to represent?\n\nThere's a difference between choosing to deny service because of religion and another to deny service based on publicized hate speech.  Also consider that being forced to provide service would place the pizzeria owners and staff in a situation of duress.  So I'd have to say \"No,\" even without bringing religion into the discussion, you can't force someone to provide services in a hostile environment.", "Few people seem to understand the way anti-discrimination laws work.\n\nThe law recognizes certain \"protected classes,\" groups of people like blacks, Jews, and (mostly) gays. Their status as a protected class in federal law is currently in transition.\n\nIf a business is normally open to the public, it is illegal for them to refuse to do business with a protected class. This is one of the things people fought--and even died--for in the civil rights movement. If you don't want to do business with \"those people,\" you are perfectly free to get the fuck OUT of the business and let somebody else have your market share. The people who are citing their religious beliefs today to refuse to do business with icky gay people are using the SAME arguments that people used to use to refuse business to blacks. \n\nIt is perfectly legal to refuse service to an *individual,* even if they happen to be a member of a protected class. So you can toss out a disruptive crackhead even if he's black. And no, you can't sneak around the law by \"just happening to\" refuse service to a bunch of individuals who \"just happen to be\" members of a protected class. Once a pattern of class discrimination is found, you're in trouble.\n\nAlthough religion is a protected class, the members of *one specific* church are possibly not. You *might* be able to get away with refusing to serve any member of a *specific* church, as long as you have no pattern of discrimination against people of that religion otherwise. You'd probably better have a good lawyer on standby if you wanted to try it, though, especially if the \"church\" is the WBC, which is really just a family of legal trolls who intentionally act outrageously to provoke people into violating their civil rights so they can sue.\n\nMostly, protected classes are things you're born into, not things that you join by choice. There are some exceptions, like family status, pregnancy, etc.\n", "Why do people consider gays a hate group? It's really silly. ", "Here's the thing about America.  You can refuse anyone by saying, \"sorry, we're booked that day.\"\n\nBut if you have to be a giant cunt and say, \"this is against my religion\", that's when you have a problem.\n\n(Also, when we allowed businesses to refuse people, we had the Jim Crow south.  The Jim Crow south sucked.  It's good we don't allow businesses to discriminate.  There is no right to own a business in the constitution.  If you can't serve people because of your religion, don't open a business.  If you do, expect to lose it to fines.)", "You can refuse to do business if they want you to do something you don't want to do, like make a cake saying \"God hates fags,\" or if catering them requires you to go to one of their rallies and listen to their crap for several hours. You can refuse service because one of them was a dick to you or someone you know. You can refuse service because they've proven to be unreliable for payments in the past, with you or with other businesses. \n\nWhat you CANT do, is refuse to provide the exact same service, in the exact same way that you provided it to everyone else because of one aspect of them that you do not like. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can-a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance", "godhatesfags.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jl4bh", "title": "why do the vast majority of humans only eat herbivores and shy away from carnivores if/when they eat meat?", "selftext": "I'm thinking 'meat is meat' right?  What am I missing in this equation/decision?\n\nWe will eat wild turkeys, etc. but not carrion birds, etc....", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jl4bh/eli5_why_do_the_vast_majority_of_humans_only_eat/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbfqhpr", "cbfqirc", "cbfqkg9", "cbfqopc", "cbfqta7", "cbfqxn3", "cbfr6o6", "cbfzpol", "cbg5txc"], "score": [40, 4, 3, 5, 6, 9, 6, 6, 2], "text": ["It's cheaper to raise animals that eat only grains, grasses, etc.", "You will notice that most (not all) carnivores do the same. It has to do with the build up of toxins through the food chain I believe. Toxins build up in the ground and plants, herbivores eat lots of grass, so each builds up levels of toxins. Then carnivores eat lots of herbivores so they build up even *more* toxins. I'm not sure on the exact details though. \n\nAlso, herbivores tend to be meatier I believe. If you think about it, carnivores tend to be fairly lean. I imagine that has to do with it as well. \n\nLastly, ease of \"hunting\". Herbivores will be easier to catch and don't have really pointy teeth. \n\nI'm particularly thinking of the African savannah and fish when I talk about this, I'm not really an expert at birds. ", "There are several reasons.\n\nThey are more likely to have parasites getting them by eating other animals.\n\nThe are more taxing to raise as you need to feed them, with each stage in a food chain a great deal of energy is lost (lets say 90% or there abouts). So they need to eat ALOT.\n\nBy eating ALOT they accumulate toxins from other animals they eat called biomagnification this is why sushi can cause mercury (and other heavy metal) poisoning.\n\nMany religious books prohibit it.\n\nWe have an evolutionary instinct to avoid preditors. They could eat us!", "cause they're ignorant. gator meat is damn good.  and tuna is a carnivore and mighty tasty.  ", "It boils down to the cost of domesticated animals.\n\nIn a very general ways, the rule of thumb is that it take 10 lbs of grains to produce 1 lb of meat in a herbivore. So there is a significant investment of resources in producing the meat we eat (which is why eating meat is rare except for the upper classes, historically). \n\nImagine if then you then had to then take the meat that you raised on grains (the herbivores) to feed another animal. You're adding a whole layer of costs. So if it takes 10lbs of meat feed to an animal to make another 1 lb of meat on the carnivorous end-product, you're making 1 lb of carnivore meat cost 100 lbs of grain. This is economically unsustainable in terms of domesticated production.\n\nA few caveats: Pigs are omnivorous. We do eat some carnivores (like alligators) but only if there is another use of them (in the case of alligators, again, the skin is very valuable) or if we hunt them. Also, carnivores haven't been domesticated for the purpose of eating, whereas chicken, cows, pigs, etc have been breed over countless generations to make their meat tasty.", "Are you ignoring that many, many fishes that we eat are, in fact, carnivores? \n\n*Edit*\n\nThe USGS happens to have a document called \"Is it Safe to Eat\" just in case you were wondering about eating some wildlife.\n_URL_0_\n\n*Edit* \nIn the PDF :  Table 5.3 Examples of parasite infections that may be observed in North American wildlife harvested for human consumption", "Carnivores don't taste very good.  Except fish and scavenger-type seafood.", "Only 10% of energy is passed up each rung of the food chain. This means that it is economically favorable to eat producers (plants), and first order consumers (herbivores).", "It unhealthy to eat out of the top of a foodchain. Toxins and heavymetal acumilate over time in the top(beetle eats a little, bird eats many beetle, snakes eats many birds, and a lion eats the snake). Also applies to fish, like you should never eat to much tuna."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/disease_emergence/Chapter5.pdf"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ibl4i", "title": "given the fire in fort mcmurray; how will insurance companies handle paying out thousands of homes and vehicles at once, without going bankrupt?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ibl4i/eli5_given_the_fire_in_fort_mcmurray_how_will/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2wpe8k", "d2wpg39", "d2wpggl", "d2wu15t"], "score": [46, 28, 44, 3], "text": ["Small insurance brokers are \"underwritten\" by larger ones such as Lloyds of London, and may also have sold some of the risk to other insurers (a practice called reinsurance) such as Swiss Re. \n\nLloyds of London is actually an insurance *market*: they don't carry the risk themselves, that falls on investors (individual and corporate) who make money in good times and lose money in bad times. ", "Insurance companies are themselves insured against this sort of thing. It's called reinsurance.\n\nThe reinsurance market exists to keep the insurance market solvent after a major natural disaster or the like.", "In a word, [reinsurance](_URL_0_).  Insurance companies insure themselves against these sorts of catastrophic losses so they'll have back-up funds when shit like this happens.  Reinsurers collect  large enough premiums, invest their money wisely enough and have occasion to pay off rarely enough that they're there when disaster strikes.  Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.\n\nEdit- fix typo", "I work for a property insurance company that does a lot of business in the area. For the past week we've had a team dedicated to generating these claims (preemptively) so that they could be processed as soon as possible once more information came in. \n\n\nAnd yes, the larger companies have enough money and have reinsured these risks as precaution against catastrophic events such as this. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance"], []]}
{"q_id": "384ty2", "title": "Monday Methods | Can the Subaltern Speak?", "selftext": "Welcome to another Evening edition of Monday Methods.\n\nI want to thank /u/lngwstksgk for suggesting today's topic, and referring me to [this thread](_URL_0_).\n\nI recognize that terms like 'subaltern' and 'hegemonic discourse' can be opaque to many who are reading this. I hope that the following quote and questions can give an accessible sense of what is being asked here.\n\nIn \"Choosing Marinality as a Site of Resistance\" ~~Bell Hooks~~ bell hooks described the dynamic between the Western Academic and the non-Western Subaltern thusly:\n\n > [There is] no need to hear your voice, when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still [the] colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now at the center of my talk.\n\nIs this a fair accusation? In writing the story of the Subaltern^1, does the Academic take away the subject's voice and replace it with the voice of the Academic?\n\nIs Joanne Sharp correct in saying that Western intellectuals relegate non-western ways of knowing as *unscientific* or *folklore* or *superstition* or *traditional*; and to be heard in the Academic community, subaltern people or groups must express themselves in Western ways of reasoning and language. Thus, in changing the \"language of knowing\" the Subaltern can no longer accurately express their traditions of knowing?\n\n----\n1- a broad, simple definition of Subaltern could be \"persons or groups in society that are written about by others, but whose first-hand accounts do not exist\". Most definitions of the Subaltern assume them to be at the margins of Western society. Historically, medieval serfs, Afro-American slaves, and women could be considered a few examples of subaltern groups, among others.\n\n----\n\nNext week's theme is **Handling manuscripts and other primary documents**.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/384ty2/monday_methods_can_the_subaltern_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crsd4ec", "crsh09j", "crsldzg"], "score": [17, 14, 6], "text": ["I don't have any problem with the description you lay out here - I think the scholarship on the subject has really adequately outlined the issue and I don't disagree in the slightest. Where I think an issue still lies is that I don't think anyone has yet to propose a very satisfactory or pragmatic solution for Western academics to continue their work on these subjects without silencing other perspectives. I find the entire discourse troubling because at some fundamental level it proposes that *there is no way* for me to continue writing history about the subaltern without perpetuating the silence. Perhaps there isn't a way to reconcile my position as a Western academic with the subject matter I would like to write about, but I hope we, as in social scientists, can at least explore some other possibilities for this reconciliation. \n\nIn American archaeology, at least, the best work is being done by archaeologists working with descendant communities - primarily Native American groups - in order to incorporate their perspectives into the history being written. At the end of the day, however, it seems that all these projects either entirely abandon their academic agency in controlling the work (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does produce different work), or they produce a final product wherein the subaltern perspective is still shackled to a fundamentally Western academic context and framework. I try not to despair, but finding a middle ground within one body of work seems difficult. Maybe the only real way to embrace a multivocal scholarship is just to flood the \"market\" with many different perspectives, rather than trying to incorporate them all into single bodies of work. ", "I think it's a problem of source material. The state didn't let the subaltern speak (essentially by definition) so the material is absent state archives, except perhaps the archives of the organs of criminal justice. It's no accident that the famous microhistories of the West that deal with peasants (*The Cheese and the Worms*, *the Return of Martin Guerre*, *Mountaillou*, etc) are all taken from court records that happened to be i) recorded in sufficient detail and ii) preserved to the present day (the records for Mountaillou only survived, for example, because the inquisitor of Mountaillou became pope, and all his paper brought to Rome and preserved).  One can construct a history from snatches of songs, and folks tales, and offhand mentions (see E.P. Thompson's work), but it is more difficult and almost impossible before printing became popular. Outside these and a few other very particular events (like peasant revolts), getting the voices of the subaltern is very difficult if not impossible. Talented social historians can pick up and stitch together a thousand scraps (either through statistics or prosopography or some other method), but it's hard to hear a \"voice\" from such a tapestry, even a magnificent one (like Eugene Weber's magisterial *Peasants into Frenchmen*). I think accusing historians of saying \"There is not need to hear your voice\" is a little facile. If their voices survived in documents (or even documented songs, folktales, etc), at least some historians would strain to hear it. But where no documents exist, those voices are dead to history.\n\nThis is purely about *academic history*. I think it often gets mixed up with current *policy* debates, where even when given amplification, the interests of subaltern groups are often not heard. To conflate those would do a disservice to both living subaltern groups (in exaggerating the difficulty of hearing them, rather than seeing it as a strategy) and dead subaltern (who most of whom can never be resurrected due to never being documented in a way that future historians could look back on).\n\nI think that the historian/anthropologist/sociologist who studies subaltern groups should do her best to understand their frames of action, but simultaneously, should not be limited in her understanding by the frames that she is supposed to be analyzing. A historian who only understood French kings (to choose the least subaltern example possible) as they understood themselves would be a bad historian.  Likewise, a historian who paid no attention to how French kings understood themselves, and only imposed outside frames (modern ones, economic ones, psychological ones, rational choice ones, etc.), would also be a bad historian. The trick of history, for a modern historian, is trying to do both at once.  It's a difficult job, to say the least (as a sociologist, I often lean towards prizing the outside frames, at least for important state actors), and reminds me at times of an old Yiddish (and, I learned this weekend, German) proverb, \"You can't dance at two weddings\" (the Yiddish adds \"with one *tuches*\", which as far as I know is absent in the German). Yet, the historian must do her best to try to be attentive to both of the bridal parties. ", "The discussion between Vivek Chibber and Spivak, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, et. al., over Chibber's attack on the Subaltern Studies group, *Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Captial* (Verso, 2013) has been really illuminating for me in understanding the stakes in the question of the subaltern's speech and the incommensurability of East and West. Spivak wrote a scathing (even for her) review to which Chibber responded, and there's a YouTube video of Chibber debating Chatterjee as well. Anyone else been following this?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bf7tw/can_the_subaltern_speak/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ylegy", "title": "how do porn stars not get stds?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ylegy/eli5_how_do_porn_stars_not_get_stds/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5wmm0y", "c5wmnaj", "c5wmtvg", "c5wmzj0", "c5wv3dy", "c5wvlaa", "c5x2kro"], "score": [32, 9, 141, 3, 6, 11, 2], "text": ["Hot people willing to do porn are plentiful. When it gets to that, you can be exclusive enough to warrant an STD test before getting someone signed to a company. That said, there are porn actors with STDs. Faye Raegan is a well known example. \n\nSource: I'm a professional porn critiquer. ", "They're very careful about it. They test for STDs at least once a month, and if they fail, they're out of the business, at least on the performance side.\n\nSo... yeah. Casual sex without protection only becomes likely to give you an STD when someone in your group fucks someone with one. If everyone in your group is clean, you ain't catching shit.", "You want the real answer? It isn't fun.\n\nTHEY DO. (At least a number of them do.)\n\nThe reason they all test \"STD-free\" is because there's no reliable HPV (genital warts) test for men (as far as I know), and HSV-1/HSV-2 (oral / genital herpes) is so common (HSV-1 affects about 75-80% of the population, HSV-2 affects about 1 in 4 women and 1 in 5 men), that they don't include it on the standard STD screening.\n\nThe standard STD screening mostly screens out those STDs that are fatal (HIV) or treatable (gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, etc., etc., etc.).\n\nSorry to ruin the fantasy. \n\n(Those of you that are sexually active, when you get STD tested (and you should), you may want to ask for the HSV-1/HSV-2 tests to be included to make sure you're not a passive carrier, as something like 50% of people with HSV have no idea.)", "Frequent testing, porn stars get regular STD tests and anyone with an STD would be out of a job pretty quickly. ", "Hi!\n\nThere are a few people who were infected with HIV in recent time (I think about 4 or 5 in 2004).  One of those people was [Darren James](_URL_1_).  There have been other outbreaks as well, such as with [Derrick Burts](_URL_0_).  This is a quote from that article:\n\n*But the inherent risks of the business rapidly manifested themselves. When he went for his first STD test he found he had contracted chlamydia. The next month he was diagnosed with gonorrhea and syphilis.*\n\nThere are less STDs than you would think because of the amount of testing they go through and the greater use of condoms, but diseases can still occur in the industry.  ", "Belladonna states that \"99% of the porn industry has herpes.\" ([source](_URL_0_))\n\nThings that condoms don't prevent, like herpes and hpv - which causes cervical cancer and genital warts, are insanely prevalent in the porn community. Others that are cleared up quickly also seem to be common. Unfortunately most actors don't realize this until they have already contracted it and by then they might as well stay in the industry.", "I can't imagine a five year old asking this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/derrick-burts-hiv-in-pornography-the-naked-truth-2167532.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darren_James"], ["http://www.covenanteyes.com/2008/10/28/ex-porn-star-tells-the-truth-about-the-porn-industry/"], []]}
{"q_id": "7vwe99", "title": "Did Charles Manson actually know what a Helter Skelter was? Did he sincerely believe the Beatles were also talking about a race war?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7vwe99/did_charles_manson_actually_know_what_a_helter/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtw92is"], "score": [23], "text": ["I hope this answer is sufficient for the sub, but I've read Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Charles Manson trial. Bugliosi's case was built partially on the idea that Manson thought the Beatles were sending him hidden messages, particularly in the \"White Album\" about a coming race war called Helter Skelter. During this race war, Manson and his followers would live underground somewhere in the desert in safety, and then come up after the war was over and rule over the blacks, who in Manson's opinion would not be able to rule themselves.\n\nAccording to Bugliosi, Manson thought the race war wasn't coming about fast enough so he and his followers would trigger it with the killings, and after killing the LaBiancas they wrote \"Helter Skelter\" in blood on the wall, which would seem to support Bugliosi's theory.\n\nI believe Manson always protested his innocence and claimed the notion of \"Helter Skelter\" as a race war was just an idea dreamed up by Bugliosi."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32bmx9", "title": "why do most humans have the desire to sleep after orgasm?", "selftext": "Is it simply the body trying to offset the expired energy?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32bmx9/eli5_why_do_most_humans_have_the_desire_to_sleep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq9oxbd", "cq9oyh0", "cq9p3uf", "cq9qqi2", "cq9ss7n", "cq9ypol", "cqa2s6l", "cqaba56"], "score": [38, 9, 7, 27, 5, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Men release prolactin into their system after sex which causes them to feel tired. Although trying to convince my fiancee of that is impossible, proof or no proof.", "It might have something to do with the fact that most people have sex at night i.e. close to their natural bedtime. Also, orgasm releases endorphins and/or other feel-good chemicals which relaxes the body. Combine the two and it's easy to snooze.\n\nI've found that sex in the morning or afternoon is actually invigorating and doesn't make me want to fall asleep.\n", "Is there any evidence to confirm this?  As /u/fh3131 posted \u2014  \n\n > I've found that sex in the morning or afternoon is actually invigorating and doesn't make me want to fall asleep.\n\n\u2014 and this is my experience as well.\n", "So that we don't have to cuddle and talk about stuff.", "It was mostly my boyfriend who fell asleep after orgasm. I, on the other hand, had multiple orgasms already and was anxious for more.", "I find it's me who gets sleepy, my girlfriend complains that it wakes her up too much and she finds it harder to get to sleep afterwards.", "First the chemical part:  \n\n >   Then there is the biochemistry of the orgasm itself. Research shows that during ejaculation, men release a cocktail of brain chemicals, including norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, nitric oxide (NO), and the hormone prolactin. The release of prolactin is linked to the feeling of sexual satisfaction, and it also mediates the \u201crecovery time\u201d that men are well aware of\u2014the time a guy must wait before \u201cgiving it another go.\u201d Studies have also shown that men deficient in prolactin have faster recovery times.    \nfrom [livescience report on a sex study](_URL_0_)   \n\nSecond, from an evolutionary standpoint, (i think i saw this on a TLC special 20 years ago when it was actually a channel about learning), female sex partners have sore hips and a desire to lay still for a short time after intercourse to encourage the chances of successful conception.  Men tend to lose the motivation to move, as it improves the relationship emotionally, through simple being there.  Of course, that chemistry stuff i mentioned means that the lack of motivation to move helps with the motivation to sleep.  ", "I noticed that most \"evolutionary standpoint\" posts on here are misguided.\n\nFrom a BBC post,\n\n\"If the man continues to thrust after ejaculation he would simply be scooping out his own semen.\"\n\nWhich evolutionary obviously isn't very great.  After you orgasm, you lose an erection and feel satisfied so that you don't go for round 2, and scoop out all of your semen.\n\nArticle:\n_URL_0_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.livescience.com/32445-why-do-guys-get-sleepy-after-sex.html"], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3128753.stm"]]}
{"q_id": "42wlnl", "title": "It's often said the Japanese monarchy was founded by Emperor Jimmu, in the 6th century BCE. Was he a real person? How much do we know about him historically?", "selftext": "I've heard people say that he was just a myth, and not a real person. How much is there to this point? Was Jimmu a real person, and can the foundation of the Japanese monarchy really be attributed to him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42wlnl/its_often_said_the_japanese_monarchy_was_founded/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czeactf"], "score": [11], "text": ["Most of what we know of this period in Japan comes to us from 2 works, the [Nihon Shoki](_URL_0_) which serves as the official state history of the Yamato state up until that point, and the [Kojiki](_URL_1_) which is largely a collection of poetry of historical value due to the fact that it was mostly the aristocrats and soldiers who were composing them. What you need to understand first about the Nihon Shoki is that it's essentially propaganda. It's main purpose is to lend authority to the imperial line of the Yamato state by associating their personages with the gods of the people. It isn't necessarily reliable, much like numerous aspects of the various chinese state histories. And as a matter of fact, there are reasons to doubt aspects of some of the older sets of poems in the Kojiki. In the Nihon Shoki it says that Jimmu is a descendant of the sun goddess Amatarasu and the storm god Susa-no-O. Now even though both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki corroborate his reign dates, they were both commissioned works from the aristocracy leading the Yamato state in (probably) Asuka and they were commissioned at about the same time anyway, and after several hundred years after Jimmu lived. If you take it for granted that he existed in the first place, you may accept the secular information about him while taking a grain of salt over his deeds as depicted in the Nihon Shoki. You certainly can't have any faith in the mythical information about him or the absurd, such as him living for 126 years. If he existed at all, that tells you that the following reigning emperors *do not* have the correct reign dates, as well for Jimmu since he could not have lived that long. However, the point of the Nihon Shoki is to present him and the imperial line as divine. As a result of this, we really don't know how far the imperial line goes back, because what we do know isn't trustworthy here. Jimmu not existing in the first place is certainly possible because the writers of the state history had a political need of such figures anyway. Alternatively the legend of Jimmu may have predated the state history and just been very convenient for the fledgling Yamato state. The only way to know for sure if he really existed would be for the discovery of a kofun burial mound that clearly identifies him by name and can be carbon dated to the time period, but so far that hasn't been discovered (to my knowledge). I would say that given the current knowledge we have, it's a safer bet that he never existed in the first place, but we can't know for sure. Large sections of history come to us from a few biased sources and this is just one of those cases. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Shoki", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojiki"]]}
{"q_id": "3jqr2p", "title": "what's so special about counter strike? it doesn't look very different from modern warfare. how does it draw such a dedicated community?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jqr2p/eli5_whats_so_special_about_counter_strike_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["curhi8i", "curhrlv", "curhrwz", "curibfe", "curkpxj", "curlf92", "curmid4", "curncd0"], "score": [7, 8, 65, 25, 2, 3, 5, 5], "text": ["The original Counter Strike came out in 2000,  Call of Duty 1 came out in 2003. Modern Warfare in 2007.", "IMO what makes CS so special is that its a very high quality, precise game, with a good engine and game mechanics. A casual gamer wouldn't understand the difference between a generic big studio game with guns in it and counter strike. The difference is mainly in how precise the game mechanics are and the skill gap, the lack of iron sights and the aiming system basically means that you won't get a kill if you can't aim well. If the best CS player in the world went up against a total noob, the noob may be able to kill them 1 for every 1 million times he is killed (I am not exaggerating). In Black OPs 3, it may be 1 to 10, or 1 to 100.\n\nFunnily enough, the majority of redditors who think they are not even casual FPS players don't realise that Modern Warfare 1, (CoD4), and its predecessors CoD2 and vCoD were almost on par with CS1.6 and CS:S at the time. Unfortunately CoD4 became a huge commercial success and was very console friendly, the games ended up being ruined and the sharpness and consistency of what you had in CoD4 was eroded every year until you get what you have right now with Black OPs 3. I.e., when you shoot a gun, its not consistently precise, it takes less skill and aim to kill people, the game itself doesnt support dedicated servers, mod tools etc. CoD4 and CS allowed for people to create professional mods that suited 5v5 competitive play. In the CoD4 sequels, the devs removed the tools that allowed modders to remove all the kill streak crap and change the damage model of the guns to make it more like CS, in CS:S successor CS:GO the devs incorporated these things into the game fully acknowledging the competitive community which was a no-brainer. As you can tell this all breaks my heart as I was a CoD4 fan, and the fact that redditors who post like they know anything about FPS don't even know about what it was like. Then a random guy uses the name 'modern warfare' as if its the standard for shit for the comparison when ironically modern warfare used to be on par with it.\n\nIts important to note that CoD4 included special console commands that no other game (including any other cod) had, which uniquely changed the look and colour tone of the game, working wonders for machinma/fragmovie editors. Even CS:GO lacks this feature which is simply amazing to have for making the game look a certain way. Instead BF4 and CS:GO look like dull dog shit compared to a CoD4 movie config. This is important because it contributed to the reason why in 2008-2009 CoD4 was about even with CS:S in its community.\n\nGames like crysis with super complex graphics and physics engines lack that crucial consistency for competitive play, and without the high quality competitive play there will never be a strong core to the community behind the game.", "1. When you die, that's it, you're dead. As a result, matches are very short, and every encounter is very intense. No five-second countdown to respawn. A lot of people prefer this to more drawn-out gameplay.\n\n2. Builds progress over a series of matches, with winning teams getting more money. So round 1 you might skip body armor or grenades so you can afford a better gun in round 2 instead of having to wait for round 3. With no need to rank up, you can have that sick sniper rifle the same time anyone else can in the match.\n\n3. Longevity and stability. COD changes its formula in various ways all the time, adding new guns, new killstreaks, messing around with death streak bonuses and the like. Gameplay in Counterstrike is largely the same as it has been since its inception, meaning that people who have been following it for years can still make sense of it.\n\n4. Lower barrier to entry/upkeep. CS:GO is $15, and has been the latest version of CS since 2012. In that time, COD has released 3 new entries at $60 apiece. So if you're broke, you can play CS for a relatively low entry.", "For an online game to become a hit, it needs three things:\n\n - It needs to be competetive by nature\n\n - It needs a very low barrier of entry\n\n - It needs very high skill ceiling\n\nCS has all three of these. Modern Warfare doesn't.", "Having super awesome professional players help as well as what everyone else said. They aren't dicks etc etc. ", "it's like if COD was 100 times harder.\n\nCS also has the greatest skill ceiling of any game I've ever played. The difference between the worst and best player is so large it's very hard to describe.\n\nit leaves massive amount of room for improvement. it's more of a discipline and less of a game  for some people.", "I think the charm of CS is that it was literally, from inception, made to be a competitive game. It came from a completely different story driven game, Half Life, so it is very unique in that respect. It has no storyline, apart from the first few fan made maps that had a little tidbit to introduce the opposing forces and that was it. From then on, players are on a constant drive to improve their own abilities, and as it was stated, not much has changed over the years unlike CoD. Your performance is solely dependent on your diligence to keep up with your own learning curve. The little things keep you going, like landing a perfect spray, getting a juan deag, learning a cool new smoke or popflash, and generally developing your own tactics so you can tear your enemies a new one in style. The introduction of GO was the moment that solidified the game, because it brought many people up to speed and allowed them to follow the pro scene as well as be part of the action. CS really is one of those special games that is weird from the outside looking in, but makes total sense when you're actually part of it.", "For me, it kept me playing because of the enormous amount of custom maps and game modes that was all community generated. Scoutzknivez - a low gravity sniper + knives only mode, Gun Game - a game where you must kill everyone with one of every type of gun first and all the fun maps people made for it (I dunno if it was invented on another game and brought over or originated on it), wc3 mode where you levelled and got extra skills and bonuses (like fantasy ones, extra speed or jumps, explosion on death), aim maps for improving your aim, etc. etc. \n\nAnd also, if you found a server that you really liked, you could just save it as a favourite and keep going back to it. Without specifically making friends and inviting them all to a lobby, you'd just walk in like a regular at a bar and there'd be people there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64lfab", "title": "for most websites, when you enter your login info incorrectly, why can't the website tell you specifically whether the username or the password is incorrect?", "selftext": "It usually only tells you \"your username or password is incorrect.\" ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64lfab/eli5_for_most_websites_when_you_enter_your_login/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg31q46", "dg31q52", "dg34ovs", "dg365zh", "dg3bb1h", "dg3gxao", "dg3jxri", "dg3o774", "dg3rdmx", "dg3slma", "dg3tw7j", "dg3u4ai", "dg3wsds", "dg3wyor", "dg3yy6d", "dg3z1f6", "dg3z7ch", "dg3z7v9", "dg3zar6", "dg4031d", "dg41t6n", "dg42664", "dg42tma", "dg44cih", "dg44lis", "dg45gyr"], "score": [2070, 64, 8, 18, 89, 4, 47, 2779, 4, 24, 26, 1468, 101, 2, 2, 8, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["They *can*. They just **don't**, because doing so is a security risk. If a hacker tries a username and password and gets back \"username is invalid\", they'll move on to another username instead of wasting time on one that doesn't exist. And if they get back \"password is invalid\",  they know that they have a real account, and can focus on trying to hack it.\n\nIt's more secure to never confirm or deny that an account exists.", "They are trying to make it harder for hackers. If the website specifies which info is wrong, then whoever's trying to hack into your account will be able to focus on changing that, rather than having to figure out which of the two is wrong.", "- Easier to code (something went wrong but we don't bother to differentiate the cases)\n- Security (getting the whole username/password combination right is harder than guess just one of these)\n- Privacy (people might know your usernames / emails but you don't always want them to know that you have an account on \"that\" website). ", "How could they know? If you entered a wrong password it could be the right password for some (wrong) username", "Hypothetically, let's say your username is Username123 and your password is Password123. But you haven't logged in in 10 years and you've forgotten your username.\n\nSo, you type in Username124 and Password123. \n\nThe host doesn't know which one is wrong. It might know that Username124 does exist (someone else obviously) and that Password123 does exist but it doesn't know which one you don't know. For all the host knows, you could have forgotten your password. If it assumed you remembered Username124, and said \"would you like me to email you your password?\" And you said yes, then the host would send the password to Username124 (which is not you).\n\nSo, in the end, it's just better to either answer the security questions or have them email it to you or reset it.\n\nYou would be astounded at the amount of people who are like \"I KNOW THIS IS MY USERNAME\" and then after some questioning are like \"Ohhh, right, Username123, duh.\"", "Cause they don't know who you are until you login correctly. Some sites will tell you if the username doesn't exist, but if you enter a valid username and incorrect password, how does the site know if the username you entered belongs to you or if you entered yours incorrectly but it just so happens to be somebody else's?", "I would like them to tell you even before you type anything in \"we require our password to have one capital letter, one number, and one symbol\" (or whatever their requirements are) so I don't have to spend time going through my variations of my password.", "For better security. Any information no matter how small could allow someone to game the system and brute force a login. \n\nLet me give you an example. Say that I really didn't like Joe Forman and I wanted to get into his facebook account but I don't know what his username is but I know a few email addresses he's used. \n\nLogin: Jforman@._URL_0_\nbad username\nLogin: Joe_f@._URL_1_\nbad username\nLogin: Lvs2@airmail.net\nbad password\n\nAha. So Instead of not knowing what was wrong, now I know that lvs2@airmail.net is the right login. Now I can use other tricks to log in. I can try some commonly guessed passwords. I can go to a black hat web site and see if anyone with that email address ever had a password stolen, and hope they use the same password on other sites. \n\nI could google Joe Forman or that email, find out their birthday, maybe the name of their pet, favorite color from some questionnaire they took 5 years ago in a public forum. And I can use some of these to do a password reset \"What is your birthday? Your pets name?\" etc. \n\nBasically brute forcing an account is infinitely easier if you are able to get any pieces of information. It goes from impossible to hard, and hard is just a matter of patience and research. ", "Tommy has a tree house. \n\nTommy doesn't want all the neighborhood kids to come in since little Jenny and little Ricky are dopes who pick their noses, so he locks the door after he goes in. \n\nBut, Tommy does want his friend to be able to get in. So, in order for his friends to get in, and because Tommy likes to play spies (that's a thing 5 year-olds do, right??) Tommy gives his friends two things: a codename, since all good spies have codenames, and a passphrase, just like they always seem to have in movies. \n\nFor example, little Mikey is codename Condor and his passphrase is \"firetruck red is my favorite crayon\". Little Joey is codename Falcon and his passphrase is \"I like grilled cheese with the crusts cut off\". \n\nIn order for Mikey or Joey to get in, they need to say both pieces of information out loud and then knock on the door. Tommy will validate the information they provide and either let them in or deny them entry. \n\nNow, along comes little Alexa, who's been wanting to get into the clubhouse for a while because she thinks Tommy is cool. So, she walks up and says \"Salamander, cats are better than dogs\". \n\nTommy yells: \"You shall not pass!\" (because his dad made him watch Lord of the Rings and he thought it was super-awesome, because Tommy doesn't suck). \n\nNow, what does that little bitch Alexa do? Well, she gets ready to make another guess. But, what does she guess? Does she try a different codename? Does she try a different passphrase? Or does she try a different both? Because she doesn't know at that point which part was wrong, or if both were wrong, she can't make a reasonable decision. All she can do is randomly guess a new codename and passphrase, and figuring out a valid combination could take forever that way. \n\nBut what if Tommy instead says \"Wrong passphrase\"? Well, now she knows (or can at least reasonably assume) that Salamander is a valid codename, she just needs to guess the passphrase now. She knows 50% more than she did when she started. \n\nIt's all about security. People trying to get into a system they shouldn't be in try to get as much information as possible so they can cut down the number of possibilities they need to try. It makes an almost impossible task much easier if you tell then which part is wrong because you've just cut the guesses they have to make in half. \n\nOh, and by the way, Alexa can go to hell, that little poopy head. ", "Also, there's a pretty strong argument for privacy.\n\nIf I go to \"_URL_0_\", and enter \"negrolax\" as a username, if they tell me \"Sorry, the password for this account is incorrect\", instead of \"Your password or username are incorrect\", then I just found out something you might not have wanted to let other people know about.\n", "Security aside, because it's been addressed already thoroughly, I think this is more of a philosophical question: the computer can't know what I was intending. \n\nI provide the following info: User111 and pAsSwOrD\n\nIf I fail to log in it could be because:\n\n\n1) I actually meant to log in with User000 and typed its password correctly. \n\n2) I hit the shift button at the wrong time, so the password should've been PaSsWoRd. \n\n3) I actually wanted User000 -AND- I hit the shift key at the wrong time.\n\nSo the poor computer can only know that one of those two things process is wrong, but it can't determine intention.", "A side point I haven't seen anyone else mention yet:\n\nWhile it's good to return the same error message whether the username or password was wrong, there's another security consideration to take into account here: the time it takes to return that error.\n\nImagine you're an attacker trying to brute force combinations on a website. All you know is whether the combination worked or not and how long it took for you to get the message. If the validation code looks something like this, then you can figure out more information than they intended (bolded lines are where a message is printed):\n\n1. Check if user exists\n2. **If user doesn't exist, print error**\n3. Get user's password\n4. Compare user's password with entered password\n5. **If both passwords match, print success**\n6. **Otherwise, print error**\n\nLooking at that logic, you can see that the error caused by an incorrect username is printed much earlier than the error caused by an incorrect password. Also keep in mind that password validation both takes a lot longer than simply comparing two usernames (so long as passwords are even somewhat properly stored) and always takes roughly the same amount of time. Because of this, if you can observe the timing of your requests, then you can determine, regardless of the text of the error message, whether the username you entered exists or not. This is called a timing attack, and security experts generally recommend mitigating it by always doing every step of the verification. \n\nCompare the above logic to this logic, which isn't vulnerable to the same timing attack:\n\n1. Check if user exists\n2. If user doesn't exist:\n  1. Get the string \"doesn'tmatter\" from the database\n  3. Compare entered password to this string\n  2. **Print error**\n3. Get user's password\n4. Compare user's password with entered password\n5. **If both passwords match, print success**\n6. **Otherwise, print error**\n\nIf you're unfamiliar with databases and how passwords are stored, just know that step 2.1 is necessary in case of a database that takes a while to respond. Anyway, in this new one, we actually validate the entered password against an arbitrary string in the case the username's incorrect and then discard the result. Because of this, it should always take effectively the same amount of time to get all three options, leaving an attacker with no indication of whether a user exists or not.", "This practice is somewhat misunderstood as a good security practice, under the principle that you cannot know if you've tried to hack with a correct email address (or username or id or whatever.) However there are other ways to verify the email address information you're providing--notably, by attempting to register that email address. The system will already tell you if an email is in use and as such there is no real security benefit to not revealing whether it's the username or password that is incorrect.\n\nTo developers out there, the best security is a strong password with good salting/hashing, and preventing people from knowing whether it was their email or password that was incorrect is bad usability that only hurts people trying to log in, not scripts that probably already know which email is being sought.\n\nEdit: Take reddit for example: I (and really bad guys) can see all of your login names.", "There is a lot of people saying that it's more secure to just not specify whether a login or password is right or not. I call this fud. It makes sense and sounds good, but it just isn't so. What is also logical is huge companies have put a lot of research and know that this practice isn't true. Google is the biggest example. If you enter a user that doesn't exist, it simply won't give you a password prompt and tells you up front that the user doesn't exist. If it is a valid user, then it gives you a password prompt. My feeling is that it's just lazy programming so they don't have to type a few extra lines of code for a better user experience. People can go on with security this and security that, but it's simply another form of security through obscurity ... not very good obscurity.", "\u2026 why would you give away free information to the enemy?\n\nThat's basically the answer. It may be short, but it's accurate.", "I have noticed that Google doesn't do this anymore. First you need to enter a correct email, then a password.\n\nI guess once you have a robust login system, this security feature becomes obsolete and you can instead improve the user experience.", "As many others have said, security is a massive thing. Even a little bit of information such as whether the email is right would make it MUCH easier for a hacker to get in. \n\nSomething no one had mentioned yet, is that your average website does not know your login details. When you put in your login credentials, it sends them to another server, where a long complex maths equation is used to see whether they are matching your account. If ANYTHING is wrong with the credentials, be it the password or username, the other server just sends back that the login was a fail, and the original website tells you something is wrong.\n\nFor more info about this check out the awesome video by Tom Scott titled \"YouTube Doesn't Know Your Password\". ", "Let's say I'm trying to breach you iPhone lock of 2 digits. Let's say the computer will tell me if digit 1 is correct/incorrect and the same with digit 2.\n\n\nIf I try every number til I get the first one right, and then using that correct digit with every number until I get the second one right, then the most number of attempts I will need is 9 + 9 = 18. Trying every combination is an example of a brute force solution.\n\n\nNow imagine if the message didn't specify which digit was wrong or right. Now the most number of attempts someone could try is 9 (number of possible choices for a place) ^ 2 (number of digit places) = 81. 81 is significantly larger than 18.\n\n\nWith usernames and password checks, that difference is exponentially larger and helps to prevent not just brute force attacks but all sorts of attacks as well.", "Yes, it is better security to keep the user guessing which field was entered incorrectly. No, most websites aren't important enough that it's worth inconveniencing users in that manner. ", "They can, and some websites do. It's actually really stupid not to because on many websites that don't specify which is wrong, they let you check which usernames are taken in the user creation page so it's not providing any extra security. If you want the extra security you need to not give username info anywhere on the site to make it not discoverable and most websites do not do that.", "Online services have two variables in a login screen; username and password. They can't know which one matches whom, but they can guess.  \n\nFor this they must assume that either the username or the password is spelled correctly. Why they choose to do this for the username will become clear in a minute.\n\nSo let's say you log in with a faulty username, right? You type \"Pauly_Anderson1763\" or whatever you might use, but in reality that 3 had to be a 4. The service will scan their system, and look for that username; it exists, so they say \"wrong password\". The alternative is that they can't find any user with that username, so they say \"username does not exists\". Either way, there's nothing wrong.\n\nIf they did it the other way around, checking for passwords instead of usernames, they would go through the list of passes: the password, which my fictional Pauly character *did* type correctly, is found soon and the user reads \"your username is misspelled\" so he fixes the mistake and gets in - nothing wrong, right?\n\nWrong!\n\nLet's say Pauly misspelled his password instead. If it doesn't match, he'll know that \"password was not found\". No problems here. \n\nIf it *does* match, but not to *his* username, the service tells him \"username is misspelled\" like it would when you actually do misspell a username. He now knows that there is someone who uses that password, and only has to figure out the username!\n\nIn small communities, a hacker could test that pass on each account in a matter of hours. In reality this already happens; people use \"qwerty\", \"12345\", the name of a popular character or a title, or their year of birth, or, god forbid, \"password\" as a password.\n\nHackers sift though thousands of usernames with these passes and sometimes they get a hit. If it's an email address they can *easily* get their hands on private info. If it's an online forum they can usually get access to whatever that forum is about. If it's a bank account... \n\nYou get the picture. Telling people whether a password *exists* in their database is a huge security flaw. ", "While security is the reason why its coded that way, the real answer to your question is because the website doesn't know which is incorrect.\n\nFor the purpose of ELI5 I think its easier to think of your last name as your password.  Imagine you want to check in to a hotel room and you show up to the reception desk.\n\nYou:  Hi, my name is Negrolax.   \nReceptionist: And your last name? (password)   \nYou: Password  \nReceptionist: Sorry, you're not on my list.  \n\nThe receptionist doesn't know or care whether your first or last name is incorrect, just that your full name (user+password) isn't on the list. The same goes for the website.", "Security. If someone unauthorized was trying to access your account, telling them that one piece of information is incorrect already implies that the *other* piece of information **is correct**.\n\nFor websites that use email logins, the email is already something likely to be widely known or searchable. This makes it all the more important to obscure the results of a login failure.", "So that it isn't obvious to ill intended people to know if they have got a valid username. If they do, it's easy to break your password.", "Do you really want me to type your e-mail into a porn web site to see that you're registered on a beastiality porn web site?", "Security flaw: you'd eventually hit a valid username if they let you know it's wrong or not. This would ease the cracking process if someone tries to guess your credentials"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["at.google.com", "at.yahoo.com"], [], ["horsefondling.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3uzx3a", "title": "why is japan so determined to keep whaling?", "selftext": "No other major nation seems to continue hunting Whales with the same tenacity but the actual spoils of the hunt must barely be a blip in the economy. Is it a cultural thing?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uzx3a/eli5_why_is_japan_so_determined_to_keep_whaling/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxj3f0k", "cxj49wh", "cxj6p77", "cxjbrvg", "cxjjokg", "cxjz398"], "score": [12, 13, 8, 26, 5, 3], "text": ["Other nations beside Norway may not have the fixation on whales . But America have a thing with trophy hunting. China like to eat exotic animals. Canada occasionally club baby seals to death. It's a strange world.", "The Japanese barely even eat whale.  In my opinion, the reason they continue to whale so aggressively is pure politics.  If they give in on the whaling issue, then it sets a precedent and they'll face increased pressure to give up on their other fish-poaching activities (notably, tuna, which is culturally important and widely eaten).", "Maybe you should ask why the rest of the world is so against killing dolphins and whales.  Dolphins aren't endangered.  There are millions of them.  Not all whale species are endangered either and the Japanese hunt relatively few of them.  No one seems to complain about the Inuit people killing whales.", "This comment is probably too late to help anyone else but hopefully you, the OP, will read it. \n\nJapan has been through a lot of cultural shift in the past two centuries due to the west and it basically boils down to refusing to do what others want them to do. \n\nBackground to help you understand. \n\n---\n\nFor a long time Japan was a closed nation. They did eventually open the borders for trade because A) the west wanted to trade, B) they wouldn't take no for an answer and C) the superior technology allowed the west win battles. \n\nNot all of Japan was against this but the majority was until it swung around to those opposing it being the minority. \n\nThe west brought their customs over which quickly displaced a lot of native ones. Where as in traditional Japanese society the businessman is the lowest social class, even lower than the farmers, he was higher in western standards. It was now undignified for women to to top less working in the fields or in the fields at all, traditional clothes were disrespectful and the Western suit became more and more prevalent. \n\nSide point. One of these customs was underwear, especially ~sexy~ underwear. Regular woman couldn't afford underwear and only those that had money could. One of those that could were high class prostitutes which is where the interest with panties come from, because they were a sexual thing. Western values which were still deeply tied to religion said anything sexual was bad which is where censored porn comes from.\n\nSlowly Japanese culture was eroded as western norms took over. Now Japan has always had a sense of superiority that can still be seen to this day with the dislike of outsiders. The end of WWII with them losing took them down a notch and stuck deep in the hearts of the people. Now the US did help rebuild the country and yet again their culture was being worn away by foreigners. The working very hard to do the best you can was instilled after WWII as a way to rebuild the country by Americans.\n\nAll along the way the people have fought back against the invading cultures. \n\n---\n\nNow back to the main point. Japan has always been a fishing nation, relying on it because there's very little arable land, and whaling is, to an extent, just large fishing. \n\nThe refusal to stop whaling is a massive \"fuck you, I won't do what you tell me\" to the world. For centuries the Japanese have basically been told that their culture was wrong and this is how you should do things and this is a protest on a national level effectively. \n\nSide point. If you read the background this is also why porn is censored, they were already forced to adopt the culture of sexuality=wrong and they refuse to change it again just because the west now deem it acceptable. \n\n---\n\nEdit. \n\nWhile just a film and should be treat lightly you can actually see a lot of this in the film The Last Samurai. ", "This is just cultural. To us, it is weird and/or barbaric. To them, it's normal.\n\nImagine if India was \"outraged\" at our refusal to stop killing cows and eating them, and \"demanded\" that we stop. Think we would?", "A: Other countries do continue hunting whales. Countries like Norway, Iceland, and Greenland still catch whales, with Iceland doing it commercially. It's not only Japan, but you only hear about Japan more.\n\nB: [Whaling IS decreasing in Japan.](_URL_0_)\n\nC: Japan, and particularly right-wing Japan, doesn't want to set precedence of conceding to the will of other nations over every little thing.\n\nD: Post-war, whale meat was more prevalent and cheaper than beef. So all the old farts in power now literally grew up eating the stuff, so yeah, it's also a part of the culture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Japan_whaling_since_1985.svg"]]}
{"q_id": "phq0g", "title": "how does the secret service avoid hiring someone with the intent of killing the president?", "selftext": "They're always armed to the teeth, always in reaching distance, and it seems like they have a large army of agents when travelling. \n\nI would imagine that terrorists would see this as an excellent opportunity to infiltrate and kill the President with a high success rate. Are there any known counter-measures they will do to avoid this risk?\n\nI'm sure I'm on someones watch-list after this post. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/phq0g/eli5_how_does_the_secret_service_avoid_hiring/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3pfxma", "c3pggaq", "c3pgll3", "c3pgrfs", "c3pgswy", "c3pgtdl", "c3pgw6l", "c3ph09u", "c3ph5t7", "c3phs1e", "c3pht6p", "c3piibp", "c3pj8e5", "c3pjoc1", "c3pk3r7", "c3pk8hk", "c3pkw8h", "c3pkx9q", "c3pll4k", "c3pmgv7", "c3pnbtr", "c3po4td", "c3poe6x", "c3pqi8n", "c3pqmd9"], "score": [188, 121, 521, 12, 11, 3, 116, 31, 3, 6, 18, 6, 6, 14, 8, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 9, 7, 5, 2, 7], "text": ["Extensive background and psychological tests.   \n\nEDIT:  Forgot this was ELI5...\n\nSo you are sitting at the lunch table when you get a sudden urge to poop.  You look around and see all those nasty second graders eying up your oh so delicious chocolate milk.  Sitting across from you are two boys, Johnny and Tommy.  Johnny and you hang out a lot and you know he is a swell kinda guy.  He is super nice, lets you borrow his pokemon over the weekend and his mommy, daddy, and sister are all totally rad.  \n\nTommy, on the other hand, wipes his boogers on the playground swingset and you know that his bigger brother likes to bully the other kids.  \n\nWho are you gonna trust to hold onto your chocolate milk when you go poop?", "Anyone reading this thread is now on a watchlist.", "My mom's family is friends with the Dierbergs family, a grocery store chain in St. Louis.  Anyway, one Dierberg male, decided to be a secret service agent.  When we was testing for it and training for it, they sent agents out to check his background.  They questioned relatives, family friends, they went to his high school and questioned his high school teachers, this literally tracked down any person who would have an idea of who he was as a person.  It's not just a \"let's check the internet for criminal records\"  It's a \"let's track down everybody who knew this guy and talk to them.\" kind of background check.\n\nThis certain Mr. Dierberg ended up protecting Nancy Reagan while she was the First Lady, I believe.", "You don't get to sit on top of the jungle gym your first day on the playground.", "For the various reasons listed elsewhere in the thread, there is virtually zero chance of that ever happening..\n\nThe thing they'd probably have to really watch out for are the ones that decide that this guy isn't worth taking a bullet for. ", "The background you would need to lay to get past the background checks would have to start somewhere near birth.  Literally.\n\nThis means you would have to be a plant, not someone who decided as an adult to kill him.\n\nGrowing up brainwashed is possible, but then you'd *have* to be released into the wild for many, many years prior to getting into the Secret Service.  Those years would be filled with alternative brainwashing (military etc) and service to other causes.  Once in the SS, you would spend more years proving yourself over and over again before you're next to the POTUS.\n\nAll those years *not* acting like you're going to kill the prez pretty much guarantee you won't want to once you get close enough to do the deed. ", "My old roommate is in the secret service.\n\nWhen he was graduating/applying, they phoned every living person he's ever known it felt like to know more about him. They phoned all his old bosses, all of his immediate family, all of his roommates (including me), and our track team coach and others.\n\nThey asked some amazing questions. The one I'll never forget is this:\n\nI was a freshman when I met the guy, he was a sophomore, and we lived together from my sophomore year until I graduated (and he before me, so I was a junior when I got this phone call). I never knew where my roommate had lived his freshmen year, seeing as I was a senior in high school.\n\nThe secret service called me and asked me all kinds of questions about his habits, his anger/temper, remarks he may have made off the cuff (seriously, they drilled into \"Did he say anything ill willed against President Bush when this happened? etc etc..), and one against where he had lived as a freshman. I had no idea and I guessed a room number and the guy hilariously goes \"Bzzz. Fox 1810, but close. No one has got that right yet. Moving on\".\n\nMeaning they knew the room number somehow, but not through anyone they had called. I thought it was hilarious, and a little crazy.", "My guess on these things is the type of people unstable enough to kill anybody often don't think it rational, long-term options.  Hollywood movies aside, you'd have to be both murderous AND cunning on a level that would simply be too rare of a \"sweet spot\" for presidential assassination.\n\nFirst, you'd have to have an actual motive.  And that's seriously long term.  The president you wanted to kill is long out of office by the time you get to that level.  Terrorists from other countries just wouldn't make it because of the culture shock, the background checks, and so on.\n\nOkay, suppose you're a psychotic from Oklahoma that decided at age 8 that you'd kill any president, no matter what their political affiliation.  Just \"a president\" would do.  Somehow, you have to be sane enough to pass some serious psychological exams and tests just to get into the secret service.  And be very athletically fit.  Now, you'd hang around a lot of these guys on your off hours, and I would imagine to get into the \"inner circle,\" you'd have to be socially aware enough not to give someone who might be your future supporters the heebie-jeebies.  I am sure there are a lot of people who don't get promoted because their never get recommended.  \n\n*\"Yeah, Jim Smith is a great bodyguard.  Really dedicated, and very fit.  Perfect record.  But... he's got this odd temper.  Doesn't play well with others.  Doesn't seem to have any friends, lives by himself in a very minimalist apartment, and his family is either all crazy or missing.  Not sure if I want him next to the football, if you get my drift.\"*\n\nAnd as another poster here suggested, the second a gun is pulled out without reason, the others would be on you like a hobo on a ham sandwich.  Seeing these guys in action, in less than 2 seconds, both you and the president would be under piles of people.  Then within 5- 10 seconds, the president would be in an armored car and speeding away.\n\nThe conditions would have to be *just right* to pull this off, and I think the chances are far too remote with \"easier options\" being too tempting for a would be killer.", "The secret service rejects people who act suspiciously, and their initial \"interview\" (if they didn't throw your resume in the garbage) rejects most people.\n\nThe interview lasts months.  They interview everybody you've ever talked to.  If one of them seems like *they* might want to kill the president, they reject you.  If there are gaps in your history they also reject you.\n\nSo in order for a terrorist to join the secret service, they'd have to spend their entire lives meeting people who would pass the security check, and they'd have to also hide their connection to anybody who wants to kill the president.  It would be nearly impossible to live this kind of life.\n\nWatch the news.  Notice when you hear about terrorists they always know how the person became a terrorist.  They had some kind of connection that the police could find with an investigation.  This is why none of them can make it into the secret service.\n\nIf there was a terrorist with no terrorist connections, they would still have to make it through the interview process.  The interview process rejects almost all the applicants.  If you pass the background check, AND the interrogation, you get trained for months.  Most people fail the interrogation.  Most people who pass the interrogation fail the background check.  Most people who get into training fail training.\n\nIf they did pass training, they would spend years investigating threats and protecting minor politicians.  If they wanted to kill the president, it would have to be the next president, not the one who was in charge when they signed up.", "You can work for the Secret Service and never be assigned to a protective detail. Additionally, the Secret Service provides protective duties for other governmental VIPs besides the POTUS and his family.\n\nFrom what I understand from someone I know that works the presidential detail, they get picked from the existing group of agents and rotated in and out of details all the time. It's entirely possible that this rogue agent would spend a career as a Treasury agent and never actually get to the POTUS detail.\n\nThat said, the background investigation goes way beyond what they do for a Top Secret clearance with polygraph and lifestyle investigations.\n\nHell, even to work at the IRS you cannot be late on your taxes or make a mistake. If you do, you're out.\n\nThe perfection by which one would have to live their life seems to make it highly unlikely that anything like \"Vantage Point\" would happen.", "Nice try, terrorist trying to kill the president. ", "They look at your reddit profile.", "I'm glad we can all easily talk about murdering presidents here.", " > I'm sure I'm on someones watch-list after this post.\n\nNo, not at all.\n\nWe've been watching you long before this.", "My brother has been accepted by the Secret Service and has been in the interview process for 27 months as of right now. He went though the in depth back ground check where they interviewed his employers and his family.Then four different lie detector test with the four different licensed interrogators in the US. They had a nice one, a mean one, one of them questioned everything about him and accused him about being a spy. One of them made him sit in a corner for 2 hours not asking a question, and on a little tiny chair.  He has now passed everything and is waiting training that only happens once a year. I don't know how this can tell u that it can stop someone, but it is a huge process. ", "Also keep in mind something here... The SS person guarding the president, or VIP probably has at least 15 years in with the service.\nBy the time you actually put the plan into action the president you were looking to assassinate is out of office long ago, not to mention the fact that it took you 15 years to put someone in that position, and during that time they've come to love the American way, have a family and don't want to give that up for some terrorist group.  ", "With a TS/SCI Yankee White clearance and lifestyle polygraph. Next question.", "I upvoted because of the 'watch list' comment. lol", "I had to fill out a very comprehensive background check just to *apply* to work at an Apple Store. God only knows how detailed it would be to protect the president. ", "You didn't happen to watch Taxi Driver recently, did you?", "One of the questions in the interview is: \"Wwwwait, you're not planning on like killing the president or anything, are you?\"\n\nTrue story.", "I admitted to homosexuality and drug use (pot only) and still got my secret level clearance in the 80s.  Once I admitted to those I had to go through a top secret level interview.\n\nThe personal interview was long.  I don't think that they went to the trouble of interviewing friends; I don't remember ... probably because I stayed toasted during the summers.  Both of my parents held really high clearances already.\n\nMaybe they didn't care if a stoner dyke was shredding paper.  ", "The people who are sane enough to not talk about wanting to kill the president to anyone at any time are also sane enough to not want to kill the president.", "Nice try, terrorists.", "They investigate everything. They are even investigating you now for asking this question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6lxhaj", "title": "Why are particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Europe built underground?", "selftext": "I imagine that particle accelerators would be a lot cheaper and easier to build if they were above ground.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6lxhaj/why_are_particle_accelerators_like_the_large/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djxcyjm"], "score": [17], "text": ["There are a few reasons that particle accelerators are generally built underground.  The main reason of course being [Synchrotron radiation](_URL_0_).  In addition, building underground makes it easier to achieve stable thermal conditions which matters more than you might expect.\n\nYou could build an above ground accelerator, but the amount of radiation shielding needed would likely make it more expensive than simply drilling a tunnel.  In a tunnel you can simply use plaster and/or concrete for the walls, no other radiation shielding needed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation"]]}
{"q_id": "4cglhs", "title": "why aren't we all thanking president obama for lower gas prices when we all blamed bush for higher prices?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cglhs/eli5_why_arent_we_all_thanking_president_obama/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1hy7wu", "d1hytbm", "d1hyvb8", "d1hzqc8", "d1hzrh3", "d1i28x9", "d1i3sh6", "d1i6rit", "d1i7am7", "d1icyin"], "score": [9, 2, 31, 4, 104, 2, 2, 15, 2, 2], "text": ["Because we all know by now that Obama's influence extends only to disaffected foreign criminals and the Cuban transsexual community.", "If I had to guess, I'd say because the low oil prices are hurting what was a booming oil industry in North America.", "It has nothing to do with Obama. \n\nBush started a war, and created a drain on oil. \n\nOPEC was enjoying the money rolling in until US started ramping its own oil production ... So OPEC decided to release all the spigots and drown supply out to lower the prices.( again nothing to do with Obama.) They did this to force out other oil competitors like US fracking companies. So you can thank Obama for doing nothing and ending the oil rush of America and all the jobs lost there I guess.\n\n Although I don't think it's his fault or his business exactly. That's just the market. Gas prices are on rise due to Russia/OPEC agreement to stall production a bit as OPECs oil production boom was crippling Russia's economy. \n\nSo that pretty much has nothing to do with Obama. \"Thanks Obama.\"", "Low gas prices are due to the US  becoming a huge producer of oil thanks to shale drilling. Compound that with OPEC's decision to not decease production but increase it, the law of demand kicks in and prices drop. \n", "Not sure about specifics, but a general rule applies: \n\nPeople complain more than they thank.", "Because those who control the messaging for \"we all\" have a political interest in blindness to his achievements.\n\nIn fact, in a broader context, future historians will ask your excellent question in wonderment.", "As others have said, it's probably more to do with psychology than economics or logic.  When we see gas at $4.15/gallon, it hurts us financially and seems illogical (\"It was only $3.10 a month ago!\"), so we assume someone must be manipulating the system, and a President with strong ties to Texas oilmen is an easy scapegoat.  But when gas falls to $1.98/gallon, we don't say \"Hmmm, I wonder who has their hand on the lever and who I should thank...?\"  We just assume it's the natural course of things to work to our benefit (or we just don't care).\n\nBut obviously, the President has little, if anything, to do with the price of gas at the pump, or we might expect gas prices to fall in the years of re-elections.", "Like a lot of people have said, Obama and Bush have really nothing to do with it. When people need to complain about something on a national scale, national leaders get blamed.\n\nThe low oil prices now exist because Saudi Arabia is trying to protect market share. When the price of oil hovered around/above $100 per barrel, it became economical for oil companies to frack oil/shale in the US and Canada because they could afford the cost of drilling/fracking oil in the US and Canada. So Saudi Arabia started losing market share in the US and elsewhere due to domestic production.\n\nSaudi Arabia decided it needed to protect its market share of the oil supply and so decided to increase pumping. When that happened, more oil flooded the market, driving down prices. Saudi Arabia is believed to be able pump oil profitably even if it is as low as $20-30 per barrel.\n\nNow, others are right that it goes beyond economic/financial and enters psychology. When oil prices kept increasing, speculators flooded in thinking they could buy now and sell higher at a later date because prices kept going up. When Saudi Arabia essentially announced it was going to pump more to protect market share, speculators ran away from the market because their buy now sell later at a higher price position would be crushed. That put a lot more downward pressure (and faster) on the price of oil.", "If anything's to blame for lower prices it's fracking.  The US under Obama was producing more oil than Saudi Arabia at one point, which broke OPEC's cartel and sent prices crashing (coupled with OPEC countries needing $ for funding their budgets, which keeps oil pumping with low prices).  Obama and Democrats are against fracking while Bush and Republicans support it, so if you gave each President some % of responsibility for current prices Bush has more to do with it than Obama because he allowed the industry to set up and subsidized it with crony deals.", "The primary reason is because gas prices are low in spite of President Obama's efforts.\n\nWhen Obama was running for his first term, he claimed he wanted the price of fossil fuels to \"necessarily skyrocket\" which would make green energy a more viable alternative. This is somewhat silly as green technology simply isn't there yet, high gas and oil prices would disproportionately impact the poor and significant reductions in emissions could be attained by reducing coal use and switching to other fossil fuel sources sources for our energy grid.\n\nIn pursuit of this, Obama prevented drilling on federal lands, significantly hampering oil production. He successfully fought the Keystone pipeline, railed against fracking and pursued energy policies designed to limit the availability of fossil fuels and drive up the cost of using them, which states are currently fighting in federal court. \n\nBeyond climate change, Obama defended these efforts by claiming none of our attempts to increase our fossil fuel supply would have any effect on reducing prices. Not only was he wrong, but recently he has tried to take credit for the fall in prices.\n\nThere is always more to the story than this. OPEC decided not to ramp down production to keep the price of oil stable partially because they wanted to undercut American fracking and maintain their own market share.\n\nBut the fact is, Obama had nothing to do with our current low prices and actively tried to thwart them."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21ihri", "title": "Are there any reasons why historic Asian sailing ships looked so differently from the sailing ships of the rest of the world?", "selftext": "The design of many early century sloops from Asia seemed so different from the ships common through out the rest of the world. I've always found the [hull designs beautiful works of art](_URL_3_), but it seems the sails have a common feature of being [stacked square shapes](_URL_1_), [colorful](_URL_2_), and for lack of a better term [\"window-blind\" like](_URL_0_). I have a great appreciation of all tall ships, but I've always wondered why Western ships didn't seem to influence the ship designs of early Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ihri/are_there_any_reasons_why_historic_asian_sailing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgdfi2b", "cgdmi57", "cgdp8fv"], "score": [74, 15, 3], "text": ["Unfortunately, the maritime history and archaeology world has not given as much attention to Asia's maritime shipbuilding traditions and architectures (at least when compared to those of the Atlantic World). Some of it might be that, besides how much newer the discipline of maritime studies is compared to the others, western archaeologists wishing to work on Asian vessels often find legal barriers to working on Asian sites. But, there has been some study.  I remember from studying Chinese Junks a few points that may help explain the differences.     \n      \nIt should be established that, yes, Asian shipbuilding traditions did develop separately from European ones. And while Asian ship building did start adapting things from Europeans when they arrived, they still maintained plenty of of their own unique styles and methods. Just a couple small differences I can remember between European and Asian vessels (in particular, the Junk) is the use of reverse-clinker on the Asian vessels (instead of strakes overlapping in an outboard direction like those in Europe, the strakes overlap in an inboard direction) and the drastically different way stem and stern posts were designed.      \nFor the sail design, that was a distinct style that made it easier for fewer people to operate a vessel. Instead of men going up shrouds and pulling in sail while perched on a yardarm, the sail was just raised and lowered from the deck (you even said \"window-blind\", think about how that is lowered and raised and you can get an idea of how that works from the deck).      \nThis topic is quite a large one, and deserves more attention than I can provide (as my flair indicates, I pay attention to the Atlantic world). But, if you want books that can help you get a better understanding, I would recommend *Chinese Junks on the Pacific: Views from a Different Deck* by Hans Konrad Van Tilburg and *Boats of South Asia* by Sean McGrail, Lucy Blue, Eric Kentley, and Colin Palmer (I highly recommend anything by Sean McGrail for Asian naval architecture development, he was one of the first to dig heavily into it). These are the two books I learned about Asian ship construction. ", "Aside from the other points, remember that European ships are not \"everywhere else\". They are just as much a product of historical forces and distinct to a particular culture as junks, waka, or pirogue. In fact, the closest thing you will get to a \"universal\" ship type is probably the dhow, which was and is used all across the Indian Ocean.", "Thanks for all that have commented on this. While we are on the subject of historical Asian ships, are there any particular ships from China, Japan, or Korean history that would be interesting to read about? Something similar to infamous western ships like Blackbeard's Queen Anne's revenge? I'd love to build a model of one!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/snafu1056/koreaship.jpg", "http://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/eet/rodes_3/history4.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Xu_Fu_expedition%27s_for_the_elixir_of_life.jpg", "http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/images/exbig_images/2a235dd003a59bf0ada024e6988ff8b4.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bh5zwi", "title": "Why are there four different Gospels that cover much of the same material? What was the intended purpose, or who was the intended audience, of each Gospel?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bh5zwi/why_are_there_four_different_gospels_that_cover/", "answers": {"a_id": ["elqwik3", "elqymhl", "elrkm4n"], "score": [169, 20, 18], "text": ["The Gospels were all written at least 50 years after Christ (Mark) to 100 years after him (John).\n\nWe think the Gospels are inspired by works we have since lost. The most famous is the \"Quelle\" or Q source (Quelle means source in German), which is supposed to be a list of sayings of Jesus.\n\nBasically what Bible scholars do is they read each text meticulously, line by line, then they compare what is similar and different between each. Doing this - it is pretty ingenious - they are able to reverse engineer earlier texts and even figure out what percentage of each text comes from each earlier work. We started doing this in the 1800s and it's persisted to present day Bible scholarship.\n\nThe other early work (other than Q) is Mark. Basically we think Matthew and Luke used Mark (the earliest Gospel) and Quelle as sources.\n\nThe first three Gospels are called \"synoptic,\" meaning they have roughly the same presentation of the Jesus story.\n\nThe last Gospel, John, is considered anomalous so it gets its own category. It doesn't have the same sources as the others and Jesus goes on long, philosophical sermons in it which he doesn't in the others.\n\nWe call the authors of the Gospels the evangelists.\n\nIn the New Testament, Matthew was placed first because *originally* we thought it was the earliest Gospel. This conclusion came from its (mostly Jewish-oriented) perspective. More recently scholarship has accurately found Mark was the earliest, using the reverse engineering method I mentioned.\n\nThere is some division over how you can interpret each Gospel but I usually present it to my students as the following:\n\nMatthew - The \"Jewish\" perspective on Jesus\n\nChristianity was originally a sect of Judaism, so Matthew is often more concerned with interpreting Christ's teachings in relation to Jewish law and tradition. Matthew is also the only Gospel written in Aramaic, not Greek.\n\nLuke - The \"Gentile\" (or Greek) perspective on Jesus\n\nAs time proceeded, Christianity began to attract adherents who were non-Jews (Gentiles) - mostly people from the Hellenic world - but there was much resistance to this as it was originally a Jewish sect. Luke's view is often focused on interpreting Christ to make it more accessible to non-Jews.\n\nThe next two are my views of the other Gospels and how I usually teach them (I like to keep it simple and clear), but just know you could dispute these and interpret them differently:\n\nMark - Emphasis on the \"Humanity\" of Jesus\n\nAs you know the Christian view of Christ says he has a dual nature, both human and divine. I base this reading mostly on the very interesting conclusion to Mark - the resurrection. The resurrection is left ambiguous in the original version of Mark. Jesus does not reappear to the disciples or overtly demonstrate his risen form. This Gospel also focuses on the \"mystery\" of who Jesus is. It is accepted he is a prophet, and he demonstrates miracles throughout, but it is unclear who he is.\n\nJohn - Emphasis on the \"Divinity\" of Jesus\n\nAnd this is how I usually frame John: as one in which the divinity of Christ is accepted - there is no \"mystery\" like in Mark. Focus on his godhood rather than his humanity. For example, he begins as a divine \"Logos\" which preexisted.\n\nGetting back to your question - you raise a very interesting point about the unique situation in which there are four different accounts of effectively the same narrative in Christianity.\n\nThe Gospels *do* offer different versions of events, tweak the exact things said by Christ, *and* contradict each other at different points.\n\nWhile in earlier epochs you might run into the danger of being accused of heresy, I feel it enriches the religion greatly and opens it up to many different analyses and lenses.\n\nPerhaps it is also not the point we are supposed to get *the exact version of what happened,* but rather understand the overall synthesis or theme of Jesus' teaching.", "The textual history of the Bible is quite complex and fascinating. The four Gospels can be divided into two groups: Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John, which is narratively and theologically distinct from the others. \n\nScholarly theories vary but one of the most common over the past 100 years or so is that Mark was the first Gospel (circa 60 AD), and Matthew and Luke were developed from Mark in combination with a lost source or sources, and John was the latest, from about 100 AD. This is very much a simplification of the distinctions between the four, but while all four gospels focus on biographical details of Jesus, the Synoptic gospels are more concrete, focusing on specific stories of Jesus's life, and John is much more abstract and philosophical in style. \n\nCertainly there were others floating around; some have survived to this day (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, etc.) and others have undoubtedly been lost over the centuries. During the first few centuries, there were a lot of arguments and differing philosophies about the developing Christian faith; the losing ideas ended up being deemed heretical. The books which eventually came to form the accepted canon of what we know now as \"The New Testament\" were developed by the end of the 4th century AD by various bishops who came up with the lists of gospels and letters which they felt were both accurate and - importantly - best reflected the theories of Christianity which matched the prevailing, orthodox(with-a-small-o) theology at the time. Primary sources which reflect the first modern New Testament Canon include St Athanasius's \"39th Festal Letter\" as well as the Codex Vaticanus, written in Rome about 30 years earlier.", "As a preface, none of this is certain.  Scholars are simply attempting to make their best guesses as to the answers to each of your questions based on the limited evidence available to them.  Virtually every position below is disputed by at least one reputable scholar.\n\nMark, Matthew, and Luke are known as the Synoptic (lit. \"seeing together\") Gospels because their content is so similar that it can be set out in columns next to each other and read side-by-side.  The academic consensus is that Mark was the first written and that Matthew and Luke adapted Mark.  Matthew and Luke would have done that to produce Gospels that they believed to be \"better\" for their intended audiences than Mark (in addition to adding more material and focusing on different issues, Matthew and Luke both improved Mark's grammar).  The most common position is that Luke and Matthew were independent of each other and that each was combining Mark, an unpreserved separate source known as \"Q,\" and their own unique traditions.  (Other theories exist, such as that Q never existed and that Luke simply had access to Matthew as well as Mark).  Mark was probably written in the late sixties or early seventies.  Matthew and Luke were likely written in the eighties or nineties.  \n\nJohn is an entirely different beast.  Over 90% of John has no parallel in any of the synoptic gospels and it has an entirely distinct character from the Synoptic Gospels.  Unlike Matthew and Luke, John shows no obvious dependence on Mark and the author of John may or may not have had access to it, Matthew, or Luke.  Most scholars date John to the mid-nineties.\n\nMark is normally presumed to have written for his own local Christian community, although others have argued the Gospels (including Mark) were intended to instruct the Church at large).  Arguments in favor of the former position include the use of personal names of specific individuals who are not otherwise referenced in the NT, that certain prophecies appear to be directed to specific locales, and that the audience of Mark appears to be persecuted (despite the absence of systemic, as opposed to local, persecution at the time Mark was written).  Additionally, the continued survival of Mark despite the existence of Luke and Matthew may point to the local use of Mark.  Traditionally, Mark was presumed to be writing from (and, under the standard presumption, to) Rome.  However, Roman Syria may be more likely for geographical and demographic reasons.  Mark's Gospel was also likely targeted primarily to those who were already Christian (rather than adversaries or nonbelievers); it presupposes Christian belief at numerous points and does not provide a reason for the disciples answering the call of Jesus (unlike in similar tales found in philosophical and wisdom literature). Mark did not presume that his audience would know Aramaic or many Jewish customs and laws (which, along with its status as a war-front, likely eliminates Palestine as its place of composition, despite a number of proponents of that theory).  The traditional answer as to the purpose of the Gospel of Mark is to preserve the Jesus tradition. However, this requires two arguably false assumptions: (1) that those in Mark's time believed written traditions to be superior to oral traditions (2) that Mark did not himself rework the Jesus tradition in his own writings.  Some scholars argue that Mark wrote to address a crisis in the early Church's eschatology caused by the Jewish war or to counter a Christological heresy.  Others argue that Mark was written pastorally to remind readers and listeners of who Jesus was, what he came to do, what he would do, and what the Kingdom of God constituted.  It may also be that Mark was intended for liturgical services.\n\nThe Gospel of Matthew was most likely written to Jewish Christians.  Reasons for this position include: its stress on the fulfillment of the Old Testament and Jesus's righteousness and fidelity to the law, the omission of explanations of Jewish customs found in Mark, Matthew's decision to present a number of discussions in rabbinic patterns, and refutations of Jewish claims against Jesus (e.g., that his body was stolen or that his birth was illegitimate).  Most scholars believe it was written in Syria (and most of those scholars believe it was written in Antioch).  There is less certainty as to its purpose.  It clearly recounts the life of Jesus, explains how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, and proclaims the saving activity manifested by Jesus's death and resurrection.  In doing so, Matthew likely intends to help his church or churches understand their new faith in the interim between the death and resurrection of Christ and his second coming.  In this manner, Matthew acts as a discipling manual, a \"handbook\" of Jesus's life and teachings.  Further suggested purposes include: to act as a midrash of Mark, to act as a lectionary or as a catechetical manual, to address divides within Matthew's community, to act as missionary propaganda, or to function as a polemic against rabbis or Pharisees.\n\nLuke's Gospel contains a preface stating that he intends to write an orderly account of \"the events that have been fulfilled among us\" for Theophilus (a name meaning \"friend of God\" that may be a pseudonym), so that he \"may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.\"  The traditional assumption is that Luke wrote pastorally to a Gentile church or churches.  However, he may have been writing to an audience of God-fearers (non-Jews of a Hellenistic background that are attracted to Judaism and follow some of its precepts but have not converted).  It should be noted since Luke is explicitly addressed to Theophilus, it is possible, but not likely, that Luke was written specifically to address the needs of Theophilus and not a wider readership.  Luke's ideal audience would have been of higher education than average, knowledgeable of northern Aegean Greek Culture, and familiar with the Septuagint.\n\nThe Gospel of John is widely assumed to have been written in either Roman Asia (likely Ephesus or Smyrna) or Syro-Palestine (likely Galilee or Antioch).  Its own statement of purpose is that it was written \"so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.\"  However, uncertainty as to the underlying Greek text and ambiguity as to its meaning renders it unclear whether that statement is missionary or instructional (i.e., to outsiders or to members of the Church) in character.  A majority of scholars believe the latter, while a minority believe it has a missionary or dual purpose.  The Gospel of John was certainly written to provide an authoritative interpretation of the Jesus tradition.  It is less clear whether John was written to supplement, correct, or interpret the synoptic Gospels (or even if John was aware of those Gospels).  However, the Gospel of John does have definite polemical aims against contemporary understandings of John the Baptist and against \"the Jews\" (generally referring to Jewish leaders, especially Pharisees, who were opposed to Jesus and his followers, not the entirety of the Jewish people).  It may also be anti-gnostic and anti-docetic, although this is far less certain.  The majority of community to which the Gospel of John was addressed were likely Jewish Christians, the core of whom would possess the Palestinian Jewish cultural knowledge assumed by the Gospel.\n\nMark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament:  A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (2d ed. 2018)\nCraig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Social-Rhetorical Commentary (2009)\n1 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (2003)\n1 Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (2012)  \nJoel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (2000)\nGeorge R. Beasley-Murray, John (rev. ed., 1999)\nJohn Nolland, Luke 1:1-9:20 (2000)\nRobert A. Guelich, Mark 1-8:26 (1989)\nDonald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (2000)\nNRSV"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vzdud", "title": "if netflix isn't constrained by advertisements, why do they stick to the 45-60 minute per episode formula of cable tv for it's original shows?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vzdud/eli5_if_netflix_isnt_constrained_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["com7lln", "com7mv1", "com7s84", "com7ydy", "com9wlr", "comajpp", "comav0n", "comayiz", "comd5o7", "comdj19", "come2kw", "comghd8", "comjwoi", "commeg4", "comtphe", "comxjaz"], "score": [26, 10, 521, 21, 11, 7, 335, 4, 2, 5, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They don't,  however they aren't going to make huge episodes regularly because people don't nessasaraly want to commit to a series of 2 hour episodes.  \n", "Because of attention span and production feasibility. People are willing to stick around longer then that but this way there is enough time to have a self contained story and be short enough to take up one unit of time that people can find to watch it.", "* that's the format people have come to expect for US TV series\n* they don't want to rule out the future revenue they can make in syndication", "The possibility of syndication money in the future.", "Those show may be sold or licensed to a television network that does use advertising at some point in the future. Standard formats exist for a reason. ", "Not saying why they do it, but why I appreciate it. I watch tv while I eat. It doesn't take me 45 minutes or an hour to eat. 22 minutes is a good amount of time.", "They don't. Episode lengths for Netflix dramas vary wildly from 40 minutes to just over an hour. A TV network would have to stretch hour long episodes over an hour and a half to fit commercials. No Netflix series are limited to the 41 minutes typical dramas are done at. The same goes for their comedies, in which episodes range from 20 minutes to well over half an hour.\n\nEDIT: Spelling", "Not all of them do, note that HBO shows are notorious for going around 1 hour (sometimes over or under 5 or so minutes), and some of the newer Netflix-only shows (the new AD season for instance) did have varying lengths.", "The average attention span maxes out at about an hour before people start to zone out, to go with that, most people don't consider anything under ~40 minutes to have told them a \"fulfilling\" story. So 40-60 minutes, give or take a few minutes, is the golden zone for storytelling in an episode style format", "The new season of trailer park boys has random episode lengths. But that's just one example.", "It's not just because it's what *we're* accustomed to, it's what *they're* accustomed to. Writers have been writing this way because, until recently, they HAD to. It's hard to break that habit once you realize how to make it work. Also, production schedules, contracts and the like all deal with the idea that they can still shoot a 45-60 minute show in 8 days. Randomly write a 2 1/2 hour episode and everything gets fucked!\n\nEDIT: stuff", "i would expect so they can sell their shows to cable and satellite providers ", "It's what we are conditioned to expect from our visual media. It's one of the qualities of a show that makes it 'bingeable'. \n\nThough Netflix can introduce more variation to the 22-30min or 45-55min models because it doesn't have the need to accomodate advertisements. I don't expect they would want to vary significantly from that model, when people watch \"tv\" they expect something in this sort of packaging. In the future perhaps our viewing habits will change as we move away from the models inherited from cable television and the \"tv episode\" media model will vary more widely. However, in the end the length of an individual episode is influenced both by the content and the need to market it in a package that the subscriber prefers to consume. ", "I wouldn't call myself qualified to answer this but I've been an armature stand up comedian I'm by no means talented at the craft but I've had the privilege of getting pointers from some very talented people. I can't speak for Netflix or tv in general but I do know that most comedians limit their sets to about an hour to 45 mins because people generally start to lose interest after that and the laughs start to die down and there's always that \"leave em wanting more\" mentality. ", "because they know the consumer is used to that length of episode. It is a strategic play", "Keep in mind shows like Lilyhammer and house of Cards were developed by TV stations and then picked up by netflix "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48k5la", "title": "How come crystals like Diamond don't conduct electricity?", "selftext": "If a current works by the flow of charge down an atomic lattice why not in crystals which have a symmetrical structure?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/48k5la/how_come_crystals_like_diamond_dont_conduct/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0kcafh", "d0kkq2f"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["Because of a lack of free electrons. Electricity travels through atoms and ions that can accept and give up free electrons. Unless the crystal has lots of impurities there are no free spots for those electrons to grab onto.", "Well an atomic lattice is a crystal as well, there's no difference in that part. The difference is whether the electrons are free to move around in the material, rather than being localized to a single atom or bond between a pair of atoms.\n\nWhere an electron is in space is related to their energy state. To be able to move around, they have to be able to change states. Now, the [Pauli principle](_URL_1_) doesn't allow electrons to share the same state, so there has to be unoccupied states for the electrons to use.\n\nNow there are _always_ unoccupied states. The question is rather whether the electrons have enough energy to reach them. We talk about a 'band gap' between the occupied states with the highest energy and the unoccupied states with the lowest energy. If there is no band gap, then the electrons don't need any additional energy to move to an unoccupied state, so they can move around and the material is a conductor.\n\nIf there is a large band gap, then the electrons can't move and the material is an insulator unless you give the electrons enough potential energy to reach the unoccupied states (the _breakdown voltage_ for insulators). Semiconductors are materials with a small band gap, allowing its conduction properties to be manipulated.\n\nIn the case of diamond, all valence electrons are used in forming the four single bonds, and there's a significant band-gap. You could contrast that to graphene (or graphite or benzene or any sp2-carbon), where each carbon atom has two single and one double bond, and the double bond can be moved around analogously to [benzene](_URL_0_). (resonance) Moving the bonds around doesn't change the energy, as the structure are the same, just rotated. So you have multiple electron states with the same energy, not all of which are occupied at the same time, and so graphene and graphite conduct electricity. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Benzene_resonance_structures.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle"]]}
{"q_id": "kf8a2", "title": "Are there any other species aside from humans who go through non-mutual breakups?", "selftext": "Some species mate with a different partner each mating season, some have harems, some have life partners (even going to the extreme where when one partner dies or is taken away the other just sits down and starves.)  \n  \nAre humans unique in that we intend to mate for life, but often don't, and it's common for the end of the relationship to not be mututal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kf8a2/are_there_any_other_species_aside_from_humans_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2jsb7f", "c2jshk2", "c2juac8", "c2jvpnp", "c2jsb7f", "c2jshk2", "c2juac8", "c2jvpnp"], "score": [3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2], "text": [" >  Are humans unique in that we intend to mate for life\n\nHumans aren't naturally monogamous.", "I\u00b4m way out of my league here, and I\u00b4m sure there ARE examples of non-mutual breakups in the animal world if one looks hard enough, but it would make sense from the evolutionary perspective that a species would settle on either of the two strategies (lifelong relationship or new mate each time) and not something in between. Each of the two strategies requires quite a lot of investment and adaptations, so it might be counterproductive to switch so much. If you have lifelong relationships, you would invest more in finding the right mate once, and in making a deep bond with that mate. That mate might also be required to help out more with the offspring. If you just get fertilised by some random guy once a year, that means you have to adapt to selecting the best mate every year etc and that means that the males have to make sure to be the fittest one every year.\n\n(start of statement based on speculation) Humans do what they want these days, mostly, but if you go back a few thousand years, I would think that the majority of partners would stay together in some conformation even if they are unhappy about each other, because that is what is keeping the family group from starving. (end of speculation)", "No, humans are not the only ones. At The San Francisco Zoo there was a gay penguin couple, who adopted an egg which the zoo cleverly named \"Chuck Norris\". Anyway, the zoo brought in a known hussy (seriously) and she ended up breaking up the relationship between the gay penguins. The gay penguin pushed aside actually became violent and had to be detained for a few days. \n\nNow everything is dandy, but this example should answer your question!", "There are some kinds of spiders where the female eats the male. I think that's non-mutual.", " >  Are humans unique in that we intend to mate for life\n\nHumans aren't naturally monogamous.", "I\u00b4m way out of my league here, and I\u00b4m sure there ARE examples of non-mutual breakups in the animal world if one looks hard enough, but it would make sense from the evolutionary perspective that a species would settle on either of the two strategies (lifelong relationship or new mate each time) and not something in between. Each of the two strategies requires quite a lot of investment and adaptations, so it might be counterproductive to switch so much. If you have lifelong relationships, you would invest more in finding the right mate once, and in making a deep bond with that mate. That mate might also be required to help out more with the offspring. If you just get fertilised by some random guy once a year, that means you have to adapt to selecting the best mate every year etc and that means that the males have to make sure to be the fittest one every year.\n\n(start of statement based on speculation) Humans do what they want these days, mostly, but if you go back a few thousand years, I would think that the majority of partners would stay together in some conformation even if they are unhappy about each other, because that is what is keeping the family group from starving. (end of speculation)", "No, humans are not the only ones. At The San Francisco Zoo there was a gay penguin couple, who adopted an egg which the zoo cleverly named \"Chuck Norris\". Anyway, the zoo brought in a known hussy (seriously) and she ended up breaking up the relationship between the gay penguins. The gay penguin pushed aside actually became violent and had to be detained for a few days. \n\nNow everything is dandy, but this example should answer your question!", "There are some kinds of spiders where the female eats the male. I think that's non-mutual."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fswtb", "title": "Why do Tau  &  muon \r\nparticles not produce \r\ncurrents like Electrons?", "selftext": "As I learnt, Electron, Muon  &  Tau particles come into the category of leptons. Electron, on its motion produces electric current. Then, why does Muon not produce Muonic Current (imaginary naming)  &  Tau -- Tauonic Current? From a few reads I got that these have many similar properties --motion, rotation, electric characters etc.-- but tau  &  muons decay very fast in comparison to electrons. Is there any other reason, why it is so?\r\n(please don't focus on language related errors. ;) )\r\nedit: Suggest a few reads/links if possible.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fswtb/why_do_tau_muon_particles_not_produce_currents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1idfsn", "c1idftd", "c1idfzb", "c1iekvq"], "score": [5, 5, 10, 3], "text": ["Every charged particle produces current if its moving.  So they do as well.", "Well, it does have a current. You can say it has a current for every quantum number it has, which includes charge (-e), spin(1/2), and lepton number (1).\n\n\nElectric current generally refers to the charge, so a muonic current or tauonic current would be the same thing, since they call carry the same charge.", "Any time charge moves \u2014 either negative *or* positive \u2014 we call it \"current.\" Muons and tauons are charged, so when one moves, you get a current \u2026\u00a0very briefly. On the order of a millionth of a second for muons, a ten-trillionth of a second for tauons.", "You get currents for all electrically charged particles that are moving including muons and tauons (which both have the same electric charge as an electron).  The only difference is that electrons are the lightest lepton so they are stable; they can't decay into any lighter particle.  Muons and tauons are unstable as they can decay into a lighter lepton; a muon will decay in about 2 microsecond (micro=10^-6 ) on average and a tau will decay in about 0.3 picoseconds (pico=10^-12 ).  Thus outside of large particle accelerators or from high energy cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere (creating muons), muons don't really exist on earth.  (And tauons have only been observed in high energy particle experiments as far as I know).  Again if you had a stream of muons the current would still be ordinary electric current and indistinguishable."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3okm5m", "title": "why are we forced to be citizens of nations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3okm5m/eli5why_are_we_forced_to_be_citizens_of_nations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvy0d6c", "cvy0gna", "cvy0mqo", "cvy1gfh", "cvy1jzn", "cvy1lmo", "cvy2bqc"], "score": [38, 43, 8, 2, 4, 6, 2], "text": ["You are not. You can set up an oil rig type construction in international waters and live law free, in anarchy ", "In a sense you aren't. There is a position in society for criminals, often imprisoned or at the least exiled from most civilized society or living as an underclass. Living in that fashion you would not have to abide by a nation's rules but you also would not likely have access to the benefits of that society.  \nIn a sense citizenship and being the member of a nation IS voluntary but the majority accept it to avoid conflict with power structures and to access it's privileges.", "Living in reasonably close proximity to others almost always requires some sort of rules or understandings for avoiding and resolving conflict. Of particular concern is the ability to raise a defense against a neighboring military power which may desire to claim and set its own rules for the place where one lives. The result is that almost every livable place on Earth is claimed by a state which sets some sort of rules on the people within its borders.\n\nEven so, there are people who avoid most state control, largely by living in remote places. Hermits do so by intentionally reducing their contact with and dependence on outside society. Remote 'tribal' societies do so by living in remote, economically undesirable locations and being self-sufficient, but even these people set rules to live by.", "If you are talking about western countries where governments are democratically elected and conform with broad international understandings of human rights and fundamental justice, the reason is that the people who don't want to follow the rules are jerks of one form or another.\n\nThere are a lot of people who don't want to pay taxes or get driver's licences but still take the benefit of public roads, police forces protecting their person and their physical property, safety regulations that allow them to easily purchase goods and services, and the court system which lets them settle disputes.  These people want something that is fundamentally unworkable (and I am a libertarian), and their motives basically come down to wanting to avoid the mildest of inconveniences (renewing a driver's licence for example).\n\nPeople who happen to be born in North Korea?  They are forced to obey that country's rules by men with guns.  However if they wanted to violently overthrow their government I would say that is their right.\n\nMurky middle?  People born in repressive governments that are still kinda functional like Egypt or Russia...  That's a trickier question and I think the answer involves working within the system to bring about popular support for change to transition into a western government but, still complying with the vast majority of government rules. ", "You are not forced at all. If you want to access the priviliges of the country you live in (healthcare, education, not being killed on your way to the mall), you will have to accept responsibilities. Being a responsible citizen is one of them.", "You aren't, at least according to Locke.  He distinguishes between two types of consent.  The first is express consent, this is generally a citizenship oath and usually happens when you want to become a citizen.  The other is tacit consent.  Tacit consent is an assumed form of consent.  Tacit consent is given by not leaving.  Essentially you are told 'these are the laws of the land, if you don't agree then you can leave' therefore if you don't leave you are agreeing to the laws.  \n\nThere are a few issues with this view in modern society.  When Locke wrote his beliefs regarding tacit consent there was plenty of land that did not belong to a specific nation.  This meant you could exist free of any citizenship.  There isn't very much land left anymore that isn't claimed by a nation.  The other issue is nations that restrict freedom to leave.  In a sense this forces people to be citizens of nations.  \n\nTl;dr: Tacit consent implies that if you don't agree to be a citizen you can leave, but due to lack of unclaimed land in the present day you are very limited in your ability to not be a citizen of a nation.", "There are movements like \"Freemen on the Land\" and \"Sovereign Citizens\" who basically argue that if you 100% refuse to be part of a nation- to acknowledge it's currency, pay (most) tax, accept any bennefits, etc then you don't have to obey that nation's laws. You may live inside the nations borders, but they say you can reject that nations authority, and your citizenship, as long as you do it across the board. I'm not sure how successful they've been in getting authorities to accept those premises.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nI guess another argument would be \"I never asked to be a citizen. I never chose their rules.\" Lots of people seem to see the world a bit like this (maybe most of us, to some extent. Most people break some laws, sometimes.) \n\nIn reality, I think there's a fair bit of \"you are 'allowed' to do whatever the fuck you can get away with.\" Like the idea that it's the cops job to catch the crim, And it's the crim's job to avoid being caught. It's the government's job to try to make us obey it's laws, and it's our job to not get caught completely ignoring those laws. \n\nThis doesn't mean the person approves of all law-breaking. Rape and murder are illegal. I don't rape or murder. But the *reason* I don't rape or murder isn't their illegality, its *my* belief that rape and murder are morally wrong. \n\nBut living in a modern state, it's pretty hard to completely ignore the government's 'authority', even if you don't acknowledge it's legitimacy. Unless you're willing to go 100% off the grid, or spend a lot of time in prison, best you can do is just *avoid* the government's 'authority'.\n\nIn the end, theres a bunch of things in life we have no control over. All we really can control is our own thinking and actions"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement"]]}
{"q_id": "17qena", "title": "How large is the sphere in the center of the sun where fusion takes place?  Does this sphere of fusion grow or shrink as heavier elements are fused?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17qena/how_large_is_the_sphere_in_the_center_of_the_sun/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c87x0k5", "c87zl72"], "score": [8, 2], "text": ["There's isn't one line where fusion \"stops\". The hotter and denser it is, the faster fusion occurs. As you move away from the center it tapers off, and eventually becomes insignificant.\n\nThe Solar core is 24% the diameter of the sun and generates 99% of the energy of the sun. Fun fact: there are no convection currents in the core \u2013 all heat flow is by radiation (conduction and diffusion are very small by comparison). Outside the core, convection currents perform most of the heat flow. In fact, that's what defines the boundary between the core and the mantle. *But* in stars larger than a certain size (about 2.5 solar masses, if I recall), they switch places.\n\nSource: I got an A in stellar astrophysics. :\\", "Related fun facts: the fusion process is drastically different than fusion reactions created on Earth.  Even at the center of the sun, the densities are in the same neighborhood as water and the power-output density (~200 W /m^3 ) is less than what you get from an incandescent light bulb.  (Much less, actually, if you just consider the filament rather than the entire interior of the bulb.)  The sun produces tremendous power through shear size."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1a13q7", "title": "social security and why i am paying for it if it will run out by the time i am eligible to use it.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a13q7/eli5_social_security_and_why_i_am_paying_for_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8t4rzd", "c8t4woj", "c8t66v8", "c8t6u6e", "c8t6x1k", "c8tbf8w"], "score": [60, 4, 11, 167, 5, 2], "text": ["You're paying for it because your parents and grandparents want you to.  It's a massive transfer of money from the younger to the older.\n\nIt may or may not completely run out by the time you are eligible, but it will doubtless be restructured in a significant way (for example, by raising the age of eligibility).", "Social Security is not like a bank account than can 'run out'. Working people pay into from the age of 18-20 until they are 65 years old. The money you are paying into it is paid out to retired people who are older than 65.\n\nWhen you reach 65 (or older) and retire, you will be paid from the money younger people pay into it then.", "I wanna know why can't the person paying into SS just get back what they put in.  We all got social security numbers, if I only paid in $10,000 I only get $10,000.  It seems more unbalanced to keep paying someone more then their share...\n\nIf you want to argue people would act fraudulently, that same threat exists today and the system is being taken advantage of is as likely as someone abusing the systems if other rules were in place.", "A lot of the talk about \"Social Security running out\" seems to be based on two misconceptions. First is that Social Security and its trust fund are the same thing. For decades, SS was taking it more money than it was paying out, so the surplus was invested in treasury bonds - that's the trust fund. Depending on how you calculate things, we either just passed, or are about to pass, the point where SS is paying out more than it's taking in, so the program has to start taking from the trust fund to cover current benefit levels. If nothing is changed, we'll completely deplete the trust fund in 25 years or so. However, people will still be paying payroll taxes towards SS, so the program won't have run out of money.\n\nThe second misconception seems to be that retirees are guaranteed certain benefit levels, so once the trust fund runs out, they'll still be entitled to the same amount of money, and we'll either have to borrow money from somewhere to keep the program going, or SS will have to go bankrupt. That's not true, either. The current law is that once we lose the trust fund, benefits will automatically be cut so that the money paid out doesn't exceed the money coming in. The current projections show that at the point where the fund runs out, that will be equivalent to about 75% of the benefits paid out while it was being subsidized by the fund.\n\nSo, if the law isn't changed at all, you'll still have Social Security checks coming to you when you retire, it's just that it will be less than what your parents and grandparents received. Chances are good, looking at how it's worked in the past, that some change will be made once people get panicked enough over it.", "Social Security is a basic insurance program where you are guaranteed a minimum income in your later years in exchange for paying into the program for the entirety of your working life.  It was created as a response to the crushing poverty of the Great Depression, which disproportionately hurt the elderly. (It also disproportionately hurt racial and ethnic minorities, but this is an entirely different subject.)\n\nIt will \"run out\" because of our nation's demographics.  The people who reach the eligible age for social security and the cost to give them their earned benefits exceeds the projected input from those still paying into the program.  This is complicated further because people are living longer and taking more out of the program than their predecessors did.  These are projections though, and projections are not set in stone.\n\nOne final addition the this mess is that all of the people coming to age now paid more into social security than was withdraw by their predecessors.  That money should have been placed in a safe place for later use when it would be needed, since this is essentially an insurance program.  However, the U.S. government has a way of reallocating unused funds to other projects, so the money we should have saved up is no longer there.  \n\nSocial Security is not a scheme meant to swindle people out of their hard-earned money, although it has actually done that in the past.  It is an insurance program which offers basic, very basic, protection to the people in our society who are often the most vulnerable to economic hardships.  Also, it will not necessarily run out by the time of your eligibility if there is an honest attempt to reform it so that it is first solvent and second protected from being raided by other programs.  Of course, it is extremely difficult to predict the future, and a lot of what happens with government programs like Social Security depend on what happens with the economy in general.", "Keep in mind that Social Security is more than just retiree benefits. It actually consists of four main components: RIB (retirement benefits), Survivors' Insurance (for children of deceased parents), disability insurance (for people who are too disabled to work), and Supplemental Security Income (commonly known as SSI, for when you already receive Social Security in some form but are still considered poor enough that additional assistance is warranted). Social Security is more than just an assistance program for retirees for which we have to \"wait\" in order to use. It provides a basic safety net against some of the harshest forms of poverty (i.e., child poverty caused by a sudden drop in parental income due to the death of a parent, or poverty due to disability/inability to work) that could strike someone at any time. That's the point of social insurance; even if you aren't receiving benefits from it now, you pay into it because you could still need it at any given point in time that you may not be able to anticipate."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "82li0i", "title": "In the 1932 German elections, the Communists won almost six million votes. The Social Democrats 7 million. Why wasn't there a massive German resistance movement under the Third Reich?", "selftext": "One thing I've heard time and time again is that there was no sizeable German resistance to the Nazis and that the Germans overwhelmingly supported Hitler during the war. But If almost 12 million people were prepared to vote for the sworn enemies of the Nazis in 1932, they couldn't have all (or even mostly) been killed, imprisoned, or converted within the next 12 years. Why was there no large-scale underground opposition?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/82li0i/in_the_1932_german_elections_the_communists_won/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvb69uc"], "score": [11], "text": ["On top of this, how did Ernst Thalmann not appeal more than Hitler? Wouldn't most Germans be anti-war?\n\nEdit to rephrase: Wouldn't people support a system that help their economy and health and whatnot, rather than Hitler's ideals of genocide and combat, as well as suppression of media?\nAlso to answer to the best of my abilities: when people don't get their candidate, it's not an immediate revolt. They would revolt when they start doing bad things. Before the war and concentration camps really started, the Nazis imprisoned and killed and tortured the Communists. On top of this, many may have been drafted or simply not disagreed strongly enough. While this doesn't answer the question fully, I think it's important to realize that by the time Hitler was worth revolting against, all the people who would had been forced into military, imprisoned/tortured, killed, or fled."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5u7qhg", "title": "why does mutually assured destruction work? from what i have learned, basically 2 countries will keep nuking each other, if one country nukes one first. and they will keep doing this until the countries don't exist anymore. why does this make sense? it seems like a stupid thing to do.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u7qhg/eli5_why_does_mutually_assured_destruction_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddrx9wt", "ddrxbrv", "ddrxcir", "ddrxh8v", "ddrxho1", "ddrxji5", "ddrxp27", "ddry5gy", "ddrzb88", "ddrzmcq", "ddrzwdb", "dds0uln", "dds2bsh", "dds39wh", "dds3ump", "ddsadiz", "ddsg2zf"], "score": [24, 2, 5, 6, 17, 6, 3, 5, 2, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The idea was to prevent a nuclear war by making it unwinnable. To do that you have to impress on the other guys that no matter how clever they are or how lucky they get you'll always have enough nukes left to burn them to the ground and then scatter the ashes across the wasteland. Because if they think they have even a tiny chance of winning a nuclear exchange, they might start one.\n\nMutually Assured Destruction was the name of the game. Nobody wins. Everybody dies.", "It works because both countries fear the consequences.    They will be extremely hesitant about engaging on conflict, and especially launching a nuclear weapon, because of the possibility of retaliation.  \n\n", "Mutually assured destruction means that at first sign of a nuclear launch against you your country launches all nuclear weapons at your enemy and their allies. The natural human impulse to not die is what prevents countries from attacking each other. \n\nIt is not possible to take out a country with a single strike before they can respond if they are also a nuclear power. ", " >  It seems like a stupid thing to do.\n\nThat's the point. It's a stupid thing to do, so the reasoning is no one will do it.\n\nBut MAD is ultimately not tenable because it depends on people not doing stupid things. Once nukes get into the hands of stupid or irrational people, MAD no longer applies.", " >  It seems like a stupid thing to do.\n\nIt *is* a stupid thing to do. Ergo, neither side wants to do it, because both sides lose.\n\nIt's considered a balanced, and therefore relatively stable situation. A can't blow up B without B blowing up A. So neither party has an incentive to attack.\n\nAlternatively, if A can blow up B safely, the situation is thought to be more unstable. Both A and B have an incentive for first strike, A to destroy B and not take damage, and B to disable A before A can destroy it.", "Because \"the only winning move is not to play\". \n\nThere's no way to win a war with these premises: even if you attack first your opponent can retaliate and destroy you, and you cannot stop him because he has so many bases that even a massive attack will start a devastating counter attack. It's like two men pointing a gun to each other *except* that the second gun goes off as soon as one of the contenders shoots (and you cannot avoid that, you cannot be faster or crouch) \n\nNobody wants to be the one who starts a battle that will end without winners.  ", "Nuclear war is stupid for many reasons (for instance the land you're \"conquering\" becomes unusable to the \"winner\" for decades), but the only one that keeps us from trying it is the certain knowledge that we'd be committing suicide in the attempt.", " >  will keep nuking each other\n\nThis seems to be your problem with understanding MAD. Launching nuclear weapons is not a matter of firing one and then waiting around for 30 minutes while another one is loaded into the tube. A nuclear war is not a back and forth gun battle where you slowly whittle down the opposition until one side surrenders or is eliminated. It's an all or nothing exchange, like two men in a pistol duel only they stand 3 feet apart and can't miss.\n\nIn a nuclear war nations fire many nuclear weapons (in just about any case *all* their weapons) at pretty much the same time. Those weapons, mostly intercontinental ballistic missiles these days, take about 30 minutes to fly up into space, go around the world and then come back down on their target. That means that another nation would expect to get some warning of an attack in which case they launch all of *their* weapons. The missiles cross paths at some point and then both nations, and likely the world, are destroyed.\n\nSo why not just fire one or two nukes instead of all of them? Imagine there is some war, like Russia attacking Poland. The US decides to respond by launching a single nuke at the advancing Russian army. This raises the stakes and the Russians now respond by launching 5 nukes to take out all of the major US staging bases in Europe. So the US responds with 50 nukes and so on. This is called escalation and it's pretty much the only thing possible when nukes are involved.\n\nOf couse all of that escalation theory was figured out from day one of the cold war. And so everyone realized that the only viable \"winning\" move is to jump immediately to the fire everything step. If the enemy launches one nuke, you launch 1000 and hope that a miracle happens and he can't respond in time (rather then the alternative where you both escalate a few nukes at a time, in which case there is a 100% chance he will be able to respond to the final doomsday exchange and everyone dies).", "It *is* a stupid thing to do. That's why it works. The idea is to impress on your enemy that they cannot possibly win, so it would  be suicide to try", "It's not about perpetual attacks. \n\nThe idea of mutually assured destruction was that if a country attacked another country, the attack would be recognized well enough in advance for them to mount a counter attack using their own nukes. This would ensure that both countries would be destroyed, likely in the first salvos.  There was no possible way to mount a surprise nuclear attack. All attacks would be recognized as missiles were launched, planes were launched or subs engaged to launch missiles, most likely as soon as or immediately after launch. \n\nThis is a deterrent because the attacking country knows they cannot ever attack fast enough to ensure the counter attack never happens and therefore any aggressive action would result in their own destruction, even if they were successful. \n\nThe expectation was always that the conflict would be so devastating that it would end after the first or maybe second salvos of attacks, at which point both countries would be so devastated that they'd never recover. ", "\"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.\"\n\n\u2015 Carl Sagan ", "The question has been answered effectively for this forum but if you want to know (a LOT) more about this subject listen to Dan Carlin's new [Hardcore History](_URL_0_) \"Destroyer of Worlds\". Dan presents information/history in an incredibly engaging way and, especially if you have interest in nuclear programs/history/theory, this is a great episode of his podcast.", "The cold war was all about the arms race.  The ultimate arms were nukes and each side quickly built up enough to wipe out the other many times over.  \n\nThis fact came to be known at Mutually Assured Destruction with the understanding that it was clearly a no-win situation and as such, it was not worth doing.", "Imagine you have a bitter enemy. \n\nIf you have a gun and he doesn't have a gun, you might go kill him.\n\nIf he has a gun and you don't, he might go kill you.\n\nBut if you both have guns and are equally well trained in using them, you won't attack each other.\n\nThat's what MAD is. Right after WW2, the US had nukes and the USSR didn't. So the US had the ability to threaten to use nukes to force USSR to do things.\n\nAfter USSR got nukes, US couldn't do that anymore because of the threat of MAD.", "That's the point, it's stupid so they don't do it. If your neighbor is a dick, and you both have flamethrowers, you aren't going to burn down his house for fear of him burning down yours. Sure, you might have the better lawn when it's over, but it's not worth losing everything else.", " > From what I have learned, basically 2 countries will keep nuking each other, if one country nukes one first. And they will keep doing this until the countries don't exist anymore. Why does this make sense? It seems like a stupid thing to do.\n\nThat's not really it at all.\n\nIt's effectively the promise of one country nuking the other country if they're nuked first which keeps everyone from launching nuclear weapons in the first place.  \n\nThe Soviet Union didn't want to be reduced to a smoldering pile of ash any more than the United States did so, no matter how bad things got during the Cold War, neither launched nuclear weapons at each other. ", "You stated why it makes sense. \n\nIf one country launches their nukes first then they will be nuked into the ground also. \n\nBecause they know they will be absolutely destroyed, they will not launch their nukes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dancarlin.com"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "452ai5", "title": "the psychology behind why some people are so attractive that they are unattractive?", "selftext": "I can't be the only person who finds some people too good looking and therefore am not attracted to them. What is going on there? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/452ai5/eli5_the_psychology_behind_why_some_people_are_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czunqxm", "czuogry", "czuoo06", "czuuf7f", "czux06z", "czuxoix", "czuyxk7", "czv0hs3", "czv1ptl"], "score": [96, 3, 15, 24, 3, 2, 6, 3, 6], "text": ["Is it maybe because you think they could never view you as a viable mate so your brain stops you from considering them as one?", "Can you give a few examples of people that fit this criteria for you? ", "I understand what you are saying. Like, I would rather bang an '8' than a '10'. I think it is because when someone is so attractive, they themselves know they are attractive and often times they become a little arrogant about it. It's also the fact that a '10' is going to be out of almost anyone's league and we subconsciously dismiss them as a partner because we know we could not get them.", "TL;DR: We think they're too attractive to keep, so prefer people who are not as attractive.\n\nElaine Hatfield's [Matching Hypothesis](_URL_0_) suggests that people pair up with others of a similar \"social desirability\" - attractiveness being an important feature that contributes to this. The psychologist Murstein explained the effect you notice as being due to the Matching Hypothesis - more specifically, people would often rather form a relationship with somebody less attractive, as they subconsciously know that they will be more able to form and stay in a relationship with them - which they might struggle to do with somebody more \"socially desirable\" - somebody who is too good looking, in your example. If someone is significantly more socially desirable than their partner, they might be tempted to go off and find a better partner - one who offers a similar level of desirability to themselves, explained in more depth by [Social Exchange Theory](_URL_1_)", "I think after awhile you start associating the very attractive with traits like narcissism that is a big turn off.   ", "Well this thread isn't going where I thought it would go. I thought we were gonna speak objectively about looks and how people like Anne Hathaway and Allison Williams are pretty much perfect looking but it's hard to find them attractive because they're dead in the eyes. Instead everyone's just talking about standards and who they want to sleep with.", "It's for the same reason people on Reddit get crushes on less physically-attractive actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Kendrick who are much more approachable-seeming.\n\nTo be charismatic you have to 1) be in a position of \"power\" (popularity usually, money, bone structure, confidence, are obvious ones but this could mean a lot of things) and 2) the other person has to feel like you like them.\n\nA lot of the really hot women clearly have part 1 covered, but they have none of part 2. If they started treating flirting with you and making you feel like they were actually into you, you'd change your mind and find them really attractive, really quick.", "Any one ever see someone so weird or unattractive that they find them strangely attractive? \nThere ever been someone you knew was ugly but you wanted them anyways?", "It could be that you know what society thinks it's beautiful, but maybe they aren't what you desire.\n\nMany models aren't exactly attractive to the average person even if they photograph well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_hypothesis", "http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/socialexchange.htm"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "83oha7", "title": "For telescopes what are the pro / cons of hexagonal vs circle mirrors ?", "selftext": "The future 39m European telescope EELT is made with hundreds of 1m hexagonal mirrors.\n\nThe future 26m Magellan Giant Telescope is made of 7 round Mirror, 8.4m wide.\n\nIntuitively I'd say the first option is easier to deal with defects in mirrors and has a better coverage. What are the pro / cons of those two techniques ?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/83oha7/for_telescopes_what_are_the_pro_cons_of_hexagonal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvko7fy"], "score": [5], "text": ["The main reason the GMT uses large 8.4 meter \"segments\" is because there was already a facility to produce such segments (Steward mirror lab at  University of Arizona). That lab was constructed to build mirrors for a range of telescopes, it had made large 8.4 meter mirrors for the Large Binocular Telescope and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Therefore they could save on infrastructure. Additionally there was already experience from LBT on how to use multiple 8.4 meter segments as one telescope. LBT's problem is that it was really just two 8.4 meter telescopes which pointed at the same target, occasionally the two mirrors were combined. GMT on the other hand the mirrors always work together to bright the light to a single instrument.\n\nWith large segments the production time is much longer and handling is complicated due to their immense size. But you only have 7 of them so you don't need nearly as much real time control as with smaller segments. The Multi Mirror Telescope was built in 1979, so operating a few mirrors as one telescope is not a difficult problem. One problem with 8 meter mirrors however is they are very thick in comparison to small segments, that means the areal density is much higher. A more massive mirror means a more expensive mount. It's not entirely well established but the specific design of GMT might mean that it has advantages in imaging exoplanets, compared to similarly sized hexagonal segment telescope because it has less edges and a simpler aperture.\n\nWith small hexagonal segments you get a better filling factor, i.e. there is more collecting area which improves the sensitivity. GMT for example is often quoted as a 25 meter telescope but it actually only has the light collecting area of a 22 meter telescope. With segments however you require each segment to have it's own active support and edge sensors to keep the mirror aligned. This gets expensive as you go to hundreds of segments. The segments themselves are however relatively cheap, they can be made thin because of their small size. This means the whole structure can be more lightweight which reduces cost. The smaller segments are also much faster to produce, GMT has been building segments for years, TMT and ELT have barely started.\n\nIn summary there are pros and cons. The real pro is that so much experience and infrastructure which already exists can be applied again, that means the project is cheaper. While large segments are more difficult to handle and construct, telescopes of this size exist, everything is a known problem. The con is that such large segments are probably a dead technology, if telescopes get any larger it simply won't be feasible because it will require a much more massive telescope structure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1tyver", "title": "Is a corrosive liquid also corrosive as a gas?", "selftext": "If so, is this always the case, or are there any exceptions to this rule?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1tyver/is_a_corrosive_liquid_also_corrosive_as_a_gas/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cecvsw4", "cedq4es"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["Yes is most cases. I know that there are corrosives that may have more or less activity depending on the phase, but they are almost always corrosive in liquid and gas states. I say \"most cases\" though because there are always exceptions to the rule.", "Don't know about things that are inherently corrosive as a pure liquid or gas, but many compounds only become significantly corrosive in solution. For example, dry HCl gas can technically be stored in ordinary steel vessels and won't corrode them ... but as soon as it comes into contact with even tiny amounts of water, it will dissociate in the water into hydrochloric acid (HCl (aq), H+ and Cl- ions). This is very corrosive and will happily eat right through that steel."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1bojoq", "title": "how game shows (price is right, jeopardy, who wants to be a millionaire, etc) can afford to keep giving away money and prizes every show?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bojoq/eli5_how_game_shows_price_is_right_jeopardy_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c98jju4", "c98kgw9", "c98l8em", "c98me1a", "c98neeq", "c98pb8o", "c99dbgz"], "score": [39, 12, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Shows get money from advertising and product placement.  In a regular produced show you have lots of actors.  For a gameshow you really just have the host making them a lot cheaper to produce.\n\nShows that give away large prizes like a million bucks use insurance.  They know that only a few people a year are going to win the $1 million.  Things like cars and TVs are off-set because the show is also used as an ad.\n\nThe Price is Right always spends a few seconds telling you about the FABULOUS NEW FUSION FROM FORD!  Ford provides the car for free or cheap because they get an ad out of it.", "I'm pretty sure you're talking about USA shows, but for comparison, I've found the [prices which ITV charge to advertise in the UK](_URL_0_) (click on the \"ITV Spots cost file\" link at the bottom of the page).\n\nA 30-second ad on national TV during peak hours is around \u00a360,000. Assuming 3 ad breaks of 4 minutes each, that's 24 individual ads, bringing in a total of \u00a31.44million ($2.19million) per show. I'd guess that would pretty much cover the cost of the prizes, when you consider that the contestants don't win the jackpot every time. And that doesn't include sponsorship - the ads for the same company that they show at the start and end of every ad break. And it doesn't include income from ads in any re-runs (not even the +1 channels which run an hour behind the regular channels).\n\n(Of course there are more costs than just prize money - but this at least gives you an idea of the money they receive.)\n\nPlus, my experience of American TV is that there are far more ads than in the UK. And, being a bigger country with a bigger population, I'd expect the cost of advertising to be bigger too.", "In the US games shows winnings(prizes, not money) quite often go unclaimed due to the taxes. Which i suspect are then re-used or returned to the company that supplied them. Additionally discounts are given on prizes to the game show and are usually at just the cost of manufacturing the item. ", "* A lot of game shows, particularly *TPIR*, are basically hour long ads for various product, which the advertisers provide for free.\n* Game shows are really, really cheap to make...no actors, no writers, 1 host, 1 set, 1 hour, 1 take...they can often do a week's worth of shows in a day.  Compare that to say, *Two and a Half Men*, where the \"men\" make a combined $1.6 million dollars...per episode.", "because they dont pay for the prizes, the prizes are part of the advertising budget for which ever company provides the prize", "the prizes just don't cost that much, relative to the amount of revenue the show earns. ", "People like watching game shows and seeing people win money/prizes. Because of this, companies spend millions of dollars to buy advertisement time slots/commercials to air on tv. That money is owned by the network company which the show is run on (Price is Right is on CBS, so CBS owns that money.) The money is provided to the winners of the prizes by the network (CBS/ABC/NBC)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/advertise/rates"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1cbmap", "title": "why does nasa wants to catch an asteroid and have it circulate the moon?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cbmap/eli5_why_does_nasa_wants_to_catch_an_asteroid_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9exiz0", "c9ezjhy", "c9ezlli", "c9f1e4i", "c9f1psn", "c9f1wv1", "c9f29ba", "c9f3je4", "c9f44gu", "c9f4uyq", "c9f53ng", "c9f5a86", "c9f7iga"], "score": [111, 540, 8, 9, 19, 33, 6, 3, 7, 6, 17, 9, 2], "text": ["I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe its partly to do with asteroid mining. Asteroids tend to be made up of rock and other heavy materials, such as metals and could potentially contain vast amounts of metals that we could use instead of ripping up the Earth to get them. \nIf NASA could successfully capture and have it orbit the moon or just change its trajectory, it would be a huge step forward towards asteroid mining. \n\nEDIT: Downvote if this isn't right, I'm simply sharing what information I know of.", "There are a few reasons.  The primary is research.  It gives us a chance to explore a body that we've never been able to study in depth before.  Looking at samples of the asteroid may offer insight into it's creation, and the creation of the solar system in general.\n\nThe second reason, is what I believe to be more of a \"proof of concept\".  The asteroid selected is nearby and convenient to access, but a successful capture opens the door to retrieving more distant (and more valuable) asteroids. Many asteroids contain metals that are rare and precious on Earth.  There are several platinum rich asteroids that have been discovered, and others have been observed to be rich in other heavy-metals. Successful mining would lead the way to a very lucrative (and beneficial) industry.  And the first step towards mining these asteroids is capturing them.", "Couldn't this potentially fuck with the moon's gravitational pull and subsequently our planet?", "We expend in excess of 50 times the mass of a payload in fuel to deliver it to low Earth orbit, let alone further.\n\nHarvesting resources already in space seems a logical stepping stone to the self-sustenance of a colony.\n\nGravity can be used to your advantage more easily in space. Since you can blow your radiation wad without fear of pollution, nuclear propulsion could be viable to move larger rocks.\n\nInstead of excavating tracts of land a on Earth, asteroids are smaller chunks of material floating in space. Pick the richest ones and leave the junk where it is.\n\nAn unpowered but controlled descent vehicle is not something that would require an excessively long period of time to develop space-based manufacturing. We could deliver things back to Earth.\n\nEarth defense against large asteroids threats is the media-touted reason. While it is viable, sending a smaller mass at a high velocity early enough and aimed well enough to gravitationally deflect the larger threatening mass, the likelyhood of such an event in the short term are slim.\n\nA far better focus would be resource collection and processing. This would provide the foundation to leverage Earth-based input into maximum benefits. Unfortunately, without threat, the term of the investment is too long to be likely to be sustained for a reasonable amount of time. \n\nGuess: Real harvesting possible in 20 years; Maybe we see it in 50.\n\nEdit: clarity", "Isn't it really difficult to maintain a stable orbit around the moon due to perturbations from Earth?", "This video has a great explanation as to why NASA wants to do this _URL_0_", "And to add here: \n\nWill the asteroids they put around the moon be visible by the naked eye? ", "Its like archeology and geology but in Space and without life. Space is much better in conserving things for a longer time or at least show how things change in a different environment over a long time. This archeology has more practical knowledge in it and is not just learning from cultural and geologic history like earths archeology does. And even if a mission fails completely, you still learned a lot about space travel and what to avoid.\n\nWe will understand solar systems much better. Especially know in more detail what everything is made of. There are pretty high chances that we find some rare materials, especially rarer isotopes (good for other researchers and chemistry), but also more heavy elements and huge chunks of diamond and similar things (stuff that sells to almost asyone who can afford it). The question is where what is and how much there is, to know when its worth starting a mining expedition.\n\nTheres always that important part in our history were we just began to model climates of other planets (and our own on a global scale) and we noticed that our excessive use of _URL_0_ (and other greenhouse gasses) almost destroyed a lot of life on earth, turning it into an atmosphere much like Venus, if we didnt ban it as a result of that realisation.", "Because they heard we like satellites orbiting satellites so we can tide while we tide. \n\nEdit: a word", "Because it would look SUPER cool. ", "Robotic capture of an asteroid that is passing near Earth will allow us to develop teleoperated mining techniques controlled from Earth-based consoles. The faster we perfect such near-Earth telepresence technology, the more quickly we will send humans to explore beyond \"near-Earth telespace\"...such as to Mars, Mercury, the Asteroid Belt, and Outer Solar System. (Eventually, except for tourism, *all* human activities in low Earth orbit, on the moon, or on captured asteroids, will be replaced by robots teleoperated from Earth-based consoles.)\n\nAn asteroid placed in near-Earth space will enable us to develop such telerobotic technologies. Robots will mine water-ice from the asteroid, which can be used as rocket fuel. This will radically lower costs of maintaining satellites (they become obsolete once they run out of fuel used to maintain their orbits). Eventually we will store hydrogen and oxygen from water-ice mining in fuel depots, which we will use to boost satellites from low Earth orbit to much higher geosynchronous orbits, and, to fuel long-distance human missions throughout our solar system.\n\nBy-products from water-ice mining are common metals such as iron and rare platinum group metals. Metals will be byproducts of the vastly more profitable mining of water-ice for fuel. Metal by-products though can still be used for robotic construction and 3D printing of massive satellite platforms, which are too expensive to launch from Earth.  Eventually Earth-Mars cyclers, and at some point, vehicles which travel throughout our solar system and beyond, will be constructed robotically using such \"leftover\" common metals.\n\nPlatinum group metals which are extremely useful but rare on Earth can be deorbited using crude aeroshells constructed in orbit, all at very low cost. Such platinum group \"leftovers\" from mining water-ice, will still be extremely useful on Earth. Strip mines, mountain top removal, sea bed mining and other ecological disasters will stop almost immediately. It will be more profitable to deorbit metals leftover from water-ice asteroid mining than it will be to mine such metals on Earth. (Basically the mines from which we obtain these rare metals on Earth now are remnants of asteroid impacts.) \n\nAlthough of course the \"price\" of platinum and other such metals will drop significantly, even if gold is as cheap as dirt it can still be deorbited as refuse at very little cost. Imagine entire chemical factories constructed of platinum, cars made of titanium, and houses wired with gold...it will take a long time for precious metals to become common industrial metals, but, it will happen. As Bill Gates says, \"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.\"\n\nUnfortunately, there are also \"make-work\" motivations for sending *humans* to the asteroid after it has been robotically captured. Advocates of 'humans to asteroid' missions claim such endeavors will test life-support systems, which will be exposed to galactic radiation outside the shelter of Earth's magnetosphere. \n\nAn alternative \"test\" of such life-support systems could be achieved through support of the Inspiration Mars mission to fly two persons around Mars in 2018 (similar to the Apollo 8 loop around the moon, as a precursor to landing).\n\nOf course we could learn much from sending humans anywhere, to do anything, even on an asteroid, but, an argument can be made that we should focus on developing telerobotic operations at the asteroid and test long-duration human factors by supporting the Inspiration Mars fly-by mission. \n\nAnother supposed rationale for robotic asteroid capture is development of the ability to deflect asteroids from Earth collision. This is also misleading since the asteroid proposed to be captured is much smaller than anything which could threaten Earth, and, since the \"bag and drag\" system of retrieval is entirely different from techniques that would be used to deflect a much larger asteroid. \n\nIn any case, even with the possibility a *robotic* asteroid retrieval program may morph into a 'humans to asteroid' mission, we will still learn a lot either way...\n\nUseful links:\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_3_\n\nedit: formatting ", "to show the russians we still rule the fuckin wurld\n\n'MURICA.", "Does NASA nees permission from anyone, The UN, To do this? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pHD0H5nHRA"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon"], [], [], ["http://InspirationMars.com", "http://PlanetaryResources.com", "http://Facebook.com/MarsToStay", "http://MarsSociety.org", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_the_Sky"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32gawc", "title": "why isn't the horror genre as respected as other film genres?", "selftext": "Why don't studios ever invest big money into horror films? Why don't high caliber actors/directors/writers get involved in horror films that often? And why are most horror movies panned by critics? I know there are a few exceptions to this trend (Rosemary's Baby,The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense etc.), but for the most part it seems like horror films are a joke. Why is this?\n\nedit-damn. glad to see I'm not the only person who would love to see some more high quality horror films.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32gawc/eli5why_isnt_the_horror_genre_as_respected_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqawt36", "cqawwtj", "cqaxmal", "cqay1fc", "cqb01dj", "cqb0v05", "cqb2rct", "cqb2t3r", "cqb3a2s", "cqb3cid", "cqb3gcm", "cqb3jzn", "cqb3ls0", "cqb3yob", "cqb42h4", "cqb47z6", "cqb4pzo", "cqb4xms", "cqb6coj", "cqb7k5b", "cqb7q9g", "cqb85b1", "cqb8bpg", "cqb95yg", "cqb9pax", "cqbdpf8", "cqbdybn", "cqbhw3t", "cqbifn3", "cqbizs9", "cqbj5mm", "cqbjj8f", "cqbk4ty", "cqbkq1d", "cqbn8w3", "cqbqddf", "cqbsq2w"], "score": [1506, 276, 56, 25, 5, 14, 12, 14, 3, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 8, 3, 2, 65, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Many horror films lack any kind of impactful storytelling. They often rely on gruesome visuals, jump-scares, and patently absurd plots. This cheapens the whole genre, and makes it harder for people to take them seriously. As you said, there are exceptions. ", "On top of other good reasons, I think it's because a large percentage of the population simply won't ever go watch one.\n\nI know lots of people who wouldn't go watch a horror movie if you paid them, mostly because they don't enjoy spending two hours having a movie scare the crap out of them.", "Because it's usually a budget flick, uncompelling story, and cheap scare tactics instead of an actual dark story. I don't like it because it's very predictable and nothing memorable. The characters all act stupid and make the worst decisions just to keep the movie going for 2 hours. The only scary thing about the movie is the sound going from dead silent to stupid loud. That pretty much described most horror movies.", "Horror movies and action movies are both seen in similar ways - they're not made to be an engrossing or beautiful story with complex characters and deep themes.  They're just built to thrill you.  Action movies usually do this in a more expensive way with explosions and car chases, and horror movies tend to be a bit more low-budget, thrilling you with jump scares and gore.\n\nNeither of those really lends itself to good storytelling, but every once in a while, there's an exception and you end up with a real classic.  For horror, that would be movies like Nightmare on Elm Street or the original Saw, both of were unique and interesting stories even without the splatter, and which influenced dozens of films after.", "There's a bit of a problem with the horror genre, and this problem is the writing. How many horror movies do you know that are genuinely scary purely because of the writing? There are a few, but not many. All the other movies depend on gruesome visuals, \"scary\" music and maybe a jumpscare here and there to keep you on the edge of your seat, but these are all easily picked apart gimmicks.\n\nI think there's a movie called mama or mother or something which I saw a while ago with friends of mine, despite being drunk and an easily frightened baby it just didn't do anything for me. The premise was stupid at best in my opinion, the scares were easily predictable, the music was clich\u00e9. It was a decent movie by all means but it was just so standard and come on: Do we trust hollywood to make a movie that is unconventional and doesn't follow a predetermined checklist? These are the movies that make the best horror but they are a risk and Hollywood doesn't take risks.", "Because, by virtue of being included in the genre, it's kind of assumed that they are just leveraging one emotion for the entire film: Fear.  There are plenty of other movies that have parts that can be plenty scary, but that also have more going on in the plot.  Take, for example, *Silence of the Lambs*, or *Frailty*, or *Alien*, or *Terminator*.  None of those movies are considered \"horror\" movies, but there's plenty of *killing for the sake of killing* going on, as well as constant mortal threat to the protagonists.  But in films like those, there is also, generally, a question greater than \"am I going to live or die.\"  Once the plot becomes any more complicated than, \"sorority girl tries to escape,\"  people don't really call it a \"horror film\" anymore...", "You've heard of Troll 2 and the Scarecrow series, yes? ", "A Youtube reviewer, Chris Stuckman, made a great 12:33 video about the problem with modern horror movies that [seems to nail it on the head.](_URL_0_)", "There was a time when high caliber actors did films like that.  Jack Nicholson was 22 years past his first real movie credit when he told Wendy he wouldn't hurt her if she'd just give him the bat.\n\nThose exceptions aside, as someone pointed out, horror films generally depend on either fear or women in skimpy clothing who make stupid decisions, often while babysitting someone else's kids in someone else's home.  That sort of discourages actors with pride from taking those roles.", "Honestly, I think it's because fear is a deeply personal, uncomfortable feeling for a lot of people.  When a film attempts to frighten you and it fails, it's easy to feel insulted.  When a film attempts to frighten people and succeeds, they don't always enjoy it.\n\nPeople often compare sense of fear to sense of humor, inasmuch as there's a certain amount of compulsion to it.  You don't choose to laugh and you don't choose to be afraid.  You just respond to the stimulus you're taking in, and the reaction is involuntary.\n\nBeyond that, even among horror fans, there's a lot of variance.  Some people like torture porn, some people are all about jump scares, some people just want to see badass monsters, and then you've got guys like me who prefer to be scared long after the movie is over, when the plot or characters linger in the back of your mind.", "For an example, look at the horror movie \"You're Next\".  Mild spoilers will follow, but nothing significant.\n\nSo, this family is getting attacked while they're eating dinner, from outside the house, and their plan is to let their daughter sprint barefoot out of the house in hopes of like... I dunno, running and getting help or something?  And no character in that movie stops and says \"Hey, this is fucking stupid. Seriously.\"  She sprints out the door and garrotes herself on a wire in the door frame, and everyone is like \"Oh man, who would've thought her running unarmed into the area where our assailants are, with no foot protection in the woods would've ended tragically!?\"\n\nSome can absolutely argue that You're Next is a healthy dose of tongue in cheek, but like Shawn of the Dead, it's poking fun at it's brethren.  It's hard for critics and stuff to accept horror movies as legitimate story telling devices when you have movies like The Strangers, wherein the bad guys do things that the protagonists never actually notice that immediately reminds your brain that you're watching a movie.\n\nHorror films are typically pretty cheap to produce, and ever since the Blair Witch Project, they've gotten cheaper, to the point where we can all enjoy \"Skype, the horror movie\" this weekend..  BWP made absolute bank because it was full of no names.  Paranormal activity, Saw, all of them lack pretty significant names, in order to save more on money.\n\nAnd finally, horror movies are polarizing.  Myself and my wife love to watch them, but none of my friends do.  They hate horror movies, they hate how the movies make them feel, even when the movie is blatantly not scary (this is subjective, but for me it's movies such as the aforementioned You're Next and The Strangers).  Why spend a lot of money and effort when you have giant swathes of people who write it off instantly because they don't like horror?", "I've learned to read between the lines of rating scores.  Sites like Rotten Tomatoes are never going to give a horror film much above a 7.  So realistically, anything over 5 might be worth looking into.  With regular movies it's more like  anything above a 7 might be worth seeing.", "Because most of the horror films are absurdly overdone cliches. ", "Recent exception... The Conjuring. Really slick cinematography, real scares and an insane climax.  Also, has anyone checked out Housebound?", "Silence of the Lambs was respected. It just takes a film with good writing, and most horror films don't put much effort into the plot/dialogue.", "I'm curious, is there a genre that is more respected than others?  Documentaries maybe?  Or are you lumping all genres together and saying that horror is generally less respected than all others together?", "Because horror cliches with rare exceptions are just plain stupid. Like why does the bad stuff always happen in the dark?... are you telling me angry ghosts can't haunt during the day? There's that movie Fear Dot Com that was dark EVERYWHERE, even inside the police station... so many other cliches as well, like the old open up the mirror to take something out of the medicine cabinet, close it to find a murderer standing behind you in the reflection...\n\nThere's only a few movies that come to mind as horror done well. Alien, The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, The Ring... probably a couple more I can't think of at the moment. \n", "It's true that there haven't been many good high budget horror movies recently, but there are LOTS of low budget/indie or foreign productions that are actually very clever, with great storytelling, acting and effects. Martyrs is an excellent example of a film that can be extremely brutal, terrifying and gruesome, but it's also incredibly smart in its social commentary. Lake Mungo is another unknown gem that explores and analyzes the concept of grief through a pretty scary ghost story. A Tale of Two Sisters is another amazing \"horror\" movie with similar themes... And I could go on. \n\nAs for why the horror genre in general isn't more respected, I'd say it's pretty obvious. Most people who watch horror movies just want to be scared or grossed out. They want to see stupid people get their well deserved gruesome deaths, they want to see scary ghosts jump at them, get their adrenaline rush and leave. They don't want to feel bad, to actually *think* about death, grief, and all those other heavy themes that a clever horror movie would include. It's just much easier to produce and sell a movie that's basically 100% blood/jumpscares. ", "A lot of my friends ask me \"why the fuck would you show me this movie\" that's why. I'd like to think horror buffs are just as unique and weird as me.... and because of that unpopular. ", "It can be argued that Horror is a genre which doesn't need to be respected in order to be successful, so horror movies don't always go for that. They are usually cheap to make and have a niche audience that they don't have to really try new things with to entertain. \n\nLack of originality and creativity also seem to be an issue. Creativity generally arises in new methods of being gory (which seems to be heavily looked down upon) and many horror films carry a negative mark of exploitation. Horror movies which are considered respected either try new things and play with a formula (like Cabin in the Woods or Scream) or are layered with other genre's (like how Silence of the Lambs is a \"thriller\" despite following the slasher film formula very closely). \n\nThere's also just a general public and critical misunderstanding and prejudice which I actually think is a big issue. When Psycho and Peeping Tom were first released they were ostracized for exploiting violence, but later reviews and rewatching over the years people start saying that they are masterpieces of film making. Film critics often struggle to tell the difference between exploitation and art I guess?\n\nTurning up big money ties back to my point of it being niche. Horror is successful because its cheap, big budget includes big risks which studios don't generally want to go for. A lot of fans would love a big budget movie, especially if its a crossover work, like an Avengers for Horror movies. ", "Show me a horror movie with a deep subplot beyond \"run away and die a bunch\".", "different movies genres are trying to evoke different emotions(reactions from viewers) \n\nso horror movies try to make you scared \n\naction movies display adrenaline junkies\n \npornographic movies want to evoke your lust \n\nBig movies use a mix of different genres. so you might need to combine a love scene with an action scene and there will probably be a lot of drama too.\n\nthe more complex the emotions displayed in movies the more difficult they are to make and the more acclaimed they are.\n\nhope that makes sense for you. ", "Newer horror films that I found are the exception to the 'stupid plotline, stupid decisions, stupid everything' (if sometimes ironically) complaints:\n\n\nYou're Next\n\nHousebound\n\nThe House of the Devil", "While I think that the current top comment by /u/o0joshua0o is the closet to summing things up (others have added a few solid points as well), there is still something missing. I'll try to best explain my point in a way fitting to ELI5, though this might lead to a fairly long post.\n\nThe short of it is this: scaring people is easy.\n\nIt isn't that the story is lacking impact or that it relies on gruesome visuals or jump-scares. If the goal of a story (a book, a movie, etc.) is to scare and it manages to do just that, then it has made a solid impact. This can be anything from the many kid-friendly campfire stories about men with hooks for hands to various urban legends or creepypastas about sleep experiments to novels about a father and husband who struggles to be a good man while dealing with his personal demons (that also happens to have a popular film adaptation that completely misses the point).\n\nStorytelling is all about the manipulation of the audience. It is like a magic act. But rather than having an audience who wants to believe an elephant can really disappear then reappear, a storyteller has an audience that wants their emotions manipulated for the purpose of entertainment. Whether it involves making them laugh, cry, or fear for their own well-being is not entirely irrelevant though it is most important that they at least feel *something* during the performance.\n\nAnd a good storyteller will manage to illicit at least one or more of even the most basic emotional responses all without the audience being actively aware that they are being manipulated. An audience wants to believe in the illusion. They know the story you're telling them isn't real, or at the very least isn't actually taking place at that very moment. It involves words on a page, or a man sitting at a campfire, or actors on a stage.\n\nA bad storyteller will rely heavily on familiarity to get their point across. A reused joke. A familiar plot and twist. Cliches that are meant to act as emotional shorthand, like putting a mother and child inside a burning building. The whole \"showing, not telling\" thing you often hear in writing courses or in threads like those in /r/books.\n\nThe audience is, at that point, doing all the emotional work. They have to make all those connections. That music means something exciting is happening. The fat guy fell down so I need to laugh at his being fat and clumsy. Or, back to my previous example, that mother and child are in danger so I should feel concern for their safety.\n\nShorthand is fine. And reusing old material is as well. But it's all in the execution. Anyone can reference an old Simpson's gag or quote Airplane (just look at all the reposts on reddit or anywhere else for proof of that). But not everyone can make people actually laugh at it the same way they had the first time they saw or heard it. If any laughter happens at all, it's more because they fondly recall that original moment.\n\nAnd this is getting to what I mean by \"scaring people is easy\".\n\nComedy, generally speaking, is really hard. Getting a genuine laugh from people is a lot of work. Timing, delivery. To take a very basic observation and present it in such a way that gets a crowd to snort and chuckle is a quest unto itself. A bad joke or weak delivery can stink up the house real quick.\n\nDrama is the same way. A combination of a solid performance of at least passable material is required to illicit a positive response from the audience. Stilted line delivery can suck any and all emotion out of a romantic scene between lovers. Cringe-worthy dialog can lead even the most tense moment into melodrama and result in laughs from an audience.\n\nEven action requires a strong understanding of framing, editing, pacing in addition to solid choreography. An action scene is a story unto itself. The fight. The chase, be it toward a goal or away from an antagonist. It's a story within a story. And a poorly shot action sequence will not keep an audience on the edge of their seats. Weak stunt work will not get them to cheer. A poorly framed or edited punch will look fake and break the illusion.\n\nBut scaring people is easy. We're all afraid of something. We all are hardwired to feel things like anxiety and stress. And to trigger such things isn't hard because it involves primitive responses to stimuli that have kept us alive generation after generation. This is why a jump scare will work on many if not most people. A video with a sudden, disturbing image and a loud audio cue is no different to the human brain than a wolf jumping out of the bushes.\n\nHorror doesn't necessarily require an emotional response so much as it does a physical and chemical response. Empathy with any of Freddy's victim isn't required to enjoy A Nightmare on Elm Street. Stilted delivery won't necessarily detract from the gore or jump scare. So long as your nervous system is lighting up and your body is flooded with things like adrenaline, the scene or story works just fine.\n\nThis is why a lot of storytellers, a lot of filmmakers can cut their teeth with horror and transition to something else. All the basic ingredients are there for a good movie. Lighting. Music. Framing. It's an entry level attempt at all the emotional manipulation required in dramas and comedy. But the bar is set so low for an effective horror movie that even a weak effort can be seen as a success. Low-budgets also help convince studios to take risks on inexperienced talent.\n\nA lot of directors and actors started off in horror. Dementia 13 was one of Francis Ford Coppola's first directing jobs. Spielberg made a name for himself with Jaws. That [guy](_URL_6_) who helped bring one of the most successful superhero franchises of all time to the big screen started off making a no-budget horror flick with his brother and big-chinned friend where a tree rapes a girl. And the dude with the two highest grossing films of [all time](_URL_12_) started off making a sequel to a movie about killer fish, then did a movie about a killer robot, and then did a sequel about killer aliens before doing a movie about a killer robot fighting another killer robot. Not to mention the likes of actors like [Johnny Depp](_URL_11_), [Jennifer Connelly](_URL_4_), [Kevin Bacon](_URL_3_), and [Crispin Glover](_URL_1_) who all got early breaks in horror. Or even established talent that find themselves diving into (or even returning to) horror like [Gary Oldman](_URL_0_), [Frank Langella](_URL_7_), [Willem Dafoe](_URL_5_), and [Sir Ian McKellen](_URL_9_).\n\nScaring people is easy. And even the most [mundane](_URL_2_), [uneventful] (_URL_8_), [low-reaching](_URL_10_) horror films can become runaway successes. It isn't the talent involved. It isn't the story failing to make an impact. It's that anyone with a camera and a few friends can make it happen and garner some attention.\n\nOf course, like all other genres it takes a lot of work and effort and talent to master the horror genre. So few names have managed to do it compared to others. When everyone can be scared, when we all share so many of the same fears, it takes a real creative mind to present something so daringly unsettling that it not only perseveres for years to come but also illicit the same emotional response. King, Barker, Lovecraft, Poe, Romero, Craven, Hooper, Carpenter, and so many others have mastered the genre. Some stick around and love to play in the same sandbox time and again. Others move on to the next challenge, maybe returning now and then when the mood strikes them.\n\nIt isn't that horror isn't respected. It's that scaring people isn't hard. Keeping people afraid is. And so few manage to do it just right.", "I'd say it has something to do with the fact that it's the hardest genre to do well (and that's not hyperbole, I assert that horror is the *most* difficult genre). It's incredibly difficult to make a scary film, and the nuances that make it possible can also be prohibitive towards other aspects of good film making. It's hard to tell a story, and maintain good suspenseful pacing, and foster a tone that speaks to the fears of your audience all at the same time.\n\nAs a result: a lot of B-movies are horrors/ thrillers, which may have degraded respect for the genre over the years. It's too bad really, B-movies are one of my favorite categories of film, and deserver more respect in my opinion. More people should give them the appreciation they deserve (I am of course talking about *good* B-movies: the Room, anything directed by Peter Jackson, Shrooms, etc).", "Those movies are more like thrillers than actual horror movies.\n\nThrillers typically do better than horror movies because they don't so much focus on people dying.\n\nHorror movies are more about gore than anything.\n\nThe only exception that I know of is the original Exorcist.", "Firstly, the premise is flawed - a list of horror films is going to include many of the greatest films ever made (Nosferatu, Jaws, Psycho, The Thing, The Shining, Deliverance, Alien, The Fly, Terminator I, Poltergeist) and with a list of venerable directors (Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Guillermo Del Toro, Roman Polanski, Francis Ford Coppola). Horror has also launched, revived, defined, or propelled a lot of careers - Bela Lugosi, Sigourney Weaver, Anthony Hopkins, Jeff Goldblum, Mia Farrow, etc). \n\nHere are a few reasons why you don't think of many horror films as prestigious: \n\n1) Horror typically works best with unknown casts. This allows the cast to be picked off, piece by piece, without the star power exerting influence or giving the order of deaths away (Psycho subverts this by murdering the star early in the picture).\n\n2) You don't think of a lot of great horror films as horror films, because they often overlap with other genres. Alien, Terminator, and The Thing overlap with sci-fi; Rebecca overlaps with Romance, others overlap with psychological thrillers. \n\n3) Your preconceptions about the genre don't match the reality of that genre. Again, look at that list of films - holy shit, those are great films! I'm guessing when you think \"horror\" you think \"b-grade slasher flick\" or \"monster attack\". You could do this to any genre, though - the romantic comedy is either The Apartment, or it's a Heigl disaster; the movie musical can be West Side Story or Mamma Mia. \n\n4) Horror films are very cheap. Done right, they usually need very little budget, small casts, few names, and thus are a great proving ground for new filmmakers. This results in way more shitty, low-grade horror films in distribution than shitty, low-grade historical epics. \n\n", "It really does come down to less originality and more non-intelligent motifs in most cases.\n\nOn an opinion note, where's all the love for Saw? Probably one of the best horror movies I ever saw, especially since it was on that low of a budget.", "The same traits of horror movies that are used in EVERYTHING (ex. jump scares is the main one, excess blood, running from stuff, etc.) have been used time and time again for decades. It's no wonder that these movies have burnt out so quickly; so few of them are actually memorable or good anymore, and a lot of them end up being super cheesy and weird (I remember when I watched Cabin in the Woods, it was good to start but then by the end I was like . . . what?). \n\nI'm a fan of psychological thrillers myself. These tend to be a lot more horrifying than actual \"horror\" movies, as they play with your thoughts and really make you think about stuff. Some of my favorite darker psychological films are those of Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Pi). I also really liked the Cube films (kinda obscure trilogy, but pretty good films). Last House on the Left is also a good thriller. \n\nEverything else these days, in the pure sense of \"horror\", without bringing thriller into it, tends to just be \"social media is evil!\" and \"oh no there's a murderer in town!\" Kinda depressing to see that horror movies haven't changed much since the 20th century. ", "I thought the premise of The Purge was incredibly wasted.  It's interesting, brings out the worst in people, and just bleeds suspense.  But then they go and lock the family in the house and then it's a simple home invasion horror story.\n\nIf they had done something such as a family going camping far away and losing track of time before the Purge, realize the date, and then have them flee terrible people while trying to get back home to safety - that would have been something worth watching.", "Horror as a genre is respected. Hitchcock is brilliant, as well as most other classic film makers. However, the horror genre today is less about plot and more about blood and guts or just how crazy the bad guy is because he's probably killing for no reason. It's not just the horror genre. Comedy has gone so far downhill, it's all dick and fart jokes followed by nutshots. Don't believe me? What was the last action film you so that wasn't totally ridiculous? Drama just gets respect for not seeming so juvenile and musicals get respect for being able to tell a story with song. What's really gripping about horror and comedy is that it hits us on such a basic level. The beauty in the cinematic art form though is to still touch upon those essential  emotions while still making us feel more. Taking us on a journey. Too many movies just cash in on the lowest form of entertainment they can without trying for anything greater, and that's sad.", "Because horror is incompatible with polite society, and thus is looked down upon as inferior or unworthy compared to \"serious\" works. \n\n", "It's the genre that's possibly saturated with cliches that we've seen in horror movies. Very few directors go beyond their boundaries and the ones you've mentioned were all pioneering films in the horror genre. A side note, if you haven't seen It Follows yet, be sure to check it out.", "It's easy to make a horror film but difficult to make a good one. \n\nMany horrors tend to stick very tight to their foundations and often stick to their respective audiences, in recent years I've found myself looking for foreign horrors such as french extremism to get a good one. \n\nBut i'd say the main reason is too few horrors try to break conventions or they purposefully do it and make sure you know about it. A cabin in the woods is a good horror for me as it explains this very by just being as it shows everything that is good and bad about horror. Quite often if i watch one with the misses it's all about the one with the brutal kills and the messed up stuff, i try to watch a proper horror and she finds it boring which leads on to the next point. \n\nMany film critics just don't know how to review it, horror critics will do it as a horror whilst film critics try to place it as an action or comedy, failing that they will attempt to extract deeper meaning from a horror when one may just not exist; Sometimes all a good horror needs is a psycho with an axe, no we do not care about why, no we do not want a trilogy that explains their motivations, we just want to see some nudity and teens getting killed.  \n\n\nSo in summary I'd place it to convention overtaking the story, a deeper story means drifting from the horror elements too much which the audience may find boring. therefore story often gets put aside for the horror elements which means classical reviewers may struggle to fit the film to their method of marking; it's like giving an expert on fine wines a bottle of exclusive locally produced ale and expecting a review, yes it's alcohol but not quite a fine Bordeaux ", "Why don't studios ever invest big money into horror films? --- Because, in large part, horror films these days tend to be made on gore and shock value, not on writing. Very rarely does a horror film both play to your visceral fears AND feature good writing. When it does, it's a unicorn. (Paranormal Activity had me sleeping with the lights on for months but was SO BRILLIANT.)\n\n Why don't high caliber actors/directors/writers get involved in horror films that often? -- Because most horror films in the industry suck, and horror tends to equal pulp, which isn't always that good, though I fondly do love pulp stuff.\n\n", "Because the bulk of horror has more in common with pornography than with regular cinema. What I mean is, there is a tendency in the genre to set up a scenario *just* enough to get the horror going and then it coasts on cheap scares and senseless gore until the end. It relies on a loose plot whose only purpose is to get the audience some standard-issue thrills.\n\nThat's not to say that there aren't great horror films, because by god there really are some amazing ones, but that the pornographic aspect of horror tends to not only taint the perception of the genre, but also bleed into the rest of the genre itself.\n\nPeople become so accustomed with *that* being horror that they feel ripped off when they go to the theater and that's not what they see. Think the \"that wasn't even scary\" crowd. As a result you either get amazing movies that fall under the radar or movies that, because they are so \"good\" are not considered horror. As an example of this I would use \"Black Swan\". One could make a solid argument for it being a horror movie in the purest sense. But few consider it as such. Because it's \"good\", and horror is \"bad\". And because horror has jump scares and dim lighting.\n\nSo my answer I guess is that the genre is a vicious cycle turned on itself.", "In general, people seem to enjoy being sad more than scared.  \n\nTo me, that mindset is counterproductive and disgusting - much like how they probably view mine."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6KOsePEHs"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087298/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080761/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087909/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_41", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_32", "http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000600/", "http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001449/?ref_=tt_cl_t2", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179904/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118636/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_59", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2f2ixc", "title": "What is the oldest piece of evidence pertaining to Judaism? Who's the first person we're sure existed, first event, first town or kingdom etc?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2f2ixc/what_is_the_oldest_piece_of_evidence_pertaining/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck5vusw", "ck79oqc", "ck7tlbw", "ck5nd14"], "score": [7, 4, 2, 11], "text": ["Evidence is reasonably strong that there actually was a King David.  At least, there is an inscription that refers to the \"House of David\"--his subsequent dynasty.  His dating is to around 1000 BCE (not entirely uncontested, but then, what is?).  So far as I know, no one earlier in the Bible has any external corroboration of their existence.\n\n_URL_0_", "Probably the [Merneptah Stele](_URL_0_), dated c. 1208 BCE.\n\n3 of its 28 lines deal with a military campaign in Canaan, and one line states that \"Israel is laid waste\". The way it's worded suggests that \"Israel\" at the time was a tribe rather than a kingdom. ", "Ive never posted here before but Ive been lurking for a while. This overmoderation is really beginning to bother me. I can't stand seeing all these deleted comments and shadowbanned posters. When there is a reponse to deleted posts that is allowed to stay, we're left without context.\n\nIt's to a point I'm considering unsubbing. I anticipate This post will be deleted soon.", "We have pieces from the books of Numbers that date from the 7th century BCE.\n\n_URL_0_\n  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele"], [], ["http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/01/06/The-Blessing-of-the-Silver-Scrolls.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "3sw6wn", "title": "if it takes up to 6 weeks for an antidepressant to work its way theough the blood-brain barrier, how come it only takes an aspirin 10 minutes to start working?", "selftext": "And many other drugs too ...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sw6wn/eli5_if_it_takes_up_to_6_weeks_for_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx0xc1r", "cx105h3", "cx11sw5"], "score": [49, 17, 11], "text": ["Because it doesn't take weeks to cross the blood brain barrier. It gets there in mins to hours like everything else, But ssri's take weeks to change the way your brain works. Which is when you will start feeling them \"work\".", "Aspirin isn't working behind the blood brain barrier, aspirin, acetaminophen, all the pain pills, are working on some part of your pain system.  Aspirin, specifically, stops a chemical that is produced in your body called Prostoglandin (just think of it as liquid pain)  Aspirin goes in and stops more liquid pain form forming.  When you have a headache, it is not in your brain, but the area around your brain, that is where you feel it, and where aspirin can get to.", "Anti-depressants are actually changing the neural connections in your brain. The change in the chemical levels happens quickly, but those changes prompt the re-wiring that is actually what you're trying to achieve with the drug. That's why short term your symptoms can even get worse. \n\nImagine putting up a stop sign in the forest where people used to walk. The immediate effect is that more people are going to walk around the forest instead of through it. The long term effect is that grass and trees will grow and the old walking path will disappear.\n\nMedication crosses the blood brain barrier very quickly. If it didn't you wouldn't be able to fall asleep for surgery. Anyone who's been to the OR knows how fast you fall asleep.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1humng", "title": "How do they design the sequences for the A, C, G, T chemical bases in DNA nanotechnology?", "selftext": "I've been reading about how the nucleotide sequence can be designed so that DNA will self-assemble into desirable nanostructures due to base pairing rules.  So how do scientists design the sequence and how is the design implemented (how do they form the custom DNA)?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1humng/how_do_they_design_the_sequences_for_the_a_c_g_t/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cay36fa", "cay4o58", "cayc46i"], "score": [2, 7, 2], "text": ["[This picture](_URL_0_) probably helps to make things clearer. Of course there are more complex structures.\n\nIt's fairly easy to get custom DNA. You can simply order it from a company. Prices vary (for more common genes for example it might be around 30 cents per base pair).", "Oligonucleotide synthesis is carried out by sequentially adding nucleotides in the desired order, starting from a nucleotide bound to a solid-phase support.  Added nucleotides are slightly modified derivatives with protective side groups to help prevent unwanted reactions.  At the end of the synthesis, these protecting groups are removed, and the nucleotide chain is released from the solid-phase support.\n\n[Wikipedia overviews it nicely](_URL_0_).", "There are some good [online tools](_URL_0_) for determining the likelihood of different secondary structures.  For the applications I get custom DNA for, mostly I'm trying to make sure these kind of secondary structures won't form, but you could use these same tools to make sure they fold the way you want as well.  As far as building these sequences deliberately, it's all a matter of making different regions of the sequence complimentary to each other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Mao-4armjunction-schematic.png/600px-Mao-4armjunction-schematic.png"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capping_step#Synthesis_by_the_phosphoramidite_method"], ["http://www.idtdna.com/analyzer/Applications/OligoAnalyzer/"]]}
{"q_id": "344kc6", "title": "there is no archeological evidence that dragons ever existed. so, if they're simply imagined, how is it that they're present in almost every major culture and depicted so similarly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/344kc6/eli5_there_is_no_archeological_evidence_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqr7iu6", "cqr7o30", "cqr80vy", "cqr878z", "cqr95k0", "cqr9a20", "cqr9ys7", "cqrebsg", "cqrg77n", "cqrgnd2", "cqrixsl", "cqrn6hz", "cqs7kut", "cqs9ry2"], "score": [30, 380, 17, 24, 97, 4, 6, 3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 2, 3], "text": ["Short answer:\n\n >  There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian countries.\n\n >  The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. \n\n[Long Answer](_URL_0_)", "There are certain things that are common in human mythology, and one of them is that humans are predisposed to be impressed by really big things. And it's easier to imagine a really big version of something that already exists than to design something completely from scratch. Hence why so many cultures have stories of giant humans running around. This applies to other creatures as well; take a reptile of some sort, scale it up to being bigger than a house, and suddenly you've got a dragon of some kind. Imagination adds other embellishments such as horns or breathing fire, or whatever the local variation is. (And they can be pretty varied; consider the differences between a standard European dragon, a Chinese dragon, and the Aztec winged serpent -- but they're all basically big lizards.) Similarly, many cultures have stories of giant birds, be it the ~~European~~ Middle Eastern (thanks productusmaximus!) Roc or the North American Thunderbird.\n\nThis of course gives rise to the question of why some animals don't seem to get the gargantuan myth treatment as often. To this I can only speculate that when one has to deal with actual bears and tigers and jaguars, stories about even larger ones aren't necessary for drama.", "The dragons in different cultures and at different times are wildly different in style and mythology.  We group a lot of different giant serpent/lizard monster concepts into one heading and call them dragons.  The fact that we have a lot of serpent monsters is likely caused by early peoples inability to comprehend snake movements by anything other than magic.  In almost all cultures snakes are either symbols of evil or symbols of good, but regardless they are magical.", "People were finding dinosaur bones long before the modern age, and they had to invent stories to explain them. They came up with dragons. ", "Asian dragons are depicted completely differently from European style dragons (which were themselves a wide range of dragony things with no consistent appearance).\n\nThere are only dragons in a **few** major cultures, and most people would not include the flying serpents of central/south american myth as \"dragons\", nor do dragons make appearances in Indian, African, Middle East, or many other \"major\" cultures.", "Note: I wanted to give a logical, legible, and casual examination of the question. As a result, it's pretty dull - but maybe helpful?\n\n This question makes me think of the major traits I personally \nassociate with dragons: they're reptilian and they breath fire. \nLots of creatures - mythological or plainly observable fly, so I \ndon't think that's critical to the 'idea' of a dragon. Also to be \nfair, not all 'dragons' are supposed to breath fire - and I'm \nsure there are plenty of other fire-breathers within various \nmythologies.\n\n I think with the first thing, a mythological creature being \ndescribed as reptilian in it's physical characteristics is a \nperfectly natural consequence of people being exposed to snakes, \nlizards, alligators, turtles, ect. It would be quite strange for \na culture to ignore an entire class of animals. It may be the \ncase that there are cultures that depicted 'dragons' that were \nentirely unaware/unexposed to reptiles of any sort, but were \nthese people also perfectly isolated from people who did?\n\n I don't think it is much of a stretch at all, from that point, \nto expect that a good number of isolated cultures could have \nconceived of an original version of a reptilian animal inspired \nby the observance of real, living reptiles. This character, \nthrough stories and artwork, would naturally be adopted by other \nother cultures as people interact with each other and share their \nideas. Just as with music, religion, or what have you. So the \nidea of a dragon becomes attached to other ideas, which become a \npart of people's collective imaginations, and consequently become \na part of those people's cultures.\n\n As for the fire-breathing part of the mystery, I think I have a \ngood comparison. The thing that's strange about 'fire-breathing \ndragons' existing in multiple cultures is that there is no \nevidence (to my knowledge) of any observable animal being able to \nexpel a stream of fire from it's mouth/nostrils/whatever. I think \nthat's the gist of what we understand from depictions of such \ndragons. \n\n Here's my comparison: zombies eating brains. Zombies are another \n'character' that can be observed in many cultures. If we decide \nthat the most basic quality of a 'zombie' is that it is a person \nthat has died who has come back to life, I think most people \nwould agree that it is unsurprising that such an idea could be \nimagined naturally by many isolated groups of people observing \ndeath. Just as it's unsurprising that people familiar with snakes \nwould imagine a special kind of snake. \n\n The thing that doesn't follow naturally of observing the real \nworld is the 'brain-eating' part. As with 'brain-eating zombies', \nthe idea of 'fire-breathing dragons' is too specifically \nfantastic for us to believe that several distinct cultures could \nhave conceived of it naturally. I don't think it's reasonable to \nconclude from this that 'brain-eating zombies' did in fact exist \nin a physical capacity. \n\n My reasoning in this case is: those ideas are too specific to \nhave originated in isolated cultures in every single individual \ncase. Dragons only properly become 'fire-breathing dragons' once that idea \nbecomes a part of stories and artwork. The stories only have to \nbecome popular for them to influence a people's culture. People \nthat are a part of a culture where this popular fiction has not \nbeen accepted may very well imagine a fantastic creature that is \nsimilar only in being reptilian in nature. \n\n TL;DR \nPeople who saw reptiles were bound to imagine fantastic \nexaggerations, which all can be recognized as 'dragons'. Beyond \ntheir reptile-inspired characteristics, their similarities could \nlargely be a case of specific incarnations (flying, fire \nbreathing, poisonous, aquatic) becoming especially popular, and\nthus more likely to spread between cultures.\n ", "I read a theory somewhere that it's some kind of amalgamated primal-subconscious archetype of our ancestors' most feared predators, the snake, the eagle, and the leopard. Probably quite fanciful but a cool idea", "The dragon's we see in popular culture are actually from cultural diffusion - historically, cultures had much different depictions of them.  Further, when there were similarities, they were akin to very large snakes/serpents.", "It's because dinosaur bones were continuously found throughout human history. And certain dinosaur skulls look like dragons. You could imagine unearthing a giant tooth and trying to imagine the creature it came from, in time those became Dragons in oral history.", "I used to spend a lot of hours in the library as a child ... I used to read a lot. \nIt was a normal day until a passage in a book I could read \"Dragons do not exist\"... I thought it was a mistake... I went in search of answers down the long corridors of the library, gathering books and more books until I could't carry any more... I spend a lot of time reading... When my mother came to pick me at the end of the day I was in tears... My search proved that the dragons really did not exist. That this magnificent and scary at the same time animal was just a myth. Sad moment of my childhood.", "There are three predators that hunted and killed early humans (and other mammals) that we instinctively fear; birds of prey, big cats, snakes.  A dragon is a manifestation of those three.  \n\nFinding dinosaur bones only helped fuel our imaginations.", "The dinosaur fossil thing that many people here mention has a huge problem, it is not actually easily discernible how dinosaurs looked like based on fossils, when the whole fossil craze began it took some time to figure out that these fossilized remains were from things whose skeletons looked similar too that of lizards etc. Our first attempts to reconstruct dinosaurs were often very wrong.\n\nIt seems a bit unlikely that primitive people all over the world without the tools or the technology that we have could have dug up up dinosaur bones and accurately reconstructed what dinosaurs must have looked like when they were still in the bronze age or ever earlier.\n\nThe idea also misses the fact that the modern dragon that looks like a big winged lizard who breathes fire is just that a modern thing. If you go back in time you will find that local depictions of what we call dragons tended to be a lot more different from each other and from what we have today.\n\nDragons were frequently described as large serpents or chimeras mad up of different sorts of animals. Many of them were multi headed and limbed and descriptions comparing them to giant lizards are spare.\n\nThe [proto indo-european religion](_URL_0_) that most religions in Asia and European and the middle east and Africa were based on and influenced by is thought to have featured a hero/god fighting a large serpent and most modern dpeictions of dragons in Eurasia are probably connected to that.\n\nThe dragon-like mythical animals in other places like Australia, the Americas or sub-Saharan African only fit the mold of the dragon with a lot more squeezing.\n\nSo the explanation is more like:\n\nOnce upon a time some people had a story about a hero slaying a big serpent. That story got exaggerated over the generations and spread throughout half the world to produce myths and religions of gods battling giant serpents. Like Thor vs. J\u00f6rmungandr or Marduk vs. Tiamat or even several times in Christian mythology.\n\nOver time those descriptions of dragons changed and evolved. when those cultures re-encountered one another they saw the similarities between the concepts and started adapting parts of their neighbours description of the creatures.\n\nEventually dinosaurs were discovered and the by then already pretty dinosaur-like gestalt was influenced by that. People attempted to make creatures from unrelated cultures fir the pattern even if not appropriate and nowadays thanks to modern fantasy stories dragons from around the world look and act very similar.", "First of all, there is no *paleontological evidence*, not archeaology, paleontology. First of all, there are lots of things many societies came to separately. All culture on all corners of the globe have found constellations in the sky. All cultures have a tradition of believing comets in the sky were a bad thing. Many cultures have independenty came up with the idea of a god of thunder or lightning, Zeus, Thor, etcetera. Many cultures have come up with the idea of warfare. Many have come up with the idea of giant humans.", "Check out real America's most authoritative source:\n\n\"Some creation scientists have postulated that the differing nature of dragons in the west and east may be because after the Great Flood, predatory, carnivorous dinosaurs tended to migrate westward, whereas large, plant-eating dinosaurs tended to migrate east from Mt. Ararat.\"\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#Comparative_mythology"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion#Dragon_or_Serpent"], [], ["http://www.conservapedia.com/Dragon"]]}
{"q_id": "36vyy1", "title": "Given what's likely to happen to its ruins, what is considered the 'must read' book on the history of Palmyra?", "selftext": "As the title says. I've been fascinated by the city ever since first hearing about it on Mike Duncan's \"The History of Rome.\" Is there a definitive book about the city's history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36vyy1/given_whats_likely_to_happen_to_its_ruins_what_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cri5vwh"], "score": [9], "text": ["I've heard good things about Pat Southern's *Empress Zenobia*, which was written to be accessible to a general audience but by somebody who knows her stuff. If you are up for it, Andrew Smith's *Roman Palmyra* is very good but very dense.\n\nRichard Stoneman's *Palmyra and its Empire* is, as far as I know, the most widely available general work on the topic. I hear it is well written but somewhat sloppy historically: for example, it takes the somewhat problematic stance that Zenobia was a native anti-Roman insurgent rather than a more complicated modern perspective. Still, it would certainly be a good place to start."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ahy840", "title": "A Persian View of Thermopylae?", "selftext": "I was amazed to discover that nearly everything in 300 hundred was a lie, that Spartan military supremacy was a myth, that theirs was a horrendously cruel slave state, that Persians were actually more Democratic and egalitarian and free in many key ways, and so on. I feel this need to hear a coherent counter-narrative. Any recommendations? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ahy840/a_persian_view_of_thermopylae/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eejtb5a", "eek37m9"], "score": [29, 60], "text": ["I caught the AskHistorians Podcast ep 116 a few months ago that might have what your looking for. Not specifically a Persian view but a more balanced one.\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\nFrom user /u/iphikrates\n\n\n\n_URL_0_", "There is very little in the way of Persian sources, and nothing that a coherent narrative can be constructed out of. Due to a limited number of sources and administrative records, the degree to which it is possible to understand the Achaemenid Empire is very limited.\n\nThey were absolutely not democratic, though - in principle, that is, ideologically speaking, the Great King was not just a powerful monarch, but an absolute theocrat governing with perfect justice. I have written a bit on this [here](_URL_1_).\n\nI've also written a bit on Persian governance and taxation [here](_URL_2_).\n\nAlso, in case any other answers interest you, my wiki profile page is [here](_URL_0_).\n\nFor the matter of the invasion of Greece I defer to /u/Iphikrates as linked by /u/seekunrustlement ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/90ha3e/askhistorians_podcast_116_debunking_300s_battle/", "https://soundcloud.com/user679855208/askhistorians-podcast-116"], ["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/lcnielsen", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0cqhp/what_role_did_the_persian_emperor_play_in/eawirps/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/adelmt/how_did_the_persian_government_work_on_a_daytoday/edizkk4/?context=2"]]}
{"q_id": "67fw7m", "title": "why are flowers attractive to humans even if we might not get any reward (fruit, nectar) from them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67fw7m/eli5_why_are_flowers_attractive_to_humans_even_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgq5sza", "dgq6pz5", "dgq6rwy", "dgq6ts0", "dgq6u9t", "dgq80e5", "dgq85qh", "dgq89r5", "dgqa9uh", "dgqagjc", "dgqahdz", "dgqaue5", "dgqaxlt", "dgqb07j", "dgqbsia", "dgqbvn5", "dgqcp3d", "dgqdv1a", "dgqefxs", "dgqem9a", "dgqf9tk", "dgqgiqq", "dgqh4vi", "dgqhonm", "dgqi3wm", "dgql9bz", "dgqm2nw", "dgqnoqr", "dgqolxs", "dgqrf80", "dgqsfor", "dgqsrl3", "dgquwg6", "dgqv5vg", "dgqvyah", "dgqz4b2", "dgqz9ao", "dgr03mb", "dgr0k6g", "dgr0lz1", "dgr37tc", "dgr4vr3", "dgr6t4l", "dgra2xm", "dgrbvxd", "dgrczk4", "dgrebvq", "dgref4r", "dgri1mq", "dgrja3d", "dgrjksm"], "score": [28, 8, 3, 22, 708, 14, 565, 2, 13, 12, 22, 1786, 10, 5619, 2, 2, 149, 3, 104, 7, 103, 29, 2, 2, 12, 4, 2, 5, 228, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 7, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["We might not get any reward? That sweet smell is sugar, and it is as useful for a human as it is for an insect. \n\nThe smaller amount of suger content in flowers may make it a more inconvenient snack than, say a fruit, but it's the same substance, the same appeal and the same instincts that drive us towards both. ", "Because we are capable of abstract thought, and finding something beautiful just because we do is a reward in itself. Plus we have assigned cultural meaning to flowers and what they represent in the context in which they are used.", "If a flower is attractive to a person and the seeds of the flower spread when the person interacts with the flower then ths flower will continue to make more flowers. So the flower continues to exist with the same attributes that attract people and cause them to interact with the flowers. Nothing breaks that cycle so it continues to happen.", "I can't offer any scientific explanation but I did read an interesting book called The Botany of Desire that talked about this subject. The author wrote it as a \"plant's-eye view\" of the world, and had different plants reflect on different forms of human desire.\n\nThere is a chapter on the tulip (and, especially, Tulipomania) that addresses this question, though I can't recall anything specific enough to answer you. I believe the argument revolved around flowers \"cross-wiring\" with the sexual gratification part of the brain.\n\n\nIt's a dope read, bruh.", "Because we are attracted to beauty! Beauty is its own reward. \n\nThe human brain is a pattern matcher. It likes to find patterns and symmetries, and patterns within patterns. Neat and tidy ratios and harmoniously varying repetitions are the building blocks of all patterns, and you can find them in a flower as you can in a person's face (though music is queen as a source of such patterns, since it's very building blocks are notes and rhythms of whole number ratios).\n\n(Which makes me think - the bee has a brain and eyes, why should it not be a pattern matcher too? Possibly the bee is also attracted to the flower because of it's beauty, and the nectar is partly incidental!)\n\n", "According to Georgia O'Keeffe, they look like vagina's.  This may have something to do with it on a subconscious level maybe?", "I think healthy flowers indicate that the area (in nature) is a healthy area and relatively safe (fertile ground, no snow, no extreme heat, decent amount of water, etc) ", "So we don't eat or destroy it. Since we covet it it then propagates. Maybe flowers are pretty because people plant pretty flowers.", "I would suggest the biological response has roots in evolutionary adaptation.  We know flowers often produce fruit - so we are attracted to flowers because our lizard brain says 'possible food source!'.  Obviously some flowers and plants that flower are super deadly.  It's not a perfect system.", "Many of the foods we eat have an obvious relationship the the flowers of the plant. EG strawberries: First we see a small white flower. Then this flower closes up and a fruit begins to grow.\n\nIf you're looking for a food/benefit reason that early humans might have noticed.", "There doesn't need to be a reward involved for humans if it resulted in some kind of an advantage for the plant.  Scents and colors that attract birds might also just happen to attract humans too.  We're not usually much help spreading pollen around, but maybe we're not a liability either.  The birds are the ones actually helping the plant spread, but it doesn't hurt the plant if other animals happen to admire them.", "Hi- I am a master florist and I teach floral design in a formal curriculum. \n\nFlowers and greenery were initially introduced as a ceremonial reward. A crown of greenery, for instance was given to an athlete for completing a monumental task which reflected his prowess. \n\nFloral crowns were bestowed on maidens to accentuate and highlight their youth during courting ceremonies. \n\nBouquets were carried by brides to mask any unpleasant smells when hygiene was not important, and also to give the bride something to hold on to. Some have noted that this may represent a phallic meaning, but it was probably just to keep her from calm and to keep her hands still. \n\nFuneral flowers also masked any smells and also deflected from staring at a corpse, i.e. Lighten the mood. \n\nLarge arrangements were displayed to indicate wealth. \n\nThe Victorian era introduced giving flowers as a gift as the flowers had different meanings. For instance, roses for love, hydrangea for gratitude, baby's breath for innocence...\n\nThese all evolved into a cryptological messaging system that delivered a message in a discrete way, gentile way. \n\nThat being said, the floral business is dying. People see flowers as a ridiculous expenditure but I'm really trying hard on my end to share my skills and knowledge with anyone who is interested. \n\nGreat question, by the way! \n", "Although I don't know that much about it I'm going to add onto the other responses because it's something I think is interesting. Flowers incorporate the \"golden ratio\" into the structure of their petals in order to get as many as possible onto the flower to increase sun exposure. For some reason this \"golden ratio\" shows up everywhere throughout nature and it has been shown that more typically attractive people have a face which closer reflects the \"golden ratio\". \nMaybe this answers your question. For some reason humans find things which incorporate it very pretty/attractive.\nLike I said I don't know that much about it but maybe someone can help me out :-)", "This doesn't address the philosophical perception of beauty, but primates' ability to see them in three colors is special, in the world of mammals:\n\n > Today, most mammals possess dichromatic vision, corresponding to protanopia red\u2013green color blindness. They can thus see violet, blue, green and yellow light, but cannot see ultraviolet, and deep red light.[4][5] This was probably a feature of the first mammalian ancestors, which were likely small, nocturnal, and burrowing.\n\n...\n > Primates have re-developed trichromatic color vision since that time, by the mechanism of gene duplication, being under unusually high evolutionary pressure to develop color vision better than the mammalian standard. Ability to perceive red[7] and orange hues allows tree-dwelling primates to discern them from green. This is particularly important for primates in the detection of red and orange fruit, as well as nutrient-rich new foliage, in which the red and orange carotenoids have not yet been masked by chlorophyll.\n\n^_URL_0_\n\nBeing able to see *red* made ripe fruits stand out visibly from unripened fruit, and from the green background foliage. I'm sure this influences our ability to appreciate flowers and their vivid contrast to *green.*", "Really enjoy most of the comments, but just to be a little bit technical, don't use the idea that plants do that or that they evolved to do that. Plants were selected, some naturally, some by us. They being attractive to us might be a consequence of this selection, but it is not the objective of it. Selection, in evolution, is not something that go towards an objective. It promotes a pressure. Who survives that pressure, \"wins\". In general, plants don't want to be recognized as good by us. They are because those that we identify as beautiful or good smelling survived the artificial pressure we imposed, or the natural pressure of attracting the right animals in order to spread. A little bit pedant, I know, sorry. But evolution and it's mechanisms, such as selection, seem to be not very well explained to people.", "I'll catch heat for this.. but if you're moderately into Christianity or believe anything the Bible says.. Genesis indicates we started in a beautiful, lush garden. Our love of flowers, nature, is an internal desire to be back in the setting whence we came. ", "\nHumans are attracted to brightly colored objects.  This is because fruit is often brightly colored and that was a food source for primitive humans.  It is also the reason that humans see in the particular color spectrum that we have.  the better to differentiate colors.", "They're mostly showing off for the pollinators, we just happen to also find the patterns beautiful. Bees see a different part of the light spectrum, and so flowers show colors in this range to show them where the good stuff is. \nsource: _URL_0_\n\n", "There's a heavy element of culture in this. While the appreciation of flowers is widespread around the globe, there are many societies in which flowers have been viewed with indifference or even disapproval (floral decorations have never been especially important in West African cultures, for example: sub-Saharan art has routinely depicted animals and people, but rarely flowers).\n\nIn general, the kind of societies in which an appreciation of flowers is mostly likely to develop are ones that are urbanized and have economic surpluses. Flowers are appreciated *precisely because* they are wasteful and don't have any practical use as foods; they symbolize the abundance of a wealthy society. \n\nPart of the beauty of flowers lies in the physiological response their colours and shapes generate; but it's also that the cultivation of flowers, and the time and attention necessary to make floral decorations, denotes luxury and leisure - and these are qualities that have positive associations for human beings.\n\n(I've loosely drawn from *The Culture of Flowers* by anthropologist Jack Goody for this answer.)", "Many flowers like Tulips were literally designed to be attractive by the horticulturalists at the time. People have been involved with cultivating plants for a very long time, it would be surprising if they didn't come up with any pretty ones.", "Attraction to these particular \"useless\"  flowers e.g. Roses,  is highly unlikely to have been specifically driven by natural selection. \n\nA few people here are getting towards a potentially correct idea from an evolutionary perspective which is our sense organs and brains are attracted to things like flowers for potentially adaptive reasons. \n\nNot every trait we have is driven by natural selection. Some of our traits are driven by natural selection because they offered a fitness advantage and were selected for. Other traits we just have because they didn't cause a disadvantage and so they happened to spread through the population by chance even though they could have been lost. Other traits are things which weren't selected for but come with other trains which are adapted. E. G. Red blood itself isn't adaptive because of the colour red but is a product of having our haemoglobin which is adaptive. These were coined \"evolutionary spandrels\" by Gould and Lewontonin. \n\nIt's likely were attracted to useless flowers like roses for a sort of spandrel reason but it could also just be a we are because of chance variation which wasn't harmful. \n\nIt's easy to form a\" just so story\" which comes up with an explanation for traits like this in an evolutionary framework, but you can't prove or disprove them so be careful. \n\n", "Uhm... we do get fruit from flowers though? Most (all?) fruits start as a flower. And some flowers (like roses) are food themselves.\n\nNot sure how much this contributes to it, but they may be factors to some degree.", "Flowers, fruit, and feathers all exist to attract attention which they achieve through vibrant colours that stand out from everything else.  These distinctions can be noticed by any species capable of seeing colour.\n      \nWhy this distinction is appealing to different species I'm not sure anyone necessarily knows.  Things like colour on fruit making a positive evolutionary association and colourful poisonous creatures which makes a negative associations... all this would have developed after animals could react to colour, since they both exist to take advantage of it in one way or another.  Maybe it started as being able to distinguish the colour of blood -a major advantage for any animal under countless circumstances, and from there other colours would only require a very minor mutation to gain other advantages.      \nWith that new input we would have developed loads of behaviours over millions of years in response to every colour, which would have shifted and changed and gotten more complex as different species evolved to take advantage of those behaviours which spark new behaviours and new uses of colours, et cetera.      \n        \nSo millions of years later and these colours inspire a complex reaction within most creatures, the one commonality between all these many different behaviours is that colour grabs our attention in the first place.      \n     \nFrom there it seems pretty natural for these things to become an evolutionary advantage for our species once we started forming into social groups because a primate who goes through the effort of distinguishing themselves attracts more attention from potential mates through decorative ornamentation and eventually gift-giving.  Not only is this more access to mates, but being healthy and intelligent enough for that to be a priority also means a higher likelihood of successful offspring.  So this behaviour would have developed our specific appreciation for feathers, flowers, and colourful minerals.      \n      \nColours can also be used in order to try and monopolize attention in order to maintain influence over others which would generally elevate an individual within a group, as it allows their will to always be more evident and prevalent in the minds of those around them.\n      \n**TL;DR:**  We do get a reward from gaining the attention from others of our species, colours grab our attention, they are therefore a useful tool for evolutionary success.", "Not really an answer but a quote I like, \"If you could see the miracle of a single flower, your whole life would change\"", "Actually, humans can't see all the patterns on flowers!  Bees have a color receptor in the ultraviolet, so a lot of the flowers that simply appear to be plain white or yellow to us have patterns that bees can see.  So many flowers do actually look more attractive to other animals than they do to us.  Here's a reference -- there are many: _URL_0_", "Flowers turn into fruit and are colorful like fruit. The reason bright colors are appealing to us is to find ripe fruit.", "One should link to Feynman on beauty and flowers: _URL_0_", "This is a quote I love, and it has helped me understand this sort of thing in the past:\n\n\u201cFriendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.\u201d - CS Lewis. \n\n(sorry if this is a repeat, I did search first and didn't find it already posted). ", "Our sense of smell and our sense of taste are very connected. \n\nWhen food has spoiled, the aromas given off by bacterial or other activity are apparent to us... isovaleric acid with rancid milk, butyric acid which smells like vomit or bile, aromatic indoles that smell like poop or manure, or the vinegar of acetic acid. We have built in aversion to these smells due to evolutionary pressures and the back of our head \"knowing\" these are linked with nasty biological processes such as spoiled food or rotten meat. \n\nWhen a fruit, or an orange, smells sweet and tasty, we're smelling the oils of the plan and other aromas. Many flowers that you might not think of as edible, actually are (even dandelion weeds can and are made into a tea, and lavender has culinary uses for instance). Fruits, too, are often \"flowers\", pear trees have flowers and many fruits are \"flowering fruits\". So there are evolutionary reasons for a human to smell the flower and be sure they aren't smelling something weird like acetic acid (meaning that maybe some berries have gotten gross and fermented). Cooking flowers in the west isn't done so much these days, but before artificial flavors and other ways of cooking, it was a lot more prevalent, but you still see this in people making herbal teas for example; the chemicals given off are pleasant, sometimes linked to chemical signals that mean \"food\" and other complex flavors (bitter, after all, is a flavor too). \n\nSomeone in the comments mentioned corpse flowers and how their rotting smell attracts insects like flies, etc.; this is of course the opposite extreme where the flower is releasing isovaleric acid and other compounds into the air; flies which WANT to find and smell rotting corpses think \"Oh hell yes, some corpses over there\" and have an evolutionary impulse to go over there.\n\nEdit: People keep bringing up roses as an example of \"useless\" flowers not linked to evolutionary pressures...\n\nUmm, hello? Rosewater in cooking anyone? Turkish delight? Roses have TONS of culinary uses, and it's linked to the aromatic compounds they release that, like many of the plants that we cultivate for straightforward culinary purposes, both activate our sense of smell and taste (and most importantly, do not activate any instinctive aversion).", "Good question, OP.  Something to do with metaphor maybe?--see \"The Wild Iris,\" by Louise Gl\u00fcck.", "Not everything has an evolutionary reason. This is a topic suited for philosophy of aesthetics.", "Color - red/green color contrast. Flowers are many times fruit indicators.\n\nAlso, general beauty, pleasant odor, and with some plants oxygen are all valuable. The beauty extends into commodity - giving someone you fancy a flower, flowers as reward historically, etc.\n\nFlowers also indirectly do reward us via various insects and creatures they attract.\n\n", "We can like things just because they look nice. It does not have to serve any other purpose.", "Yeah. Why? I mean, science should be able to answer everything about human nature. What's the science of love again?", "Flowers are colorful. Not everything develops out of an evolutionary need, some things are just by products.\n\nNot that we are self aware and conscious, we can decide what to appreciate based on knowledge and philosophy of life, not just gut instincts. \n\nThat being said, not everyone appreciates flowers.", "\"A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.\n\nThe ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm.\"\n\n-Ralph Waldo Emerson ", "Instead of growing fancy feathers like those dumb birds we took a shortcut and just picked flowers to impress our mates.", "Who doesn't like amputated plant genitals?", "Philosophy of aesthetics is a fascinating pursuit. Even if we have no evolutionary pressure to \"enjoy\" flowers we still enjoy them \u2014 why? There isn't an easy answer, and any discussion needs to juggle some dense philosophical ideas. From my college studies on the subject we started with Plato, and read about the muse and forms, then we moved on to Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kirkegard, Jung, Nitsche, and a few other modern guys (yep, all guys\u2026) I know this isn't an answer, but it should provide a sense for how difficult this problem is, as well as a basis for delving into the question.", "To get a little spiritual, Buddhist thought is that a flower is a good visual representation of the non-duality principle and therefore the whole universe. There is a central point which everything radiates out from :)\n\nOr you could believe Freud who says we like it because subconsciously it represents a vagina. Good old Freud. ", "Lots of smart scholarly posts have been made, but here's my messy, uneducated theory.\n\nWay way back in uh... the day... I guess medieval times or earlier...... many dyes  &  pigments were rare, valuable and only for the wealthy. So if you were a peasant or whatever, your world was kind of monochromatic. Your clothes were probably different shades of taupe/mud, the hovel you lived in was probably made of stone, and your belongings, if you had any, were metal, wood, maybe clay. So the majority of the bright colors you encountered in your life was probably in nature. It must have been a novel experience. Imagine encountering a violet if you've never seen purple before.\n\nThat said,  I don't know how common flowers were in medieval Europe and what kind of laws limited who could have them, but that's just my guess.\n\nI mean shit, there are still a lot of colors in flowers that are difficult to match the vibrance of in commercial pigments.\n\nWould love it if someone who knows anything about history could either support or derail my theory.", "Because ~~they are a product of design which we were programmed to be able to enjoy~~ EVOLUTION", "If you're looking for some kind of direct evolutionary explanation, then you're going to be disappointed. \n\nThat kind of bullshit is sometimes called a \"just-so story\" (after Kipling's stories, of course, about how, e.g., the elephant got its trunk.)  \n\nIt's easy to make up such stories, but they're almost certainly bullshit.", "Because then men could pick the flowers and give them to the girl ape and give her sum dat ape dick.  Now there are hella of us because the flowers bro!", "The aroma of flowers contain chemicals called prolyl endopeptidase inhibitors. When we smell them, these chemicals trigger the release of hormones typically associated with love, romance etc ie the feel good ones. Roses have a very high amount of PEIs in them, hence why they're associated with love, Valentines Day etc.", "Because most people's lives are dull and drab. And flowers add a bright colorful moment in an ordinary and rather boring day. Women, Men like getting them too!  FYI", "Too see all the colors in the rainbow, in all diff shapes, and special pleasant smells is not that hard to understand why they invoke joy in us humans. They cover at least 3 of our senses in one stop.", "Two cents: it's not so much biological as societal. It's not the flowers themselves, but the gesture of giving flowers. What u/B52Bombsell said!", "And of course, [not everybody finds flowers attractive] (_URL_0_). Some people [really don't find nature attractive at all] (_URL_1_)", "Why do you feel beauty has to be related to some benefit/reward for us? What reward do we get from a sunset? ", "I personally always took it as a nice suggestion, giving your beloved some flower genitals is a pretty nice hint"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_color_vision"], [], [], [], ["https://www.visualnews.com/2013/04/08/hidden-patterns-how-a-bee-sees-the-world-of-flowers/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11971274"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yoqjABeBM", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjjnZvtwtqA"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b2xy98", "title": "Why did the Patriarch of Rome specifically become the most powerful patriarch prior to the Great Schism?", "selftext": "Why not answer to Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, or even a city in Aksum?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b2xy98/why_did_the_patriarch_of_rome_specifically_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eiwijs6"], "score": [17], "text": ["Thing is the bishop of Rome wasn't necessarily the most powerful patriarch of Christiendom : it is true that it claimed some primacy over other main seats of Christianity as the bishops of Rome were considered the successors of Peter from one hand, and ruling from one of the most prestigious imperial centres, but nobody really agreed on what this primacy was or how it was to be applied.While Leo I, supported by the western emperor Valentinian III, asserted Roman claims to primacy in 451 during the Council of Chalcedonia, it was made clear too that the Patriarchate of Constantinople would enjoy a similar primacy especially in the East.\n\nAnd, in facts, the Roman Papacy only enjoyed a symbolic (if pretty much real) dominance over western metropolites : Milan and Ravenne beneficied from a closer relationship with western emperors and patricians such as Ricimer (and actually tended to have not a good relation with them). Roman influence over eastern churches policies was superficial at the very best. As Papacy fall under patrician/Barbarian control over the late Vth and VIth century, its prestige was fragilized.\n\nConstantinople, on the other hand, was closer to imperial authority than any other seat, and thanks to this could arguably actually enforce its primacy over the other eastern patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, following a broad imperial religious policy, and Constantinople could really be considered the most powerful patriarchate of western Christiendom during Late Antiquity.\n\nThe Vth century, while Roman pontiffs tried to assert the independence of the Church to the political power, was essentially a small \"Dark Age\" : most of royal authority in the region was Homoian (even if, at the notable exception of Vandals, not actively anti-Niceans) and Nicean Barbarians as Franks directly ruled ecclesiastical matters with their clergy, as Roman popes were, if autonomous, essentially set within Ostrogothic political influence. Seats like Carthage, without being really recognized as patriarchates, tended to function largely autonomously.\n\nByzantine reconquest of Italy, while putting Rome into Constantinople's sphere as much it was done in history which wasn't without real resistence and hostility in Italy itself, especially as Justinian proclaimed Constantinople the \"chief of all churches\", but it contributed to remove most of simony in favour of imperial nomination and to connect Rome with the general Christian theological community.\n\nWith the fall of Ostrogothic Italy, Nicean Merovingians took the lead in Western Europe where what remained of Homoian Christianity quickly vanished and began to be a political and religious influence for pagan kingdoms-in-building (such as Kent, Sussex and East-Anglia), while inner dynamics and imperial policies led to the adoption of the Nicean Credo by Spanish Goths.\n\nIn the same time, Rome and the territory it overseed, became a haven for clergy fleeing Lombard, Slavic and Persian armies (and later, Arabs), effectively making the patriarch not only more connected with the theological problems, mostly christology and defence of Chalcedonian _URL_2_ Latin Christianity grew, ecclesiastical assemblies and organisations whuch were still first and firstmost managed trough royal authority, acknowledged a significant spiritual and pastoral leadership from Papacy.\n\nImperial religious policies, critically the Three Chapters, monoenergism and monothelism, tended to be ill-recieved outside Constantinople, and the clergy of other patriarchates (especially Jerusalem, due to a lot of monastic ties with Rome since the Vth century) which opposed imperial policies looked to Rome for championing their struggle, which Rome did, less to increase its overall authority but maybe more because there wasn't much motivation for them to compromise over Christology as the matter was resolved in the _URL_3_ might seems bizarre as Roman Papacy was largely under Imperial thumb in the VIIth century. But thanks to the apparent triumph of Nicean Credo in the west and the conversion of England, a growing political autonomy born out of the Lombard advance in Italy and emperors being busy with Persians, Roman pontiffs were able to lead a short schism over monothelism, further increasing their prestige in _URL_4_ would be wrong, however, to consider the primacy of Rome established  : even in Italy, pontifical authority was challenged during the Three-Chapter controversy, as pointed by the schism of the self-proclaimed Patriarchate of Aquilea. Both the emperor and the patriarchate of Constantinople readily acted against Rome there, intervening in Roman matters and putting popes in inner exile at Constantinople.\n\nSimilarily, it's not to mean the roman partiarchate was crushed either : the emperors wanted to keep a working relationship there, rather than burning bridges (especially as Constans II toyed with the idea of moving the center of the Empire in Italy). The continuous stream of Greek and Syrian popes of the late VIIth were rather a compromise with Latins than any political imposition. In fact, Latin Church, under Rome, became more and more autonomous and (partly because of these non-Italian popes) became to identify Roman church with _URL_0_ this point, indeed, Latin Christianity's pastoral and ritual differences with Greek and Eastern Christianities became obvious, and Latins simply didn't considered abandoning it, considering these to be regular and _URL_1_, when Justinian II attempted to backtrack on the compromise and impose Constantinople's considerations and Greek rites, backleash was immediate in Italy (while the clergy in Rome was mainly Greek and Syrian), and the emperor adopted more conciliatory tone which was met by Roman church without too much trouble : the main focus of both emperor and pontiff was to keep a Roman and Christian commonwealth alive.\n\nNevertheless, what really killed it was the adoption of Iconoclasm by Leo III. Rome was really keen to championing against  imperial \"innovations\", just as before. This time, especially due to the capture of the other patriarchates by Arabs during the century, the opposition was dualistic rather than polycentric, and Leo III reneged on most of the compromises made by his predecessors, which achieved to alienate him the Roman church.Eventually, as Lombards tried to benefit from Roman isolation to achieve their conquest of Italy, Stephen II turned to the main power of Western Europe, Francia that Arnulfids (also known as Peppinids, later named Carolingians) reached a large prestige having defeated Arabo-Berbers during the 730's, while having built a tight relationship with Latin clergy with several missions in Frankish Germania. This forged a relation which climaxed with the sacrality of Carolingians and the establishment of the Carolingian Empire, as an alternative Christian Empire compared to Byzantine (the title of Charlemagne \"emperor ruling over the Empire of Romans\" is rather a reference to the pope, incarnating the will of Romans, than a reference to the old WRE).\n\nWhile Frankish Papacy, at least initially, was really under the thumb of Charlemagne, it took more and more autonomy as the sole religious reference in the West, even as Byzantine Emperors recanted iconoclasm. The late IXth and early Xth was particularily messy for Rome, which lost a lot of prestige in the anarchy that followed the fall of Carolingia; but reforms of the Xth century essentially strived to restaure Roman sole primacy, not just in the West, but also universal primacy as Constantinople obviously needed some theological discipine as far as Latin Christianity was concerned.\n\nBasically, the primacy of Roman church was always more or less asserted by Rome, but didn't really existed in practice for a long time. It was concretly built over a shaky relationship with imperial Christianity, the triumph of Nicean Credo in the West, and a defiance to imperial religious policies. It wasn't really ever acknowledged by Constantinople, but this is what made the claim of universal primacy a reality in the West at first : there are later movements (Ottonian reforms, political decline of Byzantine Empire, etc.) which reinforced it, of course, but they were mostly built over this evolution."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["Christianity.At", "catholic.So", "Credo.As", "West.It", "Christiendom.It"]]}
{"q_id": "7vpx1b", "title": "why are some round, flat things called \"disks\" while other round flat things are \"discs\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vpx1b/eli5_why_are_some_round_flat_things_called_disks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtu5iok", "dtu5joc", "dtu5lei", "dtu9223", "dtu98mx", "dtub0kh", "dtuedmg", "dtuehpz", "dtuek8x", "dtufqdx", "dtuh5ai", "dtuhwmu"], "score": [15, 2168, 18, 96, 330, 5, 3, 2, 26, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Discs are optical media like a CD or DVD.\n\nDisks are magnetic media like your computers hard drive, a floppy disk or external hard drive.", " > Disc and disk are two variants of the English word for objects of a generally thin and cylindrical geometry. The differences in spelling correspond both with regional differences and with different senses of the word. For example, in the case of flat, rotational data storage media the convention is that the spelling disk is used for magnetic storage (e.g. hard disks) while disc is used for optical storage (e.g. compact discs, better known as CDs). When there is no clear convention, the spelling disk is more popular in American English, while the spelling disc is more popular in British English.", " >  Why are some round, flat things called \"disks\" while other round flat things are \"discs\"?\n\n\"Disc\" is the chiefly British spelling while \"disk\" is preferred in the United States. As IBM was the US company that pioneered the development of computer hard drives they chose to use the \"disk\" spelling and the convention stuck to a certain extent.\n\nOtherwise they are fully interchangeable.", "The 'c' spelling comes from Latin and the 'k' one from Greek.\n\nI couldn't tell you why the 'k' spelling is more popular in American English (translations of the Odyssey? Numismatics?), but I believe that the reason we use the 'c' spelling for CDs is the influence of Phillips, which is headquartered in the Netherlands, where they sometimes say \"discus\". This is also part of the reason Commonwealth English uses the 'c' spelling more often: they tend to have a Continental European influence to their spelling.", "\u2018Disk,\u2019 as in \u2018floppy disk\u2019 is short for \u2018diskette\u2019 which refers to a magnetic disc cassette. \u2018Disc\u2019 is short for \u2018discus\u2019, which describes any object that is circular and thin.", " > In most varieties of English, disk is the correct spelling for magnetic media (hence hard disk or disk drive), whereas the variant disc is usually preferred with optical media (hence compact disc or disc film). Thus, if referring to a physical drive or older media (3\" or 5.25\" diskettes) the k is used, but c is used for newer (optical based) media. For all other uses, disc is standard in Commonwealth English and disk in American English.", "There really is no difference. The word comes from French *disque* and Latin *discus.* Up until the later 18th century, there was no standard spelling for English, so people wrote \"disk\" or \"disc\" if they wanted to. There was and is no difference.\n\nStarting in the middle 18th century, people started writing down English grammar and making rules about it. At this point, they started establishing standard spellings for English. After that, the idea that words had fixed spellings really started to take hold. Now, we believe so strongly in spelling distinctions that we create them where there are none, so now it seems strange to refer to a \"floppy disc\" or to a \"disk golf disk,\" but that's only because of habit. It feels important because we're used to it, not because it is important.", "It\u2019s region based mostly but in America we sometimes use disk for hard disk and disc for CDs. It\u2019s like how you can either use grey or gray. ", "Loosely related: \"disc\", \"disk\", \"discus\", and \"dish\" all come from the same Latin word, _discus_, itself borrowed from the Greek _diskos_. Due to repeated contacts between English and Latin or Latin-derived languages over the centuries, the word for a flat, round thing kept getting borrowed, but with more and more specificity.\n\nThe reason dish is spelled and pronounced that way is because Old English pronounced \"sc\" and \"sk\" sounds as \"sh\". Shirt and skirt were both general terms for a short garment, but while \"shirt\" had been around long enough to undergo the Old English sound change, \"skirt\" came with the comparatively more recent Danish invasions of the 8th century.  And since we now had double the terms, they could be applied to more specific things.", "At least, for me, the only time I ever use \"disK\" instead of \"disC\" is when referring to computer storage, like hard drives or floppies.", "Disk is short for diskette, usually a soft disc within a protective square plastic cover, like the save icon.\n\nA disc is a flat circular object.", "Also, some round flat things are called \"dishes,\" and it's the same word. \"Disk\" is the word we get from Old Norse, and \"Dish\" is the word we get from Old English.\n\nSimilarly, skiff/ship."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "nj1ij", "title": "not a request, but i was thinking that writers and artists of reddit should get together and make children books out of these explanations.", "selftext": "**Last Edit:   [WE'RE DOING THIS (ELI5 Project)!](_URL_0_)**\n----\n\n------------------------------------------------\n\n\nThere are concepts on here that I'm sure many redditor parents have a difficult time explaining to their kids. It would be cool if we could all get together and design some children books similar to how we do the Redditor Magazine. \n\nIt could be a .pdf file that parents print and read to their kids as bedtime short stories. Educate the little kids with tough questions they all have, while making it fun: [**we could start here**](_URL_1_)\n\nIs this something you'd all be interested in? \n\n**Edit:** Looks like we have enough support, and a decent amount of volunteers! If there's anyone else that would like to help, send me a PM or post here and I'll get in touch with you. I have enough time to execute this, but I'd also like someone to help me out a bit if anyone else has the free time and would like the task. Message me. \n\nI'll make a list soon of illustrators and writers. \n\n**Edit 2:** You guys are all awesome! I'll have an outline type document to send out to all the volunteers with all the details involved. Expect a message and/or email within the next few days! \n\n**It's not too late to let me know if you'd like to volunteer! We'll take all the help we can get!**             \nMessage me with your email address I can contact you at if possible. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nj1ij/not_a_request_but_i_was_thinking_that_writers_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c39hd2m", "c39hsub", "c39ieeb", "c39ih41", "c39ik67", "c39j4sx", "c39j9kk", "c39k03v", "c39k0dy", "c39kdu4", "c39kw94", "c39l037", "c39l880", "c39lk77", "c39ltg4", "c39lv5n", "c39mahs", "c39mdu6", "c39ms6j", "c39mzou", "c39n7sq", "c39nkp8", "c39nnow", "c39nqq5", "c39nw7i", "c39oc7i", "c39opm7", "c39p57u", "c39p9da", "c39ppso", "c39qzjp", "c39rbbh", "c39hd2m", "c39hsub", "c39ieeb", "c39ih41", "c39ik67", "c39j4sx", "c39j9kk", "c39k03v", "c39k0dy", "c39kdu4", "c39kw94", "c39l037", "c39l880", "c39lk77", "c39ltg4", "c39lv5n", "c39mahs", "c39mdu6", "c39ms6j", "c39mzou", "c39n7sq", "c39nkp8", "c39nnow", "c39nqq5", "c39nw7i", "c39oc7i", "c39opm7", "c39p57u", "c39p9da", "c39ppso", "c39qzjp", "c39rbbh"], "score": [2, 13, 2, 2, 8, 111, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 7, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 13, 2, 2, 8, 111, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 7, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I'm not and artist/writer but I do have MS paint/Microsoft word and I'd be totally down to contribute in some way. This is an awesome idea.", "If anyone does decide to do this (I'm thinking about it but I'm not sure I have the time/dedication), you could self-publish via [lulu](_URL_0_).", "High school curriculum might be more benefitial.", "I can help, but I can't do much alone.  If we divide up topics and send drafts to each other, we'd only need four or five committed individuals to get it done in three or four months.", "Sounds like an awesome project. I'd love to help, but not sure how much time I can dedicate (and pretty sure my illustration skills aren't up to par) but I've a bit of time of the break :)", "Myself and the other mods are working on an edited version of [The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy](_URL_0_) to hopefully be finished sometime this spring. We're trying to focus more on an adult/Reddit-age audience and take some of the more advanced questions a five-year-old wouldn't be interested in. \n\nI would personally love to see a version of the Guide geared more towards kids and parents (as it seems this project will be). It would be great to have some community members create something as well. \n\nHope you guys have great success! Remember to post nominations for the guide (any quality post on an interesting topic would be great) [here.](_URL_1_)", "Love the idea! I'd be very willing to contribute illustrations and/or editing of writing. Contact me if you're in need of more people!!", "This is such a cute idea! I would definitely be interested in helping out. Either writing or illustrating.", "I'd be interested in doing some writing for it. With a proper project manager dolling out the tasks, we could definitely get things done.", "I'm a published illustrator and I'd be up for this.", "I may be late to the volunteer party, but I am a professional writer and photographer and would love to contribute to this. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. If nothing else, I am one hell of an editor, be it grammatical or structural.", "This sounds absolutely awesome. Being an animation student, I'd love to help out with illustrations :)", "I'm focused more on animation and 3d, but can still do a bit of illustration. This project is something that I'd love to have a part in, especially since I've got a bit of free time on my hands. I've been wanting to do something similar as a personal project, so this could be a great way to segue into that mindset. ", "3rd year Art student here, i'd be down to help out! :)", "My wife and I are both writers and poets and would love to help however we can. \n\nI'm an ad copywriter by day and she is a Stegner Fellow, so we've got some fun chops to play around with.\n\nJust let us know what we can do!", "Illustrator here, I'd be happy to volunteer to contribute!  I've PMed you my e-mail.", "Freelance illustrator here. I'd love to help. C:", "who has legal ownership of the comments written on reddit? is it public domain, owned by the commenters, or reddit?", "I can write and would love to help.", "Thats a great idea ! Wish i could help, but im no writer or illustrator :( \nHope this project will kick off and best of luck ", "Awesome idea! I could help you guys out with graphic design.", "I'd love to contribute! I'm not a great writer, but I'm a pretty decent artist. I think I could help. :)", "The idea of this reminds me of a book i had as a kid called \"every boys handbook\"... it was fucking amazing, like a little encyclopaedia. Taught me how to play chess etc", "I'm a poet and amateur essayist. I draw, sometimes well. I've worked as a proofreader and have volunteered countless hours of my time editing cartoon subtitles for flow and clarity.\n\nI think I could be useful, and I think this sounds like a really fun project. ", "Just a little curious, what age ranges are you going to focus on? Because I'm sure someone around 8 could benefit from something like this. Just curious if there's any idea on age range.", "I'd love to help write. =D ", "I'm probably late to the party, but I'm more than willing to help with some of the writing. PM me if there's any way I can get involved.", "I would love to help. I have taught classes \"for non-engineers\" about technology (I'm an engineer myself) and I wrote a book for one of the classes. So I can write.\n\nI am also pretty good at drawing diagrams that make spatially-complicated things easier to understand, especially when it comes to aerospace.", "I'm a writer and editor. I've got experience designing educational materials for K-12 students and a few other skills that could be useful on this sort of project. \n\nAs a mini-writing sample, [here's one ELI5 comment I recently wrote about dinosaur skeleton identification](_URL_0_). I'm happy to do a real writing sample that's longer and more thoroughly researched; just give me a topic.\n\nElkerabi, I've PM'd you with my email and a little more about my background.\n\n", "I hope I'm not too late to help with some illustrations, design, or other art.\n\nif not: ninetybpm@gmail.com", "I'm a writer. Definitely up for this! Not bad with photoshop and illustrator either so I could pitch in there if needs be.", "Prepared to provide an illustration or 2, or 3, and also to write/synthesise.", "I'm not and artist/writer but I do have MS paint/Microsoft word and I'd be totally down to contribute in some way. This is an awesome idea.", "If anyone does decide to do this (I'm thinking about it but I'm not sure I have the time/dedication), you could self-publish via [lulu](_URL_0_).", "High school curriculum might be more benefitial.", "I can help, but I can't do much alone.  If we divide up topics and send drafts to each other, we'd only need four or five committed individuals to get it done in three or four months.", "Sounds like an awesome project. I'd love to help, but not sure how much time I can dedicate (and pretty sure my illustration skills aren't up to par) but I've a bit of time of the break :)", "Myself and the other mods are working on an edited version of [The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy](_URL_0_) to hopefully be finished sometime this spring. We're trying to focus more on an adult/Reddit-age audience and take some of the more advanced questions a five-year-old wouldn't be interested in. \n\nI would personally love to see a version of the Guide geared more towards kids and parents (as it seems this project will be). It would be great to have some community members create something as well. \n\nHope you guys have great success! Remember to post nominations for the guide (any quality post on an interesting topic would be great) [here.](_URL_1_)", "Love the idea! I'd be very willing to contribute illustrations and/or editing of writing. Contact me if you're in need of more people!!", "This is such a cute idea! I would definitely be interested in helping out. Either writing or illustrating.", "I'd be interested in doing some writing for it. With a proper project manager dolling out the tasks, we could definitely get things done.", "I'm a published illustrator and I'd be up for this.", "I may be late to the volunteer party, but I am a professional writer and photographer and would love to contribute to this. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. If nothing else, I am one hell of an editor, be it grammatical or structural.", "This sounds absolutely awesome. Being an animation student, I'd love to help out with illustrations :)", "I'm focused more on animation and 3d, but can still do a bit of illustration. This project is something that I'd love to have a part in, especially since I've got a bit of free time on my hands. I've been wanting to do something similar as a personal project, so this could be a great way to segue into that mindset. ", "3rd year Art student here, i'd be down to help out! :)", "My wife and I are both writers and poets and would love to help however we can. \n\nI'm an ad copywriter by day and she is a Stegner Fellow, so we've got some fun chops to play around with.\n\nJust let us know what we can do!", "Illustrator here, I'd be happy to volunteer to contribute!  I've PMed you my e-mail.", "Freelance illustrator here. I'd love to help. C:", "who has legal ownership of the comments written on reddit? is it public domain, owned by the commenters, or reddit?", "I can write and would love to help.", "Thats a great idea ! Wish i could help, but im no writer or illustrator :( \nHope this project will kick off and best of luck ", "Awesome idea! I could help you guys out with graphic design.", "I'd love to contribute! I'm not a great writer, but I'm a pretty decent artist. I think I could help. :)", "The idea of this reminds me of a book i had as a kid called \"every boys handbook\"... it was fucking amazing, like a little encyclopaedia. Taught me how to play chess etc", "I'm a poet and amateur essayist. I draw, sometimes well. I've worked as a proofreader and have volunteered countless hours of my time editing cartoon subtitles for flow and clarity.\n\nI think I could be useful, and I think this sounds like a really fun project. ", "Just a little curious, what age ranges are you going to focus on? Because I'm sure someone around 8 could benefit from something like this. Just curious if there's any idea on age range.", "I'd love to help write. =D ", "I'm probably late to the party, but I'm more than willing to help with some of the writing. PM me if there's any way I can get involved.", "I would love to help. I have taught classes \"for non-engineers\" about technology (I'm an engineer myself) and I wrote a book for one of the classes. So I can write.\n\nI am also pretty good at drawing diagrams that make spatially-complicated things easier to understand, especially when it comes to aerospace.", "I'm a writer and editor. I've got experience designing educational materials for K-12 students and a few other skills that could be useful on this sort of project. \n\nAs a mini-writing sample, [here's one ELI5 comment I recently wrote about dinosaur skeleton identification](_URL_0_). I'm happy to do a real writing sample that's longer and more thoroughly researched; just give me a topic.\n\nElkerabi, I've PM'd you with my email and a little more about my background.\n\n", "I hope I'm not too late to help with some illustrations, design, or other art.\n\nif not: ninetybpm@gmail.com", "I'm a writer. Definitely up for this! Not bad with photoshop and illustrator either so I could pitch in there if needs be.", "Prepared to provide an illustration or 2, or 3, and also to write/synthesise."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/ELI5Project", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j86h2/the_fiveyearolds_guide_to_the_galaxy/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.lulu.com"], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j86h2/the_fiveyearolds_guide_to_the_galaxy/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ldbf4/calling_all_fiveyearolds_submit_your_favorite/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n53b5/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_the_brontosaurus/c36b8iv?context=3"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.lulu.com"], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j86h2/the_fiveyearolds_guide_to_the_galaxy/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ldbf4/calling_all_fiveyearolds_submit_your_favorite/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n53b5/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_the_brontosaurus/c36b8iv?context=3"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5pqj0z", "title": "In feynman diagrams, why are positrons viewed as moving backwards through time? How is this a more useful model?", "selftext": "How is this possibly more useful than a positron moving forward in time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5pqj0z/in_feynman_diagrams_why_are_positrons_viewed_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcu5yeu"], "score": [10], "text": ["I think you're viewing Feynman diagram as a literal visual diagram of scattering which is not at all what they are.  They are nothing but a cute short-hand to notate a specific mathematical expression.  Virtual particles aren't real things, they're book-keeping math, nothing else.  And they are not a conceptual model, in the sense of \"let's think of positrons as things moving backward in time\", but rather a quantitative calculation model, in the sense of \"this mathematical term needs to be integrated over this propagator, rather than that propagator when doing the full calculation\".\u007f  Look for example at page 62 of this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhere we see how each little cartoon diagram actually represent some big honking bit of math.\n\nAt the end of the day, all Feynman expansion is, is a way to calculate experimentally verifiable properties of interacting systems, under the approximations that interactions are weak.  It's what is called a \"perturbation\" expansion, perturbation meaning \"only slightly different from the non-interacting case\".\n\nThus, the quality of the model is directly related to its accuracy of experimental prediction.  And that accuracy is the most accurate of any theory ever developed by humankind. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic521209.files/QFT-Schwartz.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "6rahxc", "title": "why do bridge surfaces freeze before road surfaces?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rahxc/eli5_why_do_bridge_surfaces_freeze_before_road/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3kn1m", "dl3kpc4", "dl3kpzx", "dl3krkv", "dl3l286", "dl3llbl"], "score": [6, 2, 10, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["The ground retains heat better,  whereas the bridge has cool air going over and under it. And it's usually made of materials (metal) that lose heat easily.  So the structure drops below zero before the ground does.", "Bridges have air on both sides.\n\nRoads are insulated on one side, obviously, and the ground temperature will always be warmer than the air temperature as things begin to freeze. ", "They do because basically they have more surface. Cold can reach the bridge from every side, where with roads they can only reach it from one side because there is ground in the way. ", "Bridges get cold faster than the ground because the cold outside air can touch all of the bridge and not just the road surface. This means ice can form sooner on a bridge than on a normal road. Also a lot of bridges are over water. Some of that water escapes into the air and travels up to the bridge where it can turn into ice. ", "The air under the bridge creates a cold zone under the bridge. The air above is also a cold zone. Add water and air cold enough to freeze it and the bridge will be slicker quicker than the road. A lot of times in areas with tropical climates, only the bridge will freeze because it just barely gets cold enough.", "Could it have to do with the steel that is reinforcing the bridge too? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c84x5y", "title": "Why was the 29th Infantry Division selected to assault Omaha Beach when there were other veteran divisions available?", "selftext": "I've been trying to research this but haven't gotten anywhere so I thought I would turn to the pros. Looking at the units chosen by the Americans for the Normandy invasion the 29th Infantry Division stands out as odd. The 1st Infantry Division, their counterpart at Omaha was a veteran regular Army formation that had already conducted 2 assault landings, and from what I can tell in my own research fared better than the 29th. The other American division at Utah was the 4th and although not a veteran unit, was at least regular Army and consisted of troops from various locations, unlike the 29th being a National Guard formation. Also, there were, at the very least, 2 further veteran divisions available that would later fight in Normandy - the 9th Infantry Division and the 2nd Armored Division.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c84x5y/why_was_the_29th_infantry_division_selected_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eskaln8"], "score": [97], "text": ["You are right. Many people expressed skeptisim at the abilities of the 29th ID. Both before, during and after the operation. By British officers, but also by senior officers in the US military, like Ike and Bradley.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat fact that the landing at Omaha were almost an unmitigated disaster didn't help/.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut generally.\n\n* Its true that the 29th was a NG division. But it had been reinforced with West Point Grads as officers in severa;l battalions.\n* The 29th had been sent to England in later summer of '42. By the time of  Normandy it had spent a lot of time in the UK (earning the derisive nickname, Englands own). They had spent a lot of time in training. In fact, they had been sent to England at the same time as the 1 ID had been, part of the first 4 divisions to be sent. 3 of these divisions had been sent to N Africa, so in some ways 29ID was a regular division in practice.\n* Further to the above, all US troops who had to land on the first day needed to go throught the US Army assualt school at Devon, in the SW of England. All 29 ID troops went through that school for three weeks, as did 1 ID troops (to their surprise and very much not delight). This training taught the men in obstracle clearance, wire cutting and use of Bangalore torpedos and other such devices.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn short the division was as well trained as could be. The near disaster at Omaha has perhaps sullied their reputation unfairly. Other things to remember.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* Only two formations of the entire Allied assualt group on the first day of the landing were veteran. The 1ID and the Britisn 50th Division. Everyone else were green (as a formation, individual soldiers and officers might have experience).\n* The 29th was far from the worst performing division, during the Normandy campaign. That dubious distinction goes to the US 90th ID, who landed at Utah (and didn't land in full on 6th June'44). They \\*were\\* high inepxerienced, having arrived in April of '44. They did have a hard time of it. And for some reason the 29ID gets the reflected derision. Although not for lack of bravery, the 90th ID suffered 20,000 casualties during its combat tour.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSources\n\n* Omaha Beach-6th June 1944. By Joseph  Balkoski \n* *Omaha Beach*: A Flawed Victory  Adrian R. Lewis"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1hpyxz", "title": "Meta: Historians, tell me about your interdisciplinary activities? Do you talk to scientists? Linguists? Anthropologists? Do you study other areas? What other discipline do you think would be most useful to you to have specialist knowledge of in your field and why?", "selftext": "Game theory as applied to the hundred years war \n\nGenetic science as applied to migration patterns \n\nClimate science to explain the spread of farming \n\nPsychological evaluations of tyrants \n\nThere must be many, many more examples. \n\nSurprise me please!\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hpyxz/meta_historians_tell_me_about_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caws6or", "cawsumz", "cawtmsd", "cawvm90", "cawwn2o", "cawwxfl", "cawyrgw", "cawzgyw", "cax1wn1"], "score": [23, 11, 14, 3, 6, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["As a Comic Book historian, I am constantly forced to look outside the field of history for my information and research.\n\nThose few (and I mean few) comic book historians that have written manuscripts (either articles or books) on the subject have either faded into academic obscurity or moved on to more \"profitable\" avenues of study. One is hard pressed to find information on any of the \"big\"...and I use that word with a tinge of sarcasm...comic historians. In this respect, I have often found myself plodding alone through the mires of comic book research.\n\nThankfully, however, Comic Book studies are alive and well in other departments, especially Fine Arts and Literature/English departments. It is from these departments that most of my contacts/partnerships have come. While writing my thesis, I consulted with my historian supervisor for what he referred to as \"co-temporality\" (concurrent events, trends, and movements in society) while I met with a faculty member in the English department for the more nitty gritty analysis sections of my thesis. \n\nThis has benefited me greatly as \"literature analysis\" is perhaps my greatest weakness as a scholar. I can dissect all different types of documents, ledgers, censuses, and memoirs, but when it comes to fiction, I'm lost. Thankfully, the comic books I'm looking at aren't exactly \"dense literature\" so my lack of experience analyzing fiction isn't too much of a drawback.\n\nThe main problem I have had with interdisciplinary study is that our methods are completely different. When discussing ideas with the professor in the English department, I often found it difficult to lead her away from \"text analysis\" and back into the realm of \"history\". The two aren't mutually exclusive, I admit, but in the greater scheme of things my research has to be weighted far more to the \"history\" side of things.\n\nThe other major problem I have faced is that my research will likely never be published in any of the major \"historical journals\". While it is too early in my academic \"career\" to really be thinking about that, most of the professors I have talked to have told me that my more likely avenue of publishing would be in an American Studies, Pop Culture, or Fine Arts journal. While this isn't in of itself a major roadblock, it sort of shatters that freshman dream of being featured in the American Historical Review or some other major publication. \n\nInterdisciplinary study comes with bonuses and drawbacks. Getting taken seriously is difficult sometimes, but pursue what you're interested in and don't worry about whether you're \"history\" or \"near-history\". The research is what matters.", "I study history of science and environmental history about whaling and fisheries; primarily 18th c U.S.. I've been involved in a number if interdisciplinary research projects with scientists and some anthropologists. My undergraduate degree was interdisciplinary and because of those studies and the nature of my work I've always tried to communicate with people in other disciplines who do similar work. I chose my graduate school partly because it has a strong tradition of interdisciplinary research.  \n\nIt is hard to say exactly how this has shaped my work as an historian. I feel that as an historian of science having worked and conversed with scientist makes me more capable of discussing science but I'm not always sure that is true. On the negative I can say I feel at times my readings in other disciplines has left me behind in my readings as an historian. This was particularly true when I first started graduate school and hadn't done readings that many people who majored in history had already read. For the most part this is less of the case now.\n\nWorking with scientists has at times made me think more about \"data\" and how historians have and have not used quantitative history effectively. My advisor is an old school labour historian who spends much of his research time putting together large databases and while I feel he is largely able to use that data to create a narrative I feel that when many historians use numbers they do it poorly and are working out of their element.\n\nAnother interesting element of working with scientists is the subject of funding money. For good and bad scientist get a lot more of it and there are temptations for a poor graduate student to try to get some of it. I've been fortunate to receive some money from a fisheries research center without feeling like I've corrupted myself and feeling that I've contributed to both science and history.", "I have degrees in history, anthropology, with folklore as a major field of study. I have published books and articles using each of this disciplines, usually mixed together with demographic analysis and architectural history. I have stood between disciplines, which has tended to make me an academic homeless. Although history dominated my degrees, I am adjunct faculty in anthro, where they have made me welcome even though they believe I am a historian or something.\n\nI have also employed dozens of interns in my position as a public historian and administrator. I have tended to employ grad students from anthro because historical archaeologists must understand history, but historians do not need to understand anything but history, and too often, that's all they know. \n\nThe most rewarding journeys I have taken have drawn on several disciplines to understand the past. And what I try to tell history students (and a few more are listening today than once was the case) is that looking at the past through several lens is not only rewarding, it opens doors to more jobs. I highly recommend emerging from university with as many tools in one's kit as possible.", "Quick question: isn't the study of historical methods called *Historiography*? ", "I don't actually *do* this kind of work, but it forms a valuable foundation for the work I actually do: Derek Oddy (I think... it's early) has been doing history and nutrition for decades now, leading a lot of work attempting to reconstruct the historical British diet based on modern knowledge of nutrition. I was thinking that this was through a History and Nutrition program at the University of Leicester, but now I can't find any info on it. I'll try to fill in the institutional background later. \n\nI think that kind of work is very useful, within limits. It certainly benefits us to know just how much people were eating, and what the possible health effects of their diets were. However, we should not stop there, for a couple reasons. First, even the best work in reconstructing diets works from an uncertain source base. Dietary surveys exist, but these were generally done by middle-class Britons looking at working-class Britons, and they reflect a set of expectations about what constituted good food for which people. They are also quite incomplete, rarely accounting for food eaten outside the home. \n\nSecond, even if we can identify what people were eating in the aggregate, it's difficult to use this as an explanatory mechanism for other historical changes without knowing what people *thought* of their food, and what it meant to them. And this, unfortunately, is even more difficult to get at, because sources are so very thin.\n\nIn general, I wish I had a really good understanding of contemporary anatomy and physiology because it would make my readings of nineteenth-century medical research a lot easier. The same is true for botany and reading nineteenth-century scientific agriculture research. However, the danger with that approach is that if you have a current knowledge of some kind of science, you've essentially been trained that that knowledge is *correct*, that it's the right explanation of digestion or plant fertility or whatever. It can then be very hard to overcome that built-in bias and understand how the people of the past were approaching human bodies, soil, plants, whatever, on their own terms. The problem is really that if we approach the history of science and medicine (and technology) with the attitude that what we have now is \"right\" (always implicit, often explicit in histories of those things written by scientists), then our research becomes a question of \"When did they get it right?\" This leads to a focus on a few Great Scientists or Great Doctors that \"discovered\" whatever important thing. But really, those handful of people to whom we attribute discovery or invention are anomalies. The overwhelming majority of doctors, scientists, engineers, and technicians do NOT make some great contribution to the knowledge that we now think is important. But, all of those doctors and scientists are still participating in the social, cultural, and political formations of science, medicine, and technology. And if we're interested in understanding human history, we have to recognize that.\n", "Despite my interest and research in military aviation, tactics, and technology, I have a degree in Chemistry, and I am currently working on my doctorate in Polymer Science and Engineering. Simply put, a polymer is the \"science-y\" word for plastic-like materials. \n\nA vast amount of chemistry, engineering, and physics go into making a polymer, and tweaking a certain aspect of the creation process can result in a widely different product. For example, polyethylene can either be low density (resulting in sandwich bag types of plastic,) high density (stronger plastic bags or plastic bottles,) or ultra high density (bullet resistance materials, aircraft parts, etc.)\n\nSome of the polymer research that I have done in the past focused on making a stronger, more bullet resistant polymer that was to replace the current windshields in American Apache helicopters. I've also worked on a project that involved creating advanced missile casings (self-staining missile casings. This is useful if, for whatever reason, the missile was damaged in transit or in storage, the body would stain itself a different color where the structure was compromised. For example, if the missile was dropped or fell off an aircraft, and resulted in a giant, brightly colored crack, then the maintenance crews knew that it needed to be replaced.) \n\nProbably one of my favorite projects that I have worked on involved ferrocene derived polymers. Back in the 1950's, the unique structure of ferrocene was discovered, and it soon became the focus of various military studies to test its physical properties. During the 1960's at the height of the Arms Race and the Cold War, both Soviet and NATO scientists were in a sort of \"ferrocene race\" to see how strong and durable the material was, with the intention of using it to help create the newest generation of military supersonic aircraft. \n\nAlthough there are a nearly infinite number of modern day military applications for plastics and polymers, the history of synthetic plastics only goes back to the early 20th century. It was not until the 1930's that chemists began to study the science of polymer synthesis. During World War II, the great demand for synthetic plastics for both the Allies and the Axis war machines led to considerable advancements in the field of polymer science. One of my favorite examples of how rubber helped win the war for the Allies was in the South Pacific. The Japanese, who built their aircraft with weight and speed in mind, decided to not implement self sealing fuel tanks. As a result, Japanese aircraft had a tendency to burst into flames when hit. In the air war that was so prevalent in the South Pacific, the Japanese soon discovered that even though their fighters could out-fly and outmaneuver slower American aircraft, a quick burst was all it took from the Americans to literally vaporize the Japanese. ", "I have an MSc in Materials science and the research group I was attached to did some work with analysing paints by Raman and Infrared Spectroscopy. (non destructive analysis methods)\n\n", "Even though I believe that History is properly a humanity, I think having a good knowledge of social science methodologies is wonderful. Sociology is a great area of knowledge to develop for social or cultural historians and is fairly interesting. Being able to work with statistics is valuable as well. As someone who has a heavy interest in legal history, understanding both economics and sociology. History has such a multi-disciplinary nature that almost any knowledge from another field could aid understanding and research.", "I think there's an important distinction to be made between:\n\n* Being conversant with the methodologies, theories, or facts of another discipline\n\nand\n\n* Using the methodologies, theories, or facts of another discipline to do the work of history\n\nYour examples are all the latter. But many of the examples given by others are of the former.\n\nI'm an historian of science, so I naturally have to be somewhat interdisciplinary in the sense that I have to know some of the science involved in my history. So when I'm working on, say, topics in the history of physics, I sometimes have to talk to physicists to make sure I understand what my historical actors are talking about.\n\n(E.g. I have worked on the history of inertial confinement fusion classification in the 1970s. So knowing why declassifying the direct-drive laser-plasma interactions of a bare sphere of DT was considered less sensitive than the laser-plasma interactions of indirectly-driven ablation is a must, and I have to know it well-enough to explain to others. For non-physicists, practically all of that last sentence is well outside the realm of \"common knowledge.\" In order to make sense of it, I've spent a lot of time reading around the physics of the topic and talking to physicists to make sure I'm not mangling it.)\n\nBecause my work also overlaps with the field of \"science studies,\" I also am in contact with anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and legal scholars at times. Occasionally even an economist! \n\nBut whatever I do with these other people, I don't do history _like they would_. I don't write history _like an anthropologist_ or _like a sociologist_ or, god forbid, _like an economist_. I am an historian first of all, and while I sometimes mine these other fields for insights (the anthropology and sociology of science have both been important to my work), I don't use their methods whatsoever.\n\nI suspect my situation here is _not_ uncommon. In science studies it is not rare to find the line between historian and anthropologist blurred for fairly contemporary topics, but other than that I think it is pretty unusual for an historian to really use the methods of non-historians _in the way the non-historians would._"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48dunx", "title": "why are phone scammer that spoof caller id unstoppable? why can't telecom operators filter spoofed caller id info the way data networks filter spoofed ip addresses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48dunx/eli5_why_are_phone_scammer_that_spoof_caller_id/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0itzvm", "d0iu0n9", "d0ix7kc", "d0iy6oo", "d0izpjb", "d0j2jz2", "d0j2kfs", "d0j4eh4", "d0j4en6"], "score": [35, 97, 84, 6, 8, 2, 4, 11, 5], "text": ["Because it would be expensive and they don't care.\n\nGenerally people spoofing IPs are doing it to attack networks or their clients. The people spoofing caller ID aren't costing the phone company money, so they don't really give a shit.", "Telecom operators benefit from spoofed caller id, it leads to more calls.  Network operators use the return IP to send answers back, so spoofing it doesn't get you any data.  They mostly check for spoofing because it's a symptom of evil.  Telecom operators are evil, so it's not on their list of problems to solve.", "The phone system has intentional vulnerables built into it, simply because it's based upon trusted phone companies supplying valid information, then there is the huge use case of call centers. These want to show customers the name and dial back number of whatever company they are contacted to at the time. Allowing this caller number and ID to be a simple header of the call request was just such a good option that there is at this point no way to convert to a locked down ecosystem ", "Imagine a letter being sent in the mail. The destination address is like an IP address. The names printed above the addresses are like caller ID metadata. They don't affect where the letter goes, they're just extra information for whoever receives the letter.\n\nNow, if you put the wrong addresses on the letter, your letter goes to the wrong place, or the receiver can't respond because they don't know where the letter came from, or maybe they do respond, but to the wrong place. Because of this, putting the wrong addresses on a letter is not abused very often, because it doesn't achieve much. For the same reasons, spoofing IP addresses is fairly uncommon, with the fix being to block individual addresses or address ranges manually on the receiver's side. To be fair, it would be easy to implement a similar mechanism for caller ID. For instance, you could simply tell your phone to block any calls from John Smith. But then the real John Smith can't call either. Same problem occurs with IP filtering.\n\nHowever, putting the wrong *name* on a letter might actually achieve something. Maybe you can trick the receiver into thinking the letter came from someone it didn't. So how do you make sure a letter came from the person it said it did? Certified mail. But, it's a pain in the ass and quite expensive because of all the extra steps involved, just as it would be for phone systems.\n\nTo answer the question more directly, spoofed caller ID cannot be filtered because there is no mechanism for nonrepudiation. Mostly because it's complicated and expensive (usually this would required asymmetric crypto and a certificate authority). Caller ID spoofing is not a huge problem, so it's not worth the extra effort or expense.", "Because phone numbers unlike IP address are not delegated by a central authority. Nowadays phone numbers are very portable, reside on a range of technologies, be delivered from any country on the globe that will traverse multiple different upstream carriers that may or may not be 100% compatible with your own network. It just wouldnt be practical to try and black list under these circumstances. \nAlso phone companies do make more off it.", "Is there any way to effectively stop these spoof calls without changing my number?", "Japan has a fairly locked down telecom system where you can't forward calls with people's original caller ID. It's quite useful to forward a call coming in to a PBX to someone's cell and keep the original caller ID.", "In ELI5 terms, spoofing a number means you're effectively imitating another number. If the phone companies could detect you were spoofing, spoofing would not be possible. Much of this is because phone networks are very poorly designed, and largely based on obsolete standards from 30+ years ago to maintain backwards compatibility. If they were to update the protocols to be secure, millions of old phones would stop working.", "Not a proper explanation but I work for a major Telecom  &  have had to answer this questions for our business customers. Basically telephone systems are old, they are based on really ancient tech, the exchange equipment that run them are literally decades old  &  are analog not digital.\n\nEssentially these scammers who spoof their phone numbers are doing it digitally  &  the receiving exchange simply doesn't know any better. It basically sends out a fake code that makes the receiving exchange think that the call is originating from a specific port at a specific exchange somewhere onshore, when it could realistically be coming from anywhere in the world. We can't back trace it because of the system being analog, all it knows is that the call originated from * code we were given from the scammers that points us somewhere else *. We have no way of knowing which are legit  &  which are not cos when the technology was being made, this wasn't possible.\n\nCall blocking basically puts a code on the line that auto-rejects any call that comes from a specific port at a specific exchange. We can also increase this to a whole range of numbers, but its almost never advised. It doesn't work for scammers cos they are simply spoofing their details, an attempt to block them will ultimately block a legitimate number from contacting you, and they can simply change their numbers on a whim."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "46nfya", "title": "if 1 burger takes 1300 gallons of fresh water to produce, how can i buy them for under $5.00?", "selftext": "I've been seeing a billboard in LA that reads: Save 1300 gallons of water. Don\u2019t flush your toilet for 6 months or don\u2019t take a shower for 3 months or For lunch today, don\u2019t eat 1 burger. \n\nEven at 2 cents a gallon, it would cost $26.00 for the water alone - forget about shipping, packaging, workers that butcher cattle and then sell the product, overhead costs for the stores etc. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46nfya/eli5if_1_burger_takes_1300_gallons_of_fresh_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d06h9gp", "d06hkcq", "d06ifc8", "d06ifvz", "d06ij4l", "d06jcb9", "d06jjma", "d06k54m", "d06kgu1", "d06kmpw", "d06nxwa", "d06rn0o", "d06u67h", "d07175l"], "score": [4, 44, 114, 11, 13, 3, 14, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 4], "text": ["Because agricultural operations don't pay a fair price for water. _URL_0_, for instance, provides some interesting numbers. ", "If they were getting all that water out of the tap in New York it would still cost under $6.00, but they obviously don't pay nearly that much for agricultural water.", "Farms don't use treated city water, they use well water. They dig a big hole and bury a $2000 pump at the bottom and they have all the groundwater under their property for 30 years or so. It's vastly cheaper than the cleaned and fluoridated wonder-water we feed humans, because we really don't care if our cows have bad teeth.\n\nThere's a lot of controversy about cows and water, but it's important to remember that water doesn't travel all that well. Most places in the Americas have excess water, with great underground flows carrying rainwater out to sea. Farms in non-arid parts of the world do not change the level of the water table, and pose no environmental or water hazard. A cow raised outside Seattle can drink and drink and not make a lick of difference because there's just so much water that feed rather than water becomes the limiting agent on raising them there.\n\nIf you're concerned about California's water situation and think farmers are to blame, go ahead and boycott beef grown in southern states. That's probably an ecologically sound move. But Montana doesn't have a water crisis, and saving their water by not eating their beef isn't going to help anyone.", "Agriculture does not pay anywhere close to the cost of water it consumes. They are heavily subsidized. For example\n\n >  And in a 1988 study conducted for Congressman George Miller, irrigators on the Vernal Unit of the Central Utah Project paid only $3.68 per acre-foot for water that cost the government $204.60 per acre-foot to deliver. 18 Such discrepancies between the cost of water storage and delivery and what irrigators ultimately pay are widespread throughout the West. \n\n_URL_0_", "To add to the other posts regarding water, there is also the issue of subsidized feed. Corn is subsidized so beef producers that use corn for feed get a big indirect subsidy as well. ", "There are places on earth where water falls from the sky. That is where your 5 dollar hamburger patty comes from. BTW, those cows don't actually consume the water. Much like that wise old proverb, \"You don't buy beer. You rent it.\" Same goes for cows. \n\nAlso, make more garbage. Landfills need filling.", " > Even at 2 cents a gallon, it would cost $26.00 for the water alone\n\nThat's super expensive water you're drinking. Treated water in cities in the US costs on average about $1.50 per 1000 gallons, or about $1.95 for 1300 gallons.", "I guess whatever you-betcha formula was used to arrive at 1300 gallons was carefully averaged for water costs. Where I'm at (Fraser Valley) unlimited fresh water is available from my wells for free.\nCome to think of it, this makes the amount of water my cows drink one of the few things I don't know about them. It's a shit ton though, so maybe 1300 gallons is low. ", "Not the biggest reason, but still worth mentioning, there are a lot of farm subsidies that go into the cost. A lot of money is given to Iowa corn farmers to make their corn cheaper. Most of that corn is fed to animals that people later kill and eat. A lot of water goes into raising crops, a lot of oil goes into powering the machines that process those crops, and a ton of other resources are spent on it as well. But the government takes tax money from other things and spends it to make food cheaper. There is very little sales tax on burgers as well. \n\nWhen you add in the fact that water costs different amounts in different places, (expensive in California, cheap in the Midwest,) the fact that shipping frozen burgers is cheaper than shipping veggies, the fact that the shelf life of burgers is much longer than fresh veggies, and the fact that people are more satisfied with cheap frozen burgers than with frozen veggies, you can see why burgers can be so cheap.", "Oddly enough, having made that one burger, you don't just throw away the rest of the cow. Sure, lots of water goes to raise/feed/hydrate a cow, but at the end of day, that water produces something. ", "Most places that raise cattle use natural water sources or on site wells. They are not paying for water, and generally only have to pay for feed to supplement the natural diet of grass. \n\nThe billboards are also scare mongering. Agriculture in California is done in places that does not naturally support that level of agriculture. They bring in water from other regions or pump it from aquifers to water crops. 85% of California water use is on crops, and much of that from Lake Mead in Arizona and not from sources that naturally feed that region. Personal consumption of citizen in California has almost no effect on the water crisis they are in. All the billboards are is a bit of fear mongering and the government acting like they are doing something. \n\nAlso it does not cost $0.02 per gallon to treat drinking water. It costs about $1.00 per 1000 gallons so that is about $0.001 per gallon. Your $0.02 would pay for 20 gallons of treated water. Now untreated water (what most farms use to water crops) is about 1/10 the cost of treated water making the costs even lower. Then you have farming subsidies that lower it even further. ", "Around here cows drink out of muddy holes in the ground called 'tanks' (ponds).  The idea that cows must drink water treated, chlorinated,  and fluoridated,  along with the associated costs is laughable.\n\nStep 1:  Dig a hole\nStep 2:  Wait for it to rain so your cows can drink.\nStep 3:  ?\nStep 4:  Profit\n\nSource:  I live in the state that until recently had more cows than people", "California fucked up its water rights long ago, and lacks the political willpower to reform them in a way that could ameliorate shortages.  \n  \nAs someone from a small state with not too many people, it boggles my mind.  How the hell can the lightly populated farming areas muster that much political will?  \n\n", "That figure isn't true. A market weight steer will weigh 1200-1400 pounds. For a 1200lb steer about 740 to 770lbs will be edible carcass. There will be about 150 -185lbs of lean trim which will end of as ground beef. So say your burger is a 1/2 pound. You could get 300-370 burgers from one steer that will be slaughtered at 18-22 months. \n\nIf that 1300 gallons of water/burger figure were true, that steer would drink 390,000 gallons of water. A small herd (say 100 head) would need 39,000,000 gallons of water. \n\nThe number of beef cattle in the U.S. as of Jan 1, 2015 was 29.7 million. Multiply that with 390,000 and my calculator breaks. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/the-misallocation-of-water.html"], [], [], ["http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/wr_guzzling_water.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fx5a11", "title": "Would administering an inactive mimic of the SARS-COVID-2 binding site on ACE2 competitively inhibit virus entry into cells?", "selftext": "If an inactive version of the binding site of ACE2 that the virus uses to access the cell could be synthesised and administered to patients, could it 'flood' the system and compete with normal ACE2 for virus binding, thereby reducing successful interactions and cell entry. What would potential flaws/problems/side-effects be?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fx5a11/would_administering_an_inactive_mimic_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fmsea8j", "fmsj78r", "fmskcq8", "fmsknzd"], "score": [6, 10, 3, 5], "text": ["What you are suggesting is similar to a vaccine. By priming the host's immune system with the same proteins, the adaptive immune system can start to develop antibodies against the protein. Upon challenge with the active virus, harboring the same proteins, the antibodies should identify the virus and mark it for degradation; the host will be immune to the virus.\n\nGranted, there are many, many other factors that play in immunity.", "Short answer: yep! The concept you may be referring to is that of a decoy receptor, which is certainly a type of drug that there is some accumulating interest in. The side effects are a bit more difficult to predict.\n\nLong answer: decoy receptors, which are drugs or endogenous molecules that act as competitive antagonists of certain ligands by binding them instead of their active targets, are already in use for certain diseases. As a notable example, specific autoimmune pathologies may be treatable with etanercept (*Enbrel*), which binds a cytokine called tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) to prevent it from binding to proinflammatory targets. See [_URL_2_](_URL_0_) for a bit more information.\n\nThere is now some interest in developing decoy receptors for the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virion, which interacts with the ACE2 receptor to break into host cells. It's not a bad idea, but it's also just one of many potential mechanisms that might be effectively targeted by antiviral drugs currently under development. For the condensed version of this, see [_URL_1_](_URL_1_) (the actual paper is a bit denser and can be found in the prestigious journal *Cell*).\n\nPredicting the adverse effects of such as drug is difficult without actual clinical data. In many cases, we don't know what a drug will do to human patients until we actually give it to them (ideally many patients over time). This is why the process of developing and approving a new drug takes such a long time\u2014you need to give the drug first to a few volunteers, then to a few more patients, and then a larger group that must be compared to a control (ideally a placebo and a standard of care) in a randomized trial. \n\nHowever, purely out of speculation: drugs tend to have side effects that are both somewhat logical based on their mechanisms of action and pharmacologic properties as well as adverse effects that cannot be predicted at all. If I were to guess as to the potential adverse effects of a decoy receptor for SARS-CoV-2, I might assume that some would involve dampening the normal activity of ACE2 (because you're creating another potential target for its normal ligands). So, since ACE2 normally breaks down angiotensin II to an inactive metabolite, you may see more activity of angiotensin II (increased blood pressures, free water and/or electrolyte retention, etc.) if you give a decoy. One might also imagine that some patients may develop allergic reactions to the drug, which can occur with nearly any foreign substance entering the body and may be severe.", "Apeiron's APN-01 is a recombinant human ACE2 protein that's currently in some early [trials](_URL_0_) with that mechanism in mind. \n\nIt was actually first developed a decade ago as a more general treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome, but didn't show significant results. It may prove to be more effective as an inhibitor of viral entry though, ideally reducing disease severity.", "There is a class of blood pressure drugs called ACE-Inhibitors that will bind the receptors and compete with the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme in your body to help lower blood pressure. These meds won\u2019t work for prevention of virus attachment because it tends to cause up regulation of ACE receptors (the cell produces more receptors) and increase sites for viral entry.  \n\nPeople with hypertension are likely on these meds and this is probably why they are at higher risk for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. \n\n_URL_1_\n\nEdit: as is usually the case, there are some who say this is not necessarily true:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_receptors", "https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/59290/decoy-ace2-receptors-could-be-promising-covid-19-infection-preventing-drug/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy\\_receptors"], ["https://pharmaphorum.com/news/apeiron-starts-mid-stage-trial-of-drug-that-blocks-coronavirus/"], ["https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ace-inhibitors-arbs-and-covid-19-what-gps-need-to", "https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/covid-19/evidence-continues-link-ace-inhibitors-severe-covid-19-symptoms"]]}
{"q_id": "yme8s", "title": "if there isn't a law banning gay marriage, why isn't it legal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yme8s/eli5_if_there_isnt_a_law_banning_gay_marriage_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5wvtp0", "c5ww8c8", "c5wxwbc", "c5x1d5t"], "score": [80, 11, 3, 7], "text": ["Because there are laws defining marriage to be a union between one woman and one man. It's somewhat misleading to say that gay marriage is illegal; it just doesn't *exist*, according to the laws of the places which ban it.", "For this, it is important to keep in mind the differences between state and federal law.\n\nSome states have passed amendments to their Constitution, or through the legislature, that have defined marriage as between one man and one woman.  So in order for your spouse to receive benefits on your behalf, such as unemployment insurance or state income taxes, you must be in a \"legal\" marriage, which to those states, is between one man and one woman.\n\nAt the federal level, it is similar, but a bit more vague.  You have probably heard of DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act.  This law [defined](_URL_0_) marriage as \"a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.\"  So in order to receive federal benefits for your spouse (such as Medicare, Social Security, etc.), or to file your taxes jointly (which can save you lots of money), you must be in a \"legal\" marriage, defined that way.\n\nTL;DR You're not going to jail for being in a gay marriage, but depending on what state your live in, you won't be able to receive the same kinds of benefits that a straight marriage would receive.\n", "I know others have mentioned specific laws but there is also the fact that the state has the exclusive right to issue marriage licenses. This is actually quite a recent thing and only happened in the 1920's as a way to prevent inter-racial marriage, which wasn't a problem (legally though not socially) until the state got involved.\n\nAll the laws like DOMA and others do is place a legal restriction on who are allowed to be issued marriage licenses, same thing goes for gay marriage (though i prefer the term equal marriage rights, or marriage equality rights) laws, all they do is legally allow the state to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples who wish to be legally married.\n\nOthers may disagree but the biggest roadblock in the pursuit of equal marriage rights is the government's monopoly on the issuing of marriage licenses.", "For the same reason you can't be king of Idaho.  There isn't a law that makes it possible.  The laws that define marriage say \"man and woman\".\n\nGay marriage isn't \"illegal\"...you can't go to jail for it.  It just doesn't have (in most states) any legal standing.\n\nMany people argue that there is an implied legal right to gay marriage...that marriage laws combined with anti-discrimination laws make that right necessary.  That is how it became legal in Massachusetts and California."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title1/html/USCODE-2011-title1-chap1-sec7.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2oowj4", "title": "Europe is becoming greener; what's going on here?", "selftext": "[Landscape changes of current-EU from 1900 til now.](_URL_0_)\n\nGif from r/gifs, I can see surburbanisation in the UK in the 30s-50s, and NL reclaiming land, but everywhere else seems to be becoming less settled, with less farmland, and more forested. This goes against what I thought was happening (though the rainforest reports might be skewing these expectations of europe).\n\nIs this gif/map to be trusted? If it is, is there a single pattern going on here, or it is many patterns, or is there no patten?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2oowj4/europe_is_becoming_greener_whats_going_on_here/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmpfdnf", "cmpfwo7", "cmpfybp", "cmpjhq7", "cmpltjw", "cmprbcj", "cmpv8vy"], "score": [9, 30, 7, 12, 8, 2, 3], "text": ["For Scandinavia at least, a significant portion of the regrowth in forests can be attributed to the shift away from using wood for heating to other fuels such as coal and natural gas.\n\nI'm still trying to remember where I read this, so give me a little while hunting down the source", "Another aspect to consider - especially in regard to Sweden - is the retention forestry model. In basic terms, instead of clearing every part of a forest during a harvest, some parts are preserved: single trees [dead and living], patches and strips. The goal behind that is to preserve the biodiversity of the area and to allow the ecosystem to still function. It also allows the forest to replenish itself over time. \n\nA study from 2007 noted that the number of living trees in Swedish forests have returned to 1955 levels, after a fall in the 1970s and 1980s. \n\nThis type of forestry has been practiced large-scale by Sweden for over 25 years. It's reflected towards the end of the .gif above by the increase of the rate of green over Sweden. \n\nThe change towards the retention forestry model came about as concerns over environmental damage and climate change increased. Countries like Sweden are very aware of the effects of climate change, as increases in temperature can be pretty dramatically seen on their landscape [i.e. melting glaciers, loss of tundra]. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "I *think* that map may not depict exactly what you think it does, but without knowing the source I can't say for certain. It's titled 'Gross Land Change' which in the scientific speak you'd find among environmental scientists and climatologists, means it would be depicting the change in land use and not depicting the actual land use. Hence giving the illusion that Europe has gotten exponentially greener than it actually has. Though that's not to say Europe hasn't gotten greener as it absolutely has. \n\nAs to why, there are several factors. Europe has been subjected to heavy deforestation for millennia as people cleared land for new settlements, to expand existing ones, or for building or heating. The late 1800s also saw massive deforestation to fuel the industrial revolution, so the start of your gif is close to the minimum forested extent of Europe. \n\nI don't see any decrease in settlement from that series of maps and there certainly hasn't been much, nothing that would register on the scale of that map. To explain the decrease in farmland you need to look no further than farming techniques and yields that have improved drastically in the last few centuries, especially in the 20th century, meaning less cultivated land is needed to feed the population.\n\nThe 20th century saw conservation movements to preserve and expand existing forests and even plant new ones. Stringent environmental regulations mean what might have been a poisoned hillside downwind of a factory is today a thriving woodland. Similarly, what might have been land that was clear-cut by a lumber company in the 1890s was being selectively harvested and actively replanted. One of the few benefits of suburbanization is that it brings lots of trees to areas where there were previously few. \n\nA final factor is globalization. Lots of furniture marketed in the first world, for just one example, will be made with lumber sourced from Brazil or Russia. Even food isn't exempt, 100 years ago you might have been eating Porridge grown down the street for breakfast, now you're eating Bananas from Central America and Oranges from Florida. ", "Forests =/= Wilderness\n\n99% of those forests you can see regrowing aren't truly wild. They are \"farmed\" just like any other crop (with varying intensity) for wood.\nOf course for that business to remain sustainable you have to replant the cut patches after every harvest, and this was indeed a 19th century innovation/paradigm shift, the result of which is visible in that graphic.\nIt's important to note that at the start point (1910) almost no old-growth forest that wasn't cut sometime in the last 2000 years remained in that map, it was all second or third generation forest.\n", "It has one simple reason - the shift from agrarian economy to industrial economy and later economy based on services. People don't need farmland anymore, because there is an abundance of food at low prices, which can also be imported from outside Europe. So the less productive patches of farmland were converted to other purposes - woodlands, parks, reservations etc. ", "To add to the other comments, I can tell you that in the middle of Germany, in hilly regions woodland is almost twice as much worth in revenues as farmland. The demand for quality hardwood is rising, and so do the prices. Hightech agriculture today only makes decent profit when you can put your huge GPS-steered tractors on really flat land.", "[Paraphrasing  &  Translating from a course I followed on deforestation at the KULeuven in 2013, can supply sources if needed]\n\nEver since the invention of agriculture 10.000 years ago, forests have disappeared in favour of crops. The increase in farmland (and consequently the decline of forests) sped up dramatically around the Industrial Revolution, in Europe from ~1700 until it stopped in ca. 1960, in North America it started around 1850 to 1970, in the developing countries this only started after WWII, and continues today.\n\nFrom the start of the Industrial Revolution, there is a clear correlation between rising population and diminishing size of forests. In Europe, starting in 1850, the size of forests started to rise again, which seems strange because population size kept rising too. (In France, forest size doubled between 1850 and 2000, from 12,5% to 25%)\nThere are four reasons for this strange trend shift:\n\n* Fuel switch from wood to fossil fuels\n* Transition from subsistence farming to intensive, market driven farming\n* More import of agricultural products and wood\n* Stricter management of forests\n\nI can elaborate if interested"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/24bpklA.gif"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112713003174"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lxuuy", "title": "american alcohol age restriction.", "selftext": "Ok, so im just wondering about you americans and your 21 legal drinking age.\n\nI plan to come over next summer from Ireland when im 18 and just curious about how that works, in Ireland at 16 it deemed socially acceptable to drink a bit and is accepted as normal. Is it the same in America?At lets say 18 is it deemed acceptable to drink or is it just a big no?\n\nSorry for sounding stupid, dont know how to phrase it!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lxuuy/eli5american_alcohol_age_restriction/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc3t1pe", "cc3t2al", "cc3t36j", "cc3t5ud", "cc3xhla", "cc411fr"], "score": [10, 3, 15, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["There are a few reasons as to why. The biggest one that I can remember is that \"America\", as in the federal government doesn't actually set the age, but instead the individual states do. But the federal government does a sneaky little thing where if the states lower it below 21, they will take away highway funding.\n\nAs to the medical reasons why, I believe it has to do with the average development of people in their 20s and that on average at about 21, you are fully grown and it won't hurt your growth.\n\nAa far as I know.", "It was 18 in a lot of places, then there was a successful campaign to impose a federal level age of 21. The idea behind it was to curb drunk driving, and even though individual states *could* lower it to 18 or whatever, they won't because the national government ties a large portion of funding for roads to adopting 21 as the legal drinking age.\n\nIf you're under 21 here, you won't be able to drink at a bar or restaurant or buy alcohol at the store. It's not like people around your age though are going to have a problem with it, a lot of people here start drinking around 16 too. Some older people might have a problem with it, but if you have a few drinks at a party with friends no one will care.", "Drinking before you turn 21 is absolutely illegal. In some situations people are more tolerant of underage drinking (college, at home during family gatherings maybe), but the law is pretty clear. You're definitely not going to be able to get a drink at a public place like a bar/pub/restaurant. ", "Having drinks with friends your own age, at a party, is perfectly normal. Drinking underage at bars or restaurants, no way. The bars themselves can get in a lot of trouble for serving underage drinkers.  \n  \nDrinking in front of adults... totally depends on the adults and the circumstances. Getting drunk, however, would generally be looked down upon.", "It must be noted that in the USA many states can start driving at the age of 15, which is much lower than most developed nations.\n\nIn most areas in the USA, with the exception of few urban areas such as New York City, using a car to get around a city is almost essential.  One reason why a Driver's License is the de facto form of ID in the USA.\n\nSo drunk driving, with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) being a major factor in the equation as well, is already a huge problem.  If teenagers, with thanks to the US culture that promotes alcohol drinking as it's a sort of *Forbidden Fruit* (but that's another topic), start drinking legally this can be a potentially dangerous issue.", "Underage drinking in public is not socially acceptable, but in private many families/social groups consider it acceptable for mature teenagers to drink a moderate amount. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xzi3w", "title": "If the universe is infinite, wouldn't that mean that somewhere out there, there is a solar system, earth and humans exactly like us, living the exact same life?", "selftext": "Infamous maths guy (forget his name) wrote this. It seems possible.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xzi3w/if_the_universe_is_infinite_wouldnt_that_mean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5qywo3", "c5qyz9p"], "score": [80, 26], "text": ["There are a lot of wrong statements in this thread, and statement correcting them, but everything has been downvoted to hell so I want to set the record straight: Even if the universe is infinite, and has existed for an infinite amount of time, and even *if* every possible configuration of matter has the same probability of occurring in a given region of space, *and* there are only finitely many configurations, you could *still* not be *certain* that there was an identical copy of our solar system anywhere else in the universe. This is a matter of probability and mathematics that is absolutely trivial if you understand it and completely unintuitive if you don't, but it's true nonetheless. The short version is that even if you flipped a coin infinitely many times, you are not guaranteed to ever get a head; the sequence of all tails is a possible sequence and is just as likely to occur as any other specific sequence. The fact that the probability of getting no heads is 0 doesn't make it impossible; in fact, *any* specific sequence has probability 0 of being the sequence you end up getting, but you *will* get some sequence. This is a simple fact of probabilities involving infinite sets, and really isn't open to dispute.\n\nSource: I am a graduate student in mathematics with a significant background in analysis and probability.", "You seem to be operating under the assumption that no matter how small the possibility, if you have an infinite number of guesses or chances, then the odds of you guessing correctly will be 100%.  And this is incorrect.\n\nLet me give you a numerical example.\n\nThere are an infinite number of positive integers, and lets say you pick a truly random (but finite) positive integer.  Obviously, my chances of guessing it on the first try is zero, since there are an infinite number of possibilities, and I have only one guess.  However, if I were to start counting from 1, I would have to eventually have to reach the number you picked.  It might take an extremely long time, but it would be a finite time.  This is because there is a systematic way of listing positive integers.  No matter which positive integer you pick, you will eventually get to it simply by counting.  This is what is known as a countable set.  So even though there are an infinite number of positive integers, they are countably infinite.\n\nSo, if have an infinite number of tries, and what you're trying to guess is part of a countable set, then yes, eventually you will have to reach the possibility that you are looking for.  To give you a simplified example, if you had an infinite number of integers, the probability that one of them is 2 would be 100%.\n\nHowever, there are sets that are uncountable.  Notably, let's take the set of real numbers.  There is simply no systematic way of listing every real number.  And so, even given an infinite amount of time, you will never be able to list every real number.  And in fact, even given an infinite number of guesses, the total number of real numbers you list is still 0 percent of the total number of that exist.  This is what an uncountable set is:  something that is so large in size that it is impossible to systematically describe everything in it even in an infinite amount of time.  Mathematicians would say that the cardinality of an uncountable set is larger than that of a countable set.  In basic english, it means that the size of an uncountable set is larger than the size of a countable set, even though both are infinite.\n\nSo lets go back to our solar system.  A solar system is a tangible, discrete thing.  The number of solar systems in the universe is probably infinite, but is definitely countably infinite.  You can start at our own solar system, craft a method for systematically categorizing the space beyond our solar system, and count up the number of other solar systems within that space. \n\nMeanwhile, the amount of ways that a solar system can result is probably uncountably infinite, due to the fact that neither time nor space appear to be discrete.  There are an uncountable number of ways for atoms within that solar system to arrange themselves.  The result is that even given an infinite number of solar systems, the odds that any two of them are identical is zero.\n\nedit: this post may contain sloppy language that would horrify a true math major."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3y5ci8", "title": "how our phones, ipods, laptops and other devices know the exact percentage of battery remaining.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y5ci8/eli5_how_our_phones_ipods_laptops_and_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyaojwz", "cyaopq7", "cyaq40t", "cyara72", "cyardgc", "cyaulhl", "cyb14l7"], "score": [174, 6, 838, 18, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["They don't, it's just an estimation. As charge level decreases, so does the voltage the battery outputs. The device can measure this and use it along with other factors (how long since charger disconnect, age of battery, number of charging cycles it's gone through, etc.) to estimate how much charge it has. It's just that, though, an estimation, not an actual measurement.", "They estimate it with the voltage that the battery outputs.\n\nWhen its full, it has a different voltage  that when is 50%, and the cellphone sguts down before it reaches a dangerous voltage level(some batteries might be unable to recharge if they drop too low)", "Besides everyone saying that either they don't, or that it's based just on voltage- modern devices use something called a Coulomb Counter which actually measures the quantity of charge leaving or entering the battery. \n\nImagine you have a water tank. Every few seconds, you check a meter to see how fast water is coming out of the tap. Then you can add up these measurements to figure out pretty closely how much is left in the tank!\n\nTechnically speaking, the device measures current consumption rapidly and performs integration to give a figure of amp-hours or watt-hours consumed.", "Not an expert here (thus I may get this wrong) - but I am an EE with a pretty good idea of what makes stuff chooch.  \n\nTwo ways it could be done (or a mixture of them both).\n\nMost obvious way is voltage monitoring and abusing the discharge curve of Lithium based batteries.  Lithium batteries don't produce a constant voltage as they discharge.  Most start at somithing in the 4.0-4.2 Volts/Cell at full charge, and are \"dead\" at around 3.0 Volts/Cell.  Discharging past that ~3.0 V number can actually destroy the battery so the device shuts it self off at a preset safe point.\n\nThe trickery happens in the way Lithium batteries discharge.  [As you can see in this shitty graph I just found on Google](_URL_0_), as the battery depletes to something in the 3.4 V/Cell range, the voltage starts dropping off, and dropping off ***FAST***.  So basically the device can monitor the voltage of the battery, but once it detects that its come upon that cliff in the discharge curve (or a preset low voltage), it declares the battery dead.  Incidentally that discharge curve is why the last 10% of your battery seems to go away instantly.\n\nSmart batteries (like you find in a laptop) might contain something like a teensy current shunt so it can get a real-time picture of how much current is flowing.  A current shunt is basically a very small resistance put in between the battery and load, when current flows through said teensy resistance it creates a teensy voltage drop.  Using ~~witchcraft~~ math and some formuolis you can figure out exactly how much current is going through the teensy resistor.  That information combined with voltage monitoring of the battery can be used to paint a very accurate picture of exactly what the battery is doing, and how healthy the battery is (they do wear out), and how much juice is left in the box.\n\n\nWell that's probably a bit much for a 5 year old but w/e.  Hope at least something in that mess is right and you found it marginally useful.  Now we just wait for the guy that works at the battery factory to come correct me.  Merry Christmas!", "My phone doesn't. As soon as it reaches 20% it goes straight to 1% and shuts off a few seconds later. If I then plug it back in and turn it on while charging, it will show about a 45% charge. ", "The (edit: formerly top) answer saying they do not is wrong, except maybe for the cheapest shittiest phone in existence. They use gas gauge chips which are cheap and plentiful. See for example _URL_1_. Some integrated phone chipsets have this built in.\n\nGood gas gauges have coulomb counters that estimate joules in and out and know the behaviour for each battery chemistry. The better ones will let you run calibration cycles first prior to production to generate a master profile, and will refine that in real-time on th target device. An example of this is a BQ78PL116 (though that is not intended for use in phones; it's a multi-cell chip).\n\nThese chips also generally handle the protection side of the circuit too, and sometimes even the charge control. They usually communicate via SMBus using the SBS ([smart battery system](_URL_0_)).\n\nSource: have designed equipment that uses gas gauges for cell management.\n", "There are three techniques to know the actual remaining charge.\n\nFirst is to measure the voltage of battery. The value is then compared to the voltage vs charge curve, there are no li-ion batteries that increase voltage when discharged. Of course when chemistry of a specific battery ages, the curve slips, and differs from standard one by increasing amount.\n\nSecond is to profile the battery, it's really evolution of the first. If you do charge cycle two or three times, you know it pretty well. Modern devices have pretty decent idea how much energy they need, so the curve can be adjusted with time. This is more precise and takes into account aging battery.\n\nThird technique is to keep close track of energy spent, down to last milijoule. In newest mobile devices SoCs usually get detailed reports on energy use for each controller. They can add it up, and when actual max capacity of battery is known it can literally describe when it will need to shut down down to one second accuracy. When combined with above mentioned technique it's by far the most precise.\n\nThere is fourth method, that can be used in lab, not in devices, that is to directly measure specific for battery chemistry ion densities inside the cell, and report that. It's more accurate, but probably less useful for everyday use."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.ibt-power.com/Battery_packs/Li_Ion/Li_Ion_DiscGph.JPG"], [], ["http://sbs-forum.org/specs/", "http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/power-management/battery-fuel-gauge-products.page"], []]}
{"q_id": "5voqzh", "title": "how did sheep shed their wool before the emergence of humans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5voqzh/eli5_how_did_sheep_shed_their_wool_before_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de3oj4m", "de3t1zm", "de3ubdt", "de402z4", "de43qky", "de49xww", "de4apyc", "de4cwlw"], "score": [409, 1182, 109, 3, 3, 2, 16, 3], "text": ["Wild sheep do not grow excessive amounts of wool.\n\nDomestic sheep have been bred for thousands of years for maximum wool production, and are now dependent on humans.", "Humans have selectively bred a small number of species to help provide better for human needs at the expense of the animals natural survival. Sheep are one of those species.\n\nPrior to domestication sheep would have grown a much smaller amount of wool up to the point where it served their needs, like the hair on a bear or a wolf. It doesn't grow indefinitely.\n\nThen humans came along and found these relatively docile sheep sitting around and someone realised their wool was very useful to make things like clothing out of. Over many generations humans captured and bred these sheep to harvest their wool from. Humans also realised that by breeding the males and females with the most and best wool, the offspring would usually end up with even more wool than the parents. By repeating this process over time we ended up with the types of sheep we have today, who are completely reliant on humans to regularly shear them and remove the wool. This is domestication and selective breeding. Without us they would suffer many problems like overheating and being far too heavy.", "Living on a farm that has a type of sheep that was never bred for wool production. Much like dogs sheep will have a different coat in summer and winter. They keep their top wool over summer for sun protection but they shed the side and stomach for heat reasons. Then in winter they will grow a thick coat all over. \nSheep grown for wool production have been specifically bred to be genetic mutants that never shed their wool. Thus they rely on people. Look up shrek the sheep. Was a New Zealand sheep that went for many years without being shawn and had one of the biggest wool coats ever.", "The sheep that that have excess wool are only one type of sheep  - the domesticated sheep. Other type of sheep don't grow wool beyond what they need to survive. As its name suggests, humans created this species by selective breeding, that is, mating males and females so that the result would be an animal *more beneficial to humans*. In the case of sheep that means more wool. It's worth noting that one of the requirements for domestication is that the resulting species be useful to humans.\n\nSo the answer is that domesticated sheep did not exist before humans because humans made them. They would not survive in nature for the most part. All this is true also for other domesticated species, like the cow.", "This is an example of selective breeding. Humans bred the sheep with the most wool over and over again through many generation. Just as wild cows would never look like what you know a cow as today. Another good example is dogs. We would never see the types of breed diversity we see today in dogs had we not selected traits we like and continuously bred for them. ", "Wild sheep grow hair to a particular length and then shed it in the spring.  Domestic wool sheep have a mutation that causing continuous growth.   The wool must be shaved off yearly.    ", "As others have suggested, the original \"wild\" sheep had shorter hair before selective breeding.\n\nWith that said... There is an island near where I live that has a wild population of wool sheep. They were left there by the Spanish when they first discovered the island with the hopes that by the time they came back there would be a big herd of sheep. The plan succeeded, but the Spanish never came back, so now the island has a bunch of wooly sheep.\n\nThey look [like this](_URL_0_) and have long, nappy hair. As they run through the woods, bits of their dreds/hair get caught on branches and twigs and pull off in little tufts. The result is that their hair gets long, but never, like, crazy long.\n\ntl;dr: Even long-haired sheep in the wild don't have that long of hair. It dreds up a bit, and is \"trimmed\" over time by getting pulled off by trees/branches that sheep run into.", "Same way chickens stood upright and cows survived without antibiotics.\n\n They didn't.\n\nHumans selectively breed these animals to have the excessive traits they have. Without humans, sheep wouldn't have the extreme amount of wool."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://cherylyoung.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/45.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4k3f5z", "title": "why does the secret service always wear suits regardless of weather when out w/ the president?", "selftext": "Even when it's over 100 degrees/100% humidity in a foreign country.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k3f5z/eli5_why_does_the_secret_service_always_wear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3bsh3v", "d3bsidw", "d3bslxe", "d3bszfv"], "score": [5, 9, 18, 3], "text": ["Because suits look good, they can conceal their weapons, and they blend in to a degree, since the people they are protecting are generally also wearing suits.", "_URL_0_\n\nIt looks professional, and the jacket is a socially acceptable way to hide a moderate-sized gun (and other equipment), to avoid scaring the public.", "The secret service THAT YOU CAN SEE are wearing suits... think about the ones who are blended in all around in plain clothes though.", "They wear suits because it's nondescript, conceals weapons, blends in with other people, etc.  They don't always wear wool suits, they have other materials that breathe better and are cooler for warm weather."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21h376/eli5_why_do_personal_bodyguards_such_as_the_us/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1iy6fe", "title": "\"television static is radiation left over from the big bang\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iy6fe/eli5_television_static_is_radiation_left_over/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb97jsb", "cb9b2dx", "cb9b3cm", "cb9cv12", "cb9etd9", "cb9k7hd"], "score": [110, 18, 15, 5, 4, 2], "text": ["To understand this properly, we need to break down what exactly we're talking about.\n\nThe \"big bang\" is the name given to our theory about how the universe evolved in its early development. The name is very misleading - it was not really a big explosion like a bomb or a supernova. \n\nThe early universe was extremely hot and incredibly energy-dense. As you may be aware, hot things give off radiation in the form of photons. The early universe was pretty much uniformly filled with a very hot plasma that emitted and absorbed radiation. But this emitted radiation could not travel very far before being absorbed - the universe was still an opaque \"fog\". \n\nDuring this early period, space expanded very rapidly (which is what most people confuse for the \"explosion\"). This expansion happened *everywhere*, causing the universe to cool down. Eventually (and I'm summarizing here), the universe cooled down enough that atoms could form. Soon, there were many more atoms than just raw protons and electrons. These atoms could not absorb the radiation the way charged particles could, so the universe became *transparent*. The photons could travel much longer distances without encountering something that could absorb them.\n\nRemember how this expansion of space was happening everywhere? That means that these ancient photons are still around, hurtling through the universe. The only difference is, they don't look like photons to us any more. Over the ages, their wavelengths have expanded along with the expansion of space. In fact, in the late 1940s, scientists predicted that we should still be receiving this radiation. The only difference is, it would appear to us as microwave radiation, which has longer wavelengths than visible light.\n\nIn the 1960s, two scientists at Bell Labs stumbled upon this radiation by accident. They were testing a very sensitive antenna and they noticed that it would pick up a constant \"background\" signal. Eventually, they realized they had stumbled upon this relic of the early universe. Today, we call this the \"Cosmic Microwave Background\" and it provides some very valuable insights into the early universe.", "it's actually only 1% or less.  Look it up.  Oh and Neil de Grasse Tyson said so too.", "Alright well, in relation to your original topic, I haven't really seen anyone describe how the television static relates back to the radiation. \n\nSo everyone has described how the big bang caused photons to be flung throughout the universe in every direction etc. etc. Now, your old school TV set uses whats called a \"Cathode Ray Tube\" to project your wonderful TV pictures to a screen. It is built up using an electron gun on the inside of a big glass tube that is void of air. \n\nThese Cathode Ray Tubes, use an electron gun to fire electrons to a large flat side of the glass tube that (usually) is coated with a very thin layer of Phosphorus. When these electrons impact with the atoms of the Phosphorus layer, a change happens called the Photoelectric Effect. \n\nThe Photoelectric Effect describes how an electron when impacting an atom of large enough mass will transfer its kinetic energy and release a photon from the atom with a very specific wavelength. \n\nNow, your eyes are essentially photon detectors that only allow specific wavelengths of these photons to be processed, we call these wavelengths the \"visible light\" spectrum because, obviously, they are the wavelengths we are able to see and our brain happens to translate them into the ROYGBIV color spectrum.\n\nSo to combine all of this, when you're seeing static on a TV set, what you're actually seeing are electrons and photons of insufficient energy impacting the same Phosphorus atoms and being redirected into your eyes. I specify \"insufficient energy\" because there is a reverse process to the photoelectric effect where a photon of sufficient energy can impact an atom of large mass and release an electron with a specific kinetic energy. However, the leftover photons from the Big Bang have wavelengths in the microwave range which doesn't have the energy to knock an electron off of the Phosphorus screen, so in turn some of the energy is transferred and the photon is deflected off with a wavelength that falls in our visible spectrum. BAM! You see a wonderful static pattern on your TV!\n\nNow, this isn't the MAIN cause of the static on your TV, most of it is actually just interference and electronic noise from all of our wonderful large appliances and satellites etc. But, every once and a while, you can be sure that one of those little specs on your screen is a relic from our Universe's past!\n\nEdit: I accidentally a word...", "Back when the universe was first born, it was like a hot, stretchy sticky goo (like the stuff you get to throw at windows and stuff).\n\nSomewhere in that blob of goo was the starting point of the energy that would make the solar system.\n\nThe blob expanded, stretching the goo in all directions.  As it stretched thinner, pieces began to clump together into smaller particles, and these particles clumped together into stars and dust and and eventually the solar system formed and, some time later, human life evolved on Earth.\n\nNow go back in time to that initial ball of goo and imagine another point at some distance away from the future-Earth point.  As the goo stretched from the size of a singularity to the size it is now, that point became further and further away from us, so that some of the stuff might have been stretched so far away that the light travelling from it towards us may not even have reached us yet.\n\nYour TV aerial works by picking up light - albeit invisible light (also called Electromagnetic radiation).  Your TV is designed to read electromagnetic signals that are arranged in a certain way so that they can be understood as pictures and sound by the TV.\n\nImagine that the radiation from the distant point in space we were just talking about finally hits your TV aerial.  The TV does its job to convert it back into sounds and pictures, but because that ancient radiation was not designed to be understandable by a TV, it makes no sense and the TV shows a blip of colour and a dash of noise.\n\nNow imagine instead of just one point in that original ball of goo, we were able to pick up radiation from every point in that ball of goo.  The radiation would all be arriving at your TV aerial at different times, because of the different points in the goo-ball getting stretched apart from each other.  The result is a constant stream of blips of colour and noise.\n\nScientists have sent special satellites into space to go around the sun just like Earth does.  These satellites are a long way away from Earth so that they aren't around TV stations, satellites and mobile phones, which all make lots of radiation.  Because it is so quiet where they are, the scientists can use lots of aerials together as a special kind of telescope - a radio telescope - which is able to tell them the direction and energy level of each background radiation particle they detect.\n\nIn doing this, scientists are able to make a map of space that is almost like viewing the early ball of goo from inside a time machine.\n\nThis helps us better understand where people and planets and stars came from, as well as making white noise on our TV's.", "TV static is [thermal noise](_URL_0_) generated by the electronics of the receiver being at room temperature (about 300K). The resistors, the transistors, etc.. all make noise and the only way to get rid of the noise is to super cool the parts to absolute zero. Not possible. \n\nThe [background noise](_URL_2_) of the universe is also thermal noise, about 2.7K. Bob Wilson and Arno Penzias accidentally discovered this when they were working on improving microwave reception of signals reflecting off the [Echo](_URL_3_) satellites for Bell Telephone Labs by investigating an improved antenna design, (the [Holmdel Horn](_URL_1_)). This antenna and the receiver design were sensitive enough to detect the residual temperature of the Universe, they estimated it to be 3K.\n\nA TV antenna and receiver is nowhere close to being good enough to pickup this noise. The screen noise is just heat noise from the electronics.", "Everything is something left over from the big bang. Did I just blow your mind son?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_noise", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmdel_Horn_Antenna", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo"], []]}
{"q_id": "4npio8", "title": "why do we trust data in research papers and studies to not be manipulated", "selftext": "I have always trusted the data (not the conclusion) in any research paper I read mostly because everyone I know does that too.\n\nBut why do we trust the scientific community so much with not manipulating the data? I can imagine in a lot of situations they might want false results to come out form the research.\n\n**EDIT**: corrected typo\n\n**EDIT 2**:\nThanks everyone that really helped to clear up everything for me!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4npio8/eli5_why_do_we_trust_data_in_research_papers_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d45tm72", "d45todq", "d45tow4", "d45uj1q", "d469n55"], "score": [16, 6, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["There are two main ways.\n\nThe most important is repetition. Scientists often repeat each others' experiments, and tend not to accept anything unless it's been shown to be repeatable.\n\nThe other is peer reviews, where other scientists review each paper before it gets published. This might not catch the specific issue of deliberately falsifying data, but it does guard against people publishing things with serious errors or misunderstandings in them.", "We don't. \n\nWe read around the subject, see how many people have researched it. Gather evidence, critique the papers, find patterns and anomalys and we make our own conclusions.\n\nResearch where you're getting your information. If it's a newspaper then take it with a pinch of salt. Go to the source, the people who published it.", "The point about scientific research is that the methods and results should be able to be reproduced by other researchers. Unfortunately this rarely happens.\nHowever, you should always look into sample size and methods.", "I guess this gets very existential, but why believe anything, in that case?  Have you ever been to Mongolia?  How do you know it exists?\n\n", "Also, if the research is done in association with a university (in the US at least), they have to run eeeeverything by an IRB, which reviews the experiment itself making sure it's legit/ethical. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3w827z", "title": "when we are put out for surgery we remember nothing, why do we think death will be any different?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w827z/eli5_when_we_are_put_out_for_surgery_we_remember/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxu2a37", "cxu2g0e", "cxu2ykh", "cxu32s5", "cxu44ez", "cxu5n2y", "cxu94ti", "cxu9sxd", "cxua44d", "cxuapw2", "cxubomu", "cxubu9a", "cxucewt", "cxudqn9", "cxudr7t", "cxudu1e", "cxueh05", "cxueixb", "cxuesly", "cxuetlc", "cxufdfv", "cxufrq6", "cxuftre"], "score": [131, 8, 255, 11, 53, 15, 37, 19, 2, 6, 7, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You don't wake up after death?  At least most of the time.", "I remember lots from being under anaesthetic for surgery. Nothing coherent or intelligible -- colour, sound, brief flashes of emotion, etc. -- but I still remember it. Your experiences do not represent those of ~7 billion people. ", "Fear. People make up stories to comfort themselves. Or each other.\n\n\nOnce we exist we want to continue to exist because those of us without that drive, didn't survive.", "People like being alive and are afraid of it ending so they need to believe that there is SOME way that they can live on after they've already died.\n\nit makes them feel better about the inevitability of their own death.\n\nMany people who struggle in life also want (need) to believe that some how they will get what they \"deserve\" and the belief in an afterlife where they will be happy helps them deal with the fact that their life isn't where they'd like it to be.\n\nThen there's the loss of others.  Much like how people don't want to accept that their own life will end eventually, it can be even harder when someone they care about dies before they do.  The idea of never seeing that person again can be devastating for some people and the belief that that person lives on somewhere else that you will go to eventually helps them live with the loss of that loved one.\n", "I have my own beliefs about the afterlife, but for me the biggest curiosity is just as OP stated.\n\nWhen I'm sleeping, or under anesthesia,  I have no recognition of time that past. For instance, when I had a surgery earlier this year, the anesthesiologist was talking to me, and in the middle of my sentence hit the juice, I woke up 3 hours later, trying to finish my sententence because I was out and to me it felt no different than blinking. \n\nAm I the only one that thinks feels like that?\n\n\n\nI think it's because I can't comprehend the idea of falling asleep and never waking up, because in my mind it's an immediate transition (even though I know time had passed). ", "Death will be different because we won't return to consciousness.  It will be like the time before you were born. We have all be dead for billions of years, the only difference is that we won't be born this time. ", "Because the \"nothingness\" *ends* after you're put out by you waking up. You have no memory of the nothingness though. You \"fast forwarded\" through it. Will the nothingness you experience while dead ever end? That's the difference.\n\nActually, if the universe exists forever, I think that nothingness does end. As soon as you die you'll \"fast forward\" to having a consciousness again. Atoms will be arranged in such a way at some point in the infinite time of the universe, you'll have a consciousness again and everything that happens in the septillions of years before that will pass in the blink of an eye.\n\nThis is assuming the universe doesn't ever end. But what if it does...", "\u201cI do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.\u201d\n\n-Mark Twain", "This question makes me think of how Michael Jackson died.  He never woke up from his nightly anesthesia.  If he were to be resurrected in the future he would just awake and not have known how long he was out for.  Time becomes irrelevant if you have no concept of it.", "Some people are so self centered they cannot imagine a reality without them in it. So they refuse to accept that they will disappear one day.\n\nI usually try to explain that \"after death\" is exactly the same as \"before birth\". It seldom works.", "I've been officially dead for 2 times. Both times 3 minutes+ \n\nI can't remember anything from about 15 minutes before my heart stopped until I woke up in IC 2 days later", "My personal belief is that death will not be any different than being unconscious, which is why I am not particularly afraid of death. It would just bum me out to not be able to spend more time with my loved ones.", "Because religious teachings have instilled the idea of the soul into our collective consciousness, even for people who are not particularly religious.\n\nI myself think we simply cease to exist. ", "Most of us don't exactly recall most of their lives either, just a few lucid moments, and some gray fuzzy goo of images that somehow deep inside feels as our own. What happens right before waking up of deep slumber? Were we all \"dead\" in these in-betweens?\n\nPerhaps, maybe, what transcends is not memory, but that fuzzy, dark, velvet-y sense of self we call \"I\". It may need of a sensory capable embodiment, to reflect onto itself and to manifest as \"alive\"; later to continue its journey when that embodiment fades away.\n\n", "There are a few comments talking about before birth and being essentially dead for eons before we're born, but I've been intrigued by the idea that if death sends us to a state that is identical to before we're born then perhaps the cycle just continues. This isn't reincarnation, which relies on a singular consciousness, but that our current consciousness is gone and a new you will be born again as the first available life form, anywhere in this universe or elsewhere. I don't believe there is an escape from existence, from a certain point of view.", "To answer part of your question, when we're \"put out for surgery\" under anesthesia, part of the anesthetic cocktail is purposely for amnesia:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWe have no way of reliably putting people \"out\" - so a lot of the purpose is just to ensure that even if people accidentally wake up during surgery or are conscious during the procedure, at least they won't remember it.", "TIL after all this time, for thousands of years of humans' debating what happens after you die, finally the actual answer is on Reddit.  Now, which one is the right one?", "No, the waking is very different. In Holland they keep you in coma for at least 24 hours. So you wake up slowly in a room with a lot of monitors, wires and at least one infusion connected to you.   Not sure how to prove I'm not lieing. Could copy part of my disability-report but that would be in Dutch and still not verified. ", "Many people believe that the reason you don't remember during surgery is because you aren't dead yet...Think of people who have near death experiences that see the white light. THey have very profound and lucid experiences and often claim they are more conscious than real life. The debate is obviously whether or not these experiences are caused by chemicals in the brain but many studies show that during these experiences there is zero brain activity. This isn't my personal belief but I am just presenting what the counter argument is. I have family members who have had these experiences and they can't explain it like any other thing in their life. For all of them, their life has completely changed from the experience for the better. Personally, I think when we die we return to the place where we were before birth....No where. No concept of time. We aren't bothered by the fact that we didn't exist before birth so why would we be afraid to return to that place. And for the people that say we die forever, well if that was true then why are we here now? Shouldn't death be permanent? If it's permanent we shouldn't be here in the first place. Just my belief.", "Because people are scared of the nothingness. The abyss. The void. They also want to believe that their lives had purpose so they choose to believe that for living a good and purposeful life, they will be rewarded. Also, the idea that small children can get cancer or some other horrible thing happen to them and die before ever really getting to experience life makes them want to believe that the kid is in heaven where things are awesome. ", "I've gotten many treatments of electroshock therapy, all which require full anesthesia. \n\nThe doctor, nurses and anesthesiologist form a circle around the hospital bed, and tell you when they're about to knock you out.\n\nAfter a lot of treatments, I thought \"Is this what a lethal injection is like? What if I died from this?\" I logically knew I wasn't, but I just put myself mentally in that place as I went under.\n\nWhen I came out of the anesthesia an hour or two later, it made me think things like, \"Am I the same person?\" \"How would I know if I died and came back?\"\n\nAfter that (a lot of other types of recovery) I realized I'm not really scared of death itself. The pain before death would be something I wouldn't look forward to, but death itself, IMHO, is probably very peaceful.", "When you have surgery, the doctor gives you a medicine that causes both anesthesia (sleeping) and amnesia (forgetting). Sleep lets our minds store memories sort of like defragging a computer disk. Neither of these states are meant to be remembered or realized at the time. Death of the brain may be very like these as there would be no physical consciousness or memory by a brain that no longer is alive.\nHowever, I feel no comparison with death can be made. Death is clearly a stop for mental, cognitive functions, meaning we are not thinking or remembering on a physical level. Few believe that death is a continuation of the physical body we are in at the time of death. Physical death can only explain the sensations of the body. \n\nI feel this does nothing to either prove or disprove what other parts of the \"person,\" if they exist, might be doing. If some part of us goes on after death of our bodies, it is most definitely not those very bodies, and therefore, not likely to feel exactly like life.\n\nI think this neither proves or disproves that there is something else after life. Apples and Oranges!", "My best way of thinking about it is I have no awareness of life before I was born. So there will be no awareness when I am gone. \n\nI've had two seizures and I don't remember any of it. Nothing. \n\nThe afterlife is a lovely fantasy, but that is all it is. A fantasy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_anaesthesia#Purpose"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3moexi", "title": "how are old films and photograph's, that are old, grainy and captured on film, restored to 1080p hd?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3moexi/eli5how_are_old_films_and_photographs_that_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvgpkus", "cvgpohx", "cvgs0ty", "cvh0vsr"], "score": [6, 24, 9, 2], "text": ["On actual film, the particles make greater than what 4K is now. Granted, they are particles and not pixels but the are so sharp that the displays that show them have to \"dumb down\" or reduce the clarity because nothing yet has been able to totally show that clarity. That's why movies always showed \"this has been formatted to fit this screen\"", "Film is better than 1080p. Not necessarily how it was shown on a television or projector, but the film itself is higher resolution than 1080p, and even 4k. This is why it can be reformatted for our current standards. Long live film.", "Several steps actually.\n\nAs others have noted, good film has been better than 4k for quite some time. Modern Super 35 (that's a size measurement) is about 7k in resolution, the 65mm that is used by people like Tarantino is about 14k. For these a scan of the film is all that necessary.\n\nFor those that don't have the resolution they actually scale it up. They rely on the fact that most people sit too far away from their TV to even properly tell 720p, so upscaling everything to 1080p just gives them advertising rights to say that it is in Full HD.\n\nFor special films they actually go through and can basically rebuild everything. Really what they are doing is building visual effects that look identical. This was used extensively in the 4k work on Taxi Driver. For this they focus almost exclusively on the places that are in focus, since that is where you will be looking. It is only the major artifacts in the background that are redone. This is simply to save a lot of money.\n\nThe basic work is very quick and inexpensive, a full movie can be done for under $5000. The more in depth ones cost far more, the Taxi Driver 4k was alleged to cost roughly $100,000.\n\nEdit:\n\nIt occurred to me that you may want an explanation of how the film scanning works.\n\nStart with the sensor from a DSLR camera (we will change this later). Now if we can lay the film precisely on top of the camera sensor, the sensor will see the film and we get the image. The problem is that sensors are actually very rough microscopically and touching then destroys them. We need something to protect the sensor.\n\nOn top of the sensor we place a very precise lens system. Film glides over glass very well, and now we don't touch the sensor.\n\nSo we precisely align a single frame of the movie on the lens over the sensor. Shine a very precise amount of light through and we capture the image perfectly.\n\nFor modern celluloid this can be done at 18 frames per second, for highest quality, if speed is important 48 frames per second are possible. For old fragile celluloid the speed is slowed way down, with very old films I have heard of speeds as low as 1 frame every 5 seconds.\n\nSo that's the basic, and is how the \"cheap\" ones work, cheap here is $20,000. However with some changes we can greatly improve quality.\n\nThe first, most common, change is to replace the sensor. Instead of a Bayer pattern sensor, like a DSLR has, we use a prism with 3 sensors a sensor each for red, green, and blue. Now we get a full resolution image for each color. This is probably the most widespread method.\n\nHowever, if we sacrifice some speed, and use the latest LEDs, we can reduce cost, and maintain quality.\n\nRemember in our first setup we used a color sensor. Instead use a black and white sensor. Black and white sensors are the sharpest, most accurate, most reliable sensors available. Now we get a black and white image. But if we shine just a carefully controlled red LED through the film we will get just the reds information. We do the same for green and blue. Now we have three images for a single frame, one each for red, green, and blue. This is basically the next generation technology for film scanning. It offers greater control, the highest quality, and is the cheapest price.\n\nOnce all the individual frames are scanned. Then the scan goes through color correction where a skilled technician carefully adjust dozens of parameters to deliver the correct color for the film. This colorist job is standard across both digital and film capture.", "**tl;dr**: Film is worse than you think, but that's OK: movies don't *have* to have good quality in the individual frames.  Digital encoding helps.  There are other ways to fix up movies and photos with digital image processing, but a five-year-old doesn't need to know them.  \n\nThe simplest answer is that you just take a high resolution digital image of each frame of film or old photograph, and then scale it down to the pixel resolution you want.\n\nThe other answers here are pretty good, miss some important things about film.  Photographic film *can* have very high resolution, but generally doesn't.  In any case, film resolution is quite different from pixel resolution.  Film works by being covered in a random pattern of tiny light-sensitive crystals.  Those crystals get \"activated\" by light.  Later, you \"develop\" the film.  The main part of developing is bathe the film in certain chemicals that turn the crystals dark.  The \"activated\" crystals turn dark faster than plain old \"unactivated\" ones, so if you bathe the film in the chemicals just the right amount of time, then an image will appear. There are other chemicals to wash away all the leftover non-darkened crystals, which makes the image permanent.\n\nThe deal is that *each crystal on the film develops all at once, or not at all*.  That is, if enough light hits a particular crystal to turn it dark, that whole tiny crystal turns dark during development. \n\nBlack-and-white film has one kind of crystal, color film has three different kinds that respond to the three primary colors.\n\nSo there's a trade, in film, between *sharpness* and *greyscale*.  At very small scales, developed black-and-white film looks like a bunch of black specks sitting on a piece of plastic.  At larger scales, you can see an image with different shades of grey.  The grey level is decided by how many black specks there are in each little bit of film inside the grey area.  The sharper the details you look for, the less clear the grey is and the more grainy the image appears.\n\nMovie film is particularly bad for grain.  That is because the film is exposed for a short amount of time in (often) low light conditions, so movie makers use a sensitive film.  Individual frames of a movie from, say, the 1970s (like \"2001: A Space Odyssey\"), stored at 1080p, often have a *lot* of visible film grain.  But in a movie that's not so important: the frames flit by so fast, your eye sort of averages out the grain from nearby frames, and the movie looks great at 1080p even though each individual frame may have enough grain to really only look smooth and good at 240p or similarly low resolution.\n\nMPEG-encoding movies helps get rid of film grain, too!  MPEG format uses  *differences* between frames and stores the information as a combination of cross-fading and bulk motion of the image.  Since MPEG is a *lossy* compression scheme, the encoding throws away a lot of \"non-essential\" information in each frame.  The non-essential information is small, faint features that are completely different frame to frame -- which is a good way to describe film grain.  So MPEG encoding actually helps clean up film grain and make the movie look \"cleaner\" even at 1080p.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2eyb9s", "title": "What were the circumstances which led the BBC to report that there was no news on April 18, 1930?", "selftext": "Was it an actual lack of news, or were there other things going on which led to this? I have heard the claim that there was Royal news which they had been asked not to report on and instead of reporting on other things they did this and I would like to know the validity of it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eyb9s/what_were_the_circumstances_which_led_the_bbc_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck4fp25"], "score": [17], "text": ["According to the BBC itself, it was due to government pressure over an interview:\n\n > on the evening before Good Friday, the Home Office was desperate to deny a newspaper account of an interview with the home secretary. It was aware that no newspapers would be published over Easter so it contacted the BBC - to ensure the denial was included in the evening radio news.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nHere they don't give such details, but once more state that it was at the government's doing:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010szlg", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/newswatch/history/noflash/html/1930s.stm"]]}
{"q_id": "3ehnwf", "title": "when dogs wag their tail and smack it against a hard surface, does it hurt them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ehnwf/eli5_when_dogs_wag_their_tail_and_smack_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctf30tr", "ctf3aor", "ctf3mjm", "ctfp7pt"], "score": [75, 151, 46, 2], "text": ["Yes.  My uncle had a dog who would get so excited she would beat her tail against the wall until it split open, then she would fling blood all over the room.  It would look like an episode of Dexter.", "Pain and excitement receptors are closely linked.  When dogs are excited they're less likely to feel the pain as pain.  Same reason you don't feel as much pain during sex.", "Yep. It's called [Happy Tail Syndrome](_URL_0_) and dogs sometimes have to get their tails amputated because of repeated damage.", "Had a great dane with this problem, after bandaging his tail over and over for about a year, we finally decided to have about 6 inches cut off. Unfortunately, that just became another bandage that with excitement, would cause problems of it's own. Cleaning blood off the walls was just another chore that had to be done regularly. He didn't seem to mind. This was also a problem with toenails, he had to have a toe amputated as a puppy because he ran into a wall at the top of the stairs and got his nail stuck in the wall. It would have healed up if the vet had cauterized it, but it happened on a Sunday so our only option was the emergency vet who insisted on just bandaging it. After almost a year of the toe not healing, it too had to go. \nObedience training combined with finding a place without walls and corners close to the front door kept this problem from reoccurring as he got older. He was a good dog. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.canidae.com/blog/2012/07/what-is-happy-tail-syndrome-in-dogs.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ovytd", "title": "why does google have a high turnover rate when it offers such good compensation? the average google employee tenure is only 1.1 years.", "selftext": "Why does Google have a high turnover rate when it offers such good compensation? The average Google employee tenure is only 1.1 years.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ovytd/eli5_why_does_google_have_a_high_turnover_rate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccw71hq", "ccw8two", "ccw9j8n", "ccw9p7l", "ccwb35z", "ccwdxca", "ccwewes", "ccwfs85", "ccwgc20", "ccwkx15"], "score": [166, 34, 374, 9, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Head-hunters. Head-hunters everywhere. Generally, if you landed a job at Google, you're the shit at whatever it is you do. You are *extremely* employable. Because of this, other companies want to hire these people, and the average Google employee is batting off job offers left and right. \n\nThis massive demand means that Google has to work just as hard to retain its talent as it does to attract it in the first place.", "In Google, it's kind of accepted that you will work long hours and basically have very little work/life balance. You are encouraged not to go home as you can relax, unwind and such using their many facilities (PS3s, free canteen, gym, etc.) and as a result, you stay in longer and work more hours.\n\nI used to get the train from Grand Canal Dock station in Dublin, which is right next to the Dublin branch of Google. You can see, at 10pm even, that people are still there beavering away at their desks. Google don't force you to do this - but it's sort of an unwritten rule that, if you don't go above and beyond the call of duty, there are 10 other extremely talented engineers who will, and they'll progress in their career faster than you will.\n\nPersonally, and I know a lot of people feel the same, when you are in a long-term relationship, or are married or have kids, this is not the type of job you want to be working in. You want more reasonable hours and a proper work/life balance so you can spend time with your SO and/or kids. Google isn't conducive to this philosophy, so people move on when it comes time for them to do so.\n\nI have 4 friends who are Google employees, in different departments, here in Dublin, who've described the company philosophy as above.", "I assume your talking about the recent results by [PayScale](_URL_1_) report. Basically it is really bad reporting, turnover and tenure rate might be directly related for some companies but not for a newish company which is growing at an enormous rate.\n\nThe [reported employment numbers](_URL_0_) in 2011 where 32,467\nd now in 2013 its 42,162 employees. That is an additional 9695 new employees, or 33% of the company. Think about that for the moment, 33% of the company *literally* can't have tenure greater than 2 years!\n\nTo make this problem even worse, Google has only been a company for 15 years. Unlike much older companies nobody at Google can have a tenure of more than 15 years.\n\nTo make this even more apparent;\n**TL;DR: I start a company yesterday, my company has an average tenure of 1 day, what a turn over rate I must have!**", "first off the tech sector has fast turnover everywhere - that is just a fact.  Second, google kind of has oddball hiring practices.  I imagine they are hiring people that they think are a good fit and as an unintended consequence lots of them are prone to be flighty - you know, young kids with money and a spirit for adventure are not widely recognized as the most stable people", "All big companies have big turnover. Especially in software. It has been the case for many years in software that when you want a raise, you find a new job. Many people take jobs at large companies because they pay more, and later decide they'd prefer to work for a smaller company and leave. It's pretty standard.", "Technical positions within Google are often highly stressful and require great skill and knowledge to perform well. It's also true that because so many of Googles systems are home grown (out of necessity because of the nature of complexity and scale of problems that have to be solved), it takes many many months for new hires to become truly productive.\n\nWhen you join Google, you will most likely have come from a job where you were the big fish; the most technically skilled in your particular department or field. Even for such intelligent and highly skilled people, it can be an enormous shock to the system to go from an environment where you know everything required to do your job, and all the years of your expert industry knowledge were usually directly relevant your job, to then be employed by a highly prestigious company (perhaps Google is your dream job) where you're now a little fish in a big pond surrounded by thousands of people who are just as clever as you, where you find there is a steep learning curve and you're not immediately productive, and where most of the systems and softwares you are working on are unfamiliar so you cannot directly draw on your past job experience to let you coast by (you have to learn learn learn to do your new job).\n\nI think THIS is probably the biggest single contributing factor to technical staff turn over. i.e. Google is a fantastic opportunity, but by the pure nature of what is required to perform your job and perform it well, some prefer to go back to an easier job where there can turn down the dial on the stress and pressure.\n\nDon't underestimate the power of feeling like you're really great at being able to do it on auto-pilot without having to really think too hard. ...and being headhunted and flattered and offered more money to go back to doing something you know how to do in your sleep is just too much to turn down by some.\n\nThat's my 2 cents anyway.", "Simple. Resume padding. Spend a year at \"the google\" and you can likely write your own ticket anywhere. I assume this is even more true if you're applying for work while you're still working at Google. \"oh, you work for google, and you want to work for us?\" sign here please.", "Working at the same place for longer than three years is considered bad for your career over here (Silicon Valley).\n\nI heard this but not from a Google employee but I believe this credo may have wide-spread acceptance over here.", "/u/mithro has a very good answer at the top, but I also want to add that Google probably works its employees to the bone.  Yeah, you get paid well, get a ton of benefits, etc...  but you're also under enormous pressure to produce results, and often.  The old stories of them allowing employees one day per week to work on individual projects are now just old stories; that policy is gone in order to increase productivity.  And sure, they have daycare at the office -- because you're there all the time and still have to take work home with you.  It's awesome to get the experience there, but it burns you out quickly, and you can take that awesome experience and your saved cash to a new job that lets you have a home life too.", "believe it or not, competitive jobs with great perks and high salaries are tough and have high attrition rates"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html", "http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/least-loyal-employees"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vqb3g", "title": "why did the germans put those barricades on the beaches for the d-day strikes? wouldn't it have been better to have left the beach with as little cover as possible for the allied troops landing?", "selftext": "[These are the barricades I'm talking about.](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vqb3g/eli5_why_did_the_germans_put_those_barricades_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cojz1fr", "cojz1hz", "cojz1xz", "cojz58y", "cok0c42", "cok2lae"], "score": [41, 5, 4, 14, 3, 12], "text": ["It prevented the Allies from landing tanks on the beach and advancing upon the gun positions.", "Pretty sure they were to prevent the rapid deployment of tanks.  ", "To keep tanks and other motorized vehicles from rolling off of the boats. They give you as much cover area as a 2x4", "One name for those is \"Czech hedgehogs\" (there may be others). They're obstacles and their purpose was to impede, stop, or damage tanks, landing craft or other watercraft/vehicles that were coming ashore. Their design makes it very difficult to go over them. If your enemy gets \"hung up\" on one, it makes them easy targets, and also prevents them from getting to you. [more info](_URL_0_)", "There were also many under water, or hidden by tides. \n\nThey came in [all shapes and sizes](_URL_0_)\n\n They deterred boats and large vehicles from using the beach easily, one of many layers of protection to delay large equipment (like bulldozers and tanks) and establishing a beachhead. Past these obstacles were walls, trenches, barbed wire, concrete pillboxes, machine gun nests, and a variety of huge artillery guns miles away, all with their crosshairs on the beaches. \n\nWhen the [Atlantic Wall](_URL_1_) was built, the Germans plan was to basically stall the enemy on the beaches until nearby planes, artillery, tanks and other reinforcements could help. When the Allies finally attacked on D-Day, they had lots of planning, the element of surprise, bombing from air and ships, and thousands of paratroopers dropped across the French countryside to cause trouble and prevent German reinforcements from helping.", "An important thing to note is that the landings occured at low tide.  IIRC, the germans expected them to land at high tide, because that would mean the troops had less open ground on the beach to cover once they got off the landing craft.  At high tide many of those obstacles would have been underwater and would have torn up the landing craft.  Some of them were also tipped with mines to straight up blow the boats up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://imgur.com/qLitw8W"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_hedgehog"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Wall#mediaviewer/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-297-1716-28,_Im_Westen,_Belgien-Frankreich,_Atlantikwall.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Wall"], []]}
{"q_id": "nbqko", "title": "so i'm in my mid 20's and don't understand why we americans are so scared of socialism? i read a lot back in the day about russia cuba etc and i get the whole not wanting a dictatorship but where does this whole fear/attitude cone from. what sustains it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nbqko/eli5_so_im_in_my_mid_20s_and_dont_understand_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c37v7gr", "c37vchg", "c37vldu", "c37wpg8", "c37x3wx", "c37x4f7", "c37xgu6", "c37xoxz", "c37xp88", "c37xp9n", "c37xpd2", "c37xs15", "c37xyoa", "c37y0o9", "c37y12x", "c37y225", "c37y560", "c37ygak", "c37yjzl", "c37ypqc", "c37yvei", "c37yywq", "c37zbtc", "c37zjr5", "c380djm", "c386vft", "c37v7gr", "c37vchg", "c37vldu", "c37wpg8", "c37x3wx", "c37x4f7", "c37xgu6", "c37xoxz", "c37xp88", "c37xp9n", "c37xpd2", "c37xs15", "c37xyoa", "c37y0o9", "c37y12x", "c37y225", "c37y560", "c37ygak", "c37yjzl", "c37ypqc", "c37yvei", "c37yywq", "c37zbtc", "c37zjr5", "c380djm", "c386vft"], "score": [3, 12, 13, 20, 2, 5, 115, 9, 34, 53, 11, 16, 5, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 12, 13, 20, 2, 5, 115, 9, 34, 53, 11, 16, 5, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["people believe socialism is \"foreign\" and \"un-american\". \n\nbeing afraid of socialism has to do often with the will to follow traditions of capitalism, but can also be an actual economic concern. ", "I have no idea why this is being downvoted.  This gets at the heart of American politics.", "The Communist Manifesto depicts the undoing of capitalism.  Now this doesn't seem like too big a problem when said like that but the people who controlled the United States freaked the fuck out!  If capitalism is going to be replaced by communism then there would be rebellion, war, and people would lose power.  And so a huge propaganda campaign started that painted the USSR (and by extension, Communism) as America's arch-enemy.  Events like The Bay of Pigs and the McCarthy Trials radicalized the divide, throwing in irrational fear and forever cementing leftism as un-American. ", "Remember that the same exact Red Scare-like counterpart was created in the Soviet Union, except the enemies were the Americans and the dirty word was capitalist or bourgeois. Both sides did it to their people to make them fear and hate each other, and thus be ready to ultimately to take arms and die to protect their corporate owners.\n\nIt's the never-ending cycle of finding a virtual enemy and blaming everything on it, it comes in all sorts of flavor. We should ask Sweden if socialism is the devil and many people seem to think.", "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an enemy of the USA for a long time. That fear of the word included in the name of the USSR still lingers to this day. ", "Just throwing this out there, but a recent podcast by Dan Carlin has some cool insight into your question:\n\n_URL_0_", "Fear-mongering and propaganda.", "Because America doesn't get communist influence from it's neighbors, unlike Europe, where countries are more geographically closer together. Here in Finland communism can't be a boogeyman when St. Petersburg is only a 2-hour drive away and you can go check it out for yourself. Europe has been in the crossroads between American capitalism and Russian socialism/communism and absorbed a lot of good ideas from both, which spawned the Scandinavian welfare state model over time. It's not a secret that communist influences do a lot of good too in terms of strengthening the worker's rights. \n\nNow, America doesn't have this luxury. The only communist state near it is puny little Cuba, while Russia and China are literally on the other side of the globe. America doesn't have a communist counterweight which has resulted in it developing into a fully capitalist society.", "I'll try to answer this the best I can.\n\nMany Americans really don't like taxes, they hate them so much they fought a war so they wouldn't have to pay for a previous war.  They also don't like being ordered what to do, so the first 10 Amendments to their Constitution severely limits how the government could order it's citizens around.\n\nSo because Americans don't like paying taxes and don't like being ordered around, they definitely do not like being ordered to pay more taxes to help someone else.  It's not that Americans aren't generous, many choose to give to numerous charities, but the fact that they're being ordered to give to someone else really rubs them the wrong way.", "The main argument most people use against socialism is that you're forced to give away your hard earned money to assist other people. Key word there being forced.\n\nI personally agree with socialism to an extent; I think we should provide food, clothing, shelter and health insurance to everyone who can't afford it. I don't agree with providing cash just the necessities.", "Thanks for asking this. Living outside the US this confuses me so much.", "I don't understand why people cant ever think that Socialism and Capitalism could be compatible. Honestly, combine the two and you get a Social Democracy that still has a mostly Capitalist economy no?", "Socialism is too ambiguous a term.  I think most Americans conceive socialism as synonymous with state welfarism.  Is this what you are referring to?   \n\nBroadly speaking, the means of accomplishing socialist goals usually involve the threat of force by a collective levied against the individual.  \n\n      ", "a) For better and worse, we're an individualistic society. We don't want to sacrifice to better the collective. More than that, we can't even think in those terms very well. b) We know enough history to know that Communism has a bad track record. We don't know enough theory to differentiate between the ideological backbone and the historical manifestation. c) Fear of change. America, historically, is such a melting pot that our common culture is driven by consumerism. Without it, a lot of people would be confused as to their roles, if not their values. d) Part of any political system's agenda is the propagation of that system. From elementary school on, we've been taught that American democracy is the city on the hill. Despite many disenfranchised and frustrated people, the current system is (at least structurally) stable.\n\nEdit: let's say \"we\" is 4 AM shorthand for Americans who haven't thought critically about their potential bias.", "Late to the party, but do you simply want to know why there is such a vitriolic hatred for socialism or why people dislike the notion of socialism on a philosophical level?", "The main problem that most see with socialism is its connection to communism, or rather its perceived connection. Many Americans do not know the difference.\nIn addition the idea goes beyond what typical American ideology is which rather then to help everyone is much more of help myself.\n\nThe second biggest contribution here is the fear that socialism leads to dictatorships. Typically the idea sprouts as \"everyone will help everyone while still being free\" but the problem arises when one person says, \"don't worry, I'll tell you what you need\". \nThat person often ends up a dictator. At least this is how Americans perceive it.\n\nMany do not see the socialism in this country already, such as public schools, police, fire, roads, post, ect. Because of that they can not see small steps towards a better tomorrow because again they perceive it as socialism which as stated above is greatly misunderstood by the people.\n\nThe final piece to this puzzle is the rising theocracy ideals in presidential candidates. The general idea for theocracy if it followed the morals they want us to believe that we should all follow wouldn't be so bad, but rarely if ever has a theocracy shown to be productive and produces and entirely different and often negative style of governing from socialism. ", "As I understand it (ie, only from a pop/news angle), it's that \"American dream\" that gets in the way of understanding/accepting things like socialism, socialist democracy, etc: \n\nThe overriding theory, even for poor laborers, is that somehow, at some time, everyone can earn their own living, and in this world view, it's a sin to share your hard earned wealth with less successful people. \n\nBut then, I suppose, the question becomes: Where *did* that American Dream world view come from?", "\u201cSocialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.\u201d\n\nAlso, there is a bit of depth to this fear.  I believe a lot of it stems from people who are irritated by the 'hippies who want handouts'.  People usually also hold the view that they don't want their government turning into a 'nanny state' whose operations cost taxpayers extra money for its inflated bureaucracy leading to overhead costs due to the legislations made to create social welfare programs to help people, after all, the government doesn't do things as efficiently as the private, capitalist industry (/s).  Lastly, [moral hazard](_URL_0_) is a concept held closely by a lot of the intellectual anti-socialist crowd.  Moral hazard is basically the idea that if you are insured from risk, you are more likely to act riskier.  If your nanny state government insures you from going completely bankrupt by providing you food stamps and welfare checks, you are less likely to find a job that would help you climb out of your debts sooner.\n\nWhile I believe some of these talking points have important information to pull away from it, it just simply is a terribly cynical view of humanity.  We don't live in a purely capitalist society right now, it operates based on 'socialist' regulations and we all drive on roads built from 'socialist' legislation.  A true capitalist society means that power is achieved by capital, ie resources.  And I don't see how this is any different from anarchy.  In a stateless soceity, the people with the most resources will have the most influence.\n\nMy biggest gripe against conservatives is the idea that social healthcare should 'never ever' be implemented because it's too expensive.  It's as if they are reading this out of some bible, some rule of life.  It's purely ideological.  A basic, accountable form of social healthcare, one that conducts voluntary tests on its population to help prevent epidemics, is certainly a necessity.  And I don't think leaving those types of responsibilities up to a deregulated/unregulated private industry who answers to shareholders first would be the best thing for society.  Hence, some form of socialism is necessary for, well, our social health.", "when did r/ELI5 turn into r/AskReddit?", "One reason is anyone can look at socialist institutions and see how awful they are to market alternatives.\n\nCompare public housing projects to private housing, or compare public schools to private schools, or private bodyguards and security firms to local police.\n\nVirtually anything government produces will cost more and be of lower quality than the market equivalent.\n\nFurthermore, with government control comes all the stupid political bullshit, like blue laws that prohibit selling alcohol on Sundays, or rules against file sharing that would come with government control of ISPs, for just two quick examples. ", "There are some complicated and subtle explanations for\nthe perpetuation of irrational fear, but the single biggest reason is \"THIS ISN'T WHAT I'M USED TO!!\"", "It's because we're a Christian nation and Jesus was very clear when he said that we should accumulate wealth and tell lazy poor people to get the fuck out of our way.", "When did this turn into r/circlejerk?  Keep this shit to r/politics man.  Seriously.", "I'll address the \"what sustains it\" question, because I think understanding the origin of the fear is as simple as them being our enemies. It's pretty much exactly what happens every time we have an enemy. Not only propaganda, but also the natural instincts of humans to defend their group. \n\nSo, my theory for why this fear is still sustained is that communism has turned out to be the most convenient 'other' for (especially right wing) politicians to use. One reason it is convenient is because by picking something radically left-wing as the enemy, you can associate our own left wing with it. Picking radical Islam as the enemy, for example, was less effective because it has helped contribute to a rise in atheism and weaken the base for the right wing. At the same time, it increased nationalism, so it wasn't all bad, but I feel like the most calculating and cynical right wing politicians (hypothetical, I'm not trying to build strawmen here) would secretly curse the fact that it wasn't FARC or some other communist faction who engineered the attacks. \n\nSo, basically, my theory is that the fear was sustained by politicians, whether it was purposeful or just because it was a natural enemy. ", "I don't know what the hell people think america is ?\n\nAmerica [spends a lot on social programs](_URL_0_)\n\nsocial security,welfare,Medicare, Medicaid are more than 50% of the Us budget. this is not counting the local and state expenses. Which go mostly towards education and other social programs.\n\nIt is not communism, which the state owns all means of capital, but it is a combination of socialism and capitalism!!", "Most Americans don't know the difference between Communism and socialism.  There was a *lot* of negative propaganda villifying Communism during the Cold War (like the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism but on an even larger scale) and the older generation still believes most of it.\n\nThey might try to come up with rationalizations  &  arguments against it but it really boils down to an instinctive conflict between \"Us\" and \"Them\".", "people believe socialism is \"foreign\" and \"un-american\". \n\nbeing afraid of socialism has to do often with the will to follow traditions of capitalism, but can also be an actual economic concern. ", "I have no idea why this is being downvoted.  This gets at the heart of American politics.", "The Communist Manifesto depicts the undoing of capitalism.  Now this doesn't seem like too big a problem when said like that but the people who controlled the United States freaked the fuck out!  If capitalism is going to be replaced by communism then there would be rebellion, war, and people would lose power.  And so a huge propaganda campaign started that painted the USSR (and by extension, Communism) as America's arch-enemy.  Events like The Bay of Pigs and the McCarthy Trials radicalized the divide, throwing in irrational fear and forever cementing leftism as un-American. ", "Remember that the same exact Red Scare-like counterpart was created in the Soviet Union, except the enemies were the Americans and the dirty word was capitalist or bourgeois. Both sides did it to their people to make them fear and hate each other, and thus be ready to ultimately to take arms and die to protect their corporate owners.\n\nIt's the never-ending cycle of finding a virtual enemy and blaming everything on it, it comes in all sorts of flavor. We should ask Sweden if socialism is the devil and many people seem to think.", "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an enemy of the USA for a long time. That fear of the word included in the name of the USSR still lingers to this day. ", "Just throwing this out there, but a recent podcast by Dan Carlin has some cool insight into your question:\n\n_URL_0_", "Fear-mongering and propaganda.", "Because America doesn't get communist influence from it's neighbors, unlike Europe, where countries are more geographically closer together. Here in Finland communism can't be a boogeyman when St. Petersburg is only a 2-hour drive away and you can go check it out for yourself. Europe has been in the crossroads between American capitalism and Russian socialism/communism and absorbed a lot of good ideas from both, which spawned the Scandinavian welfare state model over time. It's not a secret that communist influences do a lot of good too in terms of strengthening the worker's rights. \n\nNow, America doesn't have this luxury. The only communist state near it is puny little Cuba, while Russia and China are literally on the other side of the globe. America doesn't have a communist counterweight which has resulted in it developing into a fully capitalist society.", "I'll try to answer this the best I can.\n\nMany Americans really don't like taxes, they hate them so much they fought a war so they wouldn't have to pay for a previous war.  They also don't like being ordered what to do, so the first 10 Amendments to their Constitution severely limits how the government could order it's citizens around.\n\nSo because Americans don't like paying taxes and don't like being ordered around, they definitely do not like being ordered to pay more taxes to help someone else.  It's not that Americans aren't generous, many choose to give to numerous charities, but the fact that they're being ordered to give to someone else really rubs them the wrong way.", "The main argument most people use against socialism is that you're forced to give away your hard earned money to assist other people. Key word there being forced.\n\nI personally agree with socialism to an extent; I think we should provide food, clothing, shelter and health insurance to everyone who can't afford it. I don't agree with providing cash just the necessities.", "Thanks for asking this. Living outside the US this confuses me so much.", "I don't understand why people cant ever think that Socialism and Capitalism could be compatible. Honestly, combine the two and you get a Social Democracy that still has a mostly Capitalist economy no?", "Socialism is too ambiguous a term.  I think most Americans conceive socialism as synonymous with state welfarism.  Is this what you are referring to?   \n\nBroadly speaking, the means of accomplishing socialist goals usually involve the threat of force by a collective levied against the individual.  \n\n      ", "a) For better and worse, we're an individualistic society. We don't want to sacrifice to better the collective. More than that, we can't even think in those terms very well. b) We know enough history to know that Communism has a bad track record. We don't know enough theory to differentiate between the ideological backbone and the historical manifestation. c) Fear of change. America, historically, is such a melting pot that our common culture is driven by consumerism. Without it, a lot of people would be confused as to their roles, if not their values. d) Part of any political system's agenda is the propagation of that system. From elementary school on, we've been taught that American democracy is the city on the hill. Despite many disenfranchised and frustrated people, the current system is (at least structurally) stable.\n\nEdit: let's say \"we\" is 4 AM shorthand for Americans who haven't thought critically about their potential bias.", "Late to the party, but do you simply want to know why there is such a vitriolic hatred for socialism or why people dislike the notion of socialism on a philosophical level?", "The main problem that most see with socialism is its connection to communism, or rather its perceived connection. Many Americans do not know the difference.\nIn addition the idea goes beyond what typical American ideology is which rather then to help everyone is much more of help myself.\n\nThe second biggest contribution here is the fear that socialism leads to dictatorships. Typically the idea sprouts as \"everyone will help everyone while still being free\" but the problem arises when one person says, \"don't worry, I'll tell you what you need\". \nThat person often ends up a dictator. At least this is how Americans perceive it.\n\nMany do not see the socialism in this country already, such as public schools, police, fire, roads, post, ect. Because of that they can not see small steps towards a better tomorrow because again they perceive it as socialism which as stated above is greatly misunderstood by the people.\n\nThe final piece to this puzzle is the rising theocracy ideals in presidential candidates. The general idea for theocracy if it followed the morals they want us to believe that we should all follow wouldn't be so bad, but rarely if ever has a theocracy shown to be productive and produces and entirely different and often negative style of governing from socialism. ", "As I understand it (ie, only from a pop/news angle), it's that \"American dream\" that gets in the way of understanding/accepting things like socialism, socialist democracy, etc: \n\nThe overriding theory, even for poor laborers, is that somehow, at some time, everyone can earn their own living, and in this world view, it's a sin to share your hard earned wealth with less successful people. \n\nBut then, I suppose, the question becomes: Where *did* that American Dream world view come from?", "\u201cSocialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.\u201d\n\nAlso, there is a bit of depth to this fear.  I believe a lot of it stems from people who are irritated by the 'hippies who want handouts'.  People usually also hold the view that they don't want their government turning into a 'nanny state' whose operations cost taxpayers extra money for its inflated bureaucracy leading to overhead costs due to the legislations made to create social welfare programs to help people, after all, the government doesn't do things as efficiently as the private, capitalist industry (/s).  Lastly, [moral hazard](_URL_0_) is a concept held closely by a lot of the intellectual anti-socialist crowd.  Moral hazard is basically the idea that if you are insured from risk, you are more likely to act riskier.  If your nanny state government insures you from going completely bankrupt by providing you food stamps and welfare checks, you are less likely to find a job that would help you climb out of your debts sooner.\n\nWhile I believe some of these talking points have important information to pull away from it, it just simply is a terribly cynical view of humanity.  We don't live in a purely capitalist society right now, it operates based on 'socialist' regulations and we all drive on roads built from 'socialist' legislation.  A true capitalist society means that power is achieved by capital, ie resources.  And I don't see how this is any different from anarchy.  In a stateless soceity, the people with the most resources will have the most influence.\n\nMy biggest gripe against conservatives is the idea that social healthcare should 'never ever' be implemented because it's too expensive.  It's as if they are reading this out of some bible, some rule of life.  It's purely ideological.  A basic, accountable form of social healthcare, one that conducts voluntary tests on its population to help prevent epidemics, is certainly a necessity.  And I don't think leaving those types of responsibilities up to a deregulated/unregulated private industry who answers to shareholders first would be the best thing for society.  Hence, some form of socialism is necessary for, well, our social health.", "when did r/ELI5 turn into r/AskReddit?", "One reason is anyone can look at socialist institutions and see how awful they are to market alternatives.\n\nCompare public housing projects to private housing, or compare public schools to private schools, or private bodyguards and security firms to local police.\n\nVirtually anything government produces will cost more and be of lower quality than the market equivalent.\n\nFurthermore, with government control comes all the stupid political bullshit, like blue laws that prohibit selling alcohol on Sundays, or rules against file sharing that would come with government control of ISPs, for just two quick examples. ", "There are some complicated and subtle explanations for\nthe perpetuation of irrational fear, but the single biggest reason is \"THIS ISN'T WHAT I'M USED TO!!\"", "It's because we're a Christian nation and Jesus was very clear when he said that we should accumulate wealth and tell lazy poor people to get the fuck out of our way.", "When did this turn into r/circlejerk?  Keep this shit to r/politics man.  Seriously.", "I'll address the \"what sustains it\" question, because I think understanding the origin of the fear is as simple as them being our enemies. It's pretty much exactly what happens every time we have an enemy. Not only propaganda, but also the natural instincts of humans to defend their group. \n\nSo, my theory for why this fear is still sustained is that communism has turned out to be the most convenient 'other' for (especially right wing) politicians to use. One reason it is convenient is because by picking something radically left-wing as the enemy, you can associate our own left wing with it. Picking radical Islam as the enemy, for example, was less effective because it has helped contribute to a rise in atheism and weaken the base for the right wing. At the same time, it increased nationalism, so it wasn't all bad, but I feel like the most calculating and cynical right wing politicians (hypothetical, I'm not trying to build strawmen here) would secretly curse the fact that it wasn't FARC or some other communist faction who engineered the attacks. \n\nSo, basically, my theory is that the fear was sustained by politicians, whether it was purposeful or just because it was a natural enemy. ", "I don't know what the hell people think america is ?\n\nAmerica [spends a lot on social programs](_URL_0_)\n\nsocial security,welfare,Medicare, Medicaid are more than 50% of the Us budget. this is not counting the local and state expenses. Which go mostly towards education and other social programs.\n\nIt is not communism, which the state owns all means of capital, but it is a combination of socialism and capitalism!!", "Most Americans don't know the difference between Communism and socialism.  There was a *lot* of negative propaganda villifying Communism during the Cold War (like the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism but on an even larger scale) and the older generation still believes most of it.\n\nThey might try to come up with rationalizations  &  arguments against it but it really boils down to an instinctive conflict between \"Us\" and \"Them\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-40---%28BLITZ%29-Radical-Thoughts/Hoover-Palmer%20Raids-Red%20Scare"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-40---%28BLITZ%29-Radical-Thoughts/Hoover-Palmer%20Raids-Red%20Scare"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "6vhl30", "title": "why some people enjoy the smell of gasoline like a craving while others don't?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vhl30/eli5_why_some_people_enjoy_the_smell_of_gasoline/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm0d0wq", "dm0fu6y", "dm0mfm3", "dm1lsa9"], "score": [9, 86, 29, 2], "text": ["Also please Explain to me why I can barely smell gasoline.  I can put my nose up to a tank, inhale deeply and get barely a hint \n\nEdit: I don't actually do this.. Is just a thing I've noted before. I can't smell monster energy drink either", "Gasoline has an additive called benzene to help boosts its octane rating. Benzene is a chemical that has been known to have a sweet smell and can cause 'euphoria' if too much is inhaled. ", "Working on small gas engines as a kid has definitely left a romanticized impression of fuel smells. Those were fun times, and spilling a little gasoline on my jeans was common, mix that with a little burnt oil smell (since I revved my dirt bike engine too much anyway) that is a recipe for summer love. ", "I like the smell of gasoline because it reminds me of the smell of boats and lawnmowers and generally just summer "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "38wlfu", "title": "study of large viruses hint at 4th domain of life. what does this mean? what is a domain of life?", "selftext": "This concept baffles me", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38wlfu/eli5_study_of_large_viruses_hint_at_4th_domain_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cryeby9", "cryeck0", "cryeq9a"], "score": [11, 9, 5], "text": ["There are now 3 domains, eukarya, archaea and bacteria.\nEukarya covers plants and animals\nArchaea covers a group of unicellular microorganisms\nBacteria covers a large group of unicellular microorganisms that have no nucleus\n\nA fourth would have to be something that does not fit into those 3  &  I can't imagine what that would be.  Do you have a link to a story?", "In biology, organisms are classified in a specific pattern.  [Here's an example showing that pattern for a leopard.](_URL_0_)  Each species is grouped a genus, which is grouped in to a family, which is grouped into an order, which is grouped into a class, which is grouped into a phylum, which is grouped into a kingdom, which is grouped into a domain.  Confusing, isn't it?  \n\nWithout getting into the details of what each term means, each level of classification answers a general question about the species.  For example, is the species a plant or an animal?  If it's a plant, it is categorized in the plant kingdom.  If it's an animal, it is categorized in the animal kingdom.  As you move through the levels, the questions get more specific.\n\nA domain is the most general categorization on the list, even more general than asking whether an organism is a plant or an animal.  It groups every species into eukarya, bacteria, and archaea.  Eukarya includes every species you can see, and even a bunch of microscopic ones.  Just think of them as all plants an animals.  Bacteria refers to lots of single-cell organisms.  Archaea refers to a bunch of single-cell organisms different from bacteria.  Archaea live in weird environments, so they're not observed frequently, and the vast majority of people probably haven't heard of them.  \n\nSo, to make a long story short, the domains of life separate bacteria from non-bacteria (along with a 3rd category of little consequence).\n\nThe mention of large viruses as a 4th domain suggests that perhaps there's a group of virus-like organisms that are so different from anything we've seen before that they would count as their own, giant category of species.  ", "In biology, we categorize things by how similar they are to each other. If you drew out the categories it'd look like a big family tree. Each level in that tree has a name (for example, \"species\"). The top-level is called a \"domain\", of which there's generally considered 3: bacteria, archaea (like bacteria, but their DNA machinery works differently), and eukaryotes (things that have a nucleus in the cell).\n\nViruses don't fit into any of those and they aren't even considered \"alive\" by some biologist since they're much more like just DNA chunks in a protein wrapper. If a cell is a machine, the virus is a chunk of metal. Sure, you can use it for all sorts of stuff, even jam it into a running machine and have lots of metal bits come flying out, but that doesn't make the chunk of metal a \"machine\", does it?\n\nWell, very large viruses blur the line. They don't resemble bacteria, archae, or eukaryotes, but they have the complexity of a living thing, and even do some chemical stuff that you otherwise only see in living things. At some point, the chunk of metal becomes intricate enough, perhaps with some moving parts, that it looks more like a machine than a just a chunk of metal.\n\nIn this particular case, the virus has genes that don't resemble genes that have been seen elsewhere - hinting that they developed specifically (and independently) for the virus. If it's true that there are viruses that are carrying their own distinct genome and separately evolving it, well that's a good a reason as any to decide it's it's own separate living thing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/dc3b13d5-1132-4675-86d3-52566b8af9ef_taxonomy.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "63m51t", "title": "if wage gap exists between the sexes, why can't businesses hire more women as a way of saving money on salaries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63m51t/eli5if_wage_gap_exists_between_the_sexes_why_cant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfv5rzb", "dfv5tgz", "dfv5tlz", "dfv5xtm", "dfv6x7u", "dfv77c6"], "score": [5, 9, 7, 5, 9, 5], "text": ["First: supply and demand. If the demand for women increases, then that drives up competition and increases salaries.\n\nSecond: a wage gap exists between entry level employees and C-level employees, so why don't business replace all their C-level employees with entry level employees?", "They could seek out women, but it is illegal to pay someone more or less based solely on their sex, age, etc.  That said, the wage gap doesn't really exist in the way that it is often portrayed.  Generally speaking there is little to no wage gap for the same work in the same field/position.  The wage gap is simply taking all income of full time earners of men vs women in the country and comparing them.  \n\nThis \"gap\" of all overall earned income between the sexes doesn't take into account actual hours worked, education level, position, fields they elect to go into, etc.  Women as a whole tend to work less hours, in jobs that are less stressful/dangerous, have more flexibility with hours and choose to go into fields that are generally less paying than men.  This among many other similar factors is what contributes to the vast majority of the wage gap.\n\nThere's a lot of propaganda and misleading information in the news/media that try to make people believe otherwise, but it goes against all facts and data.  It's more of a politically correct argument than a sound/rational one.\n\nThe truth is that women are more likely to get a degree and in nearly all metropolitan areas of the US single, childless women earn more than men.  As these trends continue in favor of women, young men have begun to speak out and advancing the myth of the wage gap is slowly becoming less politically correct as the current generation of workers enter the job market and find that men are actually less \"privileged\" than women in many regards.  The \"wage gap\" is largely a product of life choices that women and families make for themselves and not something that can be explained squarely as a product of bias in the workplace.", "The wage gap isn't real. Not in that sense. The only way women make less is if you look at every profession of both sexes and average out incomes. The reason the gap comes up is that men tend to take higher paying jobs like doctors and construction workers. As where women tend to take jobs like nurses and teachers which pay much less. There's exceptions but that's really the only way it works out to a gap. ", "It is illegal to discriminate in pay between genders. The difference in wages between men and women comes down to differences in the types of jobs men and women take and differences in tenure.\n\nWomen are paid the same for the same work as men. Women do not tend to have the same sort of education, participate in the same industries, or stay in their positions for the same periods of time as men do on average.\n\nWhat this means for the employers is that even if they look for people to fill particular roles and are completely blind to gender, there will still be differences in the average pay of women vs men.", " > If wage gap exists between the sexes\n\nIt doesn't.  The \"70 cents to the dollar\" stat that people throw around doesn't take into account things like hours worked, years of experience, etc.  When you control for these things, the gap closes to 98 cents to the dollar.  The slight difference here is believed to be differences in how aggressive men and women are when negotiating salaries and raises.", "It's just a myth to get more Democrats outraged by inequality even when there isn't inequality. That's one of the ways the left tricks young sensitive people to vote for their party. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4anptd", "title": "why do people stress eat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4anptd/eli5_why_do_people_stress_eat/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d11wvo5", "d120sg9", "d124sy4"], "score": [35, 9, 9], "text": ["Eating, among other pleasureable things like having sex releases the hormone dopamine, also known as the pleasure hormone, that like you might have guessed makes you happy. The dopamine then relieves some of the stress, making you feel better by eating.", "Can some ELI5 why I don't eat when I'm stressed? Its been 4 days now and I haven't had a full meal either day. I feel hunger but no motivation to eat and when I force myself, one bite is enough to suppress my appetite for hours. Yeaterday day I had a cup of coffee in the morning and a cheese stick at night and that's basically been the routine unfortunately.", "I see everyone mentioning dopamine, but there are other factors as well. Stress increases cortisol production, and increased cortisol counteracts the activity of insulin while also increasing glycogen production. This will make the body think it needs to eat more to replenish the body, which is part of the link between stress and over-eating."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3t2yg4", "title": "How is it that Marijuana is considered forbidden in Islam, yet smoking hashish was such a big part of Ottoman and Turkish culture?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3t2yg4/how_is_it_that_marijuana_is_considered_forbidden/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx2t4gf", "cx3182p"], "score": [213, 18], "text": ["The short answer is that alcohol is specifically named as haram by the Qur'an, while hashish is not. \n\nThe long answer is that modern marijuana prohibition in the Muslim world is based on the simple interpretation that alcohol is haram because its mind-altering properties interfere with your relationship with Allah. Marijuana also has mind-altering properties, which can interfere with your relationship with Allah. Therefore, it is haram.\n\nInterpretations of the Qur'an have changed over the years. The Ottomans had not developed that interpretation at the time, most likely because hashish was used like coffee and tobacco as a parlor drug, not as a means of debauchery.", "Is it actually a big part of Turkish or Ottoman Culture?  I know it's in that movie *Midnight Express*, which is based on a true story, but if I recall correctly, the context of his drug use is as much hippie culture as Turkish culture.\n\nI've read more ethnographies of Turkey than most people and it has never come up in any.  I've lived in Turkey and extensively traveled in Turkey, and it's definitely not a big deal in contemporary Turkey, either.  For instance, look at this post on /r/turkey--\"[Why is using weed so harshly penalized in Turkey and so hard to find?](_URL_0_)\".  That I think gives you a sense of cannabis usage in Turkey.  There are certainly young people--especially secular kids in the big cities--who use it and what not, but as far as I can tell at far lowers rates that Europe or North America.\n\nHonestly, drinking rak\u0131 is a much bigger part of Turkish culture than hash is (and the vast majority of people in the country do not drink alcohol).  Do you have any source that it was particularly popular in Turkey?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/2bmmuc/why_is_using_weed_so_harshly_penalized_in_turkey/"]]}
{"q_id": "3lsmrp", "title": "how do we know how well other animals can see or smell?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lsmrp/eli5_how_do_we_know_how_well_other_animals_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv8zwed", "cv8zy9h", "cv90216", "cv9528z"], "score": [2, 87, 7, 8], "text": ["Well for one there is the physical properties of the animal. For example Owls big pupils do denote good night vision (human pupils dilate in darkness but not as much as an Owl's).\n\nHowever by far the main reason is how well they use the senses. You know a Dog has a good sense of smell because he finds things, they can easily track scents. A eagle as good vision because it hunts small rabbits from high altitudes where a human wouldn't even see them.\n\nIn other words the process goes: Physical attributes indicate a good sense, but further test of the animal is what confirms it.\nThis is why scientists speculate T-Rex couldn't see well, (tiny eye sockets for it's size) but can't confirm it today.", "Two main ways: \n\n1. Dissecting animals sensory organs to analyze their structure (For example, we can look at the structure of rods and cones in their eyes and theorize based on that).\n2. Running tests like playing high or low pitched sounds, putting them in mazes with food, etc.", "Well, for many animals we know how they live, which gives us many clues.\n\nFor example the European eel, a carnivorous fish that lives in many rivers and lakes in Europe (surprise!).\n\nWell, we know that it lives in muddy water mostly and while it also hunts, it acts more like the hyena or ant of the river, eating mostly already dead animals. \n\nFor it's style of living and habitat good eyes would be pointless. It's not going to see much in the muddy waters and its usual food has a strong smell to it. \n\nIt's logical to assume that eels don't have the best eyesight and an outstanding capability to smell just from knowing their \"lifestyle\".\n\nAdditionally, we can catch an eel and look at its eyes, see how many nerve-endings there are and see, that our assumption holds up, since there are way less of them in an eels eye than say in a pikes eye.\n\nPikes are carnivorous fish living mostly in clear waters and actively hunting other live fish, so we'd already assume that they have good eyes.", "* Train an animal that pressing a lever laced in X scent gets it a treat.\n* Give it two levers - one does nothing, one gives a treat. Lace the treat lever with a *tiny* amount of X scent.\n* Keep on reducing the amount until the animal can't tell the treat lever from the other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ytfbv", "title": "if silver is the best conductor of any metal, why do we most often use gold?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ytfbv/if_silver_is_the_best_conductor_of_any_metal_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfnl132", "cfnl1ru", "cfnqb30", "cfnrgy4"], "score": [63, 11, 3, 7], "text": ["Silver is not as resistant to corrosion and it \"tarnishes\" - the corroded material/tarnish are not as conductive.  Gold is remarkable in that it does not tarnish and does not corrode under most circumstances.", "Gold does not corrode like silver does.  So while Silver is better at conducting, gold is the better material when corrosion is a risk.", "We do not most often use gold.\n\nWe most often use copper to conduct electricity.\n\nSilver is better at (i.e. has less resistivity; resistance to conducting electricity) conducting electricity than any other elemental mineral, followed by copper. However, silver corrodes/tarnishes, so it's not a good material for things exposed to the air or oxygen in general.\n\nGold is used because it has a smaller temperature coefficient than copper; that is, when things get hotter, they resist more (become worse at conducting electricity). Copper has a coefficient of 0.003862, whilst gold has a coefficient of 0.0034, which is about 10% better. However, this difference is measured per degree from 20 degrees Celsius, when CPU's often run at 50 or more Celsius. Being 30 units of difference, that 10% difference goes a long way.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs a side note, check out graphene: it becomes a BETTER conductor at hotter temps.", "In order of good conductivity:\n\nSilver, Copper, Gold, Aluminum\n\n- Silver, as everyone has noted, is the best metallic conductor but corrodes readily.  And it's expensive.\n- Copper has only about 10% higher resistivity (1/conductivity) than Silver, but is far cheaper and does not corrode (or actually, corrodes far, far slower).  This is why it's the most common material for wiring.\n- Gold has about 50% higher resistivity than Silver and is very expensive, but does not tarnish or corrode, making it very valuable for spot applications like electronic contacts.\n- Aluminum is about 12% more resistive than Gold, does not corrode (or actually has a self-limiting surface corrosion), is very cheap and physically strong.  Aluminum is actually a good choice for wiring, if you carefully take into account its increased resistivity.\n- Graphene, as people have noticed, has the highest conductivity, but is still a not-ready-for-prime-time exotic material.\n\n\nQualifications:  Electronics Engineer"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity"], []]}
{"q_id": "3r3kj5", "title": "how exactly did the older generations have it easier than us?", "selftext": "I'm referring specifically to things like when we see reddit comments about baby-boomer or the last few generations having it economically easier than people in their 20s?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r3kj5/eli5_how_exactly_did_the_older_generations_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwkk0k0", "cwkl2zr", "cwkl47g", "cwklflx", "cwkliel", "cwkmak0", "cwkmk51", "cwku4nt", "cwkv8ud", "cwkvsad", "cwkw081", "cwkw3k7", "cwkw4zj", "cwkw6vi", "cwkw75h", "cwkxat2", "cwl9f4c", "cwl9g67", "cwl9pmj", "cwla0y6", "cwlayir", "cwlb0bt"], "score": [9, 4, 6, 18, 97, 2, 67, 6, 54, 3, 14, 58, 23, 6, 28, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 3], "text": ["This is an interesting question because it can be answered both subjectively and objectively.  \n\nObjectively, in almost every aspect, we have it better.  I mean aside from the sucky things that are happening now, such as great recession, and HIV/AIDS, which were not really problems for older generations, for the most part we do have it better.  Our life spans are longer, infectious disease transmission is down, malnutrition is going down, etc.  Obviously there are and will be exceptions to these things in certain places, but for the most part, life is comparably good.  \n\nSubjectively, we often see things as being better in the past, the so called \"rose-tinted glasses.\"  Don't entirely believe me and think it is a recent development that kids and teens are assholes, check out [this quote and it's author](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you really want to know some things that could be considered objectively worse today in America, politics have definitely become much much more polarized though.  Partisanship is incredibly high right now.", "The idea of it being better back then comes from having a 1 income home and still doing well as well as the job market being better and not needing a college degree.", "I think this is a misconception about our generation. We are spoiled and arrogant in a lot of ways and we talk like we're the most important generation ever, but I don't often hear anyone saying the old generations had it easier. We're very aware that having to deal with the depression, WWII, Korea, Nam, and many other things must have sucked way worse than anything we've been through. If you go back further, it sucked even worse. I can't even imagine getting drafted and forced to go kill people and probably die in WWII, or even worse Viet Nam. Iraq has been pretty messed up, but there was no draft and far less American deaths than previous wars. \n\nOne thought I often have about these generation discussions is how we are all quite the same. Human beings do not inately change from one generation to the next, we just respond to our environment. Whatever our strengths or flaws, the previous generation has made us what we are, so we should try to get along. When your grandson has stretched our ear lobes, wears all blacks, spraypaints the city, and won't get a job, it's a little bit your fault, so don't hate him too much. \n\nMy favorite quote about our generation,\n\n\"This youngest generation is the smartest and most capable generation to ever live... as long as the power is on.\"\n\n", "In the US young people have the problem of a changing nature of labor and the contract between worker and corporation. In past few decades wages have not increased with respect to ~interest rates~ inflation, in many ways they have decreased. This means we get a larger number in terms of dollars from the companies we work for, but we receive far less value for our work. So we have to work more. We work for smaller firms generally, shops and retail, tinier operations that make unionizing and collective bargaining less viable strategies for supporting our labor's value.\n\nA major reason for the existence of unions was to combat the spreading de-humanization of work, which simply put took satisfaction out of labor and alienated people. Additionally, they helped support labor in national politics. By and large people born in the past 20 years will never join or support a union, and won't be able to offer each other support for their livelihoods. This means goods are slightly cheaper, but labor is cheaper still, so we have to work more to stay solvent.\n\nGains in women's rights and expanded diversity have slightly offset the effects of wage stagnation, but the crisis of 2008 shows us that we won't get back to the state of the mid-90s labor. The minimum wages your parents worked for briefly as youths are the wages you will work for until you are middle-aged, when you briefly make more and then get fired and have to work for minimum wages again (on average).\n\nIn the past century our labor has become a substantial portion of our identities. If you write a story about someone, the thing they spend time doing to make money is probably the first thing you use to describe them. This is Jim, an accountant, or Mary, an engineer, or Sanjeet, a flight attendant, etc. Well, now your profession will last 15 months, on average. You will change jobs many times in your lifetime as a replaceable cog in a variety of machines that don't care about you.\n\nOh, and you won't be able to retire on the average person's wages. You'll get no pension, and once you are fired for being less productive than a computer the company you worked for will forget you ever existed. All your work will have your name scrubbed from it and your impact on the world will be indistinguishable from the person in the cubical next to yours (on average).\n\nedit: Thank you DrunkHacker.", "You just graduated high school?  There's a job at the auto plant, or the mill, or the shipyard for you.  In a few years you can buy a car, a house.  You can start a family in your house with your stable job with good benefits and a guaranteed retirement fund in your mid 20s, heck, maybe even by 21.  Your union is powerful.  Your union gives you the kind of leverage to make sure you don't get screwed over the way CEOs have leverage to get golden parachutes.  This is before there starts being backlash not against the exorbitant golden parachutes for the insulated, coddled executives, but against the leeches trying to put food on their tables asking for a raise to compensate for inflation and asking that their pensions not be ransacked or taken away.\n\nPeople with high school or bachelor degrees easily rise up through the ranks.  If they need extra training the company provides that training for them.", "We live in the information age.  Lots of us are completely overwhelmed by it.  And the many reasons already stated. ", "My perspective is that of a mortgage lender in the bay area.\n\nOld folks speak of graduating high school and spending 3-4 years to save up 20% for a down payment on a 3 bedroom house while renting a 2 bedroom apartment like it's no big deal.\n\nIn my market, the bay area, that doesn't happen without significant family help or a lucky IPO.\n\nThis basically means that I had to become an expert in the various low down payment options and tax write-off programs and so on and so forth just to be able to serve more than some small percent of my own generation. \n\nIn the past, according to my older loan officer peers, learning that stuff meant your 'target market' was poor uneducated people. Nope, my target market (and the reason I learn all that stuff) is college graduates in STEM.", "Competition with other countries is higher now, and also its much easier for companies to copy the models of other companies that have mastered paying as little as possible to employees.", "I think it was the stability of their lives.  Unless you royally screwed up (arrested, drugs, didn't try at all) or were pants on head stupid, you could reasonably expect life to turn out ok.  Maybe not great, probably not exciting, but you'd be fine.  Now, it's the reverse.  Unless you own the company, you're not in a stable position.  You can't really plan long term because you really don't know what will happen.  You could save for that house or car, just put down the payment, and lose your job that day, no warning.  And even getting those jobs requires a lot of excellent work history.  An average person isn't good enough most of the time.  They're only willing to take the straight A captain of the team, built robots in his bedroom guy, if that's not you, then you get a job in retail or restaurants because there's no place for you.  And if you're not constantly upgrading your skills, not a perfect worker, or even only working 60 hours a week, you're on the block for termination.", "One of the benefits that baby boomers enjoyed was a massive increase in the number of people with college degrees and increases in public education.That coupled plenty of jobs and new manufacturing meant there were plenty of jobs. Now college education is considered a minimum even for jobs that don't require it. And the number of jobs is decreasing due to automation and other efficiencies. ", "There were fewer choices and fewer connotations associated with those choices. You'd grow up in an area and work at the same factory your dad did. Or you'd go into a public profession(cop, garbage man, street cleaner) because you wanted to make your city better, and there wasn't necessarily the stigma attached, because not everyone went to college, so everyone was on a more level field. I think the choices people have now, coupled with stigmas associated with occupations, and growing inequality(rich people used to have the same things as poor people, just better, now rich people have options poor people have no idea even exist).", "I had a chat with my grandfather and father recently.\n\nMy grandparents' first house cost three times his annual wage (and mortgage payments were 1/8th his monthly pay).\n\nMy parents house cost five times my dad's wage and was about a quarter of his monthly wage.\n\nMy rent is 60% of my monthly paycheck and if I wanted to buy a one bedroom flat relatively near London, it would be about 10x my annual wage.\n\nAnyone looking to get on the property ladder now is absolutely fucked.", "Perspective on how the job market has changed:\n\nI have an older relative in his 70s that got a job straight out of high school working as a surveyor *and he didn't even apply to the job*. They literally found him, and offered him the job because they needed someone.\n\nHe says that he cant imagine trying to survive in the job market the way it is these days.\n\nBut its worth remembering that the way things are now isnt unique to the present day. If you look back at history before the 1940s, most people were just as financially insecure, and had as much trouble finding stable well-paying work as they are today. Its just that the Baby Boomers had the luck to live in times where demand for labour was reasonably high, and the economy had whole new sectors that had never existed before become major sources of employment and wealth.\n\ntldr; The baby boomers had it reaaaally good.", "100% paid pensions and healthcare. Affordable housing and cheaper college tuition. I feel like they've pilfered all the good stuff and I'm stuck paying out all my disposable income to these things. My pay used to be considered a good income (53k). Now it's just enough to get by. ", "For much of the postwar 20th century, if you were a young white man with at least a high-school education, you had to try *not* to get a job that would fund at least a lower-middle-class lifestyle. If you had a college degree in *anything*, even English or Art History, you were pretty much guaranteed a lifetime of desk jobs, each higher-paying and more powerful than the last, with The Firm, which would then take care of you through retirement with a pension. If you came into The Firm with a Bachelors, it might actually pay your time *and your tuition* for a Masters. When you went home at the end of the night, work was generally over - there was no email. Calling someone at home was a big deal and used mostly for emergencies. (This era is largely where the perception that the unemployed are just lazy comes from. There really was a time when you had to be lazy to be unemployed.)\n\nNowadays, you need to get into a good elementary school that will prepare you to work hard in middle school so you can take the right classes in high school to get into a good college in a handful of the \"right\" majors, and then maybe go to graduate school, to stand a *chance* of getting a good job if you're also a friendly/interesting person who interviews well. Outside a handful of labor markets, your health insurance and retirement plans will be token benefits (if they exist at all). You'll need to hit the streets, blast your resume around, write a ton of cover letters, and practice your interview game so you can change jobs every few years to increase your salary with your experience. Employers certainly aren't handing out meaningful raises just for showing up. Your bosses may expect you to answer your cell phone or respond to texts/emails promptly late into the night. \n\nFor blue-collar workers, much of this can be attributed to globalization and automation. For white-collar workers... as just one example, many corporations needed what was basically database functionality long before databases existed. A whole lot of middle-class lives were funded to replicate what I can now do for 15 minutes of setup and $5/month: Postgres on a virtual machine. It also turns out that people in low-cost-of-living countries are just as good at a lot of menial computer-operating tasks.\n\nFirms are also getting more and more efficient. It turns out that a lot of the time, you can lay off an entire layer of people who do nothing but have meetings with each other all day and the firm makes just as much money. You can have a \"corporate culture\" of \"passionate\" people who work 10 more hours a week for the same salary and hire 20% fewer of them. \n\nOn the other hand, if you're *not* a white man, life now is probably a great deal more manageable than it was back then.\n", "there is this, which i think explains a lot _URL_0_", "A high-school graduate could get a job and support a family on it.  Medical care was cheaper.\n\nIf you were smart, you could far more easily apply to an Ivy league college and get in without have to compete with all the homeschooled kids of Nigerian princes, Saudi oil barons, etc. from around the world.", "When we talk about that we're talking about the post war generations.  A few things happened in America that was completely unprecedented.  One, most the the industrialized world was in ruin except for the United States, this led to a large number of high paying private manufacturing jobs.  Two the United States vs. the Soviet Union made it necessary for large government expenditure and expansion, this also created jobs.  Three, women retreated from the work force after the war creating more demand for labor.  These three things made it extremely easy to find good paying work.  \n\nNow, lets look at housing.  Housing cost from post war until about 1975 rose, roughly, with inflation.  In the mid 70s the price of housing started to outpace inflation, this has accelerated so that a house in 1970 that would have cost 100k(adjusted for inflation) would have cost 200k in 1990, and today that exact same house would run half a million.  These are national numbers, there are certainly places in America where this isn't the case, but it's true in most places.  \n\nNext is education.  I'll keep this one easy.  In 1960 it cost roughly $9500 in inflation adjusted dollars to attend an ivy league school.  It now costs over $40,000.  That's quadrupling of tuition, the price of books and the aforementioned housing has also gone up significantly more.  \n\nWell, there's three factors.  There's more, but you get the jist of it. ", "Not really an answer to your question, but I think many countries (such as Thailand or Indonesia for example) offer the experience that the baby-boomers had. Less safety, lower standards of living, but more freedom, more opportunity and less pressure to perform.    ", "22 year old here. My mother, now an attorney, totaled her camaro while driving drunk the night after HS graduation. Cops didn't even ask if she was drinking. I got arrested, strip searched, and dressed like Andy Dufrane over a couple grams of weed..  ", "A high school diploma got you further with jobs back then than it does today. College wasn't as expected from kids back then as it is today. \n\nGlobal competition is tough, especially since American kids aren't keeping up with math or science as well as countries such as China or Singapore. Back in the day, you didn't have to worry about kids pulling ahead you who live 5000 miles away. Today, they compete with you. Why choose you, when employers can hire someone in India to do the same thing for much less?\n\nLess manual intensive jobs are available today. Companies don't need so much manual labor today, as they did 30 years ago. If they do need a labor intensive job to get done, it is sent east to East Asia for cheap labor. This is true for things like manufacturing and assembly. \n\nMore jobs are automated in general. You don't always need people to get the job done. You can get a computer to do the same thing. Why call up a travel agent when you can go to Priceline or Expedia? Self checkout lines?\n\nBasically what I'm saying is that there were more (good) employment opportunities back in the day. Being lazy today is worse than being lazy back then. You need to put in a lot more effort to live well today than our parents and grandparents had to. The work-life balance was also better, given that today you can still get work done with an internet connection from home.\n\n ", "There were plenty of jobs that didn't require more than a medium amount of physical strength and some determination, and you could earn enough to purchase a house and a car, plus support a wife and children.  In high school I had a friend/manager whose dad had a job like that, and he only had a 4th grade education.  These days you'll be lucky to find a fast food job that would hire you without a high school diploma, and the jobs that would let you afford a home require at least an associates degree (and a spouse/partner with their own income)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2015/11/02/top-income-declining-unions-usa-uk-oz-nz-flipchartrick-economicpolicy-politicalsift/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "sq0yy", "title": "Question about the distribution of human vision quality.", "selftext": "So I was wondering, are there any studies done on the distributions of prescriptions of people. I'm sure that there has to be, if we study trends in vision quality and stuff, but I just can't seem to find any results. I'm curious what average human eyesight is, and how varied it is. Does it end up being very bi-modal: either good or bad, associated with some genetic switch or something, or is it smooth throughout? \n\nAlso: How does this stack up for people from other places in the world, what do these curves look based on demographics essentially?\n\nAnd, I know there are a lot of various types of problems, and ways to parameterize vision, so I guess im curious how all of these evolve across the spectrum for people. \n\nI tried searching for all of this, but didn't really find any good results. Thanks for any help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sq0yy/question_about_the_distribution_of_human_vision/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4g153m", "c4g16gc", "c4gnwak"], "score": [2, 2, 2], "text": ["There's a journal called Opthalmic Epidemiology; you might be able to find something there.", "I found [this](_URL_0_) article (1974, but free to access) that did a survey of Egyptians' visual acuity. Page 250 has a table with distributions by acuity using a Snellen chart (they use the metric form of 20/20, which is 6/6).", "[Here](_URL_1_) is a relevant study on the heritability of myopia. There is most likely both a genetic component, as well as an environmental input to the development of refractive error, specifically myopia. \n\n  There are many population studies on the topic. [From this study](_URL_2_) \"Comparison of prevalence data between Asia and the West suggests substantially higher rates of myopia in industrialised regions of east Asia. It is tempting to propose a genetic basis for this observation. However, Saw and colleagues have also shown that greater reading exposure is associated with myopia in Singapore\". \n\n  I can't find much written, but it's well observed that [orthodox jewish populations](_URL_0_) show high incidence, and homogeneous myopia. This is something I've observed clinically. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1616205/"], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8254449", "http://jmg.bmj.com/content/37/3/227.full", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1772076/"]]}
{"q_id": "40qsjh", "title": "if a drunk 18 year old female has sex with a male under the age of legal consent (say 14), who would be charged with rape?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40qsjh/eli5_if_a_drunk_18_year_old_female_has_sex_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cywdcgf", "cywe4qo", "cyweke1", "cywgsdk", "cywgv73", "cywh1g8", "cywhn77", "cywhs22", "cywij8g", "cywijsy", "cywircd", "cywj2oq", "cywj82v", "cywj83j", "cywj8zs", "cywjxsd", "cywkdfd"], "score": [464, 215, 156, 33, 12, 4, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["The female obviously.  Being drunk doesn't absolve you from your actions.  She is committing statutory rape, the fact that she's drunk makes no difference except maybe in the plea process.", "Your question stems from a misunderstanding of what being too drunk to consent is. This is understandable because reddit firmly believes and will angrily defend the misunderstanding.\n\nYou aren't raping a person by having sex with a drunk girl. What's rape is when a girl has had so much booze that she doesn't understand what is happening, can't make decisions at all, and is basically passed out. This means she is physically unable to consent because she doesn't understand she is having sex and couldn't say yes or no if you asked.  \n\nPeople act like the law is that women can cry rape if they wake up and regret the beer goggles. This isn't the case. \n\nit's very clear when a person is too drunk to consent and more than that, long before you get to that point they are too drunk to have enjoyable sex, or for you to enjoy the sex (edit: More than you would with a sex doll). Most normal people wouldnt want to have sex wifh someone approaching that level. So really, if you aren't into having sex with immobile people the issue should never come up. \n\nSo the answer to your question is, it depends on how you are defining you terms. As is, the woman is sexually assaulting a minor. If you're saying she's so drunk as to be unable to consent, then obviously she can not possibly be actively trying to have sex with the kid and so the kid is obviously raping her.", "You couldn't possibly say without further context. \n\nYou're probably thinking about affirmative consent laws which come up daily around here. In a university following the affirmative consent standard it is the responsibility of the person initiating or escalating the act to ensure consent can be and is given. If the 18 year old could not or did not give consent and the 14 year old initiated / escalated then the 14 year old is responsible. In every other circumstance the 18 year old is responsible.   ", "A 16 year old was arrested for having a nude pic of himself on his phone, from when he was younger. Don't look for common sense. ", "All these answers are dumb. Obviously it's gonna depend whether she's the one that filed the charges, or whether charges are being filed against her for statutory. If she got raped, obviously she's not going to get a statutory rape charge. If she had sex with the minor while she was drunk, intentionally, especially if she instigated it, she's gonna get the statutory charge. There's plenty of 14 year old boys capable of overpowering older women, just use some common sense and you'll know what the result will be. This question doesn't even make sense in the first place considering being drunk has absolutely nothing to do with consent, only being too drunk to where you can't consent matters.", "Probably the male. What more could you expect?", "It would be statutory rape and the 18 year old would be charged, because a 14 year old is underage and therefore cannot legally give consent.", "I am to lazy to look it up right now but in Reno back in 2006 or 2007 this happened. The answer is both. Same goes for two underage kids sleeping with each other in some places.", "this differs from country to country, her in Norway we had a case where a 15 year old boy stole his fathers car and to have intercourse with a 21 year old woman. after that the boy charged the women, but the woman won because she had no reason to believe he was under the age of consent, and the boy got fined  ", "Having sex with a drunk person does not constitute rape. She would be charged with the rape of the boy.", "By UK law a women cannot rape, only men can commit rape. If a women was to have sex with someone who was not consenting it would be classed as sexual assault. However even though the term rape sounds more sinister they are both treated the same way in court.", "Check local state laws on statutory rape.  The woman is an 18 year old adult the 14 year old is a child under the legal age of consent.\n\nIn most states the woman has committed statutory rape  (even if the boy was dead keen at the time)", "Potentially both.\n\n14 year old intentionally raping an 18 year old is who is drunk to the point of being unable to consent is clealrly still rape.\n\nOn the other hand having sex with a 14 year old is statutory rape as a matter of law, regardless of intent.\n\nYeah, the law is pretty inconsistent.", "There's a Romeo and Juliet statute in Maryland where you can have sex with someone underage as long as they are within four years of your age. A 18 and 14, depending on their birthdays, can legally have sex in Maryland. ", "I don't think you can ELI5 this but i'll try. if you take the law literally both parties commit crimes and should be charged, as being drunk doesn't absolve you of guilt, sleeping with someone too drunk to consent is rape and sleeping with someone who's underage is also rape.\n\n\nHowever what's interesting, in reality with a drunk women over the age of consent and a sober young male under the age of consent i could see both facing legal issues. \n\nYet when you flip the scenario and you have a drunk male over the age of consent and a sober young female who's under the age of consent i can only see one outcome in our current judicial systems climate and overall in societies eyes.\n\nWould be interesting to hear a lawyers take on both scenarios, i believe age gap would rightly or wrongly play a massive part in the outcome.", "Here (Germany). Neither of them. There is an offence of taking advantage of the lack of maturity of 14 and 15 year-olds, but you have to be over 21 yourself to be guilty of that. \n\nAnd if you had sex with someone under the age of 13 you would be guilty of the child sexual abuse, not rape.\n\nI'm not sure if there's a law here about the ability to give consent when sufficiently drunk. ", "I wish non-lawyers wouldn't answer legal questions. The answer is that the 14 year old *may* be charged with rape, and the 18 year old may be charged with statutory rape.\n\nThere are some jurisdictions which are dubious of consent's being given if someone is under the influence of alcohol. Depending on how drunk the girl was, the 14 year old boy MAY be charged with rape if the girl was so drunk that she could not consent. \n\nStatutory rape is a strict liability offense, meaning that you don't have to know you're breaking the law or intend to break the law to be guilty of it. Having sex with someone under the age of consent is statutory rape (unless excluded by a caveat, like a Romeo clause). Assuming no Romeo clause, the 18 year old could definitely be charged with statutory rape.\n\nEDIT: This applies in the United States only, and no other country.\n\nNeither charge would probably stick, and both would likely be pleaded down, for practical reasons. But that's what would happen, so there you go. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "r3q7f", "title": "why does \"gay\" refer to male homosexuality to the exclusion of female homosexuality?  if it does not, what is the male equivalent of \"lesbian\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r3q7f/why_does_gay_refer_to_male_homosexuality_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c42nsyd", "c42nxo6", "c42nyhe", "c42o1cs", "c42oii0", "c42okqd", "c42onpy"], "score": [7, 12, 2, 9, 6, 10, 23], "text": ["Some people do use gay to mean both male and female same sex relationships. Others may use it differently because they just see them differently, like someone things two guys doing it is \"gross\" but two girls doing it is \"hot.\" I forget the source, but there was some quote somewhere (from a sitcom I think) where someone said \"Two girls doing it isn't gay, that's totally hot.\"", "The origins of the word \"gay\" [are a bit muddy at best](_URL_1_). I think what we're seeing right now is the English-speaking world trying to solidify the meaning of the word \"gay.\" Some people use it to mean \"homosexual\" in the general sense (to include both homosexual men *and* women), some people only use it to refer to homosexual men, and some people use it to include anyone who isn't heterosexual (including bisexuals and transsexuals). Likely over the next decade, \"gay\" will either fade out as new slang comes in, or it will slowly only come to have one meaning.\n\nI've offered this article up as source material before, and I'll do it again - if you look at [this page](_URL_0_) on Cracked, you'll see that there are many words today which are shifting meaning. For example, \"peruse\" originally meant \"to read very thoroughly.\" Today people use it more often to mean \"to skim/browse through.\" We are witnessing a word shift from one meaning to another meaning. It may stick, it may not. Depends on how much influence \"Grammar Nazis\" have when correcting people on this new useage.\n\n**TL;DR Language is weird and complicated.**", "It's basically a direct result of sexism. \n\nGay [historically referred to men](_URL_0_) (it was a perjorative term, first for young hobos attached to older ones, then for gays in prison). English has a habit of using male words to refer to everybody (e.g. mankind), so it got co-opted to refer to everyone. Lesbianism wasn't considered culturally important or noteworthy for a long time, so it took a long time to get its own word. \n", "I was always under the impression that gay could refer to either, while faggot was the male equivalent of lesbian. Obviously its seen as a slur now so the use has dropped off, but thats what it used to mean.", "\"Gay\" is NOT used exclusively for homosexual men, although men do use it more frequently than women.", "Typically the male form of a word is used when referring to groups of mixed gender.  We say \"policemen\" and \"actors\" and \"guys\".\n\nSo while \"actresses\" clearly refers to a group of only women, there is no equivalent word for a group of only men.\n\nThat is pretty much out the gay/lesbian thing works.  There isn't a non-pejorative word that refers exclusively to gay males.\n\nLanguage is messy that way.", "I was under the impression that \"gay\" could mean either, but suggests male, while \"lesbian\" always means female. If you want to be more specific, you could specify sex; ie, a gay male, or gay man."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.cracked.com/article_15664_9-words-that-dont-mean-what-you-think.html", "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay"], ["http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gay#Etymology_1"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5g59do", "title": "how does panic serve a function? it seems counter-productive to turn off logical function...", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5g59do/eli5_how_does_panic_serve_a_function_it_seems/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daplkjq", "daplm1i", "dapm075", "dapm66q", "dapxd32", "daq47f5", "daqdnse"], "score": [43, 11, 10, 4, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["When you panic you do one of several things. Freeze, Fight, or Run. If you are out in the woods, and you see a large predator and you freeze. You are less noticeable, less threatening if it does see you, and you aren't provoking it into chasing you by running, so other members of the herd that run get noticed, and chased down first.\nor you fight, and with the adrenaline you may buy yourself time to run, or for others to assist you, or you may even ward of the predator by being too tough for it to be worth it.\nOr you run, and the adrenaline makes you fast enough that you aren't caught(or faster than the slowest of the herd)\n\nI know when I'm hunting deer and it hasn't snowed, if they freeze and are far enough away I won't even notice them. They blend in so well that I typically just watch for movement because every dark bush looks like a deer from a distance to my eyes until I scope it out or see movement.\n\nFor people who freeze, and never unfreeze, evolutionary anomaly, they would get weeded out. If things go south they should turn to run or fight.\n\nEDIT: To add, in modern society it isn't very useful because you are typically freezing in situations when you need to perform some task or move out of the way of something, when historically you just need to not be noticed or run away.", "In some situations you don't have time to think about everything rationally and come to a well-reasoned decision. Stand around pondering how dangerous tigers have been on average over the past decade and you're kitty chow.\n\nPanic is basically the big red eject button. Running away, fighting or hiding are good options. Once you've done that, the panic will fade.\n\nUnfortunately this isn't helpful in today's world:\n\nSee snake - >  panic - >  run away - >  live happily ever after.\n\nSee boss - >  panic - >  run away - >  get fired, starve to death.", "Panic is *fast*.\n\nWhen you bypass much of your cognitive processing, you react much more quickly and extremely.  You simply react.  A bad choice made quickly can be better than a good choice made too late.", "There is an important distinction to make here. Different parts of your brain do and are responsible for different things. Some parts are much older than others.\n\nThe part relevant here is the limbic system. It's a very old part of the brain found all the way back to our reptilian ancestors (fucking old). The limbic system is responsible for our fight or flight response, but has little to no control on our cognitive abilities. In animals with no cognitive portions of the brain, this has no effect, but they still need to be able to respond to imminent threats. The system has remained fairly untouched through evolution due to its usefulness.\n\nThe cognizance necessary to perform better under duress has only recently been evolved. Panic is when the responses of the limbic system become so strong that they overwhelm the cognitive portions of the brain.", "Panic is when you stop thinking and act on instinct...and you can react much faster on instinct and muscle memory than stopping and thinking about the situation.\n\nBasically, a predator jumps out at you, you panic and run away. The simple truth is it doesn't matter *what* you're running away from, just that you're running away as fast as possible. \n\nIt's a fight or flight reaction: You either leg it or lash out.\n", "One way to look at it - bearing in mind that this is just something I read somewhere, so grain of salt time - is that panic might be an evolutionary advantage for a group of humans, if not for the individuals in the group.\n\nMost often people panic when they are faced with a new situation that they do not have a learned response for. If a group of people are all suddenly faced with an unknown and deadly threat, the way to increase the odds of some fraction surviving is to have everyone try a different strategy. Panic causes that to happen by inciting nearly random responses from each person in the group.\n\nThe survivors, if any, now have a new learned response to the situation which proved successful at least once.", "check out Daniel Kahneman. He discusses decision making thats been applied to the economical world but i think its also relevant to your question. Its all to do with the speed that we process information.\n\nSometimes, yes I completely agree with you, it is counter-intuative. We evolved these types of reactions for a different world though and sometimes when its transferred into modern society it does make things worse for us."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "76d1vo", "title": "Why did colonial Canada develop an attachment to hockey, compared to the widespread popularity of traditional British sports like cricket, rugby, and soccer in other British colonies?", "selftext": "I realized today that while other former British colonies like Australia and India still have widespread interest in traditional British sports like cricket, rugby, and soccer, Canada does not. Hockey seems to be the sport that has the most widespread interest, and it is not a British sport at all.\n\nWhy is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76d1vo/why_did_colonial_canada_develop_an_attachment_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwozcls", "doe66v9"], "score": [2, 9], "text": ["This is a very late reply to you, but I hope I can be of some help here. The distinction you are attempting to make here, if we're being honest, doesn't really exist. Canadians did enjoy rugby and cricket, but given that competition between Canadian teams and American teams is much easier to facilitate than between Canada and other British territories, those sports evolved in Canada (becoming football and baseball, respectively) simultaneous to their evolution in the US to facilitate competition across the border. Of note here is the fact that the first international cricket match was between the US and Canada... the players on that US team went on to be instrumental in the creation of baseball and teams playing by newly established American rules cropped up in Canada almost immediately. The league that would become the CFL was called the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union until the 1950s. \n\nSoccer, while now intimately associated with British culture, rose contemporaneously with hockey. The first FA Cup final to draw more 100,000 spectators was in 1901, around the same time that professional hockey became a reality in Quebec and Ontario. The decade between 1906 and 1917 would see the largest influx of British migrants to Canada that there would ever be... these would be people, even in the older generation, for whom soccer fandom was a recent phenomenon and they would be arriving to a country with it's own familiar-yet-unique sporting tradition. In the decades that followed, immigration from the UK to Canada would slow to a trickle at the expense of Australasia... which might go some way, along with the lack overwhelming American influence, toward explaining why popular culture in Australia and New Zealand is more \"British\" than Canada, the connections there are much more recent. \n\nWhile there was some mythologizing about hockey being solely Canadian, the invention of First Nations playing lacrosse on the ice, there is considerable reason to dispute the characterization of hockey as anything other than a traditional British sport. As the name suggests, it is mostly an adaptation of field hockey. Other aspects are taken from shinty, a Scottish game, and hurling, from Ireland. Shinty gives it's name to \"shinny\", a version of ball hockey played throughout Canada to this day. Bandy, another British game, may have also been an influence as is suggested below. If anything, one could argue the game's origins to be a reflection of the British colonial melting pot. \n ", "There is actually quite a bit that looks at the development of hockey in Canada, academically speaking. One theory that has been advocated is that it allowed a means for the middle- and upper-class to express their masculinity, as the modern era (at the time) had removed that outlet for them. While obviously this was something that could be expected of more than just Canada, and indeed was prominent in the UK and other regions (which has also been argued to be a factor in the rise of sports' popularity in this era), Canada had a slight twist: it was a \"frontier\" region, not a settled, civilized place like Europe or even the US.\n\nNow obviously this was not the place for the men living in Westmount in Montreal, where hockey really began to take off, but it was still a part of their cultural depiction as English Canadians (the sport was still heavily segregated among ethnic lines at the time; very English-based). That the region had rather cold winters with ample ice and skating available also contributed, which is why something like rugby (an equally aggressive, masculine sport, for lack of a better term), was not selected. It is also a factor in why hockey didn't really develop in the UK or colonies; there was winters in Britain of course, but it didn't have the coldness or length to allow the proper use of the ice (artificial ice not being widely used until the 1920s in Canada, for example; can't speak for other regions), and lacked the \"frontier\" legacy that Canadian settlers had (even if these \"settlers were living in the Ottawa Valley, a short distance from the national capital).\n\nSome reading on the subject is available in John Matthew Barlow's \"\u2018Scientific Aggression\u2019: Irishness, Manliness, Class, and Commercialization in the Shamrock Hockey Club of Montreal, 1894\u20131901\" and \"Brutal Butchery, Strenuous Spectacle: Hockey Violence, Manhood, and the 1907 Season\" by Stacy L. Lorenz and Geraint B. Osborne. Both I believe came out in separate journals (I know \"Brutal Butchery\" did, as it's a personal favourite article of mine), but they are also collected in *Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War* edited by John Chi-Kit Wong. Wong also wrote *Lords of the Rinks: The Emergence of the National Hockey League, 1875-1936*, the first part of which may shed some more detail on the subject (it certainly looks at the development of organised hockey in Canada in this era, but I can't say more as I don't have it on me). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3pauqe", "title": "Why were nightcaps used and when did the practice die out?", "selftext": " ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pauqe/why_were_nightcaps_used_and_when_did_the_practice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw4wiqc", "cw4xs71"], "score": [52, 38], "text": ["Are we talking about the clothing that goes on your head, or the drink served after dinner?", "A large part of it was just a lack of central heating in a lot of homes prior to the 20th century. Night caps are very effective for keeping warm, but not usually necessary these days. \n\nThere's more to it, though. A history teacher of mine once told me they served a secondary purpose. He claimed that oily hair products like pomade were very popular for a time in the 19th century and nightcaps were used to keep bed sheets cleaner. I followed up on it and according to *Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History* by Victoria Sherrow (p. 323) the explanation is essentially correct."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2zxsjo", "title": "if i have 'high blood pressure', why can't i just cut myself a little to reduce the pressure?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zxsjo/eli5_if_i_have_high_blood_pressure_why_cant_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpn9bu1", "cpnb0t5", "cpnbb0q", "cpnh6wq", "cpnhnyg", "cpnmz4w", "cpo6uj9"], "score": [98, 35, 23, 20, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["It is not the amount of volume.  It is the pressures inside your blood vessels...and therefore your organs.  Blood letting would not cure hypertension.  It might lower your blood pressure do to hypovolemia (loss of volume) for a period of time, but when your body recovers you will still have hypertension.  And those damaging pressures on your organs, kidneys and brain specifically.  ", "It'd kind of be like cutting the hose when someone has it bent so water can't go through easy.  ", "High blood pressure is bad because your blood vessels get narrower so you need a higher blood pressure to push the blood, with its oxygen, to the places its need to get to (organs/muscles).\n\nThe higher pressure is created by your heart having to work harder. Because it has to work harder all the time, unlike in exercise where it works hard and then gets to rest and recover, it becomes dilated and stops pumping properly.\n\nA bad heart = a bad situation.\n\nSay you let some blood out, all that means is your organs aren't getting the blood they need. So your heart will work even harder (more beats per minute) to make sure your organs are ok.", "Assuming you are a generally healthy person, you could lose about a third of your blood volume before your body would be unable to maintain pressures.  You would have to bleed yourself for 1-2 liters of blood.\n\nNeedless to say, this is not part of the standard treatment for hypertension.", "The pressure in your body has to be adequate to ensure perfusion of blood to your organs; that is to say, to ensure they receive enough blood to oxygenate everything sufficiently. The pressure in your body is monitored and controlled by a bunch of processes so that perfusion is maintained no matter what happens to you. One way this happens is by baroreceptors (\"baro\" = \"pressure\") in places like your carotid artery and your heart, which are able to tell how much the vessel is being stretched. Sudden change in blood pressure signals the baroreceptors, which signal the brain, which decides what to do to fix the perceived problem.\n\nWhen your pressure drops too low, as in the event of a hemorrhage / bleeding out (like when you cut yourself), your baroreceptors sense the lessened stretch and activate your sympathetic nervous system, which you might know as the \"fight or flight\" nervous system. This causes your blood vessels to constrict, which increases your blood pressure. (According to Poiseuille's Law, decreasing the radius of your blood vessels by half increases the pressure by a factor of 16, so it doesn't take a lot.)\n\nYou might ask why your blood pressure is so high in the first place if these mechanisms are supposed to keep it at a reasonable level. There are countless possible reasons, such as (1) your baroreceptors getting used to higher blood pressure and reaching a higher \"set-point\" that the brain doesn't think it has to compensate for, or (2) your blood vessels getting stiffer due to old age or plaques due to bad lifestyle habits, thus reducing the ability of them to stretch and activate the baroreceptors.\n\n", "Think of it as an old house with calcified pipes. It's not the flow of water (blood), but the pipes (veins, arteries, etc.) that can cause a catastrophic problem. And whatever's in the water could be contributing to the blockage in the pipes (your diet, lifestyle, genetics).", "Okay! So, hypertension also known as high blood pressure can be thought of like this.\n\nYou have this vast network of highways in your body: interstates (large vessels), highways (medium vessels), and city roads (small vessels). The cars on this highway system (red and white blood cells, platelets, various proteins, and so on) all ride this highway system in a vary harmonious way (not many asshats on the road). There is also space in between the cars (water) that has to be accounted for. For the most part, things stay well balanced, if there are potholes (a leaky vessel), it is repaired quickly with a quick patch (platelet plug), and slight fender benders are repaired without ever showing signs of a problem. \n\nHigh blood pressure can be seen as all the roads, highways, and interstates getting smaller, or the amount of space being taken up on the road is getting larger. You have to adjust one, or both, in order to fix the larger problem of the congested traffic.\n\nBy bleeding out you can reduce the number cars on the road and the space that was in between each car to help alleviate the strain on the highway system, but those cars are necessary to bring home all the bacon (oxygen) to all corners of the nation (the tissues of your body). Your body will just call for more taxes (increase in bone marrow production and collection of free water through the gut and kidney) to produce more cars and fix the space between each car and the problem starts all over again. You gotta either pass legislation to either expand the road systems (as one type of hypertensive pill = ACE inhibitor) or decrease the space between each car (another hypertensive pill = diuretic [causes you to pee more to get rid of some water]). Some times is a combination of both; a bipartisan bill so to speak.\n\nHope this helps.\n\nFun fact though: approximately 90% of the cases of hypertension have no known cause."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19moay", "title": "what is a tilde (~) used for, and why have people started to use it at the end of sentences, particularly teenagers?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19moay/eli5_what_is_a_tilde_used_for_and_why_have_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8pewhq", "c8pf6ql", "c8pfcul", "c8pfrmz", "c8phoa0", "c8pj9pj", "c8plfna", "c8po27t"], "score": [14, 98, 25, 60, 28, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["The tilde sign generally means 'about' or 'approximately', and when used at the end of a sentence it's intended to convey a cute warbling trail-off rather than an abrupt stop. Like the sort of sound an excited teenager would make.\n\n\"Oh my goooood~!\"", "It specifies your home directory.", "In Japanese culture, it makes a sentence \"cute\" just like \"?\" makes a question. I'm assuming anime has brought it over to English.", "I just use it as an estimation symbol. \n\n\"I had the busy shift but I made ~200 bucks in tips.\"", "Strictly speaking, this is a [swung dash](_URL_0_). A tilde is the similar-looking symbol \u02dc used as over certain letters in Spanish, Portuguese and other languages to show a change in the way the letter is pronounced.", "~ is often used to activate a developer's console in many mainstream video games (Source Engine.)\n\nI know this isn't what you were looking for, but the other explanations in this thread were pretty on par.", "Well, in Spanish, a\u00f1o means year. Ano means anus. Without a tilde, you'd be wishing someone a happy anus.", "This one might be a little bit ELI12...\n\nIt is used in many modern programming languages as an operator called \"NOT\" which performs bitwise negation. [More info here](_URL_0_), but I'll give a quick summary:\n\nYou can represent numbers in binary using ones and zeroes, as you probably know.  It's a lot like counting the way you're used to, which is called base 10 or Decimal, except, instead of getting all the way up to 9 before you have to use another number to show how big something is, you do it after counting just one.  Binary numbers are typically represented using the same number of numbers at all times, like this:\n\n| Binary Number | Decimal (Regular) Number |\n|:--------------|-------------------------:|\n| 0001 | 1 |\n| 0010 | 2 |\n| 0011 | 3 |\n| 0100 | 4 |\n\nWhen you perform a bitwise NOT, you turn all the zeroes into ones and vice versa, so using the table above:\n\n| Binary | Decimal | Binary NOT | Decimal NOT |\n|:------|:---------|----------:|-----------:|\n| 0001 | 1 | 1110 | 14 |\n| 0010 | 2 | 1101 | 13 |\n| 0011 | 3 | 1100 | 12 |\n| 0100 | 4 | 1011 | 11 |\n\nIf the way that binary numbers are counted doesn't make sense, here's a quick breakdown: when you count in decimal, for every \"column\" of numbers (going left) you multiply that number by a larger factor (or power) of 10; this is very natural for us, so we don't even know we're doing it.  Example:\n\n| 1 |,| 2 || 0 || 5 |\n|--|-|--|-|--|-|--|-|\n| 1 x 1,000 (10^3) |+| 2 x 100 (10^2) |+| 0 x 10 (10^1) |+| 5 x 1 (10^0) |\n| 1000 |+| 200 |+| 0 |+| 5 |\n||||||=|1,205|\n\nIn binary, we count the same way, but with bigger and bigger powers of 2, so\n\n| 1 || 1 || 0 || 1 |\n|--|-|--|-|--|-|--|-|\n| 1 x 8 (2^3) |+| 1 x 4 (2^2) |+| 0 x 2 (2^1) |+| 1 x 1 (2^0) |\n| 8 |+| 4 |+| 0 |+| 1 |\n||||||=|13|\n\nFor more information on how computers (usually, these days) treat binary numbers, including handling negatives and such, check our [this page on Two's Complement](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swung_dash#Swung_dash"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwise_NOT", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twos_complement"]]}
{"q_id": "5dh34s", "title": "why is california shutting down its last nuclear power plant, i thought nuclear power was a good thing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dh34s/eli5_why_is_california_shutting_down_its_last/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da4gbyj", "da4glq1", "da4ihz0", "da4ix7u", "da4jzwu", "da4py2p", "da4q7bw", "da4vbfq", "da4x2ur", "da51gwp", "da56vnb", "da5dqt0", "da5f040"], "score": [16, 179, 55, 4, 16, 16, 9, 8, 3, 10, 6, 5, 3], "text": ["Diablo Canyon (the plant in question) is close to the coast.  The Fukushima disaster raised concerns about that kind of site.  \n\nThe cost to build a new nuclear plant in litigious California makes it not as cost effective as solar there (the weather is very nice in CA).", "The big reason is that it's near a fault line.  No matter how safe you make it, it's hard to tell how much damage an earthquake could actually do.\n\nAnd despite how good it is, there's still a very negative perception of it just because of the word nuclear.  Too many people seem to think that it's akin to a nuclear weapon when they're not really similar at all.  ", "Currently operating nuclear power plants were build to an old design, based on the design for nuclear submarine propulsion. This design prioritized \"a lot of power in a small space\" over other things that would make it much safer in the event of a mistake or a natural disaster (earthquake, tsunami). So countries are gradually turning off some of these old plants out of fear of another Chernobyl, or another Fukushima.", "How are they going to make up for the lost power? ", "Earthquakes.  Our knowledge of seismic issues has significantly increased since these plants were built in the 60s, and they can't really stand up to a \"Bit One\" quake (or it's just too close to the margins). Plus, all power plants require upgrades to keep running; nuclear upgrades to the newer codes are very expensive, and power companies often see the cost of the upgrade is too high and just doesn't pencil out. \n\nIf the Federal Government stepped in and offered a ton of money to build new generation nuclear plants at the proper seismic standards, CA would take it. But they aren't, because it is real expensive and Republicans don't want to send billions into California. ", "Quite honestly, to me it really sucks because all the practical generation will now be natural gas which will, of course add smog.  \"renewable\" are only a tiny percentage of the energy mix and try turning a light on at night with solar or when the wind isn't blowing.  The backbone will always be petroleum based, until we run out that is, then all bets are off (I'm going with Road Warrior).", "Economical reasons. Nuclear power isnt really profitable anymore. The plants are extremly expensive, the maintenance is high due to security concerns, the fuel is costly and needs a lot of processing and the waste has no real solution. Solar power is simply cheaper. Coal and gas are cheaper aswell", "Politics and anti-nuclear environmental groups. Economics aren't helping either.\n\nDespite people saying earthquakes, the reality is Diablo Canyon is the most seismically protected plant in the country by far, and has a full time earthquake engineering staff evaluating fault lines and making plant improvements when necessary.", "I've read that plants using Thorium would be much safer and cheaper than those using Plutonium. Does anyone know if that's true? ", "Another factor that has not been brought up here, but was mentioned on the NPR story about the closure, is that the plant was providing too high of a base level of energy into the local grid to make use of the energy being provided by renewables. They claimed that the energy from renewable sources was actually being wasted because the supply exceeded demand.", "Environmentalists don't realize that Diablo Canyon is going to be replaced with natural gas.  It would cost over $80 billion and I don't even know how many acres of land to build enough solar to replace the lost generation and thats ignoring solars lack of reliability. ", "I know in Illinois a lot of the nuclear plants are shutting down because they are economically uncompetitive now. With how cheap natural gas is, if no one wants to buy your more expensive electricity then there's no reason to stay open. ", "In the 40's-60's the world had a can-do attitude and as soon as they could do a thing, they did it. So, when they figured out how to make fission power plants, they made them; nevermind that they required active cooling to prevent meltdown. The time between man splitting the atom and utility scale power plants it not a long time at all. These plants maybe weren't the best designs and maybe not safe at all.\n\nFast forward to Chernobyl and fissile energy got a big black eye and basically all development and education related to fissile energy production stopped. There was a pretty large knowledge loss as people educated and experienced in the design of nuclear power plants grew old while no new plants/people were brought in. After Chernobyl, they tried to make existing plants safer. The outcome was a lot like old airports post 9/11. A mess, but more or less secure.\n\nUnfortunately, this reputation built up by old designs for being unsafe is preventing the world from moving forward with perfectly safe newer designs. Somehow anti-nuclear has gotten momentum with environmentalists that don't seem to realize that it isn't renewables vs nuclear but coal vs nuclear. By being anti-nuclear, they are pro coal. There are currently new reactor designs that could safely burn the waste from old reactors for decades and decades and designs that could burn fresh fuel much more safely. The problem is, they can't build the new reactors because no one wants a new reactor built anywhere near them (despite coal plants releasing more radiation). Also, over the top safety regulations for older plant designs are stifling new design. Imagine if every car on the road needed a guy with a flag to walk in front of it, that was a real regulation for early cars and the same level of nonsense exists for nuclear energy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1n2xqe", "title": "how do horoscopes and signs of the zodiac seem to work? even though it seems unrealistic and fake, why does my personality match up very well to the description of my astrology sign?", "selftext": "I feel as though the entire notion of horoscopes and stuff is very unscientific and far fetched, so how is it that many people really fit the personality that is described in the traits and characteristics of individual zodiac signs?  \n\nedit: i should have left out \"horoscopes\" in the title. i know that horoscopes are very vague. the horoscopes for my sign never match up to what's actually happening in my life. but the countless in depth personality descriptions are always spot on.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n2xqe/eli5how_do_horoscopes_and_signs_of_the_zodiac/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccex7d6", "ccexbzb", "ccexgom", "cceyz1o", "cceza2p", "ccf7fvf"], "score": [26, 7, 7, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They're much more vague than you think. The brain naturally works in your own circumstances to make it seem reasonable because that's what you're expecting to find.\n\nTry reading horoscopes without looking at the sign it belongs to tomorrow, or try reading horoscopes from different publications on the same day for the same sign, you'll notice what's up quickly.", "It's mostly confirmation bias.  The descriptions and predictions given in astrology are chosen to be just specific enough to get you to assign some part of yourself to the prediction (e.g. \"you are caring\" could remind you \"oh, yeah!  I cared for that kitten!\"), while still being vague enough to apply to anyone.  In essence, it plays on the human mind being bad at making objective judgements about inherently qualitative qualities.  People remember the correct predictions better than the incorrect predictions, so shooting in the dark works for the prediction makers. \n\nThere could be *a little* bit of truth to personality variations based on the time of the year when someone is born, though.  For example, it was found that due to the way schools are structured--grouping children by year, effectively rounding their age by up to 6 months--some birth months wind up being more successful than others.  Children who are older than the average of their peers are more developed and tend to do better in both sports and academics, which can give them a statistically significantly different personality, on average.  This effect is smaller than the confirmation bias and doesn't give any credibility to daily predictions.", "To address your edit:\n\nThe \"personality descriptions\" you write about often *sound* specific and detailed, but they're not.\n\nThere have been some excellent debunking studies done where a *seemingly* specific piece of writing (talking about recent challenges, childhood relationships, parental influences, fears and dreams, etc) actually apply to well over 80% of the population. Things like: \"you act confidently, but sometimes you're troubled by insecurities about the direction of your life\" or \"you are very proud of your achievements, but you often undervalue them and second-guess your actions\" or \"you enjoy the company of others, but often you need a few minutes by yourself to unwind and relax\".\n\nSo even though you *think* it's unique and intimate, it's actually not. It applies to 8 out of every 10 people.", "Because the descriptions are vague enough, that everyone's personality will generally match all of them.", "They're Barnum statements, which are vague but specific-sounding statements. They apply to most people, but sound specific to an individual, and coupled with confirmation bias, makes it seem like it is tailored for you.\nFor more information, Derren Brown had a great discussion with Richard Dawkins about this, talking about Barnum statements, psychics, mediums etc.", "As for your edit, there's a thing called \"confirmation bias\".\n\nYou have 12 signs of the zodiac, each with a distinct personality archetype that goes with them, though personality descriptions can be vaguer or more precise, depending on the writer.\n\nThere are hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone. The US census currently puts the estimate at 316 million people. Assuming that every astrology sign covers an equal number of people, that's about 26.3 million people per sign.\n\nLet's assume, also, that there are 1,000 different types of personality combinations that are noticeably distinct from each other. For example, someone who is extroverted, enjoys music, doesn't like the outdoors, etc etc etc. This would result in 26,300 people who all share the same zodiac sign and the same personality combination.\n\nBecause of how zodiac signs were designed, they are **guaranteed** to match at least one personality combination, though are probably designed to cover as many combinations as possible. You are one of those 26,300 people.\n\nNow, you may be thinking, \"But what are the chances of my personality combination turning out to be the exact right one for my zodiac sign?\" This is the wrong way to think of the situation. Keep in mind that for this argument there are, guaranteed, 26,300 people in each zodiac sign that match the personality description. The most likely result isn't that the sign has some special significance to that it matches you so well. What's more likely is that your personality combination came about independently, and when you came across the zodiac signs, you decided that zodiacs must be special and meaningful because it describes you SO WELL!\n\nThere are, however, other factors that also make zodiac signs seem more effective than they actually are. There are many people who, after they discover a zodiac sign matching them so well, start to obsess over that sign. And, whether they're doing it intentionally or not, they start to adjust their behavior to match that sign. Simple because \"I'm a Scorpio, and Scorpios act like X\".\n\nAnother factor is that zodiacs may not be quite as spot-on as you think. The next time you're looking at a personality description, keep track of how many different points it's making. There are likely some points in there that don't *quite* match you, or don't match you at all, but you ignore those or \"round them up\" to true, because the rest of the description matches you *so well*. So, in the end, even though the description is only 70% accurate at best, or sometimes even 50% accurate, you mentally label the test as a \"success\", because you want to believe that this piece of paper is special and meaningful to you.\n\nMany many MANY people do the same thing in the last paragraph. Some do it to a greater extent than others. Some even ignore personality descriptions that are completely wrong, and only focus on the ones that are accurate.\n\nThat is \"confirmation bias\". It's the same mindset that convinces gamblers that they were \"destined\" to win that last big hand, even though it's a statistical certainty that people will win gambling games many, many times every day. They ignore the times when their hunches are proven wrong, and only focus on when they're proven right."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1je2w4", "title": "what is being transgender, and how can there be more than two genders?", "selftext": "I'm confused, do transgenders consider themselves to be another gender? I also saw people on tumblr saying how stupid it is to think there are only two genders. Thanks for the help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1je2w4/eli5_what_is_being_transgender_and_how_can_there/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbdqqwh", "cbdrbqc", "cbdsenw"], "score": [9, 11, 13], "text": ["the trans- prefix means across. So these people are living *across* genders.\n\nThe other part of your question is a social issue so I'm not going to address it (because my opinions differ from what the majority think.)", "Transgender people feel they were born the wrong sex, i.e. they feel they are a boy when they have female genitalia, and a girl if they have male genitalia. They identify with the opposite sex, are (most of the time) attracted to their own sex, and wish they had the physical body of the opposite sex. They are more comfortable dressing and behaving as the gender they feel they are. A lot of psychological issues are prevalent in transgender people because they feel they are trapped in the wrong body. I'm not an expert, so I can't answer the second half of your question about there being more than two genders. ", "I'll attempt to provide some info on the second point. There's a difference between biological sex and gender identity. Your biological sex is assigned at birth based on biological characteristics, male or female. This is in most cases a binary, except in the case of individuals born with ambiguous sexual characteristics, often termed \"intersex\" individuals because their biological sex falls somewhere between simple \"male\" or \"female\".\n\n\"Gender\" is socially constructed, meaning that we as societies and individuals determine what it means to be male or female. Behavior, appearance, dress, speech, all are examples of gender norms. Gender roles change over time and space, meaning that what it means to be a woman or a man means different things in different places. \n\nPeople referring to there being more than 2 genders may be in reference to the idea that gender is fluid, or is kind of like a spectrum. People express their gender identity in shades- for instance, some women wear dresses, some women wear pants, some men are masculine, some men are less masculine- there are thousands of ways to express gender. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fqqdsk", "title": "If you\u2019re a carrier of Coronavirus with no symptoms, does it stay in your system for only 2 weeks or longer/shorter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fqqdsk/if_youre_a_carrier_of_coronavirus_with_no/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fls09ci", "flsrujz"], "score": [17, 2], "text": ["There is insufficient data on this.  \nTo find out, you would have to find symptom free patients who test negative, keep testing them until they are positive, and then daily again until the test is negative once more. So a daily test over an unknown period of time on hundreds of perfectly healthy people (because you don't know ahead of time who will develop symptoms or not).  \nHowever, health systems around the world are currently in crisis mode and what testing capacity there is, is currently used to find infected people and interrupt the chain of infection, or to confirm severe cases to identify the treatment pathway.", "In order to be confirmed a carrier, you have to test positive with no-symptoms. At this point, your already suspected as infected and you should already be self-isolated at home.  \nOnce they get the positive test result, your officially  quarantined(home or elsewhere), and they have to test you again and it has to come back as negative before they let you out. 2 weeks is just the average.   \nAt least, that's the way it's working here.   \nHow often they test you to find this negative comes down to your local medical care coverage. If your local area is already stretched for care, they might not bother testing you again until 2 weeks is up. If your area has sufficient coverage, they might be testing you every day.  \nI think that it's been less then 2 weeks here since the first official Positives, and some of them are already testing as negative/recovered."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5pi0r6", "title": "Didn't the fact that Romans viewed Germanic tribes as barbarians bother Hitler?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5pi0r6/didnt_the_fact_that_romans_viewed_germanic_tribes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcrggb3"], "score": [71], "text": ["The Nazis took a lot of their information about Germanic tribes from a short book by the Roman political historian Tacitus called *Germania*. In this book, Tacitus uses the people of Germania as a foil to expose the decadent moral failings of the Roman people. The barbarians live simple lives, he writes, but they're virtuous; they have no cities, but instead they have good family values; every man does his duty and fights in the army; etc. Tacitus is making an argument something like the 'noble savage' interpretation of indigenous peoples that was pushed in the Enlightenment: they're not civilized, but they have preserved the basic natural virtues that the corruption of civilized life has stripped away from us. Nazis read Tacitus as a literal ethnographic account (rather than the polemical, political tract it actually is), and they found in its pages seeming proof that their ancestors had been simple and barbaric, but also as a consequence virtuous, manly, and above the corruption of the Mediterranean peoples. That was a good thing that made their 'race' strong.\n\nBy the 1930s, there was more generally a strong trend among many historians of the late Roman empire that emphasized the degeneracy of the Roman people. The empire was corrupt, soft, full of sexual and other moral vices, and had lost the strength and virtue that made it great during the Republic. The Germanic tribes over-ran the empire because they, being simple barbarians, had escaped these degenerating influences. This, again, makes barbarism out to be a virtue rather than a limitation, and ties in well with the Nazi party's emphasis on rooting out 'degenerate' forms for culture (such as music written by Jews or people of color).\n\nKrebs, *A Most Dangerous Book* is a great starting place if you want an approachable but thoughtful discussion of how descriptions of Germanic barbarians in books like Tacitus' *Germania* were re-worked into a Nazi foundation myth.\n\n(I should add that few historians today hold with any of these interpretations of the Roman empire or the barbarians. It is now generally agreed that the Romans and barbarians shared many cultural elements, that the late empire was vibrant and innovative rather than degenerate, and the breakup of the western empire into 'barbarian' kingdoms had much more to do with politics than with cultural differences between barbarians and Romans. The old Nazi ideas of pure barbarians overthrowing degenerate Romans simply don't hold up in the face of the evidence that survives.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5eysob", "title": "Did people in China resort to cannibalism during the reign of Mao?", "selftext": "I've stumbled upon a [question on History Stackexchange](_URL_2_), I quote:\n\n > I have often heard and read this, but I wonder if credible sources can support these claims. I even heard stories of merchants selling human flesh and children under 12 sold to be eaten. I read about this in \"comprendre le pouvoir\" by Noam Chomsky and in _URL_0_; there's a letter in which Albert Fish talks about a friend of him who went to China and developed a taste for human flesh because merchants were selling it everywhere.\n\n...that got me curious. The most upvoted and accepted answer over there is yes, but it's based on the impressive historical sources like The Guardian or _URL_1_. I guess the quality of this subreddit have spoiled me, but I choose to interpret that as no answer at all. There's another \"yes\" answer based on somewhat more reliable source \"Mao,The Unknown Story\" by Jon Halliday but still being no historian I cannot verify if what Halliday says is history or just sensationalism.\n\nSo the question is, did it happen, and how common/significant was it? I mean cannibalism still happens in developed countries in our day because there is always that one sick psycho, so I'd assume it could have happened in Mao times as well, or any other times for that matter. But was it more common than that, due the famine?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5eysob/did_people_in_china_resort_to_cannibalism_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dagfsc8", "daggowu"], "score": [65, 54], "text": ["While the bulk of my knowledge lies in Chinese literature rather than history, I can provide some insight (although not the concrete answer you're looking for).\n\nLu Xun's Diary of a Madman is one of the most influential texts in communist China after the little red book. The premise is that a man begins to see the words \"eat people\" between the lines of Confucian texts. It was one of the main works criticizing the old culture, fueling its fall and eventually the Communist revolution. Revolutionaries of all stripes were profoundly influenced by Lu Xun, and it was essentially required reading in the early days of Communist China.\n\nMany in Mao's China saw the parallels, and Lu Xun was used as a disguised critique of the CCP to the point that this foundational work was eventually banned.\n\nThe point is, that while cannibalism may have occurred, it is likely overblown due to the symbolic significance of that particular act in revolutionary China, as any critic could use it as a semi-coded shorthand for a degenerate society.", "Short answer: Somewhere between 20 and 43 million people died in China during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.  Did, at some point, people cannibalize?  **Absolutely yes.  It is well documented.** \n\nTwo sources on cannibalism in Modern China are the classic, but potentially overdramatized *Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China* by Yi Zheng, and Donald S. Sutton's academic paper *\" Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968\"*, published in 1995.  Note that Sutton uses Zheng's accounts as a prominent source in his paper as well.\n\n**The Statistics**\n\nIn his book, Zheng (who, in 1968, is observing the Guangxi province as a Red Guard stationed in Wuxuan County) lists that in Wuxuan County itself, \"one hundred and several tens\" were victims to cannibalism.  The official government number is 64.\n\nIn Guangxi Province as a whole, Zheng estimates that 100,000 people ate human flesh in Guangxi in the early summer of 1968 with a total victim count of 1,200; however, Sutton contests this figure as arbitrarily high.  Zheng goes into gruesome detail (as qtd. in Sutton 1995 from Zheng 1993: 96):\n\n >  Fifty-six had their heart and liver cut out; 18 were completely consumed (down to the soles of their feet), 13 had their genitals eaten, one was decapitated after being eaten, and 7 were actually cut up while they were still alive.\n\nZheng includes a list detailing the precise locations in Wuxuan County of the location of the attacks, which Sutton includes in his paper as a map (I can PM anyone the PDF if interested).\n\nFor example (copying from Sutton's table of victims):\n\nDate | Place | Victims | Type | Methods | Parts Eaten | How Disposed |\n---|---|----|----|----|----|----\nMay 4 | Tongwan | 2 Tans | Struggled | Shotgun | All flesh | Distributed\nJune 18 | Wuxuan | Wu | Struggled | Beaten | Heart, liver, thigh | School Banquets\nJuly 10 | Mashan | Diao | Fugitive | Shot | Heart, liver | Hot pot by Militia\nJuly 17 | Sanli | 2 Liaos, 2 Zhongs | Struggled | Clubbed | All flesh | Eaten by 20-30 at Brigade HQ\n\nPretty gruesome, eh?\n\n\n\n**The Cannibals**\n\nIt is interesting to note that both Zheng and Sutton describe the Wuxuan cannibalism as not an act of desperation due to starvation or famine; in fact, essentially all of the cases were perpetrated as acts of political vengeance.  \n\nAs Guangxi province and Wuxuan especially objectively one of the most brutal sites of Cultural Revolution infighting, the rival Party leaders encouraged their supporters and local intelligentsia (everyone from fiery Red Guard youth to old women to schololteachers), over a six week period, to attack political enemies and consume them.  \n\nThe killing of political rivals through cannibalism was seen as the ultimate punishment: it combined all aspects of archaic Chinese punishment (which were brought back in full during the Cultural Revolution): the victims were denied the filial obligation to ancestors to keep the physical body in one piece; the victims were paraded about like the comical satire of bad behavior; the victims, guilty of high treason, were ridiculed and eventually reduced to simple pieces of flesh and meat. \n\nA particularly succinct example (taken from Sutton):\n\n  > A variant was the parade of body parts. Thus, after the\n military defeat of the Small Faction, Zhou Weian, its captured leader, was\n executed and his head and legs taken first to Luxin village as a sacrificial\n offering at the memorial meeting for two of the Big Faction members and then\n to the county seat for theatrical use in a cruel catechism with his pregnant\n widow (Are these your husband's head and legs? Was he a bad person? Is this\n your husband's thigh bone?)\n\nPerhaps Sutton puts it best: \"The popular sense of justice required that punishment fit the crime and that no punishment was severe enough for an old feud...Cannibalism was an extension of the same idea.  To chop up, cook, and masticate was still more complete way of offending bodily integrity, depriving the enemy of humanity by reducing him to the status of a comestible.\"\n\nOh, by the way, eventually the Cultural Revolution ended and the new reformist government took power after the ousting of the Gang of Four.  The cannibals were punished by anything from fourteen years in prison to expulsion from the Communist Party.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["tuersenserie.org", "RFA.org", "http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/33909/did-people-in-china-resort-to-cannibalism-during-the-reign-of-mao"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2xw1bq", "title": "how to appreciate abstract modern art.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xw1bq/eli5_how_to_appreciate_abstract_modern_art/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp3x5w9", "cp3yebe", "cp3yl8a", "cp3z66o", "cp41btu", "cp41wv0", "cp42han", "cp42n6v", "cp44vby", "cp45x4v", "cp46uet", "cp47z8n", "cp48fwi", "cp493v2", "cp4hysk", "cp4sh67"], "score": [2, 5, 785, 9, 17, 3, 6, 3, 6, 6, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Usually there is some kind of written guide or a guide in personal instructing you. Afterwards you exchange thoughts.\n\nIf there isn't that kind of guidance, you just try to get a grasp on how that piece of art touches you or what you feel about it.\n\nIf you are really open to doing this you will be able to. \n\nSome works also need some background information which you should get to know beforehand.", "How much do you know about the history of art? Today's abstract art is a reaction upon a reaction etc.  Try to appreciate some Mondriaan or Picasso first to provide some context. ", "For this explanation I'll stick with painting, though it applies to art in general. There's two main things you look at when viewing a painting. It's \"form\" and its \"content.\" Form describes the physical stuff about a painting: color, size, what type of paint, thickness of paint, type of canvas, type of brush strokes, and so on. Content describes what the painting is depicting: a house, a person, a group of people, a particular event, a collection of objects, whatever. \n\nWe'll look at two paintings, one \"normal\" painting and then an abstract one. First up is [Leutze's painting of Washington crossing the Deleware.](_URL_0_) What are its formal qualities? Well, it's really big, 21 feet long. It's painted in oil paint using brush strokes that aren't really visible unless you're right up close. The colors are natural and a little muted. It's a horizontal rectangle. It's probably very heavy. And I assume it's made out of wood and canvas. Other than the size, there's not much going on as far as form goes. But as far as content is concerned, well... I'll just link you to the [wikipedia article.](_URL_2_) There's a whole story being told in the piece. There's men in boats, there's a great general, there's an icy river and terrified horses. There's content out the wazoo. **This is the point of most \"normal\" painting**:to depict something, and do it in such a way that the viewer isn't really worried about the how it's painted or the formal elements. It's like when you watch TV, you don't think about all the transistors and LEDs that make the thing function, you just watch your show.\n\nNow on to the abstract piece, [Jackson Pollok's Autumn Rhythm No. 30.](_URL_1_) Where \"normal\" painting is all about content, abstract painting is all about form. This painting is 17 feet long. The paint is thick and applied with a crazy dripping, splattering technique. The canvas is left bare in many places; you can see what its made out of. As far as content goes, there is literally none. The entire point of this painting is the form, how the paint is applied to the canvas. In the absence of any kind of content the viewer is left to simply react to the painting however they'd like. There are no politics in Autumn Rhythm, no story, no reclining nudes, no faces--no content. Going back to the TV metephor: It'd be like if somebody broke your TV down into it's individual components and spread them out on the floor. It's no longer about what it's displaying, it's about what makes the TV work, and what it's made of.\n\nWhy is abstract art important? Because it's progressive. Since the beginning of civilization most, if not all art was representational. Cavemen painted pictures of mammoth hunts and fertility goddesses on their cave walls, and up until very recently all that anyone in history could really do was paint that hunt a little more realistically. In the twentieth century (arguably a little bit earlier) artists deliberately moved away from representational art and simply tried to capture their feeling of a time and a place. This acceptance of emotion by itself, not attached to any concrete meaning is the essence of the abstract, and reflects a growth in the consciousness of humanity as a species. We're no longer just goofballs staring at the TV, watching whatever is on. We've taken it apart and now we're learning about electricity and transistors and LEDs and wires and the specifics of what makes the whole thing work.\n\nSo to answer your question: you should appreciate abstract art because of it's formal qualities. Look at the brush strokes. Look at the colors. Look at the size and shape of the work. Ask yourself why the artist made the decisions they made. Think about the feeling the artist was trying to communicate. Think about your own feelings while you look at an abstract piece of work. Is it uplifting? Depressing?Energizing? Chaotic? Orderly? And you should appreciate abstract art because of what it means as a milestone in the grand endevor of human expression. I should add that little reproductions of these works on your computer screen don't compare to the seeing the real deal. **Go out and see art.**\n\nedit: formatting", "Meekel1 did a great job of characterizing the value of form and the distancing from content in art. Part of the reason for this shift (nowhere close to all of it, but a significant part) was the advent of photography. With the invention of photography, many artists began to feel threatened in their old form, the \"invisible\" kind of form in which an artist attempts to convey reality as closely as possible. Now photography could lay claim to greater reality than any artist could (theoretically) hope to achieve, not only because it could depict reality more accurately than any technical skill could muster, but also because photography was a natural, scientific, physical process of recording an image; a photograph could claim objective reality where every painting was necessarily subjective. So artists began to look for ways in which they could address reality in ways that photography never could - emotional exaggeration of color, shape, and content. So we have this gradual shift away from objectively realistic content (Expressionism and Impressionism), then away from realistic content at all (surrealism), and eventually away from content all together (abstract art). In truly abstract art, the only things that could be argued as content in any form are emotion and, sometimes, historical/ temporal/ personal context. Realistically, you can appreciate any art piece any way you want. Anyone could look at a Pollock painting and decide that it's a reflection on materialism, or the Cold War. There may not be any evidence or argument for such an interpretation, but appreciation is entirely personal and requires no justification. Or you can appreciate it as one might appreciate cloud or star-gazing: looking for familiar shapes, just for the fun of it. Personally, I've looked at modern art pieces to vent emotions during stressful times in my life, and there are a few pieces that, to mean, are about a past relationship I had. Obviously, the artist had no intention to comment on my personal relationships, and no one else would make that same interpretation, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating them as such, and I find a lot of reward appreciating those pieces as I do. What everyone can look to appreciate are the formal elements of the piece - application of paint, balance of the colors and canvas space, and think about the intention behind every stroke of paint. What I like most about abstract art is that there isn't any specific way you need to appreciate it. Unlike more classical art forms, you are in no way limited by specific content of the piece, there is not necessarily a subject tying you down as to what you are supposed to think about or feel. Perhaps as a result of that, many people don't find it easy to appreciate abstract art, which is perfectly understandable. Even among those who do appreciate it, many people don't care for pieces that plenty of others consider brilliant. Modern art has become increasingly subjective, and abstract art is a pretty extreme example of that.", "I'm a fairly recent convert to abstract and modern art after years of loving Pre-raphaelite stuff. Here's the easy, non-academic way into appreciating it. \n\n1. I started wanting to buy art for my home, but our home is super modern and minimalist. I didn't want too much traditional art especially with clear subjects, like a person or a horse because I thought I'd just get sick of it or immune to it's effect. Abstract art, however, could just create an atmosphere in the room. For example a dark, moody rothko would create a certain feel in a room that's really different to a really energetic Kandinsky. So, I'd think of the atmosphere I wanted to make in the room and find prints to fit that. It started giving me a real appreciation for how subtle an influence totally abstract colours and shapes can have on your mood and therefore what different colours and shapes suggest to you! Suddenly a whole world of understanding and appreciation opened up. Then you look at sculpture by someone like Barbara Hepworth and the smooth, body-like shapes carved in wood and stone are not only impressive in terms of craft, they start getting your imagination going and give (me anyway) a sense of calm, clarity, naturalness and they're pleasant objects to be around. \n\n2. When you go to a gallery to view some modern art, it's best to know a little about the exhibition. Has the exhibition got a certain theme? Or is it for a particular artist? Know a little about them beforehand and it will help although it's not essential. Then take in one piece at a time. The first thing I usually consider is the atmosphere the piece is creating in the room (sometimes i get nothing and that's fine... that could suggest to you it's a bad piece of art if it communicates nothing or maybe just doesn't resonate). Then from getting a sense of the mood or atmosphere you can sometimes see things in the work without trying. When you read the card next to the piece, you might have guessed the artist's intention or you might have come up with your own ideas. \n\nEither way, start with the mood/feel of the piece, then look a little longer to see what ideas spring to mind about what it could be. A lot of abstract art is not just a story being told to you, it's about getting your own creative thinking going and making lots of connections in your head. It might seem academic, but if you start from the point of feeling/mood, then it can be a purely creative/enjoyable experience without having to know any facts. \n\nHope this helps! ", "You reminded me of a movie I saw in school that kinda [answers](_URL_0_) your question.\n\nps. don't mind the racial bigotry. ", "Oh man, not a lot of 5-year-old level answers. I like some modern art, and I put it to what I call the [Archer test, of \"Is this neat?\"](_URL_0_)\n\nIf it's neat it's neat, and I like it. If it's progressive and loaded with symbolism and a reductive expression of the form but it's not neat, it's crap. The great thing about art is that it's all made up. Like what you like, people can explain, but don't let them sway your opinion.\n\nFor reference, the piece that got me into modern art: _URL_1_", "No kid could make those shapes!  Only God can make these shapes!", "I've seen a lot of modern art, including abstract art, so I'll give you the scoop.\n\nDoes it look cool to you? Good, appreciate it.\n\nDoes it look sloppy, lazy, or just boring? Good, don't appreciate it.\n\nYou don't have to appreciate art that doesn't appeal to you, and if more people took that stance, modern abstract art would probably be in a better state than it is now.\n\nGo to the rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, look at some of the best examples of dutch golden age art and realism, then go to the NY Moma and be appalled by some of the crap that ends up on its walls.\n\nI've seen good abstract art, but a big part of why it was good was because it was interesting to look at, and most modern art just fails to do that for me, and I don't feel a need to appreciate it. \n", "You don't need to understand art history, or technique. \n\nJust ask yourself \"Do I enjoy looking at it?\".", "I like abstract art because it's a non-committal way to add color to a room. It can be background and a focal point at the same time. it depends on your focus.", "As a musician specializing in contemporary classical music, I want to approach this question as it relates to modern (art) music, such as atonal music like [Xenakis' String Quartets](_URL_0_) or even more out there compositions like [Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet](_URL_1_) which requires each performer to be in a separate helicopter, the sounds of the blades contributing to the bizarre music played by the live performers. In each case the notes played resemble nothing like music people normally here. There is no tonality, or a definite pitch around which the piece will naturally settle, there will rarely be any musical lines that sound like commonly heard genres such as jazz or classic rock, etc, and apart from minimalism have little to no repetition.\n\nOften when trying to explain this music to non-musicians, the focus is on technical aspects of the composition. But I find that even when someone will concede that it is clear there is a lot of craftsmanship in these pieces, it's still with a bitter disgust for having said anything good about music that doesn't *feel* good emotionally. \n\nFor me, the emotional appeal of weird new classical music is that nothing is a clich\u00e9. Whereas in a ballad, I know that the music is building towards a resolution, can feel that harmonic motion, can sense the typical resistance in how quickly the cadence is played, and even if I have an emotional reaction to this, it feels like I'm being told how to feel about it, because millions of songs have used the same techniques to achieve the same type of sentimentality. This is not true when the very techniques used are radically different. I often find myself, when I listen to a piece I've never heard, feeling new things that I've never felt before, music or no. Or sometimes I'll hear a piece that seems to perfectly convey a *very specific* memory I have. In either case, the music feels fresh, unique, and genuine. And sometimes even if I can't feel that, the mere energy of a vigorous piece, or the still ethereal soothing of a mellow one, will be engaging merely because I'm connecting on a basic level to very visceral level of very raw feeling.\n\nIt helps to put aside preconceptions in this case. Many times people like music because it feels comfortable and familiar, not because it is necessarily \"good,\" compared to something else. This is why genres will share 95% of musical characteristics (think simple chord progressions, tonal and conjunct melodies, and common time meters on pop music). If you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone enough to find new feelings and new experiences in music, then the weird stuff becomes a secret gem.\n", "You know, the best advice I can give you is this: Don't worry about what you're supposed to like. Abstract art is meant to give you more of an emotional idea or an impression.\n\nUsually. You might have to read up on it a bit. For example, there's one abstract work that's just a canvas painted blue. But that was one of the first blue paints that weren't made from incredibly expensive minerals or other such things, and so seeing a bright blue paint - before then an expensive luxury - used for such a simple thing, almost wasting it - was in itself enough to tell a story. That artwork's entire context is now lost to a modern viewer. \n\nBut, seriously, don't worry too much about it. Just look at a lot of abstract art. Some you'll be completely bored by. A few, you might decide \"actually, I quite like that.\" \n\nBut, if you can find someone who really loves a piece of abstract art? Ask them about it. Hearing someone explain why they like a particular piece will help you understand it far more than any, well, abstract talk about all abstract art. ", "After reading many of the comments in this thread i would say don't bother trying. If you like art and are interested in it you'll appreciate it.\n\nOtherwise, think of it like video games.  There's millions of games out there, some you think are amazing, some you think suck. But I could argue any game at all is \"not fun\" and \"dumb\" and you can't really prove me wrong. You can try to tell me say \"Geometry Wars\" is amazing because it's got a throwback style and takes gaming down to a core level, endless replay value, etc. And i can just say it's dumb and there's too many colors and i can't tell what's going on and how can you argue with that? Unless I have some kind of interest in video games as a whole you can't really convince me why I should appreciate any specific part of it.\n\nSame with art. If you don't care about Art as a whole, the history, development, styles, form and function, techniques, etc., then there is no way anyone can convince why you should appreciate anything based on those factors. So maybe you like it purely on a visual level or maybe it speaks to you, but if you don't \"appreciate\" it, then you aren't interested in all those i just mentioned, so just don't worry about it and don't try to appreciate it.\n\nAnd hey, personally, I bet those 5 yr old child scribbles look awesome. ", "Abstract modern art is like instrumental music, since instrumental music *is* abstract art.\n\nListen to classical music. What does it imitate or portray? Are they the sounds of birds, waterfalls, horses, waves? You hear all the melodies and harmonies of Mozart and Beethoven, but do you \"get it\"? Do you know what they represent, what's the meaning of them? Or do you just enjoy the music and the direct feelings it evokes? Instrumental music pretty much is abstract art. Instrumental music just is abstract audio art, whereas said Pollock is abstract visual art.\n\nThere are certain themes, rules, underlying principles in music. Abstract modern art often tries to seek out and play with stuff like that for our vision. It is probably because as a species we are primarily visual, it is immensely more difficult and complex system to search and find and play what different abstract visual things convey and how we perceive them. Our hearing is much more \"simple\" system so aesthetically pleasing abstract audio art and rules for it is much easier to do. And like studying classical musical theory and history opens new levels of classical music to you, so does studying art and its history open new levels in abstract art. So you just have to dwell into it.", "This reminds me of an article about why Japanese people listen to music in English. The author said that he enjoyed the music, rhythm, and melodies, even though he didn't need any lyrics/meaning to hold on to.\n\nSimilarly, with abstract art, the pieces don't need to be about anything specific, and it doesn't matter if \"a four year old could do it.\" If you can enjoy melodies and rhythms without lyrics, you can enjoy shapes, colors, forms, atmospheres, and art pieces without meaning."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851.jpg", "http://www.theslideprojector.com/images/1950s/pollock/autumnrhythm.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbyOz1yJgYs"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vq1kXLTtII", "http://imgur.com/pKH3PrS"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_iyJyy7S5U", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ykQFrL0X74"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5z1buy", "title": "why are most mexican/latin foods spicy?", "selftext": "My mom just asked me this question, which sounded like a no-brainer at first (Latin America has a lot of peppers and spices), but it seems as though everything they eat involves chili powder or something similar, such as fruit and candy. Is there any real reason why, or am I just ignorant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z1buy/eli5_why_are_most_mexicanlatin_foods_spicy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["deuhjou", "deuhybo", "deukird", "deumhh4", "deuoomp", "deuutkj"], "score": [7, 17, 2, 5, 7, 2], "text": ["It's because all of their other food options are very bland, it's the same way with other largely agrarian societies (such as in India). Where as meat based societies (such as Western Europe) focus on meat, breads, and cheeses. ", "Not all latin food is spicy. I'm Argentinian and I can't think of spicy local food. This doesn't mean that there's not a trend in latin cooking, but it may be due to what you mentioned about availability. If you're American, then your experience may be biased by the latin food which is sold in the USA: Tex-Mex food is terribly spicy, more so than Mexican food in my experience.", "Part of it is also that commercially-produced food (in the US, for example) is prepared with the idea of selling it to as many people as possible.  Make it bland, and people can add seasoning or spice to their particular taste.  Make it too spicy, and you've shrunk your customer base.", "Taking a stab at this. My dad grew up in rural mexico, came over when he was 13, and all his life has eaten peppers. He raised me on spicy food and I think most savory food needs to be spicy unless it's already bringing a lot of bold flavors to the plate. Eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns? Eh. Add some tobasco, and boom, delicious. At this point for me it's almost like another flavor category and a lot of food just feels like it's missing something without it, like how some foods feel like they need some acidity or something salty or smoky/bitter to balance them out. \n\nAlso, it's definitely not all of Latin America that does spicy food. Peppers grow well in the desert climates of Mexico which might have something to do with their heavy usage there", "_URL_0_\n\nReasons why it happens: Antimicrobial properties that aid in food safety in hot climates prior to refrigeration, local food culture, and to keep food from becoming boring.\n\nReasons that are deemed false: Spices provide macronutrients, evaporative cooling from sweat, and disguising the taste and smell of spoiled foods.\n\nI've also heard that it aids in digestion when the body is warm, which might be included under the antimicrobial thing.\n\n", "One thing everyone is missing is that chile peppers are native to southern Mexico.  Once they were cultivated, they spread throughout much of Central/South America and Mexico."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861184/"], []]}
{"q_id": "8knb9o", "title": "Why do all gas giants in our solar system have rings but none of the inner planets with rocky cores? Is this a phenomenon of how our solar system was formed or is it indicative of all gas giants in the universe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8knb9o/why_do_all_gas_giants_in_our_solar_system_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dz90wpd", "dzc6362"], "score": [23, 2], "text": ["Earth has small particles that orbit it, every planet does.\n\n\nGas giants just spin faster, causing their equator to bulge, that concentrates the particles to orbit on one plane.\n\n\nFurthermore larger planets usually have more and larger moons, once they get too close the gravity causes them to break up and much of what remains is added to the ~~moon.~~ rings", "It does seem to be *easier* for larger planets to have rings. A big reason why is the fact that giant planets' larger gravity means they have more things orbiting them. And the more things you have orbiting a planet, the more likely one of those things will produce/become a ring. For example, Saturn's E ring is made of material ejected by Enceladus' geysers. And several more of Saturn's moons act as 'shepherds' keeping the rings in tidy orbits, making it harder for the rings to get disrupted/dissipated. And in a few billion years, Neptune's moon Triton will get too close to Neptune, and get ripped apart by tidal forces, giving Neptune a massive new ring.\n\nHowever, it's worth pointing out that Mars' moon Phobos will get torn about by Mars' tidal forces in about 40 million years. Which is nothing in the grand time scales of the Solar system - and the resulting rings around Mars should last for almost 100 million years. So we've only *just* missed out on seeing Mars with rings. And, of course, Earth used to have a ring system, after the massive impact that threw the vast mass of material into orbit that eventually coalesced to become the Moon. \n\nSo whilst it's easier for bigger planets to have rings, terrestrial planets can still get in on the fun!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1g6dh0", "title": "Were left-handed knights forced to switch to their right hand?", "selftext": "I know this question may seem a bit mundane, but it's something I'm very curious about, being a left-handed person myself. I know that during the Medieval Period there was a lot of superstition regarding left-handedness- did this pertain to the military arts as well? If so, I would imagine that left-handed knights were put at quite a disadvantage.\n\nI hope this isn't too trivial! And if this had been answered before, please let me know!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g6dh0/were_lefthanded_knights_forced_to_switch_to_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cah9mx6", "cahakwb", "cahbfki", "cahbw2n", "cahuuah"], "score": [57, 21, 4, 9, 5], "text": ["A lot of people make up a lot of broad statements based off of modern recreations, old wives tales, or stuff based off of \"some guy they know\". \n\nAt the end of the day, any advantage is mixed with disadvantages, and it is largely impossible for us to really know \n\n---\n\nHowever, we can make some educated guesses, but first it requires a basic understanding the mindset of medieval combat. We can best get this by reading the sources, and probably the best descriptive source on this is George Silver Paradox of Defence (1599) - while not strictly medieval, it is good example of the mindset that existed then. \n\nIn Paradox, Silver argues (passionately) that the most important aspect for a warrior is defence - because without defence you will find it impossible to both serve the King and come back alive. \n\nWhat impact this has on fighters? That's a good question. As others have posted, in modern recreations being left handed has some form of advantage. However, in modern recreations your life isn't on the line, nor are you training for mass combat against people who's intention is to murder you. It is in this space where being a left hander would probably provide as many disadvantages as advantages. Namely, it will be harder to create strong defence against right handers, as well as making it more difficult to fit in mass combat. \n\nTo understand why, this requires a basic understand of Medieval Martial arts: One of the most deadly blows that exists in medieval combat is named as \"the down right\" by George Silver (Paradox of Defence 1599), but it is common in /every/ European Martial Arts by other names. I'll use Silver's term because I English is my natural language and it is descriptive enough for laymen. \n\nGenerally speaking, down right shots come from either above your head or from the shoulder area: \n\nWoman's guard (right shoulder) - _URL_1_ \n(_URL_2_)\n\nThe roof (above the head) - _URL_4_\n(_URL_5_)\n\n* You could probably note that these positions aren't unique to Europe. You see them all over the place. \n* Also, this includes shield combat but I'm going to focus on Longsword manuals because they are the most well known techniques that are suitable for knightly combat. \n\nBecause this shot is so pervasive it is is important that the patient agent (the defender) can create cover against it. Normally, a right handed Patient Agent does this by covering this line of attack - either with their shield, or with their sword. \n\n_URL_0_\n(_URL_3_)\n\nThis defence is pervasive in any field of Fence (European or otherwise). In Silver's terms, it would be creating cover on the Inside Line, but for the terms of this debate it it creates cover against the down right. \n\nIn the case of a left handed fighter, his sword would be on the left shoulder, or primed to follow a down left course). This makes creating this cover much, much harder. From the natural position on left shoulder, he makes it very hard to respond to a fighter with the initiative and stay alive. \n\nIn shield knightly combat, it also means that the only tool that the patient agent (defender) has against down rights is to create cover with their weapon, leaving their shield to create binds and attack. \n\nIn non-shield knightly combat, any advantage (like being able to overbind and grapple from odd angles) are lost by having awkward defence control from down rights, at least in the sense of creating a true cross against an opponent of an opposing hand. Yes, this is true for both parties, but it makes it tremendously more difficult to create appropriate cover - the basic goal of Knightly Martial Arts.  ", "While we appreciate people's good intentions, please don't engage in idle speculation as a top-level comment. There is no need to \"fill the void\", if you don't really know the answer and are not ready to back it up. Someone knowledgeable will come along in a little while.", "Wow, okay, so... I came here thinking I could find something, maybe even a tidbit of interest, man was I wrong. I found several yahoo answers, a very questionable wiki answer and a wikipedia page about bias against left handedness. Thinking maybe scholarly articles about historical left handedness would mention something to take me in the right direction I promptly couldn't find any. As this is probably my google-fu failing me I have a follow up question:\n\nWhat evidence do we have besides word connections in certain languages that attitudes in Medieval times connected left-handedness with the devil? ", "Interestingly (late medieval) [Clan Kerr](_URL_3_) from Scotland is linked to favouring the weapon in the left hand during battles.\n\nFor that reason they have at least one castle with [stairs favouring left-handed defenders](_URL_1_) (click on \"left-handed staircase\" just left of the map center). I do have the idea they flipped the photo, since it shows a clockwise(=normal) rather than a CCW staircase. Even the map shows a CCW-turning staircase.\n\nAdditional sources:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_", "I would say no, and offer this as evidence:\n\n > This position of the sword is called Coda Lunga; it is very good against the lance and any other handheld weapon\u2026 Bear in mind that this guard counters all the blows both on the mandritto and the riverso side, and is usable against right- or left-handed opponents. We will now see the plays of Coda Lunga, from which you always parry as I have described in the first illustration of the guard.\n\nThis is from Fiore dei Liberi, the second-earliest treatise on Western European martial arts, detailing sword, dagger, unarmed, spear, and mounted combat dating to about 1400.\n\nSince he addresses the topic of facing a left-handed adversary, I would imagine that you could be expected to face left-handed swordsmen."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/pxEbXVB.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/bSenyHw.jpg", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de%27i_Liberi", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/I.33", "http://i.imgur.com/Sv1cy3I.jpg", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Joachim_Me%C3%BFer/Longsword"], [], [], ["http://books.google.nl/books?id=HY_x01AMFqAC&amp;pg=PA105&amp;lpg=PA105&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=QEs00ksM58&amp;sig=8t2Li8fFhqWCY8UO6XyK_632Jd8&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=Due4Ucr0CtSZ0QWmh4HYDw&amp;ved=0CC0Q6AEwAw", "http://ferniehirst.com/castlegrounds.htm", "http://books.google.nl/books?id=1jSOLUCiKnIC&amp;pg=PA2&amp;lpg=PA2&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=CbXUNvrBO_&amp;sig=sAsn75GUwjMUDnl7ntbMuWqbnH8&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=3e64UfuoC_Cd0wWyk4GoDw&amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwBQ", "http://www.scottish-places.info/families/familyfirst99.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "4zl3bn", "title": "Why is the atmosphere of Earth primarily Nitrogen and Oxygen while our nearest neighbors, Venus and Mars, both have atmospheres of mainly CO2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4zl3bn/why_is_the_atmosphere_of_earth_primarily_nitrogen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6x5mn6", "d6xbvxd"], "score": [14, 4], "text": ["The Earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide too, half a billion years ago. Terrestrial plants and certain forms of ocean life are largely responsible for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, by turning it into coal and carbonate rocks, respectively.\n\nThere are no oceans on either Mars or Venus, and as a result, they don't have the same kind of [carbon cycle](_URL_0_) that Earth does.", "On top of what's already been said about the lack of a carbon cycle leading to CO2 buildup, it's worth pointing out that the total mass of nitrogen in Venus' atmosphere is much greater than Earth. Even though nitrogen only accounts for a little over 3% of the Venusian atmosphere, the atmosphere of Venus is also 92x thicker than Earth's, and so molecule-for-molecule there's far more total nitrogen in the atmosphere of Venus than Earth. Perhaps if Venus did have plate tectonics, it would also have a primarily nitrogen atmosphere (though that's pure speculation).\n\nAs for Mars, there's also the issue of planetary mass. Mars just isn't big enough to hold on to a lot of atmospheric gases - it's escape velocity is much lower than the other two, so it's easier for a molecule in the atmosphere to move fast enough to leave the planet entirely. Carbon dioxide is a relatively heavy molecule (atomic mass: 44), so at the same temperature CO2 molecules are moving more slowly and have a tougher time escaping than nitrogen or oxygen (atomic masses: 28 and 32, respectively), which are lighter and thus can more easily reach escape velocity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle"], []]}
{"q_id": "2brrav", "title": "why don't we see clearly without goggles underwater?", "selftext": "And what makes fish different?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2brrav/eli5_why_dont_we_see_clearly_without_goggles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj89fr2", "cj89q4y", "cj8dgg1", "cj8dp91"], "score": [55, 8, 4, 7], "text": ["There's a very fine thin layer of salty water over your eyes, which protects your eyes and cleans them from dust and other small particles. When this protective layer gets in contact with another fluid, it will flow together. This is just what fluids do (*#justfluidthings*). The thin layer is now distorted and your eye cant make up for the light distortion, causing your vision to go blurry. Wearing goggles prevent the water from touching your eye. This also happens when you cry, even with goggles on.\n\nSource: Not a doctor, but I know chemistry and stuff", "From what I understand, light travels differently through air and through water. Our eyes developed for vision in air, and are unable to focus accurately under water. Some people have trained themselves to purposely \"unfocus\" their eyes while underwater to attain better visual acuity.", "I remember reading about an island where the people had adapted to living around the ocean for so long they can actually see underwater clearly.", "Our eyes are \"calibrated\" for the index of refraction in air. \n\nWhen a ray of light passes from air into the lens of our eye, the change in the index of refraction of air to that of the lens bends it just the right amount to focus it properly on your retina. The amount of bend is determined by the difference in the index of refraction between the two mediums (air and lens) . \n\nBecause water has a different index of refraction, when light passes from water into your lens the lens doesn't bend the light enough to focus properly on your retina. \n\nGoggles fix this by letting the light transition from water to a little bit of air through a flat surface, which minimizes distortion from that change. Then the light proceeds to your eyeball through the normal air-lens transition, and everything looks good. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "d0aapv", "title": "The Wagon Fort tactics used by the Hussites seemed to be incredibly effective, fighting back 5 crusades. But after the Hussite Wars those tactics seem like they were not widely used at all. What caused such an effective tactic to fall into disuse?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d0aapv/the_wagon_fort_tactics_used_by_the_hussites/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ez94r8t", "ezabcmw"], "score": [59, 21], "text": ["At the time, firearms and artillery were rather slow to load and not particularly accurate. Just like crossbowmen, they tended to work the best when defending behind a wall, so that the gunners could be protected while reloading.  The Hussite *Wagenburg* was an ingenious solution to the problem: if guns work best defending a castle, make mobile castles. The Hussites could also change tactics, as at Kutna Hora, where they identified the weakest part of the Catholic line encircling them, used massed firearms to break through, escaped and retreated to a better location and set up another *Wagenburg.*\n\nActually, the *Wagenburg* did see use elsewhere,  after the Hussites were conciliated in 1434.  They were used in the Battle of Turnau in 1468, and were described in later military textbooks, like Philllp von Seldeneck's  *Kriegsbuch (* circa 1480). Seldeneck recommended an army on the march form up a *Wagenburg* when it encamped, to create a defensive position.\n\nBut the strength of a *Wagenburg* was greatest against the typical armies of 1420, infantry armed with pikes and swords, mounted knights with lances and swords, and archers. When gunpowder technology improved after about 1450 to the point where artillery could actually be aimed and could work at longer ranges,  the *Wagenburg* suddenly became just another fort that could be hammered and subdued.", "I\u2019d like to make the argument that Wagenburg tactics didn\u2019t die out after the Hussite Wars but rather were extensively employed in Western Eurasia until the eighteenth century. The initial source of Wagenburg tactics were Czech/Bohemian mercenaries who were quickly employed by various European masters \u2013 for example, Wladyslaw II of Poland hired thousands of Bohemian mercenaries for the Thirteen Years War (1454 \u2013 1466) against the Teutonic Order, and the Polish hetman Jan Tarnowski employed Bohemian mercenaries and their wagons for his campaign in Moldavia. His lopsided victory at Obertyn over a larger Moldavian army in 1531 was due to the employment of a wagon fort bolstered by artillery; similarly, the Hungarian general Janos Hunyadi employed 600 wagons operated by Czech mercenaries in his campaign against the Ottomans in 1443 \u2013 1444. \n\nThe Czech wagons were captured by the Ottomans after their victory at Varna and the Ottomans quickly adapted a form of Wagenburg tactics called Tabur Cengi (camp battle). In this variation, the wagon fort composed of artillery and firearms-equipped janissaries would be screened by light cavalry or skirmishers and flanked by heavy cavalry on both sides. The skirmishers would bait opponents into the range of the guns of the wagon fort where the enemy would then be devastated by the combined volley of artillery and small arms fire; the cavalry on the flanks of the Ottoman formation would then encircle the opponents and annihilate them. The camp battle won several decisive victories such as Chaldiran, against the Safavids, in 1514 and Mohacs, against the Hungarians, in 1526. A then-minor Timurid prince, Babur, adopted the Tabur Cengi or destur-i-Rumi (The Roman Method) with the assistance of Ottoman advisers and he would win two famous victories at Panipat (1526) and Khanua (1527) which would create the foundations of the Mughal empire. \n\nWagenburg tactics were also prevalent in Eastern Europe, especially in sparsely populated Ukraine and Southern Russia. As there were no easily accessible supply depots or population centers to draw resources from for military campaigns, armies were accompanied by large wagon trains. For example, Vasily Golitsyn\u2019s campaign against the Crimean fortress of Perekop in 1687 required a supply train of 20,000 wagons. In 1660, the Russian general Vasily Sheremetev\u2019s army had 3000 wagons accompanying them. In an environment teeming with cavalry (whether Polish, Cossack or Tatar), sheltering the infantry and artillery behind the wagons proved to be an effective deterrent to mounted attack. Gillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan, in his *A Description of Ukraine*, noted that: \n\n >  \u201cIn the field, I have myself observed units of at least five hundred Tatars several times, who attacked us in our tabor, and even though I was accompanied by only fifty to sixty Cossacks, the Tatars could do us no harm; nor could we harm them, since they kept beyond the range of our firearms.\u201d \n\nThis highlights the defensive advantage of the Wagenburg while simultaneously demonstrating the static and cumbersome nature of the formation. It also wasn\u2019t a secretive or swift method either. Huge convoys of wagons threw up a great deal of dust which pinpointed the march of the army to any enemy scouts. Muddy roads, flooded terrain and steep hills could impede the progress and formation of a wagon fort; for example, Sheremetev\u2019s army lost eighty wagons to a Polish attack while climbing a steep hill and a thousand wagons were lost to the Poles while crossing a marsh and yet despite these losses, Wagenburg tactics allowed the Russians to, as their Polish opponents conceded, \u201cflee from us like a wolf baring its teeth, not like a rabbit.\u201d The persistent Polish-Crimean Tatar army finally cornered the Russians at Chudnov. This encounter resembled a siege more than a battle with the Polish bombarding the Russian positions with artillery while the Crimean cavalry prevented Russian foragers from bolstering their dwindling stores and countered the Cossack cavalry attached to the Russian army. Hunger, miserable weather, defections in the Russian army and several failed breakout attempts finally forced Sheremetev\u2019s surrender. \n\nGradually, the Russians moved away from these tactics in the eighteenth century as they colonized and consolidated their positions in Ukraine and Southern Russia; this process was supplemented by the building of magazines to store provisions which reduced the need for huge supply trains. Evolutions in military armament and tactics such as the socket bayonet, infantry squares and less cumbersome anti-cavalry devices such as the \u201cFrisian horses\u201d (a portable wooden frame with numerous attached spears) and stakes diminished defensive utility of the wagon. The great weakness of the wagon fort was that it had limited offensive capability. If an enemy refused to engage, as in the case reported by Beauplan, all the infantry could do was wait; certainly, the infantry could leave the confines of the fort to mount an attack but this meant abandoning the defensive advantages of the wagons and becoming vulnerable to counterattacks (as seen at the battle of Lipany), ; the Ottomans and Mughals attempted to address the static and defensive nature of the wagon fort by using skirmishers to lure enemies into the range of the guns and then following up with devastating attacks by heavy cavalry and mounted archers. This of course assumed a supremacy in cavalry; if the cavalry was neutralized, the wagon fort could be sieged and destroyed (as seen in the case of Vasily Sheremetev\u2019s disaster at Chudnov). Men armed with bayonet equipped firearms (and before that, pikes) could both resist cavalry and attack decisively. While the Wagenburg could ward off cavalry, it was vulnerable to a determined infantry attack \u2013 perhaps the earliest demonstration of this was during the Landshut War of Succession (1504-1505) where landsknechts successfully stormed a Czech wagon fort after it had repelled a cavalry attack. Later, the Austrians and Russians would learn how to storm Ottoman taburs with a combination of artillery and infantry or dismounted dragoons (as seen for example, during the battle of Zenta). \n\nSources: \n\nAgoston, Gabor. *Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire*\n\nBrian Davies. Gulai Gorod, Wagenburg and Tabor Tactics found in *Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800*\n\nBiederman, Jan.  *L'art militaire dans les ordonnances tch\u00e8ques du XV e si\u00e8cle et son \u00e9volution: la doctrine du Wagenburg comme r\u00e9sultat de la pratique.*  M\u00e9di\u00e9vales, No. 67, Histoires de Boh\u00eame (Automne 2014), pp. 85-101"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "372l5g", "title": "Why are letters written by American Civil War soldiers so well worded and articulate even though the majority of soldiers weren't very well educated?", "selftext": "I've been reading some letters sent home to families or lovers of Civil War soldiers and I'm astounded by how eloquent and sophisticated they are. From my understanding most of these soldiers barely had any formal education, the majority being farmers or laborers, but they wrote so beautifully. Can anyone give us an understanding of why this is so? \n\n[Here's a link to some good examples of Civil War era letters written by soldiers.](_URL_0_)\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/372l5g/why_are_letters_written_by_american_civil_war/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crj6i4i", "crj6q7f"], "score": [42, 62], "text": ["Could someone check out the literacy rates from the era? Maybe all of the letters were well-written because the only literate people were well-educated?", "\"Writing beautifully\" seems to be a fairly subjective opinion - you could ask if the writing seems beautiful because of the poignancy of the situation: that the men writing could be killed before the letter arrived etc.\n\nThere's also the fact that historians will be apt to select letters that are noteworthy for some reason, either because of the quality of the writing or because the letter-writer supports some salient point of the historian's thesis.  So, the letters that you see are more likely to be the \"highlight reel\"; there could be plenty of dross that isn't worth digitizing.  \n\nHowever:\n\nThe USA, especially the North, was actually a pretty decent place to live if you were white - by the standards of the mid-19th century.  James McPherson goes into quite some detail on this point in his seminal history of the Civil War, *Battle Cry of Freedom*: IIRC the only places with better literacy rates than the Northern USA at that time were Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.  There was also very much a political awakening, especially by Northern soldiers, who voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln in 1864, and so a lot of them would have been reading Douglass and Greeley etc, and they'd definitely have read Lincoln's speeches when they were published.  Improving one's own vocab and writing skills after being exposed to more literary stuff is a well-attested phenomenon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://spec.lib.vt.edu/cwlove/"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "29jx4x", "title": "do historians, anthropologists and archeologists have any major disagreements about the past?", "selftext": "are there big conventions for all three professions? when you write a history thesis or dissertation, do you anxiously watch the news for new archeology finds that might invalidate your theories? When do theories graduate into generally accepted knowledge?\n\nEdit: Thank you, this is fascinating stuff. Big thanks to mods for an awesome subreddit.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29jx4x/do_historians_anthropologists_and_archeologists/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cilu1jv", "cilz2za", "cilz9s6", "cilzuey"], "score": [12, 7, 5, 17], "text": ["In the United States (I don't know about elsewhere) Archaeology is considered a field of Anthropology. Furthermore, Anthropology is broken into the other disciplines of Biological (Physical) Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Linguistics.\n\nBeyond that, even within a sub-discipline like cultural anthropology, there are many disagreements on how research should be conducted and the paradigms used to interpret data.\n\nI can't speak to historians (so maybe I shouldn't even be answering here) but, yes, there are disagreements, not just among the three groups you listed, but within them as well.", "If I could recommend a classic article on this subject, from ethno-historian (and trained anthropologist) Jan Vansina:\n\nVansina, Jan, \u201cHistorians, Are Archaeologists Your Siblings\u201d, History in Africa, 22 (1995), 369-408.  \n\nAfter Vansina\u2019s article was posted online to H-Africa, the archaeologist [Robert Bradshaw responded] (_URL_0_ J.shaw.html)", "There are constant disagreements about historical facts and that's part of the process. Historians work with imperfect tools in a field where its near impossible to 'prove' that something happened. We have to look at the primary sources, see if we can figure out what the facts are and argue those facts to peers in a comprehensive and articulate manner. A good historian will do all that and then try to explain the broader context and importance.\n\nI don't know if there are conventions but scholarly discussion like what I think you're alluding to occurs in publications and research journals. There's always a steady flow of theses (thesises?) that get reviewed by peers (AKA peer review). If a theory holds up to scholarly scrutiny then it becomes accepted. When a theory's argument grows stronger as new evidence emerges over time then it generally graduates into common knowledge.\n\nAnd as for your second question I haven't written a historical thesis so I can't say what it's like to have your arguments invalidated. I'm sure there's disappointment but if a historian can see the bigger picture of their field  they'd probably be accepting of it.", "I am a recent graduate with degrees in both History (Early Modern) and Anthropology (Archaeology) and I think I can speak somewhat to this question.\n\nHistorians, as their name suggests, are primarily concerned with \"historical\" sources that being sources that are written records of past events. When we say \"pre-historical\" what we mean is a period before records were kept. An anthropologist, and archaeologist in particular, is concerned primarily with physical culture. Whether it is artwork, architecture, or any other physical manifestation of a society. Effectively the role of an archaeologist is to collect, catalogue, maintain and interpret physical culture vis-a-vis its provenance.\n\nBoth disciplines rely upon eachother to produce a more nuanced, and accurate, view of historical societies, but generally are held apart. Many historians prefer to work solely with texts and have no experience on archaeological digs. Similarly many archaeologists deal exclusively in the analytically and taxonomic nature of their study and pay little attention to the context of their studies.\n\nThere is an intersection of these two fields called \"Historical Archaeology\" which informs the search and interpretation of physical culture with known written sources. A perfect example of this discipline would be the recent exhumation of, the now confirmed, body of Richard III. The dig site was chosen by interpreting numerous sources that pointed to a particular chapel as the burial site of the King. In turn they dug a number of slit trenches around the known foundations of this chapel and were able to determine the likely area of the graveyard. This was all accomplished through the integration of both disciplines.\n\nAs to you question about conflicting theories and interpretations. Yes there are a tremendous number of conflicts within history and archaeology alike. Competing methodologies often build camps around particular historical events and fight over interpretation and semantics. This should come with very little surprise given the nature of all academia. Unfortunately academic disagreements are typically so esoteric and specific that they can be easily ignored by the lay-person. \n\nOne glaring example is the growing movement within the US history community to no longer refer to the \"American Revolution\" as a revolution at all. The foundation for this argument is based upon what constitutes a revolution, the technical definition among historians, and how the American revolution could possibly be considered one. There is a growing consensus among modern historians that the American \"revolution\" was more a civil war or uprising because it was effectively maintaining a status quo within the colonies, but that is neither here nor there.\n\nWhat is important is that consensus within the historical community is not always what is accepted knowledge. Accepted knowledge, and this is coming from my anthropology side, is what a society chooses to believe about itself and others. Often times it is not accurate, or even factual, and when we discuss history our Accepted Knowledge is rarely correct. It takes years of concerted effort by historians to steer the massive weight of public consciousness away from inaccurate interpretations and towards more factual, or atleast accepted, conceptions of the past.\n\nSome good news is that historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists are cooperating more and more. As interdepartmental study is becoming a major force in education I think we can expect more students to graduate with a much greater breadth of knowledge.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/africaforum/Roderick"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33qjiy", "title": "why does it seem that the more religious a society is, the more anti-sex it is?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33qjiy/eli5_why_does_it_seem_that_the_more_religious_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqnf7vh", "cqnfa4g", "cqnfu7a", "cqnhd78", "cqniv9o", "cqnj72l", "cqnlc6x", "cqnlh0u", "cqnma4l", "cqnmeav", "cqnmej6", "cqnmpbk", "cqnmsxe", "cqnne0e", "cqnnl6i", "cqnnmfz", "cqnnmip", "cqnnp60", "cqnnrok", "cqnnwj4", "cqnnycp", "cqnnyxj", "cqno19o", "cqno231", "cqno4hc", "cqnod49", "cqnos08", "cqnp0pf", "cqnp4gf", "cqnp660", "cqnpe6u"], "score": [276, 4, 70, 13, 120, 42, 2, 3, 11, 4, 3, 9, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 11, 5, 2, 3, 11, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["All major religions, well the Abrahamic religions anyway. Teach that sex before marriage is wrong. Hence being 'anti-sex'. \n\nEdit: When I said 'anti-sex', I was assuming that OP meant societies attitude towards sex before marriage. I didn't mean that any Abrahamic religion forbids sex. ", "It's just another method of control. If the only sex that is allowed is in a church approved marriage, that gives the church a lot of power over people.", "Well, at least with Christianity, this is how it works:\nChristianity's main selling point is that you are saved from all your sins if you will only accept Jesus Christ into your heart, because he died for your sins. So if you repent, and accept him, and try not to sin so much, you'll be saved.\nUnfortunately, you can only convince people that they need a savior from their sins if you can convince them that they've sinned (that they are sinners). If your only sins are things like murder, not very many people need Christianity to save them--only murderers. So, you have to expand sin to cover a whole bunch of things that people LIKE to do... like have sex with each other, or masturbate.\nSo yes, as another user commented, it's a method of control. There are just a few different layers to it.", "A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that religious people are anti-sex. We're not. We love sex. Sex is great. \n\nThe difference is that we believe sex is also sacred. It is the power to create life and strengthen a bond between a husband and wife. Using it outside of that context is what is discouraged. \n\nIt's difficult to draw a comparison between a secular and religious level of doing something sacred outside its prescribed context but I might liken it to someone playing taps over Arlington National Cemetery. It's a tradition meant to honor and pray reverence to the fallen who may have been volunteers, or may have been drafted, but answered the call to defend this nation and died in the course of their duty. It is extremely sacred (whether you're religious or not you can tell the feeling and weight of the act when you're there). Now that, performed properly can be likened unto sex within marital bonds. \n\nSex outside of marriage can be likened to someone who decides to play \"Tequila\" on their horn instead of Taps. You just shouldn't do that. You're in the wrong setting, you're doing something you shouldn't, and you're offending everyone involved. \n\nSex outside of marriage has been made a norm by society, that doesn't mean it should be acceptable. This is a case of, \"What is popular isn't always right, and what is right isn't always popular.\" \n\ntldr - Religions - Mine in particular - Aren't anti-sex. We just believe it is a sacred act and should be performed within the bonds of marriage. To do otherwise cheapens it and perverts its purpose. ", "What about the Mormons? Catholics?  I feel like in those religions, once you're married it is expected that you bang and make babies until you die. ", "It has to do more with \"sexual immorality\" than anti-sex. Sex within the confines of marriage is always celebrated and accepted.", "It comes from a tendency of most religions to adopt a sort of ancient Greek \"dualism\" which is some kind of philosophical separation between flesh and spirit, usually dichotomizing them as evil and good respectively.", "Lot of cynicism in this thread. Can I offer an alternate explanation? Because I feel the issue of \"control\" is being read from some profoundly anti-religious premises.\n\nI think it's more fair to say that most religions have as a goal to inspire their followers to positive collective actions (however some have perverted this goal). A fundamental aspect of this is that it requires individuals to learn how to be in possession of their own individual desires and instincts, so those may be directed toward a greater good rather than for their own sake. In other words, to rule their desires rather than to be ruled by them.\n\nEach faith approaches this in its own way. Alcohol consumption, for instance, is a powerful and addictive physical pleasure that may, in moderation, promote eusocial behavior but in excess causes socially undesirable things. So religious followers are encouraged to drink in moderation or to abstain altogether not because the church relishes mind control, but because alcohol abuse can compromise an individual's ability to positively contribute to their community.\n\nSex being one of the most powerful human instincts, it shouldn't be surprising that religious people are encouraged to rule their sexual desire rather than be ruled by it. Again each faith approaches this differently, but historically most western religions have seen too little eusocial benefit to sex beyond its capacity to strengthen the bonds of a heterosexual marriage and to produce new babies to grow their communities. Weighed against some pretty negative possible consequences of unregulated desire (STIs, unwanted pregnancies, not to mention rape) it followed that teaching belIevers to master their desire by restricting sex to within marriage was the right bumper-sticker message.\n\nWhere this misses the boat, of course, is that it neglected the eusocial benefits non-marital and non-hetero sex can have. As some Christian denominations came to realize that their communities functioned better when committed gay couples were welcomed instead of shunned, or when children were trusted with factual sex education, some have softened their positions. The calculus should have been clear from the beginning: that repressing non-marital sexual behavior actually had an anti-social effect (unwanted and teen pregnancy) and so did persecuting homosexuals for their sexual orientation (the 80s AIDS crisis, gay suicide, and anti-gay hate crime). All of these hamper the ability of a community to come together and work for the common good-- which is why I'm na\u00efvely optimistic that in the long run, we'll see most mainstream religions evolve to have more positive attitudes about sex that see or more inclusively as the social good that it is... But they will still teach their followers to rule over and channel their sexual urges so that it stays within the boundaries in which it remains beneficial to society.\n\nTL;DR: Religions teach followers to master their physical desires, so that they can be assets to collective good - in the same way defensive driving or gun safety classes train the eusocial uses of potentially anti-social behavior.", "_URL_0_\n\n* Care/harm: cherishing and protecting others.\n* Fairness/cheating: rendering justice according to shared rules. (Alternate name: Proportionality)\n* Liberty/oppression: the loathing of tyranny.\n* Loyalty/betrayal: standing with your group, family, nation. (Alternate name: Ingroup)\n* Authority/subversion: obeying tradition and legitimate authority. (Alternate name: Respect.)\n* Sanctity/degradation: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions. (Alternate name: Purity.)\n\nThese are thought to be the values behind morality. Conservatives and liberals prioritize different categories.\n\nAuthority, Purity, and Ingroup correlate together. These people are more prone to religiousness (as they respect authority and value their ingroup). So it's not so much that one causes the other. Rather, people who tend to be religious also tend to emphasize purity.", "1) Religious people tend to follow interpretations of their religion, rather than the Word of God.\n\n2) The people who create those interpretations seek power.\n\n3) The need to have sex is extremely strong in humans.\n\n4) Controlling that sexual need (and the feelings surrounding it -- guilt, for example) gives the controller *enormous* power.\n\nSo it's not so much about \"religion dictates that sex is bad.\" It's that \"I want to control you, and a great way to do that is to control your access to and attitudes regarding sex. My interpretation of your religion accomplishes this.\" ", "The root of anti-sex in abrahamic religions really has nothing to the with sex but with denial of this worldly sensual pleasures, which has its roots in platonic thought and most likely made its way into Christianity through Augustine of hippo (an ex platonist). The line of reasoning is more or less this world is ever changing and false, thus, we should deny our senses and place the utmost faith in the unchanging godly realm that we come from and will some day return to (ie realm of platonic forms or heaven).", "I find it interesting that the two things religions like to control most are sex and food (fasting/forbidden foods etc). So, our two most basic needs, and they control those.", "This is a larger issue: Abrahamic religions are anti sex because they see matter and flesh as a degeneration of the divine.\n\nThey consider what remains after death the only worthy part of the human experience.\n\n\"Non-Dual\" schools of mysticism (Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, Tantrism...) on the other hand tends to have a more sane approach to sexuality since they consider enlightenment to be the union (Yoga) of the grossest parts of your manifestation to the most refined part of your being (Brahman), realizing unity in the very flesh,  they even consider sexuality as a tool for \"spiritual transformation\".\n", "Human nature, in its most primal form, is the male trying to get exclusive rights to a female. Religion is a way to enforce this desire. Religion is not anti sex, its anti multiple sexual partners. ", "I've been raised Catholic and consider myself a pretty conservative one at that but, if was in a meaningful relationship right now, given the way I currently feel, I'd definitely be having sex with her. Why? \n\nI'm a 19 year old sexually frustrated young man. ", "Not so much anti-sex as anti sex that isn't for having babies by two members of the same religion. A baby born to two parents from a religion is a new member automatically. It's all about filling pews. It's best to get them young.", "Yet they want women to marry and pump out as many fucking little shitholes as possible.\n", "[Children of God] (_URL_0_) member here. WTF are you talking about religion being anti sex?", "The simple non judgemental answer is that all western faith-based religions and many eastern religions have strict restrictions on sexuality, marriage customs and gender roles within families and societies.\n\nConsequently, more religious societies are more driven to follow these proscriptions and judge others harshly for not doing so. \n\nThey don't view this as being anti-sex. Indeed, many devout Christians, Muslims and Hindus are consumed by the desire for and love of sex - the latter invented the Kama Sutra. Instead, they view their beliefs and demands about sex as both a submission to god's will and a, frankly, limited demand hardship because within marriage sex is just as expected as it is forbidden prior to or outside of marriage, whether for procreative reasons or simple beliefs about gender roles.\n\nThis doesn't always work out well for everyone and I think it's ridiculous, but that's why from Karachi to Mumbai to The American South, ultra religious societies come off as wildly anti-sex.", "There are two (predominant) creative macrosystem circuits in the brain that humans rely on to convert limbic tension. \n\nOne is fast, funny, sexy. \n\nThe other is big picture, futuristic, transcendent. \n\nWe usually rely on one over the other, we almost NEVER use both at once. \n\nBy focusing on the transcendent function, you reduce the attention, focus and importance on the sex function.\n\nClassic Apollonian man vs Dionysian man. \n\nNeither is more important. But don't ask religious folks that. ", "Religions are against sex outside of marriage, so you could say religion encourages marriage at younger age.", "Control sex and you control social norms. By creating social norms you control the behavior of the people within a society, and deviance from those norms cause the people to look at you for answers, imbuing you with power in the process. Power is then wielded in political spectrums, allowing those with power to further enforce the norms and punish deviance.\n\nReligion inherently seeks to attain and exert power over people, this is just one way of accomplishing that.", "Nietzsche discussed this in his critique of 'slave morality'. Nietzsche prescribed religion as belonging to the 'slave caste' as resentment of life and those who enjoy life. The 'masters', who the slaves saw as evil, enjoyed their power, their health, their wealth and their sex. Slaves, who rarely could get any of these for long, became jealous and through cunning created religion as a way to undermine the values of the masters. Virtues like wealth, power, strength, independence and sexual virility became 'sins', and chastity, poverty, meekness and obedience became virtues. Thus, much of religion's virtues are a direct consequence of the slaves' ressentiment of life and their desire to subjugate those who enjoy life through an underhanded morality. The slaves achieved their revenge, fuelled by envy, by convincing the world that character traits like virility, strength and independence were to be shunned and considered evil.", "This is maybe a bit cynical, but anyways: Religions who promise an afterlife have a problem with non-monogamous relationships. As you are supposed to be reunited with all your loved ones for all eternity, complex family structures could be really awkward. Combine this with a world without birth control, and you get concepts like bastards and chastity. These concepts live on in religious traditions. ", "Most popular religions are very old.\n\nUntil very recently, sex outside of marriage caused everyone a lot of problems: Unwanted pregnancies and STDs. \n\nSo most popular religions were correct to impose beliefs that discouraged sex outside of marriage. It was beneficial for everyone. But times have changed.", "The more anti-sex they are in childhood, the bigger freaks they turn out to be as adults. \n\nIt just seems like they are anti-sex, in reality those people are mostly about keeping the women in their control. ", "To put it in general sense: All religions have their own ideals they believe people should follow, and so *in general* the more religious a society is less tolerant they are over differing or conflicting beliefs.", "The 3 of the biggest religions of the world (well, Judaism **used** to be one of the biggest religions in the world before all of that Hitler hullabaloo) stem from basically the same faith.\n\nAlso, they have always been controlled by men. And how do you make sure that men keep controlling your religious institution? By making women subservient. To this day, you cannot be a female prelate in any of the aforementioned faiths unless you subscribe to particular sects of Christianity. Notice how almost all of the prophets were men and how lineages are traced from man to man.\n\nWhy did I mention all of this? Because if you study their holy texts closely, you'll notice how they only placed restrictions on **female** sexuality. If a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, she must be stoned to death. Absolutely nothing is said about the men, though. In fact, I'm pretty sure the concept of male virginity didn't exist back then. If a woman's husband dies before she's given him an heir, she has to fuck all of his brothers in turn 'til she becomes pregnant. If you're a soldier, it's A-OK to slaughter anyone on the opposing side, male, female or child, but you should capture, rape and marry the female virgins. Then there's Islam, where most sects believe that you become a woman and can give consent (and get married) as soon as you begin menstruating and that if a married woman is raped, she probably brought it upon itself and must be killed because she committed adultery (at least the rapist will also be killed for the same crime).\n\nTL;DR: Religions founded by and controlled by men perpetuates a cycle of oligarchy for men by controlling women through guilt and stigmatization.", "Because sex makes you feel good, and if you already feel good, what do you need religion for?", "The Duggars are about as christan as they come. And look at Michelle, i know she fucks like crazy.\n\nSo anti sex, no. Just anti sex before marriage.\n\nOnce that ring is on POPULATE THE FUCKIN EARTH!", "Sex is at the root of so much evil that men and women do to each other. After all, animals -- including apes and monkeys -- kill competitors (and their children) to have the best mates. Humans developed (or it is natural) an ethos that sex must be regulated to maintain healthy relationships between people and to raise children and families in a healthy home with less conflict.\n\nSex creates conflict between humans.\n\nReligion creates rules and boundaries to eliminate conflict by regulating our conduct. When humans break these rules, as we often do, conflict abounds."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_International"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3p9cau", "title": "why do babies and toddlers love other babies (including dolls) so much?", "selftext": "They just stare at each other. My niece (22 months) pretends to change her doll's diaper. What is going on in their brains?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p9cau/eli5_why_do_babies_and_toddlers_love_other_babies/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw49g6x", "cw4e3zv", "cw4h2fk", "cw4h4mx", "cw4i8a5", "cw4jhel"], "score": [66, 15, 3, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["They are imitating their parents as it's one of the only things they've experienced in their lives ", "Play.\n\nBabies/children love play. They are hardwired to want to play, because through play they learn. Baby lions play fight and hunt, baby deer play hide and run. \n\nWhen a baby sees an adult, an adult can represent food, cleaning, time to sleep, time to wake, time to cuddle etc. But when a baby/child sees another baby/child it means its time for one thing: play!", "Well it's a combination of things really. \n\nHuman beings are incredibly empathetic and are hardwired to be care takers in many respects. It is programmed in every human being to be stressed at the sound of a crying baby, and recognition of various baby sounds. We're very good at taking care of babies because babies aren't very good at taking care of themselves.  If you enjoy caring for your child you are likely to have \"complete\" families, and healthy young from an evolutionary perspective. \n\nPut these pressures on the human species and eventually you have brains that are programmed to enjoy caring for their young. \n\nThis is strictly from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. \n\nFrom a behavioral standpoint they are likely mimicking what their parents are doing because that is what children are the best at and they also highly prize personal possessions. She is likely very attached to her doll because that is what children her age do. ", "We are born hard wired to be social, it starts from the moment they are born with children's preference for seeking out faces.\n\nAs they grow they observe social interactions, hugging laughing, smiling etc these pleasant exchanges strengthen the bonds of the family unit around them. Being caring towards others creates affection and includes them in a safe supportive environment. \n\nAs they grow they begin to practice these social niceties and mimic caring behaviour they have witnessed. Their primary caregivers make sure their needs are met by feeding them, paying attention to them and changing their nappies so they practice this with their toys. \n\nFor example I pat my daughter on the back when she's having a hug, she now pats my back and says \"Aww Mummy.\" It's nurturing behaviour in order to successfully integrate into society. \n\nEdit - spelling.... ", "It's pretend play/imitative play. They observe adults around them and imitate what they see.\n\nIt helps babies and toddlers figure out social roles and make sense of the weird weird world of adults.", "Nobody's suggested this yet, so here's my opinion: babies and small children have almost no control over their environment or physical being at all. Other more powerful people determine when they eat, where they go, what they do, their physical comfort etc. It's often frustrating for them.\n\nSo when a child has a doll, pet or even smaller child, it's a chance for them to role-play that powerful person and determine what happens in someone else's life for a change."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "66kn2f", "title": "Why does Germany have 'Free Cities' and 'Free States' etc, instead of a standardised system? Is it a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire or is it a more modern arrangement?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66kn2f/why_does_germany_have_free_cities_and_free_states/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgjy7sw"], "score": [48], "text": ["Today, both free city and free state are pretty much nomenclature, meaning that they pretty much are a name only, comparable to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is also called Commonwealth because it features in their constitution but it has no practical impact on how Massachusetts functions vs. other states of the US that are not a commonwealth. The Free State of Bavaria, Saxony or Th\u00fcringen do not differ in their status within the German federal state than Brandenburg or Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. And what sets apart the Free Cities Hamburg and Bremen is that they are states made up of one (in the case of Bremen two) cities like Berlin.\n\nAs has been mentioned in this thread the title of Free City indeed carries over from the HRR: They were cities that were not under the rule of any particular lord and did not owe the Emperor taxes or soldiers (unlike the Reichsst\u00e4dte, which were under direct tutelage of the Emperor). While both the end of the HRR and the Napoleonic wars ended the existence of most of these free cities (or in the case of Frankfurt, its annexation to Prussia in 1866), the former Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and L\u00fcbeck remained what can be classified best as city states and as such joined first the Nord German Bund and later the German Empire as sovereign entities.\n\nIt's important to understand that Germany, even with a central state arising with the Empire in the 1870s, was still a strongly federal structure in the sense that Wilhelm might have been German Emperor but there still was e.g. the king of Bavaria who enjoyed quite some authority in his lands. When the Empire ended in the German Revolution in 1918/19, most of the state entities that made up Germany under the common constitution (sort of like the states of the United States constitute the federal entity), they became \"Free States\", meaning republics and not monarchies. Free State as well as \"Volksstaat\" (people's state), which was also used were distinct social democratic / socialist titles that were used to denote the new form of government that originated with the people. Kurt Eisner when he declared the Munich Soviet Republic also used the term \"Free State\" for Bavaria.\n\nThe Weimar Republic was also a strongly federal state, made up of different constituent states. This was only ended by the Nazis, who got right of the states per se as political entities, keeping them only as administrative entities, and who introduced a strong central state in Germany. With the end of Nazi rule, the Allies did not establish a German central state with one central government. Rather, the first political entities that the Allies allowed in Germany were the federal states. These federal states then formulated one constitution, the Grundgesetz, under whose precepts they joined the German Federal Republic. Hamburg and Bremen e.g. were with the argument of their long history as city states able to establish their sovereignty as federal states within that context while L\u00fcbeck gave that up and remained as part of Schleswig-Holstein.\n\nBavaria also chose the label Free State because when it was re-founded as a political entity by the American occupation in 1945, there still was the discussion if it would become a monarchy. In fact, there even was a party agitating for re-establishing the monarch in Bavaria. While the American occupation forbade said party, in order to quell such aspirations one and for all, a popular referendum was held where the populous voted on anew constitution for the state that explicitly referred to it as a free state rather than a monarchy. It was accepted with over 70% of the popular vote and so the Free State of Bavaria was born as part of the Federal Republic.\n\nA slightly similar process occurred in the early 90s when the former states of the GDR joined the Federal Republic. The Grundgesetz explicitly stated that further states could join the Federal Republic, which was the basis for how the GDR could become part of the FGR legally. The FGR did not annex the former socialist country but rather, the constituent states voted to join the FGR. Within that context to denote the new form of government as \"real\" republics, both Saxony and Th\u00fcringen chose to denote themselves as free states.\n\nIn that sense, there is no real difference between German states calling themselves Free States of Free Cities except in the name itself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1d7pgs", "title": "why is it that \"preemptive strikes\" were so important in the middle east but now that n. korea has been shown to be a threat and actively threatening the us, the us doesn't enact a preemptive strike?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d7pgs/eli5_why_is_it_that_preemptive_strikes_were_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9np9f9", "c9npand", "c9npvcf", "c9nqeol", "c9ns96v", "c9ntjhu", "c9o3ypl"], "score": [12, 147, 24, 26, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["The difference is, the allies of the countries that were attacked in the Middle East have no influence on the United States, or their influence were insignificant to the US. However, N. Korea's allies are much stronger and do not give a shit about the US, so in case of attack, the US does not only risk their presence in Korea, but they could upset other countries backing Korea up. For example, Afghanistan and Iraq were more or less governed by tyrants and/or unfair leaders. They didn't have strong allies that could stand against USA. Iraq lost their friends ever since the Gulf War, and Afghanistan went to non-existance ever since the Taliban took control. In addition, after Al-Qaeda attacking American soil, that was a good enough reason for Americans to enact a preemptive strike. In this case, Russia, China, and Pakistan could be posing additional threat to USA in case of a strike. That is another reason why N. Korea are holding still.", "War is political. Preemptive strikes can be real but just as often it's just an excuse to start some shit for ulterior motives.\n\nNorth Korea on the other hand is...\n\n* No serious threat\n* Has nothing America wants, ie. not worth starting shit over\n* War with North Korea will cause massive trouble\n\nThe Iraq and Afghanistan conflict caused America to nose dive further into debt and everyone is struggling to stabilize the countries and clean up the mess.\n\nLet's assume a NK conflict is swiftly won and NK get's \"liberated\". There are now some 24 million North Koreans from a dysfunctional nation unloaded on the world. That's a pretty big burden to deal with.\n\nSo in short, there's no pre emptive strikes because there's no real threat and nobody wants to make NK their problem.", "Nobody wants to deal with all of the refugees. It would be a very very large number of North Koreans brainwashed to hate everyone not North Korean that would need to be educated and re-integrated into society.\n\nIn contrast, we believed that we would be welcomed with open arms and as liberators by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan before we went in there.", "Short answer: China", "Attacking a nation that is actually in possession of weapons of mass destruction is dangerous.  Pretend WMD are much, much easier to deal with.  Also, NK doesn't have any known oil deposits.", "Hahahaha \"shown to be a threat\" ", "The real problem with a war with NK would be dealing with the aftermath. \nI'll ELI5 as well and short as I can:\nA pre-emptive strike on NK would result in an immediate artillery bombardment of Seoul. The effectiveness of this is debatable as NK shells have about a 50% dud rate and Seoul is well prepared to deal with this. Within a few hours, SK and US forces would knock out most of those artillery positions, as well as supply lines in NK. NK troops would defect or surrender en masse as supplies and reinforcements are unable to reach the ever receding front line. At this point, NKs leadership would go all out, but their ranks would falter and pretty soon, less than a week I would guess, the regime would fall. So... Then we now have a few million third world denizens without a functioning government. A humanitarian crisis.\n\nTo put it bluntly... SK doesn't want an influx of underskilled malnourished brainwashed refugees from a militant police state and neither does China. And if the end result would be reunification of the north and south, China wouldn't take to kindly to now having a country with a major u.s. military base presence on its front doorstep. \n\nEdit: formatting and a word"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hkuly", "title": "how do we not kill off bees by harvesting their honey? don\u2019t they need the honey to survive the winter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hkuly/eli5_how_do_we_not_kill_off_bees_by_harvesting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dykk2mh", "dykka5m", "dykl35c", "dykofy9", "dyl1ulb"], "score": [8, 11, 55, 16, 3], "text": ["They need about 80% of their honey to survive the winter. So we only harvest a fraction. You're correct that if you take it *all* you risk killing the hive.", "Yes, bees need honey for winter. But they don't need all the honey they make. Were we to take all the honey, bees would die. Beekeepers leave 50 to 100 pounds of honey. Less than that, you would need to feed bees syrup or sugar water to supplement the honey.", "Bees will just keep making honey forever, they don't need all of what's in their hive and in fact if they overstock enough, the hive gets too crowded and they swarm (leave to form a new hive somewhere else) and something like 75% of all swarms die.\n\nCollecting honey keeps the hive manageable for the bees. Also hives in human care are constantly monitored to make sure they have enough honey, don't get deadly mite infections, and don't get eaten by predators. A human-maintained hive is basically bee heaven.\n\nIf you want to help save the bees, support your local beekeepers. Because we kinda need bees to survive; no bees means like 3/4 of our food crops can't be grown, cuz they require bees for pollination.\n\nsource: my cousin's a beekeeper (he also brews mead from the honey from his hives).", "* we leave the bees enough honey to live\n* we give them near perfect conditions to make their hives, far better than they would find in nature, which lets them make more honey\n* over centuries of beekeeping, humans have selected for the bees that produce the most honey", "My dad gave some local bee conservation people permission to put a few hives on his property, and one of the hives was started too close to winter and/or wasn't doing as well as the first, and they had to supplement it by putting honey into it so the bees could survive the winter or have enough honey once spring arrived.  But apparently once the hives are established they produce enough honey that he will get some free honey out of the deal."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4d6a9m", "title": "In Irish (Gaeilge) the common reply to hello \"Dia is Muire duit\" literally means \"God and Marry be with you.\" How did this develop and what was the common response in pre-Christian Ireland?", "selftext": "Edit: Sorry typo in the title, Mary not marry", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d6a9m/in_irish_gaeilge_the_common_reply_to_hello_dia_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1obbaa", "d1of05k"], "score": [17, 6], "text": ["It's not marry, its Mary, and the the response to that is Dia  is Muire is P\u00e1draig duit, which adds in St. Patrick. ", "You may be interested in this AskHistorians thread from 2013:\n[\"Dia dhuit\" meaning 'God be with you' is the Irish word for hello, how did Irish people greet each other before Christianity arrived?](_URL_0_)\n\nThe general consensus seems to be \"we just don't know.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dbxg6/dia_dhuit_meaning_god_be_with_you_is_the_irish/"]]}
{"q_id": "3o9r4o", "title": "what happens in the brain when you lose your temper? why the sudden outburst of rage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o9r4o/eli5_what_happens_in_the_brain_when_you_lose_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvv9j2g", "cvv9y3l", "cvvashg", "cvve03g", "cvvetot", "cvvfym3", "cvvj7kr", "cvvjns9", "cvvl5lp", "cvvljwp", "cvvodf3", "cvvq9w5", "cvvth5v"], "score": [50, 17, 3815, 3, 30, 2, 8, 2, 44, 139, 63, 3, 2], "text": ["No expert here so please accept my postulations at face value.\n\nDo you remember a few weeks ago when they said that [self-control saps memory?](_URL_0_) Well I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that managing your calm in a stressful situation saps *multiple* kinds of resources - your energy as well as your memory. In this way, I think we can call patience a finite resource. As a resource, it is metered, controlled, gained and lost.\n\nI think snapping is when your brain no longer has the power to maintain your \"calm\" social homeostasis. The brain knows what it wants: it wants the annoyance gone, it wants it stopped. Being patient often means tolerating annoyances; losing your temper is your basic brain pushing \"override\" and saying, \"OK we did it your way, now I'm going to address the problem my way.\"\n\nI couldn't venture to guess the literal chemical process, though.\n\nAlso, check out [this response](_URL_1_) from /u/archchancellor that better contextualizes my statements.", "Fight or flight response kicking in. Body evolved to have a mechanism to let you fight a bear at a moment's notice. What's remarkable is that some people are able to suppress it as well as they do.", "The current top answer is wrong. this _URL_0_ is why O.P.\n\n\"An Amygdala Hijack is an immediate and overwhelming emotional response out of proportion to the stimulus because it has triggered a more significant emotional threat. The amygdala is the part of our brain that handles emotions.\"\n\nEdit:I am the current top answer and I AM RIGHT!!!!!!!!\n*tears off shirt*\n\nEdit 2: For the people saying it's not Eli5 enough\n\n*Ahem* The part of your mind that makes you mad doesn't know how mad to make you so it makes you all the way mad just to be sure.", "Our brain has evolved to deal with threats/stress by either running away or fighting it (fight or flight). We are literally designed to act this way in responce to high stress.\n\nunfortunately, in our modern world, we are stressed constantly. Our brain is programmed to start kicking ass or running away. Modern stress is solved by neither responce... so we freak out and break shit because our monkey brains have not caught up with our modern lifestyle of being constantly stressed to death. Our brain wants to kick someones ass and in modern times thats neither productive nor helpful.\n\nTLDR; our monkey brain thinks we live on the african savannah and this is no longer the case. Our brain has not evolved for this environment and this is the result.", "You know how animals that feel threatened can suddenly become uncontrollably aggressive when they're cornered? Basically, loss of temper is that as applied to human beings.\n\nLiving things are motivated by their survival instincts, and this is greatly influenced by the Fight or Flight response. This is the process by which the brain decides whether to flee from danger, or turn aggressive and fight it.\n\nStress is the brain and body's response to feeling endangered. It is your biology priming itself for a potential Flight or a potential Fight. Beyond a certain stress threshold, the brain becomes like a cornered animal - no way out from the dangerous situation, so the only option left is to fight.\n\nThis is where \"loss of temper\" comes in. The brain treats things like rationality and reason to be superfluous in a fight to the death, and so these things are switched off. All your resources are directed into making you as scary and as physically aggressive as possible, in order to beat whatever it is that has you cornered. People that experience a loss of control, or can't recall their actions, do so because the parts of their brain responsible for that has shut down to save resources and give you more punching power. This is also why people with anger issues show much more physical strength and power when they have lost their temper, and why they can be so dangerous to those around them.\n\nThis is great all if your biggest cause of stress is the risk of being eaten by a bear or crushed by a hippo, but it doesn't translate well into modern society. The brain does not have a means of distinguishing between the kind of threats faced by our ancient, primitive ancestors and social and economic factors that cause us stress today, and it reacts to both in the same way. ", "Good question OP. I've always wondered why people have certain 'triggers' (including myself) that would essentially lead them into an irrational fit of rage.\n\nAfter reading the top comment, I did a search on the amygdala and came up with this interesting video discussing the subject. _URL_0_", "I have my own theory on this. I lose my temper once or twice per year. I have tried to control my emotions my whole life, so I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes me angry and what leads to me losing my cool. My realization is that it comes from the following (at least for me).\n\n1) Setting expectations \n2) Having those expectations umnet repeatedly \n3) Something that compounds those expectations\n4) Using force in a desire to control the outcome of your expectations\n\nTry and think of all the times you got pissed off and see if this list does not apply, any response is appreciated. Here is an example:\n\nSuzie accidentally gets charged an extra $40 on her phone bill. She calls the phone company and expects to have the money back in her account within a reasonable amount of time and to not be on hold for very long. Fist off, she is put on hold twice (not meeting her expectations) now she is getting nervous because she is short on cash and the money was budgeted for something (compounding those expectations) as soon as she is on the phone with a rep she is put on hold again (not meeting her expectations). Finally, she informed that the policy is 7 days for refunds (not meeting her expectations) That is the last straw, Suzie looses her cool and now she is ready to use force in a desire to control the outcome of her expectations.\n\nMost times I see average people lose their cool these things apply (by average, I mean normal people who never get angry and are calm and polite 99.99% of the time) So I guess the answer is that your brain gets to the point when it has tired everything else and it is ready to fight it out with someone.", "For a different perspective, consider the Jungian concept of constellation, which is what happens when a complex (for example a deep seated feeling of inferiority) is so provoked that it temporarily seizes control of your mind.\n\nThere are an endless number of possible complexes and they can evoke all kinds of behavior.  You can recognize past moments of constellation as times when the internal thinking \"I\", or ego complex, was pushed aside. \n\nIf you don't like how you act when constellated, pay attention to what triggers it and try to identify the real feelings that provoked it.  It may be easier said than done though, since complexes are often formed from material you have found too difficult to confront consciously in the past.", "So its been 7 hours. How you feelin bud?", "There is this thing called Amygdala Highjacking where the brain will will shunt impulses that threaten, frighten or offend you directly to your amygdala (where emotions and your fight of flight response springs from like anger spring from) for processing in stead of sending them to the prefrontal cortex where your consciousness resides. This means that you get angry before you have even had a chance to consider the impulse that caused the anger on a conscious level. This is because when a tiger jumps at you, then you really don't want your brain to spend a few milliseconds considering how you feel about it - you want it to run away or fight as soon as possible. This explains why we can sometimes get these sudden bursts of rage - when your consciousness does catch up it is then normal to feel embarrassed by your overreaction or your brain might after-rationalize your response after the fact.\n\nThe only way to help your brain not to overreact is to harden it int thinking that fewer things are offensive. You can train your brain into not doing this by exposing it to whatever is causing the outburst again and again.", "Ur high bro? Woahhh 420 dude epic meme LOL. I smoke too but i dont mention it in an unrelated post description because im not 14", "If it's all impulsive and this Amygdala is hijacking our reactions - why are some crimes still prosecuted as if the person should be punished for it?\n\nI've had moments where I have literally snapped and done shit that afterwards I feel \"wtf, why...\"\n\n", "It is controllable. I spent my former life surrounded by abuse, torture, pain, betrayal, violence and loss. Now it just feels like I'm continuing the cycle if I react, so I don't. God help us if I do.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/sep/07/self-control-saps-memory-resources", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o9r4o/eli5_what_happens_in_the_brain_when_you_lose_your/cvva609"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack"], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/bvteZ_bq0nk"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15ocfe", "title": "why some people can remember faces but not names.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15ocfe/eli5_why_some_people_can_remember_faces_but_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7oa13l", "c7obebi", "c7od2j9"], "score": [9, 18, 6], "text": ["The human brain is incredibly good at storing images. We have a lot of \"circuitry\" dedicated to it in our heads. The world's best memory experts will convert anything they need to remember into a visual memory so that it's more easily recalled. So, it makes sense that some people would be better at remembering someone's face than their name.", "\"Remembering\" a face really only involves recognition memory. This means that you don't need to be able to bring the face to mind from nothing, you just need to be able to say, \"yes, I have seen this face before.\" Recognition memory is automatic and requires minimal processing.\n\nRemembering a name involves a more difficult process. Long-term memory, especially that for words, works best with meaningful information. There is nothing meaningful about the association between someone's name and their face; names are arbitrary. This makes names very difficult to remember, and success requires effortful processing.\n\nIn general, no normal person is naturally better at remembering names than anyone else. It's a difficult task and some people just pay more attention or use better strategies.", "As someone that remembers faces extremely well and has a hard time with names, it's because I secretly don't give a fuck.\n\nIf I actually pay attention and focus on their name, I'll remember it just fine.  That's just me though.  Selective hearing at it's finest..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8myvo9", "title": "How did a wealthy town on the coast smaller than some peoples backyards become it's own country? (Monaco)", "selftext": "I doubt they have ever had the means to set themselves out militarily so surely it's some kind of economic quid pro quo with France or something? No idea, please enlighten me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8myvo9/how_did_a_wealthy_town_on_the_coast_smaller_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzt0q66"], "score": [6], "text": ["Not to discourage other answers, but here is the [FAQ on why European microstates are still around.](_URL_0_)\n\nHowever, there hasn't really been an indepth answer on Monaco specifically, so hopefully someone will add to this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_the_micro-nations.3A_how_have_they_survived.3F"]]}
{"q_id": "3fmqp4", "title": "When and where did the practice of frying food first develop?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fmqp4/when_and_where_did_the_practice_of_frying_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctqsc4x"], "score": [5], "text": ["Clarification question: Do you mean deep frying or cooking in oil/fat?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5uquln", "title": "Why is hydrochloric acid a covalent compound, and why is it still named as hydrogen chloride?", "selftext": "Although I've read that all acids are ionic as they break into a hydronium ion in solution, hydrochloric acid has a polar covalent bond and is classified as covalent, even though it's named hydrogen chloride. Could I ask for an explanation for why it is not ionic even as an acid, and why it would still be named hydrogen chloride? I couldn't find an explanation online.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5uquln/why_is_hydrochloric_acid_a_covalent_compound_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddw9sm4", "ddwb7yg", "ddwc0mh", "ddwknrd", "ddx2wl7"], "score": [13, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["So \"ionic\" or \"covalent\" isn't really as cut and dry as you're told. No bond is perfectly ionic or perfectly covalent - the bigger the difference in electronegativity between two elements, the more ionic/less covalent their bond. \n\nHCl happens to be on the border between what we usually call covalent and what we usually call ionic. ", "Hydrogen chloride is considered covalent because the two atoms share their valence electrons to form full electron shells. The electron negativity difference between the two atoms is not great enough to be considered an ionic bond. However, the electron negativity difference does make it a polar covalent bond, with the electrons spending most of their time near the chloride, but are still occasionally are shared with the hydrogen.\n\nIn NaCl, however, the electron negativity difference between the two atoms is so great, that the chloride takes the electron from sodium to form a full valence shell, and the sodium just hangs around because it is positively charged after the exchange (as the chloride becomes negatively charged).\n\nNow, to drive the point home, lets say you have an extremely non-polar solvent and you place some Hydrochloric acid inside it; it will remain covalently bonded (won't dissolve into ions). However, the sodium chloride will still be in it's ionic form since it wasn't covalently bonded to begin with. But you can still bet your ass that it'd be hard to pull them apart.\n\nI hope this was understandable, I am sleep deprived atm.", "The concepts of ionic, covalent, etc. bonds are ideals which help you understand what's actually going on in more complicated real-world chemistry.\n\nIn the covalently bonded molecule model you have essentially a bunch of tinkertoy models of molecules that are just bumping into each other. This is really only sort of accurate in a gas phase, in a liquid phase it's typically a huge oversimplification.\n\nIn reality some types of bonds are weak enough to form, break, and re-form constantly while a molecule is in solution. For example, water is not just a bunch of perfect H2O molecules 100% of the time, bouncing around like little mickey mouse heads in a container. In reality Hydrogen atoms from one water molecule will routinely \"Hydrogen bond\" with Oxygen atoms in other water molecules (this is a weak bond that is much less strong than a covalent bond). Additionally, water molecules will typically constantly dissociate and reform into Hydroxide ions (OH-), Hydronium ions (H3O+) or free protons (H+). You can think of water as being an equilibrium between all of those 4 different molecular species in different ratios. Typically, for ordinary water among 10 million molecules of H2O there will be one Hydronium ion and one Hydroxide ion. This may not seem like much, but because a mole of water molecules weighs only 18 grams that means there are 60 quadrillion Hydronium and Hydroxide ions in that 18 gram sample of water.\n\nSome molecules also form bonds with -H or -OH groups which are weak enough that they will occasionally dissociate when dissolved in water, leading to either acidic or basic solutions. Indeed, this is the foundation of general acid/base theory. It's about a population of molecules, and a resultant fraction of those molecules which are, at any given time, in a dissociated state. Again, there's an equilibrium among the different molecular species with a certain fraction of the molecules existing in one form at any given time. Generally, how stable a molecule is as an ion without it's -H or -OH group attached will determine how acidic or basic it is. The more stable it is the stronger an acid or base it will be, the less stable the weaker it will be. Put another way, the strength of the molecular bond to the -H or -OH group is inversely related to the strength of the acid or base. An acid that is very strongly bonded to its Hydrogen is a weak acid, an acid that is weakly bonded to its Hydrogen is a strong acid (because that means it \"shuns\" the Hydrogen and forces it into solution).\n\nNote that even for a strong acid like HCL at full concentration will typically only exist in a maybe 2:1 ratio of covalent HCL versus ionic H+ Cl-.\n\nAnyway, that's the whole basis of acid base theory, that some compounds exist in equilibria in solution between their covalent and ionic forms.", "Alright, I'm going to be dividing your question into *two parts*. \n\n***Q.1) Why is Hydrochloric acid a covalent compound?***\n\nA)   How HCl is a polar covalent compound:- \n\n HCl is called covalent because both hydrogen and chlorine atoms share one electron with each other to          \n  satisfy their respective valence shells and hence they form covalent bond.\n\n **First of all, the main thing you must realise is that no compound is purely covalent or ionic.** Every                  compound possess some degree of each character (i.e ionic  and covalent). \n\nIn the case of HCl, the two electrons involved in covalent bond are drawn a bit towards the Chlorine atom     (**because Cl is more electronegative than H**). As a result, the chlorine atom develops a small negative charge and hydrogen atom attains a small positive charge which results in an ionic character in HCl.  **And hence HCl is called as a polar covalent bond. **\n\n***Q.2) Why it's called as hydrogen chloride?***\n\nA) The main difference you ought to know about Hydrochloric acid and hydrogen chloride is that **hydrochloric acid is HCl(aq) whilst hydrogen chloride is HCl(g). **\n\nWhen hydrogen chloride dissolves in water, it forms hydrochloric acid.\n\n*HCl(g)                     +           Water -- >   HCl(aq)*\n(Hydrogen Chloride)                                (Hydrochloric acid)\n", "Firstly, hydrogen chloride and hydrochloric acid are not the same substance.\n\nHydrochoric acid, I think, most correctly refers to an equilibrium system formed between hydrogen chloride, and water forming hydronium ions and a charged ionic species. This is the case with nearly all acids.\n\nHCl + (n+1)H2O  < ==== >  H3O(+) + Cl(-)n(H2O)\n\nThe degree to which water molecules form a weak complex with the chloride ion varies.\n\nSecondly there isn't a clear physics distinction between \"covalent\" and \"ionic\" compounds, and in my opinion this maxim should no longer be taught in schools. \n\nThere is a significant amount of electron sharing between atoms in all nominally \"ionic\" compounds under most conditions. One atom or molecule does not \"rob\" an electron or electrons from another, except in the situation that the compound is dissolved in a solvent like water. I'll explain this more about this in the following.\n\nIn most cases I think \"ionic\" really amounts to a conflation between three categories.  1) [Salts:](_URL_1_) compounds formed by a reaction between an acid and a base. These are often but not always 2) [Electrolytes.](_URL_2_) That is, compounds which are capable of dissociating to some degree in water or other solvents, forming changed species. \n\n3) Probably the best distinction, is what I call [\"lattice compounds.\"](_URL_0_) \n\nThat is, compounds where the electron sharing occurs to some degree between multiple nearby atoms in a complex way, rather than just two adjacent ones.  But this effect occurs to one degree or another in nearly all solids and, probably, liquids. This partly explains why insulating materials like ceramics or glass will still conduct a tiny amount of current. So again, it's not a clear distinction just to what degree this effect becomes strong enough over binary sharing, that you can term a compound \"ionic.\"\n\n > Could I ask for an explanation for why it is not ionic even as an acid,\n\nMost traditional acids (and bases too) (Bronsted-Lowry Acids) are especially strong Electrolytes because of their reactivity towards water. Nearly all of such compounds react with water to form hydronium ions (H3O+), and conjugate base ions. \n\nIn the case of acetic acid, acetic anhydride, reacts to form some acetate ions and hydronium ions. \n\nCH3COOH + H2O  < ==== >  CH3COO(-) + H3O(+). \n\nBut since acetic acid is considered a \"weak\" acid, the left side of the reaction dominates and most of the acetic anhydride remains."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chemistry-textbook/basic-concepts-of-chemical-bonding-9/the-ionic-bond-72/lattice-energy-336-1485/", "http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Chemical/saltcom.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvation"]]}
{"q_id": "mncsr", "title": "Can someone point me to a clear explanation of how various symmetries in the Lagrange Formalism result in conserved physical quantities?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mncsr/can_someone_point_me_to_a_clear_explanation_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c32awg1", "c32awg1"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["Depends what you mean by \"clear explanation.\" Do you mean a clear mathematical proof? That's what clear explanation means in physics. I personally like the way David Tong does it in the first chapter of his [quantum field theory notes](_URL_0_). The [Wiki article](_URL_2_) on N\u00f6ether's theorem has some derivations as well, which may be useful.\n\nIf you want a clear qualitative, words-only explanation, I'm not sure I can be much help. Our qualitative language about science comes from our everyday intuition. Whenever we try to explain why something non-intuitive happens, we have to wrap words around it which analogize it to something which *is* intuitive. Such an analogy isn't always available or even particularly helpful. I think this is probably one of those cases; N\u00f6ether's theorem is a deep mathematical result, and I think it's better to let it sink into your intuition than to try to lessen it by wrapping some words around it which make it sound vaguely like something in everyday experience. That said, this might just be my own faults showing, and if someone else does have a neat way to qualitatively explain N\u00f6ether's theorem I'd be happy to see it!\n\nBrief aside: You don't need to formulate things in terms of Lagrangians (though it's certainly useful); any symmetry in the equations of physics, no matter how those equations are formulated, will result in a conserved quantity. For example, in general relativity one can generate conserved quantities from [Killing vectors](_URL_1_), vectors which describe spacetime directions along which the curvature doesn't change. A spacetime without curvature will have Killing vectors along all four spacetime directions, for example, giving you conserved energy and momenta; no need for a Lagrangian there!", "Depends what you mean by \"clear explanation.\" Do you mean a clear mathematical proof? That's what clear explanation means in physics. I personally like the way David Tong does it in the first chapter of his [quantum field theory notes](_URL_0_). The [Wiki article](_URL_2_) on N\u00f6ether's theorem has some derivations as well, which may be useful.\n\nIf you want a clear qualitative, words-only explanation, I'm not sure I can be much help. Our qualitative language about science comes from our everyday intuition. Whenever we try to explain why something non-intuitive happens, we have to wrap words around it which analogize it to something which *is* intuitive. Such an analogy isn't always available or even particularly helpful. I think this is probably one of those cases; N\u00f6ether's theorem is a deep mathematical result, and I think it's better to let it sink into your intuition than to try to lessen it by wrapping some words around it which make it sound vaguely like something in everyday experience. That said, this might just be my own faults showing, and if someone else does have a neat way to qualitatively explain N\u00f6ether's theorem I'd be happy to see it!\n\nBrief aside: You don't need to formulate things in terms of Lagrangians (though it's certainly useful); any symmetry in the equations of physics, no matter how those equations are formulated, will result in a conserved quantity. For example, in general relativity one can generate conserved quantities from [Killing vectors](_URL_1_), vectors which describe spacetime directions along which the curvature doesn't change. A spacetime without curvature will have Killing vectors along all four spacetime directions, for example, giving you conserved energy and momenta; no need for a Lagrangian there!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/qft.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_vector_field", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem#Derivations"], ["http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/qft.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_vector_field", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem#Derivations"]]}
{"q_id": "7jy0hm", "title": "why do experts say to grab vertical ropes when climbing nets?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jy0hm/eli5_why_do_experts_say_to_grab_vertical_ropes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dra1ohh", "dra4abd", "dra6kl3", "drafcrb", "drak2k1", "dranxm2"], "score": [163, 4, 4, 9, 8, 2], "text": ["Stability. The horizontal ropes will bend and cause a lot more sway in the net if you grab them. You can picture how a horizontal rope will bend to make a \"smile\" shape when you put your weight on it. The vertical rope will be put under tension and won't deform like this. ", "It depends on how the rope ladder is configured.\n\nIf the rope ladder is secured only at two points, the center of balance is directly in the center of the ladder. This means it is highly mass and prone to flipping/swaying. This means you need to keep your own center of mass directly along that center of balance to prevent swaying/flipping. The best way to do this is to use the verticle ropes, as it makes it easier for you to center yourself.\n\nIf the rope net is configured so that it's secured at four points (as it should be), you don't really need to worry about this particular aspect, as the center of balance is the entire width of the rope ladder/net. As long as you keep three points of contact, you should be just fine.\n\n\nHere is a short video describing the first type of rope ladder/net that I described, and how it's used against you during the popular carnival game. It has lots of lines/models to show you the idea with visual influences.\n_URL_0_", "Also, the little finger has the tightest grip on the hand, so you have a firmer grip in a position where you can maximize the use of the little finger. (Source: often repeated by my various martial arts instructors with regard to holding various weapons, although I just checked online, and the internet is apparently arguing about whether it is true.  My own experience backs it though.  The other fingers just aren't as good at holding onto a slender object being jerked around.). Having your wrist twisted as happens in a horizontal position also decreases your strength.  You can block an attack with much less effort if you are holding a sword vertically than if you are holding it horizontally.  Logically that applies to ropes also.", "My brother was taught during his basic training (British army)  When jumping to a climbing net don't try to grab the net with your hand but instead put your arms through the spaces in between the ropes and hug/hook the net with your arms. ", "2 reasons.\n\nHorizontal pieces deflect more than vertical pieces. Also, the soldier above you is standing on the horizontal pieces. If he slips, he's standing on your hand.", "The little finger is visibly capable of closing tighter than the other fingers - it has smaller bones and there is less distance between joints."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://youtu.be/tk_ZlWJ3qJI?t=423"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22jxfm", "title": "Did medieval colleges have what we today would consider electives, if so what are some examples of them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22jxfm/did_medieval_colleges_have_what_we_today_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgns3la"], "score": [134], "text": ["I'm going to preface all of this by saying that every University was different, and that as time passed Universities tended to develop rather individualised traditions in different countries. If I have overlooked any special examples, I do apologize.\n\nGenerally, no. Scholasticism, the governing philosophy of early Universities, taught the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. The first three were called the *Trivium* and made up the curriculum of a Bachelors Degree. The *Trivium* was seen as preparation for studying the more difficult *Quadrivium* (the last four subjects). Once a student had completed the *Quadrivium* they were considered ready to teach at a University level, and granted a Masters Degree. Unlike modern Universities, there weren't exactly majors or minors, and in the early stages of the University there weren't individualized departments. \"Faculties\" of Law, Theology, Medicine, and other subjects gradually materialized.\n\nSo instead of choosing a major, fulfilling its requirements, and then taking interesting electives on the side like we do now, medieval students had to first choose a University that specialized in whatever subject they were interested in. For example, Paris was well-known for theology, Bologna was well-known for Law, and Salerno was well-known for Medicine. At University, students sometimes chose their own professors and paid them directly, or sometimes they were assigned professors and paid tuition to a central authority. The caveat was that they could only really study the Liberal Arts.\n\nThat being said, medieval intellectuals were much less confined by disciplinary boundaries once they took their Masters than modern scholars are. A scholar with enough experience and respect could research, think, and write about almost whatever they wanted. \n\nNOTES: Paul Oldfield \"The Kingdom of Sicily and the Early University Movement\"\nPeter Denley \"Medieval Italian Universities and the Role of Foreign Scholarship\"\nA.B. Coban \"Decentralized Teaching in the Medieval English Universities\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3lc843", "title": "why do we have 'at will employment' in us? why don't we protect worker's jobs by preventing employees firing them without any fault ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lc843/eli5_why_do_we_have_at_will_employment_in_us_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv513sz", "cv519vb", "cv51jv4", "cv51o0a", "cv51qls", "cv51qs9", "cv52kky", "cv53wgy", "cv54jf7", "cv54knd", "cv55d9a", "cv562eg"], "score": [37, 24, 5, 39, 6, 2, 6, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Mostly because employers can't always afford to keep a worker. If a company's profit or income declines, they might not have the money to pay a worker. We can't legally require a business to keep a worker's job if they don't have the means to pay them.", "It's a balance. The U.S. has---for the most part, put itself all the way to one side, but there are reasons for that.  \n\nOn the one hand, you could make it less likely for people to be arbitrarily fired, expanding protections beyond stopping employers from firing people for discrimination. Obviously, this would directly protect a lot of jobs, and make the workplace a more equitable place (assuming the laws were well written).\n\nBut, on the other hand, that makes it harder to fire people meaning its harder for bad workers to be removed and that fewer spots will open up for new workers.  It also makes it riskier for businesses to hire someone since they might  turn out to be a bad worker, meaning that they will wait longer to hire and hire fewer people whenever they can.  It also, arguably, can make businesses less dynamic, meaning they'd grow slower and be more inefficient, potentially further reducing the availability of good jobs. \n\nWhich approach protects more jobs? well that's the whole debate. ", "Because an employer is paying the worker for their productivity (or value). If/when the time comes where the productivity, their value, no longer matches the wage in which they are being paid the employer has the right if not the responsibility to let that worker go. To have government dictate when an employee can be let go would significantly raise the costs of hiring employees thus the wages of the workers will decline harming millions of individuals.", "On the flip side of that, it is perfectly legal for you to quit your job without any notice and be hired somewhere else.  \"At will\" works both ways.", "A job isnt a right. Its a privilege. \n\nA person has the responsibility to maintain a skill set and perform as the environment requires. \n\nPeople dont always do this, or can't. And employers also, sometimes, have the same problem. \n\nYour position seems to imply that a true Marxist situation is \"workable\". It is not. Unless you consider a society more similar to the structure described by Owell in 1984. This does seem tobe our current path though, so, maybe. ", "Each State in the US is sovereign and some of them have chosen to be \"at will States\". That is the will of the people there. ", "Because Americans believe that the government shouldn't get involved if it doesn't have to.  Requiring employers to continue to employ people falls into \"don't tell me what to do \" territory.  ", "So if I go to a barber, the next time I have to go to the same barber, I can't change barbers? I have to show some kind of cause why I fired the old barber to some government employee? Fill out paperwork, take statements from the old barber and the new barber, pay a paperwork fee, etc.\n\n", "The reasons to why are complex. Basically history and a lot of decisions being made.\n\nI'm Swedish and a former union worker so I have some experience with saving people's jobs when they've been wrongfully terminated and giving the go-ahead to fire people on just grounds and am quite passionate about rights in general, workers rights' being a main one.\n\nI see a lot of misconceptions about how better workers rights would affect the workplace ITT and I'd like to summarize some of them and show how we do it.\n\n > Can't afford the worker, company will go bankrupt. \n\n\"Lack of work\" is one of the things that we terminate people for. This comes with restrictions that you can't replace the person with another for X months before asking the person who originally held the job if they'd like it back.\n\n > It works both ways, you can quit whenever you want too.\n\nYeah, we can do that too. You don't get payed for the hours you haven't worked, that's it.\n\n >  It's a balance, the flip side is that you can fire people who are bad.\n\nYeah, we do that too. Basically we have 3 types of employment that are most common by far (there are always special cases).\n\n* Hourly. You get paid for each hour you work, they call you whenever and don't even need to fire you, just not call again.\n\n* \"Test employment\". A 6 months probation period at the workplace. During this time you can be fired for any reason or none at all. After 6 months they have to either fire you or give you a *permanent employment*.\n\n* Permanent employment*. It's your job and as long as you do what you're supposed to do (the job you were hired for) you can't be fired. Basically you can only be fired from this if you fail to perform your duties repeatedly, criminal activity while working and lack of work.\n\n", "Billy opened a Lemonade stand outside of his house. The second week, business started booming, so he asked his neighbor Sally to help him. Sally did a great job, was on time, fast and efficient. Billy appreciated the help and paid Sally for her time. \n\nLater that month, Billy's best friend Tommy came home from summer camp. Billy wanted to hire Tommy at the Lemonade stand, but he still had a perfectly capable helper named Sally.\n\nBilly looked at his earnings and quickly realized that he could not afford to pay them both! There was Sally, who had done nothing wrong, and there was Tommy, who he would rather have there working with him.\n\n\"What should I do?\" thought Billy. For a brief moment, he considered keeping Sally around. Then, he thought to himself: \"I run this joint. ME. It was my idea, my hard work, my piggy bank savings that bought these supplies. I say what goes on around here. I never told Sally that she'd get a guaranteed job-for-life. Sally is free to start her own stand and hire or fire whoever she wants. As for me? Me and Tommy are gonna run my joint. Alright then Sally.\"\n\nthe end\n\n", "Watch [This Video](_URL_0_) that outlines the dangers of protectionism. Only the first 20 minutes or so are super pertinent to the topic. The title of the video is sensationalist and it isn't trying to prove he US is the best. \n\nThe video just shows what can happen when governments go too far to try to protect people. ", "There are pros and cons to the US approach and those of other countries which you mention. I'll give you my experience of the other countries (so not At Will) as I used to interview, hire, and if necessary look into firing, employees for a company in the UK. As to why you don't have it in the US, it's just that it's a different balance:\n\nOne of the advantages of the UK system is stability. When I hired someone I knew they would not disappear from one day to the next. The month notice period (which is standard but can vary, and generally goes up with how much responsibility you have) means that from hearing that a worker is leaving it gave me a month to find replacements, make any adjustments and even do a handover with the new starter if necessary. For the employee it meant that they had the security of knowing they would not be out on the street from one day to the next, that they had at least a month's worth of work from being told they were fired/made redundant. \n\nThe negative of this notice period is that as a worker it's sometimes hard to move into another job if they need someone else straight away or starting shorter than your notice period, because you are contractually obliged to stick out your period. Some people just leave anyway and depending on the position the company might just write it off (obviously they don't pay them). Keep in mind that if your new employer finds out they may not look favourably on this at all as they'll perceive you as being unreliable. \n\nIt's a misconception you can't fire someone, it's just that you have to follow a process. If someone starts a permanent position then both parties are agreeing to work with each other under the agreed terms of the contract. X amount of hours with Y responsibilities etc. Generally you have annual reviews, where goals are agreed on by both parties and then reviewed at the end of the year. This sets a framework for when you can or can't fire someone, and generally lets both sides know where they stand. If I wanted to fire someone I would have to follow a specific process which generally involved identifying areas where the employee is not meeting the agreed standards, making that employee aware of the faults, giving them a reasonable chance to correct them, and then going from there. That said, this is for general performance. All contracts will have \"Gross Misconduct\" items that are instantly sackable. These are generally stated in the contract itself, and include things that you would expect like theft or any other crimes but may also include other company specific reasons. These reasons have to meet employment law standards so for example you can't have \"dating a black person\" as a gross misconduct item. \n\nOne of the major benefits for the workers in the above is that you shouldn't (I say shouldn't because things don't always work out like this) ever have a situation where your boss can threaten people with getting sacked. Your boss can't come in having a bad day and say something like \"next person to piss me off is getting fired\". You'd get sued into oblivion. One thing that I personally noticed, and this is now anecdotal, is that it was more common in the US offices to hear threats of \"someone's going to lose their job over this\". Bosses don't, at least in theory, have that ability to hold your job over your head like that. Either someone is committing a fireable offence or they are not, it's not at the whim of someone having a bad day or with a bad temper. \n\nIn addition to the above, companies can of course make people redundant. This addresses the issue some have brought up about a company having a right downsize when necessary. The thing is you don't generally make people redundant, you make positions redundant. You can't make your Assistant Art Director redundant and then just hire another one when he's out the door, you have to kill that position entirely since your justification for the redundancy should be \"we can't afford/no longer need that position\". There are more granular rules on this that I don't want to state as fact without being sure, but there are time periods that have to go by for example. There are also mechanisms in place to ensure that things are being done fairly and not in a manner that breaks employment law. \n\nOne thing to really take away is that it's not just as simple as the government forcing companies to keep people on. It's a complicated framework with mechanisms that protect both sides. If a company is finding it hard to fire someone then it can be their fault for the way they drafted their original contract or how they followed the process. I've had to go through the process of someone being dismissed and really it amounts to being able to say: \"This is what we agreed you would do. These are results showing you are not able or willing to meet these standards. Here are the things I've done as an employer to help you achieve these standards (this is so that you can't place unachievable goals on someone and use that to fire them), here are results showing you still cannot meet standards. You're sacked\". \n\nAll the above happens internally with no government involvement at all. If the employee disagrees and takes you to court, that's where the paper trail you created kicks into gear. And why is it like this? Because culturally that is what the people of the UK, in general, expect and demand. Both as employers and employees. It's similar to how we have strong firearm laws in the UK yet nobody is protesting, because that's how the people there want it. \n\nPersonally I much prefer the system I was under in the UK. I had friends from the company move to the US and even had the chance to go, and turned it down because I do not feel the US system provides the sort of work environment I would want to work under. I understand why culturally Americans may prefer it, at least the employers, but it's not for me. Really it's like that for most people in the UK, and government policy reflects that. Personally I think that if Americans as a whole do not want government getting in the way of this then government is clearly not reflecting what Americans want. Don't get me wrong, this obviously happens to some degree in the UK too, but maybe because it's a much more homogenous culture and smaller population then it kind of works there. It's a bit like how companies can leverage their  power to get things they want, the people of the UK also have power and they choose to exercise it by having a system that works for them (since the majority of UK citizens are employees and not employers). I'm sure many companies in the UK would prefer the US system, but trying to do that in the UK would be political suicide for those in power. \n\nThe above is written late at night and extremely simplified. I had a HR department that dealt with the finer details so it's possible I got some details wrong or that is just doesn't apply for all circumstances (well, I know it doesn't as the laws vary according to many factors). Hopefully others can correct/add to what I said. \n\nTL;DR - Most people in the UK are employees and so they leverage what influence they have into having a system that is far fairer to the working person. This has been culturally accepted for so long that changing the paradigm would be quite hard. Who the hell would want less rights and security? Equally companies pull the other way. In the UK it's fairly levelled between employee and employer.\n\nThe US system seems to favour employers, which might make sense if you have a high number of small business or people aspiring to own a small business. Also culturally it seems people (US employees and employers) don't feel the government represents what they want, so they try and keep them out of things. In the UK, with employment law at least, it's not like that. That's why we (and in general in Europe) have far better holidays and work conditions. \n\nOh and I totally left out European laws that also come into play, but you should be able to get the gist. Why isn't your system like that in the US? Because either your government is not reflecting what workers want, or that is what workers want. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZpDjxIPpFc"], []]}
{"q_id": "2742xt", "title": "[Meta] To source or not to source?", "selftext": "After having several posts downvoted recently for not being sourced, despite them being very basic or elementary facts, makes me want to seek further clarification. Not only from the mods but the subreddit itself.\n\nIn academia it is generally accepted you don't have to show a source for every single claim or fact. It is more for controversial or obscurbe things, basic dates and facts about a period are taken as granted (e.g. William the Conqueror being a Norman and invading England in 1066).\n\nShould I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nAlso I have repeatedly been told to show a source for my personal interpretation of sourced facts. How is this possible? I thought reasoned interpretation based off sourced facts would be fine. Or am I only allowed to parrot the work of scholars who have came before me?\n\nI also often see stuff upvoted, so assumingly be \"correctly\" sourced, that actually only links to some shoddy bbc or blog article. Or they have put in lots of dates and figures. Or a very general reference of some secondry source, often \"introdcutory\" material to a subject. \n\nIf the standards of the subreddit is to exceed the quality of most academic work when it comes to sources and refrences then that is fine by me. But can we have the rule enforced a bit more strictly. \n\nOr altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly. Assuming most of us are historians or amateur historians I don't see the problem with slightly more generealised summarys of things that are common knowlege to anyone with a passing interest.\n\nTL;DR Where do I draw the line with refrencing? Even stuff that my proffesors wouldn't have considered poorly refrenced has been downvoted on this subreddit. Do I need to show proof for every single fact?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2742xt/meta_to_source_or_not_to_source/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chx79r9", "chx81fi", "chx82v9", "chx9gd5", "chxcqxa", "chxemjl", "chxj48n", "chxy6pb"], "score": [42, 4, 24, 5, 5, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Upvotes  &  downvotes are not necessarily indicative of how well an answer stays within the rules; I regularly downvote and report answers which lack depth, are parroting wikipedia, or are plain wrong. These answers sometimes have many upvotes, despite the request to \"*Upvote informative, well sourced answers*\".  Unfortunately, not everyone with an upvote button sticks to that guideline. The number of votes is often more an indication of the visibility of an answer than the quality of it. My advice would be: don't worry too much about the votes on your own answers. If you gave the best answer you could, and it was insightful and in-depth, there's not much else you can do. \n\nAs for the sources: provide sources where and when you can, certainly if someone asks for them. If it's a well-known fact which you don't think needs sourcing, and you can't find a source, just state that. But remember that not everyone knows all well-known facts, and that being able to point them somewhere where they can learn more about it would be helpful.", "In academia the people responding to questions and writing papers are known in field of study and have spent time in education learning the subject. On the internet it could be anyone that answers a question. Having a source to back something up helps to make sure that it's the people with knowledge that are answering.\n\n\nI have sat and thought to myself \"I know the answer to that\" but haven't been able to get a source in time or at all and while I'd love to answer more questions I am not academia it's all amateur and I'd rather not take the risk of telling someone something that I cannot 100% backup.\n\n\nBig difference in reading a response in a paper or book from Dr. AA Smith than a reply to a question on the internet from XXBIGCANSXX even if they do share the exact same content.", "I don't think your postulation on what gets upvoted is an accurate reflection of reality.\n\nThe citation rules on this sub are nowhere close to an academic level of rigor. The rule is this: if you state a fact, be prepared to give a source for it. This is not just because people don't believe you; it's also because people want to learn more about the subject. If you can't do this without recourse to wikipedia, then you don't have the level of expertise to be posting on the subject in the first place.\n\nIf you have questions on why particular posts might have been viewed as problematic, I would happily look at links either here or via PM.", " > Should I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nIn some ways yes, because expertise in one area doesn't make you an expert in another and what counts as a \"basic fact\" varies quite a bit from field to field and even educational system to educational system. Part of the point of this subreddit is also to provide answers to people without training in that specific subfield. ", " > After having several posts downvoted recently for not being sourced, despite them being very basic or elementary facts, makes me want to seek further clarification. Not only from the mods but the subreddit itself.\n\nI can't see these, since you say you deleted them.\n\n > In academia it is generally accepted you don't have to show a source for every single claim or fact. It is more for controversial or obscurbe things, basic dates and facts about a period are taken as granted (e.g. William the Conqueror being a Norman and invading England in 1066).\n\nAs has been said, this sub is not academia. That doesn't mean you need less or more sources. However, in the sub, you don't typically need a source for \"everything\", at least in the experience of answers I've seen.\n\n > Should I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nNo, I can't see why you'd need to. You should provide a rigorous amount of information and provide references if you want to avoid people asking where they can find more/your information, you don't have to source it all straight out of a book. However, you're probably *not* being asked for sources for facts that \"everyone knows\". If everyone knew them and they were basic fact, then you wouldn't be asked for a source. If they're \"easily findable through Google\", then you're not providing the depth they're likely looking for, and the academic rigor expected. I would encourage you to [re-read the rules in this regard](_URL_0_), as they go into the question of \"Depth\" that might be giving you some trouble.\n\n > I also often see stuff upvoted, so assumingly be \"correctly\" sourced, that actually only links to some shoddy bbc or blog article. Or they have put in lots of dates and figures. Or a very general reference of some secondry source, often \"introdcutory\" material to a subject.\n\nI have already asked to see some of this.\n\n > If the standards of the subreddit is to exceed the quality of most academic work when it comes to sources and refrences then that is fine by me. But can we have the rule enforced a bit more strictly.\n\nI don't think the standards are anywhere close. Further, as has been mentioned, upvotes are not correlated with the rules of the subreddit.\n\n > Or altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly. Assuming most of us are historians or amateur historians I don't see the problem with slightly more generealised summarys of things that are common knowlege to anyone with a passing interest.\n\nThat is what the subreddit is doing, when it downvotes answers that it doesn't believe are sourced or in-depth enough to satisfy the question. That is the subreddit populace's \"self-moderation\". Now, I'm not saying they're right. A good answer can, on occasion, be downvoted because it doesn't *seem* correct, because there's not enough depth or because it doesn't account for alternate opinions and interpretations that a more-sourced and more in-depth answer provides in the same thread. But the sub self-moderates by downvotes, and the rules have little to do with it.\n\n > TL;DR Where do I draw the line with refrencing? Even stuff that my proffesors wouldn't have considered poorly refrenced has been downvoted on this subreddit. Do I need to show proof for every single fact?\n\nUnfortunately this is very anecdotal. What is your major/focus? That may explain why some rigors are different.", " >  Also I have repeatedly been told to show a source for my personal interpretation of sourced facts. How is this possible? I thought reasoned interpretation based off sourced facts would be fine. Or am I only allowed to parrot the work of scholars who have came before me?\n\nNo, of course not. Although, if people are calling you up on advancing your argument then it is not their issue but yours, as you are clearly not either making A) a compelling case; or B) sign-posting your thinking process. Both of which I'm sure your tutors would not be happy with!\n\nIf someone is asking you to back up an interpretation the absolutely worst thing to do is claim it is impossible (because it suggests you cannot explain or justify your interpretation). This is where a familiarity with the primary sources and the ability to explicitly include them in a response is essential. If your interpretation is almost exclusively founded on the secondary material then I *would not* recommend offering a 'reasoned interpretation', as you will not have done the requisite research of your own which is necessary to set out a balanced and informed interpretation.\n\nThis is why, for the most part, I keep within the secondary literature unless it's a topic I'm very familiar with such as [Joan of Arc](_URL_0_), [medieval Wales c.1090-1284](_URL_1_), or my flared topics - although those are comfortably broad, especially the 'Medieval Europe' bit! ", "I've had my share of requests for sources, but it's kind of hard if you've just written a 5 paragraph entry, and someone says \"Do you have any sources?\"  Can we ask that requests for sources be more specific?\n\nOtherwise I look on the difficulty of writing an acceptable article as part of the price we pay for having a high quality subreddit.\n", " >  Or altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly.\n\nI want to just restate the \"official\" position of the mods on sources since there seems to be continuing misconceptions about it. The rule is, has been for a very long time, and will be for the foreseeable future, that sources are encouraged but **not** mandatory, unless you are challenged. That is, we won't remove a post because it isn't sourced unless you are asked to give a source (by anyone, not just a mod) and refuse.\n\nI think this is clearly stated in the rules and several other places; if not, please do tell us how we can improve.\n\nMy impression is that the sub has a whole has come to expect a greater standard than that specified by the rules. It is self-moderating in the sense that people tend to be much harsher with their downvotes than we are with removing posts, at least when it comes to sourcing. There's little we can do about that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_answers"], ["http://redd.it/25ppkb", "http://redd.it/240phs"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28tr80", "title": "Why did Eisenhower send federal troops to allow the 'Little Rock Nine' to go to school? What did he gain?", "selftext": "I understand how troops were *needed* to force the integration but what did Eisenhower gain from it? I mean it was before his re-election and it seems to me to be a good way to loose votes in 1950s America\n\nWas it personal conviction? Was there something his administration gained from it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28tr80/why_did_eisenhower_send_federal_troops_to_allow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciegovu", "cieo71n", "cies1gt"], "score": [92, 2, 5], "text": ["Eisenhower's personal conviction was that blacks deserved equal rights but it was the president's job to uphold the law, not make it. He has been glorified and criticised because, despite being on the right side of history, he was an apolitical military man uncomfortable taking strong positions. A book aimed at non-specialists I found insightful is called Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.\n\nAs to why he did it, this was one episode in a much larger saga. Governor Faubus of Arkansas called in the national guard in defiance of a court order, claiming \"blood will run in the streets\" if they admitted blacks. What followed set the stage for so-called massive resistance (closing schools) in Virginia and George Wallace standing in the school house door in Alabama. Eisenhower knew that. For Faubus, when he finally allowed the students to attend, it was a test case of his own. He could rile up whites with the prospect of total desegregation (which wasn't on the table yet), watch violence ensue, and say, \"Told you so.\"\n\nEisenhower called his bluff. With the students' lives in danger, he decided to send in troops. [NPR helps elaborate](_URL_0_), shedding light on your latter question:\n\n >  \"What I remember at Ms. Bates' house is that you had all of this drama going on, but we were still teenagers. We were worried about how we were going to look getting into the jeep. Why couldn't we have two jeeps, instead of one. And Daisy said: 'Look, this is a very important moment. The fact that the president of the United States has sent the United States Army here to escort you into school means that this government is finally serious about school desegregation.\"\n\nThis was a moment of strength for the president, outside the racist voters of the south, who still voted Democratic anyway. Eisenhower showed desegregation was a battle he was willing to fight. \n", "I would like to add just a years prior Eisenhower allowed the governor of Texas, Allan shrivers, to prevent Mansfield high school from desegregating because he wanted Texas' electoral votes, though i doubt he really needed them. He also gave Texas rights to the tidelands over the federal government so it could suggest Eisenhower had some alliance with shrivers. I believe Orville Fabus was just part of Eisenhower being tough on the early attempts to defy desegregation. ", "It is also important to point out that Faubus was directly ignoring a federal court order to integrate Little Rock's schools, and Eisenhower (being the Chief Executive of the federal government) had to show the supremacy of the federal government. To allow integration to be stalled in the face of a federal mandate because of the whims of a state governor would've damaged Eisenhower's credibility, especially after Eisenhower and Faubus met face to face about the crisis and Eisenhower thought it was resolved.\n\nAs a side note, last summer I went to Little Rock to work on a living memory project about the Little Rock Nine, where a group of educators (including myself), interviewed several people who experienced the painful integration of Little Rock's high schools, including a few of the Little Rock Nine themselves. It was an incredible experience."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14563865"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "267g39", "title": "what's happening in thailand?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/267g39/eli5_whats_happening_in_thailand/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chodwtx", "choe9ce", "choeav9", "choem7k", "chofdka", "chofknh", "chofoqe", "chofso5", "chofvib", "chogoes", "chohe1k", "choj6ye", "chojc3k", "chojs3q", "chojzz2", "chom7ne", "chomktg"], "score": [275, 95, 4, 2, 11, 20, 4, 2, 3, 178, 8, 2, 3, 2, 29, 2, 2], "text": ["martial law. locals are not happy with the government. Protests planned for this Friday - Sunday. Ex Pats living in Bangkok don't seem too concerned - just staying away from major areas. Pizzas and DVD's for a few days.", "Thailand is a developing country. A part of the population lives off tourism and other international industries and therefore has a comparetivly high standard of living. The big majority lives in poverty. Mostly farming rice. The majority supported The current corrupt government, because they subsidies farming and are more left leaning. That's why The richer majority was protesting. They want business friendly reform and a government that represents them instead. \n\nNow The army took power and everyone is anxious to see what will happen. ", "This article should be a great read: _URL_0_", "NPR this morning had a great story about it i would suggest their podcast or streaming website. basically what i got out of it is that the democracy that had just recently been established in the country was not favored by the military leaders and some of the population.Several days ago the military of Thailand gathered and staged what they said was not a coupe but was reveled today as being just that. Its a turbulent time in the country right now. \n\nHere is the NPR news story link on todays events _URL_0_    ", "I'm due to fly in to Bangkok on the 30th June and stay in Thailand for 5 weeks. Should I be deeply concerned?", "Here is [what the TV is showing] (_URL_0_) right now. The Thai says the same as the English.\n\nEDIT: That's every single channel by the way. Cable included.", "Politics is about compromise.  The two sides didn't want to and were at each other for almost half a year.  Huge protests from both sides.  Small bombs here, shooting there. Nothing too serious yet (compared to what happened in other parts of the world)\n\nArmy, doing very little during that time and let police handle the situation, is\nrunning out of fucks to give, so it pulled the martial law trick, and force them to talk.  Talk failed. No compromised accepted.  Fucks ran out, and army (while holding hands with navy, airforce and everybody in between, except police, because fuck police^1 ) take control.\n\nIt will be a relatively peaceful coup like it has always been.\n\n^1 (upvote bait)", "Every single year there is some kind of unrest or natural disaster. It tends to even itself out. Tourists aren't ever really affected unless the airport shuts down (which it has before). Just stay out of the pre-determined protest areas. ", "Thailand is a pretty complex country, so this explanation is going to be vastly oversimplified.\n \nThe current government was elected with a large majority, and is basically a democratic government, supported by many people, including many of the rural poor. This threatens the oligarchy, which has held the real power behind the scenes for basically all of Thailand's history. So at the beginning of the month you had the courts, which have sided with the oligarchy, ruling that the prime minister had to step down. She did, and a temporary prime minister was appointed (from her own party, because they have a majority). So Yingluck (the PM) was out, but her party was still in control. So now the military, which has also sided with the oligarchy, has taken over and kicked the current government out. It's uncertain where they'll go from here, since Yingluck's party has overwhelmingly won every election almost since the current 1997 constitution was adopted.\n \nThailand has technically been a constitutional monarchy (modeled after Great Britain) since 1932, but the government has alternated between military juntas and kinda-sorta democracy for most of the 20th century. To give you a sense of how much influence the military has had on government, in the past 80 years there have been 19 coups, 12 of which have been successful. That's almost one coup every 4 years. Since 1932 Thailand has has 17 separate constitutions. So you can see that it's not nearly as shocking to Thais for the military to force one government out of power and either rule themselves or install a new one.\n \nNow for the recent history. In 1997 a [new constitution](_URL_1_) was drafted. It was widely hailed as the most democratic constitution in Thailand's history and the first elections under it were held in 2001. [Thaksin Shinawatra](_URL_2_) and his [TRT](_URL_3_) party won, and by merging with two other parties, achieved a majority. His government implements a host of programs, including universal healthcare, infrastructure investment, a war on drugs, and rural anti poverty schemes such as microcredit. These made him popular among the rural poor, and allowed him to gain a true democratic power base. This power allowed him to do basically whatever he wanted, so he did, appointing his friends, relatives, and political allies to positions of power, and [generally being corrupt.](_URL_2_#Criticism) The fact that he had this much power and was brazenly using it threatened many people in the oligarchy, who were afraid he would become too powerful and that they would lose their influence.\n\nEnter [Prem.](_URL_6_) Prem was a general who became prime minister, then became head of the King's privy council, which effectively meant that unless the king said otherwise, Prem spoke with the king's authority. Prem was and is an extremely powerful man, and he was a major player behind the scenes in the [2005-2006 political crisis.](_URL_5_), which then led to the [2006 coup.](_URL_4_) So Thaksin was convicted of corruption, his TRT party was banned, and he chose to live in exile rather than return to Thailand and be arrested.\n \nThe military ruled for a year, and then held elections in 2007. Unfortunately, many of the TRT members (those who were not banned from politics for 5 years) reformed under the [People's Power Party](_URL_0_), which was widely understood to be Thaksin's party. It won the elections overwhelmingly. All of the people who hated Thaksin were furious, since even though he'd been convicted of corruption and forced into exile, he was essentially still in power, if only by proxy. There were protests against his party winning. After the leader of the party, [Samak Sundaravej](_URL_8_) was thrown out by the judiciary, Thaksin's brother-in-law, [Somchai Wongsawat](_URL_9_) became head of the PPP. Then the courts convicted him of corruption, threw him out, and dissolved the party. The opposition leader, [Abhisit Vejjajiva](_URL_11_) became Prime Minister after he was able to build a coalition from the remaining parties that had not been banned. Now all of Thaksin's supporters were protesting because a government that did not win a majority in the elections was in power. Eventually, Abhisit had to call new elections, which were promptly won by a new party, [Pheu Thai Party.](_URL_7_) However, this party was headed by Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin's sister, making it even more blatantly obvious that it was a proxy party for Thaksin. And, following a familiar pattern, in 2014 the courts found Yingluck guilty of nepotism, and had her removed.", "For many years, the Thai people have been in a strange political situation.  Nominally, they are a constitutional monarchy.  In practice, the king hasn't actually exercised power in a long time.  There have been 19 attempted coups in the last 80 years; 12 of them have succeeded.\n\nIn 2001, the Thai people had elections, and elected an industry tycoon.  By the 2005 elections, he had formed a kind of cult of personality - Thais were out in force to both call for his re-election and for his replacement.  He won the 2005 elections, but was deposed by a military coup when visiting the UN in 2006.  In 2010, his sister won an election to become prime minister in a still heated political climate.  This month, the constitutional court stripped her of her office for violations of the constitution.  Her opposition formed an interim government, which immediately came under scrutiny (after all, they stood to gain the most from the court's decision).\n\nThe supporters of the ousted government organized protests and marched on government buildings, where they encountered organized resistance by the supporters of the interim government (most of whom also think the family I've been talking about shouldn't be in Thai politics at all).  For a time, the protests were non-violent, but recently things have taken a rather ugly turn for the worse.  People on both sides have been injured or died, and the Thai police are either hiding or marching with the protesters.\n\nAs such, the military is the last real organized source of power in Bangkok at the moment.  The Thai military has now declared martial law, which means they acknowledge that the current government doesn't have control of the situation.  Depending on their motivations, this could turn out in many different ways.  An active military presence may quiet down the protests/riots so a working coalition government can be formed.  On the other hand, the general in charge may see this as a chance to put himself in power.  History has seen it play out both ways, and it may not even be possible for a working coalition government to be formed.\n\nAll in all, we'll have to wait and see, but you can rest assured that everyone, including China and the US, would like to see them return to peace and stability - their exports of food, textiles, and manufactured goods are of particular value to the global economy.  They've been one of the focuses of international investment and growth, along with the rest of SE Asia.", "It's coup season again.  I think this is #12 for them.", "Someone put some exact figures on this, but I'm pretty sure coups are so prevalent in Thailand that since ~1950, they've had just as many (more?) coups than the US has had presidential elections (maybe just presidents).  Anyway, it seems like it's basically the Thai way of 'electing' someone new.\n\nI live in Koh Samui so it won't affect us too much in our bubble (hopefully internet won't be affected).  Although I'm a teacher, and the military's \"National Peace and Order Maintaining Council\" has ordered schools closed for tomorrow.  One reason for this is to keep parents home to minimize people protesting in the streets.\n\nI'm sure it will blow over.  It always does.   < cue foreshadowing music > \n", "Thinking outside the box here but what if instead of a coup every couple of years how about a general election?", "Over the past few months there has been a conflict between the government and the oppossition, the oppossition basically accusing the government of corruption. They were trying to make amends and the entire country was sort of held hostage because of the conflict between the redcoats and yellowcoats, untill the army had enough and now the army generals took power. It all went without violence and the only guys imprisoned are the 2 leaders. People are kinda happy that its going to calm down a bit now. Tourists are safe as long as they respect the curfew, declared the army.\n\nNothing to be affraid of, the army has done 30 coups like this in the past century.", "This is the real explanation,  since you asked. . go ask CNN if you want the \"official\" explanation:\n\nThe Royal Family of Thailand is by default the richest family in the world,  (officially 30Billion, Unofficially much more)  they own  approx 60% of the land in the country and numerous other assets   (this figure may be slightly off, but it is close) \n\nThe figurehead of the family  (the king)  is getting on in age and at some point sooner or later he will pass on.   There is no popular or definite heir to the throne, so at some point in the very near future the largest mass of wealth IN THE WORLD is going to be up for grabs.\n\n\nThe current political struggle is a chess match between Thaksin Shiniwattra (a Lannister type)  who is living in exlie in Dubai and would like to style himself to replace the king  as a sort of \"Lee Kwan Yew (benevolent strongman) of thailand though aligning with the succession claim of the crown prince who is disliked by the thai people and then turning Thailand into an ineffectual monarchy and into some sort of \"populist constitutional dictatorship\"  and eventually doing away with the monarchy with him at the helm\n\nThe other half of the struggle is the people loyal to the core royal family  who probably support the kings daughter for succession who is beloved by the people and will maintain the status quo....\n\nIt is nothing to fucking do with \"class struggle\"  - it is just one asshole trying to take over power from the incumbents and that is pretty much it.   The farmers and protesters are paid and chess pieces.   \n\nIt is a proxy battle of royal succession between a brother and sister, that is pretty much it. \n\nELI5:  Its basically the closest thing we have to  Game of Thrones in modern day. . . A battle for the throne. ..\n\n\n", "How has nobody posted the Vox article :\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAbsolutely perfect breakdown of the situation.", "There are two factions arguing with the government, it was getting bad...  really bad.  The military instituted martial law to basically keep the two groups from fighting.  After siting down with the groups and the government the military has now taken over.  \n\nExactly why and what the goal of the military/generals are here is unknown.  But before there take over they were trying to mediate and bring about a peaceful end to the situation so hopefully it turns out well.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/thailand-crisis-up-to-speed/"], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/22/314780439/coup-in-thailand-military-seizes-control-of-country"], [], ["http://imgur.com/sHPjkzq"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Power_Party_(Thailand)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Constitution_of_Thailand", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaksin_Shinawatra", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Rak_Thai", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Thai_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thailand_political_crisis_2005-2006", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_Tinsulanonda", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheu_Thai_Party", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samak_Sundaravej", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somchai_Wongsawat", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaksin_Shinawatra#Criticism", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhisit_Vejjajiva"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.vox.com/cards/thailand-coup-problem/thailand-has-a-coup-problem"], []]}
{"q_id": "20dufq", "title": "how do fingernails grow when they seem so firmly (and sometimes painfully) attached to the skin underneath?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20dufq/eli5_how_do_fingernails_grow_when_they_seem_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg2ba24", "cg2bbsf", "cg2e9b6", "cg2hxv9", "cg2jj9o", "cg2kmuc"], "score": [471, 26, 10, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["You might want to check out this other reddit post: _URL_1_\n\nThe long and short of it, apparently:\n\nFingernails grow outwards at a rate of approximately 3 mm per month (0.1 mm per day). This means that the skin under our nail is pulled off by our nail so slowly that the pain receptors are not set off and we feel nothing. The microscopic tears in the nail bed heal just as quickly as they are formed, so you don't notice it.\n\nEdit: I can't seem to find a whole lot of information on this topic online. It all seems to be... conflicting. dr-mc-ninja offers a [different viewpoint below](_URL_0_).", "I've always noticed or thought that my fingernails grow faster on flights. Any science behind that? After a 2 hour flight my nails seem to grow more than they would in a few days.", "The skin under the nails also grows, there is no stretching between them.\n\nI mean, the skin under the nails is not static. It is growing and reconfiguring all the time.", "I would like a gif explaining this process.", "I don't know, but when I had my index finger shut in a car door, it ended up making the nail detach from the skin beneath and I ended up taking the nail off because it was halfway out off the cuticle bed and it came off easy. The skin underneath smelled like dead flesh and the nail ended up growing back twice as thick and there is a weird bit if skin that grows along with the nail underneath. I dunno what happened, but it was really gross", "I now feel my fingers tearing\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20dufq/eli5_how_do_fingernails_grow_when_they_seem_so/cg2byo2", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1c6chf/are_our_fingernails_attached_to_the_skin_under_it/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5dd3vm", "title": "JFK  &  LBJ seem like completely opposite personalities. How well did they get along working together?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5dd3vm/jfk_lbj_seem_like_completely_opposite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da3xag8", "da3z1nt"], "score": [110, 90], "text": ["Not so well. In Robert Caro's last LBJ volume he talks about the relationship in detail. LBJ saw JFK as a lightweight in the Senate. But JFK saw the value in having Johnson on the ticket because oil-rich Texas was a crucial fundraising state for Democrats. Once in the Whitehouse JFK basically ignored Johnson and essentially treated Bobby Kennedy as his Vice President. Caro writes that during the run up to the Cuban missile crisis JFK solicited Johnson's opinion and was horrified by what he considered Johnson's irresponsible hawkishness. Their relationship got so bad that many believed Johnson was going to be removed from the ticket in 1964 in favor of then Texas governor John Connally.  ", "**Not well.**\n\nObviously, Robert Caro's multi-volume series is the ultimate history of LBJ's life and service. You should start there, and the fourth volume, which covers Johnson's interactions with Kennedy, has much of what you're looking for.\n\nThe relationship between Kennedy and Johnson stretches back to the U.S. Senate, when both worked together. Johnson had been in Congress since 1937 and in the Senate since 1949; Kennedy only started serving in 1953, following the '52 elections. \"Now, this young man I appointed to the Foreign Relations Committee claims he knows more about foreign affairs than I do,\" Johnson said during the 1960 Democratic National Convention. (Caro, *Passage of Power*, p. 106)\n\nThat 1960 convention got heated between Kennedy and LBJ, who was also seeking the presidential nomination. Johnson raised \"the Catholic issue\" and Kennedy's health problems, while Kennedy's backers whispered about Johnson's 1955 heart attack. \n\nJohn Kennedy himself appears to have a much more positive view of LBJ than almost any of Kennedy's supporters did \u2500 in particular Bobby Kennedy, who was LBJ's most implacable enemy in the White House. But John Kennedy was the one who picked Johnson as vice president to balance the ticket (Johnson was a sure bet to deliver Texas and a door into several other Southern states) and his campaign went along with it.\n\nOnce elected, however, Kennedy's staff and supporters ridiculed Johnson behind closed doors. These messages reached Johnson, who \u2500 particularly after his time in the Senate \u2500 had long ears. Bobby Kennedy was a particularly vocal foe of Johnson. Jeff Shesol's *Mutual Contempt* is a good book on their relationship.\n\nFurthermore, Johnson was frustrated by the dead-end nature of the vice-presidency. He had given up a strong position in the Senate only to find himself sidelined by the Kennedy administration, which didn't really have a use for him after the election. LBJ wasn't one of Kennedy's close advisers; Bobby Kennedy was practically the shadow vice president.\n\nIn recorded interviews from 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy said her husband and Bobby Kennedy had discussed strategies for 1968 to prevent Johnson from running for president, and there's been ample discussion that Kennedy was seriously considering dumping Johnson from the ticket in 1964 in favor of someone like Texas governor John Connally. Kennedy's assassination changed all those plans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4mtamh", "title": "\"A Lanister always pays his debts\" Did powerful houses/Families/Royalty have catchphrases that were commonly known or popular?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mtamh/a_lanister_always_pays_his_debts_did_powerful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3y54tt", "d3yoh2h"], "score": [96, 33], "text": ["The short answer is yes, and you can look up \"heraldic motto\" for the full list of each house. Some of these have endured and are still fairly well known. For instance, the Order of the Garter founded by King Edward III of England has for motto \"Honi soit qui mal y pense\", a french saying (roughly translated meaning \"shame on he who  sees evil in it\". This motto is still very well known in french society, and sometimes used in everyday conversation. \n\nOther heraldic mottos :\n\n- Nutrisco et extinguo, \"I feed and extinguish\", Fran\u00e7ois I of France\n\n- Nec pluribus impar, \"not inferior to many\" (meaning superior to almost all), used by Louis XIV, XV  &  XVI\n\n- and since this is Reddit : Absentis lumina reddit, \"the moon illuminating the earth\", for Marie-Louise-Gabrielle of Savoie, wife of Phillipe V king of Spain.", "The Spanish Habsburgs had a famous family motto: Plus Ultra, or \"Further Beyond.\"\n\nAccording to ancient myth, during the trials of Hercules, he traveled as far as the Straits of Gibraltar (known in Antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules), which were inscribed with the motto Nec Plus Ultra, or Nothing Further Beyond. The implication was that there was nothing of interest in the open ocean and that venturing out further was death.\n\nEmperor Charles V, in his role as King Charles (Carlos) I of Spain, made Plus Ultra his motto, reflecting Spain's ambitions over the New World.\n\nTo this day, the phrase Plus Ultra is on the flag of Spain.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCheck out the Pillars of Hercules on either side of the Spanish crest."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/1280px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "2v3jie", "title": "A recent post on TIL claims that practically all alphabetic scripts, including Latin, Arabic, Tibetan, Hebrew and Korean, are ultimately descended from Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "I am referring to [this](_URL_0_) post. The main source is [this](_URL_1_) wikipedia article, which in turn cites \n\nGoldwasser, Orly (Mar\u2013Apr 2010). \"How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs\". Biblical Archaeology Review (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society) 36 (1). ISSN 0098-9444. Retrieved 6 Nov 2011.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2v3jie/a_recent_post_on_til_claims_that_practically_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coe7jyi"], "score": [42], "text": ["This is going to be short, but the general point is that, yes, of the scripts you have mentioned, there are in fact fair justification for considering them as derivative from a single parent script, at least through influences if not direct development. Each of these can be linked back to Proto-Sinaitic which it in turn derived from hieroglyphs. Does that mean that the connections are certain and free from any potential criticism? No, but we can still be fairly certain of their relatedness.\n\nThere are of course detractors, such as is found in the other comment about hangeul. However this comment is supported neither by the history of the script nor by the governing bodies which would have something to gain by giving such support, and as such can be ignored with reasonable degrees of confidence. There's simply no reason to believe hangeul was *not* based on 'Phags-pa.\n\nRealistically, based on the currently accepted views within the field regarding the development of orthographic systems, there's absolutely no reason to believe the different writing systems about which you are asking were not based ultimately on a single common system, however unintuitive that may seem."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2v3du3/til_practically_all_alphabetic_scripts_including/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Semitic_alphabet"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1vzi61", "title": "do ex-prisoners who have been found not-guilty a while into their wrongful sentencing receive any compensation for their unnecessary time in prison?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vzi61/eli5_do_exprisoners_who_have_been_found_notguilty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cex9cfg", "cex9h17", "cexbz83", "cexdfk4", "cexdh1l", "cexf6r3", "cexf9xd", "cexfpaw", "cexgohm", "cexh30t", "cexh6r0", "cexi2mg", "cexiv2r"], "score": [21, 5, 178, 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 24, 2, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["Yes! In Germany, for example, it is 25\u20ac each day imprisoned.", "there's a.. strong suggestion of a 50k compensation for every year of wrongful imprisonment, but it's upto the individual states to determine how much they actually give. some give nothing, many give change for a taxi and a meal, and only a handful give the full 50k. ", "It depends on a lot of factors.\n\nFor instance, some states will only pay *exonerated* prisoners.  Note that being \"exonerated\" is different from being found \"not guilty\" on appeal or at a new trial. \"Exonerated\" is defined by some states as being absolutely ruled out as a guilty person-- for instance, by DNA evidence.  It is not enough to be found \"not guilty\" on appeal because of, for instance, bad jury instructions.\n\nOther states only offer compensation for people who are convicted because of misconduct by prosecutors or police-- not just a bad jury decision that is later set aside.  That can make getting compensation very hard in cases of coerced confessions (which *do* happen).\n\nIn many states, there are legal guidelines for payouts to the wrongfully imprisoned, but the money isn't paid automatically.  People who are wrongfully sent to prison often have to sue to get this money-- and the cost involved in suing can make it hard.\n\nThe Innocence Project has a [good guide to which states in the United States have laws to pay the wrongfully imprisoned](_URL_0_).\n\nFor instance, Nevada doesn't have any laws to pay people wrongfully sent to prison.  Texas, on the other hand, provides $80k per year in prison, plus $25k per year spent on the sex offender registry, college tuition, and back child support payments-- but only if the wrongfully imprisoned person has been pardoned or \"granted relief on the basis of actual innocence\".\n\nThe short answer is: it varies significantly from place to place.  And this is a fairly US-centric answer: I have no idea what the laws are outside the United States.", "It really depends on the case and what the prosecutor did. Being wrongfully convicted of a crime doesn't make the state liable unless they IGNORED something or did something wrong.", "Not in Canada apparently: _URL_0_", "Last legislative session a law was adopted in Washington state providing 20k per year of imprsonment following exoneration.  Came from a case out of Clark Co where two guys were convicted of rape and exonerated by DNA evidence after 18 years in prison.  Before that, no compensation.", "What? An apology isn't enough?  In all seriousness, I worked for a company that kept track of how many people were freed thanks to our DNA tests.", "Do any states (or I guess non-US countries as well) pay compensation to families of innocent people who were executed? ", "There are some states that won't even expunge your record if you are found to have been wrongly convicted. I watched a movie once about a few people who were wrongly convicted then later released because of DNA evidence. One guy was wrongly accused of rape simply because he was wearing the wrong color sweatshirt at the time. 15 years later they got the correct guy and let him out. On record he was still a convicted rapist and had to tell people he was a convicted felon. He was fighting to get his record expunged but it was time consuming and expensive. The guy actually carried his exoneration papers around with him everywhere he went because he was afraid the police would stop him, see that it their system listed him as a convicted rapist and arrest him thinking he had escaped from prison.", "\"Life after death row\" by Saundra westervelt she is one if my professors at UNCG.", "I think this question belongs more in /r/answers, seeing how it's a T/F question.", "If only you could save it up and use it as credit on future sentences. \"I hear by charge you and sentence you to 3 years in jail\" - \"Thanks judge, I'ed like to use some of my credit have 5 years racked up thus far.\" - \"Officer, let this free man go, sentenced to time already served.\" ", "There's this [paper](_URL_0_) which goes into some details about compensation for wrongful conviction in Australia. To summarise there are 3 ways you can receive compensation\n\n\n* Ex Gratia payment -  The state can make a payment to you however they do not admit any wrong doing and the process is fairly secretive. The paper I linked to is quite critical of these payments\n* Sue someone - Generally you have to show that someone was responsible for your false conviction. This is hard to do and in some cases it's not possible at all.\n* Private bill - You get a politician to sponsor a bill that will get you compensation. This is extremely rare.\n\nYou can get compensation in Australia but it's neither guaranteed nor is the process transparent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.innocenceproject.org/fix/National-View1.php"], [], ["http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/served-27-years-for-sex-assaults-he-didnt-commit-man-cant-sue-crown/article16441187/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://netk.net.au/Tort/Compensation.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "32vt16", "title": "Where was Haile Selassie of Ethiopia during WWII?", "selftext": "I understand he was exiled during the invasion of Italy into Ethiopia. I also had heard he had traveled to the Caribbean, and quite possibly Jamaica during this time. \n\nA Jamaican acquaintance had very firmly stated that Haile Selassie's first visit to Jamaica was in 1966, years after WWII had ended. \n\nI've tried researching this but can not find any clear answers. Can any history buffs here provide the answer I;m looking for? Thanks! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32vt16/where_was_haile_selassie_of_ethiopia_during_wwii/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqfc03x"], "score": [7], "text": ["He went into exile in May of 1936 - first to Jerusalem to prepare his case to the League of Nations, who were located in Geneva, Switzerland, then immediately to England, where he stayed for something like five years, mostly in Bath. I didn't know this before, (and I know a little about the man) but I also took a look at his wikipedia article, which claims that he also spent a lot of time in Worthing, Wimbledon, and Malvern. But that's wikipedia, so...\n\nAnyways - he returned to Ethiopia in 1941 after Britain's North Africa campaign poured troops and resources into the region in a successful bid to extricate it from the Italians. \n\nI know nothing about him visiting Jamaica early on and considering the crazy shit Ethiopia was going through, and the fact that a major component of Selassie's exile was to try and convince the countries of Europe to step in and use their military might to rein in Italy, I can't imagine why he would've traveled to the Caribbean. Rastafari was born in Jamaica without his direct intention, around the time of Selassie's coronation...basically he is looked at as the fulfillment of Garvey's famous quasi-prophecy - \"Look to Africa, for there a black king shall be crowned.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "edkiio", "title": "What is a scientific consensus?", "selftext": "At what point is it recognized by the scientific community that there is a consensus or general agreement about a particular issue. Is it when 60% of scientists agree? 70%? I know that for issues like climate change, rent control, etc. there is a definitive consensus with more than 90% of specialists agreeing. However, I want to know when a consensus is recognized for less agreed upon issues.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/edkiio/what_is_a_scientific_consensus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fbjyogq", "fbjzmxg", "fbkpjfv"], "score": [3, 8, 19], "text": ["If you don't get an answer here, you can also try /r/philosophyofscience", "A scientific consensus has nothing to do with the opinions of the actual scientists and everything to do with the body of evidence. No one is surveying the people, the results of valid studies are analyzed and the \u201cconsensus\u201d is that the conclusion is supported by the evidence. It\u2019s less about a percentage and more about valid evidence.", "There's no set percentage and there's no official body which recognizes a consensus.  It's not an official or formalized process, instead it's a term to describe an informal process which tends to happen in science.\n\nBut why do we even care about consensus?  Isn't science about the evidence?  Shouldn't the important thing be what hypothesis has evidence supporting it, not what hypothesis is the most popular?  The answer is yes, but no, but actually yes.\n\nTo understand why, you have to understand the real gritty details of how the scientific process really works.  The common understanding is that scientists want to know a fact about the universe, so they do a study to give them the answer to that fact.  For example, does X cause cancer?  You do a study, and find out if X causes cancer.  How old is the earth?  You look at some zircons, and find the earth is X years old.  But this is a simplification of the actual process.    \n\nTake cancer for example.  The simple version of the question is \n\n > Does chemical X cause cancer? \n\nbut what you _really_ want to know is \n\n > Does chemical X cause cancer in humans at real-world relevant doses?   \n\nOf course we can't directly try to give people cancer to find this out, so instead we grab a bunch  of mice.  And then we do our best to figure out how a real life dose for a human translates into a dose for a vastly smaller mouse.  And at the end of it all what our experiment tells us is _not_ \"chemical X causes cancer\" but rather \"after exposure to chemical X at a specific dosage, lab mice got X% more cancer than the control group\".  We then have to interpret this result as evidence that chemical X might cause cancer in humans at our dosage of interest.  But this interpretation can be up for debate.  Maybe mice don't respond the same way as humans to this chemical.  Maybe our dosage was way too high or too low.  Maybe the slight increase in cancer we saw is an unlikely statistical artifact.  \n\nScientific studies always have these caveats and are open to interpretation.  Some are more convincing, some are less.  Some are just more complicated to understand.  And to get the real picture you almost always need multiple studies, which may produce conflicting results.  Anyway, the point is that scientific evidence is just that, _evidence_.  Studies don't declare a theory true or not, they produce evidence supporting or opposing it, and then people use that to judge if the theory is true or not.  \n\nThis is what produces scientific consensus (or, in some cases, doesn't produce it).  If there are enough studies that provide evidence for a theory, and those studies are convincing and their conclusions are reasonable, and it all fits in with other bits of knowledge in a sensible way, then scientists in the field reading them will tend to be convinced by the studies and agree with the theory.  And if they are mostly convinced the hypothesis is true (or false), you have scientific consensus.  \n\nIf, on the other hand, the results are somewhat ambiguous, or there are conflicting papers, or the conclusions drawn are a bit of a stretch from the evidence, then different scientists in the field may disagree.  Some may find the theory convincing, pointing to the evidence that supports their view.  And others may find the theory not convincing, pointing to the evidence supporting _their_ view. In such case, there is no consensus.  \n\nSo again, why do we even care about consensus?  Why isn't the important thing to just look at the papers and see if they are good, and if they are, then follow the theory and who cares about what anyone else is saying? Several reasons.  First, you'd quite often need to read and understand quite a lot of scientific papers to really have an informed opinion, and nobody's got time to do that for everything.  But if a bunch of experts have done that and agree on what they've found, why not just take their word for it?  Second, not all papers are good but it's not always obvious to the layman.  It's totally possible to find some paper (and even more possible to find someone reporting or blogging about a paper) that claims to support X when the consensus is Y.  And those people may say \"who cares about the consensus, look at the evidence here!\".  But quite often there's some flaw, or simply this is just one piece of dissenting evidence against a mountain on the other side. It's also almost trivially easy to mislead people who don't know a topic well by cherry-picking evidence. If it's really that convincing, why don't more of the people who spend their life studying the topic believe it?\n\nNow, of course sometimes consensus is _wrong_.  Sometimes a new bit of evidence comes out and eventually overturns the mountain and consensus changes.  And people often use this to say that consensus isn't worth paying attention to.  But most of the time, consensus is right and the dissenting paper nobody much believes is wrong and becomes forgotten.  People  mostly just remember the successful cases.  It's not that it's _impossible_ to be right in your interpretation and the consensus wrong, but it's like beating the stock market.  It's hard to do reliably and consistently.\n\n**TL;DR** Consensus tends to happen when the evidence is clear and convincing.  But evidence isn't always clear and convincing, and may be misleading if you don't know the field.  Sometimes consensus is wrong, but the odds it's wrong in this particular case (whatever that is) are low."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "49ksq1", "title": "Which are the issues with a fractal based model of the distribution of mass in the universe?", "selftext": "I was reading \"Faster than the Speed of Light\" from Jo\u00e3o Magueijo. He makes the following statment: (I read it in spanish, so you are seeing a double translation):\n\n*Despite what I said when I presented the findings of Hubble, the most resounding evidence for homogeneity comes from cosmic radiation, as there is still a unique view on the catalogs of galaxies. In fact, a team of Italian scientists has analyzed the galactic maps and has concluded that, for all we know, the universe is not homogeneous but fractal. If this happens to be true, I recommend the reader to burn this volume, forget the big bang and start mourn.*\n\nI don't understand why a fractal model of the (mass distribution in the) universe will imply a scientific problem; but quite the contrary as I think it will allow lot of predictions and understanding of nature. Magueijo does no elaborate on the issue with the fractal model, do you understand why it is bad?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/49ksq1/which_are_the_issues_with_a_fractal_based_model/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0sqeds"], "score": [10], "text": ["For the distribution of mass to be fractal, it means for example that the box-counting dimension is less than 3, the dimension of space. You define it like this: consider the limit\n\nlim for L - >  infty of (amount of mass in a cube of side L)/L^d\n\nThen a typical behaviour is that this limit is infinite for d less than a certain d\\* and zero for d greater than d\\*. d\\* is the box counting dimension and when it exists is a real number between zero and three. (The upper bound is that you cannot have a bigger dimension than the space you're contained in).\n\nNow a basic point of cosmology is the Copernican principle, including homogeneity. Homogeneity means that at sufficiently large scales the distribution of mass becomes homogeneous. In formulas:\n\nlim L- > infty of (mass in cube of side L)/L^3 exists and is finite\n\nBut that just means the dimension is d=3. Any other dimension, which would be fractal, would be at clash with homogeneity and all of cosmology would crumble.\n\nHowever, all data points towards d=3. There was a paper, which if iirc is the one you talk about, where they found d=2; this (I'm working from memory) was thoroughly contested on the basis that they introduced a serious bias by not accounting for the fact that galaxies occult each other. It's not hard to convince oneself that restricting to only visible, unocculted galaxies you essentially are building the box-counting dimension of a subset of the celestial sphere and so you cannot get anything  > 2. But the result is incorrect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "oricp", "title": "why do we like boobs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oricp/eli5_why_do_we_like_boobs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3jgcp3", "c3jgddk", "c3jgf5i", "c3jgfbi", "c3jgfpz", "c3jgibz", "c3jgil0", "c3jgnoy", "c3jgpyp", "c3jhe7q", "c3jheck", "c3jj2c4", "c3jjf8w", "c3jl4xh", "c3jmpwy", "c3jo2ti", "c3joah4", "c3jp5dq", "c3js0m2"], "score": [695, 540, 197, 8, 4, 34, 376, 71, 20, 4, 10, 20, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I'm sure there will be a far more technical answer written soon, but I'll just say: have you SEEN them, man?  They're brilliant!", "If you look at cultures that encourage nudity, such as places in Africa, those kids/men don't flock around the women with their breasts hanging out. Basically because we hide them in our society, men want what they can't have. If every woman walked around with their tits out a lot less men would be interested in them.\n\nTL;DR  We want what we can't have.\n\nedit: For clarification, I'm not trying to say we would lose interest entirely, but that our interest would not be nearly as high.", "Because we're biologically attracted to traits of the opposite sex which encourages us to reproduce.", "Heh, heh. Boobs.", "[This](_URL_0_) might guide you.", "From the movie \"100 Girls\":\n\nMatthew: [Looking at Cynthia] How can a guy have a real conversation with a girl like this when we're made so helpless? In the animal kingdom, when two members of a pack stare at each other, it is a test of dominance. The first one to look away is considered the weaker. When this happens between a man and a woman, the cards are stacked against a man. 'Cause, let's face it, every time a guy meets a girl, he wants to check out her breasts. A man must summon all of his will not to look down at those golden orbs, whose wonderous tips are upturned, aimed right at his eyes. \n\n[after staring at each other for a long time, Matt finally gives in and looks down at Cynthia's breasts] \n\nMatthew: Once a man loses his test of nerves, a woman knows she has a great secret power over him, and she can get him do anything she wants. Like a sexual sorceress, Cynthia had several men under her spell. ", "Relevant: [Did you just look at my chest?](_URL_0_)", "Cleavage looks similar to buttocks.  There are theories that say we evolved larger-than-required breasts as another means to increase sexual attraction and reproduction.\n\nIncidentally, there are similar theories on the existence of pubic hair, and now it is common to shave it off.  Because eff Mother Nature, that's why.\n\nEDIT:  FWIW, I'm not sure that I believe these theories either.  Maybe we needed these visual clues long, long ago, and maybe we didn't.  But boobies (any size) are awesome and I'm a firm believer in not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  Oh gawd, somebody give me a better analogy.", "I thought it was an evolutionary thing. We're attracted to boobs because it represents the ability to nurse our offspring. ", "There was a study done recently that suggests the reason men love breasts is because ancient man... loved breasts.", "Evolutionary processes have hardwired a certain behavior in men (and in lesbians too, I guess, but I don't know for sure). Bigger, fuller breasts are attractive because they are an indicator of good health and hold the promise of successful child-rearing. Same thing goes for wide hips. Wider hips indicate that a woman can successfully bear a child.", "So you're born, right? And not 30 minutes after you take that first breath of fresh air and monster piss you've been holding in for 9 months, you get this warm, round thing shoved in your face that is full of food and is tailor made for someone your current size and shape to be able to use without any instruction.\n\nFor the next year, all you need to do is yell out, and these perfect globes of engineering appear to appease you. Quite literally EVERYTHING you need to survive is provided by 2 godlike melons that are at your beck and call.\n\nSuddenly, and quite arbitrarily, the greatest thing in the world is taken away. It becomes \"uncouth\" to cry and reach for breasts at the mall. From 3 until whenever-you-find-a-girlfriend, the world is full of your favorite things, heaving up and down like schooner rounding Cape Horn, and you are 100% powerless to do anything about it.\n\nWorse still, around 10, still YEARS away from touching one yourself, you aren't even allowed to look at the jiggly goodness without fear of getting labeled a pervert.\n\nThis is why men don't cry and are emotionally distant. Having the only thing you want taken away, hidden, then brought back into your life with hundreds of rules and social mores governing your behavior around them is maddening.\n\ntl;dr More boobs, less psychological damage.\n\n[Original comment here.](_URL_0_) ", "They're awesome, soft, bouncy, and jiggly. How is that wrong?", "In most other primates, the buttocks are the female body part that the males are attracted to\u2014in many primates the buttocks even swell or change color during ovulation to show that the females are fertile. Some scientists postulate that when humans became bi-pedal, and our butts were no longer eye-level, females evolved swollen breasts to mimic the curve of the butt, since that was more visible as we stood upright. However, since we no longer have visible oestrus (ovulation) the breasts are always enlarged, which the male brain perceives as a sign of fertility. It\u2019s also interesting to note that in other cultures, however, the breasts are far less eroticised than in Western culture. There are many parts of the world where it is still considered perfectly fine for women to bare their breasts to nurse their babies in any public space; in the United States, this would still result in some raised eyebrows, since breasts are considered erotic. In other countries (brasil, for example) a woman\u2019s large butt and hips are still considered as sexy or even sexier than breasts.", "Because they don't talk.", "They're soft; They're squishy; They're bouncy; They're like toys! Who doesn't like toys? I like toys.", "You are over-thinking it.", "Nice boobs  >  >  healthy  >  >  able to nurture and feed baby. Nature and shit man", "Because ....they're boobs. That's why. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF7K5bsj7mk"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF7K5bsj7mk"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ntxdo/reddit_what_is_something_youve_always_wanted_to/c3bxy34"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3foujq", "title": "I've always heard of NATO plans to defend the Fulda Gap from the Soviets during the Cold War, was there a Soviet plan to stop NATO from rushing east in the same manner?", "selftext": "Another way to look at it - were there NATO ground plans to be the aggressor in this scenario?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3foujq/ive_always_heard_of_nato_plans_to_defend_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctqvawk", "ctr3bub"], "score": [17, 18], "text": ["Very much interested in this too. Also, where there any feasible NATO first strike options against the Warzaw Pact?", "Yes, there was significant power concentration in the area to stop a NATO assault. In East Germany, the area was not called Fulda Gap, but instead \"Th\u00fcringer Balkon\" (Thuringian Balcony), emphasizing the role of Thuringia as the most western region of the Eastern Bloc.\n\nThe Thuringian Balcony was important for NATO because taking it could significantly shorten the front line in a conflict as well as provide elevated positions against soviet counter attacks.\n\nUp until 1990, strong soviet contingents were stationed in the region. HQs in Nohra and Weimar commanded four divisions and six brigades of the 08th Soviet Guards Army. \n\nAs an example, the 39th Guards Motorized Rifles had seven regiments in Ohrdruf, Gotha and Meiningen. They were under arms at all times and ready for combat in a very short time to defend themselves against the (as suspected) American divisions. \n\nThey had support from strong rocket and artillery brigades from Arnstadt as well as Gotha and Ohrdruf. \n\nThis was the Southern NATO route, the Northern Route was less protected by soviet troops, but instead focused on heavy NVA (Nationale Volksarmee, Army of the GDR) presence. \n\n[See map here [GER]](_URL_0_)\n\n\nSoviets probably knew about the NATO plans, as evidenced by a German examination of  soviet maneuver \"October storm\" from 1965, where German officers concluded that it showed similarity to NATO plans Bercon Charlie. \n\nSource: Agency of Military History Research (Milit\u00e4rgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt), Potsdam, Germany.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://media401.zgt.de.cdn.thueringer-allgemeine.de/008B6044_F535331EE8891FC2C52C3ED88866AFF6"]]}
{"q_id": "2gvrwd", "title": "The fastest spinning neutron star rotates at 716 rotations per second. To what degree does the centrifugal force cancel out the gravity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2gvrwd/the_fastest_spinning_neutron_star_rotates_at_716/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckn075w"], "score": [8], "text": ["Treating it as a uniform sphere for simplicity, you have g=GM/r^2 and a=r (2pi f)^2 . If we give it the mass of the sun and a radius of 10 km, we have g at about 1.3 trillion m/s/s and a about 200 billion m/s/s. So gravity is about six times as strong. These are all approximate values, you can play with the equations if you want.\n\nOn Earth at the equator gravity is about 300 times as strong as the centrifugal acceleration."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1czmz0", "title": "who are those guys on the trading floor and what are they yelling? who is listening?", "selftext": "They are usually wearing a mesh vest with bib pockets and carry little notepads. They are often shown yelling in groups of people and apparently somebody is listening to them and it affects the market. Are they making good money?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1czmz0/eli5_who_are_those_guys_on_the_trading_floor_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9lij7m", "c9ljhr1", "c9ln1vw", "c9lo26n", "c9lp8qj", "c9lr4an", "c9lr5y6"], "score": [40, 40, 6, 11, 3, 20, 2], "text": ["They are stock traders. The yelling has little to no effect on the trading, they use [hand signals](_URL_0_).", "There was a documentary on Netflix about futures trading.   Its called floored. I too wondering the same thing until I watched that.  \n\nEdit. The whole movie is on YouTube.  _URL_0_", "I saw alpha1028's comment.  It's a good overview, but doesn't really break it down for ELI5.  The pits you reference really only exist for Futures (CBOT) and Options (CBOE) trading.  the NYSE is a shadow of its former self due to the advent of electronic trading.\n\nThe \"pits\" consist of many players from different firms.  All with their own agenda.  However, they really only consist of traders and brokers.  The brokers will bring an order out to the crowd for their big swinging client upstairs.  The broker will shout out the details of the order/contract to the traders.  Now, the traders, obviously wanting a piece of the action and a good price will start yelling and pushing everyone else out of the way so they're heard by the broker.  Therefore, taking a piece of the broker's order.\n\nMost brokers and traders in the pit are certainly making good money.  They've paid their dues to get to the big stage, if you will. The traders are paid based on performance.  So, some can make millions while others can lose millions and go BK.  And there's plenty who are in between.  The brokers are paid more consistently as they're not trading for themselves.  they're just trying to get the best price for their customer.  Depending on their reputation and their client base, they can also be making millions.  ", "Many of them use hand signals...[this](_URL_0_) is a link to the ones used on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in case you're interested.", "Here's an interesting novel recounting the daily activities of these guys:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's a really quick read.", "I worked on the floor of the NYSE for 3 summers as a page running messages to brokers from their seat on the floor.  I saw the market during 85, 86 and 87 --- pre-crash, post-crash and when computers were in wide-use.  I was there when they filmed Wall Street -- they took broad shots of the whole floor all week long and then certain people got to be called for close-up shots after hours.\n\nThe structures in the center in the room are posts and are manned by people called Specialists.  They represent the stocks themselves and the buying and selling of them.  They are surrounded by clerks (who write down the transactions for the stocks) and employees of the NYSE called Reporters who record the transactions for the ticker.\n\nAlong the walls are where the brokerage houses have seats where the stock brokers take calls from the main office.  When a call comes in, a clerk at the seat writes down the order on a pad that you see them carrying around and hands it to the broker.  The broker goes to the post and negotiates a trade with the specialist.  When there's major news, that's when you see a bunch of brokers from different brokerages shouting to get their price heard or their sale done.   The reporter records the sale and that influences when a stock goes up or down.\n\nThat's basically how it works.\n", "They are all arguing over how much their piece of a cake is worth. Instead of just eating it like you or I might do, they'd rather see if they can trade their piece of cake for an even bigger piece of cake. At the end of the day many of them end up with just a smaller piece of cake and then die of a heart attack."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.danielstrading.com/resources/education/lessons/hand-signals.php"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCcxr-fyF4Q"], [], ["http://www.cmegroup.com/education/images/open-outcry-trading-hand-signal_s.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar's_Poker"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2qdejp", "title": "why are female orgasms so much more intense than male orgasms?", "selftext": "It seems like men are sort of... Unhappy to cum. It's like they're scratching an itch, but for women it ranges from a really good feeling to an earth-shattering religious experience. How come women's orgasms are so much better?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qdejp/eli5_why_are_female_orgasms_so_much_more_intense/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn532st", "cn58qaw", "cn5b8jt", "cn5iy10"], "score": [105, 12, 3, 9], "text": ["Well for one no man has even been a woman and vice versa so it really is impossible for anyone to say the only factual thing thing we can say though is that woman can orgasm multiple times in one sex session while men can usually only do once sometimes twice, Imo men enjoy their orgasms just as much but they only get the one and when it happens the sex is usually over so it's a bittersweet moment. Females get to spend the whole time trying to orgasm as much as possible while males spend the whole time fighting the orgasm for as long as possible.", "I'd imagine answering the question would be a lot like asking why it hurts way more to get kicked in the balls than punched in the tit. ", "Men sort of unhappy to cum?! Really? Maybe it's kinda rare, but I've experience orgasms ranging from cum dribbling out and the thought of \"ok, off to do something more fun now!\", to \"fucking hell, I came so hard that gave me a headache!\" and everything in between. For me, I actively delay the onset of orgasm because sex feels so good, though I time my release to that of my partner (she's a one and done kinda gal).\n\nOne thing I learned years ago is that women have a ridiculous number of nerve endings in their clitoris. Something on the order of 8,000, whereas the penis has around half that. More nerve endings firing off in a fireworks show seems like the explosion could be bigger, much bigger.", "They're not.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nScientific evidence shows that male and female orgasms are actually really similar. Maybe men and women express it differently for whatever reasons, but as the link above, which points to a few important studies, shows, the actual orgasmic process in men and women is very similar."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/body-sense/201004/male-and-female-orgasm-not-so-different"]]}
{"q_id": "33z5zz", "title": "is it true that hanging towels, clothing, etc. out in the sun naturally deodorizes it? if so, how does that work?", "selftext": "Trying to figure out whether or not this is just an old wives tale or if there's some kind of chemical change that comes in the sunlight that destroys odors.  Also, is the deodorizing effect only temporary, or permanent?  Does the sun actually destroy or just mask odors from mold, etc?  Thanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33z5zz/eli5_is_it_true_that_hanging_towels_clothing_etc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqpqgo5", "cqpqtdy", "cqprm7w", "cqpsrzm", "cqpuk2u", "cqpuke4", "cqq6gal"], "score": [26, 5, 15, 2, 21, 30, 2], "text": ["My understanding is that it's just a good, effective way of sanitizing towels. A lot of the musty odor of some towels is that they were too wet for too long and are thus teaming with some smelly little lifeforms.\n\nA good, long exposure to fresh air and bright sun will thoroughly dry out the towel and probably kill almost anything living on it, thus removing the smell they make.", "If you have tomato stains on your clothes, hanging them in the sun with erase them.  I've even put shirts on the dash of my car and the sun takes out the stain.", "I was taught that it's that the thorough drying + fresh air which is the main thing, and also the UV radiation kills a lot of the molds and bacteria that can cause odours. ", "The simple explanation is that the sun bakes out the funk and can permanently get rid of odors.  This works really well with shoes. ", "Generally, odors in clothing are caused by bacteria. The sun's UV rays kill the bacteria, thus eliminating the odor permanently. The sun also does a pretty good job of bleaching clothes.", "The \"livestock\" living on your towels/clothing need a warm, wet and semi dark to dark environment.  \n\nPlacing them in the sun removes the water. Water is very necessary for life. \n\nImagine if you got lost in the middle of a desert. No water, too much sun, little to no food. Your ability to survive would be dependent on finding shade and water. \n\nSo basically putting clothing or towels in the sun causes desertification of their little ecosystem. ", "Do you mean hang them out instead of tumble drying ? Cos we just moved to a small house with a back garden and since hanging out our clothes - we've noticeably smelled fresher. All our clothes smell like fresh air and fabric softener. Its lovely especially since my bro and I used to smoke indoors a lot and grew used to our clothes smelling smoky or worse, funky from a broken tumble dryer.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2h0nlu", "title": "why do gravitational forces create rings on a single plane, rather than a globe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h0nlu/eli5_why_do_gravitational_forces_create_rings_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cko9g4m", "cko9ssk", "ckoajq6"], "score": [17, 36, 62], "text": ["Basically, its like highlander. \nThere can be only one 'plane.' \n\nEliptical orbits that interesect each other will eventually result in objects (within those orbits) colliding into one another. \n\nThese collisions will occur until one orbital plane wins out", "The Minute Science guy explains it in an ELI5\n\n_URL_0_", "It's not gravitational forces that do this, it's collisions.\n\nOrbits at the same distance in anything *except* a single plane will collide.  When that happens, the particles exchange momentum and tend to come out closer to an \"everage\" orbit, with a plane between the two incoming particles'.\n\nRepeat lots of times for millions of particles, and all of the particles end up in one plane.\n\nThis also circularizes the orbits, for exactly the same reason: particles moving in will collide with particles moving out, and the radial motion will be averaged out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmNXKqeUtJM"], []]}
{"q_id": "1wvyqu", "title": "why is it wrong to propose at a wedding reception?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wvyqu/eli5_why_is_it_wrong_to_propose_at_a_wedding/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf5utwv", "cf5uu1p", "cf5uvag", "cf5uwbm", "cf5uwhg", "cf5uxjj", "cf5v8nf", "cf5xe2q", "cf5y0lb", "cf5y0wh", "cf5y84g"], "score": [62, 24, 8, 9, 14, 6, 22, 15, 15, 3, 10], "text": ["You're stealing the thunder.", "It's somebody else's big day.  Proposing at their party is taking attention from them.", "People actually do this?", "It's selfish and rude.", "Not necessarily wrong, but impolite. \n\nA wedding reception is about the bride and the groom. The attention should be on them, not on someone else, because it is their special day. If you propose to your SO on a wedding reception, this means you are stealing attention from them. ", "Not so much wrong, more a faux pas. \n\nPeople feel that it takes away from the 'big moment' of their day, and instead, changes the focus on to someone else.", "It would be like going to someone else's birthday party and co opting it to celebrate your own.", "The wedding is for the bride and groom, not an asshole and his girlfriend.\n\nIf she says \"no\" it becomes extremely awkward for everyone.", "Because weddings cost a lot of money.  Much time and effort goes into planning one so it's extremely rude for some asshole to co-opt it for his own purposes.  The day belongs to the bride and groom.", "On the flip side, not only does it take attention away from the bride but it also takes attention away from the engagement. They are both just moments that deserve their own spotlights. ", "Because it's self-centered and arrogant as fuck?\n\nWeddings are the big day for the marrying couple, to celebrate their union and the joining of their families. They generally are expensive, take a lot of planning, and are dedicated to the couple whose parents are paying through the nose for it. Only a narcissist with no consideration or basest social etiquette would propose at someone else's wedding.\n\nIf you propose beforehand and then *tell* the bride and groom and they choose to share that information with their guests and give a toast to your following in their footsteps, that's one thing.\n\nBut to go down on bended knee, steal the spotlight from the wedding couple, derail the celebration, and bring attention to yourself?\n\nYeah I would hope the person being proposed to would reject such a proposal. Clearly that person doesn't think of other people's feelings and would be a shite partner.\n\nHope it was you and that burns."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "j4jjw", "title": "Why do my hair and fingernails grow faster when I'm backpacking?", "selftext": "Every time I go backpacking for a few days I notice my hair, facial hair and fingernails have grown more than they would have if I spent my weekend doing stuff around the house. Fresh air?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j4jjw/why_do_my_hair_and_fingernails_grow_faster_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c292uwh", "c292vcr", "c2938z2", "c293tmv", "c295lu5"], "score": [23, 2, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["The sun.  The vitamin D you absorb from the sun stimulates nail growth.", "Perhaps your diet. Including eating foods with more vitamin B and keratin but this is just speculation. There are many factors from general care to the environment you're in.", "You may be taking in more folic acid in your diet. ", "Have you recorded measurements of your hair/nail growth while not backpacking for comparison? You could be tricking yourself.", "Is increased blood flow off the table? That would've been my guess."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4i98oh", "title": "A Labour official (UK) recently stated that the Jews were the\u201cchief financiers\u201d of the African slave trade. Is there any truth to that?", "selftext": " > The two latest Labour officials to be suspended rehashed some of these conspiracy theories, but also threw some new ones into the mix. Jacqueline Walker, the vice-chair of the national steering committee for Momentum, the hard-left advocacy group that brought Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to power, was suspended after she was revealed to have labeled the Jews the \u201cchief financiers\u201d of the African slave trade.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIs there any truth to what she said? Or is it just nonsense?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i98oh/a_labour_official_uk_recently_stated_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2w9xc2"], "score": [112], "text": ["It's absolute nonsense, and something of a popular anti-Semitic trope in some radical black nationalist circles (ironically, it's also becoming popular with neo-Nazis), and is now apparently being taken up more broadly in some far left circles. It has its origins largely in the 1991 book *The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews*, published by the Nation of Islam, which is a work of grotesque psuedoscholarship that simply does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny. I have answered a question on the exact scope of Jewish involvement in the slave trade before [here](_URL_0_), which I'll reproduce below in quote boxes:\n\n >  Well, the slave trade was a massive international enterprise; we have evidence of about 35,000 slave voyages that occurred between 1500 and 1866, and though we don't know how many ships were involved because their names often aren't recorded and others are known only by estimation, clearly you need a lot of people and a lot of ships to pull that off. So within that operation, you're of course going to get involvement of Jewish labour and finance; that's an inevitability. On the whole though, Jewish involvement is entirely in line with their representation in the population; there is no disproportionate rate of investment or participation on the part of Jewish people.\n\n >  For example, from 1715 to 1765, we have evidence of only 377 slaves who were brought from Africa to New York on ships owned by Jewish accounts or financed by Jewish capital; that's less than 1% of the total slaving activity in that period. The largest area of Jewish involvement seems to be in the trade of slaves out of Jamaica onto continental North America, where Jewish investment accounts for 8% of all traffic there before the slave trade is abolished by Britain; but this is an exception rather than a rule, and in other contexts Jewish involvement is virtually non-existent. In importing slaves to Jamaica for instance, only 0.4% of all slaves were transported on Jewish ships. The broad pattern is one of minimal Jewish involvement in the slave trade and especially in the trade coming out of Africa. In the Caribbean, we also generally find - with the exception of Suriname (where there was disproportionately high Jewish investment in sugar) - that when Jewish families and estates own slaves in the colonies themselves, they own fewer slaves than their Christian counterparts.\n\n >  So if we were to take the Jewish involvement out of the equation, and assume that no-one had filled the gap of Jewish involvement, we would see only the tiniest reduction in the volume of the transatlantic trade. Jewish people simply were not involved in the slave trade in any meaningful way, as either distant financiers or as ship operators; whilst it is important to acknowledge the role of every agent in the slave trade and slavery, as a whole Jewish involvement is quite ancillary to the story.\n\nEli Faber's book *Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight* (1999) is a superb rejection of the idea that the Jews were the driving force behind the slave trade, and is essentially a direct response to the nonsense peddled in the 1991 National of Islam book; such is the lack of support for the idea in academic circles that some reviewers were confused as to why Faber had bothered to write a book disproving something that no-one in academia believed in the first place!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/201885/labour-officials-suspended-after-claiming-jews-were-behind-african-slave-trade-israel-behind-isis"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40fh93/howwhy_did_black_nationalist_groups_adopt/czjnfm9"]]}
{"q_id": "4y2xbq", "title": "why are prescription drug advertisements necessary?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y2xbq/eli5_why_are_prescription_drug_advertisements/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6kilw3", "d6kiooy", "d6kjxam", "d6kn1n7", "d6kn6tk", "d6kp1j1", "d6kpm63", "d6kputv", "d6kvowc"], "score": [113, 9, 6, 17, 3, 4, 7, 17, 4], "text": ["They aren't necessary.\n\nThey are effective at getting people to ask their doctor \"Would Xyzzy make my condition better?  Is it cheaper?\" and a host of other questions that drive sales.  Commercials on TV for any product are about driving sales.", "In the United States, prescription drugs are like any other product and marketing them directly to consumers is the fastest way for them to establish a foothold in the market over their competitors. With new drugs, doctors often don't know about them as they have not gained broad acceptance in the medical field.\n\nThat's why these ads often end with \"Ask you doctor if (name of drug) would be right for you\" followed by some optimistic outlook (ex. \"Relief is only a spray away!\").", "There is absolutely no reason why prescription drugs should be advertised on TV like they are a typical product. Can you go to the store and by these medications on your own? No, you must have a prescription from your doctor. can I buy granola bars without a doctors prescription? Yes. So the reasoning in the original explanation is flawed.\n\nThe reason why the advertisements say, 'Ask your doctor about a certain prescription' is so you can go to your doctor and ask for their prescription vs. the competition.\n\nAlso why are more than half the commercials dedicated to talking about all the side effects while the narrator speaks in an increased speed than when he is talking about possible benefits?", "It's a part of \"direct to consumer\" advertising. It's highly effective at selling more drugs because consumers actually ask their doctor about the medication or choose it over an alternative because it is familiar. \n\nIf you're interested in this kind of stuff, check out the book \"Selling Sickness\"", "On top what was already said - it is only legal to advertise them direct to the consumer in the US and New Zealand.", "Because if you make a drug that is $8k a dose you want people to ask about that drug.  We have a miracle drug that your insurance will pay for.  Be sure to ask your doctor. ", "Ever heard of Viagra? How about Prozac? Zoloft?\n\nNow how about Nitrostat? Brintellix? Elavil?\n\nThey're all name brands. The top row are or have been widely advertised. The bottom do the same things as the ones above. The top row are household names, the bottom are largely unheard of unless you've been prescribed them.", "They aren't. In fact, here in Australia it is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to the consumer.\n\nDrug company reps used to be able to treat *doctors* to extravagant dinners, events and gifts but that also became illegal a few years ago. \n\nNow reps can just present the features and benefits of their products to doctors", "I hope I am not falling on my own sword but...\n\nEdit: They are not necessary but can be informative. \n\nThere are over 6k drugs approved by the FDA in the US. That is a lot of drugs, and that does not include many oncological drugs.\n\nBefore advertisement many people did not know there was help for them. Take people with active bladder issues. Before 5 years ago only 5% of the population took medications to help them. Most people just learned where all the bathrooms were. Now there is actual study and medications to help. \n\nIBS for many years was thought to be \"in the mind\" of the  patient and now we have real medications to help people with their issues. \n\nThe stigma of AD(H)D has been lessened with many information out there and various treatments to help children and adults. \n\nMany adults who suffer RA have more than two options. \n\nAt the end of the day the most important aspect of humanity is choice. How do we make decisions without all the information? Commercials can help people learn they are not alone in their problems and seek help. Not all drugs are a fix, but sometimes they are necessary. There are so many ways to help people manage their illnesses, not just by drugs mind you!, but by knowing options and what your condition might be. Sometimes a person can have an issue, see the doctor and it is something else but at least they saw the doctor. Sometimes medications are not needed just a lifestyle change. \n\nIn the end it is up to people to decide if they want treatment but it is up to doctors and pharmaceutical companies to provide truthful information regarding possible medications. And it is up to the patients to be honest to their medical professionals to get proper treatment. \n\nTaking medications, making medications, handing out medications is such a two edged sword. On one hand I feel proud about  my profession and the people I help, on the other hand I see the detriment of poorly managed patients and the side effects of people thinking that medications will cure everything. \n\nNote: I do not own a tv or cable package so I have little knowledge in what current commercials play on tele or what they entail. The last commercial I saw was for Detrol LA at an airport. I have second hand info from emails/fliers or people telling me. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3e6w8l", "title": "why is it possible to understand a language when spoken to, yet not be able to speak it?", "selftext": "How can someone understand every word of a language in conversation yet not be able to form a coherent sentence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e6w8l/eli5_why_is_it_possible_to_understand_a_language/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctc0tin", "ctc1mcl", "ctc262z", "ctc7nva", "ctc9deh", "ctc9qx9", "ctcbceb", "ctcevte", "ctcg7vh", "ctcgpuj", "ctchgcr", "ctcxz4l", "ctfdclm"], "score": [54, 8, 421, 4, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 5, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["The most simple answer is that speech production and language comprehension are processed by two different parts of the brain.\n\n_URL_0_", "To expand on your question, I've noticed over the years that I can read Spanish almost fluently (i.e. for any given passage I can understand the overall concept and most specifics), whereas I can't write a complete sentence beyond simple concepts like \"how can I help you\" or \"good afternoon Mr. Sanchez\". This pattern follows in speech; I can understand most of a Spanish conversation between two of my Hispanic coworkers, but I can't respond fluently and I end up switching to English just so they can understand me. \n\nAs /u/Zentraedi indicated, it's most likely due to how we use different parts of the brain for different tasks (parallelization?).", "One part of the reason is the difference between the ability to recognise and the ability to recall.\n\nIf I asked you to name all 50 US states, would you be able to do it? Maybe you could, but you'd probably take quite a while.\n\nBut if I gave you a load of place names, you'd probably be able to pick out the ones which are states quite easily.\n\nLanguage can be similar. Someone might be able to recognise the words when they hear them, but not be able to recall them on the spot when they want to say something.", "i learn most languages from reading, but i do not know how to say the words, when i try it barely makes due\n\nbut when i hear someone talk eg: French then i reconize what they are saying.\n\nbasicly, i know bookfrench, not actual French.", "It also helps that many words are similar on different languages so we are able to make a reasonable guess at their meaning. e.g. \"une banane\" is easily understood, but if someone was asked for the French word for banana was, they would not know.", "For the same reason that many people who can play musical instruments can play others songs, but have difficulty writing their own. That's the way I interpret it. I speak Russian and English. It's much easier to understand what is being said vs creating your own responses. ", "Yes you can.\n\n I have two Bengali friends, and they are brothers. I am eastern European, so completely different languages. They will often speak amongst themselves, usually to argue. Given the current situation, the context, the fact they want to keep their argument private, etc I will usually chime in with a response. It's a little game I play...They get scared I've started learning Bengali lol", "Because they are 2 related, but separate skills.  \n  \nThink about your average day. You probably don't bust out SAT words serendipitously (!), but if you hear it, you'll understand what it means. The ratio of listening and active vocabulary use is rough 10:1 (forgot exact figure, someone can help), meaning for every 10 words you hear, you can only use 1 freely in a normal conversation.", "One issue can be grammar. I could hear the words \"I the light turn on can\" and know what it means. Then at the same time I could try saying \"I can turn on the light\" and have a native speaker look at me funny.  \n  \nanother thing could be homonyms in english that are spelled the same but are completely different words in a foreign languages. you don't want to accidentally say \"glasses\" (for the eyes) when you mean \"glasses\" (what you drink out of)", "Understanding how something works is not synonym with being able to perform it. Applies in most fields, gaming, sports, calculations. ", "Additionally, I should add is that often times you can understand out of context, or pick the useful words out of a sentence and understand the \"gist\" of what's going on. Whereas if you were to speak it, you would need to understand the language structure rules and infinitely more vocab to make a comprehendible sentence\n\nsource: im living in a foreign country", "I'm surprised that this hasn't been answered yet, considering how many upvotes it has.\n\nThis is simplifying it a lot, but there is a part of the brain called Wernicke's area that is responsible for language comprehension, and a separate part called Broca's area involved in language production. Sometimes people injure the production part, and even though they can understand words, they can't speak or express themselves back. Other times, people injure the part involved with language comprehension. Then they can make words, but they can't understand them. Therefore the words they do make don't really make any sense to others. (Hodor!)\n\nThese two areas are linked (through a section of brain called the arcuate fasciculus) but they don't always develop together. If you grew up hearing a language when you were young, but never practiced speaking it, you'll be able to understand it, but you won't be able to speak it very well.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_", "Omg I am so glad I found this thread! I grew up in a mandarin speaking household but my parents only spoke to me in English. I cannot speak it but somehow I understand the language. It is actually super frustrating though. Toddlers probably feel this way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_processing_in_the_brain"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%27s_area"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ezkwm", "title": "Do women have to schedule surgery around their menstrual cycle, especially surgery relating to the reproductive system?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ezkwm/do_women_have_to_schedule_surgery_around_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck4kucy"], "score": [10], "text": ["Often for relatively elective uterine-related procedures. The increased blood flow can cause extra bleeding if you need to take out an endometrial polyp etc. Some OB/GYNs will try to wait if the surgery is not emergent. Ultimately depends on surgeon preference and availability. For most women, a bit of extra bleeding won't be a big deal.\n\nFor other surgeries (eg gallbladder, ankle, eye, thyroid etc.), it doesn't matter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32fx5v", "title": "what is the .com itself actually called and how does one establish their own .whatever", "selftext": "As I understand it is a domain type? How does one establish their own .whatever? Please explain.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32fx5v/eli5_what_is_the_com_itself_actually_called_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqat0zy", "cqat2vr", "cqat3ta", "cqat5vo", "cqb5ffk"], "score": [39, 2, 3, 14, 6], "text": ["It is a top level domain.  To get a new one you need to petition ICANN to create one.  They are the company in charge of maintaining all the domains.  ", ".com is a [Top Level Domain](_URL_1_), and they are managed by the [The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers](_URL_0_)\n\n", "It's call a Top Level Domain. (TLD)\n\nIf you want your own you have to work out a deal with [ICANN](_URL_0_) since they are the global organizers of TLDs. If you want to register a full domain for yourself, like _URL_1_, then you'd go to any number of registrars; ICANN doesn't deal directly with the public for specific domains, they assign that responsibility to other organizations who in turn usually form business relationships with registrars.\n\nIf you want a domain that is subject only to the laws of your own country you'd do best to use your country's country-code TLD. (ccTLD). Canada has .ca, France has .fr, Germany has .de, etc.", "The \".com\" or similar is called the \"top-level domain\". New top-level domains are handled by an organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). You can't buy a top-level domain the same way as a regular domain, instead you have to write a proposal to ICANN and they might grant it to you, or some organization that can administer it.", "Why is ICANN the only one who can develop top level domains?\n\nWhy can't I start a company that sells top level domains?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain"], ["https://www.icann.org/", "shipitcrucial.com"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5cqqah", "title": "20 years ago there was a lot of fear about the effects of china having too many men because of sex-selective abortion. shouldn't we be seeing the brunt of that now?", "selftext": "In the 1990s and 2000s there was a lot of fear mongering about China having too many men.  Because of the one child policy there were a lot of sex-selective abortions to be rid of girls so families could have their male heir. There was a lot of \"what does a nation do when they've got 30,000,000 unmarried adult men but go to war!?!\" and similar talk.\n\nWell... it's been 20 years.  Those men are grown up now and looking for wives.  What's going on with that now? Shouldn't we be seeing the brunt of 30+ million unmarried and unable-to-be-married (forever alone) men?\n\nIt seems like no one is talking about it... but it, whatever it may be, should be happening now, right?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cqqah/eli5_20_years_ago_there_was_a_lot_of_fear_about/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9ykm16", "d9ykwm0", "d9youdx", "d9ypkg7", "d9yqtoe", "d9yt7c4", "d9yt93o", "d9yuh61", "d9yytj4", "d9z11jy", "d9za5mb", "d9zeqjk", "d9zq8u7", "d9ztw0r"], "score": [176, 36, 88, 13, 31, 13, 5, 2, 3, 4, 9, 2, 9, 3], "text": ["there have been much talks about it.    China is the leading male-female disparity country for the young generation age group.     by 2012 census, there are 40 million more males than females.   additionally most people in the under 30 age group are only childs as well.  \n\nthere already a big gap of unmarried males because of unable to find a partner, whereas almost all females in the 20-30 age group are married.", "I read an article posted somewhere on Reddit that said that other Asian countries were experiencing an increase in female abuduction.  They claimed the women were either being forced to get married or forced into prostitution in China because of the lack of availability of women. ", "Some guys recently did an ama regarding a documentary they made regarding abductions of women happening in Vietnam (I guess) to be sold off as wives for Chinese men. ", "As others have mentioned, there are already some small effects.\n\nMore importantly, though, those 30 million men didn't all turn 20 at once. The one child policy was in effect for decades and only recently was relaxed. Sure, the men born in the early to mid 90s may be feeling a squeeze right now, but the ones born the 2000s aren't looking for wives yet. And once they are, they may be alright without the added expense for a while. Demographic shifts and the backlash they cause can take a long time to fully manifest.", "As some of the comments had mentioned, please look up that documentary.\n\nA lot of the neighboring countries experience an increase in female abductions or a lot of poorer families 'sell' their daughters as wives. But the disparity make women a hot commodity and created an environment where women will want to married tall, handsome and rich men. The effect of the male to female ratio is more prominent in rural China. Most ladies don't want to married to poorer regions for numerous reasons and the men can't afford to move out of the region and find a woman to marry. It doesn't help that most Chinese favor having a son to carry on the family name.", "Yep theyre kidnapping young women from other countries and forcing them to marry men in china\n\nheres a page that was posted on reddit recently for a documentary about it. \n_URL_0_", "I'm not sure if this is documentary mentioned but it sounds like it. Incredibly heartbreaking results of the male preference one child law _URL_0_", "Just because it hasn't ended the country as we know it doesn't mean China (or the world) hasn't seen the brunt of it now.  They are.  The disparity in gender is what, 30+ million?  That has a *huge* effect.", "We have. \n\nThey got to the point that they were having birth rates lower than what is needed to sustain their economic growth and so they ended the one child policy. ", "There are consequences and they are cultural.  Chinese woman have more power than ever before.  Walk down a street and you will see a husband or a boyfriend carrying the purse for their woman.  To be in the running for a wife, a man must amass (with the parents and maybe grandparent's assets) a house, car and a well paying job.  Look at dating shows and you will see picky and spoiled girls who are having the final say.", "Just exactly how much human trafficking and forced marriage would there need to be for you to be satisfied?", "It IS a problem.  Hence the stories you here if Chinese women being \"stolen\" and made to marry against their will. ", "You know what communist dictatorships are great at doing?  Suppressing the expression of discontent.  You know what they are shit at doing?  Dealing with discontent.\n\nI always imagined societies as blocks with differing properties.  I think of democracies like rubber blocks.  You press them and they flex and warp and bend, and the more pressure you put on them the more they change in response to that pressure.  They are basically impossible to break, thanks to how much they change shape, but we might not always be happy with how they change shape in response to pressures (see Trump).\n\nOn the other hand dictatorships are like blocks of glass.  You press on them and they don't move, they don't flex.  Instead the pressure builds up inside them.  The more pressure you add the more those internal forces build up until, unexpectedly, there is that last straw that fractures them and they spectacularly explode.\n\nImagine being a single man in China today.  Odds are things were ok-ish through your 20s.  I mean you might have dated a little, and maybe you saw a hooker to have sex a few times.  But now your life is settling into a pattern and you are realizing that you just are not going to have a wife - ever.  You can't go to protests about this (besides what good would it do?).  You can't complain on social media.  You can't even complain too loudly in person.  You are one person (among 40 million) spread over a large country and there might be a handful of other people in your situation in your town, but it isn't like you are friends with them.\n\nSo you sit in your room, you hate the government, you hate society, you hate your country.  Silently... waiting for something to happen.\n\nYou want to know who is fucking thrilled about this?  Russian and American intelligence services.  Of these 40 million guys how many are going to find themselves in key positions in the military/military industry at some point in their lives?  How many of them are going to be able to resist the temptation of a beautiful woman offering them the companionship, the love, they never thought they could have.  Anyone who has been single for a while knows how impossibly important that first relationship back in the game is, and that is when we intellectually know there are \"plenty of fish in the sea\".  I can't imagine what kind of power a woman would have over a guy if he, correctly, believe that this was going to be his one and only shot at a relationship. ", "\"Some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right. Look...Life, uh, finds a way\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sisters-for-sale-a-human-trafficking-documentary"], ["https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sisters-for-sale-a-human-trafficking-documentary#/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5wd0d9", "title": "why is a slice of pickle usually served on the side with sandwiches at restaurants?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wd0d9/eli5_why_is_a_slice_of_pickle_usually_served_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de953kh", "de95hca", "de979e9", "de9b5z4", "de9bawz", "de9bu02", "de9cbqx"], "score": [47, 529, 6, 38, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["It's a palate cleanser - \"a neutral flavored element in food that enables to clear the palate from one flavor to another. Some widely used palate cleansers are sorbet, bread, apple slices, and pickles.\" \n(_URL_0_)\n\nI'd assume the pickle was chosen based on how the flavor characteristics differ from the entree.", "Highly vinegared pickles are traditionally served with meats that have a high fat content. The vinegar cuts through the rich, heavy taste of the fat, balancing the whole thing.\n\nThese days not all sandwiches use fatty meats, but that is how the tradition started: the pickle as pleasant counter to the fatty meat in the sandwich.", "They are a cheap garnish _URL_0_.  And also because pickles are delicious.", "In the past (not anymore) pickles were made in a way that they contained probiotics (similar to kim chi or yogurt)  So, people would put pickles in sandwiches with fatty meat (like a cuban sandwich) and it would help people to digest the fat from the meat.\n\nEdit:\nlink with information about pickle history\n_URL_0_", "Apparently this is not done everywhere. My friend from Australia recently asked me why she got a pickle with her sandwich, as she was not accustomed to the practice.", "I used to go to a restaurant in Orlando, FL (think pre-Disney small town, although it was the 80's) named Ronnie's. The waitresses were ALL over 70, dressed in strange 60's uniforms. Beautiful kosher deli food served in a diner style. On the table were: Small dill gherkins, medium dill pickles, mustard, and pickled onions. My stomach still grumbles that they're gone. Pickles on the side seem natural.", "Because they want the pickle juice to get all over the other food, completely ruining the entire meal"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Palate_cleanser"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garnish_(food)"], ["http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-pickles/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "56k3zw", "title": "Have/Will Mercury and Venus ever transit the Sun at the same time?", "selftext": "It would be pretty cool to see...", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/56k3zw/havewill_mercury_and_venus_ever_transit_the_sun/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8jyd76"], "score": [12], "text": ["Apparently this is supposed to happen on July 26, 69163, according to [this analysis](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004JBAA..114..132M"]]}
{"q_id": "4wqzu2", "title": "why does air come up from underwater in bubbles instead of a constant flow of air", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wqzu2/eli5why_does_air_come_up_from_underwater_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6979p9", "d69bv3h", "d69ftjj", "d69lnt4", "d69qxon", "d69w06u", "d6a34df", "d6aeenr"], "score": [100, 1774, 2, 17, 3, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Ever notice how if you drop water on a table it wants to stick to itself and form little beads, instead of spreading out evenly? One of the properties of water molecules is that there is an uneven distribution of electrical charge. Molecules like this are called polar molecules. [Picture](_URL_0_) The cause has to do with the shape in which the hydrogen and oxygen bond together, and how that causes the electrons to be distributed around the molecules. One side is positively charges, the other negative, so water molecules want to stick to one another (positive from one to negative of another). A cup of water is, in a sense, like a cup full of weak magnets.\n\nWhen you add air to a container of water, it could spread out into an even stream, or disperse evenly, but because all of the water wants to stay together, it segregates itself from the air, forming bubbles. This is the same phenomena that makes oil and water not want to mix. Oil is a non-polar molecule, so when you mix it with water, the water forces all of the oil into a separate spot so that the water can all be together.\n\nDensity also plays some role in this: air, oil, etc. separate to the top or bottom because they have a different density than water, but the reason they do so in individual bubbles is because water is a polar molecule.", "When you have air under water, the water molecules would rather be next to other water molecules rather than air molecules.\n\n\n\nBy forming a bubble, the air molecules are able to form a shape which minimizes the amount of air which is next to a water molecule.\n\n\n\nAnother way to think about it:  Imagine a giant field packed with 100,000 Boston Red Sox fans and 10,000 Yankee fans.  The Yankee fans are greatly outnumbered and dispersed in a crowd of Red Sox Fans.  Given that a Yankee fan would much rather be next to another Yankee fan than a Red Sox fan, we can imagine that any Yankee fan would look around and try to walk towards the nearest group of Yankee fans so that they could cheer together.  Once there were enough Yankee fans in one area, they would form into a circle, so that only the Yankee fans on the outside had to be next to Red Sox fans, and the rest of them could be surrounded by other Yankee fans.\n\n\n\nIf you want to go even deeper, the Yankee fans could move towards the edge of the field if they were close enough to see it, so that only one side of them had to be next to the Red Sox fans, as they would rather stand next to a wall than next to a Red Sox fan.  Then they would form a semi-circle.\n\n\n\nThis same phenomenon describes why you get bubbles forming on the edge of a glass more often than you get them in the center.\n\n", "Another way to think about it is the opposite. Why does rain fall as drops instead of a small continuous stream? The way it was explained to me is that the universe is lazy and so it wants to reduce its energy as much as possible, that includes surface energy. A bubble, or sphere, is the best shape to reduce that surface energy.", "Most people are close, but not quite hitting the right explanation.\n\nThe reason for bubble formation, not a column is indeed surface tension. Very simply. Surface tension is caused by unequal forces between dissimilar fluids. Similar fluids want to stick together - for example, hydrogen bonding in water means water wants to stick to itself much more than other fluids (causing relatively high surface tension in water vs. other substances), and van der Waals forces exist in all substances (causing oil to want to stick to itself more than other dissimilar fluids). If the fluids 'like' each other, for example water and ethanol, then there is no surface tension between them because they just mix! Whether fluids 'like' each other is another story, but even the same compound (liquid water and steam) can be dissimilar enough for them to have surface tension effects between them. \n\nThe second law of thermodynamics states that entropy is always increasing - that is, things are always wanting to release heat (energy) and move into a state where energy gradients don't exist e.g. a hot bowl of water will release heat until it is the same temperature as the bulk air around it.\n\nIn the same way, having lots of surface area between two dissimilar fluids causes a high energy state, like high temperature. A big cylinder isn't the shape with the lowest surface area to volume ratio (i.e. has a good amount of surface tension), so the fluids will rearrange such that the smallest surface area, a sphere, is formed (thus reducing the surface tension, and energy of the bubble). In doing so, heat is released, but because liquids tend to have relatively high heat capacities, the temperature rise is negligible. \n\nIncidentally, this is also the reason why very little bubbles are not stable! Lots of little bubbles has a HUGE surface area. The high surface tension causes an extremely high internal pressure and the bubble collapses, often causing a very localised heat spot in the resulting implosion (and even light in some cases!). See _URL_0_ for an example of sonoluminescence!\n\nInstead, the vapour pressure of the dissolved gases will cause the gas to come out of solution, and this will be as part of a larger bubble (where the increased surface area is small compared to the added volume of air), and that is why bubbles grow and grow - shake a bottle of oil and see.\n\nIn a column of rising air in oil/water, you also have to consider gravity. In the absence of gravity, a perfect sphere would form out of the column of air. In gravity, the density difference between air and a liquid will cause the air bubble to rise and detach from another bubble below it before it can form a mega bubble. \n\nIf you go a step further and pressurise the air, the surface tension effects and gravity effects become insignificant, and you get a jet of air erupting through the water. \n\nSource is my experience as a practising Chemical Engineer. ", "You know when you put a glove on and push your hand into water and can feel it shrink to your skin. Water is pushing from all sides to do that (water pressure). Water does that to air too so it shrinks to it's minimum size which is a sphere.", "If I'm right, the first post has it for the most part, but when I read it I pictured deep sea diving (don't know why that's just what I chose). I think there's also a great deal to do with the pressure you get from water. Because of the way the heavier water pushes down on every side of the lighter air in every angle possible, it forms what we see as a bubble. ", "Because the liquid can't get rid of hot molecules fast enough by just evaporating from the surface.  Unless you give it some help..\n\nLiquids boil at a temperature when the molecules have enough energy to break free of the attraction between the molecules.  As the hot molecules escape as a gas, they take their energy with them, reducing the overall temperature of the liquid.  When a liquid boils, it sits at the boiling temperature, and if you increase the heat, it just boils faster to get rid of the heat rather than getting hotter.  But a liquid does not need to boil for gas molecules to escape from it, gas molecules are constantly escaping from liquids even when not boiling, which is why water will evaporate away if you leave it long enough.\n\nThis begs the question, does a liquid really *need* to boil when you heat it up to it's boiling temperature?  To a point, no.  Evaporation, as opposed to boiling, just happens at the surface of a liquid.  The more surface area exposed to air that the liquid has, the faster it can evaporate.  If the liquid doesn't have enough surface area to shed it's heat fast enough, it heats up too much and it starts to violently erupt gas bubbles from inside.  But what if you somehow increase the surface area?  Will it no longer boil?  A well mixed liquid with a lot of ripples in it's surface will actually evaporate rather than boil at it's boiling point  You can create a lot of ripples at the surface by stirring a lot or with something more sophisticated like a vibrating surface or even by bombarding it with sonic waves.  If you raise the heat, eventually no amount of stirring or shaking will make evaporation fast enough and you're back to boiling. \n\nI hope this has given you a good idea about why things boil.\n\nNote: Although atmospheric pressure plays a role in boiling points, it is not fundamental to the phenomenon, it just modifies the temperature at which it happens.  The attraction between liquid molecules is the real determining factor.", "I guess the ultimate question is \"why can I easily pour water through air in a stream, but I can't easily pour air through the water without the air clumping together.\"  The Yankee/Red Sox analogy does not really answer this question.  Why do Red Sox fans form bubbles when surrounded by Yankee fans, but Yankee fans form a continuous line?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.middleschoolchemistry.com/img/content/multimedia/chapter_5/lesson_1/water_molecule.jpg"], [], [], ["http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GyT1dsY0KtA"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8huf2s", "title": "why germany had enough resources and manpower to start ww2,despite losing in ww1 just 20 years before?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8huf2s/eli5_why_germany_had_enough_resources_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dymna0f", "dymnx8h", "dymoua7", "dymrfeu", "dymrmze", "dymrphm", "dyms0pe", "dyms5cm", "dyms9de", "dymsdmn", "dymsfjw", "dymskjg", "dymslaw", "dymslq7", "dymsqbd", "dymsxhs", "dymtrm0", "dymtxds", "dymucgz", "dymusdf", "dymvv73", "dymw1yx", "dymwzxm", "dymybch"], "score": [6, 21, 7, 8, 7, 529, 2, 2, 2, 15, 9, 30, 64, 1049, 20, 251, 2, 2, 11, 13, 8, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["They violated the treaties with the aid of Russia and held military training on Russian soil. They had a massive amount of industrial resources within Germany that they leveraged to arm said military. Before starting the war they started enslaving the undesirables within Germany, and quickly did it in the regions they invaded once the war started, fueling their manufacturing with said slave labor. ", "Germany is rich in natural resources (forest, plains, coasts) and has major rivers all over the place.  It is basically perfect for internal and external trade.  Also, Hitler did socialism right (if you want to cherry pick and not adopt his whole suite of policies).  For example, newly married couples could apply for state subsidized loan to start their homes, of course they had to buy German made goods.  For every kid they had a portion of the loan was forgiven.\n\nThis fixes the single parent issue we have with welfare in the United States and gave local manufacturing a huge boost.  It also fixed any issues with population growth.  Really I think Evey country should implement a similar plan, the way we do welfare now is fully retarded.\n\nBut yeah, good location and the non-genocidal non-jingoistic policies were actually well thought out.  But generally if you say that you get in trouble, like a board member of the bank of Japan.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: Here is a quick rundown of Germany's Natural resources and waterways and how it affects its geopolitics.\n_URL_1_\n", "WW2 was a generation after WW1 and relatively few German civilians were killed in WW1 since most of the war was fought on enemy territory, so manpower wasn't a major concern. Germany borrowed from its citizens and other countries to rearm.", "Well part of the reason is Germany surrendered whilst still holind enemy territory. The war never reached Germany so it remained relatively entact.", "The NSDAP had very powerful foreign financiers (funding and support during the war). \n\nWallstreet and the Rise of Hitler\n[(_URL_1_)]\n\nFED / Bank of England\n[(_URL_0_)]\n\nFinanciers\n[(_URL_2_)]\n", "So the top answer at the moment is completely wrong. Anyone that refers to the NSDAP as having anything 'socialist' about it does not understand socialism, nor the state-led capitalist command economy run in Germany under Hitler. \n\nPrior to WW1 Germany was probably the industrial powerhouse of the world (albeit not to the extent the USA was in 1950 when it accounted for ~60% of world industrial output). It had the most efficient factories in the world and a skilled, healthy and efficient workforce.\n\nGermany's economic 'recovery' after the 1918 war came on the basis of a few things:\n\n- The wiping out of inefficient firms in the 1920s depression years. Their assets were acquired cheaply by surviving firms, who then experienced huge returns. (For a more recent example of this in action, look at the profits made in 2009-12 by banks that survived 2007/8 in the USA)\n- The wholesale devastation of working class consumption, first in the depression, then further under Hitler. These losses funded industrial expansion under the ownership of Hitler's oligarchs, and also the state itself.\n- A campaign of terror aimed at strikes.\n- The wholesale slaughter of the disabled and some of the elderly. Labour previously spent providing a modest existence for these people was now 'freed up' for use in the rest of the economy.\n- Economic compulsion - capitalists were forced to invest in the productive economy, rather than speculate.\n \nIn the end Germany still had its skilled and healthy working class but one that lived in terror most of the time. The most modern similar example I can think of is Saddam's Iraq in the period after the Iran-Iraq war, but before the attempted annexation of Kuwait.\n\nThe United States had many of these characteristics at the same time (the political repression was less severe and working class living standards were rising, so those were the exception).", "Well as I don't see it mentioned too often, Germany didn't start WW1 and wasn't even it's main aggressor. Back then the Austrian/Hungarian empire was still quite large. Austria started the war. ", "Germany started preparing for World War 2 almost the moment they lost World War 1. They became something almost incomprehensible when they were basically tricked into surrendering based of Wilson's '14 Points', and actually got the Versailles Treaty. They were a modern, first world country with citizens forced to exist within it like they were a third world country (if we use the common definition of first and third as an understanding of wealth/living conditions etc.)\n\n\n\n\nSo they built what was in theory a border patrol, and set up agreements with the Soviet Union to basically exchange officers (and in truth men and equipment) and train the army on Soviet land (as well as in Germany). The manpower was easy to get - the surrender had deeply damaged the German psyche. A lot of people thought the soldiers/army never lost World War 1 (it didn't), they were let down by the homefront (which is true). So there was this anger that the deplorable living conditions where something that could have been avoided.\n\n\n\nThat is basically how Hilter got into power. He blamed weak leadership for the loss of WW1, and blamed the Jews (a group of people who lived everywhere but had no homeland) for infiltrating the government and weakening German ideals. But the army Hilter used was built before he was anything but a radical German who wanted power. Germans secured as many of their resources as they could from French intervention, they got a lot from the Soviet Union also... but they always felt they couldn't compete with France and the UK because of their colonies. I forget how much it was now, but between them they essentially owned a huge percentage of the world. So the German's felt the only way they could strive to greatness (which was part of the German cultural ideal) was through war. To take. It made recruiting for armies and getting engineers to help build tanks/aircraft much easier. The Germans loved war. And if you get people who love something, they can do it in almost any conditions.\n\n\n\n(This is all within reason. Many in Germany did not love war. Many in Germany didn't want WW1 or WW2... but pedantic points will get in the way of the overall assumptions which are vital for explaining how a country which lost a devastating war can fight another so soon).", "Blitzkreig requires very few resources or manpower. You knock out your enemy with minimal loss to their troops and sieze their manpower and resources", "They didn't quite have them. That's why they used the Blitzkrieg, to win the war as fast as possible seeing that a prolonged war would have a very significant impact on the industry. And they failed at this in Russia and as soon as the Blitzkrieg slowed down to a halt, they started losing the war because the industry and recruitment couldn't keep up with the losses incurred by an attrition war, unlike the russians and the americans.", "Well, starting a war requires significantly less resources than actually winning a war.\n\nAlso it should be noted that the Germany Army is often wrongly portrayed in popular fiction as this high tech behemoth, which it not really ever was.\n\nE.g., at the start of WW2, basically all German Artillery was still horse drawn, since Germany  lacked motorized transport (and oil, ofc).\n\nGermany at no time in war had a surface Navy which could really challenge the Royal Navy. \n\nMost of the tanks Germany entered the war with were seriously inferior to the opposition they faced (both in France and in later in Russia).", "Reading some of these... like some of the economic reasoning for why Germany did well seems to contradict modern economic theory \n\nOne thing to remember OP is that a key characteristic of fascism was power and speed. \n\nAfter the Great Depression people felt feckless. They felt government was feckless. And WW I showed people that the old traditions and regimes were morally bankrupt. There was a huge crisis in confidence over the values and institutions of societies. No one knows how to fix the issues. Everything was bad. \n\nSo, imagine, on the scene, come leaders who are powerful, direct, action orientated, talk about speed, and will.\n\nEveryone gets excited: finally something to believe in. You have a goal. You have a leader. You have something to fight against. Everyone is in it together. You work hard. \n\nI think that\u2019s an important background for understanding WW II. Even without a lot of resources you can make something. \n\nLike Japan is a tiny set of islands with few resources, but they controlled huge swaths of the Pacific for a while. How do you do something like that? You get everyone excited to achieve a common goal, you have a state of ultranationalism or fascist fervour and will-to-power. And you do it.\n\nThat\u2019s why some people still wear Nazi stuff today. It\u2019s because they get caught up in that feeling of empowerment. Usually the people who get into stuff like that feel feckless or feel as if their group is losing self-determination or power, and they want to regain the fleetness of being dominant. \n\nFor me, that\u2019s a better explanation of the early success of the axis powers. \n\nLonger term success in Germany can probably be somewhat attributed to a strong tradition of training good military officers, and the society having the scientific ability to produce good technology.\n\nSo it\u2019s not always what you got but how you use it. That and if you conquer other countries you can have their resources too. ", "Military History Visualized did a great video on [How Germany Cheated Versailles](_URL_0_) that covers the topic pretty thoroughly, alongside other comments here.", "He invaded and occupied major industrial military producers, like Czechoslovakia. Read this from Wikipedia...\n\n\"In a speech delivered in the\u00a0Reichstag, Hitler stressed the military importance of occupation, noting that by occupying Czechoslovakia, Germany gained 2,175 field cannons, 469 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 43,000 machine guns, 1,090,000 military rifles, 114,000 pistols, about a billion rounds of ammunition and three million anti-aircraft grenades. This amount of weaponry would be sufficient to arm about half of the then Wehrmacht.[9]\u00a0Czechoslovak weaponry later played a major part in the German conquests of Poland (1939) and\u00a0France\u00a0(1940) - countries that had pressured Czechoslovakia's surrender to Germany in 1938.\"\n\nEdit: I said invaded and occupied, but Austria was sympathetic and became German through an Anschluss plebiscite. Czech Sudetenland and the Skoda arms factory was gifted to Germany through the Munich Agreement in an appeasement move. This is all covered by commenters below.", "In addition to what other people are saying:\n\nIn WW1, Germany launched a sudden attack against France (and Belgium), and so most of the trench warfare happened next to its borders, but outside of Germany. When the rides of battle turned, and Entente soldiers began making their way towards Germany, they surrendered before they actually reached Germany. \n\nThis means that the German soil saw no fighting during the war, and the country's infrastructure was essentially intact. Compare and contrast with France that had huge swathes of its territory rendered completely unusable to the point that some areas remain even today still off-limits. \n\nEDIT: changed the text to make the devastation in France clearer. ", "It didn't. It was wrecking its own economy in the build-up of WW2 (e.g. [hiding its near bankruptcy by handing out funny money](_URL_0_)), it was desperately short on manpower (parts of the army were demobilized between Poland and France so the men could be sent back into factories to make the ammunition they'd be shooting later!) and so short on equipment that each conquered country had to be plundered for just enough materials to fund the *next* conquest (the soldiers invading Russia had to use captured French and Polish equipment, which were conquered using Czech tanks). \n\nThe German war economy was a dumpster fire that needed to rape and pillage all of Europe to *barely* match the industrial output of a fully mobilized Britain, with no hope of ever matching the USSR or the USA. (Hence the whole Blitzkrieg idea \u2013 Germany couldn't afford more than a few months war, therefore everyone had to surrender within a few months. Too bad Stalin didn't want to cooperate.)\n\nGermany mainly got away with it during the 1930s and the first two years of the war because everyone else was too reluctant to mobilize and match Germany's war machine \u2013 the Great Depression was wrecking havoc with everyone else's economies too, and they instead focused on rebuilding their industrial base to have a healthy civilian economy instead. For France and the rest of continental Europe, this was a bad idea, since Germany could quickly assemble an army *just barely* good enough to take on the continental European peace time armies. But for Britain, the USSR and the USA, this gave them the broad industrial base they needed to out-last Germany.\n\nGermany never had hope of sustaining a long war. Not enough time nor resources to build a sufficient navy (and thus no hope of taking on the US or even Britain), no time nor resources to develop high-performance aero engines needed for strategic bombers (and thus no way to even slow down Britain, or hit the Soviet war industry); hell, for a large part there was no time nor resources to even build *assembly lines!* Apart from a few prestige projects like the Bf 109 short-range fighter (too short range to fight over Britain) and the Ju 88 light bomber (too light bomb load to be useful over Britain), Germany couldn't afford assembly line manufacturing for most of their equipment in the build-up to WW2. \n\nEven Speer, despite his promises, couldn't rationalize German industry as much as he liked to \u2013 too little resources and too little manpower to get by. He mostly just fudged the numbers by burning through slave labour (literally, in many cases; the Germans killed more slaves while building the V-2 than they did by using it) and allocating all available resources to tank and airplane factories at the expense of \"less important\" industry\u2026 like machine tool factories that made the tooling said tank and plane factories needed to keep running. \n\nManpower, as mentioned, was a similar dumpster fire. Because Germany was pouring all its resources into getting ready for WW2, it didn't have any reserves to invest in, say, mechanized farming equipment. (Not that it would've been useful, with how little oil Germany had.) As a result, Germany needed a **lot** of farm hands and peasants to feed its population, and mobilization for war was only possible by raiding all of Europe for slave labour and food (thus leading to millions of people starving). Again, completely unsustainable; Germany ran out of its nominal manpower reserves by 1940 and was improvising from then on. The Allies, on the other hand, never had that problem \u2013 both because they *had* more reserves, and because they weren't ideologically blind and mobilized women at a much more massive scale in all possible fields (factory work, and in case of the USSR, even front line combat duty).\n\n(Main source: Adam Tooze, *The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy*)", "Thanks everyone for answering! Now i understand it more, will be beneficial for my history class.  Most of the answers are different so i guess because many factors come into play.  ", "1. Germany still has a large population, large enough to gather 14 million \"soldiers\".\n\n2. Germany was running on a deficit economy, if the war of conquest was not started in 1939 or at least early 1940, Germany would have to declare bankruptcy. It's not cheap to pay and feed 2-4 million soldiers.\n\n3. Germany absorbed the economies of Austria (1938) and Czechoslovakia (1939). The annexation of Czechoslovakia helped to increased Germany's resources by a lot.\n\n4. Germany focused most of its military power onto Poland and with the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union. Germany did not have to worry about using up more forces in the East and thus enabled them to maintain a sizable army to defend Western Germany.\n\n5. Germany used a lot of its credit and manufactured goods to import and store a lot of oil and petrol to prepare for a modern war. The main downside was that they needed to win these war very quickly, in quick campaigns, like, if their war against Poland lasted too long, for example, 3 months, they would have run out of fuel, the same goes to the Western offensive.\n\nHeck, a major reason why the Luffwaffe could not simply \"zerg rush\" the British airforce during the Battle of Britain was because the Germans could not sustain a much larger air force and their fuel capacity for the battle of Britain was 3-4 months, then they had to resort to \"The Blitz\". It was only when Romania became more friendly towards Germany at the end of 1940, then Germany could afford to field a large airforce for a long period of time.\n\nAnd even with Romanian oil, the German war machine only had enough resources to properly maintain itself as an offensive power by late-1941, after that, Germany lost all of it offensive edge. ", "It's important to understand a few key points:\n\n* Germany had been engaged in arms development in violation of the Treaty of Versailles almost immediately, usually by German firms using foreign subsidiaries to develop weapons. When Germany's rearmament was no longer a secret, the Germans already had plenty of modern weapons ready for production. \n\n* The Soviet Union was generally considered something of an international pariah, due to the fact that most European countries considered the communists to be an internal security threat. This isolation allowed the Germans and Soviets to come to an agreement to train German forces inside Russia, far from the eyes of Allied inspectors. The Germans tested aircraft and tank manuevers extensively in Russia, and by the time the war broke out Germany had already developed a good idea of how to use tanks, air power, and infantry in combined maneuvers. \n\n* The Soviets needed arms, and part of their agreements with Germany were a basic understanding of German weapons and development assistance in exchange for raw materials. Through the Soviet Union, Germany acquired much of the scarce alloys that it would need for producing aircraft and tanks in the immediate pre-war period. Because the Soviet Union was relatively closed to the outside world, the volume of German-Soviet trade was not widely known at the time. \n\n* When the war did start, the Germans were able to isolate their foes initially. Czechoslovakia had been rendered indefensible by the loss of the Sudetenland by negotiations and was rapidly overrun. The Poles likewise received the full brunt of the Wehrmact, along with the Soviet Union invading a few weeks later. A major problem with the Allied strategy was that France expected to fight a defensive war, which the Germans exploited by attacking everywhere except France in the early stages of the war.\n\n* Most importantly, the Germans used captured weapons, war material, and factories to bolster their own forces. When the Germans conquered Czechoslovakia they acquired an enormous amount of tanks, small arms, and other equipment that was easily converted to their use. The Germans, Czechoslovaks, Poles, all used the same ammunition for example. By the time the Germans invaded France the Wehrmact was a far more formidable force than it had been in 1938. Everytime the Germans beat a country, they were meticulous in reusing resources for their own forces whenever possible.", "The answer to that question entails an accurate understanding of WWII, which few people in the West are ever taught. Germany had enough resources and manpower to start WWII because their entire war plan consisted of a knockout blow to the Soviet Union that would conclude the war in a matter of three months. Barbarossa was not the \"start\" of he war for Germany. It was the beginning, middle, and end. They didn't really have the resources to fight beyond that and when Barbarossa failed to topple the Soviet Government, the Germans were doomed. If the Germans knew how strong the Russians really were, they never would have invaded (though they'd still be in a perilous position because every year the Russians would increase their advantage and eventually use that to invade Germany). The real question is how the Russians became strong enough to not just withstand a German assault but to counterattack and conquer all of Eastern Europe just 20 years after losing WWI.", "Germany still had to largest population in Europe with access to the most natural resources.  Europe, tired of war, did nothing while Hitler retook the Rhineland.  Europe, tired of war, did nothing while Hitler annexed Austria. Europe, tired of war, did nothing while Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia.  The entire process leading up to WWII was appeasement to Hitler in hopes that he would stop.  Welp. They were wrong.  ", "Currently teaching this in high school. Here\u2019s a very basic point form answer, there\u2019s lots of other reasons, too tired to elaborate as well:\n\n- crazy inflation right after WWI solved by $200 million loan from America, German economy recovers before much of the rest of the world suffers the Great Depression in the 30s, Germany largely unaffected\n\n-extreme nationalism, indoctrination, humiliation from WWI, etc. all fuel a cheap and  (almost) total war effort\n\n-Germany offered relief from reparations owed from Treaty of Versailles\n\n-as others mentioned, they seized means of productions in other areas\n\n-blitzkrieg didn\u2019t necessarily require a massive standing army\n\n-first year of war a \u201cphony war\u201d (most sides building armies) so they didn\u2019t necessarily have a massive army to begin with, as well most countries they fought with also were involved in WWI so amount of troops is relative (also Germany by comparison had much less casualties than other countries)\n\n1939-1918 = 21 years = a good enough new fighting generation ", "This would be a much better question for r/askhistorians. You'll get much better quality and less contradictory answers. They are very strict though. I think this thread gives a good argument for why that is the case though. ", "Its important to remember when germany surrendered in ww1, no  foreign soldiers were on german soil. \n\nSo germany didnt suffer a lot of destruction.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.dw.com/en/bank-of-japan-apologizes-for-praising-hitlers-economic-policies/a-39479258", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNUriy9bq-E"], [], [], ["https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-nazi-germany-was-financed-by-the-federal-reserve-and-the-bank-of-england/5530318", "http://www.movimientozeitgeist.org/joomla/images/fbfiles/files/Wall_Street_and_The_Rise_of_Hitler___By_Antony_Sutton.pdf", "http://www.hist-chron.com/eu/3R/Hitlers-financiers-ENGL.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSXrFgG2JLk"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2wyraw", "title": "Why are most American high school students required to learn the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns?", "selftext": "A very unscientific sample among my friends reveals that, without exception, every one of us learned about these three columns. No context to it, just that Doric columns have the square cap, Ionic have the scroll, and Corinthian are the really fancy ones. Why on earth did we all have to learn that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wyraw/why_are_most_american_high_school_students/", "answers": {"a_id": ["covdwuv", "covjwf6"], "score": [2, 14], "text": ["I actually never learned about that for some reason and I went to high school in America. I cant really answer your question but Im guessing the reason for learning it does **not** actually help students understand the different Greek groups in Achae, Thessaly, Macedonia, Ionia/Attic etc. and how they all differed other than the way they built their columns.\n\nWhat state did you go to high school in? ", "CommodoreCoCo's response is excellent, but I would also add a few other points:\n\n1) To expand on Comm. CoCo's mention of Washington, a great deal of American architecture, in particular civic architecture, is designed on neo-Classical architectural principles. You can see [here](_URL_0_) just a few examples of the classical orders in the architecture of Washington, D.C.: Doric columns are found in the Capitol's Crypt and the Great Hall of the Supreme Court; the Old Senate Chamber of the Supreme Court contains Ionic columns; the Supreme Court building is built on the principles of the Corinthian order. Thus, knowing about the Classical orders can be a great help in understanding current American architecture, not to mention identifying important American civic buildings.\n\n2) I'm not sure any American high school students are actually *required* to learn the differences between the orders, although I may be wrong. It's likely that you and your friends, by virtue of being friends, come from similar socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, etc. backgrounds, and so would have been exposed to broadly similar educational programs. Of course I could be wrong, and if anyone is an expert on the American high school curriculum, I would love to hear from them.\n\n3) I doubt think anyone around here will disagree with me if I say that, all other things being equal, knowing the difference between the three Classical orders is preferable to not knowing them, just as knowing (nearly) anything is preferable to not knowing it. I would argue that just about anything you've come out of high school knowing is a net gain.\n\n4) Also, as an aside: the curly-cue \"scrolls\" on the Ionic capital are known as \"volutes,\" and they may be stylized representations of plants (perhaps clovers, like the Corinthian represents acanthus leaves), or even cushions to protect the \"shoulders\" of those poor columns forced to hold up a a heavy temple roof for all eternity. I favour the latter explanation purely for its delightfulness, not really for any evidence-based reason. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/architecture-columns"]]}
{"q_id": "dtfcmo", "title": "If dark matter has no electromagnetic interactions, does that mean it could move right through regular matter?", "selftext": "My understanding is that the fact that I can't put my finger through a table is actually the result of electromagnetic interactions between the molecules of my finger and the molecules of the table. If dark matter has no electromagnetic interactions, does that mean it could \"phase\" through baryonic matter?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dtfcmo/if_dark_matter_has_no_electromagnetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f6wmul1", "f6wp798", "f6x20bq", "f6xq6e4"], "score": [27, 8, 4, 2], "text": ["Under most current ideas of what makes up dark matter, yes! Dark matter particles would interact only weakly (i.e. through the Weak Force) with normal matter, so they would seldom interact. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are probably the favorite idea for dark matter at the moment. Axions are another possibility that would behave similarly I believe, though I'm not a particle physicist. Dark, compact matter like black holes (or anything normal and small and cold like aardvarks or golf balls which would also be dark) was another candidate called Massive Compact Halo Objects (MaCHOs - yes these names are real), but is now disfavored after searches have failed to turn up evidence of enough of them to explain the dark matter we know about. For sure there are isolated black holes floating around, at least of order a million in our galaxy just from massive stars dying not counting any hypothetical primordial ones left over from the Big Bang, but dark macroscopic objects don't seem likely to explain dark matter anymore.", "Essentially, yes! And that's not strictly a property of dark matter, neutrinos also pass through ordinary matter without interacting.", "Adding on to other answers, we have astronomical observations of dark matter passing through regular matter in e.g. the [bullet cluster](_URL_0_). \n\nThese are two galaxy clusters that have collided (read: two blobs of both normal matter and dark matter that's passed through each other). We can look at the matter distribution from either gravitational lensing of light (from any matter, including dark) or X-Rays (from normal matter).", "Probably, yes.\n\nWe have detectors on Earth looking for exactly that - dark matter that passes through them. They are typically in mines deep below the surface because dark matter will easily get there while most high energetic regular matter (cosmic rays) will not. Most dark matter particles will pass through them without interaction, but once in a while we should get an interaction. So far they haven't been successful, either dark matter interacts so rarely that we need bigger detectors, or dark matter is outside the mass range we can detect, or dark matter is something else."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster"], []]}
{"q_id": "11ids5", "title": "how felix baumgartner broke the sound barrier if humans have a terminal velocity of around 175 mph?", "selftext": "This absolutely baffling to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11ids5/eli5_how_felix_baumgartner_broke_the_sound/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6mq6ko", "c6mq7iq", "c6mqcg2", "c6mrfm3", "c6mrl5l", "c6mrw77", "c6ms83l", "c6mtay6", "c6mureh", "c6mux0u", "c6mvd0q", "c6mxa6r", "c6n02pr", "c6n273x", "c6n27ws", "c6n3mlp", "c6n460o", "c6n58na", "c6n5zp3"], "score": [124, 22, 999, 15, 5, 3, 117, 4, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 10, 3, 3, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["Terminal velocity isn't just some number that's always true. It's the velocity at which air resistance (which increases with velocity) matches gravity (which barely changes). As such, it depends on air pressure which directly relates to air resistance, plus also stuff like surface area. Since Baumgartner jumped from so high, air pressure is extremely low, and terminal velocity is higher than in convential jumps. As Baumgartner fell to more normal altitudes, air pressure increased and he slowed down.", "Answered. Gracias, amigo.", "Terminal velocity is reached when gravity can no longer pull you any faster through the earths atmosphere, for humans this is about 175MPH\n\nBut Felix jumped from so high up the air was much much thinner (so thin he was using a space suit to breath) the result was much less air to slow him down and thus he was able to reach speeds over 700MPH ", "Also, speed of sound is much lower at higher altitudes due to lower temperatures. If the speed of sound is lower, the speed required to break the sound barrier is also lower!\n\n_URL_0_", "The air is less dense up high so much less friction to slow him down.\n\nDraw a circle then draw arrows around it pointing towards its center. You'll notice the non-pointy ends are more spread out and the arrow-ends are close together. It's like that with the air. \n\n", "There was less air up there to slow you down", "No one seems to be giving you an answer worthy of a five year old, so here's my go at it:\n\nIt all comes down to how hard the air is pushing on him as he falls.  When people jump out of planes for fun and they are close to the ground, about 3 miles up or so, they are jumping through air that we can breath, and it is really thick.  Felix was jumping from so high up, about 24 miles up, that the air was very thin, almost too thin to even notice.  This means that when he was falling for the first minute or so, there was very little air pushing against him, which means gravity could make him go faster and faster because there was no air to slow him down.  He went over 800 miles per hour!  The thing is, both of Felix's parachutes (his main one, and his backup) are only supposed to be opened when you are falling slower than 175 miles per hour.  Thankfully, as he fell closer and closer to earth, the air became thicker and thicker.  This slowed him down to where he could safely open his parachute and come home!\n\nAir resistance, my dear Watson.  No air, no resistance, nothing slowing him down.", "Terminal velocity is related to the force of gravity and the force of drag caused by the air around you. When the force of drag is the same as the force of gravity acting on an object or person or Felix, they stop accelerating hence the term terminal velocity.  With much less air at the elevation that Felix was jumping at compared to a typical skydive he was able to continue accelerating for much longer.  Many people seem to think that terminal velocity is a solid number that exists for a given object. The terminal velocity of a person laying horizontally with arms spread is much slower than that of a person in a diving position or something like that. It is all related to drag and its incredibly variable. ", "Does anyone else thing it would be epic to go in a wingsuit and see how far he could fly. Probably from a lower altitude though so he doesn't need such an intense space suit", "Someone please confirm/deny my statement, as I'm no scientist but this is what makes sense to me.\n\nOur terminal velocity is based largely around air resistance, which is part of why cats survive falls so well is that they spread out and slow themselves down considerably. Well the higher up you go, the thinner the air gets, the less resistance you face. So theoretically our terminal velocity increases substantially when there is less air resistance, allowing us to travel faster. \n\nThat's my conclusion, but who knows if that holds any merit.", "It's really quite simple. As you ought to know, the earth's gravity pulls everything down at 9.8 m/s/s, aka 1G. The only reason why there exists a terminal velocity is because of air resistance. Remove the atmosphere and any item falling to earth will keep on accelerating at 1G until it hits the ground. \n\nSince Felix jumped at such a high altitude that air resistance played almost no role whatsoever, he was able to keep accelerating at around 1G for over 30 seconds.", "Breaking the sound barrier is also not constant.  In outer space, sound has no medium to travel through, so has an undefined (zero) speed.  Sound travels slower at higher altitude because there is less air density in which to propagate.\n\nThe speed of sound at very high altitude, where pressure/density are, no longer as influential is largely governed by the temperature of the atmosphere (see [this graph](_URL_0_))\n\nThe speed of sound in air is ~760 mph (~1230 km/hr) at sea level, where air pressure is higher.  But at high altitude, it can get below 600 mph (1000 km/hr).", "Terminal velocity depends on many things. Atmospheric density, weight, and surface area. The 175 MPH number is for someone in a spreadeagle position at a much lower altitude.\n\nHe went headfirst at a much higher velocity, with more time.\n\nAlso, though he broke the sea-level sound barrier, he broke it much sooner that high up, as the speed of sound drops when air pressure is lower.", "He took one big jump and we all got scared, they said he's moving at Mach 1 through a void with no air.", "The commentator said it was like a vacuum. Vacuums have no air, space is a vacuum, that's why he had to wear his suit. With no air, you have no resistance, you know when you run up a hill and it's harder because of air blowing on you? In the high atmosphere, you wouldn't experience that. So with no air, there is nothing pushing against him as he free falls. ", "Terminal velocity is 120mph, he went faster because up near the edge of space the air is so thin you're practically in a vacuum hence no air resistance, so infinite acceleration (getting faster and faster) until he hit higher density air, which is why he slowed down after speeding up.", "Less air, went *WOOSH* more.", "His balls of steel", "One of the factors you use when calculating terminal velocity is the amount of resistance air has when you fall (drag) \n\nBecause he started his jump at the edge of space, it starts off with virtually no drag, so he's able to accelerate to ridiculous speeds before he gets to a more normal drag. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Comparison_US_standard_atmosphere_1962.svg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Comparison_US_standard_atmosphere_1962.svg&amp;page=1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1wn0ts", "title": "What makes the carbapenem class of beta-lactam antibiotics resistant to beta-lactamase enzymes?", "selftext": "I've recently been reading a lot of material relating to bacterial resistance towards antibiotics. Whilst reading I have come across a specific class of the beta-lactam antibiotics that seem to have a structural advantage when it comes to being resistant from bacteria. I have come to understand that carbapenems are not easily hydrolysed when they come into contact with the defensive enzymes a bacteria uses as their resistance toward other beta-lactam antibiotics.\nReally my question is what are the structural advantages that carbapenems possess that makes them resistant to the enzymes that would normally hydrolyse them so quickly?\nThanks in advance to anyone answering my question.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1wn0ts/what_makes_the_carbapenem_class_of_betalactam/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf4ftea", "cf3jhou"], "score": [2, 6], "text": ["In addition to what /u/Platypuskeeper said, CRE essentially blocks the beta-lactam drug from entering the cell due to a mutation in the cell's outer membrane (or loss of it entirely) that closes off porins and denies access inside the bacteria. \nAnother method CRE has to negate beta-lactam antibiotics are through carbapenemase which can slice apart the beta-lactam ring that originally would break and attach to the enzyme that creates the bacteria's cell wall. This process would have occurred if the drug could successfully neutralize bacteria. ", "In general there's a few ways this can happen: The more common/likely one is that there's sterical hindrance, or in plain English: the molecule no longer 'fits' the \u00df-lactamase binding site, because existing groups are in the way (for instance, compared to penams, the sulphur is substituted for a carbon with a side-group, often methyl, and -C(CH3)- occupies more space than -S- does). Or it does fit but does not bind strongly enough, because of the differences in structure. The other possibility would be that the sulphur/carbon difference change the properties of the adjacent lactam ring, making it more difficult (energetically) for the enzyme to hydrolyze.\n\nI haven't studied these enzymes so I don't know which is the case (if known at all), as in which specific part of the carbapenem interferes with which shared feature of \u00df-lactamase binding sites. But it does seem that the carbapanem-hydrolyzing [NDM-1](_URL_1_) \u00df-lactamase [has a much more flexible binding site](_URL_2_), but on the other hand it also seems to have a [somewhat different mechanism](_URL_0_). So it could be either one, although there's no doubt people who might have better and more specific information.\n\n'Advantage' is a bit of a loaded term btw - molecules just _are_, being 'better' or 'worse' is entirely in the eyes of the beholder. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.fasebj.org/content/27/5/1917", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Delhi_metallo-beta-lactamase", "http://sbkb.org/discoveries/biologicaladvances/13"]]}
{"q_id": "v9t7z", "title": "mulholland drive (film)", "selftext": "What the fuck did I just watch.\n\nI read the Wikipedia article about the film - it feels like my brain has been doing somersaults after watching that. Have literally no idea about a number of things in the movie.\n\nMy interpretation was that \"Diane\" was a paranoid wreck and failed Hollywood star, who would dream up alternate circumstance for herself (i.e. Betty).\n\nAny explanations?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v9t7z/eli5_mulholland_drive_film/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c52khq2", "c52kvti", "c52lbf9", "c52n1w0", "c52nddr", "c52nf3p", "c52nfrx", "c52pufv", "c52s5ff", "c52ymz7", "c531bj2"], "score": [12, 30, 5, 3, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["How many times have you been told not to watch these channels when your mother and father aren't home? They are scrambled for a reason. Where the Hell was the babysitter? This is no movie for a five year old.\n\n", "Well you've got it pretty much.  The most widespread interpretation is that the first part of the story (Betty) is a dream, dreamed by Diane.  The second part is real but full of flashbacks, so it can be confusing.\n\nBasically, in chronological order: Diane comes to Hollywood hoping to become a famous actress.  She meets Camilla and falls in love with her.  The truth is that she's a failed star as you said, and Camilla is actually toying with her.  So she hires a hitman to kill Camilla.  She then dreams the perfect life for her and Camilla (as Betty and Rita) which is the whole first hour or so of the movie.  Then she wakes up, full of guilt and regret, and kills herself when confronted with her inner demons.\n\nThe movie makes much more sense if you watch it knowing this.  Through the story of Diane, it's a piece about the Hollywood life and how it corrupted and destroyed a na\u00efve young woman.\n", "It's the essence of the all the David Lynch work, there is not a only way to understand his films. Make your own interpretations.\nWatch him talk about his movies and you figured it out how he's working", "You will *get* the movie once you realize it was intended to be a TV series like Twin Peaks, which was then cut together to 140 min. \n\nThere was no way it could make sense after that. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was persuading us that it should.\n\n", "you just got lynched niggah!", "- YAY! Hollywood is awesome!\n- Oops! No it isn't. You're actually a failed actress/girlfriend so you've shot yourself in the head and you've been hallucinating.\n- Don't do drugs.", "I once watched Inland Empire - 3 hours of wtf ", "There is no band. ", "I'd love to answer this question, but when I watched it I got up to the bit where the horrible monster jumps out from behind the wall, got really scared, and turned it off.\n\nI'm a massive wuss.", "I saw this in Seattle really high. I walked into the wrong theater halfway through a showing. I sat through it and stuck around to watch the first part I'd missed. I had no idea what was going on.\n\nI've since seen it as intended and I can honestly say I have no better understanding.", "I just watched it as well.  I believe Mulholland drive is about a young woman who comes to Hollywood to become an actress, at the start her name is betty(blonde).  The brunette is her alter ego type character who is confused at the start but guides Betty to adapt to the corruption and fakeness of Hollywood, which explains the theatre scene where we are shown the need for illusion as a movie star.  As the movie star persona takes over, the innocent blonde girl suffers and becomes jealous of her her alter ego (everyone knowing her movie star personality and not her true personality, as we see at the fancy dinner near the end where the blonde is like a helpless bystander).  She and the director both came to Hollywood to make art but find success only when they go along with the corruption.  \n\nThe dead body is a vision of the death of her innocence later in the film.  I'm not sure about the hobo, he may just represent the hidden underbelly of hollywood: giving up your innocence in order to become a movie star, which would explain why he was in procession of the blue box which transforms the actress into a star earlier in the film.  There isn't much importance in deciphering what is real or fake, dream/awake in my opinion, its more of a commentary on this internal struggle and corruption of art."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "51ypww", "title": "What does it mean when we say that vaccines contain \"dead viruses\"?", "selftext": "I got a flu shot today, a \"trivalent inactivated influenza virus vaccine injection\". According to the pharmacist who administered it to me, this means the viruses in the vaccine are \"dead\".\n\nViruses, as I was taught in high school Biology, are not \"alive\" in the traditional sense. Or at least they straddle a line between alive and not.\n\nSo how exactly are they \"killed\" to be put into vaccines? And what happens to the individual viruses when that happens that we consider them \"dead\" at that state?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/51ypww/what_does_it_mean_when_we_say_that_vaccines/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7gezgg", "d7ggchg"], "score": [9, 3], "text": ["They're typically heat-killed, which denatures the viral proteins and prevents them from completely hijacking your cells as a normal, non-damaged virus would. Some vaccines don't even contain the whole virus, but just the proteins, which is enough to inoculate you.", "The whole \"killed\"/\"dead\" thing about viruses is just words; it has no biological significance.  Viruses are obviously capable of replicating and causing disease, and the debate about what to call that is just about the word to put on it, not the biological fact.\n\nA killed virus vaccine is a vaccine made of viruses that are no longer capable of replicating.  It's that simple.  You can destroy a virus's ability to replicate in many ways -- treat it with chemicals like formalin or beta-propriolactone, heat it, treat it with detergents, and so on.  \n\nWhat happens to the individual viruses?  It depends what the treatment is, but several things are common. Their proteins might be partially denatured -- unfolded enough that they can no longer function normally.  The virus might be physically disrupted, with some critical proteins simply falling off the virion.  The genome might be damaged badly enough that it can't replicate -- it might be physically cross-linked, or broken into tiny pieces.  Or, often, several of them can happen.  The flu virus that goes into the vaccine is generally both denatured (often with formalin or BPL), and \"split\", so that the virion is disrupted (I think there might be detergent involved), and then some of the proteins are partially separated from each other during the purification process, and the genome is probably damaged somewhat as well.\n\nHow do you know that the treatment worked?  It sounds like it should be pretty safe to assume, but vaccines have very little theory to them; they're relentlessly empirical.  So you just test it.  Can your treated virus replicate in cells?  If so, then it's not killed.  If it can't replicate, then it is a killed vaccine.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4yvbtp", "title": "why is a 1 degree temperature difference in climate such a big deal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yvbtp/eli5_why_is_a_1_degree_temperature_difference_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6qnp2d", "d6qobo0", "d6qu9k1", "d6qu9x4", "d6qvmnk"], "score": [17, 5, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Ice, ice, baby.\n\nMuch of the land on earth is covered by ice...snow pack, ice caps, glaciers, etc.  They stay ice, and even grow, because it is cold enough they get more snow on them then they lose to melting.\n\nBut if the temperature goes up just a little bit, some of them will melt faster than they grow, and start to shirk.  That water eventually makes it to the ocean raising its level.\n\nEven worse, ice is *reflective*.  When the energy from the sun hits dirt instead of ice, more of it is absorbed, and less is reflected.  That causes the earth to heat even more.\n\nFinally, change the configuration of ice around the world can change weather patterns.  It might not get a lot hotter where you are, but if prevailing winds change the rainfall you get, your farmland can turn to desert or swamp.\n\nOver time, even a small increase in temperature can make a big difference.", "The amount of \"extra\" energy needed to raise the average temperature of the water and atmosphere by a single degree is enormous. But the bigger deal is that it's an indication of a trend vice a single event... as what we are doing has raised the temperature with these negative knock on effects... if we don't stop it's gonna get hotter with additional more extreme consequences ", "Climate is the weather average over a long time and wide area. So one degree rise will mean that the temperature rises more in some parts of the world than in others, so it will have more effect. Here is one example of the more exotic unpleasant consequences from that warming that surprised everyone: [Anthrax infected deer carcasses are thawing up, infecting people in Siberia](_URL_0_). I think it's pretty safe to assume that more muck is going to happen that we can't yet imagine.", "It's not a 1 degree local, it's 1 degree global, meaning local temperatures could vary much more. I believe a 1 degree global change could mean the tropics being several degrees hotter than that.\n\nIt would cause greater ice melting, as u/kouhoutek described in good detail.  \n\nIt would also cause the oceans in the tropical reason to be much hotter, and as tropical storms and hurricanes require certain temperatures, it would increase the frequency and intensity of those storms. Given how destructive those storms can be (Sandy, Katrina, ect), that could cost a lot in lives and money.\n\nAlso, wildlife and where certain things can live is greatly effected. If an area relied on cold winter weather to get rid of certain bugs, but those bugs end up being able to stay longer, it could be worse for any plants those bugs eat. In turn, that could have larger consequences for the wildlife there.", "Ecosystems and climate are very complex systems and sensitive to changes. Sort of like the human body. If your body temperature rises by one degree (Celsius), you have a fever and you are ill. A three degree rise of your body temperature and you can already be in need of hospitalization.\n\nLikewise on the global climate and ecosystems, one degree change already causes issues. It's not catastrophic yet (the global temperature has already risen almost one Celsius degree), but definitely causing problems. The more big deal is the future change. For comparison, when the last ice age ended the global temperature rose about three degrees Celsius and glaciers covering much of Northern Europe and North America melted. So if from this day the global temperature rises still two degrees, it's comparable to the change when the last ice age ended. And before the ice age ended, the world [looked very different](_URL_0_).\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/08/01/melting-permafrost-releases-deadly-long-dormant-anthrax-siberia"], [], ["http://img14.deviantart.net/d4da/i/2011/015/5/8/ice_age_world_map_by_fenn_o_manic-d377v8e.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4jc1kk", "title": "other than finding sufficient food, what limits are there on deep-sea creatures' growth?", "selftext": "Could some of the impossibly-huge leviathans from legend be lurking somewhere in the deepest parts of the ocean, where we haven't explored yet?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jc1kk/eli5_other_than_finding_sufficient_food_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d35evxq", "d35f9hp", "d35ff4c", "d35goob", "d35gu53", "d35i18t", "d35mwrg", "d35shyn", "d35wizz", "d363w43", "d36aejv"], "score": [28, 119, 34, 3146, 5, 6, 4, 4, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I read somewhere that the pressure down there limits their potentual growth.  Take that with a grain of salt though because I do not remember where I read it and it might not be the case at all. ", "There were pretty interesting top answers for a [similar question in StackExchange](_URL_1_).\n\nOther than that, I could imagine some kind of a fungal-like organism to basically cover the whole ocean floor. For creatures that would loosely resemble something from deep-sea horror movies, I'd imagine that mobility and food become an issue relatively soon; Surface area will grow proportionally more than body size, while body mass will grow by even more than surface area, as per the [square-cube law](_URL_0_). You'll get slower while needing more and more food to eat.\n\nAlso, if such humongous creatures were even remotely usual, I would imagine that there would have been some passing evidence of their existence by now. In sonars, carcasses or scars of existing large animals.", "The sorts of limits imposed really depend on what type of animal it is. (This is really fun to think about by the way)\n\nMany of these limits will be closely related to something called the square-cube law. As you begin to scale things up, the ratio of volume to surface area and volume to area of a cross section changes drastically even though the shape remains the same. If you take a 2x2x2 cube and compare its volume (8) surface area (24) and cross-section (4) to a 4x4x4 cube (64, 96, and 16) the effect is pretty clear.\n\nThis is important because the volume is directly related to mass/weight, the cross section to how much force it takes to bend and break materials, and the surface area related to things like heat dissipation and the diffusion of things like oxygen through a membrane. As you get larger, your biomass increases much more quickly than your ability to support it! Bones can become so large that they crumble under their own weight, for example.\n", "I politely disagree with many of those posting here. Let me try to ELI5.\n\nPressure isn't as large of a factor as you might think. It is to us, because we're not adapted to it and our bodies really can't take it. But, we and most other things are actually made out of liquids. Liquid doesn't squish very much. Food is what decides how big things get.\n\nIf you are thinking about size and think about fish, well, they only get so big. Whale sharks are pretty huge for a fish, but compared to warm blooded mammals,  the great whales, they're actually pretty average. Ironically, the largest boney fish - the Sun Fish - spends most of its time quite deep, hunting jellyfish. But it has to come up to the warmer waters near the surface to warm up from time to time. It's hard being cold-blooded. It takes energy to do things and that's why food is such an important factor.\n\nMany deeper ocean creatures that are active predators - that hunt for food, instead of just kind of gather it - don't stay in the deep parts all the time. They \"go out for dinner\" coming to the shallows to hunt and then go back down later. Some of these are quite large, especially among jellyfish  & amp; their relatives and squids. It is believed the largest squids in the world live this way. And some of them wouldn't fit in your living room, OP. Even at the bottom there are some big sharks that move about - six gill, seven gill and sleeper sharks can get big - longer and larger than a car.\n\nThen there's the mammals that spend a bit of time in the deeper ocean, like sperm whales. They're big.\n\nThen there's the things that live down there all the time. The majority of these are small, limited in size mostly due the availability of food. However, on the abyssal plain - the sandy flat part of the ocean between the mountains that form islands and sea mounts and the crevices that form trenches - there are fields and fields of spiny skinned sea stars and sea urchins, walking along in their tube feet, hoovering up food that's slowly sunk down to the bottom. They move in giant herds. There's so many, and the area is so big - it's the single largest habitat on Earth - that they might actually be the largest amount of animals on the planet, by weight. That's despite what everyone says about bugs. Beetles. Everyone thinks they're so cool.\n\nBut then there's the bottoms of the trenches. So far there's no Pacific Rim sized Kayju down there that we've found, but when you stop thinking fish and start thinking other things there's some real possibility.\n\nHydrothermic vents are these cracks in the sea floor where really hot (like hotter than boiling) water comes shooting out, full of chemicals. There are creatures that can live next to these vents and live in the water who use the chemicals in the water for food. There's a type of tube worm that lives there that can stand hotter than boiling water, that has no digestive tract - no tummy, no intestines and never goes poop - that is over 1 metre long. That may not sound all that big, but that's pretty huge for a tube worm. They appear to be limited in size by the size of the vents they live on. Vents are little underwater volcanos. Get a big one and you get big tube worms. There are some rather large colonial jellyfish types down there that grow to be the size of a football field in length. That's pretty big.\n\nThen there's the less impressive - mostly because they don't move around - but really huge bottom dwellers. Deep sea corals can be hundreds of meters long, just like their shallow water counterparts. As corals grow they leave their skeletons behind, which is what makes up reefs. There are massive deep-sea sponges that are thousands of years old. Then there are things like the methane-seep living cyanobacteria colonies. Those things are miles and miles across - bigger than anything on land. I don't expect them to wade ashore to crush Tokyo anytime soon tho. They get massive because they live right next to a food source that's been like an all you can eat buffet for thousands of years, and is still going strong.\n\nTLDR: Pressure isn't that big of a deal. It's all about food.\n\nEDIT: Removed an elephant to whale shark comparison as it was just plain wrong.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Deep sea creatures are limited by these main resources: finding food, pressure, extreme cold, no light, and finding mates.\n\nAs far as size goes, there are some pretty big deep sea creatures (think giant squid or colossal squid). The majority are much more reasonable sizes. Other animals that use the deep sea also will be quite larger (think sperm whales). \n\nFor deep sea inhabitants: The extreme cold causes them to have a really slow metabolism, which in turn causes them to not need as much food for animals of a similar size. They move slow, eat less and their cellular processes are slower. So size is limited less by food and more by slow metabolism. They can get big, but it takes a long time (again, the giant squid is an exception, those are thought to have crazy short lifespans).  More times than not, the energy to survive, find a mate and reproduce are so great in the deep that putting resources to size are not often a priority.\n\nFor animals that use the deep sea: These guys tend to be big because of the cold. Sperm whales and the like have a lower surface area to retain their internal heat more easily. \n\nTheoretically, there could be some massive deep sea creatures if they are really old and generalist feeders.. but extremely unlikely. A metabolism for something that big couldn't easily be sustained. ", "At the deepest point, pressure is 1000 atmospheres, which can have some pretty screwy effects on gaseous chemistry but I'm not qualified enough to say whether it screws up chemistry in solution. Water only occupies 95% of the space per unit mass that it did at sea level for Christ sake. \n\nThe biggest thing though, apart from being a bit nippy (1-4deg C), it's dark. Really dark. Like, no light.\n\nThat means that stuff that photosynthesises does not live down there. That's the bottom tier of the entire world's eco systems missing. That means that to live down there, you'll be eating whatever drifts down from the busy photosynthesising layer above or some sort of weird alien biology based around sulphurous volcanic vents. \n\nIf you are a life form looking to eat today, pickings are going to be slim. This might well limit your growth more than freaky chemistry, being blind, cold or squeezed.\n\n\n\nReally though, the answer to a lot of this is \"we don't know\", space is easier to go to in comparison to the abyssal floor.", "Oxygen. It's more than just food for fuel. It needs oxygen. There is a finite amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and water. Earth's atmosphere was once much more oxygen dense leading to larger animal growth. ", "Access to oxygen would be, by and far, the biggest factor. More so than pressure, more so than access to food. Available oxygen absolutely plummets as you go deeper and deeper into the ocean, and oxygen is vital for multi-cellular life to function well. Oxygen is necessary for metabolic processes. The bigger you are, the more oxygen you need just to drive your metabolism and subsist.\n\nIt also means that your prey is going to be smaller, which greatly limits what you can eat.\n\nThis is a limiting concern for *all* sea life though, and it's why really large gilled animals are comparatively rare. Most of the large sea creatures aren't gilled fish, but air breathing mammals like whales. The primary reason that whales can grow so big is because they can breathe oxygen from the far more oxygen-rich atmosphere, whereas even the fish that live close to the surface must rely on the significantly less oxygen rich water they are immersed in.", "Why am I reading this before sleeping?", "What about the mysterious Jaguar Shark?", "I don't really know anything about science but I think the intense pressure of such depths might restrict growth, maybe? I have no idea but that's an interesting thought"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law", "http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/317/is-there-a-maximum-size-an-ocean-bound-creature-could-grow-to"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7yc6gc", "title": "Since the right to keep and bear arms is tied to the need for \"a well-regulated militia,\" have there ever been attempts to legally bind gun ownership with conscription?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7yc6gc/since_the_right_to_keep_and_bear_arms_is_tied_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dufkmo1"], "score": [18], "text": ["This may cover some of your query; /u/FatherAzerun gives the background to what \"well-regulated militia\" meant historically: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ossb5/the_united_states_second_amendment_starts_with_a/"]]}
{"q_id": "2upnml", "title": "many games didn't come out for the n64 because the cartridges could only hold up to 32 or 64mb. yet when you open one up, it's mostly empty. could they have not just put more chips on a larger board?", "selftext": "For example, [here's what Majora's Mask](_URL_0_), one of the largest N64 games, looks like opened up.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2upnml/eli5_many_games_didnt_come_out_for_the_n64/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coaings", "coakfqo", "coapa28", "coar9fr", "coau8tr", "coav4h2", "coavo57", "cobk4pp"], "score": [180, 25, 17, 934, 9, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["It's not a matter of how much space is in the cartridge that limits the size, it's how much linear address space the cartridge slot can address. The issue was the design of the console itself, not the cartridges per se.\n\nedit: thanks for all the upvotes, folks, but i was wrong here. This is a memory mapping architecture issue, not an address lines issue. The memory map only allocates $8000-$FFFF as rom cartridge space. That is 32 megs. So we also now know that 64meg cartridges were bank selected. Can someone translate that to 5 year old speak for me? i got stuff to do.", "Firstly chips are expensive, so even if they had enough room it still might have ruined their profits to pack more of them in.\n\nThe other limiting factor is how the CPU/N64 reads the memory from the cartridge. \nThe cartridge is essentially just a collection of bytes labelled from 0 to 34,359,738,368 (aka 32Mb), and the N64 was designed so that it could only ask for those bytes. Adding extra bytes would be pointless since the N64 wouldn't be able read them.\n\nThere are ways to get around that limitation, but it makes programming more difficult so is less widely used (not that it doesn't stop almost every successful CPU in existence having something to get around this issue)\n \n", "If I don't remember wrong, the chips itself were very expensive on those days.", "I know everyone has already basically answered this, but I want to anyway.  \n\nIt was primarily because of cost.  Every additional chip significantly increased the 'cost of goods sold', adding more financial risk if the game failed, and lowering profits.  Cost and size are why Sony went with CDs for playstation.  A single CD was huge and cost like 50 cents to a dollar at the time, a cartridge was something like $15.  My understanding is that Sony would also refund you for unsold copies, Nintendo wouldn't. On the flip side carts were super fast to load, CDs were extremely slow, Nintendo bet on the small and fast, thus no FMVs.\n\nAddress space doesn't seem to be an issue.  From what I've read it uses 32 bit addressing for data in memory and for loading from the cartridge.  Since the biggest games were 64MB I could just assume its uses 32 bit for loading (though 26 bit would be exactly enough).  \n\nFor those who still care, here's how I usually explain computer addressing (I think it's a pretty clear way).  Think of each of your fingers the as bit in a computer processor, thus representing a 10 bit computer.  Each individual way of arranging your fingers open and closed represents a single address that you can read or write data from.  Your fingers can be arranged in 1024 (2 to the power 10) different ways so you can read and write from 1024 address.  A 16 bit computer can touch 2^16 (64k) addresses, 32 bit can touch 2^32 (4 billion).  Of course schemes exist to use more 'address space' than there are bits, but they require extra computation time, and in any case clearly weren't necessary on the n64 (though they were on the original 8 bit NES for example).\n\n_URL_0_\n\n ", "Yes, they could have.  The cost issue is discussed on other posts but the way more memory is addressed is by using bank-switching.  When the console accesses a specific memory address, the logic on the cartridge swaps out PROM chip 1 for chip 2.  In later applications the two PROM memory banks and controller were integrated onto one chip. This technology was also heavily exploited in Atari 2600 games as the market matured and more memory was needed.", "It was cost.  Cartridges were already expensive enough.  To add additional hardware to each cartridge produced was a significant expense.  ", "This makes me wonder about ogre battle 64. It's so heavy, there's got to be more in it than that...", "The incredible take-away from all this is how amazing it is that Ocarina of Time was only 32MB.  Doesn't that blow your fucking mind?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.hcs64.com/images/mm.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/www.crazynation.org/N64/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "39p8ts", "title": "where did red headed people not having souls come from?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39p8ts/eli5_where_did_red_headed_people_not_having_souls/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs57l0g", "cs580wk", "cs5819s", "cs58qe2", "cs59rs0", "cs59ukk"], "score": [53, 9, 10, 40, 5, 2], "text": ["The first time I remember hearing it was on South Park years ago (Cartman).  Not sure if they made it up on the show, or if they were referencing something else.", "Ginger was a term used in Europe mostly the United kingdom, its use started a couple hundred years ago to describe someone's appearance basing the name off of the color of the ginger root. it was not until south park came out bashing us that it became a derogatory phrase... I too am a ginger so I feel your pain lol ", "There is a trope that goes all the way back about Jews. A standard music hall/theatre/popular fiction stock character was the red head dishonest Jew. It's pretty much taboo to even mention it now, but it was very common. Orwell mentions it in his essay on the art of Donald McGill, and identifies it as a dying trope in the thirties. The South Park episode was wittingly or unwittingly drawing from that tradition. \nQuick edit, I forgot- judas was always identified as a red head in popular religious culture, thus the connection. ", "The term \"ginger\" and prejudice against red-headed people has been around for a long time in the UK.  I think Celtic people tended to have more red hair, and they were historically enslaved by other Britons and discriminated against.  A red-headed English friend told me he endured all kinds of abuse in school because of his coloration.\n\nGrowing up in North America in the 80's and 90's, nobody I knew ever had a problem with redheads.  In fact, it was seen as a very attractive trait in women (Gillian Anderson is a good example).\n\nSouth Park basically started the whole thing as a joke against discrimination ... like \"What could possibly be a dumber reason to make fun of someone?\"  Unfortunately, the creators of that episode really underestimated the stupidity of their audience, and so a lot of kids totally missed the point and subsequently picked up on it (along with the term \"ginger\" which had never really been used outside of the UK) as an excuse to pick on people.\n\nGood example of how a well-meaning message actually made a situation worse.", "The Celtic origin groups in the English sphere where more likely to have red hair (the Irish and the Scotts.) It was an obvious outward sign of belonging to what was considered a lower class by the Romans, the Normans, and eventually the English themselves. It is one of the excepted, but actually racist kind of things we seem to allow because it is 'harmless\" and is so ingrained as to be not seen as racism. It is, but hey, you know they're gingers. \n\nNo different than the ingrained racism seen in Europe about the Romany.", "I never got how people got on board when it was one of Cartmans quirks... why would you emulate something Cartman believes and think that's a cool thing?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aty5x7", "title": "Can refractuve index of a medium be negative?", "selftext": "Is there a material which has a negative refractive index is yes then how will it effect the redaction of light?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aty5x7/can_refractuve_index_of_a_medium_be_negative/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eh4bx4p", "eh4cdvz"], "score": [7, 9], "text": ["I don't think there are any homogeneous materials with a negative refractive index. But there are so-called metamaterials, carefully constructed composites, that can have negative refractive index, at least over some range of frequencies. ", "Yes, for example a student of mine built a metamaterial out of paper and copper for a class which had a negative index of refraction for microwaves. By sending microwaves through the material he found that the refraction angle was inverted which can be seen by looking at Snell's law. Here's a Wikipedia article about them with a picture of one.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative-index_metamaterial"]]}
{"q_id": "1g6v7z", "title": "What are some examples of different evolutionary adaptions among different populations of humans?", "selftext": "Aside from Alcohol Dehydrogenase, Lactase never 'turning off', and melanin loss after the agricultural revolution I don't know of any changes in humanity that have been caused by environmental factors. Are there others?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1g6v7z/what_are_some_examples_of_different_evolutionary/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cahb7ol", "cahbo06", "cahc7pu", "cahmibr"], "score": [9, 9, 6, 5], "text": ["Melanin loss predated the agricultural revolution and is due to reduced solar intensity in temperate regions. Malaria resistance is a great example of an adaptation to a biotic factor; altitude adaptation (Tibet, Andes, etc) is a great example of adaptation to an abiotic factor.\n", "Body size and stature.\nCentral African people living in the harsh heat of the tropics tend to be tall with long legs, with most of their body fat distributed in just a few places so they can radiate as much heat as possible. The native people of arctic Canada tend to be short and have body fat more evenly distributed around their bodies to conserve as much heat as possible. ", "HIV immunity in some European populations [as a consequence of negative selection by the black plaque](_URL_2_).\n\n[Tay-Sachs desease](_URL_0_) that either increases average intelligence in the population, or [increases resistance to tuberculosis](_URL_1_), or both. Implied selection in Ashkenazi Jews.\n\nThe [eye shape usually associated with people of Asian descent](_URL_3_) was traditionally linked to living in dusty steppe-like environments, but I am not sure there's any conclusive evidence here.", "[Sickle cell anemia](_URL_0_) is thought to be an adaptation to deal with malaria, being most prevalent where malaria is common."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease", "http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/course/session7/explain_b_pop1.html", "http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicanthic_fold"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease"]]}
{"q_id": "6kxpnk", "title": "what is meant by the phrase \"nice guys finish last\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kxpnk/eli5_what_is_meant_by_the_phrase_nice_guys_finish/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djplio6", "djplw6v", "djpo43e", "djpocr7", "djpod76", "djpqwhx", "djq2r2l", "djq6csv", "djq95fp"], "score": [48, 4, 20, 26, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's a cynical statement that you can't win by playing by the rules, you have to have some kind of advantage, or be willing to bend rules (or outright cheat) to get by in whatever situation they're talking about.\n\nIt is used in different situations from career to romance.", "Look, I'm playing shortstop, my mother's running from second base to score on a base hit. Everybody's watching the ball. I kinda trip my mother as she goes by.\n\nNow I love my mother, but she doesn't she doesn't score the run.\n\nSo, I'm not a nice guy. Nice guys finish last.\n\n--- with apologies for the rough paraphrase from memory - to Leo Durocher", "It is another way of saying \"being overly nice and caring may hold you back from progressing\" in said situation. It describes the idea that people who are always bending over backwards for others and sacrificing their own priorities in attempt to please those people will usually be unable to get what they want, because achieving one's goals may require you to put yourself first.", "Here is an example of how this logic works. You get to the door first at  a store selling a limited number of something. You see a crowd behind you and decide you will hold the door for them. You let everyone else through and buy up all the limited stock even though you got there first your kindness made you miss out.", "A cynical view that being selfless and respectful of certain rules will allow selfish people to win.  It's used by people who feel that they did everything ethically correct and aren't any better for it when compared to others.  It's also used by people who try and rationalize their own selfishness and disregard for rules.\n\nIt's also taken on another form by guys who feel that being a decent human being means they should get more woman.  When they realize that paying for a drink and opening a couple of doors for a woman doesn't equal her wanting to have sex with them, rather than looking inward at their own shortcomings, they come to the conclusion that an asshole would have had much more success getting laid.  They then mutter to themselves, \"She only likes guys that treat her like shit.  Why do nice guys always finish last?\"", "It's a fairly cynical statement that generally boils down to the idea that if you play strictly by the rules and being caring to others that you won't get as far as head as someone only looking out for themselves.\n\nIn the simplest terms, in a race if you stop to help someone who tripped, you're going to lose to someone of equal skill who kept running.\n\nIn another example, if you're working on a project, if you offer someone help instead of just working forward on your own, you could lose to the person you helped, instead of taking advantage of their falling behind.", "Like most of these sayings you can interpret them with varying degrees of cynicism. \n\nIt can be a warning for a person that continuously sacrifices himself for the perceived benefit of others, saying that if they don't start paying attention to themselves at some point they will be left behind and miserable.\n\nOr it can be about the do good kinda guy, who never breaks a rule, is always honest and tries his hardest. Telling him that if he were a bit more flexible, a bit more willing to play dirty that he would get much further in life. \n\nOr last, its a /r/niceguy sentiment, where being \"nice\" doesn't net you any dates with women. ", "Let's say there's 2 candies in the store and 3 kids. One is a nice considerate kid who was there first and took one, another is a bully, the 3rd is just a w/e average kid. \n\nThe bully takes the last candy because that's what he's about. Let's say he's rough about it.\nThe nice kid can set aside his sweet tooth to let the other kid get the candy.\nIf either the nice or average kid take issue with the bully being forceful in taking a candy what can they do? Do they try to reason with him? They can, but being a bully chances are he won't give a damn. Do they get angry that someone's just so mean and it escalates physically? Now they're all kicked out from the store and no-one gets any candy.\n\nThe phrase symbolizes this dynamic. Being nice and considerate leaves you with nothing (other than your self-satisfaction or pride) while being a jerk usually gets you your way. If you're a jerk, most won't bother trying to oppose you over minor stuff, and if they do, you can easily make it so much trouble that their victory feels empty. \n\nOf course, it's a rather cynical view-point (but not wholly unwarranted). In the real world, integrity and charity are highly valued by those that care to look for it. For example, the shop owner in the example could have seen the whole thing and just kicked the mean kid out, maybe even given you an extra piece he had on him for being a good kid.", "It's supposedly a misquote.  \n\nWhat I always heard was baseball manager Leo Dorecher was asked what he thought about another team and their chances.  He replied, 'Nice guys, finish last'.  But the comma got dropped, which changes the entire meaning of the sentence."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2755hi", "title": "why haven't we found a way to restore enamel on our teeth?", "selftext": "This question first came to me when I stumbled upon this reddit question \n\n_URL_0_ \n\nAnd realized that the reasons our teeth are naturally yellow with the \"white\" being a layer of enamel covering our teeth and eating \"bad\" diets and brushing to hard can lead to a strip in enamel causing the natural yellow teeth to come out.\n\nMy question is It's 2014 why haven't we figured out a way to restore enamel? If it just cant be restored, Why not?\n\nThank You \n\nEdit: We got on the front page #wemadeit", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2755hi/eli5_why_havent_we_found_a_way_to_restore_enamel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chxicw2", "chxk85m", "chxm7ji", "chxmblu", "chxmia0", "chxmqm9", "chxms0k", "chxn85z", "chxonxj", "chxos2d", "chxp63t", "chxp9bv", "chxpux4", "chxqbvd", "chxqo48", "chxrqb0", "chxrrl5", "chxtfuc", "chxtw42", "chxudty", "chxunw9", "chxveqz", "chxvetj", "chxvtzu", "chxw0zx", "chxx60v", "chxzi0b", "chy0l83", "chy0lls", "chy0yl6", "chy1onm", "chy1qvj", "chy1wl7", "chy2p00", "chy6fus"], "score": [4, 701, 13, 9, 2, 123, 4, 1431, 2, 4, 4, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 2, 5, 10, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["we can just regrow teeth now", "Actually good news! I can't find the article anymore, but i read (on reddit a couple weeks ago) about a recent discovery where dentists will soon be able to \"add\" enamel to our teeth using lasers or something. Basically it was saying it could be the end of fillings, cracked teeth, etc. Don't have much info, but there is hope that fillings/drilling will be a thing of the past", "Try xposting this to /r/dentistry? Very informative folks over there.", "Well I mean I have this act mouthwash that says it rebuilds enamel. So that's pretty cool I guess. It works really well actually, but I would love for someone to comment telling me this isn't the same thing. ", "The cells that form enamel aren't present anymore once the teeth start erupting - it's not like bone where bone cells constantly reabsorb and rebuild damaged bone. ", "Dental student here. The cells that form enamel (ameloblasts) die after secreting the enamel found in teeth.  Most other \"regenerative medicine\" techniques work by stimulating certain cells to produce specific substances.  This is not possible with enamel because the ameloblasts are gone early after tooth formation. It is possible with dentin, which lies beneath enamel and is produced by odontoblasts.  These cells are functioning throughout our lives.  Link: _URL_0_", "Because discovering shit is hard. People don't just get baked in a lab and talk about how cool stuff would be. They spend tens of thousands of hours trying out different things and most of those don't work. ", "I would say the most accurate answer is we don't know why we can't. If we knew why we can't, we'd probably know why we can. (Imagine asking preflight engineers why we can't fly or preantibiotic doctors why we can't cure infection)\n\nFirstly, some incorrect answers in the thread can lead us to an OK answer. That laser business is completely useless in my opinion. But the mechanism will explain why we can't do the same for enamel.\n\nThose lasers work by chemically treating and then stimulating odontoblasts (cells which create dentine, the second layer of the tooth, enamels softer little brother) to create dentine. I won't go too far into why the only reason those lasers are gaining traction is because they're lasers, but long story short is you need vital, sterile, exposed pulp tissue, which really is only found in the case of trauma. But we already know how to stimulate dentine in such situations - CaOH or MTA. Anyone interested in why this 'breakthrough' is literally nothing but a waste of money for both clinician and patient, please Google 'Cvek Pulpotomy'. We have been doing this for decades.\n\nNow, onto the question - why can't we do that with enamel? Consider how teeth are formed. An ELIcloserto5 version, is teeth are made of 3 layers like a cake. The crisp, hard, protective, water tight icing (enamel), the softer, porous, shock absorbing sponge cake (dentine), and the gelatinous jam (blood) and cream (nerve) inner filling.\n\nThe critical part here, is how the icing and sponge are formed. The icing creating cells (ameloblasts) and the sponge creating cells (odontoblasts) start touching each other. Then, step by step, nanometer by nanometer, they move away from eachother, laying down icing and sponge cake as they go. The sponge cake cells move towards the jam and cream fillig, and when they are done they live in the filling, laying down sponge when stimulated for the life of the tooth.The icing cells move away from the jam cream filling, to the harsh outside world. Eventually, when the cake leaves the oven, the icing creating cells are lost. \n\nNow, the world is harsh. The outside world is full of flies and general trauma, which will wear the icing down and lose sugar (minerals from hydroxapatite - calcium and phosphate, although fluoride can go back in as an even better/harder mineral, though not naturally present). With good diligence shooing the flies away (brushing/flossing) and regular reintroduction of lost sugar (toothpaste/fluoride/that gum someone mentioned) we can replace the lost sugar. \n\nHowever, sugar isn't icing - some specialised cells laid down the sugar in a very particular way. As long as not to much sugar is lost and no big chunks are missing, just dusting it with sugar will work, as the exisitng icing holds enough of the pattern that there's only one way for the dusted sugar to go - the right way. We know what's in the icing - we have the recipe. But we can't lay it down with the same style and pattern the cells did. And the cells are lost. There's no stimulating them like the sponge cells. Once the icing is gone, it's gone.\n\nEdit: the comments in this thread are a testament to what I'm saying about lasers. People are almost satirical in their irrational affinity towards the study, simply because \"lasers\". ", "Dental sales rep here...I hope to God fillings aren't a thing of the past...or I'm out of a job.  Ugh.", "The fact that you're wondering that means you're not old enough that doctors tell you \"yea that's just something you live with now\" when you come in with a problem. How we handle teeth is pretty much par for the course.", "So what about whitening toothpaste? ", "I wanna know why there isn't an easier method to clean our teeth, other than brushing. You'd think there would be a gum, or mouthwash, or combo of the two that could clean them as well as little plastic bristles on a stick. ", "Biomaterials Science Masters student here, The recent Harvard publication on dentine regeneration would not be applied to enamel as the material composition is very different. Enamel is an inorganic composition of Hydroxyapatite (very similar calcium based ceramic found in bone). The ameloblasts as someone mentioned earlier is only found during the development phase of the tooth. There is a very small percentage of proteins found in the enamel and is solely used as a shock absorber so the layer doesn't propagate fracture. \n\n[Article](_URL_1_)\n\n[News report](_URL_0_)\n\nAt this stage, this is the best approach. Until artificially stimulating ameloblasts to undergo repetition of their phase cycle. Restoration, rather than regeneration. ", "I just bought a tub of enamel and I spread it on my teeth every night before bed. ", "We also can't replace hyaline cartilage in our joints.  That's why there are knee replacements.", "Dentist here. The whole thread seems like gibberish. I'd say enamel is formed when the tooth buds are unerupted. By specialised cells called ameloblasts. Once erupted there remains some specialised cells in the dentine near the pulp but they only deposit dentine. On the inside meaning narrowing the pulp chamber. I guess the why you're looking for is that the enamel is the outermost bony structure and exposed to the oral environment with another bony structure(dentine) underlying it. For growth to occur rigid structures like these must expand but being bony in nature they are unable to remodel what's more ameloblasts are not present to produce enamel. Sry gtg.", "we actually just found a way to use stem cells to regrow teeth\n_URL_0_", "Another related question is: Why is there a commercial that claims their product can do exactly this, then another commercial FOR THE SAME PRODUCT says that once the enamel is gone, it's gone?", "This whole thread is just... so, so depressing.\n\nI love my teeth and the fact that they will never be white again makes me want to cry. This is terrible\n\nWhat is this I hear about bleaching, does anyone know?\n", "What about those toothpastes that promise to restore and protect enamel? Are they lies and waste of money? ", "Teeth don't grow the way fingers and hair does, they don't come out of our bodies and build up gradually. When we are born they grow inside our faces, like they literally sit up there under other teeth, and slowly surface as we get older, teeth could potentially be jump-started to grow again inside our cheeks, built by the circulatory systems in our gums and pop out again like a shark's, but once they are out they're basically like the armor of a turtle, they cannot be re-padded with the same stuff that they came out with, they can only be polished or patched with other chemicals. Maybe one day, but I think it's more feasible to just get a new tooth installed on an artificial mount. I bet in the near future scientists will be able to trick our bodies to start growing new teeth again, and on that day we will truly have revolutionized the dental world, as well as potentially put a lot of people out of business. [Source](_URL_0_)", "your edit makes me dislike you", "After you guys went to the moon, the number 1 goal for people should have been to automate dentistry.", "Growing teeth is like growing fingers and toes. Very specialised. There are 3 major groups in teeth, the enamel, the dentine and the pulp complex which includes the nerve and blood supply.\n\nThat's like skin, bone and vessels/nerves in your fingers.\n\nNow, the enamel is exclusively hydroxyapatite (mineral content) with some carbon based material scattered (roughly 2%). There is no regenerative function because simply aren't any cells in there to GROW it. The only thing you can do is if it softens up (demineralizes), you can 'remineralize' it but that requires the lattice of structure to be largely intact. So essentially, you can strengthen it before it gets lost, but you can't lose it and get it back.\n\nThe second layer of tooth is dentine which is about 70% mineral and the rest water with very FEW cells laid out in between. This layer can be 'relayered' at the part closest to the pulp but it too will never be 'regenerated'. By regeneration, what I'm referring to is the ability for the tooth to reform its original shape.\n\nThe third layer is the vascular and nerve bundle (the pulp) and in children, it may regenerate itself but in adults, it will almost certainly kill itself if irritated too much.\n\nRestoration is only in the form of dental fillings, crowns and veneers due to the fact that enamel has NO cells to regenerate itself.", "as long as your teeth aren't your largest risk factor for death... who gives a shit if theyre yellow? We are sentient beings. You only care about your tooth color because the opposite gender generally zombies out for the big \"they\"", "Degredation of enamel is caused by acids, which are Hydrogen (H+) ions dissolved in the moisture of the mouth, bonding to hydroxyl (OH-) groups in enamel's chemical structure.  Probably resulting in H2O as a by-product if memory serves.  The enamel is dissolved into a hydrocarbon and water.  The only way to restore enamel would be to re-add the OH- groups to the enamel molecule's framework.\n\nTypically, we slow the dissolving action by saturating our mouth with Flouride ions, F-.  F- is one of the few ions that is more electronegative than OH-.  More electronegative means the H+ ions are more strongly attracted to the Flouride ions than the Hydroxyl groups in enamel.  When F- ions are present, the H+ ions are neutralized by them, and the OH- ions are not.  This suspends the decay process.\n\nUnfortunately, F- ions in strong concentrations are unhealthy.  So reversing decay is probably chemically not possible.", "The other important factor you have to consider is money. The dental industry is a very large multi billion if not trillion dollar industry. If you suddenly create a solution to the problem that will cause this industry to loose money, it simply won't be allowed into the market. Look at the pharmaceutical industry and the drugs they produce as a reference. Why fix the problem when you can milk it.", "The reason is very simple.  Far to much money to be made.  If we where able to rebuild enamel it would mean that dentist wouldn't be needed as much.  If it was something as simple as a pill or a paste you put on your teeth and they are white with no cavities think of all the business that would be out over night.  All the tooth brush makers and tooth paste makers, and the people who make white strips and then not to mention the dentist.  Then add in all the schools all over the country/world that get paid $100k for each students to go to school to become dentist.  IMO the reason we haven't figured it out is money.  To much money is to be made by not figuring it out.  ", "Ben Affleck seems to have done it.  hmmm", "Late to the party but... Actually, its been done recently\n\nSource : _URL_0_", "Because every dentist has at least one mortgage and wants to go on vacation.", "Late to the party and most likely no one will see this and I hope Im not repeating if posted already but.....XYLITOL!  I make a toothpaste and mouth rinse with it (and calcium lactate, to work together synergistically). Remineralizes your teeth and has saved a few of mine that had begun to crack from chewing ice. You can purchase xylitol chewing gum for this reason too!", "[Because crowns etc are stronger and anyway we CAN fully regrow teeth from stem cells.](_URL_0_)", "Because it is more profitable to see toothpaste and mouthwash and Whitening and dentures than it would be to have a 1 stop fix for enamel repair", "Because dentists would be unemployed largely. You would decimate the dental assistant sector of employment. There is no money in curing diseases but plenty in treating them."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w9ptd/how_do_teeth_turn_yellow_is_it_possible_to_simply/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/05/31/scientists_have_figured_out_how_to_regenerate_teeth_with_lasers.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/japan-tooth-patch-decay-microscopically-thin-film-coat-individual-teeth-article-1.1162111", "http://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/restoration-of-tooth-enamel-using-a-flexible-hydroxyapatite-sheet-coated-with-tricalcium-phosphate-2090-5025.S1-006.php?aid=19163"], [], [], [], ["http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/05/31/scientists_have_figured_out_how_to_regenerate_teeth_with_lasers.html"], [], [], [], ["http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m41lih0HX11r25yneo1_400.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://singularityhub.com/2013/08/26/scientists-grow-teeth-using-stem-cells-harvested-from-urine/"], [], [], ["http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/05/31/scientists_have_figured_out_how_to_regenerate_teeth_with_lasers.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4749i2", "title": "how did they build medieval bridges in deep water?", "selftext": "I have only the barest understanding of how they do it NOW, but how did they do it when they were effectively hand laying bricks and what not? Did they have basic diving suits? Did they never put anything at the bottom of the body of water?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4749i2/eli5_how_did_they_build_medieval_bridges_in_deep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0a3hqh", "d0a3ibh", "d0a3lko", "d0a3occ", "d0a3ogx", "d0a7tvl", "d0a863n", "d0a8lur", "d0a9cdl", "d0aaozp", "d0abpwm", "d0acu2l", "d0acuo5", "d0acx5n", "d0acz2u", "d0adkrl", "d0adxk4", "d0aegnw", "d0afgdz", "d0ag9dh", "d0agxps", "d0ahkid", "d0ahlym", "d0aplyd", "d0b94ql"], "score": [27, 4553, 792, 91, 5, 6, 6, 47, 29, 7, 17, 6, 8, 12, 2, 2, 8, 4, 3, 7, 11, 5, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["I read in a book that they pretty much built a square stone wall around the area they wanted a pillar, made it water tight and used buckets to drain it. then they put in their logs/stone and had themselves supports. Have no idea if this is true tho.", "They built them in air, not underwater. First they blocked off the water around where they were going to dig and build using what are called Cofferdams or Caissons made of pile driven wood or stone and pumped out by bucket, dug the foundation and built to the water line and then removed the temporary structure. Pressurized versions are relatively new but can go deeper but the original idea is almost 2 millennia old and would have been used for major bridges during that time. ", "The Roman architect Vitruvius tells us that in order to lay the foundations and supporting pillars the Romans would construct water tight vessels, rather like barrels. These were made of wood bound by metal. In order to provide water resistance the barrels could be lined with pitch or clay. By lowering these into the river it was then possible to divert the water from the place of work in order to dig down to build foundations. The foundations could be lain directly onto hard rock if it was found or onto wooden piles driven deep into the river bed. This last solution is relatively durable as is demonstrated by the result achieved with Venice. The wet mud and the lack of oxygen prevents the action of the bacteria which would in other cases destroy the wood.\n\nOnce the foundations had been laid the bottom portion of the pillar could be built within the \"barrel\" and from there brought up to the required height above the water level by means of scaffolding. As already described, the arches would be built by creating a truss to support the work until the arch had been spanned.\n\nThe Romans were also VERY good at pouring concrete underwater. In fact, as far as resiliency against wear and resistance to crushing, their concrete was hands down better than modern concrete. One doesn't often think about concrete being able to cure underwater, but it works perfectly fine, albeit it takes a lot longer.", "Do realize that in some cases depending on the body of water like a river, they may divert the river further up river so that they were actually dealing with a dry bed while the water went by in a bypass.  This is a technique that we continue to use today when working on water in certain areas if practical.\n\nOther building techniques they probably used was to create wooden frames, drop them down into the water (using ladders to get down inside) and then as they build they can float up the frame to rise with things and thus when you are finally at surface level you now have a solid base without having to actually get into the water.  This is a technique they used with pressurized frames with even some of the bridges and such they've built over the the last few centuries as well.\n\nNot easy to find much on this but just thinking thru what they had materials wise to build such things based on the time and technology involved. ", "A water-proof container(s) was first, put down to make the area that was going to have a support column placed, dry and able to be dug out further. I would imagine that since boats could be water-proofed, so could the support column, and then bricks and mortar would reinforce it. Place all of your support columns then build the bridge across it. This technique is more ancient roman, but I would imagine medieval Europe could do something somewhat similar.\n\nThe explanation isn't exactly like you are 5 but it's as simplified as I could manage.\n\n", "If you're interested in the story of how they built the Brooklyn Bridge in 1870: _URL_0_", "As you can see by the other comments, frequently they would build a water tight enclosure and force it to the bottom before emptying out the inside.\n\nIn other cases, where possible, they diverted the entire river temporarily to drain the bed by building dams. This was the case with the Hoover Dam. They basically drilled a new channel through some rock for the river to go then dammed up the usual path. Once the Hoover Dam construction was complete they blew up the temporary Dam they built and I believe they collapsed the alternate channel as well.", "There's a book by Ken Follet called World Without End which incorporates a lot of medieval building and most particularly the building of a stone bridge. It gives intricate and detailed information about this exact thing. It's also a great story. The first book is about Cathedral building and is called Pillars of Earth. They made a show of it which is also on Netflix.", "Another way that this was done was via boats! In the Persian Empire, Xerxes used a series of boats to bridge the Hellespont to get to Greece. After anchoring them and stringing them all together he built a bridge OVER them and marched the largest army the world had seen at that time over it! The bridge also held for multiple years while his campaign in Greece lasted, and he crossed back over it without a hitch in his retreat! ", "If you are interested in medieval building techniques, you should read Pillars Of The Earth and World Without End, they are a couple very good historical fictions with a strong emphasis on building. ", "They just built a bridge, and it sank into the water. So they built a second one. That sank into the water. So they built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the water. But the fourth one stayed up.", "As Brezz mentioned, cofferdams. You send a barge out and anchor it, and on the barge is a pile driver like a big hammer. They take timbers and pound them down into the sediment side by side like taking lincoln logs and sticking them in the mud in a circle. Sometimes they would even leave the pile driven logs and back fill the voids with stones in order to protect the bridge in case of contact with a boat. ", "How did they build bridges over massive crevasses? ", "I don't have the full details, but concrete that set underwater had long been a thing by medieval times. One of its most famous users in the ancient world was King Herod the Great, Mr. \"Kill the firstborn child of every household.\" He is famous as one of history's greatest builders, and he constructed as many as half a dozen different structures which some historians have suggested were easily on a par with the wonders of the ancient world. He had a hand in the design of most of them.\n\nHis tomb complex is so massive that, despite knowing exactly where it is, we just found his body about 7 or 8 years ago. It covers hundreds of acres. ", "I know you asked about medieval bridges, but you should also check out [Roman concrete.](_URL_0_)", "i remember reading something about caesar when he invaded england using some kind of bad ass technique for building a bridge to england.  i dont remember the specifics anyone know what im talking about?", "OP, I learnt alot about the process of Ciassons by watching a documentary on Netflix titled; [Seven wonders of the industrial world, Season 1 \"The Brooklyn Bridge\"](_URL_0_). It's a 1 hour + documentary about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge using this process, the dangers that went with it, etc etc. I can't speak for the medevil times, but this process was still used as late as the 1800's\n\n\nModern era construction is simply not as amazing as what used to go on in the world, without the huge machines we use today. Quite amazing to learn about and worth the watch.  ", "Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up.", "How do they even build bridge supports in deep water in the present day?", "Not medieval, but from the antiquity. \n\nCaesar commanded the building of a bridge across the Rhine (Rhein) to get into the Germanic tribes land. \n\nThey Germans thought that the Romans would never come across the extremely deep and really wide stream. \n\nCaesar had the bridge done in 10 days. \n\nThey used a raft to transport a tower like ramming machine to pound giant oak pillars angled into the river, then they built a bridge ontop. ", "When I first came here, this was all deep water. Everyone said I was daft to build a bridge in deep water, but I built in all the same, just to show them.  \nIt sank into the water. So I built a second one.  \nThat sank into the water.  \nSo I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the water.  \nBut the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest bridge in all of England.", "They built them in air, not underwater. First they blocked off the water around where they were going to dig and build using what are called Cofferdams or Caissons made of pile driven wood or stone and pumped out by bucket, dug the foundation and built to the water line and then removed the temporary structure. Pressurized versions are relatively new but can go deeper but the original idea is almost 2 millennia old and would have been used for major bridges during that time.....", "They just dug a trench that connects to the river upstream and downstream, then blocked off the part where they wanted to build a bridge. Then, when the bridge was finished, they just let the water flow.  & nbsp;\n\nThis is also why you often see rivers around old castles: originally that was just a river, but they dug around, changed the flow, built a bridge, and removed the obstacle; that's how they made it loop around the building.", "Read Pillars of the Earth. It's a great read and gives great insight on how these things were built. I never thought I would enjoy reading a book about building a church but it turned out to be a great read.", "the first five answers in this thread when I clicked on it had 0 or fewer votes. This is not how ELI5 is supposed to work....\n\nSeriously, minecraft vids?  fucking stupid, man."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://thememorypalace.us/2016/01/below-from-above/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_signinum"], [], ["https://www.netflix.com/watch/70110198"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e09yn", "title": "If Jupiter and Saturn are made of gas, why haven't we tried sending anything into them?", "selftext": "Would the radiation just destroy anything we send near it or do we already know enough about these planets and its not worth it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2e09yn/if_jupiter_and_saturn_are_made_of_gas_why_havent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjuwcgt", "cjuwg50", "cjv839d"], "score": [26, 5, 2], "text": ["We actually have! In 1995, we sent an atmospheric probe into Jupiter. It transmitted weather data for 58 minutes before failing due to the heat of about 150 Celsius and 23 atmospheric pressure. The next probe to arrive at Jupiter will be the Juno spacecraft, while it won't scientifically descend into the clouds, it will collect valuable data on Jupiter's polar regions.\n\n_URL_0_  \n_URL_1_", "We already have. We crashed Galileo into Jupiter in 2003 and we will be crashing Cassini into Saturn in 2017. ", "As mentioned by u/AsAChemicalEngineer, our previous attempt at penetration failed after the first hour or so because of the high temperatures/pressures destroying it. We'd have to manufacture something to withstand that, and I am not sure whether we have concrete data about the upper limits of what to expect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "76k66j", "title": "how do people die in wildfires?", "selftext": "It\u2019s not like the area spontaneously combusts, don\u2019t people have ample time to get to safety?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76k66j/eli5_how_do_people_die_in_wildfires/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doek40k", "doendsa", "doepfew", "doetm07"], "score": [20, 7, 2, 9], "text": [" >  It\u2019s not like the area spontaneously combusts, don\u2019t people have ample time to get to safety?\n\nIt sort of does spontaneously combust. Imagine a wall of flame approaching at 50+ mph and winds carrying embers which are dropping around you. Each of those might start their own fires in any direction, blocking your movement and vision.\n\nLook around your house, how far can you see? Probably not more than a mile or two at most. Once you can see fire you are probably out of time.", "a wildfire breaks out 50 miles from you.  do you evacuate?   probably not.   with wind, fire can travel 10mph.    that fire that was 50 miles away from you when you went to bed is now on top of you when you wake up in the morning.   ", "The key to this question is looking that the age of the deaths. In California, almost everyone was over 75 years old.\n\nMost often (old) people die from smoke inhalation. It aggravates pre existing conditions and they die. \n\nIn california, some residents weren't given evacuation notices, and the fire reached the houses at 2 or 3 in the morning, so everyone was sleeping. Some people woke up with flames literally in their yard. Elderly people aren't as mobile so they are more susceptible.\n\nPeople can burn to death if they get trapped by the fire. If the fire is blocking the escape, they can get trapped in. If people are on foot evacuating like that 14 year old boy, the flames can easily out pace him. The winds were  > 45 mph", "In normal forest fires most of the time yes people can evacuate in time because they have an hour or two to get out of the way. If you're talking about the fires in California right now like in the Napa Valley those are not regular forest fires, those are firestorms. \n\nA firestorm is a result of a fire that burns so hot that it actually changes the weather around it and causes air to be sucked into the base of the Flames causing them to burn even hotter which causes more air to be sucked in and the Flames to burn even hotter... the result is a wall of flame several stories tall moving faster than what you can legally do on some freeways. The time difference from when you first see the Flames to when you are literally being burned by the Flames can be 2 to 3 minutes. \n\nNow you might say that it is possible to get away from a fire in 2 to 3 minutes but I'll remind you that in most places of the world roads do not go directly away from disasters. Especially in places that are literally valleys or Canyons where there are only one or two roads out of an area meaning sometimes your last evacuation route is actually towards the flames and you need to just shelter in place. Sheltering in place can be an acceptable Last Resort but considering the raw power of a firestorm there's really no hope, we're even seeing melted engine blocks from the devastation areas so there's really nothing you can do to hide from it. For those in the path if they did not evacuate when it was 25 miles away (the next town over) they may not have had a chance to leave at all. \n\nSo stop and consider what is 25 miles away from you, and think that if that was a natural disaster, would you evacuate from your city just because of what's happening 25 miles away? Also the next time you're on the freeway think about a wall of flame the height of a large building going that speed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3eb7rq", "title": "why piratebay creator is in prison if it was the users who added illegal content?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eb7rq/eli5_why_piratebay_creator_is_in_prison_if_it_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctd8mxs", "ctd8u28", "ctd90bc", "ctdbhi2", "ctdbyh6", "ctdc0vs", "ctdc17b", "ctdc6iz", "ctdc717", "ctddmh2", "ctde3q2", "ctdep2c", "ctdepdv", "ctdf6rw", "ctdfbi1", "ctdgkep", "ctdhgo3", "ctdhhwn", "ctdi3ze", "ctdixr5", "ctdjrf3", "ctdkfks", "ctdktq1", "ctdljn8", "ctdm37t", "ctdmijb", "ctdnlxc", "ctdom0x", "ctdqla2", "ctdr3r6", "ctdre29", "ctdsbqh", "ctdsu7o", "ctdsueu", "ctdt1p0", "ctdxu6e", "ctdzhd7", "ctdzywz", "cte1dwe", "cte2ool", "cte2twm", "cte74xi", "cte7f0f"], "score": [14, 2, 3264, 5, 23, 29, 27, 449, 45, 159, 9, 2, 4, 3, 2, 12, 2, 3, 24, 17, 3, 7, 2, 3, 2, 8, 2, 6, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I am not familiar with the details of the case, but here are the most relevant points:\n1, by operating the site/servers the owner(s) were at the very least, aiding in the theft of the files being shared. \n\n2, if they made any money from the service, they would have been charged with profiting from an illegal activity.\n\nSo while they might not have been uploading the files themselves, they were still participants in one form or another in illegal activity. That is most likely how it is seen in the eyes of international copyright law.", "This thread will soon be infested with people claiming that the founders of Pirate Bay were convicted despite not having done anything criminal, because the courts wanted to make an example out of them. Well, it just doesn't work that way. \n\nIt was criminal. Now, one may like it or not. If we don't like it, let's argue for a change of those laws that they broke. But there's not much room to argue that they didn't break the law, because they did. ", "Pirate Bay did not take a prudent step to protect themselves. That is the issue. \n\nMost times a hosting site cannot be charged for distributing copyrighted or illegal material, because as you say, it is the users who are doing that. However, if illegal activity is brought to the attention of the hosting site and they do nothing about it, it can be argued that they are knowingly and willingly allowing it to happen.\n\nWe can use reddit for an example. When the leaked celebrity photos happen, they banned the subreddit that was posting them. They were made aware of the sharing of illegal activity and they took a prudent step to prevent it. This does not mean reddit has to actively search their site for illegal content, but they cannot just ignore it when it is brought to their attention.", "\n Why do they arrest the driver helping with a bank robbery? ", "Aren't they [free](_URL_0_) now?", "Well, one is in jail now for hacking banks and government records of protected identities (witness protection)", "There are safe harbor laws that protect site owners from illegal activities of their users. TPB did not work within the confines of those laws. Reddit's does. ", "(Throwaway cause I'm admitting to shady stuff in this post)\n\nI know quite a bit about this scene because I used to run a tracker (it was a tracker dedicated to anime, nothing as big as thepiratebay). We didn't run any advertisements in our website, what we did was just ask people to donate for hosting, we only asked for the amount that we needed for hosting. We did this like every 6 months and in a few days we'd find somebody that'd pay our server bills.\n\nWe did this because we didn't want to profit from it, not only for ethical reasons but also in the hopes that showing we didn't profit would give us some legal protection/leniency if we got caught.\n\nThe vast majority of trackers and sites like that, however, were run for a profit. Thepiratebay was among those 100%-for-profit enterprises that turned a huge profit while portraying themselves as uninterested martyrs. The truth is that bandwidth is hilariously cheap if you don't have specific stability concerns for it. For a tracker, it's irrelevant to have an uptime of \"just\" 98% or a packet loss of 2% (too much for enterprise) or a latency that is 50ms higher than it should, but this kind of bandwidth is really, really cheap. I made calculations once and the piratebay could have been paid for by showing a single banner one day a month. But they had a shit-ton of banners all month long, all that was profit.\n\nThe reason there was a conviction is that as soon as numbers were presented in court it became clear to everybody present that the pirate bay was a cynical cash-grab and not an ideologically-driven internet community.\n\nEDIT: Here is the verdict in English, _URL_0_ in pages 53 and 58 you can read how the commercial nature of the operation was indeed a factor regarded in the severity of the penalties.\n\n >  It has been confirmed that the operation of The Pirate Bay has generated advertising revenue\nwhich, during the period indicated in the indictment, has amounted to at least SEK 1,200,000.\nOn this basis alone, the District Court can conclude that the operation was carried on as a\ncommercial project. This conclusion is confirmed by the correspondence between the\ndefendants and the fact that the defendants have investigated and discussed various corporate forms which may have been applicable to the continued operation of The Pirate Bay. It has,\nconsequently, been a question of an operation carried on in organised form. The\ncircumstances mentioned here also indicate that an increase in the penalty may be\nappropriate. ", "The movie TPB: AFK explains it. They responded to requests with \"Please contact the uploader\"", "The news media really skimmed over this point, but they weren't just running pirate bay, they were users as well.  Once they were investigated as the owners of pirate bay, the investigators tracked down that they had in fact uploaded 33 specific files that were copy-written. \n\n[sauce](_URL_0_)\n\nMeaning, they were in fact arrested as users, but were only really investigated because they were also the owners. ", "Most hosting sites make it perfectly clear that if you, as a user, are posting and sharing copyrighted material or illegal content then it's not the site's fault. They can remove it only if the copyright owner makes them take it down... or it's child porn.\n\nPirate Bay outright advertises 'Come here for your illegally downloaded movies, pirated games and MP3 rip-offs'. If they said 'We allow users to share files via online cloud storage' they could dodge it... except they were idiots.\n\n'We do not participate in the sale or distribution of illegal fireworks... but go ask Bob down the street he has a *ton* of them. You didn't hear that from me.'", "I followed the case alot before/during the trial and there is alot of strange things surrounding it, it was a while ago so ill try to find some sources, they will probably be in swedish tho.\n\nThey were basically convicted for assisting in copyright infringement, a crime who none had ever heard of before the conviction, its basically the same as convicting a gun manufacturer of assisting in a murder commited by their guns.\n\nThe leading investigator at the case left the police department 2 months after the investigation had concluded(before the trial) and got a high position job at warner brothers sweden, who were one of the plaintiffs, and THEN gave testomony in court. _URL_2_\n\nThe judge was involved in \"The swedish organisation for copyright\" and was accused of \"bias\" but our \"High court\" rejected the accusation. _URL_1_ English post from CNet about it _URL_3_\n\nPeter Sunde who also got convicted basically only helped the site with marketing, this is his story in his own words _URL_0_\n\nMy gut feeling on the case was that alot of money were thrown around behind the scenes and the pirate bay guys were made an example of, still think this case is a disgrace to our justice system.", "For the same reason that someone who drives the car for some bank robbers will go to jail even if they did not physically loot the bank. Pirate Bay was created with the explicit purpose of enabling piracy.", "Because pirate bay was built for the specific purpose of facilitating the illegal distribution of copyright content. That is illegal. And it's far more damaging than the actions of each individual participating on it. \n\nWithout sites like pirate bay, piracy would not be so easy. If everyone who was downloading torrents had to go from person to person it would be much more difficult. Having a single site to find everything is what makes it such a big problem. \n\nIt's sort of like asking how the police can charge a mob boss when the mob boss is not doing the actual killing. Without the mob boss the killing would not be organized and as effective. ", "Its kind of like building a farmers market and letting people sell marijuana at your market .. You didn't do anything but you did build the market. Similar situation with owner of silkroad", "ITT: People comparing it to a manufacturer being jailed for when their product is used to hurt someone.\n\nBullshit analogy.\n\nA better analogy is that of a new store that opens up online.  It's called \"Illegal Weapons for sale!\".\n\nTheir slogan is \"Use us to find whatever illegal weapon you want, no questions asked\".\n\nTheir website posts pictures of warrants and notices they get from law enforcement tell them they can't sell Stinger missles to 8 year olds.  They respond \"Fuck you, hahah, we'll never stop selling illegal weapons!  Besides, we're not technically selling, we're just a marketplace for buyers and sellers to meet and exchange goods.\".\n\nTHOSE owners may damned well get in trouble since they are so damn knowingly breaking the law.  Their \"technically the Stinger missile never went through our physical warehouse since we just connected buyer and seller\" is a bullshit excuse and I'm sure the courts would come down as hard as possible on them.  Everything about that site would be there to explicitly enable illegal transactions.\n\n", "Swede here, longtime follower of legalese regarding pirayebay... Fun fact: What ultimately took thesysop's and admin/owners down was an unencrypted email from the lead tech, Gottfrid Svartholm.\n\nThe irony in it is that Gottfrid was supergungho about security, encryption and all such things was on him, he encrypted all his comms normally, but never actualy encrypted his OS drive, just 1 unencrypted drive of his was enough to tear a hole in the defense.", "They didn't get convicted for copyright infrigement. They were however found to be accessory to copyright infringement, which isn't really surprising considering piratebay is largely used for this legal activity, they knew about it and they allowed it to happen. A large part of the courts decision discussed this issue since this situation has not appeared in a swedish court before, but their conclusion is hard to be critical of if you actually look at it and has some knowledge of law, and swedish law in particular.\n\nWhat is more questionable to me as a swedish law student, is the way the damages was calculated (the civil part of the case), but I'm guessing that the maxim of party disposition (had to google for the english term) is responsible for this.", "Think of it like a pawn shop. \n\nAny pawn shop, from time to time, is going to have some illegal goods. That's just the nature of the business. \n\nBut that is different from a pawn shop that openly advertises that it takes in stolen goods and refuses to remove them even when the owners come in demanding their goods back. \n\nA service like Reddit is more like the former. While I am sure there is copyrighted material on here, they take steps to prevent it and removes it upon request. If you set up /r/freedisneymovies and put up torrents for all of them, it would be removed. \n\nThe Pirate Bay on the other hand is more like the latter kind of shop. They take no action to remove unlawful content and even encourage it. That puts them outside of the various safe harbors that protect people who unknowingly become involved in illegal activity. ", "Okay, I study law in Sweden so I know a bit, at least.\n\nThe three creators was convicted of accesory to copyright infringement.\n\nHas a copyright-crime been commited?\n1) The different kinds of worked that had been downloaded/uploaded was protected by copyright\n2) Copyright was infringed when torrents were uploaded\n3) Unidentified people was found to have commited the crime of copyright-infringement on TPB-website\n\nThe question now is basically, have TPB-creators \"helped\" these acts of crime (Accessory/Medhj\u00e4lp)\n4) The creatos had all commited various types of acts that \"helped\" the crimes (administration, financing, organisation, programming of the site etc.) i.e. TPB-website included different search, uploading and communication services that made the 3) crime \"easier to commit\"\n5) The creators hade the intent to help the 3) crime (They knew about it and didn't take countermeasures etc.)\n\n- This is a quite-simplified version of the ruling, there were a few more legal hoops to be passed, but the above are the main ones\n\n-- Also: the difference between TPB and Google/youtube is (badly translated) that the \"risk-taking\" (for accessorising 3) crimes) of Google/Youtube versus TPB is on another level and acceptable because of the benefits Google/Youtube brings...", "Simple, they hosted the content and refused to take it down. They knew they were hosting illegal content, and refused to take it down, even when faced with DMCAs up the ass, and multiple lawsuits and cease and desist orders. By law, they are (unfortunately) equally at fault for not removing the content when they were told.\n\nUp until a year or two ago, Sweden didn't have any anti-piracy laws, and since TPB was absed in Sweden, they were breaking no laws, and they were allowed to host the content. However, they were arrested when Sweden introduced some really controversial anti-piracy laws.", "He is in prison because of how the law works.   It's like if you loan your car to a person who you know doesn't have a driver's license.  If that person causes any damage to persons or property, you can be held liable.  In the eyes of the law, you are viewed as an enabler of the crime and are therefore an accessory.", "because that \"its not my fault all those other people used my website for piracy when it was explicitly for piracy...they posted it all, go be mean to *them* and leave me be\"  is a ridiculous flimsy loophole excuse that doesn't deserve to work\n\n....but for some retarded reason it works on drugs pimping racketeering and murder.    \n\njust not watching movies.  i think its a money and lobbyists thing", "He knowingly created an environment for the crime to take place making him an accessory to a crime, which is illegal.", "Because they provided the means for the people who did, also, they lacked of any content upload prohibition, of course, intentionally. Plus bad defense tactics.", "Gotfried \"anakata\" is not in prison for running piratebay, he is in Danish prison because he hacked the center for social security numbers (CPR-Numbers).", "It's called contributory copyright infringement: _URL_0_\n\nIn other words, if you don't infringe on copyrights yourself but provide a means for others to do so, then you could still be sued or charged for it.", "Because I can't start a business called \"Bob's underage alcohol sales warehouse\" and provide the marketplace in which the transactions occur, advertise and brag about how my warehouse space exists specifically to facilitate 3rd party adults selling alcohol to 13 year olds.  I can't then post the warrants for my arrest and say \"Ha!  Nothing will stop me from helping children buy alcohol in my warehouse!!!\".\n\nIf I do that shit I'm going to get in trouble.  ", "If you build a highway and drug traffickers traffic drugs on it, you aren't liable.\n\nIf you build a highway called \"no piggies drug expressway\" there is a case to make that you built it specifically for drug trafficking and that you enabled traffickers to break the law.", "Facilitating criminal activity is also a crime. If you help someone commit a crime, even if they could have gotten help from someone else or done it themselves, it's still also a crime.", "Who owns the site now?\nIt still is used by a lot of people.", "Well you know it's how people who are responsible for incompetent and racist police departments go to jail. Or how politicians that pass terrible laws get punished. How bankers went to the slammer for causing a global economic meltdown, or how Greece was kicked out of the Euro for blatantly lying when they submitted their statistics. How the people who started a false war under the pretense of 'weapons of mass distruction' are languishing in prison now (Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney). How the president of FIFA is now digging ditches. \n\nExactly like that.", "Why did the owner of the crack house get arrested if it was the junkies coming in smoking crack and not him?", "Does anyone know the estimated amount of profit lost to the movie industry distributors due to Pirate Bay? ", "In 1908, a bunch of countries got together and signed an agreement called \"1908 modification of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works\" (aka Berne Convention) in Berlin.\n\nOne of the topics they discussed was that:\n\n*Hey, its fucking hard to sue individual copyright infringers because there are so many of those bastards and none of them have money! Our important citizens/copyright holders/lobbyers are asking us implement some law that allows them to sue those guys who enables mass infringement and have deep pockets to sue while making it easy for us as we only need to sue one person.*\n\nSo they agreed to say that anyone who *authorises* infringement (secondary infringement) is just as guilty as the people who commits it (aka primary infringement).\n\nBut it was really up to each individual country to adopt that agreement into local domestic legislation with their precise wording. Just because you sign an international agreement, it wont come into effect until you make legislation for it. \n\nTypically, the way most cases have interpreted this vague word is that if they had some combination of the following factors:\n\n* the defendant had technical control to prevent infringement and did nothing about it to prevent it or even turned a blind eye (or even worse, actively promoted it which is what piratebay pretty much did)\n\n* it would have been very easy (ie not a lot of time and money) for the defendant to control/prevent infringement\n\n* they were made aware of the infringing activities\n\n* their business model was reliant on heavy usage of infringing activity (ie legitimate use was minimal compared to illegitimate use) \n\nFor example, a famous case in Australia called iiNet where the ISP was sued for this reason, they satisfied everything except for the fact that they could not easily prevent all those infringing activities.\n\nThe Piratebay creator was probably one of the most easiest cases to find that it was illegal under authorisation out all of the authorisation cases in history. \n\nTaking him to prison is something that the international agreement didnt require each country to do - the addition of criminality must have been added by the jurisdiction he was found guilty for.\n\n\n", "Okay, it goes something like this. The Piratebay founders, let's call them The Pirates, are of the opinion that banks (Entertainment Industry) shouldn't be allowed to keep all their money (Entertainment) for themselves. They buy a car (server) and drive it (run the server). Then they say \"If you want the monies from the bank, you have to take a ride with us.\" So, you, a pre-pubescent little 5 year old, obey. As do all the rest, and soon, The Pirates are driving people around constantly!\n\nThe Pirates drive you to the bank, and give you the access codes, the layout of the security, the keys and the combination to the vault. Then you run in and get what you want, and come out unscathed because The Pirates also blessed you with Anti-Piracy Fairy Powder, so you blend right in with the crowd. Then they drive you home, and you use the money to buy a hooker or soda.\n\nThe Pirates say they have no responsibility for what you, a 5 year old, is doing inside the bank. *They* aren't robbing the banks. They're just helping people get from A to B :P\n\nBut the ***GOVERNMENT*** now knows their license plate number, because there's cameras everywhere (ISPs are Government's bitches). So, instead of catching the *real* (lol) criminals, they settle for getting the driver(s) of the getaway vehicle. It's not fair, but fairness never ruled the world.", " The same reason a drug dealer will go to prison\nAnd if caught the drug user. Now swap out the word \"drug\" \"stolen media\" and you have pirate bay. \n\nPs  I allegedly downloaded all the Star Wars  because George Lucas wouldn't let me download/buy/rent  episode one anywhere .  Allegedly of course ", "The top answers here are correct on a legal and technical level...\n\nBut consider: there's a guy in prison, and 2 guys living abroad after not having anything to do with the site for near on 10 years... and they're STILL being nut punched for so-called offenses WELL beyond what should otherwise be statute of limitations.\n\nWhy are these dead horses being kicked so hard and so often when other sites are way bigger now than TBP ever was in it's heyday?\n\nBecause people. \n\nIn the early days of tbp, they would put up the take-down letters and emails that they were sent and ridicule them HARD on a page of the website. I don't think they're still there, but you might be able to find an archive somewhere. They did this for about a 2 years. \n\nOnce the sale took place in 06, all that stopped but it was too late.\n\nYou're not suppose to make fun of a large person. They'll kick your ass. But a small person with a checkbook will make your life a living hell forevermore.\n\nThat's what has happened. They thumbed their noses at an industry run by people with influence and deep pockets. Basically, the *IAAs parachuted in a herd of lobbyists, got the laws changed, and BAM now we'll gitcha. The other sites that are still running said nothing. They ignored or played down the legal issues, but largely just kept quietly running their site. \n\nI've said it before: the way these guys laughed and pointed from behind the laws of Sweden site early on set the tone for filesharing for the forseeable future. If they had not said a word, we may have actually seen *IAAs actually embrace filesharing to a point. \n\nPersonally I think the rideshare companies are doing the same thing... they're bulldozing over municipalities and \"building value\" while legal catches up. And because of that tactic, once cities figure out that they actually can do something about it, the end result will be far more strict than it would have been if they'd just worked with people from the beginning.", "Politics- I mean honestly nothing about the site was illegal the logic is he is responsible for what happens on his site, look at Megaupload though- the famous people involved were not charged. You are only going to actually be put in jail if you do not have the power through $$$ political position or fame to do anything about it", "Is contributory infringement still a thing? It started with vcr and Xerox machines", "Trafficking/fencing stolen property.  Drug dealers often use a mule, sometimes a minor, to handle the goods.  This guy was involved in turning the internet into his mule.  Technically it qualifies as hacking today.\n\n\nThis entire long sentence exists in this post to provide enough wordage for the post to qualify as an answer for ELI5.  Which frankly is a stupid way to detect whether a post is useful or not.", "It's like giving drugs to someone, then that guy being searched by the cops.\n\nYou just don't easily get off with \"But its not my meth! I'm just holding it for a friend!\" You have the offence for possessing drugs.", "Piratebay, unlike other information sharing websites like reddit, is very obviously created with the specific intention of promoting illegal activities. And the creator is facing punishment for providing a way for the crime to take place. Its the same thing as if you were a get away driver to people who just robbed a gas station. You never robbed the place, waved a gun at somebody, or took a bunch of money that isn't yours. Helping the thieves get away is a crime itself"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founders-acquitted-in-criminal-copyright-case-150710/"], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/04/piratebayverdicts.pdf"], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/apr/17/the-pirate-bay-trial-guilty-verdict"], [], ["http://blog.brokep.com/2012/07/04/nadeansokan/", "http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article11780390.ab", "http://www.svd.se/amerikanskt-filmbolag-anstallde-pirate-bay-utredare", "http://www.cnet.com/news/why-pirate-bay-judge-shouldnt-have-heard-case/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_liability#Contributory_liability"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "63bnod", "title": "why are we still discovering egyptian pyramids, shouldn't these giant structures all be discovered by now?", "selftext": "In the news today, a new pyramid was discovered.  I can see new tombs being uncovered, but this thing is out in the open, why did it take so long to find?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63bnod/eli5_why_are_we_still_discovering_egyptian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfsw0i2", "dfswfqd", "dft2kp7", "dft2ksi", "dft6wit"], "score": [46, 23, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["Sand dunes buried most of them.   All the ancient Egyptians were dead by then and the area wasn't that populated, so people lost track of where they all were.\n\nSometimes the wind blows the sand away, and poof, there is the top of a pyramid.", "The big, solid, well-built pyramids we tend to think of as pyramids were only built for a short period, probably because they were a big drain on the economy. For a while, later pharaohs who weren't as powerful but still wanted to emulate their predecessors resorted to piling up mounds of dirt and debris and then throwing a layer of bricks over that. Understandably, this didn't survive as well, and today it's not obvious what's the remains of one of these pyramids and what's a natural hill.", " > In the news today\n\nSome links for the lazy...\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "I do not think you realize how vast some deserts are or how much is buried under all that sand...", "Another thing to consider is Egypt is a single city country for the most part. 1/5 of their citizens live in the metro area of Cairo, and 1/2 of their total population live in the Nile Delta area which is only 15k square miles. There just aren't a ton of people making use of a lot of the land they have so nothing is just being stumbled on, especially outside of the cities and tourist areas. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://m.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/04/03/new-ancient-pyramid-older-than-giza-discovered-in-egypt_a_22024350/", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/3446461/New-pyramid-discovered-in-Egypt-at-Saqqara.html", "http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/pyramid-remains-discovered-south-cairo-170403102437622.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5xbkh2", "title": "why do the air force one pilots get switched with every president?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xbkh2/eli5why_do_the_air_force_one_pilots_get_switched/", "answers": {"a_id": ["degtg13", "degtpew", "degz359", "deh1g1g", "dehgz92"], "score": [66, 241, 33, 16, 6], "text": ["They don't. Many Air Force One pilots have flown for multiple presidents, even from different political parties.", "They don't switch just because a new president arrives. \n\nAir Force One is piloted by Air Force pilots (typically O-6, O-5 or O-4 - very senior guys - it's a high profile gig) and each tour of duty (like the rest in the military) typically lasts 3-5 years, so they will naturally rotate out over time during a presidency and overlap with multiple Presidents depending on timing in their career.\n\nedit: \n\nHere's a great National Geographic Documentary on this and what goes into planning each mission: _URL_0_\n\nedit2:\n/u/since_ever_since mentioned that only full bird (O-6) colonel's could be Aircraft Commander of AF1. The other pilots/navigators could be lower ranks. It is a prestigious gig, so pilots are typically selected for it as a good deal tour of duty\n", "You never do any one thing for that long in the military. Each set of orders is about 3 years pretty much wherever you go. ", "The AF1 pilots and Marine 1 Pilots all work for the Military Chief of Staff in the white house. That guy also controls Camp David and secure bunkers.  A million years ago I knew a very cool Captain that rose to that position.", "When I was 6 or so, I met the Air Force One pilot for George W Bush. The pilot gave me a box of peanut M & Ms with the American seal on it and the president's personal signature on it in sharpie, next to the printed signature. I ripped it open, ate it and threw it away.\nApparently stuff with his actual signature is worth around $300 now. Drat."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKRQyDsKODE"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hzbx5", "title": "Space falling into blackholes faster than light", "selftext": "I recently read in Phil Plaits book 'Death from the skies' that the reason light cannot escape from within a black hole's event horizon is because space itself is falling into the black hole at speeds faster than light:\n\n > \"A good way to understand what happens is to think of a black hole as like a waterfall. Except that what is falling into the black hole is not water, but space itself.  Outside the event horizon, space is falling less than the speed of light.  At the horizon, space falls at the speed of light.  And inside the horizon, space falls faster than light, carrying everything with it, including light.  This picture of a black hole as a region of space-time where space falls faster than light is not only a good conceptual picture . . . it has mathematical basis [emphasis added].\"\n\nAssuming this is true, what is happening to space outside of the event horizon?  Is space elastic, and being stretched thinner somehow, or is more space popping into existence to fill the gaps?  Could the black hole be dragging space back into itself right out to the edge of the universe itself (in the same way that sea level would become marginally lower on the other side of the planet if I took out enough water this side)? \n\nAlso, if no actual matter were falling into the black hole, would the space falling in make it heavier?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hzbx5/space_falling_into_blackholes_faster_than_light/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1zm1b7", "c1zm2fe", "c1zm4au"], "score": [18, 2, 21], "text": ["You are taking a metaphor too literally. You can think of space as being *bent* by a black hole, but spacing getting sucked into the black hole doesn't make any sense.", "I thought nothing goes faster than the speed of light - but that things can move away from us fast enough that our perspective view of it will never see it (i learned that one from yesterday's video!)", "Due respect to Phil Plait, that's a *terrible* way to understand black holes. Just terrible.\n\nRemember that space is not a tangible thing. It has no substance. Words like \"elastic\" and \"stretched\" and \"gaps\" have no applicability.\n\nWhat we're talking about here is geometry: the spatial (and temporal) relationship between neighboring points."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fqfv5", "title": "How is the hypothesis of dark matter different than when we used Aether to explain the movements of the planets?", "selftext": "The aether hypothesis may not be the best comparison, but I do wonder if people can use dark matter as a way to make the math fit their current hypothesis/theroy when dark matter has yet to be detected or measured. Does dark matter exist or are we skewing the math to fit our current model so that it has to exist?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fqfv5/how_is_the_hypothesis_of_dark_matter_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1hv4m5", "c1hvhqx", "c1hvlor", "c1hw0y8", "c1hw7tm"], "score": [10, 17, 5, 7, 2], "text": ["The aether hypothesis is not a good comparison.  There we expected the aether to exist and have certain effects, which we never measured, so eventually we threw the concept out.\n\nWe did not expect the effects that the dark matter is designed to explain.  It is a reaction to the evidence.  It ultimately might not be the right answer, but it's a reasonable modification to cosmological models to get it to agree with what we observe.\n\n(Though I love the snarkiness of a friend calling it \"the error in the model\".)", "It's more like that time we noticed Uranus was acting funny and tried to figure out if a more distant planet could cause its orbit to act that way. That's how we found Neptune.", "Aether wasn't used to explain the movements of the planets at all. It was expected from electromagnetism with Gallean relativity, before the Lorentzian one got widely accepted.", "With the aether everyone was like \"Well *obviously* light needs a medium just like sound needs air! Surely there must be something weird filling space that we can't see. We have a theory, but no evidence, so let's look for it. If it's there, light should behave a certain way. Huh, it doesn't, that means there is nothing there!\"\r\n\r\nWith dark matter everyone was like \"Dubdidu, just looking at some galaxies... and clusters... and the cosmic microwave background... huh, everything behaves exactly like there was some weird matter filling space that we can't see! Damn, we have evidence but no theory! Let's conduct even more experiments to find out about the nature of that stuff.\"", "It's the other way around. People stretch to make their models fit dark matter. Dark matter arises because actual observations don't add up with what we know. The discrepancy in observations superficially looks like missing mass, and for some reason we can't see it, so we call it dark matter.  \n\nI once heard someone say that dark matter is a placeholder used to quantify our ignorance. More importantly, it is observational problem, unlike the aether which was a conceptual problem. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9bvtjh", "title": "Why do infinity mirror tunnels appear to curve off in the distance as opposed to keeping in a straight line?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9bvtjh/why_do_infinity_mirror_tunnels_appear_to_curve/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e568uxw", "e568zqs", "e56ctot"], "score": [34, 9, 4], "text": ["It's very hard to align mirrors to be perfectly parallel and any deviation, no matter how minor, will be multiplied over and over. The net result is that almost any hall of mirrors will always appear to bend off in one direction or another.\n\n(Edited for autocorrect mess)", "Because the mirror aren't perfectly parallel so the light doesn't bounce straight back and forth. It is possible to get straight or nearly straight tunnels but no one puts in the time or effort to make a perfect one.", "You can work around this by cutting eye holes in the \"front\" mirror and suspending it by a wire.  Then when you look through the eye-hole you can manually compensate for this and see \"straight down\", but it just gets dim and fades to black.    \n    \n[Here is an example](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/look-into-infinity"]]}
{"q_id": "4b2nxq", "title": "with underground fires like centralia or the place in virginia which inspired silent hill, why can't they be put out by just pumping lots and lots of water into the mine?", "selftext": "Surely this would, if successful, save loads of coal from burning and polluting, and could then still be mined in the future?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b2nxq/eli5with_underground_fires_like_centralia_or_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d15lmiw", "d15mbz6", "d15mnbh", "d15mpcy", "d15pqby", "d15slwe", "d1646sv", "d166wci"], "score": [34, 210, 10, 19, 6, 8, 2, 3], "text": ["Flooding the entire Centralia Mine Fire with water is considered impractical, \r\nineffective and potentially dangerous. Sealing the Centralia Mine Drainage Tunnel \rmay raise the mine pool by approximately 230 feet; however, that level is not high enough to inundate the upper half of the burning coal zone. Raising the mine pool to an elevation that is high enough to flood the entire fire is not considered feasible due to the numerous seals and great size (height) of surface dams that would need to be constructed. Because the entire multiple-bed coal mine complex beneath Centralia Borough contains weakened coal barriers and roof supports, the risk of a catastrophic mine pool blow-out makes any rise in the mine pool level a very risky \r\nundertaking.", "Imagine the coal coating the inside of an uncleaned chimney is on fire and you're standing on the roof.  \nPouring water down the chimney to drown the fire would miss a lot of the fire on the way down.  So you'd have pour enough water to flood the entire house and let the rising water put out the fire in the chimney.   \nHowever the house has its windows open.       \n    \nSo the water going into that cavern could end up in a neighboring cavern.  ", "Think of the steam pressure buildup that would  result from this. Fissures would be created and the area would continue to be unsuitable for development. Essentially, it would be a wasted effort with no payoff resulting.", "Followup question, all fires need oxygen. Why not seal the entrance? Are these fires really that well ventilated?", "It has been done for certain cases of mine smoulders, but it required large territorial planning and expenses, like deviating the course of a local river toward the mine, and the fire extinction still took years. For small villages, relocating the population is the most feasible solution.", "Or better yet, why aren't we just using them as power sources?", "Good way to start a sinkhole/marsh/environmental disaster. Not only that, imagine all the disease, mosquitoes, and decay it would cause.", "Fire's need Fuel, heat, oxygen.\n\nCan they close the gaps to cut off air supply?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4sywzl", "title": "why do some people in india defecate in the street?", "selftext": "I know this is a meme at this point and I'm not trying to spark off any trolling or racist attacks at Indian citizens, I'm genuinely baffled that a country with a growing economy and industry has such poor public hygiene rules. Is this a systemic problem or a cultural one?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sywzl/eli5_why_do_some_people_in_india_defecate_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5d8fnj", "d5d8t5b", "d5db1sb", "d5dcqmh", "d5ddwqb", "d5dr5ax"], "score": [43, 2, 24, 4, 2, 9], "text": ["Much of India is still very, very poor, combined with a massively dense population of essentially homeless people. Combine it with developing infrastructure, and you get way more people than restrooms. People gotta poop, though.", "The poor often times have nowhere else to go.  \n\nNot just India - I see turds on US streets in big cities quite often.  When you gotta go, you gotta go - and a homeless person doesn't have a lot of choice regardless of what their passport would say if they had one.", "India's economy as a whole is growing, but there are still hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty. They can't use a toilet because they can't afford plumbing or even homes.\n\nTo be specific, 172 million people live on less than $1.90 per day. You might know that things are more expensive in rich areas than they are in poor areas, but that $1.90 is adjusted for purchasing power parity. That would mean that if those 172 million people lived in the US, they would still live on only $1.90 per day.\n\n58% of Indians live on less than $3.10/day (PPP). If you own a tv, computer, any type of transportation (bike/car/motorcycle), and a cell phone, you are richer than 99% of Indians. The poverty there is completely unfathomable to most Americans. If you work at minimum wage for half an hour every day in the US, you are richer than 58% of Indians.", "Most Indians have no access to a toilet. _URL_0_", "I've also seen a Chinese woman who doesn't look homeless ( new clothes and fancy hat) poo in the middle of the side walk around sunset time in a large Chinese community in Los Angeles. We have plenty of public restroom in the U.S. And even none was available why did she not poo in the alley instead of in front of everyone? \n", "(1) Historic/Logistical issues - It's not like in say USA, where a full-fledged new town with roads, water, sewage, eletric, phone and internet lines is \"built first\" and \"inhabitated later\". Its more like, historically, many towns and villages just spawned up organically, and and are much older than present government/corporate-planned city-building projects. Hence, any new infrastructure schemes need to be shoe-horned on top of existing settlements which will be highly disruptive.\n\n(2) Cultural bias - People are very ashamed about pooping and menstruation, so much so, that a lot of people prefer out-houses or very distant pooping zones in the forests, as opposed to having a pooping-room inside the house, which is considered dirty or shameful. Some people don't even accept pooping in the same place someone else pooped before, because this is also considered \"ew\". So, the concept of a \"re-usable pooping place inside the house\" is entirely repulsive.\n\n(3) Priorities - While urban middle-class and upper-classes have good toilets, lower-classes prefer spending money on cell-phones and scooters over toilets, simply because that tech is more vital to their jobs/businesses/survival. So even if toilets are built for free, they would tear them down and resuse the room for business storehouses etc. which are on a higher priority list."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/india-has-60-4-per-cent-people-without-access-to-toilet-study/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "cxkqq6", "title": "Why did the English language never develop a regulatory body like the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise or Accademia della Crusca?", "selftext": "Many languages have organizations which regulate their development, but English does not. Why is this the case? Where there ever serious pushes in the past to create one, and if so, why did it fail?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cxkqq6/why_did_the_english_language_never_develop_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eypw38z"], "score": [14], "text": ["There have certainly been English reform movements throughout history, but it is curious how this didn't lead to a centralized institution like French with the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise. While \"Why didn't ____ happen?\" questions [can be tricky to answer](_URL_0_), I'll try to shed some light on the various ways people have tried to modify English throughout history (in no particular order), and how successful their attempts were, and maybe along the way we'll get an idea of why it never developed a regulatory body.\n\nEnglish is, in my personal non-professional opinion, a dumpster fire of a language for a variety of reasons, including but certainly not limited to its strange spelling rules\u2014a result of many migrations and conquests against and by Anglo-Saxons over the course of many centuries, accumulating a variety of rules and vocabularies based on the affected languages, and exacerbated by the fact that there was no standardized spelling rules until the printing press and later dictionaries really kept things somewhat consistent, though that's a whole separate series of lectures\u2014so it's no surprise that people have pushed for somehow simplifying it. There have been a lot of people pushing for spelling reform to make the letter-to-phoneme ratio more consistent and easier to keep track of. For example, Ben Franklin [proposed a new phonetic alphabet](_URL_2_) that removed letters that were confusing or redundant (e.g., replace \"c\" with a \"k\" or \"s\" depending on the sound it's making) while creating letters for sounds that don't have their own letter. Similarly, there is a legendary comic proposal commonly attributed to Mark Twain (though also attributed to MJ Shields) of a multi-year plan to improve English:\n\n > For example, in Year 1 that useless letter \"c\" would be dropped to be replased either by \"k\" or \"s\", and likewise \"x\" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which \"c\" would be retained would be the \"ch\" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform \"w\" spelling, so that \"which\" and \"one\" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish \"y\" replasing it with \"i\" and Iear 4 might fiks the \"g/j\" anomali wonse and for all.\nJenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez \"c\", \"y\" and \"x\" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais \"ch\", \"sh\", and \"th\" rispektivli.\nFainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.\n\nAnother instance of proposed spelling reform, which went in the opposite direction, was that of scholars trying to make English more scholarly. While a lot of English's romance vocabulary comes from French (as a result of the Norman conquest of England), a decent chunk comes directly from Latin, as well as from Greek, and so a number of 16th-century scholars tried to make English more Latin/Greek by adding silent letters to words to resemble their origins. The [*Handbook of Simplified Spelling*](_URL_4_) (1920) explains that \"debt\" used to be spelled as \"det\", but \"[\u2026] *b* came to be inserted into *debt* by those who deemed it important to trace the origin of the word directly back to the Latin *debitum*, rather than through French *dette* (early modern English *dette*, *det*).\"\n\nThere have been a decent number of other spelling reform movements, which you can look at [here](_URL_3_). But none of these were appeals to actual organizations with the power to control the language. They were all essentially attempts to tell speakers of the English language directly to do something different. What about an actual institution?\n\nSomething I'll briefly note: governments definitely promote language to some degree, to create some harmony and consistency nationwide, but there are also a lot of versions of languages; one may become the dominant, thus being viewed as the \"correct\" way to speak that language. Looking at America, which evolved from British colonies, of course they are going to speak English: the Founders corresponded in English, they wrote the founding documents in English, and all the first citizens of the new country already spoke it.\n\nThere were pushes to institutionally modify it. In an [1820 letter](_URL_1_), scholar and writer William Cardell talks about his desire to have what he calls the American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres, whose purpose is \"to harmonize and determine the English language ; but it will also, according to its discretion and means, embrace every branch of useful and elegant literature, and especially whatever relates to our own country.\" Cardell believed that by having a regulatory body, we could promote consistent and therefore quality literature and other forms of writing within America, strengthening the nation as a whole. Obviously, this plan failed. If other people attempted\u2014which I imagine some people did\u2014they clearly had no success either.\n\nWhy didn't an English regulatory body ever catch on? Again, it's hard to say, but I have my suspicion: English was definitely influenced by America and its attitudes, and America has a very democratic, free-market approach to everything. The English language took a similar route: rather than let a governmental body regulate it, the people controlled it with their usage of the language. Like I said, a lot of people proposed ways of how to use the language; some of these ideas caught on, and others didn't. When dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and Oxford came out, they popularized rules that became the \"correct\" ways of using English, and those rules stuck. Early standardization was largely influenced by Samuel Johnson's dictionary that was published in the mid-18th century, not long before the American Revolution. People didn't need an institution to regulate the language, because the language was regulating itself\u2014maybe stupidly, but it was still independent and autonomous. Pretty much all linguists subscribe to descriptivism over prescriptivism, which means that language should be defined not by how it is *supposed* to be spoken, but by how it *does* get spoken. The rules are fluid and ever-changing; having someone track the changes and keep everyone up to date works, but having someone stop the changes doesn't. It ignores reality in an attempt to maintain a false, romanticized version of cultural history and tradition, and in the process attempts to destroy the evolution of that history. I don't think English speakers actively thought about it like that, but intrinsically followed this approach of essentially going with the linguistic flow and if they thought change was needed, do it themselves, rather than wait for a government."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awq55c/should_this_sub_allow_why_did_x_not_happen/", "https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.052_0465_0467/?sp=1", "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/benjamin-franklins-phonetic-alphabet-58078802/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform", "https://archive.org/details/handbookofsimpli00simprich/page/n13"]]}
{"q_id": "4nvywp", "title": "What sort of padding would a Norse Man wear under his mail, and under his helmet, when he went Viking?", "selftext": "I haven't been able to find a lot of material on this, so I thought I would ask here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4nvywp/what_sort_of_padding_would_a_norse_man_wear_under/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d47orm2", "d47wwiq"], "score": [4, 10], "text": ["This is a website run by Viking age interpreters- I've found that interpreters often have an incredible combination of scholarly expertise and practical experience because they actually make, wear, and work in the clothes to recreate the experience of people in the past. There aren't many sources here, but it's an excellent primer on terms and concepts if you'd like to look deeper. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is another source for interpreters and reenactors (there are subtle differences between the two, mostly related to the degree of study and dedication to accurate experience), and this one provides contemporary source citations:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIt is probably reasonable to assume, even given the lack of period sources, that the under-mail garment was similar among the Norse as in other areas of medieval Europe- a shirt-like creation with at least two layers, possibly quilted and/or stuffed with a buffer material like wool, and possibly with a leather outer layer to provide waterproofing or additional layer of protection under the mail. Over the undergarment and mail, it was common to wear an overshirt like a Norse kyrtle. Kyrtles, surcoats, jupons, and tabards are all related garments with similar functions. ", "Okay, so, as far as our sourcing goes, the answer is 'probably but we only have a 13th century text to suggest that they did' which is really the answer to a *lot* of viking-age Scandinavian history.\n\nThe family sagas (which deal with the viking age) are all written several hundred years after the fact, and concern themselves less with the practical day-to-day of life in early medieval Scandinavia, and more with the politicking and adventuring of a few wealthy and famous Icelanders.\n\nAs far as actual evidence goes, most of the saga heroes who wear armour do so on the continent or in England, and do so in the company of professional warriors, so it would be reasonable to assume they're wearing some sort of padding below their armour. That said, though, the padding itself doesn't need to be particularly thick as it would also be rather uncomfortable to wear. Likely, mail was worn over a thicker overgarment worn over regular clothing, but it wasn't padded armour by any stretch.\n\n*Konungs skuggsj\u00e1* mentions, in Ch. 37, that a gambeson of soft linen is the chief armour onboard ships and should also be worn beneath mail, but given that it's described as 'soft linen,' rather than 'firm' (which is a differentiation made later) it's not likely that it was a particularly dense garment."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/clothing.htm", "http://www.vikingage.org/wiki/index.php?title=Jacks_and_Gambesons"], []]}
{"q_id": "sbjyr", "title": "Is there enough oxygen on the top of everest to fire a gun?", "selftext": "How much oxygen is needed to create the spark for. Gun and is there enough oxygen to fire one from the top of everest? What is the highest point in which a gun could be fired?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sbjyr/is_there_enough_oxygen_on_the_top_of_everest_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4cowhm", "c4coxkb", "c4cq0b0"], "score": [40, 16, 2], "text": ["Guns require no outside oxygen. Gunpowder contains its own oxidizer, [potassium nitrate](_URL_0_).", "You could fire a gun from space if you so desired, they carry their own oxidizer and it's initiated by an explosive.  So the answer to your question is yes, it would fire perfectly fine. ", "Probably a stupid followup that I could just google but I do love discussions about things. If the water didn't slow the firing pin could you fire a gun like this underwater assuming the powder didn't get wet?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niter"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4td9tw", "title": "how do computer game ais work?", "selftext": "I am mostly thinking of 'open' games (e.g. Starcraft), where you cannot just construct a graph of possible states.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4td9tw/eli5_how_do_computer_game_ais_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ggqlm", "d5gk5n5", "d5gmatl", "d5gme2q"], "score": [15, 8, 2, 10], "text": ["Most of them aren't very sophisticated - definitely not what most people think of by \"artificial intelligence\".  They generally just pursue short term goals  &  follow a set of premade strategies.  Most game AIs are made stronger by giving them advantages over human players (ie - 'cheating' rather than being smarter)", "Not very well, being a games developer most in-game AI's are very very basic and are not aware of their environments or other players. Ever wonder why there are so many zombie games, or why so many games (mostly older games now but still the case with many newer titles) have only enemies? Because writing AI for enemies that only know how to attack you on sight or zombies (that are naturally very dumb) is A LOT easier and more convincing than writing AI's that now have to respond to your actions which are not pre-determined and not repeat the same 4 lines over and over again. \n\nNow it IS actually easily possible to write a super convincing friendly AI in a game but this takes significant time and resources and is quite expensive on the CPU so most game developers avoid it and it is still sadly a very overlooked area in games. We're all hoping that re-usable AI solutions become standard in a few years similar to how game engines are today.\n\nGames like No Mans Sky we're hoping have convincing and reactive AI and push this forward some.", "Each game writes their AI in their own ways trying to find the best way to program the game AI. I have modded a game where the AI worked on two concepts, plans and modes.\n\nThe plan would be the computer team's construction plan and be comprised of several sub-plans that related to things like first building resource collection units, building the first base buildings, building more units and then dispatching them, upgrading buildings or tech tree, and then building and dispatching endgame units. The plan would also include conditions like rebuilding critical infrastructure or building specific units to respond to specific units that the player was building (if player has x, build y) as well as a dispatcher component to have specific units seek out specific player units (or buildings) or send out all units to attack if there were too many idle units sitting around. The AI tends to be not as smart as humans because humans are more adaptable and capable of inventing tactics and changing tactics on the fly so sometimes the plans integrate a resource boost for the AI team so that they can still provide a challenge to the player.\n\nModes would be a concept used by the individual AI units in response to orders or game conditions. For example, the AI plan might give a group of units a MOVE order so that they accumulate in a given area and then later on an ATTACK order to target a specific unit or building. Certain other units had additional other states that were possible such as STRAFE and FLEE that changed how they fought in mid-battle, and most units had other states such as follow, idle or patrol states that could change once if the player (or the AI's plan or dispatcher code) gave it a different command.", "Lets pretend you have a friend called **George**. \n\nGeorge likes to eat crayons and is generally a bit...simple. And you want to play Chess with him.\n\nGeorge has never played chess before in his life. You however, are really experienced at chess. And can rapidly come up with creative strategies on the fly. You reckon there's no way you're going to lose to George.\n\nBut at the start of the game, George finds that there are basic instructions on a notepad infront of him. **\"Turn one, move a random pawn two tiles forward\"**. **\"Turn two, move a pawn two horizontal rows away from the first pawn\"**. \n\nGeorge doesn't know *what* he's doing. Not in the form of a grand strategy or anything. He's simply following pre-recorded instructions as fast as he's able. \n\nSo you keep playing. But suddenly George's instructions start reacting to what's going on with your pieces. **\"There's a knight in that tile to the top right, move the queen to intercept it. Then move her back the next turn\"**. The instructions are still a mixture of dumb pre-recorded ones. But now include new conditions that are reacting to your strategies.\n\nNow lets pretend on the second game, George's basic instructions are one of the known great chess strategies, figured out by chess masters who have spent decades playing. And George can carry out these instructions very, very quickly. All of a sudden, George starts clearing the table of your chess pieces. Despite not having a clue what he's doing. \n\nFor the sake of balance, the rules start including things like \"**just skip this turn and munch a crayon**\". The number of wait commands in the instructions are determined by whether George is supposed to be easy, medium or hard mode.\n\nThis is fundamentally how AI works. The public (and Hollywood) perception of AI, is that of a thinking machine. Truthfully, it's a set of pre-recorded instructions and conditional expressions. With sleep functions periodically used to stop the computer executing moves so quickly that the human gets curb stomped."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6mtk9g", "title": "Is being in a circular orbit equivalent to moving in a straight line through space-time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6mtk9g/is_being_in_a_circular_orbit_equivalent_to_moving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk4lsb4"], "score": [10], "text": ["Free fall orbits are *geodesics*. In flat Euclidean space, all geodesics are straight lines, so it is often said (although it is not accurate) that geodesics are \"straight line analogues\" in curved spaces.\n\nIn flat Euclidean space, straight-line paths minimize the distance between two fixed points. In general curved spaces, this role is played by geodesics. But in a spacetime, the underlying geometry is not Euclidean, so geodesics don't minimize any sort of distance. (In the case of particle paths, they turn out to locally maximize the proper time between two events.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "d1s65e", "title": "Media Mondays: Kingdom of Heaven", "selftext": "Hi everyone! We've decided to reform the Media Monday a little to create the critical analysis we hope for in these posts.\n\nThe media in question will now be picked by an expert flair who will lead the conversation with a top-down expert post. This guarantees that we get at least one amazing post for each submission, and leaves nobody bored - if they wanna post, all they need do is ask.\n\nWe will also try to do a new topic each week (so long as we have experts free and willing to write them), everyone is free to ask questions in the comments, and anyone can write their own expert comments (so long as they meet AH standards).\n\nThis week we are looking at the film 'Kingdom of Heaven', and the medieval world and Crusades in popular media.\n\nI\u2019m going to try my best to avoid nit picking the movie. It wouldn\u2019t be the best use of my time, and a certain amount of minor errors in a major blockbuster movie is hardly unexpected nor unwarranted. Actual history is complicated and fiddly, some things need to be simplified away for a movie to provide entertainment within a reasonable amount of time (although Kingdom of Heaven does stretch the limits of what \u201creasonable amount of time\u201d might mean). That said, before I get into the bulk of my post I do have a few nits I just cannot not pick. I\u2019ll also mention here that I\u2019m basing my write-up on the Director\u2019s Cut of the film \u2013 the significantly better version in my opinion \u2013 and not the version that was originally released in cinemas.\n\n* The opening text of the film, as well as Liam Neeson\u2019s character\u2019s status as a younger brother, is based on a myth that the primary motivation for the Crusaders was younger brothers looking to make their fortune. Jonathan Riley-Smith convincingly argued years ago that this was not the case, going on Crusade was ridiculously expensive and generally unprofitable \u2013 it was primarily an activity for elder sons or wealthy nobles themselves, not their poorer relatives.\n* Guy is weirdly obsessed with Balian\u2019s status as a bastard son and keeps acting like no one in France would ever tolerate a bastard rising to such a high status. It\u2019s barely been a century since William the Bastard conquered England and made himself a king, and his descendants still rule Normandy.\n* At the end of the movie Tiberias/Raymond says that he\u2019s going to retreat to Cyprus, but Cyprus didn\u2019t belong to the Crusader States until after Richard I\u2019s invasion at the start of the Third Crusade \u2013 why isn\u2019t he retreating to Acre or Tyre, much closer cities that actually belonged to people he was allied with?\n* Saladin\u2019s army is supposedly 200,000 men, which is like come on, that\u2019s way too big.\n\nPetty gripes aside, what I want to actually focus on is the main characters of the of the film, especially Balian and Sybilla. Most of the rest of the characters are just exaggerated versions of their historical selves \u2013 something that makes sense in the context of this being a film for entertainment and not a historical documentary. Reynald is more of a villain, Saladin is even more wise and merciful, Raymond (called Tiberias in the film, apparently to reduce confusion between him and Reynald) is even more sensible and careful, etc. The only one of these characters that arguably gets badly mistreated by the film is Guy de Lusignon. Guy doesn\u2019t exactly have the greatest reputation with historians, but no scholar would be half so cruel to poor Guy as this film is. I\u2019m certainly no Guy apologist, but his portrayal in this film is brutal, poor Guy never gets a break. There are fairly extensive historical debates around his competence vs. that of Baldwin IV and the extent to which both monarchs attempted to make the best of a rather difficult situation, and while I don\u2019t know of anyone who would put Guy on their list of Top 5 Medieval Kings, he certainly wasn\u2019t as awful or pathetic as the film shows him as.\n\nAs I said, most of the characters are just exaggerated versions of what you\u2019d find in a pretty standard history of this period, but Balian and Sibylla deviate so significantly from their historical versions as to effectively just be fictional characters who happen to have the same name as historical figures.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBalian of Ibelin, our protagonist, represents the greatest deviation from his historical counterpart in the film. We don\u2019t have a ton of personal information on Balian of Ibellin, he\u2019s a figure who exists as an important player in the events of this period but he\u2019s never the star, so we tend to only come across him when he\u2019s having a direct impact (e.g. in his defence of Jerusalem against Saladin). This (relative) lack of information \u2013 particularly with regard to his personality, hobbies, etc. \u2013 means that the film has a lot of freedom in how it could portray him. That said, somehow Kingdom of Heaven manages to get just about everything about him completely wrong.\n\nIf you haven\u2019t seen the movie, the short version is that Balian is a village blacksmith in France who is secretly the bastard son of the local noble\u2019s younger brother, but he has no knowledge of his noble heritage up until his biological father \u2013 Liam Neeson \u2013 comes to collect him and bring him back to the Holy Land where he has made himself an important noble in his own right but has no heir. Stuff happens, Balian murders his jerk of a half-brother (a priest) over the brother\u2019s treatment of Balian\u2019s dead wife (a weird sub-plot about suicide and infant mortality\u2026) and flees to join Neeson who is then murdered by the local Duke\u2019s men, leaving Balian as the inheritor of the lands in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. None of this is true of historical Balian \u2013 he was a legitimate child born in the Holy Land and raised in that environment. He was a member of the very influential if not hugely powerful Ibelin family, and he was actually the youngest son (he had two older brothers).\n\nThe film is absolutely obsessed with the idea that Balian is a blacksmith. Film Balian is a master of literally every aspect of medieval smithing: he makes fine decorative silver, weapons, siege engines, works on the cathedral, and also does standard village blacksmithing stuff. No historical smith was a master of this vast a range of specialities, it makes no sense. This carries on into the rest of the movie, though, as we see Balian using his knowledge of engineering and science to improve his lands near Jerusalem (which is distinctly lacking the impressive Ibelin Castle, where the \u201cof Ibelin\u201d in his name comes from) and just generally being a really wise guy who\u2019s ahead of his era (sometimes too far ahead, like when we see him discussing building what sounds a lot like a star fort, a type of fortification that only really becomes optimal after the adoption of gunpowder weaponry). As an aside, the bit where Balian improves his lands with his magical engineering skills is a bit white saviour-y\u2026\n\nIn general, Balian is portrayed as the Wokest Crusader That Ever Lived, an arguably perfect hero with no existing allegiances or obligations because he\u2019s not from the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and therefor able to offer a Fresh Perspective on the whole issue. This allows the film to do whatever it wants with him, but to some extent I think undercuts the movie as a whole. Balian\u2019s breaks with the King Guy and other decisions feel a lot easier because he\u2019s only just become invested in this conflict, it would be a lot more impressive for someone raised in this system who we know has a clear dog in this fight to make the decisions he does. It also goes against the actual historical tendencies, the Western Europeans who lived in the Crusader States were by and large more tolerant of other groups than the Crusaders who arrived from Europe looking for infidels to kill. This was a consistent conflict between the participants in the major Crusades and the \u2018natives\u2019 they were supposed to help. A tolerant native Balian pushing back against a newly arrived Guy would be a much better approximation of these relationships \u2013 and be closer to the actual true relationship Balian and Guy had. The movie sort of adopts this perspective (excluding Balian) without seemingly intending to. The main villains Guy and Reynald were both born in Europe (albeit for Reynald that was a good few years before, he\u2019d been in the Holy Land a while at this stage) while Raymond (called Tiberias) and Baldwin IV represent the tolerant \u2018native\u2019 crusaders.\n\nI know I said that Guy is probably the most mistreated character in Kingdom of Heaven, but it may actually be Sibylla. Sibylla was a highly motivated and competent woman living in a period of time that didn\u2019t give women a lot of access to power. The ways in which she exercised political control \u2013 especially after her brother Baldwin\u2019s leprosy diagnosis meant that the future line of the kingdom would pass through her \u2013 is fascinating, but also effectively obscures her true opinions from ones she expressed to achieve a goal (or, as is the case for all women in power, from those opinion assigned to her by historians who didn\u2019t approve). The Sibylla shown in Kingdom of Heaven deviates sharply from what we understand of her historical counterpart in a way that makes one of the Kingdom of Jerusalem\u2019s most interesting queens a lot more boring and problematic.\n\nOne thing that I think is interesting in Kingdom of Heaven is that to some extent I think they do get Sibylla right: at points throughout the film (especially near her introduction) she seems to show significant political savvy and a desire to be her own woman not controlled by all the men around her. What the film does from there, though, is honestly pretty terrible. Her motivation degrades to just wanting to be on the throne, nothing more than a desire for power, and this reaches its weirdest moment when she poisons her son Baldwin in the wake of discovering he has leprosy like her brother (in real life, Baldwin V was crowned king but just died of natural causes while still a child). To some extent the film frames this as her not wanting him to suffer, but even more it gives the impression that this is done to secure her own power or something? I don\u2019t know what they were going for here, it\u2019s a terrible plot decision that makes her a way less empathetic and likeable character \u2013 nobody is pro-infanticide.\n\nThe real problem with Sibylla is her romance with Balian. This is the only part of the movie I genuinely loathe. For one, we lose the interesting historical plot around historical Balian\u2019s actual wife^(1) but even worse it undermines Sibylla as a historical figure and a character.\n\nSee, here\u2019s the thing, while historical Sibylla may have had an affair (with Balian\u2019s brother actually), she was also pretty much the only person in the Kingdom of Jerusalem who consistently had Guy\u2019s back! The movie is reasonably accurate in it\u2019s portrayal of Baldwin IV periodically trying to end Sibylla\u2019s marriage to Guy, even though Baldwin had actually arranged it, but it was Sibylla who consistently stuck by Guy even when the nobility was opposed to him acting as regent \u2013 first for the sick Baldwin IV, and then later for the infant King Baldwin V. In the wake of Baldwin V\u2019s death, whoever was married to Sibylla was in line to be the next King of Jerusalem and the nobility wasn\u2019t in love with the idea of that being Guy. It was agreed that Sibylla could take the throne on the condition that her marriage with Guy be annulled (something similar had happened to her father Amalric). Sibylla agreed on the condition that she could pick her new husband with no room for objection from the nobility. They agreed, she and Guy had their marriage annulled, and Sibylla picked Guy to be her \u2018new\u2019 husband, a move that the nobility had no power to stop but was not particularly warmly received. Now, whether Sibylla genuinely loved Guy or just saw him as the best political tool for her purpose is kind of irrelevant, she showed a consistent loyalty to him that is the exact opposite of what Kingdom of Heaven portrays.\n\nI can appreciate a desire to strip down the extreme complexity of medieval politics \u2013 as well as the erasure of all the other children these people had, seriously Sibylla had a bunch of daughters we never see \u2013 but having Sibylla be the exact opposite of her historical personality in service to a kinda crappy romantic sub-plot is an awful decision and one that I think hurts the movie as a whole in addition to being bad history.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy final thoughts on Kingdom of Heaven going to push us a little past the 20 year rule, but I think it\u2019s an important point so I\u2019m going to stick my neck out a bit. Kingdom of Heaven is a film that has to be seen as a product of its time. It was conceived and produced in a post 9/11 world where America was waging two wars in the Middle East and a nebulous War on Terror. The main themes of the film are very much a reaction to this backdrop, and to the cultural debate of whether Islam and Christianity could coexist peacefully. The film\u2019s core thesis is essentially that the core religions are compatible, and there are good people on both sides, but there are also fanatics who desire nothing more than discord and destruction. This idea helps to make sense of the ways in which several characters are exaggerated \u2013 i.e. Saladin and Baldwin IV\u2019s almost saintliness and tolerance versus the violent madness of Reynald and Guy \u2013 and also creates one of the weirder thematic issues with the film.\n\nKingdom of Heaven can\u2019t decide whether the Crusaders (or at least some of them) were religious fanatics unable to see past their own narrow interpretation of their religion, or greedy secularists who would ignore many of the tenants of their own religion in the search for wealth. This can create some really disjointed themes, where the Templars and their associated villains are simultaneously violently religious and utterly greedy, but without any meaningful exploration of why they would be like that. Their motivation is a hot mess, basically, and I think that\u2019s the result of the film trying to have its cake and eat it with regards to making a commentary on religious fanaticism while also trying to portray Crusading as an act of greed that doesn\u2019t represent an immutable eternal war between Islam and Christianity. They\u2019re trying to thread a difficult needle and they don\u2019t fully succeed.\n\nFurther Reading:\n\nThomas Asbridge *The Crusades*\n\nChris Tyerman *God's War*\n\nJonathan Riley-Smith *The Crusades: A Short History* and *The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading*\n\nAnne Marie Edde *Saladin*\n\nPaul Cobb *The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades*\n\n^(1) Short version, Saladin gave Balian safe passage to take his wife from Jerusalem, but when Balian reached Jerusalem the populace begged him to stay and defend the city, so he requested permission from Saladin to stay and Saladin granted it, the Sultan even had Balian\u2019s wife escorted to safety in a different Crusader city. It\u2019s a great little anecdote! Also, Balian\u2019s wife was Sibylla\u2019s step-mother - Balian was her second husband \u2013 which makes the romantic sub plot kind of creepier if you know that\n\nEdit: Made some minor corrections because crusader lineages are complicated and I got some wives confused.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d1s65e/media_mondays_kingdom_of_heaven/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ezpu821", "ezpvx95", "ezpx84t", "ezpz9qy", "ezq9q4o", "ezqp39u", "ezqz4c0", "ezr8rs4", "ezrsotq", "ezryt2o", "ezslvrb", "ezu6en7", "f12nys7"], "score": [16, 9, 17, 9, 8, 44, 11, 6, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Does Balian-as-blacksmith have any historical foundation, or is it more just shoehorning the protagonist into an Everyman-But-Not-Really box?", "Just as a movie discussion. I completely disagree with you that Sibylla was portrayed as power hungry or that she killed her son to secure her power. I don\u2019t see that at all and I\u2019ve watched this movie dozens of times.", "Very nice write-up, Valkine.\n\n >  It also goes against the actual historical tendencies, the Western Europeans who lived in the Crusader States were by and large more tolerant of other groups than the Crusaders who arrived from Europe looking for infidels to kill. This was a consistent conflict between the participants in the major Crusades and the \u2018natives\u2019 they were supposed to help. A tolerant native Balian pushing back against a newly arrived Guy would be a much better approximation of these relationships \u2013 and be closer to the actual true relationship Balian and Guy had.\n\nGiven the post-9/11 backdrop/themes of the film, one has to wonder if the above reversal of context was made on purpose in order to align Balian more closely with the role (or perceived role) of the U.S. in the events of the time - ie both Balian and American forces traveling from the west to the Middle-East.\n\nAny thoughts on the clothing, armaments, and sets used in the film? I've heard anecdotally that the set design and costuming departments on this film made a lot of effort to be historically accurate, but no idea how true that really is.", "What kinds of historical errors actually ruin a film for you, as opposed to simply viewing it as some \"unrealistic\" details?  Personally, I am a nurse, so I am used to seeing ridiculous medical scenarios and incorrect devices and treatments in film and TV. But it happens so often that it rarely bothers me.", "I love this film. I never saw it as attempting to be a completely historically accurate film. But at least it's not as offensively inaccurate as Brave heart.\n\nThe original cut (Ridley's director's cut) before fox butchered it is a great film. Absolutely beautiful, Scott really paints beautiful pictures.", "While a lot of Ridley Scott's directorial choices are made in a post-9/11 context, I always feel like the writer, William Monahan, gets overlooked as an influence on the overall style of the film. In the commentary track, he says his main source was Steven Runciman, who was a very famous and important historian of the crusades. His 3-volume \"History of the Crusades\" is incredibly influential, and a great read, but it was written in the 1950s and it's now very, very out of date. The movie ignores 50 years of scholarship, which seems like it probably wouldn't be a big deal, right? History doesn't change, so what does it matter? But it does! Our understanding of what happened in Jerusalem in the 1170s and 1180s has changed a lot, thanks to the aforementioned Riley-Smith, Joshua Prawer, Peter Edbury, etc. \n\nRunciman was famous for thinking the crusaders were the absolute worst bunch of bastards who destroyed his beloved Byzantium, and he concluded that the crusades were \"a sin against the Holy Ghost\", so he clearly had a bit of an idiosyncratic approach. You can see that influence, I think, in the way certain crusaders are depicted, as Valkine noted (the incompetent Guy, the noble Saladin, Reynald the total psychopath). But actually, if Monahan had followed Runciman more closely, it might have been a more interesting movie. The parts that follow Runciman's history almost word-for-word are the best, I thought - specifically, the scene with Reynald's execution, and most of the siege of Jerusalem, including the meeting between Balian and Saladin. (Actually those follow the original medieval sources very closely, but here they are filtered through the way Runciman wrote about them.)", "Thank you so much for this post! I\u2019ve had a question on my mind about this movie for years: \n\nIn the opening scenes, Liam Neeson\u2019s band of crusaders consists of fighting men from many different regions (the Lombard, the Berber/Moor character, and the Hospitaller, etc.) Is there any historical evidence that small bands of knights such as this were so ethnically or culturally diverse or is this another example of our modern \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d seeping into the script?", "I actually did two conferences to show how *Kingdom of Heaven* displays a westernian aesthetic (I mean a cinematographic aesthetic borrowed from classical Western movies) \\^\\^ I'll answer questions upon that perspective to any interested person ;-)", "This movie will always have a place in my heart - I had the score on repeat while writing a senior thesis on medieval English literature. I did my best writing to the Battle of Kerak!\n\nGreat write-up - thank you!", "I watched it recently, and had a few questions, if you'll indulge me:\n\n\\- is the film's treatment of suicides truthful?\n\n\\- would a Hospitaller knight have medical skills, or is this a stretch? I'd assumed the knights were weapons experts and other people of the order were the medical practitioners.\n\n\\- a bloke brushes his teeth with a twig and some soap(?). would this be common?\n\n\\- Godfrey's German is very 'Germanic', in the sense that he fits Roman-era or Viking-era stereotypes - a big blond long-haired beserker with axes. Did Germans of the First Crusade Period still retain noticeably old Germanic cultural traits, or were they largely identical to other West European cultures like the English and French?\n\n\\- Godfrey's party seem to carry portable shelters - would this be the case, or would they more likely sleep on the ground, or at an inn?\n\n\\- is Godfrey's knighthood ritual shown in the film based on reality?\n\n\\- everyone seems to be armed and armoured 90% of the time, even at court (where two factions draw weapons on one another). Surely they put on armour and weapons when they needed them? Seems a hassle to walk around dressed like that.\n\n\\- is Baldwin's mask based on any reality?\n\n\\- Salahdin's execution of prisoners at Hattin seems odd. He does a little ritual with a cup of ice, he plays a little ruse with a sword and a knife, he personally executes people, and his men construct large piles of heads. Surely this all too theatrical, and he'd simply get an executioner to kill them and be done with it?\n\n\\- half the soldiers wear a blue surcoat that seems to be representative of Jerusalem - is this a knightly order, heraldry, or just the film showing who the good guys are?\n\n\\- were the Knightly Orders as involved in politics, or as fanatical, as shown? It seems as if everyone is in an Order besides Balian and the King.\n\nAnything you're comfortable in answering is appreciated.", "I like the movie. But I've always wondered: If the real Balin of Ibelin made the speech to the people of Jerusalem about how they should not hang on to the sins of their forefathers and the hatred that resulted, and that neither and both Christians and Muslims had claims to Jerusalem, how would the speech likely have been received?", "I really like this new format. Are you still planning to do the AMA's, roll it up into one, or just stick with a more expert analysis?", "I'm pretty late to the party here,  and I might be highly biased, as Scott is a favorite of mine, and the movie has a special place on my shelf. I tend to be picky when I catch inaccutacies that my limited research finds, but aside from the lazy inaccuracies you mention, I don't have much of a problem with the film for a simple reason: It's portraying fiction in a real life setting/or based on real events. It alters characters for story and thematic purposes, but tries to stay truthful to the setting. At least that's my take.\n\nIn my mind, the characters are mostly fictious, especially Balian, who is essentially an invented 'new' character that's given the name of his real life counterpart present at these events. He isn't in his 40's or from a peasanr background, and his lands in the levant seem minor. I think that Balian is a good story tool to present thr epic to us in a more journey form. You get a character that is forced to adapt and be involved in conflict hr'd rather stay away from, rather than being an acclimatized crusader who has clear motives in the conflict. This constructed character is what allowes the themes to play out.\n\nDespite characters being exaggirated, and certain things simplified or crossed over, the mood and the atmosphere is what makes it amazing in my opinion. To my perhaps naive eyes, it captures the honor bound system of truces and agreements from one hostile lord to another, and hints that the 'Holy Land' wasn't quite a black and white conflict between two religions (post 9/11 themes and modern viewpoints aside still hold some value). It may also be inspired by the later 3rd crusade and the dealings between Richard I and Saladin. I guess what I'm trying to say is it captured the essence of the setting, despite exaggirations and outdated views, and then spun a nice fiction around it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1shhoq", "title": "Why was Alcatraz closed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1shhoq/why_was_alcatraz_closed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdxn8uj", "cdxrkpn"], "score": [12, 68], "text": ["Okay, why does this say I have two comments but I don't see any?", "A prison facility built on an island in the middle of a salt water bay is neither logistically easy to keep supplied (especially given that this is a busy port), nor economically frugal to keep maintained, and operational. \n\n\n\nSomeone, or a lot of someones, figured it'd be cheaper to build a facility that was accessibly by land / road, while not necessarily being much less safe for Joe Public. \n\n\n\nAnd a lot of someones in the Joe Public sector probably were less than excited about looking out across the majestic San Francisco bay to see Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge and then....see a prison. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7hsi4i", "title": "why is trans considered part of lgbt? lgb are sexualities. t is an identity. why do they get bundled?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hsi4i/eli5_why_is_trans_considered_part_of_lgbt_lgb_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqtfrp8", "dqth618", "dqti89t"], "score": [7, 8, 5], "text": ["They're bundled because all of those are/were persecuted groups of people related to the issue of sex and sexuality, so they stuck together for solidarity and safety, and to combine resources to campaign for emancipation.  \n\nNote that it might not be as harmonious as it first appears.  Gay and lesbian communities can still be extremely discriminatory against bisexual and transgender people, and BT people are still fighting for recognition within these communities as well as the wider world.  Some gay communities also have issues with race related to sexual preference.  Just because a person is in a minority, doesn't also mean that they can't be bigoted (though I'm sure most people are perfectly decent).  ", "It goes back to the Stonewall riots in the 60s. Trans people were heavily involved and we kinda all ended up as one movement.\n\nAlthough like the other commenter mentioned some LGB people are transphobic af", "Trans and LGB people are associated with each other, because being gay is itself a form of gender variance. There's no general social taboo against sexual or romantic relationships with men - it's only an issue when *men* do so, because by having these relationships they have been considered to be inappropriately \"acting like women\". And there's no general taboo against relationships with women - unless a woman does so, in which case she is taking the \"role of a man\" and that has been considered a problem.\n\nFor most of the first half of the 20th century neither the law, medical science, nor social attitudes made any meaningful distinction between gay and trans people. People who would now be considered either gay or trans were all considered [**inverts**](_URL_1_) - people believed to have an inborn reversal of \"natural\" gender traits. A woman who desired other women was considered to be \"sexually male\", a man who desired other men was considered \"sexually female\", while bisexuals were called \"psychosexual hermaphrodites\".\n\nA person who was born male, happy as such, and conventionally \"masculine\" in all respects except for his desire for other men, and a person who was born male but identified and lived exclusively as a woman, were considered variations of the same \"inversion.\" The former was seen as \"inverted\" solely in his sexual desires, while the latter was seen as \"inverted\" in all aspects of her personality.\n\nLegally, bars were routinely raided and patrons arrested on the grounds that the patrons were seen wearing clothing considered inappropriate for their gender - which was itself a crime. \"Conversion therapy\" meant to make gay people heterosexual focused intensely on gender norms, believing homosexuality to be a form of self-loathing caused by rejection of one's \"natural\" role as a man/woman and over-identification with an opposite-sex parent (the whole \"dominant mothers/absent fathers cause gayness\" idea).\n\nThe entire idea that there is a strict distinction between gender variance in one's sexual desires, and gender variance in all other areas of one's life, is a relatively recent development. And the social connections between the two are still very much alive. Gay men deemed \"feminine\" and lesbians deemed \"butch\" still face far higher rates of discrimination and attacks than those who can \"pass\" for heterosexual. And \"conversion therapy\" not only still exists, go to any reddit thread about trans kids and you'll see a hell of a lot of people defending it.\n\nNot to mention that gender-variant people have been part of the LGBT rights movement from its earliest moments. Hell, the [**Compton's Cafeteria riot**](_URL_0_) predated Stonewall by three years, and Stonewall itself was instigated in part by trans women and activists [**Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera**](_URL_3_). Sylvia is said to have thrown the first bottle of the riot, and continued very actively working for trans rights until her death in 2002. Stonewall was a riot started and largely fought by street queens.\n\n[**Here**](_URL_2_) is a picture of Sylvia and Marsha at the 1973 Christopher Street Gay Pride Parade, with the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - an organization she and Marsha founded to work with homeless drag queens and transgender women of color in NYC."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton's_Cafeteria_riot", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_inversion_%28sexology%29", "http://images.mic.com/gkbemkns99tjnckfquvfh0vwvgbw6xxpbimb9wju1ahte4knncgu64npvzgebu9h.jpg", "http://mic.com/articles/121256/meet-marsha-p-johnson-and-sylvia-rivera-transgender-stonewall-veterans#.lMsNextxz"]]}
{"q_id": "4nr0td", "title": "why do we usually see meteors fall to earth at an angle, but rarely straight down?", "selftext": "EDIT:\n\nSo no definitive answer, and some conjecture going on. Wheels up boys and girls, we're going to r/askscience", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nr0td/eli5_why_do_we_usually_see_meteors_fall_to_earth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d464thc", "d4667ie", "d467aud", "d46cytx", "d46h8t7", "d46pocf", "d46qxp3", "d47177m"], "score": [10, 36, 10, 4, 2, 6, 4, 3], "text": ["Because our planet is spinning. To see a meteor head straight down, it needs to have the exact \"right\" velocity (speed+direction of that speed) to cancel out the displacement due to the Earth's rotation.\n\nAlso, most don't hit the planet dead-center, their \"aim\" tends to be a bit off most of the time.", "Because everything in space (with mass) has a relative orbit and gravitational force. In fact, you even have a gravitational force. As the distance to a planet or star gets smaller, its gravitational pull gets stronger. Since the meteor already has a velocity vector (a magnitude and direction) it begins to accelerate towards the planet and it changes direction. So the meteor is still flying in its original direction and speed but now it's being pulled in another direction with additional speed. There are no fixed points in space so an object can't fly directly to a point. Every time it passes anything in space with mass it will move slightly towards it, depending on how much mass the meteor has and how much mass the object has. Imagine you're driving down a straight road doing 75 mph and ahead of you on the side of the road is a powerful magnet. As you get closer to passing the magnet, it's going to pull you towards it. So imagine that when you combine the speed and direction that you're already going with now a force pulling you sideways, you will tend to move you at an angle between the two. Much like how a meteor will enter the earth. Of course an object in space wouldn't have traction or frictional forces of the road but hopefully that helps makes sense of it.", "For it to look like it's falling straight down from the surface, you'd have to be standing directly under it. There's a whole lot of earth and you're standing on a very small part of it. ", "Objects hit the Earth straight down (perpendicular to the surface) all the time - but they heat up so quickly and explode that they don't show the classic \"shooting star\" visual effect. To get more than a brief instant of heating, the object has to come in at a very shallow angle so that it has some time to heat up and get bright (but *not* explode) so that you can see it in flight.\n\nKerbal Space Program actually models this fairly well. Ships that come in at high speed and a high angle just explode on impact with the upper atmosphere, while ships coming in at very shallow angles give you the fancy light show as they disintegrate.", "I'm no expert, but consider this:\n\nfor a meteorite to fall straigth down, it can only travel in one direction.\n\nMeanwhile, every other direction will make it appear to fall at an angle. ", "This would probably be better off in /r/askscience, you'r getting a lot of flat out wrong answers here.\n", "It's like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  You can walk all the way around the tower, but only at two points on that walk will the tower appear to be straight: the point where it's leaning directly toward you, and the point where it's leaning directly away.  At every other point of the circle, the tower will seem to have a sideways angle.\n\nIn the same way, unless you are directly in the plane of the meteor's fall, you will see it falling at an angle.", "The Earth is a fairly small target, but with a larger gravity well.\n\nThink of it like this:\n\nYou have a minigolf hole. The hole is surrounded by a very large funnel shape, sloping towards the hole. Now, launch a bunch of balls randomly into that funnel. A few will be too fast and escape out at another trajectory, but many will circle inwards and eventually drop in the hole. Very few, however, will hit directly in the hole, without circling.\n\nNow, add to this that everything is moving, which means that gravity (the slope of the funnel) will affect the ball as it closes in, even of it goes straight at where the hole will be. Now, the only directions where you are likely to get a straight hit is from head on or from behind, compared to how the hole is moving."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "60z1mh", "title": "how does this vinegar/baking soda hot ice reaction work?", "selftext": "I saw today the hot ice reaction, that the person in the video reduced what appeared to be vinegar and baking soda into a solution, and when they scraped the bottom of the pan and introduced it to the boiled solution it started freezing over. What is the process that is happening and why is this heated solution able to freeze over?\n\nGif in question - _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60z1mh/eli5_how_does_this_vinegarbaking_soda_hot_ice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfagdl3", "dfaianz", "dfaytbg"], "score": [30, 36, 18], "text": ["That's not freezing. It's *nucleation*, which in this case is basically building crystals. The bit of residue on the skewer gives a point for the solid in the solution to stick to, and what's shown in the GIF is the solute building a big crystal around the skewer.", "The clear liquid is known as a supersaturated solution. In this case, of sodium acetate. By using only a little water, the maximum amount of solid is dissolved when it's hot.  When it cools down, it ought to crystalize out but it can't because there's nothing to start the them off.  When some crystals are added they act as centres for more molecules to form round.\n\nBut there's something else too.  Sodium acetate, like many substances, incorporates molecules of water in its crystals - in this case three per molecule, a trihydrate. So when it crystalizes it uses up all the water in the mix so the whole thing goes solid instead of forming a slush.  That's why the second demo forms a solid pillar as you pour the solution onto the stuff that's crystalized already.\n\nETA \nIf you try it yourself make sure that the equipment is clean, particularly the jar you pour the hot solution into to cool.  Dust, or even scratches on the glass, can be places where crystalization can start before you're ready to put the \"seed\" in.", "Good question. This is a crystallization from a supersaturated solution. \n\nHow this works... a liquid can dissolve different amounts of material depending on the temperature. By boiling the water, you are able to increase the water's ability to dissolve material. What is happening in the gif is the water is brought to a boil and the maximum amount of material (in this case sodium acetate) is dissolved. This hot solution of water and sodium acetate is transferred to the glass container to cool down. Once the solution has cooled down it contains more sodium acetate than it normally would be able to dissolve while at room temperature. This is called \"supersaturated.\" Supersaturated solutions are really good at growing crystals. Once a small amount of sodium acetate left over from the bottom of the pan is placed in the supersaturated solution (in the gif this is a small crystal on the end of the wooden dowel) the sodium acetate in solution begins to crystalize. \n\nTLDR: Boiling water can dissolve more material than cold water. Boil water, add max amount of material. Cool water down and there is \"too much\" material in the water. This \"too much\" material will form crystals in the water."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/1ketFjM.gifv"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8rym1d", "title": "I'm an American-born defector to the Soviet Union living in Moscow in December 1991. What happens to me once the Soviet Union dissolves? Do I go home to America?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8rym1d/im_an_americanborn_defector_to_the_soviet_union/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0vk25n"], "score": [14], "text": ["Are there any legal obstacles to returning? Absent a formal renunciation of citizenship, does such a person retain it?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3fegs8", "title": "why do we make such bad decisions related to food when we're hungry?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fegs8/eli5why_do_we_make_such_bad_decisions_related_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctnurvp", "ctnuvt8", "cto0897", "cto34g5", "ctofs7o"], "score": [87, 5, 7, 3, 2], "text": ["One of the reasons is that self-control is actually a resource that can be depleted. The brain has to expend more energy to exhibit self-control rather than just doing what it wants. Want to guess what form that energy takes? Glucose! That's right, sugar. So, when your sugar levels drop you actually have less ability to exhibit self-control.\n\nThat's why it's a good idea to have your meals planned and prepared before you're insanely hungry because you won't have the self-control to stop yourself from going to McDonald's.", "We dont really crave \"bad\" foods, we crave foods that our brains know have a lot of carbs in them.  Carbs are like gasoline,  they burn fast and hot. Your brain knows that pizza is the best way to get the hunger issue taken care of. Sort of like, you know its a terrible idea to call your ex at 2am for some action, but your brain is not in charge of the chemical reaction that is drawing you to the bad decision. So to help prevent the choosing bad food thing, keep lean protein on hand and try to not let yourself get overly hungry. Stuff like pregrilled chicken frozen strips, almonds, hard boiled eggs. All of that is low carb, but filling.  I like to put wing sauce on the pre grilled chicken and dip it in light ranch. Gets my fried chicken wing craving taken care of for about 300 calories and no carbs. \n\nTldr, your brain knows your body needs quick fuel and most bad food is carbs, wrapped in carbs. Quick fuel is all your after.", "The notion of \"bad food decisions\", \"I'm being so bad today\", and other morality associated with diet is an entirely social one. \n\nBiologically, \"bad decisions related to food\" would be, like, eating a lightbulb. Which is not something people do when they're hungry.\n\nOn the other hand, if you're wondering why you're prone to eating junk food (there goes that morality again) when you're especially hungry, it's because... you're hungry! Being hungry is a great excuse to let yourself out of whatever arbitrary rules you've set for yourself. And, yes, diets are, for the most part, arbitrary rules. You want to look a certain way, or see certain numbers (whether that's the size of your pants or your cholesterol test), or whatever, so you create rules for what you can eat in order to achieve those results. When you get really hungry, though, of course all that's going to go out the window. \n\nIt's kind of like the way you're more likely to sleep through your alarm when you're tired, more likely to rationalize not using a condom when you *really* want to have sex with someone, etc. When the stakes are higher, we're going to have a harder time making ourselves do the less fun thing.\n\nEdit: I'd also add that a lot of \"bad\" foods are convenience foods. A lot of the time, we're hungry because we didn't get a chance to eat. So you probably find yourself in a lot of situations where you're ravenous, but the only food at hand is something suboptimal. If you had time to cook a nice nutritious meal from whole ingredients, you probably wouldn't be feeling this hungry.", "Bad food decisions relate to the abundance of carbs, fats, and sugars which are rarely found in nature but overly abundant in quick or fast foods. When you are hungry you crave those things, not healthy nutrient packed foods - because your body thinks healthy food is plentiful. \n\nThere is probably a time factor built in there, most nutritious food isn't quick in preparation and generally requires additional things to enjoy (and/or more money if eating out). Few people are content sitting around eating only a head of lettuce - they want carrots, peppers, nuts, dried fruit, etc on top with a dressing which takes time to prepare. A pizza pocket is ready in like 150 seconds and 145 of that you are simply waiting.", "I'm assuming when you say bad decisions, you mean foods that aren't good for us like fast food, junk food, etc. Humans naturally crave foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt. It's in our genes. When we are hungry, our brain is telling us that we need to eat, so naturally we will seek food containing those things. Since fast food and junk food are more readily available (requires pulling into a restaurant on the way home or opening a bag of chips), we will want to go for those options rather than spending an hour or two cooking a meal. There are plenty of health foods that contain fat and sugar, but they usually require more effort to obtain. It just so happens that fast foods are more convenient so we go for those options."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bb8kv6", "title": "Why does the event of two black-holes merging send large gravitational \"ripples\" across spacetime?", "selftext": "I know that one of these events was used to confirm the existence of gravity waves, but do the two BH's actual merging emit waves that are stronger than are emitted in the aftermath of the event or is the \"ripple\" actually just the detectable start-point for the new SMBH's warping of space?\n\nWhat puzzles me is that black-holes are already infinitely dense, so how could the pressure from the merger produce temporarily an even higher density?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bb8kv6/why_does_the_event_of_two_blackholes_merging_send/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ekhfono"], "score": [17], "text": ["The gravitational waves are not produces by the merger itself. Any time when one body orbits another, it emits gravitational waves. In the case of regular planets and stars, the gravitational waves are negligible, because the orbital speed is too slow. But when the black holes orbits each other, their mutual attraction makes them move fast enough to emit gravitational waves of significant energy. Since the gravitational waves carry the energy away from the pair of black holes, they become closer and move faster, emitting even stronger gravitational waves. Eventually they merge and stop emitting gravitational waves.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis video illustrates the process:\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nNotice that the waves become stronger as black holes approach each other and stop at the moment of the merger"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7dyMISb1Hk"]]}
{"q_id": "8b1boq", "title": "i am living in a building where we are several students with one room each and we share a kitchen. how is it possible that all our keys to our rooms fit the lock to the kitchen, but not the other student's rooms?", "selftext": "Everyone have a key that fit the lock to their own room and the lock to the kitchen, but not to the other student's rooms.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8b1boq/eli5_i_am_living_in_a_building_where_we_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dx35fg5", "dx35i1p", "dx35izy", "dx42q88"], "score": [2, 1350, 6, 34], "text": ["Your door locks will have an extra pin, or something similar. Basically all your keys have different bumps/notches but are mostly the same. the front door lock will only care about the bit that is the same, while the bedroom locks will care about all of it.", "A lock has a number of tumblers, which all need to be pushed to a certain height in order for the lock to turn. Each key is unique, and the bumps on the key correspond to the heights of the tumblers within the corresponding lock.\n\nImagine keys and locks as a 6 digit password. Now imagine that your kitchen lock is only a 4 digit password - the kitchen lock only has 4 tumblers, not 6. So your keys can all open the kitchen door if they have the right 4 bumps, but you can't open each other's doors.\n\nImagine the kitchen door is 0134. Imagine your door is 013461 and your roommate's door is 013413. You and your roommate can both open the kitchen because your keys have 0134 (which is all the kitchen needs,) but you can't open each other's doors because your keys don't match the lock.", "Physical locks come in varying degrees of security. \n\nYour kitchen lock uses the least secure function of the key, which are the widest bumps on your key. Your individual room locks use the exact same wide bump patterns, but the narrower teeth of the keys are all different. \n\nYour kitchen lock isn't precise enough to notice the differences in the tips/ridges/bumps on the teeth of your keys, whereas your bedroom locks are.", "Hopefully, this works with Reddit formatting:\n\nThis is the kitchen key:\n\nO=\\^\\^\\^- > \n\nThis is your bedroom key\n\nO=\\^\\^\\^M > \n\nThis is your roommates bedrooms key:\n\nO=\\^\\^\\^U > \n\nAnd your other roommate:\n\nO=\\^\\^\\^S > \n\nYou all share the first part of the key, which unlocks the kitchen, but the last part of your key is different, and that's the part that unlocks your lock.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "qpxv0", "title": "Genius and Insanity", "selftext": "I have read many articles and biographies highlighting correlations involving genius and insanity.  Most of what I have read covers creative people and/or high IQs who have or have passed on mental illness (more specifically bipolar disorder, OCD, and schizophrenia).  Some feel having a \"busy brain\" may cause mental exhaustion, or just that both intelligent people and those with mental illness view the world and relationships between objects or ideas in an unusual way.  How much merit is there to the genius/insanity correlation?  Have there been studies with results that suggest a common cause, or that one can cause the other?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qpxv0/genius_and_insanity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3zkarp", "c3zlp4i", "c3zly4b"], "score": [4, 4, 6], "text": ["Low IQ is associated with higher risk of mental disorders, not high IQ. For example, _URL_0_  or better, _URL_2_ and to deal with IQ before diagnosis, _URL_1_", "5 year psychology/neuroscience student here: \n\nAs I assume you understand, correlation does not imply causation. These studies sound like they are correlating brain activation with the various characteristics that you've described. However, it is my understanding that general intelligence and schizophrenia for example are managed by different systems within the brain, and despite perhaps some common-linked brain areas the relationship between their systems would be weak. I just want to point out that brain activation is difficult to assess given the technologies that we have today and our current understanding of brain functionality. Increases in brain activity does not mean that those brain areas are necessary or sufficient for the function that those brain areas are thought to govern. What I am implying is that activation can either be facilitative or inhibitive, depending on the nature of the system that is being used. In a schizophrenic brain for example, episodes of illusionary thinking may utilize a brain area that also happens to be used when you are making the cognitive judgements necessary to interpret an IQ test question. This is hypothetical of course, but the schizophrenic activation of that area could be to inhibit that area's functionality and thereby disturb the connections that follow from that point in the system onwards. When you are taking the IQ test, that brain area could be facilitated by the cognitive task and thus activation facilitates downstream functionality of that system. \n\nWe have the ability to assess now neurotransmitters present through those systems which is why I think that you should find that creativity, intelligence and schizophrenia should be poorly correlated. The main reason why I say this is that if all these characteristics acted on the same system, we should see a direct positive relationship between changes in those systems - that is, increases in intelligence means increases in creativity. Now I am sure you have seen this in your experience but just because you get A's on tests doesn't mean that you get A's for creativity. This is why some doctors get into medical schools with less than perfect grade point averages. Now inform me if I'm wrong in assuming this, but creativity requires divergent thinking and intelligence requires convergent thinking. I say that in that creativity is typically measured by examining how many variants of solutions you can come up with for a given problem. Getting a high grade on a multiple choice exam requires you to focus solely on course material almost exactly how it was presented to you, so if you think exactly as the course instructor has instructed you to, then you should get a good grade.    \n\n*TL;DR: I say that there is poor evidence to support these claims*", " >  I have read many articles and biographies highlighting correlations involving genius and insanity.\n\nThe plural of anecdote is not evidence. Famous, intelligent people are written about, any mental quirks they exhibit become the topic of popular conversation and  myth, and the idea that intelligent people are more prone to mental instability becomes common knowledge -- something \"everyone knows\".\n\nThere is plenty of evidence that those with less-than-average IQs have more mental problems than those on the right-hand side of the standard distribution. But those people don't have books written about them, or movies made."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16260814", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15066893", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19907333"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4z1rt0", "title": "Is the mayan godess of suicide Ixtab legit ?", "selftext": "I've been interested lately in the pre-columbian history of Latin America, especially about the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayas and Aztecs. I've bumped randomly while reading a webcomic on a mention of a Mayan godess of suicide. So I've searched and found the wikipedia page. Ok. Then, I've started reading a book about the Maya writing system, where the gods where mentioned. And she wasn't. When I've typed \"Ixtab\" into Google Images, most images that popped up where... Modern. Whereas when you type \"Ach Puch\" (Or God A) or I dont know, Kukulkan, you have a shitload of various representations.\n\nSo, this is my question: Is this godess legit, or is this some kind of misenterpretation gone mainstream ?\n\nThanks for any answers !", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4z1rt0/is_the_mayan_godess_of_suicide_ixtab_legit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6sg3ro"], "score": [85], "text": ["Ix Tab is probably not a real goddess. [Here's a good little abstract specifically addressing the question.](_URL_3_) For those unwilling to click, I will summarize: there is no Maya goddess of suicide, and reference to her can be traced to the writings of Spanish bishop Diego de Landa immediately post-contact. \n\nLanda was a resident of Yucatan 1549-1579 and in his latter days the Bishop of Merida. He was a primary chronicler of Maya civilization directly post-contact. He is also a controversial and (to me, at least) repulsive figure, as in 1562 he burned every piece of Maya paper writing he could get his hands on -- and this was just about every codex still in existence. Everything Landa has done for our understanding of Maya writing, he undid a thousand times when he burned the original codices.\n\nAs for the iconography associated with the modern-day legend of the \"suicide goddess,\" let's take a look!\n\n[This is the panel](_URL_1_) of the Dresden Codex which features the image commonly credited online as \"Ixtab.\" \n\nThe image appears in the Dresden Codex on page 53b. [Here is a link to the full online version of the codex.](_URL_4_) More to the point, here is a link to [the section of interest.](_URL_2_) This part of the codex is sometimes called the Eclipse Table, as it has long been thought to contain astronomical data. It seems to span a recorded or projected 33-year period, including the dates of multiple putative astronomical events. [(Source.)](_URL_0_)\n\nThe picture on 53b shows a Moon Goddess hanging by her neck from a sky band, the Maya visual convention for the sky. The Moon Goddess does appear to be dead; her eyes are closed, and her body is spotted in a way similar to the body of the Death God seen above her in 53a. Alternatively, she may be an unconscious captive. Given the placement of this Moon Goddess within the Eclipse Table, it seems reasonable to say the \"dead moon hanging in the sky\" is a reference to lunar eclipse. The \"hanging\" element is not so much about the method of death as it is about connecting the dead moon to the sky bar above. Accordingly, while images of graphic demise are common in Maya art, death by hanging is iconographically all but absent (see first reference). \n\nSo from where did we get this association of the hanging Moon Goddess with suicide? Probably from the depths of Diego de Landa's brain. Suicide by hanging is a much more common image in the Spanish culture Landa hailed from than it is in the Maya culture he was chronicling. I think the perception that this goddess has hanged herself is most likely just a Spanish misreading of Maya iconography. \n\nI am not at all an expert, just a hobbyist, so I will gratefully accept any corrections to my rambling if an expert sees fit to stop by."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0001910/Beck_William_E_200712_Mast.pdf.pdf", "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--HaQagvHPkA/UNN5G11HIvI/AAAAAAAANY0/RBZWahFtg1Y/s640/dresden-codex-maya-goddess-ixtab.jpg", "http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/pdf/5_dresden_fors_schele_pp46-59.pdf", "http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/content/63/1/1.abstract", "http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/dresden.html"]]}
{"q_id": "761bto", "title": "I've heard that Che Guevara took pleasure in personally executing prisoners with a pistol. Is this true?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/761bto/ive_heard_that_che_guevara_took_pleasure_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dobmhni"], "score": [7], "text": ["I'd be interested in seeing where you heard this. As far as I understand, Che had indeed executed a lot of people, but that he took pleasure from it is propaganda stemming from the very vocal Cuban ex-pat community in the US. This claim seems to go against his character as evidenced by his own writings and from the testimonies from people who knew him or met him. Nelson Mandela famously said that he should be an example to every freedom-loving human.\n\n/u/ainrialai gave a very thorough response to a similar question some years ago:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lt4rb/was_it_the_truth_behind_the_critical_controversy/cc2l75x/?context=10000"]]}
{"q_id": "83nnwd", "title": "how many sides can a shape have before it becomes a circle and does the concept of geometry exist on the very small scale?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83nnwd/eli5_how_many_sides_can_a_shape_have_before_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvj5pvq", "dvj6vn8", "dvjdhdp", "dvjdq56", "dvjev8p", "dvjezx2", "dvjfipm", "dvjfs1u", "dvjgi8s", "dvjhtbi", "dvjiihj", "dvjujct", "dvk4435", "dvk494y", "dvkcx2t"], "score": [55, 450, 17, 3, 4, 4, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You can somewhat define an ellipse/circle as a polygon with infinite sides. If by small scale you mean molecular, then essentially yes. Current models of molecular geometry are supported by experimental data. ", "In geometry, regular polygons become closer to circles the more sides they have.  In that sense, you might say a circle is a regular polygon with an infinite number of sides.\n\nReal world objects can be neither perfect circles or perfect regular polygons.  Eventually imperfections will crop up, at the molecular level, if not before.", "In terms of what is practical to the user, it depends on what needs to be achieved. Requirements can be function, for example: a vector CAD package will increase the polygon side count based on the zoom to create the representation, otherwise it's really just a matter of how circular does it need to be and when does adding more faces diminish the addition's value.\n\nIn real terms: Arcs and circles are abstract concepts, they don't exist outwith theory and can only be defined functionally.", "A circle has an infinite number of sides. \n\n\nScale often doesn\u2019t matter that much with geometry. A square with side length n will *always* have an area of n \u2022 n, or n\\^2. Just use smaller units or more zeros on the left.", "Polygons in euclidean space become more circly and boring as you increase the sides. There really isn't any \"boundary\" to when a many-sided polygon becomes a circle. But more sides on a polygon means it approaches being a circle. Step on over to hyperbolic space (constant negative curvature), a polygon with an infinite number of sides can actually be tiled and it isn't a circle. [Apeirogon](_URL_0_)", "If we're dealing in perfect polygons(equilateral triangle,square,pentagon,etc) the angle of each corner is always the same. The most common measurement for angles is degrees(90 degree angle for square). Degrees can be split into 60 minutes, which in turn can be split into 60 seconds. This gives you 360 spaces within each degree angle. 360 times 360 equals 129,600, meaning the closest thing to a circle in this measurement system has 129,600 sides. You can technically split things up further, but as far as I have discovered, I do not know of any mathematical usage for such. If you use a different angle measurement system, like gradians, you can go further, but again I don't know what it would accomplish. For funsies, the Megagon is a million-sided polygon with an inside angle of 179.99964 degrees, or 199.999603411 gradians. So close to a circle that each side would have to be a football field long for you to notice the difference.\n\nEdit: I took this a step further because I made myself curious. If the side of a perfect megagon was 100 yards long, and one side was flat on the ground, the far end of the next side would be 0.000628 yards, or two one-hundredths of an inch, off the ground. So a football field isn't even enough. Let's up the ante. If our megagon was 100 miles on one side flat on the ground, the far end of the next side would be 0.000628 miles, or approximately 3 feet 4 inches, off the ground.", "Sorry if this is a weird question but: Are neutrons and protons (maybe electrons?) perfectly spherical like they're shown to be in our diagrams or are they still somewhat like ellipsoids?", "* You\u2019re in the realm of imagination when you think about questions like this, or in other words the realm where philosophy and maths exist.\n* What a lot of people forget when asking this kind of question is that first and foremost what does the observer observe?  A normal person wouldn\u2019t see the difference between a polygon with 200 lines and a circle 1 meter away, depending on how small the circle is.\n* but mathematicians believe in the \u2018perfect\u2019 observer who can see infinite amount of lines.\n* that means each length of a line in the polygon is nearing the length of a point, but as a point has no length, the number of lines are infinite, and our theoretical observer is fine with that.\n* But with a boring normal human, you could figure out the radius of a point you can make with the pen you\u2019re using, and any 2 points that just barely touch could be called the smallest line possible.  Or you can depend on the crappy resolution of eyes and the ratio between the circle radius and the distance of the observer away from the circle to blur a polygon into a circle.\n* Regarding the second part, geometry works outside of units, so scale is irrelevant.", "I don't know if anyone has answered the second question yet, but geometry *does* exist and very small scales. Just as an example, when water freezes (under normal pressure and temperature) because of the magnetic forces at a molecular level, the molecules arrange themselves to be 60 degrees apart from each other, thus creating the snowflake shapes we all know.\n\nCrystalline structures of other materials also follow a similar principal and arrange themselves into geometric lattices.", "Geometry and the features of mathematics don't exist in physical form as described in math.   A point is a location with 0 diameter.   A line  has 0 width.a polygon has 0 height.     Physical manifestations in our world have all non zero dimensions.", "Mathematically, there is no upper limit to how many sides a polygon can have. A polygon is definied by the number of its sides, so the types of polygons are in one to one correspondence with the natural numbers, which is in infinite set with no maximum element. Of course, a polygon can NOT have infinite sides, so a circle can in some sense be thought of as a polygon with n sides taken as n goes to infinity.", "mathematically a regular polygon can have any finite number of sides and the rules of geometry stay the same. it\u2019s properties like shape, area, circumference converge to that of a circle: they get closer and closer, but never reach it. just like 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... approaches 1 but never reaches it.", "There is no such number. An n-gon _approaches_ a circular geometry as n _approaches_ infinity but there is no defined number at which an n-gon suddenly becomes a circle- they are two conceptually different shapes and can not be equated. If you\u2019re talking about practical approximations, when graphing a circle on a computer, the number is relatively low. Even a 100-gon looks damn near a circle (but again, it is not truly a circle).\n\nYes, geometry exists on all scales which is evidenced by the fact that geometrical concepts are applicable with arbitrary variables. The values of those variables could be ~10^100 or ~10^-100 and the concepts work all the same.", "Geometry most certainly exists on a small scale, as molecules themselves have characteristic geometric shapes based on the angles and types of bonds they contain ", "The pure answer is \"an infinite number of sides\".\n\nBut a useful answer depends of the needs of the inquirer.\n\nScientists call a \"good enough\" answer an answer that is plenty close for their present needs. Scientists call this kind of accuracy an answer \"to a significant digit\".\n\nIf you ask \"How many candies can I get for five dollars?\" \"Plenty.\" Would be an answer, but not a very good one. \"Several\" would be a better answer, but not at all satisfying. \"Almost four\" is a pretty good answer. \"3.8575\" would be a very good answer, but too much information for your needs, probably. \"4.0\" would be the significant digit if you didn't want to break up the candies. If you needed them for a recipe or to try to figure out how many candies a balloon could float, you would want a more particular answer, or an answer to a more significant digit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/H2_tiling_23i-1.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4kticm", "title": "When/why did Protestants abandon the term Mass for the Eucharist?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kticm/whenwhy_did_protestants_abandon_the_term_mass_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3hws9t"], "score": [31], "text": ["This question doesn't really have an answer, or at least, not *one*. Luther is quite content to maintain the term Mass for his vision of the evangelical Eucharist/communion-containing ceremony (see *Deutsche Messe*, 1526), within his/what will become the Lutheran understanding of the sacrament and, of course, in German. The Reformed protestants (Calvinists et al) and early Anabaptists use Lord's Supper or Christ's Supper from an early date, in concordance with those two (very different!) general understandings of what a religious service should look like and the theology of communion. \n\nA good illustration of rhetorical divergence can be seen in how Luther and Calvin consider the traditional/Catholic Mass. Luther describe it as \"the abuse of the Mass,\" suggesting an institution that has been corrupted and needs fixing. On the other hand, Calvin in his *Institutes* writes of \"the abomination of the Mass.\" He directly addresses the labeling, explaining that the term Mass probably denotes specifically the idea of pagan sacrifice and can only refer to the Catholic belief that it is the actual body and blood of Christ. *Supper* on the other hand is biblical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3tyv4b", "title": "how is selling fan art legal?", "selftext": "I just saw a post on the front page about an artist who paints pictures of pokemon and sells them.   I'm wondering how this is legal, considering that the pokemon are owned by Nintendo.  Fan art gets sold all the time, but it seems like it would be a violation of copyright to sell them for a profit.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tyv4b/eli5_how_is_selling_fan_art_legal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxacvmu", "cxacxyb", "cxacygg", "cxaejum", "cxaihga", "cxakbms", "cxalg4p", "cxau88o", "cxavkx1", "cxb09iz", "cxb3p8b", "cxb7mia"], "score": [914, 19, 148, 11, 18, 6, 2, 2, 6, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["A lot of it isn't legal, and is copyright infringement. (Most of such art is copyright infringement whether being sold or not, by the way.) But copyright is civil in nature, not criminal--the rights holder has to request a court to enforce the law. It does not matter that I infringe on the copyright of The Pokemon Company if they choose not to sue me. Most companies have better things to do than to generate bad press by suing small-time artists.", "You're correct that it is very much likely a violation of copyright law. The problem is enforcement. It would be difficult for Nintendo to find each person who draws fan art. Even if they could, there aren't too many great options to stop it. Nintendo could sue and probably win, but it wouldn't win much and would get a lot of bad press in the process.\n\nUnless the fan art is somehow damaging to the franchise or turning into a full industry it's better for Nintendo to leave it alone. Nintendo has stopped things like a Pokemon themed party at a gaming convention and a Legend of Zelda movie, but in those cases there was more at stake. The Pokemon party would have involved booze, which may have been a liability and also gives Pokemon a more adult image than Nintendo would like. The Zelda movie would have potentially inserted a whole new story into the Zelda cannon. Both of those were also much more likely to reach a wide audience than a single piece of fan art.", "It would be.  If Nintendo wanted to, they could sue.  However: \n\n1) Suing people costs money.\n\n2) Fan artists are unlikely to have lots of money.\n\n3) Fans get mad when you treat their peers in a way that looks like \"mean-spirited big company sues little starving artist\".\n\nBut, mostly it's #1 and #2.  You don't sue people unless you can make money at it.", "Is there a specific way artists can get the ip rights to companies like Pokemon? ", "To jump on the OP's question: What about sites like Red Bubble? \n\n\nWouldn't it be advantageous for lots of companies to band together and sue?\n\n\nEdit: Spacing.", "I just wanted to add one more thing to the issue of copyright infringement.  The copyright holder or owner holds a group of rights with that valid copyright.  One of those rights is the right to derivative works.  A derivative work is defined in 17 U.S.C. \u00a7101 as :\nA \u201cderivative work\u201d is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a \u201cderivative work\u201d\n\n17 U.S.C. \u00a7 106 states that a copyright holder has the exclusive right to \n(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies...;\n\n(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;\n\n(3) to distribute copies...of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending....\n\nIn short, the copyright owner is the only one that can license or allow derivative works.  Fan art usually falls under this category because it doesn't usually meet the fair use test if it makes any significant amount of money for the artist.\n\nReminder:  Copyright Law in the US is crazy, and the courts are never sure how they want to opine.  ", "Yeah, I always wonder how it's legal for cons to support the \"artists\" that scan a movie poster and make a few touch-ups and re-sell the thing for $50 or $100.\n\nI have a ton of respect for the actual artists making completely original works based on famous source material.  Some of that shit is amazing.\n\nI guess it all comes down to how much the owners of the source material want to pursue legal action.", "It isn't legal, either in Canada, the US, or Japan.\n\nIn Canada and the US, fanworks would be derivative works, that is, works that in part derives from, or duplicates, another work (henceforth \"original work\"). In both country's respective copyright statutes, the author of the original work retains the exclusive right to create derivative works and duplications, subject to a large number of \"fair use\" defences. \n\n\nNow then, like /u/TokyoJokeyo said, copyright is civil law, so the state isn't automatically going to come after you, but the original author could, if they bothered to spend the legal fees, and somehow find you (which may require them to have to demand the derivative work creator's address, contact information, etc, which is extra trouble).\n\n\nThe problem is, once they do, the derivative work creator will run into two legal issues:\n\n1. \"Fair use\" is a defence, which means that the original work author only has to prove that your material is derivative, and then the derivative work author would have to prove fair use, which may require more legal funds than they can feasibly bring to bear  ($250/hr is a reasonable rate for lawyers). The recent Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. may make it more difficult for the original work author to gain a takedown order, or some form of injunction, but...\n\n2. If you are selling the stuff, tough luck. That's most likely not fair use.\n\n\nIf you are in Japan, you may be in deeper trouble. Japan has a much stronger conception of moral rights, so if the fan work could be considered prejudicial to the moral rights of the author (think of Nintendo not liking Super Mario Bros. Z or pictures of Mario and Luigi kissing), they can have it taken down. \n\nNotice: I am not a lawyer. I hope that I'll not have to be a lawyer.\n\nEdit: u/Ah-Q below notes that it is a crime in the US. See _URL_0_\n\nEdit2: Note that most of the time, the original authors don't do this, because there's an unfortunate amount of bad PR involved. ", "There is a difference between \"art,\" \"merchandise\" and \"publications.\"\n\nPublishing or selling merch would be completely illegal and stopped. Art is different. This is a pretty good article about creating art with trademarked images:\n\n_URL_0_", "I just typed out a good two-pager on the intricacies of how and why this is prohibited, the properties of methane, mail fraud, all kinds of cool stuff before I scrolled back up and realized this didn't say \"How is selling fart illegal?\"  \n  \nColour me lesson learnt.", "As I was scrolling past this post I had to take a double glance as I thought it read,\n \"How the hell is selling farts illegal\" \nMy mistake... \n", "I'm sorry I don't have anything to contribute to the discussion. Just wanted to mention that I read the title as \"Why is selling a fart legal?\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-42/page-16.html"], ["http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2012/10/11/resolving-conflicts-between-trademark-and-first-amendment-rights/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "yiwsn", "title": "how did most (all?) regions of the world develop/adopt the same system of measurement for time?", "selftext": "Different regions use different languages, so it'd seem reasonable to think that different parts of the world would develop their own measurements for time, as well. How did it come to be that the system we use now is universally adopted?\n\nEdit: I mean 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute, etc. Not necessarily calendar days as it seems like these would have defined themselves inherently.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yiwsn/how_did_most_all_regions_of_the_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5w016j", "c5w0vl1", "c5w0xeb", "c5w1khq", "c5w1nbu", "c5w1x6d", "c5w3r4v", "c5w6380", "c5w89f3", "c5w8i4u", "c5w9nxf", "c5w9ut7", "c5wa890", "c5wd4gr"], "score": [2, 10, 141, 3, 82, 27, 6, 2, 2, 4, 2, 15, 2, 2], "text": ["Are you thinking of 24 hours a day? ", "It actually started with the Roman Empire known as the Julian calendar created by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. They based it off Astronomy studies that the Greeks (famed Hipparchus) and themselves studied with the sun. Previously, calendars were based off lunar cycles. As you know, the Roman Empire dominated a vast majority of Europe at one point and many countries adopted the calendar. However, there were some minor issues (it assumed that the time between vernal equinoxes is 365.25 days, but it's actually 11 seconds) with the calendar and it was edited by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, now known as the Gregorian calendar. \n\nSince it was adopted by a Pope, he asked the Catholic church to adopt the calendar. As many European countries were of the Catholic faith, it was pretty much given that they too would adopt the calendar with time. \n\nShortly after this, Europe was in the midst of colonizing the world and taking the calendar with them. It was only a matter of time before the Asian countries would adopt the calendar too, since a majority of the world already adopted it. It wasn't until the late 1800s for Japan and 1900s for China amongst others. \n\nEdit: And then you edited the question and my post is useless :'(", "The Egyptians subdivided daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each since at least 2000 BC, hence the seasonal variation of their hours. The Hellenistic astronomers Hipparchus (c. 150 BC) and Ptolemy (c. AD 150) subdivided the day sexagesimally and also used a mean hour (1\u204424 day), simple fractions of an hour (1\u20444, 2\u20443, etc.) and time-degrees (1\u2044360 day or four modern minutes), but not modern minutes or seconds.[8]\n\nThe day was subdivided sexagesimally, that is by 1\u204460, by 1\u204460 of that, by 1\u204460 of that, etc., to at least six places after the sexagesimal point (a precision of better than 2 microseconds) by the Babylonians after 300 BC. For example, six fractional sexagesimal places of a day was used in their specification of the length of the year, although they were unable to measure such a small fraction of a day in real time. As another example, they specified that the mean synodic month was 29;31,50,8,20 days (four fractional sexagesimal positions), which was repeated by Hipparchus and Ptolemy sexagesimally, and is currently the mean synodic month of the Hebrew calendar, though restated as 29 days 12 hours 793 halakim (where 1 hour = 1080 halakim).[9] The Babylonians did not use the hour, but did use a double-hour lasting 120 modern minutes, a time-degree lasting four modern minutes, and a barleycorn lasting 31\u20443 modern seconds (the helek of the modern Hebrew calendar),[10] but did not sexagesimally subdivide these smaller units of time. No sexagesimal unit of the day was ever used as an independent unit of time.\n\nIn 1000, the Persian scholar al-Biruni gave the times of the new moons of specific weeks as a number of days, hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths after noon Sunday.[4] In 1267, the medieval scientist Roger Bacon stated the times of full moons as a number of hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths (horae, minuta, secunda, tertia, and quarta) after noon on specified calendar dates.[11] Although a third for 1\u204460 of a second remains in some languages, for example Polish (tercja) and Turkish (salise), the modern second is subdivided decimally.\n\n- _URL_0_", "When the Roman Elders decided to split the Year up into 365 they spend weeks locked up in the Senate deciding what to call it. After a while they gave up and called it a day.", "The measurement of time was based off of the sun.  [Sun goes up, sun goes down](_URL_0_), one day passes.  And not all cultures use the same marker for measuring time.  For instance, Orthodox Jews use sundown as the end of the day instead of midnight.  ", "Did you know that after the French Revolution the French adopted a system based on the more scientific 10 than the religious inspired system that was in place and still is now.\n\n100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes in an hour. 10 hours a day. 30 days a month, 12 months a year.", "On an interesting side note, the aboriginal perception of time isn't linear like ours (past, present and future) but rather depends on the importance of an event to the individual/community. Ie, a birth, death or marriage is deemed closer in time than the first time you tried a favourite food. \n\nIt seems to be known as dream time. \n", "The main reason is that it measures \"small\" cycles (hours, minutes, seconds). So, how do you represent this in an easily understandable way? A: a circle! \nNow you need to brake it into fractions: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 and so on...\nSo, as someone else mentioned before, 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30, thus helping a lot to this.\nA decimal measure of time would help for linear time (useful for long cycles too) and very short fractions.\nSo its just a logical way of measuring...\nBut then again, i might be wrong.", "This is total conjecture, but I think it's because you can draw an accurate clock with 12 positions using just circles.\n\nWith a compass or a piece of string  &  a pencil or even just a pair of pencils fixed at an arbitrary distance - start with one circle, then put another with its centre on the edge of the first. Repeat with the centre of the next circle on the point where the first two cross and eventually you have exactly 12 points equally spaced around the first circle with which you can then make a sundial. No straightedge or measurement required. \n\nEDIT: OK so it's slightly more complicated - you only get 6 points to start with but 12 is one iteration away. Also, it's really hard to perfectly line up circles in MS Paint. Pencil and paper with a piece of string and a thumbtack is far simpler.", "Man, I asked this exact question before:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSuch an interesting question.", "Great britain own(s)[ed] the world and that happened to be their way?", "this comments totally gonna get buried, but Radiolab did a great show on time and how it developed in the modern sense: _URL_0_", "I was literally just thinking this last week! I love reddit. ", "Minutes and Seconds were not originally measures of time, they were measures of angles.\n\nThere are two things to understand:\n\nFirst there are three universally observable phenomenon that have shaped how every single civilization used the concept of time.\n\n1. The Earths 24 hour rotation upon its own axis\n\n2. The Earths 365 day revolution around the sun\n\n3. The Moons 29 day revolution around the earth\n\nTracking these three phenomenon with high precision was VERY important to all civilizations just for daily function, and became REALLY important when religion started to come into play. All Christian holidays can be traced back to celebrations of the equinoxes and solstices, Ramadan occurs on a lunar cycle, and it was important that they occur at exactly the proper time to please god etc. So tracking stellar movement and the suns path across the sky was a point of great interest to every society.\n\nSecond, Ancient civilizations were obsessed with the number 60. This makes a lot of sense because 60 is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12 so it was really easy to use and made a lot of intuitive sense. There's a reason that a circle has 360 degrees, due to the Babylonians obsession with the number 60. etc. you see 60 everywhere.\n\nSo the sky is divided into a 360 degree sphere, and as we got good at tracking the suns movement across the sky, we realized that we could divide the sky into more minute (meaning small) divisions in order to more precisely refer to its location at a given time. Therefore we divided each degree in the sky into 60 more minute divisions called of course minutes. So instead of saying the sun was at 72 degrees you could now say the sun was at 72 degrees and 15 minutes to more precisely reflect its position. If you've ever taken a little precalc you'll be familiar with the concept of arcminutes to further divide a circle. So now we started to get even better at tracking the location of the sun and the stars, and even arc minutes weren't precise enough for us, so we decided to add a SECOND division of the sky and divide each arcminute into what could only be called an arcsecond (original I know). So now you could say a certain star was at 75 degrees 15 minutes and 29 seconds to refer to the angle you had to make to view it.\n\nIf you view time itself as a measure of distance (the sun moving across the sky) then I think you can better understand where the 60 seconds and 60 minutes came from and why they universally used. It's because they're not arbitrary measures that varied from culture to culture, they are mathematical calculations used to track universally observable astronomical phenomenon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second"], [], ["http://i.qkme.me/2yeo.jpg"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mbjb8/eli5_why_units_of_time_are_universal_across/"], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/29/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "pc533", "title": "Is there promise in Helminthic Therapy (the deliberate infestations of parasitic worms in the body) for autoimmune disorders?", "selftext": "Here's a brief overview but I don't know what to make of it _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pc533/is_there_promise_in_helminthic_therapy_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3o6q23", "c3o6qns"], "score": [2, 3], "text": ["An interesting This American Life segment on a guy who tried it and even started a business selling hookworms he harvested out of his own shit\n\n_URL_0_", "Probably, but not until someone can make a buck off of it.\n\nCritters like *Necator americanus* are safe, inexpensive, and reliable; however, because one dose can last for years (!), nobody wants to apply this organism in research. There's also the (exceedingly rare) possibility that a worm can end up where it shouldn't. Not a huge problem, but a small liability.\n\nAs a result, organisms like TSO (*Trichuris suis* ova) are preferred by research. Ts is a pig whipworm, and it cannot attach to the human gut. However, it still evokes the same immune response as other helminths.\n\nThe \"nice\" thing about TSO from a pharma standpoint is the patient needs to keep consuming the product on a regular basis. Yay, profit margin.\n\nThe other possibility is that we'll tease out the precise compound(s) responsible for the modulation of the Th1/Th2 autoimmune response, and turn that into an injectible therapy- one that costs orders of magnitude more and can be placed under a nice, stringent patent so it costs tens of thousands of dollars per year like other biologics (Humira, Remicade, Enbrel, etc.), rather than a few hundred bucks and out-the-door."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/404/enemy-camp-2010?act=3"], []]}
{"q_id": "1hcqk8", "title": "why do banks close at five when most people are just getting off of work? wouldn't it be in their better interest to stay open later?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hcqk8/eli5_why_do_banks_close_at_five_when_most_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cat1z2h", "cat3gvd", "cat3ju1", "cat3klj", "cat3yw4", "cat4eih", "cat5cfd", "cat5fzw", "cat5h4o", "cat6afn", "cat6og1", "cat779z", "cat79zq", "cat7eef", "cat8b39", "cat9an6", "cat9dlq"], "score": [77, 12, 8, 2, 24, 3, 351, 5, 26, 2, 78, 5, 7, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Telephone banking, Internet banking, and, more recently, banking via mobile apps are all available 24 hours a day for most bank accounts, and most people can do the majority of their banking through these means. So there'd probably be very little benefit to only a small number of customers if they stayed open late - most people simply don't need to visit their branch often enough to be worthwhile.\n\nHaving said that, if one bank stayed open late, I bet the others would keep a careful eye on what happened to decide if they needed to do the same to keep competitive. Right now, none of them see the need to be the first to do it.\n\nAlso, I suspect that banks make most of their money from corporate or business accounts, rather than personal accounts. This is different to, say, supermarkets, who make most of their money from personal customers (and they *do* stay open late - often 24 hours where I live).", "Hmm.  A lot of banks around here ARE open late/on limited hours on saturday to make up for this around here, but I agree.  It's pretty frustrating, especially if you have to cash your check on your lunch break.", "If your bank has an ATM that accepts checks, you can make deposits 24/7. My paychecks are handwritten as well, but the ATM has no problem reading them. The only time I've needed to actually go INSIDE my bank was to get a certified check to purchase a car. All my regular transactions are via the ATM, and online.\n\nI don't even write checks anymore. Nearly everything can be paid electronically now, and in the off-chance that I need to send a physical check somewhere, I can request it online, and the bank sends the check directly to the recipient.", "Banks close a lot earlier than that where I live.\n\nAs I understand it, when a bank closes, there's a long complicated process everyone has to go through to make sure all the money is accounted for. That can take an hour or two. Maybe that's part of it.", "Try coming to Spain. The banks here close at 2 pm. wtf?", "Most branches in my area are open until 6:30 or 7:00 on Fridays for this exact reason. ", "You're assuming banks actually care about consumers.  They don't.\n\nBanks make most of their money out of businesses - the charges involved in business banking, merchant accounts, etc. are far more profitable than the tiny fees paid by most consumers.\n\nBanks are open when their profitable customers are open - during business hours.", "Because fuck you ", "Come to Russia. Ridiculous amount of  establishments are open 24 hours. Not just supermarkets or bars, but even bookshops and hairdressers. Banks are usually open until 20.00, some offices work later.", "Banks used to open at 10:00am  and close at 3:00pm, in the United States at least.  That's where the term \"bankers hours\" came from.  Start of late and close early.    My credit union closes at 6:pm and 4:pm on Saturdays.  Love it!", "In the US, banks have only recently (in the last couple of decades) become computerized at the branch level. Before that every transaction done was recorded in a ledger at that branch. This is why there would be fees and limitations on what you could do if you went to a branch that didn't 'hold' your account. They had no quick way of verifying funds. \n\nI never worked at a bank while they were run on paper so I don't know the details completely, but each day every teller must balance his or her drawer and without having a computer system doing the majority of the work it can be very tedious and time consuming, which is why banks used to close at 3pm. To give their staff a reasonable amount of time to balance and reconcile the day's transactions and go home. \n\nNowadays every transaction is recorded electronically and sent to a central database. Making balancing nothing more than counting the cash in your drawer and comparing it to what the computer says you should have. \n\nAlso, the Federal Reserve processes every single check and electronic transaction that goes through the bank even today. The routing number on your checks which looks like \" :|123456789:| \" tells the Fed what bank that check is from and where to send it to collect funds. You deposit a check from x bank to z bank, z bank then sends the check off to the Fed which then presents the check to bank x. So because the Fed isn't open on the weekends everything done over the weekend is posted for Monday's date, the next available business day. \n\nSo essentially the reason for 'bankers hours' is a result of the history of the financial system and logistical restrictions. With that being said many large banks have been expanding their hours on weekdays and weekends. I think it is only a matter of time before we see banks start to utilize modern technology more and more allowing them to stay open for more hours a week.\n\nI'm half asleep so this may or may not make any sense but whatever. \n\nSource: Worked at a bank for the past 5 years. ", "ELI5...Besides getting a loan or mortgage, what need (other than old people having someone to talk to) is there to go inside a bank? Anything you need can be done online or at an ATM.", "The answer is in your question, the people who work at banks finish at the same time as most people.", "Because banks exist to serve big and small business, which are open during 9-5 business hours.  That's where banks make their money...they don't really care about Joe Shmoe's bimonthly paycheque from Burger King.", "This question is more suitable for r/askreddit.", "Many bank actually stay open later on weekends to help serve individuals. My bank is open until 6 every Friday and open a half day on Saturday so individuals can cash or deposit checks. ", "this pisses me off about banks, the dmv, the post office....they're only open during hours when people are working. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3vfdoq", "title": "why is morning breath so rank, when it doesn't get that bad during the day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vfdoq/eli5_why_is_morning_breath_so_rank_when_it_doesnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxn0eiv", "cxn2c2g", "cxn39lp", "cxn3nsv", "cxn9bv9", "cxnf4ii"], "score": [73, 5, 9, 4, 12, 2], "text": ["When saliva is allowed to sit in the mouth for a long period of time without being replaced, and then mostly dries up, bacteria can propagate better which causes the smell.", "If you went 6-8 hours straight without eating or drinking anything during the day, it likely would smell as bad as your morning breath.", "there are components in saliva that inhibit bacteria from growing. when you sleep, you tend to 1) breath thru your mouth - dries out the saliva and 2) produce less saliva. This allows the bacteria to grow, poop in your mouth, and when you wake up, the poop makes your mouth smell.\n\nPeople that have xerostomia (dry mouth) for 1 of many possible reasons, they tend to have pretty bad breath because of this.", "good points by all the previous posts. also, anaerobic bacteria (don't use oxygen) flourish at night while your mouth is closed and you're breathing through your nose.", "When you move your move in the day talking and eating Salvia germs are moved around and kept busy. At night they sleep and get stinky stinky.   Day awake germs move. Night germs sleepy and build up like Legos to make a stinky tower", "you also have to add that if youre a mouth breather, it's twice ~ 3 times as bad....hence why most frontal teeth get superiorly damaged vs the back"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8513lu", "title": "we keep finding all these examples of humans interbreeding with other hominids, are there any modern animals that successfully interbreed with different species?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8513lu/we_keep_finding_all_these_examples_of_humans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvu5nmj", "dvu6dit", "dvudz0p"], "score": [8, 3, 6], "text": ["Just a note.  While \"hominids\" is technically accurate, you probably meant \"homos\".  While homos are included in hominids, hominids include *all* great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and bonobos).  We did not interbreed with non-homo apes.\n\nAnyways, yes.  There's a bunch of hybrid animals.  Mules are probably the most common and well-known being the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.  There's also hinnys which are rarer and the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse.\n\nLigers (male lion and female tiger) and Tigons (male tiger and female lion) are also fairly well known.  There's a bunch of other hybrids among felines, as well.\n\nYou've also got sheep and goats, wolves and coyotes, and dolphins and whales.\n\n", "Housecats are descended from  F. silvestris lybica, a  small wildcat. But many housecats in Europe  carry some genes from a different  wildcat F. silvestris silvestris. And there are some breeds of housecats  developed by intentional breeding with other species of wildcats, then breeding back to housecats for sevral generations. So you have a housecat with some selected traits from a specific wildcat. \n\nEdit false killer whales and bottlenose dolphins are known to rarely hybridize. They have been seen in the wild (rarely) and the only one in captivity  is fertile and has a couple of calves after mating with a bottlenose dolphin.", "Wikipedia has a list of [genetic hybrids](_URL_2_); it's hard to count the number but there are at least 50 mentioned, including a number that are fertile hybrids.\n\nIt's worth pointing out that fertile human intra-species hybrids were [extremely rare](_URL_3_). The male sapiens/neandertalis hybrids were probably [completely sterile](_URL_0_), and the females were [probably subfertile](_URL_1_). That's pretty much in line with what we see with most intra-species hybrids today.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4072735/", "http://www.pnas.org/content/108/37/15129", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_hybrids", "http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0047076"]]}
{"q_id": "z6ceu", "title": "Is a rug burn a \"real burn\"?", "selftext": "Me and my boyfriend don't agree one says it's not the other thinks it is.  I say since friction causes it, it's a burn.  We googled it and still cannot come to an agreement.  Please help us figure this out Reddit, we need your help!!!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/z6ceu/is_a_rug_burn_a_real_burn/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c61ubvu", "c61v9yd"], "score": [21, 3], "text": ["Good question, but it's not. Rug burn is more similar to road rash. In a thermal burn, your skin's epithelial cells die and eventually slough themselves off (that's why your skin waits a few days to peel off after a sunburn.)\nIn rug burn, the cells are being mechanically separated from their attachments to the basement membrane. Of course friction could also cause some heating, but not enough to cause even a first degree burn.", "its not a burn, in this case the reason  injury occurs isn't heat but the friction leading to loss of epithelial cells and exposure of underlying layers ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7p6qtz", "title": "why large store chains closing down?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p6qtz/eli5_why_large_store_chains_closing_down/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dseweyc", "dsewp8e", "dsezl6j", "dsf4khn", "dsf6t11", "dsf84qk", "dsf8m3c", "dsfcnox"], "score": [3, 5, 43, 24, 7, 2, 5, 6], "text": ["If it online shopping, it could be that the physical stores are closing because they don't pull in money like they used too, whereas these companies are still making the same, if not more money, but online.", "So a few years back, everything was good and easy for brick and mortar retail: you, the customer, needed something so you headed to your local shop to get it. \n\nBut now, there is e-commerce, especially with Amazon, that delivers faster and faster everything, everywhere, for cheap. That's harsh competition for physical retail stores, ending up loosing quite a bit of sale.\n\nSo there is less revenue, but still has to pay for the same big store. So most of the companies that hadn't seen that coming or reacted good enough, quick enough try to \"restructurate\". They close less profitable store and focus on best performing, high density area ones. \n\nThat's not really working in most cases as it doesn't address the problem, but that's another discussion. It's more often a slippery slope to a bankruptcy ( like Sears Canada) or being bought by a bigger fish in the industry.", "Retail has always been a challenging business due to cash flow issues for maintaining inventory, selecting the correct inventory, etc. Certainly eCommerce has hurt a great deal... both because people choose it out of convenience and also because it allows for easy price comparison shopping. It cuts down on margins and means stores have to be more competitive on pricing as well as experience.\n\nThose that are failing also fall into a middle ground where they are neither discount nor luxury. Shoppers used to stick to particular chains based on socioeconomic class \u2014 you were Wal-Mart people, JC Penny people, Nordstrom people, etc. Now people trade up and down all the time in particular categories. So those who would\u2019ve shopped at high end stores might buy their work suits there but buy cheap workout clothes at Wal-Mart. The lower income person who loves to cook might splurge on luxury cookware while shopping dollar stores for everything else. \n\nAnd due to cash limitations, chains like Sears, K-Mart  and JC Penny haven\u2019t invested in modernizing stores or category mix to entice shoppers in. They feel dated and depressing so people don\u2019t want to shop there. They are more costly than all out discounters and frumpier than quick fashion places like H & M, etc. or outlet store options. They don\u2019t offer the glamor or style of high end places. They don\u2019t offer the prices of Home Depot or national electronics/appliance retailers.", "The Sears/KMart CEO ran them into the ground. From the moment he got in control he's run a shareholder-first maximum-returns ship that ignores the long-term good of the company.", "Unfortunately, it's not just big companies like what Sears/Kmart used to be. It's smaller, boutique shops too.\n\nMy dad works a lot with these small boutiques and he's been seeing them close in rapid form. People will go to a boutique, try on the shoes or clothes, take pictures so they don't forget, and then go and order them on Amazon because they're a few dollars cheaper.\n\nWhat people don't realize is that Amazon pulls product from thousands of other distributors so they can find the lowest prices. So even though you may have saved a few bucks, those few dollars make or break a small shop's day. \n\ntl;dr shop local when you can and support small businesses.", "Online shopping is it.  Personally, it's much easier for me to log onto Amazon if I need something than it is to hoof it down to the local store which may or may not carry what I want.\n\nIMHO, I think the stores that will remain brick-and-mortar will be stores that carry items people want to hold before purchasing.  Clothes and shoes for example - I want to try those on before buying them.  If you order those online and they don't fit, now you have to ship them back and the convenience is gone.  Home supplies would be another - I like to hand-pick wood before purchasing it.", "There are a lot of interconnected reasons but the simplest one is that we just have WAY too much retail space in this country to begin with, especially economically unsustainable big box stores. The US has around two to four times as much square feet of retail space per person as other first-world countries. Do people have trouble shopping in Canada or the U.K.? No, they have plenty or stores. We just have too many. \n\nTaking this further (and I\u2019m just scraping the surface of some bigger ideas in urban planning here so forgive the brevity), the whole big box model is a result of heavy government subsidies. Build a giant box with and even bigger box on cheap land out in the surburbs. The tax revenues per acre are horribly low due to the parking lots but cities still have to maintain these mass expenses of roads and utility connections. When trends change and that store dies, it\u2019s hard for anything else to take its space. People just build new box stores further down the street, in a finished state that will only decline with time. Contrast with a small downtown storefront that can easily change from one business to another because it\u2019s surrounded by other businesses and is always a viable destination. When a K-Mart closes, the whole block is essentially dead all at once and nobody has a reason to go there anymore. ", " > The common factor shared by the disparate struggling and bankrupt retailers -- Toys R Us, Claire's, Nordstrom's, Macy's, Sears, Penney's, Circuit City, Sports Authority, Payless, Radio Shack, etc -- is that they are saddled with crushing, inescapable debt that they took on when they were acquired by hedge funds that loaded the debt on as a way of stripmining the companies; also, they increasingly rely on predatory store-cards that can be used as cover for more financialization, debt-loading, and extraction by investors who profit even (especially) when their investments go bust.\n\n > Indeed, many of these companies are profitable, and some even experienced sales growth, even as they are circling the drain, because any dollar that comes in goes straight to debt service.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://boingboing.net/2017/11/23/it-gets-worse.html"]]}
{"q_id": "66r1gv", "title": "why do so many european countries show hatred towards the european union (like the uk), even though it has lead to the most peaceful and stable period in european history?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66r1gv/eli5why_do_so_many_european_countries_show_hatred/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgkl6ag", "dgkl9yr", "dgkmjao", "dgknysq", "dgkpwr1", "dgkqe8y", "dgksqv8", "dgkuwfv", "dgkv3sk", "dgkygf6", "dgkzrv4"], "score": [2, 5, 3, 8, 8, 2, 4, 7, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["One of the reasons is that EU tries to make EU as an united nation. EU has already huge authority over it's member countries. Some unknown force at Brussels is telling you that you can't grow more than X amounts of crop/year as an example. EU should not have an authority over the laws of any nation.\n\n\n\nThen many people does not like Euro at all, since it actually has hurt the economy of smaller countries than actually helped them. \n\n\n\n", "The EU has introduce many, many rules describing what the people, businesses, and governments in the various member states may do. Rules are usually there for good reason, but still, there are always some people who don't like any rule.\n\nAlso, the EU has allowed extensive international migration. Some people don't like having lots of immigrants around.\n\nAlso, some of the hate is actually for the Euro rather than for the EU.", "As a Brit, it's primarily because they misunderstood what it is. The tabloids print a lot of propaganda such as them preventing us using our own laws, costing the country a lot of money and forcing immigrants upon us. The truth is that during the referendum not much made it into the tabloids about how much good it does. 48% of Brits didn't want to leave it and the vote was over 18s only. If 16+ had been allowed to vote it is massively unlikely the U.K. Would be leaving. ", "One thing people haven't mentioned is immigration. Despite claims otherwise, immigration was one of the main reasons for the UK voting to leave the EU.\n\nCountries in the EU have to let people from other EU countries live and work there with no restrictions. This has resulted in a large number of people coming from less wealthy countries such as Poland coming to live in the wealthier ones including the UK.\n\nSome people don't like this because they think these immigrants will take advantage of the benefit system and not contribute to society. Although this is statistically not true in the average case.\n\nOther people don't like this because they feel they are taking jobs that British people could have done instead, leading to greater unemployment. However now many British businesses and organisations are likely to face a shortage of workers.\n\nAnd finally some people don't like how society has changed due to immigration. There are many more non-English speakers than there used to be, and there are lots of shops around catering to various immigrant groups. This makes some people feel like it's \"not their country any more\".", "I would argue that the absolute total devastation of WW2, the Iron curtain and looming threat of the Soviet Union (and unity of hate for it for countries that were under it) and greater integration and cooperation (e.g. NATO) did more to unite Europe than the EU ever did. The EU didn't really start expanding into more than a trade union until the 80s, when the threat of conflict between European countries (e.g. France and Germany) was long since non existant. \n\nThe early iteration of the EU even helped to continue to divide Europe - France got very pissy at the idea of letting the UK join. ", "In the EU-27 you need to find a comprise between all the members or the industry leading standard gets introduced. Anyway you can't make everyone happy especially because you have a wide gap in the understanding of what freedom, liberalism, democracy and so on means.\nThere is also something called \"the winner takes it all\" in economy. So the industry leaders like german car manufacturers push other car manufacturers aside. Thus unemployment ", "I think 'hatred' is the wrong word. Saying I hate the EU is a bit like saying I hate Globalisation while still walking around with an IPhone chewing on some exotic fruit. The EU is simply too massive, complex and fundamental for people to 'hate'. People, I think, don't really 'understand' the EU, and that is where this 'hatred' comes from.\n\nBrexit is a prime example of people voting against their own self-interests. Those that stood most to loose - in areas such as Wales, the North-east and Cornwall - were the biggest recipients of EU development money, yet they voted overwhelmingly in favour of leaving. Those that stood most to gain are the money men and politicians, and these guys both understand and hate the EU, for good reason.\n \nThe Proprietors of the most widely read newspapers in the UK might be a good place to first identify any 'hatred'. European Union rules have often stood in their and their friends in The City of London's way. Take for example EU wide reform proposals since the financial crash, and more recently the Panama Papers (in which many Brexit backers were implicated). These people have long found the UK government an easy place to lobby for their own interests. Rupert Murdoch, when asked why he was so opposed to the European Union, replied:\n\n\"When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.\"\n\nMurdoch's press, along with even more unsavoury Fleet Street newspapers, have had a long history of whipping up hatred against whomever they felt stood in the way of their interests. The Fleet Street press, IMO, had more to do with any hatred that existed as opposed to anything else.\n\nI don't think this is at all conspiratorial. I am answering the question of 'hatred'. And any hatred that does exist must emanate from the gutter press that blights the UK so badly.          ", "Various factors contributed to the actual problematic state of the EU, these are, in my mind, the main factors:\n\n-Forming a monetary union before forming a real political union. Big mistakes, the monetary policy comes from the political guidelines of a state, non the opposite!\n\n-People ignoring the EU politics before it was too late - a few country gave a seat in the EU structure to failed politicians as a consolation prize, you can find some very embarassing example from various countries, literally not knowing what they are talking about and not even showing up at meetings. Countries that sent more intelligent people there obviously are having more influnce on the chioces being made, this annoys the others (i know, LOL)\n\n-Massive mishandling of the immigration problem. Denying and suppressing discussion about real, hard, mathematical facts about immigrations (such as crime rates, already high unemplyment in those age groups, etc etc) branding them as \"racist\" and \"ignorant\" is, as every extremism-laden point of wiew, not a smart solution to a problem. This is why we are getting (and needing, since they are the only voices outside of the choir) the so called populist-parties.\n\n-Excessive interest in the baking system and an academical-only approach to problems, while ignoring peoples` problems. We are bored to hell of having banks \"robbed\" by executives and having the EU stepping in to save them and in the meantime proposing idiotic solutions to stagnating economies such as raise sale taxes (yes, you did read that correctly)\n\n-No long term vision. You are considered a \"good\" economy if you do not raise you debt of more than 3%  a year. Can you see where taht will lead in a zero-inflation zone?\n\n-Last but not leas, scapegoating: the media (that honestly in a few countries is in a pathetic condition, like here in italy we are quite low in the freedom of expression ranking, check out wiki..) blames all the state`s problem on the EU. Everything bad is the EU`s fault. \n\n\nThis said, the more literate of us are aware that a continental union is FUNDAMENTAL to keep Europe peaceful and rich, still THIS particular union is badly in need of a reform.\n\n\n", "It's important to understand that there is a difference between EU the ideal and EU the organisation.\n\nMost people support EU the ideal. The broad fellowship and brotherhood of peaceful European nations? Being part of the bigger community and all working together for a strong and successful Europe? Who could be opposed to that?\n\nBut in practise, the EU is perceived by many as a bloated, useless, gravy train beauracracy that bogs everything down in useless red tape. The sort of beauracracy that is more interested in writing 100 page reports about how you are allowed to grow your turnips than in actually addressing major issues like war and immigration. The sort of beauracracy where people work 4 hours a day and 20 weeks a year, and spend the rest of their time eating smoked salmon in their corporate box at the races or the opera.\n\n(I'm not saying any of this is necessarily true...but the \"rich pompous lazy fat EU beauracrat\" is an ingrained stereotype)\n\nSo it's not so much \"I hate Europe\". Its more of a \"I'm sick of those useless fat Frogs in Brussels giving me all these stupid rules, let's handle our own destiny\" kind of attitude.\n", "The countries that hate the EU already live in peace and stability since WW2.  They don't want to foot the bill to improve other countries.", "While the EU has some advantages many people suffer especially from richer countries, as poor peopl can now easily take their wealth"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7lgr3b", "title": "why does popular software like spotify, firefox or google chrome have very small (less than 1 megabyte) installer files when all they do is download larger amounts of data immediately after starting?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lgr3b/eli5_why_does_popular_software_like_spotify/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drm3jlr", "drm3u20", "drm5dr5"], "score": [11, 22, 8], "text": ["The small installer can look at the current state of your machine and download just the parts that your machine needs and doesn't already have.", "When you develop a popular software, you'll constently improve features and correct bugs (much more demand than for an obscure release).\n\nAs mainly your software will be distributed through various hosting sites (good to reach a wider audiance), if you release often a full package, you'll have to updates many sites.\n\nHaving a download that would not change (he only download a file), mean that when you release a new version on your home server, you don't have to upadte any site, as the downloader will take the source from only one location.\n", "Basically, that tiny installer gets to be somewhat smart about what to install and how:\n\n* It can call the right places to check what the latest version of the software is and download that at install time. With an offline installer, you download and install a potentially out-of-date version, then go and download and update the new version just as with the smaller installer. This is a waste of resources.\n* The installer can be validate each file it's downloading and re-download only that if it detects errors, instead of just detecting that the whole offline installer is damaged and asking you to download the whole thing again.\n* It can download things more efficiently (for some definition thereof). For example, several of these installers for games use BitTorrent or similar systems to download from many sources at once. Alternatively, it can choose an appropriate mirror to download from, as it's both cheaper and faster to download stuff from servers geographically close to you (though this is less of a problem now that CDNs are in wide use)\n\n(EDIT: fix typos and bullets)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hh70u", "title": "why are most major religions right-wing, when their central figures are left-wing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hh70u/eli5_why_are_most_major_religions_rightwing_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db07qmf", "db08ayy", "db09cre", "db09rqo", "db0j42g"], "score": [23, 12, 9, 2, 3], "text": ["Right-wing politics largely centers around a small, efficient government, low taxation, low regulation, and relies on the free market.  \n\nThis goes hand in hand with the rejection of authority - and religious people believe in a divine authority far more powerful and important than an Earthly government.  Thus, they do not trust their government to have a hand in more things than the bare minimum, and their allegiance is to God, not the government. ", "Your question includes a false premise. Most religions vote Democrat.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nNot sure why other people are trying to prove a falsehood.", "I don't think the difference is in how religious the people on either side of the political spectrum are. In the US the difference is that the Right Wing operates in the name of religious righteousness for political advantage, while the left wing tends to avoid mixing the two.\n\nThe reason is that the right wing is currently operating under a principle of exclusion while the left wing is trying to be inclusive. It's identity politics. \n\nThe problem with the left (this time around) is that part of their previous coalition felt that they were trying so hard to be everything to everyone that they felt they were being ignored, so they jumped to the anti-establishment candidate, who had aligned himself with the right wing. \n", "The scope of your question is very broad. What does right-wing and left-wing mean in this context? \n\nRight wing politics embodies a wide spectrum of ideas that most of the time have little to do with each other. For example, you have the social conservatives who want to preserve  what they see as traditional values. Then you have the fiscal conservatives who favour deregulation and lower taxes. And then you have the libertarians, the nationalist, and so forth. There is considerable diversity on both the left and the right, partly because the terms \"left\" and \"right\" are so loosely defined. \n\nAs for whether the \"central figures\" of major religions are left-wing, that is debatable. In fact, I don't think you can classify many religious figures as either left or right wing at all. Using Jesus as an example, he specifically mentioned that his kingdom is of \"not of this world\", and that he is not especially concerned with the affairs of earthly kingdoms. ", "they actually arent.  I just collected thousands of data for a class that can prove it even. you are confusing this with why are those who connect religion and politics being right wing. mainline protestant, black protestant, and catholics (aside from the abortion issue) are all left wing mostly. they make up most of US religion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "208999", "title": "why are we trying so hard to visit the mars, when the venus is only half that far away?", "selftext": "In the last several years the only news from the NASA were about the mars. But I did some googleing and found out, that the venus is only about half the distance away than the mars ([Source](_URL_0_))\n\nIs there something special about the mars (like high probability of water, etc.) or why aren't we trying to reach the venus first?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/208999/eli5_why_are_we_trying_so_hard_to_visit_the_mars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg0oj1h", "cg0ojme", "cg0okjx", "cg0oluc", "cg0pzmr", "cg0q6lb", "cg0rgaa", "cg0s8m4", "cg0s9uo", "cg0t1hd", "cg0tjb6", "cg0tvz6", "cg0uld9", "cg0uqw5", "cg0xk4x", "cg0xlre"], "score": [73, 6, 25, 12, 4, 3, 22, 3, 3, 3, 19, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Mars has a surface rather similar to Earth\u2019s. Granted, there is no comparable atmosphere, but as a landing site for rovers and such it is perfect.\n\nVenus is gaseous and stormy. And HOT!", "Because the [atmosphere on Venus](_URL_0_) is incredibly hostile. We did send [probes](_URL_1_) to survey the planet.", "Mars offers the possibility of human habitation. It has a comparable day length to ours, the presence of water, and, looking ahead, seems able to be terraformed. Venus is not and will never be able to support human life. Its atmosphere is corrosive and so thick, standing on the surface you would experience the same pressures you would at the bottom of a sea. Not to mention the temperatures on the surface are hot enough to melt lead.\n\nVenus is so hostile, even robotic probes we have sent there have only operated for minutes before being destroyed.", "Venus is too hot. We sent probes there in the 70s and they melted after a few hours of being on the surface. We know that Venus was once like the Earth but had a runaway greenhouse effect making it inhospitable for anything to survive there. Mars is less extreme and easier to study, even though it's much further away than Venus. ", "the longest lived probe to reach the surface of venus lasted under 2 hours before being a combination of corroded, crushed, and melted.", " > venus first\n\nVenus's surface temperature is hot enough to melt led, and ignite clothing (if their was oxygen to burn it). The pressure on Venus's surface is around ~1395psi (93x that of earth). \n\nMars is far easier to build ships that will survive on it's surface.", "Venus may be closer using a distance measure, it takes almost the same energy to get to Mars, or just a little more.  \n\nIt's too complicated to easily summarize, but in a nutshell, a spaceship has to use its engines (or something else, see below) to speed up and slow down in order to change orbits. It transitions from Earth orbit to an orbit that's free of Earth and going around the sun, and it must enter an orbit around Mars or Venus, essentially matching their orbits around the sun.  In addition to engines, there's the possibility of using Mars's thin and Venus's horrifyingly thick atmosphere for aerobraking to help slow down and \"capture\" into orbit around the planet, so it's possible to do slowdowns like this without engines.  However, it does mean lugging a heat shield around.\n\nYou can see [this delta-V chart](_URL_0_), which works like a subway map. The numbers next to each leg are like the fare one must pay to cover that leg.  Legs with the red arrow mean that aerobraking is possible, so maybe you don't have to pay the full amount (which is paid in fuel and engine-wear).\n\nFrom a raw numbers standpoint, one can get to the surface of Mars and back for about the same deltaV that one gets from to the *orbit* of Venus*.  That big 27 next to Venus is what it takes to get from the surface of Venus to orbit around Venus-- 27 km/s, or roughly 3 times the delta-V of getting from the Earth's surface to Earth orbit.  Of course, you bring a much smaller ship to Venus than you do from Earth, and there are tricks, like using balloons to carry the ship up before it takes off, and such. \n\nBut it's way more complicated than a trip to Mars, where people can walk around outside and spaceships won't be crushed and all that.\n\nTL;DR: Earth is moving at 67,000 mph around the sun. Venus is moving at 78,000 mph around the sun. Mars moves at 54,000 mph around the sun. A rocket must use engines to change the speed at which it goes around the sun, and we're talking 11,000 (V) vs 13,000 (M) miles per hour difference. Considering how much easier Mars is to be around in all the other ways, the energy difference is chump-change.\n\nEdit: typos", "Because we require more vespene gas.", "* Venus is nasty, with a hellishly hot and caustic atmosphere that makes it unlikely an probe will live very long\n* once you escape the Earth's gravitational influence, you are basically coasting, so distance isn't as much of an issue...you wait almost as long for the planets to line up as you do actually taking the trip", "Venus is very deadly and a lot of things stop working at 462 \u00b0C and high pressure.", "THE MARS  \nTHE VENUS", "It took me too long to figure out the, \"The mars\" thing...", "There are several reasons. First of all Mars isn't *that* much further. The closest Mars gets to Earth is 35 million miles, while Venus can get 26 million miles. \n\nSecondly Venus' surface is almost impossible to explore because of the high pressure and heat (probes sent there last only an hour or so), and it's also thought that Venus was entirely covered by volcanic eruptions fairly recently which would cover most of the surface in new rock. Mars' surface is easy to explore and old, so will contain a good geological record of the planet's history.\n\nNow one interesting thing about Venus is that while the surface is completely inhospitable, 50km above the surface [its atmosphere is the most Earth-like in the entire solar system](_URL_0_), with a pressure of 1 atm and temperature between 0-50 degrees C. There are ideas to create floating habitats there, but again because you can't do any research on the surface scientists are more excited about going to Mars because there is more science potential there.", "Someone has pointed out women are from Venus. \nOthers have pointed out how hostile corrosive and hellish it is. \nApparently probes have lasted no more than two hours before being completely destroyed and mangled. \n\nApparently Venus is the feminist home planet. ", "Venus is about 850 degrees, the atmosphere is about 92 times the earth, so it'll crush you like a grape, and the air is made up of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. Read that again.. the *air* is sulfuric acid.  Did I mention it's full of active volcanos spewing lava everywhere and non stop lightning storms?  In short.. Venus is a deathtrap.. much like all women.  ", "Venus is so hot that all the spacecraft we've sent to its surface have melted in a matter of hours.  If I remember correctly, the average temperature on Venus is roughly 1200 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's literally impossible to put anything on the surface, let alone a human, for long enough to study it.\n\nMars, on the other hand, is actually capable of supporting life.  Its atmosphere is similar to ours, the temperature ranges from -200 degrees to +60 Fahrenheit, and there is a substantial supply of water, iron, and many other materials on the planet."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.planetsedu.com/distances-between-the-planets/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_explorations_of_Venus#Early_landings"], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5khqt4", "title": "How do computers simulate probability distributions?", "selftext": "Say I want to draw random values from a Gaussian distribution. How does a program generate random values such that they follow the desired distribution?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5khqt4/how_do_computers_simulate_probability/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbocch2", "dbofdz3"], "score": [5, 7], "text": ["If you have a source of uniformly distributed random numbers (often a pseudo-random generator like the Mersenne Twister is good enough; though you need a good way to transform the integer output into uniform floating point, which comes with a number of gotchas) you can use for example the [Box-Muller transform](_URL_0_) to transform the uniform distribution into a normal distribution.\n\nThere are algorithms for transforming uniform random numbers into many other distributions as well, [some of which are listed here on Wikipedia](_URL_1_).", "So the probability density function (PDF) for your random variable X  is P(x) = (1/\u03c3\u221a(2\ud835\udf0b)) exp(-(x - \u00b5)^(2)/2\u03c3^(2)), where P(x) is the probability density for X = x (mean = \u00b5; standard deviation = \u03c3).  The associated cumulative distribution function (CDF) is\n\nF(x) = 1/2 [1 + erf(x - \u00b5)/\u03c3\u221a2] ,\n\nwhere erf is the [\"error function\"](_URL_1_).  F(x) is the probability that X lies between -\u221e and x (so F(x) always lies between 0 and 1).\n\nYou want the inverse of this function, which is:\n\nx(F) = \u00b5 + \u03c3\u221a2 erf^(-1)(2F - 1) ,\n\nwhere erf^(-1) is the [\"inverse error function\"](_URL_0_), which can be approximated by a unique Maclaurin series.\n\nNow use a random number generator (which gives a number between 0 and 1 according to a rule which, for most practical purposes, approximates a flat probability distribution over the [0,1] interval) to generate a value for F.  Plug that value for F into the equation above and Bob's your uncle."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box%E2%80%93Muller_transform", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-uniform_random_numbers"], ["http://mathworld.wolfram.com/InverseErf.html", "http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Erf.html"]]}
{"q_id": "4vvdva", "title": "why do we begin to hallucinate after a lack of sleep or severe dehydration?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vvdva/eli5_why_do_we_begin_to_hallucinate_after_a_lack/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d61r7sk", "d61rmzk", "d61s8ac", "d61t6kr", "d61tszv", "d61ume3", "d61uxld", "d61y100"], "score": [2, 327, 38, 5, 107, 6, 2, 21], "text": ["I too would like to know. I've had a few instances in the past where I had lack of sleep and saw hallucinations of dogs walking around.", "In your brain, you possess something known as the I-function. The I-function is something that is known to act as a screen between reality and what we perceive as reality. Hallucinating people have trouble differentiating between the two because their I-function distorts reality and what we perceive as reality. \n\nThe I-function relies on neurons to be effective. When you are awake for extended periods of time, your neurons do not get a break. As neurons become more taxed, a person has a difficult time differentiating between reality and what is perceived as reality, causing hallucinations. \n\nWater also provides energy for neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters relay signals between neurons in the brain. Without proper energy, neurotransmitters can misfire, resulting in the brain making you believe it is being stimulated when in reality there is nothing there, causing you to hallucinate. \n\nI've been researching this topic for about an hour, and there's not much info, but this is what I could find and infer. ", "We're not entirely sure. There are a number of hypotheses, some of which have been addressed in this thread, but we don't actually know the mechanism behind these hallucinations. Hallucinations are essentially just the part of the brain that normally responds to sensory inputs becoming active even in the absence of those inputs. There are certain circuits that are supposed cause that type of activity, like those involved in dreaming. It could be that they become partially active during severe lack of sleep or dehydration. ", "When i used to stay awake for 50+ hours it felt a vhs being written over. Youd just lose hours in an instant. What was that medically?", "There are many types of hallucinations. To explain why we hallucinate during sleep deprivation, I'll refer specifically to the visual system and visual hallucinations. \n\nSight doesn't just involve your eyes, the brain is a huge part of the process. Your eyes take in light and turn it into electrical energy. The brain organizes and interprets that energy, creating your perception of the world around you. \n\nThe brain is divided into many sections, all with specific purposes. Some of those sections process simple information, features such as: size, shape, color. This is referred to as bottom-up (or data-driven) processing, as it uses the most simple and smallest pieces of information available to build a picture of what you're seeing. Other sections process more complex information, using your past experiences to make the best guess about the meaning behind that simple information. This is referred to as top-down (or stimulus-driven) processing, because your brain uses what it already knows to complete the picture. \n\nOptimally, vision is an equal combination of both bottom-up and top-down processing. In fact, most of the brain's processing can be explained using this \"dual-route\" system.\n\nSleep deprivation impairs the brain's ability to process information. It slows thinking, impairs judgement, and increases the chance that your brain will make errors. There are many reasons as to why: in short, your body needs sleep to recover and conserve energy and your brain needs it to re-organize and consolidate information (like create memories). It also relies on something called a circadian rhythm, which regulates your alertness. Sleep loss increases the stress on your body and restricts your blood flow. Your brain receives less blood, slowing it down, and the overall stress on your system reduces alertness, making it more difficult for your brain to focus its attention. \n\nHallucinations are thought of as visual misperceptions, or errors in processing. Why do they happen? We don't *really* know. But based on what we do know, we can make some guesses. Either the brain is over-relying on bottom-up information at the expense of top-down correction, or the top-down system is making guesses by \"filling in the blanks\" about bottom-up information that isn't there. The result is a misperception, which is simply put, an error in processing. While sleep deprived, you're more prone to making these errors.", "When you are sleep deprived, your brain has a build up of neurotransmitters and various chemical \"waste\" outside cells that a magical sleep fairy comes and washes away when you sleep. The buildup will alter transmission of chemicals between cells, providing the hallucinations.\n\nWhen certain neurotransmitters build up in areas responsible for sensory reception and perception (mainly dopamine, glutamate, acetylcholine, and serotonin areas), this can result in hallucinatory or altered perceptions. This includes visual distortions of object drifting or flowing, perspective size, and a visual haze filter over your vision, and even full blown \"I'm seeing something that totally isn't there\".\n\nWith dehydration, its actually the same idea, but altered a bit. The psychological effects of less extreme forms of dehydration are from hypertonicity, or having a high concentration of electrolytes and neurotransmitters relative to the normal level of water in brain. Think of it like putting a packet of sugar in a gallon of water and a packet of sugar in a coffee cup of water. Which one will be sweeter? The higher concentration of sugar in the coffee mug will have a greater kick to the taste buds than lower concentration in the gallon. The same thing is happening in your brain with the chemicals that signal back and forth between cells. There are more chemicals (neurotransmitters and electrolytes) available relative to the amount of water they reside in, so it makes their trip to the next cell shorter in a sense.", "It is a form of delirium.\n\nDelirium is a medical term. The condition is also known as acute confusional state. Doctors use it to describe patients who have lost parts or all of their ability to focus attention. People who suffer from it may see things, or have problems problems concentrating, remembering things, or reality testing. Delirium is a medical symptom. It is not a disease.\n\nAny insult to your body's natural state can cause a delirium. It is more common in people who have older or compromised brains.\n\nA delirium can have many causes. The most common ones include:\n\n* Injuries to the head or the nervous system\n* Mental illness\n* Trauma or shock\n* Fever or pain\n* Certain substances found in drugs or poisons\n* Problems with metabolism. \n* Not having enough water, or food, or sleep\n* Withdrawal symptoms (when people try to get away from a drugs or alcohol addiction). \n\nThe delirium associated with alcohol withdrawal is called delirium tremens.\n", "ITT: nothing but shitty speculation for a post with 1487 upvotes.\n\nCan we get an actual sleep scientist in here, please? Or a neurologist?  Please? \n\nThe current top post I see mentions something called the \"I-function\" which [googling](_URL_0_) shows exactly two disagreeing results that are medically related, with 8 non-medical results. Even the first medical article which the top post seems to reference has absolutely **zero** references to any published scientific works, and instead is a collection of **class group discussions** including a \"!!!!!!!\" (I'm not joking this is a quote from the top article about \"I-function\"). As if six exclamation points weren't enough to explain the extensively studied wonders of the \"I-function\".\n\nIn short: nobody has any clue here, and this thread blows. Someone please save it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/search?q=i-function&amp;oq=i-function&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.1806j0j1&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8"]]}
{"q_id": "f4um8n", "title": "Why do Tamil and Korean share so many cognates and other shared words", "selftext": "I find this interesting and I was discussing it on a language learning subreddit because we were discussing language origins and how they evolved. I speak tamil and was once speaking to my grandfather in it at the Seoul Airport when once of the security guards said that I speak very good Korean. Initially I thought this was just funny and a coincidence, but I was surprised to see that there are numerous words which are similar or identical between the two languages, including the words for I, Mom, Dad, Grass, Fight, etc. \n\nI can\u2019t rule out that this is coincidence, and upon some reading (the wikipedia article for the Dravidian-Korean language theory, lol), it seems like people have noted and proposed similarities but no historical link exists to justify the theory\u2019s accuracy. \n\nSo are these similarities simply coincidental, or is there some historical link between Dravidian India and Korea that exists? Moreover, if the link does exist, why and how did these languages develop similarly? If it doesn\u2019t, why do they have this much coincidence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f4um8n/why_do_tamil_and_korean_share_so_many_cognates/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fhw4zwp"], "score": [48], "text": ["The similarities are coincidental. It is not unusual to see chance similarity between unrelated languages, especially in shorter words.\n\nThe way we compare languages in historical linguistics is by using the **comparative method**. The comparative method is quite simple to explain, but it takes a lot of time and training to learn to use it properly, because it's very easy to abuse its power and get weird results, like a link between Korean and Tamil. The method itself works by looking at **regular** and **recurrent** sound correspondences. Let's break that down.\n\nRegular means that in two or more languages, the correspondence is always the same. So for example, English /\u03b8/ corresponds to German /d/ in word-initial position:\n\n|English|German|\n|---|---|\n|three|drei|\n|thunder|Donner|\n|thistle|Distel|\n\nThis is regular, and we would expect this correspondence to hold for all cognates between the two languages. You can't have /\u03b8/ corresponding to /d/ in one word, but then /f/ in another without an adequate explanation.^1\n\nRecurrent means that the correspondence should occur multiple times within the dataset. This is usually the biggest problem with long-range comparisons like the one you mentioned. All too often, many \"correspondences\" appear only once, in which case they might as well be completely random.\n\nAnother very important detail is that **all sounds have to be accounted for**. Quite commonly in these fringe theories, they only compare a part of a word and just disregard the rest. That is a huge methodological flaw, and greatly increases your chances of finding a connection where there isn't one (which I guess is the point for people who abuse the comparative method like that). If you say there is a fused affix in the root, you must prove that the affix indeed existed and was productive. You cannot just lop off half a word (or even a single sound) willy-nilly, that is not how the comparative method is used.\n\nAnother thing pertaining to the Korean-Tamil hypothesis but also quite common in other such comparisons. Tamil is uncontroversially part of the Dravidian language family. When comparing language families at a higher level, we only compare data from reconstructed proto-languages, and not from daughter languages. Why? Because there are 80 languages in the Dravidian family (according to Glottolog), and that hugely increases the probability of seeing a chance resemblance if you can just cherrypick words from any language in the family. Imagine if you're comparing two families with over 1000 languages each, you'll have chance resemblances left and right. So if a language is demonstrably and incontrovertibly part of a larger linguistic family, you compare your data to the proto-language, not the daughter languages.\n\nLastly, semantics. You have to be *really* careful where word meanings are concerned, because that's another way to hugely increase your chances of finding random noise and attributing meaning to it. When you're first comparing two languages (or language families), you look for words with **identical** meanings, which also have regular and recurrent correspondences in all of their sounds. Only after a plausible connection is established and the sound correspondences worked out, you can allow for a limited amount of semantic shift, assuming that all sounds correspondences are regular. If you skip this step, you're allowing almost anything to be compared. You should see some of the mental hoops people jump through to justify a connection. Not too long ago when answering a similar question on r/linguistics, I went through a linked article where the author was comparing the words \"salmon\" and \"to fly\". Their explanation? Well see, when salmon spawn, they travel upriver, and sometimes jump through shallows, and this jumping gives the appearance of flying. So basically, if you do not control for semantics, it's a free-for-all where anything goes.\n\nReal historical linguistics is boring. It relies on meticulous analysis and most new discoveries are pretty \"duh!\". There are people who cannot resist the temptation of being the first to make a great discovery, and do not mind abusing the comparative method to do it, which of course invalidates all their efforts.\n\n_______\n\n1. You can have different correspondences in different environments (e.g. word-initial, between vowels, after a stressed vowel, etc). Sometimes you come across seeming exceptions, which may be explained through lexical borrowing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "264j36", "title": "Why are skulls so popular in Mesoamerican art?", "selftext": "I read that early Mesoamerican societies viewed the skull as representing life as well as death. Perhaps it's just difficult for me to wrap my head around, but celebrating skulls as a symbol of life seems like a difficult leap to make. Is there any more to it than that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/264j36/why_are_skulls_so_popular_in_mesoamerican_art/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chnpcjc", "cho9vjn"], "score": [20, 2], "text": ["We see the skull in a variety of contexts across cultures and periods of Mesoamerica. As such, it has a variety of meanings.  I did just read a great chapter (1) about the [*tzompantli*](_URL_1_) \"skull racks\" often seen on Mesoamerican ball courts: it talks about their symbolic role in the cycle of resurrection, which involves, as you said, both life and death.\n\nOur best version of this resurrection cycle comes from the Popol Vuh. In it, Hun Hunaphu and his twin challenge the lords of the underworld to   a ballgame. They lose, and are decapitated and dismembered. Hun Hunaphu's head is placed in a dead calabash tree, which then grows the first fruit. He later spits into the hand of the young moon goddess, impregnating her. She gives birth to the more famous, second set of Hero Twins: Hunaphu and Xblanque. They again challenge the lords, first losing and facing decapitation, but their heads are replaced with gourds from the same calabash tree. Through trickery they defeat the lords of the underworld. In earlier versions of the myth, they then restore Hun Hunaphu, as the Maize God, to life. \n\nHow is this represented in the archaeological record? The Maize God's ressurection is often seen in [Maya art](_URL_3_). (Note the central skull.) Disjointed human bones can be found buried beneath ball courts. Ballcourt markers also often feature a quatrefoil pattern [(see here, pg. 28)](_URL_2_) that represent a portal between worlds. In creating the tzompantli, what one may call skull *trees*, the Mesoamericans were representing this myth of resurrection.\n\nAnother perspective (2) on *tzompantli* is that they were simple expressions of power, at least for the post-Classic Maya. Classic Maya [monuments](_URL_0_) showed a city's ruler capturing an elite from another city. Both captive and captor have an array of names and titles. If they defeated someone important, they wanted to show just how important they were, since that makes them look all the better. In later times, this form of propaganda became less personalized- hence the *tzompantli*.\n\nIf you've got any specific examples of art you were interested in, I'm sure I or someone else could help you.\n\n* 1: Ruben Mendoza, \"The Divine Gourd Tree: Tzompantli Skull Racks, Decapitation Rituals, and Human Trophies in Ancient Mesoamerica\" in *Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians*\n\n* 2: Virginia Miller,  \"Skeletons, Skulls, and Bones in the Art of Chichen Itza\" in *New perspectives on human sacrifice and ritual body treatment in ancient Maya society*", "Your question focuses on early Mesoamerican art, but when you look towards more modern Mesoamerican expressions of skulls, it ties into religious beliefs and particularly folk religious beliefs quite a bitt. The skull carries death with it, and death is a powerful force in life. It provides protection in all forms, grants favors, and is petitioned for blessings or even revenge. A perfect example is the representations of Santisima Muerte/Holy Death in Mexico, which is a folk saint represented by a human skull or full skeleton dressed in robes or often a wedding dress. The lore around her says she's a Mesoamerican death deity basically in disguise (Mayan, I think). Her presence isn't feared, though she is appointed considerable power.\n\nI hope this isn't too far afield for your question!\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/CMHI/detail.php?num=8&amp;site=Yaxchilan&amp;type=Lintel", "http://www.americanegypt.com/feature/cities/img/chichenimages/tzomp.jpg", "http://www.caracol.org/include/files/chase/Holden09.pdf", "http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=1892"], []]}
{"q_id": "2jo507", "title": "How do hospitals get rid of dead bodies without other patients noticing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2jo507/how_do_hospitals_get_rid_of_dead_bodies_without/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cldm577", "clff26p", "cligvbt"], "score": [17, 3, 3], "text": ["This might not be the usual way how US-American hospitals deal with deceased patients, but it's probably similar: Only few patients die unexpectedly, so most will be transferred to a single room, where we can try to create a calmer atmosphere for them and their relatives, and also not have other patients around. If they wish for it, we let them and their relatives at their rooms for several hours, after the patient has died. Otherwise the staff tidies them up, and discretely moves them to the mortuary at the institute of pathology in the basement of the hospital, e.g. in the evening or during the night, with the staff lift and so on. My hospital consists of several buildings connected by an extensive underground system, that allows us to quickly bring one patient to another part of the hospital, but probably only few patients are aware of. At the mortuary, the bodies can either be cooled down until the morticians arrive, or to another secluded room where the relatives can have a wake if this is their wish. The mortuary has its own access for the hearse so other visitors wouldn't notice.\n\nEDIT: clarification", "In my hospital, the morgue has a special cart. \n\nTo a casual glance it looks just like all the other wheeled hospital beds, made up with sheet and blanket. But the mattress is just a thin cover that slides easily the side. Below it, the inside of the bed is hollow, with a platform that can be raised or lowered.\n\nA deceased patient is transferred to this cart, the platform is lowered, and then the false mattress is replaced. The whole thing can then be wheeled past visitors and other patients without distressing anyone. \n\nFor hospital personnel, there are several indicators that make it impossible to confuse this cart with a real hospital bed, but my employer says I'm not allowed to disclose those details. (I think their reasons are silly, but I would like to keep my job.)", "I once attended a cardiac arrest in a radiology suite. The resus was unsuccessful and the guy died. \n\nUnfortunately the layout was such that we couldn't get the standard morgue trolley in the area to collect him. Neither could we manoeuvre a bed in. \n\nWe ended up sitting him up on a wheelchair. Put a hat and a large oxygen mask on him, then wheeled him down the corridor to the morgue whilst making comments like \"bless him he's tired out\". \n\nManaged to get away with it, no one walking past gave him a second look.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1eem7n", "title": "what does it mean if you get more than one life sentence?", "selftext": "E.g.,The Chardon High School shooter received three life sentences after murdering three students\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eem7n/eli5_what_does_it_mean_if_you_get_more_than_one/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9zgg43", "c9zgjq4", "c9zglqz", "c9zgm35"], "score": [6, 2, 5, 5], "text": ["If one count is overturned they still stay in jail.", "it means you're gonna be in jail for a long time", "Multiple life sentences are given to keep people in prison even if they manage to get other sentences over turned. For example you kill someone and site their car get a life sentence and 20 years, but you find a good lawyer that finds a technicality and gets you off of that life sentence, now you're just serving 20 years. ", "If you get a conviction over turned, and you have great behavior in jail so your sentence is reduced by 1/3, you're still going to die in prison."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1krr73", "title": "Why didn't Middle Francia (Lotharingia) evolve a distinct cultural identity and language like West Francia (French) and East Francia (German) did?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1krr73/why_didnt_middle_francia_lotharingia_evolve_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbrzr25", "cbs1v4d", "cbs427j"], "score": [22, 3, 16], "text": ["Northern Lotharingia was divided between East and West Francia very shortly after becoming independent, as it was almost completely indefensible, the northern part of which eventually evolving into what is now the Netherlands. The level of distinction between modern Dutch and German culture is largely a matter of perspective.\n\nSouthern Lotharingia, which was not immediately conquered by either Francia, became the medieval Kingdom of Italy, before eventually being conquered and divided by the Holy Roman Empire, consisting primarily of the East Francian powerbase.", "Middle Francia suffered from difficult and non defensible boundaries, difficult and fragmented communications routes, and different cultures.  It is quite remarkable that so much of it remained for so long, and so much remains today.  Still existing remnants are Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Monaco and  San Marino.  A powerful remnant in the Middle Ages, ( now vanished) was Burgundy.\n\nI think you could say that distinct cultural elements and languages still remain after all these centuries, though those cultures are not as uniform or strong as French or German.", "If we discount Italy, which we all acknowledge as having a distinct cultural identity and language(s) separate from the rest of Middle Francia, you'll [see from the map](_URL_1_) that both West Francia and Middle Francia overlap former Roman areas, whereas East Francia does not.  \n\nCombined with the written vernacular evidence from the [Oaths of Strasbourg](_URL_0_), this explains why the regions of west of the Rhine developed a Romance language whereas East Francia developed along a Germanic one: they evolved from the existing languages of their respective region.\n\nAs for Lotharingia, something you have to keep in mind is that the reason for the unusual division of the three Francias is because Charles, Lothair, and Louis were each given a piece of the central Frankish heartlands along the Paris - Rhineland axis (in order for each to continue being a political player in that central region), as well as the outlying regions where they had the strongest base of support.  \n\nBecause of this, the unusual division along that Paris-Rhine corridor was particularly artificial for Middle Francia.  Combined with its short life span (approximately 30 years), it's pretty easy to see why it didn't develop a distinct identity, whereas the West Francia / East Francia division became permanent into the modern day after the death of Charles the Fat.\n\nFor those who would argue that Dutch and Belgium are distinct identities, I would say they did not coalesce as identities explicitly because of the short existence of Lotharingia.  They either existed before Carolingian conquest, or developed afterward.\n\ntl;dr - Frankish Lotharingia (non-Italian) was artificially demarcated, and too short lived to form a distinct identity like West Francia and East Francia later did.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_strasbourg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Partage_de_l%27Empire_carolingien_au_Trait%C3%A9_de_Verdun_en_843.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "2iula6", "title": "why does human genitalia differ so much in size between individuals when compared to other body parts?", "selftext": "For example, it is not super rare for you to have two individuals with about the same build, one with a 3 inch penis and the other with a 7 inch penis. Alternatively, you may see two females of the same build, one with an A cup and one with a C cup.\nHowever you would almost never see two individuals with about the same build save one had legs twice as long as the other, a head twice as long, or fingers twice as long.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iula6/eli5_why_does_human_genitalia_differ_so_much_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl5moa7", "cl5ni9y", "cl5p1ef", "cl5pj23", "cl5q17s", "cl5qu10", "cl5w412", "cl5zvdv", "cl62roq"], "score": [5, 8, 75, 11, 41, 7, 2, 8, 2], "text": ["I think your image is being slightly skewed by push-up bras, implants, and just modification in general. Also, i'm pretty sure 90% of men have about a 6 inch penis", "Gay guy here - never met (read: slept with) a guy with a penis smaller than 5 inches or larger than 9. The guy with the 9inch kinda skews my results as the rest of them are 7 and below. Penises don't really vary that much tbh. Not in length any way.\n\nPlus, in all the porn I've seen, there's not too much variation in size. They're just generally larger by default because it's porn.", "Genetically, our collective evolution led to some significant constants. I guarantee you that a set of guys with super-long fingers or giant legs would find it much harder to survive in an early-civilization society, for a variety of scientific reasons that are beyond the scope of this question. However, something that didn't directly impact survival wouldn't be weeded out or overwhelmingly propagated throughout humanity, because it doesn't matter. Guy A has a 4-incher, guy B has a 6-incher... so? They aren't using that thing to find a mate. Since women have held less power historically, they couldn't really *choose* what guy they wanted per se - and even if they could, we have no idea whether penis size was something they were really interested in. So unless your penis was basically unusable (either too small or too big to insert semen into a woman) your penis genes survived just like everyone else's. Same for things like skin tone and detailed facial structure - unless society really cares about that stuff, your genes will survive. It's not going to ruin your genetic propagation.\n\nBTW, just as a disclaimer: size is not 100% genetic. ", "It doesn't.  I'm sure you see just as much variation in hand size, head diameter ect.  ", "You should probably ask this in /r/askscience, because here you're going to get a lot of talking out of one's ass.", "I think a lot of it is hormonal (both pre- and post-birth.) Unlike most other body parts, secondary sex characteristics (like breast and penis size) are affected by hormones in the  uterus and during puberty, and those can fluctuate quite a bit between individuals. Most other \"size\" traits are more gene-dominated, so they're a bit more regular.\n \nThat said, I have no expertise on this. This is definitely an AskScience or Askbiology question.", "Genitals are organs just like any other. A seven foot guy could have a really small liver, for example. ", "There are some modern theories that when considered in terms of other primate sexual competition provide a potential understanding.  I dislike sharing the idea because it can be very easily misconstrued as racist, but in reality it makes sense based on the history and time frames involved in human evolution.\n\nFirst, consider that other primates do not have long penises, but rather larger testicles for producing more semen.  This occurs in many species, but please, read the piece here about Primates. [Primate Balls](_URL_1_)\n\nHopefully you see the power of sperm competition in mating systems, which means you understand the testicle size now.  But since your question is regarding penis length, read this interesting factoid.\n[Penis Shape](_URL_0_) (Summary incase title didn't make sense:  Our penis shape scoops out semen from the vagina.  Note: Do not use this as birth control)\n\nAs mating patterns changed, sexual and natural pressures on the size of testicles changes.  Depending on the type of the culture and mating patterns (we are talking WAY before any form of civilized society, pre-history, and thus not-reflective of anything existing today), a size and shape race developed that would result in modern shaped penises.  This is further evidenced by the fact our sexual duration is much longer than other primates.  The more we thrust, the more already present semen we remove from the vagina, and thus we increase the likelihood of our semen (which is moderate in volume because of decreased testicle size) being the victorious semen.   Ultimately, bigger penises with a specific shape would be more successful in high sexual competition areas, and have no disadvantage in purely pair-bonded situations.  Therefore it would selected for over time.\n\nAs cultures developed and penis size no longer because a necessary factor in mating, the genes were not selected for or against, and they persisted to present day.\n\n**TL:DR** **Sword fights**\n\n", "They don't. People have fingers, arms, legs, ears, jawline, thighs, bones, organs inches in difference. Why are the genitals special to you?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=6&amp;ved=0CEUQFjAF&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F228466536_The_human_penis_as_a_semen_displacement_device%2Flinks%2F0c96051c1b02e8d208000000&amp;ei=7T44VP_bIPXfsAS9gYGoDg&amp;usg=AFQjCNESsRNSJzJxPgQw27KAr_QTo3GBmg&amp;bvm=bv.77161500,d.cWc&amp;cad=rja", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamous_pairing_in_animals#Testis_size"], []]}
{"q_id": "4t9rr5", "title": "Star to Planet?", "selftext": "I'm curious. I read somewhere that gas giants, if large enough, could eventually collapse into a small star. I want to know if the reverse can happen and a step further. Can a star lose mass somehow, become a gas giant and then condense into a terrestrial planet?\n\nEdit: And what would it look like if it could exist?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4t9rr5/star_to_planet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5fozjh", "d5fpasf"], "score": [4, 8], "text": ["Hi, I may be able to be of use.\n\nStars can lose mass, indeed the sun is losing mass as we speak, but it's such a small percentage that it is never going to reduce the sun's mass enough to stop hydrogen burning.\n\nThe continuum between planets and stars goes (broadly speaking): planet (mass < ~13MJ), brown dwarf (~13MJ <  mass  < ~80MJ), star (mass > ~80MJ). Where 'MJ' is the mass in Jupiter masses (note, these limits are guidelines and vary depending on the exact compositions, models, etc.). Stars are defined as performing hydrogen fusion, and brown dwarfs instead perform deuterium fusion. So, to go from a star to a planet you would have to lose at least about 67MJ (from 80 to 13), or 84% of it's mass. I am not aware of any objects that have undergone any transformation like this.\n\nThere is a type of star that loses significant amounts of mass, the mass-transferring member of a [cataclysmic variable](_URL_0_), which is made up of a white-dwarf star that 'steals' mass from it's companion. I haven't heard of any CVs that have undergone such an extreme transformation (and it would be big news) but it's not completely beyond the realms of possibility.\n\nHope that's helpful.", "There is a theoretical type of stellar remnant called a [black dwarf](_URL_0_), which is a white dwarf that has cooled enough to reach thermal equilibrium with the cosmic background radiation. It would have a cool, solid surface and a thin atmosphere, so it would be vaguely planet-like. However it would not be considered a type of planet due to the way in which it forms. It would also be much more massive than any known planet, as the [smallest known white dwarf](_URL_1_) is about 175 times the mass of Jupiter (the [most massive known planet](_URL_2_) is only about 28 Jupiter masses).\n\nIt is believed that no black dwarfs exist yet because the time it takes them to reach thermal equilibrium is much longer than the current age of the universe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysmic_variable_star"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf#Composition_and_structure", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanet_extremes#Planetary_characteristics"]]}
{"q_id": "xvpuf", "title": "Wed. AMA on the Middle Ages: Carolingians to Crusades ( &  Apocalypse in between)", "selftext": "Hi everyone! My pleasure to do the 2nd AMA here. \n\nI'll keep this brief but my particular research areas are the early and high European Middle Ages (roughly 750-1250 CE), though I teach anything related to the Mediterranean World between 300-1600. I'm particulary interested in religious and intellectual history, how memory relates to history, how legend works, and justifications for sacred violence. But I'm also pursuing research on the relations between Jews and Christians, both in the Middle Ages and today (that weird term \"Judeo-Christianity\"), and echoes of violent medieval religious rhetoric in today's world. In a nutshell, I'm fascinated by how ideas make people do things. \n\nSo, ask me anything about the Crusades, medieval apocalypticism, kingship, medieval biblical commentary in the Middle Ages, the idea of \"Judeo-Christianity,\" why I hate the 19th century, or anything else related to the Middle Ages. \n\n**Brief note on schedule:** I'll be checking in throughout the day, but will disappear for a time in the evening (EST). I'll check back in tonight and tomorrow and try to answer everything I can!\n\n**EDIT:** Thanks for all the questions. I'll answer all I can but if I miss one, please just let me know!\n\n**EDIT (5:11pm EST):**  Off for a bit. I'll be back later to try to answer more questions. Thanks!\n\n**EDIT (9:27pm EST):** I'm back and will answer things until bedtime (but I'll check in again tomorrow)!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xvpuf/wed_ama_on_the_middle_ages_carolingians_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5pzahs", "c5pzh13", "c5pzjgl", "c5pzmlq", "c5pzoa1", "c5pzrk2", "c5pztzr", "c5pzyq1", "c5pzz4e", "c5pzzjs", "c5pzzs0", "c5q03gc", "c5q06bx", "c5q0act", "c5q0fg3", "c5q0kua", "c5q0qkh", "c5q0sl3", "c5q0tt4", "c5q0ul5", "c5q0um0", "c5q0yea", "c5q0zn0", "c5q169x", "c5q17df", "c5q1brx", "c5q1c1q", "c5q1iru", "c5q20k4", "c5q22ru", "c5q231h", "c5q2446", "c5q264s", "c5q2800", "c5q3rgb", "c5q6knr", "c5qgu1j"], "score": [45, 23, 14, 3, 13, 3, 8, 3, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 6, 3, 13, 4, 12, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 8, 6, 3, 3, 13, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": [" > why I hate the 19th century\n\nArrow to my heart\n\n\nWhy do you hate the 19th century?", "How differently were perceived/justified the crusades against the Albigeois/Cathars compared to the retaking of the Holy Land from the Muslims? Was it simply unacceptable for a territory, viewed as rightfully ~~Catholic~~ *catholic*, to be occupied by heretics?  ", "What degree of autonomy did the lords of France have in the Middle Ages? I've seen it suggested both that they were practically Kings within their realm - absolute rulers within their territory that owed little to their Kings except military service when called - and contrary opinions that this is highly exaggerated.\n\nDid this vary from vassal to vassal? The Dukes of Aquitaine held nearly half of France at one time while others would have held far less - I imagine they didn't both hold the same amount of power. How did this progress from the relatively weak monarchy of the early Capetians to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV (I'm sorry that this is out of period for you, but I'm sure that much of the consolidation of power into the monarchy happened long before him)?", "thanks very much for doing this AMA is nice to get free rein to ask a lecturer (i presume?) questions on the crusades. I have plenty, but to start with, where do you see crusade research going in the future, in regards to specific areas?\nAlso do you think there is any room left for research into the development of papal use and justification of crusade? I'm thinking particularly of ad hoc expansion of the crusading idea by Innocent III among others.\n\nedit: clarity", "I'm curious if you could comment more on:\n\n > how memory relates to history, how legend works\n\nThose sorts of things figure prominently in my own research (at least in my conception of where my research will go), and I'd love to hear more on what you work on there, who you're reading, etc.  Thanks!\n", "My knowledge of Jewish history, especially in relation to Christianity, between the Roman Empire and the high middle ages is limited. When did Jews leave Italy after being brought there by the Romans, how were they viewed by Dark Age Christians, and where did they spread to by the time Constantinople collapsed?", "What do you consider the most important event that occurred during the Middle Ages?", "At what point did the manorial system become common place in france and burgundy?  How did it differ from what came before and after it?  Was the working on the lord's demesne what differeniated a manorial system from simple sharecropping?", "What I would really like to know is whether their short span in the Levant opened Europeans up to the market for Chinese goods. I know it is a bit much to expect that merchants from across the Old World actually made the journey across the old silk roads by themselves, but if anything, I would expect at least one tortoiseshell comb or a silk gown to turn up somewhere.", "Can you explain how the relationship between Jews and Christians (in Europe and in the Levant) changed as a result of the Crusades?\n\nIf I recall correctly, there were pogroms on the way to at least one Crusade, but I also remember reading that Jews and Christians coexisted fairly well in the Holy Land.\n\nDid becoming more acquainted with a group which was much more of an \"other\" - the muslims - change European Christians' views of Jews in Europe?", "Here is a weird question for you: Do you know of any material that discusses the wine making techniques of the cistercians during the period of time that you cover?", "How did commune towns fit into the fabric of feudalism?  Were communes (such as Beaune) still the territory of some lord or were they totally independant once they got a charter?  Did the inhabitants of communes owe any feudal obligations to anyone?", "Could you tell us anything about the music during your period of study? Composers/ how it fit into society, etc?", "Just how backwards (economically, technologically, demographically and militarily) was Western/Northern Europe compared to the Near East and the Middle East at that point in time? How would Southern Europe have compared to either?", "Ohh thank you for doing this! I just have two questions :D\n\n1. How did the Carolingans enforce the sword-export ban? I'm wondering how this ever be efficient considering the rampant smuggling in our technologically advanced time.\n1. Was this ban one of the reasons of why swords became prestige symbols?\n\nThank you in advance ;)", "* 1) I did some cursory reading on the formation of the German State in the Industrial Era, and it talks a lot about pre-existing notions of \"Germanness.\"  To what extend did a German identity manifest itself throughout the period of your expertise, and what secondary effects did these constructs of identity have on the other political powers of Europe at the time?\n\n* 2) I've heard that the Crusades were actually a strong contributing factor for modern banking (what with departing crusaders leaving gold with Italian goldsmiths).  How accurate is that idea?  If inaccurate, what would you say in correction?  If accurate, how did the \"rise of the goldsmiths\" in economic prominence affect the political and social landscape?  Was there resistance to it or was it welcomed?\n\n* 3) What ideas were brought back from the Near East that had a profound impact on the societies of the crusaders?  Were they generally seen as foreign, or happily assimilated?", " > justifications for sacred violence\n\nWoot! Alright, I did a somewhat lengthy paper on Jon Hus. How do you think the Holy Roman Empire should have reacted after his death? Obviously his death was a bit of a screw-up on the Cardinals' parts, but could the whole Revolution have been avoided somehow? Was this a case of justified sacred violence?\n\nAlso, when you define something as sacred violence, do you base it on the expressed motivation of the aggressor? Or do you discount the sacred origins of a violent act when they're clearly secular motivations behind the action as well? \n\nAlso regarding heresy--how doctrinally informed would the average peasant (or whatever) have been? In other words, how susceptible would the population have been to heresy?", "When Hilaire Belloc wrote that the Middle Ages was a brave social experiment in human equality, is that totally crazy or just partially? Can there be at least some merit in this sentence?\n\nWas there a \"besieged city\" mentality around say 750, Vikings attacking from the North, Arab/Berber pirates from the South, Germans and Hungarians from the East?\n\nThe people in the above question felt \"Roman\",  did they still feel like they are defending the Empire?\n\nIsn't Judeo-Christanity just a post-WW2 term created and popularized to combat anti-semitism and elevate Jews into fully accepted members of the Western Civ? I use this term sometimes, but then I say Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman civilization... I find that a good way to say basically \"stuff that determined our culture before we invented modernity\".\n\nSacred violence: were the most well-known heretic massacres (Cathars/Albigens) not primarily because of religious reason but more like because they were also political revolutionaries who threatened the established political-social order?", "I hope this question isn't too broad, but:\n\nAfter doing some family research I found I have a heritage of english knights back in the 1200s to the 1400s. Could you describe the average day for one of these men? \n\nIf this is outside your area, or too broad, don't worry. Just something I've been curious about.", "Was it possible, for a unitary Carolingian empire to survive Charlemagne's death?  Or was it inevitable given the circumstances of that time that it would split into smaller successor kingdoms?  \n\nAlso, how complete was de-urbanization in western europe?  To establish an arbitrary date, I'm thinking 550+, compared to 450 western roman empire.\n\nI have a book from the 1980s on early medieval italy that said at the time there was intense debate as to what constituted urbanization in lombard Italy (and I wonder whether it applied to visigothic spain or frankish gaul), because though there was occupation in former roman towns/cities, there was not trade nor specialization in roles, i.e. they were little more than a cluster of houses inside former city walls.  \n\nWas wondering if that debate was still going on or was settled?", "I'm sorry if this is a broad subject or somewhat outside of your scope, but: feudalism.\n\nI had an excellent French history professor upon a time who talked at great length about French history during *all* periods, and how France affected the nations around it. As such I understand feudalism in England, the Iberian peninsula, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. I'm mainly curious as to the other nations of the world during the Middle Ages.\n\nPopular culture paints a lot of other nations during this time period as feudal. Hungary, for example, as well as Poland and Croatia are frequently portrayed as strongly feudal states, but just how feudal were they, and how did they get to be that way? France affected the nations around it with the Carolingians and their collapse, not to mention the Normans later on (etc.), but how much of an effect did they have on these other states in their development? If France or French culture didn't \"do\" it, how exactly did these states get to be feudal (note that I don't expect an essay, just a brief explanation would be great), and how similar in their feudal structure were they to our traditional Western feudal states?", "This is only slightly directed completely toward history but, if you're familiar with Anne Rice novels, how accurate is she with the time periods that she writes about that are also a part of your expertise?\n\nI've read that she researches very thoroughly as she writes and I've always been curious as to whether or not it is true. ", "How were the Crusader States able to survive as long as they did? Were they able to field an army by drawing from the local Muslim population, or were they forced to draw from European recruits? If the later is the case, how was this adequate for them, considering that the Crusader States stuck around nearly 200 years in the Middle East?", "To what extent did the Mongol invasions of the middle east contribute to the fall of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottoman empire? I always felt like there was a link. ", "As far as people believing that the end of the world would happen in 1500, what were people's reactions like? Did people regard it more as how we view the Mayan's 2012 apocalypse, or was it much more serious? How seriously was the Church involved in urging people to repent?", "Why do you think that western conquest failed during the crusades? ", "How (and if) did the Cluniac reforms effect things like the Lateran Council and views on priestly celibacy? What was the relation between ascetic monastic movements and the call for greater asceticism among diocesan priests? ", "Right, simple enough question:\n\nHow did war in the context of 'between recognisable-ish political entities' actually work? \n\nBeen playing too much CK2 lately, but also just looking at Irish history, you've got Vikings, Irish and Normans, all of whom live in the same place, adopt the same culture, etc. Why do they fight? And who fights? Is it going to be Leinster and Dublin fighting Munster, or, will it be the McMurroughs and the Ivarssons fighting the O'Briens? Is it all based on ties to individuals in authority, or to those authorities as concepts? \n\nTo put it slightly more effectively, would you be loyal to the Monarch or to the specific Queen/King/Duke/Count/Baron or what? ", "Not really a history question, but one about you:\n\nHow do you know these things? University studies, personal study, etc.? I'm not doubting you at all, but I'd just like to know how one becomes qualified in this (or similar) fields. Also, what kind of work do you do?", "Here's a less academic one, so feel free to put it on the bottom of your list:\n\nIf you ever read medieval fiction and/or fantasy (anything from Lord of the Rings to A Song of Ice and Fire), do you ever find yourself unable to get over certain impossibilities/improbabilities?  Do you ever suppose that a character with plan X could have drastically changed the storyline, by virtue of being more realistic?\n\nCounterfactually, if you could have prevented one political event (natural events like the plague being off-limits), within your field of study, keeping in mind the second-and third-order ramifications of the change you would make, what would you change?  And if your answer is the crusades, what if that were off-limits?", "I am thinking about reading \"The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England\"...  Is there a good book out there that provides an overview of the Middle Ages to the average Joe?  I am really interested in how people actually lived and what they experienced, rather than what country X did to country Y, and I have had a hard time finding books that really go through the lives of common people.\n\nI am hoping the time travellers guide will provide this (seems it will do the trick based on reviews) but I am wondering if there is anything else out there.", "Glad to have you here!\n\nI have a question that's rather trivial compared to some of the ones already asked, but it's mine and I'm sticking to it.\n\nWhat can you tell me about Abul Abaz, the elephant delivered to Charlemagne as a gift from the Caliph of Baghdad?  The Wiki article is rather brief on the matter, and Jeff Sypeck's *Becoming Charlemagne* (which is, I regret to say, the only book I've yet read on the subject) doesn't treat it at any great length.\n\nThe idea of walking an elephant from Baghdad to Aachen over the course of a couple of years is just amazing to me, and I'd love to know more about this remarkable adventure.", "1. Why did the Fatimids not attempt to strengthen their garrison in Jerusalem, even though they know the crusaders are coming?\n\n2. How accurate are the contemporary reports of the massacre in Jerusalem after it was taken by crusaders?\n\n3. How did feudalism work in the Kingdom of Jerusalem? Did the lords hold more or less power than they did in, say, France, or the Holy Roman Empire? What about the grandmasters of the various military orders, how much power did they hold, compared to the king of Jerusalem?\n\n4. It is generally believed that Jews in the middle ages were better off under Muslim rule than under Christian rule. How truthful is this view? When parts of Iberia conquered by Christians from Muslims during the reconquista,  did the Jews generally become significantly less well-off? How were Jews treated under Crusader rule?", "Hey man, so cool of you to do an AMA much appreciated.  \n\nMy question has to do with Charlemagne, specifically the tail end of his reign.  It's my understanding that for most of his life he was the archetypal Warrior-King, fueling his empire by conquest and bringing the axe down on anyone in his path.  However, I know that in the last few years of his life he spent most of his time isolated in his palace at Aachen; so much so that his commanders had begun to grumble and the economy shriveled somewhat for lack of warfare to stimulate it. \n\nSo my question is, am I reading too deeply into just a natural consequence of age when I wonder if Charlemagne was taking philosophical stock of his life and lamenting a reign punctuated by violence; a la Marcus Aurelius? I figure I'm probably just grasping at straws, and he was winding down his golden years cold chilling with some biddies in the hotspring, so I thank you in advance for taking the time to humor me. ", "Something that always confused me. The First Crusade was (at least on the surface) an attempt to retake the Holy Land from Muslims, but the Muslims had been occupying the Holy Land for centuries up to that point. Why all of a sudden did Europeans decide that the time was right for conquest, when they seemed to tolerate it for 400 years up to that point?", "Some historians think that Christianity is the worst thing that happened to the Europe in the Middle Ages because there were a lot of crusades, holy wars, church took much money from poor villagers and citizens and so on. Do you agree with them?\n\nAnd have you read Harry Harrison's Hummer and Cross books? If you did, are they historically correct?\n\n\n\nPS sorry for my English.", "I know the Islamic world (Ummayad and Abbasid caliphate; Ottoman Empire) was for many centuries much wealthier and scientifically and culturally open and advanced compared to western Europe during the middle ages. But now it's the reverse, or at least there's the perception that the Islamic world is anti-modern, religiously intolerant, xenophobic, impoverished. What the heck happened? Or, how have medieval scholars explained this?\n\nAlso, I read an article in history class that said the renaissance never really happened or that it distorts our picture of the \"middle ages?\" this blew my mind. What is it talking about?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5ajdfy", "title": "Why did the sons of liberty decide to dress up as Indians during the Boston tea party? Did they actually think no one would see through their disguise or was it intended to be a political statement?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ajdfy/why_did_the_sons_of_liberty_decide_to_dress_up_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9i3g28"], "score": [17], "text": ["I read a great analysis of this recently in the book \"Playing Indian\" by the historian Phil Deloria. I can't find the chapter online but I have a pdf copy if anyone wants to read it - I highly recommend it. This is my understanding of the argument:\n\nThe use of native-looking costumes by the colonists is drawing on long-standing traditions of both celebration and political dissent throughout European history. Going all the way back to ancient Rome and through the medieval era (probably starting way earlier, I would guess) the practice of inversion was common. So for example, during Saturnalia celebrations, medieval feast days, carnival/mardi gras and such, the servants would dress up as lords and the lords would wait on them. Or the kids of the household would tell the adults what to do, people would cross-dress, some random person dressed as a priest, etc. In some way a social norm or role was being reversed. Think of this happening while there are huge parties in the streets. \n\nSo on one hand, this practice of inversion - which you could find in one form or another in every culture\u2019s celebrations (Halloween comes to mind) - fucks with the social order of the society, because you are switching roles of class/gender/religious role/etc which are usually very strictly enforced. At the same time you're also *reinforcing* the social order just by the fact that the inversion only happens at a very specific time for a very specific reason. Like \"haha, isn't this ridiculous! it's totally backwards and strange and weird and would never normally happen without consequences!\"\n\nOkay so then the political dissent part. I\u2019m not too familiar with this part of history but if anyone knows more I\u2019d be interested to know. Basically, in England access to land and game was controlled by the landed nobility, and hunting by \u201ccommon\u201d folk was forbidden by the Game Laws. However, for centuries there was this kind of unofficial agreement between most nobles and the poachers, where if the latter would be discreet/reasonable in their hunting then the Game Laws wouldn\u2019t be enforced against them. A key point here is that poachers practiced \u201cblacking\u201d as part of the discreetness thing - they paint their faces black and hunt at night to avoid being identified. \n\nBut then, after the English civil war the forests were owned more by the new rich, or essentially the bourgeoisie. They have an economic interest in profiting off the land rather than just a hereditary claim like the nobles, so they come down hard on poachers of any kind to protect those resources. As a way to resist this, the poachers start organizing and \u201cblacking\u201d together as a political act of protest. If a landowner was especially cruel in their enforcement of the Game Laws, groups of poachers would all get together in disguise and go vandalize the house or humiliate the owner in some way. This form of dissent was called \u201cmisrule,\u201d btw, and it\u2019s a tradition that gets carried over to the colonies. \n\nAnyways, so basically what Deloria is getting at with this is that you have to understand both the traditions of inversion during celebrations and misrule as protest to understand the Boston Tea Party. Because the line between celebration and dissent is often blurred, and one could (and often did) switch to the other in any of these situations. You tend to think of the BTP as more strictly political, but the other commenter on this thread said they were probably drunk, so I think it fits.\n\nAlright so applying this to the colonists in particular: Deloria (who is the son of the legendary native scholar/activist Vine Deloria, which I think is relevant) is using the Boston Tea Party to make a larger argument about the relationship between the English colonists and indigenous peoples. In order to protest against the Crown, the colonists had to adopt their own distinctive American identity to separate them from their British origins. By adopting a native identity, they're reinforcing their ties to the land that they\u2019re occupying. To them being native represents freedom, seemingly endless land to explore and settle (and game, I might add), and basically everything boundless in opposition to the tight constraints of British land and society. \n\nBut there\u2019s also a colonial racist element to this as well, because again, the practice of inversion is supposed to strengthen the division just as much as it challenges it. So while these dudes might dress up as native peoples in the night to destroy property, there\u2019s an implication that they would never do something so savage and destructive in the light of day because they\u2019re good and civilized colonials. Adopting this caricature of an \u201cIndian\u201d allows them to express themselves in ways that would be unbecoming to their everyday lives. The point is, \"blacking\" was considered a significant political act in itself and there are complex reasons that these colonists chose these costumes rather than just the standard disguise. \n\nPlus, when it comes to actual encounters with native peoples, the colonists were waging a war on the frontiers and murdering/taking land, using all sorts of justifications like that they were managing the resources in a more efficient and civilized (European) way, unlike the \"savages.\" So it\u2019s this uneasy relationship where the colonists will identify with native peoples to protest the British, and then identify with the British to subjugate native peoples. And Deloria basically says that this contradiction is a key part of understanding the insecurities of the early American identity - and one that arguably is still playing out today.\n\n**TL;DR: The colonists dressed up in their interpretation of native attire to separate themselves from and oppose the British while reinforcing both their ties to the American continent and their authority over native peoples (in a more indirect way). It was both a political act and a disguise, which has precedent in English history as a political act in itself.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "r6vp5", "title": "Is there any reason manned exploration of space is better than unmanned?", "selftext": "I mean logically it seems all things be done remotely at a much cheaper cost? You wouldn't need to carry food or oxygen, there is no risk of death, less need for multiple missions. What are the advantages of manned space flight?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/r6vp5/is_there_any_reason_manned_exploration_of_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c43etpu", "c43ewaa", "c43h24y", "c43hade", "c43i46c", "c43i5uo"], "score": [12, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I'm going to take the position of [Neil deGrasse Tyson](_URL_0_) on this - manned exploration is better than unmanned because of the public mindset it creates. Manned exploration pushes frontiers not only in space, but in medicine, mathematics, engineering, all the STEM fields. It also vitalizes the public to look towards the future, and spurs innovation. The impact NASA spinoffs have had on various fields is enormous - from CT/MRI imaging analysis to structural softwares used in everything from automobile to bridge design. Remember when the space program was at it's peak? Every week there were articles on tomorrow - transportation of tomorrow, homes of tomorrow, etc.\n\nNow, unmanned exploration has it's advantages, tangible advantages - cheaper, low risk, etc. But with those advantages, you lose one of the biggest drivers of human imagination in the last century.", "The goal of manned space flight is to ultimately insure the survival of the human race. Once the technology has been perfected to sustain life in the void of space, there are very few limitations to where we could inhabit. Eventually the Earth will not be habitable, it would be nice to have somewhere else to go. ", "The time-lag from communicating remotely from Earth is a downside to unmanned exploration.  From Mars, it takes anywhere from around 3 to 21 minutes for a signal to reach Earth.  Imagine remote-controlling a car in that situation.  Much of the programming would have to be done ahead of time, and the robot would need to be capable of being fairly autonomous.  ", " >  Is there any reason manned exploration of space is better than unmanned?\n\nJust one - it's easier to get taxpayers to fund manned exploration. This is a well-known issue in Washington, and it's the bane of scientific investigators, who can get much more information from unmanned probes, which cost about 1/10 that of an equivalent manned mission.\n\nConsider this -- the U.S. and the Soviet Union both went to the moon, they both explored it, and they both collected a lot of scientific data. But no one seems to realize the Soviets got to the moon about the same time as the U.S. -- it might as well have been a secret. The reason? [The Soviet missions were unmanned](_URL_0_).\n", "No, there aren't any. All our important missions so far have been unmanned, with the sole exception maybe being the repair of Hubble. \n\nThe one thing which stands for manned missions, which is also what Neil dG Tyson is talking about is the human imagination. Unfortunately, however, this imagination is very short lived. The Apollo program was great as long as it was about racing Russia to the moon. After that, the public quickly lost interest and didn't want to foot the bill for a sustained moon program. So Apollo was eventually scrapped, with very little to no remaining legacy (when compared to the enormous cost).\n\nThe scientific return of Apollo was also very small. The same can be said about the ISS: it mainly existed as a target for the space shuttle, and the space shuttle was maintained so long because of the ISS. There's lots of contractors involved in all of this and they all want to keep making money.\n\nIt is true that eventually, a long, long time from now, there might be a reason for us to leave our planet. We don't have to start evacuating now though, waiting another 50 or 100 years before we even consider the first Mars mission wouldn't change anything. Meanwhile, there's so many more interesting things to do than send someone to Mars to look at rocks. Many truly interesting scientific unmanned missions however, have been shelved, or aren't even being considered, because most of the limited available budget is being eaten up by the ISS or other prestige projects with very little tangible value.", "Scott Altman, an astronaut who served as commander on the hubble repair mission, gave a talk at my university.\n\nNear the end of his talk he told a story about when a council of NASA executives asked whether or not he supported unmanned space exploration.\n\nTo some surprise, his response was a flat, \"No, no I do not.\"\n\nThey pressed him to elaborate as to why not.\n\nHe responded, a little flustered, \"well, we astronauts...we **want** to go to space\"\n\nProbably the greatest obstacle to unmanned space flight is that it would be unmanned"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKdaRcptVz8"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4aodg7", "title": "Where does the surname \"Holland\" in the USA come from? Does it imply they came from the Netherlands?", "selftext": "So I have heard the surname \"Holland\" a lot in in the USA. You would think this would mean it indicates that they are from the Netherlands. But I never hear this last name in the Netherlands. So i was wondering what this surname means in the USA and where it comes from.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4aodg7/where_does_the_surname_holland_in_the_usa_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d127n83"], "score": [21], "text": ["Reaney and Wilson, 3rd ed., _A Dictionary of English Surnames_,p. 235, col. 2, says\n\n >  **Holland, Hollands**: Begmundus *de Holande* c975 LibEl (Ess); William *de Holaund* 1246 AssLa.  From Holland (Essex, Lancs, Lincs).\n\nSo they derive it from any of three towns in England.  (The odd abbrevs. after the dates are the sources, indexed in the front.)\n\nOf course, that only pushes the problem back: where did the *place names* come from?  I don't have a geographical source book, but I can find out from a friend on request.\n\nI do want to warn in general that speculation about names is unreliable.  For example, I was expecting it to be a descriptive byname in origin, \"someone from the Low Countries\", but that's apparently wrong.  I might have expected the towns to have been named from the Low Countries, maybe because they had a lot of settlers?, but note that one was in Lancashire, which is almost as far from the Low Countries as you can get and still be in England.  Reaney and Wilson often note place-name derivations (\"dweller at the ford by the steep bank\", \"so-and-so's farm\"), so for all I can say now, the origin might be a case of \"don't know; it just was?\".\n\nAs for not seeing it in Holland: the purpose of surnames was to distinguish this William from that William in the same place by some distinguishing property, like father's name, place-name, occupational byname, descriptive byname, or whatever.  For a community in Holland, what would be the point of adding \"of Holland\"?  In a village in Holland, for example, almost everyone would be from Holland.  \n\nThe counter-argument to that last is that **England** is attested in England by Reaney and Wilson (p. 156, col. 1), which puzzled even them: they discard a possible derivation from *ing-lang 'meadowland'* and say \"The reference must be to the name of the country, a surname which appears curiously out-of-place in England, v. ENGLISH\".  (More sanely, English is derived just below from the tribe of Angles as opposed to Saxon, native English as opposed to French-origin, or to English in predominantly non-English areas like Wales, the Danelaw when it was Norseish, southern Scotland, ...)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1kyznq", "title": "What does it mean for a gene to be \"switched on\" or \"switched off\"?", "selftext": "I *think* I understand this from a sort-of high-level standpoint.  If you see genes as code, one gene being \"off\" or \"on\" means certain code is run or not run.\n\nWhat I'm interested in is *how* a gene switches \"on\".  How does this \"on-ness\" manifest itself?  How do the various cells in the body \"know\" a gene is \"on\" or \"off\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kyznq/what_does_it_mean_for_a_gene_to_be_switched_on_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbu2egm", "cbu2g01"], "score": [3, 8], "text": ["Typically, a class of proteins known as [transcription factors](_URL_1_) are responsible for \"turning on\" or \"off\" a gene.  They typically are part of a cascade response present in the cell that senses the environment using multiple different methods (I'll give an example in a second) and then adapts accordingly by synthesizing a transcription factor.  Transcription factors can be inhibitors of transcription (and thus gene expression), activators (\"turn on\"), or any level of dampening/ramping up of gene expression.\n\nIt's best to lead with an example, so forgive me for not doing that first.  One of the most studied transcription factor systems is the [*lac* operon system](_URL_2_) found in the bacterium *E. coli*.  This system evolved to deal with the presence or absence of glucose/lactose in the *E. coli* cell.\n\nWhen lactose is not present in the cell, the lactose repressor protein binds directly to the DNA sequence prior to the gene for a protein known as beta-galactosidase.  B-gal is a protein that [breaks the bond](_URL_0_) between the galactose subunit and the glucose subunit in the complex sugar lactose.\nThus, the cell is conserving energy by blocking the RNA polymerase (DNA - >  RNA enzyme involved in transcription and therefore gene expression) from transcribing the gene for B-gal since it would be wasted in an environment without lactose.\n\nHowever, when lactose is present in the cell, it binds to the lactose repressor protein mentioned before, essentially (and oversimply) causing a structural change in the lactose repressor protein that causes it to unbind from the DNA sequence before the B-gal protein gene.  This then allows for the expression of B-gal in order to harvest lactose in the cell for glucose, *E. coli*'s primary energy source.\n\nIt's kind of a lengthy explanation, but I hope that clears a couple things up through use of an example.  And yes, it is oversimplified and there are a LOT more moving parts than indicated by my short description, but I think it gives you a general idea.", "The \"on-ness\" and \"off-ness\" of genes is not binary like code. Instead of it only being 1 and 0, there are an infinite number of values between that represent different levels of \"on-ness\". Actually, when we say that a gene is on, we *really* mean that it's being read by RNA polymerase, which creates, some mRNA for that gene, which in turn is read by a ribosome which spits out a protein based on that mRNA. We call this \"expression\", so when I say that a gene is being expressed, I mean that it's being read by RNA polymerase and so on and so forth until a real protein product from that gene is being produced.\n\nNow, what exactly causes varying levels of expression? Genes are made of DNA. DNA is a really really incredibly long string of chemical bases (A, T, C, and G). In our cells, DNA is organized into chromosomes, which are just really really long strings of DNA that contain genes at several points on the string. Focusing in on a \"gene\", which is really just a subsection of the string of DNA, you'll see that the actual DNA string is wrapped around proteins called histones. The histone-DNA complex forms a structure called a nucleosome, and there are nucleosomes evenly spaced along the DNA. These nucleosomes basically make DNA look like \"beads on a string\". The histone proteins basically come together to make protein balls for the DNA to wrap around, but they also have what we call \"histone tails\", just meaning that parts of the protein do not act as scaffolding for the DNA wrapping. Instead, these histone tails can be modified by other proteins in the cell. These histone tail modifications \"mark\" those histones, and in turn mark the nucleosomes that those histones are part of (the DNA itself, by the way, can also be chemically marked). RNA polymerase is almost always scanning (not reading, just scanning) around on the DNA, looking for these specific markings. Different combinations of markings will signify different levels of gene expression: a certain combination could mean that the gene is mostly off, that it will very very rarely be recognized and read by the RNA polymerase, while another combination could mean that any RNA polymerase happening to scan in that area will immediately recognize the markings and will start reading the gene and making mRNA.\n\nTo further complicate things, those markings are not the only things that change levels of gene expression! Certain proteins are capable of binding to the DNA in front of, in, or behind a gene, and those proteins can be recognized by other proteins and RNA polymerase thereby influencing expression of that gene. \n\n\ntl;dr: When you think about DNA, don't think about a nice and tidy double helix. Instead, think about that double helix plastered with proteins that very effectively control which parts of the DNA are transcribed into RNA and which remain \"silent\", AKA \"unexpressed\" or \"off\".\n\nedit: Different cells know to \"turn on\" different parts of the DNA because those cells express certain proteins. If you want to know *why* those different cells express different proteins that cause different bits of DNA to be \"on\", you want to know more about a process called \"differentiation\". This process basically involves cells that can express a large variety of proteins (AKA stem cells) becoming more and more limited as to which proteins they can express as time (and other influences) progress. I can explain that too if you want!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lactose_etc.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_factor", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_operon"], []]}
{"q_id": "2n8wat", "title": "Could somebody explain the Hierarchy problem to me please?", "selftext": "What exactly is the \"Hierachy problem\" and why is it such an issue?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n8wat/could_somebody_explain_the_hierarchy_problem_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmbnh72"], "score": [12], "text": ["The idea is that the Higgs boson is supposed to fix some consistency problems with the standard model (roughly, without something like the Higgs the standard model would predict the probability of a certain process to happen would be greater that %100, or event infinite, which doesn't make any sense). In order for this to work, the Higgs mass has to be \"light\", for some high-energy physics definition of \"light\" (indeed, the famous CERN detection of the Higgs found it with such a mass). Unfortunately, the mathematics of the standard model (quantum field theory) tell us that there should be contributions to the mass of the Higgs particle that come from it's interaction with the vacuum (i.e. \"virtual particles\", as some people like to say). These contributions are HUGE compared to the size of the needed Higgs mass. The only way to add these contributions and not get a number that's way too big is for certain numerical factors (that are undetermined by the theoretical framework), to be tuned to a very precise level. When I say very precise, I mean if the factor was different by even 0.00000000000001%, the Higgs mass would be way off the necessary value.\n\nAt this point, the hierarchy problem starts to get sort of philosophical. On the one hand, there's no reason that these numerical factors aren't just very precisely tuned. However, at some point human nature makes us believe that there must be some *reason* for this to be the case. I once heard the following analogy: The United States and Canada have a very similar total area. The US is 9857306km^2 while Canada is 9984670km^2. That's only a 127364km^2 difference, or about 1%. However, if the area of the US and Canada were only different by 0.00000000000001%, that would require the areas differing by the area of a single atom.\n\nSo the hierarchy problem is about trying to resolve this \"weirdness\". Is the universe \"just like that\", where the numerical factors appear to be precisely tuned, or is there some deeper explanation? Supersymmetry is a very popular resolution to the problem, and the LHC will continue to look for evidence of supersymmetry when it starts its next run.\n\nThere is a pretty good [blog post](_URL_0_) on the topic as well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/07/01/the-hierarchy-problem-why-the-higgs-has-a-snowballs-chance-in-hell/"]]}
{"q_id": "uzqs3", "title": "Are there ways to exercise your bladder to be bigger or stronger?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uzqs3/are_there_ways_to_exercise_your_bladder_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c500plv"], "score": [2], "text": ["Depends on your sex as to which exercises you do but they do have them.\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://incontinence.emedtv.com/bladder-problems/bladder-control-exercises.html"]]}
{"q_id": "6ysmly", "title": "my wife recently gave birth and 3/4 of the way through pushing she developed a red dot rash on her face. the doctors just said that it goes away, but what causes it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ysmly/eli5_my_wife_recently_gave_birth_and_34_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmpvcvu", "dmpvdk1", "dmpw9z4", "dmq243q", "dmq6hrd", "dmqgbgv", "dmqm4tk", "dmqw28c"], "score": [104, 18, 8, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's not a rash, a crap load of the capillaries in her face exploded from her blood pressure as she was pushing. ", "Probably the strain of the pushing, increasing her blood pressure, and popping the small capillaries in her skin. If this is the case, it will heal up pretty soon. Congrats on the baby!", "Mom of twins here born with vaginal birth. This happened to me. I rested a cool towel twice daily on my face to help with the dots,  and i highly recommend Palmers coca butter for her skin, every day, morning and night. Hormonal changes will alter her skin too. Many congrats on your little boy. ", "It's called petechiae if you want to look it up. Although not the most common thing in labor, it's not crazy rare either. It will go away over a week or so.\n\nIt happens because of all the bleeding. The bodies clotting mechanisms are on overdrive to help keep mom from bleeding too much and as all these things get used, you can run a little low. If you get too low it's called thrombocytopenia. But in normal deliver a little petechiae isn't the end of the world. Post delivery blood tests would make sure everything was back at the levels they need to be.", "As others have said, burst blood vessels. You can get the same thing from lifting super heavy weights or just generally straining yourself really hard.", "Happend to me once when I had a really hard stool. Had to push so hard my face started to tingle. Turned out i busted a lot of blood vessels in my cheeks. ", "I had the same thing on my chest from 3 kids. It hasn't gone away. Looks more like tiny spider veins but red. My mom has it too. Dr said it was busted capillaries. For some reason ours are permanent. Hope hers clear up, and congrats! ", "Pushing hard. I was born premature at a tiny 8 lbs (I.E. not a huge, heavy load being pushed out of my mom's vagina) and she still broke a sweat lol."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mnj3g", "title": "What musical instruments would commoners in medieval europe have owned?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mnj3g/what_musical_instruments_would_commoners_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccb0ugr"], "score": [26], "text": ["In medieval Russia I'd vote for different kinds of flutes ([svirel](_URL_2_), [pyzhatka](_URL_0_), [overtone flutes](_URL_1_)). Maybe also [birch trumpets](_URL_6_), and related [single-reed](_URL_8_) and [double-reed](_URL_5_) instruments. Many of the flutes were made of reed or hollow tubes of rind (e.g. that of [red elderberry](_URL_9_) bushes), which rendered them very fragile, so new instruments were made every year (in the fall and spring respectively). But this same quality also made them very inexpensive.\n\nAlso obviously you'd had some percussion, such as buben (a simple tambourine), and lots of wooden percussion of all sorts.\n\nInterestingly, string instruments were apparently rather expensive. In medieval Russia you'd get a kind of a harp ([gusli](_URL_4_)), and a type of rebec/lyra bow string instrument called [gudok](_URL_7_), but both of them were used by professional musicians. Gudok is associated with more low-key music (see [Skomorokh](_URL_3_)), while Gusli (both types) were associated with high-key ballad-style incantations. I don't think they would be normally owned by commoners.\n\nInterestingly, there were no lutes in medieval Russia. All supposedly \"Russian\" lutes, such as domra and balalayka are a much later invention (17-19 c.). Edit: grammar."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyzhatka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalyuka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svirel", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skomorokh", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusli", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szopelka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimirskiy_rozhok", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudok", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaleika", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus_racemosa"]]}
{"q_id": "48vo7s", "title": "why do places like new york city use a steam network to heat buildings where in other parts of the world use boilers and pipes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48vo7s/eli5_why_do_places_like_new_york_city_use_a_steam/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0mz5cj", "d0n195e", "d0n26zw", "d0n37ua", "d0n3hsw", "d0n3u2v", "d0n49pm", "d0n4wga", "d0n5bt6", "d0n5nj4", "d0n6bed", "d0n8mjb", "d0n8sot", "d0n9xwb", "d0ncet0", "d0ncwlj", "d0ne749", "d0nhj7z", "d0nhnyz", "d0ni1ti", "d0nkgfu", "d0nkoum", "d0nn7vq"], "score": [367, 2483, 20, 4, 1081, 59, 3, 4, 6, 31, 11, 34, 3, 6, 2, 9, 5, 2, 4, 14, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["New York City is an old city with old buildings.  Back in the day, it was seen as \"modern\" to have a central steam facility pushing steam to buildings rather than requiring them all to operate their own boiler.\n\nThese buildings are still standing  &  the technology works well enough that it's still used.  Nobody would build a city this way today - we have gas  &  electric heaters - but it's not worth tearing it out and replacing it.", "It is efficient to use the heat from a power plant to heat buildings. First the the steam is used to spin the turbines for electricity production. The steam is still hot but to  extract more heat from the steam  the turbine blades would have to be enormous. The pressure is below atmospheric pressure. To condense the steam cooling towers are used. Or the heat can be routed to warm buildings. The building have to be close.\n\nThe engineers have figured this all out. They are really smart and use a lot of math.", "It's part of a power plant design called Combined Heat and Power or Cogeneration. \n\nIt works best when you have high space heating demands adjacent to power generation facilities. It helps raise the thermal efficiency of the system. You also see this type of system in industrial plants that use excess heat for drying and things like that.\n\n_URL_0_", "Remember also that NYC has a very high density of buildings, one of the largest of the world. As moving steam around is expensive (pipes, insulation) and not very efficient (thermal losses) you won't find a system of this kind in a suburban area.\n", "[Short video from NYT](_URL_0_). One reason is that a blizzard destroyed all of the above-ground power lines. Since they had to dig and lay down all of those power lines, they decided to also lay down steam pipes and build around that technology.", "Watch this video:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nMy family has been in the steam business for three generations.  Armstrong is a company that makes many of the components used to harness steam power, and this 15 minute video will take one of the most seemingly mundane topics and make it interesting for you.\n\nI'm not affiliated with Armstrong in any way.  It's just a good video.", "Because steam generates an exponential amount of energy through the anticipation of half life 3", "I live in San Francisco. Our building has steam heat in each unit. You can't control the temperature but it feels better than the dry heat from more modern central heating units. ", "Cleveland has one of these systems too,  it's nicknamed the Steamer.  Google it and have a look,  pretty unique. ", " >   where in other parts of the world use boilers and pipes?  \n\nIn large parts of Europe there's district heating.  \n[See this list on wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n >  As a whole, the European Union currently generates 11% of its electricity using cogeneration, saving Europe an estimated 35 Mtoe per annum. However, there are large differences between the member states, with energy savings ranging from 2% to 60%. Europe has the three countries with the world\u2019s most intensive cogeneration economies: Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.", "Isn't whole Russia heated up by centralized steam heating? That's quite a big other part of the world that doesn't use boilers.", "NYC power plant operator here:\nSimply put\n\nThe district heating system is used for both heating and cooling of buildings where available.  Using the steam generated by power plants and large boiler plants makes sense to building owners because they can heat without a boiler(don't have to buy gas, don't need an engineer to run it) and cool the building using an absorption chiller which uses the steam heat to generate chilled water instead of an electric chiller which would have an expensive electric bill for comfort cooling.", "Steam is made by a boiler. (Actually that is what the name means, like any other kitchen appliance. What does it do? Boils water into steam. Oh, it's a boiler. )\n\nSteam is transported from place to place in pipes. \n\nSteam has more energy per pound than water. \n\nMost places that have smaller systems use lower pressure/quality steam since they don't have to move it as far. ", "It  actually used to be very common for cities and counties to run a public home heating system like this. My father (1917-83) grew up in Reading PA and had *City Steam* growing up. Without researching it, I'm guessing fewer cities have large generating plants right in town anymore so it's now less easy to get initially..", "Some cities built huge steam heating networks when electricity was first being established as a method of using as much left over energy as possible. The steam can be connected to buildings near power stations and serve as a secondary revenue stream. \n\nI know Milwaukee has such a system (actually two systems, an older low pressure system with pipes large enough to walk through, and a newer high pressure system with smaller pipes to deliver energy over greater distances). Ultimately it serves as a cheaper source of heat for large buildings, and can even be used in some instances to heat city streets during brutal winters to stave off ice formation. ", "Steamfitter here. Due to costs associated with maintenance, it is much more economical to run a larger boiler plant than to run many smaller ones. Larger plants can operate at higher pressures to supply many buildings, where steam pressure is reduced on site. Often, buildings use hydronic heating anyway, and so having a dedicated boiler would increase costs too much to be worth it. In addition, boilers over a certain horsepower are required to have a maintenance technician on site at all times to perform daily checks and tasks required for upkeep. This is for good reason, because boiler explosions are no joke. Which also factors into the decision, passing off liability for mistakes is another reason to have one main plant.", "I am a Mechanical Engineer working in a city that has Steam heating (and chilled water cooling) distributed for almost all of our buildings. One of the benefits to having a steam network compared to hot water boilers all over town is the steam plant is more efficient, both in energy use and in land allocation. Large steam plants also gain efficiency by heating the \"working fluid\" (in this case, water) to a higher temperature than a boiler typically can and then exchanging that energy with a system that is at a lower temperature. The maximum efficiency of a system (the Carnot efficiency) is determined by the ratio of the highest temperature to the lowest temperature in the heat exchange system (in this case, steam is the high temp and the building air is the low temp).\n\nAnother reason to use a steam plant versus many, independent boilers, is reliability and cost avoidance. If every building had a boiler in it, every building would need to pay someone, or some company, to maintain that boiler. Most states require that whoever maintains the boiler is a licensed boiler mechanic (and often that includes working on pressure vessels - the boiler itself - which can be its own certification). Mechanics, especially those with a boiler certification, are expensive to employ. Then we get into all the fun things like replacing major components (the heating element in the boiler, for example) every 10-20 years and minor components (like valves and seals) every 5-10 years. Steam plants can accomplish all the same things, with a higher efficiency, at a fraction of the overhead cost. This also acts as a nice tax-revenue supplement for the city, if the city runs the plant.\n\nNow, for the second part of your question. New York, as mentioned by u/YouAintGotToLieCraig, is a good example of why many cities do not use district heating (which is the industry name for what we have been talking about). The city is old, and was mostly developed prior to the rise of the technology to effectively implement district heating. Once a city is built up, it is extremely difficult to go back through and add in anything that requires underground work. That goes for district heating, district cooling (although New York might not be a good place for district cooling for a different reason), subways, underground power lines, etc. For the utilities side, every building would not only need to have the roads around it torn up (and as I understand traffic is already pretty bad in New York) but it would need to have a hole cut in its wall below street level. If the building is older than 20ish years, asbestos will be everywhere. I don't know about New York, but where I live, as soon as we touch asbestos we have to either clean it **all** up or seal it in permanently. Nothing to do with asbestos is even relatively cheap. It can sink a project right off the bat because it will cost too much.\n\nOther places may not use it for a variety of reasons. In other parts of the world, mechanics may not have to be licensed at all. It could just be someone who knows how to use tools. There also may be a cooperation barrier. District heating requires that everyone on the network cooperate to reduce downtime and to allow maintenance workers into their buildings. \n\nI could probably go on about this some more (combined heating and power anyone?), but I won't. This is already getting a little long I think. \n\n**tl;dr - Steam heating is more efficient and costs less to operate but requires a massive construction effort to implement in more developed cities.**", "There is still steam used in a lot of older cities and in processing plants. It's still around because it can be expensive to replace.  And some manufacturing applications still use it today.", " >  other parts of the world use boilers and pipes\n\nMany places in Sweden almost exclusively uses steam networks, so called \"fj\u00e4rrv\u00e4rme\".", "Most of the larger cities in Denmark have steam networks. The heat comes from burning domestic trash. Though in recent years they have had to resort to importing trash from other countries, since most domestic trash gets sorted for recycling.\n", "Ok so I'm on mobile with shitty connect in Alaska. I just want to ask this. The whole city of NYC runs on a system of steam to heat buildings? So, like no one has to pay for heat as a utility? Like is the heat guaranteed?", "It takes a lot of effort to deliberately plan a network such as this. Our political systems just aren't very good at implementing these types of projects that have mass benefit because they take time and money. It's more convenient to just to make each property figure out their own energy solutions, even if it's less efficient and more costly in the long run. ", "Chicago has something similar, just the opposite. District cooling. A lot of buildings use it. There are 5 plants I believe and the whole system is interconnected so if a plant goes down, the others pick up the load. I imagine the majority of downtown buildings still use their own chillers, but the company has over 100 customers."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAB1gesb8cQ"], ["https://vimeo.com/66929782"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#National_variation"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28w02b", "title": "how is it possible to have 0ms of ping?", "selftext": "I've seen different streamers on twitch boast that they have 0ms of ping. After reading some other posts on here and doing some tests of my own, this doesn't seem reasonable for any connection.\n\nHow could I possibly take my 40mb/s and my 17ms of ping setup that I have now and improve on that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w02b/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_have_0ms_of_ping/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciezg51", "ciezg6q", "ciezlxn", "ciezrhh", "cif14sy", "cif27sr", "cif3aea", "cif3cps"], "score": [7, 17, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Well... you could plug directly into the server.\n\nBut otherwise they are probably exaggerating.  Your 17ms is about as good as it gets without directly linking.", "You can't have a true 0 ping, but you can have so little that it will be rounded down to show 0. It depends on your connection type, and the hardware you use, and the hardware of the server you're connecting to, and every connection in between those", "Sme systems round down from values below 1ms.\n\nThat said, this is virtually impossible to achieve unless you're literally on the same LAN as the game server. ISPs don't give you ping that good.", "It *might* be possible if the server you're pinging is within 150km of your location.   \n\nExplanation: Light can travel roughly 300 km in 1 millisecond.  I say 1ms because anything less than that can show up as 0 ms.  Keeping in mind that a ping packet has to travel to the server and back, that would be 300/2 = 150km.    But this is just an approximation because the packet doesn't travel straight to its destination, it travels all over the place and through lots of network equipment before actually reaching its destination.\n\nSo it is more likely than not that the streamers are exaggerating or lying.  A few lucky ones may have servers they ping (such as _URL_0_ servers) hosted in an exchange near where they live.  For example, many universities will host a speedtest server, ISO servers, etc.  ", "if you think about it.  actual zero ping means from the time your computer sends info, the server will already know about it.   that's impossible.    information needs time to propogate.    \n\nwall street traders fight over which server aisle their servers are on so that the number of feet of cable is minimized to the trading exchange server.   that gets them a nanosecond faster than the guy in the next aisle.     your gaming application 10ms is a lifetime in wall street exchange numbers.  ", "You can measure the hypothetical minimum ping easily by using the speed of light and straight line distance.\n\nOf course, the latency will be much longer than that in real life because it doesn't travel in a straight line and there are pieces of equipment that can slow it down.\n\nOne of the most important factors regarding latency is distance. In order to have 0ms you would need to be physically very close that server, perhaps even on a LAN. Obviously, it's not actually 0.000ms latency as that would be impossible. It's just in the microseconds so it's like 0.04ms (40us) ping and it is rounded down to 0ms.", "[Give me a PING Vasili.  One PING only, please.](_URL_0_)", "Speaking as someone who gets 150-200 ping in all my online games.. f**k you. :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["speedtest.net"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr0JaXfKj68"], []]}
{"q_id": "4el9kh", "title": "why do pens dry out when the cap is left off, but the caps themselves have holes?", "selftext": "Wouldn't this also dry the pen out?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4el9kh/eli5_why_do_pens_dry_out_when_the_cap_is_left_off/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d211i9k", "d211zkl", "d2126x5", "d21aiq9", "d21jm0k", "d21mzuo", "d21n2ei", "d21otld", "d21srpm", "d21t10m", "d21t2y4", "d21tztu", "d22276h", "d222bck", "d222n3v", "d223aji", "d22bcte", "d22ct1n"], "score": [3745, 42, 337, 150, 31, 2, 2, 27, 2, 39, 2, 5, 3, 3, 5, 9, 2, 7], "text": ["The pens dry out because the ink contains solvents. The solvents are volatile and will evaporate if exposed to the air too much.  \n\nThe caps slow this down but they don't completely prevent it. The solvents will still evaporate but will largely just sit inside the lid if there's no air moving past the pen.\n\nThe holes in the lid are there so children are less likely to choke and suffocate if they swallow one.  \n\nEdit: I'll just add this...   \n\n_URL_0_", "What the others have said, plus that, if you look closely on the cap, there is often an outer cap (with holes) and an inner cap which just sits over the tip (without holes). So, even if the big cap has holes, the tip is still resting snugly in it's little inner cap, with no air circulation.", "The cap isn't there to keep the pen from drying out, it's to keep the pen from marking things you don't want it to. For example, when you just toss it in your bag, or are handling it, or put it in your pocket. ", "Why do pens still work if you leave the lid off for long amounts of time?", "Sorry, guys, I'm confused. Pen caps have holes in them? I'm looking at one right now that completely seals the pen when put on.\n\nEDIT: Okay, so I went down to the mail room here at work, grabbed a random handful of pens, and examined their caps. Of the five I grabbed, two of them don't have holes: _URL_0_\n\nIt's possible the second from the top has some complex system of holed under the otherwise not porous cap.\n", "The cap is there largely just to keep you from getting ink on things when you're not actively using the pen.  Drying out is not really an issue for ballpoint or rollerball pens.  \n", "Ballpoint pens don't dry out, because the ball at the end acts as a barrier.\n\nThe hole in the cap on ballpoint pens is there to prevent choking if someone gets it in their throat.\n\nFelt-tipped pens/markers have caps without holes because if it had a hole it would dry out.", "269 comments, 8h.\n\nNone of the top comments at (this time) mention that the ball (in most ball-point pens) is spring loaded, and when depressed/touching allows the ink to flow around the ball and onto whatever it is touching.\n\nI can speculate;  \nW/ the cap on, noting can press on the ball, and the spring is able to then close the ink off from the air. - w/ the cap off, the ball can be is depressed slightly b the seight of the pen, (or contact with the container) allowing air to dry the ink out.\n\nSince the ink (in most ball point pens) is gravity fed, storing the pens point up is not ideal, and frequently the pint will come to rest at the bottom of whatever cup or basket pens are stored in.\n\nSurface tension drawing the solvent from ink out and into/onto the pen's container may also have some effect.\n\n\nThe hole is to make removing the cap easier.\n", "The same as how a mountain climber can die of cold on the mountain side yet survive in a cave", "**The real reason the caps have to have a hole in the top is for liability reasons when children chew on the caps. They can choke on it but the hole allows for them to continue breathing till appropriate medical help has been administered.**\n", "Without the cap the ink is exposed to convection air currents that greatly increase the rate of evaporation.", "Big reason, if you look inside the cap of most pens, there is a little rubber cup inside the cap that is up against the tip of the pen when it is closed. I imagine the holes are so if swallowed children can still breathe.", "I read this as \"Why do penis dry out when the cap is left off\". \n\nThought for sure this was my chance to explain why I use Oil of Olay hydrating cream on my member. ", "A girl in my brothers highschool was chewing on a BiC pen lid and ended up getting it stuck in her airway. EMS came. The girl was treated. I'm told the hole in the pen lid was what allowed her just enough oxygen until help arrived.", "Think of it like this...\n\nYour out in the middle of the forest and you only have a jacket to keep your body warm. Then a snowstorm comes and you have to take the jacket off. You are not wearing a shirt underneath your jacket and you begin to freeze because your body temperature is dropping dramatically. So, you put your jacket back on and all of a sudden the snow stops falling. A few moments later you put your jacket back on because you are cold again.... Wait. What was the question again?", "Anyone else think this post was from r/hockey and was very confused? ", "Are you sure the pen is dry?\nMaybe the pen is just resting.\n\nMaybe the pen is not liking the current weather. \n\nYou never know about how a pen is.", "Over a long period of time a pen with the cap will dry out at the tip, if you apply pressure to the back of the ink line, you'll break through the dried ink and capillary action will take over again.\n\nAnyways, the cap creates a dead zone of air around the tip of the pen, since the air is mostly non-moving the ink around the tip will stay liquid much longer. With the cap off the subtle movements of air will dry out the ink, similar to how a breeze will cause a small puddle to dry out on a driveway even in winter.\n\nThe holes in the cap are to reduce the chances of suffocation if it gets inhaled. Bic pioneered this in 1991 after it was determined that it was one of the common things that children were choking on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=56728"], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/V3ZdyNe"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4unzrb", "title": "why are humans diurnal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4unzrb/eli5_why_are_humans_diurnal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5rcf0b", "d5rd4fu", "d5rhnks", "d5roal8"], "score": [34, 5, 2, 11], "text": ["Our eyes do not operate well in low light. Our hunting skills are sight based. So over-all going hunting in anything but daylight means we're more likely to be the prey, then the hunter. We weren't the top predator back when we were evolving, we used progressively better tools to drag our way up the list.", "Usually a question about why an organism evolved in a certain way can be answered as simply as, it worked best. Organisms that have to compete in their environment (niche) may have been able to take advantage of daytime or night-time activity, whether it meant finding prey and resources easier, or not becoming the prey. It is almost arbitrary whether we are, because we could just have easily evolved the other way if there were selective pressures. Other features such as our eyes' sensitivity to light and a diurnal rhythm evolved from these pressures as well.", "In a nutshell we are visual animals.  We have some of the best eyes in the animal kingdom, we have 3 cone types that descriminate between Red, Blue, and Green, and our brains can use that to create a wide range of colors.  Our visual acuity is also excellent.  Some animals, like Raptors, have better visual acuity at distance, and there is the mantis shrimp that has a dozen different cone cell types, but overall humans have excellent vision and rely heavily on the sense of sight.\n\nOur eyes work OK in the dark of night, but we lose alot of our advantages, especially our ability to discriminate between colors/wavelengths of light.  Humans are capable of operating at night if need be, but our eyes just aren't that finely adapted to it - they work, but they aren't a superpower like our day time vision is (compared to other animals).", "Everyone else on here is not actually answering the question, rather the symptoms of being diurnal (Rods/cones in the eyes, etc)\n\nOur primate ancestor was a nocturnal prosimian (think an eye-eye, very small primate). As we evolved, got bigger, and brains started to develop, it became easier to compete for resources with other daytime animals. Before being out during the day meant certain death: predatory birds, lions, bears, etc..... as we got bigger, became easier to move and be active in daytime (way harder for an eagle to pick up a chimp than a mouse lemur). \n\nWhy is being diurnal more beneficial? Think hunting, fishing, social groups, etc. being able to see and move in the day makes all of these more \"evolved\" activities possible. Most nocturnal animals (esp nocturnal primates) are solitary foragers, very small, etc. \n\nWhy is size beneficial? Because of metabolic rate. Bigger animals have more efficient metabolism, can digest food more easily. \n\nWhy did apes evolve to be bigger while there are some still nocturnal prosimians? This question stumps a lot of evolutionary biologists, but the idea is that some prosimians 50 million years ago (or whatever timeline) were in better positions for resources with less competition and were able to \"become\" larger/diurnal. \n\nHopefully that is ELI5"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5aqhh1", "title": "How did the ballet \"The Nutcracker\" become \"for kids?\"", "selftext": "My city's leading mommy blogger just published a list of ALL the available productions of *Nutcracker* this season in the larger metro area, and it got me to thinking about how weird that is. It is unique for being one piece of art performed regularly in every major US city... that I wouldn't dream of going to myself without the requisite accessory, small antsy humans in dress-up clothes. There's no comparable opera or Broadway musical. Tchaikovsky presumably didn't compose the thing in the hopes that someday it would help sell little red velvet dresses and tiny bow ties. What happened to make it Baby's First High Art Performance? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5aqhh1/how_did_the_ballet_the_nutcracker_become_for_kids/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9iofzt"], "score": [34], "text": ["As a follow up question:\n\nMy quick google search (based on a hunch) tells me it wasn't a huge, successful piece until George Balanchine produced it in 1954. How much of its success could be attributed to Disney's Fantasia, released in 1940?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "pwmr7", "title": "How high up in the atmosphere must one go before you could find no more life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pwmr7/how_high_up_in_the_atmosphere_must_one_go_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3sur38"], "score": [7], "text": ["If by \"life\" you are referring to complexer lifeforms like birds, then the limit would be the stratosphere, or to be more precise, the tropopause, which marks it's border. At this hight the air gets very thin and the temperature drops from about 0\u00b0C to -50\u00b0C. This happens at a height of about 10-15km above sealevel and very fast, so above there won't be any birds.\n\nIf by \"life\" you also mean Bacteria: Bacteria have been found up to a height of 41km above sealevel. They can exist in the relatively warm stratosphere (again about 0\u00b0) which goes from 15-50km amsl."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "a207t4", "title": "Why can you only get black widow antivenom once in your lifetime?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a207t4/why_can_you_only_get_black_widow_antivenom_once/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eauooix"], "score": [22], "text": ["It\u2019s made from horse serum, which can cause allergic reactions because the horse proteins are foreign to the body. If you\u2019ve already been exposed, your body \u201cremembers\u201d and will generate and even faster/stronger response the second time, which can be fatal. \nRef: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3200105/"]]}
{"q_id": "4lh01l", "title": "why does all of the vr footage i've seen make it seem like video game graphics has regressed 5+ years?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lh01l/eli5_why_does_all_of_the_vr_footage_ive_seen_make/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3n7pia", "d3n7q45", "d3n7r5l", "d3n7s4f", "d3n7ts8", "d3njdh8", "d3nulv1"], "score": [11, 104, 3, 31, 2, 5, 3], "text": ["So you don't vomit when the frame rate drops is partly the reason. Unless you have superior computer hardware to run high res textures at full HD 60 frames per second minimum, you have to downgrade to keep up. That's what I've heard anyway.\n\n", "VR headsets have to render two images at very high framerates.  To accomplish that without hugely expensive hardware the game developers have had to tone down the resolution and visual effects.", "I'm assuming you're talking about the generally lower standard of graphical quality in VR games.\n\nVR is VERY resource intensive. Making simpler models and lower resolution textures etc. lets it run better. Which is important because a VR game with a bad framerate will knock you sick.", "A VR game needs to two screens with slightly different viewpoints. So a lot more processing power is needed for two screens vs just one.\n\nAlso it's really important to have a high frame rate with VR, otherwise people can feel sick when playing. Many normal games are 30 fps on console, but for VR 60 fps is a bare minimum for it to be playable. And that's not really enough, it should 90.\n\nSo not only are you rendering two screens, you're also producing images 2-3 times as fast.\n\nSo for it to run on anything less powerful than the most powerful PCs, the graphics quality and detail in general has to be significantly reduced so it can render 2 screens at 90+ frames per second. Especially with the Playstation VR because the PS4 is not very powerful compared to an up to date gaming PC.", "Current VR displays need to simultaneously render two separate 1080p displays, both running at 90 frames per second, with virtually no framerate drops (or else you'll get nauseous).  That's not possible to do with complex graphics for most current video cards.", "In addition to the technical answers so far, it's probably also important to note that there aren't any AAA VR titles like what you're used to seeing. Try comparing AAA games vs indie titles and you tend to see the same quality disparity in the graphics (often compensated for with unique visual styling). Even AAA studios just aren't devoting the same resources to VR titles vs more traditional projects. Those high-end games take entire studios years to pull off, many built on engines that have been incrementally maturing for years and years, where VR titles haven't seen nearly as much investment, and the frameworks that they're built on literally are several years behind what's available for non-VR gaming.", "nobody is building big budget games for the 5 people that bought vr          \nyou need to target a slightly higher resolution but at 90hz+ stable instead of 30+ or 60          \nsince no one is building \"big games\" much is shit that is slapped together in unity"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6y25k7", "title": "Why Tsar Bomba - the most powerful bomb ever detonated - could have destroyed the Earth according to its creators?", "selftext": "According to the Russian physicists who created the bomb, the explosion could have started a self-sustaining nuclear reaction in the ocean, leading to the planet's destruction. How is that possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6y25k7/why_tsar_bomba_the_most_powerful_bomb_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmk40h8", "dmk46ta"], "score": [27, 10], "text": ["Do you mean the Trinity test rather than Tsar Bomba? The thought was that the temperature would be high enough to ignite a fusion chain reaction in the atmosphere.\n\nOf course it didn't happen, because we're still alive.", "Do you have source for them saying that?\n\nI know that during the first ever nuclear explosion (manhattan project) there were some theories that it could ignite the attmosphere to a chain fusion reaction, but this was considered very unlikely so they proceeded with the experiment.\n\nAfter that scientist knew that a runaway earth destroying effect wont happen, so i doupt the soviet scientist would have the fear you claimed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1se6z2", "title": "why are license plates blurred out on tv when they are in public for anyone to see?", "selftext": "I understand if it's a celebrity, but why would a random persons have to be blurred?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1se6z2/eli5_why_are_license_plates_blurred_out_on_tv/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdwp9ur", "cdwpwk7", "cdwskw6", "cdwx8a4", "cdwzfid", "cdx0m5n", "cdx8gvj"], "score": [59, 6, 4, 7, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["They want to protect the privacy of the vehicle owner and not get sued for the stupidest reason out there.\n\nEdit: /u/miopinions has it explained well.", "Im pretty sure if you can identify someone in anything, you either must get written consent or pay them if you are trying to make money off that video.  So, if its on TV, you must either pay them or get written consent.", "As am addition to what /u/miopinions said ,\nits no only in the U.S. \nmost of the license plates showed on tv are related to a news story , and they are obligated to keep the privacy of the person due to legal issues.\nas an example , a victim or a suspect that his car was found , if they will show his plate everyone \"can know\" who is the person, and can start a false rumor/opinion on the specific person.\n\n(sorry if it was a blurry explanation :) )", "In the UK your licence plate is the key to you, your home and lots of personal information about you. Converting your licence plate into information about you is straight forward and a vast array of government bodies, private companies and private individuals have access, with the DVLA selling millions of peoples records a year. \n\nIn the UK the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority (DVLA), to whom all vehicles have to be registered by law, sells our vehicle and contact details \"vehicle keeper information\"  to \"private companies and land owners\" that can \"demonstrate a reasonable cause for requiring it\". \n\n\"Reasonable cause is not defined in legislation but the Government\u2019s policy is that it should relate to the vehicle or its use, following incidents where there may be liability on the part of the driver.\"\n\n\"The DVLA considers it to be a reasonable cause for businesses and landowners to receive vehicle keeper details where there has been an alleged breach of [parking] terms and conditions\".\n\n\"Regulations allow the Agency to release information to the police\nand local authorities to assist with the investigation of offences and parking violations. Information can also be released to anyone else who can demonstrate \u2018reasonable cause\u2019 for his or her request.\nThis means that vehicle keeper data can be used lawfully for a variety of other purposes. These include:\n\n\u2022 Traffic surveys and research by the Department for Transport.\n\n\u2022 Investigations by insurance companies, finance houses and members of the public who can demonstrate reasonable cause.\n\n\u2022 The enforcement of congestion charging initiatives.\n\n\u2022 The investigation of benefit fraud by other government bodies.\n\n\u2022 The enforcement of court orders.\n\n\u2022 The enforcement of parking restrictions on private property.\n\n\u2022 Safety recalls by motor manufactures. \"\n\n\"All car parking companies requesting keeper data must be members of a DVLA Accredited Trade Association, which has a mandatory code of practice that all members must adhere to. The British Parking Association (BPA) is the appropriate Accredited Trade Association for the parking industry\" \n\n\"If they fail to police their code they could lose their accreditation and their members would lose their ability to request DVLA data\"\n\nThis practice is open to abuse and news reports have highlighted this [7,000 drivers' names sold to criminals: How DVLA made \u00a321m selling details of 4.85m motorists](_URL_2_) and [DVLA made \u00a310m in a year by selling on names and addresses](_URL_3_)\n\nThe DVLA also sells details about your vehicle, but not personal information about you. For example a car repair garage knows all about your vehicle from just asking you for your licence plate number: \n\"To check information about a particular vehicle, such as the year it was made, engine size and colour. A person making this kind of enquiry would only receive information about the vehicle. They would not be given the keeper\u2019s name and address.\"\n\n*Sources*\n\n[_URL_4_](_URL_5_) \n\n[DVLA leaflet INS160](_URL_1_)  \n\n[Information Commissioner\u2019s Office](_URL_0_) ", "It's probably to protect themselves from getting sued over stupid crap.", "They do this because they dont want to leave information in the video that can be traced back to people, who has not given their concent to be in the video.\n\nAlthough you might find it harmless, the persons still didn't give their conscent, and might think that it in some way or another, puts them in a bad light.\n\nThen they sue you (ONLY IN 'MURICA) for that, because American law is stupid, and people are greedy as fuck.\n\nSimple as that.\n ", "It's to protect their sensitive tomato centers (which are photosensitive when viewed online.)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.ico.org.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/dvla", "http://applications.doeni.gov.uk/publications/document.asp?docid=19368", "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123390/7-000-drivers-names-sold-criminals-How-DVLA-21m-selling-details-4-85m-motorists.html", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9994089/DVLA-made-10m-in-a-year-by-selling-on-names-and-addresses.html", "WhatDoTheyKnow.com", "https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/dvla_selling_personal_informatio"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "zth21", "title": "Is it scientifically possible for a live head to be in a jar?", "selftext": "Like Futurama, basically.\n\nWell, of course there would be some types of wires coming out of the bottom of the neck and we can't talk in water. But otherwise, how possible is this? Given technologies we have now and may have in the future? Or is it completely physically impossible to keep a human head alive in a jar for an extended period of time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zth21/is_it_scientifically_possible_for_a_live_head_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c67k8ku", "c67ko7x", "c67mmmp"], "score": [8, 17, 2], "text": ["You should look at [this](_URL_0_), the Russians did some experiments involving decapitating dogs and keeping the head alive, they also attached the head to another dog and kept it alive for a relatively significant amount of time.", "In the future, it might be possible for a time, but will probably never be desirable or practical.\n\nThe main consideration in the short term (seconds to hours) would be supplying the head with oxygenated blood of a high enough pressure to perfuse the capillaries of the head.  Not so tough- use a [heart and lung machine](_URL_1_) connected via specialized connections to the carotid artery and the jugular vein and you'll get a system that can do this today.  Practically, you'd have to move very quickly, since brain death begins ~5 minutes after loss of blood supply.\n\nIn the medium term (days-weeks), nutrient delivery (i.e. glucose, vitamins, etc.) and waste removal would become important.  The brain has very precise nutritional requirements.  Nutrient delivery and waste removal would have to be precisely regulated via very precisely regulated [TPN](_URL_0_) and dialysis of the blood, respectively.\n\nIn the longer term (weeks+), any number of things would become an issue.  The main one that comes to mind is immune.  A head doesn't have the ability to maintain an immune system, the cells for which are made elsewhere in the body (bone marrow, thymus, and so on).  So infection will be a huge problem after a week or so.  Sterile conditions and well-devised anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral medications might prolong live, but something would eventually get past whatever medications you put in.\n\nNo blood vessels = no blood pressure regulation.  There is a very precise balance between too little and too much blood pressure.  Too low and you lose consciousness.  Too high and any number of complications can arise.\n\nThe machinery necessary to maintain all this would have to be running 24/7.  Machinery breaks down.  Clots form around lines.  The heparin and thrombin you'd have to keep circulating would be extremely dangerous.\n\nAnd so on.  There are literally millions of things that could go wrong in this system.  Without a lot of research resources and probably a lot of grotesque failures, it would not be feasible to keep a brain alive in the absence of a body.  It will likely one day be possible, but never, ever desirable.\n\nSource: I'm a biologist and my friends and I discussed one time whether this might be possible.  We disgusted ourselves thinking it through and have never mentioned that day since...", "I think it's more likely that you'll see a head transplant (onto a donor body) first.  We pretty much have the techniques and technology in place to make all of the re-connections, except for the spinal cord of course."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenteral_nutrition", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_bypass"], []]}
{"q_id": "5yvzk4", "title": "Why was the US caught so unaware during the battle of the bulge if they had cracked top level German communications?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5yvzk4/why_was_the_us_caught_so_unaware_during_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["detghb0"], "score": [186], "text": ["Although the German high command still considered the Enigma cipher machine secure, they did suspect heavily that the Western Allies were using signal analysis (i.e. studying the frequency or size of intercepted signals to glean information on German intentions) and human intelligence from agents in occupied territory to aid their understanding of upcoming operations. So during the leadup to the Second Ardennes Offensive the Germans sent no signals over radio, but sent individual messengers with orders. Couple this with almost all preparations being prepared on German soil meant there would be very few leaks of human intelligence. The Germans even gave the operation a defensive sounding code name: Die wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine). \n\nSo the Germans went out of their way to mount a surprise offensive, and the Americans (and Brits for that matter) fundamentally underestimated German capabilities and intentions. The American 12th Army Group was sending officers on leave and preparing to dig in along the front for the winter after the debacle of Operation Market Garden failed to get the Western Allies into Germany. The only divisions in reserve on the whole Western Front were the Airborne Corps consisting of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The Allies had no idea the Germans had been able to assemble such a collection of armor, had the fuel reserves to mount an offensive with them, or would dare to mass their armor together in the face of total allied air superiority. \n\nThe Germans managed to gather armor and fuel by starving the Eastern and Italian fronts, stockpiling as much as possible, and running the whole operation on the barest of shoestrings with armored columns being expected to capture Allied fuel and ammo dumps for resupply. The Germans were only able to supply two day's worth of supplies for an all out offensive, and if the timetable was even slightly disrupted the chances of reaching Antwerp were virtually nil. To counter Allied air supremacy, the attack was to be mounted in fog and snow when allied fighters would be grounded. \n\nIn the event, the offensive was a shambles despite success the first day. The Germans had little trouble breaking through the weak American front across from them: the four American divisions were either green or had just come out of a nasty battle in a nearby forest that left them depleted and needing reinforcement. One - the first incidentally - of several important communications hubs on the way to the Meuse river was Bastogne, which possessed seven roads in and out of town. Hastily occupied by a brigade of the 10th Armored Division and the under supplied and lightly equipped 101st Airborne Division, the German 5th Panzerarmee threw almost all its strength against Bastogne but failed to either defeat the Americans or force their surrender which totally disrupted the German left flank of the advance. The 6th SS Panzerarmee on the right was checked by Americans and a few Brits dug in along heights to the north if St Vith, and was forced westward *away* from the Meuse where it too was to be checked when the 2nd Armored division met the 2nd Panzer division and fought them to a standstill. \n\nMeanwhile, the weather cleared and Allied fighters began to hunt down every German tank they could find. The ever energetic Patton had already pulled his third Army out of an eastward attack, and with startling rapidity turned them 90 degrees toward north and set off on a new attack towards Bastogne where the 101st Airborne was successfully holding off a Panzerarmee by itself and kindly brought them supplies to go over to the attack. Hitler declared there would be no retreats from ground gained, and Patton said to Bradley (I paraphrase) the kraut has stuck his head in a meat grinder and I've got my hand on the crank. \n\nAt no point, despite the total initial surprise and the confusion sewn in the rear areas by German commando operations, was the offensive seriously likely to succeed. The conditions were too poor, the Germans to shaky logistically and the American Paratroops too stubborn to let the Germans pass.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2tq6ng", "title": "Who was the first person killed by a gun?", "selftext": "I tried searching a few different keywords and did an askhistorians google search but came up with nothing.\n\nThanks for doing what you do!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tq6ng/who_was_the_first_person_killed_by_a_gun/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co1bsan", "co1gjio", "co1t7ng"], "score": [72, 21, 2], "text": ["To expand upon the question, there are plenty of definitions of what people consider a \"gun.\"  So I might split it into several questions, on the off-chance someone can better answer one over the other.\n\nWho (or when) was the first person killed by a...\n\n* Gunpowder-based projectile\n\n* Handheld (small arms) gunpowder-based projectile\n\n* Gun that uses rounds (i.e. self-contained shells with gunpowder, bullet, and ignition mechanism)\n\n* Automatic weapon\n\n\"Who\" might not necessarily mean a name, but maybe which kind of person (e.g. civilization, year, social status)?", "As others have said it is hard to tell what specifically it is that you are asking, but if you are asking about the first assassination by firearm I can tell you that.\n\nIn Scot land James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray was assassinated in 1570 by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. James Stewart was the regent for James VI of Scotland, but at this time Scotland was engulfed in a civil war. James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was a supporter of Mary of Guise (the opposition to the infant James VI), so when he found an opportunity to fire at him with a carbine from his uncles home, he did so, fatally wounding James Stewart. \n\nSources: (It is hard to find any definitively reliable source, but there are many different sources that agree.)\n\nAntonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots, pp. 339, 486\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nIf anyone has any definitively reliable sources, a reply would be greatly appreciated, along with any corrections.\n", "Remember, for a long time (in Europe at least) the only guns were siege weapons. So it's unlikely that anyone would record which unlucky 13th-century foot soldier was the first to be crushed by a flying cannon-boulder. And that's not even considering China, which had had gunpowder rockets for quite a while at that point."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/people/lord-james-stewart-earl-moray-regent-scotland/", "https://artemisiasroyalden.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/day-in-history-james-stewart-is-murderd-in-the-first-recorded-assassination-by-a-firearm/"], []]}
{"q_id": "4nohtf", "title": "why are we taught that we must be tolerant of cultures that are different from ours, but at the same time we are told that the practice of child marriages around the world must be stopped?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nohtf/eli5_why_are_we_taught_that_we_must_be_tolerant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d45l25h", "d45mtqz", "d45pvbf"], "score": [27, 24, 7], "text": ["Raping is also a part of some cultures. So is cutting hands off for theft, so is death by stoning for homosexuality. Doesn't make those things right/respectable just because it's a different culture. Respecting a different culture is generally said in reference to differences in clothing, language, lifestyles, food, appearance etc. \n\nGetting two children married to each other basically takes away their right to make an informed, rational decision by themselves. Arranging a marriage without informed consent is one of the worst things you could do to a person. It is simply wrong whichever way you look at it. A practice like that doesn't enrich any culture in any way, it's simply evil and unnecessary in this day and age.", "I'm going to do a little bit more than ELI5, let's say ELI15. When we talk about culture and tolerance we are generally using a lens of cultural relativism. That is to say, generally speaking that from our framework we may not understand another culture's practices or behaviors and that's fine so long as we don't judge. That statement could mean one of two things. Either 1. There is no objective measures by which to judge culture and as such, we can't make an objective comparison between the two cultures. Or 2. that we as an individual can not(or at least ought not) make direct moral judgments. \n\nThis distinction can best be summed up separating the discussion into two tiers. The second example I gave is tier one, the tier we make direct moral judgments about something and the first example I gave is actually the second tier, a meta tier (one in which we are effectively talking about talking about another culture). \n\nPhilosophical, if we learn that there is no objective \"right\" culture we are effectively learning the meta, 2nd tier. This teaches us that things we may not understand or that might even make us morally uncomfortable can potentially be entirely justified from another framework. However, we are still moral actors and cannot function in day to day life without making moral and normative judgments (that is to say, judgments inflected by our own society). It would literally be impossible. So, we must acknowledged that in practice we must still be able to make moral judgments against practices we find particularly morally repugnant. \n\nIn short, there is no objective right when it comes to culture (which is a 2nd tier truth). However, some things are so repugnant to our day to day truths (1st tier) that we override our awareness of the 2nd tier and need to act at the first tier. \n\nSo, the child marriage example. Those in the west believe in certain notions of consent/agency theory as well as certain post-romanticism notions of sex. While we can appreciate certain societies might view the will of the individual or love differently than we do and that's fine (2nd tier thought), the idea of child marriage is so repugnant to our 1st tier beliefs that we will still have to challenge it because it breaches our notions of agency (children are too young to fully be able to commit to a marriage), and post-romanticism views (children haven't developed the capacity to love in the way that is necessary to properly pick a mate). So while we can tolerate the idea that societies are different this, hits us at fundamental presumptions. ", "Because it kills, injures and maims young girls and stunts their opportunities in life. \n\nThese children are married to grown men and their bodies aren't developed enough to cope. \nA 13 year old dying from internal injuries caused by her adult husband. \n_URL_0_\n\nGirls under 16 are more likely to die from childbirth or develop fistulas (Awful tears between the vagina and bladder (or rectum) which cause awful infections, pain, incontinence, and social shunning). \n\nIf you look at a girl of 12-13 and compare her with a 16-17 year old and then with a young woman of 19-20 there is a huge difference in their physical appearances.\nThe hips widen, the body becomes stronger - the girl grows. All these things are essential to make reproduction safer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264729/Child-bride-13-dies-internal-injuries-days-arranged-marriage-Yemen.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3quaui", "title": "Did Alexander the Great's notion of a campaign to free or avenge the Greeks have any impact on Greek mercenaries serving the Persian Empire at the time?", "selftext": "Alexander the Great's campaign to topple the Persian Empire seemed to have a great deal of propaganda supporting it. On multiple occasions he is said to be doing it to free the Greeks, or to get revenge on the Persians for Xerxes' campaign. How did this message impact Greek mercenaries in the armies of Darius and his satraps? It appears that Alexander encountered a few Persian forces of which Greek mercenaries played a large part, so was his notion of a panhellenic crusade really even effective, or did it just attempt to provide justification on his end?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3quaui/did_alexander_the_greats_notion_of_a_campaign_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwit5m1", "cwj2r9p"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["Tack on question. How Greek was Alexander's empire exactly and how did his Macedonian heritage influence it? What roles and functions did the other Greek city states and peoples fulfill in Alexander's empire?", "Alexander was particularly harsh to Greek mercenaries and he even killed a large portion of them following his victory over them at the Battle of Granicus. This harsh treatment is said to have stiffened resistance against Alexander as Greek mercenaries under the Persians did not want similar treatment. Alexander also forced cities that surrendered to him to pay the same tribute that the Persians demanded so many Greeks that did convert to his side didn't see him as a saviour as they were treated similarly (or worse) than the Persians had treated them. It is also well documented that Alexander didn't like any of these conquered Greeks to object to his rule and he was not scared to intervene in local politics to enforce his will."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8cyh7r", "title": "When LIGO detected the gravitational waves, how did the astronomers know where to point their telescopes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8cyh7r/when_ligo_detected_the_gravitational_waves_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxixb0a", "dxjedh2"], "score": [15, 6], "text": ["The LIGO detector is an interferometer that is able to detect length contraction along two perpendicular arms.  In principle, any gravitational wave passing through the detector would be detected unless its propagation was perfectly perpendicular to both arms, which would be extremely unlikely.  In effect, they detect whatever component of the wave is parallel to the plane of the detector, if that component is sufficiently large.\n\nSince there are two LIGO sites, one in Washington and one in Louisiana, the LIGO project actually has 3D coverage, although they are more sensitive to waves from certain directions.  Any gravitational wave that we see passes through the entire planet, so it is detected by both detectors, and they can determine, by the relative signals and orientations of both detectors what direction the wave originated from.  There's a third interferometer in Italy which corrobates this LIGO signal and improves the ability to pinpoint wave sources.  As more detectors are built in the future, they improve our coverage of space and sensitivity to even smaller gravitational signals from all directions.", "As the other poster has said, the LIGO and Virgo detectors have somewhat omni-directional sensitivity, with some dead spots. An example would be a wave that is travelling in the plane of a detector which bisects the arms. In that case, the space is stetched and squeezed in the same way in each arm, which is a mode we cannot measure. The instrument by design measures the difference in arm length and not any common length change. \n\nWith a single detector all we can really say is what parts of the sky we are more sensitive to. With two or more, we can look at the arrival time of the signal in each observatory. A given time delay picks out a ring on the sky that is consistent. This occurs because if we assume that the gravitational wave is travelling at the speed of light (as would be the case in general relativity), we can use the relative time to determine the angle between the source and a line drawn between two observatories. If two observatories observe the signal at the same time for example, we know that the source must be perpendicular to the line between the detectors.\n\nWith three detectors we have 3 sets of rings from each pair of observatories. Where they intersect is the only possible region. I'll add that we also have a bit more information than this even, and so often can exclude parts of each ring. This is because we also have the signal strength and phase of the signal in each detector, which also correlates with the relative sky location of the source to each detector. \n\nThe signal strength also gives us our estimate of the distance to the source. What we provide to astronomers is actually a full 3d volume that indicates where the source is likely to have come from.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "28rtal", "title": "why isn't africa an economic super-power? why are there no african cars, or clothes, manufactured and exported to other continents?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28rtal/eli5_why_isnt_africa_an_economic_superpower_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cidti6d", "cidtior", "cidu5w8", "cidulon", "cidwcgj", "cidxehu", "cidy197", "cidybr6", "cidyixc", "cidyka5", "cidyxgu", "cidyxjp", "cidz6c2", "cidzdmv", "cidzpv3", "cidzutb", "cidzz0h", "cie3dss", "cie8gbp"], "score": [20, 154, 12, 8, 7, 3, 42, 14, 6, 3, 18, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["With the little bit I remember from my economics class I believed you answered your own question. They don't invest in infrastructure and manufacturing. They rely on natural resources and the profits get funneled to corrupt leaders. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. ", "There's plenty being exported from Africa.\n\nThis has to do with a few factors.\n\n1) Africa is geopolitically unstable: we invented most of the countries that exist there after WWI. As a result, they aren't like the homogeneous countries in Europe, which have their millennium long histories. These are places where there are hundreds of different tribes, with different identities. In Europe, we more or less eliminated the tribal system some time during the first millenium.\n\n2) We fucked up Africa pretty hard with colonialism. I'm not entirely sure how relevant this point is now, but we didn't exactly do a great job of setting up infrastructure there.\n\n3) The environment is fairly shitty: In NA, we used chemical warfare to eliminate disease bearing mosquitos. We never seemed to take this play to Africa, which might be for the best, given the ecological damage we did.", "Europe divided Africa into territories under different spheres of influence: Belgium got a piece of land, England got a piece of land, etc.  In this time, Africa was ruled by their own tribes and were seen as uncivilized by Europe.  Europe took all of the resources and ran, leaving Africa subject to leadership by terrorist groups.  Terrorist groups turned Africa upside down, which is why Africa isn't an economic powerhouse.  Africa still hasn't recovered from the European \"Scramble for Africa\"", "Government instability plays a huge role as well.  Stable government=more investment, more investment = ability to produce.  Botswana is a success story. \nVehicles are produced on the continent as well, but it's cheaper to ship used cars from Japan.", "Corruption, lack of education.  ", "One should not forget the impact of the cold war on developing countries in Africa. Some would argue that the cold war had an even bigger impact than colonialism.\n\nThe argument that could be made is that money and influence from the superpowers flowed into the emerging new countries and destabilized them. Very simpliefied.\n\n\n\n\n\n ", "I think this question makes an assumption that Africa does not have economic super-powers, and that is wrong.  Nigeria is now the 26th largest economy in the world, having just surpassed South Africa.  FDI into much of Africa by China, the USA, and Europe is pretty astounding.  Africa boasted 7/10 fastest growing economies of the last decades.  Yes, there are problems that have been stated, like political instability, but these are also improving.  Ghana, Botswana, Nigeria, to a much lesser extent Kenya and SA all have fairly stable governments that have peaceful transitions of power.  Africa has been held back, but I think the world still suffers from an impression that Africa is a backwards continent, and it is not.  It is growing and I think will appear as the next (and maybe last) great emerging market.", "From the book The shackled continent by Robert Guest:\n\nThe great African novelist, Chinua Achebe, said of his homeland: \u201cThe trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.\u201d\n\nSubstitute \u201cAfrica\u201d for \u201cNigeria\u201d and this is a pretty good summary of what holds the continent back. Since independence, Africa\u2019s governments have failed their people. Few allow ordinary citizens the freedom to seek their own fortunes without official harassment. Few uphold the rule of law, enforce contracts, or safeguard property rights. Many are blatantly predatory, serving as the means by which a small elite extracts rents from everyone else. Predatory governments usually make their countries poorer, as in Nigeria and the Central African Republic. Worse, when power confers riches, people sometimes fight for it, as in Congo and Liberia.\n", "\"Africa\" isn't a singular entity, it's an entire continent, the second most populous on Earth. Imagine asking why Asia was an economic superpower. It wouldn't make sense to assume that there's some universal quality of Asianness that had lead to economic growth in China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.\n\nIt's true that many of the factors described here are problems for many African nations (and post-colonial states on other continents as well), but Africa is a diverse group states, each with their own triumphs and failures, some doing better (e.g. Botswana, Ghana), and others floundering (e.g. Somalia, Nigeria). Perhaps the question \"What's wrong with Africa?\" plays a role in contributing to the problems so many of the continents' nations face.", "Europeans industrialized first, and spread, which made it even harder for Africa to catch up.  I wonder if it's possible to study this without being considered to be racist.", "Guys: educate yourself about why the 54 *countries* of Africa do indeed export a lot more than you think. See the Atlas of Economic Complexity, which shows visually all the exports of every country in a mosaic. Here's Kenya. _URL_0_", "Note that when African leaders DO try to counter the colonial legacy and seize control of their own resources and wealth, they are demonized in the west and portrayed as madmen and despots.  We hit them with sanctions and pressure other countries to ostracise and not trade with them..  If they roll over and allow the big western companies to own them like all the rest and drag all the wealth out of their nations, then they're friendly governments.", "It's got no infrastructure, everyone is corrupt, it still uses tribe systems.\n\nIt exports gold and other resources though.", "There's a thriving auto industry in the nation of South Africa. Ford, for example, exports the modern Ranger pickup truck to the rest of Africa and the Middle East. Maybe... just maybe they're exported to Europe, too (Europe models may come from Thailand; I can't remember).\n\nThe cool thing (you know, which a lot of historical negatives, too) about South Africa is that it wasn't hindered as much by colonialism; it was settled and kept by the settlers. It's a lot like the United States.\n\n", "The issue needs to be examined on a regional basis; instability in Libya is different from that of the Central African Republic, etc", "Let's break it up like this:\n\nAfrica isn't a country, it's a continent, therefore: it's made of several different countries, with severl different kinds of people, ideas, clans, ethnic groups, etc.\n\nWhen colonisation was over, most of these countries kept the shape they were given during the Scramble for Africa. That means that etnies that hated each other like the Tutsis and the Hutus had to share the same country.\n\nBeing unable to cooperate in even the smallest details, war was guaranteed for countries like these. Civil war means no progress, no progress means no cars.\n\nAnother example is the Cold War. During this period several dictators and coup d'\u00e9tat winners made deals with the USSR or the USA for money, protection, legitimization of their governments, etc. In exchange for money, weapons to defeat internal opposition or simply in exchange for a blind eye in case of gross violations of human rights, these states would became supportive of one these two super-powers who were trying to rule the world.\n\nRight now, the problems are still the same.\n\nCountries like Sudan are still living this nightmare, South Sudan (rich in petrol and minerals) broke up from Sudan so they could live in peace. Right now they're living a new civil war because their elites don't want to share power, wealth and control with each other.\n\nPlus, we are living a new Scramble for Africa. China is attacking with all it's might and sending huge waves of migrants to African territories, providing cheaply made infrastructures like Hospitals, Roads and Schools in exchange for resources, political influence and international prestige.\n\nSo yeah, Africa as a whole is still trying to get up on it's feet, time will tell if they can or can't.", "If the recent National Geographic article is on point, Africa is due to be the world's next farming powerhouse. Farming is widespread across the continent, mostly sub-Saharan, but yields are generally well below average for various reasons. If some key reasons can be resolved such as irrigation, fertilizer, technology and organization then there is huge potential in Africa. A little bit of efficiency will go a long way there.", "Because of colonization! All the European powers carved out pieces of Africa for themselves for the large amount of resources available there.  They then built infrastructure that was meant to take resources out of the colonies, not bring it in.  Much of their infrastructure is still the same, so the countries there are not able to become manufacturing powers.  The colonizers also made it so the Africans were very dependent on them so that the Africans would essentially remain children.  \n\nThe Europeans then had the argument that they had to continue their colonial empire because the Africans needed them.  When they were finally forced to stop colonization after WWII, and abruptly pulled out of their African colonies, the Africans didn't know how to run the new economic and political systems, so they were never able to advance too much.  This is just a small part of the explanation.  I'm just seeing how much I remember from my World Geography class :)", "This question reminds me of a lecture I heard from an economics professor. The speech starts out \"let's stop referring to Africa as a country. It is a huge continent with vast diversity of everything from religion to climates. Now we can have serious conversation.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://atlas.media.mit.edu/explore/tree_map/hs/export/ken/all/show/2011/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3dqgba", "title": "why is standard household supply voltage sometimes given as 230v and sometimes as 240v (or 110/120v in countries like the us which use lower voltage as standard)? what's with the 10v difference?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dqgba/eli5why_is_standard_household_supply_voltage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct7no29", "ct7npd5", "ct7o0ap", "ct7pmox", "ct85us6"], "score": [15, 11, 28, 6, 3], "text": ["Nominally, the mains voltage in Europe is 230V  & plusmn; 10%. However, in practice the UK continues to use 240V and most of the rest of Europe continues to use 220V, as they did before that common standard was introduced.", "In the U.S. , the standard is two 120v feeds that combine for 240 V for larger loads like dryers, air conditioners, and ovens.  The voltage typically varies from 110v to 120v depending on load, the efficiency of the supplying transformer, the distance from the transformer, and other factors.  It is important to note that AC electrical current is graphed as a sine wave and the measurement is typically an RMS (root mean squared) average.  Variance is normal.", "It's because the \"standard\" household voltage is not \"standard\" at all.\n\nIn Brazil we even say 110V when it is actually 127V. We have most places using 127V and some with 220V. It is not 110- > 220 because we use 3-phase distribution.\n\nFor example in my house I receive 3 phase 220V and a Neutral (4 conductors), so I have 127V (phase-Neutral) outlets and 220V (phase-phase) outlets, and it is easy to convert one to the other just by rewiring.\n\nThe relation in a 3-phase system is \n\n127 * 3/\u221a3 = 220\n\nThere is also an allowed deviation of 10%.\n\nAnother thing which is not standard is the frequency. We (Brazil), as in the US use 60Hz, whereas I believe the normal in Europe is 50Hz.\n\nThat caused weird problems with devices which used the mains frequency as a time reference (like cheap alarm clocks).", "Some of it may be a holdover from a time when nominal voltages weren't as strict:  I've seen a lot of pre WWII equipment with nameplates of 110/220/440/etc volts.\n\n\nSome of it may be due to confusion between service voltage provided by the utlity and utilization voltage the equipment must accept:\n\n\nNEMA says appliances must function normally even with a drop in supply voltage.  As a result a lot of equipment nameplates incorporate a ~5% reduction into an approximation of the voltage the equipment will utilize:  \n\n\n120=110, 208=200, 240=230, 480=460, 600=575.", "So attempting an actual ELI5.\n\nBecause of how power works, voltage in a system can vary due to many factors, including wire length from source(where the power comes from) to load(what uses the power), amount of load on the system, and a bunch of other factors.\n\nBecause of this, the electrical standard isnt a fixed point, but instead appliances are designed to work within a range of voltages, since it's impossible to predict what exact voltage each instance of it's use will have to work with.\n\nMost appliances will work with anything close to it's range, 110,115,120v are all the same to 99% of appliances these days, and the same for 208/220/240v This means in most places you see it written they all mean essentially the same thing.\n\nThe probable reason you still see things listed at different voltages is due to countries having varied electrical standards. Even though an appliance will work with anything from 200-250v or 100-120v it's labelled to match the standard of the market it's intended for, which depends on both location and use. For an example I see power referred to in North America as 208v in my professional applications (live production lighting) and 240v when referring to stove or dryer plugs. These are the exact same power, from the same mains and will have the same voltage if you measure them, it's just industry standards how they're referred to. Similarly some countries call it 110v, some 120v. In the end anything that works with one will work with the other, it's just history and habit that keep people using one over the other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2w2udd", "title": "Why, in the United States, do we refer to judges as 'Your Honor'?", "selftext": "What are the historical links from today to hundreds of years ago regarding that reference? How far back does it go?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2w2udd/why_in_the_united_states_do_we_refer_to_judges_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["conhe28", "cons7jj"], "score": [30, 10], "text": ["Dates back to at least 1551\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >   With possessive adjective and freq. with capital initial, as Your Honour , etc.:  (a) a deferential form of address for any person of higher rank or status (now rare, chiefly regional in later use);  (b) a title of respect or form of address for a person holding a particular office, esp. that of court judge.\n\nso i'm guessing it derives from the ancient form of addressing superiors which got applied to english offices, especially the bench but it seems from the OED definitions (more via link) that this concept of honor was widely used and over time got narrowed down. \n\nhigh quality dictionaries like the OED are really an amazing resource that the internet hasn't been able to quickly and easily replace. ", "It should be noted that not just Judges are accorded the title. Virtually every elected or higher level government position is accorded the title \"Honorable.\"\n\nThat Includes President, VP, Senators, Representatives, Anyone appointed by the President and Confirmed by Congress (So Secretaries, Deputies, Under Secretaries and Directors of the various Agencies) Governors, State Legislators, Mayors, US Attorneys, and US Marshals.\n\nIn fact there are many more people who have the title who are not judges then who are. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/88227?redirectedFrom=your+honor#eid1534112"], []]}
{"q_id": "3v8g5x", "title": "why can't surgeons simply cut out the fat and excess skin or perform extreme liposuction to people that weigh 500+lbs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v8g5x/eli5_why_cant_surgeons_simply_cut_out_the_fat_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxl9aoq", "cxl9eg0", "cxla3jj", "cxlasf4", "cxlay63", "cxlb1ih", "cxlb3bt", "cxlblu4", "cxldc1u", "cxldswj", "cxle348", "cxleavq", "cxlebuu", "cxlecij", "cxlen18", "cxletef", "cxleud1", "cxlfdhk", "cxlfdu8", "cxlfj69", "cxlfmu6", "cxlfnsv", "cxlfuji", "cxlfvva", "cxlgatv", "cxlgy2i", "cxlhf2d", "cxlhkcd", "cxlhoyo", "cxlht30", "cxli3do", "cxliaw0", "cxlic1f", "cxlie76", "cxliv49", "cxlj4qf", "cxljlgg", "cxljxyq", "cxlk3lj", "cxlk72n", "cxll3jv", "cxlm5k8", "cxlm8ca", "cxlnojg", "cxlo3e2", "cxloec1", "cxloiq0", "cxlosme", "cxlp9f1", "cxlpil0", "cxlpzri", "cxlryqt", "cxls5ej", "cxls5gh", "cxltvl5", "cxlu25a", "cxlum99", "cxlvqep", "cxlw27m", "cxlwdg8", "cxlwwq2", "cxlyl60", "cxm1dph", "cxm3lme", "cxm4xet", "cxm97s5"], "score": [336, 18, 7, 4, 626, 22, 75, 3726, 5, 127, 4, 4, 8, 9, 12, 3, 26, 2, 10, 66, 2, 6, 6, 382, 2, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 95, 2, 5, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 10, 4, 11, 3, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["The body will react adversely to a sudden change. It's for this reason too that people who are fasting never go for a buffet on finishing it. Instead they start slowly with liquids then light food before they can return to their normal diets. The human body needs to get conditioned. A sudden loss of fat might end up killing the person.", "Skin has limited elasticity. What happens when they balloon up again?", "Even if it were physically possible to remove the fat via surgery that wouldn't be necessary if the person is going to follow up with bypass surgery and an improved diet. Morbidly obese people who have a successful surgery and stick to the diet lose weight very quickly. \n\nPutting them through both gastric bypass and fat trimming surgery at the same time could make their recovery more difficult rather than speed things along.", "They don't do it for people who are extremely overfat because those people have to learn what a healthy lifestyle means for them and also build the discipline to maintain that.  The vast majority of people in that position simply don't understand diet/exercise and/or don't have the discipline to eat healthy and move.  Simply cutting off the fat and skin will see them in the same position again in a short while.  \n\nAlso, whether you cut someone with a rusty dagger or a super high tech laserbeam, damage (trauma) is damage.  Obviously one is worse than the other, but its a matter of degree.  In general one should try to limit the amount of damage they sustain.  Also people who are overfat don't exactly tend to be the healthiest, and may have trouble recovering from so much damage all at once.  There is an inherent risk involved in surgery, having to cut out the fat is addition surgery and being relatively unhealthy simply makes it worse.\n\nFinally fat is a hormone producing organ.  We need it to live.  Cutting hundreds of pounds of it all at once will cause a significant shift in the body's overall chemistry which could cause fatal complications.  Combine this with the above factors and you have a very dangerous situation with perhaps very little long term benefit.  ", "When more than 5,000 cc's of fatty aspirate are removed, the complication rate rises dramatically. Under these circumstances, massive fluid shifts can occur, which increase the potential for cardiac and pulmonary complications. ", "You have to look at it from a psychological view.  Being 500+ lbs is not normal for a human to maintain and live.  If doctors just cut out 250 of those lbs nothing is stopping the person from still consuming just as much to get back up to 500+ lbs.\n\nSo mentally a healthier way to approach the problem is introducing the person to self control, food management, and exercise.  Extreme changes for humans does not usually pan out well, mentally and/or physically. Taking a step by step approach will teach the person to become more focused, disciplined, and determined.\n\nThis is mostly a psychological issue, but there is a biological reason as well.  I am no expert by no means and you would need someone who knows something about anatomy to tell you the side effects of removing fat cells and how fat cells grow at extreme levels.", "Fat is all over the body, and each chunk of fat has access to blood. It would be like performing 100's of amputations at once. And each of these amputations has a ton of risks. Patient won't survive that.", "It's not always just fat \"under the skin\". A lot of fat is interstitial or spread throughout muscles and in between organs. Think of a nice fatty marbled kobe/wagyu ribeye steak. The fat is all interleaved between muscle fibers.\n\nNow there is a lot of subcutaneous fat, but removing it also damages all the connective tissues between the skin and your body, its not as simple as \"vacuuming out the fat\".\n\nGoogle for a cross section/MRI of an obese body and it'll show you where the fat deposits are spread around.\n\nEdit: here's a link to an photo that shows the difference between where the fat is located on an obese vs regular profile. It's also visceral (inside your body cavity) fat that isn't something you can vacuum out either.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nedit2: there are quite a few people who are disturbingly interested in \"dat thigh gap\" on the slimmer cross section..\n\nedit3: and for a very medically compelling answer to people asking \"Well why can't you just remove the stuff under the skin that you can get to easily\", taken from a comment below by /u/huphelmeyer:\n\n > \"When more than 5,000 cc's of fatty aspirate are removed, the complication rate rises dramatically. Under these circumstances, massive fluid shifts can occur, which increase the potential for cardiac and pulmonary complications.\"\n\nedit4: there are some very good more detailed answers in some of the other comments. my comment here is mostly focused around helping people realize that body fat is more complicated than just being \"under your skin\" and there's no easy way to *safely* remove it via surgery.", "Just because you remove the fat from the excessive areas, you still caused significant damage to your organs by gaining all that weight. I watched a CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) and this fella was obese and his heart had so much fat on it, so enlarged and just excessively huge. The surgeon was telling me how he loves his job but he always fears that something as excessive as heart surgery doesn't even motivate people to change. ", "Kind of a tangent; but can anyone explain why liposuctions seem so violent!? There is a shit load of bruising and watching a surgery was like watching a doctor murder fat with a tube!", "You don't get obese without eating your way there. Cutting it off of people wouldn't result in a permanent solution, they'd be right back to gaining weight.", "Fats, especially saturated and trans fatty acids, take very long for your body to metabolize vs unsaturated/omerga-3 fats (that is because the altter has alkenyl bonds, which are more readily oxidized, whereas saturated fats are all alkyl chains, which take much longer to metabolize).\n\nBecause of the accumulation of \"bad\" fats (they're not necessarily bad, just worse for you in general than unsaturated/cis fats), they can absorb readily into various parts of the body. It was mentioned the comparison of a marble steak, where fat is layered in between muscle tissue, but it can also build up in heart valves, inside of blood vessels/arteries to form blockage, and also inside of organs. The liver has a very fibrous sponge-like texture that can asborb a lot of fat. Fatty liver occurs when too much fat is consumed, or something else is consumed that damages the liver's ability to metabolize things (such as in long term alcohol abuse).\n\nThe treatment of the severely obese needs to be gradual and can't be done in a drastic surgery like that, which will only get the \"surface fat\" and not the buildup of cholesterol and various fatty acids inside of organs and arteries. I'm not sure exactly how approved it is, but I heard for the severely obese, it can be treated using IV administration of pharmaceutical drugs. I heard that currently, trials are going underway for the IV administration of fucoxanthin with piperine to selectively induce apoptosis of lipocytes (fat cells--that is, cells which accumulate all those fatty acids mentioned above).\n\nOne could always even make the semisynthetic analogue O,O-diacetyl-fucoxanthin to increase fat solubility and bioavailability, and it should not only increase potency but molecular mass, so it'd not only be more potent by dose, but making it from fucoxanthin would actually add mass to your final product. So you'd get a more potent drug for an overall cheaper cost by weight. (same pattern seen in morphine vs heroin, THC vs THC-O-acetate, etc). It would release two molecules of acetic acid and one molecule of fucotxanthin.\n\nEven better, O,O-dipropanoyl-fucoxanthin should increase potency even more, similar in Dipropanoylmorphine vs heroin. O,O-diaminoacetyl (glycinoyl prodrugs) would be even better because glycine is highly fat soluble (much more than proanoic acid or acetic acid), and on top of that, the nitrogen amine on glycine would be protonated, and so the glycinoyl ester should bond more strongly to the oxgyen molecule on fucoxanthin, whreas in acetyl/propanoyl groups they are all O-acyl carbon chains, which has a like charge to the O- and would repel more (thus cleaving off faster and absorbing less into the system).\n\nIf you wanted to be extra fancy you could use the fatty acids in fish oil as a prodrug group, and make O,O-di-eicosapentaenoyl-fucoxanthin. This would release a molecule of fucoxanthin for every two molecules of Eicosapentaenoic acid.\n Being actual lipids, the EPA prodrug chain obviously would increase bioavailability a really significant amount. At that point due to all the extra bulk it'd be probably less potent by dose, but manufacturing fucoxanthin into Di-EPA-fucoxanthin could be done with nearly 100% conversion, so the conversion would add a massive increase of mass in the final product, which would even out decreased potency. \n", "Also there are a ton of blood vessels that run all through there. You gotta be careful what you suck out cause you could rupture them all and kill the patient; especially one so big", "Not the main reason, but another contributing factor that I've yet to see mentioned is that people who are extremely obese are tricky to operate on. Putting them under with anesthesia is extremely risky, and there's an incredibly high chance of them dying on the table. Therefore, it's better to have them lose weight via diet changes, and then do surgery to deal with the flabby skin.", "Fat cells grow large with the accumulation of more fat, but they don't divide and make more cells. If you remove the cells, fat can't be stored in that place as well.  There is more risk associated with fat around the organs than in fat under the skin, but the organ fat is more difficult to remove.  Remove the fat under the skin, and then all of the excess energy needs to get stored around the organs - not safe.  \nFat storage problems are then coupled with the difficulty of anesthesia on an obese person due to a difficult airway, excess pressure on the chest due to weight, and the cardiovascular complications of obesity.  ", "Several reasons:\n\n- very difficult to put under anesthesia, with their weight causing breathing problems.\n\n\n- there is more than surface fat causing the person to be large, but fat on the orgins.\n\n\n- fat contains lots of small blood vessels, so lots of bleeding in surgery\n\n\n- skin itself has terrible blood supply so huge risk of infection.", "The other problem is that adipose tissue is also highly vascular. Fat is actually stored inside vacoule compartments in cells, its not like it is free floating in your body. All of this fat is still in cells,which is in tissues which are highly vascularized, and that bleed like hell. What surgeons do to mitigate this when they are doing a lipo is to use some sort of local alpha adrenergic drug (ie: epinephrine)  to vasoconstrict the little artieries and also alot of cauterization to burn them shut but you can only do so much of that before you are dealing with a patient bleeding out on the table. And the kicker to all of this is that although liposuction brings about an aesthetic improvement, on average it does nothing to modify obese patients insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease risk. So the cost benefit is quite shit, especially when you compare it to something like bariatric surgery.\n\nEDIT: I realize now that my explanation may have been less than accessible so I'm more than willing to clarify anything", "Assuming they could do that, would it really solve the obesity of the person? If someone manages to get to 600 pounds its their unhealthy lifestyle that needs corrected, not surgery. I imagine they would just gain it right back if they didn't decide to change for good.", "2 big simple problems to consider.\n\n1. If you've ever gone to the dentist, after the novacane wears off, you know how much it hurts? Now imagine that 90% of your skin feels that way.\n\n2. The skin is the strongest barrier preventing you from getting an infection. By doing it all at once, you're creating a separation between a large amount of surface area that can get infected. Another easy analogy. Try tinting your entire car without getting a single air bubble or piece of dust on the first shot. If you don't get it right on the first shot, your car is at risk of dying and never running again.\n\n", "Surgeon's Assistant here, with experience in Plastics and Massive Weight loss:\n\nThe quick answer is fluid / electrolyte balance. When you remove a ton of fat at once, you seriously upset their fluid  &  electrolyte levels, and if you take too much (the total amount you can take at once varies by state, but is measured in liters), they can go into \"bounce\" where the bodies chemical levels do not balance out, resulting in patient death.\n\nThis has happened many times before, and is why there is now a state mandated limit to how much adipose tissue can be removed in a single go.", "Another factor I haven't seen mentioned (albeit, its not the most important) is the endocrine disruption after a massive removal of fat tissue.  Leptin is secreted from fat cells and suppresses hunger in healthy individuals.  It is meant to encourage those with more energy stored in their thighs and around their guts to eat less in order to maintain optimal body weight.  I think the malfunction of this pathway is also believed by some to be a key factor in obesity, but someone will have to fact check me on that. \n\nI'm assuming that the reduction of a strong signal of appetite suppression to a much smaller one would lead to feelings of extreme hunger, severe overeating, and possible increased fat storage until the body adjusts.  This can actually be observed in some rapid weight loss diets.  The dieter initially loses a ton of weight but gains it all back and sometimes a little bit more as the body attempts to bring body weight back up to what it believes is homeostasis (equilibrium/balance)\n\nI guess there could be hormone treatment available for postop therapy.  I don't know-\nJust googled it and it exists.  Guess it's still relevant to the discussion though\n", "In addition to what everyone else is saying, fat also acts as an endocrine organ, and secretes a surprising number of hormones.  Removing too much could cause a pretty major shock and increase the likelihood of complications post-surgery.", "Fat is a collection of living cells, blood, and water. If you remove a lot of fat, you lose all the blood and water with it.\n\nThinking about this another way, if you stand up too fast after not drinking a lot of water, you feel dizzy, and might even pass out. That's because your heart (your engine) isn't getting enough blood to keep your neck arteries full. Your arteries send distress signals to your nervous system, which tell your brain to shut down. This causes you to automatically lie flat and gravity gets blood to your head. \n\nSimilarly, if you remove a lot of fat all at once, you are effectively creating a dangerous shift in the blood, water, nutrient balance.  Your total body volume shifts dangerously away from what it can cope with.  \n\nIn fact, after any large surgery, the body loses a lot of water and nutrients from the stress of the operation, sweating, and incidental bleeding. That's why you usually get fluids before, during, and/or after surgery.\n\nIn California, you may only take 10 pounds of fat at a given liposuction appointment. This is to protect patients and doctors from taking too much fat, shifting the blood/water balance, and thus, putting a life in jeopardy.\n", "Because this is an ELI5 and not a personal request for medical advice (one reason I think many doctors who see these threads and don't reply are concerned about) there are really four main factors, which some commenters have already mentioned.  But if you want the real answer you're gonna have to put up with the TL version without DR.\n\n1) Anaesthetic risk is even more risky. Sedating/paralysing/analgesing someone is a balance of many factors. Forgive the pun but obesity puts the balance out of whack. The easiest part of that to understand is that you  physically have to keep the airway open against a person's body weight when they are entering/coming out of sedation(the machine does that in the middle), let alone the chemical/neurological aspects of keeping them safely \"under\".\n\n2) Fat is a difficult tissue to work with. It is intricately connected to all its surrounding tissue, so even though you can separate it from the skin, it's something like how when you peel an orange the white pith always comes away with the segments. Plus fat is not even deposited in neat segments, it just looks that way because a lot of it will make up a layer, and, as others have mentioned, it also coats our internal organs for protection. There are blood vessels all through our fat. Even moreso than that, fat has an important hormonal role in the body, it is also a small source of stem cells, and performs other homeostatic functions (it's a buffer for chemicals and other nutrients we eat/store/release). \n\n3) Big surgery is a big deal, like running a marathon on no training. Literally the most invasive intervention we have in medicine. Even small wounds cause lots of inflammation, and when you divert fluid en masse from one part of the body to another (wound) site, you get the fluid shifts everyone keeps mentioning.  \"Lasering\" off the fat (cauterising, more like) still leaves charred unhappy tissue behind. And afterward, any surgery creates scar tissue - in a joint, in the abdominal cavity (sticky adhesions that can cause your bowels to twist on themselves and even cut circulation off) and yes, even track marks in fat. Any doctor will tell you the principles of treatment start with conservative (e.g. quitting smoking, dieting), then medical (nonsurgical interventions like medications or CPAP snoring machines) before surgical, with few exceptions such as broken bones. The media does not acurately reflect this decisionmaking process, which is done through talking WITH the patient, at all. But it is a cornerstone of good practice, one which makeover reality shows can decieve you does not exist.\n\n4) Then, you have to recover from it. Some commenters have mentioned the psychological aspects of dramatic weight loss. It's more like, how would you deal with the probably dramatic body adaptations to sudden massive weight loss? People do not realise that plastic surgeons have a responsibility to leave a safe amount of fat on the body so that it continues to function as expected for the patient. Unlike amputation, which is obviously, very traumatic, and unlike small volume liposucton, the tissue loss you are asking about is not isolated. Plus the skin is our number 1 defensive barrier against infection, and now you go and compromise it all over. As I mentioned earlier, adipose (fat) plays a buffering role in the body, and the body continues to support the growth of adipose as well as form scar tissue wherever normal tissue integrity has been physically interrupted. The effect of sudden massive adipose loss has not been well studied, and in my honest medical opinion, it is not ethical to begin to do so at this time in history, despite those who I imagine will reply to tell me otherwise. A myriad of terrible complications are all theoretically probable from the surgery you are thinking of. So, it isn't a thing.\n\nEdit: paragraphs as requested - sorry I wrote it in my phone and didn't double-enter. ", "You'd have to consider the over all blood volume and pressure. You can't just remove a large chunk of person and expect the organs to cope with a sudden change like that. It certainly isn't a trivial procedure anyway, and the risk to life - especially given the patient's bad general health and the difficulty of safely anaesthetising them - would be pretty high.", "On a similar note, why can't there be a service to lock up obese people (with their consent) and give them water and vitamin supplements and let them starve away the fat? It could even be labelled as a medical procedure since it might be necessary for their own health, thereby allowing them enough medical leave from their jobs to attempt it.", "So, what we take out by liposuction, we measure in liters.  Max. we take out is 10 L. 20 to 25% of that liquid is blood. 2 to 2.5 L of blood. Average human has up to 6 L of the precious liquid, so... You do the math. Its bad.\n\nBesides, large ones have all sorts of problems with anaesthesia, healing, infections, chronic diseases as well, so...", "The real answer is that no surgery comes without risks. When you perform these surgeries you're removing heavily vascularised tissue which can result in a lot of blood loss and adverse events. Secondly obese people are generally very unhealthy to begin with, attempting to operate on them when they are at the peak of their unhealthy life style is asking for complications including infections, inability to fight infections, inability to heal properly and sometimes even Inabiltiy to come off the ventilator. The process of getting a 600 lb patient down in weight is caloric restriction, and if that fails some sort of restrictive gastric surgery which carries much less complications than Lipo or panniculectomies. If the patient has chronic infections from pendulous fat then we can wntertain removing the tissue. ", "An issue people haven't touched on is\n\n > The person would still have to get bypass and watch their diet of course\n\nI know this is a somewhat controversial subject. But the fact is that someone isn't gettiing up to that weight unless they have severe psychological issues. The weight is a symptom and one which will just rebound if the underlying cause isn't properly addressed. It shouldn't be done with surgery until someone has demonstrated that they're able to relate to food in a more psychologically healthy way. Otherwise the combination of overeating and the surgery would be decreasing their heatlh. ", "You have to lose a certain amount of weight first so you have less of a risk of stroke or heart attack. The fat would also grow back without any modification to the digestive system/eating habits, necessitating dangerous repeat surgeries. I'm sure there are more reasons - I'm just thinking of what I've seen on My 600 Lb Life.", "OR Nurse here:\nTrying to sedate and keeping a person alive of that size is a hell of a task. In fact, the hospital I work at has criteria that excludes morbidly obese people from non-essential surgery.", "I'm not a doctor or expert on the matter. However I could tell you that I got an abdominoplasty and liposuction on my sides when I was 24.  I was 240 at the time and 5 foot 9 inches. I'm also a male, where a lot of the patients in this particular area are male.\n\nThe procedures were expensive and pretty invasive in my eyes. However, I was dealing with really emotional stuff after a huge breakup after a long relationship so I was pretty vulnerable. I ended up getting the procedure done by the same doctor whome I paid to perform breast enlargement on the same girlfriend who just left me.\n\nI had to get the approval of both my psychiatrist and therapist who said I was of sound emotional mind to get the procedure. Now, I'm getting my masters in mental health therapy and I know what to say and I realize now it was a mistake.\n\nAnyways, sorry for getting offtrack. The after procedure healing for me, even for someone who isn't 500+ pounds, was very painful and taxing. I had to get two pumps on either side of my abdomen to suck out blood, make sure sites were clean, not to mention not being able to move and risk of infection. Luckily this didn't happen to me but I imagine these are big concerns with people very obese.\n\nThe other main issue is that this doesn't teach the patients anything. These people who would get liposuction will likely just regain the weight if they don't show their doctor they can lose the weight and keep it off for a period of time.\n\nI'm an anecdotal account of this. I ended up regaining all the weight and undoing every procedure I had done within a year and a half. I'm embarrassed of myself. Basically I have a scar larger and thicker than a c section scar going across the whole front of my waist and on top of that I'm a male, so I get lots of questions whenever my shirt lifts up accidentally and reveals it. I'm ashamed of the decision I made, not being dedicated to weight loss and choosing a shortcut where I ended up worse then before.\n\nAnyways, I know this is a more personal account and may not answer your question completely, but maybe it can give you some first person insight in what can happen when someone like me makes a stupid decision and isn't ready for the responsibility of what these types of surgeries entail.\n\nHave a great day.", "The main reason is that fat is vascular. To supply blood to all that extra tissue the body increases the total volume of blood that specific body contains. The amount of fat taken out during each procedure, which is determined by each State's medical board and probably no more than 10% of body weight or so, is determined so as not to risk taking away too much blood from the system at one time.\n\nEdit: basically for the same reason you can only give so much blood or serum per visit to the blood bank.", "like the expensive cuts of meat, the fat isnt draped over a morbidly obese person like a coat, its marbled in their tissue. You can't just cut it off because its between everything and in everything.", "The same reason why liposuctions can't be performed \"at once\", the body needs time to adjust to it, essentially, missing part of itself. \n\nAlso, general anesthesia is pretty ruthless towards the body(been there, done that).", "I think one reason is that they are not healthy enough to survive the anesthesia required for surgery. Their hearts are under enormous stress  ", "it's likely that they would die on the operating table, because it'd mean removing the mayority of the body mass all at once, when anesthesia alone is likely enough to kill someone of that size, that's why most doctors won't operate on someone who's 500 pounds, even if that means that they might die, because the risk of them dying is WAY too big from the anesthesia alone, let alone the stress you'd be putting on the body with that operation", "I've seen a lot of good reasons but this hasnt been mentioned. Fat cells in subcutaneous fat tissue is not as endocrinally active as fat cells in/in between organs. A lot of the health effects of obesity comes from visceral fat that induces insulin resistance, increased blood fat levels and inflammation. - >  cardiovascular disease", "In general you should always remember that in medical science there is very little things that can be summarized as \"just do this\". Everything is complicated in it.", "TL;DR: core fat and lasting effects.\n\nThe reason is lifestyle and core fat. \n\nSure, you could cut off the fat BUT you couldn't do that to the fat in the heart and liver etc.. ONLY exercise can get rid of that hence the lifestyle change. \n\nIf you cut off that fat then fatties like me would just get op after op. The lifestyle change KEEPS the fat off and rids it from the core. Meaning overall health is achieved rather than aesthetic happiness.", "I have a friend who is 500+ pounds and the reason a doctor can't just go nuts and start cutting out the fat is because the amount of anesthesia it takes someone that size could end up killing them. It's a risk that doctors will not take. My friend ended up getting surgery but she had to lose over 100 pounds first", "There's also if I remember correctly a lot of capillaries and other small blood vessels in the fat section that makes it even harder to operate and more at risk of bleeding.", "I haven't seen anyone mention this: liposuction patients almost always gain all the weight back. The body has decided it needs 400 lbs of fat, after the surgery it notices it is short and will rapidly expand what fat that remains to get back to its \"goal\" level leaving you hideously perportioned. They do perform gastric bypass on people that size. The operation was originally intended to make it hard to eat large amounts. But determined people can stretch out their stomach and stay fat. Lap band works bc the stomach itself produces one of the hormones involved in deciding your \"goal\" body fat. Less hormone. Less fat. ", "I always wondered why they don't just wire their jaws shut. It would seem to accomplish the same effect ", "Liposuction is a safe, **optional**, cosmetic procedure. It can not, and is not, best practice to treat obesity for a number of reasons. The most common technique, tumescent liposuction, uses several liters of water pumped just under the skin, with a mixture of lidocaine (a numbing agent) and epinephrine (basically adrenaline). The fat is then sucked out through long, narrow, tubes. If you've ever seen it on TV-you know the doctor uses a series of strong and quick strafing motions to essentially 'rip' the available fat away. \n\nThe danger comes from a few key effects that *can* happen, but very rarely do. (Less then 10 reported deaths from 1993-2008 per the FDA). These are: blot clot, bradycardia (very slow heartbeat), hypotension  (very low blood pressure) and pulmonary edema. That's fluid collection in the lungs; nasty way to go.\n\nMost of these deaths are due to drug interactions in the body. Too much fluid around your chest and you form an edema, too much around your legs and you throw a clot. Too much lidocaine and your heart stops or your pressure bottoms out. Then there is the normal surgery risks: infection, adverse effects to general anesthesia, narcotic drug overdose, as well as certain age/health related effects. Like poor Donda West who bled out and arrested because of poor health mixed with lack of proper after-care monitoring. \n\nSo, for a 600lb person, who is presumably in terrible cardiovascular health, trying to suck **all** the fat away via TL would be incredibly dangerous- if not outright fatal.", "OR maybe they could eat less,work out little more?", "If you remove \"a lot\" of fat all at once the odds of pulmonary issues are pretty high.  Exactly how much is \"a lot\" most would say over 5,000cc's or basically much more than say 10pounds and you are getting into risky territory and when you are suggesting removing HUNDREDS of pounds of fat you are now talking beyond risky to downright lethal to the patient.  \n\nWhy is it so risky/lethal?  Fat has a purpose, its not just trash in the body making you look bad.  To that end it will cause massive fluid imbalance issues which will almost assuredly cause various systems within your body to have much more fluid than normal in them after serious fat removal like you are suggesting.  \nIs it possible to survive such a surgery?  While we don't have hard proof either way I'd say its \"probably\" likely assuming the patient was otherwise healthy and you had cardio-pulmonary specialists on hand to IMMEDIATELY start treatment of the issues that arise.  Though this would in a realistic setting NEVER happen simply because the odds of this failing and killing the patient are exceedingly high and this is not it will kill you at somepoint in the future from a heart attack like obesity, this is literally kill you within hours or minutes of the surgery kinda thing... likely before the surgery is even complete.  \n\nIts also important to realize that fat people don't have a lot of extra fat cells, instead there fat cells are simply larger. When using surgical removal your body will regrow (or atleast attempt to) those fat cells since to be completely blunt your body 100% needs fat cells to function and be health BUT obviously too much/too big and its clearly an issue.  To this end excess skin removal has to wait until after the patient has recovered AND stabilized there weight to some degree.  \n\nTL;DR, serious fat removal of more than just a handful of pounds of fat will cause serious medical issues realistically including death.  \n\nFull disclosure, some of my statements are overt simplifications for the sake of explaining things and not 100% scientifically accurate nor should they be treated as such.  Further the topic at hand is discussing theoretical procedures nobody has real data on besides \"if its bad at this amount, its probably much worse at higher amounts\".  ", "Fat has a lot of capillaries. A large blood supply.  When a person has maxi liposuction the fluid imbalance  can cause  heart failure. Also the disruption to the tissue causes more swelling. As for just cutting it out I think long incisions have more chance of complications.  ", "Why can't people eat a healthy diet and exercise and not ask for miracles?", "Don't know if anyone answered OP about this yet, but fat or adipose tissue as it's known as has a lot of vascularisation. That means in order to keep the fat cells alive they have to be fed with oxygen and nutrients and have waste products taken away like any other cells in the human body, which means that they need blood vessels running through them as well (up to seven miles of blood vessels for every pound of fat!). \n\nIf you just cut open an obese person and started removing that fat tissue, that also would cause a lot of bleeding as well. Remove too much tissue, and you could have major problems with their blood pressure, or they could simply bleed out, or go into cardiac arrest. Bottom line, the risks associated with just physically removing the fat are too great in comparison to the benefits.", "Humans are not designed in layers. Our fat is weaved within and around our muscle fibers as well as surrounded by nerves various cartilage tendons veins and bones. What you are suggesting would cause the person to bleed out or die from infection from having full open body wounds. Once you're that fat, it is not easy to go back.\n\nTl;dr once you go fat you never go back", "I wish it was this easy. I've been overweight since elementary school. I'm not morbidly obese or anything, but I'm a 5'7\" female and am at about 200 lbs right now. I was pretty consistent around 165 while working in fast food for 4 years but i ballooned after getting my degree and getting a desk job. I have tried numerous diets and work out routines with varying degrees of success and nothing lasting long term. It is really depressing when you diet and exercise really well for a month, hop on the scale to see your progress and haven't lost any weight at all. \n\nI found out as an adult I have hypothyroidism, pernicious anemia and non-alcholic fatty liver disease. My job stresses me out alot and I used to come home and drink a beer because I LOVE beer, but my ability to enjoy alcohol was taken from me at 22 T_T \n\nI know i need to try to lose weight in order to improve my health, but its like when you have tried so many things and none of them work you kind of just give up inside. If it was this easy people would be lined up around the block, but that wont remove the fat from my liver", "Individuals who are obese have two types of fat: subcutaneous (under the skin) and visceral (inside the abdominal cavity). Liposuction involves removal of fat that is under the skin, but does nothing to address fat that lies underneath the muscles. To remove fat in the abdominal cavity, it would be nesecarry to cut through muslce and work around the internal organs. Removal of fat from other areas of the body(arms, legs) also includes bleeding and infection risks as skin and vessels are severed. So could a surgeon remove both types of fat if they really wanted to? Probably, but it would be very risky.", "Because their hearts will be so efficient that they will literally turn into superman/superwoman.", "Because they'd die, homes! \n\nBut really, the fat in our body acts as a protective element for our organs. However, when an individual is obese, that fat just excessively accumulates around organs and becomes interwoven with capillaries, muscles, portions of the organs, etc. ", "Man, why were you even watching that crap?  ", "Looks like the top commenters covered the important points. You might be interested to know, however, that this is *sort of* done for people with extreme amounts of belly fat. Panniculectomy. The panniculus is the bulk of fat on the belly.\n\n_URL_0_", "This doesn't address any of the root causes of people being 500 lbs. If this procedure was technically possible, people who do not address their over eating life style will just put all the weight right back on, making it utterly pointless.", "I'm speaking from a strictly functional observation here, but I imagine that finding a home for all of the stuff in between is a part of it.\n\nIt's not just a matter of cutting out the fat and excess skin, you also need to remember that the body was that previous size. \n\nThink about a limousine; they don't come out of the factory that way. Somebody has to take a car, cut it in half, add in some material to fill the gap, and lengthen the parts that run the distance (I.E. - Fuel lines, exhaust, driveshaft, etc.)\n\nTo perform a massive \"fat-ectomy\", to cut out excess fat and skin, would be like making a limousine in reverse. Blood vessels, nerve endings, organ placement, all of that needs to be adjusted to accommodate the changes. The problem is finding the room in the skinnier body for the heavier parts.\n\nThat's just one issue, there are many more. The massive shock to the body from such a massive surgery could easily be lethal. The necessary blood volume in the body would change drastically, and I imagine anemia, or even it's opposite condition, would be massively exacerbated. Infection, in my mind, would probably be the biggest issue. You're talking about long, deep incisions that run from the skins surface deep into the body, creating, not just avenues, but nice, clear, superhighways for infection.\n\nThat's why it's Lipo-\"suction\"; they emulsify the fat into a more liquid state and suck it out in a far less invasive process.", "There are two main ways fat is stored in the body: subcutaneously (just beneath the skin), and viscerally (in the cavity surrounding the organs). Liposuction can only remove subcutaneous fat, but in morbidly obese individuals a large portion of this fat is stored viscerally. Even if one *could* remove all of the fat surgically, that would be an extremely complex and invasive procedure, and it could put the patient at greater risk (as others have said). ", "There was a woman that worked at a company I delivered to years ago. She looked like Jabba the Hutt. Suddenly she quit her job. About a year later, a new girl starts working there. I ask about her and found out it was Jabba, hundreds of pounds lighter, she looked much happier, younger, and unrecognizable to the old person. She had some sort of surgeries done but I don't know which type. Anyway, the point is that the miracles of modern medicine can turn Jabba the Hutt into a beautiful woman.", "That would kill the patient. All that fat has blood vessels running through it, they would lose too much fluid and have a heart attack", "The fat itself is not the problem, it is a symptom of the problem which is an unhealthy lifestyle, whether that is based on complicating health conditions, poor decision-making, or psychological and emotional issues.  So apart from the risks of such a surgery, simply removing a lot of fat would not be a permanent fix.  It's analogous to cleaning out a hoarded house-- all that excess got there for reasons and the reasons have to be addressed for a true recovery.", "Because it's not just fat, there's other stuff as well - like muscle and veins. Other things to consider is how the body will react and if it can handle having that sudden fat being gone. ", "I don't know. Why can't fat people just cut out fat and extra calories from their diet?", "I find anytime the question includes the word \"simply\", e.g. \"why can't they simply...\", or \"it should be simple to...\" *that's* the reason why. It's because the asker has glossed over the part that answers their question with the assumption that that thing is *simple*.\n\nYou have connective tissues that need to be taken care of, new blood vessels that are now bleeding, massive shifts in weight, mass, and fluid distribution that the body now has to re-jig itself to make use of, and so on. \n\nGenerally, the more drastic the thing you're doing, the less you can do it, or the less time you have to be doing it. Removing entire parts of the inside of your body is a pretty big modification not just on the table, but for the person's body afterward. Better to lose the weight naturally and in a healthy way than risk an unnecessary death or complications. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nyas.org/image.axd?id=d4aa338e-f305-4521-8822-b603cd76a9c7&amp;t=634314620997800000"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://surgery.med.umich.edu/plastic/patient/adult_procedures/panniculectomy/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3nufpu", "title": "Can anyone explain the ergodic hypothesis simply?", "selftext": "Spent far too long staring at the wiki page, it's just not making sense. Is it possible to explain it in simpler terms? I'm not a physicist, but have an understanding of thermodynamics.\nAny help would be appreciated. Thank you for reading!\nedit: put physics flair on, but this could also be a mathematical question. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3nufpu/can_anyone_explain_the_ergodic_hypothesis_simply/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvrgnql"], "score": [5], "text": ["The ergodic hypothesis is the statement that all states of a system with a given energy are equally likely to occur over long periods of time.\n\nAdopting the ergodic hypothesis allows one to compute the average behavior of a system over time by instead performing an average over states."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2nravh", "title": "why don't americans/english take off their shoes when entering a house, even their own house?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nravh/eli5_why_dont_americansenglish_take_off_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmg45s0", "cmg49fm", "cmg4dr3", "cmg4dyt", "cmg4f71", "cmg4kvb", "cmg4o3b", "cmg4pg9", "cmg4pom", "cmg4sif", "cmg4tui", "cmg5fyy", "cmg5mr5", "cmg5pn3", "cmg5xcv", "cmg62ha", "cmg6hg2", "cmg74el", "cmgbf9p", "cmgd87r", "cmgdalm", "cmgdycm", "cmgeg0i", "cmgf5b3", "cmgf6sf"], "score": [127, 19, 4, 36, 7, 27, 7, 4, 5, 3, 2, 65, 2, 6, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Who says they don't?  First thing I do as soon as I get home is take them off. ", "because we dont have open sewers/animals and people shitting in our streets. ", "American here, always take my shoes off, but only because I find shoes uncomfortable ", "I absolutely do remove my shoes before entering my home, and I ask that all visitors do the same. Grinding dirt/chemicals/ick into my carpets with shoes on? Yeah, no thanks.", "I don't think there is a standard etiquette for this in the UK. Some people prefer that you take your shoes off in their home, others don't care. Maybe some would prefer that you keep them on.\n\nI normally just copy what everyone else does when in someone else's home. In my home I take my shoes off, but I don't particularly mind what other people do. Then again I very rarely have anyone other than my girlfriend or my family round.", "I'm fairly certain it's a regional thing in the US. I live in the northeast, and just about everyone I've ever met takes off their shoes as soon as they enter any house. You don't want to track mud or snow around, especially if you're a guest. I've got a couple of friends from northern Texas though, and they don't take their shoes off unless they're invited to or are friends of the property owner because otherwise it looks like they're being rude and making yourself at home without permission. ", "Many Americans have an initial room like a mud room or a small foyer where people normally take their shoes off.", "It depends on the climate and weather conditions.  I grew up partially in Southern California where it is warm and dry.  Most people leave their shoes on.  Here in Maine where it is cold and snowy most people take their shoes off. ", "always lived in the uk here, everyone i know takes their shoes off when entering a house, be it their own or someone elses", "Nearly everyone I know in England tends to take their shoes off when entering a house, it's pretty standard over here. Can't speak for America though.", "Depends on how clean the house is. Some people keep clean houses and like you to take of your shoes, others, well, that may not be a good idea.", "It's easiest to explain this initially by looking at why people of many Asian cultures DO take their shoes off. I can't speak for all Asian cultures, but I've spent a good amount of time in Japan and over there, the floor plays a far more significant part in daily life than it does in the west, despite the increasing modern popularity of western furniture and beds. Traditionally, the Japanese sit directly on the floor, possibly with a cushion, around a low table. This is where you eat, socialise and work. When you sleep, the bedding material is rolled out directly onto the floor, and then put away again the next morning. On that basis, it's clear that having a clean and pleasant floor is *extremely* important, and as a guest it's culturally significant to take your shoes off as a mark of respect for your host and for their home.\n\nCompare that with the west, where we have historically always raised our living space upward. Chairs and dining tables for eating, matresses on bed frames for sleeping; in stark contrast to Asian attitudes it's culturally accepted that the floor is a dirty place, and that it's *okay* for it to be dirty.\n\nSo it's not that we *don't* take our shoes off in the US/UK, it's merely that there is no specific culturally mandated rule that we must, and so people are free to make their own house rules based on their personal preference, upbringing, and living situation. Some people mix and match and have intentionally hard-wearing and easy to clean floors downstairs so that it's no problem to keep your shoes on, and then a \"no shoes upstairs\" rule where it's carpeted. I personally take my shoes off in my house as it has carpet throughout. As a guest, your behaviour is generally expected to conform to that of your host, and whether you  may leave your shoes on or not when you visit someone is dependant on what they themselves are doing.", "I do. It started while growing up on a farm. I'm not bringing my animal poo encrusted boots past the mud room. Everyone in my family removes their shoes, even the ones that don't live on the farm. It's rude to the person who keeps the home clean. ", "Cause some of us aren't *that* concerned about the bit of dirt on them from our regular daily lives.  Most of us spend most of our time indoors throughout the day, so we don't get that dirty, so meh.  We take them to our rooms so we can ready ourselves for the next day earlier.", "An other, related question: do you have carpet in your living room and what country are you from?\n\nAsking this because I live in the Netherlands and I know NOBODY who has carpet in their living room...\nEdit: English", "This is a misconception.  Americans don't do one or the other, it varies from house to house, for a multitude of reasons.", "North East England here, everyone i know takes shoes off when they enter a house.", "It's just not a tradition of cultural norm. Lots of people take their shoes off once inside to keep debris from getting on the carpet or floor, but we generally don't have any rules about it other than what people have for their individual houses. We also usually store our shoes inside, even if we take them off.", "American here, yeah shoes come off. Unless my feet reek from pantyhose/tights/no sock flats at someone else's house and they keep theirs on too. I follow suit until I can (if I can) wash my feet in a sink, baby wipes, ect ect. Tights  &  dress shoes combo is terrrrrrrible.", "I don't like shoes on myself so in the house, and even for quick trips outside, I'm usually barefoot. I don't recommend that to everyone, it's just my thing. As far as other people go I don't request anyone remove their shoes...floors are for walking on. It's also where my animals hang out. If my floors  get's dirty I can sweep, mop or vacuum, that's why the those things were invented.", "As an American from the east coast going to school in the midwest, I can say I've never gone into a house and left my shoes on.", "English here and I don't know anyone who wears shoes in the house. I have just moved to a new house in the rural north. It has beautiful new light carpets everyone automatically takes their shoes off at the door as I do when I visit", "I almost always take my shoes off when I'm in my house, I also take them off in others houses unless they tell me it's ok", "I live in Canada and we always, remove shoes. This was a big change for me, as a child, in Africa, we never did. ", "Because there is shit (literally) all over everything all the time, and providing my immune system with the nutrients it requires is far more significant than avoiding exposure to environmental toxins. I pick up after myself and keep things clean, mind. I believe in cleanliness, but sanitation? Nah. Germs are everywhere, like it or not you rely on your constitution to survive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4grwhk", "title": "If a neutralisation reaction is exothermic why does adding heat to the reaction promote product formation (opposite logic to Le Chatelier's Principle)?", "selftext": "Increasing the reaction temperature increases the number of collisions and number of molecules traveling at or above the activation energy, which would favour product formation. However, the overall neutralisation reaction is exothermic, so by Le Chatelier's Principle adding heat should have the effect of favouring the reactants. This is so fundamental, pls help.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4grwhk/if_a_neutralisation_reaction_is_exothermic_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2kg533"], "score": [13], "text": ["Think carefully about what you mean by \"promote product formation,\" because you might be confusing thermodynamics and kinetics.\n\nSince neutralization is exothermic, you're right, increasing the temperature should decrease the overall equilibrium constant. This is a thermodynamic effect. In general, though, neutralization reactions between strong acids and strong bases have very, very high equilibrium constants. Raising the temperature probably won't affect the thermodynamic equilibrium enough to be very noticeable.\n\nYou're also right in saying that when the temperature goes up, the number of collisions between reactants would increase. Essentially, the probability of the reaction happening goes up, which influences the rate constant of the reaction. The observable effect is that the reaction reaches equilibrium more quickly (even if that equilibrium is slightly lower than it might be otherwise). This is a kinetic effect."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "45lc22", "title": "Why did Albania withdraw from the Warsaw Pact in 1968?", "selftext": "My history textbooks were always really vague about this. They just threw in a sentence at the end of the Prague Spring about them withdrawing following the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It never said the reason, but I assume the Prague Spring had something to do with it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45lc22/why_did_albania_withdraw_from_the_warsaw_pact_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czz5xph"], "score": [16], "text": ["Although the invasion of Czechoslovakia is the straw that broke the camel's back, there are even more underlying reasons for Albania withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.\n\nOne of the larger and more general reasons for it was the Sino-Soviet Split, or a split in ideology between differing communist parties. The majority of the socialist world sided with the Soviet Union, however 4 countries did not, 2 of these (North Korea and Yugoslavia) were neutral, while 2 of these were Chinese leaning, one of these being China itself, while the other being Albania.\n\nHoxha, leader of Communist Albania, was a Maoist, which was distinctly different from the standard Marxism-Leninism that the majority of the Warsaw Pact was, and Hoxhaism, the political ideology that came from Hoxha, is considered a distinct form of Maoism.\n\nAlbania sided with China in almost everything, and even purged their own members of government that were known to be pro-soviet. The Soviet Union condemned Albania for this and eventually cut off diplomatic relations in 1961.\n\nChina's influence in Albania grew even larger because of aid to Albania and Albania acted as the People's Republic of China's spokesperson to the UN (before the United States allowed shifting the seat of power from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China). This, again, didn't sit well with the Soviets and further increased tensions.\n\nAnother thing about communism you must know is the idea of revisionism. A revisionist is someone who \"revises\" the ideology of Marx. This is a big no-no in communism. Being called a revisionist is one of the biggest insults in the communist world. With that being said, one of the main ideas of Hoxha is that the only \"true\" communist countries were the Soviet Union until Stalin's death, Albania, and China. The rest were revisionist scum.\n\nAfter Khrushchev's death, the new Soviet leadership tried making promises to Albania, however it soon became clear that they didn't want to make the landscape more favorable to Albania.\n\nWhen the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, Albania decided it was the best time to leave the Warsaw Pact, however it was a long time coming.\n\nNeedless to say Brezhnev didn't really think of it as a big issue and never did anything to try to bring them back."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24dofw", "title": "how come when i get down really low, rub my fingers together and say \"psspsspsspss\" nearly all cats will come to me?", "selftext": "*Edit*\nHoly shit, front page!\nYou guys have popped my front page virginity!\n\n*edit2*\nCHERRY! I meant cherry! Have mercy....", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24dofw/eli5_how_come_when_i_get_down_really_low_rub_my/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch6fv85", "ch6fyyk", "ch6ggnb", "ch6gwr3", "ch6hdqr", "ch6hfau", "ch6hfvb", "ch6i3yf", "ch6i4rt", "ch6ixri", "ch6jbw2", "ch6koct", "ch6l69x", "ch6l7ng", "ch6locl", "ch6mdlm", "ch6mwks", "ch6nl2d", "ch6o7be", "ch6ommn", "ch6oqot", "ch6oy2z", "ch6qf5c", "ch6sds9", "ch6t27h", "ch6ti4y", "ch63nm1", "ch63osw", "ch63p84", "ch641wb", "ch65gcv", "ch65kzn", "ch65rx4", "ch667fi", "ch66gkf", "ch66kog", "ch66mzd", "ch66otf", "ch671s9", "ch672rn", "ch679vp", "ch67mkp", "ch67n1r", "ch68tkh", "ch69bmz", "ch6aq9p", "ch6axty", "ch6b0u6", "ch6b8qe", "ch6bx8d", "ch6cgyh", "ch6cilx", "ch6cxtk", "ch6czvp", "ch6dvlq", "ch6egc1", "ch6egqa", "ch6exzw", "ch6f1na", "ch6f7hp", "ch6f916", "ch6fes7", "ch6fgzf"], "score": [3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 4, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 4, 2, 3, 458, 8, 14, 43, 2, 6, 2341, 2, 5, 13, 11, 4, 27, 3, 133, 17, 4, 6, 8, 46, 53, 3, 6, 3, 2, 3, 5, 21, 2, 2, 3, 34, 6, 2, 3, 7, 3], "text": ["Cats are ambush animals. Getting low to the ground allows them to percieve you as non-threating. As long as the cat hasnt had a poor treatment by humans, it probably thinks you are friendly and are offering food.", "This is a true ELI5 question.", "Two 50/80 pound dogs just pounced on my face.  Thanks, op. ", "Fun fact: in Sweden, we say KSSSKSSSKSSSKSSSKSSS, not PSSSPSSSPSSSPSSSPSSS.\n\nLanguage truly is fascinating.", "At first when I read the question, I thought this was on /r/circlejerk because this is just a weird question. ", "I think american cats are socialized to respond to this. When I was in Korea and Japan, the cats were completely uninterested in  my \"finger rubbing\" and \"tchtchtching\" I saw a lot of Koreans calling cats by making kissing sounds at them.", "Jackson galaxy was on here the other day. Where'd he go?", "My crazy fucking cat likes bleach. We used to clean the kitchen counters with the spray stuff that has bleach and he would proceed to jump up and roll around in it. If I tried to get him down he would get pissed.", "The \"psspsspsspss\" is a relatively new noise that gets their attention, rubbing your fingers together makes them think you have something, being low means that they can easily reach whatever you may have.", "You smell like tuna. ", "I am fucking laughing too hard at \"psspsspss\", but I don't know why", "Cuz they think your autistic so they feel bad for you ", "\"psspsspsspss\" mimics the distress call baby birds make when they've fallen from their nest. ", "I got down and said \"piss piss piss\" and my wife looked at me weird.\nAlso, we have no cats.", " > *Edit*\nHoly shit, front page!\nYou guys have popped my front page virginity!\n\nI think you meant to say \"lost your front page cherry\".", "It works better with dogs, since they basically run at you with their eyes crossed and tongues out like retards. ", "Because your name is Bubbles?", "* They think you have food. \n* Humans are associated with bringing food, affection etc.\n* Animals will seek this out if you provide it. That goes for many animals.\n\nEg. Birds come for food, squirrels, bears etc. People feed things, then the animal associates people with food. It isn't the action of your fingers or getting low. It's the indication that you may have some sort of food/treat. \n\nThink of it like the reason you go to fast food restaurants. You associate them with food. ", "I have read that making such a rubbing motion tricks them into thinking you have something in your hand, and they come over to see what it is. Is there truth to this? It seems to work in practice anyway.", "Tbh, there isn't a whole lot of scientific research into the behavioural sciences of cats, mostly because cats are notoriously shitty and uncooperative test subjects", "Pussies love fingers ", "I love this question so damned much. Comically specific, yet valid and an accurate description of that thing we do to get cats to pay some goddamn attention to us", "Rubbing your fingers together also will help kind of waft your sent their way so you become more interesting than you do threatening. \n\n", "I know it might just be a UK thing but they sell this stuff called Dreamies.  Shit's like crack laced with cat-meth.  You will become lord of the cats if you so much as pick up a baggy of this stuff.  \n\nWhenever my gf wants the cats to come back into the house etc she just shouts \"Dreamies\".  We now have 1 bajillion cats and what I suspect to be a racoon.", "Because most humans in your country naturally have done that and therefore trained the cat overtime. Even a cat meowing is only to communicate with humans. They don't meow at each other.", "Wow, those edits. Ultra cringe.", "It's probably them linking it to being petted or getting food, or that they just love you which wont be true because cats are assholes\n\nTIL; my most upvoted comment is me calling cats assholes", "It's more to due with curiosity than anything else from what I've seen,as Deadricdoom says it could be because they think you're gonna give em food or something ", "I think the rubbing the fingers together they may think you have food and the psspsspss noise is something cats recognize as a \"look over here\" kinda thing, because we have done it for so long though i have no idea where it started.\rSource: I have two cats.", "The cats' owners do this and then pet the cat or give it treats so it thinks you'll do the same. This will not work on feral cats! If you see a cat and it lets you get close enough to even attempt this it is at least somewhat domesticated.", "Honestly I figured that it started because it sounds like mouse noises, with mousing being a major reason that cats were first domesticated.", "You are the cat whisperer.", "Any kind of scratching noises attract them because it sounds like a mouse. \n\nGetting low to the ground makes you less threatening and smaller - notice how they run away when you stand up at your full height.\n\nHolding your fingers out makes you less threatening because they can come close and smell you to learn your scent, and by staying at the limit of your reach they're safe from being picked up suddenly. ", "association. usually when you do that and the cat comes it reserves something that's good (being petted or getting some food and treats). It's like a learned behavior. if you ring a bell every time you feed a dog and then after a few times, you ring the bell but don't give the dog food it's mouth will still water.  ", "[This guy](_URL_0_) knows the power of getting low.", "I've done this my entire life and it seems to work for just about all cats.\n\nMust date back to our caveman ancestors growing up with cats to protect them from dinosaurs.", "Many feral cats on my great grandmothers farm. Not one of them will come up to you if you do this. They will stare directly at you until you realize how silly you look. ", "Humans almost never use the noises they use to attract animals with each other; thus domesticated animals become trained to associate such noises with their owner providing them with food and grooming. In feral animals or in regards to animals where perhaps a different noise is used (i.e whistling), they may still approach out of curiosity, as it is a noise they're not accustomed to (that is also not threatening).", "Getting low really helps regardless. Height is like a power trip for cats, if you are towering over them they don't like it so much. It is why they go for height in the first place, it's a position of superiority.", "I do this to every cat I see. It works 99% of the time. The trick is to let them smell your hand a little first, then the pets commence. Some cats are usually little shits, and will bite you when you're not looking. This one neighborhood cat and I had a game that only I played where I would set my phone's stop watch to see how long I could pet him before I got bit. I once got to 22 minutes. Never again though.", "Typically, the noises that you make are mimicking the noises that the cats' natural prey make (Rodents, birds, insects). So the clicking, and higher-pitched squeaky type noises easily grab their attention.  Couple that with a very naturally-curious temperament---and voila!  You have the common housecat!", "A few people have mentioned that the reason is because the owners do the same, and they are trained to come using that noise. On that: I was at my Polish friend's house and tried to call their cat using the \"pshpsh\" kind of noise and was told that this was a Polish cat, and would only come if you said \"KITCHEE KITCHEE KITCHEE\" at it. So I guess it depends on the owners!", "I kinda think it's a regional thing. I've found people in the west tend to go \"pssspsspss\" to cats and cats will learn that it's a non-threatening/friendly noise. People in the east making kissy noises instead and cats will respond to those. Completely feral cats don't respond to any noises I make anywhere.", "Because what do you do once the cat comes to you. You pet it. It likes being pet. How do other people get a cat to come to them. By doing the exact same thing because it is a universal concept to do this to cats to get them to come.\n\nclassical conditioning. ", "What if I told you you were the [one](_URL_0_)?", "Because cats love secrets.", "When you get low your butt-cheeks come apart releasing a bouquet of odors that are too mesmerizing for a cat to pass up.", "You must be the pussy whisperer", "Cats are attracted to crazy.", "Here's a tip my grandfather taught me. He has around 27 neighborhood cats that visit his porch. If you see a cat that doesnt hide when it spots you, dont approach it but make a purring sound similar to a pigeon and follow it into a meow. This works for me 99% of the time, and they will respond by trying to communicate back with you and eventually come to you purring as well.\n\nedit: pigeon sound.", "The sound gets their attention, rubbing your fingers together makes them think you have something in your hand, usually food since that's what they get when people get down low and hold their hand out.", "Dat title. It got me.", "Yeah, my friend's kid once asked me out of the blue \"What's that sound you make that makes cats come to you?\"\n\nI immediately thought \"That's crazy talk.  You can't *make* a cat do anything.\"  Then I remembered a couple days before we'd been walking to the store and saw a cat, and I called it over.\n\nSo I said \"Oh, clicking my tongue?\"  Then we practiced.", "True story.\n\nOne day I go to open my front door and there is a tiny kitten sitting on my front steps. It was alone, no mother, no other kittens etc. So I knew I had to get it inside and the only thing it would respond to was doing just this. I went \"pssspssspssspspsss\" rubbing my fingers together and the little kitten came to me. I mean this was a very young kitten, probably had no human interaction at all. \n\nFrom that day on, Tony lived with me for a good 16 years and I'm glad she did.\n\nBTW This is the first time i discovered that this works. I had tried almost anything to get the cat in. I didnt want to scare the cat and have it run away when i opened the screen door. Ever since then, this has worked almost without fail.\n\nI've since invited other kittens i've found outside my house under my deck over the years since tony's death.\n", "If you convert the sound into the frequency domain and analyses it, which you can do with an FFT, you'll observe sounds like your fingers rubbing together, gas leaks, scratching sounds, essentially friction noises are quite loud at frequencies that we cannot hear with the naked ear.\n\nPredators adapted to be able to hear in this 30-40khz range because they're the frequencies that prey makes.\n\nAs a trade off, they have worse hearing down in lower range of frequencies. ", "The title to this was gold", "You are speaking their language ", "You are the Felineborn. You are a human with the soul of a cat. You don't have any shouts like the Dragonborn does, but you *do* have the ability to spray piss on anyone who threatens you.", "You can get cats to come to you???\nYou must be a wizard!", "I can tell you after working and training with several dogs at my local kennel, that getting down, and even more so, sitting down on the ground, will increase the probability of the dog coming to you.\n\nEven when I take them out for exercise at the back yard, they're running around, and as soon as I knee down on the ground, most of them will rush over to me to check out what I'm doing.\n\nThey see it as less threatening. ", "Meh, you can do the same thing with a squirrel if you stay still enough.  And have a peanut.", "Jeez I read that like \"when I get down really low\" meaning emotionally low and you just rub your fingers together whisper \"psspsspss\"  then cats appear.\n\nFinals are melting my brain.", "This only happens to you. You are the Cat Whisperer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqysyRvOw9o"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/t0n2KUtuXYM/hqdefault.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3dliko", "title": "Has anyone ever tried to covertly study the Sentinelese people, using for example directional microphones, wiretapping, aerial photography or hidden cameras?", "selftext": "The [Sentinelese people](_URL_0_) are one od the, if not *the*, least studied populations on Earth. I'd think studying them would give us valuable information on a multitude of anthropological issues.\n\nIt's an ethical issue too, I think, but a population of 50-400 is at a danger of extinction due to sea level rise, epidemic, infighting, genetic diseases etc. Studying their culture would save the non-material elements of their lives, should something ever happen.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3dliko/has_anyone_ever_tried_to_covertly_study_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct6frrx", "ct6gij5"], "score": [4, 11], "text": ["These people have actively attacked any visitors to their island. They have scavenged nearby shipwrecks for scrap metal. If you were to somehow put a monitoring tower on the island, they would most likely tear it down for materials. India has decided to not bother with making any additional attempts to contact or study this population. This makes the North Sentinel island one of the only self-governing regions within India.", "That would be totally unethical. It's a central tenet of anthropology (and research involving people in general) that all research is carried out with the informed consent of its subjects. The Sentinalese could not have been more clear over the years that they don't want *any* contact with outsiders. Whatever threats you think up (although I don't see any evidence for the ones you mentioned), at the end of the day it's their lives, their culture, and we don't have the responsibility or the right to try and \"save\" it against their wishes. Trying to interfere would be no better than past paternalistic, colonialist missions to \"civilise\" indigenous people - and we all know how well those good intentions went.\n\nEdit: so no, it should go without saying that no reputable scientist has, or would, try to spy on the Sentinalese."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5ky1lz", "title": "when the barometric pressure changes, why do surgically repaired areas get sore?", "selftext": "When there's an incoming storm or cold front coming, areas that have had surgery tend to get sore. I asked my doctor before getting surgery about this and he didn't have an answer for me. Does anyone know what happens?\n\nEDIT: It seems very subjective at this point. Thanks for all the answers!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ky1lz/eli5_when_the_barometric_pressure_changes_why_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbrjrt9", "dbrk7k4", "dbrkid5", "dbrks5s", "dbrkz4s", "dbrllky", "dbrn5x1", "dbrnf0a", "dbror3s", "dbrqiwc", "dbrr8r8", "dbrrurq", "dbrsdx1", "dbrusrt", "dbruvab", "dbrw7et", "dbrx5ui", "dbrxds7", "dbrxp25", "dbrzqk4", "dbs0kjb", "dbs1rhk", "dbs20xo", "dbs3wjr", "dbs44cy", "dbs507i", "dbs76je", "dbs79et", "dbs7cvd", "dbs91sk", "dbs9fq7", "dbs9jzf", "dbsbdfk", "dbsg5tj"], "score": [75, 2491, 32, 724, 2, 8, 2, 150, 6, 6, 3, 4, 64, 2, 2, 2, 195, 2, 2, 10, 2, 2, 12, 5, 8, 2, 2, 2, 6, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Think of a wooden object like a cabinet.  As the weather changes, the doors on the cabinet sometimes get hard to open and close because the shape and size of the wood pieces are slightly changing in response to the humidity and temperature.\n\nYour body does something similar.  As you grow from childhood to adulthood your body is growing as one unit so everything works well together.  But when you break a bone, the area that healed is going to be slightly different from the area that grew when you were younger.  \n\nNow this area doesn't respond to atmospheric changes in the same way the rest of the area reacts so you might notice some discomfort in the area.  The regular bone might shrink a little more than the newly healed area and you feel it.", "Any answer to this is purely theoretical. Seems to be a real phenomenon though, at least based on the extent to which people report this effect\n\nSauce: am arthritis doctor", "The way it was explained to me was a combination of the pressure change and nerve damage.  No matter how you are cut, during a surgery, there is a small amount of nerve damage.  Nerves heal extremely slowly, if at all.  That causes changes in the pathways for feeling at an injured site.  (Anyone who has experienced a pinched or damaged nerve will tell you that just touching your skin can be painful, or feel different at an affected nerve).. this heightened or changed feeling/area is easily affected by pressure changes.  Thats pretty much it.", "Ok I did some actual literature searching.\n\nMost published studies seem to read more or less the same conclusion as this one : _URL_0_\n\n\"CONCLUSION: The studies to date do not show any consistent group effect of weather conditions on pain in people with RA. There is, however, evidence suggesting that pain in some individuals is more affected by the weather than in others, and that patients react in different ways to the weather. Thus, the hypothesis that weather changes might significantly influence pain reporting in clinical care and research in some patients with RA cannot be rejected.\"", "I have an old ankle injury as well as a shitty left knee.\nI know bad weather is coming the day before it does because those two parts start feeling pretty achy.", "When the pressure around something (IE your body) decreases it expands.  This is known in physics.  The rest is a guess based on that rule, my BS in physics, and my chronic pain.\n\nNormally, this expansion is typically not a problem as your body is more or less [Isotropic](_URL_0_), so everything expands equally and stays in the proper proportion.  With damaged/scar tissue you *may* get a different expansion relative to the neighboring tissue.  \n\nI think of it like what happened to the O-ring causing the [Challenger Disaster](_URL_1_). Due to the cold weather, the O-ring expanded *less* than the joint it sealed, resulting in a gap and catastrophic failure. In your case, the drop in pressure might cause your damaged tissue to shrink too much or too little which can result in pain. ", "When air pressure gets higher (like when you go down in altitude, when it's cold, or during some storms) there's essentially more weight pressing down on you. So places that tend to get sore get sore quicker or for no reason.\nFor example, I have a friend who's a pilot and has had back surgery. He loves flying because he doesn't feel sore or achy at high altitudes, and hates visiting places like Los Angeles because it the relatively higher pressure makes him feel sore. \nYou feel more sore/achy in the winter because the air is cold - >  more dense - >  heavier. Same for some storms that are accompanied by high pressure systems\n\nSource: Meteorology minor living at high altitude", "Barometric pressure.  Injuries never heal perfectly (yet).  When the barometric pressure changes, you are getting stretched or compressed.  The scar tissue does the same, but at a different rate than surrounding non-damaged areas.  That makes it hurt.  The greater the change, the more pain.  Once the barometric pressure stabilizes, the stretching and compressing stops and everything goes back to \"normal\".  That's why it hurts before the storm, but not necessarily during or after...at least for me.\n\nArthritis works under a similar method.  Any currently inflamed tissue will ache because some level of damage is occurring - sort of like tugging at a big cut on your arm.  Leave it be and the pain will stop.  Keeping tugging and it will keep hurting.", "This applies mostly to implants, and not just all areas that have been openened. Your body minutely expands and contracts with barometric pressure. Any artificial implant will expand and contract at a different rate.  \n\nBarometric pressure drops before clouds/a storm, sometimes quickly, so this can make orthopedic rods, plates, screws, and joint replacements ache.", "Personally I have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome type 2 causalgia\nI have constant issues with weather patterns and low and high-pressure systems bringing about different effects, with the pain and feeling involved.\nI find at lower pressure the feeling received is like a vice being enclosed around the limb \nI find at higher pressure the feeling received is like a balloon being overinflated inside the limb.\nWhat I have found in my searches and talks with peeps/pros is: so far peripheral nervous system gets out of whack with\nThe lymphatic system, your spleen and few other bodily functions which control micro circulation which all work together in a wonderful way assisting each other. When you disrupt, the brain remembers the injury/surgery! peripheral and central nervous systems can \"shudder\" sending out incorrect signals thinking that the body is in a similar state. this is what I have been informed so far .....Good luck\n\n\n", "Can confirm. My migraines go apeshit when the pressure drops. I used to think this was just something old people said because they were old.", "The area with internal scarring caused by the surgery is of a different density to the surrounding tissue, and therefore expands/contracts at a different rate in response to changes in atmospheric pressure than the surrounding areas.", "I have a little input on this. \n\nI'm an air traffic controller and a big part of my job is controlling medevac helicopters transitioning through the airspace. We aren't supposed to give the aircraft altitude adjustments because if someone is bleeding in the aircraft, changing the aircraft's altitude a few hundred feet can mean the difference of a person remaining stable and a person bleeding out.  \n\nThis is sad when you think about helpless pilots in Afghanistan when they fly out of steep terrain. Those pilots know what's going on behind them and know that clearing the ridge by climbing 1,000 ft is going to kill his passengers.  \n\nAt my last base, we were one of the busiest airports for VFR traffic in the country, working 12-14 aircraft in a pattern was almost a daily occurrence(for tower, that's pretty damn busy).  I've had situations where we have been busy as shit and a medevac helo called needing to cut straight through my airspace with a critical casualty. I've made blanket broadcasts telling all the aircraft at once to change their altitude and 'race track' just so medavac can get through without any issues; it's that important that they don't climb.   ", "Then it wouldn't balloon... to balloon it must be elastic...  less elastic would resist stretching even more. More elastic would allow it to compensate by stretching. Scar tissue may hurt because it cannot stretch because it is not elastic and it cannot balloon to compensate. ", "My brother was in a car accident a long time ago and had to have a small metal plate put in his head. Before a storm would come in, even if it didn't look like it, he would call it. And it was pretty accurate. Not quite science, but damnit I'm not Bill Nye. ", "First surgery was in '98 for a broken knee. Second in 2003 for partial reconstruction. After the second I started having fluid in my knee. The air pressure vs the internal pressure of my knee fluid caused my pain. \n\nIn '06 had a tib/fib fracture. The rod in my leg caused really cold temperature swings to hurt, but not pressure related. ", "From: _URL_0_\n\nAnd the pain is not just from surgically repaired areas. Even the \"ole football\" type injures become sore as well. \n\n >  > There's no full agreement among scientists that weather causes pain, or if a specific mechanism is at fault, Jamison says. But there are plausible theories.\n\n >  > One leading theory points to changes in air pressure. Although many people say that their pain worsens with damp, rainy weather, research has shown that it's not the cold, wind, rain, or snow, Borenstein says. \"The thing that affects people most is barometric pressure.\"\n\n >  > Barometric pressure is the weight of the atmosphere that surrounds us.\n\n >  > If you imagine the tissues surrounding the joints to be like a balloon, high barometric pressure that pushes against the body from the outside will keep tissues from expanding.\n\n >  > But barometric pressure often drops before bad weather sets in. This lower air pressure pushes less against the body, allowing tissues to expand -- and those expanded tissues can put pressure on the joint. \"It's very microscopic and we can hardly notice, except that we have these sensations,\" Jamison says.", "The rise and fall of the barometer, especially in a short period of time, causes the bones to hurt.\n\n  \n\nBone/tissue  density variations caused by rapid changes to air pressure.\n\n", "I had multiple surgeries and only one had screws and that one gets painful when there's low pressure systems coming through. ", "I would like to know this as well. I've had multiple brain surgeries and I can feel the change of the weather all the time. It's like a superpower, but one of those unwanted superpowers ", "It's not just surgery. I suffered a very serious longboard injury when I was a teenager and did significant damage to my elbows knees and forearm.  I live a relatively pain-free life yet every time a storm is approaching or within a few hours away I start to notice my forearm throbs and my knees start to ache.  ", "Dude with metal plates and screws in his arm and a titanium rod for a tibia checking in. I've never experienced this. Everyone always asks me though.", "My opinion is based on personal experience, knowledge of materials and relating the two. I have torn so many muscles, tendons, ligaments, broken a couple bones, screwed up my back, neck, shoulder, wrists... a 20f variance over less than 48 hours is enough to make me grab advil or such.  Over a day or less and I hurt quite a bit.  40f change during the day REALLY hurts \n\nMatter expands and contracts.  Change over time of that is directly related to the type of material, mostly density. Different materials or materials of the same matter but different densities expand/contract at different rates over the same time.  At the end, they will have expanded/contracted different amounts.  Atmospheric pressure along with temperature both affect expansion and contraction. \n\nHealing of injuries involves the human body replacing or adding new material to the injured area. Typically, it is also more durable than what it replaced. To be that way, it has to be more dense then the material around it.\n\nPut the two concepts together.  Just like with two different metals being affected by temp and/or pressure, they will expand/contract at different rates.  This causes friction and pressure with metals, woods, etc.\n\nI suspect it also does the same with bone and flesh.  Difference is, there are also nerves involved and those are stimulated by the differences. Much like someone lightly applying pressure and increasing it will cause increasing discomfort, even pain. ", "I have had 14 surgeries in my life so far, several broken bones, spinal fusions, progressive arthritis, etc. And have never experienced this, ever. All my surgically repaired and injury areas always feel the same.", "Not a doctor o scientist however I had my left arm reconstructed when I got shot in Afghanistan. My theory: Our bodies typically work in harmony when under barometric pressure shifts and adjust according so we don't feel the pressure change. The presence of excessive scared tissue, bone overgrowth, shifted muscle/fascia placement and internal fixation throw off this equilibrium and result in our bodies perceiving the pressure change when the affected areas come under pressure change without being able to equalize this pressure change in the same way a healthy area of the body would. ", "I have a large scar on my stomach from surgery when I was two. It gets sore and tense when the weather drastically changes. I only feel this on the left side of where the incision was made. It shocked my husband the first time he felt my scar tense up. If I could describe the pain I would say that it feels like a cramp in your side after running for too long.", "Did you have any plates or screws fixated to your bone/s? If so this may help, it explains the thermal expansion properties of bone and orthopedic biomaterials that are used in surgeries. \n\n_URL_0_ ", "I don't have a solid answer for this of course, but I can let you know that apparently my mother's shoulder can tell when a big storm is coming. She'll put it out on Facebook as well warning everyone. Oddly enough she's usually right, an ice storm, thunderstorm, something ends up happening within the next couple days. She still sounds like a nutter doing it, but it's interesting it's usually right. :) ", "I have had multiple spinal fusions and I can predict with over 90% accuracy when it will rain/snow within the following 36 hours. Now if i could only use this to my advantage in Vegas and gamble on when the weather is going to change.", "General surgery, see most of the comments. \n\nBroken bones however are what I've always heard pain associated with. This was explained to me by my orthopedic surgeon after a femur break. \n\nYou have a tube of marrow in your bone which has liquid in it. This liquid also contains gases in solution. The body can effectively shift pressures in your bones to match the outside pressure, until you break your bones. When your bone heals it creates a solid wall through that fluid chamber. The result is when you get a pressure change the bone cannot equalize pressure on each side at the same rate. Result is pressure at the point of the break which causes pain and discomfort. \n\nThe pain is more noticeable as a storm front approaches since the pressure usually drops. ", "well the pressure changing could be expanding or contracting your over all body, the scar tissue in the area is less flexible than normal skin so it might be nerves reacting to that.... \ni had a knee surgery and ive noticed it as more of an itch than a soreness when the pressure changes before a storm.", "Migraine sufferer here.  I have also had upper and lower jaw surgery.  Over 70% of my migraines happen within a few hours of a steep increase in pressure.  I suspect that pain is affected by mood, which is affected by weather.  I can't believe that such a small increase influences things, especially when going on an airplane seems to have such little effect.", "Random total fucking guess (because everyone else is doing it), the area doesn't heal perfectly back to normal or is healing and changes in pressure causes expansion/contraction of fluids and tissue in ways that can cause nerves to fire.\n\nWhen I broke my hand the first 4-5 months after I could feel weather changes in it, eventually it went away. ", "I see this too. My mother has psoriatic arthritis along with plenty of other joint issues. I always would call her if the weatherman said a storm was coming. She was never wrong. Maybe we should stop giving idiots fresh out of college meteorology jobs and give it to people with physical pains. Then they'll never be wrong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20570193/?i=5&amp;from=/15229951/related"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotropy", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/features/weather_and_pain#1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.globalacademicresearchjournals.org/full-articles/compatibility-of-thermal.pdf?view=inline"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7o88dz", "title": "Atat\u00fcrk reformed and secularized Turkey. He changed many things to differentiate the new Turkish republic from the fallen Ottoman empire. He, for example, changed the alphabet, abolished the Caliphate, etc. Why did he stick with the obviously non-secular Ottoman flag, then?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7o88dz/atat\u00fcrk_reformed_and_secularized_turkey_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds7rbpd"], "score": [105], "text": ["I'm not entirely sure why the flag is \"obviously non-secular.\" The star and crescent's association with Islam is because of the Ottomans, not the other way around, and is a Turkic symbol. See for example these previous threads on the matter:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you had some other idea as to why it's obviously non-secular perhaps you could elaborate?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rm5ap/why_did_the_crescent_and_star_become_symbol_of/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24d72l/why_is_the_star_and_crescent_considered_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "2hvclz", "title": "British artillery could have shot at Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo but Wellington refused the opportunity and said \"It is not the business of commanders to be firing upon one another\". Why did he say this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2hvclz/british_artillery_could_have_shot_at_napoleon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckwg8d8"], "score": [100], "text": ["There was a similar controversy during the Civil War in which an artillery barrage ordered by General William T. Sherman killed Confederate General Leonidas Polk (in fact, Polk was cut in half by a shell). Sherman goes to deliberate lengths in his memoir to say that this was not intentional but simply meant to scatter the cluster of officers who were observing his troops. As I think your question implies, this is somewhat strange considering the strategic advantages inherent in killing the leader of your opposing troops. You would think he would claim credit for it! \n\nI would venture to say that aside from the general notions of honor and military protocol prevalent among military elite at that time, another part of it is that leaderless troops aren't exactly *good* for anyone, even for their opponents. The chaos and the disorder that go along with such an event do not necessarily make for decisive victory, can lead to slaughter and uncontrollable troops, nor always settle the conflict as it needs to be settled. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2by8f1", "title": "Which is the oldest standing army in the world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2by8f1/which_is_the_oldest_standing_army_in_the_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cja4h77", "cja7qi6", "cja8c3y", "cjaef3d"], "score": [98, 16, 11, 2], "text": ["I don't know about the oldest army but I know the oldest unit is the [Pontifical Swiss Guard](_URL_0_). The unit was founded on 22 January 1506 as the bodyguard of the Pope and to protect Vatican City. It is now 508 years old. ", "Could someone explain to me what is meant by a 'standing army'? I understand that it means they are always in the army, even in times of peace, but I've heard that these 'professional armies' didn't appear in Europe until relatively recently. Why wouldn't Roman legionnaires or the like be considered part of a 'standing army' if they signed long (I think 8 year) contracts?", "I think we need to concretely define \"standing army\" for this.  \n\nFor example, I think we can all agree that the current US army constitutes a standing army, at least in part.  Troops live on bases with the rest of their unit, their weapons are housed within the base complex, etc\n\nIt becomes a little more nebulous when we bring up off base housing.  Now the troops are living away from their weapons and units.  Their full-time job is \"soldier\" though, so they are available for military duties at all times.  \n\nThe national guard might also fit the bill.  Like off base housed troops they live apart from their unit and weapons but they have a rank in the organization and an established route to activation with gear awaiting them on a moments notice.  They have other work, however, and while they can be pulled away from that at any time, economic considerations temper the state's ability to respond with them instantly.\n\nNow we get into militia groups which are rather like the guard.  Again, rank structures persist even in periods of inactivity and equipment is maintained.  Personal ownership of weapons is more common.  Heavy weapons are less common.  \n\nNow, finally, we are to the kinds of units we can all agree are not standing armies.  These are the ones that exist only on paper, perhaps with a professional officer corps, which are created out of whole cloth during a mobilization.  Perhaps not institutionally, but at least personally, the vast majority of the combatants in most pre-modern wars fall into this category.  \n\nWhere on the continuum are we talking?  \n", "This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_0_). These poll-type questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. \u201cMost\u201d, \u201cleast\u201d, \"best\" and \"worst\" questions usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. If you'd like, you may PM /u/caffarelli to have your question considered for an upcoming [Tuesday Trivia](_URL_1_) thread."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard#Pontifical_Swiss_Guard"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia"]]}
{"q_id": "h8i40", "title": "Found this little guy hobbling along. Can you identify it, askscience?", "selftext": "[Bug in question](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h8i40/found_this_little_guy_hobbling_along_can_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1teouh", "c1tfdjd", "c1tfebn"], "score": [14, 13, 5], "text": ["you might want to try _URL_0_", "Nah, you don't need to go there today (/r/whatsthisbug, I mean)! I'm an entomologist. It's a Crane flyof the [Tipulidae family](_URL_0_). I used to catch them as kids as singles or mating pairs. They are great bugs, but damned irritating to pin.\n\nEdit: formatting", "It is a crane-fly: A species of [Family Tipulidae](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://tychadwell.imgur.com/82EAO"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisbug/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly"]]}
{"q_id": "5fdtkq", "title": "We often see Native Americans in paintings from Early Colonial America smoking pipes. Was this a regular pastime or is this a stereotype?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fdtkq/we_often_see_native_americans_in_paintings_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dajyjdo"], "score": [21], "text": ["The answer to this question is a little from column A and a little from column B. Dependent upon the culture in question individuals could smoke. Among the Mandan of North Dakota tobacco was reserved for elder males and specific ceremonies, whereas individual Creek could smoke and did so from less ornate clay pipes. However, the deep ceremonial role of tobacco in many Native American cultures meant pipe smoking became an essential aspect of negotiations, including the debates surrounding peace, war, and trade. Paintings from Colonial America often depicted European-Native American interactions surrounding peace or trade, those meetings would, by tradition, be authenticated by tobacco smoke.\n\nTobacco was cultivated in Mesoamerica more than three thousand years ago and spread to both North and South America quickly thereafter. To generalize greatly, tobacco held deep ritual and spiritual significance throughout the Americas as well as being used for medicinal purposes. In North America a special type of ceremonial pipe style and usage developed. A stone [bowl](_URL_3_) was carved from a soft material, often [pipestone](_URL_2_), and then attached to a [longer stem](_URL_1_) that was adorned with decorations signifying the unique purpose of the pipe (peace, war, trade, etc). Other pipe styles could be used for everyday affairs, but a ritual known as the calumet evolved around this unique ceremonial pipe form.\n\nBy the time the French explorers ventured into the heart of North America the shocks of contact were already reverberating across the continent. The French, following their allies west during the Huron/Wendat displacement, encountered other nations displaced by the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois expansion of the [Beaver Wars](_URL_5_) when they ventured along the great waterways of the Eastern Woodlands. In the Southeast the Indian slave trade out of the Carolinas likewise caused the migration, disruption, and eventually the coalescence of previous distinct nations into new, powerful confederacies. Into this world of upheaval, of refugees and new migrants attempting to carve out territory in a new land filled with different languages and dialects, the calumet ceremony became crucial.\n\nAs Calloway states in *One Vast Winter Count* \"for Indian people, peace meant more than a lack of conflict or ending hostilities; it was a state of being that required a positive assumption of moral duties\" (p.237). Smoking the calumet and participating in the ritual dances associated with the ceremony allowed participants to enter the proper mindset, reminded participants of their responsibilities, and soon developed into a prerequisite for negotiation. Marquette wrote\n\n >  There is nothing more mysterious or respected among them... It seems to be the God of peace and of war, the Arbiter of life and death.\n\nAnd Perrot said this about the calumet among the nations of the Great Lakes...\n\n >  The calumet halts the warriors belonging to the tribe of those who sung it, and arrests the vengeance which they could lawfully take for their tribesmen who have been slain. The calumet also compels the suspension of hostilities and secures the reception of deputies from hostile tribes who undertake to visit those whose people have been recently slain by theirs. It is, in one word, the calumet which has authority to confirm everything, and which renders solemn oaths binding. \n\nTo a rapidly changing, often violent, world the calumet offered a way to signify peace. Travelers could use their pipe as a passport to guarantee safe travel through others' territory. The ceremony turned, if only for a time, strangers into kin and enemies into friends (Calloway). Anything worth saying, worth doing, worth remembering was marked by the smell of pipe smoke.\n\nThe French, understanding the vital importance of the ceremony to their hopes of traveling unmolested, seized upon the ritual and may have been partially responsible for it's spread across the interior of the continent. By the late 1600s the calumet was an essential preface to negotiations from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Great Plains. In 1682 La Salle encountered the ritual among the Quapaws and the Caddos as he made his way south. By the time of English colonial expansion away from the Atlantic seaboard the importance of the calumet ceremony was solidified for many in the interior of the continent. Painters, and [later photographers](_URL_0_), recognizing the ceremonial importance would include pipes with images of Native Americans, especially during important occasions like Benjamin West's 1766 [*The Indians giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet*](_URL_4_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.oldsantafetradingco.com/assets/site-images/sitting-bull-with-pipe.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:Peace_pipe.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:MissPipe1.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:Black_hawk_calumet.jpg", "http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-896&amp;storyId=1-9-14", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars"]]}
{"q_id": "20wm8t", "title": "Why do children (especially infants) have such poor reflex and reaction times?", "selftext": "I have an 11 month old daughter and it has really caught my attention how poor a child's reaction time is.  I can understand that experience/anticipation plays a role here, which would develop as one gets older.  However, even to unexpected circumstances, a typical adult's reaction time is far faster than a child's.  Is this based in brain development, muscle/motor control?  This seems as though it would be a poor trait for survival.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20wm8t/why_do_children_especially_infants_have_such_poor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg7s2e0", "cg8244t"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["Myelination - the fatty sheath which insulates the electrical 'wires' of your brain are not fully developed in human infants. Any animal which is altricial (helpess at birth) needs to go through the myelination process. The main effect of this is that the signals are better insulated so the 'noise' of the brain's signals is reduced. Thus more coordinated movements. \n\nFun additional fact - some babies, like my little sister, can have fits during the myelination process as the connections in the brain form. These fits are mostly harmless and cease happening after about 18 months ish. ", "There's a lot of good information here. However, to tie it all together, it has to do with myelination of neurons, which allows insulation to pathways so that they work more efficiently, but also (and more importantly) is the idea of cephalocaudal and proximodistal trends in development.\n\nInfants develop from the top down, and from the center out. An infant must first develop the ability to use their head, then chest, then arms and finally hands. Then hips, legs, feet and toes. \n\nFollowing these trends, infants develop some things faster than other things. Not to mention the idea of blooming and pruning neurons, which will enhance efficiency in the brain. So, that's the brain development aspect.\n\nYou mentioned that it doesn't seem very helpful for survival. I want to explain that even though it doesn't seem physically helpful for survival, these experiences and your part in them are insanely necessary for cognitive, and even physical development. \n\nYour child, at 11 months, is still in the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development. This means their experiences (at least for another 7 months or so) will be largely based on sensory information and how it ties to physical experiences. Also at this time, your child is in the trust vs mistrust crisis stage. Your child needs to know they can trust people. Without these fundamental experiences, we would not be social creatures! If we were born with all our reflexes, more instincts, fully developed - there would be no understanding of community, no real evolution - at least not at the rate we have it. \n\nCongrats on the child! These are good questions. Make sure you're fostering an atmosphere of trust (in the sense that you tend to your child's needs) and promote more individuality in a physical way, because it will help create the pruning your child needs for more effective neural pathways. You got this!!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6bqp6c", "title": "\"Why did the chicken cross the road?\" How did the motives of this transient fowl become such a fascinating subject of inquiry?", "selftext": "The Wikipedia article says it appeared in The Knickerbocker magazine in 1847, but offers little in the way of explaining it's spread throughout pop culture.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6bqp6c/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_how_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhpmwgw"], "score": [21], "text": ["Folk sayings and the origins of colloquialisms are notoriously hard to know the history of - many of the reasons why they became popular have been lost to time either because people either didn't record them, or because the records have become lost. It could be that the joke was originally the catchphrase of a popular comedian, or that it spread in playgrounds, or that it comes from a magazine or newspaper that is no longer extant, or at least no longer easy to find. Trying to figure out the origin of such a joke is probably like trying to figure out the origin of some modern dank meme with access only to the archives of the *New York Times* - I mean, the New York Times has probably discussed Pepe by now because of politics, but would they have bothered discussing those six panel \"what I do\" \"what I think do\" \"what my parents think I do\" (etc) memes? Probably not.\n\nNonetheless, if you look at the phrase 'chicken cross the road' on [Google ngrams](_URL_6_), there is a spike circa the 1850s, which doesn't show up in search for me, but which could be a version of a quote from [an 1848 edition of *The Knickerbocker*](_URL_1_):\n\n >  \"There are \u2018quips and quillets\u2019 which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: \u2018Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you \u2018out of town?\u2019 Do you \u2018give it up?\u2019 Well, then: \u2018Because it wants to get on the other side!\u2019\"\n\nThere's a variant of the joke in [an 1872 edition of the *Sydney Mail*](_URL_7_), which was a now discontinued weekly edition of the *[Sydney Morning Herald](_URL_0_)*, which [the website of an etymologist, Barry Popik](_URL_4_), suggests may have first come from the San Francisco Bulletin:\n\n > Why should not a chicken cross the road? It would be a fowl proceeding.\n\nGoogle ngrams suggests that the early 20th century is when references to the joke start noticeably increasing. One reason for this, perhaps, is that early automobile drivers had a genuine problem with chickens crossing the road when their cars came nearby. I get the sense reading the snippets that the writers mentioning these issues are bemused about the pre-existing joke.\n\nTake a reference in the early automobile trade magazine [*The Horseless Age*, which has a 1905 article](_URL_2_) saying that:\n\n > A cash prize is now being offered for the correct solution of the question, \"Why does a chicken cross the road?\" and its practical application. The prize is offered by a French automobilist to the French agricultural societies for a breed of chickens which will not cross the road every time an automobilist approaches\n\nSimilarly, [*American Hay, Flour And Feed Journal* in 1912](_URL_3_) has someone complaining that: \n\n > Autos shoot all over the Corn Belt during July to September and furnish the chickens with a daily life gamble. You understand the saying, 'Why does a Chicken cross the Road' for the first time after a few country trips. The chicken will be perfectly safe on one side of the road, but he will be alarmed and seized with a desire to flap over to the other side right in front of your machine.\n\nOn a different tack, [*Life* magazine, in 1912](_URL_5_), also mentions the question with a much more obviously satirical tone, presumably making fun of the Bourbon Democrats of the time: \n\n >  ...a question which has puzzled the economists and biologists for decades. The resolution which was introduced by Congressman Bourbon, is as follows:\n\n >  *Resolved*, That an international commission be formed to investigate the question: 'Why does a chicken cross the road?' and be it further\n\n >  *Resolved*, That said commission be fully empowered to dig as deeply into the matter as possible.\n\nElsewhere in the early 20th century, *The Gideon* in 1914 calls it an 'ancient conundrum', while a writer in *The American Angler* in 1921 complains about 'an occasional crazy chicken' on the road while driving, again prompting said ancient conundrum. \n\nThese quotes all, I suspect, suggest that the joke is quite well known at this point in America, without furnishing much clue of how exactly it spread. Perhaps *The Knickerbocker* really *was* the first to use it, but the subtext of that quote does seem to be that the joke was already well-known at the time. \n\nGiven the context of a lot of these early quotes, it might be that the joke particularly gained popularity because of the rise of automobiles (or that Google's corpus of books is quite possibly missing several 1800s references to the joke). Chickens being interrupted by a loud, fast moving, vehicle clearly evoked a sort of 'fight-or-flight' response, and it seems that the nature of their flight response was not particularly good for the chicken's health in the age of the automobile.\n\nPerhaps this also somewhat explains the point of the joke, which might have been lost on the writer from the *Knickerbocker*: chickens apparently did seem to be crossing the road mostly to get themselves killed and thus find themselves in another plane of existence: 'the other side'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.smh.com.au/", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3MQGAQAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA283&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+street%22&amp;lr=&amp;as_drrb_is=b&amp;as_minm_is=0&amp;as_miny_is=1700&amp;as_maxm_is=0&amp;as_maxy_is=1899&amp;num=100&amp;as_brr=0&amp;ei=cI2YSt_8LZXszATQmeXUDg&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q=%22chicken%20cross%20the%20street%22&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HSDmAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj-r9_U4fjTAhUEv7wKHbsIDCI4ChDoAQgtMAM", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Q9gwAQAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj-r9_U4fjTAhUEv7wKHbsIDCI4ChDoAQgpMAI", "http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_joke/", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vYE4AQAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi1oPLM4PjTAhWJVrwKHX-9C_w4ChDoAQghMAA", "https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chicken+cross+the+road&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cchicken%20cross%20the%20road%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cchicken%20cross%20the%20road%3B%2Cc1", "https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ftIQAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=P5MDAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=7347,6098909&amp;dq=chicken-cross-the-road&amp;hl=en"]]}
{"q_id": "1kujpb", "title": "How does the fungus involved in \"ant zombification\" work to control the ant's actions?", "selftext": "I saw a great article in the national geographic: [link](_URL_0_) So, how does this happen? What, physiologically, is done to control the ant?\n\nThank you all!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kujpb/how_does_the_fungus_involved_in_ant_zombification/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbt61p7"], "score": [2], "text": ["The actual mechanism behind the brain-altering fungus is not entirely known.  In fact, we don't even know the diversity of the fungus itself (number of species or their distribution).  Based on behaviors of ants pre- and post-infection we can infer certain things but that's all it is.  A couple years ago a paper was published suggesting that atrophy in mandibular muscles of ants caused them to clamp onto grass and not be able to release their grip.  They found significant differences in muscles between infected and non-infected ants but how this happens is still up for discussion.  There are entire \"graveyards\" of infected ants that have been reported and they seem to do this clamping behavior around noon so solar information or temperature is probably a regulating mechanism here but that is still largely unknown."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120504-zombie-ant-fungus-science-environment-rainforest/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ysdj3", "title": "What's the difference between light and electricity?", "selftext": "So I'm a little embarassed to ask this question, but the more searching I did on google and wikipedia the less clear the answer seemed to be! \n\nFrom what little I understand, electricity is just electrons (sub atomic particles) moving through a conductor. Light is also just subatomic particles moving through a conductor (i.e. transparent medium) and both are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, if I understand this correctly. \n\nWhat I'm really wondering though is if something like light could ever be used in a similar way to electricity, not just as information transfer but actually transmit power too? \n\nObviously we don't do this yet so I must misunderstand something but I thought it was an interesting question nonetheless. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ysdj3/whats_the_difference_between_light_and_electricity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfnf9p3", "cfngqkx", "cfnigbq"], "score": [10, 3, 2], "text": ["Electrons (the particles that are important for electricity) and photons (the particles that \"are light\") are two fundamentally different particles.\n\nElectrons possess charge and mass. The fact that they are negatively charged means, that they are attracted by positive charges and repelled by other negative charges. This fact can be used to transport them from one point to another point. This transport of charged particles is called \"electric current\". The energy harvested from electric current is really just the kinetic (=movement) Energy of those charged particles.\n\nPhotons possess neither charge nor mass. Photons \"are light\". The reason I am putting quotation marks around those words is, that photons are quantized packages of any form of electromagnetic radiation. That includes radio waves, infrared waves, and light waves. \n\nWe can, and we do in fact, transport energy with photons. When the sun sends electromagnetic radiation (light) towards earth, earth heats up. That is a form of energy transport from the sun to earth. \n\nThere are even cables, optical fiber cables, that use photons very similarly as normal copper cables use electrons in order to transmit information.\n\nIf you to read more about this subject, I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on the [Standard Model of Elementary Particles](_URL_0_). That should clear a few things up.", "So electrons and ions flowing makes up an electric current, as /u/strokeofbrucke and /u/natty_dread have so succinctly pointed out.\n\nLight, or electromagnetic radiation consists of packets or quanta of waves that propagate in space. Light is not confined to a medium, and can propagate in a vacuum.\n\nPart of the reason why this can get confusing is that light, or EM radiation is generated by the motion of electric charges.\nSo while electrons are not a part of the EM spectrum, their oscillation or precession can generate photons with a frequency that is on the EM spectrum.\n\nA not very accurate analogy can be thinking of a coin spinning and slowing down- the sound coming out of the coin as it comes to a stop is higher pitched depending on how fast the coin is spinning.\nSo you can think of the electron as the coin, and the light as the sound coming from the coin.\nBut once again, this is not literally what happens with the electrons, but it may help to clear up the confusion.\n\nBasically, the electrons can absorb light to increase their energy, and to decrease their energy they emit light.\n\nAs to wireless power, there are groups researching this very topic. That being said I'm not doing research in this myself, so I'll have to pass the buck to someone more learned than I.", "It looks like people have properly answered your questions, but I wanted to address something in your question that maybe didn't get addressed by answering them directly.\n\nYou say:\n\n >  What I'm really wondering though is if something like light could ever be used in a similar way to electricity, not just as information transfer but actually transmit power too?\n\n >  Obviously we don't do this yet so I must misunderstand something but I thought it was an interesting question nonetheless.\n\nI think you probably realize that light transmits energy. You've most likely been in the sun or seen a heat lamp or maybe even a laser burning a whole through steel, etc. You might even realize that this is how a microwave oven works. Photons in the microwave part of the spectrum are generated and used to bombard food (or whatever is in the microwave) and they transfer some of their energy to the atoms within the food (especially water molecules), warming it up.\n\nAnyway, what I think you are really asking is why we don't have wireless power as efficient (or close) as wired electricity, and there are a couple of reasons involved.\n\nThe main problem with transmitting electricity along a wire is that electrical resistance reduces the efficiency of the transmission and some power is inevitably and unavoidably lost. But for wired electricity that is usually \"okay\". Part of that is because it is the baseline. The other part is that we we can find ways to lower the electrical resistance of our wire to a certain point using different materials, etc. Either way, whatever we put in our wire is how our electrical charge moves from one place to the other, providing the electricity.\n\nThe other issue is the conversion of electricity to light. This is not a perfect conversion rate. As far as we know it cannot be and probably will never really be close enough to replace wired electricity. From what I have read the current rate for electricity to optical is 85%, which isn't too bad. You generate X amount of electrical energy and you can transform 85% of it to light energy. 15% will go to things like heat, which while unavoidable can possibly be reduced further by advances in technology, and unintended refraction, again, unavoidable but possibly reducible, as well as powering whatever device is doing the conversion. \n\nThen you have the problem of what is between your transmitter and your receiver. There is no medium for light to travel through, as the others have mentioned. Photons are the least inhibited when traveling through a vacuum. The closer to vacuum, the better. They need two electrons to emit and absorb them, but the less there is between those two electrons the better. So if you have a \"wireless powerplant\" at point A and a building that needs power at point B, everything between them, even air, is getting in the way.\n\nHowever, photovoltaic receivers to convert from (monochrome) light back to electricity only have a 50% conversion rate (something like a solar panel that works on a spectrum range is much lower). That means you are really only going to get 42.5% of your energy on the other end and I don't think that counts \"resistance\" from the environment between the two points, so realistically it will be far less (and variable and likely somewhat unreliable due to weather and atmospheric conditions).\n\nThen you run into other practical problems. Obviously electrical wires can pose danger. So would high energy photons. Instead of getting shocked, you might get burned. And probably not burned like you think of an electrical shock victim, but literally incinerated.\n\nThat brings us to another problem. \"Wireless\" power would need unobstructed line of sight to be efficient and safe and that would make it extremely difficult to distribute to houses and other power consumers.\n\nSo, the short answer is that it is currently possible, it is just not feasible until technology improves. Even after that has happened, it will never be efficient and trivial enough for every-day use in a form that is pervasive like wired electricity. It would always probably be used for specific needs.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1znmai", "title": "how do shows like the walking dead get such realistic backgrounds of places. (city, towns etc..)", "selftext": "Example: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1znmai/eli5_how_do_shows_like_the_walking_dead_get_such/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfv8lsv", "cfva83u", "cfvb05h", "cfve0ui", "cfvh54q", "cfvhkoi", "cfvhsx9", "cfvhxjh", "cfvj0at", "cfvrtdy"], "score": [236, 18, 26, 6, 2, 8, 4, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Your example is just a movie lot. With fancy editing, a very enclosed space can seem much more expansive. The same can be done when shooting on location: close off half a block of city street and shoot it from three different angles, you can make it seem like you're shooting across half a mile of city.\n\nBut CGI is used a LOT more than you might think to replace backgrounds and add detail. Check out [this video.] (_URL_0_) I'm willing to bet you never would have guessed that most or even all of those were entirely faked.", "I was re-watching *Band of Brothers* recently and noticed - because it had been pointed out to me - that every time you see a town or village, it's the *same one*. In this case, the producers leased a bit of land near Pinewood Studios in England and built a couple of streets of Generic European Housing to film in.\n\nThey shoot from different angles, dress things differently but once you've noticed that distinctively-shaped house, or whatever, you have a hard time not seeing it. ", "The Walking Dead is mostly filmed on location in Georgia.\n\nThe scenes in the first season were filmed on location in Atlanta, possibly with a few shots done on a movie lot.\n\nWoodbury was filmed in Senoia, Georgia. If you google it, you can see. I was surprised because they basically made it look like the shittiest backlot in the world. Some of the suburbs scenes were filmed around there too.\n\nThey used a real prison for the prison, obviously.\n\nEdit: The redditor who said it's mostly green screen is talking complete shit.", "Real locations. \n\nMany shows that are based in NYC are shot on location with locals that are hired/cast as extras, so the locations are the real and authentic. Examples of shows shot in NYC: Gossip Girl, Nurse Jackie, Elementary, Law and Order (all, and currently SVU), Blue Bloods, and more. \n\nOther shows are shot chiefly on studio lots. A show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer could build a mini-Sunnydale and use it for most of their needs, though I am sure they did location shooting, too. It is possible to dress a set (either a real place, or a built set on a lot) to make it look fairly different so it can be more than one location in different episodes.", "if you've seen The Great Gatsby, 90% of the sets in the movie are CGI.", "It's so cool to see people taking interest in VFX. I am a film director and I do visual effects work as well. Yeah, a lot of it is matte painting and rotoscoping. Think of it as photoshop with motion. Most of the time they just take really high res photos of existing places and create a brand new place. They then roughly model the geometry in their 3D program of choice and camera map the photoshopped image onto the geometry. You add in green screened actors, elements and give it a camera move with some color correction. Now you have a final shot. Watch this video, it shows you the general process of how it's done. Hope that helps. :) _URL_0_", "You might enjoy this.   Lots of the crazy realistic areas are realistic because they are real.  Many of the shots in Walking Dead are real locations just made dirty and shot from an angle to hide the living city from view.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nUp until recently, I actually lived in 'Woodbury' under the control of the Governor.  The town is actually a place called Senoia, Georgia.   It was funny to see how they hid the really nice homes from view with giant tire barricades.  Maybe they were worried that people would recognize the homes from Driving Miss Daisy, Footloose, or some other movies.  ", "This is mostly accomplished, especially on The Walking Dead, by shooting on location. Their backdrops of Georgia look so realistic because it actually is Georgia.\n\nIn other circumstances, it can be accomplished either by dressing a set to look extremely realistic or via green screen and CGI. Hollywood has employed many tricks of the trade for years to make even the shittiest of studios look real.", "This is Fairlie Street in downtown Atlanta. It is pretty deserted right there. They were shooting films near this corner all the time back in 2010-2011. It is easy to close off that particular block since the U.S. Court of appeals has the other side of Fairlie controlled with bollard posts. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: It was also shot on the weekend when downtown is nearly empty.\n", "Here's an example you might be interested in, to shoot the London scenes in 28 Days Later the production [was given permission to close off streets in central London for an hour at dawn](_URL_0_). \n\nFor the scene with the overturned London bus they were able to lower the bus onto its side, shoot the scene and raise the bus back up again within the space of 20 minutes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/3onN9W5.jpg"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=clnozSXyF4k"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRoj0hJfosU&amp;list=FLdH7MOAlZDIVFqjlbfDEXZQ&amp;index=2"], ["https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=207359767003592801519.000496a3cdd937ab6cb68&amp;msa=0&amp;dg=feature"], [], ["https://www.google.com/maps/@33.756456,-84.390843,3a,75y,238.23h,72.87t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s_3XBG6r81OueA-EKHBKXfg!2e0"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later#Production"]]}
{"q_id": "921wff", "title": "What was the urban life of the Cahokia Mounds like?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/921wff/what_was_the_urban_life_of_the_cahokia_mounds_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e32om0z"], "score": [21], "text": ["I asked [a different question about Cahokia](_URL_0_) a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but there's some info in the top answer from /u/Reedstilt and more in comments further down that might be insightful. I'd especially direct you to /u/RioAbajo's remarks in [this comment chain](_URL_0_d0183e1) about what it means to call Cahokia a city."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wfq9/one_of_the_most_impressive_cities_in_the_medieval/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wfq9/one_of_the_most_impressive_cities_in_the_medieval/d0183e1"]]}
{"q_id": "lm3is", "title": "how credit scores are determined", "selftext": "I get that a 900 is fantastic and a 200 is awful, but what do these numbers mean and how does whoever comes up with them come up with them?\n\n**Like I'm Five**\n\n***FIVE***", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lm3is/eli5_how_credit_scores_are_determined/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2ts1c7", "c2tset0", "c2tslh2", "c2tsm6c", "c2tt51i", "c2ts1c7", "c2tset0", "c2tslh2", "c2tsm6c", "c2tt51i"], "score": [26, 7, 7, 4, 8, 26, 7, 7, 4, 8], "text": ["The short answer is only the credit bureaus know exactly, but there's a few things that everyone knows play a role:\n\n*Length of credit history - longer is better\n\n*Payment history - no reported late payments, no reported defaults/delinquencies\n\n*Amount of available credit and ratio of used/unused credit - large amounts of available credit with a low usage ratio is best\n\n*Number of open lines - more are better, as long as they are paid on time", "Slightly offtopic, but I've always wondered what my credit score was but I am :raisedeyebrow: at all the credit score websites. What's the BEST way to go about checking, or shouldn't I unless I need to (does checking hurt your credit rating?)", "Just a clarifying thing, but the actual range of credit score is 300-850. Please disregard if you are outside the U.S.", "I work in a semi-related field, so I think I can answer this decently.\n\nThere are these three places that keep track of everyone's ability to pay their bills on time. They are called [credit bureaus](_URL_0_). In the US, they are called Equifax, Transunion and Experian. There are more, but these are the biggest three. \n\nWhenever you make a payment on time on your student loan, car loan, credit card, etc, that payment is reported to at least one of those bureaus. Each bureau will assign you a score based on how well you're doing. When you apply for a new credit card, the bank will ask those bureaus how good you are at paying your bills so they can decide if they want to take the chance that you'll pay them back. If your score is good, say 750, they will give you a credit card with a lower interest rate and a higher credit limit, because you have proven yourself to be trustworthy.\n\nHowever, if you've been late on payments to other banks or you've decided to no longer pay your debts, the credit bureaus will lower your score. Anything below 600 is considered very bad. If you apply for a credit card with a score in the low 600s or lower, they will approve you with a higher interest rate and a lower credit limit, because they are taking a risk by lending to you. They may even decide you're too risky to lend to, and decline you.\n\nThere are ways to recover from a really low credit score, but it generally takes a lot of time. There are a lot of bad people out there who try to tell people with low scores that they can help, but they're really just trying to scam you. Generally, if you resume making regular payments on your debts, your score will start to slowly rise. If you get a credit card and pay the balance in full each month, that is also a good way to raise your credit score.\n\nThere's obviously more too it, but it's explain like I'm five, so hopefully that helps.", "Is it really bad that I use 75% of my available credit line each month? I pay that shit off in full, but should I start using my debit more often?", "The short answer is only the credit bureaus know exactly, but there's a few things that everyone knows play a role:\n\n*Length of credit history - longer is better\n\n*Payment history - no reported late payments, no reported defaults/delinquencies\n\n*Amount of available credit and ratio of used/unused credit - large amounts of available credit with a low usage ratio is best\n\n*Number of open lines - more are better, as long as they are paid on time", "Slightly offtopic, but I've always wondered what my credit score was but I am :raisedeyebrow: at all the credit score websites. What's the BEST way to go about checking, or shouldn't I unless I need to (does checking hurt your credit rating?)", "Just a clarifying thing, but the actual range of credit score is 300-850. Please disregard if you are outside the U.S.", "I work in a semi-related field, so I think I can answer this decently.\n\nThere are these three places that keep track of everyone's ability to pay their bills on time. They are called [credit bureaus](_URL_0_). In the US, they are called Equifax, Transunion and Experian. There are more, but these are the biggest three. \n\nWhenever you make a payment on time on your student loan, car loan, credit card, etc, that payment is reported to at least one of those bureaus. Each bureau will assign you a score based on how well you're doing. When you apply for a new credit card, the bank will ask those bureaus how good you are at paying your bills so they can decide if they want to take the chance that you'll pay them back. If your score is good, say 750, they will give you a credit card with a lower interest rate and a higher credit limit, because you have proven yourself to be trustworthy.\n\nHowever, if you've been late on payments to other banks or you've decided to no longer pay your debts, the credit bureaus will lower your score. Anything below 600 is considered very bad. If you apply for a credit card with a score in the low 600s or lower, they will approve you with a higher interest rate and a lower credit limit, because they are taking a risk by lending to you. They may even decide you're too risky to lend to, and decline you.\n\nThere are ways to recover from a really low credit score, but it generally takes a lot of time. There are a lot of bad people out there who try to tell people with low scores that they can help, but they're really just trying to scam you. Generally, if you resume making regular payments on your debts, your score will start to slowly rise. If you get a credit card and pay the balance in full each month, that is also a good way to raise your credit score.\n\nThere's obviously more too it, but it's explain like I'm five, so hopefully that helps.", "Is it really bad that I use 75% of my available credit line each month? I pay that shit off in full, but should I start using my debit more often?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_bureau"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_bureau"], []]}
{"q_id": "557drz", "title": "why are there so few venomous creatures in the uk and northern europe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/557drz/eli5_why_are_there_so_few_venomous_creatures_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d885ndm", "d885zev", "d886f1f", "d887ohp", "d8890gi", "d8893rc", "d889ajq", "d889k86", "d88a9nv", "d88b2uf", "d88bbpn", "d88bmfh", "d88bnps", "d88cxv8", "d88d71j", "d88d98g", "d88eyfm", "d88ip8i", "d88lwbl", "d88q8dn"], "score": [3, 41, 531, 22, 261, 57, 14, 4, 2, 52, 3, 4, 159, 28, 2, 3, 2759, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I assume it's because we killed off any species which could kill humans\n\n\nsince Europe has next to no uninhabited areas, it'd be very hard for a species which is dangerous not to be systematically hunted to extinction ", "Being venomous in an area heavily populated by humans is arguably a tremendous disadvantage, because it marks you as a threat. That's why most dangerous creatures (venomous or not) are absent from Europe - Humans have eliminated them over the centuries.\n\nBut leaving humans aside, as I understand it, the cooler climate is less favourable to life resulting in lower species diversity, and so less competition- thus less evolutionary pressure to evolve 'novel' advantages. Finally until very recently in evolutionary terms a lot of northern Europe was covered in Ice. That REALLY limits life's options.\n", "Tropical climates allow more life to survive by having warm temperatures and an abundance of water/vegetation. With that amount of life comes a need to survive against predators. That survival can evolve as creatures really good at hiding/camouflage, but the alternate option is to be venomous so nothing tries to kill you. Therefore, with an abundance of life comes an abundance of venomous life. \n\nEurope and other northern climates are slightly less easy to live in. Weather varies more, creatures have to adapt to survive the climate as much as they do other creatures. So you see some venomous animals, but you also see creatures that adapted to the climate to simply out-survive less hardy species. With less life comes less venomous life.", "I don't think the top answer on this thread about more venomous creatures evolving in tropical climates is based in fact. It's huge human population that is the main driving factor.", "Survival usually entails surviving the elements and surviving other creatures who might want to eat you or take over your habitat and ecological niche, leaving you to starve. \n\nVenom takes a lot of resources to produce. So having it in stockpile has to be advantageous by a huge margin to\" justify\" passing on the genes for it. Temperate areas usually have winter temperature drops so the survival against the elements plays a huge factor. ", "I'ts all about climate, most venomous creatures are either reptilian or some sort of arachnid, where the vast majority of those species require more tropical/warm and humid environments,. hence why somewhere like Alaska has almost no venomous creatures (besides Sarah Palin).", "Venomous creatures usually are snakes and spiders. Snakes and Spiders are cold blooded, and england is famously wet and cold. You've heard the story of how St.Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland? There never were any, its too cold. Also it doesn't hurt that both England and Ireland are isolated from the mainland.", "Warmer climates simply have more species. Which means more venomous snakes. Snakes are also cold blooded and don't tend to thrive in cold environments.", "Most people are focused on the venomous animals aspect of this question, but I would like to note that poisonous plants (and fungi and other nonplants that are generally considered \"plantlike\" by laypeople) exist almost everywhere. There are a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that some plant components are toxic only to humans or certain livestock as well as very little pressure for humans to exterminate plants because they can't actively envenomate people.\n\nBut other posters are correct that the increased diversity of tropical climates also contributes to higher numbers of venemous and poisonous organisms.", "Venom isn't cheap, metabolically speaking. It's a risky investment in cold climates, since food isn't always readily available. Does no good to pack a venomous bite if there is nothing to bite. That's why you see other \"safer\" adaptations in cold climates, such as hibernation, which conserve resources.", "We don't even have natural disasters or any real worry, it's great haha.\n\nHere in Cardiff...and much of south west to south east Wales and Bristol and other parts of south west England we were hit with severe floods that are thought to have been a tsunami......400 years ago. Seems likely as thousands died, the water went miles inland and with water marks quite a few metres high above sea level.\n\nSo on the off chance of a tsunami in the Bristol channel, I have really no worries from mother nature or  the environment...even all this Reddit bs about...hottest month on record every month, no it's been standard shit here as usual. 13 degrees c and rain tomorrow... lovely, think we had a few days close to 30c in the past year or 2", "you need to look at the percentage of species that are venomous to get a better idea and then realize that the majority of all species live in warmer climates. \n\nso if there are 1000 species of snakes and 80% of them are found in warmer climates and only 5% of all species are venomous that would mean there are 40 venomous species in the tropics and only 10 in colder regions.", "So there are very few endemic creatures to the UK at all, I'm reading. Really interesting how glaciers basically wiped the isles clean of most living things. \n\n > The British Isles have few endemic species due to past frequent glaciations and because of the proximity to Continental Europe and former land bridges which enabled species to re-colonise the islands from the continent following glaciations.\n > \n > British Conservationists often describe this as a \u201cwiped clean effect\u201d with repeated glaciations forcing many species out of the modern area of the islands to more southern latitudes in Europe and perhaps even driving some species extinct.\n\n_URL_0_", "Enviro science degree holder here. It's because densely populated areas (not so much human populations but moreso competing animal life) breed more competition and threat, necessitating energy intensive adaptive responses.\n\nAnimal life is only abundant in places because of abundant resources, so the main problem isn't finding food so much as competing for it or avoiding becoming food. The high resource environment allows the energy for animals to develop energy intensive adaptations like funky colors, venom, poison, or other defense mechanisms. Even plants do a bit of this.\n\nAnimals in areas of low population don't need these adaptations because they aren't competing as much and food energy is more scarce, so spending the energy to produce these fancy adaptations is both a waste of scarce energy and not necessary for survival. \n\nTo add, equatorial areas are often more populated because it gets more sun which supports more plant life (primary energy) which forms a broad dependable foundation for animal life to subsist upon. Areas like the UK have little sun so barely anything to support the rich and varied ecosystems that the equator does, resulting in a less compelling habitat for animals to live. ", "Most (not all, but most) venemous creatures are cold-blooded. This means that they must regulate their own body temperature. Most cold-blooded creatures do this by sunbathing, going for a swim, or thermo-regulating ([which looks like this](_URL_0_) and basically involves just laying in a cool area with their mouth open to help release heat).\n\nGiven the climate of the UK and Northern Europe vs. the climate in a place like the southern United States (which, for reference, is basically like a mini Australia, most everything you find in your back yard can kill you), it's pretty easy to see why cold-blooded creatures aren't huge fans of northern Europe. During the winters, it just gets far too cold for a cold-blooded creature to adapt to the climate, and they would just freeze to death. \n\nFor instance, the average temperature in central Florida in January is 70^o F (21^o C) with an average of 8 hours of sunshine. So, if you need to regulate your own body temperature in the middle of the winter, you can just climb onto a rock in a sunny spot and lay there for a bit. For comparison, the average temperature in London in January is about 44^o F (7^o C) with around 3 hours of sunshine. So if you have to thermo-regulate in London in January, well.....you're pretty fucked.\n\nOf course, some creatures have made the evolutionary jump, but it's not common for a cold-blooded creature to seek out climates that are often cold, since they would have no way of keeping their body warm.", "I heard a herpetologist answer an almost identical question on the radio a few days ago: \"Why are most venomous creatures in hot countries\".\n\nHis answer was two-fold.  First of all, there are plenty of venomous creatures outside hot countries and the distribution isn't polarised as you might think.  The figure mentioned was 60% of them being in hot countries, but obviously there's a lot of context missing there.\n\nHis other point was what has already been mentioned here: the fact that most venomous creatures are cold blooded and therefore fare better in hot climates.\n\nSomething he didn't mention was that there is a higher level of diversity in hot places.  Compare the tropics to the poles, or even just temperate regions - there is a much higher density of different species.  Even if 1/100 species was venomous in all parts of the globe, that would put a higher overall number of them in the hot tropics.", "A little late to post, but I have some knowledge in this. \n\nFirst off, the two things you mention are very different. \n\n**Venomous** means that the creature (animal) is capable of injecting toxins by means of a bite or a sting. \n\n**Toxic** creatures (also including things like caterpillars and poison arrow frogs) are not safe to eat because they have toxins in their bodies (or leaves/stems/flowers/roots/berries). Poisonous plants are generally considered toxic. \n\n(For true ELI5, scroll down to the TL;DR)\n\nNow the two are very different evolutionarily but they do have a common component: making toxins is metabolically expensive. That means that it takes a lot of energy to make toxins. It only makes sense to produce toxins if there is a lot of evolutionary pressure to do so. In fact there have been studies done on plants that suggests when non-native species are introduced to a new area, because there are usually less predators that feed on them in the new area, they tend to lose the potency of their toxicity (the study was specifically on weedy plant species). **\n\nNow, a lot of people in this thread have made two claims: A) that there is a lot less biodiversity in cooler climates (which is true) and B) that human populations have been a driving factor in eliminating venomous/toxic species. To address the second point: this is obviously not the case because there are plenty of toxic/venomous species in tropical areas with high human populations. In fact, regions like Siberia and Canada have a very low human population and fewer venomous/toxic species and places like India and Nigeria have high populations of human and high populations of venomous species. \n\nTo address the biodiversity claim, thats partially true. Since there are fewer species further north (because there are fewer resources like sunlight), this results in fewer overall numbers of venomous/toxic species. I would argue, however, that there is still a similar percentage of *toxic* species, compared to the tropics. For example there are plenty of toxic caterpillar species (monarch butterfly, for example) and, some amphibian species (Pickerel frog) and many toxic plant species (hemlock, or poison ivy). \n\nBut that does not address the lack of *venomous* species in northern climates. There are examples, such as many spiders, and bees and wasps, but venomous species make up a smaller percentage of species than warmer climates. The reason for this is two fold: evolution and size. \n\nVenomous species tend to have evolved in a couple specific groups. The list includes: spiders, bees/wasps/ants, snakes, a handful of truly venomous lizards (the Gila monster), centipedes, jellyfish, many species of fish, and some mammals. When looking at the list, every singles species that is venomous is cold blooded (ectothermic) with the exception of mammals. When looking at the mammals that are venomous they are all very primitive: insectivores such as shrews, and the platypus (male only). It has been proposed that the reason most mammals never evolved a need for venom is because mammals evolved much stronger jaw bones and jaw muscles than their ancestors the lizards and snakes. Mammals were capable of actively killing their prey with their newly evolved jaws, teeth and retractable claws, whereas most reptiles killed more passively. This makes sense, being ectothermic, that snakes (as well as spiders, scorpions, jellyfish, fish etc) kill their prey with a single bite/sting, and then wait for the animal to die, exerting less energy overall. The venom found in the few species of shrew is a little bit different. From Wikipedia: \n > Shrews cache various prey in a comatose state, including earthworms, insects, snails, and to a lesser extent, small mammals such as voles and mice. This behaviour is an adaption to winter. In this context, the shrew venom acts as a tool to sustain a living hoard, thus ensuring food supply when capturing prey is difficult. \n\nKeep in mind that these shrews are insectivores, meaning that they only eat insects and small vertibrates, no nuts/berries. Comparing this to mice, which do eat nuts and berries, despite their similar size, the mouse jawbow is much stronger than their shrew counterpart. There are handful of venomous shrews, no known venomous mice. Coming back to the main point, there is one species of toxic mammal in Europe, the european mole, which does use it venom to paralyze earthworms. It is likely that mice, being able to store nuts/berries through the winter, AND eat insect in the warmer months, are better equipped to survive in colder months than the weaker jawed shrew. \n\nThe second point I was going to make was about colder climates, size and body temperature. Bergmann's rule states that generally: the further north you go, the larger the size of the animals. The theory behind this is that when an animal is larger, it's volume increases faster than surface area, making it relatively easier to maintain a constant temperature. Likewise in warmer climates, a smaller body sheds heat faster than larger body. There are exceptions to this, there are mice that live in cold areas and elephants that live in warm areas, but both within species and among species this rule is generally true. For example, in western hemisphere, the white tailed deer live from Venezuela, all the way up to Canada. The tropical subspecies of the deer are significantly smaller than their arctic brethren. Why is this important when talking about venom? Well, the larger the prey, the stronger the venom required to bring down the prey. The stronger the venom (usually) the more expensive it is to metabolically produce. And remember, the northern climates already have less energy available in the food chain than tropical climates. This likely helps to explain why we never see something like poisonous wolves or big cats, as stronger jaws are better at killing large prey faster than a very expensive to produce toxin. The one time we do see something like this is in the Komodo dragon, which is a more passive \"venom\". The lizard will bite it's large prey and then just follow, chill and wait, sometimes a week or more, for the beast to die. (Originally the thought was that the venom is bacterial, recent research has called that into question, as the venom may be an anticoagulant that then encourages infection of the open wound). Since the Komodo Dragon lives in a warm climate, they have less of an issue waiting for an animal to die, compared to a wolf which needs to maintain it's body temperature in the cold climate. \n\n**TL;DR**: *Toxic* plants and animals do exist in northern climates. *Venomous* creatures aren't as well represented because northern climates tend to favor larger animals, especially mammals, who have other adaptations like strong jaws that make venom unnecessary. \n\n** (Not ELI5, but a couple people have asked me about metabolic cost of toxin production, specifically in snakes. I was taught, back in the early 2000's that it was more expensive to produce more powerful toxins, but in doing some quick research to answer their question, it seems that the research has changed. Studies [here](_URL_0_) (caution paywall) and [here](_URL_1_)  both suggest the cost of snake toxin production is quite low. \u00af\\\\\\_(\u30c4)_/\u00af I standby the plant studies that plants, over generations without evolutionary pressure, will begin to reduce toxin production in favor of growth (the 'non-native plant species exposed to new lands' study I alluded above). \n", "Organisms are either ectotherms (cold blooded), endotherms (warm blooded), or heterotherms ( able to be both). Ecto's must get heat from the environment for the reactions that keep them breathing, digesting, moving about, etc. This is an advantage because their bodies don't have to constantly use energy for these things; this is disadvantageous because their bodies rely on the environment to \"power them up\" and temps can vary. Because of this, most ecto's are found where it's constantly warm. Also, ever noticed how lizards are really fast for a short distance then they must stop? Or how fast a viper strikes then recoils, then waits, and strikes again? This is also due to being an ectotherm. For ectotherms who must catch prey with short bursts of energy, venom to kill prey is an adaptation that makes them more efficient! \n\nEverything in nature wants to get the most out of the energy it receives. \n\nHuman population or density has an impact on organism diversity, but not on the naturally occurring patterns of ectotherm populations \n\n[Ecology student]", "has a little to do with being venomous is a highly rare evolution, only necessary in habitats that have a high volume of diversity and many participants in the food chain. a rainforest for example. also, venom is more common in reptiles and amphibians, which are less common as you steer away from the equator. but don't take my word for it. College dropout here.", "Jesus the posts here really miss the mark for \"Explain like I'm 5\"\n\nELI5 version: Venomous animals prefer warmer regions (as they're \"wasting\" energy on venom that could be spent on staying warm). There are plenty of poisonous animals/plants in those places. Venomous = they bite you and you get sick, poisonous = you bite them and you get sick"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endemic_species_of_the_British_Isles"], [], ["http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/american-alligator-thermoregulating-everglades-national-park-florida-picture-id541556144?s=170667a"], [], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041010110002758", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814011"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5tkz8g", "title": "why (some) americans hate obamacare?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tkz8g/eli5_why_some_americans_hate_obamacare/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddna4nz", "ddna60j", "ddnbobf", "ddndckg"], "score": [8, 6, 6, 11], "text": ["Middle-class hates it. For the lower class it really is helpful and useful, but if you make a normal amount of money it is expensive as FUCK to pay for", "The government forces people to buy a certain product or be penalized, which is illegal and stupid. Obamacare made everyone's health insurance cost go up by a huge amount (my wife's increased by 400%). Also, it's immoral for someone to steal my money at gunpoint to pay for someone else's medical care. ", "I could be mistaken, but I could have sworn before it came into effect, Obama promised that it wouldn't cause my current insurance costs to go up.  They went up a fucking lot.", "1.) It fundamentally changed the relationship between the federal government and the individual citizen.  This was discussed at length during the Supreme Court hearing (by Kennedy, I believe), pointing out that the government had never claimed the power to force individuals into engaging in commerce with other private parties under penalty of law.\n\n2.) It was a windfall for the very insurance industry that was villainized during its passage.  You would be hard-pressed to think of a better way to enrich the Insurance companies while doing very little to address the underlying issues with the cost of healthcare.\n\n3.) It is detrimental to a significant portion of young working families by either forcing them to buy insurance at a time when it is reasonable to forego it due to low risks or to buy it at higher premiums.\n\n4.) The law was huge and complicated, but passed in a rushed, opaque manner at a time when the Democrats had a near supermajority in Congress.  It really felt like they were trying to slip something by before anyone had a chance to fully analyze it, leading to a very difficult implementation.  The law was rapidly written in a piecemeal fashion by multiple parties, leading to contradictory language and badly in need of a streamlined approach.\n\n5.) It failed to remove long-standing and important barriers to insurance access such as the an on interstate purchase of insurance.  This a particularly egregious example of congressional overreach based on the Commerce clause of the Constitution.  Congress simultaneously bans interstate commerce on insurance and claims the right to regulate it as interstate commerce.\n\n6.) It is the worst of all solutions.  It is neither the relatively simplified and easily regulated single payer solution nor the fully competitive free market solution (I.e. removing barriers like in number 5), but with arguably some of the worst elements of both.\n\nI could g on, but I hope this at least shows that it's not all partisan vitriol spewed by puppets of the almighty Fox News clown show as some claim.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7jcalh", "title": "Why did the Southern German states join the North German Confederation and not stay independent like Austria, or join Austria-Hungary with whom they had previously been allied with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7jcalh/why_did_the_southern_german_states_join_the_north/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dr6e22e"], "score": [7], "text": ["Pan-German sentiment (calls for a unified German people under one nation, Greater Germany) had been increasingly pronounced throughout the 19th century. This fomenting idea was one of the factors contributing to the 1848 revolutions that swept through the many German states. Although ultimately the revolution was a failure, this idea continued to simmer and grow in both popular sentiment and various intellectual circles. \n\nMeanwhile the state of Prussia itself was rapidly emerging as one of the Great Powers. Its geographical location in the Rhineland, access to abundant waterways and fertile plains allowed it to industrialise rapidly, compared to the more Alpine Austrian Empire. As a result Prussia could successfully form an economic and social hegemony over the other smaller German states. (the earlier German confederation was formed as a trade alliance actually, which Prussia began to grow more and more predominant over)\n\nPrussia was also a militarily powerful country. Sandwiched between the French Republic to the West and the Russian Empire to the East, the German states could rely on an alliance with Prussia in the event of war with either. Frederick the Great and his legacy was instrumental in transforming Prussia into one of the great military powers in Europe after all. As it was oft quoted \"other states have an army, but Prussia was an army with a state\". \n\nThe Austrian Empire consisted of numerous other diverse ethnicities, like Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and others. This did not sit well with the Pan-Germanists who wanted a Greater Germany, consisted mainly of Germans. Prussia on the other hand WAS predominantly German (save for the significant Polish populations in the Eastern regions after the 1795 partitions of Poland)\n\nNot only that but the Austrian Empire's strategic defeat in the Austro-Prussian war, it was clear who was the pre-eminent power among the German states. Whilst some of the states (like Saxony) actually fought on the side of Austria and against Prussia the outcome of the war made it certain who was the winning horse. The Austrian armies were made up of numerous ethnic minorities speaking various languages and it made military coordination exceedingly difficult. Not only that Austria was overall not as well coordinated and had a reputation of being technologically inferior.   \n\nBut the largest factor that led the southern German states to join the North German confederation was actually the Franco Prussian war. The southern German states have a long historic enmity with the French, and when the Franco-Prussian war broke out they   joined the Prussians and successfully won the French in various battles. \n\nBismarck had always been a shrewd negotiator and he succeeded in uniting the German states in the war effort and convincing the South Germans to put aside their differences and support unification and solidarity. Events culminated in the unification of the Southern German states with the North German confederation and most famously of all, the declaration of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace in January 1871. \n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "67pgrv", "title": "can a sufficiently rich person park in \"no parking\" spaces and just keep paying the fines?", "selftext": "Provided it's not a tow away zone, can someone with a lot of money just keep parking illegally and pay the fines forever?  Will he eventually lose his license or face jail time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67pgrv/eli5_can_a_sufficiently_rich_person_park_in_no/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgs63ll", "dgs66kh", "dgs66np", "dgs68o2", "dgs69sc", "dgs6g2m", "dgs6ldv", "dgs8b2s", "dgs9s1d", "dgsbll5", "dgsc1gw", "dgsi4ad", "dgslwal", "dgsn6jo", "dgsoljv", "dgsve73", "dgt17pc", "dgt2gv9", "dgt4kz9"], "score": [8, 16, 3, 59, 14, 5, 325, 10, 9, 4, 4, 2, 3, 53, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["In Ohio, only moving violations can cost you your license.  If you want to keep paying the fine, and getting your car out of the pound, sure, have at it.", "Short answer: yes, in most places\n\nHowever, usually, parking enforcement can order the car towed at their discretion, so if they find you constantly violaating the ordinance, they might decide to do that.", "I know handicap parking tickets are a non-moving violation with no points.  \n\nSo I believe you could park there and just keep paying the fine.  they could not revoke your license.", "Most states can't take your license away unless it's a moving violation (or if you don't pay your fines). So yes they could.\n\nEver wonder why people with super expensive cars often quadruple-park, besides to show off their obviously massive manhood?", "Depends on where you live.\n\nIn BC, Canada, where I live, parking violations are civil bylaw infractions. They have nothing to do with your driver's license. If you pay, they go away. If you don't pay, you get sent to collections. You can never go to prison for parking tickets in BC. \n\n", "It depends on the legislation. It is possible that the vehicle may be towed. And then without paying the impound fee and the parking tickets to get the car it may be auctioned off. But it would take months for this to happen. There are instances where rich people park wherever they like if they are in a hurry and just pay the parking tickets. Even the impound fee is not scaring them away. Some places it is a bit of a problem and they have to weekly tow cars left by rich people in a hurry.", "I actually knew a guy who did this.\n\nA business owner in NYC. Whenever we'd go out (he was my client) he'd just park his BWM anywhere.\n\nStreet corners, handicap spaces, fire hydrants, whatever. \n\nHe came out to a ticket every time. He just tossed it in the back and handed it to his assistant when he got to the office. \n\nHe figures he spent 4 to 5 thousand a year on fines. \n\nBut he made 2 million.\n\nSo his parking costs were just 0.25% of his income. \n\nOne quarter of one percent.\n\nWhich is basically what you probably pay as a percentage of your yearly income parking legitimately at meters or in garages.", "It depends on the type of no parking. \n\nIf it is a no parking zone that is for emergency services no. After a few violations you will be arrested for public endangerment. But the level that the city sees as the point that it becomes public endangerment is different for every city and it is possible they have other connections that keep them from getting into trouble. \n\nOther kinds of illegal parking just about anyone can get away with so long as you pay your fines. ", "In the UK there is the criminal offence *Leaving a Vehicle in a Dangerous Position* , for example on a blind corner. This can be punished by 3 'penalty points' as well as a fine. That wouldn't apply to things like parking in disabled spaces though. Accumulate 12 penalty points in 3 years and you normally get banned from driving. Drive while banned and you can be put in prison. For some context, other common offences that earn 3 points are mild speeding and running red lights.", "Yes, and it happens frequently. I live in Chicago and people double park, park in no parking, park on the sidewalks, or in a permit parking area (sans permit) all the time. It's a thing that just happens.  Sometimes you will get a ticket, most times you will not. If you do get a ticket you just pay it and move on. You do need to pay it because if you get too many unpaid tickets they will tow your car. Also if you are parking in certain areas that require absolute no parking (no parking for game days) they will tow your car. They will not tow if you just happen to get a lot of tickets (and pay them). They don't care because each ticket is more revenue for the city. ", "This is one of the reasons why people want tickets and fines to be based on your income and not a flat rate. Rich people can afford the fine and thus it isn't a punishment. If a person's income is $25k and a ticket is $250 that's 1% of their income. If a person's income is $1m and a ticket is $250 who cares? That's .025%. They make more than that in interest rates.", "I think Steve Jobs was famous for breaking \"non-moving violation\" type driving laws, and would just pay the fines.  Since he was a billionaire the fines were to him what being fined half a cent might be to an average person, and that was only when he was caught.\n\nIt was rumoured that he would drive without license plates, park in handicap spots, I guess stuff like that.", "There's a guy in Scotland that does it. It was in a newspaper a few years ago. I think he was a boxing promoter. He drove some kind of sports car that was really low to the ground so couldn't be towed and he'd just take a ticket as the money meant nothing to him and it meant he didn't waste time finding a proper space.\n\nSounds like a proper tool, but then if he's got ten money, I guess why not? As long as it's not endangering g anyone by clicking somewhere important, there's nothing that could be done and the council makes a decent amount off him every year. ", "Actually yes, and it happens. Steve Jobs was notorious for constantly parking in handicapped spaces even before his cancer made that justifiable, and he ducked California's mandatory license plates law by *trading in his car for the exact same model every six months.*", "And this is the reason that fines should be a percentage of income rather than a fixed amount. ", "I'm not rich but I essentially do this everyday (well similar). I'm a college student and we have a bunch of different lots but also pay per hour parking. I normally just park and ignore it and get a ticket. It's normally about 8 dollars a ticket. However, I've found that the price of getting a ticket (almost) everyday still isn't enough to justify buying an overpriced parking pass.\n\nAlso most towns have a limit on the number of unpaid parking tickets you can have. So you can get towed after a while. I've gotten towed from this before. I'm not sure whether it goes on your record but yeah.", "My old boss lives this life daily. He gets hassled more by angry residents than parking enforcement. That said, the first day I worked for him he paid off $3000 worth of $25 no parking fees.", "This is actually common in big cities where parking is expensive. Many people roll the dice and park illegally rather than pay big bucks for a legit parking space.", "There's that one guy in Beverly Hills, his bugatti is parked outside his business 24/7.\nBut then again, he's been dead a while now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7jpau9", "title": "do planes have speed limits?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jpau9/eli5do_planes_have_speed_limits/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dr851ef", "dr85c43", "dr87dgi", "dr8ar03", "dr8his1"], "score": [14, 7, 4, 7, 2], "text": ["Planes are not allowed to fly at the speed of sound over land (at least in the US).  It causes an unpleasant sonic boom.", "If you mean to ask whether airspace has speed limits that aircraft must adhere to, yes!  It varies by region, and can be a bit complex, but typically airplanes have to slow down the lower they are flying.  For instance, in Canadian Aviation Regulations 602.32(reference number if you want to look online!) Specify that below 10,000 feet speed shall be not above 250 knots, below 3,000 feet no faster than 200 kts... but it depends where you are and how busy it is.  In reality commercial aircraft sometimes exceed those speeds and it is rarely reported or punished in areas with low traffic volume and low oversight.", "Both answers posted so far are good but it should also be mentioned that planes will literally start to fall apart if they are flown faster than their intended top speeds. ", "Types of  speed limits for airplanes in the U.S.\n\n* No faster than the speed of sound over or near land\n* No faster than 250 knots (about 300mph) below 10,000\n* Certain types of airspace have a 200 knot limit\n* Certain departure/arrival procedures have a published limit saying \"cross XXX position at XXX sped\"\n* Air traffic control can assign specific speeds example: \"snoo 1234 maintain 300 knots\"\n\nPhysical limits:\n\n* vNE/vMO:  Never exceed or max operating speed, the speed at which physical damage may occur to the aircraft\n* mMO:  Similar to the above but measured in % of the speed of sound.  Usually mMO limit exists to prevent some of the effects encountered when flying near the speed of sound (mach tuck, buffett)\n* vFE/LE/Whatever:  Similar in nature to vNE but lower due to a specific situation like having the flaps out.  These can vary depending on the type of plane you're flying, for example my current airplane has a limit saying that you can't exceed 160 knots with the window open.  ", "I'll add one more \"speed limit\" no one has mentioned so far: materials.\n\nAs you increase past the speed of sound a shockwave forms.  On one side of the shockwave air flows at its normal supersonic speed, on the other side of the shockwave the air flows at sub-sonic speeds.  This... shocking... deceleration releases a huge amount of energy (heat).  If you remember from high school physics energy is the square of velocity, so the faster you go above the speed of sound the energy being released by the air is going to increase exponentially.  At some point the heat is simply so intense that it will melt every known material that is also strong enough to take the kinds of forces produced at those speeds.\n\nWhen the USA tests out \"hyper-sonic\" missiles or planes the real speed limit is based on materials science."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "284lga", "title": "why are whites in america often referred to as \"caucasians\"? (a word derived from the caucasus mountain region of central asia)", "selftext": "From what I've read the word \"Caucasian\" is derived from the Caucasus mountain region in Southern Russia.  Was there ever a time that a great number of immigrants to the New World were from this region?  Or perhaps do the people from this region share in skin tone to European whites, and therefore the skin tone became associated with this region?  Other countries in the Caucasus region include Azerbaijan and Georgia... I am just confused as to why modern American Whites would be referred to in this way.  Can someone shed some light on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/284lga/eli5_why_are_whites_in_america_often_referred_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci7c6t5", "ci7cq49", "ci7d4iv", "ci7fblp", "ci7ij8m"], "score": [28, 3, 6, 17, 50], "text": ["Short answer- an explorer was going through the region and thought that all people with light skin must have originated there", "Essentially:\nOriginally Caucasian was coined to describe white Europeans, particularly Germans.\nLater the term was co-opted (now Caucasoid) along with \"Negroid\"; \"Mongoloid\"; and \"Australoid\" to classify common, but distinct, facial features without necessarily referencing skin tone.", "So the guy who coined the term believed the white race to have begun in the Caucasus region.  He believed people of that region were the most beautiful and therefore that all whites were descended from that region.  In part he is not completely off.  That area of the world is part of the dividing line between east and west meaning lighter skin color and European features probably did begin near this region. ", "For anyone interested, caucasian isn't the only confusing word to describe a \"race\" or a \"heritage.\" Many terms don't make sense. \"Hispanic\" and \"Latin American/ latino-latina\" are extremely broad and inaccurate as well.", "The Caucasus mountains are not in central Asia they are in Eastern Europe and Western Asia.\n\nEurope and Asia are one land mass (along with Africa) where Europe ends and Asia begins is arbitrary and down to historical reasons. These mountains are one of the arbitrary geographical features that divides Europe from Asia (along with the Urals farther north).\n\nIn the 19th, or possibly 18th, century a German dude named Blumanbach(?) tried to divide the world up into 3 great races; Negroid were black Africans; Mongoloids were east Asians (what Americans mean when the say \"Asian\"); Caucasoids were European, North African and Asians from Europe to somewhere in India.\n\n**This whole thing was psuedoscience** but it did not try to divide people by skin tone, rather it was by skull features. Anyway, this dude had a skull of a woman from Georgia which he designated to have the definitive features of all Caucasoid people and theorized that this was where the first Caucasoid people originated.\n\nThe term was used in US legal system for who was allowed to enter the USA. So in 1922 when a Japanese dude who had white coloured skin wanted to become naturalised they wouldn't allow him because he wasn't Caucasion, then one year later when a dude from India who was Caucasion said \"hey I want to become a citizen\" the supreme court said \"Yeaaah, about that, we know you are caucasion but we really only meant white caucasions, so fuck you\". Thus to Americans caucasian means people from Europe (although plenty of west Asians and North Africans are white). It is a silly term and shouldn't be used for anyone that's not from the Caucasus region.\n\nAlso Hispanic and Arabic have nothing to do with skin colour. And when Americans say Asian they don't include about half of Asia. Sometimes Americans will get offended if you point out that Asia includes many more people or that their are white Hispanic and Arabic people, but they are just silly-Billies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5w0c1o", "title": "why do websites make you have a complicated password when most account breaches come from a hack and not just guessing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w0c1o/eli5_why_do_websites_make_you_have_a_complicated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de6awtp", "de6beiu", "de6bi2m", "de6c8wb", "de6cg3v", "de6p07l", "de6qxt5", "de6tcuv", "de6v6n8", "de6w0pf", "de6w49u", "de6wd7o", "de6x7sg", "de6xnbo", "de6y5fz", "de74f0b", "de79k5e"], "score": [6, 287, 1148, 103, 8, 6, 32, 15, 2, 25, 2, 2, 6, 142, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["Because if the site didn't require you to make a complex password, the hacks would be even more frequent and would be from guessing.  ", "This is like asking \"why do we have locks on the door, when burglars often break a window?\" They break the window -- which makes their crime harder -- *because*  the door is locked.", "When people hack sites for passwords, they usually get a list of the hashed passwords. That means when you put in your password, the site can check if it's the same password you signed up with but it doesn't know what the password is. It's like a one-way secret message.\n\nThe way hackers figure out passwords is they know common hashing techniques and they guess common passwords using those techniques. Since \"password123\" is a common password, they'll put that in the hash, see what comes out, and match that output to the stolen list of hashed passwords they got. If they can't guess your password to input, then they won't be able to know what it is.\n\nComplex passwords make it harder to guess the hashed passwords once they're stolen. The biggest factors for making a password hard to guess are the total numbers of characters you can use and the length. So forcing you to have three special characters and two capitals and a number doesn't really help, but allowing you to use any character and requiring your password to be long does help. In other words, \"a%6L7\" looks like a more securepassword than\"!XthisismypasswordforthissiteX!\", but the latter is actually more secure since it's longer and can possibly use just as many symbols. Longer passwords are harder to guess because the possible combinations of guesses increase quickly as you add additional characters.", " >  most account breaches come from a hack and not just guessing?\n\nThis is a direct result of those websites making users have complex passwords. If password were easy to guess then that's what the attackers would do. ", "It is because of this thing security researchers called \"social engineering\". Passwords are like locks - at best they are a deterrent against unauthorized access.  The harder the lock is to crack, the less inclined a thief will be to break in. \n\nA lot of hackers can engineer or \"guess\" a password by looking at social aspects of your life. The harder you make it for them to \"guess\" your password, the harder they have to try to hack into your account. At one point they will just give up because it is not worth the effort. ", "Because if you didn't have complex passwords most breaches would come from guessing.\n\n(...?) ", "Most account breaches come from guessing, you just never hear about them because they often go unnoticed. Think of a snoopy family member or \"friend\" trying to see what you've been up to. If you use an uncomplicated password, they can probably guess it, and they'll probably never tell you they logged into your account without permission.\n\nAlso, dictionary attacks on websites that don't have password restrictions can also fly under the radar unless the website publicly discloses that accounts were compromised. Which isn't likely; if they don't give a fuck about your password strength, they probably don't give a fuck about who is using your account.\n\nFinally, there are many security reasons for password restrictions. Passwords are often stored as hashes which, if stolen, can be brute forced if the attacker knows how the hashes are generated. The more complicated the password, the longer it takes to brute force it. A good password with special characters can take a single computer upwards of billions of years to brute force, whereas bad passwords with only lower case letters can be forced in milliseconds.", "Incompetent and/or uneducated developers genuinely believing they are helping you.\n\nAware that security is an issue but unaware of why, they instead choosing to solve the \"how\" by thinking like a human instead of a computer.\n\nOh, and just because it's not here yet: mandatory relevant [XKCD](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit:\n\nIt's just a comic, dammit!  Not an example of \"how to do securityz\".  Sheesh.", "Most account breaches occur from SE not from hacking. Lots of misinformation in this post. Read from a trusted source. ", "The breaches you *hear* about come from hacks, because those are breaches that involve thousands and thousands of accounts all at once and make the news.\n\nWhen Bob from Idaho's account gets broken into because it has a weak password, it's not going to make the news.", "I might be old, but when I opened my Hotmail account, on the previous century, I was able to have a 4 character password.", "because password security is just theatre. \n\nknow whats a better password than 'Yu44**^q1'?\n\n'passwords you cant remember are stupid'\n\nsecond password is waaaay better than the stupid one above.  ", "Like you\u2019re five: Your password is like the code on a safe. When someone hacks a site, they steal everyone\u2019s safes, but they still need to break the code.\n\nThese are very good safes that cannot be physically broken and can be secured with very long codes. But if you choose a simple code, the thieves have your information almost the moment they escape with the physical safe.", "You complex password isn't just for breaches. A couple of years back a ton of naked pictures of celebreties was stolen off of iCloud, this hack was done because of social engineering (figuring out their login) and weak passwords (using brute force to gain access).\n\nIf your password is a word or simple, it will take fewer guesses. If a hacker knows your login and wants to get *your* password, they will usually start with a dictionary attack (lists of common word and combinations); by requiring your password to be at least 8 characters with numbers, the amount of guesses needed goes way way up - if you have 4 characters and numbers it's 4^37, if you have 8 it's 8^37 (not counting symbols etc), that's hours vs. billions of years of computing. \n\nNow when a breach happens, complex passwords are still your friend *if* the website did their homework. *A lot* of people use the same username and password on all their accounts; facebook, linkedin, twitter, pornhub etc. and this is where complexity starts to matter. They now have most of your credentials, they know what email you sign in with and they know the hash of your password for *this* website. Now most website worth their salt will have a custom way of salting their passwords, however the hacker just gained access to everything, which probably includes the source code for the login, they can now start to figure out your password, which probably gains login to everything. If your password is complex and the salt is correctly made, it will still take billions of years to brute force the hash.\n\nSo the reason why they require you to make it complex is for your own good. We *know* our websites are susceptible to attacks, it's simply impossible to make anything hacker proof, short of disconnecting it from the internet, turn it off and bury it in 10 ft. of concrete in the Mariana Trench. You *have* to assume that you have a data leak at some point, having good policies for password and other sensitive data will mitigate the fallout.\n\n", "Irony is that by enforcing certain password characteristics (min/max length, must contain at least one of X), the site is actually making your password easier to guess for the hakers...", "most hacks involve guessing. \n\nOk so breakdown on how passwords are stored:\n\nIf whoever is storing the password for your account isn't a toolbag, they don't ever actually store your password. Instead they feed your password to a hash function and then store what that outputs, and then whenever you input your password, they just feed it back through the function again and check to see if it matches what they have stored. May need to explain what a hash function is so let's detour for a minute. \n\nA hash function will take some input of any length and it will output something of a fixed length (usually quite long), the input should always map to exactly the same output ever time and it should do so in a way that's quite easy to do, but very very very hard to undo.  For example: using the md5 hash (which isn't one that should ever be used for storing passwords) feeding it \"password\" outputs 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99, \"password1235483\" outputs  c048f211d0c6e9dcd83316b042a6723c and and mashing on my keyboard for a hundered chracters or so produces bae019d234e18408edd8b82c9437fecf\n\nSo this means that if a site is compromised and someone makes off with whatever database they're storing the hashed passwords in, they'd stuck trying figure out what the hell the hashed passwords are. In general this is accomplished via a lookup table which looks kinda like this\n\n286755fad04869ca523320acce0dc6a4=password\n10b222970537b97919db36ec757370d2=password1\n7576f3a00f6de47b0c72c5baf2d505b0=password123\nf2c93f0625019e5461379cd1a4ed1b16=p455w0rd \n\nand so on. Then you compare the hashed passwords that were stolen with the known ones and see what matches. Infact because computers are good at what they do, you can just find the hash for basically every combination of characters under a certain size. there's only a few billion passwords with 6 characters or fewer, and it would not take a computer very long to build a database of the hashes for every single one of those passwords. And it also doesn't take a computer very long to check the a bunch of stolen passwords against that list. If you have a weak password, they're going to find it real quick. If you've something much longer and more complex, then it's probably not sitting in some lookup table. \n\nInfact, hashing in general isn't the only thing that happens to a password. Instead what they really really should be doing is a salt+hash method. which means instead of feeding just your password to the hash function, they feed it and some other randomly generated \"password\" (the salt) to it. In a simple case this could be something like \n\nyourpassword64sdf55c4c1w34372654263r4236r623r23r423564415...\n\nwhere yourpassword is what it says it is and then the random stuff afterwards is the salt. Done right this has two advantages. The first is if two people use the same password there will be different salts used and so the hashed passwords will be different. The second is that it makes lookup tables much less useful, and forces anyone wanting to figure the password out to fall back on brute force guessing. And while a weak password is a little better off in this case, it still won't take very long for a computer to run through a bunch of really common passwords and eventually find yours. \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "This is because the hacks are, in every sense of the word, guessing. Hackers just leverage computers to intelligently 'guess' hundreds to thousands of passwords a second. This is simplifying the various methods of cracking a password, but the bottom line is that computers are much better at guessing passwords than humans and complex passwords are required to increase the entropy of your password. \n\nA 4 digit PIN with composed of the numbers 0 through 9 has 10,000 possible combinations. All 10,000 of those combinations can be tested with software in basically an instant. A 4 digit PIN that could use the English alphabet, numbers and special characters, let's just say it's 50 different symbols, has 6.25 million possible combinations. That increase in uncertainty (entropy) makes it much more difficult for hackers to use simple exploitation tools to discover your password. Now you just need to scale the previous example up to allow for 20+ characters, or whatever the site allows you to use. \n\nHowever, just because a site requires you use special characters, symbols and capital letters does not mean you are safe. As other posters have mentioned, hackers keep 'rainbow tables' of hashed passwords - basically a list of common, encrypted passwords that hackers can compare to the encrypted passwords they are trying to decipher. So, if your password is PAssword!!11, you are basically already compromised. \n\nA much better solution is to use a password manager like LastPass to automatically generate high-entropy passwords that you don't have to remember. It works between all of your devices and, as long as you create a strong master password, keeps your new passwords protected by encryption. This works because hackers tend to go after the easy targets, that is, they run a preformatted 'list' of common hashed passwords against their target, exploit the least defended victims, and move on. \n\nI wrote a blog post about this on my site (local computer repair business). It is a bit light on content but was made for a wide audience. You may find something useful inside. [Password Management](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://xkcd.com/936/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://coloradopcpro.com/password-pitfalls/"]]}
{"q_id": "6zms60", "title": "When the west roman empire fell, were there any romans from the fallen empire that (tried) to move to the east-roman empire?", "selftext": "I am thinking about the idea of a tv show about a roman soldier just after the fall of the roman empire who is struggling with the fall of the relative safety of the vast roman empire. He then tries to reach the Byzantium empire, hoping to find some stability there, moving through Europe falling apart. I was wondering, is there any documentation of people who haven actually tried, or even suceeded, while doing this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zms60/when_the_west_roman_empire_fell_were_there_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmxawh9"], "score": [39], "text": ["I'm afraid this answer might be a bit unsatisfying. The collapse of the Western Empire did not happen very suddenly. The Goths had been within the empire for roughly a century and the Vandals about 70-80 years there were no Romans alive when the west \"fell\" that could likely remember a Time when some germanic group or another wasn't \"squatting\" on Roman territory. As often as not these groups were administering Roman territory for the imperial government and fighting on behalf of the Empire as they were fighting with it. Even in 476 when Romulus Augusts was deposed and Odoacer became king of Italy, it wasn't all that different from the Visigoths or Franks whose kings were nominal subjects of the Emperor and administered the provinces on the emperors behalf. Odoacer would even mint coins in the Image of the ex-western emperor Julius Nepos until Nepos' death, though we would let Nepos return to Italy..in fact for the next couple centuries the western kingdoms would continue to Mint coins displaying the image of the Eastern emperors. So the western empire didn't just disappear one day, to the perspective of someone living at the time. \n\nThe educated elites would be most likely to know about they changes going on around them than your average poor farmer but the difficultly if travel for people and information and the long amount of time that can take, nevermind the potential unreliability of that news might have meant that the further away from Italy you got the less even an educated Elite might know for certain. Plus the wealth of the elites in ancient times was in land, so even if Theuderic the Frank shows up at your door and says; \"hey pal, half your Empire is gone and you're gonna be paying your taxes to us now,\" you can't just trade your land in for a chest of coins and ride off for Constantinople. For poor Publius the cobbler in Tolouse he might not even know that anything had changed, Sure he was paying the goths taxes, but the coins still have the emperors face on them, and besides he'd been paying the Goths taxes for as decades as far as he can recall. The Gallo-Roman Aristocracy, their Iberian counterparts, and the Italian Senatorial class all  for the most part just made accommodations with their new Germanic overlords and went on with their business. We do hear that under Justinian some Italian senators and other elites fled east, but this was due to the devastation from the Gothic wars which ruined Italy far more than the \"fall\" of the West 70 years earlier.\n\n\nsources:\n\"The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians\" Peter Heather\n\n\"The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization\" Bryan Ward-Perkins\n\n\"Byzantium: The Early Centuries\" John Julius Norwich\n\nI've probably left out a couple good sources too and I'm sure there might be a few salient examples of western \"emigres\" but nothing really springs to mind, and I'm happy to be corrected, I've been up for 19 hours as I type this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2wde60", "title": "why the usa needs, or doesn't need, to have its military at the size that it is.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wde60/eli5_why_the_usa_needs_or_doesnt_need_to_have_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["copszsv", "coptrow", "copu1wf", "copvsg7", "copx3co", "copzlfc", "coq08gd", "coq26pc", "coq3dj7", "coq3opq", "coqmsl3"], "score": [59, 49, 7, 2, 250, 3, 5, 7, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["The base of it is this: it is politically unpopular to reduce the size of the military for any reason. There is a big enough military-industrial complex that you would essentially be removing jobs from the US economy, and so nobody wants to do it. When you add to that that you're essentially firing our most patriotically-viewed demographic, it's almost political suicide.\n\nEisenhower, a 5-star general in the military during WWII, talked on his way out of the presidency about how [dangerous it is to the US to let the military-industrial complex](_URL_1_) get out of hand, but even an insider who was president at the time couldn't stop its growth.\n\nClearly, a military is important, but outspending the [next 13 closest militaries](_URL_0_) is, in my opinion, just as clearly too big.", "It depends on your definition of \"need.\" For better or worse the USA is the leading world power at the moment, to maintain this status we actually do \"need\" the military we have (there is a reason China is building up their military), Europe's military spending is tiny in comparison and rely heavily on the USA for the bulk of NATO work (US missile defense systems in Turkey, US tank busters in Germany, US Navy controlling Atlantic  &  Mediterranean, etc.), the US controls the ocean's trading routes all over the entire planet (US Navy has the 2nd largest air force in the world after the US Air Force) which allows for trade to continue is some of the most hostile environments (see coast of Somalia), the US acts as world police as well basically being involved in some way in every conflict in the globe and spends billions giving money to foreign countries to help maintain relative peace. Domestically, u/praecipula explained it well, too much money involved in making sure things don't change. You could say this is a bad thing, but even as someone who thinks we spend far too on our military, I would prefer for the US to be doing this than any other country as there are few who can actually fund such activities, history has shown someone will always step into that power vacuum if you step away (every empire throughout history, more recently Spain then Britain, now us), and the other options (really just Russia  &  China) seem like they would do a lot worse of a job.", "Not a full answer, but kind of a response to the people who state that U.S. military is bigger than \"next 13 closest militaries\". The size difference is simply because a lot of the rest of the world (especially Europe) relies heavily on U.S. defense spending, therefore those governments have a lesser need to invest in defense themselves. A huge portion of NATO is funded by the US.", "When we think of military size, it's worth remembering that the budget the military receives is not directly proportional to the combat effectiveness of the force.  There is a terrifying amount of waste in the US military budget.  Examples include the RAH-66 Comanche recon helicopter - $7 billion was spent developing, building and testing it, before the program was cancelled because the army decided they didn't want it after all; the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - cost $910 billion before even becoming operational; the V-22 Osprey - cost $35.6 billion and 30 deaths; the F-22 Raptor - cost $67 billion for an aircraft that wasn't even needed, as the existing F-15 airframe can outfight anything the other side has; the procurement of unneeded M1 Abrams tanks, costing $181 million...\n\nIt goes on.  The US military is a top-heavy bureaucracy behind the scenes, and a frightening amount of its budget just goes to justify having the budget in the first place.", "There are three states that the world can be in:\n\n*One superpower*\n\n*Multiple superpowers*\n\n*No super powers (every country equally as strong as another)*\n\nLets start with the last one. By nature, countries will compete for dominance over one another for political, economic, and security reasons. Therefore this state is almost unattainable. Not all countries can afford or care to keep up with the others, so there will never be a time when no country is more powerful than others. \n\nNow for the middle state, *multiple superpowers*. This is what the cold war was. This ends up the same as we discussed above, because the countries that CAN afford to compete for power DO compete, and end up in 'cold' wars with one another. This can happen with any number of countries, for instance during the last half of the 20th century it was two (US and USSR), but it could easily happen with three, four, or more countries competing for dominance.\n\nFirst on this list is close to what we have now, *one superpower*. The united states 'won' the cold war because the other guy quit competing. That left it with no other country even CLOSE to being as powerful militarily or spending as much as they did. \n\nHere they had two options: stop spending because our main threat is 'gone', or keep spending to PREVENT them from being able to come back. The US chose the latter, obviously. Many people think that a system of one superpower is the most realistic 'best' option. It is unrealistic to think that countries will not compete with each other, and a cold war is dangerous for the entire planet because nuclear arms exist. \n\nThe theory is this: If the US spends so much money and has such a large military presence in most of the world that they can counter any emerging threats before they get too big, that *theoretically* means that other countries would have a hard time becoming powerful enough to inflict major harm on other countries because the US *could* swoop in at any time and stop them. While the US is not a perfect country, most of the world (the west and some of Asia) thinks that the US is a good choice because *the other candidates are worse*. Russia? Most of the world doesn't want them to have the power. China? Same thing. Both have terrible human rights records and less obligation to do things fairly because they don't answer to their citizens in the same way. While the US doesn't do things fairly or always do the 'right' thing, it's pretty much the only candidate for the job that has a *chance* of doing the right thing. \n\nAncillary reasons: With the US military being so large and powerful, many Europeans countries can spend WAY less money per capita on their military. This is good for them. Part of the reason the US spends more than the next 13 countries combined is because they hardly spend anything at all since they either can't keep up enough to matter against the US military or they are friends with the US.\n\nThe US spends a lot but we have for all of recent memory so the citizens don't put up much fuss. It also helps that having the most powerful military in the world allows you to exert your will on other countries for political, economic, or security reasons.", "The reason the US military is so large is so it can win on multiple fronts while still defending the homeland. Consider that perspective when you read stats about how the US military is larger than several others combined. Winning a foreign conflict doesn't help if it leaves you venerable. \n\nFrom _URL_0_\nThe current strategic doctrine, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued in his Quadrennial Defense Review of early 2001 (before the 9/11 attacks), is a package of U.S. military requirements known as 1-4-2-1. The first 1 refers to defending the US homeland. The 4 refers to deterring hostilities in four key regions of the world. The 2 means the US armed forces must have the strength to win swiftly in two near-simultaneous conflicts in those regions. The final 1 means that the US forces must win one of those conflicts \"decisively\".", "For the amount of money it spends the US actually has a relatively small military. But it has a very well equipped military. \n\nIt also has a massive air and sea component. The US would rather use that technological edge to leverage force, meaning that they need fewer ground forces to accomplish the same goal in theory.\n\nThe US is also separated by oceans from most politically or geographically important areas. meaning that the ability to get there, protect lines of communication, and keep supplied are very important, in addition to power projection. hence the need for a large air force and navy. Both of those get very expensive as they require constant upgrades and maintenance, and training. ", "The U.S. Is in a position of power. If it was to drastically reduce its military strength it's not like the rest of the world will stay the same. The power vacuum would be filled by Russia or China. As much as many people disagree with how the United States handles its foreign policy, you can be certain a Russia or China as the sole superpower would be much, much worse.", "We need a large military to invade countries that pose a threat to use. Even if it is a 1% chance.", "Whether it's cars, crops, computers, financial services, fossil fuels or t-shirts, every country has its exports.  The US exports its military.  The difference is that while other goods are paid for with money, having a large military is paid for by having a deeper influence in foreign affairs.  This helps put US friendly leaders in charge who may seek to increase trade with the US.  We protect them, or economy grows.  You could try to reduce the size of the military, but ultimately it's a big advantage to have  a larger, more disciplined military than anyone else.  You don't want to let someone take that away from you.  ", "One *small* reason to maintain spending is a skilled work force. The USA is constantly building aircraft carriers and submarines.  We have plenty now, but if they stopped for 5-10 years, than those people who know how to build them would find employment elsewhere.  When the time comes to build another, those workers wouldn't be available.  Same goes for some of the smaller contractors....they could go out of business and their skills would be lost.\n\nOthers have given more broad and complete answers, this is just a small part."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/01/4A8078449E794DFB8CC33ADD00A6F1AF.gif", "http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2g82xd", "title": "What is the best guess about what happened to the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes?", "selftext": "There's a story that the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes was sold to a Jewish merchant, who basically hauled it away for scrap. Did this really happen? If so, do we know anything about this merchant or what he might have done with the remains? If not, do we know what actually happened? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g82xd/what_is_the_best_guess_about_what_happened_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckgozup"], "score": [27], "text": ["It is likely that never happened, as all other sources of this statement can be traced back to The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, who stated that an invading Muslim army tore down the statue, cast it down and sold it to a Jewish merchant of Edessa who loaded the bronze on 900 camel but in all likely hood it most likely was none existing at that stage of time due to an earthquake in 226 BC, where the statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but the oracle of Delphi made the Rhodians afraid that they had offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it.\n\nThe tale of the Jew and Muslim army destroying it possibly originated as a metaphor for Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the destruction of a great statue, and may have been seen have as evidence for the coming apocalypse.\n\nSource: The Arabs and the Colossus. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3rd ser. L.I. Conrad."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2anwqq", "title": "israeli/palestinian conflict gaza - july 2014", "selftext": "This thread is intended to serve as the official thread for all questions and discussion regarding the conflict in Gaza and Israel, due to there being an overwhelming number of threads asking for the same details.  Feel free to post new questions as comments below, or offer explanations of the entire situation or any details.  [Keep in mind our rules](_URL_1_) and of course also [take a look at the prior, more specific threads which have great explanations](_URL_0_)  Thanks!\n\nLike all threads on ELI5 we'll be actively moderating here.  Different interpretations of facts are natural and unavoidable, but please don't think it's okay to be an asshole in ELI5.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2anwqq/eli5_israelipalestinian_conflict_gaza_july_2014/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cix28by", "cix2d4a", "cix301v", "cix4unm", "cix6bj0", "cix7qei", "cix9uaa", "cixqkxe", "cixx94z", "ciz4071", "cizg4na", "cizltin", "cizwr44", "cj0d1ea", "cj0qazi", "cj0u49g", "cj1d4hh", "cj36s39", "cj3av9r", "cj3gpi9", "cj3nk3n", "cj3xfbf", "cj424hy", "cj465ug", "cj4gxqf", "cj4udq0", "cj55sj7", "cj5m0rr", "cj60b22", "cj6693y", "cj6oeae", "cj6om0j", "cj84gf1", "cj96tf0", "cj9ecks", "cj9zqpb", "cj9zr00", "cjajbjs", "cjchp5a", "cjcj2h8", "cjckt1u", "cjdyad1", "cje6w12"], "score": [19, 383, 116, 2, 47, 2, 6, 42, 3, 8, 6, 13, 3, 2, 12, 3, 16, 2, 2, 7, 2, 3, 2, 4, 8, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Slightly *meta* but: is it even possible to state an opinion or give an analysis of this situation without it either being entirely banal or accused of bias by one side?", "[Here is a 4x gold comment on the current situation from /r/Arabs.](_URL_0_) It's written by an Israeli who sums up the recent escalation in violence that was sparked with the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. \n\n**EDIT: more context**", "I was in Israel and Palestine for a few months in 2010, working with multiple NGO's throughout the West Bank and Israel. Most of my time was spent traveling the West Bank extensively and studying the conflict, as it has been coined. By no means am I an expert or anything of the like, just saying I've had some experience. Below I'm referring to the situation as I understand it, that has been inherited by both the Israelis and Palestinians today. \n\n\nFirst, there really is no simple explanation and many, many factors have to be included when you discuss the conflict. The most recent rocketing from both sides is an extension of a long history between the Israelis and Palestinians. I would study that first (1948 war, Six-Day war, the Intifadas, etc.) which is readily available and pretty straight forward. With no background, the whole thing will be much more difficult to wrap your head around. \n\nSecondly, understand that the Palestinians are a people, not a group of terrorists. Hamas is a separate entity that scares some Palestinians just as much as they scare Israelis. Just like all Afghani's are not Al Qaeda, same holds true for Palestinians. This may seem like a simple concept but I am absolutely baffled that many people don't understand this. \n\n\nJust yesterday, a rocket from the Gaza strip fired by Hamas hit a power plant that supplied 70,000 people in Gaza with electricity. Not good for anyone. \n\n\nWith that being said, also understand that the Palestinians (though strong), can at times be a desperate people. They live surrounded by walls with near impossible checkpoints in most areas, and within most of these walls are third world conditions. Many of them dream to travel freely, have more rights, but with the current situation of (what the Palestinians refer to as) apartheid, it is more or less impossible. This causes frustration, fueling Hamas. When Israel is provoked by Hamas attacks, they may retaliate which usually results in civilian casualties within the West Bank and Gaza, thus fueling Hamas even more.\n\n\nOn the other side, when speaking with young Israeli soldiers, many will tell you stories of the Intifada's...being scared young children and hiding under tables as Hamas rockets rain down around their homes. Some killing friends, family or neighbors. Obviously growing up like this will give you a different perspective than the rest of the world and the Palestinian side. The Israelis are serving to protect their country and their families, regardless of how the situation became what it is today, it is necessary to defend their country now. Jewish people wanted a safe haven for all Jews, now they have it. Imagine giving that up in any circumstance.\n\n\nThe Israelis today did not do this to Palestinians. This situation is a culmination of factors and history that has been inherited by the people on both sides.\n\n\nIt is a sad, unfortunate, \"grid lock\", deadly situation in which every so often tensions rise enough to cause this.. Kidnappings of Israeli teens - a desperate move by a fanatical Hamas, leads to tensions rising, Israeli citizens calling for action, leads to fanatical Israelis kidnapping a Palestinian, leads to big protests, demonstrations, and the rocketing /death toll increasing all the while.\n\n\nFollow @IDFSpokesperson and it will give you some good insight, but again just a side to the story. He is a Brooklyn, NY native and I believe tells it how it is. \n\n\nI have friends in the IDF and throughout Israel. I still keep in contact with some Palestinians from my travels. \n\nI should also note that 70% of my work was in Area C of the West Bank with a Bedouin village and the other work done in various refugee camps throughout the West Bank. \n\n\nAnd those of you that are probably wondering...I was born and raised catholic but don't take it too seriously. \n\n\nI have the names of the organizations I worked with, pictures, all sorts of other info if anyone is interested. I have proof that I'm an average Joe catholic (sorta) American for anyone that wants it. I consider my experience there invaluable and would love to share with anyone thats interested. Unfortunately I must go to work so I can't post anymore right this second but I really hope this has helped some people. Im also sure I've left out something as I wrote this quickly, so I hope not to offend anyone. \n\nEdits: can't type today\n\nEdit 2: Because everyone is focused on the \"apartheid\", I would like to clarify. The majority of Palestinians I spoke with view their situation as apartheid...whether it is or not is up for argument. I wouldn't know exactly what to call it. The situation has many similarities to situations throughout history, but is in itself very unique. Their interpretation of their situation is that it is, apartheid. That is the word they spoke to me. \n\n\nFrom a comment below:\n\n > Simply put *physical* separation..physical, very real, very tall, walls keeping these people separate. These walls are interpreted as the physical manifestation of oppression, segregation and racism to many Palestinians. That's what I understood from speaking to them personally, anyway.\n\nUnderstand also, that these walls were initially built in different times where security was of great concern for Israel. The most recent occurrences prove that security still is of great concern with a very active Hamas. Israelis were being killed by (Hamas involved) Palestinians, so they built a wall. Regardless, the wall and check points are protecting innocent Israeli life.\n", "Is it politically correct to refer to Palestine as a country? Palestinians, sure, but the land is officially Israel, no?", "So I'm a little confused. A couple days ago, one of my facebook friends (who is reasonably knowledgeable of these events) updated their status to something along the lines of \"...if you support Israel, unfriend me right now..\". The thing I don't get is why Israel is the major player in fault here. Isn't the kidnapping and murdering of three Israeli teens by Palestinians the thing that sparked this whole mess? And isn't it the Hamas who are from Palestine the ones who are firing rockets right now?  \n\n\nJust to be clear, I am not taking sides and I am just looking for an explanation of what is going on. Don't hate me for what I wrote. If something I wrote is wrong, please correct me.", "ELI5 - If you believe that Israel should give Palestinians their land back, why don't you leave America and give whatever land you own back to Native Americans?  At the very least, why are you not protesting the American occupation of Native American land?  I say this in the least cynical and smart-ass way possible. I never see this issue brought up and every time people discuss the conflict, I begin to wonder the answer to this question.", "Does anyone think a one-state solution is viable? Why or why not?", "I am Israeli, so I might be biased. However here are a few critical points I don't think are disputable:\n\n1. Israel, by and large, prefers to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, going as far as warning civilians before airstrikes. Meanwhile, Hamas purposefully targets civilians in Israel, and purposefully stores and fires rockets from within civilian areas in Gaza.\n\n2. In the latest round of fighting Israel attacked more than 1,000 times in Gaza. The civilian death toll in Gaza is somewhere between 30 and 100 - tragic, of course, but obviously low when Israel's military ability is taken into account. Hamas fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel, and thanks to the Iron Dome system and sheer luck the civilian death toll in Israel is zero. This makes Israel's response seem disproportionate, but you must keep in mind that Hamas intends to kill civilians with every rocket.\n\n3. Many people round the world - and many Israelis - criticize Israel for settlements. It is important to keep in mind that however unwise and even wrong the settlement policy is, building towns shouldn't justify attacks against civilians, or the kidnapping and murder of children. The Israeli public and government have largely accepted the inevitability of the two-state solution, and if security and peace were assured, the issue of settlements could be solved through negotiations.\n\n4. When jews brutally murdered an Israeli Arab boy, the terrible act was unanimously condemned in Israel, and the perpetrators were quickly found, and are expected to spend many long years in prison. The kidnapping and killing of three Israeli boys was lauded, and almost certainly perpetrated, by Hamas, which is part of the Palestinian government.\n\nTo me these four points suggest that while the situation is very complicated, and both sides are guilty of mistakes and crimes, and both sides have racists and extremists, there is still a clear difference between Israel and Hamas on the whole. Hamas is motivated by extreme religious ideology, does not respect the lives of civilians on both sides, and in the long term seeks nothing less than to erase Israel through Jihad. Israel is motivated by security concerns, tries to minimize civilian casualties on both sides, and in the long term seeks to arrive at a mutually agreed solution to this long bloody conflict. ", "Today Israel agreed to a ceasefire at 9 am. Since then Hamas had still been shooting rockets. I'm in Israel and it's happening. This fact can answer many questions on why some groups of ppl are behind walls and need to cross checkpoints. ", "Why does Hamas use civilian space to launch rocket attacks, and why does the Palestinian populace allow this?", "How come the other surrounding Arab countries aren't coming to Palestine's aid? ", "Also a lot of people my age (university peers) are protesting and holding conferences criticizing Israel. I saw on the news that Israel had started a peace process with Hamas recently, but then rockets were fired into Israel, thereby starting the fighting again. \n\nBear in mind I don't know much about the history of the conflict, but from a third party perspective, why is Israel being criticized when they're retaliating against people that cannot be trusted to hold peace talks? What am I missing? ", "We always hear the Muslim Arab opinion on this.  What is the Christian Arab point of view on all of this?  ", "Genuine question from someone who knows VERY little about the situation here: Why is Israel being portrayed as the bad guys in this situation? Didn't the first missiles come from the Gaza strip?", "I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but whatever here it goes. \n\nWhat were the actual population demographics of Isreal/Palestine when the British mandate was ended? As I understand it the area was primarily Arab with a growing population of (Primarily polish) Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis. \n\nI ask because I'm confused as the why the UN sided with an independent Isreal in the first place.\n\nTo be clear, I'm not trying to argue against an independent isreali/jewish state, especially after the displacement of such a large population of people during the holocaust. I just question why (as I understand it, which may be an incorrect understanding) a population of primarily polish citizens was given Carte Blanche to found a country in the middle east.  America and Russia had essentially anexed Germany already, so why wasn't the country Isreal carved out of Germany, the country that was actually persecuting the Jewish people in the first place?", "Can someone please explain whats going on between these 2 countries? I know they hate eachother but I've never full understood why ", "Are there any documentaries on the history of the conflict? (A non-biased film/series) ", "Why does seemingly everyone on here hates Israel and Jews in some cases? There are far worse countries.\n\nThe conflict is not black and white but people make it out to be. People on here say the recent holocaust survivor post was a shill with only account age as \"proof\". People on here also deny both sides suffer. Israel has made some good stuff and is the only stable country in that are, so why do people want it gone? Why is is suddenly the new Nazi state? Also, anyone who supports Israel gets a lot of abuse and downvotes. I notice people on here saying the top comments are pro Israel but when I look they are at the bottom or the lower middle. Can someone explain what goes into all this?", "I don't think this thread is objective with so many Israel fanboys here lol...", "My official thoughts-\n\nA: Most of the posts above show a wild misunderstanding of the situation \n\nB: Hamas hides weapons in civilian areas\n\nC: Israel takes steps to minimize harm to civilians\n\nD: Israel can not be expected to ignore repeated attempts to harm its citizens\n\nE: Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew on the land, making it very hard to negotiate.\n\nF: The US and a fair share of the world designate Hamas as a terrorist entity\n\nG: The withdrawal from Gaza almost 10 years ago was meant to foster development and lead to the withdrawal from the West Bank, instead, Gazans elected Hamas to be their government and Hamas diverted aid to weapons and tunnels. \n\nOH, and H: There was never in the history of the world, a state known as \"Palestine\" when the Romans conquered the land, they began calling it various names including Palestine that were continued by the Turks and British up till 1948. \n\nI: When Israel was founded, only occupying it's share of the land according to the 1947 UN Plan, Arab countries expelled thousands of Jews. While many Arabs were displaced in the conflict, their descendants being known today as Palestinians, the various Arab countries refused entry that would alleviate the problem. Israel, meanwhile, welcomed any and all Jews expelled from the Arab states.\n\nJ: There is no genetic difference between a Palestinian and Jordanian or Palestinian and Syrian etc. ", "Why don't the Palestinians take a non-violent approach to their statehood, similar to Ghandi in India and MLK jr against Jim Crowe?\n\nWith 500+ Palestinians dead in the recent ground war, the Palestinian-American teenager being assaulted by Israelis, the Shelling of a beach in Gaza, and a myriad of other war crimes the Palestinians allege, I think the Palestinian people could muster a great deal of International support for their cause. And could concievably swing US - support against military aid to Israel.  \nUnfortunately, Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups are using suicide bombers, firing rockets from civilian positions, and other asymmetric attacks wash away needed international support for the Palestinians and justify Israel's heavy handed tactics.", "Why can't Gazans flee into Egypt? I keep hearing that they have nowhere to go, since Israel won't let them into their country, but why can't they evacuate into Egypt as refugees?", "People are slagging Israel off for the death toll in palestine compared to their own, but why? It doesn't seem fair that because Israel has a functioning missile defense system and shelters (lowering their death toll) they should be blamed simply because they're better at defending as well as attacking?\n\nIt's like going to a sword fight with a balloon sword and saying \"That's not fair, you'll have to fight with a balloon too\" just because the guy actually turned up with a rather sharp sword!", "1)  Israel is not killing innocents on purpose as they warn them.  Hamas tells them to stay if Israel tells them to get out.\n\n2) Hamas is a terrorist organization\n\n3) Should America give their land back to the Native Americans?\n\n4) The only reason people think Israel shouldnt be allowed to exist is because they are antisemitic or ignorant.", "Why is it that most of reddit is either pro Israel or pro Palestine, and neither side will admit that they are both wrong? Why is it also that people who post comments defending Israel must have been paid to? I understand that the JIDF is paying some students, but it seems that according to reddit everyone who supports Israel is being paid to. I generally support Israel, but am ashamed at what they are doing now, but at the same time I see what Hamas is doing as wrong. Both sides are wrong, their is no good guy. But reddit cannot see that way. \n\nI received some disgusting pm's because I made a few comments supporting Israel, and some were very anti-Semitic telling me I should I just run and hide in my bomb shelter and wait for my death. Except I'm in fucking Chicago. Am just trying to understand the mindset of everyone here, I used to come to reddit to hear mostly impartial stuff, and good debate, but now it's just like over there, constant attacks, no debate, and no one will admit that their side is ALSO wrong. \n\nWhile I am technically jewish, I don't practice or believe it, it's more about heritage for me. I am also part Muslim and Christian. My grandma is from Palestine, and her father was Egyption/Muslim, and her mother was Jewish. My grandpa was Christian. I in no way support either side. I just want to know why all of a sudden, reddit has basically become Gaza.  ", "Why aren't the Gaza citizens evacuating? Regardless of what's right or wrong how does a parent allow their children to stay in a city that's being bombarded? ", "Why don't the Muslim countries surrounding Israel let the Palestinians in?", "After WWI, the United Nations took a piece of the former Ottoman Empire and divided it up between Jews and Arabs (also created Jordan). They did this because the UK called in favors from both sides during WWI. They enlisted Arab states to fight against the Ottomans, in return for a free Arab state. They also promised a Jewish nation in return for help enlisting Russia and the US on their side.\n\nOnce it came time to deliver on the promise, the UN split the newly conquered land up, but Palestinians weren't happy with the split. They wanted the Jews gone. Ever since the nation of Israel was formed, they have been trying to destroy it.\n\nObviously, Israel has the backing of both the UN and the US, so they have far superior military capabilities. When Arabs have attacked (I use Arabs, because it has been a number of different groups: Hamas, PLO, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, etc), Israel has hit back HARD.\n\nPeace accords have been extended dozens of times, but the Arabs will not accept anything short of the total destruction of Israel.", "Honest question that may turn into a slight rant, so my apologies. But what exactly, is Hamas trying to accomplish? I've been trying to do some reading on the history of the Gaza strip and from the Gaza Strip wikipedia article (and some follow up articles) it seems that both Israel and Egypt have, over the past 20 years given complete authority to the Palestinian leadership and no longer have any form of military occupation (or even jewish settlers) in the area, and this was even stated by the leader of Hamas in 2012. \n\nThe only relation that I can see between Gaza and Israel (besides a close proximity) is that Israel provides many of the utilities and hydro to Gaza, but I couldn't find much evidence of a bad relationship in that transaction. So again, what was Hamas trying to accomplish by firing 70 rockets into Israel, unprovoked? I know the history of the three teenage boys being killed and some vigilante Israelis retaliated by killing a Gazan teen. But that doesn't really seem to warrant a declaration of war does it? In fact, the Israeli authorities caught the 6 Israeli culprits and have charged them with the death as far as I'm aware. Even still, if the rockets are retaliatory towards this one murder, I have to say I'm quite stunned that this is what the war is about.\n\n\nFrom both pro-palestinian and pro-israeli sources, I don't think I've stated anything above that isn't considered true by both sides, but do correct me if I am wrong. From here on, this is approximately the start of my opinion. I would love an answer to my question above, so if you do not want to hear an opinion, you may disregard the next half of this post, and only respond to the content in the first part.\n\nIf what I said above is true, I am utterly shocked that the world is so supportive of the palestinian cause. I find it repugnant especially when I hear of Americans who lambast Israel for it's killing of innocent civilians when Americans took part in [something ever so similar recently](_URL_0_). Does Israel not have a right to defend itself? What would any other country do if a neighbouring country fired **70** rockets at major cities? What would the US do if Tijuana fired 70 rockets at San Diego and some reached Los Angeles? \n\nI am not saying this as a supporter of Israel. I am saddened and crushed that innocent Gazans are dying, but this is guerilla warfare, and it's a shame to see the world collectively become an armchair cynic, and pretend that *they* could carry out a better military operation against a terrorist organization operating in residential areas. War is messy, war is unkind, and nobody that I know of, (and I'm following quite a bit of pro-palestinian sources) is reporting that Israelis are dancing in the streets. These people are scared, they are running to bomb shelters every few hours. It is my opinion, and should be yours, that a nation has every right to defend itself against rocket attacks. If you think you have some clever way in which Israel can stay behind it's borders and pick off Gazan militants and its rocket centres (stationed in school playgrounds, and crowded places) with some super sniper rifle, or a missile that magically produces no collateral damage, then you have no idea how war works, and shame on you for judging others as if you do. ", "I'm totally way late to this party, but my simplistic mind tells me that Hamas can stop this mess by not launching any more rockets into Israel.\n\n1. Why won't they stop when they are clearly outmatched?\n2. What do they seriously think they will gain by launching rockets into Israel?\n3. If Israel's actions are \"excessive\", what would be a better way to respond to repeated attacks than the way they have responded?\n\nI get that people think Israel is being excessive, but I honestly can't imagine any other militarily advanced country handling it much differently.", "ELI5 why the media focuses so much on civilian causalities in Gaza. Im young and only have recollection of recent conflicts like the US invasion of Iraq which had something like 60,000 civilians killed. I never heard any news about Iraqi school or hospitals being blown or multiple headlines of children being killed. Did this not happen during the Iraq war? Are the Israelis killing more civilians? Killing them on purpose? ELI5 Why are civilian casualties such a news worthy topic during this conflict? ", "ELI5: How does Israel maintain that they are doing their best to avoid civilian casualties while at the same time killing hundreds within such a short timespan?\n\nI repeatedly see the excuse, \"the Israeli army warned the civilians to evacuate,\" which is, to me, a solid way to attempt at avoiding civilian casualties (let me know if I am wrong there). However, that does not explain all of the civilian deaths. Are they randomly shooting at civilian buildings?\n\nIn all, I thought this was a targeted strike at Hamas, as well as an attempt to destroy tunnels. How is all of this resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people?", "The best analogy I can give on the whole Israel-Gaza situation goes something like this.\n\nIt's finals week. People are doing their own thing and studying in a room. There is a table with one guy studying(Palestine). Eventually there is another who walks in and tries to find a seat, everyone else in the room is his friend. So the majority of the room decides he should share the table with the guy who was already there. So the two guys are in a room studying with other people. They're both sharing a table. One of them(Israel-first) keeps provoking the other guy (Palestine-second) by taking more and more room on the table and when the second guy tells him to stop and gives him a nudge, the first guys sucker punches the the second in the mouth and says that he started it first by nudging him. After the second guy calms down and hesitantly accepts what just happened and tries to move past it, the first guy does that all over again. Only this time, he punches him even harder and does it repeatedly citing the same reason over and over again. Eventually the others in the room start taking the first guy's side and start helping him and rooting him on. At this point every time the second guy says anything, everyone in the room tells him to shut up and stop bothering guy number one. Eventually the first guy decides he has an opportunity to take the entire table for himself and comes up with an excuse to start and altercation with the second guy and this time he just keeps pounding on him. He says he's just defending himself and trying to make sure the guy doesn't take the rest of the space on the table, which was his to begin with.\n\nThis is whats happening in Gaza, guys. \n\nI put this as an analogy because I know it relates to a lot of you a little more than other examples. \n\nEDIT: Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy but pretty accurate, IMO.", "What does each side want as a final resolution?", "I think it's a mistake to attribute the conflict to the Mandate, it begins much earlier that that. Prior to becoming a British Mandate after the conclusion of the First World War, there was a Palestinian Jewish population, made up mostly of the descendants of [Sephardic Jews](_URL_1_). They became to be known as the [Mizrahi](_URL_3_). There was not that huge of a distinction between Jew and non-Jew during the Ottoman days, as (unlike Europe) there were no restrictions on trade or movement for Jews there.\n\nIt wasn't until the migration of European Jews that there had been a raft of activity that was designed and carried out to frustrate socialization between Jews and Arabs. Shortly before that time, [Theodor Herzel](_URL_7_) had founded a movement that stated that Jews could never assimilate and participate as equal members in European society. After the [Dreyfus Affair](_URL_8_) and the progroms against Jews in Russia, many had flocked to his cause, which was (at first) considered more of an extremist sect, as opposed to a mainstream, politically neutral idea (as it is today). This movement was known as Zionism.\n\nThe problem is that Herzel and other Zionists were not uneffected by colonialism and race ideology. During this time before the First World War, Europe had embarked on the great imperialist project of dividing the world markets and its resources among themselves, conquering whole continents and subjecting it to its rule, justifying themselves by claiming the indigenous populations of wherever they went were racially inferior. So it's no surprise that Herzel felt that a Jewish state could only be built under the patronage of one of the imperialist powers. Because the European Jews would inevitably be a minority wherever they settled, and since they would incur the hostility of whatever indigenous population they were colonizing, they could not succeed without the help of a European power. In fact, Palestine was only one of several territories Herzl considered for colonization. Argentina, Uganda, and Cyprus were listed as many possible locations for the Jewish state. But the religious faction in the Zionist movement fought hard for Palestine and Herzl, never one to miss the power of a symbol, agreed that the ancient Jewish \"homeland\" would give the movement more emotional power. \n\nSo fast forward to 1896-1900. European Jewish migration picks up to the \"holy land.\" Herzel, still ever-willing to seek a supporter of their cause, was willing to beg from the table of every colonial power, no matter how terrible they were. He met with all of them - the German Kaiser, the Turks, the Russian Tsar, and the British Empire. In 1896, a few decades before the First World War, Herzl entered into negotiations with the Turkish Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over Palestine for more than five hundred years. Herzl offered the Sultan a deal - in exchange for giving Palestine to the Jews, the Zionist movement would help soften world condemnation of Turkey for its genocidal campaign against the Armenians. He even pledged to meet with Armenian leaders to convince them to call off their resistance struggle! In his diary, Herzl wrote: \n\n\"[The Sultan] could and would receive me as a friend\u2013after I had rendered him a service.\u2026 For one thing I am to influence the European press\u2026to handle the Armenian question in a spirit more friendly to the Turks: for another, I am to induce the Armenian leaders directly to submit to him, whereupon he will make all sorts of concessions to them.\u2026 I immediately told [Hamid\u2019s agent] that I was ready a me mettre en campagne [to start my campaign.]\"\n\nWith the arrival of many [Ashkenazi Jews](_URL_6_) during Herzel's catering with the many European powers, the Zionist settlers made it clear that they were not there to colonize in the traditional European sense (not to create new markets for itself, acquire more resources, or to use the indigenous population as a cheap source of labor) but to completely replace that indigenous population. The goal was to create an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority, which meant they created parallel organizations from the natives, by which they bought (or stole) as much Arab land as possible, by which they had Jewish land and shopowners only employ Jews and have Jewish trade unionists exclude Arabs so that they could dominate the labor market, and so on. As these parallel Jewish-colonial structures started to sprout, the existing structures of segregation in education and housing ensured that intermarriage and communication between the two were very rare. \n\nOf course, as Britain conquered and declared the British Mandate, Zionists (who again, were courting all of the imperial powers) found an opportunity. Chain Weizmann, the first President of Israel and inheritor of Herzel's project, thought that this was a good thing:  \"...should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal.\" And with that, Jewish migration indeed very rapidly picked up into the 1920s, which exacerbated the acquisition of Arab land and their exclusion from the labor market. This led to racial tensions between the two, with several Arabs riots throughout that decade (they were very similar to pogroms). To stabilize that fragile situation, Britain had declared a cessation of all Jewish migration into the Mandate, which led to an outbreak of Jewish terrorism, both on Arabs and the Majesty's occupying army. \n\nBut as Arab nationalism picked up - see [the 1920 Iraqi revolt](_URL_0_) - there was a fear that pan-Arabism posed a worse threat. Sir Ronald Storrs, the first Governor of Jerusalem, thought that a Jewish state in Palestine could be beneficial for the British Empire, as it \"...will form for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism,\" referencing the Protestant minority in north Ireland that allowed them to split the Island. So, for that while, the Jewish parallel government and its growing paramilitary was tolerated. British colonial rule had periodically collaborated and depended on the use of the [Haganah](_URL_4_), the precursor of the Israeli Defense Forces. Some of the key training for Zionist paramilitaries before 1948 was in supporting British colonial repression of the Palestinian Arab national liberation struggle in 1936-9, just as fascism was ravaging Europe. Britain assisted in the formation of the Jewish police, which was 1,240-strong, but expanded over the next two years so that by 1939, it numbered 14,500 men. The training they received was usually passed on to thousands of others who were not included in the force - such as those in the Haganah. The [Special Night Squads](_URL_5_) were a notoriously brutal manifestation of this collusion and they (to me) show a lot about how Israel's current ROE's (rules of engagement) work in relation to the conflict in Gaza. Orde Wingate, a senior British army officer and Zionist, organized them. Wingate's role is still commemorated, with many streets and schools named after him in Israel. His doctrine was based on surprise, offensive daring, deep penetration and high mobility. According to Israeli historian Tom Segev, he also taught the Squad torture, on-the-spot executions, mass detention without trial, black flag operations, etc. All of which was perfectly normal for the British. Charles Tegart, who also used similar tactics during his time in the Calcutta police, was requisitioned to Palestine during the revolt, where he provided his expert assistance in the formation of [Arab Investigation Centres](_URL_2_), where Palestinians were brutally tortured. \n\nAt the outbreak of the Second World War, British policy of using Jewish colonists as a means of preserving their rule led to the training of a further 50,000 Haganah troops. The revelations of the Holocaust and the Balfour Agreement, along with the agreed proclamation on how territory would be divided amongst the Arabs and Jews, had granted public legitimacy to the Jews that had settled in Palestine, and with the outbreak of the war in 1948 the Zionist leadership inherited Britain's counterinsurgency war on the Palestinians, and (after easily defeating Arab armies) had ethnically cleansed through a system of terror, massacres, the destruction of villages and dispossession, 700,000 Palestinians, who scattered into the West Bank and Gaza.\n\nThis is what started the conflict. See: the Nakbah. ", "Why doesn't Israel give away more land to the Palestinians?", "TL;DR\n\nHamas' only purpose in life is to kill israelis, so they shoot thousands of rockets every day to israel. 90% of them get shot down mid-air and the rest never kill anyone anyway.\n\nIn response, israel shoots down their rocket launching areas which are placed in hospitals, schools, and highly populated areas in gaza to intentionally kill innocent people from their own people and try to get support from the media using pictures of their corpses saying \"israel are killing innocent people!\".\nthey need support because they are broke as fuck", "Why is Israel's force so disproportionately large compared to Gaza's. Surely if's just reflecting badly on them and it doesn't seem to be stopping Gaza. ", "You=Palestine. The Neighbor=Israel\n\nYou have a new neighbor that has recently been causing you a lot of trouble blaring loud music, and using your property to store his excess collectibles. One day you get so fed up with his lack of consideration that you take a shit on his door step.\n\nOf course, shitting on someone's doorstep is wrong as well!! No one in the neighborhood wants to associate with a door shitter. But the neighborhood association just wouldn't listen to your requests that the neighbor next door was constantly blasting his Klezmer music all the time and putting his trash on your lawn. They don't want to bother that guy because he recently moved to your area, and the neighborhood association gave him that CD as a welcome present. You cant get any sleep b/c of the constant infringement of such loud music, which is ironic because that same neighbor moved from his last apartment because the guy in 2A was an abusive drunk and constantly blaring his own minnesinger music to the blond chick in 2B. So in an act of desperation, you take a shit on his doorstep. And now everyone knows you as the door shitter. You try to make peace with your fellow next door, offering the idea of noise restrictions, but only at night during the weekdays, but no one want to listen to you because you are now the door shitter, and the neighbor always brings the deserts during the local cookouts. Your neighbor gets wind of all of this, realizes you took a shit on your door step, and starts destroying all your lawn gnomes! No one pays attention, cause the neighbor simply claims he is in the right because you took a shit on his doorstep. Now everything is destroyed and you and your neighbor are constantly tearing up each others lawns. The most poplar guy in the mansion at the end of the street refuses to say/do anything because the neighbor makes the best apple pie he's ever tasted, and everyone watches out their window looking at the pile of trash that used to be your and his houses.\n\nIM NOT TRYING TO MAKE A JOKE OF THE SITUATION, but this is just my metaphor to explain things in a layman's sense of how sadly and tragically ridiculous this situation has become, and HOW NO ONE should blame ANYONE in this situation, because human emotions can spark especially when bad management comes into play. We should be attempting to solve the issue rather than pointing a finger or looking the other way.", "Here's the way i see it:\nThe palestinians were there until world war 1, which displaced jewish people and so they wanted to take back \"their holy land.\" But the palestinians were already there for so much longer.\nIf Israel and Palestine can't get a long, my solution would be for the UN (or other international force) to establish a new government and take the entire area (by force if needed) and make the entire nation a new land with a new name. That way if there is any violence between (formerly) israeli and (formerly) palestinian people then it is treated as plain old violence against another person.\nYou wan't an ELI5 answer? Think back to what you were taught in preschool. \"If you can't play together nicely and share the toy, then it is taken away from both kids.\" In this case the toy is that land, and the kids are israel and palestine", "[Serious] Israel claims that it is trying to locate and destroy Hamas tunnels...wouldn't it be safer and more efficient to look for those tunnels on the Israel friendly side of the tunnel?", "Why the hell does the U.S. consider Israel such an important ally? Why do people want to keep supporting their wars?\n", "Why last year were we looking at pictures of mutilated Israeli kids caught in schoolyard Palestinian suicide bombings and complaining about evil Palestinians, and this year we are looking at Palestinian kids caught in the rubble of Gaza and complaining about evil Israelis?\n\nIs Oceania now at war with Israel? Have we always been at war with Israel?\n\nWhatever happened to just retaliation, defending your people, putting a stop to this shit, etc.? People were talking about how Israel should just destroy Palestine because they keep killing Israelis; now Israel has started, and the same people are talking about how we should all help Palestine destroy Israel. Whatever happened to just sitting both their asses down and helping them find Buddha?\n\nIt makes as much sense as if 85% of Americans suddenly started voting Republican, or converted to Islam."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=Israel&amp;sort=relevance&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;t=month", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/rules"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://np.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/2a8lh5/discussion_palestinian_death_toll_in_the_gaza/cism6ql"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_revolt_against_the_British", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Investigation_Centres", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Night_Squads", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7v6yo7", "title": "why are criminal cases in the military processed in military courts instead of public courts despite the military being funded by taxes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7v6yo7/eli5_why_are_criminal_cases_in_the_military/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtpxtbq", "dtpxvjk", "dtpy4lm", "dtpya9l", "dtq0kg4"], "score": [33, 157, 11, 8, 3], "text": ["I'm not sure what your purpose is in pointing out that the military is being funded by taxes.  All courts (military and civilian) are funded by taxes, too.  Why would the military being tax-funded mean that they should be tried in one type of court over another?", "It's ultimately because the military has many laws that are specific to the military; sedition, mutiny, and failure to obey a lawful order being just a few of them. These aren't civilian crimes, so the military needs legal authority to prosecute these charges. \n\nIn the event that a servicemember commits a typical crime, let's say getting drunk and assaulting someone, the civilian legal system will get together with the military legal system and determine in which court to prosecute (typically it will end up in the civilian court if the crime was not committed on a military installation). When the crime is committed off-base, the city/county has jurisdiction. They can then choose to hand over jurisdiction to the military, or they can maintain jurisdiction and prosecute normally.", "The military is subject to a separate set of rules. The military does not follow the constitution or bill of rights pertaining to military members, but rather the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). It\u2019s a comparative document to the BoR, but it somewhat limits freedoms compared to the BoR. \nExample: 1st Amendment of the Constitution says you can belong to a hate group (KKK) without recourse. The UCMJ says the same thing, but, it also says you cannot be a active member or attend protests, esp in uniform. Also, it covers rules and regulations during times of war and conduct of members while fighting. The UCMJ also covers what is called Rules of Engagement (ROEs) and Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC) during times of war. They govern your conduct, who you can and cannot engage, standard procedures during war, and the basic wartime rules (example- It\u2019s unlawful to use a .50 Cal machine gun on personal. They are anti-vehicle and material weapons, and using same against personal could make you subject to Courts Marshal action) \n\nThe UCMJ also covers conduct in regards to behavior and following lawful orders of NCO\u2019s and Officers, behavior on and off duty, order and discipline, and also allows for what is called Non-Judicial Punishments (NJP) or Article 15 action. Basically instead of going to jail or getting kicked out, you loose rank, get fined, and get extra duty (at the discretion of your Commander) \n\nAlso, the military does not have trials, but rather Courts Marshals. Military courts marshals are completely different in terms of prosecution and defense as the UCMJ is more in depth than the BoR. \n\nLastly, a Courts Marshal is composed entirely of other military members. The Judge, Jury, prosecution, defense and all other officials are Active Duty or Reserve. Civilians would be completely lost as far as rules and regulations of Active Duty, as well as everyday life of active duty. ", "Because A) the military has jurisdiction over the individual and their workspaces and B) there are a whole raft of things that are trial-worthy crimes in the military that don't merit being called a 'crime' in civilian life.\n\nA comes up a lot because military personnel can get sent all over the place, including places outside what would otherwise be the jurisdiction of the nation's civilian courts. Say for instance someone is getting deployed and commits a crime during transit in international waters. A civilian government's jurisdiction doesn't cover that, but the military has them dead to rights. \n\nB is especially important; between internal codes of procedure and international treaties, military law is effectively a field of study all on it's own. For instance, say a civilian does a no-call/no-show at their place of work, they just fail to show up one day. They're in trouble when they get back. Most likely going to be disciplined. Possibly fired. If he had a contract, there might be financial penalties. An American soldier says 'fuck it' and skives off with no warning? He's 'Absent Without Leave' and in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He's committed a crime worthy of a trial, and could be looking down the barrel of a felony conviction and a multi-year jail sentence. ", "It all comes down to one simple fact: for the general public, killing people is a crime.  For the military, it's part of the job.\n\nThere's a whole lot of consequences to this, including the idea that desertion isn't just quitting your job, it could get your coworkers killed, and that refusing orders isn't just going to get you fired, it could lead to the extermination of your country...\n\nThe point is that most governments have decided that the high-stakes, life-and-death nature of military service means that many of the rights and legal privileges ordinary citizens are entitled to don't work the same way in the military, so special courts are required."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5lfw4b", "title": "what is the emotional 'awwww' feeling we get when we see cute things? why does it happen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lfw4b/eli5_what_is_the_emotional_awwww_feeling_we_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbvdape", "dbvj7lp", "dbvoobs", "dbvopu9", "dbvouwg", "dbvrl0o", "dbvrspq", "dbvs28d", "dbvss2v", "dbvtf5e", "dbvtowr", "dbvtv64"], "score": [1384, 20, 34, 3, 339, 8, 8, 6, 2, 2, 10, 3], "text": ["This is basically the brain releasing neurotransmitters like oxytocin which is normally only released when we are in love or when we feel safe/protected or are caring for children. Allegedly animals we find cute (cats/dogs) were selected for their \"cuteness\" over centuries but what makes them cute turns out to be the ratio/proportion/distance of their eyes and face face shape, which is nearly that of human children. So, in essence only human children were originally meant to elicit that feeling but we have created/found other things that also stimulate that part of the brain and thus sort of tricks us into finding it attractive/urge to protect it from harm. Baby animals are also like this and there have been citations of adult animals caring for young  of other species probably also for similar reasons: their brains are sort of hardwired to instinctively care for \"cute things\" which babies of most species are. ", "I want to know if this sensation is less prominent in people who have had children of their own. Does the stab of awww wane as we have cute children of our own? Does it come back once the children are grown?", "Michael from Vsauce explains it amazingly in his video - _URL_0_", "It's a vestigial hunting instinct. Notice that it's almost always accompanied by a desire to squeeze the thing as hard as you can.", "Can anyone explain why, despite being a human male, I find babies to be annoying and uninteresting but my heart melts like an ice cream in the sun when I see a cute little puppy? ", "First off, babies are annoying. They have to be as they need lots of reliable attention to get the care they need to survive. They tune their crying to match the natural resonant frequency of their parents ear canals. This means they also match random other people's ears too. This makes it very tempting to smash them with a large rock. Their parents won't because they are under the influence of oxytocin, but the other tribe members need the awww instinct to prevent random baby smashings. Baby animals trigger it too, because instincts aren't exactly smart. They only need to work well enough for people to survive. ", "I can understand the reason we feel 'awww' for babies etc (instinct to take care of offspring) but why do we think fluffy animals are so cute? Humans aren't fluffy. Is this because we've come to associate them with pets as we grow up, and not so much a hardwired thought?", "Question I have is why do I not feel this way towards anything? I have looked at pictures and videos of babies and animals and felt nothing while people around me did.", "The emotional response is elicited when things are viewed that have physical similarities to human offspring (babies). From an evolutionary standpoint, organisms evolved physiological (chemical) traits which help them to protect and nurture their offspring. This means that when you look at a baby for example, you may feel the need to squeeze, hug or even EAT it. This is a positive feedback response (a strong chemical signal) which induces you to protect it. This is why things similar in appearance to babies, e.g. puppies, kittens, with rounded features, small head to body ratio, induce this response of AWWW", "I volunteered at a animal hospital years ago, around Xmas. 2 pit bull puppies were in little cages with their mouths all burned and what looked like jaws wired shut from eating plugged in Xmas lights. I got this terrible feeling in my uterus. Now when I see something awful that has been to an animal that same feeling comes back, right in the uterus. I've asked other women if that ever happened to them and they look at me like I have 2 heads. It is not a feeling in my stomach, I have given birth and I know where my uterus is. ", "The important news is that humanity has sunk a lot of resources into giving themselves this response.  \n\n-Entire species of dogs left effectively helpless, but for their capacity to appeal to human standards for oxytocin release.\n\n-Entire subreddits devoted to masturbating this oxytocin release.\n\n-Tuning competitive impulses to release *other* neurochemicals whenever we present an \"explanation\" that's really just a cursory view of biological artifacts, rather than any proper effort to deconstruct modern human experiences.\n\n\nThe thing that's metaphysically happening is that humans want to connect with everything they can, and there are certain visual cues that make that easier.\n\nBut we have gifs of buildings falling down, and all it takes is a little face doodle to get us to empathize with them.  In the present environment, descriptions of neurotransmitters is just another way to release neurotransmitters, not any proper explanation of a thing.", "Emotions are like memories from our evolutionary history. They direct our behavior without us learning them first, because they are part our genetic code. We respond to certain queues around youth, like a high eye size to head size ratio with a caring impulse. It helps our species survive by making us more likely to care for our young."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0zConOPZ8Y"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xyx53", "title": "Is it possible for flatulence to transmit pathogenic organisms or other disease?  If not, why not? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xyx53/is_it_possible_for_flatulence_to_transmit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5r3vuz"], "score": [2], "text": ["Relevant info: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/917/"]]}
{"q_id": "2gwyc6", "title": "Do the magnetic toys \"Buckyballs\" mimic the behavior of any type of particle?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2gwyc6/do_the_magnetic_toys_buckyballs_mimic_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cko3bp5"], "score": [3], "text": ["How good are Buckyballs? I love them. I think they are brilliant! I have actually thought long and hard about this question while playing with my little round magnets. \n\nFrom a purely theoretical perspective, they do not mimic anything because a fundamental property of magnets is that they are dipolar (ie have a north and a south end). You cannot have a magnetic monopole (and if you were to make one somehow you would probably get a Nobel Prize). This pretty different to electric charge which can have monopoles. \n\nAtoms tend to either be positively or negatively charged, ie they are monopoles. So of you were to have two buckyball sized atoms with opposite charges they would be attracted to each other in all orientations, which is very different to magnet balls which can be attractive or repulsive. \n\nBut, dont despair! Because of the roundness of the magnets they can do things normal magnets cannot. You can have them stick together so that a north pole isnt exactly touching a south pole. This is why they are such fun to play with! \n\nAnd as a result you can use them to model the different ways of [packing sphere](_URL_0_) (well, some of them) which is a great model of what occurs at the atomic scale in solids! \n\nThat is probably as close as they can get to an actual atomic behaviour, and there are some issues. But if we relax our rules to what mimic means we can use them to model other things.\n\nSo I said before that its problematic that they have two poles. But what if we use them to model something that has two distinct ends? Such as a polymer. When you put your buckyballs in a line they are mimicing a polymer! and you can even branch the polymer, just like we observe in real life!\n\nGo play with your buckyballs and have some fun with it!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_packing"]]}
{"q_id": "3419m7", "title": "in english, why is \"i\" capitalized, but not \"me\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3419m7/eli5_in_english_why_is_i_capitalized_but_not_me/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqq9wic", "cqqa74u", "cqqdu7h", "cqqgaq0", "cqqj00t", "cqqjqdj", "cqqjwh3", "cqqq4z4", "cqqqqf8", "cqqqzt8", "cqqsj56", "cqqskfu", "cqqu90s", "cqquylp", "cqqvq7k", "cqqwdge", "cqqzewj", "cqr1ol8", "cqr2g03", "cqr3pt6", "cqr3sa3", "cqr45qm", "cqr7idp", "cqr941n", "cqrbnuy", "cqrc5vc"], "score": [1705, 1645, 52, 18, 2, 12, 10, 13, 2, 15, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 5, 9, 7, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3], "text": ["**ELI5: Probably because it looks better.**\n\nOnce *I* became a single letter (originally it was normally spelt *ic*) it gradually grew taller because (and I suppose this is conjecture) it didn't look very good. Originally it was not capitalised and it is a trend that started at the end of the 1300s (i.e. when Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales) and has stuck. \n\nEdit: As /u/proudlom points out [in his comment below](_URL_0_) there is no definitive answer to this question. ", "If it helps, there is a pretty good ELI5-like section on Wikipedia that answers this question: _URL_0_  \n  \n >  There is no known record of a definitive explanation from around the early period of this capitalisation practice.  \n\nThere is no conclusive answer but some good hypotheses listed.", "I'd speculate it could be from the advent of the printing press. Vowels if you see a press are all over the damn place. It would have saved them a lower case i to consistently use the capital I and free up a lower case i based on how often you would see I in a sentence.", "In old English calligraphic script a lower case \"I\" might look like \":\" our a \"j\" if drawn badly (amongst other text). It simply stoped you having to struggle to read in times when most people were semi illiterate if not fully so.", "I (no pun intended) would guess its has something to do with the fact that I is often the start of a sentence, while me never is.", "I'm fairly confident that it is because I is a noun equivalent to a name.\n_URL_0_\nAs per that link, I is a subject pronoun, and since it can be used in the Place of your own name, it has to be capitalized since all names in English are capitalized. Me is an object pronoun, and object dont get capitalized.", "I don't know. And I don't know if this is at all helpful, but in Danish \"I\" can mean either the plural form of \"you\" or \"in\". Here it is capitalized when it means \"you\", but not when it means \"in\".", "\"I\" is technically considered a proper noun while \"me\" is a pronoun. In the English language, proper nouns are capitalized but pronouns are not. In the same way \"Bill\" is capitalized but \"he\" is not.", "Okay so I might be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure it's because \"I\" is seen as a proper noun in English, because you do not utilize your own name in most common dialogue. \"Me\" is not capitalized because it is a pronoun, just like he, she, and they. \n\nI hope that made sense. \n(And I hope I'm correct.)", "12c. shortening of Old English ic, first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek/*ik (cognates: Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg-, nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (cognates: Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French Je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian a\u0161). Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, it began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.\n\n**The reason for writing I is ... the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I) whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three iij, etc.), just as much as the pronoun. [Otto Jespersen, \"Growth and Structure of the English Language,\" p.233]**\n\nThe form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. The dot on the \"small\" letter -i- began to appear in 11c. Latin manuscripts, to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-). Originally a diacritic, it was reduced to a dot with the introduction of Roman type fonts. The letter -y- also was written with a top dot in Old English and early Middle English, when it tended to be written with a closed loop at the top and thus was almost indistinguishable from the lower-case thorn (\u00fe).\n\n_URL_0_", "I'm surprised noone has said this..\n\nI asked this question to one of my English teachers in high school.\nAccording to him.. I is more formal, and takes the place of a name. It is also capitalized to identify that it is a personal pronoun, and refers to the *subject*. Me is not capitalized because it's a more informal pronoun and refers to the *object*.\n\nHowever, it always made more sense to me that it's capitalized because it's a single letter. ", "\"A folk legend tells of a printmaker who was convinced by the Faustian demon Mephistopheles to begin the practice of capitalizing 'I'.\"\n\nTo every child that asks this question, I will respond with this tale.", "_URL_0_\n\nSister is an english major, said that this link is accurate", "Steve Jobs insisted that \"I\" be capitalized to distinguish it from his Apple product lines, like iPod, iPhone, etc. An IP thing. ", "I'm thinking that it's because grammar makes no freaking sense; like the way \"grammar\" becomes \"grammatical.\"  Where'd the \"r\" go?  Where'd the \"t\" come from, or should I say, \"From where did the 't' come?\"?", "When using 'I' you are speaking of or for you entirely, therefore it represents your name, where while using 'me' you refer to yourself as an element within the context of a relationship to someone or something else.\n\nThough it didn't occur to me there would be this great distinction, in fact I don't care.\n\nIf you ask me, I'm getting this right.", "Would it have something to do with \"I\" being the stand-in for your own name when you're the subject of your own sentence and \"me\" being the stand-in for \"him/her\" as the object of your sentence? Like you'd say \"Daniel brought the pen with him\", with Daniel capitalized and him not, just like you'd say \"I brought the pen with me\".", "Your using \"I\" as a substitute of your own name, so it gets a capital. \"me\" is used when your talking about yourself as an object.  \nBut the distinction is only visible when your speaking english properly,  like when your mum would correct you. \"Hey mum can me and Dan go chase roos on the quad bike?\" \"You mean to say, Can Dan and I go chase roos on the quad bike? And the answer's no ya little cunts, now get ya asshole of a father a beer. \"", "I'm a graphic designer, and the way it was explained to us, is that it was all simply a matter of typographic taste. Lowercase i looked weird. No seriously, it just didn't seem to fit visually\u00a0\u2014\u00a0leaving odd whitespace and looking puny, but also distracting because of the dot. Plus there was inconsistency whenever a sentence was started with I. The solution, apparently, was to make it a capital. Nice and sturdy. Occupies a nice bit of height and doesn't overwhelm the line. ", "Two hypotheses I've heard:\n\n1) \"I\" is usually the subject of a sentence (e.g., I like doughnuts), whereas \"me\" is usually the object (e.g., give that doughnut to me). So \"I\" may be capitalized because it's of greater importance and refers more directly to the speaker/writer. Personally, I favor this view.\n\n2) In Latin \"I\" precedes the verb and looks fine capitalized (Ego amo vs. ego amo), while \"me\" is subordinate to the verb and looks awkward capitalized (e.g., da mihi vs. da Mihi).", "Because the people of tumblr find it funny to speak in all lowercase and they tag everything as \"#me\".", "Due to the apparent consensus being that nobody knows:\n\nMy guess is that it's because 'I' is a frequently written word, and it's easier and faster to write a capital 'I' than a lower-case 'i'.", "At some point in time it was a different symbol that just happened to be similar to a capital cursive I. It has been replaced since.", "Because I is first person subjective - it is personal, closer to our sense of identity and therefore more important to us.  \"Me\" is 3rd person objective - which feels farther from our sense of identity, speaking of ourselves as more of an object than a subject, which feels less important.", "I would posture because I is a proper noun when used to refer to yourself therefore it is capitalized.", "Uhhh... It's \"I\" before \"me\", except after \"she\", because \"she\" will always be more important than \"you\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3419m7/eli5_in_english_why_is_i_capitalized_but_not_me/cqqa74u"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_(pronoun)#Capitalization"], [], [], [], ["http://www.grammar.cl/Notes/Object_Pronouns.htm"], [], [], [], ["http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&amp;search=I&amp;searchmode=term"], [], [], ["http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html?referrer=&amp;_r=0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "362pru", "title": "how can roman bridges be still standing after 2000 years, but my 10 year old concrete driveway is cracking?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/362pru/eli5_how_can_roman_bridges_be_still_standing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cra5b8n", "cra5ffu", "cra5mzp", "cra5raa", "cra5z21", "cra625b", "cra6bya", "cra6euk", "cra6tfx", "cra6vf2", "cra6z8k", "cra74zo", "cra78pc", "cra79st", "cra7afv", "cra7dso", "cra7vju", "cra8jrt", "cra8npd", "cra8tul", "cra9b38", "cra9eu9", "cra9fw7", "cra9gda", "cra9jlh", "cra9zlr", "craa03z", "craafta", "crab5qu", "crabazf", "crabb5d", "crabnvn", "crabt5p", "crabu50", "crabv7r", "crabzv3", "crac0cd", "crac5m9", "craccv1", "cracfrq", "cracsg3", "cracw1f", "crad4e9", "cradd0j", "cradj79", "cradv5k", "cradw0p", "cradxbz", "cradxqb", "cradzwo", "crae6lg", "craedxx", "craeho6", "craejam", "craevvv", "craf053", "craf11w", "craf3gg", "craf3q8", "crafcwn", "crafhec", "crafjeg", "crafkyz", "crafnwf", "crafv2i", "crafxnv", "crag5j2", "crag63r", "crag6ai", "cragbmc", "cragdj5", "cragoi1", "cragscx", "cragxlm", "crah23j", "crah5rw", "crahee9", "crahrs6", "crai1r0", "crai8q1", "craih3k", "craijhl", "crail6j", "craivvb", "craix3e", "craj620", "craj9fm", "crajhhb", "crajn6g", "crajyne", "crak1v4", "crak49e", "crakadn", "crakbf5", "crakz4c", "cral6wu", "craloew", "craloqb", "cram621", "cramqjp", "cramvkc", "cranar5", "cranksp", "crankt2", "cranln6", "crao1uo", "craoedg", "craomag", "craowbs", "craox6d", "craprq1", "crapuv7", "craq1pr", "craq2rp", "craqgls", "craqk4u", "craqwqw", "crar3ol", "crarfgx", "crariic", "crarl5x", "crarpql", "crartys", "crasdw8", "crat259", "crat2y1", "cratc92", "crau1ok", "crauuq7", "cravu3z", "crax2e5", "cray7cq", "craynqe", "crb1kqb"], "score": [1149, 9, 914, 4214, 126, 16, 56, 5, 13, 10, 3, 21, 35, 101, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 3, 3, 36, 2, 7, 7, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 10, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 10, 2, 2, 3, 2849, 4, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 6, 2, 5, 4, 6, 5, 4, 5, 2, 6, 8, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Because they are two totally different things with almost nothing in common. If you built a Roman style arched bridge today it too would last forever.\n\nLemme elaborate: Your driveway has to flex like a big long beam, the bridge is an arch. All of the weight there is going straight down into the rocks of the arch legs. Concrete can't bend very well. Rocks are really good at just holding up weight. Your driveway is all concrete that cracks (except for the aggregate, but let's move along), the the arch legs of those bridges are big hunks of rock that don't crack. Your driveway has rebar. The bridge doesn't. Your driveway is sitting on top of the soil, which moves every year as the ground freezes and thaws. Or as water erodes it. Or about a thousand other things that can undermine what your driveway is sitting on. The legs of those Roman bridges go down to bedrock and don't move.\n\nAll of these things cause your driveway to crack and the bridge to not.", "I can't really eli5, but this is a nice overview.  _URL_0_", "A lot of Roman stuff still standing has been maintained and periodically fixed.  The Colosseum for example has new parts that keep it from further damage.  However, the Colosseum was actually built with iron supports originally to keep it from falling down.  After the empire collapsed, people removed the iron to sell for scrap.  It would be in a lot better shape now if people didn't use it for parts. ", "Old stone bridges that are still standing probably had their footings build on solid rock or very stable earth. By contrast, your driveway was poured onto earth that moved or eroded under it. \n\nFortunately, cracked driveways are still safe to use, unlike cracked bridges.\n\nEdit:typo", "Concrete in driveways is vulnerable to a number of attacks:\n\n1. Concrete shrinks when it cures, resulting in cracks. These may be large or barely visible, but they all let water in. When the water freezes it expands and causes considerable damage to the concrete. This happens all through winter.\n\n2. This can be compounded if there is reinforcement, as de-icing salts accelerate corrosion. When steel corrodes it expands and cracks concrete.\n\n3. Ground heave, from frost, can lead to uneven expansion of soil beneath the slab which causes/opens cracks.\n\n4. Possible poor workmanship - bad concrete mix, bad installation, poor compaction of subgrade, bad design (too thin), improper curing and the like will also greatly reduce the longevity of your slab.\n\nNow - for the Romans - you're mostly looking at stone, which is MUCH less susceptible to weathering and is not full of metal bars that'll expand if they corrode. Any mortar in the bridges is a potential weak point, but one that can be compensated with some maintenance. The bridges are also arch bridges with a very high arch - the stones all basically hold themselves together under the force of gravity as they are shaped together (shallow arch bridges are a little more vulnerable).\n\nAlso - the roman bridges we see today aren't all the bridges they built - plenty of Roman structures have fallen to pieces over the millennia. What we see today are mostly the best and most durable examples of Roman architecture. Any shoddy workmanship done by the Romans is long gone.", "One word, over-engineering. Although modern constructions takes a shitload of safety factors into account theyre only made as strong as they have to be to be considered safe. back in the roman days construction was waay less precise so they just built it the way their limited engineering knowledge and materials allowed them to. If we were to build our infrastructure to those standards there would be probably like 10 times less of it, not mentioning the immense amount of energy it requires in compare to with modern buildings. And yeah you can still build long lasting things they just tend to be on the more expensive side of things.", "There are a lot of correct answers but one thing that is missing is that nobody seems to mention is that not every bridge and structure built by Romans are still standing. What you see after 2000 years are only the strongest ones while the shoddy ones that only lasted 20 years are long forgotten. In 2000 years there will undoubtedly be some driveways around and the future people will marvel at their longevity but your driveway will likely have been long forgotten.", "Roman bridges have regulated traffic, that was usually limited to horses. The bridge itself is made of real stonework (not concrete).\n\nYour driveway is made of bitumen, a recyclable cheap substance made of oil. Unfortunately it loses many of it's properties to weathering. Also you park a multiton car on it.", "You forgot to put in expansion joint and/or control joints.  Concrete always cracks but you can decide where and how.\n", "A roman bridge and your driveway are made from completely different materials. It's like asking why a ceramic mug lasts longer than a paper cup. \n\n_URL_0_", "Just you wait until [this self-healing biological concrete](_URL_0_) comes into the market. ", "Civil Engineer here:\n\nOne thing that I don't see mentioned is the engineering behind the structure.  The Romans didn't have finite element analysis and as such over designed their structures.  Structures now are designed to be more efficient which means that just enough steel is used to maintain a comfortable factor of safety.  \n", "If anyone wants to interpret this further:\n\n[Roman road structure](_URL_0_)\n\n[Typical modern road structure](_URL_1_)", "I remember reading that Roman concrete was actually a substantially different formula than the concrete in use today and that theirs was stronger due to use of volcanic ash.\n\n_URL_0_", "Roman Concrete my friend. Archaeologists are trying to find / or found the way to make it. It lasts super long (Millennia), while our concrete nowadays would hardly last 100 years..", " If Roman bridges are so good, why don't we build more?", "I'm sure part of it it due to the fact that the Romans weren't driving cars over their bridges everyday", "The Romans didn't know how to build a road that would last ten years. They had to massively overengineer everything they built because they didn't have the mathematical knowhow to build to a particular expectation. ", "Cause all the crappy bridges they built have long since crumbled. What is left now is that tiny fraction of constructions that were of extraordinary quality!", "Roman cement is actually made differently than the cement we use today, and even the cement used by other civilizations around that time.\n\nRoman cement was mixed with ash from the volcanos, actually making it stronger.", "Too lazy to browse to see if someone else said this somewhere in the comments.  Roman bridges never had 300,000+ automobiles rolling over them per hour, each weighing anywhere from 1500lbs to 60,000lbs rolling through them on a daily basis.  Also, the majority of them are in temperate regions, so you don't get as high of a heat/cold fluctuation as we have (at least compared to here in the upper midwest USA).  There's an old saying around here: we have two seasons - Winter and Road Construction.  Believe you me, a bit of water and extreme cold/heat will do numbers to concrete, no matter its composition.  Even softer materials such as asphalt which contract/expand better than concrete need repair/replacement every few years.  \n\n\nModern concrete is as good as the technology gets, since it provides us with the perfect balance of cost, strength/durability, and ease of manufacturing/use.  If the modern day engineers built a bridge for modern day use, but all you got were foot traffic, horse buggies, or the occasional army-on-horseback riding through, I'd bet those bridges will stand for several millennia. \n\n\nIt's unfair to compare your concrete driveway to bridges, though, since the thickness of the concrete comes into play.  Most slabs for residential driveways and garages only go about 4 to 6 inches deep, and are not uniform across the entire surface.  If you've ever noticed, the contractors rarely use anything more than a 2x6 to create the edges of your driveway.  Assuming the depth is universal (99.99% of the time it isn't) then you'd have a 6\" slab all the way around.  Not bad, but still prone to breaking under its own weight as the ground shifts.  On the other hand, if you've ever seen them pour concrete for roadways or bridges, it is rebar-reinforced and poured several feet thick.  \n\n\nTL:DR (ELI5); don't compare your 4\" driveway slab made to park one or two small cars to a bridge designed to safely carry heavy volume.", "Romans used concrete admixture that was composed of lime and another volcanic material called pozzalana (sp?). These materials are much more resistance to salt, which is the main culprit for the deterioration of modern day concrete. Romans did not use steel reinforcment either, which will accelerate deterioration of the concrete if it comes into contact with salt water. Water causes oxidation of iron creating rust, while salt accelerates that process. The rust increases the volume of the steel, creating a large force, which then results in the concrete (which is kind of like, glued together with a binder) to deteriorate because the tension resistance of the concrete is not strong. \n\nI assume that your concrete driveway has some sort of welded wire mesh (fabric), and with enough rain, water, and salt, the concrete deteriorates faster over time - espcially with continual use. \n\nSource: Structural Engineer + Forensic Repair and Restoration Experience\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTLDR: Romans used concrete with different stuff. Also most of the structures that are still standing do not have embedded steel reinforcement, which causes deterioration in concrete. Modern structures use steel reinforcment, and different admixture for concrete (cheapest method is best method) which deteriorate faster. ", "We also have no idea how they made their concrete. We have taken guesses at it, but still can't compete with their quality. ", "A lot of modern bridges are made of a different concrete mix than Roman bridges. A lot of Roman bridges had a different mix of stone and sand that came from volcanic soils, which are chemically distinct from the concrete used in modern concrete. Additionally, modern concrete uses rebar, which can crack the concrete, and these micro-cracks can react with the rebar, rusting it from the outside in.\n\nA *really* fascinating book that goes over the different kinds of concrete, and uses concrete to look at historical and architectural marvels is Concrete Planet by Robert Courtland. Simply a stunning read.", "CONTRACTOR HERE:\n\nIf your drive way doesn't have room to shift, it will crack. \n\nIf your concrete slab dries to fast after being poured, it cracks because concrete shrinks when moisture leaves. \n ", "Roman concrete contained volcanic ash which is probably a large factor in why they are still standing strong today.", "Gravity was a lot lighter back then, because there were less people on the Earth at the time, so bridges were more sturdy. As gravity increased, it only strengthened the existing structures by compressing them more tightly. Your concrete driveway would need to be carved out of stones by hand and individually fitted if you didn't want it to crack due to the increased gravity of 7 billion people.    \n    \nSadly, I know people who would believe that shit.       \n     \nRoman architecture in particular was all about math and engineering and making something \"work\" and still be beautiful. They used what they had on hand, and they figured out things (like arches) that really added support and stabilization to things.      \n     \nModern day architecture is a lot looser, uses different materials (like concrete) and is overall, in my opinion, inferior to our ancestors simply because we don't care if it's going to last the test of time, we just want to work and be as cheap as possible. So the people laying the concrete in your driveway probably didn't use steamrollers and those big hammers that pack down the dirt enough to provide a suitable bed for the concrete. So as rain falls, it gets up underneath the concrete and into the soil bed, which starts to shift and slide and ultimately you end up with big giant cracks in your concrete from where there's no more \"earth\" underneath it, because it all washed away.        \n       \nIf you really want a driveway that's going to last, pavers are really the way to go. They last decades, and if individual paving stones crack, break, etc, you just replace that paving stone instead of the entire driveway. ", "You have to look more at the construction of your driveway, there are ways of doing a driveway/concrete work to last, the issue is it costs far out weigh the longevity of it. \n\nWe want things fast, we want things cheap, and we want quality goods. This is not how things work in reality. ", "Because General Maximus threatened that bridge with his legion in 45 ad.  \n\n\"Stand, bridge!  For the age!  For the Glory of Rome!\"\n\nAnd so there it is.  ", "We are only seeing the bridges/structures that survived. There were tons of other buildings that didn't. We will probably say the same thing in two thousand years about structures of our era", "They don't make them like they used to? I got nothing.", "Is this /r/shittyaskscience?", "Do you live in 4 seasons zone? The freeze-thaw process is a killer to rigid structures.  ", "[Roman concrete](_URL_0_) is much different than your typical driveway concrete. This is probably the biggest reason why there's such a difference in quality.", "I'm assuming you live in America.  Roads and bridges are built cheaply here so they need fixing more often to create more jobs. ", "Among the other good reasons mentioned here is probably selection bias. All the shitty bridges have been gone for centuries so all we have left are the good ones.", "If your 10 year old driveway is cracking, it is one of 2 things.  Poor mud or poor craftsmanship.  The ready mix industry is pretty reliable, however there are times when loads get contaminated with things that don't belong in concrete.  \n\nIt could be one of a million factors, but typically cracked concrete is a result of poor grade prep (compacting, fill, class V, etc) - poor design (expansion and control joints in the wrong spot), poor finishing, incorrect reinforcement placing, etc.\n\nKeep in mind, cracked concrete does not necessarily mean a \"bad\" concrete job.  There are 2 guarantees with concrete - it gets hard and cracks.  It is all about CONTROLLING where the cracks are.  That is why you see guys sawing a brand new slab after they pour with diamond saws, or they use a groover or cutter to cut a joint into the concrete for the naturally occurring cracks to develop in an aesthetically pleasing way.  Al the \"lines\" you see in the concrete you walk on that are nice and straight were put there so the concrete would crack along those lines.\n\nNow spalling, chipping, scaling concrete is another story.  Same culprits (bad mud, bad finishing practices, improper curing process, de-icing chemicals with no protection (siloxanes, acrylics, methacrylates, linseed oil, PAMS curing compounds, etc), over-finishing, adding too much water, hot windy days where the slab gets away from you, can all contribute to a failed pour.\n\nin conclusion - cracked concrete aint a bad thing - that is what concrete does.\n\nalso - modern concrete is evolves and changes.  volcanic pozzolans, fly ash, different Portland cements and admixtures are always changing, and the \"concrete\" that the romans used is fundamentally different than the concrete used today with the advent of synthetic fiber reinforcing, chemical admixtures and water reducers etc.", "Roman concrete was mixed with red volcanic ash mined on the Isle of Santorini. It hardened underwater and is a much stronger concrete than is made today. Generally speaking, Roman engineers would avoid using a \"grout\" and fit the stones together so that gravity (i.e. the arch keystone) would hold things together. In other words, we dont make things like we used to.", "[Survivorship bias](_URL_0_): They made a lot of bridges and acquaducts, and you only see the ones that lasted.\n\nDriveways in disrepair are still used. But 5 bucks says the currently cracked driveways won't be here in 50 years.", "Just some thinking, no scientific proof for this one:\nThe concrete that was poored for your driveway is probably pretty solid. After some years of expanding and decreasing in size beacause of temperature fluctuations it is pushed to it's limit. At some point the molecules and particles it's made of won't bent anymore, but crack. The intermoleculair bonds will break so there is room for the solid matter to expand in and shrink if needed.\nThe roman bridges however consist of multiple parts: you have the big stone blocks and the cement. Both of which are pretty loose from each other. This way the materials wil behave differently when temperatures rise or decrease and thus the shrinking and expanding won't put as much pressure on the matter itself.\n(note: probably the cement will grind and break up first, because the stones expanding is much more consistent and powerful than the cement mixture that on it's own consists out of multiple different solids)\n\nHope you agree with me.\nIf not: leave a comment. I'm curious about other their thoughts as well!", "The masonry work was made with a special blend that really resisted time.  that's about it, and also good design and construction.    Romans built roads and aqueducts really, really well.  NOT LIKE MY STUPID ASS CITY.  ELI5: THEY WEREN'T CHEAP LITTLE FUCKS", "the old bridges that Flagler built in the keys are in great shape, the replacement bridges -  not so much! ", "Because the Romans built it better.  Seriously, if you had a time machine and went back to ancient Rome, picked up a bunch of Roman craftsman, and said \"Build me a driveway that would last a thousand years\" -they will pull it off.  \n\nBUT\n\nYou go to some guy named Roman running a driveway paver business down the street from where you live.  He probably doesn't even know what materials exist that would last longer than a decade.  He won't know shit.  He's got machines that will level it, lay down gravel, and put some asphalt on top.  That's all he knows.  And if that doesn't last more than a few years you're fucked.  ", "It all comes down to workmanship.... was your driveway built by slaves? Cause the Roman bridges were", "To be fair, all the Roman bridges that fell down are no longer visible, and I suspect that's the majority of them, so they're not part of your equation.\n\nHowever, there is also [significant research into the durability and tensile strength of Roman concrete,](_URL_0_) and the process for making it is still not completely understood.", "There are a variety of contributing factors. The makeup of today's concrete is weaker than that of Roman concrete unless it is specifically designed not to be for heavy duty purposes. Roman concrete would be prohibitively expensive today, on the scale that we use it. \n\nThere are a lot of \"modern\" innovations which are actually inferior to what was used in ancient times, being meant to fill a function adequately at far less expense. Concrete is one; another major item on that list would be paper. Wood pulp makes paper that degrades relatively quickly compared to the materials of yesteryear (it's also much cheaper, far less of a pain in the ass, etc.).\n\nOther contributing factors are undoubtedly function (there were no heavy vehicles thundering across Roman concrete, or resting on it for prolonged periods of time--not like what we have today, at least. Nothing more than fully-loaded carts and lots of foot traffic.). I don't pretend to know to what extent this contributes, but it would seem to be a factor.\n\nFinally... most ancient Roman structures that are still standing after 2,000 years are only in \"good condition\" for something that's been standing for 2,000 years. They're largely collapsed, they're in pieces, no individual portion is completely intact, they've been cannibalized for material, etc. They are, with very few exceptions, no longer capable of fulfilling their original functions.", "Because the old Roman structures aren't loaded with cars, trucks and whatever else on a daily basis. They're either tourist attractions or just used for foot traffic... ", "What is used in your driveway is likely unreinforced portland cement.\n\nModern cement is not particularly strong by itself. To make it not crack, you need to reinforce it with rebar and/or inserting shims to allow expansion and contraction.\n\nIn the heyday of roman concrete it was quite different than modern concrete using portland cement. In particular roman formulations used a bit of pozzolans, or volcanic pumice. Experiments have shown that some formulations with this (the romans had several different formulations for different applications and times) makes a more crack resistant concrete. However, reinforced concrete is generally better than unreinforced.\n\nConcrete is very old and slow, air-setting concrete has been found that predates the romans by thousands of years. It is widely believed the romans invented concrete that can set without air, which they used for applications such as bridge footings. Actually though, it was the Greeks who first used concrete with pumice and concrete which could set underwater. However, they did not use it as widely as the Romans, who made it famous.", "Civil engineer here. If your driveway is getting major cracks already it was probably designed/installed improperly or there was a defect in the mix when it was poured. Also you could be parking really heavy things on it. A pretty common problem for cracking is to have a subgrade (i.e. the stuff under the bottom of the slab) that is too thin or too soft. The concrete may not have been poured thick enough too, but that doesn't happen as often. Even more rare is when joints are cut in the wet concrete incorrectly. Odd shapes and sizes of panels can increase the chance of cracking.", "Part of this has to do with the fact that their structures were built to last.....another part has to do with the fact that you don't see vast majority of their stuff which fell apart. Just the parts that remain.", "Keep in mind that you're talking about the Roman bridges that have survived out of all that have been built, and compared it to a modern example of something that isn't lasting.\n\nThe Romans built plenty of things that haven't lasted till today as well, and there are plenty of things we have built that may last for a long time. We just don't know which ones will last.\n\ntl;dr: There's a wide spread of the life of various structures. Your driveway and that Roman bridge are just on the opposite ends of the spectrum", "\"\u201cIn the middle 20th century, concrete structures were designed to last 50 years, and a lot of them are on borrowed time,\u201d Monteiro says. \u201cNow we design buildings to last 100 to 120 years.\u201d Yet Roman harbor installations have survived 2,000 years of chemical attack and wave action underwater.\n\nHow the Romans did it\n\nThe Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated \u2013 incorporating water molecules into its structure \u2013 and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.\n\nDescriptions of volcanic ash have survived from ancient times. First Vitruvius, an engineer for the Emperor Augustus, and later Pliny the Elder recorded that the best maritime concrete was made with ash from volcanic regions of the Gulf of Naples (Pliny died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried Pompeii), especially from sites near today\u2019s seaside town of Pozzuoli. Ash with similar mineral characteristics, called pozzolan, is found in many parts of the world.\n\nAnother striking contribution of the Monteiro team concerns the hydration products in concrete. [...]\n\n[...] Finally, microscopic studies [...] identified the other minerals in the Roman samples. Integration of the results from the various beamlines revealed the minerals\u2019 potential applications for high-performance concretes, including the encapsulation of hazardous wastes.\"\n_URL_0_", "Long answer? You can find that elsewhere in the thread.\n\nShort answer? Slaves get shit done.", "In America, the bridge is still standing after 2000 years.  In soviet Russia, after 2000 years still standing on bridge!", " If we are talking about Roman concrete then it has to do with a different formula. The ground underneath has nothing to do with it, as this concrete holds up across a wide range of terrain. \n\nBasically, they made it better back then. [Roman Concrete](_URL_2_)\n\nLooks like they used [volcanic ash and seawater](_URL_0_) as special ingredients. \n\nEdit: Not only did it hold up better, it was more environmentally friendly than today's concrete. [Source](_URL_1_)\n\n\"The secret to Roman concrete lies in its unique mineral formulation and production technique. As the researchers explain in a press release outlining their findings, \u201cThe Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated\u2014incorporating water molecules into its structure\u2014and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.\u201d\n\nThe Portland cement formula crucially lacks the lyme and volcanic ash mixture. As a result, it doesn\u2019t bind quite as well when compared with the Roman concrete, researchers found. It is this inferior binding property that explains why structures made of Portland cement tend to weaken and crack after a few decades of use, Jackson says.\"", "I believe a kind of (rare) volcanic sand - found locally at that time- was one of the 'ingredients' of the concrete mix, and that supposedly gave it its durability.", "[This will most likely be buried but apparently science has figured this one out.](_URL_1_) Apparently the secret ingredient was volcanic ash. This story did the rounds in December 2014, [here's another one from the daily mail.]( _URL_0_)", "Didn't I read somewhere that Roman concrete used some kind of volcanic ash and someone had rediscovered the recipe for their super strong concrete?", "Your driveway is a cheap imitation called portland cement, mainly ground limestone and other rocks. The formula for Roman concrete was lost until just recently, and added volcanic ash and seawater. Salt would actually corrode cement, but the ash resists it somehow, and maybe it gives it some equilibrium against the environment (utter speculation).\n\nVolcanic ash might not be economical in the quantities we use today, and salt might damage steel reinforcement.\n\nYour driveway is also one big slab. Big slabs tend to crack from thermal expansion, or if water gets in and freezes. I doubt it freezes in Rome most years.", "An important consideration to make is that not every Roman bridge is still standing 2000 years later, we only see the very best and they are a fraction of their overall infrastructure. In much the same way, just because your driveway cracks after 10 years doesn't mean there isn't a driveway out there that has far exceeded that age. Next we need to consider the engineering levels at each time, the Romans knew less and as a result were more likely to over-engineer structures to ensure they were sufficient. Today you can fairly accurately predict the strength and failure points of any building material, so engineers today can get by with much less.\n\n\nAll of that said, the largest consideration would have to be the foundations involved. Roman bridges likely had foundations in solid rock, and since there isn't a lot of flexing occurring the materials experience a much longer life. Your driveway on the other hand is likely over dirt that can erode leaving gaps beneath or allowing roots to grow upward into it; and the constant addition/removal of a load over the thin slab will cause a lot more flex. Concrete is very strong, but very brittle, and that constant stress from flexing lends to cracks.", "Also, Roman Concrete had a better cement from active volcanoes\n\n_URL_0_\n", "Another key factor is that the Romans would use a lot more concrete in their buildings and supports. Concrete has a high compressive strength and very weak tensile strength which we overcome now a days by using steel reinforcing. This meant that a column we use today with steel reinforcing would need to be significantly larger without the steel reinforcement. A column with a 4 square foot cross section today may of needed to be 20 square feet in the roman times. Because the volume needed would be so much larger it would also take longer to deteriorate. You can still design modern day concrete to last a 100 years, but the cost would be enormous.", "Roman concrete was made with volcanic ash instead of sand like modern concrete. It takes hundreds of years to fully cure and gets stronger with time.", "[Roman concrete was different than our concrete and had a secret ingredient that made it less susceptible to tiny cracks - volcanic ash.](_URL_0_)\n\nSource: I'm part Roman. :)", "I know I've seen something about a certain material the Romans used in their concrete that we don't use today. I can't remember exactly what the material is, but believe it was a sort of sand/silt/ash found on a volcanic mountain that causes the concrete made by the Romans to continue hardening as it ages. Pretty sure it as said that the hardening was still happening in most Roman structures that were built that way, so they will only continue to get stronger as they age.", "I'm a civil technologist who specializes in concrete quality control.  You have no idea how frustrating this thread is that keeps repeating the same wrong shit.  ", "Roman concrete was made with volcanic ash which pretty much made the stuff indestructible. Most things made by it have lasted more than a 1,000 years. We've only recent found out how to create the same sort of concrete.  In fact a project that used flyash(very similar to roman volcanic ash) it in the Florida keys for the support beams for a raised road was found to be irremovable when they decided to expand the road.  They blew up a few pillars with high explosives, but at such cost that they gave up and just built the new road higher than the old to avoid having to remove the old pillars.\n\nA bit on the topic:\n_URL_0_", "The sweat of slave labor hardens their building materials harder than you can imagine. And simply can't be matched by the contactor doing your driveway.", "I am not sure if many of you understand how drastically different Mediterranean climate is to most of that in US. Climate factors such as  freeze-thaw cycles are critical when it comes to concrete serviceability.\n\nIt is hard to compare regular driveway slab to some beam bridge, since in general they are designed to be working under different conditions and loads. Say, those roman bridges or aqueducts are currently experiencing very small service loads (or none at all), while your typical road slab is experiencing more under the course of one year than that bridge had in all his life in comparison.\n\nIn addition to that, slabs are typically vulnerable to shrinkage-creep cycles, as suggested by one of the commenters here, and unless they are placed in ideal conditions they are bound to fail serviceability checks (read: crack) sooner or later. But it's ok, we can replace them very quickly. On the other hand, typical ancient stone road bridge utilizes much smaller elements so much less vulnerable to shrinkage. Why don't we use stone roads then anymore? Because they cannot survive continious high dynamic load cycles, much more vulnerable to freeze-thaw and are harder to maintain.\n\neli5-TL:DR - stone bridges and road slabs are different things. Those slabs are in use while most of roman bridges are not. It is not that cold in Rome so their bridges don't crack due to that.", "The Romans used Volcanic Ash called pozzolana or \"pit sand\" in their mortar. By doing so their cement was much more resistant to salt water because of its higher alumina and silica content.\nI am a Geologist Major, and learned about this in class. You will find many online resources about this topic as well!", "What's the worst that can happen if a Roman bridge collapses?\nWhat's the worst that can happen if your driveway cracks into a few pieces? \n\nExactly. ", "Lowball bidding, half-assed site prep, inadequate compaction, lack of/to few cold joints in the slab sections and sub-par workmanship.\n\nBut mostly it's because the product used today is sand-laden/lime/ash deficient and inferior to the product used 2000 years ago.\n\nYou'll actually get better/longer life out of your driveway using compacted cinder instead of concrete or asphalt. The up-front cost is higher for cinder, but you'll save a ton of money in maintenance in the long-term.", "Lots of valid replies so far, but for a true 5 year old level:\n\n- This is true of antiques in general - people think old stuff was really well built.  Nope.  Its just that all the poorly built stuff is gone.\n\n- Stone bridges in general have to be made really durable to work at all, and are really expensive to build so are made to last.  Driveways work even if cheaply made, and nobody wants to pay a lot for one.\n\n- Roman concrete used chemicals that make it more durable than modern concrete.  The stone that the bridges are mostly made of is more durable than either.", "Mainly because the materials used are somewhat different. Romans used more volcanic sand and ash. This causes a different and stronger type of chemical bond than the materials used in modern concrete. \n\n_URL_0_", "Civil Engineering Student here; Firstly in ancient times they just scaled up what worked. This often didn't work and they just tried to make it work. This meant the bridges that didn't work fell down pretty much straight away (as the max load was on placed on it) and have been checked and upgraded for modern loading. (Perfect) Arches are always in compression, their shape is the inverse of the bending moment diagram should it be a beam. Your Concrete driveway undergoes beading (depending on ground underneath). Concrete is meant to crack. A beam under a uniformally distributed load has tension at the bottom and compression at the top. Concrete has approx 0 tensile strength (that is why there is reinforcement steel to take the tension). The concrete in the tension zone cracks but as it didn't take any load anyway it is fine. Also concrete is susceptible to damage. Frost for example can cause water in the voids in the concrete to expand and contract causing cracking. Also chemicals, road salt, sulphates etc. can all damage concrete. \n\nConsider geotechnical (soil) conditions as well. Bridges are founded with deep foundations on rock. driveways could have basements, old coal mines, voids, whatever underneath. Also as it is soil the weather conditions can cause shrink and swell on the soil. Consolidation can still be ongoing up to 50 years after loading for clay soils. \n\nFatigue could be another cause of cracking, this could occur with bridges as well though. Fatigue is reduction of strength due to cyclic (on/off) loading but I won't go into detail.\n\nTL:DR Concrete is suspectible to cracking; You only see roman structures that have survived long enough", "The old becomes the new. You should lay PAVERS. The stone bridges of the Romans are based on the same technology. They did not pour concrete :)", "Can't believe that the top comment doesn't mention anything about the lost art of Roman concrete.  Ancient Rome used an recipe for concrete that was - until very very recently - completely lost to modern knowledge.  Roman concrete was widely considered to be a miracle mystery until just a couple of years ago.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "Romans used mostly rock joined whit really good concrete.\n\nYour driveway is made whit litle rock, by the lowest bidder.", "Because only the ones that survived, survived. I'm sure 99% of Roman architecture has long since vanished into nothing but the 1% that happened to be built exceptionally well are what remains and that's what we see today.", "The Romans used an additive to the concrete. One we haven't bee able to find. But your question is age old, and there are people out there looking for the secret. Some say its hair, some straw, some say its needles. There is a denser cement than that they used for driveways. You can use it for driveways, but it much more expensive. They even have double hydrological, and they are used for making high rises and sky scrapper, the bigger the hard the cement needs to be. They used none rusting metal tiny needles to keep from cracking. The reason a driveway craks is because there is no metal frame work in it, to keep it together, so when it naturally contracts and expands with the temperatures, nothing to bind it. ", "The romans used lime mortar which has greater flexibility and actually gets stronger with age. The flexibility allows the wall to cope with small land movements and should microscopic cracks appear the wall can resettle and the mortar \"reheal\" by chemical reaction. Lime also doesn't trap water which can create pressure and make a wall fail. Lime motar is also softer than the stone or brick used to make the wall. This is important because if there is movement the mortar breaks first because of this, which means the wall just needs repatching with new mortar. If you try to smash down a concreted wall then very often you'll destroy the bricks as well because they are weaker than the concrete.\n\nThe inverse is important and in short, concrete is strong but brittle. It's something like glass, very strong but it can't cope well with twisting or bending. It's not as straightforward as described, the Roman structures would be maintained very well and it could be the case that your driveway has maybe more damage from freezing winters. However, all concrete cracks it's just in the nature of the material.\n\nEven older surviving structures didn't use mortar at all, neither lime nor concrete, and instead just used dry stone cut [accurately to shape](_URL_0_). It has the added advantage of being able to be dismantled like a jigsaw and new blocks cut to match old damaged ones.", "We lost the recipe. Romans had the best concrete even in the docks that are still there it is way better then what we have now. \n\n_URL_0_", "Either your concrete driveway is absolutely shit, the base course is shit, the reinforcement is shit or whoever built it forgot to build expansion joints into the pavement. On the other hand, roman bridges are built from stone, have good foundations, are built without the need for reinforcement and each joint provides for expansion. ", "A few issues:\n\nThe Romans had a slightly different recepie for concrete that was lost to time and only very recently discovered. It is stronger, lighter and more environmentally friendly. This alone doesn't account for the difference though. \n\nThe romans didn't reinforce their concrete. If you don't have enough cover over your steel reo, it will be exposed to air and rust. \n\nYour driveway is likely too thin, was left to cure wrongly (bad weather, lack of water, poorly mixed.", "Because all the crappy bridges buildt in roman times have allready collapsed. There are almost certainly some bridges buildt today that will still be around in 2000 years time. Most however wont.", "Romans mixed their concrete with volcanic ash, which creates a stronger bond. What we use in place of ash isn't nearly as durable.", "It is because during the Roman time period they came up with the brilliant idea of putting volcanic ash into their cement mix. Adding this simple and abundant resource to the mix also made it weather durable and even waterproof! That is why some of the concrete building and pieces of art are not corroded whilst in the salty ocean water. :)", "The Romans' concrete is especially strong because it is made from their volcanic rock. The concrete is so strong that the structures have well outlasted the Greek structures and will outlast even your driveway.", "I studied this recently during my class on Ancient Civilizations.  Apparently, the reason why the buildings and roadwork that remains from the ancient Romans is due to the ingredients they used in their building mixtures.  Volcanic ash was the primary source that apparently gave the concrete its ability to last longer in harsher environments.  Hope this helps on the answer towards your question. :)", "It's the same reason your house needs maintenance, but thousand-year old castles are still standing. It's all in what you're willing and able to spend and do.\n\nPerhaps ironically, the biggest reason that many ancient Roman constructions are still standing is that ancient Roman engineers weren't as good as modern ones -- but they *knew* it. What they did was *over*engineer those structures, to make up for what they knew they didn't know about how to build things like that to be strong, safe, and durable.\n\nImagine, for example, you want to suspend something in the air -- let's say a bicycle. You're pretty sure that [this](_URL_1_) won't do. You're certain, though, that [this](_URL_0_) would. If you don't know the exact strength you need and how to achieve it, and you can afford it, you're going to err towards the latter, even though you know there's a good chance you're overdoing it. Better to overdo it and be wrong, then the opposite.\n\nAs a result, ancient Roman structures were often built to a safety factor up to *four times* what most modern ones were. Just to be on the safe side. Because they *didn't know* that they were overdoing it by that much.\n\nIt's *possible* to build to that same standard today, but it's hard to justify economically. Sure, we can build a bridge that will stand for two thousand years. But why would we? We're not going to bet on needing it or wanting that long, and it will be very expensive.\n\nWhat we do instead is build to a reasonably manageable cost-benefit standard, that we've calculated we can reasonably afford to build and maintain indefinitely. In most cases, that's what makes the best economic sense. That's especially true when the final word comes from taxpayers instead of emperors.\n", "A lot of people are saying that Roman concrete is stronger than modern day concrete, this is not correct. It may be more durable and last longer but it certainly would not have the compression strength that we can make today. Any academic paper I've found on the strength of ancient concrete has said that the strength varies greatly, however the average for Roman concrete is around 12MPA ( 1,700 psi), where as modern high strength concrete can go beyond 150 MPA (22,000 psi ).", "Can say nothing about how to build bridges and explain much about that. However about Roman Bridges I have a small amount of knowledge. \nThey designate bridges as these 3:\nRoman Bridge: Construction or reconstruction maintaining the original design\nMedieval-Roman Bridge: Medieval reconstruction over Roman foundations\nRoman?-Medieval Bridge: Medieval Bridge not of Roman design but on Roman pathway.\nThere are 4 main bridges still being used today all of those have several times been reconstructed:\n_URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_3_\n\nNo expert by all means in Geology or even Petrology but my experience is in the fact that I've lived for the first 20 years of my life in a Roman road. Leading to a Roman bridge. And next to a Roman Aqueduct.\n Which leads me to this: The really impressive ones are the aqueducts. When it rains? It still carries water. It's obviously not in use. Broken in parts, only bits and bobs remain. But impressive none the less.\n\nPS: I am editing the post to also say this: A lot of the things called Roman, sorry English not my first language, are actually in Roman Style? So you will often have things designed exactly the same way and built between 16th and 18th century. \nLeading to a lot of confusion.", "I wish I could find the article or documentary where I heard this but today's concrete is very different from ancient concrete, we use cheap and abundant materials whereas I believe the ancient romans used..I think it was volcano ash or a particular type of sand which was much stronger and durable. Hopefully someone here can  back me up with a link to what I saw/read\n\nEdit >  some mention of it here _URL_0_ \n\n >  Gypsum and lime were used as binders. Volcanic dusts, called pozzolana or \"pit sand\", were favored where they could be obtained. Pozzolana makes the concrete more resistant to salt water than modern-day concrete.[4] The pozzolanic mortar used had a high content of alumina and silica.\n", "I'm actually a concrete inspector with a history degree. This might be the only question ever on reddit that I am qualified to answer in authority. Yay!\n\n Before you build a bridge you have to make sure the soil under it can bear the weight, the soil has to be very compact and stable. They had ways of doing this similar to a [proctor test](_URL_0_) and a [sand cone test](_URL_1_)The ancient Romans being the best civil engineers that history would see for centuries learned it the hard way. This is before science so it was just an ongoing record of learning from past mistakes with knowledge handed down to the next generation. They only built with the best plans, with the best material available. Earthquakes are a big problem in Italy so you have to \"over build\" often. That means make something much stronger than necessary every step of the way so that when it's finished it's going to stick around. \n\nThey also made sure to pick the best spot for their bridges and would sometimes dig and dig and dig to make sure that if there is bed rock, they'll hit it.\n\nAlso, you have to remember that after thousands of years all of the ones who couldn't survive the test of time fell apart. What you're seeing is the ones who could and did.\n\nWhat you are seeing in your driveway is the cheapest cement on discount at Home depot, poured by the cheapest guys a crooked sub contractor tricked into working in terrible conditions regardless of the untested soil.\n\n", "This is because the Romans used a secert recipe unknown to anyone living in the modern age. This recipe was lost during the dark ages. However scientists have recently rediscovered the recipe! Inside the concrete, deposits of volcanic ash were found. If you look Pompeii today (the Roman city were Mt. Vesuvius erupted) you will still see bodies covered in volcanic ash, frozen in time. The Romans were smart enough to put this ash in their concrete mix, and nobodies thought of it since.", "Roman concrete (opus caementicium) is quite different to modern concrete; hence why it has stood the test of time so well. As far as I'm aware for centuries there were numerous attempts to recreate Roman concrete as no one was able to find an actual recipe in Roman records. Eventually the concrete was found to be made from specific levels of pasty, hydrate lime; pozzolan ash; and a few pieces of fist-sized rock. It's generally believed that the ash gives it it's unique properties.", "Because your driveway wasn't financed by an empire?", "In modern construction the lowest bid wins. Then to break even, contractors cut cost any way possible. Cheapest materials, labor and bare minimum to pass inspections.", "Roman concrete was far stronger than ours today:\n\n_URL_0_", "This is true, however 2000 year old bridges obviously did not constantly have 2500 lb cars driving over them. They had people walking over them. Therefore, less stress= less cracks/damage", "What did the romans ever do for us?", "Roman concrete and modern concrete differ in three important ways: steel reinforcement, volcanic ash, and age. \n\nRoman concrete was made with volcanic ash, which is a very fine powder. The smaller particles of ash makes the pores in the concrete (tiny spaces between particles) very small. This prevents water from soaking into the concrete, which breaks it down and erodes it. \n\nConcrete takes a short time to set, but a long time to cure. When it's set, it's hard, but basically only because it's dry. As the concrete cures, it undergoes a chemical change that makes it tougher. The longer it cures, the tougher it gets. \n\nThis is why your driveway doesn't last (plus the fact that Roman concrete didn't have tons of car constantly moving on it).\n\nModern bridges also use steel reinforcement bars, which, when exposed to the caustic concrete, rust. Rusting steel expands, which puts pressure on the concrete from the inside. \n\nTl;Dr They're not the same kind of concrete. ", "IIRC, The recipe for Roman concrete is a lost technology.  A lost art.\n\n_URL_0_", "its called planned obsolescence.  if you only have to pay for something one time and then it works forever the company that sold it to you will go bankrupt.  roman roads were built before some jack ass invented this scam.  back then, you built something right the first time.", "roman cement was made with volcanic ash making it more durable than any modern cement available today. this also makes it water resistant ", "When we compare your driveway to Roman bridges, do we include the ones that fell down over the course of 2000 years, or just the few that remain standing?", "Roman concrete becomes stronger over time through the development of secondary minerals forming as hydrates in the concrete matrix.  The pore spaces fill themselves with new crystal growth.  Most concrete is in modern use becomes weaker over time and exposure to water (especially salty water) when used in conjunction with metal or wood these structures are prone to decay.  Metal rusts and wood rots, molds and burns.  Roman structures used primarily stone and concrete fired at lower than modern temperatures using localized volcanic ash.  (I heard of this from these sources:  _URL_1_ , _URL_0_)\n  Your driveway may be also subject to swelling soils underneath and heavy vehicles driving over it, faulting (microfaulting) and improper (a small possibility) laying.  Roman bridges that were on swelling soils or faults probably deteriorated during roman times, so there was a preservation bias for the strongest bridges on the steadiest ground.\ntl`dr: Better materials, luck and the strongest survived to today.", "What the top rated guy said. ALSO, Romans used a different kind of concrete, they had some sort of volcano shit in it that makes it a lot higher quality than our run of the mill cycle and recycle and recycled concrete.", "Roman concrete uses a mixture of lime and volcanic rock, as the mixture dries and hardens, it forms molecular bonds much more lasting than modern concrete formulas.", "You know when I read this I was thinking if I asked my dad this. He would have said they don't make things like they used to son. Now thinking would have told my son the same thing if he would have asked me too. I made explain it like a dad today...", "Remember only the best Roman buildings are still standing, all the crap ones have fallen down and the stone has been nicked to build with.", "The Romans may have also made better concrete by mixing volcanic sand with limestone.  \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nMy knowledge base: I red it on the internet and I once made a sand castle.", "All the things built 2000 years ago that are still standing today have lasted for 2000 years.\n\nBut the things that were built 10 years ago that are still around today have only lasted for 10 years.", "I know this one.  They are just now re-discovering that the Romans put a substance into their concrete.  It was one of those things that \"everyone\" knows so they never recorded it.  The substance was very common and would make the concrete stronger and allow it to flex and not crack.  We have begun using a substance called \"fly-ash\" from coal power plants in ND that does a similar thing to concrete.  ", "Depends how many people died and suffered to build it. The more death and suffering the better the product. ", "_URL_0_\n\nIt's because the Romans used volcanic rock that produces a durable mineral that prevents the spreading of the tiny cracks that end up growing and breaking modern cement. If I remember right they started using volcanic rock because they had massive amounts of ash laying over next to Vesuvius", "Hi, here is an answer to your question regarding Roman concrete, The Romans used a different type of method which involved salt water, the salt water creates aluminium deposits into the mixture during the hardening process making Roman concrete more durable than what we use today.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "Well I make cement (not concrete) for a living, so I will take a shot at this. There is a lot of pressure to reduce cost nowadays. This pressure has done several things:\n\nTher is much less over-design in the structure itself. Typical safety factors range from around 2 - 5, meaning a bridge might be designed to carry up to 5x the intended load. In ancient times, the exact strength could not be calculated in advance, so they dramatically overbuilt.\n\nCement builds strength much faster than in the past. This save a lot of money because of the quicker construction times, but durability suffers. I could easilly make much more durable cement, but it would set slower, and noone would want to buy it.\n\nFinally, there is one glaring contradiction to your observation. You are comparing the very best structures built at the time to one of the cheapest structures built today. A better comparison would be to the concrete used in skyscrapers today. That concrete is much more advanced, very strong, expected to last centuries, and of course very very expensive.", "Romans knew a different way of making concrete, which was much better than ours.\n\nWe only rediscovered the formula in December, 2014:\n_URL_0_", "The Romans figured out that arch bridges are really strong. They would make two identical sets of bricks, stack them up in to two identical towers. You could stack them and say something like \"brick 'a' would be on the bottom, brick 'b' would be on top brick 'a', brick 'c' would be on top of 'b', brick 'd' would be on top of brick 'c', and so on\". Now once the have the two towers stacked up very neatly, they would put one last brick between the tops of the two towers. This last brick is called a \"keystone\", and the two towers beside it keep it from falling down because they are really heavy and put a lot of friction on it. The bridge is then laid over a bunch of these arches, on top of each of the keystones. Somehow the load is evenly distributed. Since there are already cracks between the bricks, there is no more need for major cracks.", "It all balances out. Roman candles don't even last 2 minutes whereas regular candles last several hours.", "One thing to keep in mind is what the builders intend.\n\nYou probably live in a neighborhood that was built by one company that was not interested in building stronger than they had to.\n\nAnd it's not like we can't be as good as the Romans if we wanted to be.\n\nLook at our Monuments, and other things that we built to last.\n\nThe St. Louis Arch for instance? Because it's near a fault, when they were making it they drove the foundations deep and it won't rust. Plus Arch's are generally strong shapes.\n\nThis makes it possibly among the most durable Man made objects in the World.\n\nAnd most Roman building was the same way. They didn't build the average homes and shops they needed to last forever, that would be silly and expensive.\n\nHomes today in many ways are much better and more convenient.", "The Romans were advanced engineers and had discovered several [volcanic ash additives](_URL_0_) that acted as a cementing agent in their concrete. Like in modern concrete the hardening process is a chemical reaction that occurs when the cement is exposed to lime and water as opposed to say drying mud bricks. This is why Roman concrete survives today. Comparing a 100mm thick driveway slab to a bridge isn't really fair though. Very few if any Roman 'driveways' survive to the modern day. I would also hazard that if our civilisation disappeared tomorrow many of our mega structures would also survive several millennia reasonably intact, though obviously your driveway will not.\n\nIf anyone is interested in Roman engineering I strongly recommend reading [De architectura](_URL_1_). It is an architectural handbook authored approx 15 BC (no one actually knows for sure) and covers many topics such as building materials, town planning etc. Interesting read.", "Roman concrete was made with a blend of volcanic ash, limestone, and other minerals from that area. These materials formed bonds that were resistant against the elements for years. \nMore info here:\n_URL_0_", "Pave your driveway with solid granite blocks and it will be there 2,000 years from now.  \n\nPave it with generic concrete mixed by some thieving contractor's prison-furloughed brother-in-law and your dog will outlive it.", "They used less water and hammered it into place. [Source](_URL_0_)", "Roman concrete is simply far superior due to volcanic rock and ash used to make it, there is currently studys under way on this exaxt thing because its more eco friendly!  \n\n_URL_0_", "The ancient Romans used a special concrete that gets stronger as it ages. Scientists have only recently figured out the recipe and are just beginning to learn how it works.\n\nFor more info, see here: _URL_0_", "roman made a special concrete that is better then the concrete we use today in the past we didnt know the secret concrete mix but now we know. _URL_0_\n", "One thing that no one has mentioned is that pre 1880's cement was much much weaker than it is today. In fact it was much more like a hydraulic lime, which is way more flexible. \n\nModern cements are incredibly strong,  75 newton's per square inch plus, as the main use for it is for use in concrete for multi stories, skyscrapers etc. \n\nIn fact only 1% of cement actually goes into bricks and mortar. This is why expansion joints are necessary in modern cement and concrete, otherwise they will crack due to expansion and contraction. \n\nLime mortars and roman cements are a much more flexible binder and can often settle and out live many modern structures with good conservation. \n\nSource : I'm a Heritage and Conservation Brickmason\n\n", "The difference is those Roman bridges were built by expert stonemasons with vast experience and they took great pride in their work, whereas your drive was built by some lazy pikeys.  ", "When a local highway was built here on Long Island \"sunrise highway\" their was an article that said they were mixing in volcanic ash into the concrete.  It was a technique borrowed from the Romans.  The ash had very tiny particles and filled in the holes in the concrete on a microscopic level.  That way water could not seep into the concrete and cause it to break apart when it froze. Water seeping into concrete and freezing is the enemy of concrete.\nThe article described who this was rediscovered after a couple of thousand years. ", "Your driveway is likely only 4 inches thick built on a base of sand that was probably not compacted like it should be. There may be a mesh reinforcement that was not pulled into the center of the concrete as it was being poured. The concrete may have been to hot, to cold, to wet when poured. The base settled over time and cracked the concrete. Low bidding may be a factor.\nThe Romans built to last using soldier labor with the cost as no object. (mostly)", "Part of it too, is that it had been found that the materials used for Roman style cement formed a small crystalline structure over the exterior that helped protect it. The exact mix of materials used was list to time, and modern cement for not form this protective barrier."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2877547/Why-Colosseum-hasn-t-collapsed-Roman-concrete-used-secret-ingredient-stand-test-time-engineers-want-copy-it.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete"], ["http://www.citg.tudelft.nl/en/research/projects/self-healing-concrete"], [], ["http://www.crystalinks.com/RomeRoads2.jpg", "http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/getimage.dll?path=TOICH/2011/12/05/5/Img/Pc0050700.jpg"], ["http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/"], [], [], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a9208/ancient-roman-concrete-the-building-material-of-the-future-15631356/", "http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-06-14/ancient-roman-concrete-is-about-to-revolutionize-modern-architecture", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete"], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2877547/Why-Colosseum-hasn-t-collapsed-Roman-concrete-used-secret-ingredient-stand-test-time-engineers-want-copy-it.html", "http://gizmodo.com/scientists-have-found-the-ancient-secret-of-indestructi-513592527"], [], [], [], ["http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm"], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2877547/Why-Colosseum-hasn-t-collapsed-Roman-concrete-used-secret-ingredient-stand-test-time-engineers-want-copy-it.html"], [], [], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a9208/ancient-roman-concrete-the-building-material-of-the-future-15631356/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Inka_mauern_cuzco.jpg"], ["http://moduslighting.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-we-lost-recipe-for-concrete.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Contin_-_stone_tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_14046.jpg", "http://eunnyjang.com/images/knit/0511armwarmers/011704.jpg"], [], ["http://viasromanas.planetaclix.pt/pontedechaves.jpg", "http://viasromanas.planetaclix.pt/pontedapedratorredonachama2.jpg", "http://viasromanas.planetaclix.pt/pontedevilaformosa.jpg", "http://viasromanas.planetaclix.pt/pontedesegura.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25z0MewBj0Q", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK9kt_P3IMw"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2877547/Why-Colosseum-hasn-t-collapsed-Roman-concrete-used-secret-ingredient-stand-test-time-engineers-want-copy-it.html"], [], [], [], ["http://goldschmidt.info/2014/uploads/abstracts/proofs/J.pdf", "http://universityofcalifornia.edu/news/what-makes-ancient-roman-concrete-so-tough"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], ["http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18484"], ["http://www.history.com/news/the-secrets-of-ancient-roman-concrete"], [], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolana", "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/29239-h.htm"], ["http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-secrets-of-ancient-romes-buildings-234992/?no-ist"], [], ["http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm"], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a9208/ancient-roman-concrete-the-building-material-of-the-future-15631356/"], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], ["http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1b6ybw", "title": "how does a smoker feel, when wants to smoke, but doesn't have a cigarette", "selftext": "I know the biological aspect of it, but I can't imagine how that feels, not being a smoker myself.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b6ybw/eli5how_does_a_smoker_feel_when_wants_to_smoke/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c945sbn", "c945y21", "c946glw", "c946kkw", "c946mpd", "c946t27", "c94759h", "c948w6e", "c94926p", "c94b38s", "c94c3am", "c94cz7n", "c94dwpx", "c94e2j7", "c94eb7k", "c94f6ys", "c94fkjy", "c94fyrm", "c94h056", "c94is2u", "c94iyb9", "c94j81u", "c94r16d"], "score": [132, 5, 15, 18, 6, 27, 60, 27, 10, 51, 3, 10, 3, 3, 2, 10, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It's kind of like being thirsty without water", "I would feel anxious and then when I would finally get to smoke it would be almost instant relief.", "Have you ever been dumped, or fired? Reaching for a cigarette and finding an empty pack feels like the Universe just broke up with you, and now you'll never feel pleasure again.", "Like not being invited to a party. Sad and somehow get in a bad mood and say things you don't mean. Like not sleeping for a while. And you know it can all be better if you just go smoke. ", "this is actually the reason i started smoking, sadly enough. i wanted to know what made my dad \"decide\" he needed to light up when he did. now i know. its an uncontrollable urge to satisfy a need you dont understand. what's worse than wanting to smoke and not having a cigarette is wanting to smoke, having a cigarette, and not having a source of fire. i can't help but blame god when i don't have a cigarette and want one. so, think of the most awful thing ever and blaming god for it, in that moment you feel desperate, lost, out of control and angry. :)", "For whatever reason, I can smoke casually and occasionally and never feel physically addicted. My grandfather and uncle were the same. But when I do feel the desire to partake, I feel a tightness or pressure in my chest that is relieved by inhaling, as though I'm filling a hole in my chest. \n\nI also want to say that it's not worth trying cigarettes in order to experience the unique sensation. I used to be a drug rehab counselor in a prison and I can tell you 100% of the time, cigarettes were the first substance my clients became addicted to, and the last they ever gave up. ", "It's like the beginning stages of an anxiety attack. It's hell when you're already stressed out. I feel like all my organs are pushing up to my heart and lungs, making them both work harder. You have a one track mind and cannot focus on anything but smoking. Then when you get one it's like you've just had a pile of rocks removed from the top of you. ", "It feels like your brain itches.", "Like i want to rip someones face off. It's one thing if I have some and want one, no biggie. But if I dn't have any? Well I make things happen lol\n\nEdit: I realize how pitiful this is and how much it controls my life.... maybe I should really make an effort to quit.", "Eating 1 Pringle then leaving the pack open in front of you- you could just not have one, but fuck it.", "I usually equate it to the panic you get when you hold your breathe.", "I'll try to describe it. \n\nIt's starting mentally, the same it would do if you really, really needed a glass of water. It's much like when you have made a run on a hot day. The need for water you feel there = the need for a cigarette after 2-3 hours. If you don't take one (it's your own choice after all) the need starts to get physical. You lungs start to tickle - not in a bad way. It's like when you scrath something, so it kindda feels good, but also like you want to do something about it - a teasing feeling. If you still not choose to take a cigarette it gets worse. Your throat starts to tickle the same way your lungs now do, and you can nearly taste the wonderful taste of nicotine on your tungue, imagine the taste like candy or chocolate (it dosn't taste like that, but it feels the same way). Maybe imagine the taste like when you have emptied a bag of chips and there is nothing left in the bag, but you still feel like eating more of them - something like that. If you still not choose to take a cigarette it starts to get really bad. Your heart starts to beat faster and you can really feel the shape of your lungs from the ticking feeling, which is no longer pleasant, but much more of a nuisance to you. Your mouth gets dry and you start shaking - not much, but it's there. You still don't want a cigarette? You start losing the ability to think straight, and can only concentrate on what it would feel like to smoke a cigarette. Everything becomes slighty more insignificant compared to the feeling of nicotine in your body.  \n\n\nBut hey, you can stop whenever you want to. \n\n\nSource: I'm a smoker\n\n\nSource of error: I'm suffering from anxiety as well, and maybe it mixes up with the nicotine addiction. ", "motivated to get my ass up and go to the store", "My lifestyle doesn't necessitate that I stop smoking for more than an hour or two, basically ever (except sleeping). So for me, and for probably a lot of smokers, it is second nature. It is almost always exactly one hour between when I smoke cigarettes.\n\nThere are some exceptions to this. Certain things just immediately activate me lighting up. After a meal. When I get into a car. After sex. After smoking something... else. When I make what I know will be a long phone call. \n\nOn the rare occasions that I can not smoke for a long time, such as a long plane ride, it is more mental for me than it seems to be for most people. Even after an 8 hour cross-country plane ride with a layover, it is simply a \"want\". It doesn't \"feel\" like anything. I think this is because I know that having a cigarette is simply not a possibility in these circumstances. So I think about it, increasingly more as time passes, but I don't experience what I would describe as a physical withdraw. Note that when I say I think about it \"more\" as time passes. I am talking about once every couple minutes here. Unless I can distract myself with a book.\n\nI have tried to quit a few times, but even then I have used an electronic cigarette, nicotine gum, or a patch. \n\nI have not gone one day without nicotine in my body since 1999. \n\n:/", "I once \"taco'ed\" a quad at the dunes... broken clavicle, separated shoulder, separated sternum, 3 broken ribs and broken ulna. I regained consciousness before anyone noted the accident and in a panic desperately struggled to get up and walk to prove I wasn't crippled. Same panic ensued when my head went through a windshield in car accident. That panic and fear is similar to how I feel when I don't have a smoke easily accessible. As a matter of fact, I'm feeling a little jittery right now. ", "For me, its not even the literal cigarette that gets me. Its me convincing myself of alternate scenarios in which a cigarette is present for me to have. My own psychology used against me. Its like Dark Link in the water temple, but its actually a camel.\n\nbtw, nine days without one! first people I've told! been smoking since I was thirteen, super excited.", "I started smoking to find out. Horrible decision. ", "To me it feels like I can hear my phone ringing but I can't find it.", "I am a smoker who has tried to quit on multiple occasions.  I've also casually read up on smoking and how the brain works when it's addicted.\n\nThe best way I can describe it, is that it's very much like being hungry.  When you've eaten a meal, your brain releases chemicals that you interpret as a feeling of satisfaction.  When you smoke a cigarette, very similar chemicals are released and you feel satisfied.  When people can't have a cigarette they may get irritable.  How would you feel if you had to work all day without lunch?  It's a very similar craving, and it's insidious how it commandeers your natural instincts for food.\n\nSmoking is also an appetite suppressant for this reason.", "I'm writing a paper that's due tomorrow. \n\nI should go smoke. No I don't have time right now, later.\n\n But then I will get more done because I'll be relaxed. \n\nLater. \n\nRight now. \n\nMaybe. Well I'm not making any progress anyway. \n\nI wonder how much I've smoked today. \n\nOne more. Wait, I need to work on this paper. \n\nAfter this page. I'll go. \n\nAnd it's like that in circles all day over and over even right after I've smoked. \n\nTL;DR: Don't. ", "One time a smoker, always a smoker. It doesn't matter if you're on a smoking-break for the rest of your life, that feeling to grab a cigarette will creep up on you when you least expect it. The constant feeling of \"something is missing\". A lot of people confuse the feeling with hunger or thirst, but no matter how much you eat or drink, it's still there. This is worst the months after quitting but it's still with me, and it's strongest when you least want it to be i.e. stressed out, sad, in shock, basically places where you are most vulnerable. ", "Like having an itch that you can't scratch", "It's a nagging feeling. Anxious. Like someone keeps whispering in your ear \"a cigarette would be *great* right now. \n\nAnd it never goes away. 3 years strong right now. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xhx05", "title": "Why are greasy foods considered tasty by many people?", "selftext": "Whenever I crave a greasy burger or pizza, I've always wondered exactly why this is?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xhx05/why_are_greasy_foods_considered_tasty_by_many/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5mhk2d", "c5mhpft", "c5mhum4", "c5mlkar"], "score": [2, 14, 2, 2], "text": ["Because fat is the best, energy-dense and most valuable source of energy. Your body knows how rare and awesome it is (was, up till maybe 50 years ago, significantly 100 and more years ago). ", "Taste is basically the body's way of directing us toward the nutrients we need. Back in the dawn of our species, fats and salts were quite hard to come by.  Fat has the highest calorie density of any food, so our sense of taste makes it 'good', by eating it we increase the likelihood that we will survive, and thus pass on our genes. As the ability to pass on genes is the cornerstone of natural selection, there is a strong evolutionary pressure to value to taste of fat. \n\nAs we lived in central Africa, in the beginning, salt was also hard to come by and is an essential nutrient.  So, by the same mechanism, we 'learned' to crave salt, as it encouraged us to seek it out.\n\nOf course, now, the drive to eat salt and fat is no longer necessary and could arguably be said to be a draw-back, or a evolutionary weakness. But natural selection takes time to correct for mistakes and to adapt to new circumstances, so, you still love yourself some God-damn McFat. \n", "There's a new line of work relating stress to selection for foods high in fat, sugar, and salt. Mary Dallman was making interesting headway on this problem towards the end of her career (and she's an awesome scientist and person). \n\n_URL_0_\n", "Two follow up questions.\n\nI've heard that part of why we like fat in food is that fat is good at carrying other flavours. The way I imagine it is that there are some tasty molecules that are fat soluble and the fat helps to coat them over the inside of your mouth. Is there any truth in this?\n\nWhy do we like herbs and spices? Are basil or rosemary leaves, for example, more nutritious than say oak leaves?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.pnas.org/content/100/20/11696.abstract"], []]}
{"q_id": "1nsv9o", "title": "why do things keep smelling? can odor get \"spent\"?", "selftext": "\nI was handling a key and noticed my hands smelled like metal after. I wondered how long this key has been around and was curious about the fact that it still had a smell. I imagined the \"odor particles\" coming out of the key and wondered if they ever get spent... (and if there even is such thing as an \"odor particle\")\n\nThanks beforehand!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nsv9o/why_do_things_keep_smelling_can_odor_get_spent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cclqbzp", "cclqory", "cclrsj0", "cclrvdj"], "score": [17, 9, 2, 7], "text": ["The smell of metal on your hands after handling keys, coins, etc is actually the smell of your body's natural oils on the surface of your skin reacting in a small way with the metal. Chemical by-products are released, some as vapours that you can smell.\n\nOnce you remove the metal, the smell lingers until the chemical reaction has 'used up' the available metal atoms and the smell disappears.", "Perfectly clean metal has no smell. However, the oils in our sweat react with metals to form compounds that do have an odor.\n\nIt only takes a few molecules of some things to cause an odor. In the case of a metal it will still smell like metal until contact with human sweat very slowly corrodes it to nothing, but this will take a while.\n\nPlastics usually smell because of additives in them, which will very slowly leach out. Dead decomposing things will smell until they have been reduced to nothing by bacteria or dried out completely.", "But our ability to detect smells can become less in time, our olfactory sensors can become fatigued, so we no longer notice the ammonia smell of the cat box, for example.", "I have another question...if something smells, does that mean it's losing mass?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3xpz72", "title": "why is it that when something is flavored grape (grape soda), that it tastes nothing like an actual grape?", "selftext": "Learned that my grapes are different from the grape flavor they're trying to make. They're trying to make the flavor of Concord grapes, thanks /u/mredding ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xpz72/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_something_is_flavored/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy6qdwn", "cy6qs0f", "cy6vnyt", "cy6xvff", "cy7esaj"], "score": [110, 13, 5, 7, 3], "text": ["Grape flavored soda tastes like Concord grapes. Find them. Try them. Marvel in how exact they got it right.", "The varieties of \"table grapes\" that you can buy at the grocery store taste significantly different from various other varieties of grapes that exist. The grapes you buy at the store have been bred to be larger and more resilient, often seedless, and with a thinner less bitter skin. They're easier to handle and eat, but they don't taste as good. \n\nThe \"grape flavor\" that is commonly seen in drinks/candy/etc. is very similar to the taste of actual Concord grapes.", "Bad example using grapes, a better example is watermelon and its artificial flavoring. The two are nothing alike.", "I personally find the artificial orange flavor is completely different to an actual orange. ", "Is blue raspberry something that occurs in nature or is it strictly something the flavor companies thought of? I'm assuming they used blue to avoid confusion with strawberries."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "780x48", "title": "why do towels that feel so rough on the skin dry you so much better, but towels that feel soft don t dry well at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/780x48/eli5_why_do_towels_that_feel_so_rough_on_the_skin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doq589o", "doq8fbt", "doqbsm2", "doqnvp8", "doqx12p", "dor5r5i", "dor657r", "dor9j80", "dosfqkr"], "score": [127, 390, 19, 3, 7, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Part of roughness means there's more highs  &  lows in the towel fibers. That increased surface area allows more area for absorption and therefore allows for better drying.\n\nYou could try to make a towel soft by increasing the density of fibers/yarns but then if you increase it too much you just approach a solid surface meaning there's less surface area for absorption again. I'd say in reality there's a balance in the type of fibers/cloth a towel has which determines its softness/absorption capabilities and your actual fiber/yarn count. There are very soft towels (supima cotton) which can be [extremely good at drying](_URL_0_). You don't necessarily need to sand your skin to get a good towel. I personally use the Pottery Barn towels that Sweet Home recommended a few years ago, and they've spoiled me. I end up hating most towels at hotels unless I stay at a nice place. Even the JW I stayed at a few months ago had towels that felt like sandpaper.", "Fabric softeners that make towels nice and fluffy also make them slightly more water proof so they tend to absorb less efficiently.", "Fabric softeners coat the towel fibres with a film that isn't very water absorbent, which makes the towel feel softer, but it won't absorb (dry you) as well. Generally, towels should be washed with just detergent at a relatively high temperature (60 degrees celsius+), and tumble dried to fluff up the fibres/threads to ensure maximum surface area. The drying in a machine is important, as towels which are air dried will tend to have the threads clump together which creates that rough feeling too.\n\nLots of hotel towels that feel rough are just using dense cotton designed to last longer, or they are overly worn and the threads are short.\n\nLike with bed sheets, towels are one item where it's worth investing a few extra bucks to ensure good quality and they will last way longer than a cheaper product using poor materials. Egyptian cotton is considered one of the best. ", "Also while we are at it, can someone please tell me which of the two are better for your skin? ", "Is that you Larry d.?", "In most cases, it probably has to do with fabric content. 100% cotton towels are very \"thirsty\" and dry well, but towels that are part polyester (or another synthetic material) and woven with thinner fibers will feel softer to the touch, but not soak up water the way cotton does. The quality and length of the particular cotton, as well as the way it's woven, also factor in. ", "Don't know the exact science behind towels, but general rougher surfaces have more pores, or more holes for things to fit into, compared to smoother surfaces. That is one explanation I suppose.", "It partly depends on how the towel is made.  Terry cloth towels have loops that will wick away moisture on contact.  Sheared towels or microfiber type towels are cut and it's harder for the strands to absorb moisture when you rub it on your skin.", "Ugh so many bad and wrong answers here.\n\nThe real answer has to do with the materials the towels are made out of. 100% cotton towels become crunchy after a while. They lose a lot of the finer fibers which frees up more space for water to be absorbed thanks to the fact that water likes to stick to itself and cotton allows this to happen easily.\n\nThose super soft plush towels are made with either a cotton blend or are made with fully synthetic fibers which do not absorb water anywhere near as well as the fibers actually repel water for the same reasons plastic water bottles exist."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-bath-towel/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "mjvog", "title": "why my stomach \"growl\" and make noise?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mjvog/eli5_why_my_stomach_growl_and_make_noise/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c31itlb", "c31j2oy", "c31j9ce", "c31jx7n", "c31k7eg", "c31kawz", "c31itlb", "c31j2oy", "c31j9ce", "c31jx7n", "c31k7eg", "c31kawz"], "score": [8, 169, 27, 8, 6, 4, 8, 169, 27, 8, 6, 4], "text": ["And how can you stop it!", "The digestive system is a long tube that starts at your mouth and ends at... the end. The muscles in the intestines contract and push the food downward. This also helps turn the food, liquid and whatever else into a gooey mix. This is what results in a growling stomach.\n\nTwo hours after your stomach empties itself, the nerves send a message to the brain, which sends a message to your digestive system to restart the contractions. This gets any remaining food that is sitting there from the last time. These vibrations will make you hungry. They'll come and go every hour and last about 10 to 20 minutes until you eat something.\n\nTo avoid this happening in a quiet setting, eat many small meals a day instead of 2-3 large ones so your stomach doesn't have time to restart the process.", "Equally important : how well can other people hear them? Growled in a meeting the other day, couldn't work out if people couldn't hear it or were just being polite ", "Have you ever had one of those fart toys that's a chunk of ooze in a plastic container and you squish it around to make fart noises? Your stomach and intestines are a lot like that - your stomach/intestines are the container and the food you've eaten is the ooze. Some parts of how your body digests food make gas, which is like the bubbles that have to be in the ooze to squish out and make the noise. (These same bubbles eventually become farts.) And the muscles in your belly that push the food along your intestines are like your fingers pushing the ooze around in the toy. The difference in the sounds of the toy and your stomach are because the toy tends to have a few big bubbles, so it gives one short sound for each one, but the food that's being digested tends to have lots of little bubbles, which get squished around one after the other to make a longer and more complicated sound.", "I'd just like to say I'm blown away that I've never asked or even thought of this question before.  So thanks OP!", "When I'm working a long shift and it's a long time in between meals, my stomach will growl a few hours after my last meal.  However, if I ignore it, eventually the growling stops and I don't feel hunger anymore.  What's happening here?", "And how can you stop it!", "The digestive system is a long tube that starts at your mouth and ends at... the end. The muscles in the intestines contract and push the food downward. This also helps turn the food, liquid and whatever else into a gooey mix. This is what results in a growling stomach.\n\nTwo hours after your stomach empties itself, the nerves send a message to the brain, which sends a message to your digestive system to restart the contractions. This gets any remaining food that is sitting there from the last time. These vibrations will make you hungry. They'll come and go every hour and last about 10 to 20 minutes until you eat something.\n\nTo avoid this happening in a quiet setting, eat many small meals a day instead of 2-3 large ones so your stomach doesn't have time to restart the process.", "Equally important : how well can other people hear them? Growled in a meeting the other day, couldn't work out if people couldn't hear it or were just being polite ", "Have you ever had one of those fart toys that's a chunk of ooze in a plastic container and you squish it around to make fart noises? Your stomach and intestines are a lot like that - your stomach/intestines are the container and the food you've eaten is the ooze. Some parts of how your body digests food make gas, which is like the bubbles that have to be in the ooze to squish out and make the noise. (These same bubbles eventually become farts.) And the muscles in your belly that push the food along your intestines are like your fingers pushing the ooze around in the toy. The difference in the sounds of the toy and your stomach are because the toy tends to have a few big bubbles, so it gives one short sound for each one, but the food that's being digested tends to have lots of little bubbles, which get squished around one after the other to make a longer and more complicated sound.", "I'd just like to say I'm blown away that I've never asked or even thought of this question before.  So thanks OP!", "When I'm working a long shift and it's a long time in between meals, my stomach will growl a few hours after my last meal.  However, if I ignore it, eventually the growling stops and I don't feel hunger anymore.  What's happening here?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "tcuax", "title": "What are examples of the latest occured evolutions, that are observable?", "selftext": "I think of evolutions where somehow lions also became cats (they have a mostly common evolutionary lineage) and wonder which of these obviously observable ones occured most recently?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tcuax/what_are_examples_of_the_latest_occured/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4li6ec", "c4ljixg", "c4ljwrd", "c4lk0yx", "c4lkhli"], "score": [22, 3, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["I guess flu and other virii aren't easily observable, but they evolve (mutate) frequently.  Domesticated dogs are all wolves genetically.  Although the evolution is man made, I would still consider it an example of evolution.  It's an example I use when talking to creationists.  It also helps explain the \"why are there still apes, if we evolved from them\" argument, as there are still wolves.\n\nI'm hardly a scientist...Just a layman's thoughts.", "I thought that evolution is constantly occuring. Is this true?", "The lizards of Pod Mrcaru is a good example, in 1971 5 pairs of lizards were transferred from Pod Kopiste to the previously lizard free Pod Mrcaru, by 2008 the transferred lizards had developed much larger heads to account for a more vegetarian diet, they also started to evolve a caecal valve, there were behavioral changes too as they had a much denser population and no longer defended territories. All of this is due to the required diet change from insects to vegetation owing to differences on the islands.\n\nSee Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, chapter 5, pages 114-116. ", "Well this will vary depending on the organism. For example bacteria evolve quite rapidly and have been known to become antibiotic resistance fairly quickly. An interesting example recent human of evolution would be lactase persistence in adults. You can find an explanation in Wikipedia found [here](_URL_0_).", "Relevant thread on [recent human evolutionary changes](_URL_0_). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence#Evolutionary_history"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sjkwp/is_there_any_evidence_of_human_evolution_within/"]]}
{"q_id": "5yz983", "title": "How would the interstellar medium behave for an object traveling at relativistic velocities?", "selftext": "If we could build a spacecraft to travel at significant fraction of the speed of light, would the interstellar medium be a factor worth considering? Would it cause drag, or compress into a shock wave? Could it cause damage to the spacecraft?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5yz983/how_would_the_interstellar_medium_behave_for_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["deu6dya", "deu6tt6"], "score": [15, 2], "text": ["It would cause significant ~~drag~~ erosion. A hypothetical mission to nearest star would have a lightsail sent to Alpha Centauri, and it turns out that \"up to 30 per cent of its volume could be eroded by the interstellar medium by the time it reaches Alpha Centauri.\"  \n[source](_URL_0_)  \n  \nEDIT: Edited out drag, because it isn't really drag (collisions are rare, but still energetic enough to erode the probe).", "Do a simple calculation - you'll see that at relativistic speeds the particles in the interstellar gas will act as extremely energetic radiation.\n\nThey will produce extensive damage to the materials and also result in high-energy gamma rays that will go through the spacecraft.\n\nYes, there will be drag, but the more noticeable effect will be the complete erosion of all materials and sterilization due to gamma rays. Your spacecraft will be destroyed soon after is starts moving at those speeds.\n\nIn reality we don't need to worry about that - those speeds (and energies) are completely unachievable by any theoretical technology we can think of."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.newscientist.com/article/2102267-interstellar-probes-will-be-eroded-on-the-way-to-alpha-centauri/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2mdht4", "title": "What happened in the period around 400 b.c.?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nThe upper graph shows populations vs. year and the lower graph shows the relative growth. I was wondering what was causing the hump at 400 b.c. in the lower graph.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mdht4/what_happened_in_the_period_around_400_bc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm3as6b"], "score": [39], "text": ["The graph cites a broken link to the US Census Bureau.  A few minutes of digging led me to [this table](_URL_0_).  As you can see, the only number for 400 BCE is from Biraben, whose numbers are higher than the McEvedy and Jones numbers the table depended on before.  Biraben numbers often are the upper limit, but according to the rules of the table if only one number is given, it is automatically made the lower limit.  That would throw off a line graph of the lower limits, which is possibly what the graph you linked used (but the scale is useless).\n\nSo I'd say a noncritical Wikipedia editor just took what they had and ran with it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev%C3%B6lkerungsentwicklung#mediaviewer/File:World-pop-hist-de-2.png"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php"]]}
{"q_id": "1xph7k", "title": "Is there any evidence that King George VI pushed the scandal that led his brother, King Edward VIII into abdicating the throne?", "selftext": "I know that conventional wisdom and Wikipedia say quite the opposite, but I was wondering if there is evidence that King George directed the whole thing, so that he could be king. \n\nMy question comes from that scene in the film, \"The Kings Speech,\" when King Edward accuses his brother of pushing him off the throne. I don't recall the exact words used in the film. \n\nPerhaps I'm watching too much \"House of Cards\". \n\nSo I'm asking the experts. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xph7k/is_there_any_evidence_that_king_george_vi_pushed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfdsrmh"], "score": [15], "text": ["I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest this, most of the push for abdication came from the government rather than the Royal Family (who typically stay out of politics anyway).  George VI had no interest in being King and was terrified of speaking in public.  In his diary he writes: \"\"When I told her [Queen Mary] what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child.\".  The movie is quite accurate in its portrayal of him being a reluctant King, but takes a few dramatic liberties and accelerates the timeline.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "246tih", "title": "is falling in love an evolutionary advantage?", "selftext": "Why do humans fall in love when clearly the best way to ensure the survival of the species is to spread a male's seed to as many partners as possible? Why do we develop strong feelings to want to stay with one partner even though sometimes their physical traits may not represent the best choice from an evolutionary standpoint? (Not strong, no confidence, no attractive features, etc.) \n\n**EDIT: I think I understand now. Things also need to be viewed from a female perspective. Thanks for the help, evolutionary biologists/future evolutionary biologists/knowledgeable people of Reddit!**\n\n**EDIT 2: I'm still keeping this as explained because of the dozens of reasonable explanations I've received. However it is clear this is a much more complex topic than I previously thought. The many points/counterpoints are all very interesting to read and follow. Thank you for the help with this subject everyone!**", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/246tih/eli5_is_falling_in_love_an_evolutionary_advantage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch45a76", "ch46vxa", "ch47tvq", "ch486s3", "ch49x6u", "ch4an4i", "ch4c0kf"], "score": [22, 148, 2, 8, 13, 2, 10], "text": ["Falling in love encourages parents to remain together, meaning their offspring are cared for by two adults and so have a better chance of survival.", "You're looking at it from the male's perspective.\n\nThe female perspective is that she wishes to find a mate who will settle down to help raise offspring, thereby increasing the survival rate.\n\nSo it seems like there is absolutely an evolutionary advantage in \"falling in love\". The advantage is that the offspring has a higher chance for survival since there are two parents to take care of the child, instead of just one.\n\nSo it is more advantageous for a man to \"spread his seed\", but it is severely disadvantageous for a woman to hook up with a guy and to have him leave her all alone to raise a child.  So there is a bit of a tug-of-war effect happening.\n\nIt would make sense that children who are raised from two parents have a much greater survival rate than children who are raised without a father.", "Yes.  \n\nWe descend from females and males that tended to have this feeling of wanting to stay together for a while, at least until the child was autonomous.  Those that didn't usually were vulnerable to famine and predators and the children might have dies so the feature tends to get passed on.  \n\nThe reason is that, unlike most mammals, humans are born very dependent on their mother for food and movement (I read it's due to cranium size due to brain development but apparently it's not so simple) , this ties the mother down so you need someone else to get the food, hunt and protect.  Once the child is autonomous (about 5 years old) this is no longer necessary.  \n\nThis was valid in the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that shaped most of our genetics today.  Now of course this is not necessary in most places of thew world, but we keep \"falling in love\" regardless.  ", "Think of love as a \"co-operation strategy\" between males and females where the alternative for both sexes would be to cheat for slightly different reasons, although it would only be an advantage if the other partner did not cheat as well.\n\n-----------------------------------------------------\n\nHumans are mammals, and our sexual behavior is consistent with our Linnaean class. Donald Symons sums up the ethnographic record on sex differences in sexuality: \u201cAmong all peoples it is primarily men who court, woo, proposition, seduce, employ love charms and love magic, give gifts in exchange for sex, and use the services of prostitutes.\u201d32 Among Western peoples, studies have shown that men seek a greater number of sexual partners than women, are less picky in their choice of a short-term partner, and are far more likely to be customers for visual pornography.33 But the male of Homo sapiens differs from the male of most other mammals in a crucial way: men invest in their offspring rather than leaving all the investing to the female. Though deprived of organs that can siphon nutrients directly into his children, a man can help them indirectly by feeding, protecting, teaching, and nurturing them. The minimum investments of a man and a woman are still unequal, because a child can be born to a single mother whose husband has fled but not to a single father whose wife has fled. But the investment of the man is greater than zero, which means that women are also predicted to compete in the mate market, though they should compete over the males most likely to invest (and the males with the highest genetic quality) rather than the males most willing to mate.\n\nThe genetic economics of sex also predicts that both sexes have a genetic incentive to commit adultery, though for partly different reasons. A philandering man can have additional offspring by impregnating women other than his wife. A philandering woman can have better offspring by conceiving a child by a man with better genes than her husband while having her husband around to help nurture the child. But when a wife gets the best of both worlds from her affair, the husband gets the worst of both worlds, because he is investing in another man's genes that have usurped the place of his own. We thus get the flip side of the evolution of fatherly feelings: the evolution of male sexual jealousy, designed to prevent his wife from having another man's child.  {253}  Women's jealousy is tilted more toward preventing the alienation of a man's affections, a sign of his willingness to invest in another woman's children at the expense of her own.\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------\n\nDonald Symons has argued that we have genetic conflict to thank for the fact that we have feelings toward other people at all.88 Consciousness is a manifestation of the neural computations necessary to figure out how to get the rare and unpredictable things we need. We feel hunger, savor food, and have a palate for countless fascinating tastes because food was hard to get during most of our evolutionary history. We don't normally feel longing, delight, or fascination regarding oxygen, even though it is crucial for survival, because it was never hard to obtain. We just breathe.\n\nThe same may be true of conflicts over kin, mates, and friends. I mentioned that if a couple were guaranteed to be faithful, to favor each other over their kin, and to die at the same time, their genetic interests would be identical, wrapped up in their common children. One can even imagine a species in which every couple was marooned on an island for life and their offspring dispersed at maturity, never to return. Since the genetic interests of the two mates are identical, one might at first think that evolution would endow them with a blissful perfection of sexual, romantic, and companionate love.\n\nBut, Symons argues, nothing of the sort would happen. The relation between the mates would evolve to be like the relation among the cells of a single body, whose genetic interests are also identical. Heart cells and lung cells don't  {268}  have to fall in love to get along in perfect harmony. Likewise, the couples in this species would have sex only for the purpose of procreation (why waste energy?), and sex would bring no more pleasure than the rest of reproductive physiology such as the release of hormones or the formation of the gametes:\n\n >  There would be no falling in love, because there would be no alternative mates to choose among, and falling in love would be a huge waste. You would literally love your mate as yourself, but that's the point: you don't really love yourself, except metaphorically; you are yourself. The two of you would be, as far as evolution is concerned, one flesh, and your relationship would be governed by mindless physiology.... You might feel pain if you observed your mate cut herself, but all the feelings we have about our mates that make a relationship so wonderful when it is working well (and so painful when it is not) would never evolve. Even if a species had them when they took up this way of life, they would be selected out as surely as the eyes of a cave-dwelling fish are selected out, because they would be all cost and no benefit.\n\n-----------------------------------------------\n\nSource: [The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - Chapter 14: The Many Roots of Our Suffering](_URL_0_)", "Quality vs. quantity.  The time spent with young ones is an investment in their long term survival and success.\n\nAlso, young ones without a male around to protect them are more likely to be killed by another male of the species or predators.", "Let me clear some stuff up:\n\n*Love and sex aren't related at all. You can love someone you have sex with but they are mutually exclusive.\n\n*Love is constructed mostly by social interactions, the love we feel is so influence by media and instructed behavior that there isn't a biological love that affects evolutionary survival.\n\n*Humans are non-monogamous in nature. We are naturally sexual. Monogamous relationships are usually based off of cultural influences.\n\n*Child bearing relationships don't have to be loving, nor do any relationships.  Relationships in general are a survival advantage but it has nothing to do with love. Penguins can adopt orphned penguins yada yada.\n\n*The closest thing to falling in love biologically is infatuation, which is based of characteristics like asymmetry, healthy looking skin, etc.", "Mods removed my previous comment (quite rightly) so let me give a more compete answer.\n\nMy previous comment: \n\n > ITT: Pop psychology and Evo-psych drivel.\n\nA better answer:\n\nYou have to be **very** careful when asking if something has an evolutionary advantage. It is often very easy to say \"Structure A is used in manner B, and must therefore have evolved for that purpose\" when in reality you have no way of empirically knowing that or not. \n\n Evolution is **messy**, and not every trait offers evolutionary advantages.  Some traits are common because they're closely linked to other traits that offer advantage.  Some arise through random chance, and stick around because they don't affect fitness at all.\n\nIt's also very difficult to ascribe evolutionary benefits to human psychology. Evo-psych is absolutely stuffed with \"just so stories\"--satisfying narratives with very little empirical evidence.  \n\nStephen J. Gould's [The Spandrals of San Marco] (_URL_0_) is essential reading for pretty much anybody who wants to ask \"what is the evolutionary advantage of [TRAIT]. \"\n\nEdit: this isn't very ELI5, but the simple fact is there's no simple answer to OP's question. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm#14"], [], [], ["http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/205/1161/581.abstract"]]}
{"q_id": "71duix", "title": ". how can i sit in a ~200\u00b0 f sauna and not get burned, but water the same temperature spilled on my arm will burn and blister my skin?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71duix/eli5_how_can_i_sit_in_a_200_f_sauna_and_not_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn9zt6h", "dn9zu0b", "dn9zxho", "dna5w8k", "dna7b8h", "dnaeone", "dnalphp", "dnatg0u", "dnazz4h"], "score": [2, 12, 139, 479, 6, 2, 9, 3, 22], "text": ["'Heat' is a form of energy. When something is 'hot' is has more energy than something that it cold. \n\nWater, being denser than air, can hold much more of this energy than air, so water at a given temperature has more energy than air at the same temperature. \n\nIf your skin touches hot water, it is touching something with more energy, and so it absorbs more from it. \n\n(ELI10 and ELI15 would get into things like specific heat and transfer rates...)\n", "Water is a very good conductor of heat, while air is not. Humid air, like is in a sauna, is a better conductor, but still not close to water. It works the opposite way too. If you put your hand in a freezer, or somewhere it's very cold, it doesn't make your hand very cold quickly, but if you touch a better conductor of heat such as ice or metal, it will feel much colder than the air.", "The difference is how air and water TRANSFER heat. Air is a fairly poor at transmitting heat. It is at a very high temperature but it does not transfer that temperature to your skin. Water is about 30 times better at transferring heat. The high temperature goes right into your skin and burns.\n\nIt's the reverse of why standing naked in 50 degree air will be cold but bearable for maybe half an hour, but jump into 50 degree water and you'll be unconscious from cold in a few minutes. ", "Both correct answers are here already but neither in the same post with one another.  First, water has high heat capacity.  That means that even a small change in temperature for water = a ton of energy.  So 200 degree water has thousands of times more heat than air for every degree of temperature change, and that's based on MASS.  The density of water is much higher than that of air so there's a lot more of it close to you when you're exposed to it.  Finally, because of the density, it transfers energy much much faster.  Heat is transferred when molecules hit one another - more density means more molecules close together, which means more collisions = faster energy transfer.\n\nFor an example of this at work try to bake a potato in a 450 deg F oven while boiling one in 212 deg F (boiling) water.  Should go alot faster in the water.\n\ntl;dr - Water has more energy in a smaller space and transfers that energy much faster.", "Burns are caused by a rapid exchange of energy. The sauna will not provide this rapid exchange for many reasons already posted here.  The direct contact with water will exchange energy with your skin at a very rapid pace, causing severe burns.  Similarly this is why dry ice will cause burns if held by your naked hand.", "Think of being outside when it's 40 degrees freedom out then think of jumping in 40 degree water.  The water will feel a lot colder.", "Wtf? I thought a normal spa temp is like 105?", "There is less material nearby to transfer heat to your skin. The density of air is around 1kg / cubic meter. The density of water is about 1000 kg / cubic meter. So there's around 1000X the amount of mass nearby to burn your skin.\n\nWater also has around 4X the specific heat of air, so a given mass of water has about 4X the energy of the same mass of air (at a given temperature).\n\nSo there's about 4000X more *energy* nearby to burn you.\n\nNote, you would eventually cook in a sauna.", "FYI ... Extremists might do a dry sauna at 190-195F for 3-5 minutes.  Most home saunas tap out at 170F, and average use is in the 130F-140F range"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3h79k2", "title": "when you drink a significantly larger amount of liquid than the average bladder can hold, what does the body do with surplus until it's time to let it go?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h79k2/eli5_when_you_drink_a_significantly_larger_amount/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu4umbe", "cu52s2c", "cu56tf2", "cu597id", "cu5jaad"], "score": [258, 19, 10, 6, 2], "text": ["Consumed liquid doesn't immediately find its way to the bladder.  \nFirst, it sits around in the stomach until the stomach contents are sufficiently digested, where the mixture is passed to the intestines. Most of the water is absorbed into the blood stream in the large intestine.  \nOnce in the blood, the excess water is removed by the kidneys and then passed down to the bladder.\n\nAll of these processes take time, and the bladder gradually fills until you feel the urge to urinate.", "The urine will stay in your vascular system for some time until the kidneys can take in the fluid to be filtered and sent to the bladder.  \n\nIf, for say, the person is unable to urinate (urinary retention) and there is a surplus of fluid in the body, it can cause the urine to back up into the kidneys causing them to swell.  This can cause the kidneys to fail.  The person may also develop urinary or kidney infection.  Not common, but if the walls of the bladder are weak, the bladder can rupture which is life threatening.  \n\nAlso, if the bladder is frequently overfilled, the bladder can lose its ability to contract to release the urine from the body.  ", "Type 1 diabetic here. Pre diagnosis I was DYING of thirst. Quenchless, unfaltering thirst.\n\nI got mad one day and drank 5 RT44 Sonic cups of water to try and quench it. I peed for 2 min and 43 sec. \n\nI always wondered where my body put the water while my kidneys turbo processed it!", "Imagine a mountain in a forest.  Small creeks and rivers flow down off the mountain and drain away water that builds up.  \n\nNow imagine when a huge rainfall happens.  The rivers don't instantly fill up; it takes time for the rain to filter down through the trees and the dirt and eventually reach the creek beds that go on to feed the rivers.\n\nThe water will eventually get drained away, but it takes time; same as your body.", "The bladder of a healthy adult is only approximately 1/3 full when you first get the urge to pee, so it continues to fill.  This is the body's mechanism to keep the bladder from becoming too full."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "330s6d", "title": "If helium is a noble gas, then how was lithium created in the early universe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/330s6d/if_helium_is_a_noble_gas_then_how_was_lithium/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqgh5dh"], "score": [26], "text": ["A gas being \"noble\" has to do with its electron configuration. Noble gases all have outer orbitals with a complete complement of electrons, making them highly unlikely to participate in chemical reactions, as either gaining or losing an electron to form bonds would push it to a less stable configuration.  Forming Lithium, however, is not a chemical reaction, but a nuclear one. Lithium must either be formed by fusion of lighter elements, or as a decay or fission product of heavier ones.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "by6rbi", "title": "East Asia Panel AMA: ask our flairs questions and be answered!", "selftext": "Welcome to the **East Asia flair panel AMA**! A team of flaired users specializing in topics in or related to East Asia will be on hand to answer your questions about the region, its people and its history.\n\nEast Asia, commonly defined as encompassing China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, usually Manchuria and sometimes Mongolia and Tibet, has never been a single homogeneous entity. Across up to 12 million square kilometers it would be impossible not to find marked differences in landscape, language and lifestyle, which even today can often be overlooked from a Western point of view. Arguably the only serious attempt at Pan-Asianism ended in flames in the 1930s and 40s, and even in recent years there has been no dearth of causes for enmity between powers and between peoples.\n\nYet alongside such divisions, there have also been connections, both within the broader region and further afield across the globe. For quite a while, East Asia was largely united by a common standard of writing, and at many times people have been able to travel quite freely between its various landmasses, be they merchants, pirates, political exiles or simply travelers and tourists. Across the steppe and the seas, people, goods, ideas and knowledge from East Asia have flowed out to the wider world, and those from the wider world have flowed back into East Asia.\n\nIn the many millennia of East Asian History huge changes have occurred in many areas. Looking just at the last 1000 years, we see effects from the Mongol conquests in the 13th century, to the Columbian exchange in the 16th, to the appearance of Western imperialism in the 19th, and of course, a whole host of endogenous developments, be they religious, cultural, political or socioeconomic. There have been continuities too, of course, and sometimes quite resilient ones. For one, the physical geography has for the most part been pretty constant, outside of course the regular course changes of the lower Yellow River.\n\nWith this panel we hope to shed a little more light, to the best of our abilities, on one of the most prominent and yet often least popularly understood regions of the world. We're all ears for questions, and hopefully, you should be all ears for answers!\n\n\n--- \n\nOur Panelists today are:  \n\n/u/bigbluepanda \thas the least worst knowledge of the evolution of the military within pre-modern Japan, of which the majority of questions fall into the Sengoku period.\n\t\n/u/buy_a_pork_bun\tSpecializes primarily in the Vietnam War and the Chinese Civil War. That said he is more than happy to discuss the nature of Tokugawa judicature, the transition of power towards and away from Meiji, the CCP, Japanese colonialism, and Chinese ethnography from Tang, Song, and Qing. Somewhere in the vaults is a fuzzy memory of the utilization of military equipment in the Pacific theater and in the Korean War and probably a few tidbits about the vehicle of Japanese legitimacy from Fujiwara onwards.\n\t\n/u/Cenodoxus\twas originally training as a medievalist, but started researching North Korea because she understood nothing about the country from what she read in the papers. After several years of intense study, now she understands even less. Her previous AMAs on North Korea and Korean history for /r/AskHistorians can be found [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_).\n\t\n/u/churakaagii \tis about as niche as you can get for the English language, especially as an amateur in the history game: She got into history through her love of Okinawa, and trying to figure out how and why her heritage language and culture is in a zombie state. On /r/AskHistorians, this has largely turned into answering questions about Japan from very specific times that were relevant to Okinawa, e.g. the tide of Western colonialism in East Asia during the mid-to-late 19th century, or the pre-WW2 Imperial period.\n\t\n/u/cthulhushrugged\tspecializes in the Early  &  Mid-Imperial Eras of China, in particular, the political, military, economic, and ethnic histories of the Qin, Han, Tang, and Song Dynasties (and the periods of civil war bracketing each). He's also thrilled to wax poetic about the Mongols and Genghis Khan (and more broadly the border states and peoples surrounding China), why invading Korea and Vietnam overland are horrible ideas, and the Pacific Theater of the 2nd World War.\n\t\n/u/_dk\tis an avid reader of East Asian history with an interest in the Three Kingdoms period of China and the maritime situation in East Asia during the 16th century, a time of pirates and the Portuguese.\n\t\n/u/EnclavedMicrostate \tspecialises in Qing Dynasty China, primarily from 1796 to 1912, with a particular emphasis on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-64) and its broader context. He'll also be happy to discuss the Opium Wars, 19th century Sino-Western relations more broadly, and questions more generally about the later Qing Dynasty and its own domestic and imperial policy.\n\t\n/u/JimeDorje\tis the local historian specializing in all things Tibet and Tibet-related, focusing on indigenous Tibetan historiography, the intersection between Sangha and State-formation, and the development of Tibet, Bhutan, and other Himalayan states from the Imperial period, to the development of Buddhist theocracies, and their absorption into 20th Century Statehood. He's happy to discuss all things historically Tibetan, Buddhist, and Himalayan.\n\t\n/u/keyilan\tis an historical linguist specialising in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to the historical development of the languages of Asia, he is also interested in historical language planning and policies, particularly in Taiwan and Korea under Japanese occupation, and also minority language rights. Beyond linguistics, areas of interest include Hakka studies, China in the 19th century, and Chinese diaspora communities around the world, with an emphasis on the Chinese Exclusion Acts and anti-Chinese sentiment.\n\t\n/u/KippyPowers\tspecializes in the Philippines, with interests spanning precolonial, colonial, and modern, with a particular interest in social history and language and cultural politics. Secondary interests include modern China and Taiwan (particularly late Qing Dynasty to now, and yes, he and u/EnclavedMicrostate do love to have fun dialogues on this period together) and modern Viet Nam (in particular the 20th century). In both cases, again, he has a great interest in social and cultural history and is always very excited to discuss them.\n\t\n/u/lordtiandao \tworks on the institutional, military, and fiscal history of the Song-Yuan-Ming period, focusing on the Mongol conquest and its impact on state employment of personnel and state capacity. He's also interested in the study of nomadic state formation, military mutinies in the Ming dynasty, and Ming policy in Northwest and Southwest China. He's happy to discuss the politics, military, institutions, and finances of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties.\n\t\n/u/LTercero \tfocuses on Japan's Sengoku period, in particular, the socio-political climate which drove the military conflicts and general upheaval of 15th-16th century Japan.\n\t\n/u/ParallelPain\tloves all history, but focuses on Japan, specifically the Sengoku era, due to the influence of NHK's historical drama. With only a bachelors in history, he'd like to call himself more of an \"educated-amateur\" than a professional historian, but loves diving through the primary sources in search for answers, which often cause him to take longer to write even short answers, even by /r/Askhistorian standards. That is, if he didn't give up altogether.\n\t\n/u/ParkSungJun\toccasionally contributes points about organizational structures and institutions in Imperial Japan, Republican China, and other parts of Asia, Europe, and North America. In addition, he moonlights as an economic historian in commodity markets both past and present.\n\t\n/u/Spiritof454\tis an American Chinese history PhD student researching the late Qing and the Republican period from a perspective of economic and business history.\n\n**Reminder from the mod team: our Panel today is consisted of users scattered across the globe, in various timezones with different real-world obligations. Please, be patient, and give them time to get to your question! Thank you!**", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/by6rbi/east_asia_panel_ama_ask_our_flairs_questions_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqdlbwf", "eqdq0p5", "eqdq4cn", "eqdtqe4", "eqdxwwh", "eqe5nq5", "eqe6fyq", "eqe6xol", "eqe9oeu", "eqea5yy", "eqeajv8", "eqedtd6", "eqekgau", "eqerl1z", "eqessn7", "eqetrtu", "eqezkuj", "eqf3kll", "eqf6s3z", "eqfkvnu", "eqg2nr5", "eqgl5x0", "eqsyik1", "eqtx2r1"], "score": [11, 4, 4, 5, 14, 10, 11, 12, 3, 12, 3, 9, 11, 7, 6, 6, 4, 4, 7, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I'd like to kick it off with a question regarding Japan: \n\nI\u2019ve been told that after reverse engineering the Portuguese arquebuses (was it Sam Hawley\u2019s *Imjin War*?) the Japanese organized their armies according to the gunsmith from which the weapons were made. European armies were made up of heterogenous units of soldiers who couldn\u2019t trade ammunition or equipment due to the plethora of gunsmiths in Europe, while Japan had only four, and a central command with Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Am I totally off the mark? And if this is correct, what more can you tell me about these four gunsmiths? Where were they? How large were they? What happened to them after Hideyoshi died? Were they controlled really as strictly as it sounds?", "How did adoptions in the late Han and Three Kingdoms period of China operate? Was it a very regulated and legal process?", "I've heard Qing emperor Kangxi (regined 1661-1722) had an impressive cannon making program.   \n\nWhat can you tell me about me this? What kind of cannons did the Qing make? Who made them? How did they compare to european cannon making of the same period? Did they ever use them and how did they preform?", "How did the Mongol military establishment adapt in order to successfully conquer southern China, which had previously foiled steppe conquest dynasties?\n\nFW Mote says that Ming governmental and military institutions took a lot from the Yuan, while the Qing represented something of a break - to what extent is this true? \n\nThe Imjin War in Korea would become dominated by siege warfare and infantry battle - why did cavalry not play a larger role? Was a lack of cavalry part of the reason for Japanese failure?\n\nTo what extent can the failure of the Qing to modernize successfully and avoid the end of its dynasty be laid at the feet of the Taiping Rebellion, as opposed to fiscal issues or lack of governmental will?", "Hello! Thanks for the opportunity for an interesting panel. I have a couple of questions in mind, but I'm on a train, so maybe it's a bit too incoherent. But here goes.\n\n1. To my knowledge, *wakashu* (adolescent boys) were subjects of sexual/erotic interests of adult men in pre-Meiji Japan. How did the dynamics play out? Were boys simply an object of desire that eventually needs to be weeded out (not sure what a more appropriate term is) as the men grow older and realize their duty to their family (wife, kids), similar to how *ghulams* - young boys - were treated in Abbasid Caliphate? Was it possible for men to love their boys like they love their concubines? I think my bigger question is, how were \"male love\" and \"homoerotic sexuality\" (if such thing existed) performed in pre-Meiji Japan?\n\n2. To follow question number 2, how did the criminalization of same-sex activity in the early Meiji era (to accord to Western norms) affect Japanese idea of sex(uality) and love?\n\n3. How did Western colonialism influence the idea of \"(becoming a) modern man\" in the area you study? In Indonesia, the \"myth of lazy native\" was common in 19th century. The myth goes: Non-Western natives are lazy, irrational, and inefficient. Natives are not disciplined and succumb to superstition. To become a \"modern man\", \"primordial\" identity has to be worn off. One has to aim to be like the Westerners (in terms of fashion, intellectual pursuit, even imagination of 'development' and 'industrialization').\n   * Mostly interested in Japan, as today Southeast Asians often take Japan as a prime example of \"a blend between modernity and traditionality\". I wonder how did Japanese conceive themselves on this issue. But I'm also interested in knowing the other too.\n\nThank you again for the chance!", "Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated for a Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. He\u2019s since been a huge advocate for world peace via Engaged Buddhism and was banned from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam until 2005. Aside from his general religious attitude and his religious activities, which I\u2019m pretty well aware of, why was he nominated for the Prize? \n\nWhat did he do, Gandhi-esque or otherwise, to earn so much recognition as an activist for peace during the Vietnam War?", "1) Did the Qing Dynasty follow the Sinocentric view of the world? It's generally accepted that for most of history Chinese dynasties have seen themselves as the center of the universe, and all other peoples to be barbarians on the periphery. The Qing Dynasty though, seems to have been less Sinicized than other dynasties, both \"Chinese\" and \"foreign\" (e.g. Yuan, Jin, etc.). So then did the Qing see themselves as the center of the universe, like the Chinese dynasties before them?\n\n2) When did giant pandas become an iconic creature of Chinese culture? They don't seem to be featured very much in pre-modern Chinese art.\n\n3) What do we know of \u738b\u7384\u7b56, a Tang diplomat who was attacked by an Indian king, and lead a combination of Tibetan and Nepali troops in a successful counterattack, capturing said king and bringing him back to China? Did he even exist? I can't find much about him.\n\n4) Does it make sense to think of China as being part of Greater India or the Indosphere, since China was heavily influenced by Indian religion, architecture, etc? I originally saw the point being made by an Indian nationalist, so I suspect the assertion.\n\n5) When did China encounter the Indian numerals system? What did they think of the system, compared to their own?\n\n6) With the exception of Zheng He's treasure fleets, Chinese dynasties never really seemed to have been naval powers. Is there a reason for this?\n\n7) Zheng He's treasure fleets is said to have brought many soldiers on their trip. Were they ever used for combat? Were they expecting to have to fight any groups on their trip?\n\n8) Abe no Nakamaro was a Japanese member of one of the missions to Tang China. He stayed in the country and passed the civil service examinations, becoming an administrator. What do we know about his life in China? How did he pass the very difficult civil service exams despite starting studying years behind Chinese students? Was he unique, or were there many foreign (Japanese or others) examinees and administrators in the Tang bureaucracy?\n\n9) Looking at the list of Japanese missions to Tang China, it seems like many of the ships were lost or shipwrecked. Just how dangerous was the journey from Japan to China in this period? What technological advances did sailors make that made this trip safer in later years?\n\n10) What happened to the war brides from Japan taken to America after WW2? How did they acclimate to American society? Did they ever try to return to their homeland? What happened to their descendants?", "I've posted this question in the sub before and gotten no answer but here goes:\n\nWhat was the Taiwanese government's reaction to the United States recognizing the One China Policy? Did it come as a shock? Given the political relationship between US-Taiwan-PRC today, it seems surprising that the US would have done this. Was there ever the possibility of recognizing the two entities as separate, discreet states?\n\nAs a follow-up, how did the Kuomintang evolve into the major Taiwanese party more sympathetic to the PRC today? You would assume given their history of animosity and anti-communism they would be more vociferous in their opposition.", "The Wu dynasty of the three kingdoms period was ruled by the Sun family, and it seems that other dynasties names were unrelated to the ruling family, so how did Chinese dynasties get their name and why are they called dynasties if the ruling family\u2019s name have nothing to do with it?", "How much is known about the earliest Chinese dynasty - the Xia? Among that information how much of it comes from more archeological sources versus secondary accounts from later writers? How much of what is known is history rather than mythology?", "Is there significant evidence of East Asian exploration in the Americas or Oceania prior to Columbus?", "To my knowledge, the Khitan script and language remain undeciphered, despite a larger corpus than other deciphered or partly deciphered languages, what barriers are their to its decipherment and have there been any recent developments?", "I don't know if this is within anybody's wheelhouse in particular, but I would like to know more about the history of celebrating the Duanwu Festival (which was just yesterday!) Here in Taiwan I've read a lot of pop-history articles about how Duanwu represents an appropriation of Chu culture and customs by the northern \"China proper.\" So it got me curious about when Duanwu became a holiday celebrated across all of China, and how and when did Qu Yuan become associated with the holiday?", "Questions I have regarding Korea: \n\n* Is there any good English-language work that covers the Korean War from the Korean Perspective? I\u2019ve read a few good ones that primarily focus on American/Soviet relations, MacArthur\u2019s conflict with Truman, and the negotiations with the North Koreans/Chinese. I\u2019m really curious about the decisions Syngman Rhee had to make, the experience of Korean (South, but North would be interesting, too) soldiers, and possibly the decisions that Korean commanders had to work with.\n\n* What do we know about the Korean Population from the Imjin War to the 20th Century? I\u2019ve been repeating what I learned from the museum at Hwaseong in Suwon about how the population was cut nearly in half, and was still barely recovering when Hwaseong was under construction in the 1770s.\n\n* King Sejong\u2019s Hall of Worthies, so I\u2019ve been told, made an in kind taxation system based on yearly rainfall tied to a province\u2019s rice output. How was this calculated?\n\n* Why is invading Korea overland a bad idea? Seems like the Mongols did just fine. (Are they the exception?) In my understanding of Korean history, really it just seems like the Japanese were the ones with the real problem (invading over sea).\n\n* The *Sparrowhawk*\u2019s visit to Korea in the 1680s allegedly found a Korea \u201cpreparing for war.\u201d The Koreans were happy to have some more westerners to make guns and were, again, allegedly, preparing to invade Qing China and reestablish the Ming. Is this\u2026 accurate? The war, as far as I can tell, never came to be. Did they have a Ming candidate in waiting Targaryen-style to restore to the throne?", "Questions I have regarding China: \n\n* I read that the last Ming pretender landed on Taiwan and set up shop for a few decades before dying/relenting. Was there already a Han presence on the island that he could claim rulership over, or was he intruding on aboriginal turf?\n\n* Van Schaik writes briefly about mid-T\u2019ang Chang\u2019an culture when the Tibetan delegation visited to request a royal marriage. He writes that there was a bit of a Turco-mania going on, with young men cutting meat with their swords, wearing furs in the nomadic style, and portraying dawdles and trinkets they acquired from the western market. All of it logically made the delegates from Tibet celebrities for a brief time. How true is this concept of mid-seventh century Chang\u2019an? How well documented is this Turco-mania?\n\n* James Michener\u2019s *Hawaii* involves a few scenes which are\u2026 rather ambiguous about what\u2019s actually happening. Part-sexual assault, part-coercion, and part-indentured servitude is involved in a rather aggressive labor market transferring large amounts of Chinese laborers to Hawai\u2019i. Was this accurate? Were a lot of Chinese laborers moved around the world like this, or was it just for dramatic effect?\n\n* What was the Ming policy in northwest and southwest China? As far as I can tell, they pretty much left the area (Tibet for the most part) alone. Tibet seemed key to their horse trade, especially while the Mongols could be unreliable trading partners what with holding an emperor hostage and threateningly naming one of their Khaan\u2019s \u201cDayan.\u201d I know that today the historic policy is that the Ming never gave up control of Tibet and point to the handing out of titles (at least two cases of \u201cTai Situ\u201d), conferring of official seals (notably the Karmapa Lama). Although I can\u2019t find any specific incidents from Tibetan histories that I\u2019m looking into of a lot of Tibetan contact with China in this period in any significant capacity. Trade and raid, yes. But a broader policy I\u2019m pretty fuzzy on. The Tibetans themselves had dynastic changeovers to deal with (Phagmodrupa, Rinpungpa, and Tsangpa). What did the Ming think?\n\n* The Imjin War has been called the Ming Dynasty\u2019s \u201cSwan Song.\u201d That the counterattack against Hideyoshi\u2019s invasion was so devastating to the Ming finances that they never recovered. What exactly happened?", "Ok, two more. One on Mongolia and one on the Philippines: \n\n* Jack Weatherford (I know, I know) tells a good story in *Secret History of the Mongol Queens* alleging that Dayan Khaan was a direct descendant of Chinggis Khaan. Indeed, he goes so far as to imply that he was the last *legitimate* male descendant with a claim to the Great Khaan\u2019s legacy and crown. Is this right? Given Temujin\u2019s fecundity, I find that hard to believe. But was Dayan Khaan regarded as such? Was Manduhkhai Khaatuun using this idea for her own purposes or was it generally acknowledged that this was a true bloodline?\n\n* Just learned about Suyat. Any interesting translations out there? I\u2019m becoming interested in Philippines history lately.", "What was life at the frontiers of China like? A lot of books I've read focus primary on warfare or imperial conceptions of borderlands and frontier regions, but very little on what kinds of cultural interactions, religious beliefs etc you would see in communities there. Perhaps it is a limitation of the sources, but I'm interested in comparing it to the many works on Sicily, Iberia, Jerusalem, Hungary etc. \n\nI am mostly interested in the Song/Liao/Jin/Yuan empires, but any help is greatly appreciated!", "This would be a Philippines-related question:\n\nEscolta used to be the business capital of Philippines during the Spanish and American colonial Eras before Makati. What led to this shift in the base of economic power?", "For the panel...\n\nWe hear a lot about the Columbian Exchange across the Atlantic, but how did the initiation of a truly global transfer of people/goods/foods to and from the Americas influence life on the other side of the Pacific?", "Historiographical/state of the field question(s):\n\n & #x200B;\n\n1. Is there any kind of rethink happening in light of the ongoing anti-Western academic crackdown in regards to how accepting Western historians should be of Chinese secondary scholarship? Or in regards to how we should see Western scholarship conducted under the aegis of \"engagement\" policies designed to coax China into joining the liberal world order? I'm thinking of pieces like Peter Lorge's *The Asian Military Revolution* which blames the \"peaceful China\" myth solely on Western racism without at least acknowledging the contribution the PRC government might just maybe have made via things like the \"China's peaceful rise\" propaganda campaign. (To be clear, racism was definitely a big part of this phenomenon, but I don't think it accounts for everything.) \n2. How is the field dealing with older, particularly subaltern-focused, histories of things like the Opium Wars and Hong Kong's relationship with the UK as PRC nationalism becomes more blatantly a part of the present-day picture? Are we looking at a potential re-evaluation of these topics from the ground up? Or are certain works that seem to push the Beijing narrative just being looked at askance? Is there a PRC/everyone else (US, EU/UK, Taiwan, HK, etc) scholarship credibility gap developing? \n\n & #x200B;\n\nI understand these might be hotbutton issues, so if anyone wants to PM me an answer, I would definitely understand.", "Hi, thanks to everyone on the panel, it's been a fascinating look into history. I have a question for /u/buy_a_pork_bun \n\nI read recently that at the beginning, or perhaps shortly before the long march, Mao stashed two of his children with sympathetic local farmers, the logic being that the children likely wouldn't survive the ordeal they were about to undertake. And this in spite of the fact that the reactionary forces pursuing them were expected to exact harsh reprisals against the local peasants. [The book I was reading](_URL_0_) said Mao never found the children.\n\nMy questions are, when did Mao begin looking for his lost children, and when (if ever) did he stop? Did he reference them in later years, and did he ever link his later controversial agrarian policies with the fates of his lost children?", "Since at least the Tang dynasty, different colours of ceramics were valued differently in China. Celadon for instance was valued more highly than typical brown ceramics. \n\nSo how did a ceramic maker decide where to build a kiln, or what type of kiln to build, in order to get the desired colours and quality? Nowadays we know that minerals, temperature and oxygen levels influence the result, but how did the Chinese work out all these factors, and well enough to plonk down considerable investment into a large kiln?", "@ /u/lordtiandao\n\nFrom what I\u2019ve read, state formation generally goes in hand with religious justification: the king is the high-priest, or is a sacred king. In any case, he\u2019s very important and above the rest of men.\n\nIs it the same with nomads? Are khans considered to be supernaturally above the rest of men? How do khans justify their rule?\n\nMaybe my question is naive, still, I\u2019m interested in the similarities and differences of nomadic state formation compared to that of sedentary societies\u2019.", "Little late to the party but maybe somebody will still answer this. How do you see job perspectives in the field of East Asian studies and East Asian history? I am a german undergrad student in my final year and i was always kinda looking to go into technological or social history in a european conext but i spend the last 2 semesters in Korea and will have a 3 month internship in Tokyo soon. The thought of focusing more on Asia (or east asia) in grad school crossed my mind but i am hesitant. Any go for it or dont go for it advices? I have very basic language skills in Korean but nothing that d be sufficient to actually work within these languages - i am aware that d have to change."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c29lu/wednesday_ama_north_korea/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lzdnx/panel_ama_korean_history/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://books.google.com/books/about/Mao_s_China_and_After.html?id=YpV7vbvclfgC"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7j0waf", "title": "why is almost every country in debt?", "selftext": "Who do they owe money to?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7j0waf/eli5_why_is_almost_every_country_in_debt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dr2ti2y", "dr2tick", "dr2ua0i", "dr2w0to"], "score": [11, 5, 10, 9], "text": ["They owe money to other countries, civilians, companies, retirement funds and investment institutions that buy treasury bonds or government debt.\n\nEvery country is in debt because it makes financial and economic sense. The interest rate charged to countries on loans are typically low and thus in almost all cases the benefit their able to gain from investing/spending that loaned money is greater than the downside of having to make interest payments.", "They owe money to other countries, civilians, companies, retirement funds and investment institutions that buy treasury bonds or government debt.\n\nEvery country is in debt because it makes financial and economic sense. The interest rate charged to countries on loans are typically low and thus in almost all cases the benefit their able to gain from investing/spending that loaned money is greater than the downside of having to make interest payments.", "Countries go into debt by investing in themselves. Building infrastructure, building the economy, building militaries, supporting the citizens that cannot support themselves, supplying benefits such as education/healthcare/police/fire/etc to citizens. A country that is not at least slightly in debt is not investing in itself, or is not doing so quickly which means it is dying. ", "National debt is what is termed 'sovereign debt'. It's very different than say, your credit card debt in that the 'sovereign' is also the one who prints the currency.\n\nLet's say your weekly paycheck is $500. You only spend $400 this week. No big deal - you just leave it in the bank.\n\nHowever, if you're a 'sovereign' issuing currency, you can't just leave it in the bank - that would cause currency-crushing deflation. You *have* to spend that money somehow.\n\nUnfortunately, there's no direct link between revenues and expenditures. There's no way to predict when you collect the revenues how much you'll spend. Given that you'll crush your economy if you spend too little, you have to set revenue far enough below tax receipts that you never risk spending too little.\n\nThe solution is sovereign debt - borrowing against future tax receipts to bridge the gap between revenue and expenditures.\n\nA side benefit of this system is that it gives investors a place to park their money. Without sovereign debt, you'd need to put your money in private securities - which are much, much riskier."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b45njd", "title": "If we send a submersible probe to Europa, how will it communicate with us?", "selftext": "What kind of problem does the 10km+ thick ice sheet pose in sending information back to earth?  What are some of the possible solutions to this problem?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b45njd/if_we_send_a_submersible_probe_to_europa_how_will/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ej4sz9r", "ej5rjyd"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Ice behaves somewhat transparent, depending the frequency used. [They use this to map underneath ice sheets.](_URL_0_) - although the signal gets attenuated a lot so you have to do a lot of signal processing. \n\nBut.. if our knowledge of Europa turns out to be true, that its a solid core with ocean covered with ice, then we can't just parachute a submersible down there - we'd have to land some type of drilling rig that would drill through the ice to insert the submersible. So in that case, it would be easier to just run a relay station mounted to the underside of the ice that is connected to the surface with a cable. Or, have a communication relay use sound vibrations THROUGH the ice with a surface relay. ", "This is a huge problem, and it's one of the reasons nobody's planning to launch a Europa submarine anytime soon.\n\nThe best solution we've come up with for this problem also solves another big problem: there's no source of energy -- not even a nuclear reactor -- that can provide enough energy to melt through the entire ice shell, that is compact enough to fit inside a submarine.  If you made the submarine big enough to hold the power source, you'd have to melt even more ice. So *the power source needs to stay at the surface while the submarine goes through the ice*.\n\nTo solve both these problems, [one strategy](_URL_0_) is to land a nuclear reactor on the surface, with a high-powered laser that would beam energy through a fiber-optic cable that would unspool behind the submarine.  The submarine would use that light energy to melt through the ice.  And once the submarine reaches the ocean, it can use a small laser to transmit data back up that cable to the surface station, which will radio Earth.\n\nIn a [followup reply](_URL_1_), you asked how we will know how long a cable we should bring.  You're absolutely right that at present, we have no idea.  A couple km?  50 km?  No way to know.  Also, is Europa's surface smooth enough to land a nuclear reactor on?  Dunno.\n\nThat's why it's way too early to make serious plans for a Europa submarine.  We need at least one, possibly several more missions to learn more about Europa's surface and ice crust before we're ready to go for a swim."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/airborne-radar-looking-through-thick-ice-during-nasa-polar-campaigns/"], ["https://www.universetoday.com/140499/archimedes-digging-into-the-ice-on-europa-with-lasers/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b45njd/if_we_send_a_submersible_probe_to_europa_how_will/ej4vcym/"]]}
{"q_id": "5qhpq7", "title": "what atomic properties determine the transparency of a material?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qhpq7/eli5_what_atomic_properties_determine_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dczespj", "dczf2r1", "dczl14g", "dczu47b"], "score": [35, 26, 5, 2], "text": ["It has to do with the way that the electrons are arranged.\n\nElectrons can also absorb photons to jump up energy levels - but only if there's the right amount of energy in the photon to do a complete jump. Electrons won't jump up anything but whole energy levels.\n\nThis means that there has to be the right amount of energy in the light in order for it to be absorbed. With light, energy is proportional to the frequency, which is inversely proportional to the wavelength. This means there's a direct relationship between wavelength and energy.\n\nThis is why glass, for example, is transparent. The amount of energy necessary to excite electrons in glass doesn't match the amount of energy that photons have when they're in the visible part of the spectrum, so the photons go whizzing on through without being absorbed.", " A material shows transparency if there are no processes that compete with transmission, either by absorbing the light or by scattering it in other directions. In pure silicon, there is a very strong absorptive process at work: the incident visible light is absorbed by electrons that then move from one electron energy state to another (an occurrence technically known as a band-to-band transition). Glass, being silicon dioxide--not pure silicon--does not have this band structure, so it cannot absorb light as pure silicon does. Sand, on the other hand, is also silicon dioxide, but it is so filled with impurities that light simply scatters outward incoherently and does not pass through to a noticeable extent", "Photons carry the electromagnetic force. Electrons interact with the electromagnetic force, however, electrons can only interact with photons of certain energies, depending on a few factors that are too complex for an ELI5. Basically, electrons can only absorb or emit photons of discrete energies (think whole numbers, 1,2,3, etc. You can't have a .5, for example)\n\nThis means that any photons that aren't at those specific energies don't interact with electrons, so they fly right through the material.\n\nPure metals, for example, are opaque because their electrons can occupy a huge number of possible states, and visible light happens to have the right energy to interact with the electrons in the metal (electrons moving freely through a metal aren't under the same restrictions and can interact with any photons IIRC).\n\nGlass, however, has electrons in a tightly bound state that can only interact with photons in certain bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, few of which fall within visible light. Most materials have specific energies at which photons can pass through them, and other energies at which photons can't pass through. Glass is right in the visible spectrum, as is water (which is probably why our visual range is what it is, all the frequencies of light we can detect travel through water easily, I cannot explain the mantis shrimp, sorry).\n\nClear as mud?", "Transparency and opacity are influenced also at a larger scale, by the microstructure. Silica may come in a form with nanoscale holes and will be opaque, or in another form a grain structure without holes will be transparent/translucent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3dvzlx", "title": "why do cats always stretch their front legs before walking up to you?", "selftext": "My cats do this if they were just sitting down a few feet away, or if they ran from across the house", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dvzlx/eli5_why_do_cats_always_stretch_their_front_legs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct97pnv", "ct98lk3", "ct9amen", "ct9k61k"], "score": [99, 6, 23, 6], "text": ["It's a greeting in cat body language. It's basically saying, \"I'm coming at you, but not aggressively- see I'm relaxed\" *stretch*", "I always assumed that they were acting disinterested in me and my pats because they didn't wanna seem submissive to me calling them to come to me.  I thought this because I have met cats that wanna run right up to you and meow and rub without any stretching.", "Domesticated cats still have a lot of biological traits in common with their wild ancestors and stretching prior to approaching actually serves the evolutionary function of letting you know they could not possibly give less of a shit and are merely humoring you.", "Hm, thanks for asking this. It's something I've noticed but haven't ever really thought about in any sort of details. I've had cats almost my whole life and I just disregarded this behaviour as actually stretching after a period of inactivity, like when I stretch. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c3h1wz", "title": "There are a number of famous \"Lonely Mountains,\" such as Mt. Fuji or Mt. Rainier. Did J.R.R. Tolkien ever visit any of them? If not the real world, was there a literary or mythical inspiration that he drew upon to create Erebor?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c3h1wz/there_are_a_number_of_famous_lonely_mountains/", "answers": {"a_id": ["errqnq3"], "score": [106], "text": ["One of the most hated interview questions among authors is what in their published works was \u201cinspired\u201d by real life. The novelist Jonathan Franzen likes to tell the story of a writer who sarcastically answers such questions with percentages.\n\n >  \u201cIs your new book inspired by your life?\u201d\n\n >  \u201cYes, 26 % of it.\u201d*\n\nThe point is that a writer\u2019s work is entirely dependent upon her life, knowledge and experiences. But even the writer may not be able to decisively pinpoint something in her work and say \u201cthis chapter was inspired by my own life but this chapter came from my imagination\u201d.\n\nIn the case of J.R.R. Tolkien, his life and writing are extremely well-documented. He left copious notes behind and his friends and family have been willing to talk to researchers and biographers. For instance, Tolkien admits the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings \u201cowe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme\u201d and that Bilbo and the Dwarves\u2019 journey in the Misty Mountains was inspired by his own experiences hiking in Switzerland.\n\nOther aspects of his work have been directly linked to real-world counterparts, such Beorn\u2019s house which has been decisively traced to Hrolf Kraki\u2019s Hall. Tolkien\u2019s illustrations of Beorn and his dwelling are unmistakably copied from a \u201cNordic mead-hall\u201d published by his friend E.V. Gordon in An introduction to Old Norse.\n\nThe Lonely Mountain was originally called the Black Mountain in early drafts of The Hobbit. The first maps Tolkien drew of the area showed that it was not quite lonely \u2013 in fact, it was probably loosely connected to a mountain chain at its north-east corner or to the Iron Mountains, the home of the dwarf Dain and his kin. This idea is retained somewhat in his published maps and text, although the Mountain\u2019s solitary nature became much more prominent as the Hobbit narrative developed. \n\nThe prime role of the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit is the home of the dragon. In Tolkien\u2019s writings dragons are drawn from a tradition depicting them lying on mounds of treasure in prominent lairs. This is the case with Beowulf\u2019s dragon, Sigurd\u2019s Fafnir, as well as \u201cearly Silmarillion\u201d dragons like Glorund.\n\nThe bad guys in Tolkien\u2019s writings at this stage tend to have major heights for their strongholds, including the Necromancer\u2019s castle and Sauron\u2019s tower in the Luthien myth (Sauron is named Thu at early stages). This idea survived into the Lord of the Rings with the Dark Tower in Mordor and Saruman\u2019s Orthanc in Isengard. In the case of dragon's, they are depicted as more of an animalistic or natural power, so they are in prominent natural landmarks like mountains instead of built landmarks such as towers.\n\nSo the dragon lair needs to be prominent, and no height is more prominent than a volcano. Was the Lonely Mountain a volcano or inspired by a real-life volcano? One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is Tolkien\u2019s own [drawings](_URL_0_), which depicts a noticeable crater at the top. \n\nWhat kind of mountain has a crater, unless it is a volcano? Case solved, right? Well, maybe not. In the published text no crater is mentioned.\n\n >  Only its high peak could they see in clear weather, and they seldom looked at it, for it was ominous and dreary even in the light of morning.\n\n >  There far away was the Lonely Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale.\n\nSo what conclusions can we draw? John D. Rateliff has a good point to make regarding the geography of Tolkien\u2019s world. Tolkien was writing a legendary history.\n\n >  The \u2018legendary\u2019 part is worth stressing, since Tolkien was writing fantasy, not pseudo-history or pseudoscience\u2026 This liberates him from any obligation to make the details of his setting consistent with \u2018what geologists may say or surmise\u2019\u2026\n\nSo what is the decisive answer? How much of the Lonely Mountain was inspired by mythical or real-life places? \n\n26% of it, of course. ;) \n\nThere is a huge wealth of great material regarding Tolkien and his works, but in regards to this question I drew heavily upon John D. Rateliff\u2019s two-volume The History of the Hobbit.\n\n* Note: I don't recall the actual percentage Franzen says in his joke, but the actual number is irrelevant in regards to how much of a writer's work is \"imaginary\" or \"real\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/a/a3/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_The_Lonely_Mountain.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4jrj8n", "title": "Why does only Britain use a FPTP voting system in comparison to the rest of Europe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4jrj8n/why_does_only_britain_use_a_fptp_voting_system_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d39i1ge"], "score": [22], "text": ["PR systems are only meaningful with organized political parties.  The House of Commons is hundreds of years older than political parties in the modern sense, but once parties arose FPTP automatically fostered a two (dominant) party system for whom any move to PR was contrary to self-interest.  The constitutional provisions for lower parliamentary houses on the Continent are all far younger. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6qw8he", "title": "AMA: South Sulawesi, 1300-1800", "selftext": "A short introduction: I'm /u/PangeranDipanagara, this subreddit's most active Southeast Asia expert. I am not a professional historian, but I *have* had a deep interest in the history of Indonesian societies for some time. This is my first AMA, hope I don't mess it up and it turns out to be at least somewhat interesting. \n\nNote: Due to living on the other side of the earth as most of you folks, I will probably be asleep from around 11 AM EST to 7 PM EST. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want and I'll get to them in the morning (evening EST).\n\nE: Going to bed now. See you tomorrow!\n\nE: I'm back!\n\n---\n\nThe peninsula of [South Sulawesi](_URL_1_) is an oft-neglected corner of eastern Indonesia. After all, it is significantly smaller than West Virginia, its GDP is around that of Rhode Island, and it harbors no tourist magnets like neighboring Java or Bali. The only modicum of attention the area ever receives on this site is for having a gender system that seems peculiar to Western eyes, and [to which Redditors show an astonishing lack of respect.](_URL_0_)\n\nYet the peninsula has one of the most diverse histories in Indonesia. South Sulawesi's history is first and foremost a narrative of change. It was a time and place when simple rice-farming chiefdoms became, within just three hundred years, \"sophisticated, literate polities with a working knowledge of ballistics and the Galilean telescope.\" But on the darker side, it was also a time and place when the little peninsula exported as many slaves as the largest West African slave ports.\n\nSouth Sulawesi's history is also a tale of old customs standing their ground in the face of unremitting change. In this deeply Muslim land, \"third gender\" shamans blessed pilgrims to Mecca, the nobility regularly elected women as rulers, and the *I La Galigo*--a pre-Islamic epic that is one of the longest works of literature in the world, far longer than even the *Mahabharata*--was recited. And despite all that had changed between 1300 and 1800, people in the peninsula held by the values that glued their society together: *siriq* (self-worth) and *pesse* (sympathy).\n\nAnd South Sulawesi's history is finally a story of resistance and perseverance--a story of a great king asking the Dutch if they were \"of the opinion that God has reserved these islands, so removed from your nation, for your trade alone,\" a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.\n\nThis AMA is about that history.\n\n\n# A very brief history of Early Modern South Sulawesi\n\nTo help with any readers introduced to Sulawesi or Indonesian history for the first time, a very brief ( > 3000 character) synopsis of this AMA's topic. Gross generalizations will be unavoidable.\n\nMost of the kingdoms that mark South Sulawesi's Early Modern history emerged as agricultural chiefdoms focused on intensive rice-farming around 1300, though newer research is pushing up the dates into the 13th century. Many of these polities were probably loose confederations of villages; others had hereditary chiefs with claims to divine descent but with limited power. There was no writing and no bureaucracy to speak of.\n\nFrom the 15th century onward and increasingly in the 16th century, agricultural intensification and the growth of foreign commerce propelled the stratification and territorial expansion of chiefdoms. Writing was adopted around this time as well. By the mid-1500s most of the peninsula had been united by the kingdom of Gowa with its fertile rice fields, great foreign trade, and incipient bureaucracy.\n\nGowa completed its unification of South Sulawesi in the first decade of the 1600s with its formal adoption of Islam and its conquest of its neighbors under the justification of spreading the new faith. Supported by immense volumes of trade--its capital and main port was home to more than 100,000 people--Gowa then embarked on a rapid campaign of overseas expansion and created the largest maritime empire in eastern Indonesian history. Yet Gowa's hegemony was short-lived; in the Makassar War of 1666-1669, the Dutch East India Company allied with South Sulawesi rebels to shatter Gowa's power. \n\nThe leader of said rebels, Arung Palakka, indirectly ruled the entire peninsula as a most faithful ally of the Dutchmen until his death in 1696. His successor proved unable to carry on his legacy, and South Sulawesi's 18th-century history is marked by great wars as no kingdom proved able to gain dominance over the peninsula. Not even the Dutch--who maintained a few forts here and there following the Makassar War--could maintain control, and indeed the VOC (Dutch East India Company) steadily lost authority in the 18th century.\n\nBut the century was not all doom and gloom. Literacy seems to have expanded, although almost no research has been done on this. South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system. Some people went southeast and made regular contact with Australia; others went northwest and founded a long-lasting Sulawesi-derived dynasty in the heart of the Malay world.\n\nIn the year 1800, despite the wars and the slave trade, South Sulawesi remained a vibrant center of indigenous civilization. Indeed, it would remain so for a century *after* 1800 until 1906, when the Dutch colonial government extinguished the last independent kingdoms on the peninsula. But that is beyond the scope of our AMA.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6qw8he/ama_south_sulawesi_13001800/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl0f3fn", "dl0f64w", "dl0f8j0", "dl0fefl", "dl0h6dw", "dl0hjx9", "dl0if55", "dl0ijjp", "dl0iw87", "dl0lahc", "dl0m156", "dl0nr0m", "dl0obg8", "dl0pg54", "dl0s75n", "dl1i5te", "dl1jwei", "dl1svn7"], "score": [15, 12, 12, 22, 5, 8, 2, 8, 5, 8, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 7, 2, 4], "text": ["Thanks for doing this AMA.\n\nWhere are the archives and records for this period found? How extensive are they and what condition are they in?", "What was South Sulawesi's relationship with the Spice Islands and with the spice trade?", "What would a South Sulawesi army, say one of Gowa, look like? What type of weapons and armor are used, how much cavalry is there, how would the soldiers have become soldiers?", " > South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system. \n\nCould you expand on this?", "With the mass adoption of writing, has anyone done research/what do you know about the literature/literary culture? What sort of things were people writing, etc. What sort of oral tradition was there before that?\n\n", " > a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.\n\nWhat were the Sulawesi sailors doing in Australia?", "The Gowa state was centered in South Sulawesi, right? Were Palakka and his rebels coming from within the Sultanate, or were they sort of peripheral players (if that makes sense)? What instigated the rebellion, and how did Palakka/Dutch rule differ from the Sultanate?", "In your synopsis, you say that literacy seems to have expanded during the upheaval of the 18th century.\n\nWhat form does literature take in that century? Is it written in Arabic or Malay or another language? Was there a locally developed writing system, or would they be using an arabic ajami, or roman letters?", "What was 18th-Century South Sulawesian society like? Was it mostly rural, or were there urban centers? What were those urban centers like?  Were populations mostly coastal, or was there significant settlements in the interior? How \"deep\" would Dutch/Western culture have penetrated? ", "You mention that women could be elected as rulers. What do we know about gender roles outside the ruling class? Could women participate in activities like trade or were their economic activities limited to domestic production?", "A few questions about the slave trade: who were they selling, and who were they selling them to? Are there still coherent diaspora communities?", "You mention agricultural intensification in the 15th and 16th centuries. What crops were grown, and in what way did agriculture change in this period?", "Thanks for doing this!\n\n1) According to wikipedia, between the 15th to 19th centuries, South Sulawesi served as the gateway to the Maluku Islands. What do we know about relations between South Sulawesi and Maluku? Were they mostly economical/ focused on trade, or was there also cultural exchange taking place?\n\n2) Do we know of European reactions when encountering female rulers? For example regarding the Bugis ruler who led a revolt against the Dutch at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (which might have been perceived of as unusual in this region). ", "Do the people of Sulawesi have any record of large volcanic eruptions? How did something like the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, or the 1257 eruption of Samalas affect institutions and life in general on Sulawesi (or other large eruptions if those are outside your scope)?\n\n Do they have cultural traditions about how to respond to volcanoes and tsunamis? Could people farm that year? Did governments survive the crisis? Were their religious implications? Did the disruptions aid or disrupt Dutch or Portuguese imperialism?", "I am curious about the internal relations between different groups within Sulawesi. My understanding is that on much of the Indonesian islands a very complex dynamic emerged between the upland groups and coastal groups, like the Dayak and Banjar of Borneo. What sort of internal relations were there in Sulawesi?", "How did South Sulawesi's states relate to the other peninsulas of the Island? To the interior of the center? Looking at the geography of the Island I would assume a lot of transportation was by sea.", "Great post. My question is: what was the relationship between the Indonesian kingdoms in Sulawesi and the Siamese kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya or the Khmer kingdoms? Were there trading missions or diplomatic relations and envoys between Indonesia and the mainland Indochina? ", "This has been a super fascinating read, thanks. I know you've listed a lot of sources but are there any great introductory books on either South Sulawesi or South East Asian history in general that you would recommend for further reading?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cgkr3/til_the_bugis_people_of_indonesia_recognise_5/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sulawesi"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64eqwi", "title": "why is dental work separate from other medical treatment even in 'free' health systems?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64eqwi/eli5_why_is_dental_work_separate_from_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg1kohd", "dg1kpv2", "dg1m8q9", "dg1tl5e", "dg1zwjk", "dg21b5m", "dg228e5"], "score": [42, 18, 89, 6, 3, 5, 5], "text": ["Presumably because it's not life threatening. Here in the UK like you said all healthcare is free (apart from a nominal prescription charge for some) but that doesn't include dentistry, which you have to pay for, but is subsidised. Having said that children, pregnant women and unemployed people do get it for free. ", "I'm in the UK. The NHS does help out some with dental charges but it's not free, unless you get various means-tested benefits. Although it's undoubtedly still a good deal:\n\n >  There are three NHS charge bands:\n\n >  Band 1: \u00a320.60 covers an examination, diagnosis and advice. If necessary, it also includes X-rays, a scale and polish and planning for further treatment. \n\n >  Band 2: \u00a356.30 covers all treatment covered by Band 1, plus additional treatment, such as fillings, root canal treatment and removing teeth (extractions).\n\n >  Band 3: \u00a3244.30 covers all treatment covered by Bands 1 and 2, plus more complex procedures, such as crowns, dentures and bridges.\n\nAny further treatment in the same band or below is then free for the next two months.", "Back in the day, dentistry wasn't a medical profession. Dentists weren't doctors with degrees who went to school for 6 years and then apprenticed for another 6. Dentists were your local barber or blacksmith. Basically anyone who had the tools to pull a tooth from your head.\n\nBecause of that 'tradition', dentistry is a completely separate medical profession from everything else. A dentist is a D.D.S -- a medical doctor (cardiologist, dermatologist, endocrinologist, GP) is an M.D.\n\nAll of that carries over to insurance.\n\nOn a side note there are free health care system that include dentistry, like for example the health care system of Poland, where a visit to the dentist is covered under the free national health care.\n\nIn simplest terms it's insurance companies, capitalising on the traditional split of medicine and dentistry to find an excuse not to cover dental needs under a general health care plan so they can bill you for it separately.", "it's routine, which means you're going to do it anyway. there's nothing that needs to 'spur' a visit to the dentist. you need your teeth deeply cleaned at regular intervals, or your teeth will rot and fall out. yes, you need a checkup at regular intervals... but your typical checkup will result in a doctor spending a small amount of time with you and maybe he finds something that needs to be taken care of. probably not, though. it's much more common that a dentist will find a cavity. with that...\n\nit's predictable, which means people tend to have the same issues at similar intervals. pretty much everyone, with few exceptions, will need a cavity filled, a tooth pulled, and/or a root canal, every so often. compare that to emergency medical ailments, like appendicitis or tonsilitis. those are rare compared to, say, a wisdom tooth pulled... and those are some of the most common emergency ailments that need to be taken care of by medical professionals.\n\nit's expensive to deliver. not only do dentists have to sink in thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars into training, but they have a lot of regular expenses (cleaning solution, replacement heads and picks, office staff, computer systems, licensing... list goes on). not to mention a fair amount of overhead (all that stuff in your dentist's office is really expensive, i'm talking 5-7 figure machines). now, medical care is also expensive to deliver... but medical care can range from an hour of a doctor's time, to millions of dollars to perform multiple surgeries, maintain treatment, and keep you housed in a top-notch facility for months and months. not only that, but this kind of ailment does NOT happen to everybody. in fact, it's not even close. \n\ncombine all these factors and it simply makes no sense to insure. now, let's say you're not aware of how insurance works. insurance is a business by which people pay a regular fee in order to not have to worry about a big fee caused by some sort of emergency. cars, homes, and human bodies have insurance.\n\nso why doesn't your mouth have insurance that's fully covered? well, the reason is mainly because of the profit motive. insurance companies want to make money, so they're essentially betting on a healthy person living to 80 without any real complications. your typical healthy person will have a few health problems, then one serious health problem at the end of their life (which, in turn, kills them). this doesn't work very well with dental because of the reasons listed above.\n\ndental insurance is not that good of a bet because insurance, in itself, is expensive. insurance companies are very expensive to run, and that causes an added cost overall on your health care plan. on top of that, insurance companies want to make a profit. so, if all of dental care were insured, it would be prohibitively expensive to the average person. might as well just pay for the cleanings with some sort of subscription and deal with the cost of a root canal (which is not a $25,000 procedure and doesn't require a lengthy hospital stay... but is still expensive to deliver and routine enough to expect most people to deal with this in their lives.)\n\ncompare that to medical insurance where the company makes a bet that any given person will NOT have to have a $1 million surgery. so they charge each of them, say, $1000/yr. if 1 in 1000 have this $1 million surgery, then they break even. however, the insurance company determines that the ratio is far less than 1 in 1000.\n\nthis, in a nutshell, is why dental care insurance doesn't cover everything.\n\nhowever, your question was about socialized health care schemes, where we all dump some money into the health care scheme via our taxes and pay nothing up front for our care or insurance. this goes back to the 'prohibitively expensive' thing. for a government to offer free dental entirely, they would generally want to integrate it into their health insurance scheme. this, though, would result in a tax increase roughly the cost of dental insurance.\n\ntax increases are almost never popular. and the marginal benefit of a tax increase for dental care is quite low. might as well have people elect for the kind of dental care they want and not have to invest the resources to have the government take care of it.\n\nhope this helps.", "Certainly for the UK everyone here is wrong so far. Originally when the NHS was formed Dentistry was included. But due to the massive costs it incurred it was removed (mostly) a few years later. \n\nFrom Wikipedia 'Initially NHS dentistry was free at the time of use but charges to patients were introduced in 1951 and have been increased from time to time. Charges vary in different countries of the UK.' ", "Dentistry is its own profession, distinct from medicine, mainly for historical reasons. A Frenchman, Pierre Fauchard, is thought to have really got modern dentistry started back in 1728. That's over a century before doctors generally accepted that germs cause disease, for example.\n\nAs for why it's not funded, it's down to what the government decided. In the UK specifically, changes made in 2006 led to the government not adequately paying dentists for NHS work. In particular those changes mean that a dentist would receive no more money for a 'course of treatment' involving several fillings than they would for a single filling. This has resulted in many former NHS dentists switching to only treat patients on a private basis.", "Something to note is that along with all the other reasons, dentists lobby to make ensure that dentistry isn't covered. Dentists make a lot of money because dentistry isn't covered under universal health care. \n\nWhen negotiating a price between seller(dentist) and buyer(person with tooth problems) the dentist has a lot of power and can charge a price favourable to them. If we were to replace the buyer with the government instead of the person with tooth problems, the buyer gets a lot more negotiating power than if it were an individual person."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1m15fv", "title": "Are there any pieces by well-known artists that are generally considered \"bad\"?", "selftext": "I apologize if this isn't the proper subreddit to discuss art/music history.\n\nToday, I read [this article](_URL_0_) about the Van Gogh Museum identifying a new painting by Van Gogh, and it made me wonder: Are there any world famous artists (be they painters, composers, sculptors) who have pieces that are widely considered as \"bad\" or at least much worse than the rest of their work? It seems like all pieces in an artist's body of work typically receive some sort of acclaim regardless of their actual artistic merits. I understand this is a highly subjective question, but I assume that there would be some examples that showed a lesser execution or failed attempt at a derivative style.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m15fv/are_there_any_pieces_by_wellknown_artists_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc4u7k1", "cc4uq07", "cc4vpl7", "cc4vykd", "cc4x21b", "cc5f4ok"], "score": [81, 24, 7, 6, 39, 4], "text": ["[Wellington's Victory](_URL_0_), written by Ludwig van Beethoven, could count. Written to commemorate the Duke of Wellington's Victory over Joseph Bonaparte (NOT his more famous victory over a different Bonaparte), it was pretty popular in the aftermath of the victory but also drew criticism for being...well...not very good, certainly not as good as the rest of his music. It did make him boatloads of money though.\n\n\nAlthough, responding to criticism, Beethoven apparently said \"What I shit is better than anything you could ever think up!\"", "Rothko's early expressionist work, such as this; _URL_1_\n\nThat's the kind of trend I've found with artists regarding this topic. Bad at style X and move into style Y and are much better.\n\nMy source is the Simon Schama doc regarding Rothko. Not sure in which part, but it's there. _URL_0_", "I think that's fairly common although such pieces by for instance painters, of course still sell at good prices (but no where near their more famous works). Van Gogh is said to have drawn/painted more than 2,000 pieces and most of them still exist, yet, his early works sell for a fraction of his much more famous late paintings. I remember an auction a few years back of a dozen or so early Van Gogh sketches. They sold for between 1,000 and 5,000 US dollars a piece if I remember correctly. That also means, that for the price of the average living room sofa, you can actually acquire an original Van Gogh. It's not going to be Der Stern Nacht or something with sunflowers though :)", "I can think of a few examples in literature. \n\nJean-Paul Sartre wrote a trilogy of novels called \"Les Chemins de la libert\u00e9\" that have received little to no attention by scholars. They're frankly as odd to read as Ayn Rand, in that he's trying really hard to illustrate a philosophical theory in fiction. It's hard to say something is \"bad\" but this could very well fit the bill.\n\nNabokov translated Pushkin's Eugene Onegin in the 1960s, a translation that was generally considered to be terrible. Nabokov seemed to believe that the book could not be translated, so he made an English version that was clunky, non-rhyming, and obscure. \n\nFlaubert wrote a sort-of poem called \"The Temptation of Saint Anthony\" that, after he finished the first version, his friends told him to throw in the fire. He continued to work on it for the rest of his life, but it never really took off the way any of his other work did. ", "I think it's important to differentiate between an artist's juvenilia, which can often be mediocre, and a mature work that's just not up to snuff. Wellington's Victory is an example of the latter, as has been suggested.\n\nThere are a number of instances where a composer's early operas are seen as clunky or otherwise not very good- both Verdi and Wagner are examples of this, with  the former's Oberto and Un giorno di regno being widely regarded as promising but uneven, and the latter's Die Feen never being performed and Das Liebesverbot being withdrawn after one performance. \n\nIn literature, the poetry of James Joyce is regarded as competent but not worth much acclaim, and his play Exiles is regarded by some as a failure. Joyce's first book of poetry isn't quite juvenilia but also not mature either, and Exiles, while mature, is early. ", "Do modern musicians count? There are several artists who are widely considered to have declined in quality over time. Johnny Cash's work in the years before *American Recordings* was released are generally agreed to be bad. Bob Dylan's *Knocked Out Loaded* and *Down in the Groove* were very poorly received."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/arts/design/new-van-gogh-painting-discovered-in-amsterdam.html?_r=0"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington's_Victory"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ8AIIAgYpg", "http://www.galleryintell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Rothko-3.png"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5lpmll", "title": "How much of the world's air is trapped in bubble wrap?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5lpmll/how_much_of_the_worlds_air_is_trapped_in_bubble/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbxo64k"], "score": [51], "text": ["Order-of-magnitude calculation, since it's hard to find the relevant facts on this. \n\n* [UPS and FedEx collectively deliver 6.5 billion packages a year](_URL_1_) as of 2012. Let's double that to account for other carriers and inflation.\n* Assume each package has about 100 bubbles on average and that each bubble has 1cm x 1cm x 0.2cm = 0.2cm^3 of air.\n* Assume that bubbles pop after a year. (Though from personal experience, bubbles are popped immediately after opening the package.)\n\nThen there are 2.6 * 10^10 cm^3 of air trapped inside the bubbles. The [mass of the atmosphere](_URL_0_) is about 5.15 * 10^18 kg, so dividing by the density of air, this is about 4 * 10^24 cm^(3), so the percent of the atmosphere trapped in bubble wrap is about 0.00000000000065%."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth", "http://www.cnbc.com/id/46071532"]]}
{"q_id": "dudihe", "title": "In the new Netflix movie \"The King\" about King Henry V of England and the battle of Agincourt, would the Dauphin of France have really died the way he did?", "selftext": "I'm not real knowledgeable on this part of the world at this time in history, so I looked it up and the Dauphin wasn't even at the battle, so I know the movie is making stuff up here. BUT, *would* a king simply let the common soldiers basically execute the prince of France? Is it in all cases that royalty and nobility were taken prisoner until they could be ransomed off or could a scenario like that of \"The King\" have realistically happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dudihe/in_the_new_netflix_movie_the_king_about_king/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f77ka9c"], "score": [37], "text": ["I suppose you could say that there are two separate questions here, one being whether common soldiers might be permitted to kill high nobility on the battlefield, and the other being whether or not they would be allowed to kill a member of the high nobility after the battle had ended, which is essentially the situation at the end of the movie. The need to answer both questions comes from a number of different sources describing Agincourt as the battle where chivalry died in the mud, suggesting that it was substantially different from all previous battles and that the killing of greater nobles was something unusual at the time.\n\nWhile it's certainly true that the ideal was to take knights and other nobles for ransom, both out of a sense of a shared \"club\", if you will, and out of financial incentives, this hides a very pragmatic face of battle. If it was impractical to take someone prisoner, either because they were actively fighting you or because your army was outnumbered, then you simply killed them, whether they were a peasant or a king. There were also some special occasions, such as when fighting traitors or against a bitter enemy, when a king might declare that no prisoners were to be taken. Both the French and English declared this at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt and, although many high ranking prisoners were taken during the late stages of all three battles, on the whole the death toll among the nobility could be quite shocking. \n\nAs an example at the Battle of Crecy, king John of Bohemia, the duke of Lorraine and the counts and lords of Alencon, Flanders, Blois, Harcourt, Salm, Rosenberg and Saint-Venant were all killed, in addition to perhaps as many as two thousand lesser lords and knights. More interestingly, we know of at least four prisoners who were killed after Crecy during a dispute over who had captured them. The details aren't provided beyond that but the source, Colins de Beaumont, was quite possibly a witness to the battle and certainly seems to have helped identify the French dead afterwards.\n\nAt Agincourt specifically, three dukes, five counts and nearly 100 other great lords in addition to somewhere around 3600-4000 other knights and men-at-arms. All but two of the major French commanders were killed, along with almost 60% of France's bailiffs and seneschals (officials in charge of Royal justice and administration in a region). The male line of entire families were wiped out, and the region of Picardy was almost devoid of knights and men-at-arms for a generation. This was seen as a great tragedy, but not as something unusual except in scale. After all, large numbers of the great princes (dukes, counts, kings, etc) had been killed at Crecy and Poitiers, so this was nothing new.\n\nWhile we can never be certain how many of these great lords were killed by common soldiers, there was no outrage over the fact that many were, in fact, killed by lower class men. It was a normal part of warfare for the period, and any lament was less for their deaths than for the lack of a chance for higher ranked men to have killed them and gained honour for themselves.\n\nComing back around to the Dauphin and *The King*, had the Dauphin been at Agincourt (he wasn't) and had he shown himself off to Henry after the French had been defeat, Henry wouldn't have ordered his men, whether common or noble, to kill him. The Dauphin was a far too useful political and financial catch to waste by slaughtering him. Even when Henry V ordered the killing of the prisoners (of whom ~700-900 out of 1400-1600 were killed, with ~700 survivors), he deliberately excepted the highest ranking men, such as Arthur de Richemont, the Duke of Brittany. Not only would killing them deny Henry a rich ransom (it was normal for the king to \"buy\" the highest ranked nobles from their captors), but by keeping them prisoner he could minimise the participation of their lands in future conflict. Without their lord to recruit troops, it would be harder to draw men from those counties and dukedoms. \n\nCapturing the Dauphin, the heir to the throne, would have been even better. Not only would he have been worth a king's ransom (almost literally), but by having him prisoner Henry would be removing a moderating factor in the civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and gaining an even greater ability to play each side against the other as he strove to become king of France.\n\n**Recommended Reading**\n\n* *Agincourt: A New History*, by Anne Curry\n* *The Hundred Years' War Volume 4*, by Jonathan Sumption"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5sxvxx", "title": "what specifically were white people afraid would happen if they used the same water fountain as black people?", "selftext": "It makes sense that schools were separated, because there were learned social differences, but why water fountains? Did they simply perceive other races to have worse hygiene? Or were they superstitious about race-specific diseases?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sxvxx/eli5_what_specifically_were_white_people_afraid/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddiuv1i", "ddiuxej", "ddj0hk1", "ddj1c8d", "ddj4k2y", "ddj9j9f", "ddkeqra"], "score": [21, 2, 6, 4, 9, 2, 2], "text": ["White supremacists had everyone believing that black folks were inferior,  disgusting,  half  - beast people.  In their minds,  drinking  from a black persons water fountain was like sticking your head in  a horse trough. ", "The chief complaint from whitey from using the same public facilities of blacks was contracting the diseases that the black community shared. While the segregation of the races was indeed racist, the fear of contracting diseases through sharing facilities was a real possibility. This is because medical care in the white community was superior to medical care in the black community. The discrepancy in medical care quality was a direct result of segregation, it was a reality that yielded more disease among the black American community members. So, while segregated facilities was racist, it was also practical.", "It was not fear, or superstition that created these policies, (though certainly some individuals actually believed this) it was simply a means to control and assert dominance over another group. \n\nThere were many similar myths propagated to support slavery as well, they were lies told to justify the exploitation of others.", "They considered (and many people still consider) black people to be sub-human, so sharing anything with black people was seen as sharing with animals.", "Would you drink from a dog bowl? \n\nThat's closer to the mentality. When you consider drinking from a dogs bowl there is an instant gut reaction of disgust. ", "Whites were likely \"afraid\" of drinking from 'Coloreds Only' water fountains in the same way a man might be \"afraid\" of using the women's restroom.", "The American Civil War ended chattel slavery as an institution in the United States, but the attitude of \"Negroes are animals\" didn't die with the Confederacy. Lawmakers in the Southern states enacted Black Codes, which outlined what rights black people didn't have (e.g. the right to bear witness against a white person) to keep them as oppressed as possible. That prompted Congress to write and ratify the 14th Amendment, including the Equal Protection Clause that stated every citizen (the 13th Amendment gave the Southern slaves citizenship) had the equal protection of the law.\n\nCreative interpretation of that clause led to the Supreme Court ruling (in the 1896 case *Plessy v. Ferguson*) that racially-segregated facilities were legal as long as they were \"Separate but equal.\" In theory, the States had to fund white and black colleges, for example, equally. In practice, black schools were terrible in every way. Every place of business had to decide whether they would serve white people or black people, with the latter always getting the short end of the stick.\n\nIt was a way to keep black people in their own squalid ghettos, to remind them that Whitey was better than them in every way. Using the same facilities, like water fountains, would send the message that there was no difference between them and their utterly racist attitudes were hypocritical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1zyljk", "title": "Did the Polish Army really fight on horses against tanks in WW2?", "selftext": "I've heard several stories here. My background is Polish so I have a bit of a interest into Polish history.\n\nI've talked to some old timers about the war and many would say the Polish Army fought the tanks on Horseback, now this may seem ridiculous and maybe somewhat brave, but more or less stupid. I heard from family sources that this horse vs tank, was nothing more than German propaganda in Italy.\n\nI understand Poland was not high in tech during the time, and I could understand using a cavalry to split up infantry, but to ride against a tank? I find that utter nonsense.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zyljk/did_the_polish_army_really_fight_on_horses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfy5mc3"], "score": [585], "text": ["This is actually a really interesting story.\n\nThe Polish Cavalry was a very high-prestige part of Polish armed forces, and had a lot of history behind them - Napoleon's lancers, Winged Hussars and so on. By 1939, the Polish cavalry were, as mirozi said, highly mobile infantry units really, but were used in the same way as NATO planned to use jeep squads in the event of a Soviet invasion - set up an ambush with anti-tank weapons, knock out a couple of tanks, retire to the next position quickly and set up another ambush etc. \n\nThere were even examples of the Polish cavalry divisions bringing the Panzers to a dead stop, for example the [Battle of Mokra](_URL_0_).\n\nThe \"charging tanks with cavalry\" myth seems to have originated in a specific incident on the first day of the invasion, the [Skirmish at Krojanty](_URL_1_).\n\nAlthough trained as mobile anti-tank/dragoon units, Polish cavalry retained the sabre, just in case. On 1 September, the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans were covering a retreat when they spotted a unit of German infantry resting in a clearing. Colonel Mastalerz decided to take them by surprise and ordered a sabre charge of about 250 cavalry. The charge was successful and the German infantry - who can't have been expecting cavalry with sabres charging them - dispersed into the trees with heavy casualties.\n\nAt that point, some German armoured cars appeared and laid into the cavalry, causing some casualties (including Col. Mastelarz) and driving the rest off.\n\nIn the aftermath, the German casualties were cleared away and the Poles left, and some neutral war correspondents were invited to come and see, and told that the cavalrymen had been killed while charging at tanks with sabres.\n\nThe story circulated rapidly, not only among the German and sympathetic presses (to whom the moral of the story was supposed to be *Look how stupid and backward the Poles are - we're doing them a favour by bringing German civilisation*), but also in the British and French presses, who swallowed the story whole, but there the moral was *Look how suicidally brave the romantic Poles are - isn't this just the sort of people we should be supporting*.\n\nThen, after the war, the Communist Polish government, eager to seize on anything that would make the pre-war government look bad, perpetuated the myth, with the moral now being *Look what the old capitalist government did for you - forcing soldiers to face Panzers with sword and lance!*\n\nIn other words the same, fake, story has been repeated by fascist, democratic and communist sources each to serve their own narrative of the invasion if 1939.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_mokra", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirmish_of_Krojanty"]]}
{"q_id": "5br6q5", "title": "Did the Warring States of China speak compatible languages? What about the Three Kingdoms, or the Northern and Southern dynasties? Are the modern Chinese language areas related to previous dynastic borders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5br6q5/did_the_warring_states_of_china_speak_compatible/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9rhkur", "d9s20hw", "d9snayg"], "score": [26, 4, 5], "text": ["The victor of the Warring States, Qin Shi Huang, was famous for being the person who truly \"unified\" China by dictating that the whole country must use the same width gauge for carts (and therefore roads), and the same script for language. This enabled the centralised bureaucracy which he envisioned. Naturally, that means that before him, each region would speak their individual dialects. Note that he unified the *writing*, not the spoken language, which is why, even to this day, China is host to dozens of different dialects which all share the same writing system, but are almost as different as Western European languages are from each other. The most familiar example would be Cantonese, which is as understandable to a speaker of Mandarin as French would be to a speaker of English, even while the writing is 95% identical. \n\nTo anticipate follow-up questions, the Qin dynasty script is almost still readable by modern Chinese speakers. They look [archaic and weird](_URL_1_) compared with [modern script](_URL_0_) (left), but one could still make out some characters that have survived 2500 years nearly unchanged. \n\nIt follows that during the Three Kingdoms and Northern and Southern States periods, the script was already unified, and therefore any piece of writing could be read across the length and breadth of China. I am not completely familiar with the spoken dialect during those times, but there would be a dominant \u5b98\u8a71 (guan hua, \"official speak\") spoken in the capital and by officials, which changed with the dynasties who liked to move the capital around a lot. Modern Mandarin is technically a northern dialect favoured by the Manchus of the last dynasty, Qing. \n\nSorry if this is a rambling answer, since I'm not specifically a linguistic expert, but have studied Chinese history a fair deal and pieced together this reply from bits and pieces of what I know. ", "During the Warring States the large southern state of Chu spoke a non-sinic language. (_URL_0_) The other Zhou states spoke a form of Chinese with no obvious dialectical differences. I don't know about later dynasties but I assume that in the Northern and Southern dynasties the north received influences from Steppe languages and the literate elites of the South spoke (good, proper) Chinese. ", "I think you'll find this article interesting:\n\n\"Vernacular Languages in the Medieval Jiankang Empire\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt goes into the different spoken Sinitic languages of the Southern Dynasties:\n\nThe most prestigious was that spoken by the literate elite at the capital, Jiankang, which descended from the language spoken around 4th century Luoyang and had been carried south by the elite families fleeing the chaos of that era. This was consider by them as the proper way to speak. By the end of the Northern and Southern period this language/dialect had apparently diverged sufficiently from that in the north that northerners could be mocked for their uncivilized speech:\n\n\"At  that  time  among  Ru  scholars  who  had  come  from  the  north  there  was  Cui  Ling\u2019en,  Sun  Xiang,  and  Jiang  Xian;  they  all  assembled disciples and gave lectures, but their nunciation and phrases were crude and clumsy; only Guang\u2019s speech and arguments were pure and *ya*, not like a northern \nperson.\"\n\nThe northerners didn't have much good to say about the southerners either:\n\n\"Although Qin urvivors and Han convicts mixed in using some civilized speech,  nonetheless  the  difficult  languages  of  Min  and  Chu  cannot  be  changed\"\n\n\"The  officials  of  the  central  plains  exclaim  that  Jiangdong  people  (i.e., the southerners)  are  all  acting  like  badgers,  and  said  they  were  akin  to  foxes  and  badgers.  As  for  the  Ba,  Shu,  Man,  Liao,  Xi,  Li,  Chu,  and  Yue  [peoples]:  their  languages  are  as  dissimilar  as  the  sounds  of  birds  and  the  cries  of  fowl,  their  preferences all as different as those of monkeys, snakes, fish, and turtles.\"\n\nWu language originated as a blend of Sinitic and the native languages of the Wu and Yue states of the Spring and Autumn era. This was the native speech of the Jiangdong era, including the native southern elites, and was the language spoken at the Wu court during the Three Kingdoms era (the Sun clan were themselves natives of Wu) As such it also enjoyed a certain prestige.\n\nAnother spoken language was that of Chu (here Chu is used in a late Warring State sense, i.e. the Huai region) As quoted above it was considered by northerners as quite barbaric and bird-like, possibly due to having more tones than northern languages. To them this was a language of country bumpkins, but these bumpkins included most of the soldiers and generals in the South's Northern Headquarters army, including the founders of the Liu Song and Southern Qi dynasties.\n\nThere were many other dialects and languages as well, but evidence these are much more slim"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Chenzihmyon_typefaces.svg/1280px-Chenzihmyon_typefaces.svg.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script#/media/File:XiaozhuanQinquan_sized.jpg"], ["https://www.umass.edu/wsp/resources/chu/lexicon.html"], ["http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp250_jiankang_empire.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "tpjp7", "title": "Before there was written language or verbal communication, how did humans initiate breeding? Did they have to 'attract' another mate by doing something?", "selftext": "And by attract, I'm talking about doing something unique like most animals do in nature today. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tpjp7/before_there_was_written_language_or_verbal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4onc0x"], "score": [2], "text": ["Not sure if this helps, but I learned in a biological prehistory class that most Paleolithic (beginning of Stone Age) societies are thought to be hunter-gathering societies based on fossil record. We do know that these kinds of societies often have egalitarian social structures, so early humans may have been at the very least a non-hierarchical society. \n\nSince we're talking pre-oral communication, primates are point of interest in answering your question about attracting mates. Combining a loose form of egalitarianism with what we know about primate mating behaviors,  I'd say that our use of mating behaviors may have been something similar to [Bonobo great apes](_URL_0_), while attracting mates had a lot to do with one's perceived ability to provide and protect. \n\nThanks for piquing my interest! I'm interested to see what more knowledgeable individuals write."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior"]]}
{"q_id": "5v3x80", "title": "Does Princeton's PEAR carry any validity in the scientific community?", "selftext": "More specifically, I'm wondering about this article right here: _URL_0_\n\nIt's a very interesting read.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5v3x80/does_princetons_pear_carry_any_validity_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddzs8ti", "de0093w"], "score": [6, 3], "text": ["I have only briefly skimmed the article.  From what I gather, they had a mechanism which dropped balls in such a way that their distribution roughly aproximates a normal (gaussian) distribution.  They asked the question whether observers could psychically influence the direction of the distribution of the balls (e.g., more fall to the left or right), just by observing them fall and having the intention that the balls fall one way or the other.  \n\nThe scientific consensus is that psychic abilities do not exist.  \n\nIt is possible they followed 'questionable research practices' (QRPs) in order to achieve their conclusions, such as p-hacking.   \n\nA few things that jump out at me - they report a p value of .001, which is usually considered significant.  However, it was a one-tailed test, instead of the usual two-tailed test. Reporting a one-tailed, instead of a two-tailed test might be a sign of QRPs. So the p value may actually have been .002, which isn't always accepted as 'significant'. \n\nThey also split up their data according to whether their observers were' succesful or not - a big no no. \n\nFinally, look at the histogram on page 166 - they don't even begin to look like normal distributions, suggesting that a lot more data collection would be needed before any meaningful conclusions could be made. \n\nFinally relying on p values comes with problems about what conclusions you can actually draw,and there is now a movement away from them. \n", "There are some massive methodological flaws in this study:\n\n- First of all they have no validation of their machine. They claim the the distributions it produces should show a normal curve, but provide no evidence of how they ensured that or external validation of this machine.\n\n- Second of all as far as I can see they did not validate how they measured participant intention at all, they simply sat people down and asked them to manipulate the results however they could. The fact that 4/25 claimed the distribution followed their willful attempts is pretty much meaningless hindsight bias.\n\nI guess I could go on, but while it was a fun topic I think there is a risk that people get swept up in the technical sounding language rather than applying a scientific review"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.princeton.edu/~pear/pdfs/1988-operator-related-anomalies-rmc.pdf"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "63z5p3", "title": "my daughter asked me what condensation is, i tried i explaining but she didn't understand. i need a genuine eli5 on what condensation is.", "selftext": "I tried explaining*  \n\nThank you all for your assistance, I think I have enough now to help with my explanation. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63z5p3/eli5_my_daughter_asked_me_what_condensation_is_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfy4kae", "dfy4lxj", "dfy61n6", "dfy6jzr", "dfyelj0", "dfyhn1w", "dfyy7s8"], "score": [313, 3, 23, 3, 7, 574, 2], "text": ["There's lots of water that hangs out in the air. It's very spread out and in very, very small little bits. Some stuff is really good at attracting these little bits of water and collecting them. One thing that does this is a surface that's really cold, like a chilly glass.\n\nWater has an easier time of hanging out in the air when it's warmer, so when the chilly glass makes the air around it colder, the water in the air has a hard time staying in the air and sticks to the glass instead.", "Molecules have some electro-magnetic charges, so they are kind of sticky to each other.  \nIf it's too hot, the molecules are moving toe fast and don't stick together, that's a gas.  \nIf it's cool enough, the molecules move slowly enough that they stick together forming a liquid.  \nCondensation is when fast moving hot molecules are slowed down enough to stick together and become a liquid.", "You can find water in the air. It's called humidity or moisture.\n\n**\"BUT WATER IS A LIQUID!!\"** Kinda, water prefers to be in the liquid state but a small percentage goes to the air, this percentage depends mostly on the temperature. Hot environment can hold more water in the air and Cold ones don't hold up to as much water. \n\n**Are you serious?! This happens?**\" Yes. Actually how to clothes dry up in the sun? The shirts don't heat up to 100\u00baC / 212\u00baF. The sun just heats up the air around the shirt and the water mixes up with the air. Removing it from the shirt to the air.\n\n**WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH CONDENSATION?!\"** Well, hot environment hold more water than cold ones. So what happens when he pass from hot air to cold air? Well, the cold air can't hold up as much water and the water starts to leave the air and forms droplets.\n\nUsually this happens in walls or cold surfaces like Mirrors or windows because the hot air is touching there and getting colder. \n\nAny doubts or further explanation PM me, I'm a chem engineer so I'm at ease with the matter.\n\nEDIT: Forgot the \"r\" in shirt.......... sorry", "You could maybe show her if you have a kettle and boil it next to a window or mirror or another surface it will condense onto.", "Water is made up of tiny little pieces called molecules, and when those molecules are warm and excited they dance so hard that they fly up into the air. It\u2019s like an invisible dance party happening all around us. But if those excited, dancing molecules become cold by, for example, touching a cold window, they stop dancing and grab onto each other like people do when they get cold. They become liquid water again until they warm up, let go of each other, and dance up into the air again.", "This is something I did with my 5 year old daughter:\n\nWe took an ice cube tray and filled it with water. We put in in the freezer and talked about how it was going to get cold, and I asked her what she thought would happen.\n\nThen we took the ice out and put it in a pan on the stove. We talked about how it was going to warm up, and I asked what she thought would happen.\n\nWhen it was all liquid, we talked about how it was still getting warmer. What will happen next.\n\nAnd when the pan was dry, we talked about where the water went.\n\nA few days later she is asking what are clouds. So we talked about where the water in the pot had gone. I asked her what she thought would happen when the water cooled down.\n\nShe said \"it will be a liquid again,\" and just then it started raining. So I asked her what she thought would happen if it got really cold. Ice, snow.\n\nHaving a curious kid is fun.", "Instead of explaining why not show her? do an experiment together and explain what's happening as you progress, it'll be fun and much easier to understand, and remember, than just explaining it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6gj2ma", "title": "could someone medically unable to feel pain have surgery done without anaethesia?", "selftext": "For instance, if a person with total CIPA needed major heart surgery. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gj2ma/eli5_could_someone_medically_unable_to_feel_pain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diqno14", "diqqcq3", "diqquqs", "dir6uai"], "score": [25, 20, 11, 2], "text": ["Nah b/c what if they start to crash and need to be intubated. They will still freak out whether it hurts or not ", "no. people who can't feel pain can usually still feel pressure and vibration (they are different nerve fiber types), which are incredibly uncomfortable sensations during surgery. also the reasons listed by others. ", "Some limited, non-invasive surgery sure. However, general anaesthesia is not a pain killer, it is a consciousness killer.\n\nGeneral anaesthetics have an extreme depressing effect on the central nervous system, heart, and other organs. Most are also powerful muscle relaxants.\n\nDifferent general anaesthetics can be used to alter heart rate, heart rhythm, and contraction strength in order to suit the patient's health and the operation that is being performed.\n\nGeneral anaesthetics also block muscular reflexes and other autonamous responses that may complicate surgery.", "Anyone could have surgery done without anesthesia. It would just be a disaster because they wouldn't be able to stay still. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "j2clb", "title": "[kinda old] what was carmaggedon?", "selftext": "Is it still going on? All I know is a freeway was closed.\n\nEDIT: I love this subreddit", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2clb/kinda_old_what_was_carmaggedon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c28k0lq", "c28k0ui", "c28k1aa", "c28k2ah", "c28ko6b", "c28kpav", "c28oipo"], "score": [34, 15, 2, 4, 28, 22, 2], "text": ["The busiest highway in the US was shut down for a short period of time for renovations, causing a ton of media outlets to nickname it \"carmaggedon\", seeing as the huge amounts of traffic that was normally present on the freeway would now be even more congested on detour routes. It's funny.\n\n[Here's a helpful wikipedia blurb.](_URL_0_)", "Major freeway in Los Angeles (connecting road systems of northern and southern LA) was closed for a weekend while they demolished an overpass. Celebrities made an announcements on Twitter and radio urging people to stay at home. People paid attention, the crew worked around the clock and finished almost ten hours early, and catastrophe was avoided", "One of the busiest freeways in LA (possibly the country/world) was closed for 2.5 days, creating traffic problems.\n\nGov't entities were telling celebrities who lived in LA to tweet about it and try to get the word out so people could plan ahead and try to keep traffic to a minimum during the shutdown.\n\nI never heard anything about it after it happened (I live in WV, USA) so I'm not sure how it all turned out.", "There was also a computer game where the aim was to run people over. I think it was in Germany where they made the producer replace the people with dinosaurs.", "carmaggedon is old, but it's a very good video game :P (although sadly i dont think thats what you meant)", "I live in Los Angeles so I have first hand experience about what went on. Around 2 weeks ago, they closed the 405 Freeway for construction. Since it is one of the busiest, most traffic infested freeways in the country, the news stations hyped it up that because of its closing, there would be tremendous amounts of traffic spilling onto the other freeways (the 5, 605, 110, etc.) The news stations even claimed traffic would be backed up to the Mexican border. Basically it would be the end of the world as we know it (you know, with explosions and stuff). Then the day came when they shut down the freeway for construction. And nothing happened. Nobody went out, because City officials urged people to stay off the freeway, ride bikes, use public transportation or simply just stay inside. And everybody did. Due to the people simply cooperating, there was no \"Carmageddon\" as the media hyped. Instead the news stations looked silly and tried to find other stories about how the people were affected by the dust/mess or noise of the construction. But the construction was very speedy and efficient, and at no risk to residents, as the workers finished ten hours ahead of their deadline. ", "This.  The greatest.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_405_\\(California\\)#Sepulveda_Pass_Improvements_Project"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZqlIq9oZs"]]}
{"q_id": "76wf0e", "title": "why does the pizza hot pocket have a different cardboard cooling sleeve than the ham and cheese hotpocket?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76wf0e/eli5_why_does_the_pizza_hot_pocket_have_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doh90wc", "dohar5e", "dohjlzm", "dohl1oz", "dohm4i9"], "score": [15, 7, 9, 2, 24], "text": ["I think you mean cooking sleeve, not cooling sleeve. Microwave ovens cook by causing the water in food to vibrate rapidly, warming it up. Different items require the microwaves to reflect in, while others do not need the same reflective material to cook properly. ", "My guess would be that they\u2019re made in different factories and the sleeves are sourced from different companies. ", " I didn't know anyone even used the sleeves to eat the hot pocket. Just bite off a top corner and a little bite near the bottom and blow in it to cool it down. \n\nI'm assuming each hot pocket has its own automated 'assembly' line including packaging. No use reprogramming or modifying one of their pizza packing machines until it breaks down or is due for servicing. \n\nLPT: Do not bite two holes in the top and blow to cool the hotpocket, unless you enjoy the sensation of your face melting. ", "I'll suggest also that it could be that they change the tooling/dies over the years but only as they wear out rather than all of it at once.  While a new design might be better in some manner, it's not worth it to replace all of the tooling because the old sleeves still work.\n\nThat said, they're not \"cooling\" sleeves but \"crisping\" sleeves.  They're designed to safely heat up fairly hot in the microwave and radiate heat.", "I got this. One I think you are mistaken it is actually a crisping sleeve. The ones that are different are between the croissant crust and the deli crust or what ever other crust there is. The croissant crust is taller (because croissants rise differently) so requires a different size crisping sleeve. \n\nSource- I may or may not have worked on this business. \n\nEdit- fixed typo "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mzqqk", "title": "why doesn't everyone pay a flat tax rate regardless of what they earn?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mzqqk/eli5_why_doesnt_everyone_pay_a_flat_tax_rate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvjiie5", "cvjimhy", "cvjk3bn", "cvjlukv"], "score": [8, 12, 13, 3], "text": ["Flat taxes are unfair to the poor, because the poor need to spend a greater percentage of their income on the basics of survival (i.e, food and shelter).\n\nThat's why the poor pay a lower marginal tax rate than the wealthy.  ", "A flat tax does more harm to people who earn less.\n\nHousing, food, clothing, transportation; you have to pay these, whether you make a huge amount of money or very little. However, people who make very little are spending almost all of it just covering these bare necessities, while someone who makes millions a year can comfortably provide for these needs with a fraction of a fraction of their income.\n\nIf you take 20% of the income of the poor person and 20% of the income of the rich person, the rich person barely feels it in comparison to the hardship it will cause the poor person. If you take 10% from the poor person and 40% from the rich person, you're still causing more hardship to the poor person, but much less than you were before.", "It is one approach that has been suggested. There are a few reasons that a \"progressive tax\" where the rich pay more is fairly common:\n\nSavings. Rich people tend to save more of their money and spend less of it (since the poor need to spend all of it to survive today). With a tax just on consumption (like a sales tax) this actually means that the rich pay less tax than the poor.\n\nSheltering. Rich people have more flexibility about how they earn money. They can get shares in a company in another country rather than a salary, so they can avoid paying tax on some of their income. Again this means the poor end up paying more tax. If all of the loopholes were closed this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but that's difficult to do when someone is willing to spend $1M to find ways around the tax laws.\n\nEfficiency. Why a percentage of income. If taxes are to provide services, why shouldn't everyone just pay an equal share (e.g. $10,000/yr)? If we do that, then taxes are limited to what lowest earning workers can afford to pay, which is pretty close to nothing. If I earn 10x what my husband does, and we insist we always split the costs, then I end up living and eating very cheaply, but if I contribute more then we both end up with a better house, car, and food.\n\nHappiness. $1,000 means more to someone making $10,000/yr than it does to someone making $100,000/yr. It's one thing to not be able to buy a new iPhone, but it's another to not be able to buy food. Starving leads to desperate acts like crime, or armed revolution, which ultimately make the rich unhappy also. Having the rich contribute more leads to an overall happier society.\n\nFairness. There is an idea, particularly in the US, but also in the UK, that people are morally entitled to their income, because being rich is a reflection of pure skill. However, in reality almost everyone\u2019s income results largely from factors beyond their control -- what country you're born in, the quality of schools, the road, water, sewer, and healthcare infrastructure, the legal and regulatory enforcement system, and their parent's income. Imagine being born in Tasmania 1,000 years ago, vs Rome 2,000 years ago, vs India today. Some of being rich is about hard work, but most of it is about luck.\n\nFrom a moral point of view, the rich aren't really entitled to all of that money, so society can fairly ask the wealthy to pay more. By having the rich pay more the society can improve and be happier. However, the society also wants to encourage hard work, so there needs to be some incentive to work hard and be productive so we can't make the tax rate so progressive that the rich lose all of their money. \n\nUltimately even with the progressive taxes, there are enough advantages to already being rich that the rich are making more money much faster than the poor (or even the average), so the existing tax rates probably aren't progressive enough.", "The relative effects on those who make less money are more severe.\n\nIf you make $12,000/year, you are officially just above the poverty line and might be able to just scrape by. You don't have money for luxuries, but you can probably keep yourself sheltered in some capacity (even if it's just a rented room). You probably can't save much. A tax burden of 10% would have a *huge* impact on your quality of life. Now, you're effectively making $10,800, which is below the poverty line. You went from just scraping by to maybe getting evicted. \n\nIf you're making 50,000/year, that same tax takes you down to 45,000. It might affect the car you buy or how many rooms your house/apartment has, but it's not affecting your ability to keep sheltered, clothed, and fed. \n\nIf you're making 100,000/year, that tax takes you down to 90,000. There is little impact on your lifestyle at this point. Maybe you can only buy a new car every three or four years, or you vacation in Hawaii instead of Europe. \n\nIf you're making 1,000,000/year, you pay 100,000 and take home 900,000. Maybe your yacht is slightly shorter? There's not much functional impact on you at all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "v6mzh", "title": "I was advised to include some squats in every weightlifting workout because, as the largest muscle group, it will cause the most testosterone release and will help my increases elsewhere... is there anything scientific to this?", "selftext": "I've heard muscles release horomones when stressed, which is how the body knows to repair them... but i know the testicles are the only location to produce testosterone... but maybe the horomones released by the muscles causes increased testosterone production in the testes?   I find this stuff fascinating and as an engineer never really got a chance to study it in depth.  I would love more than a yes or no.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v6mzh/i_was_advised_to_include_some_squats_in_every/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c51tmmh"], "score": [14], "text": ["You have numerous errors in your assumptions and in the advice you've received. Please [see this article](_URL_1_) which is one of many on the area of muscle hypertrophy (growth and enlargement).\n\n1. There is [little to no evidence](_URL_2_) supporting an evidence-based mechanism for muscled hypertrophy and protein synthesis. \" Increases in muscle protein synthesis after exercise occur independently of the systemic milieu, for example, growth hormone/testosterone concentrations.\"\n2. There is no evidence that testosterone has anything but a local effect after exercising large muscle masses. In other words, there is an insufficient concentration of testosterone in the blood to have any effect, if there were an effect.\n\nYou're being fed a bunch of bull, and not the good bull. In other words, building muscle mass takes work.\n\nIf you really are energetic, search \"testosterone muscle hypertrophy\" in _URL_0_ You can then laugh at those individuals with no science or medical background who think they are giving you solid advice. They are giving you non-evidence backed nonsense."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["pubmed.gov", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20959702", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22037010"]]}
{"q_id": "4hyt9w", "title": "why was late 18th and early to mid 19th century conventional warfare (such as the american revolution and the napoleonic wars) so civil and organized?", "selftext": "Wouldn't it make more sense to attack with a major charge while your enemy's troops were organizing? Why did they allow their soldiers to get to shot and why didn't the soldier simply draw on the enemy and return fire? This has always confused me. Why was it so formal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hyt9w/eli5_why_was_late_18th_and_early_to_mid_19th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2tj6id", "d2tl8zf", "d2tqjdq", "d2tzeri", "d2u1yr1", "d2u2olr"], "score": [31, 58, 14, 2, 10, 4], "text": ["Most of the guns at the time were inaccurate over anything but very short ranges so sporadic fire really wasn't that effective. Even a few shots at short range wouldn't deter a charging group instead a massed volley fire causing large casualties at the same time would be the only way of preventing a bayonet charge being successful. For that you need organised groups of troops, the counter to this is to get a massed charge to work again you need time to get everyone in a large group and pointed in the right direction a disorganised charge would be quickly cut down because the other troops would have time to reload.", "napoleon was actually not very civil with his tactics.\n\nWar was in many ways considered a game for rulers. Armies would push and move and claim territory without many men dying. often men would line up and enter the field  (lines were tactically the best for ranged warfare) and fire at each other until one side's discipline broke or their general could see they would not win today and withdraw. Injuries were regular, and so were deaths, but not hundreds a day like movies portray. there were rules of engagement and to break these rules for a victory was unsporting and would bring ridicule...there was no honour in stabbing a sleeping man. Ambushes were tactical and the fault of the enemy for not being prepared, and so not dishonorable. Even in retreat men should walk backwards and face the enemy for to run with your back turned was cowardly.\n\nnapoleon was considered ungentlemanly in the way he conducted his troops to attack baggage lines, strike from behind or at night, he also did not battle in lines, but in columns and destroy the enemy like a battering ram. \nNapoleon was not there to play games, he was there to win...and he was very good at it until the others caught up.\n\nEDIT: in the civil war era battle was disastrous and thousands of men died each battle, because this was also not a game of gentlemen like the hundred year war, or war of roses, or the trinity wars, or the 7 years war, much of the Spanish conquest and so on. The reason the these wars were organised was because strategic points are quite clear to both sides. \nIf there is a river crossing, one side is attacking and one is defending. when the attackers move, the defenders have time to react...often hours. There are no jeeps and APCs to move men, they move at walking speed. and when you know the rage of your opponents you can gather your troops outside this range into formations and march them forward.    ", "For a while war had been progressively more civil mostly because Kingdoms in Europe had all realized how much money they had been pumping into their armies. They also didn't hold the same views on Nationalism.\n\nThis all changed with Napoleon. Europe was a playground with everyone following the rules, enjoying their back and forth contests with their shiny toys. Games would be played and someone would inevitably lose but since everyone had expensive toys that they didn't want to get destroyed, people would surrender and restraint was shown. It was kinda like an elaborate game of Chess. Napoleon came in as a poor kid and decided he didn't like these rich kids in the playground. So he started playing with them but when it came down to the point where the rich kids would surrender, Napoleon grabbed their toys and stomped them to pieces. Without toys to play the games the kids just went to the sidelines to complain and figure out how to get the playground back in order.", "The Amrev was won by mostly unorganized contingents of Colony forces attacking supply routes and avoiding massive open field combat. \n\nAs mentioned, the rifles in the 18th century were pretty much useless beyond 50-100 yards unless it was rifled (which was rare).\n\nHowever the volley strategy is more than likely what I think your talking about, where volley lines would essentially try to fire all of their rifles at once, fall behind another line that would then do the same, and return to the front once they were able to reload.\n\nMelee combat was still about 70-85% of the battle, and most of the battles were relatively quick. Despite this, the sounds and sites of battle were grotesque, and having an untrained, undisciplined unit is a fast way to get yourself killed.\n\nThe introduction of the Gatling gun changed how officers had to plan for war going forward, large tight-packed groups lost their numbers advantage as soon as one man was able to dish out the lead that 100 still couldn't.", "I think this is largely an illusion caused by literacy rates.\n\nIn the Napoleonic era, most of the soldiers were illiterate.  Thus the surviving accounts we have are almost entirely from officers, who wanted to seem noble and gentlemanly and presented that viewpoint in their written accounts.  I suspect if we had surviving written accounts from the line soldiers, those accounts would not present warfare as so civil and organized.\n\nRight on the heels of the Napoleonic era we had the industrial revolution, and with greater emphasis on technical skills and greater economic surpluses to fund education, literacy skyrocketed.  By the mid nineteenth century when the American Civil War and the Crimean War were fought, a large percentage of common soldiers were literate and many did leave surviving accounts in the form of letters and diaries.  These accounts are full of the brutal details of terror, savagery, and ghastly wounds witnessed by the common soldiers, which doesn't seem gentlemanly at all.\n\nI don't think the 18th/early 19th century era was really more civil than later wars.  Its just the surviving accounts we have come from a different class of people with a very different viewpoint than the common soldier.", "The images of large blocks of infantry maneuvering before battle as if they were on a parade ground, and units marching in close formation while under fire, might look strange and overly formal to a modern observer, but there were practical reasons for doing things this way, it wasn't purely form or convention. \n\nAs regards your first question, \"Wouldn't it make more sense to attack with a major charge while your enemy's troops were organizing?\" Armies didn't just march up to each other, then organize, and then attack. Armies would get into battle order at considerable distance, with the main battle lines, supporting units, and reserves occupying the general positions they would be in for the attack.  Once they were in battle order they would then move forward into potential attacking range. So from a defenders perspective, by the time the enemy is close enough for me to attack, then they would also probably be well prepared and positioned to defend that attack. Most of the time it would be better to hold my position, especially if terrain gives me some advantage that I would lose by moving forwards. \n\nAs for infantry marching in rank and file while taking fire, there are a few things to note. First of all, infantry wouldn't spend the entire battle doing this, it was generally only the relatively brief period of time when an attacking unit was attempting to close the distance with the enemy and then charge with bayonets, forcing the enemy unit to break or withdraw from their position. They did it in close order like this because, although they were vulnerable, it was really the only reliable way to get a large body of men to close that distance, charge the enemy, and then actually win that charge. \n\nFor the charge to work effectively, physcially and psychologically, you need to have your people close together and acting as one unit rather than just as individuals. If they ran over the distance at full speed, then they would be winded and disorganized by the time they reach the enemy. If they moved forward as individuals, spaced out and taking cover, they'd probably move too slowly, \nwould be too inclined to just sit in cover, and if they did get close enough to charge, the charge would be totally ineffective. Marching blocks of troops closing with the enemy would take heavy losses, but the slow reloading speed of muskets, and the cover provided by the clouds of smoke they caused, gave you a good chance of still having an effective force by the time you reached the enemy. If the attack fails, or looks like it will fail, then you can attack again with fresh units, or call off the attack. They wouldn't stand at close range for extended periods just exchanging fire.\n\nAt longer range, infantry would be relatively safe from musket fire. If they were taking casualties from longer ranged weapons like artillery, it was quite common for commanders to take measures to reduce those casualties, such as having their men sit or lie down, or move behind cover if possible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2942ot", "title": "How do we know statistical sampling works? i.e. evidence for it", "selftext": "How do we go about proving that small part of a population even if it  is random  conveys information about the whole population \n\nedit: good points made thank you all!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2942ot/how_do_we_know_statistical_sampling_works_ie/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cihb4ns", "cihcr7a", "cihe9qi", "cihh54v"], "score": [2, 18, 6, 3], "text": ["Basic sampling works depending on some assumptions you have to you have to make about the population you wish to sample, whether they be people, cats or protons. If for instance, it can be reasonably assumed that the speed of molecules in a box obey a Boltzmann distribution, then you only need a small sampling because the statistics for those distributions are *very* well understood. The uncertainty in your sampling also decreases by 1/sqrt(N). The most common distribution is the Gaussian by far, it is also the simplest and gives decent results for even poorly fitted systems. For truly Gaussian systems, a sampling of just *~30* already gives you access to powerful statistics.\n\nSo even a small number of samples can give you *very* accurate results as long as you can reasonably show that the system obeys the distribution you're using. Now systems like determining the political voting pattern of a city requires the use of some pretty complex models, but at the end of the day the principal is the same, the samples are applied to the \"laws\" of statistics.", "There is a much deeper philosophical issue here that you may have in mind, namely the [problem of induction](_URL_1_) as introduced to modern Western philosophy by David Hume: Why is it justified to extrapolate from one sample to a larger conclusion about the world? There is no completely satisfactory answer to this question. \n\nBut if you have purely statistical questions in mind, then the [law of large numbers](_URL_0_) is the answer. This law says that, with a well understood sample and repeated, unbiased selection, you can bound the error of the sample from the true population at a given sample size, and the sample converges (fairly quickly) to the population as the size grows. If you introduce bias into the sample then you have to correct for that, and once there is uncertain bias in the sample then you have a very difficult statistical problem at hand.", "You can easily prove this to your self using a simple computer program, say in R:\n\n    for (i in 1:10){\n        x < -rnorm(100, mean=0, sd=1)\n        mean(x)\n        sd(x)\n    }\n\nThat program takes 10x100 random samples from a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and sd 1, and estimates the mean and sd from those samples. They will be fairly close to the population parameters. If you want to \"prove\" these contain information about the population, simply compare their performance to, say, a set of random numbers drawn from 1 to 100 (trivial example, yes, but it \"proves\" the point).\n\nedit: spelling.\n", "Nobody has brought up the [central limit theorem](_URL_2_) yet, which is most relevant (assuming I understand the question correctly).\n\nThe central limit theorem in its simplest form says that if X is a random variable (which isn't too ugly in certain ways), and you add multiple independent copies of it together, you *must* approach the appropriate normal distribution.\n\nFor example, everyone in the country is either wearing a blue hat or a red hat.  That's our random variable X: red or blue?  So you call someone up and ask \"is your hat red?\", and then another, and another.  You don't even take care to not call the same person more than once.  You just call up N random, independently chosen people.  *We'll leave aside a discussion of accurate sampling, which is a whole other can of beans!*\n\nSo now you've got *m* people who said \"red\" and *N-m* people who said \"blue.\"  Let's be more concrete by saying we called 1000 people, and 350 said \"red.\"  So our best guess is that 35% of people have a red hat.  How confident are we in our guess?\n\nLeaving out the calculations, one may compute a [confidence interval](_URL_0_).  I used the online calculator [here](_URL_1_).  We can be 95% certain that the actual proportion of red hats is between 32% and 38%.  If we wanted to be 99% certain, we'd have to admit a wider range of possibilities: about 31% to 39%.  If we're willing to live with less certainty, like 80% confidence, then we can be more specific: 33% to 37%.\n\nSo this is the \"margin of error\" you see in polls that are published.  95% is the standard confidence interval; *again assuming the sampling is representative*, you can be 95% certain that the reality is within the margin of error of the stated result.\n\nA few basic things: if you want 100% confidence, you have to make your interval go to infinitely large.  i.e. you can't be 100% confident of anything meaningful (I can say with 100% confidence that the proportion of red hats is between 0% and 100%).  If you want the margin of error to be zero, you have to abandon all confidence: I have zero confidence that the proportion of red hats is *exactly* 35%.\n\nThe confidence interval shrinks as your sample size gets bigger, but not by much.  That's another remarkable aspect of the central limit theorem!  If we're talking yes/no questions where the real proportion isn't *too* small or big (say, between 10% and 90%), then a sample of 500 people will give you a reasonably small confidence interval.  \n\n*Regardless of the size of the population!*\n\nAgain: if you want to get an idea how many people in the country are wearing red hats versus blue hats, once you've called about 500 truly random people, you have a good idea on the answer.  It doesn't matter how many people are in the population.  If the population is smaller than 500 (I only called up people in the classroom, for example), you still get a good estimate, but there were probably better ways to get your answer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval", "https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculators/confidence-interval-for-proportions-calculator/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem"]]}
{"q_id": "29gy6c", "title": "how does a silencer on a fire arm work?", "selftext": "I obviously know that it make the weapon sound quieter and like (pthew) noise, but whenever I see one in a film or at weapon museums I just think that they look like barrel extensions, and I know that that wouldn't make the weapon quieter. So how does it work?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29gy6c/eli5_how_does_a_silencer_on_a_fire_arm_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciksl73", "ciksn7k", "ciksnji"], "score": [21, 17, 7], "text": ["The aim of a silencer is to break up/soften the noise of the weapon firing. It does this by directing the air leaving the muzzle through a series of baffles, slowing and redirecting the air so that it will form a 'softer' noise, rather than a single loud pulse.\n\nThe noise you hear in the movies is not representative of the average silenced weapon, but is a plot device to let bad (or good) guys do their job steathily. In practice, the silencer will reduce the noise and make it harder to pinpoint, but will not give anything like as significant a reduction in volume", "Imagine a hollow tube with a series of \"walls\" inside.  These walls are called baffles.\n\nMuch of the sound produced in the report of a gunshot is produced fron the rapid expansion of hot gasses leaving the muzzle of the barrel.\n\nThe suppressor serves to trap these gasses within a series of baffles, lessening the sound.\n\nBear in mind that you will not find many suppressors creating the 'hollywood' quiet sound that we're so used to.  In fact, it can still be quite loud.  Especially if you're using supersonic ammunition (subsonic ammunition is a must for eliminating the supersonic crack - but will often have reduced ballistic performance).\n\nThe proper term is suppressor, as these devices only serve to suppress or muffle the sound.  \"Silencer\" is actually a trademark of a company called Silenco that produces suppressors.\n\nTo add a little more, baffle strikes can result in a catastrophic failure of the suppressor.  When using a bullet that is too heavy to be stabilized by the twist rate of the barrel, the bullet can actually hit the baffles, destroying the suppressor.  This can also be caused by improper threading, where the suppressor, when mounted, is ever so slightly canted.", "They don't work like in the movies; you don't get a mouse fart *pthew* noise. Most movies don't accurately depict a silencer, because they can't accurately portray how utterly loud the guns are. Guns, even smaller .22 caliber guns, are so loud that standing next to one without hearing protection while it is being fired *just once* can damage your hearing. A silencer reduces this sound that's about as loud as a jet engine to one that's about as loud as a jackhammer. In other words: it still sounds like a gunshot, it just won't make you go deaf immediately."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1orvol", "title": "Is it possible to sleep your way out of an addiction?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1orvol/is_it_possible_to_sleep_your_way_out_of_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccuzwg2"], "score": [7], "text": ["Induced comas have been used as treatment for addicts, allowing them to 'bypass' withdrawal symptoms.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's highly controversial, and generally not done except in some extreme cases.\n\nAside from induced comas, withdrawal symptoms of most highly addictive drugs will generally prevent sleep, preventing someone from \"sleeping their way out of an addiction\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.detox.com/centers/rapid/"]]}
{"q_id": "4i8seu", "title": "Is it commonly accepted that Alexander Hamilton was lovers with fellow soldier and aristocrat John Laurens?", "selftext": "I just came across this piece and was wondering what historians in general think of Hamilton's letters to Laurens. _URL_0_\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i8seu/is_it_commonly_accepted_that_alexander_hamilton/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2wk7z0"], "score": [5], "text": ["Am reading [Ron Chernow's \"Alexander Hamilton\"](_URL_0_) currently, and as in your linked article, he presents the facts and adds a bit of context and makes the same conclusion as your linked article does:  \"Of course, we\u2019ll probably never know for sure. \".\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.queerty.com/was-founding-father-alexander-hamilton-bisexual-his-letters-suggest-so-20140704"], "answers_urls": [["http://bulkbookstore.com/alexander-hamilton-9780143034759?gclid=CjwKEAjwpLa5BRCTwcXS6_rpvC4SJACTDQMM-DyyVixIVPLRz0rZJniS9tlO25TvrlJ5Bjoc9UrhJBoCGajw_wcB"]]}
{"q_id": "w3nu1", "title": "Are there any health risks from gold/silver consumption?", "selftext": "I'm sitting here eating some silver-wrapped candies from India, so I assume they are relatively harmless in small amounts --- but is there a point at which consumption of gold/silver poses a health risk? Also, are they completely inert or is there partial uptake by cells?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/w3nu1/are_there_any_health_risks_from_goldsilver/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c59y7x3", "c59yxj1"], "score": [7, 11], "text": ["Gold is pretty much inert, but excessive silver consumption can cause [argyria](_URL_0_).", "Unreacted gold is non-toxic, but gold ions are toxic.  Gold metal is inert enough that it exists as a food additive.  However, gold salts are toxic to the liver and kidneys.  \n\nThere was even a [House episode](_URL_0_ about it.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clueless_(House)"]]}
{"q_id": "2fn69p", "title": "why is the name \"sean\" pronounced like \"shawn\" when there's no letter h in it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fn69p/eli5_why_is_the_name_sean_pronounced_like_shawn/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckatgai", "ckatu6p", "ckatw4k", "ckau04n", "ckau847", "ckaucwp", "ckaufiq", "ckaugzt", "ckausvd", "ckav2dm", "ckav431", "ckav8vu", "ckav9p2", "ckavefy", "ckavfzc", "ckavjpo", "ckavrs6", "ckaw3jp", "ckaw3t3", "ckawlph", "ckawyp4", "ckax9m8", "ckaxezv", "ckaxk8f", "ckaxkzw", "ckayf52", "ckayoc4", "ckayyh6", "ckayyk6", "ckaz5pl", "ckazcep", "ckazd09", "ckazvzw", "ckb02tz", "ckb03ew", "ckb03pz", "ckb0757", "ckb09jg", "ckb09nc", "ckb0gdc", "ckb0uq3", "ckb18cw", "ckb1n7d", "ckb20m9", "ckb2183", "ckb251r", "ckb29cs", "ckb2eoj", "ckb2fpn", "ckb2htg", "ckb2jl3", "ckb2jtz", "ckb2ohx", "ckb3l10", "ckb3xxk", "ckb4ebs", "ckb4mcs", "ckb4vs0", "ckb4ykd", "ckb56if", "ckb5du4", "ckb61xz", "ckb6bg0", "ckb6c3g", "ckb6hwx", "ckb6t0m", "ckb7exw", "ckb82eu", "ckb88ya", "ckb8iyf", "ckb8u0q", "ckb8uuj", "ckb9enu", "ckb9h6o", "ckb9hzw", "ckbciv5", "ckbcuk8", "ckbd1e6", "ckbd5pd", "ckbe7ig", "ckbek4a", "ckbfvra", "ckbfxqf", "ckbhxoe", "ckbjhpp"], "score": [4456, 81, 235, 32, 141, 437, 22, 14, 56, 2, 216, 32, 2, 22, 9, 4, 14, 19, 55, 27, 3, 2, 2, 4, 12, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 19, 2, 2, 17, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 5, 3, 5, 2, 4, 11, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Se\u00e1n comes from the Irish name for John, the accent on the a (called a fada) makes the a longer and so changes the pronunciation as well as this Se in Irish is often pronounces as SH.\n\nThe name Shawn in an anglicised version of the Irish name Se\u00e1n.", "Because Se\u00e1n isn't an English word.\n\nWhen non-Irish English speakers heard the word, they started spelling it Shawn because its pronounced that way. Se\u00e1n is the original word, Shawn is Se\u00e1n anglicised.", "It's not an English name; it's Gaelic. (There are Scottish and Irish versions of Gaelic, but the name is pronounced the same way in both).\n\nIn Gaelic, when the letter s is next to an i or e, it's pronounced \"sh\". Thus Sean is pronounced as if it were \"Shean\"; Siobhan as if it were \"Shiovan\"; Sinead as if it were \"Shineat\". [As you may have noticed, bh is pronounced as the English v, and d sounds more like the English t anywhere except the beginning of a word, in which case it sounds more like the English j. Perfectly clear, right?]\n\nS is pronounced the same as it is in English under other circumstances (i.e. when it is not next to i or e).\n\nEdit: Well, I'm not going to argue with everyone named Sinead. :)  I can't speak for Irish, but I am quite sure that in Scottish Gaelic, D is pronounced quite like an English T under most circumstances.\n\n(There are actually quite a few rules about pronouncing D: \n\nAt the beginning of a word, it's more like English J. \"Dearbh\" is pronounced as \"jerav\".\n\nDH next to E or I is a nearly-silent Y sound. \"Taigh\" has a nearly silent \"dh\", so pronounced \"tai\".\n\nDH otherwise is a soft, back-of-the-throat \"gh\" sound. \n\nD by itself, after the beginning of a word, is usually closer to a T.)\n\n", "My niece's name is Sadhbh, which is pronounced \"Sive.\" In contrast, her brother's name is Fionn, which is pronounced \"Fionn.\"", "Until recently I thought Sean was read like \"seen\". Being a non English speaker i admired Sean Bean's cool name \"Seen Been\".", "There's no H in \"sugar\"....", "Honestly this is something you could have probably Googled and gotten the same answers as this thread.", "Jan, Jean, John, Sean, Juan\n\nNice", "Why is colonel pronounced \"kernel\"? ", "Not so long ago, we pronounced the \"e\" in \"Sean\" as a palatal vowel, much like we later did and \"u\" in sugar. The term palatal means that the tongue is against or near the roof of the mouth and, in this case, just behind where the roof meets the teeth.\n\nThe thing is, as the language changed over time, it grew to not include very much palatalization (whereas some languages like French and Russian have quite a bit), so it became awkward or, at least not common place, for many native speakers to palatize their vowels in these positions. However, right near this palatal space is the fricative space where we pronounce fricative consonants (e.g., sounds like \"sh\" in \"shoot\" and \"zh\" in the second \"g\" of \"garage\"). This fricative space is directly behind where your top and bottom teeth meet. So people with difficulty making this sound would drop their tongues slightly and go from having the vowel be palatal to the consonant preceding the vowel be fricative.\n\nTo make a long story short, this change is part of a common phenomenon where the pronunciation is assimilated into already familiar sounds. This can happen when a word moves from one language to another (like \"constitu|tion|\") or when pronunciation within a language changes over time (like \"ni|gh|t\").", "Maybe I'll stop being called \"seen\" now. ", "The name is hibero-nordic (Vikings turn up in Ireland, bring their names from which we get names like John, Jon, Juan, and Jonsi), and the locals adopt them, adjusting for their own phonetics.       \n     \nI'm now speaking from the point of view of a Gaidhlig (scottish dialects of the language) learner, but to my knowledge everything I say is true of Irish (Gaelge) also.  Anyone about please correct my if I err.      \n\nIn Gaelic, the vowels a, o and u are \"broad\", and so broaden consonants near them, whilst e and i are 'slender' and so 'slenderise' consonants near them.  The Slender form of 's' is pronounced like \"sh\".  Also, h is used to asperate the consonants: b, c, m, p, d, g, t, and s.  (The lenited 'sh' is also pronounced like the english, so when leniting 'Se' to 'She' we have a slenderised lenited 's' - pronounced \"h\").  A better example of this effect is in Seamus.  Seamus is pronounced with a slender \"sh\" sound at the beginning and a broad 's' sound at the end.  If we are to put the name in the vocative case we have to to two things, first we lenite, so 'Se' - >  'She', pronounced \"h\", secondly, we have to slenderise the end of the word, so '-as' (pronounced \"sh\") - >  '-ais', pronounced \"sh\".  Seamus -- >  Sheamais, the latter being where we get the name Hamish.  :D  (neat, right?)", "The fact that it's derived from Irish and was transliterated oddly to English.", "It's an Irish name. The Irish language pronounces letters differently to English, so when our names and place names are used in English, the letters don't always make sense to foreigners.\n\nConsider: \"Tadhg and Caoimhe met the Taoiseach and Tanaiste outside the Dail, on their way from Aungier Street to Ranelagh.\"\n\nProunounced: \"Tie-g and Qweev-ah met the Tee-shock and Taw-nish-tah outside the Dawl, on their way from Ainger Street to Rah-neh-lah.\"", "ELI5 Island, Illinois, Arkansas", "So how is Bono pronounced?", "I'm a native Irish speaker, and live in an area where nearly all names are in Irish, so since the answer has been explained, if anyone wants me to explain or write a few names phonetically, I'm happy to help.\n\n(I'm from Connemara so the pronunciation might vary from other regions.)  ", "PSA - the language is not called Gaelic. It's called Irish. Gaelic is a language family consisting of Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx.", "As an Irish person the language as the people call it is Irish. Not Gaelic, this bugs me big time. Gaelic is the root language like Germanish, not the actually language. Also in Ireland Gaelic is a game. French people speak French, German people speak German. Irish people speak Irish. Get it right!", "Everything the Irish do is to confuse the English. An English warrant with a misspelled name was not valid. \n\nWhen the English outlawed dancing the Irish Kevin Bacon came up with dancing where just your legs move but your upper body and your arms remain still. If the English looked in the window they would just see folks standing around instead of having a dance. ", "Same reason \"Siobhan\" is pronounced \"Shih-von,\" and \"Saoirse\" is pronounced \"Ser-sha\"", "hmmm. I'm not really 'sure'", "Just trust me. \n\nSincerely,\nColonel February", "Iarfhlaith and Caoilfhinn are my personal favourites for names to confuse yanks. ", "Because the Irish Gaelige language is a bitch to read.  \n  \nIn the same way that, in English, i/e will make a 'c' sound like an 's' (eg. fla**cc**id), or a 'g' sound like a 'j' (eg. **g**iant), in Irish, i/e makes 's' shound like 'sh'.  \n\nIn the original spelling, it would have been spelled 'Se\u00e1n', the '\u00e1' indicates that the 'e' is silent in 'e\u00e1'. And '\u00e1' is pronounced similarly to 'aw' (although it depends upon the dialect).  \n  \nSo, Se\u00e1n  >  Shawn", "TIL why my name is spelled and pronounced the way it is.", "Se = shuh\n\n\u00e1n = awwn\n\nSe\u00e1n = Shawn", "ffs, OP. was google too hard for you?", "because when names get adopted into different languages, those languages tend to adapt the name so that it fits better into their pronunciation.\n\nWikipedia shows that it was originally a French name, adopted by the English and then later further adopted by the Irish\nJehan / Johan - >  Johan/John - >  Se\u00e1n\n\n", "Fun fact. In Irish. \"Sean\" means old. ~~S\u00e9an~~\"Se\u00e1n\" means john.", "WHY AREN'T THEY SPELT LIKE SHAUN!?\nFUCK THIS WORLD.", "As someone named Sean, nothing burns me up more than when people spell my name Shawn...Sean is the right way to spell it damn it!", "Why come words that ain't not from English is spelt wrong?", "Sean is a Gaelic name. There is no \"J\" in this alphabet. John becomes Sean. James becomes Seamus. Joseph becomes Seosamh(Sho-sav).", "Sean John = John John", "You're gonna be pissed when you hear that sometimes \"K\" is pronounced \"sh\" in Swedish", "I'd just like to add that Sean is the CORRECT SPELLING, not shawn or shaun or shonne or whatever the fuck else exists. \n\nsource: my name is Sean and always has been. other Sean's will agree.", "The worst part about being a Sean is the learning curve for kids growing up in class. \n\n\"Your names SEEN?!?\"\n\n\"No, no it is not it's Pronounced Shawn\"\n\n\"no it isn't I can read and your name is seen\" \n\nLike bitch I don't care if you're five ", "My name is Sean, and people have occasionally pronounced it \"Seen\" throughout my life. But it has gotten much worse since I moved to Arizona, where there is a local news anchor, Sean McLaughlin, who actually pronounces it that way. I hate him. ", "Its an Irish name and its supposed to be spelt S\u00e9an. The little dash over the e is called a fada and gives the e an aww sound.\n\nThis is why its pronounced Shawn. \n\n", "Because the Irish are a bunch of drunken bastards. \n\nSource: I'm Welsh and just as drunk and just as much a bastard.", "my name is sean and i appreciate this thread. ", "I feel like half of these ELI5 posts could be easily answered with a google search", "Im going to make up a whole new name for my kid. Like Pimmy", "Poor non-Irish people trying to say our names...\nSource: Labhair m\u00e9 a l\u00e1n Gaeilge", "It was originally an Irish name (Se\u00e1n) that was loaned from the French, Jehan (now Jean).  It then morphed out from there.\n\nSo the names Shawn, Shaun, etc., came after the original spellings, likely in an attempt to reconcile the evolution of pronunciations.\n\nEdit for clarification: The S replaced the J because the Irish pronunciation of the dza sound is S in their orthography.", "Because that is how Sean Connery would prefer it, as well as myself", "The Irish Gaelic name Sean was borrowed in the middle ages from Norman French Jehan (i.e. Jean, or John in English - ultimately a Biblical Hebrew loan); in Irish Gaelic there is no native sound exactly equivalent to the initial je- (/d\u0292\u025b\u02c8/) in Jehan, so it was substituted with Irish se-, pronounced like \"shyuh\" (similar to English \"shut\"). The reason se- in Irish is pronounced this way is do to a linguistic process call palatization that affects consonants that come into contact with the vowels -e- or -i-. In Irish Gaelic, an -s- occurring next to an -e- or -i- is pronounced like English -sh-.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "But what about me shaun\n", "I googled 'sean', and the very first result answered this question.\n\nwhy the fuck did this need a post here? and why did it get so many upvotes? talk about low hanging fruit here\n\n\nedit: it doesn't even need to be explained like you're five, its such a cut and dry answer", "Because the english language is a dick like that", "Because it's an Irish name not an English one so you don't pronounce it like an English word", "Sean is an Irish name and in Irish the letter S when followed by a vowel is pronounced \u201csh\u201d. Another example that British people might be familiar with is Sinn Fein (Shin Fain).", "It's SHAUN BAUN or SEEN BEAN. He can't have it both ways.", "[Michael McIntyre wonders the same](_URL_0_).", "Seen Been or Shawn Bhawn", "Because Sean Connery shaid sho.", "Sean isn't an english name... that's why.  ", "seen but not heard", "I'm very late to the game here but for those who are interested:\n\nIn Irish every consonant, historically, had two variations, a broad form and a slender form. So, for example the vowel sound in the words *b\u00f3* and *beo* is similar but the b at the beginning is different. (This is an over simplification and misrepresents the language as it is today somewhat but it shows my point) The most obvious facet of this is that the letter s is pronounced as it normally is in English when succeeded or preceded by a broad vowel but is pronounced like the English sh when preceded or succeeded by a slender vowel (e or i), Hence Se\u00e1n becomes shawn.\n\nThere are still some dialects where you can hear the difference between the broad and the slender \"r\" sounds as well. The slender \"r\" is kind of close to an \"l\" sound and is rolled slightly. It's mostly only used by news readers today, because it smacks of a certain professional old timey authenticity.", "because another language doesn't say it the same as English", "I'm late to the party but....\n\nIn Irish orthography using the western/latin alphabet you can tell whether a vowel sound is broad (velarised - pronounced with the back of the tongue raised to the velum or soft palate) or slender (palatalised with the blade of the tongue raised to the hard palate) by looking at the vowels around it.  Usually if the immediately following or preceding vowel is front (i or e) the consonant is palatalised and this is the cased in 'Se\u00e1n'.  You see the same with 'c\u00e1is' pronounced 'cash' with long 'a' and meaning 'cheese' and the name 'Aisling'.  If the immediately preceding or following vowel is back (a, o or u) then the consonant is velarised.  An example with 's' is the word (and name) 'saoirse' pronounced roughtly 'seershe'.\n\n", "People who spell it \"Shawn\" may as well be named \"Chad\".", "Because it's an Irish not an English name.\n\nHere's a YouTube playlist of Irish name pronunciations, eg. Siobh\u00e1n, Sadhbh, Saoirse, Niamh, Aoife, Ois\u00edn, Tadhgh, etc.\n\n_URL_0_", "Sean here. I've always pronounced my name \"seen.\" I'm such an idiot.", "Well im pretty sure it's of irish (or that general area) descent, and it's just how they pronounce stuff, like how we pronoune ph as f.  They pronounce Sidhe as Shee as well, just how their phonetics evolved", "Cus it's irish ya dope ", "Because Sean is an Irish language name, not English.", "Because the Roman alphabet wasn't created exclusively for the convenience of English speakers, and other languages that use the alphabet follow their own spelling conventions. Sean is an Irish name, hence it has an Irish spelling and Irish pronunciation. This is the same reason that the Spanish name Jos\u00e9 is not pronounced \"joe-zay\" or \"joes.\"", "Becaush Sean Connery pronounshesh it that way", "Thanks, I'll just stick with Jessica ", "It's an Irish name, not English. Basically the same reason that Siobh\u00e1in is Shiv-awn, \u00d3rfhlaith is Orla, \u00c9adaoin is a-deen and Niamh is Neev", "Why is 'ballet' pronounced like 'ballay' when there is no 'y' in it?", "Kind of like how the Irish name Seamus is pronounced shaymus", "It's Irish. Irish phonetics are a bit wild.", "I think because of the accent/language it's from. Sidhe is pronounced shee. Believe it's gaelic ", "A few days ago, someone posted on /r/askreddit asking for the dumbest thread to ever make the front page. This. It's this one.", "Because the H from herb has to go somewhere. ", "i dont understand why the english language doesnt have accents, can someone explain to me why people just decided to drop them from the language? its such a foreign concept to english speakers but when you learn a bit about a language with them it just makes pronunciation easier.", "So I need to start spelling my name Se\u00e1n instead of Sean or I need to embrace that my name is supposed to be pronounced Shaan", "Now that I know the answer to the question that I'm sure everyone was dieing to know the answer to.. Reddit is only going to go downhill from here. ", "Good job OP has never met Siobhan.", "Out of all the ELI5 questions lately, this has to be near the bottom of the barrel. ", "Why does laugh or cough have an \"F\" sound when there's no F in it?", "Sean is an irish name, basically a translation of John.\n\nIn Irish it is spelled with a fada so it's Se\u00e1n.\n\nThe fada changes the way the \"a\" sounds from the regular \"a\" to an \"aw\" sound.\n\nThe \"H\" sound again is due to the irish background \"s+vowel\" generally makes a \"sh\" sound, seachtain(week) sounds like shock - tin (ish.. depending on area), sioc(frost) sounds like shook.\n\nHope that helps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42RA2wWF61M"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zW-aAOB1E8&amp;list=PL6D2EF641C0139A25"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3uf0dn", "title": "why did nato think it was a good idea to have turkey as a member?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uf0dn/eli5why_did_nato_think_it_was_a_good_idea_to_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxeb8yp", "cxebaoi", "cxebbum", "cxeghft", "cxerb2i"], "score": [92, 206, 18, 15, 3], "text": ["Turkey has the 2nd highest active military force in NATO, next to the US.\n\nOf NATO members, they tie for 2nd place (with France, UK, Greece) in highest military spending as % of GDP. 17% largest GDP in the world. And their aerospace industries are pretty good too. Founding member of the UN, frequent member of the UN security council. Universal education, high literacy, and universal healthcare.\n\nThey are a secular parlimentary democracy in in the midst of a historically un-stable region. They are right up there close to the rooskis and can offer NATO forces lots of military bases to defend against the USSR (back when it existed)... or for when projecting military force into regions around the middle east, which seems to be happening quite a bit recently; very strategic.. \n\n", "Geography.\n\nTurkey controls the Bosphorus strait, splitting the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. During the Cold War, control of that strait was absolutely vital. The USSR's navy was bottled up for large portions of the year when the winter would freeze their other ports up. Only the ports in the Black Sea remain ice free 100% of the year.\n\nIt was also very close to Russia, and the US placed several nukes in Turkey until the Cuban missile crisis.", "Simple...Location location location.\n\nTurkey allows NATO to have access to the Black Sea and also gives it strategic access to the south of Ukraine and Russia.", "Turkey's land army is probably the second strongest in NATO, and it has the most important strategic position to screw Russia over via the Bosphorus straits.", "FWIW, during WWI, the U.K. neglected Turkey as a potential ally (or at least non-adversary) and Turkey sided with Germany - leading to the Gallipoli disaster and prolonging the war. Of course, Russia was allied with the U.K. that time, so it is unlikely Turkey would have joined the UK/France alliance. While it is debated, many historians attribute the UK's unwillingness to deal with Turkey to historical anti-Muslim prejudice-particularly on the part on then-younger Winston Churchill. With that background only 30-40 years past when NATO was being formed and Turkey joined in 1952 , it's hard to understand why anyone would oppose Turkey's admission as a member. \n\nBarbara Tuchman's 'The Guns of August' gets into these pre-WWI Anglo-Turkish issue a bit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "80hqgz", "title": "why does garlic smell good to us when it\u2019s cooking, but as soon as it\u2019s on someone\u2019s breath it\u2019s revolting?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80hqgz/eli5_why_does_garlic_smell_good_to_us_when_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duvoczs", "duw33xf", "duw38ep"], "score": [65, 8, 10], "text": ["Garlic's pungent, but generally pleasant smell is due to a variety of sulfur compounds.  As these are broken down by bacteria and our digestive systems, these sulfur compounds convert into much less pleasant smelling ones.\n\nThis is only partially what makes garlic breath so pungent.  Some of the metabolic products enter our bloodstream and are subsequently volatilized through our lungs.  This is why no amount of mouthwash, brushing your teeth, or chewing gum can get rid of garlic breath (these only mask it temporarily).", "imo the unpleasant garlic (or onions) breath is not the one from someone's mouth right after they eat garlic. this just smells like garlic. it's the garlic burps that come up to a few hours after that smell like rotten garbage", "Because the smell of cooked garlic is not the garlic you smell on someone's breath.\n\nThat's without getting into the contextual markers humans use to tune their senses.  Being greeted to the general odor of things cooking is step one to enjoying that garlic smell.\n\nFinding it within the general odor of another person's mouth?  \n\nThe sense/sound/warmth of food cooking makes our body primed for food, with \"good\" feelings as a byproduct.\n\nOther human mouths prime us to assess what the heck might be afflicting this other human that we'd want to avoid for ourselves.  If we find nothing, we can focus on our other impulses.  If we find a garlic smell, that's not the one we got from the food cooking in any form or context.\n\nThe real question here: Do cannibals have a pleasant response to smelling garlic on someone's breath?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "10dy38", "title": "Hey r/AskHistorians! I'm an illustrator doing a portrait of Boudica of the Iceni for an exhibition. Anyone have any pointers on what she would have worn? (x post r/history)", "selftext": "I know she probably would have worn a torc and possibly a fur cloak with a celtic brooch, but beyond that i'm stumped! And I'm not even sure if that's correct! Any pointers would be much appreciated!\n\nEdit: you guys are amazing! I'm so thrilled with all the information you've proffered, thanks so much! I'll post here with my final so you guys can see how it goes! Thanks again :')\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10dy38/hey_raskhistorians_im_an_illustrator_doing_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6cp6po", "c6cpe8p", "c6cph0x", "c6cpt2z"], "score": [67, 4, 24, 27], "text": ["There's some controversy over whether Boudica was a real historical person or whether she was a mythological figure (a bit like an early, female  King Arthur.) _URL_0_ \n\nAssuming she did exist, she would most likely have dressed like a typical Celtic noblewoman. \n\nYou have some poetic licence here since we've barely more than Roman written accounts for how the costumes themselves were assembled (google image for jewellery as much survived) but your 'fur cloak' idea alone sounds way too crude. The Celts were renowned for their textiles, the upper class had imported linens and silks as well woollen and fur garments and they had elaborate weaving and dying techniques which the Romans had to import since they couldn't recreate them. Even the poorest celts would have worn loosely woven garments, probably woollen ones and the richest celts would have had closely woven silk or linen garments, complete with embroidery and an optional fur trim. \n\nDon't think 'cave woman' think 'these people wore clothes so nice they were sought after by rich Romans.'\n\nInterestingly some of the surviving archaeological evidence shows that the Celts were able to produce tartan/plaid cloth so you can totally use that.  \n\n_URL_1_ ", "Accounts of her refer to very long red hair and a \"multi-colored\" dress, which could have meant the plaid-like weave that did exist then (please note that the modern Scottish kilt is a creation of the Renaissance and does not have its roots in antiquity. Sorry Mel Gibson). Celts often fought nude or nearly nude, and almost always with bare feet. I would think Boudicca would have been sleeveless and her hemline would not fall far below the knees. ", "Here's a paper by an undergraduate student of Art History: [\u2018Celtic\u2019 Clothing \\(with Greek and Roman Influence\\)from the Iron Age-a Realistic View Based on What We Know](_URL_0_). It has lots of pictures of surviving bits of textile and other apparel and some reconstructions.", "You may want to ask /r/fashionhistory if you don't find your answer here. :) Good luck!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://suite101.com/article/the-evidence-for-the-historical-boudica-a309102", "http://ua-huntsville.academia.edu/heathersmith/Papers/1544116/Celtic_Clothing_During_the_Iron_Age-_A_Very_Broad_and_Generic_Approach"], [], ["http://ua-huntsville.academia.edu/heathersmith/Papers/1544116/Celtic_Clothing_During_the_Iron_Age-_A_Very_Broad_and_Generic_Approach"], []]}
{"q_id": "63vzcc", "title": "how do we not run out of oxygen in closed rooms?", "selftext": "Are there any small ventilation holes to let oxygen in buildings and cars? Do architects need to take this into account?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63vzcc/eli5how_do_we_not_run_out_of_oxygen_in_closed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfxexn3", "dfxf0yf", "dfxf55d", "dfxirnv", "dfxkvt6"], "score": [2, 22, 7, 3, 7], "text": ["very few rooms are both airtight and have people in them for long enough for this to be a problem.", "Generally, nothing is going to be airtight unless *it's specifically designed to be*.  Making stuff airtight is very difficult, and very expensive.  It requires special materials and precision. \n\nThere are lots of places for air to get in, such as a window frame, underneath a door, vents (even if the furnace isn't running).  \n\nIf you were in a room sealed well enough to prevent much air from entering, an average size room has *a lot* of oxygen.  It would take many days, even weeks, to use it all up and asphyxiate.  Chances are you will have left by then.  ", "In a completely airtight small room of 3 meters by 4 meters and average height, one person can live 2 or 3 days and nights without running out of oxygen. They will reach toxic levels of CO2 before then, though.\n\nArchitects simply avoid making rooms truly airtight.", "There are enough spots where air can flow in and out, so there's always enough ventilation. Secondly, oxygen makes up 21% of the air you inhale vs. 15% during exhalation. So we don't use *that* much oxygen. Thirdly, the body doesn't really priorotize oxygen consumption. It's far more important to keep the pH in the blood as stable as possible, and one of the ways to do that is through inhalation/exhalation of CO2. In a super small chamber without ventilation, there's a risk of suffering from hypercapnia: a condition of elevated CO2 levels in the blood. Symtoms include shorteness of breath, feeling drowsy, headache, elevated heart rate, and eventually loss of consciousness. And all of that even in the case of abundant oxygen in the room.", "Architecture school graduate here. Google \"air changes per hour\" an old house may have two air changes per hour, meaning whatever cracks exist allow the entire volume of air to be replaced twice an hour. Even a modern house will still have 1 to 1.5 air changes per hour. But yeah, in a room with a lot of people, I think a classroom wants at least 4 ACH, so we definitely pump fresh air in. Although I don't think kids would be suffocating, but the air would get stale and germs would spread even more. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "idpz2", "title": "Can someone explain how aromatic rings work?", "selftext": "...and specifically why they interact with light to produce different colors, pigments, etc?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/idpz2/can_someone_explain_how_aromatic_rings_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c22xj0s", "c22xp92"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["It's been a while since I've done anything with this, but I'll give it a shot.\n\nSimilarly to how electrons in atoms are located in orbitals, the electrons that compose a bond are located in molecular orbitals. In a molecular bond we have HOMO (highest occupied molecular orbital) and LUMO (lowest unoccupied molecular orbital). When an electron in a bond receives enough energy it will jump from HOMO to LUMO and then it can release its energy (as light) and jump back down. The color of the emitted light is directly related to how large the gap between HOMO and LUMO is.\n\nIn an aromatic compound, the pi bonds just merge together and you have delocalized electrons (which act a little like one bond). These delocalized electrons are almost always going to be located in HOMO. So, now you have a bunch of electrons that can absorb energy and then release it as light. When you shine light on it, the electrons absorb the energy and if the light has enough energy, the electrons will jump from HOMO to LUMO and then release the energy as light of a specific color as they fall back down.\n\nLike I said, it's been a while, so that could just be complete gibberish.", "Consider an isolated c-c double bond: Two Pz  orbitals with 1 e- each line up and due to quantum they remix into a pi (bonding) molecular orbital and a pi-star (antibonding) molecular orbital. Each orbital can hold two e-, and since there are only two e- they both go into the lower energy pi orbital, but can be promoted to the pi-star orbital (a p- > pi-star transition) if a photon with enough energy strikes it. At least a portion of the photon's energy is usually changed to heat and so the light dims at that wavelength. For an isolated double bond the requisite energy is in the mid ultraviolet and so such compounds are not colored.\n\n\nIn aromatic rings there are more p atomic orbitals. In benzene there are six and so there are six pi molecular orbitals. Again because of quantum these are of gradually increasing energy and the gap between the highest filled pi oribtal (HOMO) and the lowest empty pi-star (LUMO) is lower. A lower energy gap means a lower energy photon is needed for a pi- > pi-star transition and as the rings get bigger you approach the visible region. \n\n\nTwo more notes:\n\nOften n (non-bonding) electron sitting on an oxygen or nitrogen atom adjacent to a pi system will be promoted to the pi-star orbital and cause the molecule to be colored, these often just happen to be at the right energy level. \n\nThe reason photons aren't absorbed at a single, sharp wavelength is because the electron clouds and vibrational modes of the absorbing molecule and its neighbors nudge the energy gap one way or the other, producing smooth peaks at the macroscopic scale. Gas-phase molecules have much sharper absorption peaks."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "43f0mn", "title": "why do we use rubber belts for cars, driers, treadmills, vacuum cleaners etc. when used with motors instead of using chains like those on bikes and motorcycles. wouldn't they last longer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43f0mn/eli5_why_do_we_use_rubber_belts_for_cars_driers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czhpssi", "czhpuzt", "czhpvf1", "czhqve6", "czht4y2", "czhwr12", "czhymlf", "czhz4ee"], "score": [28, 2, 5, 125, 2, 2, 3, 8], "text": ["I think it's probably because belts are not as noisy, and the don't need any lubrication.  A lot of cars use a toothed belt rather than a chain for the valvetrain.  The chain itself may last longer than a belt would, but the wear on a toothed sprocket or gear would be much greater than a belt would cause.  \n\nYou might get twice as much life using a chain, but then the gears  &  stuff would need replacing as well, leading to a less cost-effective solution over the life of the machine.", "Just a guess, so correct me if I am wrong. It has to do with torsion and general movement of the individual parts. Using chains would require a much more rigid design and also require much higher tolerances of production of all the components.\n\nTldr: it's just easier and more cost efficient to use belts.", "Chains are more expensive, noisier, can cause critical damage if they fail, and probably most importantly of all they require regular lubrication. It's one thing asking a motorcycle owner to spray chain lube on the final drive chain every 1,000 miles or so, but expecting a car owner or vacuum cleaner owner to do the same is highly improbable.\n", " Chains only last longer than belts when they are inside an enclosure where they can be kept clean and lubricated. \nIn an exposed application a belt will usually last longer and needs less maintenance. \n\n In all of the products mentioned a chain could be used, but would significantly increase the manufacturing costs.  Belts work well enough. \n\n\n\n", "For timing in cars, well designed (meaning well LUBRICATED) timing chains are still better than belts in my opinion. They last the life of the car, need no maintenance, and are not noticeably noisier than a belt. Belts break, and often cause internal engine damage. On the flip side, there are motorcycles that are belt driven as well. Smaller appliances use belts because they are low power and the rubber will hold up. Also belts require no lube, therefore no mess.", "Some old cars actually do use chains instead of belts. I've replaced a few integra timing belts and some of them seemed like they broke because oil from the engine leaked and got on them. If I could convert my honda engines to timing chains instead of belts, I would.", "There are some cars that use timing chains instead of timing belts (which is the norm). Those do last about 3 times longer than a basic timing belt in a car before needing to be replaced.", "in certain instances, lawnmowers being the best example, a chain puts the engine at risk.  for example, drawing power from the engine to the self-propel gearbox or the mowing deck, which are vulnerable to impact that will stop or slow their movement.  if that obstruction stops the mower blade, which then stops the chain, which then stops the engine's crankshaft, there is a flywheel in there which is the weakest part of the 'driveline', which will snap to protect the impact from reaching all the way to the internal engine.\n\nwould you rather have a belt slip, which over time will require adjustment to keep it tight, and occasional replacement? Or would you rather be disconnectng everything to access the engine to replace a flywheel everytime you hit a rock?\n\nYou're trading off some loss of power to the functional components in order to save yourself time and money on maintenance and repairs in the event of an accident, which with a lot of these types of small engine machines are common"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5a6ilw", "title": "what's the noise we hear in our head when we stretch?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a6ilw/eli5_whats_the_noise_we_hear_in_our_head_when_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9e2c99", "d9e2ehq", "d9e2g73", "d9e2j08", "d9e2ogn", "d9e2vwl", "d9e37ef", "d9e3wzw", "d9e4f9y", "d9e72cn", "d9e7tr1", "d9e85bv", "d9e8th3", "d9e9qso", "d9ecxjb", "d9ed0ke", "d9ee31h", "d9ejqmv", "d9ejvf0", "d9ejvkw", "d9ejz00", "d9ek5kx", "d9ekl4a", "d9emdey", "d9emegx", "d9emk03", "d9eozwd", "d9epaxx", "d9erfau", "d9eskr8", "d9et2zr", "d9eul6q", "d9evevw", "d9evpxn"], "score": [11, 27, 2, 34, 1907, 78, 14, 7, 3, 3, 12, 2, 2, 4, 6, 10, 14, 22, 2, 64, 11, 2, 3, 43, 5, 13, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["It's like an oscillating sound right?", "Do you mean the sound from contracting the muscles in your ears?", "I know what you mean, I hear that sounds too.\n\nCan't describe it, or answer your question though. Just thought I would validate you.", "I get it while yawning. I'm thinking that maybe it could be blood flow increasing temporarily in that area since yawns happen in much the same area as the ears\n\nEdit: too comment says it's a muscle and bone. How cool!", "Previous answer from /u/toasterkid\n\n\"What you are hearing is the tensor tympani muscle. This is a small muscle in your ear that acts as a dampener of external sound. It attaches to a small bone in the ear and prevents it from oscillating, particularly when chewing. This is why you can also hear it if you move your jaw in certain positions, it also tends to contract when you close your eyes tightly and quickly. You'll notice the sound will only last briefly. This is because the initial contraction of the muscle causes the bone to move creating a rumbling sound. Interestingly, some people have the ability to contract this muscle voluntarily.\"\n\nAlso, check out /r/earrumblersassemble :D", "You're probably an ear rumbler and you're flexing your tensor timpani muscle when you yawn or stretch.\n\n/r/earrumblersassemble", "What noise? Also stretching fingers? Stretching what?", "That is the exact sound of my tinnitus. Only I hear that x 1000 louder 24/7. I don't really notice it though,  it's amazing how the body and mind can adapt... until I hear a tinnitus commercial where they replicate the sound. Seriously, those people need to be punched in the face.", "You mean the one where you close your eyes really hard?", "If I tighten my jaw muscles or some around my ear I don't hear a rumbling noise but a kind of high pitched a squeak/squeal.", "Wait wait hold up am I the only one who doesn't get this??", "I've been wondering about this. I hear it when I yawn, chew, anytime I hear something loud and if anything touches my ear. Basically I hear it almost all the time.", "I can do this voluntarily, and I can also wiggle my ears, does anyone know if the two are connected?", "Does it sound like pop rocks? Or like a very muted thunder?", "Holy crap I've been doing this for 40 years and I finally understand what it is. I stopped asking other people about it when I was 10 since no one ever said 'oh yeah I can do that too'", "What? I've never experience this or heard of this.", "I'm not familiar with this sound, unfortunately.\n\nI'm more concerned about the crunchy, creaking sound in the back of my head when I lift my head up. Doesn't sound quite right to me - anyone know what this is?", "I used to to do this when I was younger as a means to dampen loud external noises. Now, I do it to help block out spoilers from sports broadcasts when I'm in public. ", "So you're saying I don't have the force when I yawn?", "I can do it voluntarily, although I'd describe it more like a wind sound. The sound is more intense when I close my eyes tightly. ", "I would always ask the adult figures in my life what caused that but they never had an answer for me. They didn't have many answers in general...\n\nBut I digress. TIL I have a rare ability. XD", "My other half has Tourette's syndrome and can't make that sound happen at all, he has no idea what I'm talking about. Wonder if there's a link?", "I have always wondered what that was.  I can tell alcohol is starting to hit me when that sound is more pronounced when I close my eyes.  Any pills do that too.  It's like my own personal indicator that a drug is now in my system.", "I've never heard any noises, I don't know what is every talking about, can someone explain like i'm two or three?", "I've been able to contract the muscle all my life and noticed it to be a sound dampener. I've always wondered if it really was a set of natural ear protection but now I know. Comes in handy when you work at a gun range.", "Aghhh finally I know what that noise is. I can make it  voluntarily as well. Good to know. ", "These same muscles are irritated the day after I miss my Paxil dose. Also referred to as \"head zaps\". Very interesting. ", "Previous answer from /u/toasterkid\n\n\"Interestingly, some people have the ability to contract this muscle voluntarily.\"\n\n\nIt's nice to know, after all this time, that I'm not a (total) freak and that this has a name.", "You hear a noise when you stretch??? Woah. Now I have to see.", "I can make an internal WHHMM like noise in my ears when I make my mouth into a yawn like shape and move my inner throat back and forth and I can make it do it over and over again. it also makes this noise when I crack my neck (only when I bend it to the right though) is this the noise you're talking about? cuz I was wondering if there was something wrong with me but this is really interesting to learn", "How about the squishing  sound i hear when i get really angry?", "Is it the noise that sounds kind like a strong breeze outside, also kind of like somebody sliding a couch along on the floor above you? I can make that noise voluntarily in my head but I have no idea where it comes from!", "I always assumed everyone could do this. This explains a lot as to why when I tell people to do it they act like I'm crazy!", "Wait I can hear that noice voluntarily, you're telling me other people can't?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7xfhvg", "title": "- why when watching hd movies is the dialogue volume so low and the background noises (score, explosions, etc) so loud?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xfhvg/eli5_why_when_watching_hd_movies_is_the_dialogue/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du7xhx1", "du7yfj8", "du86ain", "du8ci9a", "du8csiy", "du8hxsq", "du8jc0y", "du8m963", "du8nlqt", "du8pbv0", "du8rar8", "du8sldw", "du8sugs", "du8vat9", "du90ktt", "du93s0c"], "score": [58, 377, 16, 48, 31, 20, 4, 8, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You need at least a 5.1 surround system and equalize the center channel with the others.  Dialogue is usually in the center channel, so it's volume should be increased relative to the other channels", "Having a high dynamic range (the difference in volume at reference amplification between the lowest whisper sound and the loudest explosion in the soundtrack) is often a sought after factor. In proper professional movie theatres where you won't bother a neighbour this is a good thing. For most consumers it's pretty annoying. If you're able to, when I set up my surround sound I program the center channel at least 3db louder than any other speaker to compensate for the quiet voice thing. Many receiver/amps have also a night mode that compresses Dynamic range as well although I haven't been a fan when I've tried it. ", "Make sure you're using the correct audio settings for your setup. If you have 5 speakers and 1 subwoofer, you have a 5.1 system. In that case, you'll want to boost your center channel volume by a decibel or two at a time until it feels right. You may also have a calibration option in your audio receiver; if so, I recommend trying that first.  \n\nIf you only have two speakers, make sure your player and receiver are set to 2.0 or dual-channel audio. If they're set to 5.1 and you don't have that setup, you're unable to hear 4 channels of audio that the video player thinks you have. One of those channels is the center channel, which is commonly used for voice.  \n\nOnce you're using the correct settings, voice should be much closer to the score and action scenes in movies. If it's still significantly quieter, you can try setting your audio to \"mono\" (last resort, you'll lose audio directionality) or try one of the other suggestions here; the above scenarios are just the most common I've seen.", "I experience it just out of TV speakers. Literally can't watch a damn thing without having it super loud. I used to have a htpc plugged into my TV and windows has an audio setting called Loud Equilization which completely fixed it, but can't replicate it on other devices. I now just have an Android box connected to the TV and been trying to find and equivalent setting. Unless I wear headphones, as soon as music or an action scene plays in the show, wife comes out 'can you turn that down a bit please', at which point I just switch the TV off because it's fucking pointless. ", "Can fix that with VLC player it's simple to do _URL_0_", "To add to what others are saying, and it hasn't been specifically mentioned so far, is that filmmakers set out *deliberately* to create the huge gap between dialogue and explosions. In sound editing there are a few standards (like LUFS) that define peak waveforms in dB. It's standard practice in the industry, intended to be viewed in theatres.", "Here's my question. Compressors are super simple. Maybe the answer is processor speed but why in the hell do 5.1 systems not have good compressors? I've even got dynamic EQ and automatic volume automation (not a compressor) in my recording software. These things will work in real time on software monitored tracks with no noticeable (eh, within reason) latency. Besides, how hard could it possibly be to delay the picture by the same amount of time the latency of such processing would introduce to the sound? I have a Night Time setting on my Boston Audio system that does nothing but bump the vocal range in the eq. Compressors damn it! We want compressors!", "I've never noticed this but it's probably because I always watch everything with the subtitles on. That way is someone is doing the dishes or cooking or something I don't have to rewind or miss anything. It does suck with comedies because it screws up the timing of the jokes, but other then that I love it. I've been doing it since high school and now am just used to it. It sometimes bugs other people (roommates, parents) but they are usually polite and let me do it and then eventually get used to it. ", "Some people have answered this partly in my view. It depends on your speaker system as well as your settings. Double check to make sure that if you're listening through TV or computer speakers,the settings are appropriate, rather than 5.1. \n\nI worked in the film audio industry and yes the industry standard is to mix at a certain level (dialogue at approx.  -24dbFS for theatrical mix and -20dbFS for TV, meaning that for TV, there is 20 db of headroom for louder sounds). I did think it was a bit odd when there is also a large population listening on bad speakers or built in speakers that won't be hearing what we mixers are hearing. Yes, some software for your speakers/amps do calibrate this, but I've tested my mixes before  and it didn't sound nearly similar enough to what I was hearing in a studio. Bad hardware can only go so far.\n\nThere are certain standards that Netflix, Disney, and other distributors/broadcasters have that mixes need to meet. I actually think the QC that they do doesn't focus on dialogue clarity as much as it should, and I definitely have heard dialogue that I thought was too quiet. Realism and art is good for sure, but in most scenes I just want to hear what a character is saying. I feel that there should be a review of how mixes are done and delivered, especially when there is a larger audience watching via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime, etc than theatres. ", "I'd double check that surround sound signals are actually reaching your receiver. If you run it through your tv, then to your receiver, the tv may be stripping it down to PCM (2.0 channels) due to fears of copyright protection, then your receiver is emulating PCM back into surround, creating the problem you're describing. Using all HDMI with the ARC (audio return channel) function shouldn't strip it down, but it still may if it doesn't pass the HDCP (high definition copy protection) check.\n\nTry running either optical or digital out from your player directly to your receiver, and check that the receiver options are set to Dolby, not just \"all speakers\", which is a fancy form of stereo 2.1. Hopefully that will correct your issue!", "This is actually a thing?  Thanks OP.  I keep discussing for real with my wife if I'm loosing my hearing or not with all these new shows as I can't hear for shit what they're saying but then the SFX comes on and suddenly its too loud.", "Looking at you The Walking Dead! If there wasn't subtitles I wouldn't know what's being said and my speakers would be blown the second anything action like would happen ", "Nothing to do with HD stuff. This has been an issue since the VHS days(Though rarer back then. I had some tapes that did this). It's to do with the sound mixing.\n\nTV has this problem a lot, even when it's got nothing to do with surround sound and stuff(I was playing volume jockey in the 90s a lot when watching cable TV). So do many net videos.", "We need, for want of a better name, an Old Man button.  Where the dark scenes suddenly become well lit, where the dialogue level is high, and where the explosions  &  sound effects are at a low level.  As an extra, especially for complicated murder/mystery/crime shows or movies, a pop up that helps you remember the person they are taking about.  Like \u201cBob\u201d did something, the murder perhaps, and you are all ... which one is Bob?  Is he the ex-husband or the mechanic?  Then a little pop up comes with a picture and a quick reminder.  It\u2019s brilliant.  ", "I have fought this problem ever since playing dvds on PS2, which seemed to exhibit this problem even more than other players.\n\nIf you don't have a receiver or you are playing the sound through the tv speakers, there is little to be done.  You could try changing dynamic range on the player or see if there is a dialogue boost setting on the tv or dvd player.\n\nIf you have a receiver or some form of a sound system, you can, as others have said, boost the center channel.  I have my system setup where it accepts 5.1/7.1 and plays it through 4 speakers (2 front and 2 rear).  It is a phantom center channel, so the center channel gets played through my big front speakers.  I've noticed the front speakers have a much bigger frequency range than the center, so having the center channel speaker lost some of the experience (for example the rain sequence at the beginning of gladiator - having a center speaker causes some of the clear rain sounds to disappear or not play at all).  So this has improved dialogue a little.  \n\nIn my experience, having very loud music/background noise/ everything else and quiet dialogue is a sign of a poorly encoded audio mix.  I forget where I read it, but I think issues with dialogue volume are instances where the audio tracks weren't adjusted properly from levels set while playing at the movie theaters vs the levels encoded into the blu ray.  I've changed every setting imaginable, and run with my center channel boosted 10db and it still doesn't fix the issue on certain movies.  It is extremely annoying having to turn down the volume when people are not speaking because the volume is what to high.  ", "I am in the movie business.\n\nMovies are sound balanced for theater volume.  At home people keep from rattling furniture, turning the volume down which muddies speech. Movies that are made for tv, are sound balanced for a lower playback volume.  \n\nMovies made for foreign distribution sets the volume even louder than US theaters.  Bollywood, is a good example.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://lifehacker.com/5920290/how-to-fix-movies-that-are-really-quiet-then-really-loud"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ypawy", "title": "London Club Culture", "selftext": "I've been a fan of the Sherlock Homes series for most of my life and the stories continually reference a fictional London club called the 'Diogenes Club'.  London clubs are also mentioned extensively in 'The Long Firm', which is set in the 1960's. I would be interested to know the answers to the following questions.\n\n1) What exactly were these clubs ? \n\n2) How did one join ? \n\n3) What were the costs of membership ? \n\n4) Do many of these clubs still exist ?   \n\n5) Were there clubs for all social classes at this point in history or just the wealthy ? \n\n6) Was this culture unique to London or did other major European cities have gentleman's clubs ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ypawy/london_club_culture/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfmntb1", "cfmnv56", "cfmqh8n"], "score": [21, 3, 10], "text": ["1. Large club houses, usually highly luxurious, complete with bars, restaurants, billiards rooms, smoking rooms, and guest bedrooms.\n2. Each club typically has it's own requirements, which have shifted over time. The Oxford and Cambridge Club is for graduates of Oxford and Cambridge University, The East India Club was originally intended for officers and civil servants who had served the East India Company. Today it recruits from recent graduates of Britain's elite \"public\" schools (i.e. private schools.) There is also usually some mechanism by which the children of members can become members.\n3. Varied from club to club and the type of member. Younger and older members usually pay less, as do those who aren't residents of London.\n4. Yes they very much still exist, which is how I'm able to answer this question.\n5. Class in the UK is separate from a question of wealth. These clubs are a bastion of what the British call the \"middle class\" but the middle class in Britain can refer to a billionaire so long as they don't have a title. The aristocracy have their own club affiliations. Then there are political clubs. There's even \"alternative\" members clubs for those involved in the arts and entertainment like The Groucho Club: _URL_1_\n6. They are extensive throughout the United States (virtually every Northern City has a Union League. New York and Boston, in particular, have many) and in Anglo/American expat communities around the world, but while the continent certainly it's share of fraternal organizations and salons I don't know of any non-English speaking countries where this took off in the same way.\n\nedit: in reference to class there are also the working men's clubs: _URL_0_", "I can answer question 4)\n\nThere are still numerous clubs still active, including the Savile Club: _URL_1_ and the Caledonian club: _URL_0_.\n\nThere is a list of London gentlemens' clubs on Wikipedia that you might find interesting: _URL_2_\n\nEDIT: CptBuck has covered everything in depth anyway.\n", "I highly recommend:\rMilne-Smith, Amy. London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late Victorian Britain. New York: Palgrave, 2011. \rit addresses many of these questions as well as how clubs contributed to gender norms of \"the gentleman.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_men%27s_club", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Club"], ["http://www.caledonianclub.com/", "http://www.savileclub.co.uk/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_London's_gentlemen's_clubs"], []]}
{"q_id": "ctu30w", "title": "As modern humans, we spend a significant percentage of our lives wearing shoes and other related footwear. How does this affect the development of our feet and legs, if at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ctu30w/as_modern_humans_we_spend_a_significant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["expcyoq", "expsnf9"], "score": [3, 10], "text": ["The first shoes did not have a big impact on this\nBut the newer shoes that have thick soles do. your feet will land differently once u touch the ground. In a study it was discovered that walking barefoot puts 12% less pressure on the knees.\nAs far as i know there is not a really big difference in how our legs evolved but we do walk differently\nI hopes this somewhat answers your question", "There are definite morphological implications.  People who grew up barefoot (ie native tribes in South America, Africa, or Australia) tend to have significantly wider feet. This is because the confinement of shoes, while slight, is enough that it alters the shape of the foot. In addition, the intirnisic muscles of the foot in shoe-wearing populations tend to be relatively weak and/or underdeveloped, as the shoe structure replaces many functions of the foot. The weakness of those muscles tends to lead to over-pronation, which in turn can lead to increased tibial rotation during the stance phase of gait, and tibial rotation can cause a misalignment of the tibia/femur/patella complex.\n\nThat being said, feet are very unique so you may not see all of those things or even none of those things in any given person who usually wears shoes. Things like 'barefoot' shoes are also primarily marketing gimmicks meant to prey upon ignorance and utilizing psuedoscience."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "vaevc", "title": "Driving over broken glass; better to go fast or slow?", "selftext": "On one of the roads that lead to my work's parking lot there is often broken glass on it.  Usually just broken beer bottles.  Unfortunately, there is sometimes no way to drive around or take another road.  \n\nThere's a debate in my office whether it is better to driver fast or slow over the glass.  Those that drive fast say it will break the fragments into smaller pieces making it less likely to puncture the tire.  Those that drive slow say it allows the broken pieces time to be moved into a flatter position which is less likely to puncture the tire.  (There's also a lot of conjecture and pseudo-science on both sides that I'll save you from)\n\nSo which side is right?  Should I drive fast or slow over broken glass to minimize my chance of getting a flat tire?\n\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vaevc/driving_over_broken_glass_better_to_go_fast_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c52sl96", "c52thz6"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["Going faster will kick up the glass and you'll be more likely to get it caught in your CV boots and cut those up, so I'd drive slower.\n\nCar tyres are pretty thick, I've run over beer bottles that someone put behind my wheels with no issue.", "As far as actual damage to the tires goes, it shouldn't really matter which speed you drove over the glass. The same amount of your tire will touch the road regardless of the speed that you drive over it.\n\nWhat would matter is the size of the glass pieces and their orientation. If the piece was long enough that it could puncture the tire, and at the perfect orientation, there might be a problem. However, any glass that is large enough to puncture a tire and not at the perfect orientation will likely be crushed under the weight of the car."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "ofmda", "title": "Stone glows/lights up when placed in water? (What type of chemistry is this? what is this?)", "selftext": "Hello reddit!\n\nI received a stone that glows/lights up when it comes in contact with water. Does this have to do something with the chemistry of the stone? I'm fairly certain that this isn't a natural stone. (Chemically altered?)\n\nThanks for helping a layman /r/askscience!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ofmda/stone_glowslights_up_when_placed_in_water_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3guwcl", "c3gvh56", "c3gxcz4"], "score": [10, 2, 4], "text": ["We're really going to need some pictures or more information. ", "does the *stone*'s reaction faint, the more often you use it?", "Well, if it happens once, it's a form of lyoluminescence. If it happens repeatedly, you have a magic stone."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5pqhe5", "title": "why is the french revolution considered more important than the american one in world history when it came later and had many of the same themes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pqhe5/eli5_why_is_the_french_revolution_considered_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcszz2o", "dct0er1", "dct1g9s", "dct3c8q", "dct3fm2", "dct9y0r"], "score": [19, 3, 3, 8, 8, 6], "text": ["Mostly because the American one was about a part of a nation becoming independent with a new rulership and associated laws.\n\nThe French one was about getting rid of monarchies, which changed power structures all over Europe, which, even Eurocentricism aside was a huge factor of influence on how the world is today. You can still see monarchies in place in countries where the revolution did not happen, so it also doesn't count as a \"would have happened anyway\" thing.", "At the time of the American Revolution, the soon-to-be USA consisted of 13 colonies. Those 13 breakaway colonies did not even comprise the whole of the British interest in the New World - Newfoundland, Quebec and several more substantial colonies remained loyal to the British Crown. France, on the other hand, was an established global empire, with many far-flung political and economic interests. When some of their colonies revolted against British rule, it rattled the British. When the French revolted against monarchic rule, it rattled the wider world - with other nations and rulers considering their own position.  ", "In addition to what others have mentioned, the French Revolution led to the rise of Napoleon and what could arguably be called the first truly global war.", "Because the American Revolution was a limited rebellion against a limited monarchy in a far off colony. The French Revolution was an absolutist revolution against an absolute monarchy in the most powerful nation in Europe. It rocked the European monarchs to the core, and terrified them that these revolutions could occur in their backyards, hence why they acted quickly to suppress the revolution (and failed). \n\nNot to mention, it put the left-right dichotomy into place, introduced the concept of mass conscription (which would lead to the bloodbaths of the American Civil War and the World Wars) and inspired the revolutionary waves of the 19th and 20th centuries. ", "The French Revolution was actually a revolution--the social order and government in France completely changed. \n\nThe American Revolution isn't consistently considered a revolution by scholars, but rather a war of independence and separation from a colonial master. The government of Britain was not overthrown and social order did not change; America (simply) stopped being a part of Britain.", "Rebellion against a colonial power is nothing new.  It was practically a national sport in Ireland for centuries before the US existed.\n\nOverthrowing a long standing monarchy, especially one as entrenched as France's, and replacing it with a democracy, that was something quite new."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6kpeyj", "title": "Why did Jefferson's \"Let's make thousands of tiny one-cannon gunboats instead of a few giant ships\" scheme fail?", "selftext": "See title. Seemed like a creative idea when I read about it, but it was apparently vaguely \"unworkable\". Why is that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kpeyj/why_did_jeffersons_lets_make_thousands_of_tiny/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djoc7mc"], "score": [80], "text": ["There's a saying that a military prepares for the *last* war it fought. Such was the case with the United States. The experience at Tripoli taught America's naval and political leaders that gunboats could be effective in harbor defense. Navy Secretary Robert Smith, however, knew that gunboats alone would not be sufficient to meet America's defensive needs in the first decade of the 19th century. He asked the federal government in 1806 to provide for frigates, ships of the line, then gunboats for harbor defense.\n\nSmith ran into a political buzzsaw: Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, a \"fiscal superhawk\" (to use a term from *Six Frigates*) who asked whether Smith's requested naval expense would cause more problems than it solved. While Smith had Congressional support, he was only able to wrangle funds for seaport fortifications and gunboats in April 1806. The same appropriations legislation limited the number of standing naval personnel; if gunboats were to be built, they would be operated by the equivalent of naval militia, by and large.\n\nA year after Smith garnered $250,000 for gunboats, Jefferson asked Congress for $1 million more to build 200 additional gunboats. Congress complied with enough money to build 180.\n\nThere were multiple problems with the concept, to quote *Six Frigates*:\n\n > \"As the first gunboats were launched and placed in service, criticism mounted. They were wet, cramped, and uncomfortable. It was often difficult to recruit full complements of seamen to man them. Officers took the first opportunity to be transferred into a frigate. Then a Norfolk gunboat capsized and sank in six fathoms of water, Stephen Decatur dryly asked a fellow officer: 'What would be the real national loss if all gunboats were sunk in a\nhundred fathoms of water?'\"\n\nThe critics were, of course, right. Gunboats were ineffective in anything but a flat calm. They were incredibly fragile, usually sinking under a single shot from a larger vessel. They were difficult to man and operate \u2500 it was much more efficient to use the same number of crewmen on a frigate \u2500 and they were much more expensive than planned. Congress had expected each gunboat to cost about $5,000. The true cost was almost double that. \n\nCongress authorized the construction of 278 gunboats between 1805 and 1807, but only 176 were built and still fewer were placed into service. The gunboat program was abandoned after Jefferson left office. It was a complete failure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3yhz25", "title": "why do americans build homes out of nothing but wood in areas where hurricanes or tornadoes would do mostly nothing to a house made of brick or concrete?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yhz25/eli5why_do_americans_build_homes_out_of_nothing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cydmaj0", "cydmbv1", "cydmdoi", "cydmeyh", "cydmgxc", "cydr6st", "cydsoch", "cydvu5x", "cye4ln5"], "score": [6, 16, 46, 17, 5, 24, 33, 2, 2], "text": ["Brick gets wiped smooth just as stick built pretty much.  Concrete is a great idea, might help some, but unless you concrete roof that shit, it also won't matter in a tornado.  You'll just have some nice concrete walls standing.\n\nBut most of the real Tornado alley dwellers don't have the finances.  \n\nIt's kind of like people living in flood zones.  They know it's going to fucking flood, but it's cheap, and it's hard to find a buyer for your current property, so you're kinda stuck with floods.  Or in this case Tornados.  ", "I'm not an expert but I would guess...\n\n1. Brick and concrete are expensive. People generally don't assume a natural disaster will happen to THEM, and many probably don't factor in insurance costs when buying a home.\n\n2. Most new housing these days is basically cookie cutter, off the shelf designs. Concrete, brick, etc. will mean basically a custom designed home.", "1. In extremely violent tornado storms that wipe out entire cities, virtually no structure, regardless of material, can survive the wind and still be within reasonable cost. Instead most houses in tornado-prone areas have much safer and cheaper underground shelters. ([Here's a bank vault where 23 people took shelter that withstood an EF5 tornado](_URL_0_). As you can see it protected the occupants but nevertheless sustained considerable damage. Most people can't afford to or really want to live in a windowless bank vault.)\n\n2. In less violent tornado storms the tornado will only travel through a very narrow path, so the chance of getting hit by a tornado is very low and it's simply not cost effective to tear down every house and replace it with brick houses. Most new subdivisions in these areas are stronger and can withstand a mild tornado. \n\n3. Flying debris is a major cause of death and injuries. Wood will break apart into smaller and lighter pieces while brick and concrete will not break apart easily, they will make much more dangerous hazard. ", "With hurricanes most damages is from tidal surges and flooding. Brick homes and concrete homes are just as susceptible to this kind of damage as wooden ones are. \n\nYou also seem to have a lack of understanding as to how strong tornadoes are. Tornadoes can dismantle a brick house nearly as easily as they can a wooden house. All you get is heavier debris being thrown in the air. Concrete homes would do better, but to be a tornado resistant concrete it has to be around 4' thick and steel reinforced. \n\nIt basically boils down to cost. A brick home would be between 2 and 5 times more expensive than a wooden one and a concrete home can be as much as 10 times as expensive. A tornado resistant home would be around 20 times as expensive as a single tornado bunker room can cost as much as a normal house. ", "\"It's not *that* the wind is blowing, it's *what* the wind is blowing.\" - Ron White\n\nWhen a house gets hit with the debris inside a tornado, it can be made of just about anything and it will still be demolished.\n\nThe structural damage from a hurricane is caused by the extreme flooding, not wind.", "Its all about cost vs usefullness. The chance for a tornado to tear down your house is like winning the lottery, while building a brick house vs wood is significantly more expensive and infact might be too expensive for the family to afford.  \n\nWe all need to live somewhere...", "I live in tornado alley, and the chances of my house getting hit by a tornado are basically zero. It just isn't worth the expense to build a house that can withstand a tornado. It's like saying \"look how many people die in car crashes, why not drive tanks around?\"", "Because common established building practices. Nobody is really trained to build a half underground mound house that looks like something out of the Hobbit Shire, even though that is likely the most storm-proof design. (Sloped so the wind and any storm debris goes over it, and insulated and protected by some amount of earth.) And if somehow you manage to build one like that independently, it's typically considered a harder sell because the design is fairly unique.\n\nThere's also considerations that once building out of more solid materials, you also need to work out ways to get a building to breathe. Condensation and moisture build-up and just not enough air-exchange in a unique design can cause sick-building syndrome. Less experience among local architects in dealing with those things tend to make that more difficult and expensive to approach as well.\n\nWood has been tried and done all the time, so it's a lot cheaper. That and the insurance industry, people just get to keep rebuilding the same damn thing even though you'd think they'd learn after nature hits them with a clue stick every 20 years or so. (And some areas really should have been left farmland and not developed because of the weather patterns.)", "I lived in central Illinois for my childhood and in coastal South Carolina for my early adulthood. The odds of a tornado touching down on a house and not a corn field are slim. Many of the towns and homes that dot the wide open farm land are from the late 1800's and most brick structures are important civic buildings or schools due to cost. Tornadoes don't care if a building is made with the finest brick or cheapest pressed wood, in the end it eats what it wants to unless it's an earth home. Earth homes seem to be the bane of tornadoes but nobody wants to bury their 100 year old home stead yet. Architect's have more to think of when building on the SC coast not just because of the hurricane but also the swamps. The swamps love to give full body hugs to heavy structures. Most buildings really close to the ocean are stucco, brick, or hardie-plank and put up on huge stilts or foundation HOWEVER, some places like Charleston have historical buildings that can't be messed and still have wood. Many of the cheaper more inland buildings have a brick veneer on the first floor and a slab foundation but homes close to the swamps are small and built of wood due to sinking (well, that's what I was told by locals). The SC government has tax breaks put in to help home owners make hurricane improvements too but none are for brick that I know of just working shutters, roofs, windows/ doors... you get the idea. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a3b678f07573b302cd839fea2a4e3bfb?convert_to_webp=true"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2147sd", "title": "why do we still have car lighters instead of regular electricity plugs", "selftext": "It seems like no one uses car lighters for there intended purpose anymore but we still use the same plug for charging. Why haven't we switched to plug outlets it seems the most logical thing to do.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2147sd/eli5_why_do_we_still_have_car_lighters_instead_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg9g0no", "cg9g1fl", "cg9gd75", "cg9gn0t", "cg9iwuq", "cg9jmhd", "cg9kfpf", "cg9kupf", "cg9l8ne", "cg9ljgh", "cg9m0bn", "cg9n1hy", "cg9n2eh", "cg9ne0b", "cg9q34a", "cg9r0s5", "cg9s067"], "score": [15, 15, 176, 15, 2, 13, 2, 2, 2, 71, 3, 10, 12, 3, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["There is a big legacy install base of 12V auto connectors. Plus, having a regular plug means you need an inverter...many cars have this now but it's still cost/weight/power draw so it's not ubiquitous. ", "The plug like in your house provides alternating current at 120 volts (give or take). The cigarette lighter plug provides direct current at 12 volts; they're incompatible. The cigarette lighter socket is a pretty standard way of supplying the kind of power your car needs anyway; without having an inverter, a car can't provide the kind of power you're used to in the house.", "Household electricity is AC, your car's electrical system is DC.  It takes addition equipment to convert it to DC, and you lose some efficiency in the process.\n\nAlso, a car battery only produces about 500 watts, which is not enough for some high power uses.  Your car's electrical wiring and fuses are not designed to deliver more power than that.  So it is better to have low power DC devices that use one plug, and higher power AC devices that use a different plug.", "My car also has set of USB plugs, good enough for the iDevices to stay charged.", "Eventually the lighter outlet type plug might get phased out in favor of USB plugs, but USB doesn't support 12V. A lot of what decides what sort of plug is used is based on keeping people from plugging the wrong thing into an outlet that will fry the device.", "People do still smoke you know? Have you ever tried to light a cigarette, keep a Bic lit with the windows down, steer with your knee, work the clutch and shift at the same time? ", "Im pretty sure the Volkswagon Amorok has a 240v outlet as an optional extra in Australia.\n", "ELI5 within an ELI5: If cigarette lighters don't provide enough current to act as a typical electricity plug, why am I able to use one of these to run my laptop on road trips? \n\n_URL_0_", "My mom's jeep has both, and it's from 2006.", "Although most of the answers are true, or have an element of truth, they all seem to answer the question, \"why would it be hard to switch to household plugs in automobiles instead of the cigarette adapter we currently use.\"\n\nThe real reason we still have the 12 V sockets is that a plug isn't just a set of matching connectors, *it represents a standard*.\n\nYour household socket is shaped differently than your car's accessory socket because they support different types of power delivery, and the *products* that use them *expect* a specific type of power delivery.\n\nHave you ever tried to plug something in at home and the plug will only insert one way, while other items seem to work either way? That's because your home socket is shaped so that products that need to can guarantee that they are connected in a certain way. Likewise, you can't plug your coffee maker into your dashboard because the coffee maker expects a certain voltage, power delivery mechanism, and minimum available amperage--none of which is commonly available in a car. Without serious effort or amazing oversight, you will never be able to plug your vacuum cleaner into a socket that cannot provide the power to run it, and you will never be able to plug your car charger into a socket that would overload your phone.", "My 2012 grand Cherokee has a power outlet, plus I believe 4 USB ports and an AC outlet.", "I cant believe nobody has mentioned that small electronics like phones, laptops, and nav systems and whatnot all need DC power to run.  At home, the little brick or plug that goes into the wall converts high voltage AC into DC power they can use.  You car already has low voltage DC.  Go unplug your iphone charger and read it. It will read Input 120v ac, output 5v DC.  It WANTS DC power and its a hell of a lot easier to start with 12v DC.  Circuit boards want nothing to do with a household outlet.  Converting up and back down is stupid and has limited uses.", "the car lighter outlet size is a hold over from older days, its wider size is so you can light a cigar\n\nnow as for power, that depends on your car, its 12 volts, so the amp rating and fuse will limit your total power, but using a standard of 15 amps:\n\n15a x 12v = 180 watts\n\n180 watts is more than enough to power most portable electronics, including light to medium duty laptops\n\nso why don't cars come with an AC110 port? some do, but the fact is that the cigar lighter has been standard for 60+ years, if they dropped it in favor of a AC outlet you would have two problems:\n\n1 tons of devices designed to use the cigar lighter would no longer work\n\n2 people are dumb, that number i pulled about the wattage 95% of people would ignore and would try to put a powerstrip with a TV, microwave, couple laptops and probably a toaster in their car\n\nthis would result in the fuse blowing, and people complaining,\n\nexcept for a few sneaky fucks who would put a bigger fuse in, say a 30 or 45 amp fuse, but then they would sue after their car caught fire while watching honey boo boo and making hot pockets while stuck in traffic\n\n", "I use a USB adaptor in my vans cigarette lighter socket,is that what you meant?", "Because people are dumb and would plug things in that aren't supposed to. It's supposed to be idiot proof. ", "Regular 110V AC isn't standard on cars and trucks because people would install hairdryers, plasma TVs, space heaters and and in the south, plasma rifles and Gatling guns. There's a lotta suckers that need a taste of the plasma rifle. Keep the Gatling warm and primed,. in case they don't catch a hint. Then play it all back on the 90\" TV installed into the roof.\n\nThe things that need to run in a car all work with the cigarette lighter, and as no one uses it for cigarettes anymore, even if they smoke, that plug is free. 110V AC was a good standard 60 years ago because step up or step down in voltage can efficiently be accomplished through transformers. Solid state made that unnecessary and power wasting. Communication and information devices are simpler to build with 12V power. ", "i can\u00b4t resist..... *their"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-inverter-adapter-charger-notebook/dp/B003Q54V88/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395550786&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=dc+to+ac+inverter"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "i71jj", "title": "Safest medium for long term water storage.", "selftext": "Whats the best way to store water for extended periods of time. Glass?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i71jj/safest_medium_for_long_term_water_storage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c21evm7"], "score": [5], "text": ["Silver Coated Can void of air."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4kzgh9", "title": "what determines whether or not someone is a naturally good singer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kzgh9/eli5_what_determines_whether_or_not_someone_is_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3j085x", "d3j1ylf", "d3jc2zj", "d3jjzgx", "d3jm5z2"], "score": [20, 115, 24, 3, 5], "text": ["I'm not a singer so I can't comment specifically on that.  But when someone says a person is \"naturally\" good at something it means that they naturally do something with good form or with proper technique from the start.  They don't have to unlearn bad habits which gives them a leg up from the start.  It still requires practice to excel at something.", "Physically speaking, being a naturally good singer means you were born with a good \"instrument\". Your vocal cords would be more elastic and flexible, and this would make your voice able to produce more overtones, or the right mix of overtones which sound pleasant. Overtones are basically sound waves on top of sound waves which have wavelengths that overlap on the original wave, e.g. half the wavelength, one third the wavelength, and we can tell the difference between a trumpet and a piano or a sweet and a shrill voice largely by picking up on the differences between the mixtures of overtones. \n\n\nBesides that, being naturally coordinated would help controlling the muscles which keep a steady pitch or vibrato or volume, being naturally gifted in pitch and tone differentiation would be important(good ear, perfect pitch), and because IMO natural abilities get a little too much credit with the general public, a natural patience, memory, intelligence, passion and persistence would all be very important when it comes to learning and practicing. Because no one comes out of the womb singing.", "Having a good *ear* is more relevant to developing a good voice than any vocal talent.\n\nThat being said, the best indicator is how hard you are willing to work at it.\n\nSinging well - in tune, on rhythm, intentional intonation, good projection, without damaging your voice - is very hard, and takes discipline, practice, and determination.\n\nYou also have to maintain it, because your voice changes as you age, and you need to be on top of the transitions.  Puberty is the most dramatic example, but it's only one of many.\n\ntl;dr: A decent ear and a strong desire to work hard and intelligently.", "I have a piggy back question. What effect do you think getting a nose job would have on someone's singing voice? I have a prominent \"Roman\" nose with a big bump on the bridge and I've always wanted a nose job, but I'm a singer and my mom told me it would mess up my voice. I've heard that Barbara Streisand wanted one too but didn't do it because she was worried about her voice. But I feel like a lot of singers have plastic surgery or naturally small noses. So how would shaving down cartilage on top of my nose impact my sinuses and vocal tone? ", "My personal theory is that naturally good singers hear their voice at the same pitch other people hear it. When you sing or speak, you hear your voice through the air (like everyone else hears you) but mostly through the bones and tissue in your neck and head. If this tissue and bone distorts the pitch of the sound, when you hear yourself singing in tune everyone else will hear you singing out of tune. Naturally bad singers can figure out how to only listen to their voice through the air or to figure out what pitch they need to hear themselves sing to produce the correct pitch for everyone else."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2sdkyv", "title": "why are the ceilings in so many grocery stores so high?", "selftext": "Doesn't this increase both initial building costs and subsequent heating costs?\n\nEdit: Thank you to everyone who helped to answer my question. I had no idea so many factors were involved.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sdkyv/eli5_why_are_the_ceilings_in_so_many_grocery/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnoh4lx", "cnohlgh", "cnoil9n", "cnokd3d", "cnol1rk", "cnomm54", "cnong9g", "cnonmgc", "cnoo4i4", "cnoomn2", "cnooo2n", "cnooy1u", "cnopiu9", "cnopr8t", "cnos30e", "cnoujq4", "cnp48hd", "cnp4izh", "cnp4qr4", "cnp6x8l"], "score": [1295, 213, 86, 6, 17, 15, 20, 2, 2, 34, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It makes the store feel open and less crowded, and it lets you set up displays that take advantage of the height, such as signs visible anywhere in the store. It also makes moving things with machinery like forklifts easier. \n\nPsychological experiments have shown that people don't like being in areas with low ceilings. Some airports have made use of low ceilings in places where they don't want people to linger, like the front of the check in line. \n\nedit: check in, not check out. ", "The greatest benefit to height is in the event of a fire. Higher ceilings allow more time for smoke and heat to accumulate before affecting things closer to the floor (e.g., people, fire load/combustibles). The height also can allow for fire suppression systems that cover a greater area with fewer components, such as sprinkler heads. In addition, it is generally easier to control the climate in a larger space with larger air volumes (exchanges per hour) that are not as noticeable in one spot. (Except for those annoying freeze-or-fry areas where air flows are concentrated.) The air handlers in these systems can also be configured for use following a fire to assist in evacuating smoke from a building, either by exhaust or pressurizing the building (negative and positive pressure ventilation, respectively).\n\nConstruction costs would tend to be slightly higher because of the longer (higher) columns required, which in turn need to be stronger because of (typically) larger roof systems such as bar joists or trusses. Such costs can be somewhat offset by reducing the number of columns required. When designers are tasked to create 'open space', regardless of low or high ceilings, larger columns with stronger roof systems allow column spacing to be increased, thus 'opening' the space. However, this is not always the case, such as in multi-story structures where significant weight/loads on higher floors require different column sizes or spacing (e.g., airports, parking ramps, hotels).\n\nOperating costs do tend to be higher, but it is a trade off on the desired space/affect and what is considered reasonable operating expense.  Such factors are taken into consideration during the design phase of projects, so the owner/operator knows early-on what to expect.  These factors also contribute to changes in a design if costs are deemed to be unreasonable or exceeding targets/goals.\n\nSource: Engineer by day, Firefighter by night. \n\nEdit: Additional information regarding costs.", "Hi! I'm no architect, but luckily, I do know a few! I work in the construction business with my dad and every now and again bump into an architect. Sorry for the long amount of text incoming by the way...\n\nSo on a lunch run at our local Safeway with said architect and my father, I indeed asked him why the ceiling height was so high, and why it wouldn't be cost effective to heat and cool the mass of air. His answer, paraphrased:\n\nThe store ceilings are high because it helps regulate interior temperature (news to me) and cuts down severely on the sheer acoustic noise created by the public and the checkout lines and the such. Apparently, it's cost effective to use minimal heat, along with the hot lights in the ceiling (news to me that supermarket light's heat was ACTUALLY put to use) and to circulate that using ventilation installed on the roof of the structure. Also, the height is useful for displays and the such, which I already knew.\n\nProof: Yeah, sorry. No pics or anything. Just Google it if you don't believe me.", "The simplest answer is that almost every one of those stores will be a steel frame. Steel frame one-storied buildings are naturally capable of having very tall ceilings. In a way, it's economical to have steel frame buildings be bigger than a certain minimum size and just use the interior however you please.\n\nI've seen plenty of smaller steel buildings as private shops/garages and they're all a minimum of about 40'x40'x20' with ceilings so high you could build a second story loft inside.\n\nThe high ceilings were a result of the steel frame technique and a lot of the older ones had drop ceilings. It was in recent decades that high open ceilings came into style, for reasons that are listed elsewhere here.", "I can't believe no one has mentioned this, but taller ceilings also allow for more storage in the back without taking up as much sale floor space. Freight in is an accounting cost that may be higher then the utilities. ", "Another reason that hasn't been mentioned is security. Before security cameras widely used, many grocery stores had a booth or room that was sat higher up. Usually this was your accounting/cash office or a managers office. They might be set a few feet up or even as a loft. \n\nThis let you see the entire store, using mirrors placed at prime locations (beer  &  wine, meat department, etc) to prevent shop lifting. \n\nNow that security cameras are more widely used, the high ceilings still allow you to view more floor space with fewer cameras. ", "My company does new construction and remodels of several chain grocery stores.\n\nThe high ceilings accomplish a few things, but mainly the goal is temperature regulation. Heating, cooling, and lighting large spaces is expensive so most designs will try and take advantage of simple physics to mitigate those costs. \n\nA large \"cushion\" of air will maintain temperature better than individual pockets of air that would be prevalent in a low ceiling shopping aisle. If you look at newer stores, namely Walmarts, you will see destratification fans (look for big white dome-ish plastic pieces) over the open cooler/produce sections that mix internal air to continually regulate it.\n\nAlso, having your light fixtures higher up allows you to use less of them to cover a wider area. When a new store opens, health and safety inspectors walk through every section of the store with light meters to ensure each area is properly lit. Being able to meet these requirements with less fixtures means a cheaper initial cost and long term energy savings.\n\nDepending on what's burning, fire will not reach the ceiling of these higher buildings. This makes them immensely safer in the event of an accident, as well as making it easier to design a sprinkler system for the space.\n\n**TLDR**: Large air masses maintain temperature better than small pockets, and mounting lights higher covers more area with the same number of bulbs. Fire doesn't spread as quickly when it can't reach the ceiling.", "I thought about this recently while in a DSW show store waiting around with my So. The ceiling was so unbelievably high for a shoe store. I just kept thinking this must be more expensive to heat and cool. \n\nSome of the arguments here make sense regarding the ease of regulating the temperature when many people are inside. I can see that aspect being valid for a supermarket or  Walmart etc.. But a shoe store would probably never get that packed.  My guess is that it's a standard space that is built so when DSW goes out of business someday the space can easily be used for something else. ", "The height of a ceiling has to be proportional to the size of the room.\n\nIt's the same principle which dictates why very often the \"great room\" of a house has a 1.5 or 2 story ceiling while smaller rooms (e.g., bedrooms) do not.\n\nIf you've ever been in a large room (e.g., 20'x10' or bigger) with only an 8' ceiling, you feel it.\n\nIt has to do with perspective.  If you look down a long room with a low ceiling, then the place where the wall meets the ceiling at the far end of the room is actually almost eye-level, which makes the ceiling feel lower still.\n\nI suspect the underlying psychology has something to do with feeling trapped, e.g., being unable to escape predators if necessary.", "It's so the birds that get trapped inside can fly around and gather intelligence on shopping habits.", "A book you might find interesting about the retail industry written by Vance Packard called Hidden Pursuaders.  It explains the milk, the bread,  and why your favorite cereal went from top shelf to the middle and finally the bottom.", "I'm speculating a little bit, but when I worked at a major retailer many years ago the shelving in the \"back room\" areas went basically up to the ceiling. So perhaps inventory management plays a role also!", "I imagine one key advantage, besides having room for big signs etc., is because all the hot air will rise.\n\nThis keeps the refrigerated/frozen sections (most of the shop) cooler.", "This was a question in my life that I didn't know needed answering.", "Otherwise it would be cramped and smelly. Nobody wants to shop in the cramped and smelly store.", "They usually have a second story in the back for the offices and stuff.  Also, the warehouse part in the back goes up way higher than the shelves up front.", "So the crappy music resonates ALL OVER THE WHOLE STORE", "So that they can have signs visible from most of the store.  Such as the signs displaying the contents of each aisle, so you can actually find stuff.  ", "Resale value.\n\n\nHigh ceiling = more types of stores and even warehousing or night clubs.\n\n", "Because they want an upper level to put the store offices out of sight (and often also to have a view of the whole store)\n\nAnd because it's cheaper to leave the ceiling bare than to put in a drop ceiling that serves no purpose. Also, not having a drop ceiling makes it easier to repair the light fixtures and what not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "93x9ho", "title": "I am a Chinese scholar from a poor background who just passed his imperial exam. What is my future path like? Will I be obstructed due to my poverty? How meritocratic is the system?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/93x9ho/i_am_a_chinese_scholar_from_a_poor_background_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3gmnqx", "e3hmdpb", "e3hreki"], "score": [15, 8, 24], "text": ["I didn't wanted to specify a time period for fear that the question may be too specific. If it's a concern, we can fix around 1000 AD.", "As a sort of follow up, how likely was someone from a poor background to have the opportunity to take or pass the exam? Was literacy preventative enough, or was an at least \"middle class\" (to use a perhaps anachronistic term) background a prerequisite? \n\nEven if that were the case I imagine OP's general question would still apply regarding the treatment differences of the nobility/wealthy and less advantaged exam takers. But I would be curious to know the extent to which imperial exams were feasible to much of the population. ", "Depending on what level of exam the person just passed. During the Song dynasty, around 1000 AD, there were three levels of examinations. Regional, provincial, and court. Also there are martial and arts, depending on what exam you participated the results differ. If you rank at the very top, you'd be invited to participate the court exam under the direct supervision of the emperor himself. Passing the court exam can make someone over night from poor peasant to prime minister.  Lower rankings might get you some employment opportunities at local bureaucracies. After the emperor Yingzong's (1065AD onward) reforms of the examination system, all exam participants who passed court exam would be issued government positions, regardless of ranking.\n\nAs far as Song dynasty's exams are concerns, it is very meritocratic. Several improvements were made to ensure fairness also traveling and food stipends were handed out to traveling and poor exam participants. The emperor Yingzong also issued decrees such as double blinded exams, the exam taker doesn't know who the marker is and the marker can't see the name of the exam taker because the name is sealed. So the exam taker can't find the right person to bribe, and exam marker can't abuse their position through nepotism.  \n\nTotal amount of people passed the exams during the Song dynasty was around 40k out of an adult male population of more than ten million. So the competition is fierce. If you have reached that level of scholarly prowess, opportunities will most likely to find you without your worries. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "386uze", "title": "why should the tsa be shut down? don't airports need security checks?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/386uze/eli5_why_should_the_tsa_be_shut_down_dont/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crss3y2", "crss4fz", "crst2aq", "crsudtw", "crsugaz", "crsvbjw", "crsvos5", "crsvv5c", "crsw3po", "crsw8i5", "crswgqn", "crswos3", "crsx5pc", "crsxztb", "crsy1hr", "crsz4fa", "crszx5f", "crt22rw", "crt26uw", "crt2tam"], "score": [85, 112, 219, 4, 10, 11, 17, 28, 3, 9, 7, 5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["It was recently reported they miss decoy weapons or bombs over 90% of the time during routine tests conducted by the Homeland Security Dept.", "It's only existed since 2001. Before that, airports hired their own security.\n\nThere are some things that benefit from being run by the federal government. They tend to be large scale endeavors: flying to the moon, fighting the Nazis, cross-country highways.\n\nUshering people through metal detectors isn't something that needs the full weight of the federal government behind it.", "it's so bad because it does a shit job of what it's supposed to do, and makes people think that being searched and having no rights when you travel is a normal thing. it should be replaced with a handful of privately hired security guards, like we had before, and who were doing a fine job. nothing the TSA does right now would have prevented 9/11 from happening, yet that is reason we're given for their existence and the billions of dollars that are wasted on it. it's a completely horseshit infringement of people's rights, and worst of all, it does basically nothing to make us any safer. most of the people that work for the TSA are barely qualified to work at walmart.", "Because its staffed by people that would steal the gold teeth out of their dyeing mothers mouth. It can't work. ", "They don't find the real threats.\nThey find lots of non threats and they end up pissing people off\nThey are expensive as fuck...\n\nAnd as a further question - why do airports need security any more so than any other mass transport?", "yes, airports need security checks\n\nbut having someone paid minimum wage powertrippin' as they tell you to remove your shoes is not security\n\nit is something visible and kinda looks like security, makes Homeland Security look like they're doing something and politicians always want to be perceived as doing something\n\nbut, what was reported yesterday as the percentage of weapons they missed?  95%?\n\nif the airlines/Fed were serious about security they wouldn't be hiring people at minimum wage to ensure it  ", "Airports need security checks.\n\nSecurity checks need to ensure security.\n\nTSA doesn't ensure security. \n\nThat's a good summary. ", "I'll bite.  So consider this.  The general idea is that we need to screen people before getting on air planes.  Why is that?  Well, the theory is that because airplanes have a high concentration of people confined to a relatively small area, it provides a setting in which a bad actor is afforded the opportunity do something untoward (in the worst case, kill them).  Because of that, we want to screen everyone who is going to enter that confined area of high density soft targets to make sure they have no such ill intent.  Again, as others have pointed out, airport security is not new and wasn't suddenly sprung upon us with the advent of the TSA.  Anyway, now we have TSA and along with that we have long lines at the security checkpoint at every airport in the world.  What this has done is basically move the high concentration of soft targets in a relatively confined space off of the airplane and into the airport itself.  There are no security checks required to get to the security checkpoint in the airport.  A bad actor can simply walk in and do his evil deed when he gets, say, half-way through the security line.  The bottom line is that we've not measurably improved security.  We've simply made a change for change' sake.  This is precisely what is commonly known as \"security theater\".  It gives that average person a false sense of increased safety and security while draining billions of taxpayer dollars in the process.  The things that TSA claims to do (stop bad actors through behavior analysis and detection of contraband and so on) is largely false as test after test have shown.  It's basically a big social experiment that does nothing to improve safety/security, wastes money, punishes honest travelers and makes it easier for would be bad actors to inflict harm should they choose to.  The fact that there have been no such attacks doesn't prove that TSA is effective, it proves that the risk is incredibly small.", "Is Israel's security as impressive as they claim, and could we adopt their approach?", "The TSA is considered to be utterly terrible at doing it's job because anyone who has ever had anything to do with actual security or even just airports can name a half dozen severe security failures just off the top of their heads in five minutes of interacting with them.  This has given a distinct perception that they are utterly and severely incompetent at security.\n\nTo the best of my knowledge this perception is entirely accurate.  Yet, to be fair, I must also admit that the TSA does a lot of stuff we don't see away from the public.  It is supposedly better at those tasks, but I haven't seen any evidence either way. \n\nThe tasks assigned to the TSA by Congress were not well defined and the entire organization was thrown together slap dash in a huge hurry.  At the time it was well known that it was being put together too fast to assure any sort of quality or efficiency.  So now the sense of dissatisfaction with the way they work is to the point where most of us think that they should be dismantled and another organization should replace them.\n\nKey things: \n\n* Any new organization has to be created by Congress and the President to be a  security agency. (TSA was pushed through Congress very fast.)\n* It has to have the public's good will and faith that they are competent to do their work.  (TSA has never actually had this, it is a post 9/11 reaction without aforethought at it's finest.)\n* It has to have a clear and distinct set of responsibilities.  (Just ask anyone at the TSA what the agency's job is.)\n* There needs to be oversight and an internal auditing system in place to reassure everyone they are doing things correctly.  (Necessary for any and all government agencies.)", "Bruce schneier sums it up pretty good. \n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n\nTldr: they are ineffective and cost a ton of money. But make us feel more secure.\n\nEdit to add second link. ", "I find it interesting that airports have such tight security but trains have pretty much none. Want to ride Amtrak? Show up 2 minutes before the train arrives and get on. I haven't ever been on a cruise but I imagine they don't have real strict security either. I guess planes are more isolated in the air but I don't think that warrants the over-the-top security posture. I'd rather we just have more undercover air marshals than all the TSA agents in the airports.", "People are gathered together on the plane, theoretically making a juicy target for a terrorist. \n\nNow they're behind an ineffectual guise of security, making them a theoretically less juicy target for a terrorist. \n\nHowever, to get through that guise of security, they have to cram together into huge, tightly packed, lines, which involve no security to get into. \n\nTerrorists have a long history of blowing themselves up in *huge tightly packed lines* such as those going to collect pay, to enter churches, at markets, and so on. I don't see why the line 'waiting to go through security' would be any different. \n\nSo really, what you have done is added a massive inconvenience to the population, for the benefit of moving the optimal target slightly closer to the street. ", " > Why is it so bad and what should it be replaced with?\n\nHoly shit, try the metal detectors and cops that worked fine before it. What the actual fuck.", "The TSA creates a lot of overpaid, high-benefit government jobs that were formerly done better for $7/hr by Argenbright security before 9/11. The way it went down was that the only people willing to work for these low wages in metropolitan areas were lowly-educated Indian and other immigrants. After 9/11, Indians look like terrorists to a lot of idiots. Passengers badly need to see a white face to inspire confidence that the job isn't being done by someone without an accent. The regime in power figures out they can destroy a developed, successful private industry and create easy government jobs with no accountability for their friends to run. Don't forget that pre-9/11 if airport screeners found box cutters, they weren't explicitly banned, so there would not be a sifnificant red flag. The security followed regulations. The reward was getting let go, and having the US government hijack your industry so you can never work again. The more intelligent and affluent workers in the TSA realize it is a bullshit organization and quit/transfer. In the end we have up ended replacing low-paid, uneducated immigrant brown faces who found, upwards of 50% of test weapons, with very highly-paid, uneducated brown faces who find only 5% of test weapons. ", "I'm a bit confused. I remember as a kid, before 9/11, there were some kind of security checks and bag scanners. What did post 9/11  just increase the scope of it? ", "the cause of there being a TSA was an attack made apparently easier by the freedom USA provided: almost all world airports at that time had security checkpoints similar to today's (minus the liquid limits), while the US did not. \n\nunfortunately, what 9/11 ended up doing was having Americans concede some of their rights and freedoms for a \"feeling\" of security, while giving a ridiculous amount of power to some public and private entities (mostly the federal government) to do whatever they want to protect this \"feeling\" of security.\n\nbut then, answer this: what made the USA a \"free country\" like no other in the world? what did the union represent, exactly?\n\nfreedom of speech, right to travel freely, a very efficient government, public tolerance, a bill of rights forcing the government spend most of its budget serving the needs of its people without interfering in their lives, taxation with representation (sorry DC), a legal system that made it extremely hard for the enforcer to breach on US citizens' rights (i'm talking about the Patriot act right here).. these, and many more, made America what it was, and it worked very fucking well. and then 9/11 happened, and most of these went out of the window. like, in less than a year too. \n\nThus I believe the TSA, (- and i'm going to generalize here - most things that happened after 9/11, especially in terms of civil rights and public opinion,) was particularly UN-AMERICAN. \n\nIt is a costly brute force effort in preventing terrorism in a single mode of transportation, i'll give you that, but\n\na favorable cost-benefit analysis of maybe losing thousands of lives and several multi million dollar planes and the cost of losing people's trust in flying vs. the cost of operating the TSA and the inconvenience it provides regarding lost time could be a very \"american\" and a very reasonable explanation for keeping the TSA, \n\nhowever I still believe shutting down the TSA, (specifically, decreasing but not eliminating federal government's presence in public transportation security,) if ever considered, is a decision that should not have anything to do with its efficiency in preventing terrorist attacks: it should be shut down because America should realize that it stands and will always stand a free country regardless of the cost it has to pay: terrorism is only effective if it instills terror. The US, and the American people should realize and trust that they are strong enough to withstand many, many more blows like that without having to compromise their way of life. \n\nbut then i'm very utilitarian and there are definitely other questions at bay here: what is a government's primary duty? protecting its' citizens' lives, or their way of life? what is the cost of a human life? would americans have lost trust in their government if it did not show its power to prevent another attack like that, or would they have preferred a government that went business as usual? i can't answer these definitively.", "Why should I take these broken brakes off my car, dont cars need brakes?", "In addition to what some others have said here, the fact that you have to ask this question points out quite clearly why the TSA needs to go. In your mind it has become so normal you expect it to be there, when in reality the nature and methodology the TSA uses are very far from normal. Years ago the process for boarding flights was incredibly quicker and for those of us that remember it, the current system seems like a nightmare in comparison. It is an agency that is highly invasive and disrespects the rights of many travelers, and on top of that does a very poor job at its designed function. I personally am not opposed to government officials being involved somewhere in the domestic flight process (air marshals anyone?) but the TSA is not something that should continue to be allowed.", "The TSA is security theater because it does not do anything to remove a threat to an airliner, they demonstrably fail repeatedly to find weapons and bombs.  There are already multiple lines of defense which will better prevent another hijacking, for instance, the cockpit doors are secured before the engines are even started, granted, this could also pose a potential risk as seen in the recent [Germanwings crash](_URL_0_) in the French Alps.  Any would-be terrorists couldn't even access the controls.  Even if they could get control of the plane, there is also the fact that the passengers will not allow another 9/11 to happen, they figured it out on flight 93 before the initial 9/11 was even over.  The passengers would rush the hijackers, the plane may be lost, but another 9/11 style attack will NOT happen.  All TSA does is make people think they are more secure, while actually shifting the target to an even more open and less secure area.  \n\nThere is absolutely no security before the TSA line, where there can be hundreds if not thousands of people packed together in a busy airport.  Just think about what would happen in a major attack at a TSA line.  It would completely shut that airport down.  All it would take is one person with a backpack bomb to close down LAX or Atlanta.  Now what happens if you send one person with a backpack bomb to 2 different airports or three or four?  Now do that 2 days in a row, or skip a week.  Hell, make it unpredictable, don't just hit big airports, go to smaller regional airports, do you really think the govt. can afford even further increased screening and major checkpoints at every little regional airport across the nation?  You've just effectively shut down all air traffic without having to set foot on an airplane, and barely inside of an airport.  The loss of life may not be as high, but the economic and societal impact would be astronomical.\n\nThe original 9/11 attacks took at least 19 known terrorists, years of training and planning, and an intricate coordinated attack strategy which had to get through airline security.  In the end, the hijackings were actually carried out with weapons that in all likelihood would make it through today's TSA screenings.  Because of the bs security theater the TSA has in place, we have now concentrated a softer target in an easier to reach location that can be attacked by far fewer terrorists with no training other than how to press a button.  Oh, and we've spent a metric fuck-ton of money to do it.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6205/tsa-scans-security-theater-interview/", "https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/harms_of_post-9.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525"]]}
{"q_id": "2vskr8", "title": "why do clothes and shoe sizes vary so greatly between companies?", "selftext": "I was shopping online for shoes recently and after seeing several comments like \"order these shoes 1 full size smaller because they run large\" it had me thinking why shoe sizes vary so much between brands. You'd think there would be more of a standard where a size 10 shoe should fit x, y, and z dimensions. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vskr8/eli5_why_do_clothes_and_shoe_sizes_vary_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cokkb4b", "cokkji0", "cokloy2", "cokmo1q", "cokmwk7", "cokn5rv", "cokn7dw", "coko2tz", "cokoqrt", "cokpiq8", "cokq5vj", "cokqomo", "cokqquq", "cokrio2", "cokrkl6", "coktjgr", "coku9w1", "cokvbhv", "cokvpon", "cokvt30", "cokx9o9", "col0u2x", "col11ps", "col1vst", "col2y4v", "col39hg", "col3gxv"], "score": [1077, 245, 56, 637, 3, 2, 127, 13, 4, 3, 11, 3, 7, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Yes, you would. After fifteen years selling shoes, I can tell you that you would be wrong. There are several reasons:\n\n1. Different styles for different purposes necessarily have different fits.  A ballet flat or a pump has to grab a girl's toes and hold on for dear life... which is why I don't recommend wearing them if you can help it. But to have that look, they must necessarily fit poorly, because there are no laces or straps to adjust. Athletic or hiking shoes, made to properly fit a human foot during a given activity, always fit better on any foot.\n\n2. It's a hell of a thing to fit a human foot, which is a three-dimensional object that has three distinct shapes: walking, standing, and sitting. The same shoe has to fit the same foot when it has three different sets of dimensions, depending on what you're doing.\n\n3. As a man, my clothes are marked in inches, but that doesn't mean I can get Levis, American Eagle, Hugo Boss, and Armani to even agree how big a damn inch is when they make my pants, so why should we expect New Balance, Clarks, Allen Edmonds, and Keen to agree on how big a size 9 is?\n\ntl;dr It's just one of those things. Whaddya gonna do?", "The length of the shoe itself is not that different, but the shape of the shoes, material it's made from, the heel height, and the foot of the person wearing them will greatly affect how the shoes will fit. \n\nAs for clothing size, sizing used to mean something (like every x inch larger would make one larger size or something). Women's size chart back in the day start with 8 because anything smaller would fall under junior or children's size (the same way adult shoe sizes is a continuation of children shoe sizes). The [US government actually tried to make a standardized sizing chart](_URL_3_), which was useful during World War II when they needed to produce various uniforms for women. Then [there's more attempts at standardization](_URL_2_). [Sewing patterns today still use the older sizing](_URL_1_). \n\nWhile vanity sizing and our standard of slimness is certainly a contributing factor, clothing manufacturers also need to make a reasonable range that encompass most of their target consumers. Instead of having the smallest size starting at standardized 8 (who might not even shop at your place) and run out of sizes for anyone bigger than the standardized range (who might only buy your clothes), moving the smallest size they make down to 0 or 2 and correspond to fit the slimmest people in their specific segment of consumers so they don't have to split off bigger sizes to another department. I began to speculate this after realizing (not to stereotype people) that stores with more plus size shoppers (but do not specifically market only plus size clothing) tend to make their sizes much bigger than stores that cater to younger women. Some stores that specialize in plus size clothing and stores with a older clientele even do away with these sizes all together and [invented entirely different size charts](_URL_0_). ", "With womens clothing it has a lot to do with appealing to vanity. For instance if I'm a UK size 12, I'm going to feel a whole lot slimmer if I fit in to a size 10 of brand B. I'll feel more confident and will probably purchase it. ", "When sizing clothes, manufacturers will typically use a 'fit model'. These fit models are required to have certain measurements based on the size they are representing but there is always a tolerance of a few CM either side, as finding someone who has the exact required measurements can be difficult. \nThe garments are then tailored to fit the fit models. As every company uses different fit models for sizing there will always be variances in sizing between brands. \n\nAlso for economical reasons clothing companies will usually fit every  second size eg. 32, 36, 40 and then grade evenly between the missing sizes.\n\nSource: I design clothes", "Vanity sizing. Clothing companies like to make us feel thinner, and they do this by marking a pair of jeans as 32\" when in reality they are more like 34\" or 36\". We find ourselves pleased that we can fit in them ('wow, I must have lost weight!') and we are more likely to buy them.\n\nIf every company would just abandon this, it would make online ordering a hell of a lot easier.\n\nIf you feel like getting extra depressed over valentines day, measure your waist with a measuring tape to get your actual measurement!", "Each brand's goal is to maximize profit. They collect data to analyze which sizes to offer and how many of each size to produce based off what is most likely to sell. Now the sizes are different because each brand knows they are catering to a different group of people. Therefore, they classify the label of the dimensions of their product to what is most appropriate with what their potential buyers want.", "I work for a major athletic shoe company. We have this debate internally every season when we release new products, and every time we review the performance of current products.\n\nEvery shoe company has a different idea of what the \"perfect fit\" should be.  Hence, they use different proportions and measurements when designing their shoes, and especially their technologies.  Even if most brands are using roughly the same \"here's the average measurements of X size foot\", the philosophies on how we should wrap a shoe around that foot vary wildly, even within the same company.  Combined with the different needs and methods of the manufacturing process, it leads to a variation in \"fits\" across different brands.  Honestly, with as many variables that go into the process, it's actually pretty amazing that shoes \"fit\" as close to each other as they do.\n\nAnd on a philosophical note, fit is actually extremely subjective, especially when it comes to clothes.  One brand's designer's idea of the \"right\" fit for a \"relaxed\" pair of jeans or running shorts might be totally different from another designer's ideas.  And what your perception of a \"relaxed\" fit is could be totally different from the guy sitting next to you. ", "Different companies also use different fit models to reflect the \"look\" of their brand. For example, the fit model for Abercrombie & Fitch will have completely different proportions than the fit model for Old Navy (even if their measurements are the same). \n & nbsp;\n\nAdditionally, different companies grade their patterns differently.  This means the patterns used to cut the clothes get bigger or smaller by different increments. For example, the difference between an 8 and a 10 in one brand could be a grand total of a half inch in the finished garment or a whopping two inches in another depending on who made it. \n & nbsp;\n\nOn top of everything, plus and petite sizes screw everything up. Some clueless brands just take a size 4 and keep adding inches until it matches the size chart for a 16. This usually results in short waists on dresses and out of place sleeves. The best companies use \"size breaks\" and completely re-draft their pattern to fit a new fit model for their plus or petite lines and grade up from there.\n & nbsp;\n\nAs for shoes, a similar principle applies. Different shoe companies use different \"lasts\" to create their shoe design (just like a fit model for clothes). While some brands best fit a narrow foot, others account for wide feet. Again, my advice is to find a brand that fits your feet nicely and shop from within. \n & nbsp;\n\nHope that helps!", "Standardization in a free market only works when laws are used to force standards. Otherwise companies just do whatever they like with the sole motivation of profit. There are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions.", "Mass produced clothing can vary in size due to how it is manufactured. \nVisualize a stack of fabric laying on top of one another and a very sharp cookie cutter slide down and cut down on that pile to cut out the pattern piece for each fabric. This is done to all pieces needed to make a garment.\n\nThe piece at the top of that pile may be a whole inch different from the piece at the very bottom.\nA seamstress will grab from that pile and sew together all the necessary pieces to make the item. \nNo one would check for size because it's about quantity not quality.\nThe end product could be a whole size different. \nThat's why if an item is a cheaper item, you could take all the same sized item and try thrm on and they all fit a bit different.", "To really understand why this is the case with shoes, you need to understand that shoes are built on what's called a \"last\", which is a three dimensional mold that the upper is shaped around. Lasts are unique to each maker, and they will have several, and they're one of the defining things of a maker's style. [Here is a comparison shot of one maker's different lasts.] ( _URL_0_) Now, each one is going to fit a three dimensional human foot differently. A shoe size is just a measure of the length and width, but you also need to consider the shape of the foot. Somebody with a narrower foot may find themselves sizing down on a wider last, especially one with an elongated toe. Some lasts will accommodate a higher instep, but be uncomfortable for people with a low instep. A last with a wide heel and chiseled toebox may just not work for a person with a wide forefoot and narrow heel. You can make shoes that accommodate more foot types, but that means they probably won't fit anybody perfectly, and they're often an aesthetic compromise. ", "Because there is no proper standardisation, I am looking forward to the day that I can buy DIN shoes.", "About the shoes sizes I can help you, I'm second generation shoe maker. Basically every company has their own sizing, UK, US, and European are the major ones, sometime you'll see Japan, they use their sizing in millimetres, which I like the best. Typically UK fits a size bigger than US some times with an extra half-size, it all varies and why does it vary? It's deterimed by two things where the upper sits on the foot and the shape of the last, the last is a plastic foot form, the upper and lining is wrapped and formed around once the components are stitched together. The last shape will determine the shape of the product, if it's a dress shoe it would be more narrow at the forefoot, if it was a casual shoe it would be more rounded. The biggest issue with sizing variation with a company all has to do with costings; a company has a manufacturer in China (or where ever) producing their shoes, they've got 1000 lasts, all of a sudden something happens; company changes hands or company changes manufacturer it's cheaper for them to toss the last and get new ones produced, as a matter of fact that's why clarks school shoes had such an issue with size changes. Sizings are corresponding of the countries demographic ", "And women's clothes are worse than men's clothes because women's clothing has vanity sizing.  Size 00 should not exist!", "Because of this: _URL_0_\n\nText- \n\"Situation: There are 14 competing standards.\n-14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one standard that covers everyone's use cases.\"\n-Yeah!\nSoon: Situation: There are 15 competing standards.", "Hell, why are they different from one color to another within the exact same product line from one manufacturer. Depending on the color, I wear different sizes of Levi's 527s. Some colors seen to be produced differently, with different materials, stiffnesses and softnesses. In a darker, stiffer size, I wear one size, which is a tiny bit loose. in a lighter, softer color, I can't even get close to buttoning the front.", "**Size is not the same as Fit**\n\nTall and skinny needs a slim fit **size large** tshirt\nTall and bulky needs a full cut **size large** tshirt\n\nDifferent brands cater to different bodies.  I'm happy I can get a slender shirt for a skinny kid and a full cut for the big one.  I just have to shop different brand.\n\nWhen I was measured for ski boots, they told me they also looked at **volume** - was you foot long and bony or thick like Fred Flinstone's?\n\nThere has to be variation in sizes because we are such a varied species.\n\n", "If clothing from a certain company fit you a certain way, say Levi's for example, then you'll be more inclined to be like \"I need a new pair of pants, and I know Levi's fit me so I'll get Levi's\" and thus establishing brand loyalty ", "It's called vanity sizing and it's meant to make big girls feel better about themselves.", "The difference between L, XL, XXL, XXXL in shirts seems to be primarily girth rather than being proportionately larger.  It sucks because I'm proportionately larger, particularly in the shoulders and arms but clothing manufacturers seem to assume that larger shoulders means obese around the waist.", "Two reasons. \n\nOne is marketing; it's a similar concept to small containers of ice cream still being labeled \"pints\" when they're actually closer to 80-90% of a pint. Clothing lines aimed at larger individuals, for instance, will downplay their sizes. \n\nUnless they're fronted by Gabriel Iglesias. Then everything is 10x.\n\nThe other is style. Ideally, your clothes should be custom-fitted to you. We all get a good laugh out of \"one size fits all\" clothing, but really, a generic list of 4-6 common sizes--aimed at hundreds of millions of people--isn't much better. One of the ways that this is accommodated is through descriptors such as \"loose fitting,\" \"relaxed fit,\" \"extra long,\" and so on. Different companies have different styles, even if they're called the same thing; they aren't *that* different, but if one company's close-fitting shirt is half an inch narrower around the chest than another's, you're going to feel that difference. ", "Not sure if it's been said, but some companies like to use what's called \"vanity sizing.\" (for some reason I'm not sure if that's the exact term). For example, to make you feel better about yourself, Nike may call what would normally be a size 12 a size 13. That makes you feel better since you have a bigger show size. I found this out when purchasing chucks and timberlands this year, I had to get sizes much lower than my Nike sizing and I've heard this is the reason. \n\nAlso, clothing comes in so many different types of cuts and styles. A 32\" waist slim fit Jean will fit different than a 32\" waist relaxed fit jean. \n\nThere are just too many shapes and sizes to have a small, medium, large, etc scale for sizing clothes. Sizing clothes is hard for everyone I imagine. There are just too many variables to consider and it's impossible to please everyone. Some companies will choose a sizing concept and stick with it, so at least you know that if you buy a medium of brand X, it will fit like the last shirt you got from them, but there are plenty of cases where that is not true as well. \n\nFeet are all different too, you've got length width and height. Different manufacturers have different fits. Personally, my feet are probably wider and taller than normal compared to their length, so shoe shipping is hard sometimes. Really, we should work it out so that shoe sizes are based on length and width, and a quick chart could be produced for each shoe model to show you what would be the best fit ", "There's no regulation.  Not saying there should be, but that's what happens when companies define their own business parameters.  ", "1. There is no international or national standard sizing charts for any clothes. There are guides, but they do not need to be followed.\n2. Companies realised that they would get more business if their \"size 8\" said \"size 6\", and so on... If you flatter a person with your product by saying \"hey, you're not as fat as you thought\", then they're more likely to buy it. Similar deal with shoes. Women's would have smaller numbers written than they actually were, and men's would have larger numbers written than they actually were. Both designed to complement people.\n3. Everyone is different. Shoes are not just X cm long, they are Y cm wide, and Z cm high. And they taper along each of those dimensions.\n\nAfter a while of this going on the whole thing became a clusterfuck. Now, honestly, the only sensible way to size yourself is to use actual measurements. And no, not \"34 inch waist\" labelled pants, I mean, get a tape measure and literally measure yourself. Then, if the product you are buying is good (this is especially helpful for men's business clothing), you can refer to the specific measurements for each garment.\n\n", "Women's clothing is all over the place because the higher cost brands are in a never ending race to see how many fatties they can convince are size 0. Flattery goes a long way when it comes to fools that think throwing away hundreds of dollars on pants makes them better pants and makes them better than you.", "The shoe thing is nuts. I measure out at a size 15. I have some shoes that are size 14, and I've worn as large as size 17. They all fit roughly the same.", "Some people have narrow heels, wide shoulders, long arms, big butts, long necks, short necks (all relative of course) so while the basic measurements might be the same a particular brand might be designed for one version of the 'perfect' size."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.torrid.com/torrid/cs/CustomerService/SizeFitGuide.jsp", "http://www.simplicitynewlook.com/media/catalog/product/1/6/1690_env_back_6.gif", "http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/role.htm", "http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762108,00.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/MDwKTs0"], [], [], [], ["http://xkcd.com/927/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b3unct", "title": "feathers are the best insulators known to man. How come tropical birds don\u2019t overheat?", "selftext": "additionally, are feathers on cold-adapted birds (e.g. snowy owl) structurally thicker than those on tropical birds?\n\nA songbird in New England looks so similar to one in Brazil, despite the climate being so different. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b3unct/feathers_are_the_best_insulators_known_to_man_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ej2fboy"], "score": [30], "text": ["Birds have many ways of controlling their body temperatures. Cold climate birds might have more down than warmer weather birds to add to their insulative properties, but it's a lot more complicated than just having feathers/what their feather types are. There are [7 types of feathers](_URL_4_); down, wing, tail, contour, semi-plume, bristle, and filoplume. The down and semiplume are responsible for insulation.\n\n**Keeping cool in the summer - Most of these are behavioral**\n\n* Panting\n\nBirds can [pant](_URL_2_), like your dog, during the summer to cool down. Panting releases heat through evaporation of moisture along the bird\u2019s mouth, throat, and lungs.\n\n* Soaring\n\nYou'll often see larger birds, such as hawks or [vultures](_URL_12_), soaring high up when it's warm out. The air at higher altitudes is much cooler and soaring allows them to conserve energy. Conserving energy and not flapping their wings prevents muscle heat up.\n\n* Wing Spreading\n\nI see this a lot in herons and egrets on hot days. They spread their wings wide. which increases their surface area and allows air flow to cool them down. \n\n* Reflective coloration\n\nThe lighter the color of the bird the more heat is reflected off of it. Alternatively, the darker the bird the more sunlight they absorb.\n\n* [Bathing](_URL_15_)\n\nYou'll often see birds at your yard's birdbath on hot days cooling off. My parents' birdfeeder is always covered in grackles.\n\n* [Feather ruffling](_URL_11_)\n\nLifting their feathers allows cool breezes to blow off the heat trapped beneath and between their feathers.\n\n**Weird stuff!**\n\nVultures and Storks [defecate on their legs](_URL_16_) to cool themselves down. Their very wet waste cools their legs down via evaporation, like a much grosser form of sweating.\n\nHerons, nighthawks, pelicans, doves, and owls use [*gular fluttering*](_URL_13_) to cool themselves down. This is a frequent vibration of their throat membranes, which increases airflow to the membrane which increases evaporation.\n\n**Keeping warm in the winter -**\n\n**Physiological/Morphological Adaptations**\n\n* Metabolism\n\nBirds are [endotherms](_URL_9_) or warm-blooded (we don't really say warm-blooded anymore, but I know folks are familiar with the term). This means they create their own heat from their metabolic processes. Birds also have a much higher resting metabolic rates than humans do. The average bird\u2019s body temperature is 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). [This page has a lot of great information on bird metabolism.](_URL_0_)\n\n* Reserves of body fat\n\nBirds can build up a fat reserve during the Fall to prepare for harsh winter months. They gorge on food which gives them a protective fatty layer.\n\n* Feathers\n\nBirds\u2019 feathers also provide excellent insulation against the cold, and many species grow extra feathers in the late fall to give them more protection during the winter months. There is also an oil that coats birds\u2019 feathers which provides insulation as well as waterproofing. Bids also have a layer of soft, insulating feathers called \"[down](_URL_3_)\" (you can see it's soft and fluffy) which traps their body heat, minimizing heat loss.\n\n* Feet and legs\n\nBirds\u2019 legs and feet are covered with [specialized scales](_URL_8_) that help trap heat. They can also control the temperature of their legs and feet separately from their bodies by constricting blood flow, which reduces heat loss. Aside from this, you may have noticed that waterfowl, such as ducks, herons, and geese, can tolerate cold water. This is a great adaptation called *[counter current heat exchange](_URL_1_)*. How this works is the warm arterial blood flowing away from the heart warms up the cooler venous blood heading towards the heart. This exchange keeps their feet from freezing while standing exposed or floating in water. [Here is a diagram to help you visualize this process.](_URL_14_)\n\n**Behavioral adaptations**\n\n[Fluffing](_URL_5_) - birds can fluff out their feathers to create air pockets for additional insulation in cold temperatures. \n\nRoosting - certain species of birds will flock together in winter to keep warm for the evening. We see this in the [America crow](_URL_6_) (*Corvus brachyrhyncos*) around sundown in the cooler months. Near me at 4pm in the Fall you can watch them gather together in large groups.\n\nSunning - allowing the Sun to do the hard work, birds can keep warm (like other animals) by ensuring they are spending time in the sun.\n\nShivering - shivering keeps birds warm just as it does with humans and other animals.\n\n[Tucking](_URL_10_) - you'll often see birds tucking a beak or one leg up into their feathers to minimize heat loss. You'll probably notice ducks and gulls doing this all the time! They do it in the summer as well as it's a comfortable resting position for them. \n\n[Torpor](_URL_7_) - Torpor is a state of reduced metabolism when the body temperature is lowered, therefore requiring fewer calories to maintain a comfortable body temperature. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdmetabolism.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_exchange#Countercurrent_exchange_of_heat_in_organisms", "https://howyoudoin.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/falcon-panting.jpg", "http://www.earthlife.net/birds/images/anatomy/f-pic-down.jpg", "https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/feathers-article/2/", "http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1211edLEADOFF2ROBIN.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/kX0FsW4.jpg", "http://www.discoverwildlife.com/british-wildlife/how-tell-torpor-hibernation", "http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/HawkRedShoulderedFoot01.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endotherm", "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-68_aL5l-7Wg/UyW7ZCizE9I/AAAAAAAAlI4/tkpNZYbwQkI/s1600/lbcu01.jpg", "http://a.rgbimg.com/cache1nunb0/users/k/kr/krayker/300/meRTP3q.jpg", "https://castyournet.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/turkey-vulture-soaring-alan-lenk.jpg", "https://www.audubon.org/news/how-birds-keep-their-cool", "https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/96c3ff68a2873e0443f80cd91d67936088a40b4a.png", "http://ashdown4628.clients.cmdwebsites.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/IMG_4430.jpg", "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/panting-pooping-8-weird-ways-animals-keep-cool-180952226/?page=2"]]}
{"q_id": "552cf2", "title": "the watergate scandal and exactly what nixon did that would have had him impeached had he not resigned?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/552cf2/eli5_the_watergate_scandal_and_exactly_what_nixon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d86ybm4", "d86yziy", "d8706ym", "d87575a", "d877fih", "d877mg7", "d87bsew", "d87ckds", "d87j9ly"], "score": [4, 946, 64, 3, 14, 3, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["He fired the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General on the same night, because they wouldn't fire the special prosecutor assigned to the investigation and close down the investigation. The third guy up ultimately completed the task, and went on to be a Supreme Court justice in one of the ugliest nomination battles until Clarence Thomas came along.", "I wrote up a very detailed (perhaps too detailed) history of Watergate in this sub last year. [Here it is.](_URL_0_)\n\nIn very abbreviated form:\n\n* Under the auspices of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), Nixon's executive staff (incl. his Chief of Staff, Attorney General, and others) used campaign donations as a slush fund to run a \"dirty tricks\" operation to harass political opponents via forging letters, planting provocateurs at political rallies, etc.\n* Although the CREEPs didn't brief Nixon on the details of their operations directly, he knew that CREEP was a dirty tricks shop, who ran it, and the kinds of actions they took, and was briefed on at least some operations after the fact.\n* CREEP authorized a burglary of Democrstic headquarters in order to secretly (and illegally) tap their phones, located in The Watergate Hotel. (It's really a hotel/apartment/office building.)\n* The burglars got caught, and they had the names and contact info of WH staff on them, as well as a $25,000 campaign donation cashiers check in their bank accounts.\n* After the burglary, the CREEPs briefed Nixon about it.\n* Nixon held a press conference in which he falsely denied knowing anything about it, falsely claimed he had assigned WH Counsel John Dean to investigate, and falsely claimed Dean found no connection to the WH.\n* Nixon publicly ordered the FBI to investigate, but privately ordered them not to look too thoroughly. This was obstruction of justice, a felony.\n* He also secretly ordered the CIA to interfere with the FBI investigation, which is also obstruction of justice.\n* He later ordered various staffers to lie to the grand jury investigating Watergate, which is perjury. Yet more obstruction of justice.\n* As a result of the investigation, it came out that there was a secret taping system recording conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon tried to fire the Watergate special prosecutor when he demanded the tapes, and ultimately also fired the new Attorney General and Assistant AG when they refused to fire the prosecutor. (\"The Saturday Night Massacre.\")\n* Eventually Nixon handed over the tapes, which showed all the lies and obstruction of justice mentioned above, as well as the essentially immoral and illegal purpose of CREEP. The tapes also showed that Nixon routinely suborned the FBI, CIA, and IRS to investigate and persecute his political opponents and members of the press.\n* There is an 18 and a half minute gap in the tapes, which no one has ever explained. Given that the WH did turn over multiple instances of the president suborning oerjury, siccing federal agencies on private citizens, and obstructing justice, what could possibly have been so bad that they had to destroy it?\n\nImpeachment motions had been in the House already, but after the tapes, everybody knew it was a matter of time, and Nixon resigned. Ultimately 49 people went to jail for their participation in Watergate and CREEP, including the burglars, Nixon's Chief of Staff, several other Exec staffers, the former Attorney General, John Dean, etc. Prosecutors were very seriously considering pursuing Nixon himself for obstruction of justice; if they had done so, he would have almost certainly been convicted based in the evidence of the tapes. But President Ford pardoned Nixon as one of his first official acts. And so Nixon lived out his days in California, unmolested.", "**The most important point is that impeachment charges were brought against Nixon NOT for bugging the Democratic offices at the Watergate complex, but for covering it up and obstructing justice in the aftermath.**\n\nIn 1971 (in response to the [Pentagon Papers](_URL_0_) scandal) a group known as The Plumbers was formed under White House control with the task of performing various illegal activities. For example they burglarized the offices of the psychiatrist of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg - an act that would later lead to all charges being dropped against Ellsberg.\n\nIn 1972 the Plumbers were tasked with breaking into the offices of the  Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex in Washington D.C. and planting wiretapping devices there. They broke in undetected on May 28  but there were problems with the bugs they had planted, so they returned for a second break-in on June 17 to reinstall the bugs. This time a security guard noticed tape over some of the door locks and called the police and the Plumbers were caught red-handed by undercover cops.\n\nThe White House tried to cover up the whole affair but gradually the facts came out through investigations by the FBI and congress and by a series of journalistic  scoops (most famously by Woodward and Bernstein from The Washington Post).\n\nNixon denied any foreknowledge of the break-in and any role in covering it up, but three key events would lead to his downfall:\n\n1\\. One of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, had a crisis of conscience while in prison and revealed everything he knew,\n\n2\\. John Dean, White House counsel, who knew all about the Plumbers and their activities, feared he would become the fall guy for the whole scandal, so he blabbed as well,\n\n3\\. It was revealed that Nixon had a taping system set up in the White House to record most of his conversations. These provided undeniable proof of what Nixon knew and did.\n\nIn Congress in July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee passed [Three Articles of Impeachment](_URL_1_) against Nixon. You'll note that the Articles don't accuse Nixon of having  foreknowledge of the break-in or of  authorizing it. No hard evidence was found or has since been found for that. Nixon was a control freak with a strong attention to detail so many assume he must have known about it - but nothing certain has ever been found to prove that allegation.\n\nThe Third Article accuses Nixon of ignoring subpeonas from Congress but the other two articles mainly focus on events during the aftermath of the Watergate break-in when Nixon tried to cover up the scandal by paying hush money to the Watergate burglars, trying to derail the FBI investigation through illegal means, lying and withholding evidence, telling witnesses to perjure themselves, and other abuses of power and obstructions of justice.\n\nNixon ended up resigning on August 9, 1974 before the full House could vote on the Articles of Impeachment and before an Impeachment Trial in the Senate could take place. His vice-president Gerald Ford became President.\n\n**tl;dr** - a White House unit broke in and wiretapped the Democratic HQ at the Watergate complex.When they were caught Nixon used illegal means to try and cover up the scandal leading to impeachment proceedings against him and then his resignation.", "I can really recommend the book \"All the President's men\" by Bernstein and Woodward. It covers the full story including the unravelling of the scandal. Skip the movie.", "If you have a Netflix subscription, there is a TV Documentary series published by CNN called, \"The Seventies\". The episode, \"United States vs. Nixon\", gives a very through ELI5-level look into not only what Nixon and his staff did, but the political, social and cultural climate of the USA and how it affected Nixon's choices, the public reaction, and so on. \n\nI highly recommend it, and the rest of the CNN decades mini series (The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties). Each episode does a good job of giving an ELI5-level explanation without sacrificing quality or accuracy while still remaining very entertaining! ", "What watergate was: Nixon and his reelection committee (CREEP) hired people (former CIA, FBI, and military personal) to break into the DNC to plant video recording devices so that Nixon could essentially blackmail the Democratic nominee.\n\nIn simple: yes, Nixon SHOULD HAVE gotten impeached, as Congress had already passed 3 articles of impeachment against Nixon, he resigned, because (and this was likely planned), one Ford (Nixon's VP) took power, Nixon was pardoned for his crimes that he \"may or may not have committed\" during the watergate scandal\n\n", " > For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director -- who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.\n\n > That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says -- and he is, after all, the President of the United States.\n\nDATE: MAY 1, 1994\n\nFROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON\n\nSUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.", "Note: impeachment is not the same as being removed from office. Impeachment is simply charging the president of a crime. The Senate then votes to remove the president from office ", "LBJ has had his own tapes recently declassified, and it appears he had the goods on Nixon for treason for dealing with the Viet Cong privately. It would explain why he risked so much for that break in, and why he worked so hard to cover it up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i5ypp/eli5_the_watergate_scandal/"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers", "http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mz8r4", "title": "why do people hate gm foods?", "selftext": "I just cant understand. What is it about genetic modification that makes these foods just completely inedible? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mz8r4/eli5_why_do_people_hate_gm_foods/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccdyjvx", "ccdyw32", "ccdyxua", "ccdzy2z", "cce5jv9", "ccecj9f"], "score": [8, 8, 6, 7, 4, 2], "text": ["You start fucking with the genetic structure of things you can't predict the long term effects of these changes.  Some people are just stupid also, usually clinging to things like the bible as reasoning for it, stating that it's just leading us down a false path.  Other's go the scientific route, usually saying that genetic modification is fine but further research should be done before introducing it into the public food supply, just to make sure it is safe.", "If you check [here](_URL_0_) with the good folk of /r/askscience they'll tell you there's little evidence that they are harmful.\n\nA lot of it is to do with Monsanto. A huge company who are heavily into it who are a very disagreeable company with questionable ethics in some areas.\n\nAdd in the fact that papers love to scare us dumb folk into thinking harmless things will kill us. Add in a nice bt of mad scientists trying to pervert nature and its a hack's wet dream.", "They aren't, as you put it, \"completely inedible\". There's very little we eat that hasn't been extensively genetically modified already through selective breeding.  There's no real evidence that GMO foods are harmful to eat, that they taste differently, are less nutritious, etc. \n\nIn my experience, very nearly everybody who declares blanket opposition to GMO foods has been completely unfamiliar with genetics (or biology in general), and the details are usually all wrong in ways that make no sense at all.   For those people, the opposition seems to be largely motivated by politics and ideology, not science or evidence. \n\nAmong those who've put more thought into the matter, the risk is usually theoretical: \"we should study X more, etc, in case Y is possible in the long term, though we concede this is unlikely\".  It's hard to take exception to that position. \n\n", "* Many people are against them for religious reasons, y'know the whole \"God didn't intend for corn to be that way\" type of thing. \n* Some are against them because of pure paranoia. Even though they're usually safe, \"genetically modified\" sounds scary. It's like the big fear everyone has of nuclear power, when in reality they're one of the safest types of power plants out there.\n* Another reason people don't like GM foods is because, at least in the US, companies are not required to specify that the food is genetically modified. This can cause issues with allergies if someone's cross-breeding genes from peanuts into corn. It isn't necessarily \"against GM foods\" as it is against the companies (and the FDA) for not making it required to label them.\n\nAlso, most of them aren't \"completely inedible.\" Usually genetic modifications don't change the taste. For example, a lot of corn is genetically modified to have natural insecticides or herbicides. This doesn't really affect taste, just helps with the growing process.", "Because the thought of moving selective genetic manipulation off a farm (breed cow A with cow B for specific traits) and into the BIG SCARY LABORATORY freaks people out. \n\nThere's going to be the hair splitters that say \"well, you're mixing DNA from one organism with another incompatible organism\"....so? DNA is a universal code, it doesn't matter if you're talking about an amoeba or a horse. What they really mean is that it's \"bad\" to eat anything that wasn't the result of sexual reproduction, \"naturally\" = \"right\" (although if you've ever seen a racehorse stud on a human-subdued mare, you'd realize it's anything but natural).  \n\nDid you know that GMO wheat has sustained millions of people in countries that could not produce enough food to feed their people?  Or that scientists that study GMO's are often unable to publish their findings because of the controversy (how are people supposed to learn if the research is being stop-gagged to prevent public outcry)? Often times, something being \"bad\" or \"good\" is simply a matter of perspective. \n\nAs far as it being inedible BECAUSE it's GMO, that's 100% bullshit. Your body breaks down proteins, uses sugars, and produces waste in the exact same way if you eat a Certified Organic Banana Grown in the Excrement of Free Range Jungle Chickens as you eating a GMO ear of corn grown in Iowa. Your body is simply a machine. It chops, dices, and utilizes what it can and gets rid of the rest. ", "Probably because most people know that the GMO companies do not have their best interests at heart and these companies intend to fuck with our food supply. This isn't the Internet or the price of video games where we complain but in the end it doesn't really matter. This is our food and we die if they fuck up.\n\nPlus they don't want to label it so people have a gut reaction that it must be icky and want to avoid. If they just listed \"may contain milk, wheat, GMO soy, and peanuts\" on the back of the box I doubt most people would care and just buy it. BUT they don't want to tell you so it must be bad."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s87py/there_is_a_lot_of_uproar_against_mansato_but_what/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "i9uuc", "title": "Anatomy people, please help!", "selftext": "It says in my notes that the Gastrocnemius (calf muscle)  Flexes the foot. I thought flexing made the angle smaller at the joint not bigger... Like flexing your arms would utilize the biceps, and flexing your legs about the knee joint utilizes the hamstrings, so why is going onto your toes referred to as flexing the foot and not the opposite (extending)?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i9uuc/anatomy_people_please_help/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c222ten"], "score": [6], "text": ["Flexing does make the angle smaller. When you go on your toes, the angle between the calcaneus (the bone that the gastrocnemius inserts into) and the tibia becomes smaller.\n\nIn my anatomy class, we always used the terms [dorsiflexion and plantarflexion](_URL_0_) when referring to the upward and downward movement of the foot. Might help alleviate any confusion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_7V4hxLiHU"]]}
{"q_id": "1x5tpn", "title": "Was it possible to fake your death during a battle and escape afterwards?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x5tpn/was_it_possible_to_fake_your_death_during_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf8j4yb"], "score": [3], "text": ["The thing to keep in mind is that throughout most of human history, playing dead was terrible idea.  Reason-being, up until the 20th century, looting corpses was generally considered legal foraging.  (Up until the 20th century, pillage was frequently a stated incentive for a soldier.)  Once the losing side was driven off, the fallen would be stripped naked by the victors and their assorted camp followers.  Also worth mentioning, ripping teeth from the fallen was a common practice up through the Victorian-era, as they could be resold for dentures.  Good luck playing dead through that.  Unless you're a wounded officer/noble worth a ransom, there was no incentive not to finish you on the spot.\n\nThat being said, I can think of some modern US examples.\n\nThe D-Day paratrooper on the St. Mere Church is a pretty famous story, immortalized in the book/movie The Longest Day.  The planes took so much AA that the paratroopers were scattered everywhere from early drops and evasive manuevers.  Two squads ended up dropping literally in the middle of the German occupied town of St. Mere Eglise.  Private John Steele's chute got caught on the church steeple.  When he attempted to cut the risers, he fumbled and dropped his switchblade.  His weapon would have been in an inaccessible duffle bag.  So he did the only thing he could and played dead, having to watch the rest of his squad get hunted down and killed.\n\nThe classic book The Longest Day was written as pop history and is a very fun read.  The movie also has aged fairly well, so long as you're comfortable with how WW2 was depicted on the silver screen prior to Saving Private Ryan.  The 505th RCT also maintains a pretty good history page that does PVT Steele good justice.  TIL, that Steele was actually the oldest man in his company at 32 and doubled as the company barber: _URL_3_\n\nIn Vietnam, there were quite a few lone suvivors of catastrophic near ambushes.\n\nIn OPERATION HICKORY, 18 May 1967, an infantry platoon was pinned by a battallion-sized element of NVA.  Realizing they where doomed, the PL called 155mm on their position.  The NVA overran them and took their position.  When relief came the next morning, they found only eight survivors who had successfully played dead and were stripped of belongings.  It's worth mentioning that this action was the beginning of a Presidential Unit Citation for 1/4 BCT.\n\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n\nThe POW's SPC McMillian, SGT Davis, and SGT Calloway were captured while unsuccesfully attempting to play dead.  Their accounts were told in \"Survivors\" by Zarin Grant.  On 10 MAR 1968, their observation post came under fire and the did not have a radio.  While evading incoming mortar fire, they were separated from their unit and walked into the line of an enemy machinegun.  Calloway was badly wounded and they tried to hide.  Eventually they exhausted their ammo and were captured while trying to play dead.  Luckily the NVA had recent order to take POW's as negotiating chips.  Calloway died of wounds that night.  Davis and McMillan spent the next five years getting tortured in a variety of POW camps in both North and South Vietnam.  On a positive note, Davis would retire as a Command Sergeant Major in 1997 (!!!) after finishing a 30 year career with the US Army.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_5_\n\nThere are various loose anecdotes about this being done in Vietnam.  Particularly chilling was a 2010 obit for a deceased Marine vet:\n\n\"As a Marine on the front lines, Mr. Cruse saw most of the men in his platoon killed, his family said.\n\nViet Cong ambushed Mr. Cruse and men in his division as they crossed a mine field. Mr. Cruse took shelter behind the body of a Viet Cong soldier who had just been killed, said nephew Jeffrey Dovan, who is now a Marine.\n\nWhen the gunfire stopped and the Viet Cong were checking for survivors, Mr. Cruse successfully played dead.\n\nMr. Cruse, who lived in Vietnamese villages and dressed like the local people to blend in, later had a difficult time coping with what he had experienced.\n\n\"He had issues with helicopters,\" his sister said. \"It was bad for a long time, with the flashbacks.\"\"\n\n_URL_6_\n\nOne unusual outlier, on Christmas, 1969, CPT Marshall and three other men were enroute to a Christmas party outside Saigon when their jeep was ambushed.  The only man alive, he held his breath as they looted his corpse.  The dog piled the bodies and lit them ablaze with gasoline.  Luckily Charlie did't watch the bonfire as CPT Marshall was able to crawl out from the bottom. \"I could smell the burning flesh.\"\n\n_URL_4_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/d/d016.htm", "http://members.tripod.com/msg_fisher/puc.html", "http://members.tripod.com/msg_fisher/battle-1a.html", "http://www.505rct.org/album2/steele_j.asp", "http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&amp;dat=19691228&amp;id=Z05AAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=tfIFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=3631,381848", "http://www.veterantributes.org/TributeDetail.php?recordID=1716", "http://articles.philly.com/2010-09-14/news/24974768_1_sister-viet-cong-vietnam-war"]]}
{"q_id": "1saccp", "title": "what makes a feature film look different than regular video recording?", "selftext": "What makes a movie look different from regular video recording like one might see on YouTube? There's something that makes it seem more polished visually, but I can't quite put a finger on it.\n\nWhat do they do that makes it look quite that way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1saccp/eli5_what_makes_a_feature_film_look_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdvirjj", "cdvit0b", "cdvms5a", "cdvo4c9", "cdvomr0"], "score": [11, 5, 2, 4, 8], "text": ["Higher quality cameras, different ratios, but mainly color correcting. Color correcting adds the overall theatric and cinematic feel o a film. It's why when you see raw footage of the movie it looks like a lower quality. There is sometimes some cg overlay as well.", "More factors than I could ever possibly name, being a layman myself, but just for starters: better cameras, better lighting, better make-up, and definitely better post-production, by which I mean the digital treatment of the image after it's filmed. \n\nI think other factors play a psychological role as well. Even the better actors, sets, production value, etc. help transport you more into the image and allow for that feeling of richness and realness. ", "You've answered your question *in your question*.  The fidelity of 35mm film usually vastly outstrips that of a video camera.  35mm film threads through the projector at ~24 frames per second and it's effective resolution is about 4K - 4096x2160, i.e. 8.8 megapixels.  (Note, there exists some argument as to what the actual \"resolution\" of film is.  Some people say 1 MP, some say 10 MP.  But it's pretty high, and it's running through the projector pretty fast.)\n\nSure, there are cameras that outstrip that, but not at 24 frames per second.\n\nAlso, you'll see bona fide movie cameras with big-ass lenses, which allow in a great deal more light and allow much higher resolution than the relatively small lenses on a video camera or (shudder) an iPhone.\n\nBut the biggest difference is the format.  Film is still a peerless format when it comes to moving pictures.", "The magic happens in post production. When the film is scanned and digitized and then touched up in detail. Left eye lighter than right eye, let me fix that for you. Glare on the window obscures an actor - gone. Bad white correction across takes, not a problem. Foley effects so you can get complete enjoyment of the sound of someone stepping on a tarantula. The music and the footage coordinated in editing. And, oh yeah, a script. When you watch the credits at the end of a movie check out all the specialists that touched the film. They are the difference.", "It's been touched on, but not enough, but shutter speed and frame rate. Specifically, that films are almost always at 24 frames per second, and much TV (though this is changing) and home video is shot at 30 frames per second or 60i (60 half frames per second, essentially).  Have you seen a movie on display at best buy that looked like a soap opera or live production?  That's because they have frame interpolation on, which interpolates (fakes, basically) extra frames to smooth out the motion.  This makes it look like something shot at a higher frame rate.\n\nFilms also often use somewhat slower shutter speeds (the length of time the camera iris is open per frame) then videos, often 1/48th or a multiple of this, which gives a distinct look.\n\nColor correction and proper lighting also play major roles, along with focal depth (most cinema films deliberately focus on specific parts of the frame for effect - they don't have to though, watch Citizen Kane and you'll note almost everything is in focus much of the time)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "36pxah", "title": "is math considered an invention or a discovery by mathematicians and scientists?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36pxah/eli5is_math_considered_an_invention_or_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crg2gzm", "crg2tlw", "crg5avb", "crg6j7j", "crgc8i4", "crgd048"], "score": [27, 9, 2, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["Neither, but I guess it would be closer to an invention in which there are discoveries.\n\nIn reality it's a language.  A language with a lot of rules and limitations, but discoveries about the language let us describe new things in new ways.", "The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is \"All structures that exist mathematically exist also physically.\" Since the world so precisely acts as small equations describe, it simplifies things if the world is not just acting like math but actually is math, especially if its all possibilities at once. If thats true, then math is a discovery since it physically exists.", "I believe this is a heavily debated argument among the science committee. Some believe it is created by humans to understand how nature behaves, and others believe that math is a fundamental property of the universe. I think it is both, but thats just my 2 cents.", "That's a huge philosophical question, one for which there isn't a simple and clear answer (and anyone who claims to have one doesn't know what they're talking about).\n\nMaybe try /r/askphilosophy\n\nOne thing I can say is that it wasn't invented by scientists. That's not what scientists do.\n\nIt wasn't even necesarilly invented by mathematicians - numbers gave been around a lot longer than professional mathematicians have.\n\n", "all of math is the study of an artificial, made up world.\n\nNow, it turns out, that for maths that most students are taught, those made up worlds are almost or basically are the same thing as certain things that we see in reality.\n\nGeometry is a good example. A point is an imaginary thing. A line is an imaginary infinite series of points. Concepts like area and distance flow from those concepts, but are also stricty imaginary/conceptual. Do these things really exist? Not in their pure, strictly  defined mathematic forms, but they're close enough for the physical world. Heck, some theories of quantum physics hold that space IS in fact quantized, that is, made of little \"boxes\" if you will, but for macroscopic measurements traditional geomatery is what works", "I would say both.\n\nTo sum up : Definitions are invented. Theorems are discovered. (But proofs are invented). Mathematics contain both things.\n\nYou can define/invent a mathematical object (like the number 8). You can define/invent a particular property (like being even)\n\nAnd then you can prove/discover that a particular mathematical object has a particular property (8 is even). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2y6f0l", "title": "why is the nazi flag taboo, but confederate flag \"culture\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y6f0l/eli5_why_is_the_nazi_flag_taboo_but_confederate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp6numq", "cp6nvy6", "cp6nx4k", "cp6nydq", "cp6oaf3", "cp6oem3", "cp6ogmn", "cp6p770", "cp6pcku", "cp6poyi", "cp6qfyj", "cp6y3ft", "cp787mc"], "score": [40, 18, 6, 18, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Only people who fly the confederate flag think it's appropriate. The rest of us go \"Ah, you're one of them\" and then sit somewhere else.", "Because the Nazi atrocities did not occur over a long enough time span for it to become culture, plus the US has a really strong freedom of speech protection.  You can, in fact, fly a Nazi flag if you really wanted to deal with the fallout (fallout not related to the legal system)\n\nThat, and people are morons.", "Nazism ideals included heavy interests to naturalizm to the extreme point of killing lots of innocent people. \n\nThe Confederate state of America were about more than just slavery. They wanted clear definitions of states rights and felt that the north was taking away states rights when convenient.  Also sectionalism and cotton trade. the south was being bullied and they revolted, it just didn't work.", "Well for one, nobody likes the Confederate flag. That's something you only see in super south states and usually flown by fucking morons. \n\nSecondly; the Confederates didn't set up extermination camps and slaughter millions of innocents. ", "The Confederacy was Americans and were fighting a functionally defensive war for simple independence. \n\nSlavery was an important part of the Confederate states' culture because it was an integral part of their economy. It was considered one of the key issues they felt threatened by northern dominance of the federal government.\n\nHowever, they did not fight against the North in order to conquer it or exterminate blacks, but to break away from what was in their view the threat of tyranny. Racism was not the primary motivation factor of the confederacy. Economics and political power were.\n\nContrast this with the NAZIs who were seeking explicit extermination of undesirables and expansionist policy through an all-powerful central government.", "For some weird reason I keep seeing confederate flags in small towns in Norway. They are very much in to the rockabilly aesthetic bit still... It's fucking weird as fuck.", "My high school had a big debate over the Confederate flag, which led to it being brought to the School District and it was banned across the entire District. People who so much as had a bumper-stickers of the Confederate flag on their vehicles could no longer park in the school parking lot, that they had paid for a parking pass to use. They claimed it was heritage, not discrimination,  but the whole issues stemmed from some ill-mannered kids\n\nI think the only reason I made it past a school poll was they organized a walk-out to gain media attention. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who used it as an excuse to ditch class, rather than protest", "Confederate flags are anti American. They tried to break free and be their own country", "Isn't the flag we are talking about a battle flag....not the actual CSA flag?  My question is:   What positive spin can you attach to it? ", "A lot of it has to do with the mythology of \"The Lost Cause\". Some people, mostly but not always southerners, have nostalgia for the pre-Civil War south. Think of Gone With The Wind: beautiful women and handsome brave men walking around on elegant plantations while childlike but mostly happy slaves care for them, and are fed and clothed in return. [Never mind that this was not the norm - we're talking myths here.]\n\nThe Civil War destroyed the south quite comprehensively, and it took a century to recover - if it ever really did in Mississippi and Alabama. People have a tendency to look back to a better past when their present is grim. So the idea emerged that the South had just been ground down by a tyrannical North, intent on planting its boots on the neck of freedom loving patriots, etc, etc.\n\nAdd this to the actual records of the war itself, with some truly spectacular commanders (I point to Robert E. Lee, who was a brilliant commander with balls of steel - and who felt that slavery was an evil institution but still fought on that side.) plus amazing tenacity on the part of the common soldiers often well beyond what we would consider rational. People who had been so comprehensively beaten want to find some positive things in their defeat. (Note that post WW1 Germans fely that their noble soldiers had been sold out by rear echelon politicians - I'm pretty sure Hitler felt this way, but he probably tossed in the Jews as well.)\n\nAnd, yes, it is also a symbol for some people who are just flat racist, but the US has very strong protections for free speech, no matter how odious.", "I'm from Alabama, I can give you a pretty solid answer behind this.\n\nPeople who's fly the confederate flag more likely than not do so because they are proud of the region they come from, and or, to pay homage to their ancestors who fought in the war. \n\nSlavery was a by product of southern farming culture. The rebel flag has nothing to do with this. \n\nThe National Socialism Party, or Nazis as many refer to them as, had beliefs that revolved around eradicating other races to perpetuate the longevity and success of their own. \n\nNazis flag is a symbol for their beliefs \n\nThe Rebel flag is a symbol for a region ", "Its not so much a difference between the Confederates and the Nazis as a difference between how Americans and Germans view freedom of speech.  Americans strongly feel people should be allowed to express their views even when they are ignorant and hateful.  Germans are more comfortable with forbidding offensive ideas.", "The Confederate flag is nothing like the Nazi flag.  That is just a stupid comparison that people are are already prejudiced use.   I think a more fair comparison is the U.S. Flag and the Battle Flag (which has been the popular Southern flag since Gone With The Wind made it popular again.  Now under the U.S. Flag we have seen wars of aggression and conquest (hello Mexican War), we had a nationalistic movement that declared the U.S. had a \"Manifest Destiny\" to spread from sea to shining sea.  The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, the U.S. very nearly exterminated the Native Americans.   Not to mention slavery being legal in the U.S. up until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.  Also if you look at how the slave trade enriched many in the North, whether it was from the actual importation of slaves, or if it was Northern banks financing the slave trade, the whole \"slavery was just a Southern evil\" turns a blind eye to the North's history in relation to slavery.  Segregation and racism have always been Northern problems too.  In fact the most segregated schools in the U.S. are now found in the North.  If you look at what has happened during the life of both flags I think there is a strong case for the U.S. Flag being more like the Nazi flag.  Or another way to say it would be Yankees who live in glass houses should shut the hell up about our flag.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6a4tto", "title": "why do artists wear an earpiece when performing a concert?", "selftext": "What comes through the earpiece and what purpose does it serve?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a4tto/eli5_why_do_artists_wear_an_earpiece_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhboixv", "dhbonf1", "dhbp1zr"], "score": [6, 25, 6], "text": ["It's a monitor. They hear themselves through it. It's easier to sing in key if you can hear your own voice above all the other noise on stage and in the crowd.", "These are in ear monitors. If they do not have them they usually have speakers on stage directed at them. The problem with performing a music piece is that you do not hear how the music sounds when you are in the middle of it. The normal speakers are pointed towards the public and sound moves quite slow though the air. So you might perform a guitar solo on one side of the stage and hit every beat as you hear the bass guitar on the other side of the stage and it sounds perfect to you. However to the public it sounds like you are too slow and quiet because the sounds takes some time to go from the bass guitar across the stage to you. So to make sure you hear the beat and the music as the public hear it you need to monitor the sound coming though the sound system.\n\nBefore sound systems small bands used to stand much closer together on the stage and look at each other rather then out to the public. Bigger orchestra would have a director in front or even among the public who could direct them using movement.", "Other replies are spot on. A little addition... Many times an unheard backing track is running that will give certain parts a 1..2..3..4.. count in to start playing. Often the drummer will hear a 'click track' to make sure they keep the correct tempo. All of this is essential when a band is performing to a background video in order to keep the two in sync."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ixvel", "title": "Why is Paris a popular city for peace negotiations? Why are there over 20 treaties of Paris?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ixvel/why_is_paris_a_popular_city_for_peace/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb95e4n", "cb95wac"], "score": [123, 63], "text": ["This doesn't seem to be anything unusual for a European capital. According to Wikipedia:\n\n[25ish in London](_URL_1_)\n\n[10 in Madrid](_URL_2_)\n\n[6 in Lisbon](_URL_0_\n\n[9 in Berin](_URL_3_)\n\n[12 in Vienna](_URL_4_)\n", "France was, for an extremely long time, (basically between the decentralization and decline and the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages and the rise of Spain in the early renaissance with the final conquest of Granada, and then from the decline of Spain in the Thirty Years War until the rise of Britain and Russia with the fall of Napoleon) the preeminent military power in Europe, winning the vast majority of wars that it fought and signing a great many treaties in its capital. Even the HRE, which you might think, with its massive size would be the power to beat, was mostly decentralized and fought many more wars within its borders than without, and as individual states instead of a group.\n\nNot only that, but for a different very long time, primarily after the Reformation (when Church Latin started to lose its prior universality for some reason), French was also the lingua franca of Europe, everyone's second language ~~(which is why it's still called the lingua franca)~~. Catherine the Great of Russia even made French the language of her Russian court in her quest to modernize.\n\nBasically, France was a huge, powerful and influential deal in Europe for an extremely long time, and it makes sense that so many treaties were signed there, just like in London, because so much of Europe's history turns on the whims of the French. And where else are the French going to sign their big treaties but in Paris?\n\nEDIT: [Correction.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon_(disambiguation)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Madrid", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Berlin", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Vienna"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ixvel/why_is_paris_a_popular_city_for_peace/cb9ef62"]]}
{"q_id": "83qnz1", "title": "How exactly did the Aztecs distribute the cacao bean as currency? Did the state have a monopoly on bean production? Were bean farmers the richest people in the empire?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/83qnz1/how_exactly_did_the_aztecs_distribute_the_cacao/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvk7yk0", "dvkd0cp"], "score": [37, 5], "text": ["So you are right that cacao was used as a currency but don't confuse that with how we might use printed fiat currency today.\n\nTheir value was relatively small, but they were particularly useful for the markets of the time. They had value because they could be used to make hot chocolate and culturally they were understood to be a useful standard for small value transactions. They were used inside and outside the Aztec Empire.\n\nSure cacao growing communities had them in ready supply, but mechanisms of taxation and market economies moved cacao beans out of those communities and into wider circulation.\n\nCacao beans were not the only pseudo-currency, bolts of cotton cloth were used similarly and had a much greater value. The best way to think of either cacao or cotton cloth is as a form of change that could be used to balance transactions. Sure cacao could be used in a pure exchange for something small, but they were just as often used to balance transactions of other items. Say you needed obsidian blades but were selling fine pottery. The value of the blades might exceed that of the pottery so you add a bag of cacao beans to match.\n\nThe value and utility of cacao beans lasted for decades after the Spanish conquests. For various reasons colonial Mexico was always cash poor (not enough specie in circulation) which made extensive use of credit and pseudo-currencies like cacao essential for regular commercial transactions. The Spanish even established a formal conversion rate to specie currency. The rate in 1555 was 320 beans to a Spanish silver peso (piece of 8), or 40 cacao beans (a *zontle*) to a real (1/8 of a peso). By the end of the century it was up to 800 beans to a peso or about 100 to a real. For context, an indigenous day laborer would have made about one real a day. So in other words a small bag of beans 40-100 was about one day's pay for an unskilled laborer.  \n\nHere is a Spanish language article on cacao as a currency in both precolumbian and postconquest periods:\n\nAranda, L. \"El uso de cacao como moneda en la \u00e9poca prehisp\u00e1nica y supervivencia en la \u00e9poca colonial.\" In XIII Congreso Internacional de Numism\u00e1tica, vol. 2, pp. 1439-1450. 2003.\n\navailable as a pdf [here](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: source\n\n", "I was actually just about to post something sort of similar. I'm not sure it'd be better off as it's own post or mee asking as a follow up question .\n\nBasically, I was curious how the goods and \"money\" from tribute intersect with the goods/\"Money\" from Pochteca in terms of the overall economic picture/Aztec (I say Aztec as in the overall hedgemonic empire, since I know tribute was also owed to Tlacopan and Texcoco and was also divvied out to other cities at times as well) economy. Were there any other facets to the Aztec economy besides these two? \n\nAdditionally, I was curious about how the logistics of tribute worked. I know the Mexica had a fairly complex, bureaucratic government, so I assume that this was equally complicated and involveed a variety of civil officials. The [wiikipedia page](_URL_0_) lists titles known as Petlacalcatl, Huecalpixque and Calpixque as officials involved with this process. \n\nIf I should have this be it''s own post(s), let me know. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-mecd/en/dms/mecd/cultura-mecd/areas-cultura/museos/mc/actasnumis/volumen-ii/edad-moderna/El_uso_cacao_como_moneda.pdf"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire#Schematic_of_hierarchy"]]}
{"q_id": "16llc2", "title": "Is there an official US list of countries which first recognized the United States of America?", "selftext": "Hello, my first post, I tried searching for this and couldn't find anything here. Google isn't that helpful either except there seems to be some consensus that Morocco is the first country to officially recognize US independence as a sovereign nation (Dec 20 1777):\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThough according to this quote, France officially recognized US independence a few days earlier (Dec 17 1777):\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd this link asserts that the Netherlands officially first \"recognized\" US independence in that it recognized the US naval ship Andrew Doria flying the new US flag in November 1776 (near the bottom of this link):\n_URL_2_\n\nMy question is simply this: is there an \"official list\" of countries which first recognized the United States of America that, for the lack of a better word, the US itself officially \"recognizes\"?\n\nThank you in advance!\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16llc2/is_there_an_official_us_list_of_countries_which/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7x6yst", "c7x9b8e", "c7xf37z"], "score": [33, 8, 2], "text": ["Looking for an official list? Go to the official source: [the US Department of State Office of the Historian](_URL_0_).\n\nAccording to that source, \"Morocco recognized the United States on June 23, 1786\" and \"France recognized the United States as an independent state on February 6, 1778.\"", "I heard that Dubrovnik sent a merchant to the US in 1776 and by that was the first to recognize it.\n\nCan anyone confirm?", "I dunno if this counts as anything but trivia, but Denmark was the first to salute an american flag.\n\n >  Denmark and The Netherlands were the first countries to salute the Grand Union flag, when gun salutes by American ships were returned by officials in the West Indies in late 1776: on Danish St. Croix in October, and on Dutch St. Eustatius in November. (Though later, the better documented St. Eustatius incident involving the USS\u00a0Andrew Doria is traditionally regarded as the \"first salute\".) France was the first country to salute the Stars and Stripes, when a fleet off the French mainland returned a gun salute by Captain John Paul Jones commanding USS\u00a0Ranger on February 14, 1778.\n\n(From Wikipedia)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1777/december_17_1777_43318.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93United_States_relations", "http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question87572.html"], "answers_urls": [["http://history.state.gov/countries"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yimnd", "title": "how can thieves sell one-of-a-kind items like art and rare artifacts.", "selftext": "If someone tried to sell a Mona Lisa after it was reported stolen, you'd think someone would catch on. So who is willing to buy these items and why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yimnd/eli5_how_can_thieves_sell_oneofakind_items_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfkujg2", "cfkutn8", "cfky2h0"], "score": [15, 7, 6], "text": ["They sell to very discreet buyers. Most of the buyers for these items have private collections and don't advertise what they have. ", "They also usually find a buyer before they steal the stuff. ", "Stealing something that is known is next to impossible to sell on any market (including the black market). \n\nThe way it is done, is by first finding a client and then stealing it for them. This is why if these deals don't go through, it makes it a living hell for the thief (knowledge is out that he has it, so he has to be fast before he gets caught or people go after him for what he stole). \n\nIt's a dangerous world to play with :)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19jvzf", "title": "how can high end clothing companies like gucci charge, and actually get, $300-$500 for simple cotton t shirts?", "selftext": "**EDIT** - Yes i get all these points. I get them. No one has really answered what I'm asking though. Two shirts. Both 100% cotton. One company decides to charge MUCH more than another company for essentially the same shirt. How has the expensive company gotten to the point where they can set such high prices for something that costs 1/10th of that price to make?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19jvzf/eli5_how_can_high_end_clothing_companies_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8oojxb", "c8oowhd", "c8otikf", "c8otpnd", "c8oxk3k"], "score": [15, 12, 25, 9, 2], "text": ["First of all, you can guarantee you're getting an excellent product. Gucci has a reputation of making fashionable and *high quality* clothing. The company stands behind this. When I purchase a Gucci shirt, I know I'm paying for something that will look good and last a long time (provided I take care of it). If I'm buying a cheaper shirt, I don't know what I'm getting. The shirt could fade or tear easily and my money will have been wasted. \n\nSecondly, wearing a Gucci shirt creates a certain image. Gucci caters to celebrities, wealthy people, and fashion icons. When other people see me wearing a Gucci shirt, they might think \"Oh wow, he's wearing a $300 Gucci shirt. He must be successful.\" In our society, being financially successful is often associated with popularity and sex appeal. \n\nThe same principal applies to other products as well. A Mercedes and a Toyota do the exact same thing. But with a Mercedes, I *know* I'm buying a great car that will handle well and last long. Toyota cars are probably just as good but Mercedes has a reputation for a reason. Driving a Mercedes makes me look successful. I can afford a decent car so I must be doing something right.\n\nIt's hard to say that spending more money on a brand name product is a good decision or not. It's a personal decision based on experience. In my experience, I know that Starkist tuna tastes the same as the store brand tuna so I go with the cheaper option. In my experience know that Clorox anti-bacterial wipes stay moist longer than the store brand wipes, so I am willing to spend more money.\n\nCompanies know the importance of a brand name and use it to their advantage, oftentimes deceiving the customer. In CVS (for non-American Redditors, it's a pharmacy), you have a choice of Bayer aspirin and CVS brand aspirin. The Bayer aspirin is more expensive because the company has a history of making quality medicine. What most people don't know is that the CVS brand aspirin is also made by Bayer. No matter which of the two aspirins a customer picks, the Bayer company still makes a sale.", "Because people like feeling exclusive. While you might not want to shell out more than $20 for a t-shirt, there are definitely people who are more than willing to do so just to show off the money they have", "Your edit still shows you don't get it.  What they said is all there is to it.  It's prestigious.  And the company gets a reputation of being prestigious, which perpetuates that prestige.  It doesn't matter if they're 100% identical.  One has the \"Gucci\" tag and the other doesnt.  The price is their way to \"weed out\" people they think are lower status than them.\n\nIt's pathetically socioeconomically prejudiced but that's all it is.  That is literally all there is to this. ", "a long long time ago, i've read a research paper done on hooke... ...um... ...I mean... ... hotdog stands in NYC.  the guy first posed a question of \"why does a same hotdog from the same hotdog stand cost $1 in Bronx and $5 in Manhattan?\"\n\nIIRC, it all comes down to how we Individually perceive Value.  if it's something that you THINK is worth $60 and it sells for $60, then you'll probably buy it.  if it sells for $40, then you'll think it's a Deal.  however, if it sells for $120, then it's expensive.  on the other hand, i might think that thing is worthless to me.  eg. a brand new PS3 copy of Assassin's Creed 4 when i only got a 360.\n\nFurthermore, you're not really buying the \"same\" product.  as in, a $2 white tee from bubbles mart is different than a $200 Gucci white tee.  Do i think it's worth $200, hell no.  but some people think the design (a very objective thing), quality and reputation is worth the $200-300 price tag.", "Let's take the accepted answer of a display of your financial success and status one step further.  There are those who do not have that level of success that desire to have it greatly, and so instead of the correct path (step 1: achieve financial success.  Step 2: spend large amounts of money on things that symbolize that success), they skip ahead to the part of owning stuff that symbolizes their financial success.  To do this, they either buy forged, pirated or stolen goods or worse, the real thing at exorbitant prices.  They blow their real budget on items they could have spent less money on with a non-name brand but still quality item.  This impacts them and their families in compromising their budgets in other ways, denying them the purchasing power for items of real need.  Or, they just put it on a credit card and find themselves in perpetual debt.   Next, in the population as a whole, when a large percentage of the population has their own copy of the prestigious thing, making it much more commonplace, the level of exclusivity drops.  The only way to exit that status is to spend even more money on something even more unusual and ridiculous.  Repeat ad nauseum.  \n\nLast night while waiting for my table to open up, I observed a nearly elderly woman near me who had a Coach purse.  This is a similar situation to some of the staff members at my office where I see them with a new and different purse a couple of times a year.  I'm pretty familiar with the level of wages they make and the prices of these purses.  It doesn't match.  The purses, in my mind, does not add one whit to their level of attractiveness.  Them or this grandmother I saw.  Yet, hundreds of dollars are spent without serious thought to the reason why.  I can only come up with the rationale in that they do it to feel pretty.  To whom, exactly?  Men? Gay men, maybe.  It's to feel prettier than other women.   It's a never-ending cycle, and companies that have established some prestige in their products are absolutely shovelling in the money because of this aspect of human behaviour. Good for them, sad for us.  Thankfully, Mrs. LeFortIII doesn't participate in that. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "23217j", "title": "if bad posture is so bad, why does it feel so good?!", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23217j/eli5_if_bad_posture_is_so_bad_why_does_it_feel_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgsn8g5", "cgspmho", "cgspq2m", "cgsqh2d", "cgsr1da", "cgsrbjz", "cgsrqv7", "cgsrrw1", "cgsrw60", "cgss7zh", "cgssug5", "cgst3sv", "cgsta5e", "cgsteq5", "cgsth4p", "cgstm24", "cgstokx", "cgstwqw", "cgstxvc", "cgsu2cb", "cgsu5gq", "cgsvi70", "cgswbit", "cgswoim", "cgswrgj", "cgsx00q", "cgsx9f9", "cgsyt4f", "cgszz61", "cgt18wg", "cgt27r1", "cgt2w7w", "cgt3afd", "cgt5ibu", "cgt5lt1", "cgt6krs", "cgt6oql", "cgt6z32", "cgt8bjz", "cgt8gph", "cgt8ly6", "cgtag3o", "cgtbdpi"], "score": [2143, 5, 75, 156, 15, 3, 6, 24, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 6, 15, 50, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 39, 40, 4, 2, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 15, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because your body is used to it. if you slouch all the time and then try and sit up straight, you're forcing seldom used muscles to work. If you sit up straight all the time, slouching will hurt because your back muscles will stretch awkwardly in an unfamiliar way. If you sit for a long period of time, you'll probably be a little sore regardles, but more so if you're slouching, which puts pressure on your spinal nerves.  \n\nwhen you'd sit straight all the time and have the muscles to support yourself,  you realize that slouching actually doesn't feel that good.\n\ntldr slouching feels good because you haven't experienced truly comfortable sitting, maaaaaaan. ", "_URL_0_\n\nA great video. They touch on this, and make it very easy to understand. Hope it helps!", "If heroin is so bad, why does it feel so good?", "I'll take a stab at in since none of the other answers seem to really pinpoint what makes sense to me.  I'm no expert, but I have a background in sports medicine and know anatomy and physiology pretty well.\n\n\"Good posture\" as I interpret it, is using muscles to support your bones, mainly your spine and sacrum, in their proper alignment.  Using any muscle means using energy and can get tiring after awhile.  When you slouch/relax, you relax those muscles, which can bring on a sense of relief.  However, your bones still have to stay together SOMEHOW.  That support then falls on the ligaments which attach those bones together and the connective tissue capsules around the joints.  If you rely too heavily on the ligaments for support you can overstress them, sprain them, and inflame them leading to pain.\n\nIn short, using your muscles to support your posture can be tiring.  The alternative is using ligaments to support you which can result in vertebral and sacral joint pain.\n\nEdit: grammar, typo", "Because the muscles that you normally would use to support yourself have atrophied.", "I disagree that it is bad, but to each his own. I'm 45, I lean back when I sit and I don't hold a military posture when I'm standing. To this day, nary a backache. One thing, though, I don't keep a particular position for very long. I move around and I stand and walk a little every so often. I personally think that you just don't want to be too static. The key to health is movement, not posture.", "I felt like success kid when i read this: _URL_0_ ", "How long does it take for the body to adjust from slouching to sitting up straight?", "Having good posture requires that you use some energy.  If you don't have the engrams for good posture, keeping that posture is going to be difficult. ", "What about why does my stomach and gut area hurt wheb sitting up straight?", "Bad posture feels terrible to someone with good posture. It actually gives me a headache and neck pain. Once you develop good posture it actually become easier to have good than bad posture", "I'm sure others have already said it, but it really doesn't. You just don't notice it. No other way to explain it (from me at least) other than \"You don't notice until you notice it. Then you notice it all the time.\"", "So how long would it take for me to get used to sitting at a good posture? I assume a few weeks of sitting up right?", "God im a chronic sloucher and I want to have better posture but don't know how. Any tips?", "Because sitting straight is \"[bad for backs](_URL_0_).\"", "Pretty much everything that feels good is bad for you (except fap city bro).  If you want to get better you need to do what is hard.", "What is the correct sitting posture?", "I had bad back aches until I learned to slump in my chair, not sit up straight.", "As someone with really bad posture (get called hunch back of Notre Dame) how can I fix my posture?", "Why it feels good: Because it takes more muscle to hold your head and shoulders up than it does to rest your weight on your vertebrae and shoulder capsule (the cartilage on the front of your shoulder).  This is true of standing, when you also have your legs and hips as a solid base. When you sit down, good posture is even harder to maintain because fewer muscles are able to help maintain good posture. Those muscles get tired in about 20 minutes.\n\nWhy it's so bad: Your shoulder capsule and vertebrae are very poor structures to hold weight in this way. They wear out after a while and the result is chronic pain, and painful/restricted movement. In other words, it will make getting older suck a lot more.\n\nTl;dr: The human body is not very good at sitting around doing fine motor skills for long periods of time. It's much better at moving around!", "Here, for those of you who are paranoid and want an easy solution to fix your problems just watch this video and do what this man does.\n\n_URL_0_", "Admit it, you just readjusted yourself in the chair, while reading this thread. ", "same goes with food--if junk food is so bad, why does it taste so good?", "\"Bad Posture\" is not necessarily bad posture.  Much of what is considered \"Good Posture\" is myth created by people who wanted to make money, be famous, of just help people but didn't study human anatomy. (Much like today's \"holistic treatments.\")\n\nAs far as slouching goes, over a decade ago a part of the pelvis was identified as \"sit bones\", a pair of flattened bits at the bottom, evolved so that a human can sit comfortably on them.  And when you do sit on them your spine will curve into a shape that has come to be known as a \"slouch\".", "Mildly related - how do I develop good posture?", "Related question-\n\nWhy do chair designers for the public school system have to fuck over tall people every single time we want to sit down?", "Its the same as eating to much sweets, it certainly doesn't feel bad but in the long run it can ruin your health. So do not be decieved by your feelings and seneses young skywalker!", "Slouching forward is bad for your spine , as your telling your body and brain that bending your spine forward is a good thing and that sitting up straight is weird. Once your brain and body is accustomed to slouching ,the muscles you would otherwise use to sit up straight arent used as frequently , so when you DO sit up straight , it feels really weird. ", "This will probably get buried but this is my area of expertise. When you slouch you basically let gravity do what it wants, while relying on your structures (vertebrae, ligaments, muscles) to hold you in a \"low energy\" state. This takes less energy, which feels better but will lead to changes in your muscles and spine. \n\nWolff's law states that stresses on bones results in increased bone deposition in those areas. If you slouch, the abnormal way the bones sit results in \"bone spurs\" that will come off around the edges, and degeneration of your intervertebral discs. All of this over time results in osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease. Sometimes those can lead to problems with the spinal nerves exiting the spine, and give you nerve damage or even stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal). \n\nSo yes, it feels good to slouch because it requires less energy than activating the muscles of posture to sit properly. However, there is a price to pay if you continue to have bad posture.", "Annndddd redditors collectively sit up in their chairs, before going back to slouching", "\"Bad\" posture is usually a position where you're allowing your weight to be passively supported by your spine instead of using your muscles to hold yourself in a neutral position. Because you're not engaging your muscles as much, it feels easier to sit this way.\n\nThe reason it's bad for you is that it puts uneven pressures on the spinal discs between your vertebrae. While you're young, you probably won't notice the ill effects. Over time, everyone's discs degenerate, but bad posture and other stresses will hasten that process.\n\nIn terms of sitting positions, the short answer is that sitting for prolonged periods of time in any position is bad for your spine. Standing in a neutral position is far easier on your spine because your lower body bears a great deal of the weight.\n\nIf you do have to sit, it's important not only to keep a neutral spine position, but also to vary your position frequently. Sit completely straight sometimes. Lean back at others. Elevate your feet slightly. Stand up periodically. Doing these things will help to distribute the pressure and protect your spine over the long term.", "How many of you immediately sat up straight after reading the subject title? I know I did.", "I'm surprised no one mentioned this:\n\nA key postural task our body needs to do perform is **support the weight of our head**.\n\nTowards this purpose, most people do unnecessary, crazy efforts with their neck and back muscles, and they don't even realize it.\n\nSome tips. When sitting down:\n\n * Relax your neck, shoulders and back. Take your time to check if you're tensing your lower back. [**STOP IT!**](_URL_1_).\n * Think \"UP\". You want to stretch your spine up while sitting down. Don't overdo it, this is mostly a thouoght.  It's incredible how giving yourself a direction can change your whole body's organization.\n * Balance the weight of your head in your neck. While thinking up, and stretching your neck, slightly tilt your head down. Think of the center of gravity of your head, and how you should balance it in your neck.\n * Also think how the load your neck is receiving, goes to the spine, and is transferred nicely to your ischium.\n * I cannot stress this enough: YOUR BUTT SHOULD SUPPORT YOUR HEAD'S WEIGHT, and your spine should be just a middle man doing practically no work.\n\nAnyway, questions?\n\np.s. This is all based in Alexander Technique: _URL_0_", "How many other people just sat up straight?", "Read title, sat up straight.", "You can say the same thing about anything that feels so good.", "Here is my theory, Please tell me if I'm way off the mark.\n\nTo sit up straight it requires you to use your muscles in your back.  Using any muscle for an extended period of time gets tiresome.\n\nWhen you slouch you are allowing your spine to support all of your weight.  This relieves your muscles but at the cost of your spine.  When you're young you can do this with little to no damage.  but trust me this will get you in the end.", "If you have bad posture long enough it hurts\n", "A lot of posters are saying that you need to work muscles to have aligned posture when this is actually NOT the case. \"Bad\" posture is caused by tension in the body's muscles, not lack of tension (or work) in certain muscles. A person with perfect alignment wouldn't have tensed muscles, but actually the opposite. The aim shouldn't be to tense muscles, but to release the tension that is causing the misalignment of your spine. \n\nIt's important to remember that all the muscles in your body are \"connected\", in that muscles in your legs may overwork themselves to make up for unbalanced torso, etc. So although the problem may be in your upper back, to achieve better alignment you will actually have to release tension in your whole body. The first step to doing this is building an awareness of your body. Don't ignore the pain in your muscles. Be aware of stiffness and allow yourself to release the tension you are holding. \n\nAn exercise I'd recommend trying requires only two small bouncy balls. First, lie on the floor. Next, without placing your feet but rather letting them hang and drop, bring your knees toward your body so that they are pointing towards the ceiling and your feet are resting on the ground. Make sure to now take a moment to assess how your body feels. Now, take the bouncy balls and place them under your upper back between your shoulder blades but NOT under your spine. You want the balls to be higher rather than lower along your shoulder blades. This might feel somewhat painful, but allow your muscles to release into the balls. What is happening is the muscles laying over the balls are releasing tension to accommodate their shape. Keep the balls under you for a few minutes, or however long you can handle, remember to breathe into the floor. Don't tense yourself either, but let yourself sink into the balls and the floor. Now, remove the balls. Stay on the floor and I guarantee you will feel an openness in your upper back. There are a lot of similar exercises, or \"preliminaries\" as they're sometimes called, for different muscles.\n\nA book I would HIGHLY recommend to everyone who lives in a body is The Body Has Its Reasons by Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Bertherat. It gives directions on how to perform many other preliminaries. There are also many touching and enlightening passages, but one that really struck me was about a old woman the teacher visited who had a very contorted spine and tense body. Days later, the teacher visited the woman and found her lying in bed with perfect alignment. She was dead. It makes the point that the body's natural state is perfect alignment, such as we have when we are born or when we are dead. The tension that we hold throughout our life cause the pain and discomfort that many of us live in. \n\nThis is a little blurb about the book that gives you an idea: \n\"Your body has not forgotten anything. In the stiffness, in the inhibitions, in the muscular pains of your back, of your limbs, of your diaphragm and also of your face and genitals, your entire history is revealed, from birth to today. From the first months of your life, you have reacted to pressure: \u201cWatch your posture. Don\u2019t touch. Don\u2019t touch yourself. . .\u201d. You accommodated as best you could and in thus conforming, you deformed yourself. Liberate yourself from past programming.\"\n\nI learned this info and was recommended this book from a well renowned \"movement\" teacher who teaches at the acting school I used to attend.\n\n", "Licensed Massage Therapist here. The top complaints I get from clients are issues that arise from 'bad' posture. The reason for this is because your postural muscles are designed to live in a state of tension, to fight gravity and hold you up. They are quite efficient at this, but only when used as directed.\n\nLet's focus on the upper back, which is a *slightly* more typical problem area. When you slouch, you are lengthening (stretching) your rhomboids, trap 3 and erectors (among others, but those are the main ones). When a muscle is lengthened it becomes weaker, *however*, you are still asking it to do the same amount of work. This causes knots/trigger points which cause pain. And in extreme cases/after many years of bad posture, the body starts to calcify those muscles, binding them up and creating more structure to hold you up in that non-ideal position. This causes even more problems because it starts to restrict movement and blood flow which, you guessed it, leads to even more pain. After a really long while you can even reach a point of no return where no amount of exercise or massage/physical therapy can get you back to 100%.\n\nThis effect is most pronounced when you do it with your neck. Ever seen someone with a [dowager's hump](_URL_2_)? That's from 'forward head posture' and it forms from your body adding extra structure to support the weight of your head while forward. FUN FACT: your ears should be in line with your shoulder socket, and for every inch that your ears are forward from it, it doubles the weight of your head. Forward head posture also causes you to have to lift your head up so you're not always looking at the ground. This puts unnecessary strain on your occipital muscles and can cause chronic headaches.\n\n**So what can I do about it? I just get achy when I try and sit up straight!**\n\nA couple things. You get achy because those muscles are weak, you need to strengthen them. \n\n1. Strengthen your rhomboids with ['wall angels.'](_URL_0_) so you don't get achy from sitting up straight. Do 3 sets of 10 *every day*.\n\n2. You may find that even with these exercises and sitting up straight, that you still cannot stop rounding your shoulders and it still looks like you are slouching. That's because all those years of bad posture have caused you pecs to shorten. Do regular [doorway stretches](_URL_1_) for your pecs. In the pic they show doing both sides at once but I recommend going one side at a time. Be sure to keep your back straight, your forearm flat against the door frame, and DO use the three positions shown to stretch all three heads of pec. And remember, it's not a stretch if you don't hold it for at least 20 FULL seconds and *breathe*.\n\n3. Strengthen your core. There are many exercises/options out there for this, but the important thing to remember is that your abdominal muscles are ALSO postural muscles and need to be strong to keep you sitting/standing up straight. Strong abs mean a posterior pelvic tilt which means non-shortened QL and low back muscles which means less low back pain!\n\nTL;DR: Use your muscles the way they were designed or pay the price later in life.", "It feels good because your back muscles are underdeveloped. If you had great posture, it would feel like shit when you slouched.", "If heroin is so bad, why does it feel so good?", "Reading this while hunched over a computer desk is making me sad."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rIUh3dCRBto"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/57654.php"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wimp.com/improveposture/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfcvMXuT8ac", "http://www.bestmassagect.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/doorwaystretch.jpg", "http://www.miketomich.com/sitebuilder/images/04-15-07_buffalo_hump_1-299x220.jpg"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "q5y73", "title": "why do we perceive time as moving at a particular rate? do certain creatures (such as those with greater reaction times or who move quickly) literally perceive time as moving slower?", "selftext": "EDIT: Tried posting this to /r/askscience, but apparently it got caught in the spam filter. Because obviously, as somebody who's never posted a submission in /r/askscience before, there was reason to believe I was going to start spamming links for knockoff jackets /eyeroll.\n\nHere's somehacker's link which was successful: _URL_0_\n\nUnfortunately it looks like everybody is considering the question in terms of reaction time rather than actual perception of time.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q5y73/eli5_why_do_we_perceive_time_as_moving_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3uztgu", "c3v01vu", "c3v0lsn", "c3v0vp8", "c3v1hyn", "c3v1ste", "c3v1vzl", "c3v1xhz", "c3v23cj", "c3v29vq", "c3v2thx", "c3v2wow", "c3v38u5", "c3v3rpr", "c3v3tj0"], "score": [37, 162, 97, 18, 4, 2, 11, 5, 2, 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I've always wondered what time felt like to insects that live their entire lives in the course of 24 hours. To be born, reproduce, and die, all within a day.  Do they enjoy their lives?  Or do they not realize other creatures get longer to live because they have no way to perceive that reality?", "I only have my own answer to this, but going to give it anyway. I'm not sure we perceive time at all. Time is just the word we use to say one thing happens after another. We can make machines that make one thing happen after another at a regular rate, call it a clock, and measure stuff with it, but can we talk about a perception of time? If so it would be relative to or own appreciation, in context, at the time. So in that sense a pigeon, metabolic rate 160 times faster than ours, probably understands things at a different speed, but perceive time? time isn't something you touch, manipulate or even experience. It's just an arbitrary measurement for purposes of synchronization.", "You should go to r/askscience with this because I really want to hear some good answers.", "Every living thing perceives time to move according to its own needs, life cycles, and lifetime.  Asking whether even you and I perceive the color blue in the same way is unanswerable.  If I saw blue as red, I would still call the shades light and dark blue, and neither of us would ever know the difference.  Compare this to time dilation in relativity (this may be making a mockery of ELI5); we all perceive time to proceed at a \"normal\" pace according to our frame of reference.  If a mayfly lives only a day, then we appear long-lived to it.  If we live 80 years, then a giant redwood tree appears long-lived to us.  The pace of time is consistent with the metabolism of the organism, and cannot \"feel\" inappropriate to any living thing, as it knows no different.", " > That's not very ELI5....\n-*JPillz*\n\n\nExactly my point.  Listen man, you are first going to need to ask something like this on [r/askscience](_URL_0_) or [r/askreddit](_URL_1_).  You will more then likely get your answer there, because I am not sure how anyone could explain this to a 5 year old without some of the technical in there.  Even if they could explain it to a 5 year old, it just seems like it would be much more interesting to hear an explanation a little more technically.\n\nIf you do happen to get an answer please link me.  I have always been pretty curious about this also.", "i've always wondered if certain bugs that live for like 2 days feel like they had this epicly long life", "This is my own personal \"explanation\" of how we \"feel\" time.\n\n Our brains have a certain processing speed, of the information from our senses. This rate determines how time is felt. For instance, you're sitting in a class, bored out of your mind, daydreaming away; because your brain is perceiving the world your body is in, along with simultaneously creating and perceiving the imaginary world you're in, it's processing speed has to be very high. So you feel as if time is extremely slow. \n\nOpposite of that, when you're having fun and enjoying yourself, being in moment, present; your brain doesn't have to do much work, only to process the information from your senses. I believe most would agree they aren't thinking much in such cases. Thus, your brain's processing speed is low, making time seem fast. \n\nNow I use \"high\" and \"low\" to describe these speeds as I also connect it to effects of drugs. \n\nNow for other creatures. I suspect many would perceive time much slower compared to us. Insects, many live mere days compared to our life span; but to the bug, it is it's entire existence. \n\n**TL;DR Brain processes information at certain speeds. The speed, high or low, determines how we feel time.**", "**Disclaimer:** I thought about this before and I came up with this. These are just my thoughts, nothing scientific.  \nI think of time as *noticeable change*. Say you sit in a dark and empty room. You'll notice pretty soon that you lose your sense of time because nothing changes so you're more likely to overestimate the time that went by. On the other hand when you're playing a videogame there are a lot of changes happening nonstop so you're more likely to underestimate the time you played. \n\nEdit: fixed typo", "I actually did a science fair project on this. The fact is that different people perceive time passing at different rates. The big deciding factor seemed to be age, the older a person gets the faster they'll perceive time as passing. I believe that a lot of it has to do with overall life time experience (the years get shorter as you get older) and based on research it also had something to do with the changes in dopamine levels in the brain (which also directly correlated with age). The results changed somewhat when the subjects were asked to perform a menial task, but the age-perception ratio was fairly constant.\n\nBased on this I would think that creatures with shorter lifespans would probably experience time slower (like a fly experiencing a lifetime across its 3 days on earth), but I think metabolism might affect that as hormone production would vary greatly. ", "From a very \"small time period\" viewpoint: Our brain has a fixed speed at which it can get information and respond to it. If some event starts and ends in a shorter amount of time than this, it becomes almost unregistered to our sense.\n\nNow imagine some life form that hypothetically has 10x the reaction time, and can move and think 10x faster. It could theoretically see time as \"slowed down\" in that its brain processes more information. I think about it like when a camera records at a higher framerate. It's still filming the same video as a slower camera, but it captures more instantaneous blips in time. So if you play high-FPS film at a normal speed, it looks slow, but it can be sped up to look normal.", "Radiolab is the bomb. [This](_URL_0_) episode treats a guy whose speech was really, really slow, but who perceived it as being normal speed until he heard a recording of himself. That summary doesn't do it justice, so go listen to the piece. And then listen to all their episodes :)", "I listened to a few podcasts on this.  If you're really interested and have the time, check out this episode of [WNYC's radiolab](_URL_0_), which covers people with different disorders that make them perceive time's passage at different rates and/or the short, [Slow](_URL_1_), an anecdote regarding a man who was in an accident.  He moves much slower than he used to and talks slower as well, but didn't realize he talked at a slower pace until he heard himself on tape.  They're both incredibly interesting and could almost be considered great ELI5 quality explanations.", "Obligatory wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey reference.", "We perceive time as moving at a particular rate because we are all accelerating at a certain speed. Sit in a room with a group of people, if you stand up and walk to the door, you are experiencing time slower than those other people because you are accelerating faster than they are, because you are moving and they are sitting. Time is perceived by how fast you are accelerating, so an animal, or human, going faster than you are is going to experience time slower than you because it is accelerating more than you are. time = velocity - initial velocity / acceleration", "Time is an illusion made by our mind to make sense of what happens in our reality."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q6crn/why_do_we_perceive_time_as_moving_at_a_particular/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience", "http://reddit.com/r/askreddit"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/oct/18/slow/"], ["http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/29/", "http://castroller.com/Podcasts/WnycsRadioLab/2642919"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5q0c8x", "title": "how can the president sign all these executive orders without approval? what's to stop them from making all their campaign promises and their party's agenda into executive orders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q0c8x/eli5_how_can_the_president_sign_all_these/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcv9s04", "dcvh3we", "dcvihnk", "dcviizn", "dcvj7x1", "dcvk474", "dcvkd78", "dcvl2yl", "dcvl99q", "dcvlh9s", "dcvook7", "dcvozs6", "dcvp8os", "dcvpufr", "dcvq7gc", "dcvq9jk", "dcvs3dk", "dcvsmyt", "dcvt7s3", "dcvt9zb", "dcvtd60", "dcvuv9e", "dcvv67j", "dcvvxct", "dcvw2dj", "dcvx6d4", "dcvxtmu"], "score": [4910, 41, 11, 13, 28, 3, 462, 8, 308, 25, 48, 5, 4, 5, 634, 10, 3, 2, 6, 2, 3, 23, 5, 8, 2, 3, 5], "text": ["Executive orders can only impact very narrow areas. They are, by definition, orders issued by the chief of the executive branch of the federal government, and as such can only impact federal agencies directly under the control of the executive branch, or in areas where authority has been expressly delegated to the executive branch by Congress.\n\nThe president cannot legislate by fiat, and such power remains vested in Congress.", "Because he's their boss, the President can use executive orders to tell the people who work for him what to do or set their priorities.\n\nBut he can't order around people who don't work for him.", "Congress passes a bill, the President signs it and it becomes law.  However, the President ultimately decides how a law is implemented.  Essentially these instructions to the employees of the Executive Branch are executive orders.\n\nExample:\nObama signed an executive order about \"dreamers\".  He essentially instructed prosecutors and immigration enforcement that they should not worry about undocumented people in this country that came here when they were young.  He can't all of a sudden say they are now legal (that would be an immigration law congress would have to pass) but he can say he is not going to really worry about them.  The issue becomes that the new administration  (Trump) can come in and say he doesn't care what a person's past is.  If they are undocumented they should be deported.  Essentially reverse Obamas executive order with a new executive order.\n\nThe original question was about fulfilling campaign promises so I will mention this since it is going to be in the news very soon.  Trump is about to sign an executive order to start building the wall he promised.  Yeah, he can do this but there is a limit.  If he can't get funding from congress he is going to be very limited.", "Obama really pushed the envelope with his executive orders.  Especially on immigration.  Even Saturday Night Live commented on it with this educational video:\n\n_URL_0_", "The president and his departments are the executive branch. He can do things within his powers and those decisions can be brought into check by other branches of the federal government. Media makes it seem as though presidents violate the constitution every time they make a decision. If they do happen to do something that violates the constitution then the judicial branch will have the opportunity to put the decision \"in check\". Moreover, if the president were to not only violate the constitution, but commit a high crime worthy of impeachment, the legislative branch will both impeach and prosecute him. The POUS is not even afforded the opportunity to turn into a 21st century Hitler. Bush, Obama, Trump, were and will be the focus of attention and scrutiny by the media, and how else do the American citizens stay in touch? We are force fed with fear and excessive dependence on the president. We are misled by an industry that profits off of drama, turmoil, and tragedy. And sadly, every POUS who signs an executive order, past, present, or future, will supply the media with hours of misleading, party dividing profits. ", "ELI5 question amendment: What happens if someone DISOBEYS a Presidential executive order?", "The legislative branch makes laws. The executive branch executes those laws. The judicial branch considers whether actions taken by the executive branch or laws written by the legislative branch are constitutional.\n\nIn executing the laws, the executive branch has an interpretation and certain resources. For example, a law might be created to institute something like the FCC, whose head is nominated by the president and follows the president's orders. The president needs some way to tell the various departments and bureaus what to do, so he uses executive orders.\n\nThere is nothing wrong with executive orders. You just need to understand what they do. All they do is to give instructions on how to handle cases requiring regulatory approval or oversight within the bounds of the responsibility of that department as assigned by congress.\n\nIf they overstep the bounds, then the action can be challenged in court. If the dept. itself is unconstitutional (for example, congress creates a department of religious affairs to say what religions can and can't be practiced) then it will be challenged in court. \n\nAn executive order is not unconstitutional until declared unconstitutional by the courts. Despite what conservatives would have you believe about Obama's executive orders. I don't necessarily agree with what Trump is doing, but he's well within the law on this. ", "Planet Money podcast had a great episode on precisely this a few days ago. Fascinating listen.", "I'm a presidency scholar, so I can answer this pretty well. In inhibiting executive action, there are four really key things. \n\nThe first is that the POTUS is not the Executive. By that I mean that the man signs the thing, but the institution must do any of the actions. If, for instance, Trump wakes up cranky and decides, by executive order, to have arrested on sight anyone who makes fun of him, many will simply not do it. Their reasons for disobedience will vary from moral to legal arguments, but many will not. It wasn't an order, rather a firing, but this scared Truman shitless when he wanted to fire MacArthur. \n\nSecond, there is Congress. Congress can pass law contravening Executive orders, in which case the law takes precedent. Congress can also de-fund offices, projects, etc. that try to do the will of POTUS. So if, for instance, Trump decides we should not do trade deals, but congress signs laws mandating him to do so, we'd be headed in the direction of #3...\n\nThird, there is the Supreme Court. If someone sues POTUS for doing something wildly illegal (for instance, violating the fourth amendment by requiring us all to wear ID badges indicating citizenship status), SCOTUS would then decide the issue. \n\nFourth is political expediency. In the past, presidents would have rather used orders sparingly; they really piss off Congress and have the nasty attribute of being tied to the man himself very, very directly. This may be lessened if, for instance, the POTUS has no idea what political capital is and is already willing to simply ignore congress. This, I think, is the most common but hardest to study insomuch that it is the non-event, the deed that gets done without order that matters here. More orders happen under divided government or when the party in power has no one single mind on an issue: executive orders are a desperate tool to try to get something done when the normal legislating process works. I am willing to make the scholarly argument that Obama had to use so many for the sole reason that the modern GOP would have filibustered everything Obama wanted, even if it was a proposal for a bill to have the floors waxed in the Senate to keep the building nice.", "An executive order is supposed to be a direction by the President stating how power already granted by law is to be used.\n\nWhile Obama did not issue as many executive orders as some of his predecessors, the fact remains that for six of his eight years, his party did not control Congress.  This resulting in many of his initiatives being rooted in executive  power.  Unless the law that is the basis of his power is limited in some unidirectional fashion, the next president can simply issue executive orders rescinding those of his predecessor.  For example, when Obama created two new national monuments and declared land protected from drilling, he invoked a 1953 allowing him to do so, but the same law does not allow the president to destroy a national monument or unprotect lands.", "The Constitution says that Congress gets to make laws and the executive branch, led by the President, enforces laws. The courts interpret laws, resolve disagreements, and determine punishment within the bounds of laws set by Congress.\n\nThere is a fourth shadow branch of government that you don't learn about in school: administrative agencies. These are entities-- some famous, like the EPA, NASA, FTC, FCC, and dozens that you've never heard of-- that are created by Congress and told to do certain things. Usually (and this is grossly oversimplifying) Congress will say, \"we are creating this agency. Here is how agency heads are appointed. This agency needs to regulate X Policy Area (environment, communications, whatever) consistent with Y Vague Standards. They must pass rules and can bring actions against entities that violate rules.\" The rules made by agencies have to be enacted, usually, by procedures outlined in the Administrative Procedures Act, which is like a handbook for agency actions. The APA requires that a proposed rule be published, the public have a chance to comment, and then a final rule must be supported by a statement justifying why the rule is appropriate. Rules passed by agencies have the force and effect of law.\n\nUnder these grants of authority, agencies actually pass WAY more rules than Congress.\n\nHere's where things get interesting: agencies, because they are carrying out laws (enforcing the law created by congress), they are under the executive branch's ultimate control. The President usually has some level of power to appoint and remove agency heads, the President wields political control over agencies, and the President sets the policy agenda.\n\nThe President, through executive order, can direct an agency to make a rule on a certain topic as long as the rule generally falls within an agency's power. Similarly, the President can direct agencies to NOT enforce a given law! (Think, for example, the choice to not enforce the federal ban on marijuana, or President Obama's DAPA and DACA programs).\n\nPresidents since Reagan have seen agencies as extensions of their own policy agendas, and while SOME limits exist, the immense breadth of agencies and delegation of rule-makong authority to the executive branch means that the President has a lot of practical control over federal lawmaking and enforcement through executive action.", "Tsar  Nicholas II was alleged to have said \"I do not rule Russia; ten thousand clerks rule Russia.\"  This may have something to do with the question, but I'm old, senile and drunk so I'm not sure.  \n\nIn addition, Congress controls the money. As I understand it this is why Obama couldn't shut down the detention facility at Gitmo.  Congress didn't provide the funds for him to relocate the detainees.", "So Congress is in charge of writing laws, okay? But they're too busy to get involved with micromanaging the Federal Government, so when they write the laws they tend to be more or less vague about how the law is to be carried out or enforced, and leave the details to the Executive Branch to figure out. Officers within the Executive Branch can work within the framework of the law to apply the law that Congress wrote. Since the President is the senior officer of the Executive Branch, he can dictate how all of his employees do their job by issuing various executive orders. However, the orders themselves can't contradict the law, nor can they just make things up out of nothing. \n\nSo, for example, there's a law that Congress wrote that authorizes the building of a wall along the southern border. The actual building of that wall is left to the Executive Branch to figure out, and all Pres. Trump has to do is sign an order telling the Department of Homeland Security to resume building the wall. If no law existed that authorized such a project, or if the funding was pulled by Congress then the President would have no authority to order such an action, regardless of his campaign promises. ", "Executive Orders (EO) aren't Royal Proclamations that skirt the law or the Constitution. They're directives to  federal agencies controlled by the President on how he wants things done. And if the President makes an EO that does go against the Constitution like FDR did with the National Recovery Agency, it can get thrown out by the Supreme Court.", "The President has always been able to sign executive orders and actually sign many less than they used to in the past (the record holder is Franklin D. Roosevelt at 3,522 executive orders. Here's the numbers (from Wikipedia) of the last few presidents: \n\nPresident | Executive Orders\n---------|----------------\nRichard Nixon | 346 | \nGerald Ford | 169 |\nJimmy Carter | 320 |\nRonald Reagan | 381 | \nGeorge H. W. Bush | 166 | \nBill Clinton | 364 |\nGeorge W. Bush | 291 |\nBarack Obama | 275 |\nDonald Trump (so far) | 2 | \n\nExecutive orders however don't let you make law. They let you control and issue orders to things directly or indirectly assigned to the executive branch. According to Article II. Section1. of the U.S. Constitution: \"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.\" This means he can order things to happen as long as it doesn't violate the laws that Congress has passed. You should read up more on this here: _URL_1_ If Congress doesn't like an executive order, they can pass a law overruling it and Congress's law will take priority. The president can veto the law however, so basically to overrule an Executive Order a 2/3 majority is needed in Congress to overrule the executive order. This is why the Republican controlled congress couldn't stop Obamacare from happening. Though a Republican president can simply reverse previous executive orders unilaterally. Specifically though, areas of foreign policy, national defense, or the implementation and negotiation of treaties are given specifically to the President in the U.S. Constitution and Congress has little ability to over-rule an executive order in these cases.\n\nEdit: Additionally, I should add, the courts also have the power to overrule an executive order if it's determined to be in violation of the Constitution, this has happened several times but it's relatively rare. _URL_0_\n\nAnd you should also read our Constitution, every citizen should have at least read it once even if you don't fully understand it. It's the core of our country and it's not very long, only a couple pages, even if some parts are somewhat confusing. _URL_2_", "_URL_0_\n\nTrump just happened to make all of hsi promises based on what the president can actually do - enforce migration laws, block/renegotiate trade deals. The link I have given is partisan, but truthful to what he can do alone and what he needs congress in order to achieve.\n", "Executive orders can be overturned as soon as the other side comes back to power, just as the abortion funding and federal funding is changed every time the white house goes to the other side.", "Lol.  Ask the last president.  That made up the lions share of his political action.  And the check/balance that restricts the president is the Supreme Court ruling an EO unconstitutional.  EOs are only supposed to affect federal agencies that fall under the executive branch.  However as our federal government has ballooned into a massive, far reaching organization that affects many more aspects of day to day life, the executive orders now have the ability to impact much more day to day life. ", "Awfully hard to feel bad for people who wanted the government to have virtually unlimited size and scope and then freak out when that power ended up in the hands of someone they don't like. The executive order has been used to direct ever-ballooning federal agencies for almost a century. Obama expressly said he would use the executive order to circumvent Congress, and the left didn't care. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly the left thinks the executive has too much power. These two parties are so broken.", "Obama did the same exact thing. In fact a handful of his EOs were reversing EOs of Obama's. I personally hope that he goes through Congress so that the laws stick and can't be undone so easily by the next prez. ", "[NPR's Planet Money Episode 748: Undoing Obama](_URL_0_) talks about how easy it is for Trump to \"undo\" Obama's work.\n\nThey mention a new \"Midnight Rule Relief Act\" where Congress can undo any regulation made in the last 2 months with a single vote, instead of voting on them individually.", "Would like to point out President Trump has so far only signed one executive order.  The rest have been presidential memoranda.  President Obama did this as well.  Problem is they don't count memo's like they do the EO's but they have the same power.  It's why President Obama was hammered by Congress yet the history books don't show him issuing that many EO's. ", "Congress has given the president power to make orders by giving him agencies under his power that he can order around.\n\nReally, its a bad breach of the separation of powers and should be fixed.\n\nThere, an actual ALI5.", "Where were you when Obama signed his 277 Executive Orders in the 8 years he was President?  It's only terrible when it's done  by a President you don't like. ", "Why weren't you asking this question the past 8 years???", "He's mostly undoing Mr. Obama's executive orders, not passing new things, but despite this /r/politics keeps acting like he's rewriting laws completely on his own.", "The easiest way to think of executive orders is like your boss giving out orders to people, whereas the board of directors (congress)  can actually change the rules of the business. \n\nyour boss might tell you to stop working on that project, or move to another one (start building the pipeline!) \n\nBut your boss might later tell you that the board has told him that you cant work on that project at all. (new environmental law is passed) \n\nThe president is the chief administrator or the executive branch of government, so he is the manager of all government employees. If he looks like he's doing stuff that's not very \"boss-like\" and it seems like he's trying to change the rules of the game, then it's executive over-reach. Thus why the Patriot Act is so hotly debated, as it gives the president power to start conflicts based on secret information---essentially changing the rules of the game without checking with congress. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/JUDSeb2zHQ0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order#Legal_conflicts", "http://www.thisnation.com/question/040.html", "http://constitutionus.com/"], ["http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/01/01/gs%20ex%203.png"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/18/510456884/episode-748-undoing-obama"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q9wqr", "title": "Would 18th century warships pick up sailors from sinking ships?", "selftext": "For instance, if the British navy and French navy had a naval battle and several ships on both sides sunk would the victor mount rescue operations to save the sailors who abandoned ship?\n\nWould they save their enemies as well?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q9wqr/would_18th_century_warships_pick_up_sailors_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdassyz", "cdatlbn"], "score": [33, 24], "text": ["First, you should understand that in the Age of Sail it was far, far more common for ships to be boarded and captured than to be sunk. Ship actions were fought at close quarters and officers and crew would share in prize money if a captured ship was brought into service. This was a major incentive that prevented firing into a ship to totally destroy it.\n\nAnd another thing is that sailors at this time could very rarely swim. Since ships were most often lost in storms, when rescue was impossible, the ability to swim was looked on as a liability. Much better to get your inevitable drowning over with quickly.\n\nSailors who survived a ship's grounding and breaking up would sometimes be rescued by boats sent out from land or from ships further off the coast. \n\nBut in the rare case when a ship was sunk and sailors were still afloat, clinging to flotsam, they would of course be picked up if possible. If not for common humanitarian motives, then at least for the possibility of intelligence.\n\nEdit: *In the great naval battle of Trafalgar, only one French ship was destroyed, compared to 10 captured, along with 11 Spanish ships captured to none destroyed.*\n\n*Navies also had no incentive to teach swimming to their crews because crews, when in home ports, were confined to their ships to prevent running. The ability to go over the sides and swim to shore would have wrecked havoc with a navy's ability to keep ship's numbers up to the required levels.*", "As I recall from Frederick Marryat novels, every attempt was made to save ones own sailors. In addition the enemy was rescued as well, when possible, to encourage reciprocation.\n\nI consider his novels as a decent source as they were written in the 1800s and Marryat was a British naval officer. \n\nIn that era, prisoners were routinely traded so one needed to collect them to get back ones own captured comrades. Officers were \"paroled\", given freedom of movement with the understanding that they would not try to escape until they were exchanged.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3ydfmy", "title": "how to violinists and cellists know where to put their fingers for a certain note when they have no frets?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ydfmy/eli5how_to_violinists_and_cellists_know_where_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cycjb5s", "cycjb6s", "cycjk00", "cyck1h8", "cyckh4x", "cyckx1y", "cyclsao", "cycnlr6", "cyco66j"], "score": [67, 7, 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Muscle memory. An experienced guitarist isn't looking or feeling the frets, either. Your hands eventually just know where to go.", "From experience you just get a certain instinct for it. You know the positions for various common notes, and since \"uncommon\" notes are just intervals above or below \"common\" notes it's pretty easy to play them even if you don't exactly know the finger position immediately. But really after awhile you don't even think about it anymore.\n\nEDIT: Grammar", "In addition to what others have said, sometimes students put tiny slivers of tape on the neck as an aid until they gain the muscle memory.", "You start with small stickers indicating the 4 most regular used positions  (at least I did when learning to play violin), that way you can see where to put your fingers. Pretty quickly you get a feeling of where to put your fingers and you can remove the stickers. As for notes beyond the 4 mentioned positions, it comes instinctively I would say, once you get a feel for the instrument. Playing the violin is not much different from playing the guitar IMO (aside from the increased freedom of the missing frets on a violin)", "I play double-bass and I've got the intonation thing down to a science now. I tape little pieces of felt to the back of my bass's neck. When my thumb hits felt, I know which note is underneath my other fingers on the fingerboard. This way I don't have to spend so much time forcing my muscles to remember hand positions.", "Upright bass player here!\n\nIts half muscle memory and half ear. When you first learn you can some time mark on the neck where certain notes are, personally I played bass guitar before upright and aside from my hand position going from horizontal to vertical the note spacing was pretty much the same so I relied a lot on the fact that my fingers already 'knew' where to go for what note. The top four 'frets' are easy to remember because you can anchor your hand placement to the nut by the headstock and then you can base your hand position from there. For notes farther down the neck, my anchor point became the slope where the neck joined the body. I'd plant my thumb there and I knew directly above my thumb was the fifth 'fret' and that c was where I based my positioning off of lower down on the neck", "Scales and arpeggios are the DNA of common practice music, and the \"map\" of non-fretted string instruments.  They are certainly a boring chore to practice for many years, but they are invaluable in learning how to play in tune, and sight read most regular tonal music.  \n\nTo give violin as an example (because the situation is a bit more complex for cello), composers think about how their material is going to fit into various standard \"positions\" - if they want to write a fast passage that the instrumentalists will have to learn at speed, or sight read, they have to rely on stock figurations that fall conveniently within one of the standard positions, to minimise shifts up and down.  \n\nOver time the anchor location of these positions becomes second nature and violinists can just look at a long sequence of notes and figure out how they are going to finger it in the most efficient way.  \n\nFurthermore, if in doubt, string instrumentalists can check positions by softly playing certain harmonics that appear at points proportional to the length of the string.", "Related question: How do trombone players learn the positions? The answer for violins seems to be putting tape on the fretboard until muscle memory develops, but I can't imagine trombone players can use the same tape trick.", "Trombone player so slightly similar. You get used to where its supposed to be and then you use your ear."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "18otp0", "title": "What makes effective TB vaccines hard to produce?", "selftext": "So developing an effective vaccine against tuberculosis has proven difficult, and the BCG has numerous limitations, but why exactly is this so hard? \n\nSuppose I just grew a bunch of TB bacteria in culture, or in some animal tissue or whatever, and then killed them all by boiling them or with some form of antibiotic. Would they not express a whole lot of antigenes that our bodies can recognise? What is it about TB that makes it so hard to vaccinate against? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18otp0/what_makes_effective_tb_vaccines_hard_to_produce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8gn9y4", "c8grf2p"], "score": [9, 11], "text": ["From my microbiology textbook:\n\n\"Experience has shown that it is fairly effective when given to young children, but for adolescents and adults it seems to have an effectiveness approaching zero. Recent work indicates that exposure to members of the m. avium-intracellulare complex that is often encountered in the environment may interfere with the effectiveness of the BCG vaccine.\"", "The M. Tuberculosis that infects humans is an intracellular pathogen. It is ingested by macrophages but the macrophages cannot destroy it because TB prevents fusion of the phagosome with the lysosome. This inability to destroy the pathogen also prevents the macrophages from activating the adaptive immune response by presenting bits of the TB to CD4+ helper T-Cells. Phagosomes are the vacuole produced when the macrophage ingests something and the lysosome is basically a bag of nasty enzymes used to kill pathogens. Since the macrophages cannot destroy the TB they have ingested, the body attempts to wall the infection off and prevent it from escaping. This results in the characteristic granulomas seen in the lungs of patients with TB. So, back to your question, it is difficult to produce vaccines for TB because it is so good at evading degradation by macrophages. If the macrophages could destroy it they could then present a portion of it via the Major Histocompatibility Complex II to CD4+ helper T-cells and your body could mount a response. But since your body cant' bridge the gap between innate and adaptive immune response and therefore recognize the infection, it can't mount a specific immune response, and you can't clear the TB. Intracellular pathogens are notoriously difficult to vaccinate against for these reasons. This is a pretty good summation if you can access it, _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359644608001542"]]}
{"q_id": "4isoqq", "title": "Could there be objects that have a figure-8 shaped orbit around the sun and the Alpha Centauri System?", "selftext": "According to Wikipedia, the oort cloud could extend as far from the Sun as 200,000 AU (3.2 ly). This would put parts of it well inside the sphere of influence of Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 ly away. Based on this, it seems possible that objects could orbit both the Sun and the Alpha Centauri system in a figure-8 shaped orbit. Is this possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4isoqq/could_there_be_objects_that_have_a_figure8_shaped/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d30yubj"], "score": [8], "text": ["There is indeed a figure 8 orbit, but it is not stable.  \n_URL_0_  \n\nThe object will, if perturbed, orbit one body or the other."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/67260"]]}
{"q_id": "31zyqy", "title": "why do americans take dates/partners to strip clubs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31zyqy/eli5_why_do_americans_take_datespartners_to_strip/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq6j4ve", "cq6jcr9", "cq6jem7", "cq6m59q", "cq6midz", "cq6msp5"], "score": [3, 6, 18, 13, 4, 3], "text": ["I don't know what the rules are like at strip clubs in the UK, but a lot of times here, it's just another form of entertainment. Like going to see a burlesque show. The big difference is, the actresses interact with you at a strip club, but for the most part (at least in the nicer clubs) the girls aren't trying to get the guys off. It's a tease - a strip tease to be exact.\n\nAlthough, I've certainly seen a lot of couples where the women are very uncomfortable at first (or up until the moment they walk out the door) and their boyfriends are trying to show them that there's nothing really sexual going on, it's just a show.", "We hope the SO learns some new moves.  Plus it will probably lead to really good sex.", "I don't think this is an American thing, but a relationship thing. I know plenty of American couples who would do this and plenty who wouldn't.  I like to go to strip clubs / sex clubs / burlesque with my SO because neither of us gets jealous and because we both like looking at pretty naked people.", "American here, I have never heard of this even being thought of as common. I don't even know if I know anyone who has gone to a strip club.", "It's not that common.\n\n90% of the people in a strip club are going to be guys by them selves or with their buddies.", " >  in the UK this would never happen\n\nI doubt that is true.\n\nMy girlfriend and I have gone to a few strip clubs together. She likes looking at naked ladies, I like looking at naked ladies. We both get turned on then go home and have great sex. \n\nI wouldnt say that this is all that common, though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "922dfy", "title": "How much of a co-ruler was Theodora (500-548) to her husband Justinian (482-565)?", "selftext": "So in my classics class this last spring semester we read *Secret History* by Procopius and talked a lot about Justinian and Theodora. It was clear that Procopius didn't have many nice things to say about the couple, *especially* Theodora. One of my favorite little anecdotes was during the Nika Riots, I believe, where Justinian proposed fleeing for safety, and Theodora basically told him off in front of everyone saying that he could leave if he chose, but she was staying right where she was. I want to know, was this story actually true? And how much of an empress was Theodora really?\n\nThank you guys in advance  < 3 I truly love this board. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/922dfy/how_much_of_a_coruler_was_theodora_500548_to_her/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e332r1l", "e336rpn"], "score": [6, 15], "text": ["According to JJ Norwich\u2019s book \u2018The Early Days\u2019 Justinian saw her very much as his equal from the beginning and sought her council regularly. He also suggests that he was regularly acting on her suggestions and was largely under her influence. If it wasn\u2019t for her giving him a massive speech (as you alluded to) about how she\u2019d rather die in the purple than give it up in exile he most likely would\u2019ve been deposed at the riots of Nika (532) and this story is very much true. This event alone says enough about how much of an co-emperor she was \n\nPS: Absolutely fantastic book would very much recommend for an overview/ introduction to late antiquity/ early Byzantium ", "So, Theodora is one of those subjects where pop-history has a consensus that actual history doesn't. To be frank this pop-historical consensus is made by cherry picking good things from sources and discrediting anything negative. For example, the same source that mentions her as a ruler, perhaps even better than Justinian, also accuses her of murdering her own children so Justinian wouldn't set her aside. Setting aside what this says about her character, that action clearly implies Justinian had more power in the relationship. The justification for including the former and not the latter is that the latter is slander and the former is reporting a true fact because... well, it's not actually justified.\n\nYou brought up two common ideas: that she was a co-emperor and that she prevented Justinian from fleeing the Nika Riots. The idea she was a co-emperor has two pieces of evidence. First, from artistic representations where she was often portrayed more prominently than ministers, and sometimes equally prominent with Justinian. While this is unusual, it wasn't unprecedented and doesn't directly imply a specific title. What is known, though, is that it was often Justinian who was commissioning these pieces and that it actually became *more* common after her death.\n\nThe other piece of evidence is a mention by Procopius that she was crowned as his equal. This could mean she was raised to that title. It could also mean that Justinian didn't force her to make symbolic acts of submission and had her crowned rather than treating her as simply a consort. Considering the lack of coins and inscriptions using the title, it's likely he meant the latter. Even Procopius never describes her as acting as his equal or exerting direct authority the way a co-emperor would. There are some historians who do believe it's literal but the weight of evidence is that, while she was highly influential on her husband, Justinian was really the one in power.\n\nSecondly, the Nika Riots. Again, the specific story and speech is mentioned in only one source: Procopius. And we have no reason to believe Procopius was actually at the meeting. The language Procopius uses in describing Theodora is very clearly meant to evoke Sejanus, right down to using a Greek version of Sejanus's famous title 'socius operis'. And like Sejanus, Theodora is described as setting her own policy, thwarting her partner, starting reigns of terror, and taking on imperial powers. The incident might have happened but it serves an invective and paralleling purpose in the work.\n\nThe fact that Justinian is considering fleeing is cowardice since he still has his armies. That Theodora needs to encourage him to even fight for his throne is a clear insult to Justinian. It implies Justinian and his ministers are weaker and more cowardly than his wife. That, along with the excessive butchery of suppressing the riot along with the executions of innocents at Theodora's insistence, makes her a callous butcher and is another accusation of murder. (Side note: As to her being co-emperor, you might also note her famous speech begins with her saying that she doesn't usually attend the council of ministers that runs the state...) This also parallels Drusus and Sejanus' purge of Pannonian mutineers, comparing the couple unfavorably.\n\nSo while the incident might be real, the account we have of it is perfectly constructed for a specific literary purpose. And Procopius is not above manufacturing incidents wholesale.\n\nSourced from all three works of Procopius (*The Secret History*, *The Wars of Justinian*, *The Buildings of Justinian*), *The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian*, *Women in the Byzantine Empire*, and *The Secret History and Propaganda*.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "aypy79", "title": "Is there any historical evidence of Jesus referring to himself as the son of God?", "selftext": "having heard of gnostic christianity and the idea that Jesus did not believe himself to be a God, I was just wondering if there was any non-bible source of him making the claim. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aypy79/is_there_any_historical_evidence_of_jesus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ei2ndyg", "ei310p6"], "score": [70, 4], "text": ["One of the few extra-biblical accounts of Jesus comes from the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus:\n\n\u201cAbout this time there lived Jesus, a wise man \\[if indeed one ought to call him a man.\\]  For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such  people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the  Greeks. \\[He was the Christ.\\]  When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing  amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the  first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him.\u00a0 \\[On  the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of  God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about  him.\\] And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.\u201d\n\n(The bracketed portions come from the Greek Translation; the 10th century Arabic translation does not include them) This one section of his work has cased quite a bit of controversy, with some scholars believing it to have been tampered with or completely fabricated. However, very few works outside the Bible quote Jesus directly, and, as of right now, the Gnostic's and other Christians must content themselves to the Bible.\n\nSources: \n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n [_URL_2_](_URL_2_) \n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n(edit):  formating changes", "I have a related question. I read somewhere that there is only one historical mention of Jesus by any other society alive at the time and that was found to be plagiarized. Is this true? Did no one around the world,outside of the immediate area, know about Jesus?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://josephus.org/testimonium.htm", "https://carm.org/regarding-quotes-historian-josephus-about-jesus", "https://www.britannica.com/biography/Flavius-Josephus"], []]}
{"q_id": "30l9os", "title": "Candles vs. electric lights, which is more energy efficient?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/30l9os/candles_vs_electric_lights_which_is_more_energy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpth49s"], "score": [7], "text": ["Here's a plot of the thermal spectrum of [various light sources](_URL_0_) with roughly the same power output. Physically, much of a candle's light is from thermal emission which gives it a curve similar to an incandescent light bulb, however unlike the common tungsten bulb, candles are much cooler. This means, for the same total power, the light bulb is much brighter to the human eye as more of its light is emitted in the visible wavelengths.\n\nNow, if you know anything about light bulbs, incandescents are ***horribly*** inefficient as much of the light produced isn't even visible to the human eye. Fluorescent and LED light sources provide more brightness for less power."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://ledlampinchina.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/wavelength-and-efficiency-of-daylight-vs-incandescent-vs-warm-white-led-vs-halogen-vs-cool-white-led-vs-warm-white-led.png"]]}
{"q_id": "3ciuyx", "title": "Did ancient forms of mass entertainment have the ancient equivalent of advertisement? For example, did the Roman coliseum have something like banners from sponsors hanging in it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ciuyx/did_ancient_forms_of_mass_entertainment_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csvyuql"], "score": [47], "text": ["You wouldn\u2019t find banners or signs proclaiming \u2018Try Lucius\u2019 olive oil!\u2019 or \u20189 out of 10 gladiators prefer Marcus\u2019 fish sauce!\u2019. However, in a sense these mass spectacles were advertisements for their sponsors. \n\nThese games were paid for by rich men and magistrates, and they made sure that the populace knew who was picking up the bill. Normally the sponsor would be present at the spectacle and would stand and acknowledge the cheers (or jeers) of the crowd. This was a way to show that he was concerned about the well-being and happiness of the people. This was advertising his worth as a leader.\n\nIn the Republic different magistrates or candidates would put on these shows almost as a form of campaigning for office. So much money was spent that various laws were passed to try and reign in the extravagance.\n\nDuring the Empire the emperor was the best-known sponsor, either directly or indirectly \u2013 such as paying for games in the names of the consuls. Out in the provinces local elites paid for local shows, sometimes on their own and sometimes with the help of the emperor.\n\nRich men were expected to do this, as it was part of their civic responsibility. They were supposed to be magistrates and bestow such largesse on the people, but not all of them did it voluntarily. They could get out of it for various reasons, like sickness or being a practicing sophist \u2013 a kind of public speaker who was seen to add value to the community by his rhetoric. Aelius Aristides was one desperately tried to avoid it. Aristides wrote passionate letters explaining that he was a sophist and so shouldn\u2019t be forced to hold an office and spend much of his wealth on the public.\n\nA good overview is Eckart K\u00f6hne\u2019s Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6qjg5i", "title": "why do humans need pillows and what would happen if we slept without them on a regular basis? would this cause long term spinal problems?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qjg5i/eli5_why_do_humans_need_pillows_and_what_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkxz72u", "dky01ci", "dky3t2j", "dky5207", "dky6otz", "dky76yu", "dky7vwh", "dky8j6w", "dkyajwl", "dkyat5p", "dkybmam", "dkydbnx", "dkyg149", "dkyhtm9", "dkyiqoq", "dkyjvw5", "dkyklao", "dkyn8p8", "dkync31", "dkyr8lm", "dkyvhan", "dkz058j", "dkz2g0x", "dkz61q2", "dkzgkqh"], "score": [5874, 311, 2428, 16, 45, 21, 13, 85, 17, 53, 25, 397, 3, 6, 14, 2, 3, 3, 7, 67, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Edit 4: All the way at the top so you can read it first. \nDisclaimer: I am not a ~~doctor nor chiropractor~~ medical professional. While I do have some medical experience, I am in no way qualified to provide medical advice. I am simply sharing what training I've received and my personal experiences either with customers or what I've felt myself. I am doing this of my own free will at the low low price of... wait for it.. free. Yes that was a salesman joke. Now all comments I've expressed are opinionated. Please research this topic yourself before purchasing a mattress. Trust but verify. \n\nI currently work at a Colorado based Mattress Store. While you don't need a mattress or a pillow, it does wonders for hip, neck, back, and shoulder pains. \n\nA properly fitted mattress provides about 2/3rds of your support. The mattress in conjunction with the pillow provides the remaining 1/3rd. I feel that this support is necessary IF you want the best nights rest possible. You can still sleep without it but not optimally. The way it was explained in my training is as follows. \n\nA mattress that is actually fitted to your sleeping habits and body, reduces how much your muscles have to work throughout the night to maintain the natural S curve of your spine. If your muscles work hard throughout the night maintaining this position you tend to wake up with a tense back and/or back pain. The part the pillow plays is also quite important. An improperly fitted pillow typically causes neck pain due to similar reasons. The neck muscles work and are stretched throughout the night from the lack of support. \n\nPlease note that this a very general statement and that every person is different as well as the mattress they sleep on. Many people will say that they sleep absolutely amazing on their current mattress that is 40 years old (no exaggeration, true story). However, I used to think that Motorola Razr was the best phone ever. Then I tried something new, the Samsung Note. To be clear, my point is that just because you feel something is the best you've ever experienced doesn't mean you can't experience something better. \n\nBonus (A few general mattress rules) :\n\nIf you are a side sleeper try to avoid firm mattresses. They place a lot of pressure on your shoulders and hips with very little give. This leads to more tossing and turning throughout the night (even if you aren't completely awake/aware). \n\nAdjustable bases, sometimes called hospital beds, are used in hospitals for a reason. They reduce pressure on your body by forming a S curve to help match your spine's curve. Also, they raise your feet above your heart causing increased blood flow to facilitate healing. Why do you think doctors tell you to keep certain injuries elevated? \n\nIn regards to pillows, most stomach sleepers need a thin pillow. Side sleepers often need the thickest. The reason for that relates to your shoulders. The pillow needs to be about as thick as the distance from your neck to the edge of your shoulder so that the neck is in line with spine. Back sleepers are often  needing something in the middle. Although almost every customer claims to need the fluffiest fluffernugget of a pillow we have. Very few of them will listen otherwise. So we sell it to them. The customer is always right. No matter how ridiculously wrong they are. \n\nEdit 1: A lot of people have asked about the best pillow for someone who switches between their stomach and side throughout the night. There isn't a specific pillow or really even a best one. What works for me may not work for you. However this is what I personally do:\n\nWhat worked for me, and **might** work for you is this. I purchased a thin pillow that I was comfortable with on my stomach. Now, most side sleepers end up having an arm underneath the pillow essentially \"increasing\" the thickness of the pillow to match a so called side sleeper pillow. This worked for me. My arm made up for the missing padding. Again, this is what is good for me. \n\nEdit 2: There has been a fair amount of skepticism regarding the increased blood flow portion of this comment. The medical field is slightly outside my area of knowledge. However, while I am not currently retracting this statement, I am going to research a little more in depth. Hopefully I come back with a more satisfactory explanation. \n\nEdit 3: Wow. Um. Gold. Huh. I really appreciate that! Truly! \n\n*obligatory first gold comment followed by lame pun*\n\nEdit 5: There's been a lot more interest on this subject than I expected. I've answered most of the questions at least once, some more. If I haven't addressed yours, the answer may be in another comment. Tonight however, I'm turning in. I may be able to answer some tomorrow morning. Past that, I feel like the subject was been pretty well exhausted. I do wish I every a excellent night's rest! Good night! \n\nEdit 6: Editing the edit. I get it, a lot of people don't like chiropractors. ", "You may need a thicker or thinner pillow to maintain a neutral anatomic position while sleeping on your back.  This is based on the thickness of the muscle and fat on your back and shoulders, as well as the angle of your cervical spine.  This neutral and anatomic position can help with breathing while sleeping.\n\nSource: training for strapping people to spinal boards.", "Did ancient people (like 2,000-5,000 BC) use pillows of some sort?   When did humans start using pillows?", "while supine, we don't need pillows; while in side posture, it makes sense to keep the cervical vertebrae in line w/the rest of the spine, i.e., keep your head some distance from the mattress.\n\nimagine your posture from the side while standing.\nnow imagine your neck flexed (while standing) as if a pillow were there. not good. similarly, not good while lying.\n\nI sleep supine without pillows on a long term basis and I feel no spinal problems.", "Is it possible that the desire to elevate the head has to do indirectly with blood flow to the brain? All of the posts I've seen have supported (haha) the position that pillows are for the benefit of maintaining natural spinal structures or aiding the muscles around other body parts. \n\nI have zero expertise in this area, and I am merely posting a question. I recently watched a discussion on some eastern philosophy and it dealt with a concern for blood flow to the brain. I was wondering if it is possible that the elevation of the head during sleep corresponds with any evolutionary changes in the human brain.", "why do you think we need pillows?\n\napes [sleep just fine](_URL_0_) without and so do we.\n\nSpinal problems are mostly due to the fact we do very little physical activity and most of us sit at a desk most of the day. If you moved properly 12 hours a day, it would make little difference whether you slept with or without a pillow.", "Chiropractor here. I don't see any comments so far talking about sleeping on your side. You need a pillow to keep your cervical spine relatively neutral for side sleeping.\n\nWhile sleeping on your back your cervical lordosis (normal curve in the neck) will be fine. But side note: you'll snore more on your back\n\nEdit: if you sleep on your side and you find yourself putting a hand under your pillow, you're asking for more support ", "The really easy answer is that humans don't need pillows. Plenty of people never use them. \n\nThat said, almost nothing about the way you sleep is similar to how you evolved to sleep. You're likely on a bed that has a lot of give. You might be on your side or belly. If you were sleeping on your back on the ground the pillow would make less sense. ", "Besides any potential spinal issues, sleeping with the head elevated can reduce the symptoms of acid reflux and sleep apnea. You don't necessarily need a pillow for this if you have an adjustable mattress, or elevate the head of your bed with risers.", "Related question: since the Japanese sleep on much different equipment, have studies been done establishing the different effects to Western bedclothes?", "All luxury items.  Pillows can be your arm on your side, or nothing on your back.  Exceptions for pathology mutations, or obesity of course, but in nature, how successful would those be?\n\nAlso, your body adapts somewhat through childhood growth.  Look up binding of skulls, feet, neck rings, etc for things we humans have chosen to do to change our shape willfully, and mutations in general to see what nature does to us.\n\nHot spots, sore spots, can form if we are heavier than what our bodies are grown to be, or from lying on a hard surface.  \n\nHowever, most animals make a more comfortable nest.  We would use leaves, or other padding, for warmth and comfort.  Hammocks, blankets, and stuffed mattresses are pretty early, primitave technologies that have been around since prehistory.  We just have industries in the west to make these for us, but there are places in the world where humans live in trees or dirt huts.", "We do not need pillows, we simply desire them.\n\nIf we look to the animal kingdom and our nearest relatives we can see that yes we share traits of nest building with chimpanzees and great apes, however you would do well to notice that they all use hard woods.\n\nfurther reading shows that native peoples such as african tribal peoples from the 50's do not sleep on soft pillows.\n\nWhen you lie down on a hard, flat floor you will immediately feel all your tension (try it). Once you sense your tightness, you can do something about it and let go the areas that are holding stress and rigidity and release the stiffness. When you get down on the floor, something has to give, and it\u2019s not going to be the floor; that\u2019s for sure! Think of the floor as your personal biofeedback device. Use your breathing to release tension and encourage relaxation.\n\nYour body has not had the time to evolve to require pillows, and your muscles relax themselves pretty well when asleep.\n\nInfact it is poor pillow and mattress choice that causes most of us to suffer as we find ourselves comfortable in what are unhealthy positions to lie in, if you cushion the discomfort, you can stay in a position that your body is warning you is not safe.\n\n", "So, here's the thing. If you're in pretty good shape and good health, sleeping on your back is the best.\n\nSleeping on your side alleviates snoring and apnea. Which are only problems when you're carrying extra weight or sick. Or when you have a medical condition.\n\nBut most of us aren't. And we snore. Which is bad for us. So sleeping in your side is good. Except for all the problems it causes. Which is why we need mattresses and pillows to align our spines and neck and such. ", "My aunt is a physiotherapist. According to her, what we need is a very thin pillow or none at all. The purpose of the thin pillow is to support the head, neck and shoulders ( upto the clavicle). Mostly the neck. What happens in people who use firm pillows and sleep on their back is that they wake up with a neck ache at times. That's because the head is flexed throughout the night, so the body has to adjust. We wake up with a pain because the neck muscles are sore. \n\nThe normal human spine has two curvatures. One at the neck (cervical) and one in the lumbar region. The 'S'.  So our sleeping position should be such that it is maintained and all muscles are comfortably relaxed. A thin pillow helps achieve that. Some people find a fluffy pillow comfortable as well. \n\nPs. I'm a medical student, final year. ", "This is a false premise. We have no need for pillows whatsoever. Our ancestors didn't have them and, as others have pointed out, there's been no time for us to evolve to the need. They're just a societal norm now and we become accustomed to them. Plenty of civilizations don't use pillows, and many prisons don't provide them, with the people being just fine. One could argue that they're even better off as soft surfaces conform to our bodies and whatever tensions they may have, resulting in them being reinforced. Not to say head support is bad, it's just no needed in any way.\n\nThat said, I fucking love pillows. I've got one that stays cool and keeps my head cool. It was super expensive but totally worth it.\n\nEdit: People are asking for the pillow. It's a pillow by Lux-Living that has gel inside. It was like $125.", "We don't necessarily need pillows. If you sleep on your back you could certainly not sleep with a pillow. If you sleeps on your side or stomach/side it's beneficial to have a pillow to help keep your head in alignment with your spine. However, I'm sure you could even figure out a way around using a pillow is these positions as well, perhaps using your arms as support. \n\n", "[What about ancient civilizations that used neck rests instead of pillows?](_URL_0_) I've seen plenty of these in museums, but didn't see this discussed here. I actually use something like this on occasion. When I take a nap in my car, using an empty water bottle (with the cap on to keep in air) under my neck really helps how I sleep. Of course, anything that keeps the natural curve of the neck would work too.", "Humans don't need pillows. All they do is feel nice and squishy, but they are actually not great for your neck and shoulders. You can read more about that and how to get away from using pillows on Katy Bowman's blog. She's a biomechanist and alignment specialist. _URL_0_", "According to [this BBC article](_URL_1_) summarizing [this article from Physical Anthropology](_URL_0_), nesting or building sleeping platforms is a characteristic of all great apes, and enables us to spend longer, more sustained periods of time in non-REM sleep.\n  \nAccording to the article, great apes have higher quality of sleep than other primates, owing to the switch to sleeping on nest platforms of some sort, and this behavioral adaptation occurred 14-18 million years ago.\n  \nQuoting the lead researcher, Dr. David Samson:\n\"Sleep quality may be a critical difference between apes and monkeys. Monkeys likely spend more time in \u2018light\u2019 sleep due to their less comfortable, less secure, and socially dynamic sleep environments. The trade-off is that they can easily arouse from sleep when a predator is around, or a social partner is active, but the cost is that they don\u2019t achieve the benefits of deep sleep.\"\n  \n\"We apes seem to have innovated an effective way to sleep both securely and comfortably.\"\n  \nThe author goes on to speculate that many of our cognitive adaptations are possible only because we are able to get the benefits of good sleep on the brain.", "I am a physical therapist in a spinal cord injury unit.  Pillows have the same purpose as pressure relief with our spinal cord injury patients.  In the back of the head, there is a boney prominence called the occiput.  If you lay on something hard, the blood in the skin between the occiput and the hard ground surface occludes  and the skin in that area slowly dies if you lay there for long periods without allowing blood flow to be restored.  The entire weight of the head is concentrated on that one small area and so it needs to be supported to prevent occluding blood.  This same event occurs with the hip bones in spinal cord patients as they cannot move their legs to relieve the pressure (thus they use their wheel chairs to recline and adjust gravity pressures through their legs or they lift themselves off the chair to restore blood flow - every 15 minutes).   You will get pressure sores which are the skin between the bone and the surface necrosing.\nBasically pillows serve to support the head to allow blood flow to that skin throughout the night and also support the neck musculature while we sleep.", "People want comfort, I am sure most culture did invent a \"pillow\" like most culture did invent a bed. That the bed and pillow only was hay and leaves on a earth floor, do not prevent them to be a bed and pillow.\n\nBecuse its material that disappears we will not find a stone age pillow out of hay or skin. ", "Pillows aren't necessary, and it is purely individual and can vary from mattress type to mattress type as well as other factors. The main point is that you want to achieve a neutral spine. \n\nMy qualifications- Student Physical Therapist (posture education behind me)", "Pillows reduce the blood flow into the brain from the heart (that is when the metabolism goes down and the body prepares to sleep) and that helps in falling asleep faster. \nApart from minor inconveniences in the beginning few days there is no way sleeping without pillows can cause spine problems.", "Think of it this way: your mattress supports you from the shoulders down. Your pillow supports from the shoulders up. With the fact that all human bodies have natural curvatures, though some more than others, the mattress and the pillow need to work together to create proper spinal alignment. Improper alignment can cause a whole host of issues with your body, from head to toe. ", "Back pain stems from a lot of different issues. Poor posture is one. A supportive mattress and an adjustable base help your body to align itself. This can, with time, help their posture improve while alleviating some of the pain from the continued poor posture. As well as pain from overworking the back muscles. Every muscle needs rest. Even ones that work continuously. For example, the heart. Yes, most cardio regimens have your heart rate around 165 BPM I believe. Maintaining that heart rate for extremely long periods of time will cause damage. Every muscle needs a slower work load at times. \n\nMany people don't consciously try to change their posture. A properly fitted mattress could help. Otherwise, they will continue to have poor posture while suffering from said posture. Unless that person continuously strives to correct their posture. \n\nYou stated that many people need all the work they can get. I'll admit that many do need to strengthen their back muscles. However, working said muscles improperly could cause more damage to their body. I  know I keep saying this, but a properly fitted mattress could help retrain poor posture. Particularly if paired with an adjustable base. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150415-apes-reveal-sleep-secrets"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://slumberwise.com/trivia/real-men-sleep-on-rocks/"], ["https://nutritiousmovement.com/your-pillow-is-an-orthotic/"], ["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22733/full", "http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150415-apes-reveal-sleep-secrets"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ozr1g", "title": "Is there any not-yet-feasible but theoretically sound experiment that would determine topology of the universe?", "selftext": "Or is there a fundamental problem preventing one from observing the topology of the spacetime he's in?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ozr1g/is_there_any_notyetfeasible_but_theoretically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4h3ic0"], "score": [7], "text": ["It depends on what you mean by topology. I'm going to guess you are referring to the curvature of the universe (open, flat, or closed).\n\nThere are certainly experiments one can perform to determine the curvature of local spacetime. One of the simplest is to create a triangle with straight sides, and measure its angles. You can do this with lasers to get precise measurements. This is actually feasible right now. The cost of doing so depends on the precision you need. It turns out that our local spacetime's curvature is very, very close to zero; therefore, to get a nonzero curvature reading, you need really expensive, precise instruments.\n\nFiguring out the curvature of the entire universe is a bit harder, because it runs up against the limits of observation. There are more complex calculations we can do to estimate the curvature of everything we can see, but they run into two problems.\n\n1) The values we keep getting are very, very close to zero. When a value is very close to the margin of error, it's hard to tell whether it's really zero, positive or negative - this is just a universal property of measuring things, not anything specific to topology or curvature.\n\n2) We can only see a finite section of the universe. We have no specific reason to believe that the universe outside of observable space behaves differently - but we also, by definition, have no way to prove that it behaves exactly the same. So we can't necessarily extrapolate to the shape of \"the entire universe\", only to the parts that we can see and measure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "qhdm1", "title": "why do a good amount of gay men have higher voices than the norm?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qhdm1/eli5_why_do_a_good_amount_of_gay_men_have_higher/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3xmb7r", "c3xmej2", "c3xmeko", "c3xmgpy", "c3xmqjh", "c3xoqs4"], "score": [25, 7, 3, 47, 5, 2], "text": ["half of all people have a higher voice than the norm, and that is a good amount.", "I really think it's more of a matter of the register gay men allow their voices to go into. They are expressive and their voice follows suit. I, for instance, speak in a fairly high voice, but if I want to I can go lower than my straight friend, despite the fact that he normally talks in a lower register.\n\nYou know how sometimes you can tell that a guy is making his voice seem lower than it really naturally is? I believe that many straight men do this habitually; many gay men do the opposite. It's a societal pressure on both sides.", "Most gay men do not have a higher voice.", "This has to do with a confirmation bias.\n\nThink of it this way. Everyone thinks that toupees are terrible and extremely easy to spot. This is a problem because the only toupees that you spot are the bad ones. The good ones or 'passable' ones go on unnoticed.\n\nThe same is for gay men. You tend to notice the gay men who fit the stereotype: effeminate voices, metrosexual dress, vaguely flamboyant, yet all of the gays that do not posses these traits often go unnoticed. Or even then you tend to overlook their existence somewhat because the human brain tends to mentally overlook something that doesn't agree with their preconceived notions.", "As a side to the OP \u2013 why is there a stereotype that gay men talk in a lisp? I know 6 or so gay men pretty well, and only one really talks like that (I'm pretty sure it's an affectation and he's the only one who really tries that hard to seem effeminate). Obviously a lot of gay men don't have a lisp, but for some reason or another this is a fairly accepted stereotype \u2013 listen to a comedian do an impression, for instance. Any thoughts on where this originated (or why people think lisps are effeminate)?", "They don't. They're just the ones you notice more."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "jhvm7", "title": "What is the highest number of beats per minute that the human ear can discern?", "selftext": "How many beats can the human ear discern before it just sounds like one, continuous note/sound. And is it different for different sources of sound?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jhvm7/what_is_the_highest_number_of_beats_per_minute/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2c8rgs", "c2caayy", "c2cd1hh", "c2cie70", "c2c8rgs", "c2caayy", "c2cd1hh", "c2cie70"], "score": [19, 5, 2, 3, 19, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["Not a scientist, but a musician. 20Hz is about the lowest tone most people perceive as a, well, tone.  Lower than that and you hear the individual cycles as beats (or you hear nothing at all). Similarly, if you take a percussive beat and play more than about 20/second, it will transform from a beat pattern into a tone. There's electronic music that uses this to great effect.\n\nI believe this 20Hz cutoff is independent of the source or type of sound - it's more a result of how our ears work. \nMaybe a scientist can chip in on *why* this happens?", "I think ogxela pretty much answered your question; this is just a bit more detail. The human ear is an awesomely complex series of parts that collect, amplify and analyze sound. However, ultimately, the sensation of sound occurs in the cochlea. This is a snail shell shaped organ covered with tiny hairlike protrusions called stereocilia which vibrate in response to sonic waves allowing us to detect sound. The 'hairs' have different lengths depending on where they are located on the cochlea causing differing tones to stimulate cilia in differing regions. This is how we detect tone. Magnitude of sound is decided by the amount of vibrating the cilia do in response to the sound. The human cochlea has an overall range of about 20hz-20,000hz (1hz=1beat/sec). To answer ogxela's question, when a series of waves of lower than 20hz is heard (or not heard rather), the frequency is low enough such that the cilia in that range are moved then have time to stop moving before the next wave hits more than 0.05sec later. In this case, each wave is perceived individually. As the frequency approaches and exceeds 20hz, the cilia do not have time to stop moving between waves causing them to vibrate perpetually. This gives a continuous signal and is perceived as a tone. If you want actual specifics as far as the mechanics of the signal propagation I can do that as well but I've already gone on pretty long for this question. Hope I answered your question.", "Miller and Taylor (1948) turned a white noise on and off, and found that for rates of 100 - 250 Hz the sound was reported to have a 'pitchlike quality'. To some extent it would still sound like a sound being turned on and off though - though there is a large grey area between 'beep beep beep' and 'beeeeeeep'.\n\nMight be best to try this for yourself and see what you reckon.\n\nEDIT: Just to add though that such pitch sensations are not massively strong, and some people barely report hearing them at all. For more info check out page 220 of [this](_URL_0_) book.", "People on here seem to be confused between the terms acoustic frequency and beats per minute. Beats per minute is a musical term for the [tempo](_URL_1_), or speed, a song is supposed to be played at, typically used in electronic music. OP is asking, how fast can you set the tempo of a song before it becomes smeared into a continuous sound.\n\n\nThe simple answer, which petejonze pointed out (including references, awesome), is somewhere less than 100Hz. 100Hz is equal to 6000 beats per minute. Once you get to around 100Hz (6000BPM, or 16th notes at 375BPM), you stop hearing beats and you start to hear a buzz with the same pitch as a 100Hz tone.\n\n\nHowever, there is a huge difference in timbre (sound quality) between a buzz and a continuous tone. Since you hear a buzz, you are still perceiving a beat, it's just that instead of hearing each beat your auditory system groups them together into a buzz. You can still perceive the beat, as a buzz, up to the rate your auditory neurons can encode changes in level over time, around 1500Hz. 1500Hz is 90000BPM, or 16th notes at 5625BPM. Once you get over 90000 you will actually hear a continuous sound with no traces of the buzzy roughness caused by the beats.\n\n\nFYI, your vocal chords release bursts of air each time they open and close when you are speaking. Those bursts are like clicks, and if you slow them down (electronically or by doing a [glottal fry](_URL_0_)) you hear individual beats. When you speed it up to normal speed you hear a normal human voice (well, maybe not for glottal fry). The same auditory mechanism that turns your vocal chord beats into a human voice with a strong pitch is what turns a fast rhythm into a buzz. The lowest pitches humans can sing are right at the limit of the fastest BPM you can hear as individual beats. In other words, our auditory system is optimized to pick out human vocalizations in the range that they can occur, and outside that range the optimization is totally different.\n\nEdit: forgot to carry the two.  \nEdit2: actually, the math makes more sense if you say it in terms of 16th notes. 100Hz, or 100Hz clicks per second, is the same as 16th notes at 375BPM.", "Not a scientist, but a musician. 20Hz is about the lowest tone most people perceive as a, well, tone.  Lower than that and you hear the individual cycles as beats (or you hear nothing at all). Similarly, if you take a percussive beat and play more than about 20/second, it will transform from a beat pattern into a tone. There's electronic music that uses this to great effect.\n\nI believe this 20Hz cutoff is independent of the source or type of sound - it's more a result of how our ears work. \nMaybe a scientist can chip in on *why* this happens?", "I think ogxela pretty much answered your question; this is just a bit more detail. The human ear is an awesomely complex series of parts that collect, amplify and analyze sound. However, ultimately, the sensation of sound occurs in the cochlea. This is a snail shell shaped organ covered with tiny hairlike protrusions called stereocilia which vibrate in response to sonic waves allowing us to detect sound. The 'hairs' have different lengths depending on where they are located on the cochlea causing differing tones to stimulate cilia in differing regions. This is how we detect tone. Magnitude of sound is decided by the amount of vibrating the cilia do in response to the sound. The human cochlea has an overall range of about 20hz-20,000hz (1hz=1beat/sec). To answer ogxela's question, when a series of waves of lower than 20hz is heard (or not heard rather), the frequency is low enough such that the cilia in that range are moved then have time to stop moving before the next wave hits more than 0.05sec later. In this case, each wave is perceived individually. As the frequency approaches and exceeds 20hz, the cilia do not have time to stop moving between waves causing them to vibrate perpetually. This gives a continuous signal and is perceived as a tone. If you want actual specifics as far as the mechanics of the signal propagation I can do that as well but I've already gone on pretty long for this question. Hope I answered your question.", "Miller and Taylor (1948) turned a white noise on and off, and found that for rates of 100 - 250 Hz the sound was reported to have a 'pitchlike quality'. To some extent it would still sound like a sound being turned on and off though - though there is a large grey area between 'beep beep beep' and 'beeeeeeep'.\n\nMight be best to try this for yourself and see what you reckon.\n\nEDIT: Just to add though that such pitch sensations are not massively strong, and some people barely report hearing them at all. For more info check out page 220 of [this](_URL_0_) book.", "People on here seem to be confused between the terms acoustic frequency and beats per minute. Beats per minute is a musical term for the [tempo](_URL_1_), or speed, a song is supposed to be played at, typically used in electronic music. OP is asking, how fast can you set the tempo of a song before it becomes smeared into a continuous sound.\n\n\nThe simple answer, which petejonze pointed out (including references, awesome), is somewhere less than 100Hz. 100Hz is equal to 6000 beats per minute. Once you get to around 100Hz (6000BPM, or 16th notes at 375BPM), you stop hearing beats and you start to hear a buzz with the same pitch as a 100Hz tone.\n\n\nHowever, there is a huge difference in timbre (sound quality) between a buzz and a continuous tone. Since you hear a buzz, you are still perceiving a beat, it's just that instead of hearing each beat your auditory system groups them together into a buzz. You can still perceive the beat, as a buzz, up to the rate your auditory neurons can encode changes in level over time, around 1500Hz. 1500Hz is 90000BPM, or 16th notes at 5625BPM. Once you get over 90000 you will actually hear a continuous sound with no traces of the buzzy roughness caused by the beats.\n\n\nFYI, your vocal chords release bursts of air each time they open and close when you are speaking. Those bursts are like clicks, and if you slow them down (electronically or by doing a [glottal fry](_URL_0_)) you hear individual beats. When you speed it up to normal speed you hear a normal human voice (well, maybe not for glottal fry). The same auditory mechanism that turns your vocal chord beats into a human voice with a strong pitch is what turns a fast rhythm into a buzz. The lowest pitches humans can sing are right at the limit of the fastest BPM you can hear as individual beats. In other words, our auditory system is optimized to pick out human vocalizations in the range that they can occur, and outside that range the optimization is totally different.\n\nEdit: forgot to carry the two.  \nEdit2: actually, the math makes more sense if you say it in terms of 16th notes. 100Hz, or 100Hz clicks per second, is the same as 16th notes at 375BPM."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tkbOivKH2HkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=moore+introduction+to+the+psychology+of+hearing+pitch+perception&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=0J9HToPyDoS5hAealugv&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=moore%20introduction%20to%20the%20psychology%20of%20hearing%20pitch%20perception&amp;f=false"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1zGQ4iUApo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo"], [], [], ["http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tkbOivKH2HkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=moore+introduction+to+the+psychology+of+hearing+pitch+perception&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=0J9HToPyDoS5hAealugv&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=moore%20introduction%20to%20the%20psychology%20of%20hearing%20pitch%20perception&amp;f=false"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1zGQ4iUApo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo"]]}
{"q_id": "20agcf", "title": "i have $10,000 in the bank right now, if i move to another country and exchange my currency can i live like a king somewhere else?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20agcf/eli5i_have_10000_in_the_bank_right_now_if_i_move/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg1bfqu", "cg1bjy1", "cg1bolt", "cg1chu3", "cg1d2bu", "cg1et5y", "cg1eyhg", "cg1gqs9", "cg1hfa8", "cg1ig87", "cg1j9v2"], "score": [31, 7, 5, 7, 4, 6, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["Depends on how long you want your reign to last ", "Depends on where you go, but no.  If you don't have a job, your money will run out, and soon.  Also, most consumer goods like clothes, TVs and computers cost much more in the third world than in the US.  Every time I go back to the US, I always bring an extra suitcase so I can bring a lot of cheap shit back.", "10,000 won't get u far.....not for the rest of your life anyway.    the plane ticket alone will take 10% out of your savings. \n\nthailand and vietnam are pretty popular for retirees.   even then you'd still need a good size nest egg.   ", "It depends on what sort of king you want to live like. You maybe could be an aboriginal king, but be worse off overall than a fast food worker in the first world.", "Take india for example. If you convert that $10,000 to INR it is RS 6,12,150. The average middle class income is about Rs 2,00,000 to 5,00,000 per year here. So you could probably live like a upper middle class person with that money for about a year.\n\n(i excluded taxes here which is Rs 54,003)", "In Chile I got a huge three course meal for like $2.50 USD", "$10,000 is not going to make it happen. ", "In Shanghai, China you would get about..hmm  61,00 rmb.   4-5 months of pretty frugal living my most expat standards. ", "I was paying about $6 a day to live in Laos, which paid for the hotel, food and drinks. So good, so cheap.", "Indonesia. But you're going to need an income eventually.", "If Euro Trip has taught me anything, Bratislava is the place for you ;D"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22xg64", "title": "what is the story behind the bundy vs. blm standoff?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22xg64/eli5_what_is_the_story_behind_the_bundy_vs_blm/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgrdnor", "cgrdpjo", "cgreewp", "cgreg7s", "cgrfete", "cgrr1d3"], "score": [3, 5, 5, 9, 7, 2], "text": ["There are fees to graze certain areas in Nevada. He believes he has a right to graze there even though the laws not on his side and has done it for years dodging over 1000000 dollars in fees.", "As I understand it...\n\nA cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy has been in the southern Nevada area for a long time and is using federal land and allowing his cows to eat the grass. This guy claims that he paid for and inherited rights to use this federal property for his cattle's purposes. \n\nUp until two decades ago, there was little or no issue with what he was doing. In fact, he says he was paying the state of Nevada to manage the land, whatever the hell that means. Around that time, the Bureau of Land Management started trying to assess fees for grazing, which Bundy wouldn't pay because he felt he was reimbursing them for driving his cattle off the land, and push his cattle off the land, stating that his cattle were trampling the habitat of the endangered desert tortoise.\n\nNow, the BLM has stepped up their game and has been actively rounding up Bundy's cattle, which he obviously disagrees with and doesn't like. The family has protested and at times gone a bit overboard, so the BLM setup a First Amendment Area where they could protest and not be in the way of the BLM operation. As you might have guessed, this pissed off the Bundys even more and drove even more protesting. \n\nNow the Bundys are pushing to get the BLM to leave them alone and return their cattle. Bundy is also a local militia member who rounded up his buddies and is ready to fight the government that he says is trampling on his rights. \n\nSeveral people have taken sides and it's unclear why this has come to a head now, but conspiracy theorists believe that there is something going on with Harry Reid and that he might be brokering a deal to setup a solar energy farm on the land. This is of course just hearsay. ", "I read somewhere that the land had belonged to the Bundy family since like 1870. I also read about the Harry Reid thing saying they wanted to do frakking on the land. I am still trying to make sense of it all, reading various articles and viewpoints. ", "In 1993, to protect the desert tortoise which was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the BLM modified the terms of Bundy\u2019s cattle grazing agreement. Bundy refused to comply with the new terms, so the BLM cancelled his permit. Bundy stopped paying the grazing fees, but continued to let his animals roam the public lands, claiming an ancestral right to the land based on his Mormon family settling there in the 19th century and his belief that federal authority doesn't apply to state land(s).\n\nAs part of an effort to further protect the tortoise, Clark County (NV) purchased all of the active grazing permits in the area and closed it to grazing. Despite him no longer having a valid legal claim, the government offered Bundy compensation, for water rights and range improvements, for his previously held grazing permit. He rejected the offer and left his cattle out there.\n\nThe government finally had enough and started rounding up his cattle to move them off of the closed land. Bundy claimed the government was taking away his freedom and a bunch of Tea Party nuts showed up to support him with semi-automatic weapons. The BLM, outnumbered and outgunned, told the protesters that they had to stay within certain 'First Amendment' areas to stage their protests. This further inflamed the 'right', who began comparing the situation to East Berlin.\n\nAs more anti-government groups, right-wing politicians, and gun-rights activists showed up, pushing turned to shoving and one of Bundy's kids got tasered. Seeing a Ruby Ridge/Waco situation in the offing, the government backed down, halting the round-up and vowing to continue fighting Bundy in the same courts he's ignored for the past 20 years.\n\n/standoff", "Ok, 5 year-old:\n1. The US Government owns the land\n2. The US Government wants Cliven Bundy's cows to leave the land\n3. Cliven said 'no'.\n4. The courts said 'yes'.\n5. Cliven said 'make me'.\n6. The BLM came to take Cliven's cows.\n7. A band of armed men showed up and intimidated the BLM into leaving the cows alone.\n\nEverything else is just muddying the water. It doesn't matter why BLM wants the cows off the land - they own the land!", "No matter witch side you agree with, a large group of armed citizens drove the federal government off the land,  this is a very big deal and should be the headlines of every news station in the country but it is largely being ignored by traditional media. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "42gqg6", "title": "What is the origin of bullfighting in Spain?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42gqg6/what_is_the_origin_of_bullfighting_in_spain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czm3yfj"], "score": [2], "text": ["Consult Adrian Shubert's \"Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight\"\n\n_URL_0_;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://global.oup.com/academic/product/death-and-money-in-the-afternoon-9780195144123?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp"]]}
{"q_id": "49pr8i", "title": "why does it take 30 mins for my dogs bloodwork to come back yet mine takes 24 hours?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49pr8i/eli5_why_does_it_take_30_mins_for_my_dogs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0tryju", "d0tskgb", "d0tsma1", "d0tsrsq", "d0tst83", "d0tu3g7", "d0tvrs4", "d0tvuc0", "d0ty33y", "d0tybfw", "d0u0fy2", "d0u0l65", "d0u24ig", "d0u53z7"], "score": [239, 62, 4, 2, 6, 2, 462, 13, 3, 10, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Probably depends upon the workload of the lab techs and/or the urgency of your results. \n\nI'm Aircrew in the military (not U.S.) and my blood work comes back within a week for my yearly medical, but if I'm sick and possibly medically grounded, my results have come back as quick as 1 hour.\n\nAlso, certain tests require more time. Perhaps your dogs tests are simple and yours are not...", "Many hospitals will send your blood off to a reference laboratory for the actual tests, whereas many vet offices are able to run tests right there in their own facility.  In the average community, there aren't so many animals needing blood tests at any given time that it becomes problematic or impractical to do right there in the vet office.  On the other hand, if you live in a city of average size, there may be thousands of human blood samples from the community to test on any given day.  Ultimately it becomes far more efficient to send the blood samples off in batches to other labs and facilities that specialize in this kind of thing.   \n\nAlso, some of these testing laboratories don't only cover your immediate city; oftentimes they are regional, covering numerous cities and towns in the area, leading to higher workloads and increased turnaround on results.\n\nBlood tests can be expedited if there is some urgency, but typically yours will be placed at the end of the line.  And there may be hundreds or thousands of tests waiting in line ahead of you.  ", "Vet blood work is usually simple and doesn't require high levels of accuracy. Simple finger prick blood tests are almost instantaneous while actual lab tests take a while based on priority and workload. After I broke my leg, they drew blood and had results in less than an hour. ", "I just had a lot of blood work done and I already had the email with the results by the time I got home from the lab. ", "Simple answer is backlog. There are way more people that need labs done than there are animals. If your hospital or clinic has their own lab, then chances are you'll be able to get your labs done faster than if it has to be sent out. Not to mention the lab might take orders from outside sources. You are probably number 249 on their list by the time your order gets inputted. You dog is probably number 29.\nPriority as well. Blood work in ER visits take priority over someone who's in for their yearly lipid test. Literally a matter of life or death in some cases.", "If the place where you get your blood tested gets an i-STAT (_URL_0_) for about $10000, and $20 per blood bottle, then you can have the most common tests done and back in 10 minutes.\n\nIf they send it to a large lab then it costs about $5 for almost all the tests you could want, except for rare tests which need expensive reagents.", "Thank you all for the answers. Sadly this 30 min test basically told it's time put down my dog. I'll be crying in my room if you need me.\n\n\n\nEDIT: I'll add on to this so hopefully more see this, took her to the vet and turns out it was really bad case of [DKA](_URL_0_). All the symptoms she had we assumed she was just getting slower with old age.\n\nShe pulled through today and has another big day ahead of her tomorrow. If the levels fall she'll make it and we will do insulin the rest of her days, if not....\n\nBasically don't be a cheapo like me and do the blood work at the yearly check ups. It's worth it and I feel like the worst human ever for not doing it.", "i did research on blood transport for the FDA a decade ago. dog blood is not regulated as much as human blood. people handling it require less training. there is less documentation required, and fewer controls. it's easier to get dog blood through the process because there are fewer barcodes to scan, fewer things to enter in a computer. ", "Your blood test takes a very short amount of time. It's just the workload of the lab you go to. I've had results back in 20 minutes.", "With few exceptions, your tests can be completed quite quickly, but there are other factors that interfere.\n\n1. Many doctors send blood and other specimen (feces, urine, etc) offsite for analysis rather than doing it in their office, as it can require specialized equipment/facilities. \n\n2. If it's done on-site, your tests may be delayed due to other, higher-priority patients. If you're getting your cholesterol checked, it can wait a day or two, but if someone *might* be having a heart attack, the test results are needed ASAP to determine the appropriate treatment, as the patient's life may be at stake. ", "It's marked up as explained, but just to add to this topic.\n\nThe vast majority of blood work has a very short turn around time regardless of species.  Time delays really only occur when samples have to be sent to a local laboratory for either confirmation or if the practice doesn't have the equipment to run the required test.\n\nAs a couple examples a veterinary practice might have a biochemistry and a haematology analyser which will allow a vet or vet nurse to provide results within 5 minutes.  These analysers are quite accurate and provide a decent snap shot typically of liver/kidney parameters along with a full blood count.  These results will help a clinician to in the least start treatment, continue therapy, confirm health status.  They may send the same samples on to a reference laboratory to confirm/get more detailed results.  Typically a vet practice lab will have a few other smaller point of care analysers or tests that they can perform (haemoglobin, blood glucose, blood typing or simple snap ELISA).  When sending a sample to a reference laboratory the samples will arrive by courier and/or local postal delivery.  This obviously takes more time, but the larger laboratories endeavour to provide either same day or within 24 hours for the vast majority of samples/tests.  The advantage of sending to a reference lab are specialised analysers with higher accuracy, wider range of available testing and the ability of having specialised areas (for example the company that I work for has recently developed tests for early kidney disease markers, has exclusive tests for pancreatic inflammation etc which are only available by testing at our reference laboratories).\n\nAs for human testing (and this is more specific to the UK), when you have your bloods taken at your GP, they may have some simpler point of care testing machines (Blood glucose, haemoglobin, cholesterol etc) but they will be far less likely to have their own laboratory.  These will be couriered to a laboratory (usually hospital based) and tested within an hour or two.  The results are then transmitted (fax, email, or posted results) back to the GP surgery.  Obviously if your bloods are taken at the hospital, then turn around of results will be massively reduced, but even they may have to send samples on to a specialised reference laboratory as it is generally not cost effective to provide every service under the sun if the sample numbers are low.\n\nIf you'd like to know more about reference laboratories ask away.\n\nSource:  Laboratory Scientist at a veterinary reference lab.", "It depends on what the \"bloodwork\" is. I can send for certain labs from my emergency department, set the timing to \"stat\" in the computer, and get results back within 30 minutes for certain tests. Electrolytes, cancer markets, blood counts, etc don't take too long.\n\nCultures take longer because you're literally waiting for bacterial colonies to grow, so we like to wait 24 hours. If you're in the hospital due to an infection, we like to make sure you have negative cultures for 48 hours before we send you home. \n\nIf we send for a biopsy, need sections mounted on slides for a cell morphology study (eg, seeing if your cells are cancerous), or anything that a pathologist would have to set up, it really depends on how many pathologists are in at the time, what their workload is, etc. At our hospital they take sections of every placenta after every birth, lots of biopsies for suspected cancers, etc, so things can get quite backed up.\n\nYour \"priority\" also matters a lot. Nobody is going to rush to take a look at your cancer markers because cancer doesn't change hour to hour, day to day, etc, but something like.. idk, an ABG for a hypercapnic patient who's barely breathing is definitely higher on the list. \n\nSome of these answers are a little off. Even small community hospitals usually have some sort of lab. If you come into the ER with an acute condition, no hospital is going to be able to send out for labs to some other place, that simply doesn't make sense. \n\nThere are a lot of factors, but I hope this helps.\n\n\nedit - I just saw you posted about your dog and the circumstances surrounding your question. I'm really sorry :( I have two dogs that I absolutely adore and don't know what I'm gonna do when the time comes. ", "Sorry for your loss mate. After my buddy passed I spent a lot of time cursing out vet and wondering why after so many tests nothing was ever diagnosed. Took me time to realize I should have focused on the good times we shared and the joy he provided instead of anger and resentment. Cherish the time you guys shared. I'm glad science has made it easy to receive such prompt results. Beats seeing your buddy in pain with no clear answers. ", "Simple. \n\nIt takes your dog's bloodwork 30 minutes because there are like 20 tests maximum that you can get, all performed on two little machines your vet has in the back room. (Think like a bigger version of the glucose strip reader that a diabetic would use). Add that to the number of people who pay for pet blood work being relatively small, means that the back log of samples waiting to get into that machine is small to none. Quick, 30 minutes. In fact, 30 minutes is a long time to wait for that -- realistically, the tests could be done in five, and prettied up in ten.\n\nIt takes YOUR bloodwork 24 hours to a week to get back to you because there are thousands of possible tests your doctor could want, and not all hospitals are able to test them all. What they do is they divide the less common ones up, so to save on machinery and supply cost. That may mean your blood needs to get shipped to four different addresses before all the tests your doctor wants done are resulted. That takes time.\n\nI could go into more detail of how things are prioritized within that system causing the difference between 1 hour results back and weeks results back, but above is the basics.\n\n(source: I'm certified to run both animal lab and human lab blood work)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.abbottpointofcare.com/products-services/istat-handheld"], ["http://www.upstateamc.com/Diabetic_ketoacidosis__Cani.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c3iof8", "title": "How did the Merovingian kings, so powerful under Clovis, become so irrelevant as to be overshadowed by the Mayor of the Palace?", "selftext": "Perhaps my thinking is influenced by fiction but it seems incredible to me that a line of kings who claimed descent from a literal god (Merovech) could become so powerless as the Merovingians became. Could anyone shed some light on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c3iof8/how_did_the_merovingian_kings_so_powerful_under/", "answers": {"a_id": ["errw1aw"], "score": [80], "text": ["So, here's the thing, we tend to think of kings as some sort of all powerful monarch whose very word was law, when honestly absolute monarchy was not particularly common in medieval Europe.  There's some debate, but most put the era of absolute monarchs as not really starting until the 1500s at the earliest.  \n\nIn any case, the Merovingian kings were not absolute monarchs.  On the contrary, the Merovingians power waxed and waned largely based on military might and political acumen.  Take Clovis himself, at the start of his career he was the young ruler of a reasonably sized group of warriors, but he still needed allies from other warbands to make any real progress in gaining wider control of the area.  Of these king-chiefs (in the scraps of writing we have about the time they are called regulus or petty kings instead of rex) all of the ones which we have lineages to cite some legendary godlike ancestor.  That was part of the complex web by which they justified their authority.  So Clovis being the descendant of Merovech was probably not unique.  In fact, both of his major Frankish rival kings Ragnachar and Chararic, may have been relatives of Clovis.  I believe the jury is still out on Chararic.  \n\nSo, from the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensium (which for the record is written some 300 years after the events taking place) we can get a view of what was going on, though because of the time gap may be a bit flawed.  We see Clovis realizing that even with his military might he could not control the population without making some concessions to the religion of the land he ruled: Christianity.  He took a Christian wife, and later converted.  This shows another tension within the Merovingian power structure.  The king taking these steps in some ways shows that the church has at least some power over him.  The legitimacy that was once granted by the semi-legendary relative is now in the hands of the church.  \n\nBut this caused a ripple out effect among his warriors.  Many did not like this Christianization and sided with other more traditionally pagan kings.  One of which was Ragnachar.  His fate reveals another intricacy of the Merovingian power structures.  The kings ruled with their warriors so long as they could control their warriors.  And to control warriors you must give them things to fight, prove that you are an adept commander, and distribute wealth to your followers accordingly.  \n\nNow the records have a fun story about Ragnachar being miserly with his gifts and Clovis bribing his warriors to abandon him with armbands that he claimed were gold, but were really gold-plated bronze. In any case there was a battle, Clovis decisively won and Ragnachar was killed.  There's a different probably more accurate account of Ragnachar's defeat without the whole fake gold armband trickery.  But after his defeat, Ragnachar's own warriors offered him up to Clovis.\n\nIn either case, the important points to note are that the king must appease his warriors.  Their loyalty is fluid, if they feel unrewarded they will abandon their king.  But the king must also show strength, and deal with these unruly warriors harshly should the need require it.  It was a delicate balancing act and Clovis handled it marvelously.  \n\nEnough about Clovis himself, let's look at after he died.  Well his kingdom was split between his sons.  This, as one might expect further weakened the position of the king and the brothers made war against each other and vied for power.  So the idea of making war against the royal family was not really outside of anyone experience.  \n\nNow let's get to the last of Clovis' line.  Childeric III was famously deposed by his majordomo Pepin the Short.  How did Pepin grow so powerful?  Well, for the starters, being the son of a great commander does not necessarily make one a great commander.  Many of Clovis' descendants were not up to the task of fighting battles and navigating the politics of ruling under the power of the church while appeasing your warrior class.  The position of mayor of the house was originally something of a managerial position for lands the king directly held.  But from the turmoil of the Merovingian rulers wars, the position became hereditary and gained increasing power over the distribution of wealth and for particularly weak kings even commanded battles.  \n\nThen we get to Pepin's father, Charles Martel.  Martel was one of those warriors unsatisfied with the rule of the royal family, and fought several wars against them until the king was forced to give him the title of mayor of the house.  Charles then set about the long work of doing everything a king was supposed to do.  He won victories, he defended the church, he distributed wealth to the warrior classes.  When his king died that didn't really stop.  Charles was so powerful he got to appoint the king he wanted.  And at the end of his life he didn't even bother to do that.  There was no king for four years, with Charles mostly just running things as though nothing had happened.\n\nBy the time Charles died, his son Peppin the Short was ready to take up the reins from his father.  Peppin was clever, he distributed the wealth, he ran the battles, he made political ties to the church.  Another king does get appointed, finally, but only because the sons of Charles were fighting for control and Peppin wanted a real king to add legitimacy to his position.  \n\nOnce the king served his purpose, and Peppin defeated his brother there wasn't much a point for him anymore.  Peppin spoke with the pope, who really needed the assistance of a powerful military leader at the time, to secure the alliance with the Church to depose the Merovingians.  Then he got himself elected by his own soldiers who he paid.  Then he continued to lead these men in battle and distributed their loot accordingly.  And so the transition is completed.  \n\nThe power of the Merovingian throne rested far more in the political leaders ability to balance the keys to the throne rather than things like lineage.  Canny mayors of the palace realized this and over the years took control of those important keys and in turn made the king irrelevant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "52py6m", "title": "what causes the trail behind jets at high altitude?", "selftext": "Physics teacher today said it was to do with the pressure difference around the wing creating a disturbance which creates a 'cloud' behind the plane. I always thought it was water vapour (or something similar) coming from the engines and freezing since it experiences such low temperatures so high up.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52py6m/eli5_what_causes_the_trail_behind_jets_at_high/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7m9jdc", "d7m9kr3", "d7mbpel", "d7mc16h", "d7mcchh", "d7mhrlc", "d7muu45"], "score": [4, 67, 2, 2, 18, 4, 35], "text": ["Jets leave white trails, or contrails, in their wakes for the same reason you can sometimes see your breath. The hot, humid exhaust from jet engines mixes with the atmosphere, which at high altitude is of much lower vapor pressure and temperature than the exhaust gas.", "It is water vapor and ice. They are produced from the hot engine exhaust in the cold atmosphere. Water vapor from the engine exhaust mixed with unburnt particulate in the jet fuel gives the surrounding moist air something to latch onto and ice crystals form. Depending on the hight of the aircraft, they can last seconds to hours.\n\nIf you have seen a running car on a brisk morning, that is a similar effect. The car is too close to the relatively warmer ground that trails do not last for more than a second. ", "Your teacher's explanation can also be right (in addition to exhaust-based explanations given already).  As I'm sure you learned in class, pressure and temperature are related. Wings work because they create a low pressure area on top and a high pressure area on bottom -- the wing is essentially sucked upwards. Since the air pressure around the wing is changing so drastically (and complicated things happen to the air after the wing has traveled through it) you can have a reasonably large change in temperature of the air that is at low pressure.  If the temperature of air changes, it also changes the amount of water vapor that can possibly be mixed in the air -- so if the temperature drops enough, some of the water vapor can condense out into either liquid water droplets or ice crystals.", "Fuel and Oxygen mix and burn in the engines and produce water and carbon dioxide. The water condenses and forms the trail.", "You are both right. In moist air the compression and expansion of air around the wings can form a temporary cloud [like this](_URL_0_). However, what you see that lasts in the sky as a contrail is water vapor byproducts of the fuel combustion.", "Jets passing over typically are flying at altitudes where temperatures are fairly low - -40C.  At this temperature, in clear air, there isn't a lot of water vapor (humidity) in the air.\n\nA jet engine takes this air in and uses it to burn fuel, which it pushes out of its exhaust.  The fuel burns to mostly carbon dioxide and water.   The air exiting the engine now has considerable water vapor in it.\n\nThe exiting air mixes with the surrounding air, dropping its temperature rapidly.  When hot, this air could hold a lot of water vapor.  After cooling, it can't.   The water vapor, which is clear, has to go somewhere, and where it goes is into ice or water droplets.  These are no longer invisible, but reflect light, and appear white.\n\nThere's a little more than that, in that the jet engine doesn't really burn the fuel perfectly, so some stuff is left over other than carbon dioxide and water - partly burned fuel.  This makes particles that are needed to start the water vapor on its way to becoming liquid water or ice.  These particles are called seeds.", "awwww man, I'm disappointed. I came to this thread looking to read [and laugh at] some tinfoil hat chemtrail craziness. \n\nI cant believe I'm going to say this, but: Reddit you are far too reasonable"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQgKuhKWHJk"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ph64q", "title": "why are emotions so amplified right before bed?", "selftext": "Before bed last night I was thinking about my future and some major life changes happening relatively soon. It scared the snot out of me and I was kept awake in a state of dreadful anxiety. The next morning I explored the same thoughts and was completely fine and undeterred by them. Why does this happen? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ph64q/eli5_why_are_emotions_so_amplified_right_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw6ajn9", "cw6bq1i", "cw6bry4", "cw6cng0", "cw6cwjj", "cw6eben", "cw6eu9j", "cw6hx15", "cw6lbyw", "cw6s4rr", "cw6s5ns", "cw6t2r5", "cw6u2fn", "cw6ztf5", "cw70m15", "cw7bqq9"], "score": [51, 15, 8, 7, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Maybe because you rarely reflect and you also happen to reflect at night as the day has ended and you can start thinking about life and what not.", "Because you're laying down and don't get distracted by things , but your thoughts. Probably also because you're tired and it's harder to 'tone down' emotions with your rational side. ", "Total guess. Could be wrong:\n\nNighttime is when you have a chance to reflect on your day, your decisions, etc.  The typical distractions are all gone and so you have a chance to think more thoroughly about what you have experienced. There is also an evolutionary fear of the dark that exists in people and when people are afraid, their other emotions are naturally amplified as well. ", "Im no genius on the matter but as i have been experiencing this for as long as i can remember i mostly think it has to do with two things, first of all when you go to sleep you are tired so your mind might be easier to manipulate in a way, therefore when tired and lying in bed thinking everything is a bit more extreme compared to usual with no rational thinking involved and the second reason is when you arent even tired and you still experience these extreme thoughts while lying in bed has to probably(at least i think) as others have said to do with that you are lying in bed and \"stuck\" there, you're to lazy to stand up get water to clear your mind so you just lie there in this loop of bad thoughts which just keep on getting worse over time.", "I think its also to do with how tired you are mixed with the fact that once you're in bed you have no more of that day left to think about so the only thing to think about is on a larger scale e.g. *your life*.", "I could be wrong but maybe it has to do with the fact that not being fully awake could alter your sense of rationality and priority. Being tired makes you think differently since you aren't as alert, certain \"filters\" could be removed because you won't need them as you sleep (ie making decisions and thoughts that you may have while on autopilot shut off and you are left with the thought of everything)", "It seems to me that my rational mind begins to wind down, allowing my emotional mind to take over.  The worries and doubts I crowded out during the work day now become center stage.  Source:  Clinical Depression", "There are a couple of things at work here:  1)  you aren't distracted by the workaday stresses of life.  You have time to reflect and ponder the day, week, month, life, and so forth.  2)  Your body is actually more receptive to dopamine, estrogen/androgen, and other chemicals it naturally produces during this time.  It's an old evolutionary trait that allowed for us to be more alert during dangerous times, like night-time.\n\nSo, in summation:  no distractions and hypervigilance leads us to \"feel\" things more strongly at night.", "Because I'm drunk right before bed?", "Since childhood this has plagued me.  My only way around it is to DDOS my bad thoughts by consciously focusing on things that occupy my brain.  One of my go-tos (being a golfer) I will play every shot of every hold on a local course that I know from memory.  It usually helps to keep the bad thoughts at bay. ", "All the emotions you took in are there but you are too busy with your things during the day to let them out... until you lay down and face them.", "Because you are tired. When you are tired you get an elevated heartrate, which mimics the effects on anxiety. Combined with doing nothing, which allows intrusive thoughts into your head.", "No one is giving you the scientific explanation. I don't know it myself but I know there's one (hormone I think) explanation that works too with the fact that some ideas are good at night but not the next day.", "When I'm tired my emotions, sometimes, will get the better of me. For example, something that's mildly irritating during the day will just piss me off when I'm really tired. My mom called it \"overtired\" when I was a kid.", "People are talking about how nighttime is a quiet time where you have nothing to do and think about your daily decisions.\n\nI want to guess that it also has to do with sleeping and dreams. Dreams have been reported to contain mostly negative emotions, specifically stress. Even in good dreams, there's still usually an element that stresses you out. \"My house was a mansion this whole time?! Aw man, why didn't I know this before? What am I going to do with all this space now? If it wasn't a mansion, would my house have been less expensive?\"\n\nDuring sleep, it is believed that memories formed during the day are being stored away into long term memory. Dreams are believed to be the signals that the brain picks up on and erroneously interprets as perception during this process. It seems as though stressful memories are more likely remembered, so you know how to deal with stress later, and dreams are accidentally a way for you to practice dealing with stress without the risk of failure.\n\nAlso, scientists performed experiments with people falling asleep hooked up to brain scanners. During early stages of sleep, they were woken up, but they reported that they didn't feel like they even began to fall asleep at all. This suggests that awake/asleep is more like a sliding scale, and we don't always know how conscious we are. Therefore, when you try to fall asleep, your brain is probably already preparing to store away stressful memories and have a dream.", "Actually, there is some evidence that emotions are not more intense when you're asleep. [Check this study out] (_URL_0_) In your case it may be that you are thinking about other things during the day-- work, school, daytime activities, etc.  At night, your mind is free and you can think of these underlying worries you have. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.6.1.139"]]}
{"q_id": "3u1y82", "title": "After glancing through all the Jared Diamond rebuttals on this sub's FAQ, it seems as though geographical determinism is largely discredited. But I don't understand how that can be the case, what else is there?", "selftext": "Every rebuttal mentions culture and ideology, but those don't just spontaneously appear.  There has to be some causal series of events that brought forth said culture.  Wouldn't the root of that causal chain be geography?  Is my interpretation broader than the intended meaning of the term?  Because otherwise I do not see how one could argue against the idea.  Are all historians dualists?  Where is the culture coming from if not environmental stimuli?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3u1y82/after_glancing_through_all_the_jared_diamond/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxb8tov", "cxbabye"], "score": [10, 94], "text": ["Not an answer but an auxiliary question: has Diamond ever addressed any of the criticisms towards his work?", "I had a similar conversation with a friend yesterday. I don't like to tie myself down to anthropological theory, but I'm certainly against Environmental Determinism (Diamond isn't purely an environmental determinist, but near enough that I'll be using be shorthanding his theory that way here). If you twist my arm, I'll generally side with Historical Particularism or at least something akin to that. It's anthropological theory for those who don't like anthropological theory!\n\nThe basics of Historical Particularism are these:\n\n* Each society is shaped by its own unique history.\n* That history includes environmental factors, yes, but also interactions with neighboring peoples, the appearance of innovators (technological, philosophical, artistic, etc.), the response to those innovators, the occasional bit of dumb luck, and so on.\n* Human societies are too diverse and influenced by too many factors for a simplistic Big Picture theory to accurately account for all variables.\n* To understand a human society, you need to closely examine that society specifically and delve into its unique historical circumstances.\n\nOther people will likely have their own frameworks to work with, but in general the thing that sets them apart from an Environmental Deterministic view is the value placed on human agency. \n\nDiamond makes a big deal about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the idea that environmental differences between Eurasia and the Americas determined the outcome of that event. But there are plenty of moments leading up to the Fall of Tenochtitlan where the decisions of individuals shaped the course of events. Years before Geronimo de Aguilar had been shipwrecked in the Yucatan. By the time Cortes arrived, Aguilar was one of two survivors. Luck spared him from diseases and the choices of his captors spared him from execution / sacrifice. His own choices led him into Cortes' service as a translator, while Gonzalo Guerrero (the other survivor) chose to ally himself with the Maya. Without Aguilar serving as the first link in the daisy chain of translations, Cortes' expedition would have been crippled. For Cortes himself, he was tasked with establishing a trading port on the coast of Mexico only; he chose to venture further and seek his fortune through conquest rather than trading. The Tlaxcala leadership chose to spare the Cortes and his men when they had them on the ropes, opting against the advise of their general, in order to turn the Spanish loose against their Aztec enemies. Ixtlilxochitl II chose to ally himself with the Spanish to settle an old grudge and overthrow his brother for control of Texcoco, removing one of the Mexica's primary allies from the picture before the siege of Tenochtitlan. I could go on, but you get the idea. History pivots on choices like these, and they're not subject to the predictions of environmental determinism."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4z6cll", "title": "nationalism and globalism", "selftext": "Hi! I'm wondering about the stances of nationalism and globalism.\n\nThese are two political stances that I've heard about, and wondering exactly what they imply.\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z6cll/eli5_nationalism_and_globalism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6t68k7", "d6t6ft7", "d6t8vvr"], "score": [15, 7, 6], "text": ["First, it's important to note that both of these are generally derogatory terms used to put down the political opposition. As such, you'll often see them miss used or applied in odd ways.\n\nNationalism: the belief that your nations interests must come first, regardless of the effects on other people or nations. A nationalist would be in favor of strictly limiting refugee intake if there's a risk terrorism or instability, regardless of how small that risk is.\n\nGlobalism: the belief that nations must act to benefit everyone, even if it comes at the detriment of the nation enacting the policy. A globalist would be in favor of expanding the number if refugees allowed into the nation, even if it resulted in some economic or safety risks.", "**Globalism** : a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence \u2014 compare imperialism, internationalism.\n\n\n**Nationalism**:  \n*patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.\nsynonyms:\tpatriotism, patriotic sentiment, flag-waving, xenophobia, chauvinism, jingoism, isolationism\n\n*an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.\n\n*advocacy of political independence for a particular country.\n\n\n\nIn it's most basic and extreme sense, globalists see the world as  unified unit and do not put their country first where nationalists care first and most importantly about their country.  Globalists are more likely to support free trade and global human rights initiatives whereas nationalists only really care about their country.  Nationalists are more likely to care more about relative gains (gaining 5 more than other countries) where globalists care more about absolute gains (gaining 10 although everyone else gained 11).  \n\nMost people are somewhere in the middle and not the extremes when it comes to these two world views.  You can be for both, ending sweatshops and child labor in other countries but wanting your country to have the largest GDP in the world, etc.  \n\nCurrently, (the last 100 years or so) we are in an age of globalism not seen in any point in human history.  I am typing this on hardware made in china using software designed by American workers who were taught by professors from all around the world.  I'm wearing cloths made in Mexico and Italy and this comment can be seen by anyone around the world with internet access.  Many Globalists will argue that free trade deals make things like this very comment possible.  Nationalists/isolationists may argue that we could have done this without the rest of the world's help and it hurts their country's job prospects when you use other country's cheap labor.  \n\n", "Nationalism stems from the basic human instinct of tribalism applied to a nation. Wikipedia covers the aspect quite nicely:\n\n > A nation (from Latin: natio, \"people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock\") is a large group or collective of people with common characteristics attributed to them - including language, traditions, mores (customs), habitus (habits), and ethnicity. A nation, by comparison, is more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group. It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity, and particular interests.\n > \n > Stalin's Marxism and the National Question (1913) declares that \"a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;\" \"a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people\"; \"a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation\"; and, in its entirety: \"a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.\"\n\nNationalists engage in an ingroup-outgroup mentality, prioritizing the interests of their nation-state and their fellow countrymen; those who are not in the ingroup get the short end or the stick, or, in the worst case, the pointy end. Nationalism does not *automatically* result in xenophobia or a superiority complex (jingoism); by default nationalists respect other nationalists so long as they are being nationalist somewhere else.\n\nMost theorize that nationalism is *crucial* for democracy, because before nationalism, people were affiliated with something as tenuous as the ruling figure or ruling family, with loyalty ensured through force and sheer inertia. Obviously, citizens of a democratic state need something greater than the jackboot of the elected authorities to fell loyalty towards.\n\nGlobalism is among other things a rejection of nationalism; globalists see no benefit - and a lot of harm - in the construct of nation. As such, they frequently go about weakening the nation-state as well as breaking up and marginalizing national identities."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5k8xqe", "title": "the different subgroups of catholicism (jesuit, franciscan etc)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k8xqe/eli5_the_different_subgroups_of_catholicism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbm9ros", "dbmb394", "dbmbhdu", "dbmbwfj", "dbme0h5", "dbmilgz"], "score": [35, 144, 5, 73, 2, 7], "text": ["Those two examples are not subgroups of catholics, they are different orders of priests.  Different orders of priests focus on different facets of the ideas of the church, some on education, some one caring for the sick, others meditation and prayer.", "As mentioned by another poster, they're not subgroups of Catholicism in the sense of denominations if that is what you were thinking. Rather, there are different types of religious \"orders\". As the previous poster also mentioned, each order has a different way of serving and worshipping God. It's not to say that they believe any particular way is \"more correct\" than another way, but that it is simply the way they feel is best for *themselves* to glorify God. Some find that through prayer, others through education, others through prayer and reflection. Now, the origin of each of these orders comes from various groups of monastic priests (monks/brothers), and the rituals they would follow under their leader (an abbot). \n\n & nbsp;\n\nWhoever founded the order would have several monastic priests under him, and would often form several monasteries in his lifetime. It's not always founded under one specific leader, but to keep the explanation simple we'll treat it that way. Especially when the founder of an order passed away, others would often form new monasteries teaching in the same principles. This is why they are often named after a specific individual. There exist two main \"divisions\" when it comes to these orders: active and contemplative. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nActive would be those such as the Franciscans (St. Francis of Assisi), the Jesuits (St. Francis Xavier, after whom Pope Francis took his Papal name), and the Dominicans (St. Dominic). These \"active\" orders are the ones often going out and preaching, serving the poor, etc. Unless you visit a monastery, these are the ones you would be more likely to run into somewhere. The \"contemplative\" are more of the typical image of what a monk/brother is, living in the monastery with other monks, spending most of the day in prayer, reading Scripture, etc. As their name would imply, these are the ones spending most of their time in solitude, dedicating their lives to God in this manner.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIf you would like an overview of the most-popular orders, [this webpage](_URL_0_) does a good job of explaining what each one specifically dedicates themselves too.", "The different groups you're thinking of are different religious institutes. A religious institute is basically a society where members take public vows and live as brothers and sisters in common. There are a lot of different institutes and they all function a bit differently. \n\nIn general, though, each institute focuses on a particular area or areas of church life. Some are contemplative, some serve in parishes, some have schools, some are separated from the world, some are active in the world, etc. In addition, each institute usually follows a specific set of rules about communal life. The Benedictines, for example, are monks who follow the rule of St. Benedict. The Franciscans are mendicants (meaning they live off alms, travel, serve the poor, etc.), who follow the teachings and practices of St. Francis. The Jesuits are clerics regular (a kind of broad category for priests) who work in all sorts of fields including parish life, education, scientific research, cultural pursuits, etc.", "TL;DR - All these different groups were founded in the Middle Ages to be a place to throw your 'extra' kid, to do different kinds of work for the Church.\n\nIn the middle ages in Europe, life was hard. If you and your wife were commoners, it was very likely that more than half of any kids you brought into the world would die before giving you grandchildren. But what happens when you're 'lucky' and have five sons survive to adulthood, and the family farm can only support one or two of them? One path was apprenticeship, essentially selling the kid into indentured servitude in exchange for them having a paying trade at the end. \n\nOkay, that gets rid of one or two of them. But now you have Fred over here who has no talent in farming or a trade. You've spent a bunch of money to get him to breeding age and you're not going to get anything back from this. If you were a noble or something, you could send your kid into religious 'officer's school' to be a priest or bishop or something, but that option isn't open for poor Fred, either. \n\nEnter: monasticism. Basically, you can sell your kid to the Catholic Church, not for money, but for Heaven Credits (tm). We send useless Fred off to go be a monk at a monastery somewhere where he can earn money for the Church by toiling in some way or another (or providing some sort of administrative role) and spend the rest of the time praying for you and your wife's immortal soul. He doesn't get the prestige of being a priest who gets up in front of people and runs church, but there is at least a little status bump for having a kid be a monk, and you don't have to look at all those pox scars on his face all the time to remind you of all the food you could have saved if you had drowned him in the bathtub. \n\nBut not all monasteries could sit off in the mountains and make beer for the Church to sell, or the bottom would just fall out of the market. So they diversified into doing shit that Church leaders really didn't want to do themselves.\n\nSome became those guys you can pay to sit in line for you on Black Friday,  like the Carmelites squatting in what's now Israel so all those other filthy groups who wanted Israel couldn't live there. But it's kind of sandy and boring there, so nobody else wanted that job.\n\nSome became actual soldiers for god, like the Dominicans, who were brought together because the Cathars were Catholic'ing wrong and needed to have their heads rearranged by sharp bits of metal.\n\nSome went on biohazard duty, like the Franciscans tending to lepers. I mean sure, Jesus mentioned being nice to lepers, but those fuckers had communicable diseases!\n\nSome went out to be salespeople of Catholicism to the heathens like the Jesuits, because who really wants to go to foreign lands where they don't even have half-decent liquor and convince all these idiots to give your church their allegiance?\n\nThat's not to say that's what all these groups do today. Today, the vast majority of religious orders do some great work for mankind. But you'd be surprised how many of them started with some priestly noble fuck not wanting to learn Native American languages or leave behind his comfy life in his family castle. ", "They all believe more or less the same thing and have no impact on the laypeople at all. It's more like different clubs for the clergy. \n\nIf you're gonna be a monk, that's great more power to you. But you know what's better than being a self proclaimed monk? Being part of an official monk club! And you have so many options. Benedictine, Franciscan, all sorts. Some like to sing. Some don't. They all like to read. ", "This isn't the most important thing, but it's good to know that the monastic orders operate independent of the local diocese. They are accountable to the leaders of their order, the College of Cardinals and the Pope, but they aren't under the authority of the local bishop."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.religious-vocation.com/differences_religious_orders.html#.WGAVineZMy4"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5xvggq", "title": "in the united states, why are positions like attorney general, secretary of state, etc. appointed by the president at the federal level but elected by the people at the state level? had it ever been proposed to do this differently?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xvggq/eli5_in_the_united_states_why_are_positions_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["del5nry", "del8j4x", "delao3b", "deldb0l"], "score": [27, 20, 2, 9], "text": ["The federal government was designed to primarily be a representative of the States, while the States would represent the People.\n\nThis is apparent in how the Federal Senate was initially chosen by the state legislatures (prior to a constitutional ammendment), and the Electoral College was initially also selected independent of the popular vote (that's screwy ATM because of state-level laws). Indeed, the House of Representatives still gets 0 say in federal nominations, appointments, or treaties.\n\nAs the State governments were viewed to be much closer and more relevant to the People, their state constitutions generally reflected this in directly voting in many more positions.  ", "Well in 7 states the Attorney General is appointed, not elected. And there isn't such a thing as Secretary of State in a state government. \n\nEdit : There is a secretary of states in state government but it's not the same role as the Federal one.", "In state government, you can have significant gridlock within the Executive branch if the heads of various agencies come from different parties and have different political agendas (even if they are from the same party).  This can be good or bad depending on your perspective, but it's rarely efficient.", "There really isn't supposed to be one system for everything. The Constitution determines how the Federal government is made up, and nothing else. The states are free to manage their affairs and their governments how they see fit. Some do elections, some do appointments. \n\nConsider that the United States was founded to be a union of semi-autonomous nations. State after all means nation. That's why they're called states and not provinces or something else. The Federal government is designed to represent the will of each state as a unit. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lq5x9", "title": "what is physically happening when i sleep wrong and wake up with stiff neck?", "selftext": "Why does my neck hate so much right now and why does it last so long?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lq5x9/what_is_physically_happening_when_i_sleep_wrong/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc1qno5", "cc1srnn", "cc1tiu3", "cc1tx0e", "cc1u2ja", "cc1uqhn", "cc1urj2", "cc1vboy", "cc1vnbc", "cc1vuwg", "cc1w4ky", "cc1wumm", "cc1xk0o", "cc22cpg", "cc22w8r"], "score": [359, 133, 2, 32, 2, 7, 2, 5, 7, 5, 14, 2, 53, 2, 2], "text": ["Your neck has a lot of muscles in it to help support your head. When you're sitting up straight all of these muscles work together how they are supposed to to keep your head balanced. When you sleep in a way for a long period of time with your head in a position it is not used to your muscles dont like that. You're over stretching and working some muscles while others are no longer stretching or working at all. The muscles that are over worked from stretching too much can get sore when you wake up. They've had to do all sorts of the extra work trying to compensate for your head being in an odd position and using only some of your muscles to support it.\n\nedited for spelling", "put a towel in the dryer for ~15 minutes\n\nput over neck and grasp a corner of the towel in each hand\n\nrub back and forth, using the towel to massage your neck\n\ncontinue until it doesn't hurt that much anymore\n\nthank me when you are done\n\nhere's a super shitty drawing and gif I made of it to illustrate:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "Tempurpedic pillow, the best $100 I've ever spent. I've never had a neck ache since the purchase and you can pick them up at most malls. ", "Are you drinking enough water?\n\nI had a stiff neck for 3-years.  One day, I decide to drink a lot of water before bed and next day I wake up with no stiff neck.\n\nDecided to test the theory that stiff neck has something to do with dehydration and here was the result:\n\ndrink water.... fine.\ndon't drink water... stiff neck\n\ndrink water.... fine.\ndon't drink water... stiff neck\n\ndrink water.... fine.\ndon't drink water... stiff neck\n\nNow I just drink water.", "Most likely you're sleeping with your head turned to the side.  If this is done for an extended period of time, the muscles on one side of the neck will shorten.  Once you wake up and get moving around, it takes time for the muscle(s) to warm up and 'stretch' back out to their normal position.  This is what ends up giving you that stiff feeling.", "you could be a night teeth grinder like me; the muscles involved in clenching/grinding your jaw could lead to neck pain - try clenching now", "not an answer to the question, but just my two cents....I don't really have neck pain, but i do have really bad lower back and like oblique/side pain...so much so that it hurts to breathe. I generally start on my back spread eagle and try and spread my body as flat as possible with no pillow under my head. I tuck my chin down to try and elongate the back of my neck. This is the only way i can fall asleep.", "hello!  Licensed Massage therapist here-  I've dealt with this problem many times especially when I was working at a chiropractor's.  skabossphil is absolutely right about the mussels.  I too suffered from this problem and ONE PILLOW solved all that.  The relax-right contour pillow.  I been using that as per recommendation from the chiropractor I worked with.  2+ yrs later and I havnt had the problem since. \n_URL_0_\n\nIf the problem still persists after using the pillow (btw it takes at least a week or so to get used to it) you should see a chiropractor for an adjustment\n\n", "This is the simplest way that I can explain proper alignment:While sleeping,  your back and neck need to be in the same position as when you are standing. \n\nUse any combination of pillows, rolled towels, etc that work for you. \n\nSource: I live with Degenerative Disc Disorder", "My natural resting position is fetal position on my right side, with my right hand resting under my thigh. \n\nA few months back I was getting severe wrist pain every time I tried to do pushups, had to force myself to sleep on my back. \n\nI recently realized the reason my wrist hadn't gotten hurt before was because for years I'd had someone to cuddle with, which slightly changed a few things around to achieve a perfectly fine sleeping position.  Attempted this position with pillows, but all I achieved was tear soaked pillows.", "Physiotherapist here. About to start work but if people are interested I can find some links for management of neck pain and post them. Can't say I've ever had to explain a wry neck to a five year old though.\n", "If I sleep on my back I start to snore after a couple minutes and it wakes me up. If I sleep on my side my shoulder starts to hurt after a hour or so. So I spend the night rolling back and forth between sides with a body pillow being dragged along for the ride.", "For all you folks talking about the muscles being tightened on one side of your neck and over stretched on the other, stop.  You're wrong.  The muscles on one side of my leg or arm don't tighten up while I sleep.\n\nPhysical therapist here (or a \"physio\" for you English blokes) and here's the deal:\n\nThe neck or cervical spine, is comprised of 7 bones, called vertebrae, that are stacked one on top of another.  Between the bones are small, spongy shock absorbers called intervertebral discs.\n\nThe discs are made up of two parts: the outer part is like a stiff cartilage, like your ear, and the inner part is like a jelly-type stuff.  Think of having a small jelly donut between the bones in your neck.\n\nThere is a small forward curve in your neck called a lordosis.  When you sit slouched or bend your head forward, the lordosis straightens.   This puts stress on the front side of the discs in your neck, and some of the jelly can push out of place if you stay in this forward bent position too long.\n\nWhen you sleep on your back and your head is being supported by your pillow, your lordosis temporarily goes away, and pressure may be placed on the front of your jelly donut discs.  The jelly pushes out of place, pinches a nerve, and you wake up with pain and difficulty moving your neck.  As you move around a bit, the jelly squeezes back into place, and in a few hours or days, you're back to normal.\n\nIf the jelly pushes out of place a whole bunch, then you've got a serious problem.\n\nTo prevent a stiff neck in the morning, sleep with a neck roll tucked into your pillowcase to support the forward curve in your neck.  Don't sleep on your tummy, and learn a few exercises to do prior to going to bed and when your first wake up.  Also, learn to keep proper posture during the day.\n\nRead any simple book by the great physio Robin McKenzie (from New Zealand) for more info.  \"Treat Your Own Neck\" is a good one.\n\ntl;dr  The small discs in your neck push out of place when you sleep.  Use a neck roll to keep them in place and learn a few stretches to do (perhaps from your physical therapist trained in the McKenzie Method).", "I sleep diagonally on my bed and rarely have pain.  Gotta find what feels natural for your body.  My bed dips a little bit in the middle and so I go across that so my body dips a bit too.  I also use a firm pillow so that my head isn't being folded up by the ends nor is it resting too high.", "I think a lot of you don't know what stiff neck is. If you've gotten stiff neck, you'd know. It's not general cramping and neck aches. It's when you wake up and you can't fucking move your neck and you think you might be fucking paralyzed and your neck it in a shit-ton of pain if you try to turn your head the slightest bit. You can't go to school or work. Then after a day it goes away."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://i.imgur.com/cT84p26.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/8uGxJsH.gif"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.relaxrightproducts.com/adult_pillows.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6bck3l", "title": "why is it okay for companies to fire employees on the spot but it is recommended/respected when employees give the company a 2 weeks notice?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bck3l/eli5_why_is_it_okay_for_companies_to_fire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhlhk9z", "dhlhr1v", "dhliaxu", "dhlib9q", "dhlinix", "dhlipy3", "dhlky8v", "dhlkz6m", "dhlm9wd", "dhlmdws", "dhlmgux", "dhlmli2", "dhlmuy7", "dhlmzsf", "dhln0ia", "dhlnctu", "dhlnfl1", "dhlnjw4", "dhlnjwh", "dhlnoag", "dhlnq00", "dhlnvkw", "dhlnvvf", "dhlo1l2", "dhloel7", "dhlofak", "dhlofup", "dhlohz7", "dhlop1c", "dhlory6", "dhlotc6", "dhloum9", "dhlovqp", "dhlow9p", "dhlozgp", "dhlp4ya", "dhlp6oy", "dhlpdk4", "dhlprok"], "score": [13, 65, 358, 23, 643, 19, 4, 63, 623, 2, 62, 333, 7, 54, 53, 2, 123, 2, 4, 14, 19, 2, 5, 41, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4], "text": ["When a company fires you, they probably don't want you back and also don't need you as a reference...\n\nWhen you quit, and later try to get a new job, you stand a greater chance of needing the old company as a reference", "An employee who quits without notice can be viewed as unreliable, as a sudden departure can upset many things and be costly. The employer can fire you at will because they have determined you are not necessary (or in some cases a liability) and they won't need a job reference from you down the road.", "Employees that are being fired aren't known for being particularly productive or honest. (*edit: I'm not saying only bad people get fired, I'm saying good people get angry when they get fired, and might use their two weeks left to act against the company's interest out of spite*) \n\nI wouldn't want to tell someone that I'm putting their entire livelihood and future into question and then also give them two weeks of access to all my data, systems, server, financials, trade secrets, etc. Not everyone is a bad sport about things like that, but even if it's 1/50 that's a lot of issues caused by the courtesy of a grace period. ", "Assuming we're talking about normal separation, not separation for cause where some law or policy has been violated, most any reputable employer has in place some sort of separation payment that helps with the transition. Absent that there is unemployment insurance ", "Giving two weeks notice is a courtesy. You don't *have* to give a two weeks notice, you can text your boss \"I quit\" and never come in to work again. There are no repercussions, they still owe you whatever outstanding pay you have, etc.\n\nJust don't expect a good reference.", "I don't know how such things are managed in the land of peanut butter and jelly but in the civilised world you can't just fire an employee on the spot, except in cases of gross misconduct, criminal acts and so on. A contract of employment generally includes specified periods of notice for both the employer and the employee. ", "Because it looks better to the next potential employer. Even if the current job is crap, giving 2 weeks, and having that documented is better for you professionally in the future, so people tend to do it. The next company may not suck, but you may just get a better opportunity and need to leave that job, and they want to know that you'll give them notice so that they aren't left undermanned. \n\nIn contrast, an applicant for a company isn't going to call former employees to get a reference for the company, so firing you on the spot has less of a negative impact on them. \n\nThis in addition to not wanting someone hanging around who knows they are out of job to be able disrupt the other workers or cause other issues, as others have said. ", "It's absolutely not OK to fire people on the spot in continental Europe. Unless it's disciplinary.\nSo I would say it's a cultural thing.", "Because it's a relationship with a power imbalance\u200b. I don't do it though. Seen too many people let go as soon as they give notice. Happened at my last job. My supervision and the owner said he was a moron to give notice. They were them surprised when I failed to give notice. Huh.", "Being fired and quitting aren't quite the same.  The two week notice equivalent for the company is informing the workforce of upcoming layoffs or providing some form of pay in the case of layoffs.\n\nQuitting without notice is more like a company locking its doors at 5 on Friday  after the pay periods and telling you not to bother come back in Monday.", "That moment when you live in France and both employees  &  employers need a 3 months notice (except some rare cases).", "In Australia, you can't fire someone on the spot. You have to give warnings, etc. The question, I assume, is coming from America, where the power of companies in politics is much stronger. \n\nhere's a piece (which I wrote a few years ago) about an employment law example from Australia\n\n > Managing underperformance is not as simple as on TV. It requires preparation and understanding, and the legal consequences of skipping those steps can be severe. Yelling \"You're fired!\" makes for a good dramatic scene. But in the real world, if those words are uttered, an employer can quickly find themselves stuck in a court-room saga, cast as the bad guy.\n\n > Take the case of fashion designer Danae Moumtzis. She got the surprise of her working life in August 2012, receiving a letter from her employer stating she was unfit to keep her job and telling her she was fired.\n\n > But her employer, Dolina Fashion Group, had failed to follow proper process, an omission that ended up being very costly when the courts finally ruled. \"The evidence does not establish that Ms Moumtzis had been warned about the unsatisfactory performance,\" noted the decision by Fair Work Commission Vice President Watson, made in 2013. \"I find that the dismissal was harsh, unjust and unreasonable.\"\n\n > Dolina was required to pay Ms Moumtzis 22 weeks' salary in compensation - equal to around $50,000. The employer's allegations that Ms Moumtzis' was not contributing to the firm's profit margins and that her designs were not selling were aired in court, but did not contribute to the finding. The Judge reminded the employer that performance inadequacies need to be discussed, and employees need to be helped to meet the standards, before action can be taken.", "Do you mean as in slave/owner relationships, or as an actual employee of a modern company? Because companies can totally not fire employees on the spot in Austria. (atleast not under normal circumstances)", "If it is amicable both ways, notice should be given..\n\nUsually, when someone is fired, it is because the employee has wronged them for some reason.\n\nConversely, if an employee is wronged by his/her company, it is okay to abruptly quit, if the wrongdoing is eggregious enough. However, there is often litigation involved with these types of cases. ", "Well, to put it simply from an employee's perspective, you want to give a 2 weeks notice so that you could put them down as a reference for future jobs, and if you were a respectable person and employee and politely followed the steps in leaving your job, you're likely to get better references. If you up and quit on the spot, it doesn't make you look like a great guy and probably won't get good \"reviews\" if another job you interview for decides to call your past employer. \n\nI'm not really sure how it goes from an employer stand point though, however depending on the job, you may have signed something that would make you liable for the missing work to some degree if you didn't follow proper quitting protocol. I'm not positive but I feel like that's a thing.\n\n", "You don't have to give 2 weeks notice, its just considered polite just as it's polite for a company to let an employee go with notice...", "Both scenarios are allowed and \"okay\", but obviously better companies treat their employees better and give them chances or warnings.  Likewise, better employees treat their employers better and give them two week's notice.  \n\nAt my company (typically we hire high school and college students), even if someone gives two weeks notice, we usually have them work the rest of their scheduled shifts and stop scheduling them on the following week.  If they work too much longer after their statement of wanting to quit, two things happen.  First, their productivity drastically decreases because they no longer have motivation to work hard.  Second, they infect other employees with their attitude and brag about their quitting with statements such as \"This is my last shift and then I'm OUTTA THIS PLACE!!!\"  It's not unlikely that another employee will want to quit too or lose motivation because of this.   ", "Putting aside courtesy and niceties, the best reason is that nobody is going to call you and ask about Company X, but someone will call Company X to ask about you, and you don't want them to say you aren't eligible for rehire, were a poor team player, whatever euphemism they come up with.", "They're usually very different scenarios.\n\nSomeone being fired on the spot is indicative of a problem.  Perhaps not always, but the vast majority of instantaneous firings are reactionary.  The employee did something bad/stupid/illegal and must be removed from their position immediately.  Letting them stick around for 2 more weeks is just asking for trouble.  The best middle ground is a severance package.  They're still fired and have to leave right now, but they still get paid for a little while, so that they can try to find a new job.\n\nA two-week-notice is a more amicable breakup.  Perhaps not always, but this usually means that you have a new job lined up already.  If you like your current job, but need to move on to something better, giving notice can help ease that transition.  Even if you don't like your current job, it shows the new employer you aren't the kind of person to up and quit.  It's the professional and polite thing to do.  \n\nThat said, it's not technically required, and depending on the job you're planning to leave, it may or may not work out in your favor.  If you have a particularly vindictive boss, giving your 2 weeks might get you canned immediately, or might get you stuck with 2 weeks of crap work.  \n\nedit: I accidentally a grammar", "I had this happen to me.  \nNo prior warning, I was just fired on the spot. (later found out the boss' son needed a job  &  was given mine.)  \nLuckily, the company had a lot of..  *shady* discrepancies in their earnings.  \nLong story short, made a few calls to the police, they directed me to the correct divisions  &  less than 6 months later, that boss was put on trial for embezzlement.  \nI also banged his son's fiance, but that's neither here nor there.  \n", "It's important to note, it's *recommended* to leave with notice, but it's not required. Similarly, it's *recommended* to fire people with notice, but it's not required. When my mom was let go, she was given a month's notice and a severance package. One of my coworkers was let go because of upcoming budget changes and was given two weeks to plan ahead for it. When I was let go, though, it was because my company literally couldn't afford payroll, so I got ten minutes notice.\n\n", "It's not okay everywhere. Mostly the US is known for it but over here in Germany it is rather hard to fire an employee at all. If the employee didn't slap someone or stole someone or displayed unacceptable behaviour then he vsn only be fired for economical/restructuring reasons and if that's the case the company has to do a social plan and have to fire the youngest people with the least amount of company membership and no family members (husband/wife, children, sick relative s/he takes care off, etc). So losing your job is near impossible and usually only happens during acquisitions when whole departmens are (re)moved.\n\nThe notice will help you to not burn bridges and not ruin your written work reference.   ", "Here in Argentina, employers can't fire their employees without a 1 month warning. Otherwise they have to pay them a whole month of work when they are made to leave. From the employee side I think there's a 2 week warning by law, but nothing happens if you don't call it. It's more like the right thing to do in order to keep in good terms with your former employer. ", "Is two weeks notice and on-the-spot-firing really how it is done in america? I am stunned. In Norway it is usually stated in the contract: 1-6 months notice, regardless of if you are being fired or quit yourself. 3 months being more common in my experience. It gives both time to find a replacement, say goodbye, settle whatever undone tasks or projects you have going. \nIf you get fired because of disloyalty or something makes you untrustworthy you'd have to go immediately, but I know of that happening once in my entire professional carrier.\n\nYour job is where you spend a BIG portion of your life, quitting so suddenly seems a bit inhumane. I think more of you american workers should join a union, demand some rights. Letting the rich corporate leaders decide on all the rules is destructive for all of you.", "Because we don't have a robust labor movement. Because we have a political system when multi-national corporations are more powerful that the governments of nation-states. Because Capitalism turns workers into commodities. Because you've been duped into fearing socialism.", "Some infractions are just too bad and if an employee is a position of trust they can do way more damage to the company if allowed to remain in their jobs for two weeks.\n\nWhat we do is let them go immediately but will still pay them for a certain amount of time. So no they are no longer working in the office but still getting paid. We usually do 1 month salary plus any holiday days they have earned but not used.\n\nIn my industry it costs around 25k to put a bum in a seat. Firing someone costs not far off of that. Depending on the role firing can cost way more than that in lost productivity for the company. Much easier to try and fix a problem than to fire someone. But some things cannot be fixed.\n\n", "Because employers and employees are dumb\u2014or have a good reason to...\n\nIf an employee or an employer is breaking the law, conducting acts of misconduct, doesn't appear to be viable (not performing), the employee or the employer should \"fire\" the other in the relationship. This burns a bridge and hurts reputations if it happens without notice and leaves the other hanging (either without coverage if an employer or by losing the income stream of the employment if an employee) so if it isn't the other's fault, it shouldn't be done.\n\nHowever, if a circumstance beyond the other's control appears (better  opportunities, the business is changing, etc.) the other should give the other notice or make special accommodations (ie, I won the lottery but I will pay for temps for you for a few weeks). 2 weeks seems to have been adopted as a \"standard\", but I've given employers months of notice before \"firing\" them. In the past this resulted in better opportunities for me later on because they know I am not dumb.\n\nHowever, people seem to give the employee/employer this \"magical\" status and hand all of the power to employers. Mostly by having difficult to market/low demand/high supply skillsets or living in areas where demand for their skillsets are low.", "Scale. That's all it is.\n\nJoe Schmoe talks shit about BigCorp Inc. No one cares about Joe Schmoe. He's just one guy.\n\nBigCorp Inc. Talks shit about Joe Schmoe. BigCorp has money. They buy our products. They have influence. Let's listen to BigCorp.", "it's also to do that if the employer gives you notice they may fear that you won't give then your 100% the remaining time or that you may even wreck a bit of havoc. \n\nI did business with a branch that I knew was going to get shut (the company owed a lot of money and was going to liquidation) and till the last days as the stock was getting depleted and the store emptied the employees thought and had been told the store would just move to a different location nearby. I guess it kept them motivated right till the end.", "My friend was let go from a job recently after he gave his 2weeks notice. 4 other people were quitting soon, within a few weeks to a month of this, but they all decided to leave the same date as the last person was going to leave, and didn't give any notice of it. They saw what management did to that one guy, and it left a sour taste in their mouth. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big impact, it was a business that employed about 40 people, but I'm sure losing 4 people had some impact. He heard from a former coworker that management was NOT happy, and sent out a email reminding people about professional courtesy.", "When you look for a job, you don't get to talk to former employees. When you're looking to hire, you do talk to former employers.", "Because you're wanting to keep the relations with your coworker's good, specially if you're in an industry where your network matters or might work with them later. \n\n", "When you quite a job, the company/your supervisor has something to offer you - a good reference for future employers. If you try to make your resignation as easy as possible on the company/your coworkers you will likely receive this in return.\n\nWhen a company fires you, the company has already deemed that you have nothing to offer, and they have no incentive to keep you around.\n\nIf you have economic opportunity that involves quitting earlier than two weeks, then do so. A company would fire you in the same manner.", "I think comments already covered it, but:\n- Giving two weeks notice is a recommended/respected practice, as the boss typically doesn't know it is happening and has to have time to organize your replacement/shift cover. \n- Fired on the spot has two types: Cause and without cause. Regardless of type, as others have said you've just terminated someones livelihood and many times the individual is upset/etc (See Up in the Air). You do not exactly want an emotionally unstable person having access to your customers and data. Could have crippling effects.\n- Cause means you have given the employer grounds to fire you. Something that would hold up if a legal dispute were to come about. Here the employer typically has no obligation to provide any sort of compensation and pay is halted immediately. This doesn't happen much these days, and is reserved for serious offenses they know wouldn't be fought in court. \n- Without cause means they do not have to give a reason on paper and you generally cannot fight your dismissal. It also means the employer is typically legally obligated to provide some sort of minimum compensation for terminating your employment. This is usually controlled by state/province or federal laws based on company hq. Most cases this is two weeks or x weeks for every consecutive year worked. This is where the two weeks notice comes from. \n\nNote: Many employers will walk you out the door the second you give your two weeks notice, due largely in part of the security concern. This is dependent on the employee/employer relationship and how desperate they are for you to complete the work you've been assigned. ", "Because we have little to no collective bargaining power in America thanks to the destruction/demonization of unions.", "Because in America, people have been brainwashed into thinking they need to have some sort of loyalty to their company. ", "The downside to not giving notice is that it will anger the person being affected.  If an employee doesn't get notice they will then complain to their friends not to work at so and so company.  If an employee doesn't give notice so and so company might tell whoever asks not to hire them.\n\nThe second scenario is much scarier for the employee than the first is to the employer, so unless there's regulations against letting employees go at the drop of a hat, the employee has bigger incentives to be nice and give notice before leaving.", "In the US we have \"at will\" employers who can fire anyone for any reason at any time without prior warning.  Your employer is required to have you sign something when you take a job with them and it should say this somewhere on it; this may be given to you in tandem with something that explains your workers' comp rights and things like that. ", "This literally happened to me today. 10 years with the company and I was let go with no notice due to \"restructuring\" of the department of which I am the head. No notice. No warning. Out of the clear blue sky. I was escorted from the building 15 minutes after I arrived and didn't get to say goodbye to my staff, many of whom I hired and worked alongside for a decade. \n\nDon't kid yourself that you are anything but a number on a ledger sheet. These hoes ain't loyal. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ft0gi8", "title": "AITA for losing my temper with my husband?", "selftext": "My (35F) husband (45M) and I have had a pretty difficult road to happiness. He started pursuing me while he was still married, but he was really serious about our relationship \u2013 it took seven years for their divorce to go through, but it definitely wasn\u2019t for lack of trying on his part! Not only did he have to break things off with his first wife, he went through some major shifts in his way of living and was forced to choose between making a new, happy life with me and keeping ties to the Pope, Catholic countries/people, and his ex-wife\u2019s powerful family. His life is definitely better now, though, and I think a lot of those people weren\u2019t good for him anyway. We share so many interests and a lot of passion!\n\nBut things have been kind of rocky. I\u2019ve never been able to get on with his daughter from his first marriage, for one thing. Probably not too hard to guess why. A lot of people who don\u2019t even know us are badmouthing me all the time, and blaming me for everything unfortunate that happens in the kingdom. I\u2019ve had several miscarriages, which really troubles my husband as he\u2019s always wanted a son. (Don\u2019t get me wrong, he loves our daughter, who is just like a little version of him.) And lately I\u2019ve noticed him looking at and flirting with my ladies in waiting \u2013 one in particular \u2013 which has led me to lose my temper and instigate some knock-down drag-out fights.\n\nIt\u2019s just all so *stressful*. But my husband is really ticked off with me, and there\u2019s definitely something going on with some of his councillors \u2013 I\u2019ll come up to them talking quietly and then they all shut up when I get close. AITA? Am I being too hard on him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ft0gi8/aita_for_losing_my_temper_with_my_husband/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm6ai3c", "fm6f4e6", "fm4aqit", "fm4e4eu", "fm4q4ib", "fm53tfq", "fm5eai9", "fm5mx1c"], "score": [6, 6, 31, 43, 7, 13, 6, 3], "text": ["ESH, only polyamory can save this marriage. Except for you, you're not allowed to have any polyamory. STOP LOOKING AT THAT LUTE PLAYER.", "ESH I know you\u2019re just trying to have some fun and didn\u2019t mean to hurt anyone.  But you gotta expect if a man cheats WITH you, he\u2019ll also cheat ON you.  Sorry, not sorry.  Don\u2019t lose your head!", "NTA - sounds like you all have been thru a lot.  Don\u2019t lose your head over it, Anne!", "So let me get this straight. You broke up his first marriage and now you're pitching a fit every time he looks at another woman?\n\nESH (besides the kids of course). Sure your husband's being a jerk for openly flirting with other women, but you can't be surprised when your whole relationship started as an affair.", "NTA. Imean, what were you meant to do?", "YTA. I think your husbands first wife posted as well. Poor Catherine is in bits because of you!", "NAH--sounds like a rough time all around! You mentioned your husband has \"councillors\"--like therapists? Have you thought about seeing one together? I'd hate to see people losing their heads over these kinds of squabbles if it can be avoided.", "ESH, enjoy your puunishment... the worst PL team in London naming their stadium after you\n\nAs for why he's an AH... it's obvious, isn't it?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ocxor", "title": "since the ps4 and xb1 are x86 based, how come you can't just rip the os and run it in a vm to emulate them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ocxor/eli5_since_the_ps4_and_xb1_are_x86_based_how_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmlyk4y", "cmm30pr", "cmm36ii", "cmm4zyp", "cmm6c46", "cmm8roh", "cmmd3c7", "cmmdwhx", "cmmkhtc"], "score": [250, 22, 56, 3, 14, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nMaking everything the guy above me mean jack shit.\nThe reason why you can't just do it is because it's encrypted on the nand flash, but if you figure those keys out, you can run it as an os on a pc. No need for an APU cause you can modify the IRQ addresses", "Wow can someone ELI5 his title first for me? Lol", "Although the cpus really are x86, to be able to \"play them in a pc\" is worth noticing there is a lot of other stuff that is not \"found on a regular pc\" and should be replicated in a emulator.\n\n* custom cpu instructions\n - >  although unlikely, amd may have included extra cpu opcodes (commands) on the ps4/xb1 cpus, that alone would cause huge problems on any plans to use a simple hardware virtualization layer (HVM). (short version: virtual box, vmware and similars just simulate a ibm pc, the console has a similar cpu, but is not built as a ibm pc in MANY ways)\n\n* low level hardware access\n - >  since ps4/xb1 software is created to be run in a single hardware platform, at a very very specific environment, this \"virtual machine\" would need to emulate things like special hardware registers, hardware busses, edram memory space and behavior (for xbox one) and other even nastier stuff. (short version: it would be very slow)\n\n* drm (digital rights management, aka copy protection department)\n  - >  this may not be the worst barrier actually, but it is one regardless. The big deal is that with obfuscated software (protected against decryption) it is harder to figure it out \"how it does work\" to find \"what it is missing\" for it to work. (signed executables aren't a big deal in emulation because a emulated cpu can pretty much \"dismiss\" a signature check in the code, the protection is usually implemented at the transistor level inside the cpu)\n\n* proprietary \"custom\" hardware / undocumented hardware\n - >  when individuals create emulators, they need to understand (many times pretty deeply) how each integrated circuit works in the console, to be able to accurately simulate its behavior. This is (mostly) simple to do in \"off the shelf\" because the manufacturers publish documents (datasheets) describing in detail how the circuit works\n  - >  but when you are dealing with a \"custom undocumented chip\", its pretty much up to you to figure it out how it works.  (what may require \"top notch\" hardware hackers to work it out)\n\n* the GPU problem / custom gpu / shared memory architecture\n- >  short: you cant just \"copy and paste\" instructions to the console gpu into your graphical api of choice. \n- >  maybe, but just maybe that may be plausible in some early \"pure\" dx11 xbox1 titles, but just the really early ones that dont use directcompute or low level gpu access in any way)\n- >  the actual big deal: you may need to emulate hardware registers and complex aspects of the gpu of each of those consoles, because they CAN communicate back to the cpu and they mostly share the same memory for the cpu/gpu. (consistency in the memory addresses and values may be a requirement, what is pretty hard to do in gpus under windows and a high level access api).\n\n", "If a five year old asked me this I would assume he was talking jibberish. ", "Could someone explain the question like I'm 5, please?", "Can someone Eli5 this question? ", "OK this may sound stupid but if we consistently see both ps4/xb1 running on high end PC's, I guess I'm wondering how. Do they have a Dev program that could be used to crack the encryption or is there no encryption until time of production. ", "Memory/GPU architecture are different. The structure of memory is also different from a standard pc. If I remember right both use a unified pool of memory shared between graphics and system (granted it's partitioned in some way). xbone also has an intermediate pool between system and graphics. In most pcs this is separate. Some do share a pool (laptops, integrated graphics) but once again those work differently from the xbone/ps4.\n\nThe graphics pipeline will differ between the xbone and the ps4 and the pc. \n\nThe OSes are probably not designed to interact with a standard pc's components.\n\ntl;dr, x86 is only one part of the equation. There's more to these machines than just the CPU. Not to say emulation is impossible, but it's not as simple as running the standard xbone/ps4 OS on a PC. I would not be surprised if Microsoft/Sony have versions of the OS that can, but they probably have them locked down.\n\nAs a note, the xbone might be the closest to running on a standard x86 machine as the OS runs on a hypervisor. It's already running as a virtual machine.", "I've always wondered this too, and wished that someone would find a way to do it. Do you know how awesome it would be to be able to just pop an Xbox game in your PC, and Windows opening up an Xbox One Homescreen? It sounds easy in theory, and honestly, I'd prefer it. Being able to play all the Microsoft games without having to deal with shitty ports, and just having to spend maybe $100-200 on the software/hardware (disc drive) to have your PC have an Xbox mode? I'd be in love."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.pcworld.com/article/2691032/how-hackers-accidentally-sold-a-prerelease-xbox-one-to-the-fbi.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22bo7h", "title": "why do people get so upset that an un-vaccinated child will \"infect\" their child ? if your child is vaccinated, doesn't that mean they cannot contact the illness ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22bo7h/eli5why_do_people_get_so_upset_that_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgl8cgr", "cgl8d4a", "cgl8ef2", "cgl8ron", "cgl8xrr", "cgl9kei"], "score": [23, 2, 3, 8, 6, 2], "text": ["**Not everyone can be or is vaccinated** So, say you have a 4 month old child.  That child is not inoculated against measles, because you don't get that vaccine until 12 months.  However, that child can still get the measles. Similarly, say you have a kid who has been otherwise sickly, or is one of the rare, but not unheard of kids for whom the vaccine doesn't take.  Or say you're an old person whose immune system has simply weakened overall.  In any of these cases, the unvaccinated child is a danger. \n\n", "No, because vaccinations aren't 100% effective.  So even if you vaccinate your child, there's like a 2% chance that, if exposed to a pathogen, they can still become infected.  The best defense against this is everyone vaccinating their child.\n\nThis is not to mention those children that have compromised immune systems and cannot receive vaccines.", "Vaccinations are not 100% effective, so someone who is vaccinated still may get the disease. As well, babies and other people who cannot be vaccinated are at risk of being infected by an unvaccinated child (or by a child who was vaccinated but who is still a carrier and who was infected by an unvaccinated child or adult.)", "There is also the chance of enough un-vaccinated people acting as a \"breeding chamber\" for the illness, allowing it to mutate and infect vaccinated people. Considering the long duration before a new vaccine can be made and given out, this is a pretty damnable risk.", "unvaccinated children can house an illness while it mutates into a vaccine resistant form.\n\nEssentially, imagine it as if there is a triangle. A is the virus, B is the unvaccinated child and C is the vaccinated child. The virus cannot travel AC, but it can travel AB, then BC", "*There are some people who are allergic to ingredients in vaccines and can't get some of them. \n\n*There are also people who are immuno-compromised in some way (perhaps from chemotherapy or from HIV), and they can't get vaccines. \n\n*Some infants aren't old enough for some vaccines. \n\n*There are some vaccines that can take multiple doses to be effective. For example, the whooping cough vaccine (DTAP), only protects about 60% of infants after the first dose. It isn't until after the 3rd or 4th dose (at about 12 months old) that almost all vaccinated babies are fully immune to whooping cough.\n\n\nIn all of the above examples, those people rely on the immunity of those around them. When the vaccination rate in a community drops, it allows preventable diseases to spread if introduced. That's why people who can get vaccinated but don't put their entire community at risk."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4tc3jq", "title": "Does Juno experience any time dilation due to its proximity to Jupiter?", "selftext": "Jupiter is the most massive object in our solar system aside from the sun. Does Juno experience any time dilation from being in such close proximity to it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4tc3jq/does_juno_experience_any_time_dilation_due_to_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5g9w49", "d5hcx9y"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["Anything near anything causes time dilation. Whether it is measurable or negligible is a different question. Satellites in space around Earth experience time dilation and thus have to be corrected for it, otherwise GPS satellites would have your position wrong by a few kilometres. Jupiter is much more massive so Juno would experience time dilation. It wouldn't be noticeable though as communications back and forth between Earth and Juno are limited by the finite speed of light. In this case, there's time dilation regardless of the gravitational time dilation presented by Jupiter. ", "There are two effects at play here, time dilation due to speed and due to gravity.\n\nSince Juno is moving fast relative to us, we see its clocks running slow. Its speed is due mostly to Jupiter's orbital speed, which is 13 km/s. This gives a gamma factor (i.e., time dilation factor) of approximately 1+1/2 (v/c)^(2) = 1.00000000094, which is pretty small. Over the two years or so that Juno will be in orbit, its clocks will drift 60 ms compared to ours. I highly doubt this is in any way important, but there might be some experiments that need this amount of precision.\n\nJuno also runs a bit slower because it is lower in Jupiter's gravity well than us. According to [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) Juno's closest approach distance is 4300 km, and using the [relevant formula](_URL_1_) I get a bigger factor of 1.0000003278. Over two years this would mean some additional 20 seconds, which is at least detectable, though I don't know how important it would be.\n\nTime dilation in this context is really only relevant for experiments that last a long time, so that the different speed of clocks becomes noticeable. If we check in in two years it'll just look like Juno's clock is delayed, and since there's already a much bigger delay due to the speed of light, time dilation might not be very important."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_\\(spacecraft\\)#Orbit_and_environment", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation#Outside_a_non-rotating_sphere"]]}
{"q_id": "27a34i", "title": "Were xwedodah marriages (nuclear incest) really a common occurence in Zoroastrianism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27a34i/were_xwedodah_marriages_nuclear_incest_really_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chysx1r", "chzfu6u"], "score": [25, 6], "text": ["In the videogame crusader kings 2, zoroastrian characters are able to marry their close relatives. Was this common in real life? Did every level of society engage in it or was it just the nobility? Also, what is the basis for such unions being seen as sacred?", "[This article is ridiculously extensive with references, although it may be biased, does seem to be comprehensive.](_URL_0_) It warns that there is very limited information on the extent of this practice, and that the term may *also* apply to cousin-marriage in some sources, which is not uncommon at all for the period. As that article concludes (emphasis mine):\n\n >  The actual practice in historical times, **which is difficult to deny,** should also be seen in the context of the Zoroastrian world view, where the cosmic battle between good and evil during the period of Mixture, in which mankind finds itself, is conducted on three levels: by the deities in the other world; by the sacrificers, who provide the link between the two worlds; and by humanity in this world.  **Thus, the behavioral prototypes provided by the gods and the priests (including the kings) may have been interpreted literally and led to the extension of the practice among royalty (the king being also the high priest) and, to an unknown extent, in the population in general.**  Modern Parsi scholars, being more concerned with how they were seen and judged by Muslims, Hindus, and Christians, in their discussions of xw\u0113d\u014ddah, do not seem to have considered this particular aspect of their religious traditions.\n\nI hesitate to belabor the point, because the article is pretty darn informational. There is a huge, huge section on the mythological basis which should tell you everything you could want to know. To what extent really depends on who and where. It happened among the royalty, but there's not much information about commoners."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marriage-next-of-kin"]]}
{"q_id": "3o2k6w", "title": "can you really develop a 'whiskey voice' from too much drinking and/or smoking?", "selftext": "Many people seem to think it's a myth. That throaty, sort of scratchy, rock and roll voice. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o2k6w/eli5_can_you_really_develop_a_whiskey_voice_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvtgby2", "cvth5xj", "cvthbdg", "cvtntgg", "cvtrs7u", "cvtxcig", "cvu3qg9"], "score": [25, 210, 61, 3, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Take a listen to Lemmy, from Motorhead. It sounds like he gargled *nails*, for God sake. That don't come naturally, that came from *decades* of smoking, drinking and just all-out partying. He used to drink either a bottle or a fifth of Jack Daniels (Which is a brand of whiskey) *A DAY* (though, for health reasons, he has recently switched to vodka). If you need another example, then I'm sorry, my friend, I don't know where you can find one.", "Yes, it's called chronic laryngitis. The larynx is also known as the voice box. When people smoke and drink (any alcohol, not just whiskey) they irritate the mucosal lining of the larynx, which causes inflammation/swelling. This thickens the vocal cords and causes a raspy voice.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "I don't know how to ELI5 a yes or no question but the answer is absolutely YES!\n\nMy uncle is 56 and his voice is a cross between Michael Clark Duncan (low and bassy) and the sound of someone trying to mow a gravel parking lot with the blades on overdrive.... Shit's terrifying!\n\nAnyway, to explain a little I guess; this doesn't just happen overnight and people aren't born with trash compactors for a larynx. It happens because this fool has been smoking 3-4 packs of Marlboro Reds with the filters torn off A DAY since he was 14 years old and he's also the guy who orders double jack and cokes, hold the coke (he thinks its funny every time.... It's not) every 15 minutes on the dot until the bar closes every single night.\n\nTL;DR: You wanna sound like garbage disposal with a spoon in it, then treat your body like the spoon.", "I can tell you from experience with smoking, I play music and sing.. 2 totally different voices when I quit vs. when I'm smoking ", " > That throaty, sort of scratchy, rock and roll voice.\n\nA lot of people get that dusky voice from excessive use of their voice.  Screaming can really have a life long impact from just a little, which is why a lot of rock singers have it and my parents who smoked for 40+ years, and are now in their 70's, don't.\n\nThe vocal cords are at least partly flesh, like all other flesh they can stretch, tear, and scar.  Habitual screaming as a child causes a raspy voice.  Had a neighbor who's kid would lose his shit when parent's went to work when the child was a toddler, he grew up with a raspy voice from that....unless he was secretly a chain smoking and whisky drinking 8 year old...\n\nYes, environmental factors can influence it, but are not *necessarily* the primary cause.  As with anything else, some people can have a long life with use of such consumables and never develop that raspy voice.\n\nIt is, however, quite popular to pin the reason on some \"bad\" activity that people like to look down upon or try to scare their child away from doing said activities.\n\n_URL_0_", "Someone hasn't seen The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia\n\n_URL_0_", "I'm 31, I've been drinking for 13 years and smoking for 11. I'm also a teacher, college sports coach, and personal trainer. So yeah, I also yell, often and loudly.\n\nMy voice is terrible and completely different from even 5 years ago. I completely lose my voice for days on end, even from one cigarette or a night of drinking. This is not a myth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/laryngitis/basics/causes/con-20021565", "http://www.drugs.com/health-guide/chronic-laryngitis.html"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUIapa-U0bY"], []]}
{"q_id": "kmsxv", "title": "why are u.s. health insurance prices so high?", "selftext": "Today, my Micro Economics professor explained that Health Insurance prices are so high because hospitals have to pay for the uninsured. \n\nI had always thought it was because Insurance Companies hiked the prices up. \n\nPlease help! I want to learn!\n\n**Edit: I think I really meant to ask is why Healthcare costs are so high. (Which I still believe to be because of Insurance Companies)**", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kmsxv/eli5_why_are_us_health_insurance_prices_so_high/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2lie8m", "c2lijzo", "c2liq7c", "c2lkf6p", "c2lpch2", "c2lie8m", "c2lijzo", "c2liq7c", "c2lkf6p", "c2lpch2"], "score": [4, 25, 5, 2, 5, 4, 25, 5, 2, 5], "text": ["Insurance premiums are high because insurance payouts are high and the likelihood of having to pay out is also high.\n\nThe real question is why healthcare costs are so high (highest per person in the world) in the US.  That's a question with an answer far more complex than I can offer, but I'd offer my oversimplified summary.  Healthcare in the US is a for-profit endeavour with limited competition.", "It's a complicated answer with a few causes so I will try to go over a few.\n\nInsurance premiums are high because costs to insurance companies are high. These costs come from a few sources. Hospitals do not refuse ER treatment to the uninsured and when those people default on the HUGE bills, the hospital must just deal with that. Because of this, people who CAN pay (insurance companies), must pay extra for the hospital to break even/ make a profit. \n\nThis is only a small part of the story, though. Costs are high because doctors get paid a lot. Not that they do not deserve a high salary, but the cost of *becoming* a doctor is incredible. Due to this, a high salary is required to pay off the mountains of debt each doctor is likely in from getting an education.\n\nCosts are high because of pharmaceutical companies charging thousands of dollars per dose of lifesaving medication. Insurance companies try to encourage people towards generics because it costs much, much less to them. Let's say you need Pill A to live. Pill A is a name brand which costs $1,00 per dose. There is a generic version of Pill A available at only $200 per dose and it works just as well. Your doctor may not know what the actual cost of Pill A is, and he prescribes it to you. You have an option to go with a generic but many people prefer a name brand. Co-Pays exist to encourage you to choose alternatives like generics. Let's say you have a $100 co-pay on Pill A, but only a $5 co-pay on the generic. This is your insurance company's way of encouraging you to the cheaper option. If you choose the generic, your insurance company has to pay the other $195 that is left after your co-pay. That sounds like a lot still, but it's still better for them than having to pay the other $900 left for the name brand Pill A.\n\nCosts are high because of malpractice insurance. Suing for medical malpractice is surprisingly easy, and because of this, doctors have to pay for insurance in case it happens to them. Whether it is a good or a bad thing is irrelevant: these costs are passed on to the consumer.\n\nCosts are high because of how insurance works on a fundamental basis. Young, healthy people are MUCH less likely to actually make claims on their insurance. Old/sick people are MUCH more likely to go to the hospital and therefore they make more claims to the insurance company. The insurance company needs to have a LOT of young, healthy people paying every month to have enough money to pay for sick people as well as make a profit. This is called the insurance 'pool'. The larger the pool is, the lower the costs can be for each person in the pool. A big insurance company has more healthy people paying in, which mitigates the costs of the fewer number of sick people.\n\nThere are other reasons at all, but it's impressive that a 5 year old is in a micro econ class.", "It's high for these reasons (not listed in any particular order):\n\n* Medicaid and Medicare insist on lower rates.  Hospitals and doctors need to get that money back somehow, and hey do so by charging everyone else higher rates.\n\n* Some people don't pay health insurance, but still end up getting services for free.  Hospitals and doctors need to get that money back somehow, and they do so by charging everyone else higher rates.\n\n* Many other countries regulate health prices low enough that companies only turn profits based on products sold in the USA.  In other words, the USA is subsidizing the rest of the world.\n\n* There is little regulation of costs in the USA.  Health care is not a regulated utility like electricity or natural gas often is.  It is also not fully government managed.\n\n* People are removed from the actual costs of health decisions.  There's an attitude that you should be able to go anywhere, get 5-star health service, and only pay a copay of $25.  So doctors can frequently charge what they want, and insurance often pays a large portion of it.\n\n* It is near impossible to go shopping for health procedures by price.  If you are uninsured, and you call around to various places and ask prices for a simple visit or a simple procedure, nobody will tell you a price.  People don't ask this, and thus people don't know how to provide it.\n\n* In some markets, there isn't enough competition between health providers and/or insurance.  In those markets, health costs go up.  (I happen to live in the Ogden-Clearfield Utah area, which was just rated #1 in lowest health costs.  We have a handful of options, which drives costs down.  It's still expensive, but half the nationwide average.)\n\n* Some insurance is for profit.  Their profit margin is very small (say, 3%), but that 3% does add on top of existing health costs.\n\n* Studies have indicated that malpractice lawsuits add roughly an additional 2% that is perhaps frivolously large.  \n\n* The medical world in the USA feels in some sense entitled to high salaries.  Becoming a specialist is an easy way to pull in a $200k salary.  Anesthesiologists often make much more than that.  There's very little pressure to make those salaries smaller.\n\n* There is more demand for skilled medical professionals.  And the way people become licensed is heavily regulated and restricted.\n\n* The USA largely functions on an employer sponsored insurance model, and it's heavily regulated, insisting that insurance must cover a wide range of things.  This also heavily hides costs and choice from consumers. \n\n* It costs a massive amount of money to research, test, and approve a pharmaceutical drug.   Those drugs only get a short life span before generics can come in and effectively steal the market away.  So those new drugs often seem ridiculously expensive.\n\n* Our society is fat.\n\n* Our society is unhealthy.\n\nThe recent passed health legislation (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) does little to reform these costs to make them better.  What it focused on instead is increasing regulation so that insurance covers more things.  It also subsizes the employer sponsored health insurance model.  It also expands the role of Medicaid. It obtains lower health care costs by raising taxes on the rich, and redistributing that money to help pay for insurance to anyone making $80,000 or less, on a sliding scale, (if the individual does not want employer sponsored insurance).  \n \n\n", "I know a guy who entered the ER with stroke symptoms, after it was deemed it was a stroke he was given a $15,000 thrombolytic drug to dissolve the clot. \n\n$15,000 for one does of this drug. Fucking maddening. Excuse my language, I don't normally curse in front of 5 yearolds. ", "Insurance agent here:\n\nLooks like you've got a TON of debate as to reasons why.  I'll give you the reasons I've run into working mainly with healthcare industries and professionals.  \n\n1. The US is pretty damn unhealthy.   33% obesity?  It's insane.\n\n2. Medical professionals face *incredible* expenses.  Not just the cost of education, but equipment, business operations, and especially the insane expense of malpractice insurance.  Which brings me to:\n\n3. Rapid expansion of lawsuits.  Whether the vast number of medical related lawsuits is warranted or not, I'll not comment.  But the sheer number means every doctor can expect to be named in a suit at least a couple times in their careers.  \n\n4. Large aging population.  The baby boomers are hitting their unhealthy years and the price is passed on to the consumer base in general.\n\n5.  Insurance company greed.  This is not a real strong contributor, since many small groups try to create health care 'pools' or 'clubs' where they share the cost of each others' health care and find that they're paying just as much as they would for a traditional health insurance plan. \n\n6. Big Pharma.  Discussed in detail elsewhere in this thread.", "Insurance premiums are high because insurance payouts are high and the likelihood of having to pay out is also high.\n\nThe real question is why healthcare costs are so high (highest per person in the world) in the US.  That's a question with an answer far more complex than I can offer, but I'd offer my oversimplified summary.  Healthcare in the US is a for-profit endeavour with limited competition.", "It's a complicated answer with a few causes so I will try to go over a few.\n\nInsurance premiums are high because costs to insurance companies are high. These costs come from a few sources. Hospitals do not refuse ER treatment to the uninsured and when those people default on the HUGE bills, the hospital must just deal with that. Because of this, people who CAN pay (insurance companies), must pay extra for the hospital to break even/ make a profit. \n\nThis is only a small part of the story, though. Costs are high because doctors get paid a lot. Not that they do not deserve a high salary, but the cost of *becoming* a doctor is incredible. Due to this, a high salary is required to pay off the mountains of debt each doctor is likely in from getting an education.\n\nCosts are high because of pharmaceutical companies charging thousands of dollars per dose of lifesaving medication. Insurance companies try to encourage people towards generics because it costs much, much less to them. Let's say you need Pill A to live. Pill A is a name brand which costs $1,00 per dose. There is a generic version of Pill A available at only $200 per dose and it works just as well. Your doctor may not know what the actual cost of Pill A is, and he prescribes it to you. You have an option to go with a generic but many people prefer a name brand. Co-Pays exist to encourage you to choose alternatives like generics. Let's say you have a $100 co-pay on Pill A, but only a $5 co-pay on the generic. This is your insurance company's way of encouraging you to the cheaper option. If you choose the generic, your insurance company has to pay the other $195 that is left after your co-pay. That sounds like a lot still, but it's still better for them than having to pay the other $900 left for the name brand Pill A.\n\nCosts are high because of malpractice insurance. Suing for medical malpractice is surprisingly easy, and because of this, doctors have to pay for insurance in case it happens to them. Whether it is a good or a bad thing is irrelevant: these costs are passed on to the consumer.\n\nCosts are high because of how insurance works on a fundamental basis. Young, healthy people are MUCH less likely to actually make claims on their insurance. Old/sick people are MUCH more likely to go to the hospital and therefore they make more claims to the insurance company. The insurance company needs to have a LOT of young, healthy people paying every month to have enough money to pay for sick people as well as make a profit. This is called the insurance 'pool'. The larger the pool is, the lower the costs can be for each person in the pool. A big insurance company has more healthy people paying in, which mitigates the costs of the fewer number of sick people.\n\nThere are other reasons at all, but it's impressive that a 5 year old is in a micro econ class.", "It's high for these reasons (not listed in any particular order):\n\n* Medicaid and Medicare insist on lower rates.  Hospitals and doctors need to get that money back somehow, and hey do so by charging everyone else higher rates.\n\n* Some people don't pay health insurance, but still end up getting services for free.  Hospitals and doctors need to get that money back somehow, and they do so by charging everyone else higher rates.\n\n* Many other countries regulate health prices low enough that companies only turn profits based on products sold in the USA.  In other words, the USA is subsidizing the rest of the world.\n\n* There is little regulation of costs in the USA.  Health care is not a regulated utility like electricity or natural gas often is.  It is also not fully government managed.\n\n* People are removed from the actual costs of health decisions.  There's an attitude that you should be able to go anywhere, get 5-star health service, and only pay a copay of $25.  So doctors can frequently charge what they want, and insurance often pays a large portion of it.\n\n* It is near impossible to go shopping for health procedures by price.  If you are uninsured, and you call around to various places and ask prices for a simple visit or a simple procedure, nobody will tell you a price.  People don't ask this, and thus people don't know how to provide it.\n\n* In some markets, there isn't enough competition between health providers and/or insurance.  In those markets, health costs go up.  (I happen to live in the Ogden-Clearfield Utah area, which was just rated #1 in lowest health costs.  We have a handful of options, which drives costs down.  It's still expensive, but half the nationwide average.)\n\n* Some insurance is for profit.  Their profit margin is very small (say, 3%), but that 3% does add on top of existing health costs.\n\n* Studies have indicated that malpractice lawsuits add roughly an additional 2% that is perhaps frivolously large.  \n\n* The medical world in the USA feels in some sense entitled to high salaries.  Becoming a specialist is an easy way to pull in a $200k salary.  Anesthesiologists often make much more than that.  There's very little pressure to make those salaries smaller.\n\n* There is more demand for skilled medical professionals.  And the way people become licensed is heavily regulated and restricted.\n\n* The USA largely functions on an employer sponsored insurance model, and it's heavily regulated, insisting that insurance must cover a wide range of things.  This also heavily hides costs and choice from consumers. \n\n* It costs a massive amount of money to research, test, and approve a pharmaceutical drug.   Those drugs only get a short life span before generics can come in and effectively steal the market away.  So those new drugs often seem ridiculously expensive.\n\n* Our society is fat.\n\n* Our society is unhealthy.\n\nThe recent passed health legislation (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) does little to reform these costs to make them better.  What it focused on instead is increasing regulation so that insurance covers more things.  It also subsizes the employer sponsored health insurance model.  It also expands the role of Medicaid. It obtains lower health care costs by raising taxes on the rich, and redistributing that money to help pay for insurance to anyone making $80,000 or less, on a sliding scale, (if the individual does not want employer sponsored insurance).  \n \n\n", "I know a guy who entered the ER with stroke symptoms, after it was deemed it was a stroke he was given a $15,000 thrombolytic drug to dissolve the clot. \n\n$15,000 for one does of this drug. Fucking maddening. Excuse my language, I don't normally curse in front of 5 yearolds. ", "Insurance agent here:\n\nLooks like you've got a TON of debate as to reasons why.  I'll give you the reasons I've run into working mainly with healthcare industries and professionals.  \n\n1. The US is pretty damn unhealthy.   33% obesity?  It's insane.\n\n2. Medical professionals face *incredible* expenses.  Not just the cost of education, but equipment, business operations, and especially the insane expense of malpractice insurance.  Which brings me to:\n\n3. Rapid expansion of lawsuits.  Whether the vast number of medical related lawsuits is warranted or not, I'll not comment.  But the sheer number means every doctor can expect to be named in a suit at least a couple times in their careers.  \n\n4. Large aging population.  The baby boomers are hitting their unhealthy years and the price is passed on to the consumer base in general.\n\n5.  Insurance company greed.  This is not a real strong contributor, since many small groups try to create health care 'pools' or 'clubs' where they share the cost of each others' health care and find that they're paying just as much as they would for a traditional health insurance plan. \n\n6. Big Pharma.  Discussed in detail elsewhere in this thread."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1p0xak", "title": "Did sharks really follow slave ships on their journey across the Atlantic to feed on bodies thrown overboard?", "selftext": "I saw this stated on the PBS show \"The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross - With Henry Louis\". Is there evidence that this actually occurred and if so how well was it documented?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1p0xak/did_sharks_really_follow_slave_ships_on_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccxrlj8", "ccxrphr", "ccxudqn"], "score": [36, 5, 2], "text": ["As it is usual with many sensationalist statements: it depends.\n\nSharks, by their nature, are not smart enough to recognize a slave ship from any other and follow it *on purpose*, *knowing* that something *will* fall out of it. I know that that is not what the statement says but it is the image it immediately conjures. Of sharks flocking to a slave ship as soon as it leaves port and following it for the duration of its travel.\n\nSlavers did cram their ships beyond capacity because it was cheaper to write off human loses in one travel than it was to make several trips to Africa and back with les people and a 100% survival rate. This /(_URL_0_)/ is a famous depiction of how space was allocated in a slave ship. As any other person that died aboard, slaves would be buried at sea. Sharks have a powerful sense of smell (the usual way of fishing them is to throw pieces of meat from a moving boat to bait them) and could be seen feasting on a body soon after it was thrown overboard. Since slave ships threw out *many* bodies, it could give the appearance to those on board that sharks were actively following the ship.", "I am not a historian, but have been interested in this ever since I heard about the oceanic white tip shark being the most deadly shark to humans due to the habit of tailing ships and eating up shipwrecked sailors\n\n\nquotes from [the oceanic white tip entry in wikipedia](_URL_0_): \n\"the oceanic whitetip, the most common ship-following shark\"\n\"When whaling took place in warm waters, oceanic whitetips were often responsible for much of the damage to floating carcasses.\"\n(source: Leonard J. V. Compagno (1984). Sharks of the World: An annotated and illustrated catalogue of shark species known to date. Vol. 4, Part 2. Carcharhiniformes. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. pp. 484\u201386, 555\u201361, 588. ISBN 92-5-101383-7.)", "I cannot imagine that there is any acceptable hard evidence for this beyond a few crew logs stating \"Them sharks is back 'gin today\".\n\nHaving said that, I don't really doubt that animals would \"follow the food\".  Sharks are largely indiscriminant eaters and their regular prey is dead or wounded fish (and they don't care if they killed it themselves).  However, to the best of my knowledge sharks are not migratory animals.  They are where the food is, within a certain range.\n\nI would find it easy to believe that some ships, during particularly high period of mortality, would be followed by packs of predators that snacked on tossed bodies.  However, the idea that a shark, or group of sharks, would intentionally stick with a ship to continue feeding as they traverse the Atlantic is pretty far fetched."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://0.tqn.com/d/africanhistory/1/0/p/I/SlaveShipBrookes.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_whitetip_shark#Behaviour"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ou2jk", "title": "why have we not seen a fracturing of the democratic party similar to the ongoing conflict within the republican party?", "selftext": "Why is there no tea party of the left?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ou2jk/why_have_we_not_seen_a_fracturing_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccvlhbq", "ccvlhwx", "ccvlkd9", "ccvlvs9", "ccvlys0", "ccvm0j3", "ccvm99c", "ccvmeqc", "ccvmjwk", "ccvmuhp", "ccvnorz"], "score": [5, 3, 3, 3, 32, 8, 2, 2, 10, 4, 4], "text": ["The \"Ultra Left\" would be Socialism, which is politically toxic in the US.", "There's not major issue members of the Democratic Party disagree on, most are pro choice, pro gay marriage,  &  agnostic toward religion ", "You'd have to have a groundswell of support for uber-socialist policies, then have a powerful media outlet and some serious big money backers nurture the development of the movement to increase its footprint from grassroots to a viable, organized force.  \n\nNone of those things would be likely in the context of American culture.  Culturally and politically unpopular, and the money backers would be working againnst their own interests. ", "The occupy movement was sort-of a democrat's tea partly. It was different partly because the democrats were in power at the time, so there wasn't much hope of changing the party from within like the tea party wants to do, and if the democrats tried pandering to occupies to win votes, everyone would know they are lying because they have toe power to actually act, not just make empty promises. Also, occupy tried to be bi-partisan and focus on issues in how the government was run, and they tried to keep social opinions separate, which didn't really stick. \n\nIt could also be because Democrat supporters often see problems in that party as caused by Republican stubbornness, while Republicans can point to the religious right as the problem. ", "There was a fracturing of the Democratic Party between 1964 and 1992.  Working class whites became disenchanted with the party's outreach towards minorities and the social programs they believed disproportionately benefitted non-whites.  The old New Deal coalition fractured, with minorities, union members, and academics at odds with these mainly Southern whites.\n\nRichard Nixon capitalized on this divide in 1968, with his Southern Strategy, reaching out to the disaffected working class whites.  This strategy worked well for the next 20 years, with the GOP winning all but one presidential election.  \n\nThe Democratic Party controlled the House for that entire time, but was afflicted by constant bickering between its factions.  As the GOP is now learning, the House is a terrible place from which to communicate a national message, due to the sheer number of members and their relative extremism as compared to either the Senate or the White House.", "We've seen a fracturing of the Democratic Party in the past. Party realignment is a natural cycle, and the Republican Party may be going through this right now. Arguably, I'd say Democrats last had this around 1968. That realignment affected the GOP as well since we saw southern Democrats more or less turn into southern Republicans. \n\nAs for why its not happening to Democrats now? I think one reason, of many, is because the left sees President Obama as \"one of them.\" They might feel that their interests are at least decently represented. The Republican Party doesn't have that kind of figure or leadership, and a certain niche of their party feels completely unrepresented. They want to change that. \n\n", "There are factions on the left, but they are not at this time angry enough to set themselves apart from the mainstream. ", "During the Obama  &  Clinton showdown, Clinton stepped aside as is customary to the candidate that garnished more support. If she hadn't, it could've cost a fracture, a large one as Clinton was immensely popular as well. ", "I think it is because the far Left understands they have to make a long march _URL_0_\n\nYou will find many liberals who support ObamaCare only because they see it as a step to single payer's complete government control of health care.\n\nThe Tea Party on the other hand see America reaching a point of no return with public debt now at $17 trillion when it was \"only\" $10 trillion 5 years ago.", "Fearing the danger of walking into a political thread (and trying to give an objective answer) the simple answer is that we have numerous times throughout it's history. A great example is the 1968 Democratic primary where the contest was split between three major factions that ranged between \"old style\" Democrats (southern) like McGovern and \"new left\" style candidates like Eugene McCarthy. The gap between the sides were far more dramatic than the differences you see in the GOP today. \n\nIt's pretty common for a political party to have decades of relative stability, then experience a process of dramatic change. Of course, during that process of change, the party will lose elections, but what emerges is a party that tends to better reflect the electorate (everyone's mileage may vary on this one.)", "You are joking right? The Democratic party is far more fractured. It is a collection of various interest groups with almost no overlapping priorities. Environmentalists, gun controllers, women's rights, gay rights, and socialists none of whom are interested in each others' primary agenda. \n\nExample: i am an environmentalist straight capitalist gun owner. I am averse to r/politics brand of resenting wealth and loving Norway and i want my guns. I want the natural world protected at almost any cost. I am neutral on gay rights because I don't care. I am sort of negative on women's rights advocates because i think women are privileged in Western cultures but act oppressed the way Christians do. I don't really find myself in league with democrats so much as just voting against religious anti environmentalists. \n\nI think most people do this in politics and will not admit it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.history.com/topics/long-march"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bj01g", "title": "why do livestreams take 15-30 seconds from being sent to being seen, but videogames can send complex movements of many players near instantaneously?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bj01g/eli5_why_do_livestreams_take_1530_seconds_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csmjezm", "csmjiso", "csmjo4k", "csmlfee"], "score": [3, 75, 7, 7], "text": ["They can be done near instantaneously, however this could give advantages to opponents.\n\nFor example: map locations", "Because video games are being rendered on your local machine. The World of Warcraft servers aren't sending frames to your computer, they're sending \"player \"loldude\" x=2563 y=4403 NPC \"person mcPersonson\" x=2582 y=4430 ...\", and your computer uses that information to inform how it builds the screen that gets shown to you.  \n\nWhen you're streaming, then you are actually sending frames over the internet. You need to send the color data for every single pixel on the screen, as well as the audio that goes with it. ", "If you're watching _URL_0_, most of the time, they are on a delay (imposed by twitch).  This is helpful to prevent stream sniping, but it's also to be able to better control the content.", "The delay is \"used for better quality streaming\". \n\nLive streaming is different from say, a YouTube video because of the way it works. YouTube has a 'handshake' meaning packets (pieces of information) are first verified before being sent to the user, so that no/very little information is lost, meaning a better video quality. this is the TCP protocol.\n\nLivestreaming sites use the UDP protocol which doesnt involve this 'handshake', which means that if they were to just allow a live feed with no delay, a lot of packets could be lost through transit, so they leave a delay so that they themselves can verify the packets have reached them.\n\nAnother reason is because of the constant increase in livestream usage, the companies needs to have an efficient way to manage all the traffic and videos which takes up a lot of bandwidth. Steam does the same by throtteling (slowing down) download speeds to it can server a larger population and have a consistant speed.\n\nP.S\nThere are a few more suttle reasons but I covered some of the main ones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["twitch.tv"], []]}
{"q_id": "5z61tp", "title": "a piano and a violin can play the same note but their sound differs; you can tell them apart. how do notes differ with each instrument, but retain the characteristics of its assigned pitch?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z61tp/eli5_a_piano_and_a_violin_can_play_the_same_note/", "answers": {"a_id": ["devjalm", "devjdvp", "devlc9n", "devonq7", "devqr19", "devttlx", "devwam9", "devx8fu", "devxrft", "devxx4a", "devzi78", "dew1pc4", "dew23cy", "dew2mie", "dew4ib8", "dew4o35", "dew526a", "dew616u", "dew7l5b", "dew8vsz", "dew9jy5", "dew9ok0", "dewa5gt", "dewbez1", "dewcwku", "dewcyo8", "dewer02", "dewgd94", "dewhbxa", "dewjv78", "dewm5hz", "dewnof4", "dews2ld", "dewstng", "dewwd8m", "dewxw6l"], "score": [2369, 3, 724, 36, 5, 92, 3, 4, 27, 1074, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Sounds are usually described by three characteristics - pitch, loudness, and quality (or \"timbre\"). Pitch is determined by frequency and describes how high or low a note is. Loudness is what it sounds like (forgive the pun - I simply mean loudness is self-explanatory). Everything else is generally categorized as \"timbre,\" which is what allows you to tell the difference between a piano and violin playing a note at the same pitch and loudness.\n\nQuite a bit goes into timbre such as harmonic content, attack and decay, and vibrato. I don't really know enough about those to explain them further other than to say they are characteristics of sound waves that affect how you hear, but don't change the pitch or loudness. If you can find an app that lets you play around with a synthesizer, you can usually change those settings directly so you can play around with how they affect sound.\n\nEdit: There are some more technical responses below from people who know more about this than I do. Check them out for more details. And thanks to everyone who provided more details!\n\nEdit 2: Most of the comments below are saying that attack (the beginning of a sound and how long it takes to get to peak volume/loudness) and slight variations in the pitch and loudness are the physical properties that create different timbres, though the area is still being researched. Apparently when you play a note on an instrument the part of the instrument producing the note actually produces multiple frequencies and can have slight variations in loudness. The frequencies not associated with the pitch you hear are called overtones. You generally only perceive the fundamental frequency (the pitch of the note), but the overtones change how you perceive that. To bring it back to your original question, you can tell the difference between a piano and violin playing middle C because they have different attack, overtones, and the loudness during the note will change slightly. And you might not be able to tell the difference if you didn't hear the attack (the beginning of the note). \n\nAs an added bonus, if I understand correctly, the different overtones result in a different spectral flux and the changing loudness over the duration of the note results in a different spectral envelope.", "(1) a \"pitch\" is just a frequency of a sound wave.  But, two waves with the same pitch will have very different shapes.  The piano and violin generate waves of different shapes.\n(2) The waves have different rates of decay.  A piano makes a tone when a hammer hits a string.  The string starts to vibrate, but the vibrations decay away.  In contrast, the violin passes a bow over the string, causing the vibrations not to decay away.   \n(3) Each instrument has different acoustic properties that cause harmonics and reverberations to add to (or subtract from) the initial wave form.\n(4) The piano typically hits more than one string at the same time.  While the strings technically supposed to be identical, they are not precisely, and that produces wave forms that are slightly off from the original pitch.\n", "/u/tellahthesage is right on the money: timbre is what defines it all, and there's a lot that goes into it.\n\nLet's start with a pure tone (i.e. a sine wave) at 1000 Hz, or 1kHz. (For reference, that's close to the C two octaves above middle C.) **Harmonics** are multiples of the frequency at lower levels, e.g. 2kHz, 4kHz, 8kHz, and so forth. Adding different harmonics in different mathematical patterns will result in different wave shapes and different sounds. [Wikipedia has some good links on the subject](_URL_0_), including sample clips of the main wave forms.\nIncidentally, a given instrument may 'voice' two (or more) notes simultaneously, with a harmonic series for each note, which adds complexity and in some cases (like percussion), perhaps noise.\n\nNow that we have a wave form, we can vary the pitch of it by a little bit. This is **vibrato**, and is described by a width (how much it varies - maybe a quarter tone for example) and frequency (how fast it varies). A similar (but not identical) effect can be got by varying the *volume* by a small amount, which is called **tremolo**.\n\nNow, you can change how fast the note gets up to 'full' volume (**attack**), and how fast it fades away afterwards (**decay**). A flute has a relatively slow attack. A hammered piano note has a much faster attack, and a glockenspiel (with metal bars and hard mallets) is faster still. A violin note doesn't actually decay as long as the musician is bowing it continuously, whereas a damped xylophone will fall off very quickly.\n\nAnd that's...most of it. Except for all of the other parts. :-)\n", "In a single word: overtones. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhile yes, others have already mentioned characteristics of a given sound, the one thing that differentiates different instruments are the array of overtones produced when the instrument is played.\n\nLots of factors can influence the overtones (which include \"harmonics\") and it has even been theorized that in some cases, instrument components or construction techniques have influenced the distribution of overtones (one example being a Stradivarius violin). \n\nEven more cool are \"sum\" or \"difference\" tones - [which exist only in the mind of the listener](_URL_1_). ", "Sound is air moving back and forth. The faster it moves back and forth, the higher the note sounds.  Picture this as your arm moving up and down in front of your face.\n\nTo produce the same note but with a different \"sound\", small sub-vibrations occur simultaneously along with the \"main\" vibration.  Picture this as your hand waving up and down as your arm also moves up and down in front of your face.\n\nTwo notes from different instruments have the same \"main\" vibration (your arm in the above description), but different sub-vibrations (your hand in the above description).", "Everything mentioned here is great! Superb answers, all. One thing is missing tho: noise, and its colours. \n\nIn addition to the basic tone and its various overtones, there is always some level of [noise](_URL_8_) in any given [timbre.](_URL_0_) Noise can mean many things, but in this context, it means sound that is not recognizable as one focussed frequency, but is spread out across the spectrum; [white noise](_URL_7_) being probably the most well-known variety. \n\nWhite noise was given the name because, like white light, it was once thought to be sound spread evenly across the spectrum, AKA all frequencies at once, evenly distributed. This has since been disproven, but among [the other colours of noise](_URL_2_), [pink noise](_URL_3_) has been found to truly give an equal loudness to all audible frequencies.\n\nThat's just a fun tangent tho; no physical instrument consistently produces any one colour of noise perfectly, but they all do produce different colours of noise, changing along with the other elements of timbre. \n\nElements of noise like the breath of a flautist may increase or decrease with loudness, or the flautist may deliberately make their sound *more breathy* (more noisy) by varying the shape of their mouth, AKA their [embrouchure.](_URL_4_)\n\nThe bowed instruments are a classic example; the bow produces a [fairly noisy and complex timbre,](_URL_5_) as the sound is produced by friction, an action we all have experienced as being \"noisy\".\n\nOnce you get into electronic instruments, noise becomes a fully malleable thing; you can increase it, modulate it, make it reactive to loudness/pitch/time in new ways, or just completely neglect to add it, for a decidedly unnatural yet pure sound.\n\nIncidentally, noise is a vital component of modern emergency vehicle sirens; [it helps our ears detect where the sound is coming from,](_URL_6_) an incredibly useful thing in busy traffic.\n\nHope this was as fun to read as it was to write!\n\nEdit: Whoops! Turns out I was wrong, and pink noise isn't equally loud across the spectrum; [gray noise](_URL_1_) is the correct answer, I just like pink noise better, and my desires hijacked my memory.", "pitch is from how many times a sound wave goes from up to down in a second, it's *frequency*.  tone comes from how smooth the lines of the curve are.  a perfectly smooth and curved sound wave is called a 'sine wave' and sounds like a beep or computer tone.  different instruments can produce sound waves which have the same basic frequency, but the shape of the actual sound wave is much different due to different ways of generating the tone.  Over-generally but not completely wrong is the smoother the waveform, the more like a beep, the rougher the waveform, the more like a buzz.  edit: in other comments OP described using an oscilloscope to see these waveforms. ", "According to Daniel Levitin, known obsessor over sound and how we hear it, it was mentioned once briefly, the attack, or the very first instant we hear a note on any instrument (or in nature) is the key factor to identifying it's source. Running a bow across a string sounds different than picking a string, sounds different than the same note coming out of a brass or wind instrument, etc. Our brains pick up on this subtlety, good composers make the most of our ability to distinguish instruments, and without the attack, our brains are unable to detect the source of a note. Dr. Levitin said if you could cut out the attack, ie. the first tenth of a second of a given sound, we would be unable to know exactly the source and it would just sound like the note.\n\nAs far as vibrato goes that's a back and forth tweak on a string to give it a little extra something, it changes the frequency of the note a little sharp and a little flat repeatedly, very fast and gives the note a lot more character.", "There are three elements of sound: pitch, amplitude, and timbre. \n\nPitch refers to the rate at which the sound is vibrating, measured by frequency over a second. A440 refers to a sound vibrating at 440 times a second, for example. This is measured in hertz (hz).\n\nAmplitude refers to attack, peak, and decay of a sound. So essentially how fast and loud does the sound peak to its max volume, and likewise how does it decay back into silence (or the next note). \n\nFinally, and most importantly, is timbre, which refers to the harmonic qualities of a sound. This is what determines the unique quality of any instrument or voice. \n\nEssentially, every sound made by a physical source (hitting a cymbal, striking a piano note, attacking a string on a guitar, etc.) is composed not just of the \u201cprinciple\u201d or \u201cfundamental\u201d note \u2014 what we might call \u201cmiddle C\u201d \u2014 but of lots of other notes or pitches that aren\u2019t as prominent as the fundamental. These other notes that compose the entire sound of a given pitch on an instrument are called \u201charmonics\u201d or \u201covertones.\u201d (Technically there are some minor differences between these two words, but for the purposes of this explanation, don\u2019t worry). \n\nThe best way to illustrate how this works this is to google \u201csine wave,\u201d and you\u2019ll hear an electronic generated sound wave that is only composed of a single note, such as just a 440hz. It sounds really odd and unnatural. This is because there aren\u2019t any other \n\nThe reason every instrument sounds different is because the amplitude of these overtones are varied. For example, the fundamental pitch of the note is twice as loud as the first overtone, which is an octave higher than the fundamental. The first overtone is four times as loud as the second overtone, which is a fifth higher than the first overtone (and an octave and an a fifth higher than the fundamental). This continues on a loose logarithmic scale, with the amplitude of each successive overtone decreasing at a given rate. \n\nWhat this rate is for each instrument and the \u201charmonic\u201d composition of each pitch is different for each instrument (and each person\u2019s voice, or any physical sound). You can, interestingly, map the composition of an instrument visually or mathematically. \n\nThis is how electronic instruments attempt to \u201csample\u201d or \u201csynthesize\u201d real physical instruments through electronic means. There is software out there that, for example, has spent thousands of hours sampling real string instruments to such a precise degree that it\u2019s nearly impossible to tell the difference between the electronic and real versions of, say, a violin. You can adjust for all three elements of sounds. And there\u2019s a reason that this particular plugin costs somewhere around $5,000. \n\nHope that helps. ", "Oooooo!!! Somebody asked about the best electives we took in college, and I unwittingly answered this exact question in my excitement (with bonus radio info, because that's what I do for a living now)!\n\n > Physics of musical acoustics, what I remember of it, mostly went extremely in depth on what makes audio audio.\n\n > For instance, the timbre, or the *kind* of sound, is determined by the type of waveform.  A guitar, for instance, has a sine wave, as [can be easily seen in slow motion](_URL_2_).  A violin, on the other hand, has a sawtooth wave, due to the [string constantly catching the bow as it vibrates](_URL_1_).  Percussion has a scattered waveform that doesn't resonate well, hence why most people don't think of it having \"pitch\" in the same way other instruments do.  What we think of as electronic sounds are usually [a square waveform](_URL_0_).\n\n > The pitch of the sound is determined by the frequency of the wave, or how many times the wave \"cycles\" in a given time period.  The slow motion guitar video I posted above does a great job of showing this, actually.  The thicker strings do not vibrate as quickly as the thinner ones do, which is why they are lower in pitch.  You can change the amount of cycles these strings will emit by tightening and loosening the strings.  The same thing is done with the air pockets in instruments like the oboe or the trumpet--by changing the size of the vibrating space, you change the pitch.\n\n > Lastly, there is the amplitude.  Going back to the slow motion guitar, you might think that the cycles would be affected by how hard you plucked the strings.  But if you've ever played a guitar, you know that only the volume is affected by how hard you pluck the strings, not the pitch.  This is because they vibrate further up and down, not faster or slower.  So, simply put, the amplitude of a waveform is your volume.  The higher up and down the wave goes, the more powerful it will be.\n\n > Now where it gets tricky is when you get radio involved...  Amplitude modulation (AM), for instance, changes the amplitude of a radio signal that is of a much higher frequency than we can hear, and, then your radio when it receives that Very High Frequency (VHF) signal, then knows what frequency to strip off of it (the frequency you tuned your radio to), and leaves only those minor variations that were inserted in the signal.  Those minor variations in amplitude?  They're the audio that was originally inserted into the signal, called the \"intelligence\".\n\n > Frequency Modulation (FM) does the same thing, only it inserts minor variations in the frequency of the signal, then strips off that frequency in the same way and takes the difference, leaving just the original audio frequency.\n\n > Anyway... physics is awesome.", "Think of it like waves on the ocean. The note or pitch values come from how often a wave breaks/how far they are apart from one another. The instrument sound comes from the general shape of the waves and the changes between each wave.", "Timbre and pitch are fundamentally two different aspects of sound. Like color and shape in visual arts. Just completely different aspects.\n\nI'm sure a lot of others have gotten it but I'll add my two cents as a staff pianist and composer for a fairly large organization, who's thought about this stuff for a long time, at least on an artistic level.\n\nTimbre (pronounced tam-burr), is the quality of a sound. There are theories about where this comes from: for example, there are different balances within the overtone series, for different instruments. If you haven't heard of the overtone series (or harmonic series) the basic idea is this: every single note that you hear, there are actually about 8 notes above that note that are sounding above that note (produced by divisions of the fundamental note). They are tough to hear, but they are there. And it's not really 8 notes above, it's more like infinite notes above, but the human ear is limited in how many it perceives.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFrom the article \"The relative amplitudes (strengths) of the various harmonics primarily determine the timbre of different instruments and sounds, though onset transients, formants, noises, and inharmonicities also play a role. For example, the clarinet and saxophone have similar mouthpieces and reeds, and both produce sound through resonance of air inside a chamber whose mouthpiece end is considered closed. Because the clarinet's resonator is cylindrical, the even-numbered harmonics are less present. The saxophone's resonator is conical, which allows the even-numbered harmonics to sound more strongly and thus produces a more complex tone. The inharmonic ringing of the instrument's metal resonator is even more prominent in the sounds of brass instruments.\"\n\nSo basically, the physical aspects of each instrument will effect how loud or soft those invisible notes above the actual note are (the fundamental), which produces differences in the character of the sound.\n\nAs an extra thing, there's a great story in the composer John Adams' memoir _URL_1_\n\nwhere he talks about experimenting in the 70's with tape recordings of different instruments. Long story short, if they took tape recordings of different instruments playing a C note, for example, and they cut off the beginning of the note (the attack), it became MUCH more difficult to distinguish between the different instruments.\n\nIn other words, a big part of the difference in timbre comes from the attack of a note, while the sustained part is harder to differentiate.\n", "True ELI5: The specific sound of an instrument (timbre) is like the flavour of a piece of candy. Pitch is just how fast you can eat the candy. It does not change the flavour of the candy.", "A lot of these answers come from music theory, and they discuss things like timbre, texture, noise, attack etc. While that's all true, and indeed necessary to characterize the sound, the fundamental reason is this:  \n  \nWhen we say that two sounds are the same pitch, we do not mean that they have the same frequency. A sound has many frequencies at once, and those frequencies may change as the sound changes over time (e.g. a bending of a note, vibrato, or as it fades away). The pitch of a sound is a subjective perception of its frequencies, usually based on the most prevalent (loudest) frequency. The wikipedia article (_URL_1_) has a good discussion of this.  \n  \nSo, when we say that two sounds are the same pitch, we usually mean that the loudest frequency of each sound are the same. This means that many things can be different:\n\n- How loud is the loudest frequency compared to the others?\n- What other frequencies are there? How loud are they?\n- How does all of the above change over time?\n\nIt's in these aspects that two sounds of the same pitch can sound different! For example, according to google images, the violin waveform looks like [this](_URL_0_), however a pure tone would look like a clean wave (with the same separation of peaks and troughs).  \n  \nWhat's amazing is that our ears can \"see\" all of that chaos in the waveform and get harmonies, timbre, vibrato, etc. out of it.", "A real musical tone isn't just made up of a single smoothly repeating sine wave. In the real world, instruments that make music produce incredibly complex sound waves.  Even two sound samples recorded from the same instrument, played exactly the same way, have noticeable differences, due to imperceptible differences in the movement of the musician's body, or air pressure, or temperature, or name a thing.", "Sound is made when something vibrates at a certain speed - in the case of both a violin and a piano what vibrates is strings (with the body of the instrument adding extra \"flavouring\", but we can ignore that). If you draw that vibration on a piece of paper, you get a _wave_ -  they look [something like this](_URL_0_). The waves generated by each instrument have different shape - that's how we can recognise them. That shape is called the _timbre_.\n\nWhat give those sounds their shape?\n\nIt turns out a sound is not just one vibration - it's a lot of independent vibrations going on the same time, which add up to create the single sound we hear. These vibrations are in a sequence - if the base ones vibrates 200 times per second, the next one will vibrate 400 times, then the one after 600 times, and so on. They are called \"harmonics\", and the sequence of vibrations (x, 2x, 3x, ...)  is called _harmonic sequence_. All instruments have harmonics in that sequence - what changes is that in some instrument the some harmonics are louder and other softer. You don't hear the individual sounds, they just add up to make a single sound. That combination of harmonics is what changes the _timbre_ of a sound, and makes the instrument recognisable. There is a mathematical technique called \"fourier analysis\" which allow you to show all the harmonics for a given sound - the [graphs look like this](_URL_1_)\n\nBut the harmonics are only the \"pure\" components of sound - you can hear them well in old synthesizers from the 70s.  In the real world there are also other vibrations which are outside the sequence - typically they are considered \"noise\", but they exist, typically for percussion instruments, but also at the very beginning of other sounds, particularly wind instruments (they tend to die off quickly and leave mostly harmonics)\n\nSo a combination of all these vibrations, harmonics and inharmonics, each one with its own loudness, each one becoming louder or softer in time independently from the other, is what gives the timbre of a sound.\n\nWhat controls which harmonics are softer / louder in a sound wave?\n\nIt depends from every instrument. Typically when an object vibrates, the sound comes to our ear because the air between the object and the object vibrates. The air tends to \"fall in line\" with the vibrating object, and vibrate at the same speed. As do any other object in the vicinity which have the ability of vibrate at the same speed (that's why windows vibrate when there is bus engine in the area but not when you have a drill - the frequency of the bus engine matches the \"natural\" frequency of the window, but that of the drill doesn't). So the instrument builders use that and work with the shape of the body of the instrument to give them pockets of air or parts of the body that emphasise certain harmonic and dampen others.\n", "I know this has already been answered, but I wanted to simplify it a bit. An easy way to think of it is: pitch is how quickly the the sound wave is repeating, whereas, the *way* it sounds is determined by the *shape* of the sound wave. \n\nYes there are a lot of other factors that play into the timbre of a sound, but the most important element of what makes a violin sound like a violin, etc. is its unique sound wave. ", "There are a lot of good answers here so I wont bother repeating all that juicy information.  Once you're comfortable with the answer, I did want to leave you with a new, but related question.         \n            \nPick a random note and sing the vowel sounds: A E I O U.  How can you sing/speak the same pitch but tell different vowel sounds apart? It turn out to be almost the same thing as piano vs violin playing the same note: The mixture of harmonics/overtones (and a few lesser elements of the timbre in the vocal instrument).       \n           \nYou mention in another comment that you record music on your computer.  If you have a spectrogram plugin for the recording software, trying recoding yourself singing \"A E I O U\" and see how it looks.  I think its pretty cool, myself.  Here's a spectrogram of someone saying [\"I can see you\"](_URL_0_). Notice how all of the vowel sounds have those (less dark) overtones above the fundamental pitch being spoken.    Those are what gives the different vowels each its own timbre.   \n         \nA bit of a tangent but hopefully you found that interesting :)", "Sound is made of a bunch of wobbles. Some wobble fast and some wobble slow. When you have a string, or a drum head, or a tube that's doing the wobbling, only some lengths of wobble are allowed to happen. \n\nImagine a piece of string, held tight, and you pluck it in the middle. You can see the middle goes up and down a lot, but the ends don't move at all. Now, imagine geeeeently pinching the middle. The pattern that happens now is you get two halves that wobble up and down, in sync but in opposite directions. This means the \"wave\" on the string has half the distance between crests. Because maths, this makes the rate at which it wobbles twice as high; when the \"wavelength\" is halved, the \"frequency\" is doubled. You can do the same thing but pinching in two places (as long as the places are evenly spread out), three, four, five and on to infinity places. The collection of these pitches that are allowed to happen is called the \"Overtone Series\".\n\nFor anything that wobbles like the string (drum head, air in a tube etc.), the lowest allowed pitch is called the \"Fundamental\". This is almost always the loudest wobble that happens, and is the pitch that you hear when comparing the sound of a violin and piano playing the same note. The thing that makes the sound different is how strong each overtone is. Every instrument, every human and animal voice, anything that makes sound like this, has a unique pattern in the strengths of its overtones. For example, if you listen to something called a \"Square Wave\" as you get higher and higher up the overtone series, each one gets half as strong. Real instruments, and especially human voices, have very complicated patterns in their overtones. In fact, it is these patterns that allow us to tell vowels apart!\n\nTry this: start with your mouth wide open and say Ah. Now slowly close your lips, while making the ah sound with your voice box. What you'll hear is the vowel turning from an Ah into an Ooh, without changing pitch! This is because when your mouth closes, some of the very highest overtones get completely stopped, leaving only the lowest few to make it out of your mouth. Now try this: start off with an Ooh. Now make the sound really nasal, like you're pushing the sound through your nose. Move your lips around to make the shape of an Ee sound. If you do it slowly and carefully, and play around with if, you should hear a note that you aren't singing, that sounds quite a lot higher than the sound of your throat. Congratulations, you've found an overtone in your own voice!\n\nOvertones and the \"harmonic series\", which is all the notes that make up the overtone series, have been studied since Pythagoras first started thinking about why music sounded pleasant. Since then we've got very very got at choosing what kind of overtones we want our instruments to play. Even singers can do it; if you listen to good Barbershop quartets you can often hear very high notes that no one is singing, where the overtones of everyone's voices line up and ring really loudly. Train horns have been chosen to have two notes that don't share any overtones, so they really grab your attention by sounding really unpleasant. Overtones are all around us, and at the very least, you can make some cool mouth noises now.\n\nI hope this helps!", "You mentioned that you have a daw. Open up a basic oscillator and play any note. You'll notice that the wave is a perfectly curve sine wave. Change it to a saw wave, and it sounds different. This is timbre: same wavelength and amplitude, but just different shapes. Now, open up an acoustic instrument and look at the wave. It resembles a sine wave, but it's more jagged. Another example of timbre", "Omg thank you for asking this. I've been wondering about this in the back of my mind for a long long time. Glad to see it got some traction and some good answers! Thanks!", "I was once told by my music teacher in high school that the attack (the beginning of the sound) is the most important part. In fact he said that if you took out the attack and heard a note after it had already begun it would be very difficult to distinguish what thing is making that sound. If you ever are switching stations on the radio occasionally you'll experience this by accident. \n ", "If I'm not mistaken, I heard in a class once that if you take away the attack and decay of 2 sound waves produced by 2 different instruments, but maintained the same pitch and loudness, it would be difficult to determine whic instrument was producing the sound. Can anyone confirm? (This was mentioned in a studio music recording class)", "If you were actually 5, I would tell you that the different shapes and materials instruments are made out of make different types of sounds called timbres. The sound could be the same high or low pitch, but things made of wood and metal are going to have different timbres. It's like how your voice is a little bit different than your friend's because your body is a different shape and size.\n\nAs an adult, I would explain to you how harmonics work, but many others here have done a good job of that.", "Here's a fun experiment - if you have audio editing software cut the attack off of a bunch of different instruments playing the same pitch. Without the attack it becomes much more difficult to identify an instrument. There are many other factors like timbre which is essentially harmonic content produced by each instrument but the attack is perhaps the biggest one and one that few people realize. ", "I am late to post, but I made [a video](_URL_0_) that deals with your question.  The intro may throw you off, but just watch.", "Harmonics. Those sounds are not made of a single note, they just have a root note, but have hundreds of overtone harmonics that make up the timbre of the sound. That single note will also have 3rds, 5ths, 7ths, etc mixed in with it that give it that timbre. Otherwise you would only have a simple sine wave and everything would sound identical.\n\nThis is also not taking into account how the sound waves bounce and refract off of surfaces and the . return back to your ear at different times. ", "When you hear a piano play a note, you think of it as a single frequency. In reality, that note you hear is the base frequency, but you're also hearing hundreds of higher notes as well, called 'harmonics.' The harmonics differ depending on the instrument. So if a violin plays the same base note, you hear the same base, but the harmonics are different, which is why they sound different. (This is also why chords sound muddy in the low piano register - you can hear much more of the harmonics interacting together).", "Well I'm not seeing any that a 5 year old could understand, so I'll take a crack at it.\n\nSound is made up of waves in the air, just like you see waves in the water.  \n\nWhen there's no sound, the line is flat.  No waves.  Like this ______\n\nWhen there is sound, the air is all wavy, like this ~~~~\n\nWhen the sound gets higher, that means there's more waves per second.  So 200~ is twice as high as 100~.  400~ is twice as high as 200~ and so on.  We call these octaves.  \n\nWhen two different instruments play the same note; they are playing the same amount of waves (200~) but the waves just look different and have a different shape.  Some even have more waves stacked on top of them (usually double or triple the amount, just at a lower volume so you can't hear them as distinctly)\n\nHope this helped someone!  This is how I explained to my daughter.\n\nSource:  audio engineer and father to a seven year old.", "Let's ELI5 this!  I see some nice answers that are WAY above ELI5, so let's make this simple here.\n\nYou know what a pitch is -- it's a frequency.  Basically, the air is vibrating so many times per second.  For example, if it vibrates 440 times a second, we name that note A4.  Just what we call it.  It's the A above middle C on the piano, and it's the second highest string on the violin.  If a sound wave is vibrating at 440 Hz, that is, 440 times per second, it's an A4.\n\nSo OK, can you draw a wave on a piece of paper?  It waves up and down like a snake, right?  Well, one time going up and one time going down is one cycle.  That's the bit that repeats.  The main thing that makes different sounds sound different is that these waves have different shapes.  Maybe instead of being like a snake, it goes straight up, over, straight down, over, straight up, over, etc.  That's a square wave.  Or maybe it goes in triangles, making a triangle wave.  Each shape of wave makes a different sound.  For example, if you sing \"ah\" or \"eh\" or \"ee\" or \"oh\" or \"oo\" or \"aw\" or \"uh\" or whatever, on the same note, each of those vowels will make a wave of a different shape.  It'll still have the same number of cycles per second, but the cycle of the \"eh\" will look different from the cycle of the \"oo\".  They'll probably be kind of weird curvy thingies, but they'll be *different* kind of weird curvy thingies.  That's what makes the sound different...\n\n...when you're holding it.  Because there's other stuff too.  When you *start* a sound or *end* a sound, different things can happen.  For example, you can start the sound really hard, hitting it very loud for a very short time and then quickly going away to a normal volume.  For example, if you say \"Dah\", with a hard D, you'll have a different start from if you say \"nah\" with a light n.  These features at the start are called attack and decay; the attack is how long it takes to get to the loudest bit, then the decay is how long it takes to get to the regular volume.  Then comes the end of the sound.  The violin can just keep holding a note at constant volume for a long time, but you can't do that on piano; once you strike a key, the sound starts dying away slowly while you're holding the key down (you can make it stop quickly if you want by releasing the key).  This behavior is called sustain.  When you finally release the key, or when you stop bowing the note, there's a little bit of echo or some sort of sound when you stop; this is called the release.  These four parameters, attack, decay, sustain, and release, are collectively known as the envelope of the sound.  Different sounds have different envelopes too.\n\nBut sounds don't have to be pure.  There can be many different sounds that together make up one sound.  For example, when you say \"Dah\", there's a \"D\" and there's an \"ah\".  If you say \"Tah\" or \"nah\" or \"sah\", you'll have a different initial sound -- the consonant -- but the same vowel sound.  The shape of the wave is in the vowel; the consonant is just what happens right at the beginning.  In those cases, it's not usually a wave at a particular frequency; it's just a burst of energy, and that burst can have any shape at all and it doesn't have to repeat 440 times a second.  Each shape makes a different sound.\n\nSound is one thing and one thing only: air vibrating.  The type of sound we hear is based entirely on the shape of the sound wave.  Different sounds come from different shapes.", "I'm only writing in because I've seen mostly true but not entirely true responses. The top response as I write this is mostly correct but then cliff dives while describing AM radio frequencies as higher than we can hear - those aren't even the same waves, bro.\n\nAnyway, the answer most correct is timbre and to a much smaller extent, attack.\n\nTimbre can be described as the relationship in amplitude (volume) between the fundamental (the assigned pitch as you put it) and its overtones or harmonics. Harmonics/overtones are usually multiples of the fundamental. Interestingly, due to the way pianos are played, its harmonics are slightly sharper than the multiples of its fundamentals, so much so that the middle of the piano is tuned to the same pitch as accompanying instruments, but the lows are tuned almost a quarter tone below where it should be relative to the middle notes, and the highs nearly a quarter note tuned higher.\n\nThe attack is the second most important distinction between instruments. The attack is simply how the sound is initiated. The bowed violin, for example, is nearly a sine wave after the initial attack. ", "Interesting additional fact to all the previous comments: A lot of instruments sound a lot more similar than you may think. A university in my hometown once did a study about that, where a bunch of single instruments were recorded. They all played the same note quite long. The attack of every note was then cut off, so people could only hear the note, but not it's start where for example a piano's hammer hit the string, the bow of a violin touching the string, and so on.\nThe majority of people listening to these sounds couldn't tell the difference between a violin and a trumpet.", "Fourrier tells us that any sound can be described as the sum of pure frequencies. If one axis is frequency, one is amplitude, and a third is time, then you can create a three dimensional representation of an actual sound (technically you need phase also but that's less prominent). This includes everything from timbre to vibrato to the beginning and end of notes to breath noise. \n\nThe pitch we recognize is the fundamental, or base frequency of a sound. Three aspects of timbre I want to touch on are harmonics, evolution over time, and musical noise. \n\nHarmonics are multiples of the base frequency that we hear as part of it. /u/Darth_Ra did a pretty good job making understanding those accessible as wave forms. \nI think that's only a third of the story though. \n\nSome others have mentioned attack, but I think it's more than that. A guitar pluck for instance starts out with many strong harmonics and fades to just a few as the strings fundamental takes over. A wind instrument on the other hand can become brighter (more harmonics) or more reserved at any time, just based on the breath and mouth control of the player. A paino played backwards doesn't quite sound like a piano, because it's we associate the instrument with a pattern of change in timbre over time. A fast scale on the piano is a series of short bright (many rich harmonics) transients whereas that scale on a wind instrument could be a steady smooth waveform changing only in pitch. \n\nFinally musical noise is an important part of what cues our ears in. Some flutes are almost pure sine waves, but the players breath gives the sound context. In a piano the keys make a thud when theyre pressed down and hit the keybed.  It has nothing to do with the strings it's just a piece of wood hitting felt. A guitar string plucked hard has some 'twang' which is basically non-harmonic content. \nThe noise gives context and clues the ears into what they're hearing. \n\nEven though \"harmonics\" or \"timbre\" is probably good enough for a ELI5, I wanted to add what was missing to create a full spectrum over time picture of the sound. ", "Welp, looks like I'm throwing my hat in the ring:\n\nA note can be defined by three things: its pitch, its loudness, and its timbre. I'm not going to go into the physics of these, but I'll explain it as best I can. \n\nThe pitch remains consistent among all instruments. It defines how high or low a note is. For instance, a middle F is a higher note than a middle C, therefore it has a higher pitch. No matter what instrument you're playing, this rule holds true.\n\nLoudness also is consistent among instruments. It can be defined by a couple of things: how easy it is to hear, and how far away from the source you can move and still hear it. As these increase, the sound can be said to get louder.\n\nThe timbre is what differs between instruments, and is what makes the various instruments sound different. Differing timbres are created by the different methods each instrument uses to produce music. A violin sounds different from a trombone, or a piano, because all three produce music differently.\n\nAgain, none of this goes into the physics, so it can't explain why it happens, only that it does.\n\nAannnddddd....\n\nThat's my explanation!", "ELI5-style: Each note consists of a bunch of frequencies laid on top of each other. Whenever you play an \"A\" or \"C-sharp\" or whatever, you're playing a sound that has the same frequencies relatively \"louder\" than the other frequencies in the note and it creates sort of a \"finger print\" which lets us say, \"Oh, that's an A.\" The reason a piano and violin sound different (the \"timbre\") is because they're playing different frequencies in addition to the \"louder\" frequencies.\n\nWhenever anyone in this thread talks about a Fourier analysis, they mean something [like this](_URL_0_). Those big peaks are the \"louder\" frequencies I was talking about, and the non-zero squiggles are the other frequencies.", "Imagine the same note played by a piano and a violin, for the sake of easy comparison.\n\nIn a piano, a hammer strikes the string which makes the string vibrate.\nThe pitch of the note is determined by how often in a second the string vibrates up and down. This is the lowest so-called \u201cmode\u201d of the string, the \u201cslowest\u201d vibration, causing a big bulge:\n\n    \u2022                         \u2022\n     \u2022\u2022\u2022                   \u2022\u2022\u2022\n        \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022         \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\n             \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\n    \n\n But, at the same time, the string can also vibrate in higher modes: the first half can wiggle up while the second half wiggles down, and vice versa:\n\n                   \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\n                \u2022\u2022\u2022    \u2022\u2022\u2022\n    \u2022          \u2022          \u2022\n     \u2022\u2022\u2022    \u2022\u2022\u2022\n        \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\n\nThis vibration has a pitch that\u2019s twice as high as the lowest vibration mode. But it is not as strong.\nThe next mode has 3 bulges, the next mode has 4 bulges, and so on... each of these modes being usually weaker than the other modes, sometimes with certain exceptions.\n\nIn a violin for example, the combinations of these modes can make the string appear to vibrate in an interesting pattern, looking rather like a triangle changing its shape, the pointy bit moving from one end to the other, than round bulges wiggling up and down. This is because the bow constantly scratches the string, which creates a lot of higher modes:\n\n    \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022                       \u2022\u2022\n        \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022                 \u2022\u2022\n            \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022           \u2022\u2022\n                 \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022    \u2022\u2022\n                     \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\n\n\nThe combination of these modes makes the timbre of the sound generated by this string. If the higher modes are very weak then the sound is very \u201csterile\u201d and muffled. if the higher modes are stronger then the sound is brighter.\n\nAs an example, imagine a flute and a violin playing the same note. The air column in a flute produces mainly the lowest mode, which makes a flute sound very \u201csimple\u201d. The same note, played with a violin, sounds much more \u201ccomplex\u201d, brighter. The reason is that the bow scratches the string over and over again, producing lots of higher modes which make the sound appear much more vivid.\n\nEach instrument produces different strengths for each of these modes, and that variation of combinations of modes makes every instrument sound different. And this is valid no matter if the sound is produced by a string or a column of air or by even other means like a vibrating metal plate or the head of a drum. Plates or bells (instead of strings or air columns) just add one additional direction in which they can generate more vibrational modes, which makes them sound even more complex, as everyone knows who has heard xylophones, marimbas or church bells before.\n\nEdit: grammar"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-sinusoidal_waveform"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_tone"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_noise", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embouchure", "http://knutsacoustics.com/files/Noisy-instruments.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_siren", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise"], [], [], [], ["https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/21451/SquareWave.gif", "http://waynestegall.com/politics/earthmusic.htm", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X11Z4-fmE8"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)#Timbre_of_musical_instruments", "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GR249G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1"], [], ["http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/asymmetry/kogan0.gif", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_(music)#Pitch_and_frequency"], [], ["https://cdn.vectorstock.com/i/composite/81,05/sound-wave-vector-5788105.jpg", "http://hearinghealthmatters.org/waynesworld/files/2012/06/Fourier-Analysis.gif"], [], ["https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Graphics/Spectrograph2.gif"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/5tGEDgkZlC8"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.dataq.com/resources/images/article_images/fourier-transform/fourier.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ym528", "title": "What measures were taken to prevent President Reagan from divulging state secrets due to his Alzheimer's disease?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ym528/what_measures_were_taken_to_prevent_president/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cflyth2", "cflytta"], "score": [19, 4], "text": ["Federal records archivist here.  We can't know the answer to that for sure, we aren't privy to details of Reagan's medical privacy.  Most classified topics concern technical details of aircraft and weapon design, or other things that would hardly ever come up in conversation unless you were at work.  It's unlikely that it was ever an issue, and if you've ever been around an Alzheimer's patient, you know they say a lot of things that aren't true and don't make much sense, sadly.  If it did come up by some chance, the family would just sign a non-disclosure form, probably.", "Maybe the moderators will let it pass, but this question technically violates the 20-year rule (Reagan was diagnosed in 1994, and your question would concern events in the years after that). \n\nIt's an interesting question, though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "naynb", "title": "Why does solder attach to some metals and not to others?", "selftext": "I'm a long-time electrical engineer and I've never heard a good reason why solder will easily attach to gold and copper, for example; but it won't attach to metals such as steel or aluminum.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/naynb/why_does_solder_attach_to_some_metals_and_not_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c37nfs0", "c37no9v", "c37nfs0", "c37no9v"], "score": [9, 3, 9, 3], "text": ["Normal 63-37 Sn-Pb solder attaches to aluminum and steel just fine.  You may be having trouble if your workpiece is larger than a small contact or wire point.  In that case, your iron may not be powerful enough to heat the contact point, and the solder will ball up instead of wetting out.\n\nTry a smaller wire / piece of metal, or a more powerful heat source.  Some larger soldering work is done with propane torches instead of irons.\n\nedit:  You should also make sure to properly clean the aluminum or steel if there's an oxide layer present.  Aluminum pretty much always forms a quick oxide, but I've never had much trouble soldering on top of it.  You can purchase special flux for this purpose.", "Solder only works if the contact is heated up as well. Certain metals aren't going to heat up as easily or as fast and so the solder won't bond.", "Normal 63-37 Sn-Pb solder attaches to aluminum and steel just fine.  You may be having trouble if your workpiece is larger than a small contact or wire point.  In that case, your iron may not be powerful enough to heat the contact point, and the solder will ball up instead of wetting out.\n\nTry a smaller wire / piece of metal, or a more powerful heat source.  Some larger soldering work is done with propane torches instead of irons.\n\nedit:  You should also make sure to properly clean the aluminum or steel if there's an oxide layer present.  Aluminum pretty much always forms a quick oxide, but I've never had much trouble soldering on top of it.  You can purchase special flux for this purpose.", "Solder only works if the contact is heated up as well. Certain metals aren't going to heat up as easily or as fast and so the solder won't bond."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aone8h", "title": "After DNA replication, what prevents the newly replicated daughter DNA strands from being replicated once again?", "selftext": "My best guess is that there is a marker or signal protein that tells the difference between old and new DNA strands, however a Google search doesn't bring up anything nor does my Biology teacher know.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aone8h/after_dna_replication_what_prevents_the_newly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eg2obj7", "eg41ymn"], "score": [12, 5], "text": ["In bacteria, the daughter DNA molecules are hemi-methylated (only one DNA strand is methylated), which is bound by the protein SeqA, stopping further replication. \nIn eukaryotes, a complex of proteins involved in cell division binds the newly replicated DNA to prevent replication (e.g. Geminin, Cdt1, Cdc6). There are other ways DNA replication is controlled as well, these are just the ones I have in my notes.", "First time answering here, but DNA replication is my main field so this is a great question to start with!\n\nThe quick answer is, it's all about the regulation of origin firing. DNA replication can only start from specific places on chromosomes called origins of replication, where replisomes (the multi-protein machines that replicate DNA) are loaded onto the DNA. After the replisomes are loaded, they have to be activated by a special regulatory mechanism that basically turns them on, so they can start replicating. The trick is making sure this regulatory mechanism only works once per cell cycle. That way, each origin will only \"fire\" once, and therefore the DNA will only be replicated once.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHere's a bit more detail if you're interested: \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn bacteria, there is generally just one circular chromosome, and just one origin of replication. The regulation of origin firing in bacteria is fascinating, and still being researched, but without going into all the details I'll just say that the origin fires early enough in the cell cycle so that when the cell is ready to divide, replication of the entire chromosome would already be complete. In bacteria that are rapidly dividing (the classical example is *E. coli*, which divides every 20 minutes under optimal conditions), replicating the entire chromosome from the one origin can take longer than the time the cell needs to prepare for division; bacteria have solved this problem by beginning to replicate the chromosome again, for the next division, while the current round of replication is still ongoing. This means that newly replicated DNA can, in fact, start being replicated *again* before the previous round has completed, but only in a tightly regulated and well-timed manner.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn eukaryotes, the process is a bit more complex. The cell cycle is more orderly: cells generally grow during the G1 phase of the cell cycle, replicate DNA during the S phase, and prepare for mitosis in the G2 phase. Mitosis only occurs after DNA replication has been fully completed. There are multiple linear chromosomes, and each one has multiple origins of replication along it's length. This presents a bigger regulatory challenge: in bacteria, if the origin fires again a bit too soon, it's not the end of the world, but in eukaryotes, if even a single origin (out of hundreds) accidentally fires twice during a single S phase, it's really bad. Part of the chromosome will be replicated twice, and this will probably lead to chromosome breakage and serious damage to the stability of the genome. Therefore, a clever mechanism has evolved called \"origin licensing\". Basically what this means is that replisomes are loaded onto the DNA and sort of \"pre-activated\" (or \"licensed\") during G1 phase. The proteins responsible for this licensing step exist only in G1 phase and are destroyed before S phase. When S phase begins, only replisomes that have already been loaded at origins and licensed can be activated. This ensures that every region of every chromosome will only be replicated once per cell cycle, because as soon as a replisome leaves the origin and starts to replicate the region next to it, no additional replisomes can be loaded at that origin until the next G1 phase, when the licensing proteins appear again.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFinally, I should point out that this whole issue has nothing to do with \"telling the difference between old and new DNA strands\". There is no need to do that in order to prevent re-replication; the only thing needed is to make sure that every origin fires once per cycle. There are *also* mechanisms for telling apart old and new DNA strands (someone mentioned hemi-methylation in bacteria in another comment, which is very true, and eukaryotes have a different mechanism to achieve this), but this is not for preventing re-replication, but rather for directing mismatch repair to the newer strand.   \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "47zuoe", "title": "why would anyone try a very addictive/harmful drug like meth or heroin for the first time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47zuoe/eli5_why_would_anyone_try_a_very_addictiveharmful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0ghstk", "d0ghx6c", "d0gi413", "d0gi4lo", "d0gi4zf"], "score": [5, 7, 7, 5, 2], "text": ["Peer pressure can be a powerful force. In the interest of going along with the flow, people will go very far. Check out the [Milgram Experiment](_URL_0_)", "So, the question is why people try things that are bad for them, even if they feel good?\n\nDo you ever drink soda? what about eating fast food? drinking alcohol? they're a lesser extent, but you must be totally aware that's not good for your body. But you make excuses, \"oh only this one time\", \"it cant be THAT bad for you\", etc etc, but the fact remains you're doing something bad for you to feel good. ", "A lot of heroin addicts start using heroin after they've been addicted to prescription opiates--it's surprisingly easy for this to happen even when they're legitimately prescribed.  The pill addiction can carry on for a while after their prescriptions are used up and they get their pills on the black market.  When they start to run short on money, they'll switch to heroin since it's stronger and cheaper.", "Desperation and needing to do absolutely anything to escape from reality or to numb some sort of pain. At least that's how I feel when it comes to heroin, the only people that I knew that did meth were bikers and for them it was part of the culture. Other than that it could just be curiosity or, as everyone else has said, peer pressure.", "'Addictive' is a very subjective term; the severity depends from person to person through their biological make up. What may be extremely addictive to some, may not be for others. For example, people that don't have an addictive personality and also have a strong sense of will power may want to try a drug once for the experience. That's just my opinion on the matter.\n\nCan confirm anecdotally."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7ij58v", "title": "Who wrote the book of revelations?", "selftext": "It would seem that traditionally john of patmos and the apostle john were thought of to be the same person. But more recently that they are probably not.\n\nBeale in his short commentary on revelation says it was most likely john the apostle due to the authors authority in the church and that it was highly unlikely that any other could john could have written it.\n\nHowever Leonard Thompson in his book of revelation commentary states that early thinkers such as Dionysus of Alexandria states that it cannot be john the apostle due to his stylistic and linguistic changes compared to the gospel.\n\nEssentially what im asking is if there is any kind of consensus about the authorship of the book of revelations ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ij58v/who_wrote_the_book_of_revelations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqzoftd", "dqzqje7", "dr08hoz"], "score": [13, 41, 3], "text": ["I recommend that you ask this question on /r/AcademicBiblical, where you will get a good intro to the (rather uncertain) modern theories on its authorship and dating. It's a bit on the basic intro side, but they tend to welcome those kinds of questions.", "No, there's no consensus, but the theories are much less complicated than for other New Testament books. They boil down to perhaps 4:\n\n1. John the Apostle\n2. Another John\n3. Someone not named John.\n4. The book is a composite work.\n\nView 4 is popular for some other biblical texts, but not widely held for Revelation. Beckwith's classic 1919 *The Apocalypse of John* surveys compositional views of the 19th and early 20th century. A more recent advocate of a compositional view would be someone like J. Massyngberde Ford who sees it as a product of a circle of followers originally associated with John the Baptist.\n\nView 3, that the work is pseudonymous, runs into all the usual arguments over pseudepigraphical writings. It's argued against by another classic commentary, R.H. Charles *The Revelation of St. John* (1920). There are good grounds for continuing to reject pseudonymity - unlike other apocalypses, the author claims no ancient figure to give authority to their text, indeed they simply self-identify as \"John\". Calling oneself \"John\" if, say, one's name was actually \"James\", doesn't serve any purpose. You'd expect a pseudonymous text to identify himself *at least* as John *the Apostle* or some other authoritative figure. \n\nIn essence, view 3 is problematic because it doesn't tell you anything. If someone unknown whose name isn't John writes a book under the name \"John\", this differs very little from some unknown person whose name *is* John.\n\nThat brings us back to 1 and 2. It's important to remember that the text doesn't identify the author as John the Apostle. And, it's important to recognise two other factors - (1) the author of the fourth gospel never self-identifies as John the Apostle either, and (2) even if you decided that John the Apostle wrote Revelation, that doesn't necessitate that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John either.\n\nA typical contender for another John, at least a known 'John', is 'John the Elder', mentioned by Papias in a fragment in Eusebius *Ecclesiastical History* 3.39. But it's not even certain that Papias was trying to distinguish between two Johns. In effect, attributing it to John the Elder is based on a very thin slice of data.\n\nThompson is quite write that as early as Dionysius of Alexandria in the mid-3rd century there were questions about the style. Revelation's Greek is quite different from the Gospel of John, and in itself it's very odd (and the subject of its own set of debates - was the author a second-language speaker, does he make grammatical errors on purpose, etc.). That said, Dionysius was also trying to demote the book because it was being used by his theological opponents in the local area. Anyway, everyone recognises that stylistically there are significant differences between Revelation and GJohn, though there are other aspects of similarity (the Exodus-Moses motif, christological titles and patterns, and certain vocabulary items prominent in both books).\n\nWho wrote it? We don't know and there's no consensus. The majority of scholars, I'd say, settle into a position that is \"someone named John\", which is what the text of the book tells you anyway.\n\n", " >  It would seem that traditionally john of patmos and the apostle john were thought of to be the same person. But more recently that they are probably not.\n\nI just wanted to chime in to say that, while it is traditional to identify John of Patmos and the Apostle John, it would be a mistake to say that it's a modern thing to doubt this identification.\n\nIndeed, during the first centuries the identity of the two authors was seriously disputed. Part of this dispute is that several early Christians (before the solidification of the canon) didn't think that the Apocalypse was an inspired text - and these Christians obviously, believing the text to be apocryphal, had no issue in pronouncing the author to be either an impostor, or a name whose name happened to be John by pure coincidence.\n\nThere's examples found, and I'll mention two that come from Eusebius' Church History.\n\nIn the first, he's relating the writings of Dyonisus of Alexandria, a [Bishop-Pope of Alexandria](_URL_0_), [Book 7 chapter 25](_URL_1_).\n\n >  \"Some before us have set aside and rejected the book [of Revelation] altogether, criticising it chapter by chapter, and pronouncing it without sense or argument, and maintaining that the title is fraudulent. For they say that it is not the work of John, nor is it a revelation, because it is covered thickly and densely by a vail of obscurity. And they affirm that none of the apostles, and none of the saints, nor any one in the Church is its author, but that Cerinthus, who founded the sect which was called after him the Cerinthian, desiring reputable authority for his fiction, prefixed the name. [...] But I could not venture to reject the book, as many brethren hold it in high esteem.\n\nAt this point Dyonisus analyses the Apocalypse, to conclude that:\n\n >  Therefore that he was called John, and that this book is the work of one John, I do not deny. And I agree also that it is the work of a holy and inspired man. But I cannot readily admit that he was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, by whom the Gospel of John and the Catholic Epistle were written. For I judge from the character of both, and the forms of expression, and the entire execution of the book that it is not his. For the evangelist nowhere gives his name, or proclaims himself, either in the Gospel or Epistle. [...] Moreover, it can also be shown that the diction of the Gospel and Epistle differs from that of the Apocalypse. [...] I do not deny that [the writer of the Apocalypse] saw a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy. I perceive, however, that his dialect and language are not accurate Greek, but that he uses barbarous idioms, and, in some places, solecisms. \"\n\nWhether you accept Dyonisus' method and conclusion or not (it's worth reading if you are interested.), this letter documents two sort of ancient attitudes on the Apocalypse: those who thought it was an entire fraud (whom Dyonisus disagrees with) and those who accept the text as holy, but don't accept John as the author (Dyonisus himself).\n\nIn the second example, Eusebius is relating the words of Papias. In his writings, Papias mentions two different Johns - the apostle, and \"Presbyter John\" (John the Elder). Eusebius picks on that and says:\n\n >  It is worth while observing here that the name John is twice enumerated by him. [...] This shows that the statement of those is true, who say that there were two persons in Asia that bore the same name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which, even to the present day, is called John\u2019s. It is important to notice this. For it is probable that it was the second, if one is not willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Revelation, which is ascribed by name to John.\n\nIn a rather convoluted way, Eusebius relates the two Johns in Papias to two tombs in Ephesus (which were also discussed by Dyonisus, and it is no coincidence), and that while the first John is the evangelist, the second John is the presbyter: and that one might \"not be willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Apocalypse\".\n\n____________________________________________________\n\nSo, anyway, there has been controversy about the book of the Apocalypse... basically ever since the Apocalypse was written. It was a minoritarian view, but there were Church fathers who weren't at all convinced by the argument that Apocalypse John and Gospel John were the same."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Dionysius_of_Alexandria", "http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.xii.xxvi.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1n92ti", "title": "Can someone please explain to me the concept of light cones?", "selftext": "I've been getting interested in science again lately so I downloaded the kindle version of  \"A Brief History of Time.\" I've gotten as far as this part and now I'm having trouble picturing how light cones work in my head. Are we actually talking about a cone that the light from a specific light source would make as it travels outward through space and time from it's origin? Or is it more of a diagram that what would be affected by what happens at a particular event in space time? Or am I way off?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1n92ti/can_someone_please_explain_to_me_the_concept_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccgn9ax", "ccgnwgv", "ccgrm7a", "ccgwk4i"], "score": [3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["The light cone is a somewhat abstract way of visualize how things are connected in time and space. The light cone simply shows how far away things can be from an event and still be causally connected as time goes by.\n\nWhen an event occurs somewhere (event A), information about this event can be transmitted no faster than the speed of light, that means another event (event B) can only be caused by event A if event B is inside event A's light cone. If event A happened at location 0,0,0 and time 0, and event B happened at time T, then the location of event B must be inside the sphere with radius c*T.\n\nThe light cone is just called a cone because we consider all spatial dimensions to be identical and so only show two of them.", "The \"cone\" isn't the actual thing; it's the shape of the graph when you describe the actual thing.\n\nThe origin is a point, the \"now\" if you like. For every unit of time that passes, light travels a certain distance. If you talk about a year, everything more than a light year away is outside the light cone. Nothing that occurs at \"now\" could affect that thing a year from now, and nothing that thing did within the last year had any effect on \"now.\"\n\nThe thing you're describing goes in all directions, not a cone. But if you draw it on paper in a graph of time x distance, rather than time x direction, you can draw it as a cone (well, two cones, past and future), to easily visualize whether or not a different \"now\" affects your own \"now\" in either direction, by whether it's inside or outside the cone.", "[Here's the typical way they show it](_URL_0_). Imagine that, instead of being 3 dimensional, all of space is two dimensional, and that you're standing still. The big, flat plane in the middle of the image is space at the actual present time - how everything is at a given moment. If you go up or down, the line directly through the center of the graph (labelled \"time\") represents your location at different points in time; points horizontally off of that line represent other locations at that same point in time. \n\nNow, it takes time for light to reach you, so when you see something farther away from you, you're actually seeing it at some point in the past.  This means that what you *actually* see is, for example, everything close to you X units of time ago, then everything a bit farther 2X units of time ago, then everything even farther 3X units ago, etc. If you were to plot what you saw on the above image, you would then see a circle - representing everything close to you - at a point X units below you on the time axis, then another, wide circle, representing everything a bit further, 2X units below you, etc. \n\nIf you imagine, instead of just a few circles, you've got a circle for every single distance from you, and each one at a corresponding time, you end up with a series of increasingly wide circles going back in time, creating the \"past\" light cone you see in the image. The \"cone\" is just a way of visualizing all of the past moments that you can see at the present time - obviously the real universe is 3 dimensional, so the reality is a bit more complicated. \n\nSimilarly, the \"future light cone\" in the image represents all of the locations that will see light coming off of your present location, and the times at which those locations will see that light - the further in the future you go, the further away the points will be that are be seeing your light for the first time, so you get another cone, just upside down.", "From a less mathematical point of view, if some object emits a burst of light at a certain time, the fact that the speed of that light is finite means that after a certain amount of time has elapsed, that light can only go so far. The axis which runs down the height of the 'cone' is the time axis. The further you 'look' into time, the more distance your light pulse can have covered, so the 'cone' gets wider (the cone is just many circles, each getting progressively larger). \n\nYou can also think of it this way: the volume inside the cone is all the things that can be affected by your light pulse at a certain time, the volume outside cannot possibly observe your light pulse, and so your light pulse and any object outside of the cone are causally unrelated*.\n\n* A note on causality: it depends on where you're sitting, according to Dr. Einstein. Consider this scenario: you are at point *a* and you assert that two events cannot possibly be causally related. I am at point *b* and I assure you the are. According to special relativity, we are both right."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/World_line.svg/481px-World_line.svg.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "x4ey9", "title": "how can pepsi use coke in their ads so prevalently without legal issues?", "selftext": "...confusing", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x4ey9/eli5_how_can_pepsi_use_coke_in_their_ads_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5j2gcq", "c5j3siv", "c5j69d8", "c5j6e1e", "c5j6e90", "c5j6tga", "c5j89f1", "c5jc4co", "c5jc8r0"], "score": [149, 30, 40, 3, 2, 14, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Why do you think there ought to be legal issues?\n\nAnyone can use any other brand in their commercial so long as they don't construe that brand as endorsing your own (without their permission) or say anything untrue about it.\n\nYou usually won't see a company show a competitor's brand in their commercial because they don't want to increase their competitor's brand recognition. Since it's impossible to increase Coke's brand recogition (it is the most recognized brand in the world), there's no incentive for Pepsi to avoid using them on this count.", "I've never seen Pepsi using Coke in their ads here in France. I guess laws are different in the US?", "I think what op is asking is, isn't that kind of thing defamation? If not, what makes this slandering not defamation?", "because of name recognition. there's no such thing as bad publicity, says the old adage. If Tide has an add and compares itself to Brand X, the viewer doesn't learn of or be reminded of the other brand. If Tide has an add and compares itself to Alondra Laundry Soap, well, then the viewer suddenly is aware of Alondra Laundry Soap. Free advertising for Alondra Laundry Soap. Even if Tide says Alondra Laundry Soap is bad, Alondra Laundry Soap gets free name recognition. I suppose Pepsi knows that everyone's heard of Coke, so why hide it.", "In addition to what others are saying, pepsi and coke kind of have a marketing alliance and their \"competition\" is a calculated show to get people to think and talk about which is their favourite etc. and buy more.  Given this, I'm sure they communicate about their ads before showing them, it's not like Coke doesn't find out what Pepsi will air until it's aired.  They're not going to seriously go to eachothers throats legally.", "In a marketing course I took back in my undergrad days, I remember the professor explaining that there is a rule of thumb in advertising. Now I don't know the legality of this, but generally companies who are not the market leader will use the name of the market leader in their commercials. \n\nPepsi using Coke is the most popular example, but I've seen insurance use this (save xxx compared to Allstate or Geico), and I've seen it used in car commercials comparing their luxury car to Mercedes Benz. However you'll never see Mercedes talking bad about Lexus, Infinity, or Acura.\n\nLike I said, I don't know the legality of it, but this was the rule of thumb in advertising that I learned as an undergrad. I always wondered the same thing, so when we talked about this, I really found it fascinating. ", "Previously companies were not allowed to name a competitor's brand in an advertisement.  At some point, I forget exactly when, the FTC adjusted  that policy allowing competitors' brands to be named.\n\nIn 1981, a company called Jartran (a Ryder-owned truck rental company) was sued by U-Haul for comparative adverts run earlier that year.  Jartran made several claims which patently false about the competition and the judge awarded U-Haul $13 million in damages over the case.   The precedent set in that case much more clearly defined how to handle comparative advertising.", "Trademark says \"I own this brand name and logo and stuff, and you can't use it to do your business\". This is to keep people from being confused. If I made some iced tea in my bathtub, and called it \"Coke\", people would get confused and think it was Coca-Cola. When it wasn't, people would blame Coca-Cola for selling them shit, not me. Also, I would be taking sales away from Coca-Cola because people who wanted real Coke spent their money on my crap instead.\n\nSo I'm not allowed to use Coke, Coca-Cola, or their logo or anything in my advertising, because that's like impersonation.\n\nThe one HUGE exception is that I can use their logos and names as long as I'm using them to clearly and FACTUALLY represent their product.\n\nI can't say \"Buy my stuff because Coke\"\nI can hold up a can of Coke and say \"Buy my stuff, because it is NOT Coke, like this can. It's iced tea and it tastes better. Watch me give some to Fido here\"\n\nIn that case, I'm not claiming that *I* am Coke, or that I'm selling Coke, or that my special bathtub iced tea is Coke. I'm saying that actual Coke is, actually, Coke... and more to the point, the only way I can actually do that IS by using the Coke name.", "I wish I could have taken a picture but there was this Pepsi machine by a hotel that had a sign near it that read \"Please stop urinating by/on our machine\".  Someone wrote below it \"That's not urine, your Pepsi cans are leaking\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4gbovj", "title": "What was the icon of Paris before the Eiffel Tower?", "selftext": "The Eiffel tower has represented Paris in countless contexts, but what was used before 1889? Was it Notre Dame?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4gbovj/what_was_the_icon_of_paris_before_the_eiffel_tower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2giypb", "d2gobqx"], "score": [47, 29], "text": ["Looking at medieval times, philosopher John of Jandun wrote his *Treatise on the Praises of Paris* in 1323 and singles out three buildings for praise: the Notre Dame Cathedral as you mentioned, the Conciergerie, and the Sainte-Chapelle. All three buildings are on the Ile de la Cite so I think this island in its total could be considered the icon of Medieval Paris\n\nI think you could also make an argument for the Sorbonne as a major icon of Paris. Back in the Middle Ages I definitely think you could consider it the intellectual capital of Medieval Europe in terms of the thinkers it produced in this period.", "I am not a historian, but I am fascinated by your question and have been reading about it all morning when I should have been doing other things. I will present a brief synthesis of my findings and my -- again, *non-professional* -- conclusion, which is...\n\nTL;DR: There was no \"icon of Paris\" before the Eiffel Tower.\n\nFirst and foremost, I recommend Roland Barthes' 1979 collection of essays *The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies*, which helped shape my thinking on this question quite a bit. The first essay in the collection is about the Tower. He begins by summing up the same position you take in your question:\n\n >  The Tower is ... present to the entire world. First of all as a universal symbol of Paris, it is everywhere on the globe where Paris is to be stated as an image; from the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn't made, somehow, in the Tower's name, no schoolbook, poster, or film about France which fails to propose it as the major sign of a people and of a place: it belongs to the universal language of travel (3-4).\n\nNow, to sum up his argument about the Tower, allow me to quote this excerpt from the collection's first essay on the eponymous landmark:\n\n >  This pure -- virtually empty -- sign [the Tower] -- is ineluctable, *because it means everything*. In order to negate the Eiffel Tower ... you must, like Maupassant, get up on it and, so to speak, identify yourself with it. Like man himself, who is the only one not to know his own glance, the Tower is the only blind point of the total optical system of which it is the center and Paris the circumference. But in this movement which seems to limit it, the Tower acquires a new power: an object when we look at it, becomes a lookout in its turn when we visit it, and now constitutes as an object, simultaneously extended and collected beneath it, that Paris which just now was looking at it (4).\n\nSo not only is the Tower, through its height, geographical placement, and aesthetic, constantly seen (indeed, Barthes notes that \"you must take endless precautions, in Paris, not to see the Eiffel Tower; whatever the season, through mist and cloud, on overcast days or in sunshine, in rain -- wherever you are, whatever the landscape of roofs, domes, or branches separating you from it, *the Tower is there*\" (3).) but it unifies all of Paris under its gaze. Moreover, this is its only real function. Built as the entrance to the 1889 *Exposition Universalle* in Paris, the Tower was quickly criticized as [\"useless and monstrous\"](_URL_1_) in the famous Artists' Petition, published in the Parisian newspaper *Le Temps*. To ascend it, to look down on Paris from above, was to coordinate \"the city into a kind of nature; it constitutes the swarming of men into a landscape, it adds to the frequently grim urban myth a romantic dimension, a harmony, a mitigation; by it, starting from it, the city joins up with the great natural themes which are offered to the curiosity of men: the ocean, the storm, the mountains, the snow the rivers\" (Barthes 8) Barthes goes on to say: \n\n >  To visit the Tower, then, is to enter into contact not with a historical Sacred, as is the case for the majority of monuments, but rather with a new nature, that of human space: the Tower is not a trace, a souvenir, in short a culture; but rather an immediate consumption of humanity made natural by that glance which transforms it into space\" (8). \n\nThe Eiffel Tower is the icon of Paris, then, because it *is* Paris.  That is its function -- perhaps not its original intention, but nonetheless the Tower (which \"attracts meaning, the way a lightning rod attracts thunderbolts\" (Barthes 9)) has become metonym and icon for the city.\n\nI would contend that none of Paris' other famous structures or monuments do the same thing as the Tower, though the obvious contender is, as you suggest, Notre Dame. After all, in his liberetto *Les mari\u00e9s de la tour Eiffel*, Jean Cocteau has his characters proclaim [\"The Eiffel Tower is a world, like Notre-Dame. It is the Notre-Dame of the Left Bank.\" \"It is the Queen of Paris.\"](_URL_0_) It was started in the time of Charlemagne and, as /u/VaughanThrilliams (great name) said, it was picked out for its prominence and splendor pretty much as soon as it was built. Seeing it today, Notre-Dame is still spectacular, and it definitely is *one of* the icons of Paris -- but it is not, nor was it ever, *the* icon in the way the Tower is (and in the way your question situates it).\n\nPrior to the construction of the Tower, I think that Paris was an icon in itself -- it was, as Walter Benjamin famously described it, \"the Captial of the Nineteenth Century\" -- the paragon of fashion, industry, arts, and culture of all kinds. Inasmuch as the Eiffel Tower, the largest structure in the world when it was first unveiled, the gateway to an international event designed to showcase art and human achievement, *is* Paris (an empty signifier, Barthes' lightning rod of meaning), it has entered into popular culture vernacular as shorthand for the city itself. Nothing before could have done that. Nothing before it was so thoroughly magnificent yet ambivalent, so thoroughly the place where it stood, as to warrant iconicity of the same magnitude. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=AKggnnC0TssC&amp;pg=PA166&amp;lpg=PA166&amp;dq=%22Notre-Dame+of+the+Left+Bank%22+the+queen+of+paris&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=K0PQuJKuX-&amp;sig=SfzvmEPo3Xd2Rd0qSvnzpsxZXe0&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwibqJjZlKrMAhUBHh4KHWukDQIQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&amp;q=%22Notre-Dame%20of%20the%20Left%20Bank%22%20the%20queen%20of%20paris&amp;f=false", "http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/24/gustave-eiffel-beyond-tower"]]}
{"q_id": "2m2eye", "title": "why does a line have 1 dimension while a point has none?", "selftext": "If a line is made up of infinite points, why do we say that a line has 1 dimension while a point, by itself has zero?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m2eye/eli5_why_does_a_line_have_1_dimension_while_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm0avlq", "cm0bog7", "cm0brsb", "cm0cc6j"], "score": [12, 7, 6, 2], "text": ["A line has 1 dimension because if you're on the line, a single number is enough to describe exactly where you are.\n\nA point has 0 dimensions because if you're on the point, you need no numbers to describe exactly where you are.", "Think of dimension as something that can be measured. \n\nA cube has (1) length, (2) width, and (3) height. So it has 3 dimensions.\n\nA plane has (1) length, and (2) width. So it has 2 dimensions.\n\nA line has (1) length. So it has 1 dimension.\n\nA point has none of the above. So it has 0 dimensions.", "An simple way to think about dimensions is how many length based measurements you can make.\n\nIf you take a point, how many length based measurements can you make of it? None. (0)\n\nIf you take a line, you can measure its length. (1)\n\nIf you take a square, you can measure its height and width. (2)\n\nIf you take a cube, you can measure its height, width and depth. (3)\n\nIf you take a Tardis, you can measure its height, width, depth and a point in time. (4)", "Dimensions just mean how many numbers you need to describe the system.\n\nYou don't need any numbers to describe a dimensionless point because there's nothing to describe.\n\nA line has length, so to describe a point in that system, you need 1 number: the point's position on the line. \n\nA plane has length and width, so you need two numbers to describe the position of a point on the plane.\n\nAs you add more dimensions, you need more numbers. 3D needs 3 numbers (x,y,z)\n\n4D Spacetime requires 4 numbers, and the point is now considered an 'event'. It requires the (x,y,z) of 3d space, plus a 'when': (x,y,z,t)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "295oms", "title": "why can't a person with alzheimer's have a fact sheet in front of them at all times reminding them of every truth about them, including the fact that they have alzheimer's, and that they are expected to be constantly confused?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/295oms/eli5_why_cant_a_person_with_alzheimers_have_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cihnm4p", "cihnwe3", "cihoiuf", "cihojez", "cihop1l", "cihop89", "cihoqy6", "cihotoa", "cihp4b6", "cihp91f", "cihplif", "cihpr3c", "cihqa3j", "cihrhpp", "cihsjjy", "ciht2t1", "ciht5wb", "cihtt5w", "cihu2vb", "cihu50a", "cihuaa4", "cihudxr", "cihuf7i", "cihui86", "cihuyub", "cihv1vm", "cihv2rs", "cihv78r", "cihvsrp", "cihvu6b", "cihvuhm", "cihx1pc", "cihxm9e", "cihxou3", "cihxqla", "cihxt30", "cihxwtu", "cihxxlt", "cihxz7t", "cihy0hn", "cihy6pp", "cihy8jv", "cihyame", "cihydsn", "cihyfi0", "cihyfyg", "cihyp4t", "cihyqnv", "cihywtt", "cihyyea", "cihyzc6", "cihz6ex", "cihzyo1", "cii0dnl", "cii11xm", "cii12pc", "cii1fou", "cii1i3j", "cii33ik", "cii3h1i", "cii42gq", "cii4n3c", "cii6h61", "cii6vo5", "cii7f9r", "cii7qz0", "ciia2mj", "ciiajr8", "ciibhka", "ciibvqt", "ciibw23", "ciic7we", "ciicabw", "ciicznl", "ciid2sc", "ciih6kr", "cij15jj"], "score": [3, 1155, 90, 15, 4, 16, 308, 308, 48, 39, 2, 2, 2, 10, 30, 2, 21, 4, 8, 11, 2, 4, 7, 8, 6, 21, 6, 3, 3, 2, 72, 25, 3, 2, 5, 9, 2, 22, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 5, 2, 4, 8, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 3, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["What if they move? Like physically get up and walk somewhere?", "Because it will add to their misery. This is not like the forgetting that non-sufferers may experience as a result of an injury or hangover; it goes much deeper and has a shorter cycle. You can tell an Alzheimer's patient a \"fact\" one minute and it's gone in 30 seconds. The *truth* for advanced patients may bear absolutely no resemblance to fact, because a humane approach most often involves meeting their uncertainties with whatever words bring comfort, not pounding them with proof that they're wrong.", "Alzheimer's is more than simply forgetting; that's just the side effect that non-suffers see most.  The sheet would be meaningless to them.  ", "Alzheimer's disease isn't just a sitcom-like trouble with memories.   There is a hell of a lot more going wrong with their brain.  The placard you place in front of them will probably just confuse them more...you know what?  Yah I'm for it, get them tattoos memento style.  ", "Why not just tattoo your body with info about your life...", "When you're doubting everything else, why would you believe a piece of paper? ", "My grandmother is in a nursing home and has what I'd have to imagine is fairly advanced Alzheimer's / dementia. She thinks she's in her fifties, that her parents are alive, and that she owns extensive properties in Florida. Not only that, but she believes not that she is in an elderly home, but that she works at the facility as a manager of some sort. She talks about all the people that have come to visit her lately, many of them years deceased. She has told me, to my face, that she doesn't see my mother very often because of her young children, which she says she understands. I am obviously said child, and I'm 29, and my mom is there three times a week. My grandmother is 85 and hasn't walked in three years, much less been outside.\n\nWe've been advised to pick and choose what to tell her about reality as we know it. If she's frustrated, telling her her parents are 25 years dead and that she couldn't walk if she wanted to doesn't help anybody. Even when you do decide to correct her, there's the chance that she'll argue. And the arguments are pointless. *Of course I can go down to the bar for a drink, I've lived here since the Carter administration! I have the clearance to do it!* And so instead you say stuff like \"Oh, really nan? That's great you got to go into the city and get your hair done - it looks great!\"\n\nIt's sort of depressing, but you just roll with it because you want to cause them less grief than more. Quality of life is sort of hard to rationalize in a nursing home, but you do what you can to make them comfortable. ", "If you had a fact sheet in front of you saying your kid has had another kid who is also a gangster and the year is 2070, you'd be really reluctant to believe it.", "Because it's not that they forgotten the information, it's that they can't process memory correctly. They essentially have been displaced in time. So even when presented with facts about their life, they wouldn't see them that way. Because they have no frame of reference for those memories. ", "Ah, the \"Memento\" method. Unfortunately Alzheimer's goes a bit deeper than just memory loss - it's an actual cognitive impairment. Even if they're able to read the sign there's still a pretty good chance they're not going to understand it. ", "My grandmother could only read the most basic sentences in the final stages of Alzhiemers, and she couldn't write. ", "Tagging on to this ELI5: reading comments and stories about people having Alzheimer's, why is it that their story is more or less the same every time they \"wake up\"?", "Imagine being told that everything you think is going on is a lie.  Would you believe it?", "This wouldn't work. Someone with Alzheimer's might not remember the beginning of the page once they get to the end of it. Even if they did manage to read through it and understand they would most likely forget shortly after.\n\nAs well as this although someone with Alzheimer's can't remember their feelings remain. If I had Alzheimer's and were to read that many of my relatives were dead I would be upset, then forget, and then wonder why I'm upset which would just confuse me and frustrate me even more.\n\nThe best way I found to deal with Alzheimer's is to agree with the person suffering.", "Imagine right now having a fact sheet in front of you telling you that it is like 2050 right now and you have Alzheimer's. You would be really confused, too. To them, it's just like this, because they perceive their own reality. ", "They may at some point also forget how's to read and write as well", "Please kill me if this ever happens to me. ", "This would make a great film. They could cast Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore as the lead roles", "I work at a long term care facility that has a dementia unit. I tried this tactic with one of the ladies who repeatedly asks the same  things over and over.  Where am I? How did I get here? Where is my family? What day is it? Etc.... Over and over and over all day long. I made her a paper saying she is at such and such facility,  the date,  the fact that her son lives down the road and visits often etc. It worked for this particular lady,  she would look at it and read it out loud all day long and it seemed to calm her.  You have to remember  though that this won't work for some or most alz  patients becuase some of them,  depending on where they are in the disease process, have even lost the ability to read. ", "My grandmother has vascular demetia (behaves much like alzheimer's). She cannot speak in coherent sentences, cannot read, cannot even focus on something like a picture or a card. She hasn't recognised us, her family, in a few years. Sometimes she thinks she is a little girl. Sometimes she asks where her mother is. Sometimes she thinks she lives in a house on her own, and that she goes to work in the city every day. She doesn't know that her brother died a few weeks ago. She couldn't even go to the funeral because she requires so much attentive care. \n\nMost of the people in her area of the nursing home also cannot speak coherently. Many cannot speak at all. They have a large tv that plays old movies, but none of them can focus on the tv at all. They just don't process the sensory material. \n\nIt is a very, very sad way to die, and for some people, it is a long decline. It has been 10 years now, for my grandmother. ", "I've heard that is an accurate representation of Alzheimer's. (Related)\n_URL_0_", "You can't have a three sentence conversation with my grandmother. She can respond to a question or ask one and seem to be aware of the answer, but the next sentence might as well be about something entirely different for all the connection she'll make between it and the first. Like, 'Do you like peas?' \"Yes!\" 'Would you like some?' \"Some what?\"\n\n\nThis note would be less than useful. She might read it out loud repeatedly all day long, like she will the headline of a newspaper or the titles of books on the bookshelf, but it wouldn't mean anything to her. By the time she reads the second sentence she's entirely forgotten the first, and that's assuming she ever processed it to begin with. \n\n\nOne of the big things with trying to talk to someone with dementia is to not further their confusion by talking about things they have no understanding of. If they're having an exceptionally good day and are able to carry on a short conversation, the first time they seem to get confused you just sort of shuffle to the next thing, gloss over it. It keeps them calmer and happier. The brief moments they are aware of how much they are missing/how muddled their world is are the saddest. Thankfully my grandmother doesn't have those anymore. ", "You cured Alzheimers! Bravo!", "Sounds like somebody's been watching \"50 First Dates\"...", "Because they would believe it as much as you would believe it if I handed you one right this second.", "Alzheimer's type dementia, although the most visible symptoms are confusion and memory loss, they are just the surface of what's really going on.  There are \"plaques and tangles\" that form in and around the neurons of the brain. This manifests itself in memory loss to us, the bystanders, but really it's a progressive and irreversible degeneration of all cognitive or \"thought\" functions, in which memory is just one aspect. That would include, seeing the fact sheet as something significant, reading it, understanding what was read, and if an AD patient got that far (they were lucid at the time), the most significant hurdle would be accepting it and coping with it. But that is just a temporary fix until the next episode came along.", "One of the passengers in my shuttle told everyone about his dad. Apparently this guy's dad has the Heimers and said, \"Son, at least I can hide my own easter eggs.\"", "Reading the comments, I can just pray that my mom never gets this. She was in a nursing home for a month about a year ago because of a bad staph infection in her foot that left her unable to walk until it healed, and she says that she'll kill herself before going back to one.", "Sometimes it better that they forget. There was a man with alcohol-related dementia in a nursing home i used to work at. Both of his parents were dead, but he didn't remember that. And every day he asked all of us, over and over, where his parents were and when they were coming to get him. He was so upset and it was just awful. For a while, someone broke the news to him every day, resulting in fresh grief and agony for him. Finally we figured out to make something up about their being delayed for some reason. It pacified him temporarily and by the next day he'd forgotten everything again and the whole thing repeated. ", "Reading all these stories makes me glad that my own grandparents retained their mental faculties pretty well for the last years of their lives. \n\nThe last one to go was 92, and until the last several months, she had been living at home with in-home carers. She had Parkinson's and had had spondylitis for years, but her mind was still in good shape (it may have started to slip in the last weeks or something, but there was certainly no dementia). She lived overseas; I saw her several months before she died and said a very awkward goodbye, knowing it would probably be my last. It was a short visit, as I was traveling, but she knew who I was and could share her views, identify people in old photos for us, and all that stuff.\n\nAll but one of my grandparents died in homes, actually, in their sleep (two from being old and one from prostate cancer), still *compos mentis*, as far as I know. The fourth had a massive stroke at the breakfast table. I'm certainly hoping my own parents at least maintain their mental faculties as their parents did (and that I can do the same!).", "I work in a nursing home, and we're taught to essentially \"come to them\" with whatever they're talking about. \nAnd rather than force truths that could potentially aggravate, confuse, and/or upset the resident, I generally give vague answers that aren't technically lies, but sort of ride that line.. for example:\nA resident asks me if I've seen their mother, who I'm sure has long since passed away.. Instead of trying to make them understand that they're dead, I always just say \"Nope, but if I do, I'll be sure to send them your way\" \n\nWhat's important isn't trying to reverse things or force them into a reality that's more comfortable to you, but to embrace their confusion and make it easier for them to exist day to day.", "Since my wife has memory problems I will explain this. Our cats Smoke and paint died over a decade ago. When she is having memory problems she does not remember this. When having a bad memory day if she asks about these two longtime beloved pets I redirect her and put her focus on something else. In time she will forget about her question or non-emotionally remember these two pets have died. \n\nIf I tell her immediately or if she has a card that tells her she feels all the emotion as if it had just happened. She would relive a very painful part of her past again. Having her cry for hours (which also makes her memory worse) only servers to make her grieve all over again and me feel like an asshole.\n\nImagine you wake up from your nights sleep and ask about your loving wife of 45 years only to hear that she has been dead for 10 years and you suck for not remembering.....The pain can be unbearable and it would be repeated needlessly over and over.", "I once treated a patient who's family would remind him that his wife had recently passed away and it destroyed him every time. \n\nIt was their way of coping with it, not meant to be malicious in the slightest but it was still  difficult to observe.", "If I had alzheimer's, I would listen to my favorite song over and over and over and over and over again.", "Remember Sammy Jankis", "Their hippocampus is decaying. A fact sheet can't fix that.", "The worst phase of any type of dementia is the phase in which the person has an awareness that something isn't right.  It's so hard to watch because you can see and feel  the terror they are experiencing.   For a while, as nurses,  we were told we should constantly reorient them.  I never felt good about doing that and for the most part said and/or did for them anything that decreased their anxiety.  ", "Trying to reason with a person who suffers from  Alzheimer's is like telling a baby to stop crying; frustrating and useless.\n\nMy Gramma thought she had lead weights in her legs preventing her from walking.  It took almost an hour to get her to walk to any room in the house because she refused to lift her legs up due to the mysterious weights.  No amount of reasoning would make her believe the weights weren't in her legs.\n\nMy Gramma finally found love in her delusional state of mind with a fellow senile old man in her care home.  My mother and his son had to sign \"permission slips\" to allow them to have a relationship.  It was hilarious.  She was single and alone for 50 years and was able to get a boyfriend at almost 90 years old!  ", " > every truth about them\n\nTo cover everything someone has forgotten because of Alzheimer's, you'd need an incredibly dense fact sheet, like an encyclopedia, of the last few decades of their life. \n\nEdit: Obviously, this doesn't apply to all cases. In the instances of my family members, they lost so, so much I wouldn't even know where to begin.", "I used to work as an HA in an Alzheimer's ward. It's like dealing with people whose brains keep resetting. Could be five minutes ago, could be 30 years ago, could be it's completely fragged where nothing makes sense. And then their bodies start shutting down. Memories go, ability to do actions go, social interactions go. Just a slow shut down of body and mind as they just sort of drift off.\n\nHaving a cheat sheet of \"I am Joe Somebody. I have Alzheimers. I might remember this, I might not. Your wife was named Irene, she's been dead four months now. Your kid is Joe Jr and he's got a wife, Debbie, and two kids.\"\n\nSo you remember this note or you might not. You might not even register the note. It doesn't do anything for you short term or long.", "it just hurts them to much to know what's going on for the short time they remember what they've learned. in our family we tried to fight it when my grandmother showed signs we tried correcting her and my mother couldn't handle it well but sometimes they realize whats going on. I'll never forget my mother was bring her to a bath and getting frustrated and my grandmother looked my mom in the eyes and said \"do you think i like being in this fog\" and then she was gone again. reading these comments of stories their loved ones remembered a few months after that incident the only thing she remembered was a greeting she knew in high school,we'd say \"beez you got bugs?\" and she'd say in her horse little voice\"sure i are everybody do\" it was heart breaking", "Lists and calendars work well for early stage memory loss but as it progresses, it gets bad enough that it can't be grasped. Many Altzheimers patients become angry and blame others for what they are going though. \n\nWe are still trying to get my mother in law diagnosed and it's almost been two years. ", "They are only confused because of what the world is telling them. Alzheimer patients are pretty confident in their delusions. ", "*Don't believe his lies.*", "The simple answer is that it is unlikely that they would need the same information all the time, and it's likely that they would not be able to read it. Dementia is like forgetting your keys; Alzheimers is like staring at your keys and forgetting what they are for. People with Alzheimers don't just forget stuff, their brain does not know how to do stuff that they didn't even think about before (like read simple words, sign your name, feed yourself or control bladders and bowels). Scientists can't even be sure how much people with advanced Alzheimers understand about their surroundings. My grandmother basically died of alzheimers (her body essentially \"forgot\" how to function) and her language ability degraded in a very gradual way that we didn't even notice at first, but before she was completely unable to speak had her reduced to a few short phrases that made sense in the context of the conversation, but she couldn't say anything else. She did understand speech- she knew what was happening to her but didn't need \"reminding\" of anything other than to do things like take her dentures out, chew her sandwich etc. When she could still speak, she was obviously aware of who people were in our family, but she called us all by the wrong names, not because she had forgotten- it was more like the connection in her brain was telling her \"I know who this is, it's blah\". She called my mum and my aunt her sisters' names, and me and my sister my mum and my aunt's names but she knew that we were not her sisters and her daughters, but her daughters and her grandchildren, so we just got used to what our \"Granny\" name was and she knew who she meant.\nTerry Pratchett said in an interview a while ago that he was staring at his keyboard and couldn't work out where the A (or something) was (sorry I don't have a source), so that's the kind of thing Alzheimers causes. Your solution could possibly work with early dementia but it's just not how Alzheimers works.", "Because they will probably lose the sheet and/or not know it's for them. \n\nI tried this already with my grandmother.", "I had an epiphany when I read a story called \"Flying Polar Bear Spray.\"\nAs a caregiver for 36 years, I recommend it. \nYou get into their reality, things work better that way.\npeace.", "Alzheimer's is the slow destruction of neurons due to build up to toxic proteins Tau and Beta-amyloid.  These neurons die and are no longer replaced by new ones (through a process called neurogenesis).  Therefore, it's not as simple to say they are losing their memories, but in fact, their entire brain is slowing dying.  This affects other cognitive functions, such as judgement, reasoning, motor coordination, pattern recognition, as well as memory.  ", "As soon as they look away they will forget it. Also, abuse.", "what is this, 50 first dates?", "Even if this worked it wouldn't grant them the ability to remember faces. From my understanding this is one of the largest negatives of alzheimers, you can't recognize your family even if you remember you have one.", "Speech pathologist here. Basically, this can be done, and sometimes is. However, at later stages of the disease, your ability to understand language receptively will degenerate as well. It  can simply be too much into for you to take in. The words and sentences may be too much for someone to comprehend, leading to more confusion. Abstract thought becomes difficult.\n\nThere are systems that therapists use with the patient that are similar to what you just described, but are simpler. For example, one can point to a picture to communicate, things such as yes, no, going to the bathroom \"I am hungry\", etc. Eye gaze boards can be used as well.\n\nIt all depends on each individual patient as the disease progresses differently for everyone.  ", "Nothing like realizing you are diagnosed every time you look down, why don't we just keep putting fake winning lottery tickets in front of them, they would be so happy all the time. ", "My grandmother has Alzheimer's disease. Before she went to the nursing home, she had a little dog she loved. This little dog was also old and sick. Finally, I knew it was time to take the dog and put it to sleep.\n\nThat evening my grandmother asked where her dog was. I told her the dog was very sick and I had to take her to the vet to be put down. She said \"oh no\" and began to cry. \n\nAfter a while, we were watching TV and my grandmother asked where her dog was. I told her the dog was very sick and I had to take her to the vet to be put down. She said \"oh no\" and began to cry. \n\nThe next morning at breakfast my grandmother asked where he dog was. I told her the dog was visiting my house and everything was fine. She finished breakfast and went on with her day.\n\nThere was nothing to be gained by telling her the truth. The only result of honesty would be repeated emotional pain for my grandmother.\n\nEventually, she stopped asking about her dog.", "The easiest way I can put it is this: could you imagine if you woke up to someone telling you everything about your life, and none of it is true? That would upset you pretty well, wouldn't it? It's the same thing with them. ", "On the surface it seems like a good idea, but on a deeper level it causes more pain.  Imagine having to relive being told you have a mental degenerative terminal illness every day, having to relive that moment constantly and never getting the chance to come to terms with it.  \n\nTo illustrate, my great grandfather was a brilliant man, a veteran of WWII and an inventor of heavy duty machinery.  My great grandmother passed away and soon after he began developing Alzheimer's.  He could no longer care for himself and we moved him to a home to ease his final days.  We would visit him often and he was more likely than not bedridden.  My mother would talk to him and he would call her 'Barbie', the pet name for his daughter.  At first we would try to correct him, but we quickly realized that it brought him a great amount of pain and confusion because he couldn't recall my mom's name.  In the end my mom let him call her Barbie, even though it was wrong it made him happy even for that brief moment.\n\nThe sad thing is a factbook might help I'm the early stages, but down the road it won't.  They'll forget to check the book, they'll forget the book even exists.  You can't fight Alzheimer's, as much as you might want too it's easier to just let it run its course and make the patients days easier as best you can.  ", "My mom used to work in a senior center and they had a woman who had early stage Alzheimer's. The only real problem they ran into was that she kept asking where her husband was. He had died several years prior, and her daughter (who brought her daily to the center) would remind her in the car that he was gone. It meant this poor woman got dropped off in misery because she was feeling the grief freshly. It was terrible. Finally, the daughter began to tell her mother that \"dad was at the store\" or that \"he was working on the house.\" It allowed this woman pleasure and didn't end up hurting her.\n\nHaving a fact sheet like that that could remind a person of their situation could only add to their suffering. It's not like The Notebook. You don't suddenly get lucid everyday after hearing a nice story.", "Alzheimer's is not Amnesia.", "\"Losing your memory\" is a simplistic layman's explanation of what happens with dementia/alzheimers. As Alzheimers progresses, the brain loses mass and vital neuron connections. Their brains misinterpret things and lose the ability to decipher context from their surroundings. That is why sufferers in nursing homes often think they are in hotels, or on cruises, or in prisons. Their brains are trying to interpret their surroundings but can't do it anymore with any accuracy. Words on a page become unreadable or incoherent. They forget context and social norms. Even if they could read the message about their lives, they wouldn't necessarily think it applies to them. \n\nIn early stages of Alzheimers people do these things sometimes to help cope with their symptoms, but gradually these messages become like lecture notes for a class the person doesn't remember taking. \n\nTLDR: \"Losing your memory\" is a simplistic explanation of what Alzheimer's does. Alzheimers is a slow decay of the brain.", "Well for one if it were my grandmother she would lose the fact sheet and stick it with her bill statements from 2008. She has suffered for years from Alzheimer's and there's a certain face and look she gives me when she has these realizations that this is the life she lives. I live with her and take care of her and i have learned, telling her the reality of the situation only makes her cry. Like today she asked why she was so tired and i told her we had a doctors appointment. She clearly didn't remember we'd already gone and she gave me that same scared face, and i had to leave her alone while she just sat there, re-remembering for the 100000th time that her life really has changed. I posted a poem on her fridge that really has helped me in frustrating times i swore i wouldn't get through.\n\n _URL_0_\n\nI read it every single day.\n\n", "It would only confuse the them more and make them sad. Some are stuck in a belief that they are living in the past and are still young. Bringing up issues that make them scared does not help. Some of our patients think they are in their apartment, some think they are at work and some think I am their son. From what I have  encountered many still can live a happy life. I try to go with the flow, hold hands and soothe their days. \n\nSource: Maintenance guy in a nursing home that gets talked to a whole lot!  \n\nAs a side note, if you have a loved one in a nursing home pay a visit. Get to know the other residents too. Many do not have relatives to visit them and it really brightens their day. Especially the memory loss ones. So much can be gained for you too. ", "My dad has Alzheimer's and I take care of him. He is only a stage 3-4. His short term memory is the first to go it seems. I had a serious what-the-fuck funny moment the other day. I'm studying GRE vocabulary words. Hell if he didn't know every single word and definition. I thought he had some crazy break through. Then asked him what day it was and he didn't know what year it was. And that's how it goes. He can't learn new tasks or new information at all. And fuck no I'm not going to remind him everyday about his disease. ", "It is more comforting to just go along with what they say in a conversation even if it doesn't make sense. They can get very agitated, sad, irritated if you try to correct them or explain the correctness of a topic.\n\nsource: Mom had dementia before she died.", "I spent years working in an Alzheimer's ward. It's not just gets they lose, but the ability to render basic things like toileting, personal care, (what do I do with this toothbrush?) How to eat, how to chew and swallow. Eventually they have problems swallowing and have to be out on pureed foods and thickened liquids. Let me tell ya, you haven't lived until you've spoon fed someone pudding thickened water. As far as reorienting them daily, so you want to be the one to tell a person daily that their spouse who they love is dead? Watch them go through that grief every day? It's cruelty. You tell they have gone to visit their brother/sister/mother whoever.", "My wife put up a big sign in her mother's apt telling her that this was her home and that she was safe there.  All of her mother's worldly possessions were in that apt.  Her mother still called her at least once a day asking her why she was in some strange hotel room  &  saying that she was scared to be there.  She just wasn't really seeing what was in front of her much of the time (who knows how many times she actually read the sign and was comforted by it before forgetting it all again).  She's pretty much in a constant state of fear  &  agitation, so she can't be expected to be aware of her surroundings.  It's a horrible disease.", "They tell you not to contradict Alzheimers patients because it will only upset them. For example I know someone whose Nan always thinks they're going on holiday whenever her family take her out somewhere. In the end they just had to tell her that wherever they go is somewhere they're visiting on holiday, even if they're just going to the park. ", "Alzheimer's is not soley memory loss, it is a cognitive deterioration that happens because of plaques and tangles within a persons brain. Therefore, a persons cognitive, behavioral, and emotion memory/functioning will often also be hindered or affected. \n\nSo, although reminding them of certain things may seem like a logical fix (even though reminding someone, of their life, can also be emotionally devastating. EG: imagine you forget your mom has died... and someone keeps telling you. You have to live that over, and over again) unfortunately, it is not only their memory that becomes faulty, it is also their senses. \n\nUnfortunately, an Alzheimer's patient will slowly become less of who they are as a whole, and therefore, queing someone who no longer recognizes such ques, does not work.\n\nTo summarize, Alzheimer's is very complicated, and affects more then memory.\n\nMe= social worker who worked with Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers for a year during a practicum, not an expert.", "Imagine you have terminal cancer, but every day you wake up thinking you don't. Each day is the same, living like you don't have cancer. Then imagine waking up every day learning you have terminal cancer and living that way. Somewhat like that. ", "Alzheimer's is just the worst fucking disease.  Such a horrible way to end your life.  I hope Alzheimer's patients have some form of internal peace.\n\nMy grandmother had it.  She was the smartest person I ever knew.  She was absolutely brilliant.  I saw it take her from us while I was in high school.  She forgot my brother and I, then she forgot my dad (her son), then forgot my mother (who visited her every day), then forgot how to speak, then presumably forgot how to breathe.\n\nMy only real regret in life is that I once told her she had Alzheimer's.  Nobody else was around, and I felt it would help some of her confusion.  She got mad at me and said I was wrong.  I know she forgot about that soon after, but I really wish I never did that.", "I was a caregiver to an elderly parent with Alzheimer's for over 10 years. I've tried that, and others have tried that. I regret even trying it. All it does is lead to arguments and confrontations. When what you ultimately should do is just try to keep them as happy and safe as possible.\n\nCorrect handling of an alzheimer's patient is more akin to improv, going with the flow and yes/anding everything to steer things in a healthier direction. In my personal experience, they should not be left alone for more than a moment, with obvious exceptions such as if they are in care facility. Basically, from my experience, guard their safety as you would a toddler.\n\nIf there's one bit of advice I'd give to people struggling with taking care of someone with this that worked for me it's this: regular flattery and kindness can make them a lot less grumpy over time. Remember, they are scared and feel alone, and building trust is the goal.\n\nI'm aware that got off track from the initial question but I'm just trying to help anyone reading this who might be struggling.", "My grandma has Alzheimer's and she spends most of her day reading her diary to see what has happened that day.\n\nIt could be something like:\n\n\"Today is Tuesday and my daughter Andrea visited me before dinner. My grandson commentssortedbynew is coming later on.\"\n\nWhen I'm there she will read the sentence over and over and the conversation will be something like:\n\nDid Andrea come today?\n\nYes, she came this morning and now I've come to say hello too.\n\nOh yes it say here, she came this morning.\n\nThat's right, she said you were looking well.\n\nThat's nice of her. Was that today?\n\nYes it was this morning.\n\nOh yes it says so here, and that you're coming later, are you coming later.\n\nWell I'm here now, it was later but now that time has come.\n\nRight so you'll be going then?\n\nYes in a bit. So what did you have for dinner?\n\nI don't know, a sandwich probably. Is your mum coming?\n\nShe came earlier yes.\n\nRight, lets see what I'm doing to day.\n\nAnd so the circular conversation starts again. If you were to put down all the questions they needed, it's just not possible.", "Because it is just impossible,no matter what and everyday its gonna be worse for them.I work in a retirement home that specializes in seniors with Dementia and alzheimer and honestly the last thing you wanna do is tell them something like that.You'd probably confuse them more and theyd ask you what the hell are you talking about?When you have patience for people like this it can be one of the most amazing things you can be doing for someone!!!Im a server and the littlest things like remembering to put choco syrup on ice cream,or bringing cranberry juice or chopping their food up because they can't chew can really really make their day or feel special,iving them one on one attention is a really huge important thing.", "I have read a lot of comments saying \"kill me if I get like this\" or \"I hope I die before I get like this\". Obviously there is a tipping point where there is more pain and confusion than happy times. However that is in very advanced stages. My mothers short term memory has gone it frustrates her and our family. Yet she still gets so much enjoyment from life. Doing her garden, seeing her grandson, watching trash t.v. and chatting with her sisters and friends. Despite the fact I am her carer she still takes a lot of pride in thinking she is looking after me and my brother (I am 39 he's 41) .. There are medications now which really do slow the advancement of dementia and by the time most of the commentors in this thread get to that age there will be outright cures or prevention. My tip to all is. \n\nBe aware of what the early symptoms are and get into treatment a.s.a.p.", "1. That list will be insanely huge, unwieldy, and inconvenient\n2. They patient will likely just forget to read it, or not notice it after it's gone from memory.\n3. If they did read it, it's incredibly depressing. It's not like going into a room and forgetting what you went in there for. It's a constant cycle of your brain realizing that its trying to get information that is no longer there. This confuses them. It creates fear because they are aware they can't remember something, even if they don't know what. Emotions run high. Panic can set in. And then the cycle starts again. It's like this constantly. \n4. There is no point in the end. Telling them they're ill won't solve help the issue. They won't care in 30 seconds. It's like repeatedly telling them 'this is your life now, accept it.'\n5. For less aggressive Alzheimers, it's not a case of constantly telling them they're sick (as stated above.) It could just be them doing silly shit. Like for example, I'd pour my uncle a cup of tea, and he'd just forget it was poured, and then spill it everywhere on his lap. It's at this stage where you don't necessarily know he's ill or not, you don't fully understand how far gone he is. Or how long he has left until he goes full blown. It's horrible. ", "They will:\n-not realize that the sheet is something they are supposed to read\n-not believe it\n-begin reading it, forget they were reading it, get distracted, and then lose it, and then maybe come back to it and then the whole thing will start all over again\n-they may have lost the capacity to read\n-they may get very upset upon reading it and each time they see it, the information will be as if they are reading it for the first time. ", "My dad died from Alzheimer's in 2012.  He couldn't walk and could barely talk. He couldn't understand us that well either. He didn't know who he was or who any of us were. He would cry about having to go fight in the war and thought his wife was his mother. Maybe someone in early stages could benefit from this but I really think it wouldn't help much. It would have made things more confusing for my dad. \n", "If I had Alzheimer's,  I would want those facts laid before me, every last one of them.  And then, once I knew my reality was crumbling,  I would hold onto every last one of those horrible truths, and try to use them to tether myself to reality."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/634905"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.alzheimers.net/2013-08-05/do-not-ask-me-to-remember-poem/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "240xak", "title": "what should i know about reddit before posting more?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/240xak/eli5_what_should_i_know_about_reddit_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch2i6tl", "ch2ibe7", "ch2ibhe", "ch2idgp", "ch2ip03", "ch2ix78", "ch2jme9"], "score": [7, 5, 2, 27, 2, 10, 2], "text": ["Just go have fun, I'm sure if you do something wrong you will be told.", "Reddit is owned by a company called [Advance Publications](_URL_0_) which took US$ 6.56 billion in 2013, mainly from advertising.", "As far as slang goes that would depend on which subreddit you go. I would also say read the rules on the right side of each subreddit before posting (especially in tv show subreddit so as to not spoil anyone on it) and have fun. Just posting anything that is on your mind. ", "Most people on here will be assholes over really minor things, you retarded piece of shit.", "* Please check the [Rules of Reddit](_URL_3_) and the [Reddiquette](_URL_6_) if you haven't done it yet.\n\n* Check the [FAQ](_URL_0_) for any questions you'd want to have answered. The answer about [recurring acronyms](_URL_0_#wiki_what_do_all_of_these_acronyms_mean.3F) might be quite useful.\n\n* Have a look at the \"formatting help\" tool at the bottom of any comment box, so you know how to format your Reddit comments.\n\n* Discover new subreddits [by using the tool in this page](_URL_2_) or by checking [Metareddit](_URL_1_).\n\n* If you ever find some in-joke or an unexplained reference, you can check the [list of retired questions in /r/OutOfTheLoop](_URL_5_).", "**READ THE SIDEBARS**.\n\nReally, that's all there is to it. Each subreddit has its own rules and regulations, and it frustrates regulars to no end when an endless stream of people post things they shouldn't.", "Never admit to being wrong. If someone starts getting pushy, adopt a condescending attitude to deal with that person. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq", "http://metareddit.com/reddits/biggest/list", "http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/", "http://www.reddit.com/rules/", "http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_do_all_of_these_acronyms_mean.3F", "http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/wiki/index/retired_questions", "http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5eglv4", "title": "if \"we\" are going to mars soon, why do we mind so much that the rovers (etc) do not \"contaminate\" the planet?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5eglv4/eli5_if_we_are_going_to_mars_soon_why_do_we_mind/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dac9iv2", "dac9mhb", "dacavm5", "dacdxzo", "dacfhor"], "score": [9, 2, 6, 7, 2], "text": ["This is mostly an assumption, but: \n\nThe rovers are sent to Mars for research. To take photographs and samples of most everything. If you want to investigate Mars, it's a bad idea to send a long a piece of Earth (e.g. dirt, minerals, bacteria) and then examine it on Mars. \n\nTL;DR: Don't get earth bacteria on your Mars samples. ", "Because Mars colonization missions would presumably be obliged to uphold the same standards of *planetary protection*.", "Once we contaminate it, there's no un-contaminating it. Right now we have chance to study how things work on Mars -- and notably, to study if there's any life on Mars -- without thinking it actually came from us. So we want to study it carefully in its pristine state, while that exists.", " > the planet will be completely Terra-formed\n\nThat's unlikely to occur on any conceivable timescale, if ever. \n\nMinimizing contamination now, means there's more to study without worry that your samples are already contaminated. For example, it'd be really annoying for one of our probes to 'discover life' only for many man hours of research to discover it is some earth bacteria clinging to the drill bit or what have you.", "There's actually a whole wealth of moral hand-wringing that's been going on in science fiction literature on this very topic for years. Basically, we're going to end up going somewhere, which means we're bringing our 'pets' with us. There's really no connection between human habitation and terraforming like you're thinking though. Likely there will be some bacteria and maybe some lichen that might survive, but Mars is pretty damned inhospitable to life actually. The reason we're so keep to keep it lifeless is because we're trying to figure out if there is life there already or if there ever was. Once humans show up and our little biome gets out of the domes then we're going to have a really hard time figuring out what might be Martian and what's Terran.  \n  \nNow here's something that'll keep you up at night. If Mars DOES have life or ever had life then that means that, statistically, the whole universe should be crawling with life. I mean, to have two planets (and lets not forget Europa) that have life would mean that it's pretty common. Now why haven't we heard from any of our neighbors yet? Check out the Fermi Paradox sometime. Suffice to say, I really really hope we don't find life anytime soon. The implications are terrifying. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2uvs66", "title": "how is it legal for hershey's to block cadbury's chocolate from entering the us?", "selftext": "Edit: Some really good responses, thanks folks. For the record I'm a Brit and feel lucky that these shenanigans don't affect my chocolate stash. I feel for you America.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uvs66/eli5_how_is_it_legal_for_hersheys_to_block/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coc3nk6", "coc3pmc", "coc3pvm", "coc3spx", "coc3sse", "coc8mfv", "coc9bqp", "coc9hj4", "cocazln", "cocbct9", "cocbr0d", "coccdbj", "cocco2p", "coceyjp", "cocgyds", "cochlef", "cochv1q", "coci2no", "cocipun", "cocjobf", "cocruo1", "cocwill", "cocwkba", "cod1pnw"], "score": [221, 2, 9, 3, 4123, 3, 3, 82, 143, 12, 2, 5, 7, 7, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Hershey and Cadbury signed a contract allowing Hershey the exclusive right to make and sell Cadbury chocolate in the US.", "They struck up an agreement with the importer, where the importer agreed to stop importing. ", "Hershey's has an exclusive license to sell Cadbury's chocolate (or at least stuff they call Cadbury's chocolate) in the US.  They paid a lot of money for those rights.  Cadbury made this decision and went for it.\n\nNow, people are trying to import Cadbury's chocolate and sell it. That is actually against trademark law.", "They haven't blocked the import...sort of. They have the license to manufacture Cadbury products in the US, and can claim that UK versions coming in to the US violate that licensing agreement.\n\nThe end result is much the same, but it's the threat of legal action preventing the importation more than some sort of direct control on the importation and selling of them.", "It's not Hershey's blocking Cadbury's.  It's Cadbury's blocking Cadbury's because they've sold the rights to Hershey. \n\nCadbury's signed a contract with Hershey's stating that Hershey's would manufacture chocolate in the US and sell it in the US under the Cadbury's name.  Hersheys paid Cadbury's a sum of money for this privilege.  In return Hershey's gets to use the Cadbury's name and advertizing.  In addition Cadbury's agrees not to sell it's own chocolate within the United States.\n\nThe problem here is that people are importing Cadbury's from the UK and selling it in the US.  If Cadbury's does not take steps to prevent this then Hershey's could sue them for breaching the contract mentioned above.  Since Cadbury's actually likes that contract (because of all the money Hershey's pays them) then don't like these chocolate importers.  So they attempt to block it.\n\nIt's not Hershey's doing the blocking.  It's Cadbury honoring the commitment they made when they signed that contract.", "From what I understand, Hershey's came to an agreement with the importer in question. That importer imported the vast majority of Cadbury UK's product that was sold in the US.\n\nSaying that Hershey's blocked Cadbury's chocolate is incorrect; Hershey convinced the importer to stop importing Cadbury's chocolate. Hershey's may or may not have the legal right to block imports of Cadbury's chocolate, but I'm sure their press release implied that Hershey's successfully banned Cadbury's chocolate, which is what the press picked up on.\n\n", "Cadbury sold their rights to Hershey's.\n\nWow that was easy.", "Since there's no top level comment that explains this, I'll collate some of the correct answers from other comments:\n\nFirst of all, Hershey's is not trying to block *all* Cadbury's chocolate. They're going after a specific importer who imports the majority of UK chocolate.\n\nSecondly, the way they're allowed to do this isn't exactly through a contract they have with Cadbury's. Yes, they have exclusive rights to manufacture Cadbury's chocolate for distribution in the United States. That isn't the important part\u2014the important part is that they have exclusive rights in the United States to Cadbury's *trademarks*. For all intents and purposes, this means that Hershey's owns the trademarks in the United States.\n\nNow for the explanastion: What's happening here is that there's a company importing Cadbury's chocolate from the UK to the United States and then marketing it as Cadbury's chocolate. Hershey's, since they own the rights to Cadbury's trademarks in the US, is suing them for trademark infringement to block the importation of the \"counterfeit goods\".\n\nTL;DR: Hershey's is the only company allowed to call themselves Cadbury's in the US, and they're suing the importer of the \"counterfeit\" chocolate bars.", "Dan opens a lemonade stand on his block. You open a lemonade stand on your block. Dan's lemonade is wildly successful, and people on your block want it.   \n\nSo you pay Dan so that you can make your lemonade and sell it as \"Dan's Lemonade\" on your block and make money for yourself. Then, Bill from your block starts driving to Dan's block and buying \"Dan's Lemonade\" from Dan, driving it back to your block, and selling it in a stand right next to yours.  \n\nYou paid Dan to able to make \"Dan's Lemonade\" so that you could be the person to sell it on your block, but Bill just bought it from Dan's block and came to sell it on your block.", "Owner of a [Imported Candy distribution company](_URL_0_) here, and so far, Hershey has only got one Importer, to stop importing Cadbury's + a few others that look like American candy bars (toffee crisp, for example). They can do this because they own the US distribution rights but, if you wanna be tricky, you can still get them from Canada. ", "Canadian here. Anyone know if the Cadbury Dairy Milk bars I buy here are from the UK? or does a similar situation exist with Hershey's in Canada?", "Cadbury's was bought out by Kraft Foods (an American company) several years ago now, and anybody from the UK and from my generation will tell you that most Cadbury products aren't what they used to be. The taste of the chocolate became weaker and the textures dissapeared from some of our favourites like Cadbury's Roses. The brand is still strong and kids will always buy it, but for those of us born in the 70's and 80's, it's a travesty. I haven't bought their products for a few years now. For me personally, it tastes like sugared milk. There's no richness to it anymore.", "As a Canadian I'm curious if we get real Cadbury or Hershey Cadbury?", "They changed the recipe in Creme Eggs (_URL_0_) \n\nIt is going to lose them a large amount of business. \n\nLots of people are very unhappy with the new american style rubbish, follow #cremeegggate", "Hershey owns the rights to distribute Cadbury in the US. After the rights to do so were sold to them, Cadbury can't come in and compete under the same label. Conceivably, Cadbury could buy the rights to distribute other candy in the US, but not Cadbury-brand; likewise, Cadbury could, hypothetically, buy the rights to distribute Hershey in the UK, in which case Hershey could not sell Hershey-brand candy there (buuut, it could buy the rights to sell *other* candy in the UK).\n\n**tl,dr:** brand ownership in multinational corporations is handled by-country, it's not an \"overall\" thing.", "IANAL- In order for this to a be a big concern, shouldn't Hershey have to show that these imports did in fact hurt their profit margin? Shouldn't Hershey have to prove that it was Cadbury doing the actual importing. Furthermore, how is clearing customs? If cargo is checked on the way into the country, shouldn't it be a big red flag that a million chocolate eggs are being brought IN? If the government is going to take tax money to perform this task, isn't this case a blatant show that they are failing at the most based task they are supposed to be doing?", "One of  the biggest differences between products from the US and most  of the rest of the world be  it sweets, pop,  ketchup  etc. is most the  world uses \"Sucrose, commonly named table sugar or sugar, is a cane and beet sugar\"  In the US it is cheaper to use Fructose derived from from corn Syrup due to heavy farm subsidies.\nLiving in a border area  I notice the  taste difference all the time.", "Okay so now I'm curious.  There's a tiny little store here in Orlando called The British Shoppe.  They mostly sell three things: British convenience foods (things that come in cans, jars or bottles, nothing perishable), more tea flavors than have ever been discovered by mankind, and a giant wall o' grossly overpriced British candy (I'm not kidding, a small bag of Jelly Babies is like $9.00).  The candy is a huge portion of their sales, and easily 50% of the selection is imported Cadbury's.   \n\nIs this decision going to completely and utterly fuck them?", "So I'm curious to know, last year I sent a package to a friend in the US, little gifts and what not. But I also sent her British Cadbury chocolate, you know since our chocolate is better and I did hear about  the Hershey version tasting baaad. So I figured why not. \n\nNow I'm wondering could I do this again, or would that be against their agreement, even though what I am sending is private and a gift. not enough to go selling of course.", "Well son, you see, we live in a world where the more money you have, the less the rules apply to you. Corporations do a lot of things that aren't fair, and seem like they should be obviously illegal. The sorry truth is that the world isn't fair, and laws only apply to you if you can't pay the price to ignore them. Think of life like Disneyland, most of us will wait in line to go on the rides, but the rich will pay to jump the line. This may be unfair, but the sorry truth is this, if you could afford it, you'd pay to jump the line to. Money is power, and power corrupts. Did that help at all?", "LY5: Hershey's paid Cadbury not to sell their chocolate in America. Shops and importers want Cadbury chocolate so bring it in themselves but Hershey's doesn't like that so ask the courts to stop them.", "Prior agreement between the two companies? And yeah, Cadbury is way better than Hershey's", "So when my mom goes back home every year and brings back a selections box she is smuggling them?????", "I have a question. Is this on the news a lot in Briton? I doubt most Americans are even aware of this but something pops up on the front page at least once a week. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://bocandy.com"], [], [], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/jan/12/-sp-the-cadburys-creme-egg-scandal-how-to-stage-a-chocolate-revolution"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "86g33o", "title": "I\u2019ve read in multiple places that there\u2019s no official foundation date for Oxford University but that teaching has gone in there since 1096. Why did people choose Oxford as a center of learning and what happened in 1096 to be important enough to record?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/86g33o/ive_read_in_multiple_places_that_theres_no/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dw5gjr7"], "score": [21], "text": ["Unfortunately, the sources don't have that much more to say than \"There was teaching at Oxford around 1100, and then at some later points.\" \n\nThe *universitas* or guild consolidates when a group of students (usually Italy) or teachers (northern Europe) banded together and sought corporate legal privileges, which seems to have happened in Paris, Bologna, and Oxford sometime around/a little before 1200. Before that, \"higher education\" for potential bureaucrats and clerics alike meant a group of students flocking to be instructed/lectured to by a famous master. Usually the support for this would come through locating near a famous monastery or based at a cathedral church--including the chance to pick up some extra money instructing monks, for example. So that is what we are dealing with at Oxford before the 13th century: individual masters gathering students around themselves.\n\nThat \"earliest evidence\" of teaching at Oxford is frustratingly vague. A [series of letters](_URL_0_) by the French/Norman canon Theobald of Etampes (outside Paris), dated to around 1100, has two where he describes himself as \"magister Oxenfordiae.\" That is, *master at Oxford.*  It's mentioned elsewhere that he lectured to both secular clerics and to monks, but there's not much to be said about individual tutoring or in-depth programs of study. The next reference to an Oxford master is Robert Pullen in the 1120s, from the *Oseney Abbey Chronicle*.\n\nOxford doesn't necessarily fit what we might consider the \"ideal\" for a potential high medieval university town. It didn't have the cathedral church--far from it! Oxford wasn't a diocesan seat until the 16th century; that was Lincoln, and Lincoln and Oxford were...kinda rivals at the time, in fact. And while there were plenty of monasteries--the earliest references to settlements at \"Oxneford\" are convents--the controversialist letters of Theobald as well as later mentions of lecturing to diverse audiences and (apparently) the eventual legal statutes of Oxford University suggest that the early masters were *not* basing themselves out of a convent.\n\nWhat Oxford did have going for it was location: it's very conveniently situated on the Thames, near but not in London. It was definitely an up-and-coming city by the time Theobald arrived: a castle built just to its north became a stop on the English royal *iter*; both Richard I and John were born there during the king and queen's travels.\n\nIt's possible that the lack of domination by either a great monastery or a diocesan cathedral was a financial benefit for Oxford's masters. In addition to Theobald, mentioned as lecturing to regular and secular clergy alike, late in the 12th century Gerald of Wales makes a similar claim for himself. (He also mentions lecturing to lay people, which is fascinating). But this has to remain speculation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://archive.org/stream/patrologiaecurs40unkngoog#page/n383/mode/2up"]]}
{"q_id": "1tp7qe", "title": "why are flywheels still unworkable? it seems to me that they're such a simple method of power storage, but every article i read seems to be about how they're out of reach. what's the problem?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tp7qe/eli5_why_are_flywheels_still_unworkable_it_seems/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cea4o02", "cea4u8u", "cea69a5", "cea6c0j", "cea84u5", "ceagzu8", "ceah2sd"], "score": [18, 8, 6, 3, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["Efficiency, for one.  Flywheels are used in a few applications, like very large online UPSes (uninterruptable power supplies). High speed flywheels can make a big mess and kill if they come apart, so some work is being done to find good designs that can run at very high RPMs.  This helps make them more efficient and higher capacity, while making them smaller in size. \n\nEDIT: typos EDIT 2: and size. Size could be the biggest reason.\n", "They're workable, they're just limited in use.\n\nSome manufacturers are making decent money selling composite magnetic bearing/magnetic levitated flywheels for various uses:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt sounds like you expected some sort of revolution from flywheels?  ", "They also need to run in a very low pressure environment in order to reduce frictional losses from passing through the air. ", "They can be found in some places. Most engines contain a flywheel, to help maintain the engine through its rotation, so that there is not as strong an impulse with each firing of the individual cylinders.", "Compared to other power storage mechanisms, flywheels have pretty large losses due to bearing drag and air friction.  This makes them unsuitable for storing large amounts of power for long periods.", "The [Williams Formula 1 team](_URL_0_) developed a hybrid flywheel energy storage system for use in their racing cars. Although they never actually used the system in F1, they later set up a [separate company](_URL_1_) to market the technology.\n\nThey have already shown a number of different ways the hybrid flywheel technology can be used, including motorsport, bus, rail and car.\n\nEDIT: Their hybrid power website isn't very link-friendly. Click on 'Technology' and 'Applications' on the left hand side of the page for the information.", "I think the main problem is that when they fail, they fail catastrophically and smash stuff up unpredictably."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.beaconpower.com/solutions/other-flywheel-applications.asp"], [], [], [], ["http://www.williamsf1.com/", "http://www.williamshybridpower.com/#%2Fintro"], []]}
{"q_id": "a33u2o", "title": "How do silkworms produce silk?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a33u2o/how_do_silkworms_produce_silk/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eb3x92b"], "score": [2], "text": ["Comes out of silkworms similar to spider web from spiders.   Interesting history google china silkworm smuggle.   Chinese Silk once dominated world  economy  siphoning cash from Europe to China resulting in changes to China's destiny."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "68jwfl", "title": "If the use of magic was seen as heresy in the Catholic church, why was Merlin, a renowned wizard, seen as a good and admirable figure from the Arthurian legends?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/68jwfl/if_the_use_of_magic_was_seen_as_heresy_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgz9l2q", "dgzp740"], "score": [111, 65], "text": ["sorry if this is against the rules, but sort of a side-question, challenge of the basic assumptions of this question:\n\nwas Merlin even viewed as a \"wizard\" in the sense that we think of him today?  I feel like a lot of people's conception of Merlin today might come from the Disney Sword in the Stone movie which portrays him as a sort of crackpot always casting spells and doing \"magic\".  But, I read most of Book 1 of Le Morte d'Arthur and in it, I believe the only real \"magic\" that he does is at the very beginning he turns Arthur's dad into a likeness of Arthur's mom's husband so that he can bang her.  After that, it seemed liked all Merlin really did was tell the future (Arthur would come to him for council and Merlin would say \"blah blah blah is going to happen and this person is going to fight this person and the result of the battle will be this person is going to die\")  \n\nBasically, I wonder if the question should be: was he even viewed as a \"wizard\" (and what did that mean back then - also no time is specified so when?) and was he even viewed as \"good and admirable\"?  because the OP makes the assumption that he was but maybe the Catholic church was anti-Merlin.  \n\nI think a better question would be: What was the Catholic church's stance on \"magic\" during the popularity of Arthurian legend (medieval time period) and how was Merlin viewed in the eyes of the church and the general populace?  ", "[1/2]\n\nLancelot is the great tragic hero of the Middle Ages--the Knight of Hearts, *defined* by his love for the woman he can never permanently have. Gawain is the chivalric warrior par excellence, the greatest knight of the Round Table. And yet, in the early 13C *Quest of the Holy Grail*, one volume of the cycle that basically codifies the 'full' story of King Arthur and his knights, Lancelot spends the whole book doing penance for his adultery, spiritually divorcing himself from his defining characteristic, and still doesn't truly reach the Grail. Gawain doesn't have any opportunities to prove himself worthy. No, boring AF Galahad, Perceval, and Bors plod through their quest and receive the Grail-vision victory. Court-based \"Fanfction\" writers all over Europe take Gawain off on his own riotous adventures of ladies and war--while the rewrite and consolidation of the overarching tale works even *harder* to make everything a Christianized spiritual quest. Thomas Malory in the 15C, of course, will have none of this, thus reifying Lancelot and Guinevere's romance as the beating heart of Camelot.\n\nThe point is, western medieval Europe loved Arthur and his knights, and so the stories mattered. Because they mattered, people fought over them--both in and out of the texts. The presentation of Merlin throughout later medieval Arthuriana is a fantastic illustration of the tensions in play amidst changing social ideals of order, purity, and Christian orthodoxy.\n\nMerlin has both an in-universe and meta-literary backstory when Geoffrey of Monmouth drops him into his rough outline of the Arthurian saga in the 12th century. Geoffs had a bit of an obsession with the legendary wild man who evidently walked around spewing prophecy to anyone with a pen, in fact--he translated a book of prophecies attributed to Merlin from Welsh into Latin before composing the *Historia*, and followed it up with a separate biography of just Merlin.\n\nGeoffrey's new and improved backstory for Merlin already starts to show some of the tensions over supernatural power acting in the world. He borrows part of a biography of yet another legendary character--and then twists it completely. Instead of being a teenager with an unknown father (who turns out to be an ordinary Roman), Geoffs lets one character interview another as to Merlin's parentage. Merlin's mother implies the father was some sort of spirit in the *shape* of a young man, and Vortigern's advisor-sorcerers generally agree it was a demon. This is hearsay, this is supposition, it allows Geoffrey to avoid the question of the relationship between his prophet and magic, his prophet and demons.\n\nMerlin's magic or \"magic\" in the *Historia* is equally ambivalent. Geoffs certainly implies it--or does he? Are Merlin's \"contrivances\" that enable him to move Stonehenge all by himself, 'merely' physical? How closely were \"medicines\" tied to supernatural rather than natural power in the 12th century imagination? Is Merlin transforming Uther into Gorlois, or just giving him really good makeup advice? And--is the apparent ambiguity to us simply a modern imposition on a 12C worldview that didn't differentiate?\n\nThe popularity of Merlin beyond the developing Arthur tale, and the evident popularity of the character within it, made a serious impact on late 12C and early 13C readers. The first group I'll discuss is, like Geoffs, the scholarly-ecclesiastical elite: Latinate churchmen, at the forefront of crystallizing orthodoxy and stamping out what they label heresy (at this point: basically anything seen to threaten Church power; heretical \"belief\" is kind of a wash in an era where the bishop agreed to let the demon-possessed lady keep preaching and shouting in church until Hildegard of Bingen could get there to perform the exorcism).\n\nYou might think that, with the Church doubling down on Church-ifying and controlling lay belief from the late 12C on, clerics would frown on Merlin and vernacular writers composing romances for the laity would know what sells. Well, as Facebook might say, *it's complicated*.\n\nPerpetual crankypants John of Salisbury made little secret of his distaste for Merlin. John differentiated between contemporary, chosen-by-God prophets like Hildegard and Elisabeth of Schonau on one hand, and misguided diviners (that is, those who sought supernatural knowledge by themselves) of \"futile/worthless authority\" whose false prophetic powers came from demons. But when John criticized Merlin explicitly, he did so in response to a colleague who had cited him authoritatively.\n\nAround the turn of the 13th century, William of Newburgh had even harsher words about Merlin. Writing passionately that no true words can come from the devil, which is Merlin's source *even according to Geoffrey* (in Will's account), the Augustinian jeers:\n\n >  It is plain that whatever things [Geo\ufb00rey] published, writing about Merlin, are lies, made up to gratify the curiosity of those without prudence/virtue.\n\nAround the same time, however, Gerald of Wales thoughtfully placed Merlin's Welsh-pagan roots in the context of the current fad towards Christianizing classical pagan texts and ideas (a time-honored medieval obsession). Gerald pointed out that, for example. pre-Jesus seers like the Sibyl nevertheless prophesied his birth (...roll with it). Orderic Vitalis had gone even further, pointing out that some of Merlin's prophecies had been fulfilled and more would be! God speaks through his saints; surely he has the power to speak through others even in the contemporary world. Still, Gerald must be cagey:\n\n >  ...By what spirit such prophecies are made possible, I do not necessarily say that it is demoniac.\n\nThrough the twelfth century, the general idea of \"King Arthur\" and the Round Table knights grew into a gelatinous, disorganized blob. Around 1200, authors with a keen eye towards what was popular with readers started to work to change that. Among the most important, certainly of those whose (probable) name survives, was one Robert de Boron. Robert is probably best known for weaving the Grail into Arthurian legend not as a mysterious floating dish but as the Holy Chalice/Holy Grail brough to England by Joseph of Arimathea--in other words, a lot of the responsibility for the Christianization of Camelot's questing is on his shoulders. And, or maybe and yet?, his other major passion (at least, to surviving text appearances) was *Merlin*.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2eeosc", "title": "why the ku klux klan is not classified as a terrorist organization and members are not arrested on sight.", "selftext": "They seem to be a Taliban-like organization operating in the United States, yet the government does not have a vendetta agains them. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eeosc/eli5_why_the_ku_klux_klan_is_not_classified_as_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjyqqwo", "cjyr04p", "cjyrg4x", "cjyrnnt", "cjyxi8b"], "score": [8, 7, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Would you elaborate on how they are \"Taliban-like\".  I mean... they have an unpopular view of the world, but that is protected by the First Amendment.  They haven't (to my knowledge) used violence or the threat of violence as a political tool in decades (which is the definition of a terrorist).  So they don't really qualify.\n\nAlso recall that the KKK is basically toothless at this point.  They aren't worth the governments time.", "Freedom of speech and freedom to your own beliefs. ", "Same reason that the Nation of Islam - Louis Farrakhan - are permitted to espouse their views unabashed. -  It's their right. ", "They actually have not done terrorist activities as a group in several decades. There have been some splinter groups that have done so, and those have been arrested. ", "The KKK haven't done much terrorism for a long time. It's also wrong to say the government doesn't have vendetta against them as the KKK has long been infiltrated by FBI spies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jbthf", "title": "ethics vs morals", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jbthf/eli5_ethics_vs_morals/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cunxidd", "cunxj2w", "cunxpu3", "cunykyq", "cuo06np", "cuo9oxs", "cuobqe7"], "score": [15, 2, 12, 48, 6, 6, 2], "text": ["Ethics are based on the social contract, we decide together on expectations of how to treat one another.\n\nMorals are based on a belief system independent of other people's belief systems. They are more subjective, yet treated as more universal.\n\nAt least that's how I see the difference.", "Ethics study what is wrong and what is right, moral is what makes you do the right thing. Used pretty much interchangeably nowadays though", "Ethics are intended to be a group discussion of the concept of right and wrong conduct. It is intended to determine what is best for all participants even if it is against the beliefs of a few. For example some might consider the idea that a group of people can set the prices on related products to the same cost for the benefit of that group and the detriment of another group by forming an Oligarchy. While the group that sets the price have no moral quarrel with agreeing with their business partners to set prices to the same amount the people who were purchasing these products would find it unfair, hence unethical.\n\nMorals are what determine what should be believed to be right and wrong and the guiding actions between doing the right thing. In the above example of the Oligarchy, the moral quandary the business partners might have is \"is it okay to make it more difficult for people to purchase what they need for the sole sake of benefiting me?\" This is a moral quandary because instead of an action it is focused on a question of values, determining whether making life difficult for others is okay if it makes your life better.\n\n\nEthics aims to make things as fair as possible for all people. Morals aim to determine what is right and what is wrong.\n\nThat's why they seem so similar because generally most people assume what is fair is also right.", "Ethics are the comprehension and understanding of morals. It's like the difference between anthropology and actually being a human. One is study, the other is application.\n\nTo quote a famous example: The ethical man knows that it is wrong to cheat on his spouse, the moral man doesn't cheat on his spouse.", "The tl;dr version:  \n\nMoral: You don't steal from someone because it would make you feel guilty (and depending on your religion, affect your 'soul').  \nEthical: You don't steal from someone because it harms them, and sets a bad precedent for everyone else.  \n\ne: Naturally, most things that are immoral, you can find an ethical reason for them being wrong too. If you ever find something that's 'immoral' that doesn't have an ethical basis, you should think about why (and thus, if the moral basis is false).", "Let me explain it as clearly and concisely as I can.\n\nEthics is the value-theoretical study of the good. This contrasts it with aesthetics, the value-theoretical study of the beautiful. It also contrasts it with fields such as epistemology (the study of knowledge) and metaphysics (the study of reality), which are not value-theoretical at all (that is, they do not concern themselves with issues of value, such as \"better\", \"worse\", etc). You'll often hear that ethics is the study of justified action or something like that, but this is a misleading characterisation of ethics. While this is a true statement about ethical theories such as consequentialism (which judges actions solely based on their consequences) and deontology (which judges actions based on duties they adhere to, principles they follow, or other such things, and maybe consequences as well depending on the specific theory), it is not true about virtue-centred ethical theories, in which the central focus is on the agent's character rather than on their actions. Nor is it true about care-centred ethical theories, in which the focus is on relationships between people (again, less about specific actions here). Of course, both virtue and care ethics can recommend courses of action, but that is not their central focus. \n\nMorality, on the other hand, is something else. It's a subset of ethical thought, sure, but beyond that, it's a nebulously-at-best defined term. This is why it's not used quite as much in formal contexts. It can mean one of several things. For example, when we say \"morality\", we could be referring to the common ethical rules of a particular group of people - their common morality. Ever heard of \"social mores\"? Well, this is it. \nOn the other hand, \"morality\" can be used to mean something roughly equivalent to spiritual purity. There's often a sense that contravening morals in some way taints the agent. \nOn the third hand, some draw the distinction at the place of other-regarding considerations (thinking about other people). For example, a character-centred virtue theorist may say that it is ethically desirable to have a great deal self-control. But this is often not in the field of morality because it often has nothing to do with other people, but just with you, the subject. This same virtue-theorist may say that generosity, for example, being an other-regarding virtue lands within the field of morality. \nI'd avoid the use of a term like \"morality\" without a solid definition, because it can mean so many differen things to different people.", "**Basically**, there is no difference.\n\n**A fuller, more nuanced answer** follows.\n\n(1) *Most philosophers use the terms interchangeably*, i.e. regard 'ethics' and 'morals' (/'morality') as different words for the same thing. Yet (2) *some philosophers distinguish the two*. One version of the distinction is as follows. (2.i) Morality is a subset of ethics. For morality is about obligations and prohibitions \u2013 about what one should and should not do, whereas ethics is about how to live and what to value; and there is more to living and valuing and obligations and prohibitions. Here is another version of the distinction. (2.ii) Morality is one particular ethic or type of ethics, i.e. one more or less particular way understanding of how to live. (Bernard Williams, drawing upon Nietzsche, holds something like this.) A third version of the distinction: (2.iii) morality is the part of ethics that is universally binding, whereas ethics is somehow relative to groups. (Habermas holds something like this.)\n\n(3) *Etymology.* The word \u2018ethics\u2019 derives from (or is at least related to) several ancient Greek words: *ethos*, meaning character, way of life; *ethikos*, meaning of good character; and *ta ethika*, meaning the study of those things, i.e. ethics. The word \u2018morality\u2019 derives, I think, from the Latin *moralis*, which was (again: I think) first coined in order to translate *ta ethika*. Any linguists / historians around?\n\n\nMore could and should be said, too, about the common usage of the English words \u2018ethics\u2019 and \u2018morality\u2019. Any sociolinguists around?\n\nProperly sorting all this out \u2013 getting fully clear on how the two concepts (ethics and morality) interrelate - would take some work.\n\nSource: I'm heavily involved in this stuff, although this is my first full-ish attempt on your particular question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6h2n30", "title": "why is it when i'm somewhere like the mall or other public place you sometimes see people wearing surgical mask?", "selftext": "Also, is it just coincidental they all seem to be of Asian decent.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h2n30/eli5_why_is_it_when_im_somewhere_like_the_mall_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["div0rby", "div1ef8", "div1g2p", "div44cy", "div83jn", "divf2zp"], "score": [12, 21, 2, 2, 7, 2], "text": ["This is predominantly an Asian culture phenomenon where people will wear the masks to protect themselves against flu and cold outbreaks, as well as air pollutants.\n\nThe practice dates back to the early 20th century, when a number of events - huge influenza outbreaks prior to 1919; the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the ensuing inferno that shot massive amounts of ash into the air; another global flu epidemic in 1934; etc - made use of face masks fairly common in Asia. People assumed the masks offered protection against disease and pollution (air quality gradually became horrendous during the post-WWII industrialization of Japan and China), so their use became widespread and continues to this day.\n\nThere's a good read on the subject here: _URL_0_\n\nEdit: interesting point here:\n\n >  The reality is that the woven-cloth surgical masks provide minimal protection from environmental viruses anyway. (Surgeons use them to protect patients from their mouth-borne germs, not the other way around.)\n\nThe benefits to protecting oneself from other air pollutants is not mentioned, but unless the mask has an air seal around the face and prevents unfiltered air from getting to your orifices, its actual benefits may be limited. That is, other than protecting *others* from *you*.", "I have heard that it is considered respectful to wear a surgical mask in public when you are sick to limit spreading your illness in very dense cities. ", "The people wearing them could have some form of communicable disease (such as tuberculosis, or the flu) and don't want to accidentally infect others.  ", "People wearing them could be immunocompromised and being exposed to even seemingly healthy people could make them sick. Just because a healthy person doesn't show symptoms doesn't mean they aren't carrying something like the flu virus, it may not be strong enough to make them sick, or they already may have immunity to the specific invader but can be easily passed on to someone who has  compromised immune system such as someone with lupus, aids, or chemo patient.", "Reading all of this makes sense but since I live in a rather clean city (it's pretty small) I'm just going to look at them and think to myself how thoughtful, they don't want to get others sick, Every time. Nothing wrong with being positive right? Lol ", " >  Why is it when I'm somewhere like the mall or other public place you sometimes see people wearing surgical mask?\n\nBecause you're filthy.\n\nJK lol. It is not coincidental that these people you've seen are all Asian. It's quite common in East Asia for people to wear facial masks when out and about. It's mostly out of health concerns.\n\nFor instance, in some places (e.g., China) people are very aware that the air quality is horrendous, so they wear masks as an inexpensive way to protect their lungs. Similarly, people are very sensitive to airborne germs in places like subways or buses where many people are crammed into a confined space. So many people in such situations wear masks to prevent themselves from getting sick or, if they're sick themselves, avoid spreading germs to others.\n\nCasually wearing facial masks in Asia is sort of the Asian equivalent of hand-washing in the West. Where westerners are much more cognizant of hand sanitation than dirty air, East Asians are much more cognizant of airborne pathogens and pollutants than dirty hands. So westerners wash their hands but never wear masks, while Asians wear masks but don't wash their hands (as often). *[And before anybody takes issue with that last point, I dare you to visit a public restroom in any East Asian country other than Japan - there is rarely ever hand soap, and when there is,  < 50% of people actually use it.]*\n\nOf course, everything I just said is an enormous generalization and there are obviously plenty of exceptions at the individual level. But as a general cultural trend, the above is all true."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://qz.com/299003/a-quick-history-of-why-asians-wear-surgical-masks-in-public/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ljgqf", "title": "The decline effect", "selftext": "So I was reading an article called \"The truth wears off\" about the controversies of the scientific method and how there is a problem with science due to an effect called \"the decline effect\", which is essentially statisical regression to a mean.This article enraged me, but after looking it to it more I found other people were just as annoyed. So I started to think maybe this effect is limited to certain sciences such as psychology and ecology which are comprised of very complex systems. I'm wondering if anyone has head of such an effect in other fields such as physics, math chemistry...etc?\n\nArticle _URL_0_\n\nSorry for the grammar/spelling.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ljgqf/the_decline_effect/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2t6sbl", "c2t7y0l", "c2t6sbl", "c2t7y0l"], "score": [5, 9, 5, 9], "text": ["I hadn't heard of the decline effect before, but I found the article very interesting.  I agree that the scientists' expectations can affect what they measure -- however, this is why many experiments are performed \"blind\" in biology or biochemistry -- that is, the tester doesn't know which sample is a control or an experimental sample, etc, but just records what they measure.  \n\nIt's true that there are too many papers out there for all experiments to be repeated by other labs.  However, I've had to recreate data from other papers, or other people (who were in the lab 10+ years ago), and although this can be very difficult (there are many parameters that one never thinks about mattering) it's always been possible.  It's just a matter of having enough information about how the experiment was done.  This would be more difficult if the read-out is instead contingent on the behavior of a mouse or the emotions of a human, however.  I think those systems are so complex that it is difficult to control all the parameters.  ", "It's a well-known problem in statistical literature, though it's hard to study directly since the test subjects would be practicing scientists! There are loads of \"observational\" data in repeated experiments of the past, however. \n\nFor instance, if you look up the resistivity of a neuron membrane, the value was confidently measured then shown wrong over and over as the accepted value fell over many years. It turns out improved technology had reduced the \"leakage\" caused by poorly made electrodes, but that leakage wasn't considered in publication.\n\nBlame is usually cast at social sciences and psychology because it is really so easy to read results incorrectly and be overconfident. Worse, people often fall prey to a very insidious confirmation bias that occurs in statistical testing. For instance, an experiment is considered significant if its results are unlikely to a certain measure. It's not always well understood that if you then make slight variations on that same experiment and try again you need to increase the stringency of your significance test otherwise you're nearly guaranteed to publish an incorrect result.\n\nOftentimes the decline effect is explained in those terms. Positive results are certainly more likely to see publication than negative results and therefore there is a \"selection pressure\" which causes plausible and exciting results to become public... even when fallacious.", "I hadn't heard of the decline effect before, but I found the article very interesting.  I agree that the scientists' expectations can affect what they measure -- however, this is why many experiments are performed \"blind\" in biology or biochemistry -- that is, the tester doesn't know which sample is a control or an experimental sample, etc, but just records what they measure.  \n\nIt's true that there are too many papers out there for all experiments to be repeated by other labs.  However, I've had to recreate data from other papers, or other people (who were in the lab 10+ years ago), and although this can be very difficult (there are many parameters that one never thinks about mattering) it's always been possible.  It's just a matter of having enough information about how the experiment was done.  This would be more difficult if the read-out is instead contingent on the behavior of a mouse or the emotions of a human, however.  I think those systems are so complex that it is difficult to control all the parameters.  ", "It's a well-known problem in statistical literature, though it's hard to study directly since the test subjects would be practicing scientists! There are loads of \"observational\" data in repeated experiments of the past, however. \n\nFor instance, if you look up the resistivity of a neuron membrane, the value was confidently measured then shown wrong over and over as the accepted value fell over many years. It turns out improved technology had reduced the \"leakage\" caused by poorly made electrodes, but that leakage wasn't considered in publication.\n\nBlame is usually cast at social sciences and psychology because it is really so easy to read results incorrectly and be overconfident. Worse, people often fall prey to a very insidious confirmation bias that occurs in statistical testing. For instance, an experiment is considered significant if its results are unlikely to a certain measure. It's not always well understood that if you then make slight variations on that same experiment and try again you need to increase the stringency of your significance test otherwise you're nearly guaranteed to publish an incorrect result.\n\nOftentimes the decline effect is explained in those terms. Positive results are certainly more likely to see publication than negative results and therefore there is a \"selection pressure\" which causes plausible and exciting results to become public... even when fallacious."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "47sjmc", "title": "why did iraq invade and annex kuwait in 1990? how could they have not anticipated that much stronger countries allied to kuwait would intervene and drive them out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47sjmc/eli5_why_did_iraq_invade_and_annex_kuwait_in_1990/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0fanis", "d0fbo10", "d0fbrxp", "d0fcxkz", "d0fho5i", "d0fhxzq", "d0fhyd4", "d0firnr", "d0fj1nx", "d0fjz22", "d0fkc4t", "d0fktqi", "d0fl9ng", "d0flb1r", "d0flzef", "d0fm3u5", "d0fn12f", "d0fn24z", "d0fnani", "d0fnjyp", "d0fnrnk", "d0fnytj", "d0fo4bu", "d0fp9tj", "d0fpfn2", "d0fq9xr", "d0fsrfd", "d0fstfn", "d0fuqkd", "d0fvp22", "d0fvwhh", "d0fxw3d", "d0fyh0c", "d0fz99f", "d0g98tt"], "score": [240, 45, 277, 3736, 7, 4, 6, 2, 19, 2, 11, 17, 2, 2, 2, 4, 29, 10, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 18, 2, 6, 13, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Because, well, history wasn't on the side of that. Iraq was the strongest military power in the region. While the Cold War was winding down, the US and USSR still didn't see eye to eye, and both had, within the past generation, had foreign military adventures (Vietnam and Afghanistan) that were PR disasters at home.\n\nSaddam figured that as long as the oil kept flowing, the west wouldn't give a shit who was selling it, or about the politics of the region.\n\nThat math might have been true a decade earlier, but clearly not in 1990.", "Kuwait was slant mining and tapping into Iraqi oil reserves.  At the time Iraq had the stronger military in the region and had relatively good relations with the US.  Through diplomatic channels, the US said they considered the dispute to be a regional matter, hinting they would not oppose a military solution.\n\nIraq either misunderstood, or more likely, figured they could invade quickly enough and be so entrenched that the US and other countries would not have the will to intervene.  They failed to take into account the how the fail of the Soviet Union broke the Cold War stalemate and made it a lot easier for western power to act.", "Iraq was virtually bankrupt after a long war with Iran, it had only one asset left a very large and powerful army, Kuwait looked a soft touch and they gambled on world opinion.", "Iraq invaded Kuwait for financial reasons mostly. Kuwait supported Iraq during the war with Iran. After the war Iraq was in debt to Kuwait for something like $15 billion. Kuwait refused to debt relief. Kuwait was over prducing oil when there was already a glut. This drives the price of oil down which is bad for Iraq because they are really far in debt not just to Kuwait but to many countries around the world to the tune of $60 billion. Also Iraq accused kuwait of slant drill across the border into Iraq and pumping oil from Iraqi oil fields.\n\nNow, how does Iraq invade Kuwait and not expect retaliation from the U.S. and other? Iraq at the time was the most powerful military in the region and the U.S. and Russian had just wound down the cold war. Iraq calculated we wouldn't be able to stomach another conflict with Vietnam and Afghanistan in our rearview mirror. \n\nAnother reason they thought the U.S. wouldn't get involved was a matter of mixed signals from the U.S. ambassador. Statements such as \" we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts\" and that the U.S. did not intend to \"start an economic war against Iraq\". This was said while Iraqi forces were forming on the border with Kuwait. These statements and others, said and not said, was seen as a go ahead  for invasion.\n\nThe U.S. didn't think Iraq was really going to annex Kuwait. The U.S. believed it was just posturing by the Iraqis to put pressure on Kuwait for debt relief and lower oil prduction. I've heard that Saddam was surprised by the response from the U.S.\n\n\n\n", "Iraq at the time had something like the 4th or 5th largest army in the world, it is very possible that Saddam though that the West would not chance war over Kuwait or that he'd be able to fight off the West at the very least. ", "Apart from the other reasons in this thread it's also worth remembering that Iraq and Iran were created by the victors after WW1 (British and French) and that Kuwait was created at the same time in order to deny Iraq a port on the Persian Gulf. It was a divide and conquer approach to colonialism.", "Check out this BBC doc about the war, it gives good detail about Iraq's strategy and an is an excellent quick overview of the war:\n\n_URL_0_ ", "USA called their bluff, I guess. \n\nThink about it, USA could EASILY win a military victory over Cuba and annex it. \n\nwhy don't we?\n\nwho will call our bluff? \n\nRussia?\n\nChina?", "Iraq and Iran has just finished an eight year war.  During that war, there was a subset of conflict called the 'Tanker War' in which a lot of Oil Transports transferred their flag to American subsidiaries. \n\nIran was a dangerous entity in the '80's.  A very new government, espousing a form of Islam that the rest of the Gulf (Saudi, Kuwait, U.A.E etc) were afraid of.  Iraq 'stepped up to the plate' and went to war against Iran, a move that the other Gulf states felt great relief over, because the war curbed Iran's Islamic expansion.\n\nNominally, every country in the Gulf supported Iraq during this war. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'  Iraq had the equipment (Tanks, Planes, Artillery) and Iran had the bodies (Human Wave attacks).  After eight years, Iraq was financially wasted and Iran had a very bloody nose.\n\nIraq needed money and that money came in the form of Oil Revenue.  Kuwait, who 'had Iraq's back' during the war, owned large oil producing fields.  When Iraq went to Kuwait saying 'Look, we fought the Iranians and stopped them from invading the other gulf states now we need money', Kuwait apparently no longer had their back.  \n\nIraq needed the oil but Kuwait had it.\n\nThere were claims to diagonal drilling and '19th Provence'. \n\nSecretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to diffuse the situation but failed miserably, giving Saddam Hussain the impression that he had a green light from the United States to Invade.\n\nSaddam had a delusion that he was a major player in the world.  He felt his military was strong enough to deter any intervention.  He miscalculated.\n\nThis has a lot to do with the command structure of the government and the military in Iraq.  Saddam felt he couldn't lose because he had led such a magical life and there was no one in his circle of advisers that would contradict him.  To do so meant death or ostracizing.  He was surrounded by 'yes men'.\n\nSaddam had built up a cult of personality.  The first Gulf war cracked that wall. ", "As a side note, please never forget that the immediate US military response was \"Operation Desert Shield,\" not Operation Desert Storm.  And where was this Shield located?  Saudi Arabia.  Don't ever, ever, ever let anyone tell you that Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom were about *anything other than oil.*", "\nThe US ambassador had a face to face meeting with Saddam Hussein shortly before the invasion.   She told him the US had no opinion on arab-arab conflicts.   She didn't say anything like \"The United States will not accept an invasion of Kuwait\". \n\nIn the world of diplomacy,  I assume this is how America communicates \"go ahead friend,  we won't stop you\".\n", "Saddamn thought they were Russia invading Crimea.  Or Germany annexing Austria.  They thought their power and distance from from the United States and other major players would keep international players from interfering.\n\nSaddam, as he would many times in his life, miscalculated.  All regional powers are given a certain amount of leeway in controlling their backyard, but Saddam overestimated Iraqi power and underestimated the economic importance of Kuwait as well as a recent strengthening of US-Kuwait relations.  \n\nEspecially, Saddam overestimated the leverage he had over the United States in a post-Cold War environment, when he was used to having the US relatively eager to keep a major regional power happy.\n\nOf course, the people who miscalculated the worst were the Kuwaitis, who thought their increased drilling from the field shared between Iraq and Kuwait would force Iraq to the negotiating table, but instead led to tanks rolling over the borders.\n\nHonestly, the US probably would have been okay with Iraq strongarming Kuwait, maybe shooting up some oil wells and some salvos of artillery while promising more to come if Kuwait didn't settle down.   But a full-fledged invasion and occupation was too far over the line given the strengthening ties between the US and Kuwait - the same way Russia would be playing a very dangerous game if it tried to annex all of Ukraine instead of just Crimea.  Consider how even in their blatant annexation of Crimea, Russia plays politics by insisting it's local sentiment and Ukrainian secessionists and no Russia has no idea where those tanks came from.  We let Germany have Austria because we could imagine a sufficient excuse, and we let Germany have Czechoslovakia because Hitler asked nicely and the German war machine was pretty terrifying.  And of course, many of the relevant politicians could remember WW2 and so could their political bases, so any appeasement would have made them look weaker than they would have in the absence of Hitler.\n\nSaddam forgot to even ask - in the modern world, you have to give the world powers a chance to save face if you're going to exert military force.\n\nTL;DR Saddam thought Iraq had a hard sphere of influence that would let him apply an Iraqi version of the Monroe Doctrine/Iron Curtain, but it didn't.", "\"Iraq invaded Kuwait for financial reasons mostly. Kuwait supported Iraq during the war with Iran. After the war Iraq was in debt to Kuwait for something like $15 billion. Kuwait refused to debt relief. Kuwait was over prducing oil when there was already a glut. This drives the price of oil down which is bad for Iraq because they are really far in debt not just to Kuwait but to many countries around the world to the tune of $60 billion. Also Iraq accused kuwait of slant drill across the border into Iraq and pumping oil from Iraqi oil fields.\nNow, how does Iraq invade Kuwait and not expect retaliation from the U.S. and other? Iraq at the time was the most powerful military in the region and the U.S. and Russian had just wound down the cold war. Iraq calculated we wouldn't be able to stomach another conflict with Vietnam and Afghanistan in our rearview mirror.\nAnother reason they thought the U.S. wouldn't get involved was a matter of mixed signals from the U.S. ambassador. Statements such as \" we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts\" and that the U.S. did not intend to \"start an economic war against Iraq\". This was said while Iraqi forces were forming on the border with Kuwait. These statements and others, said and not said, was seen as a go ahead for invasion.\nThe U.S. didn't think Iraq was really going to annex Kuwait. The U.S. believed it was just posturing by the Iraqis to put pressure on Kuwait for debt relief and lower oil prduction. I've heard that Saddam was surprised by the response from the U.S.\"", "You also have to remember that the leader, Saddam, was literally surrounded by yes men and was delusional.  ", "As far as I know, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 because Kuwait didn't offer the same amount of debt relief to Iraq that Iraq wanted (Iraq was deeply in debt to Kuwait during this time due to Kuwaiti loans to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War).\n\nAs for Saddam not anticipating the strong U.S. response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, U.S. diplomat April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein shortly before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that the U.S. takes no sides in Arab-on-Arab disputes (or something along those lines). Indeed, Saddam Hussein appears to have misinterpreted April Glaspie's statement and thought that this statement meant that the U.S. will not militarily intervene in the event that Iraq invaded Kuwait.\n\nAlso, while the U.S. did, in fact, militarily intervene against Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, it is worth noting that the vote in favor of war in the U.S. Senate was a narrow 52 to 47, with the overwhelming majority of Democrats voting against war. Thus, Saddam Hussein's view that the U.S. will not go to war with Iraq in response to an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait might have very well been accurate if a Democrat, rather than a Republican, would have been the U.S. President at the time that Saddam Hussein would have invaded Kuwait. Indeed, in hindsight, all that Saddam Hussein might have needed to do to more-or-less get away with an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would have been to wait a couple of years or more before he would have actually invaded Kuwait. Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein, though, he certainly didn't have the luxury of hindsight and wasn't a particularly good decision-maker either.", "In the days before the invasion, Condie Rice was all over the news essentially saying \"middle east affairs, not ours\", Saddam watched the news.  ", "While a lot of posts are mentioning the western viewpoint of why people think Iraq did it there are very few actually telling the real viewpoint why Saddam did it.\n\n\n- Kuwait was actually drilling into wells that were accessed by Iraq siphoning oil off their reserves (some people mentioned this, but it was basically the last straw so to speak)\n\n- Kuwait had absolutely TONS of oil reserves keeping the prices low which really really hurt Iraq at the time which had a lot of debt from the Iraq / Iran war.\n\n- Kuwait and Baghdad had a partnership that went back hundreds of years.  Iraqi's were the major reason why Kuwait became a commercial boom center (long before oil)  As you can see from the [border](_URL_0_)  It's got a huge port and a lot more coastline in the Gulf.  All very valuable and since it was Iraqis who made that port into the boom country it is (before oil) and now it's mega rich with oil, it makes a lot of sense.\n\nSo to sum up the why.\n\n- Kuwait was siphoning off oil\n- Had gigantic reserves keeping the price low\n- Iraq had a lot of debt from a previous war\n- Historically Iraqi's helped make Kuwait what it is today\n\nAll of that is the reason why.  Saddam had the means, the need, and both present and past reasons to do it.\n\nNow on to why Saddam thought nobody would care in the Western world.  \n\n- First off the US/West really hadn't been involved in the regions conflicts all that much.  They would sell arms, send support that way, but not actually get involved militarily.  Russia did in Afghanistan, but that was them, and the west really wasn't into doing that sort of thing.\n\n- He was actually correct about that.  The west really didn't care at all about the region enough to get involved at all in a hands on sort of way.  In fact Britain got out of a lot of places in the last 50 years.  But the economic interest isn't what he expected at all.\n\n- Kuwait has billions upon billions of pounds in British banks.  The reason is because of the alliance Mubarak made with the crown a long time ago when Britain was looking for influence in the region to help with trade routes to/from India.  Basically later Britain agreed to defend Kuwait and ensure its National Security, and Kuwait agreed to give it a secure oil supply. \n\n- This was Saddam's miss calculation.  Britain's tie to Kuwait was VERY big.  Billions in British pounds at very very cheap oil prices.  If Britain didn't honor the agreement to protect Kuwait, Kuwait would pull its money out of the British banks.   Now if you think the housing collapse in the US is bad, Kuwait pulling out of its British investments would have been absolutely a killer to the British economy.  (Kuwait invested like 5 billion in Spain in the late 80s that basically was a bust, but they have that kind of money where they are annoyed but no big deal. )   So when Britain saw Iraq invade Kuwait they had to do something, not because the care about the Kuwait people.  They did it because their economy depended on it, and if their economy depends on it...The US economy depended on it.\n\nSo What Saddam missed was the major economic threat that Kuwait was going to serve Britain if they didn't get their ass over there and kick out Saddam.\n\nThis also set up the whole Iraq war 2 Electric Bugaloo with Tony Blair.  \"George W. Bush: Hey remember when my dad saved your ass with the whole Saddam thing?  Well it's time to pay us back, don't worry we'll cut you in for a piece of that oil action\", and that's why Blair and Bush were joined at the hip for Iraq part 2.\n\nSo what did Saddam not understand?\n\nThat Britain was economically heavily tied to Kuwait so much so that they had to intervene no matter what or risk going into a massive recession, which would send the US into one.  ", "There's actually a pretty good writeup on Wikipedia about this. You should read it to get the full story, but I'll give you the tl;dr. Basically, until then, US and Iraq were buds. The US somewhat supported Iraq in their war against Iran, and maintained close relations after that was over. When Kuwait started being sorta dickish (slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields), Iraq complained, including to the US. The US basically said \"it's an arab problem, we don't care\", which led Iraq to believe that the US did not care about how the problem was resolved. Iraq tried to negotiate with Kuwait but couldn't get what they wanted, so, believing that the rest of the world would stay out of the matter, they invaded. Then the US said \"holy shit they were serious\", the Saudis said \"hey, US, we'll give you mucho dinero to beat up our rival for us\", Iraq said \"dafuq?\", and then the gulf war happened.", "I don't agree with the OP's premise. I do not think Iraq expected allies to respond like that. \n\nIf anything, Western countries were (at the time and before it) moving physical military force OUT of the Middle East.\n\nIt's also easy to forget that (at the time) Saddams Iraq was seen as a very big and very threatening army making a lot of other arabs nervous. I think they touted the '5th largest active army' in the world AND were very experienced fighters (long war with Iran) AND were notorious for using WMDs and brutality.\n\nSo, its all good to look back with 20/20 hindsight and see a massive alliance did kick them out of Kuwait but even then did not counter-invade, take over, depose etc. Just Kuwait. But we can look back and say that seemed easy however..\n\n..ya they were a massive army and no I dont think they expected the pushback. ", "Iraq asked US ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie what would happen if Iraq invaded Kuwait. Glaspie said the US policy was to not get involved in Arab vs Arab disputes. Iraq was secretly audio taping this conversation and released the tapes later on. The contents of these tapes have never been discredited.\n\nNo one was willing to blame April Glaspie for fucking up because they felt that would hurt the career chances of other women trying to become ambassadors so her mistake was downplayed by the media and forgotten by most people.", "Countries have been invading each other on a regular basis, usually they get slapped with economic sanctions for it and that's all.\n\nIt was very unusual to get this kind of direct military intervention.", "It is probably too late to list the real trigger. I'm not going to get into the underlying causes at all. The trigger was Secretary of State James Baker's insistence that Saddam receive the following message via April Catherine Glaspie in 1990:\n\n >  We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.\n\nAllow me to translate the subtext: *Saddam Hussein, we will look the other way as Iraqi tanks roll through Kuwait.*", "_URL_0_ is relevant:\n\n\"Later the transcript has Glaspie saying:\n\n\u201cWe have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.\u201d\n\n[...]\n\nWhen these purported transcripts were made public, Glaspie was accused of having given tacit approval for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which took place on August 2, 1990. It was argued that Glaspie's statements that \"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts\" and that \"the Kuwait issue is not associated with America\" were interpreted by Saddam as giving free rein to handle his disputes with Kuwait as he saw fit. It was also argued that Saddam would not have invaded Kuwait had he been given an explicit warning that such an invasion would be met with force by the United States.\"", "As an Iraqi i can only say that Iraq was the agressor. \n\nIran has been pretty alright since the revolution and the fear of terrorism from Iran didnt come true at all. Instead terrorism came from KSA/Yemen. \n\nMeanwhile Iran has been the victim of the west (mainly usa) simply because a coup removed an USA pro dictator in favor of an Sovjet pro dictator (but now its a democracy-like state).\n\nThe Iraq Iran war has many winners and 2 losers. All the weapsons sold to both sides, sometimes by the same country is just so wrong.", "As an Iraqi living in Iraq at the time, the noise we were hearing from officials were that Kuwait was drilling right into Iraqi oil fields. ", "George Bush Sr.'s diplomats gave Saddam Hussein the impression that there would be no intervention if he seized Kuwait - that the US did not have any great interest.  \n\nThey basically baited him into invading, then turned around and used the invasion as an excuse to mobilize a war.  It was part of Bush Sr.'s grand strategy to get re-elected, which failed because the war was too successful and ended too quickly.  \n\nThe same people later made sure to make the next war last longer under Bush's son a decade later.", "April glaspie, the U.S. Middle East envoy, told Saddam he could. It's documented in transcripts available on the net. \n\nYou also need to remember the U.S.helped Saddam get in and retain power in the first place. He had no reason to expect a double cross", "[Here](_URL_0_) is a transcript of a conversation between April Gillespie, who was the US Ambassador to Iraq at the time of the invasion, and Saddam Hussein.\n\nIn it, Saddam makes it clear that he considers Kuwait to be part of Iraq, but states that he will drop his aggression towards Kuwait in return for being allowed to keep a part of Iran.\n\nIn response, after having said that her only mission is to maintain good relations with Iraq, tells Saddam that Iraq's stance on Kuwait is not really US business and implies a \"You do whatever you do.\" attitude.\n\nIn effect... Saddam was told that the US wouldn't interfere. That's not to say the US supported the invasion, but did not feel it was prudent to *oppose*.\n\nTL:DR - Saddam had obtained tacit permission *by* the more powerful countries.", "Iraq received confusing signals from the Americans about Kuwait doing slant drilling into Iraq. Iraq responded by invading them, stealing there gold, burning the oil wells and creating one the largest environmental disasters in history. I think if Iraq made specific forays into Kuwait with the purpose of stopping Slant drilling it may have worked out well for Iraq.", "On a side note about the first gulf war.  I remember watching the Senate hearings on weather or not we should get involved.  They had this young girl testify that she was working in a hospital in Kuwait and watched the Iraqi soldiers come in and loot the hospital.  Including taking babies out of incubators.  Well, it turns out that this was complete bullshit.  In fact, the girl who testified turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwait ambassador to the United States.  She was living in the United States at the time and was going to college here on the taxpayers dime.  So there's that.\n", "Saddam made some noises about invading,just to see the reaction. Since at the time Saddam was a \"friend\" to the US (Rumsfeld gave Saddam the chemical weapons he used on the Kurds), the US signaled him that they wouldn't react. Then Bush 1 changed his mind..", "Apart from \"historical reasons\" (Kuwait being former part of Iraq), Kuwait was also stealing oil from Iraq and did other things concealed from OPEC and directly damaging to Iraq economy.\n\nKuwait was secretly pumping above the OPEC quotes, inevitably lowering the price thus hurting Iraq and Iran efforts to recover after the long and bloody Irn-Irq war of the 80s.\n\nNot only that, Kuwait was caught slant-drilling Iraqi oil near the border which is plain stealing. The stealing was confirmed by various UN experts that Iraqi government invited to investigate.\n\nHowever, Kuwait choose to ignore all Iraqi warnings. After many attempts at resolution, Iraqis called US ambassador in Iraq to complain about Kuwait behavior and warning that Iraq will have to \"do something\" about it. US ambassador says \"what two arab countries do between themselves is of no concern to US\" which is implicitly a green light.", "Saddam was led to believe we would not get involved. Basically we completely set him up.  After all, it had been the CIA in the 50s that pushed for the Baathist rise to power,", "It is also important to note that Saddam Hussein offered the United States $10 per barrel for the remainder of his entire life if they did not intervene. \nThe United States declined that offer and the rest was history", "History is slowly wiping out the seeds of what ultimately led to the Iraq war and possibly the collapse of post WW1 Middle East.\n\nBush and Co. Screwed over Saddam by providing guns to Iran while publicly supporting Iraq in their war.\n\n[Screwed 'Em](_URL_0_)\n\n[It was personal](_URL_1_)\n\nWe led Iraq to believe we would not invade if they moved into Kuwait war hounds used the opportunity to place a military presence in the region.\n\n[It goes back a ways](_URL_2_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMV_0iTk1qs"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/DpC0cWd.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie#Meetings_with_Saddam_Hussein"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-between-saddam-hussein-and-ambassador-to-iraq-april-glaspie/31145"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran\u2013Contra_affair", "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/timeline/062793.htm", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century"]]}
{"q_id": "5crd18", "title": "why do multi billionaires continue striving to earn more money and waste decades to earn more money when they've reached a place we're their ancestors would never have to work again for the next 200 years?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5crd18/eli5_why_do_multi_billionaires_continue_striving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9yq2is", "d9yq8gt", "d9yqkrd", "d9yr0cr", "d9yrbhb", "d9yrcxv"], "score": [12, 30, 7, 5, 2, 12], "text": ["Same reason some people want the high score in a video game. Or some people want to be the fastest person alive.\n\nSomething in our evolution said \"You need to be the best in order to mate and pass on your genes\" Some people that evolutionary trait is ~~very common~~ *hyperactive*.\n\nSome people it's a point of pride or spite. Anger or emotion keep them doing things. Some people just enjoy doing what they're doing and happen to make a lot of money from it.", "There's actually a psychological principle called \"habituation,\" where you get used to something and the novelty wears off. Whatever income level you have becomes normal, and you want to break beyond it.  \n\nRegardless of actual income, the average human being thinks they'll be happier earning \"10-15% more\" than whatever you currently make.  But happiness is better understood as a personality trait, not something that comes from a reaction to the quality of your life.\n\nSo this means that most people feel like they're chasing their happiness/contentedness, but really they're just slightly unhappy people. \n\nThink of it like a drug addiction.  You're middle class, but want to be upperclass.  You feel unhappy because you can only afford to rent an apartment, you have a crappy car, you vacation to New Jersey, etc.  Then you make a million dollars, and all of a sudden you can afford a nice house, a nice car, take more exotic vacations, etc. \n\nThen that begins to feel like the baseline \"norm.\"  You want something additional to make you happier. You want more money to get that vacation home, three cars, be able to take vacations 3 months out of the year.  \n\nThat drive to move forward and have a little more never ends.  And the more you get, the higher your tolerance is.  It takes more and more to get that same \"happy\" rush you got from being able to afford your first house.  All of a sudden you want original picasos, exotic animals, you want a penthouse suite in Dubai.  \n\nAnd so on.  ", "Why does man climb the mountain?\n\nSome people are greedy assholes, but I'd wager that there is very little you can do with $2 billion that you can't do with 1. No, they do it for a variety of reasons. \n\n1. It's what they're good at. No one lucks into that much money. Sure, they benefited from fortunate circumstances, but they also had skill that allowed them to \"win the game\" so to speak. They also probably enjoy what they do, otherwise they would have retired to a private island much sooner. If you really liked something and were good at it, would you quit and watch Netflix all day?\n\n2. Some people want to build something. It's not about the strict dollar figure, it's about the tangible result. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Andrew Carnegie. These people created things that were enduring and changed the world. Would you give that up just because you \"had enough money\" already?\n\n3. Some people want to win the game. They derive pleasure and satisfaction from being successful and on top. It's not inherently about the money, but since we measure business success in dollars, that's the result. ", "When you work all your life on something you cant just drop it on a whim, people often see their companies like their children, its not just 'x amount of money every year'.\n\nIt is more easily undrrstood with actors or musicians, they built their career all their life sothey wouldnt stop just because the money is not a problem anymore. As odd as it seems people can feel like that about their companies or investments too.", "Because for some, making money is a byproduct of how they choose to live their life, not the goal. ", "Because successful people don't work for money, they work to win. There is always another foe to vanquish."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lk76o", "title": "how come on military uniforms and other things of that nature is there a backwards american flag on one shoulder and then a normal one on the other?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lk76o/eli5_how_come_on_military_uniforms_and_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc0219x", "cc02axw", "cc02hgn"], "score": [18, 15, 10], "text": ["The backwards flag is supposed to symbolize the flag fluttering in the wind as our troops move forward on the battle field.", "It represent the American flag, properly aligned, entering battle as if it was on a flagpole.", "The American flag always flies forward. So of you imagine someone running with a flag on a pole, from their right side it would look normal, from the left side it would seem to be backwards."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hkonu", "title": "why won't any country grant snowden asylum?", "selftext": "why is he getting rejected over and over again? I read the stupid excuses, but what's the real reason?\nalso why did the ecuadurian reject him while accepting assange, aren't they both on the same \"team\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hkonu/eli5why_wont_any_country_grant_snowden_asylum/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cav8zbw", "cav9i2j", "cavamg7", "cavaxu4", "cavdjo9", "cavoccz"], "score": [26, 16, 6, 21, 7, 2], "text": ["Assange went to Ecuadorian territory (an embassy is their territory, ~~technically~~ basically), so he followed their rules on granting Diplomatic Asylum.  For Snowden he's probably be granted the same if he went to Ecuador's embassy, but he'd have to go into Moscow for that, which wouldn't happen.\n\nRegarding \"what is the **real** reason\" the best we can tell you is what those countries say, everything else is just useless speculation.", "He's basically the equivalent of playing nuclear hot potato. Nobody really wants to fuck with a wanted criminal with his kind of infamy. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his actions, you have to see that he's become a bit of a worldwide pariah.", "There are probably several countries who would grant him asylum, but he has to be in that country or at the very least in their embassy when he applies. \n\nRussia have already offered him asylum, but on the condition that he stop sharing US secrets. He refused the condition and the offer of asylum was withdrawn.", "There will be severe economic and political consequences for anyone who grants Snowden asylum. The US is like the schoolyard bully, anyone who crosses him will get knocked around a bit. ", "No country has anything to gain by letting Snowden in. They all have a lot to lose (pissing off the US.)", "Because they weights the pros and cons.  And Snowden is not worth it.  That's the sad truth, there's a price for everything in this world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4d7chh", "title": "i got spam from my own account. i looked this up and apparently some e-mail providers allow you to send messages from other e-mail accounts (spoofing). why is this allowed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d7chh/eli5_i_got_spam_from_my_own_account_i_looked_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1oct02", "d1od788", "d1om983"], "score": [7, 27, 11], "text": ["For an e-mail to get where it's going, it has to pass through many steps.\n\nLet's have a human equivalent. Andrew wants to send a message to David. He gives the message to Bob, telling him it's for David. Bob gives the message to Charles, telling him it's from Andrew and it's for David. And Charles gives the message to David, telling him it's from Andrew.\n\nThe thing is, there's no way for Charles or David to know the message really is from Andrew. It may be that Bob said it is, but he just made it up.\n\nE-mail spoofing woks like this. So it's not a case of being \"allowed\", it's just that, with the way e-mails work, it's hard to prevent.", "E-mail is sent using a protocol called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which dates back to 1981 (and so is about eight years older than the World Wide Web).\n\nBack then, the internet was used by the military and academia (universities, research institutions and so on) -- it wasn't available to the general public. Nobody really thought the internet would become what it is now, with nearly everyone in the developed world (and a lot of people in the developing world) owning devices that could connect to it. And the idea that anyone would want to spoof e-mails was... ridiculous. This was a serious research tool, a network of databases.\n\nSo SMTP never included a way to authenticate the sender. And we're stuck with that.", "It's like writing a false return address on an envelope.  The email system, like the postal system, doesn't check that the sender has put their real address."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5dv65p", "title": "how come nyc (latitude=40\u00b0) gets covered in snow during winter whereas melbourne (latitude=-38\u00b0) never really gets much?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dv65p/eli5_how_come_nyc_latitude40_gets_covered_in_snow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da7ioxz", "da7izvq", "da7jsjl", "da7jyoz"], "score": [46, 6, 8, 6], "text": ["Oceanic currents and wind patterns keep the weather on some coasts milder than on others. That is why the West Coast is much warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the East Coast of the US. Melbourne is protected from Antarctic weather systems by the Southern Ocean, while nothing stops polar winds from reaching NYC.", "Because latitude isn't the only determining factor in what kind of whether a location gets.\n\nTopology and relation to ocean currents is much more telling. That's why countries like England and Denmark have mild climate even though they're further north than the entire continental United States.", "Topography matters. I live in Dublin, 55N, which is very close to the same latitude as Edmonton, Alberta. I've been there - very nice, gets about 50% more sunshine than Dublin, but in winter ... hoo, boy. I was in Edmonton one January, walking around in -20C during the day, in bright sunshine, but one night there was a severe storm during which the temp dropped below -30C. \n\nIreland's climate is warmed by the Gulf Stream, and it never gets *really* cold. Last winter Dublin got no snow worth mentioning at all. Edmonton, on the other hand, is on the east side of the Rockies, and cold air sweeps down over land all the way from the Arctic. If that hits moist Pacific air pushed up over the Rockies, the result is massive snowfall. ", "Jet stream patterns.\n\nMelbourne gets hit by (relatively) dry warm winds that have blown across the Great Victoria Desert, the Nullarbor Plain, and the Great Australian Bight (which is fed by warm winds from the Indian Ocean).\n\nNew York gets pinned between the cold Polar jet stream blowing down from Canada (picking up moisture along the way from the Great Lakes) and wet wind blowing in from the North Atlantic Ocean.\n\nThe relative lack of other land masses in the southern hemisphere creates a warm jet stream (the 'westerlies') that isolates Australia from the Antarctic cold winds (the 'Polar easterlies'). So the winds that hit southern Australia are mostly warm winds being pushed south from the Indian Ocean, despite its low latitude and proximity to Antarctica."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bdrl2w", "title": "Following the burning of Notre Dame, what is the impact of burnt lead on the environment ?", "selftext": "Following the burning of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris yesterday, I read that the spire (and other elements of the roof) was composed of 250 tons of lead. What is the environmental impact of lead exposed to a fire ? What can we expect in the following days/weeks/months in term of pollution ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bdrl2w/following_the_burning_of_notre_dame_what_is_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["el2v99z", "el2vf9v"], "score": [2, 6], "text": ["Likely it would be somewhat similar to a forest fire but with higher levels of lead in the air, although even considering the large amount of lead now present in the air surrounding the cathedral, it\u2019s not likely that we\u2019d see any adverse effects similar to the effects when lead was present in gasoline.\n\nIn terms of environmental damage, this means that crops surrounding the cathedral would contain higher amounts of lead, which would also probably be negligible to human health.", "The boiling point of lead is 1750 C (3180 F), so it couldn't just boil away.\n\nA bit of it will have evaporated, some parts might have formed new chemical compounds with whatever else was around, but I would expect that most of the lead remained as it is - now solid again. Not sure if that is actually the case, we would need someone who knows the conditions of the roof of Notre Dame better."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4igg7f", "title": "Weird question: What did ancient Mediterranean societies (Rome, Greece mainly, but other answers are welcome too) use as lube?", "selftext": "With the acceptance of queer sex in these societies, I don't really see how that would be going on. Do we know? Did they use olive oil, spit, what? Or are there no sources on the matter? \nThanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4igg7f/weird_question_what_did_ancient_mediterranean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2y4t5h"], "score": [18], "text": ["This was answered in this subreddit already. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aygwa/how_did_people_in_the_past_perform_anal_sex/"]]}
{"q_id": "44ns7s", "title": "why humans are relatively hairless?", "selftext": "What happened in the evolution somewhere along the line that we lost all our hair? Monkeys and neanderthals were nearly covered in hair, why did we lose it except it some places?\n\nBonus question: Why did we keep the certain places we do have? What do eyebrows and head hair do for us and why have we had them for so long?\n\nWouldn't having hair/fur be a pretty significant advantage? We wouldnt have to worry about buying a fur coat for winter.\n\n-\n\nedit: thanks for the responses guys!\n\n-\n\nedit2: what the actual **** did i actually hit front page while i watched the super bowl\n\n-\n\nedit3: *stop telling me we have the same number of follicles as chimps, that doesn't answer my question and you know it*", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44ns7s/eli5_why_humans_are_relatively_hairless/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czrgkqa", "czrgroa", "czrgs4b", "czrgt2l", "czrn270", "czrnfw4", "czrnur0", "czro7r3", "czrp031", "czrp4mj", "czrp9gm", "czrpegx", "czrq39h", "czrqbk4", "czrrhnp", "czrs969", "czrsyb8", "czrtag7", "czrthzg", "czru4mk", "czru8ii", "czrudcb", "czruslp", "czrvqp5", "czrw0qg", "czrw11a", "czrwj1k", "czrx1ul", "czrx8tj", "czrx96u", "czrxoa5", "czrxuyd", "czrxxwv", "czrybq4", "czrymv7", "czryraw", "czrzaf7", "czrzqs9", "czs00zz", "czs03lw", "czs14gt", "czs1loe", "czs1pih", "czs1w94", "czs1zjf", "czs2fhg", "czs2ib1", "czs3011", "czs38ze", "czs3q34", "czs3w45", "czs3w5j", "czs43ma", "czs43rb", "czs5j4e", "czs5kzf", "czs5tf1", "czs6111", "czs61z9", "czs7i7z", "czs7ifh", "czs9sld", "czseoml", "czsm602"], "score": [3468, 34, 5, 1051, 54, 45, 468, 12, 9, 2, 1626, 13, 2, 12, 3, 4, 25, 12, 7, 2, 3, 137, 296, 2, 8, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 4, 2, 2, 5, 3, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Hairlessness allows us to regulate our body heat more easily. One of the main advantages humans have over other animals is our ability to run long distances, and hunt animals by tiring them out. If we were covered in fur, we would simply heat up too quickly and not be able to run for long. ", "Humans have the ability to sweat which gives us legendary endurance for both continuous movement and the ability to withstand hot environments and even both at the same time. You can't properly sweat while covered in fur. As for warmth it wasn't really necessary since clothing was invented a very long time ago and if we could wear the fur of a mammoth then there is no need to grow our own. With this in mind fur actually becomes a hindrance, not to mention it is more costly in terms of time, effort and energy to maintain. On top of all that lice and ticks were a very real problem and still are for animals that have fur. \n\nThe reason that head hair was kept is because of sexual selection. Long wavy hair was seen as a symbol of someone so good at the caveman life that they can maintain nice hair in an era where hunting and farming was an absolute must. On top of that long hair does offer some protection against the sun and physical damage, and makes somewhat of a cushion for sleeping. \n\nEyebrows allows for non-verbal communication without resorting to hand symbols in humans and is vital for reading facial expressions. It is beneficial for teamwork and empathy for this reason. Eyebrows also keep water from dripping down into your eyes when it rains. Likewise eyelashes keep out dust and dirt from your eyes and help remove it if it does get in. \n\nHair on the underarms and butt region allows you to move your limbs without chaffing your skin. As for the last section of hair, probably sexual selection once again. ", "It is down to a type of hunting called an endurance hunt which bipedal animals are more suited for and enables us to lose heat whilst running long distances, for more on this - _URL_0_", "Our ancestors were essentially marathon runners that ran down our prey until it was exhausted. Humans aren't very fast. Nearly all our prey were faster in short bursts, but none possessed the endurance of our species. Sweat cools our body down. Losing the hair allowed the sweat to perform more efficiently and keep going for longer distances.\n\nEyebrows...I don't know for certain. Total guess here would be that they keep sweat from running into our eyes and are effective communication tools in facial expression.", "We are not hairless.  We have just as many hairs as other animals, it's just not as thick in some places.  I read someplace that we have as many hair follicles as chimps.", "I've not read yet about the \"swimmer\" hypothesis. Humans are pretty good swimmers and divers, and can hold our breathe well and other random stuff. There is an hypothesis, that we spent some time evolving near water, and relatively less hair is an adaption for that.\n\nEDIT:\n\n[Here's the wikipedia article about it](_URL_0_). I should say that glancing at the article, it isn't really well accepted. But it is interesting.", "I just want to say that what the top comments in this thread aren't proven at all. They are theories with a lot of evidence supporting it, but almost just as much disagreeing or not supporting it. I'm not saying they probably aren't right, in fact I think the endurance running hypothesis is pretty good. But I'm just saying to keep an open mind as these are not 100% proven and we still don't have the whole picture (but probably never will due to gaps in hominin fossil record).\n\nHairlessness may have resulted because of sweating alone, but it could just as easily be due to a multitude of factors. One thing we dont know is at what point hominins lost their hair.\n\nAs an interesting sidebit, we don't actually have any definitive answer for the chin. Why do we have it? Other apes do not have chins, neither did Neanderthals. Studies show it has nothing to do with mastication. What is thought now is that it had to do with genetic isolation or sexual selection. Nobody ever thinks about the chin, so just thought I'd share.\n\nEdit: I actually expected to be downvoted to hell with this initial comment. I'm glad that there are a lot of you that think about these things objectively and formulate your own hypotheses! This is how science happens guys", "Here's a BBC 7 minute [video](_URL_0_) of an African Hunter-Gather group running prey down to exhuastion.", "The aquatic ape theory.  It explains just about every distinction between apes and humans. The \"hairlessness\" (although we have just as many hair follicles as chimps, only ours barely produce in comparison) aided swimming, nose shape, subcutaneous fat, saline tears, dive reflex, uprightness and others are all traits developed during our aquatic phase.  All of the traits that differentiate humans and apes also happen to be shared with marine mammals.  Humans are evolved down the aquatic scale more than otters but less than seals.  It's interesting as hell to me. Plenty on YouTube, Elaine Morgan is the woman most active in the theory.", "Are you saying I'm not human?", "It is difficult to ELI5 because no one actually knows the answer for sure.  Every answer presented as fact is really a hypothesis.  More than that, they are [just-so stories](_URL_2_), because they are almost untestable and thus unfalsifiable.  All of that being said, there are three major hypotheses, which are not mutually exclusive:\n\n- [The running man hypothesis](_URL_1_): Walking on two-legs helped us throw spears and see far, and also let us separate our breathing from our stride.  When most four-legged animals sprint, their bodies expand and contract such that their breathing is forced to follow their stride; we can decouple those two motions, which is a luxury.  Furthermore, hairlessness helps us to sweat, as hair would slow down evaporative cooling.\n\n- [The aquatic ape hypothesis](_URL_4_): Another idea holds that humans became bipedal because an elevated head helped them when wading and fishing.  Aquatic mammals tend to either have very dense hair or no hair at all (whales, dolphins, pigs - kinda, etc.).  This idea is not as crazy as it sounds, and some random observations support that we evolved to be in or near wet environments.  For example, you know how your fingertips get wrinkly when they're in water for a while?  Well, that reaction is regulated by your nervous system, and is not a direct effect of wetness.  Furthermore, those wrinkles have been demonstrated to aid your ability to grip wet rocks.\n\n- [The filthy fur hypothesis](_URL_5_): Fur is not as good as clothing, because you can remove and clean clothing.  Fur, on the other hand, is always full of parasites.  Consider the two hairiest parts of the body, the scalp and the crotch; both are subject to lice.  This argument holds that we lost fur because of the terrible parasite load associated with dense fur.  It also argues that the few remaining hairs can help you feel crawling parasites and impede their progress (I have a hairy back, and can attest to this.  Good luck, ticks!)  We either replaced fur with clothing gradually, or else picked it up later to cover our nakedness, especially as we went into colder climates, depending on the timeline (which I will admit isn't known to me).\n\nThe remaining hair may serve a number of purposes, but it seems to help prevent sunburn, demonstrate sexual maturity, channel water flow, filter air, increase sensation and sensory range, and possibly trap aroma (while many probably no longer find this desirable, [body odor was considered sexy even in historical times, and still is in some places](_URL_0_)).  Some people here have asked if (or argued that) a trait must have been selected for if we see it today, but that's not always the case.  As hard as it is to accept, some things are the way they are purely by chance.  Red hair is frequent in Ireland in spite of no known selective benefit.  Eyebrow shapes could be in the same category.  Again, [no one knows.](_URL_3_)\n\nEDIT: About 10 different people rightly pointed out a mistake in my language, which made it seem like I think humans evolved a certain way because it *would be* to their benefit, rather than that they evolved a certain way because it *was* to their benefit.  I hope I corrected it so that no one thinks I'm a Lamarckian or believe in directed evolution.  Thanks for the input, glad people like the response!  Remember to stay skeptical!\n\nEDIT: Thanks for the gold!", "I find the theory around [Neoteny](_URL_0_) quite attractive. It starts from acknowledging the fact that a lot of human traits are in fact juvenile traits that have been retained by the adults (large brain, flattened face, hairless body, no penis bone etc). It is something very interesting... So there are a lot of different explanation that are given but I will put this one, since it explains why female are more neotenous than male (those body hair):\n > human evolution's trend toward neoteny may have been caused by sexual selection in human evolution for neotenous facial traits in women by men with the resulting neoteny in male faces being a \"by-product\" of sexual selection for neotenous female faces. Jones said that this type of sexual selection \"likely\" had a major role in human evolution once a larger proportion of women lived past the age of menopause. This increasing proportion of women who were too old to reproduce resulted in a greater variance in fecundity in the population of women, and it resulted in a greater sexual selection for indicators of youthful fecundity in women by men.", "in the most simple of terms I can think of, Its an adaption our ape ancestors underwent during the end of the age of apes when the forests in africa were retreating and the savannah was expanding, we've basically just savannah chimps", "Look at it, we're evolving without it! We came from the apes, and look at us now. One day we'll be completely without it... and totally pure.", "So is the reason I'm hairy (I'm Indian, not native literally my parents are from India.) is because my ancestors were largely farmers and vegetarian so they didn't have to participate in hunting and the such? but still they engaged in a lot of physical activity as farmers? Or is there a reason indians are generally pretty hairy. Granted some of the hairiest people I've seen have been white.", "You ever seen anyone from the Middle East? No one is hairless. I repeat no one is hairless.\n\nEdit: To the Middle Eastern Hairy Bitches Downvote brigade- get fucked. ", "This will be buried, but there could be reasons that in some sense are non-adaptive.  For instance, if female sexual preference randomly evolved to favor less hairy males, then such males would beget less hairy children, who would likely inherit their mother's preference for less hairy males, forming a loop. ", "We do not know how hairy Neanderthals or other hominid species were.\n\nIf you have fire and the fur of other animals to keep your warm at night. then you do not need fur to keep you warm at night. So during the day you can sweat more efficiently combined with bipedalism allows humans to run long distance much farther more efficiently than most other animals. Also helped by carrying water in containers. When not running fur actually helps mammals stay cool by shielding them from sunlight, but a human can make a cloak which is better shade combined with better ventilation. Clothing that you can put on and take off makes you much more adaptable than insulation that is permanently attached to your skin.", " > Why are humans relatively hairless? \n\n[We're not, it just got very, very fine.](_URL_0_)", "Did we lose all our hair?  My genes definitely didn't get the memo.  On a related note, time for my fourteenth laser hair removal treatment for my back...", "Essentially, our need to keep cool by sweating was greater than our need to keep warm with fur", "Middle Eastern guy here. What is this hairlessness you speak of?", "I shouldn't do this. But I've been drinking and watching football. So what the hell. \n\nI'm a PhD and study human evolution. The endurance running hypothesis (which is being promoted by several answers in this thread) is bunk. Eventually it will become consensus in the scientific and public community that Dan Lieberman and his co conspirators have over interpreted natural selections power and did so to fit a particular and biased agenda. \nThe endurance running hypothesis is no more valid than the aquatic ape hypothesis. \nThe best and most simple reason humans are hairless is because we are bipedal. Being bipedal having extra fat within our abdominal cavity could cause herniations or prolapses in our lower bowl areas. Moving the fat outside out abdominal wall released this risk. \nHowever. Having this extra layer of fat on the outside also served to insulate. So we needed to ride ourselves of hair to prevent over heating \n\nYes. Over heating is the same root cause. But long distance running is a delusional dream of Lieberman that I can't wait to trash once I have tenure. \n\nEDIT: sober follow up:\n\nIf you want to read a good peer-reviewed paper on why the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is just adaptive story-telling, find: Langdon, JH (1997) Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the aquatic ape hypothesis. Journal of Human Evolution Vol 33:479-494\nThis is an excellent paper, and all of his points can be easily applied to the endurance running hypothesis. But to boil it down:\n\nAquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) has no real evidence to suggest its true other than the appearance of parsimony. That is AAH purports to explain many strange features of humans all at once with a concise adaptive narrative. Features explained are: hairlessness, long hair on our heads, holding our breath, being able to speak, bipedalism, natural-swimming behaviors in infants, etc. The problem with AAH is that other than the ability to explain all these features at once with a single over-arching adaptive scenario, there is no evidence for it. We don't find hominin fossils in marine deposits. The fact that some modern peoples swim/dive for their food is cherry-picking (its not a dominant behavior among modern humans), hairlessness and other features can be explained individually if maybe not collectively, etc. But the most damning part of the AAH is the double-treatment of evolutionary constraints.  \n\nFor those not in the know: evolutionary constraints are forces which 'prevent' evolution. In general terms we think of there being 2 of these. 1st is the 'constructional constraint' which boils down to the laws of physics. Why don't humans have steel teeth? Or wheels instead of legs? These seem like absurd questions, but they only seem absurd because we intuitively understand the constructional constraint. A wheel-like mechanisms can't be built with the biological building materials we have on hand AND steel cannot be forged and shaped within a biological entity. These things are beyond biology's reach because of the laws of physics. 2nd we have the 'phylogenetic/historical constraint' which is basically heredity at work. You look more like your parents than you do any other random person (save for dopplegangers, but you get my point). This is heredity and it can be applied to the species level as well. Our species looks more like its parent species than some random other. And so on up the tree of life into larger and larger clades. This has some important consequences. The first, which is not intuitive, is that without this restriction on form, natural selection cannot work. For it can't be an effective filtering mechanism without there being some reliability of the outcome after reproduction. Second, and more intuitively, it restricts the types of forms organisms can take. You are bound by your heredity to stay within a certain range of features. Why don't we have 6 arms and legs? It would be so useful in the kitchen while making dinner. Other animals do. Why don't humans? Well because we are the descendants of tetrapod fish. That's a lame answer, but the true answer. \n\n(Back to AAH) The thing that AAH does is it argues constraints 2 ways. First, that our ancestors apart from chimps were radically re-made (morphologically) because of natural selection working on our form while in the past aquatic niche. BUT we retained these features after this aquatic phase\u2014which we no longer have need for\u2014because of evolutionary constraints. So, constraints are weak and do nothing, then they turn around and do everything. This is theoretically bankrupt. (Sound familiar? yeah, I'm looking at you, all you at the top of this thread promoting your adaptive story-telling and making Dan Lieberman at Harvard seem so smart). \n\nTo some others in this thread. Dan Lieberman is part of the \"academic establishment\". When you're a lowly post-doc like I am, you don't take on the establishment since they can deny you job opportunities, funding opportunities, and publications. Waiting for tenure is the only way to really rock the boat on a popular idea. Tenure\u2014for all its imperfections and abuses\u2014is designed to give people academic freedom to pursue ideas/hypothesis/concepts without fear of backlash. It does work in that regard. But being a post-doc I don't have that... yet. \n\nLastly, I apologize for using the argument from authority in my original post. It was lazy and un-necessary. Having the PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology does not entitle me to short-cutting claims/ideas/concepts. Also, thanks for the gold and the people who liked this post. But I think this will languish down at the bottom of this thread. I'm not sure if that is good or bad given the shots I've taken at Lieberman. ", "I could be completely wrong here, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with us evolving into bipedal creatures.  Originally, while walking on all fours, most of the backside of our bodies was exposed to the sun, thus being covered with hair for protection. As we began to walk upright, we no longer relied on having that much hair on our bodies because much less of it was being exposed to the harmful rays of the sun.\n", "Hairless? Speak for yourself. I'm like a freaking Wookie. ", "There is no real evidence that neanderthals were hairier than us. Although it is probable.\n\nWe actually have more individual hairs on our body on average than a chimpanzee. Ours are just much smaller and thinner. If you look at yourself though, every inch of your body is covered in hair except your palms and soles of your feet. Even on your nose there are at least follicles.\n\nThere are several theories as to why. Obviously the trait(s) were selected for by environmental pressure.\n\n My personal favorite is the semi aquatic ape theory. The idea is that the earliest modern human populations can be found close to coastal areas, and even now that's where humans naturally happen to populate the most. We ate a lot of fish/sea creatures and we would swim/stand/dive in shallow water. This would be why there is still hair on our heads, the only part that would be likely sticking out above water. Our noses are hooded to allow us to hold our breath, like a diving bell. Our mammalian cold water reflex is stronger than other primates and comparable to aquatic mammals, and we are the only non aquatic mammal that stores almost all of our cutaneous tissue directly under our skin. It is also a good explanation for our flat feet and upright posture.\n\nOf course this theory is heavily debated and opposed. The prevailing theory states that we get all of these traits from hunting in grasslands and chasing prey, which we are very well suited for also. The lack of hair and sweating helps us to regulate temperature in hot conditions, but exposes us to sunburn, however all of the earliest humans had melanin to prevent that from happening. There are quite a few traits though that this does not explain, like the cold water reflex and cutaneous tissue.\n\nBut remember, the way evolution works, not every trait *needs* a reason. They don't come about because of environmental conditions, they are selected for due to environmental pressures. Big difference. Some traits may have just been on some specimens that had other traits that were selected for, and so through the process of evolution they stayed also.", "There are a number of theories:  \n\n1. body heat regulation as Schnutzel explains   \n2. aesthetics (sexual selection)  \n3. an aquatic phase  \n4. to free our skin of parasites  \n\nThere are others. It could be simply a coincidental result of some other important genetic mutation. Nobody knows for sure which one it was or if it was a combination of two or more.  ", "Probably way late for this, but \"The Human Animal\" by Desmond Morris is a great read for topics like this", "There are more than a few theories to this evolution. As most have mentioned, hairlessness is great for body heat regulation which would aid our ancestor's long marathon hunts. I do recall reading somewhere, that a theory for our hairlessness is that we evolved from an ancestral ape to be more aquatic. Hairlessness is perfect for a semi-aquatic animal to hunt in the ocean and be able to swim more effectively. The water also would act as a back support which explains our ability to walk upright as well. If someone finds an article either disproving or providing more info on this, please post it.", "The answers here look pretty good, but if you want to explore the topic further, check out the book \"Why is Sex Fun: The Evolution of  Human Sexuality\" by Jared Diamond. Very short, easy read that discusses this topic specifically.", "Paedomorphism. Men sexually selected women with more child-like features because the theory is that men are more protective of women who look more like children. It's why men have traits that in the ape world are adult traits, such as large brows, hair, heavy features, and women don't. \n\nBasically humans look like baby apes because we're more sexually attracted to those features. Look at a baby ape with the relative hairlessness, large eyes, big head, and flat face. ", "I heard one theory on a TED talk that we might have been primarily aquatic somewhere down the line. The theory also supported why we walked upright as well as opposed to hunched over like gorillas and monkeys.  ", "Thermoregulation. Humans haven't necessarily become hairless but share the same proportion of follicles as chimpanzees. The only difference between humans and chimps is the selective pressure to reduce follicle size to a microscopic level. In other words, it's still there just drastically reduced. ", "We have more hair follicles than chimpanzees. The real question you want to ask is why our body hair is so much thinner.", "I have hair on nearly every part of my body and it grows at a rapid rate. I have to shave my body twice a week to keep up with it.\n\nSide note, I have no hair on feet or hands which I think is weird for me", "Animals with fur have an oily sweat. The watery sweat that humans use is much better at cooling than oily sweat is. But watery sweat mattes down fur which insulates the body. Losing the fur allows us to use watery sweat, which keeps us cooler. Keeping cool is a big advantage in the hot climates where we evolved this adaptation.\n\nWe have hair on our heads because they point up at the sun. It does hurt cooling, but that seems to be outweighed by damage from sunburn and the hair helps with that. It's also likely we have head hair because we find it attractive, and that makes you more likely to have offspring. Another adaptation we evolved to compensate for loss of fur is dark skin to protect against damage from the sun.", "We have more hair. Our hair are finer.\n\nEyebrows hair guide the sweat away. Pubic hair keep from infection. No idea about head hair.\n\nFurry body would have been good to stay warm. Might have happened if humans started in the colder regions. But we all evolved from the Africa which has a tropical climate. ", "Last time this was asked, no one mentioned how our improved cooling system is not just good for long distance running but allows us to keep a large brain cool.\n\nAnd same thing again here. No mention of it.\n\nIt does seem that the sweating and loss of body hair came first, and then larger brains followed, but that doesn't mean we are only hairless for the long endurance. It is likely the evolution of large brains that followed is why our sweating, hairless trait followed while others that didn't evolve the largely brains died out, because the endurance alone wasn't enough of an evolutionary advantage to last hundreds of thousands of years.\n\nSo why did we evolve near hairlessness? Probably endurance, or something to do with living around water as well and requiring a lot of hydration.\n\nWhy did our species endure while also being relatively hairless? Probably since it and the need for lots of hydration also allowed us large brains.", " > What happened in the evolution somewhere along the line that we lost all our hair? Monkeys and neanderthals were nearly covered in hair, why did we lose it except it some places?\n\nThis has been covered, but the lack of hair is related to body heat. We cover ourselves in the cold because of the lack of hair to keep us warm like animals, but we have the ability to shed clothing and be cool due to the lack of hair during the hotter months. \n\n > Bonus question: Why did we keep the certain places we do have? What do eyebrows and head hair do for us and why have we had them for so long?\n\nEyebrows are related to communication. They convey horror, humor, seriousness, surprise, and disapproval just to touch on a few. They also play a factor in protection the same way eyelashes do for the eye. Eyebrows block and reroute sweat from dripping into our eyes, and prevents dirt and dust from either falling off our face into our eyes or sweat dripping dirt directly into them. Obviously not a perfect system, eyelashes and eyebrows end up in the eye themselves, but they do the job. \n\nNow, you may remember in science class - or if you live in a cold climate - a lot of body heat escapes from the head. Hair on top of the head keeps us warm. If humans would have evolved to the point where no hair or very little hair grew on our heads, the winter months would have been tougher, especially before clothing became a staple of the human race. Think about how much warmer you are just by putting on a winter cap or pulling up your hood. Or cooler the summertime is with a shaved head. \n\nAlso, we have head hair for the same reason certain animals have bright plumage or feathers and fur characteristics to begin with. Now, I don't see there being an entire subgroup of our ancestors who were bald the entirety of their life essentially dying out because they were unable to find a mate because they were always bald, but head hair is a clear attraction standpoint, even if it comes secondary. \n\n > Wouldn't having hair/fur be a pretty significant advantage? We wouldnt have to worry about buying a fur coat for winter\n\nSure, having a human fur coat would be advantageous in the fact you would be warmer and have an extra layer of protection against the elements... especially thorns, rocks, tree bark, or anything else that could cut or scratch you out in the wild, but the majority of life in this day and age takes place in an urban setting. And the benefit of having excess hair or fur would be outweighed by man's natural desire to live in a warmer climate. Sure, if it was frigid and you also had access to grooming products so you could cut or shave your \"coat\" at your choosing, full body hair could benefit you, but what about every person who lives in a hot and humid climate who would be having a heat stroke in the jungle or desert. Man would naturally seek out a warmer climate even when their bodies were covered in hair because it wasn't enough to completely negate a frozen winter. As hair-covered man moved to a warmer climate, the hair became less and less necessary. ", "I haven't seen anyone say that we actually don't have less hair than monkeys or any other ape, in fact, humans have more hair per square inch, it's just that ours is much much thinner.", "I imagine that it has to do with hunting.  We would literally follow/chase herds to death.  Long distance and sustained running inevitably caused heat exhaustion and we would overcome our prey.  \n\nI'd venture to guess those of us with less hair allowed us to sustain travel further, faster and hunt more efficiently.  As was the same reason for us transitioning to bipedal. ", "I'm in the aquatic ape camp. Climate change in Africa did away with forests (trees, our original habitat). We waded into the shallow remaining water to elude predators. Standing in water so much, we lost our hair (like dolphins). Big floaty breasts for breastfeeding while standing in water. Hair on head to protect the part exposed to the sun. Eyebrows ditto. \n", "I would say that you need to include differences between people, there are some hairless people and then there are people with a lot of body hair naturally. I am one of the people who have more than usual. But pretty much all of my ancestors of the past couple of hundred years came from north.", "If something isn't inhibiting survival it won't be lost. \n\nHair on top of our heads protects us from the sun and can be an indicator of health and good genetics. \n\nIf something becomes too specialized like the panda and koala they can't adapt when their food source is gone. \n\nBody hair that humans have signal sexual maturity as well.\n\n", "Not all of us lost being covered in hair. I should be in a damn zoo with how much hair I'm covered in.", "Most people believe that the biggest reason, based on natural selection, for the loss of fur was the fact that fur-less homonids were no longer breeding grounds for parasites like lice that lived in fur. Some scientists have different opinions, however. There is one theory that a lack of fur allowed facial expressions to be more distinguisable, promoting higher levels of social behavior. All in all, though, it's still something that's argued on by evolutionists and nobody's completely sure.", "Remaining hair makes sense, head-hair is there to protect the head against the sun, and later cold, notice big difference in hair between africans and non africans, african hair is this small curls which allow for air to pass under, and create a layer on top of the head that heats instead of the head.\n\nWhile euro/asian/NA hair is smooth and clings to the head (oil) providing a coating against cold/frost. \n\nHair on genitalia also makes a bit of sense, it provides a buffer to protect a fairly thin and fragile area of skin, as anyone who shaves will know, sometimes it causes issues. \n\nI imagine armpit hair also serves that function.\n\nBeard however, i have no idea why, for example NA and most Asians cant grow it or simply dont have it. (lucky bastards saving so much $$ on shaving blades). ", "Vitamin-D.\n  \nHumans, chimpanzees and such use Vitamin-D a lot (bone health etc). It's very difficult to find any foods with vitamin D. This affects many species health. A \"hairy\" ape like thing gets either a lot of sun or some fish. A non-hairy ape can use shelters and live away form sources of bright sun or fish.", "There's actually a lot of evidence for the \"water ape\" theory which would explani why we lost our hair, have our noses, why we're pretty bad at holding water, why we walk up right, why we have a strong dive reflex, why we have \"water babies\", why our butts need wiping and not least of which explains HOW we got our big brains.\n\nEssentially there's a \"gap\" in evolution between the trees and the savannah and many researchers agree on this theory, not least of which is Sir David Attenborough.\n\nSources: _URL_1_\n\nTED Talk:\n_URL_0_\n\nThere's also a wonderful documentary series on yourtube called the Human animal I would also check out because it takes a documentarians view to humanity as a species. \n", "The main reason we lost our hair is because we started wearing clothes. The hair we have left is still rather functional. In your armpits and groin, for example, it prevents your skin from sticking together, allowing air to stream by. Eyebrows and nose/ear hair prevents dirt from blocking your senses. Other places where we have hair, like head, arms and legs, are the places we least cover with clothes.", "I browsed over the answers and no one seems to have put forward my favourite loss of hair theory. We found a better way to use all of that protein building a giant brain. I'm on mobile so I can't back it up with link or quickly check the rest of the thread but if a real MVP wants to step up...", "I watched a really interesting documentary that disused the possibility that we were water apes at one point in our evolutionary history. It explains our relative hairlessness, the slight webbing between our fingers and toes, missionary sex,  our buoyancy and even the layout of the body hair we have. ", "I don't have references for any of this but what I remember, the purpose of keeping eye brows evolutionary was to keep sweat from dripping into your eyes while exposed to the hotter weather while humans were being nomads or whatever. I believe hair in the pubic region helps in preventing excessive bacterial growth and also decreases friction during procreation (which theoretically any rash or open area on skin is a \"Come on in the waters fine!\" to bacteria. ", "What's all this evolution talk?  Didn't we emerge from the Garden of Eden in this form?  \n  \nOn a serious note, I've always been curious about the difference in evolution between male and female...why would males of our species have much facial hair, when females have mostly none?  I can't think of another species on the planet that has evolved that way...except maybe the Lion...are we evolved similarly to Lions in terms of comparing our male facial hair to a male Lion's mane? ", "There's an interesting theory as to why we kept head hair, and specifically why our head hair continues to grow, rather than moulting after a certain length of time.\n\nBasically, to keep our head hair looking tidy, it needs to be cut regularly and groomed. Otherwise it forms a three foot long, shaggy mess that catches on bushes, can be grabbed by sabre toothed tigers, and is generally not helpful for survival. Our shaggy mops are unique in the animal kingdom.\n\nThe theory goes that cutting and grooming have been a marker of status, and so a means of sexual selection. Hair combs are some of the most ancient artifacts found.\n\nIn which case, hairdressing may be actually be the oldest profession. ", "The aquatic ape hypothesis is the coolest one. The fact that my brain orders my finger tips to literally change shape and grip rocks better, makes me a mutant. ", "when aliens injected their genes in us, we lost the hair on our bodies and started building ditches and pyramids and stuff", "We actually learned about this in my anthropology class. A major factor that led to the loss of hair, believe it or not, was actually FLEAS! \n\n\nThey were a huge nuisance to host and not only that but take into consideration the amount of diseases they carry.(remember they were also responsible for the Black Plague) Our early ancestors that didn't have as much fleas lived longer and were constantly healthier so lived to reproduce more often and pass along their hairless genes. After a few hundred generations....hairless monkeys, us. ", "I was giving my baby a bath last night and when I rinsed his head the water spilled over and I freaked out for a second thinking I was getting water in his eyes. I look at him and all the water was stopped by his little baby eyebrows, just streamin off to the side.", "Why is the so much hair in my ass Crack? I don't need those dingleberries so wtf... Explain that", "Hairy tits and asses? No thank you. ", "Not that it's actually supported by any real science or by any real scientist but the aquatic ape is an interesting theory I think there is a ted talk about it. ", "Somewhere along the line, I got it into my head that perhaps the hair on our remaining hairy areas is intended to be a sort of \"protection\" for important parts of our bodies (e.g. heads of hair \"protecting\" the brain, the genitals, arteries near armpits, chest hair for the heart (though obviously I couldn't explain why females wouldn't have it, unless it's some evolutionary hunting thing for males). Is there any legitimate discussion/theorizing about this, or did I just make it up?", "Less hair was caused by evolution wherein early humans were adapting to having to hunt on the extremely hot African plains. Early humans were neither fast nor strong in comparison to the animals they were hunting, so the most effective way to catch prey was to literally run it to death.  Most other African animals had much thicker fur and would die of exhaustion in the midday heat.  Humans, with less hair and more skin exposed to the air, could perspire to prevent heat exhaustion.  Evolution, adaptation, survival of the fittest all take place and over many generations humans become relatively hairless."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://youtu.be/jjvPvnQ-DUw"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis"], [], ["https://youtu.be/826HMLoiE_o"], [], [], ["http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2007/12/personal-freshn.html", "https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjpqNDohefKAhWK6RQKHYj3ABgQFggcMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEndurance_running_hypothesis&amp;usg=AFQjCNFeJXeXG_l4X42d_1PQxT6CrRBHRQ&amp;sig2=uNnmc27m0O_IzQUnp_5ufg&amp;bvm=bv.113370389,d.dmo", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis", "http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/latest-theory-human-body-hair/"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellus_hair"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes?language=en", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "246wkc", "title": "why does the severe weather alert system that broadcasts over your television sound like i'm logging on to the internet in the 90's?", "selftext": "We are having severe weather here and they just did a test over the tele and it got me wondering. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/246wkc/eli5_why_does_the_severe_weather_alert_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch46qj8", "ch47v61", "ch4aann", "ch4ajtu", "ch4dfwh"], "score": [172, 10, 4, 10, 2], "text": ["It's actually quite intentional.\n\nThe Emergency Alert System is designed to be broadcast in case of any emergency, whether it's a weather alert or a Presidential Alert. The system doesn't differentiate where the signal is sent, and is broadcast nationally for each alert, but you don't see the ones that don't apply to you because of those tones at the beginning of the broadcast.\n\nThe first time the modem noise is played, the EAS is broadcasting information about the affected area, the type of alert, and the originator to the EAS device located at the station. This code is then repeated two additional times in order to ensure that the data was correctly interpreted on the receiving end. The receiver at the broadcast station reads this data, determines automatically if the alert is valid for the broadcast area, and cuts into whatever is playing in order to relay the information.\n\nThis is the same principal as the handshake your modem used to connect to the internet, but with different data since certain things are assumed (Baud rate, transmission format, frequency, etc.)\n\nThe three tones at the end of the EAS broadcast are the \"End of Message\" tones.\n\nTL;dr: It's because the alerts are sent by a system that's pretty close to a modem.\n\n(edit: Moved a few letters around for clarity's sake.)", "A few years ago, I wrote a python program to generate EAS SAME messages.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n    from struct import pack\n    from math import sin, pi\n    import sys\n    import sunau\n    \n    def write_bit(freq):\n        global fout\n        global sample\n        dur=1.92\n        factor = 2 * pi * freq/sample\n        # write data\n        seg = fout.tell()\n        while ((fout.tell()*1000000)/sample)  <  1920:\n            # sine wave calculations\n            sin_seg = sin(seg * factor)\n            fout.writeframes(pack('b', 127 * sin_seg))\n    \n    def write_silence(dur):\n        \"\"\"\n        dur- time in seconds\n        \"\"\"\n        global fout\n        global sample\n        for seg in range(sample*dur):\n            fout.writeframes(pack('b', 0))\n    \n    def write_one():\n        write_bit(4/.00192)\n    \n    def write_zero():\n        write_bit(3/.00192)\n    \n    def write_char(c):\n        for i in range(8):\n            a = c & 1\n            if (a==1):\n                write_one()\n            else:\n                write_zero()\n            c  >  > = 1\n    \n    def write_string(str):\n        for c in str:\n            write_char(ord(c))\n    \n    def write_preamble():\n        for i in range(16):\n            write_char(171)\n    \n    def write_tail():\n        for i in range(3):\n            write_preamble()\n            write_string(\"ZZZZ\")\n            write_silence(1)\n    \n    def write_header(str):\n        for i in range(3):\n            write_preamble()\n            write_string(str)\n            write_silence(1)\n    \n    def write_attention():\n        # play 853 and 960 Hz for 8 seconds\n        write_silence(1)\n    \n    # test the module ...\n    if __name__ == '__main__':\n        global fout\n        global sample\n        global data_bytes\n    \n        name='_URL_0_'\n        sample=44100\n        data_bytes=0\n        #string=\"ZCZC-EAS-RWT-012057-012081-012101-012103-012115+0030-2780415-WTSP/TV-\"\n        \"\"\"\n        Originator Code  - (EAS) EAS Participant\n        Event Code       - (RWT) Required Weekly Test\n        Location Codes   - (012057) Florida, Hillsborough County\n                         - (012081) Florida, Manatee County\n                         - (012101)\n                         - (012103)\n                         - (012115)\n        Purge Time       - (0030) 30 minutes\n        Exact Issue Time - (2780415) October 5th, 4:15 AM\n        Callsign         - WTSP-TV\n        \"\"\"\n    \n        string=\"ZCZC-EAS-TSW-055073+0030-0450000-zImage-\"\n        \"\"\"\n        Originator Code  - (EAS) EAS Participant\n        Event Code       - (TSW) Tsunami Warning\n        Location Codes   - (055073) Wisconsin, Marathon County\n        Purge Time       - (0030) 30 minutes\n        Exact Issue Time - (0450000) February 14th, 12:00am\n        Callsign         - zImage\n        \"\"\"\n    \n        #fout = open(name, 'wb')\n        fout = sunau.open(name, 'wb')\n        fout.setnchannels(1)\n        fout.setsampwidth(1)\n        fout.setframerate(sample)\n    \n        # skip the header. We'll write it at the end.\n        write_header(string)\n        write_tail()\n    \n        # Go back to the beginning\n        #fout.seek(0)\n    \n        # write the header\n        #fout.write('.snd' + pack(' > 5L', 24, data_bytes, 2, 44100, 1))\n    \n        #fout.close()", "As someone from Canada - what are you talking about?", "Personally, I thought the sound was used to wake you up or get your attention if you were sleeping or doing something else but had the radio/TV on. It is annoying enough to do that. \n\nBefore Hurricane Sandy, my sister and I were sleeping on the couch with the TV on, and the sound started to go off, and it woke us both up. \n\nDuring Hurricane Irene, I was chopping veggies in the kitchen, and the sound got my attention. ", "Skrillex got the contract"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["sound800.au", "https://soundcloud.com/zimage/emergency-alert-system-test-1"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b1hyp1", "title": "Is there a correlation between the complexity of an organism and the genetic diversity of its species?", "selftext": "What sorts of species have very low genetic diversity? High? How do humans compare relative to the rest of life on Earth?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b1hyp1/is_there_a_correlation_between_the_complexity_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eilsum5", "eilyvhx"], "score": [2, 9], "text": ["Genetic bottlenecks can drastically decrease the  genetic diversity of a species regardless of the organism\u2019s complexity. I think genetic diversity is really determined by the environment that species is in, which is why you see an increase in biodiversity as you get nearer to the equator. ", "There is no particular reason that genetic diversity and \"complexity\" (which is fairly difficult to define quantitatively) would be correlated.  Genetic diversity is dependent on many factors, including:\n\n* population size (larger populations can support more diversity, smaller populations are more susceptible to drift and can lose diversity this way)\n* population structure (species with several populations that are only loosely connected can support more diversity than a single well-connected group)\n* mutation rate (higher mutation rates allow faster introduction of new genetic diversity)\n* balancing selection (maintains standing genetic diversity)\n* directional selection (strong directional selection typically *decreases* genetic diversity and keeps it low by removing deleterious alleles)\n* etc.\n\nThese and other factors that affect genetic diversity can be highly variable from species to species, and so it's not really possible to predict genetic diversity by any features as broad as \"complexity\".  That said, there are some more specific predictions that can be made, such as that sexually reproducing species should have higher genetic diversity than asexual species, species with more inbreeding have reduced genetic diversity, etc.\n\nOf the factors listed, population size is sometimes used as a sort of proxy for genetic diversity.  Specifically, we talk about \"effective population size\", which is the size of a theoretical ideal population that shares similar characteristics to the real population.  Effective population size is always smaller than true population size, since there are many things that make real populations non-ideal (e.g. some individuals die before reproducing, some individuals have more offspring than others, and population sizes naturally change over time).  \n\nSurprisingly, humans have an effective population size of only around 10,000 ([Source](_URL_2_))! (I've also seen some estimates that are a bit larger, but still less than 100,000).  This may seem crazy compared to the current true population which is approaching 8 billion, but the reason our effective population size is so much smaller is explainable by a few facts.  Firstly, our population has been growing exponentially for hundreds if not thousands of years ([see graph](_URL_1_)), which by the way is pretty much unprecedented in the natural world for this duration of time, and this means that there just hasn't been enough time for the number of mutations you'd expect to see in a population of 8 billion to accumulate.  Secondly, there's also a pretty good amount of evidence that even before human populations started to grow rapidly, we also underwent at least one and possibly multiple significant bottleneck events where our ancestors' true population dropped into the small tens of thousands ([Source](_URL_0_)).\n\nThat got kind of longer than I had planned, but I hope it addressed some of your questions!  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/5/2147.full.pdf", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Population_curve.svg/1024px-Population_curve.svg.png", "https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0016672310000558"]]}
{"q_id": "1givg4", "title": "What goods and services have undergone the most significant price changes in the last 100 years, adjusted for inflation?", "selftext": "I understand that this is a difficult question to answer due to the fact that the goods and services themselves have changed a lot in the last 100 years. Perhaps a better way to look at it would be what percentage of household income was spent on certain types of things.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1givg4/what_goods_and_services_have_undergone_the_most/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cakpacr", "cakplqe", "cakpyr0", "cakqzfh", "cakulua", "cakv7js", "cakwtwm", "cakxg51"], "score": [8, 11, 101, 29, 2, 15, 7, 10], "text": ["If you give me a list of goods you're specifically interested in I'd probably be able to help.", "Well, the obvious answer is to go with something like home computing.  A hundred years ago, it was impossible, 70 years ago it was millions of dollars for any computer, now I've got a *phone* a hundred times more powerful than my gaming PC from 1998.", "Computer storage is probably the most drastic.\n\nThe equivalent of One MB of computer storage cost $411,041,792 in 1957 which would be $3,401,422,026.18 in today's dollars. Today you can get one Mb [not sold individually] for $0.0054.  Which gives a price decrease of 1.59\u00d710^-12 adjusted for inflation.\n\nAnyone please feel free to check my math, I have a headache now.\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_0_ ](_URL_0_ )\n\n\n", "I'm not a historian by any means, but I believe the most likely answers to this question are things that were once common (or legal) and are no longer, or vice-versa. For instance, an [ad for Lloyd's Manufacturing](_URL_0_)* shows the retail price of cocaine toothache drops to be 15 cents in 1885, which looks to be about $3.72 in today's money (averaging the [first](_URL_2_) [two](_URL_4_) inflation calculators on Google). While we can't exactly look up the retail price on such an item these days, I doubt that's anywhere near going rate for such a drug. \n\nLooking at the opposite, something like computer hard drives (as mentioned by LemurianLemurLad) were horribly expensive at first with the first one clocking in at $10,000 per 5 mb in 1956 ([source](_URL_5_)) and the first gigabyte drive costing $40,000 in 1980 ([source](_URL_3_)), which works out to $86,206.90 and $113,636.36 respectively for just the hard drive. Of course, those were likely aimed at corporations, but even then the most expensive drive I could find on Newegg today is an [800gb SSD](_URL_1_) at $3999.99, while an average hard drive will run you a few hundred dollars at most. \n\nA few other things that I put into the calculator showed to be fairly steady. You often hear tales of how Coke used to be a nickel when it came out in 1885 or how cheap gas used to be (seemed to hover around a $.20 in the late 40s/early 50s based on some searches). Converting these to 2013 prices gives $1.22 for Coke and around $2 for the gas. Granted, the gas is about twice that now, but just go back a few years and you're back in that range again. \n\nI'm sure there are tons of other examples, but I'd guess that most would fall into one of these two categories.\n\n*I believe I've read online about this ad, or at least similar ads, being quite valid, but I can't find a decent source on it right now. I know many now-illegal substances started out being legal, and now are not, so the idea behind this is solid I believe, even if this specific example may not be.", "As for services, education is a good example:\n_URL_2_\n\nAs well as Healthcare:\n_URL_3_\n\nSince your question included percentage of household income on certain types of things, Food is actually one of the most dramatic decreases over the last 100 years:\n_URL_1_\n\nThis is obviously a function more of household income increasing, though; many countries today still see similar levels of food expense / income: _URL_0_\n\n", "I want to go back a bit more than a century, but aluminum deserves a mention. It was discovered as a metal in 1825, but until the [Hall-Heroult process](_URL_0_) was developed in 1886 aluminum was *incredibly* expensive. Napoleon III of France had aluminum cutlery for his most favored guests, while less-favored had to make do with gold. The capstone of the Washington Monument was made of aluminum, to show off the wealth of the United States. At the time it was placed there, aluminum had come down in price to the point where it was about as expensive as silver was.\n\n[Here's a source](_URL_1_)", "The Economist had a little look at this for their millennium special issue: you might find [the article of interest](_URL_0_), which looks at the change in prices over the 20th century of a bunch of common goods and services.\n\nAt the top of the list (in terms of real price falls) is a telephone call from New York to Chicago, which cost 1000 times what it does now. Fridges and salt are also pretty high up there; on the opposite end of the spectrum are services that are labor-intensive services that have not seen much substitution of technology for labor (butlers, theatre shows, hotel rooms) or products that now bear excise taxes (alcohol and cigarettes).\n\nYou'll also see some estimates of the fall of prices of goods in the last decade of the century alone, which are tremendously steep for the highest-tech goods/services, and of the fall in quality-adjusted prices associated with past technological revolutions, with the computing revolution beating them all handily.\n\nIf you were to want to think of how to answer this question in general over any period X-Y, I would think you'd want to identify goods/services that were just invented just before X, that were initially targeted at an elite audience (perhaps rich consumers, perhaps researchers or scientists), and that are still around at Y and routinely consumed by broad swathes of the developed world's population: a telephone call fits that description well, as does computing power/storage over the last 50 years.", "Horse manure... in 1900s people paid others to remove horse manure from NYC, but now people pay money for horse manure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/", "http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm"], ["http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlylehold/5540310839/", "http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167126&amp;IsVirtualParent=1", "http://www.westegg.com/inflation/\u200e", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hard_disk_drives", "http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php\u200e", "http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html"], ["http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-chart-5", "http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/sept/wk1/art02.htm", "http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Articles/Education_Inflation.asp", "http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/understanding_the_cause_of_hea.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-H%C3%A9roult_process", "http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.html"], ["http://www.economist.com/node/457272"], []]}
{"q_id": "c5l49o", "title": "Why are asymmetrical internet connections so common in residential ISP offerings? What technical reason prevents the ISP from offering a symmetrical connection? Why do fiber-to-the-home providers seem to be more able to offer a symmetrical connection?", "selftext": "I understand that the asymmetrical connection matches the average residential internet user's habits, but what specifically prevents certain ISPs, mainly cable and DSL, from offering symmetrical speeds?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c5l49o/why_are_asymmetrical_internet_connections_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["es2p0ok", "es2r5rv", "es3aigu"], "score": [11, 15, 8], "text": ["Former cable tech here. \n\nUpstream data over coax is much more error prone, and for this reason uses a more robust, low bandwidth encryption that, put simply, sends less data in each cycle of the RF wave being sent down the wire.\n\nAdditionally, you mentioned that most people don't use that much upload data. This is true. For a variety of technical reasons involving interference, hardware limitations etc, companies must decide what frequencies to allocate for upstream and downstream; they can not easily be intermixed. Once those allocations are made, you can't just switch them for one customer, and switching them across the network dramatically slows download speeds for the benefit of a few heavy uploaders.", "Cable or phone line based DLS has to get both upstream and downstream through the same wire. That means you get a total bandwidth that you gotta split in two somehow, because otherwise you couldn't upload and download data at the same time. Since the vast majority of people need/want more downstream, because they rarely upload large amounts of data, the ISPs allot a greater part of the spectrum for downstream.\n\nFiber doesn't have that issue, since there's usually a dedicated fiber for up and downstream respectively, so they don't share a medium (and even if they do, you can push way more bandwidth through a single fiber than through copper).", "While there may have been some historical reasons why asymmetric connections were advantageous, those reasons are no longer applicable with today's networking technology.  Nothing actually prevents symmetric cable or even DSL connections from being offered from a technology perspective.  Nowadays symmetric connections are just dangled by ISPs as higher-cost options so that they can make more money off of you (just like they charge you more for a static IP address rather than a dynamic one -- it has nothing to do with running out of IPv4 addresses, you still get an IPv4 address either way).\n\nIt is well established that ISPs make obscene amounts of profit and intentionally choose not to properly maintain their networking infrastructure in order to essentially milk consumers.  For example, according to Time Warner Cable's SEC filing, [97% of its revenue on high-speed Internet became profit](_URL_0_) while only 3% went into operating costs -- including paying technicians and making infrastructure improvements.  Big ISPs have both the money and technology to offer symmetric speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than those actually offered today, even over existing wires, and still make profits that would make any other company envious.  But they choose not to, instead very slowly walking up the price and pretending that there are real infrastructure concerns that they can't afford to address, while they pocket money hand-over-fist and charge you for services that cost them essentially nothing to deliver.  It's all politics these days.  There are no real technological barriers in place in circumstances like this.  Back in the 90s Congress approved $200 billion in subsidies granted to major ISPs under the promise that within a decade every home in America would have fiber optic service available to them.  To this day, that promise still has not been fulfilled despite nothing actually standing in the way of it.  Whenever local or state governments try to get around it by running their own high-speed (often symmetric Gigabit) networks/service, ISP lobbyists stuff cash into the pockets of politicians to get laws passed in an attempt to prevent it, so that ISPs can continue charging you high prices and face no real competition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6591916/amp"]]}
{"q_id": "1wpb3r", "title": "what determines the position we are comfortable sleeping in?", "selftext": "Any why is it so hard to sleep when you're **not** in that position? I've slept on my side since I can remember, but I've always wished I'd slept on my back. Would make flying a much easier experience.\n\nEDIT: Typos", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wpb3r/eli5_what_determines_the_position_we_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf45p7a", "cf482is", "cf48iyi", "cf48rhn", "cf48sis", "cf49336", "cf49522", "cf497a2", "cf49biv", "cf49ffl", "cf49nof", "cf49otr", "cf49vmc", "cf49xmv", "cf4a9fb", "cf4aj8g", "cf4awgq", "cf4c34d", "cf4da3c", "cf4e8zw", "cf4eny3", "cf4f1kc", "cf4fnlv", "cf4gk8s"], "score": [36, 9, 132, 85, 13, 19, 2, 3, 3, 12, 8, 2, 2, 673, 2, 4, 3, 31, 6, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["There is no particular reason other than people just find the position that feels best to them.  It's often just personal preference and habit, often formed in childhood.\n\nThough there can certainly be reasons why a particular position is not comfortable, in which case the choice will be anything but that.", "I don't have a source for this but I've heard it's carried over from how you slept as an infant.  If you were placed on your back, you tend to sleep on your back when you're older.  My older brother always slept on his stomach and remains a stomach sleeper today (and yes, I know that's a terrible position for infants to sleep on, hence the reason I am not a stomach sleeper.)", "A combination of blood flow, temperature and habit. First and foremost, your body wants to position itself so that blood flow isn't restricted to the majour organs during sleep. Most of the time it isn't a problem, but if you do have trouble sleeping, then this could be a viable cause and is often overlooked. Second is temperature. Your body wants to maintain a constant temperature ( homeostasis) and so your body will curl up if its too cold or spread out usually on your back if its too hot. Last but not least is habit. If you have lived your whole life sleeping almost always on your side, then it will be uncomfortable and awkward to sleep anyway else other than your side. Sometimes a persons sleeping position is absolute ( they have to sleep in that position or else its nearly impossible for them to sleep) other times they shift around, varying positions every night. ", "But is there an universal best position for sleeping.. for proper breathing, posture, and good nights sleep?", "A lot of speculative responses so far.  AMA request: sleep comfort engineers", "I'm a side sleeper and cannot sleep (I will actually wake up) on my back or stomach, but sleeping on my side hurts my shoulders =(", "As a follow up to this. Do the predictions of personality hold any weight or are they just broad statements that people feel they can relate to? ", "I sleep on my stomach with my arms crossed across my chest. I'm also into bondage.", "I can sleep almost anywhere, in most positions. Getting up is the hard part. ", "On a somewhat related note, I teach swim lessons and I have found that kids like to breathe to the same side that they sleep on. So, If a kid sleeps on their right side, they are a lot more comfortable breathing to the right. And same for the left.", "can someone tell me why i can't fall asleep without being on my stomach even though it's uncomfortable for me?", "Depends on your posture and muscle development.  \n\nI sleep in different position all the time.  Depending on which muscles are most stressed I sleep in different positions because each position stresses different muscles.  If my hamstrings are particularly tired I sleep in the fetal position so they have a chance to relax.  If I've worked one side of my body particularly hard (I'm a landscaper, and some tools (chainsaw) are biased towards one hand) I sleep on my side with that side up to relax it.  If my back is a bit out I sleep on my stomach to align it.", "I've found that sleeping on my left side after a while actually causes a pain right beneath my ribs, whereas when i sleep in any other position I feel perfectly fine. Anyone else experience this before?", "Guy who works in a sleep clinic here. I score many sleep studies (heck, I was just scoring some a few minutes ago). And position of sleep is something that I check on every study. \n\nWhy do I check? Because no matter what people say or think they do, they often move a lot. Are there people who don't sleep on their side or back? Sure. But they are rare, and even they often to it because they have some kind of issues (e.g. back pain in supine).\n\nYou probably start on your side, and likely spend most of the time there. But there is a strong chance you spend at least some of the time on your back.  \n\nIf you don't and you snore and you often wake up tired, you may want to consider seeing a doctor about possible sleep apnea (this disorder is worse on the back).", "It you sleep on your side or stomach it can be based on ease of breathing with a deviated septum. The side of my nose that is more closed off has to not be squished onto my pillow so I sleep on my stomach facing right. I wasn't sure how I was sleeping until my allergist made the guess for me based on my septum, and I started paying attention to how my head was positioned when I woke up. ", "ITT: Intelligent people getting \"lying\" and \"laying\" mixed up. Or, perhaps, subtly telling us that sex is the most comfortable sleeping position.\n\nEdit - [English is a stupid language](_URL_0_).", "I usually face the wall. If the bed isn't arranged like that, I'll face away from the door.\n\nLeft or right side doesn't matter since that's dependent upon how the bed is arranged in the room, and which end I have my head at.\n\nThe dilemma comes when I'm sleeping with someone. If the bed is long-ways against the wall, I want to be between the girl, and the wall. But to do this *and* face the wall, I have to be the little spoon. Granted I love being the little spoon, but it doesn't happen all that often. So usually, at the beginning of a relationship, I'll fall to sleep between the wall and whoever I'm dating, facing away from the wall to facilitate spooning. Once I'm really comfortable with her, I'll be the big spoon until she falls asleep, then I turn around and sleep facing the wall. \n\nThe bonus is that sleeping back against back is kind of like little spoon-light. Not quite as good as the real thing, but a decent substitute none the less.", "I am a former mattress salesman. In my experience the vast majority of people sleep on their sides. Why is this? Because when you're on your side you can raise your knees and arch your back which serves to take the pressure off your lower back. \n\nThe main thing that causes us to move about is the build up of pressure and the constriction of blood flow. When you are laying flat on your back you will notice that your lower back starts to hurt. On your stomach any lack of support you receive as well as the arc your pillow will put you in bends your body in a way which it is not meant to bend. Which is why most stomach sleepers prefer thin pillows. This is also why most stomach sleepers will actually tend towards a semi-side position where one knee comes up to achieve the same thing side sleepers do. I would be willing to bet when you lay on your side the first thing you do is bring your knees towards your chest.\n\nStand up against a wall with your shoulders and your heels touching the wall and you will find that you can slip your hand between your lumbar and the wall. Supporting this arc is what it's all about.\n\nBasically it's about posture, pressure and personal habits :)", "I used to sleep on my back until I discovered spooning. Spooning leads to forking.", "I move around a lot when I am trying to go to sleep but I always end up waking up lying on my back.", "Normally I've always been a stomach sleeper, just lying completely sprawled across the bed, but since being in a relationship and sharing a bed every night I've switched to sleeping on my back. They're both comfortable now but at first I wouldn't ever in a million years be able to sleep on my back. I just switch back and forth every other night now, just which ever is more comfortable at the time.", "I always thought, for no reason other than thinking about it one day, that maybe it had something to do with how you slept as a baby or perhaps even in the womb. But after reading some of the other answers on here I'm probably retarded.", "having arms. If I could just pop em off when I go to bed, problem solved.", "I've been told that the side of the bed you sleep on is determined by right/left hand dominance.  So you would sleep with your dominant hand on the edge of the bed, so as to be able to draw a weapon.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/lay-versus-lie"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7qntfx", "title": "we've all seen optical illusions, but are there tactile illusions, olfactory illusions or audio illusions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qntfx/eli5_weve_all_seen_optical_illusions_but_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsqjebe", "dsqjm3n", "dsqkn0r", "dsqlixs", "dsqmyea", "dsqnla2", "dsqrle0", "dsqtt91", "dsqu2gz", "dsr1lw6"], "score": [24, 31, 7, 14, 2, 3, 2, 2, 10, 3], "text": ["Absolutely yes.\n\nTwo good examples of tactile illusion:\n\n- Phantom cellphone vibrate, where you are sure your pocket is vibrating but it isn't.\n- Phantom limb pain, where an amputated arm or leg still seems to hurt.", "The most well known auditory illusion is called a \"Shepard tone\" which sounds like a pitch continuously increasing or decreasing forever. Made famous by [Super Mario 64 ](_URL_0_)", "One of the oldest tactile illusions is the Aristotle illusion. It is easy to perform. Cross your fingers, then touch a small spherical object such as a dried pea, and it feels like you are touching two peas. This also works if you touch your nose.", "The [McGurk Effect](_URL_0_) is a pretty good auditory illusion. [Here is a video.](_URL_1_)\n\nThe McGurk effect demonstrates that what we see influences what we hear. A man saying 'Baa' repeated will sound like he is saying 'Faa', if the 'Baa' audio is dubbed over a video of him saying 'Faa'.", "When something isn\u2019t \u201cSmells like the taste\u201d or \u201cTaste like the smell\u201d used to confuse me as a baby when something like smelling a fruity shampoo but it tasted like a chemical vat. \n\n\nI was so reckless as a baby. I still am, but I use to, too. ", "Tactile:  Have a partner use two toothpicks to lightly poke your skin. They can either start with the toothpicks far apart and move them closer together until you only sense one poke or start with them close and move them farther apart until you feel two pokes. Different areas of your body have different densities of nerve endings. This means you will sense two pokes much closer together on your fingertips than you would on the back of your neck.\n\nAuditory: I'm not sure what this is called, but in a choir rehearsal we practiced singing one note in perfect unison. It produced a faint overtone maybe one octave higher. I kept thinking who the f is trying to show off right now, but then our choir director explained the phenomenon.", "Ventriloquists make use of auditory illusions all the time. They'll throw some phonemes together so quickly they seem like they're pronouncing a different letter.", "Here's a tactile one you try at home. Cross your fingers, the index and middle. Now, without looking, touch something small like a marble or pen with the crossed fingers. You should feel two objects. Why? Your brain feels something on the opposite sides of your fingers and with visual reference assumes there are two things. ", "[The Thermal Grill. ](_URL_0_)\n\nThis is one of the trippiest things I've experienced. Warm water running through one pipe, cool in another, and they're looped side by side for a short distance such that they appear to be a single coil. Placing your hand on the coil feels like you'll get burned, but touching individual tubes reveals the temperature difference.\n\nI experienced this only once, and I think it was at EPCOT. It was over twenty years ago, and I still find it amazing and mind boggling.", "An example of auditory illusion is \"*soramimi*\" (Japanese for \"auditory illusion\", which is usually used for a specific genre : misheard lyrics) when listening to a song in another language, what actually happens is that you're victim of your phonological cribble (basically, the only sounds you're able to hear are those of your mother tongue), so not all the original sounds of the foreign language arrive to your brain and your brain makes up for it, creating something that makes sense for you out of that noise.\n\nThe reason it has become so well-known in Japan is that obviously, the more phonemes there are in your mother tongue, the less you're subject to those auditory illusions, but since Japanese has few phonemes, Japanese people get a lot of those illusions out of a lot of languages."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://youtu.be/B-udfiFZcko"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0"], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_grill_illusion"], []]}
{"q_id": "33l461", "title": "Why is the name George so common in Greece?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33l461/why_is_the_name_george_so_common_in_greece/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqm5zpo"], "score": [31], "text": ["The name George is of Classical Greek origin. \u03b3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 means \"farmer\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4o0ls1", "title": "why are train tracks filled with stones?", "selftext": "Isn't that extremely dangerous if one of the stones gets on the track?\n\n#Answer below\n\n##Do trains get derailed by a stone or a coin on the track?\nNo, trains do net get derailed by stones on the tracks. That's mostly because trains are fucking heavy and move with such power that stones, coins, etc just get crushed!\n\n##Why are train tracks filled with anything anyways?\n* Distributes the weight of the track evenly\n* Prevents water from getting into the ground \u00bb making it unstable\n* Keeps the tracks in place\n\n##Why stones and not any other option?\n* Keeps out vegetation\n* Stones are cheap\n* Low maintenance\n\nThanks to every contributor :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o0ls1/eli5_why_are_train_tracks_filled_with_stones/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d48juyp", "d48jvoo", "d48jwle", "d48k2jq", "d48nzal", "d48oxgj", "d48pr32", "d48pyos", "d48qd45", "d48rcif", "d48ru4v", "d48s3ue", "d48s4yy", "d48scqh", "d48t2ug", "d48tdps", "d48ua25", "d48uggs", "d48usn5", "d48uxcf", "d48v69l", "d491otx", "d491v4o", "d493adk", "d4950cm", "d4951nf", "d4960o3", "d496fj4", "d49bu88", "d49d6zv", "d49iu9c", "d49ixoa", "d49j8fr", "d49k79e", "d49sg3l", "d49tqty"], "score": [10, 4877, 5, 592, 93, 3, 30, 2, 18, 2, 5, 2, 230, 2, 3, 4, 2, 5, 11, 5, 3, 2, 21, 162, 2, 2, 4, 12, 3, 9, 2, 11, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I doubt a stone the size they use would be dangerous to a train it would just turn it to dust .any way the reasons they use ballast (stones)is because it is usually a cheap and readily available material in the quantities they need .secondly they use different grades and sizes to build a very solid foundation ,they kind of bind together with friction. And lastly it is an easy material to work with so repairs and reshaping aren't as technical or costly to compete ", "Those stones (called track ballast) serve four primary purposes:\n\n- Load-bearing (it distributes and bears the weight of the railroad ties)\n- Facilitation of water drainage away from the ties\n- Keeps out vegetation that could interfere with the structure of the track\n- Helps keep the ties in place", "As opposed to what else?\n\nIf the tracks just rest on dirt or sand, then they sink and warp with the first storm that turns it to mud.\n\nIf the tracks rest on/in concrete or cement, the vibrations of the train will just break it apart into gravel and sand. Not to mention the huge upkeep costs.\n\nIf a stone somehow gets in a track, it's because a human put it there. Which happens with the alternatives as well. Gravel is cheap, it's steady and it drains well. And if a stone is put on the track, it gets turned into dust. It won't derail the train and I doubt it would be pushed out like some sort of cartoon.", "Trains can be extremely heavy, this weight is focused upon the fairly small area of their wheels. The stones are actually called *track ballast* and help to spread the huge force from the train's wheels out over a larger area of ground. Without this ballast the ground underneath might sink unevenly. The sleepers (*cross ties*) of the tracks are not directly attached to the ballast which allows the track to have a little movement (e.g. as the track expands and contracts due to changes in temperature).\n\nStones are a good choice for this role because:  \n1. They are cheap.  \n2. They can resist compressive loads well.  \n3. Relatively low maintenance.  \n\nAlso of note: ballast is itself built upon a foundation of earth (the *subgrade*) that helps to raise the track and further distribute load.\n\nOther functions: stops plants growing around the tracks, allows water to drain away.\n\nAre rocks a significant derailment hazard? Not really -- trains are massive and move quickly -- this enormous momentum means they smash right through most anything in their path. Rocks are typically turned to dust by the wheels of the train or thrown out of the way by the tremendous pressure of the wheels against the track.", "Train driver here.  Slab track (or ballastless track) would be preferable over ballast any day.  It is basically track fixed directly to reinforced concrete slabs and has the advantage of increased stability and lower maintenance costs.  It is however expensive, so sleepers and ballast are used instead.  In some countries, slab track is used extensively on high speed, high frequency lines, such as Japan or around some areas where the track must be stable such as in tunnels or around stations.  This is of course dependant on the amount of investment in rail infrastructure!", "I didn't see it mentioned here, but apologies if I missed it. The rocks are also erosion resistant. The wear on the over time is very small since the only thing that can cause it is rain, and the water doesn't  even have a constant flow. If dirt or sand were used, then you would see some of it washing away after the first small rainfall.\n\nYou see this is also in effect in the drainage pipe mouths, they use rocks since they don't wash away easily.", "I build trains cars for a living. Due to sheer weight it hard to derail them, but remember this when parked next to a track waiting to cross as a train is coming through. They are not bolted or attached to the wheels at all. They sit on a 7 to 10 inch king pin, and the weight is all that keeps them on.   Empty rail cars are very very easy to derail. Back up a few feet from the cross guards and give the tracks some space. ", "I remember reading a long time ago that avoiding resonance was one of the reasons for stones being used. Left to themselves, the tracks might vibrate hard enough to deform (thereby causing a derailment) or cause the ties and bolts to loosen. Having the stones next to them vibrating at a different frequency avoids this.", "The crushed stones are what is known as ballast. Their purpose is to hold the wooden cross ties in place, which in turn hold the rails in place.  You start with the bare ground, and then build up a foundation to raise the track high enough so it won't get flooded. On top of the foundation, you deposit a load of crushed stone (the ballast). On top of the stone, you lay down (perpendicular to the direction of the track) a line of wooden beams on 19.5 inch centers, 8 1/2 feet long, 9 inches wide and 7 inches thick, weighing about 200 pounds...3,249 of them per mile. You then continue to dump crushed stone all around the beams. The sharp edges of the stone make it difficult for them to slide over each other (in the way that smooth, round pebbles would), thus effectively locking them in place.  \nThis is all necessary because a train (depending on size) moving across the tracks can exert up to 1,000,000 pounds of moving pressure on the tracks", "How are you supposed to take part in the Christmas Day tradition of throwing rocks at trains if there are no rocks by the train tracks?", "It's also important to keep the track clean. A double broom is designed to clean ties between and outside of the rails. This helps to remove dirt, foreign material, and excess ballast. It moves at about 1 MPH and consists of two, separate hydraulically powered rotary brooms which sweep a width of 9 feet or so, which completely cleans finished track during a single pass.\n\nAn undercutter is use for re-ballasting road crossings, improving track conditions, roadbed prep, etc. It moves about 600 ft per hour. It can trench depths up to 34 inches below the top of the rail.\nA ballast compactor restores the bed, ballast, and track geometry. Moves at about 2-4 miles per hour.\n\nA ballast regulator moves at about 3-5 miles per hour, and transfers ballast from the field side of one rail to the field side of another, and the same for the gauge side of the rail.\n\nThe shoulder ballast cleaner - picks up the ballast off the end of the ties and moves the ballast and mud into a shaker box that separates the two. The dirt is moved to the side of the track, and the cleaned ballast is dumped back onto the shoulder.\n\nA track geometry car identifies and records track defects and can travel any of the speeds posted in a specific division. It identifies defects by mechanically measuring track parameters while under heavy loads. The measurements are recorded electronically and compares them to normal track standards.\n\nThe Jordan spreader is cool, too. It's used to spread ballast and dirt for widening embankments, and cleans ditches, level sub-grade, spreading fouled ballast, food clean up, and clearing snow drifts.\n.... These are just a few. Everything you didn't know you didn't want to know about maintenance of way.", "When I was a kid me and a friend used to make the Train gates come down setting the signals off. Cars would start backing up and wonder why no train was crossing and then the gates would just go back up.\n\nEdit: Got a few pm's on how. Pretty simple actually and clearly I don't recommend because it is illegal. We found a stop sign on the train tracks and placed it over the tracks and pressed down and begin walking and after I am guessing 10-20ft or so the gates came down. We thought an actual train was coming and got the hell out of the way. We did not realize at first that it was us. We were just messing around.", "I am an engineer working on the Hudson yard project in Manhattan for the LIRR and I've worked on many other jobs with the Long Island rail road. The stone is actually a very good bearing material and is very carefully specified for carrying the weight of the train and providing good drainage for the ties beneath the rails. \n\nNow about the whole stone on the track thing. Trains don't give a single fuck about pretty much anything on the tracks. Stones are reduced to dust. Coins are reminted. People and animals are exploded like meat filled balloons. \n\nDon't fuck with trains. They don't care. ", "Those stones are not at all dangerous if it gets on the tracks, or atleast in my experiences. When I was in middle school id always put stones on tracks to see what happened (not proud of it but I was a foolish kid) sometimes id put many stones in a sequence to make almost a melody. The weight and force of a train is tremendous and crushs the stones like a soda can. The real danger is metal on the tracks for they don't explode in a dust cloud like a rock would, but rather shootout projectiles. I have damaged nerve tissue in my leg because of that.\nBe careful around tracks", "Laying down Gravel/loose bedding is an ancient roman invention and it's why their roads lasted so long. Think about all the sidewalks you've seen and how most of them are cracked and sometimes those cracks get angled so you trip. Gravel bedding allows the ground beneath the road to contort, compress, and bend without the road itself from warping.", "Not a specific answer to your question, but I was involved in emergency response for train derails in Eastern and Atlantic Canada up until last year. \nThe vast majority of derailments happen due to trains taking turns too fast. A very small percentage (maybe  < 3%) happen due to a failure of the rail, tie, or ballast. An extremely small percentage happen due to tampering. \n\nI probably responded to 5-8 derailments per year. Usually 1 or 2 per year would come from rail fatigue (rotten tie or loosened ballast). I never once saw a train derail from tampering. \n\nBut just a few weeks ago I received a call to assist with an investigation where the rail had actually been cut! Unfortunately I was on vacation in California and couldn't make it out to see. ", "For the second part of your question: when me and my friends were dumb kids we thought it would be funny to load snow and sticks on the track to see if we could derail it (I know we were fucking retarded). Anyways, our 2 hours of work were for nothing. Train blasted through that shit like it was air. The \"cow catcher\" blasted most of it away and the rest was laughable. Guy driving didn't try to stop or speed up or anything, just kept cruisin.", "Nop. When i was a kid, my brother and me used to lay like fifty of them on the tracks. We then waited for the TGV to pass. Free firecrackers ! Deafening shit\n\n\n\nPS: i know it is stupid, but we were 10 years old", "I always find humor when people ask \"wont a penny or stone derail the train\"....... to which i show them a video of a train blowing through a fully loaded semi trailer without slowing down one bit. I then let them decide for themselves. ", "When I was young and took a road trip with my parents, my dad put a quarter on rail road tracks. The train hauled ass by and flattened the coin and looked awesome.\n\nI was terrified it was gonna derail the train the whole time...", "What are the chances that a stone gets kicked up and gets shot at somebody on the platform?  ", "I grew up with a train track in my backyard.  We put everything on the tracks as kids.  Pennies, rocks, sticks....etc. The rocks were cool because it made sparks when the wheels hit them.  Cool as a kid....I often think back and wonder how we never derailed a train, or received a visit from the railroad commission.", "These stones are called ballast, and their job is to provide a sort of 'bed' or base for the track to sit on top of (hence why it's sometimes called the 'trackbed'). \n\nBasically, it allows water to drain through, and the stones can shift slightly to evenly distribute the weight of the train into the ground  as the train goes over it. If the ballast wasn't there, the weight of the trains going over, combined with a build up of water, would cause ground subsidence under the track - the track would be pushed into the dirt by the weight of the trains.\n\nOn some modern rail lines they instead use concrete slab track like  [this](_URL_0_), where the rail sits on top of sprung 'chairs', which distribute the weight into the track. This system is low maintenance and allows higher speeds, but is also much more expensive to build.\nAs for your second question, this poses absolutely no harm to the train at all. Only a very small section of the wheel is in contact with the track, and it has the entire weight of the train on top of it, so it ploughs through everything. When my grandma was little in 1950s Britain, she used to put pennies (a type of coin equivalent to a cent for you US folks) on the tracks near their house, and they would be flattened by the trains as they passed over them. \n\nSource: Major railway enthusiast (railfan in the US??), and thinking of doing an engineering degree at university.\n[](/GNU Terry Pratchett)", "Why are train tracks filled with stones? So [they can do this](_URL_0_)", "I was literally thinking of asking g this question yesterday.  Thank you OP for reading minds xD", "Here's a stab in the dark, without reading.  The stones may act as sound deadening, drainage, and instead of paving it which would crack due to vibrations.  ", "I don't really have anything to contribute other than when I was a kid we had train tracks behind our house and I would place rocks (by rocks I mean like driveway stones, so - small) and quarters on the tracks and wait for a train. I had so many smashed quarters as a kid, it was awesome. The rocks would just disintegrate but it was still fun to do. Then one day someone told me a train could derail if it ran over a rock and it freaked me out and I never did it again.  ", "Stones in this case are called **ballast**. They ensure the properly drainage of the laying terrain, and, also, serves as a blocking device for the sleepers and as a weight-distribution over the soil.\n\nImagine if you lay the rails and sleepers right over the terrain, without laying the geotextile and the ballast bed: if the soil contains clays, the rain will not drain properly, thus creating an unstable condition (twisted rails, misalignments, deflections).\n\nThe ballast helps to maintain the soil properly drained (keeping in mind that, below the crushed rocks, there is a geotextile). Also, it bears the loads on the sleepers (or ties), distributing the weight uniformly on the terrain. And, of course, holds the ties and rails in place.", "It was also explained to me that it's much cheaper than asphalt or concrete. And more stable under heavy loads", "Railway engineer for a major class 1 (US) railroad here. Track maintenance is an every day fixture, especially on the heavily trafficked corridor in which I work. This includes the dropping and leveling of new ballast. Companies like Herzog use specially designed rail cars on work trains that can drop ballast while the train is moving at about 30 MPH. It's a pretty neat deal that's all controlled by satellite. Sometimes, however, a lot of stray rocks will stay on the rails after a ballast train has dropped its load. Being the first train to hit rails covered with ballast is always a fun/uncomfortable experience. You feel every. Single. Rock. Even though the train is very heavy and the rocks pose no threat, due to the small contact area between the locomotive wheels and the rails, it makes for a helluva bumpy ride!", "Can confirm that putting those rocks on the tracks does nothing to the train but makes for a heck of a good time when your a bored kid. Used to live beside some when I was a kid and we would always put stuff on the tracks to watch it either a) explode or b) get squished. FYI rocks explode, coins squish.", "Trains are not able to handle deformation of their tracks anyway near the extent of say a car can a drive safely over a bad road. This is a much bigger risk to derailment than a stone on the track.\nThe ballast (stones) and subgrade (material between the ballast and natural earth) is built as an elevated trapezoidal shape that distributes the load at the top of the trapezoid (train) over a larger area at the base so that the natural soil it is built on will not sink, in much the same way snow shoes stop you from falling through soft snow. The elevation of the trapezoid also stops water run off/small amounts of flooding moving/washing the tracks away.\nThe reason stones are an ideal ballast material is more complicated, the simple explanation being that stones are a granular material that allows water to drain through the ballast area. Because water is not retained the ballast will not have a long term settlement (sink further over time) so the tracks stay in the same place in the long term.\nSource: Civil Engineer.", "How come the subway trains don't have stones on the tracks?", "If it was built on dirt, over the years there'd be a number of dangerous ground/maintenance/foliage issues. Stones are the most sterdy and most efficient material to use ", "When I was a kid we used to put a bunch of those rocks on the train tracks then hide behind a nearby wall and watch as the train passed. It exploded each rock with ease ", "The stones are called 'ballast'. The tracks need to be very very straight and very very level. With so many tons rolling over them they tend to shift and move, and need to be periodically realigned. Also the wooden ties need to be replaced occasionally. If they were set in asphalt or concrete this task would be made much more difficult. \n\nNo it's not dangerous. The train pulverizes those rocks like a game of Candy Crush when they get atop the rail. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Feste_Fahrbahn_FFB%C3%B6gl.jpg"], ["https://i.imgur.com/JOeNC94.gifv"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31vdzf", "title": "Was there anyone in Hitler's High Command that had serious misgivings about invading Poland and triggering the Second World War so soon after recovering from the First? Or was it a unanimous decision to put boots overseas?", "selftext": "I'm aware of the plots to assassinate him and Operation Valkyrie, but I'm wondering more about whether the beginning of the war was apprehensive for some, and if anyone tried to stop it. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31vdzf/was_there_anyone_in_hitlers_high_command_that_had/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq5exbb"], "score": [122], "text": ["The line in the sand for the German Generals was not the invasion of Poland. By then, it was already too late. It was the invasion of Czechoslovakia.\n\nTheir resistance to Hitler's war plans in 1938 and before the invasion of Czechoslovakia were the reason why he used the first chance to get rid of General Werner von Blomberg, then War Secretary and CiC of the Wehrmacht, as well as General Werner von Fritsch, then CiC of the Army, in the so-called [Blomberg\u2013Fritsch Affair](_URL_3_): Hitler blackmailed Blomberg with the latter's much younger wife's past and had his henchman Heydrich disseminate rumours that Fritsch was homosexual. Von Blomberg was pressured into retirement, von Fritsch was transferred and later sought death in combat.\n\nEven after Hitler forcibly retired 16 Generals and transferred 44 more, the head of the German General Staff [Ludwig Beck](_URL_1_) tried to organize his peers against Hitler's war plans. A meeting that took place on August 4th 1938 showed that with the exceptions of Generals Ernst Busch and Walter von Reichenau, the entire General Staff presciently considered a war to be unwinnable and eventually to lead into catastrophe. In particular, General [Erwin von Witzleben](_URL_0_) made plans together with, among others, Generals Franz Halder, Walter Graf von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, Paul von Hase and Erich Hoepner to arrest, imprison and eventually put Hitler before a court in the event of a Franco-British declaration of war. At the same time, [Admiral Wilhelm Canaris](_URL_2_), who was working with Beck and von Witzleben, sent Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin to Britain as his envoy, asking for a British declaration of war in the event of a Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. That declaration would have given the General Staff both the pretext and support for the above-mentioned overthrow of Hitler.\n\nChamberlain's caving-in at Munich however destroyed the German generals' plans. Beck was eventually pressured into retirement, von Witzleben was transferred to Heeresgruppe two and Canaris shifted his efforts to more clandestine means. All of them were and eventually killed after the failed [20 July plot](_URL_4_).\n\nOther Source:\n\nJoachim C. Fest: Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945. Phoenix, 1996 - ISBN 0753800403"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_von_Witzleben", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Beck", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blomberg%E2%80%93Fritsch_Affair", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot"]]}
{"q_id": "3tfr3o", "title": "if ted cruz was born in canada, how is is he running for president of the united states when arnold schwarzenegger was not eligible to?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tfr3o/eli5_if_ted_cruz_was_born_in_canada_how_is_is_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx5pxlz", "cx5pxo3", "cx5pz32", "cx5q2m7", "cx5rku7", "cx5wsio", "cx5zd51", "cx60z00", "cx61blb", "cx61iuf", "cx61nc5", "cx621da", "cx62ae0", "cx62alr", "cx62rxx"], "score": [563, 45, 11, 88, 5, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Cruz was born to American citizen parents (so their citizenship passes to their son), Schwarzenegger was born to Austrians (whose Austrian citizenship passed to their son). ", "Great question! It's because his mother was born in the U.S. and lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, thus making him a U.S. citizen.  ", "Ted Cruz was born an US citizen,  Arnold was not. \n\nThe constitution says you must be a natural born citizen to be president. ", "The trick is that to be president you must be a \"natural born\" citizen.  Now, how do you define exactly what that means.  There's lots of complexities but the important part is weather or not you were a citizen at the time of your birth.\n\nBeing born in the US is the best way to guarantee that you are a citizen at the time of birth (since by definition all persons born in the US are US citizens). But there are other ways.\n\nArnold immigrated to the US as an adult and eventually got citizenship.  So he clearly is not naturally born a US citizen.\n\nCruze was burn in Canada, but that's not enough to disqualify him.  Both of his parents were American and had recently lived in America.  That's enough to be granted citizenship.  If you are born to American parents who just happen to be living outside the US at the time, you are still a US citizen. \n\nSo even though Cruz was born in Canada, he was an American citizen from the moment he breathed his first breath. And that's enough to qualify him as a naturally born American. ", "More importantly, why was the right-wing media and politicians making a fuss about Obama not being born in the US (even though he was) and no one says anything about Cruz -- even though we know for a fact he wasn't born in the US? \n\nThen some say racism is not real...", "McCain was born in Panama if I recall correctly.  Location is important but so it nationality of your parents.", "If your parent is a U.S. citizen who has resided in the USA for 5 years in total with at least 3 after the age of 14, you are a natural born US citizen from birth. Ted Cruz was born abroad to a mother who fit within that criteria. Therefore, he is a US citizen from birth, qualifying him to be the president. Schwarzenegger was born in Austria to Austrian citizens. Therefore, at the time of his birth he was not a natural born US citizen. Rather, he was naturalized in the US later in life. He also may quite possibly now be a dual US/Austrian national.", "The answers I am reading are incomplete, so I'm going to offer something a little deeper.  The answer is that Sen. Cruz is most likely eligible, whereas Gov. Schwarzenegger is definitely not.\n\nFirst, Ted Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother.  He obtained U.S. citizenship at birth through jus sanguinis (law of the blood).  The other way to obtain U.S. citizenship is to be born in the United States (jus soli).  Most children born in America are covered by both.\n\nTo become President, the Constitution sets forth certain qualifications in article 2, section 1, clause 5:\n\n >  No person except a **natural born Citizen**, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.\n\nNow, the Constitution does not explain what a natural born citizen is, but we know that Ted Cruz was certainly born a citizen.  Until a challenge is presented to the Supreme Court, we won't know for certain if Ted Cruz is eligible, but research is of the opinion that he almost certainly is.\n\nFirst, the [Harvard Law Review](_URL_0_) published an article earlier this year arguing that at the time of the Constitution's writing, it would have been understood that a natural born citizen is anyone born an American.\n\nEarlier, Congress also posed this question to the [Congressional Research Service](_URL_1_), which also came to the same conclusion after exhaustive research.\n\nBased on these, I doubt the Supreme Court would dare overturn the democratic will of the people given the lack of precedent that \"natural born citizen\" means something else.\n\nGovernor Schwarzenegger was born in Austria to Austrian parents.  He was not born with U.S. citizenship, and is therefore constitutionally ineligible to run for that office.\n\nEdit: typo.", "Cruz's mother is a US citizen, so that *should* be enough.\n\nHowever, this theory has never been tested in court and there's a fairly strong case to be made that the framers of the Constitution (the law, not the boat ones) intended for only people who were **literally born on US soil** to parents who were full citizens at the time should serve as president. \n\nThe reason is that Europe over the centuries had had rulers who not only were aliens, but couldn't even speak the language of the people they governed. ", "Because one of his parents was American and his other (father) is Canadian, he had both American and Canadian citizenship. He renounced his Canadian citizenship, and because he was technically born American he's able to run for president. \n\nAlso, a little side-not he didn't have to renounce his citizenship to Canada to run, it just increased his odds at winning. (Or at least this is to the best of my knowledge).\n\nSource: [Parents' info](_URL_0_)\n\nTL;DR He wasn't naturalized like Schwarzenegger, he was born American. ", "You have to be a 'Natural Born' Citizen. \n\nThe definition of which is a bit hazy sometimes. Most believe you need be born on US Soil to be 'Natural Born'. So if you were born in Australia, even to US Parents - you're a US Citizen, but not 'Natural Born'.\n\nFrom Wiki:\n\n\"Ted Cruz announced on March 22, 2015, that he was running for the Republican Party's nomination for president in the 2016 election.\n\nCruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to a \"U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban immigrant father\", giving him dual Canadian-American citizenship.\n\nCruz applied to formally renounce his Canadian citizenship and ceased being a citizen of Canada, on May 14, 2014.\n\nProfessor Chin, former Solicitor General Paul Clement, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, and Professor Peter Spiro of Temple University Law School believe Cruz meets the constitutional requirements to be eligible for the presidency. Professor McManamon believes generally that natural-born citizens must be born in the United States, which would make Cruz ineligible. Orly Taitz, Larry Klayman, and Mario Apuzzo, who each filed multiple lawsuits challenging Obama's eligibility, have asserted Cruz is not eligible.\n\nIn November 2015, two ballot challenges were filed in New Hampshire, alleging Cruz was ineligible because he was born in Canada.\"\n\nSince Cruz was a Canadian Citizen for most of his life - I would say that further supports his ineligibility.\n\nBut I'm not a Constitutional lawyer. \n\n", "Since I don't see it explicitly sourced, yet... The eligibility requirements to serve as President are laid out in clause 5, Section 1, Article Two of the Constitution:\n\n >  \"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.\"\n\nBecause Ted Cruz is a \"natural born citizen\" -- i.e. a citizen at birth due to his U.S. citizen parents -- he is thus eligible.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "Because his mother was a United States citizen at the time of his birth he also become officially a United States citizen. Where born is irrelevant and Ted Cruz can run for president for the same reason that McCain was able to run for president (his parent's were U.S. citizens stationed in Panama Canal when McCain was born) and if Barack Obama was born in Kenya (claims was born in Hawaii but irrelevant where he was born) would still be allowed to run for president because his mother was a U.S. citizen.\n\nDoesn't matter WHERE born but rather whether born to a U.S. citizen. Just because somebody is visiting or living in, say, Brazil but was born to at least one U.S. citizen is STILL a U.S. citizen.", "The constitution states that only NATURAL citizens can be president. So this means anyone that was born a natural citizen, and not naturalized (made a citizen after birth), has the ability to run for president. The easiest way to be a citizen at birth is to be born in the United States, but me and Ted Cruz where born to US citizens so instead of a naturalization certificate, we have a \"US Birth Abroad\" birth certificate, so from the moment we left our mother's wombs we were 'MERICANS.\n\nSource: I am planning my 2030 presidential campaign as we speak even though I was born in Mexico.\n\nEDIT: capitalization ", "To be a natural born citizen, as is the requirement that is called into question, the baby must be born either;\n\n1 - Within United States territory and the baby receives a birth certificate from the government recognizing the birth.\n\nor\n\n2 - When an American gives birth in a foreign country, and the parent receives a special form from the US Embassy that recognizes the baby as an American citizen. \n\nMost people don't realize this, but we had this run-in before with the GOP when Mitt Romney's father ran for president. He was born in Switzerland, but his parents filled out the form, causing the government to recognize him as a natural born US citizen."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/", "http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz#Early_life_and_ancestry"], [], ["http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4i25pj", "title": "What determines how long a day cycle is on a planet?", "selftext": "Example: Earth's rotational period is 23 hours 56 minutes. \n\nJupiter is 9 hours 55 minutes. \n\nNeptune is 16 hours 6 minutes. \n\nI thought rotational periods were relative to their distance from the sun. \n\nWell Earth is closer to the sun than Jupiter and earth has a longer day cycle, and Neptune is farther from the sun than Jupiter but Neptune has a longer day cycle. \n\nDoes distance from the sun not determine how it takes a planet to rotate?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4i25pj/what_determines_how_long_a_day_cycle_is_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2uimo1", "d2uv6sz"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["There is no pattern, but the collective angular momentum of whatever coalesced to form the planet is the primary source of spin. Should something collide with it on an angle, the impact can change not only the day length but also the rotational axis. This may be why Venus spins the wrong way and why Uranus' axis is so far off-kilter.", "the main thing affected by distance to the sun is the year length, not the day length. The day length is about conservation of angular momentum, and depends on the total angular momentum of everything the planet is made of/ interacted in the past. (collisions or near misses could mess it up a bunch for example)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "bagrk9", "title": "How are entire ecosystems largely consistent between continents, but entire classes of animals therein aren't represented at all?", "selftext": "I was recently reading Teddy Roosevelt's The Wilderness Hunter, and an excerpt from the first chapter caught my interest:\n\n\"The untrodden American wilderness resembles both in game and physical character the forests, the mountains, and the steppes of the Old World as it was at the beginning of our era. Great woods of pine and fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut ; streams where the chief game fish are spotted trout and silvery salmon; grouse of various kinds as the most common game birds; all these the hunter finds as characteristic of the New World as of the Old. So it is with most of the beasts of the chase, and so also with the furbearing animals that furnish to the trapper alike his life work and his means of livelihood. The bear, wolf, bison, moose, caribou, wapiti, deer, and big horn, the lynx, fox, wolverine, sable, mink, ermine, beaver, badger, and otter of both worlds are either identical or more or less closely kin to one another.\"\n\nThis is a *really* wide swathe of these biomes that has life similar enough to reside (in many cases) in the same genus and sometimes the same species. How is it that these areas can simultaneously be so similar, while in other areas - songbird populations, reptiles, etc. - they remain almost totally distinct? For instance, while both locations have rat snakes, that's an enormous subfamily of colubrids that often aren't all that similar. Similarly, both regions have vipers (family *Viperidae*) but the genuses are distinct and the animals are very different (*Crotalus* in NA; *Vipera* in EU).\n\nIn general, I don't think I understand why phenomena that allow genetically similar species to be extremely geographically distinct - such as land bridges and conjoined continents - have results that appear to be so selective.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bagrk9/how_are_entire_ecosystems_largely_consistent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ekbgt92"], "score": [4], "text": ["This has mostly to do with the ability of the specimen to travel long distances and to cross different biomes.\n\nFlying birds have it very easy. They don't need a land bridge, and many species have long distance travel as their natural behaviour. \nBig terrestrial mammals need at least a temporary land bridge, but then they can walk long distances and they are not very sensitive to temperature variations.\n\nReptiles, on the other hand, hate the cold. They could not cross into North America from Asia, it has always been very cold there. Another interesting example from North America are earthworms. They were all killed of in northern latidudes by the last ice age, and because they spread so slowly they are still expanding their habitat to the north."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8fe4h9", "title": "if a ceo of a major company is worth billions of dollars, how does that translate into them having lots of money? if all their money is tied up in stocks, then how do they have billions to spend?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fe4h9/eli5_if_a_ceo_of_a_major_company_is_worth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dy2qp8k", "dy2qxfx", "dy2rn9j", "dy2rta8", "dy2s7mg", "dy2st1x", "dy2w11n"], "score": [19, 8, 9, 5, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["They can sell a small portion of their stock. Or they can get a loan against the value of the stock, which can be sold in the future.", "Any transaction on the order of billions of dollars is not going to be done immediately. They'd have time to liquidate assets.", "They don't have billions to spend necessarily... most people of that kind of weath only need a small fraction to cover even a lavish lifestyle, so they typically have set trades of their shares to give them enough money for living expenses and diversifying their portfolio. Say they have $5 billion in stock in a company they founded... each quarter they sell, say, $10 million worth of stock, no matter what the price is (to prevent accusations of insider trading). That's still only 0.2% of their wealth/shares so it has no impact on their control of the company.", "All of their money is not tied up in stocks. Many CEO's get paid a lot of actual money. Some make millions of dollars per year.", "Generally it's not the CEO, but the OWNER of the company that gets his worth from the company value.  Sometimes the owners are the CEO (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg used to be ?(not sure if he is anymore)... \n\nBut when you speak of stock, the 'owner' has cashed out already, as he is the one selling the stock so you can buy it. Then comes a \"Board of Directors\" that the CEO reports to... and on and on. ", "You're talking about the subject of \"liquidity\". In short, it's a major concern but money that isn't \"liquid\" (immediately able to be spent) isn't useless.\n\nIt's all on a spectrum anyways. If you have a typical bank account there's a limit to how much cash you can withdraw at once, often about $1000 per day, so if somebody stole your card/info they couldn't empty the account (along with other reasons, I'm sure). Writing checks or spending money with a debit card *might* be similarly limited, depending on the bank etc. \n\nDoes this mean you can't spend it all? No, I'd say $10,000 in a checking account is one of the more flexible/convenient ways to hold onto money. But it doesn't mean there is *zero* limit or inconvenience involved in moving it around. ", "You can't spend billions of dollars.  You can just rearrange what it is billions of dollars worth of.\n\nIf I give you a hundred bucks you can go out and buy a pair of shoes.  Once you wear them they are worthless.  \n\nIf I give you 10,000.00 you can go and buy a car, and once you have driven it around enough it is worthless.  \n\nIf I give you 1,000,000 though you can't really spend that in such a way that you won't have it - at least not without some effort.  You will get a house, and then you own an asset that can appreciate in value.\n\nIf I give you 100,000,000 even if you tried to spend it... a dozen hookers full time servicing you while world famous chefs cooked for you and you drank 10K a bottle booze and stayed at the fanciest of hotels... well odds are pretty good the interest you are earning on that money is more than you can spend every hour despite your best efforts.\n\nWith billions the problem only gets worse."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3agzvu", "title": "In game of thrones Varys is known as the master of whispers. Essentially the head of an espionage group. How did ancient spymasters manage such networks?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3agzvu/in_game_of_thrones_varys_is_known_as_the_master/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cscp78k", "cscv1be", "csd0ko0", "csd2565"], "score": [40, 31, 32, 29], "text": ["If I can ask a follow up question, Varys' \"little birds\" are loyal to him and him alone, not the current head of state. Is that consistent with organisations like the CIA, MI5/6, KGB etc?", "Sort of a follow-on, but were 'ancient spymasters' even a thing? Did ancient espionage exist in a form similar to modern espionage? If so, would there have been a single person in charge of it?", "This isn't *ancient*, but I'm assuming it's the kind of information you're looking for.\n\nHenry VII was the first Tudor King of England, reigning from 1485 to 1509. He was a justifiably paranoid man. He'd won his crown on the battlefield, and through the years he'd faced multiple rebellions, conspiracies, and insurrections.\n\nThere wasn't just any one spymaster. Instead, Henry's multitude of advisers, in addition to their official roles, collected information for him.\n\nSpies were kept in-line through a variety of methods. There were professional, paid royal informers. When Sir James Tyrrell was arrested, his servant Robert Wellesbourne was the key witness in his trial. It was unclear how long he had been an informant. His family had close ties to Sir Thomas Lovell, who was Chancellor to the Exchequer as well as an informal spymaster.\n\nIn any case, Robert Wellesbourne was granted a half-year's salary of 60s 10d, an extremely generous sum, and continued serving as a spy.\n\nThen there were those spies who worked for free. Sir John Wilshire was sent down by Henry to monitor the books at Calais. He was also expected to cultivate a spy network, keeping a close eye on Henry's exiled enemy Suffolk. Wilshire did so by promising pardons to Suffolk's associates in-return for information.\n\nSome spies didn't have employers. Often times, men came forward to the king with information on their own initiative, either hoping for rewards or just trying to destroy their political rivals.\n\nIn one conversation, Sir Hugh Conway, the treasurer of Calais, complained about disloyalty in the Calais garrison. In response, Sir Sampson Norton told him to talk to the king about it.\n\nConway refused, stating that the king would suspect him of, \"envy, ill-will and malice\" and that he would have, \"blame and no thank, for his truth and good mind\". So many men went forward to the king with information that he had become deeply suspicious of them. Henry's problem wasn't that he had too little information - it was that he had too much. In fact, Henry sometimes personally interrogated suspected traitors. Presumably he wanted to cut through the rumor mongering that dominated his reign.\n\nThe reason we know about Conway's complaints is because one of the men involved, John Flamank reported the conversation to the king. Flamank had gotten into an argument with Sir Richard Nanfan, one of the men present in the discussion, and had decided to inform on everyone.\n\nTo summarize: Henry VII had multiple competing spymasters. These spymasters maintained their networks through official salaries, bribes, or promises of pardons. In addition to these networks, many informants came in on their own initiative. All these different sources of information were used to double-check each other.\n\nSource: Penn, Thomas. *Winter King: Henry VII and The Dawn of Tudor England*. New York: Simon  &  Schuster, 2012. Print.", "First post here. Let me know if I haven't done something properly :)\n\nThe Neo-Assyrian Kings well understood the benefits of using spies and did so on numerous occasions (we're talking 9th to 7th centuries BCE here btw).\nOne example is in the usage of spies in an ongoing power struggle with the Urartians, a kingdom to the North of Assyria that threatened to overtake them as the dominant power in the region.\n\nThe image we have of spies in this particular ancient setting is very reliant on the type of evidence that is available from the period. We have a vast quantity of cuneiform texts from the major Ancient Assyrian cities that record correspondences between the Assyrian Kings and his higher level administrators. It's a bit hard to navigate but I encourage you to have a look at some of them if you want a glimpse at the sort of evidence that survives this period. Large amounts of it can be found online in the State Archives of Assyria series. Because what we see is the what is presented to the King or his central administration, we only get a  glimpse of what was more than likely an extensive network of spies. Only the most important matters deserve to reach the King.\n\nDubovsky talks about information reaching the king in three ways 1. Ambassadors visiting his court, 2. People being sent on independent missions to his court and 3. Through 'provincial information hubs'. These information hubs were managed by his centrally appointed Governors (think Member of Parliament but with full authority over the region) within the empire. So rather than ancient spymasters, intelligence was within the common remit of the provincial administrators within the empire. Outside the empire we have examples of delegates appointed within client kingdoms known as 'Qepu' who would report on the activities within the kingdom. These people could do so in any number of ways. Interrogation of prisoners, paid spies, interception of messengers/ messages, informers etc.\n\nSo what can we take away from this? Both of these positions I've posted were roles within the Assyrian state structure. Any intelligence networks that existed, while they may not themselves have been formalised, entered and followed a similar path to the administrative state hierarchy at the provincial level with the Governors taking on the closest we have to the role of a 'spymaster.'The question then becomes about the loyalties of the state officials to the King and this is something which the Assyrian system also addressed... often by chopping off their gonads.\n\n--Dubovsk\u00fd, P., Hezekiah and the Assyrian spies: reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian intelligence services and its significance for 2 Kings 18-19 (Biblica et orientalia 49), Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006 \n\n--_URL_0_\n\nI also highly recommend this resource for anyone looking to find out about the Neo-Assyrian Empire:\n--_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/corpus", "http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/"]]}
{"q_id": "c4widz", "title": "Does \"Child Benefit\" incentivize child birth?", "selftext": "Countries like Canada and Australia provide and income to their citizens that are parents or guardians of children. At first glance it naturally sounds like an incentive and like it could impact child birth rate to go up. What I'm looking for of course is scientific evidence and studies in this topic.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c4widz/does_child_benefit_incentivize_child_birth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["es04tlu"], "score": [7], "text": ["Not for Singapore it doesn\u2019t. You get USD 5,500 cash for your first baby with a Government dollar-for-dollar Child development Fund (you contribute 10 K govt contributes an equal 10 K, up to USD 10 K). You also get an initial USD 2 K in your first CDA account. \n\nThe cash bonus increases per additional child you have, up to a maximum of USD 7 K cash for your 5th Child.\n\nThere are other benefits (child care subsidies, kindergarten subsidies, maid subsidies etc) that you become eligible upon the birth of your first child.\n\nHowever, despite the above slew of cash payouts and subsidies, Singapore\u2019s birth rate hit a 7-year low of 1.16 live baby/thousand females in 2018\n\nMain reasons for not proactively procreating are: 1) no suitable partner, 2) no dating opportunities (due to fast-paced lifestyle) and 3) passive attitude towards dating.\n\nSociety mindset needs to change in order for the alarming trend to stabilise and eventually reverse. However, this cannot change overnight so the planned steady influx of foreigners actually helped to mitigate the unwillingness of Singaporeans to have children."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "89px0y", "title": "Can CRISPR repair the genes of someone who is born missing part of a chromosome?", "selftext": "I was watching [this video on r/videos](_URL_0_) of a woman who was born with Distal 18q- and was wondering if CRISPR could be used in childhood to allow them to develop normally? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/89px0y/can_crispr_repair_the_genes_of_someone_who_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwsumgv", "dwtlava"], "score": [10, 2], "text": ["With the current technology, no.\n\nCurrently with crispr, you can only truly guarantee that the whole genome of an organism is changed if you inject the guide RNAs, Caspase 9, and donor DNA template if you inject into the zygote before it starts to divide into other cells. I do this in the lab with xenopus oocytes to microinject them before they start to divide, and this is nice and easy because the eggs are fertilized and develop externally. With mammals you'd have to get the zygote right after it was fertilized and then re-implant back into the uterus.\n\nThe other challenge is the issue of knock-ins vs. knockouts. To treat a disease like this, you want to add a template DNA to replace the one that is missing. CRISPR works in a way that makes it much easier to cut out a section of DNA than it does to add something in. This is because caspase is the enzyme that cuts the template, and then donor DNA is only added if homologous recombination lines in a way such that it will use that donor DNA template as a basis to repair the double strand break, but that gets into molecular biology thats a bit complicated, just know that normally the ends of DNA are just glued together after a doublestrand break, and you only get template based repair, insertion if the stars align and proteins get to the right place at the right time.\n\nCurrently, we only have about a 10%-30% success rate with knocking a gene in (much less a whole huge section of genes), but the success rate for knockouts is much higher. When a knockin or knockout fails in the lab they may not develop properly (or at all) and we screen them to only pick the successful ones. With a human life, you don't want to have a major chance of failing to successfully edit their genome.\n\nIf technology progresses in the future, I think it could be possible to fix a disease like that. But we would probably need to develop a way to deliver CRISPR/gRNA/Donor DNA to every cell in the body and have it be repaired properly without fail, and we are an incredibly long ways off from being able to do that. For now CRISPR's therapeautic potential will be limited to cell specific editing, such as the CAR T-cells being used now to treat leukemias in clinical trials (through you don't necessarily need CRISPR to do that, you can use a virus too).\n\nAnyway, I hope that helps you understand the current limits of CRISPR better. Please let me know if you have any questions.", "Hopefully one day, but definitely not now. For crispr to have decent efficiency, it needs to be i jected early on in development. For example, we inject zebrafish at the one cell stage, amd even then, the mutation wont exist in every cell. Next, we now have to add in the DNA to be inserted at the cut site. Ive done insertions of juat over a thousand bases, and even thathas low efficiency. I don't know how big the deletion it is, but I'd hazard a guess that it's in the million, and I doubt a cell would easily uptake that much DNA. Also, just generating a sequence of DNA that long and being able to replicate it in high enough quantities to inject would be unheard of. When you combine all of these issues, it's simply not feasable at this point in time. Hopefully it will be possible in our lifetimes, but certainly not now. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/89mhbs/woman_born_with_distal_18q_a_genetic_condition/"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "zjubo", "title": "how does the internet connect to other continents?", "selftext": "Is/was there giant fiber optic tubes across the oceans?  \n\n(I'm pretty sure telephone lines had wire under the ocean).\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zjubo/eli5_how_does_the_internet_connect_to_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c657uik", "c658nkk", "c658pg5", "c658w3c", "c659dp4", "c659kj1", "c65a8v1", "c65a9nh", "c65a9wn", "c65au5h", "c65bfrv", "c65c0iv", "c65caux", "c65cjvu", "c65ewxl", "c65gr3b", "c65hiu1", "c65ib3f"], "score": [270, 10, 52, 31, 16, 34, 7, 3, 7, 2, 4, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": [" > Is/was there giant fiber optic tubes across the oceans?  \n\nExactly right, [there are several underwater fiber optic lines connecting the continents.](_URL_0_) Nowadays, these also carry telephone communications as well. ", "[This is a great talk about it given at Nerd Nite SF while back.](_URL_0_)", "also satellites... but mostly fibre optics under the sea.... right across the pacific and atlantic.\n\n_URL_0_\n\ndon't know how old this is but this will give you some idea of where the cables go. and yes the cables break... there are ships dedicated to maintaining these cables... miles under the sea.", "Who owns and maintains them?", "If you're interested in how the internet works, I recommend the book [Tubes by Andrew Blum](_URL_0_). It's an interesting read and covers the basics of the internet.", "Big cables that go across the ocean and connect countries to each other.\n\nAn example of a few of them.\n\n[CANTAT-3](_URL_3_)\n\n- Connects Canada / Iceland / Faroe Islands and Europe\n- Is really really old and slow and very expensive to lease\n\n[FARICE-1](_URL_1_)\n\n- Connects Iceland / Faroe Islands / Scotland\n- In use since 2004\n- Very stable now but farmers used to accidentally cut it back in the day, disconnecting Iceland from the world essentially, since CANTAT-5 couldn't handle the stress.\n\n[DANICE](_URL_4_) (the green one in the picture)\n\n- Very new and helps with connections to Europe that dont go through the UK\n\n[Greenland Connect](_URL_0_)\n\n- Very new and helps with connections to the US.\n- Before Greenland connect, the traffic from Iceland to the USA went through Europe if CANTAT-5 was tapped.\n- Before Greenland connect, to increase the data flow to the USA, they didn't buy more slots in CANTAT-5, but bought a lot more slots in FARICE and hoped that would fix the issue.\n\n[Here's a picture of all of them](_URL_2_)", "This is the best thing ever written about this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt will make you want to travel to remote islands to see cables.", "Russia sold us Alaska so they could afford their trans-Pacific cable.  Modern Marvels", "And for those wondering about how they power the repeaters, They run a line of DC current along with the fiber.", "when I read \"wires under the ocean\" I looked at my computer like \"you've got to be fucking kidding me. Why would there be cables ran through the oceans?\" \n\nThen I saw the answer and was like.. \"welp, time to go back to watching Criminal Minds\" ", "does anyone know how they deal with crossing the mid-atlantic ridge?", "Followup: how do these cables manage all that bandwidth? ", "Yes, there are quite a lot of cables connecting continents. \n\nNowadays, almost all data transfer is made through fiber optic cables or terrestrial radio links (antennas that point to each other at small distances), simply because of the amount of time it takes for the signal to reach a satellite and arrive back to Earth is too much for satellites to be useful at phone calls, video conferences, playing online games and so on.\n\nLarge datacenters (places where there are lots of computers connected to several internet providers at the same time) sometimes also have large antenna dishes aimed at some satellites they have contracts with. In case there is an emergency where the datacenter loses one or several land based connections, the owners of those computers can connect through the satellite and retrieve their data. \n \n\nIf you're really interested, there's a very long but insightful article on Wired about how one of those very long ocean cables ws put in the ocean and what's involved in doing something like this: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe author was on one of those boats that layed the cables on the ocean floor and talked to a lot of people so it's quite informative.\n\nAs you can see from reading that article, things could be so much simpler and better for the whole world, if religion and politics didn't exist (or didn't play such a big role in people's lives) :(\n\nBut on the happier side, it's amazing to see how many technical difficulties can be solved and how much work there actually is in moving data around the world. \n", "Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson wrote an [AMAZING article about these cables being laid](_URL_0_) for Wired.", "Continents no longer exist.  It's just cable.", "If you would like a more in depth explanation, a pretty good book was released not that long ago called Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.\n\nIt explains how networks interconnect, how fibers are laid underwater, etc.  I work in IT infrastructure so I thought it was a fun read and surprisingly well researched.\n\n\n_URL_0_", "[Popular Science had an awesome article](_URL_0_) on this a little while ago.\n\n[**This picture**](_URL_1_) still amazes me, that's the center in Miami that connects South America. ", "i can finally see how i got that email from that nigerian prince."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://telcotroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Undersea-Cables.jpg"], ["https://vimeo.com/29975179"], ["http://ansonalex.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/underwater-internet-cable-map.jpg"], [], ["http://www.worldcat.org/title/tubes-a-journey-to-the-center-of-the-internet/oclc/758392010"], ["http://climategreenland.gl/files/tekstfotos/1%20kabelruten.JPG", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FARICE-1-map.png", "http://www.invest.is/resources/images/invest.is/KeySectors/Fiber.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CANTAT-3-route.png", "http://nhpc.hi.is/sites/default/files/rhnet.jpg"], ["http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html"], ["http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html"], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994936"], ["http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-intrnet?page=1", "http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/tubes.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1i2q7y", "title": "how is the earth's core still hot 4.5 billion years into its existence?", "selftext": "I mean, I get that it's pressurized and all, but how does it maintain enough heat to keep iron melted?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i2q7y/eli5_how_is_the_earths_core_still_hot_45_billion/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb0dqyd", "cb0drum", "cb0fbyw", "cb0gq9f", "cb0js9n"], "score": [118, 13, 24, 67, 2], "text": ["The earth is actually still heating itself. We're not just a bunch of rock, the core and mantle actually have atoms breaking down, releasing heat. We are effectively sat on a nuclear reactor set to slow.\n\nEarly earth was hotter, and has lost a LOT of heat over time, but the amount we have left isn't just here form the start, our planet is effectively burning fuel to keep active.", "1. Leftover heat from when the rock were smashed together by gravity - ~~As MCMXCII points out, the rate of heat loss is likely to be quiet small.~~ Looked it up, heat loss is about 44.2 TW.\n\n2. Nuclear decay - isotopes undergoing ~~fission~~ nuclear decay releasing more heat. Rate of heating is about 30 TW\n\n[See here for more info.](_URL_0_) \n\n", "Turns out thousands of miles of rock are great for insulation.", "Put a hot pocket in the microwave for 5 minutes. That shit takes forever to cool down.\n\nThe earth is a giant hot pocket. ", "For perspective, white dwarfs are stars that stopped producing their own heat and energy.  They're just sitting there, cooling down.\n\nIt's estimated it would take them 1,000,000,000,000,000 (1 quadrillion) years to cool down.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3cm206", "title": "why are we using rockets instead of space shuttles now as it seems like a step backwards?", "selftext": "It doesn't make sense to me! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cm206/eli5_why_are_we_using_rockets_instead_of_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cswsrs4", "cswsy2f", "cswtpkb", "cswu7do", "cswuywy", "cswwzy9"], "score": [30, 7, 8, 17, 3, 3], "text": ["Actually, it was the space shuttles that were the step backwards. They can't make it any higher than low Earth orbit. You want to explore other planets, you have to go pure rocket. ", "The Shuttle was rocket powered anyway. They just decided to cut out the middle man and go Spacey Shooty with a Rocket instead of a rocket AND  a shuttle ", "Because we should have been using rockets all along - the mistake was the Space Shuttle.\n\nIt may *seem* like a reusable vehicle would save money, but that's only true if you're building the Enterprise.  Outside of science fiction, you have to deal with the limitations of real world materials and the very real problem of having them survive multiple re-entries.  You also have to deal with the truth that technology is not frozen in place, so when you're creating projects intended to last decades they'll spend the bulk of their operational life being obsolete.\n\nIn the world of engineering, building something that can last for a long time is not better than building something that can only be used once.  The point of engineering is to make the inevitable failure predictable.  A bridge that is guaranteed to collapse after a year of use is not a bad bridge - it's just a bridge you need to rebuild in a year's time.  If it's cheaper to replace your one-year bridge every year than it is to replace your 50-year bridge every 50 years, you build one-year bridges.", "The space shuttle was an important step forward in our understanding of space travel, but it was much more expensive and inefficient than just using rockets alone, because we are very good at making efficient rockets. The shuttle program was an attempt to find a way to make a reusable space craft, but the shuttle turned out not to be a good way to do that. It was a valuable experiment, but not a successful one. But some people took the lessons learned from the shuttle program and have been trying to find better ideas off of it. Until they succeed, though, plain rockets are much cheaper and more efficient than shuttles.", "The shuttle was created to show private industry a semi truck to space was possible and you can buy an experiment on the ISS, that's what it's for. NASA has always been interested in far space research and disappointed in private industry not taking a role. \n\nThey knew near earth orbit needs to be main stream for progression to occur. Growth in knowledge is predictable.\n\nOur furthermost crafts where launched over 30 years ago and New Horizons reaches Pluto NOW. We've never seen our own solar system completely yet. After a 9 year flight we are on Tuesday. [Pluto](_URL_0_) for the first time in human history. We are sending humans to retrieve an asteroid and put into orbit around the moon to mine. Again to show private industry it can be done. Install an asteroid defense system and put an ISS around Mars. Then place people there. Thats what NASA is really doing.", "The Space Shuttle concept was a good idea.  Totally reusable rockets are probably the way of the future.  SpaceX is trying hard to recycle their first stage by flying it back and landing it.  There are two key gains: 1) obviously you get your hardware back and can use it again, probably after some inspection and refurbishment; and 2) perhaps more importantly, the rocket you're flying has been flown before so it's been tested.  Ever flown on an aircraft that's brand new and never left the ground before?  The cost of rockets is stupidly high partly because they have to be perfect the first time without ever undergoing a whole-system test.\n\nThe problem with the Space Shuttle program was the terrible execution.  The government kept reducing NASA's budget so they had to skimp on the whole concept but, as a government project, they dared not call it a failure and cancel.  For example, the boosters were originally supposed to be liquid fuelled and totally reusable but they ended up solid rockets that were really no cheaper to reuse, not to mention being more dangerous."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php"], []]}
{"q_id": "32dj3p", "title": "when charlie sheen was fired why didn't the producers just sue him for not doing his job and not have to pay him ridiculous amounts of money to end his contract?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32dj3p/eli5_when_charlie_sheen_was_fired_why_didnt_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqa706f", "cqa71p9", "cqaa4vx", "cqabeta", "cqadcyk", "cqagjf4"], "score": [85, 4, 15, 2, 16, 2], "text": ["Entertainment contracts are... complicated. And Charlie and his team know how he could continue to meet the demands of his contract and get paid.  The contract probably (read: it absolutely did) have termination payments and such for various reasons and clauses for outs for both sides.\n\nFor whatever reasons, the producers decided to go the firing route, preventing him from riding out his contract and causing conflict.", "It is likely that you answered your own question without knowing it.  You used the word 'contract'.  In his contract are doubtless, exit clauses that deal with all manner of exits and who gets paid how much, when, why and how, etc.  It is often more cost efficient to follow the exit clause than it is to fight it in court.  Also fighting in court tends to burn bridges which is a bad thing to do unless you know the future.  Less likely, but still in my own personal probability of reality is that the whole thing was a publicity stunt for Sheen, the show, or both.", "Because he would have done his job if they wouldn't have fired him. \"*They*\" broke the contract, not Sheen.", "It's impossible to know for sure if we can't look at the contract itself but it's quite possible that, while in the shittiest way possible, he still fulfilled his contractual obligations and suing him was in fact impossible.", "So I thought I'd hit up [wikipedia] (_URL_0_) for some background..\n\n\n > In the series finale, it is revealed that a goat was killed by the train instead of Charlie and that Charlie was bound and gagged by Rose and returned to the US where she kept him captive in a pit for four years. He escapes, portends his imminent arrival by sending threats to Alan, Evelyn and Walden and generous checks to Jenny, Jake, Berta, and his ex-girlfriends, but is killed by a falling grand piano while about to enter the beach house.\n\nWhat.", "I'm guessing the term fired is used loosely here. He was 'fired' for doing a shitty job/falling off the wagon. My guess is that his contract had how 'Charlie being a dick' would be dealt with written in, including what sort of financial settlement he would receive. There was no reason to sue. It was probably already all spelled out - from both sides. If Charlie had a smart lawyer, his 'firing' and the conditions thereof would have been legally negotiated and put in his contract before he ever signed on the dotted line. Same goes for the production company, who took a risk in hiring him, so, again, termination terms would have been spelled out so he couldn't sue them either. \n\nAnyway, his contract was terminated based on a pre negotiated set of rules and circumstances."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_and_a_Half_Men"], []]}
{"q_id": "751u2i", "title": "Why did Luxembourg send 44 troops to the Korean War (out of some 900,000 on the U.S/U.N. side) What did they do? Did they make a difference?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/751u2i/why_did_luxembourg_send_44_troops_to_the_korean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do3bg5t"], "score": [42], "text": ["Luxembourg was a founding member of the United Nations, being signatory to the original 1942 declaration, so certainly felt some level of obligation to participate in the United Nations military mission to Korea, although pressure from NATO should also be understood as a factor. Although Korea was obviously not covered by the treaty, there was a drive to increase the military abilities of the smaller member nations, and Korea presented a strong opportunity for that to focus on, resulting in most nations contributing to the UN military mission also being NATO countries, or closely aligned. However, being a very tiny country, with an equally tiny military - even with universal conscription - they weren't able to send over a contingent capable of anything approaching self-sufficiency, so their small contingent (smallest of any country in Korea) was folded into the ~900 man Belgian military contribution to the conflict, something not without precedence as Luxembourgian soldiers has been similarly attached during World War II, as part of the Free Belgian forces. As such, the Luxembourgers formed 1st Platoon, A Co. of a joint Belgian-Luxembourg Battalion, which was in turn attached to the US 3rd Division. \n\nAlthough originally outfitted with British surplus, being within the US military umbrella they were reequipped with US hardware. It is hard to say whether they made a *difference* as that is a tough thing to evaluate, but we can say that they did their part, seeing action in a number of engagements, both big and small, and earning multiple US Presidential Unit Citations, the first on Sept. 6, 1951, [reading the following](_URL_0_)\n\n > By decision of the President concurrent with the dispositions of the execution order 9396 (Sec. I, War Department Bulletin 22, 1943) etc. ... , the following unit is mentioned on the daily order as a public testimonial of deserved honor and distinction.\n\n > Citation : The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment of the UN Forces in Korea is mentioned for exceptional execution of its missions and for its remarkable heroism in its actions against the enemy on the Imjin, near Hantangang, Korea during the period from 20 till 26 April 1951. \n\n > The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment, one of the smallest units of the UNO in Korea, has inflicted thirty-fold losses on the enemy compared to its own, due to its aggressive and courageous actions against the Communist Chinese. During this period considerable enemy forces, supported by fire by machine guns, mortars and artillery, repeatedly and heavily attacked the positions held by the battalion but, Belgians and Luxembourgers have continuously and bravely repulsed these fanatic attacks by inflicting heavy losses to the enemy forces. When the Chinese troops had succeeded in occupying positions endangering the liaison with the allied neighboring units, The Belgian battalion with the Luxembourg detachment launched furious counter-attacks with the bayonet. The enemy, surprised by the tenacity of these attacks became disorganised and withdrew in disorder. Finally, the Belgian-Luxembourg battalion withdrew by order of higher authority, evacuated its wounded, was resupplied and requested to be put back in the line. \n\n > Having arrived at the frontline again, numerous enemy infantry and cavalry units were observed heading south. When the enemy was sufficiently close, the Belgian-Luxembourg battalion launched a rain of mortar shells with the devastating effect that its front area was covered with bodies. When the Chinese communists continued to bring in fresh troops in the attack, the Belgian-Luxembourg troops fought a successful delaying battle which enabled the adjoining positions to be methodically evacuated with minimum losses. \n\n > The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment has shown so much proof of courage, decision and esprit de corps in the accomplishment of its missions during these actions in difficult and hazardous circumstances, that it has to be placed above any other units participating in these actions. The extraordinary courage shown by the members of this units during this period has bestowed extraordinary honor on their country and on themselves.\n\nSouth Korea would add their own Presidential Unit Citation to the Belgian-Luxembourg unit, and a second US Citation would be awarded for actions at Haktanhni in October, and would remain in Korea through 1953, with two KIA, 17 WIA, and having had no men missing or captured.\n\nSource: 'United Nations Participants in the Korean War: The Contributions of 45 Member Countries' by Paul M. Edwards\n\n'Understanding the Korean War' by Arthur H. Mitchell"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hmc2.pagesperso-orange.fr/en/spotl/korpucs.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2zvppv", "title": "why are there so many more poisonous/venomous animals in australia than the rest of the world?", "selftext": "It seems like Australia is trying to kill everything and anything. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zvppv/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_more_poisonousvenomous/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpmq1pl", "cpmqhon", "cpmqkhx", "cpmqouz", "cpmra01", "cpmrul7", "cpms34z", "cpmskbd", "cpmuq4f", "cpmxhe8", "cpmyj4g", "cpn7qrv"], "score": [39, 14, 2, 5, 6, 10, 5, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["comformation bias, there are very venomous and poisous animals all over the world alstalia just happens to have a few of the most.", "Our warm / hot conditions are a good breeding ground for many diverse types of animals.\n\nIt doesn't snow in many places here, and most animals in the outback can expect fairly consistent conditions. It's been shown that there are usually a lot more diverse types of animals in these conditions compared to areas where animals have to adapt to more extreme temperature variations like having a yearly snowfall.", "Isolstion could be part of it, but a big factor may be how relatively unpopulated it's been compared to other land masses.  In a world with humans, it's a much more advantageous trait to be delicious that to be dangerous.\n\nPigs, sheep, and cows, none of whom are noted swimmers, have crossed every ocean to establish populations around the world.  On the other hand, England used to have wolves (though Ireland never had snakes).  Give the 'Strayans a thousand more years or so and they'll even the ledgers.", "Don't forget the [Drop Bears](_URL_1_) - they actually [target tourists](_URL_0_)", "Maybe because there's lots of big distances and it's underpopulated. So if you're going to get some prey you need to make sure you kill it because the encounters would be relatively infrequent. It's also not very fertile in most of Australia and not as many animals survive. ", " Proportionally, there are just as many venomous snakes and spiders as most of the rest of the world. Due to there being a larger number of snakes and spiders in Australia versus colder places, there are more venomous species. For example, if a certain percentage of snakes are venomous, then the more snakes in a given area the more venomous. Still at the same proportion though. _URL_0_\n", "This is an interesting question, particularly when we consider the relative lack of natural predators in Australia. Bill Bryson puts it well in 'Down Under':\n >  \"No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.\u201d \n\u2015 Bill Bryson. ", "Bollocks, Snake Island off the coast of Brazil!", "So that annoying tourists scared of their own shadows stay home.", "I can't find the article now, but when the Australia has dangerous animals meme started, someone wrote an article on how certain climates/biomes tend to have more poisonous/venomous animals. It showed that most of those biomes were by the equator and that the country with actually the most poisonous/venomous animals is Mexico.\n\nBut I think we don't hear about it is because A. Mexico is a poorer country so much fewer people are on the internet than Australia and A. they speak mostly Spanish so they wouldn't be on the same places on the internet to see debunk the meme.", "It has a lot to do with Australia's location on the globe. This video explains it nicely:\n\n_URL_0_", "I'm an American who grew up in Europe, and currently lives in Australia, and I've never really found that they have 'more poisonous/venomous' animals as the rest of the world, it's just a huge exaggeration that aussies love to talk up... just like their damned 'drop-bear' joke. (sorry mates!)\n\nI will say though, my partner (female) and many Aussie girls I know, have very little fear of critters like spiders and bugs, compared to the average American female I grew up with. Oh, and they don't really seem to be worried about 'stingers' during 'stinger season,' which are fatal jellyfish that are in the ocean waters at a certain time of year! She is from Cairns, after all though, and they have (fairly regular) dengue outbreaks where the mosquitos just happen to be carrying this terrible disease. Her response is always, 'you'll probably be fine, I always have been!'"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/03/drop-bears-target-tourists,-study-says/", "http://australianmuseum.net.au/drop-bear"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myh94hpFmJY"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUd0iCFvjc"], []]}
{"q_id": "13usaw", "title": "How do we tell if a newly discovered life form is earthly or of alien origin", "selftext": "Say, if we find a new life form (bacteria for the sake of example), how would we tell if that bacteria originated from earth or came from somewhere else.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13usaw/how_do_we_tell_if_a_newly_discovered_life_form_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c77cyga", "c77dmvm"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["The most obvious way is that it could just be blatantly obvious by looking at it's genetic material; There's the possibility that alien life's genetic material could operate exactly like DNA, but even if this were the case, one must think it'd be structured in a completely different way.\n\nAdditionally, all life on Earth NEEDS 6 things: Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. If the life in question did not NEED at least one of these things, then it is probably not terrestrial.", "Every living thing on earth we know of is made up of DNA or RNA as its genetic material. There are some proteins - prions - which are speculated to have a mind of their own, but its not considered life. All known life-forms on earth have carbon-based biochemistries. That's where one could start. In any case though, for a bacterium-like organism, its not simple.\n\nThe first challenge would be to grow the bacterium on a culture medium. We can't grow 99% of our own, earthly microbes and have to resort to metagenomics to figure what lies in our soils and in our waters. If you have a single alien microbe sticking to some rock, we would probably miss it with our current methods. But if we can find traces of, say, carbon-based compounds in the soils, we can start looking more carefully. I believe that's what the [Mars Curiosity expedition](_URL_0_) is doing right now as we speak."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/what-earth-shaking-evidence-did-mars-rover-curiosity-just-find"]]}
{"q_id": "5sfbc0", "title": "how native americans lost so much of their territory so quickly to colonists", "selftext": "Was it really just diseases that decimated their numbers or were they just too trusting of the colonist until it was too late and their numbers and technology was just too great to fight back?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sfbc0/eli5_how_native_americans_lost_so_much_of_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddel02w", "ddel164", "ddeldkq", "ddemgcc", "ddexkyt", "ddey392"], "score": [5, 14, 82, 3, 6, 9], "text": ["They didn't. If you're not counting the lost colony, the first British settlement was in 1607. The last Indians were put down by the US Army in the 1890's. That's an almost 300 year gap.", "Yes, it really was that disease destroyed their numbers. Between 80% and 90% of their populations were killed by the natural spread of disease after first contact with the Spaniards and other colonists starting in the 1500s. ", "Lots of things.  \n\n(1) The diseases had killed off vast numbers of people even in places that no Europeans visited.  By the time anyone set up colonies in North America, you were already looking at the post-apocalyptic leftovers of their civilization.  \n\n(2) It really wasn't that fast.  You are looking at a stretch of basically 500 years.   That's a long damn time by anyone's reckoning.\n\n(3) Numbers and technology did play a role.  The Natives only had their own groups to replace their numbers, but the colonists had a practically limitless supply of people and resources coming over from the Old World.\n\n(4) There was no such thing as \"The Native Americans.\"  There were many hundreds of nations, bands, and tribes that encountered the Europeans at different times and places.  Many native groups were also at war with each other.  There was never a point at which all natives took direction from a single leader or followed a single policy.  Trying to look at millions of diverse people as if they were a single Borg-like entity is a huge mistake.", "Survival rates and life expectancy among native americans were likely not on the same level as the colonists. On the same token, birth rates were probably much higher among the colonists than the natives. \n\nThose two factors alone would quickly lead the colonists to naturally push out the natives.\n\nThat doesnt even touch on the superior firepower, communication, travel, and numbers, of the colonists. Or their uncanny ability to accidentally genocide through disease. When you're *actively* trying to displace a population, those help. \n\nSimple demographics were against them from the start, and once the colonists started actively claiming land, there was nothing the natives could do. \n\n", "Disease had a major role.  We know that pre-colonial populations were in the millions and there were actually mega cities throughout the country.  However, disease contracted by contact with European colonists wiped out an estimated 90% of the native population.  This is why the large cities were abandoned and most natives moved into remote tribal settings.\n\nThe technology gap was another driver, especially when it came to weapons of war.  Over the course of time, the natives were drastically outmatched when facing European conquerers.\n\nLastly, the natives were disorganized compared to the colonists.  Remember that the natives were not one united group of people, there were hundreds of small tribes spread across the country.  These tribes acted independently of each other and in many cases were warring with each other.  Conversely, the colonists were unified and able to overwhelm any one tribe at a time.", "A lot of good points here but something that's missing is native Americans had no idea you could own land.  So if someone came to you and said I'd like to buy all the oxygen in this area, you'd probably sell, free money right?  But then they came and told you they bought all the oxygen here and you aren't allowed to breath it.  Would kind of take you by surprise"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2o9auw", "title": "if body fat is stored energy, how come a morbidly obese person would die of starvation before all their fat is used up?", "selftext": "Let's assume here they're still drinking water and taking in basic minerals and vitamins that they need, but are consuming zeroish calories.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o9auw/eli5_if_body_fat_is_stored_energy_how_come_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmkwsfn", "cmkx2j3", "cmkxa1p", "cmkxb2t", "cmkxk77"], "score": [16, 7, 4, 3, 25], "text": ["This has already been done, a Scottish man ate nothing for a year and 17 days and lost 125 kilograms over the period while the hospital monitored him/gave him the necessary vitamins. There are problems that come around from doing this as well, that scottish man was pretty lucky and people have died from things like lactic acidosis.", "You can only metabolize fat so fast, and the worse shape you're in, the worse your body is at doing it. A super obese person will often require more calories per day to maintain essential organ function, partly because they have so much extra tissue to keep alive as well, than they can extract from their fat alone.", "To get access to the energy contained within the fat cells in the body you need certain other chemical reactions to occur which require certain vitamins and nutrients and water to take away any of the fat-bound toxins (for lack of a better word). So if you were to not drink or have vitamins the body would be unable to carry out the reactions to break down the fat cells. \n\nThat is one problem, the other is the guff that binds to fat and your insulin levels, so if you ingest a lot of processed foods which contain all manner of artificial chemicals, in some cases these chemicals cannot be flushed out by the body and are basically bound up in fat cells so the problem can be dealt with a different day. So when your body finally cracks back open that fat cell it may get a small amount of energy from it, but now you have the toxins back in circulation, and if your body is unable to get rid of them (via kidneys/liver etc) then it has to put them back into fat, which takes energy and can send your insulin levels off a bit. So you would not be able to get enough energy to supply the body AND deal with the rising amount of fat soluble toxins so your body would be overwhelmed and would slowly shut down.\n\nAssuming the person is taking all the vitamins etc and does not have any crazy toxins bound up within their cells then theoretically they could survive until all the fat is used up.", "From my point of view, as someone who works in retirement and nursing homes - the fat ones linger for *way* longer than the thin ones.  When an overweight person goes palliative they can hang on for months while for the skinny ones the suffering is usually over with fairly quickly.\nWhen it's my time to go I sure as hell hope I'm skinny because if you hang on for a long time the bed sores and other stuff that happens to you while you are dying is excruciatingly horrible for your family to have to go through.  ", "It's not starvation that morbidly obese people will die of when they literally stop eating. Its malnutrition. The body stores any energie it does not use in the form of fat. Energie intake can be done via different sources: carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. Note, we need all of the aforementioned in various degrees, but in western societies, they are heavily over consumed. Vitamins and minerals don't supply us with energy, but are necessary to perform functions, such as potassium is needed to flex a muscle. Vitamins and minerals can't be stored by the body, and an overconsumption of these will leave the body via excretion or fecal matter, or can even poison the body.   \n\nMalnutrition is observed in lots of poor third world counties, but also in Western societies. It is because of people are not conscious of what their body needs.  \n\nHere is an analogy for your morbidly obese person: an African child gets to eat nothing but a cup of rice each day. The cup of rice gives the cild the energy it needs. Energy alone however, is not enough. It also needs its vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, proteins and others to have all its cells perform its functions. The child does not have a healthy intake of vitamins and minerals, and slowly, its body functions are shutting down.   \n\nThe morbidly obese person has plenty of fat storage to provide the body with energie, however, the body does not need all this energy, it needs other nutrients, the obese person is not taking in, so it dies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "388py7", "title": "what does the pope actually do?", "selftext": "Edit: I was not specific enough in my title, I guess I am wondering about what he does on a day to day basis. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/388py7/eli5_what_does_the_pope_actually_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crt6bat", "crthj1f", "crti3wi", "crtkl20", "crtlp59", "crtlsdo", "crtmlcd", "cru35qt"], "score": [53, 28, 29, 134, 9, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["The pope is the leader of the Catholic Church. He is in charge of a small country, and a global population of Catholics.\n\n[For more info, click here.](_URL_0_)", "ELI5: Hyperlinks.\n\nCan someone just type out what the links say... like, in short bullet points or something?\n\nWhat does the Pope do?", "Isn't he also the bishop of Rome? Does he do what the bishop of Los Angeles does, In Addition to his job a pope?", "The Pope is the absolute monarch of Vatican City. Within city, his word is law, and he can override everyone else within the Vatican City. Outside the city, he is the final word for the Catholic Church's official doctrine. He can speak *Ex cathedra,* (from the chair), which means he IS speaking for God, and everything he says while doing so IS God's word.\n\nUnofficially, the Pope is the face of the Church and (for lack of a better term) markets it to the world at large.", "He is the head of the Catholic church.\n\nThis means: He is the effective \"Head-Of-State\" in the Catholic World (I.e. someone else does the day to day running but he is the figure head). \nHowever he can become \"Commander-in-Chief\" if he needs to be and says \"As the pope - I decree that all Catholics believe this\".\n\nAnd this boils down to WHY Catholics have a pope - to ultimately decide what the Catholic Churches teachings/beliefs are. For example with the abortion stance - the pope would have instigated a series of discussions, consulting on the advice of Scientific experts, to understand and establish when 'life' is created. The pope would then decide, based upon the advice and opinions of his subordinates and scientists, that life begins when the Sperm hits the Egg and therefore Abortion is wrong and Catholic teaching should reflect this. This is all done behind closed doors and this gives the appearance of the pope/Church just pulling ideas out their arse. \n\nBut the idea is that this prevents a split in the Church and it is a unified message that as a Catholic you either accept or not - hence why Catholicism has Confirmation (The Act of Confirming that the religion your parents brought you up in - is now yours. And now that you have been taught what it means to be catholic you agree with it).\n\nHowever splits do happen - Protestant churches represent splits away from the Pope. e.g. King Henry became head of the Church in England so that he could conduct a divorce that the Pope was not willing to grant. Other churches broke away for a variety of different reasons, but ultimately are saying they do not agree with the authority that the Pope is given.", "Other than priesty stuff, he does pretty much what a CEO does with the catholic church being the company in this analogy.", "He gives a papal audience every week, he does religious duties (like most other priests), gives visits to countries (he's coming to the US this fall) and writes books, the pope is rad. in a spiritual sense, the pope is the pontifex, the bridge between the world and God. ", "CGP grey on some pope videos\n\n[Vatican City Explained](_URL_1_)\n\nHow to become [pope](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.livescience.com/27623-what-does-the-pope-do.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF8I_r9XT7A", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPHRIjI3hXs"]]}
{"q_id": "20cw1h", "title": "Are silver/mercury compounds more effective than antibiotics?", "selftext": "With the emergence of antibiotics resistant gonorrhea; TB and NDM-1, it looks like it is fast approaching the end of the age of antibiotics, unless we try to discover new drugs. However, I know that, prior to antibiotics, we used silver/mercury compounds such as colloidal silver for gonorrhea and salvarsan for syphilis. I'm curious to find out are these more effective than antibiotics? And, has there every been a peer-reviewed paper published on their efficacy? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20cw1h/are_silvermercury_compounds_more_effective_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg22r7r", "cg2f4qv"], "score": [6, 4], "text": ["A quick [PubMed](_URL_0_) search for these drugs brings up a vast amount of peer-reviewed papers, some of which are free even if you are not at a University with access. \n\nThe short answer is that even though these early compounds were effective, the side effects were astronomical. We've moved towards more specific compounds that have better efficacy with less side effects. \n\nFor salvarsan, that was one of the pioneering discoveries in Pharmacology since Ehrlich and colleagues tinkered with the molecule in a systematic way until they developed a better drug. Since then, our capabilities of altering chemical structures have grown rapidly.", "All the things you listed were used to treat diseases at great cost to the patient's overall health. Using them in humans was due to a lack of understanding the consequences of doing so and while using today's antibiotics causes some problems they are vastly superior. \n\nLook at it this way: we use 70% isopropyl alcohol to clean surfaces in a medical setting but we could never use it to treat an internal infection in a patient because it would kill them. using mercury was a similar situation, you can eliminate bacteria but it poisons people. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed"], []]}
{"q_id": "8wbppf", "title": "why are user names not case sensitive?", "selftext": "ELI5: Why are passwords case sensitive and user names or email addresses are not case sensitive? In other words, why are user names not case sensitive? Is the technology for each different?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wbppf/eli5_why_are_user_names_not_case_sensitive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1u79te", "e1u7ggq", "e1u93ih"], "score": [7, 12, 5], "text": ["I'm probably going to get corrected on this, but there's nothing universal to either. You can have a password system that isn't case sensitive and you can have a username/email system that is. \n\nIt's usually implemented this way because case sensitive passwords are substantially more secure.", "In situations where the username is used as a displayed name, case sensitive usernames would enable someone to attempt to impersonate someone else just by registering a new account with a different permutation of capital/lowercase letters. The same applies for web domains.\n\nFor emails, case sensitive addresses would result in a lot of undelivered emails from someone forgetting which letters were capitalized or not.  \n\nEtc.    Also worth noting that some companies, like Wells Fargo, do not use case sensitive passwords as an added convenience to the user.\n\nFor passwords, passwords are supposed to be arbitrary, are not stored in plain text or ever displayed, and allowing case sensitive passwords enables a massively wider range of possible passwords to discourage guessing.", "Its a design choice. You could make a system that allows casesensitive names. Other awnsers have discribed why that is not a good idea."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7fdqgm", "title": "What distance from the centre of the earth is an object's potential energy the greatest?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7fdqgm/what_distance_from_the_centre_of_the_earth_is_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqb6q17", "dqb8zw2", "dqb9xdw"], "score": [24, 3, 7], "text": ["You never stop gaining potential energy from moving away from a massive object. You can calculate the potential energy from moving an \"infinite\" distance away if you want (this is closely related to the concept of \"escape velocity\"). But you'll never *quite* get that much potential energy moving any finite distance.", "Zero potential energy doesn\u2019t mean zero force.\n\nThe place where you\u2019ll have the maximum potential energy, and the place where you\u2019ll have zero potential energy are the same place: infinitely far away from the Earth.\n\nWhere you set the zero for the potential energy is arbitrary, but it\u2019s conventionally set to zero at infinity for convenience.\n\nSo outside the Earth, the gravitational potential using Newtonian gravity is just \n\n\u03c6(r) = -GM/r.\n\nIf you maximize this function with respect to r on its domain (0,\u221e), you find that it has no finite maximum, but it\u2019s bounded above by zero, corresponding to r going to infinity.", "I think the answers already given cover it nicely, but I want to add a thought that might be where your confusion lies.\n\nIf I move an object away from the earth, it is always gaining potential energy in the earth-object system. However, the universe is full of objects, which means that although you can never fully escape the earth's potential well, you can move far enough away that it is no longer the biggest gravitational effect near you. Let's say you move towards the moon. At some point you would hit a sweet spot where the earth and moon exert equal pulls on you. Here you would be experiencing balanced forces of gravity, so you would be even closer to true weightlessness than before! \n\nI leave it to you to go and calculate the exact distance above the earth that this happens at :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6srr2d", "title": "after detecting a missile launch, how does a country know if it's an attack or just a test?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6srr2d/eli5_after_detecting_a_missile_launch_how_does_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlf1k2f", "dlf1meu", "dlf34z3", "dlfcumi", "dlfgfrr", "dlfusaa", "dlg3e4q"], "score": [3, 78, 14, 3, 6, 3, 7], "text": ["They track the launch using radar to determine where it's headed. If it's not headed in your direction, it's not an attack (or at least not a successful one).", "Normally they tell the other country they are launching a missile.  \n[Though sometimes they forget and there's a bit of a nuclear scare](_URL_0_).  \nSo far this hasn't torched off a nuclear war because most tests are just 1 rocket.  \nAnd a full first strike would involve hundreds of rockets.      \nAlso the missile might not be headed in the direction of anything of value.  \nIf the choice was potentially starting a nuclear war on accident or losing an uninhabited island in the middle of the pacific that you technically own, most people pick the latter.", "As others have said, you can calculate the trajectory of the missile to determine where it will land - A test launch won't be aimed at another country.\n\nAnother thing to note is that any attack is likely to involve lots of missiles being launched simultaneously, seeing just one on radar is definitely cause for doubt that it's an intentional attack.", "Standard practice is for the country doing the test to tell all others that they are doing a test. If a country fails to do this the trajectory is calculated and if it looks like it could be an attack it is assumed to be one. ", "Article about the U.S.' launch under attack process:\n\n_URL_0_", "Typically a test is anouncwd via an international NOTAM: Notice To Airman.\n\nWhen a launch is detected without a NOTAM, all hell breaks loose to track where it's going. Once that's determined then decissions are made made based on the preliminary trajectory.\n\nNeedless to say, getting it right, with typically no more than 20 minutes of time to decide, is the money shot!", "Could I add a sub-question? How do countries know when a missile has been launched by another country? Are they always watching via satellite? Surely their radar doesn't cover everywhere? Also, do they have missiles that can change direction mid flight to confuse the intended target?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident"], [], [], ["http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/launch-under-attack-feasible/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5bc3zw", "title": "Historically, do Native Americans on reservations tend to vote in US Presidential and Congressional elections? Do Presidential candidates try to court this group?", "selftext": "I never hear much about this group of potential voters (a group that [didn't technically have citizenship until the 1920s](_URL_0_)). Do they tend to be politically active? Are there elections since the 20th century where Native American voters (or where Native American issues) were prominent? Do politicians historically treat them as if they are a politically active group? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bc3zw/historically_do_native_americans_on_reservations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9nvmvf"], "score": [194], "text": ["Actually, no. Historically, Native Americans have had low voter turnout rates. And likewise, candidates do not often try to gain the Native vote as opposed to other groups. There are several reasons for this.\n\n**Population**\n\nThe first deals with population. [In 1920, the population of the United States was approximately 106,021,500.](_URL_0_) The American Indian population was between [~244,400 and ~336,300,](_URL_6_) depending on the agency who conducted the census (either the Census Bureau or the BIA). For the natives, this makes up between 0.23% - 0.31% of the U.S. population around the time the Indian Citizenship Act was passed in 1924. With Indians making up so little of the population, there was no benefit for candidates to try and campaign for their vote by the time they were counted as citizens.\n\nEven today, the Indigenous populations of the U.S. make up only [1.7% of the population at best, 0.9% at worst.](_URL_5_)\n\n**Government Prohibitions**\n\nPrior to 1924, some Native Americans did become U.S. citizens. This was accomplished through several means. Certain treaties made provisions for Indians to accept U.S. citizenship if they met certain requirements. Others became citizens once land was alloted to them via the General Allotment Act of 1887. However, this still did not grant them the ability to vote.\n\n[In 1884, a particular case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.](_URL_3_) An Indian man had tried to register to vote in Nebraska, but was denied, even after having renounced his tribal citizenship. When the Supreme Court made its ruling, they decided that American Indians were not covered under the 14th Amendment and they refused them the ability to vote.\n\nDespite all Indians becoming citizens in 1924, many state governments continued to be opposed to Indians being able to vote, particularly those states with large native populations. They worked their way around the 15th Amendment (passed in 1870), which barred states from passing laws that prohibited citizens to vote based on race, by passing laws that targeted natives on reservations, land that isn't under state jurisdiction. Through this method, states like South Dakota denied Indians the right to vote until the 1940s. New Mexico denied Native Americans from voting until 1962.\n\nSo regardless if Indians were looking to vote or not, many of them simply couldn't.\n\n**Voter Participation System**\n\nIn this category, there are a few things that would hinder Native Americans from voting. One big thing is poverty. One analysis from 2012 reports the following:\n\n > Voting experts have found that income is a major predictor of whether an individual is registered to vote.^6  Among the American population at large, 11.5 million low-income Americans are not registered to vote and the registration gap between low-income and high-income citizens is over 19 percent.^7  According to the Census, 12 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives live below 50 percent of the poverty level, and 26 percent live below 100 percent of the poverty line.^[1]\n\nAdditionally, many Native Americans do not have easy access to voting stations. Since a number of reservations were placed in isolated and unfavorable areas when they were established, the natives who continue to live there face difficulties when attempting to vote. [This is made evident even in recent elections in states like Nevada.](_URL_2_)\n\n**History and Culture**\n\nThis section is probably the biggest reason why we see Native American voting turnouts so low and answers if they are politically active.\n\nI don't think it is a big surprise that Native Americans have a huge distrust of the government, whether local, state, or federal. There is a joke in Indian Country about how \"Indians don't sign papers\" or \"remember the last time we signed a piece of paper?\" The general notion is often along the lines of \"Why vote? We [Indians] get screwed over either way.\" The distrust runs so deep that Native Americans have a hard time even voting in their own *tribal* elections. There are plenty of historical reasons as to why this is, but even contemporary reasons. David Wilkins highlights the tension on the state level by saying:\n\n > Although sharing a level of citizenship and land masses, the sovereigns have jealously guarded and been protective of their collective political, economic, and cultural resources. Tribes resent the states' constant attempts to tax and regulate their lands, wages, and industries, and are displease that many states are still reluctant to concede the reality of tribal sovereignty and recognized tribal competence to handle increasing amounts of regulatory, judicial, and administrative duties. States, especially the western states, resent the fact that they lack basic jurisdiction over Indian lands and may not tax those territories without congressional and tribal consent.^[2]\n\nBut native voter participation will vary from place to place, tribe to tribe. Many tribes in the Pacific Northwest are of a more liberal nature from what I have experienced. Plus, many of those reservations are located in urban areas. This offers more voting locations, more societal influence, and chances of decrease poverty. But tribal citizens that hold fast to their traditions often rejecting voting. This is because voting and the structure of tribal governments are not Indigenous institutions. By voting, many natives believe this legitimizes the colonizer's rule and do not want to participate in that, which is understandable. Personally, I avoided voting for a while because of these reasons. It was actually only this year that I decided to vote. The earlier cited report also relays this:\n\n > Attitudes about voting vary among tribes and individuals. While a small handful of tribes express hostility toward voting in American elections, many more are strongly in favor of it. As Jefferson Keel president of the National Congress Of American Indians, stated at the most recent annual State of Indian Nations Address, \u201cAs grandmas on the Navajo nation and young people in Alaska Native villages go to the ballot box this November, they are stand-ing on the shoulders of those who fought hard for that right...Our America is a place where all candidates know that we matter, and America sees it at the ballot box.\u201d^14 According to Wilkins, \u201cMany of the native nations argue, in fact, that from their perspective, voting may be the best and possibly only way to protect their remaining land rights, economic rights to conduct gaming operations, and cultural rights like bilingual education.\u201d^15\n\nSince many Native Americans faced issues that are inherent in their status that do not affect other groups in the United States, the general concept for many Indians is that to be native is to be political. The struggle for sovereignty and the demonstration of that sovereignty conveys a political message even if it is being carried out through different aspects, such as a social movement. What is happening in North Dakota with the Standing Rock Sioux is an example. Another would be the American Indian Movement during the 70s. Since tribal members typically possess dual citizenship, their actions either call into play or effect something in the political sphere. Native Americans are often involved in politics, but it is their own politics, whether traditional or tribal governance. In terms of the American political system, we are starting to see the emergence of a larger politically active bloc for Native Americans.^[1] Younger generations and changing political landscapes have started to change the previously held ideas. Not an abandonment of tradition, but a re-envisioning of where Native Americans should direct their attention in order to improve tribal sovereignty.\n\nBeyond that, I can't go much further without violating the 20 year rule.\n\n**Conclusion**\n\nFor many years even after becoming citizens, Native Americans have faced challenges when it comes to voting, regardless if they wanted to or not. Because of their relatively small population numbers, they are often not large enough to warrant the attention of political candidates like those running for President. However, smaller elections would benefit in doing so because some states have, proportionally speaking, large native populations like tribes in the Southwest U.S.\n\nMany Native Americans are against voting in U.S. elections, but it really comes down to the area and tribe. As for being politically active, that all depends on the context, whether that be personal, local, tribal, state, or federal politics. In the end, though, there isn't really a whole lot of data that has been done on Native American voting patterns until recently, beginning approximately in the 1990s. The first reference to that report I quoted makes note of this in several places and has a reference in its footnotes.\n___\n**References:**\n\n[1] [Wang, Tova. (2012). \"Ensuring Access to the Ballot for American Indians  &  Alaska Natives: New Solutions to Strengthen American Democracy.\"](_URL_4_)\n\n[2] [Wilkins, David E., and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian politics and the American political system. Rowman  &  Littlefield Publishers, 2010.](_URL_1_)\n\n**Edit:** Added in links to the references. Also added a couple sentences to 6th paragraph under \"History and Culture\" and to the conclusion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1920_fast_facts.html", "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Indian_Politics_and_the_America.html?id=RkF3cGkv5R8C", "http://fusion.net/story/363622/nevada-native-american-voting-rights/", "https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/112/94/", "http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/IHS%20Report-Demos.pdf", "http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes/demographics", "http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/19/how-make-census-count-natives-152802"]]}
{"q_id": "h88rp", "title": "Why is the male/female ratio lower in the eastern U.S. than it is in the west?", "selftext": "[U.S. Census Bureau Sex Ratio of the Total Population Map](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h88rp/why_is_the_malefemale_ratio_lower_in_the_eastern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1tcs58", "c1tcsm5"], "score": [10, 4], "text": ["Migration would be the obvious reason. The data on that page doesn't seem to address birth ratios, so I assume those are nearly the same everywhere.\n\nPeople primarily migrate for work, and the green states probably tend to have industries that are primarily male-dominated (natural resource extraction, for example). The cities on the East coast end up with a slight surplus of women, because some of the men moved to Alaska, Wyoming, and Nevada, for work.\n\nInteresting contrast with the map of [Percent of population born in their state of residence](_URL_0_)\n\nThe states with the most people living there who weren't born there also tend to have higher male/female ratios.\n", "It's not just an east/west divide. It is more heterogeneous than that.\n\nSee this [map](_URL_0_) and this [article](_URL_1_).\n\nThe biggest factors are (1) women live longer, so if you have a population that is generally older you will have more women and (2) men immigrate more, so if you have a population with many immigrants, you have more men.\n\nI think live births in the US is about 1.05 men per women, so a younger population will have slightly more men.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ThematicMapFramesetServlet?_bm=y&amp;-_MapEvent=displayBy&amp;-errMsg=&amp;-_useSS=N&amp;-_dBy=040&amp;-redoLog=false&amp;-_zoomLevel=&amp;-tm_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_M00626&amp;-tm_config=|b=50|l=en|t=5309|zf=0.0|ms=thm_def|dw=1.9557697048764706E7|dh=1.4455689123E7|dt=gov.census.aff.domain.map.LSRMapExtent|if=gif|cx=-1159354.4733499996|cy=7122022.5|zl=10|pz=10|bo=|bl=|ft=350:349:335:389:388:332:331|fl=403:381:204:380:369:379:368|g=01000US|ds=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_|sb=49|tud=false|db=040|mn=89.3|mx=108.6|cc=1|cm=1|cn=5|cb=|um=Males/100%20Females|pr=1|th=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_M00626|sf=N|sg=&amp;-PANEL_ID=tm_result&amp;-_pageY=&amp;-_lang=en&amp;-geo_id=01000US&amp;-_pageX=&amp;-_mapY=&amp;-_mapX=&amp;-_latitude=&amp;-_pan=&amp;-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&amp;-_longitude=&amp;-_changeMap=Identify#?311,353"], "answers_urls": [["http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ThematicMapFramesetServlet?_bm=y&amp;-PANEL_ID=tm_result&amp;-ds_label=2005-2009%20American%20Community%20Survey%205-Year%20Estimates&amp;-tm_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_M00689&amp;-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_&amp;-tm_config=%7Cb=50%7Cl=en%7Ct=5309%7Czf=0.0%7Cms=thm_def%7Cdw=1.9557697048764706E7%7Cdh=1.4455689123E7%7Cdt=gov.census.aff.domain.map.LSRMapExtent%7Cif=gif%7Ccx=-1159354.4733499996%7Ccy=7122022.5%7Czl=10%7Cpz=10%7Cbo=%7Cbl=%7Cft=350:349:335:389:388:332:331%7Cfl=403:381:204:380:369:379:368%7Cg=01000US%7Cds=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_%7Csb=49%7Ctud=false%7Cdb=040%7Cmn=89.3%7Cmx=108.6%7Ccc=1%7Ccm=1%7Ccn=5%7Ccb=%7Cum=Males/100%20Females%7Cpr=1%7Cth=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_M00626%7Csf=N%7Csg=&amp;-CONTEXT=tm&amp;-errMsg=&amp;-redoLog=false&amp;-geo_id=01000US&amp;-_lang=en"], ["http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/IMAGES/gender-fig4.gif", "http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_gender.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2gf5e0", "title": "why exactly do children have so much energy? is their metabolism way more efficient than an adult's? why can't i have that much energy when i've consumed just as much (or more) food (\"fuel\") as my 4yo?", "selftext": "This must be something I just never learned in Biology, because I can't think of any reason why a 40yo body would process nutrients and oxygen (the things that give your body energy) any differently than a 10yo body.  \n\n(Note that while this sounds like the kind of thing you can just Google an answer to, it turns out that there's no concrete answer and many opinions)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gf5e0/eli5_why_exactly_do_children_have_so_much_energy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckij5pi", "ckindt5", "ckinezm", "ckiovgb", "ckistyl"], "score": [16, 2, 53, 5, 2], "text": ["A person's resting or basal metabolism (calories burned just for being alive) is based on one's body mass (how many cells need energy). So an adult human and a child have very different basal metabolism. An amount of food that would barely fulfill the basal metabolism of an adult would fulfill a child's basal metabolism plus fuel three poo paintings and one tantrum, etc.", "I figured it was due to the cube-square law. Or at least partially. ", "This topic has bubbled back up for me recently as many of my friends have popped out kids. The reality is, they don't *really* have all that much more energy than you do if you think about it logically (making assumptions that you approach parenting like many other people and are attempting to keep your children healthy).\n\nThey have enforced bed times and they get the required and prescribed amount of sleep almost every night. They are well-rested every day. They don't sacrifice sleep to meet other goals.\n\nThey almost never skip meals or eat poorly (your 4 year old won't skip a real breakfast and suck down some coffee and a danish because he's late for the train. He will instead eat the healthy breakfast you've made for him, while making yourself late for the train. You can always pick up a coffee and a danish on the way in to work, right?)\n\nIn addition to eating three square meals every day, they are offered snacks at regular intervals.\n\nThey have enforced nap times, usually at least once and sometimes twice per day. When was the last time you checked out for a 30 minute nap at work? How much more energy do you think you might have if you could?\n\nFinally, you approach a much more complex set of tasks over the course of a day; you must not only take care of yourself, but a 4 year old child. Additionally you'll need to hustle yourself to work, dedicate significant brainpower and/or physical labor to your job, make sure your household stays in order (pay bills, get groceries and other goods, etc.), and still take part in whatever social rituals you are involved in. Comparatively, (barring the mental and physical demands of growing up), your 4 year old is positively *relaxing*.", "Because they suck it out of adults nearby or people responsible for them.\n\nSource: spent last 4 summers ad a counselor at a summer camp ", "Kids just appear to have more energy because of their excitement, they're happy and playful.  \n\nAdults have a much lower mood than children, they're much less excited about the world, as you have already learned how boring and shit everything is.  \n\nPretty sure you could out last a kid on an endurance task in terms of energy, the only difference is kids appear to have much more vitality, but this is due to their positive attitudes, they lack a negative/realistic outlook on the world.  \n\nThere is also the evolutionary benefit of \"playing\", which you observe in other species young too, this increased level of pointless physical activity serves to help train bone, muscles and coordination - kids are very physically fit, which contributes towards their well-being."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3txu8v", "title": "why do canadians, or at least where i'm from, still measure height in feet and inches and weight in pounds if we use the metric system?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3txu8v/eli5_why_do_canadians_or_at_least_where_im_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxa3pf9", "cxa5ftc", "cxacz20", "cxad2tp", "cxaeiod", "cxaf83q", "cxagev7", "cxaisx3", "cxakvu7", "cxaofpt", "cxarkt5", "cxb4y53"], "score": [160, 7, 4, 229, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["Purely because that's what people are used to and when you're talking informally it's easier to visualise (for example) a person who is 6'2\" compared to imagining someone who is 1.88m.  \n\nWe do exactly the same thing here in the UK. We have the metric system and are mostly fine using it where we need to but when talking informally to someone you're much more likely to say your weight in stones and pounds, height in feet and inches and distances in miles. We're happy enough working in litres and kilos too though.", "I am 39. When I was in school, we were taught both metric and imperial. Then it was phased out shortly after. I am assuming some places may have done this sooner or later than others.", "That's so funny. I'm browsing Reddit at work and to my left I have a paper with a number 2860 circled. I work in construction and that number is the height of glass I have to go measure to see if we have clearance. I was thinking to myself...blah I hate metric because I can't picture how tall that is...it could be 4' or 7' or 10' I have no idea until I do the conversion. Sure, I probably should take the time to memorize the conversion but I guess just due to laziness I never have. I can just google quick what the conversion is and off I go. ...It's basically 9'5\" lol\nThe reason I will continue be doing the conversions is because material in construction generally is ordered in imperial....everyone knows a 2'x4' and plywood comes in 4'x8' sheet...etc. etc. So...I guess you can blame the construction industry? A decent amount of material comes from the US as well so they will still be in imperial.", "Okay, all of these answers are incorrect. \n\nThe introduction of the metric system in Canada was a phased process that started in 1976. Because it was phased, certain things changed before others. In 1984, Mulroney was elected and disbanded the commission, so no further metrification  took place. If it was done already it remained in metric, if not, it remained in imperial. \n\nHence, you drive 50km/h but weigh 185lbs.  It's 20C outside but 350F in your oven. Canada is a massive dog pile of measurements because baby boomers didn't care to see through a full conversion to metric. People almost got killed over this. See: Gilmi glider. It's really something that should be re-instituted so that we can fully convert.\n\nEDIT: See here: _URL_0_\n\n", "Am Canadian and like others have said, it's just what we're familiar with, and which is why the US still uses miles and such.\n\nI'm all for switching to demonstrably better units/systems, but the barriers to switching are huge. If it were small we could all swtich to DVORAK keyboards, electric cars, roundabouts, Esperanto or Lojban, Unix, ISPs as public utilities etc, and switch again if we didn't like them, but... it's hard.\n\nHell, you can't even upgrade your office suite from 2010 to 2013 without hundreds of people bitching about their buttons having moved.\n\n", "I think it is just a remnant from the past. My neice and nephews are all under 6, and only use metric. We're just old and confused.", "Anything involving construction is difficult to do in  metric. All building materials are in standard imperial units. Our building code is still based in imperial units. \n\nHeck, our back roads are all laid out in miles. \n\nAutomotive is an odd mashup. All the domestic manufacturers switched to metric in the 80's so Americans have to deal with metric for the newer stuff. I have a hell of a time knowing what a L/100km translates into in terms of mpg. Or what a kpa is in psi.", "As a former tradesman I can say that a good portion of it has to do with relations with american equipment manufacturers. We are also expected to know both metric and imperial, one perfect example that I dealt with as a hvac guy was the temperature conversions between the two systems. I would also carry two sets of tools for every task, one set in imperial measurements one in metric (Because you never know when you might need metric measurements). \n\nOn another note my uncle is an auto mechanic and from what I understand a majority of his work requires metric instruments.", "I always thought it was because since we import and export a lot of things from and to the U.S we would have to understand their systems in order to get things done.", "It's because of Murica. They can't let go of that imperial system and continue to drag us down with them", "Canadians in their 40s learned imperial measurements and then had to switch to metric in elementary school so it's like having to relearn your multiplication tables or how to tie your shoe. At one point they had kph stickers to stick onto your speedometer because most cars had MPH but the signs were in KPH.", "most trades related things get parts from the states so....we tag along with the imperial system even though the metric system is superior"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "t7x7q", "title": "time dilation.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t7x7q/eli5_time_dilation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4kba1v", "c4kbgt9", "c4kbhqe", "c4kceqm", "c4kcgvf", "c4kcifu", "c4kcmot", "c4kdph1"], "score": [136, 9, 11, 14, 2, 9, 5, 2], "text": ["There is no real intuitive explanation of HOW it happens, but here is how they came up with it\n\nOkay, so years ago Galileo came up this idea called relativity. Basically he said that Newton's Laws are valid in all inertial reference frames, that is ones that are not accelerating.\n\nSo what this means is that if I'm in a car going a constant 20mph and a car is approaching me at 30mph, we could assume that MY car is standing still and their's is approaching at 50mph. At the time what he was really saying is \"The laws of physics are valid in all inertial reference frames,\" as Newton's laws were, more or less the laws of physics as far as we knew.\n\nSo in come a few people: Gauss, Ampere, and Faraday who develop some really important laws governing electricity and magnetism. A fellow named Maxwell expands on their work and realizes that--with some tweaking--their results combine to four very elegant laws explaining how charged bodies move and how magnets work, also that they are very closely linked (you've probably heard the term *electromagnetism*, yes we physicists view them as two sides of the same coin). Maxwell combines their results into a set of laws called \"Maxwell's Equations.\" One of the equations implies that changes in a magnetic field create and electric field and vice-versa. One of the RESULTS of Maxwell's equations is that light travels at a constant speed, which we could now calculate with these equations. \n\nNow in come the quantum physicists of the early 20th Century. They realize that light is a just a propagating change in the electric and magnetic fields. So Einstein wonders, \"if light is just the electric and magnetic fields changing, what would happen if we 'ran' next to light at the same speed? We don't see the changes in the field (aka the light) and there should be no light when we run alongside it (this is a clumsy way of saying with words what he said with math).\" \n\nSo Einstein is REALLY perplexed by this. Next he thinks \"If all the laws of physics were the same in all inertial frames back in Galileo's day, why shouldn't the same be true for Maxwell's equations.\" Remember that from Maxwell we can DERIVE the speed of light. So Einstein decides THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS A LAW OF THE UNIVERSE. That is, no matter how fast we move, light moves at the same speed! That takes a moment to digest so think about it. Say I'm running away from you at 5mph and you're standing still. A photon (light particle) runs between us; WE BOTH SEE IT MOVING AT THE SAME SPEED!\n\nNow what is speed? It is distance over time. You saw the photon move some distance X, I saw it move some distance that was more than X. But we saw it move at the same speed! How is that possible? If and only if a clock in my pocket was ticking slower than a clock in your pocket!\n\nEdit: Let me say explicitly, **the faster you are moving, the slower a clock moving at the same speed will tick.** Also, grammar.\n\nPhysics man...", "I think you just shut down my brain. Perfect timing 'cause it's bed time. Good night folks. ", "I answered an ELI5 of this a while ago:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEnjoy.", "It seems as though people aren't really understanding Fuck_my_username's response so I'll give a simple (and common) way of understanding it.\n\nImagine two people. Person A is on a train, Person B is next to the train track. Inside the train, next to Person A is a table with a torch (flashlight) on it pointing at the roof.\n\nNow imagine the train is moving from left to right, where does the light go? Well, just as Fuck_my_username explained, saying the train is moving at 10 kph to the right, is the same as saying the Earth moved at 10kph to the left.\n\nSo when the guy on the train looks at the light he sees it go straight up and hit the roof. Lets say that that distance is 1 metre.\n\nHowever what does the guy next to the moving train see? He sees that even though the light went up and hit the roof, because the train is moving to the right, the light slightly moved to the right too. Imagine throwing a tennis ball up in the car, it goes straight up and straight down to you, but to someone outside they saw that ball move very fast to the right (as it was thrown up) given your car is moving very fast to the right.\n\nSo therefore for the person outside the train the light travelled a longer path.\n\nThe speed of light is constant.\n\nTherefore less time elapsed for the guy inside the train than for the guy outside the train.\n\n----\n\nIf diagrams are needed I can probably make some.", "Go watch an anime called Gunbuster. Along with the story and a load of gainax history, you'll learn all you ever wanted to know about time dilatation from its physical effects, to how it mentally effects those who are effected by it. Its only 3 hours of anime, and its got a 1980's sound track.", "Go get a piece of paper and a sticky note, Jimmy, and I'll show you.\n\nOk, so on the sticky note I'm going to draw a big arrow, and fold it into the shape of that arrow. Look, an upvote! Now on the paper I'm going to draw two arrows, pointing away from each other at 90 degrees, like this, see?\n\n* ^\n* |\n* |\n* |\n* x - - -  > \n\nNow down here at the X is where we're going to put the sticky note arrow. The up arrow represents velocity through space, or how fast we're moving. The right arrow represents velocity through time how fast time is moving. So if we point our sticky note all the way towards time, you see that it's not pointing at velocity at all! So all of our velocity is going towards moving forward in time.\n\nNow if we rotate it a little bit towards the up space arrow, it's pointing less at *time* and more at *space*. Now we're moving mostly through time, but also a little bit through space. \n\nImagine we're on the Enterprise. What, you don't know what that is? It's a spaceship that can go close to the speed of light. If we were on the spaceship and started going the speed of light, look what happens here, we're moving mostly through space, but now only a little bit through time.\n\nMoving through space and moving through time are linked like this, you have a maximum velocity that you can move, and you have to split that between time and space.\n\nNow light particles, or photons, always travel at the speed of light, because they are light. See how they're pointed all the way at the 'space' arrow and none at the 'time' arrow? This shows us that photons don't move through time at all, only through space. Meaning, photons don't experience time at all. From their view, the moment they are created is the same moment they are destroyed.\n\nBecause we're not moving at the same speed as photons, we can watch them move and see them moving through time. That's because we're not able to move our arrow all the way over to pointing at space. Why? Well it takes a lot of force to move this arrow. Right now we can only move the arrow a tiny tiny little bit. Just enough that we can notice a time speed difference between the ground and a satellite in orbit. Maybe someday we can figure out a way to make our arrow go farther, but right now it's too hard to make that happen.\n\n\n*Really low level, but does that make a bit more sense than the other examples on here?*", "[**The best ELI5 answer I have for this is this video**](_URL_0_). I remember seeing that video in my astro class and finally the whole concept clicked for me, I never fully understood what anyone had been talking about for a quarter and a half of classes until the professor showed that. \n\nYou gotta remember that there is no central reference point for anything in space, everything is moving in some way or another, even black holes. So non accelerating speed is completely relative to your point of view. Two ships moving at the same constant speed parallel to eachother, relative to eachother are not moving at all, space is just moving equally around them. There are better more detailed responses here, but this is the simplest way to visualize what is happening. ", "ITT: People with no or just terrible intuition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rz6r7/eli5_why_with_increasing_velocity_there_is_a/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjpBjgIMVk&amp;sns=em"], []]}
{"q_id": "5d6xnp", "title": "why isn't there a conservative version of the daily show somewhere?", "selftext": "I've scoured but can't really find anything. Anyone?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d6xnp/eli5_why_isnt_there_a_conservative_version_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da292qw", "da29sx0", "da2a1um", "da2cqq6", "da2me3s"], "score": [6, 6, 9, 6, 2], "text": ["Conservatives are generally older, and don't appreciate the irreverent humor style as much.  That said, Bill O Reilly, Glenn Beck, Hannity, etc. all have some humorous moments.", "There actually have been some [attempts](_URL_1_) at [this](_URL_2_), and well, no one really watched them, and they died pretty quickly.  Many conservative audiences are older, and prefer more news-like sources and/or talk radio.\n\nThat being said, The Daily Show itself remains fairly unique, as doing a talk show like this, even with a younger, more liberal audience, and acquiring that audience is just plain hard.  There was something there  that just worked, and maybe it won't ever be repeated in the same way, especially on a 4 day per week basis.\n\nIf you're looking for something more in depth [The Atlantic](_URL_0_) asked this question last year", "There have been attempts, but they mostly haven't been very funny. Fox News premiered a show called The 1/2 Hour News Hour sometime during the Bush administration which was an attempt at a Daily Show-style show, but no one watched it. \n\nThey currently have The Greg Gutfield Show, which is their attempt at a Bill Maher/Politically Incorrect style panel show blending political commentary and comedy. It is close to unwatchable. ", "You could ask the same thing about the reverse: why isn't there a liberal version of all of the conservative talk radio stations?\n\nYeah, there might be one or two, but they have almost no listeners.\n\nDifferent audiences, different preferred formats.\n\n", "something becomes funny, if it has something unexpected or surprising to it. that also means it has to bring something new or even innovative to your thoughts.\ni just guess this is kind of contrairy to a conservative point of view."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why-theres-no-conservative-jon-stewart/385480/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1/2_Hour_News_Hour", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greg_Gutfeld_Show"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4e3nrb", "title": "do dogs understand their names, or do they just think it's a command meaning \"come here\" or \"look at me\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e3nrb/eli5_do_dogs_understand_their_names_or_do_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1wqzds", "d1wrn0r", "d1wsma9", "d1wt75h", "d1wtd9x", "d1wtr75", "d1wu4e5", "d1wu6sy", "d1wuqok", "d1wv30e", "d1wvdz7", "d1wvgnz", "d1wviyb", "d1wvsrs", "d1wvv9c", "d1ww5kw", "d1wwdhs", "d1wwmlx", "d1wwq8h"], "score": [2, 228, 61, 303, 41, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 7, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Dogs don't use language and even though we for obvious reasons can never really know, once could suspect that animal reasoning is based on emotional impulses. That is impulsive reaction to stimuli. Over time a dog will learn to react to its name based on events that previously took place when the name is called. At first not knowing how to react to its name the owner will teach the dog trough positive and negative feedback. And slowly the dog learns how to react and what to expect. You could call such a thing embodied cognition. It might be worth noting that animals can have rather complex reasoning given they don't use language. I remember a friends dog who got very good at tricking me into taking him for a walk on a specific path that led to a playground for dogs. The dog could use me to take him to a different location in time and space where he would have some good times. Cool stuff. ", "I have two dogs, and there is no doubt they both know the respective names. If I want both to come I have to call both names.\n\nDogs are actually the species that has been trained to understand most human words. There is a border collie that has demonstrated working knowledge of over 1000 words. He even understands simple sentences such as \"orange bear to frisbee\".", "Dog's do not pass a mirror test so it's highly unlikely they have a sense of self.  For example if your dog's name is Fido, he doesn't understand Fido's place in the world.  \n\nThey do recognize there names, it's a bit of an illusion though.  For example if you have two dogs, and you give one of them a treat when you say Fido, and the other when you say Clifford, they learn that the respective words only apply to them.  \n\nFido knows he will never get a treat when he hears Clifford and Clifford knows he will never get a treat when he hears Fido.  \n\nSo do they know that \"they are Fido,\" or they are \"Clifford,\" no, but they can recognize the command only applies to them. \n\nYou can take this pretty far, for example you can say Fido come, and they will learn only to come if their name proceeds.  However you can do this w/ a two syllable command.  For example teach your dog to leave a treat on the floor until you say okay.  \n\nThen start saying things like Oklahoma or Oh Boy.  The dog can be trained to only move on okay.  So when you expand this to \"Fido come,\" they aren't learning \"the name,\" they are learning the multiple syllables that apply to them as they don't understand them as \"words,\" either.  \n\nWhich you can further break down just using random sounds.  Dogs will even learn that different whistles apply to different dogs and so on.    \n\nEdit: For reference regarding \"scent tests.\"  _URL_0_\n\n", "They don't have a concept of names the way we do, but they do recognize it as our way of getting their attention and know to respond to it. \n\nEdit: Surprised at how this thread took off.. there's a difference between knowing a word and who or what to associate it with (ex: a dog knowing your whole family by their names) and understanding the concept of the words. I think my dog is a special brilliant magical creature, and he \"knows\" his name, but I don't think he actually understands that it is him, or who he is. That said, this thread makes me want to put a wig on him and film a cover of \"Reflection\" from Mulan. *Who is that dog I see...*", "All I know for sure is that dogs understand English better than we understand dog language which is kinda strange if they're just \"dumb dogs\"", "If I say my dogs name it will wake him from his sleep. Even if I say it in a regular voice. We've never really done anything to train his name. But it could also be a command for attention, but isn't that what names are anyway?", "I think the abilities of dogs are understood more clearly if instead of saying that they understand 'names' or 'words' we say that dogs are capable of recognizing a specific sound, i.e. the sound that is made when we utter its name. Then, by associating the sound of that utterance with a reward, humans can train dogs to respond to those specific sounds. ", "Well dogs don't have the thinking capacity we have but it's generally the same for people. It's just an arbitrary word that we have learnt to react to in a certain way and when we don't react in the way that is normal we are taught to act in the correct way. It's all about how they're trained. A dog can consider its name to be a whistle of a certain tune.", "are our names really any different? there are dogs who wont respond to other dogs name, just like you wouldnt to someone elses you here your name you know that its personal to you, i would say a dogs understanding of a name is no difference than ours", "My dog definitely understands \"ROYAL YOU LITTLE SHIT\" as his name . I know this because \"OMG LEAVE THE DAMN CAT ALONE\" doesn't get the same response from him as his name. ", "I can pitch in that yes they probably do have some form of concept for names, as atleast my dog is very good at remembering names for objects and places. She knows home, ball, food, the names of some of her dog-friends (or she just knows when we say their names she's about to meet them), and she also knows the names of the family.  She's learned our names, when we say like \"Where's Syper?\", she'll walk over to me and wiggle her tail like there's no tomorrow.", "While we are on the same subject, what about cats? Do they not know their names, or are they just ignoring me?", "Man all I know is I'd really like some research or articles presented with these stories because so far almost everything I see saying yes is anecdotal evidence ", "Consider that names are really just that. They are just labels we use to differentiate between one another. In other words, it's a way of telling an individual - look/come here.", "My old dog was pretty smart it understood. \n\nMy name\nMy brothers name\nMy mothers name\nMy fathers name\nSome of our close friends name. \n\nIf you said go  see \"sigmatrophic\" it would come to me and not anyone else. \n\nIt also understood upstairs and downstairs without any body language. ", "A theory is in fact they actually attenuate the name you give them to more or less something that they relate with when someone addresses them.\n\nThey don't have the concept of ownership and self though, so basically they know the word means you are speaking to them but they have no concept of what names are.", "In reality, that's all a name is to a human. It's a \"hey you\" or a \"come here\" but a bit more personalized.", "My old dog was dumb as shit and would literally respond to any and all words. But then would just stand there and stare at you. I was never even able to get him to learn to sit so I just dealt with it by making him fat and lazy. ", "There's not too much of a difference. If somebody calls *my* name, I'm going to pay attention to them. Even if they mention my name without the intent of grabbing my intention, I am still likely to listen to them.\n\nThis is how a dog's mind works. What distinguishes dogs from humans in regard to the understanding of names is that they likely don't have the mental capacity to understand that the name is an identifier associated with them specifically. Notice how if you have multiple dogs, calling one of their names gets the attention of others too since they hear the name often enough to perceive it as a command for attention as well. AFAIK, there is no evidence that suggests that dogs are self-aware, a trait I believe to be necessary to be able to conceptualize names."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/03/03/134167145/i-sniff-therefore-i-am-are-dogs-self-conscious"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1wk311", "title": "why do my eyes turn bloodshot red after smoking cannabis ?", "selftext": "After smoking, my eyes turn bloodshot red, not your usual milky red, I'm talking as red as the fire of a thousand burning suns. My vision remains fine though, and there generally is itchiness and swelling. Usually a bit of decent eye drops does the trick. Right now I can't upload a pic since I'm not under the influence, but I will ASAP for clarity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wk311/why_do_my_eyes_turn_bloodshot_red_after_smoking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf2rl07", "cf2rx4p", "cf2vudf", "cf2wb6d"], "score": [69, 13, 19, 5], "text": ["This is extremely common and well known to occur after smoking cannabis. The main compound in cannabis that gets you high, THC, is a powerful vasodilator! This means that THC lowers blood pressure and widens the veins and capillaries throughout your body, including the ones in your eyes, allowing for more blood flow to these areas. This dilation of blood vessels is also why many people experienced a flushed/red face when high on cannabis, and the drop in blood pressure explains why many people may feel dizzy while high.  ", "as red as the devils dick?", "If you smoke enough and concentrate, you can shoot laser beams from your eyes", "\"for clarity\"\n\nYeah, man, do it for clarity. Dat clarity kush."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48dlt7", "title": "Can light ever become another state such as a liquid turning solid or as a gas?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/48dlt7/can_light_ever_become_another_state_such_as_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0izmfp", "d0j9wtn"], "score": [12, 5], "text": ["There are some scenarios in which light behaves sort of like a state of matter. The simplest example is what's called the photon gas, which is what happens if you have a box with mirrored walls that get really hot. Light can also be trapped in more complex phases, including Bose-Einstein condensates and Luttinger liquids.", "It depends a lot on what you want to call \"light\".  Light as a stream of photons in a vacuum doesn't do anything particularly interesting because photons don't (directly) interact with one another.  Without interactions there can't really be much in the way of collective behaviour (i.e. forming a phase).  Thus the \"phase\" of such photons is essentially an ensemble of entirely independent photons (i.e. a photon gas).\n\nHowever, when light travels through a material it doesn't travel as photons, which is a quantization of the electromagnetic field, but rather as a quantization of the electrical \"polarization\" of a material, what is called a polariton and the polarization behaviour is both material dependent and more complex than the regular vacuum EM field:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThus, light propagating in a medium is much more interesting and there's a lot more freedom to do some crazy things.  For example, light can be made to interact within a medium and the study of this composes its own entire field called: Nonlinear Optics and/or Quantum Optics\n\n_URL_2_\n\nIn such systems one can, for example, force light into a Bose-Einstein condensates:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nand Luttinger Liquid:\n\n_URL_3_\n\nas mentioned by /r/iorgfeflkd\n\ntl;dr The crucial thing is that although photons (light in a vacuum)  do not directly interact, polaritons (light in a medium) can and interactions allow for my complex collective behaviour like phase transitions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7323/full/nature09567.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index#Microscopic_explanation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics", "http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.153601"]]}
{"q_id": "32lc8q", "title": "with the number of deaths it causes each year, how are alcohol advertisements not illegal like cigarettes?", "selftext": "I can't help but read some basic stats on alcohol use/abuse and feel like there are a lot of parallels with cigarettes. Maybe big alcohol has better lobbyists?\n\nLink: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32lc8q/eli5_with_the_number_of_deaths_it_causes_each/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqc9inf", "cqc9ukd", "cqca64c", "cqcap67", "cqccfgp", "cqccq7r", "cqcftyi"], "score": [17, 31, 16, 2, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["While ads are allowed, you can't show someone drinking the product.", "Because the alcohol industry is better at Public Relations management. Tobacco has become the public whipping boy and the slightest breath to defend tobacco will draw an insane firestorm of rabid mouth-foamers (despite whatever huge chunk of society is stupid enough to choose smoking). The fact that \"plain packaging\" - which really shows diseased eyeballs and rotting teeth and such -- can be mandated for cigs is a clear example. Try to push that on anything else bad, alcohol, whatever, and you'd see people freak out. Bashing tobacco is the media darling these days and there is no limit to how far you can push that.", "Alcohol is viewed as the only drug that can be taken in moderation, and its enjoyment by humans far predates tobacco.", "One of the reason could be also that alcohol most of the time is a \"social\" drug", "Laws in a democracy aren't based on pure logic or the best public policy. Good policies often need majority support to be implemented. Only 18 percent of Americans smoke while 65 percent drink alcohol at least occasionally. \n\nCigarettes have been losing in a downward cycle. The few smokers the easier it is to approve anti-smoking rules. As a result there are few smokers which in turn making it easier to put in place new restrictions.\n\nI wrote a piece about the long term political dynamics the legal marijuana industry faces will likely face that applies perfectly to the question you are asking.\n\n_URL_0_", "First of all, advertising tobacco isn't entirely illegal; it's only illegal on TV, which children are likely to see. Similarly, it is unlawful to advertise alcohol on TV programs targeted to minors. So there are similarities, though obviously, restrictions on tobacco advertising are more strict.\n\nThe why is a political matter. Tobacco, even in moderation, is a potent carcinogen; it causes cancer. Alcohol, in moderation, has documented health benefits. Although as a society, we limit alcohol consumption to adults, drinking is seen as a normal and non-harmful behavior, provided it's done responsibly, so as a society we haven't seen fit to limit its advertising as aggressively.", "Depends on the country. A lot of european countries completely or partially ban alcohol advertisement"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.cdc.gov/features/alcohol-deaths/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.pendinghorizon.com/2015/04/legal-marijuana-regulated-like-alcohol.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19m7rc", "title": "what's going on with this mother teresa being a bad person?", "selftext": "I keep seeing posts about her today, and I don't get what she did that was so bad it would cancel out all the good she did. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19m7rc/eli5_whats_going_on_with_this_mother_teresa_being/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8pasc2", "c8pawa7", "c8pbeom", "c8pbsmm", "c8pc82h", "c8pcd0n", "c8pd6yl", "c8pekre", "c8penqt", "c8pftat", "c8pgm3v", "c8pgsx0", "c8ph6m1", "c8phr7m", "c8piiga", "c8pixli", "c8piyd5", "c8pkvzm", "c8pl716", "c8plpje", "c8pocz9", "c8pprnm", "c8qph7u"], "score": [2, 170, 139, 74, 9, 1277, 104, 36, 23, 150, 7, 2, 12, 43, 4, 6, 6, 2, 5, 5, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["*The Missionary Position* by Christopher Hitches", "They looked into her finances and found hundreds of millions of dollars missing. Her missions were lacking in hygiene, pain killers and medicine to the point where doctors called the \"homes for the dying\" and there's no financial reason for that.", "Watch this:\n\n[Christopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel](_URL_0_)", "The more virtuous your P.R. machines makes you out to be, the nastier the backlash when you turn out to be just another asshole. See also: Tiger Woods.", "Simply: She campaigned against birth control in one of the most cripplingly over populated countries on Earth.", "There are a variety of complaints against Mother Teresa. Here are some of the most common.\n\n1- She accepted donations from shady sources including infamous 3rd world dictators and embezzled funds. She also associated with various questionable figures, and took sides in Indian politics.\n\n2- She used very little of the donations for actual charity. Much of the donations she received went to either missionary work or the general RCC funds, even when earmarked for charity. The exact proportion is unknown because she refused to release any info except where absolutely required by law.\n\n3- The medical care she offered did not meet standards, even for third world hospice care. And quotes like this, \"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people,\" and \"the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ,\" certainly don't put her in the best light. Her goal was never to treat the poor sick. Her goals were conversion and to help people suffer properly to prepare their souls for the afterlife. Added to this the fact that she went to western hospitals when she herself got sick, makes her look like a hypocrite as well. \n\n4- She had patients baptized, apparently without a full and proper Catechism or understanding of what was being done to them.\n\nNow your view on whether these are bad are not depends on your point of view on these subjects. Maybe she was a devoted missionary who took a hold of whatever tools she could to perform an important duty. Or maybe she was a sadistic individual who hung out with evil men and tortured her so called patients. But in any case she wasn't the saintly medical caregiver as she was frequently portrayed. ", " > At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. \nBut these missions have been described as 'homes for the dying' by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. \nDoctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. But the authors say the problem is not a lack of money, as the foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundred of millions of pounds. They also say that following numerous natural disasters in India she offered prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid.", "Nothing good someone does cancels out the bad, and nothing bad someone does cancels out the good.", "Aw man. Everyone's a sex offender and now I find out that Mother Teresa was a dick. \n\nI'm gunna go live underground for a while.", "I am Albanian (the same ethnicity as Mother Teresa) and it's so refreshing for me to see all these 'not so bright' arguments about her. You wouldn't believe how much she is glorified in Albania and Kosovo, they named everything after her. It's like she's the world's saint. \nAlso, everything we were taught about her was all the best things a human can do. If you try to question her in a public discussion, you will get all the bs towards you and of course you will be labeled as a \"non-Albanian\".\nI really like these discussions here since it is one of the most rarest rational discussions I've encountered about her. ", "I know this is going to get rained upon with downvotes, but I must say that I think a direct answer to the question here is that a lot of people in this neck of the woods \"get off\" on downing christianity.  There are literally millions more people in the world who do much worse things than Mother Teresa may \"or may not\" have done, but christian bashing seems to be at its peek in history, and the anti-christian church seems to have settled quite firmly here at reddit :)\n\nFamous people do horrible things all of the time and we turn our heads to it, so you have to question the reason why some people's bad deeds get so much more attention than others.  People just don't like Christianity these days and the answer to the reason for that would be a much more interesting discussion in my opinion.\n\n**edit** in the event that someone actually reads this, I might also note that I am not a practicing Christian myself, that was not my point, I seriously think it would be much more interesting to figure out why people are just hating a religion so much these days than to single out a single figure head's deeds.\n", "Penn and Teller have an episode of Bullshit on YouTube. Suey I can't link on phone. ", "TIL: apparently there's something going on with Mother Teresa being a bad person", "I think this sums it up best: _URL_0_\n\n >  In one great story early in the video, Mother Teresa said she told one cancer patient that pain means Jesus is near to you and that suffering is \u201can opportunity to share in the passion of Christ.\u201d She said she compared suffering to kisses from Jesus. She said the person replied, \u201cPlease tell Jesus to stop kissing me.\u201d", " >  cancel out all the good she did. \n\nWhat exactly was this good, anyways?", "My apologies for not offering an ELI5 answer. I will, instead, link to pictures of the Facebook group \"STOP The Missionaries of Charity\". [These pictures are of Mother Teresa's \"Kalihgat\": the infamous \"Home of the Dying\"] (_URL_0_).  Some of them are **NSFW.**\n\nThe pictures clearly show the absence of medical treatment, basic hygiene and disregard to the sickly. ", "Seriously whats the problem seeing the difference between /askreddit/ and /explainlikeimfive/ ????", "\"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself.\"\n\nIn her Nobel Peace Prize speech. Good on her, right? /sarcasm", "A large part was that she built many centers where the suffering were sent to suffer...not to be treated and healed. She wanted people to suffer, as she thought it was the way to be closer to god. Being around the suffering was her way of being closer to god. ", "**TL;DR of all the comments:** Someone who was portrayed as a hero turned out to be a normal, imperfect person and everyone is acting surprised. ", "['Dubious' care of the sick, 'questionable' politics and 'suspicious' financial dealings: Researchers claim Mother Teresa was not so saintly after all](_URL_0_)", "TIL Mother Teresa is a real person. I though she was just a bible character.", "Here is a list of video links collected from comments that redditors have made in response to this submission:\n\n|Source Comment|Score|Video Link|\n|:-------|:-------|:-------|\n|[gepetto616](_URL_3_)|139|[Christopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel 1994](_URL_24_)|\n|[GL_HaveFun](_URL_10_)|14|[FUNNY TV FAIL -  cross the streets in boats because of massive floods says reporter](_URL_1_)|\n|[lightsaberon](_URL_2_)|5|[Jesus Teaches About \"The Good Samaritan\"](_URL_22_)|\n|[Philo_T_Farnsworth](_URL_11_)|3|[Not forgiving people - Kingpin](_URL_13_)|\n|[Jimmerz](_URL_21_)|3|[Patriotism And Nationalism Are Stupid](_URL_4_)|\n|[Psilocybe_Unicorn](_URL_12_)|2|[Penn and Teller - Holier Than Thou Full Episode](_URL_26_)|\n|[namepitched](_URL_29_)|2|[Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens 1 of 3](_URL_5_)|\n|[Gangy1](_URL_14_)|1|[Hells Angel Mother Teresa - Christopher Hitchens](_URL_27_)|\n|[Wingsmith](_URL_9_)|1|[Penn  & amp; Teller Bullshit - Holier than Thou Part 2](_URL_8_)|\n|[naturalcauzes](_URL_28_)|1|[Penn And Teller BS Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa](_URL_30_)|\n|[apisapis](_URL_25_)|1|[Documentary: Mother Teresa - Hell's Angel Christopher Hitchens](_URL_17_)|\n|[wildtalent](_URL_6_)|-1|[Mother Teresa: DEAFANATLY NOT A SAINT!](_URL_16_)|\n|[W_Edwards_Deming](_URL_19_)|-1|[Wayne Newton - Danke Schoen 1968.flv](_URL_7_)|\n|[W_Edwards_Deming](_URL_0_)|-23|[JIMMY MARTIN 36 short films about. here is #1.](_URL_18_)|\n\n* [VideoLinkBot FAQ](_URL_23_)\n* [Feedback](_URL_15_)\n* [Playlist of videos in this comment](_URL_20_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76_qL6fiyDw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/mother-teresa-on-suffering"], [], ["http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.181998785175205.34732.181945775180506&amp;type=3"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/dubious-care-of-the-sick-questionable-politics-and-suspicious-financial-dealings-researchers-claim-mother-teresa-was-not-so-saintly-after-all-29107530.html"], [], ["http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pjnvk", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1emNx8YIQvs", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pilm4", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pbeom", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Ylz3TDuA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pii0n", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUryeDLpY_c", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Jm9PzGLB8", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8qpgrc", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pkpum", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pjl88", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pgumb", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKhPTvuXS6I", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8plyp2", "http://www.reddit.com/r/VideoLinkBot/submit", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3tUuA7WBRE", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ12imRY0Og", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teOtw8q_qzw", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8q2v3q", "http://radd.it/comments/19m7rc/_/c8qph7u?start=1", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pq24m", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU", "http://www.reddit.com/r/VideoLinkBot/wiki/faq", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76_qL6fiyDw", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pkpwf", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_21XD74JKHw", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8pouh6", "http://reddit.com/comments/19m7rc/_/c8ph4p5", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nCaxHN-cY"]]}
{"q_id": "2985yt", "title": "why do wounds itch when healing, prompting us to scratch and potentially re-damage the area?", "selftext": "Edit:\nTo sum things up so far, in no particular order:\n\n* because evolution may not be 100% perfect\n* because it may help draw attention to the wound so you may tend to it\n* because it may help remove unwanted objects and / or remove parts of the scab and help the healing process\n* because nerves are slowly being rebuilt inside the wound\n* because histamine\n\nThanks for the answers guys.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2985yt/eli5_why_do_wounds_itch_when_healing_prompting_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciid77b", "ciidll9", "ciie4cd", "ciieerk", "ciieeus", "ciiegxb", "ciiep4t", "ciiep90", "ciiez65", "ciif2v2", "ciifpzn", "ciih1wm", "ciih5w6", "ciihful", "ciihmgg", "ciihroa", "ciihrzb", "ciiijgc", "ciikakl", "ciikpn2", "ciikrqd", "ciiktfu", "ciil2rc", "ciil6qv", "ciilenu", "ciioddb", "ciiq40s", "ciiqev0", "ciirqsp", "ciis0j6", "ciitxsr", "ciivjbh", "ciixf8h", "ciiyohl", "cij0jts", "cij26n1"], "score": [1312, 37, 7, 2, 2, 2, 5, 112, 6, 9, 7, 2, 146, 53, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Part of the healing process is removing any potential pathogens that may have gotten into the wound, so there is an inflammatory response at the site of injury. More blood flows to the area and more white blood cells are recruited to kill stuff, and in the process release different chemicals that cause you to be itchy, like histamine. ", "The itching of a wound is nothing that should worry us. It is a good sign and shows that the injury is in the healing process.Our body is like a coordinated organization in which each cell has its function and task. In order to coordinate processes that cells communicate to each other via little messengers (Semiochemicals). These biochemical substances tell the cells what is going on and what to do. \n\nNow in case of an injury, let's say a scrape on your arm, this organization of cells goes out of balance for a short moment. Many repair cells are suddenly activated, that need to restore the skin. The cells have to be really quick in doing so, to ensure the fastest possible healing process. To avoid blood loss and an increased risk of infection, the cells must be reinforced and, most of all, quickly communicate with each other. \n\nThe messangers (Histamine) have a little side effect, which is causing itchiness. Since the wound is very sensitive, it is irritated by these messengers. Thus we feel the itch. ;)", "I always liked to think that the itching was our brain test firing the nerves in the area kind of like a live healing update. \n\nThis most likely has no basis in fact. But it's interesting to wonder if even the most innocuous things fit into some evolutionary design.", "when the skin is healing around a wound scabs and hard skin come into play to basically stint the cut: hold the skin still as its slowly drawn together. healthy skin around this stationary area continues to move normally, which pulls gently around the wound setting off mild touch/pain sensations (feels like an itch)\n\nits actually the skin around the wound thats itching so scratch the skin on both sides instead of right on the cut and you'll feel much better\n", "Similarly: why do many of us have an urge to pick at wounds? Seems very counter-productive.", "I wish I could *find* the damn article, but I remember a few years back reading something about how pulling off scabs at least slightly before they fall off on their own can lead to less scarring - suggesting that the itch is potentially a means of reducing scarring.", "Either I'm in the minority who understood what you're asking, or I'm way off base.\n\n\nThe answer to why our bodies do anything is: Either natural selection bred it in it because it helps us survive, or it has no meaningful negative impact on our survival so natural selection didn't bother to breed it out. In this case, I'm guessing the latter -- the itching is a side-effect of a needed process and most of us likely have always had enough sense to not pick at a wound enough to cause death/sterility, so it stuck around.\n\nEdit: By \"bred it in/out\" I mean that the genes causing the trait occurred (arguably by random) in an individual or family line, and if they made a difference in whether the individual(s) survived to breed, and whether that offspring carrying the genes had the same breeding advantage/disadvantage, the genes would spread or die out. \n\nTrust me. I went to college. ", "An evolutionary biology theory:\n\nBigger wounds actually need to be scraped out and cleaned every now and then, itchiness is a reminder to do that.", "In animals the instinct is not so much to scratch as to lick. This would clean the wound with antibacterial saliva rather than ripping it open. We're just too dumb to use our tongues and use dirty nails instead. ", "Just as a general point about evolution, not every individual trait is positive; A negative trait could be an unintended result of a different, positive trait.\n\nTake this itching thing. As others have pointed out it's caused by part of the immune system response to an injury. This immune response is very positive for preventing infection, so it has to stay.\n\nNow not itching at all is negative, if you didn't itch at all that would prevent you from knowing that insects were biting you etc. so itching in general has to stay too.\n\nEvolving a combination of not itching specifically on wounds without losing either of those 2 other traits (which would be worse than scratching a wound) is probably too much of a leap for natural selection so it hasn't happened yet.", "The itchiness in healing wounds is caused by the same substance that causes itchiness in mosquitoes and other insect bites: histamine.  \n\nHistamine is a protein involved in the body's inflammatory response to pain and it allows white blood cells to pass through the blood vessels to the attack infection in a wound.  However, it also causes irritation to the nerve endings in the affected area, causing us to scratch.\n\nThe itching can be reduced by applying a cold compress which numbs the nerve endings in the wounded area, or by taking anti-histamines (found in many anti-allergy medications) which block the brain's sensitivity to those irritated nerve endings.", "Besides for the scientific reason of the release of histamine in your brain. One possible explanation that I always liked was when something is scabbing over from an open wound, the bodies natural defense is to itch it because if there were something inside of it such as dirt it is telling you to get it out.\nA good example is if you get a tattoo, during the healing process the tattoo gets extremely itchy. This may be because your body is telling you to itch the unknown substance (the ink) out of your skin to further protect yourself.", "I'm a physician. I work part-time in a wound center. We treat chronic non-healing wounds. Part of the treatment algorithm is debridement, or removing non-viable tissue from the wound so it can heal faster. So if there's a big dead nasty scab on it, or a slimy film on it, it should all come off. My theory is that itching is the body's way of causing us to debride our wounds ourselves, and thereby speed healing. ", "Shoutout to OP with the summary edit. He's not the OP we deserve, but the OP we need. ", "Maybe its nature telling you to lick it.", "I love posts like this. They're like \"sometimes things don't work out in the most perfect way possible and a minor trouble occurs. Why?\" Well, nothing is perfect and sometimes things suck. Evolution doesn't owe you one. Yes, sometimes you can't sleep though you were tired a minute before. You won't die because of this, it will just suck for like fifteen minutes. That's all. Same with this topic. Evolution isn't perfect. It's trial and error. And most things just kinda work so they don't change, even if they have flaws", "I like this OP, he encouraged my laziness by putting the answers in his original post.", "People are missing the point. OP is asking an evolutionary reason, not a chemical reason. Is like answering \"why do we get a boners\" with \"because an increase of blood flow to your penis\".\n\nI remember reading an answer to this a long time ago on /r/askscience. I'm not sure if it's correct, since the question had very little answers, and it didn't have any source.\n\n >  During the time at which mammals developed this response, it was commonplace for parasitic insects to remain attached to the body for some time, the itch would be an indicator to the host that something is biting it. Insects evolve faster than we do, however, and most insects will now have long departed by the time you notice the itch. Essentially however, it is to make sure that whatever caused it has gone.\n\n_URL_0_", "\"...Evolution isn't perfect....\"\n\nIt's perfect for the poison oak that wants to kill off its human predators by causing them to scratch all their skin off, though.  ;-)", "Itching is a product of / related to biologically nerve endings that deal with pain. When those nerve endings heal they cause an itching sensation as they are coming back to life so to speak.\n\nThe associated itching that comes with consumption of opiates is identical to the itch and pleasant sensations of scratching that itch when it is from a healing wound. Touching yourself to scratch the itch in both cases causes more itching along with the pleasurable sensation of dealing with the itch until in the case of healing wounds they become overstimulated and begin to register pain.\n\nCould be totally wrong", "Thank you for putting helpful answer in the box afterwards op, makes it easier to find an answer.", "It reminds you that it's time to patch it up. You're outdated.", "Itching early in the wound healing process is created from histamine.  Histamine has been scientifically proven to increase the rate of healing.  But it does not itself cause the itching - it causes inflammation and this makes your nerves go nuts.\n\nYour skin is covered in nerves and cells that cause the itching sensation from either mechanical motion (bugs, wind, etc), chemical interaction (irritants), and very low-voltage electrical signals.\n\nA scientist discovered that the voltage at the base of a wound is different from the regular voltage of the skin elsewhere.  Why this is the case is up for debate but the mechanism at work here is that new nerve cells can follow this ever-decreasing electrical signal so they know where to go.  Once there and bonded with other nearby cells the wound slowly pulls itself closed.  Or if this is early in the process the bonds are stretched and pulled at by the histamine-aided inflammation and produces the same result.\n\nBoth the inflammation and the repair cause a small variation in the electrical signal and simulate motion.  The inflammation or removal of inflammation is the movement and the nerve cells getting the local voltage back to normal is the electrical.  Combined, these make your wounds itch like a motherfucker.  \n\nThere may be other things at play here but this is what we can prove.\n", "Nobody knows.  Itching itself is a scientific mystery, and all hypotheses regarding it are considered weak conjecture.", "slightly related to this, I have a bunch of insect bites (because they all hate me) and they are all super duper itchy, but why is it that the itching is in the area 2-3cm from the bite itself rather than where the actual bite is? ", "I propose a far simpler answer even beyond simply due to dry skin and the fact that scabs are not flexible like live skin. It could also play a role in healing since scabs tend to get itchy, if at all, when the wound and scab is old. In order to remove the scab which served its purpose and allow the area to dry out and heal properly it has to be removed, what better way for the scab to be removed than an animal scratching at it...yes, that includes you too. ", "My bf's mom used to be a nurse. She's always said that itching is the lowest form of pain.", "**Itching is a form of pain.**\n\nIf 0 is no pain at all and 10 is most painful thing imaginable, then itching is somewhere between 0 and 1. Itching is a form of pain. But it's so small in intensity we normally don't qualify it as outright painful.", "I remember watching a video in my high school science class where it said something along the lines about that in small wounds, like cuts and scrapes, the skin is growing underneath the scab while the scab is protecting the new skin from getting reopened. However, the body then wants the scab off since the new skin underneath is ready, so there is some kind of response or signal where the injured site becomes itchy you scratch the scab off. \n\nI figured this was true since if you pick at a scab before it is ready, it bleeds again. If you just wait until it's ready and starts itching, the outer edges itch the most and come off the fastest. Over the next several days the itchiness continues and the scab becomes smaller and smaller until one day it completely comes off. ", "I think a more interesting question is why does scratching an itch feel so good, even when scratching so hard as to cause an abrasion.", "Unless you believe in intelligent design, there won't necessarily be a reason. Evolution does not warrant a valid explanation for all our inner workings.", "a common mistake is to assume that there is a reason for anything. Evolution works the other way round. Organisms behave in certain ways which vary, sometimes by mutations, and those traits hang around unless they are detrimental. mutations are almost always detrimental, but sometimes they are beneficial.\n\nthere is no reason. it may just be neutral from a fitness point of view.", "I know I'm late to the party, but here is a great article that explains the connection between itching and physical pain, and it may help your understanding: _URL_0_", "Good on ya for editing your post to include possible answers as they were presented.  Good guy op. ", "Here's a little bitcoin tip for bothering to edit in a very nice summary. If only everyone did that! 500 bits /u/changetip verify", "The wound closes in a clot.  Extending from the clot are strands of clot.  This brings white blood cells into the tissue.  They cause the tissue around the wound to swell and itch.  As these white blood cells leave, the symptoms resolve."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10992n/why_do_healing_wounds_itch_surely_raking_a/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidelifescience/untangling-ouch-itch.html"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yaqtk", "title": "how do filming companies shut down major cities for making movies? like las vegas or new york", "selftext": "To be a bit clearer, I just got done watching the hangover part III, and when they're driving down the strip or on top of a hotel (obviously not green-screened) how do they get all those thousands of people to stop what they're doing for the day, or hope everyone will behave when they're recording?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yaqtk/eli5how_do_filming_companies_shut_down_major/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfitxr5", "cfiu4qd", "cfiudj5", "cfivgrt", "cfiwsq8", "cfizm84", "cfj0fiv", "cfj0nht", "cfj1zr8", "cfj2rl4", "cfj33gt", "cfj3kjz", "cfj4d2j", "cfj4dhh", "cfj818b", "cfj855x", "cfj8t3o", "cfja17i", "cfjavq1", "cfjf9re", "cfjg8tf", "cfjjrq0", "cfjpsg1"], "score": [3, 176, 25, 40, 12, 4, 10, 7, 2, 4, 12, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Cities usually have some sort of \"filming committee\" that blesses//coordinates// & c movie filming within their city.", "They only shut down a block at a time. What you see as \"shutting down\" the whole city is just editing. And it gets super annoying when you work on Park Avenue South, because christ they love filming there. Jerks.\n\nAlso, anyone on film is a paid extra. These aren't just thousands of regular people walking around that they asked to be on film.", "You pay a lot of money haha.\n\nThe studio will contact whatever local agency handles such requests and works with any relevant federal, state, or local government to find a price, time, and location that will be acceptable to all parties that may be effected. Depending on the scope on the project anything from a few police officers to the coast guard could be used to close off access and provide a safe filming environment.\n\nThe film *I Am Legend* spent $5 million dollars to shutdown the area around the Brooklyn Bridge for around 6 days. [This old Reuters](_URL_0_) article talks about what went into that scene and you may find it interesting. \n\n", "When they roll down the Strip in Vegas they can get permission to make a rolling convoy so that nobody photobombs the shot.  People and other stuff in the background just gets used.\n\nThey will also shoot early in the morning and block sidewalks off.  Have you ever seen the front of Bellagio so empty as it looked in Oceans Eleven?", "*staggering* sums of money, mostly. ", "Lots of the street shots are 4:30 to 6am in June. They bring in hundreds of people and shoot it with angles to make the people into crowds then enhance it through post production. ", "I know they use Toronto a lot for scenes set in NYC. ", "Some enterprising filmmakers have been shooting New York City destruction scenes in Cleveland, where people are reeeaaally used to streets being closed constantly. The buildings apparently have a similar character. So know that when you watch The Avengers and the new Captain America, you are seeing cheap knockoff NYC, not the real deal. ;)", "Also, a lot if cgi backgrounds now.", "While what others are saying is accurate, you may be surprised at [what filmmakers can do with greenscreen](_URL_0_). And that's a relatively old video. There's a similar video with the effects in Wolf of Wall Street -- I didn't see the movie but I would have guessed less compositing was involved. \n\nWhile I'm not sure what they did in Hangover III, in general, there's probably more greenscreen than you realize. ", "Hey, I can answer this one.  Cities and States love having film productions shoot in their town because it brings a ton of money into the local economy.  The production designer needs to build a set?  Well hey, that means Ernie at the lumber yard will be making some money and may have to hire some more workers.  These filmmakers are going to need to eat while they're here, why that mean's that Ole' Joe the grocer will be selling a lot of food and Ed who owns the hotel is going to be seeing a lot more business.  \n\nFilm productions bring so much money into the local economy that many cities will bend over backwards to entice them to come by granting them tax exemptions and aiding them in securing locations.  Securing permits to close down public streets can get very expensive and is a great way for municipalities to bring in money.\n\nMany people complain about the inconvenience that film productions bring into their communities but with them they also bring a lot of money to pour into the local economy.  It's also worth noting that as culture is now this country's primary export, it's worth protecting by offering tax incentives to entice producers not to make their films overseas.", "iirc for the movie vanilla sky, they paid some millions of dollars to have times square blocked off entirely for like less than an hour at like 6am or something", "They partially close off areas they are shooting in. Example: _URL_0_", "I went to the Batman filming in Chicago.  They did it at night and apparently some areas of the city are deserted after the businesses shut down after 5.  They also do some good editing.", "You would be amazed at how much is green screened. Almost any shot of an above average movie star or tv series actor in the middle of a major city is green screened. A great example is Heroes where all Times Square shots etc are green screen. It's so well done you can't tell. \n\nExtras do get paid. In Australia it's about $40 per hour. I should know I spend thousands $ every month on extras and featured extras. \n( I'm a commercial director)\n\n", " > (obviously not green-screened) \n\nYou would be surprised how well things can be green screened.  A frequent trick is to just green screen part of a street scene.  So you get a certain overall view but can't really pick out the green screened parts. \n\nHere is an example from [The Great Gatsby](_URL_0_) which has a lot of obvious green screen with a lot of subtle green (and blue) screen.", "Yeah I can see that, then just fill it all in later, or stitch it up i mean. I remember here in michigan when they were filming the Transformers movie and all of us in the metro detroit area tried to get in as a double[.](_URL_0_)", "They shot all the New York scenes in Captain America in Manchester and Liverpool in the UK, (which let face it, looks nothing like New York). They only needed the ground level to look New Yorky though, so they rebuilt all the shop facias (which they would have needed to do anyway, seeing as it was set in the 40's), and hung large green sheets in the alleyways, so they could add the NY skyline in post production\n\nThey left the streets open to the public while the set was being built, so I was able to have a mooch around the shop where Captain America received his supersoldier serum......\n\n_URL_0_", "Businesses and local employees get notices of filming when these things are happening in their area.  Downtown Chicago was used a lot for the new Divergent movie and we were getting notifications about 1-2 times a week of filming.  They generally weren't filming during the normal day, so we really didn't run into them often.  They also sent out notifications about flying a helicopter through the area at a low altitude.", "Sometimes they don't. I'm from Cleveland, and they just filmed the latest Avengers film on E. 9th (the \"main street\", if you will, of downtown Cleveland). All that they did was shut down a few blocks of E. 9th and created facades on the buildings to model it after New York. The film company saved A LOT of money by filming in a much smaller market/city. For this specific movie, they just put out and ad for extras and compensate them for their time.", "Sometimes money (Pirates of the Caribbean in Hawaii did this a lot. And they were total dicks about it.) Sometimes digital imagery (see 28 days later.) Sometimes they don't (Hawaii 5-0 oftentimes just asks people nicely if they can stop for a second so they can shoot a scene, and are really cool about it. People usually are into watching the scene get shot.) ", "For The Avengers they used the front of a large building in Cleveland that had stores on the first floor. They changed the names and look of the front, and the owner of the building was paid (really well if I recall correctly) for use of the building. I believe the store owners also got some cash for having to be closed.  \n\nSource: my girlfriends dad does real estate and owns the building \n\n ", "A little late so it might get lost. I know in the walking dead's second episode when they are on the roof top, they didn't close anything off. They just CG'd the walkers in. In fact, numerous 911 calls were made when people heard shots being fired from a rooftop, thinking the shooter was aiming at them. That was the scene where Murle  polls off some random shots at walkers. In scenes like Woodbury, they actually borrowed a town and set the entire thing up, nothing was green screened or anything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/24/film-newyork-legend-dc-idUSN2335654320070424"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k"], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/U5nV-NZa5mk"], [], [], ["http://vimeo.com/68451324"], ["http://www.deadwooddicks.com/lodging/"], ["http://imgur.com/a/0S9av"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "430pmh", "title": "How much amount of light is required to perceive colors?", "selftext": "In a unlit room, it's pitch back to see. say, i have a light source (point) behind me, how much of light, illuminance or intensity, is required, so that i can **start** to perceive the colors of the objects in front of me? how much light is required for me to **properly** perceive the colors of the objects?  \nalso, does the amount of light required depend on the size of the light source, position of the light source, distance of the colored objects from the light source/me, the size of the colored objects/room?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/430pmh/how_much_amount_of_light_is_required_to_perceive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czer2yu"], "score": [13], "text": ["[For full color vision there needs to be at least about 3 cd/m^2 of  illumination; for \"washed-out\" colors you can go as low as about 0.003 cd/m^2. Below that you don't see in color.](_URL_0_)  These are the borders between scotopic (B & W), mesopic, and photopic (full color) vision. Note that 1 cd/m^2 is more familiarly called 1 lux.  For reference, 0.0014 lux is the typical lighting under a full moon, 2 lux is typical lighting of a floodlight building/monument/fountain, 25 lux is the approximate lighting at sunrise or sunset, 100 lux is a usual monitor brightness, and 5000 lux is a scene viewed in full sunlight.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot-org/Sample-Chapter.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "37g44j", "title": "what would happen if the usa pulled all troops from around the globe and stopped involvement in foreign affairs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37g44j/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_usa_pulled_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crmeawt", "crmfhyj", "crmfqir", "crmj6il", "crmku5l", "crmlegk", "crmmg4z", "crmozce"], "score": [49, 51, 16, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It's extremely hard to say what would happen in the absence of U.S. involvement.\n\nHowever, we have a pretty good idea that it would be nothing good.\n\nLook at what happened in Baltimore during the protests.  Because the police were pulled back (for political reasons) and busy with the protests, crime unrelated to any political issue exploded.  Whatever you may think about the Baltimore Police Department, their absence made a huge difference in the level of violence on the streets.\n\nThe same occurs in the larger world.  Any number of armed conflicts simply don't happen because those deciding whether to engage in them are frightened of U.S. involvement.  Crimes like piracy are relatively rare because no stable nation is willing to host the pirates for fear of reprisal.  The only reason the world doesn't have a viable slave trade is the prohibition by first the British and then the Americans.\n\nThis is no different than it has been throughout history.  *Someone* needs to ensure that the trade routes remain open.  Commerce between different nations and cultures is not a default, but rather the product of governments using force to permit it.  So your question is less about whether there will be military intervention around the world and more about who will be doing the intervening.  Most people prefer it be the United States.", "Day 1: Taiwan falls to china. Japan announces a plan for a nuclear weapons program in a last ditch effort to deter chinese aggression. North Korea invades South Korea. China denies bankrolling and supplying NK but everyone knows better. \n\nDay 4: Israel announces an easing of restrictions on Palestinian citizens. They offer a legitimate plan for a Palestinian state in an attempt to hold off Arab aggression. It fails.\n\nDay 7: Russia retakes portions of Eastern Europe. Economic sanctions be damned. EU nations begin considering development of nukes and a return to conscription. \n\nDay 10: Republicans take credit for huge budget surplus.\n\nDay 11: unemployment spikes after soldiers become unemployed, democrats announce a return if FDR style make work projects for young men.\n\nDay 30: China continues to expand into SE Asia.\n\nDay 45: Putin is assassinated.\n\nDay 1009: Two hairdressers crawl out of a destroyed subway station. They admire a 6 eyes cat before clubbing it to death and eating it.", "You rarely hear of such instances because they don't make people scream trying to get the US out. There are plenty of non wartime examples of the US military getting sent somewhere to enforce peace to get the job done and leave. What about Haiti? The tsunami in the pacific a few years back? Delivering aid to Africa? The US is the world's largest and most powerful military. It is also the most well funded and effective logistics platform for humanitarian aid. No one argues and claims that's a bad thing, thus no masses of protesters, because generally speaking everyone views it as a good thing.\n\nThere's also ongoing missions that are not combat related that the US military is vital for. Protecting shipping lanes. For the most part there isn't a great deal of piracy. There is some, but the shipping lanes are relatively safe, protecting worldwide trade. You can thank the US military for that. Flights over the pacific are safe because the US runs air traffic control over the Pacific. US military bases project US protection around the world for allies, allowing them to focus efforts internally and the presence of US military bases are overwhelmingly positive for the local community (despite what people seem to think) economically.\n\nSimply put bad shit will happen if the US just pulls out of everything around the world and just stays home. The Iraq war, while incredibly stupid, is really only a tiny bit of what the US military is actually responsible for. Most people don't know about what the rest of the US military does because it's under the radar of public outrage. In time will the world adjust in such a world? Of course. But expect very rough times for a few decades. Don't expect to live your modern life during this time, expect it to relapse to something similar to pre WWI/WWII until the world reorganizes itself.", "US troops would be replaced by ISIS troops, or red Chinese troops, or Russian troops, or some as-yet unnoticed, but ambitious and vicious entity. There would be mass murder, oppression, and subjugation far worse than you might imagine the US is guilty of. That is what has happened throughout history and will always happen. It is the nature of man, and you cannot have a perfect world, because the natural state of man is not peace. Peace is a rare thing that only occurs when a war is successful and only desirable when the least oppressive side wins and enforces a just peace or at least the most just peace possible. The US has historically been the least oppressive side regardless of revisionists want you to believe. Do not imagine that the UN is an apolitical or just institution superior to other powers. It is highly political and so useless that it has never successfully voted to condemn terrorism as a weapon even after many attempts. Furthermore, it has absolutely no ability to mount any sort of an armed effort without US forces and US financing. It is basically a place for nations to vocalize their displeasure with other nations and to gain entry into the US to perform espionage operations while pretending to be diplomats who merely ignore parking tickets.", "Im guessing it goes something like this:\n\n\n-North Korea invades South Korea, China and Japan get involved\n\n-India and Pakistan get involved\n\n-Russia tries to invade Europe and within a year there is WW3", "It depends on the standpoint(from US standpoint or that of a foreign country) and it is kind of case to case. Generally, all of the involvement is benefiting US, or certain people in US.  \n\nUS is spending by far the most on their military, there is lots of money there, so they sort of have to use it. On top of that, most involvement is not some random 'let's save those dudes', it is rather specific, somewhere with lots of natural resources or important location. ", "There is a documentry called \"The world without us\" that goes into this, using examples from past conflicts involving the United States and conflicts where the United States stepped aside.  ", "Perhaps a better but more difficult question: how much could the US military reduce forces/power/spending and still maintain US (and Allies) hegemony, maintain open trade, etc.?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2b1eep", "title": "Was Prester John actually Genghis Khan?", "selftext": "I was listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and he seemed to imply that after a long game of \"medieval telephone\" Genghis Khan's name turned into \"Prester John.\" He certainly was someone who attacked Muslims in the East, and they do sound very similar, but did they sound similar in the tongues back then? Was Genghis really Prester and they had to pretend he wasn't once they found he wasn't Christian?\n\nAlso, is Dan Carlin a good source? The podcasts are very well done and interesting so far but I've only hear 6 or so. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b1eep/was_prester_john_actually_genghis_khan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj0wwlk", "cj0x1m1", "cj1b5e7"], "score": [53, 15, 6], "text": ["I've listened to the whole Wrath of the Khans series of podcasts several times and can say with some degree of certainty that Dan Carlin never makes the claim that the name of Prester John is derived from Genghis Khan. The stories of the mythical figure predate the birth of the historical one, or at least any time when the name could've possibly spread all the way to Europe. It's just that when rumours of the Mongol conquests of the Islamic world started spreading West, a lot of people connected them to this particular legend.\n\nI know Wikipedia isn't held in very high regard on this subreddit, but the [article on Prester John](_URL_1_) is a pretty good one.\n\nThere's a whole [section in the FAQ](_URL_0_) about Dan Carlin that you might want to check.", "As far as if Dan is a good source or not, here is a discussion we had in this sub from about a year ago. _URL_0_ basically it boils down to he is entertaining and hits a lot of the points but isn't the be all end all by any stretch.", "I listened to the whole series, and here's what I got out of it, regarding the \"Prestor John\" subject:\n\n1) The Prestor John myth regarded a supposed Christian kingdom lying somewhere in the East\n\n2) Nestorian Christian missionaries had succeeded in converting substantial groups of Turkic peoples somewhere in Western Asia (I can't recall the name of the peoples mentioned, but I do remember that the Mongols eventually conquered / assimilated them)\n\n3) The Muslim World -- which Christendom was currently at war with -- was suddenly besieged by some power from the East\n\n4) Thus, the Christians jumped to the conclusion that this mysterious invading force was the much-rumored Prestor John.\n\nBut, as mentioned by others, the legend predates Genghis Khan; the Mongols were simply one of a number of identifications the Christians associated the legend with -- India, Ethiopia and North America would all be others.\n\nI have heard lots of theories on the origin of the legend..my favorite is that it was a memory of the Byzantines in Constantinople by those left in the West after the Fall of the Roman Empire in the west."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_dan_carlin.27s_.22hardcore_history.22", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12i31q/dan_carlin_history_or_bunk/"], []]}
{"q_id": "83bow1", "title": "babies crying pre-sedentary/having shelters if it would technically be a death sentence attracting predators in nature", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83bow1/eli5_babies_crying_presedentaryhaving_shelters_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvgn39g", "dvgoj4k", "dvh0zs2", "dvh5ah8"], "score": [48, 16, 5, 6], "text": ["Hardly.\n\nFirst, remember that babies were not left unattended. Our early ancestors (much like some hunter gatherer tribes still do to this day) carries their babies around constantly. Babies that are worn cry much less because pretty much their every need (food and comfort) are very close by.\n\nAdditionally, we are a species that lives in groups. A group of humans is going to be loud in any situation, and the occasional baby cry is not going to add much to that. Living in a group was our protection already, not stealth. ", "Human infants were rarely without shelter, even during the hunter-gatherer nomadic phase humans lived in camps and caves. Infants were also never left alone. There were always adults around to attend to their needs and protect them from predators. This is one of the reasons that humans live in groups. ", "There are no predators in nature that will attack a group of humans (except maybe when completely desparate). Heck, there are very few that will even attack a single adult human. The few predators that are actually bigger and stronger than humans also understand the concept of strength in numbers.", "Predators don't want to tangle with a bunch of hunter-gatherers, whether or not they are in a shelter.  Humans are scary, and predators in general tend to go for isolated young or old individuals.\n\nAlso, in mobile societies the babies spend a whole lot of time on their mothers, either in arms or wrapped on.  They tend to cry a lot less when being held."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "h0qn6", "title": "How high of a temperature would you theoretically need to break any combination of molecules apart from each other into their single elements?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h0qn6/how_high_of_a_temperature_would_you_theoretically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1rqhq3"], "score": [2], "text": ["As Qwerty222 said, there is certainly a question of molecular bond strength. It should be pretty easy to set an upperbound on this, however.\n\nFor covalent molecules, (excluding network solids) I'd suspect something on the order of 1500K in the absence of oxygen.\n\nFor network solids, maybe 3000K? This is a blind guess.\n\nFor ionic solids...hrm. I'm not even entirely sure if it would be possible simply by heating. Eventually you'd wind up in the gaseous ionic state but I don't think heating provides a mechanism by which to facilitate electron exchange and get you back in the elemental state.\n\nThe relevant calculation, if you wanted to know the temperatures for sure, would be to take the bond energy to be less than the boltzmann constant times the temperature (in Kelvin)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "83ukwd", "title": "why human cloning is considered unethical?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83ukwd/eli5_why_human_cloning_is_considered_unethical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvklh75", "dvklhrw", "dvkm8rt", "dvkmhva", "dvkr2fm", "dvks7d9", "dvkzi6w"], "score": [26, 3, 12, 3, 2, 6, 3], "text": [" >  So for me cloning sounds like an amazing opportunity to start from scratch and have a normal life.\n\nYou do know cloning doesn't work like that, right? Cloning is just a way to make a baby with the same DNA as its \"parent\". This baby is an entirely separate individual, it still needs to grow, and despite having the same DNA it can still have a completely different personality, based on its life experiences.", "While this might not directly answer your question, one thing you might want to consider is that your clone wouldn't be *you*.  You'd still be you.  Your clone will just have the same genes as you, but that's only a tiny part of who you are - and, more importantly, even if you had an exact copy of yourself, your consciousness is still *yours*, so you wouldn't consider that copy as \"you\".\n\nIt's like having a child.  They might have half (or more!) of your genes, but you don't think of a kid as \"you having an opportunity to start from scratch\".  People want their children to have a better life than they did, of course - that happens with *any* children, though, not just clone children.", "First, just a note, there's a lot of different kinds of cloning (single tissue, single organ, whole individual, etc). Whole individual is the one considered unethical, and what we'll talk about. \n\nAnyway, there's a couple issues here:\n\n1. Cloning technology has a long way to go. . Clones don't live nearly as long as naturally conceived members of the species, and have all kinds of health problems. To create a human clone would be to deliberately create a living, thinking individual who will never have a normal life due to health complications caused by the cloning process. That is considered very unethical. \n2. Some are concerned that clones wouldn't have the same rights as regular humans, and may be created only to provide genetically-identical replacement organs and the like for transplant into the original. \n3. What you're describing - creating a new individual to give a better life to than you had - applied to just having children normally. Whether or not they're genetically identical to you, or even related at all, you have an opportunity to give them a better, happier life. You don't need cloning for that. ", "Have you heard that some scientists are currently attempting to help PTSD and depression by eliminating bad memories from your brain?  That might be something you wanna try rather than cloning.\n\nBut to answer your question people think cloning is going against god himself.  In addition, people don\u2019t like that science could potentially mess up and make a deformed clone or something.  I think it\u2019s more about doing the research and getting it to work and I\u2019d be fine with cloning.", " > I suffer from depression and anxiety because things that happened when I was a kid (PTSD). So for me cloning sounds like an amazing opportunity to start from scratch and have a normal life. \n\nYour depression and anxiety could be due to genetics, though. Therefore, your clone may still develop depression and anxiety.\n\nI believe the reason why it is unethical right now is because it fucks up the genetic pool. The main reason why we reproduce with another person is because it allows your genetic mixing and produce a new organism. If you have 100s of clones of a few people, you severely limit the genetic variation. You'll effectively hinder evolution.\n\nAt the same time, cloning human is also unethical because it will be limited to those who can actually afford it. So imagine 100s of hitlers or DJT walking around.", "Some reasons.\n\n1) Religion. If cloning succeed, it either means that soul does not exist, either that human successfully created souls, either than not every human-like has soul, either that God created a soul for the clone and approved that kind of scientific experience. And most likely, there is no way of saying which one is \"right\", leading to a lot of morality questions.\n\n2) Human experimentation. Experience mean failures, and sometimes failure that look like success until too late. Animal experimentation are already at the limit of the morality, so human experimentation...\n\n3) Human great replacement fear. People fear that immigrants them. They fear that AIs replace them. So of course they fear that clones might replace them.\n\n4) Eugenisme. If clonage is possible, most likely you can make \"improved clonage\", with better capacities. Why \"improving humanity\" by genetic selection is unethical is another (quite complex) question, but it is currently considered as unethical.", " > A opportunity to start in a better place.\n\nBut it wouldn't be your opportunity, just some random other kid's.  What is so special about your DNA? Why can't the \"normal life\" of any random child fulfill this desire for you?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "13b3zz", "title": "why are booze and cigarettes so expensive in canada as opposed to the states?", "selftext": "Moved here (Nova Scotia) last year and it's been bugging me (I have quit smoking though!)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13b3zz/why_are_booze_and_cigarettes_so_expensive_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c72dmdg", "c72dmji", "c72dn59", "c72edrs"], "score": [6, 16, 6, 2], "text": ["We pay much higher taxes on these items for one. I don't know how Liquor is controlled in NS but in Ontario, liquor is sold only through a provincial monopoly or by institutions with a liquor license. I do know we pay high taxes on ciggarettes.\n\nELI5: Do you know how Mommy and Daddy sometimes don't let you have candy because it's bad  for you? The government does the same thing with adult candies, and not just because they are bad for you. When you want candy, sometimes mommy and daddy will let you have some if you clean your room. The government does the same thing with ciggarettes-because they are bad for people, the government makes you pay more. The U.S. is like your uncle-he just lets you have candy, because he doesn't see the point in babying you! But mommy and Daddy know they can get you to clean your room this way and they make sure you can't have too much candy.\n\nWell that was my best attempt for now, even though I know it's not perfect.", "Taxes, lots and lots of taxes. Its called sin tax, my girlfriend did her masters paper on it. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nfrom the wiki page on canada taxation: Both the federal and provincial governments impose excise taxes on inelastic goods such as cigarettes, gasoline, alcohol, and for vehicle air conditioners. A great bulk of the retail price of cigarettes and alcohol are excise taxes. The vehicle air conditioner tax is currently set at $100 per air conditioning unit. Canada has some of the highest rates of taxes on cigarettes and alcohol in the world. These are sometimes referred to as sin taxes. It is generally accepted that higher prices deter consumption of these items which have been deemed to increase health care costs stemming from those who use them.", "It's terrible in England too!\n\nThe government will say it's to discourage people from smoking.\nSmokers will say it because the government knows it can tax whatever it wants on cigarettes, and their addiction will force people to pay whatever price the government wants to extort them for.\nHospitals will say its to balance the cost that smokers take to treat their smoking-related illnesses. In countries other than the US healthcare is often publicly funded, so this might be why the US is cheaper overall. Also, America is much bigger on the whole freedom thing whereas the UK government will be criticised if it doesn't show enough incentive to improve public health.", "FYI - EVERYTHING is more expensive in Nova Scotia. Went there for vacation over the summer\n\nMilk - Maryland = $3.50 / NS = ~$6\n\nIce Cream - Maryland = $4 / NS = ~$7\n\nEggs - Maryland $3 / NS = ~$5"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_tax"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "26wntc", "title": "If Silly Putty is hit forcefully, it keeps it shape and bounces back. However, if it is pressed slowly, it loses its shape easily. Does that mean it's slightly non-Newtonian?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26wntc/if_silly_putty_is_hit_forcefully_it_keeps_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chvb10i"], "score": [12], "text": ["By definition it is *completely* non-Newtonian.\n\nIn more technical terms, a Newtonian fluid has a shear rate (flow) that is proportional to the shear stress (essentially an applied pressure) in the fluid.  The relationship between shear rate and shear stress in a Newtonian fluid is governed solely by the fluid's viscosity.  The amount or duration of an applied stress plays no role in the resulting shear rate.  Since Silly Putty does not fit this model, it is non-Newtonian.\n\nAs you've pointed out, there is a time-dependence to its viscoelasticity: over long time periods it acts as a fluid, while short impacts demonstrate elastic behavior.  This is the definition of a thixotropic material."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3t2ahd", "title": "Does the heat generated by a military grade laser weapon generate any \"impact\" when striking a target or do they only generate heat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3t2ahd/does_the_heat_generated_by_a_military_grade_laser/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx2wq1i"], "score": [15], "text": ["Theoretically, there is some momentum transfer from light reflecting off of or being absorbed by the target, but it won't be very noticeable.\n\nHowever, a sufficiently powerful laser that strikes an object will vaporize the part of the object the laser strikes. This will generate rapidly expanding gas. If there's enough energy transfer, the practical effect is an explosion where the laser strikes the object. \n\nThis could make it appear that the laser 'impacted' the target and blew it backwards."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ovukh", "title": "bra sizing???", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ovukh/eli5_bra_sizing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3kg4ez", "c3kgq30", "c3kh5bv", "c3khfa1", "c3khw5e", "c3ki94b", "c3kic7g", "c3kif7i", "c3kl59n"], "score": [370, 16, 60, 4, 2, 7, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["You measure the circumference of your ribcage just under your breasts, then you measure around at the fullest at your breasts. \n\nNow there are two methods of calculation. One tells you to subtract the ribcage measurement from the breast measurement, the other tells you to add 2-4 inches to the ribcage measurement. This is because decades ago when stretchy materials like Lycra didn't exist, you need to add some inches to the band in order to be comfortable. \n\nSo most modern day bra manufacturers (at least in the US) use the modern method. Let say your ribcage measurement is 34 and breast measurement is 38. You subtract 38-34 = 4. The ribcage measurement will be the band size (so it's 34) and every inch difference will be one cup up (if you get 1 inch difference you have A cup, 2 inch difference you have B cup. In our example the difference is 4 inches, so congratulations you have D cup boobs). Our bra size is 34D. \n\nIt might be a little confusing when you get to more than 5 inches in difference. Back in the 50's the biggest cup available was D (I guess they didn't foresee breast implant become popular or people getting fatter), so when they realized they need to make even bigger cup sizes, they just add an extra D thinking boobs cannot possibly get any bigger (most old ladies at the time wore one-piece corslettes, bra was something younger and slimmer women would buy). When they needed to make yet bigger cups, some manufacturers decides to make DDD and others decides to go up one letter to E. There isn't a standard on cup sizing beyond DD so some bras cups will be A-B-C-D-DD-DDD-E while other bras cups will be A-B-C-D-DD-E-F. (I've noticed DDD is more common in the US while DD-E is more common in the UK).\n\nTake note though, finding the correct sizing is only the beginning. Bra manufacturer may or may not make the bra according to the size or make bras that's just not suitable for your shape. Therefore it's very important to try several different sizes/styles on and learn what's the best design for you. ", "Cup sizes are also relative to band size. So a \"C cup\" for a 32 will be smaller than a \"C cup\" on a 38.\n\nSizes/fits can also vary QUITE a bit between manufacturers, as cecikierk said, so trying them on (even once you know what size/styles work for you) is pretty much essential to getting something that fits.\n\n[This chick explains the whole thing pretty well](_URL_0_) and is super cute to boot.", "You're 5. Don't play with daddy's toys.", "If anyone has any other questions or just wants to read more on the subject [/r/TwoXChromosomes](/r/TwoXChromosomes) has lots of posts/threads devoted to this topic that go into a little bit more detail about sizing/shopping/etc. (if you want more information than a 5 year old.) ", "Based on cecikierk's explanation:\nRibcage: 31in\nBust: 35in\nTIL I'm roughly a 32D. Was not expecting that at all... However, this will make shopping for bras even harder than it was before. Great.", "\"You got the A, B, C the D. That's the biggest.\"", "Furthering my belief that everything I need to know I learned in an episode of Seinfeld.", "The number is the length around the chest. The letter is volume.\n\nThe bigger the number, the wider the woman is.\n\nThe bigger the letter, the bigger the boobs.", "Shouldn't this question be directed at the sub-reddit \"Explain like I'm 8-11 depending on your individual development?\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syiA4yelmYk"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9h2r91", "title": "Why were the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century so much smaller than the Roman armies fielded during the Roman civil wars? How did Belisarius retake the Italian Peninsula with 7,500 men?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9h2r91/why_were_the_armies_of_the_eastern_roman_empire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ea3jbt7", "e690xds", "e691ek6"], "score": [2, 132, 14], "text": ["If you read the first few paragraphs of chapter 5 of the Gothic Wars 1, which is handily free and online as copyright has expired on H.B. Dewing's translation (see here: _URL_0_ ), then you will see that there were three invasions of Italy, not just Belisarius'. \n\nMundus: \"And he first commanded Mundus, the general of Illyricum, to go to Dalmatia, which was subject to the Goths, and make trial of Salones.\"\n\nThe Franks: \"And he also sent a letter to the leaders of the Franks as follows: \"The Goths, having seized by violence Italy, which was ours, have not only refused absolutely to give it back, but have committed further acts of injustice against us which are unendurable and pass beyond all bounds. For this reason we have been compelled to take the field against them, and it is proper that you should join with us in waging this war, which is rendered yours as well as ours not only by the orthodox faith, which rejects the opinion of the Arians, but also by the enmity we both feel toward the Goths.\" Such was the emperor's letter; and making a gift of money to them, he agreed to give more as soon as they should take an active part. And they with all zeal promised to fight in alliance with him.\"\n\nFinally, Belisarius: \"As for Belisarius, he put in at Sicily and took Catana.\"\n\nBelisarius was essentially invading a country denuded of soldiers, as the Goths were focussing on the North to fight Mundus and the Franks. \n\nIt's worthwhile taking Belisarius out of the spotlight of history at times to really appreciate why he was successful. \n\nSources: Procopius, Gothic Wars 1/History of the Wars V, Chapter five, lines 44-50.", "\"Why were the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century so much smaller than the Roman armies fielded during the Roman civil wars?\"\n\n**Short Answer**\n\nThe Eastern Roman Empire had small field armies during the 6th century because it was almost bankrupt and therefore couldn't afford to raise large armies. \n\n**Long Answer**\n\nI'd like to start by clearing up a common misconception - the overall size of the later Roman army was actually bigger than it was during the times of Augustus and Trajan. Under the reign of Tiberius the army was about 255,000 men - 125,000 legionnaires, 5000 praetorians, and 125,000 auxiliaries. The Roman army of the early 5th century was theoretically about 400,000 men in total, but was understaffed so was probably closer to 300-350,000. The early imperial army was organised into legions, large bodies of thousands of men that regularly fought, whereas the later army was organised into *comitatenses*; fighting units of 1000 men each. Furthermore, most of the later Roman army were the *limitanei*, which were border garrisons who were rarely involved in campaigns. This means that even though the later Roman army was very large, most of its units did not go on campaign, giving the impression that the later Roman army was far smaller than it actually was. Obviously, when the western half of the empire fell the western armies fell with it. Despite this loss, the ERE could still maintain an army of around 200,000 men. I mention this because the Eastern Roman armies of the 6th century were not typical and should not be seen as representative of the Eastern Roman Empire as a whole. \n\nThe reason the size of Roman armies took a nosedive in the middle of the 6th century is as a result of emperor Justinian and his incredible spending habits. Justinian haemorrhaged money. His vast building programmes, expensive treaties with the Persians, and most of all his attempted reconquest of the west bankrupted the empire. The reason Belisarius had only 7,500 men to start taking Italy (he did get reinforcements later in the campaign) was because that was literally all the emperor could afford to spare at that time, and he removed the *limitanei* from the Danube river to create this army. When he invaded North Africa just before this campaign, Belisarius had around 17,000 men, but had to leave half of them behind as a garrison. Procopius' The Wars tells us that Belisarius was almost constantly asking Justinian for more money, supplies and men. Even then, a lot of the men went unpaid and the garrisons of North Africa mutinied in 536 because they had not been paid for *years*. From this we can suppose that the imperial treasury was empty - not in a figurative way, at times it was literally empty and the army couldn't be paid. There was also the first recorded outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 541, which killed about 25% of the empire and further limited sources of tax income and soldiers. According to the chronicler John Malalas, in 553 Justinian attempted a drastic debasing of coinage so he could mint more coins and pay the army, but rioting across the empire followed and the policy was scrapped. In the late 540s and early 550s in particular, the sources paint an almost uniform picture of an empire on the brink of financial collapse because of wars and plague. Justinian probably did have some money left, but the empire was certainly losing money fast. \n\nThis was not helped by the wars in Italy. You say that Belisarius retook Italy with 7,500 men, but in truth he did not have control. In 540 AD, Belisarius entered Revenna, the Gothic capital, and declared mission accomplished. There was then a 13 year war between Belisarius' men and a Gothic insurgency led by Totila. The war devastated the region - when Belisarius retook Rome for the second time (Totila conquered it in 549) he found nobody there; even Rome itself was abandoned by its inhabitants as a result of the war. Even once the Goths were fully defeated in 554, the Exarch of Revenna and the Bishop of Rome routinely wrote to Constantinople asking for money to rebuild - Italy was a money sink. North Africa did not go much better - in the 540s the Moors unified to fight the Romans and the Romans could not pin them down, which meant another protracted war, though North Africa did eventually become profitable. In the 550s and 60s, Avars and Bulgars got in on the carnage and raided the Balkans as far as Constantinople's suburbs. There were supposed to be garrisons along the Danube to prevent this, but the troops had been stripped from them to fight for Belisarius and the empire could not afford replacements. The Long Walls, Constantinople's first line of defence, was completely unmanned and the Avars were able to reach the suburbs of Constantinople before facing any notable resistance from the army at all. The whole episode was farcical and costly, and a focal point of Procopius\u2019 anger toward Justinian. From the 530s well into the 560s, the empire was broke and therefore unable to raise armies. \n\nThe extended territory created by Justinian's reconquest stretched the Roman army even thinner and even more units became *limitanei*. Southern Spain, North Africa, and Italy all needed extensive garrisons which took men away from the mobile field armies. By the early 7th century, the situation had recovered and field armies were once again in the tens of thousands, but never the 70,000 men that was previously typical of major wars (see Vitellius' army during the Year of Four Emperors, or the Roman army that fought the Jewish War). That being said, even during the Last Great War of Antiquity (608-28), a climactic war of attrition between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, Roman armies were always over 20,000 soldiers despite suffering serious losses of territory and men throughout the war. \n\nSources: \n\nMitchell, Stephen. A history of the later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. John Wiley  &  Sons, 2014\n\nCameron, Averil. Procopius and the Sixth Century. London: Duckworth, 1985.\n\nScott, Roger D. \"Malalas, the secret history, and Justinian's propaganda.\" Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985): 99-109.\n\nSarris, Peter. Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian. Cambridge University Press, 2006.\n\nEvans, J. A. S. The Age of Justinian the Circumstances of Imperial Power. London ; New York: Routledge, 1996.\n\nMoorhead, John. Justinian. Routledge, 2013.\n\n\n\n\n", "I answered a similar question about the size of Belisarius' army in Italy _URL_0_ and explain some of the reasons that Justinian may have had for sending Belisarius to Italy with only 7,500 men (and also why those 7,500 men weren't as \"small\" of a force as we perceive them to be). That being said, Eastern Roman armies actually weren't smaller in the 6th century. When Belisarius retook North Africa from the Vandals he actually had around 15-17,000 men with him. On top of this the total strength of the Eastern military at this time was around 200,000 men. As my linked answer explains, Justinian initial sent Belisarius to capture Sicily, and sent a separate army commanded by Mundus to capture Dalmatia, both of which would have allowed the emperor to reinforce Belisarius should the need to do so arise. The size, and composition, of Belisarius' army was most likely a strategic choice that served several purposes. One of these purposes would have been to trick the Goths into thinking that it was just a garrison force heading for Carthage, and that they were simply stopping in Sicily for a short time. Another purpose would have been the added mobility that came with an army of this size that was composed of large number of cavalry. It should also be noted that while the Eastern military totaled about 200,000 men, that these men would not have all been available for the Gothic war. Some of them would have been needed to defend the Danubian border, which was fairly long, and some of course would have been needed along the border with Persia (with whom the Romans had been at war with only 4 years before Belisarius went to Italy). In fact the Persians broke a peace treaty with the Empire in 540, while Belisarius was still fighting in Italy. \n \n\n\nSources:\nWarfare in Medieval Europe, Bernard S. Bachrach and Davis S. Bachrach"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20298/20298-h/20298-h.htm#Page_1"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96nmcf/when_belisarius_was_sent_to_reconquer_italy_he/e42qc68/"]]}
{"q_id": "4cjgl9", "title": "If I had a very fast and accurate camera, could I see a speaker cone move sample by sample?", "selftext": "Let's assume we're playing CD audio through a speaker. Would each sample of the waveform be detectable as pauses or slowdowns of the cone? Sense suggests there would be capacitors \"smoothing out\" the waveform at higher frequencies, but surely some effect could remain?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4cjgl9/if_i_had_a_very_fast_and_accurate_camera_could_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1itpk1", "d1j7vn0", "d1jaoac"], "score": [3, 13, 2], "text": ["The cone of the speaker has to move. So there would have to be a smoothing out of the samples. How many samples are required to reproduce a sound is related by the nyquist frequency. If your signal sampling rate matches or exceeds that you hear a sound of the recorded frequency.\n\n:edit: So back to your actual question, shoot at a higher frame rate then syncronize. But you're just sampling the speakers movement again.", "This question is unfortunately leading. And I will answer, hopefully in sufficient detail for you. But before I do, I want to point out to anyone looking to use my statements as an argument against digital music when compared to analog (in other words cd vs vinyl) **even with these distortions, digital music has a higher SNR than analog and recreates the source sound better.** Anyway, on with the discussion.\n\nNow you ask about discrete jumps, at some level, yes there would be. There actually two different forces at work here. \n\n1.) Because the music is digital there is finite precision in the audio range outputs\n\n2.) Sampling makes the time intervals discrete\n\nSo let me address each individually, starting with the first. The D to A has some finite precision. If the D to A could reproduce the input exactly, you would have something that looked like [this](_URL_3_). From the picture you can see sharp edges for 3 bit quantization. Now I could talk about how all of this gets smoothed out so you would have some sort of interpolation function between the points instead of those crisp breaks. You do not need to worry about that though, because every bit of precision gets you exponentially closer to the original source. In other words \n\n| x(t) -x_d (t) |  <  2^-q \n\nassuming that x(t) has been normalized to 1. So is it there? Yes, but in practice you would not be able to observe it over a single frame. Indeed consider it a binary detection problem. Given our observation, you want to determine if the signal is x(t) or the discrete version x_d(t). Well by the bound earlier, we know these are separated by at most 2^-q , where q is bits of precision. It is not hard to see that the further apart two values are the easier it is to decide between them. Therefore determining between the discrete and non discrete signal will be harder than deciding between 0 and 2^-q . Now, if there is no noise, it is very east to differentiate 0 and 2^-q , but in real world applications there exists noise. The most pertinent question now becomes, given there is noise, what is the probability of being able to reliably detect the discrete version given n samples. The (maximum) probability of being able to detect the discrete version given both true and quantized are corrupted with 0-mean s-standard deviation gaussian noise is roughly exp(-n2^-2q / s^2 ). This is because for all binary hypothesis testing problems with independent samples the probability of detection the exp(-n * KL divergence between the two distributions) and from the [the kl divergence between two gaussians, thanks to mpiktas on stack exchange](_URL_5_). In realistic terms, say you wanted to determine if the signal is the true version or the quantized version with probability of error 1/4. The number of samples you would need would be (s 2^q )^2. Considering s fixed, then n scales exponentially with 2 times the number of quantization bits. For 16 bits you would need s^2 * 42949672 samples to have a 3/4 probability of differentiating the two. Not exactly practically observable. \n\nSo now for the second consideration, the discrete time values. IN specific lets say you sample a waveform at twice the highest frequency (2*Fs). [If we view the frequency domain of the sampled signal in comparison to the frequency domain of the original signal we see that they are similar except the sampled version has replicas of itself centered at every Fs](_URL_4_). Why is this important? Well, with a perfect low pass filter, it would possible to recreate EXACTLY the original signal. Exactly. No error, whatsoever. The problem? Perfect Low pass filters are non causal. But how well can we approximate them? [Very well in fact, note these are FIRs, which is important.](_URL_1_) But the need for those steep cut offs can be eliminated by increasing the sampling frequency. In the end, you can estimate your reconstructed signal as the true signal + noise at -80 dB. If you were inclined, you could find out what 80 dB roughly corresponded to in terms of a noise estimate, and then back out something like the previous example by considering a binary hypothesis test and what not, but you will get something similar to before, you would need a VERY LARGE number of samples to differentiate between the signal and the signal that has been sampled. \n\nThese things are also what cloud peoples view in the digital vs analog debate and why I added a disclaimer. So to fully answer your question, **yes there exist artifacts due to signal being digital at one point, but to empirically determine their existence is not practically feasible.**\n\n\nedit-- Fixed some spelling mistakes\n\nAlso wanted to add that all of what I wrote is obviously on the signal processing end. And the conclusion is that it is **practically impossible to determine the difference between a quantized and sampled signal and one which has not before it even reaches the speaker.** Then because speakers are approximately linear time invariant systems (time invariant is obvious, linear otherwise you have multiples of the frequency), you can determine how a speaker responds to an impulse. Furthermore, it is obvious what the ideal frequency response of a speaker is (flat) and so it follows the ideal impulse response of the signal would look like [this](_URL_2_). You can compare those with the [impulse response of an actual speaker](_URL_0_) and see that in fact they are pretty similar.", "I'd go with \"maybe, but not too distinctly\" because of the following technical reason: if you go shopping for headphones for example, you'd see that they all specify the frequency range they are rated for, the high end of which rarely goes above 20kHz. Which is where (or somewhat past where) the power of the driver becomes entirely insufficient to overcome the inertia of the coil and the cone and the whole thing acts as a low-pass filter.\n\nWhich in turn means that when you send say a +1.0, -1.0, +1.0, -1.0, ... signal at 44.2 kHz, the cone still shows some induced oscillations of course, but at a small fraction of the full range. So it's nothing like what you imagined, the position of the coil reaching close to the target position noticeably before the end of the sample, it's smoothed out at a much larger scale than this. Oh, and of course it only get worse when you send a realistic signal that changes by little between samples, because the smaller the change the slower the response (LCD used to suffer from a related problem, with really sucky gray-to-gray transition latencies).\n\nAnother thing to note is that even if you used a crazy light coil and powerful driver for some reason, so that you could see the unsmoothed structure between samples (and maybe the coil overshooting and wobbling and stuff!) with a high-speed camera, there's no way you could detect it with a detector that can only respond to frequencies up to 20kHz, such as human ear.\n\nOn a related note, a much more practically interesting problem is what happens if you use a \"high quality\" 192kHz audio feed. [Here's an article by one of the Xiph guys about it](_URL_0_), tl;dr: if your source material contains noise above 20kHz (which is noise by definition since you can't hear it on ideal equipment) (and if there's nothing above 20kHz, then why are you using more than 40kHz discretization?), then these low-pass-filter-related nonlinearities are going to turn into audible noise. But I recommend to read the whole article, it even has examples."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.regonaudio.com/Quad%20impcoranduncorr.jpg", "http://www.mathworks.com/help/examples/dsp_product/lpfirdemo_02.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Sinc_function_%28neutral%29.jpg", "http://www.ni.com/cms/images/devzone/tut/Fig_9_3-bit_vs_16-bit_ADC.JPG", "http://images.books24x7.com/bookimages/id_7567/fig69_01.jpg", "http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7440/kl-divergence-between-two-univariate-gaussians"], ["https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html"]]}
{"q_id": "8zooqt", "title": "what would happen if a nuclear power plant was left unattended?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zooqt/eli5_what_would_happen_if_a_nuclear_power_plant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2k9mtt", "e2k9q83", "e2k9sqx", "e2k9v0c", "e2k9yj5", "e2kbeqs", "e2kiy26", "e2kysvr"], "score": [8, 87, 7, 6, 2, 11, 2, 2], "text": ["Most of these things are designed to shut themselves down if they don't receive maintenance.  So probably they won't be the huge problem shown in, like, 'last man on earth'", "There are safeguards that would trigger and shut the whole thing down safely. They'd just turn off.\n\nIf you're asking about potential for meltdown, that's possible but exceedingly unlikely. Even in that case, most reactors (all American reactors) are designed to meltdown as safely as possible.\n\nMost people don't know that a \"meltdown\" is actually a safety feature. The reactor is positioned over a huge block of cement. In the event of an uncontrolled reactor (it's still not a bomb), the heat generated melts the cement, the reactor sinks, and the cement hardens behind it, \"melting down\" into a cement tomb designed to contain the reactor and radiation for as long as it has to.", "A nuclear plant with modern safety systems would likely eventually encounter some sort of fault scenario and shut itself down. They are designed to be *extremely* failsafe now, both due to the actual threat presented, and the perception of threat presented. ", "My former nuclear engineering roommate explained it to me like this: without monitoring it may overheat. When this happens there are automated emergency processes that try to make it not overheat anymore and stop the reaction. If those fail it will keep getting hotter and things will start to melt down through the floor. There's no nuclear explosion but it's possible for there to be a sudden release of pressurized steam or hydrogen if things have gone really bad.", "It depends a bit on the circumstances under which it was abandoned, but assuming it was left in normal operating conditions, the automatic safety systems would shut the reactor down with very little danger to the surrounding area once the lack of people had caused something important to fail.", "To add to what's been said, the vast majority of land based nuclear reactors are designed in such a way that the water surrounding the core is necessary for the chain reaction to continue. Even if every SCRAM fail-safe fails, once the water boils off the core, the reaction stops. That doesn\u2019t prevent a meltdown, but it does limit the danger of one. The fuel would melt and pool at the bottom of the reaction vessel. It might leak and it might make it into the water table (all of which would be bad but for chemical and not radiological reasons, mainly). Pretty quickly, however, the molten core would cool and solidify. It would remain dangerously radioactive for millennia, but it would never \u201cgo off\u201d like a nuclear bomb.\n\nNaval and some Soviet designs don\u2019t work this way. They're essentially slow burning bombs, as I understand them. The good news is that water is just about the best shielding against radiation you could ever ask for and as long as the ship goes down in deep water, there's no problem. This has, in fact, happened. A submarine at the bottom of the ocean is probably a better containment vessel than anything we could engineer for the task. Even then, they wouldn\u2019t go off like a nuclear weapon. They\u2019d melt down and continue reacting until the fuel was dispersed or depleted.\n\nChernobyl style reactors, however? Don\u2019t be down wind of them if civilization collapses. They explode, but still not a nuclear explosion. They'll kick a whole cloud if radioactive death into the atmosphere though. They're closest to what we would call a \u201cdirty bomb\u201d.\n\nI\u2019m not a professional. I\u2019m just a nuclear hobbyist. Some people collect stamps.", "These answers about automatic shutdown are correct, but if the plant remained unattended, say for months or years, then eventually things would start to break, cooling would cease to function as designed, and there would be a probable meltdown.  In this scenario, there would be no ongoing chain reaction but the fuel would still generate enough decay heat to heat up and boil a few days or weeks after the last cooling pump stopped working.  With no one at the plant to maintain the pumps, the pumps will certainly fail eventually, then the fuel will heat up and melt.  Once the fuel melts it may melt through the bottom of the reactor vessel and drop to the floor of the containment structure.  Since this scenario takes so long to evolve, the final melting will happen in a fully depressurization system with relatively low decay heat, so the fuel wouldn\u2019t be so likely to be hot enough to burns through the concrete floor.\n\nThe discussion above assumes that everyone simply has lost their mind and has just forgotten about the plant, but has continued to provide electricity to power the pumps.  If electricity vanishes with the missing attendants, then the plant would automatically shut down and cool itself, by itself, until the diesel tanks were empty, at which time the emergency diesels stop generating emergency power, the cooling pumps stop, and the meltdown scenario would begin.  Plants are required to have a 30 day supply of emergency power.  If no attendants are available to restore electrical power at the end of 30 days then the pumps would stop, the cooling water would boil away, the fuel would melt, the bottom of the vessel would melt and the molten floor would spill onto the concrete containment floor.  At 30 days the decay heat is sort of high, so the containment might be more challenged.\n\nThe result would not be like Fukushima because Fukushima lost cooling within a day or so after shutting down so decay heat was very high.  The above scenarios happen with much lower decay heat, so would be dramatically less hideously spectacular.", "Edit: TL;DR- not much.\n\nWell it depends on what type of reactor we are talking about. But let's assume it's simplified pressurized water reactor with a simplified steam plant attached.\n\nNow, the type of apocalyptic scenario will play some apply some key features. In all scenarios where there is one trained operator alive and functional, he will ensure the reactor is in a safe condition before abandoning. It will be ultimately recoverable and functional. There will be no contamination of anything in the surrounding environment for over 3000 years assuming all material requirements/inspections were above board during construction and maintenance. The internal metallic components (which are submerged in water) should have minimal corrosion for over 200 years assuming the system remains closed (a reasonable assumption) and will still be functional.\n\nWe must in any \"interesting\" scenarios remove all operators from ensuring a safe and effective shutdown.\n\n**Let's first assume that the reactor and attached plant are simply abandoned in place and that the society around it for all intents and purposes ceases to exist.**\n\nThe only loads to the steam system will be the power utilized by the plant itself (associated pumps, heating rods, indicators, ect). With no electric load the Steam System will fail to cool the reactor side water. The inlet temperature will rise which will cause lowering of thermal neutron density in the core. This means Reactor Power will lower to almost nothing. Excess heat generated by the Reactor will reach equilibrium with losses to ambient. Power will remain stable at  < 1%. Since no person is around to maintain rod height, temperature will lower in a compensatory fashion as more fuel is expended. Overall temperature of the plant will eventually reach a set point and the reactor will scram to prevent a cold water incursion. The reactor and associated plant will remain dormant essentially indefinitely until a trained team of operators commences with a properly executed startup procedure. \n\n**Now let's assume a non directed physical assault on the plant from an external source (i.e. earthquake, or if on a ship a collision). The operators are all incapacitated simultaneously.**\n\nReactor control rods will immediately be driven to the bottom of the core. Reactor power will immediately reach the subcritical range (any fission events will not result in a chain reaction). For Plants with a fill system the pumps will fill the entire reactor compartment with water from a fill system. The plant will likely be damaged but contained.  The containment features of any plant will make contamination spread highly unlikely (astronomically unlikely). The plant will likely be unrecoverable without significant maintenance if at all.\n\n**Final scenario is a directed attack whether internal or external to the plant. All operators are either incapacitated or directly working to sabotage the system safeties**\n\nOne level of containment will be immediately lost. Trained saboteurs will likely attempt to create a cold water incursion as that is the most assured way to destroy primary containment. The problem is that this will immediately disengage irrecoverable safeties. The plant is completely irrecoverable at this point. Further containment will prevent spread of the system to the surrounding environment (barring sabotage). Dilution will rapidly occur as reactor fill systems kick in (barring sabotage). The water will be highly radioactive but localized and designed to stay inside the plant. A significant flooding event would be required to spread the contaminated water.\n\nAssuming a missile or other external strike. The reactor will scram. The strike will breach outer containment. No other layer of containment will likely be affected. The Reactor plant will be largely unaffected (and shutdown). Recovery of the Reactor plant will be possible, but the steam plant will need to be rebuilt."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1k1jso", "title": "The Byzantine Empire often gets remarkably little attention in the history of civilization. Are there any notable advances in science or culture that can be directly traced back to Byzantine innovators?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k1jso/the_byzantine_empire_often_gets_remarkably_little/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbkheb4", "cbkjl01", "cbkm08g", "cbkobb5"], "score": [2, 29, 68, 76], "text": ["The one that comes to mind is [Greek fire](_URL_0_), however the technology was kept secret and eventually lost.", "I think the way that you asked the question reveals a lot about how Western Civilization is largely a constructed narrative of \"progress,\" and because of this, the Byzantine empire has been largely omitted from those narratives. The contemporary Anglophone narrative of Plato to NATO was developed in western Europe, and drew a line from (maybe Egypt and/or Sumeria to) Greece, then Rome, then the fall of Rome and the \"Dark Ages,\" then the Renaissance (the rebirth of Classical civilization), scientific revolution, Enlightenment, industrial revolution, modernity. In this narrative, the geographical focus is the western Roman empire, and \"progress\" is defined as pretty much whatever things could be identified in the past that most closely resemble what we have now; you've demonstrated with this question that this is basically the education that you've gotten, as you've asked what \"advances\" Byzantium made toward \"culture\" or \"science.\" You're not in trouble or anything, it's just that this is a question that a professional historian would never ask, or at least, not in the last fifty years. \n\nWestern historians, since the Renaissance and right though the last five hundred years, have essentially selected a few groups of people from the past as our \"ancestors,\" and whatever they did that we approve of--or did not do--we take as an \"advance\" or more rarely a kind of retrogression. This suggests that history is a kind of linear progression from the distant past up until the natural, inevitable *now*. The Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium was excluded from that, perhaps due to geography (although that didn't seem to be a problem for the ancient Greeks), perhaps due to its rule under the Ottoman Turks since the fifteenth century. Being \"Muslim\" territory effectively excluded it from the Christian \"we\" that was writing Western Civilization, and thus there was no real need to look at Byzantine history as a source of \"progress.\" This is evidenced by how nonsensical the \"dark ages\" are if we look east of the Adriatic Sea, where things were not particularly \"dark\" at all. But, clearly, narratives of the West haven't done that for several hundred years, so we have no widely known examples of \"contributions\" from Byzantium. \n\nReally, though, these ancient civilizations have not bequeathed some set of progressive knowledge to us. \"Culture\" is not something that \"advances\" or declines, it just is. I'll get some pushback for this one, but I'd argue that \"science\" doesn't do that either. It makes a big deal about *telling us* that it does, since that's one of the ways that science, as a discourse, constructs and reinforces its authority. And, certainly, some forms of knowledge build upon other forms of knowledge; you can't really have modern knowledge of physiology, for example, without chemistry. But, we should be very wary of ascribing to knowledge the idea of \"progress.\" There's no forward or backward, there just is. \n\nSubstantially edited for clarity.", "Quite a few actually:\n\n1. The Cyrillic alphabet:  created by the Byzantine monk Cyril and Methodius in order to spread Christianity to the bulgars. Now used in most of the slavonic states (Russia, Bulgaria, etc)\n\n2. The solidus: this was a gold coin that kept his weight and purity for over 600 years, making it the equivalent of  the dollar or euro for its times. It was used not only in the Byzantine empire, but also in western Europe, the Middle-East and coins have been found even in Scandinavia - mostly due to the norse man serving in the Varangian. Also, when western Europe caught up in technology with the Byzantine empire, the kings would mint coins in the same style : denomination in the front, portrait in the back.\n\n3. The hand grenade\n\n4. Corpus Juris Civilis: or at its knows \"The Justinian Code\" - this set of laws became the foundation of the entire western legal system. ", "Advances, you say? Let's see...we have:\n\n1. Greek Fire\n2. Hand-held Flamethrowers\n3. Flamethrower Ships (Fire Dromons)\n4. Incendiary and corrosive chemical grenades (as well as \"terror\" [scorpion and snake] grenades)\n5. The Klivanion (highly-effective precursor to modern body armor)\n6. Trebuchets \n7. The Solenarion (a kind of Byzantine arrow guide)\n8. The Paramerion (sabre-like weapon)\n9. Inflatable Siege Ladders and other siege curiosities\n10. The Pendentive Dome (see Hagia Sophia)\n11. Improved and tolerant status of women (in regard to other states of the time)\n12. Proto-humanist and realistic art (heavily influencing the Renaissance)\n13. The University (see University of Constantinople)\n14. The Byzantine Suda (a form of encyclopedia) and other lexica\n15. State-run hospitals with separate patient wards and female doctors AND other social services, such as orphanages and alms-houses\n16. State-run primary, secondary, and tertiary schooling for the citizenry\n17. Advanced knowledge and compendia of medicine, herbal remedy, surgery, and diseases which propagated into the Renaissance and beyond\n18. Significant advances in musical composing and notation\n19. Of course, the previously-mentioned Cyrillic writing system\n20. Various studies, commentaries, and arguments of the classical treatises, as well as the preserving of such treatises past the sack of Constantinople via collaboration with Italian traders and Saracen scholars\n21. Advanced civic infrastructure (Constantinople was, by far, the largest city in Europe for most of the Medieval period)\n22. Advanced trade networks and book keeping (which heavily influenced the Italian maritime states)\n23. Various foodstuffs (fruits/salad combinations, several cheeses, specialty breads, confectionaries) appear to be Byzantine in origin, or were at least expanded upon by Byzantine culture. An understanding of the effects of various foods and spices (and the benefits of healthy eating) was documented and explored by several Byzantine authors.\n24. Standardized Military Manuals (Taktika, Strategikon, Praecepta Militaria) ensuring competent generalship and logistics in war\n25. Justinian's Code of Laws, as well as expansions by later rulers, such as Leo VI the Wise still exist in some countries today as the basis for their code of laws. Funny story: Leo VI's *Basilika* Code of Laws was used as a transitional law system for 13 years after the Greeks gained their independence in 1821!\n26. The rules of Byzantine diplomacy (mercy in war, protecting civilians whenever possible, fighting only when all other diplomatic options have been exhausted, etc.) which are covered in many Byzantine rulers' treatises, echo in today's diplomatic relations.\n27. I suppose, to some extent, iconography, especially dynastic icons (such as the Komnenian and Palaiologan Eagles) were expanded upon and highly prominent in Byzantine society\n28. Fashion. Byzantine silks, face veils, robes, and colored, patterned, and other stylish clothing influenced European fashion for several centuries at least.\n29. The women's \"dressing room\" (complete with perfumes, lotions, makeup, and other cosmetics) was highly prevalent in Byzantine society, and again, likely heavily influenced the modern perception.\n30. A form of Divine Right and strongly centralized government (with hints of popular influence) well before other Western powers had firmly established such a system.\n31. The Byzantine Orthodox Church, of course, has still been going strong since AD 313, not to mention the many other breakaway churches that have become autocephalous over the years. A good number of churches of Slavic Christianity owe their creation to Saint Vladimir's baptismal agreement with Byzantine Emperor Basil II. In exchange for the hand of Basil's lovely sister, Anna Porphyrogennita, and a contingent of 6,000 Varangian soldiers (which later became the Byzantine Varangian Guard), Vladimir the Great was required to be baptized as a Christian and baptize the entirety of his people, the Kievan Rus - not a bad deal, right? \n\nThere are many more, but this should be good for now.\n\nYou can read about these advances in some of my previous posts:\n\n[Byzantine Greek Fire weapons](_URL_1_)\n\n[Wonders of Constantinople](_URL_0_)\n\n**And, as always, please feel free to ask questions if you have any!**\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1iyf6e/what_was_the_difference_in_quality_of_life_in/cb9fuub", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ij7ot/what_were_considered_the_most_powerful_weapons/cb504e3"]]}
{"q_id": "1ql0rx", "title": "How long would it take for all the planets in our solar system to return to the exact same location as they are right now?", "selftext": "I am curious not about the planets individually, but the planets all together.  When will they next be in the same location as they are right now?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ql0rx/how_long_would_it_take_for_all_the_planets_in_our/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cddxkbq", "cddz9di", "cdetlt6"], "score": [7, 4, 2], "text": ["It depends on how precise you want to be about \"in the same location,\" but it'll ~~at least take centuries.~~ definitely be long after the Sun dies. \n\nFor every 1 Earth year, each planet completes this many orbits:\n\n* Mercury: 4.152\n\n* Venus: 1.626\n\n* Earth: 1\n\n* Mars: 0.532\n\n* Jupiter: 0.0843\n\n* Saturn: 0.0339\n\n* Uranus: 0.0112\n\n* Neptune: 0.00607\n\nTo find out how many years until they're all in the same place again, \"simply\" find a whole number *X* such that when each of the above values is multiplied by *X*, they are approximately whole numbers. *X* would then be the number of years until alignment. (... I think. Could be wrong, feel free to correct me.)\n\nEDIT: fixed estimate to match actual math", "This is extremely difficult to know with certainty.  The problem is that natural interactions and perturbations in the orbits of the planets cause their orbits, and thus their orbital periods, to change over time.  Remember that the solar system contains an untold number of bodies in various orbits around the sun and around each other.  These include the planets, their moons, an unknown number of comets and astroids, and other undiscovered bodies that continuously interact gravitationally with the rest of the solar system.  Simulating and predicting the paths of every single known *and unknown* body in the solar system is mind-bogglingly complex and prone to errors, and that's just considering short-term prediction.  Over the long-term, small differences and variations in the orbits of the planets and everything else in the solar system would start to mix things up beyond any methods of forecasting.\n\n\nAgain, these differences would be minute over short time scales (i.e., a few thousand Earth-years), but given tens-of-thousands of orbits (which could amount to millions of Earth-years for the outer planets), the changes would become increasingly difficult to predict with reasonable accuracy.  [The wiki article on the stability of the Solar System](_URL_1_) explains this in more detail, but the general idea is that the orbits and positions of the planets and everything else in the solar system become incredibly difficult to extrapolate over timescales exceeding 2 million Earth-years. \n\n[This response](_URL_0_) from below is logical if we assume the orbital periods will remain constant over a short time.  However, if you do the math based on the info sto-ifics42 provided, you get a rough estimate that the current positions of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, with respect to Earth, will reoccur approximately every 5 million Earth-years.  Given that this is more than double the limit of 2 million years (in terms of reasonable hopes for accuracy), it's reasonable to conclude that there's no way to know for sure when or if the current (or any particular previous) positions of the planets will ever reoccur exactly as before.  There's just far too much variation and complexity to be even reasonably sure.\n\n**TL;DR:  The solar system is huge and complex, orbits change, and thus accurate prediction becomes nearly impossible over the time scales required to create a reoccurrence of previous positions of the planets.**  ...and that actually kind of makes me sad.", "I think the questions being asked has been addressed, but I would like to add the elements of universal expansion, perturbation, local group motion and position within the Milky Way and I will say that statistically speaking we will never be in the same position again.\n\nAlso, depending on your definition of planet, it might make the math above a bit more complicated. Dwarf planets and minor planets might not be considered in our definition, but they are wanderers by nature."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ql0rx/how_long_would_it_take_for_all_the_planets_in_our/cddxkbq", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_of_the_Solar_System#Predictability"], []]}
{"q_id": "65gzhu", "title": "why did 'solar freaking roadways' never come into fruition?", "selftext": "For something that seemed to make so much sense/generate a lot of hype, why has the idea died off?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65gzhu/eli5_why_did_solar_freaking_roadways_never_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dga77oz", "dga7b0c", "dga7fjr", "dgaamzg", "dgab3ex", "dgacnik", "dgae6lz", "dgafl5d"], "score": [10, 29, 54, 8, 6, 6, 7, 2], "text": ["Because it was a horrid idea. Solar panels are not durable enough to be used as pavement, and they are definitely too fragile to have cars driving over them. ", " > why has the idea died off?\n\nBecause they tested it, and [it failed miserably](_URL_0_).\n\nTheir prototype couldn't actually be driven on, had multiple hardware failures and panels that were dead on arrival, and normal rain shorted out even more of them.\n\nSolar panels are much better served being installed on top of roofs, where they're angled to drain off water, and don't need to be tough enough to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure from cars and trucks.", "The people making it can't even figure out how to get a roughly 15 foot area of sidewalk panels to light up, let alone produce energy, and that's after several million dollars, and YEARS of work.\n\nThe entire designed is flawed, as they are too fragile, would never be able to reach 100 capacity (solar panels need to be angled towards the sun, road needs to be flat).\n\nPlus, glass is a HORRIBLE road surface. Aside from the fragility issue, the second it rains, you'd might as well be driving on ice it's be so slippery.\n\nOh, and it's also completely cost ineffective.", " >  seemed to make so much sense/generate a lot of hype\n\nIt never made any sense and the only hype it generated was all the talking about how stupid the whole idea was.", "You know what would also work? installing solar panels next to existing roads", "Because it was a stupid idea in the first place.  Maintenance costs alone would be astronomical.  Eventually rubber from the tires would build up and the panels' efficiency would tank.", "Because to everyone's surprise, solar power doesn't work when it's blocked from the sun. Which is what would happen when it's covered in dirt, snow, rubber marks and other various crap. It was a retarded idea based on that alone not to mention a whole host of other issues.", "After ELI5 check out EEVBLOG videos on YouTube and he goes in depth about why they are garbage "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/18/solar-road-has-total-and-epic-failure-as-83-of-its-panels-break-in-a-week/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21cbvw", "title": "if we put a large mirror 100 lightyears from earth, would we be able see the past?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21cbvw/eli5_if_we_put_a_large_mirror_100_lightyears_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbnh6m", "cgbnhjb", "cgboee4", "cgbra4o", "cgbssif", "cgbsyqv", "cgbz8qn", "cgc0zce", "cgc19v4", "cgc2fa0", "cgc2h5j", "cgc2jkz", "cgc3ezk", "cgc3wtq", "cgc4476", "cgc4ea2", "cgc4ham", "cgc4v5m", "cgc4zet"], "score": [39, 3, 471, 253, 24, 10, 7, 2, 5, 2, 5, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Assuming such a large mirror could possibly exist, then basically yes.  ~~Although, of course we wouldn't be able to see further back than the point the mirror was built (since we would only get light from it 100 years after it was put in place, and that light would only show us earth from 100 years prior to that).~~  But we would only be able to see as far back as 100 years prior to the end of the construction of the mirror, and it would also take at least 100 years to get there.", "Yes.  Assuming some amazing mirror 100 light years from earth, we could look at it and see things that happened 200 years previously.  (100 years for the light to get to the mirror, and 100 years for the light to get back to earth).\n\nNote that you'd have to spend 100 years going to the place you wanted to assemble the mirror (minimum).  It's not a time machine - you can't see anything from before you built the mirror.", "Technically, when you look in the mirror every morning, you are looking into the past.", "Yes, the returned light would be from the past, but just how large would the mirror theoretically have to be for us to see it (you mentioned really large)?\n\nIf light was bouncing from Earth towards the mirror, how many of those photons (at varying angles) would actually hit a mirror that far away, and how many would miss?  Any then of those that are reflected back, how many would actually reach all the way back in space precisely to the position of Earth where they could enter our telescopes?\n\nIn other words, unless the mirror was inconceivably huge, we would probably never be able to see it that far away, at least with any interesting detail.  [A huge, huge, planet that far away right now would appear as only a dim fuzzy dot.](_URL_0_)", "Hypothetically yes, but it involved light being bent by gravity to get to your mirror.\n\nAs many of the other posts here mention, you can't get the mirror there in time to see anything reflected prior to its construction, but only if the light goes in a straight line.\n\nIf light is bent like in this [mspaint drawing](_URL_0_), light from the past would be reflected back.", "I like this idea, but FWIW, if you can place a mirror there, you can (for far far less cost) put a space telescope there and just have it radio back its findings.  The mirror would preserve a whole lot of really useless information, like the image of the stars behind Earth, and light would travel twice as far (Earth - >  Mirror - >  Earth) without error correction, and light-loss-- light falls off with the square of the distance, so the light hitting Earth after a mirror bounce would be 1/4 of what the light the mirror is receiving from Earth (which, at 100ly, would be diddly squat).  Future Earth would basically be looking at a 200ly-distance planet and trying to pick up details.  A remote telescope instead of a mirror would be looking at a 100ly-distance object, and then sending pictures back to Earth with whatever fidelity the transmission allows, but it could conceivably be pretty good.  (That is, if you can build either the mirror or the telescope, you should already have the wherewithall to build a long-distance information transport of some kind.)", "what if you make a pole or a stick or something that you can push, that is 100 light years long, and there is a button on the other end of the stick. when you push the stick, will it instantly press the button?", "Yes and no.  I'm late to the party, but I think people are missing the point of the question.\n\nThe short answer is yes, there would be some amount of light that would manage to travel from the earth all the way to the mirror and back again.  If we looked at the mirror, we would be seeing a 200-year old reflection, and if we aimed right, we could probably see earth (or at least our solar system).  This happens everywhere we look.  Light takes time to travel to our eyes, so we always see things as they were in the past.  Up close, that time is usually so short that it's practically instantaneous; it's much more pronounced on astronomical scales.\n\nAll that said, I doubt we'd be able to see anything incredibly meaningful.  It would be like looking at any other planet that's 200 lightyears away - really dim and really tiny.  If it's just looking into the past in general that you're interested in, there are much better places to look.  If you're trying to see the Earth's past, specifically, we wouldn't be able to get a good enough picture to get anything more than historical records or calculations could tell us.", "It is a theoretical question meaning under ideal circumstances. stop commenting about the size of the mirror and how many photons would actually make it and not bounce off space rocks..", "consider this.  All the stars we currently see could be from hundreds of years ago but the light not reaching us until now. For all we know it could have supernova'd already", "This would be the perfect department store mirror.", "Holy shit!! This is awesome! So long as there isn't too much thin film interference... Hahahahaha I got a B+ that year in Physics, lol.", "I sat and watched as the white flashes ignited the sky for the second time.  The mushroom clouds filling the sky contrast with my own utter isolation.\n\nIt wasn't always this way. Before the resource wars Earth had reached relative peace.  International cooperation and a united vision had seen to the construction of a moon base and tentative manned visits to the rest of the solar system.  By 2048 the solar mirror had been completed, promising nearly unlimited power to the residents of Earth.  Unfortunately it was not meant to be, the asteroid strike predicted for generations missed Earth entirely.  A 3 mile long rock passed close enough to the mirror to send mankind's future hopes spiraling away from the sun in a wide elliptical trajectory.  I watched the numbers spill onto Moon Base One's screens, performing month after month of careful observations with crossed fingers and baited breaths.  Each new calculation reaffirming that the mirror was never coming back.\n\nOne deep breath...  I turn away from the telescopes view screen centered on what was once humanity's greatest hope, now floating harmlessly past the heliosphere. The mirror reflects humanities failures rather than the energy we so desperately needed.  I walk past the gear room and begin reaching to grab a pressure suit, quickly stopping myself with a laugh, I won't need a suit for this journey.  Around the corner I reach one hand out to the airlock entry.  I pull the lever up and begin to push forward.", "Not to hijack your post, but isn't any mirror we look at, regardless of the distance, technically showing us the past? The light has to reach the mirror, bounce off of it and then hit the eye. Granted it's not a perceivable difference, but it should be at least a fraction of a millisecond behind", "Wouldn't it just be easier to set up a high res video camera in space pointed at our direction? This would serve the same purpose...at a fraction of the cost. We could \"look into the past\" by rewinding the \"tape\". ", "The mirror would need to reflex light back too.  So if the  mirror was 100ly away that mirror's image would need another 100ly to travel back to earth.\n\nthe light from the stars may have taking 100's even 1000's of light years to reach earth.  So that \"new\" star you see one night may actually be the oldest star in the universe.", "I was going to comment and say \"what about if we invented some way of storing the light so that we could look at it later\"\n\nThen I realised we already have cameras.", "This is such a Gavin Free question", "Yes, you'd see a tiny speck of our sun from two hundred years ago. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20309762"], ["http://i.imgur.com/nu1e6nx.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aq4fn2", "title": "How long would someone need to spend in another country, before it would be detectable to isotope analysis?", "selftext": "So, I was reading Sue Black(formerly Professor of Forensic Anthropology at University of Dundee, Scotland)'s book \"All That Remains\" the other day and there was a passage that caught my attention. \n\nIt was talking about the use of isotope analysis on people's hair to determine whether someone had spent time in another country (the specific example used was \"a terrorist suspect claiming to have never left the UK\" having spent time in Afghanistan), and it had me wondering about just how much time you'd need to spend in another country (or another part of your own, for that matter) to affect such an analysis?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aq4fn2/how_long_would_someone_need_to_spend_in_another/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egfamkn"], "score": [2], "text": ["I'm unfamiliar with isotope analysis in humans but here is an [article](_URL_0_) about how this process was used to gather information about migrating birds. In short, the isotope being measured will be taken up relative to the rate of metabolic activity in the body tissues. So the isotope will show up in blood and muscle tissue before it shows up in something like hair or fingernails. By comparing the isotopes found in these different tissues researchers can develop a rough timeline for when an animal (or person) moved from one place to another. From what I've read it appears that some of these markers can show up in blood in about a day but it varies if the person ate, drank, came into contact with plants and livestock, etc. If someone has more info or studies please correct me. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2435.2003.00725.x"]]}
{"q_id": "7mn014", "title": "How and why is the fourth oldest mosque in the world in China?", "selftext": "The Huaisheng Mosque is supposedly built in 627, during the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime. Did the Muslims really have contact with the Chinese and have Chinese converts that early in their history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7mn014/how_and_why_is_the_fourth_oldest_mosque_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drx3te9"], "score": [8], "text": ["Trade between Arabia and China had been going on for centuries prior to Muhammad's revelations, not just by land, but by sea. It is this sea-going trade that would have delivered early Muslims to Guangzhou. Keep in mind that initially these routes were for trade, not proselytizing, although that would become a motivation in later centuries. \n\nIt's all along this sea route that traders would take to port, where some would stay and marry into the local communities. That's where conversions would take place and children were born, growing a Muslim community; spouses would not be compelled to convert, but children were required to be raised Muslim. \n\nBroomhall states that \u201cit is possible that the Arabs had established a factory at [Guangzhou]\u201d prior to 622 CE, although he does not substantiate that claim. He then goes further to describe date discrepancies of Chinese Muhammad monuments, some claimed to have been installed prior to Muhammad receiving his first revelations from God. \n\nRegarding the date discrepancies, /u/cthulhushrugged touches on the date issues in this post from a few months back covering [What's the earliest mention of Islam in China](_URL_0_)\n\n\nSources:\n\nBroomhall, Marshall. 1910.  Islam in China A Neglected Problem.\n\nChew, Sing C. 2016.  \u201cFrom the Nanhai to the Indian Ocean and Beyond: Southeast Asia in the Maritime 'Silk' Roads of the Eurasian World Economy, 200 BC \u2013 AD500.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72mr1r/whats_the_earliest_mention_of_islam_in_china/"]]}
{"q_id": "3ukm5n", "title": "how do you get job experience when you can't get a job with no experience?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ukm5n/eli5_how_do_you_get_job_experience_when_you_cant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxfm8vg", "cxfm8xt", "cxfm98r", "cxfmpns", "cxfn0mw", "cxfnjaw", "cxfowpi", "cxfoycl", "cxftu4x", "cxfvf00", "cxfvycv", "cxfz509", "cxg1l03", "cxg1w1j"], "score": [19, 2, 54, 6, 3, 3, 6, 3, 11, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Start small, lots of fast food joints and clubs/pubs have a higher turnover rate (at least in Australia that is) and will take anyone who is willing, even the unexperienced. Yeah the pay might not be great, but stick it out for a few months, get some experiences and some good references (very important) then you might be able to find something closer to the area you want.", "You have to take a job that doesn't require experience. You have to take a job you are over qualified for. This is called paying your dues. It's no fun, but you shouldn't need to be there more than a year. One year should do it, so grt in there and get it over with. ", "You power up your CV by doing volunteer work and. I know this sounds super shitty and exploitative, but unpaid or minimum wage work experience. ", "You work lower level jobs (such as at restaurants or retail) and you volunteer at things related to your intended field. ", "You can get a job with no experience, it depends what sort of job you're looking for. I got a job as a barista straight out of high school. ", "Lie.... As long as you have the skill.  Want to learn HVAC.  Say you worked as a helper at xyz company from another city.  Smaller places and lower level work don't check as much.  Ironically higher level work doesn't check always for assumed things like degrees.\n\nWant to be a manager/lead  but we're a lowly accountant.... Lie.  Say you were a lead.  Give HR as a reference and say its for legal reasons they don't give personal refs.  They verify the start and end dates the details are up to you. Staffing firms who get paid a portion of your salary as commission are happy to go to bat for you.\n\nDo this in private sector.  Please don't do this to govt or healthcare fields. ", "You have to start small. I started at Burger King. Now I'm CTO of a fast growing software company.", "Examine your skills and hobbies. Are any of them valuable skills that an employer would value? If so, these become experience. Since you are on Redditt you have experience using a computer. So detail that experience. What do you do with it that an employer desires? Did you make a spreadsheet that analyzed some data? Are you good at social networking? Did you build a web site? Did you write a term paper using it? Did you make a video? Providing that none of this activity includes a negative aspect, all of this can be considered experience. Job experience involves your working as part of a team. If you belonged to a club like the chess club, or sports team, or school newspaper, radio station or had a part-time job after school that too is considered job experience.\n\nNow take all that information and apply it to what specialty the job you are applying for needs. Show your love of the profession, and the willingness and commitment to learn the business their way. One job I succeeded in getting was that I saw an ad for a company hiring artists for a night shift. I wrote the company suggesting they needed an experienced art director like my self to head this group of artists. So when you write them suggest how you can be of value to the need.", "Scouting\n\nJROTC/Cadet programs\n\nMilitary service\n\nVolunteer\n\nInternships\n\nCollege/University programs\n\nGetting a good job when you're 21 starts by doing good work when you're 12.", "volunteer, intern, take more classes, freelance work, take a lesser paying job that you don't want (minimum wage, or even unpaid if thats what it takes) ... if it has the potential to grow/promote you into a position that will give you the experience you want, ask someone working in the field how they got to where they are now, learn how to make a good resume and connect seemingly unrelated dots that show your general experience.\n\n\nand don't expect to have everything in the world handed to you the day you finish college.", "Unpaid, preferably paid, internships. I've had two unpaid internships and one paid. I did the first two to boost my resume for grad school and now im working at the paid internship while taking classes. \n\n", "Internships!!!! I feel like that's what companies mean when they say they want experienced employees for an entry level job. Apply for summer internships and get valuable experience in the field and when you graduate you'll have a least a year or two of prior experience ", "Fake it til ya make it. Be ready though, it is no doubt a sink-or-swim scenario. Don't fuck up.", "You apply anyways. Write a cover letter. Did you do anything in school that applies to this job directly? Boom. Experience. Do anything you can to get an interview.\n\n Most jobs are just trying to scare off people with unbelievable expectations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9skszw", "title": "Who were the \"Diggers\" or True Levellers and where do social-religious movements of this era (16th and 17th centuries) fit in the history of socialism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9skszw/who_were_the_diggers_or_true_levellers_and_where/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8qoz9v"], "score": [10], "text": ["Luckily pamphlets written by the Diggers still exist, including [The True Levellers Standard Advanced](_URL_2_), and A Light Shinning in Buckinghamshire, so we know what they thought pretty well. As for what they did, essentially they tried to establish communes on common land, and where suppressed, there is a short overview with sources [Here](_URL_4_). The movement then shifted to less material objectives, and can be regarded as a forerunner of the Quakers.\n\nBut for me the interesting part of the question is how they (and similar groups especially among German Anabaptists) fit into the history of socialism. Firstly they are solidly on the anarchist flank of modern socialism, although the historic use of terms socialist, communist, and anarchist are overlapping and unclear (for instance [Oscar Wilde](_URL_0_) refers to himself as a socialist, yet his views would today make him an anarchist). This could be contrasted with movements like the followers of  Mazdak, who are more aligned with socialism as it is perceived today (being conducted by the state). The Diggers fit quite nicely into the category Christian Anarchism, along with Leo Tolstoy. This grouping can be summarised by: pacifism, egalitarianism, and opposition to the state and hierarchy.\n\nThere is to my knowledge there is no reason to believe first person to use the term anarchist in this context, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (source definitely not take from wiki  John M. Merriman, The Dynamite Club (2009), p. 42.), was aware of the Diggers or influenced by them, although his brand of anarchism (mutualism) differs significantly from the latter use of the term. Reading both [The Conquest of Bread](_URL_1_) (regarded as the anarchist-communist manifesto, written by an atheist) and the Diggers pamphlets, I was struck by the similarity. Both refer to bread extensively, but much more importantly feature the idea of the earth as a common inheritance to all, as well as more general socialist principles and opposition to the state. I therefore think that the Diggers can be regarded as solidly within the anarchist communist school of thought, the main difference being the justification of this desired social order being derived from their theology, rather than material analysis or moral sentiment. Edit: a note on their theology, taken from [The True Levellers Standard Advanced](_URL_2_), the most striking thing to me was the belief that original sin (as in the book of Genesis), was the origin of hierarchy and the start of domination. I think this chimes well with leftist such as Murray Bookchin who effectively makes the same argument in secular terms in The Ecology of Freedom, and with the statement by  Abdullah \u00d6calan that patriarchy (a form of domination) is humanities first great mistake.\n\nIts also worth noting that the Diggers cited the bible extensively, so depending on the amount of historical credence you will allow the book of Acts (and accept their interpretation), they where merely applying a millennium old doctrine  to modern circumstance.\n\nAs to whether they influenced the development of socialist thought historically, rather than simply where they fit into this history, it is hard to tell. Perhaps the ardent atheism of key \"socialist\" thinkers (e.g. [Proudhon](_URL_3_), [Marx](_URL_5_)), would obscure their input historically, although in The Ecology of Freedom, Murray Bookchin clearly favours these kind of groups, and sees them as the ancestors of the modern left.\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/", "https://thebreadbook.org/conquestofbread.html", "https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/winstanley/1649/levellers-standard.htm", "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-god-is-evil-man-is-free", "http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/diggers", "https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "59b6e1", "title": "[Military History] I often hear \"Most military operations in the high-late medieval period consisted of raids and sieges, not pitched battles\" How did raids work?", "selftext": "It's a phrase I often hear, that battles were few. That most conflict consisted of sieges and raids. My question is centered around raids. Since my original perception of medieval warfare comes from games like Total War, I'm biased towards a thinking centered around pitched battles, but I would like to know how raids functioned. How were they different?\n\n* What kinds of raids were there? Were there regional differences?\n* How did medieval raids function? Was it planned or opportunistic? \n* What was the scale? Was it 30 guys on one small town, or 30 guys spreading out over a large agrarian area?\n* What was the target? Was it always civilians, cattle, etc. or did it focus on directly crippling an enemies military operations?\n* Who participated in these raids? The knightly class only? Serjeants and henchmen? A whole army full of farmers? Mercenaries?\n* Did they use horses? Sword & buckler? Torches? Or weapons which is suited in array, like a spear, pike or halberd?\n\n----\n\nFrame of the question: An overall ancient or medieval European or Middle-Eastern focus is good. Spain between 1100-1500 is even better. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59b6e1/military_history_i_often_hear_most_military/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d97fhzp"], "score": [86], "text": ["Yay, something that i know a bit about! \n\nMy area of expertise is the hundred years war (1337-1453) between England and France, so i will draw all my examples from that conflict. Now, to answer your questions in a random order:\n\nThe main purpose of raids during medieval warfare was threefold:\n1: Disrupting the economy\n2: Pointing out your enemy's inability to protect his lands\n3: sustaining your own army without paying for it.\n\nTherefor, the most common (and most effective) raid were large-scale, regional campaigns, where a sizeable army would burn and pillage villages and smaller towns, while castles and fortified towns where left alone. This had the effect of forcing the peasants of the raided areas to flee *en masse* to the larger towns, which, along with the disruption of supplies caused by burning or stealing crops and other resources from the hinterlands, would cause a famine in the affected towns.\n\n A good example of a raid conducted like this would be the *Grande Chevauch\u00e9e* of 1355, Where Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, led an army of 5.000 men from Bordeaux into the counties of Armagnac, Foix and Languedoc, while bypassing the city of Toulouse, where the count of Armagnac had concentrated his army. The English army was able to return to Bordeaux with an extraordinarily large amount of loot, while the count of Armagnac became generally despised in France for not resisting the English army, but in reality, he didn't have a choice, because every time his forces would go near the English, they would place themselves on the top of a hill, or on the other side of a river, where they would have the upper hand if the French decided to attack. This had happened earlier, in 1346 at the battle of Crecy, where Edward III used a raiding campaign to force the French king to attack him while he had an advantageous position atop a hill, and soundly defeated the larger french army. And again in 1356, where the Black Prince led a similar raid from Bordeaux (again), and was caught by a large french army near Portiers, which he also soundly defeated, with the added Bonus of capturing the French King.\n\nAs you can see from the participation of both the English King and the Crown Prince in these raids, there was no social stigma attached to the concept of raiding, and both common footsoldiers and mounted knights and men-at-arms would participate. \n\nThe raid would usually consist of a large main force, with several smaller warbands (30-200 men in each) mainly consisting of mounted troops, would detach from the main force and plunder nearby villages. The army couldn't afford to split too many soldiers from the main force, as it would put them at risk of a counterattack.\n\nAs to the target og the raids, by stealing from civilians, taking cattel and burning crops, they crippled their enemies long-term capabilities to conducting military operations, because of a lack of food and taxes from the villages meant a lack of supplies and wages for the soldiers. \n\nAs in all other medieval warfare, and maybe even to a greater degree, the soldiers used whatever tools they had handy. Burning villages and towns added the cost of rebuilding to the enemys losses, so it was a must. Horses meant that the raiding forces could get away before the enemy could mount a counterattack. As for the weapons used, i don't think there was any explicit preference. \n\nSources:\n The Wars of Edward III, by Clifford J. Rogers\n\nWestern Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, by John France.\n\nTrial by Battle, by Jonathan Sumption.\n\nI hope you could use my wall of words, and i'm sorry if my english is sub-par, but it is not my main language."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ngi1g", "title": "I am a soldier in a 13th century German army that is currently besieging a castle. But the defenders have enough supplies to hold out several months before surrendering out of hunger. What does my day to day live look like in these months?", "selftext": "What are the duties and orders i have to fulfill? \nHow long would my \"work day\" be during the siege? \nAnd what could I do to pass the time and have fun? where there games and contests that took place inside the camp or even brothels to ease the tension among the men? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ngi1g/i_am_a_soldier_in_a_13th_century_german_army_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d43pcd5", "d43ritt", "d44228g"], "score": [30, 53, 9], "text": ["Follow up - We often don't hear what it was like for the defenders during seiges. What would they do, day to day, both soldier and civilian?", "_URL_0_\n\n/u/eeeeeep wrote a great reply to the same question a few days ago", "I'd like to add a cautionary note, if that's alright.\n\nI hope that I may be proved wrong, but I would advise you not to hope for too much specificity in your answer. As /u/eeeeeep did, we can speak in generalities about the high medieval fighting man's experience, but the sort of primary sources that would tell us what their lives were like, what they thought about them, etc, simply do not exist. Chroniclers were exclusively aristocrats or clergymen (or both), and their work focused overwhelmingly on the social elite and their acts. They include a great deal of information on the broad strokes of campaigning - where the armies went, what they besieged, how long these sieges lasted, various comments on deprivations and other general conditions - but less than could be hoped for on the micro level. They weren't awfully interested in the nuts and bolts of tactics, organization, logistics, and all the other things that medieval military historians would sell their eye teeth to know."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4m6x3j/what_did_medieval_soldiers_do_during_sieges/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ip82s", "title": "a friend of mine who lives in germany told me citizens receive help from the goverment if they do not have a job or a home, how can germany afford it to do so, and why do they do it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ip82s/eli5_a_friend_of_mine_who_lives_in_germany_told/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuiepc1", "cuiepmq", "cuiepz8", "cuieu67", "cuif2x1", "cuifbud", "cuifj3l", "cuifze1", "cuigpqj", "cuiiw98", "cuil6re", "cuilahj", "cuioyl8", "cuip4xv", "cuipnpr", "cuiqa1m"], "score": [187, 10, 26, 18, 14, 2, 5, 16, 3, 12, 2, 11, 5, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["This is commonplace throughout Europe.  We have high tax rates that enable a high quality of welfare provision.  This extends to free or low cost medical and dental care,  housing,  and cost of living benefits. \n\nThe answer to why is because these societies have decided that the expense of helping people through rough patches is worth it in the long term. It can help reduce crime,  keep people out of worse poverty,  which saves health costs further down the line.  Or they just support it on moral grounds.  Or a mix and match combination of factors. ", "Just putting it out there but it isn't just Germany that does this. In the UK welfare is funded by taxes.", "This is a fairly common social security feature in most western democracies. They use part of the tax income to provide help and assistance for those in need. ", "There are studies which show that helping the homeless saves a lot of cash for society. Police interventions are expensive.\n\nRational citizens in a democracy will authorize government aid as the least expensive option for society.", "Wait, is there no housing or unemployment benefit in the US? I assumed they'd have it and it would just be a bit shit. ", "This, along with the pension, became a common practice in Europe in 1880-1920. The reason back then was mainly economical: if these people have money, they buy products which, in the end, is also good for the state. Meanwhile, the money multiplicates.\r\rNowadays, it's mostly political. If any politician would ever decide to cut these cos, they would never be elected again. So they don't.", "Because solidarity works. That which benefits the population/group/nation/species as a whole also benefits each and every individual even if it's not apparent there and then how. ", "As people have said, Germany is not alone. Compared to North America, all of Europe is this way. \nBecause at the end of WW2, the Europeans had a better long term view on human life than the Americans did. It was easier for them to have a better long term view, though, they had to do the actual clean up after all the fighting.\n\nSurrounded by death, you see the commonality of humans and find much more value in human life. You know, because you still have your life and that entire family that lived on the farm next to yours is gone now. Because they are dead for things they never chose.\n\nEurope had a more human perspective after WWII, and their governments reflect that. But don't worry, those in power now don't have the same great perspective. Because there is a game to be won! \nWhile the Europeans were busy giving a crap about the future of humanity being a better one, the Americans were busy setting up the framework to a game called consumerism, aka \"Whoever has the most money wins!\"\nEurope is dumb enough to try and compete. Slowly the governments are dismantling all the safety nets that those who lived through WWII found to be the most important for future generations. You know because of the dolla dolla bills.", "Appropriate concern for their own citizens. Affordable because not much of German budget is wasted on over-policing or over-jailing (centralized decision in that nation).    ", "Another historical explanation for the European welfare system is that it was a socialist counter movement to the liberal/capitalist systems the industrial revolution in the late 19th/early 20th century created. The ideas of Karl Marx became so popular among the \"exploited\" working class that they workers, unions, politicians) gradually created a system not only in favor of the wealthy industrialists but more balanced with worker's rights. In Germany for example Bismarck created the first welfare laws for injured workers unable to take care of themselves to not loose all his voters to the Socialist party. \n\nThe decline of the traditional family support system due to the new individualisation brought by industrialization put the state into responsibility where traditionally the family/village used to be. \n\nBesides all that the Cold War (not only a geopolitical conflict but also one of ideologies: capitalism vs socialism) also contributed a lot to the popularity of Socialist ideas of redistribution and the state taking care of it's citizens (in exchange for more control over their lives, higher taxes on the wealthy).", "To give some perspective here are incomes before and after taxes and government transfers in the UK and US (this sort of data is pretty wonkish and I didn't find it on stat comparison sites like Europa and I don't know the right terms to find it in other languages I'd happily add other nations if someone provides links to the data):\n\nQuintiles|US Market Income|US After Tax and Benefits Income|UK Market Income|UK After Tax and Benefits Income\n:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:\nLowest Quintile|$8,100|$30,800|$7,168|21,468\nSecond Quintile|$30,700|$43,400|$16,569|$30,168\nMiddile Quintile|$54,800|$57,400|$31,665|$38,128\nFourth Quintile|$87,700|$78,900|$55,834|$50,041\nTop Quintile|$234,400|$181,900|$114,790|$61,376\n\nAll incomes in USD adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity (ie the exchange rates try to account for different market prices of goods).  Quintiles are 20% blocks of the population and table figures reflect averages for the quintile.  \n\nThe US has large transfers, and all quintiles are materially better off than the same quintile in the UK, but the US' highest quintile earns a massive income compared to likely the rest of the world.  All figures show income (so there may be the occasional low income high asset household in either nation--think modest pensioner who bought a home that is now worth millions).  \n\nSources:\n[US income and transfer data](_URL_2_)--table on page 7\n[UK Income and transfer data](_URL_1_)--table on page 3\n[PPP exchange rates](_URL_0_)", "German in germany here ( I grew up in the US) :This works because every one pays into the system whether they like it or not. You dont know when you might need it but it helps you sleep at night knowing its there.\n You have different tax clases \n1:Single (highest percentage) \n2) Single parents \n3) Married couples ( this is the most favorable as the spouse is in tax class 4 \n4) souses of those in class 3 but which is less than class 1 or 2.  \nNow indeed there are people that live of the system and its on their conscience to do so. Most Germans rather eat up their savings before living off the dole. You have to also understand that the concept of life  here include a life/work balance. Other benefits are for example. monthly allowance for having kids. 30 days paid holidays if you work 40hrs/week. If you are sick during your holidays those arent taken from your vacation days as those are sick days. Health insurance. women can take leave for up to 2 years if they have a baby and dads can take 1 year. Their job will be saved from them for when they come back in the mean time they will hire a temp. And you get +/- 60% of your salary from the insurance.  This also is powered by a \"honor\" system, some cheat...yes.  but most dont. ", "Does any developed country not do this?  You can argue about how well various countries do it, but they all try.", "Does America not have this?", " > ...why do they do it?\n\n\nIt would cost more to *not* do so.\n\nit's the right thing to do - economically and ethically.\n\nPeople that don't have income still do have to eat, and live no matter what. It's better for the individual and less expensive for society.\n\nIt costs much less to put people in houses than into jails. including food, medical care. There are almost no homeless people, unlike the situation in some other civilized countries that prefer the way of \"everybody for himself\" and let people live on the streets, where they are basically on their own - in a world where nothing is available for them to claim anymore (land, animals, food, water etc.) since everything is owned already. It's about integrating people into society - not into profit-run prisons.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "To add on this, France does the same, and has a higher unemployment rate (10% as of right now)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP", "http://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/121005151233-TheprogressivityofUKtaxesandtransfers.pdf", "http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44604-AverageTaxRates.pdf"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "409w7r", "title": "how sean penn located el chapo to conduct an interview yet none of the intelligence agencies looking for the wanted drug kingpin could find him", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/409w7r/eli5_how_sean_penn_located_el_chapo_to_conduct_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cysm44t", "cysm91r", "cysmti5", "cysq53i", "cysqxy2", "cysqzsh", "cysuu8l", "cyswb1r", "cyswwzi", "cysx0m9", "cysybwx", "cysyxh9", "cysz7ys", "cyszwi5", "cyt0d11", "cyt0hrj", "cyt1d72", "cyt1naw", "cyt1pze", "cyt27xc", "cyt3sr1", "cyt755e", "cytdia1", "cyti03o"], "score": [968, 454, 2080, 406, 19, 128, 16, 20, 10, 6, 4, 2, 11, 52, 4, 13, 2, 3, 8, 3, 3, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["The did find him. A few days after one of the interviews the Mexican government attacked one of the interview locations and Chapo only narrowly escaped. It's widely believed that his continued contact with Penn is the main reason they were able to eventually re-capture him. ", "Because El Chapo *wanted* to be found by Penn, because he trusted Penn would adhere to journalistic standards of protecting his sources (although I'd assume he was still cautious in the arrangements for the interview).\n\nIts not hard for someone to find a person, if they want you to find them.\n\nI wonder if El Chapo's \"one hundred dollars million\" contract on Trump still stands.", "El Chapo's people reached out to him. All penn had to do follow chapos security and sit in the back of a truck for a couple hours", "I think El Chapo watched the secret life of Walter Mitty and thought Sean  Penn was a photojournalist.", "The news reported that there was a go between (a Mexican actress) who helped facilitate the interview.\n\n\n_URL_0_", "el chapo was receiving movie offers and stuff while in jail.  a mexican actress that had played a drug lord offered to help him with the movie.  chapo liked her work and trusted her to help with his movie.\n\nsean penn and this actress had some mutual acquaintances/friends.  he heard that she was in contact with chapo.  sean got in contact with her through their mutual friends.  the actress set up the meeting.", "read the stories instead of the headlines, OP. newspapers explain stuff, that's their job.  \n  \n_URL_0_", "So now that Chapo has been caught (or is it almost caught?) Due to his interviews with Sean Penn, will Penn be murdered now?", "1).  Sean Penn and his crew go to any city within 500 miles of Chapo.\n2).  Put out the word that this famous American actor would like to do a fawning, soft serve interview.\n3).  Chapo's intel network will surreptitiously discover that Penn's luggage contains 100% cameras and 0% submachine guns.\n4).  Interview will be arranged because crime bosses are usually egotists and consider themselves celebrities just like anybody in Hollywood; plus they're usually misunderstood, wronged souls who only have their community's best interests at heart, and this message must get out.  ", "Although Chapo is a bad person and deserved to be caught, I find it distasteful that Rolling Stone helped capture him. \n\nReporters are not Law Enforcement Agencies; they aren't supposed to create the story themselves (remember *Nightcrawler?*). This puts legitimate journalists in harms way.\n\nFuck Rolling Stone.", "Is it just me or does \"El Chapo\" is sounds really cool as a nickname?", "The CIA/DEA arranged it because El Chapo is in leagues with the government. And the CIA is heavily involved in Hollywood. Everyone is corrupt as fuck. That's my guess.", "(Mexican here) It's widely considered that the Federal Government is allied with organized crime, and uses El Chapo (and viceversa) when considered necessary. A lot of us believe that the government has always known where El Chapo is at all times, and \"arrests\" him when they want to seem in control, but he's too powerful, for him jail is probably just another safe house where he keeps working just like outside of it.  ", "Imagine you're playing hide and seek with your childhood classmates. Youre the one of the last ones hiding, and you hear the class bully is looking for you, so you stay hidden. Then you hear your crush looking for you, so you whisper to her where you are hidden so she can come and hide with you for awhile   \n   \nThat's essentially how it works with fugitives like this.", "Because the Intelligence Agencies that are \"looking\" for El Chapo don't *really* want to find him.  Him being on any \"Most Wanted\" list is public relations, not crime fighting.", "How about an ELI5 on why Sean penn feels the need to put himself into a real live dangerous movie when he could just fucking chill on a yacht and party at home.", "And how is it that Penn didn't get in any trouble?", "Where i can watch the interview?", "Life in Mexico law enforcement goes like this:  You want to catch/inprision/keep/convict El Chapo?  The last guy in your job has just disappeared, then one day someone visits you with an offer you can't refuse.  Pictures of your children/wife/family in one hand, a suitcase of cash on the other - if you are lucky.  ", "Guess you never watched that Netflix show Narcos. It's easy to keep hiding when people are visiting the families of those trying to catch you or bribing people.", "Those wondering Kate del Castillo the actress who helped Sean Penn meet El Chapo has her show La Reina del Sur on Netflix. About a woman who heads a drug cartel in good ol' Mexico. Fun watch, similar to Narcos. ", "This seems like the timeline that answers the question and clarifies some of the speculative comments in the thread:\n\n\"El Chapo was caught after contacting actors and directors about making a Narcos-style biopic about his life, Mexican officials said. It is not clear whether Penn was contacted about the movie.\n\nThe seeds for the bizarre meeting between Penn and El Chapo were sown back in 2012 after a representative for the Mexican gangster contacted del Castillo, who had posted tweets saying she had more trust in the cartel than the government.\n\nA lawyer for the Sinaloa cartel said flowers were being sent to the actress, however they never arrived. \n\nDel Castillo later met a fixer called Espinoza - and both of them remained in contact with El Chapo's people after his escape. \n\nPenn later met Espinoza and suggested he meet the fugitive for a magazine article and, incredibly, the Sinaloa cartel agreed to it. \n\nSOURCE: _URL_0_\n\n", "I'm still wondering in what conditions did chapo respond to the video interview: was it after or before his capture? The timeline in the article isn't clear.", "It's like when Dan Rather got an interview with Sadaam Hussein, when the military couldn't find him. \n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.latintimes.com/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-arrest-kate-del-castillo-sean-penn-interviewed-drug-lord-his-363217"], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/world/americas/el-chapo-mexican-drug-lord-interview-with-sean-penn.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3392260/Actor-Sean-Penn-met-interviewed-El-Chapo-Mexico-run-year.html#ixzz3wsHkJGv4"], [], ["https://youtu.be/y64XR36zsIM"]]}
{"q_id": "i84b0", "title": "How to frequency double a laser.", "selftext": "I'm hoping someone here might be able to help me with a problem I've run into in my PhD research. I'm doing some laser diagnostics of combustion, but one of the things I need is a laser at 266 nm. Generally my lab uses Nd:YAG lasers (which output at 1064 nm) and we tend to buy them with a doubler installed, so they also output at 532 nm.\n\nI have a BBO (\u03b2-barium borate) crystal that I'm pretty sure has been used in the past for frequency doubling. I've tried shining the 523 nm beam through the laser (with no optics between where the laser is emitted and the crystal), but I'm not convinced I'm generating a 266 nm beam.\n\nI'm sure someone else here works with lasers and knows something about frequency doubling, so some instruction would be helpful. Do I need the face of the crystal to be at some angle other than 90 degrees to the laser? Should I be focusing the beam to a point inside the crystal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i84b0/how_to_frequency_double_a_laser/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c21nkl1", "c21o7wd", "c21orlo", "c21pyjp"], "score": [2, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["It's unbelievably complected. It's not as simple as just shining the light through a special crystal. The temperature of the non-linear optic may have to be very carefully controlled, and it will work only for certain initial frequencies. I think angle is probably also important.\n\nI had a class in this stuff, but the teacher was old and didn't really communicate much other than the fact that the material was incredibly difficult. ", "Howdy! I have some experience with this and the other posters are correct - you can't just use any old BBO crystal that is lying around. Critical factors include temperature, the angle the crystal has been cut at (relative to the crystal structure), and the thickness and transparency of the crystal. \n\nHere's a good resource to get you started: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)", "No way to borrow a UV spectrometer and check?\n\nEdit: After browsing some papers and the links provided by transgenrobo and electroncafe, it seems you'll want a [Brewster plate (to fix polarization, pdf)](_URL_1_) to help you with [phase matching](_URL_0_).", "[Yes, you can absolutely do this](_URL_0_), this will not be terribly difficult from a PhD perspective.\n\nBBO has a much smaller angular acceptance window than LBO / CLBO, so alignment is critical, and you will run into thermally induced phase mismatching at higher powers, but if you can deal with 20-30% conversion efficiencies you will be golden.\n\nAs far as the literature is concerned, I would search for \"second / third / fourth harmonic generation\" instead of \"frequency doubling / tripling / quadrupling.\" There are a lot of articles on this.\n\nI use an LBO - >  CLBO setup to get 266 from our Nd:Yag, so I may not be able to help you all the way, but please feel free to PM if you run into questions as you're setting this up.  Good luck!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.rp-photonics.com/frequency_doubling.html"], ["http://www.rp-photonics.com/critical_phase_matching.html", "http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?&amp;id=71416"], ["http://www.its.caltech.edu/~sheng/NLO/SPIE28.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "fdntay", "title": "Why was the sun often depicted with a face in the Middle Ages and Renaissance?", "selftext": "I've been reading the book Cosmigraphics by Michael Benson which goes over the history of depicting space, and as I'm nearing the end it's really striking to me how so many Western depictions of the sun give it a face. \n\nHere's an example by Andreas Cellarius:  [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) \n\nI find this very mysterious. From what I can tell, none of these things mention the sun being any kind of character or being. I've never seen one of these suns talking or anything. So why does it have a face?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fdntay/why_was_the_sun_often_depicted_with_a_face_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fjj181w"], "score": [69], "text": ["This is an interesting question. I don't know of any scholarship on Sun imagery in the Early Modern period (I could imagine a nice research paper coming out of someone willing to parse over a lot of these things). \n\nIt is of note that all of those examples from the 17th century are heliocentric depictions. Early advocates of heliocentrism, especially Kepler but also others, did often imbue their arguments with aspects of Sun-worship, and waxed poetically in anthropomorphic manner about the Sun. Here is Copernicus, from _De Revolutionibus_: \n\n >  In the midst assuredly dwells the Sun. For in this most beautiful temple  who would place this luminary in any other or better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? Indeed, some rightly call Him the Light of the World, others, the Mind or the ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the visible God, Sophocles' Electra calls him the all-seeing. So indeed the Sun remains, as if in his kingly dominion, governing the family of Heavenly bodies which circles around him. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children, the planets, which circle round him. ... The Earth has intercourse with the Sun, and is impregnated for its yearly parturition.\n\nThe notion of the Sun as a God, and notably the Sun as a king, is very prominent in this kind of imagery. Here is Kepler's argument:\n\n >  [The sun] is a fountain of light, rich in fruitful heat, most fair, limpid, and pure to the sight, the source of vision, portrayer of all colors, though himself empty of color, called king of the planets for his motion, heart of the world for his power, its eye for his beauty, and which alone we should judge worthy of the Most High God,  should he be pleased with a material domicile and choose a place in which to dwell with the blessed angels.\u2026\n\n >  For if the Germans elect him as Caesar who has most power in the whole empire, who would hesitate to confer the votes of the celestial motions on him who already has been administering all other movements and changes by the benefit of the light which is entirely his possession? ... \n\n >  [Hence] by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself\u2026\n\nAnd so on and so on. And of course we have rulers who associate themselves with the Sun as well \u2014 Louis XIV, famously \"The Sun King.\" \n\nSo the imagery of the Sun as some kind of king of the skies, looking on the Earth with his light, and maybe even (as Kepler would hold it) being the seat of God himself... this is very common in this period in European writing about the Sun, and extremely common in early heliocentrism, which itself had many explicit references to Ancient sun-worship (e.g., the Pythagoreans). It is largely what drove men like Copernicus and Kepler to be heliocentrists in the first place (only later did they get some evidence for it, and even then it was somewhat ambiguous), in the same way that those who advocated for geocentrism were also driven by aesthetic, religious, or philosophical motivations. But I would note that to my knowledge neither Copernicus nor Kepler ever depicted the Sun in such a grandiose fashion, visually: their hyperbole was strictly verbal.\n\nAnyway, that's my guess: a mixture of reverent anthropomorphic imagery with a visual stylization (\"Sun has a face\") that \u2014 accurately \u2014 reflects the prominence of the Sun in the Copernican worldview (as opposed to the Ptolemaic one, in which the Sun is but another planet)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-celestial-atlas-of-andreas-cellarius-1660"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9rxj05", "title": "Why don't we use therapeutic hypothermia when dealing with anticoagulation, or brain bleeds, etc.?", "selftext": "If ice can help a bruise by constricting blood vessels, why don't we use that on a greater scale, like for people on blood thinners, or for brain bleeds that won't clot? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9rxj05/why_dont_we_use_therapeutic_hypothermia_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8vkq3v", "e8l73dk"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["Hypothetically it seems to make sense, but the main reason is that hypothermia actually worsens coagulopathy: the decrease in temperature reduces the activity of the enzymes, clotting factors, and platelets which are involved in the formation of blood clots.\n\nWe actively try to avoid hypothermia in hemorrhage cases because of this.\n\nSo definitely hypothermia is not an option for someone who has critical bleeding such as an intracranial hemorrhage. And practically, an intracranial bleed just doesn't have the luxury of time to treat it \"medically.\" More often the patient will require a surgery or endovascular procedure to stop the bleeding immediately.\n\nFor patients on blood thinners, often there is a way to reverse the anticoagulation. For example, warfarin can be reversed with plasma infusion or prothrombin complex concentrates. Antiplatelet medications such as clopidogrel can be reversed with platelet infusions. Heparin can be reversed with protamine. Dabigatran can be reversed with idarucizumab.", "Extensive research has been done on this, if you\u2019re interested into the science and medicine of it, you should read yourself: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) \n\nThere are many risks associated with major hypothermia, which would be required to result in any affects of coagulation, including cardiac arrhythmias, coagulopathy, hypokalemia, and infections, of which pneumonia is the most frequently reported. These are still rare  < 4%.\n\nAnother risk is, as the study cited above tells: \n\u201cA key adverse effect of hypothermia is shivering, which may cause great discomfort to the patient, triggering massive increases in systemic and cerebral energy consumption, that produce considerably slower cooling rates and increase intracranial pressure\u201d.\n\nHowever; the study mentions multiple clinical trials in the case of severe brain trauma in which hypothermia has certainly helped:\n\u201cKramer et al. in a 2009 Cochrane review, included 23 trials and 1,614 patients with the following criteria: early hypothermia, target temperatures of 35\u00b0C for at least 12 h and the need for hospitalization. Authors concluded that those patients treated with hypothermia had better results in terms of mortality and neurologic outcomes. \u201c The study mentions 4 other trials similar to this with similar results, with none citing major downsides.\n\nSo, like a lot of things in medicine, why aren\u2019t we? Well we are- just maybe as not as much as we aren\u2019t. It seems there aren\u2019t many medical downsides, but when it comes to hospital procedure, time, and all that- it\u2019s a different story; hopefully a medical doctor can elaborate.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456795/"]]}
{"q_id": "38gdmm", "title": "Are there any photos of Omaha beach from the perspective of what the troops would see as they came off their landing crafts?", "selftext": "All of the photos of Omaha beach seem to be after the attack facing seaward or don't show much of what the troops actually saw as they stormed the beach. I feel like a lot of media and film, especially saving private ryan (as accurate as it is acclaimed to be), have skewed my vision of what it actually looked like. \n\nPresent day photographs leave it very hard for me to envision what it would look like at the time. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38gdmm/are_there_any_photos_of_omaha_beach_from_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cruw8l2"], "score": [79], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nHere's one.  It looks nothing like Saving Private Ryan.  The beach on SPR was too narrow for starters as you can see in this pic.\n\nEdit - Robert Capa took a lot of photos on Omaha Beach but sadly most of his photos were accidentally destroyed during the development process.  Who knows what they would have shown."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2ye86a", "title": "why do some cities have a distinguishable accent while others don't?", "selftext": "For example New York and Boston both have a unique accent, but LA has the same accent as Seattle, Chicago, DC etc...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ye86a/eli5_why_do_some_cities_have_a_distinguishable/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp8pd46", "cp8pdtc", "cp8q4fc", "cp8rv1y", "cp8s9oq", "cp8wqlt", "cp8zq3n", "cp9jqzp"], "score": [9, 33, 3, 19, 4, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["If you were raised in Chicago or if you spent a very long time there you will incorporate a Chicago accent.  There is a distinct Chicago accent.", "Well, you can still spot a Chicago accent, or Atlanta or New Orleans...etc.\r\rHowever the Midwestern accent has been adopted by news, broadcast  and Hollywood., so those are alike by dissemination by the entertainment industry.\r\rUsed to be that Hollywood used the artificial, trained \"Mid-Atlantic\" accent (Hepburn, Gable, Bogart) to appear more sophisticated and blend better into the UK accent, but it was abandoned for the Midwestern accent that the next generation entertainers and newscasters such as Johnny Carson (Nebraska) and Walter Cronkite (Missouri) had.", "Los Angeles does have an accent in certain parts ", "LA has the same accent as Chicago? Not even close. ", "People who live in towns like this are Wicked Smaht. ", "Being from a small country like Ireland its crazy to me to. Just go a couple miles any direction from where you live and the accent will change.. sometimes dramatically like its not even the same language. ", "I guess it's because a country like the US is relatively new compared to European countries. in Europe many people would stay in the same towns or villages for generations and hardly travel at all. thus meaning dialects and accents have time to evolve and develop their own characteristics.\n\nIn the US a lot of cities have been built up in an age where travel is more common. Plus having people from all over the world mixing together. US cities aren't going to have a distinguished accent. Unless of course people stop traveling so much and stay in the same neighborhoods for a few generations.", "Distinguishable to whom? You might not be able to tell a difference, but others certainly can. I'm no dialect/accent expert, but even I can tell the difference between cities in *my own state*. Seattle and Chicago are light years apart by comparison.\n\nAlso, bonus knowledge: cities aren't homogeneous. Chicagoans you might hear on, say, the TV news sound a lot different from Chicagoans on the street. Living in another city, you might only be exposed to more mobile, educated folks from other cities like Seattle and Chicago, but spend some time in a few of their neighborhoods and you'll start to hear some differences."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fin67y", "title": "Does white noise sound different for everyone??", "selftext": "If white noise is a combination of all frequencies of sound that humans can hear, and people hear certain frequencies more than others, does that mean white noise sounds different for other people? Do old people hear white noise as a lower \"note\" than young people?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fin67y/does_white_noise_sound_different_for_everyone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkje80b", "fkjv7w1"], "score": [7, 3], "text": ["White noise technically every frequency playing back at equal levels. The general frequency range of human hearing is 20hz-20khz. Everyone might experience it ever so slightly different depending on their range when they\u2019re born but typically you start to experience hearing loss as you grow older. You might hear from 30hz - 16khz. The frequencies remain the same but your perception of them may diminish.", "Yes! Also the perceived loudness is different since everyone hearing ability is a bit different. Furthermore the tonal perception is also dependent of the playback level since everyone perceives the relative loudness of tones not independent of the level of the tones.\n\nInteresting side fact: there are also many different versions of white noise since only two parameter are typically defined. The version can sound differently. White noise defines the power spectral density to be 1 and the signal has do be statistically independent. So there is a variety of signal with different amplitude distributions which satisfy these conditions. So there is a white noise which has in its digital amplitude over time representation only many  -1 and 1s and another white noise signal which has all values (real numbers) between -1 and 1."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2joug4", "title": "who is davy jones and why is the bottom of the sea referred to as his locker?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2joug4/eli5who_is_davy_jones_and_why_is_the_bottom_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cldowb2", "cldrfau", "cldrg60", "clds3js", "cldvbaq", "cldvm6e", "cldx154", "cldzrbf", "cle003v", "cle0iai", "cle1b81", "cle2e7m", "cle30u5"], "score": [755, 108, 63, 82, 6, 1284, 2, 2, 8, 16, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Davy Jones is a character from old stories sailors used to tell eachother to frighten eachother. It was believed that if you died while on sea, your soul would go to the bottom of the sea, where Davy Jones would capture it and place it in his Locker. ", "Davy Jones was the captain of the ship *The Flying Dutchman*.  One day a formless figure appeared on deck who claimed to be the devil.  this figure challenged him to sail his ship until he (the devil) returned to tell him to stop.  He never did.  The crew slowly died and the Flying Dutchman decayed and was slowly ripped apart by the sea and storm.  Now the ship rests at the bottom of the sea, Davy Jones still trying to sail it until the devil returns to release his soul.\n\nthis was a story i read in elementary school, so take it with a grain of salt.", "Is there any particular reason why most of this shit can't be googled?  \n\n_URL_0_\n", "He was in The Monkees. His chest is at the bottom of the sea because they liked to monkey around.", "I don't know where I heard this but I always thought Davy Jones was a nickname for the devil, his locker being hell.", "To understand, you need to know how language and slang has changed.\n\nDuffy used to be a word meaning ghost.\n\nJones used to just mean some random person.\n\nAnd locker was . . .  Well, still a locker.\n\nOriginally, the term was probably Duffy Jones's Locker, which meant the grave of all the unknown ghosts of people who had died at sea.\n\nOver time, Duffy became Davey, and so the original meaning of a nameless forgotten ghost was confused.\n\nSo what originally meant \"The graves of the forgotten\" became \"The grave of this one guy.\"", "David Jones was a 16th century pirate that used to throw his crew or prisoners overboard tied to a weight. Thus creating Davy Jones' locker. ", "From the Oxford English Dictionary. I posted this below in a reply but I'll post it here too.  \n\nb. Naut. A chest or compartment for containing clothes, stores, ammunition, etc. Often with word prefixed to indicate its use, as chain-locker, shot-locker. boatswain's locker: \u2018a chest in small craft wherein material for working upon rigging is kept\u2019 (Smyth Sailor's Word-bk. 1867). (not) a shot in the locker , used fig. for: (no) money in one's pocket, (not) a chance left. laid in the lockers fig., dead. Also Davy Jones's locker at Davy Jones n.", "Also, why is he a part time Green ghost, part time octopus man?", "[Davy Jones was a member of a band called The Monkees](_URL_0_) who were basically a constructed band made to emulate the Beatles, who were already unpopular with people who were against youth culture. Most vocal of anyone against youth culture would be adult conservative groups who hold no qualms about punching someone in the face, like longshoremen and sailors.   \n\nAs a sailor all of your belongings would be kept in a duffle bag or a locker.  If you were an asshole you might find your belongs hurled into the sea, where it would sink to the bottom never to be seen again.  During this era of the emergence of youth culture in the 60's and 70's Davy Jones emerged as the poster boy for boy bands adults loved to hate, sort of that era's version of Justin Bieber.  \n\nSo if there was anyone's locker a sailor would like to hurl into the sea, it would be Davy Jones.  So one place you don't want to wind up in is Davy Jones' locker.  ", "Op you saw that episode of SpongeBob didn't you? ", "All I know is that tons of people during school make references to this since my name is David Jones.", "Davy Jones is the actual birth name of rock god David Bowie, look it up. And the bottom of the sea is referred to as his locker because in his role as The Sovereign of The Guild of Calamitous Intent, an organization that oversees the operations of super-villains, that's where he keeps his secret hideout located\u2014right next to Sealab 2021."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones'_Locker"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TsinZYy-Uk"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yum0w", "title": "What would we see if we were the size of an atom?", "selftext": "Would it be colorless? Would everything be enlarged to a huge scale? I was wondering what it would look like.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1yum0w/what_would_we_see_if_we_were_the_size_of_an_atom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfo2fu8", "cfo43w7", "cfo5vjw"], "score": [13, 2, 3], "text": ["It makes no physical sense to ask what we would see, as the light-waves we use to see normally would be larger than us. Optical wavelengths range from ~400-900nm where as atoms are on the order of a couple of  \u00c5 or .1 nm. Quantum effects would also rule here, meaning things wouldn't anything like what you normally experience. Things wouldn't have definite positions or momenta, thanks to the [uncertainty principle](_URL_0_). ", "What flavor is light? What color is the vacuum? \n\nThese questions don't make sense in the same way yours doesn't. Color is the result of light being absorbed by electrons, exciting them to a higher energy state, and the resulting cascade of them returning to a lower energy state releases a particle of light. This becomes infinitely more complicated with molecules and colors and whatnot but it's all about electrons absorbing and re-emitting energy. So particles can't have color. \n\nSince there's nothing to transfer the information of the objects to your eyes, you wouldn't see anything. If you're looking for a mystical way to just know where and what things are, then it violates a rule of quantum mechanics called the uncertainty principle where we can't know the velocity and the position, simultaneously, of a particle.\n\nBecause of this your question has no answer. Because we can't be the size of an atom. There's no way we could see things. No way we could actually observe anything happening at that scale. So, even if there was an answer, we would have no way to know it was the right one and we couldn't reply to your question with that answer with any certainty. ", "It is inherently impossible to \"see\" atoms.\n\nThe reason for this is, that the wavelength of visible light is ~400-700 nm = 4 x 10-7 - 7 x 10-7 m.\nAtoms have roughly the size of ~1\u00c5 = 1 x 10-10 m.\n\nAs you can clearly see, the shortest wavelength of visible light is still more than 3 orders of magnitudes bigger than an atom. Thus, visible light will never be able to represent Atoms.\n\nWhat we can do, and what we are already doing, is using particles of shorter wavelength than visible light, like electrons.\n\nThis will result in an representation of Atoms in visible light."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5v3xpz", "title": "if i bake a cake today with milk that'll expire tomorrow, will my cake also expire tomorrow or has the expiration been nullified?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v3xpz/eli5_if_i_bake_a_cake_today_with_milk_thatll/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddz1y1z", "ddz25up", "ddz2b94", "ddz2p8p", "ddz4c1y", "ddz92xy", "ddzarah"], "score": [3, 71, 3, 2, 14, 2, 7], "text": ["Somewhere in-between. The milk is no longer plain milk, it has combined with other ingredients in new combinations, and been cooked (which kills bacteria). But there are so many variables in the milk, the other ingredients, cooking time, and so on, that it's tough to set a new expiry date.", "The expiration date from the milk is no longer relevant. Your cake will have the same shelf regardless of whether you used milk expiring tomorrow, or milk expiring much later, because you have killed all the bacteria that were going to make the milk spoil.", "In that case, you've heat killed the bacteria and other harmful pathogens that could grow in it. Chemically, the milk reacts with the other ingredients resulting in a new mixture that may or may not be sustainable for pathogens. ", "The date on food is usually a sell by date. You usually have a week after that date or you can obviously go by smell or taste.", "I worked at a food production facility and it's cool how much effort went into knowing the answers to this type of question. Every ingredient in a product that ends up for sale is considered and chosen for that recipe based on freshness dates.  If certain ingredients are not as fresh then the 'sell by' date is changed. Potato salad with all fresh ingredients gets, say, three days on the shelf before the mayo goes off. That's basically universal, so extended shelf life means added salts, maybe sugar or vinegar but usually salt. So if your local deli has takeout potato salad and they say it's good for 2 days refrigerated and Wal-Mart has a tub of it but it's good for 6 days and we can assume similar ingredients ( they don't have magic mayo ) then it's a guarantee the extra 4 days come from the massive amount of added salt. \n\n", "If it's used to make a fruit cake, it will exist in \"edible\" form long past our species expiry.", "There are a few different dates that get put on food, and they have different meanings.\n\n**Sell by** - mostly meaningless to consumers. A note for the store to discard the food after this date, but it's often a week or more before the food goes bad. Ignore this date, or add a week to it. Your milk probably has this date on it. \n\n**Best before** - a note for the customer. Quality can't be 100% guaranteed after this date, so you can't sue if it's not up to par, but it's still edible. \n\n**Use by** - this is a real one, but it only means quality may degrade after this date. If it smells okay, it's likely still safe. \n\nHowever, all of the above applies to ***unopened*** food. Once you open it, you introduce bacteria and humidity, and if you don't store it properly the date on the package doesn't matter. \n\nThere are different ways food goes \"bad\" once it's opened:\n\n- **Stale/dry:** The flavor or texture is changed by the air. It doesn't taste the best, but it's not bad for you. \n\n- **Rancid:** Oils go bad. Some oils are prone to going bad from oxygen, heat, and light. Not only do they taste and smell bad, but they can chemically harm your body.  \n\n- **Contaminated:** Bacteria grow when there's water or moisture. The bacteria can make you sick, and many bacteria (like botulism) make toxic wastes. Cooking it well kills the bacteria, but cooking won't get rid of the toxins.\n\n- **Moldy:** Fungus grows when there's moisture. If you see fuzzy mold or weird colors *anywhere* on the food, it's everywhere in the food. Throw it out. \n\nNow, back to the milk. \n\nThe date on the carton is likely the \"sell by\" date, not an expiration date. Once it's home, add a week to get a better expiry date. Regardless of the date, if you haven't opened it yet, it's probably fine to drink or cook with. If you opened it in the past week and kept it in the fridge,  it's probably fine to drink or cook with. \n\nIt's been in the fridge open for more than a week...  bacteria may have gotten in. Pour a bit into a cup and give it a smell. Your nose is good at detecting when something is off. \n\n**If it smells ok, it's probably good to cook with.** Cooking will kill off any bacteria and reset the expiration date. Cooking will likely fix stale or dry food too. You can put stale tortilla chips in the oven and they'll be good as new. You can cook with milk beyond its date if it smells fine. \n\n**If it looks or smells weird or gross, don't cook with it.** Cooking can kill bacteria, but it can't get rid of the toxic wastes from the bacteria or fungus, and it can't fix any rancid oils.\n\nHowever, you should know that if you're immune system is suppressed (old, very young, pregnant, or otherwise vulnerable to infection) then you should definitely keep to the printed \"use by\" dates and don't eat things after a few hours at room temperature or a few days in the fridge. This stuff may be lightly contaminated but still safe for most people, but it may be dangerous if your immune system can't handle the extra bacteria. You can still cook with it if you cook it thoroughly, but just be cautious. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "pm9o4", "title": "Can flash photography really damage cats' and dogs' eyes?", "selftext": "I get blasted by several of my friends anytime I show them a picture of my pet with automatic flash on. I usually use a cheap portable camera or my Motorola phone with a shitty flash; nothing nearly as powerful as professional flash bulbs. I tell them I've googled everywhere and found not one reliable source that flash photography can cause lasting damage to any sort of eyes. My feeble counterargument is usually that it's about the same as when a cat comes out of a cellar into full sunlight, but I would really like some closure on this.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pm9o4/can_flash_photography_really_damage_cats_and_dogs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3qhrko"], "score": [3], "text": ["At a normal distance, certainly not.  Even up close, extremely unlikely.\n\nThis is not to say that they'll like it, as they have greater sensitivity to allow them to see well in low light, but there simply is not enough energy in your flash to injure the retina."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "27nwht", "title": "Were there any facial expressions commonly used in the past, that are no longer used now?", "selftext": "It seems that the expressions of basic emotions (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness) are generally universal and pretty much hard-wired into being human, albeit with varying perceptions depending on your location, for example, westerns rely more on eyebrow movement, whereas those towards the east rely more on reading ones eyes. However, were there any expressions that were more common or perceived differently in the past, and adding a little more to the question were there any \"facial crazes\" in the past, such as how we (albeit unfortunately) have \"duckface\" now?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27nwht/were_there_any_facial_expressions_commonly_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci2vtii", "ci34bcl"], "score": [46, 14], "text": ["There's a new book out called \"Laughter in Ancient Rome\" by Mary Beard, University of California Press, in which she suggests that Romans didn't smile. \n\nThere was no Roman word for smiling, no mention of it anywhere. \nAbsence of evidence is, of course, not evidence of absence. But it would contradict the hardwired idea. \n\nIncidentally, she was taking the idea from Jacques Le Goff who theorised that smiling was invented in the Middle Ages.\n", "[Paul Ekman](_URL_0_) has shown, fairly conclusively in my opinion, that the expression of emotion in the face is universal. In fact, facial expressions evolved for communication purposes. Despite the regular pleading of, 'I am not a mind reader,' human beings evolved to be able to read expressions at a distance. The reason we have white sclera is so that we can see where another person is looking with relative ease.\n\nI think there is an argument to be made about 'display rules' in ancient cultures, but when Romans were reading Catullus one can only guess that they were gut-laughing about a senator brushing his teeth with donkey piss. \n\nThis is definitely a topic where you need to look at the science of expression rather than the opinions of historians. We know something about the evolution of expression and so are more likely to find conclusive answers there.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman"]]}
{"q_id": "9i2hpp", "title": "Is unpolarised light made up of lots of different polarised photons OR are the E fields of the photons just rotating and moving around randomly and very quickly giving it the unpolarised aspect?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9i2hpp/is_unpolarised_light_made_up_of_lots_of_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6gau0x"], "score": [9], "text": ["Unpolarized light is a statistical mixture of all possible polarizations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1kxnd1", "title": "What led to the downfall of \"big research\", ie Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, IBM Research, etc.", "selftext": "The research done by these companies have, to a very large extent, shaped the modern world as we know it. These institutions were on par with the very best research universities in the world (number of Nobel prizes, publications etc), and while they are still around in present times (either as the same company, or as a derivative company), they are shadows of their former selves.\n\nI'm curious as to the circumstances that led to the fall of such research institutions, because by any metric they should have made their companies fortunes (Printers, GUI, transistors, digital cameras, hard drives, C etc).  Was it just a case of poor capitalization? Was the research too fundamental (_URL_0_ this would be an example of a groundbreaking discovery that i doubt made much money)? Was there a shift in company values?\n\nthanks!\n\nAny books that could be recommended on the subject matter would be appreciated as well", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kxnd1/what_led_to_the_downfall_of_big_research_ie_bell/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbtow28"], "score": [133], "text": ["It's a complicated question. My understanding, from talking to people who have studied this quite a bit (there are people where I work who study this question very directly relationship to industry and physics), is that a few important changes have occurred. One is that these big behemoth companies like Bell and Xerox and IBM underwent significant financial struggles in the late 20th century. That never helps anybody. The other is that around the same time, there is an emergence of what we might label as \"start up\" culture. Scientists at universities were encouraged to take their academic research and commercialize it directly, starting small, speciality companies based around their niche areas. (This is part of a longer movement of \"technology transfer\" in the university system, as well as the [ability for scientists to patent the results of publicly-funded research.](_URL_1_)) \n\nThe combination of these effects means that the big companies no longer feel like it is worth maintaining general R & D divisions, where only maybe 10% of the total work at most will turn into anything profitable for the company. Instead, they simply buy up the start-ups (or their intellectual property) that seem to be the real winners \u2014 they only pay for the stuff that they think is actually going to be useful to them. So they've pushed the general R & D function back to the universities. They care a lot more about the bottom line today than they used to, in part because they no longer have some of the near-monopoly advantages that they used to have, what with increased foreign competition, fragmentation of the markets, and technology disruption, etc.\n\nSuch is my understanding of it, anyway, which is derived mostly from a few talks and conversations. You can see [some of the results of my colleagues' research here](_URL_0_) \u2014 look in particular at \"Part 1\" for a pocket history of physics in American industry in the late 40 years, which discusses some of the corporate changes as well.\n\nI don't know whether this trend applies everywhere; the above is done mostly with regards to the physics industries of the original question. I'm sure biotech and big pharma has their own stories."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.aip.org/history/pubs/HOPI_Final_report.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act"]]}
{"q_id": "2z5rnt", "title": "if female orgasms last so much longer then males, why do men think/want sex so much more?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z5rnt/eli5_if_female_orgasms_last_so_much_longer_then/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpfwrbm", "cpfws35", "cpfxgov", "cpfxirw", "cpg00t4", "cpg00uq", "cpg04nw", "cpg0r73", "cpg17dj", "cpg1ig3", "cpg5kb1", "cpg6z7h", "cpg6zoo", "cpg7imm"], "score": [57, 87, 44, 24, 21, 7, 13, 7, 44, 2, 5, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["While there may be some biological differences, a lot of it comes from our culture. If you tell one group of people: 'your worth is tied up in how much sex you can have' and tell another group: 'your worth is tied up in abstaining from sex', who do you think is going to think about and admit to thinking about sex more?\n\nAdditionally, more women are on drugs that lower the sex drive (namely hormonal contraceptive and SSRIs)", "It's not just about the orgasm. The sex thought process is also driven by the biological need to procreate and produce the next generation.\n\nWomen are fertile a few days of the month, but men are fertile pretty much all the time, and a guy can fertilize many many women. So biologically men's sex drive is higher and they think of it more often.\n\nAnd yes, there are lots and lots of individual exceptions. This is from a general trend perspective.", "I don't know. I think women want sex as equally as guys... we've just been conned to think otherwise. ", "They don't. There is just as much variance in libido within men as there are within women and the ranges are almost the same between the genders. If there is a difference it is very slight and mostly due to hormonal birth control. \n\nMost of the idea that men think of sex more is a social construct that is false. ", "There was a study that stated that men and women think about sex just as much as the other. Due to cultural influences when a woman expresses her sexual desire she is seen as a slut (or some other shaming word) and when a man does the same thing they are not looked at in such a way. So as a result women tend to be less vocal about their sexual desire making it seem that they think/want less sex.\n\nAlso I do not believe there is a connection between orgasm length and sexual desire. ", "They don't. We all love sex just as much as each other. ", "I'm not convinced it's anything other than a false generalization. As a male around people.", "2 questions. Have you ever been in a sex toy store? And have you ever overheard girls talking when they think no guys can hear them? I disagree that guys think about sex more. ", "I feel as though I may be In a unique situation, as a transgender man who is taking hormones (testosterone), I have both male and female perspectives on this question.\n\nWhen I had no male hormones in my system I did think about sex but in an entirely different way than I do now. It was generally localised around the 'time of the month' that I thought most about sex and it was more a need for that moment of closeness and connection with another person.\n\nNow I honestly think about it all the time, everything makes me think of it from a cute girl walking down the street to a flash thought in the back of my mind and it's more of an animal need for it.\n\nI am effectively going though a male puberty however, that could have something to do with it.\n\nDisregard if I am somewhat of an anomaly", "This goes against the general train of thought in these posts, but I think that men *do* think about sex more.  Consider the behavior of gay men versus lesbian women.  Gay men are much more sexually active.  I think that the traditional idea that women are more selective in regards to sex because they are the ones who get pregnant may sound hackneyed, but is basically correct.  ", "Men want sex more because it's harder for them to obtain.", "Because if men didn't want to have sex with women they'd have less reason to protect and provide for them and the species would have died out.", "Horniness isn't a thinking about or wanting of orgasm. It's the desire for the sexual contact that leads to orgasm. \n\nIt's like saying that craving taco bell is having a craving for digestive problems.", " > why do men think/want sex so much more?\n\nSays who? Look at any female based tv show, its all about either sex or wine."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3605a3", "title": "Who were the Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan of 1880s/90s Germany?", "selftext": "As a student of American history, I have a wealth of information regarding the modern industrialization in the U.S.  I realize that Germany also underwent rapid industrialization at approximately the same time.  Were there also stand out industrialists that pushed Germany forward?\n\nThanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3605a3/who_were_the_rockefeller_carnegie_and_jp_morgan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr9rhwn", "cr9s30j"], "score": [3, 6], "text": ["Albert Ballin worked his way up through the ranks of the Hamburg American Steamship Line (HAPAG) and was so successful at increasing the number of passengers carried by that company on the North Atlantic route, he became the president of the company. Ballin also turned HAPAG into the largest steamship company in the world from 1906 to 1914. Despite being Jewish, he became a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II.  The Kaiser let his great love of anything nautical and the very large ocean liners built by HAPAG overcome what ever anti-Semitism he may have had. In fact, some apologists of Kaiser Wilhelm point to his friendship with Ballin to prove he had no hatred against the Jews. \nSource: \"Lost Liners\" by Robert Ballard   ", "Gerson von Bleichr\u00f6der was the chief banker for the Imperial state and handled Bismarck's own personal finances. Although not nearly as powerful a banker as Morgan, von Bleichr\u00f6der was able to use his connections within the Imperial state to expand his financial interests. \n\nAlbert Ballin was a shipping magnate and head of the lucrative Hamburg-America Line, which was one of the world's largest shipping lines in the late nineteenth century. Ballin also operated as a diplomatic go-between for Imperial Germany and the British. \n\nWalther Rathenau, like von Bleichr\u00f6der, was a German-Jewish businessman who founded  Allgemeine Elektrizit\u00e4ts-Gesellschaft (AEG), an electrical concern. He played a crucial role in organizing Germany's economy during the First World War and became a controversial figure in the early Weimar Republic as he became Foreign Minister. The antisemitic right saw his process of diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union as a part of a Jewish conspiracy to further destroy Germany, leading to his assassination in 1922.\n\nThe Ruhr coal industry created a number of major industrial magnates as coal was the most accessible fossil fuel available for Germany. Louis Baare was the director of the Bochumer Verein and highly respected in Imperial Germany and was a representative to the *Reichstag* and a prominent supporter of the anti-socialist legislation. Emil Kirdorf was another Ruhr coal magnate and lived all the way through the Third Reich, passing in 1938.  Kridorf's Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) was a massive coal concern and Kirdorf was an avid supporter of reactionary politics, supporting the NSDAP in their lean times between the Beer Hall Putsch and the Depression. When he died in 1938, Hitler himself attended Kirdorf's state funeral. Carl Lueg was the head of  Gutehoffnungsh\u00fctte (GHH), a mining and engineering company that grew tremendously after unification. Like his fellow coal magnates, Lueg was a prominent advocate for trade protectionism and also employed industrial paternalism for his workers providing care for his employees (provided they did not strike or have the temerity to vote for the SPD).   \n\nOne of the major differences between German industrialists and their American counterparts was that in the former case they played a much more formalized role in national politics. Although Rockefeller and Morgan were important players in the national scene, they never formally entered into the federal government, unlike figures like Rathenau or Baare. American industrialists actually prided themselves in their relative autonomy from the stat; the idea that the American entrepreneur succeeded without government interference or aid was a powerful myth that surrounded this charter generation of American entrepreneurs. The Germans never really maintained this position and German industrial magnates argued that business and politics were intertwined. This played into long-standing German cultural mores about the social role of economic superiors, called \"Bread-Lords,\" or *Arbeitsgeber* in which employers were accepted to have a leading role over their employees' lives and politics in exchange for fair wages and a measure of social welfare.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1l50pl", "title": "why is there no unanimous name for the years 2000-2009? and if there is one, what is it?", "selftext": "When we refer to the 1970s, we call them \"the 70s.\" Why hasn't there been a cohesive name for the years 2000-2009? Anytime I need to refer to it quickly, I just say \"the ought's\" which I know isn't even close to being accurate.\n\nI know that the generation from that time period (which I happen to be a part of) is referred to as \"millennial's\" but that's as much information I've heard discussed. I feel like I'm part of a forgotten generation, but not having a name for it makes it even harder to complain about.\n\nEdit: not sure if this can be considered explained to the fullest, but it's definitely satisfactory by /r/explainlikeimfive  standards.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l50pl/eli5_why_is_there_no_unanimous_name_for_the_years/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbvtau5", "cbvtceq", "cbvtg2a", "cbvtymw", "cbvvpuz", "cbvw4ti", "cbw08l6", "cbw5bpv"], "score": [9, 5, 18, 7, 20, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["the 1900-1909 years were called the \"oughts\" so calling the 2000-2009 years that isn't really that terrible.  People just don't use the term \"oughts\" very often so they prefer to use phrases like 2000s (two thousands) instead.", "No, I've used the \"oughts\" before, and I've heard it used by others.  I've also heard them referred to as the \"thousands,\" but not very often.", "The term popularly used here is 'the noughties'", "I've heard \"new millennium\" a few times. Of course, my generation is also called \"millenneals\", which compared to \"the greatest generation\", the \"baby boomers\" \"gen X'ers\" and the like, sounds downright stupid to me.", "I've only heard it referred to as the Two Thousands. ", "On a similar note, if someone said to me to pronounce the year 2008, I would say \"two thousand and eight\", but we have a quiz show called University Challenge here in the UK and Jeremy Paxman (the host) always pronounces 2008 as \"twenty oh eight\", which always blindsides me every single week when I watch it :/", "Because '70' is a number that we can easily add an 's' too. It is a standard form that no one has to think about.\n\nWith the decades beginning in 2000 and 2010 we don't have that. So it takes a little creativity, and different persons will have different ideas. 'Noughties' is fun, but not really fit for formal usage, '2000s' is ambiguous, etc. We can call this decade the '2010s', but that is somewhat ugly, 'teens' is informal, so we won't have a standard form until we have a new '20s' in a few years time.", "in medieval times, time periods are referred to as ages, like the dark age, the silver age. etc"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1sw1wt", "title": "why are corporations considered a person and why was it necessary to implement this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sw1wt/eli5_why_are_corporations_considered_a_person_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce1s6do", "ce1s7zi", "ce1yom5", "ce21535"], "score": [9, 23, 11, 3], "text": ["Corporate Personhood **does not mean that they are \"people\".** It means that it's an entity that can be taxed and sued. ", "Corporations are not people, as much as some politicians and pundits would like you to believe, however, in order to do business, they have to be granted some of the same rights as people. People and pets have the right to not be physically abused, but that doesn't make pets people.\n\nAs a REPRESENTATIVE of a group of people, a corporation needs the ability to do things like enter into contracts, be taxed and act as a single entity for a group of people. Corporations also shield individuals from the liabilities of a company. If a company goes bankrupt, the debtors can't take money away from the individual shareholders. \n\nBasically, a corporation is a legal construct to allow a group of people (shareholders) do business.", "They aren't people, they have corporate personhood.\n\nIf the concept of corporate personhood didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to sue them, tax them, or enter into contracts with them.\n\nThings like \"Exxon signs agreement to sell 100,000 barrels of oil to Sears\" would be impossible without personhood since neither Exxon nor Sears could enter into contracts without it.", "Corporations are a collection of people, that creates certain issues.\n\nFirst, a corporation as an entity needs to be able to have some legal framework to operate under, there are different kinds of corporations with different charters and laws that they must follow, but the key is that they have to have some framework work under.  There are also other legal frameworks collections of people can operate under (labour unions, associations, political parties etc.). \n\nNow what does this mean about things like corporations and speech?  Well corporations are a collection of people, and if you impose a limitation on the speech of a collection of people you are limiting the speech of those people, which is a violation of (in the US) the first amendment.  For example, book publishers are corporations, and if you can prohibit one type of speech you could perhaps do this to another.  In the US the supreme court has rules the risk of corruption does not meet a standard of 'strict scrutiny', which would have allowed rules limiting political speech.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25rswc", "title": "how do military/police dogs distinguish between a target under pursuit and non-targets such as civilians and other servicemen, and how often does this go awry?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25rswc/eli5_how_do_militarypolice_dogs_distinguish/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chk4bzg", "chk5prt", "chk5wfe", "chk6gcr", "chk6q3d", "chk7pt5", "chk7r27", "chk8bbe", "chk8d7k", "chk8en1", "chk8qu6", "chk93qg", "chk98rr", "chk9b4v", "chk9l8d", "chk9q62", "chkafdz", "chkao7x", "chkaqm5", "chkb8wg", "chkbigw", "chkccav", "chkcdeu", "chkcsyw", "chkcv9b", "chkdewu", "chkdi9u", "chkdkst", "chkdnsn", "chkepp2", "chkhk1p", "chki7ou", "chkipzf", "chkk1mm", "chkl9j5", "chkpbq5"], "score": [4, 1001, 34, 4, 127, 16, 13, 47, 2, 41, 13, 5, 4, 4, 7, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 10, 7, 5, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["I don't have much time working with my K9 counterparts but I would assume that the handler ensures the dog knows the target and the dog can also read a human very well and sense who the danger is rather than a civilian running away. But that's just my guess.\n\nSource: Military Police", "It can happen with newer/poorly trained dogs and handlers. As others have said, experienced dogs and their handlers are able to read/judge each other well.\n\nThe most commonly utilized 3 breeds in the US at the moment (German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Dutch Shepherd) are historically used as perimeter herders for livestock. They will go after/herd something that is fleeing if they have a pretty strong instinct intact. That of course is ideal when picking out candidates for training, but can take a lot of work to focus the instinct.\n\nA lot of dogs are also trained to be more in tune with the emotions the suspects are expressing too, so chances of a well trained dog going after an innocent are slim.\n We used to do a training exercise called \"the happy dance\" where the handler would stand calmly with the dog at plotz(laying down) and another worker would pass by and think aggressively and make gestures. The dog would get up at the alert between the person and it's handler and go nuts at the guy. Then the guy would turn around, calm down, and be happy sounding and the dog would  change it's posture and lay back down almost instantly. \n\nSource- worked with a K9 security company, and owned a pretty high drive flunk out Dutchie (flunked because his drive was the wrong kind for the job. Unless the perpetrators were always on bicycles... or were actual sheep.)\n\nEdit- for all those saying \"so I should just turn around and say WHO'S A GOOD BOY\" or \"so I should just try to play with him\", I know you're trying to be funny but no. You should honestly stop and lay on the ground with your face down. The dog will still come towards you, but they are often trained to guard the suspect on the ground until the handler arrives to arrest. The handler will call the dog off.\nThat game we played was to test the dogs protective instinct for the handler or a threat more than anything but is an exercise for the dogs judgment no less.", "They don't. That's the easy answer. The long answer is they can attempt to take cues from the handler as to who the priority is based on body language, actions, commands, or having been directed towards a subject prior to being released. They can also use their own dog logic like a common pet would, which doesn't always work. Just like humans can do their job better than others, so can the dogs. Especially in a scrum or some chaos, even the best dog might bite the hand that feeds.\n\nIn my fairly large department, we only have two dogs. One of them is pretty crazy while the other is more of what you'd expect from a police dog. They both have cops on their take down sheets, though. One story involves the crazy dog being taken to a building suspected of having a burglar inside. Only the dog and the handler went inside and left some other officers outside. The dog was allowed to search off leash and got ahead of the handler. For some reason the dog thought it was best to go back outside and jumps through a small opened window to find a handful of cops waiting outside. He decided that they must have burglarized the place and started to chase them. Out in the open with no place to hide and too close to the dog to hop back into their cruisers, the handler finally came outside to find all the officers hopped up on the hoods or trunks of their cars with the dog barking at and biting at their heels.", "They don't.  The trick is to train the officers.\n\nIf you're going to be working with K-9s you have to be aware of when the dog is released and not be in it's path.\n\nEvery cop story I've ever heard about getting bit was either the handler's fault for releasing when officers were already in pursuit or a cop taking off in pursuit instead of letting the dog do its job.", "K9 handler for 6 years. Retired my dog a few years ago. Ok it can happen. The dog will \"target lock\" on the one fleeing 99.9% of the time and run past the one standing still if there are people around. The issue takes skill and training. You must train yourself and the dog. You watch the dogs behavior and see who he's watching then give the command. We commonly would call the dog off in training and re direct him on a passive target while the first one fled to work past always chasing the moving target. Bottom line as a handler you must take the surroundings into perspective before deploying him. ", "Is the unit called K-9, because if pronounced it sounds like canine? (Just curious)", "I don't have much personal experience with the dogs but I've spent some time on military exercises with K9 units (being taken down is fun when you have the suit).\n\nEvery single one of the handlers I've met had atleast a couple smaller scars. The first thing they where told upon joining their unit was \"you're going to get bit, if that's a problem tell us now and we'll get you reassigned\".\n\nThe handlers carried around a bright orange rope with a ball on each end that the dog was trained to go for instead of whatever they'd originally locked in at. It worked nicely but not a perfect solution though as they only did so if the rope was moving and in the air, basically you had to throw it right at the dog while they where close enough to get distracted by it but not so early that it hits the ground or the dog will refocus on you. \n\nWe used it during training exercises and when they demonstrated the dogs tracking and attack power, my sergeant volunteered me for the demonstration, I had to go hide and be tracked down and once they where close they released the dog. Watching a fully grown and huge as fuck German Shepherd that's trained to bite run towards me full sprint was somewhat uncomfortable but the rope worked.", "I was working a summer camp one year where the local sherrifs departments bring out a group of inner city kids for three days.  The last day out there is \"media day\" where the Sherrifs bring all their fancy toys out to parade around.  They had SWAT trucks, mobile command centers, Police horses, and a hovercraft, among other items.  \n\nOne part of the event had a police dog demonstration, where they would line up a bunch of different containers and make it sniff out some drugs.  Another demo was the dog taking down a suspect.  The \"suspect\" would wear a padded sleeve that the dog was trained to go for.  As the handler got ready to release the dog, a camera lady moved in directly opposite the handler, with the \"suspect\" in between them.  The handler gives the take down command, and releases the leash.  At that moment, thinking she was going to get a great action shot, the camera lady lets rip with a series of flashes.  \n\nI'm not sure if police dogs are trained to respond to gunfire of muzzle flashes, but they can identify handguns from what I was told.  Well to this dog, flashes+camera=handgun, so it fucks off the \"suspect\" and makes a b-line for the unfortunate camera lady.  \n\nIn front of a crows of inner city youth and Police personnel, this dog takes out a camera lady from the local newspaper.  This was all caught on film as well from another news station.  If those kids were piss-scared of police dogs before this point, theres no question about it now.\n\nSo in other words, its easy to confuse a dog.  And, barring any personal injuries, the circumstances can be both horrifying and a tad entertaining.", "If he be running, he be guilty. Dogs have a keen sense of this. ", "Cop here. I'll start with interactions with officers. It essentially comes down to how well trained the dog is. When we first get a dog they will only be comfortable around the handler. If you walk near it it will growl/bark at you and if you try to touch it he will keep whatever piece of you touches him. As he becomes more acclimated to the department he will recognize the uniforms and learn we are the good guys. Same goes on a chase. It also helps that officers know the dog chases what is running. I can't speak for all officers but I know in my dept when we hear \"dogs out!\" on the radio we stop and let him go past. Does an officer (or even a handler) get bit from time to time? Yep, it happens. I saw a handler get stitches a few weeks ago and I got nipped on the ass once when I stepped between the dog and the bad guy. The nip was the dogs way of telling me to move.\n\nNow for citizens. I'm not a handler but I can't see a dog being let loose for a chase if the bad guy is running in a crowded area. On a track or search though they often get confused. Even officers will throw off a scent in a track if they've walked through the area. The work around just comes from the skill of the handler. What I have seen them do is when they see the dog is tracking the wrong person they will start over and somehow communicate to the dog to pick a new scent. The dogs are also pretty smart. A while back I was checking a building with my partner and we found a locked room. We called a K9 in and he immediately indicated there was someone in the building (he was smelling me and my partner) even though we had stepped out because our scent remained. The dog turned around and sniffed me and my partner and stopped barking. He realized he was smelling us. \n\nLong story short, it comes down to training and more importantly the dog/handler relationship. ", "From a TV series a while back about police dogs, there's a lot of factors that go into how the dogs behave. Most non sniffer dogs are trained to do two things: Pursuit or Attack.\n\nGenerally under pursuit mode, they will only pursue the perp and bark when they've been found, not attack. The dogs are trained to recognise all sorts of things about someone on the run. In one of the shows it was claimed they could smell the raised adrenaline levels of a perp on the run.\n\nIn attack mode, they will only attack who they're directed to attack.\n\nAnother interesting thing they mentioned in this show is that the dogs are *trained* to attack, thus they don't respond like other dogs given the same stimuli, which is why it can be quite dangerous to go and pet a police dog - sometimes when they look happiest it's when they're getting ready to attack, as they're trained that way.\n\nEdit: this was in the UK, I think the series was called [Send in the Dogs](_URL_0_) IIRC. Fascinating watch. [Here's a playlist of episodes on YouTube](_URL_0_ & list=PLYfXTQBHHW4e4snUH7ZPgngW3Rmgr2h68).", "Pro tip, drug dogs have a very high failure rate due to being coached to \"trigger\" via their handlers actions. (ie. a drug dog is for show to make the cops have \"legal\" cause to search your car)", "Well ideally the dog is working with a handler and the handler controls where the dog is going.  Dog's are trained to bite people who are running away or acting aggressive and to let go immediately and bark when the person stops moving.  That's the idea but in reality it's not that perfect. \n\n It's happened when several LEOs are chasing a suspect that a dog might think a running  &  yelling LEO is the bad guy.  Or there's dogs that take \"dirty bites\" - that is they don't let go when the suspect stops resisting.  \n\nThe dog  &  handler are supposed to work together and keep in fairly good contact so that the handler can direct the dog and correct situations before they get out of hand.    ", "TL;DR they don't\n\nIf you're running away from the dog, they will chase you.\n\nIf you stand still put your hands in the air so they won't grab you.\n\nSource: uk's tallest policeman who I chatted to once, who was chased down by one on foot. They go for the arms apparently and because he was 7+ feet tall he could avoid getting munched", "When I was in Iraq I could walk by a k9 and the would not bat an eye, but a local national would do the same thing and instant apeshit landshark, I wondered why.", "It goes wrong more often than we are told. Just here in my city this police dog bit a cop in the armpit when he drew his weapon on a bad guy, got 15 stitches. Before that the sheriff entered into a  K9  training session and tried to pet one of the dogs, got bit,  9 stitches on the hand. Both times the K9 officers were punished. ", "As you might expect, different types of dogs distinguish targets differently.\n\nThe Sentry Dogs that I worked were 'air scenters.' Typically, a sentry dog team (1 human, 1 dog) worked on a perimeter where anyone approaching externally would be presumed hostile. \n\nSentry Dog rules of engagement were if you got within 5 feet of me while I was working, you went down. (Didn't matter whose side you were on...) Might be why they only worked Sentry Dogs from the late 60's to the mid 70s...\n\nFor more information, you can view a training video. A few are posted at:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nNote: Civilian, or police, dogs would work differently.\n\nUno\n\nSentry Dog Handler, US Army, 69-71", "I remember watching this _URL_0_ and at 3:20 the guy on the left asks if he can touch the dog and they yell at him not to. ", "Short answer:  They don't really\n\nLongish answer:  Dogs are smart.  People and dogs have been working so closely for tens of thousands of years that we've become a somewhat symbiotic species, they and us.  Dogs are one of the few, if not only species that understand what it means when you \"point\" at something.  Chimpanzees, for instance, cannot understand that gesture.\n\nA well trained dog/human pair can be very effective tools.", "[This is a really informative demonstration by the West Midlands (UK) police team at Crufts 2014.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe police explain what kind of dogs they look for and how they train them up, followed by demonstrations of different events they might come across.", "As someone who has worked as a Police officer for over 30 years, I learnt something very early in my service. When the furry land shark is released, you get out of the bloody way , it's not the dogs fault , he wants to catch the bad guy, if you get in the the way ..... tough luck ", "A cop friend once said that when they release the dog, they all give a sigh of relief when it doesn't go after one of them.", "Once the cops and their police dog were chasing a criminal and the criminal ran into my friends house because the door was open and my friend who was inside was bit in the hand by the dog so yeah", "It's 50 50. It's call collateral damage. ", "When I was on patrol in Afghanistan, the dog handlers dog was just walking around off a leash and everything was cool, then all of a sudden he just looked back at me and leaped up at my hand. I wasn't even moving or anything. Luckily I pulled my hand away quick and he only got my pinky finger. Even through my heavy gloves he drew blood. \n\nI don't blame the dog or handler or anything, he had just been deployed too many times and had PTSD. He was retired a few weeks later", "Also, why is it considered ok to unleash vicious animals on a fleeing suspect in a situation where there is no immediate danger to the public?", "I'm not sure but one time I accidentally walked through an area at my work where police were training their dogs. It should have been blocked off properly but it wasn't and I almost got mauled. The dog saw me and he charged me, they were yelling at it to call it off but it didn't listen right away. It stopped just before me but was still behaving extremely aggressively until they caught up to it and grabbed it. I know they didn't specifically set it on me because they didn't know I was there, In a real situation I could have just been an innocent passerby and the dog would have gone for me. ", "They go after the one running away.", "On my first deployment to Afghanistan I was made a dog handler and had to go to an 8 week course with a young Belgian Malinois. It comes down to how the handler acts around threats and when you order the dog to track, or attack, towards a specific threat. ", "Dog quarry here (I'm the guy who wears the suit/sleeve and gets bit by the dogs in training). \n\nDisclaimer: I'm not a dog trainer per se, I play my role and must know a certain amount about dog training and body language but I'm no expert on dogs. I can share my experience though. \n\nThe handlers will generally cue the dogs onto a person with a command that tells them that they might get to bite someone soon (something like \"watch him/her!\"), the dogs get really excited when they hear this, usually start barking and pulling on their leash/harness - the handler will usually watch and wait until the dog is looking at the right person or in the right direction before saying it so the dog get's the reward of the command when they are looking at the correct person and they will get a \"leave it\" or something like that if they look at the wrong person (it's pretty clear who they're looking at usually because their ears are perked up and they look directly straight at the person so from behind the dog the handler can see exactly where they're looking). With that command, the dog is now fully alert and itching to get a bite. The dog will read everyone's body language as well and whoever is acting the most aggressive or most nervous and twitchy will trigger the prey drive. However this type of prey drive is not necessary for the dog to focus/bite - if the handler has been able to cue the dog on the correct person, it is also trained to deploy on a seemingly passive person (passive as in not moving around much, not peaceful). So you can't avoid a bite by just playing dead or not acting aggressive or not running - they're trained for that quite a bit as it can initially be a problem for many dogs. \n\nWe quarries do lots of different types of body language behaviour during training such as pacing, yelling, backing away, puffing up, waving arms, simply talking to the cop with a dismissive tone (\"Ahhh get outta here, what did I do wrong?\") anything that a nervous/aggressive/uncooperative person might do in this situation, so the dogs know what they're looking for. They also train with other cops around the dog and around the target so they get used to people being near the target and know they don't bite people who are acting a certain way toward them (dogs are really good at following humans' gaze too so it helps that in a situation many people are likely to be focusing on the suspect and the dog will do the same). We even train the dogs to bite a target person who is fighting a cop already - so even when they are grappling, the dog knows who's who. They're really smart, they're not just a biting machine that will tear up anything that gets close enough. They are able to discriminate due to the extensive training they get. The dogs are also socialized really well with all types/ages of people, so they are very well-versed in what appropriate human behaviour looks like and what is out of the ordinary.\n\nLots of bites will happen on-leash where this isn't even an issue, while only a fleeing person will cause them to let the dog go and by that point the dog is typically very clear on who it is they're after, and they've got that \"missile lock\" thing going on. I've never seen an in-service dog focus on the correct person and then suddenly switch and bite someone else just because they're closer - they know the game and they know that's not okay. \n\nI don't know how often this goes awry, but I've never heard of it happening within the police department I work for.\n\nThe handlers will not let the dog go unless they are \"missile locked\" on the correct person. It is possible that a dog could cue onto the wrong person in an ambiguous situation, so it is up to the handler to use their judgment and only send the dog for a bite if they know the dog is not confused about who the target is. That's up to their experience and knowledge of their dog.\n\nEdit: Grammar/spelling", "ALPHA SAYS BITE BAD MAN!\n\nBAD MAN IS RUNNING MAN!\n\nCHASE BAD MAN!\n\nWOOF!\n\nRUN! FAST!\n\nCATCH BAD MAN!\n\nBITE! BITE!\n\nGOOD BOY!", "I'm a Paramedic, I had a call the other day that was a dog bite. The lady was a black woman who was walking down the road and was about to enter a store whenever she was suddenly watching a police dog run at her. She could not run and there was nowhere to hide. She just stood there frightened as this police dog ran her down and bit her on the foot. (merely a flesh wound) The officer had no idea that his had happened. He was in the bathroom taking a shit. Whenever he dropped his pants, he accidentally hit the button and the door came open for the dog. I guess the dog took that as his signal to go for it. The woman is now suing the dog because she said that there was another white lady walking into the store and that the dog is racist because he went after the black lady. True story.", "There is a really relevant video floating around somewhere with a woman being the person fleeing. The dog runs all over the place, running past her, chasing random guys, just can't figure it out when it's a woman. I can't find it though, it's shot from a helicopter.", "The idea of animals holding ranks in the military or in law enforcement is truly the dumbest idea possible. That'd be like giving a rank to your firearm. An animal is a little more important than a tool, that's true, but they are not humans. They cannot reason. They cannot make the type of decisions that are  required by the rank. I find the whole concept offensive. \n\nA cop with an attack dog is a danger to society. I'd rather the cop had a taser, because at least he can make the decision not to pull the trigger. The only saving grace is that K-9's are too much hassle to be used wide-spread. That said, I have no problems whatsoever with K-9 sniffer dogs. That's an *appropriate* use of a dog.\n\nFurthermore, there's no logical reason why it would specifically be an offense to kill a police dog. We already *had* laws which covered such an occurence that were *far and away* more appropriate; it's destruction of government property. \n\nI realize that's probably not a popular opinion (especially amongst law enforcement.) Downvote if you think you must; I've got imaginary internet points to spare.", "Train them to only attack red targets. Like children or commies. Better dead than red!", "This has been explained, but this is just some advice, if you hear \"dog off leash\" or see a k9 running, just stop moving. Stand still."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYQxKYrt2Z4", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYQxKYrt2Z4&amp;list=PLYfXTQBHHW4e4snUH7ZPgngW3Rmgr2h68"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://cybersd.com/sd/"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJt_HOLFs1Y"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAXnV-OLmWM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "15622k", "title": "why do we feel warranted stepping into the middle of conflicts halfway around the world but we won't intervene in mexico and the tragic drug wars?", "selftext": "I've been wondering this for a little while now and I haven't come up with a good answer. I'm far from an expert on foreign policy, so I could use some insight. \n\nI have a sneaking suspicion that the top answer will be \"oil\", but I'm not sure. \n\nEdit: It's come to my attention that we are somewhat involved and since apparently this question is biased, let me clarify: Our involvement isn't publicized like it is overseas, and since they are our neighbors, my question is why don't we hear more about it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15622k/why_do_we_feel_warranted_stepping_into_the_middle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7jlmji", "c7jln4b", "c7jn94c", "c7jnr90", "c7jo1ao", "c7jog3a", "c7jp8z9", "c7jpr05", "c7jpz7s", "c7jq0ln", "c7jsy3d"], "score": [72, 10, 3, 4, 38, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Intervene how?\n\nWe're already funding anti-drug efforts, sending agents down, providing weapons and training, etc.\n\nThe problem is that the cartels have tens of billions of dollars a year, and a ready supply of weapons being smuggled across the border. (Not small guns; heavier munitions that the US makes in its war industries.) They've been able to use these arms to stage increasingly violent conflicts with the military - having already bought off most of the police departments with drug money (or installed corrupt officials).\n\nThere is a growing sentiment in Mexico that the US is causing this problem for them by funding the cartels with its domestic drug policy, and so invading Mexico in response to the cartels would be a great way to ensure the general Mexican populace dislikes us, too.\n\ntl;dr: The Mexican deaths are the casualties in the US's \"War on Drugs\", and invading them would make it even more obvious it was our unilateral policy choices getting them killed, and make us even less popular.\n\nEdit: To understand the scale of the problem, since 2006, somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 Mexicans have died in the current bout of drug violence. Understandably, the Mexican people are unhappy that thousands of murders are being committed each year because of US drug policy.", "The answer isn't so much \"oil\" as it is \"money\" and \"politics\". There's a lot of political gain to having strategically placed bases/units in the middle east.\n\nWhen it comes to Mexico:\n\n* there isn't a big public outcry to help, like there is for Isreal.\n* It would be really expensive to really do much of any real affect, for not much gain\n* It would be extremely dangerous, not just for our troops, but for the locals living in Mexico. The cartels literally run entire cities. Any uprisings could (and do) result in a lot of bloodshed. \n\n\nWhat's happening there is terrible, but America can't be expected to play World Police ALL the time.", "Nobody likes to poo where they eat?", "Operation Fast and Furious...that's how we \"intervene\"", "Question asks for an opinion, is already biased AND factually incorrect from the get-go, and generally displays what a bad ELI5 post looks like. ", "Hey kid, don't ever get into fights at school, OK? What I'm about to explain to you is how the bigger world works, but only because there are no teachers. Since you have teachers at your school, you should go to them and they will help you. When I say \"take down the bully\" or \"lose your friends\", I mean getting in trouble so that they're suspended or expelled.\n\nSo, the school bullies have started being much too aggressive, so now you have created a strike force to stop them. You have 10 friends, and there are 50 bullies. Already you realize you can't take all the bullies at once!! But you and your friends are smart, and can take them out one by one.\n\nNow, there are only 4 days of school left (8 if you're re-elected), and you want to make the school safer for the next class. You could always just sit around and play games with your friends. Fighting the bullies would actually make you and your friends more sad, but playing games would make you happier. But you've decided, for the greater good, you'll at least intervene and stop a few bullies while you're there.\n\nBut now, who do you stop? You can't take on all the bullies at once. And you don't have enough time to take them all out one by one. So you look for which bully is the worst. But perhaps even that isn't the smartest way to do it. Let's say we can rank the bullies as if it's a class. There are A bullies, B bullies, and so on. Of course, it's hard to tell whether a bully is very bad, or you are just wrong and estimated it wrong. You might take down an A bully, but it turns out they were D all along, so your time could have been better spent elsewhere. [*cough* Iraq *cough*]\n\nSo you have all these bullies and their estimated ranks. It's a simple matter of going after all the A bullies, then the B bullies, and so on. But wait! One of the B bullies is always taking your lunch. You actually have to go back home in the middle of the day and get some food, and then come back to school. This is taking up time [and resources] that could be spent fighting more bullies! So you decide that, even though it's just a B bully, you'll take him out first, since that's smartest.\n\nThen you come across a really mean A bully. But he doesn't bully you that much. He bullies more the other bullies, and leaves you alone most of the time. Obviously, you can come back to him later. You find a few others, with different levels of hurting you, but since they only bully you a few times a year, and are actually doing other things, you can come back to them later.\n\nThen you come to a really strong and bad A bully. He's hasn't bullied you guys so much, but is really bullying other little innocent kids. You should take him down. But if you take him on, you will lose 5 of your friends. Those friends can actually help you take on more bullies, so you should think about saving this bully for later, and using these friends to take down this big one after those others.\n\nBut you've decided that this big bully has to be taken down even if you lose 5 of your friends. The problem is, this particular bully won't be alone. While you can take others one by one, this one will get others' help to oppose you.\n\nIn fact, every time you take down a bully, you are actually making all the bullies more likely to make a team and take you down. So even though you could take down 3 or 4 bullies a day, it might be better to only take down 1 or maybe even 0. In the meantime, you make strategies with your friends about how to take down the bullies as inconspicuously as possible, and also which are the most immediately important and which are not.\n\nYou're starting to realize that all your friends are listening to you. Some come to you for help since a bully is starting to bully them. Others come with ideas about which bullies to take on that would make things better for yourself and your friends only, but not the other kids. But most of the other kids also support you. You've just realized that you're the one who has the best information about the bullies, and can make decisions which ones to take down first. Everyone will listen to you, since it makes more sense to do your ideas of taking down the school lunch bully first, not taking the super strong one early, and so on.\n\nBut you also realize that you could easily just say to take down a bully that *isn't* the best bully. Maybe one annoyed you specifically and you want to take him out. Or maybe you could take all the candy from one and you choose him over another. You could easily just pick to take down the bullies that benefits you and your friends the most, without benefiting the other kids, but saying that you're picking the best, and nobody would know. So you have to be careful not to become selfish, since you have so much power.\n\nYou remember Spiderman, right? With great power comes great responsibility! You'll have to pick your battles, and the same is true later in life. But, I don't want to hear any fighting with bullies at school, am I clear? If somebody bullies you, go to the teacher right away!\n\n**TL;DR: complex prioritization with potential for corruption**", "Nothing is being done about the mexican drug lords because they are actually propping up a huge portion of the world's economy. The drug lords provide banks with billions of dollars of liquid assets and in turn, the banks launders the money. What other industry would be able to walk into the bank and deposit between 300 and 750 thousand dollars in cash, day after day after day? ", "Because the government profits off of drug sales...", "ELI5 Version:\n\nWe kindof are, but in a different smaller way that's more secretive.  In Iraq, we sent our military in and lots of people know about it.  In Mexico and Columbia (and maybe others), we sent in experts to teach them how to fight, some of them hired and some of them from our government.  A lot of people are saying that they are actually doing the fighting for them, though, even though they aren't supposed to.  We don't really know because they don't have to tell us as much like the military does.  It's sort of a secret way of doing the same thing.\n\n\nAdult Version:\n\nYou could say we are, but in a different way.  We have sent private military contractors to Columbia and Mexico, as well as CIA agents.  In Columbia, there are many allegations that the PMC's have begun direct combat with cartels.  So really, we are, just in a covert manner.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThere's a lot more info in Corperate Warriors by PW Singer.  It's about the history and state of PMC's, and a really good read if you're into that.\n\n", "Because you use \"we\" in an international website", "Because the Mexican Constitution says no foreign military backup, which was put in there specifically because America was man-handling every other nation down there.  So legally, NO ONE but Mexico can help fighting Mexican Cartels with anything but selling them bullets and beans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/07drugs.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "53ucq6", "title": "If single-letter variable names are intolerable in programming, why are they the standard for formulas?", "selftext": "I have a BS  &  MS in CS, but I've been out of the academic world for some time. Recently while reading some lecture slides I was surprised to find how high the mental load of parsing long formulas written in the usual greek alphabet is when you aren't working with them daily anymore.\n\nA fictional example, \n\nIf one would never consider it acceptable to write code with variable names such as:\n\n    int a = (r * (b - d)) ^ l;\n\nWhy is it standard practice to write formulas such as:\n\n     \u03a9 = (\u03b2(\u03bc - \u03b5))^\u03c3\n\nAnd not using descriptive names such as:\n\n    reactionSize = (timeBias * (initialValue - currentValue)) ^ userBias\n\nIs there a practical benefit to representing concepts in such a hyper-concise way or is it more than just a long-standing convention?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/53ucq6/if_singleletter_variable_names_are_intolerable_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7wazix", "d7wcz5n", "d7wob49", "d7ws8u2", "d7x36bz", "d7xilvo"], "score": [30, 9, 6, 3, 2, 4], "text": ["This is kind of an opinion-based question, but it's interesting and hopefully it doesn't get deleted (maybe better suited for /r/asksciencediscussion.)\n\nAs someone who straddles the line between analytical pen-and-paper work and computation, I can give you a practical answer:\n\n > \u201cPrograms must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.\u201d - from \"structure and interpretation of computer programs.\"\n\nWhen you write code, you tend to write it out once, edit a bit, and you're done with it -- the speed at which you can type out code is not a limiting factor for the speed at which you actually create programs (unless you're a terrible hunt-and-peck typist.) You can also copy-paste and you can use auto-complete features whenever you need to repeat variables. But there's a premium on things being easy to read and understand, so the descriptive names make tons of sense. One way to put it is that you might write a program once, but it'll get read 1000s of times, and likely by people other than the person who wrote it.\n\nNow, when you're writing out math with pen-and-paper, stuff like \n\n >  \u03a9 = (\u03b2(\u03bc - \u03b5))^\u03c3\n\nmakes a lot of sense, because it's like 1/10th of the amount of writing as \"reactionSize = ...\". And the person doing that math tends to know the precise domain language those symbols represent. But if I'm reading code, I don't know what those symbols stand for unless I'm familiar with the whole context of their usage. For a concrete example in my own work, \"\u03b5\" can be used as the specific dissipation rate, or it can be used as a small tolerance parameter. \"\u03bc\" might be viscosity, or it might be a variance.\n\n**tldr** shorthand notation is more efficient when everyone knows what terms represent, but for broader readability in code writing out explicit names is better.", "If I were to wager an attempt of an explanation ... minor qualifications: I work in CS and have studied much math in college\n\nComputer programs are used by multiple people and continually maintained. There are functions that are implemented, inherited, and passed around to multiple places where they get used repeatedly. At that point, variables are essentially \"fixtures\" that require definition for stability's sake. **CS Variable names are long for fixed definitions and read optimization.**\n\nIn the mathematical world, my experience is that every formula is discrete, finite, and mostly handwritten. Having to rewrite each step of a proof with full words for each variable would drive me up a wall. Conventions of using certain variables for certain contexts (e.g., `x, y, z` for Cartesian coordinates) helps to give definitions without application that don't require rewriting whole words over and over again. **Mathematical (academic) variable names are single-character for open interpretation and write-optimization**\n\nEdit: minor formatting", "The actual reason is namespace.  You can write a mathematical paper that uses the same greek letters as 10 other mathematical papers on the same subject.  You can then _sort of_ read each paper separately and know what they are about.  I personally have trouble with greek letter reuse - in engineering systems I might research 3 papers that use the same greek letter for a different variable and it gets confusing to keep them straight.\n\nAnyways, if you write a computer program that uses global variables of 1 letter, it's a pain because you'll quickly lose track of what is what.  Also the compiler will throw an error if you try to use a variable in 2 places with 2 separate declarations.  Some consider it just fine to use a single letter variable locally, like as a temporary loop counter.  x or i or something.  ", "If I'm just writing a little test script of a few lines, I will definitely go for a, b, c, d, but if I'm writing a function that's part of a module that's part of a system containing thousands of lines of code, I will write it out like number_of_user_beers_in_ring_of_honor (actual variable name), even if I'm only using it once or twice, because then a month later I can grep for it when there's some related bug to fix, or new feature to add.\n\nEquations don't usually run into thousands of lines, so it's just a lot easier to assign letters to variables and then write out an equation that's probably not going to take up half a page. It helps that in most disciplines there are standard single letter variable names. But there are also standard subscripts that help a lot in keeping track of which variable means what.\n\nWhen I started programming, it was in FORTRAN many years ago. I used to write a lot of software that just had x, y, z, i, and j. Then of course there were vx, vy, vz, ax, ay, az, and for more complicated programs the names would get longer. But that was back when the whole thing had to fit in 32K of RAM and the CPU was only running at 500 MHz, so you weren't going to have a lot of lines of code anyway.\n\nTo this day I still worry about how long the computer's going to spend parsing a long, descriptive name, then I have to snap myself out of it.", "Just to add something: math papers and formulae would take up WAY too much space of you wrote out long variable names.  In my experience, it's common to have 4-5 pages of consecutive similar formulae when deriving an equation (or solving a particularly convoluted one).  The math in computer programs tends to pick from only the relevant parts of these longer statements; or the difficulty of understanding the derivation/solution is less in following step by step and more understanding the structures which solve it.", " > If one would never consider it acceptable to write code with variable names such as:\n > int a = (r * (b - d)) ^ l;\n\nActually this is just fine if within a small method, or other local context. I work in engineering simulation and we often use small methods with a0 or ri as variable names, since they will correspond with common formulas.\n\nBut in general you risk compilation errors or context issues if you do that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1iyhkb", "title": "what will happen on earth when galaxies collide?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\nLike this.\nWhat would we see from Earth? Or will it happen so fast that Earth will just collide with another planet and get blown up.\n\nI know that the galaxy earth is in still has a long long time before it collides  but assuming humans are still around what would we see?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iyhkb/eli5_what_will_happen_on_earth_when_galaxies/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb99sbz", "cb9a6m6", "cb9bdx2", "cb9buyz", "cb9e1ij", "cb9ed0j", "cb9ftaj", "cb9gt6g"], "score": [2, 68, 17, 9, 3, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["If you consider how small the Earth is in relation to galaxies, and how widely-spaced things in galaxies can be, there's a good chance we wouldn't hit anything.\n\nAlso, that gif is much faster than real time (obviously).", "So there are about a trillion stars in andromeda (the other galaxy) and 300 billion in the milky way. It's unlikely there will be even a single collision between stars, so it's incredibly unlikely a planet will collide with another planet and virtually certain earth will not be destroyed during the process.\n\nIt's possible our whole solar system will be thrown out of the galaxy as a whole, but that probably won't have any major impacts on the earth-sun relationship.\n\nAt that point all the water will have already boiled off the earth so I think it's pretty likely we won't be here anymore.\n\nEdit - million -- >  Billion", "Galaxies are mostly empty space. The chance of a direct collision is actually fairly low, especially for outlying solar systems such as ours. Also, any \"collision\" wouldn't happen in the sense of two cars crashing into each other, for example - it would take millions of years for the collision to unfold completely. A human lifespan is nothing on that timescale.", "Luckily we probably have nothing to worry about.  Not for the reasons the other posters have stated (which are absolutely correct), but because the collision won't happen for another 4 billion years, and by then earth will already be a [life-less water-less desert wasteland](_URL_0_) due to the natural life cycle of the sun.  By then humans with either be extinct, or moved off planet, either of which means we wouldn't have to worry about it much.", "Nothing?  Galaxies are colliding as we speak, but unless you've got a few million year lifespan, it's not really going to be noticeable.", "The process would actually be rather slow, when compared to the scale of the galaxy. It certainly would not visibly occur as quickly as what that gif portrays. \n\nOne issue with that gif is that it portrays the two galaxies as solid objects which would actually have a physical collision with each other. This isn't so; there's more \"empty\" space in a galaxy than there is physical matter capable of colliding. The greatest effect the two would have on one another would be a gravitational one. A galaxy is held together by the gravity of the whole, and usually in part by a black hole at the center. Galaxies that \"collide\" tend to pull at each other, reshaping both once one has passed through the other, or even merging if they both lose enough speed. There would be very little actual collision, if any.\n\nOn that note, you probably wouldn't actually see anything unusual unless one star happened to come particularly close to our galaxy. It's possible that the night sky might look a little more populated and that those particular stars might appear to move a little more than our normal ones but the space between stars is so vast, even the closest star to us looks the same as the furthest one to the naked eye.", "Nothing.And no there will not be any humans by that time.Just my opinion,Humans have less than maybe a couple hundred thousand years left.", "_URL_0_\n\nNasa made some pictures depicting what will happen. Enjoy!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/eELzMnB.gif"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/specials/washington_2000/649913.stm"], [], [], [], ["http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html"]]}
{"q_id": "361xy6", "title": "In the Movie \"Hunt for Red October\" The Soviet captain said \"Halsey acted stupidly\". What actions could he be referring to.", "selftext": "I assume that he would be referring to some risk Halsey toke in the Pacific world war 2 theater. Would him as a Soviet commander be more likely to view american historical commanders more unfavorably?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/361xy6/in_the_movie_hunt_for_red_october_the_soviet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr9xkyj", "cr9yjnk", "crab8xp"], "score": [57, 31, 2], "text": ["This was a reference to Halsey's actions at Leyte Gulf where he \"swallowed the bait\" and [attacked](_URL_0_) Ozawa's mobile force of Japan's surviving carriers. This left the Leyte landing  unprotected by the strongest American naval force in the area. This decision has remained controversial among within the Navy andnaval historians  ever since and    Clancy's reference to it reflects this debate.", "The response from /u/kieslowskifan may be correct, as that is Halsey's best-known mistake.\n\nThere are also references in Clancy's book to Ryan writing a book regarding Halsey's actions during Typhoon Cobra in 1944.  Three destroyers were lost and many ships were damaged.  I don't recall the exact excerpt from the text of Clancy's book, but this reference could also be the Soviet captain making it clear that he had read Ryan's book.  That's what I recall, anyway.\n\nIt's not a great source, but the final item in [wikipedia's entry on mentions of Halsey in popular culture](_URL_0_) agrees with my recollection.\n\nI found this online, and it appears to be the text in question:\n\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds.\n > Captain Ramius: [to Ryan] What books?\n > Jack Ryan: Pardon me?\n > Captain Ramius: What books did you write?\n > Jack Ryan: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called \"The Fighting Sailor\", about, uh, naval combat tactics...\n > Captain Ramius: I know this book!\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact...\n > Captain Ramius: Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan...\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: ...10 seconds.\n > Captain Ramius: ...Halsey acted stupidly.\n\nI don't know if I can say for sure which mistake the captain is referring to, but it seems to me it would either be going after the carriers or sailing into the typhoon.  I know of no other major errors on Halsey's part that Ryan (via Clancy) would be referring to.", "Side question: if Halsey's reputation for aggression to the point of recklessness was already established by May 1942, why did he suggest Raymond Spruance (regarded as extremely conservative) to take over operations at Midway?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf#Halsey.27s_decision_.2824_October.29"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Halsey,_Jr.#In_popular_culture"], []]}
{"q_id": "1lduti", "title": "Why don't planes have multiple wings to generate more lift?", "selftext": "Why do commercial aircraft utilize only one wing to generate lift? Would it not be easier to use two or more wings like bi-planes of the past?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1lduti/why_dont_planes_have_multiple_wings_to_generate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cby9091", "cby9mex", "cbyagoy"], "score": [8, 6, 9], "text": ["Wings have drag, two wings have twice as much drag as one. One wing has enough lift, so why go to the added complexity and drag of two? Two wings are advantageous for stunting or crop dusting, but not for cruising.", "Essentially, because the increase in lift is outmatched by the increase in drag.\n\nThe key here is that commercial airliners are built to travel at very fast speeds very efficiently... and we can take \"efficiency\" to mean \"the least amount of drag possible\".  Now the amount of lift an airfoil can produce increases as your speed through the air increases, so that at commercial airliner speeds even a relatively small wing can produce enough lift to keep the airplane level.  If you were to make the wing bigger (or add another wing), you would create lift that you don't really need.\n\nThink of it this way: the most efficient wing possible for a given aircraft is that which produces just enough lift required.  Anything over that just adds drag.", "Firstly, commercial airplanes generate enough lift. They don't need more. \n\nNow the question becomes: Why they have one wide wing instead of two shorter wings so that the strength and thickness of individual wing can be smaller, reducing overall drag and weight?  \n\nThe problem with  bi-planes is that the lower wing is not generating as much lift as the upper wing. Most of the lift is generated on the top of the wing. The wing is turning air that flows over it little downward and that effect  works even 60 feet above the wing in commercial planes.  One wing creates minimum amount of turbulence and distraction and produces most lift per amount of drag generated. \n\nbi-planes were used when the strength of the wing was an issue. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "38dqn8", "title": "Why, with the Maryland-Virgina border, was Maryland (and DC) given control of the entire Potomac River up to the Virginia bank instead of having the border go through the center of the river?", "selftext": "I assume there was some logic to this, but the most I can find is that as colonies both claimed the entire river, and then Virginia relinquished its claim, but no explanation for why they were willing to.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38dqn8/why_with_the_marylandvirgina_border_was_maryland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crumi5d"], "score": [22], "text": ["This arrangement is pretty common along river boundaries. There are many practical reasons to place the border along one side or the other, among them licensing of boats and fishing, and that it is harder to find the middle than to find the riverbank.\n\nIn reality, though, it comes down to what the charter/court/legislature says.\n\nSometimes there is political pressure and sometimes deals are struck in setting the boundary.  For example there was a 17th century border related conflict between [Baltimore and Penn](_URL_2_) in trying to decide what water access Pennsylvania should get.\n\nIn the case of states admitted to the union, an already admitted state has much more political power, and can trade its support for territory.  This is why Ohio got Toledo.  Michigan was in turn allowed to grab the U.P. from Wisconsin.\n\nI can't answer to Potomac River, but the boundary between the distant parts Virginia that are now Kentucky and what was to become the state Ohio was [readjudicated in 1981](_URL_1_) so that Kentucky gets the river, but only up to the 1792 waterline on the Ohio side.  This is tricky because the river has changed course and in many places this is now in the middle of the river.\n\nIn 1910, part of the boundary along the West Virginia and Maryland was decided to be the south bank in [Maryland v West Virginia](_URL_0_).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/217/1/", "http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/21/us/kentucky-indiana-and-ohio-end-river-boundary-dispute.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn%E2%80%93Calvert_Boundary_Dispute"]]}
{"q_id": "fegtvr", "title": "How do two clients agree on an encryption key through a non-encypted line?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fegtvr/how_do_two_clients_agree_on_an_encryption_key/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fjojh8q", "fjowjav"], "score": [15, 14], "text": ["Typically, in the real world, [asymmetric cryptography](_URL_1_) (aka public-key cryptography) is used, where the receiver keeps a private key known only to themselves, and publishes a separate public key that is allowed to be known by anyone.  Someone who wants to then communicate with the receiver securely uses the public key to encrypt their message and sends it to the receiver.  The message encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the receiver's private key, so the message can't be eavesdropped on.\n\nIn a scheme like this, there's no \"agreement\" on a shared key to use, each party has their own key and it's okay for the public key to be known by everyone as long as the private key is only known to the receiver.\n\nIn the separate case of a symmetric cryptographic scheme (like AES for example), a single encryption key does need to be shared securely.  Either it can be shared via a pre-existing secure channel (such as one secured by a public-key cryptographic scheme), or there are various ways to involve trusted third parties to perform distributed [secret sharing](_URL_3_), for example using an algorithm like [Shamir's secret sharing algorithm](_URL_0_), where the key to be shared is split up into multiple shares which are then provided to shareholders, and a minimum number of shareholders is required to work together to obtain the encryption key.  That way, compromise of a single share (or even multiple shares as long as it's less than a threshold number of shares) does not endanger the secret key.\n\nEdit:  Also it's worth mentioning that while a number of public key algorithms used today are known to be insecure against quantum computing-based attacks, there do exist [post-quantum](_URL_2_) public key algorithms that are not known or expected to be vulnerable, and some of them are also already in use in modern applications with support continuing to increase with each passing day.  So, contrary to what you might hear in popular discourse, public-key crypotography isn't going to suddenly die in a fire and leave us completely vulnerable once quantum supremacy is achieved and capable quantum computers become widely available.  Unless something truly wild happens (like a constructive proof that P=NP is found), public-key cryptography is here to stay (and it will probably still be around in some form even if something like a constructive proof of P=NP is found, just using different problems that are not in NP and instead using problems in a harder complexity class like EXPTIME, which might be inconvenient in some ways such as increasing bandwidth usage, but still an effective means for doing public-key cryptography).", "I think the most interesting answer here is the Diffie Hellman key exchange. Alice and Bob both tell each other numbers (in public), and then they can calculate a shared key that a listener (Eve) can't work out.\n\n [_URL_1_](_URL_2_) \n\nThe first two of these videos at Khan Academy may be useful too.\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing"], ["https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/modern-crypt/v/discrete-logarithm-problem", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman\\_key\\_exchange", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange"]]}
{"q_id": "2ablmc", "title": "how come it can be harmful to ingest hand soap (vomiting, diarrhea) but we don't get sick from using soap-washed hands to eat food?", "selftext": "Ingestion of soap can lead to vomiting and diarrhea, but this doesn't happen when hands washed by soap are used to hold food.\nWhy is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ablmc/eli5_how_come_it_can_be_harmful_to_ingest_hand/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cite3wi", "citeb3b", "citeuki"], "score": [7, 6, 6], "text": ["When you wash your hands, you also wash off the soap.  If you do happen to ingest some residual soap, it will be a very small amount.", "Why do we get sick if we eat tons of metal, but we're fine eating with a fork?\n\nProportions and material transfer. You don't lather up your hands and walk away. There is very very little soap left when you're done rinsing them. Any that's left would probably be absorbed into your skin pretty quickly, and if any happens to get into your food, there won't be enough to have any effect. ", "The biggest problem with soap in the intestines is what happens when you mix it with water and shake everything up a lot - >  a lot of foam. Imagine that in a long tube with only two small holes (up and down) to expand to.\n\nAlso, when the foam comes up the esophagus, it goes not only out of the mouth but also into the trachea and lungs, where it can block some of the airflow, leading to shortness of breath. But this doesn't account for vomitin and diarrhea.\n\nFinally, soap can emulsify fat. Cell walls and the cell surface are, along with other materials, made from a lot of fat. Other than the skin, the mucous membrane (= skin of the intestines) doesn't have a lot of protection from its environment, so these cells are far more likely to take damage and burst. While the dysfunction already leads to symptoms, the body also reacts by removing the culprit (soap) from the stomach (vomiting) and lower intestines (diarrhea).\n\nAll of this requires way more soap than what is left on your hands after washing them.\n\nTL;DR\n\n1) The expansion of foam overstimulates pressure receptors all over the intestines\n\n2) Dysfunction from damaged cells and the registration of a toxin lead to vomiting and diarrhea.\n\n3) It takes more than just a little residual soap from your hands."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6uvro9", "title": "Does it take the same amount of force to move a car from 0 to 30 kmph, as it does from 30 to 60 kmph ?", "selftext": "30 and kmph are just arbitrary.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6uvro9/does_it_take_the_same_amount_of_force_to_move_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlvtngb", "dlvz8z8"], "score": [10, 24], "text": ["Any constant force **F** can get a car up to any speed you like. You can accelerate from 0 to 30 kph with some very large acceleration and then accelerate from 30 to 60 kph with some very small acceleration. You can even decelerate and then accelerate. But if you were to use the same constant force **F** always, then since v = v*_0_* + at for constant acceleration (i.e., \u0394v = *a* \u0394t), it also follows that the time taken to impart a given speed increase is always the same.\n\nI suspect though that you don't mean to ask about force but rather energy. (It doesn't really make sense to talk about \"same amounts of force\".) In the frame of some stationary observer on the ground, the increase in kinetic energy (per unit mass) is \u0394v(v*_1_*+v*_2_*)/2, i.e., the speed difference times the average of the initial and final speeds. So the energy increase is larger in the second case (30 to 60 kph) than in the first case (0 to 30 kph).", "This is an ill-posed question, which is the best type of question because a) they're the most common in real life, and b) we get to learn more by figuring out why it's ill-posed and how to fix it. *Then* we get to answer the fixed questions.\n\nIt's ill posed because, if we ignore resistive forces, we can use *any* force to accelerate from 0 to 30, or 30 to 60. Since the only horizontal force would be the one pushing the car forward, Newton's 2nd tells us that the force leads to an acceleration, which would eventually change our speed enough to reach 30, then 60 kmph no matter how small the acceleration is.\n\nIf we include air resistance, we can answer what *minimum* force is required. Air resistance is stronger the faster the car moves, so we would need a larger force to overcome the resistance when going from 30 to 60 compared to 0 to 30. So, we can say the minimum force to accelerate from 0 to 30 is less than the minimum for 30 to 60 if we're including air resistance.\n\nWe could make the question more meaningful by appending restrictions like, \"in the same distance.\" In that case, we know F = ma = m(vf^2 -vi^2 )/2\u0394x from our trusty kinematic equations. (Assuming constant acceleration, which is fine here if we're ignoring resistive forces.) So, for the same \u0394x, whichever difference of squares is larger requires the larger force. \n\n* 60^2 - 30^2 = 3600 - 900 = 2700 \n\n* 30^2 - 0^2 = 900 - 0 = 900\n\nSo, going from 30 to 60 requires a larger force than going from 0 to 30 *in the same distance*. If we considered air resistance, it would require even more force for the 30 to 60 case compared to 0 to 30 as I discussed above.\n\nA question for you: What if we appended \"in the same time,\" to the original question? What would change?\n\nSomeone else already tackled the energy version of the question well, which *does* have a straightforward answer without appending restrictions. It's interesting to note why that is: Think about the relation between force and work. What restriction did we need above to get an answerable question?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "81heux", "title": "if the earths atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, why dont we have nitrogen based life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81heux/eli5_if_the_earths_atmosphere_is_78_nitrogen_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dv35kj7", "dv35ngi", "dv35pm0", "dv35u0m", "dv36c9r"], "score": [12, 7, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Life isn't nitrogen based, but life does make use of lots of nitrogen atoms. \n\nLife is carbon based because the structure of carbon enables lots of different variations of organic molecules. Nitrogen doesn't form the types of bonds to enable the same amount of variation. \n\n", "Because Nitrogen is an \"inert\" gas, which means it doesn't react with anything.\n\nOxygen is different. Oxygen reacts with all kinds of different chemicals and elements. And a lot of those reactions release heat or energy, which your body uses.\n\nIt's like gasoline for cars. We don't put gasoline in cars because there is so much of it, we use it because it has the energy needed to make the car go. The same thing goes for life and oxygen, living things don't use oxygen because it's plentiful, but because it has the energy we need to live.", "Nitrogen is fairly inert.  It's not super reactive with things by itself (until it becomes a molecule with something else like nitrous oxide).\n\nOxygen is incredibly reactive and very helpful at converting something into something else via oxidation.  Rather than looking at nitrogen as an oxygen replacement, you'd probably want to look at something below oxygen on the periodic table of elements, since it will share similar reactive properties (the elements below oxygen are Sulphur, Selenium, and Tellurium).  ", "It's not as versatile as oxygen because it's less reactive and this is because of how its electrons are round its nucleus.  Electrons round the nucleus form layers called shells and nitrogen had a full outer shell.  This makes it harder for it to share electrons with other atoms and form a chemical bond.  But! it does figure a lot in plant life.. \"nitrates\" (chemical compounds containing nitrogen) are widely used by plants for growth.  ", "Nitrogen gas is very *inert* which means that it doesn't react easily with other elements.  So when you inhale, most of that Nitrogen gas is simply going in your lungs and coming back out, without being used by your body at all - while your body is able to absorb and utilize the oxygen in the air.\n\nNitrogen is very important to life, and much of it comes to us through food, where nitrogen atoms are usually bonded to other atoms and are a bit easier to react, break apart, and reorganize.  But oxygen is far more reactive and very good at transferring energy, which is why it's so useful to our bodies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "akhryj", "title": "How does a potassium chloride injection stop the heart?", "selftext": "I have very basic knowledge in neuroscience, so an explanation in layman's terms would be great. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/akhryj/how_does_a_potassium_chloride_injection_stop_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ef521rk"], "score": [13], "text": ["Essentially Potassium Chloride stops the heart entirely because of the Potassium ions. These ions depolarise the neurons in the heart, preventing them from firing. This happens because normally there is a high concentration of Potassium inside the neurons, and a low concentration outside. When the outside concentration gets high, the neurons can't reset themselves after they fire, which stops the heart from beating. Potassium Chloride is just used because, like Sodium Chloride, it's easy to make and disolves in water."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6n5eh6", "title": "why is it safe to dry age beef, but unsafe to keep supermarket beef in the fridge for more than a few days?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n5eh6/eli5_why_is_it_safe_to_dry_age_beef_but_unsafe_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk6vo61", "dk6vpe9", "dk6wgkj"], "score": [13, 7, 6], "text": ["Because bacteria love moist, delicious meat.  So if you leave a steak or some hamburger in the fridge for more than a few days, they'll have time to eat and grow all over your food.\n\nBut bacteria need moisture in them to survive, and dry, salted beef doesn't have much.  And even more importantly, the salt will actually pull water *out* of bacteria cells, shriveling them up and killing them.  Which is why salting has been one of our best preservation methods for thousands of years.", "When you dry age beef, you are doing it in conditions that prevent many different types of bacteria from reproducing. In the fridge, none of the bad bacteria are actually killed, so they just slowly multiply. If you were to remove the beef from the store packaging, dip it in boiling water for a few seconds, salt the outside, then put it into the fridge uncovered with good air circulation, it will last much longer. ", "Dry gang is done in an environment that is optimized for aging, while a fridge is not. Also rotted meat is trimmed from aged meat -- that and water loss is why aged meat is so expensive per pound. In addition to the storage space needed, you lose about 30-50% of the meat's weight from start to final steak."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3pt9jk", "title": "What are some scientific/psychological explanations for demonic possessions and exorcisms?", "selftext": "I'm wondering about not just the psychology of people claiming to be possessed, but also what drives the behavior of those who are possessed and why they react in such violent, conventionally \"demonic\" ways (speaking in tongues, screaming, lashing out, etc).", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3pt9jk/what_are_some_scientificpsychological/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw9hg9t"], "score": [12], "text": ["Most depictions of demonic possessions match the criteria for some psychotic disorder (i.e. the schizophrenia spectrum).  The key feature of a psychotic disorder is the presence of delusions and/or hallucinations (at least one of these is required), as well as disorganized thoughts/speech, grossly disorganized or abnormal motor behavior, and \"negative symptoms\" (alogia, flat affect, avolition, anhedonia, etc).  \n\nSpecifically, auditory and visual hallucinations play a large role in the connection to demonic possession.  For the subject with the psychotic disorder, the delusions or hallucinations may involve demonic possession or persecution, or they may hear demonic voices.  For these subjects, even though they may logically understand that demonic possession is not probable, they still truly believe that they are possessed by a demonic force.  For those who come into close contact with someone with a psychotic disorder (a family member, co-worker, or spouse/loved one), the behavior of a subject with a psychotic disorder may be reminiscent of someone possessed by a demon, especially if they are observed by someone with a rich religious background.  The subject may have a conversation with someone who is not there, or they may be observed \"speaking in tongues\" (something psychologists recognize as \"word salad\" or disorganized speech, a symptom of psychotic disorders).  When observing someone's behavior while they are suffering these symptoms, it is not hard see why some may believe they are possessed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "o5jl5", "title": "how are billionaires able to pay such a low tax rate?", "selftext": "I know they write off stocks somehow, and some use something called the \"variable prepaid forward contract\" however this stuff makes my head spin.  Can anyone break down how this is possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o5jl5/eli5_how_are_billionaires_able_to_pay_such_a_low/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3ej4jn", "c3ejkhs", "c3ejoim", "c3ejxew", "c3ejzoz", "c3ekcoz", "c3elk8j", "c3empi1"], "score": [25, 8, 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 25], "text": ["Billionaires make most of their money off various sorts of investment income (which affects a very small percentage of the population) rather than payroll taxes (which affect most people).\n\nGiven the total tax liability of a typical billionaire, it's usually very cost-effective to do some combination of restructuring their income to avoid taxes (relatively easy, since they're probably a CEO or major shareholder of a company that employs lots of high-level accountants), or lobby the relevant national government to add a few tax loopholes that benefit billionaires with their specific income structure. \n\nIn other words, you don't need to understand the details of the \"variable prepaid forward contract;\" the important thing to understand is that once you make a sufficiently insane amount of money, it's much cheaper to game the tax system than to pay your fair share.", "Adding to what Wurm42 said, billionaires can afford structured tax shelters, overseas corporations, and the really big fish can pay major law firms for \"legal opinion\" letters that are then indemnified by the law firm if the billionaire gets sued by the IRS.  In other words, the billionaire gets a letter from a lawyer telling him some tax dodge is legal.  If the IRS challenges the deduction, then the billionaire can claim he was innocently following the advice of council while the law firm defends him.  ", "Moreover as an executive, the company could pay for many of their expenses like private jet, car, driver, assistant, meals, clothing, vacations, housing, etc. This then gets deducted as business expenses. ", "Donate 1 million to get friendly folks elected. Save 100 million. ???. Profit.", "A much more concrete example is that most wealthy people make much of their money from investment vehicles, which include the selling of stock or property.  When an asset is sold for more than one bought it for, it's called a capital gain. \n\nAs such, when one makes money from capital gains, it isn't taxed at a regular income tax level like the money you earn from a job.  Rather, it's taxed a lower rate.  Currently, long-term capital gains (assets held for more than a year) are taxed at a flat 15% for most income tax brackets.  And the kicker here is that if your income is actually in the lowest two brackets of 10% and 15%, you aren't taxed on those long-term capital gains.  \n\nI imagine that most of the wealthiest people have a low reported income because they aren't working a typical job, so they fall into the lowest tax bracket.  Most of their income that dictates their brackets would be from dividends from stocks or property income.\n", "I don't know the answer to how the specific tactic you describe works, but in general...\n\nTax rates are based on *taxable income*. This is different from the actual amount of income you have, because tax law allows people to exclude certain types of income from 'counting' as taxable.\n\nFor example, if you pay interest on your home loan, you get to say \"that money doesn't count as income\" to the IRS, and so you don't have to pay tax on that part. If you contribute income to a 401k, you don't have to count that either. And, certain ways of getting income (like the sale of your home) don't count as taxable income.\n\nVery wealthy people don't get as much of their income through obvious sources like a paycheck, and because they have large volumes of money they have opportunities to shelter more of their income -- which is a way of saying that they can do things with their income that make it \"not count\" as taxable.\n\nBy doing these things, they pay tax only on a small percentage of their real income, which means the percentage of tax they pay compared to their overall income is very small.", "I do not see an answer yet that explains it like you are 5, so I am going to try.\n\nYou work a job and make $X.  Your tax rate is probably around 20% if you are an average American.  If your job pays you over $250k (or thereabouts) you pay income tax of 35%.\n\nHere is the kicker.  If I have a billion dollars, I don't need to work a job that pays an income anymore or at least not a large one.  I can say, hey pay me $50k and i'll take the rest in stock options.  or I make $1million, but invest $900k of it making it non-taxable.\n\nMoney made from investing it, or giving it to a company to spend in exchange for part of the profits, is taxed at a lower rate than income.\n\nThe $1 billion I have.  I presumably at some point paid taxes on that so I don't need to pay taxes on it again until I die, the death tax.\n\nThere is so much more to it, I don't pretend to understand it all, but that maybe a 5yo could understand.", "I am surprised nobody has given you a correct answer yet. Forgive me for not pretending you are five. \n\nLet's say you are a billionaire. You have a billion dollars. You don't keep it all in cash under your mattress. In fact, you don't keep it in a savings account at a bank, either, at least not very much of it.  \n\nMost of your billion dollars is actually something you own which is worth a billion dollars. Property, stock, mutual funds, etc. \n\nThe way taxes work in the US, you don't pay taxes on what you own. You pay taxes on your income. That income could be from salary, or from a profitable investment. But investments are special, because there is no income until you sell them for more money than you initially paid for them. \n\nSo let's say you own a billion dollars worth of mutual funds. Over the course of the year, it grows 8% in value. That is an 80 million dollar increase in value. But unless you sell some of it, there is no income, so there is no tax. You are 80 million dollars richer, but you have paid no taxes. \n\nNow, hang on a second.  You do need some money to live on. Let's say a million dollars this year - that should be enough. So you sell a million dollars worth of this mutual fund you own. You will have to pay taxes on this. But not on a million dollars, just on the difference between what you paid for it and what you sold it for. Let's say the difference is 20% since you initially bought it a few years ago. You will pay taxes on $200k. Also, because this is a special kind of income called capital gains, you will pay a lower tax rate than if it were your salary. Instead of 30% or more, you will pay 20%. $40k. \n\nSo, you are 80 million dollars richer this year. Your tax bill is $40 thousand dollars. Your effective tax rate was one twentieth of one percent.  0.05%  Not 5%, not 0.5%.  0.05%.  \n\nEdit:  Fixed my math.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2cbf7q", "title": "How accurate are Ken Follet's \"Pillars of the Earth\" and \"World without End\" to actual life in 14th Century England?", "selftext": "I'm aware that the town itself is fictional, but how true is Follet's depiction of social organization and the role of the church in English society? \n\nSpecifically:\n\nHow much authority could the Prior of a Parish actually yield? Were they actually considered the \"owners\" of a town? \n\nIs the depiction of village life (the village of Wigleigh in \"World Without End\") accurate? \n\nThank you in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cbf7q/how_accurate_are_ken_follets_pillars_of_the_earth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cje7dbo", "cjefenn"], "score": [8, 5], "text": ["It has been a very long time since I read the book, but unless my memory is playing serious tricks on me, the cathedral was being built by a monastery, not a parish. It would only be a monastery or a diocese that would build a cathedral, not a single parish (a parish is a subdivision of a diocese, and 'cathedral' comes from \"seat of a Bishop\"). \n\nThe abbot of a monastery is and was of the same religious level order as a bishop of a diocese, and they were lords of the realm as well back then (I don't know if they still sit in the House of Lords, but they used to). I'm not sure at what level of nobility they were either, but at least equal to a baron and, like a baron, they could \"own\" or at least govern a town.", "Follow-up question regarding the book's social/family constructions. I'm just about to finish *Pillars of the Earth* on the heels of rereading Connie Willis' *Doomsday Book*. Obviously, historical novels will lean toward novel as opposed to history, but one major difference between the two involves parental love. I assumed that strong parental love (In *PotE*, a starving builder says that his children are his best work, though he hopes his cathedral plans will be his second best) was a fairly modern construction, and *Doomsday*'s fond mother who nevertheless prefers to have the nurse mind the children all day was more realistic. How adored were children of poor tradespeople in the 1100s? \n\n*PotE* is killing me. [Wikipedia's list of its historical inaccuracies](_URL_0_) is fascinating but surely this doesn't begin to touch on the social inaccuracies. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillars_of_the_Earth#Historical_accuracy"]]}
{"q_id": "8jk5mu", "title": "I have seen many references to \"Asiatic despotism\" in the work of 19th and 20th century writers. How did this notion become popular? Were Asian societies really more authoritarian than average as compared to other regions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8jk5mu/i_have_seen_many_references_to_asiatic_despotism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dz0q1iz"], "score": [11], "text": ["Additional question, if I may: how did this trend color Western views of places like Russia and the Byzantine empire?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "bojuyj", "title": "What is causing the background static/white noise being heard in VHF signals?", "selftext": "I've been listening to this stream of [_URL_0_](_URL_1_). Everyonce in a while a distinct audio is heard, but for the most part it's just white noise. Where is this white noise coming from exactly?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bojuyj/what_is_causing_the_background_staticwhite_noise/", "answers": {"a_id": ["enhi7zf"], "score": [11], "text": ["Mostly, it comes from the circuits inside your radio.  Real world components are not perfect, and they introduce noise.\n\nThermal noise is another factor.  The random movement of matter always causes some white noise in a radio.  You can reduce this by operating your radio at temperatures closer to absolute zero, but of course that introduces it's own challenges."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["LiveMeteors.com", "http://www.livemeteors.com/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2gbneu", "title": "What would you consider to be the most essential AskHistorians posts that one should read?", "selftext": "This subreddit is full of insightful, fascinating and illumianting answers/posts by knowledgeable flaired redditors. Which of these would you strongly urge that everyone should read?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gbneu/what_would_you_consider_to_be_the_most_essential/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckhkfru", "ckhlh77", "ckhm3wb", "ckhp1ya", "ckhs485"], "score": [20, 12, 16, 7, 2], "text": ["The next one.\n\nThere are so many good answers and well-researched responses that it's impossible to say. I'm always pleasantly surprised what I find and learn here, and I personally hope that I've contributed in some way.", "Anything that makes the [Sunday: Day of Reflection](_URL_0_) weekly feature.", "Many of our flaired users maintain [Profile Pages](_URL_0_) highlighting what they consider to be their best answers. Definitely a good place to start.", "I don't have any specific answers, but \"most essential\" is a somewhat specific term and I'm going to ride it home. \n\nIf there's anything essential in the breadth of historical consideration, it's the *means* of understanding history. New information emerges all the time, placing holes in some theories and validating others, so one's historical knowledge is always, to some degree, perishable. As a result, the most essential skill is in the interpretation of information, especially interpreting that information in as \"neutral\" a way as possible.\n\nAs a result, the most essential posts on /r/AskHistorians to my mind will be those that deal with how modern people find historical materials, interpret those materials, and how they draw hypothesis and theories from those materials. In my opinion, what makes a historian is the skill they display in this task above all others -- which means that anyone with the proper approach and an honest intellect can be a historian, irrespective of formal education or the circumstances of their life. History is a form of science, after all, and factual information is the resource science thrives upon. If one is capable of and willing to find that factual information (or the informations that are theoretically equally factual) in context of history, then that's the requisite basis to partake of the broader, modern world of historical study. \n\nOf course, what happens after that basis is established is responsible for the remarkable diversity in various studies of history, and where things naturally get much more complex. But again, \"essential\". And what is most essential is honest interpretation of the information at our disposal, with as little bias as is possible.\n\ntl;dr do we have a post that boils down to \"ditch the History Channel and passionately absorb information concerning your favourite eras of history from a diversity of sources\"? Because that is the essential thing. ", "Sort /r/AskHistorians by \"top\"  posts and that is the best place to start in assessing what the AskHistorians community considers most fascinating. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=day+of+reflection&amp;restrict_sr=on"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1r5f51", "title": "why are we so worried about a water shortage when there is plenty of ocean water? why don't we just filter the salt out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r5f51/eli5_why_are_we_so_worried_about_a_water_shortage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdjqz5j", "cdjr07v", "cdjtwhj", "cdjv4mb", "cdjva76", "cdjyh74", "cdjzyhf"], "score": [9, 29, 7, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because it's expensive to build and operate desalination plants.\n\nFor example the [Gold Coast Desalination Plant](_URL_0_) cost over 1 billion Australian Dollars to build (about the same amount in USD)", "Filtering ocean water to the point of it being drinkable is an INCREDIBLY expensive process. Just getting the salt out alone is very expensive. Then the water still has to go through the whole usual water cleaning process.\n\nOn top of that, the solution really only helps those close enough to an ocean to get to the water. There'd be no feasible way to get the water to the center of large continents that didn't involve literally shipping it in trucks/trains/etc. Water in large volumes is incredibly heavy, thus very expensive to ship.\n\nSo the question becomes how do you deal with all of that? Who pays for what? Do we have enough of the materials needed to filter that much water long term? Who's responsible for building new infrastructure? Where does the money come from? All that money being sucked into maintaining the current water supply would cripple most economies.\n\nAnd this is just the 1st world discussion. In 3rd worlds, where EXISTING fresh water is already hard enough to come by, there'd be no good solution at all.", "Because filtering salt water, on an industrial scale, is very hard and expensive.  Salt water is extremely corrosive to metals, especially at the high pressures and temperatures required for any desalination process.  Even stainless steel pipes are quite vulnerable.\n\n(By the way, this is the reason everyone was so shocked when the Fukushima company in Japan decided to dump sea water on the damaged reactor - it was a desperate move because it meant that cooling the plant was more important than salvaging anything in it.)", "I remember reading about technology involving your question.  The book was by Peter Diamandis called Abundance.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the technology is available to make the water from the ocean potable.  What they are working on now is how to make the technology more available (i.e., cheaper, mobile, ease of use).", "Removing the salt from seawater is called desalination. It is expensive, but is done in many places around the world. The wikipedia article lists desalination methods, some costs, and a list of desalination facilities.\n\n_URL_0_", "There's plenty of freshwater around as well.  It's getting that water to different parts of the country/world that makes it difficult.\n\nAt New Orleans, the Mississippi River flows at about 600,000 cubic feet per second.  At ~7.5 gallons per cubic foot, that's 4.5 million gallons of freshwater passing by New Orleans each SECOND and almost 400 billion gallons each day.  That is almost the entire daily usage of the United States passing by New Orleans each day.  ", "Even though everyone is saying how expensive it is to filter the salt out of the water its also going to be expensive to pipe or ship it to the places that need it.  People usually try to say that we do this with oil but you have to remember that even though it might be feasible for normal families to pay 3 dollars a gallon for water especially if they cut down usage.   But the main uses for water would be for farming and farmers just couldn't pay that much for the amount of water they use. It would probably ruin the US economy because all our food would be ridiculously expensive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_Desalination_Plant"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "18buph", "title": "What is in rich food that makes it 'rich', and why does eating too much of it make us sick?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18buph/what_is_in_rich_food_that_makes_it_rich_and_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8dre64"], "score": [2], "text": ["When you eat \"rich\" foods, those high in fat usually, cholecystokinin (CCK) is released from your duodenum.  This hormone acts on many places, but one action is to inhibit gastric emptying, making you feel full.  When you eat too much fat in your diet, CCK may cause your stomach to hold its contents longer an you may not have enough enzymes and bile salts to break down and emulsify the fats respectively.  This, as I'm sure we all have experienced, can cause loose stools or diarrhea. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5g31cf", "title": "how does 'bail' work in america? why do they attribute money to the severity of crimes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5g31cf/eli5_how_does_bail_work_in_america_why_do_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dap1ajv", "dap1cfs", "dap1jt1", "dap4uoj", "dap547l", "dap5cep", "dap5t85", "dap5yvl", "dap6o24", "dap8aqr", "dap8qpz", "dap8xbv"], "score": [2606, 17, 75, 2, 25, 2, 3, 3, 85, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["It's a form of protection for the accused. There can actually be a long time between arrest and trial and there is only one way to guarantee that the accused shows up to trial: jail them in the interim.\n\nSince a person not yet tried is technically innocent, and since this interim period can be long (and historically has been used to jail people indefinitely), we have the option of releasing them until the trial.\n\nBut we still need a way to ensure they show up for trial, so we have bail. They pay money that the court keeps until they show up for trial. If they show up, they get the money back, if not, they lose the money (and get other crimes added to their charges, to boot).\n\nThe more severe the crime, the more severe punishment the accused faces, and the greater incentive is needed for them to appear to face that possible punishment, so we have higher bails for those crimes.\n\nEDIT:\n\nSome answers to common replies:\n\n1. Yes you can get the money back even if you are guilty, but the government will take from that fees, fines and other penalties. Since it's money you would owe anyway, them taking it out of money they are already in possession of is the same thing as giving you all the money back and then just taking the money anyway.\n\n2. It is not a loan. It is collateral. You do not get interest and it is not adjusted for inflation.\n\n3. Yes, this is just one of many aspects of the US criminal justice system that hurts poor people more than rich people. It is not the only aspect nor the aspect that hurts poor people the most.\n\n4. People that cannot afford bail outright (almost everyone) can use a bail bondsman. This is a person or company that will pay your bail for you, but the price of that is they permanently keep 10% of that fee. So if your bail is $50,000, you pay the bail bondsman $5,000 and they will foot the rest of the bill to the government. So you are permanently out $5,000 as opposed to being temporarily out $50,000. If you skip trial (meaning the bondsman loses their money) they will hunt you down and find you and not be very friendly about it.\n\nEDIT2:\n\nUpdate from /u/wickedogg regarding bond bailmen:\n\n >  As an attorney who works for a bail bondsman, hunting people down is not the main consequence of skipping trial. The main thing that we do is go after the people who agreed to guarantee the bail. The accused (to use your term) needs someone to go to the bondsman for him and usually that person is a parent, or uncle, or other family member. That person signs a guarantee and a confession of judgment along with providing a detailed accounting of all their assets, job, and personal information. When the bail gets forfeited I file the judgment and take the money out of bank accounts, garnish wages, and take property. All of this is motivation for the family to make sure that the accused shows up in court in the first place, or turns himself in soon after skipping a court date.", "When you're accused of a crime, there are two choices: you sit in a jail cell until your trial (which can be months away) or you don't. Don't you're presumed to be innocent until found guilty in a trial, it doesn't seem right to keep you locked up. But if you aren't locked up, there's a risk that you may try to flee and not go to your trial at all.\n\nBail is money that you give to the government to be allowed to not sit in a jail cell when you're waiting for a trial. If you show up for the trial, you get your money back once the trial is concluded. And if you don't, the money is used to pay a bounty hunter to capture you and bring you back.\n\nThe amount of bail is set based on the financial situation of the accused, the severity of the crime, and how much of a flight risk they seem to be. The goal is to make it financially infeasible for the accused to try to run away.", " > How does 'Bail' work in America?\n\nThe court determines an amount of money you can give to the court in order to not sit in jail between arraignment and trial.\n\n > Why do they attribute money to the severity of crimes?\n\nThe amount is set in relation to the risk of flight from justice (how likely you are to not show up to court if not held there between arraignment and the trial).\n\nThis amount, per the law, is to be set high enough that you will be compelled to not run, but low enough that you can afford it.\n\nTypically, individuals use bail-bondsmen to obtain money for bail.\n\nYou pay a bail-bondsman a percentage of the total bail amount, and they front the rest to the court. If you fail to show, the bail-bond company send out bounty hunters to capture you in order to get the money they fronted to the court back.", "Several states in America are looking at new policies to stop using arbitrary or discretionary bond/bail amounts.  Bond companies can take advantage of people facing criminal charges and have abused the powers afforded to them fugitive recovery.  On the other hand,  some court have began to favor paying 10% of the bail to the court (same concept as paying to a bail  bondsman).  The court however does not have any investment in the process,  unlike the bondsmen.  So when a Defendant fails to appear at court after paying 10% bond to the court directly, there is no smart way to go find the people that are not showing up.  Instead it becomes and additional burden on law enforcement to go and find the people they have already arrested once.  ", "Bail is not really linked to the crime, as much as it is a measure of how likely you are to flee before the trial. \n\nHigh chance of running away = high bail. ", "Bail is set at a certain level generally based on two factors:\n\n1) The individual's risk to either flee or not show up to future court hearings, and\n\n2) The risk of committing other crimes/posing a danger to society if released.\n\n\nIf a judge determines, based on (among other things) the nature of the crimes charged (violent or not, number of offenses charged, etc.), the accused's demeanor in court, the accused's history of showing up to court hearings, and the accused's ties (or lack thereof) to the community, that the accused is not a great risk to commit other crimes and that there is a reasonable probability that the accused will appear at any future hearings voluntarily, bail is generally set at nothing (\"released on own recognizance\"), or set at a low amount.\n\n\nAs the severity of the perceived risks increases, the amount of bail tends to increase, in an attempt to ensure the accused's presence and to protect the public from a possibly dangerous person.\n\n\nSince there are many factors considered in determining the risk of releasing the accused, rather than simply a \"released or jailed\" system, money adds an element of accountability to the accused, since if that person posts the bail and does not live up to the terms of the bail agreement, that person does not get the money back as punishment for not complying with the court's orders, and the person is generally jailed until the case is resolved to ensure compliance with the court's directives.", "It is more risk of flight, where the severity of the crime plays a role. Other factors are ease of flight (such as if you can easily live abroad, etc) and you take into account other factors that would maybe form an intent to stay such as the accuser has his business and family in the area. Bail will (should) also depend on your ability. So if you are very rich, paying a smaller sum would not decrease your risk of flight.\n\nIt is a mix of the above in theory. Normally the prosecutor will have a say in it and as well with your defense attorney generally wanting to ease the bail requirements. ", "Follow up - How does bond work?", "   Attorney here, with the majority of my practice in criminal law. The terms \"bail\" and \"bond\" are used pretty interchangeably. In theory, bail is used to ensure your appearance in court. You have to \"post\" the bond with the court in full. The amount is set based on a number of factors, all with the focus being on what will it take to make sure you come back to court. So if you have a very serious crime, it will take a lot of money to make sure you come back, rather than just run. If you have a history of skipping out on court dates, you get a high bond. If you have the ability to travel to foreign countries, high bond. If you've never been in trouble before, have strong ties to the community, and are intent on contesting the charges, a lower bond. Most judges have  standard \"x charge = y bond\", and will only deviate from that (up or down) based on extraordinary circumstances. If you show up for your court, that money is refunded to you, or oftentimes is applied to fines and court costs if you are found guilty.\n\n   Bail bondsmen come in to play when you cannot afford your bond. They are licensed and regulated by the courts. In my state, their fees are also regulated - 10% of the bond plus fees. If you have a $50,000 bond, you are going to pay the bondsman $5,000 plus his fees (usually $80-$250). That money is a payment to the bondsman and you will not get it back. The bondsmen then signs some paperwork with the jail saying they are guaranteeing you will be in court on the specified date and time, and if you are not, then they are on the hook for the $50,000. This is where \"bounty hunters\" come from. In most cases, the bounty hunter and bondsman are the same person. If you miss court, the judge will give the bondsman a set amount of time (usually 30-60 days) to get you back in to court before they make the bondsman pay up. So now it is in his financial interest to go find you. If he can't, he may hire a private party to find you, or put out a bounty, because it's better to pay $10,000 to the guy that finds you and brings you in than it is to pay $50,000 to the court. \n\n   It is important to note that just because your bond is forfeited, doesn't' mean you are off the hook for the charges you were facing. Your charges are still pending, you have a warrant, you will have a new charge for failure to appear, and you are out the bond money. \n\n   The court can impose almost any type of restriction it wants while you are out on bail. Common ones are GPS monitoring, surrendering your passport, and no out of state travel. \n\n   The system definitely favors the wealthy over the poor. If you have the money to post the $50,000, you aren't out anything. Most people facing criminal charges can't afford that, so they have to pay $5000 to a bondsman to avoid sitting in jail for the months/years it may take to get to trial. That $5000 is money they no longer have to spend on hiring an attorney or other things to help in their defense. ", "1) Bail is money you give to the court in exchange for a promise that, if you are let out of jail before trial, you will show up to your trial.\n\nBail basically is a means of ensuring that you show up - you aren't paying the government anything, you're giving them money to hold that they return to you when your trial takes place.\n\n2) Bail amounts depend on two things - how much money you have, and the severity of the crime you committed. If you committed some heinous crime, they may not allow you out on bail at all; you simply cannot be trusted out in the community, and/or no amount of money could ensure that you wouldn't try to run, because you might be sentenced to life in prison or death. Likewise, if you have a history of running away when facing trial, they're unlikely to allow you out on bail for any amount of money.\n\nIf you have a lot of money, they're likely to ask for a greater amount of money from you for bail - to a poor person, $1,000 might be a lot, but to Donald Trump, that wouldn't be very much.\n\nHowever, other factors are taken into account as well - having strong ties to the local community will tend to lower bail amounts, for instance, because if you fled, you'd have to be abandoning all that stuff. Owning a house or a business makes it much less likely you'll just run off because there's no way for you to take that house or business with you. Obviously, this varies depending on the crime.\n\nThe purpose of bail is ultimately to get you to show up - if they have other reasons to think you'll show up if they let you out of jail until your trial, they're less likely to ask for bail money.\n\n3) If you fail to show up to your trial, you lose your bail money - the government keeps it.\n\n4) In some states, such as Oregon, bail works slightly differently; instead of giving the government the full amount, you give the government 1/10th the amount of your bail. If you show up, you get that money back; if you fail to show up, not only do you lose the money the government is holding, but you owe the government the rest of that money as well, and they may seize it from you.\n\n5) In some other states, it is possible to get a loan from someone known as a bail bondsman. Typically speaking, a bail bondsman will ask for approximately 10% of the bail as a fee; the bail bondsman then gives the government the full amount of your bail. If you show up to your trial, the bail bondsman will get their money back, but you won't get that 10% of the bail that you paid the bail bondsman back - that was their fee, so you're just out their money. This allows you to get out with 1/10th the amount of bail you would pay otherwise, but you do lose that bail for sure. This is how bail bondsmen make money.\n\nIn most states where this is legal, the bail bondsman can also hire a bounty hunter to track you down if you skip out on your trial - if the bounty hunter tracks you down and brings you back in, the bail bondsman gets their bail money back, though the bail bondsman will have to pay the bounty hunter for their services (though in some cases, bail bondsmen double as bounty hunters).\n\nThe practice of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters is controversial; the idea behind bail bondsmen is that, as private individuals, they'll hunt you down if you skip out on your trial. They also frequently force you to get cosigners for your bond, and if you skip out on your trial, those other people may become responsible for the loan that the bail bondsman made to you, further disincentivizing fleeing.\n\nThe problem is that this can lead to corruption (bail bondsmen make money from people going to jail, which can lead to them getting cozy with local law enforcement and judges in an attempt to get more money, as well as incentivizing them to want to push for more things to be criminalized), overly high bonds being demanded of people as a matter of course (because people only have to pay 1/10th of it), bail bondsmen  making money doing something that the government should be doing itself, it undercutting the idea of bonds in the first place, it primarily being directed at taking advantage of poor people, and the problems which can be caused by bounty hunters (who aren't law enforcement officers) doing illegal things, harassing people, or in some cases, kidnapping people.", "I recently went through the court system for the first time. How I noticed how they determine the cost (at least for those of us who were involved in smaller misdemeanors) of the bail isn't entirely the severity of the crimes. Most of the time it is highly dependant on the history of the defendant. If they have a history for escaping, not showing up for parole or court, or running from the cops, then the state determines that they are at high risk of not showing up to their next court appearance. Higher risk of a no show, the higher the bail bond will be as a form of collateral to get to get the defendant to show.", "The money is to make sure you show up in court the more severe the crime the more incentive they want to give you to show up, so higher bail. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1dtnyl", "title": "Do plants have a 'microbiome'?", "selftext": "I know we have a 'microbiome' - bacterial communities on our skin + in our digestive system - essential to our health.\n\nI know of the ['rhizosphere'](_URL_0_).\n\nBut do plants have beneficial bacterial communities on their surface like us?\nDo the bacteria improve plant productivity? How?\nCan we optimise the plant microbiome for agriculture?\n\nPlease cite scientific papers if possible.\n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1dtnyl/do_plants_have_a_microbiome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9trxv9", "c9ts8c3", "c9tsf9l", "c9uxxsa"], "score": [7, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["Nitrogen fixation immediately pops to mind.\n\nAll life need Nitrogen. But atmospheric nitrogen is almost inert and is not readily available to metabolic pathways. Ammonia (NH3) is a far better nitrogen source. There are many species of bacteria that create symbiotic relationships inside the roots of plants. Especially plants of the legume family. These [root nodules](_URL_0_) are filled with bacteria and use the sugar from the plants as a energy source for converting atmospheric nitrogen into Ammonia via [Nitrogen Fixation](_URL_1_).", "    Can we optimise the plant microbiome for agriculture?\n\nNot the plant itself, but there is the microbial community in soils with the goal of improving agriculture is an active area of research mostly due to the recent advances in DNA sequencing and metagenomics. Whether or not that can be called the microbiome is debatable.", "Yes, there are a variety of [epiphytic bacteria](_URL_1_) that live on the surface of the plant and can form biofilms, etc., as opposed to endophytic bacteria which live inside the plant. Depending on the interactions between the plant and the microbe, we may be able to increase biomass: look at the comparison of growth in the link below. however, some bacteria may be pathogenic to the plant. \n\n[Scientists Identify Bacteria That Increase Plant Growth, 2009](_URL_0_). \n\nSorry for the poor answer.", "Absolutely!  Fungi are associated with all plants and there are bacteria and viruses in plants as well.  Endophytic fungi are incredibly diverse and live within plant tissues (some as systemic infections, others are very localized) while not causing disease.  Fungal endophytes have been found associated with every plant surveyed to date.  These fungal endophytes can provide benefits to the plant such as disease resistance, herbivory deterrence, or increase stress tolerance.  I'm studying a fungus that can be a pathogen or a defensive mutualist depending on the plant host and other fungi that are present within the plant.\n\nAside from fungal endophytes there are also mycorrhizal fungi.  Over 90% of land plants make some sort of mycorhizzal association with various fungi in their roots.  This is a very ancient symbiosis dating back aproximately 400 million years and the signaling pathway used by nitrogen fixing bacteria in legume roots is derived from the pathway that mycorrhizal fungi use to communicate with their plant host.  In these symbioses, the plant provides carbon to the fungus in exchange for nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which the plant is not very good at getting on its own.\n\nAdditionally the great majority of plant pathogens are fungi.  There are also endophytic and plant-pathogenic bacteria that live in plants as well as viruses and bacteria that live in the fungi that live in the plants!\n\nPlants have very interesting microbiomes and we're only just now beginning to find ways to study and understand them.  The microbial communities that live in plants can have dramatic impact or their biology and fitness."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rhizosphere&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;channel=fflb"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nodule", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation"], [], ["http://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=1874", "http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-4538-7_4"], []]}
{"q_id": "2yxbgs", "title": "Are modern Italians anything like ancient Romans physically?", "selftext": "In a lot of contemporary paintings, murals, etc, Roman look a lot more like modern day Turks. I know that there was a migration of tribes from the north down into Italy towards the end of the Western Roman Empire, but just wondered if a modern Italian would look anything like an ancient Roman if they stood next to them. Can a majority of the native Italian population today claim heritage back to Roman days?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yxbgs/are_modern_italians_anything_like_ancient_romans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpe3blv"], "score": [29], "text": ["There was a study in Science (link at bottom) that traced genetic admixture events. There's also a [website](_URL_0_) that's free and a little easier for laymen to read. \n\nIf I'm reading it correctly, 41% of their sample of Tuscan genomes comes from an influx of \"French-like\" and \"Cypriot-like\" genes between 522CE - 1222CE. Their samples for the rest of Italy look pretty similar, with some exceptions (more Middle Eastern-type genes in Sicily, etc.) So going off of this, the answer is \"partly\". \n\n\n_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/", "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/747.abstract?sid=3a8a4e24-47e8-45c8-bbf8-23c1f6d246f5"]]}
{"q_id": "39b96y", "title": "how can people like the guy off of 'man v. food' eat loads at a time and still be fairly healthy?", "selftext": "yeah he is slightly obese but pretty good from the looks of things, or is that the camera angles? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39b96y/eli5_how_can_people_like_the_guy_off_of_man_v/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs1wags", "cs1wce6", "cs2cafq", "cs2ibwp"], "score": [24, 10, 8, 3], "text": ["To be honest he didn't look fairly healthy...he was pretty overweight towards the end of the 2nd season...if you notice now he has other fans do the challenges now too.", "My understanding is the reason he's stopped eating like that is because he wasn't healthy.\n\nHe followed that show up with a show where he watches other people attempt those feats.", "I remember an article about this. He would run his ass off on a treadmill every morning, and the challenge meal would be the only thing he ate that day. Even then, he was still rather heavy, and last I heard the production company was having a hard time getting insurance. Hence the shift to watching other people do the challenges instead of him.\n\nThe show ended a couple of years ago now, and he has lost a *lot* of weight since.", "Unfortunately your question is somewhat malformed. During the shooting of Man v Food, the host was completely unhealthy despite putting in significant effort to work off the weight gained from shooting the show. The host developed sleep apnoea as well as other health issues. After leaving the show he dropped approximately 70 pounds and looks significantly more healthy than he did during taping of the show. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22co8t", "title": "Question about waves?", "selftext": "What exactly is the \"medium\" through which particle waves travel through? Water is the medium for water waves, air is the medium for sound waves; so what's the medium for sub-atomic particles?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22co8t/question_about_waves/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cglijv8"], "score": [2], "text": ["There does not need to be a medium. Perhaps the best example for this is light. For years physicists thought that a medium was required for the light to propagate (the so-called ether), but this theory was disproved. Light simply propagates by itself in the particle picture as photons traveling at the speed of light, or in the wave picture as an oscillation of the electromagnetic field propagating at the speed of light. \n\nThe same picture holds true for other particles as well. Maybe this explanation will sound even more confusing, but in a more modern picture one can think of elementary particles such as electrons as an excitation in a certain \"field\" and electron motion can be treated as the propagation of this excitation through space."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1bd99k", "title": "why do online retailers like amazon stick with mp3 instead of transitioning to lossless flac?", "selftext": "It made sense when most of us had dial-up modems and tiny hard drives. These days, most people have broadband and no shortage of storage space. \n\nIt's like sticking with JPEG when PNG is a viable option.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bd99k/eli5_why_do_online_retailers_like_amazon_stick/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c95tgs4", "c95u25z", "c95ubyv", "c95uek9", "c95vema", "c95xmm0", "c960pz4"], "score": [28, 9, 2, 8, 4, 3, 3], "text": ["The likely reason is compatibility.  Many more devices and programs play MP3 than FLAC.  For example, the Ipod, arguably the most popular portable audio player, doesn't play FLAC(or at least, didn't the last I knew).  If Amazon sold audio files in FLAC, they'd either have to:\n\n1.  Also offer the MP3, thus doubling the size of their stock\n2.  Offer support for converting to MP3, thus increasing their tech support needs, and losing themselves customers.\n3.  Refuse to support non-FLAC uses, which means they'd not be compatible with Ipods and other non-FLAC players.  \n\nIn short, it makes a lot more sense for them to offer the most popular format in their store.\n\n", "FLAC is not a widely supported file-format, either in software (it's not possible to play FLAC files on Windows without downloading third-party software) or hardware (it's not natively supported by either iOS or iTunes).  Thus, switching to FLAC would create a level of inconvenience for the consumer that is not found with rivals such as iTunes.\n\nFurthermore, in blind tests on consumer-grade playback equipment most listeners are unable to reliably distinguish between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC files.^[source](_URL_0_)  For this reason, adding FLAC as an option would not be cost effective for Amazon.\n\nAudio nazis that require a lossless format can purchase the CD from Amazon.", "Nobody cares enough to change, and most people have headphones that would not let them hear the difference. ", "MP3s, when properly trans-coded from the original source, are often transparent, being transparent that the most people can not tell the difference between the encoded MP3 and the original lossless media.\n\nAn MP3 at 320CBR or v0 is indistinguishable to nearly everyone in standard listening conditions.", "I'd imagine increased bandwidth to download the much larger Flac files would be a consideration.", "Others have covered the audio-format stuff, I'll address your comparison to image formats:\n\nJPEG and PNG serve different purposes. The JPEG, for the Joint Photographic Experts Group that designed it, format was specifically designed for storing photographic (or at least photorealistic) images that had a lot of colors with gradient transitions - if you're using it for anything else you're probably using it wrong.\n\nPNG was created to be a replacement for the GIF format which was optimized for images with a limited number of colors with sharp edges/contrasts - things like line-art or logos. PNGs now have a large enough color palate that the number of available colors might be enough to represent a photograph (certainly better than GIF allows), but the encoding algorithm isn't optimized for the type of image that photography gets you.\n\nA more apt comparison might be between JPEG and something like the RAW format - keeping the comparison between file formats that were designed for the same purpose (photography) but the lossless one trades off file size for the image fidelity.", "ELI5: What is the difference between FLAC and MP3?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://lifehacker.com/5903625/mp3-or-lossless-see-if-you-can-hear-the-difference-with-this-test"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1x39jg", "title": "Did building a snowman have any kind of documented cultural origin, or was it just a spontaneous thing we started doing one day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x39jg/did_building_a_snowman_have_any_kind_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf7q46w", "cf855pw"], "score": [28, 6], "text": ["Shockingly enough, there have been numerous books published on the subject. Although there are no confirmed cultural origins, the first known depiction was in a Book of Hours currently held at Koninlijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. ", "_URL_0_ \n\nPrevious thread on the subject here. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b0oq5/wherewhen_did_the_tradition_of_building_snow_men/"]]}
{"q_id": "2psj51", "title": "Since electromagnetism is so much stronger than gravity, why doesn't it have more of an effect on large celestial bodies?", "selftext": "Since bodies like Earth, Jupiter and the Sun all have powerful magnetic fields, why do we not see the orbits of large bodies shifted by the magnetic fields of one another? Indeed, *do* we see this at all?\n\nAfter all, even a tiny magnet can defy the gravity of an entire planet by lifting a kilogram weight off a table, and an  electromagnet in a scrap yard can lift an entire car. Why, then, does this apparently-more-powerful force not propagate out into space more effectively than gravity?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2psj51/since_electromagnetism_is_so_much_stronger_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmzrnss"], "score": [19], "text": ["Excellent question. The fundamental reason is because there is no such thing as negative mass. Let me explain. Electric charge can come either as positive or negative, and opposites attract. This means that free positive charges will tend to attract free negative charges until they bind to form neutral atoms and molecules (or more exotic composite objects). When bound together, the electric and positive charge are so close to each other that for the most part they cancel each other's effects. To a first approximation, a system with an equal amount of positive and negative electric charge acts like an electric dipole. The electric field of an electric dipole dies off with distance according to 1/r^3 . In contrast, the electric field of a bare electric charge dies off with distance according to 1/r^2 . On astronomical scales, r is huge, so that that the electric field due to a dipole (and by an extension, a neutral molecule) is far weaker than the electric field due to a bare charge. Since opposites attract, most of the electric charge on a planet is bound up in neutral atoms/molecules. For molecules that have a weak dipole moment, the electric field falls off even faster than 1/r^3 . The situation is even worse for magnets. Magnetic poles *always* come in pairs, so that the magnetic field of a magnetic object always dies off as 1/r^3 or faster (as long as you are sufficiently external to the object - inside magnetic objects/systems you can get all sorts of fields).\n\nNow let's turn to gravity. Since there is no negative mass, there is nothing to partially cancel the gravitational field of positive mass. Therefore, the strength of gravity of a localized mass always dies off dominantly as 1/r^2. \n\nIn summary, electromagnetism is stronger than gravity, and they both fundamentally die off with distance at the same rate (1/r^2 ), but due to the existence of negative charges/South magnetic poles and not negative mass, in most practical situations, electromagnetic fields die off much quicker with distance than gravity. The distances involved on astronomical scales are so large that gravity dominates. \n\nIn principle, if we could make an entire planet out of just electrons (if we found someway to turn off their mutual repulsion), the electric field of this planet on astronomical scales would be immensely strong, far stronger than gravity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "88ry2u", "title": "non disclosure agreements", "selftext": "What is the general purpose of an NDA? What happens if you witness someone in your company doing something against the law? Does the NDA still apply?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88ry2u/eli5_non_disclosure_agreements/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwms6zi", "dwmsooj", "dwmurz4"], "score": [6, 8, 6], "text": ["The general purpose of the Non-Disclosure Agreement is in the name - it's to prevent an individual or party who is receiving access to privileged and secured information from going around and releasing that information to non-authorized individuals or parties, under threat of legal repercussions (fines, jail sentences, etc.).\n\nYes, the NDA definitely still applies if you see someone commit a wrongdoing. Just because someone does something wrong does not automatically give you permission to break an agreement that you signed with the employer. Companies that require someone to sign an NDA also typically have very straightforward reporting procedures in place (such as a compliance office, an inspector general office, etc.) for reporting violations or suspected wrongdoing to. \n\nThey should also be providing people with training on a periodic (usually annually) basis for how to handle situations like those, so that you don't have to guess about what to do in situations where a questionable practice or absolute wrongdoing is observed.", "Usually the NDA specifies what you are not allowed to disclose. I have one because I may work on/with some technology that isn't public yet. Also, I'm not allowed to give out technical details about what I'm doing. If I breach the NDA my contract may be terminated and I can be forced to pay a certain fee. \nThis does not extend to other stuff that may happen in the office. ", "Apple wants to hire my company to help with their new super secret project.  The problem is, I don't want to sign a contract until I know what I am supposed to do, and they don't want to share their secrets until I've agreed to a contract.  The solution is an NDA.  I agree not to share anything I find out, under financial penalties, and they feel better about giving me access to the information I need.  Employees are often required to sign NDA with their employers as well.\n\n >  What happens if you witness someone in your company doing something against the law? \n\nIn general, a contract that involves illegal activity is not binding.  If you pay me $10K to kill someone, and I just take the money, you can't sue me, even if you didn't care about the legal consquences.\n\nMore specifically, NDA's do not apply to criminal behavior, nor do the prevent someone from following a court order.  However, it can be tricky to know exactly what is illegal and what information should be disclosed to reveal that activity.  If you guess wrong, you can still run afoul of the NDA."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "69mgc8", "title": "if blue eyes are recessive then how did they manage to originally spread to so many people?", "selftext": "So it's generally said that the genes for blue eyes are recessive as opposed to other eye colors such as brown/green/hazel. However it's believed that blue eyes all originate from a single person thousands of years ago. This person had a genetic mutation that gave them blue eyes and then the gene spread over the millennia. But if blue eyes are recessive then surely nobody would have blue eyes today? So is it really a case that blue eyes are recessive in the short term and then they begin to appear spontaneously amongst people who have the blue eye gene regardless of their eye color? \n\nAny answers are appreciated, thanks! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69mgc8/eli5_if_blue_eyes_are_recessive_then_how_did_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh7pl6e", "dh7pnvj", "dh7rl81", "dh82cfc", "dh83orq", "dh8bjp5"], "score": [6, 104, 10, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["Recessive genes are no less likely to be inherited than any other. \nThis means they get passed down to about 1/2 of a carrier's progeny.  Recessive means they are only expressed when someone has a copy form both parents.   Odds are every carrier who reproduces is going to have at least one carrier descendant.  Nothing ever weeds the carriers out of the genome, and it takes genetic testing (or having a blue eyed kid) to even tell the gene is there.  Nothing ever selectively culls them out.  \n\nIt is likely the blue eyes mutation has occurred more than once.  If it did, science might be unable to tell the difference unless the populations were widely separated to prevent their descendants form interbreeding.  There ARE very black Africans with startlingly blue eyes.  Google it.\n\n", "Blue eyes are what are called Autosomal recessive (this isn't necessarily 100% true, but it is good enough we can work with it).\n\n\nAutosomal recessive means that both alleles (meaning genes that you get from your parents) need to be recessive in order to be expressed in the offspring. \n\n\nNow lets say that this blue eyed person's alleles are represented by  'rr'. A person needs two little 'r's, one from the father and one from the mother, to have blue eyes. Here's where it gets interesting. Father and Mother do not need to have blue eyes to necessarily have a blue eyed kid. If Mom has a Brown eyed allele and blue eyed allele, she will have brown eyes, but still carry a blue eyed gene, or what we would write as 'Rr'. If the father has the same 'Rr' pattern, then there is 1/4 chance of one of their kids getting 'rr' and having blue eyes. Also, they will have a 1/2 chance of getting a kid with 'Rr', meaning the gene is still present, even if it isn't being expressed. \n\n\nA one more point before I wrap up with an answer. Since blue eyes do not necessarily put a person at risk of early death in the wild, they are not selected against in population. The lack of disadvantage means that the likelihood of someone with blue eyes living as long as someone with brown eyes is pretty good, and increases the chances of a blue eyed person mating with another blue eyed person, or a brown eyed person with an 'r' allele. You could even argue that blue eyes are selected for in modern populations, as some consider those with blue eyes more attractive and therefore increase that person's chances of mating (although the applicability of that could definitely be questioned).\n\nIn short\n\n\nBecause a gene can be carried without being expressed in a person, it can survive a surprising amount of time without ever showing up as a blue eyed person. All it takes to express that gene is one other person with that recessive allele to mate with them, and a blue eyed person can be born. And because blue eyes are not usually selected against in nature, when someone does appear with blue eyes they are just as likely to mate as any other member of the population, increasing the chances of persistence in population.\n\nEdit: I should have probably made this a bit more clear, eye color is not 100% controlled by one gene, it is controlled by quite a few genes that give each eye a unique hue and pattern. Eye color as whole however does work pretty well in models for autosomal traits.", "I think you may have misunderstood how dominant and recessive genes work. [This has a lot of good information on the topic](_URL_0_). Note that there are a lot of other genes that go into eye colour, so in reality it's much more complicated than what I'll try to explain here. \n\n > But if blue eyes are recessive then surely nobody would have blue eyes today?\n\nWhy do you think this? The children of that original blue eyed person wouldn't have had blue eyes, but they were carrying the blue eye gene that didn't get expresed. Over the thousands of years, they have some kids, those kids have more kids, and eventually some of these distantly related cousins get together. The ones who each carry a blue eye gene have a chance of having blue eyed kids. You get half your genes from each parent, and if both parents have one blue eye gene and one brown eye gene (meaning they have brown eyes) you will have blue eyes if the halves you get each contain the blue eye gene. ", "Just to clarify, eye color is a complex trait resulting from the interaction of MANY genes, not just one gene as previously thought. It's not as simple as just being \"recessive\". \n\nAs someone else posted, recessive genes are only expressed if a person has two copies of them, one from each parent. They are not \"weaker\" than dominant genes.  Often what makes a gene recessive is that the protein it codes for doesn't work or it has a different function than the dominant protein. In the case of eye color, blue eyed people don't make as much melanin, which is a brown-colored pigment (protein) that also makes your skin tan and fruit turn brown when exposed to air. \n\nThat being said, recessive traits in general can be very common in a population if they are associated with a reproductive advantage. For example, dwarfism is actually a dominant trait, but it's not very common because having two copies of the dwarfism gene causes a baby to be stillborn or die shortly after birth. So people with dwarfism typically have one dominant allele for dwarfism and one recessive allele for normal height. But the recessive gene for normal height is far more common in the population because babies with two recessive copies reproduce more frequently, thus passing on that gene more often. \n\nMore info on eye genetics: _URL_0_\n\nSource: I'm a high school biology teacher and my kids ask this question every year. ", "Are blue eyes a survival enhancement in low light northern latitudes?", "So here's the deal. Yes, blue eyes are recessive but imagine you were the first dude to have blue eyes. That guy had his way with every woman in the tribe. He was probably considered a god. Could have been a female but think about it. One guy and fifty females could make fifty kids in nine months. One female and fifty guys could only make one baby in nine months. So probably had to be a dude to spread the gene. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/patterns/"], ["https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/eyecolor"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "q5whr", "title": "how certain people can eat any and everything and not get fat?", "selftext": "And then explain the people who do the same thing but don't exercise.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q5whr/eli5_how_certain_people_can_eat_any_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3uz5o6", "c3uzsaw", "c3v0pkd", "c3v0qj4"], "score": [5, 30, 6, 7], "text": ["Not every*body* is the same.", "I watched [this](_URL_0_) documentary a couple of years ago - 'Why Aren't Thin People Fat?'\n\nIt basically suggested that thin people don't eat as much as they think they do, in terms of portion size, calories, etc. They made the participants eat 4000 calories a day (I think) which most of the thin people couldn't even manage, and they all put on weight just as expected.\n\nOr all except one guy who was an anomaly, and it turned out he'd started twitching his legs and stuff to counteract the extra calories, or something. Pretty interesting stuff.\n\nObviously there are so many other factors and theories about it; genetics, metabolism, lifestyle, etc. But basically, thin people can't actually 'eat everything' and not get fat, they just tend to have different perceptions of how much they eat.", "Maybe they eat any everything in front of you but eat much less for the rest of the day when you're not looking?\n\nSame with exercise. Maybe you never see them workout, but they could be doing quite a bit of walking when you're not looking.\n\nIt could also explain why you never see Johnny study for his math tests but gets high marks every time.\n\nWhat you're seeing may not be what is actually going on. We call this *perception*. Unless you were with the person and observing them all the time, you are simply assuming something.\n\nEDIT: better rewording", "[The types of bacteria in your gut can change how many calories your body actually gets to use from the food you eat.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hbsk2"], [], ["http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/21/health/la-he-in-the-works-20100621"]]}
{"q_id": "hn4r0", "title": "Am I getting this right?", "selftext": "Okay, so I've been reading alot about physics lately, and I find it incredibly intriguing. But it's easy to get lost in formulas and math, I'm no scientist. So I try to explain things simply. I realise that alot of physics is counterintuitive and just too strange to put into laymans terms, but I'm just trying to understand, so bear with me, please.\n\nLet's start at the beginning. All the mass in the universe is condensed to a single point. Motion is not possible, because there are no dimensions to move in. Somehow, space expands, forming dimensions for waves/particles to move through. I'm thinking of quantum fluctuations, and the whole universe from nothing-business. Is this close?\n\nAnyway, the universe cools down after a while. Is this because the atoms and particles have more space in which to move? I've been watching Richard Feynman's Fun to Imagine - Jiggling atoms, where he explains hot and cold as atoms shaking or jiggling more (hot) or less (cold).\n\nI visualize the expanding space as a uniform grid, like a chess board, with one dot in each square. Each dot is bouncing around inside its square at a uniform speed. It bounces say 100 times per second. \n\nAs the chess board expands, the size of the squares increase, but the dots stay the same size, and they still travel at the same speed. A dot will spend a longer amount of time travelling across the square. A dot bouncing around 100 times a second in a small square is hotter than a dot bouncing around 50 times a second in a large square.\n\nSo as the squares get bigger, the dots bounce less frequently, and everything cools down?\n\nIs this making any kind of sense?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hn4r0/am_i_getting_this_right/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1wq34s"], "score": [6], "text": ["So I think one of the first good things to realize is that space is not a thing. It's a measurement. Point A is x meters away from point B at angle theta with respect to the line between B and C. The measurements change over time, they grow between objects that don't have much gravitational attraction to each other.\n\nNext, the universe wasn't \"a single point.\" It was some *very dense* region, but we haven't sufficient information to believe it was *infinitely* dense, pointlike. But yes, as the expansion continues between objects, they have the capacity to cool down, and they get to undergo a phase change from some unknown stuff to quark gluon plasma to regular plasma and then 300,000 years later the plasma turns into plain old gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and light is free to move about, that's the cosmic microwave background. That's my little bit of a start to discuss this. You can search the subreddit for \"big bang\" \"universe\" etc. and find a lot more discussions"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "13o2xg", "title": "why does f.m. radio sound pretty good and a.m. sound like it's coming to us live from the 1920s?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13o2xg/eli5_why_does_fm_radio_sound_pretty_good_and_am/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c75m9su", "c75mgdb", "c75n8qq", "c75nbd7", "c75nh80", "c75nl1g", "c75o5vg", "c75qlk4", "c75t3wi", "c75tepm", "c75wfqm", "c761641", "c762464", "c763jln", "c77edwv"], "score": [21, 313, 4, 1262, 9, 13, 7, 7, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Partly because AM radio is subject to more interference than FM.  Partly because FM was developed as a higher-fidelity alternative to AM.", "The A.M. signal is a much simpler way to transmit audio through radio signals.  It was the first type to be invented, and the receiver needs fewer parts to make it work.  In A.M., there is a lower frequency radio signal that carries the audio, and the strength of the signal is \"wiggled\" up and down to make the sound come out of the speaker. \n\nF.M. signals require a higher frequency, and more complicated parts to work.  The frequency of the signal is \"wiggled\" a little higher and lower to make the sound come out of the speaker.\n\nWhen you turn on a light switch or have a noisy electrical motor, or during an electrical storm, there is a jolt of radio noise that interferes with nearby radios.  The jolt interferes with the strength of the signal - which is why it is reproduced as a pop in the speaker of an A.M. radio, but is mostly silent in an F.M. radio which only follows the frequency change, not the amplitude (strength) change.\n  ", "Why aren't there more AM stations? It seems like they'd be cheaper, and available to independent stations.\n\nAnd why are so many in Spanish, and why are they commonly talk radio?", "Because FM is a newer and better technology:\n\nImagine the radio waves are light. AM transmits by changing the brightness of a light (Amplitude Modulation), FM transmits by changing the colour of the light (Frequency Modulation).\n\nIf you have a clear view of both lights then they both sound good, but imagine if you're driving and trees get in the way of the light beam. You can still see the light through the leaves, but not as well. \n\nWith AM the brightness of the light keeps changing as leaves block it so the volume keeps going up and down. With FM it doesn't matter how bright the light is because you only care about the colour, which doesn't change.\n\nThe reason you still have AM as well as FM because AM is much cheaper to broadcast and the signals travel further.", "In addition to stgnet's excellent explanation, there are the actual effects of the technology and legislation.\n\n1) AM radio signals usually broadcast about 40Hz-5kHz, which means from quite low (deep, bass) to only moderately high. If you have a stereo with tone controls, turn the \"treble\" knob all the way down and the bass knob about halfway down, and you'll get an idea of what these limitations are like.\nFM, in contrast, is about 30Hz-15kHz, which means it goes from deeper bass to much higher treble.\n\n2) The FM signal has a much bigger dynamic range. This means that the difference between the quietest and the loudest sounds is much bigger than with AM.\n\n3) Also, while AM stereo exists, it's hardly ever used. FM is generally stereo.\n\nA good FM signal (which is rarely broadcast) with a good FM tuner (which is very hard-to-find) can sound really good - almost as good as an excellent CD. A typical FM signal through a normal stereo tuner is still going to sound pretty good.\n", "Related question undeserving of it''s own thread:  why do AM stations power down at night?  My favorite local AM station has an abrupt power up at sunrise and a down at sunset where the quality goes from passable at night to excellent during the day.  I thought it was audience related but it seems to follow the sun and isn't affected by time or DST.\n\nSorry if I'm violating thread etiquette.", "I have a question, if FM changes the frequency, how can there be different stations? What are the differences between from one station and the next?\n\nI imagine in AM radio, that the frequency would be the difference between each station.\n\nBut with FM, how can that work? What's the difference from each station to the next?", "Question from the future: Why does HDTV look pretty good and SDTV like it's coming to us live from the 1900s?", "With IBOC (aka HD Radio) AM stations can sound just as good as a FM station and FM stations sound CD quality. This is done by sending a digital signal with the analogue waveform. The HD in this case stands for hybrid digital. On AM broadcasts the HD signal can recreate sounds up to about 15KHz using a 30kbit digital stream to make it sound like a FM station. FM HD signals can achieve CD quality sound since it has a 300kbit digital stream. This digital stream has enough bandwidth to provide a 150kbit stream for the FM station and create digital sub channels like 95.5 HD-2, 95.5 HD-3. In my area some of these stations simulcast their AM station on a FM HD substation or specialized programming. My favourite is 93.1 Jack FM HD-2 which is _URL_0_ Discover. ", "And to expand on this: how does Phase Modulation compare, and why don't we see PM broadcasting and consumer radios with PM capabilities?", "AM transmits data by changing brightness while FM transmits data by chaning \"colors\" in an invisible spectrum.\n\nBrightness is directly affected by distance making brightness measurements less accurate while color is only slighly changed by distance, so getting the accurate color from a far away signal is easyer.", "This article assumes you are within 25 miles of the fm and am radio stations.   You need to move out to about 50 miles to see which is better.  You will find no FM but the AM is going strong.    AM  signal can be picked up from 4 times the distance.   Although most comments about the two are correct they leave out AMs greatest feature, signal distance. ", "MP3 killed the radio star (for me, anyway).  I rarely listen to broadcast radio anymore. ", "Here's my take, apologies if I'm parroting anyone from earlier:\n\nAM is based on power changes; sounds are converted to big or little bumps on a carrier signal. FM changes the frequency of the carrier signal. That's all been said. The reason for clarity and reception differences are this:  AM is by design very sensitive to amplitude changes; drive through a tunnel and the degraded signal is heard as static. But FM doesn't care about amplitude; you only need a very small bit of it to \"see\" the frequency changes. This is why FM stays clear until you're basically out of reception area, then it basically goes dead. ", "I actually love AM because I can drive from NYC to Boston with WFAN (660) on the whole time.  Came in handy great when I wanted to listen to a Mets game when I was at school.  You have got to love the distances AM can travel."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["Last.FM"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6nb46x", "title": "why, at least i know in the u.s., are public funds sometimes used to help build private stadiums/arenas?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nb46x/eli5_why_at_least_i_know_in_the_us_are_public/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk83v57", "dk84c3o", "dk858km", "dk860h1", "dk8dh2o"], "score": [17, 6, 11, 2, 3], "text": ["Because of the \"expected\" economic revenue said Stadium will bring to a city and surrounding areas. In most cases, it pays off, although the question is always going to be: \"Why is a person worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars not paying for their own stadium?\" of which the answer would be \"Because they don't have to when there are cities around the country that will fight to have the team in their city and be willing to pay for a large amount of the funding.\"", "Because the public often supports them.\n\nIf you are Oklahoma City and you don't have a major professional sports franchise, your citizens might support public money to a new stadium to lure one to move.\n\nOr if you are Minneapolis, and have team you have supported for decades, when an owner started dropping hints about moving, you support a new public stadium to keep the team in town.\n\nOf course, it doesn't always work that way, cities have grown a little weary of billionaires hold their sports teams for ransom.  San Diego and Oakland basically told their teams to take a hike.", "[This is a picture](_URL_1_) of Downtown San Diego before they built the Padres stadium in the early 2000s\n\n[This is a picture](_URL_0_) of downtown San Diego several  years after they built Petco Park\n\nA stadium and the regular traffic it brings in can be a huge windfall to an area.  It encourages development and improves the tax base *if done correctly*\n\nPetco Park has helped dramatically improve the city economically.  It has 100% been worth the public money spent on it.", "It's the \"we\" mentality of professional sports.  How many times have you heard someone refer to their team as \"we\"?  Dumb people take personal and emotional ownership of sports franchises in their geography and act like they matter.  The owners know this and will continue to exploit it for their own financial gain. ", "Most major sports leagues in the US are monopolies. As such, if you are convinced there is a Civic or financial upside to having a team in your city, you may have to compete against other cities to convince one to locate in your area. Public stadium financing is a popular bribe or inducement depending on how you look at it for a team to move to your city. The teams want to maximize ticket sales and minimize costs, and seem to think newer, larger, and nicer stadiums help with that.\n\nActual economic impact is not clear, but sports fans talk about it a lot anyway."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://voiceofsandiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/EVAfter.jpg", "http://voiceofsandiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/EVBefore.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "unhsm", "title": "Do fundamental forces change near light-speed?", "selftext": "If mass increases as speed approaches C, then what happens to other fundamental properties? I'm wondering if there is a theoretical limit to human travel at some point bellow C. If we had unlimited free energy through some as yet unknown technology, could we use that to get arbitrarily close to C, or would the chemical bonds we depend on for life break down?\n\nThe most simple example I can think of is a single hydrogen atom. If we accelerate this atom it becomes heavier and heavier (infinitely so), as do all its components including an orbiting electron. So, is the electron stripped at some point because it becomes too massive for the charge force to continue binding it to the atom? Does the charge on the electron and proton increase with speed as well so that this does not happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/unhsm/do_fundamental_forces_change_near_lightspeed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4wwl8l", "c4wwxeo"], "score": [8, 11], "text": ["In your own reference frame you can always consider yourself at rest and everything else is moving.\n\nAs such any experiment you do in that reference frame will come out the same as doing it in any other reference frame.\n\nThe classic example is to imagine an empty universe devoid of anything except you and one other person.  You see that other person traveling towards you at, say, 0.999999999c.\n\nFrom the other person's perspective it is they who are standing still and it is you who is approaching them at 0.999999999c.\n\nNo experiment either of you do can determine who is standing still and who is moving (or some combination of the two).\n", "Mass ***does not*** increase with speed.  \"Relativistic mass\" is an idea that was used as a way to \"intuitively\" explain differences in relativistic dynamics as opposed to Newtonian--a way to side step going into the messiness of velocity's nonlinear behavior in the relativistic area.  Though that interpretation was meant to simplify things, it muddies the actual physics going on and fell out of favor.         \n\ntl;dr       \nRelativistic mass isn't a thing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "a09mec", "title": "\"IBM and the Holocaust,\"by Edwin Black claims, \"Data generated by IBM was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe.\" How do historians view this book? How deep was the cooperation between IBM and Germany?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a09mec/ibm_and_the_holocaustby_edwin_black_claims_data/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eahbxj0"], "score": [20], "text": ["There was a nice succinct answer from /u/estherke when [nearly the same question was](_URL_0_) asked about three years ago.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nOf course there is always room for more discussion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wpbj4/the_book_ibm_and_the_holocaust_by_edwin_black/"]]}
{"q_id": "3akut3", "title": "why does the number 142857 behave like it does when multiplied?", "selftext": "In case you don't know,\n\n* 142857  & times; 2 =   285714\n* 142857  & times; 3 =   428571\n* 142857  & times; 4 =   571428\n* 142857  & times; 5 =   714285\n* 142857  & times; 6 =   857142\n\nso, is there any kind of mathematical *reason* for this?\n\n**EDIT**: I'm kind of tired of explaining to people that there's an interesting pattern here.  Does this help?\n\n    1|4|2|8|5|7|1|4|2|8|5|7|1|\n     | |2|8|5|7|1|4| | | | | |\n     | | | | | | |4|2|8|5|7|1|\n     | | | |5|7|1|4|2|8| | | |\n     | | | | |7|1|4|2|8|5| | |\n     | | |8|5|7|1|4|2| | | | |", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3akut3/eli5_why_does_the_number_142857_behave_like_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csdklfo", "csdkocu", "csdkuqz", "csdl5of", "csdp5ry", "csdq4ot", "csdqgiv", "csdqkm0", "csdrc2d", "csdrlft", "csdrzxh", "csds4u4", "csdsb1m", "csdsmp4", "csdu163", "csdulai", "csdve2f", "csdvkxe", "csdw94e", "csdxbat", "csdy1pc", "csdyrt0", "csdyz32", "cse03d0", "cse0b41", "cse11dw", "cse1scu", "cse5fb3"], "score": [124, 56, 1141, 191, 3, 629, 81, 771, 7, 3, 2, 4, 9, 8, 199, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 6, 3, 8, 2, 3, 4], "text": ["Because 142857 x 7 = 999999.\n\nedit: oops, let's make the automod happy.\n\n142857/999999 = 0.142857142857...  \nIt also equals 1/7.  \nNow multiply by 10, and keep only the part after the decimal point.  \n0.428571428571...  = 3/7  \nRepeat this process for the rest.\n\nedit 2: extra explaining\n\nwhat we want is a repeating decimal expansion where the denominator is a prime number after we simplify to lowest terms. In base 10, that means it has to be something like 142857/999999, or 5882352941/99999999999.\n\nsince the number is prime, multiplying by 10 and keeping the part less than one only will inevitably cycle through all the positions of the repeating decimal.\n\n*my apologies for my previous iterations of this explanation; i feel like i was one of those asshole textbook editors that says \"because of this fact, a simple proof follows, which i have left as an exercise for the reader\"*", "Am I supposed to be seeing that they all have the same numbers in them? ", "Because they're the six repeating digits of 1/7. If you times it by 2 (2/7) they're still going to repeat, just starting at a different place.", "To dive deeper, cyclic numbers have shown to be [[b^(p-1)]-1]/p where b is the base number (10) and p is a prime number that does not divide b. \n\nUsing b=10 and p=7...\n\n[[b^(p-1)]-1]/p\n\n[[10^(7-1)]-1]/7\n\n[10^(6)]-1]/7\n\n(1000000-1)/7\n\n999999/7\n\n142857\n\nEdit: Sorry the reddit formatting on exponents is funky. Trying to make it display properly.\n\nEdit2: There we go.", "EDIT: I should note here that I'm not sure that my answer is foolproof, it's just an opinion...take it with any amount of salt at your own discretion.\n\nANSWER: Mathematical reason? I doubt they found any mathematical reason for it being a cyclic permutation. It just happens to be one. Just like how 496 happens to be a [perfect number](_URL_0_). \n\nSource: The wikipedia page for 142857 lists properties of it, but no explanation as to why it behaves like that. A lot of places cite 1/7=.142857... being a reason, but then other repeating decimals should work like that too. So I think it is not a reason, but rather the byproduct of some other phenomenon which we are yet to discover.\n\n", "All of the explanations are either wrong or not really an explanation. [Here](_URL_0_) is a real explanation, it's not really ELI5 though. But even that explanation is basically only \"it works because it works\" in more fancy words. There simply is no better explanation, in fact we don't really have an explanation for this phenomen at all. ", "I don't understand any of these answers and I'm not 5.\n\n > Because they're the six repeating digits of 1/7.\n\nThe numbers should repeat because they're a fraction?\n\n > If you times it by 2 (2/7) they're still going to repeat\n\nWhy?\n\n > Because 142857 x 7 = 999999.\n\nSo?\n\n > 142857/999999 = 0.142857142857...\nIt also equals 1/7.\nNow multiply by 10, and keep only the part after the decimal point.\n0.428571428571... = 3/7\nRepeat this process for the rest.\n\nOh is the fraction a recurring string of 6 numbers no matter how many decimal places you add?  \n\nI guess I understand it a bit better.  But I'm not familiar with a rule apart from multiplying and dividing by 10 where you shift the decimal.  \n\nThis seems to be multiplying by other numbers where you shift the focus to the left or right and reveal the hidden recurring pattern.  ", "I always thought a lot of these things are artifacts of our base ten system plus, numbers are weird?", "I am an algebra teacher, and I have always loved (*read: hated*) helping my students memorize fraction-decimal conversions that they should have memorized years ago. Though I truly do like teaching the sevenths trick. \n\nStart with 1/7. What is the denominator (7) doubled? 14. What is 14 doubled? 28. What is 28 doubled plus the numerator (1)? 57. So 1/7 is 0.142857142857...\n\nSo what is 2/7? It's the same repeating digits, except you start with the next highest digit. For example, the repeating digits are 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8. 1/7 starts with the 1, 2/7 starts with the 2, 3/7 starts with the 4, and so on.\n\nThus,\n1/7 = 0.142857142857...\n\n2/7 = 0.285714285714...\n\n3/7 = 0.428571428571...\n\n4/7 = 0.571428571428...\n\n5/7 = 0.714285714285...\n\n6/7 = 0.857142857142...\n\nAnd finally, 7/7 = 1/7 + 6/7 = 2/7 + 5/7 = 3/7 + 4/7 = 0.999999... = 1\n\nAnd I get to have that discussion with them next (does 0.999999... = 1?) \n\nFUN!!! ", "I clicked this because it made me think that everyone already knew how 142857 behaved when multiplied and I was left out.", "This proof has many steps. Our first step is this: we have to show that six very important numbers (1/7, 2/7, 3/7, 4/7, 5/7, and 6/7) are all made of the same repeating bunch of digits, with only the starting point being different.\n\nWe do this as follows: we start from 1/7 and only allow ourselves to manipulate it in two ways: multiplying by 10, aka. shifting the comma, and subtracting integers when necessary. With these simple tools we *have to* be able to construct all six, or this won't work:\n\n1/7 = 0.142857... ||\u00d710  \n1/7\u00d710 = 10/7 = 1+3/7 = 1.428571... ||-1  \n3/7 = 0.428571... ||\u00d710  \n3/7\u00d710 = 30/7 = 4+2/7 = 4.285714... ||-4   \n2/7 = 0.285714... ||\u00d710  \n20/7 = 2+6/7 = 2.857142...  \n6/7 = 0.857142...  \n60/7 = 8+4/7 = 8.571428...  \n4/7 = 0.571428...  \n40/7 = 5+5/7 = 5.714285...  \n5/7 = 0.714285...\n\nTurns out we can do it. All six constructed with their repeating patterns intact, like promised. Thank you 7 for being so horribly indivisible. Now, our next step is converting the recurring decimals into a neater form. Gladly we can do that by taking the repeating part and diving it by an equally long string of nines. Like so:\n\n1/7 = 142,857/999,999  \n2/7 = 285,714/999,999  \n3/7 = 428,571/999,999  \n4/7 = 517,428/999,999  \n5/7 = 742,851/999,999  \n\nIf anyone needs an explanation on why this is possible, ask. Moving on, we're almost done now. Now we multiply by 999,999.\n\n1\u00d7(999,999/7) = 142,857  \n2\u00d7(999,999/7) = 285,714  \n3\u00d7(999,999/7) = 428,571  \n4\u00d7(999,999/7) = 571,428  \n5\u00d7(999,999/7) = 714,285  \n6\u00d7(999,999/7) = 857,142\n\nReplace 999,999/7 with 142,857 and finally we have what we came for:\n\n1\u00d7142,857=142,857  \n2\u00d7142,857=285,714  \n3\u00d7142,857=428,571  \n4\u00d7142,857=571,428  \n5\u00d7142,857=714,285  \n6\u00d7142,857=857,142\n\nNow, in retrospect, we can see our result hinges on a few essential things: 7 being terribly indivisible by 10, our numbers being in Base10, and 1/7 having a recurring pattern that is not so long that it would be unaesthetic.", "EDIT: ***AND NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT!***\n\n142857 is actually my favorite number.  I *discovered* this property of the number for myself in highschool.  One extra thing that hasn't been mentioned yet.  \n\nI'll pick a \"random\" number 4-digit that is not divisible by 7... 4237.\n\n4237 * 142857  = 605285109\n\nIsolate the last 6 digits from the preceding digits\n \n605|285109\n\n605 + 285109 = 285714\n\nWorks EVERY TIME.  Can someone explain this aspect to me?  Try it out.  It can work with 8-digit numbers!  Larger numbers mean you might have to do it twice (or more)\n\n142857 * 32947588 = 4706793578916\n\n4706793|578916\n\n4706793 + 578916 = 5285709\n\n5|285709\n\n5 + 285709 =285714.\n\nCan someone ELI5 *that*?\n\nEDIT:  in my two examples I happened to land on 285714 both times, which is a coincidence.  As long as your starting number is not divisible by 7, you will wind up with some cyclic permutation of 142857 {285714, 428571, 571428, 714285, 857142}", "[Here's](_URL_0_) a great video explaining cyclic numbers! Really cool behavior!", "The amount of people opening the generic Windows calculator when seeing this thread must have been by the hundreds. Anyone snooping on Windows usage must have been like, \"Woah, fucking huge spike in people doing some maths!\"\n\nOr not. Leave me alone, it's Sunday :(", "Okay, I'm gonna try to explain this as simple as possible. The numbers are the recurring decimals of 1/7.\n\n* **1**/7 = 0.**142857**142857142857...\n\nNow, take this times 10 and we get:\n\n* 10/7 = 1.428571428571428571...\n\nNow, 10/7 = 1 + 3/7, so we get:\n\n* 1 + 3/7 = 1.428571428571428571...\n\nIf we subtract 1 from each side we get:\n\n* **3**/7 = 0.**428571**428571428571...\n\nNext we can redo step 2-4, but multiplying by 100 instead:\n\n* 100/7 = 14.28571428571428571...\n\n100/7 = 14 + 2/7 and by subtracting 14 from both side we get:\n\n* **2**/7 = 0.**285714**28571428571...\n\nWe can also repeat the process, but multiplying with 1000, 10000 and 100000 as well. The reason this works is because multiplying by powers of 10, you only have to move the decimal point, but not change any digits.\n\n* 1,000/7 = 142.8571428571... = >  **6**/7 = 0.**857142**857...\n* 10,000/7 = 1428.571428571... = >  **4**/7 = 0.**571428**571...\n* 100,000/7 = 14285.71428571... = >  **5**/7 = 0.**714285**714..\n\nNow multiplying this by a million, we get:\n\n1,000,000/7 = 142857.1428571... = >  1/7 = 0.1428571...\n\n___\nNow this problem doesn't have the recurring decimals, but it still works. How is that possible?\n\nWell, those decimals won't add up to 1, until you multiply by 7, as we see from the fact that it is 1/7, and therefor won't affect anything on the left side of the decimal until then. Cutting away those decimals and only using one cycle, 142857, means that we get 999,999, instead of 1,000,000, when we multiply by 7, while the earlier multiplications still works out.\n\nTry doing this trick with two cycles of the decimals, and it still holds:\n\n142857142857 * 1 = 142857142857\n\n142857142857 * 2 = 285714285714\n\n142857142857 * 3 = 428571428571\n\n142857142857 * 4 = 571428571428\n\n142857142857 * 5 = 714285714285\n\n142857142857 * 6 = 857142857142\n\n142857142857 * 7 = 999999999999\n\n_____\nWhy 7? Well, this is a property of some prime numbers decimals, but not all! 2 and 5 gives single or double digit decimals and 3 gives only 3's recurring, therefore we can exclude them. Next prime on the list is 13. If we do this check for 13, we notice that it works for the most part, but not all multiplications, 2 for example. The next prime is 17, which we notice that it does work for all multiplications.  The decimals we get are 0.**0588235294117647**0588235294117647... repeating. Taking 0588235294117647 and multiplying by any integer between 1 and 16 gives us the same scenario as with 1/7. Multiplying it by 17 gives us 9999999999999999.\n\nThe same goes for 19 and 23.. And 29! But 31, 37, 41 or 43 all gives us the same problem as 13. Most multiplications works, but not all!\n\nBasically it is a property of prime numbers that sometimes line up so perfectly that we get perfect cyclic numbers. Approximately 37.4% of all prime numbers are cyclic numbers.", "My favorite is 123456789 x 9 = 1111111101. Any multiple of 9 up to 9x9 yields the other multiplier:\n\n123456789x18=2222222202\n123456789x27=3333333303\n123456789x36=4444444404\nEtc. all the way to\n123456789x81=9999999909", "We have a base ten number system. Some numbers divide evenly into it (1/2 = 0.5) and some numbers don't (1/3 = 0.3333333....). \n\nWhen numbers don't divide evenly, they tend to create repeated patterns. We all know the repetition of 1/3, but what you are asking about is a more interesting one, which is 1/7. \n\n1/7 will create a repeated pattern of 0.142857.... Unless a number divides evenly by seven (e.g. 14), will be the same repeated pattern of decimals, just starting at a different place. \n\n2/7 = 0.285714285714....\n\n3/7 = 0.428571428571....\n\nAnd so on and so forth. \n\nWhat you've done is taken the artifact from divisions of seven in a base ten system, isolated the repeating part, and shown the six possible starting points for the pattern. ", "The usual way of dividing a number from left to right can show how 1/7=0.142857 142857 ...:  \n    1 x 10 = 1 x 7  +  3 (bring this to next line)  \n    3 x 10 = 4 x 7  +  2  \n    2 x 10 = 2 x 7  +  6  \n    6 x 10 = 8 x 7  +  4  \n    4 x 10 = 5 x 7  +  5  \n    5 x 10 = 7 x 7  +  1  \n    and we repeat it again.  \nNote that 3rd column is the number in question: 142857. When we multiply by 2 for 2/7=0.285714 285714 ..., we are just starting the cycle from the third line, and the cycle repeats.  \nNow let's look at how a number can have cyclical decimals. In this case:  \n    1 / 7 = 0.142857 142857 142857 ...  \n    1 / 7 = 0.000001 000001 000001 ... x 142857  \nThe number with ...01 repeating is easily converted to 1/99...; in this case 1/999999 (6 digits of 9)  \n    1 / 7 = 1 / 999999 x 142857  \nAnd moving the numbers around:  \n    142857 = 999999 / 7  \nSo multiplying by 2 up to 6, we can repeat the same process getting e.g. from 2/7=0.285714 285714 ... to 285714=2x999999/7=2x142857.  \nLet's look at the next prime number after 7 and 11 which is 13 (using non-prime numbers would just mean dividing both sides of the equations which then comes back to primes, and 1/11 just gives .090909..). 1/13=0.076923 076923 .... So, would 76923 work like 142857? Let's try breaking down 1/13:  \n     1 x 10 = 0 x 13  +  10  \n    10 x 10 = 7 x 13  +  9  \n     9 x 10 = 6 x 13  +  12  \n    12 x 10 = 9 x 13  +  3  \n     3 x 10 = 2 x 13  +  4  \n     4 x 10 = 3 x 13  +  1  \nand repeat ad infinitum.  \nIf we look at the first column, only 1, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 12 appears, so if we multiply 76923 by them, we do get 76923, 230769, 307692, 692307, 769230 and 923076, which works! But it will not work with 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11.  \nSo it seems that there are a class of prime numbers, where for a given prime number p, the cyclic number will cycle for all numbers from 1 to (p-1), and these are called reptend primes, and the cyclic number will also have (p-1) digits. Notice that 142857 has 6 digits.  \nThe next reptend prime is 17, giving 5882352941176470 as the cyclic number. But why isn't that as well known as 142857?  Calculators and Excel can't handle that 16-digit number, so there's no way for you to observe the cycle.", "I kind of have an answer ... Something I haven't thought about since middle school. Yes, I was very boring. \n\n**TLDR - You've found the 6-digit repeating pattern in 1/7, 2/7, 3/7 4/7, 5/7, 6/7 and multiplied them by 1,000,000**\n\n1/7 = 0.142857142857142857142857142857\n\n2/7, 3/7 etc ... all have similar patterns. I liked patterns as a kid. \n\nSo. 0.14 28 57 14 28 57\n\n14*2 = 28 * 2 = 56?\n\nWell, that's close. What happens when you double 56? You get 1**12** ... oh that's close again. And it looks like that stray 1 in the hundreds place gets added to the 56. And then in 2**24** the 2 in the hundreds gets added to the previous 12 to get 14. As the pattern refreshes and the numbers keep going.\n\nSo it keeps going as it keeps repeating and \"collapsing\" on itself. \"The collapsing\" gets a little weird, but if we double all those numbers again, we get ... 14 28 56 112 224 448 896 1792 3584\n\nSame thing happens with 3/7 = 0.42 85 71 428571428571 ...\n\n42 84 168 336 672 1344 2688\n\nOne more ... 5/7 = 0.714285714285714285\n\n70 140 280 560 1120 2240 \n\nWhat causes this? I mean, I can't answer outside of this, but I just know lots of fractions tend to have patterns in them, even if they're confusing. I suppose they need to have some sort of \"numerical symmetry\" in order for them to eventually fit together into x/x = 1 \nWhat it looks like you did is find those 6 repeating numbers of 1/7, 2/7 etc multiplied by 1,000,000 so that it looks ... I dunno. More random?\n\nI didn't study math oddly enough, but I can attempt elaborate more if you like. I just know the patterns exist, because I had fun finding them as a kid. I thought they'd turn out to be useful. All they were useful for was pissing off my math teachers and my parents. That was entertaining for a while haha. ", "For all the people saying they don't know what *like it does* means, the numbers always stay in the same order when it's multiplied.", "It's fascinating: the more I explain this, the more conditions I discover are required for something like this to happen. Insofar: 142857 is a factor of one less than a power of 10 (specifically, 999999); 999999/142857 gives 7, a prime number; 7 is less than the base of our number system (10); 10 does not produce a remainder of 1 after dividing by 7.\n\n*Basically* what's happening is that y\n\nFirst part:\n\nIf a number has *n* digits, dividing it by 999...9 (where there are *n* 9's) will produce an infinite decimal consisting exactly of that number repeating. To show this, start with the decimal:\n\n     0.142857142857142857...\n\nand break it up into the repeating components:\n\n     0.142857 + 0.000000142857 + 0.000000000000142857 + ...\n\nwhich you can convert to fractions\n\n     142857*10^-7 + 142857*10^-14 + 142857*10^-21 + ...\n\nand since this is a converging infinite geometric series (basically, because there's a *pattern* to this sum, and because the sum tends to a finite value, you can actually [find the value of the sum](_URL_0_)), you can find that it converges (adds up) to:\n\n     142857*10^-7 / ( 1-10^-7 ) = 142857 / (10^7-1) = 142857 / 999999\n\nYou can show it more generally, but for the purpose of this post I won't get into that.\n\nSecond part:\n\nWe know that 142857 / 999999 = 1/7. Now, if we multiply this by 10, and take only the decimal portion, it's pretty obvious that we're just shifting the decimal point to the right by one number, chopping off the whole number, and repeating. The funky thing, though, is that if we do this, we *cycle* through a sequence:\n\n1. **1/7** \n1. - >  10/7 - >  **3/7** \n1. - >  30/7 - >  **2/7** \n1. - >  20/7 - >  **6/7** \n1. - >  60/7 - >  **4/7** \n1. - >  40/7 - >  **5/7** \n1. - >  50/7 - >  **1/7** \n1. - >  repeat *ad infinitum*.\n\nWhat's actually happening here is that we're cycling through the cyclic group of integers modulo 7, by multiplying by 10. For those normal people who've never been exposed to number theory before, this (only for the purposes of explanation - what's going on is indeed a bit more complicated) just means that you're doing normal arithmetic with the integers, except that every time you get a number greater than or equal to 7, you divide by 7, take the remainder, and continue working with the remainder. In other words, multiply 1 by 10, take the remainder after dividing by 7 to get 3, multiply 3 by 10, take the remainder after dividing by 7 to get 4, etc.\n\nI'm not going to delve into the specifics of *why* this cycling is happening (specifically, C_7 has 10 as a generator), but suffice it to say that it's this pattern which makes it possible to have the pattern that OP describes.\n\nIn fact, the next time this happens is for 142857142857, which is a factor of 999999999999, and I suspect that at least in base 10, this is *only* possible for numbers of this form.\n", "Can someone ELI5 the ELI5, please? ", "Because 142857 is the repeating sequence in the decimal representation of 1/7. But this does not occur in other fractions, for example 1/9. \n\nSo why is 1/7 so special? It is important to note that 1/7 is not unique in this characteristic. 1/17, 1/19 and 1/821 are examples of other numbers for which this holds true. They all have in common that their decimal form has a repeating sequence of one less (**n-1**) integers than the size of the denominator (**n** if the number in question is **1/n**). A fuller list can be found here: _URL_0_\n\nThese denominators (examplified by 7, 17, 19 and 821) are all primes. There is no way to explain why this works for these numbers specifically to anyone who doesn't have a firm grip of at least high school mathematics, so to the 5 year olds reading this i'd say \"I'll tell you when you're older.\"", "I had the hardest time finding the significance of the number and had to get to the post where it was talking about the division of 999999 for me to finally get what's going on. Even after then I'm like kinda meh, but that's probably because I already knew about the repeating number division of 9s though.", "I don't even understand the question. It behaves the way it does because when multiplied by the numbers given on the left, it equals the number on the right. Like.. What?", "I'm a little late to the game, and this is not an ELI5 answer, but I studied this in my undergrad for mathematics.  [Here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_) are links to the paper and poster that I presented on the subject.", "This is my favourite cyclic number! It occurs when you divide numbers that aren't a multiple of seven by seven. ", "Okay, this is how far I got:\n\n    a = 1\n    b = 4\n    c = 2\n    d = 8\n    e = 5\n    f = 7\n\n     x = 100000a + 10000b + 1000c + 100d + 10e + f\n    2x = 100000c + 10000d + 1000e + 100f + 10a + b\n    3x = 100000b + 10000c + 1000d + 100e + 10f + a\n    4x = 100000e + 10000f + 1000a + 100b + 10c + d\n    5x = 100000f + 10000a + 1000b + 100c + 10d + e\n    6x = 100000d + 10000e + 1000f + 100a + 10b + c\n\n    2x = 200000a + 20000b + 2000c + 200d + 20e + 2f\n\n    200000a + 20000b + 2000c + 200d + 20e + 2f = 100000c + 10000d + 1000e + 100f + 10a + b\n    199990a + 19999b - 98000c - 9800d - 980e - 98f = 0\n    199990a + 19999b = 98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f\n    199990a = 98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b\n    a = (98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b)/199990\n\n    3x = 300000a + 30000b + 3000c + 300d + 30e + 3f\n    300000a + 30000b + 3000c + 300d + 30e + 3f = 100000b + 10000c + 1000d + 100e + 10f + a\n    299999a - 70000b - 7000c - 700d - 70e - 7f = 0\n    299999a = 70000b + 7000c + 700d + 70e + 7f\n    a = (70000b + 7000c + 700d + 70e + 7f)/299999\n\n    (98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b)/199990 = (70000b + 7000c + 700d + 70e + 7f)/299999\n    98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b = (199990/299999)(70000b + 7000c + 700d + 70e + 7f)\n    299999(98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b) = 199990(70000b + 7000c + 700d + 70e + 7f)\n    2939902000c + 293990200d + 29399020e + 2939902f - 5999680001b = 13999300000b + 1399930000c + 139993000d + 13999300e + 1399930f\n    19998980001b = 1539972000c + 153997200d + 15399720e + 1539972f\n    b = (1539972000c + 153997200d + 15399720e + 1539972f)/19998980001\n\n    4x = 400000a + 40000b + 4000c + 400d + 40e + 4f\n    400000((98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b)/199990) + 40000b + 4000c + 400d + 40e + 4f = 100000e + 10000f + 1000((98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b)/199990) + 100b + 10c + d\n    (400000/199990)(98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b) + 40000b + 4000c + 400d + 40e + 4f = 100000e + 10000f + (1000/199990)(98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b) + 100b + 10c + d\n    400000(98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b) + 7999600000b + 799960000c + 79996000d + 7999600e + 799960f = 1999900000e + 199990000f + 1000(98000c + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b) + 19999000b + 1999900c + 199990d\n    39200000000c + 3920000000d + 392000000e + 39200000f - 7999600000b + 7999600000b + 79996000d + 7999600e + 799960f = 1999900000e + 199990000f + 98000000c + 9800000d + 980000e + 98000f - 19999000b + 19999000b + 1999900c + 199990d\n    39200000000c + 3999996000d + 399999600e + 3999960f = 2000880000e + 200088000f + 99999900c + 9999990d\n    39100000100c = 1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d\n    c = (1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100\n\n    5x = 500000a + 50000b + 5000c + 500d + 50e + 5f\n    500000a + 50000b + 5000c + 500d + 50e + 5f = 100000f + 10000a + 1000b + 100c + 10d + e\n    500000((98000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999((1539972000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 153997200d + 15399720e + 1539972f)/19998980001))/199990) + 50000((1539972000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 153997200d + 15399720e + 1539972f)/19998980001) + 5000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 500d + 50e + 5f = 100000f + 10000(98000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 9800d + 980e + 98f - 19999b)/199990 + 1000((1539972000((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 153997200d + 15399720e + 1539972f)/19998980001) + 100((1600880400e + 196088040f - 3989996010d)/39100000100) + 10d + e\n\n\nAnd then I gave up because I figured that the five-year-old's attention span probably moved on by this point."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Perfect_number"], ["http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FullReptendPrime.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlaUalgxqI"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Geometric_series#Formula"], [], ["https://oeis.org/A001913"], [], [], ["https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fSzAK6SgYCazdGfKFC_6J7UsCYKkf-yBBUFF1_TGhgA/edit?usp=sharing", "https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OXeXICLJa2gvyNfxUzOi3gpaDZYyEMr1OxUzm87jtxc/edit?usp=sharing"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31tn9d", "title": "why am i exhausted when my alarm goes off at 7am, but when i get up to go to the bathroom at 5am, i'm wide awake?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31tn9d/eli5_why_am_i_exhausted_when_my_alarm_goes_off_at/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq4v5z6", "cq4v7r9", "cq4wfyw", "cq4xagd", "cq4zrhu", "cq50tt4", "cq53py0", "cq53zex", "cq54cd8", "cq56heh", "cq57q85", "cq57taw", "cq58cdh", "cq58oq6", "cq59lng", "cq5a61u", "cq5audb", "cq5ax3q"], "score": [48, 32, 16, 428, 268, 3, 3, 9, 7, 3, 2, 6, 7, 2, 3, 2, 5, 6], "text": ["Because at 5am you are probably not in a deep REM pattern sleep, so when you wake at 5 you are not feeling like you're still asleep..as you go back to sleep after you pee you go back to sleep and you're probably entering your deep REM when the alarm goes off at 7...which is why you feel like you are exhausted.", "Circadian rhythms. Next time you wake up at 5 a.m. to go to the restroom go ahead and start your day. Don't go back to bed and see how you feel later on. Usually when I do that I feel awful later on in the day. But it could be that at 5am you've actually gotten the proper amount of sleep and you're good to go. How much sleep each person needs varies widely from individual to individual.", "People have mentioned circadian rhythms and sleep cycles. While that is probably true. I'm going to say it has something to do with the urgency of needing to use the restroom coupled with your sleep cycle. ", "use [this calculator](_URL_0_) to figure out when you should wake up according to when you went to bed to make sure you're not awoken during your deep-sleep phase(s)", "it has to do with you REM cycle. when you wake up randomly at 5am it's because you are waking up naturally at the end of your sleep cycle. when your alarm goes off you're abruptly shaken out of your natural cycle and your brain isn't ready to be awake yet, hence the tiredness.", "Waking up the first time during a shallow part of the sleep cycle.  Waking up  the second time during a deep part of it.  Try varying when you go to sleep by a half hour or so in either direction and see what that does for you.  Give it a week or two to really sink in before passing judgement.", "Just to clarify the others' explanation: when you woke up to use the restroom, you were sleeping so lightly that your bladder discomfort was able to wake you up.  When your alarm woke you up, you weren't sleeping that lightly anymore!", "Your body has an internal 'clock' called the circadian rhythm. This essentially determines how much sleep you need. During sleep your body goes through sleep cycles: deep sleep, light sleep, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. At 5am, when you wake up, your body has likely finished a sleep cycle and is in light sleep stage preparing for another cycle. However, at 7am when the alarm interrupts, you are likely still in the middle of a deep sleep or REM cycle, hence feeling sleepy.\n\nUsing a smart alarm app such as Sleep as Android or Sleep Cycle, it is possible to track your sleep cycles. These apps take advantage of the accelerometer on your phone, which measures vibrations on your bed. The app wakes you up during a set interval when the vibrations are greatest as this is probably when you are in light sleep.", "On a slightly related note to this question.  I've read that if you ever wake up from a blacked-out state of drinking, and you feel extra alert at like 4 or 5 am, after 3 hours sleep, with seemingly no hangover yet; it is because your body has been breaking down alcohol into sugars while you were asleep. Feels good like you just drank 10 Sunny Ds for breakfast.", "Blue light makes us awake cause our brain think it's morning. Even  when it's just a minute. That's why we should have red lights in our bathrooms for example or should not use electronic devices right before sleep time. But sometimes it just depends on the sleep phase you woke up from.\n\nEdit: don't really know how to say that in English but blue light is emitted by every normal lightbulb,  monitor, tv etc ", "As you sleep, a set of gnomes appear and cast incantations on you. After an hour or so they have to open a new spell book and make sure everybody has turned to the right page, otherwise you get nightmares. During this time, your body is released from it's temporal bindings and you are able to fully function. But if you awake spell they have to flee and hide and your mind is still trapped in an induced state of ethereal manipulation.\n\nThis is also why you may find various limbs have \"gone to sleep\". The gnomes are small and surprisingly fragile, and if you flail around while they're casting, they occasionally have to suspend your motor controls for their own safety.", "I posted a question like this but it immediately got deleted because it was \"about me\" or a \"personal problem\" and I guess that violated the rules. This shit happens in EVERY subreddit. Fucking mods", "Here's my most invaluable trick I use: when you wake up to take a piss at any odd hour of the night, ***keep one eye closed***. Walk to your bathroom, piss, and walk back to bed with one eye closed. That way, it never adjusts to staying open, seeing, light, etc.\n\nWhen you pop back into bed, you fall asleep much faster and easier since one eye is still kind of asleep.", "Reason is sleepcycle you are sleeping easily and heavy at diffrant stages during the night If you wake up while ur sleeping heavily you feel tired and viceversa.  There are tons of alarm apps that will learn your cycle and wake you when you are sleeping the lightest.  Takes about a week for the app to learn your cycle. ", "I always get 8 hours of sleep and (generally) wake up naturally 30 minutes before the alarm goes off.\n\nStill always dead tired :( ", "Einstein covered this in his Theory of Sleep Relativity. It also says that when you're tired, micturating one ounce of fluid can take seven hours due to time dilation of your wormhole.", "Up until the mid 1800's, people tended to sleep in two cycles per day, a longer period of 4-5 hours, plus another somewhat later of 3-4 hours.  This is the natural human condition, and is completely normal.\n\nThe 8 hour sleep schedule is a product of the industrial age, where people need to be synchronized to fit into work schedules.\n", "Wide awake my ass. I trip over 2 dogs and hit 7 walls minimum everytime i take a piss at night lol"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://sleepyti.me"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "af7xtj", "title": "Why do we see from the front of our eyes if the retina is in the back? Why don\u2019t we see the inside of our eyes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/af7xtj/why_do_we_see_from_the_front_of_our_eyes_if_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["edwk2j0"], "score": [13], "text": ["Because it is dark inside your eyes and the only light that comes in is through the front.\n\nIf there were a light source inside your eye, or if the  outside of the eye were entirely transparent instead of just a small gap, all of the photoreceptors in the retina would be hit by all the light, and you would get a wash of light and not be able to form a picture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ujty2", "title": "why do i get sleepy after reading 2 hours or studying but my scumbag brain can play skyrim all night without getting tired?", "selftext": "Why do I get tired after I have been reading for a while and my eyelids get heavy while I can pull an all nighter playing videogames and not be slightly tired until I stop playing? Neuropsychologists of Reddit, help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ujty2/eli5_why_do_i_get_sleepy_after_reading_2_hours_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceisvqo", "ceiudzw", "ceivny8", "ceiwebr", "ceix7z9", "ceizx0y", "cej0iib", "cej0jn6", "cej0o6d", "cej1hq9", "cej1pjk", "cej1uj5", "cej2ll3", "cej2nmw", "cej3rem", "cej3sj9", "cej3v1h", "cej41eo", "cej5mpk", "cej5rlf", "cej5srt", "cej8767", "cej87s3", "cej8pyz", "cej8yzd", "cej92el", "cej99qc", "cej9b5v", "cej9d2c", "cej9vgp", "cejahsj", "cejbefw", "cejbinn", "cejdo0a", "cejfeft", "cejfzkq", "cejg0a4", "cejh1ea", "cejhr6h", "cejisgl", "cejjncw", "cejkn3s", "cejkxpx", "cejyq6f"], "score": [342, 223, 2, 2, 53, 11, 3, 2, 3, 2, 12, 1065, 15, 4, 2, 3, 88, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because your brain releases small, constant spurts dopamine and adrenaline when you're playing a video game that excites you. You feel tired due to constant dopamine being released, but you stay up because of the constant adrenaline being released. When you study...you're bored. Nothing is really being released other than you just getting tired because of a tough day.\n\n\nI'm sure somebody can provide a lot more information on it!\nCheers!\n\n\nSource: wrote a report on it. (Junior in highschool and a gamer.)\nEdit: spelling. Wording.", "Also assuming that you study with a book instead of a computer, the light source is most likely affecting the suprachiasmatic nucleus and your circadian rhythms. Looking at a LCD screen can trick your brain into thinking it's the daytime, and thus you're less tired.\nSource: _URL_0_", "I'm going to agree with the people that are saying that its mostly to do with circadian rhythms and bright light. Specifically that its the blue light spectrum that affects you more. Red light will generally make you feel groggy.\n\nHere's some related info:\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "Check out the work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He wrote a book called 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience'  The goal of a good video game such as Skyrim is to get a user into this mental state.  _URL_0_ ", "Because exploring caves is more fun than calculus. ", "Video games are specifically designed to counter this. They keep changing environment, stratgies, lullsi nhte action etc to keep you interested. The diablo 3 team talked about changing the color palette of the environment every 30 minutes of gameplay. (before the D3 hate, its a well designed game, it was just saddled with a greedy vision.)", "A video game provides immediate feedback, appropriate skill challenge, goal, a beginning, an end, and the ability to get better at it. Reading or studying is often done for the sake of studying/reading with little of the previously stated elements. It's largely why it's best to learn by doing rather than learn by studying; when you do, those elements come at you naturally. ", "Another thing you should consider is the fact that your screen is really bright. Because it is so bright and you stare at it directly, it can mess with your sleep cycle. For that reason, it is recommended to not use the computer for a few hours before you are planning to go to sleep.", "Here is a possible reason (maybe I'm wrong?).\n\nAre you studying in a bed, perhaps laying down.  Are you reading in bed, perhaps laying down?\n\nWhenever you do anything where your body is programmed to sleep, you are more likely to fall asleep.\n\nI got this information from my wife when she took Psychology courses as part of her Psychology degree.\n\nI wouldn't mind being corrected if I'm wrong.", "TIL make studying intense as fuck to release adrenaline and go all night", "2 hours? That's like a marathon!  I get sleepy after reading 20 mins.  ", "dopamine / Adrenaline stuff doesn't sit well with me, it doesn't really play a role in WHY you feel sleepy. 2 Hours of studying requires extensive use of the brain centers which releases a host of different kinds of neurotransmitters that stimulate long term potentiation. Skyrim on the otherhand, does not really utilize the brain at all that much. All you are doing in skyrim is the same old practiced routines over and over again. Probably the first couple times of playing skyrim, you had trouble playing for 5 hours a day, until you practiced it enough to be easy. It's kind of like a baby walking. First couple of times, only 2 minutes a day. Now, you can walk for hours. Same stuff, just practiced until you aren't really thinking anymore. ", "A lot of these answers are completely in favor of video games, like they were a werewolf, or some other mystical personal trainer. The answer is that you are not realizing what joy other activities can bring you. Video games are great for understanding what mastery means. If you apply the same routine, but create the task, you are basically doing the same thing as Skyrim. \n\nIf you are not able to focus on real work for very long, do not over analyze it. An example of this dilemma may be reading for a class. The way to work through this type of work, most efficiently, is to rest or recover by writing. \n\n1. You read, enough to where you comprehend, not over-doing it, spurring a wild day dream instead. \n\n2. You recover, by writing a note or anything that pertains to further comprehension. \n\n3. Repeat until assignment is finished. \n\nThis technique works just like how walking does, left foot, right foot. Just think of what you are really trying to do by tackling an entire reading assignment, all at once -- It's like hopping all-day on one foot. \n\nThe key part of the reading technique is, the studying picks up momentum as the subject gets completely engrossed by your attention. ", "Because of the light from the screen hitting your eyes, which then tells your brain to not secrete melatonin.", "*bunch of scientific words dopamine, adrenline, hormones\n\ntl;dr - because you're bored", "Because while your are playing Skyrim, you are RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE IN A FOREST AND OH MY GOD LOOK A DRAGON WHERE DID YOU CAME FROM? OH SHIT I DIED!\n\nWhen this happens, your brain keeps you awake. You can't kill a dragon while you sleep.\n\n(Also, your monitor is as bright as day light. Use _URL_0_ to dim it)\n", "Because studying is boring and Skyrim is fun.", "When studying, you're not getting immediate rewards for reading 3 chapters instead of 1 - just improved education, which is hard to quantify. In Skyrim, you probably get a trophy, and see a lot of cool scenery and enemies in the process.\n\nStudying is not a game (unless you're a great student who knows how to take satisfaction from studying). Skyrim, like most games, gives you points and simulation experience for most things - even if you don't achieve anything worthy of mention.\n\nThis is actually more related to the concept of gamification in particular, than neuropsychology as a broad field.", "For the same reason they say if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life.", "the best way to study for me (in med school)\n\nstudy for 20-30 minutes stop when sleepy/bored.  facebook or play bejewled or redit for 5-10 minutes and study again for another 20-30 minutes with reddit reward for 10 min.\n\ni used a whole 8 hours that way and aced shit.\n\ni was failing when i was cramming hours and hours before. ", "I am just taking an educated guess and also based on my own observation:\n\nLet's say you are studying. After an hour, you will probably get bored out of your mind, you get easily distracted by the slightest thing (sleepiness, \"tired\", headache, etc). Maybe you *are* sleepy or tired. But maybe you are subconsciously making yourself tired or sleepy because you need a valid justification to stop studying. Its like a defense mechanism. Studying is perceive as a danger and to get out of that danger, you are initiating your defense mechanism.\n\nThe opposite happens when you are playing Skyrim. You *want* to play. You want to *keep* playing. So, not matter if you are tired of sleepy, your desire will fight off your needs.\n\nBasically, its what you **really** want to do.", "Reading = Ben Stein roll call...\nVideo games = Katy Perry on a trampoline in a tube top.", "Have you considered you just might be reading the wrong books? I read all of the time. Some books I could read all day and night, finish, and immediately re-read. I will never get tired of them. Other books will put me to sleep before I'm 100 pages in. \n\nI'm sure there are games that bore the hell out of you. You enjoy Skyrim, but would you enjoy Gran Turismo? Madden? Starcraft? ", "Your brain uses more than 20% of the energy you use.  When you're reading/studying (or doing other high willpower activities), you burn tremendous amounts of glucose and you can get tired. Skyrim, however, doesn't require the same sort of mental energy. Much as you may level up your willpower in the game, none is required to play. Try keeping your blood sugar up when doing high willpower activities!", "Another thing is that an LCD screen is basically a big light. Staring at a screen at night makes your brain repress melatonin and keeps you up. Reading on the other hand doesn't hinder melatonin and allows you to get drowsy and fall asleep like normal. ", "The explanation I was given that in regards to lighting, LEDs are especially bad in regards to keeping you awake due to their ability to simulate light spectrum. This specific spectrum apparently tricks your brain into assuming it's daytime, thus making it harder to fall asleep.", "Because you WANT to play Skyrim, and you HAVE to study. ", "Aside from what's been mentioned below, RPGs tend to deliver challenges in small, discrete chunks. You fall victim to the \"just 5 more minutes\" syndrome for hours. ", "Because you care about your character progression in Skyrim.\n\nAnd you don't care much about knowing differential equations.", "Because playing video games is more fun than reading your chemistry textbook.", "Your scumbag brain is trying to keep you alive.  It cares about stuff like getting attacked by dragons and walking across the land looking for potatoes to eat by the hundreds not just because it's cool, but because it keeps changing the sort of stimulus you get.  Your brain thinks that just maybe you're about to be attacked by a tiger and it wants to be ready.  \n\nBy contrast, then you read one book and page after page is the same, your brain knows you're not about to be attacked by a tiger so it wants to go to sleep so it can keep you from being attacked by a tiger even better tomorrow (and maybe score because it likes that, too).  \n\nProtip:  to keep your brain interested in studying, use different approaches:  flashcards, audio, charts, pictures, etc.  Change it up and your brain will stay interested longer.  ", "ELI5: I would suspect reading and vidya games use different parts of the brain, one has to translate the written word into the imagination and memory, the other presents you with everything pre-imagined but sparks the part of the brain that makes choices.\n\nI feel sleepy after 2-3 hours of study but I am told this is my brain needing to sought and file the info, and it does not need me moving about so much and getting in its way.\n\nI have read some novels that have kept me up all night, but they are generally the type that require less brain power to get through.\n\nI have played vidya games for days at a time (everquest I am looking at you)... no idea why or how my body could keep going, cannot do this any more but I suspect I wasted my best years of my brain doing it.", "Occam's razor: studying is boring, boredom makes you sleepy. Skyrim is fun, and you want to keep doing fun things. It's purely psychological. ", "Books are not backlit by giant lightbulbs...", "I can't believe everybody's glossing over the obvious reason here.\n\n**It's because you find reading boring.**\n\nThe things that bore you, fail to stimulate your brain. Your brain begins shutting off, and eventually there's not enough energy for it to sustain itself. **That's one of the factors.**\n\nThe other factor is effort. In Skyrim, you're merely exploring. That's easy for your brain to do. Studying, on the other hand (different from merely reading) requires your brain to expend resources in trying to comprehend matter and store it in an organized manner. That's a huge strain on the brain, because it doesn't really like storing information in ways that it isn't used to storing usually. It's like the difference between lifting 5lbs and 40lbs with your hands.", "Dude. video games are such a compulsive experience.", "Reward. There is little instant reward in studying. There is though, when playing Skyrim, a constant stream of immediate and short term goals and rewards. It is not correct that you are not tired while you are playing, indeed, when you get up immediately afterwards, you probably notice that you quickly feel tired. Instead, with a constant reward structure, your mind simply ignores your body's cues. ", "Outside of all the pseudo psychological BS that everyone is spouting, the real answer is much simpler and well documented.\n\nThe light from the computer screens prevents the production of melatonin which is required for sleep.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nELI5 version:\n\nThe heavy amounts of blue light coming from your electronics makes your body think that it is still time to be awake.\n\n_URL_1_", "Bright and blueish lights, such as natural sunlight, inhibit the creation of melatonin in the brain to signal the beginning of the day. \n\nMost computer, tablet, and touch phone displays, however, also emit a blue light that triggers this inhibition, affecting the user's ability to sleep and potentially disrupting the user's sleep cycle. \n\nPrograms like f.lux, which runs in the background of your computer and when night time arrives, f.lux automatically adjusts the color temperature (making whites appear reddish or salmon), thus reducing the display's brightness to match the room's lighting. The change is noticeable at first but turns imperceptible after a few seconds.\n\nI get tired when playing a video game as much as reading a book after an hour or two when f.lux is running.", "serious genuine studying uses a lot more brain than playing skyrim.\n\ni'm an avid gamer and love skyrim.\n\nbut if you break it down, skyrim takes little intelligence. all you do is get a quest, kill a bunch of shit, chuck potions, retrieve item. Rinse and repeat.\n\nEspecially with modern games where you are handheld and instructed with great detail.\n\non the other hand, playing sc2 competitively will tire you very fast.\n\nwhich is why in WCG, a pro sc2 player is scheduled to play 5 games roughly daily.", "One word: flux. ", "Oh you are tired after Skyrim, that's why you sleep through you next day of classes and exams :P", "Because you enjoy Skyrim...", "Congratulations on making it to the Front Page of Reddit!  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy", "http://www.news-medical.net/health/Light-Therapy-for-Depression-and-Sleep-Problems.aspx"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://justgetflux.com/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249592.php", "http://chriskresser.com/how-artificial-light-is-wrecking-your-sleep-and-what-to-do-about-it"], [], [], [], [], [], ["www.redditpage.com/badges/1ujty2.png"]]}
{"q_id": "3aenbb", "title": "what does one bitcoin look like to a computer? and why can it not be just copied like a simple file?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3aenbb/eli5_what_does_one_bitcoin_look_like_to_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csbvw7v", "csbw0h7", "csbwmpo", "csbxdwm"], "score": [10, 5, 5, 2], "text": ["It's a series of numbers. And you can copy it, but you can still only spend it once because the transaction ledger- the list of which wallets sent which bitcoins to which other wallets- is public. It's not like spending a Bitcoin physically removes the data from your computer and sends it in a tube to the other computer. It's just that you need the other machines mining bitcoins to verify your transaction and they won't verify it if you try to spend it twice.", "Bitcoin is a system where every user has a copy of the records of every single deal ever made. A wallet is the password to instructions of how to tell the system to give a specific bitcoin (or a fraction) to another wallet. So there is nothing to copy, the password can only be used once, which makes everyone in the system write to their records (which is why you can't reverse transactions).", "Your computer doesn't store a single bitcoin at a time like a dollar bill, it stores a large number that is proof to the rest of the world that you can spend a particular bitcoin.\n\nCopying it will only copy the proof that you own it, not the money itself. Copying the key to a safe does not duplicate the safe or the safe's contents.", "Because it's not a file - all that is stored is a record of every transaction that's ever occured. So if Alice pays Bob 100 bitcoins, then Bob has 100 bitcoins. Then if Bob pays Charles 20 bitcoins, then Bob now has 80 bitcoins. But nowhere is Bob's total number of bitcoins recorded - what's recorded are the transactions that have occured. The number of Bitcoins in Bob's wallet is simply the number of bitcoins that he's recieved minus those he's paid out. This record of transactions is called the *blockchain*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aj2ktv", "title": "In 1994 in the U.K., the 'Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill' outlawed (among other things) EDM or \"techno\" music. Rave culture persists there, however. What happened?", "selftext": "One of the elements of the U.K.'s 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill outlawed \u201cgatherings around music characterized wholly or predominantly by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.\u201d This was seen at the time as a push against \"rave\" culture or \"techno\" music events. So far as I know, people in the U.K. still go to raves featuring EDM that falls within this definition umbrella. Was this law just not enforced? If it was, how did rave culture in the U.K. get around this law following this Act's passage in 1994? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aj2ktv/in_1994_in_the_uk_the_criminal_justice_and_public/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eetxnxb"], "score": [5], "text": ["Autechre released an EP in 1994 which included a protest of this bill by way of a track called Flutter in which no subsequent bar is repeated in the same way. They even state: \"have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment.\", which highlights just how ridiculous the bill was to enforce from a technical perspective."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6dzqgy", "title": "how do flies constantly fly into hard objects at high speeds(walls, doors, windows, etc) but never manage to get hurt?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dzqgy/eli5_how_do_flies_constantly_fly_into_hard/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di6k7pa", "di6kc7j", "di6lhso", "di6lynv", "di6mop8", "di6mpxg", "di6nkva", "di6nlfo", "di6o22a", "di6o8e2", "di6oq2a", "di6orjv", "di6ozum", "di6p1ng", "di6p4eu", "di6p946", "di6qgt4", "di6qhiw", "di6qq6p", "di6r6vd", "di6rh06", "di6rwhx", "di6s94h", "di6sl8w", "di6t1h0", "di6ta1v", "di6th9m", "di6tiaj", "di6tp38", "di6v1cv", "di6y13x", "di6ywrm", "di6z0cb", "di70wb2", "di72t4b", "di73pme", "di75r84", "di77c9g", "di7fscf", "di7is93", "di7jycd", "di7lc0y", "di7ot2g", "di7qgbr", "di7rgsa", "di7sef6", "di7sz2o"], "score": [7335, 390, 6, 1156, 16, 36, 36, 3, 159, 36, 170, 2, 761, 3, 9201, 11, 10, 4, 5, 2, 6, 4, 2, 2, 3, 95, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 18, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 2, 5, 2, 4, 4, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Arthropods that fly have very low mass. They also have a lightweight armour made largely of chitin. This exoskeleton protects their nervous system (brain) organs and muscles. It's like a body helmet. Lastly, they have an open circulatory system that prevents them from inflammation damage, i.e., bruising.", "There's not much force coming from those collisions. Force is the product of mass and acceleration. With such low mass, the speed would need to be increased tremendously to cause damage to its relatively strong exoskeleton. ", "u/FunkeTown13 explained it but here's a neat video :)\n_URL_0_", "Tiny amount of mass. There is an old expression that goes something to the effect of 'Insects float, cats land, humans break, and horses splash'. Basically gravity becomes much more lethal as your mass goes up.", "Take your finger and tap a window as fast as a fly would hit it. Does it hurt? Probably not. This is roughly the same sort of force the fly experiences. ", "Why do ping-pong balls not break when hit at very high speeds? The same principle at roughly a thirtieth of the size. ", "In addition to everyone's answers, I'll mention I saw a beetle fly straight into a window and then plop down on the ground writhing. It was pretty large, like golf ball sized, and made an audible noise.", "I keep asking my self many of these questions when I see animals, insects, and plants not getting hurt easily like we do. The answer always human is so weak!", "The better question is how come they always manage to hit the wall, but yet they somehow can never go out through the damn window?", "As others have mentioned, the low mass of insects combined with exoskeleton usually protects them from injury. However, one should also consider that their inherent velocity and acceleration are relatively low (Force= mass x acceleration). If you are driving your car and hit a bug, it does splatter on your windshield as the velocity is much higher. A rapidly flying insect hitting a window may also get hurt. ", "Maybe the square-cubed law. Basically as things get smaller they get stronger proportional to their weight. The idea is that strength is mostly determined by the cross sectional area of whatever it is you are measuring, which increases with the square of the dimensions. The weight usually increases with the cube of the dimension. So if you have a rectangular bar and double its size its strength will increase four times, but it's weight will increase by eight times making it half as strong for its weight. This is also why ants can lift six times their body weight.", "Well, have you ever seen my car? They do get hurt mate :) ", "Yes it's partly low mass and their exoskeleton, but that isn't the entire reason.\n\nIt's because of the square - cube law. \n\nThis principle states that, as a shape (or creature) grows in size, its volume (and weight) grows faster than its surface area. So when the fly hits the wall, there is less weight dispersed over a larger surface area (relatively) than a larger creature.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is also why children can comfortably sit on their knees,  but adults can't.", "F=ma or the force is equal to the mass times the acceleration. Because the acceleration ( or deceleration on the case of hitting a wall) is normal but their mass is so small, the force they encounter is also very small. This coupled with them having an exoskeleton for a armor makes them pretty resilient. ", "Imagine you had a ping pong ball, and you filled it with cool whip. Now shrink that whole thing down to the size of a fly. Now imagine you threw that tiny little shell full of goop at the wall. Even if you threw it as hard as you could, it's still soooo tiny and soooo tough and bouncy on the outside that it'll just bounce off. \n\nFlies are super tiny, and have a shell just like that ping pong ball, but with little flexible, foldable wings. And just like a fly, if you use a slingshot instead of your hand (a moving car instead of a window) you might just get it to pop. \n\n**Edit for a bit more actual explanation:**\n\nFlies have an exoskeleton that's incredibly tough and hard in some spots, and just flexible enough to be springy and bouncy in others. Just like that ping pong ball, they've got a shell that's good at taking a bit of a hit and bouncing off instead of just squishing like a worm (which doesn't have that tough shell).\n\nThe fact that they're so small helps in a couple different ways as well. For one, we *think* they're flying super fast, but it's really just because they're tiny. If you look at a massive airplane, it might be moving at 500 miles per hour but still looks like it's just crawling along across the sky. Houseflies look fast, but [I asked Google](_URL_0_) and they only go about 5 miles per hour. That means a baseball pitcher can throw a fastball **20 times as fast as a housefly flies**.\n\nNot only are they actually super slow (if you don't let the size trick you), they also weigh almost nothing. Like, it would take about 200 flies to add up to the weight of a single ping pong ball, according to some quick Googling/converting.\n\nSo your ping pong ball full of cool whip is actually super tough, reaaally slow, and unbelievably lightweight, meaning that dumb little fly was *designed* to fly into the window several thousand times before it finds the opening. Evolution at work.", "Now, we need to talk first about volume/surface ratio. All living beings are made from the same things pretty much, so more volume generally means more weight (unless you adopt measures to reduce weight such hollow bones in birds). Think about a cube: if i take a 3 meters cube, the face has a surface of 9 square meters (3^2), while the volume would be of 27 cubic meters (3^3). Now this means that if you increase the size of an animal, volume (and hence weight) gets exponentially higher than surface. Now we have to introduce the concept of pressure, pressure is weight divided by surface. The higher the weight, the higher the pressure, but the higher the surface, the lower the pressure is. Now you can understand my point: bigger animals have a higher weight in proportion to the surface that impacts an object or the ground.\n\nNow, all living beings are made of the same thing, cells, so cells of the outer layer are what absorb an impact with something.\n\nIf a fly flies into a wall, the cells on his outer layer that face the wall absorb the impact and aren't damaged.\n\nIf an elephant impacts a wall at the same speed, the cells on his outer layer are still of the same size and have similar properties than the ones of a fly, but the pressure applied to them is way stronger due to the elephant having a higher weight/surface proportion, due to being bigger, so the cells get destroyed by the impact.\n\nLiving being have evolved ways to get bigger, we have a sturdy core (bones), a system of pretty resistant wires (tendons and muscles) and an outer layer of cells that are constantly changed and can die without much consequences up to a certain point (skin) plus many other things, but this can go only up to a certain point, animals like the Blue Whale couldn't exist on the land cause their own weight would crush them.\n\nThink it like this: throw a small ball of hollow bricks from 1 meter, most likely all the bricks will be intact. Throw a big ball of bricks from 1 meter and most likely the lower bricks will broke. Ammass a large enough ball of bricks and the bricks at the bottom will crush under the weight without needing a 1 meter drop. You can solve this by using an organized brick structure, iron bars, concrete and stuff, basically sturdier materials and better organization, but there is a limit to how big of a building you can make.\n\nEDIT: i corrected some typos, autocorrect mistakes and language mistakes, sorry if everything isn't on spot, i'm foreign.\n", "This is a bit of a different explanation- but flies experience time differently than us. To a degree all animals do, but at that small, everything is pretty much in slow-mo. A second to us is considerably longer experientially to them.\n\nCouple that with these things being so huge to them comparatively, in a fraction of a second their tiny brains have coordinated everything for them to land. It looks amazing to us, it's probably quite boring and easy to them.\n\nJust because we live longer than them doesn't mean we necessarily experience more than them.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThat's why it's so cool when you can catch a fly, and even cooler if you can catch it without hurting it.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nHere's a fun question- for insects that go through metamorphosis, from something tiny to something much bigger, do they experience time differently depending on their stage in life?\n\nWe do, and we don't even change in size.", "A lot of people here are giving explanations about surface area and mass.\n\nIn the spirit of the sub, here's a way to explain it so a five year old might understand.\n\nTake about ten ping pong balls, and tape them together. Then throw them at the floor. If you taped them up really well, then they'll stay together. Now, picture a trash bag full of those balls. You can try to hold them together, but there's so many that when they hit, enough will keep moving that whatever is holding them will break.", "What do you know of a fly's pain? ", "from a physical point of view, it all has to do with Conservation of Momentum and Kinetic energy. both of these are effected by mass and speed. \n\nthe gist of it is, its not only the high speed that has effects the collision but also the mass of the fly. \nbecause the fly is so light weight, the energy it receives when getting hit is still FAR less than what a human would receive going at the same speed. \nand the fly's body is capable of handling that amount of energy", "Holy shit I was thinking this exact question yesterday. How can I slap a mosquito as hard as I can and yet it still is fine?\n\nIf I got hit by something like that I'd be dead.", "Physics answer (not related to biology):\n\nTheir mass is so tiny that there isn't an exorbitant amount of force acting on their body as they collide with the object. F=ma, where the SI unit of mass is kg. The average mass of a fly is 10^-7 to 10^-12kg, thus there has to be a lot of acceleration to merit the fly to incur damage. \n\nThe reason you see them \"pop\" when they hit your windshield is because your car is accelerating in the opposite direction therefore it's additive to the force the fly experiences. It's all relative. I'd include the collision physics equations but they look gross when I type em out XD ", "if a mouse jumps down a mineshaft, it lands. \n\nif a person jumps down a mineshaft, it breaks. \n\nif a horse jumps down a mineshaft, it splashes. ", "Another of these questions like the one with the concrete wall, it's all in the force that it takes to move a 1 gram fly compared to a 70kg human, it takes muuuuuuuch less force so the fly experiences the same deceleration but it is releasing less energy and has less momentum. It takes less force for them to stop so i they don't feel anything...\n\nAs someone stated they do have a protective layer but that's biology and not my speciality", "They are small, hence very small inertia, so the bone-breaking force that applies to humans running into walls (~I'm guessing for a 75kg man like 130kg of force) doesn't really apply to flies as they are like less than 2 grams. So it's like 3g force", "The short and sweet answer is that they have such a small mass and move so slowly.\n\nLet's say you have an average housefly named Luke Flywalker. Luke has a mass of 12mg (0.000012kg) and has a max flying speed of 5mph (2.235 m/s). You find him resting on a delicious plate of mac  &  cheese that you want to eat so you swat him. \n\nScared for his tiny life, he instantly engages his tiny thrusters to make the jump to flyperspace and starts flying away as fast as he can, reaching max speed after flying for 1 full second. Let's also say that the idea of being smushed has brought back haunting trash compactor memories (from a sleep-over at his dad's house a long time ago) so terrifying that he doesn't pay attention to where he's going and flies right into a glass window as soon as he hits max speed. This gives the fly an acceleration of 2.235 (m/s)/s at the time of impact.\n\nNow, the Force (hehe) equals mass multiplied by acceleration (F=ma). So if this young Jedfly reached his max speed at the instant of impact, he would still only strike it with a Force of 0.00002682 Newtons (0.000012kg x 2.235m/s^2).\n\nSo since 1 lbf (pound-force) is equal to 4.48 Newtons, Luke Flywalker flying at max speed into a window only puts 0.00000603 lbs of force in his body and he is free to eat your food another day.\n\nEDIT: some words", "A further explanation, in addition to the very valuable considerations about mass, acceleration and the law of squares, is that - at the scale of a house fly - the surrounding air is actually quite viscous. The viscosity of the air at house fly scale is more akin to water at a human scale than to air. Small insects \"paddle\" through the air more than they fly through it. So, before hitting a wall they are actually already moving through a medium with quite a lot of resistance. The fly hitting a wall is not so much like a human being falling through air and landing on a hard surface. It is more similar to a human being jumping into a few meters of water and hitting the bottom.", "Newton's third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. \n\nImagine a fly hitting a window. That window hits the fly with the same force as the fly hits the window. As others have mentioned, the mass of the fly is small therefore the force will also be small. That's why the window doesn't get damaged and the fly doesn't get hurt. \n\nImagine you try to walk through a sliding glass door, thinking it's open. Your face hits the pane of glass, startling you. Your mass is much larger than the fly. You hit the glass with more force. It hits you with equal and opposite force. The sliding door has the chance to break your face but you have the chance to break the glass. \n\nNow think about throwing a pebble at a window and then throwing a brick. Which object feels a larger equal but opposite force?", "A better question yet is how do flies find a pile of shit so fast..??", "I don't know but we recently got one of those fly zappers where it flies into the racket looking thing and gets electrocuted. We had multiple flies get electrocuted and still manage to fly off!  They are resilient, that's for sure. ", "P=M*V\n\nThat is, momentum is mass times velocity.   A fly has very low mass, therefore even at high speeds for a fly it still has low momentum, and hence not a hard collision.\n\nHigh momentum impact, such as a linebacker tackling you at full speed, is what hurts.\n\n", "Force = Impact = What kills people in a car crash.\n\nForce= Mass x Acceleration\n\nFly= Low mass\n\nLow mass x Acceleration = Low Force\n\nLow force = Low impact\n\nLow impact = \"Fly not getting hurt\"\n", "It's cause the flies have exoskeletons that are tough as fuck but still has space between the shell and the organs, therefore, making it very tough but light and incredibly blast proof. Also, since they are so small, our eyes perceive them as fast, but that is not true. Using worldoak's google search, the housefly moves 5 mph. If you have the mass of the fly, the force is just 2.235 * 2*10^-5 = 4.47 * 10^(-5). That is an incredibly tiny force and for a skeleton, that tough, a fly ramming into a concrete brick thousands of times would not even make the smallest of cracks.", "Found this out as a kid. If you catch a fly with you hand. And smack it into hard floor, it will \"knock it out\" for a few seconds. ", "they have an incredibly low kinetic energy and an incredibly tough body to absorb the impacts.", "Smaller object = more surface area per weight. Larger object = opposite. \nThis helps with gravity. Googled this once and read an example about a cockroach falling down a mineshaft is fine, a mouse is stunned, a human breaks their legs, a horse... no longer resembles a horse. Also a big part is mass, a bowling ball at high velocity is harder to stop than am average hollow ping pong ball. Now if the object hits an object of similar or stronger material, the object in motion will have a lot of stress on impact. The front of the fly is hitting the object and and has a low enough mass to quickly decelerate without the rest of its body trying to pancake itself against the object.", "How do we know they don't get hurt? They have pretty short lifespans, virtually no organized medical care (I will go out on a limb: no medical care) so I don't know if we can say a fly hitting a window hundreds of times doesn't suffer some chronic injury that sadly goes unrecorded, unnoticed. There are few creatures more anonymous than a fly. Even an ant gets some sort of recognition at least sometimes from its nestmates but flies are on their own their entire lives except those that manage to mate.", "All this explanation of the anatomy of a fly but what it really boils down to is the fly is tiny (little mass) and does not move fast therefore the kinetic energy involved is not enough to cause any significant deformations to *ANYTHING*. In fact most of this kinetic energy will be converted into sound in the form of a soft thud. ", "Imagine weighing a couple grams. \n\nYou certainly wouldn't need a bicycle helmet anymore. You just can't get enough momentum to need any sort of protection.\n\nIt's also, I imagine, why land animals don't get much bigger than elephants. With the sheer size of their body it's easier to get hurt. Whales live in a bouyant environment which protects their bodies, so they get to be bigger.", "I've always wondered something similar to this - like how spiders can fall from a desk and for us that would be us falling off a 10 story building but their fine where as we'd be dead", "Just because you don't hear them cry doesn't mean they don't, you know? ", "I feel like the better question is how, having hundreds of eyes, can they not find the damn exit", "Force = Mass x Acceleration \nThe greater the mass the greater the force. Since the fly's mass is so small the force is almost nothing.", "Most flies are part of tough biker gangs, and wear D.O.T. approved headgear (too small for most humans to notice). They also drink tons of whiskey: it dulls physical pain and the pain of an inconsequential existence. Lastly the pain of flying into a wall is nothing compared to the prison tat they got in Folsom for that job that went wrong.\n", "How do you know they don't get hurt? I seem to have a lot of dead flies under my window. ", "This is unrelatedish, but when I was like 13 those gosh darn mosquitoes were so freaking annoying and usually growing up with them constantly being around and inside the house, with like 15-20 of them always inside at the end of the day, you'd always just squish it and kill it once you actually catch it but me being super annoyed discovered something because of this one particular mosquito. It was annoying me for at least an hour and once I caught It i was so frustrated and decided to do something risky. I didn't kill it right away and was like \"you know what? I'm going to whip you at a wall you lil shit\" and legit threw this mosquito at a wall and to my surprise the mosquito actually died upon impact on the wall (heard the lil \"tic\"). I was probably 5ft away from the wall and just threw it my hardest. \n\nTldr: captured a really annoying mosquito, decided its fate by whipping it at a wall and it actually died. ", "On a related note, how do they rest on lightbulbs without being singed? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYRvWNE5kE"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law"], [], ["https://www.google.com/search?q=how+fast+are+houseflies"], [], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-live-in-a-slow-motion-world/", "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/16/time-passes-slowly-flies-study"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8povos", "title": "why do babies/toddlers scream and cry for a long time when they are tired instead of just going the eff to sleep?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8povos/eli5_why_do_babiestoddlers_scream_and_cry_for_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0cw41w", "e0cxsod", "e0cyhca", "e0czhsa", "e0czwvq", "e0d188h", "e0d2486", "e0d2jwj", "e0d2tt8", "e0d3uo1", "e0d3v88", "e0d3wyk", "e0d40ej", "e0d40nh", "e0d49xs", "e0d4ctv", "e0d4etk", "e0d4p3e", "e0d4syz", "e0d4xib", "e0d57th", "e0d5ig6", "e0d5maf", "e0d5reh", "e0d61ky", "e0d74pb", "e0d76lv", "e0d7ao2", "e0d7ch7", "e0d7drf", "e0d7xwf", "e0d8aui", "e0d8f2l", "e0d8lqb", "e0d8r30", "e0d967b", "e0d97ac", "e0d9exf", "e0d9ryv", "e0d9xoc", "e0dahct", "e0db2h5", "e0db8ar", "e0dbceu", "e0dbihs", "e0dbj4i", "e0dbne4", "e0dbord", "e0dbtlp", "e0dc1oc", "e0dc24f", "e0dc408", "e0dcbdh", "e0dcelz", "e0dckr7", "e0dcl4e", "e0dcqh1", "e0dcql3", "e0dd6tu", "e0ddbfx", "e0df83e"], "score": [27, 9, 70, 3072, 240, 36, 5, 32, 16, 978, 2, 13, 5, 372, 2, 2, 28, 6, 2, 6, 2, 32, 2, 2, 173, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 25, 4, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It\u2019s the only way they know how to express their frustration. They can\u2019t articulate in words how crappy they feel plus crying hard also serves to tire them out more. Ever have a good cry and just feel exhausted after? Yeah that. Be patient, they\u2019re little. ", "They have zero control over their emotions, their brain are still suffering changes that's why adults tease other adult about crying like babies (for no reason apparently) .  We all being there but it is easier to understand when you have a toddler. ", "Children are, by definition, immature. They have yet to mature. Babies and toddlers are also irrational. They don't have the brain development to behave in a logical fashion.\n\nSo in a sense, your question is:\n\"Why do these tiny immature and irrational people do things that aren't *reasonable*?\n\nThey don't have the experience and maturity to recognize their internal and external state (being tired or sleepy). They also don't have the brain development to formulate or recognize a rational solution to the problem.\n\nWhat the DO have is an instinctive need to cry and scream for their caretakers when they are uncomfortable. So since that is the only tool they reliably have, they use it.\n\n", "Child care provider/hopeful future postpartum doula here. When babies/toddlers are overtired, their bodies produce cortisol to help them stay awake. This stress inhibits sleep and results in the hormonal/emotional mess you speak of. \n\nEdit: I've learned that what I thought was right is not accurate. My information comes from baby sleep specialist sites like _URL_0_ and I haven't found backing from sources with more authority. I never bothered to check for myself because the explanation made sense to me and aligned with my experiences. Sorry, guys!", "There is a process called myelination that happens in your brain as you grow. This process puts a sheath on the nerves in the brain to improve conductivity. Children have a frontal lobe that isn\u2019t fully myelinated thus their regulation of emotion is poor. This also explains risky behavior as a teen as the risk judgement part of your brain isn\u2019t myelinated fully. Your brain doesn\u2019t fully myelinate until you are about 25 and through the myelination process executive functions mature.", "Babies can\u2019t filter out what feeling means what, they only understand good feelings and bad feelings. Mom holding me, good: laugh! Fatigue, bad: cry! ", "Because they're hungry *now* and can sleep later. Nor do they care that it's 3 am and you have to go to work in a few hours.", "Beyond the fact that babies lack an understanding of their surroundings at a young age (as many others have pointed out), the main problem is that they do not understand how to put themselves to sleep.  \n\nIn the womb, and most of the time during early life, they fall asleep with the comfort of the mother.  In the womb, they hear her heartbeat and blood flow and have the constant warmth of her body heat.  Once born, young babies most often fall asleep during or shortly after feedings, while being held.  When they're placed in cribs or bassinets awake or when they wake up alone inside a crib or bassinet, they don't have the capacity to self-soothe and return to a calm enough state to fall asleep.  \n\nThis is why the Ferber method of sleep training is popular and effective.  You let your child cry for a pre-determined time (which increases as the training progresses) and eventually they learn to put themselves to sleep without parental comfort.  ", "Because they have zero emotional intelligence and do not yet have any insight into their own feelings or what causes them. We know what tired feels like because we\u2019ve felt it thousands of times. ", "There are two issues here.  First, they need certain triggers to fall asleep - whatever they usually have, such as a rocking motion, you singing a lullaby, drinking a bottle, etc.  They ideally want the same smelling sheets as last night and the same amount of light in their room. If the trigger is missing, they have a lot of difficulty falling asleep.  This is why I always warn moms to be aware of this if they nurse the baby to sleep.  That baby most likely is not going to quietly drift off at 3 am in Dad's arms.  If you think about it, you probably face the same issue when travelling.\n   Another issue that comes up is their instinctual need to be close to you.  Babies can sometimes get distressed if their primary caretaker isn't there.  Newborns don't seem to notice as long as they are full, dry, and cozy.  However, a few months later they seem to realize that mom and dad can leave.  That combined with missing their sleep cues, and it's scream city, even if they slept well in earlier weeks.", "Even adults get moody. They handle it better (usually) than babies but it is still a similar phenomenon. ", "Most people put children down to sleep amd leave them which is a deeply terrfying thing for a baby. Babies are little flesh bags and literally the only thing they know is that mommy and daddy are keeping them alive. Then they leave?? Oh god, what if they don't come back??", "Even adults have trouble processing their emotions. Ever got in an argument and later realised you were only angry because you were hungry, horny, or tired?", "Babies don't understand that sleep fixes lack of sleep.\n\nThey cry because of the discomfort.\n\nThe dumb shits.", "They just dont have to ability to communicate and they rely on you alot so i guess they just want to let you know", "The real answer is the same reason that non-babies get cranky when over tired -- but non-babies can say that they are tired, whereas babies cannot.\n\nBeing over tired = cranky, at any age. ", "Healthy babies have basically three reasons for crying: 1) They are hungry. 2) They are lonely. 3) They want to sleep. Edit: 4) Dirty diaper. Crying drives a parental response that addresses all those concerns. They cry because it gets them what they want.  \nI've wondered about that myself. I mean, how the fuck did my cave man ancestors keep their kids quiet when they were hunted by a saber tooth tiger or some shit? My kids get anxiety if their Kindle battery gets below 40%. ", "...and how is this a good evolutionary tactic? You would think that the loud babies would self select for elimination by wild animals and remove their noise-some gene from the gene pool.", "For babies their only method of communication is crying, sometimes they aren't crying to necessarily express their upset", "Sorry, but you are WAY over thinking this.  Babies are uncomplicated,  and there are a very limited set of reasons for their crying.  \n\n1.  Hungry\n2.  Scared\n3.  Uncomfortable (too hot, cold, stomach pains, filled diaper, diaper rash,  etc., and the like).\n4.  Over tired\n\nIt really actually is that simple.\n\nThen, later on (after you finally figure them out) they will change the rules on you and start teething. ", "For newborns, while in utero, they were being held 24/7/10(months) in a perfect temperature, warm, water environment floating arround and listening to the soothing sound of their mother's heartbeat. The moment born, they are being held less. It is getting used to being held for less time and acclimating to a new environment.", "Because being tired is uncomfortable. It sucks. Babies don't understand that the discomfort associated with being tired is temporary. They just know that they are uncomfortable, and they cry for attention and care when they experience discomfort. ", "because that's the only way they have to vent frustration.  Ever been upset, and exhaustion/tired been a part of it?  you can vocalize that reason as your brain has developed enough as adult.  Babies haven't, and so as they are tired, they get frustrated, and they cry.    \n\n\nIt happens ALL. THE. TIME.  all you can do is just wait for it.  and Purple Crying is also a thing, where babies cry and scream for periods.  it'll pass.", "When they\u2019re so young that they\u2019re still doing that they crying out of reflex opposed to being emotionally upset like older kids. It\u2019s pretty much like their body is telling them they need something and their response to that if they don\u2019t get it quick enough is to cry. ", "Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but another reason babies and young children cry before going to sleep is because that is how they decompress. They don\u2019t have solid language skills and aren\u2019t emotionally developed enough to sit there and tell you \u201cSo I was really over stimulated today by all the fun things we did. I think I\u2019ll take a nice long walk and listen to some music or a nice warm shower to just chill out. \u201c So they scream to release stress. Also when they\u2019re over tired forget about it- something happens and they get delirious and turn into banshees. Many haven\u2019t learned coping skills or the ability to self soothe which is a very important skill for them to obtain. Thus screaming commences. Parents often refer to the \u201cwitching hour\u201d which is often about dinner time for adults. It\u2019s a very real thing. Kids are exhausted and have pent up stress, parents are hungry and tired themselves so they aren\u2019t full of patience and it\u2019s a perfect storm. ", "They don't know they want to sleep. They are brand new to this world so they don't know the relation between tired and sleep. Then when they get to be a year or more and they'll start comprehending, exploring, and understanding their daily lives. Literally everything they encounter is amazing. A potato chip bag, a sneaker, cell phone... They are impressed with everything so even though they are starting to realize tired means sleep, they are afraid they'll miss the next big thing.. Like a cardboard box or something. ", "Sleeping babies is not as simple as adults. They often need to be quiet. They need to find the feeling they are most familiar with before they can fall asleep. Otherwise, if they are uncomfortable, they will only express it through crying because he will not be in other ways.", "They haven\u2019t yet learned to regulate negative feelings by self-soothing.  Adults and older children, like babies, feel tired, which is unpleasant, but know from experience that this feeling is temporary and that lying down and resting will help.  They are able to comfort themselves with their thought processes.  Babies actually learn to regulate their own negative emotions through the experience of being comforted by familiar adults, over and over again, but it takes to time to learn the process of emotion regulation to the extent they can successfully do it on their own.\n\nThis is why older children/teens who were neglected as infants/toddlers often struggle with regulation of their emotions, even though they cannot remember the neglect they experienced at such a young age.  They missed the development of the skill of self-soothing as infants.  This skill can still be developed later in life with the proper support, but it\u2019s much harder to do at that point and the child may never get to the skill level of a non-neglected child.\n\nSource:  Am a high school teacher who works with many students who\u2019ve been affected by trauma and neglect, and have read a lot on the subject, one source in particular being the book \u201cThe Body Keeps the Score\u201d by Bessel Van der Kolk.", "Little babies are not born fully developed. That includes their brains and nervous systems. Just as they progress through physical developmental milestones by learning to eat, walk, etc, they also have milestones of their nervous system. One of these is the ability to regulate their nervous system to calm and sooth agitated states. Until then they rely on assistance to transition between these states.\n\nThe result is that an infant easily transitions to agitated emotional states, and with difficulty transitions away for them without help.", "Their minds become over stimulated. They don\u2019t have the critical thinking skills to \u201cwind down\u201d crying can sometimes help. Usually talking to them in a soft calm voice, a car ride, or something that forces them to focus and relax will help them fall asleep. It would be like going to an all night concert and within 2 seconds of the music stopping being expected to fall asleep. Yes. You\u2019re tired. But your brain needs to come down from the noise, the chaos, the stimulus. ", "They haven't learned how to self soothe. You have to be extremely exhausted to fall asleep with no soothing technique. Every does something. I rub my feet together. My SO rolls onto his stomach. ", "Imagine if you will, feeling a feeling for the first time, all you know is it feels bad.  How do you fix it? Now take away your ability to walk, talk, comprehend anything, read, write, critical thinking, etc to the point where you are basically a ball of jello with a bad feeling.  How do you fix it? How can you even begin to comprehend fixing it? ", "Without using any fancy words, here's a simple explanation...\n\nRemember how young they are. They have close to zero experience in life. **Babies and toddlers don't actually know they are tired**. They feel uncomfortable, irritated, some unpleasant sensation... but they don't know what it means. All they know, at this point in life, is that it feels bad and they wish for that bad sensation to go away. They haven't had enough life experience to realize that all you have to do is lay down, stop moving, and get some rest. They do what babies do when faced with something they don't like. They lash out, crying for help without realizing it will just make them even more tired.\n\nInitially, we fight this bad feeling until we pass out. Eventually, we all learn and stop fighting when we realize the meaning of feeling tired.", "Babies start out in the womb, literally being part of their mother. Everything is regulated for them- they are constantly held snugly, are warm, are few, and have their mama\u2019s voice and heartbeat with them always. Once born into the big bad world, they are suddenly separate beings and do not know how to do things like this for themselves, including how to soothe themselves to sleep. It\u2019s literally called self-soothing and is something we have to teach babies to do so they can allow themselves to relax and drift off. There\u2019s more to it than this, but the concept of self-soothing as a skill we learn is the gist of the answer you seek.", "Little ones have a difficult time figuring out their bodies signals. They just know that something's wrong. Crying is their instinctive way of telling mom and dad that there's something wrong. \n\nIt really is that simple. That's why rocking usually works. They get comforted and can calm down enough to relax and let it happen.", "Even after toddlers start talking, they still don\u2019t understand \u201cdo x and y will feel better\u201d. That thought process won\u2019t solidify sometimes until they\u2019re like 10. So when children feel ill or are tired, they tend to act out. Ever have a terrible nights sleep and have your morning routine go to shit only to get nailed in rush hour traffic? How crabby do you get?", "Babies crying usually boils down to\n\nTired\nHungry\nGassy\nConstipated\nLonely \nWet\nScared\n\nBabies need to be soothed to sleep, whether it's by rocking, or rubbing their backs, or nursing to sleep like my babe does. Adults have rituals to help them settle down, too, but their brains are far more developed and they can dp those things on their own. Eventually babies get used to a routine that is just am elongated version of this to gradually get them settled enough to sleep. It may be\n\nDinner\nDiaper\nBath \nPajamas\nStory/Song\nSound machine \nNightlight \nSleep\n\nOr some variation of that. If the routine gets screwed up because you're out somewhere and they've been sleepy for an hour but it's too loud or bright for sleep to happen, their bodies will literally fight to keep them awake. This will continue even after you've finally gone home and done the whole bedtime shebang. Baby gets frustrated because they're sooo tired and JUST. WANNA. SLEEP! But it's that much harder because they've basically missed their window and have to wait for the next one. This will continue into toddlerhood, and then sometime after they're in grade school they'll start to sleep like normal people, and you won't have to plan everything to end before 8 PM to keep your child from going absolutely batshit.\n\nThere is a logic to it, but it's baby logic. TL;DR: it takes time for small humans to learn to just fall asleep, routine is important and fucking up bedtime routine leads to these crazy sleepless crying things.", "The behavior you describe indicates that the child is overly tired or had little warning that it was time to rest. Children who are up past the time that their body needs sleep become fussy due to stress hormones building up. Their level of frustration increases, while they also begin experiencing rushes of adrenaline as their body attempts to cope with the stress. Hence why these children can be silly one second and weeping the next. Their ability to cope with minor set backs decreases to a critical point at which most caregivers will go \"Ohhhh, you're tired\" and immediately attempt to put the child down for nap. But interrupting whatever they were doing and going straight into nap is also a potential conflict, as they don't perceive themselves as ready for nap. They're busy trying to rip the wall paper down (or something similar).\n\nSo now, you've got a baby who is stressed (due to exhaustion) and frustrated (due to having to stop what they were doing for this 'nap' thing you're raving about) and over stimulated (due to adrenaline). And we're expecting them to lie still and go to sleep.... all three of the above things are reasons children cry. It defuses  energy and expels stress hormones, and it communicates to you \"I need help, something is wrong with me\".\n\nSo, how to prevent this. Have a routine... it doesn't have to be extensive. Even just 1)diaper change 2) a lullaby and 3) I put you in your crib can be enough for some children. And in addition to their routine, you have to notice their first tired cue and begin the routine. Rubbing eyes, bags forming, yawning, slowing down, becoming clumsy... these are all cues and each child is a little different. Once you know a child's cue, begin the routine as soon as they have one or two and BEFORE their tiredness upsets them.\n\nOther helpful nap time tips -\n\n- limit screen time. Children under 3 especially are highly influenced by tv and other video devices. Not only do programs and games make them sedentary so they are not burning energy through physical or mental play, but the blue light messes with their circadian rhythm and sleep hormones.\n\n-get outside. Sunlight is best for helping children's sleep hormones regulate appropriately.\n\n-avoid relying on tricks or devices to put children to sleep if possible (swings, cars, on top of the washer etc.) These limit a child's ability to learn what it feels like to fall asleep and build this skill. Some families desperately need them to survive the first few years, and if it's what they have to do, that's fine. But a young child will eventually have to unlearn those habits... many healthy infants and toddlers can learn to fall asleep with minimal support. But it does take a lot of trust and patience from caregivers.", "Very young babies literally don't understand what's happening to them when they're falling asleep. (Think about what's involved- if you didn't know all those things = falling asleep, it'd be terrifying.) \n\nAnd screaming (usually) brings people who tend to them (basically what baby-cries are designed to do). ", "Over many, many years - millions of years - human babies have learned that if they are left alone a wolf might eat them.  So when a baby is put down and feels alone, they will cry as a warning to their parents: pick me up!  \n_URL_0_\n\nOften when you pick up a crying baby it will stop crying immediately.  This is why.\n\nIf the baby doesn't stop crying that means something else is wrong, maybe diaper rash, or hunger.", "Maybe they do that to raise awareness around them and call parents to take care of them even if they are already in their crib because they have some kind of behavioral memory attached to that as well.\n\nAnd, well, the basic action babies perform is screaming/crying to get the things they want.", "Exhaustion heightens emotions and kids can get \"overtired\" to the point where they're so tired they get upset. When they're upset, they're not going to sleep until calm again.\n\nIf you miss your window, you get stressed. Stress causes cortisol (a hormone, or signaling molecule to tell your body how to react. It lasts up to 24 hours or so after being turned \"off\" even) to be released, which prepares your body for the \"flight or fight\" response by increasing heart rate (to transport oxygen to muscles), blood glucose (to fuel muscles), and blood pressure. To sleep, you want a stable blood glucose, a resting heart rate, and regular or slower breathing. Those are all pretty opposite to the stress response.\n\nAnd fuck, I get overtired at night and can't sleep too. Haven't you ever gone into that \"I'm so tired but I keep looking at the clock and checking how much sleep I'll get but it's only making me more stressed out about not sleeping that I can't sleep even though I'm tired\" phase at like 2 am? \n\nSources: \n\nDaycare teacher for 3 years\n\nJust got an A- in physiology\n\nSome googled stuff to make sure I was explaining properly.\n\n[cortisol info](_URL_0_)\n", "So I guess, think of a baby as a blob. A primitive, instinctual blob. Without having learned anything about the world yet. Now imagine you're a blob. Your just starting to experience everything, without language or understanding. Without context clues or nuances, or appropriate social behaviors. Then imagine this; you only understand binary feelings of good and bad.\n\nGood: Mommy or Daddy feeding you. Changing your diaper so you're clean. Playing/interacting with you. \n\nBad: pooped yourself, you're hungry, you're tired. \n\nBut babies/toddlers don't understand concepts like \"tired\" or \"hungry\",  just feelings. They don't have social context yet to understand what tired means and therefore how to solve it on their own. They only understand bad and good. And how have they solved all their bad problems so far in life? Crying! It's a developmental thing. Unfortunately, it just takes time until they get old enough to understand.", "It\u2019s because they can\u2019t process it the same way adults do so they cry for comfort from a loved one they trust (aka parent) to hold them and make them feel better. In the process, they let go and allow themselves to fall asleep", "Child care provider/hopeful future postpartum doula here. When babies/toddlers are overtired, their bodies produce cortisol to help them stay awake. This stress inhibits sleep and results in the hormonal/emotional mess you speak of.\n", "As the parent of a one-year-old, and somebody who has never asked why, I have a theory that just popped into my head.   When babies cry, our usual reaction is to comfort them.   When they\u2019re overtired, they\u2019re also uncomfortable, so maybe it\u2019s a way for them to ask to be comforted to sleep, in the only language they know how to speak.   ", "Babies can't regulate themselves. Which means manage the stimuli internal or external. If a baby is cold, hungry or tired they cry. Scared, tired or sick..they cry. It communicates to the caregiver that something is amiss. They are completely reliant on adults to survive. So crying communicates not just a need but that something for the baby is unmanagable. Sucking on pacifiers for example helps them calm and regulate. This is because sucking is something they are familiar with and can do. Swaddling helps them regulate as does skin to skin contact. Colic is something not completely understood but it may be a digestion issue or the baby has difficulty in calming. They do outgrow it but it is beyond typical crying for day to day needs. As we get older we self regulate and have better ways to communicate.", "Oh finally something I can explain! \nBabies are pretty crazy little machines, and they work totally different from adults due to lack of experience!\nWhen a baby cries it's because it's experiencing some sort of discomfort. Newborns are crazy and have no concept of how the world works, not even their own bodies and their feelings like tired or hungry. So, when they experience discomfort they cry, including when they are tired. They haven't quite grasped the concept that sleep=not tired yet, so they cry because they feel uncomfortable. Babies naturally want to become more self sufficient, and learn how to fix minor discomfort on their own over time. This is why as they get older they stop crying when they get tired, because they know that they can fix their own discomfort by sleeping. ", "Every bit of slight discomfort for a baby is a brand new phenominon, and literally the worst thing they've experienced in their lives.", "Even adults have trouble processing their emotions. Ever got in an argument and later realised you were only angry because you were hungry, horny, or tired?\n\n", "Yerp they can\u2019t talk, also it\u2019s instinctual for a baby to cry so they get social practice. A baby who doesn\u2019t cry is a cause for concern.", "Babies and toddlers have a different approach to stress as you or I, they simply aren't able to manage their own emotions - in medicine we call this self regulation and children develop it later into childhood.\n\nBasically babies are trained to feel bad, scream, and have you solve the problem all the time every time. They simply cannot plan an action to fix their own feelings of anxiety even if it seems obvious. This is called \"attatchement\" when you form this sort of feedback loop of screaming and fixing. There isn't a natural instinct for babies to associate any behaviour other than crying with their own comfort until they hit a concrete operational stage where they can understand simple cause and effect - this is the 2nd stage of stress management where they can plan a solution to a problem and see it through.", "Maybe because they have no sense of sleep or even self. So imagine you suddenly feel like you're drifting away into nothingness and only darkness is approaching. \nIf you don't know what sleep is, that could be scary...", "They dont understand like you or I do after years of experience that to get rid of that tired feeling you need to sleep. They have no context or experience with it. Same reason you see those puppy or kitten videos of an animal that is clearly falling asleep standing up tired but instead of just chilling out and not fighting it they keep standing up and running around for 2 seconds before nodding off again. They are freaking out and scared and they dont know what exactly is going on. They havent figured out how to even fall asleep yet let alone connected the dots that sleep is what they need to get rid of this feeling that they dont understand.", "The short answer is that babies and toddlers require a lot more time to transition from one activity to another. \n\nThey find comfort in routine and they hate deviation from what they know. There is a reason why many pediatricians colloquially refer to the first three months of life as \u201cthe fourth trimester.\u201d\n\nMost babies and young children have cues long before they get to screaming/crying but it takes knowing what they are to respond to them appropriately and within time. \n\nMany children and babies are soothed by being swaddled and walked or worn in a carrier because it simulates the familiar and safe feeling of the womb. \n\nWhen a baby or young child gets so overwhelmed and their needs are not met, they basically get to the point of meltdown because to them, the need is extreme and there is no way to communicate it with more nuance. \n\nHunger and tiredness are the most common because they affect the entire brain and body. Plenty of adults grow irritable when they lose lots of sleep but newborns and children not only require a lot of sleep, they\u2019re growing and developing by leaps and bounds, which requires immense amounts of energy. \n\nThe problem is that very little babies and many children cannot self soothe because they literally do not have the skills to do so. Their brains and bodies are not developed enough, either.  Children and babies are terrible at planning or keeping to schedules despite having needs. \n\nSo it is up to caregivers to slowly help teach their kids that not only can they rely on them when they need help, but that their parents will give them the comfort and environment they need to calm down. ", "Everything is new to a baby. Every good thing is the best thing ever. Every bad thing is the worst thing ever. But babies cannot articulate what they want or need. They cry because that's the only thing that will get their needs met. Hungry? Cry. Soiled diaper? Cry. Being tired? Cry. ", "Babies are complex in terms of brain development but luckily this is easy to explain. Human babies have only one defense strategy which comes first in all situation and it goes like this: when in discomfort of any kind: scream.  Fun fact: this egocentrism makes babies very much like psychopaths - putting themselves and disregarding others' emotions.\n\nThis instinct of screaming is like many instincts not always used in an optimal setting, just like stress doesn't help us much before tests or like how sexual drive doesn't do much for our species when we masturbate and so on...", "What's the evolutionary justification?  Why do babies survive better if they scream to tell predators where they are?  Or, are babies whose mothers can't hold them less 'fit' to survive?", "It is called being overtired. They get so tired and frustrated that they cant get calm and take even longer to get to sleep. There is a magic window of tiredness when you have to put them down, at least for the first couple years. Good luck!", "I love how you can see what was previously posted in the deleted text, within the subject line for 3 seconds before it disappears.", "As a parent, I feel as though experience speaks to this effect - children are not reasonable beings. You can share the most eloquent of arguments but kids will never hear you. As humans, they know when you're full of shit but will still dog you on an issue.just to be obstinant. It's not because they want to, mostly because they can.  \n  \nLook at it this way - if you can get the desired results by yelling about it and you see progress, why wouldn't you keep it up?\n\nThey see it the same way. Kids arent dumb, they see real-world results and tune into it.  \nSo, if you want to out-smart kids then all you need to do is be ready for ALL of their questions, no matter the cost..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://sleeptightconsultants.com/2014/06/avoiding-perils-overtired-baby/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html"], [], ["https://www.hormone.org/hormones-and-health/hormones/cortisol"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jnspm", "title": "d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu", "selftext": "Edit: I know what it is. Really want to understand what causes it and why it happens.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jnspm/eli5_d\u00e9j\u00e0_vu/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbgi3lf", "cbgicu9", "cbgiof2", "cbgivek", "cbgj59x", "cbgjugo", "cbgkuo8", "cbgmfxg", "cbgmrb6", "cbgncob", "cbgogow", "cbgwbl1"], "score": [38, 47, 39, 10, 72, 22, 10, 4, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["what is your question exactly? Are you asking what it is, or why it happens?", "what is your question exactly? Are you asking what it is, or why it happens?\n", "*what is your question exactly?* Are you asking *what it is*, or *why it happens?*", "what is your question exactly? Are you asking what it is, or why it happens?", "There are various theories explaining deja vu. A lack of research exists on the subject simply because the instance occurs infrequently amongst those that have reported experiencing it. Therefore, it is difficult to pinpoint this experience in someone and analyze the electrical signals in the brain.\n\n\nMy favorite theory encompasses the idea that deja vu is essentially a delay in short term memory storage; similar to that of a computer's CPU telling the ram to store an amount of data, but the process is stalled briefly due to a hang up with other processes. The result, is an interesting feeling of 'hearing something' or 'seeing something' that is 'familiar' when in reality your brain is just playing catch up with your short term memory storage process.\n\n[Vsauce has a bit on this as well.](_URL_0_)", "You have two forms of memory, short term and long term. Usually your experiences go into the short term, then long term\n\nWhen you experience a deja vu, it goes to both at once, so even though you are experiencing something for the first time, you have the sensation that you are also remembering it.", "According to fringe logic, your other half in the multiuniverse went through the same thing so you felt a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu", "I feel like I've seen this question before. ", " I have epilepsy (Now fully controlled by medication), my aura before a seizure was deja vu sometimes lasting several minutes. That I was convinced what I was experiencing had happened before is undeniable but I know that it wasn't true just an intense feeling of familiarity. I have also experienced the opposite Jamais vu where places, objects, people that you know well, feel unfamiliar. Deja vu used to be a pleasant experience for me before I developed epilepsy ( due to a heamorage).\n  I am sure other experiences I have had such as seeing people and being sure I know them or even seeing friends and them have an 'aura' of being some famous personality are related.\n As my experience of deja vu was directly related to my epilepsy I am sure it is due to electrical activity in the temporal lobes.\n\n", "A glitch in the Matrix", "There are three types of memories your brain has. One is sensory. These are felt and discarded almost immediately, if you even noted them at all. If you do notice them, it's something like an itch or a hair in your face, quickly gotten rid of, and not very memorable. \n\nThe second is short-term memory. It's remembering someone's phone number until you get it in your phone, or the page you left off in a book. It's front and center in your mind for a little while, but it's not something you commit to the third type of memory.\n\nLong term. It's the name of your husband or wife, or your native tongue. You never forget.\n\nWhen deja-vu occurs, it's a some neurons messing up where they're supposed to go. Instead of just sensory information being discarded, it's getting rerouted to the short or long term memory. It makes everything feel as if it has happened before, even if it has not. It is a false experience of memories being recalled, because it wasn't in your other memories before your neurons shot wrong.\n\nThere are two other occurrences like deva vu; jamais vu and presque vu. Jamais vu is like deja vu, except when you feel as if you remember something you're experiencing now with deja vu, jamais vu makes familiar things seem foreign. It's when you sit down in your car you've had for years and forget how to start it. Your brain is again misfiring and not making the connection that it should be.\n\nPresque vu is when you have \"It's on the tip of my tongue\" feeling. You're trying to remember your friend's name, but it's not there. \n\nAll of these things just point to your brain as being a huge, mishmashed ball of cords with a little cover over the middle of them, but the ends can fire energy anywhere and it may get caught in a wire that wasn't supposed to receive it. It's really a wonder it works so well for us, with everything that you're thinking about throughout the day. ", "Humans (and other, intelligent animals) are hard-wired for false positives. We are constantly gathering and organizing information, and most importantly, making connections.\n\nThis has been tested with the Skinner box.\n_URL_0_\n\nOf course you haven't experienced that *exact* situation twice, but you likely have made enough connections to feel so. This is my untested hypothesis, but it might work as some kind of explanation.\n\nI shudder every time I experience it, regardless.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSf8i8bHIns"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber"]]}
{"q_id": "5wz6r7", "title": "what happens in our body at the exact time when we fall asleep? where is the border between consciousness and unconsciousness?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wz6r7/eli5_what_happens_in_our_body_at_the_exact_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dee19t8", "deeipny", "deej957", "deejkhg", "deelyy7"], "score": [44, 37, 2, 6, 3], "text": ["There is no \"exact time\" when you fall asleep. Falling asleep is a gradual process where brain activity across many different areas of the brain slowly shift into sleep over many minutes.", "Your brain activity can be measured in waves, these waves are measured by an EEG. When we are awake and active, our brain produces beta waves. When we are deeply relaxed but still awake, we produced alpha waves. Theta waves define the first sleep stage. You could say that you could base the moment you fall asleep on the appearance of theta waves. Stage 1 and 2 have them, if you woke somebody up in these stages they may say they weren't even asleep yet, you've probably experienced that feeling before. Stages 3 and 4 become deeper sleeps and the brain produces delta waves. These are the longest waves and signals a deep dreamless sleep. After you move through stages 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, a person generally goes back through the stages backwards except instead of stage 1 they go into what's called REM sleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement and that is what characterizes this sleep stage, you may have witnessed this in someone else. This is the stage where you will dream. This whole cycle takes about 90 min. You will continue cycling though the stages this way but REM stage will get longer and the time you spend in stage 3 and 4 will get shorter as the cycles go by. \n\nI apologize if this is messy, I'm exhausted and on my phone. Looking forward to cycling through these stages myself in a moment ", "You don't necessarily have to be asleep the be unaware of the world around you.  Meditation, daydreaming, - technically you're awake but not consciously focused on your environment.  \n\n\n[How Sleep Works](_URL_0_)  - copied this from my sleep cycle app because I'm drifting as I write this and don't feel like looking through my reading list for a reputable source. ", "It's called the Hypnagogic State\n\nFun fact: It's where Salvador Dali claimed to get a lot of his inspiration from. He'd try and paint in this state. \n\n\"Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this \"threshold consciousness\" phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.\"", "I had this weird moment during my yoga class last week where I was laying in savasana and I was kind of awake w my eyes closed but also dreaming at the same time. It was surreal. I don't really know how else to describe it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.sleepcycle.com/how-it-works/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4sriwp", "title": "You can win those \"guess-how-many-X's-are-in-the-jar\"-games by calculating the average of all the other guesses and put that as your answer, but how does that work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4sriwp/you_can_win_those_guesshowmanyxsareinthejargames/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5briii"], "score": [15], "text": ["If all guesses are independent, have the same gaussian distribution then you can compute that the average of all these guesses has the same mean, and a smaller standard deviation, which means it is less likely that the average of the guesses has a lower chance of being off.\n\nNow if all the guesses were completely idiotic, this would'nt work, also if the answers tended to several popular answers and not just one.\n\nBut it's reasonable to assume that may ppl did in fact look attentively, or tried to count or guesstimate the real number of X in the jar. So we postulate they give a random guess around the correct value, with some deviation from it.\n\nIn the end, it works because ppl DO aim for the correct value, it's the *deviation* from the correct value that is lowered by averaging.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "97ni87", "title": "Do vegans have different gut bacteria?", "selftext": "I know that animals like horses and cows have different bacteria in their GI tracts due to only eating plants and no meat, which is why their manure can be used as fertilizer. If humans eat a strictly vegan diet long enough, do their GI tracts adjust the bacteria in the same way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/97ni87/do_vegans_have_different_gut_bacteria/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e4a4jm6"], "score": [17], "text": ["Numerous studies have shown that diet has an impact on microbiota.\nFor instance in 2012, this study concludes that \"Maintaining a strict vegan or vegetarian diet results in a significant shift in the microbiota while total cell numbers remain unaltered.\" (Zimmer et al., 2012, retrieved from  _URL_0_).\nAnother study experimented a strict vegetarian diet on 6 obese people and observed a change a the bacteria ratio communities. This was associated to weight loss and a decrease of pathobionts (Kim et al., 2013, retrieved from _URL_1_). \nYou will find plenty of examples on Google scholar only by typing the key words vegan, microbiota, diet... Among the main reasons, one can cite the fibers, the inflammation caused by an over consumption of meat or the different fatty acids. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2011141", "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1758-2229.12079"]]}
{"q_id": "13mhgz", "title": "how free apps without ads make money.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13mhgz/eli5_how_free_apps_without_ads_make_money/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c758bmh", "c758hqo", "c758nv5", "c759kma", "c75dlyi"], "score": [43, 13, 10, 5, 2], "text": ["I'm definitely no expert or app producer. But I do notice that people release better forms of the app for a price. Full versions verses light/free versions. \n\nPeople like the free version, go to see what the full version has, decide they want that stuff too, buy the full version.\n", "Either developers create a paid and a lite version, put ads in their free game or create a free game as a kind of viral advertisement for another developer or company who in turn gives them their payslip. \n\nEither that or they just like programming and putting themselves out there. It's not always about the money, at least not initially. ", "In App Purchases. Some games will practically force you into buying upgraded equipment from their store to beat the game. I always check the low starred reviews to see if a game is an IAP scam. ", "as a direct answer, they don't.\n\nhowever, they spread the name of the app out there, as a form of networking. then when the dev releases a paid for app, people have already experienced their work and will want to buy the paid for app. its like advertising.", "My friend has an App which looks at clubs near the user. No ads, free. His model is based on getting the clubs to pay to be featured, for promotion, etc. as opposed to sending the cost to the user."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4trkao", "title": "Speed of air entering an evacuated tube?", "selftext": "Over on /r/hyperloop is a [discussion](_URL_0_) of a video about catastrophic failure of the Hyperloop tube. The nut of the issue is this:\n\nPicture a 2-meter diameter tube many kilometers long -- say, 100km to have a number. The tube is evacuated to a pressure of 1 millibar.\n\nNow picture a catastrophic failure (an explosion, say) which instantly severs the tube. Air rushes into the tube at some speed. At what speed does the pressure front move along the tube? Speed of sound? Higher? Lower?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4trkao/speed_of_air_entering_an_evacuated_tube/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5jydhs"], "score": [29], "text": ["The problem of sudden opening of a membrane\nseparating two regions of high and low pressure is well\nknown in continuous fluid dynamics: it is the vacuum\nshock tube problem. This problem is solved\nanalytically starting from energy and momentum\nconservation. The most startling feature in this treatment\nis the shock wave, travelling at constant speed into vacuum, but carrying vanishing density. \n\nu_max = 2*c_0/(gamma-1)\n\nHere, c_0 is\nthe local speed of sound, while gamma is the specific heat ratio.\nFor air, gamma = 1.4 and c_0 = 331 m/s, so the shock wave speed is 1655 m/s, or Mach = 5. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperloop/comments/4tne73/thunderfoot_how_the_hyperloop_can_kill_you/"], "answers_urls": [["http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/IPAC2014/papers/wepme039.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "5a0gdf", "title": "how are genders different than sexes and what do many different genders mean?", "selftext": "Not trolling, just can't understand. Don't turn this into a fight.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a0gdf/eli5_how_are_genders_different_than_sexes_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9cpl69", "d9cpzle", "d9cq4t8", "d9cqumn", "d9cqwg7", "d9cs2a2", "d9cvbpi", "d9cvy2y", "d9cztqc", "d9d3pgh", "d9d3rdf", "d9d40if", "d9d5flj", "d9d5ov9", "d9dl9a6"], "score": [2, 476, 3, 74, 5, 10, 14, 3, 6, 29, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Generally speaking gender (in the sense of a gender identity) includes all of the social aspects of being masculine, feminine (or neuter). Being a man or woman is deeply tied with culture. Look at fashion and the jobs and roles men and women are expected to play. The toys they are expected to play with growing up. Mannerisms, etc.\n\nNone of that has anything to do with having a specific set of sexual organs. It's all cultural and social and sometimes people feel as if their role in society is at odds with their biological sex.", "Since there is a lot of overlapping terminology I'm going to use \"male\" and \"female\" when I'm refering to sex and \"man\" and \"woman\" when refering to gender. The definitions I'm going to give for the different genders aren't set in stone and are debatable. But, it's a good entry point. \n\nSex is a biological trait that is related to our genes and hormones. In our DNA we have what are called sex chromosomes \"x\" and \"y\". Generally  XX chromosomes create a female sexed person and XY create a male sexed person. There are other combinations, sometimes with more than two. In addition, because of other genetic effects hormones can override these chromosomes and create other sex traits. Arguably male and female are the most common, but intersex people of varying sorts aren't particularly uncommon.\n\nGender is how we as a society expect the sexes to behave in that society but also to some extent how a person wants to interact with society with regards to their sex. So, if we looked at the US in the 50's that might mean, women have long hair. Men had short hair. Men went to work. Women stayed at home with the kids. Men liked cars. Women liked cooking. Etc. etc. etc. \n\nThe usage of new gender words is to try to express the feeling many people have that their gender is either more complicated or innaccurate than the default society wants to give. The different new genders express similar but somewhat distinct ideas.  \n\nPeople who are genderfluid tend to find that they will sometimes strongly identify with certain gender roles at different times. So a person who might love to wear very masculine suits and very feminine dresses may be genderqueer. \n\nGenderqueer is someone who finds that the normal expression of gender doesn't quite capture how they feel. They don't quite see themselves as men or as women but something amalgamated. \n\nGender neutral is someone who sees themselves as having less gendered content. \n\nOften times gender neutral, genderqueer and genderfluid are thrown around as interchangeable. They aren't exactly. But for many people they effectively are so similar and used in such a variety of ways they all end up roughly meaning \"not quite men not quite women\". \n\nAll of this is made more complicated by the fact that liberal socities are generally trying to break down gender roles as it is. While there has been great progress compared with say, the middle ages, there is still a TON of assumed gendered behavior that just doesn't capture people's lived experiences. \n\nI'm a little hungover so let me know if I need to do any clarifying! \n\nEDIT: Just to re-iterate a point. Sex is also more complicated than a lot of people are saying. There are more sexes than simply male or female so it's not just you are born male or female. Follows is a link with some info on intersex (which are those people who are born not exactly male or not exactly female). _URL_0_\n\nEDIT 2: HOLY SHIT! Reddit gold! Thank you anonymous benefactor! This is my first ever reddit gold. I also passed the New York bar this week. It's been a good week (the reddit gold is better). \n\nI want to quickly address a few of the \"biological\" points that came up in this thread and why they don't really answer the question. \n\nSomeone pointed out that standard female brains tend to be smaller (which for those MRA people out there has absolutely zero correlation with intelligence), men usually have more testosterone etc etc. This is true. But notice how I had to use words like \"standard\" and \"tend\" to. It is not always the case that if you take 1 woman and 1 man they will always have relative differences based on those factors. Some women have bigger brains and more testosterone than some men. This then fails the  necessary 1 to 1 requirement of a definition. For example, if I said a chair has 4 legs and then showed you one with 5 legs or three legs (or none, like a rocking chair on skis), you would have to say well it's not a chair or my definition is wrong. In this instance, I think using those points may help us understand trends and tendencies (but probably not) they don't help define gender or sex.\n\nAgain I want to point out that sex is something on the biological level and unless you have a habit of DNA testing all of the people you know, you won't ever meaningfully interact with a person's sex. Because you can only ever interact with a person who has been socialized you will always interact with their gender expression. \n\nThese words help more than 1% of the population. And even if they only help 1% of the population, in the USA alone that is 3 million people. That is a lot of people. I admit, learning a few new words is an inconvenience and takes some processing power (you have to read my whole post). Once you've read the post. You now know the words and can't make the argument that you will be harmed by using the words. You already know them. Seriously though, the inconvenience is minuscule on a societal level to grasp new words.\n\nI also want to point out that the idea of non-binary gender is not new. Many cultures have had third and fluid genders. For example, North American Native Americans (exactly how many tribes is currently under debate) who had a concept of two spirits and had 4 different gender categories.  This idea of third gender and gender non conforming is even in the kama sutra. Plato's Symposium mentions a creation myth with Male, Female and Gender Neutral characters. \n\nEDIT 3: One more clarification. The reason individual gender expression and letting an individual pick their own gender is the best solution is precisely because gender on a social level is a weak concept. As many people have accurately pointed out women can wear pents, men can have long hair etc. etc. Agreed! That's why things often associated with gender aren't defining, merely associated (in fact many of the things often thought defining of gender in our times were different in other times, Pink used to be a  boys color (it was like blood and men were bloody), and in the Middle Ages in Europe women were seen as the sexual predators and men were the innocents who needed to protect themselves). Since pretty much anything associated with gender isn't a 1 to 1 it doesn't define any gender. Therefore, there is no good way to make a call as to who is or isn't a particular gender on a macro level. Therefore, the only way to accurately sort people is to just let people sort themselves. \n", "Sex is what you were born with (penis= man, vagina =girl) and gender is what you identify as. If you feel like a girl but you were born with a penis, your sex is male (unless you get corrective surgery) but your gender is female.\n\nAt least that's what I learned in 4+ years majoring in psychology and taking numerous human development courses.", "As someone in my youth stated it: \"sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears\"; sex is what you physically are, while gender is what you think of yourself as.  Although not without its limitations, it's a pretty good definition.  \nWhen they are mismatched* It's like** having a (mostly)permanent job as a factory worker when all you wanted to do your whole life was farm.  \n* gonna get crucified with that one.  \n* *  with how society in general perceives you.", "Long story short, sex is the one you're born as. It's mainly used for medical purposes. Gender is what you identify as, it's different from your sex if you're transgender. Usually people's gender identities match their sexes, but transgender people usually identify as the other sex.\n\nThen the concept of neopronouns and neogenders appeared, and you've got people whose gender identities are neither man nor woman, which usually results in wanting to be referred to (he/him/his for men, as an example) using these neopronouns linked to these neogenders.", "\"Sex\" refers to your biological sex. This is in reference to what your genes define and is a more \"medical\" term than gender. Sex can be ill-defined due to some genetic factors, not plainly male or female or XY and XX respectively. Things like [Klinefelter syndrome](_URL_1_), or XXY, is just one of many combinations beyond XX or XY that humans may end up with. \n\nGender is separate from you biological sex and has many factors that make a person identify as a \"man\" or a \"woman\" or somewhere in between.  Some cultures have many different genders other than male and female for social norms and place in society, such as the [Hijra](_URL_0_. \n\nBasically sex is the chromosomal makeup and physical expression of your sexual reproduction. \n\nGender is how you identify with those sexual reproduction parts and the roles you accept in your society as a \"man,\" \"woman,\" or \"other\" in reference to your physicality. ", "Prior answers are dreadful.\n\nHere's info from a human behavioral biology lecture series by Stanford you can find on YouTube.\n\nThe key factors are-\n\n1) Genetic gender\n\n2) Neurological structure\n\nAs with all medical situations it's important to keep in mind that self-evaluation is unreliable for an accurate medical diagnosis especially when dealing with non-physical conditions.\n\n1) Ok so first thing is genetics- some people have XY chromosome pairs, some have XX, some have atypical pairings or other genetic factors that lead to interesting traits that totally blur the lines of distinct genetic genders. Consider hermaphroditism, hyper androgynous women and the Guevedoces. This is to be expected if you except the premise of evolution - genetic factors that effect gender are subject to the same process of mutation that the rest of the body is subject to, hence we should expect atypical (non-binary) genetic genders.\n\n2) Second thing that is incredibly important in describing gender is the internal ratio structure of the brain, this is important because these structures have been proven to be highly predictive of behavioral traits including traits like homosexuality, hyper-aggression, or some neurological disabilities.\n\nStandard female brains have distinct ratios from standard male brains. But the size of these areas are subject to variance among a population. If we except the premise that the variance in these brain ratios is most likely a normal distribution then we have to anticipate that there will be some statistical outliers who have ratios that more closely resemble the opposite gender's 'standard brain' than we would expect to see given their genetic gender.\n\nWe can also expect so of these ratios to be right in the no man's land between what we would call a typical male brain or a typical female brain. These cases roughly equate to hyperandro women or hemaphrodites who blur the gender line in the genetic arena.\n\n__\n\n\nSo what does this actually mean?\n\nIt means we can't deny the possibility that someone might have the genetics of gender A and the neurology of gender B. Or the genetics of gender A and completely unique neurology.\n\nConsequently, telling someone who has a mismatch between neurology and gender that they shouldn't have access to gender reassignment surgery or hormone supplements is a horrible thing.\n\nWhat does not mean?\n\nThis doesn't mean that gender is a social construct or that you can toy around with gender identity and flit between calling yourself a man one day and a woman the next. \n\nPretending your atypical in a genetic or neurological regard or pretending that gender is a myth is incredibly irresponsible because you delegitimize people who have actual medical conditions.\n\n\nA perhaps more horrible consequence of this 'trans-trender' movement is the danger that they might convince someone who suffers mild schizophrenia or depression that the origin of their problem is something to do with gender and gender identity. \n\nA huge portion of pre and post-operation trans people suffer from serious mental disorders and I worry that professionalism when dealing with these people is under siege by uniformed people that think gender is a myth or that gender has nothing to do with behavior.", "I'm gonna copy/paste my explaination from another thread and elaborate a bit.  \n\"Hello! FtM checking in. Gender and sex are very complicated subjects but scientists and the medical community are starting to figure out why there's a difference between gender and sex.\nYour gender (boy/girl/agender/etc) is determined by how your brain views your sex. This is influenced by;\n-The layout of your brain and how the cortexes interact (Yes! Men and women have slightly different layouts.)\n-Hormones in the womb and what kind of imprint they left on your brain and endocrine system during pregnancy\n-The amount of hormones your body produces\n-And there are many more theories out there. \n\nBeing a cisgender boy means your sex is male, you have a masculine brain layout, you were exposed to the \"correct\" amount of hormones in the womb and your hormones are within the male spectrum.\nBeing transgender boy means all of the above is true but your sex is female.\nBeing genderqueer/non-binary means that theres a mix. So maybe you have a female layout, was exposed to more male hormones, and produces more male hormones, and your sex is female.\nI hope this helped some. Its gets much more complicated when you add gender roles and gender expression.\"  \n\nA lot of these are *theories* but what it boils down to is that you are wired to see yourself as male/female/a mix. For transgender people, we have gender dysphoria due to the disconnect between our gender and sex, which is very similar to body dysmorphic disorder, but the difference is that BDD won't go away when you change your body to how you wanted it. It changes to another part of your body. Whereas gender dysphoria signifigantly lessens or goes away completely once you medically transition. Its the disconnect thats the problem- not our gender.  \n\nAdd in gender roles. I see gender roles as independent from gender. Masculine women and feminine men exist- they are still women and men but its how they choose to express their gender. Its societal and social. Im not FtM because im masculine, I'm FtM because I'm wired for a male body and got a female one.  \nI hope this helped some. Theres a lot of different views on gender that are controversial and debatable, and it is a very complicated subject.", "Hey.  \nConsidering the abundant amount of misinformation on this thread I would recommend checking out /r/asktransgender.  They have first hand experience with how gender is different than sex, and it *ISNT* because of gender roles.", "I've always felt like [this image](_URL_0_) and accompanying text gave a pretty strong categorization for how sex, gender, gender expression, and attraction differ from one another.", "Sex is biological. It's your chromosomes, genitalia, etc. With some exceptions, people are generally male (XY) or female (XX). Intersex people (who may have different chromosomal makeup or ambiguous sex organs/genitalia) do exist and people are starting to recognize their right to control their bodies -- it's still quite common for intersex babies to have their genitals surgically altered to make them \"one or the other\". Malta became the first country (in April 2015) to outlaw such practices (though it's OK if an intersex adult explicitly consents to such a procedure). \n\nYour gender is a social, cultural, and psychological phenomenon. What we think of as \"male\" and \"female\" might have *some* roots in biological factors, but most things that we associate with male/female are cultural and social. A girl does/looks like this, a boy does/looks like that. Most people's gender lines up with their biological sex. For example, I was born with XX chromosomes, a vagina, a uterus, all that good stuff, and I identify as female, which I express by wearing my hair long/in a \"feminine\" style, wearing clothing marketed for women, going by a \"feminine\" name, and so on. I live my life as a woman, and what defines \"womanhood\" is very much rooted in the culture I grew up in. \n\nSome people's gender identity does not line up with their biological sex. Let's say that Jim was born with XX chromosomes, a uterus, vagina, the whole nine yards. Jim is biologically female. But Jim does not identify as female. Jim wears \"masculine\" clothes, wears a short haircut associated with men, goes by a traditionally masculine name, and takes hormones to stop having periods and grow more body hair. Jim identifies as male and lives his life as a man. \n\nThen there are people who don't really fall under male or female, either because they are intersex (edit: though many intersex people live as \"one or the other\", either on their own free will or due to medical interventions in childhood, which, as I mentioned further up, are starting to be recognized as wrong/unnecessary), or because they identify/live their lives as both male and female, or perhaps neither (a third gender), or no gender at all. \n\nPeople are starting to recognize a) that gender and sexuality/sex aren't so clear-cut, and b) people who don't fall into such defined boxes deserve rights and dignity like everyone else. But we still have a ways to go on those two things. ", "Wow, a lot of these answers are far too complicated for an ELI5...\n\nSex: were you born with girl parts or boy parts.     Biology\nGender: do you identify with guys or girls...men, women, transgender, etc.     Psychology", "To my uneducated knowledge, gender is whether you have 2 X chromisomes or one X and one Y. It's your biological sex. If you are transgender, you feel as though you were the opposite gender into which you were born. This means that trans men are male and trans women are female. But many different genders are usually people who don't feel like they conform to the usual stereotypes. I find this stupid because if you are a guy that likes the color pink, for example, you're still of the male sex. You aren't a separate gender for that. I personally think it's the special snowflakes wanting to be special and its a load of horseshit, but I honestly would just call you whatever the hell you want me to within reason. ", "Sex is what the archaeologists when they dig your bones up will ascertain when they run your bone matter through the computers. You can't change your sex at all its in your genetic make up.\n\nGender is a social construct that happens purely within your head and how you act and how you present yourself the outside world.", "The top answers in this thread are shit and awfully misleading.\n\nIn this thread, people are, in fact, discussing THREE different factors, not two. These are:\n\n1) Sex. Biological sex-ie, your genitals, chromosomes, hormones, etc.\n\n2) Gender roles. Men like blue/wear pants/are intellectual/have short hair, women like pink/wear skirts/are emotional/have long hair.\n\n3) Gender identity. A kind of abstract 'map' consisting of subconscious expectations for the first item on this list, sex. When someone is missing an arm, it causes distress-same goes for sexually dimorphic parts. Incorrect genitalia causes distressed, incorrect hormone balances causes distress, etc. Also includes more abstract factors-like how, if a woman is in a room of all men, and hears someone come in and say \"Could the lady over there come check her car?\" or something like that, there is a bit of an instinctual \"is that me?\" perking up that may occur. That's only one example and not really a great one but you see what I mean.\n\nThe problem is, people in this thread are not at all distinguishing between number 2 and number 3. Gender roles and gender identities are talked as being one in the same. This is really frustrating to see."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome"], [], [], [], ["http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2015/03/the-genderbread-person-v3/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6gfp48", "title": "What is the history of cuck(old) as an insult?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gfp48/what_is_the_history_of_cuckold_as_an_insult/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dipwe4n"], "score": [308], "text": ["The first thing you have to realize when approaching this question is that before about mid-17th century (1650) or so, sexuality and sexual identity was largely controlled/supported by the village or town community. People who fell out of line from what was seen as correct or right were often beaten, humiliated or even tried by their local communities. As Stone puts it:\n\n\n > During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this intrusive scrutiny actually intensified due to the rise of ethical Puritanism and the increased activity of the Church courts in controlling personal morality. Everyone gossiped freely about the most intimate details of domestic relations, and did not hesitate to denounce violations of community norms to an archdeacon's visitation enquiry, so that people were constantly testifying in court about the alleged moral peccadilloes of their neighbours.\n\nAside from church courts, and indeed some of the court\u2019s sentences were town humiliations. One such sentence or community punishment might be the use of the cucking/ducking stool\u2014which looked like [this](_URL_2_) or [this](_URL_0_) where the cuckold or the woman accused of being too dominant and controlling or argumentative would be ducked in the water.. the 1615 ballad Cucking of a Scold recounts one such event:\n\n\n\n > Then was the Scold herself,\n\n\n > In a wheelbarrow brought,\n\n\n > Stripped naked to the smock,\n\n\n > As in that case she ought:\n\n\n > Neats tongues about her neck\n\n\n > Were hung in open show;\n\n\n > And thus unto the cucking stool\n\n\n > This famous scold did go.\n\nThe tradition or punishment is quite old--there are references to it in Anglo-Saxon times. The other form of community punishment might be the Charivari or Skimmington ride, that would include a impropmptu town parade of people banging on pots and pans and singing roudy ballads\u2014sometimes to force an unmarried couple to wed, sometimes to humiliate a man who couldn\u2019t control his wife, sometimes in the case of older widows remarrying. It was a form of social control-- Hogarth made an [illustration of this](_URL_1_), which even at his time was becoming dated\n\nAs one historian puts it:\n\n > Both the state and the community relied on this collective opinion to ensure social order: hence the importance of one's 'good name and fme' in determining guilt and innocence in both civil and criminal trials/ the courts' use of 'shame' punishments - the pillory, stocks, cucking stool and public whipping - to solicit community participation in the public destruction of the reputations of those convicted of certain crimes\n\nSo, in result, there was a high amount of pressure on men to assert their manhood through sexual control of woman. When a man was single, it was more than okay for him to brag about his sexual conquests, but as soon as he became married, it became essential for him to control their wives to avoid the risk and danger of being called a cuckold. The humiliation of such an event could spell loss of respect, honor, and in some cases lead to duels or fights. There is much to say about history of masculinity here that /u/Georgy_k_Zhukov might want to say here that I don\u2019t know as much about.\n\nRegardless, this held more or less true through the 16th and 17th centuries. The difference is that by the 18th century, the amount of community control over sexuality had begun to collapse \u2013 partially because of the rise of a more professionalized and urban police force that was more concerned with enforcing very visible sorts of disorder such as drunkenness and fighting and partially because church courts, which were the arbitrators and enforcer of english morality for so long never managed to recover after the Civil War.\n\nAs Shoemaker puts it\n\n > As the individual ceased to be so closely watched by the community, estimations of honour and reputation became less publicly defined. Craig Muldrew has traced a similar decline in the social and moral significance of 'credit' (a public reputation for solvency) between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as new financial institutions developed to guarantee financial transactions. As he suggests, these changes might usefully be interpreted as part of the same process that created the modern notion of the individual, whose identity is determined by the inner, 'true' self.\n\nBy the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution had resensitized the minds of English people to the fragility of \u201cthe great family of the public,\u201d the very \u201cprivacy\u201d of the marriage contract seemed to argue against the intrusions of public law. \u201cAdultery ceased to be a part of the history of cuckoldry and became a domestic tragedy, less a matter for public scorn (though that was still there) and more a part of private pain.\u201d\n\nIn the context of a private, personal pain, the image of the cuckolded husband and the community and group humiliation that came along with it began to fall apart. The shame was individual and within the family, and did not need to be reinforced or bestowed on an individual by a larger community. \n\nHowever, cuckold as an insult did not die off completely everywhere in the English speaking world. In fact, the term remained in vogue, in particular places. \n\nOne of those places was the American South, where the danger of black men sleeping with white women remained a paramount bogeyman \u2013 and still does. As you might suspect, this lead to the fetish and a porn genre that has heavy ties to humiliation and racism. A cuckold video usually involves an impotent and humiliated white man watching as his wife sleeps with a larger more powerful black man or \u201cBBC.\u201d \n\nEdit: removed something that was a bit too far over the current politics line :) \n\n\nSources:\n\nFashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740 - - - David M Turner\n\n\n\n\nThe Secret History of Domesticity--Michael McKeon\n\n\nThe Family, Sex, and Marriage \u2013 Lawrence Stone\n\n\nThe Decline of the Public Insult In London \u2013 Robert Shoemaker\n\n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool#/media/File:Ducking-Stool_1_\\(PSF\\).png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/William_Hogarth._Hudibras_Encounters_the_Skimmington.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool#/media/File:Old_woman_draught_at_Ratcliffe_Highway.png"]]}
{"q_id": "aja184", "title": "Are bacteria more resistant to UV radiation than eukaryotes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aja184/are_bacteria_more_resistant_to_uv_radiation_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eetxi4r", "eetys2t", "eeu7tjp"], "score": [3, 2, 4], "text": ["I would say the opposite. Eukaryotes have more advanced and complicated mechanisms for correcting their DNA after damage. \n\nThere are a ton of controls that go into DNA replication and eukaryotes have a few more controls that would halt replication and repair the DNA if there was damage", "might this simply be a perception thing due to the fact that the scales and proportionality are too dissimilar to compare as equals.\n\nyes, bacteria can survive exposure to mass ratios far above what large organisms can sustain.\n\nthe same can be said of their ability to survive drop and impact forces, but we know this is an illusion.", "From a lethal perspective, I can't really say. However, this is a very interesting evolutionary question. Bacteria are very hard to kill, and some spores will survive high levels of irradiation. Although penetration is an important component of UV resistant, for bacteria the key is on mutation impact. There are 2 ways (maybe more) that UV can kill you. By destroying your cells or burning you. UV is \"citotoxic\" because it causes errors in DNA replication. In general bacteria are much more tolerant to errors in DNA replication the eukaryotes. Contrary to the complexity rationale, complexity is the problem. The more complex an organism is, the more interactions exists between its pieces, you brake one, you brake the whole thing. You can thing of bacteria and viruses even more so as simpler machines. Simpler organisms can withstand much higher mutation rates than complex eukaryotes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jgtyb", "title": "why are medical bills ridiculously expensive if no one can afford them in the first place?", "selftext": "We all need insurance to pay for us so why are they high prices?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jgtyb/eli5why_are_medical_bills_ridiculously_expensive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbejakl", "cbejdm5", "cbekcdu", "cbem5cy", "cbemeok", "cbenax1", "cbeo8gx", "cbeobyc", "cber6zb", "cbes2s1"], "score": [178, 15, 27, 2, 4, 2, 4, 9, 4, 2], "text": ["Insurance **is** the reason.  Insurance removes the patient from the cost of treatment.  When was the last time you think someone shopped around for an X-Ray?  They don't.  How much is an X-Ray?  Who cares, I pay $X per month for insurance and they take care of it.\n\nDue to this, there is very little downward pressure on prices as the people doing the \"purchasing\" are not price sensitive.", "I posted an answer in /r/wtf.  While not the only thing, It has to do with doctor billing methods.  Insruance pays what you bill them up to their negotiated rate for a CPC (procedure code).  The thing is a doctor does not know what insurance will pay what for what code if anything so they pile everything in the bill. \n\nFor example if an ER doctor sets a broken arm they will bill $4,000.  The negotiated rate may be $400.  That means in exchange for the \"privilage\" of being a BCBS network hospital you agree to fix a broken arm for $400.  The doctor wil get a $400 check and write the rest off as a loss.  If the doctor would bill $200 the insurance company will just give them $200.  Another insurance company might pay $800.  Another might pay $600 for a complete care package including any necessary visits after setting the arm.  Finally, medicare might pay $500.  You never know!\n\nSomeone without insurance gets the whole bill for $4000.  They can usually negotiate it down as well but not everyone knows this.\n\nDrug prices are also through the roof, but that's another discussion.\n\nHere's my post on /r/wtf _URL_0_\n\nCheck out _URL_1_", "It's important to realize how incredible some of the things that are being done in medicine that weren't possible even 100 years ago and thus it makes sense to be pricey, but here's a quick explanation.\nFirst, I recommend every American reads [the healthcare handbook](_URL_0_) which was written by two medical students recently at Washington University in St. Louis - it breaks the American Healthcare system down beautifully.\n\nTo give you a quicker read though: There are two large areas of why healthcare (medical bills) are expensive.\n\n1. Those present in any system of healthcare:\n**Equipment** : The incredible equipment we have today takes lots of money and time to develop and drug development leads to patent laws and thus the healthcare provider must make back their money to pay for all of their expensive equipment and your drugs. \n**Training** In the U.S. to become a physician you need a bachelors degree followed by four years of medical school and a **minimum** of 3 year residency. four years of med school can run you well into a $250k, average indebtedness hovers above $100k and residencies are 85+ hour work weeks for below minimum wage.\n\n2. Unique to the U.S. and why bills are super high? \nIn the U.S. due to our mostly private healthcare system, large HMOs and Insurance companies play a game with hospitals. Because they can guarantee a large number of patients and must pay the bill, they negotiate with healthcare providers to actually only pay a fraction. The provider then raises it's rates and the cycle repeats. Those without insurance get screwed.\ntdlr: A small fraction of the U.S. is stuck actually footing those huge bills and large HMOs and Insurance companies pay them and although they're expensive they normally still make a profit because so many people are paying them premiums as a backup\n**Overhead** : The U.S. has a huge overhead cost in healthcare (due to how confusing and mixed up our billing is as a private industry).\n\n", "Hospitals expect to have a certain amount of bills go unpaid. They're required to provide emergency medical treatment to anyone who needs it, regardless of their ability to pay. However, if someone doesn't have insurance and can't pay their medical bill, it's probably going to ultimately go unpaid. Hospitals have to cover the costs of these bills (which can legitimately be expensive without the ridiculous inflation, things like MRIs and some prescriptions are extremely costly) so they inflate the prices of the bills of everyone, knowing that the people with insurance will have it covered and won't mind too much while the hospital makes enough extra on these procedures to provide care to people who can't pay. It's a win win for everyone except the people who are uninsured and are stuck trying to pay the massive hospital bills. It's kind of a cyclic problem.", "It's not a free market.", "A similar reason to why 24-hour pet hospitals charge a small fortune for even small procedures: Who is going to choose money over their well-being, or the well-being of someone they care for?\n\nIt's essentially a monopoly run by people who are telling you to pay up, or watch someone / yourself suffer and go without.", "To put it in the words of my dad (and this is only part of the reason):\n\n\"True, that little bottle of pills might only cost one dollar to produce, but the research it took to make the first one cost millions.\"", "1. This is a bad question.  The correct question is \"why does US medical care cost 1.4x as much in terms of GDP as other countries?\"\n\n2. the answer is complicated, but the biggest contributor is simply that medical procedures cost more in the USA.  Not malpractice, not fancier treatments. [Merkins pay 2x more for a colonoscopy than the French](_URL_0_).\n\n3. Bills have nothing to do with costs of services.  Bills reflect cost shifting.  Your aspirin costs $200 because someone else can't pay for their emergency room visit.\n\n3. Malpractice and defensive medicine are minor effects.\n\n4. the law gives providers (hospitals) local monopolies by preventing new hospitals, under the theory that too many beds leads to over-utilization.   But hospitals then have no competition. \n\n4. US doctors are pushed into specialties, because of pay differentials and huge debts.  And they like the money.   Specialists do expensive stuff.   But doctors' salaries alone are less than 10% of US medical costs.  The stuff doctors do costs much more, of course.\n\n5. Fee-for-service rather than salaries encourages more procedures.\n\n6. The antagonistic relationship between providers and insurers means that there exist 2 hostile bureaucracies fighting each other, on your dollar.\n\n7. Hospitals are usually 'non-profits' but their executives like to maximize cash flow (and their own pay).   \n\n8. Grandpa's respirator isn't shut off soon enough.\n\n", "The providers know you, the patient/consumer, can't afford these.  In fact the insurance companies can't either, but the providers are trying to milk out as much as they can.  They are trying to capture as much of the [economic surplus](_URL_0_) as possible.\n\nIn negotations for price, the rule of thumb is to always come in higher than what you want because the other party will try to lower the price.  This applies to healthcare.\n\nWhenever a healthcare provider renders a service, they send a claim to the insurance company you have on file.  This could be private carriers like AETNA and BCBS or public ones like Medicaid and Medicare.  Say they send a claim with a list of items like this:\n\n- Procedure 1 - $10,000\n- Procedure 2 - $ 5,000\n- Procedure 3 - $ 2,500\n\nThe insurance company will only cover as much as it is obligated to under contract, and it has max payouts for every procedure.  So I have insurance company HealthShield.  HealthShield receives the claim, and sends back an [EOB (Explanation of Benefits)](_URL_1_).  The EOB says that HealthShield will pay the following:\n\n- Procedure 1 - $8,000\n- Procedure 2 - $4,800\n- Procedure 3 - $2,500\n\nSo the healthcare provider gets it back and sees that all of Procedure 3 was covered.  That means that HealthShield's max payout could be higher, so the provider wants to charge more in order to not leave money on the table.  What about Procedures 1 and 2?  They weren't entirely paid for?  The provider expected this.  They can either try to file another claim with a secondary insurance (some people have more than one), they could write it off (like the $200 for Procedure 2), or they can directly bill the patient.\n\nBecause of inflation and government ineptitude, this becomes a ratcheting effect that continuously raises prices.\n\nThat is why medical bills are ridiculously expensive.\n\n===========\n\nA little extra for you (not so ELI5ish):\n\nIn order to capture as much economic surplus as possible, they need to have different rates for different insurances (including government ones).  Different rates also occur because insurance companies have leverage and can get lower rates for the procedures they are contractually obliged to pay by guaranteeing bulk quantity of said procedure.  Because insurance companies have leverage to lower rates, and because providers need to avoid the appearance of fraud for arbitrarily assigning rates, the providers gouge the price to the uninsured.\n\nThat is why medical bills are ludicrously expensive for the uninsured.\n\n===========\n\nSource: I'm a medical billing software programmer\n\nEdit: clarified grammar\n\nAlso, when I said write off, I should have been more clear.  Because of the different types of insurance that prefer certain providers and negotiate better rates, the provider agrees to accept whatever the amount happens to be and isn't allowed to bill the patient for the remainder.  This is not a tax deduction (that I'm aware of).", "A bit surprised that no one has mentioned the [ChargeMaster](_URL_1_).  This is the pricing system that hospitals use for EVERYTHING -- often at a steep mark-up. This article published by TIME really changed my perspective: [Bitter Pill](_URL_0_). It offers insight at why there are 100x mark-ups for a single aspirin and how to avoid paying some of your medical bills. \n\n\nThere are *some* reasons that prices must be marked up in hospitals -- not all justified by the ChargeMaster.  First, there are strict regulations for hospitals. Pills pass through multiple hands before every reaching your bedside. And those pills are the ones that are patented exclusively for years and cost 70x more than the generic brand. \n\nThere are many employees behind the scenes who help make a hospital operate smoothly. There has to be security, maintenance, accountants, marketers, etc. to promote and sustain the hospital. The BOD will get paid hundreds of thousands for their service to the hospital. However, the large hospitals keep on growing.\n\n\nThis growth is because when a hospital turns a profit they expand. Hell, it's hard not to turn a profit at the insane rates they charge. Hospitals are either non-profit or public (governmental) and neither of them are very fond of having excess money at the end of the fiscal year. So, they reinvest within their own walls and become more and more bloated every single year. Medical bills then remain expensive to support all the additional costs that a hospital has (although there is very little accountability on whether the costs are justifiable).\n\n\nMedical bills are also expensive to cover the cost of those without insurance or a means to pay their bills. Healthcare is a very political subject but there is no beating around the bush for some facts. When a homeless person comes in for a heart attack, that bill is incurred yet unpaid. Every other patient is left picking up that tab. In a large city like Chicago, there are thousands of people who go into the ER every year for gunshots, heart attacks, broken bones with bills that are unpaid. Hospitals account for these costs by adding onto other patients bills.\n\n**TL;DR Chargemaster rapes your wallet to support bloated hospitals under strict regulations that give medical care to EVERYONE (even the poor) on your dime.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1jgeeg/the_price_of_a_45_minute_outpatient_procedure_to/cbeh72z", "http://truecostofhealthcare.org/"], ["http://www.amazon.com/Health-Care-Handbook-Elisabeth-Askin/dp/0615650937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375328831&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+health+care+handbook"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/health/colonoscopies-explain-why-us-leads-the-world-in-health-expenditures.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanation_of_benefits_(insurance\\)"], ["http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CCwQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Flivingwithmcl.com%2FBitterPill.pdf&amp;ei=emb6UbrWKYTJygG13IDADg&amp;usg=AFQjCNHkcmib6apIahFMfjFSO5J_FA25fQ&amp;bvm=bv.50165853,d.aWc", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster"]]}
{"q_id": "rnsfw", "title": "why does april fools' day end after midday?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rnsfw/eli5_why_does_april_fools_day_end_after_midday/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c479ivn", "c479kg8", "c479r6n", "c479uao", "c479zro", "c47a0tq", "c47a1je", "c47a1zf", "c47ace4", "c47alx1", "c47amt1", "c47b92m", "c47br05", "c47bst6", "c47btlw", "c47bueb", "c47c8ul", "c47cl5s", "c47d9qm", "c47d9qu"], "score": [77, 42, 10, 8, 87, 37, 142, 224, 4, 41, 72, 35, 15, 5, 2, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["..Because it's annoying as hell.", "So people can get shit done instead of having to second-guess everything someone tells them, or peak around every corner. That crap gets old, fast.", "It doesnt for me. And that is why no one wants to hang out with me entire april. :(", "because everyone gets bored of it around midday. ", "after midday everyone already knows it's a fools day. so they just stop.", "I see what you did there.", "Because that's the time when everyone's worked out it's April Fools day, and then the people who have been tricked try to do their jokes, only to be told it ends at midday.", "When mummy and daddy get sick of silly pranks pulled by their children they make up rules such as this one.", "What's even worse is that it's going to hit on Monday next year.  I think I'm just going to take a vacation day.", "You don't want somebody to explain it like you're five, you just want them to answer your question. ", "I'm sorry but... [/r/answers](/r/answers)  or even [/r/AskReddit](/r/AskReddit) at a stretch. But this question is not for this subreddit. Really, just no.", "A lot of people are taking this to be an April Fool's day prank... just to be clear, April Fool's day *does* end after midday (here in the UK at least), so I don't think the OP is trying to fool us.", "I was told (UK here) that if you fool somebody after midday it is you who is the fool or something. ", "Everyone that says it ends at midday is just jealous because they're not awesome enough to think of funny shit to pull, and use it as a defense.", "I've always hated the \"ends at midday\" thing since I first heard about it a few years ago. Why take something as great and precious as April Fools' Day and end it so much earlier than necessary?! A full day is barely long enough to begin with.", "Because Game of Thrones Season 2 starts tonight and it better not fucking be an April Fool's Day joke or there will be riots.", "r/explainlikeimfive has drifted a long way from where it started. It's become no different from r/answers.", "When did r/explainlikeimfive become r/circlejerk?", "This is a prime example of the kinds of posts that don't belong here! This has nothing to do with explaining like you are 5. This belongs in [/r/AskReddit](/r/AskReddit) \n\n\n[See this post...](_URL_0_)", "Because fool me once, shame on you. Fool me after midday... you can't get fooled again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive//comments/jqy5x/attn_this_subreddit_is_for_explaining_complicated/"], []]}
{"q_id": "m2c8m", "title": "Would it be possible to create an entirely new organ which has a different function from ones that exist?(for a human)", "selftext": "Would it be possible to implant gills on a human, I'm not really sure about what other examples to say, I'm not very creative.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/m2c8m/would_it_be_possible_to_create_an_entirely_new/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2xjkhd", "c2xl748", "c2xl8j4", "c2xlest", "c2xjkhd", "c2xl748", "c2xl8j4", "c2xlest"], "score": [6, 5, 2, 2, 6, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Depends what you mean by organ.\n\nWe already have artificial \"organs\" that regulate heartbeat, deliver medicine, or suppress excessive brain activity.\n\nThey are relatively simple today, but no doubt they will get more complex in the future.", "We've inserted neodymium magnets into people so that they can feel EM fields. I'd consider that to be a sense organ.\n\n\nAt least one person is trying to get a subdermal compass implanted using said magnets.", "To create a new organ would imply a need. Modern physiology has developed due to a 'need.' (In the sense that those mutations that led to  modern organs were selected for somehow.)\n\nSo the answer to your question is, yes, in theory. If say, over the next 10,000 years a selection process developed for a mutation where an organ with multiple functions were to split and develop a new organ to take some of the functions, then voila. This organ could then mutate in it's own way and 100,000 years from now it's function wouldn't even have been imaginable today.\n\nWhether or not humans could genetically engineer a new organ today, is an entirely different question. It's possible, I guess, but it would only be pursued if an actual need were to be identified that a new organ would fulfill.", "I'm not an expert, but I expect the body would reject it as it is foreign. We have what we need. The body can tell between different kinds of cells (ie-nerve cells, skin cells etc) You would have to use some existing cells if you wanted it to take, but they wouldn't function properly, as they adapted over eons.", "Depends what you mean by organ.\n\nWe already have artificial \"organs\" that regulate heartbeat, deliver medicine, or suppress excessive brain activity.\n\nThey are relatively simple today, but no doubt they will get more complex in the future.", "We've inserted neodymium magnets into people so that they can feel EM fields. I'd consider that to be a sense organ.\n\n\nAt least one person is trying to get a subdermal compass implanted using said magnets.", "To create a new organ would imply a need. Modern physiology has developed due to a 'need.' (In the sense that those mutations that led to  modern organs were selected for somehow.)\n\nSo the answer to your question is, yes, in theory. If say, over the next 10,000 years a selection process developed for a mutation where an organ with multiple functions were to split and develop a new organ to take some of the functions, then voila. This organ could then mutate in it's own way and 100,000 years from now it's function wouldn't even have been imaginable today.\n\nWhether or not humans could genetically engineer a new organ today, is an entirely different question. It's possible, I guess, but it would only be pursued if an actual need were to be identified that a new organ would fulfill.", "I'm not an expert, but I expect the body would reject it as it is foreign. We have what we need. The body can tell between different kinds of cells (ie-nerve cells, skin cells etc) You would have to use some existing cells if you wanted it to take, but they wouldn't function properly, as they adapted over eons."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7g39f3", "title": "Does tectonic movement destroy ancient asteroid craters?", "selftext": "This might be a silly question with an obvious answer, but hear me out. Plate tectonics are responsible for shaping and moving the crust of our earth, correct? If they change the shape of our earth so much, how can we know which craters cause certain extinctions? For example the Chicxulub Crater, which supposedly caused a mass extinction, might not actually be as old as we assume it is. Wouldn't the moving plates, after millions of years, change the topography so much as to make craters unrecognizable? How do we know the Chicxulub Crater isn't a more recent addition to earth's landscaping?\n\nEdit: fixed a fragmented sentence. \nPS. this isn't meant to sound precocious or knit-picky. I have very little knowledge of this subject and I'm genuinely curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7g39f3/does_tectonic_movement_destroy_ancient_asteroid/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqg98qm"], "score": [16], "text": ["Greetings /u/Jean_the_Wanderer,\n\nThere are quite a few things of note mixed up together in your question, so we'll just take them sequentially if you don't mind:\n\n >  A) - Does tectonic movement destroy ancient asteroid craters?\n\nAbsolutely. This is really a fundamental consequence of Plate Tectonics. Consider for instance [this map of the Earth Impact database](_URL_4_). Notice how the ocean floor (75% of the Earths surface) is pretty much devoid of significant cratering? That's because one of the fundamental tenets of Plate Tectonics is that older crust gets recycled into the mantle after being subducted, while new oceanic crust is produced in spreading centers. Oceanic crust in general is very young relatively to the Age of the Earth (4.6 Ga). [The oldest oceanic crust on Earth is, to my knowledge, in the eastern Med Basin and is about 280 Ma. The oldest oceanic crust in the Atlantic is about 180 Ma. The overwhelming majority of oceanic rocks are somewhere between 40 and 100 Ma.](_URL_9_) As I said, The Earth is 4.6 *Billion* years old. Rocks get destroyed, and new rocks replace them, all the time. \n\nThat being said, continental crust behave differently. It is thicker, less dense and tends to preserve longer. [All of the contenders for \"Worlds oldest rock\" we have are from continental crust](_URL_7_). This is not a coincidence. \n\nThis does not mean, however, that the craters themselves may not progressively become obscured by various geological processes. Consider for instance the Sudbury crater. Initially circular, just like any other crater, it was laterally compressed by the Grenville Orogeny which peaked about 1 Ga ago [see: Deutsch, A., et al. \"The Sudbury structure (Ontario, Canada): A tectonically deformed multi-ring impact basin.\" Geologische Rundschau 84.4 (1995): 697-709. - consider in particular page 698  &  702](_URL_5_).\n\nAnother one of my favorites is the Charlevoix crater, next door to my home town. [Notice how the SE half of the crater is missing?](_URL_8_) The impact is about 335 Ma old, and part of it was obliterated by mountain building just south of the St-Lawrence which happened about at the same time, in the Appalachians. Part of it was obliterated later, about 65 Ma ago, when the Atlantic opened and the St-Lawrence valley rifted open a bit.\n\nThere are other processes at work as well, particularly erosion and burial by sediments.\n\nOne thing is, we have a comparable. The Moon has been subjected to the same meteoric bombardments (some of which were *really* something, like [the Late Heavy Bombardment](_URL_1_) for instance) as the Earth, but does not have an active geology. What gets cratered on the Moon stays cratered. The intensity of cratering on the Moon thus provides a baseline to compare the terrestrial crater database with.  We are not even close to the same order of magnitude. There has been a lot of crustal recycling going on through erosion, subduction, mountain building and metamorphism.\n\n >  B) - Plate tectonics are responsible for shaping and moving the crust of our earth, correct? If they change the shape of our earth so much, how can we know which craters cause certain extinctions? \n\nThat brings the question to a whole other level. First we have to focus on a specific extinction event. The K-T event is the classic, because that was the first one where an impact model was seriously considered by Alvarez. Notice that back then, we didn't even know of the Chicxulub crater's age, it was poorly studied and it's age was unknown, in part because it is covered by thick sedimentary cover rock sequences, and in part at the bottom of the gulf of Mexico - it also had only just been found in the 70's. [What Alvarez found was a very thin layer intercalated within the sedimentary rock sequence, right at the K-T discontinuity, which has peculiar geochemical characteristics](_URL_6_). Because the layer was continuous, and located at a horizon of known age, we could already from the get go start wondering about what that layer told us about the event. And the geochemical signature spoke of meteorite! It was enriched in a family of elements which are more heavily concentrated in primitive and undifferentiated geo-materials such as meteorites, and less so in evolved geo-materials such as our continental lithosphere, with shocked quartz and microspherulites. They really stood out like a sore thumb. But all we had was a layer of ejecta. We didn't know it's source. Thus began the hunt for the crater, which took years. \n\nIt took a lot of effort to link Chicxulub to the KT-Event. The age of the crater had to be determined, which required samples, which required deep drilling. The crater had to be found to be relevant in the first place, which was notably established by the concentrations of cosmogenic elements such as Iridium which were found show a gradient (both concentration and thickness) towards the impact site. [The story has been told in more detail than I care to delve in here](_URL_3_).\n\n >  C) - For example the Chicxulub Crater, which supposedly caused a mass extinction, might not actually be as old as we assume it is. Wouldn't the moving plates, after millions of years, change the topography so much as to make craters unrecognizable? How do we know the Chicxulub Crater isn't a more recent addition to earth's landscaping?\n\nA goodly part of this question has been addressed in \"B\".\n\nBut, yes, the craters topography has been changed quite a lot in the last 65 Ma. Part has subsided under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan part is filled with tertiary sediments. The best way to see the crater remains though it's geophysical signature (see: [Gulick, S. P. S., et al. \"Geophysical characterization of the Chicxulub impact crater.\" Reviews of Geophysics 51.1 (2013): 31-52](_URL_0_) - their figure 1 in particular). Age, as I said, was know for the ejecta from stratigraphic concordance. The melted rocks found in the crater were dated independantly through Ar/Ar geochronology and returned an age of 64.98 +/- 0.05 Ma, an age which was replicated from other source, and concordant with that of the ejecta layer (see: [Swisher, Carl C., et al. \"Coeval 40Ar/39Ar ages of 65.0 million years ago from Chicxulub crater melt rock and Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary tektites.\" Science 257.5072 (1992): 954-958](_URL_2_)). We also have the age of the rocks underlying the crater, those which filled it up after the impact, and well dated fossils on either side of the iridium layer. It makes for a pretty compelling case.\n\nEDIT: Typos. I can't spell until I'm fully caffeinated."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/science/G352A/article.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17789640", "https://www.space.com/19681-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-chicxulub-crater.html", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Earth_Impact_Database_world_map.svg", "https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Grieve/publication/301824024_An_impact_model_of_the_Sudbury_structure/links/57309a7108aed286ca0db63a.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_dated_rocks", "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobl%C3%A8me_de_Charlevoix#/media/File:Astrobl%C3%A8me_de_Charlevoix.jpg", "https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/ocean_age/data/2008/ngdc-generated_images/whole_world/2008_age_of_oceans_plates.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "jnwnr", "title": "why women underperform men in every single sport, even those which do not require greater physical strength (like the high dive).", "selftext": "I know that in most sports, men's greater average strength and stamina factors in heavily.  But I was watching [this](_URL_0_) video and got to wondering - why is the women's record 54 feet less than the men's?  Are women selling themselves short, or is there something physiological going on here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jnwnr/eli5_why_women_underperform_men_in_every_single/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2dnw0y", "c2dnwgk", "c2dobet", "c2dom1i", "c2dp0du", "c2dpbzy", "c2dpk84", "c2dqipp", "c2dnw0y", "c2dnwgk", "c2dobet", "c2dom1i", "c2dp0du", "c2dpbzy", "c2dpk84", "c2dqipp"], "score": [44, 61, 6, 18, 11, 12, 2, 14, 44, 61, 6, 18, 11, 12, 2, 14], "text": ["I'm breaking the rules by speculating...And you might want to x-post this to AskScience, but here's my stab at it:\n\nObviously men's greater average strength and stamina factor heavily in most sports. Males also have denser and stronger bones, tendons and ligaments. Men also have higher peripheral pain tolerance. In general, men also have better spatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination.\n\nAnother big factor could be testosterone...Testosterone makes people more competitive.", "I think it has to do with the number of competitors each gender produces.  There are just more men who compete in sports.\n\nThink of two high school football teams.  One high school has 200 students in the student body.  The other high school has 4000.  Even though there are only 11 players on the field per team at any given time in a football game, the 4,000 student school's team will likely be better because it has a larger talent pool to draw from.\n\nCompetition also plays a factor.  Most of the time, men and women don't see themselves directly competing.  When you're better than everyone else you see yourself competing with, it's hard to push yourself further.  Think of if you're in high school running a mile race.  You run it in 5 minutes and all of your competitors run it in 7 minutes.  Clearly your better than your competition, but had you been running against people who can also run it in 5 minutes, your time would likely have been faster because you were being pushed.", "Men are also better at chess and Scrabble.", "men tend to be raised to value sports. we watch them on tv every weekend, get very enthusiastic about teams, we look up to the athletes in schools and on tv, we reward them with lots of cash... there are a lot of incentives and social pressures for men to be involved in athletics. so, a lot of men do sports.\n\nmeanwhile, women are raised not to value sports as much. it's just not as important to them. plus, the attributes that tend to make people good at most sports (strength, speed, competitiveness) are often viewed as not womanly. so, those that are good at sports are going against their own gender, in a vague way.\n\nlastly, talents feed into other talents. if you have a lot of strength, it's easier for you to be fast. if you're improving your hand-eye coordination, you'll probably be getting better at making precise movements with the rest of your body.\n\nso, men have a larger group of people involved, tend to value it more, get better incentives for being involved, and have related talents (strength, speed) that feed into other talents (precision, agility).\n\n**TL;DR**:men tend to do better than women at most sports because they have some biological advantages that combine with social advantages.\n\n*PS*, the high dive is scored on difficulty. doing a lot of twists and maneuvers requires a lot of strength, which men have more of. however, women are much better physiologically than men at super-endurance events, which some scientists think links to the biological tools to deal with childbirth.", "I've put adult parts in square brackets.\n\nWell Little Jimmy, from my understanding this stems from two reason.\n\nThe first: You know how the boys in your school like the girls and sometimes you'll do things to try to impress them [part of natural selection]. This happens a lot for boys (and men) and because of that there is a much larger number of males doing these physical activities than there are women (who typically try to impress guys in other ways [like looking healthy with makeup and fertile with bras and hair dye]). Because there are so many more men doing these things there are more people who can be excellent at it, ATribeCalledGreg describes this quite well, and also there is a lot more competition among men which pushes them to perform better.\n[More reading:\n*_URL_1_\n*_URL_0_]\n\nThe second: This one is a lot more controversial and actually describes a situation where men are generally both better AND worse than women at these things. Back when humans just started existing people had to evolve to survive. When humans evolved they didn't just automatically become better, each time a child was born it had a chance to be less good or more good than it's parent. What would happen then is the best children would have more babies with better partners and the less good ones would have less babies (if they got to have babies at all). This would happen over and over again and over time there were more and more better children. If children didn't become less and more good [mutate] this whole thing would not have worked [evolution]. There is a theory that this was more important to men because we are the ones that have to impress women (like we talked about before). What this means is that every time a baby boy is born it has a bigger chance to be better and a bigger chance to be worse but a lower change to be average [standard deviation is higher].  \n\n[More reading: _URL_2_]\n\nTL;DR: There are a lot more men doing these sports because of our evolutionary need to impress women through physical activities and the standard deviation for men's performance at most things in life is much larger than that for women (i.e. men tend to be both better and worse than women at most things where women tend to be more average).", "\"Well, 'cause if girls did it, what would guys do to impress them?\" -Clueless", "The high dive requires moving your body into various rotations and twists.  That takes force, and force requires muscle.\n\nAll sports (even most of those that are debatable as such) require physical exertion, and that (generally) favors men.  Add to that the fact that more men are competing than women, and I think the case is already made.", "Biology Guy, reporting in again. \n\nIt's not every single sport. But you have a valid point. Here's why!\nScientists can scan to see what part of the brain is working when you do a task, or think of something. We know from medicine in a general way what parts of the brain do what.\nThey found that men and women use different parts of the brain for the exact same tasks sometimes. \nNow, the part of the brain that men use more than women , the scientists and doctors know that part has to do with how we think of the locations of things. (How objects orient themselves in space, ELI12)\nMen almost always perform better on tests that involve this type of thing too. \n\nLots of sports require quick brain work on where to run to, or how to place your feet when you dive into the pool, or other things like that. So often, even in cases where a man and woman are the same size, weight, and have the same amount of practice for some sport, in lots of cases the women comes out a little bit short. \n\nIt's valid to note that it really depends on the sport. There are very small differences between what a man can do and a woman can do in some sports (0.8 seconds difference between some sprint world records).\n\nOther sports have massive differences. Even the greatest female tennis player that has ever lived would be very hard pressed to beat the 300th ranked best male tennis player. [See this and related articles for info.](_URL_0_)\n", "I'm breaking the rules by speculating...And you might want to x-post this to AskScience, but here's my stab at it:\n\nObviously men's greater average strength and stamina factor heavily in most sports. Males also have denser and stronger bones, tendons and ligaments. Men also have higher peripheral pain tolerance. In general, men also have better spatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination.\n\nAnother big factor could be testosterone...Testosterone makes people more competitive.", "I think it has to do with the number of competitors each gender produces.  There are just more men who compete in sports.\n\nThink of two high school football teams.  One high school has 200 students in the student body.  The other high school has 4000.  Even though there are only 11 players on the field per team at any given time in a football game, the 4,000 student school's team will likely be better because it has a larger talent pool to draw from.\n\nCompetition also plays a factor.  Most of the time, men and women don't see themselves directly competing.  When you're better than everyone else you see yourself competing with, it's hard to push yourself further.  Think of if you're in high school running a mile race.  You run it in 5 minutes and all of your competitors run it in 7 minutes.  Clearly your better than your competition, but had you been running against people who can also run it in 5 minutes, your time would likely have been faster because you were being pushed.", "Men are also better at chess and Scrabble.", "men tend to be raised to value sports. we watch them on tv every weekend, get very enthusiastic about teams, we look up to the athletes in schools and on tv, we reward them with lots of cash... there are a lot of incentives and social pressures for men to be involved in athletics. so, a lot of men do sports.\n\nmeanwhile, women are raised not to value sports as much. it's just not as important to them. plus, the attributes that tend to make people good at most sports (strength, speed, competitiveness) are often viewed as not womanly. so, those that are good at sports are going against their own gender, in a vague way.\n\nlastly, talents feed into other talents. if you have a lot of strength, it's easier for you to be fast. if you're improving your hand-eye coordination, you'll probably be getting better at making precise movements with the rest of your body.\n\nso, men have a larger group of people involved, tend to value it more, get better incentives for being involved, and have related talents (strength, speed) that feed into other talents (precision, agility).\n\n**TL;DR**:men tend to do better than women at most sports because they have some biological advantages that combine with social advantages.\n\n*PS*, the high dive is scored on difficulty. doing a lot of twists and maneuvers requires a lot of strength, which men have more of. however, women are much better physiologically than men at super-endurance events, which some scientists think links to the biological tools to deal with childbirth.", "I've put adult parts in square brackets.\n\nWell Little Jimmy, from my understanding this stems from two reason.\n\nThe first: You know how the boys in your school like the girls and sometimes you'll do things to try to impress them [part of natural selection]. This happens a lot for boys (and men) and because of that there is a much larger number of males doing these physical activities than there are women (who typically try to impress guys in other ways [like looking healthy with makeup and fertile with bras and hair dye]). Because there are so many more men doing these things there are more people who can be excellent at it, ATribeCalledGreg describes this quite well, and also there is a lot more competition among men which pushes them to perform better.\n[More reading:\n*_URL_1_\n*_URL_0_]\n\nThe second: This one is a lot more controversial and actually describes a situation where men are generally both better AND worse than women at these things. Back when humans just started existing people had to evolve to survive. When humans evolved they didn't just automatically become better, each time a child was born it had a chance to be less good or more good than it's parent. What would happen then is the best children would have more babies with better partners and the less good ones would have less babies (if they got to have babies at all). This would happen over and over again and over time there were more and more better children. If children didn't become less and more good [mutate] this whole thing would not have worked [evolution]. There is a theory that this was more important to men because we are the ones that have to impress women (like we talked about before). What this means is that every time a baby boy is born it has a bigger chance to be better and a bigger chance to be worse but a lower change to be average [standard deviation is higher].  \n\n[More reading: _URL_2_]\n\nTL;DR: There are a lot more men doing these sports because of our evolutionary need to impress women through physical activities and the standard deviation for men's performance at most things in life is much larger than that for women (i.e. men tend to be both better and worse than women at most things where women tend to be more average).", "\"Well, 'cause if girls did it, what would guys do to impress them?\" -Clueless", "The high dive requires moving your body into various rotations and twists.  That takes force, and force requires muscle.\n\nAll sports (even most of those that are debatable as such) require physical exertion, and that (generally) favors men.  Add to that the fact that more men are competing than women, and I think the case is already made.", "Biology Guy, reporting in again. \n\nIt's not every single sport. But you have a valid point. Here's why!\nScientists can scan to see what part of the brain is working when you do a task, or think of something. We know from medicine in a general way what parts of the brain do what.\nThey found that men and women use different parts of the brain for the exact same tasks sometimes. \nNow, the part of the brain that men use more than women , the scientists and doctors know that part has to do with how we think of the locations of things. (How objects orient themselves in space, ELI12)\nMen almost always perform better on tests that involve this type of thing too. \n\nLots of sports require quick brain work on where to run to, or how to place your feet when you dive into the pool, or other things like that. So often, even in cases where a man and woman are the same size, weight, and have the same amount of practice for some sport, in lots of cases the women comes out a little bit short. \n\nIt's valid to note that it really depends on the sport. There are very small differences between what a man can do and a woman can do in some sports (0.8 seconds difference between some sprint world records).\n\nOther sports have massive differences. Even the greatest female tennis player that has ever lived would be very hard pressed to beat the 300th ranked best male tennis player. [See this and related articles for info.](_URL_0_)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPS1q3QBBDo&amp;feature=related"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201101/beautiful-people-have-more-daughters", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology", "http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsten_Braasch"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201101/beautiful-people-have-more-daughters", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology", "http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsten_Braasch"]]}
{"q_id": "6zcgnw", "title": "why are we able to see where child predators live nearby? what about murderers, rapists, or robbers?", "selftext": "What makes child molesters so special? Why do even need to see where they live doesn't that endanger them? I personally feel like that's counterproductive for someone who just wants to move on as well as dangerous. Still I don't understand why it's even a thing.  At least in the US\n\nalso aren't they supposed to go door to door explaining themselves? again this seems counter productive I'd like to stay as far as away as I can from someone with a criminal record.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zcgnw/eli5why_are_we_able_to_see_where_child_predators/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmu8h1g", "dmu8q7z", "dmuew6o"], "score": [29, 9, 9], "text": ["It's because of Megan's Law. A 7 year old child named Megan Kanka was raped and killed by a paedophile. He was a repeat offender. The family fought for sex offenders to be documented and for people to be able to see who lived nearby so they can protect their children.  \n\nHer mother argued that if she had known a sex offender lived on their Street her daughter would have never been attacked.\n\nHowever, many studies show that it actually has no impact on the number of attacks. \n\nAs to why no such list is in place for murderers. Most murderers do not reoffend. There isn't the public support for such a scheme. \n\nSource: am forensic psychologist ", " > What makes child molesters so special?\n\nThe fact that people who molest children are much more likely to do it again than a murderer is to murder again.\n\nPeople who murder usually do so for reasons like revenge, or a heat-of-the-moment situation where they walk in on their spouse having sex with someone else.  They're generally not serial killers, and aren't likely to ever kill again.\n\nBy contrast, molesting children is usually done because the person is a pedophile, and that's a trait that they have that will never go away.  They'll always have the urge to have sex with children, even after serving their time.  \n\nFrom [this article](_URL_1_):\n\n > Mullane said she was able to determine that 988 convicted murderers were released from prisons in California over a 20 year period. Out of those 988, she said 1 percent were arrested for new crimes, and 10 percent were arrested for violating parole. She found **none of the 988 were rearrested for murder, and none went back to prison over the 20 year period she examined**.\n\nAnd from [this other article](_URL_0_):\n\n > The 15-year recidivism rate is 13 percent for incest perpetrators, 24 percent for rapists, and 35 percent for child molesters of boy victims.\n\nWhether or not it's *right* to have a perpetual punishment (e.g. being permanently put on a list) is a conversation for a different subreddit, but the above is why it happens.", "Because there was a national outrage over an innocent victim and America is categorically incapable of doing anything in any other situation.\n\nSo someone came up with the idea of perpetual punishment of 'child predators' and the definition has been extensively expanded to include people who got caught pissing in bushes or who got drunk and googled the wrong phrase.\n\nAs with any 'police state' punishment it can never be rescinded or lightened by individual politicians seeking re-election because that would invite their opponent to find the one person impacted by the event and run a commercial \"REP X FREED HER KILLER! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!\".\n\nIn a backward political system such as set up in our Constitution this is a one-way ratchet. You should expect to see murder lists and thief lists set up in the future, and you should expect to see shoplifters eventually put on them.\n\nIn fact some states are working on murderer and domestic violence lists as we speak."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/misunderstood-crimes/", "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/once-a-criminal-always-a-criminal/"], []]}
{"q_id": "77btix", "title": "it seems like people are much more familiar with bytes rather than bits because we use them for data storage. is there a push to use bytes to classify network speeds (i.e. 1mbps instead of 8mbps), as opposed to bits?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77btix/eli5_it_seems_like_people_are_much_more_familiar/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dokoak9", "dokoj6z", "dokqti6", "doktw5i"], "score": [6, 5, 6, 12], "text": ["I wish there would be! But in reality, I don't think there will be a push to switch. Any company that has a business predicated on how quickly their internet speed can flow (ISPs, router manufacturers, etc.) can put a number that is 8x bigger than the actual amount of traffic it can withstand. It's pretty much Marketing 101, when you can put in some extremely small fine print what the actual speed is, or even just put \"Mbps\" instead of \"MBps\" in small print, knowing the general consumer public won't know the difference. Companies would willingly have to change their marketing style to push Bits out of contention for Bytes. The market dictates this will never happen, given that the first company to do so would see significantly less business due to everyone else having inflated numbers.", "Yes, but it's completely drowned out from the marketing department.   \n\nSadly, most people are idiots. They'll see service A selling 16MB  for $20 and service B selling 2MB for $18 and they'll buy service A.  Both of which ignore that it's a rate and ignoring the \"per second\" part of the unit, because while the guys from marketing might have a point, they're also kinda idiots. \n\nWhere's my 32 nibbles per minute connection?", "If you pay for internet service, the connection can transfer a certain number of bits per unit time at maximum speed. How many bytes that translates to is not necessarily constant.\n\nStart by reviewing the [OSI model](_URL_0_). Your ISP provides a basic connection at the media layers: simply passing bits around, and routing. That is usually all.\n\nHowever, most people think in terms of the host layers. \"I am downloading this file in Chrome and it says I get X bytes/sec.\" That translates to 8X bits per second. However, that is using TCP/IP: the raw number of bits your connection can provide are not all dedicated to the contents of that file you are transferring. TCP adds overhead: each packet has timestamps and checksums, so the client knows if a packet is corrupt or was received out of order. Acknowledgement packets are sent in both directions. All of these consume bits.\n\nGoing back to your question, this is more of a perception issue than anything. Data pipes are generally measured in the number of bits they can transfer because that is what they do. Even the concept of a \"byte\" may be foreign to the physical layer in OSI, for example.\n\nPeople think in terms of bytes, because that is what their web browsers report when transferring files. A byte is the smallest addressable entity in computer memory, and files on a disk are measured in bytes, not bits. Humans are trained to think in bytes. However, overhead ensures that the number of bits at the physical layer of the network is not simply eight times the number of bytes transferred at the application layer.\n\nIf we started advertising speeds in bytes and classifying connections using bytes, it would _never_ match what people actually see in web browsers or SFTP clients. While it is possible to measure network speeds in terms of bytes, it would not really help anything and could add confusion.\n", "Your network cable doesn't know what a byte is.  It doesn't care whether you are sending 8 bits at a time, or 8000, there is no inherent notion of a byte.  Ethernet, for example, operates on octets, three bits at a time, so thinking in terms of bytes is unnatural in that context.\n\nIn addition, 100 bytes of data on your hard drive probably isn't 100 bytes on your network.  Your data is going to be put into groups, and that group will have header data, separators, error correction, etc.  That group will be put into another group, with more data, that is put into another group, with more data.  All that might be compressed, making it smaller again.  The 800 kilobits on your network are not the same as the 100 kilobytes on your disk.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model"], []]}
{"q_id": "sgbdw", "title": "What is the earliest rendering of the common penis drawing we all know? (NSFW?) ", "selftext": "[This](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sgbdw/what_is_the_earliest_rendering_of_the_common/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4duf1u", "c4dw23j", "c4dwgrr", "c4dxryn", "c4dxsi8", "c4dym53"], "score": [86, 22, 3, 6, 9, 2], "text": ["This is a pretty funny question, but it isn't without value. It is too bad you are getting downvoted because I at least think ancient graffiti is pretty fascinating.\n\nI can't tell you the earliest example, but there are Roman graffiti in Pompeii of the \"rocket ship\" type.", "The oldest I've heard of is the [Hohle phallus](_URL_0_) (NSFW? It's a stone object that vaguely resembles a penis), which admittedly is a full-scale stone phallic object, probably used as a dildo. That dates to about 26,000 BCE.", "Well, it seems relevant... so I guess I can link to a wikipedia article on [Kanamara Masuri](_URL_0_). There's a lot of little shrines and festivals like this in Japan. If you wanted to research it some more, I've heard of certain totems that are 2000 years old, but it's not my area, so I don't have much at hand to link to. ", "Really, really interesting thread here. Sometimes I forget how prominent and important dongs were in ancient culture.", "The oldest penis sculpture are believed to be 28,000 years old.  _URL_1_ \n\nThe oldest fertility statue (with boobs and a naked women) is even older, 35,000. _URL_0_\n\nEdit: I know it's not a drawing, but still a very old penis.", "I can't answer this question, but I remember seeing Titus Pullo drawing a penis on a bench in the first episode of *Rome*. That got me asking similar questions"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://benaxelrad.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/dickphoto.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4713323.stm"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanamara_Matsuri"], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1181357/Carved-figurine-dating-35-000-years-mans-oldest-known-sculpture---yes-naked-woman.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus#Archaeology"], []]}
{"q_id": "anct7d", "title": "I'm a soldier on the Western Front during WWI, and I've been hit while in no man's land. What are my chances of survival?", "selftext": "This could question could apply to any country that was on the Western Front (British Empire, Germany, France etc.). I'm going over the top in an attack and I get hit, either by machine gun fire or artillery, but I'm not dead. How likely am I to survive this ordeal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/anct7d/im_a_soldier_on_the_western_front_during_wwi_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["efsygd4", "efsyx73", "efszunx"], "score": [5, 55, 12], "text": ["As a follow up question: How would a wounded soldier get back to his trenches? Did the opposition allow for recovery of wounded? That seems unlikely. If the wound is more severe then it could be impossible to crawl back.", "EDIT: I am home now and have provided a more in depth answer as a reply. But here is the TL;DR: The quick answer to your question is that it depends on the injury you sustained. **Surprisingly if you were wounded and received treatment you had a [95% survival rate](_URL_0_)(Found under \"American medicine in the second decade...\").** If you were hit by artillery you had a 30% survival rate. If you had a limb amputated you had a 95% survival rate. Survival rate of diseases with treatment was 30%. If you were wounded on the battlefield and were beyond help (head wound, abdomen wound, artery hit), you were left there to die on the field.\n\n\n\n\nI study 20th century warfare so I\u2019ll try to give the best answer that I can. Right now I am on my phone so I can\u2019t pull up exact numbers but once I am home in an hour or so I\u2019ll expand on my answer and go into more detail. For now I will answer your question specifically to the question you asked. And most of my answer will include more influence from the US history. But once I am at my desktop and have my books I will be able to provide numbers and percentages on survival chance dependent upon injuries. \n\n\nTo get to your question, the answer to your question depends on a multitude of circumstances; so it\u2019s difficult to answer. A number of questions have to be asked to determine your chances of survival. \n\n\nWhere in no man\u2019s land are you? Are you 5ft from your side\u2019s trench or are you 200ft from it? Did you end up next to a soldier nearby to assist you? The location in which you were injured greatly affects your chances of survival. The closer you were to being able to receive aid, the time it takes before a medic begins to work on you, these things will help determine your chances of survival. Back in WW1 there was no modern day corpsman. Where there would be a trained soldier having all the tools and equipment to field stabilize someone. Durning WW1 the US in essence borrowed from the English and French system. Medical staff used stretchers to run out and grab people and bring them back to their side where they would be transported back to the med tents. And then medical staff would begin work on you. Additionally, if a med tent became overflowed with wounded it could take more time for you to receive aid, lowering chances of survival. If there was prolonged machine gun fire or artillery, it may have not been possible for you to receive help as it may have been to dangerous for them to get to you. \nThere could be some instances where some limited immediate help could be provided. Let\u2019s say you got injured and ended up in a crater left from artillery and there was someone else in the hole with you. They may be able to apply a tourniquet and bandage to your wound. Thus your chances of survival would improve. Or maybe you were shot immediately after exiting your side\u2019s trench. Someone may be able to pull you back into the trench and you\u2019d be brought back to the med tents. Like I said, right now I don\u2019t have access to the numbers so I apologize. But if you were wounded in the trench and were brought back to the med tents for better treatment, your odds of survival would greatly improve. \n\n\nWhat kind of damage did you sustain? Were you shot in the end of a limb? The chest? The head? How much blood are you losing and how long will it take for you to bleed out? The severity of your wound is another factor that determines your chance of survival. In WW1, the medical technology in combat could even be considered primal when compared to today\u2019s and even WW2\u2019s medical standards. The more severe of a wound you received, as applies to any situation even outside of war, the lower your chances of survival. But it was even worse in WW1. Since field medics weren\u2019t standard practice, bleed out rates from bullet wounds and missing limbs were high. When I am home I will provide numbers on survival rates from different types of wounds and injuries sustained. \n\n\nAnother issue that soldiers faced were the low sanitation standards in the trenches and in med tents. Sometimes in trenches it was like standing in marsh water. People were sweating in the water, bleeding in it, throwing up in it. It was an absolute breeding ground for many diseases and illnesses. Let\u2019s say you received a superficial wound like a graze from a bullet or shrapnel, or you got cut somehow. The injury you sustained may have not been enough to send you back so you continue to stay on the frontlines in the trenches. Now the wound you received is being exposed to all the bacteria that is thriving in those trenches. And then you get incredibly sick. The medical technology wasn\u2019t their yet at the time, getting sick like that could mean certain death. This sort of thing even more so extended to the wounded in the med tents. In WW1 the medical practices had almost barely evolved since the Civil War. It wasn\u2019t fully understood by nurses and doctors at the time the importance of sanitation and keeping things sterile. Salt water was the main sterilization technique used to clean wounds. And once infection set it little could be done which resulted in high numbers of lives lost. Illness was so bad that it claimed more lives than gunfire did.\n\n\nI apologize that was my answer was not incredibly extensive and as I said, I will elaborate on it when I am home. I hope this somewhat satisfies your question. \n\n\nIf you want more information on this right now, read this: _URL_1_", "The scenario leaves a lot of questions regarding assumptions. Are you asking how likely you are to survive simply being in No Man's Land, getting back to the trench, or long term (the wound, the war itself, etc)?\n\nI'll try to address each of these in turn. \n\nFirst, let's take a look at *when* you would have gone over the top. It's either part of a trench raid or probe, or it's in a larger attack on the lines. \n\nIf the attack occurred as a trench raid or probe, it would have happened overnight. You could have been strafed by machine gun fire and clipped, and possibly separated from your raiding party. In this case, you'd need to be able to very slowly pick your way back to the lines. Dangerous, but possible - and this did happen. There could be occasional illumination flares, and that (along with noise) could be the most dangerous time to be caught in the open. Soldiers would try to memorize the shapes and shadows of what they could observe at night, because the movement of the flares would shift the appearance of the shadows, causing the appearance of moving objects. When observing a part of the line, a soldier would be aware of the optical illusion caused by illumination flares and would try to spot anything out of place. Noise near the enemy trench might invite a harassing grenade. You could also easily run into an enemy raiding party, or even another friendly raiding party, although that's a little less likely since the communication was pretty good about who was going out for raids. Still...very dangerous. Pick your way quietly back to the line, whisper to your mates, and hope the enemy doesn't hear the commotion. On the other hand, it's also likely that your buddies in a raiding party (there could be as many as 20) would spend some time searching for you before they gave up. They'd bring you back if they found you (alive). \n\nNow let's examine what might happen if you were clipped by a bullet or shrapnel during a larger attack on the lines. \n\nUnlike trench raids, dawn was the standard time of attack. This means that if you went over the top and were wounded, you'd have a helluva long wait until dusk to get back to the line unnoticed. *However*, it's kind of a Hollywood assumption that this is what would have to happen for you to get back to the relative safety of the trench. \n\nMaybe you can pick your way back. The gap of No Man's Land looks different depending on where you are. The average width is 250m, but the gap could be anywhere from 50 to 500m. The closest was SEVEN METERS at Zonnebeke. \n\nNear each combatant's line, there could be as much as 100 ft of barbed wire in many bands. There would be water-filled shell holes. The terrain is pockmarked and difficult. There could be primitive land mines of sorts and unexploded ordnance. If you could walk, you would. With luck, you'd make it back without being hit again. Or caught in wire. Or stuck drowning in mud. \n\nLet's ground this for a moment: there was quite a bit of casualty collection in No Man's Land, both formally (organized stretcher bearing parties) and informally (buddies carrying buddies during battle). If you were hit during a battle, you MIGHT be carried back right away, depending on the wound. There were also frequent, informal ceasefires arranged to allow for stretcher bearer parties (including Red Cross) to enter and remove wounded. Depending on where you get stuck in No Man's Land, you might be collected and treated by the enemy - or get swapped between friendly/enemy stretcher bearers and get back to your side for treatment. \n\nSimply being in No Man's Land is very dangerous. If you are there at night, you risk being caught as a trench raider by the enemy, hurting yourself on any of the very dangerous things on the ground, and getting killed by your own side. During a pitched battle, you risk getting hit by machine gun fire, a stray or directed rifle bullet, or shrapnel if there is an artillery attack or someone tosses a grenade (note: use of grenades in WWI is more of a harassing feature than how they have been used in more recent conflicts, beginning with WWII). \n\nWe've talked about the possibilities of getting killed in No Man's Land, getting killed while trying to regain the relative safety of the trench, so now I'll turn to the longer term questions of survival. \n\nLet's say you are among \"average\" British troops. The casualty(dead and wounded) rate is 56% and the over all death rate is 12.5%. \n\nA significant number (not quite 30%) of simple leg or arm wounds could result in death. American statistics show that as many as 44% of any gangrenous wound would result in death. A head wound puts you at 50/50 chances, and an abdomen wound is near certain death (99%). A majority of wounds came from shells. This should not be a surprise, since there was a lot more shelling than small arms combat. Since shell shrapnel can carry debris into a wound much more so than a bullet, you would be more likely to receive infection from a shell wound. If you're dragging yourself through a muddy No Mans Land with dead bodies all over the place, you can expect that any wound you have received could get infected. \n\nIn summary, a lot depends on the nature of the wound (of course), the time of day, the type of attack, the distance to friendly lines, the location of the wound, whether or not it gets infected (including time to treatment), etc. \n\nLots of resources available upon request. I will also recommend for general reading on the experience of day to day life and fighting in the trenches, Herbert McBride's \"A Rifleman Went to War.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/practice-of-medicine-in-ww1.html", "https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-medicine-battlefield"], []]}
{"q_id": "18n9g7", "title": "What prevents us from controlling smooth muscle in our body?", "selftext": "I understand there are different nerves involved (autonomic nerves), but I guess my question is kind of...why are these nerves autonomic and not controllable by our conscious mind? What prevents us from altering our smooth muscle such as in our gut?\n\nDo these nerves just run from a part of our mind that we don't have control over? And did we ever have control of these functions at any point in time on the evolutionary scale?\n\nSorry for the mouthful of questions", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18n9g7/what_prevents_us_from_controlling_smooth_muscle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8geyee"], "score": [3], "text": ["The central nervous system has two different types of nerves:\n- Autonomic Nervous system (Involuntary control)\n- Somatic Nervous system (Voluntary control)\n\nAutonomic nervous system indeed has nerves going in and out of organs (gastrointestinal system) to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) but these nerves terminate at a region we cannot consciously control. I.e. it does not terminate at the primary motor cortex, thus disabling us from controlling it. There are sensory nerves from the gut then again it does not end at the primary sensory cortex, thus disabling us from feeling gut stretch etc. This was the shorthand explanation. There is another nervous system present at the gastrointestinal system called the enteric nervous system, which finely control the digestion and absorption of oral intake. The enteric nervous system works with autonomic nervous system to transfer information to the brain which then again intergrated and sent back to the enteric nervous sytem for further change in control which also deemed involuntary. \n\nIn short, yes you are correct, the nerves terminate in the central nervous system that we do not have control over. It is primarily regulated by feedback mechanisms. The body is programmed naturally to control the gut itself. I am not sure whether these functions at any point in time were voluntary, you have to ask an evolutionary biologist. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9h8xj3", "title": "\u200b\u200bFrom Ska to Rocksteady and Reggae to Dub, Jamaican music w\u200bas transformed \u200bat an incredible pace in the 1960s and '70s. What factors influenced these \u200bmajor \u200bartistic and technological advances?", "selftext": "\u200bA few developments that come to mind: The strength of Jamaica's recording industry; influence of U.S. Jazz, Soul etc. via radios; a particularly hot summer that called for slower grooves, supposedly leading from ska to rocksteady; religious influence of rastafari via Ethiopia, including on drum circles; \u200bthe studio wizardry of the early dub producers. Would be glad to get more in-depth info and/or reading recommendations about the topic - also regarding what role Jamaican politics and economy played at the time for these impressive artistic developments and huge musical output for a (comparatively) smaller country.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9h8xj3/from_ska_to_rocksteady_and_reggae_to_dub_jamaican/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6ae1oa", "e6apqre", "e6b5dgp"], "score": [88, 3, 3], "text": ["Jamaican R & B (to use an umbrella term for all the genres you mention above) came to be so fruitful thanks to a fair few different factors - many of which you've mentioned above. I'd say that there's three very big social factors playing a role in how it came to be.\n\nFirstly, Jamaica was a British colony with a long history of slavery (/u/sowser discusses [the abolition of slavery in the British empire with a Caribbean emphasis here](_URL_0_)). While British slavery might have stopped a generation before American slavery, it unsurprisingly had lasting cultural impacts. Lloyd Bradley in *Bass Culture* argues, for example, that Rastafari is more than anything a cultural response to living in a black majority state with a British upper class. In Jamaica, the way cultural capital worked was to encourage an emulation of the white upper class. In contrast, Rastafari was to some extent an explicit rejection of high society's manners - the dreadlocks that Rastafari wore were a symbol of African heritage, for starters, and Rastafari attitudes and behaviours  were in opposition to the servile and self-serving attitudes encouraged by interaction with the British upper class.\n\nThe history of oppression of black people also meant that (poor) Jamaicans (of African heritage) shared several cultural touchstones with African-Americans, and gravitated towards their music. Jamaican R & B starts, primarily, as a scene simply playing American R & B records. There are later traces of this in how Bob Marley would later cover 'People Get Ready' by the American soul act Curtis Mayfield  &  The Impressions (or check out the compilation on the Soul Jazz label, *Studio One Soul*, where artists recording for the Jamaican-based Studio One label cover the likes of 'Time Is Tight', 'Respect' and 'Express Yourself'.) But at the start of the Jamaican R & B scene, the aim was simple emulation of American R & B.\n\nSecondly, because there was an entire lack of infrastructure willing to provide a space for R & B despite its popularity (whether because of simple poverty or other factors), a scene based around portable 'sound systems' developed, where entrepreneurs put together powerful portable PA systems and carried them around to different areas of the Kingston slums (charging for admission and selling drinks). \n\nDifferent sound system owners prided themselves on their ability to find the obscure 1950s American R & B tracks that had the qualities that Jamaican audiences wanted, often focusing on New Orleans-based R & B with something more of a Caribbean beat (take [the 1956 recording of 'My Boy Lollypop' by Barbie Gaye](_URL_2_), which I should point out was more New York than New Orleans in origin). As the sound systems grew more prominent, the entrepreneurs behind them started to desire new, homegrown product that better served their particular dancefloors, and the sound system owners therefore branched out into becoming, effectively, record labels. \n\nAnd if this sound system stuff sounds familiar, one of the reasons would be that Jamaicans in the 1970s like Kool Herc exported this idea to The Bronx in New York, and it became one of the pillars of early hip-hop when sound system culture, toasting, and turntable techniques were applied to funk and soul records - American rather than Jamaican R & B; the famous party where Kool Herc (arguably) invented hip-hop was literally the one where he applied the techniques of Jamaican soundsystem culture to the funk and soul records that his New Yorker audience knew.\n\nThirdly, it's also important to point out that Jamaica remained a British colony until August 6th, 1962 when they declared themselves an independent nation (mind you, it is still part of the Commonwealth - like Australia - and the Queen is still its official head of state). As a nascent nation, Jamaicans became increasingly proud of growing their own musical sounds, and increasingly focused on their own music rather than American or British imports. The Rastafari culture had previously been shunned by respectable Jamaican people anxious not to lose their cultural capital. But post-independence, Rastafari became seen less as troublemakers and more as a culture that was obviously home-grown and Jamaican, something that they might be proud of even if they weren\u2019t Rastafari themselves. \n\nAdditionally, the Jamaican R & B scene received an extra financial boost in the mid-to-late 1960s (and beyond) thanks to its success elsewhere. It\u2019s important to remember that hundreds of thousands of Caribbean people immigrated to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jamaican music served an important role for young Caribbean-British people and often inspired others who came in contact with it, even before the big success of Bob Marley (Paul McCartney\u2019s ska-influenced \u2018Ob La Di, Ob La Da\u2019 in the Beatles\u2019 White Album in 1968, populated by characters with typically Caribbean names - Desmond and Molly Jones - shows if nothing else that British fans of American R & B, like McCartney, were often also exposed to and interested in Jamaican R & B).\n\n[Millie Small's 'My Boy Lollipop' in 1964](_URL_1_), in a ska style (but not that different from Barbie Gaye above), was an international hit. This was thanks partly to the efforts of Chris Blackwell, a (white) Jamaican who transplanted himself to England and started the Island record label that would eventually sign Bob Marley and propel him to international stardom. Similarly, in the late 1960s, the Trojan record label would do a healthy business in releasing Jamaican songs in England. As English consumers generally expected better sound quality, the rise of Trojan led to improvements in the studio technology used, and thus to further changes in the styles of the music, as musicians tried to exploit the possibilities of new increases in sound quality.\n\nAll of these factors meant that - just as with American R & B at a similar time period - there was a lot of competition and thus experimentation in the scene, as different acts and producers strained to find that new 'thing' that would set them apart from their competitors on the sound systems of Kingston, or which might serve them to make it big in the UK. This led to the rise of new genres and sounds like ska and rocksteady and reggae, as one person\u2019s new thing became widely imitated (though rocksteady is basically slowed down ska, and reggae is basically rocksteady that\u2019s a bit funkier - given that the context of the rise of reggae is contemporaneous to the rise of funk in the USA - and a bit more ...stoned). \n\nSo yes, Jamaicans transformed the American R & B sounds they were hearing (Jamaica not being a million miles away from the US's southern coastline, after all, Southern R & B radio stations with powerful signals could be tuned into in Jamaica) into something distinctively Jamaican which they could then export to the UK and elsewhere in the world.\n\nIn terms of what to read, I think Lloyd Bradley's *Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King* is pretty accessible and well-written, albeit for a popular audience; Bradley was a sound system operator in the UK in the 1970s and has something of a practitioner's view on the scene, but he's also got a good annotated bibliography at the back of the book. There are also some good academic takes on Jamaican music culture in Dick Hebdige's *Cut 'N' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music* (Hebdige being a sociologist/cultural theorist famous for his 1979 book on subcultures, which introduced the term to the world), while Norman Stolzoff's *Wake The Town And Tell The People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica* is an ethnography focusing on Jamaican styles (dancehall, obviously) of the 1990s.", "Agree. Wow, what a treat. ", "This was fascinating to read, thank you. Could anyone recommend any reading on the relationship between punk and ska and how that came to be? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36pc0o/did_the_british_have_other_than_idealistic/crg8ez3/?context=3", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH35A5C5sZ4", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OYZ1PZtV0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21t83f", "title": "as someone from the uk, i have no idea why obamacare has been getting so much hate. explain.", "selftext": "I really just have not clue.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21t83f/eli5_as_someone_from_the_uk_i_have_no_idea_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cggz4jh", "cgh0k5q", "cgh3q9o", "cggadrh", "cggae1i", "cggamu4", "cggas82", "cggba0e", "cggbrpj", "cggcrse", "cggd0el", "cggd9zs", "cggddjw", "cggeclv", "cggedfo", "cggegfb", "cggej1l", "cggeptx", "cggeu93", "cggexue", "cggf1am", "cggf37z", "cggf3l2", "cggf5ij", "cggfa7o", "cggfcfa", "cggfkd3", "cggfm98", "cggftwj", "cggfugr", "cggfwtd", "cggg3rl", "cggg3z9", "cggg7xb", "cggg9tz", "cgggjds", "cgggpjc", "cgggrxg", "cgggwct", "cgggyh9", "cggh16b", "cgghagg", "cgghft0", "cgghxtn", "cggk2o8", "cggkhlw", "cggkrsp", "cggl07k", "cggl5cp", "cggli9u", "cggll2s", "cgglmik", "cggloly", "cggm8lj", "cggmjwo", "cggml73", "cggoitu", "cggondl", "cggop7z", "cggoxqv", "cggp5ln", "cggp6qv", "cggpseo", "cggr0cl", "cggs9p3", "cggtffv"], "score": [2, 2, 3, 6, 510, 2, 2, 155, 44, 6, 13, 6, 9, 2, 9, 57, 4, 35, 3, 63, 6, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 8, 3, 12, 9, 3, 2, 11, 4, 8, 9, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 5, 8, 7, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 17, 5, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 5, 2], "text": ["As a college student on financial aid making less than $500 a month, I resent the ACA simply because I have to pay $80 a month with a $6000 deductible. It takes at least 5 hours to get on the phone with them, and when I do they always tell me something is wrong with my account and that I need to call back the next day. I've been struggling to finalize all of my information for almost 3 weeks now, and I wonder if it would b better to just not have any insurance and pay $300 a year.", "Many people have seen private healthcare cost increases.  Significant at that. It provides healthcare for the poor by making healthcare less affordable for those just above the cutoffs.  From personal experience, the cost of family coverage increased 500 percent.  That's not a small change.  There are other problems, of course, but that's been my experience.", "So, most of the responses on here are really great as far as explaining what health care is like in the US, as well as in other countries, but to actually answer OP's question. It has been getting so much hate because the opposition party has done, and will continue to do everything it can to make the Obama administration appear to be ineffective while also trying to make it appear as though the administration is over reaching it's power. The top Republican(opposition party) in the senate even stated during the presidents first term that their priority should be to make sure that Obama was a one term president. The truly interesting kicker in all of this is that in the 90's the Republicans proposed a very similar plan. Furthermore, a Republican governor signed a similar plan into law in the state of Massachusetts. That governor went on to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012 you may remember Mitt Romney. \nTL:DR\nIt has much less to do with the policy itself and much more to do with the the politics of the opposing parties.    ", "Also, big insurance lobbied hardcore to get it through. Their only concern is making their shareholders happy, not taking care of people. And people are losing their current insurance plans because they don't meet the new criteria, and now they have to sign up for more expensive ones. \n\nThe whole thing just seems like a real shady deal. I don't know enough about it, and I don't think anyone else does either. They make these laws so complex intentionally so the average person has no clue what's going on.", "Obamacare mandates that you buy healthcare insurance, or apply for free coverage from the government if you're poor enough or old enough to qualify. It gives subsidies based on income. \n\nLong story short, there are a lot of Americans who think that the free market is the best solution to all problems - healthcare included. They view Obamacare as evil for two reasons: 1) it forces you to purchase something against your will, and 2) it runs contrary to free market principles.\n\nMany (most?) of these people also tend believe that healthcare in the US is significantly superior to that which exists in the UK/Canada/Switzerland/etc.. Thus, any move toward a European model is viewed as a degradation of current services.", "Most Americans don't either. \nWe all just pick a side  &  argue until it's time to vote for the perceived best choice given. Wash  &  repeat. \n", "Basically, now you have to get insurance. If you can't afford it, you will be subsidized by those who can. If you have health insurance, chances are you will be paying more. How much more? It depends on how much you can afford. Most people are now paying a lot more money for it, many whom don't need or want it. Because you have to have it, insurance companies can basically name their price. Are you young, healthy and have a good paying job? Great, how's $400 a month sound? Hand it over or you will be fined. ", "If you understand what \"obamacare\" is, you might understand the opposition.   It's NOT government medical service (like  NHS).  It's NOT government medical insurance (like Canada).  It's NOT free market medicine.  IT IS mandatory purchase of private insurance (racket).  In essence it's the worst of all worlds. \n\nNot to mention, it was imposed upon the US in abnormal circumstances, without actual debate or public scrutiny.   It mandates millions of new customers to wealthy medical insurance companies, and results in significantly higher premiums.  It does not address the rising prices of medical services, it makes it the law you must pay for them, and if you don't you must pay more tax.  (though currently the law does not include prison for failure to pay those  new taxes, you can bet in short order that it will include \"criminal\" sentences in the near future.)\n\nSo, it boils down to this, people who like \"Obamacare\" don't know what it actually is (or they might be evil).  People who oppose it, can do math.", "I'm from New Zealand, so I'm just looking at it as an outside observer, but I can completely understand why the idea of a universal healthcare system mightn't be incredibly attractive to an American. \n\nYou're from the UK, right; how would you feel if the NHS was abolished, and suddenly your healthcare was the responsibility of the European Commission?\n\nI'm not saying a publicly-funded healthcare system isn't a good idea. I actually think quite the opposite. But I don't see what's stopping individual states from implementing their own system that best suits their own set of circumstances. I also think it would be a lot easier to sell that solution, specifically tailored to the people of one state, instead to trying to satisfy the whole country with a one-size-fits-all progamme.\n\nWould an American be able to explain why none of the states have done this? (I understand Massachusetts had some kind of reform, but it was more along the lines of 'mandated healthcare insurance', \u00e0 la Obamacare.)", "Free healthcare does not equal universal healthcare.\n\nThe biggest issue I see is that many private insurance premiums cost much, much less than Obamacare, especially for younger, healthy Americans. ANY insurane is  principled upon some people paying more while others pay less. We all share a fixed premium, but some will use insurance benefits more than others.\n\nWhere this screws Obamacare is that the young, healthy Americans (who offset the cost for the older, sicker ones) can typically just go buy a better plan for pennies on the dollar. That leaves the older, sicker group left with higher rates and still stuck on a basic Obama plan.\n\nPicture you're getting a group discount for buying hotels. You also get a free upgrade with the group. But then a significant chunk of your party just buys through Expedia or Priceline and gets a smoking deal. Because of your scenario, you can't buy online so you're stuck with (a) not getting the group rate and (b) not getting the upgraded room.\n\nThat's the biggest flaw with Obamacare. The healthy don't want it and the sick are left with nothing but higher rates and worse care.\n\nAsk yourself this- if Obamacare was really THAT amazing, why aren't all the leaches in Washington signing up?  Like it or not, America IS a free market economy.  If you hate your healthcare, find a better job. Sounds harsh, but that's exactly what many of us have done. Stop being a victim and waiting for the government to bail you out. Low-cost healthcare will always exist for the handicapped or unable, but a large number of the Obamacare critics and fans are neither.  \n\nBasic healthcare should be a right. But that doesn't mean I'll subject myself to basic care if I have better options elsewhere.", "Because it didn't improve the current situation. It made healthcare more expensive for those who have to purchase it themselves. Because they were stuck on the private industry profit-driven model, and no controls or limits were placed on prices, the insurance companies decided that since everyone _has_ to purchase from them anyhow, there's no reason to lower the price. It's a horrifyingly murdered version of the free market, where demand is locked in at 100%, so the providers are free to charge any price, and make as much profit as they want.\n\nI truly can't imagine a worse way to provide healthcare. ", "I will start with my situation. My husband and I work for the same organization, our health insurance is 100% paid for by our employers, but our dependants health insurance is not. To cover our children under our job would be $300 per child. Obamacare considers them covered by our job, so we cannot get them covered by Obamacare, unitl they become independants at age 23. We have been insuring them privately at a rate of about $80 per child. This insurance has always worked well for us, even when my son broke his arm we only paid $100 out of pocket. Now our insurance has been cancelled and we are being offered new policies of $185 a month. Now for my children of 7 and 8 we are required to have insurance that covers everything anyone would ever need, such as colonscopies, mammograms and birth control. (Yes for childen). I personally would be happy with just catatrophic insurance. I can afford doctors visits, its the big things I can't afford. But that is now illegal.\n\n Now we make a good salary, there are a lot of people at my organization making closer to minimum wage, how can they afford this? For two children, that is $370 a month (or $600 if you stick with the employee plan) .\n\nIt is a big convoluted system. Yes, there are many many problems with the healthcare system in this country, but I dont believe this is the fix for it.", "There are a litany of issues at play. In the interest of ELI5, let me try to break them down clearly:\n\n1. Some people believe that the Affordable Care Act (so-called Obamacare) is an attempt to move us towards a socialized system. Those people often equate socialism with evil and are mad.\n2. Some people believe that the USA can not afford the ACA so they are mad.\n3. Some people believe the American system has played out very well and that we have the best doctors and services in the world. They view they ACA as a measure that will send good doctors packing, so they are mad.\n4. Some people were happy not having health insurance and didn't want to be forced to buy it, so they are mad.\n5. Some people just hate anything Obama says, ACA included, so they are mad.\n6. Some people wanted to propose it first and Obama beat them to the punch. They can no longer claim this as their victory, so they are mad.\n\nEdit: Also, its important to understand the political landscape right now. Fighting between the Democrats and Republicans (the 2 major parties in our system) has become very bitter. Anything one side is for, the other side is staunchly against. This creates a situation where one party is feeding the media one opinion staunchly pro-ACA, and the other is feeding it just the opposite.", "Coming from an American who does not and never has supported the new healthcare laws we have a lot of reasons why we are against it.\n\nFirst the law was abnormally passed in the house of reps using a basically a procedural trick, without the support of a single republican, and with a majority of American against it. So as far as it being unpopular it never has been anything but. \n\nIf the law was even a half decent piece of legislation it would not have already been changed 38 times, that is unprecedented. If a law is so poorly written that it has to been changed numerous times right after being passed, how bad will it be in the long term?\n\nCost....... this is the the biggest for most people. The president and everyone involved in this has lied numerous times about how this would reduce cost for everyone. Nothing has been further from the truth. Everyones insurance premiums have gone up tremendously, and often to receive less coverage than they used to have. \n\nNote on other countries having better healthcare, the notion that Canadian or European healthcare is better is laughable. The study most people site that statistic from is flawed. It does not adjust for our violent crime rate which is much higher than Canada's and most of Europes. If you adjust for all the murders and victims would fare no better elsewhere the US is number one in healthcare. Canada does not even have the Gama Knife yet, canadians have to come here for treatment for many types of brain cancer because they would die in Canada.", "We had health insurance through work. We aren't rich, but above average income earners (so pretty solidly middle class). Our monthly rate for insurance was good and affordable, and our deductibles were reasonable. For the kid I'm about to have, we would have paid about $200 total (for hospital visit) and everything else was covered 100%. Since our plan changed Jan 1st to go along with the new obamacare plan, that $200 will now be a minimum of $2300 just for me - $300 deductible and $2000 max out of pocket for me as an individual since my services are now only covered at 80%. I'm certain I will reach this maximum amount for myself since insurance has become more \"affordable\" but they seemed to have forgotten to make the cost of healthcare affordable and just the hospital visit will run 40k or more (I've already paid out about $1000 out of pocket and I haven't even had the baby yet). If the baby needs care that's another potential $2300 and then I will hit my max cap for the year of $600 deductible for family and $4000 out of pocket for whole family before everything (should) be covered at 100%. So, from $200 to a potential of $4600 just for this one medical event. This will repeat every year depending on what medical issues we have, some years we may not pay much but it will almost certainly be a lot more than we ever had to pay before. Plus our monthly rate has increased. \n\nNow, if we had to buy on the exchange in my state? Would be absolutely unaffordable for our family without some serious lifestyle changes. We make too much to qualify for much in subsidies but not enough to actually afford it. Other states have better exchanges but ours basically has one single company that is on it (but others you can buy from individually outside the exchange). If they had actually made the cost of health services affordable it might not be so bad, and our plan is not terrible in comparison to others who now pay $500 a month and end up with 10k deductibles. \n\nBeing from the UK, your healthcare isn't something you know you pay for monthly, you are used to it being part of your taxes. I know my taxes pay for roads but I don't think each month \"ok, I've paid $25 towards roads this month\". This is a big addition to monthly expenses for most people instead of an assumed expense that's already rolled in and adjusted for in lifestyle. It's a huge change and hit on many peoples income - the very people who didn't have a lot of extra income in the first place. You may be less likely to go into millions of debt for medical care but the people that happens to are a small minority compared to EVERYONE now having their monthly income reduced. Ok, not everyone, but I'd hazard a vast majority are feeling a decent to large hit because of the new plans. ", "Its really really expensive. I don't qualify for any tax credits and for my family of four it's two fucking thousand dollars a month. TWO FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS!", "My understanding is that NHS costs about as much per capita as Medicare did before the ACA.  Also, constantly lying about the ACA makes it hard to know what the truth is \"You can keep your plan\".", "As someone who opposes Obamacare (but doesn't hate it, just dislikes it very strongly) I'll try explaining.\n\nInsurance is all about spreading risk. Some people will end up getting more money than the insurance costs, and some people will pay in more money than they get out. This is how it works for all insurance.\n\nHealthcare insurance is difficult to do because of this. Generally speaking, young people will pay in more money than they get out, and old people less, simply from the fact that old people get sicker than young people. All insurance plans account for this fact, which is why large age diverse groups generally have lower costs (and why large employers can often provide healthcare where small ones can't - obviously not true in all cases). \n\nIn a market where people are forced to buy in, what you get is essentially a tax on young people. Since they are not getting as much out of their insurance as they put in, they'd be better of not having it and saving the money instead, or doing what they please with it. This is why Obama has been so focused on signing up young people - because, for lack of a better phrase, they're the ones it screws over. Now Americans are generally opposed to the government making decisions for you, regardless of whether they are beneficial for yourself or not. And now the government is forcing people to make a decision that is very clearly detrimental to themselves - simply because it is good for a government program as a whole.\n\nIn essence the healthcare law falls on young people disproportionately, and for very obvious reasons - young people don't vote as often as old people do. In a country where everyone is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, the healthcare act is specifically attempting to force through legal means to get young people to make decisions against their interest. \n\nI hope this explains this a bit better in a clearly argued way. I know it isn't popular, but besides the crazy pundits who just rage against Obamacare, there are good arguments against it. I'm much less opposed to national insurance programs - which are funded by taxation, which falls on people much more evenly (or at least falls on those that can most afford it, rather than young people who can't). \nThanks for reading", "Because America has a great sickness. Americans have decided that anything the government gives away will be abused to the point of bankrupting the country. They believe that although they themselves are trustworthy and have no problem taking advantage of whatever programs they can that nobody else should because they would abuse it. They believe that although the richest 35 people have more money then the poorest 35 million that its because they worked harder some how and earned it by being super smart. They believe that the poor are poor because they are stupid and refuse to work hard, and even though they themselves work hard and are underpaid that any minute they could be turned into billionaires and if they were billionaires they wouldn't want the government taxing them so they support the nontaxing of the rich. Then you have the whole \"job creators\" joke where the rich are job creators so you shouldn't mess with them when its total BS. the rich squirrel away their money demanding high interest on it, the middle/lower class spend all their money on stuff so that money goes back into the economy. so the poor and middle class are the job creators because they create demand, the rich suck out the money they spend and squirrel it away. I watched a great documentary last night about the gap between rich and poor and its amazing people don't see it. how the rich spend very little of their money while the middle/low spend all of theirs. if the rich were forced to spend all their income yearly like the other classes then the economy would be amazing. ", "In general people don't like it for several reasons:\n\n1. Congress passed the law and President Obama signed it without allowing the public to read the law. This isn't necessarily unprecedented but it riles folks up anyway.\n\n2. Congress passed the law using the reconciliation process. Normally an important bill needs at least 60 votes in the senate to pass, but the senate used a special process to pass the bill with 51 votes instead. It was a very shady, underhanded way to get the law passed. (This is very ELI5 - there's a lot more to it)\n\n3. Many Americans are inherently distrustful of government, especially the federal government. It's something that's ingrained in our culture. Many of us don't even trust the government to handle basic government services due to personal experiences, so trusting them with anything to do with something so intimate (healthcare) is not easy for Americans.\n\n4. For many people, especially small business owners who make a decent income, their existing plans were cancelled due to the new regulations, and the new healthcare plans that match the new regulations are often more costly.\n\nI'm at work and out of time for the moment, but there are so many more reasons. It's not 100% bad, but it's not the right solution.", "One of the other problems with this health care is that numerous people in America believe it is free.  Just like how Canada and Some European countries have \"free\" health care. So many people quickly supported this health care bill and when it turned out that we all have to pay something and that those who thought they were poor enough to get it for \"free\" weren't actually poor enough. Now that even the poor have to pay, many Americans are angry about this health bill. ", "As said, it mandates you purchase health insurance. As already existed, if you are impoverished, you can get it from the govt. But the poverty limits are low. Many don't qualify. At $60k a year a family of 4 doesn't even come close and this is a good est. of income for most typical families. The rub is that if you don't have HI then you are fined. The fines are low now but increase every year. Keep in mind if you are fired or quit and you don't get another job you could have made to much already that year and end up with fines as well if you didn't have HI for more than 60 days. \n\nIt's not socialized health care at all. The propaganda makes it seem like this is the issue. It's fines for not buying health insurance. It's mandating people by something or be fined for not doing it. And it's not something that's cheap. Private individual HI can be thousands a month. Yet another part of the propaganda. .. It's not cheap. \n\nIt's a two way money grab. The are also increased costs to employers and other issues for HC providers,  but that's a whole other topic. ", "Let me tell this to you from the perspective of a striving-to-be-middle class citizen. Your girlfriend, un-married, makes crap money: she gets subsidies. She pays ten dollars a month for health care for herself and her kid (not your kid btw). You however, have a decent job. It's not formal-attire good, but it pays. You make JUST enough money to not qualify for subsidies, so apparently you pay the exact same as a millionaire. You also have 2 kids of your own (from previous wives) that you spend every dollar on them and at the end of the day... you break even. It's actually CHEAPER to take the penalty than to pay health insurance. Fucked up.", "I have a problem with the fact that I will be forced to pay  $2k this year to get \"insurance\" that doesn't kick in until I first pay another $12k in medical bills.\n\nLast year: $150 on my one check up during winter months when I had a cold\n\n\nThis year: $2,150 on my one check up during the winter months when I get a cold \n\nIf I actually have an emergency this year: $14k **before I ever get a lick of help from insurance.** I think I'll take the $95 penalty ", "Because it's not healthcare. 20 years ago Hillary Clinton tried to push universal health care only to get bribed by the insurance lobby to shut up and go away.\n\nNow cue 20 yrs and you have hospitals, clinics and big pharma gouging people for basics. The thought was that insurance would be subsidized by the healthier to pay for the unhealthy and uninsured but because everybody has their hand in your pocket the insurance companies were becoming unprofitable... Something had to change.... Hillary get back here!\n\nAmerica is also in deep debt so any scheme to extort money from the already underwater population looked good too. Intro Obamacare. A nefarious scheme to force America to buy insurance, and those who don't pay a tax; all done under the color of law.... Trouble by decree. It's premise was medieval. By forcing people to purchase insurance the insurance companies stand to profit in ways unheard of. For those who choose not to participate they benefit the government by being taxed. Win-Win for Uncle Sam and insurance companies.\n\nWhat about the people? In order to pull the wool over the American public's eyes, untruth had to prevail and prevail it did. *\"If you like your current plan/Dr you can keep it\", Barrack Obama*... **AN EPIC LIE BY AN EPIC LIAR!!!** Plans got canceled and people lost their doctors. By forcing everybody into a policy insurance, companies could triple or even quadruple the price of a premium. Or you could just sign up for Obamacare or one of your states exchange programs -that also don't work cause everybody who was contracted to set up the websites took the money and ran....to the the tune of billions of tax payer dollars.\n\nSo basically we are now forced to purchase healthcare that's 3-4X what we used to pay or get taxed; AND we must also spend an absolutely unjust amount out of pocket after premiums to cover the deductible before coverage even begins... The alternative to the dupe is the tax, which is something like $600 or 1% of our income or whichever is higher- (could be wrong on this though). There's much more but already angry just typing this. I'm sure others will fill in missing details. Again this is not nor ever was about caring for the health of the people...this was about making money for insurance companies, big pharma and the U.S gob't.....be all end all!\n\n**So what is the ONLY solution???**\nDaniel 2:44, Matt 6:9-10....\n\u201cAmen! Come, Lord Jesus.\u201d Revelation 22:20", "In one statement, 'Involuntary redistribution of wealth'.  The subsidies = taxes.", "Enough about ACA, let's talk about this scam they call \"Insurance\". I would  rather get some medicaid and have my taxes raised than give my money to those Insurance Cartels!!", "There are two reasons why:\n\n(1) Some people don't want nationalized health care. The belief can stem from fear of government intrusion into their lives (anytime the governments money gets in something, you play by their rules, etc), slower service, getting denied for care, etc. Then there are the people that want free market only options. \n(2) But the bigger reason is the terrible implementation of it, what it doesn't do, and its increase in costs (either by premium spikes or by lower coverage than you got before.\n\nObamacare is not free health care. You still have to pay for the insurance. You might be eligible for subsidies or you might not. Even if you are, HOLY FREAKING COW the deductibles are crazy! Common low tier plans have an average of $5000 annual deductible per person (about $12,000 for a family) before coverage even begins (at only 60% coverage).\n\nWe spent over $600 million a website that is terrible and has been plagued by problems.  Many people have seen their premiums spike or their deductibles increase dramatically (personally, my prices have dropped about 5% but my deductibles have increased over 60%).\n\nWorst of all, it doesn't really do much of anything to stem the costs of medical care. We don't have review boards that determine procedure costs. We still have the \"throw it at the wall and see what sticks\" system that has been shafting us.\n\nSo you might have health insurance now when you didn't before, but if you were too poor to have it before and now you do have a major accident, you are still out several thousand dollars before coverage even begins. Yes, you may not be out $100k, but you still might be financially destroyed. ", "Obamacare is nothing like healthcare in Europe. \n\nObamacare is not a (Universal healthcare)[_URL_0_]\n\nIt doesn't protect people that earn less than 17k.\n\n_URL_1_\n > 90% health insurance coverage\n\nMost of the healthcare options are terrible in obamacare. I've seen that deductibles are very high, copayments are high, and broze plans require coinsurance of 30-40% payed out of your pocket.\n\nMy family got the flu, and we payed about $600 in cash for the care and medicine.\nI don't see the point of the insurance because we're paying about $300 per month.\n\n**TL;DR** Obamacare is like paying for a nonexistant expensive german car.\n", "\"you will be able to keep your plan.....Period\" -- President Obama", "American here.\nPersonally, I don't want my taxes explicitly paying for Mary the obese lady's 5 triple bypass surgeries, Bill the 2014 cigarette smoker's emphysema drugs, or Cindy the alcoholic's follies.\n\nIf everybody is under the same care, we all pool in finances to pay.\nHow does it make sense for me, a health-conscious person, to pay in for all these people? It really doesn't and it really isn't fair!\n\nAnd it's true, socialized anything typically turns mediocre-- it's the only way accommodate millions of people. The one problem is one size does not fit all. ", "I'm a 23 year old male in America. Because of Obamacare my monthly health insurance bill will go from somewhere around 30$ a month to 200$. I have no reason to even need insurance... yet.", "Because Obamacare is just a massive blowjob for the insurance industry. They should something like medicare for all. Not the crap they pushed. It does nothing to bring down costs as they said it would. ", "Why I don't like it.  Forced to buy, so I get it, its like $250/mo for just enough to keep from going bankrupt if i'm in an accident, not dental, no eyes, does have free preventive care.  So i'm now paying $250/mo I wasn't expecting, which sucks being unemployed.  Apply for gov. subsidy, they offer $4/month.  Not worth the mountain of paperwork.  Thanks Obama.  Also, don't like that Gov can force us to buy things,  don't like that when I am employed, my taxes will go to pay for subsidies I was denied.\n", "When Obamacare was being introduced, President Obama repeatedly promised that for those who already had healthcare that worked for them, nothing would change. \"If you like your doctor/ insurance plan, you can keep it.\" But when it got rolling, that turned out to be not true at all. Suddenly their insurance plans were being cancelled and their premiums were significantly increased, while their plans were downgraded, and doctors they had been with for years were no longer available to them. ", "Because it is NOT what it was pitched to be.  The ACA was supposedly going to be universal, affordable healthcare - it is not.\n\nIt is nothing like the NHS.  You are still buying insurance at high rates from private insurance companies.  You still have all the same private insurance bullsht- deductibles, copays, etc.  It does very little to bring down the absolutely staggering cost of US healthcare (over 2x as high as the next highest per capita healthcare cost country, France).\n\nIt may have started our as a good idea, but it was gutted by insurance companies and special interest groups (lobbyists).\n\nThe plan ultimately was not written for the people- it was constructed by the private insurance companies.  There is no single payer (the most critical part for affordable coverage) entity and so, it is basically shit - a way for insurance companies to get more $$ - a single payer was really the only thing that mattered, but it got removed after Kstreet got their money-grubbing paws on it.", "the existing system of health care insurance was so bad that they passed a law making it a requirement.", "In my country I dont pay anything for hospital stays, or seeing the doctor. Instead everyone with an income pays a medical tax. I think it was 6 or 7 percent last year. As I didnt go to the hospital or saw a doctor, I payed quite a lot of money for a service I didnt use. However everyone pays so we all, in the case we need it, can go free of charge at that moment.\n\nDental care however, is not covered. Luckily, I am covered in the neighbouring country, where 85% is payed by the government there, so best of both worlds.\nStill, universal healthcare is quite expensive, its just an expense disguised as a tax. But the tax is a percentage of your income so if you are poor you pay little, and if you have no income, you still have coverage.\n\nIm a danish citizen, but live in Sweden.", "Here is why I dont like it. \n\nI I've been privately insured for my entire adult life through my employer's insurance. I work for a small company but the coverage was still very good and affordable for both myself and my employer. \n\nThe insurance company that offered coverage for myself and my coworkers was forced to drop all of us on the first of this year. They could no longer offer us the same deal. A comparable plan was offered, but it cost enough to put my employer out of business in less than a year after 25 years of buisness.  \n\nSince I don't make a ton of money I qualify for free insurance under the new legislation. This is something a lot of poor or unemployed Americans are happy about. \n\nNot me. \n\nAll of my more established or higher earning friends and family members who don't qualify for free coverage like I do are now being forced to pay for insurance premiums that are about 4 times higher and they can't afford it.  The insurance That myself and my unemployed crackhead neighbor must take for free, by law, is going to quickly knock the middle class of America down a peg. \n\nI see that as a problem. ", "I'm very late to the party, but I work in a think tank at an insurance company and this topic has been widely debated. The problem people are having is that it's not really going to act like insurance. Insurance is protection against a future loss. By having a large group pay a monthly premium you offset the cost of a few individuals having huge losses. Each monthly premium is adjusted by your individual risk towards having a loss. Under Affordable Healthcare act you're not paying money into a system to offset future risk, you're paying money so that people without insurance can get assistance. This boils down to essentially you are paying for someone elses surgery who in many cases didn't pay their fair share into insurance to begin with. Another problem for younger demographics is that for 99.99% of people under 40 you're just losing money. Many people in their 20's don't get insurance just because it's far cheaper to just pay for their minor accidents when they occur. Insurance companies know the risk of a 20 year old needing major surgery is slim, so they adjust the insurance rate as such. Under Affordable healthcare act young people are forced to not only have insurance, but to also pay higher monthly premiums than they would normally have. When you add college debt, car payments, cellphone, apartment, saving for a house and saving for retirement into the mix many young adults can't afford the extra money without vastly decreasing their comfort levels.", "Not to argue right and wrong, but America is America because it's America. It's a country where social well-being is not as valued as rolling up your sleeves and doing it yourself. It is the ultimate social darwinistic society. If you cannot afford health insurance, go make it happen. If you can't, pour hot coffee on your lap and sue someone or develop a pet rock. Things like this are only possible in the states and what drive the push back to socialized healthcare.", "There is also opposition to requiring that certain types of coverage be provided. Currently there is a case in the U.S. Supreme Court with many companies who oppose to the requirements for contraceptives (specifically late stage/post-conception contraceptives like Plan B) as being inconsistent with the company's moral/religious alignment, essentially mandating that they provide a service they aren't comfortable with, or face financial penalties. This issue (in some ways) transcends healthcare, as it requires an examination of higher constitutional questions of the role of religion and religious freedom against what is considered essential or mandated services.\n\n_URL_0_", "Honestly, there are many reasons why people don't like this, so the answer would likely confuse a five year old.\n\nAmerica has never been big on socialized things, so on its face making everybody pay in to get insurance just rubs people the wrong way.  There is also a deep distrust of the federal government which can be traced to the deep mistrust of the British government all those years ago.\n\nBeyond that, there are different groups with different views.  There are some who want a system like the NHS in the UK where this does not go far enough.  To these people, as to others, the subsidies to corporations like insurance companies and hospitals are abhorrent.\n\nTo others, this is a violation of the free market and a dramatic increase in what is already a very large government.  Like I said before, people do not trust the feds, and beyond that they don't trust them to do something well.  So all people can see is tax increases and inefficiency.\n\nLastly, no one, and I mean no one likes medical insurance.  It is expensive.  It is capricious.  It is maddening.  It hides prices so no one knows how much anything costs.  So how is it better to enshrine into the entitlements of the country something which people despise?  Anyone who has received a denial of service from the insurance company after having seen a doctor and getting a doctor's bill for the full amount knows what I am talking about.\n\nLastly, it is expensive.  Here, traditionally, insurance is partially paid by the employer, and what people see when they see the prices on the exchanges is the non-subsidized price, which can be over double what people normally pay, so the whole concept of affordable becomes a value judgement, where sure if you don't have any income it's free, but if you are earning a low income at some point it becomes very, very expensive.\n\nSo that's why people hate it.", "I'm not seeing a lot of Americans commenting on this. As an American, let me lay out my fears. First of all, I am young. I'm 20 years old and I am just starting out, and I'm in college. (At Uni, eh). For me, heathcare is hard to come by. My employer, a fast food chain, offers me a small package because they are required to, but it costs around 15% of my income and yet covers very little. (45% off emergency care, 38% off dental work, access to a Family Practitioner aka GP for 50% off. Keeping in mind, say I get a rash and I need an antibiotic, visiting my FP will take me around 2 days to get an appointment and I'll get 50% off a visit that will last an hour and yet cost me 681 dollars.  < -real example from last year. So I still payed $340.50.) Now. I work in fast food because at this particular university, we are surrounded by a rural bible belt county. I say county because the county (not including the population of the uni) has a population of about 10,000. The individual towns hover around 2,000, meaning there is not a lot of businesses around here, and I say bible belt because I have to point out that almost everything around here closes at 5pm Mon-Fri, 2pm on Saturdays and almost everything is closed on Sundays. So finding a job that I can work after my morning classes end around noon ish is fast food. I struggle, and I sweat and I stress out every day for the legal minimum of $7.25 an hour. This means, if I am able to work 35 hours a week, I'll get paid 507 bucks every two weeks. Minus state/federal taxes, which works out to around 17% when added together. So of 507, Ill make 421.50. Minus the healthcare at 15%. So now I'm at $345. Working from 3pm to 11Pm daily, I have to work 5 days a week almost to make that. \n\nUnder Obamacare, businesses like mine will have to pay the cost of my healthcare for me. (The 15% of my income that I pay now.) Except the business will have to pay more than I've been paying, because they are required to cover me more........................................ If I work at least 29 hours a week. \n\nI repeat IN ORDER TO BE COVERED, I HAVE TO WORK MORE THAN 29 HOURS A WEEK. If I don't work that 29 hours, my business becomes exempt from paying for my healthcare. So what do they do? They cut my hours back to less than 29 hours and I go back to where I was before, except now I can only work 28 hours a week. So now I start at 403 dollars. Minus healthcare is 345, minus regular taxes I'm now left with $275. Times 2 for the month means I make 550 a month with Obamacare. ( my health care is slightly better and cheaper, but I'm in great health so it doesnt affect me anyways.) I have pretty cheap rent- utilities plus rent itself comes out to a pretty consistent $465 a month. Now I have $85 dollars left for the month to pay my cell and my gas and my insurance and my groceries. Obviously that isn't enough. I go into debt. Before obamacare I had $690 a month minus rent/utilities and leftover was 225. I was poor as shit, but I could make it stretch into what I had to pay. \n\nThis is just one example. Ask other Americans how it affects them. For me, it puts me into debt. If this gets replies/karma I will come back and give you more examples of other ways it affects me. ", "1) the majority of lawmakers that passed it admitted to not reading it that is just ridiculous\n\n2) It is a widely held opinion that the result will more money spent with the result of a worse overall system.\n\n3) A typical big government MO. Offer an entitlement that is popular get votes. Use allocated money to benefit friends and special interests. Dont worry if it doesnt work or if you deliver nothing apparatly its only the thought that counts and there is no fiscal responsibility or consequences.\n", "I thought I broke my hand so i went to the hospital. There wasnt really a wait, but I think this had more to do with it being a very small hospital. After I got an xray and a little splint I was relieved to find out I had just sprained it. With decent health insurance (So I thought) it still cost me about 400$ out of pocket... For an xray and splint. ", "Hi all, mid-late 20's american corporate worker here. Here are some real numbers:\n\n-last year, i effectively paid ~$80 a month for medical and dental coverage. Deductible was $70 (which in medicine is nothing)\n\n-this year, i effectively pay ~$95 a month for the same coverage. Deductible has gone up to $700 (which is still not bad, but a 10X difference from the year prior)", "There are two main schools of thought in economics. Capitalism and socialism. Either every man for himself, or we all pool our resources and divide them evenly. The problem is, Obamacare is **neither**. It's a product of insurance companies and their lobbies getting together and putting together legislation the *requires* everyone to  *buy* health insurance. It was a very clever and well orchestrated cash grab by American insurers to sell more insurance. ", "It has very little to do with healthcare and is about a  government power grab.", "At work we all hate it, but only because the corporation we work for won't supply us with healthcare which they have to do if we get 30 hours a week. So instead all of the lower staff gets maxed out at 28 hours. Which means that we need twice as many employees to make up for the lost hours. But no one wants to work for minimum wage for 28 hours at most, everyone is getting second jobs that pay better and cutting their availability down.", "my quote for healthcare with a 12,000 dollar deductible was ~400 a month. It wouldn't pay more than 12k as well so its basically... useless\n", "Obama Care does exactly zero to control costs for the average person. It offers no transparency in the prices charges nor any consistency.\n\nIt imposed a law to pay or be penalized on individuals and businesses. Pretty much a huge tax increase.\n\nHospitals and medical providers are not required to tell you what a service costs before a procedure. Let's say you have a routine colonoscopy scheduled. The prices are negotiated by third parties. The provider comes up with a ridiculous price they bill and the insurance - whether it's Medicare or Private - has already decided what their agreement to pay the facility will be. The price the provider bills has no basis in reality, it's just highly inflated so the provider can get paid all they can after the insurance has discounted it. \n\nThe cash pay customer gets screwed because they don't have access to the same discounted rates - sometimes as high as 80%! \n\nThen the other problem! You go for that routine procedure. You have a set date under your insurance as a copay and everything is included. At the last minute the routine anesthesia provider is not available for a multitude of legitimate reasons. So the MD uses another provider. That one may not have the same agreement with the insurance so the insurance company says whoa, we aren't paying and you get sent the bill.\n\nIn its application Obama Care - the Affordable Care Act - is only affordable to the great big conglomerates and that's why you see huge mergers in Healthcare now. The big organizations are going to win. The system won't provide any better for the vast majority of people, it will only ensure that the average working person will pay out the nose without any control of benefits.\n\nEdited some autocorrect. :)\n", "Well, in my life, I am not thrilled by it for two reasons.  1) We are pretty much being forced to give our money to corporations for a service that we don't even want. 2) I am covered through my work, but Obamacare for my wife would cost a lot more money per year than what she spends going to the doctor uninsured.  The whole thing just feels like \"protection money\" that you would give a mobster or something.\n\n", "I think we are all asking the wrong questions about healthcare in the US. Instead of asking why is X-system better than Y-system, why are we not asking why the cost of medical care has sky rocketed? I had a very simple medical procedure performed just this morning (small wart removed from my tougne), was in and out of the office in no more than 15 minutes. Yet the total cost was $1165! This is fucking ridiculous! No anestegiologist, just a local numbing gel, quick cut, and four taps with a cauterizing pen. Done, how the hell does that cost so much. I could have done the exact same at home with whiskey, sharp knife, a paper clip and a lighter.", "For people like me, who don't need/have obama care, my rates went way up to compensate for the new market competition. I'm fine with paying a little more knowing that it goes towards my nation getting more health coverage, but we're talking a HUGE difference in cost. I went from spending about $3-4k a year on my family of 3 for health care, to now the cost of almost $10k. And this is basic check ups and what not. \n\nAlso, I am very lucky because my company gives us an HSA with 2k contribution and our insurance rates our based on how much we are paid (Paid less, cost less) \n\nIt has caused me to go from \"My son has been really sick, let's go to the doctor\" to \"my son is really sick but we definitely cannot afford to take him to do the doctor. Should we or shouldn't we?\" and to me, that is the exact opposite reason of why Obama care was created. ", "1) Lobbyists from the insurance industry wrote the law, and the law says that you must purchase a product from said insurance industry.  Many people find this objectionable.\n\n2) The law was passed with no bipartisan support; the Democrats said \"we win, you lose, deal with it\" to 50% of America.  This is polarizing, and generally a bad way to get things done.\n\n3) President Obama lied about it in order to pass it, then again to win a second term in office.  He said he would not raise taxes on middle class families (the \"Individual Mandate\" [see point 1] was determined to be a tax by the US Surpreme Court), and he also said that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance plan (a statement that he knew was false, yet repeated several times).\n\nAdd on top of all of this: the fact that the implementation of the program was extremely \"sloppy\", and that President Obama is delaying / modifying / not implementing parts of the law on a whim (seemingly for political gain), instead of going to Congress (as the Constitution requires him to do) makes many people wary of the program.\n\n**In summary, people are being forced to buy something, despite wide public opposition, and they're not only NOT receiving the service that was promised, it's being delivered in an embarassing and legally dubious way.**", "B/c I feel allowing the federal government to force me to buy anything in this manner is a really dangerous precedent.", "It's a complicated issue for sure..\n\nBottom line?  It's an attempt to have more people covered WITHOUT addressing the root cause of the issue.  Healthcare in the United States is too expensive!   \n\nYes mandating coverage by the government is Un-American.  It takes the choice away from the individual which is, largely, a no-go for many people.\n\nCouple that with it now being MORE expensive for middle income Americans (premiums, deductibles etc), the lies about \"keeping your doctor\", and it's effect on employment mandates for small companies or larger ones.\n\nAND!!  Lest we forget...  This was passed without it being completely read by those who voted for it.   THIS is what bothers me the most.  Legislation passed which affects everyone, yet it was voted for by people who didnt know what it is.  ", "Because Americans will work against themselves. \n\nWe don't have a free market for healthcare in America - we pretend we do. But we really don't. \n\nAmericans hate to be told they have to do anything. ", "It's really just a big tax increase. Ask the Supreme Court. If it weren't a tax it would violate the commerce clause of the constitution.", "It is simply a tax on the poor to benefit large medical corporations. ", "I just can't afford it.  I fall into a loophole where I won't be able to afford it, therefore causing me to be fined for not having it.  I did just hear that I may also fall into a loophole that prevents me from being fined.  Either way, I now don't have healthcare where I did before.", "Its an over-complicated system that is the only healthcare system we can put in place because everyone is opposed to moving towards a \"good\" system because \"good\" systems are \"socialist\" and \"socialist\" is a bad word.", "First you have to look at what it claims to do, then what problems we have, and then if what it does addresses the problems we have.\n\n*What it claims to do*: Make healthcare more accessible and more affordable.\n\nFor the Accessible part, there were only about 12 million people that are \"Chronically\" uninsured in America.  The total \"number of uninsured\" was inflated grossly.\n\nAnd the \"Affordable\" part doesn't hold muster period.  There was a lot of hand-waving, saying that uninsured people were costing a ton for Emergency Rooms, and if you got them regular care it would actually be cheaper.  In reality what they're really doing is trying to socialize and subsidize insurance payments.  If you extend free or subsidized coverage to an extra 30 million people, it's going to cost more, period.  Which isn't automatically bad.  It's just they weren't honest about it.\n\n*What we had* pre-Obamacare\n\nThe main (valid) complaint is that it is too expensive. And it *was* pretty expensive.  The flip side of that expense is that we have very short waiting periods, and our doctor and care networks were very extensive.  If my liver started blowing up, I'd get shipped over to Seattle *that night*, and get treated at University of Washington's premiere Medical facility with top doctors.  I'd get as good of care as any CEO or any President.  \n\nThis is in contrast to the single-payer systems in Britain and formerly in Canada, where lower costs also mean less supply, so time-sensitive procedures were delayed by days, months, or even years.  I say 'former' in Canada because their system was declared a human rights violation about a decade ago, the waits were so bad.  So they had to allow private clinics to re-open.  Which means, even in 'socialized medicine' you get two classes of treatment.  Those for the poor and those for the rich.  In America, the disparity of care between classes (amongst the insured) is significantly smaller.\n\n\nBut anyway, what was the main cause of the high cost of our system?  **This is an important part**.  It isn't free-loading ER walk-ins that are making my hospital visits so expensive.  It's the incentives of the system that make it so *nobody* has any reason to be efficient.  We have a 3-party payment system.  Person A pays Insurance Company B to Pay for doctor  &  hospital C for whatever treatments A wants to get.\n\nAs an example, you go into the doctor with a broken ankle.  Before this mess, the doctor would say *\"Yep, that's a sprained ankle.  I'll wrap it; take some Advil as you need and stay off it for two weeks\"*.  You pay him $40 for his time and you both go on your way.\n\nNow, the doctor says: *\"That's a sprained ankle.  But I want to get a* [$1000] *MRI to be sure.\"* Because he doesn't want to get sued if you actually have a broken bone.  This is called defensive medicine.  You say: *\"How much would that cost me?\"* and he says that your insurance covers it, so you say *\"Okay!*\".  A $50 visit just became a $1500 visit unnecessarily because the doctor doesn't want to get sued, and you have no reason to say no to an extra and costly test, because it doesn't affect your bottom line.  The 3 party payment system insulates choices from consequence.  None of us and individually incentivize to care about our health cost.  Then we all complain when we all (rationally) act wasteful, because we're paying for all this extra care whether we use it or not.\n\n\nSo the question is what does the Affordable Care Act Do?\n\nIt solidifies the 3-party system.  Mandating people buy insurance, and mandating a minimum amount of coverage an insurance plan covers.  This includes 50-year-old bachelors paying for pregnancy and mammograms, incidentally.  Next, to 'reduce' health costs on the old, they mandate that two people can't pay more than ~3x difference for the same coverage.  Now a lung transplant costs the same for me as it does for an 80-year-old smoker.  But he's 10x as *likely* to need it.  So normally the little part of his payment that goes towards lung transplant coverage should be 10x mine.  But it can only be 3x.  So my costs are artificially inflated and his deflated until our prices get within those bounds.  *This* is socializing medicine - when you have to pay for the average health of the group, rather than pay for the average health of a bunch of clones of you.  \n\nBut wait, this will make healthcare *very* expensive for healthy young kids making very little money just starting out. Especially the ones who were skipping on health insurance to start with.  To cover this issue, we add in 'subsidies'.  Which adds up to a lot of distorted prices, further insulation of cost, and less choice.\n\n\nSo the reason I personally dislike it, is because it had to have this hybrid system to get passed period. And this hybrid system further institutionalizes the very problems that make out healthcare prohibitively expensive.\n\n\n**TL:DR** 3-party system tells everybody to be wasteful with their healthcare service, thinking they're spending other people's money even though it loops back around to them.  ACA institutionalizes that, socializes costs by diverting your insurance payment from your predicted healthcare costs, and adds a ton of new subsidized healthcare users to the Federal Dole while throwing a great big bureaucracy on top of a sixth of the economy.  There is no world where all of this results in a net gain for the population at large.  And as millions of people are getting coverage they liked canceled, they're getting new coverage which is less good, in a smaller network, for a higher cost.  And those are among the ~10 million independently insured people.  When people who get insurance through their business - when those insurance plans have to comply, you'll see the same thing happen to those ~50 million plans. Tens of millions of people will suffer the same fate.  \n\nWhich is why our President is delaying the mandate unilaterally (without consent of congress despite no provision for such a delay) until after the 2014 election.  The 2014 election will be disastrous for Democrats because every single Democrat Senator voted for it, and only democrats voted for it.  They can't run away from the disaster, and their majority in the Senate is threatened, so they have to delay the disaster.\n\nThis is a small taste of the practical and political complaints about the ACA.  The TLDR of the TLDR is that it's too complicated, and doesn't actually solve any problems.  It just makes us pay our health insurance by funneling money through the government first.  3-party free system into a 4-party coerced system.  It will implode when the Business mandate is finally implemented and the majority of Americans actually finally get to experience Obamacare.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "In a nutshell? Right Wing nutters hate it because the is forcing people to buy health insurance (subsidized for poor people) instead of letting \"the free market\" decide that poor people should just die of preventable illness. Left wing nutters like me hate it because it is forcing everyone to pour even more money into the evil health insurance industry rather than putting them out of business by administering a taxpayer funded single payer system like every other sane country in the developed world does. And *both* sides agree that the obvious unintended consequence resulting from insurance companies now having *hostages* rather than *customers* and jacking up rates is bullshit.\n\nBut I guess if the system is pissing *everyone* off it must be a pretty well balanced compromise. /s", "My premiums are going from ~$80 to $280 a month, I don't like that. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Europe"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/politics/scotus-obamacare-contraception-mandate/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9wdvl0", "title": "If skills are not inheritable then how do cats and other hunters seem to just know how to hunt from a very young age?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9wdvl0/if_skills_are_not_inheritable_then_how_do_cats/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e9k4i8f", "e9l2dk7"], "score": [15, 3], "text": ["Skills like hunting are imperative to survival,  and a top priority for the babies to learn.  However, that doesn't mean the babies are instantly capable of finding food.  They will need to be taught through watching a parent and then through practice.  ", "In zoology, instincts are sometimes referred to as \"genetic learning\" as distinct from \"cultural learning.\" Cultural learning is what we often refer to as \"learning\" in everyday speech, it is the stuff you're taught over the course of your life. It is extremely advantageous in that it can change over the course of the life of an individual, allowing it to be highly adaptable. The downside is that, well, the individual has to learn it. Genetic learning, or instincts, are extremely advantageous as they are understood almost at birth. A snake comes out of the egg knowing how to hunt, a fawn gazelle can run minutes after it's born. The downside is that this learning takes generations upon generations to learn and is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to undo. Not very adaptable over the course of an individual's life should circumstances change.\n\nCultural learning bypasses this evolutionary timescale. When a whale learns a new, successful feeding strategy, we can watch that strategy propagate throughout a population in just a few years (as we did with humpbacks and lobtail feeding). It could have taken thousands or tens of thousands of years to achieve that same effect with genetic learning."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "34g34r", "title": "When did the standard dimension of credit cards come to be what we have today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34g34r/when_did_the_standard_dimension_of_credit_cards/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cquis96", "cquohct", "cqup5b2", "cquq37w"], "score": [56, 11, 14, 4], "text": ["The current standard defining the size of credit cards is [ISO/IEC 7810, last revised in 2003](_URL_0_). If you visit that site you can look back through prior revisions; the earliest I can find relating to credit cards/magnetic stripe cards is from 1976. (You can also preview the current revision of the standard).\n\nI don't have access to the text of the previous standards unfortunately, but I would suggest around that timeframe for the \"standard\" per your question. Credit cards certainly existed before then - Diners Club, American Express and a few others started as early as the 1950s - but I can't find any indication of what sizes those cards were.\n\nEDIT: American Express started out with paper cards but was the first to switch to plastic in 1959. ([Source](_URL_1_)) That would probably be a good starting place for a deeper study.", "Diners Club was amongst the first (or the first depending on your definition) credit cards being in operation from the late 1940's. There are some images here dating back to the 1950's. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nUnfortunately no sizes are given but the proportions appear to be the same as today and it seems reasonable to think the size was then more or less what it is today .\n\n", "Is there a relationship between credit card size, business card size and/or poker card size (which are all about 2in x 3.5in)?", "Here's a site showing the evolution of Diners Cards over the past 50 years: \n_URL_1_\n\nNotice that it isn't until the late 1970s or even the 1980s that the current card design becomes common -- early cards did not have the current 16-digit embossed numbers, nor they have the magnetic stripe on the back.  These features only became common in the 1980s.  \n\nThe best recent examination of the economic and development of the modern consumer-credit industry is Evans and Schmalensee [*Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing*](_URL_0_) (2006).  This is more of a business and economics book than a history book, but it still gives a good analysis of how the credit card industry grew into the billion-dollar behemoth it is today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=31432", "http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-cards-history-1264.php"], ["http://www.dinersclub.com/press-room/card-history.html"], [], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=F7sMMrNUneoC&amp;lpg=PA325&amp;dq=credit%20cards%20history&amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;q=credit%20cards%20history&amp;f=false", "http://www.dinersclub.com/press-room/card-history.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1ijd3b", "title": "Why did Opium addict and oppress the Chinese so much, while neighboring countries such as Japan and Korea seemed relatively unaffected?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ijd3b/why_did_opium_addict_and_oppress_the_chinese_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb514zi", "cb51y2u", "cb53lb0", "cb5cbp0"], "score": [84, 15, 5, 3], "text": ["Opium didn't affect Japan/Korea because of the closed off manner of there governments and nations. Japan was a remote island largely unexplored and was not even important to the Imperial economies because of the minimal trade potential and the hostily to foreign powers.\n\nIt wasn't until Commander Perry and the US that Japan really opened up to foreign trade. Until then Foreign governments were only allowed small outposts that had limits on how many people and good could be stored there.\n\nCHINA however was beginning to feel the pressure from the West. It was lagging behind in terms of territorial expansion and military might making it a ripe target for British and foreign agents to attack. For example when the Chinese emperor tried to ban opium, the British sailed down the Yangzte blasting apart Chinese defenses. They were \"unstoppable\" to the \"ancient\" and unmodernized Chinese military. \n\nWhen the Chinese resisted the Opium trade because of the obvious harms to Chinese society, foreign powers responded with force to protect there valuable trade - cheap opium from the India colonies = expensive luxuries from China for England.\n\nBasically the Opium Wars were a massive political and military failure for the Chinese but would set them on the road to modernization. \n\nMore so, There are some reliable sources (can't link I'm on my phone) that suggest the opium manufactored in India for China was \"pushed\" on them as a manner for the British to raise LOTS of money well weakening the Chinese influence and defense. It was used to make a lot of money in both sterling silver and goods which would be shipped back to England as luxuries. \n\ntl; dr China had a large border, less strict trade policy and a weak military/political climate compared to the might of modern foreign Empires. \n\nJapan and Korea were fairly closed off, remote and much more strict to foreign presence in there territory.\n\n(For quick references please check Wikipedia as there section on the Opium Wars and Commandore Perry and Japan are both well written and sourced - Ill link more when I can get to a computer - hope this helps answer \nyour questions)\n\nCommdore Perry and Opening Japan \n_URL_0_\n\nOpium Wars \n_URL_2_\n\nOpium Trade - British Arguments for \n_URL_1_\n\nOpium Trade - British Arguments against\n_URL_3_\n\nedit1: Sources that should provided more information. All credit to those authors. I simply linked there work.\n", "I can speak to Japan at least. As the mainland Opium Wars raged, the island nation was in the final years of its self-imposed international exile. The Tokugawa Shogunate, the government of Japan, was not stupid: it saw the results of European imperialism and the suspect guise of \"Christianizing.\" They were especially perceptive of opium's ravaging effect on the former paramount Asian power. Andrew Gordon elaborates on this in his brief but informative *A History of Modern Japan*.", "I think that it's worth pointing out that it wasn't opium that oppressed the Chinese. Opium was simply the tool used. England can take much of the blame, but they were certainly not alone in exploiting Asia.\n\nIt's not as if the Chinese government was loving it, they did everything could to prevent it, from military action to morality propaganda.\n\nSo a better questions would be: Why was England so effective at using opium to oppress China as opposed to Japan and Korea.", "China's addiction to opium is tied to Britain's addiction to tea.  It's a story of the first truly globalized trade relationship.\n\nBritain needed tea, which only came from China, but the Chinese weren't willing to buy any English goods in exchange.  They only accepted valuable metals, usually in the form of Silver \"Mex\" dollars, mined in Latin America.\n\nThis proved an unbearable strain on the British economy until British traders figured out that Chinese traders were willing to trade for opium from India.\n\nAlthough opium was illegal in Britain and many prominent figures considered it immoral, the economic necessity of this trade proved irresistible. \n\nA related topic which I find fascinating is the story of [Jardine Matheson](_URL_0_), the company which more or less started Hong Kong by smuggling opium, and which is still a massive and powerful company to this day.\n\nOnce you learn a bit about them, particularly about their 'behind-the-scenes' role in shaping British policy in China, you'll come to the stunning realization that this one company  may bear more of the blame for China's 'Century of Humiliation' than the British government does!  And not only are very few people aware of this, but Jardine's is still a respected and influential company in China.\n\nI've never found any internet resources which directly support this claim, but there are a number of books on the subject.\n\nEDIT I'm hesitant to reference a fictional work, but I think it merits an exception in this case.\n\n\"Tai-Pan\" from the Asian Saga series of historical-fiction (which includes the classic \"Shogun\") by James Clavell tells the story of \"Struan's\" (which the book claims is not at all based on Jardine's ;)) and the founding of Hong Kong.  The book is a dramatization and should be taken with a big grain of salt, but it's a great read and IMO, after having done my own research into the subject, gives a fairly reasonable account)\n\nThe next book in the series, \"Gai-Jin\" tells the story of the 'opening up' of Japan, and \"Struan's\" role."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1750_perry.htm", "http://www.stanford.edu/group/journal/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Su_SocSci_2008.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Suppression_of_the_Opium_Trade"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardine_Matheson"]]}
{"q_id": "hsst4", "title": "Would being submerged in liquid help protect a space traveller from high-G acceleration?", "selftext": "Like in [this clip from Mission to Mars](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hsst4/would_being_submerged_in_liquid_help_protect_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1y2gs5"], "score": [12], "text": ["[Asked recently](_URL_0_). Please take advantage of the search function; there's good stuff in the archive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UUiV_O4IqA&amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=79s"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hqsnz/can_the_human_acceleration_limit_be_worked_around/"]]}
{"q_id": "1tmbgw", "title": "why do women change salutation to mrs. (from ms.) while men stays mr. regardless of civil status?", "selftext": "merci.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tmbgw/eli5_why_do_women_change_salutation_to_mrs_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce9cm8u", "ce9cs7k", "ce9csoq", "ce9cwvq", "ce9e86n", "ce9ehk6", "ce9ho4x", "ce9i6gs", "ce9l8dj", "ce9l9dd", "ce9onfq", "ce9ppe4"], "score": [145, 10, 2, 33, 26, 3, 23, 14, 4, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["Because being married is much more important for a women than a man, historically at least. Becoming Mrs. is a quick indication you're no longer available for courting to men.", "Females were children or wives. The childlike, or spinster marker honorific, Miss,  making a clear separation from the Mrs. married woman. \n\nNot married and producing children, meant, no  value.\n\nIf you are a true feminist, if you truly believe in economic, political and culture equality,  you do not use Mrs, or Miss, only Ms. ", "Mister is a courtesy title - I am not a mister.  It is polite to address me by my surname and more polite to use to use the title \"Mister\" as well but, when you ask my name, it would be presumptive of me to add the title \"Mister\".\n\n\n\"Mrs\" is not a courtesy title - it is a title like \"Doctor\" or \"Lord\" and it would be impolite (or derogatory) to omit Mrs from a married woman's name.\n\nPrior to being married, a woman should be addressed by her first name, not her surname.\n\nIn the UK, when a doctor becomes a surgeon, he is then known as Mister.  I do not know what happens if the doctor/surgeon is a woman, and I have asked one.\n", "I've heard that Mr. is the male version of Mrs. and that the male version on Ms. used to be Master (ex: Alfred calling Bruce Master Wayne because Alfred is old school).  Its just not used anymore for one reason or another.\n\n\nno idea if its accurate or not", "A couple of generations ago, unmarried women were \"Miss\" while married women were \"Mrs.\" All men were \"Mr.\" There's a bunch of social stuff that goes into this; most of it boils down to women being considered as a sort of commodity. Men needed to be able to know if a woman was married; women had no need to know if men were married.\n\nAs women began gaining more rights, it was observed that it's pretty silly for a woman's honorific salutation to be dependent on her marital status, as her worth is not related to her marital state, and her marital state is also no one's business unless she chooses to share it. The alternative \"Ms\" was thus popularized.", "Before gender equality was considered a good thing, women had few opportunities to support themselves, and an unmarried woman was considered a burden on her family.  So her future livelihood depended upon finding a husband.  In addition, men pursued women, not the other way around.\n\nThis made it more important for women to advertise their marital status than it was for men.", "Historically, a man's legal status never changed whether he was married or not; he could own property, enter into debts, etc. \n\nThis was not always the case for women. A \"miss\" was a signifier that the woman in question could not do these things. \n\nA \"mrs\" could, and the fact that it was \"mrs John Doe\" rather than \"mrs jane doe\" let everyone know that John Doe was the actual landholder and debtor.  ", "There are many good responses in this thread, but I would also like to point out one more thing: \"Mrs.\" is used before the man's first and last name, not the woman's. For instance, if Jane Doe marries John Smith, she is not Mrs. Jane Doe. She is also not Mrs. Jane Smith. She is Mrs. John Smith. She could, especially these days, call herself Ms. Jane Doe or Ms. Jane Smith.\n\nAlthough this is way more lax now, there were many etiquette writers years back who would've been very strict about what was proper.", "Women change their salutation from Miss (not Ms.) to Mrs. when they are married. It in an anachronistic indicator of whether a woman is married, because women were treated more like property and the title indicates whether she is her father's property or her husband's.\n\nMs. (pronounced Miz) is the female version of Mr.  It does not indicate marital status. However, it is so frequently misused or misunderstood that it has been rendered rendered practically useless.", "Changed from 'Miss', actually - was that a typo of yours?\n\nMs is the form proposed by feminists to replace both Miss and Mrs, since both of those have marital baggage. As other commenters has said, the fact that women's salutations historically changed is because a woman's place in life was dependent upon whether or not she was married. Whereas a man's a man for a' that.", "There are three salutations for women. Miss = unmarried, Mrs.= married, and from your feminist friends, Ms. = non of your damn business. Ms. Was to equate with Mr. And not to change based on marital status. ", "Mister is a bastardization of \"My Sir.\" Sir being a title that only men can obtain. Miss, and Misses were both developed much later, and as a result, there is no male equivalent. \n\nAs to why there is an importance given to a woman's title and her marital status, women weren't really allowed to work, even in the western world until relatively recently. WWII really marked the start of women working, and that was really only 70 some years ago. Before that point, a woman's marital status was *everything* about a woman. If she was unmarried she better still be a child or else she's a failure. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6w8ayy", "title": "Mansa Musa claimed that his predecessor, Abu Bakr II, set sail from the west coast of Africa with 2,000 ships and was never heard from again. Where did he... go?", "selftext": "Do we have any evidence, or at least a historical guess, as to what happened? It seems really odd that 2,000 ships, along with the emperor of Mali, would just straight up disappear.\n\nConsidering they sailed from the west coast of Africa, could they have reached America?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6w8ayy/mansa_musa_claimed_that_his_predecessor_abu_bakr/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm7iveh"], "score": [8], "text": ["I don't think it would be correct to say \"Mansa Musa claimed that...\"\n\nWhen this claim enters the historical record, it is not written in Musa's hand, or even in his lifetime. \n\nWe first encounter this claim when the Syrian writer Shihab al Umari visits Cairo 20 years after the Malian emperor's hajj, and al Umari writes down accounts of Cairenes who interacted with the Mansa during his stay in that city. \n\nSo, there is already a fair amount of room for invention being injected into the narrative, either by al Umari, or by one of the people he interviewed. \n\nAll of this is to say, we can not be certain that there was a voyage. We can't be certain how many boats were taken. The existing oral traditions and the earliest written account of the dynastic succession of Mali (written by Ibn Khaldun) don't agree with al-Umari whether Abu Bakr II was the father or elder brother of Musa. In fact, a recent(ish) scholar has even proposed that references to an Abu Bakr II might stem from mistranslations of arabic and misunderstandings of the rules of Malian inheritance. Thus, this scholar proposes that Mansa Musa was not \"son of Abu Bakr II\" but rather a male descendant of Abu Bakr I.^1\n\nAll of this is a long way of saying, we don't know much at all about this voyage of Abu Bakr II beyond what al Umari tells us, and there is strong reason to suppose it might be myth.\n\n----\n1. \"The Age of Mansa Musa of Mali: Problems in Succession and Chronolgoy\" in *International Journal of African Historical Studies* vo. 5, no 2 (1972) pp 221-234 _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.jstor.org/stable/217515"]]}
{"q_id": "72qdtd", "title": "why are jellyfish kept in a tank without any plantation or soil at all? they are always kept in a totally empty tank.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72qdtd/eli5_why_are_jellyfish_kept_in_a_tank_without_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnkhlb0", "dnkhzva", "dnkixot", "dnkj79x", "dnkjach", "dnlg5vb"], "score": [9, 9, 6, 13, 168, 2], "text": ["They don't interact with the bottom -- they prefer to float freely -- so there is no point installing a terrain on the bottom. It's just one more thing to pay for, and to clean, and they get nothing out of it.", "They evolved to float in the free column of the ocean. They do not naturally encounter the sea floor often. ", "Jellyfish are one very small step up from plants, in terms of being animate.  They don't even have brains, or much even in the way of nerves.\n\nThe emptier the tank, aside from them, the easier the maintenance.", "Most jellyfish float along currents in vast expanses of ocean. They're actually very fragile. In an aquarium you want to simulate their native environment as closely as possible. Any kind of substrate would have no benefit to the jellyfish and actually pose a risk of damaging it. The tanks are even designed to have no corners and use a gentle rotating current that keeps the jellyfish from bumping the walls of the tank. ", "They are very delicate and extremely hard to keep in tanks for that reason. They are mostly water with very thin membranes as their body structure. Any sharp object can rip them apart fairly easily. Of course, there are lots of larger jellies that have evolved to be more durable, or can grow big enough to withstand damage (like the Stygiomedusa gigantea, or the larger fried egg jellyfish specimens). But the vast majority are small and mostly helpless, except for their unique stinging cells, but that doesn't affect their ability to survive in a tank.\n\nIn their natural environment, they usually just float freely with the currents in the open ocean, so there's nothing for them to bump up against (except predators). They aren't strong swimmers either, so they can get stranded or trapped easily if the current washes them onto the shore or pushes them into a confined area. \n\nIn order to most closely replicate their natural environment, jellies need tanks with rounded edges to keep from getting stuck in corners, a gentle current to propel them around the tank, and a small amount of food suspended in the water. They have very specific requirements for temperature and water pH, but I don't know those details, you could probably find them on an aquarist website, though. No gravel since they could scrape against the grains and tear up their membranes. No plants since they could get stuck in the leaves. I don't think the jellyfish stings would be good for the plant either, but maybe it would be fine. \n\nAnyway, there ya go! If you want to know more just look up a jellyfish keeping guide  &  they'll have a lot more info.\n\nI also totally recommend looking up Stygiomedusa gigantea and fried egg jellyfish if you've never seen them before!", "jellyfish are pretty much just moving plants in terms of how much brainpower they have. They don't have emotions nor do they care about anything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ujx7f", "title": "In response to Google's recent achievement, how does a supercomputer \"simulate\" a molecule and (in the case of hydrogen) isn't it easy as just putting two dots on a 3d graph?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ujx7f/in_response_to_googles_recent_achievement_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5qvk6e", "d5qvxm2"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["Oh my god no. A molecule is an unbelievably complex quantum object. Even point particles and vacuum itself aren't simple to model.", "Here's the paper OP is talking about,  \n\n* O'Malley, P. J. J., et al. \"Scalable Quantum Simulation of Molecular Energies.\" arXiv preprint _URL_0_ (2015).\n\nAnd a relevant news article about it,  \n\n* _URL_1_  \n\nThe hydrogen molecule has been well studied for decades. The significance is not that they studied it again, but the methodology that was used was quantum computing a field still in infancy.\n\n > isn't it easy as just putting two dots on a 3d graph?\n\nI can assure you OP that even though you can (approximately) do the calculation by hand, *much much* more is involved than just drawing dots on a piece of paper."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.06860", "http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2016/07/quantum-computer-simulates-hydrogen-molecule-complex-calculations"]]}
{"q_id": "4j4v2a", "title": "Is it true that Aristotle told Alexander the Great that his army should boil water before drinking it?", "selftext": "My microbiology lecturer mentioned this, but I can't seem to find any primary sources about this.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j4v2a/is_it_true_that_aristotle_told_alexander_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d33tzs2", "d34g5mg"], "score": [57, 3], "text": ["Nope, does not sound a very legit claim - I'm trying to think where your lecturer would have gotten that idea, but any ancient source definitely doesn't say anything like that. I've written [previously](_URL_2_) about the relationship between Alexander and Aristotle, and basically we don't know anything at all what Aristotle taught and said to Alexander. Aristotle taught Alexander only for a year or two when the prince was 13-14-years-old, although it's plausible that they corresponded until Alexander's death. Aristotle's and Alexander's teacher-pupil relationship was glorified in later antiquity and medieval times and people wrote things such as 'fake correspondence' between them (e.g. [*Secret of Secrets*](_URL_0_)) - I am not familiar with these works but it is possible that your lecturer has gotten the story from some fictional work.\n\nI also don't think Aristotle would have known that boiling water can make bad water drinkable. Aristotle ascribed to the Hippocratic idea of disease, i.e. that there were four 'humors' in the body, melancholy, choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic. They corresponded with the four primary fundamental 'qualities' in life: hot, cold, wet, and dry; and the four 'elements':  earth, air, fire, and water. They were respectively represented in the body by black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Sickness was caused by the imbalance of these four humors in the body. Hippocrates writes in great length in his [*On Airs, Waters, Places*](_URL_1_) how different kinds of waters (e.g. salty, hard, cold) have different effects on your health; for example, water from marshlands contains too much black bile and therefore disturbs the balance of your body, which can make you ill. Hippocrates believed that the geography and topography of the water source is what made the water good or bad, and he does mention that certain waters might need boiling because of their 'structure': \n\n >  Such , [rainwaters] to all appearance, are the best of waters, but they require to be boiled and strained; for otherwise they have a bad smell, and occasion hoarseness and thickness of the voice to those who drink them.\n\nBut, he definitely does not say anything to the effect that *all* unknown water should be boiled or that boiling water can prevent disease. Looked up also what Aristotle wrote in *On Meteorology* 4 about boiling, but it's all about theoretical questions such as what happens when things boil, what can boil, why different substances react differently to boiling etc., nothing about preventing diseases. ", "Followup question: Did any other ancient people make the connection between boiling and water potability? It doesn't seem like you would need to actually understand germs to make the connection. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretum_Secretorum", "http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.mb.txt", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yo0wl/do_we_know_what_aristotle_thought_of_alexander/cyfn0ue"], []]}
{"q_id": "43zyrj", "title": "why is the cars speed/amount of horsepower part of a selling point but we have speed limits?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43zyrj/eli5_why_is_the_cars_speedamount_of_horsepower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czm9hod", "czmb051", "czmb20m", "czmb79t", "czmb8i1", "czmbf9m", "czmbl0e", "czmbqtd", "czmccs1", "czmcwwm", "czmcz48", "czmd0ap", "czmd48m", "czmd4ql", "czmd5el", "czmd7vd", "czmdiqk", "czmfslu", "czmgc9v"], "score": [55, 36, 223, 7, 3, 8, 5, 31, 7, 2, 14, 2, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["More horsepower means more torque, meaning better acceleration, which is very helpful when going from a low priority road to a higher one, it also helps when towing. More horsepower also means better engine efficiency at higher speeds; your MPG is usually best around 1750RPM-2250RPM, my car is ~200HP and is at 2000RPM @55MPH, my mother's minivan is ~285HP and is at 2000RPM @65MPH, her relative fuel economy is better than mine when driving on freeways.  \n  \nEDIT: slightly edited the range for best fuel economy, from 2000RPM-2500RPM to 1750RPM-2250RPM.", "We have some speed limits up to 120km/hr here, as long as you don't squeal your tires you are free to accelerate as fast as you want, some people like the feel of sudden acceleration. Vehicles like trucks need the horsepower and torque for hauling or pulling heavy loads. As far as high powered sports cars, many people who buy these also invest in radar detection technology or use radar jammers to get off speeding charges. It's only illegal if you get caught basically. ", "My wife asks me why i own a \"fast\" car all the time even though I (almost) never speed.  For me more power and torque is still really fun to go from zero to speed limit quickly.  Also on ramps and merging are fun with more power.  \n\nPlus some people have local dragstrips or trackdays they can use the car on but I suspect that is a small amount of the population.", "You follow the speed limit?  I do what I want!", "There are, of course, utilitarian concerns. Vehicles that are made for purposes such as hauling need the torque/power to move the weight. Those have been discussed. The other reason power is a selling point is for much the same reason we have different styles of clothing and materials that we make them from. Pleasure.\n\nHaving a car that is powerful and fast is fun. They also tend to be more attractive vehicles, with better styling. More power is, basically, a luxury. It's like smartphones. We don't NEED them to have all the features that they do, a lot of which won't see use. But people buy the new gollywog phone because they know it's a more capable device. \n\nI would also say that a higher performance vehicle can be safer than a slower one, since the driver now has power and handling available to escape/avoid a situation that a slower vehicle may not be able to. ", "Top speed isn't really all that important, as even econo-boxes will exceed the speed limit by a significant margin.   I think almost any modern car will break 100mph (yes, I'm sure there are a few exceptions).\n\nOn the other hand acceleration, and the improved handling that generally comes with higher performance automobiles, is quite important.   I might not care about the top speed, but I definitely care about that 0-60 when getting onto the highway. ", "It should be mentioned along with what others said that many race tracks have track days pretty much daily. It's relatively cheap to go there for the afternoon and then you can drive as fast as you want. It's just like any other hobby. You'll see anything from your Ferraris and Lambos there to a BMW M5, someone who has put many days and thousands of dollars into a car or engine they built, or the increasingly popular (in North America, already popular in Europe) fast hatchbacks like the Focus or Fiesta ST, or the soon to be here Focus RS. ", "Have you ever been for a ride in a 500hp car? It's amazing!", "If you live in Germany or near Germany, then you can drive that fast car in autobahn where there is no speed limit. ", "Those higher figures affect performance through every gear, from zero to top speed. Performance vehicles typically, and should, also have upgraded tires, suspension, and brakes. This gives you a greater range safety and flexibility because the vehicle can respond more quickly to your inputs.\n\nYou can accelerate out of danger faster, turn out of danger faster, and stop before you reach danger sooner.\n\nThis vehicular confidence allows the driver better synchronization. Driving can become more second nature. When a vehicle doesn't return the desired input, you have to account for that with secondary action.", "It sells cars. Plain and simple. If you really want to know how well the car will perform for your needs, you need to look at its powerband. Low end tq and consistently rising from a car that can rev high will give you your best results(this is el5, I know there's a lot of tweaking you can do). Horsepower is nothing more than an equation from a formula. There's no actual horsepower readout when testing a cars power, it measures torque, multiplied it by the rpm you are at, then divided by a constant(5252) you get HP.\n\nWritten out(on mobile) like HP=[(TQ*RPM)/5252]\n\nWhich, you can see here, and on any Hp readout graph, that your tq=hp at 5252rpms. \n\nThere's much more to this, and I'd love to keep going, but I'm doing this from memory of stuff I was doing 10-15 years ago and I don't know how accurate I'll be. I know Some large trucks may have a very low(relative) hp rating, but because they only rev to 3k rpms, they may have over 1000 ft/lb of tq, yet in the 200-300hp range. Yet it can move a 20,000lb trailer, where your 500hp anything car would burn out trying to get that moving. Once again from  hazy memory, so my numbers may be off, but the concept is there.\n\nAlso, hp can be looked at as \"high end power\". (It's not the best way to describe it, because I feel it makes hp feel like a variable, instead of a readout based on your tq) the more low end tq you have, the better you can tow, and get up and moving. The more hp you have, the better you can accelerate when your in the upper part of your rpms. \n\nThere's so much more, and as I remember little bits, I need to stop. I don't remember enough to teach a lesson on it,and I don't want to spread misinformation.", "Not all the world is ther USA. There are still countries where you can drive a car instead of slouching in it.", "Other than for useful acceleration speed and Batmobile-like handling in traffic, many auto enthusiasts enjoy showing off their fine-tuned combustion machines with gusto at drag racing tracks all over the world. Most commonly in quarter-mile increments, these races are battled for cash, glory and bragging rights, if not for their inherently thrilling nature. Whether you want to zip in between traffic and cut 15 minutes off your drive, or you like to blow away the competition in your roaring-loud earthbound rocket, a high performance vehicle will forever change the way you look at driving.", "1. Better acceleration minimizes exposure time in \"risky\" tasks like two-lane passing and making a left against traffic flow.\n\n2. Bragging rights. If your neighbor has a V6 and you've got the V8, that feels good to know your car is superior. Having more than you need is a luxury, and our culture sees that luxury and assigns a social value to it.\n\n3. A small minority of enthusiasts actually do use the extra power in events that are not regulated by speed limits, such as driving on racetracks, drag strips, etc.\n\n4. It's a sales/marketing tool. Car A may be no \"faster\" than Car B in the real world, but if it has a higher HP or Torque number, the marketing folks can exploit that in advertising and maybe steal sales from a rival manufacturer.\n", "It's still fun to drive a powerful car.  Also, some cars are appropriate for a spin around a racetrack.  Not to mention, some people exceed the speed limit :)", "Some people use their vehicles for more than just regular commuting on roads with speed limits. Autocross, offroading, and the like make good use of that torque and horsepower, and people who are into those things will be looking for those selling points when buying a car. Sometimes people just want a car that's quick and fun to drive. \n\nBasically it's a selling point because despite the existence of speed limits, there's still a demand (is that the appropriate word?) for it. ", "Because you can only swing so high on the swing set, but do you want a small push, or a really BIG push? ", "It is not just about top speed limits; it is also about acceleration and ability to power through tasks. Practically, it gives you speed to maneuver the car in case of emergencies, or more power to use for utilitarian things. Socially, car lovers just lover power and the sound that comes with it.", "The fastest I've gone in US roads is 185mph and that was on a motorcycle.  The fastest I've been in a car was just over 140mph.  You're not speeding unless you get caught."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3j8aam", "title": "Joshua Chamberlain and the defense of Little Round Top", "selftext": "My Pastor on this last Sunday used an illustration describing how Joshua Chamberlain and his 300 troops made a valiant defense during the battle of Gettysburg, getting whittled down to only 80 soldiers by the enemy 4000 confederates, only to then perform a valiant charge and subsequently capturing all 4000 of the confederates.  \nWhile this all sounds pretty amazing, I had not heard of this before and wonder if someone could verify, debunk or give a more accurate version of the event. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j8aam/joshua_chamberlain_and_the_defense_of_little/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cun5lqq"], "score": [35], "text": ["The numbers (80 charging and capturing 4000) are totally out of whack but in essence Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine did charge downhill at the 15th Alabama, driving them off and taking prisoners, and he was subsequently (30 odd years later) awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was also present at Appomatox and later Governor of Maine and President of Bowdoin. His career is pretty impressive, and, although it's frowned on here, the wikipedia page on him seems like a reasonably accurate summation of his achievements.\n\nMy personal opinion (as a former grad student in US History, Civil War specifically) is that his famous charge that saved the flank on Little Round Top did not turn the tide of the war, as is sometimes implied. No doubt had the 15th Alabama driven the 20th Maine from their positions it would have been a hard time for the Union defenders of Little Round Top, but Union reinforcements were already on the way, and the Confederate attackers were very tired, having already done a lot of marching that day, and did not have food or water. I don't think that they would have been able to exploit a small local success into a general breakthrough into the Union rear. I would also add that Longstreet had very ambiguous feelings about the whole battle and may not have supported a local success on Little Round Top with the weight of his whole Corps, even supposing that he could have been informed of the situation in a timely manner and responded with alacrity (alacrity not really being his style). On the whole, while any victory is a good thing, I don't think that the 100-odd prisoners that Chamberlain took with a bayonet charge saved the Union, or that, had he retreated that the Confederacy would have won the war.\n\nIn The Hands Of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain And The American Civil War by Alice Trulock isn't bad, although it's some years since I read it so I can't really give it a ringing endorsement."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24vq0r", "title": "Why can't you roll down a car window after the car is submerged under water?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/24vq0r/why_cant_you_roll_down_a_car_window_after_the_car/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chb4hnk"], "score": [47], "text": ["The water pressure pushes in on the window.  This makes it extremely hard to move up and down because the window is pressed against the gaskets in the door.  \n\nSimilar to how if you put an empty shoe on the floor, you can easily slide it around by pushing with one hand... but if you try to push the same shoe with a person's weight in it, it will be nearly impossible to slide."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2zkvwc", "title": "How is a CPU's temperature measured?", "selftext": "Nobody in /r/techsupport could answer this question and I can't find the answer on Google.\n\nI've always assumed motherboards have some type of thermometer built in, but I was recently told that they actually calculate the temperature based on voltage and resistance. Can anyone clear this up for me?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2zkvwc/how_is_a_cpus_temperature_measured/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpjz127", "cpjz2qr"], "score": [29, 5], "text": ["Both are, somewhat, correct.\n\nA \"thermometer\" is nothing more than simply a device that measures temperature in some way. How it's done is not included in the definition of the word. Since whatever is in your CPU measures the temperature, it's by definition a thermometer.\n\nBut the thing that actually does the work in this case, is simply a diode. A diode is an electrical component that lets current flow through in one direction, but not the other. However, even though the diode will let current flow in one direction (called the \"forward\" direction), there is still a voltage drop. As it turns out, the magnitude of this voltage drop depends on the temperature of the material (and of course some other properties).\n\nSo a CPU thermometer works by measuring the magnitude of the voltage drop across a silicon diode. The official name for such a thermometer is a silicon bandgap thermometer. See for more: _URL_0_", "The latest versions of Intel's processors have digital temperature sensors embedded within each core.  These sensors can report the temperature.  They also have built in functions to prevent the core from overheating.  Applications of these digital temperature sensors are described in detail here: _URL_0_\n\nIntel doesn't describe the exact method they use to measure the temperature, but the most widely used mechanism is to measure the forward voltage on silicon diode.  This voltage is temperature dependent, see _URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_bandgap_temperature_sensor"], ["http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/testing-and-validation/cpu-monitoring-dts-peci-paper.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_bandgap_temperature_sensor"]]}
{"q_id": "1icege", "title": "During the Cold War, how much more independent were eastern block countries compared to Soviet republics?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1icege/during_the_cold_war_how_much_more_independent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb374by", "cb39m2d", "cb3n9qw"], "score": [2, 18, 2], "text": ["Independent in what way? ", "To some extent it is impossible to state. The threat of military intervention after putting Czechoslovakia back in their place in 1968 loomed over every political leader. When the political politburo in Poland considered giving in to the demands of Solidarity, the main concern was whether or not the Red Army would intervene should they choose to yield. The possibility they would do so is said to be the main reason for crushing the opposition and going all Military state on the country. Whether or not that is true (in theory the Polish politburo was informed the soviets won't intervene no matter what, but how reliable was that resurgence could be questioned) is unsure (maybe they were just power hungry and wanted to keep the power no matter what).\n\nGenerally, well, what Moscow says, monkey states do. Only difference were they had independent administration, separate parties and were allowed some freedom in their International Policy. Some - Poland and Czechoslovakia were forced to decline participating in the Marshall Plan on Stalins order.\n\nSource - I'm a Pole and was moderately interested in history in my youth.", "Most independent in Eastern block was Poland. You can see it by checking time of screening in different countries for example Star Wars or first translations of Tolkien. It will show you how open to Western culture was certain country.\n\nWell mostly those countres had to say sth about their internal policy but within borders outlined by USRR. No market economy etc. International policy was I guess most sensitive. I think the least independent was DDR, because that they were Germans and had border with capitalistic sister.\n\nAnd well if we count in Yougoslavia in Eastern block then its the most independent country, but it didnt really belong to that block."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "75pbqc", "title": "Can the Born probability rule be derived from the Shrodinger's Equation, or is it an additional postulate?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/75pbqc/can_the_born_probability_rule_be_derived_from_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do84ydn", "do85re7", "do8677e"], "score": [3, 3, 7], "text": ["It's an additional postulate and one of a very different nature than the Schroedinger Equation. Schroedinger's equation describes the dynamics of a wavefunction in a continuous and deterministic way.  Born's rule, in essence, discontinuously breaks that object and maps it too a real world probability.  There's no aspect of this connection present within the Schroedinger equation.", "This is disputed. Advocates of unitary quantum mechanics interpretations (interpretations in which objectively the wave function doesn't collapse) have argued that the Born rule can be derived from the Schrodinger equation and the structure of Hilbert space. There is back and forth about this, and there is no consensus about whether or not the various derivations are satisfactory. What can probably be said without controversy is that the Born rule is the only possible probability rule, as both Everett and Gleason showed in the 1950's.", "[Gleason's Theorem](_URL_0_) says that the Born Rule is the only possible way of obtaining probabilities from the wavefunction. The question of why measurements have specific outcomes in the first place is called the Measurement Problem, and there may be some additional assumption needed for this (not everyone agrees). But the Born Rule itself is not what you need to postulate, there are several different ways you can choose a measurement postulate that all imply the Born Rule without putting it in directly. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason%27s_theorem"]]}
{"q_id": "4e3fpj", "title": "what is shock? what does it mean when your body goes into a state of shock?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e3fpj/eli5_what_is_shock_what_does_it_mean_when_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1wo7yu", "d1woik9", "d1wqfft", "d1wr52i", "d1x57dw"], "score": [50, 14, 8, 11, 5], "text": ["Shock is the name for any time when your tissues need more oxygen than your body can provide.  Examples are if you have lost blood (hemorrhagic shock) or if your heart is pumping too weakly (cardiogenic). In septic shock, the blood vessels dilate and are leaky so supply drops, and the oxygen demand is higher due to the infection and inflammation. ", "Shock is a condition in which the tissues of the body are not being provided with adequate amounts of oxygen. This is dangerous because your body needs a constant supply of oxygen to keep functioning. Things doctors look for to identify whether someone is in shock include low blood pressure, increased heart rate and respiratory rate, low urine output, and confusion. It typically means that a person is very sick.\n\nIt can be caused by a number of things, however there are 4 basic \"classes\" of shock. It is very important to identify what type of shock a person is in because the treatment for each is very different. The classes are:\n\n1. Distributive: This type of shock involves dilation of your blood vessels, such that adequate blood pressure cannot be maintained. As a result, your tissues and organs don't receive enough blood. The most common cause of this type of shock is sepsis, an inflammatory state in response to a disseminated infection. Other causes include Anaphylaxis -- a severe allergic response to something like peanuts.\n2. Hypovolemic: Your body does not have enough blood to circulate to your tissues. This is often seen in trauma victims who have lost a lot of blood (\"hemorrhagic shock\")\n3. Cardiogenic: The heart is failing to adequately pump blood throughout the body. This may be due to conditions like heart attacks or irregular rhythms of the heart (i.e. ventricular fibrillation).\n4. Obstructive: There is a blockage in the circulatory system preventing the heart from pumping blood throughout the body. The most common cause is a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the vessels of the lungs. The heart cannot mount enough pressure to overcome the blockage created by the clot.", "I was thinking of \"shock\" in the sense of when someone experiences a traumatic event I.e. a car wreck where the accident was so intense the victim is not hurt but in \"shock\". ", "In response to the traumatic event question: Emotional shock or an \"acute stress reaction,\" is a very variable psychological condition experienced after a traumatic event. It can cause dramatic psychological effects (dissociation, memory loss, hallucination, temporary paralyzation/blindness/other somatization), and it can cause various physical effects mostly related to the autonomic nervous system (tachycardia/bradycardia, hypertension/hypotension, syncope, sweatiness, GI distress, ect). The physical effects are never directly lethal or life threatening, but they can bring about indirect lethal events in a susceptible person (heart attack, stroke, seizure, ect.)\n\nLike everything in psychiatry, we do not know exactly what causes it or how it works. We know severe distress can cause states of emotional shock, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. We know psychiatric illness can cause inexplicable physical symptoms (pain, seizures, paralysis, numbness, hallucination, even blindness) without any evidence of physical malfunction. We know an incredible amount, and this is a lot more to learn. ", "As a paramedic, it absolutely kills me when I hear laypeople throwing out the phrase \"he/she is in shock!\" when someone is actually  stunned, panicked, or scared."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "56fds6", "title": "why does british pronunciation drop the -er sound on some words, like \"dear\", but add the -er sound on others, like \"idea\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56fds6/eli5_why_does_british_pronunciation_drop_the_er/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8iv0sm", "d8ivhwx", "d8iwddp", "d8iwm0b", "d8iwoci", "d8ixgx5", "d8ixo2w", "d8ixxqd"], "score": [15, 116, 12, 15, 27, 4, 4, 5], "text": ["There's not going to be a solid, reliable answer to your question. Colloquial sayings, words, and pronunciations are what they are because \"reasons\". It's just the way people talk, presumably some distorted artifact of an older variant of the language in which certain words or pronunciation rules were different but somehow got carried along to modern times purely by \"tradition\". We have the same sort of things in US English. In some regions of the country some people do the \"warsh\" and go to \"Warshington\". We often have silent e's on the ends of words for no obvious grammatical reason as a hold over from a time in our language when it would have been pronounced. ", "In a non-rhotic accent like most British accents, an \"r\" is generally spoken between words if the first word ends in a vowel sound and the next word begins with one. \n\nSo, you will hear \"I have an idear about the car\" but \"I have an idea that you will like\".", "I come from Kent. My pronunciation of idea is literally just \"I-deer\"\n\nAlso what do call a deer with no eyes?\n\nWhat do youcall a deer with no eyes and no legs?", "The missing link here is that all those dropped R's come back when followed by a vowel. Most Brits will say \"dear Amy\" or \"center area\" (\"centre\", as it were) with those final R sounds. Pronunciation and spelling aren't inherently linked, though; you can be illiterate and still speak perfect English. This is important because it shows how you usually don't think of how words are spelled when speaking or listening, only when writing or reading.\n\nNow, consider this: subconsciously, a British English speaker might think of the word \"dear\" as just the \"dea\" sound. When the next word starts with a vowel, they attach an R, so you hear the R in \"dear Amy\". That \"rule\" can become over-generalized to apply to words where it should not. \"idea\" isn't ever supposed to have an R sound, but the British person's brain subconsciously says \"this words ends in a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, better stick an R in between\", hence \"this **idea^r** is really cool\".", "The non-rhotic pronunciation came before the intrusive R. People would say things like 'tuner' and 'tuna' and it would sound the same. Eventually you have phrases like 'tuner oil', where the second word begins with a vowel sound. The r-sound came back to link the words, so 'tuner oil' would have the r, and sound different from 'tuna oil', but 'tuner' and 'tuna' would still sound the same. Eventually, this became overgeneralized, with people slipping in the r-sound to connect words, even when there was no r-sound to being with. So for those people, they pronounce 'tuner' and 'tuna' the same, while also indeed pronouncing 'tuner oil' and 'tuna oil' the same, with an r-sound. From there you get phrases like \"law and order\" sounding something like \"lauren d'order\". This has gotten generalized even further, to being in the middle of words (like saying 'drawing' as 'draw-ring') and at the ends of words with no vowel sound after them, such as [this video](_URL_0_) , where George W. Bush says \"the FEMA-r director\".", "There's no such thing as 'British' pronunciation. There are hundreds of dialects in Britain, each with their own way of pronouncing the words you are detailing, and many of them do not use the pronunciations that you describe.", "Am I missing something? Dear and Idea are pronouncee identically (less the i) where i am from", "Don't know which British people you talk to, but most of us don't pronounce words like you describe. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/Be6tunbRcs8?t=80"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2wjp2u", "title": "if animals like bees fertilize plants and animals came after plants, how did plants fertilize before?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wjp2u/eli5_if_animals_like_bees_fertilize_plants_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["corg7d1", "corgvxt", "corh0d2", "corh0v3", "corl6ac", "cos971x"], "score": [6, 25, 5, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["Even today, many plants self-pollinate. Furthermore, some plants today cross-pollinate by using either the wind or water. Before animals evolved, these methods were probably much more common.", "Flowering plants did not exist prior to insects. Before animals evolved plants either self pollinated or pollinated via the wind. ", "You're probably thinking of plants that use flowers and pollen for reproduction. Many of those plants need pollinator animals. But the earliest plants didn't have flowers.... they used spores (or more primitive forms of asexual reproduction) to reproduce. There are still plants today (ferns, club mosses, etc) that do this.", "You're thinking complex plants like flowers. The first plants were simpler. Think more like algae, pond scum. There were animals eating plants way before there were flowering plants. The answer to other half of your question is probably \"spores.\" ", "The first plants produced self-pollinating spores, which includes algae, [mosses, liverworts](_URL_3_), and [ferns](_URL_1_).  [Gymnosperms](_URL_0_), which include conifers, cypress, and gingkos were a sign of more complex life. These plants utilize self-pollination methods such as wind or water, along with insects.  \n\n[Here's](_URL_2_) a bit more info on how plants evolved.\n\nOne cool fact:  Some pollinators and plants evolved together, which is called [co-evolution](_URL_4_).  This is common in many orchid plants- each specific plant has a specific pollinator.  As you can surmise, this causes a huge problem if either the insect or the plant goes extinct or has a significant decrease in population size.  One of the reasons why vanilla is so expensive, is that the orchid has to be pollinated by hand since there is not a living population of that plant's pollinator in some of the areas the plant is cultivated for global sale.\n\nHere's a little bit more info on the [diversity of life](_URL_2_).", "I am a beekeeper who specializes in phylogeny for bees. If you want to see the scientific community go into a fight where someone is going to get hurt get an entomologist together with a botanist to discuss the evolution of flowering plants and insects that pollinate them. \n\nWhat we can surmise so far. Plant life most likely some type of algae and or fungi come to the edge of the water line and then onto land. Eventually more complicated life forms followed which eventually includes ancestors of insects (this is such a gross oversimplification it is bad) . \n\nRemember plants though have a head start but these are not plants that necessarily flower or produce pollen. We will need millions of years to go by before that happens. However starting to play catch up are insects. Lots of them. Of all sorts of different types. Giving them a few million years and you will eventually end up with wasps which are the ancestor to bees (again a horrible oversimplification). \n\nPlants can self pollinate in the forms of pines and ginkos and a few others. Now is where things get fun. Did the plants produce fruits that would have been consumed by herbivores in order to help disperse seeds?  But that is not pollination per se. You are right but remember seed production is the result of pollination. So wind pollination becomes possible for flowers but the fossil timeline does not give a definitive answer because there is an overlap with flowering plants with sticky pollen that was carried by insects and other animals. \n\nWhat we do know is that we have some really old plant fossils with sticky pollen and some really old plant fossils with non sticky pollen. We also have insects and animals that are evolving at the same time to work these plants and developing in such a way that this becomes beneficial to the animals and the plants at the same time. \n\nThere are plants that wind pollinate without insects or other animals helping them. There are plants that must have animals or insects to help pollinate them or they don't make it. There are plants that self pollinate and don't care about either of the above groups. The aspect of co-evolution is taken very seriously here because it offers the best insight into the current data. With new discoveries things may change but it is an interesting matter of research and some of the coolest things about have been happening in the last five years. I have had to correct my talks with new information a lot because of new and wonderful information that has been showing up in the journals.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnosperm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_plants", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryophyte", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coevolution"], []]}
{"q_id": "3e1hl2", "title": "why is it that a fully buffered youtube video will buffer again from where you click on the progress bar when you skip a few seconds ahead?", "selftext": "Edit: Thanks for the great discussion everyone! It all makes sense now.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e1hl2/eli5_why_is_it_that_a_fully_buffered_youtube/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctanyhg", "ctaowp3", "ctapom5", "ctaqohx", "ctaqzsu", "ctas1fw", "ctasfd5", "ctastb5", "ctax6x6", "ctax7ge", "ctaxuxf", "ctb1bw5", "ctb37yp", "ctb3i8l"], "score": [12, 2650, 196, 174, 37, 9, 2, 3, 7, 4, 435, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["would love to know why too. HTML5 seems to fix some of the issues however. i just wish they didnt load scrubber thumbnails before the video. dont show me what i cant see, dammit.", "Since 2013, youtube doesn't preload the entire video anymore thanks to a feature called \"DASH playback\" (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). It makes youtube less of a bandwidth hog by only preloading a small portion of video at a time.\n\nYou might be able to disable DASH via a plugin: _URL_0_", "They changed it because most of youtubes traffic came from videos which were  never watched. I have a 100 mbits internet connection. If im browsing the videos on the right side clicking here and there i would have loaded every video i clicked while searching completly in seconds in the highest quality. Their 'new' system ensures that isnt happening. Bit its annoying espacially if im on my phone where i have limited data usage", "As far as I can tell, when streaming a video it may start off at 480p. As the video plays, it starts to buffer a higher 720p. This process may have started 5 seconds into the video, but in an attempt to avoid interrupting your playback it starts loading the 720p video from the 20 second mark.\nIf you happen to skip forward within that 20 second window of 480p video, it will attempt to load the video from that point in 720p, thus resetting the buffered video.\nThis is a side effect of YouTube's adaptive streaming.\nHope this answers your question!", "YouTube does not actually pre-buffer the entire video anymore. With the advent of HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP), most on demand videos are actually played back in the same manner as livestreaming.\n\nThe browser receives a manifest of all the chunks of video (usually 2-10 seconds in length each) along with different resolutions for each chunk. The player then loads the current chunk + a few more in advance but will not download the entire list. Previously it was one big video file and the browser would happily load the entire file.\n\nThe only different between live and on demand is that the manifest file for live streaming is updated as more video becomes available, whereas the manifest for on demand stays the same.", "Disclaimer: I'm not a Youtube engineer and have no particular knowledge beyond what I have guessed and accidentally gotten right.\n\nNow then. There are a couple of reasons for this. As mentioned, Youtube no longer gathers a long buffer, as they determined that most people have enough bandwidth to stream their video instead. For the few people that don't have enough bandwidth, Youtube added an adaptive quality feature that automatically makes the video shit if your internet isn't as good as they think it should be. \n\nBecause the video quality can keep changing for people with sub-par internet, and because the people with fast internet don't care, Youtube figured that storing the video for seeking purposes isn't worth the effort to program or the space that buffer takes up. If they allowed you to skip a few seconds forward, would they then have to allow you to skip one second back as well in case you overshoot? It's just easier to toss everything.\n\n", "Well the same has been happening to me as well..and I can't really figure out why...I would rather let the entire video load..completely..before watching it rather than waiting for it to buffer everytime as I watch.", "Also, earlier when the whole video used to load, it got stored in chrome/cache and was very easy to copy in its entirety. The dash system also took care of that. ", "A better question is, why do the ads always play through perfectly no matter what then the video you actually want has to buffer like you're on dial-up?", "What I don't understand is that no matter where I am or what computer I am on or what connection my internet is a 720p or 1080p video will never play without stopping from start to finish. ", "I think OP is asking why if you click ahead in the progress bar to a spot that has already been buffered (eg 15seconds ahead in a 2min buffer) the buffering immediately starts again at the spot you clicked on, so that the other 1m45s of your buffer is gone and has to be redownloaded. And similarly if you click on a spot that's already been played (eg 15 seconds back), you lose the entire 2min buffer. ", "Cost saving measures, both in the form of DASH and bandwidth throttling policies in the player.\n\nThis is why you can download the video for offline viewing 10x faster than waiting for it to buffer. \n\nThus, their throttling isn't on the whole video network but just when accessed through the default flash/html players.\n\ntl;dr : less bandwidth used is less $$$ paid to ISPs for peering/caching.", "On the topic of YouTube, why is it that sometimes, a video will load horribly slow to the point of being unwatchable, but after refreshing the page, it suddenly loads super quickly?\n\nOr sometimes it just refuses to load in the first place, and refreshing seems to fix it.", "Compare it to having a book. You have the entire book in front of you (fully buffered), and if you read it front to back, you'll never run into a rebuffering issue.\n\nHowever, if you want to instantly skip to page 154, it takes you a few seconds to get there. You might guess about where it is and then refine it from there, but you most likely won't instantly open to that page."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://lifehacker.com/preload-entire-youtube-videos-by-disabling-dash-playbac-1186454034"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2dpx90", "title": "why is it only nudity when the nipple is visible?", "selftext": "And why can men with \"man boobs\" go around shirtless? Is it really just a women cant thing?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dpx90/eli5_why_is_it_only_nudity_when_the_nipple_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjrvo1w", "cjrvvon", "cjrwbmi", "cjrwi88", "cjrxyqe", "cjry76d", "cjrzd0b", "cjs087f", "cjs1azs", "cjs1d72", "cjs3052", "cjs37og", "cjs3cfy", "cjs5vu9", "cjs7f73"], "score": [14, 181, 5, 22, 42, 12, 7, 14, 14, 41, 72, 2, 15, 5, 2], "text": ["Societal expectations. We have been nurtured and conditioned to believe that nudity is that, and has to be that.", "When beach towns try to ban thongs, they also tend to come up with rather contorted legal definitions of what constitutes a \"naked\" butt.\n\nAnd ~~in~~ **from the 1790s into** the early 19th century, before \"Victorianism\" really got started, a fashionable woman could reveal almost all of her breasts in an evening gown. But a generation or so later, even a glimpse of upper cleavage was considered semi-obscene.\n\nTimes and definitions change.\n\nEDIT: Correction for accuracy", "Got to draw the line somewhere.", "I don't know the reason, but it's very true. You can show a complete set of breasts on cable television, so long as something is covering the nipples. And butts? Totally okay to show on cable, as long as it's a male butt. ", "Basically, it's a natural [Schelling fence](_URL_0_).", "Women's nipples are the source of all evil. ", "it's where the milk comes from", "They can show their breasts in many parts of the world. The US seems somewhat puritanical, especially TV.", "In five year old terms, the female nipple is a direct visual indicator of sexual arousal - much more so than with men. We therefore, as a society, perceive it at a naughty bit.", "In some areas, anywhere a man can legally go topless, so can a woman. For instance, New York.", "Because without nipples they're pretty much pointless...", "It's an arbitrary, but precise line that can be crossed. usually to make censorship or age rating easier.", "What about if it was a circular pastey that was brown is that ok? What about pink? What about blue? Or black? What if it was a Pic of a mans nipples cut into a circle?", "Because grown ups make all the rules.", "We had to draw a line somewhere. And nature drew the line for us: the  areola."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7z536z", "title": "how is an i7 processor faster than an i3 if the clock speed is almost the same?", "selftext": "I just upgraded my laptop from an i3 to a (used) i7. 2.3GHz i3, 2.4GHz i7. I'm up 100 MHz. For the price difference, I feel kinda cheated. I understand that a few decades ago a hundred MHz was a huge difference, but it doesn't seem like much to me now. I'm presuming there's more to the picture than simply the clock speed?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7z536z/eli5_how_is_an_i7_processor_faster_than_an_i3_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dulcyak", "duld67s", "duld8g5", "duldede", "duled38", "duli0i3", "duljshx", "dulyp2z", "dum4uw7", "dum6mlo"], "score": [2, 51, 2, 869, 12, 24, 2, 12, 7, 2], "text": ["The number of cores is important, the memory level is important. Core i3\u00a0processors have two cores,\u00a0Core i5\u00a0CPUs have four and\u00a0Core i7\u00a0models also have four processors and sometimes six or eight\u00a0cores. ", "Oooh a question I can answer.\n\nOk, imagine you have some people painting a wall. They can paint thousands strokes a second because these are some really fast painters. There are two ways you can finish painting the wall quicker, either make them paint faster, or get more painters.\n\nIn this analogy:\n\n*  clock speed = number of strokes a second\n*  the number of cores = number of painters\n\nNow when you get a hyperthreaded (or multithreaded) CPU, this is like giving the painters a brush in each hand. They can multitask now! It's hard to multitask though, so two painters are usually better than one painter with two brushes.\n\n\n*(In reality it's a little more complex than that, sometimes faster clock speeds will be better, and sometimes more cores will be better)*\n\n**EDIT:** I noticed I hadn't brought it back to the question really, but an i7 has one big benefit over an i3, the i7 has more cores. Now, the i3 might be better if the i7 is a lot lot older [for example an 8th generation i3 vs a 3rd generation i7](_URL_0_).", "You can compare you CPUs here: _URL_0_\n\nClock speed is only one of the factors that determine the performance of a processor. ", "**Short answer**: the difference is in how much your processor does in those clock cycles. \n\n\n**Long answer:**\n\nThe amount of instructions your processor handles each second depends on two factors: \n\n* Clock speed: the speed at which the processor components switch state\n\n* Instructions per Clock cycle (IPC): the amount of instructions the processor can handle during one cycle. \n\nClock speed has not improved that much over the last 5-10 years. A higher clock speed results in more heat, and we have hit a limit to how much we can comfortably cool. For desktops that's in between 3-4 GHz, for laptops that's even lower. \n\nTherefore lots of improvements have been made to the IPC. Mostly it comes down to parallellism: processing multiple instructions at the same time. If we compare processing instructions to doing the laundry: \n\n* Pipelining: instead of washing, drying, ironing the first load, then doing the same for the second, third, ... the second load can already start using the washing machine as soon as the first load is transfered to the dryer.\n\n* Instruction parallellism: if two loads of laundry require the same washing machine settings, we can put them together and execute in the same cycle.\n\n* Multiple processor cores: we use multiple washing machines, dryers, irons to wach multiple loads at the same time. \n\n* Multiple instruction threads per core: if a certain load does not need to be ironed, we can use the iron for another load.\n\n\nEDIT: \n\n* Most people seem to use the term \"IPC\" only to indicate single core performance, here I used it in the broader sense and do count multicore processors as an improvement in IPC. \n\n* Cache is indeed a factor I forgot. In laundry terms, cache is a set of racks where you can store a small amount of laundry. You can store laundry you just washed while it waits for the dryer to be free. Or if you have a load of blue shirts in the washing machine you can already prepare another load of blue shirts to follow so you don't have to switch settings. ", "The first thing to understand is that \"i3\" and \"i7\" are more about *branding* than technical specifications.\n\nDepending on year it came out  &  even the particular model that year, they could have different numbers of cores, different amounts of cache, different onboard graphics processors and other differences.  The systems they're in can have different amounts and speeds of RAM, different types  &  speeds of HDD/SSD and might have different types/speeds of graphics processor (or none at all).  All of these can have significant differences in performance.\n\nYear over year, the \"2.3GHz i3\" gets faster because they're constantly updating the core architecture so it can do more per clock tick.  [Going from a 2000-series to a 5000-series gives you about a 20% performance boost](_URL_0_[]=750 & cmp[]=2602).\n\nThen you're jumping from an i3, which is supposed to a mid/low-end chip to an i7, which is supposed to be a high-end chip.  It's going to have more cores, hyperthreading and all the bells  &  whistles enabled.", "Have you got the model numbers of both parts on you? If it's the same architecture for both, you're only going to see a very tiny boost in single threaded performance but the i7 probably has twice as many threads to throw around. Your team of CPU men hasn't gotten much stronger individually, it's just doubled in size.\n\nI went from an i5 4300M to an i7 4810MQ, the clock speed only went up from 2.6 to 2.8 but it also went from two cores and four threads to four cores and eight threads. Effectively, I've got twice the power to throw around now. It won't neccessarily make every single application faster, because not everything uses more than one core, but it'll let me do more things at once.", "This is super simplified but still.\n\nLet's say clock speed is akin to speed of two animals, a common pet dog (assuming it is similar to an i3 processor)  &  an elephant (i7 processor). While both of them can go from place A to place B 4 times per hour, the amount of wooden logs they can carry with them on each trip would be different. A typical elephant would be able to carry huge amount of logs in a single trip when compared to the dog. Thus elephant would be able to get more amount of work done per trip, even though both have same speed. While the dog may need 10 trips to take 10 logs, the elephant probably would be able to take 10 logs in 2 trips only, thus requiring lesser trips.\n\nIn the same way, an i7 processor would be able to execute much more amount of instructions per clock cycle when compared to an i3 processor. So it would complete the same task in fewer clock cycles than i3 processor, even though the clock speeds are the same. It is definitely an upgrade.\n\nThen there also the case of number of physical cores present in the processor - the i3 processor may have only two cores while i7 might have 4 cores.\n\n", "Another factor not yet mentioned here is cache. A computer uses multiple forms of short-term memory. These things cannot hold data without drawing power, but have much higher bandwidth. Which basically mean how fast data can be moved around.\n\nOne of those types of memory is called cache, and is part of the actual CPU chipset. It's much faster than the system memory you have called RAM. The most used data is stored in the cache, anything that doesn't fit is put in system memory. \n\nHigher grade CPU's come with more cache. And this plays a part in the better performance.", "ELI5 answer.\n\nImagine you need to move a lot of boxes from one location to another.\n\nAll CPU cycle speed does is measure how many runs you can do in an hour. \n\nBut an I7 CPU can carry a lot more boxes than I3 CPU per run.\n\nSo even though I7 and I3 run at exactly the same speed, I7 can do a lot more work than I3.", "Clock speed is only useful to compare two processors of the same generation/type and brand, i.e i5, i7, Ryzen, Pentium. You  can't compare a 4.0GHZ Pentium 4, to a 1.7GHZ i3, to a ryzen 7 3.7GHZ\n\n\nIf you want to compare the performance of the two processors that arn't the same generation/type you need to look at the benchmarks, like this _URL_0_ benchmarks a a good guide, real life performance varies by work load.\n\n\nFunny fact, Quality control is the main reason there are different processors. All processors are made from the same die. Lets take the current intel coffee lake (lga1151) for example. Every one is supposed to be a 6 core 12 thread processor. \n\nThe perfect ones go in the i7 bin. 6 core 12 thread\n\nIf there is a broken core, they disable 1 other cores and hyper threading and it goes in the i3 bin (4 core 4 thread). \n\nIf just hyper threading doesn't work it goes in the i5 bin (6 cores, 6 thread). \n\nAfter that they are tested to see what clock speed they can maintain, that's why a i7-8700k runs at 3.7Ghz and a i7-8700 3.2Ghz. I'm ignoring boost speeds for simplicity.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3820-vs-Intel-Core-i3-8350K/m739vs3935"], ["https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php"], [], ["https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp"], [], [], [], [], ["http://cpuboss.com/"]]}
{"q_id": "2uttgb", "title": "why isn't there any passion from both democrats and republicans about making voting day a national holiday?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uttgb/eli5_why_isnt_there_any_passion_from_both/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cobm3uw", "cobm5oy", "cobm9h7", "cobmbgn", "coboq1f", "cobpddv", "cobpp72", "cobq7e3", "cobrkzf", "cobrqik", "cobrx5d", "cobrznw", "cobs1oz", "cobs60w", "cobs7it", "cobs9mt", "cobsgqn", "cobspjg", "cobsvrz", "cobsyv6", "cobt8e6", "cobtfxo", "cobtswa", "cobtulf", "cobty2e", "cobty5c", "cobu0c0", "cobu4mj", "cobuc4x", "cobug83", "cobur2f", "cobv0i0", "cobv6g0", "cobv958", "cobvdnx", "cobve11", "cobvi8i", "cobvidu", "cobvj9p", "cobvplx", "cobvr56", "cobvvp5", "cobvzn1", "cobw21m", "cobw2rk", "cobw8t8", "cobwkof", "cobwo6q", "cobww0v", "cobx2rp", "cobx5gw", "cobxe9c", "cobxmnx", "cobxrim", "cobxyua", "coby7am", "coby866", "cobyft6", "cobyl4o", "cobyudh", "cobywuu", "cobyyyh", "cobyzv9", "cobzf0z", "cobzhdy", "cobzy9g", "coc05ds", "coc0b3f", "coc0fn6", "coc0ko1", "coc0m0r", "coc0sp9", "coc0yrq", "coc11lh", "coc16zq", "coc1884", "coc1ujv", "coc1x7m", "coc25jm", "coc287d", "coc28px", "coc2dwx", "coc2mpl", "coc2zeg", "coc31p7", "coc329w", "coc38ii", "coc3ibe", "coc41nf", "coc48bu", "coc4jn4", "coc4wbr", "coc5482", "coc6iju", "coc6zn3", "coc797k", "coc81mt", "cocbbbn", "coccqjt"], "score": [25, 8, 10, 1706, 1411, 236, 2, 63, 2, 9, 89, 2, 122, 23, 3, 3, 7, 5, 4, 2, 280, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 38, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 8, 2, 3, 17, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 10, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["What would it actually do? Just because something is a national holiday does not mean that any employer would be required to give anyone the day off. It would be largely symbolic and not really do anything to actually increase voting. ", "Probably because then the people coming out would be more likely to be moderates,  and therefore unpredictable.  As it stands, people holding more extreme party views are more likely to come out to vote, as they tend to care more. If incentive to not vote is taken away (such as not having to work) then the moderates have more incentive to vote.  (I'm no expert, just taking a Government and Politics class)", "Voter suppression is an important tactic for the Republican party.  The Republican base is generally smaller but more dedicated,  making voting as hard as possible means that more democrats stay home rather than take time off work and go down to the polls with 9 forms of photo ID . This allows them to win elections even with a smaller base of support.", "The Republican party would certainly not benefit from the move. Their target demographics tend to be wealthier, older, or both. In other words, people who do not especially need a national holiday to get off work, or who can afford to take a day off. Furthermore, it would allow the middle to lower class demographics more opportunities to vote, which on average would favor democrats, not republicans.\n\nThe Democrats could also potentially be harmed by such a move by admittedly more nebulous reasons. The largest one would be that the poor generally do want to work so that they can make more money for their day to day needs. Mandating a day off would negatively impact a large voting block for the democratic party, possibly driving their supporters away.\n\nEDIT: Rather than responding to everyone, I'll just address some common complaints here:\n\n1. I know it's illegal to prevent your employee from voting. That doesn't mean you have to pay them for the time they missed, which provides an economic incentive to stay at work.\n\n2. I also know that not every rich person votes Republican and every poor person Democrat. These are general demographic trends among major voting blocks in each party. Enough people do fit in these categories that it becomes useful to examine how changing policies would impact these demographics.\n\n3. In the US, you do not have to pay your employees on voting day or national holidays. Some people do, but it is by no means required.\n\n4. The weekend has been suggested multiple times. I do not know what impact this would have. That's all I really have to say on the matter.", "Elected officials are rarely excited about radically altering the composition of the electorate for the simple reason that it was *this composition* which elected them. \n\nThis problem is so basic that the US Constitution includes a clause for assembling a whole new Constitutional Convention, if Congress and State Legislatures become to resistant to reform.", "Early and absentee voting.  Most states have it, and it gives people weeks to vote, so there's no need for a holiday..", "Why not just put voting day on Veteran's Day or some other nationally recognized holiday?", "Another factor is the fact that it won't likely lead to an increase in turnout. People don't typically go out on their days off and if they do it's certainly not going to be to go vote. The majority of people who don't vote don't do so because they don't have time but rather don't feel their votes matter. So making voting day a national holiday wouldn't likely make any large impacts on voter turnout. \n\nEdit: Here's some supporting evidence- _URL_0_", "National Voter Registration Day is gaining some momentum.  Check it out.", "Politicians don't want *everyone* to vote. They want only their supporters to vote. ", "Honestly I hate the idea of a national voting holiday for a couple reasons. \n\n1) It's more likely to turn into a long vacation weekend. \"I can get a four day weekend just by taking a Monday off? Sign me up!\"\n\n2) Which day? We have more than one election every year. And arguably local elections have far more impact on people's lives than who's president.\n\n\nIt's far more important to extend the voting period to include multiple Saturdays and Sundays. And it would be far cheaper for local govt to pay overtime for a couple people working weekends than giving all employees a paid day.", "I'm unable to answer your question, but I completely agree with your sentiment. I'm tired of being unable to vote because of an unwillingness to set aside the time to do so after an 8-10 hour work day. ", "Because the idea of a 'one day' to vote is absurd and out dated. A better solution is to create a variety of voting channels (mail in, walk in, etc) and allow people to vote over a longer period of time. That way, people of all situations can find the time to participate. ", "Because we don't need it.  \n  \nMail-In ballots are the way to go.", "It likely wouldn't change much.  While every job is required to allow people time away from work to vote, only state and federal non-essential personnel would benefit from getting the entire day off as a national holiday.  Private companies are not required to give people off on national holidays.  ", "Because both think it would give the other an advantage. \n\nThis is why all things that should happen don't in government. ", "A national holiday doesn't mean a whole lot.  Fast food places are still open.  Factories still run.  The grocery store still needs to be stocked.  All it means is a couple select groups like federal workers, teachers, and bank employees don't have to work.  The other 98% of the worker class still have to clock in.", "congress is a body made up of officials elected under the current electoral system so any change to the current electoral system is more likely to benefit challengers almost by definition", "I feel like the main underlying reason is just that the guys who are in office are the ones who know how to win under the current system.  For most of them any change is not in their self interest.  Like even if it would benefit democrats more than republicans it still might not benefit the specific democrats that are currently in office.  They're the ones that have the support of those democrats that have the time to vote.  They wouldn't necessarily have the support of those that don't have the time. ", "I believe this is one reason why write in ballots are raising in popularity.", "This is a solved problem in Australia. Elections always happen on Saturdays.\n\n(Postal voting and early voting booths are available if circumstances prevent you from showing up on a Saturday.)", "Hi, sorry if this gets buried but I work in politics managing campaigns and here's my 2 cents on why this isnt a big deal.\n\nNo dramatic increases in voter participation is tied to ease of voting. Literally most everyone who wants to vote is going to vote anyway. 37 states of no excuse early voting. They do not see an increase in voter turnout. Oregon switched to mail in voting, literally not even having to wait in line, and turnout didn't increase (here's the Sec State report) _URL_0_ \n\n\nNow onto the main reasons. Cost Cost Cost Cost Cost Cost Cost. Disregard what I said above, lets approach it not from the reality, but from the possibility:\n\n I am running a campaign for Sam the Baker against Bob the Builder. We're running for a seat to represent the United Professions, Seat B, which has 50 voters in it. Only 2/3 of those people will likely vote more than once in their lifetime, but lets be generous and say 80% so now I have 40 voters to talk to. My party, Bakers Dozen, has 13 members. Bobs Union has 12 members so I'm already at an advantage. But Sam's wife and adult child will vote for him but Bob has a wife  and adult child too and Sam's ex-wife is voting for Bob because Sam sucks in bed. So now we're both at 15 with only our base voting. Where does this put us, its July, we're now both polling at 30% in the polls and the race is wide open with 40% undecided. Now here is where the cost comes in because Peter the President was a real prick and thought instituting a national holiday and no excuse mail in voting was going to win his party more votes. Guess what I know have to worry about? I have to worry about not only convincing voters and getting them to the polls, but doing that not for 3 weeks but now for 9 months because at ANY time they can choose to vote with mail in voting. /end sidebar \n\nSo now we're tired but since everyone's going to vote so now not only do I have to spend money on educating every voter (not bad) but now I have to worry about more election day costs. How many buses can I rent for driving my voters to the polls, how many cars and gas cards do I need to pay for the same thing. How many volunteers do I need, how much am I paying for a database to track who early voted or not. Everything about that is great, I get paid more too because now I'm not sleeping for 2 months instead of 1 week but don't complain about money in politics if you want that, because Dave the Drunk will never mount a viable third party campaign to unseat the Bakers or Builders. ", "Can someone ELI5 when does USA actually have election days? From the comments I undersand that it's only a single Tuesday? That doesn't sound reasonable. What time?\n\nWe (Czech Republic) have election days on Fridays, 2 PM - 10 PM + Saturdays 8 AM - 2 PM, so that everyone can go vote and it doesn't need to be a holiday, since people working 9-5 can go vote straight after work (as opposed to if it was a holiday, they might just be lazy and stay at home).", "heres an idea. Move President's day to be on the same day as Election Day. It only makes sense.", "In Australia, it's compulsory to vote. \n\nWe vote on weekends which means that the majority of people can vote easily. Polling booths are reasonably efficient and thus usually you can line up and vote in under 1-2 hours at worst. Usually there's a fundraiser BBQ going for the school / volunteer fire brigade etc so your lunch is covered too. We call election day \"National Sausage Sizzle Day\".\n\nFor people that have to work on that day, postal / absentee votes are possible and easy to do.\n\n", "Cause they know that the voting secretly doesn't matter.", "Also, if everyone voted 100% every election cycle, conservatives would never win because most people left of middle on the political spectrum. We did a test I my APGOV class and all but one person landed square in the middle or I the liberal left. That one other person scored way more conservative than anybody else. He also had the bright idea of wearing KKK shirts on MLK day as a joke.", "Uk here. Our polls are open from 7:00 to 22:00, gives everybody the opportunity to vote. What time are they open in the US which would mean people couldn't because of work?", "It would involve taking First Past The Post seriously. No one can take a system as manipulable and undemocratic as First Past The Post seriously. There are so many ways in which it can be manipulated, which makes companies and lobbies very happy, so why even bother? \n\nAlso, if the US didn't have FPTP, they would have ceased having a bipartisan system a long time ago. Perhaps it would also be less sensitive to tricks like gerrymandering and other forms of manipulation, and political discussion might just be a little more sensible than \"I'm Republican, so I'm right and you're retarded\" and \"No, you're a backwards Bible hugger, as a Democrat I'm the one who's right\".", "If that was the case everyone would be at a park having a picnic in election day.\n\nBeing able to legally skip work or be late on election day? Priceless.", "Neither party would benefit from such a thing. However if this was combined with serious campaign finance reform, it might have a real impact. Also I think every ballot should contain a vote for \"none of the above\". Lets all remember that our elected officials are public servants, not American royalty.", "Realistically it doesn't matter and could only hurt people. I work in a plant. A plant that will not shut down for voting. McDonald's is not going to close for voting. Super Markets are not going to close for voting. Etc. The places that do close for voting will be few and there is no guarantee that the employees will be paid for that day. Overall, it is a great idea in principle, it wouldn't really make a difference.", "if voting day was a national holiday, i feel like a lot of people ... wouldn't take that day off to vote. It doesn't make sense...but it makes sense. The excuse to be late because you were at the polls ... works well enough. The fact that you're already out and about for the day, with shit to do so you take some time to go vote. I can't speak for everyone obviously, but, a \"holiday\" means ... day off. Making plans (or not making plans), that don't involve standing in line to vote. It's like, it would almost become even MORE inconvenient.", "Why not have it on a Saturday like we do in Australia. \n\nThe tough part is finding the place with the best sausage sizzle. ", "Because the super bowl should probably be a holiday first. ", "Australian here, we always vote on a Saturday, what's the issue? ", "Just an opinion, and I know you're inbox is full of them, but what would it fucking matter?  MLK Day is a national holiday. President's day is a national holiday. Hell, thanksgiving is a national holiday. Now how many people do you know that still had to work in some form on any of those days. National holiday means more shoppers, drivers, and diners, so more \"low skill\" employees still have to bust their asses to meet demand. ", "Voting day in our country  is always on a weekend...  I'm pretty sure it's always a Saturday -  New Zealand ", "People would turn it into a four day weekend and still wouldn't vote.\n\n", "Just do what Australia and Brazil do, and make it mandatory to vote otherwise you get a fine. ", "It would turn into a giant sales day.  \"Check out the Voting Day sales at your local Dodge dealer\".  Not everyone would get the day off.  \n\nIf you want change, make voting day April 15th, with your taxes.  \n\n", "So, maybe it's just cause I'm young, but why do we need a voting day? Why do people complain about having to stand in line for hours? When I voted, I just dropped off my ballet in a box. No lines. No nothing. Just walked up, dropped it off. Took 2 minutes. Didn't even have to leave my house either if I didn't want to, I could have mailed it in. So what's up with people complaining about the \"hassle\" of voting?", "Why would they? \n\nThe cynic in me says that as it's not a public holiday, people are happy to go and vote as it's time out of work. \n\nIf it were a public holiday, people would think \"I don't want to waste some of my day off by going to vote!\"\n\nELI5 : adults generally don't enjoy being in work, or voting, so wuldn't waste a day off by going to vote.", "We have compulsory voting and it would be nice to have a public holiday but they usually just put it on a Saturday. Still doesn't suit everyone ", "OMG why doesn't anyone realize that the people who can't vote because of work are largely the group of people who would use a holiday to travel. Holidays are rare, special days and people who get them off use them wisely. NOT for voting.\n\n", "Because voting takes 20 minutes, not all day. ", "Are you aware of the amount of people who not only would still have to work, it would become MANDATORY for them to be at work because national holiday = increased business capacity. Do you think it will increase voters? No, people will just take the holiday and just like all the other \"National Holidays\" make others work.", "If you had an holiday what would you normally do? Go out, get a short vacation. Would you go vote?", "**Better question:** If my phone can read my finger print, why can't I just vote on my phone? Surely it wouldn't be more open to fraud than the mailed ballots.", "Ultimately, it's just not worth it in their eyes.  There are very few people that fail to vote because they had to work.  The polls are open for a long enough time to accommodate all work shifts.  Of course it *does* impact some people, but it's not a large enough percentage for them to care. \n\nOn top of that, there are no laws that say you can't make your employees work on a national holiday.   In fact,  most companies are still open on national holidays.  So it's not like everyone will be off for voting day.  It would have almost no effect. ", "It's not necessary. State's can, and often do offer early voting.  You have three weeks and even weekends to vote in Georgia leading up to election day.  There is also absentee voting.  Plus...which election day are you talking about?  There are elections every year.  Some are local in nature.  Then there are runnoffs...should they be holidays too?  ", "We have early voting. The poles are open at least a week. I'm always really confused when this comes up.", "Here in backwards-ass Pasco County, Florida you can sign up to vote by mail using the county election supervisor's website. And one of the options when you sign up is \"do you want to vote by mail in all future elections?\" \n\nThe answer should be Yes.\n\nAnd about a month before election day a ballot shows up in the mail. For any election - county, city, primary, general, all of them. You fill in the bubbles, put a stamp on it, and mail it. It could not be any easier.", "It's easier to control the outcome through advertising with a smaller number of voters.", "You can vote by mail in pretty much every state. No need for a holiday -- especially when it won't help low-income workers who would likely have to work that day. ", "Did you just call it \"voting day?\"", "Republicans actively want less people to Vite and suppress voters.", "Paul Weyrich conservative Republican and founder of the far right wing Heritage foundation. \n\n\n\"So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.\"\n\nTypical Republican prick.\n\n", "In my state it would be pointless.  Starting a couple years ago WA state decided to close all polling places and mail out everybody ballot.  Voting by mail anywhere in WA state is your only option.", "Voting on time must be a problem for the rich, because as someone whos never been rich and had bullshit barely over minimum wage jobs  before, Ivs never had a problem going to the polls before or after work. Even took my 3 year old with me last time.", "I don't know about Democrats, but for Republicans opposing a national holiday is a no-brainer.\n\n\"National Election Day\" would immediately join the ranks of other \"second tier\" national holidays : MLK day, President's day, Veteran's day, Columbus Day.  Every government office and school would be closed, but 90% of the rest of us would still be at work, as we are on MLK day, President's day, etc.\n\nSince government employees and teachers vote Democrat, it would amount to a massive turnout operation for Democrats.\n\nOh, and for an added bonus : the two segments of US government employees that do vote Republican are law enforcement and the military ... which are way more likely to be working on a national holiday.\n\nI don't know why the Democrats don't like it.  Popular yet Quixotic efforts seem to be their wheelhouse lately.", "Because a whole day off to vote would possibly involve some rapscallions getting their voices heard while simultaneously decrease productivity. And with a whole day off, some people might research candidates and position and what have you and not vote straight party. A third or fourth voice might get elected, and one of them might not be a doctor or a lawyer. RON PAUL 2012", "I want to slap about nine out of every ten commenters in this thread. Cynical asses, all of you. Whatever's going on or not, it *must* be due to someone's conniving, right?\n\nElection Day *used* to be a holiday, if you go back far enough. It was part of a larger, multi-day event known as a 'muster'. The muster had to do with the 'militia' referenced in the first clause of the Second Amendment: Before the modern republic took shape, the nation had no standing army (\"regulars\") and instead relied on volunteer militias.\n\nOr *mostly* volunteer, that is, in the sense that these people were more similar to reservists, if reservists only showed up once a year. Mustering was in some ways similar to the draft, in that it was required by law for 'able' men of appropriate age, though enforcement was mostly in the form of local peer pressure and the social appeal of being one of the manly men who participated.\n\nMustering was a scheduled annual event, and that was a convenient time also to have elections, since at the time it was mostly the same people (landed gentry) who had the franchise. (The womenfolk and others who stayed home didn't vote anyway, so it didn't matter that they weren't there). This was, in that historical context, a very obvious confluence of priorities. Since the muster meant that most men weren't available for regular work, it was an ideal time to hold elections, and so in that respect Election Day was a kind of holiday.\n\nIt was on Tuesday (in most places) on the logic that most people would attend church on Sunday, then leave for the muster, and it might take time time to get there on the roads of 300 years ago, if you lived in the country -- which most people did at the time. In many places, Election Day was the single biggest event of the whole year.\n\nWe inherited most of that, but the muster is long gone. If you ever wondered why federal elections are on a Tuesday, though, now you know. It's got nothing to with our parties, which didn't even exist at the time this tradition started. And it started under British rule, not even our own national government, so you can't blame Washington (which also didn't exist at the time). It's just an old habit, one that continues to serve its original purpose well enough that so far, there hasn't seemed much need to change it, or at least no one's come up with a better one and convinced enough others of it.\n\nThat's all. It's not conservatives or liberals, Republican or Democratic schemers (or even Whigs and Tories), unions, corporations, or any of that other modern-day cynical bile. It's just an artefact of history, okay, folks? Calm the fuck down. If you want your world to be better, a good start would be to not whip out your dicks and piss on every discussion about how to do it.\n", "also oh my god, why did I even open this thread", "because the only people that would have that day off are government workers.  everyone else would still have to go to work.  it would be pointless.\n\n", "A reason I haven't seen on here in a quick skim through the thread is that employers aren't going to shut themselves down for an entire day. That's a large amount of lost profits. If they don't even close for Thanksgiving (or Christmas!!!), are they really going to support a bill? No, they're going to lobby against it as hard as possible...and businesses like that hold a lot of sway over the Congresspeople whose campaigns they finance.", "why would it need to be made a holiday when employers are already required by law to allow someone paid time to go and vote?", "Really, why would anyone want people voting who are so lazy that they couldn't make it on election day during the week? Yes, I've failed to vote a few times, but solely from lack of energy to get myself to the polls. If so many people died to preserve our free elections, citizens can somehow grind their way to the voting booth once every two years.", "Holiday means \"holy day\", and I don't think God wants us to vote.\n\nAlso: don't we have enough holidays already?  Get back to work, slacker.", "An election day would simply become another holiday that all poor people must work, so I'm sure democrats wouldn't want it. ", "Its more trouble than its worth. Think about every holiday, some businesses or government agencies are always open. So are needed. Best to do what we do now, and just mandate ever employer give their employees an excused couple hours to go vote.", "Because why would you need a whole day off to do something which takes most people less than a half hour?", "I'm soooooo glad this isn't.  When voting isn't important to someone I don't want their opinion in government.", "Democrats don't need it. There core voting base doesn't work and we have to many national holidays as is. ", "Have any studies shown that it would actually help turnout? I suspect it might even hurt as people decide to take a long weekend and go out of town. I guess it depends on your state, but I feel like the ballots open early enough and stay open late enough that it really isn't that hard to get out and vote IF YOU WANT TO. And if you don't want to, I don't think a day off is going to change that. Maybe if it was a day off only if you provided proof you voted, but I'm pretty sure that would violate the constitution in some way.\n", "The long and short of it is that Democrats don't want people who work voting and the Republicans want to make sure that those who are going to vote will.", "Because Wed just use it as a day to get drunk and have barbecues in parks", "Nobody's going to agree with me at this point but the problem continues to be that everybody reduces the infinite complexity of life and the universe down to 2 categories.    Every fucking time. \n\nEverything is DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN.   LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE.   US VS. THEM.    ALWAYS ONE OF TWO CATEGORIES 100% OF THE TIME. \n\nWe can't have *any* rational conversations in this world because it's all been reduced to 2 columns and whatever column you assign yourself to, the other column and everything in it is your mortal enemy. \n\n", "BECAUSE THEY DON'T ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO VOTE, DUH. ", "Does the US not have pre voting or postal voting?", "Is voting so complicated it requires an entire day off?  Im Canadian so our elections have at most 2-3 decisions. Ive never been at my polling place longer than 10 minutes, including lineups. Arent advanced polls enough rather than an entire day off. ", "It wouldn't change anything.  There are plenty of \"national holidays\" that are just completely skipped or looked over by most jobs and most people would *still* be at work on the new national holiday simply because they can't afford to take an unpaid holiday or don't want to use a paid vacation day to vote when they can easily do early voting or just go before or after work (if they even care enough to vote).\n\nRetail stores will not close.  They only close now for Easter, Christmas and half of Thanksgiving (shrinking every year).  All of those workers will still be at work, and they might even have more than the usual number of workers to cover the \"holiday\" rush caused by everyone else having a day off.  Hourly workers of all types will still be working on voting day even if it's a national holiday.\n\nPolicemen, Firemen, Military, Doctors, Nurses, EMTs, Pilots, Airport personnel, Bus drivers and other such essential jobs won't have a day off because they *never* have a day off.  Emergencies don't wait for national holidays to be over, and people still have to travel.\n\nThe only people who get national holidays as a true day off are teachers, schoolkids, and people with salaried white collar jobs, and those are the people who don't need any help on voting day anyway because (a) schools are used as polling places so school is often cancelled that day anyway and (b) salaried workers usually don't have any problem taking a long lunch or an extra hour off to go vote in the middle of the day.\n\nUnless you *force* employers to close on voting day and mandate that they pay their workers for the day anyway, it won't change anything.", "Seattle does something pretty cool here that I think helps turnout a bit. We actually have our ballots mailed to us, we fill it out and send it off by the cutoff date, a few days later we have results. This is how Washington legalized gay marriage and decriminalized recreational marijuana a couple years back.", "Voting and superbowl Monday should both be holidays. ", "PS ALL YOU DUMB FUCKS OUT THERE WHO BITCH AND COMPLAIN ABOUT NOT BEING REPRESENTED....  ALL IT TAKES IS A LITTLE FUCKING EFFORT TO VOTE BY MAIL.  IF YOU CANT DO THAT THEN FUCK YOU DON'T DESERVE TO VOTE YOU LAZY PIECE OF AMERICAN SHIT!\n\nThat is all.", "The companies that paid to put them in office do not want to pay their workers to have a whole day off to vote.", "Because the window to vote is more than enough. if you can't find an hour to vote during those WEEKS or mail it in... you don't get a vote.", "Does it matter?  Who is working on voting day for a 16 hour shift and can't do absentee ballot?\n\nThat has to be like 0.001% of people with a problem, here. ", "Because it doesn't need to be.\n\n1. Voting in person should be easy, if it isn't we should do mail-in vote.\n\n2. National holiday is wasteful drag on productivity for something that should not take more than a hour.\n\n3. How often should we have have this holiday?  \n    Once every four year? Well has the House of Representatives has elections every two, how about some love for them.\n    OK, Every two years.  Sure, but my town has elections for boards and such\n    OK, every year, you satisfied?\n\nNo because with federal elections, state elections, local elections, plus primaries(state and local) , special elections, run-offs and over-rides, some years I vote on TEN different days.  \nA holiday for each is not practical or worth it. \n\nJust Vote\n\n ", "Making something a holiday doesn't get a lot of people off work. In fact, it would probably cause a lot more people to have to work. \"Come on in for Election Day sales! Everything is 20% off!\"\n\nAnyway, where I live, the polling station is open for 12 hours and we also have absentee voting.", "Swede here. Why would it be a holiday?", "UK guy here. Why would this be needed? In the UK polling stations are open from early morning until well into the evening. Do US polling stations only open during office hours or something?", "ITT: People who don't understand how few rights you actually have regarding labor.\n\n1.  If you made voting a national holiday, there would be nobody to manage the polls - state and federal employees are off on national holidays.\n\n2.  It wouldn't help get people to vote because people companies aren't required to pay extra for people to work national holidays.  People would still work the same hours.", "As a Democrat I would love a national holiday for voting. My assumption is that most Democrats would as they tend to benefit from higher turnout, historically speaking. \n\nActually, I would even take it a step further and do what Australia does -- make voting mandatory. Cue replies of how this would be tyranny and oppressive and the end of the world. Did I mention Australia already does this?", "TLDR: Republicans wouldn't gain votes, they're either retired, unemployed, or have the freedom to leave work. Democrats are usually too busy hustling away at work. ", "Just replace Columbus Day with Election Day and be done with it.", "Lol also....electoral college system....why does that shit still exist", "According to reddit the dinosaurs going extinct is because the republicans.", "ITT: People who think Bankers and government workers need another holiday in the U.S. \n\n\n\n\nEither that or they don't have real jobs in the real world, because most people work most Government Holidays since businesses aren't forced to give people the day off or even pay time and a half. And as far as I know the only people that get all Federal Holidays off are bank employees and government workers. Most people work without time and a half,  holidays like Presidents Day,  Columbus Day,  Martin Luther King Jr Day. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/181farber.pdf"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/Voter_Turnout_History_General_Election.pdf"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xint2", "title": "What features of mammalian blood cause parasites to be species specific?", "selftext": "The first thing I did after telling my husband that our kids had brought lice home was spend ten minutes convincing him we didn't need to shave the cats and dog.  A quick google search was able to show that pets can't be infested with human head lice, but none of them explained why.  What is it about the blood of a mammal that makes their parasites species specific?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xint2/what_features_of_mammalian_blood_cause_parasites/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5mtfcy"], "score": [9], "text": ["Some parasites are generalists and some are species-specific. With regard to *P. humanus spp.*, both the body louse and the head louse are the product of a long period of co-evolution with humans. The speciation event between the two is also an ongoing thing.\n\nLacking wings or strong legs adapted for jumping, lice are more inclined to an existence that keeps their whole life cycle on a single host. Contrast with fleas who will take a meal, bugger off, lay their eggs in carpets or bedding, then their offspring might end up on a different species altogether.\n\nSo, more than anything it's just that different species of endoparasites are well-adapted to specific hosts. It's not necessarily an aspect of blood, although the presence of a specific nutrient or absence of a particular toxin or antibody could be a determining factor.\n\nFor example, you can create a laboratory environment where *D. medinensis*, a parasitic nematode, will infect mammals other than humans. This is something that almost never happens in nature. Conversely, its cousin, *D. insignis*, normally infects raccoons and canids but has been documented in humans. So it's exceedingly unlikely that it'll happen naturally, but the situation can be orchestrated under controlled conditions. Between the two species I mentioned, there are differences in IgG1 and IgG4 produced in response to their presence. It may be that the immune response to *D. insignis* is more robust, or simply more effective, explaining the rarity of these infections. This logic goes back to other host-specific parasites as well. So when you have one that's host-specific, it's a combination of these factors. The host *is* the parasite's ecosystem, so it has to be well-adapted to it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "56w6a0", "title": "why was mylan's ceo forced to testify before congress over epipen prices? as a private company, aren't they allowed to charge whatever they think people will pay?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56w6a0/eli5_why_was_mylans_ceo_forced_to_testify_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8mx3ie", "d8mx65b", "d8mys3d", "d8n2zyj", "d8n5rit"], "score": [7, 20, 10, 33, 9], "text": ["Congress can summon to hearings anyone they want for any reason they want. Even if Mylan's actions were legal, they were bad public relations and so there was an opportunity for congressional politicians to look good by grilling the company.", "Because the government is a major buyer of Epi-Pens via medicaid and medicare.  If Congressional policies (via the laws that fund government health care) are a factor in the price increases or the price increases are causing the government to overpay, congress can compel testimony relating to the laws they want to pass.  ", "Congress has a subpoena power.   They can summon anyone to a hearing and those hearings can be on pretty much anything.   Steroids and baseball,  bridges to nowhere,  secret service and prostitutes,  you name it.   If there are political points to score,  Congress will hold hearings on it. ", "there's a little bit more to it. Her father is in congress, and he was critical in a process that created a government requirement to keep a supply of epi-pens in all public schools, shortly before the price hike.\n\nnow, some people feel like this may be some corruption at work, for obvious reasons. ", "Congress can call any citizen of the US to testify in their presence for whatever reason they may want. They do not have to be guilty of any kind of misconduct or crime. They can call them simply to get information for a change in law they are considering, or they want to hear someone talk. \n\nThe Government has also set requirements that schools and some other government facilities require epi-pens to be in stock on location. These price hikes cost the government a lot of money and they want an answer for why. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16whkh", "title": "If the year was 200 AD what could I buy with a single 'silver denarius'?", "selftext": "Jeweler here. Making a custom necklace for a customer who brought in a roman silver denarius. Just curious as to what it's value was 1800 years ago. (the coin is small, 18mm. And features Septimius Serverus. Coinn was minted 200-201 AD) thanks reddit :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16whkh/if_the_year_was_200_ad_what_could_i_buy_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c801ex8", "c8027ok", "c803vba"], "score": [10, 67, 4], "text": ["Rendering the value of ancient coins in modern day terms is tough.  I just looked at [Wikipedia](_URL_1_) and discovered a denarius might be about $20 of bread.  [The Dictionary of of Roman Coins](_URL_0_) says it was a daily wage.\n\n So let's assume that's correct for the 3rd century.  There's still no reason to think Romans valued bread as we do, or that all labor was equally valued.\n\nI've got a question for you: how do you know it's not a forgery?  An ex girlfriend gave me a sestertius of Trajan.  I have no idea where she got it, and my limited experience with coins gives me no reason to think it's fake.  I've found parallels in the manuals.  However whenever I tell someone about it the first question is always \"how do you know it's not fake?\"  Any suggestions?", "History major, Antiquities focus here. \n***\nThroughout the Severan reign, the currency went through yet another round of devaluation, bringing its silver content down once again, but this time, *VERY* drastically. It fell to exactly 50% silver purity in the standard silver denarius, down from roughly 80% silver purity. To put it in perspective, during much of the early Principate (first Emperors) the silver denarius was roughly ninety to high-eighties percent purity. \n***\nSo in simple terms, your customer got short-changed, heh. Well, relatively speaking. Later denarii have even lower silver content. But the Severan denarii stand at an economic crossroads of a sort, as they were the first time when the Roman coinage took a large-scale and severe hit (from which it would not recover). Severan denarii are as common as dirt on the current market - they are the most common denarii you can buy and the cheapest - as low as $40-60 per coin. In contrast, the earlier denarii were more pure and less of them survived to us, though that is not always true however - part of their rarity, I suspect, is due to the current market taking greater interest in Augustian or Caesarian denarii which represent the 'classic' Rome that they know rather some Late Principate/Dominate emperor they've never heard of. Of course, no doubt the current deluge of Severan denarii also has something to do with the sheer number that were minted - the Severan dynasty put in an admirable amount of effort into quantitative easing. I am somewhat of a numismatist and I collect Roman, Hellenistic and Chinese coins. Most Chinese and Roman ones, since they are cheap, plentiful and more standardised, so there is more fun categorising them and building progression collections. \n***\nNow, for the coin's actual value, we would have to know the relative date it was minted - there are several ways to check this, but the mere presence of the Emperor Septimius Severus may not be enough, as his descendants minted coinage with his likeness as well. Septimius Severus went through several coinage debasements, with even more devaluation overseen by his successors of the Severan dynasty. Furthermore, the wages were raised for important state-maintained occupations, such as the army (the most notable under the unpopular Caracalla went up to 700d mean wage of a legionary). These two factors in addition to the increase in the quantity of coins minted all resulted in falling value of coinage. One has to understand that the situation was that of the aftermath of the Second Crisis, or the Year of the Five Emperors (193-194 CE) and immediately prior to the Crisis of the Third Century. A time of severe political and economic instability it was and the difficulty with times such as these is that one cannot easily and accurately assess the value of coinage. There are hundreds of sources detailing the value of coins in the early Principate, for instance, but sources detailing the purchasing power of the Severan denarii are a bit harder to find. I will dig around and see what I can stumble upon. Of course, the legionary wages are somewhat of an easy 'gold standard' when it comes to determining the worth of a coin. If 700d is what an average legionary of common rank was paid every year, we are looking at 2d per day. Day labour would earn between 1-3d for the more manual labour and 4-7d for the craftsmen (these are middle Principate figures, right before the Second Crisis). \n***\nThe nature of Imperial coinage was such that a significant amount of imperial power and authority was based on something as simple and common as the value of a coin - strong coinage was a strong reinforcement of Imperial sovereignty and authority. Inflation was a much graver concern in a society lacking a fiat currency and instead based upon a fixed-value bullion-based currency. Decreasing the bullion content presented problems as all denarii were in theory equal value and the Emperor releasing the said denarii most certainly expected his to be taken at the same face value - such as when paying the persons under his upkeep their fixed salaries - salaries fixed under a previous standard of bullion content of coinage. You can certainly see the precarious nature of the situation here. Changing silver content of the denarius presented a governmental as well as an economic problem to the Romans and a historical problem for us as the economy reacted to the shifts in coinage value. These shifts were strictly speaking informal too, at first, as the primary aim of debasing coinage was to allow the Emperor to satisfy debts with less silver - and in order to achieve this aim, the amount of denarii paid had to remain the same. Therefore if Caracalla were to debase the denarii to 50% from 56%, the increase in army wages would nullify the entire logic of the debasement, at the first glance. On a closer examination, the Emperors often debased coinage (which affected everyone) but only increased the wages for the most crucial elements of their Imperial 'machine', such as the army.\n***\nSource: here is THE BEST quick easy reference source on coin purity that I have been able to find so far in my research: _URL_0_ As you can see, it incidentally comes from Tulane at New Orleans, which happened to have been one of the Unis where I took classes. (*I attended Loyola New Orleans before moving to Virginia; Loyola and Tulane were literally right next door to each other, with a small fence separating the two campuses - it was very common for students from both to take classes in either Uni*). Hell, I bet I still have this handout in one of my old binders from those days - I had a class on Later Roman Society that used this source.\n\nAnother very helpful source is the '*Archaeology of the Roman Economy*' by Kevin Green, which I used in my final paper project for that said class. It's not as boring as it sounds - the book is actually a pretty lively discussion of the Roman economy, not just a turgid description of minor archaeological finds that probably lacked much significance anyway unless one's subject is immeasurably narrow (which is sometimes my impression of books of this like).", "* You could buy just under one litre (1.56 sextarii) of beer!\n* With 20 of them, you could buy a pair of sandals!\n* With 15, you could buy a kilo of goat!\n* And most importantly, with 3 of them, you could buy a litre (dry measure) of barley, beans, or rye. \n\nHow i got this is below: \n\n\nDetermining the purchasing power of ancient anything is difficult, but approximation is very possible. So here goes: \n\n301 is going to be our baseline year, because an 'edict of prices' was released in that year, which denominated pay scales and price ceilings for consumer goods/services.  Using that edict, we can calculate the value of the denarii, in 200. \n\nIn 301, a legionaire earned 1800 denarii annually; in 200-201 (under Caracalla), they earned 700. \n\nThis price difference is almost entirely attributable to inflation. The manpower requirements/force structure of the legions were largely identical in those two years; it was only beginning with Diocletian that the army began morphing into the integrated field corps which differentiated it from the marian army it was in 200. \n\nThus, there was roughly 247% inflation in those years...which is to say, that your denarius would be worth only 40% of one minted in 301; when prices were laid out. And, as the empire made sure to maintain anapproprate supply of commodities throughout the urban areas of the empire(practical self-preservation), the relative prices of items like grain/wine/olive oil would have remained [relative to the market] stable. \n\nAnd, relatively stable prices would have meant that the only differences would be due to inflation*, which means that whatever something cost in 301, it would have cost .39 times the price in 301, as deliniated in the aforementioned edict. \n\n*Romans didn't understand economics, at all in the modern sense. This is part of the reason extrapolating prices is such a crapshoot - prices weren't indicators of the market's assigned value as we now understand it. They didn't exactly have a fed maintaining price stability, but a series of despots who lowered the value of money when they needed some, or lowered it when they felt like it, by killing people who tried to obey market prices. \n\nEdit: formatting"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=denarius", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius#Comparisons_and_silver_content"], ["http://www.tulane.edu/~august/handouts/601cprin.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "61pa7d", "title": "Tell me about Rome in the Islamic and/or Arab imagination", "selftext": "Just heard recently that ISIS has a magazine named \"Rumiyah,\" apparently Arabic for \"Rome.\" I found that fascinating. Wikipedia tells me that it's a reference to the prophet Muhammad's promise or prediction that Muslims would conquer Rome. That in itself is interesting, given that Muhammad's lifetime coincided with what seems to be Rome's nadir.\n\nCan you tell me about what role Rome plays in the Islamic and/or Arabic imagination?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/61pa7d/tell_me_about_rome_in_the_islamic_andor_arab/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfgu0zk", "dfgw9bf"], "score": [34, 7], "text": ["There's a few parts to this. Firstly, there's a sura of the Qur'an called Sura \"ar-Rum\", i.e. Sura of \"Rome\" or \"the Roman Sura\". We know from context that it is *not* referring to the city of Rome or to the Western Empire, but rather to the Greek speaking eastern empire, whom we typically refer to as the Byzantines. NB that the Byzantines themselves would have called themselves \"Roman\" so while this is somewhat confusing to us it would have been unambiguous at the time.\n\nThe text of this Sura includes a prediction the Byzantines would be defeated and then recover in their battles against the Persians. So from the Pickthall translation:\n\n >  The Romans have been defeated\n\n >  In the nearer land, and they, after their defeat will be victorious\n\n >  Within ten years - Allah's is the command in the former case and in the latter - and in that day believers will rejoice\n\n >  In Allah's help to victory. He helpeth to victory whom He will. He is the Mighty, the Merciful.\n\nThis is actually one of the *only* explicit references to contemporary events in the Qur'an, which generally speaking does not make specific references to contemporary global politics and those references that it does make are often ambiguous, despite the supposed clarity of later exegesis ascribing each reference to a point in the life of Muhammad.\n\nSo it is prophesying that the Byzantines, having suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Sassanians, would then gain victory.\n\nSo there is a Quranic understanding that the position of the Byzantines in global affairs is a matter of theological concern, but there's little explicitly about the Byzantines (Romans) beyond that except the more general references to the predicted triumphs of the believers.\n\nBattles against the Romans (Byzantines) feature somewhat more prominently in the Hadith, the collected sayings and of the Prophet, for example here:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand here: _URL_0_\n\nBut that's still basically pretty pedestrian stuff.\n\nAs far as I'm aware, though I've read *much* less of this literature, the vast bulk of what gets modern Salafi Jihadists excited about this stuff relates to the later, non-canonical apocalyptical literature that while sometimes attributed to Muhammad in the style of hadith is typically composed, at best, of \"weak\" hadith and from an academic perspective appears to be very closely related to mid-to-late 7th century campaigns against Byzantium and the assaults Constantinople. In terms of content this stuff is basically asserting that the Muslims will be victorious in Constantinople and then will march on the city of Rome and that this will be part of ushering in the apocalypse.\n\nWhile such traditions have survived across the centuries they've never been regarded as being entirely canonical. Jihadists of an apocalyptic bent have latched on to them, particularly as they can read into the texts America or Russia or the Jews/Israel for Rome or whatever. These analogies are made pretty explicit in ISIS' materials and propaganda.\n\nSource wise:\n\nThe appendices of Will McCant's *ISIS Apocalypse* include a number of these stories about the conquest victory and the end times. IIRC Robert Hoyland's *In God's Path* talks about the formation of the apocalyptical literature in the context of the campaigns against the Byzantines.", "From my understanding the Islamic Ottomans knew they had conquered the Romans at the fall of Constantinople. Richard Fidler's history of Constantinople called \"Ghost Empire\" says \"The long story of the Roman empire comes to a close with those two elegiac lines of Persian poetry uttered by Mehmed in the Great Palace.\" \n\n\nThe lines were: \"The spider weaves the curtains in the Palace of the Caesars;\nThe owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.\"\n\n\nSo at the fall of Constantinople in 1453 there is some evidence that the Muslim Turks understood the gravitas of Rome and what they had done to the empire. \n\n\nSultan Mehmed was also said to have adopted the title 'Kayser-i R\u00fbm' which means 'Caesar of the Romans'. It also suggests that they themselves could not picture a world without a Roman presence and since they were the people to end the 2nd Rome, the mantle had been passed to the Islamic Turks to carry on Rome's legacy. \n\n\nA Muslim Caesar didn't fly in Europe though, as a marriage between the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III and the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium by the Pope at St. Peter's Basilica, in Europe's eyes, passed the legacy of Rome to Russia - hence the origin of the title 'Czar': 'Caesar'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://sunnah.com/muslim/54/46", "https://sunnah.com/muslim/54/50"], []]}
{"q_id": "1pb19t", "title": "Hello, how many inhabitants did greek cities have in 2000 B.C.?", "selftext": "I want to write about the old city of Iolcus and wanted to ask how many people lived in that time in a \"normal\" city in the old greece in that time.\n\n(pls don't hit me, my english in not perfect.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pb19t/hello_how_many_inhabitants_did_greek_cities_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd0k6hr"], "score": [27], "text": ["Not sure if this will help you but, during the bronze age on Crete, bigger cities were quite rare. The biggest one, Knossos, counted possibly several thousands individuals(estimates vary). Few after Knossos (Phaistos, Zakros, Malia) were singificantly smaller, maybe around 100 households (again, its hard to say).   \nMost common type of settlement were small villages of up to 10 households, and solitary houses in the countryside (just to mention, this is 2000BC, during the Minoan peak, when it's population was booming and was possibly at it's peak).\n\nYou should find more about this topic in 'The Aegean Bronze Age', by Oliver Dickinson. I just started studying this topic, so can't tell you more."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5t9lij", "title": "Do records exist of pre-industrial people expressing existential dread? Is it a modern luxury?", "selftext": "In modern life, it's common in some communities for people to think about, joke about, or discuss existential ideas; why we're here, what our remit in society is, how to cope with temporary existence, how to find purpose, how to embrace the self, and so on. In 2017, there are dedicated meme pages now for this self-aware, self-referential, existential, often nihilistic dialogue.\n\nQuestion: what historical record do we have of people expressing these kinds of existential thoughts? Is this a relatively recent luxury of post-industrial society? Do any pre-industrial records show a concern for life purpose, or do we just not know?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t9lij/do_records_exist_of_preindustrial_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddllwni"], "score": [54], "text": ["Absolutely! These topics are all over the history of philosophy, and are found in most religions as well. However, most solutions tend to be different than existentialism itself (and the tone is often different). I'll only survey a couple attempts here, because these worries- how to live a meaningful life and avoid suffering, form one of the core subject matters of Ethics itself.\n\nAncient Greek philosophy was very concerned with the idea of how to live a good life and what gave life meaning. The works of Plato, the Stoics, Pyrrhonists, and Epicureans were all concerned (perhaps even primarily so) with how to live a meaningful life and cope with suffering.\n\nFor instance, the Epicureans were interested in the fear of death and suffering, writing extensively on the topics. For one of my favorite Epicurean takes on these topics you can see the Roman author Lucretius's *De rerum natura* or On the nature of things. Epicureans stressed living of a moderate life and to take joy in the pleasures of life while not allowing pains to disturb us. Another good text for these hellenistic philosophies is \"The Post Socratics Vol. I\" by Long and Sedley.\n\nThe lack of self and the death of the ego (and embracing the impermanence of all things) is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism sees the root of all suffering as the attachment of an illusory self to impermanent things. Only when we come to accept impermanence and to rid ourselves of the notion of the self can we avoid this suffering and escape the world of rebirth and impermanence. Obviously the key work in Buddhism is the Dhammapada, though for a layperson directed take on the religion I like \"The heart of Buddha's Teaching\" by Thich Nhat Hanh. Though note this latter is a religious text, not an academic source. It does however convey the Buddhist method of combating existential considerations.\n\nOne also finds such themes in the bible, the book of Job comes to mind (though this also deals with the problem of Evil), though I'm no expert on biblical philosophy to point to exact chapters.\n\nFor intros to other considerations see [these videos by professional philosophers](_URL_0_).\n\n\nEdit- one thing I thought I would add is that the existentialists seem to have such a unique approach to these questions primarily because they were responding to the failure of many of these ethical systems (at least in their minds). Thinkers in the industrial era suddenly found themselves with the arguments for God undermined, completely physical explanations of the world, and even more importantly physical explanations of the person, which led to a distinctively pessimistic view of these questions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKNX4SfKpzWy2OxVPOTlPDLbqC1IIotO"]]}
{"q_id": "9cofvq", "title": "What is the history behind the shift in Satan being regarded as an agent of God in Orthodox Judaism to being seen as a entity separate from God in Christianity.", "selftext": "In Judaism Satan is not seen as a physical entity seperate from God from my understanding. While in Christianity, Satan is seen as autonomous figure. What is the historical basis, if any, for this shift in thinking?\nEdit: \"punctuation\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cofvq/what_is_the_history_behind_the_shift_in_satan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5cnmdg", "e5cqftv"], "score": [58, 22], "text": ["That's a long question, I'd point you to the book [The River of God](_URL_0_) by Gregory Riley. His 4th chapter traces the history of that question. IIRC, when Israel was in exile they encountered more dualistic ways of thinking and understanding the world. And in doing so reinterpreted this history in that light. \n\nSo you can take stories like Job, who in that context Satan is a person in God's court. But, in that context he functions more as a character in a story that an actual person we can glean knowledge about. Similarly, in other earlier OT stories, the word translated Satan, in Hebrew means adversary. Number's 22 is a great story of Balaam's donkey in v. 22 the text says there is an adversary in his way. That context it's clear Satan isn't in his way, just an adversarial character. And it was an Angel of the Lord in the way, so it's not like it was an evil character. \n\nBut, as time went on and Israel encountered, and adapted more dualistic ways of thinking they began to add an article in front of adversary. You can see this in the LXX. I used to have a good example of a story in Kings and in Chronicles that illustrated this but I can't remember and all my notes are in my office. \n\nThat's the tl:dr version, but Riley gives a better outline. ", "One of my fellow moderators, at /r/AcademicBiblical has written an extensive article that sheds much light on the subject at hand.\n\nIt is entitled:\n\n[Princes of Darkness: The Devil\u2019s Many Faces in Scripture and Tradition](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.amazon.com/River-God-History-Christian-Origins/dp/0060669802"], ["https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/princes-of-darkness-the-devils-many-faces-in-scripture-and-tradition/"]]}
{"q_id": "7hjg2w", "title": "Rousseau abandoned his children at an orphanage. What kind fate he could expect for them? How likely it was that they survived to adulthood?", "selftext": "I'm asking this because while reading the [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article](_URL_1_) on Rousseau, I was struck by the following passage:\n\n > In 1745 Rousseau met Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Levasseur, a barely literate laundry-maid who became his lover and, later, his wife. According to Rousseau\u2019s own account, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se bore him five children, all of whom were deposited at the foundling hospital shortly after birth, **an almost certain sentence of death in eighteenth-century France**. Rousseau\u2019s abandonment of his children was later to be used against him by Voltaire.\n\nI highlighted the relevant sentence. Is the claim true?\n\nThe SEP article lists a bibliography at the end and maybe some of them contains the citation for the claim, but I don't have the capacity to research this question further.\n\nAccording to search, previously Rousseau's children have been discussed [here](_URL_0_) on AskHistorians, but only from the angle \"how common it was\", not \"what happened to the kids later\".", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7hjg2w/rousseau_abandoned_his_children_at_an_orphanage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqscq00"], "score": [15], "text": ["According to Laurence L. Bongie, in his book *From Rogue to Everyman: A Foundling's Journey to the Bastille*, around two-thirds of children placed in Paris orphanages died in their first year. A significant number of the surviving third would not have made it to adulthood, given that deadly illness was a reality for most Parisians, and the very young were most vulnerable. I don't have statistics on this, but see David Garrioch, *The Making of Revolutionary Paris* (especially the second chapter) for more information on the various illnesses that plagued the city at this time. \n\nThis sounds pretty shocking to us, but it's worth remembering that infant mortality in Paris was somewhere in the range of 35 to 45 percent at this time (according to Daniel Roche, in *The People of Paris*). A foundling's chances of survival were worse than those of the average Parisian child, but, sadly, those chances were pretty abysmal to begin with. \n\nChild abandonment may not have been a death sentence, but it did worsen a child's chance of survival. Most parents who abandoned their children really didn't have a choice - most of the time they simply couldn't feed them. Rousseau, while he may not have been wealthy, also wasn't destitute. He could have given his children a better chance at life, but he chose not to do so. \n\nFor more information I really recommend the David Garrioch book I cited above, as well as Arlette Farge, *Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris*. Sorry, I'm too tired for properly formatted citations right now. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76yfrt/rousseau_had_five_children_by_therese_le_vasseur/", "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1hr6o2", "title": "is time travel possible??", "selftext": "\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hr6o2/eli5_is_time_travel_possible/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cax2wec", "cax2z2k", "cax36ww", "cax3bqy", "caxcexk", "caxgbu1"], "score": [13, 5, 55, 9, 5, 2], "text": ["Like you're five?  No.", "Of course! We keep traveling forward all the time! It's going back that's the tricky part.", "Sure. You are going forward in the future all the time. We also know exactly what to do for you to experience a second while the whole world ages through centuries. \n\nBasically the faster you move, the slower your time goes, so at certain speeds, your second will be a year for the rest of the world. \n\nSame thing happens with gravity - the more gravity the slower times goes, so clocks on the Moon go faster than clocks on Earth. You could theoretically get an orbit around a black hole, so that your time slows down enough, that when you return you'll find yourself in a far future.\n\nBoth of these things are proven experimentally and most famous example are GPS satellites which were highly inaccurate before these effects were accounted for.\n\n---\n\nBackwards time travel works too, but only in equatioms. Theoretivally if you were going faster than light it would work. The only problem is that going at the speed of light is impossible.\n\nIf you were to find a wormhole (also exist only on paper), they could transport you in time as well.\n\n", "Kind of hard to explain like you're five but I'll try: Go almost the speed of light=time travel. The laws of physics don't allow anything to travel faster or as fast as light so it slows down time for the object moving at that speed. Another way would be to orbit an extremely large object with huge gravity (Like a Black Hole) that would also cause the same effect.\n          It is impossible to travel to the past, the laws of physics do not allow it. The only way would be to enlarge a wormhole, which is impossible.\n\nSource: [Into the Universe with Stephen Hawkin](_URL_0_)", "Go forward: yes. \nGo back: no. \nLook forward: no. \nLook back yes. ", "Let's say that a person truly figures out how to time travel. They get the science right and all that jazz. But there is still a huge problem regarding location. If a person goes back in time, theoretically they will go back to the same location at that point in the past. The earth wont be there anymore. The earth is in CONSTANT motion on its axis. It is constantly orbiting the sun, which is constantly moving about in the Milky Way galaxy, which is moving within  the universe. If a person were to figure out time travel, they would also have to precisely move themselves to where the earth was or will be in the universe at that specific time, or risk popping up in the vacuum of space.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1658581/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2edyj6", "title": "why do certain countries, such as the united states, seem to always be at war with someone? how have some countries managed to stay relatively peaceful? (ex. switzerland)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2edyj6/eli5_why_do_certain_countries_such_as_the_united/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjyjci7", "cjyjlwz", "cjyjodh", "cjyjwdp", "cjyjxbb", "cjyk0b7", "cjyly4s", "cjym6u0", "cjync7c", "cjyo1eg", "cjypp8g", "cjypvyf", "cjyqdb4", "cjyqmtq", "cjyqw4z", "cjyqzz2", "cjyrik6", "cjyrt9d", "cjyruv4", "cjyrvml", "cjys2ac", "cjys6u4", "cjysa70", "cjyshs8", "cjysppk", "cjyt8bm", "cjytau5", "cjytiec", "cjytrjl", "cjyu0kn", "cjyu44i", "cjyuhfk", "cjyuyqy", "cjyw0yu", "cjywc1o", "cjywgfo", "cjywir4", "cjywj18", "cjywl84", "cjywpwt", "cjyx1ln", "cjyxhqj", "cjyxmyb", "cjyy3nn", "cjyykbr", "cjyzb0h", "cjyzqon", "cjyzu28", "cjz1jwg", "cjz2dwu", "cjz2gru", "cjz2iq7", "cjz2ldp", "cjz30ku", "cjz3376", "cjz3cfs", "cjz3d3j", "cjz3udi", "cjz4nno", "cjz62rp", "cjz6axv", "cjz6di0", "cjz8zth", "cjza4iv", "cjzbbxr", "cjzbe1n", "cjzdcug", "cjzeoqq"], "score": [1903, 48, 12, 208, 20, 15, 59, 21, 3, 12, 10, 2, 6, 7, 8, 3, 14, 3, 118, 12, 2, 4, 4, 2, 53, 2, 16, 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 20, 7, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 8, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The US has a large economy and far reaching economic interests. This puts it in conflict with almost anything ~~nasty~~ contentious on the planet, as somehow it impacts their interests.\n\nSwitzerland has a relatively narrow set of economic interests (banking) that encourage neutrality in conflicts. They also benefit by being close to powerful countries with a vested interest in protecting them from attack. This allows them to be protected by proxy.", "Switzerland can afford to be neutral because it's a small, mountainous country with a heavily-armed populace. Invading it will cost more than it would seem.\n\nAmerica's stayed relatively peaceful (in the sense that there isn't a lot of war around here, despite sending our military elsewhere) because we're bordered by two oceans and have two friendly neighbors/trade partners.\n\n", "We have also made ourselves such a super power almost directly because of our military prowess. We are one of the only countries to have a standing military in other nations, our military defines us as a nation and we use it accordingly.", "The United States has two things that bring it into conflict with other countries.\n1) Broad global interests. The economy is increasingly global, and as the united states has needed to import both consumer goods and raw materials it has come into regional conflicts that it may never have been involved with. Also, The US doctrine of spreading democracy has lead to a huge range of conflicts, look at the cold war.\n2) The US has money. Like tons of it. Seriously, fucking tons. The united states gives 30 billion+ dollars in foreign aid to countries, making it the largest giver. This is more than number 2 and 3 combined. 36% of all military spending is done by the US. ALL MILITARY SPENDING, by all countries.\n\nThese two factors mean that not only does the US have an interest in foreign affairs, but it also is able to affect them.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_", "[The Military Industrial Complex](_URL_0_) pretty much ensures a constant state of war lest the economy would suffer.\n\n", "Because the military industrial complex is big business in Murica", "Many of the above comments are also correct, yet US Defense spending often allows other countries to profit from the security environment that it does create. This effectively displaces foreign military spending in many cases, notably by European countries (Germany, the UK, Spain, France to a much more limited extent, Denmark, Beglium, and the Netherlands) US Defense spending also creates capacities eg Heavy Strategic Airlift that many NATO countries use extensively, (see OPN Serval) and therefore dont have to develop. I think one of the more extreme examples are pooled NATO nuclear weapons. In a nuclear war, while Denmark or the Netherlands would have to seek US approval for example, it would be more than likely that Danish F16s would be delivering US nukes effectively rendering them a nuclear power. ", "Because **\"War is a racket\"**\n > \"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.\"\n_URL_1_\n\nTell me, why did we invade Iraq?\n\nMore: _URL_0_", "because we are team america:world police", "Those countries bury their heads in the sand.  If the US will be the world police, then those countries can spend their money on themselves (public works, etc).  Without the US and other protector countries, they actually have to take responsibility for their security, including being proactive.  I believe most Americans want the rest of the world to join them in making the world a better place for everyone to live.  Some join, like the UK, and many sit back and let the US protect them.  It will be interesting to see how China's rise changes the world stability.  China is economically shady, but more on the side of not intervening (for better or worse).  Their middle class seems to be getting more reasonable, however (no source, just from what I hear).", "It should be noted that just because the US has broad global economic interests nobody has provided any evidence that it's war making actually benefits it as a whole.", "because the US has taken over as the primary defender of much of the western world as a relic of nato and the cold war.  we pretty much play world police as a result.", "This will have very different answers based on the time it's asked.", "Killing Is Our Business... and Business Is Good!", "I think it boils down to a few things:\n\n1) They can. They have money, numbers, and hardware to back it up.\n\n2) There is always a reason. Whether you accept those reasons as real or fabrications (i.e. WMDs) is a matter of opinion.\n\n3) They have an accepting population. The USA appears to have a political climate where it's fine to say you don't support President Obama, but not at all fine if you say you don't support the country itself. The whole, \"I may not support the war, but I support the troops thing\", there is a moral get-out clause even if you don't support the actions of the government.\n\n4) Support of Israel does not help matters, many countries would have no reason to dislike the USA if it was not for that.", "Because the US has the unique doctrine where it intervenes with international crisis.\n\nSome other countries only intervenes when it affects their own interest.\n\nPlus the United States has the backing of a large GDP to maintain a sustained conflict whereas OP's example of Switzerland doesn't nearly have enough to fund their national defense forces.", " > I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.\n\n > I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.\n\n > I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.\n\n > During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.\n\nU.S. Major General Smedley Butler\n\n\n[Support our Troops](_URL_0_)", "When you swing a big dick you have to defend it.", "Those are two different questions: (1) why is the U.S. frequently engaged in armed conflict, and (2) why do some countries fight more or less than others? \n\n1. For different reasons. During the Cold War, the U.S. got involved in armed conflict when it perceived that its was threatened by communism: Vietnam, Grenada, Korea. After the Cold War, once the Soviet Union was no longer the \"nanny state\" of half the globe, it fell to the United States to do what's called \"guarding the commons\": ensuring that there's global stability so trade, business, and peace are the norm. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, we stepped in to prevent Saddam from winning. When the former Yugoslavia broke up, we intervened to stop a civil war from spiraling out of control. (Iraq and Afghanistan are the exception rather than the rule for the post-Cold War era in that we intervened because we perceived them as direct threats.)\n\n2. There are many explanations. Some point to culture: Switzerland is highly individualistic and has a tradition of non-interference in other countries' affairs, so war is unthinkable. Some point to geography: Venezuela may be ruled by a dictatorial government, but its neighbors are pretty chill so it has little reason to meddle in their affairs using military force. \n\nBut a lot of academics say it's because, since the end of the Cold War, without pressure to maintain stability from the U.S. or the Soviet Union, [wars between countries have all but disappeared](_URL_0_) and been replaced by wars within countries. Think Syria, Sudan, etc. So the types of countries that are more likely to experience conflict now are ones that have underlying national problems, like poorly drawn borders or ethnic/religious tensions.\n\nThe logical follow-on to that is that wars between countries only occur when there's a huge threat for one side or the other involved, so much so that it forces them to go to war. This is what's happening in Eastern Europe: Russia (Vladimir Putin, really) feels personally threatened by the events in Ukraine, so it intervenes. If you want to call Iran's involvement in the Syrian civil war armed conflict between two countries, Iran feels very threatened because it is a Shia Muslim country in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood, and the Syrian government is Shia, so it is intervening in Syria to back up what it views as its core, critical national interests. These are the types of places where you now see wars between countries. ", "When we don't get involved somehow we get shamed for not helping out.  When we do get involved we get shamed for helping out.  ", "Its simple\n\nWhen you are the champ, everyone wants a piece of you.", "Why is batman always fighting people? Why can't he be peaceful like Lex Luther? \n\nThere, that's how you explain things to a five year old.", "Dwight Eisenhower took the time to answer this question in 1961 *before* shit was even close to as bad as it is today. \n\nIt's called the [Military industrial complex](_URL_0_)", "Self interest, the US wants for itself, Cheap food, cheap oil, self protection basically the things that every other country wants but we have the cash to do it.", "The answer is far less nefarious than the anti-American ranting on this thread. There is a naturally occurring balance of power between states. Each state is constantly trying to reorder the balance to its own benefit to the extent that its power will allow; this is typically accomplished through war. When many states have relatively equal power, they are constantly at war with each other, e.g. WW1 and WW2. When a few dominant powers emerge all smaller states align themselves with one side or the other and conflicts typically happen through proxies on the fringe of the alliances, think of the Cold War. After the fall of the Soviet Union we entered a brief moment of unipolarity during which the U.S.A achieved hegemony. During this time, anyone who attempted to reorder the balance of power was bound to come up against the interests of the United States so yes the U.S.A puts its nose in everyone's business. It is worth noting that this process repeats itself with different players in different roles, but the story remains more or less the same.\n\nSo countries that seem to be peaceful are really just the weak players during this iteration of balance of power. The violent players are the strong ones enforcing the current arrangement as long as they can or attempting to upturn it. The Europeans have an incredibly violent history and will most likely return to reality now that the unipolar moment is over. As far as Pax eras go, for better or worse the U.S.A has led the most peaceful and prosperous period in human existence, don't be so quick to see it go. ", "I read an interesting theory - the USA loves wars, because WW2 was so good for them. Unlike Europe, the US mainland was never bombed, and it came out of WW2 as the leading global superpower. It created this psyche of War = Power  &  Profit.", "I've always thought of it as a perfect example of the hegemonic stability theory.\nThis idea, as I've defined it, is that having a single large superpower promotes global interactions and stability through a constant directed pressure. The hegemon, or head power controls the flow and direction of global politics, economies etc through their sphere of influence. They do this by possessing a superior military or economic power that surpasses any attempts to rival it. \nBy controlling the economy through their unrivaled buying power and influence (such as with the global British Empire in the 1700's, or the US in the late 1900's), and enforcing their economic interests through a dominant military, they control the flow of global development. \nLesser regional powers follow the example of the hegemon, and generally cooperate with its rules and ideas, thus aligning themselves with the strongest possible ally and in doing so validating and helping to consolidate its global dominance. The smaller powers view the system as being mutually exclusive, as they can lower their own militaries and focus on economy, knowing the hegemon will provide both political security and an avenue for economic growth. The hegemon takes on the role of global police force essentially, protecting and providing security for its dependents, in return for their cooperation and openness to the hegemon's will, be that planting an army base or opening their markets and resources.\nThis seems to be the general US policy since WW2. That is why the US gets involved in EVERYTHING, they view themselves as hegemon and it is their job to make everyone play nice. \nThe problem is the whole idea gets more and more complicated as we move into the global age, and the vast interdependence of countries confuses who if anyone is a hegemon, how much they should be involved, and in what way.", "It seems everyone forgets, while the US typically leads the war, let's say Iraq, there was a [multi national force](_URL_0_) and by that I mean, many other countries also went to war. \n\nSo, yes, the US is at war, but usually done via coalition, agreement, and support from many other countries, probably yours included.  ", "It's important to remember that most countries and groups of people were, before WWII, always fighting with some other group. When you look at things in the grand scope what America is doing isn't very unusual at all. It's really because of WWII that America emerged as such a supreme economic force with way too many interests to protect abroad to maintain it's, and the allies, massive economies.", "The United States is the World's hyperpower (for now, at least) and is therefore the most politically, militarily, and economically powerful nation on Earth. It is also an ideological power, in the sense that, as a nation, it is the vanguard state for Western-style democratic capitalism and the greatest exporter of this ideology. In order to both maintain its standing as the World's lone superpower, it needs to maintain a situation in which it is relatively unchallenged globally, particularly in Eurasia. By ensuring that the Eurasian continent is chaotic enough that no one nation/union rises to levels that allow it to challenge the US, while keeping it peaceful enough to avoid anarchy, its hegemony will remain untarnished. To create and maintain this balance of chaos and stability, it is frequently involved in military incursions either in Eurasia directly or in ones that affect the interests of Eurasian rivals (e.g. Russia or China). Examples include our support of South American dictatorships which, while hostile to liberal ideals, were also hostile towards communism, all in an effort to thwart the spread of Soviet influence in the West. Another, of course, was our re-establishment of relations with China during the Nixon administration; China, while a communist dictatorship, was a key American ally in the Cold War and helped to contain Soviet power, thus helping us to win the conflict.\n\nOn the topic of spreading democracy, when it is possible to do so, the US typically does (to varying degrees, anyways). As the vanguard of Western Civilization and its most powerful nation, it is one of the few nations in the West capable of spreading democracy militarily (others being, to much smaller degrees, the UK, France, and others). As it is the only nation in this group with any real power and ambition to do so, it usually is the only Western country to initiate military invasions/interventions in order to spread ideology. That is why it is at war so much more frequently than any other western nation, and, indeed, most other nations on Earth.\n\nMore peaceful countries, such as Switzerland as mentioned by OP, have neither the military or economic capability to wage frequent military engagements. Most other countries are also not the vangaurds of the ideology of their respective civilizations. The Soviet Union was the vanguard of Communism and was constantly involved in military excursions. China today, while titled as a communist state, is more fascist than anything but can be seen as a vanguard of sorts. It too, has engaged with border spats with Vietnam, The USSR, Japan, India, Pakistan, and both of the Koreas. Other countries that may want to engage others militarily to become more powerful (e.g. North Korea) would if they could but can't due to a lack of economic and military capabilities.\n\nTL;DR: the most powerful countries that are the ideological hearts of their civilizations, such as the US, USSR, and China with the military and economic ability to wage frequent wars will fight more often than less geopolitically and ideologically prominent countries, such as Switzerland, in an attempt to maintain their power base and to spread their ideologies.", "The real answer starts at the end of WWII.  The US entered into treaties like NATO and have become the defacto protectors of Western Europe and Japan and South Korea. This puts the US squarely in harms way as protector for most countries on the planet.  \n\n\nOur economy and global interest are a direct result of this.  ", "The US has a large military industrial complex that profits from global conflict and holds sway over the government.", "There are a lot of different answers based on what international theories you believe are driving the decisions of states.\n\nFor example, if your were a realist you would say that because the United States is a hegemony (the world super power) it's constantly forced into conflict to maintain this power. And previously, as it was seeking to be a super power it was put into competition with several other states who at the time were equally powerful and all fighting each other to become the only super power. \n\nSwitzerland on the other hand has a very different history, land locked, surrounded by other strong powers, and relatively weak when you consider their ability to field an army and supply it, the only policy that makes sense for their survival is to avoid conflict  and use their natural defensive boundaries to leverage their small number and make an invasion frustrating and pointless considering the risks.  \n\nThere is also liberalism, constructivism and Marxism. I'm a little rusty on the other ones, though Marxism claims that international conflict comes from a states need to exploit other state. ", "you have got an awesome post right here...", "America underwrites global security; other countries free-ride that security arrangement.", "I am going to bookmark your thread and read this again later...", "Iam going to favorite this article for tomorrow.", "Iam going to favorite this post for tomorrow.", "My Uncle, lets call him Sam, once said \"With great power, comes great responsibility\".", "Probably the only situation where an International Relations undergrad degree comes in handy. Think a number of people have touched on the explanations already, i think its useful to consider that there isn't just one \"right\" reason (and in fact, i may not even have addressed the right reasons so feel free to add your thoughts). I think the reason the US finds itself in war can be broadly split into \"intention\" and \"capability\"\n\nIntention:\n1) Geopolitics: The US wants to maintain its dominant position it has enjoyed since 1945, and which was enhanced by the collapse of the USSR. This relies largely on economic dominance, but unfortunately occasionally on military power.\n2) Liberalism: The US, and the rest of the world, benefit from free trade and the rule of law. Any threats to this need to be addressed.\n3) Idealism: Spreading democracy (by force if necessary - read: Neocons) or humanitarian intervention (e.g. Kosovo, Somalia).\n4) Resources: Maintaining a powerful domestic economy (the USA's number one asset) requires trade and resource security. Hence anybody fucking around in the Middle East is usually dealt with quite swiftly.\n\nCapability:\nFundamentally though, one of the main reasons the US seems to always be involved in conflict is because no other entity actually has that capacity. Europe, for example, couldn't sort out its own backyard during Kosovo in 1999, and so the US had to intervene. Also, even where other nations do have reasonable militaries, no country has the ability to project the same amount of military force like the US. Some countries come close (UK, France), but never to the same degree.\n\n\nAs for countries like Switzerland: War simply isn't profitable or desirable for most countries. Switzerland (and most of Europe) relies on the US to maintain the global order. The only situation in which it makes sense for Switzerland to be at war (ignoring potentially supporting initiatives such as ISAF) is if it is being threatened by another state. For this to happen, Germany would either have to do a 180, back out of the EU and go into fourth reich mode, or Russia would have to do a reverse-barbarossa. The former case is extremely unlikely, the latter case would probably lead to Nuclear war.\n", "This may not be the best comparison to be making, simply because Switzerland is just too different a country. US is the 3rd largest country by area, with 2nd largest coastline, spanning 3 oceans with the world's largest economy. The US economy represents  > 22% of ALL of the world's capital. They are huge geographically, economically and geopolitically, which means they have a lot of interests to protect and almost every other country is a competitor of the US in one industry/sphere of influence or another. Hence, comparing it to Switzerland - a tiny, landlocked European country with a small, albeit robust and prosperous, economy is not the best example. Small and isolated countries either *have to* maintain peace or are protected by larger neighbours with similar interests. \nTake a look at the [Global Piece Index](_URL_1_). Let's run down the list:\n\n* Iceland - small, isolated, protected by NATO\n* Denmark - small, protected by NATO\n* Austria - small, landlocked, mountainous, surrounded by NATO and Switzerland.\n* New Zealand - small, isolated, global partner of NATO, member of the Five Eyes, ally of the US  &  UK\n* Switzerland - small, landlocked, mountainous, surrounded by NATO and Austria\n* Finland - ?\n* Canada - isolated, protected by NATO, NORAD, member of the Five Eyes, ally of the US, worked on the Manhattan Project with US and UK\n* Japan - an island nation, ally of the US + US Military Bases\n* Belgium - small, protected by NATO\n* Norway - isolated, mountainous, protected by NATO\n* Sweden - a miracle of diplomacy\n* Czech Republic - small, landlocked, protected by NATO\n* Ireland - island nation, surrounded by NATO members\n* Slovenia - small, protected by NATO\n* Australia - isolated, global partner of NATO, member of the Five Eyes, ally of the US  &  UK\n* Bhutan - small, landlocked, mountainous, 'the Switzerland of Asia'\n* Germany - protected by NATO + US Military Bases\n* Portugal - small, isolated, protected by NATO\n* Slovakia - small, landlocked, protected by NATO\n\nAs you see, a pattern emerges. The safest and most peaceful nations are, magically, either members of NATO or a strong ally of the US/UK/France (which is really the same thing anyway).^also ^being ^small, ^isolated ^and ^mountainous ^helps.\n\nPerhaps a better comparison would be to compare post-1946 American war involvement with either other world powers after WW2 (ahem, Soviet Union) or with European Empires during 18th-19th centuries. When comparing apples to apples, US may not stand out as much as you think. Case and point - I leave you with the map of [the 22 countries that Britain had NOT invaded](_URL_0_) over the course of world history.", "The US could \"stay peaceful\" but then everyone would call us selfish for not helping out the shitty countries when they have problems.\n\nSo instead we fuck around with other countries and everyone says \"hey america, stop playing world police\"\n\n\nbut then some african girls get kidnapped and it's \"WHY ARE WE NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?\", and then the hilarity of that KONY 2012 bullshit.\n\n\nUnfortunately the rest of the world looks to us to fix shit, but if we don't do an absolutely perfect job we then turn into assholes.\n\n\nSwitzerland just sits back and does nothing about anything so nobody can say shit about them.\n", "In the united states they have this fickle beast called the military industrial complex ... which basically means large multinational corporations profit from the destruction and \"re-building\" of nations. \n\nCorporations run america and the populace there is too consumed with pepsi, american idol, and the kardashians to make any significant change.\n\nELI5: Americas economy needs war to survive ... the swiss economy does not.\n\n\n\n", "Approximately 1/5 of the US economy is dependent on making war. We do it because it sustains our economy. We got addicted to it, and now we couldn't stop if we wanted to or else our economy would implode. That's why we keep declaring war every few years, when the economy starts slumping. \n\nWe also do it to enforce the petrodollar hegemony, which means that we make everyone trade oil in USD, which props up the currency. That's why we invaded Iraq and Libya and several others. It's also the reason we tried to invade Syria, but that one didn't work out because there wasn't public support and also russia blocked us. \n\nI half-expect another 9/11 type event (probably blamed on ISIS) that will be used to align the public behind the idea of invading Syria and Iran, and re-invading Iraq. It will be their last-ditch effort to save our struggling economy. \n\nIt's really messed up, and I hate that it is like this. ", "Nations with far reaching economic and politcal interests tend to be involved in wars more often than those that do not have such interest.  Nations that are seen as relatively peaceful remains as such by having neither the reasonable capacity to wage offensive war nor possess anything worth the effort of taking.\n\nIn the case of Switzerland, for example, neutrality was a hard won position that involved centuries of warfare.  A combination of terrain that favors the defense and a lack of anything of strategic significance protected them in the wars of the 20th century.  Being defensible, lacking anything tangible that is worth the effort and lacking the capacity to project significant military power has kept them neutral.  In short, they are too small and too hard to attack to be worth attacking and the Swiss have nothing to gain within reasonable reach that would make it worth dramatically expanding their military power for.", "I always assumed it was because after ww2 the army and defense industry were so huge and important to the nations economy that it would be bad for any politicians to scale it back in there state or nationaly there for its in the national interest to get involved in conflicts or peacekeeping actions. \nThe armed services are bureaucracies and large bureaucracies serve to maintain and expand themselves and there interests. \nJust my 2 pence worth. ", "America is run by very wealthy men who own things like weapons manufacturing plants. These men make money when america is at war because there is a demand for things like bullets, guns and tanks.\n\nPeaceful countries are run by very wealthy men too, but they make their money from things like banking. They make more money from people being peaceful, so the country will only go to war if it is an absolute necessity.", "The US has always considered itself the beacon of democracy to the world, but used to have a policy of non-intervention and avoiding European balance of power conflicts, until World War 1 where the undemocratic Germany 'poked' the US by trying to ally with Mexico and blockaded/sunk American ships headed to Britain. America joined the war, and then Ww2 was soon after which they joined due to being bombed by the Japanese. \n\nDuring ww2 the American economy grew and grew while the rest of the world powers were wrecked by war. After the end of WW2 Soviet forces occupied much of Eastern Europe, and was perceived (correctly) as the greatest threat to world peace/security, and most of all, democracy, as well as threatening US economic interests. The US strategy was to avoid going to war with the Soviets (thought they were too strong (wrong until the soviets got their own bomb), and also didn't want more destruction in Europe) but instead to wait for collapse from within, and in the meantime to 'contain' the expansion of what the US saw as an international communist conspiracy. This containment policy meant strengthening US allies bordering the Soviets in Europe.\n\nWhat the US wasn't expecting was for communist North Korea to invade South Korea, which meant that 'containment' was no longer limited to Europe, but brought America to lands they had never imagined they'd be defending. After that, the US had basically established itself as the defender of the free world, aided sometimes by its buddies from NATO and the UN. This brought America into other conflicts and crises throughout the cold war until the soviet union collapsed. After the cold war, the US still had military ties, economic interests and military bases throughout the world, and many countries had come to depend on US intervention for protection. This brought the US into the middle east in the 90s. The afghanistan war was in response to 9.11.\n\nAll that stuff above? That didn't happen to Switzerland. You can't point to a formula for why some countries are like this and others are like that. The fact is there was a specific, unique chain of events that lead to the current state of each country/the world, and only by getting an idea of those events can you get an idea of why we are where we are now", "War is good business. We're a corporate oligarchy.", "it's the other way around. Only the US seems to be at war all the time. No other country comes to mind that has fought anywhere near as many wars on so many frontiers as th USA in the last 50 years and probably even 100 years.", "War is good business, and some major players are tied into Washington?\n\nAlso, there can't be \"haves\", if there aren't \"have nots\"\n\n", "In example of switzerland, well, a bank doesnt declare war", "Some countries take a social supportive role, others take a fascist oppressive one.  It's a certain lack of humility maybe..?\n*sort of like how the Nazis thought that the world was their right to own.", "Check your facts. Aside from supporting minor conflicts, the US has been involved in a grand total of about ten significant international wars in 239 years. That's a pretty good track record for peace. Keep hugging your trees while guys like me (a veteran of two of those wars) keep you safe from the countless bastards around the world who want YOU dead just for things as simple as the freedom to question war.", "I live in Switzerland and they've always had excellent defensive schemes, so most countries wouldn't bother trying to invade them. This is a country where every adult male citizen has an assault rifle and national service training, bunkers and airbases and garages inside mountains, jet fighter pilots trained to land on highways, etc. Their main defense against foreign interest is probably banking though. If Hitler and Mussolini had decided to invade Switzerland, it would fuck their economies up.", "Switzerland sits back and launders war money that's how", "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.", "We tried staying out of things for two world wars.  That didn't work out so well for everyone involved.  Now we feel we have to get involved or else the situation won't get handled.", "[Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex](_URL_0_)", "Everyone cries USA is the war mongering bully until they need our help.", "Switzerland doesn't care about anyone's well being but itselfs.\nThey don't pick a side so they can continue making business with both parties.\n\nA good example is the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Switzerland took forever to set up some embargos against Russia. After the international pressure was high enough, they finally caved. But still there were talks about lifting the embargos because they will have some (minor) impacts on the Swiss economy/wealth.\nIt's fucking pathetic.\n\nSauce: I'm Swiss. ", "Well probably because we have a larger military industrial complex than any other country in the world. When a certain sector gains too much leverage in an economy, they tend to start manipulating events to play out in such a manner that will bring profit... Long story short, war is a profitable business. That's why.", "Watch the documentary Why We Fight. ", "Whether you agree or disagree with the recent US military actions, we are one of the only countries CAPABLE of doing them on a large scale all over the world without going to some sort of war footing economy.  Ignoring morality, doing this much fighting is expensive, and we are one of the only ones who can afford it (somewhat) easily.\n      \nThis doesn't explain the entire question, but it explains part of the answer.\n", "Because when something goes wrong in the world (e.g. Bosnia in 90's), no one calls upon Switzerland to help.\n\nSwitzerland exists only because countries like the USA fight Nazis.", "IMHO the U.S., and to a lesser, though significant extent the British, became the primary defender(s) of Western Europe after the end of the Second World War. Because nations like Spain, Germany, Italy, and others no longer needed to invest heavily in defense, they were able to turn their priorities on reconstruction and social welfare programs. The United States has paid the tab on NATO defense for 65+ years, and as a result have 'perfected' the means to destroy it's enemies and protect it's interests. Add to this a culture that promotes competition, nationalism, and a 'don't fuck with me' attitude, and you will get what we have today: American military dominance of the planet. ", "The United States did not inherit the hawkish position in WW2, it has always been that way. The US had colonies even back in the 1800:s. Switzerland did not.\n\nThe militaristic \"might makes right\" philosophy was grounded in the american founding fathers, that is why they built D.C. with Rome in mind (with white, bombastic marble colons).", "Late to respond, so this will probably get buried, but none of the top answers really address the question...\n\nThe modern \"Superpower\" is really a post-WWII phenomenon. To grossly over-simplify thousands of years and millions of pages of world history... In the wake of WWII, there were \"three worlds\":\n\n- **The First World** was USA, Western Europe, and countries affiliated/conquered/surrendered (Japan, especially). These countries were nominally capitalist-ish, recognizing individual freedoms and property rights within mostly-democratic government structures. The USA was instrumental in the reconstruction and development of many of these war-devastated countries, and had tremendous influence, often providing or overseeing the primary or only substantive military force. \n\n- **The Second World** was USSR, Eastern Europe, and (to a lesser degree) China, plus affiliated countries/alliances. This alliance nominally gave primacy to the welfare of the \"state\" or collective, over individuals and property rights. Different from the alliances and diplomatic influence of the USA, USSR offered/imposed/pursued direct military and political control over member states, with an ideology that pursued an eventual worldwide state of communism or hardline socialism, more totalitarian than \"democratic\". \n\n- **The Third World** was a collective term for all countries not specifically affiliated with either the USA or the USSR. Contrary to popular belief, it does not specifically mean \"poor\", it just means outside of American or Russian influence. Theoretically, this could include Switzerland, for example, but nobody really counted it that way. \"Third World\" became increasingly a descriptor for really a number of different \"worlds\" with their own histories and geo-politics, including Islamic states, the Indian sub-continent, and much of South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia. \n\nAlmost immediately after WWII, a so-called **\"Cold War\"** began, between the first and second worlds (USA and USSR), over geopolitical and military control/influence, especially in the \"third world\". \n\nDepending on how you look at it, the USA/\"first world\" spent much of the mid-late 20th century either \"protecting\" unaffiliated countries from Soviet takeover, or else preventing the people of slave-state, capitalist-run \"Banana Republics\" from joining the worldwide socialist collective. \n\n- This conflict of ideologies and military/political power was perhaps no more vivid than in the **Vietnam War**, where the Americans \"lost\", but it is very hard to say who \"won\". Somewhere around a million Vietnamese died before American withdrawal, but it is very hard to see how Vietnam benefitted from the Soviet Liberation, or how they would have been better had the Americans \"won\". \n\n- The **Vietnam War** also vividly illustrated the human cost of the \"cold war\" to Americans and the First World. A common takeaway lesson is that the people of Vietnam are worse off, after the war, but would not have been much better off, had the Americans won. I.e., it was lose-lose for Vietnam. \n\nFor the next 20 years or so, this \"keep the cold war cold\" mentality led to some ugly and complex interventions on all sides, often led by intelligence agencies rather than military intervention, where American and Soviet governments engaged in all kinds of morally-dubious behavior. \n\n**Fast-forward to 2000**: The Soviet Union has collapsed. The \"second world\" is not even really a thing. Opposition to American/Western geopolitical hegemony, is now fragmented and often somewhat nuanced: no serious contender is advocating a worldwide socialist state, or anything like it. \n\nThere are all kinds of terribly-run countries in the world, but most of them are either obviously corrupt, or run in the service of strongman-type leaders who use the country to enrich themselves. The biggest real, global, ideological alternative to western-style democracy is a loose and disorganized association of **Islamists**. \n\n- **\"Islamist\" can be different from \"Muslim\", or \"Islamic.\"** \n\nThe USA and \"first world\" generally became the face of whatever was good or bad about global culture and circumstances, after the collapse of the USSR. Whatever benefit of the doubt has previously been extended to the \"good guys\" quickly turned to skepticism of the global hegemony of the \"people in power\". \n\nAs the sole remaining military, political, cultural, and economic superpower, America and the \"First World\" came to mean something new and different in geopolitical discourse. Increasingly, it came to imply those responsible for, and who benefitted from, whatever state the world was in, at any given point in time. \n\nIslamists unhappy with the state of world affairs attacked skyscrapers in New York, not because they had any particular gripe with the people who worked there, but because they were symbolic of... something. WTC was a symbol of a new global pan-culturalism, an Americanization of the world, a multicultural homogenization...\n\nAs the sole remaining superpower, USA is involved with almost any war, anywhere in the world, either directly or indirectly. Compared with most  global empires in history (e.g., the Romans, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the British Empire, etc), the USA appears to be mostly an improvement, in a humanitarian sense. \n\nBut there is also a frightening and anti-human aspect to American/western dominance: Never before in the history of the world has so much power been so concentrated. In the past, broad philosophies competed in part by combat. You could fight the people you disagreed with, if worse came to worst. \n\nBut it is difficult to foresee a world where anyone, even China, could win a fight against the USA, without resorting to global thermonuclear war. Which means that the world is increasingly divided into two camps:\n\n- Those who work with and through American/first-world political and diplomatic channels, and;\n\n- Those who see an apocalyptic outcome as a tolerable or even desirable one. \n\nTo the specific question: it is unrealistic to imagine a world where the sole remaining superpower is **not** involved in a high proportion of military conflicts. One might well disagree with the USA on any number of points, but who else do you call on, when genuine \"bad guys\" start taking over? \n\nThe question implies that wars/conflicts should/might happen *without* American intervention. If not the Americans, then who? Or should the world just leave each other to kill each other, when the fancy strikes? It's not an easy question to answer...\n\nedit:typos and speling"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-doners-of-foreigner-aid-map.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7DdWmWUa_8"], [], ["http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSB2007/Figures/2007HSBrief_fig3_1-StateBasedArmedConflictsByType.jpg"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq#List_of_countries_in_the_coalition"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACur8v1188"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8uqbj1", "title": "men and women have the same body temperature, right? then why does it seem that on average women are always cold and shower at temperatures exceeding the melting point of galvanized steel?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8uqbj1/eli5_men_and_women_have_the_same_body_temperature/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1hcy8l", "e1hd1ct", "e1hdtpz", "e1hg3ic", "e1hgu0j", "e1hhrfc", "e1hit3y", "e1hj34y", "e1hjwme", "e1hlhbe", "e1hlkxa", "e1hlry7", "e1hlye2", "e1hmhrk", "e1hmkt6", "e1hmlhn", "e1hmnj9", "e1hmv10", "e1hmvtg", "e1hn40l", "e1hnmu1", "e1hojlr", "e1hovmc", "e1howc2", "e1hpixq", "e1hppj4", "e1hpt5k", "e1hqxpd", "e1hr0r4", "e1hrw3r", "e1hs0gm", "e1hsl9r", "e1hsvm0", "e1ht1s0", "e1hv4in", "e1hyljo", "e1i7opj"], "score": [8, 6304, 20, 1564, 46, 208, 271, 11, 5, 129, 4, 8, 12, 2, 15, 2, 3466, 2, 2, 6, 4, 36, 2, 3, 13, 3, 5, 30, 5, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I didn't know that I wasn't alone on this topic. Maybe it has to do with body hair or something. But even if I had no hair I wouldn't shower at 1200\u00b0", "There\u2019s a lot involved here. There have actually been studies on it. Believe it or not though women tend to run warmer than men as far as core body temp goes, though their extremities (hands/feet) are significantly colder than those of a man. \nIt\u2019s quite interesting to see how it\u2019s broken down in [this article](_URL_0_) ", "Women's core temperature tend to run higher than men's. So the same temp. water wouldn't feel as hot. \n\nJust a guess", "Women have several things that make them feel colder, and they have to do with making them better able to carry a child. \n\nWomen tend to have slightly higher body temps than men on average, which means that what they sense as being cold will be slightly higher than what men do. \n\nAnd they also tend to have poorer circulation in their extremities which will make their hands and feet more likely to be cold. ", "Body fat and hormones (I think) are two factors I recall my first year professor telling us about this when a question was asked during lecture. \n\nMen and women have different body fat percentages , this contributes( not sure on specifics) to the different sexes to feel different temperatures.\n\nI don't recall how the hormone thing worked, it was first year biology , 8 am ( I think) class.", "I have a follow up question to this. Before getting pregnant,  my wife was always colder than most people (including other women). Starting around the end of the first trimester and continuing to today (kid is 6), she is always warmer than most people (including me and other men). Any ideas?", "I can't tell more than what's already been told from a biological perspective.\n\nBut I'll add a thought:\n\nWhile women are generally more prone to being cold than men, women clothes are, again generally, thinner and less covering (compare men and women tops, sweaters, pants). This makes no sense", "Absolutely zero smart input on my part, just wanted to let you know I laughed like crazy while commuting to your \u201ctemperatures exceeding the melting point of steel\u201d \ud83d\ude02 so true on so many levels", "I think you may be generalizing; meaning, the basis for the statement of your question is false.    \n    \n\n\nMy GF, always is wearing warm clothes,  even in summer to keep warm. And would seem to fit the standard stereotype, except she showers with cold water ( she says it is not cold, it is simply not heated). \n", "Bruh this is why I won't shower with my girlfriend. She's always freezing, her skin is as cold as the depths of space, and she turns only the hot water on when she showers, shits like 120 degrees.", "Women tend to be smaller than men, and have less musculature. This means that we produce less body heat. We also have less skin area, which means that we lose less heat to the environment, but not so much that it compensates for producing less. This is because of the square-cube law, which says that if something doubles in height, but keeps the same proportions, its surface area will increase fourfold (2\u00b2), but its volume will increase eight fold (2\u00b3). This means that the volume to surface ratio will double.", "There is a fairly straightforward Heat Transfer explanation.  Women on average are smaller and weigh less than men, which means less Volume, and less Surface area.  However the factors of Volume and Surface Area don't scale at the same rate.  For simplicity sake, let's simplify people into Cubes, although the underlying math works for any shape.\n\nDouble the Volume of a cube (increasing it by 100%), and the surface area only grows by 2^2/3 or a 58% growth.  So in general, the bigger you are, the faster your volume grows relative to your surface area.  Or if it makes the math easier for you, double the sides of a cube, and the surface area grows by a factor of 4 (since each side grows by 2^2) and the volume grows by a factor of  8 (2^3).\n\nWell, your heat transfer is governed by how much surface area you have, among other things, and how much heat you have to lose is governed by your volume, among other things.\n\nSo, the bigger you get, the more internal heat you have relative to your heat transfer, and the smaller you are, the more efficient your body is at transferring heat away.\n\nTLDR: women, in general transfer a higher percentage of their internal heat away at any time because in general they are smaller than men and smaller things lose their heat quicker than bigger things.  If they want to solve the problem, they could grow big and fat and then they will be hot and sweaty any time the temperature approaches body temp.\n\nI hope this help, if it was confusing, please feel free to ask followup questions.", "Hey, as a guy I do this too. Just gradually turn up the temperature of the water. You won't feel a thing unless the temperature control jerks to one side as it gives more than it should do and you suddenly either freeze your arse off or have to dodge the lava stream coming out of the showerhead.", "Studies have been done on mammal male and female temperature preferences and they found that while females prefer warmer temps males prefer colder temps. Part of this is because females on average have higher body temps and do what's warm to males doesnt always feel warm to females. They also found that a reason males preferred colder temps was to be able to better regulate the temperature of their testicles. ", "Your body tempature is only what it is in your butt and under your tongue. Apparently scientifically women have cold hands and legs and stuff.. ", "My \"hot\" shower feels lukewarm to my boyfriend and the water my boyfriend showers in is unbearably hot for me, it hurts my skin, so there you go.", "Since girls can make babies, the area around their tummies need to be warmer to keep the baby safe and comfortable. Heat is taken from girls arms and legs and given to the tummy area which makes girls feel a little colder on the outside than boys.", "Kind of off subject but it just hit me a few days go that the saying \"People with the coldest hands have the warmest hearts\" exist because almost all women have cold hands. It's literally playing off the female caregiver. \n\nBut on topic, women also have slower metabolic rate. So we don't produce as much heat as men who have a 23% (maybe it was 25% can't remember) higher rate.", "In the shower, I find as I get used to the temperature I tend to crank it up a bit more. So by the time I'm done with a shower, it is usually pretty hot!\n\nI have a large, noisy family including two children that are 3 and 1. The shower is the ONE place in the house where I can hear nobody and nobody follows me. They're lucky I come out.\n", "I always thought this was a myth, as a male who enjoys tremendously warm showers, I've always had to turn it up the heat after all my partners.\n\nAfter reading a few more posts. It seems linked to poor circulation which I do have.", "It's gotta be something to do with hormones. As a transgender woman, I am much more resistant to high temps after hormone therapy. Previously I used to use ac and fans even in the winter and hated high temps. Right now I had to stop my meds for a month brcause reasons and I actually feel like I'm in a microwave all the time again. So yeah, there's definitely a real thing there.", "I'm a trans woman and after my E1 levels reached cis woman levels I got cold all the time and my showers got progressively hotter and hotter.\n\nHormones are whack yo", "Women are warm and affectionate by nature so they want to feel warmth and affection all the time. It's ultimately a good thing.", "According to CTRL-F, no one in this thread has mentioned testicles yet? Men's testicles are external to their bodies because they require lower than body temperatures to function properly. Seems like an obvious corollary that men should therefore be more comfortable in lower temperatures. Anything close to body temperature will impede their balls from storing piss.", "The distribution of fat and muscle is different, and there are some other hormonal factors that cause temperature to vary throughout the day and month. What underlies that reason though, is evolution: \n\n\"Brr... It's cold in here.\"\n\n\"I got you, baby.\"\n\nRepeat for millions of generations. ", "Broad statement that is nearly opposite to how my girlfriend runs. She's always warm to touch, just below fever warmth to me, but she never sweats. Takes cool showers. She doesn't notice when I use too much hot water in a long shower.", "Water from showers start off warm when they come out of the shower head, but cool down as they fall through the air, so the water is cooler the lower you are. Since women are usually shorter than men, they like to have the water start off warmer when it comes out so it cools to a nicer temperature when the water gets to them. Kids are even shorter and need even warmer water to stay comfortable. If you want to try this out yourself, you can see the temperature difference between standing in the shower vs sitting in the shower and you'll notice the difference! Those iconic giant cooling towers in nuclear power plants work on the same principal, cooling water by having it fall a great height inside the cooling tower so that the water is cooler at the bottom. The steam is the warm water escaping.", "Girlfriend is cold 100% of the time. Latches onto me to stay warm. Physically feels cold. \n\nSomehow turns into a nuclear reactor as soon as she touches a bed.", "Women come from a deeper level of hell and have had their souls tempered in the hottest fires.", "Not true! Yes, I\u2019m a sufferer of the cold hands/feet as my poor SO can attest. He\u2019s been attacked by them innumerable times. \n\nHowever, his shower temp is close to that on the surface of the sun. He comes out of the shower daily looking as if he gave his entire body first degree burns. \n\nMany times I have showered after him and just pulled up the knob to turn it on and yelled and jumped out because it was too damn hot. \n\nI\u2019m a woman and I enjoy a mildly hot shower. Much like baby bear from Goldilocks. ", "Being cold is a relative thing. It appears that women on average have a higher body temperature, but we also may get cold at a higher temperature because of that. Which would also explain the hotter showers (although I couldn't find any research on shower temperatures being gendered), if women are trying to return to a higher temperature.", "Women are generally more anemic or borderline anemic because of our uterus/periods. So we run cold. Plus as other have said more fat tissue.", "Men and women should have the same average temperature. However, a lot depends on personal chemistry. My girlfriend is the warm one out of the two of us, but I'm told its because I don't have enough iron in my diet.", "Melting point of galvanized steel? Nah it's closer to the temperature required to melt Uru", "Actually, it all comes feom the heart.  Men are from hell, and that warmth naturally permeates their bodies.   ..but the body naturally seeks to moderate that temperature by releasing it through heavy activity and sweatimg.  Males with larger pieces of hell often have to do extreme amounts of work, exercise, and sweating, or the energy starts ro get released as evil, which is more energy dense.  This takes the form of collusion, oppression, coercion etc, and if not guarded against, will become the default method of releasing energy -- but the body naturally prefers release through simpler methods.\n\nWomen, on the other hand, are from the void dimension.  Although you might think that means they technically don't exist, they are really complex patterns of tendency toward nothingness.  They feed on extremes, because they need the energy gradient.  They reduce everything they interact with to the average energy level, but need extremes to sustain themselves, because it is the process of reduction that keeps them alive.  Physically, this manifests as extremely hot showers, often followed by ice cream, or in some cases sitting directly in front of a fan or AC while wet.  When their needs aren't met, they seek to incite and create extremes in their environment which they can then sustain themselves on.  ..like men, though, their bodies naturally trend toward 98.7 degrees (although there's some small variance in the baseline), and there's only so much their bodies can take.  The feeling that they are cold comes from you experiencing the process of your heat being reduced.  The woman is at a perfectly normal temperature, they are simply reducing your heat with coldness they have acquired elsewhere.", "This continues to baffle me. My girlfriend thrives in extremely hot showers. The same temperature feels like it's literally burning my skin. She often jokes about it, too, how she feels \"cold\" when we shower together and I turn the heat up just to where I can barely stand it.", "Shot in the dark. Lower BMI or just less body fat in the furthermost extremities. Besides that I run well over normal temp, meaning I overheat/perspire easily, and I take showers at the same temp or hotter than my SOs usually  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-womens-bodies-run-colder-than-mens-836827770"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4h99k7", "title": "Considering its maritime traditions, why didn't Denmark have a larger colonial Empire like Britain and France did?", "selftext": "Just seems odd considering Spain and France weren't particularly maritime nations and yet they both had a lot of oversees holdings and it doesn't make sense to me why Denmark never had anything more than Iceland and Greenland (and a few negligable Islands across the world)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h99k7/considering_its_maritime_traditions_why_didnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2oo0zo", "d2ph517"], "score": [30, 5], "text": ["Denmark actually did have overseas holdings during from 1618, when the danish King Christian the IV sent a small expedition to Ceylon (todays Sri Lanka), until 1917 where the last remaining holdings (Danish west indies) were sold to the US for 25 million dollars. During this time Denmark also had som smaller holdings in Tranquebar, India and on the Gold Coast. Though the holdings in Africa and India were not really colonies, they functioned more like trading stations with several protestant missions attached. \n\nDenmark's drive for holdings where just like all other european powers driven by mercantilism (from the french word mercantile), where an positive trading balance were wanted, which then would lead to a higher tax base. To obtain this the government at the time would increase import taxes and decrease export taxes, the problem with this system was that every country in europe would do the same.\n\nHowever the colonies in Africa and India did not provide any real profit, and only the colonies in the Danish West Indies provided a profit, but only for a short periode of time. Which ultimately led to the sale in 1917.\n\nEventough Denmark did have a proud naval tradition at the time, it did not have the economic surplus to rival nations like France and Britain. This plus the factor that a great deal of Denmark's foreign policy at the time was specifically aimed at getting Skaane back from Sweeden, which removed some of the focus from the Caribbean, Africa and India.\n\nI hope this answers your question. I have provided some sources, keep in mind they are in danish though.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n", "In 1807 the British attacked Copenhagen in the aim of capturing/sinking the main Danish fleet,  basically to stop Napoleon getting them in the future. This would have severely   hampered any overseas expansion. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://danmarkshistorien.dk/leksikon-og-kilder/vis/materiale/merkantilisme-og-danske-tropekolonier/?no_cache=1", "http://danmarkshistorien.dk/historiske-perioder/den-aeldre-enevaelde-1660-1784/enevaeldens-krige-og-udenrigspolitik/", "http://danmarkshistorien.dk/leksikon-og-kilder/vis/materiale/om-ove-gieddes-ekspedition-til-ceylon-og-trankebar-1618-1622/?no_cache=1&amp;cHash=8f0c7a6254761753e4cd1eda7e0d85aa"], []]}
{"q_id": "mcj8c", "title": "How do you make this?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nI'm really want to know, and I think other people do too", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mcj8c/how_do_you_make_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2zvvbn", "c2zvvbn"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["[Superhydrophobic](_URL_0_) materials have been around for some time, but the innovation here appears to be the spray-on application to common surfaces, which you must admit is a damn convenient way to make a surface superhydrophobic.\n\nThe video and the accompanying article do not reveal the chemistry of the product, but it must have the property of superhydrophobia and to bind to a variety of surfaces. My understanding of chemistry is highly limited, but this does remind me of how detergent works: by having the ability to bond with water and oil at the same time (through two different functional groups in the molecules).", "[Superhydrophobic](_URL_0_) materials have been around for some time, but the innovation here appears to be the spray-on application to common surfaces, which you must admit is a damn convenient way to make a surface superhydrophobic.\n\nThe video and the accompanying article do not reveal the chemistry of the product, but it must have the property of superhydrophobia and to bind to a variety of surfaces. My understanding of chemistry is highly limited, but this does remind me of how detergent works: by having the ability to bond with water and oil at the same time (through two different functional groups in the molecules)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7is6r6zXFDc"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhydrophobe"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhydrophobe"]]}
{"q_id": "339zf4", "title": "why does my personality become slightly more like the main character of a novel or tv show that i am totally engrossed in?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/339zf4/eli5_why_does_my_personality_become_slightly_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqiwee5", "cqixdth", "cqizm0r", "cqj2hbg", "cqj3aqo", "cqj4whx", "cqja3ec"], "score": [49, 35, 8, 9, 2, 6, 3], "text": ["Very interesting thought.   I always thought I emulated the characters to a point where it was obvious and annoying to me and my wife both. I think Trailer Park Boys was what got me thinking this exact thought after I started talking like Rickey and bubbles.  Just never once thought to ask the question. ", "There is a common phenomenon where you emulate people around you.  You probably noticed that you ended up in life similarly to your friends in school.  This is why they say if you want to be a millionaire then surround yourself with millionaires.  So if you're thinking of those people on TV as part of your circle then I guess it would make sense to act like them.", "I bet it's awkward around the house after you watch a porno.", "Growing up, my mom always asked what book I was reading so she would know what kind of attitude I would have.  :)  Oddly, I always liked that.  ", "Psychologists have dubbed this 'experience-taking.' Apparently this happens when you are least reminded of yourself. The more you identify with the character, the less it is likely to occur. \n\n", "empathy and adaptation\nIt is normal, and books are the greatest source of empathetic experience besides actual participation.\n\nThat said, you are probably young, older then 12 (below this age people tend to lack exactly this capacity,) probably younger then 17, as by that age people tend to have so many highly prioritized in person relationships that they don't notice the effects of other sources.  14? 15?  Or, few deep social contacts.\n\nThis phenomenon is one reason why it is very important to read early.  It greatly enhances a person's ability to cope with diverse situations and find creative solutions.  It also increases interpersonal skills, empathy, and emotional quotient.  (literary fiction is best for this.)\n\n\nMind you, you do the same thing with everything you encounter and empathize with.  As such, it is important to choose who/what you read, AND who/what you hang out with and other ways you spend your time.  We really do become like our friends, and the onset can be imperceptible.  \n\n\n", "It has a great deal of similarities with mirroring the body language of someone you're romantically/sexually attracted to.\n\nIn the same way people who like each other cross their legs, for example, at the same time, if you're watching a show/reading a book you love, you might find yourself emulating the characters in a subconscious attempt to become closer to them.\n\n(The body language thing is widely documented, language use is beginning to be. [Here's](_URL_0_) an interesting article regarding the shared language of lovers.)\n\nThe other influence is immersion. In the same way one picks up bits of an accent when living in another country or region, you'll start to pick up things from fiction you're immersed in. I find this much more from television shows, as I tend to pick up verbal tics - and television shows usually have much more content (than, say, a novel or film) to immerse yourself in."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/8041587/The-language-that-lovers-share-is-a-window-into-the-state-of-their-relationship.html"]]}
{"q_id": "mtct3", "title": "why does my nose clog and block my air passage ways?", "selftext": "I'm not allergic and its not exactly pollen season, why does my nose clog up and making sleeping hard and annoying? Why does the body even have a process that blocks nasal passages and sinuses? It just seems counter productive. \n\nEdit: Thanks people, I learned a good amount about my nose today. Holding my breathe after pushing the air out of my lungs did help my nose open up a bit but I'll be mentioning my nose to a doc next time I see him just in case.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mtct3/eli5_why_does_my_nose_clog_and_block_my_air/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c33pdjm", "c33pfep", "c33piqd", "c33po1u", "c33pph6", "c33psbx", "c33q6cy", "c33pdjm", "c33pfep", "c33piqd", "c33po1u", "c33pph6", "c33psbx", "c33q6cy"], "score": [30, 5, 15, 178, 3, 2, 2, 30, 5, 15, 178, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I thought my nose was running, but it's snot.", "I cannot provide an answer. I can, however, provide some entry points to reading about the sinuses, specifically, to the idea of the nasal cycle... Did you know that your nasal sinuses alternate between one another over a period of several hours?\n\n_URL_0_", "Can we get an actual ELI5 answer instead of links?", "The inside of your nose, sinuses, and the nasal passage is covered by something called a 'mucous membrane'. Think of it like a wet carpet that has miniature water sprinklers, if you will. The function of such an arrangement is to make sure that the air reaching your lungs is not dry (which would in turn make your lungs dry, which is dangerous), amongst other things.\n\n\nCome winter, and a large number of viruses find it a very conducive environment to harbour themselves in your nasal mucous membrane. These in turn cause the glands secreting the mucus (the miniature water sprinklers) to work overtime. The purpose of this is to wash out the virus, broadly speaking. But as a result of this, mucus is produced in excess. When you're awake, this dribbles down the back of your throat due to gravity, not making its presence felt for the most part. When you're asleep, it becomes difficult for this to happen. So, it accumulates and dries up. This is why you get a clogged nasal passage.\n\n\nAnother reason is that the miniature arteries carrying blood to the mucous membrane dilate themselves in response to the infection. This swells up the mucosa, giving you a sensation of a stuffed nose.\n\nNot exactly the most comprehensive explanation, but hope it helps.", "Similarly, why does my nose not seem to work when I lay on my left side, but works fine when I lay on my right side?", "I learned something awesome on reddit recently: when your nose is clogged, expel all the air you have in your lungs and don't breath for as long as you can. Your nostrils will open themselves (by contracting the mucus, or something), and you'll be able to breathe far better.", "Your body hates you and is trying to kill you by cutting off your air supply.", "I thought my nose was running, but it's snot.", "I cannot provide an answer. I can, however, provide some entry points to reading about the sinuses, specifically, to the idea of the nasal cycle... Did you know that your nasal sinuses alternate between one another over a period of several hours?\n\n_URL_0_", "Can we get an actual ELI5 answer instead of links?", "The inside of your nose, sinuses, and the nasal passage is covered by something called a 'mucous membrane'. Think of it like a wet carpet that has miniature water sprinklers, if you will. The function of such an arrangement is to make sure that the air reaching your lungs is not dry (which would in turn make your lungs dry, which is dangerous), amongst other things.\n\n\nCome winter, and a large number of viruses find it a very conducive environment to harbour themselves in your nasal mucous membrane. These in turn cause the glands secreting the mucus (the miniature water sprinklers) to work overtime. The purpose of this is to wash out the virus, broadly speaking. But as a result of this, mucus is produced in excess. When you're awake, this dribbles down the back of your throat due to gravity, not making its presence felt for the most part. When you're asleep, it becomes difficult for this to happen. So, it accumulates and dries up. This is why you get a clogged nasal passage.\n\n\nAnother reason is that the miniature arteries carrying blood to the mucous membrane dilate themselves in response to the infection. This swells up the mucosa, giving you a sensation of a stuffed nose.\n\nNot exactly the most comprehensive explanation, but hope it helps.", "Similarly, why does my nose not seem to work when I lay on my left side, but works fine when I lay on my right side?", "I learned something awesome on reddit recently: when your nose is clogged, expel all the air you have in your lungs and don't breath for as long as you can. Your nostrils will open themselves (by contracting the mucus, or something), and you'll be able to breathe far better.", "Your body hates you and is trying to kill you by cutting off your air supply."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7kttyy", "title": "Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. What did it mean?", "selftext": "Wiki describes fatwa as a non-binding legal opinion on matters of Islamic law. Local newspaper described it as \"every Muslim is obliged to kill him on sight\". Obviously, the truth is somewhere in the middle - Salman Rushdie had serious police protection so there must have been some threat to him.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7kttyy/ayatollah_ruhollah_khomeini_issued_a_fatwa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drh4iud"], "score": [79], "text": ["A \"fatwa\", in the simplest sense, means an edict, or command, issued by a Muslim religious authority, usually a mufti or Islamic scholar. (sometimes imams can also issue fatwas) There have been many fatwas issued on various things, on such whether investing in stocks is allowed under Islamic jurisprudence or whether various foods are haram or not. Fatwas are not death-sentences in of themselves. But.....  \n\nIn Salman Rushdie's case, he had published his book \"the Satanic Verses\" in 1988. In part of the book, he drew inspiration from a long circulating idea (found in several of Muhammad's more controversial biographies) that the Prophet had mistaken some \"satanic suggestions\" for \"divine revelation\", interpreted them as such in error, and later withdrew them. Part of the Satanic verses book actually goes into the author's own interpretation of Muhammad's life, such as  Prophet Muhammad receiving a dream to return to a form of polytheism but later vigorously rejecting it. \n \n As expected, most mainstream Islamic scholars reject the idea that Muhammad had received instruction from devilish beings and call this heretical.   \n\nIn Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's case, he and other fundamentalist Muslims took Rushdie's book as pure blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. So he issued a *fatwa* or edict, calling upon Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie. This had **deep** implications upon Western perceptions of the Muslim world.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3ewdec", "title": "At what point does a rock become a boulder?", "selftext": "Is there an exact rule to follow, perhaps based on size and mass, or is it a case of \"I'll call that one a boulder because it is bigger than the other rocks\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ewdec/at_what_point_does_a_rock_become_a_boulder/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctiz40o"], "score": [31], "text": ["A rock is a description of a type of material. A boulder is a grainsize classification (_URL_0_) - anything over 25.6cm diameter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_size_(grain_size)"]]}
{"q_id": "15lshb", "title": "What's the longest neuron of the human body?", "selftext": "This question has been bugging me for ages. By searching online, one often finds sites claiming that motor neurons of the sciatic nerve (which at most extends from the lower spinal cord to the tip of your big toe) are the longest (approx. 3 feet), but what about the neurons of the dorsal column-medial lemniscus pathway? My understanding is that these sensory neurons innervate tissues as far down as the toes, and doesn't synapse at all before entering the medulla. This makes for some incredibly long axons. Am I missing something here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15lshb/whats_the_longest_neuron_of_the_human_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7nq7rp"], "score": [5], "text": ["The wikipedia page for [DCML](_URL_0_) disagrees with my physiology text books, which admittedly I had to consult. As far as the textbooks seem concerned ^^[1][2] the neurons in the DCML pathways and other sensory pathways which pass through the spinal cord are passed through multiple neurons before getting to the brain.\n\nThe order seems to be first order neurons take sensory information from the source to the dorsal  root-ganglia. There, a second sensory neuron creates receptive field*. Signals are then passed to the brain and carried through the medulla by the secondary sensory neuron from the spinal cord. Thus they would not be the longest neuron as they synapse where the first order sensory neuron meets the spinal cord.\n\n*Receptive fields allow for distinction between fine and course stimulus. Simplified, they allow local neurons to interact and effect final signal transduction to the secondary neuron.\n\n^[1]Human Physiology - Silverthorn - 5th ed.\n^[2]Human Physiology - Standfield - 4th ed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterior_column-medial_lemniscus_pathway"]]}
{"q_id": "8sgerm", "title": "how is it possible for a nap as short as 15-20 minutes to significantly boost our alertness for the rest of the day? especially considering the fact that it doesn't involve a deep sleep stage?", "selftext": "I love naps, and I realize how benefitial they are. But it blows my mind that merely 20 minutes of sleep can be so benefitial. What is the biological/physiological reason behind that? How does that work?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8sgerm/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_a_nap_as_short_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0z9y3y", "e0za06d", "e0za7y8", "e0zamy6", "e0zb4oy", "e0zb6vh", "e0zc7lq", "e0znwe3", "e0zowk1"], "score": [1185, 11169, 127, 13, 2, 20, 48, 8, 2], "text": ["A \u201cpower nap\u201d as it is called is usually between 15-30 minutes, and when done correctly, avoids the deep sleep stages. The first 30ish minutes of sleep are spent in Stage 1 and 2, which are the lighter phases. During these, the brain is semi-relaxed, slows down signals, and gets some rest. It is important to wake up before Stage 3 and 4 because waking up during those leaves the person dazed and more tired, because the body was interrupted during its shut off stage. Power naps are like trying to reap as many benefits of sleep as possible without actually becoming fully asleep, meaning one feels more alert in less time. It can be compared to putting on a bandage when you\u2019re really busy until you have time to get stitches.", "It basically 'flushes the buffers\" of your brain, clears out short-term memory and plaques that accumulate.  NASA did a wonderful study on it: _URL_0_\n\nThey found a 20 minute nap is better than 200mg of caffeine.", "There isn\u2019t a perfect correlation between feeling states and physiological states. When you exercise, you start feeling fatigue long before your muscles physically run out of energy to burn. Obese people feel hungry at mealtimes even though it would take weeks of total starvation to kill them. And when you\u2019re mildly sleep deprived, your brain purposely creates a state of sleepiness and exhaustion even though it is physically capable of continuing operation. You feel more tired than your brain actually is. The evolutionary reason for this is probably just to motivate humans to emphasize sleep in their daily routines and not go too long without it. So, a short nap is enough to reverse acute feelings of sleepiness. The brain is programmed to return to a restful feeling state even after a short period of sleep. But only in the short term. If you sleep poorly for 10 days in a row, you\u2019ll find that a 20-minute power nap won\u2019t rejuvenate you nearly as well as on day 1. At that point, your brain really is physically incapable of operating at full levels without sleeping to recover.  ", "You probably do drop into REM sleep briefly. When the cells in your brain create energy, they release adenosine as a byproduct. This normally gets processed in other parts of your body, but it can't penetrate your blood brain barrier while you are awake. It's the main reason you get tired from being awake as it is a central nervous system depressant. Caffeine acts as an adenosine receptor inhibitor. So you aren't solving the problem, but you are less sensitive to it. When you drop into REM sleep, your body starts purging the adenosine in your brain through some process that causes wild hallucinations (dreams). When you have a higher quantity of adenosine, more gets processed faster. So the first 10 minutes of REM sleep do more than the last hour in terms of purging your brain. \n\nSome people have experimented with great success splitting up sleep to sleep twice a day for less time, and it turns out to be more effective than sleeping in one large block. For example, you sleep 3 hours twice a day or 2 hours 2-3 times a day instead of once for 8 hours. This is because you are maximizing the efficiency of the purging mechanism and minimizing adenosine accumulation. ", "A 15min nap is the 2min power cycle equivalent of our brain. Just enough time to \"reset\" and get going again.", "Apparently it's built into our circadian rhythm through evolution. There's a dip around lunch time which allows a nap to be had because we probably all did this thousands of years ago like most animals. That dip is different depending if your circadian rhythm is different like a night owl. So the dip could be are around 5 o'clock for someone else. You get about 20 minutes, anymore and you've ruined it.", "Imagine you start everyday with an empty trailer behind your car. You spend all day in your car. As you go about your day the trailer is filled with stuff you accumulate from daily experiences. A nap can empty some of the load from your trailer. Deep sleep on the other hand is car maintenance plus emptying of trailer. It takes longer and if your car functions fine, you won't feel much difference between just emptying the trailer and both maintenance and emptying the trailer.", "If you think of a human as a computer, this is much more helpful.\n\\n\n\nSo in a computer, Ram is Random Access Memory. What it does is store data temporary, and upon the command of the CPU (the brain of the computer that does all the thinking), the Ram flushes the data and shoots it to the CPU so that the CPU can process the data to display information on the screen.\n\\n\n\nHeres the Problem: When the CPU is asking for a lot of things to be done, Ram starts to pile up and tends to reach its threshold on the amount of data it can hold directly. When this happens, data will have to be retrieved from the memory itself which could take forever and waste a lot of time and effort. Its ineffecient, and makes the screen display things slowly and lag. To solve this issue, the computer needs to unload its resources to stop the straining of ram. How? By shutting down short term memories and processes that are not essential. Its important that you dont have the computer shut down all the way: it can take a long time to jumpstart, boot, and load windows or mac os for you again. But do it just right (via task manager or killing programs) and you have free ram to work freely.\n\\n\n\nThe Human mind is no different. We are task orientated species that have multiple tasks for the day. Even if we complete a task, we still keep the task in our mind, and as a result, the mind is cluttered with incohrent shit. Solution? Power napping. We shut down the body by purging all the short term stuff and wake up just before shutting down completely to avoid the shitting feeling, which occurs because the body has to use resources to restart the brain. So really, power napping is the crux of effeciency: reallocating and reprioritizing resources that matter.", "As you'll notice, no one actually has a conclusive answer.  You get some guesses, correlations, and anecdotes that don't actually explain \"how\" it is possible.  \"We tried giving people naps and coffee and the nap people felt better\" is not an explanation of \"how\".\n\nThe simple fact is that we have no idea.  We don't have a clue how the activity of the body leads to certain first-person experiences like \"alertness\".  We can say there are certain brain regions that show activity, and certain chemicals increase or decrease, affecting certain \"pathways\", but that's not an answer to the \"how\" question - it's just observing some correlations.\n\nThese types of questions get asked all the time and none of the top answers ever seem to address this, probably because we value black-white answers with an air of \"knowledge\" to them, even if they don't actually answer the original question.\n\nJust thought I would point this out for anyone who's willing to be puzzled by things, rather than accepting things that sound like answers but actually aren't.  Keep being puzzled."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://priceonomics.com/the-nasa-studies-on-napping/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4sn954", "title": "why are hairdryers so loud?", "selftext": "Why haven't we made hairdryers that are a lot quieter and as efficient, if not more?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sn954/eli5why_are_hairdryers_so_loud/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5akzr2", "d5annto", "d5ar8zg", "d5awfrs", "d5axn5k"], "score": [50, 3, 17, 14, 2], "text": ["We have, they just cost a lot more. Most people are willing to put up with the noise and pay a lot less for a perfectly functioning, if noisy, hair dryer for a few minutes a day.", "Same thing with Blenders, holy shit are they **loud**. I would love a quiet blender. At least with a Hair Dryer you can close the bathroom door.", "First, let's bust a myth: **moving air is not intrinsically loud**. Drive down the road at 30 mph with the window down, and despite the fact that air is now moving past your vehicle at 30 mph, it should be fairly quiet. Stick your hand out the window, with your palm flat down, and it's still mostly quiet. Turn your hand and cup it and now you can feel the force of the wind blowing by and probably hear the turbulence. Same air speed, radically different sound levels.\n\nMoving air isn't loud, but it has the potential to create a lot of noise, especially when you put something it its path to create turbulence. Something like the inlet and outlet grates on a hair dryer. Or a curly heating element. All of these can be designed to reduce sound levels, but that requires research and design. It requires more complex manufacturing processes and more expensive materials. \n\nIn addition to the moving air, the stuff that makes the air move can also create noise. A cheap little motor will cause vibrations, some of which you can hear. These vibrations can be minimized through balancing and damping, but that requires research and design. It requires more complex manufacturing processes and more expensive materials. A cheap little fan blade will create waste noise, which is noise that's just associated with spinning the fan, but doesn't contribute to moving air in the desired direction. This waste noise can also be reduced, but that requires research and design. It requires more complex manufacturing processes and more expensive materials.\n\nYou can't buy a quiet hairdryer, yet. But you can buy a quieter hair dryer, they just cost less, weigh more, and may not dry as well.", "So generations of husbands  &  boyfriends will know that their SO is nearing the end of her 90mins in the bathroom before heading out. Time to decide what to wear....", "Hairdryers have cheap motors in them that are loud.  There are quiet motors available but they are expensive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2n9lnu", "title": "When making a bibliography for an academic paper, why does it matter what city the publisher is based out of?", "selftext": "My suspicion is that this practice is one of those things that used to matter but is now antiquated because of how easy it is to look things like this up, or that it's used to distinguish between X publisher in one place and X publisher of no relation in another place. Do any academics know why this is emphasized in so many style guides?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n9lnu/when_making_a_bibliography_for_an_academic_paper/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmbmthm", "cmboo6w", "cmbopyv", "cmbpumr", "cmbs16e", "cmbtjwr", "cmbvq2l"], "score": [66, 22, 59, 35, 6, 3, 7], "text": ["Specificity. Typing a few more characters makes it just that much easier for a reader to track down your exact source. It may be true at the time of your writing that there is no potential for ambiguity. That may not be the case in perpetuity.", "Some of this demand can be attributed to historians' penchant for OCD behavior. The preferred style for academic historians is Chicago-Turabian, the latter part stems from [Kate Turabian](_URL_0_) who codified the various standards. \n\nHowever, the value of listing a city is also because not every edition/printing of the book is the same. Publishers change and newer editions may have additional material or different page numbers and it's vital for fellow scholars to be able to tell what edition your paper uses. The city is a vital clue for this, especially since publishers can come and go or amalgamate. ", "To add to what /u/targustargus pointed out, many presses (think Oxford University Press, for example) had or have many regional sub-units.  These did not, until very recently, have crossover catalogues; if you wanted a book from OUP Delhi, it was not necessarily available from OUP Oxford or OUP New York.  Before the era of Worldcat that distinction was rather important.  It is far less the case now, but many presses do still have regional branches or other entities under their umbrella with differing catalogues.  So you're right that it's often unnecessary now, but that is not universally true, and may not be (as pointed out) true in the future.", "In my own work, the place of publication has been important in two ways:\n\n1. *Raising historical questions*. For example: Why did the Prime Minister of Portugal publish [anti-Jesuit propaganda](_URL_1_) in France in 1758? Short answer, he was trying to enlist the Bourbon monarchs (France and Spain) to help suppress the order. Or, why was [pro-Jesuit propaganda](_URL_0_) being published in Nuremberg in 1788? Short answer, Protestants in the Imperial free city could use the story of the Jesuit suppression to censure the Catholic Church for its corruption and politicization. So place of publication helps scholars ask better-informed questions about historical sources.\n\n2. *Assessing modern histories*. Sometimes this is just about geographic bias. For example, if I want to read about the Viking-Age Faroes (in the North Sea), my best bet is a history published in Edinburgh, Scotland. But if I want to read about Finland, I'll probably look at a history published in Stockholm, Sweden. Sometimes this is about scholarly trends in a countries university system. For example, if I want to look at power relations and networks, the landscape archaeology of Sweden is a good bet. But if I want to look at perceptions or the experience of the landscape, then the landscape archaeology of England is a good choice. So if I already have specific questions and I'm working with a large bibliography, knowing place of publication can help me figure out where to start.\n\nPlus, as others have noted, it can help track down an exact source. This is especially true if you're trying to track down a page citation from a text that's appeared in many different editions.", "I'd agree it's an artifact.  More significant in a time when publishing/printing were indistinguishable (or performed proximately).  Now, the mere location of some corporate head office doesn't imply as much about where the intellectual or material product was made.\n\nStill, hardly surprising that conventions outlive utility.  Something like this is but a drop in the ocean of time/ink \"wasted\" on addressing--where a correct postal (ZIP) code makes city/state redundant.\n\nTradition is a powerful thing.  Many outlive utility.  Some outlive even comprehension of their original purpose.", "To agree with the other posters here, it's a requirement that is less relevant for modern books, but is sometimes helpful for older books that have gone through many editions, where there may be page numbers or even entire chapters that differ greatly between different editions.  In the age before electronic typesetting, page numbers could differ quite a lot between different printings of the same work, and so city of publication could be helpful in tracking down an exact page citation.", "I would argue that it is not necessarily an artifact.  I recently encountered two seemingly identical versions of a book.  One book had an error that the other had rectified.  One was printed in New York the other in Hong Kong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_who.html"], [], ["http://www.worldcat.org/title/geschichte-der-jesuiten-in-portugal/oclc/243455371?referer=di&amp;ht=edition", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/republique-des-jesuites-au-paraguay-renversee-ou-relation-authentique-de-la-guerre-que-ces-religieux-ont-ose-soutenir-contre-les-monarques-despagne-de-portugal-en-amerique/oclc/778451756"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4j298z", "title": "why isn't getting checked for cancerous tumors, or tumors in general, a routine process?", "selftext": "I feel like tumors are only discovered when the patient feels as if something is wrong, and by then it is usually too late to take effective action. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j298z/eli5_why_isnt_getting_checked_for_cancerous/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d331t28", "d331ts6", "d331ufw", "d331xib", "d331z1h", "d336xp3", "d33pmcq"], "score": [3, 62, 8, 2, 9, 7, 2], "text": ["Because there's no easy/quick/cheap way to do it. The sorts of machines that we have that can do full-body scans that would be able to catch a wide range of tumors are expensive to build/buy/operate, and already in high demand. It would cost a fortune to regularly scan everyone, when statistically only a very tiny percentage of 'normal' healthy people are likely to have tumors. ", "The problem is that there are very many downsides to routine checks. Too many downsides, in fact.\n\nFirst of all, we do not have the resources to preform routine checks on everybody. In many places, there are already long waiting lists when people need certain types of scans or care. If we tie up our limited amount of scanning equipment and personnel that can use these machines and interpret the results with millions of people who don't even need them, the waiting lists will only get longer and longer.\n\nSecondly, body scans are not magic. They can detect if there are irregularities in your body. They cannot immediately detect whether this irregularity is something to be concerned about or not. Most of us have irregularities in our bodies that are absolutely nothing to worry about, just a result of how we aren't perfect beings and don't grow perfectly. If everybody gets routinely scanned, all of these irregularities are going to pop up and doctors will pretty much be obligated to investigate them further. Even though 99% of them are absolutely not any danger to you. That means more tests (so again, more strain on our limited resources) and also means more stress\n\nWhich brings me to point three: quality of life. Basically, routine scans do not improve quality of life. In rare rare rare rare exceedingly rare cases, they might detect something slightly earlier than it would otherwise have been detected. In most cases it is going to detect harmless irregularities, which will lead to people having to undergo more (and sometimes painful testing), which they will have to wait longer for due to the longer wait lists, which all accumulates in a huge increase in stress. All to tell you something they knew already, namely that there is nothing wrong with you. Basically, the very marginal benefits of a system like this do not outweigh the much more common adverse effects (all the extra stress and pain of tests that people will experience and the added wait time to everybody else who *does* need these tests and might be in a worst position due to the long wait), so we don't do it. ", "Finding them can be difficult and/or expensive. Why don't doctors run a full scan of every conceivable system and perform every test? It's too expensive, painful and time consuming. We don't have the technology to be proactive, so often we have to be reactive.", "There's no easy way to detect a tumor. MRI can do it, but you need to know where to look; just scanning your brain costs thousands of dollars, a full body MRI is prohibitively expensive except in the most extreme of cases. \n\nAs well, with most forms of cancer, more obvious symptoms manifest themselves before the cancer becomes lethal. Skin cancer produces a distinctive rash, breast and testicular cancer create easily-felt lumps, bladder cancer leads causes blood in the urine, etc. The most common and deadly of cancers are among the most obvious, so simply paying attention to your own body and keeping an eye out for unusual changes is very nearly as good as a full body MRI. ", "Several scenarios.\n\nOne. You don't find any tumours. That's because you haven't got any. Doesn't mean you won't get one I'm the next month or year. But since a doctor has told you then you feel safe. But you shouldn't. You don't have a tumour TODAY.\n\nTwo. You find a tumour. Great. Except not all positives will be right so you just gave a lot of people drugs, worry and surgery who did not need it!\n\nThree. You don't find any tumour, but you missed it. So that's a waste and false security for the patient.\n\nFour. You find a tumour and they have cancer. The rarest of all the outcomes.\n\nAlso it's hard to find a tumour when there are no symptoms.\n\n\nHow many people had to be screened and at what cost? And what about the increase in radiation exposure or the minor surgery to have a look? Both have risks and you cause more harm in doing the screening than the number of people caught *who wouldn't have been caught later when they had symptoms*.\n\n\nIt's also very hard looking for rare events in a huge population.  And quite counterintuitive.\n\nIt's actually a fascinating area\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n", "Diagnostic imaging physicist here. This is a lot more complex of an issue than it sounds. \n\nFor starters, checking women that are middle age and older for breast cancer IS a routine process. Women over 50 are recommended to have mammograms (breast x-rays) every six months. Any kind of program like that is called \"screening\", and since it involves radiation, there are a LOT of legal guidelines. In the US it's regulated by the FDA, a purview enabled by the Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA). \n\nI do safety checks on mammography machines, and let me tell you, they are a real pain in the butt. Not because mammography is complicated - it isn't, compared to other types of diagnostic imaging - it's because the FDA takes any program where (usually) healthy people are exposed to radiation on purpose VERY seriously. And frankly, they should. There needs to be a definite trade-off between early breast cancer detection and any harm that might occur to patients, not just from radiation but from the stress of having to go through a biopsy when it turns out to be negative anyway. \n\nSo let's say we were to start screening for something else. We would need to impose all the safety guidelines, regulations, and checks on that type of imaging as well. This is starting to happen for lung cancer, a few screening programs are already in place nationwide. Like for mammography, these have to be scrutinized to a ridiculous degree in order to be FDA (or state, in some cases) approved. This increases cost per scan, and also substantially increases throughput on CT machines. So to do it, you can't already be booked solid with emergency patients, inpatients and what have you. \n\nNo problem, you say, let's not use radiation. Let's use MRI or ultrasound instead. Those don't emit (ionizing) radiation. \n\nMRI is most likely a straight-up no go. Depending on the equipment and the anatomy of interest, those exams might be 20-60 minutes each (mammograms and chest CTs take 5 or less). Most MRI scanners already have near-constant throughput, so adding hundreds more patients per week is not going to happen. \n\nAs for ultrasound, since they can only penetrate into the body a few centimeters, it's difficult to examine large body parts with them. Plus, ultrasound is useless on air-filled structures like the lungs (air reflects ultrasound) and is problematic with water-filled structures like the bladder (which block ultrasound). So what would you screen with ultrasound, then? Pregnant mothers? Yep, we already do that. \n\nThose considerations aside, let's say we did screening anyway - a full body CT for everyone who wants one. That's a lot of radiation, for starters. Plus it'll take radiologists a long time to scrutinize hundreds of full body scans (radiologists are already accused of missing breast cancers because of the ridiculously high throughput needed when reviewing mammograms). And even if you find anything, there's a huge chance it'll just be benign. You end up worrying the patient, exposing them to a ton of radiation, and subjecting them to biopsies or even surgery for nothing. Independent CT clinics offering full body scans used to be commonplace, but aren't anymore, for precisely those reasons. \n\nThe worst outcome of all would be a patient that actually had cancer, and then a scan missed it. They might develop symptoms later, and then ignore them, because the scan turned up negative, right? It's a false sense of security. \n\nBottom line, it sounds like a good idea, but it's just not worth it. It's much better to restrict scans to people with risk factors and/or symptoms. \n", "Well because lots of tumors can only be detected through x-rays and mri's, etc. But if you scan your body every year the radiation would slowly make you sick and ironically will damage your dna and rna which will then create defective cells that become cancer. Thats how the discoverers of x-ray's died, of cancer after their bodies became riddled with tumors.\n\nSo the best we can do is tell people to be aware of their symptoms and obviously check your body for any strange lumps, etc. Us women are actually supposed to do a thorough breast examination every month on our own at home to check for lumps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.badscience.net/2006/12/crystal-balls-and-positive-predictive-values/", "http://www.badscience.net/2008/01/screen-test/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5xs99f", "title": "What was Cato the Elder's problem?", "selftext": "Why did he hate Carthage so much? It seem like after the 2nd Punic war Carthage had given up on militarism and was content to be an economic power. Why did Cato push so hard for the city to be destroyed?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xs99f/what_was_cato_the_elders_problem/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dekmtsu", "del51a4"], "score": [89, 11], "text": ["Cato the Elder is a strange man in general. \n\n* He was a staunch conservative; opposing change and following the old ideals of what it meant to be a proper Roman, and held every office from quaestor to consul.\n\n* He hated both Greece and Carthage passionately, this quote is attributed to him -'if ever the Romans became infected with the literature of Greece they would lose their empire'\n\nBradley lays out a convincing case for Cato's hatred of Carthage (and Greece) stemming from his deeply conservative attitudes towards both cultures. His hatred of Carthage stemmed from his deep fear that it would once more rise as a power to rival, and perhaps destroy, Rome. This is why he pushed for its complete annihilation so furiously. \n\nSo to summarise, he pushed for the destruction of Carthage because he was not satisfied with it remaining only an economic power. He feared greatly its possible resurrection as an enemy of Rome capable of bringing about her downfall.\n\nSources:\nPamela Bradley, 1990. *Ancient Rome: Using Evidence*\nPlutarch, *Cato The Elder*\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: still getting used to formatting, sorry :)", "I would question the premise regarding Carthage's militarism--certainly its empire had collapsed after the Second Punic War, but this empire was somewhat recent and specific to the Barcid family. But its commercial power was unchecked (it was able to pay off the indemnity relatively easily) and any thought that it was really pacified is belied by the military harbor, [still visible today](_URL_0_), that was built in the second century. And Carthage was, after all, very nearby--Cato's famous moment was when he showed a Libyan fig on the floor of the Senate, saying it had only been plucked three days earlier (Plutarch, Cato, 27). And in te war itself Carthage was no pushover, as the Romans cycled through three different generals before landing on Scipio Aemilianus, one of the most talented leaders in Roman history, to actually make headway.\n\nObviously I'm not justifying the Third Punic War, which was pretty blatantly aggressive on Rome's part, but within he power politics of the second century Cato was not wrong that Carthage was a threat to Roman power."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["Roman-Empire.net"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cothon#/media/File:Carthage-1958-PortsPuniques.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3s3v70", "title": "Why are humans so incredibly resistant to stress and changes when compared to most other complex life forms?", "selftext": "For example, I've heard about fish dying because the PH of their water isn't kept near perfect, or the temperature is a few degrees off. I've seen that it's not uncommon for birds to *die* from being stressed out even for only a few minutes.\n\nHumans, on the other hand, seem to be able to weather a wide variety of climates and conditions, and our bodies seem to adapt to a much wider array of abuses and changes. We can go from eating a pure vegetarian diet living in a frigid environment to living in a hot desert and eating a diet consisting almost entirely of meat *overnight*, and the worst we suffer from is a very short period of discomfort before we get used to it.\n\nWhat is the biological or genetic reason for humans' ability to so easily adapt to sudden, severe changes in our environments and lifestyles?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3s3v70/why_are_humans_so_incredibly_resistant_to_stress/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwultit"], "score": [4], "text": ["I would disagree with your statement to begin with, , also should we consider our technological advances as part of our ability to adapt or should we just consider our physiological responses?\n\nI think it's all about the combination of the following:\n\n- Being able to regulate your body temperature. (Endothermic)\n- Being omnivorous. (Enzimes for multiple sources of nutrients)\n- Being compentent hunters and gatherers. (Intelligence and physical capabilities)\n\nI'm not going to count all of our technological advances, because then you would have to escalate into we being the one animal species that is able to survive space. I'm just going to consider the technology we had for hunting, which are spears because they had been part of our evolution for a lot of time and predate our own species.\n\n- As you can see mammals are able to survive most climates, from camels to polar bears and whales. Being endothermic is a physiological advantage that all mammals share but is not exclusive to mammals as birds share this and some extinct dinosaurs are especulated to had the adapation too. This adaptation gives us a wider range to temperatures we can tolerate, by being able to sustain the same metabolic rythm, which would be impossible if we were exothermic. \n\n- Having the ability to eat different foods gives us the upper hand as mammals this is actually not a common ability, we are able to eat small preys and big preys, we can even eat predators, we can gather fruits, stems, seeds, honey, we can fish, we can gather seafood and on and on. Our intelligence predates our ability to eat lots of things and it is actually a consequence of our intelligence, by being able to have acces to them our species was able to adapat and develop the enzymes needed to digest all of them, we never for example ate lots of plants and as such we never developed the enzymes for digesting cellulose, but if we had there is a strong chance we would have those enzymes, but frankly we had better sources of protein so it's no wonder we never did.\n\nIn other words, our intelligence has allowed us to become omnivores and it has given us the tools to adapt to wider array of situations. We are mediocre in most situations, but with our intelligence, we were able to succed and outperform every other species."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1npkcc", "title": "What happened to cosmonauts on MIR when the USSR fell and turned over control to the new Russia?", "selftext": "Wondering how they handled the change, how they were treated, tech control for their issues during the switch, etc.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1npkcc/what_happened_to_cosmonauts_on_mir_when_the_ussr/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cckv7cl"], "score": [44], "text": ["There's a documentary about Sergei Krikalev's Mir mission during the USSR fall called Out of the Present. \n\nOn that mission he was up there for 10 months. He spent a total of over 2 years in space amongst all his missions. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "b3k01w", "title": "What was Spanish life like under the Arab occupation after 711 AD and how much of the Arab culture is present in modern Spanish and Latin American cultures today ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b3k01w/what_was_spanish_life_like_under_the_arab/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ej1fmuj", "ej1ftme"], "score": [7, 8], "text": ["You can hardly speak of \"spanish\" before 711 AD though, a better question would be what life in Islamic Iberian realms was like, are you particularly interested in what life was like for Christians? \n\nAlso the period of islamic rule lasted for nearly 8 centuries, it was extremely long and conditions varied greatly depending on location within the Iberian peninsula and date. Maybe you should specify that too?\n\nLast but not least, the impact of of that period in Spanish culture was immense, and is being a bit downplayed up to this day: here's a declaration from a representative of the Spanish royal Academy\n\n _URL_0_\n\n\nIll try and come back later to give a more complete answer, with better sources and a more in depth view\n\nEdit:\nLink doesnt seem to work, heres the name and info on this work\n\nLa investigaci\u00f3n de los arabismos \r\ndel castellano en registros normales, \r\nfolkl\u00f3ricos y bajos\r\nREAL ACADEMIA ESPA\u00d1OLA \r\nDISCURSO LE\u00cdDO EL D\u00cdA 20 DE MAYO DE 2018 EN SU RECEPCI\u00d3N P\u00daBLICA POR EL EXCMO. SR.  D. FEDERICO CORRIENTE Y CONTESTACI\u00d3N DEL EXCMO. SR. D. JUAN GIL", "You have asked two entirely separate questions, the latter of which is not historical in nature. The former question regarding life in Spain after the Muslim Umayyad conquest in 711, I can answer that it encompassed several periods of remarkable peaceful coexistence between Christians, Jews and Muslims. Keep in mind that Muslim rule in Hispania lasted over 700 years - it was more than just an 'occupation' - and the conditions would have varied significantly over that time span. However, the general view is that it was a period of exceptional tolerance for various ethnic and religious groups, and is referred to as La Convivencia.  There is some debate about what tolerance really meant, and I hope that we will get more answers on this post.  But it is a fact that for several centuries both Jews and Christians took part in the royal courts, and were fully integrated into the intellectual life, particularly in Cordoba.  A great deal of ancient classic writing survived because of la convivencia - Greek writings were translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and vice versa.  I may check back later to give some more detail.  There are actually many surviving firsthand documents from Christians, Jews and Muslims from throughout this period so if you don't get any detailed authoritative answers on this thread, here are two books that will definitely shed light on this:\n\n1: [_URL_2_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nand also 2: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\-pars\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/36/77/_ebook.pdf&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjnr4H7tZPhAhVPRBoKHWptDYEQFjABegQIBxAB&amp;usg=AOvVaw1irfG1caZkxCtEOQWeoLeE"], ["https://www.amazon.com/Ornament-World-Christians-Tolerance-Medieval/dp/0316168718", "https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812215699/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1", "https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812215699/ref=oh\\_aui\\_search\\_asin\\_title?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1"]]}
{"q_id": "3d13rq", "title": "if a man and a woman both get drunk and have intercourse, why is the man charged with rape due to the woman not being able to consent due to being intoxicated, when, by the same logic, the man is intoxicated so cannot give consent either?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d13rq/eli5_if_a_man_and_a_woman_both_get_drunk_and_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct0thrh", "ct0v8xg", "ct16oir", "ct1fcm3"], "score": [293, 22, 15, 4], "text": ["Because that is not true. I'm assuming this is about that ridiculous poster that made its rounds in /r/pics. Regardless though, it isn't even true that being drunk means you are unable to consent (it is only at a certain level of drunkness that comes into play) and the law governing that is written completely gender neutral. Women don't have an up on men in this case.\n\n[This] (_URL_0_) comment has some good explanation of the laws in this case. ", "If you live in the UK women technically cannot be charged of rape due the wording of law means it requires penetration for rape to occur. So although both not technically consenting the only one raping is the man.\nAs well as this (despite science disproving this the law just loves to cling onto ancient beliefs) men need to be aroused to have sex, so therefore the act of sex for a man means they are consenting, this is not the case for women.", "As other commenters note, the poster that's been going around the internet lately is an incorrect statement of criminal law but an accurate reflection of how campus administrators treat drunk sex cases.\n\nBut poster aside, people just assume that when there's a drunk guy and a drunk girl, the guy always wants it and is always the one making moves on the girl. The girl is the gatekeeper; the default is that she doesn't want it and she's never the initiator. That's why the guy is responsible for what he *does*, and the girl's not responsible for what is *done to her*. It just doesn't occur to lots of people that maybe the girl is the one doing something *to the guy*\u2014that is, initiating/making the moves.", "To keep the story short, we both drank, she aggressively tried getting sexual with me (She almost tried raping me), nothing even happened, she accused  me of rape, huge investigation.  Case dropped.  I'm still seen as the bad guy by everyone I work with for the next 1.5 years.\n\nYeah this shit happens and it fucking sucks.  Was the worst time of my life."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3cvui3/uh_this_is_kinda_bullshit/cszk2vd"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "84diwz", "title": "published papers in science", "selftext": "So it's a pretty common metric you see all over the place, but what does it mean exactly, \"xx has over n published papers\".\n\nWho reviews them? Who reads them? How do you qualify for it? Where is it published and by whom? Do all papers carry new unique ideas and theories, or can just consist of already accepted ideas in new form? Is it even a valid metric?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84diwz/eli5_published_papers_in_science/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvonpo5", "dvonwgv", "dvoo0hg", "dvp0n0y", "dvpmyzf", "dvpqee0", "dvpxcu9"], "score": [5, 5, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The answer to this really depends on the journal you are talking about.\n\nSome journals, like _Nature_, are highly respected and are very selective about what papers they publish.  Submissions are highly reviewed and must be of substantive nature.  Other journals will publish _literally_ anything you pay them to publish (as an example, _Adam Ruins Everything_ got the script of one of their episodes published in an \"academic\" journal by paying the fee).\n\n", "Each journal that publishes papers establishes a committee of experts who review the papers before they are published.\n\nThere is a huge difference between publication in a prestigious journal, like Nature, and publishing in an obscure one.  However, when you are just introducing someone, \"n published papers\" is enough to show that they are an academic.\n\nWhen it makes a difference, academics typically provide a Curriculum Vitae (CV).  A CV is like a resume, but it focuses on where you studied, with whom, and it lists all your publications by title and journal.  This allows folks to see if you've published in related topics or in more prestigious journals.", "The act of being published does not necessarily correlate to the quality of content, it just means the paper they produced was published in a journal somewhere. Publishing is an important part of the scientific process as it allows your work to reach the larger audience, which in turn allows for criticism, review, and confirmation by other scientists.\n\nMany research professors and residents are hired based on the number of publications they make per year, and the phrase \"Publish or perish\" is a common one in research circles. If your studies and experiments aren't producing results, what use are you as a researcher? Quality becomes less important than quantity at the beginning of your career when your position in the field is less stable. \n\nI'd argue that the vast majority of scientific publications are **old ideas** being verified, criticized, or altered in such a way that it becomes an important difference. For example, one paper might push the new idea of measuring time by the oscillation of caesium atoms, and then 3,000 papers will come out shortly afterward talking about that first paper in some manner or other.", "Normally, this refers to peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, like [this](_URL_5_) or [this](_URL_1_) or [this](_URL_2_) or even [this](_URL_0_). Literally tens of thousands if not more of these journals exist, covering about every field you can imagine and then some. Some that are very prominent include *Science*, *Nature*, *Journal of the American Psychological Association*, *Journal of the American Medical Association*, etc. These very high-profile journals often cover a broader field, whereas smaller, lesser-known journals (like the reindeer one above!) usually publish articles on very specific subfields.\n\nThese are published by private academic publishing companies like [Elsevier](_URL_4_), or by professional/academic organizations like the American Medical Association, or university-owned companies like the [Cambridge University Press](_URL_3_).\n\nPeople who read them include other researchers in the field, who usually have subscriptions through their institution. You do that because you want to stay up-to-date on what's happening in your field!\n\n\"Articles\" can be many things, but generally think about anything you might write in college/university for a class, but more detailed and on a more advanced topic. In science, most commonly they can be the results of an experiment or experiments on a single topic (kind of like a lab report), but they can also be a review of current research in a field, responses to other studies that have been published, case studies of a single patient in medicine, etc. In other fields, they take many forms...book reviews, essays on a particular philosopher, you name it.\n\n\"Peer-reviewed\" means that when you submit an article, it gets reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers people who are selected by the journal *who know a lot about that field*, usually other professors/researchers. This is key, because it means what you wrote has to stand up to the scrutiny of people who also know a lot about the subject. If I submit an article to a physics journal about how we're all quantum wavelengths of the divine or something, the physicists who review it will say \"nope, this doesn't make sense.\"\n\nWhether it's a valid metric is a controversial question. Certainly someone who has published tons of work in important journals has likely done a lot of important research, and also importantly lots of people have heard of their research. However, you can probably imagine a lot of reasons why \"number of published papers\" does not = \"great researcher!\"    ", "I had started to write out a long explanation about the hierarchy and politics of scientific publications... but here's a blunter version: In academia, unless you are working primarily as a teacher at a small college or something, the *real* metric of success is *money.* STEM professors are expected to bring in big research grants (because the school gets to take half of that money for *other* stuff, but that's a whole other can of worms). If they don't, they're out. Having publications in a specific area makes it more likely for someone to get a grant on that topic because it is evidence that other experts agree that you *can* do the type of work you are proposing. Grant renewals often hinge on publications, because they are seen as signs of progress. If you had X years of funding and nothing to show for it, they aren't going to give you X more years of funding. ", "Papers are essentially articles published in an academic journal. In science, the article might be the details and results of a new experiment; in a history journal, it might be a new theory based on re-reading a ton of old documents, etc.\n\nIf we restrict the discussion to science, then articles can be of several types. A common set of types are: Full papers (a long detailed description of a new experiment/trial, and its results, together with how they affect current theories), short communications (a brief description of a new result, not important or complicated enough to need a full paper), reviews (an article going through all the existing papers on a particular subject, pointing out which are good and bad, which results are reliable and which might not be, and producing an overall conclusion about the current theories, etc.)\n\nAnyone can write a paper and submit it to a journal. Editorial staff will then look at the paper, make sure it is something that journal readers might be interested in, and then find some volunteer experts to review it. Typically, the experts will be authors who have previously submitted papers on a similar topic to the journal and had them accepted for publication. However, they might also be personally recommended to the editors, or the editors may be familiar with their expertise from other journals.  The reviewers will then review the paper, and make a recommendation to the editor as to whether it should be published or not.\n\nSo, who reads the journals? Anyone that is interested in the up-to-date knowledge. For science journals, that would be scientists working in that field. For medical journals, it would be doctors who need to know about the latest advances. \n\nThe journals are essentially a method for people to get their results and theories out to the wider world. Some are old and have a long and prestigious history, taking care to make sure that the reviews are of good quality and that the papers are interesting and important. Some, especially these days, are little more than scams which will publish anything if you pay their \"publication fee\". The older ones were typically weekly or monthly printed magazines, but these days people prefer online subscriptions; with many of the new low cost journals being online only.\n\nOne of the problems with just using number of papers published as a metric, is that it doesn't reflect on quality. A preferred metric is \"impact factor\" which is based on how many times an author's papers are cited. ", "So basically as far as science goes you can think of published papers as mainly a way of sharing research with other scientists. Some papers might have such a huge impact that they're read generally by all biologists or chemists or whatever, but most research isn't getting published in Nature or Lancet or the handful of other very popular journals. What happens in biomedical science, which is what I know, is that papers published in associated journals gets a unique ID and entered into a database called pubmed. As other scientists, when we're learning about something or coming up with an experiment, we use these databases to find and read all the related work that's been done. Most of these papers wouldn't be read by the public because they probably seem insanely boring, but I care a lot, for example, about a paper presenting the structure of a receptor that a virus I work with binds to. A lot of journals are behind paywalls and a single article can cost $50, so those are pretty much restricted to students and facilities with access.\n\nThe other point a lot of people made already is that a lot of published papers are reviews. These are basically written as introduction to something and a review of all the prior research. A researcher with a passing interest in something can read reviews to get a general idea of what's going on in a specific area, and they're very helpful when you're starting to work with something new."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/rangifer", "https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama", "https://www.jstor.org/journal/jenglgermphil", "http://www.cambridge.org/", "https://www.elsevier.ca/ca/", "https://www.nature.com/nature/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c9e36h", "title": "What would melt faster? A spherical or cubic, ice cube?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c9e36h/what_would_melt_faster_a_spherical_or_cubic_ice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["esy74ma"], "score": [32], "text": ["For the same volume of ice, the cube will melt faster as it has a higher surface area to volume ratio."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5zrgig", "title": "what is the purpose of titanium in deodorant?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zrgig/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_titanium_in_deodorant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df0e4cq", "df0eiyl", "df0lzt1", "df0vr49"], "score": [15, 24, 18, 2], "text": ["From what I can gather, titanium oxide is a colorant to make your deodorant white. It also has UV blocking qualities, but how much sun do you get in your pits?", "Mine doesn't, but are you referring to Titanium Dioxide?  -- this is a very common white pigment", "In deodorant, titanium dioxide is a very bright looking white pigment added for aesthetics to make the product look \"pure\". Without any colorants most deodorants (depending on formulation) would look like a cloudy hard gel, or an off-white to beige color.", "Basically what everyone else said. Its useful in suncream because it absorbs UV rays.\n\nIn deo a common thing is silver nano particles. They kill bacteria to stop the smell."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4lk0zb", "title": "How common were domestic pigs in Arabia and the Middle-East before Islam? What happened to pig farmers after Islam became dominant religion in the region? Were there shortages of food/meat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lk0zb/how_common_were_domestic_pigs_in_arabia_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3o0c4t", "d3o34mb"], "score": [73, 27], "text": ["I can't say that there were *no* domestic pigs in Arabia before Islam, but, for instance in Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam* the words \"pig\" \"pork\" and \"boar\" are not mentioned.\n\nEven if there hypothetically were pigs in Arabia there are only a limited number of locations where they could plausibly have been raised, such as in Yemen or the southern Levant. The raising of pigs, as I understand it, is a sedentary form of pastoralism. This would have been less common in Arabia than transhumance (i.e. seasonal migrations) or nomadic pastoralism. These latter forms focused on the raising of goats, sheep, and, most famously, camels.\n\nNor am I familiar with any reports of food shortages associated with Islamic strictures on food consumption.", "Domestic pigs can be found in Ancient Egypt dating back to the 5th millennium BCE, and were extremely common throughout North Africa until Islam became dominant, and was still common amongst some of the Berbers until relatively recently.\n\nOne of the primary purposes of pigs is garbage collection, as such while owning Pigs may have been outlawed for the Muslim population, there is still a need for them and some level of tolerance of letting marginalized groups have them.  To this day, the Egyptian underclass of informal garbage collectors, the Zabbaleen, still use and grow pigs.  They are also over 90% Coptic Christian.  In times of religious fervor and hysteria over disease outbreak it has not been uncommon for the government to do cullings, including as recently as a few years ago.\n\nAs for the food issue, just like today, people thousands of years ago preferred beef to pork.  People, especially the poorer, ate more pork when beef was less available.  McDonald's does this as well, when beef futures are expensive they bring back the McRib.\n\nThe problem of pigs is not that they're dirty or carry disease, that's 'mostly' a problem of modern farming.  It's that they're bad nomadic pastoral animals, and bad at herding across deserts (though they travel by boat fine).  Pigs are actually pretty smart and if given enough space will avoid sleeping in their own filth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "89jix3", "title": "How strong is the explosive power of a hypernova?", "selftext": "If u can answer in megatons aka what we grade nukes on.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/89jix3/how_strong_is_the_explosive_power_of_a_hypernova/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwresxo", "dwrfblf"], "score": [17, 11], "text": ["Hypernovae, or [superluminous supernovae](_URL_1_), have energies 10 or more times that of normal supernovae, which explode with the energy of 10^44 Joules. \n\n[10^45 J = 2.39 x 10^29 megatons of TNT](_URL_0_)", "Energy released by hypernova \u2248 5x10^45 J [[source](_URL_1_)]\n\nEnergy in a 1 megaton bomb \u2248 4x10^15 J [[source](_URL_0_)]\n\nSo a hypernova equates to approximately (5x10^(45))/(4x10^(15)) = 1.25x10^30 megatons.\n\nEdit: dammit, /u/Iamlord7 beat me to it :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E45+J+to+megatons+of+TNT", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminous_supernova"], ["https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-b&amp;dcr=0&amp;ei=LQzEWvutLZKTkwXX1ovoDw&amp;q=convert+1+megaton+to+joules&amp;oq=convert+1+megaton+to+joules&amp;gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1.211970.220414.0.221750.27.22.0.5.5.0.108.1940.14j6.20.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..2.25.1952...0j0i67k1j0i131k1j35i39k1j0i131i67k1j0i22i10i30k1.0.yYRHVDSnP6o", "http://uk.businessinsider.com/astronomers-discover-the-most-powerful-hypernova-2016-1"]]}
{"q_id": "437u7q", "title": "how astrology works.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/437u7q/eli5_how_astrology_works/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czg6065", "czg65w2", "czg669n", "czg67i6", "czg6brz", "czg6fg7"], "score": [6, 3, 9, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Astrology is made up. The only 'science' behind it is that of astronomy. Some astrologers will take notice of where the planets actually are, but their position does not affect us as humans in the way they like to make out.", "Astrology as we know it is bunk. Due to the way the Earth's orbit shifts slightly over the centuries even if it were 100% true, the stars are no longer in the same precise alignments.   \n  \nThough there are some theories on how it may have worked for a pre-refrigeration, pre-global transit Greece.  \nFor example, consider a woman giving birth to a Virgo, it's in September so the fetus likely developed during the summer months with the mother receiving plenty of sun shine, with good nutrition due to the availability of fruits, etc. The developing baby would then experience some nutritional deficiency due to the coming of winter.  \nThis isn't enough to determine someone's personality, but it is enough to shift probabilities. So the actual stars are irrelevant, what it was tracking was just the seasons and dates.  \n  \nOf course we now live in a society where you can get South American Oranges in December or just put those Strawberries on ice until you want em, so none of it is relevant anymore, particularly if you live in a tropical/southern hemisphere location.", "Astrology as a 'science' is complete bunk. It has no basis whatosever in solid science fields like statistics. There's actually **no** science behind it, not even junk science.\n\nBut astrology AS A BUSINESS, where it's all about making money works, largely by offering some \"wish fulfilment\", and that part has a basis in science fields like behavioural psychology. \n\nMost people wish to know more about their future. Many of them want to believe there's something out there that can help them know that future, and some of them are gullible and have money to spend. Astrology fits nicely in here.\n\nThere's also a little entertainment value in it for some. Astrology can provide some minor amusement and distraction for folks as well. \n\nSo there's customers out there for astrology despite it being complete bunk. And that's why there's still astrology columns in a lot of lower-quality newspapers out there.", "No. Astrology is 100% bullshit. And that's ALL astrology, there are dozens of different kinds, each with its own contradicting sets of rules. Most astrologies are based on real observations of the motions of the heavens, but typically, these observations were made centuries, even millennia ago, and are not very accurate. For example the 12-sign astrology used most often in the west is based on the Sun being in a certain constellation at the moment of your birth. But because of various factors, those points have drifted over time, and today, your astrological sign is no longer the *actual* constellation the Sun was in when you were born.\n\nAs far as horoscopes go, they use vague, generalized statements that apply to just about everybody. So no matter what your sign is, most of the the stuff you read will seem to be written specifically for you (and you'll just forget the parts that don't apply to you). Do this: have somebody cut the zodiac signs off a bunch of horoscope stuff, then read through them and see if you can identify which one is \"your sign.\" Spoiler alert: you can't. All of them will contain stuff that sounds familiar, all of them will contain stuff that's not quite right.\n\n\"Real\" horoscopes, ones written by an astrologer for a specific person, are already bullshit, but newspaper horoscopes aren't even up to THAT level, some bored intern just cranks out a truckload of standard feel-good aphorisms at random.\n\nJames Randi, the famous paranormal debunker, used to do a cool demonstration with school classes. The students were told that a famous astrologer was going to come and do their horoscopes for them, so they were asked to write down all the specific details about their birth they could: date, time, place, etc. It was emphasized that they needed to be as precise as possible (which is what we call \"selling the con\").\n\nSo a few days later, Randi \"the astrologer\" shows up, and hands out the \"personalized horoscopes.\" The students read them, and then are asked to rate them for accuracy. Overwhelmingly, the horoscopes are rated as exceptionally accurate, dead-bang on. Then Randi tells everybody to swap horoscopes with the person next to them.\n\nYup: every single horoscope was identical.\n", "It is made up, it relates to the Barnum effect or the Forer effect, the self-serving bias and lack of a sceptical outlook enables this to work - _URL_0_", "Astrology works because the human brain has a tendency to recognize patterns where none exist - pareidolia. Such tendencies vary from person to person. In its most extreme form it's called schizophrenia. \n\nAstrology is based on the traditional belief that the stars influence terrestrial events and that understanding celestial movements can help us predict the future. \n\nAlthough this may seem like complete bunkum to us in the 21st century, its interesting that astrology was almost universally believed in ancient times and arose in many different cultures. The stars in the night sky must have seemed to hold the explanation for everything to more primitive peoples. Astrologers were revered and even kings took their advice seriously. For example, Elizabeth I's closest consultant was the royal astrologer John Dee. And many early mathematicians, such as Leonhard Euler and Carl Friedrich Gauss, were famous not for the fact they created whole new mathematical fields but because they were able to predict the movements of the stars by numeric calculations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/xV_FxLntxVU"], []]}
{"q_id": "2kom8o", "title": "What is the difference between \"Right Circular\" and \"Left Circular\" polarized light? How can you tell which of the two a lens/filter is?", "selftext": "I have been doing reading about polarized light, and understand that light can either be circularly or linearly polarized. I understand that linear polarization aligns the light along a common axis, essentially, and circular polarization aligns it on a common... spiral? i guess would be the word. \n\nWhat I am wondering is what the difference between a \"left polarized\" and a \"right polarized\" filter or lens is. Is one simply the other flipped over? How would you tell which of the two something is, specifically the lenses RealD 3D glasses (which I know have two differently circularly polarized lenses)?\n\nThanks for the help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2kom8o/what_is_the_difference_between_right_circular_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clnelfh"], "score": [5], "text": ["If you are looking head on to the light beam so that it is heading straight towards you, a right-circularly polarized beam will have its electric field vector at a fixed point in space rotate clockwise (i.e. when the electric field vector is near the 12:00 position, it is heading to the right). For a left-circularly polarized beam, the electric field vector at a fixed point in space rotates counter-clockwise (i.e. when the electric field vector is near the 12:00 position, it is heading to the left). As the EM wave propagates, the tips of the electric field vectors at many different points in space form a spiral which is moving towards you. The special thing about circular polarization is that the magnitude of the electric field is constant, and its the direction of the E field that is fluctuating/waving. \n\nA circular polarizing filter contains molecules that are effectively corkscrew spiraling shaped. As a result the the molecules interacts strongly with light that is spiraling in the correct direction and weakly with the light that is not. The difference between the left and right polarizing filters is direction in which their molecules spiral. The way to tell whether a circular polarization filter is right or left is simply to send right-circularly polarized light through the filter and see if the light is blocked or transmitted."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1vokn0", "title": "why can dennis rodman just hang out in north korea all the time?", "selftext": "I'm pretty sure that if I did it it would involve me getting killed!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vokn0/eli5_why_can_dennis_rodman_just_hang_out_in_north/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceuabc5", "ceuaeh4", "ceuaest", "ceuam90", "ceubk3x", "ceuds9b", "ceues1s", "ceuevpo", "ceufeax", "ceufkv4", "ceufq4a", "ceufyud", "ceugcfy", "ceugdvv", "ceugljm", "ceugmej", "ceugpar", "ceugu84", "ceuh4r2", "ceuh9mo", "ceuhf27", "ceuhmfm", "ceuhmy8", "ceuhqjy", "ceuhzoa", "ceui6l7", "ceuievk", "ceuii7p", "ceuilqu", "ceujmrc", "ceujykm", "ceuk4k2", "ceuk57v", "ceukke3", "ceukmxq", "ceul07k", "ceulo1v", "ceulrwk", "ceulsee", "ceumb4a", "ceumtg5", "ceumvaa", "ceunvqn", "ceunyis", "ceuo73f", "ceuot2t", "ceup020", "ceup3he", "ceupful", "ceuph05", "ceupx6l", "ceuq4cm", "ceuq6e4", "ceusdes", "ceuspm3", "ceut1k7", "ceutcuq", "ceutl65", "ceutt4o", "ceuu6h2", "ceuu6we", "ceuw70p", "ceuwlb7", "ceuxg6m", "ceuxsne", "ceuxtii", "ceuynmg", "ceuyzfo", "ceuz2ej", "ceuzbau", "ceuzmg6", "ceuzuh5", "cev0vc2"], "score": [265, 2083, 92, 587, 22, 39, 59, 3, 4, 161, 2, 2, 15, 5, 2, 41, 4, 3, 29, 2, 51, 2, 7, 5, 130, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 5, 2, 2, 12, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The Kim dynasty are huge fans of the Chicago Bulls", "Kim Jong-un is a huge fan of basketball. Dennis Rodman is there by invitation (and whatever crazy reasons he has personally). \n\nYou wouldn't be killed there, though. They deny a lot of people entrance to their country arbitrarily, but if they did let you in, you'd just be watched at all times, most likely.", "Kim Jong-Un is a huge fan of basketball and Rodman hosts basketball tournaments featuring former NBA players and Rodman became friends with Kim Jong-Un.", "Anyone can go to North Korea, including Americans with American passports. You just have to go in through Beijing. There's a ton of tour companys, such as Koryo Tours, who take Americans there almost constantly. If you can afford to get to Beijing and pay a tour company, you can go to North Korea.", "You actually can travel to the DRPK as a tourist, there are companies that arrange it (well, I think it's actually one company, state controlled, that operates through china).  Depends on where you have citizenship, and you do take the risk that today is the day they decide to kidnap all the tourists in the country and hold them hostage. But it is possible to go on 'guided' tours.\n\nRodman as others say is there by invitation, and, importantly, US government rules on travelling to the DPRK are bad, but not as bad as they could be.  You're not going to end up in jail for having spent money there while travelling.  ", "I heard rumor that he really wanted Jordan but settled for Rodman when Pippen also declined.", "VICE has a documentary about best Korea. They bribed their way in through China. It's kinda wierd how they are following a tour of madness once inside.\n_URL_0_", "Actually you can find the real reason [here](_URL_0_)\nmedia coverage from western civilization is not allowed. they basically used the knowledge that Jong-un is a basketball nut and used rodman as a key to get media coverage ", "Min Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un both love basketball. VICE, a news outlet of sorts convinced some basketball players to go to North Korea as a friendly gesture endorsed by the US government. Dennis rodman is the united states unofficial ambassador to the hermit kingdom. \n\nYou can watch the documentary from the visit on HBO or watch a clip of it [here](_URL_0_)", "This is due to a VICE documentary in which their 'angle' to get into the country was to bring with them 3 All-star basketball players for a game - Kim Jong-Un is a massive fan of basketball. This allowed them unprecedented access to North Korea, and Kim Jong-Un actually unexpectedly turned up to the game and invited them all to a meal afterwards, at which Dennis Rodman befriended him.\n\nIt's a bit of a grey area him hanging out with them... \n\n- On one level, which is fantastic, and why he's still doing it I assume, he's creating a good link between the west and the most isolated country in the world. Maybe his interactions with North Korea will help them see the light and not want to continue being insane?\n\n- On another level, by befriending Kim Jong-Un, is Dennis Rodman condoning North Korea's horrendous domestic and international policies?\n\nIt's a difficult one, but I like to stick to the former, because it can't hurt to try, right? \n\nEDIT: Formatting and a few words!", "Lots of people go to North Korea. A few of my friends have been and had a lovely time. \n\nI don't know why you think it would get you killed. He's also the guest of Kim Jon Un, so he's probably not suspected of spying. ", "because he is a spy. im not kidding.", "The Kims have always been known to have harems of Women chosen for their beauty plucked for their families for the use by the state.  These women are used to entertain members of state as well as their guests.\n\nRodman is well renowned for his drug use, partying, and sexual deviancy.  Who knows what really was happening over there, but I am sure he was partying his ass off.", "Because the Korean people see him as fool and a court jester who they laugh at for their own entertainment.  \n", "This should be on /r/ExplainLikeImCalvin", "My personal theory is that Rodman and his lot are actually working for the CIA. (Not the first time US intelligence has recruited sports stars -- look up Moe Berg at some point.) Considering how little we know about Kim Jong Un's psychology -- and how much is riding on it -- even just one or two personal conversations could make a huge difference.", "Because it is not illegal to travel to N.K., just not advised", "Dear Mods- if you have to remove this many posts complaining about the quality of this question, you might want to look at the post itself? This is garbage.", "It's not a big deal.  I am American and went to NK last year.  Signed up for a tour, had a great time.  Wish I had known more about the country before I visited, as a lot of this makes a lot more sense after having been there.  What a wild place. Think of it. Millions of people with no internet, no idea of the outside world.  It's like a veritable Truman Show.  I was constantly watched.  Constantly escorted.  And I only saw what they wanted me to see.  Any deviation required permissions from the \"head office.\"", "Dennis Rodman and dear leader jr. are hommies. ", "I think the better question would be, \"Why can't Dennis Rodman just stay in North Korea?\"", "im just waiting for dennis rodman to screw something up in north korea that will get him executed for something. ", "Gotta love your government when it lets you travel to North Korea but not Cuba.", "Because we're hoping they'll keep him", "The direct answer is because he is invited by the head of state in North Korea.\n\nThe idea of this happening is absurd for most observers of North Korea.\nWhat we all believe  is how tightly controlled NK is,and how people who visit\nare guided at all times.   There are only a few approved haircuts, \nTV and radio are all governed by the state. \nSo nobody is allowed to see what goes on in the real world.\n\nNow contrast this with Dennis Rodman, a controversial figure even in the US.   Being invited by the head of NK to visit.   \n\nThe man does not have an approved haircut, he has metal parts on his face, \nhe does not know any decorum as how to treat the head of state.  Now if he was just allowed to meet secretly with the leader that would make more sense. \n\nBut in fact they have large events where Rodman participates. \nNK has sent a baseball team to the US to train. \nRodman has met quite a few NK people, and been seen by many thousands.\n\nThe NK people (only some of them) now have to process that people can look like that, behave like that. Its a shocking experience I am sure. \n\nWe should not underestimate the importance of these events.\n\nRodman is an ambassador of sports sure, but also of American culture. \nWhat he is not is a directly political ambassador. \n\nI think it is awesome that these exchanges takes place. \n\nThey are tiny microsteps, and even some not that small. that may\ngive a glimpse of a slight softening up in North Korea.  I am convinced\nit will take a lot of time, but I think there might be possibilities now.", "If you think the reason Rodman gets special priviledge is simply because Kim Jong-un is a big basketball fan and they are \"buddies\" then you are being naive. While this may be true, Kim Jong-un is using Rodman as a political tool to undermine President Obama and America. It makes Obama look weak in that Kim will grant a foolish figure like Rodman more influence on his country than the leader of the free world. For example, he would deny Obama's request for the release of captured reporters but would do it for his basketball buddy. It also furthers the narrative that Kim is a unstable and crazy leader with some nukes which gives him even more power. I know North Korea is a joke but don't oversimplify it.", "Even North Korea isn't crazy enough to hurt foreign citizens who have a permission to be there. It would cause a huge diplomatic incident and after that nobody would go there again (foreign diplomats, doctors, entertainers etc). So it's in North Korea's best interest that their guests remain safe and well-treated.\n  \nIf you entered North Korea illegally or clearly broke laws while in there you might have a harder time, but even so your government and North Korea would probably work together to resolve the issue and let you go.", "ELI5: Why can't Dennis Rodman hang out in North Korea ALL the time?", "Because he's doing some part time work for the govt. Who better to spy on NK than a cocaine fueled crazy man? He's got government agent written all over him... Literally - it's a tattoo on his left arm.", "There is an amazing documentary done by Vice magazine on NK. I would highly recommend watching it.\n[Youtube!](_URL_0_)", "I think the more appropriate question is why can't he just stay there?", "I think the better question is why don't we see if they'll keep him. Maybe they'd trade us back some journalists or some of those concentration camp prisoners. Does Kim Jong Un like any other $ellebrities? What could we get for Kimye? If we gave him Miley Vyrus would he shut down the nuclear program? Let's give him the entire cast of the Jersey Shore as a show of good faith. ", "Because Dennis Rodman is too much of a fool to realize that he's being played by Kim Jong-un to act as a propaganda machine for North Korea and communism.", "because dennis rodman", "Because he needed to go to rehab for alcohol abuse and those dont exist in N Korea.", "Watch the HBO series Vice Guide. It's there second time going to N. Korea undercover. They went with Dennis Rodman and some of the Harlem Globetrotters as somewhat of a diplomatic mission, at least from the Basketball players POV. Vice was there for gonzo journalism", "He just checked into rehab today...that explains it.", "Kim Jong-un had his uncle executed because he was a drunken womaniser. But he's ok with Dennis Rodman?", "Because he's getting paid, simple as that.", "Anyone can hang out in NK... its as simple as filling out a form and answering a few questions and showing some ID... stop watching so much news.", "Because we're all hoping he'll stay.", "My friend recently went there with Dennis Rodman and the basketball players that were just there. \nShe said that pretty much anyone can go there as long as they aren't causing problems and speaking out against the government. She also talked about how her and her father received a lot of negative attention towards the whole thing and people saying that they support Kim Jong Un. \nBut she explained it like this, North Korea wants to be isolated for a reason, and by people ignoring them, they are getting what they want. In order for there to be change, we have to show them in a positive way that we are good people and that may spark people to change. It really opened my eyes. ", "They think he is Michael Jordan.", "I bet Dennis Rodman has stated to Kim Jong-Un that he's sympathetic to communist ideals.  ", "[Ill just put this here](_URL_0_)", "The bigger question needs to be asked..why hasn't Dennis Rodmans US passport been revoked? He is obviously doing damage to our interests over there. I am the furthest person from being a conspiracy theorist, and I actually have a history degree..but I have this feeling that Dennis Rodman is actually working for the CIA over there to gather intell from within the country about the leadership apparatus of North Korea. Publically, they make it seem like he is rogue and they work off his alcohol issues to make it seem plausible. Thoughts? ", "I read this as \"Why DOESN'T Dennis Rodman...\", which seems like a more pertinent question. ", "ELI5 why he won't just stay there?", "He's too retarded to be of much harm", "You might go there and show respect but as Gadhi said \"when the law is not respectable, i dont respect the law.\" I wont be going any time soon\n", "I bet he gets girls for his liking, drugs, more girls, booze and more girls. ", "...um try exercising your religious freedoms in North Korea! You're in for a surprise...", "First let's dispel a couple myths. \n* American's can enter North Korea on tour groups during certain times of the year.\n* You will not be arrested simply for being an American in North Korea\n* If invited by a government official you may travel to North Korea at any time.\n\nIn Rodman's case he's invited by Kim Jong Un because the DPRK's leader is a big basketball fan, in particular the Chicago Bull's championship team (Jordan, Rodman, Pippen). Other notable people have traveled to North Korea under invitation such as Google's Eric Schmitt. While not everyone is approved anyone can apply to go on a tour in North Korea. The country doesn't usually turn down visitors unless your a member of the US government or a member of the media. Cellphones and computers are usually confiscated, and you travel with a state appointed tour guide and \"minder\". You don't have someone with a machine gun following you everywhere. You are put in a state run hotel for foreign visitors and the prices for things are rather high compared to what other's in the country pay (still cheap by 1st world standards) and everything is paid for in Euros. \n", "Kim Jong-un likes basketball, and Dennis Rodman likes attention.", "And why can't he just stay there?", "It's perfectly legal.  It's not like he's trying to do something crazy like go to Cuba.", "I'm still waiting an answer from the State Department (I know, good luck with that) on how he is able to obtain a passport to travel with having child support arrears.  Anyone know his magic around this one?  Best I could find is currently $219,000 in arrears.", "North Korea makes some money by running tours, although they are very controlled and filled with propaganda. They start in China. This video of vice going in should answer a lot of questions about this: _URL_0_ ", "Yeah - he could have just checked himself into one of the North Korean 'Re-hab Clinics' - I hear they have a lot of them, like camps...some people like them so much, they *never leave*...", "something something CIA ", "My grandma who lives in Boca Raton says that rodman hangs out at the local IHOP all the time. \nYeah I'm contributing!", "I'd like to think that Rodman has a secret agenda: after all the booze and drugs and laughs and tears, after Jong-un trusts him as a friend, he will casually start to push human rights.  \"Hey bro. You know we're buddies right?  So don't take this the wrong way.  That girl we were wrecking last night?  She says here village is starving.  Maybe we should do something to help?\"  Yeah, nevermind.", "I feel like dennis rodman is the real world equivalent to the episode of 30 rock where tracy jordan is kim jung ill's best friend and they made movies about how great he is", "Because the leader of North Korea is a fan of his.", "Kim Jong-un like basket ball. Period.", "Americans are allowed in North Korea. Your activities in the country are very limited and supervised but you *can* go.", "Why is this any different from what happened with Jane Fonda and Vietnam? Why is Dennis Rodman not facing the same public recourse? ", "Off topic, but my dad has a funny theory that Dennis Rodman is actually a CIA operative who is reporting back any intel he can to the US.\n\nIt's kinda out there and probably not what's going on, but goddamn would that be awesome.", "why can't he?", "Dennis Rodman is walking anti-American propaganda. ", "to fuck the korean hoes plus kim jong-un wants to be an nba player so its like a mutual thing", "Let us take you to the most mysterious country in the world...\n\n_URL_0_", "Because nobody else wants to bother with that turkey!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4"], ["http://youtu.be/24R8JObNNQ4"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoeSlDeb3NY"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAprW14F-8k"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.koryogroup.com/"], []]}
{"q_id": "dh18q9", "title": "Gibbon about antipope John XXIII: \"The more scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was accused only of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest.\" What could \"the more scandalous charges\" be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dh18q9/gibbon_about_antipope_john_xxiii_the_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3lwszk"], "score": [23], "text": ["Almost certainly those other charges were heresy, simony (buying and selling of church offices), and perpetuating the Western schism. These were considered more serious crimes because of their religious nature. \n\nBut that answer alone is incomplete, so let's have some context. Antipope John XXIII was born Baldassarre Cossa in the kingdom of Naples. His father was the lord of Procida and Cossa himself became a soldier. However, he later switched paths and instead studied civil and canon law and then entered into the service of Pope Benedict IX. He became a cardinal in 1402, but remained more interested in living like a warrior than a clergyman. Two of his brothers were executed by Ladislaus of Naples for piracy and Cossa himself was accused of collaborating with robbers and highwaymen, which he sometimes used as muscle to rough up his rivals.\n\nNow, it's important to explain here that from 1378 and 1410, there was something called the Western Schism. This meant that there were at least two popes both claiming ultimate authority, one in Rome and one in Avignon. This occurred, in large part, because from 1309 until 1376, the papacy had been based in Avignon. This situation had arisen because of conflict between Philippe IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but remained in place for so long because Rome had become awash in bloody violence as a result of the Guelph-Ghibbeline wars. In 1376, Pope Gregory XI decided to return to Rome on the advice of Saint Catherine of Siena and then died shortly after. After his death, Italian cardinals in Rome elected the Italian Pope Urban VI while the French cardinals in Avignon elected the Frenchman Antipope Clement VII. This situation continued for years with there effectively being two popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome. \n\nIn 1408, Cossa and six other cardinals withdrew their allegiance from Pope Gregory XII on the basis that he had broken his oath not to create more cardinals without consulting them. In response, Cossa and the other cardinals met with cardinals from Avignon to attempt to resolve the schism. They declared the Pope Gregory XII and Antipope Benedict XIII were both deposed and elected Antipope Alexander V. But Gregory and Benedict refused to resign, so now there were 3 popes. Alexander died a year later and thus, this group of cardinals elected Cossa as Antipope John XXIII. \n\nCossa's most formidable enemy (because he was very nearby) was Ladislaus of Naples. In 1413, he assisted Louis II, duke of Anjou in his abortive attempts to remove Ladislaus as the king of Naples. After that failed, Cossa fled to Florence where he met Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, who hoped to end the schism once and for all. The result was the Council of Constance, which Pope Gregory XII also authorized. The council decided that all three papal claimants should resign and a new one should be elected instead. \n\nBut Cossa didn't like the results, so he fled from Constance in disguise with the assistance of Friedrich IV, Duke of Austria. Sigismund was enraged and declared that Friedrich was to be deposed as Duke. Ludwig III, Count Palantine eventually caught up to them, though, and convinced Friedrich to hand Cossa over.\n\nCossa was then taken back to Constance where he was accused of a whole host of crimes and imprisoned. He was eventually freed after the Medici paid his ransom and submitted to the authority of the newly elected Pope, Martin V, who made him a cardinal bishop. \n\nNow, the $64,000 question is, \"Was Cossa actually guilty of all the crimes he was accused of?\" The answer is, \"Probably not.\" That he was a shady customer is not disputed, but even shady customers aren't guilty of every crime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "26tjen", "title": "why is hitler often considered a genius? and why did he lose the war?", "selftext": "I often hear of the idea that Hitler was really very smart. Was this due to his political moves? His military tactics?\n\nFurthermore, if he was a genius (or even a great leader) what was his downfall? Was there a crucial pivotal event where his supposed intelligence was wrong?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26tjen/eli5_why_is_hitler_often_considered_a_genius_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chubhlf", "chubjsc", "chubk45", "chubqqq", "chuccl4", "chug1jd"], "score": [5, 13, 3, 7, 3, 2], "text": ["He was pretty adept at organizing his party and understanding the dynamics of politics. His military prowess is more due to his excellent generals. \n\nAs for his downfall, even for the smartest of us, arrogance costs a price. He believed he could invade the USSR and take over in the spring before winter set in and he couldn't. He severely underestimated the lengths the Russians were willing to go to to repel the invasion. Pride comes before the fall.", "I dont know who you've been talking to, but it's generally agreed that he was no genius. He did have a rather good staff though. The main downfall of the nazi regime was the same as it's success, their speed and aggression. They pushed too far and too fast, making too many enemies. It wasnt a sustainable model, and neither was the regime itself. He was an excellent orator though, that was what he did best. In the end he did convince an awful lot of people to go an awful long way out of their normal behaviour. ", "He was pretty good at whipping people up at him, but his paranoia really undermined the war effort, \nand he was not that great of a strategist.\n\nGermany arguably lost the war entirely because Hitler convinced himself Russia was going to turn on him and picked a fight he couldn't afford before sending an army into Russia without cold weather gear.", " >  I often hear of the idea that Hitler was really very smart. Was this due to his political moves? His military tactics?\n\nThere's no clear consensus on this; for obvious reasons it's pretty much impossible to have an objective conversation about the guy, so there's a lot of hyperbole on both sides.\n\nAs for why he might be considered a genius, the Nazis were amazingly successful, all things considered. Recall that Germany went from being completely broken and disarmed to owning nearly all of Europe in just a few years. In addition, he had a few very early victories which completely shattered the Allies in Europe. Whether this was actual genius though, or just beginners luck is impossible to say. As time went on, his mental capacity certainly began to falter though, and by the end of the war he was a barely functional drug addict. \n\n >  Furthermore, if he was a genius (or even a great leader) what was his downfall? Was there a crucial pivotal event where his supposed intelligence was wrong?\n\nThe answer pretty much everyone is going to give you is Operation Barbarossa. Without question, the Soviet Union was the most important opposition to Hitler. The Nazis suffered about 80% of their losses on the Eastern Front. \n\nWhether the decision to invade or not was actually a mistake though is debated by historians. While the two parties may have worked together early in the war, they were anything but friends. Sooner or later, the Nazis and the Communists *would* come to blows. By launching a sneak attack, Hitler at least took the initiative and had the opportunity to set the stage in his favor. Indeed, the initial push was massively successful; the Nazis were viewed as *liberators* by a shockingly large number of people (remember, Stalin was not exactly popular). If the Nazis had decided to arm the Slavs and turn them against the Soviets instead of trying to exterminate them, they might have actually won. Of course, that was impossible for Nazi ideology, so maybe it could have had unforeseen consequences. Such is the way of things with alternative history. \n\nAside from Barbarossa, there were a couple other large mistakes which would come back to haunt him. Not smashing the British at Dunkirk eventually would eventually bite him in the ass. Not trying to find a way to keep the Americans out of the European Theater was likewise a failure.\n\nThe short of the matter though is simply that Hitler was just some dude with a lot of ambition, in the right place at the right time. He wasn't the larger than life figure pop culture has made him out to be. As for the war, war is chaos. Even the best people make mistakes, and no one ever knows for sure what the consequences of their actions will be. There are multiple junctions in which the tide of the conflict could theoretically turned, but there's no way to say for certain. ", "I've heard he had great speaking skills, like in talking to crowds and whatnot. Now genius... nope, never heard of that.", "He wasn't a genius, but a very charismatic politician who, at the time, knew that his party would only be successful by surrounding himself by those who excelled in very specific areas. \n\nGoebbels was a master when it came to engineering propaganda that the common German could get behind and even champion. Eichmann was an expert when it came to transporting large quantities of resources in the most efficient, timely manner possible. Himmler was instrumental in championing the Aryan cause by forming the SS (among other things) while also knowing how to effectively consolidate power internally(usually by arranging assassinations or subterfuge). Heydrich was, unlike some of the other Nazis, a skilled soldier who was absolute unrestrained in his brutality and callousness; he was essentially a conquerer who had absolutely no qualms with razing entire villages to the ground in order to achieve a goal. And you would see this kind of brutality adopted by his superior (Himmler), the SA, SS, and SD. Goering WAS an actual genius, decorated veteran, and brilliant battlefield tactician whose one major flaw was a morphine addiction. \n\nHitler's downfall was making strategic military decisions he was in no way qualified to make because of his own inflated ego during the middle of the war. The Nazis quickly and aggressively rolled through country after country, effectively crushing any and all military resistance that got in their way. They were borderline unstoppable. BUT, these victories were not because of HItler; they belonged to men like Goering, Rommel, Himmler, and Heydrich.\n\nThe moment Hitler took the reigns of the Nazi military, things started to come apart. His country's military victories fueled his arrogance; he thought he could make no mistakes, that nothing could possibly stop him, and that it was his brilliance alone which saw Nazi Germany become the major player that it was. And this was his undoing. He started ignoring the advice of his generals, and began making poor, then extremely poor, tactical mistakes as a consequence: the expansion of the war into Russia was a disaster (one that would cost him the war), he effectively mishandled both the African and Western campaigns to the point the Allies started gaining ground.\n\nTL:DR; Hitler wasn't a genius, but he surrounded himself with people that were highly skilled at what they did. His undoing was letting military and political victories get to his head, he stopped listening to those people that had made him successful in the first place, and his personal military tactics cost him the war.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16cxc5", "title": "If a boat floats in a current, under no other power, can it be turned with the rudder?", "selftext": "If there was no wind, or any other force applied to the boat except for the water current could it be turned with a rudder?\n\nI feel like if the boat and the water are moving together, the rudder would do nothing, but everyone I ask disagrees.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16cxc5/if_a_boat_floats_in_a_current_under_no_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7uv7vr", "c7uvggx", "c7uwi2k", "c7uz68n", "c7uzymz", "c7v0ooa"], "score": [6, 8, 6, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["You are right, it would do nothing, provided the boat was not moving relative to the current.", "If the boat is stationary with respect to the current, no forces would act on the boat and it would not move.\n\nHowever, real life currents are not smooth, and their energy often varies with depth and location. Depending on the design of the boat and depth of the rudder, it may be possible to direct the boat with a deep rudder.", "Sailor here. No wind, no movement, no rudder action. Even in a current you are at the mercy of the elements.", "There would be some friction. The boat can't move perfectly with the current. The question is, is there enough force in that friction to turn the boat using a rudder. Probably not, as drive2fast, an actual sailor, said elsethread.", "The answers provided so far are great but technically wrong. \n\nThe rudder would turn the boat, not nearly as fast as you would hope, but it wouldn't turn it due to water currents.\n\nIt would be unable to turn the boat by conventional means, aka fast moving current. That being said, Sufficient thrust left or right once, will displace water pushing the back of the boat in the opposite direction.\n\nIt wouldn't work very well, and every time you try to move the rudder the other way you'll just end up going back to your original position. However, quick thrust, wait, move back to starting position slowly, quick thrust, wait, move back to starting position slowly and you would be able to turn the boat, albeit very slowly.", "Sailor and naval engineer here.\n\nIn first approximation, if there is no wind and only current, your ship move at the same speed and direction as the current. This means that there no water moving around your rudder. Rudder is inefficient.\n\nBut moving with the current creates apparent wind, which can be used by the sail to power the boat. There is water moving around your rudder and you can (hardly) drive your boat.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3yze3v", "title": "why isn't new years date on the winter solstice?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yze3v/eli5_why_isnt_new_years_date_on_the_winter/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyhzya6", "cyi3uw5", "cyi520y", "cyijvsu", "cyin1an"], "score": [153, 36, 19, 5, 2], "text": ["We used the Gregorian calendar which was influenced by the Roman Empire and the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar had January 1st and the beginning of the new year because that is when consuls, a type of politician, took office for Rome. ", "Addition factoid: in Iran, they celebrate the new year (Nowruz) on the vernal equinox (first day of spring).  It's a huge series of celebrations that takes place over a couple days.", "Because the calendar used to follow to moon. Julia Caesar et al changed to a solar calendar in 45BC. So they added 67 days to the calendar, at the beginning of the calendar. These were January and February. So the first date of the additions, January 1, was the first of the new year - the first year using the new calendar. \n\nThey also added leap years (though not with total accuracy) and changed names of some months, among many other things. \n\nBasically once they redistributed the days of the year to add/remove days from months, add days to the year, etc, the first day was January 1. Didn't much matter whether it was a solstice or not. ", "Everybody is giving you great, accurate answers, but I like the unspoken assertion in your question: it probably should be on the solstice.\n\nThere are many things we could do to rationalize the calendar, and only religion and inertia stop us.", "I suggest this awesome vlogbrothers video by Hank Green explaining just that : _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/Hm5E1v6Svls"]]}
{"q_id": "2aoosp", "title": "In WWII, were there any Audie Murphy-level one man armies on the Axis side?", "selftext": "I always hear stories about American and Allied soldiers single handedly holding off an insane amount of Nazis or Japanese soldiers. Are there any cases in WWII where an entire American regiment couldn't advance through a town because of one German holding them off?\n\nIs it just Allied propaganda? Did the Allies just never report cases where of Axis one man armies? Genuinely curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aoosp/in_wwii_were_there_any_audie_murphylevel_one_man/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cixdxys", "cixgmi8", "cixitxt", "cixol84", "cixp8wc", "cixq6y0", "cixq9c7", "cixt8vf", "cixv0eo"], "score": [109, 59, 44, 9, 17, 10, 8, 8, 9], "text": ["[Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4](_URL_0_) would be the closest approximation I could think of at the moment. He was a sniper for the Finnish army during the [Winter War](_URL_1_) against Russia 1939-1940. During this time, he amassed 505 confirmed kills against the Soviet Army [possibly more due to the fact that kills had to be confirmed by another officer] and became feared as the 'White Death', as he was known to dress in white snow-camouflage. \n\nThe man was an especially skilled marksman, using his rifle's iron sights as they did not fog up in the cold air and also allowing him to increase his accuracy. He was shot in the jaw by a Russian soldier after numerous attempts to eliminate him prior (including artillery and counter-snipers), but survived and was promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant.", "Michael Wittmann would probably count as a one man army in terms of Panzer aces.  His story is almost certainly overinflated in the propaganda, but he was renowned at the time and definitely is worthy of some credit.  He won the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords which made him one of the most highly decorated German soldiers of the war.\n\nHe is credited with single handedly holding up the British 7th Armoured Division at Villers-Bocage and a great deal has been written about this encounter in particular.  You can find plenty of information on him and his exploits if you search around a bit.\n\nThe key point of contention seems to be whether or not he actually was completely alone during Villers-Bocage or if he was supported at times by part of his company.  Either way, he either personally destroyed or led an action in a key role which halted the advance of the British and destroyed more than a company without being killed.  It's a pretty impressive tactical feat regardless of the mismatch in firepower.", "Personal courage was not the exclusive preserve of Allies of Axis soldiers. Here's a few examples of heroism from Wehrmacht and Waffen SS troops.\n\nIn 1940, Waffen SS NCO Ludwig Kepplinger lead an attack on the Ijessel River bridge. Despite heavy fire from Dutch positions, Kepplinger lead two comrades in a hand grenade attack that cleared the way for the SS attack. Kepplinger won an Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross for his action.\n\nIn another bridge-related incident in Low Countries during 1940, Feldwebel (Sergeant) Helmut Arpke lead a gliberborne attack on the \nAlbert Canal bridges. In less than ten minutes, Arpke and his pioneer teams knocked out a Belgian MG nest and dismantled the demolition charges on the bridge. In the same action, another German paratrooper, Obergefreiter (Corporal) P. Meier swam across a river under fire, stole a bicycle, linked up with the Germans at Eben-Emael, and then turned back in search of his unit. Although he didn't find his comrade that day, he single-handedly managed to capture 110 Belgian soldiers.\n\nDuring the same action, Rudolf Witzig won the Iron Cross Second Class, the Iron Cross First Class, and the Knight's Cross all on the same day. Leading another glider attack, this time on the Eben-Emael fortress, Witzig rallied his men and coordinated a bitter fight to clear the Belgian troops entrenched inside the fort. \n\nIn July 1942, 19-year-old Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) Gunter Halm was part of a detachment of two anti-tank guns that destroyed nine British tanks and disabled six more at El Alamein. Halm won the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross in this battle. \n\n\n", "Oberstleutnant Gunter Viezenz who single-handedly destroyed 21 Enemy tanks with handheld explosives in ww2 (panzerfaust, Satchels/etc).  Tell me that isn't a one-man wrecking machine!  He was awarded the most Panzervernichtungsabzeichen (Tank Destruction Badges) in the Third Reich.\n\nSurprisingly Wiki has a pic and little blerb about him:\n_URL_0_", "[Franz Stigler]( _URL_2_) is perhaps best known for his antics involving escorting a damaged American B-17 to safety. \n\nHowever, in his amazing account of the war detailed in the biographical book of his war experience ( [A Higher Call] ( _URL_1_) ) we learn that he was a seemingly invincible German ace fighter pilot. He flew in missions from nearly the beginning of the war to the very end, wherein he finds himself among an elite unit of German aces flying the ME-262 jet fighter.\n\nStigler was credited with a few HUNDRED kills. Was he the most successful fighter pilot in all of recorded history? No.\n\nThat title belongs to another German ace by the name of [Erich Hartmann]( _URL_0_) with 352 credited kills.\n\nBoth men survived the war and many decades afterwards, dying eventually of old age. They seemed to be absolutely invincible in the skies over Germany.", "Yay, this doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet!\n\nErich Hartmann was a Luftwaffe pilot serving in Jagdgeschwader 52 on the eastern front. He had 352 confirmed kills - that is, he shot down 352 allied aircraft. He is the most successful fighter pilot ever in this regard, nicknamed \"The Black Devil\" by the Soviets.\n\nHe was never shot down, although he had to crash-land 14 times because debris from other planes he destroyed would hit him. This was because he often would wait until the last possible second to open fire on another plane, so as to maintain maximum surprise against the enemy and so the other planes in a formation wouldn't notice him coming. He would usually attack by diving from above.\n\nHe was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. He was only a 20-something year old guy during the war as well, which is incredibly impressive. Not a bad guy at all either.", "Really the main reason you hear about these stories relating to the Allies is because they won the war and its easier to glorify such things.  The Axis had plenty of the same Rambo style heroes but they lost so the Western media isn't so interested in glorifying Nazis.\n\nFor example you can take a look at the recipients of the Tank Destruction Badge _URL_1_\n\nJust about all of these guys are badasses - this is not just a badge for destroying tanks - its a badge for destroying them with handheld weapons (no AT guns, tanks, planes, etc).  These guys generally had to get VERY close and many of them did it over and over again.\n\n\nYou can also take a look at fighter pilots.  _URL_0_\n\nNotice how far down on this list you have to scroll to even find an Allied pilot.  Some of these scores are inflated but that is the case with both Axis and Allied sides.\n\n\nReally the Axis has more \"one man army\" situations for a few reasons.  One of them is that as the war went on they were generally outnumbered - its 'easier' to be Rambo if you are constantly put in desperate situations.  It was also the case that the Allies would often take a war hero off the front and put him back home to sell war bonds or train recruits.  Oftentimes an Axis soldier was put on the front until he was either killed or the war was over.  Thus lots of badass soldiers got more opportunities to continue being badasses.", "Heinrich Severloh comes to mind.\r\rDrafted in 1942 he never was a big fan of the Wehrmacht. After various disputes with his superiors he got asthma after a sustained period of physical labour in Russia. After six months in hospitals for recovery he got deployed to France.  Still not liking the Prussian military mentality, he did what he had to but at the same time was looking for ways out of the service until he became best friends with his superior Oberleutnant Bernhard Frerking while he served as his attendant. Time went by until the 6.6.1944 came around. Severloh's unit manned Widerstandsnest 62 on Omaha beach. From his position he had a good overlook of the eastern part of the landing zone. During the night he noticed bombs being dropped in the area, but they were too far away to really bother him. The naval bombardment in the morning on the other hand gave his position quit the beating with one shell impacting around 10m from his position. When the landing started he fired his MG42 into the landing infantry while his comrade, which was in WN62 brought more ammunition. According to his own testimony he felt sorry for the people he shot at but kept on shooting because he felt that otherwise he and his comrades would be killed. Over the course of the day he fired 12'000 rounds with the Mg 42 until he run out of ammo because no resupply arrived. He then proceeded to fire the 50 shots he carried for his 98k. According to him he missed 5 of these shots. By this time it was around 15:00 to 15:30. Out of ammo and alone he decided to leave his position and retreated. When he found the remains of his unit, his beloved Oberleutnant Frerking was missing. He was directing artillery fire from a bunker and didn't make it out alive, something that haunted Severloh his whole life.\r\rThis is the part we know and can verify to some degree, what remains unclear is the actual bodycount. Estimates vary from some hundred up to two thousand casualties inflicted by severlohe. While the second number pretty sure is too high, it's certain that he played a crucial role in the defense of his sector. What strikes me most is that he wasn't a typical hero, and he sure didn't see himself as one, but simply a man with a machine gun in a favourable position with many targets, enough ammo and a reason to keep fighting (saving his comrades).\r\rSources: a documentary called \"Todfeinde von Omaha Beach\" by Alexander Czogolla is how I first found out about him.\r\r\rHis autobiography \"Erinnerungen an die Normandie 6.Juni 1944\"\r\r", "Check out [Hans Ulrich Rudel](_URL_0_)\n\nHe was the only person to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with GOLDEN Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds and was the highest decorated serviceman of the Axis forces. The only one with higher decorations was Hermann Goering.\n\nThe man is responsible for the following:\n\nFlew over 2500 combat missions\n\nDestroyed over 800 vehicles\n\n519 tanks\n\n150 artillery pieces\n\n70 landing craft\n\n9 aircraft\n\n4 trains\n\na few bridges\n\nand contributed to the destruction of a destroyer, 2 cruisers and a freakin Russian battleship. He was literally Hercules in a cockpit and absolutely loyal to the Nazi party until the end"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnther_Viezenz"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hartmann", "http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0425252868?pc_redir=1405330637&amp;robot_redir=1", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Destruction_Badge"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel"]]}
{"q_id": "6h897x", "title": "why is the united states so hesitant with stem cell treatment when it, so clearly, could revolutionize modern medicine as we know it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h897x/eli5_why_is_the_united_states_so_hesitant_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diw8uyg", "diw8x3h", "diwfmwp", "diwluyv", "diwmt12", "diwo8vy", "diwofru", "diwoj3g", "diwokvc", "diwpj48", "diwq2vq", "diwq6xx"], "score": [2, 166, 29, 2, 13, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 5], "text": ["Stems cells can come from aborted fetal tissue. The U.S. is very touchy around abortion and anything that can be tied to it faces large public resistance (see Planned Parenthood).", "Human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research is ethically and politically controversial because it involves the destruction of human embryos, since the embryonic stem cells, being so early in development, are able to differentiate into any type of cell unlike type-limited pluripotent stem cells in later stages of life. As a matter of religious faith and moral conviction, some people believe that \u201chuman life begins at conception\u201d and that an embryo is therefore a person", "There might be the feeling that once stem cell treatment becomes common place, there will be a larger demand for embryos. A demand that the current supply of unwanted embryos cannot accommodate. It isn't that much of a stretch to imagine less than ethical methods of meeting that demand.", "I think stem cell research should give everyone pause, and I say this as an atheist, a pro-choice-er, and someone who holds an advanced science degree.\n\nThe issue is this: Even though I am pro-choice I do not believe a 3 month old fetus is of zero moral worth.  I think the mother's physical autonomy is more morally worthy than a 3 month old fetus, but the fetus isn't a nothing.\n\nAnd I am not sure when moral worth starts moving up from zero.\n\nStem Cell treatments/research have the potential to involve multiplications of millions or billions on whatever that moral sum is.  So I think it is very, very, important that the moral sum be zero.\n\nAs I understand it there are ways of making stem cells that do involve zero moral worth it is just these methods were a bit less convenient in the early 2000's than other options which might have engaged some kind of non-zero moral worth.\n\nSo I do think a moment of hesitation and consideration is appropriate.", "1. To the extent that the US is \"hesitant\" with stem cell *research*, this has mostly to do with *embryonic* stem cell research. Why? Suffice it to say that, simply as a matter of fact, the issue of embryonic stem cell research is closely linked to the issue of abortion, which has been a political hot-button for the past forty years. But stem cell research based on non-embryonic sources continues apace with very little controversy. \n\n2. To the extent that the US is \"hesitant\" with stem cell *therapy*, it is hardly unique. Other than bone marrow transplants (which have been performed for quite some time now), there really aren't all that many actual stem cell *therapies* that have been approved for clinical use anywhere in the world. The technology still in its infancy. [Very few usable therapeutic applications/uses have been definitively identified and perfected.](_URL_0_) From that link:\n\n > The list of diseases for which stem cell treatments have been shown to be beneficial is still very short. The best-defined and most extensively used stem cell treatment is hematopoietic (or blood) stem cell transplantation, for example, bone marrow transplantation, to treat certain blood and immune system disorders or to rebuild the blood system after treatments for some kinds of cancer.\n\n > Some bone, skin and corneal (eye) injuries and diseases can be treated by grafting or implanting tissues, and the healing process relies on stem cells within this implanted tissue. These procedures are widely accepted as safe and effective by the medical community. All other applications of stem cells are yet to be proven in clinical trials and should be considered highly experimental.", "Something else to remember is that embryos are not the only source for stem cells for research, they can be derived from adipose and other kinds of tissues, too. There is a lot of stem cell research that is conducted everyday with these cells, and there are several treatments in use that employ them. ", "Better question ELI5: Why does separation of church and state only go one way. Why is there legislation to protect religion from government, but none to protect government from religion?", "It's worth noting that Adult Stem Cells are actively used in treatments. And, when conservative types here are explained what they are (not embryonic), they have no problems with those treatments. \n\n\n", "The United States is peculiar in that there are a significant number of people who care more about human embryos than actual humans. In fact, once you're old enough to go die in a war your life has lost all the holiness it once had. Life is most sacred when it's an embryo or a foetus, and least sacred when you're ready to go die in Iraq or if you turn out gay or worse. ", "Did you just watch Dan Bilzarians snap chat ?", "My honest opinion is that the right wing nut job excuse is just that... \n\nI think big corporations, especially big Pharma do not want these kinds of testings and procedures done here because it does the one thing a pill doesn't.\n\nIt actually cures your ailment!!\n\nCan't sell you pills if your problem is fixed.\n\nThat and other countries are way ahead of us in that development, so if it ever was legal, all the foreign companies would come in and we wouldn't reap the benefits of those dollars...\n\nThis is based on nothing except that I am on reddit to much and everyone is out to screw everyone and we can trust the Hospital networks, and Pharmaceutical companies about as much as we can trust the MSM.  I am in the Insurance world... which gives me a basis for my bias.", "As the sidebar says:\n\n >  Don't post to argue a point of view.\n\nYou want /r/changemyview.  This post has been removed.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/stem-cells-and-medicine/nine-things-to-know-about-stem-cell-treatments"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3c7tqc", "title": "Did they honor the \"Don't kill the messenger\" back in the days?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c7tqc/did_they_honor_the_dont_kill_the_messenger_back/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cst6p85"], "score": [6], "text": ["Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_).  These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for.  If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "8qeb2p", "title": "Why did concept albums take off, and what happened to them?", "selftext": "It seems as though the concept album was largely confined to the 70s \u2013 *The Six Wives of Henry VIII* (1973), *Journey to the Centre of the Earth* (1974), *Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters* (1974), *Animals* (1977), *Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds* (1978) and *The Wall* (1979), to name some of the most prominent examples. Yet, looking at the 80s, I can't really think of any concept albums of note. Why, then, did they take off, and why haven't they made a major comeback?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8qeb2p/why_did_concept_albums_take_off_and_what_happened/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0ivlwe", "e0j806t", "e0lpmgc"], "score": [6, 332, 6], "text": ["Follow-up questions: What caused the rise in their popularity in the first place? Was there a particular artist or album that started a trend or marked a significant cultural change?\n\nAlso, FYI, concept albums still exist (and seem to be popular among smaller groups of fans) in the hard rock/metal world. \n\nTool - Lateralus (2001)\n\nTool - 10,000 Days (2007)\n\nKeldian - Outbound (2013)\n\nThrawsunblat - Wanderer On the Continet of Saplings (2013)\n\nThrawsunblat - Metachthonia (2016)\n\nWoods of Ypres - Pursuit of the sun  &  allure of the earth (2004)\n\nAnubis gate - Horizons (2014)\n\nBrendon Small - Doomstar Requiem (2013)\n\n\nThose are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, that I've listened to, and that I believe qualify as concept albums because they are tied lyrically, musically, and thematically from start to finish, including ALL tracks. If we loosen the definition of \"concept album\" a bit, the list of candidates from the 80's or later gets very long very quickly. \n\nHowever I do agree that they seem to have lost the universal cultural appeal of your examples from the 70s. And I would also like to know why.", "**1/2**\n\nFirstly, let's talk about what an album is. So, the word 'album' originally comes from the idea of the album implicit in the term 'photo album' which (in the pre-internet age, at least) is a book that holds separate photos in a single package. The original albums were albums in this sense: they were pre-packaged collections of single 78rpm discs, a format that, at least in its popular form, usually only held 3-4 minutes of music on each side. Together, with a set of 78rpm discs packaged together, you had an album. The first concept album inevitably dates from this period, not the 1970s. For example, Woody Guthrie's *Dust Bowl Ballads*, from 1940, was a folk concept album revolving around the experience of Depression/dust bowl-era 1930s in Oklahoma (song titles including 'The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)', 'Dust Bowl Refugee', 'Dust Bowl Blues' and ['Dusty Old Dust'](_URL_1_)).\n\nWhen the 12\" 33rpm record became popular in the 1950s - when you could fit all of an album on one disc - concept albums soon followed, such as *In The Wee Small Hours* by Frank Sinatra, from 1955 - as one of the first pop albums to be released on one 12\" 33rpm disc, it was also therefore one of the first pop concept albums to be released on one 12\" 33rpm disc (seeing as the songs had a theme of late-night loneliness tying them together, [like the title track](_URL_3_)).\n\nHowever, in the mid-1960s, with the rise of multitrack recording technology, you get a different kind of conception of what an album is to what had previously come. To some extent, in the 1950s, the attitude towards the album was that it was simply a collection of performances. However, from the 1960s, people started viewing the album not as a collection of recordings of performances, but a thing in of itself; the album wasn't an avenue for you to hear the Beatles performing ['A Day In The Life'](_URL_2_) - it was no longer simply musicians performing, caught on tape, but a physical artifact - a piece of vinyl - deliberately designed to be received as art. The Beatles and their producers  have generally denied that *Sgt Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band* (released in May 1967) is a concept album in the way that, say, *Tommy* is - obviously, the first three songs are sort of thematically linked, but then it goes in other directions - but it absolutely was a concept album. With its sounds being electronically manipulated in a way that would mean the Beatles couldn't actually sound like that in real life, and in its emphasis on the album being a physical artifact - the ornate packaging, the effort put into the album cover, the loop in the runout grooves, for example - the concept of *Sgt. Peppers*, in a way, was of a new *conception* of *the album* as an artwork in of itself. An enormously popular new conception of the album, seeing *Sgt Peppers*' enormous success.\n\nThe albums you mention - by Rick Wakeman, Pink Floyd, etc. - historically follow in the wake of *Sgt Peppers*, which - along with some other ambitious albums of the period, such as *Pet Sounds* - inaugurated a new era of 'rock' music which distinguished itself from run of the mill pop by its sonic ambitiousness, and its desire to *progress* artistically, to do something new. \n\nAt this point, after the success of *Sgt. Peppers*, which had elements of 20th century (classical) art music forms like *musique concrete* in it, several artists started to combine rock music with other musical forms that were typically longer than the 3-4 minute pop song. For example, The Moody Blues released *Days Of Future Passed* in November 1967, which features orchestral interludes by the London Festival Orchestra, and which clearly aims at a sort of classical form in the parts of the album without orchestra. The Moody Blues, and other such ambitious, largely British rock bands, were well-received, and the impulses of groups like Yes and Genesis and ELP came together in a genre called *progressive rock*, which aimed to progress from *Sgt Peppers*' starting point towards a music which aimed towards the ambitiousness and complexity of some of the forms of classical music. The point at which progressive rock really gets going commercially and artistically is basically on the turn of the 1970s.\n\nWith that in mind, let's talk about the concept album. Firstly, there are a variety of different kinds of concept album. At the most basic level of the concept album is the idea that there is a thread running its way through these songs - these songs have been collected together for a specific purpose. \n\nOne of those purposes is a consistent lyrical theme - see *Dust Bowl Ballads* or *In The Wee Small Hours*, or, for example, *Little Deuce Coupe*, the 1963 album by the Beach Boys that's *all* about cars. *Animals* which you list above, fits this category. Another is that there is a consistent use of particular musical sounds or events on the album. So, for example, the band Self released an album in 2000 called *Gizmodgery* which is a concept album because everything on the album is recorded with toy instruments ([hear their version of 'What A Fool Believes'](_URL_8_)). \n\nAt a slightly more advanced level of conceptual-ness is an album that has a sort of progression of situations through the album - a song cycle where the songs are meant to be presented in a specific sequence. Pink Floyd's *Dark Side Of The Moon* goes from birth (the infant cries and heartbeats at the very start of the album) to death ([a song called 'Eclipse'](_URL_0_)), for example, and there's particular ways in which the music of the different songs on the album fit together thematically. But other albums might have a sense of progression in this kind of way without necessarily having a specific theme - there might be some elements of the kind of motifs and musical structures that you might see in a symphony, mixed with pop music forms (though, usually, with rather more widdly guitar and burping synth than the average classical symphony).\n\nAnd then there are albums that specifically do 'rock opera', in the sense that the albums are storytelling narrative, told through song - quite like an opera or musical, except in rock album form. *Tommy* by The Who, from 1969, was self-consciously a rock opera, described as such in its promotional material (and later presented in film musical form, i.e., [with Elton doing 'Pinball Wizard'](_URL_5_)). You can often imagine rock operas performed as musicals, and in fact Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's *Jesus Christ Superstar* was first a rock opera album, released in 1970 with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple playing Jesus ([here on 'Gethsemane'](_URL_6_)), before it was first performed live in 1971. *War Of The Worlds*, with its narration is very clearly a rock opera. And *The Wall* too, with its somewhat abstract but fairly clear narrative of a rock star becoming progressively more alienated as explicated in the film version.\n\nSo the various types of concept albums took off, essentially, because in the wake of Sgt Peppers there was a young, but rapidly maturing baby boomer audience who wanted to believe - in the wake of *Sgt Peppers* that rock music could continue to be *important*, that it could be High Art. In wanting to be High Art, the rock musicians emulated the forms of High Art they saw in socially-esteemed classical music - symphonies and operas.\n\nSo the explosion of concept albums in the 1970s was predicated on the belief that rock music was reaching towards High Art, and that the way in which to reach towards High Art was to emulate classical forms. These beliefs did not last in the discourse around popular music. By the late 1970s, critics and younger audiences championed punk, which self-consciously rejected any prog rock pretensions to High Art (John Lydon in his autobiography *Rotten* talks about how he became a member of the Sex Pistols largely because they saw him in his famous 'I hate Pink Floyd' t-shirt; he also claims that \"Yes or any of that stuff...was too arty, distant and remote, all about 6/4 masturbation\"). Punk largely championed the 3 minute single, and musical simplicity - it was part of the myth of punk that they could barely play their instruments. Not necessarily *because* of punk, but the late 1970s saw the bigger progressive rock bands ultimately move away from forms and sounds that aimed for classical music. Genesis transitioned from Peter Gabriel as lead singer to Phil Collins as lead singer, and eventually started making fairly straight pop music (['Follow You Follow Me'](_URL_7_)). Trevor Horn of The Buggles produced an album for Yes, which ended up having a new wave style hit in ['Owner Of A Lonely Heart'](_URL_4_). Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2' might be from a concept album, but it has a disco beat. \n", " >   Yet, looking at the 80s, I can't really think of any concept albums of note.\n\nThere were a lot of bands that today would be called \"power metal\" or \"progressive metal\" doing concept albums in the 80s.  The most prominent being:\n\n* Queensryche - *Operation: Mindcrime*, released in 1988, is a rock opera with a clear story progression from track to track about a dystopian near future.  *Rage for Order* (1986) and *Empire* (1990) also have strong concept album elements, although not every song on those albums are tied together.\n\n*  Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden were incorporating some thematically related songs as early as 1982's *Number of the Beast*, which continued into *Powerslave* (1984) and *Somewhere in Time* (1986).  *Seventh Son of a Seventh Son* (1988) meets all the criteria for a concept album, with every song based on Orson Scott Card's novel *Seventh Son*.\n\n*  King Diamond - *Abigail* (1987), thematically centered around ghosts and hauntings.\n\n* Helloween - Most of their albums have some concept elements, especially *Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt 1* (1987) and *Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt 2* (1988), which were originally intended to be released as a double album, and finally were in 2010.\n\nOutside of strictly heavy metal, we've got:\n\n*  Blue Oyster Cult - Although *Imaginos* (1988) is credited to BOC, it's probably better described as longtime producer and lyricist Sandy Pearlman's project tying together many of the repeating themes in previous albums by the band.\n\n* Planet P - More or less a one man band (Tony Carey), Planet P's second release, *Pink World* was released as a double album (On pink vinyl!) in 1984.  It's about a highly dystopian post nuclear apocalypse society contained inside an area called \"the Zone\".\n\nOne can debate how \"notable\" some of these albums are outside their genre.  *Pink World* is somewhat obscure, and *Imaginos* suffered from distribution and record label problems, but *Operation: Mindcrime* and *Seventh Son of a Seventh Son* both hit the mainstream charts (*Seventh...* was #1 in the UK), and *Mindcrime* was certified platinum, *Seventh* gold by the RAA.\n\nConcept albums didn't disappear in the 80s, they were just in a different place."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z39KZAryzk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudNm4r9NKo", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiPUv4kXzvw", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOuYquXuuc", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePiGVI2Hs-g", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOjyGy1NR4Y", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDRXbP1MaY", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV64MTaw7aE"], []]}
{"q_id": "34mymv", "title": "why is nudity such a big deal?", "selftext": "I never understand how nudity became such a big deal that seems to impact virtually every culture. In Europe there is a more relaxed attitude about it. And in some tribal cultures I guess nudity is OK. So why in the modern cultures is nudity such a taboo? You can go to jail for being naked in public - and it all just seems normal. I don't understand this. Most ethics seem to agree this is how it \"should be\" from atheist or theist, from communist to capitalist - there does not seem to be any real **movement to decriminalize nudity**. Will humans ever move beyond this? We see ourself nude every day. And we see our spouse - or other people in locker rooms. It seems like such a strange and narrow cultural regulation. It seems irrational but fixed.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34mymv/eli5why_is_nudity_such_a_big_deal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqw5z76", "cqw69a6", "cqw71m3", "cqw75zk", "cqw942n"], "score": [8, 9, 27, 5, 2], "text": ["One reason is that nudity is associated with sexuality.  In the USA in particular, sexual situations and actions in public are considered taboo (largely because of the high level or religiosity in America).  Nudity taboos are largely cultural, but I think that in less religious countries/cultures the taboo is a good deal weaker.", "Coverage, or primitive clothing was probably more a utilitarian thing to keep us warm. Over time then that became the norm and that resulted in a sense of modesty, when you felt weird being the only naked one and its all built on from that.", "When some female animals are in heat, they undertake actions known as presenting, signaling readiness for intercourse, which in some species triggers hormonal cascades in males, basically turning them into horny fuckbunnies.  Human females are fecund year round, and human males get turned on by all manner of displays, some instinctual, some conditioned.  There are all kinds of maladaptive behaviors men undertake when they posit that a female in their vicinity is signaling sexual readiness.  Some joke that men can think with only one head at a time.  And fathers of many human females will be damned if they let her get nude before that high school dropout junkie who likes to sweet talk her.  In most modern societies, being nude before a male of the species typically IS a signal of readiness for intercourse and vice versa.", "Because people 200 years from now need something to look back at and say \"lol I can't believe how primitive they were.\"", "I think that TODAY, it is very hard to decriminalize nudity. We have become sensitized to bodies being inherently sexual. To make the next generation desexualized to bodies we would expose older generations to it. And the issue isn't laws as much as it is our brains. When you have people like Niki Minaj posing IN CLOTHING in a way they people find sexually appealing, it hard to imagine Tue majority of the population deciding nudity isn't sexual. People use sex appeal to their advantage so people who do that would want to keep their sex appeal. Nudists are a small group in a world using sex appeal to their advantage. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6kl7co", "title": "Did Vietnam War get that bad for Americans as depicted in Apocalypse Now: open desertions, lack of C.O.s, bases in complete desolate condition...", "selftext": "Great movie. and I hear the Vietnam War vets say this movie is the closest thing that resembles what they went through out of all the other hollywood movies. Not sure if they mean thematically or realistically. \n\nWhat I am asking is did things get so bad for some American forces there that there were open desertions (like when the boat was passing by one of the frontline bases), complete chaos (the scene where there is a machine gunner and sleeping grenadier) and oblivious conditions (the second scene where playmates are shown, with them going half-full insane and trapped in the desolate base with dead bodies not taken care of) etc etc...?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kl7co/did_vietnam_war_get_that_bad_for_americans_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djnh8xm"], "score": [26], "text": ["OP have you got a link to where Vietnam veterans praised the film for its accuracy? I was under the belief that it was the opposite, giving the film being an updated Heart of Darkness.\n\nAlso, the answers in [this thread](_URL_0_) may be of some interest. (given by /u/Anastik and /u/deleted)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28isjy/reception_of_apocalypse_now_among_vietnam_veterans/"]]}
{"q_id": "514by8", "title": "Why does glass (insulator) heat up slower than copper (conductor)?", "selftext": "What is really happening at the microscopic level ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/514by8/why_does_glass_insulator_heat_up_slower_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7971bt"], "score": [11], "text": ["First of all, let's be clear, thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity don't always go hand in hand. For example, one of the best thermal conductors is diamond, an electrical insulator. Having said that, there is a reason why thermal and electrical conductivity are related, which goes at the heart of your question.\n\nThermal conduction in solids is mostly mediated by 1) vibrations (phonons) and 2) free electrons. In insulators vibrations dominate. You can think of these collective vibrations as groups of atoms swaying back and forth, e.g. [like this](_URL_1_). These vibrations tend to dump energy into the crystal lattice, which effectively shuffles the internal energy spatially. In other words, you have heat transport.\n\nNow in the case of metals on top of the vibrations there is a large density of free electrons that can help transfer heat. If you would like, think of the free electrons a bit like the ball in the pinball machine. As the electrons are sloshing around they bump into atoms and dump part of their energy through inelastic collisions. Now the more free electrons you have, the more efficiently heat can be transferred. For this reason, in metals the thermal conductivity largely tracks the electrical conductivity as described by the [Wiedemann\u2013Franz law](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiedemann%E2%80%93Franz_law", "http://i.imgur.com/X3mnj8W.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "2ygeyh", "title": "why do some shots are required to be taken into my ass. what is wrong with getting it in my arm", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ygeyh/eli5_why_do_some_shots_are_required_to_be_taken/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp996t5", "cp99lpl", "cp9aiac", "cp9c4zg", "cp9cu9u", "cp9k1ep"], "score": [18, 8, 2, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Some shots are best given into a muscle, where it then slowly diffuses into the blood stream. Your butt is one of the biggest muscles in your body, so it's a prime target.", "You also can request it in your arm.  However, shots that are painful after the injection hurt much less in the butt.  ", "I have been told that if the volume of medicine is great it can cause tissue damage if it's in a smaller muscle. ", "The amount of surface area makes a huge difference as to how the drug is taken into the body.  Pain medications, muscle relaxers, etc., that are given in a \"I need it now\" setting need to be taken up as quickly as possible.  So, larger surface area= faster availability.  Also, the amount of fluid that can be given in the arm is about 1mL (cc), so basically only immunizations are small enough.  ", "- Some medications require (or prefer) intramuscular injection, as opposed to intravenous or subcutaneous.\n\n- The muscle into which the medication is delivered needs to properly accomodate it, i.e. you don't really want to administer 3ml into your bicep or tricep. Your glutes or quads can take that without trouble.\n\nAs an aside, it's becoming increasingly more popular to inject into the ventrogluteal area rather than the gluteus maximus (your ass). That way you can't hit the sciatic nerve.", "Thanks for all the feedback. Also I realized how awful my grammar was in that title"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52c9zc", "title": "Did pre-Islamic Arabs eat pork? Did they practice circumcision? What was the reaction to Muhammad's rules on these practices?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/52c9zc/did_preislamic_arabs_eat_pork_did_they_practice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7jrwww"], "score": [13], "text": [" >  Did the pre-Islamic Arabs...practice circumcision?\n\nYes. This seems to have been widespread to the point of near-universality among males and was also practiced on females. The Arabic word for the practice \"khitan\" is pre-Islamic, and we also have pre-Islamic words referring to the un-circumcised. The practice of circumcision is also mentioned in pre-Islamic poetry.\n\nA second century AD Syriac commentator, Bardaisan, noted upon the conquest of the Nabateans (of northern Arabia) by the Romans that:\n\n >  \u2018Recently the Romans have conquered Arabia [i.e. the Nabatean territories] and have done away with the old laws there used to be, particularly circumcision, which was a custom they practised\u2019\n\nFrom Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs*\n\nMoreover, in the hadith, circumcision is included among the \"Fitra\", the practices so basic to human existence that there are expected to practiced regardless of any specific religious injunction almost as a point of personal hygiene, and which include clipping one's fingernails, trimming of pubic hair, removing under-arm hair and trimming the moustache.\n\nMoreover, circumcision would have been practiced on a religious basis by the extensive Jewish community of Arabia, which seems to have been common in north Arabia and even predominant in the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen.\n\nAs a result, I'm not familiar with any objections to the practice.\n\n >  Did pre-Islamic Arabs eat pork?\n\nI can't prove a negative, but, as I've discussed previously before [HERE](_URL_0_), the answer seems to be no. Certainly there were (and are) pigs in the Levant and the wider Middle East and Arabs who would have come across and even eaten pork in those locations. But that being said, and I say this as a non-farmer, as far as I'm aware the conditions in most of Arabia are not conducive to raising pigs, and boars are not endemic to the Arabian peninsula.\n\nSo in pre-Islamic Arabia, as now, the primary forms of pastoralism related to the raising of camels, sheep and goats, and to a certain extent horses, rather than the raising of pigs or cattle which are ill-suited to the desert.\n\nsource wise:\n\nAs mentioned above see Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs*\n\nand the *Encyclopaedia of Islam* entry on circumcision \"Khitan.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lk0zb/how_common_were_domestic_pigs_in_arabia_and_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "2c9pqm", "title": "why are monsanto considered to be evil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c9pqm/eli5_why_are_monsanto_considered_to_be_evil/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjdb6p3", "cjdbgua", "cjdc2j7", "cjdc2n5", "cjdc3x9", "cjddqyh", "cjdg3a5", "cjdgisb", "cjdgl0i", "cjdi2ow"], "score": [3, 9, 3, 6, 20, 13, 4, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Big, successful, technological, no general public marketing, operates (among other things) with genetics and food, the stuff of sci-fi nightmares.  It's the perfect villain for any veggie-vegan-hippie-conspiracy-liberal-robinhoodian-braveheartian activist.  \n\nAs with everything, they are as evil and as good as any large corporation.", "Because they are a giant corporation and all giant corporations are generally considered to be inherently evil. Monsanto has a somewhat undeserved reputation for extra evilness because they produce a lot of Genetically Modified Organisms but, for the life of me, I can find almost no credible research on why GMO's are so bad. ", "Check the archives. This is asked three times a week. ", "If I recall, they are 'legal bullies' to a lot of farmers.\n\nThey sell the seeds to the farmer, who then grows the crops and sells the grain/beans etc.  If the farmer tries to keep any grain to replant, Monsanto will sue them out of their pants.  \n\nMonsanto also uses various methods to make it very hard for farmers to escape this cycle, so that the farmers are reliant on Monsanto products.  \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n\nIt's a complicated issue with many good (and bad) points on either side.\n", "Monsanto tends to get into trouble because of their tendency to employ strong arm legal tactics against farmers.  Specifically, they patented their seeds, so when you buy seed from Monsanto you're really just buying a license to a plant which will grow and produce its own seeds...but legally you can't plant those seeds because your license doesn't cover them.  So if you're a poor farmer in India and Monsanto's people convince you their seed is amazing and will give you a great crop yield, and you fork over all your money to buy their seed but that year your crop fails...now you're broke and you have no useful seed because if you just replant your crops you'll get sued.  And that's the best case, if you went into debt for those seeds now you're in the hole money you can't recoup without a harvest, but you can't harvest anything without licensing more plants...or totally reinvesting in seed from somewhere else...that you can't afford because you're in debt.  This actually cause a rash of farmer suicides.\n\nAlso since plants are living things they tend to attempt to reproduce, so if GMO wheat from Monsanto's research farm in Oregon spreads itself and ends up in your organic farm, your certifications are all in trouble.  If you're big enough to sell to other states or countries if they don't allow GMO wheat you can't sell to them anymore, your whole business is fucked.  This also happened.\n\nFinally, if you're a farmer, and your neighbor's a farmer, and he buys Monsanto's seeds but you don't.  Some seasons later Monsanto comes over and realizes his crops fertilized your crops and now you're growing hybrid plants through no intent of your own.  Technically that's patent infringement and now Monsanto is suing you because the guy next door to you bought their product and then plants did their thing and tried to make more plants.", "The reason people do not like Monsanto is usually because they do not like GMO's in the first place, and so they unquestionably accept the various urban legends they have been presented about the company. For example, I'd encourage you to do your own research regarding Monsanto's supposedly litigious nature. ", "Well-off white people are afraid of technology and think it's okay to condemn foreigners to starvation because understanding science is hard.", "ITT/TIL: Monsanto isn't evil.", "Jesus, can *MONSANTO QUESTIONS* please be linked to in the sidebar. This is fucking insane how often the question comes up.", "I love how people in this thread are being so absurdly general about GMOs. As if it's all the same. Like it's binary- either you don't modify, or you do. It is so much more nuanced than that. There is an extremely wide range of ways to modify food. Some of those practices are just fine, and some aren't. Yet, all the actions of genetic modification are clumped together. People get very defensive one way or the other when your bring it up. GMOS ARE OK!!! GMOS ARE HORRIBLE!!\n\nIt all depends. Some are amazing, and in the future, could massively expand in a very incredible way, and the misconceptions could easily get in the way of that beneficial expansion. But the other side is that some of these GMO practices are really not good, at all. Monsanto, employs both positive and negative practices. \n\nThe negative is the cycle they have put themselves into with pesticides. Continually modifying the seed to withstand more and more bombardment  from what is essentially a nerve agent. Insects have short lives, and thus many generation in a short time. They adapt to the new pesticide levels, so they blast more on. Whoops, they adapted again, let's spray more! Whoops, it's damaging the plant. Let's modify the plant to take it! Whoops, the bugs adapted again. More pesticides it is! Whoops.... on and on.\n\nThis is their 'solution.' And this is, very fairly IMO, part of the root of the mistrust for GMOS. And that's not good. Modifying food is something we've done for a long time and we're on the edge of really expanding it in wonderful ways. Synthetic meat, for example, could really be amazing . But with the current trust level, it will be hard for it to be adapted when it's ready to go. Some of the mistrust is earned, and some of it isn't. One thing is for sure though- this 'one way or the other' thinking has got to go, as do these endless cycles that companies like Monsanto perpetuate. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805", "http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15825", "http://www.alternet.org/food/what-it-means-monsanto-holds-patents-life", "http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/01/13/supreme-court-sides-notorious-patent-bully-monsanto"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27vx7o", "title": "What is the yellow layer visible in the atmosphere in this picture from the ISS?", "selftext": "[Image here](_URL_0_). \nMost images of Earth from space do not show this layer, but all the ISS night side images do. \n\nedit: I call it yellow, but actually, after zooming in, it can be seen to be (orange?) yellow and green in bands.\n\nedit: [Video here](_URL_1_), this better shows the effect. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/27vx7o/what_is_the_yellow_layer_visible_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci50csu", "ci538wj", "cibl0ye"], "score": [2, 11, 2], "text": ["~~_URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n~~Basicly light is shining on the atmosphere (its higher so it still can be hit while the ground can \u00b4t) and the atmosphere is breaking up the light so you can only see a certan colour (like sun sets are red because most of the other coloured light gets reflected elsewhere).~~\nEDIT: as [/u/Sannish](_URL_1_) pointed out its airglow... vid destroyed my reasoning.", "It is called [airglow](_URL_0_) and it is caused mainly by the recombination of atoms in the upper atmosphere/ionosphere.  It is there all the time, but just too faint to see during the day.", "Just a note that the green color you see in the airglow is the same as in the aurora (due to atomic oxygen). The yellow is mostly sodium (like a street light). Looking at higher altitudes, you can also see a faint red glow in some ISS images, which is another oxygen emission arising in the ionosphere. And, if you (or the camera) could see infrared, you would notice the hydroxyl emissions from ~87km, which are even more intense."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Sprite_from_ISS.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19zUMpkrGrA"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_refraction", "http://www.reddit.com/user/Sannish", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum~~"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow"], []]}
{"q_id": "6bh3gl", "title": "Is there any weird phenomenon related to the non-existence of the mean of the Cauchy Distribution?", "selftext": "I understand how to prove that the mean doesn't exist, but it still feels weird. Is there any interesting mathematical reason for that? I've also read that it appears in physics too. Is there any weird phenomenon related to the non.existence of the mean?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6bh3gl/is_there_any_weird_phenomenon_related_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhmiaay", "dhmn9hm", "dhmqf4e"], "score": [5, 5, 2], "text": ["The mean is just a convenient mathematical parameter to use for *certain* probability distributions. It's not guaranteed that a given probability distribution will have a mean, nor is it necessary to parameterize the distribution by its mean.\n\nThe Cauchy distribution does not have a mean nor a variance, so it's parametrized in terms of its mode and FWHM instead.\n\nThe Cauchy distribution shows up often in physics. There are no physical implications of the fact that the mean doesn't exist. And as far as I know, there's no interesting reason why the mean doesn't exist, it just turns out that the integral of x f(x) dx over all x does not converge (where f(x) is the Cauchy PDF).", "If you sample a variable with a Cauchy distribution, then neither the sample mean nor variance converges as the number of samples goes to infinity. The \"mathematical\" reason is obviously that the integrals do not exist, but more practically it's about the tails being too \"fat\" - in other words the probability of finding outliers that throws off the mean and variance is too large for the values to converge.", "It is more significant that the standard deviation is infinite, which means a sum of independent Cauchy distributed random variables does not obey the central limit theorem and thus cannot be approximated as a Gaussian.  \n\nIn fact, the probability distribution I have for the mean of \"N\" random variables which obey the same Cauchy distribution, IS the Cauchy distribution they all obey.  This means no matter how much I sample a Cauchy distribution I can never estimate the mean in this way.  Fortunately the median can be estimated by sampling, which is also the Cauchy principle value for the mean."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "qlqow", "title": "why is the lethal injection needle sterilised?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qlqow/eli5why_is_the_lethal_injection_needle_sterilised/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3ykaco", "c3ykbxi", "c3ykeqm", "c3ylifm", "c3ylkwc", "c3ym0sm", "c3ym3jr", "c3ym5pa", "c3yn7cn", "c3ynhkt", "c3ynj1n", "c3yny56", "c3yo47a", "c3yo4d0", "c3yp2ft", "c3ypisb", "c3yqgm5", "c3yqtnr", "c3yro0q", "c3yt76d", "c3yudxh"], "score": [201, 1019, 19, 9, 7, 5, 160, 128, 6, 13, 2, 2, 9, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It's a standard medical procedure and has no real meaning nor is it part of a subtle, ongoing joke.  In addition to the health and safety reasons (for when you're handling sharp objects), you are also ensuring that the condemned dies due to the chemicals.\n\nAlso, the companies that manufacture the needles don't know what it's going to be used for.  They are required to sterilize the needles that they ship out.  ", "I believe the execution can be halted right up to the 'push' of the drug sequence into the IV.\n\nThis means that the needle is placed a few minutes before the actual execution starts.\n\nSo they still need to be able to abort the procedure at a moments notice with no harm to the prisoner.\n\nEdit: Grammar ", "It would have to also have something to do with the fact that the needle is being handled by someone other than the one being executed. If they stick themselves with the needle, they'll want the assurance that they haven't contracted something horrible. That would mean a whole LOT of other needles to be involved!\n\nWorkplace health and safety", "As has been mentioned, when the State is trying to put someone to death, it takes a while. \n\nDuring all the time it takes to get ready, the Governor can call and pardon the prisoner and tell everyone not to kill him. So they take out the needle, which must be clean to prevent infection.\n\nLegally, if the prisoner was to get sick because of the needle, his lawyers could argue that the prison broke the rules of how to keep prisoners (ELI20: The 6th Amendment on Cruel and Unusual Punishment) and try to get the prisoner life in prison instead, or even freed. \n\nSo they're really trying to cover their own ass at for possible options, as governments usually try to do.", "fun fact: doctors can't perform a lethal injection because of the Hippocratic Oath so the prisons hire interns and nurses to do it instead and you end up with stories, like this one, where they  [can't find the vein](_URL_0_)", "I've heard urban legends of doctors \"saving\" prisioners from heart attacks/etc with the prisioner being executed days later.  I'm curious how many \"11th hour\" stoppage there have been (I mean, where the sterilization of the needle has come into play).  Has someone really been hooked up and then the governor calls?  ", "Good God, armchair doctors and lawyers, step aside a second.\n\nNobody actually sterilizes needles before using them anymore. They're all disposable and come prepackaged already sterile. It's cheaper than buying and maintaining an autoclave, and paying a surgical tech to operate it. Plus it reduces the risk of an accidental needlestick injury (they teach you not to even re-cap a used needle- there are almost always safety mechanisms on them to slide a plastic sheath over the needle so that it can be disposed of in a sharps container). \n\nNow go back to the movies and TV shows that inform your knowledge bases.", "Where are you going to get unsterilized needles?  Recovering used needles would be a waste of taxpayer dollars, and opening the packaging earlier in the day just to let it sit out and fester for awhile is a waste of time.  They are pre-packaged single-use devices, manufactured in bulk.", "You want them to keep a used, dirty needle around somewhere instead of just buying a box of clean ones for $10 and using a fresh one everytime?", "I'm sure it's easier and cheaper to find sterile needles than used ones...", "Because it's not like we're a bunch of sick fucking monsters.  Non-sterilized needles?  Come on now, that's inhumane.", "Aside from whatever the *actual* reason is, I would think the most *reasonable and simple* explanation is that medical procedures shouldn't allow for inconsistencies from one patient to the next due to the potential for other problems. Inconsistencies in most anything is what creates problems and litigation.", "\"In case the condemned receives a stay of execution at the last minute.\nSince no one knows if the condemned will be receive a stay at the last minute, standard medical infection rules apply. This includes swabbing the IV area with alcohol and iodine as well as using sterile, one-time-use needles.\nRegardless of setting, using sterilized needles makes things safer for everyone involved. It avoids any improper infection, making cause of death easier to rule. Also, having sterilized needles prevents staff members from getting any infection due to cross-contamination.\nIt does seem counter-intuitive, yes. But since the main reason is to keep the condemned healthy until death is administered, spending the extra time to sanitize and sterilize is well worth it.\"\n\nFound this.", "It has nothing to do with it being a lethal injection. I doubt you could even buy non sterile medical syringes if you wanted to for some reason.\n", "Surgical needles, at least in the west, come in one flavour - sterilised. Sourcing unsterlised needles would cost more than buying standard ones.", "Because everything about capital punishment is illogical and abhorrent.", "Suplly technician for a large hospital here. Many needless come sterilized from the factory.  As in when you remove it from the covering it is already sterile.\n\nI doubt they have a sterilization unit there processing their supplies. It pregnant just comes that way, but people have turned it into a thing where it sounds like they go out of their way to sterilize it.", "Well, kiddo, when the government decides to...get rid of a bad guy, they don't want to hurt the bad guys, just to get rid of them. It's not nice to be mean to the bad guys. Also, sometimes a good person is mistaken for the bad guy and we don't want to risk getting him sick, just in case.", "As a needle user every day in a veterinary practice, every needle I have ever purchased for use has been prepackaged and sterile.  Also, if you use a needle too many times, such as poking it into a rubber stopper of a medicine bottle, the needle dulls.  So it's not like it has to be sterile, but it just comes like that.", "That's just how needles for injections come. I don't think there's much of a market for non-sterile needles. They likely come from the same kind of suppliers as the ones health care providers and the general population get their supplies from. I'd be surprised if there was some kind of \"special\" equipment for lethal injection. I've never actually seen it done but I am under the impression that it's actually a luer-lock type of system with IV line established, not just a venipuncture and immediate injection thereafter. I think they probably establish a peripheral site line and then attach a needleless syringe to the hub to inject the solution. All of that stuff is just sterile.  ", "All prison nurses are union.  Union nurses must sterilize all needles regardless of procedure.  It would take millions of dollars for lawyers to weed out a provision in their contracts to make a single caveat for lethal injections.  \n\n$1,000,000's in lawyers fees  >  $.03 for a cotton ball and a dab of alcohol times every time we've actually gotten around to putting someone to death.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130959&amp;page=1#.T1eQdHJAYnY"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2q006a", "title": "imagine a normal British Celtic farmer in 77BCE, imagine a normal English Saxon farmer in AD1059. aside from things relating to religion how would their daily lives likely be different?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2q006a/imagine_a_normal_british_celtic_farmer_in_77bce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn1t7ai", "cn21fej", "cn2cn0a"], "score": [26, 6, 6], "text": ["I don't know enough about agriculture specifically to talk about the daily work life of a farmer in either era, but I imagine there would've been stark differences in population density, more widely shared cultural mores, and generally more developed infrastructure connecting the various kingdoms. \n\n77BCE predates the Roman conquest so a farmer living in this era would have had a much more limited understanding of the broader world. You said 'apart from religion,' but in many ways it's difficult to separate religion from the daily life of a person living at the end of the first millennium, at least insofar as how joe farmer would imagine his place in the world. By this time the mark Rome left on the island would've been unavoidable (speaking of physical remains), and when the Normans conquered the island just a few years on, the influence of that reign and the The Roman Catholic Church would leave marks that still can be seen today. \n\nThe tribes that inhabited the islands in 77 BCE certainly had dealings with the Mediterranean world, to say nothing of the inter-tribal dealings and shared cultural heritage, but by 1059 the intervening centuries saw so many changes through both the precipitate social upheaval brought on through war, and also more gradual influence through trade and the concomitant spread of ideas that I would imagine a tribal farmer in pre-roman Britain would have a more local understanding of his environment. --- I don't mean to imply that a farmer in 1050 would care in the slightest about anything beyond his local existence, rather that he would be more likely to have heard of Jerusalem or Constantinople, say. And that, theology aside, even a passing familiarity with Christianity carried with it such dense cultural weight that it would be near impossible to have it not color your experience and perspective in some way. \n", "I think that the English Saxon farmers would also be involved in the wool trade, while the celtic farmer most likely would not. I believe wool had become an important industry by the middle ages, and that many Saxon farmers depended on their wives to convert wool into textiles (for trade with France) as apart of their livelihoods. \n\nSource: Robert Bucholz, *History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts*. Great Courses No. 8470.", "One of the biggest changes in agricultural technology would have been the introduction of the mouldboard plough.  \n\nThe Celtic farmer in 77 BCE would have used a \"scratch plough\" (or \"true ard\") - Quite possibly pulled by oxen.  \n\nThe Saxon farmer in 1059 AD would have used a mouldboard plough almost certainly pulled by oxen.\n\nThe mouldboard plough had two advantages.  It greatly reduced the amount of time to prepare a field, allowing a farmer to farm more land and grow more produce.  In the form of the heavy wheeled mouldboard plough (sometimes known as the \"Roman Plough\"), it also allowed tougher and more difficult soils to be ploughed and put into agriculture.\n\nThere is archaeological evidence that the Roman plough was used in Britain by about the late 3rd or early 4th century AD.\n\nBy the 8th or 9th century, the three field system (one field planted in grain, one in other crops (usually peas, lentils or beans), and one left fallow as pasture)- rotate annually - had replaced the old two field system (half the land left fallow every year) in Britain.  (The secret to it's success was planting the third field in nitrogen fixing crops, which helped renew the soil.)\n\nThese two changes meant that the Saxon farmer could put more land in production and produce more crops (and larger surpluses) than his Celtic predecessor.  \n\nThe replacement of oxen by horses as the main draft animals for ploughing came later in Britain (12th century?) and this led to another improvement in farm productivity, as horse teams can plough faster than ox teams.  (Raising Crops in Northern Europe, with a short growing season, means that there is a limited time between the ground thawing and the crops needing to be planted, in which ploughing can be done.  What cannot be ploughed in that window cannot be successfully cropped that year).\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "eas2a5", "title": "Would the Chicxulub impact have caused an earthquake or created earthquake like waves? If so how high would it have registered?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eas2a5/would_the_chicxulub_impact_have_caused_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fb0slr8", "fb2puma"], "score": [11, 7], "text": ["Somewhere about magnitude 12.5 in terms of energy released. \n\n\nThe Chicxulub impact is estimated to have released the equivalent of 100 terratons (10^14 tons) of TNT.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThat's between 12.5and 12.6 using this calculator  - _URL_1_\n\nBy comparison the largest terrestrial earthquake in Chile in 1960 is given as magnitude 9.5 which calculates as 2.7 gigatons TNT equivalent, nearly 40,000 times less energy.", "Massively huge.  Mind-numbingly huge compared to regular quakes.  \n\nJust to get started, there is a paper available online here  [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)  from the Geophysical Journal International.  It does a computer simulation of actual displacement, on the surface and within the mantle, of a Chicxulub-scale impact.  The equations are messed up in my web view so I downloaded the PDF, though what you really want is the graph of displacements vs angle of separation on the earth.  The ***minimum*** is roughly 130 degrees out, meaning 9000mi/15000Km away from the impact, and the up and down motion is still something like .3 meters, or about a foot.  This would feel like an old-school Richter magnitude (which is more perception-based) of 8, which is roughly equivalent to a major California quake, standing directly on the epicenter.  (I'm estimating from the Lillie Empirical formula for Richter.)  There were tsunamis *everywhere*.  The spherical shape of the earth focuses the energy on the antipode (the exact far side of the earth) where the earthquake motions would be over a meter, maybe several meters in magnitude.  Some believe that a massive volcanic deposit called the Deccan Traps was produced by eruptions triggered by these antipodal effects.  The place was on the antipode, with a date nearly identical to that of the Yucatan impact.  There are moons of Saturn, such as Tethys, that have antipodal features opposite massive craters.  \n\nYou might not have cared so much though, if you were there.  Ultimately, the raining down of impact fragments, \"splashed\" atmosphere, and possibly splashed, vaporized seawater was a much bigger problem, and that hits first.  It is the distributed impact energy in the atmosphere that is responsible for the extinction events."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/we-finally-know-how-much-dino-killing-asteroid-reshaped-earth-180958222/", "https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1346229131"], ["https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/187/1/529/564818"]]}
{"q_id": "chkg5e", "title": "Before the light bulb (and after, but before high-powered bulbs), did trains travel only by day? If they traveled at night, what are the details of what happened if an animal or debris was on the tracks?", "selftext": "If they did travel at night, was that limited to cargo only, or did passenger trains travel by night as well? Did they use oil lamps in the compartments? Was there a high risk of fires?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/chkg5e/before_the_light_bulb_and_after_but_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["euwrq3c"], "score": [39], "text": ["The light bulb is hardly the only source of light.\n\nEarly trains that operated at night used candles enclosed in large housings that had reflectors and lenses to project the light forward.    In the second half of the 19C trains switched over to oil burning lamps, typically using kerosene.\n\nThere was a second type of flame based lantern, the \"carbide lamp\".  When water drips on calcium carbide it gives off acetylene gas which is burned to produce light.  This type of light was also used in early automobiles (e.g. 1915 Model T)  and on bicycle headlights up until the 50s, and for miners and cavers.\n\nAround 1880 Charles Brush developed the arc lamp which is basically an electrical arc between a pair of carbon electrodes.  It sometimes required adjustment of the spacing between them as the carbon gradually wore down.  It was very bright, and locomotives equipped with arc were required to add shutters so that they could dim their lights for oncoming trains.\n\nAlthough Edison developed the incandescent lamp at about the same time, these used a carbon filament which was fragile and not well suited to the vibration of a locomotive.  It wasn't until 1911 that the tungsten filament came out.\n\nAdoption of the light bulb was not immediate by any stretch. According to a [1915 Santa Fe Magazine](_URL_0_) article, lighting broke down as:\n\n    In 1915 there are 67,869 locomotive headlights in use.\n      42,213 are oil.\n       2,904 are acetylene.\n      22,120 are electric arc.\n         632 are incandescent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=EfLNAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA8-PA43&amp;lpg=RA8-PA43&amp;ots=SRPwLSfm3n&amp;f=false#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "s2sff", "title": "How do chemists approach substance analysis? ", "selftext": "Suppose a chemist were given an unlabelled bottle of substance, about which only the immediately apparent physical characteristics were known.  How would he/she go about identifying it? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s2sff/how_do_chemists_approach_substance_analysis/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4amefd", "c4amm44", "c4aomny"], "score": [7, 2, 2], "text": ["Nowadays, the combination of IR, mass spec, and NMR will be enough for structural determination.", "As an aside, this type of analysis is extremely rare. Chemists almost always have a very good idea of what they are looking for before they begin. Even highly robust techniques like gas chromatography with mass spectroscopy typically require fairly detailed knowledge of what's being analyzed.", "Check [this previous thread](_URL_0_) for some pretty extensive answers to your question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mrlp4/how_do_you_analyze_a_sample_of_something_to_find/"]]}
{"q_id": "8a8ua8", "title": "I've read that for all their lamentations over the evils of slavery, only George Washington among the southern Founding Fathers bothered to free his slaves in his will. Was this true? How unusual an act would this have been for the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8a8ua8/ive_read_that_for_all_their_lamentations_over_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwxemtz", "dwxl9qb"], "score": [9, 29], "text": ["Side question: Any examples of the other founding fathers \u201clamentations over the evils of slavery\u201d? I know they signed the document that said all men are created equal when they obviously didn\u2019t mean all men, but are there any times they lambasted slavery and it\u2019s evils specifically? I feel like the title is referring to some specific anti-slavery speeches or writings, but I\u2019m not familiar.", "There was a wave of manumission in Virginia following the American Revolution and some 10,000 slaves were manumitted in the 1790's. This was part of an increased dialogue that had centered on the evils of slavery (in particular the slave trade) in both the United States and Great Britain as well as a loosening of the [manumission laws in Virginia](_URL_0_).10,000 is a very large figure in American history for manumission although comparatively small to Latin American slavery. So Washington wouldn't have been particularly out of place for manumitting his slaves but given the number of slaves he owned certainly set him apart(although most he couldn't free as they were from his Wife's first husband). Regarding other Southern founding fathers, the only prominent Virginian of the period that comes to mind is John Randolph of Roanoke. A rather interesting and eccentric figure even for his time period, he left competing wills behind that were contested in court by his heirs regarding the manumission of his 400 or so slaves that dragged on for over a decade. Even after they were freed they had a horrible time actually making it to the land they had bought in Ohio being met with angry armed mobs repeatedly who did not want to live among blacks. Randolph really didn't come into prominent political office until the 1790's however so past the time you'd probably normally consider the founding."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/An_act_to_authorize_the_manumission_of_slaves_1782"]]}
{"q_id": "3nqzt7", "title": "Pre-WWII did Jews really occupy a disproportionate amount of authority and wealth in Germany compared to their being 1% of the national population?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nqzt7/prewwii_did_jews_really_occupy_a_disproportionate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvqzysa", "cvre68f"], "score": [7, 5], "text": ["Also, I had read that Jews from eastern europe that immigrated to the US were almost universally literate even if they weren't wealthy in Poland or whatnot.\n\nWas the status of Jews say from 1860-1920 pretty similar in Germany to the rest of Eastern Europe, or were they more disadvantaged in Eastern Europe?\n\nThis may just be because Poland was more poor than Germany.\n\n", "The German Jews were a highly urbanized, bourgeois, middle-class community and highly integrated in German society. According to the population census of 1925, around 564 000 Jewish Germans lived in the Reich. As you said, that's close to 1% of the total population. In the first half of the 20th century the Jewish community of Germany was not a growing, but a stagnating, even slightly shrinking one. -- Contrary to the frequent depictions of a strong Jewish influx in right-wing propaganda of the time. This perception was probably based on the more recent immigration of 108 000 Eastern European Jews in the 1920s (called *Ostjuden* in German at the time). These Jews were on the average poorer and more openly religious than the indigenous Jews of Germany. Compared to them the Eastern European Jews were a more \"visible minority\".\n\nThe Jewish population was concentrated in the largest cities of the Reich, around a third in Berlin alone. Their occupational pattern was relatively stable and -- as in many places -- the product of historic pre-modern practices of exclusion from certain professions. In relation to the total population, the Jews were overrepresented in the areas of small business like retail (often self-employed), in trade, and in banking (although not by a large degree). They were traditionally underrepresented in agriculture (as a result of their concentration in urban areas) and in the industry (as a result of their middle-class/self-employed traditions). The Jews of Germany were in no way disproportionally wealthy or powerful. If you want, the \"most powerful\" Jews of Germany, if it even merits the term, were the founders and owners of large department store chains like the Tietz or the Alsberg family. That didn't protect them from dispossession and eventually murder at the hands of the National Socialist regime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3tx4hf", "title": "why are ideas like socialism and communism great in theory, but not so much when actually implemented?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tx4hf/eli5why_are_ideas_like_socialism_and_communism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx9yuqy", "cx9ywxb", "cx9zeoj", "cx9ztc0", "cxa08s0", "cxa0s9k", "cxa13n6", "cxa14zm", "cxa2iwn", "cxa4tpr", "cxa86jg", "cxabesf", "cxah463", "cxahnae", "cxakby1"], "score": [11, 10, 7, 9, 2, 2, 57, 2, 2, 4, 18, 13, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Same as democracy, they don't factor in to human greed.  The only ideology that works is capitalism, but that literally is based on greed.", "The idea is basically that everyone works, and everyone recieves benefits.\n\nThe problem is that when people are just handed what they need, they'll do the bare minimum to get by.  Why work harder when you're still getting paid the same?", "They aren't \"great in theory,\" which is why they do not work in practice.\n\nCollectivism denies the concept of individual rights and fails to understand human motivation and wealth creation.\n\nShort version: Marx was wrong about everything.", "One of the major problems is what's known as [\"The Knowledge Problem\"](_URL_0_). Basically, the idea is that the knowledge required for the correct distribution of goods and services is distributed among so many individuals that no central authority good ever efficiently choose how to distribute them. I really wouldn't say that Communism is \"great in theory\". It's just not economically sound.\n\nAlso, obligatory plug for /r/Anarcho_Capitalism...", "Think of it in terms of a classroom of students taking a test. \n\nIn order for everyone to pass, the professor decides to take the class average and award it equally to each student. The students who didn't study and performed poorly still managed to pass the test with the class average of 70%, while the hard working students who did study for their well deserved A+ were also awarded a 70%. At least everyone passed so what's the harm right? Well, now on the next test the hard working students are going to study less because there's no use in working toward a 100% if the class average will weigh you down anyway, and the lazy students, now confident that they will pass with the class average, aren't going to study any harder than the first time. The result? A declining class average with each test until everyone fails.", "The conecpt of equality in chances and welfare for everyone is something that fascinates us about socialism. Imagine all the welfare equally distributed in industrial nations, everyone could life a wealthy live, or so is the assumption.\n\nNow the problem is about incentives. The amount of welfare generated today is due to the incentives people have to create it. In a free market you generally get more money if you contribute more. So, in order to live a wealthy life, you are incentivized strongly to contribute. In planned economy these incentives are missing, because if everybody is to be compensated equally, nobody is incentivized to work as hard as he would have to in a free market. The sum of these missing incentives empirically led to a significantly lower overall welfare in planned economies.\n\nLet me give you an example. Imagine you are a cab driver in a free market. To earn the money you need to survive and acquire wealth you have maximize the money you can get by taking as many passengers as possible and driving them on as long detours as possible, if they do not notice at least, so you earn the maximum amount of money. So the result is: You have an incentive of being a productive cab driver in a free market, but sometimes you may deceive people to earn more money, though they also have an incentive to notice detours and prevent them since it is also their money they spend.\nNow next is an actual example of what cab drivers did in Moscow, while communism was still active. Since they got paid their salary independent on how many passengers they took in, they were just hiding their cabs well, so they did not have to take passengers. This is an example of missing incentives. Now the government saw the problem and provided incentives by paying cab drivers per mile they drove. Guess what happened, on the highway around Moscow you suddenly saw a huge amount of cabs without passengers driving circles, to reach the miles so they got their full wage. So in result even if you are aware of the problem of incentives it can be very hard or even impossible to figure out incentives for behaviour which contributes to the biggest possible welfare.\n\nIn capitalism some early theories recognized the \"hidden hand\", which even if people maximize and deceive for their own welfare, in sum leads to everyone profiting from a very huge overall welfare. This phenomena is also well described in the famous Fable of the Bees: _URL_0_", "Communism\n-\nEveryone contributes to the system equally, everyone takes out equally\n\n**Doesn't work because**: not all jobs are equal. Why should I spend 40 hours a week shovelling dog shit, and get the same amount of reward/food as you get to be a chocolate taster? Why should I spend 8 years training to be a doctor, while you only spend 18 months learning to be a chef? More importantly, why would anyone do the hard/rubbish jobs, if they could do an easier/more pleasant job and still get the same house etc as everyone else? Some people would be willing to, for the sake of society, but many would not\n\nAt it's most simple, communism is too fair. It would work very well if we could truly split the work that needed to be done, and the rewards into equal chunks that everyone did the same. If we all spent a day as a doctor, a day as the shit shoveller, a day as the chocolate taster, and then had a day sat on the sofa with the iPad, we might all think it was fair and be happy. In reality, we can't make things this neat so some people (usually the ones with the most highly required skills that we can't do without) will dislike the system. Similarly it's open to abuse since lazy people can just slack off and let others do the work\n\nSocialism\n-\n\nDoes work to a far greater extent. Most of Europe, for example, is far more socialistic than the US or many other parts of the world.\n\nWhen taken to the same extent as communism (ie traditional socialism), it fails for the same reason as communism: it can't be fair enough. Note that this is traditional socialism, however, where things like manufacturing are all under the control of the state, prices are controlled etc. There is an alternative which does seem to work better: Modern Socialism.\n\nModern Socialism, is a kind of fairer-fairness. Instead of everyone putting in the same and taking out the same, it's kind of weighted. You still get rewarded more if you have greater skills or put in greater effort, but some things that are seen as belonging to everyone, are paid for by everyone. Think of it more as a \"We all contribute some of our income, we all gain from the shared result\" rather than \"we put everything in and all get the exact same out\".\n\nFor example energy companies, transportation, health services: these are things that everyone needs and uses, so the idea is that everyone pays into them and everyone can use them fairly.... but Doctors still get paid more than chocolate tasters, so there's a reason to aspire to \"better\" or harder jobs, or to work at jobs which take more effort or are less pleasant but give more financial rewards. You can still gain personally *as well as* sharing services with others. This is generally more appealing and is *fairer* if not *more equal*.\n\nThe NHS (British National Health Service) is a great example of socialism \"working\" - everyone pays in with their taxes, and everyone can use the NHS for free. You pay in a little more if you earn more, but you are still allowed to earn more (ie a Doctor isn't told he has to be paid the same as a street cleaner)\n\nCapitalism\n-\n\nCapitalism doesn't necessarily \"work\" any better than Socialism or Communism... it just happens to be that Capitalism works in favour of people who already have power/money, so the people with power/money work to keep it that way.\n\nThe \"true\" answer is probably somewhere closer to Norway/Sweden/Denmark, where people are able to earn more money and free markets work for \"commodities\" (eg luxuries), but \"services\" are more tightly controlled and shared.", "Neither Socialism or Communism are great in theory, because both preach the sacrifice of the individual over the collective. the problem is there is no such thing as a collective, every group being made up of individuals. both ignore economics as a science , while claiming to be scientific. they preach collectivism , but you gotta have a leader, a council, someone who rules. communism has anarchy as it's stated goal, but wants to reach that thru totalitarian rule by a government.\n\nBoth are contradictions and both are immoral.", "Communism and Socialism are NOT great in theory.  In theory they are an abomination that defies nature and the spirit of man.  Communism/socialism dictates that the individual has no value in of them self. It is this utter contempt for the individual in the name of 'the greater good' that ultimately leads to the mass genocide that has occurred in every country that has embraced this insane ideology.\n\nCommunism/socialism leads to genocide.  This is beyond any reasonable doubt at this point.  Read the other replies in this thread very carefully.  They will consist of 'that was not *real* communism/socialism', 'that was state capitalism!!' and mass redefinition of words.  Hell, some people will even attempt to pass off 'democracy' as a successful implementation of socialism.  These people are useful idiots.\n\n**Edit://** Oh dear.  It would seem the asshurt socialists are out for a downvoting frenzy!\n\n**Bonus Double edit!://** Milton Friedman on capitalism and greed.\n\n_URL_0_", "Because government enforced ideologies are far too easily corrupted. If you are talking about a settlement of say around 50 people, Communism can work extremely effectively. The key to it working correctly is a familial environment.", "A lot of these answers use the word \"greedy\".  It's not so much about people being \"greedy\", but more about people being \"lazy\", or \"valuing their own labor\", depending on how you look at it.  The fact is, people are unlikely to work hard unless they are rewarded for their work, and Communism is very bad at rewarding hard work. In other words - \n\nSupply and Demand Vs Command Economy\n\nCapitalism uses the supply and demand model, which means people are free to produce what they want, whenever they want, and to charge however much they want.  Since people can charge whatever they want, if they are successful, they get rewarded with more money for working harder or smarter.  Communism uses the command economy model, where the government tells people what and how much to produce.  There is no real reward for doing anything apart from meeting the targets set by the government.\n\nImagine that you live in a country with 50,000 farmers, all of whom need a shovel.  Let's imagine that a shovel lasts 10 years, so we need 5,000 shovels per year.  Now let's imagine that one year there is a bad frost, so a lot of farmers end up breaking newer shovels.  Now we need 10,000 shovels or 10% of our farmers cannot grow crops. \n\nIn a supply and demand economy, the shovel factory manager will realize that lots of extra farmers want shovels, and if he makes more shovels, he will make more money, so he will do everything he can to make the extra 5,000 shovels.  Prices may rise, but most of the 10,000 farmers who need shovels will get one and continue producing food, even if it becomes more expensive. \n\nIn a command economy, the chief-comrade of the shovel factory was told by the government to produce 5,000 shovels that year.  If more farmers want shovels, that's not his problem - he already met his quota, he will get no more reward.  The only thing that will get him making more shovels is if a Party Officer comes down and threatens him.  There is no chance of the chief-comrade receiving material rewards as this is an egalitarian workers paradise, where doctors drive the same cars as street sweepers. In the mean-time, 5,000 farmers can't produce food because they don't have shovels.   \n\nBut let's say, shovels need handles and blades (also known as supply chain). \n\nIn the supply and demand system, the factory manager can go to the handle factory and the blade factory, and ask them to double production to meet his demands, rewarding them with more money.  He can then get another 5,000 handles  &  another 5,000 blades, and make 5,000 more shovels.  Again, prices may rise, but everyone is working hard to make the necessary 10,000 shovels since they will all make more money. \n\nIn a command economy, the handle factory chief-comrade and the blade factory chief-comrade have are in the same position as the shovel factory chief-comrade before central government threatened him - they have met their quotas already, they don't care if some farmers have broken shovels.  As they have no reward for doing extra work, they are only going to make the extra 5,000 handles and the extra 5,000 blades that the shovel chief-comrade needs if the political officer comes down and \"persuades\" them.  In the mean-time, the shovel factory isn't making shovels, and the farmers aren't farming.   \n\nNow apply the supply chain needed for a shovel to a tractor, and you can see why communism doesn't work.  \n\nTL;DR\n\nCapitalism relies on people individually deciding what other people need to be produced, and people rewarding each other with money for producing the things we need.  Communism relies on central government telling people what to produce, and then someone going down and threatening people if they get it wrong.  Local carrots work better than distant sticks. ", "One could make a strong case that individual families are communist. Everyone contributes what they can, and everyone receives what they need. One this scale, communism and socialism work just fine, and are implemented in almost every house in every country. \n\nThe problem is that nations are not just big families. Nationalism can create bonds between people, but it is not the same as familial bonds. As such, the inherent parasitism which is fundamental to family structure becomes a problem on the national level. Also, grown adults who require services do not like being treated like children and demand autonomy. Last, individual families do not have to do everything, there exist outside institutions (other families, businesses, etc.) to fulfill unmet needs. Nations tend to be self-sufficient and cannot just let entire domains of needs be left to outside parties. \n\nIn short, socialism and communism work great when the group involved is tightly knit (family, small local sports team, small business, etc.) A reasonable real-world example of something a little bigger scale might be the Kibbutz system in Israel. However, as the size of the group increases and trust and dependency between individuals decreases these systems can start to break down. Once you reach the size of entire countries, these systems flaws become highly transparent. Just as a quick example: consider a parent refusing to pay the doctor for their child's visit and a parent forcing their child to go to the doctor vs. a rich person being forced to pay for a poorer individuals care and/or a rich person forcing a poorer person to go to the doctor when they don't want to. ", "Your question is harder to answer than you would think. \n\n- There are many definitions of socialism and communism.\n- \"Great in theory\" depends on your political values.\n- Actual implementation is debatable and its success depends on what you would consider favorable.\n- People will give you their thoughts on both systems, but you should be wary that it is an extremely politically charged question.\n\n**Many definitions**:\n\nThey come with more varieties than a Japanese Kit-Kat collection and they are often contradictory. They have been reformulated as many times as it was politically profitable. For example, many here cite Marx as the basis, but if you were to read him, you would find him opposed to other communists thinkers that followed him.\n\nSo let's try very basic definitions.\n\nCommunism: A governing system where workers are owners of the means of production and actual production. \n\nSocialism: A governing system where capitalistic actors are allowed to operate, but wages and capital are heavily taxed and wealth is redistributed to the poorest.\n\n**\"Great in theory\"**\n\nLet's clear socialism first. In theory and in practice, you would find it similar to what you know in your country (I'm assuming you're from  an industrialized country cuz this is Reddit). The main difference would be on your paycheck: a very high wage tax (or a capital tax if you are more well off and trading equities). Government would be involved in a lot of daily life affairs through regulations or public enterprises and would be politically expected to do so. Democracy can be the form of government, but it is not necessary the case. \n\nCommunism is more difficult to pin down due to the multiple takes on it as I described before. Historically, it was tried with a centrally organized economy and it was tried with letting some form of capitalism survive within. But the theoretical goal is to make the workers the owners of what they make. Old-stock communists see the factory owner as an opportunist who steal the workers \"added-value\" in the products they make. This comes from Marx's views that value comes from labor only and capital and risk are not factors of growth. This, by the way, is thoroughly wrong in the modern economic theory (irregardless of your political stance). More contemporary communists (a rare sight) make a more humanist appeal, saying income gap or capitalism's inefficient waste management are grotesques, for example. Democracy should, in theory, be the goal of communism since it is supposed the promote the worker's power, but...\n\n**Implementation**\n\n... it failed to appear in all attempts so far. While communism achieved industrialization in most countries, it generated terribly despotic regimes. In Benjamin Moore's *The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy*, Moore hypothesized that communist regimes form when the aristocrats ally themselves to the people to squash bourgeois ambitions. In other words, the movement might start as a popular revolution but will be hijacked by the elites to perpetuate their power. The workers are supposed to govern their  workplace and enjoy the best conditions, but they are often treated like lemons to be squeezed.\n\nSocialism's successes and failures are more subtle. Scandinavian countries enjoyed both growth and fair redistribution of wealth for years, but they had (and still have) complications. Wage taxes reached highs of 70% at one point in Sweden. At this stage, people start to think what's the point of even showing up for work. Public businesses often operate as monopolies which give a rise in prices and lower the number of choices. It's harder to start a business or save money and all of the potential success depends on the efficiency of the government. Some African countries learned this the hard way when they got their independence and corruption just siphoned the money away. The upside can be great healthcare, education system, solid infrastructure and a wide social net. Modern liberal democracies do try to balance some of those goals and the individual's aspirations to a better life.\n\n**Politically charged question**\n\nThis is Reddit. The average user is American, male, white and in his 30s. Americans usually don't like extremes in politics and give the individual a place of choice when thinking about society. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against that. But you won't find a lot of persons here advocating a violent overthrow of the government in favor a subjugation of the people to common ideals. See the other comments in this thread that don't dismiss communism outright: they are downvoted and objected to. I made this one in hopes that it is more explicative and neutral, but as I said, I'm not socialist either. Read what you see here with that in mind if you want a critical view of those theories.", "Because they were created by 19th Century middle-upper class intellectuals with little knowledge about real world.", "People are essentially tyrants when exposed to power and opportunity to control.\n\nPower corrupts and all that.\n\nCommunism and socialism on its face is purely about control\n\nYou cannot have any dissent in communism.  To ensure that the collective works you are obligated to do your part for the whole.\n\nSocialism is control of the masses by an elite, for the good of the people.  Again, you cannot have dissenters because if enough people don't go along with the system it falls apart.\n\nThere will always be those who do not wish to conform."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_knowledge_problem"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9ijyjs", "title": "What can we know of Zoroaster, his authoring of sacred texts, and what they reveal about him?", "selftext": "A brilliant answer to [another question](_URL_0_) by /u/lcnielsen ended with the following: \u201cOf course, textual critics like to argue that the Gathas are hyper-formulaic compositions that tell us absolutely nothing about the experiences of Zoroaster and the world he lived in. But that's a discussion for another time!\u201d Now is that time! How are we to understand these compositions and what can we know of Zoroaster and his contribution to the religion that bears his name?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ijyjs/what_can_we_know_of_zoroaster_his_authoring_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6kqfaa", "e6z6p6a"], "score": [53, 2], "text": ["Oh boy, this is a tough one. Before we can even attempt to formulate an answer, it's important that we know the terms we're using. So, prepare for some breakdowns. I will do my best to \"work my way up\" from the extant source material we have, to allow the reader the ability to judge for themselves. A fair amont of subjective judgment is in my view a necessity given the state of the source material available. Throughout, I will include useful links to the material of _URL_3_, which is a fantastic resource.\n\n###**The Avesta**\n\nThe Avesta is the portion of Zoroastrian scripture written in an obscure Iranian language conventionally called _Avestan_. Avestan, especially in its archaic form, is by far the oldest Iranian language, with the earliest preserved material dating back to the mid-2nd Milennium BC. It has a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility with Vedic Sanskrit, but as far as I know no extant Iranian language is thought to be particularly closely related to it. It is in this way very unlike Sanskrit, which is usually thought to be the ancestral language of all modern Indic (or _Indo-Aryan_) languages - Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati,  & c. But I digress.\n\nThe Avestan material can be classified into two parts - older, and younger. One section of the material is collected into the [Yasna](http://_URL_3_/yasna/index.html) (literally meaning \"liturgy\"). The bulk of the Old Avestan material is contained in the poetic hymns in strict meter, the _Gathas_ (chapters 28-34, 43-51, 53). 35-42, the \"Yasna Yaptanghaiti\" are in a dialect identical to the Gathas and presumably similarly old, but in \"prose\". Most of the rest of the Yasna material (minus a verse here or there) are in \"younger Avestan\", which since the work of the great 19th-century philologist Martin Haug have been accepted to be separated from the older material by a minimum of centuries.\n\nThe next big collection is the [Vendidad](http://_URL_3_/vendidad/index.html) (or Videvdad), which is a big book of... stuff, that is sometimes kind of weird (see chapter 8: \"Funerals and purification, unlawful sex\" or chapter 14: \"Atoning for the murder of a water-dog\") and clearly of a highly mixed age - some of it must be so young as to date no earlier than around the Parthian period (i.e. from around 200 BC to 200 AD), but scholarly orthodoxy (e.g. Boyce) holds that it was mostly fixed at some point prior to the Achaemenid period. Much of it is dedicated to moral guidances, directions on ritual purity, and pseudo-laws. This is said to be the one book out of twenty-one in the canon of the Sasanians that has survived, which really makes you wonder how weird the other twenty were. I tend to take the supposed extensiveness of Avestan material destroyed by Alexander or the Muslims with a very large pinch of salt (especially considering the fair amount of repetition found in extant material).\n\nWhat must be the bulk of Young Avestan material is found in the [_Yashts_ (PDF warning!)](_URL_2_) which are epic hymns dedicated to individual deities. The introduction contains a brief explanation of how these fit into Zoroastrian theology from an inside perspective, which may be interesting to read to some.\n\nFinally, there is the Khordeh Avesta, which is the prayer book that many Zoroastrians carry with them. It contains mostly material from the rest of the canon.\n\n###**Pahlavi Literature**\n\nThe Pahlavi literature, in Middle Persian, is extensive and diverse enough to be beyond my means (and probably any reader's attention span) to fully explain, and it is perhaps best to look over the index found at _URL_0_ to get an idea of what it contains. It contains some of the straightforward explanations of Zoroastrian cosmology in e.g. the Bundahishn. However, it postdates the Sasanian period, and it is generally questionable to what degree it preserves older tradition - it may only be a small sliver of interpretations and vernacular glosses of scripture that survived the collapse of Sasanian Persia (diversity is suggested by e.g. Arabic accounts of Zoroastrian beliefs). Of course, it is fascinating as a body of religious literature in its own right, but less relevant to our purposes here.\n\n###**Zoroaster and the Gathas**\n\nVirtually all studies of the origins of Zoroastrianism stands on the shoulders of the great philologist Martin Haug. Haug identified the Gathas as the holiest scripture of contemporary Zoroastrianism, and realized that they were written, as I noted above, in a much older (centuries, at least) dialect than much of the older variant (Being a 19th century German linguist, he was obviously more quantitative and specific about these relationships than I will try to be here). Drawing up a chronology, he found the traditional dating of Zoroaster as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great to be implausible, and proposed instead that Zoroaster must have lived in the 2nd milennium BC. Haug's theological \"insights\" were, shall we say, less impressive, and I won't go into them here.\n\nIt goes without saying that it is not actually possible to **prove** that a prehistoric prophet personally composed the Gathas - one problem with the type of pastoral society the Gathas are set in is the lack of geographic identifiers. We do at least however have the prophet identified as Spitama Zarathustra, i.e., Zarathustra of the Spitaman clan, and other names associated with his family. Moreover, we can present the usual arguments - their preservation in a peculiar metric form, the unlikelihood of a movement springing from nowhere, the distinct literary style,  consistent theology, the abscence of certain elements of later societies (most famously, iron)... and the fact that the author [helpfully identifies himself](_URL_1_):\n\n > Y 43.7 As the holy one I recognized thee, Mazda Ahura, when Good Purpose came to me and asked me: \"Who art thou? to whom dost thou belong? By what signs wilt thou appoint the days for questioning about thy possessions and thyself?\"\n\n > Y 8 **Then I said to him: \"To the first (question), Zarathushtra am I**, a true foe to the Liar, to the utmost of my power, but a powerful support would I be to the Righteous, that I may attain the future things of the infinite Dominion, according as I praise and sing thee, O Mazda.\n\nNow, when one sets out to read the Gathas, it is important to understand one \"axiom\": there is no clear distinction made between divinities, and the abstract concepts they represent. The late, great Mary Boyce liked [this verse](_URL_1_) as an example [brackets mine]:\n\n > Y 31.4. If Asha [righteousness] is to be invoked and Mazda [wisdom] and the other Ahuras [lords] and Ashi [reward] and Armaiti [devotion], *do thou seek for me, O Vohu Manah* [alt: *do thou seek for me by the best purpose*], the mighty Dominion, by the increase of which we might vanquish the Lie. [If the meaning of the verse is unclear, it is saying something like: \"If we are to invoke the divine, grant us the power to destroy evil\"]\n\n", "Follow up question for @Lcnielsen : Both Christianity and Islam shaped the goals and foreign policy of the empires where they were practiced. Islam tore off a huge chunk of the eastern Roman empire in the name of spreading the religion, and the remaining Byzantine empire and the European states that launched crusades attempted to reconquer the old territories, also for the glory of their respective gods.\n\nDid Zoroastrianism shape the foreign policy of the various Persian empires/dynasties in a similar way? Did practitioners of  Zoroastrianism see Roman paganism and Christianity as something they needed to overcome, defend against, etc?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9hzwqi/saturday_showcase_september_22_2018/e6g830k/"], "answers_urls": [["www.avesta.org", "http://avesta.org/yasna/index.html#y43", "http://avesta.org/kanga/kanga_yashts.pdf", "avesta.org", "http://avesta.org/vendidad/index.html", "http://avesta.org/yasna/index.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "iy6t9", "title": "Why we don't fall in love with the people we grow up with?", "selftext": "I'm doing a research on incest and I remember reading a scientific phenomenon that prevents siblings from developing feeling with each others but I can't recall the name of the law. Can someone help me with that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iy6t9/why_we_dont_fall_in_love_with_the_people_we_grow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c27lczf", "c27ltbf"], "score": [6, 6], "text": ["I actually don't know much about it myself, but Redditors much more intelligent than myself have brought up solutions.\n\n-I've read someone mention the \"Westermarck\" effect, which causes someone to become psychologically unattracted to those they spend long amounts of time with in childhood.\n\n-Another Redditor mentioned something called the \"Imprinting effect.\" As I understand it, it's the same thing.\n\nI think if you do internet searches on both/either, you should be able to glean some more information. Hope this helped. ", "_URL_0_\n\nThat one?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect#Westermarck_effect"]]}
{"q_id": "130rg9", "title": "what does it mean when music is written in a certain key?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/130rg9/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_music_is_written_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6zspu1", "c6zvj8f", "c6zwhpm", "c6zxgn2", "c6zy7bg", "c6zyfpr", "c6zzy0x"], "score": [26, 6, 3, 9, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Think of the key as a starting point for a typical scale used in a piece of music. Each song will have the same basic scale in order for it to sound pleasing to the ear or, in the right key. Your basic key for music is the key of C, which employs the notes C through G and back to B again, naturally with no \"sharps\" or \"flats.\" These scales can be offset starting with a different note other than C. After this is done, the pattern of sound differences must be carried over to the new notes by using sharps and flats. Using the C major and G major keys as an example, the C scale would read C,D,E,F,G,A,B, with a smaller pitch gap between E-F and B-C, called a half-step. These small gaps will change based on whether the key is major or minor. With a G major scale, you start on G and implement the half-steps into the same places they would be in the C scale. With Gmaj we see G,A,B,C,D,E,F#(sharp), keeping the half-steps where they should be (B-C, F#-G)", "A key signature is essentially a map for which musical notes one has to hit to create pleasing music. The map gives the sharps and flats of the musical piece, but there is still the possibility of changing keys or adding naturals (playing the white keys when they otherwise would be played as sharps or flats).", "Think of it as the rule set for music. If a song is in Dm (D minor), there are certain chords and notes that work, and some that don't.\n\nSince you are five, imagine that a song is a page in a color by numbers book. There are clear boundaries where certain colors go, and because you know the picture has certain colors to use, it's easier to see what the picture is.\n\nWith music, the key sets what notes fit into the song, and then it's easier to know what to play. It is especially helpful when trying to play by ear, because you know what the rules are, and its easier to figure out how the song goes.\n\nIt goes deeper than that, but we can talk about it when you are a little older, okay Champ?", "No one has really ELY5 so I'll give it a shot. \n\nLet's say there is a bowl of candy. And you, being the OCD 5 year old you are, sort all the candy into different piles. one with chocolate, one with sweet tarts, one with lolipops. Now, what the music writer does is take a big handful of candy from one of the piles and then sorts them out. He remembers though that you get bored with the same hershey bar over and over, so here and there he will add in a 3 musketeers. Then maybe a Resees here and there. But if there was a lolipop in the chocolate \"song\" it would taste terrible. and sound bad.", "In music, a \"key\" is basically a pattern of notes which is measured by the amount of 'space' in between each note. There are many different types of keys, which are not to be confused with \"key signatures\". \n\nWithin each key type, you can start the pattern on any note you want, though which note you start on will determine what the other notes in the key are. \n\nSo for example, a song in \"G major\" is a song written in the key type \"major\" using the specific major pattern which starts on G.", "You can look at it like a painting. The key signature is defining the basic palate of colors you will be working with to create the painting. You might occasionally use some extra colors, outside of your palate, in the music this would be denoted with sharp flat or natural signs to indicate how that note differs from the key signature, for example F major's key signature calls for a F G A B flat C D E F, by indicating B flat. The basic idea is that any notes I play will be these, unless otherwise specified using an accidental.\n\nSome composers will write music that is not indicated as being in a specific key, but still could be analyzed as being in one.", "After reading the replies, I wondered, \"Is there an ELI4?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31hwz4", "title": "why are plane crashes such a big deal? there are 21 plane crashes worth of death each day in the world from traffic accidents.", "selftext": "Based on 2010 WHO statistics for total deaths and an average commercial plane size of 160 passengers.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31hwz4/eli5why_are_plane_crashes_such_a_big_deal_there/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq1q2uu", "cq1q55w", "cq1q7vv", "cq1qk06", "cq1qsbg", "cq1qyqn", "cq1rndq", "cq1xw4b", "cq1y5r6"], "score": [27, 16, 3, 6, 3, 19, 2, 2, 6], "text": ["Precisely because plane crashes happen so rarely compared to car crashes is why you hear about them on the news. A traffic accident is quite literally an everyday experience, so no one cares. A plane crash happens only once in a blue moon, so that's news. ", "You answered it yourself, a car crash happens so often you rarely notice it. A fatal car crash annoys you as it jams up traffic. A plane crash is a rare occurrence.", "News is news because it's out of the ordinary/unexpected, or \"not part of the plan\".  It's a good thing that most news is bad news, because that means that most bad things that happen aren't expected to happen.  If it were news when \"Thousands of people survive another day at school.\"  Traffic accidents happen every day, they're not \"news\" because they're part of the routine.  I'm sure most of know someone or know someone who knows someone who was killed/maimed in a car accident.   \n\nPlane crashes don't happen every day, but when they happen, they kill lots of people and cause millions in damage.  We are also so anxious about flying that we throw up hundreds of safety precautions and redundancies with air travel, so when one slips through the cracks (like the pilot's mental health).  When we drive, we have quite a bit of control over the outcome, when we fly, we have zero, and the stakes are much higher at 30,000 feet, so we're much more eager to learn about plane crashes, causes and prevention than car accidents.", "A lot of it has to do with sensationalism. A lot of people have a fear of flying. The media knows this and plays on those fears, so they immediately jump on anything having to do with plane crashes. They also do anything possible to make it seem like somebody is directly responsible for the crash, which is hardly ever the case. One of my favorites is when they get an \"expert\" for commentary from the ntsb. The ntsb doesn't have anything to do with aviation oversight. That's all the FAA. \n\nFlying and aviation is totally 100% based around safety. I'm an aviation mechanic and about 70% percent of my day is taken up with inspections and checks. We inspect everything a lot. More than anybody not in the business could ever understand. Another 20% of my time is spent replacing time based maintenance items, which is pretty much everything on the whole plane. Landing gear, brakes, wheels, engines, engine components, batteries, everything is time based. The last 10% is resolving squawks that pop up. Pretty much anything problem that comes up with a commercially operated aircraft has to be resolved before flight. \n\n\nSo yeah, the media makes a big deal out of very crash, but they just do it to prey on people and get you to watch and read the news. ", "Car crashes aren't exciting to the masses. People want to see grotesque and out of the ordinary, not normal things that happen every day. It's odd, but that's just how it is.", "By entering a plane, you are submitting to the control of the pilot.\n\nIt's easier to justify driving to work every day with the thought safe in your head that, to whatever degree you believe, YOU are the one piloting your vehicle. And if something ever challenged you, at least your nervous system would be there to take control and evade these dangers.\n\nAlso, it's easier and safer to put the hazards on and pull over to the emergency lane than it is to lose engine 2 and hurtle into a mountain.", "Same reason a dog who's been relocated with his owner is headline news to distract you from the real issues. ", "What's scarier, being in a car crash or a plane crash?\n\nThe scarier thing is usually the most newsworthy thing.", "120 separate people each finding $1 isn't as noteworthy as one person finding $120"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1jmyg5", "title": "Who was the Queen of Sheba?", "selftext": "For someone who is reputed to be extremely wealthy and mentioned in many texts, how is not much known about her? She even goes by innumerable different names. Is this a common historical occurrence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jmyg5/who_was_the_queen_of_sheba/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbg9v5m", "cbgbz5r"], "score": [27, 23], "text": ["I am surprised that you presuppose that all the references are of the same person. \n\nSheba was an ancient kingdom whose borders and rulers would have been subject to change over time.", "In the *Kebra Nagast* she is identified with a Queen Makeda of Ethiopia, and has a son named Menelik with Solomon. This is, of course, an Ethiopian tradition, and it was written in the 14th century, so I think you're unlikely to find any relationship to historical fact here."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4ymixf", "title": "i just watched the big short, and i still don't understand what \"shorting\" is. how does buying credit swaps profit you when the market collapses? who pays that out and why?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ymixf/eli5_i_just_watched_the_big_short_and_i_still/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6ovaka", "d6owcut", "d6oyhb1", "d6p6yzs", "d6p761g", "d6p80l2", "d6p8cd1", "d6p8qli", "d6paabs", "d6pagu8", "d6pbkdy", "d6pc9ks", "d6ph4qa", "d6pnc60", "d6psbre", "d6pwueh"], "score": [338, 1271, 71, 4, 2, 8, 93, 2, 2, 3, 8, 2, 6, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Let's say you own $1000 of stock I think it is  going to go down in price.\n\nI borrow those shares from you, and immediately sell them for $1000.  The next day, the stock goes down and is only worth $900.  I buy them back, and return them to you, plus a little cash for your trouble.  I've just made almost $100 from your stock going down.\n\nThat's what shorting is, essentially sell a share of stock you don't have, then buying it for less when its price goes down.  Essentially, you are buying a negative share of stock.\n\nThe downside is if the price goes up.  If you sold it for $1000, but the price goes up to $1100, you will have to spend that much to return the stock you borrowed.", "Say Bob has a bunch of stock in a business called Company, Inc.  Bob's friend Henry thinks Company, Inc.'s stock is about to drop significantly.  Henry makes a deal with Bob:  Bob will lend Henry 100 shares of Company, Inc. stock, but Henry has to give it all back exactly one year from now.  So Henry gets 100 shares and sells them at their current price of $10 each.  Henry now has $1000, but he'll have to buy back 100 shares before the end of the year in order to hold up his end of the bargain.\n\nA year later, Company, Inc. stock isn't doing so well, selling for only $1 a share.  Henry buys up 100 shares and gives them back to Bob.  By shorting the Company, Inc. stock, Henry made a profit of $900.\n\nIn an alternate universe, Company, Inc. is doing pretty good at the end of the year.  Their stock is selling for $20 a share.  In order to get the 100 shares he needs to give back to Bob, Henry has to use the $1000 he got from selling the stock originally AND $1000 from his own pocket.  In this universe, Henry's attempt to short the Company, Inc. stock has cost him $1000.", "There's a bunch of good explanations for what a short is. The thing they were doing in the movie though is actually called a credit default swap, which works a little bit differently.\n\nBanks lend money to people for houses. Those people repay the loans, and the bank can take that stream of money and sell it to other people. This is the secondary mortgage market, and it helps make mortgages less risky to banks.\n\nA swap in general, is an agreement to trade one cash flow for another. In the case of credit default swaps in the movie, let's say the bank is making $100 a month from people paying their mortgages. Christian Bale offered the bank $300 for that $100 to go to him instead. So every month, he's down $200 and this is why the banks think it's so funny.\n\nThe catch is, the bank agrees to pay him whatever's left on the mortgage if people stop paying their mortgages. In practice, these aren't individual mortgages but tiny chunks of a lot of mortgages, so the chance of everyone failing to pay at once was very low. It's basically like insurance. He pays a small amount every month, but gets paid a lot if something bad happens.\n\nAs the movie goes on, Steve Carell's group is getting screwed because their premiums go up. They're paying for the right to an income stream, and that income is deemed to be more valuable as the movie goes on, so they have to pay more to keep their right to it.", "I think the price of bananas is going to go down. My buddy has a bunch of bananas. I borrow his bananas, promising to return them in a few days. Mean while I sell them for the current price, hoping to buy them cheaper before I have to return them to my friend. That is shorting. I profit when prices go lower by borrowing, selling, and repurchasing.\n\nTo short, someone else has to take a \"long\" position - buy and hold, hoping prices rise.\n\nThe idea, overall, is that a short position redistributes risk from one party to another, paying out when the instrument goes south. Credit default swaps are not a direct \"short,\" but rather a form of insurance taken against asset backed instruments; they have the same relationship, in that the failure of the underlying asset leads to a pay out.", "Tldr.. You can make bets on something winning or losing.\n\nShorting is basically a financial term that allows an investor to bet that a company will underperform.\n\nIf that happens the investor profits. If not he loses.\n\nThere is a lot more than that Involved in speculative investing but that is the tldr version.", "What they did in the movie was bet on the market and that the mortgages would default when the \"bubble\" burst.\n\nSo they bought (invested in) these mortgages (bonds) from banks and made a deal with the banks that if such a default event happened they would get paid back whatever the mortgages were worth. But they werent buying full price for the bonds. They were buying tiny chunks of mortgages. But the payouts were astronomical because they essentially got paid whatever the homebuyer had left on said mortgage. Small investment, huge returns.  \n\nThe only way the banks would make that deal was to charge a premium (like car insurance) every month or whatever was agreed. \n\nSince the market was very strong and showed many years of people paying their mortgages, and the unemployment rate was consistently low, they felt this was just free money they would be getting from the premiums and that the market would never crash. \n\nChristain Bales character did some research on the numbers and realized they (banks) were giving these large (mortgage) loans out to many people who couldnt afford them in the long run and theyd eventually go into default. Predatory loans or \"subprime\" as we call them. They were also poorly rated bonds. But even though they were still lowly rated, people still continued to pay their monthly payments. The market was strong as it had been for many years and apparently as far as the bankers were concerned there was no end in sight and they would collect trillions off these stupid investors.\n\nAnd then eventually, as predicted, the market crashed. Millions lost their jobs, pensions, etc. The housing market crashed. $500K homes were now worth half that. People started leaving their homes and letting their mortgages go into default because who the fuck wants to keep paying a mortgage on a home that is now worth half what you paid for it? Also, since people lost their jobs they couldnt pay the bills, so again their mortgages defaulted and they left their homes.  \n\nAt this point it was considered a credit event and the banks had to pay back the investors IN FULL. Many of them did not want to. \n\nThey were called credit default swaps. \n\nHere is a video of what they did. \n\n_URL_0_", "You're kind of asking two questions actually, so:\n\n**Short selling**\n\nThe usual way to make money in finance is to \"buy low, sell high.\" This is called going long. You buy a thing (a stock, say) for $100, it goes up to $120, sell it there - you made $20. Hooray!\n\nShort selling reverses that to \"sell high, buy low\". But you don't have it, so...you borrow it from someone else, with the promise to give it back later. You borrow it, sell it at $100, and if it goes down, you buy it back at $80 and give it back. You made $20. Hooray!\n\nThe person, however, that lent the stock to you is sad since what was formerly worth $100 is now $80.\n\nThere are other costs associated with short selling but this is the core idea.\n\n**Credit Default Swaps**\n\nSo credit default swaps (I assume you mean these by \"credit swaps\") are a thing. They are commonly referred to by the acronym CDS.\n\nThis is different from short selling.\n\nYou loan me $100. But I'm a deadbeat and you're worried I won't pay you back. You will be sad if I don't pay you back because you lose that $100 and the interest I pay you on the loan. This keeps you up at night.\n\nYour friend Alice, however, thinks I'm not a deadbeat. So she makes a deal with you, kind of like insurance: you pay her a few bucks every three months, and if I turn out to be a deadbeat and can't pay up, she'll pay you $100. If I'm not a deadbeat, I pay you back the $100, and Alice just pockets the cash you've paid her. It's like if you pay insurance on your house and it never burns down.\n\n(There are significant technical complications I'm not getting into, but it's the core idea)\n\nThe difference between insurance and CDS is that I can't insure someone else's house.\n\nSo if I owe Bob $100 instead of you, you can still make that bet with Alice (the CDS). You pay a few bucks every three months to Alice insuring my debt to Bob. If I turn out to be a deadbeat, Alice pays you $100 - even though I have nothing to do with you.\n\n**Shorting and CDS**\n\n\"Shorting\" is just when you make money when a thing loses value. A \"long\" is when you bet that the thing is going to be worth more later.\n\nA short position is a bet that something fails. I know that sounds mean, but it's a valuable tool: it makes prices in financial markets work properly. Things should be worth what they're correctly worth. If they're worth too much, someone should drive the price down. Shorting helps that.\n\nShort selling is clearly a bet that a thing loses value.\n\nIf you pay for CDS on my debt, you make money if I go bankrupt and my debt lost value. So you're shorting me. That's how these concepts relate.\n\n(This is informal, it's ELI5 after all - more formally \"the protection buyer in a CDS is shorting the credit quality of the reference obligation\" but meh)", "So pretend you travel back in time and buy full coverage insurance for the Titanic in 1912 before its maiden voyage.  They think it's unsinkable, you know it's doomed. They think you're crazy so they let you buy it for relatively cheap, but you agree to pay a premium everyday the titanic doesn't sink. When it finally does sink,  you collect 5 or 10x your initial investment because it was full coverage policy on the Titanic . It was a terrible tragedy but you make a huge profit. Kinda like that but with MBS's, banks, and the global economy. \n \nFrom what I understand, Christian Bale( and the other characters) essentially bought $100M worth of mortgage-back securities from multiple banks, so long as they agreed to pay him back 10 to 1 (idk someone mentions this) payout when they failed. He agreed to pay a premium every month default didn't occur. This was a contract that he made with the bank, a Credit Default Swap. They laughed in his face because they were C, B, and A+ loans, deemed safe in the mortgage industry, in which a collapse is highly unlikely. But he found out they were MBSs full of subprime loans. Remember Margot Robbie? Subprime=shit. Basically phony A's and B loans that were really D's and F loans that were about to fail in mass. \n\n[My question is: why was it so easy for all of them to unload the CDS's? Why were the banks eager to buy them back? Like why was Brad Pitt able to negotiate from 40 to 80M with the banker? ...And how did Ryan Goslings character make his money? It was confusing to me what he was up to. Saw it once, gotta watch it again]\n\n", "A bond is an investment where you loan money to a company* that promises to pay you back over time with interest. However, if the company goes bankrupt, then you lose your investment.\n\nA credit default swap is an agreement you enter into with another company (which is basically an insurer) to insure bonds. You pay premiums to the insurer and if the company you invested in happens to go bankrupt, then the insurer will refund your premiums and make the payments that the bankrupt company was supposed to pay.\n\nHowever, a CDS is not legally insurance, which exempts sellers from insurance requirements such as having enough money on hand to pay out on your commitments. So AIG and other companies were selling what were essentially insurance policies without being required to keep enough money on hand to pay out.\n\nAlso, because a CDS is not insurance, people were able to buy CDS on bonds they did not own. This was called a \"naked\" CDS and caused a lot of problems. A billion dollars in bonds, for instance, could give rise to four billion dollar's worth of loss due to naked CDS. So when the market blew up, instead of just a billion, in our example, you'll have four billion dollars in loss. Then the insurers couldn't pay on the CDS, which led to everything falling apart.\n\n*Can also include governments but I'll use company to keep it simple.", "A credit default swap (CDS) is this: A bank loans money (a mortgage) to a homeowner to buy a home. The bank goes to another financial institution and buys insurance to cover them in case you default on your mortgage (never pay your mortgage off in full and the bank gets screwed out of their money). In exchange for the coverage the bank pays the financial institution monthly premiums. The above insuring is done on a group of many many mortgages as a group. The insuring financial institution then turns around and sells this group off to another financial institution (that other financial institution has to pay in case of default but is also getting paid premiums). Sometimes financial institution B sells again to financial institution C and so on. That's a credit default swap.\n\nThe problem came in because of this: Each mortgage has a slight risk that the homeowner will default... this is based on their credit worthiness  (determined when you fill out a credit application). A group of insurance contracts was usually around 15% risky mortgages, 85% safer mortgages. Back in the early/mid 2000s it became custom for Financial institution B to take a bunch of groups, mix them all up and separate them back out again. What happened is that some groups ended up being made up of way more than 15% risky mortgages (because banks are greedy and qualifying for a mortgage back then  -- even if you were risky in terms of credit worthiness -- was very easy). These mixed up groups were sold off again without the financial institution telling the purchasing financial institution that they weren't necessarily only 15% risky. Some of the groups of insurance that were very top heavy in risk started to fail (these people couldn't really afford their house in the first place, they failed to pay, many of these entire groups of risk-heavy insurance failed). The owners of the insurance groups had to pay the banks to cover the groups of defaulted mortgages. This happened on such a great scale that there wasn't actually money to cover it. The banks that loaned the mortgages ended up not getting back all of the money they loaned out for the houses. When most of our major financial institutions don't get paid back on loans at the same time nasty things happen. People start to freak out, the market crashes, people lose their investments, people's house halve in value, small businesses go out of business, people lose their jobs etc etc. Bad scenario.\n\n\nEdit: the thing about this that is so frustrating for me is that this is simply the backbone of the US economy and in reality it's just betting. It's like someone buying a billion of scratch off tickets and having your entire economy propped up based on the idea that more than half of the time they'll be winners. None of us have a choice in this.", "You should *read* it instead, trust me, about half way thru it will start to make sense. The lingo and jargon is intense, but it's not infinite. Eventually the same terms will start to repeat themselves...*a lot* and voila, you'll start to get a feel for it. \n\nA credit default swap is nothing more than insurance. They didn't exist when Mike Burry saw his opportunity and the book goes into a little more detail about how he convinced the biggest banks to insure him against the bonds he had bought. If you want to sound shit hot and like you know what you're talking about you can say he 'bought credit default swaps'....but really he just bought insurance for his bonds. \n\nThe banks insured Mike just as any insurance company would, by making him pay premiums (monthly or yearly in his case, I can't remember which). So, in the case of a U.S. government bond for example, if it completely fails the government can literally just *print more money* and pay you back...it literally *cannot fail*, in a sense, and so these are given a AAA rating as far as bonds go. \n\nIn Mike Burry's case, he dug a little and saw all these absurdly, hideously shitty mortgage bonds being rated as AAA and \"knew\" they would fail at some point. The banks who insured him (sold him credit default swaps) did *no digging whatsoever* and said 'hey look, a AAA rating, it can't fail!' \n\nSo, to answer your question, because Mike Burry paid the big Wall Street banks premiums regularly, just like your or I would pay our insurance bill each month, *it was the banks* who were responsible for *insuring* Mike when the bonds failed....and they sure as shit better since he had been paying them a princely sum to do just that (he used his investors money to pay the premiums which is why they come to his office demanding their money back, so for a few years he 'lost'  a tremendous amount of money, on paper). \n\nTo muddy the waters a little further...Mike ended up being *so incredibly right* about the bonds failing that he was almost right *too much*. In other words, the banks were going to lose *A LOT* of money when they had to pay out the insurance he had bought, the problem was they lost so much money to begin with some of them *actually went out of business* (and the government bailed others out) so that they couldn't pay Mike anyway, and this almost bit him and the other characters in the butt. I'm not entirely sure on this point but I think this is where the banks wanted to buy the credit default swaps back rather than pay them out, and so all the characters still made bank! \n\nTL; DR It's a long answer but nothing too cosmic and I really did keep it simple cause I'm not that smart on this stuff myself. ", "How does shorting work with stock splits? So if like I shorted 100 stocks at $10, and they split in 2, I'll have doubled my money invested because I still only need to return 100 stocks and they're worth $5 now, correct?", "Think of it as dropshipping on Ebay. You post an auction for an XBox for $300 that you don't own. After someone wins it, you now have to buy an XBox off Amazon to ship. Ideally, you buy it for $250. The other guy pays you $300. So you make a $50 profit.\n\nBut if for some reason, Amazon is showing $320, you end up losing $20 dollars in order to fulfill your obligation.", " > Who pays that out and why?\n\nThat is actually the big problem. The contract says the person who sold the credit default swap pays. But the people who sold them before the crisis were absolutely sure they wouldn't have to pay, and some of them couldn't.\n\nBut these aren't ordinary people we're talking about here. These are financial institutions. They owe lots of people lots of money, way more than they ever had. They're also owed lots of money by lots of other people, so everything usually balances out. But when the crisis went boom, they couldn't pay them *or anyone else*, and that threatened to cascade across the entire system, bankrupting everybody.", "Let's say there's a market for pencils at school. They're currently selling for $1 each, but I think the price is going to go down. Sally has a bunch of pencils she's keeping for the long term, because she wants to use them for her final exam.\n\nI make a deal with Sally. I'll give Sally five cents to borrow 10 of her pencils, and I promise to give them back to her at exam time.\nImmediately after borrowing her pencils, I sell them, and now have $10 cash in hand. At exam time, I have to buy 10 pencils to give to Sally. Let's say I was right, and the price drops to a quarter. I only have to spend $2.50 to buy those ten pencils, and I get to keep the $7.50.\n\nI have now shorted the pencil market.\n\nNow let's say I was wrong, and pencils are $2 each at exam time. Now I have to shell out $20 so I can replace Sally's pencils. I've lost $10.\n\nThat's what make short selling a bit dangerous. With normal investments, you can only lose 100% of your investment. With short investments, the potential losses are limitless. If there's some sort of pencil-drought that year and pencil prices rise to $100, my losses are many times my initial investment.", "There are ETFs that are set up to short specific commodities. DWTI, for example, will pay you 3% for every 1% WTI crude oil goes down in price.  This is available for gold and natural gas etc.   You buy $1000 of DWTI and if WTI oil goes down by 1% you make $30.  \n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZC6WCE5Bj4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "iihu1", "title": "How the heck does smart shade makeup (Almay) work?", "selftext": "Almay makes a foundation called \"smart shade\" that is supposed to *magically* change to match your skin tone.  It comes out of the tube looking white with little black specks in it, but as you rub it into your skin, it turns to a fleshy colour.  What kind of sorcery is this?  Help me /r/AskScience!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iihu1/how_the_heck_does_smart_shade_makeup_almay_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c242p06"], "score": [4], "text": ["This actually turned out to be a very interesting question, and I'm glad you asked it (I think I might even write/draw it up on my blog).  For all the rest of the men who doesn't know what RainbootRobot is talking about, she's referring to [this], and The Internet seems to suggest it actually [works] (within a range of complexion).\n\nSome more digging yielded this [patent], claiming an \"emulsion makeup compositions for keratinous surfaces which change color upon application\".  Taking apart the patent language, I believe this is what's behind SmartShade.  This foundation, apparently, is different from other formulations in that the pigments are not dispersed to start with, but instead captured in little droplets of emulsion.  (The chemistry there is interesting, but I don't think you need to know that to appreciate the real issue.)\n\nThe pigments and the carrier solution are not the same polarity: one is hydrophilic, the other hydrophobic.  When it's applied next to the skin, the hydrophilic pigments diffuse out from the hydrophobic media, and disperses itsel now on the keratinous surface (skin).  And this, straight from the horse's mouth,\n\n >  In the case of a composition applied to skin such as foundation makeup, the development of the color directly on the skin from a non-skin matching color to a skin matching color *gives the consumer the impression that the composition is \"smart\" and capable of changing color to exactly match her skin tone.*\n\nIn other words, it's all smoke and mirrors -- which is why \"SmartShade\" foundation comes in \"light\", \"light-medium\", and \"medium\" ;)\n\n[works]: _URL_2_\n[this]: _URL_3_\n[patent]: _URL_0_\n\n*edit* - ...and for a more graphical explanation, this is the writeup in [comic form](_URL_1_)!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.google.com/patents?id=S72XAAAAEBA", "http://www.jkwchui.com/2011/07/how-does-smartshade-cosmetics-work/", "http://leftoverluncheonmeat.blogspot.com/2006/05/product-review-almay-smart-shade.html", "http://www.almay.com/Products/Face/Foundation/smart-shade-makeup.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "q8cyz", "title": "Why the exact moment I turn on my desk lamp (that has lost the protection glass) in a room my speakers, in another room, make a sudden noise?", "selftext": "When I kept them close I figured not having the little protection glass my lamp would \"disturb\" my speakers (even though I couldn't give a proper scientific explanation), but I was surprised when the same thing happened even when I moved the lamp to another room. When I turn the lamp on I can hear in the exact same moment my speakers making something like a dull thud. Why exactely does this happen? How is it possible than the noise comes up in the same moment I turn the lamp on even with a wall in between?\nAnd I guess this is bad for the speakers, isn't it?\nSorry if my english wasn't perfect, thanks in advance!\n\nEdit: Thank you everyone, I appreciate you taking time in answering my question", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q8cyz/why_the_exact_moment_i_turn_on_my_desk_lamp_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3vjver", "c3vkzr6", "c3vm7ve"], "score": [6, 2, 5], "text": ["sounds like you have a bad ground wire", "This is just a guess, but...\n\nTurning on a lamp that shares a circuit with the speakers will cause a brief voltage drop, as well as a change in current flow. One of those things is causing a movement of electrons in the speaker circuit as it equalizes again, which briefly acts as an audio signal to the speaker.\n\nHey, it's a theory.", "You sound like an early investigator of electricity.\n\nWhen searching for a relationship between electricity and magnetism, someone (Faraday or Ampere or Volta, one of those dudes) tried placing a needle next to a current-carrying wire. Nothing happened.\n\nHowever, when he watched the setup carefully, **as soon as he flipped the switch** and the wire carried current, the compass needle deflected for a brief instant. He then surmised that a *changing* electric field/current produces a magnetic field, and a *changing* magnetic field produces an electrical current. This is one of the reasons everyone uses Alternating Current power: transformers couldn't transform voltages without a changing current producing a magnetic field, and that changing magnetic field producing a current.\n\nNow, is this phenomenon directly responsible? I don't know, but you reminded me of that anecdote of the guy flipping a switch and seeing a momentary magnetic phenomenon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2de7rj", "title": "Can radiation spikes, such as those caused by nuclear weapons, really be detected by satalites?", "selftext": "In many films, nuclear weapons are detected by some government agency through satellite imaging. How based in reality is this?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2de7rj/can_radiation_spikes_such_as_those_caused_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjooh4q"], "score": [9], "text": ["It is reality.  Check out this page on the [Vela satellites](_URL_0_).  You basically take astronomy satellites that are pointed away from the earth, and point them towards the earth.  They have x-ray and gamma ray detectors.  Since a nuclear explosion emits lots of gamma rays, it is easy to see.  In addition, due to the gamma double flash, it is easy to distinguish gamma rays from a nuclear weapon from gamma rays due to natural sources.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_\\(satellite\\)"]]}
{"q_id": "2e0me8", "title": ": why don't we use morphine for lethal injection?", "selftext": "There have been a lot of botched lethal injections in the past, and the chemicals used are very difficult to acquire. Why don't we use morphine or cyanide to kill someone? We know they will die, and the chemicals are much easier to get a hold of.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e0me8/eli5_why_dont_we_use_morphine_for_lethal_injection/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjuwccr", "cjuwe99", "cjuxs53", "cjuy9hl", "cjuze6g", "cjv04sj", "cjv2068", "cjv265w", "cjv3tlz", "cjv4h5p", "cjv5vy7", "cjve239"], "score": [11, 3, 19, 11, 4, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Cyanide is painful and inhumane compared to the current injections.", "Is a morphine overdose considered cruel?\n\n8th amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishments (which is why states stopped using the gas chamber)", "There are many pharmaceutical companies that explicitly state \"If you want to buy our drug, you have to promise not to use it to kill people.\"  This is the reason that the US has had so many issues with lethal injection drugs recently; some cocktails have been disallowed by the manufacturers, and some of the new mixtures haven't been as thoroughly tested and aren't having the expected results.\n\nThis is a guess, but I'd say the morphine manufacturing companies slapa sticker on the bottle that says \"No executions, thanks!\"", "Morphine doesn't work very reliably as a poison. Many people take huge doses regularly for medical or recreational purposes without dying. To use it for an execution you'd need to have a large amount available (awkward to run to the morphine store halfway through an execution). Since it's not just a dangerous drug but also a drug of abuse, you'd need to make sure you had extra safeguards in place to secure the supply and prevent diversion by those in charge of it. The mechanism of death or produces could be argued to be cruel, as well. Going to sleep and forgetting to breathe doesn't sound so bad... ... Choking to death on vomit does. Both could happen.", "Additional to the other good thoughts here, I would imagine a drug like morphine, with high demand for those not on death row, would be better used as intended. Some for executions to make the process more humane makes sense too. I'm not saying they shouldn't be given any, just that priorities for important drugs likely dictate responsible usage is elsewhere.", "If you want to know the most efficient and humane way to kill a human being, then you can watch the BBC Horizon documentary done by Michael Portillo, \"How to Kill a Human Being\". \n\n_URL_0_\n\nPortillo thinks he has found the perfect solution.", "Why don't they just use propofol and then chop their head off?", "if someone would just OD me with Morphine and then also shoot me ~5 minutes later that'd be ok with me", "People who like the death penalty don't want the condemned to experience euphoria at execution.\n\nPeople who don't like the death penalty don't want morphine to be a work-around of their humanitarian argument.\n\nThere's no lobby for it.", "Some states use Dilaudid (Hydromorphone) in their lethal injection cocktails. Typically along with a Benzodiazapene.", "Why don't they use a carbon monoxide chamber to put the victim to sleep with 0 pain and then they eventually asphyxiate?", "People have suggested Nitrogen asphyxiation as the most humane, cheap and effective way to carrying out the death penalty; problem is that you get a high from Nitrogen and many people were unhappy that murderers get such a humane death."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BY3Trq5qOk"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5mvk5p", "title": "in video games, why killing people and violence is ok, but sex and nudity is still controversial?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mvk5p/eli5_in_video_games_why_killing_people_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc6ph0q", "dc6qbf5", "dc6sdkh", "dc6tl4l", "dc6x2lq", "dc73h06", "dc7b5tb", "dc7fugk"], "score": [86, 24, 3, 2, 20, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["Because of your culture.  \nIn comparison, here in germany it's the other way around. We're more lax on the sex and nudity, but violence, gore and the like get the boot.", "Video games are largely a USA centered industry, with Japan being the 2nd place, grandfathered in.\n\nThe USA is a country which is totally fine with murder and blood and violence. We figuratively get off on it. Probably literally, too, some of us. \n\nAlso, the largest games are marketed to and prodicrd with intent on 12-14 year old boys in the US, and they demographic wants to be violent and heroic at the same time. The more blood, the better.", "Maybe it has to do with all the fundie Christians here. There are European countries with lots of religious people but they're religious in a different way it seems. Not so preoccupied with normal human sexuality (except maybe homosexuality)", "In pretty much all media in the United States there's a very weird relationship between violence and sexuality, and how much of each is okay. There's no rhyme or reason to it, the history of it going back decades, some things getting more relaxed while others have stayed rigid.", "Top voted comment is everyone in america loves violence and hates sex because they're dumb, but it's really just an aspect of our culture. not just american culture, virtually any culture. imagine you walk in on your two kids having a pretend gun-fight in the living room. They're just playing. Play-fighting, wrestling, all these things are just completely ingrained in us as a species. Now imagine you walked into your living room and your kids are pretend fucking. That's a whole other situation isn't it? \n\nLike it or not, fighting, and violence is something that we see in children's cartoons because mild conflict and fighting is something even babies are capable of. Sex however is something that's supposedly much more mature than just imaginary shoot-outs or car crashes, because it's honestly not really something that people want kids to be exposed to at an early age. \n\nI get it, some countries are cooler with it than other countries, but you have to be a complete idiot to not understand why someone wouldn't think twice over lego dudes killing each other, and might be hestant about seeing barbie giving ken a blowjob.", "Wouldnt it make more sense the other way around since sex is needed for human survival while killing can be avoided? ", "This is just my opinion (as a mother of 2 boys).\n\nViolence is black and white: don't do it. Don't shoot someone. Don't hit someone. Don't fight someone. Violence is bad. Video games are pretend. TV is pretend. There are bad people in the world who do bad things. Don't be a bad person who is violent. Stay away from bad people.\n\nSex is complicated. You can't say \"don't ever do it.\" But you don't want to just say, \"it's something only adults do or only married couples do.\" Sex is different for different people. It's about respect and consent. It's about responsibility. Then you have other things: handjobs, blowjobs, making out, etc. Some may think 10-14 years old is too young to be having sex, some may think 13-16 is too young. Then, most people would agree maturity for sex is different for different people.\n\nIf something violent pops up on a TV screen, I can easily explain it away to my sons that it's pretend or some people in the world are just bad.\n\nIf something sexual pops up on a TV screen, well, now I got an hour long discussion about sex, consent, love, etc.", "Some really weird comments in here skewering western culture and claiming the pervasiveness of violence is because of the culture these things come from.  \n\nThat is total bullshit.  Games depict violence, normalize violence and contain violence as a central theme because of the very nature of games.  \n\nIn most games, and video games are no exception, you have winners and you have losers; you have win conditions and you have fail-states.  Imagining a game where victory is achievable through violent means is easy; you win, you live and progress, you lose, you die and go no further. \n\nNow imagine what a game would look like if its core mechanic was sexual in nature.  What is your win condition?  Getting to have sex? Getting married?  You can't gamify sexual content without doing one or all of the following:\n\n* alienating half of all possible users by making your win-state a relationship with a woman, thus losing the interest of all possible people attracted to men\n\n* alienating everyone that doesn't find the \"win-state\" of your game to be even desirable. ie. how do you make your game-girl universally appealing to everyone in your male audience\n\n* Objectifying women/men by making your win condition a relationship.  A trophy.\n\nThese games exist, they are called dating sims and they are very niche products which many people find creepy or demeaning.  Imagine if mainstream gaming depicted sexuality and relationships to the degree it does violence, and how much more damaging that would be to people's ability to form meaningful real-world relationships.\n\nViolence on the other hand is more universal, more immediately identifiable, and more easily translated into a game.  Not only that, but people understand that there is a time and place for violence, that society universally condemns the use of extreme violence to solve our problems, whereas sexuality and its expression is more nuanced.\n\n**TL;DR** games are violent because winning and losing is clearer, less morally grey, and easier to understand than if the goals and subject matter of the game was sexual"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "e0g359", "title": "What is the different between Stresses and Pressures?", "selftext": "I am a fresh mechanical engineering student and as i start learning solid's mechanics , i am confused between the different of these two as they both have same formula ? Force by area. Thanks", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/e0g359/what_is_the_different_between_stresses_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f8e956c", "f8eisga", "f8ff10z"], "score": [9, 9, 6], "text": ["Typically, \"pressure\" is used for fluids and while \"stresses\" occurs in solids.\n(Edit: that only applies to Newtonian fluids though.)\n\nPressure can only act perpendicular (normal) to a surface while stress can can perpendicular (normal) and parallel to a surface (shear stresses).\n\nPressure is scalar and can be defined by just one value - magnitude. \n\nStress is a tensor that needs nine vector components (magnitude + direction) to fully define.", "Consider a small box of material.  The material nearby can exert force on any face in any direction.  There are 9 unique options, forces in the x, y, or z direction on an x, y, or z- facing face: these are the components of the stress tensor.\n\nThe pressure is the inward shared component: the x-force on an x-face, y-force on a y-face, and z- force on a z-face.  In an inviscid fluid, these are equal and are the *only* stresses acting, but in other materials there may be \u201csideways\u201d viscous or elastic stresses too.", "Stresses in a material are directional and get described via the [Cauchy stress tensor](_URL_0_) \u03c3, mapping surface normals to surface traction vectors.\n\nOne possible definition of scalar pressure in terms of this stress tensor is\n\n    p = -trace(\u03c3)/3\n\nie the average of the traction components parallel to the normals of three surfaces pointing in linearly independent directions. This is an isotropic contribution to stress, ignoring any shear and independent of direction. The minus sign is there so gas pressure (which is compressive instead of tensile) will be positive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_stress_tensor"]]}
{"q_id": "3roaqz", "title": "why does everything seem so interesting while i am procrastinating?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3roaqz/eli5why_does_everything_seem_so_interesting_while/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwptza9", "cwpucjd", "cwpv53a", "cwpv76l", "cwpwkut", "cwpx821", "cwpzjcn"], "score": [16, 56, 2, 121, 32, 3, 2], "text": ["If I had to take a stab in the dark at this, I'd say it's because when you do have something you need to get done, e.g. a paper, you indirectly look for things that will distract you from what you're supposed to be accomplishing. Your brain starts to perceive all these mundane things like cleaning your room as another way to get out of the task you need to do. Just my guess. ", "Because you aren't \"allowed\" to do it in that moment, which makes it more tantalizing than if you were free to do it all you pleased.  The scarcity renders it attractive.", "Just heard a show on this, have a listen at - \n\n_URL_0_\n", "Tl;dr, eli5: Our brains reward us for avoiding threats by releasing feel good chemicals which makes everything else seem rewarding. \n\nIt's because avoiding things that seem scary, threatening, or overwhelming feels good and is really reinforcing. For example, think about a time where the professor forgot to show up for an exam that you were nervous about or something similar. The world takes on a brighter hue right? Our brains are programmed to release feel good chemicals when we dodge threats. Same thing happens when we get through it and persevere but sometimes people can get stuck in an avoidance behavior pattern. ", "You procrastinate due to stress and discomfort.  Stress causes you to tend to do things that will avoid the stress.  Deep down you might be afraid of doing a terrible job on your paper, so the idea of working on the paper is stressful.  Your expected result is negative, you imagine doing a disappointing job.  Doing that paper will be hard, and it will result in a bad feeling.\n\nOn the other hand, nearly anything is preferable.  If you clean your room, you will succeed.  It's very unlikely you will fail at cleaning your room.  It will make you feel like you've accomplished something.  If you start to clean your room, you immediately feel better because you are distracted.  You finish cleaning your room and feel better.  \n\nThis might be a good thing for prompting you to do something uncomfortable.  You're now in a more comfortable space, you've just accomplished something, you feel better.  Unfortunately, in the case of a paper that is due, another result is you've now got less time to complete it, so you're even more certain the paper is going to be inadequate.  That stress forces you to seek out something that will comfort you.  Maybe you will have a snack, you're getting a bit hungry, you'll do a better job if you don't try to write the paper hungry.  Oh shit, another 20 minutes have passed. etc.\n\nEventually, the stress builds up to the point that it motivates you to act because you aren't worried about whether you're going to have a good enough paper, you're worried about whether you will have any paper at all, and by that point your only escape is to either write the paper, or not. \n\nIt's hard to break that cycle, and the only real way to do that is learn to mute that anticipation of discomfort.  But that is rooted pretty deep in our psyche, and is really kind of the same sort of thing that keeps us from touching a hot stove.  Some people get over it by psyching themselves up, and with positive self-talk.  \n\nPersonally, I think what's best is to cool down, meditate or otherwise clear my head, decide rationally what I'm going to do, and try to do the absolute least amount possible adequately.  If it's a paper, I don't think about whether it's going to be good or not, I don't think about failure or success.  I just open Word.  I look at the assignment. I could just stop there if I want, that's easy.  No reason to procrastinate on that.  Then I take one more step, I choose my topic. It doesn't have to be the best topic, it just has to be a topic.  Maybe I choose a few.  They don't have to be the best.  Then I think about which of those is the easiest for me to turn into something interesting. \n\nAgain, nothing here is high pressure, nothing here is hard, I can't succeed or fail at any of this, I've just done some easy things.  I am not doing it as the first steps to complete the paper, I'm not doing it with the goal to write an A level paper.  I'm just thinking about the question, for myself. Of these topics, which point would be easiest to describe? \n\nThen maybe I would jot down some structure.  Here's a topic to discuss, here's a topic to discuss, here's a topic to discuss.  I'd think about why they're interesting.  I wouldn't think about why my teacher would think they're interesting, but I've picked what I thought was the most interesting topic.  Maybe I have an opinion or idea on this point of discussion, maybe I'll look it up to see if my opinion is shared or if my idea is supported. Oh cool, I was right.  Oh cool, I was mistaken.  I take a few notes about this.  \n\nAfter a while, I'm genuinely interested in the topic, even if it wasn't something I was totally interested in to start with, I've given myself enough lead in to the paper to actually care about whether my preconceptions match reality, or some of the more interesting points in the discussion.  By that point, I'm writing the paper for my own benefit.  I'll format it in the structure that my teacher expects, but only because it's easy enough to do and get that out of the way while I'm working on figuring out some things about a topic that is now reasonably interesting. \n\nBut as soon as I'm thinking about doing it for the purpose of not getting punished for a bad grade or a bad result, I'm far more likely to start to procrastinate. ", "If I could figure out why, instead of working,  I am trying to answer your question about procrastination, I could probably answer your question about procrastination.", "This sounds nuts, but the only time I enjoy anything is when I'm procrastinating.\n\nIf I'm not avoiding something else, I am bored out of my mind.\n\nIt is terrible and non-adaptive. But this is how I am. And I've been successfully employed (and riding a very thin line) for a decade."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.wpr.org/shows/why-do-we-procrastinate"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "521lvl", "title": "why do dams have a massive ramp when releasing overflow water?", "selftext": "Most dam ive seen have a big 'ramp' at the bottom that direct water into the air. Any specific reason for this?\n\nExample: _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/521lvl/eli5_why_do_dams_have_a_massive_ramp_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7gn1hr", "d7gn92g", "d7gnhu2", "d7go44g", "d7gu0fm", "d7gu92s", "d7gx2y2", "d7gyblw", "d7gz1lv", "d7h1mw3", "d7h2efd", "d7h3ebe", "d7hpeto"], "score": [21, 331, 1871, 327, 28, 8, 17, 3, 9, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Spillways can have baffles, steps, or a ramp in them as a means of dissipating energy. By slowing down the water, there's less erosion of the riverbed right behind the dam.", "The biggest danger for a dam is undercutting, where the water flowing down the face of the dam swirls around and eats away at or under its base. But designing a spillway to direct the water away from the face of the dam, you reduce or eliminate that risk.\n\nThrowing the water into the air also gets rid of a lot of the energy of that falling water. It transmits a lot of it into air that is pulled into the foam, and the air takes the energy away as wind.\n\nLastly, the water in a dam has often been still for a long time, and has lost a lot of its oxygen and gained some sulphur chemicals. That oxygen gets added back in, and the sulphur dispersed, by mixing in a lot of air like this. This isn't as important with spillways, but it is with dams that release water from pipes at their base.", "Spillways are generally used in emergency situations when you need to reduce the water level in your reservoir FAST. The water released has huge amounts of energy, as you can see in the video.\n\nThink of all the damage that water can do when it reaches the bottom. If you just had a ramp straight down, the water would reach the downstream riverbed with huge amounts of energy, and start pushing away the soil and rocks at the bottom (causing erosion). \n\nBut, so what if that stuff gets pushed away? Well the dam is a really heavy structure that's supporting lots of pressure, and so it requires a good base to stand on. If this erosion goes uncontrolled, the dam can become unsupported and lose stability, leading to a collapse. This would be catastrophic for anyone/anything that is downstream. (You can google dam collapses, that shit ain't pretty).\n\nWith this in mind, spillways are designed with a big curve at the bottom called a 'ski jump'. The purpose is simple: to dissipate all of that energy flowing downstream. And tbh it also has the added benefit of looking super cool.   ", "Same reason that when I am pouring water from a 5 gallon bucket into my fish tank I have to make sure I pour it over the rock structure in the tank so the gravel doesn't get shot everywhere and my fish aren't left with a giant crater. ^_^", "I actually just watched a show on the science channel about the three gorges dam in China. The reason the ramp is there is so the water can separate in the air and the energy dissipate so as to not dig out the base of the dam.", "Essentially, if the ramp wasn't there the water would erode the area just below the dam. \n\nThis could cause the whole dam to fail and come crashing down.", "Does this affect the wild life at all? Like there has to be a ton of fish going off that ramp and being moved to a new ecosystem down river. ", "There is no greater force on earth than moving water en mass.  You have to protect the channel, or you'll be carving the basement down further when releasing energy in this small a space, at this high a volume.\n\nIf you do not protect the foundation of the entire area (including immediately downstream), then your dam will be undermined and the damage will be catastrophic.", "Water coming down a dam has a lot of energy. You could use that energy to make electricity. Some dams aren't used to make electricity. Other dams make electricity but sometimes need to release more water than they can use to make electricity.\n\nIf the water was simply released downwards, it would erode the river bottom, and maybe even erode under the dam and weaken it. The ramp is there to use up some of that energy and make the water hit further away from the dam, to protect the dam.", "From /u/runningturtle6\n\n[original post](_URL_0_)\n\n > It's a phenomenon called hydraulic jump. The spillway is designed this way so that the water's energy is dissipated before entering the river. This helps prevent erosion and a torrent of fast moving water rushing downstream.\n\nI believe the dam is partially built on the area where the water would hit so if you erode it, you'd be eroding part of the foundation of the dam itself. Further in the comments it is debated whether this is a \"hydraulic jump\" or not.", "I would think because it takes out some of the kinetic energy when it goes up it so it won't just drill a hole in the ground", "Energy dissapation, some use ramps, some have sloped blocks called dragon teeth, it slows the watwr and allows gravith to do most of the work.  Without these the erosion to downstream would be very problematic.", "To reduce the amount of kinetic energy of the falling water.\n\nOtherwise it could tear hills literally apart, create mudslides, etc."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://i.imgur.com/WPWaOc2.gifv"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/51zies/emergency_dam_discharge/d7gife0"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7yb429", "title": "how did a small country like japan occupy a vast country like china, while still projecting power elsewhere, during the buildup to ww2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yb429/eli5_how_did_a_small_country_like_japan_occupy_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duezpxw", "duf0dbl", "duf8s92"], "score": [129, 7, 19], "text": ["1: They didn't occupy all of China, only parts of the coastline. \n\n2: China was in the middle of a Civil War between the communists and the nationalists, they weren't prepared for an invasion. The two factions did band together to repel the Japanese, but it was an uneasy alliance, and by 1938 it was breaking down.\n\n3: China wasn't exactly the most technologically advanced nation at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese war. For example, they still used biplanes while the Japanese Air Force had actual fighters.\n\n4: Not only were the Chinese technologically inferior, they also had less of everything except manpower. Take a look at the chart [here](_URL_0_). In 1939 Japan had almost 5 times the aircraft, 4 times the tanks, and 1.5 times field artillery. By 1941, the ratios got even worse.\n\n5: Japanese soldiers were fanatics during battle. Officers often stressed the importance of no retreat, of death over dishonor. This led to Japanese troops achieving victories from the brink of defeat. \n\n6: Japan had the resources to control major cities, but lacked the manpower to lock down the vast countryside, where the Chinese would often launch guerrilla strikes. And by 1941, when the USA joined the war, Japan had to reallocate resources to another front.\n\n", "The population difference was not as large as you would guess.  China had a population of ~517 million and Japan had 73 million in what is Japan today. Add to that 30 million in Korea and Taiwan that Japan had controlled since. 1910 , 1895\n\nSo the population difference is only 5:1. China was not a united country but split and there had been a civil war since 1927 between the communist and the  Republic of China- Republic of China had formally control on all parts of china expect the communist controlled since 1928 but the former warlords had huge influence and control of their former areas. The Republic of China and communist had a temporary and of the civil war to unite against Japan in 1936 \n\nSo a country ravaged by civile war was against a united and undamaged country. It is no surprise that better equipped and trained Japanese troops had success in the war.\n\nJapan did not occupied all of China Look at the maps [here](\n_URL_0_). A estimation is that is they only occupy 1/3.  Manchuria was already a Japanese puppet state since 1905. Xinjiang and Tibet that is today controlled by China is not included in the estimation. As they are separated on the maps when they was semindependent/independent at the time.\n", "From around 1600 to the mid-1800s, during the Edo period, Japan was a [closed](_URL_4_), isolationist society.  Foreigners were not welcome, and Japanese were not allowed to travel.  \n\nThis ended in 1853 when an American navy fleet led by Commodore Perry [sailed in](_URL_2_) and said \"Hi, you're going to be trading with us now.... or else.\"  The Japanese leadership was still stuck with 200-year-old technology -- literally bows and arrows and swords -- and had nothing to fight back against modern steam warships.  So they had no choice but to agree to Perry's demands.  Over the next few years, other world powers including Russia also used their navy to push Japan around.\n\nJapan was humiliated, and decided to do something about it.  They engaged in a crash program of modernization.  During the [Meiji](_URL_3_) era, they hired westerners to teach science and engineering, built railroads, factories, modern schools and hospitals, and most importantly, conscripted a powerful modern army and navy.\n\nWithin 30 years, Japan had become a modern industrial nation, powerful enough to defend itself against western powers.  But that meant it was also powerful enough to go up against its neighbors.  As a small island nation, Japan had limited food and mineral resources, and was worried about attack from foreign powers.  And hey, if you've got a modern army and navy, there's a huge temptation to use it.   To keep its new modern society running, Japan decided to [attack Korea](_URL_0_), which was very weak militarily, and under the control of China, which had a much less modern military and was dealing with a major revolt on the other side of China at the time.\n\nJapan won handily, taking over Korea.  Several more conflicts followed against [Russia](_URL_1_) and China, centered around Japan being worried that they might try to take Korea away, and Russia and China being worried that Japan might not stop with Korea.  Japan won all of them, eventually leaving them with control of all of Manchuria (what's now northern China).  Not just the coastline, as /u/Dueling7 describes, but up to 700 miles inland to the modern border of Mongolia and Russia.  This gave Japan control over the resources of a huge region, and the (unwilling) labor of about 45 million people.  This, plus their technological superiority, made them the most powerful empire in the region.\n\nSo the main answer to the question is that Japan engaged in a crash modernization program after being bullied by Western powers, but it's worth mentioning that things in China were not going nearly as well at the time.  The ruling Qing dynasty were ethnic Manchurians, and not popular among the majority Han Chinese.  Several popular uprisings against the emperor occurred during this time.  In addition, Western powers were working hard to get the entire country hooked on opium so they could profit off it, and several failed revolts against Western trade occurred as a result.  China tried to carry out the same modernization program the Japanese were pursuing, but civil unrest and foreign meddling made it impossible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Forces"], ["https://www.quora.com/How-much-of-China-did-Japan-control-at-greatest-extent"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakumatsu", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku"]]}
{"q_id": "2ftlo5", "title": "Do we know anything about how the Olmec civilization was ruled?", "selftext": "[ ](/classyspitfire)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ftlo5/do_we_know_anything_about_how_the_olmec/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckctk95"], "score": [64], "text": ["That is a complicated question and to answer it in a way that is more illuminating to the readers out there who do not know much about the Olmec, I am going to address it and some broader Mesoamerican history at the same time.  **If you don't want this contextual information, just skip to my second reply below.**\n\nBefore we begin, I should offer two disclaimers - I do not specialize in the study of the Olmec and more importantly that field remains very divided due to the limited amount of archaeological data we have on the Olmec and the extent to which much of our current understanding of the Olmec relies on extensive interpretation of that limited dataset. \n\nNeverthless the archaeological data we do have suggests that the rise of the Olmec civilization proper during the Early Formative (~1000 BCE) coincided with a significant increase in regional trade ties across much of Mesoamerica.  Readers who are unfamiliar with Mesoamerican history should know that Mesoamerican culture was in its infancy during this timeframe and that this development was one of the seminal moments in the overall evolution of Mesoamerica.  While the nature of depositional means that only certain kinds of artifacts will be preserved in the archaeological record for an extended period of time, Archaeologists are fairly certain that ritual goods and precious stones were among the primary goods being exchanged by Mesoamericans in this first example of a pan-Mesoamerican trade network.   Trade goods identified as originating in the Olmec heartland as well Olmec-inspired iconography found at distant sites like Tlatilco and Chalcatzingo point to the centrality of the Olmec to this activity, which raises several questions about early Mesoamerican trade: what allowed the Olmec to take such a preeminent role in this trade activity?  What does the widespread dispersal of Olmec religious paraphernalia across Mesoamerica say about the nature of this exchange?\n\nTo answer these questions we must consider several factors. Even during this early time period, Mesoamerica was a very culturally diverse region.  When one considers the difficulty of facilitating trade across a wide range of cultural and linguistic barriers (to say nothing of the complicated logistics of moving goods over long distances) it becomes apparent that the growth of this trade network must have reflected a profound shift in the nature of Mesoamerican affairs.  Archaeologists generally agree that, save for a few notable sites, most Mesoamerican societies during this time frame exhibited a limited amount of social complexity.  While burial deposits and site layouts do point to a degree of social stratification, most Mesoamerican societies do not appear to have the complex social hierarchies and individual specialization that is associated with \"civilization\".  Monumental architecture as Olmec sites like San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, La Venta, and Laguna de los Cerros demonstrates that the Olmec on the other hand were an entirely different animal so to speak.  The construction of the temple mounds, stone sculptures, and ritual complexes found at these sites would have required significant resources and labor which could have only been organized by a very centralized society with narrowly delineated social positions and roles.\n\nArchaeologists believe that the comparatively greater social complexity of the Olmec offered them a significant advantage in the mass production and distribution of goods, one that allowed them to achieve dominance in this early Mesoamerican exchange.  Here it should be pointed out that \"trade dominance\" in this context is not what we would imagine it to be in today's society.  The Olmec were not a gang of merchants who produced a lot of consumer goods which drove their competitors out of business.  The Mesoamerican exchange is not generally thought of as something that had any immediate and significant impact on the day to day lives of most Mesoamericans.  It is instead a phenomenon that exclusively involved the ruling elite of divergent societies found across Mesoamerica.  Although not always explicitly visible in the archaeological record, the exchange of goods also entails a transference of ideas and particularly in the case of the Olmecs, the widespread trade of their ritual goods signifies the high esteem many Mesoamerican elites held for Olmec sensibilities and beliefs.\n\nA recurrent theme in Mesoamerican culture is the use of exotic goods and foreign religious imagery as a means of legitimizing one's own rule and authority.  For a long time Mesoamericanists have seen the widespread demand and adoption of Olmec aesthetic and material culture as the first expression of this theme.  The general thinking is that elites coming from societies that were materially more humble than the Olmec would have been extremely impressed by the extravagance and grandeur of Olmec goods and culture, seeking to associate themselves with and ultimately emulate the behaviors and organizational patterns of the Olmec themselves.  It is for this reason that the Olmec are widely considered to be the \"Mother culture\" of Mesoamerica.  As the Olmec either directly or indirectly organized trade to distant regions and other Mesoamerican elites came to demand their ritual items, a pan-Mesoamerican elite culture began to develop - with certain religious practices and beliefs being adopted so completely across the region that a basic template for Mesoamerican civilization was established.  Beliefs which were still widely observed by the time the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica, like the worship of mountains and an early precursor to the Aztec rain god Tlaloc (God IV), reverence for the cardinal directions, and perhaps even the Mesoamerican Ballgame have their origins in Olmec religion.  Although this narrative has been rightly critiqued by many (I myself am a firm believer that the Olmec were merely partners in the development of a shared Mesoamerican culture and that the contributions of the Zapotec have been grossly underestimated by Mesoamericanists) and there are competing explanations for the abundance of Olmec imagery in other Mesoamericans cultures, the basics of this interpretation are largely accepted by Mesoamericanists. \n\n(Continued in reply)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "51qohb", "title": "how do people make/steal money using credit card skimmers?", "selftext": "I mean walk me through it because clearly I am missing something here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51qohb/eli5_how_do_people_makesteal_money_using_credit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7e14u7", "d7e16kw", "d7e1lhr", "d7e5sam", "d7e72x7", "d7e79w3", "d7e8ffx", "d7e8mnp", "d7e9lkg", "d7e9qvr", "d7eat35", "d7ebi1s", "d7ec2u5", "d7edq3l", "d7eg6z0", "d7eiifa", "d7ej4wg", "d7ejvyz", "d7ek9cf", "d7eld19", "d7eljah", "d7embtl", "d7en24a", "d7ewxol", "d7ezdjd", "d7f0m8l"], "score": [50, 1018, 33, 8, 2, 13, 8, 2, 36, 424, 3, 2, 12, 3, 2, 937, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["The skimmer reads the information off of your card's magnetic stripe and saves it.  Later, the thief retrieves the skimmer and writes the data onto a blank card so it now contains all of your card's data, and then uses it to make purchases, which get charged to you.  Alternatively, they just use the card number and expiration date encoded in the magnetic stripe to make online purchases.", "A skimmer is a device that can read the information off your credit card without you noticing. The information can be used to create a clone of your card that can be used to buy items. For example someone could have a skimmer on a payment terminal. You could use the terminal and the skimmer stores your credit card information internally. Later on the criminals can return to retreive their skimmer and read your credit card information. They can then make a replica of your credit card and go to another store and buy something. Your bank will process the payment as it thinks you made the purchase. Nobody will notice until you check your credit card statement and makes the bank aware of this. By that time it can be very hard to track down the criminals.", "Have smart cards and PINs effectively killed this off? I can't recall last time I swiped my card in the UK. ", "google Credit Card skimmer\n_URL_0_\nliterally the first link and the standard for discussion due to the immense amount of research that Brian Krebs has put into the topic", "They sell the stolen credit card numbers for money.\nThose who buy credit card numbers, buy stuff with your credit card.", "A couple of ways:\n\nThey read and store the info from the strip on the card.\n\nThey have a circuit board under the number pad that read and store keystrokes. \n\nThen they come back and pick it up. They are made to look exactly like the real reader and are designed to slip on easily. \n\nexample: _URL_1_\n\nsome pictures I found on Google: _URL_0_\n", "Credit card scammers more commonly enroll in a merchant service provider to get a new \"business\"  signed up to accept credit cards. This then allows them to charge all the cards(copied or keyed in) and have it deposited into a bank account. If the merchant service doesn't have an underwriting process, the account is usually approved and then the person can start processing the cards immediately upon receiving the terminal or card reader. Even worse, most of the scammers would just get an online only account that allows them to key in the cards and process them that way. \n\nSource: worked in merchant services. Shutdown and encountered so many fake and stolen \"businesses\"", "The quickest and easiest way people make money from using skimmers is by selling the collected information to other people. \n\nThey'll collect a list of names, card numbers, and PINs, then sell it to someone else who has the ability to use it for a few hundred dollars. \n\nThat person can then clone the cards or use the info online, make a bunch of purchases, then sell the bought items for cash.", "Ex bank employee here. \n\nThe primary way (in the UK anyway) couples a skimmer with a small camera which films the keypad. The skimmer reads your card info and the camera films you entering your pin. \n\nThey then put info from the skimmed card on any other strip card (lotyalty cards, phone top up cards, gift cards etc) and use this to create a clone. When they have a big pile of cards they hit up the cash points withdrawing the maximum amount (\u00a3300 per day, or around $400) per card every day until you notice and cancel the card.\n\nWe had reports of people making \u00a310-15,000 per day with this technique if they snagged enough cards, and this is why it's crazy important for you to hide your PIN number when you type it in even if there's nobody around. If they clone your card but don't have your pin it's almost useless, if they have both be prepared for a pain in the ass whirlwind of police reports, fraud claim forms and back-and-forth before you get it sorted. \n\nEDIT: in case anyone was tempted, we also caught the vast majority of people doing this. ATMs are crazy-well defended with cameras, and are in highly monitored areas. Even if people put a mask on a few streets away we still had footage of them on the approach that was good enough to catch them. ", "Cop here:\n\nTo add to how everyone has explained how they steal your money, here is how they keep it. \n\nInstead of buying things at local stores, they trade/sell numbers to people across the country, making it difficult for local law enforcement to work the case. Then, they buy Bitcoin or those visa vanilla gift cards. Then, they have clean spendable cash and it doesn't matter if your card gets shut off. The criminals who take a step further then buy money orders with the vanilla gift cards and western union that money to a bank account, often in South America. \n\nIt's a complex process. \n\n\nTo avoid being a victim:\n\nAlways use a credit card at gas pumps, it's easier to get your money back if you get skimmed. \n\nAlways fill up at the pumps in the middle, that are in direct view of the door and clerk, it's less likely they will put skimmers on those. \n\nTry to see if the tape over the seams of the \"payment area\" are broken, if they are the box has been opened by a criminal, however sometimes they get in without breaking the tape.  ", "My time to shine...\nI work for a very large US domestic bank, on their \"card team.\" I see this all day. Skimming is a very common practice among fraudsters. \n\nWhen a customer swipes their card in a terminal that has a reader the merchant and the customer do not have anyway of knowing that the card has been skimmed till it's too late. The card reader takes the info from the card and either does a) send info directly to another computer that the fraudster is looking at in real time and then they forward that info directly onto the black market. Or b) saves the info directly to the skimmer and then is retrieved later with a ton of different cards.\n\nFrom there all of the info can be applied to dummie cards, think of a hotel, they have a stack of \"blank cards\" where they upload the room info to the card in one swipe. These cards typically have the fraudsters name printed on the card and look completely legitimate. \n\nChip technology is a great way to combat this. Everytime the card is ran it places a one time card number for that transaction, then is changes to a different card number, it's kinda like an access code if you will. This is still possible to get around but not going into detail.\n\nI was reading that people were inquiring about the PIN. I typically don't see these fake cards used at ATM's for that reason alone. Unless the fraudster did in fact install a camera to look at the PIN pad, this is not that common though. \n\nWhen using the chip technology to make a purchase it is the merchant who is the one that decides if it is going to be ran as \"chip and signature\" or \"chip and PIN.\" The fraudsters know what stores do not ask for the PIN. Cough cough Walmart. (most of the time but I heard that will change.)\n\nMy tips and tricks for combating this. Chip readers are 9/10 times used at gas pumps. They are easier to install there, no camera like ATM, and usually nobody is around at night to watch them. What I personally do is shake the card terminal. If it wiggles GO TO ANOTHER PUMP. If you go to a place that you know only does chip and signature, use cash. ATM's typically are safe, remember the wiggle tip. \n\nIf amyone has questions just ask.", "Because banks will try to blame the customer when money is taken from their credit card.\n\nThe theory is very similiar to how stores will refuse to replace/refund items under warranty, and insurance companies turn down 100% of claims at the first stage.\n\nThe hope is that a percentage of people just 'give up' and go away.\n\nIn the stolen card scenario, the bank levies a withdrawal fee as well as the amounts on the card, and if there are enough people who don't quit the bank in disgust and aren't able/willing to take their complaint higher, the bank can make a profit on the scam.\n\nAll the major high-street banks in the UK make 10s to 100s of millions a year from stolen card transactions.\n", "Go on ebay and buy an old point of sales credit card reader.  Alternatively, liberate one from your nearest Rite Aid or wherever.  Take it apart and install a second mag strip reader, a matrix between the rubber buttons and the actual button switches, a small PLD and a bluetooth transceiver.  Buy a cheap burner phone.  Use it to replace one at your local highschool-dropout staffed convenience store and put the burner phone somewhere within bluetooth range (like beneath a rack).  Each swipe texts mag data and pin number to burner.  Go pick up burner.  Profit.\n\nAlternatively, get a job as a waitress at a sit-down restaurant and by-pass 90% of the technological requirements and just buy a skimmer.\n\nThankfully chips are making this exponentially harder to do.  Too bad America failed on the +pin part.", "I've  understood how skimmers work for a long time now. What I've never been able to get it how they get away with it? If you buy something online they can track where you shipped it, if you use in person there's no way you aren't caught on camera somewhere along the way, and if you set up your own merchant service you have to link a bank account which requires all sorts of personal verification to have. The only thing I can imagine getting away with is virtual micro transactions for your video games and such IF you have a good proxy set up. Can someone explain how they get away with it?", "There was a documentary on netfix that followed criminals. One of them was a credit card fraud guy. He had a connection, a bartender who used a skimmer to collect numbers, who sold him the data. He then buys a bunch of the visa gift cards and removes the printed on numbers. He then had a device that loads the stolen number onto the blank visa gift card. He then used a embossing machine to emboss the stolen number onto the card, so it looks like a visa credit card. \nin short he copy stolen numbers onto a visa gift card and emboss it to make it look legit. \nIn the episode he took the copied card to BestBuy and bought a ipad which he posted and sold on craigslist the same day.\n", "Former Credit Card fraud investigator and current fraud consultant/strategist here. There are a few ways that people make money using skimmers (some of which are mentioned here) but some aren't. *Quick edit: the explanations about going to stores and just buying stuff are great - but they are not easy 'cash earners' for the fraudster. They can only buy so many items before the card is declined and then they have to worry about selling it all. The explanation below is how they earn just cold hard cash. \n\nFirst and foremost, a credit card skimmer is just an easy way to collect a pool of credit card numbers. The pool will keep getting fresh new data as long as the skimmer is well placed/hidden (ie. a gas station pump). Also, the magnetic strip on your credit card contains a ton of information including but not limited to the name on the card, the credit card number, and expiration. The first 6 digits of the card even identify where the card came from (such as bank, issuer, etc.)\n\nLet's call the guy who made/placed the skimmer the \"fraudster\". The fraudster collects the credit card data that the skimmer has read and can do multiple things with it.\n\n1) As mentioned, he/she can sell large swaths of these CC numbers online in auctions (usually anonymously on TOR). Since they know the first 6 digits, they can even bucket them into high value cards. For example, Amex cards typically have higher credit limits than a regular debit card. They might organize the Amex cards into one list and earn more on that list than they would from say, Bank of America debit cards. \n\n2) Another thing they can do is transfer the stolen card info onto a new card (someone mentioned this) BUT it is actually not as common to do this onto an existing card with the fraudster's name on it. Instead, these fraudsters usually buy blank hotel keys in bulk (very easy to purchase, common item for hotels/motels). They now have 500 physical cards that they can transfer the stolen credit card info onto. Now these cards are just blank white plastic cards, so going to a store and using them is pointless and too risky. Instead, they sign up to get their own credit card machine. Some are pretty cheap or even free (such as PayPal Here or Square). They can pretend to be some store using fake information and then start physically swiping the cards with the stolen data. The advantage of physically swiping them is the transaction will appear to the processing company and bank/card issuer as done \"in-person\" since the card was swiped. These are seen as lower risk transactions since most fraud is committed via just \"keyed-in transactions\" (such as online purchases, over the phone purchases, etc.). The machine that reads the cards only reads the magnetic strip, so it doesn't recognize that these are just generic hotel keys or crappy plastic cards someone bought online. So to the machine/reader, and to the credit card company and the credit card processor, it is just a normal physically swiped transaction.\n\nThere are more nuances and ways this can get more lucrative but that's the basics of it. Luckily most cardholders are protected from this kind of fraud by their bank/card issuer. If you recognize bad transactions they will cancel the card, refund your money, and send you a new one. The bummer is the people who get hosed are the businesses that might unknowingly accept your stolen card information and sell something. When you get a refund from your bank after \"disputing\" a transaction - that money typically comes from the business it was used at, not the bank. So if a business is tricked into selling a $2,000 painting over the phone to a guy who gave them a stolen credit card number - that business is going to lose the painting and the money and there's nothing they can do about it since the responsibility to investigate was theirs (according to most processors).\n\nFeel free to let me know if you have any questions! I've always been a lurker but this question inspired me to sign up and try my hand at answering something. \n\nEdit*: Wow so happy with how much interaction and questions there are with this explanation! I'd be happy to do an AMA at some point since it seems there is a lot of confusion and remaining questions about fraud, how it's caught, etc. ", "I'm late but I hope this helps.\n\nThe magnetic strip on the back of the card is a sequence of lines that each is either more conductive or is more magnetic (I can't remember which, but think of the strip kind of like 1's and 0's with more conductive and less conductive).\n\nThat's all the magnetic strip is. That code contains the card information. When you swipe your card, the reader reads the information.\n\nSo a credit card skimmer reads the info and saves it but still allows the transaction to complete as normal so that you don't notice something happened.\n\nNow they have your info saved. \n\nThey can then use a machine to print a magnetic strip onto a new credit card that is identical to your credit card, and they can go shopping with it.", "There was this show on Netflix, I forgot what it was called but it looked at the lives of criminals. One episode focused on a credit card thief. \n\nHow he worked was that he knew a girl who worked in a restaurant as a waitress. When she would take a  customer's card when they were paying she would run it through a card reader machine she had in the back. Then she would give this machine that she had hundreds of stolen card numbers saved to it to this guy who would use these numbers to make a fake card with his own name on it with the stolen card number on the strip. \n\nFrom there he could go to any business and swipe the card (in the show they went to Best Buy) and if the cashier looked at the card it would have his name on it. The only risk would be if you looked on the receipt and saw a different name. \n\nIt was funny though because when the guy was making the cloned card the guy whose show he was on started talking to him and messed him up.  He went to Best Buy and tried to buy an iPad but realized he made a card with his name on it but forgot to imprint the number into it.  \n\nIt was pretty interesting. ", "Card skimming victim here: I'm not an expert on the crime's machinery or master plan, but it happened to me with my debit card (not a credit card). \n\nI used a sketchy looking machine in Toronto. I don't know if the skimmer have been added after the fact or the owners of the machine itself where skimming numbers, but I used it one night late after work. Not long after I started seeing deductions from my bank account on a regular basis. Every few weeks. $50 here, $60 dollars there. Each deduction was taken by a nondescript company name. I think the plan for skimmers like this is to bury small transactions in your statements with mysterious but legitimate-looking company. With me it worked: It took me about three months to figure it out. Once I did, my bank took care of it and the money was returned to me (TD Canada Trust, in case you're interested). \n\nThe bank representative explained to me if that the transactions are kept small and spread out over many company names because it's not worth the bank's time to chase down a hundred different companies, each of whom took $250. There's a lot I don't know about the \"big picture\" stuff, however... like why they can't track down the owner of the ATM and  do something with that guy. But given that the bank refunds the stolen amount, I'm sure they're extremely focused on finding a solution.", "the ELI5 version:  \n  \nPeople make money on skimmers by either selling the credit card information they skim online. The Dark Web and IRC channels have all sorts of places where you can buy stolen credit card information.\n  \nEnterprising thief's skim your CC information, and then run that information through a program which copies your CC information on a blank CC, effectively cloning your CC.", "Go on a deep web market and there's literally novels of literature these people make and sell with Bitcoin. Getting the card is one thing.. The skill is in laundering the stolen money without getting caught ", "I'll give it my best shot.\n\nSkimmers are a hackish implementation of the same technology that ATMs use. When you use your card at an ATM, it \"reads\" your card's magnetic strip. That magnetic strip contains information which links it back to a particular account (whether that be a checking account, credit card account, whatever).\n\nSkimmers will also \"read\" the data off your magnetic strip, but instead store that information on a chip. That chip, which is later collected, can then be used to flash blank cards with your information. So now they can essentially replicate your credit card as many times as they want. Those cards then function exactly as yours would at a physical machine.\n\nThink of it in the same way that hotels produce your room card. They have a stack of blanks which, when swiped, are programmed to open your door and your door only. Locked out? No problem, they can reproduce another one on the spot.", "Here in India, Central Banking Authority - Reserve bank of India, has made it mandatory for all new cards to be chip enabled. Further, for all physical transactions you have to enter PIN and for all electronic transactions you have to enter password or OTP. Additionally, my credit card issuing bank also sends me a message after each transaction no matter how small. They also call me up and check if I do any big transaction. Not sure why it's not the same everywhere!? Such measure leave little room for skimmers. ", "Are you asking for a friend?", ". Every country is a little different when it comes to cc frauds so i will tell you guys how its done in canada. First and formost is to collect the credit card data. This was very easy to do in the late 90s and early 2000s. Yu could collect credit data by applying a skimming device on an atm machine. The skimming device is a little cover piece that fits perfectly on the mouth piece of where yu inject ur card. These were made by highly skilled people who would sell them to low level fraudsters. The skimmer could only  record the card data not the pin so a camera is usually hidden to record the pin. If yu happened to cover your pin then the card info would only work for swiping at retailers. If yu got the pin then yu could withdrawl from the card and yu would be getting debits and credits. Once the skimmibg device and camera is placed the fraudster would wait for a few hours and come back and remove it. Once home he watched the video and extracts the info. Using a reader/writer which can be bought on kijiji or online he copies the data which for yu who dont know are just numbers. All it takes to copy the card is to swipe a blank card in the reader click write on the program swipe card few more times and then double check if its written there. Next he records the pin on the card using a pen so he remembers. Forgot to mention the cards. Yu can use anything walk into a gas statio. And steal gift cards or purchase what are called faces which are Fake cc cards that are printed and engraved and embosed just like yhe real thing. No one can tell except if yu look at the card signature which is rough so yu can sign it but on the faces they are shiny cause it was printed. If a card is signed with a marker its probally fake. Walk into a store with the face swipe and ur gone. When your info gets stolen like this the card will work.for a while because the banks really thinks it yu. If yu got debit cards yu could withdral the money. Now for the real stuff. Employees working for pos terminals moneris have hacked the device called the ingenico. They learned how to add a device in the machine that copies the data and the pin. A bluetooth device is added so it can be sent remotely. This is how the big.money is made. Yu need a dummy pad which is just a term for a random stolen pad it is only used to seem like the real one is still there. So heres how it goes. Yu walk into the store during.closing yu switch the pad with the dummy go home and get it chipped. Next morning yu go bacl and put it back.and take the dummy back. Because yu replaced it at night no1 even knows the real.one was gone. Now the altered pad is back in there collecting data. If yu happen to know the owner. Or employee who agree _URL_1_ it you can just get it chipped nd put it in surprisingly alot of owners do this. Yu leave that pad in there for months it will collect over 2000 numbers. Yu dowbload it via bluetooth and password. Now yu need to get money. Hpwever banks started to cancel cards from a batch if yu ran the cards one by one. Meaning yu withdrew money from card 1 out of 2000. Then take the 2nd card out of 2000 then withdrawl etc etc. Banks would catch on after reports.of 30 cards frauded then they could track that all 30 ppl used they card at canadian tire on dundas and the whole file would die. So criminals would do what was called a run they would use Every single card at the exact samr time. Homeboys calls all of his boys gives them all a box with a pin on it inside are the cards. He tells everyone to call this number at 6. At 6 everyone on the phone waiting for yhe pin on the _URL_0_ get the cards. This way everyone usese the card at 6 and the banks cant trace it because yu did alll 2000 in 5 mins. Fast forward 2016 chip cards are impenetrable. However. Crooks have learned that if yu insert ur card with no chip 3 times it will say swipe and yu can swipe. Tips to protect urself in 2017 in canada. If a machine ever ask yu tp swipe and enter pin it is frauded. The chip cannot be hacked but the info atill on thw swipe. ", "Asking for a friend right?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://krebsonsecurity.com/all-about-skimmers/"], [], ["http://imgur.com/a/au3Ph", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5FMbREGYL4"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["box.to", "to.do"], []]}
{"q_id": "8mx2ov", "title": "why shouldn't you plug a power strip into another power strip?", "selftext": "I've seen so many things saying it makes it more likely to cause a fire, but nothing explaining why.\n\nEDIT: I appreciate the explanations, everyone, thanks! But I think some of you may have forgotten that this is /r/explainlikeimfive, not /r/explainlikeim25.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mx2ov/eli5_why_shouldnt_you_plug_a_power_strip_into/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzr2ygc", "dzr3kyu", "dzr4lv3", "dzreqs5", "dztdhdo"], "score": [17, 10, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["The short answer is because outlets are only designed to draw so much current and adding power strips makes them more likely to draw a dangerous amount of current. ", "A powerstrip is a way of creating a parallel circuit: all devices you plug in get the same voltage. Since each device uses some amount of power, each will draw some current, which will all pass through the powerstrip wires.\n\nSince they're all plugged in parallel, all that current adds up. So the powerstrip tends to draw more current from the same outlet: it \"amplifies\" the possible current being drawn.\n\nIt's the current that makes wires heat up, it's not difficult to see how this amplification effect can be dangerous.\n\nFor example, suppose you have a 110 watt lightbulb plugged into a 110 volt outlet. It will draw 1 amp\u00e8re of current from the outlet.\n\nNow plug a powerstrip with 5 outlets instead, and plug 5 lightbulbs in the powerstrip. Each lightbulb will still draw 1 A, so the powerstrip is now drawing 5 A from the outlet.\n\nNow replace one of the bulbs with another power strip with 5 bulbs. The first powerstrip is now drawing 4 A + 5 A = 9 A from the wall outlet.\n\nMost outlets and powerstrips aren't supposed to go above 10 A - 20 A, so you can see how easily this can become dangerous with devices that draw more power.", "It is a falsely stated safety precautions. You _can_ quite safely line up as many power plug as you desire. \n\nBut you have to be careful, all the devices that are plugged into your tree of power strips will draw current from one power outlet and therefore the current of all your devices will go through the cable of the first power strip.\n\nThe problem is in this first strip, it has been designed to withstand a particular current, which is related to the amount of outlets it has. If you branch out to more outlets, you basically \"increase\" the amount of outlets of the first strip. \n\nTo wrap up, the actual valid safety precaution would be: \"If you plug a power strip into another power strip, never connect more devices than you could using first power strip.\"\n\nAnd the answer why is to prevent the current to exceed  limits. Exceeding current limits is how you'll get a electrical fire, which is undesirable, so that is _why_.\n", "You absolutely can as long as you don't draw too much current from the source outlet, it's just that having more outlets connected to the same source makes it easier to exceed this limit.\n\nIf the outlet can handle 10 Amps then plugging in even two 6 Amp devices will overload it, but you could safely have one hundred 0.1 Amp devices, using as many power strips as necessary to provide one hundred outlets. The trouble is if you plug 1 Amp devices into all those outlets you'll be ten times over the limit.", "It's not specifically about plugging power strips into power strips, it's about using too much power from one outlet.\n\nWhen you use a power strip, all the power that goes to all the stuff plugged into it comes through the power strip's cable.\n\nWhen you plug another power strip into that power strip, the first power strip's cable is carrying all the power for all the stuff in the first strip, plus all the power for all the stuff in the second strip. More strips and it gets even worse.\n\n\"Don't plug them into each other\" is a rule of thumb. If the things plugged in don't use very much power then you're fine. If the things use lots of power (think clothes dryers) then even just one power strip might be too many.\n\nAs for *why* it's a problem - loose plugs get hot when lots of power goes through them, and if they get too hot they could start to melt or catch fire. (Theoretically the cable could melt too, but I've never heard of that, it always seems to be the plug/outlet first)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1w79xi", "title": "why did the u.s. government need a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, but didn't to ban other drugs?", "selftext": "This has always bothered me.  Was there a reinterpretation of the constitution in between that gave congress more authority or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w79xi/eli5_why_did_the_us_government_need_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cezc4qe", "cezccyj", "cezcxqa", "cezet5y", "cezg3zt", "cezh2qb", "cezj67l", "cezjg0x", "cezjqj6", "ceztpkj", "cezxoxr", "cf01zqp"], "score": [282, 5, 37, 7, 2, 2, 20, 3, 17, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["The temperance movement sought a constitutional ban, not a legal ban, so as to prevent the ban from being easily repealed. A super-majority of the members of the 65th Congress favored prohibition -- but that was really an oddity. Many in politics opposed prohibition, and anti-prohibitionists might retake a majority at any time. The temperance movement enacted a constitutional ban to ensure that, without a 2/3 majority, Congress couldn't repeal the ban on the sale, transport, and manufacture of alcohol.\n\nOpponents of prohibition also preferred the constitutional ban -- because it didn't include any provisions for enforcement. They thought they could deliver prohibitionists a moral victory, while still using their power to block good enforcement. Ultimately, they succeeded -- alcohol was banned, but everyone still drank. Of course, this ended out being a huge disaster, but that's another matter.\n\nDaniel Okrant's *Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition* details the nitty-gritty of the prohibition battle including the risk that Congress might repeal. \n\nFor the record, Congress claims the authority to regulate drugs today under the interstate commerce clause, given that most drugs include components traded across state lines, or are sold across state lines, or are sold by groups that operate across state lines, etc. etc. etc. See *United States v. Lopez* for more information.", "Well, partly. In those days they took \"limited government\" a bit more seriously, and Congress might have had trouble trying to ban same-state production and consumption of alcohol.  But mostly it's because banning it by constitutional amendment was the deliberate result of the \"[temperance movement](_URL_0_)\". \n\nSurprisingly, the 18th Amendment was railroaded through 36 states in less than two years, so drinking must have been perceived as a pretty severe social problem in those days.", "Watch Ken Burns' documentary Prohibition, it details the long and complicated story of the social issues that lead to prohibition. In short, alcoholism was a huge huge huge problem, women had no control over finances which went straight to the husband's booze, and hard spirits like rum replaced softer ale and beer as the drink of choice. This was one of the first issues that women felt they could use to gain power outside the home, and it actually helped give them the confidence to pursue gaining the vote, and from there they used that power to vote in dry politicians. The wet politicians never believed prohibition would succeed and sort of treated it as a joke. Clearly, they weren't laughing in the end. But seriously this is not something explainable to a five year old, watch the first part of the documentary. \n\nEdit: as for a constitutional ban vs a simple bill, they believed it was their moral obligation to obliterate alcohol, and the only way to ensure all states permanently went dry was to pursue it via the Constitution. ", "It actually would, or does need an amendment. The government constantly acts outside of its Constitutional limits and the States largely do nothing about it. This is an example. There is no enumerated power in the Constitution that allows for the federal government to ban drugs.", "The Constitution gives the federal government the authority to regulate interstate trade but not intrastate trade, so they should have gotten an amendment, and many original intent scholars hold that federal intrastate contraband regulations are illegal.", "Ah yes, a very prescient question. It is because they stopped following it. ", "Every answer in this thread is wrong. It isn't a hard one.\n\nWickard v. Filburn was the Supreme Court case that did it.\n\nIt made anything interstate commerce, which then allowed regulation. Previous to that case the government didn't have the right to regulate it, thus needed an amendment.\n\nEdit:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n > The government also contended that consuming one's locally grown marijuana for medical purposes affects the interstate market of marijuana, and hence that the federal government may regulate\u2014and prohibit\u2014such consumption. This argument stems from the landmark New Deal case Wickard v. Filburn, which held that the government may regulate personal cultivation and consumption of crops, due to the aggregate effect of individual consumption on the government's legitimate statutory framework governing the interstate wheat market.\n\nIt is important to note that the first ban wasn't technically a ban... The marihuana tax act was passed in 1937 made it so that people needed a tax stamp to grow it and sell it, the government just refused to give anyone the stamp, effectively making it illegal. They couldn't actually make it illegal until after Wickard passed.\n\nIn 1969 the tax act was ruled unconstitutional, so congress passed the controlled substances act to replace it.\n\n\nEdit 2: Downvotes... That's reddit for you I guess. ", "Well the U.S. used to operate in a constitutional way. But that has since been abandoned for the, \"Do as we say,\" method of governing which is far more efficient.", "Really it has to do with the date. The 18th amendment was passed before the judicial revolution of 1937; the \"switch in time that saved nine.\"\n\nPrior to 1937, and the Parrish decision the courts had a much more constrained view of the commerce power. Only after this extremely important shift in american jurisprudence could the New Deal be implemented.  \n\nTldr: prohibition was before the courts expanded the commerce power.", "Statutory entrenchment (in whatever form), i.e., where a statute requires more than 51% of the vote to change it, is the dead hand of the past trying to control the future. \n\nI don't give a fuck what some dead folks wanted me to do. The intentions of living constituents are the only valid ones.\n\n", "The Gov't didn't 'need' a constitutional amendment, the people looking to change the government sought one.", "Back then, they understood that the federal government had no power to regulate private commerce.  Therefore, they had to make a constitutional amendment in order for the federal government to have that power (no constitutional amendment can be unconstitutional but a regular statute can be). \n\nSince the 18th and 21st Amendments, various presidents have bullied Congress and the Supreme Court into changing what power the Commerce Clause gives to the government.  The Commerce Clause gives the federal government the power to regulate state isolationism; and that's it.  \n\nBut, since they've been bullied, Congress has capitulated and has aggrandized its power and given the president more power and the Supreme Court has shirked its duties and ignored the unconstitutional regulations of every commercial interaction in the country.  \n\nThis error gave the federal government the bright idea that it could ban any private conduct so long as they define it as having an impact on interstate commercial activity in the aggregate (if everyone did it, would it impact interstate trade? If so, then Congress can regulate it).  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_temperance_movement_in_the_United_States"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn#Subsequent_developments", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1zfz24", "title": "what does russia have to gain from invading such a poor country? why are they doing this?", "selftext": "Putin says it is to protect the people living there (I did Google) but I can't seem to find any info to support that statement... Is there any truth to it? What's the upside to all this for them when all they seem to have done is anger everyone?\n\nEdit - spelling", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zfz24/eli5_what_does_russia_have_to_gain_from_invading/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cftad4x", "cftaepj", "cftag2m", "cftahw1", "cftaq9n", "cftauv9", "cftbeuf", "cftbhmj", "cftbj6s", "cftbl5w", "cftbmmb", "cftbpyx", "cftbu5r", "cftbuw5", "cftbylk", "cftc5xx", "cftc6ut", "cftc8cw", "cftchba", "cftcs1d", "cftctiw", "cftd755", "cftd9lo", "cftdbhs", "cftdmjv", "cftdtlw", "cftduui", "cfte3cr", "cfte4te", "cftejm0", "cfteriv", "cftetvq", "cftf1c7", "cftfhkr", "cftfsx4", "cftftcf", "cftg3eo", "cftg6yt", "cftg9xl", "cftgbw1", "cftgcoq", "cftgd1t", "cftgd7g", "cftgel1", "cftgp9b", "cftgsv9", "cftgwbv", "cfth0in", "cfth1of", "cfth4wo", "cfth5ho", "cfth8sj", "cfthblg", "cfthdta", "cfthetq", "cfthgqz", "cfthkgk", "cfti0e7", "cfti3jp", "cfti7v2", "cfti92g", "cfticfy", "cftidh8", "cftihfc", "cftiho7", "cftipif", "cftix0t", "cftjhjv", "cftjicc", "cftjljv", "cftjno8", "cftjojq", "cftjpoz", "cftk2y9", "cftkcdo", "cftklye", "cftkx0r", "cftkxse", "cftlbfc", "cftld3d", "cftlf17", "cftlh69", "cftllba", "cftn35j", "cftn49h", "cftn5rr", "cftn94u", "cftnafb", "cftnd49", "cftndx8", "cftnnt1", "cftntx0", "cfto1fr", "cfto1v9", "cftoem8", "cftohry", "cftor0u", "cftoz82", "cftpv45", "cftpyp9", "cftqb4c", "cftqhs1", "cftqid8", "cftqih0", "cftqj6s", "cftqojy", "cftqwkq", "cftr65r", "cftr96e", "cftrrbc", "cftrsq0", "cfts0h6", "cftspt0", "cftsqw1", "cftsxtx", "cfttd5o", "cftth5a", "cfttncc", "cftujvv", "cftuy7g", "cftvsue", "cftw1f4", "cftwfy2", "cftx9id", "cftxorp", "cftxy7w", "cftyiy2", "cftyjvy", "cftylr3", "cftym90", "cftz0dw", "cfu1b3i", "cfu1bu4", "cfu1lzz", "cfu220l", "cfu2e99", "cfu3dn0", "cfu4cq5", "cfu4em0", "cfu54z3", "cfu6d4e"], "score": [3, 175, 827, 42, 17, 132, 3798, 6, 2, 75, 3, 5, 2, 2, 4, 3, 5, 1469, 2, 10, 2, 48, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 5, 69, 4, 12, 2, 4, 2, 7, 3, 3, 3, 22, 2, 82, 2, 4, 2, 2, 5, 2, 5, 2, 2, 6, 2, 46, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 12, 6, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 5, 6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 7, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 4, 4, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 70, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Its a money/land grab for very wealthy people. \n\nNever give countries motives, because countries are made of many people, with many motives. \n\nI'm just hoping this doesn't lead to interests in the war economy. ", "Crimea is home to the russian navies black sea fleet and is one of thier few warm-water ports After the fall of the soviet union they retained a lease on thier bases but may feel after pro-eu government overthrow that it has to protect it's assets.\n\nAlso, one of the ways that putin has retained control of russia for so long is by promising to be the strong man restoring russia's strength after the collapse of comunism - this can only help his image back home", "The \"Ethnic Russian\" motivation is all crap, Russia just wants quick access to the Black Sea so it can maintain its presence. Since the Ukrainian people kicked out Yanukovich Russia won't be getting what it wants. The Ukrainians want to join the EU instead of being Russia's puppet.\n\nPS: I was born in Georgia and grew up in Ukraine. Russia is now invading the second country I lived in within a very short time.", "Cheers for the insights guys :)", "There are many reasons, but I personally feel this is mostly due to the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Military:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey have a slew of ships and nuclear capability - I am sure they did not want to give up the port or have the chance of weapons falling into the wrong hands.", "\nThe recurring theme of Russia's entire history is access to warm water ports.  Regardless of whatever else happens, Russia is as likely to give up it's Naval Base on the Black sea as the US is to give up it's Naval Base in Cuba.\n\nNever. Happening. Ever.\n\nMy opinion is that the only way Ukraine gets out of this in one piece is to give Russia sovereignty over it's naval base in Crimea.", "Because it contains a vital port - Sevastopol. \n\nThe Russians have to ask the Ukrainians for permission to use this port, they get a lease on it - they literally \"rent\" it. \n\nThis wasn't difficult with a pro-Russian president in Ukraine, however the Russians are very worried now, because there's been an uprising in Ukraine, and the pro-Russian president was turfed out, they may lose their lease on this port\n\nIf they lose the lease, they lose their power in the region. Putin is a very clever man, he knows that he can *push* a certain amount and there won't be any military repercussions - no one is going to risk a massive war - so in a way he's playing a game of bluff, he'll push forces into Crimea, take Sevastopol all for himself - it'll cost Russia money and international relations - but he obviously thinks that the gamble is worth it to control such a vital port\n\nHe doesn't have any strong opposition at home (running in opposition is \"difficult\" in Russia) and he pretty much runs the media - so he can convince the Russians at home, and those in the Ukraine that he is merely trying to protect them - this is something a lot of them believe\n\nTry not to think of countries as friends, but more as businesses - this is a hostile take-over, internationally it's condemned, but to Putin, that naval port permanently in the hands of Russia is worth it\n\n\n", "Why has no one discussed the massive amount of oil lines that go through Ukraine from Russia? If Ukraine went into a civil war and blew those pipelines (definite possibility) Russia would lose trillions", "I'm pretty sure it's because there's a deep warm water port in Crimea.", "RUSSIA WANTS A PORT IN THE BLACK SEA", "Side note, Crimea looks like a beautiful place. ", "Gaining Ukraine would exponentially increase Russia's influence on the west. Ukraine also has dozens of natural gas+petroleum lines connecting to the rest of Europe. Russia would also get a port on the Black Sea.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPetroDollar warfare at its finest. That is all.\n", "You know how there's always that series of events that happen before a world war starts?  Someone gets killed, someone invades somewhere.  Anywhere from a decade to a few months before the war actually breaks out.  What's the potential of this being that event?  Maybe 5 or 10 years away?", "This is about not loosing face as one of the world\u00b4s superpowers. As I see it, the conflict started out between the EU and Russia when the unrest started, both parties saw it as an oportunity to gain controll over the country. Ukraine is one of the most promising countries seen with european eyes as they can provide cheap(er) labour and become a new asia.\n", "One of the reasons is to show that Russia is stronger than west. If NATO won't do anything, it will be percieved as dog who barks, but not bites.\n\nAlso Pution will gain high prestige in Russia, because he will be percieved as mighty heroes who saved the Russians from Ukraine overlords.", "Ukraine has a lot of things Russia would normally like to have access to - natural resources  &  warm-water ports in particular. But Putin has made no secret of his desire to build something akin to the EU out of the old Soviet republics, and that simply can't happen unless he's got Ukraine on the team. This fall's referendum showing the country leaning towards warmer relations with the West (and the EU in particular) spurred Putin to direct action. He tried to get Ukraine on the sly by having his puppet Yanyukovich simply hand the country to Russia, but you see how well that went. Now he's got to take it by force if he wants it at all, and that's just what he's doing.\n\nTL/DR: Russia needs Ukraine far more than Ukraine needs Russia.", "i think this article explains a lot of this well\u2026\n\n\n_URL_0_", "There are thousands of miles of Russian oil pipelines coursing through Ukraine that many people neglect to think about. If these pipelines were to be compromised, you can only think of the economic backlash russia would experience.\n\nThis leads to the main reason why Europe is being so delicate with Russia right now, 76% of Russian oil exports are sent to European countries. \n\nWe've got a good ole Mexican stand off on our hands right. Europe needs oil and Russia is the cheapest dealer. But if Europe decided to seek oil from elsewhere, albeit more expensive, Russia would have no choice but to listen to the international community. This will never happen though", "Since the Crimean war, Russia has been obsessed with access to the Sea, both for trade and transportation.  Also, the majority of folks living in Crimea are Russian in ethnicity.  ", "just because it is a poor country doesnt mean it doesnt have value. 100 years ago sweden was one of the poorest coutries around and now its one of the richest.\n\nApart from a very strategical position (ports/gas pipelines) it also has massive amounts of good farm land. \n\nUkraine could probably be a very rich country if it was managed well.", "WARM WATER PORTS\n\nRemember that and you know 90% of what you need to know about Russia", "The principal geopolitical reason is the freshwater port to the Black Sea, which will allow the Russian Navy to enter the Mediterranean Sea via the Bosporus at Istanbul. This will be Russia\u2019s primary means to access the Atlantic Ocean without having to go through their Arctic and near-Arctic ports. \n\nHowever, Russia also is fearful of waning hegemony, or influence. That\u2019s the heart of this whole thing, the tangible fear of a loss of influence. Much of the Ukraine is very interested in allying itself with the European Union; this was the foundation of the quasi-revolution in Kiev this past month, the decision of the former Prime Minister to ally with Moscow in deference to the EU. So, Russia sends their military into Crimea. This is a very forward, provocative move, but it has precedent in how Russia made moves on Georgia. After all, the other half still identifies itself with Russia. \n\nBoth Georgia and the Ukraine really are on the Eastern Frontier, separating the influence of Russia and Europe. But, since they are so isolated, it's that much easier for Russia to just bully them around without much Western influence other than \u201cstrong words\u201d. \n\nRussia's other major fear is that these states will join NATO. This is popularly portrayed in Russia as a somewhat provocative force that counters their state's efforts to further a better life for its own nation. It also is likely that the West would welcome entrance into NATO for Ukraine should Russia not have intervened as it had. \n\nThe real takeaway is that Russia will further the maintenance of the status quo in the countries around its borders to prevent change, fostering stability. They want to keep their neighbors quiet and in line.\n\nMeanwhile, the Ukraine's economy is garbage. They're deep in debt, have been witnessing the expatriation of capital throughout the last month, and interest rates are huge. The initial alignment between Russia and the Ukraine at the beginning of the year was essentially an economic bailout in exchange for alignment. Now, the EU and US are looking to offer monies to the new pro-Western Ukrainian government. \n\nFinally, this all comes down to Putin's government wanting to reengage the West in competition, to portray it as the counter to Russia. This positioning of influences to the Russian people furthers their allegiances to Putin, seeing him as championing their causes for life and prosperity. In essence, this is a bit of scapegoating. (Better, remember that Family Guy where Mayor West makes a big deal out of banning Gay Marriage after making a solid gold statue of cereal mogul Dig'Em of Dig'Em Smacks, then getting in trouble? Same thing, different players. The West is Gay Marriage while Putin's authoritarianistic power siege is Dig'Em. You dig it?)Plus, as the US has moved swiftly from two wars towards quasi-isolationist positioning in very rapid order, there are a lot of countries who\u2019d be open to aligning themselves with a counter-US influence. That\u2019s Russia more than it is China. \n\nThe big geopolitical variable, however, is revolutionary momentum spreading around. Reports are that the Balkans are now beginning to witness calls for change rising up on their allegiances  &  alignments. Imagine if this spreads to other centers along the Russian border, including the Latvian states, Azerbaijan, and even in some of the \u201cStans\u201d. With only passive Western intervention, we could witness spreading demands for Western-style government and economics counter to the Russian offerings. \n\nGoing forward, the West is playing with a weak hand. The EU wants peace; Germany especially, as much of their power comes directly from Russia, and they don\u2019t want their economy to suffer. But, they really want to expand their influence and welcome the Ukraine as a possible member to the EU. Meanwhile, the West appeased Russia before with the de facto appeasement of Georgia. The US\u2019 only qualified engagement since then has been disinterested neglect until the media caught the story. Best the current administration can offer is (1) economic sanctions and (2) putting John Kerry in the country under the belief that Russia wouldn't dare risk the US' Secretary of State being killed in an armed invasion. But, after all these years of general geopolitical neglect, that\u2019s about all the US can do. And because the US acted weak here, Putin figured he can act with impunity. After all, he\u2019s done it before. ", "It's not a port thing. It's purely politics. The entire conflict is not about Ukrainian. It is about Russian vs the West. Only for the Ukrainian people is this conflict about Ukrainian.\n\nThe West uses manipulation, backroom dealing, black-ops, psy-ops, harassment, intimidation, and every other passive aggressive method straight out of the organized crime handbook to interfere and gain a foothold in foreign politics in order to spread corporate capitalist imperialism. Also with overwhelming odds they consider using force. Understand I am not offering an opinion on these methods, merely stating the facts. \n\nRussia attempts to use the same methods, but is not as successful, and Russia is resentful of it's diminished importance in International policy. Their methods are so ineffectual that they were unable to keep the west from gaining corporate control over their own next door neighbor, on their very doorstep, the same neighbor they once ruled unconditionally. The successful uprising seemingly cemented capitalist control over the country. It was a blow for Russia.\n\nRather than take it lying down, Russia seems to be willing to separate the passive and the aggressive, and put an end to the back room tit for tat in exchange for a conflict of force. At least that seems to be the direction it is heading right now. It's possible, due to the reluctance on both sides to spill blood, that this whole thing is just more hogwash.\n\nUltimately war is coming to us all. Whether this is the catalyst only time will tell. Our species zeitgeist has once again been infested with narcissism. It is a story as old as recorded history. No human civilization has ever been able to stop it once the process has begun, no matter how valiant the attempts of the wise to stop it. All the greatest ethical and moral philosophies of our ancestors come during the times shortly before the collapses of their civilization, and yet it is never enough. Narcissism spreads like a plague. History knows what happens when each individuals insistence on their own greatness becomes the defining focus of said individuals life. What we see in the direction of the society around us is merely a reflection of the battles within our own hearts and minds. ", "Here is a simple summary of the situation: _URL_0_", "In short, Russia is full of buttholes.", "I'm hearing so many unthinkingly anti-Russian posts here.\n\nI'll present the other side, which I believe is credible:\n\nRussia doesn't see it as invading a poor country. It is protecting a smaller cousin that asked for its help against a fascist coup in Kiev which has overthrown the democratically elected government.\n\n", "All Russia ever wants is a warm water port.", "The Black Sea port explanations are all valid, however, Putin acted in a similar way in 2008, when he occupied Georgia, which had zero economic value for him. \n\nBack then, it was a question of pride, and Russia's bristling in what it sees as meddling in its backyard and historic sphere of influence. The same applies here.\n\nKeep in mind, Russia has for centuries thought of itself as an empire, with its own unique mission and place in the world. It's weakness in the '90s is remembered as a great humiliation by many citizens, and by Putin himself. \n\nPutin is concerned, as always, with Russia's image, and with his own place in history.\n\n", "because russians are fucking dickheads ", "The upside for Russia in absorbing Ukraine is greater than the downside of letting Ukraine be supported by western countries. Ukraine potentially has trillions in untapped natural resources. Too much money involved and this is all financially motivated by both sides. Russia's GDP would grow tremendously. Going to the negotiation tables empty handed would be a mistake and Russia knows this. I highly doubt a war will ensue, and the likely hood of having Russia's offers accepted would be greater. Russia's GDP is heavily based in oil and mining minerals (coal, iron, etc), so this would mean growth in Russian GDP.\n\nAmerica's (and the ROW's minus Russia) primary goal is to maintain status quo. It seems likely that Ukraine will be split than go towards one side or the other. Half of Ukraine's GDP is better than no GDP for Russia. Crimea is also strategically better for Russian trades. If war is triggered, high volatility will be hard for even Russia to control.\n\nRussia ain't raising fools ya know!", "The Russian leadership wants to hold on to what little influence and power they have left over the old Soviet blocs. They are using the notion of protecting ethnic Russians as an excuse, just like they did in Georgia a few years ago, but the real reason is that what little empire they had following the fall of the USSR, is falling apart, and they are desperate to regain lost influence and retain their buffer states before it is all lost to NATO and the EU.", "Doesn't Russia already have access to the Black Sea without Crimea?", "no ukraine, no gain", "list of reasons Russia invaded Ukraine\n\nI. warm water port\n\nI1. this port historically belonged to USSR (russia)\n\nI1. russia wants to maintain their hegemony. even though people might think that their political power ended with the fall of the soviet union, this is far from the truth. Russia maintains their influence over its former satellite states by leveraging a combination of \"soft\" and \"hard\" power. \n\nI1A. soft power - large population of ethnic \"russians\" in former soviet republics.\n\nI1B. hard power- Russia has great mineral wealth, and all the pipelines and railroad lines are old soviet structures, which go through former satellites, such as Ukraine. these pipelines supply western europe, and feed russia ever increasing amounts of wealth (price of oil jumped from 20 bucks a barrel to over 200 since 1999). Russian businessmen also own most of the energy distribution companies outside their borders (niggas makin' bank fuck yeah). \n\n\nII. trouble in Ukraine\n\nII1. besides russias geopolitical ambitions and ways of justifying their aggressive stance, is the burgeoning trouble in Ukraine. The protests in Ukraine functioned to exacerbate a divide in the population which existed since WW2. The divide being between Eastern and Western Ukraine, the east being historically majority Russian speaking, and the west being historically ukrainian/polish. the borders forged by stalin and hitler and the west, and whoever the fuck was involved in ww2, are not necessarily drawn along ethnic lines. the whole area was carved up willy nilly, and that goes against the \"nation state ideal\" which is kind of what our whole political-social-identity westphalian system is based on (every nation {group of people} gets their own state {nation}). \n\nII2. now leading out of that point, requires mentioning that the protests in Ukraine, which began as political protests against russias economic dominion of Ukraine, took a sharply nationalistic turn (think tea party retards, or adolf hitlers nazi party). The radical right wing protestors took over, and people WERE saying things like \"ukraine for ukrainians, get the russians out of here\". now that is a whole separate discussion about crowd theory and sociology, which i really am way too hungry to get into right now, someone feed me please for the love of god i hate college. anyways, basically, the protests were some fascist ass occupy wall street bullshit, with no direction, which spiraled so far out of control that they toppled the government. Now obviously this would make about half (40% is half, fuck you, its close enough, suck my college balls) of ukraines population very very nervous, because of YUGOSLAVIA!!! Ultra-right wing nationalist idiots caused a genocide and made the country fracture into 7 independent, shitty ass, poor as fuck, useless states based on ethnic divisions and nationalism... retarded... but good for slobodan milosevic who probably stood to make a pretty penny if all went his way... once again, seperate discussion but this is all connected, I promise.\n\nIII. satellites be leavin', like \"fuck you putin\"\n\nIII1. but putin be like \"fuck you niggas, you my bitches, suck these excessively large and steely putin-balls. i be putin my balls in your mouth. etc... \nbasically, the balkans, kazakhstan, and Ukraine, all have people in them that want stronger ties with the european union. whether or not this will be good long term are debatable, one side citing the increased cost of goods that will plunge even more of the country into abject poverty with the adoption of the euro... and the other side which believes in a long term economic solution hinging on middlemanning russias mineral resources to western europe (albeit with long term goals including the adoption of policy that will lower gap between rich and poor, think americas trust buster shit). I may have confused something in the last few sentences, but im so hungry and this is keeping me from lunch so i will assume what i mean can be inferred...motherfucker? yeah whatever. this is basically like the first section about russias hegemony, but more specific about the exact economic problems posed by being europes poor ass 2nd world bitches, or russias poor ass second world bitches. Either way, eastern europe sucks balls, but as long as theres no genocides then russia is probably doing good. \n\nto end this all of a few notes that may give evidence of biases and whatever.\n1. i am russian, from ukraine, east ukraine. \n2. the divides in ukraine exist, this is why my family came to the US 20 years ago. economic and social and political reasons. ukraine is poor, the people are divided, always there is a hated group, whether its people of jewish ancestry (me) or people who speak russian in western ukraine (also me), or just general flag waving nationalism, which is always bad, no matter what. \n3. putin wrote his PHD on russias mineral wealth... that's how he leverages political control. think dune \"he that controls the spice controls the universe\". the \"spice\" being oil. this basically means that he can do whatever he wants short of a massive full scale invasion of europe, which he is not going to do, russia is more than big enough...\n4. slobodan milosevic is the ex-president of Croatia, the main nationalistic aggressor in what used to be the nation of Yugoslavia. \n5. regarding the protests against corruption, all governments are corrupt, especially america.\n6. protesting like in Ukraine, would never happen here, because if it did, the cops would KILL THE EVERLOVING FUCK OUT OF IT, and thats a good thing because people should be able to go do their shopping and shit without worrying about drunk populist assholes burning down the city. \n\nok lunchtime, fuck this im dying. ", "You want your port back Putin? Cri-me-a river. ", "Russia hosted the Olympics and this is what most major powers do after hosting the Olympics.\n\nI think Hitler started it...", "Crimea is filled with ethnic Russians, they were probably going to defect to Russia anyways, Putin is just expediting the process. Ukraine is fractured to fuck right now, there is some justification in Russia actions, not much, but some. ", "Something that seems to be missing for all the otherwise good answers about the port:\n\nTwo of the reasons Ukraine is poor is because of the lopsided trade agreements it has with Russia, and because the ousted President siphoned $35-$70 billion from the country. Billion with a b. \n\nRussia wants Ukraine to be dependent on it, and does so by isolating it and getting deals on cheap labor, food (Ukraine has more filter black soil then any other country in Europe), natural gas, and the pipelines which send the gas to the EU. Deals that it would otherwise not get if Ukraine could get a competitive price from say the EU. \n\nWhile the EU won't deal with a country whose government is corrupt and likely to pocket the money, Russia is fine with this, and thrives on an authoritative corrupt Ukrainian government. ", "Other than Sevastopol, the only other deep water, warm weather seaport in the Russian sphere of influence is Vladivostok, over 4,000 miles and seven time zones from Moscow.  All the other ports in Russia are impassable from four to six months every year.\n\nThey first built a navy in the early 1700's under Peter the Great.  Prior to his reign, and to a great degree even to this day, Russia was essentially mired in the Middle Ages.\n\nThe importance of the Crimea to Russia's defense and national pride cannot be overstated.\n\nAnd  Khrushchev gave the Crimean area to the Ukranian Socialist Republic in the 1950. It was not an issue then, and there are agreements in place that ensure russian access to eastern Ukraine.  But the flux in Ukranian leadership right now would make any despot lose sleep.\n\nPutin does not like to lose sleep.", "Russia invades Ukraine. Canada makes a motion of support for Russia during a UN council.The USA fueled by fried chicken and Republican hatred is forced into a proxy war with Canada whose army consists of several hockey teams and horses wielding flintlock _URL_0_ help their new Communist allies Russia sends in Ak-47 armed Grizzly bears to support Canada in their fight against America as all their real troops are out invading other countries. While all this is happening the Mexican Cartels invade from the south quickly overtaking Texas and new mexico but are brought to an abrupt halt when they reach the white trash of the bible belt, an epic firefight ensues.armed with their daddy's shotguns and Led by Honey Boo Boo the white trash of the bible belt repel the cartel invasion and counter invade Mexico Claiming the land in the Name of \"The Confederacy 2.0\" Slavery is quickly re-established and Inbreeding is quickly legalized(required by law). The US military force is stuck in a 4 on 1 war with the new Confederacy, Canada the Taliban and North Korea who have discovered the secret of cloning and is now led by a cannibal army of Kim Jung Un replicas. Sensing a disturbance in the force JFK ,Lincoln and oddly enough Lee Harvey Oswald rise from their graves to reestablish order in the world. Lincoln travels to Mexico which is under confederacy control and calls upon the heavens to show these people the errors of their ways. In a flash of blinding light the skies open up and begin raining pennies down on the inbred soldiers and crushing their leader honey boo boo to death. Quickly upon the death of their leader the confederacy falls into chaos and is routed back into the swamps of Alabama by the Mexican army Led by their General Danny Trejo who leads his men only with a Machete. With Lincolns work done he decides to attend Wrestle-mania. Meanwhile Lee Harvey Oswald moves to intercept the approaching Cloned cannibalistic horde of \"Dear Leaders\" Using his magical bullets and trusty rifle he makes short work of the clone army and moves in to target the original Kim Jung Un. Upon news that JFK has risen from the dead President Obama Impeaches himself and JFK resumes his presidency all the while wondering why his hangover wont go away. Upon learning that the country did in fact lose the Vietnam War JFK pushes the big red button and nukes Vietnam and Cuba in a fit of rage. Obviously unhappy with what just happened China allies with Russia and Canada in the war against the US. After successfully finishing the invasion of the Ukraine Russia moves its forces to Cuba where it quickly turns into the second round of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Deciding not to put up with any shit this time JFK once again pushes the Big red Button and nukes Cuba and sends missiles towards the Russian and Chinese mainlands. Both Countries quickly retaliate and fire nukes back to the US. Everyone who doesn't die of Nuclear Holocaust dies shortly of Nuclear Winter and the fact the Ozone layer is completely gone along with the Sun. THE END", "**Note:** Russia has yet to invade Ukraine and the statement saying that Russia would was not issued by major Russian officials and **CALLED B.S. BY THE RUSSIAN MINISTER OF DEFENSE**. \n", "the hot ukrainian girls", "The port is a main point of contention, but it goes beyond that.\n\nRussia has been feeling the pressure of the potential for old Russian satellite states to join or deepen relations with the European Union. Ukraine was split between pro-EU and pro-Russian economic relations, and Putin probably wants to maintain some form of power in these regards. The loss of Viktor Yanukovych, who was distinctly pro-Russian, would have been a signal to Putin that Ukraine would have been heading the EU's way had it not been for an intervention. While this is predicting things that haven't happened, it would be a distinct loss of power and influence in the region had a new pro-EU leader been elected and the country was left to run its course. It also sends a message to other satellite states that they could also run the risk of having an angry Russia at their doorstep if they were to turn away from their former masters. \n\nDespite the Cold War being over and the Soviet Union being dead, Russia has always had the lingering after thought that it has 'lost' to the West and that it needs to maintain some form of authority. There is plenty of literature to support this, and it still affects the unpredictable nature of Russia sometimes. The international system maintains stability by being predictable, and Putin is clearly shaking things up again by being wholly unpredictable.\n\nPutin also has a habit of picking and choosing which international laws he wants to follow, but this demonstrates a willingness to go beyond just a simple wavering of the rules. He is really testing western states to see just how far they will go. Coupled with the build up of forces on the borders to Lithuania and the Polish reaction (quite rightly), we could have a major problem if shots are fired tomorrow. \n\nDoes anyone know what the Chinese position on this is? Its interesting to see them so quiet in these circumstances.", "[The Russian Black Sea Fleet was founded on **May 13, 1783**, together with its principal base, the city of Sevastopol, Crimean peninsula.] (_URL_1_) (Source: Wikipedia)\n\nThe entire Crimea was part of the Russian Empire since 1783, it was never a part of Ukraine before 1954.([Source: Wikipedia](_URL_0_))\n\nRussians were the dominant ethnic group for several hundred years. \n\nAccording to the [2001 census 58.32% of the Crimean population are ethnic Russian](_URL_2_). (Source: Wikipedia)\n\nOn 19 February 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued a decree transferring the Crimean Oblast from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.The transfer of the Crimean Oblast to Ukraine has been described as a \"symbolic gesture,\" marking the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of the Russian Empire. ([Source: Wikipedia](_URL_5_))\n\nDriving force was [Nikita Khrushchev](_URL_4_) whose parents were Ukrainian and who was born at the Russian-Ukranian border.\n\nThe Soviet government intended to build several major inland waterways and including the Crimea to **the** Ukraine made it easier to control the management since only one provincial government (Ukraine) was involved instead of two (Russia  &  Ukraine). At this point of history it made no difference at all, since no one would have imagined a future were Ukraine and Russia would be two different nations. Both were integral parts of the *Soviet Union* and were so until the 1990s.\n\nFun fact, just to put this into a little perspective: The [Treaty of Paris] (_URL_3_)  was signed on **September 3, 1783**, ending the American Revolutionary War.\n\nBtw. I sometimes do wonder what would happen if some kind of \"revolution\" would take place e.g. in Japan and the demonstrators would massively push for the closing of all US military bases in Japan. I guess the US reaction would be quite obvious and there is not even a majority of US related ethnic groups in Japan at all.\n\nI'm not a Russian btw.\n\n", "After reading a lot of these things I have a question. Is Russia really the bad guy here? \n\nI know this is a simplistic manner of looking at things and theres never really a good guy and bad guy in anything, but it seems a lot of people are trying to make Russia out to be acting in a shitty manner. \n\nA) As far as I can see, Ukraine is a country with 2 political beliefs (Western vs Russian), and having one government for two nearly equally supported political policies (60% to 40% I think I saw) doesn't really work and it seems these two groups have a geographical divide in them, so wouldnt the country splitting into two help calm the situation?\n\nB) If Russia really needs that warm water port, its sorta understandable that they will act in their best interest. Hasn't America been pretty aggressive about protecting their oil interests in the Middle East?", "I haven't read through the entire mass of posts here, but from what I've seen, there is something that is being missed, and that's the rising Russian Nationalism, coupled with Putin's desire to recreate the Russian Empire in some regards and reclaim Russian glory. \n\nSevastopol is important to be sure (the warm water port), but they already have a warm water port in Kaliningrad, and with modern ice breaking boats, a warm water port, while important, isn't as important as it once was. While this plays a role, it's only a part of the conflict.\n\nIn 1954, Crimea was transferred from Russian to Ukrainian control, though obviously this was all under the guise of the USSR, so the transfer really didn't matter much. Now, the reason that protests and riots broke out in Ukraine to begin with is because Ukraine is at a crossroads. Do they want to ally themselves closer with Europe, or with Russia? In 2004, Ukraine underwent the \"Orange Revolution\", a Revolution that was supposed to liberalize and modernize the country. Ukraine was supposed to strengthen ties with Europe, but that fell apart, and in November of 2013, an economic deal was signed with Russia rather than the EU, sending many, primarily young, Ukrainians into the streets.\n\nSo, Russia is concerned with their sphere of influence in the region, which leads of course to economic gain should they consolidate power, but Russian nationalism should not be understated. Crimea, the last I saw, was 58% ethnically Russian. Russia is spewing massive amounts of propaganda justifying involvement in Crimea (and perhaps further), which is massively unsettling and disconcerting. If the residents of Crimea want to join Russia and do so by a popular vote, that's one thing, and since the majority is ethnically Russian, you could make the case that it makes sense. However, the fact that Russia moved into Crimea so quickly, is worrisome. What makes things even worse is that now there are questions about the rest of Ukraine.\n\nIf it was just about Sevastopol, an area that in all reality has relatively limited global importance for countries outside of Ukraine and Russia, it would be an international incident but likely one that is relatively contained, similar to Georgia in 2008. However, Kiev has massive importance to the Russian Orthodox Church, something Putin has mentioned before. Ukraine is in chaos domestically, and is ill-equipped to deal with an invading force, let alone one as strong as Russia. \n\nThis invasion isn't just about economics and resources (Sevastopol). There is an ideological bent which greatly complicates the issue. If it was merely about resources and economics, the likelihood that some sort of deal could be cut would be increased. However, Putin is ex-KGB and has a nostalgic view of Russian glory past. In Russia, there is a youth movement called NASHI that has drawn comparisons to the Hitler youth movement, rife with propaganda and incitement of violence towards opposition, coupled with unbelievably nationalistic parades of Russian pride. This element has gained a lot of power, and Putin's display of regional power is being praised widely throughout much of Russia. \n\nNationalism yet again is the driving force here, more so than Crimea, Sevastopol, and perhaps even Ukraine. We'll see what happens. \n\n*edited for grammar", "FYI - They aren't \"invading\". They do have an agreement with Crimea which allows the dispatch of troops upon their soil. The troop size allows is up to 25,000.", "Because its the second time in ten years that a president chosen by Putin has been overthrown by 'people'  who then demand free elections. Having a functioning democracy made up of people who look and sound just like Russians is fundamentally unacceptable to a Russian state where all power is in control of one party and where so much energy is spent promoting a cult of personality for that leader. \nmore broadly, despite high energy prices the Russian economy continues to be basically an energy exporter, corruption, a brain drain of the best educated and the Dutch disease have all rendered attempts to modernize the Russian state along modern lines incomplete or impossible, if Putin cannot bring further tangible benefits he can provide them with nationalism and a muscular foreign policy that makes Russians feel like Russia has 'come back' and is now an equal to the United States. ", "Because by showing the world that Russia can do whatever it wants, they further secure their status as a (real) superpower. The same thing happened with the Syria situation.\n\n\nThe US consistently exercises its superpower \"rights\", and this gives them incredible advantages outside the realm of just making decisions for others. They can barter incredible deals, with huge gains for the US, by deciding on issues that don't concern the US in the slightest. Russia wants a piece of that action, by getting to the same \"decider\" level superpower status.\n\n\nYou can't get there by simply looking big on a map. A show of force is needed. When the next Assad thinks about whose support he's gonna get against western pressure, Russia becomes more of a viable option with every time Putin shows his middle finger to the world.", "Russia also, to an extent, has a claim to Crimea. Russia won the region from the Ottomans during the reign of Catherine the Great, and it was theirs until they gave it to Ukraine as a birthday present. However, this was during the Soviet Union, so Russia didn't really lose control of the region; imagine the US federal government gifting a valuable part of South Dakota to North Dakota because either way the land really belongs to the federal government, but then the federal government dissolves and North Dakota tries to join Canada; South Dakota would want that land back. Russia only gave Ukraine Crimea under the impression that Ukraine would remain (essentially) a part of Russia. Now that Ukraine is trying to leave them, Russia wants the resources, most notably a port on the Baltic Sea, that they never really intended to give up. So far Crimea isn't putting up a fight, in no small part because the majority of the population is Russian.", "I'm not extremely well informed about this, but Eastern Ukraine is generally more Russian and Western Ukraine more Western-European. SO the conflict starts when the President of Ukraine (from the East) decides to stand in the way of the Europeanization of Ukraine (something about the EU, not sure if they were joining or just trying to take steps to join the EU, but they would be leaving some sort of economic pact with Russia for it). People in the west get pissed because they don't even like Russia, so they rise up and overthrow the Pro-Russian government, but there are still many Pro-Russians in Eastern Ukraine, and so Russia steps in to seize a warm water port that they always wanted, and also to protect the wishes of the Pro-Russian population in Eastern Russia. What is their real motive? Probably the warm water port. But I wouldn't really know, and I doubt many people really do. People talk about Putin controlling media in Russia but with all that has happened in the last few years I doubt the people of any country really have control of their own media.", "Think of US analogy of Okinawa or Panama Canal. \n\nSending troops there is considered defense. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. ", "Remember, nothing is black and white.\n\n1. We start with the Maidan or the EuroMaidan , the \"pro-west\" \"revolution\" that happened in the capital of Ukraine.The revolution happened because the then-current president Yanukovich backed of a EU trade aggreament that would have opened the gates of Ukraine to the EU and vice versa. Now the problem here lies with the importing of EU goods in Ukraine which would've crashed the local market and also the terms of the trade agreement were generally not favorable for the Ukrainian population (gas prices going up , wages frozen etc) which the population of Ukraine might or might not realize. Now after Yanukovich backed out of the EU trade deal he made a deal with Russia which gave Ukraine a lot of money (~15 bil euro) and privileges prices for gas.\n2. After Yanukovich fled they installed the pro-west government. The problem is that Ukraine is a diverse country with a couple of parts that are predominantly Russian (parts of east Ukraine and crimea) which didnt take too kindly to the new government comprised of parties that before the revolution were nobodies (exaggeration). The main party (the party of Yanukovich) that won 48.95% of the votes on the last election is not represented. So firstly the new government is illegal (not elected by voting) and secondly it doesnt represent all of the parties in Ukraine.\n2. The deep water port Sevastopol and the Crimean peninsula (with historical and cultural significance to the Russian people) which Russia currently leases from Ukraine. \nSide note: The Crimea has historically been a part of Russia until 1954 when it was \"gifted\" to Ukrainian Socialist Republic as \"symbolic gesture,\" marking the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of the Russian Empire.\n3. Which brings us to the part where Crimea is predominantly Russian (linguistically and ethnically) with ~60% being ethnically russian.\nRussia is probably using Crimea either to gain leverage with the new government so that it gets back some semblance of power so that they appoint more pro-russia people in the government or in the case the Ukrainian government doesnt break they just hold the Crimean peninsula until Crimea declares independence (the voting for which is scheduled for 30th of March). ", "What does the United States have to gain from invading Afganistan, whose GDP is 1/10th of Ukraine? As an American I have no earthly idea why the military spends, in 68 days, the same amount of money that country makes in an entire year as a whole.  We could built 467 Burj Khalifa's with what has been squandered on that waste of time.  ", "A bajillion years ago, in my AP Euro class, my teacher used to make us stand up and shout \"WARM WATER PORTS\" every time we mentioned Russia. It was like a military drill. \n\nWhy does Russia do anything? For access to WARM WATER PORTS. Period.", "Ukraine is considered a buffer zone for the Russians. Without Ukraine, the Russian Federation's border region to the rest of Europe is indefensible. Of course there are other reasons, but this is basically the main reason. If Ukraine is lost, the Russian Federation might as well disintegrate.\n\nWatch this Caspian report video, it'll teach you everything you want to know in very simple terms...\n\n_URL_0_", "Silly redditors. You have only been fully aware in the 21st century and were under the mistaken impression that the USA was the bad guy - running around bullying little countries with wars for oil... while the rest of the world was just misunderstood and all of the cold war was a conspiracy.\n\nWelcome to reality. ", "Russia's playing Civ 5: Brave New World. Russia is playing Catherine, while Crimea is a city-state. This far into the game, Russia has one of the strongest military powers across all of the nations (and this is on Earth with Huge setting and about 30 times the normal amount of civs/city statefor scale). Crimea is a coastal mercantile city-state and Russia has about 10 trade routes being unused. Unfortunately in this world, the majority of Russia's coastal cities become embargoed every half year due to the Nature mod. Crimea is unaffected by this mod and can thus be used as a port for Russia's trade routes. Russia can be denounced by a few nations, as noone wants to go to war this late into the game, but that'll eventually wear off in time.", "This all just seems like media hype\n\nHave the Russians even fired a bullet?\n\nSeems to me they are stabilizing the region. ", "pipelines and $", "The main reason for the invasion is that Putin cannot afford an example of people's power so close to his borders. He sees Ukraine's revolution as a direct threat to his dictatorship, so now he will use lies and provocations in an attempt to thoroughly destroy Ukraine, making an example of it. And he sees the West's inaction as encouragement. If this invasion works, he will proceed to conquer the Baltic states, Moldova and then Poland and Finland. He is already moving troops to the Baltic Coast.", "I'm a little surprised this hasn't been pointed out more prominently, but this entire situation is literally the main plot from Tom Clancy's posthumous final novel.  It's like Putin's using it as an instruction manual.", "Warm water port.", "I was talking to a Russian guy at work. He is pretty anti-Russian, but gave the reasons why.\n\nHere's what he said.\n\nEssentially, the port Sevastopol had been under Russian control for a long time. Russians consider it a part of Russia. \n\nDuring the Soviet Era when the Ukraine was under Soviet control, the Russian government decided to 'gift' the port to the Ukraine in 1957 by merging it with the Balaklava Ukranian town. I use the word gift in quotes, because it all depends on how you see it.\n\nIn any case, the Soviet Union collapses, Ukraine becomes it's own country... and the Ukraine essentially leaves with the Sevastopol port that Russia had 'gifted them'.\n\nRussia still thinks it owns the vital Sevastopol port and that is what they are trying to protec/retake.\n\nEDIT: I did some more researching. I think Russia thinks it still has claim to the whole Crimea region, but anyways... the essence is the same. They think they Ukraine left with more than it should have.\n\n\n", "While talk of strategic ports and buffers to NATO are all correct, don't discount plain old fashioned ego.   Putin views himself as the savior of Russia, and these views are shared by a lot of Russians.  Russia of the 1990's was a miserable place to live (unless you had some money and then it actually could have been an awesome place, which is why about 50,000 American Expats called Moscow home then).  Organized crime was rampant.  Salaries, if paid, were around $100 a month.  The country was broke and there was national shame.   Putin's coup  (it's rarely talked about, but while still the Prime Minister (2nd highest position) he just showed up on TV one New Year's Eve for what should be the traditional 5 minute Presidential speech given right before midnight and announced he was the new President and the former President would not be prosecuted) was followed by a return to nationalism.  Russian flags were flown prominantly, a few of the corrupt oligarchs were chased away mostly for publicity, and the economy improved pretty rapidly.   The biggest factor in the economy, of course was that oil went from 15 US dollars a barrel to close to 130 if memory serves.   And what is forgotten is much of the increase had to do with Russia signing an agreement with Iran to build nuclear reactors.  This set off a chain of events leading to oil sanctions on Iran and increased security fears for war in the middle east.  The result - Russia got rich quickly.   Putin is not a stupid man.    He was credited with bringing stability and prosperity.   For Americans of a certain age, it wasn't too disimilar from Reagan taking over from Carter.  Much of what Reagan got credit for probably would have happened if my dog had been President, but he was the one on TV, and he made Americans wave the flag for the first time in a generation.  \n\nIf you accept that Putin was the puppeteer to Medvedev the 4 years he was constitutionally banned from being President for a 3rd term, then he is well into his 2nd decade as leader of Russia.  He's legacy shopping, and wants to be remembered in the history books (beyond the ones he writes himself today) as one of Russia's great leaders.   Russian leaders have traditionally been judged by lands they have conquered.   And while, it's not likely Russia will go on an imperialistic binge around the world soaking up new lands,  Putin certainly does not want to be seen as the Russian leader who lost \"control\" of Ukraine.   \n\nThe trick for our diplomatic efforts to resolve this will be to find a face saving way for Putin to get out of this.   There is ZERO CHANCE he will let himself as being seen as backing down to the US.  He has sold nearly 15 years of propaganda to the Russian people that he is the man who stands up to the US.     I suspect he'd rather press the button than face that shame.   \n\n", "This is a video of my old world regions professor explaining the history and current events needed to understand what's going on. He started this podcast series about a week ago and it became a 4 part series. It explains most of the history in a nutshell since Ukraine voted to be an independent state (as in, left the USSR).\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI continue to watch his podcasts because he is a fantastic source of information about the current events in the world today.", "In addition to everything what my predecessors have said, there is - I believe - an urgent geopolitical motive that reaches far beyond Ukraine. Sevastopol, in addition to everything that's been said, serves another important purpose right now - it ensures that Black Sea fleet will still be able to freely maneuver in this area. Keep in mind that this is very important for Syria war at the moment. Remember that it was quick tactical movement of Russian Black Sea fleet that prevented French and US navy from aiding anti-government forces in Syrian civil war. Such aid could have swayed the force balance in the conflict and Russia doesn't want allow it. Sevastopol is essential in Syrian conflict if Russia wants it to play by their rules. Now try to think as Putin for a moment, how would you feel when not so long after you stopped the West from aiding Syria, a revolution starts in Ukraine that overthrows government and installs pro-west one instead. To Russia it must have been obvious conclusion that this is how the west was trying to undermine their presence in the Black Sea and open their way to Syria. I'm not trying to justify Putin's actions, but I can see why he might have felt so bothered. An why is Syria that important is whole other story.", "Everyone is claiming this is about the ports but I think that's wrong. It's about National prestige and pipelines. \n\nNatural Gas Lines to Europe run through the Crimea. If Ukraine and Crimea flip blue, Russia will lose some control over it's gas exports. \n", "Russia just trying to show power to the world. And they do pretty well, West can't do much about it.\n\n", "You what mate, describing Ukrain as a \"such a poor country\"? Ukrain is as much a civilised country as any state of America, even further if we have to compare it to some states.", "As usual it is all about oil.\n80% of Russia's oil pipelines to the West go through Ukraine. \n\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_", "Why are warm water ports so valued?", "I'm surprised no one has mentioned that if Russia let's Ukraine go to the EU they may have a NATO nation on their doorstep.  Would the U.S. Let Mexico become a Warsaw ally and reduce economic ties.  I don't think so.  Would the U.S. invade Mexico to keep that from happening?  I think so.  Russia is doing this to maintain their protective buffers and sovereignty\n\nWe'd be invading too if the situation were reversed.  Just look at Bay of pigs and history with Cuba.  And that was further away than Ukraine is from Russia.\n\n", "This is how I understand the situation:\n\nThe US have funded the opposition in order to have their people ruling the government. I didn't believe when people were saying that the US sponsor most of the revolutions alike, but after I heard this hacked phone call, during which Victoria Nuland and American ambassador to Ukraine decide whom should they put in charge in Ukraine, I started to believe that without the US none of this would have happened.\n\nthis is their conversation: _URL_1_\n\nthis is the transcript: _URL_0_\n\nThe same woman was giving out cookies (literally) to protesters of Maidan, showing them her support.\n\nPutin has realized that if he will let this happen, Ukraine will be\u0441ome a branch office of the US, which probably means that they will build another NATO base right next to Russia's border and probably remove Russian Black Sea fleet from the Black Sea region.\n\nSo he had to react, because not paying attention would be suicidal for Russia (in the long term).\n\nCrimea region always has had close ties with Russia, because more than a half of its population are Russians. The first thing new government did after they've gained some power - they worsened the status of Russian language. Before the revolution Russian language used to be an official regional language in some states, but it's not anymore. I think it was a very stupid move, because I believe a lot of Russians started panicking about becoming sort of a second class citizens, like Russians in the Baltic States. New government is saying they didn't mean it, but it doesn't look good when the first thing you do is focus on worsening the status of the Russian language, whilst the country is having tons of other REAL problems. Their actions spoke louder than their words.\n\nThis is how, I think, Crimea has become even more loyal to Russia. Not all of them of course.\n\nI think what Russia is currently trying to do, is make Crimea region sort of independent from pro-Western Kyiv. I don't think they are trying to annex it or make it a part of Russia, they just want to reduce Kyiv's (read American) influence, so the Black Sea fleet could stay where it is.", "It's worth noting that, like...50-60% of people in Crimea are ethnically Russian, Putin is a conservative nationalist, and certain segments of the Russian population tend to think of old USSR countries as being rightfully part of Russia. Not that this is the only reason, but its surely related.\n\nSource: Got out of an college-level international politics class ten minutes ago.\n\nEDIT: said Ukraine instead of Crimea", "A major part of it is posturing. ", "Testing the boundaries of how far Russia can go before other countries take real action. ", "Playing who's got the bigger dick with the US", "Why is the US assisting in an insurrection in the Ukraine a better question?", "There was a chart submitted in the last couple of days that showed about 5 routes that go thru Ukraine to move oil.  It's about $$$$$$$$$$$$\n\nI'll try and find the chart and give recognition to the submitter.  It made it all so clear and w/o words.  It definitely was a ELI5 answer to this question.", "1. putin is scared to lose his face after the revolution in Ukraine. \n2. Ukraine geopoliticaly is very important, Oil pipe\n3. Ukraine can build rockets, aviation, nukes (few countries can do it), energy, has very rich soil (long list actually)\n4. Ukraine has a lot of very important military objects from ex-ussr\n\nTLDR: \"putin lost connection with reality\" as said Angella Merkel", "True ELI5 response:  Check the map, check the map, CHECK THE MAP!", "The Russian 'citizens' in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are citizens in name only.  They do not serve in the Russian military, they do not pay taxes to Moscow, and they do not live under Russian law.  There are none of the elements of a social contract between these people and Moscow that traditionally obligate a government to provide people military defence.  Moreover, at the moment, Russia is handing out passports (citizenship documents) to residents of Crimea like a vendor hands out free samples, just as they did in South Ossetia.  This is an exercise to *de jure* legitimise the use of Russian military force.  It is full of shit.\n\nDoes Russia rightfully have concern for these 'citizens' and other ethnically Russian people in Ukraine?  Sure it does.  But it does NOT have obligations to these people which justify the Kremlin completely dispensing with diplomacy and political process, implementing a pre-meditated, professionally-executed invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory against numerous treaty obligations, and demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from their own territory under pain of destruction. ", "Modern infantry get the drill promotion. +15 percent combat strength in rough terrain.", "OH MY GOD! IT is alot simpler. Ok here is the story. and it goes back awhile.\n\nin 1654 the nobles of the prinicipality of ukraine were under threats from the tatars and the poles. Since the ukrainien kingdoms didn't have very large standing armies, they asked for russian protection, thus starting a long love-hate realtionship with Russia.\n\nFast forward to 1954, The Soviet era of Russia. At a Foreign dignitary dinner party the story goes as followed. The Russian Leader got extremely drunk, and in a drunken state deeply admonished Ukraine for being such a great ally the past 300 years. In return, against the will of all of his adviser, he signed over the region of crimea to ukraine. ( At the time not meaning much becuase there was no autonomous Ukraine.\n\nFast forward again to 1991, the breakup of the soviet union. Crimea, a region of mostly ethnic Russians live. They never should have been part of Ukraine from the start. Ukrainians are White Russians, The Crimeans are mostly Traditional Russians. \n\nNow fast forward one last time, to today. Putin an idealist wants to reclaim what was gloriously theirs in the first place so he paints it. But the real reason and sum up of this response.\n\nPutin did it to basically say F*** you to the UN, UNited States, And the entire west.\n\nHope this was helpful!", "TL;DR   Russia gains power, and they're doing it because they CAN and because it will be hard for others to stop them.\n\nPutin views relations with other countries as relationships based on power. Putin wants more military power, more money, more ability to stop other countries from having a lot of money, more fear and respect from the global community of countries, and more respect and admiration from people in his country that also want Russia to be strong.\n\nPutin has enough power to stop people who disagree with him in Russia from doing anything and enough power to make people who disagree with him outside of the country think twice about doing anything to stop him.  \n\nControlling part or all of Ukraine gives Russia more military power via a navy base. Oil pipelines are good for making money, supporting a military, and preventing pesky Europeans from having so much money. Invading Ukraine makes you look tough at home and abroad, and its hard for other people to stop you if you have a giant military and lots of nuclear weapons.\n", "Let us not forget that the United States and her allies have called for war against Iran (one of Russia's strongest ally), funded and instigated a \"revolution\" attempting to topple another of Russia direct ally's in Syria, and now are funding and encouraging the \"revolution\" in Ukraine. The president of Ukraine is a piece of shit, but that's convenient for those convincing the American public (i.e. Khadaffi). The chess pieces are being played as these separate theatres are indeed linked. Russia is playing too, no doubt through proxies and provocations. As far as invading Ukraine, I'll ask this: How would the US military react if Russia and its allies instigated a revolt in Great Britain through mercenaries attempting to overthrow the government. When the UK responds with force, Russia's propaganda machine repeats over and over that Great Britain is firing on it's own citizens and something must be done. All this while openly calling for war with Israel because they have nukes. Next thing you know, Canada's president is ran out of the country via a \"revolution\" that the US knows is funded and supported by Russia and its allies. Parts of the Canadian government asks the US for help to stabilize the situation (while other parts of the Canadian government hates America for past wrongs). US units arrive and Russia cries invasion. I know this is over simplified, yet it's important to try viewing all perspectives.", "Because what people dont realize is that we may be more civilized socially, our governments never grew up along with us.", "what Russia gives, Russia takes.", "This is NOT my post. This is a copy and paste from user Nathan_Flomm. Dude understands this stuff incredibly well.\n\nHere's the post:\n\n----\n\nIt started with Ukraine's financial problems. Ukraine was trying to work out a deal with the IMF but Russia offered them a $15 billion bailout. The bailout included subsidies for oil. Ukraine does not have its own independent source for oil and actually depends on the Russia to provide it. [You may be familiar with Russia turning off Ukraine's supply of oil many times in the past.](_URL_2_) The majority of people in Ukraine wanted to work with the European Union however Russia's influence on Ukraine (because of the bail out, and the oil subsidies, as well as threats to cut off all access to oil) made the Ukrainian government side with Russia as opposed to working out the trade deal with the European Union.\n\nThe people of Ukraine were extremely upset and protested. Eventually protests that were peaceful turned violent. Some of the protests where co-opted by Neo Nazi organizations, and other extremely right wing (and violent) individuals. \n\nThe government then made a series of [anti-protest laws](_URL_3_) that were simply ridiculous. For example, simply protesting in front of a building and making it harder for people to enter that building can get you 6 years in prison. If you gather with a group and simply talk negatively about certain members of the government you can now get as much as 2 years in prison. The laws had the opposite effect and made the protestors even more violent. \n\nWithin a matter of days the laws were repealed and eventually the protesters successfully ousted the prime minister (who now has been seen in Moscow). The government started negotiating with the protestors. Progress and financial independence from Russia seemed inevitable. This made Putin very angry because this meant that Ukraine would switch their allegiance from Russia to the European Union and the IMF. \n\nPutin wants to create a [post communist Eurasian union](_URL_0_) which Kazakhstan and Belarus have already agreed to join. Many believe that this union is simply a disguise for combining all the post-communist countries into one huge organization resembling the USSR once again. This is the crux of the protesters argument. \n\nPutin believes that even though he has gained support for this union in other post communist countries, the protests in Ukraine might remove some of the successes he has gained. Furthermore, this could potentially stop other post communist countries from joining the union, thus he is putting military pressure to ensure that the protests do not leak to other post communist Eastern European nations. \n\nThe WWIII aspect plays into this because Ukraine is requesting NATO support, which the US is part of, but this is not just limited to United States, Ukraine and Russia. NATO consists of 28 sovereign countries that have agreed to support each other militarily in case they are invaded. Many of those countries have other alliances which would increase the number of nations involved in any potential military intervention. The US has warned Russia as has have many other countries that their actions \"have consequences\".\n\nThe question now is what will Russia do? If they don't leave will NATO take military action against Russia? If so, will China support Russia? Pretty soon this could escalate to into war with 35+ countries engaging in military action. \n\nPersonally, I don't think we'll get there - but it is a real risk, and one that needs serious thought on how it can be avoided without Putin having to go back with his tail between his legs. If he can't save face this can start another Cold War. \n\nEDIT: Thanks for the gold, kind stranger.\n\nEDIT2: Since other people have been asking:\n\n[Why the Crimean warm water port is important, but not the biggest reason.](_URL_6_)\n\n[Half of Ukraine is not pro-Russian. 14% are](_URL_1_), and even though Crimea is [58% Russian only 23% favor joining Russia](_URL_7_).\n\n[Russia exports both oil and gas](_URL_4_) both which flows through Ukraine and Belarus. \n\nYanukovych was the President, not the PM (my bad).\n\nAlso, the Ukrainian revolts were not manufactured by the West. There is no evidence of that, just pure speculation.  \n\n----\n\n[Here's the link to the original post.](_URL_5_)", "Same reason anyone goes to war/ invades another country: resources. ", "Ukraine does have lots of wheat fields...\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "With the Ukraine, Russia is once again an Empire.  Without it, it isn't.  That is the reasoning in Putin's mind.  And he knows that there is no one in the world strong enough to do a damn thing about it.  US is too weak and the EU have always been craven in these kind of situations.\n\nRFB", "Russia's motives in a nutshell:\n\n- To capture Gas fields in crimea\n- To expand russian influence and provide a buffer zone to Europe now that Yanukovic is gone\n- To bring the Russian people together thus consolidating Putins power\n- To make NATO look powerless\n- To a lesser extent to capture Sevastopol, but they were already building a navy base on nearby Russian territory so this is not as significant as people might think", "The Ukraine gov sided with Russia instead of the eu but many people wanted them to side with the eu which created violent protest and since many people in the Ukraine are Russian the Russians feel obligated. It's a complicated issue, but, essentially, it's a standoff between the east and west that's the biggest one since the Cold War in the 60's.", "Because Russia is protecting it's assets, the Black Sea Fleet and all it's hardware on that side of Ukraine.  And the pretense of rescuing Ukrainian Russians from Ukrainians :p", "Did you ask this same question when the US did it, time and time again?", "Oh Crimea river", "It's worth remembering that Putin's power base absolutely requires him to maintain a tough guy image. The long term strategic problems of losing Sevastopol are a major factor, but his reasoning likely also runs to the simple fact that he would have a difficult time remaining in power if he loses control of it. ", "As my 9th grade Western Civ. teacher drilled into our heads, RUSSIA WANTS WARM WATER PORTS! All water ports in Russia freeze during the winter so access to the Black Sea would be very useful for them.", "I don't remember Russia putting up a stink when we invaded every country in the Middle East over the last 15 years (some countries twice).  Russia invades a country and our NSA goes into overdrive posting propaganda against Putin.  When they invade half as many countries as we have I'll start to get mad.  ", "75% or more at Viscaine Bay at Miami are  Cuban.\nCan Fidel disembark Cuban marines in Miami to protect them?\n", "Russian here. Putin is notorious for being selfish and trying to strengthen his power verticale. In this case, he is trying to unite Russia against a common foe (fascist uprisings in his brother-like Ukraine) in order to solidify his power. He does it all the time. \n\nA great example is the Nord-Ost terrorist attack in Moscow back in 2002, when a theater full of 900 hostages was captured by terrorists. The storming and liberating operation was extremely successfully carried out by special forces, which also pumped gas in the theater to make everyone go to sleep. Problem is, no one cared about the hostages - there was no field hospital made near the scene, ambulances were far away beyond perimeter, no attempt was made to supply them with food and water (the terrorist held out for 2 days 1.5 out of which Putin was mostly silent and didn't want to negotiate at all with them). Because of the lethal amount/mix of gas, 150 people died and he didn't give a single shit about them calling the operation a major success demonstrating how cool the Federal Security agency and he is. Later he refused to reveal the type of gas used (hospitals couldn't even help the poisoned victims). All the Alpha special forces team members were given antidotes but none were provided for the liberated hostages.\n\nAnother case is the war in Chechnya, which is a great reason for Putin to prove his power. By keeping this hell on Earth under he controls he feels more powerful and omnipotent. The costs are astronomical (in terms of human lives lost, corruption and money in general).\n\nThere are plenty more examples i can provide just reply to my comment.\n\nIn this case its selfishness that takes over again. He wants to demonstrate the world how cool he is. He wants to make sure everyone knows the size of his balls and how much he wants to risk his people/economy/stability just to demonstrate that he can do whatever he wants. The ruble already plummeted by 25% making exports profitable, increasing budget surplus and local producers and general population suffer (hint hint oil). To be honest all the West has to do is to freeze Russia government official's and Putin's friends Swiss bank accounts and he's done for. Even worse would be for him if EU restricts borders. \n\nSorry for my poor english.", "As a more tertiary reason, Russians are pretty butthurt that Kiev (the traditional origin of Russia (Kievan Rus) is not in Russia. ", "Russia still views Ukraine as a colony. Also, FYI it's not \"the Ukraine,\" just \"Ukraine.\" The use of the article suggests that it's a territory, not a sovereign state. ", "I am so tired of this. Can people for a few moments stop wearing tinfoil hats and look at this from another angle? I understand the bandwagon of hating on Russia is pretty popular right now, but perhaps they are there acting as sort of a policing force until the govt stabilizes? Like, oh I don't know, other countries do for their neighbors?\n\nMy gf's parents live in Ukraine, and she tells me that they are scared of the new govt, that things like \"Ukraine only for Ukranians (ethnically Ukranians which I do not even understand)\" are being proposed. They do not live in Crimea (in the East though to be fair). \n\nOf course there is political agenda, there always is, but the people that support this are most likely supporting it not because of propaganda, but because they are worried about family and relatives in the country.\n\nTBH I do not even see the point of all these protests/this coup. I have not met any supporters here (where I live) that can articulate legitimate plans or changes that this new govt proposes that will alter Ukraine's future in a positive way. All I hear around hear is we support them because democracy, because freedom, because no more corruption and other buzzwords. \n\nOnly thing that I could applaud is getting rid of a president that stole from his people, unfortunately he will be replaced with one that will steal just as much most likely... I just hope he will not be of a neo-nazi extremist type.\n\nI apologize for my rant", "if you really think putin is protecting the people there then might as well start waving the white flag now", "There are several reasons why Russia wants to take back Crimea.\n\na) Crimea is not necessarily a poor region. Its people may be impoverished but Crimean ports have a huge economic significance (also a possible reason why Ukraine does not want to give up this land).\nb) The ethnically Russian inhabitants of the land support a Russian takeover. So with a weak Ukrainian influence in the region, invading Crimea should be easier than say, taking the Congo, a region completely unrelated to Russia.\nc) Putin is very power-hungry. So much so that the guy doesn't even care so much what economic sanction will be forced upon him. He wants a bigger and more powerful Russia. This is his chance to get it.", "There are ethnic Russians on the Eastern border.\n_URL_2_\n\nThen there is the issue of pipelines for oil  &   gas\n_URL_1_\n\nThis infographic also helps the comparisons\n_URL_0_\n\n\nThere are also issues of a great port on the black sea.\n\nThose play into the \"why\" question, but there is always the issue of \"what problems is Russia trying to distract people from?\"\n\nWe have very little information about our own political motivations, so it would be foolish to think we will see clearly to the question of motivation on the other side of the world.\n", "There's also, aside from all the other really great reasons, the dangerous implications that can develop if Russia manages to set a precedent under which it is okay for them to invade other sovereign nations.", "The whole situation is extremely complex and mostly is not what the media trying to portray it as. \n\n* In 1990, after the cold war ended and Germany was unified, US/NATO gave Russia what some people call a \"guarantee\" that it will not expand eastward, in return Germany could be peacefully reunited and also the the balance of power remained untouched.\n\n* Now look at [this](_URL_0_) map, NATO expanded eastward by more than 10 countries since the end of cold war and fall of the Soviet Union, getting basically right next to the Russian border. Putin is a very smart man whether you like him or not and he knows exactly whats going on. Now naturally, Russia feels threatened because NATO is not just expanding eastward, it deploys missiles and anti-missile systems in to its member countries. \n\n* Think back to Cuban Missile crisis, US freaked out when USSR deployed misses in Cuba, so what kind of reaction should Russia have to NATO's moves? What if hypothetically Russia deploys whole bunch of missiles/anti missile systems in Cuba, Mexico and Canada, I think that would not just be unacceptable but a straight up provocation.\n\n* Now what about Ukraine? Ukraine and Russia are not just extremely historically and culturally interconnected, at this point it is the last \"buffer zone\" between Russia and EU/NATO. Putin needs Ukraine to be pro Russian, he needs that buffer zone, he needs that Crimean port. Can you blame him? You decide.\n\n\n", "From a geopolitical prospective (international relation through the view of geography), Chrimea is a important strategic location. It is a peninsula and controls one half of the straight into the sea of Azov, the other half of which is controlled by Russia. \nMap:_URL_0_\n\nRussia stands to gain strategically by controlling all of the access to the sea, regardless of the other strategic gains (oil and gas pipelines etc.)", "I'm curious about the Geneva Convention laws governing the use of uniforms. Since Russian troops have no recognizable flags or patches showing where they are from, are they not in wrong?\n\n\"Modern laws of war regarding conduct during war (jus in bello), such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, provide that it is unlawful for belligerents to engage in combat without meeting certain requirements, such as wearing distinctive uniform or other distinctive signs visible at a distance,\"", "My history teacher once told me in high school if you want to understand Russia's actions from medieval times until today all you need is once sentence...Russia wants a warm water port. Obviously it's simplified but it still kind of applies here", "read this (it's short):   \n_URL_0_", "As a Ukrainian:\n\n* Poor? The richest of all Putin's victims, even if it is poorer than EU countries. And people here live much better than people in a lot of regions of Russia.\n* \"Ethnic Russians being oppressed\" reasoning is a crap. Nobody offends or oppresses ethnic Russians here. It is just that Putin already used this excuse to attack Georgia, and it succeeded.\n* Previous government pretty much gave up Ukraine to Russia. Russia had an almost complete control over it. New government, on other hand, is formed from revolution people that are highly unlikely to give up the interests of Ukraine to Russia, and even if they want, people will not let them. And Ukraine has a lot of great things that Russia can't get without the permission of Ukraine. The most important to Russia is, access to Black Sea and port in Sevastopol.", "Putins strategy is solid. \n\nThe Russians will back independence for a break-away Crimean Republic. Crimean officials will swear loyalty to Crimea, not Ukraine. Ordinary Crimeans  will rally in the square and demand independence from Ukraine. It'll be like Kosovo leaving Yugoslavia. Russia can rally a number of other nations to recognize Crimea as sovereign, and in doing so set up a client/puppet state. Russia can supply New Crimea with with loans and provide security while keeping the Port at Sebastopol. And it will all be because of \"democracy\" a demand by the Crimeans to be free of their dastardly Ukrainian overlords. \n\nIn this scenario Russia damages Ukraine by peeling off its territory. It secures its hold on Sebastopol through agreements with a new Crimean gov't. It gets all that it wants without firing a shot.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n ", "For the luls", "Their fleet base is there...\n", "According to the last census taken 58% of Crimeans are ethnically Russian. So when the Crimean parliament requests help from Russia, they mean it. This isn't just Putin flexing his arm and invading a small country.", "Sir, we are not so poor. We are the same as Russia proportionally ", "Same reason why USA is invading countries like Afghanistan, to \"protect\" the people living there.", "So . . . It's not just a ploy to get the world to forget about the Sochi olympics. I thought it was a given Putin would invade something as soon as the fifth snowflake didn't open!  I know, too soon and too out of place in such a serious political discussion!  ", "Why do people (you) think its profitable to invade rich countries? Attacking small poor countries makes logical sense from an imperialist perspective. Wealthier countries can actually defend themselves.", "Gas lines/pipes passin through Ukraine\n", "Wonderful comments and great insight.  The upside is stability!...period!\n\nRussia supplies 30% of the EU's need for gas, of which 80% passes through the Ukraine.  Since the USA and Saudi Arbia's attempted over throw of Syria's president Assad for Qatars' new gas find, they have been scrambling.  Qatar needs to get its gas to Syria...which then is a viable product for the EU to be supplied from.  But as we know the USA has been supporting the Syrian rebels with little success, even with \"false flag\" chemical weapons attempts, the rest of the world would not buy into this deprived act. \n\nNext we have the USA, very significantly working behind the scenes with the Ukrainian opposition (rebels) to destabilize the democratically elected government.  Again this is to assist friendly governments to supply energy the EU.  The fastest way to get this moving??? is not to grow your business through good competition, but through competitor default in meeting supply demands.  ", "I see a lot of good explanations in this thread, they all make up the big picture:\n\n- Economic reasons: Pipelines through the Ukraine are vital for the Russian economy and in trade with Europe. Securing Sevastopol as well as building a land connection directly between Russia and Crimea would also open up a lot of trade opportunities.\n\n- Strategic reasons: Without naval bases in the Crimea the Russian Black Sea Fleet would be severely weakened. Not only would this weaken Russia's control of the Black Sea, but it would also impact Russian force projection and sphere of influence into the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa. \n\n- Internal politics: Putin has built his career as a strong man. He was almost entirely unknown to the World and Russian people when he became prime minister under Yeltsin and built his reputation and popularity through the Chechen Wars. Nationalistic fervor and dreams of Russia once again being a super power is a big part of his popularity and why the people do not protest when he stifles democratic rights, freedom of speech and extends his own power.  His image as a strong man would be weakened if Russia lost its influence over the Ukraine. It may not be possible to keep Russia\u2019s influence over the Ukraine and the recent actions may be directly counterproductive to keeping it, but if Russia secures more direct control of Crimea Putin will still look good. If he had done nothing his image would be weakened. \n\n- Ethnic Russians: Even though Russia\u2019s \u201chumanitarian\u201d reasons for these actions are all bull shit, there is still value in increasing the population of Russia, especially with more ethnic Russians, for a country that aspires to revive its empire.\n\n\nAlso of note is that historically and ethnically Russia has probably a stronger claim to Crimea then Ukraine does: Crimea was a part of Russia for 171 years before it was transferred to Ukraine more or less because it seemed like a more convenient administrative arrangement within the USSR (and possibly because Kruschev was Ukrainian and looking out for his own country). Only 24% of Crimeans are Ukrainian, while 54% are Russian.\n", "Here the the real reason. \n\n* USSR falls. Ukraine becomes independent, but clearly in Russian Sphere of Influence.\n* Russia bullies Ukraine and screws them. Government is corrupt and in Russia's back pocket.\n* Ukrainian people says \"fuck you Russia,we'll try to join the EU\" and become their trade partner instead. Overthrow the government.\n* Russia is pissed and is afraid of a domino effect of EU expansion into Eastern Europe costing it trade/sphere of influence.\n* Russia wants to assert Eastern Europe is \"theirs\" and is willing to use military to do so by saying the people can't overthrow the government.\n* As Tornada said Putin will hold power no matter what, so blowback doesn't matter.\n", "To me it looks more like Putin and his regime is making a statement that the US and nato can get poland, balticum etc but that Ukraine is still within the kreml's sphere of influence.", "Some men just want to watch the world burn", "You have to understand they're not invading Ukraine, rather they feel they're \"securing\" Crimea.", "Because the Ukraine is weak. \n\n_URL_0_", "The simple answer is spheres of influence\n\nRussia is establishing itself as a dominant political leader akin to the USA. This is obviously rippling the geopolitical landscape as many countries are simply not used to having to deal with an additional watchdog.\n\nThe right to do so is theirs and tiptoe global politics will allow it to happen eventually as long as noone violently upsets the balance of powers (to the scale of nuclear threats, open war etc). The US is doing exactly the same, however its sphere of influence reaches far further than that of Russia, to the point that US can partake in any conflict of opinion in the world under the pretense of it affecting democracy/world peace/freedom of speech etc\n\nYou can argue that North Korea (missile launches) and China (bulk buying of any and all raw materials to the point of controlling economies which depend on the export of such materials) are attemtping to broaden their sphere of influence as well.", "It's hardly poor. It was the breadbasket of the world at one point before Stalin starved millions of them.", "On top of what has already been mentioned, I believe that there was a little issue also, previously, where Ukraine was in debt, the EU refused to pay the debt, but Russia was willing to offer financial aid.\n\nThe EU got all prissy about how Ukraine was getting closer to Russia, then this rebellion started that the Western media portrayed in a very positive light.\n\nOne reason Russia may well be invading, in my eyes, is simply to assert that Ukraine belongs to the East.", "The Crimea is or was part of Russia as much as Florida is a part of the u.s.  For some reason. The soviets gave it to ukraine. The vast majority of ppl in the Crimea support this action as they see themselves as Russian . ", "Projection of power, and asserting there domminance. It's like a gorilla pounding it's chest, warning off any potential enemy. It's like any other country hosting 'war games' which are essentially showing off their military might.\n\nHe's showing world powers that he isn't afraid to protect his interests, and that he isn't afraid of the US or anyone else.\n\nEdit: A lot of spelling errors.", "I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure nearly have of Ukraine identifies as 'ethnic Russians'. This isn't a story of a big bad guy Russia invading their smaller neighbor Ukraine, there is much more to this than I can explain, because I do not know much on the subject.", "The Ukraine's poor because its been pillaged for hundreds of years. Between Polish, Russian and Austro-Hungarian overlords the Ukrainians have been peasant slaves through most (maybe all) of recorded history. \n\nBesides the port at Sevastopol, the Ukraine's always been Russia's bread basket. Before and during WW2 it had lots of oil. I don't remember what its other resources were, but Hitler wanted the Ukraine so bad he forgot to destroy Russia first. \n\nDuring WW2, A lot of Ukrainians joined the German Army because they hated Russians. Stalin promised the Ukraine independence after the Germans were defeated to get Ukrainians to join the 'Soviet' Army. When he reneged and the Ukraine revolted, he sent the Army in, took all their food, and killed millions more.\n\nThe modern Ukraine is the first time its ever ruled itself. Looks like Putin wants to put a stop to any of that free thinking nonsense. ", "Ukraine is/was part of Putin's plan for a *not the EU* trading bloc. Ukraine also has Russia's gas  &  oil pipelines running right through it. Further, one more set of warm water ports in the Black Sea. All of this makes it very unfortunate for Ukraine. Their strategic value to Russia is very high.", "British here, seems we gained loads from invading poor countries. Can't see why it won't work for others!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Fleet"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/02/20140220_ukr7.png"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/03/02/putin-is-losing-in-ukraine-and-thats-our-biggest-problem-right-now/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.politicalhighground.com/conflict-in-ukraine/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["pistols.To"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Early_history", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Fleet", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Ethnic_groups", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_%281783%29", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruschev#Struggle_for_control", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#In_the_Soviet_Union"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jHhzj08yQ"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeA5UR3iK_I"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_disputes", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456974/html/nn4page1.stm"], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957", "http://youtu.be/8oljT0fT4LA"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Union", "http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1zd1bo/what_is_the_situation_with_russia_ukraine_and/cfsquog", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_disputes", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine", "http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/11/13/pipelines-of-empire/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1zd1bo/what_is_the_situation_with_russia_ukraine_and/cfsn12t", "http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1zd1bo/what_is_the_situation_with_russia_ukraine_and/cfsu7d7", "http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1zd1bo/what_is_the_situation_with_russia_ukraine_and/cfsnacn"], [], ["http://crushspread.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/ukrainian-wheat-production/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-01/russia-vs-ukraine-infographic", "http://en.ria.ru/infographics/20090609/155206402.html", "http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/09/this-one-map-helps-explain-ukraines-protests/"], [], ["http://stratrisks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/nato-expansion.jpg"], ["http://understandinguncertainty.org/files/MapOfCrimea.png"], [], [], ["http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116810/putin-declares-war-ukraine-and-us-or-nato-wont-do-much"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/teSXcJlpMl8"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "llj0n", "title": "AskScience AMA Series - IAMA Published Biofuels researcher, Currently PhD Student in Biochemistry AMA", "selftext": "I am a first year Biochemistry PhD student, previous to starting my PhD I worked in several labs varying from Biofuels research to Photo physics.\nI've published papers in Biodiesel research and contributed to muscle protein grants. \nI can offer information on what I've worked on, as well as applying to graduate programs etc.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/llj0n/askscience_ama_series_iama_published_biofuels/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2tn9zi", "c2tnf8j", "c2to3q9", "c2vxv4b", "c2tn9zi", "c2tnf8j", "c2to3q9", "c2vxv4b", "c48kgxa"], "score": [3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["What are you actually working on now? Furthermore, what muscle protein did you work on prior to graduate school?", "I know that in the US, more and more corn has been going to alternative fuel sources, I have even heard that as much as 50% of US corn production is for fuel use.\n\nIs there any truth to that? What are the implications? Is wise to divert that much food resource to fuel? Do you know how this has been affecting food prices? Are there better sources of biofuels? And why are they better?", "A few problems with the biofuel industry is first the cost of production; I read not too long ago some biodiesel was sold to the U.S. navy for something around $500 a gallon. The cause of this problem is ultimately the necessity for food and nutrients for fuel source.\n\nWhat's your take on this problem? \n", "Hey thanks for doing this AMA. Would you mind cross posting this to \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThat way future readers can see it and you'll get the messages.", "What are you actually working on now? Furthermore, what muscle protein did you work on prior to graduate school?", "I know that in the US, more and more corn has been going to alternative fuel sources, I have even heard that as much as 50% of US corn production is for fuel use.\n\nIs there any truth to that? What are the implications? Is wise to divert that much food resource to fuel? Do you know how this has been affecting food prices? Are there better sources of biofuels? And why are they better?", "A few problems with the biofuel industry is first the cost of production; I read not too long ago some biodiesel was sold to the U.S. navy for something around $500 a gallon. The cause of this problem is ultimately the necessity for food and nutrients for fuel source.\n\nWhat's your take on this problem? \n", "Hey thanks for doing this AMA. Would you mind cross posting this to \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThat way future readers can see it and you'll get the messages.", "This may not be your specialty, but I'll give it a shot anyway:\n\nDo you know of any way to safely block or limit glutamine metabolism in the body?\n\nContext: I'm on a ketogenic diet (high fat, high protein, low carb) as a supplemental treatment for my brain cancer (the idea being that brain cancer cells cannot metabolize ketones). It's unclear whether this diet is doing any good, especially considering there is literature citing that brain cancer cell lines can use glutamine/glutamate for energy. Here is one article that covers some of this topic: _URL_0_\n\nBeing on the ketogenic diet makes it hard to avoid glutamine-loaded foods, as many of my staples are daiy, meat, nuts, and vegetables. Is there any way, via diet, to block metabolism of glutamine? The article I linked mentions some glutamine analogues that appear to do this, but I have no knowledge of the accessibility of these amino acids or how I would even begin to get them into my body.\n\nSorry to talk about this in such crude terms; I don't have any background in biochemistry."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceAMA/"], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceAMA/"], ["http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/45/9/4077"]]}
{"q_id": "4tfhry", "title": "Did nobles pay rent to live at Versailles?", "selftext": "Did members of nobility pay rent to live at Louis XIV's court? Did they pay for food or was everything provided for? \n\nAlso, I read that during the reign of Louis XIV, Versailles was open to the public - even the apartments (and bedrooms) of royalty. Wouldn't this have posed a huge security threat in terms of potential assassination attempts, as well as theft? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tfhry/did_nobles_pay_rent_to_live_at_versailles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5hzto3"], "score": [12], "text": ["They were provided for. Versailles was a golden prison. But everyone did not stay at court everyday. Many of the wealthiest nobles had an hotel somewhere close ( like in the city of Versailles ) where they retreated after the day at court. There the hotel was theirs (bought or rented ) and when they organized festivities or hold their \" own little court \" it was up to them to pay of course.\n\nPlus, many nobles, those who were not the political elite ( ministers, secretary of state, ...Etc ) would live for several months every year to live in their castles or manors, generally in the countryside. \n\nServants were also provided for, and there were a lot of them. Meaning that being a servant at Versailles, or generally for the King's court, was an excellent advancement in life. \n\nYou read right that Versailles was extremely open. This is due to several thing. First the King was a public person so this, a access to Versailles, was wanted by the monarch. But it does not mean that because one could walk through Versailles and see the King. \nThe second reason is practical, Versailles was constantly being built. Thus, workers and artisans needed to get from a point to another to do their work. Yet, there has been foreign witnesses who were surprised at how easy it was to walk in Versailles, even visiting the *chambre du roi* ( the public King's bedroom ) without being bothered by a guard. \n\nAs for the security, the King was rarely alone, especially Louis XIV. But security improved during the *affair of the poisons*. On the other hand the openness of where the monarch lived became troublesome during the reign of Louis XV, when Damiens almost killed him. This was not new to Versailles however. When Henri III was murdered by the monk Jacques Cl\u00e9mentin 1589, the murderer managed to get to the king without being bothered by anyone ( the fact that he was a monk played a part ). \n\nAs for theft, I don't know if there have been any studies about it, or if there even is any kind of sources we could use. \n\nSources  :\n\n*Versailles: Au Service du Roi* by Mathieu da Vinha ( which I am very sad it has not been translated, it would be a success even among general public. Anyone working in book editing ?? ). \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "23goxd", "title": "How do fluids with extremely high Reynold's number behave?", "selftext": "I understand that there has been a lot of work done on characterizing fluid mechanics in low Reynold's number regimes, such as on the length scale of cells and bacteria. On our normal human scale of water pipes, lakes, and oceans, fluids behave differently, viscous forces are negligible. \n\nHowever, I was wonder about extremely high Renoyld's number such as in the giant space clouds of water. (_URL_0_) Do the fluid behave similarly to our experiences, with viscous forces that are negligible? Or are the mechanics starkly different like the difference between \"normal\" Reynold's number and the low Reynold's number of bacteria?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23goxd/how_do_fluids_with_extremely_high_reynolds_number/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgwtxgf"], "score": [2], "text": ["They have turbulent behaviour, usually dynamically chaotic, and the fluid is is no longer incompressible/irrotational since the pressure forces take over the viscosity and stress forces, and the fluid picks up angular momentum. This means that the velocity of a fluid **v** cannot be described solely by the scalar velocity potential, such that grad\u03c8=**v**, but there'd be an additional curl term and pressure term.\n\nThe Navier-Stokes equation describes the most general behaviour of fluids, under any conditions and bodily forces, including laminar and turbulent flows. If the solution (if one even exists) is found, it would mark the end of fluid dynamics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/23g1tf/til_there_is_a_mass_reservoir_of_water_floating/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "58z6s3", "title": "how does youtube make enough money to pay every youtuber?", "selftext": "i just dont understand where they get the money from to pay that large amount of money to alot of youtubers, can someone explain it", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58z6s3/eli5how_does_youtube_make_enough_money_to_pay/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d94cb9i", "d94clai", "d94crbs", "d94cx34", "d94jqzo", "d94tskc"], "score": [36, 3, 8, 55, 2, 2], "text": ["Youtube receives money from advertisers, and pays Youtubers a small percentage of that. They also have other sources of income, including monthly subscriptions.", "The money that a YouTuber receives is directly proportional to the amount of viewers they have simple as that. If someone is receiving a large amount of money it's because they get a large amount of views it's not as if youtube is paying a flat rate to anyone who uploads a video. Also what they pay is a very small amount of the total money being made like peanuts in comparison.", "YouTube's bandwidth and actually running the site is probably far more expensive than any payments they are making to people posting videos on the site, but payments will be a significant issue too as the site grows even more.\n\nYoutube sells advertising on its site, and it sells a whole lot of ads. In 2015, the last time reliable info on it really came out, it was estimated they sold about $4B in ads per year.\n\nHowever, even at $4B per year in ad revenue, [YouTube isn't profitiable](_URL_0_)\n\nThere are some people predicting YouTube will be profitable in 2016, but we'll have to wait and see.", "First of all, very *very* few Youtubers make any significant amount of money, and the amount the top Youtubers make still pales in comparison to the top tier of other entertainment professions, such as music, TV. \n\nYoutube generates revenue by selling advertising space, mostly in the form of pre-roll, which are videos that you watch before a Youtube video plays.  While this ad space is sold for a seemingly small amount *per view*, Youtube generates *four billion* views a day, and has over one billion users.  A third of the internet users on Earth.  Even at pennies per view, that's a tremendous amount of money and Youtube is able to pay all the Youtubers with the change they scrape from underneath their couch cushions.\n\n", "Does anyone know the exact figure a YouTuber makes? Like a 100 dollars per X views or what?", "Youtubers get money from two sources - advertisements and views.\n\nVideo advertisers pay YouTube money, and YouTube gives a part of that to the Youtubers.\n\nBanner advertisers do the same thing - they pay YouTube money each time their ad is seen, and YouTube pays the owner of the video on that page part of the profit.\n\nBasically, for every source of income for a Youtuber, there's a larger source of income for YouTube. That's how they can always afford to pay their clients."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-for-youtube-1424897967"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2gm2u1", "title": "why do hotel pools and fitness rooms close and lock their doors at a particular hour? they don't have lifeguards in the in the middle of the day, what's the difference that i'm not seeing that happens at night?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gm2u1/eli5_why_do_hotel_pools_and_fitness_rooms_close/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckke26l", "ckke6a9", "ckkfgzd", "ckkicie", "ckkifhx", "ckkk6it", "ckkkac8", "ckkkbbe", "ckkkg7z", "ckkkkg7", "ckkkv7j", "ckkl2ql", "ckkl644", "ckklpve", "ckkmzgw", "ckkq14k", "ckl7nis", "cklfkb7"], "score": [5, 372, 108, 37, 52, 7, 3, 5, 5, 10, 5, 2, 95, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They still have to have staff to keep it clean.", "I've spent ten years working in hotel lounges and bars. \n\nLess staff to monitor safety precautions. A lot of guests seem to think that general rules don't apply when in hotels. That they are in an island void of rules. People are found opening drinking, having sex, naked, etc. in pool and gym areas all the time. \n\nThe things that go on in hotels... It's kind of gross. I've walked in on people filming porn in their rooms. I was delivering the room service they had ordered. ", "I used to manage a hotel.\n\nWe kept the fitness room open 24/7, but we did close the pool at night.  It's closed because of safety concerns/liability insurance.  If it's outdoor, there will be less light at night even if there are lights outside.  People tend to drink at night and may make bad decisions.  If you keep your pool open at night, allow drinking near the pool, or any number of other higher risk situations, your liability insurance will go up.  Most small and medium sized hotels don't think the additional cost is worth the small inconvenience to a few guests who want to swim 10pm-6am.  ", "Part of the reason that I understand we shut down the pool is so that the filters have a downtime of no one being in the pool to sufficiently clean the water. When a lot of people are in and out of the pool all day long dirt, skin, bodily fluids, ect are being left in the water. On a busy day you might notice the water being a bit cloudy by the time you shut the pool down. Before the pools are opened in the morning, levels are checked to insure safety. At least at the hotels I've worked at.", "Mom worked front desk at a hotel for years. She personally locked the fitness room and pool because she was tired of people having sex in there while she was trying to replace towels or something for the next day.\n\nEDIT: Licked is now Locked.", "Sex mostly. People will have sex after hours anywhere in a hotel. ", "People do stupid things at night.  It's all fun and games until someone drowns.", "I've never seen a lifeguard in a fitness room.", "I work at a hotel, the main reason is so people are not kept awake by the noise of others swimming. ", "Hotel Night shift guy here. \n\nPretty much all of the rule I enforce are there to prevent complaints. People complain for any and every reason. The facilities close during the night to stop the noise and stuff that could disturb guests and generate complaints.\n\nAny weird or silly rule a hotel has probably came from a weird or silly complaint.  ", "Hotel Manager and Certified Pool Operator chiming in!\n\nMost state laws require a pool to remain 'continuously unoccupied for no less than eight (8) hours'.\n\nWhat better time to keep the pool unoccupied than overnight!", "foot traffic generally keeps people civil. ", "Hotel Manager here. There are quite a few reasons.\n\n1) Even though there are no lifeguards, pool areas are usually checked on periodically throughout the day. At night, we have fewer staff (sometimes only one night auditor) and so we cannot keep an eye on it.\n\n2) In the same vein, if something bad were to happen during the day, we have more staff and more resources to handle it. At night, it might be that one auditor I mentioned earlier attempting CPR on your 8-year-old.\n\n3) People get drunk at night. Drunk people love to do stupid shit in pools and treat fitness centers like playgrounds.\n\n4) Nighttime is when our graveyard shift housekeepers clean the pool and pool area, wipe down and disinfect the exercise equipment, replace towels, add chemicals and do maintenance on pumps and other hardware.\n\n5) Shutting off the jets in the hot tub, the lights in these areas, and the running of water from showers, sinks, fountains, etc. saves the hotel money at times when guest traffic doesn't warrant the expense of keeping the area running.\n\n6) People splashing around in the pool or loudly clanging free weights back onto the racks disturbs other guests who are trying to sleep.\n\n7) We secretly hate all of you and it puts a faint twinkle in our eye when we get to tell you you can't have what you want the second you want it.", "Worked in a hotel for two years, which had an outdoor pool that 2/3rds of the rooms looked out onto the pool. Simplest answer; people in the pool is noisey shit, 11pm rolls around, we shut 'er down.", "Also, people tend to scream as retards when swiming at night. And there are often other people sleeping during that time.", "Night Auditor here, and all the previous replies are spot on as far as why it's shut down at night.\n\nDrunk people are obnoxious, i have a good imagination and the shit they would do drunk at the pool would be scary.\n\nI also have a little story. One of our regulars thought he would be smart and prop open the outside door to the indoor pool without us noticing. While we were delivering receipts to the rooms later that night my other auditor found him dick deep in some random chick in the hot tub. The other auditor had to kick him out of the pool.  This regular has a girlfriend that we have all me before, and the girl in the pool was definitely not his girl. \n\nThis same regular also punched his boss in the face out in front of the hotel to keep his boss from driving drunk. He came running into the hotel and jumped over the front desk asking me to call the cops. His boss was running in right behind him ready to bead his ass, until I had the police on the line. His boss then berates me for the next 15 minutes until the cops get here, saying all kinds of shit like \"Look at your life, you are so pathetic.\"\n\nI was never so glad that my Gm refused to let him stay here after this incident.", "I worked for Hyatt for 5 years... Its pretty simple, people are there to sleep, and it disturbs other guest if theres people swimming at midnight having a ball, so we have to set rules to insure that people get what they paid for.", "I used to work in several hotels. People get a little too comfortable in the middle of the night when its silent and no one is in sight... and they seem to like to get naked... and um... do things in the pool or hot tub. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "55tyqs", "title": "Can sound influence human hormones?", "selftext": "I'm thinking estrogen and testosterone etc.\nI've seen one study that showed that music decreased testosterone temporarily, even aggressive music.\nIs there any truth to this?\nCould one *in theory* expose themselves to specific sounds to change hormones? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/55tyqs/can_sound_influence_human_hormones/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8enozf"], "score": [3], "text": ["I'll take a shot at this, though music is probably the one thing I know the least about in regards to neuroscience, but I have taken a course that analyzed music and its role in the brain. I also am off to bed nd exhausted from the Orioles/Blue Jays game, so sorry for any mistakes. The paper I link later on is a great read, and will be your best bet for good information.\n\nWe have to first point out that the brain is very neuroplastic - it constantly creates new connections betweens neurons, down/upregulates receptors, and hoards of other things in response to psychosocial stimuli. It has been shown that music, especially \"major\" chords produce uplifting feelings, while minor chords have a \"sad\" feeling to them. This is the result of neurotransmitters like dopamine circulating through brain areas such as the hippocampus, auditory cortex, and amygdala, and how we have socially adapted when and where we first heard these sounds. I have another post regarding the universality of music on emotion and will try and find and post it too.\n\n\n [I found this paper that seemed to be the first of its kind to analyze music and its affect on testosterone levels of males and females](_URL_0_). \nHonestly, their abstract is pretty well summarized and I can't summarize it much more succinctly; but to answer your question: **YES**, sound can influence human hormones! This study had a small sample size, but saw cortisol levels change in regards to music, and in females, \"T levels increased in those listening to chill-inducing music but declined when they listened to music they disliked - however, these differences were not significant\". So, we can't draw major conclusions from this - there was not any drastic changes seen, but some *were* - aka, this needs further study.\n\nA bigger study with more participants and differing genres of music over a longer time period would help learn more. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848314/"]]}
{"q_id": "2mde25", "title": "Why is the Devil often potrayed with a pitchfork?", "selftext": "I found an old topic on this but nobody had answered. Where does it come from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mde25/why_is_the_devil_often_potrayed_with_a_pitchfork/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm38bt9", "cm3kmpa"], "score": [139, 9], "text": ["This question poses an interesting challenge that can shed light on how historians think about evidence, and how we often take different approaches to finding an 'answer' to our questions.\n\nTo start with, most of the physical features of the modern image of the Devil developed through the medieval period as the Devil (Satan) became more *real* to Christians, as he began to stalk the earth in the minds of ecclesiastics. This process of *materializing* the devil begins in the latter part of the early middle ages, late Carolingian. These physical features given by ecclesiastics are not represented in the Bible. \n\nThe problem medievalists face is that documentation between late antiquity through to the high middle ages is thin. How did the Devil get the form he was given, why was he given his specific look? Historians must turn to archaeology, architecture, arts, visual evidence where text is absent or mute. For some medievalists, this means a turn to *formalism*.  Here is what medievalist Norman Cantor has to say about formalism:\n\n >  A definition of formalism in medieval studies might be the way of interpreting literature or art that stresses the heavy or exclusive dominance of traditional standard images or motifs, perpetual coded formulas of representation and description. The traditional, standardized images and motifs are privileged and centered in this view of medieval visual and literary art, while individual creativity and original discovery are marginalized or excluded altogether. Formalists regard medieval literature and art as overwhelmingly dominated by traditional sets of images and themes and individual creativity in literature and art as rare. [Cantor, *Inventing the Middle Ages*, William Morrow:1991,p162]\n\nSo, for some medievalists, this methodology privileges the persistence of forms inherited over time:\n\n > Literary and artistic styles and genres did change, but not the thematic content of ideas in medieval art and literature. Ideas, themes, motifs followed traditional formularies. [p163]\n\nCantor shrewdly see that there is some foundation to this approach, but also sees it as ideological:\n\n > Iconology and topology also speak to the conservative continuity and enduring unity of higher medieval culture. The great preponderance of images and motifs was inherited from Greco-Roman classical art and literature or from the thought world of the Church Fathers [..] which in turn was a product of the interaction of biblical ideas with the classical traditions.\n\nWhat does all have to do with the devil and his pitchfork?\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**The Devil's Trident**\n\nHere is one of the [first representations](_URL_1_) we find of him with pitchfork, on [Muiredach's High Cross](_URL_3_) at the Irish monastery of Monasterboice. The carving is dated to the 10th century. On the right arm it depicts the devil, pitchfork in hand, herding souls away from Jesus at the center, corralling souls off to hell to the blast of a demon's trumpet like some parade in our worst nightmares. Or is it a trident the Devil uses to corral the souls?\n\nThe historian Jeffrey Burton Russell did a lot of important work on demonology of the middle ages, from heresy and witchcraft to the history of the devil. He contributed tremendously to understanding the development of the devil in the minds of Latin Christendom and how that in turn affected persecution. His writing is often beautiful, lyrical and convincing with his immense erudition. In some important respects, though, he leaned on formalism, and it shows in his totalizing rationalizations of the origins of witches, witchcraft, and the devil. Here he writes about the devil and his pitchfork:\n\n > Three of his characteristics have origins other than the bestial. Wings are an ancient symbol of divine power found on the shoulders of many Mesopotamian deities, and from Mesopotamia they passed over onto the shoulders of the Hebrew cherubim and seraphim. Ahura Mazda in Iran was represented borne aloft by mighty wings. Hermes, the messenger of the god, wore wings upon his ankles or legs. Horns to are ancient symbols of power and fertility. The Devils \"pitchfork\" derives in part from the ancient trident, such as that carrier by Poseidon, which symbolizes threefold power over earth, air, and sea, in part from symbols of death (such as the mallet of Charun), and in part from the instruments used in hell for the torment of the damned. [Russell, *The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity*, Cornell:1977, p254]\n\nWell, he's just about the only one who has written much of anything on the devil's pitchfork and so it gets repeated and [becomes true](_URL_2_). Even Russell putting \"pitchfork\" in quotations sets us up for doubt, that the pitchfork isn't actually a pitchfork. Russell has on his very interesting agenda a rooting of Christian beliefs in traditions that came before it. Accordingly, we should see that the \"pitchfork\" is an inheritance of a Poseidon's classical, 1000 year old Trident. Following the logic of formalist medievalism, and not entirely without good argument, this image crossed 1000 years from Greece, maybe India, to Ireland and wound up as the image a carver would use in their depiction of the devil. Russell would likely support his arguments with the tremendous storehouse of history he kept in his head to remind us of all the other inheritances that can truly be documented.\n\nThere is safety in tradition, in formalism. It compares physical evidence, things we can *see* and *touch*. And it provides an answer no matter how great (and often inexplicable) a gap. Whether that answer is right is another matter, and one that I want to challenge.\n\nThe problem is that nowhere is the link across 1000 years gap positively affirmed. Not in the bible, not in the writings of Church fathers. No early transitional iconography nor mention of trident in ecclesiastical writings. It develops in iconography of the latter end of the early middle ages, during the period where the devil starts to take his place in the material world. During this time he moves from invisible instigator to walking among us. I wrote a bit about another aspect of the Devil's materialization in the early middle ages in [another post on the devil and his suit](_URL_0_). \n\nIf the devil is to appear in the real world, an innovation in Latin Christendom, than why wouldn't the real world inspire his image?\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**The Devil's Pitchfork**\n\nThe imagery of the war between God and the Devil as fought on earth was created by ecclesiastics, and principally by monastics. It should be familiar story to most that these monastics lived in rural surroundings. There wasn't much of life in the early middle ages Europe that wasn't dominated by agriculture. Abbeys were situated on cleared land, or land to be cleared.\n\nThe early medievals inherited the light scratch-plow from the Romans. But medievals in northern Europe, with heavier, clay soils, innovated the moldboard plow to turn deeper farrows. And so it is that the Romans [had a two-pronged pitchfork](_URL_4_), but it was smaller, for light work.  It appears, in the west, that the three-plus pronged pitchfork developed in the early middle ages. (The trident was used by Romans for fishing, but it does not appear to have persisted past antiquity, nor made its way to the north.)\n\nFarming communities grew up around these abbeys, against their walls. The monastic's daily life would have been suffused with the sights, sounds, smells of rural life, of peasantry. The rhythms of scything, stacking, and moving hay. Of mucking barns. Pitchforks slung over shoulder, propped against walls on breaks, or swinging in hours of constant motion.\n\nThese monastics were some of our only witnesses to war in the medieval country side. We know that war was not fought by sword alone, and indeed the peasant with pitchfork was an effective threat to the mounted warrior.\n\nSo, if the monastics are now thinking about the devil come to earth, to obtain not just the soul but now the very bodies of people, to be swept, shepherded, cajoled, into the mouth of hell to live a physical pain, when that monastic is searching for imagery with which to arm his rebelling demons, why would he look further than the fields of his monastery, fields filled with the hard working Christian souls tending the fields and barns with the most common of implements?\n\n\nThe Devil's pitchfork appears in the second half of the early middle ages, somewhere after 800 CE. He appears by the hands of ecclesiastical writers and artists: monks and bishops. Did those monks and bishops draw their inspiration from Greece and Rome of a 1000 years before? Or from looking on peasant flock who the monks were *just then* beginning to worry would be shepherded away by some physical, stalking Satan, prodded and poked from salvation to the gates of hell like some demonic inversion of John the Baptist's vision of salvation by Christ:\n\n >  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. [Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17]", "-I'm still a student but I feel I can actually contribute to this.\n\nOne thing that I've learned about the portrayal of good and evil (this has come from sources such as reading Nietzsche, to examining the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation, to even Ancient Greece and Rome) is what is associated with \"good\" and \"evil\"\n\n\"Good\" is mainly associated with the rich- they are \"pure\", they are clean of the stench that the poor have because the poor must work, they do not have to bother themselves with using tools such as pitchforks, and they also set the viewpoint for good and evil- or that they determine what and who is good and bad. This can be seen easier in societies where one of, of the main upper social classes are composed of the clergy. In Medieval Europe, it was the clergy. In India, the Brahmans, in South/Latin America (before colonization) the tribal leaders of the great empires (Olmecs, Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, etc.) and after, the Spanish.\n\nThe ideas of what good and bad looked like were made by those in power- and those in power wanting to look good, pure, etc. also associated the terms with Christianity- or specifically morality. Those who were rich could only be considered good Christians because they were \"so obviously blessed\" to be born into a rich family, or somehow make the wealth themselves. \nThe bad was everyone else. The poor, the serfs, the slaves, the workers, the foreigners, the conquered peoples, those in exile, who fall out of favor, who are not rich or powerful. They were seen as bad, and so were their habits.\n\nIn Ancient Athens (and most of Ancient Greece), it was seen as a disgrace to work for a living. If you didn't have some sort of preexisting wealth, you were still a citizen (assuming you were male, born in Athens, and completed your military service), but you were looked down upon. You had a vote, but you weren't considered as smart as those who didn't have to work for a living. This idea was so en-rooted in Athenian culture, that the philosopher Socrates lived by it- getting all his meals from friends/parties, and living in a small home.\nBack to the Devil- The poor were associated with bad morality, and the ultimate symbol of bad morality was Hell, Lucifer, the Devil, Satan, whatever you want to call it. Pitchforks were used by farmers, and because farmers had to manually work, and were still poor ?(for the most part) the pitchfork became associated with this sense of bad morality because of its association with what the \"good\" part of society considered \"bad\"\n\nEverything has been covered wonderfully- I just want to get this out there (and see if my thought pattern derived from my studies is logical)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kwoku/when_did_the_devil_gain_his_suit_in_popular/clpmzav", "http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/pix/Monasterboice-Muiredachs-High-Cross-East-Face-Last-Judgment_medium.jpg", "http://books.google.com/books?id=x2QRu5-rVZgC", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muiredach's_High_Cross", "http://books.google.com/books?id=GrXyV1LPmZAC"], []]}
{"q_id": "5465vn", "title": "i see kids that are younger and younger with glasses every day. how do they measure how they can see and how bad their eyes are when it's literally a baby that can't even walk or talk, let alone read letters aloud from an eye exam?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5465vn/eli5_i_see_kids_that_are_younger_and_younger_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7z71wj", "d7z72ba", "d7z8uml", "d7z9aw2", "d7zaqrd", "d7zbzmp", "d7zc4en", "d7zfw48", "d7zlhlk", "d7znmhm", "d7znuso", "d7ztlui", "d7zx20d", "d7zzgbe", "d800h0o", "d800oil", "d802ltc", "d805s5h", "d807t0b", "d80diu9"], "score": [89, 11, 3643, 3, 7, 11, 5, 6, 3, 468, 54, 29, 5, 3, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They use a machine called an autorefracter. It projects an image onto the retina, rapidly changes the focus, and uses a camera to look at the retina and see when the image of focused correctly by the patient's eye. ", "There is a machine that can project an image on your eye and look through the pupil to see the image formed on the retina at the back of your eye.  It makes the image out of focus in a specific way and observes the eye lenses attempt to focus it.  With that measurement it can make a sharp image on your retina, and from that measure your prescription without you doing anything.\n\nI'm not sure that's a good thing, or what people are doing, but it's possible.", "The other answers so far are incorrect - try putting a baby in an autorefractor and let me know how that goes for you. ;)\n\nFor babies or nonverbal people, we can use something called a **retinoscope**. Basically we shine a light in the back of the eye and move it around, and based on how the reflection moves it tell us if you are far-sighted, near-sighted, or have good vision. If the reflection moves when we move the light, we know you have a refractive error and which one it is (far- or near-sighted). We then place different-powered lenses in front of the eye to \"neutralize\" or stop the movement. The lens that does that is your prescription.\n\nWe can also use the same technique to determine if you have an astigmatism.\n\nSource: I am an optometry student. \n\nEdit: Since a lot of people are asking why don't we just make this standard instead of the \"Which is better, 1 or 2?\" thing we do:\n\nThe answer is that retinoscopy is a *bit* less accurate than the regular \"1 or 2\" technique, but it can get us very close. The \"1 or 2\" is done to fine tune the prescription and make sure the patient is comfortable with the correction.\n\nEdit 2: If the 2 options the doctor gives you look the same to you, it's perfectly acceptable to say so. \"They look the same\" is a valid response. ", "Ooo there's folks who specialize in pediatric optometry, but most drs can do the basic stuff.  Checking that the eyes are working together, that they can see their parents face, that they're able to track and follow etc.  I use an interesting thing (babies don't see a lot of pen lights) to get then to pay attention and then watch how they fixate.  There are cards with pictures that get smaller and smaller, like with little cars or animals or basic shapes.  The tumbling E or C pointing in different directions.\n\nMost offices have an auto refractor or retinascope.  Specialist offices might use a fancy EOG machines and  whatnot.  Any test that doesn't require subjective input.  There are cards with contrasting bands of light and dark strips of different thicknesses vs a boring all grey that the baby looks at (they look at the more interesting side)\n\nThere are red green glasses you put on the kid and make then trace a path through a colored dot field they can only navigate if both eyes are working together.  There are vision tests to check depth perception (You might remember having to look at a 3D fly and grabbing the wings as a kid) babies can do that.  \n\nWe have to do these things to make sure that the kids use both eyes together.  What can happen is they end up letting one eye better than the other and that other eye gets neglected and never develops as well.  There's this critical period we have to hit or it just turns out.", "The question I have is why are younger and younger children wearing glasses? Is the eye sight of the human range getting worse for some reason?", "Some eye ailments are very obvious. I was born with crossed eyes (strabismus) and had corrective surgery at a few months. I was wearing eyeglasses before I could walk. \n\nI still need to wear glasses, but my eyesight is very good. You would never know my eyes used to be crossed.", "I got glasses when I was 6 months old. My older brother was diagnosed much older when he would refuse to sit anywhere but a few inches from the TV when watching. So, when I was born my parents saw signs they recognized from him and they just knew. Things like stuff not registering to me from far away. I don't know how they knew what prescription I needed, but that was how it happened with me. Been wearing some form of corrective lenses for 23 years since.", "Sometimes it's not about something besides not being able\nto see. For example my little brother has a really bad lazy eye and when he was about 6 months old he had to start wearing glasses to help correct it. When he takes his glasses off his left eye stops looking forward at you and starts looking at 7'oclock and he can't move it or control it. But put the glasses back on and the eye drifts back up. It's odd. ", "Related question.  Can these techniques be used on an adult with dementia who cannot understand optometrist instructions?", "Awesome question! (I'm a pediatric optometry resident)\n\nSo for children too young to give us a reliable subjective \"1 or 2\", we base the prescription on objective measurements. We can objectively measure their refractive error with retinoscopy (as mentioned above). That's when we shine a light in their eyes  and use lenses to determine the prescription. It's very versatile, and we don't need a machine so it's perfect for kids. They can do anything (eat, watch tv) as long as their eyes are open for us to get the measurement.\n\nIn kiddos, it's best to do this when they're dilated because the dilation drops force their eyes to relax their focusing/accommodation ability (which they have a lot of). Kids can accommodate through far sighted prescription/refractive error. Prescriptions for kids under 7 should almost always be determined with dilating drops. It's normal to be a little far sighted when you're young, and as you grow up you tend to become more near sighted. \n\nAs pediatric optometrists, one of our greatest worries is amblyopia or lazy eye. That's when a child either has an eye turn, or high prescription leading them to favor one eye over the other. The non-favored eye doesn't develop the proper connections in the brain to see 20/20 because the kid will always favor his \"good eye\". That's why you'll see some kids wearing an eye patch. It's to force them to use their \"bad or lazy eye\" so the brain can recognize and developed clear vision through that eye. It's important to treat lazy eye when they're young while the visual system is still malleable.", "I took my son to All Children's in St Pete. They used a type of computer modeling to determine how to correct his vision problems after they completed the basic, physical eye exam. The tech measured different aspects of his eyes then the doctor was able to simulate his vision based on those measurements. \n\nFrom there, the doctor was able to take out a set of sample glasses and set them to what would be his prescription. Then he'd put the glasses on his face and see how he'd react. He kept making minor changes until his eyes no longer crossed or turned in.\n\nWhen the doctor finally got it right, he tried to take the glasses off my son and he grabbed at them. He threw a full fledged temper tantrum because he wanted the glasses back immediately. It made that much difference in what he could see.\n\nThe doctor said that children with severe vision problems almost always reacted that way when they got it right. That's one of the ways he could tell that the glasses would work.", "I was younger then 5 when I got mine. The nose prints on the tv were a clue for my parents. ", "I got glasses when I was in 1st grade. At my eye exam, they showed me a cartoon and looked at my eyes while I watched it. Of course, this was back in 1981ish, so methods have probably changed dramatically. ", "I had a head injury that damaged my vision at 2. I've had glasses since I was 4. At 3, eye specialist used a pediatric eye chart (shapes and symbols instead of letters) to see what my vision was. This was in the 80s, tech has moved on and eye problems are easier to catch.", "The top comment is correct, but I want to add that little kids often wear glasses to not just correct they're vision, but keep their eyes straight.  \n\nWe all do two things when we look up close - we change the curvature of our lens inside of our eye to focus up close, and we turn our eyes together to fuse onan image up close.  Some kids have this drive to help them see far away, which can cause an eye to turn inward, which is called esotropia. An eye that is not straight will not develop the same vision potential as a straight one.  As an ophthalmology resident, I'll give glasses to a kid to eliminate this drive altogether to help straighten the eyes.\n\nSo it's not that kids are seeing worse and need glasses at an earlier age, it's that we are trying to fix ocular alignment.", "Pediatric Ophthalmologist here:\n\n1. Retinoscopy method described earlier is correct. With some skill, knowledge and experience you can be very accurate and certainly more accurate than asking a young child to refine his refraction with \"which is better\" type questions. \n\n2. How do we know to check?  Every child that comes into my office for any reason gets a full, cycloplegic (dilated) eye exam with refraction, no matter the reason for being there. You would be shocked how many times I have to convince parents who brought their child in for pink eye or a stye to let me do the full exam with drops and I find something unknown and unexpected.  Also vision screening from outside sources (pediatricians or schools) has gotten quite sophisticated and picks up many things earlier than they used to. \n\n3. Do young children need to correct their vision?  Sometimes. I will accept small amounts of myopia or astigmatism without correcting early while explaining to the parents that glasses are likely coming \"down the road\". But larger amounts or particularly  significant asymmetry between the two eyes is something that if uncorrected can lead to amblyopia (the brain not developing normal vision from one or both eyes) and will usually be corrected as well as refractive problems in the setting of other eye problems like crossing of the eyes. ", "When I took my daughter at her 4 year check up, they used shapes in place of the letter chart. ", "I just want to chime in and thank OP for asking this question, and piggyback with one of my own. \n\nMy daughter is 15 months old and was prescribed glasses before she was even 1. Both her eyes can go lazy when the doctor checks them, but not all the time. Her glasses are supposed to help her focus. The thing is, with or without her glasses, I've noticed that she has no trouble moving around, grasping things, identifying faces, and more, so I'm confused as to how much the glasses are actually helping, or if her vision is focusing on its own. \n\nThe doc wants to try surgery next if her lazy eye problem doesn't improve, but I don't know what that entails and I'm unsure that it's necessary. I understand it would be easier to do and would likely heal better when she's this young, but I don't want to over-correct a problem that might not be that much of an issue to begin with. \n\nWhat kind of surgery would improve a toddler's lazy eye, and how much risk is there?", "To add to the other responses here when a child is old enough to speak and answer but too young to dependably recognise and identify letters they use little pictures. My first son was tested at age three and instead of a chart with letters they had pictures such as a duck , a boot , a square , a house , etc. \n  \nWhen he got to the line that was difficult for him to see he would think the house was a square. The only difference was the house was a square shape with a triangle on top to denote a roof. The duck and boot were roughly similar in shape as they were both roughly an L shape. I remember being impressed by this as he might call a B a D or an L an I or a 1 at his age even of he saw them correctly. \n  \nThey also looked into his eyes with a device that shone a light and the doctor could tell by how it reflected back what prescription he needed. I remember he hated the drops in his eyes that dilated them as it made things \"like underwater\" as he put it. \n  \nHe never minded wearing glasses as being able to see clearly was enough incentive and soon he identified as a glasses wearer and felt odd if he wasn't wearing them. I had supposed we would have trouble getting him to wear his glasses. ", "I was about 8 years of age when I was given glasses, the ugliest glasses possible. Not just ugly but they had fairly thick lenses as well. I flat out refused to wear them and it was about 2 weeks later that my mother, thankfully not me otherwise they would have believed I did it, sat on the glasses and broke them. Us being very broke at the time we could not get me a replacement set of glasses.\n\nFast forward 22 years later and I decide to go and see a optometrist to have my eyes tested seeing as I should have something wrong with my eyes even though I did not feel like there was.\n\nI told the optometrist the story and he tested my eyes, now with much more modern equipment, and concluded that I had perfect 20/20 vision. In his own words 'if everybody had as good eyes he would be out of a job'.\n\nI firmly believe that if I had worn my glasses, all these years later I would have been 100% dependent on them.\n\nNot saying it's the same for everybody but just makes me think that you really need to be aware of what is really the cause, in my case problems focusing in general at the time, and what is the possible out comes of the 'remedy' to be used."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ovtni", "title": "how does china artificially keep its currency cheap?", "selftext": "I've tried reading around and googling but I cant seem to find a simple enough explanation for the not so financially savvy me. So, if anyone of you awesome people can help me out here. **How does China artifically keep its currency cheap? What do they have to do in order for this to happen? Any long term or short term consuquences?**", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ovtni/eli5_how_does_china_artificially_keep_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3kg0us", "c3kgm13", "c3kgomf", "c3kjg8z"], "score": [15, 5, 15, 11], "text": ["Instead of exchanging the USD they've earned into yuan (thus resulting in a surplus of USD in circulation in international currency market and short supply of yuan, in other words, devalued USD and higher value in yuan), they buy US treasury bonds, which is in USD denominations, it's not affected by the value of yuan. That way the supply of yuan circulating in the international currency market will never be low. ", "The Chinese government refuses to buy Yuan at any value other than the one that they have fixed, making it essentially worthless to trade Yuan up/down on an open market, because, in the end, you won't be able to sell it for any more than the Chinese government is willing to pay for it.", "The key to China's control over their exchange rate is their capital controls. That, and a central bank with extraordinarily large quantities of dollars and yuan to spend to defend the exchange rate.\n\nGermany and many other Western countries used to have a policy of fixed exchange rates. That changed when savvy people with lots of money figured out that they could \"attack\" the fixed rate.\n\nHow they \"attacked\" the exchange rate is by borrowing vast quantities of German marks and buying British pounds at the fixed rate. Many investors repeated this until the German banks no longer could afford to sell pounds and buy marks to keep the exchange rate constant. At that point, the price of marks went down, the investors traded back and paid off their loans, and pocketed the difference.\n\nThis process is simply not possible with China, since China does not allow currency traders to do the things they need to do to attack the exchange rate. Furthermore, the Chinese central bank has vast quantities of USD that they can use to defend the exchange rate.", "[**Pegging the Yuan**](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.khanacademy.org/video/pegging-the-yuan?playlist=Currency"]]}
{"q_id": "2mgx7d", "title": "why german engineering is spoken of as being superior to many other countries?", "selftext": "It seems to me that Germans are often thought to be some of the best engineers in the world. This idea seems to have been around since the world wars, if not longer. What about their engineering practices is superior? What do they learn in college/university curriculums that is so different from that of schools In other countries to warrant such a reputation? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mgx7d/eli5_why_german_engineering_is_spoken_of_as_being/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm42yj3", "cm43sjv", "cm455d1", "cm45pd9", "cm4a4mt", "cm4a90n", "cm4e89n", "cm4jg4c", "cm4mavk", "cm50ccy"], "score": [73, 144, 9, 14, 3, 6, 2, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["I'm German so i can tell you some things i noticed when going to foreign  countries. I don't really know much about college/university curriculum outside of my field. But the only thing i could say about mine is that it was extremely theoretical. Lots of math, lots of physics. When i finished university i couldn't do one thing right. But apparently companies don't expect you too. I've learned just as much in my first two years at work as i did at university. \n\n\nBut i think lot's of it has to do with German work ethics. Get up early and work hard, you usually don't take  many breaks just for a coffee, to small talk, or anything like it. We're usually very focused. I don't say other countries are lazy or something like that, it's just a bit more.\n\n\nAnd another really big thing i noticed (and other people i met agreed) is that especially in america people have the tendency to deny if somethings not working. Or just say i'm working on it, and it's ok. And people are even offended when you ask why their work doesn't work. Here in Germany we're usually very straight forward, if somethings wrong we say it just like that. And i think that prevents many bigger mistakes and enables people to give each other good advice or help if necessary. ", "I'm going to explain this like I explained it to my actual five-year-old:\n\nGermany came late to the industrial revolution. They were able to build on the technological advances of the earlier factories and machines in other countries.\n\nSecondly Industries were set up as cartels. So the steel industry was a cartel for example. This led to uniform standards of production and quality. \n\nSo eventually people noticed that products and materials from Germany were usually \"premium\" when compared to the average in the market. \n\nTl;dr: they got the best factory equipment, and set up their industry in a very logical way.  Cooperation rather than competition", "Back when American cars were extremely lucky to make it to 100k miles, German cars could do that and still drive like new, while the American cars drove like a floating cloud with no brakes.  I think we've all pretty much evened up these days though.  ", "Also relevant: The term ['Made in Germany](_URL_0_)/(any other foreign country)' was supposed to corrupt imports for the UK in end of 19th century. Ironically the german 'rip-offs' labeled as such were actually pretty good or even of higher value, so 'Made in Germany' became eventually a certification mark. ", "I agree with many of the other points made in this thread, but I also think that there are a couple of other points. \n\nFirstly Germany is a Rhine economy which means that the Government takes a more active role in the economy - supporting, investing in, and subsidising key industries as they see fit and in accordance with a wider economic strategy. Anglo-saxon economies also pay out a lot in subsidy (more that their reputation for 'laissez-faire' might imply!) but it's more of a free-for-all. The advantage of the Rhine model for large industrial companies is that it creates economic stability so that they can invest and develop themselves long-term, and it reduces risk because they know that if there is trouble, the government will help them (and in many instances the government owns a big chunk of the business, so it's in their interest to step in, not only to protect the economy from lots of job-losses and additional benefits claims, but to protect the long-term revenues of the nation via dividends as well as taxes). Because they operate in a more stable, conservatively-run economy, instead of an extreme boom-and-bust cycle, and because they have the additional security of support from the government, these industrial companies can invest in R & D and the latest production methods and technology more easily - they may feel that they can afford to think long-term about expensive projects.\n\nAnother issue is that historically many countries had similar reputations for excellence in engineering and manufacturing. Even the reputation of the British was once very good (and in some specialist areas such as space technology, it still is). However the British had a problem, and that problem was called oil. The discovery of oil in the North Sea forced the price of the pound up, because everyone wanted to buy oil from us, and needed to buy pounds in order to do so. This meant that the UK currency got relatively expensive, which meant that companies exporting goods from the UK found that their products were immediately more expensive than those of their international peers. The automotive industry, for instance, was destroyed, when previously we had exported respectable numbers of cars such as the Morris Minor to other countries.", "German engineer here:\nThere are other countries well renowned for their engineering, like Switzerland, Japan, Russia and the USA. \nRussian products were made to last and work in all conditions. So the engineers had to make them simple and easy to repair.\nGerman companies usually have to look for small markets and design their products to fulfill the highest demands because the wages are relatively high and thus the products are expensive. With Switzerland, USA, Japan and similar rich countries this is true, too.\nFor consumer markets, price is usually more important than quality, so countries with lower production costs make compromises with quality to compete in this price sensitive market. \n\nLook at solar panels: when efficiency mattered most, Germany was leading, now that it is a mass market, China took over, because production is much cheaper (which may have to do with lower environmental standards beside wages). The production machines often still are german though. \nCameras: the only german manufacturer left follows a very special concept, aiming for a few enthusiasts. \n\nCountries with high GNI can afford better education. Compared to other countries, the german system focuses on more theoretical work in universities, and on more industry oriented education in the former FHs (now called university, too). Our students don't have to pay tuition fees. The universities cope with the lack of money by working together with companies, which is easy in the engineering field, but difficult in some other. ", " >   Why [is] German Engineering Is spoken of as being superior to many other countries?\n\nBetter branding? While Germany does some excellent engineering, the idea that they're head and shoulders above everyone else is seriously overblown. As /u/pharmaceus put it:\n\n >  The Netherlands or the Swiss have comparable quality of industry and yet nobody thinks \"Dutch engineering\" or \"Swiss engineering\" as their first thought. And they are definitely the places to go in my field (construction &  engineering) - not Germany.\n\nI think that part of the reason for Germany's reputation is that they make some good expensive cars, like Mercedes, BMW and Porsche. Cars are the highest visibility product you can make, so those brands boost the German image.\n\nAs an American I *hated* the American car industry for the garbage it produced, because it gave American products in general a bad reputation (including amongst Americans). Actually the opposite was true, back in the days when the US actually manufactured things, and even now with engineering done here, there are many excellent American products. Want to try American electronic engineering? Back before the Japanese destroyed it with price dumping, the US also had an excellent machine tools industry. The US had a host of other quality products too, like major appliances. We have an excellent and deserved reputation for aircraft (and will keep it if the brilliant management at Boeing realize when they design the 797 that Boeing has the best staff of airliner engineers in the world).", "At this stage of the game, it's pretty much a marketing gimmick. ", "In the US I think alot of it comes from the legacy of the volkwagen beetle and bus. For decades these things were pretty much bullet proof. You could keep them running with a pair of vice grips and a match book. As the years went on they became known for very complex designs utilizing high quality materials. \n\nHowever, I've spent the last fifteen years fixing things. I've worked in auto repair, tool repair, and gun repair. Now I fix planes. German engineering sucks. It seems like there are two competing schools of thought. \n\nIt's going to break, so we should keep that it mind while designing it. Somebody is going to have to take this apart to fix it, because it's awesome and people will want to repair it. \n\nIt's perfect. It will never break. It will last forever. Its just that good. So lets make it ultra super complex, damn near next to impossible to take apart, and then lets put the most crucial parts in the very center! This is the German way of doing things. \n\nTheir designs tend to focus on a few key features. Vibration reduction, noise reduction, and user comfort. Problem is these things add so extra parts into the mix that they break more often than other choices. So when you first get a German made item, its super awesome for the first phase of use. It will be better than your other options. Then it breaks and the nightmare begins. It will cost twice as much and three times more longer to get it back into operational shape.  \n\n", "Precision. They don't know what it means to say, \"That's *good enough*.\" That attitude tends to be a precursor to quality."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3v4vha", "title": "Where did the practice of flipping a coin to make a decision come from?", "selftext": "Ex: top side = one option, bottom side = another option. I'm wondering where that specific method, that seems universal, seems to come from.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3v4vha/where_did_the_practice_of_flipping_a_coin_to_make/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxkg5ca"], "score": [12], "text": ["See [this](_URL_0_) post from a couple of years back.  The practice probably dates back to the beginning of coinage."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qo0ap/how_did_flipping_a_coin_become_a_way_to_easily/"]]}
{"q_id": "aqokzi", "title": "Are there any true crystalline metals? Not polycrystalline?", "selftext": "Sorry about this rabbit hole: my wife is playing Kingdom Hearts 3 and there is a crafting material called Mithril Crystal. Mithril, as far as I understood, is a metal, which had me go down this path. Apparently most metals are polycrystalline, but I wasn't able to find any metal that was truly crystalline. \n\nAnd if there isn't a naturally/synthetically made metal that is crystalline, is there a way to turn a metal, like iron, from polycrystalline to crystalline through very specific heat reatment/forging? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aqokzi/are_there_any_true_crystalline_metals_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egifgwo"], "score": [20], "text": ["Absolutely. Metals can be grown as [single crystals](_URL_0_); my PhD work is based on deformation behavior of metal single crystals. There's several methods for growing metal crystals, such as the [Bridgman method](_URL_3_) or the [Czochralski process](_URL_2_). \n\nHowever, they're not commonly used outside of certain very specific applications; polycrystalline metals are much more difficult to deform (stronger) than single crystals, and have much more isotropic behavior (same in all directions). It also takes much more effort to produce a single crystal rather than a polycrystalline metal, which can be produced by simply allowing molten metal to solidify in any container that can hold it. \n\nThe one common structural usage for single-crystal metals I can think of offhand is high-performance turbine blades. At very high temperatures, the same grain boundaries that make polycrystalline metals stronger than single crystals also make them much more susceptible to [creep deformation](_URL_1_), with this being the primary limit on the lifespan of the turbine blade. The reduced creep rate in the single-crystal blades outweighs the other downsides like reduced overall strength and increased cost. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_crystal", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(deformation\\)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czochralski_process", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgman%E2%80%93Stockbarger_technique"]]}
{"q_id": "11fuqp", "title": "Felix Baumgartner:  When he is falling at terminal velocity really high up would it feel the same as falling at terminal velocity at normal skydiving height?", "selftext": "The way I see it, falling at terminal velocity at 100 000 feet would require the same amount of force pushing you upwards as at, say, 10 000 feet.  However, because the air is way less dense you'd have to be falling much faster to have the same amount of air hitting you to slow you down.  So I guess what I'm asking is whether a few air molecules hitting you at 700 miles an hour would be the same sensation as dense air hitting you at 100 miles an hour.  Maybe it's more of a thought experiment than anything else..\n\nJust curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11fuqp/felix_baumgartner_when_he_is_falling_at_terminal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6m3jf4", "c6m4r8y"], "score": [7, 9], "text": ["When they interviewed the guy that did this in 1960 he couldn't even tell he was falling until he got into the more dense atmosphere.  ", "I can think of a few differences.\n\nLike [yeerk72 said](_URL_2_), the thin atmosphere wouldn't decelerate you as immediately as if you jumped at low altitude. Your terminal velocity is faster, so accelerating at 1g, it will take you longer to get there. So the feeling of zero-g freefall should last longer.\n\nOnce you do hit terminal velocity, since you're going faster (possibly supersonic), the overall force on the air on you is the same as a low-altitude jump, but the airflow around you is shaped differently (faster speed and less dense air means a higher Reynolds number, meaning an [emptier](_URL_0_) and more vacuum-like [wake](_URL_3_) on the downstream (upper) surfaces of your body). Without looking at wind-tunnel data, I could only guess what impact that would have for practical purposes. Maybe stuff would flap around less? Well, that also depends on the [Strouhal number](_URL_1_)... But it would probably be a smoother flow, since thin air moving fast won't \"stick\" so much, i.e. it will be more like lots of little beads of sand falling past you, less like water or honey. But, again, I'm not sure how much you could feel the difference.\n\nOne difference you might feel is temperature. At these higher speeds, you're going fast enough that the air around the stagnation point of your leading edges (i.e. the watershed lines along your underside where air hitting on one side of the line will flow around you one way, and air hitting the other side of the line will flow around you the other way... The centerline of your body would be one such line, as well as one along the centerline of the underside of each arm and leg) would probably get noticeably hot. How hot? Well, depends how dense the air is, how fast you're going, and how quickly the heat is dissipated (into neighboring air or into whatever you're wearing and through your body). Without doing a heat-transfer analysis, I wouldn't be able to tell you whether the guy's leading edges would be \"slightly warm\" or \"in danger of burning\", but that heat from compressibility would be (I would guess) the main difference between this dive and lower, slower dive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~johnc/teaching/fluidmechanics4/2003-04/fluids14/image41.gif", "http://www.cfm.brown.edu/crunch/cylinder.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11fuqp/felix_baumgartner_when_he_is_falling_at_terminal/c6m3jf4", "http://img.springerimages.com/Images/SpringerBooks/BSE=5394/BOK=978-3-642-21922-1/PRT=3/CHP=4_10.1007-978-3-642-21922-1_4/MediaObjects/WATER_215938_1_En_4_Fig18_HTML.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "8hld83", "title": "Can you propel in zero gravity by hiting yourself?", "selftext": "Example: hitting your chest with your hand?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hld83/can_you_propel_in_zero_gravity_by_hiting_yourself/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyku6qq", "dykuh4u", "dykvwjf", "dyl1rtf"], "score": [26, 5, 10, 7], "text": ["You cannot cause your center of mass to accelerate using only internal forces.", "We can reach a conclusion using classical Newtonian mechanics. \n\nA common dictation of Newton\u2019s third law of motion is: \n\n > \tFor every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.\n\nSo if object A exerts a force on object B, object B will exert a force with equal intensity and opposite direction. However, if both forces are acting on the same body - As in, you pushing yourself - they will cancel each other resulting in a net zero acceleration. \n\nYou could propel yourself in zero gravity space by throwing an object away from you, throwing the object with a force F will result in the object pushing you with a force F\u2019 in the opposite direction. ", "No. It's there's a fundamental physical law called [\"conservation of momentum.\"](_URL_1_)\n\nIn the absence of other net forces, in order to change the momentum of one object, you need to alter the momentum of another on in an opposite way. So, you can't move by hitting yourself, booting yourself in the backside or any other form of self-abuse.\n\nYou can move by throwing an object away. This is how rockets work.\n\nThe conservation laws are absolutely foundational to physics. One of the most astonishing mathematical discoveries is [Emmy N\u00f6ther's](_URL_0_) theorem. It proves that every symmetry is also a conservation law, and vice versa. Conservation of Momentum is equivalent to translational symmetry.\n\nThis is the main reason why physicists ignore claims about 'reactionless engines.' They can't exist without breaking the universe.", "You would heat up your chest and your hand, the additional radiation from this would give a tiny thrust. But apart from that (which is negligible compared to various other effects): No. Your internal motion doesn't influence your center of mass."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Conservation"], []]}
{"q_id": "2u8itg", "title": "what happens to innocent people who get identified in a police lineup?", "selftext": "Let's say I get asked by the police to be in a lineup because I look similar to the suspect. I'm innocent, but the witness/victim identifies me as the person who attacked them. Am I free to go, or is there any kind of investigation? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u8itg/eli5_what_happens_to_innocent_people_who_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co642a5", "co649te", "co64ie6", "co64sim", "co6565u", "co6a5fu", "co6a7sl", "co6dqpd"], "score": [25, 15, 76, 9, 3, 2, 3, 9], "text": ["You're put in a line up in order to find out if the victim can adequately identify the actual suspect.  You're not a suspect so you'll be free to go as there's no reason to think you were the actual one who did it.", "Most of the time police don't do a lineup like you see on TV. They have a photo book of different people and the victim chooses the suspect from the photos. Typically the people featured in the lineup were innocent people (other cops, volunteers, interns, etc.) so that the police would know if the victim could identify the right person.", "The line ups are staged.  They don't put a bunch of possible suspects in the line up, the line up has the one suspect and 4-5 other people that may look similar but are not at all under investigation.  If the witness points to anyone but the actual suspect then it casts doubt on the witness.", "Typically, they head over to the craft services table and shove a few snacks into their pocket.  Then they head over to the administration office to collect their $25 bucks or so.  Finally, they race home to add \"Extra in Law  &  Order: SVU Episode 256\" to their resume and imdb page.", "As others have said, lineups involve only one suspect so if an innocent person is picked, then it only casts doubt on the witness. \n\nHowever, the problem with lineups comes in when the witness picks out the suspect, but the suspect is innocent. This happens more frequently than you might think because often the cops know who the suspect is and they will subconsciously (or perhaps consciously) encourage the witness to pick the suspect. If a suspect is innocent but got picked out of a lineup because of something like this then they may very well get screwed in court. \n\nThe proper way to do a lineup is to do a double-blind run where the officer running the lineup also doesn't know who the suspect is.", "Do you have a drivers licence? Yes? Good news YOU have been in a police photo line up! It is true.\n\nThey only use a line up when they have a suspect already. So let's say johnny is a suspect and he is 6' tall with black hair and purple eyes. They get a bunch of 6' tall people's photos (they can be photos from mugshots, if they can't find those, then they use photos of officers, if no officers or mugshots look a like, they use dmv, if not that, then realistically it shouldn't be hard to find this person). \n\nThey then take 5 or more photos varying on dept. and then they just let the victim or witness look at it. Let's say john is number 3 and they pick out number 1, they may have the wrong guy in custody ", "I got stopped  in the street by a cop once and asked if I wanted to earn a few quid and take part in a lineup. \n\nSo I followed her to the police station and she took a few details then led me into a room with a few other guys. I remember looking around trying to figure out who the suspect was. \n\nWe were then told to look straight ahead at a  two-way mirror for a minute then it was all over. I left the room, signed a piece of paper and the cop gave me some cash which I donated to the nearest pub.", "\"Give me the keys you coc$$ucker!\" -usual suspects"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5b76j2", "title": "why can't a nuclear reactor power the pumps that cool its reactors?", "selftext": "If a reactor core isn't cooled, it explodes I guess. Most (if not all) are cooled by cold water pumps powered by electricity. Why can't those pumps be powered by the reactor itself? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b76j2/eli5_why_cant_a_nuclear_reactor_power_the_pumps/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9ma0h8", "d9ma2wx", "d9mbl67", "d9mbo1a", "d9mfgqx", "d9n4plp"], "score": [2, 37, 90, 9, 6, 2], "text": ["Because if something goes wrong and the plant is not putting out power, you're still going to have to keep the fuel rods cool. So an outside power source and/or backup generators power the cooling system, so in the event of a plant shut down you're not dealing with a core meltdown because you lost power to the cooling system. ", "They usually are. However reactors still need cooling even if they aren't producing power. So most designs either have multiple redundant backups or some provision for cooling without pumps.", "Nuclear engineer here. This is hard to really explain all the details involved. But here is the short answer. \n\nA reactor doesn't make electricity, it makes steam. The turbine and generator make electricity. So if they can't work, then you can't make electricity. \n\nDuring normal operation, the main generator will power the plant. \n\nAfter a reactor scram, there isn't enough steam to run the turbine generator, so your electric systems now need offsite power or emergency generators. \n\nEvery plant has one auxiliary feed pump that runs on either steam, or diesel fuel....or they have a passive cooling system that can run for a short time. (Hours).  These are meant to buy time, they aren't a final cooling solution. They will either run out of water or overheat if you don't get power back eventually. \n\nFor reference: Fukushima unit 1 had failures cause it's passive and steam powered cooling system to be unavailable. Unit 2 used its small steam powered cooling pump until it over heated and failed 70 hours later. Unit 3 used its large steam powered cooling pump until it depleted the reactor's steam inventory 32 hours later and began to overheat and stall, finally failing. \n\nSo we do use reactor decay steam to run auxiliary feed pumps, but ultimately you need to restore normal decay heat removal to bring the plant to cold shutdown. \n\nAlso. The reactor doesn't explode. The core will melt. And the metal will rust so rapidly, that it absorbs O2 from water, leaving H2 (explosive hydrogen gas) that can later get outside, mix with oxygen, and explode. But that's not a reactor explosion. ", "About 10% of the nuclear reactors electricity generation powers in-house loads.  When the reactor is operating pumps that cool the reactor are powered by what comes out of the electric generators.\n\nThe reactor shuts down it's still generates heat. That heat has to be taken away from the core. Normally the electricity to power the pumps would come from the grid.\n\nIf there was some type of catastrophic failure no source of electricity, the plants have separate diesel generators that provide electricity to run the pumps after everything is shut down.\n\nBasically there's a back up to the backup. ", "Nuclear Engineer Here. They can! Just not right away...\n\nMost reactors can't power its own pumps after a \"blackout\" purely because they are actually making too much power. The primary coolant pumps are massive equipment and they can take as much as 25 MW of power to run. However, when  the reactor is at 100%, it is generating about 1500 to 3000 MW of thermal steam power (depending on station) which gets converted to 500 to 1000 MW electrical. This is MASSIVE amounts of energy. \n\nIf the grid \"goes down\" and the plant wants to continue running, it would need a LOAD that could accept the MASSIVE amount of power that's being outputted from the generator. You would need like another whole \"city\" to take a 1000 MW. Plus it would need to make the transfer, at that VERY instant, which is unlikely or blow up the generator/turbine system (the steam flow coming from the reactor is like a hundred 747s). Reactor power needs to be shutdown.  This is actually surprisingly easy but is comes at the cost of being \"All or nothing.\" Reactor power is either maneuvered fraction of a % at a time, or EVERYTHING is just at once. You CANNOT in an instant, lower it from producing 1000 MW down to 26MW. So night night reactor :) Go to sleep. \n\nNow you have a shutdown reactor which doesn't power anything. No steam flow to the generator = no power. So as people said before, standby generators kick in and power the pumps. Ok cool. But what if they run out of fuel? What if an earthquake caused the grid to go down and we can't get more fuel to run these standby generators? HOW ARE WE GOING TO COOL THE NCUELEKR OMGA...okay relax... Besides the plethora of really cool features like pump inertial mixing, and thermosyphoning, you have actually a method that allows a reactor to be \"self sufficient\" called....\n\nIslanding! \n\nAfter a shutdown, and some fancy \"xenon override\" stuff goes away, the core can be brought back to critical and SLOWLY increased in power. It can be brought up to a low power state that allows for a steam flow that will provide enough generator power for the plant to basically power its own needs. ", "Nuclear reactor cores continue to produce heat after they are shutdown. This is much, much less (about 3% after a 1 minute, 1% after 1 day, and 0.1% after 1 month) normal heat production, but it is uncontrollable and cannot be stopped. \n\nThis is not enough to power the main generator, but it is still a substantial amount of heat. For example, the modern EPR reactor has a normal reactor thermal rating of 4.5 GW. 1% of that is 45 MW, which is enough heat to be a serious problem. \n\nA common way of dealing with the heat is by pumping in cold water (either into the reactor or its steam generators, depending on design) and allowing the steam to escape or be re-condensed (depending on if the steam is contaminated). \n\nThere are a number of different techniques:\nIsolation condensor - a steam pipe from the top of the reactor runs into a tank of cold water outside the main reactor containment, into a big radiator submerged in water. A drain pipe collects condensed from the radiator water and carries it back to the bottom of the reactor. The water in the tank boils, and the steam escapes. Eventually, the water in the cooling tank will run out unless it is topped up, this can be in a few hours (e.g. at Fukushima 1), to 7 days for the latest designs.\n\nEmergency feedwater - Steam is allowed to escape from steam generators or reactor, and additional cold water is pumped in from a large holding tank. Some designs use electric or diesel pumps, but many use a steam turbine to power a pump, capturing energy from the steam being released from the reactor. The correct operation of a steam turbine, however, needs some degree of control. This was used at Fukushima 2 and 3, but in the absence of battery power, the turbines operated abnormally, and may not have worked at correct efficiency, and eventually overheated.\n\nPassive heat removal heat exchanger and passive containment cooling: a large cold water tank is placed above the reactor inside containment. A large radiator is connected to the reactor at top and bottom. As hot water rises above cold water, hot water enters the radiator, is cooled and re-enters the reactor at the bottom, once the valves are open. After a few hours the water in the tank boils, and steam builds up in the containment building. The containment instead of being made from concrete is made from metal, allowing the heat from the steam to escape to the air around the building. This is assisted by having a roof tank trickle water onto the outer skin of the building. Steam inside the building touches the cold walls of the building, condenses back into water, falls into gutters and is directed back into the tank.\n\nPassively cooled steam generators - Like isolation cooling but for reactors with steam generators. Steam from the steam generators goes to a large radiator and the condensed water is returned to the steam generator. These can use water submerged radiators, but some designs just use air cooled radiators. The steam generators are placed high above the reactor in these designs, so the hot water naturally rises to the steam generators and after cooling sinks back into the reactor."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5aoa4m", "title": "do i even read anymore, or has my brain memorised all the words/patterns that i need and recognises it automatically ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5aoa4m/eli5do_i_even_read_anymore_or_has_my_brain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9i14q2", "d9i2waw", "d9i5dzb", "d9i5hm8", "d9i5phv", "d9i7opz", "d9ihzt2"], "score": [473, 39, 47, 8, 5, 28, 4], "text": ["You are reading this reply right now. You've never seen this particular combination of words before, yet you somehow understand my meaning anyway because I've arranged them in a way that makes sense to you.  This is called reading, you're doing it.  \n\nYou cannot possibly store in your brain the near infinite possible arrangements of all the words you know.   You are stringing together words to infer meaning on the fly. Your brain has to a degree some hard wiring for language, earned through millions of years of evolution, that makes you capable interpreting arranged letters as words, and those words fit together to form larger concepts.  With these tools people can take thoughts from their own heads and put them in other people's heads.  It's fucking amazing when you think about it.\n\nThe reason we know this language (and reading by extension) ability is hard-wired is we see it develop independently all over the place.  It's been studied extensively.  When you look at people from remote areas that have had little to no contact with other civilizations, you see they've created language with mostly the same rules and constructs.  When you put people together that can't directly communicate (which was common during the international slave trade), you see that they develop crude \"pigin\" languages, and then those pigins get more complex in the next generation to form a \"creole\", and those higher level languages seem to wind up operating the same way (for the most part).   Groups of deaf people will independently develop their  own language with each other that operations mostly the same way everyone else's language works.  I'd recommend Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct for more on this.\n\n\nEIDT: Who to for thanks many to gold from is, yo!\n", "Reading is absolutely an active skill.  However, it is a skill that requires a framework to be most effective.  Speech is very similar--We start making sounds long before we understand what any of them mean, but little by little we build that framework so we understand word meanings, word order, spelling, and pronunciation.  Much like how we must crawl and walk before we can run, we must babble and play with letter blocks before language makes sense.\n\nLet's try a magic trick.  Hear me out:  A fully-fledged language must, among other things, be able to discuss things that are not present (pointing at something and making noises isn't quite language, but it's heading in that direction).  Imagine a tree.  It will almost certainly be a single brown stalk leading up to a puffball of green.  Let's take it one step further:  Imagine a pine tree.  The amorphous, tree-like smudge has taken on better definition--still a single stalk, but the greenery is triangular, serrated/terraced.  Let's take it even further:  Touch your nose.  (This example works better in person; it's much easier to be obstinate on the internet).  If you actually touched your nose, then I caused you to hallucinate two distinct images and move your body *with the power of language alone*.  \n\nFor my magic trick to work, however, you need to have all that framework where \"tree,\" \"pine,\" \"imagine,\" \"touch,\" \"nose,\" and \"your\" all makes sense.  This takes exposure, practice, and time.  The neat thing, though, is that exposure to multiple languages can be beneficial to children, contrary to decades of focus on monolingual education in America. But that gets a bit complicated, so the short version is this:  Language is magic, because sounds and pictures become other sounds and pictures in your mind.", "There's two great replies from /u/GlamRockDave and /u/CthonicProteus, so I won't go over that stuff again. However, I do have something add to that. Although reading is most definitely an active skill, you don't necessarily read all the words, if the first and last letter are correct in a word, you can change the order of the middle letters and still be able to understand it. That's how we miss typos.\n\nFor example: I am stitnig at hmoe gvinig emxalpels of wrod rcegointoin.\n\nYou would have been able to read that (I hope!) despite the many errors in it. This happens because the brain naturally attempts to optimise everything we do. When it comes to reading, it's too much of a task to recognise every combination of words possible, but we know how to spell the words. This means that based on context and a correct spelling, we make educated guesses at what the word is, to speed up the rate at which we read. This is also why it's so hard to read someone's work if their grammar is appalling, as it ruins our ability to understand words quickly based on context.", "There's some conflation going on here between language and *reading*.  Language seems to be something that humans develop \"naturally\", as already mentioned. But *reading* isn't natural. And the system that we use,  where graphemes (marks) represent phonemes (speech sounds), is always happening in our brains as we read.  Studies have shown how fluent readers are still scanning words left to right,  they are just very accomplished at it, so the feeling is of absorbing whole words. ", "Awesome replies in this thread. I would just like to add that we do a lot of our reading by sight- meaning we automatically recognise certain words unconsciously which helps us a lot in reading faster. This is how we are able to scan texts- many of the words are recognized on sight. \n\nIn learners who are learning to read, there is a conscious effort to sound out the words. However with enough practice and exposure, familiar words go into our ventral stream in our brains and it becomes an automatic process in order to optimize and speed it up, something that a previous poster mentioned ", "Some really good comments here.  I would add we recognize words pretty well even when they're jumbled, as lomg as the first and last letters are correct, suggesting we dont necessarily read every letter, we look for patterns that match what we've  seen on multiple occasions. .  Can you read this paragraph?\n\n >  I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.\n\n\nEdit: My typo was completely unintentional.", "You're doing a little of both. Your eye will take in key info in words and chunk them together. It's almost like you're sampling the visual data and sorting the meaning quickly in your mind.\n\nThis assumes you have a lot of reading practice. You use the words \"recognize it automatically\" and that is literally what happens. In fact, in reading we even call it *automaticity*\n\nThis also assumes you are encountering totally familiar words. \n\nAs you read more difficult text with more complicated vocabulary/syntax, your automaticity drops. You have to slow down and even re-read to come to an acceptable comprehension rate. \n\nIn a way, reading is like any skill. You get much much more efficient with practice. So, with familiar words/syntax, the whole process becomes effortless/automatic. As textual complexity increases, you slow down. \n\nSource: Am Reading Specialist\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5h8kmq", "title": "If I were a middle class man born around 6th century BC: would it have been better for me to live in one of the Greek City states, or somewhere in the Persian empire?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5h8kmq/if_i_were_a_middle_class_man_born_around_6th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dayjzej"], "score": [182], "text": ["There's a lot of ground to cover here - I hope this answer will make some kind of sense by the time we get to the end.\n\n**3 Problems with your Question**\n\nFirst, you're asking about the 6th century BC, but the Persian Empire doesn't actually exist for the first half of that century. Around 550 BC, Cyrus II conquers the heartland of the Medes, which can be seen as the rise Achaemenid Persia (though this is a slight simplification as Cyrus was a Teispid). Throughout the rest of the century, the new power of Persia keeps expanding, absorbing first Lydia and Babylon, and then most of eastern Iran, the Levantine coast, Egypt, parts of the Indus valley, and Thrace. Persia is not a constant presence, but a growing world empire, and the reach and nature of its dominion are only just taking shape. For the sake of this answer, I will assume you were born at some point in the reign of Darius I (c. 522-486 BC), which is generally considered the period when Achaemenid power solidified.\n\nSecond (and you probably know this already), you could be living in a Greek city state *and* in the Persian Empire. The Greek cities of Western Asia Minor, those on the south coast of the Black Sea, and the settlement at Naukratis in the Nile Delta are all part of the Persian Empire by the end of the 6th century BC. This complicates your question for a number of reasons, but it also helps. We can make a better comparison between places to live if they both belong to the same cultural zone but exist under different political circumstances.\n\nThird, the \"middle class\" is a modern concept. The Ancient Greeks did not know it; while I don't think we have enough information about the socio-economic or political thought of the Persians, I doubt they knew it either. It is true that the Greeks idealised the philosophical concept of the middle as a superior \"third option\" that avoided unhealthy extremes, but this concept did not map onto any particular social, economic or political group in society. Indeed, the ideal of the middle was malleable to the point of meaninglessness. Aristotle once refers to a regent of Sparta as a member of the \"middle\" because he wasn't a king. In practice, the Greeks saw society as divided into two groups: the rich and the poor. The difference between the two was that the former owned enough to live a life of leisure, while the latter had to work to get by. In this worldview, every single person we would consider \"middle class\" was considered one of the poor. This category may have been very broad, ranging from penniless day labourers to well-to-do independent farmers, but it wasn't subdivided in any meaningful way (except, of course, for the strict distinction between free citizens and slaves).\n\nSo, when we're talking about a \"middle-class man\" in the 6th century BC, we have to bear in mind that we're applying an arbitrary modern distinction onto a past that didn't recognise it. Generally, the existence of slavery and the peculiarities of a subsistence economy led to a system of labour relations that doesn't quite overlap with what we know today. For the sake of this answer, I'll assume you are either an independent small farmer or a specialist craftsman - categories that would put you above abject poverty, but would still require you to use your own labour (along with that of your family and slaves) to survive.\n\n**The Nature of Persian Rule**\n\nThis is where we get to what you're really asking: are the conditions of life in the Greek city-states c.520 BC fundamentally different from those in the Persian Empire? Would the average man of modest means notice the effect of his political situation?\n\nWe should not be distracted here by Greek rhetoric about how all the subjects of the Great King were his slaves, and how the barbarian ruled his realm with an iron fist and with the arbitrary cruelty that was typical of an oppressive despot. This is mostly a matter of propaganda. In fact, we have the counter-propaganda too: Persian reliefs from Persepolis show that the Persians themselves liked to see their empire as a collection of peoples cheerfully joined in the worthy task of supporting the righteous rule of Ahura Mazda's representative on Earth. They paid tribute, and in return they received peace and justice from the king.\n\nIn practice, all the evidence we have suggests that the Persians liked to rule, as most empires do, by affirming and preserving existing administrative structures and political systems in return for tribute and loyalty. In other words, they were happy to let their subjects do their own thing as long as they paid tribute every year and sent as many troops as the king needed. The famous Cyrus Cylinder confirms the privileges of the old Baylonian priesthood; Darius' self-representation in Egypt casts him as a traditional pharaoh, honouring and paying for the upkeep of the old cults and temples. In Asia Minor, the Greeks were initially allowed to keep the tyrants that ruled their cities. When the Ionians rose in revolt in 499 BC and deposed their tyrants, the Persians, upon crushing the revolts, decided to let them keep their new democracies, too (Herodotos 6.43.3). As long as the tribute kept coming in, the Persians were cool with whatever.\n\nIt follows that we shouldn't think of the Persian Empire as a despotic, barbaric realm in which all freedom of thought and enterprise was stifled. Rather, it was an agglomeration of semi-autonomous communities that were free to do more or less what they wanted as long as they paid the tribute, served the Persian war machine, and recognised the complete subordination of their foreign policy to the interests of Persia. Individuals within the empire may not have noticed its presence very much, unless the tribute came partly out of their pocket, or if their area had received a Persian garrison.\n\nThis form of rule, coupled with the *Pax Persica*, meant that the Greek cities of Asia Minor actually flourished once they had fallen under the Persian sway. Possibly their integration into the imperial system opened up new markets for their traders; certainly their connection to the old civilisations of the East generated a boost in intellectual development, with the first medical and ethnographic treatises, the first world maps, and the first histories ever written all originating in late 6th century BC Ionia. Herodotos (5.28) notes that Miletos, which had suffered endless internal strife before, became \"the jewel of Ionia\" once the Persians guaranteed the position of its tyrant Histiaios. A similar development may well have taken place elsewhere in regions that were previously unstable. In regions that had previously enjoyed unity and stable rule (like Egypt under the Saite dynasty), life would have gone on more or less as before.\n\n**So Where Would You Rather Live?**\n\nSo let's get down to brass tacks. As a man living in modest comfort, where would you be better off? As should be clear from the above, it really depends on where you are and what you do for a living. \n\nAs an independent farmer, your life is likely to be the same all over. Both the Greek world and the Persian Empire knew a small leisure class of large landowners, but the small farmer was known to the Greeks by the late 6th century BC, and no doubt he would have been seen elsewhere too. And the life of a small farmer was hard work wherever you happened to live. The only difference between *some* (but by no means all) Greek city-states and most of the Persian Empire is political representation. In states like Athens, you'd have a vote in the Assembly, and a share in the political processes of your community. In most Greek cities you'd enjoy certain rights as a freeborn citizen. These things were still in development, and even many Greek states were run by tyrants, or by oligarchs, like the cities of Phoenicia, but still, if politics is your thing, you might be happier in Athens or Cyrene than somewhere in Mesopotamia.\n\nIf you're a specialist craftsman, you really want to be in the trade network, regardless of where you might be. From the Phoenician cities on the Levantine coast, a centuries-old trade web spread all over the Mediterranean, and you could profit from this web whether you were on Samos or Cyprus or Sardinia. The example of Ionia above shows that being part of the Persian Empire doesn't seem to have hampered trade - indeed, it may have boosted merchant activity as more regions became pacified. By the late 6th century BC, you could also benefit from the new network spreading east over land - the Royal Roads that connected the western administrative hubs of the Empire to its core in Persia. Where you obviously *don't* want to be is \"off the grid\", in remote semi-autonomous parts of the Persian Empire that saw limited economic activity. If you were in the [old Assyrian heartland](_URL_0_), for instance, or in some distant area of the Iranian plateau, there would be little else for you to do except sell to your local community. Far better to be in one of the wealthier, better connected parts of the Empire, like Ionia or Lower Egypt."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g326k/xenephon_writes_about_huge_abandoned_cities_in/dap70ii/"]]}
{"q_id": "14u8n1", "title": "cisgender", "selftext": "I'm having trouble understanding the wikipedia article about Cisgender. Cisgender and Cissexualism is apparently a trend in Reddit nowadays.\n\nI don't get it. Can somebody ELI5? But please no ridiculous apple, pear, orange analogies and stuff like that. I don't care about them. \n\nSimple examples in layman terms, so I can finally understand what the rage is all about.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14u8n1/eli5_cisgender/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7ggil3", "c7ghhco", "c7gj4tx", "c7gk0st", "c7gmeie", "c7goqrh"], "score": [9, 18, 2, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["I only just read the article on wikipedia, but my reading of it is: If you have a name for transgender and transsexual, you might as well have a name for the opposite, \"normal\", sexual identity.\n\nIn chemistry, cis/trans isomerism is basically a way of saying \"these two molecules have the same chemical composition, but different shapes\". If you look at the very top of [this article](_URL_0_), the pictures should illustrate what I mean.\n\nSo if cis/trans is already used to refer to same/switched in chemistry, it's only natural to use cisgender/cissexual to refer to the opposite of transgender/transsexual. That is, to refer to males who identify as males, and to females who identify as females.", "The other answers are overcomplicated and not entirely correct.\n\nBasically a cisgender person is someone who self-identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth.\n\nIn even simpler terms: if your birth certificate said either male or female and now that you're old enough to consider it, you basically agree with that, then you are cisgender. \n\n\nThe rage is about a bunch of people saying that what you think you are doesn't matter, only the gender assigned at your birth is truly important. ", "Cisgender : You identify as male and you have male genetals or you identify as female and have female genetals\n\nTrans* : You identify as male and have female genetals or you identify as female and have male genetals or you don't identify as either or you identify as both or you identify as one sometimes and as another other times or as neither or as something new.  (Sorry if I left anything out here)\n\nThe cis prefix is the gender equivalent of being sexually straight to put it really, really generally.  Conflict arises because the gender/born sex separation is different from what people have been taught and, our society is largely built on \"men's groups\" and \"women's groups\" things will need some redefining and restructuring (but that's just my opinion).\n\nSource: I'm trans* falling into genderqueer, feel free to ask me questions about it :)", "*Cis* is a latin prefix that means \"on this side.\" So if something is cis-atlantic, that means it is on this side of the Atlantic ocean.\n\nThe opposite latin prefix is *trans,* which means to cross over or be on the other side. So if something is trans-Neptunian, that means it is on the other side of Neptune.\n\nCisgender and cissexual are the grammatical opposites of transgender and transsexual.\n\n*Transgender* is a broad term that can refer to anyone who varies from common social gender norms significantly enough that they get noticed for it. A man who is seen as extremely \"feminine\" or a woman who is seen as extremely \"masculine\" might be called transgender.\n\n**Transgender = crossing over social gender norms, or being on \"the other side\" of social gender norms.**\n\n*Cisgender* is the opposite - a cisgender person is someone who doesn't vary significantly from common social gender norms. Whatever gender-atypical behavior or personality traits they may have, are socially considered minor enough to not be worth noticing.\n\n**Cisgender = staying within social gender norms, or being on \"this side\" of social gender norms.**\n\n*Transsexual* is more specific than \"transgender\". Transsexual refers to the situation of people whose gender identity (neurological/psychological sense of self) differs from their anatomical sex (how they look). Oversimplified, a woman's brain in a body that looks male, or a man's brain in a body that looks female. Transsexual people generally change their bodies and their lives to match their brains. E.g., photographer [**Loren Cameron**](_URL_1_) is a transsexual man. He was born appearing physically female, and assumed to be a girl until he was old enough to correct the mistake. Fashion model [**Isis King**](_URL_0_) is a transsexual woman. She was born appearing physically male, and assumed to be a boy until she was old enough to correct the mistake.\n\n**Transsexual = people whose brains are wired to be one gender, but whose bodies at birth do not match. Someone whose neurological sex is on the other side from their anatomical sex at birth.**\n\n*Cissexual* is the opposite - someone who is not transsexual, someone whose gender identity and physical appearance have always matched, is cissexual.\n\n**Cissexual = someone who is not transsexual. Someone whose neurological sex is on the same side as their anatomical sex at birth.**\n\n\n***Cissexualism*** is something else. Cissexualism is like sexism. Cissexualism is the belief that transsexual people are inherently inferior to cissexual people. That the lives and identities of transsexual people are less legitimate or real than those of their cissexual counterparts.", "I think that other people have done a good job of explaining what cisgender is (basically: not transgender), but nobody's touched on why it's a \"thing\".\n\nFor one - if you're discussing transgendered people and gender identity, it's useful to have a words that means \"not transgendered\". So there's that. In any LGBT or GSM (gender and sexual minority) communities, it gets tossed around a lot, because it's relevant to the discussions they usually have.\n\nWhen you go about your daily life, there are certain things you probably take for granted. You take for granted that you have two working legs. You take for granted that you didn't stop growing at four feet tall. And that's not necessarily bad. But if you came across a person in a wheelchair, or a little person, you realize that those aren't true for everybody. And if you see them trying to maneuver a staircase, or order across a tall counter, you probably feel a bit sympathetic towards them. You might think that not everybody is made the same way, and that we should try to be accepting of people that are different.\n\nWell there's other things you probably take for granted. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to assume you're a cis male. What this means is that you look like a boy, and you feel like you're a boy, and you have the body of a boy. And there's nothing wrong with that - but that's not true for everybody.\n\nThere are a lot of reasons for that. Sometimes somebody's brain disagrees with their body. Sometimes they aren't just one sex - sometimes babies are born intersexed, or a mix between male and female, and the doctor will pick one gender and use surgery to make the match - and years later, their brain might disagree with what the doctor chose. Sometimes people don't like defining themselves as just one gender or the other, particularly since men and women can be treated very differently.\n\nSo how is life different for those people? Well, instead of pity or understanding, usually people like this are treated with fear or revulsion.\nOne big example is with public restrooms. If you look and feel like a girl, then you can go to the girl's room, no worries. What if your body was different? What if people think you still look like a boy, and yell and say you're \"secretly a man\", and call you a pervert for \"trying to look like a woman\"? For transgendered people, this is something they always have to worry about. A lot of times, they have to be afraid of harm to their personal well-being, even the risk of being murdered.\n\nThe idea of \"cis privilege\" is about assuming that everybody is cisgendered. Usually, it's tied to a lot of hurtful ideas - for example, that everybody *should* be cisgendered, or that trans people can just \"get over it\" or not be transgendered. This is about as helpful as telling a little person to \"just grow taller\".\n\nOftentimes, people will feel that men \"should\" be one way and women \"should\" be the other. This is a damaging idea for everybody, not just trans people! What if a woman is discouraged from working in the field she loves, because it's assumed that she's dumb to do it because she's a woman? What if a man doesn't know how to cook or clean after himself, because he was taught that those were a woman's jobs? If a piece of clothing fits well and you think it looks cool, should you have to worry about whether it's \"for men\" or \"for women\"? If a guy wants to do a girly dance and pretend he's the opposite gender, is that any more evil than affecting an English accent and pretending he's a cartoon villain?\n\nSo \"cis privilege\" also refers to the harmful idea that \"men are men, and women are women, and they have to be totally separate from each other, and nobody should be in between.\" \n\nOne last thing to touch on: You mention seeing the term \"cis scum\". This is, basically, a joke that nobody really likes laughing at. Because cisgendered people are the majority, a trans person has to actually be afraid of any threats made against them. If somebody shouts \"die, tranny scum!\" at them, that's likely to be a very threat. \"Die cis scum\" only really exists in internet discussions. It's a joke, because everybody knows that, well, it doesn't mean much of anything. It exists to highlight the power inequality between transgendered people, and the cisgendered majority.\n\nNow, for the most part, trans people don't want anything too crazy. They want unisex public restrooms, they want to be able to legally change their gender if need be without too much hassle, and they want to not be murdered.\n\n**TL;DR: \"Cisgender\" means \"not transgender\". The word exists in order to ease discussion. Things can't get better for trans people without discussion happening first.**", "It means having a gender identity in line with your biological sex.  I am a male, I have all the appropriate male bits, and I identify as a male.  I am cisgendered  It is basically \"normal\" but I can see why people don't want to use the word normal, because that would mean that people who are otherwise would be \"abnormal\" which is a word that carries negative connotations.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Butene"], [], [], ["http://www.celebritybrideguide.com/photos/isis-king-278x400.jpg", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9rPx5zm5vF0/T6Cq71c66WI/AAAAAAAAAGc/2tNAy76HUW8/s320/Loren-Cameron.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1knyht", "title": "why is 0.9999... equal to 1?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1knyht/eli5_why_is_09999_equal_to_1/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbqufod", "cbqugcs", "cbqujvo", "cbqv528", "cbqxc7r"], "score": [6, 7, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["The simplest explanation I've found is this:\n\nCan you think of any number that is between 0.999... and 1?\n\nNo, you can't, because there aren't any.  And if there are no numbers between two given numbers, then those two numbers are the same.\n\nTo go into a bit more detail, \"0.9999...\" and \"1\" are two different ways of writing the same number, just like \"0.333...\" and \"1/3\" are two different ways of writing the same number.  Or just like \"0.25\" and \"1/4\" are two different ways of writing the same number.\n\nIn fact, if you accept that \"0.333...\" and \"1/3\" are the same, then \"0.333... + 0.333... + 0.333...\" must equal \"1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3\", and thus \"0.999...\" must equal \"1\".", "Because Math\n_URL_0_...  \nBasically there are many proofs to show .9999... = 1 the simplest is :  \nLet x = .999...  \n10*x = 9.9999...  \n10x-x = 9.9999... - .9999...  \n9x = 9  \nx = 1  \nQED  \nThere are a lot more complex and rigorous proofs on the wiki page if you have the mathematical background to understand them.\n", "1/9 is .111..., right?\n\nIf you don't believe me, think about it for a second. It's 1/10 + 1/100 + 1/1000 and so on, because there's always that pesky remainder.\n\nSo, what's .111... times 9? .999..., naturally.\n\nWhat's 1/9 times 9? 1, naturally.\n\nYay!", "to sum up: infinity is a confusing concept", "So far the answers are about proving that 0.999... equals 1, but after you accept that you may still be left with the question, \"but why does it work that way?\".  While math is completely universal, how we represent that math in numbers is completely man made.  We use a base 10 system, mostly because we have 10 fingers (some cultures finger count differently and they tend to use a different base for their number systems).  All base 10 means is that we represent the number 10 by place a 1 in a new column, and start our counting again at 0.  \n\nNow for any given base some fractions are going to be easy to represent, and some are going to be hard to represent.  In Base 10 the fraction 1/9th is hard to represent, which is why it ends up as the awkward 0.111... .  This leads to what looks odd, and that is that 9/9 = .999... = 1.  But there is nothing special about base 10 math.  If we take one common way to show how .999... = 1:\n\n1 / 9 = .111...\n\n2 / 9 = .222...\n\n...\n\n8 / 9 = .888...\n\n9 / 9 = 1 = .999...\n\n\nNow if we convert all these numbers to base 9 (remember that in base 9 the number 10 represents the base 10 number 9), you can see how all the confusion simply goes away:\n\n\n1 / 10 = 0.1\n\n2 / 10 = 0.2\n\n...\n\n8 / 10 = 0.8\n\n10 / 10 = 1 = 1.0\n\n\nTL;DR It's only confusing because 1/9th looks weird in base 10."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "mp2gh", "title": "why a dog's leg twitches when you scratch the sweet spot.", "selftext": "I have always wondered why they do that.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mp2gh/why_a_dogs_leg_twitches_when_you_scratch_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c32osrb", "c32p06a", "c32q8qw", "c32qhrx", "c32qy2z", "c32r4ay", "c32r4mx", "c32rbn5", "c32osrb", "c32p06a", "c32q8qw", "c32qhrx", "c32qy2z", "c32r4ay", "c32r4mx", "c32rbn5"], "score": [58, 8, 3, 15, 17, 41, 25, 7, 58, 8, 3, 15, 17, 41, 25, 7], "text": ["Their 'sweet spot' is basically equivalent to a human's ticklish area.  When you scratch let's say an area of your dog's tummy and starts twitching/kicking, the dog is just trying to scratch the sweet spot.  ", "Next time you have a question like this you might get a better answer in /r/askscience as long as the like I'm five thing isn't too big of a deal.", "Probably the same reason mine does.", "Once i get my dog's leg kicking she will hit her \"kicky leg\" spot for herself and just keep going and going.", "I once saw a cow do this.", "It is because you are scratching near a shallow (as in, closer to the skin) nerve area called a saddle region (usually your dog's back and sides of his legs and tummy) and his nerves think it's an itch and there is an involuntary twitch response for him to scratch it. ", "This is explainlikeimfive, not explainlikeimdog.", "My dog is broken. She doesn't kick. :[", "Their 'sweet spot' is basically equivalent to a human's ticklish area.  When you scratch let's say an area of your dog's tummy and starts twitching/kicking, the dog is just trying to scratch the sweet spot.  ", "Next time you have a question like this you might get a better answer in /r/askscience as long as the like I'm five thing isn't too big of a deal.", "Probably the same reason mine does.", "Once i get my dog's leg kicking she will hit her \"kicky leg\" spot for herself and just keep going and going.", "I once saw a cow do this.", "It is because you are scratching near a shallow (as in, closer to the skin) nerve area called a saddle region (usually your dog's back and sides of his legs and tummy) and his nerves think it's an itch and there is an involuntary twitch response for him to scratch it. ", "This is explainlikeimfive, not explainlikeimdog.", "My dog is broken. She doesn't kick. :["]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2s29vt", "title": "Is there DNA in table sugar?", "selftext": "Hard to find an answer to this. Would you be able to find DNA in sugar, or has the refinement process stripped it down to its basic chemical structure?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2s29vt/is_there_dna_in_table_sugar/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnlhk6a", "cnlhpwo"], "score": [8, 23], "text": ["Sugarcane certainly has DNA, but when you heat it up in the refining process it breaks down. There could be some types of molasses (the thicker stuff at the bottom of the sugar sludge in the refining process) that still contain bits of intact plant matter, but even that will have been heated to a point where I think you could reasonably assume there is no DNA in sugar.", "There is most likely at least *some* DNA present in sugar, but it may not neccessarily be from the sugar cane plant itself (although it may be). Sugar is simply the sugar cane plant's energy source taken out. It is nothing more than simple carbohydrates that the plant would use to make energy, so the sugar in and of itself does not contain DNA. \n\nThat being said, throughout the process of actually harvesting the sugar it is likely that DNA from some of the plant's cells may have be left behind in the sugar. There are also most likely some microbes left within the sugar since microbes are basically everywhere. These microscopic guys may or may not be dead, but either way they may leave behind some DNA. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4iy7or", "title": "how is that wine bypasses any expiration dates and essentially gets \"better\" as it ages?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iy7or/eli5_how_is_that_wine_bypasses_any_expiration/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3241oh", "d324d12", "d326d2m"], "score": [13, 6, 7], "text": ["Its typically red wine that gets better with age, white wine turns to vinegar.\nIts down to personal preference also.", "Wine has a lot of alcohol in it.  Alcohol stops microorganisms from growing.  Microorganisms growing in your food is the #1 cause of it going bad.\n\n...and most people overestimate how much aging will improve wine.  Most wines don't really get better after a year or two of aging.  A few good ones might improve a few years after that, at which point they pretty much stand still.  The only good reason to pay for crazy expensive 20 year old bottles of wine is because they're rare classics - nobody will ever make another 1997 Pierre Whatever Merlot again - and you want to show off that you can afford it.", "Most spoilage occurs due to either rancidity, or microbial growth. \n\nWine contains essentially zero fats, so rancidity isn't an issue. \n\nAnd as far as microbes go, there are very few of them that can tolerate ethanol concentrations anywhere near what's in wine. One of the few that can is yeast, which is what was used to make the wine in the first place. One of the others is a group of little critters referred to as acetobacteria, because they like to eat ethanol and make acetic acid, vinegar. \n\nSo, if you do get a wine that's been contaminated with a microbe that will digest it, it will in fact go bad and turn into wine vinegar. \n\nNow, as far as aged wine being better, that depends. A lot of wines are still made using wild fermentation techniques, which means that the yeast they use isn't from some named and predictable package, it just happens to be whatever was floating around the vinter's yard that day or hanging out on the skins of the grapes. \n\nThose wild yeast can make some really awesome flavors. Or some really terrible ones. Fortunately, most of the terrible flavors tend to be rather unstable. So if you allow the wine to just sit around in a cool to slightly warm area (25*C would be pushing it), the unstable compounds will break down and the flavors will mellow. If you get it too hot, the wine will basically cook and too much of the flavor will disappear. If you keep it too cold, the wine will take a very long time to age and some of the nasty flavors will probably never disappear. \n\nYou also want some of those ostensibly unpleasant flavors to stick around. They help provide complexity to the flavor profile and can balance out any residual sweetness from sugars that the yeast didn't convert into alcohol. \n\nThis means that there's a sweet spot in the age of a wine where it's at it's best. When this range is will depend on the wine. Sweeter whites tend to peak in a few months, as they have a lot of residual sweetness and very little tannin to balance it. Dry reds tend to peak in a few years, since they have a lot of tannin and very little sugar to balance it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "369sjs", "title": "why does stomach gas feel painful only occasionally, while other times it flows freely from my anus?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/369sjs/eli5_why_does_stomach_gas_feel_painful_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crc6xor", "crc73m4", "crcfbgm"], "score": [77, 14, 7], "text": ["Sometimes it gets trapped and builds up pressure. The pressure is what causes pain. It gets trapped because there is other stuff in the way. When it flows freely from your anus, it is not trapped.  \n^()  \n^^^\\(Sorry ^^^for ^^^taking ^^^the ^^^subreddit ^^^literally, ^^^but ^^^it ^^^came ^^^out ^^^that ^^^way, ^^^and ^^^I ^^^thought ^^^it ^^^was ^^^funny.  ^^^No ^^^offense ^^^meant.)", "It depends on where and how much is generated. If there is too much gas generated (dependent on what you eat and how it breaks down, how much air you swallow), it impinges on your muscles in the tummy and makes it hurt. You're also forgetting about burps, which are basically farts from the mouth.", "The pain is from stretching of the intestines. You can pass larger bubbles easier, so lots of small bubbles (like foam, if you want to imagine that...) will hurt more because it's more difficult to vent it out the chute.\n\nThis can be from stuff you eat, or stuff you eat interacting with certain bacteria which tend to release gasses. People with lactose intolerance can testify to that.\n\nThings like simethecone reduce the foaming property and allow you to pass the gas much easier. So, lay off the dish soap or you might be in pain."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ly96n", "title": "why is it that a vast majority of attempted cyber attacks originate from china?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ly96n/eli5_why_is_it_that_a_vast_majority_of_attempted/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3r96sl", "d3re1gs", "d3re1sa", "d3rfggy", "d3rh4pd"], "score": [91, 4, 23, 21, 2], "text": ["Long story short: there are numerous security companies in China whose work primarily consists of attempting to breach foreign companies' databases, some directly on behalf of the Chinese government, some just to sell the information to the highest bidder (oftentimes the Chinese government anyway). \n\nAs for the history that led to that point, my knowledge is a little shaky since it's been a while since I've seriously read literature on the subject, so take the following with a grain of salt. Cyber attacks and information theft are official policy of the PRC, intended to strengthen the country. As for why there are so many, that's because China simply has more hackers. From the 1990s to around 2005, China had a large community of patriotic computer hackers who operated independently or in non-government-affiliated groups, yet with the tacit consent of the government (this had to do with their philosophy, which emphasized the role of the everyday citizen in the betterment of the country). \n\nAround 2005, the Chinese government switched its stance and began cracking down on unsanctioned hacking. Most of the hackers either quit causing trouble, or legitimized into security companies so that they could continue to operate with the approval of the Chinese government. The government itself also operates several military units dedicated to hacking as well, but those are probably less relevant to you (assuming you don't work for a defense contractor or military R & D company).\n\nIncidentally, do you know the time stamps for the attempted logins?  The security companies in China tend to operate on a 9-5 schedule, Beijing time.\n\nEDIT:\nIf anyone's interested, here are some relevant readings:\n\n* *The Dark Visitor - Scott Henderson* - Silly cover aside, it details the history of the Chinese hacking community and how it has evolved.\n\n* *Mandiant's APT1 report* - A little more technical, but also talks about the role of the Chinese military in CNO, primarily the infamous Unit 61398. I think this one is pretty well known.", "The real answer is that they don't necessarily originate from China, but botnets are used all throughout China via compromised computers. They simply have more population. You can gain access to these botnets relatively cheaply compared to other botnets, say in europe, usa, russia... and they're way more powerful against any target that doesn't outright block chinese traffic.\n\nThe EU, USA, RUS botnets are more expensive because they're \"in the firewall\" for those areas so to speak.\n", "In addition to the other responses, hackers will also run VPNs through China (and Russia) for their hacking. Honestly if your company does no business with China and/or Russia, it might be best to block those IP blocks if nothing should be coming from them.\n\nThey can always be unblocked if need be.", "There are three reasons:\n\n**1) China has 1.357 billion people within its borders, according to Google.**\n\nStatistically speaking, China makes up a *large* chunk of the global population, and an even larger chunk of the global population of people with the technology to attempt a Cyber Attack.\n\nSheer statistics say that you're going to see a proportionate number of attacks coming.\n\nI'd be willing to bet that you're also seeing *a lot* of attempted log-ins from India, for a similar reason.\n\n**2) China's Government encourages Cyber Attacks.**\n\nYou probably hear *a lot* about how China has a *super-duper advanced Hacking program* that is a *threat to American security* if you watch the right-wing news or listen to John McAfee. The way they make it sound, you might think that China has this uber-skilled cabal of expert hackers that are typing circles around their American counterparts.\n\nThat's not accurate.\n\nChina's ability to be a threat in Cyber-Warfare exists for the same reason that they're a threat in Conventional Warfare: They have *manpower*.\n\nChina *basically* has a standing Bounty out on Data stolen from American Companies, Citizens, and Government. They pay reasonably well for *anything* that might be useful.\n\nThey're not hacking into servers by being sophisticated and slipping around the security. They're hacking in by throwing a few *million* script-kiddies at the servers, and seeing who guesses a correct password first.\n\n**3) Botnets...**\n\nChina's citizens are *not* good at securing their computers. As a result, most of the country's computers are part of *at least* one Botnet. So long as a computer that's part of a Botnet is turned on, it can be hijacked and used in a cyber attack.\n\nBotnets are *usually* used for brute-force techniques. DDOS Attacks are what they were *made for*. However, Botnets can also be used to get around a lot of password security. You can coordinate your Botnet, allowing you to try and brute-force a password even if the system locks you out after [X] attempts.\n\nSeveral of those Botnets can be rented by people who live *outside* of the Great Firewall. That means that you can get hold of the Cyber-Warfare equivalent of a Zerg Hive, and launch attacks *through* the Botnet to cover your trail.", "For a good illustration of just how many, and where most originate: _URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://map.norsecorp.com/#/"]]}
{"q_id": "1ar6zm", "title": "what would happen if the us govt cut all foreign aid?", "selftext": "This is the pure, isolationist \"Why are we giving all these other countries money when we're in trouble here at home?\" I know that foreign aid is a very tiny amount of the budget, I'm interested in what the effects of cutting aid would actually be, and what repercussions would follow.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ar6zm/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_us_govt_cut_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9007e7", "c900ypa", "c9086st", "c908usx"], "score": [4, 35, 8, 8], "text": ["Not a lot would happen. The US's foreign aid is substantial, but there are a lot of other countries giving out a lot of other aid. There would still be plenty to go around. If you only take the top 10 donators of foreign aid the US accounts for only about 16% of it.\n\nThe main impact would be on foreign relations, and how foreigners view the US. The US is not well liked in much of the world, and looking like a good guy is important.\n", "US Foreign aid breaks down roughly as follows:\n\n15 billion - Rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, which are two countries where we started wars.  We feel responsible for trying to repair some of the damage.\n\n3 billion - Military aid for Israel.  Mostly in the form of expensive weapons.  Without our assistance, Israel would almost certainly get attacked by one of their neighbors (who do not like Israel).\n\n4 billion - Economic and Military aid for Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan.   The goal is to have a few people in the mideast who call us allies.  Essentially, we buy their cooperation.  That cooperation is sometimes useful.  For example, when we killed Osama Bin Laden, we sent troops into Pakistan.  Normally, countries don't tolerate troops from other countries.  The Pakistanis did complain a little, but they didn't do anything about it.  That's what we're buying.\n\n10 billion - Assorted disaster zones around the world.  For example, we send 1 billion to Haiti, which is where that horrible tsunami/earthquake happened.  A lot of this is done in a spirit of charity, but there's also an element of self-interest.  Many of these areas have unstable governments or no governments, and we're hoping that if they do get stable governments, the new government will be friendly to us.\n\nJust for perspective: the total money spent by the US government on our *own* citizens and our *own* military is 3,500 billion, that is, roughly 100x more than we spend on foreign aid.\n\n", "This is a great question! It is important to understand that the US is liked internationally because of a few simple factors: historical ties, trade, foreign aid and security arrangements.\n\nSimply put, if all aid was cut then there could be serious backlash on the US diplomatic status quo. Take many African states who rely on US aid, like Lesotho. The US is trying to help prevent AIDS there and the state is barely keeping its head above water. Lesotho is friendly with the US because they are helping them out, the aid gives legitimacy to the government and in return maybe they allow them to have a military base there or sell them rare earth minerals. \n\nIf the US says no, why would they make the US a priority customer, they might just as easily sell to China or the EU.\n\nIn the international aid world money = influence! It is one of the best forms of currency as it can be used to help people without directly helping oppressors or can provide leverage and diplomatic dominance over a state that maybe you want to be your friend.\n\nThe decisions on where to send foreign aid is one of the most complex issues any government can make. In fact I think it is probably the most complex issue. Which is why I cannot be bothered with people who say that they don't want their money going overseas to people who can't help themselves. When used correctly, a little aid can go a very long way and be as good an investment as any blue chip stock.", "Imagine you are very rich. In fact, the richest person in your neighbourhood! But not everyone in your neighbourhood is rich. Some in fact, are incredibly poor. Well, you want to live in a nice neighbourhood right? But how can you make it nice!\n\nWell, there are two ways. You could give money to your neighbours, a thousand bucks here, a thousand bucks there, to help them build a nice fence, to be able to afford to tie up their dog, to fix their roof, to send their kids to school, or to deal with the Islamic militants camping in their backyard! You make everyone  like you, and more able to deal with their problems. The neighbours talk about what a great guy you are, and let you land your plane in their gardens and your kids sell their kids lemonade.\n\nOr you could say fuck you all, and just build a giant ass fence around your house. Well, the neighbourhood starts to get a little shittier. Your neighbours Ivan and Wang are helping where they can, but they care about dumb things you don't care about! Their fences look weird and stuff! And everytime you look out of your window, everyone is giving you the stink eye. You are super rich, but you haven't helped them at all. So why should they help you? They're buying and selling lemonade to wang and Ivan, and even Pierre and Reginald! Some of your neighbours problems are getting bad too. Theres a horrible stink, and those islamic militants just moved into the house opposite you! Well, you're gonna need a bigger fence. Maybe some more guards. No one will let you land your plane in their garden, let alone your helicopter! You have to start handing out bribes to get what you want, or just paying for it yourself, and it's just getting worse and worse! Everyone hates you and you're stuck in your house.\n\nObviously, helping people out is actually cheaper than telling them all to fuck off and then building a giant fence. It's like that with Foreign aid. Apart from ethical and moral arguments, it's a LOT cheaper to give your buddy Israel money to build an army and look out for you in the middle east than it would be to do it yourself. It's easier to pay a small amount now rather than waiting for shit to go wrong and instability to creep into the world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2pf5iu", "title": "how can our buttholes stretch to accomodate enormous turds with minimal pain, but many people experience pain inserting anything up there, let alone anything that big?", "selftext": "Seems like even with lube, putting anything up your butt causes discomfort to a lot of people, and yet I'm pretty sure everyone has expelled an enormous turd at some point in their life and bounced back quite quickly.  Why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pf5iu/eli5_how_can_our_buttholes_stretch_to_accomodate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmw3gqf", "cmw3jsr", "cmw4kw2", "cmw4mzd", "cmw4vdq", "cmwbke4", "cmwbwli", "cmwcvj2", "cmwd5y8", "cmwdiar", "cmwdqme", "cmwdtiu", "cmwf9q6", "cmwfk9a", "cmwfl1v", "cmwfr2b", "cmwftdr", "cmwg4mo", "cmwgf9j", "cmwgo2x", "cmwgupr", "cmwiek9", "cmwj0ol", "cmwjkw2", "cmwjq5b", "cmwlh8x", "cmwnh8d", "cmwnk9s", "cmwp2br", "cmwpbrg", "cmwr2sk", "cmwsrwt", "cmx9gx3"], "score": [356, 114, 63, 1369, 85, 15, 6, 3, 2, 1306, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 7, 6, 4, 5, 15, 15, 5, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6], "text": ["Turds are not solid. Have you ever noticed the hard ones also hurt the most.", "The muscles in the rectum/anus are designed to facilitate movement in one direction, out. Forcing the issue inward is a sort of lifehack and people's tolerance to it varies greatly.", "When you defecate there are also muscles pushing out from within your body. That's what your colon and rectum and anus are designed to do.\n\nPutting something in requires practise to do without pain, and involves a great effort to relax the muscles that usually clamp shut to avoid leakage out of your anus. \n\nI understand it takes time, patience and lots of lube. I've been trying for a while though and it still hurts like hell. Which is a pity really.", "It's not a \"stretch\" but more of a \"relax\". The sphincter muscles there are only partly under conscious control for regular people, but it happens that the act of bearing down and pushing out to poop cues them to literally let go for a moment.\n\nAlso, not everyone's going to enjoy the sensation of being penetrated there, and use of a lot of good lube is super important.", "There are two sphincters, the outer one we can control but the inner one we cant. The inner one is in charge of telling the difference between a shit and a fart and holding back what shouldn't come out. Then when you are ready to drop the kids of at the pool it relaxes and lets it past. If you are putting something up your butt then this one will still be tight no matter how much you try to will yourself to relax. \n\nOn a slightly related note there is a thing called an anal fissure, where the inner sphincter stays tight and the poo is still forced out which tears it. It feels like shitting glass apparently. So not everyone bounces back from a big turd that quickly. Its a (cough cough) real pain in the arse...\n", "Normal feces from a person who is hydrated and consumes the proper amount of fiber is very malleable. Because of that fact your sphincter will be able push out large amounts at one time without you noticing any considerable discomfort. \n\nThe opposite is true in cases of constipation, when feces becomes desiccated and compacted it becomes not only harder to pass but more painful.\n\nChronic constipation can result in anal lesions and/or prolapse which can lead to sepsis if constipation and anal wounds are left untreated. This is especially problematic for children and the elderly.\n\nAlso, let's not forget, naturally speaking the anus serves as an exit, not an entrance.\n\nSource: med student studying proctology.", "When you shit, your body also excretes mucus to lubricate that shit. This is why shits are shiny and moist (most times). Plus, your body has already been prepared to expel waste, so it modifies the anus accordingly. When you are taking a dildo or a dick up there, no matter how prepared you may be, the function of the anus is not to receive, but to expel, so it's kind of like pushing a door that leads out, in. With enough lube, it doesn't hurt as much, but it still causes microscopic tears in the lining. ", "That's easy - some people don't like having stuff put up their butt, therefore it hurts them.\n\nWhen someone's turned on enough to want object X in their ass, they can relax and work it in instead of clenching up.", "I don't think stretching would have anything to do with it. It all comes down to one factor, friction. Feces have oils and moisture so they tend to be painless but anything could be inserted if there is lubrication. ", "As someone that's into butt stuff, and more explicitly, putting things into my butt that make even the largest of human penises or epic dumps look laughably small, this is an easy question to answer.   \n\nPooping is, for lack of a better word, normal. So when a turd travels through your intestines and finally reaches the \"staging area\" of the human digestive tract, the rectum, the pressure it exerts on the walls of your rectum tells your body that you need to go take a dump. So you go and sit on the toilet.   \n\n(Which, BTW, is not very good for you, since squatting is the natural position for dropping a deuce and relaxes a [muscle](_URL_0_) called the [Puborectalis muscle](_URL_1_) that, if you poop while sitting, doesn't relax and actually makes it harder to poop; using a foot stool while you're passing a stool will allow your body to mimic a squatting posture without actually squatting over the toilet, making it easier and faster for you to poop, helping prevent the formation of hemorrhoids, and allows for more complete elimination of the browns from your proverbial playoff pool)\n\nYou're used to things exiting your body, and so the muscles that control your butthole relax, allowing for the turd to exit without pain or discomfort. Turds are (if you eat a healthy diet and poop regularly) relatively soft, and contain some amount of water, and a fair amount of mucus that you've either inadvertently or intentionally swallowed and that has been produced by the intestines themselves. \n\nBut, since the majority of people, male and female and inbetween, aren't used to things going *into* their butts, these muscles don't relax, and often intentionally tighten up when such a stimuli is applied. This resistance, often coupled with a lack of sufficient lubrication, leads to friction, which can cause tears (micro-and-macroscopic) to the rectal and anal lining, which is painful (to say the least). \n\nIf you acclimatize the body to things being inserted into the anus and rectum, and learn how to manually relax the muscles that control the sphincter (and are in a somewhat relaxed state of mind) and use adequate lubrication, there's no pain at all, or discomfort for that matter. \n\nThe human anus is actually quite flexible, if trained properly. With enough warm-up and lubrication, some individuals can safely and comfortably accommodate objects as large as 12\"+ in length, and 4\"+ in diameter, or about as large as a foot tall stack of DVD's (I do not recommend trying to put a foot-tall stack of DVD's into your butt). \n\nIn other words, given enough time, training, and lube, some people's butts have 1.43 Terabytes of storage capacity. And the reason it hurts when you or someone else tries to put something in your butt is because you're not used to it, the muscles that control your butthole tighten, which causes more friction, which leads to tears, which hurt. And even if you do use enough lube, if you try to put *anything* in your butt, no matter the size, without warming it up first, it's still going to hurt because you're forcefully stretching muscles that are contracting. Whereas when you poop, your butthole is relaxed, and the relatively soft dookie can squeeze out of your brown eye like so much of Satans toothpaste. \n\nPersonally speaking, taking a dump still kinda hurts if the turd is rock-hard, and is usually a sign that you need to eat more fiber and drink more water. \n\nEDIT;  \nIf my calculations are correct (area of a cylinder 120mm in diameter x 305mm in height, divided by the approximate area of a micro sd card (15mm x 11mm x 1mm length x width x height)) then the area taken up by a one-foot tall stack of DVD's would be anough area for 19,394 micro sd cards.\n19,394 times 128gb equals 2.42425 PETABYTES of storage.  \n\nFor comparison, the entire internet is estimated to be 4,883 petabytes large. So that means someone that could fit that stack of DVD's into their ass could fit roughly 0.025% of the internet into their ass.  \n\nSo 4000 masters of the anal arts could fit the entire internet into their collective asses.  \n\nEach of those 128gb microSD cards retails at 200$. So at full retail price, I could fit $3,878,800 into my ass. Backing up the entire internet, anally, would cost $15,515,200,000!  \n\nWorth it\n\nADDITIONAL EDIT;  \n\nCredit goes to /u/493 for finding an error in my math, I forgot to carry the decimal point one more time on the final total  \n\nFINAL EDIT;\nThis is a shameless plug (although aren't they all, *wink wink, nudge nudge*) but I'm just a poor broke anon trying to fit several million dollars worth of SD cards in my ass. If you can find it in your heart to donate some bitcoins, or even just a fraction of one, I would really appreciate it. It's totally unnecessary, but it can't hurt to try putting it out there. I spent about an hour working on this comment at 1:30 in the morning, and I'm exhausted.  \n\n1Fp8dDDSiAJG5cJXnGzgDFpzuKjQqwVX4J  \n\n/\\ That's my bitcoin wallet address. Thank you for reading my comment, and thank you even more if you decide to throw something my way. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukkah, and Happy Holidays!\n\n", "Have you ever picked up a turd?  Even a \"hard\" post-constipation turd is quite soft and has no structure once its out of the water.  That's why when you got a big three day one that's too big for the bowl, it just folds over.", "There are two sphincter muscles in the butthole, you can only controll the external one. I would guess that putting something big up there when the internal sphincter muscle isn't properly relaxed would hurt. ", "Finally, I get to use my years of experience inserting things up people's asses for money!\n\nIf you want to push something up your butt, you need to push *out* as you insert it. This forces the sphincter muscles to relax, and you can shove stuff up there. Unfortunately, our natural reaction to something coming up the \"wrong\" pipe is to clench, which makes it hurt.", "A butthole is designed to have poop coming out if it, your natural reflex is to let poop out, you have to hold it in. Having something inserted into your anus isn't part of its natural design, so it tightens up to prevent potentially dangerous foreign objects getting in there. ", "Because the butthole isn't the problem with rectal insertion and it is more than the sphincter muscles are fighting it.  Look at the anatomy of the colon and you'll see that what you're trying to stretch isn't muscle tissue but something little more ridged and fragile adding to that it doesn't hurt that it is teaming with nerves. \n\nHere's a diagram. \n\n_URL_0_ \n\nMeh it's from Wikipedia usually I decry it as a source but its the only one I could find without testiest for some reason. If you'd like one with more detail as it is cutaway but has testies  here you go \n\n_URL_1_\n\nIf you chose option 2 with testies note the curvature of the organ it is not a straight line. Often the item you insert is a straight line. ", "The organ is designed to let stuff out easily and not let stuff in. But if you're so inclined, practice makes perfect. With enough lube and patience I'm sure you'll reach mastery and get all sorts of big things in there!", "Well I've had both penises go in there and poop go out of there, and I'd say that one of the reasons poops are less uncomfortable is because the poop only comes out once. Like, something is only stretching out your booty hole for like three seconds. A penis can be in there for quite a while.\n\nAlso, poops are kinda moist, so they lube themselves. When you wipe, that shit you're wiping off is moist poop that got scraped off around your butthole, and in being scraped off that poop lubed stuff up so that your sphincter didn't have to deal with all the friction.\n\n Penises, or fingers, are not literally made out of lube. If there is friction, the solution isn't that a piece of the penis gets scraped off. You just kinda have to deal with it. \n\nWith poop, when there's friction, a little bit of poop gets scraped off.", "It doesn't stretch. It relaxes. Think of almost all life on Earth as being a tube, with things growing around it to make that tube more complicated. (With the exception of sea cucumbers... Fucking sea cucumbers.)\n\nIt's job is to turn matter into energy, and this tube is riddled with sphincters. The world famous sphincter known as your rectum isn't stretching, it's merely relaxing. \n\nIt is essentially an exhaust port, and as humans we have very advanced... well everything. Our exhaust port features air pressure suction, muscles that push out waste at almost every stage of ingestion. A lubricated and incredibly low friction anal cavity means large bits of matter can just slip past. It has specifically evolved to be as efficient as it can. \n\nWhat it HASN'T evolved is the ability to put 12\" dildo's up our arse. Turns out that isn't too integral to our survival. You see, another perk of evolution making ourselves efficient is that immediately after the butthole, you have an incredibly dry elevated region. It is to keep moisture away avoiding things like rashes, and essentially makes the poo hole a one way street. \n\nSo, lob in a large object with a substantial surface area, force it into a location that is literally grown to be dry and abrasive into a hole that is supposed to be one way is going to be a painful endeavor. Which is why lube is popular to make the process that little bit silkier. \n\nSource: Booty expert. ", "When you poop, your body knows you're popping, and sends special messages to relax your two sphincters (via your parasympathetic nervous system). When you aren't pooping, but shoving something up there, you don't get any special relaxing messages, and you may even clench on top of that too. This equals pain. Plus the whole lube/no lube thing plays a part. \n\nSide note... Eating also triggers these special messages that relax your bum bum. (Parasympathetic stimulation from stretch of your stomach leads to peristalsis of your gut and bowel). So if you're constipated try pooping right after you eat. Or drinking water while on the toilet. ", "Being relaxed. \n\nYou're in control of the speed in which the turd comes out of you. Having a cock jamming in and out, plus excitement means a lack of control and an increase of stress. \n\nIf you're unsure, ask a guy to jab you in the butt and then compare it to taking a dump. ", "There are two kinds of \"rectal muscles\" known as the internal and the external anal sphincters.\n\nThe internal sphincter is under autonomic or unconcious control. When there's poop in your rectum, your internal sphincter relaxes. Now the poop is nearing your anus. When it reaches there, your external sphincter, the one you control, is letting you know (by nerve signals) that it wants to relax and release poop. However, you have to let it relax, and it won't poop on its own.\n\nSo basically, when poop is coming OUT of the rectum, your external sphincter is relaxed. But when something is being inserted INTO the rectum, this is an immediate reflex to contract and make sure nothing gets inside. This is probably to protect our bodies from injurious agents that may enter the body through the colon (Fun fact: there's this disease called myiasis that can come if the good old house fly lays its eggs on your anus. Obviously, this happens with poorer people who don't have clothes. In the end, you end up with maggots in your intestine.\n\n**TL:DR** Your sphincter relaxes when it needs to evacuate poop, and contracts when something is entering the rectum as an evolutionary defense mechanism against bacteria and other injurious agents.", "Here's a ***true LI5 explanation that is ACTUALLY CORRECT***: \n\n---\n\nIt all depends on how ***UPTIGHT*** you are. Literally. \n\nGenerally the sphincter can accommodate *massive logs* without pain. People into anal sex aren't necessarily into BDSM etc. \n\nWhen one takes a dump, the sphincter receives an ***incoming signal*** from the body and ***relaxes***. \n\nWhen stuff goes ***the other direction*** though, the natural instinct is to not let it... unless perhaps you're really, really horny. Thus, as a reflex, the sphincter cramps up, sealing tight. If one forces through that, a rather painful experience awaits. \n\nAny anal porn star will readily testify that this can be trained without much difficulty. Usually, it starts with training one's ***mind***. Hesitancy is the biggest enemy here. \n\nSo, yeah: ***ANAL PENETRATION -- a self-awareness training!*** ", "Because the assholes job is to give shit, not take it.", "it is the most sophisticated one way valve known. No other object can release gas wihtout letting in water. ONE WAY valve", "The whole body gets ready to eliminate waste your parasympathetic nervous system causes the sphincter muscles to relax and eliminate the waste effectively. When inserting anything anally I would assume we're talking sexual manipulation the sympathetic nervous system is in full drive which would explain why it hurts because some muscle are tense.", "Ever heard of a one way street? Easy flowing to say the least, but when someone or something goes the opposite direction, bad things happen.", "There are two sets of muscles I think. The outer muscle you can control and the inner one you cannot. Though you probably start to understand the inner one as you do buttstuff more often. Don't quote me on this.", "Because the anus is a one way street, it was never meant to have anything go up it.", "Think of your asshole as a diode, stuff is only supposed to flow in one direction.", "easy, when you are pooping you are \"moving\" your muscles to open and close in succession so that the poop is pushed out, you are not doing it consciously, but that's what the butt is made for, when you try to \"insert\" something, you are going \"against the tide\" and your ass tries to push it out because that's how it\u00b4s designed, that's why they tell you to relax, because if you don't, you are going to unconsciously push back whatever is going in and your ass is going to lose to the pressure applied from outside, which of course hurts", "All because I'm reading this on the loo, doesn't mean I want to read about being on the loo...", "Its funny. While I can find some comfort in taking a big poo, I cannot stand doing things like applying ointment in the area or things of that nature. Yes, I have had hemorrhoids\n before.", "Whenever I take a massive shit, I like to look at it and think, \"Hypothetically, that's how much dick I could take.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/yljxpomnx9ibldawzebk.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puborectalis_muscle"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectum#mediaviewer/File:Anatomy_of_human_rectum_and_anus-2.png", "http://chestofbooks.com/health/anatomy/Human-Body-Construction/images/Fig-445-Rectum-and-anal-canal.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3atqck", "title": "why is america so opposed to universal health care?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3atqck/eli5_why_is_america_so_opposed_to_universal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csfu9p3", "csfucbr", "csfuz3s", "csfvdas", "csfviiq", "csfw8hf", "csfyetu"], "score": [6, 15, 9, 3, 7, 6, 2], "text": ["There has been years of propaganda against Universal heath care in America calling it  socialized healthcare to imply connections with communism. Example, _URL_0_ Ronald Reagan speaks on the evils of socialized Healthcare.", "In the US, people hear horror stories of 6-month waits to see a doctor, and the inability to get certain procedures done at all in some cases, and little or no choice in what type of care you receive.  Of course, lots of folks are already on Medicare and Medicaid in this country, so to be reflexively against what one might consider to be \"socialized medicine\" is kind of curious...", " >  access to medical assistance is considered a basic human right\n\nHere is the main issue, if providing economic benefits to everyone is a right, who is forced to provide those benefits? \n\nIf the argument is that healthcare is a basic human right, does it extend to all humans? If a person in Toronto is forced to pay doctor bills for someone in Vancouver, can he be also be forced to pay for doctor bills for someone in Kenya? Or since Kenyans are not Canadian citizens, they do not deserve basic human rights? \n\n > benefits so society vastly out weigh the cost in tax dollars.\n\nRight, so Canadians paying for the healthcare of someone in Kenya benefits society. \n", "Aside from the \"socialism\" fears, health is big business in the US, over 17% of our GDP, generating billions of dollars and employing millions of people.\n\nSocializing healthcare would reasonably result in a large portion of these people losing their jobs. NY recently passed a bill for single payer (aka, universal healthcare) and estimates 326,000 people will lose their job in NY alone, just in the administrative side of healthcare. Expanding out nation wide, that means about 5.6M people being out of a job with the entire industry they know gone.\n\nIt's really hard for any politician to pass a law knowing it will put millions of taxpayers out of work with no replacement available, while also shutting down multi-billion dollar companies that have been around for decades, or even centuries.", "I think universal healthcare is not seen as a good option in the US because our government runs many social programs very poorly, and healthcare isn't a program you want run poorly.  For instance, the VA has had lots of troubles in the news in the past few years.  If the government can't even runt he VA right, how can they run everything?  There is also the idea that free market and high pay is what makes people make the investment to become doctors.  Yes healthcare is expensive, but why would you invest so much of your life if there wasn't a reward.  One theory I have heard is we already have a Dr. Shortage, if the government ran the hospitals, there would be no free market for Doctors to move between hospitals for increased pay and such so there would be a loss of incentive to become a Dr.  TO be clear, I don't agree with these points of view, but they are a few examples that I have heard why it won't work in the US.", "Two reasons (that I don't personally ascribe to) are used in these arguments:  \n1. I should get to keep more of my money. My hard work shouldn't go toward paying \"Lazy Joe's\" medical expenses. If he were less lazy, he could pay for himself.  \n2. There is a perception of better care through a privatized system. No long waits to see doctors, the quality of doctor is supposedly better, blah blah blah.  \n\n  \nIn the rhetoric, #1 is more often cited by conservative pundits. The USA has a real \"if you work hard enough, X is achievable\" mindset, which is untrue for many reasons. ", "I don't think most Americans have an issue with universal healthcare.  I just think they have an issue with:\n\n1. How it was implemented, i.e... have healthcare or be fined.\n2. It being government run.  Most all government run programs here are failing miserably.  USPS, welfare, social security...."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://youtu.be/fRdLpem-AAs"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5rg42c", "title": "why does sticking out your tongue indicate playfulness or not being serious?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rg42c/eli5_why_does_sticking_out_your_tongue_indicate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd70174", "dd7eb1e", "dd7epse", "dd7f41g", "dd7f86s"], "score": [19, 19, 28, 3, 8], "text": ["Sticking out your tongue is seen as a childish thing to do (since children do it).  An adult acting childish is seen as not being serious.\n\nSimilar to responding to someone with, \"I know you are, but what am I?\"", "I take an adult sticking their tongue out at me as playfulness becuase it can indicate how they plan to use it later.", "I would have thought it was the opposite of bearing your teeth to show aggression. \n\nSticking your tongue out of your mouth is very dangerous in an aggressive setting, as you might get hit in the face and bite it off, so it shows that you're not looking for a fight in any way.\n\n\n[(Disregard Maori war dance)](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: Shit, I got pinged by a grammar bot.", "in evolutionary terms, the tongue is a very sensitive area, so when we present it to others, it signals in our brain that they are not a threat. at least, that's how i feel most things on here are answered.\n", "It's mock rejection, and it stems from the infantile response to stopping a breast feeding session. This is also why we stick out our tongues while we are concentrating. \n\nI am not a biologist or cultural anthropologist. Grain of salt."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-syPq1VUfV14/UvtQmtq0InI/AAAAAAAAjtk/I0j4CMhCrzs/s1600/ScreenShot1260.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4tb7w2", "title": "Why do camera recordings get digital artifacts when receiving physical strain(during impacts, for example)?", "selftext": "Like this:\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4tb7w2/why_do_camera_recordings_get_digital_artifacts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5h1kl4"], "score": [2], "text": ["The artifact you see is from a packet loss: the video is encoded blocks by blocks and then transmitted. Because losing adjacent packets (blocks of data) is likely, blocks are shuffled so that we lose less *neighbouring* blocks, and it looks less crappy. There are ways to conceal losses but when they're too numerous, blocky artifacts happen.\n\nSo it is not the sensor that fails, or even the compression itself, but the writing to memory or the transmission, which may be affected by big shocks, but tbh while I do know that it happens I don't know why :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://youtu.be/1_FXVjf46T8?t=107"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1rhtuw", "title": "Hot Chocolate?", "selftext": "So here is a question that I have been wondering. What has better distribution? Pouring a hot liquid on the hot chocolate mix. Or, Pouring the hot chocolate mix into the hot liquid. \n\nFollow up question, which liquid distributes the hot chocolate mix better, water or milk?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rhtuw/hot_chocolate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdng8za"], "score": [13], "text": ["Water is hydrophilic, milk is a mostly water emulsion with some fats giving it some hydrophobic character. Without knowing every last compound in he mix which can vary, it would be speculation to say. Given that theres chocolate which has dairy fats milk would be more reasonable choice. \n\nYou have a greater chance of powder clumping if you were to dump the powder on top of the liquid. If you were going to prepare it like a chemist who can't leave procedure in the lab, you would add the liquid to the solid. You would add a small amount of liquid and mix, just enough to make a slurry ( a loose paste consistancy ) then bring it up the desired liquid level. \n\nDumping powder into the liquid or quickly adding liquid to the powder can cause clumping. The two different mediums flow differently and Van der Waals forces come into play. While there are some powders that you would swear look liquid when poured, most don't. Powder particles are still solid and exhibit more friction upon each other than a liquid. If the liquid is allowed to surround an amount of powder instead of solvating , the water will then be pushing on this clump of powder from all sides. It is still solvating, but only on the surface area of the clump.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4goxy9", "title": "Why are American Indians stereotypically humorless?", "selftext": "We aren't.\n\nEDIT:\n\n\"There is scarcely anything so exasperating to me as the idea that the natives of this country have no sense of humor and no faculty for mirth. This phase of their character is well understood by those whose fortune or misfortune it has been to live among them day in and day out at their homes. I don't believe I ever heard a real hearty laugh away from the Indians' fireside. I have often spent an entire evening in laughing with them until I could laugh no more. There are evenings when the recognized wit or story-teller of the village gives a free entertainment which keeps the rest of the community in a convulsive state until he leaves them. However, Indian humor consists as much in the gestures and inflections of the voice as in words, and is really untranslatable.\"\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4goxy9/why_are_american_indians_stereotypically_humorless/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2jnkdk"], "score": [108], "text": ["From an anthropological standpoint- two reasons. \n\n1) that it is very helpful to portray a group as \"other\" if \"they don't act like us\", so saying a group is unfeeling, humorless, or conversely, overemotional and passionate can make a distinction between them and us. See the American portrayals of Japanese or Germans during WW2, or Irish during the Famine. \n\n2) A lot of the early interaction with American Indians by whites was in a hostile environment, where empathy isn't really an asset. Nor is showing fear or pain. Later, not showing emotion is a common coping strategy for groups who fear reprisal for their words or actions. See diaries/memoirs of American black slaves, or 20th c POWs. (Same concept behind the myth that \"black people don't feel pain like white people\", which apparently is still widely believed in the medical field.)\n\nThis is a link to a really interesting pamphlet written by a Smithsonian anthropologist in the 1930s- who was frankly surprised by the depth and beauty of the Seneca Iroquois culture he documented. It's definitely not without some temporal bias (meaning academic language and standards were different in the '30s) but interesting.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/Iroquois_L6_opt.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "2p3zy3", "title": "If there is so much space between atoms, how does light bounce off anything? Shouldn't it penetrate matter deeply before even hitting a nucleus? Or is it repulsed by the same forces that keep matter from meshing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2p3zy3/if_there_is_so_much_space_between_atoms_how_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmtmcbf"], "score": [3], "text": ["Light is an oscillating electric field. It interacts with electrons in atoms by interacting with it electrically.\n\nBesides, light has a characteristic wavelength, that determines how it sees charged particles. For visible light, the wavelength is ~0.5um, so it has a very good chance of interacting with particles on that order. Whereas if you had a gamma radiation, equivalent wavelength on the order of  > 10pm, it penetrates deeply into matter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "s30cs", "title": "Does a sample size of 1,200 give an accurate representation of the entire population regardless of the population's size?", "selftext": "I recall learning last year (I believe in a social psychology course) that when polling a population of people, 1200 is statistically accurate no matter how big the entire population is. Is this actually true? Or does it only apply to certain ranges of population size?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s30cs/does_a_sample_size_of_1200_give_an_accurate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4ao5uk", "c4ar08v"], "score": [10, 8], "text": ["No, it's actually true. The margin of error of a poll (assuming you pick the sample truly randomly) only depends on the *absolute* sample size, not the sample size relative to the population size.", "Great question!\n\nAssuming that the SRS is truly random, it does not matter what the true population size is. In fact, most times survey statisticians do not even know the true population size. The relationship between sample size and the subsequent confidence interval (a measure of precision associated with your estimate) is NOT linear. Although the selection of 1200 is to my knowledge arbitrary, it is a good enough approximation of a target representative sample size. \n\nReally it comes down to how much precision you would like in your estimate. A truly simple random sample of 1200 would result in a confidence interval of roughly 3% at medium sized populations. This holds true whether your population size is 20,000 or 20,000,000\n\nHere, play around with it yourself. Make sure to impute 50% as the percentage, indicating the \"worst case scenario\" of an option: _URL_0_\n\nSRS has its weaknesses, which is why many other sampling methods exist. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.macorr.com/sample-size-calculator.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "hwdl9", "title": "What Happened To This Invention?", "selftext": "_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hwdl9/what_happened_to_this_invention/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1ywoh0", "c1ywosw", "c1yyqra"], "score": [9, 8, 3], "text": ["IIRC, the machine worked as shown, but not exactly as the video says.  There was another thread on askreddit about this and the agreed upon answer was that there is no way to produce that much energy with just water.  There was external energy used and i believe electrolysis needs A LOT of energy.", "What invention? It's just an oxyhydrogen torch. They've been in widespread, though not particularly common, use for fifty years.", "The video is misleading in that it suggests that you just fuel up on water. That's not the case, the water has to be turned into HHO before it can be used, and that takes energy.\n\nGasoline already stores energy (solar energy slowly collected over thousands of years), so we just extract it from the ground and voila, fuel. Water, on the other hand, doesn't store much readily available energy. So we would need to use energy from power plants to convert the water into HHO in order to turn it into a viable fuel.\n\nHence, it's not a replacement for gasoline. You can't simply fuel up on water. The water can store energy (as gasoline does), but the energy first has to be provided to it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2wG90QlZSU&amp;feature=related"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1d2wno", "title": "How did they decide where to land on the moon?", "selftext": "I'm looking at [this](_URL_0_) map and most of the landing seem to be around the equator", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1d2wno/how_did_they_decide_where_to_land_on_the_moon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9md4d6", "c9md7yt", "c9me5s9"], "score": [25, 65, 6], "text": ["Let me preface my answer by saying that my practical knowledge is based entirely on kerbal space program (an amaaaazing space simulator with a kickass free demo), but also that the principals are interchangeable with real life..\n\nThe main reason most of the landings were around the \"equator\" is simply that that was the easiest region to reach. When you are sending heavy equipment to the moon, you need to be using the most efficient route possible to reduce fuel consumption, which in turn would require extra thrust.\n\nTo do this, the route you take to the moon has to be as efficient as possible, with the highest chance of success. This means for one thing, burning fuel as low as possible inside gravity wells, but more importantly, approaching the moon on the plane of its orbit. (simpler version from astronaut's perspective - Approaching it flat, to either side, rather than climbing or descending above/below it.)\n\nBecause our moon spins in such a way, the astronauts actually have access to about 5 degrees up or down depending on how patient they are, without expending any extra fuel. This is because our moon doesn't spin exactly on its orbital plane. But to land more than 5 degrees from the \"equator\" requires an extra fuel burn in the moons orbit, which means carrying it all up there in the first place, not impossible, but just complicates the process, and leaves less room for errors. \n\nAs for why each specific site was chosen, I can only make the assumption that the exact sites where chosen only once they knew which ones they could reach, and the lateral coordinates were chosen mainly on scientific interest. Hopefully an actual historian will have a source for the desired outcomes of each landing.", "Howdy.\n\nI'm not a NASA historian or Space historian but I am a teacher, and one part of a lesson involved the moon landings.  From NASA I got a teacher's instructive guide which is, according to NASA, accurate information.  (For example, [here](_URL_0_) is one part of the guide.)\n\n\nAccording to the booklet from NASA, the six Apollo neaside landing sites were chosen to explore different geologic terrains.  Apollo 11 landed in basaltic lava, as did Apollo 12; Apollo 14 landed in what was thought to be ejecta from the Imbrium Basin; Apollo 15 in breccia and basalt mare and highlands; Apollo 16 landed in anorthosite and highlands soil; and Apollo 17 landed in an area comprised of mare soil, orange soil, basaltic lava, and anorthosite.\n\nThe Lunar and Planetary Institute says that the Apollo 11 landing site was one of three short-listed landing sites and was chosen because it was relatively smooth, with no large hills, cliffs, or deep craters.  It would require less fuel to get to (nearside, near the equator) as well, among some other criteria.  The mare regions near the equator were the best bet.  The Apollo 12 precision landing was done because Apollo 11 landed a few miles beyond its planned target, so Apollo 12 would have a precision landing in order to prove that it could work for future missions.  Its landing site was chosen because the mare region it would land in was younger and of different composition from Apollo 11.\n\nLanding sites were still restricted to regions near the equator; prior to Apollo 13's aborted mission, Apollo 14 would have landed in an area to study volcanic deposites, but instead it was retargeted to the Apollo 13 area known as the Fra Mauro formation, which was a convenient marker that divided features geologically older and younger, and there would be easily accessed samples from deep in the moon's crust.\n\nApollo 15 was chosen firm because they could sample the rim of the Imbrium Bason along the Appenine Mountains and would allow NAA to explore and study a channel in the mare surface formed volcanically.\n\nThe Apollo 16 landing site was chosen because NASA wanted to land at a site in the lunar highlands away from the mare regions, so they chose the Descartes landing site.  This would allow them to sample the Descartes Formation and the Cayley formation, which cover about 11% of the lunar nearside and thus were important to study.\n\nApollo 17 which would be the last landing Apollo mission, ended up choosing the Taurus-Littrow Valley.  They wnated to obtain highland material samples and investigate allegedly young, explosive volcanic activity.  This was someone influenced by Apollo 15 photographs which showed that the valley was safe to land in.", "Sir Patrick Moore produced detailed maps of the moon's surface which were used by Nasa for planning the landings. It was his detailed research which allowed for potential sites to be initially identified. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Moon_landing_map.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/58199main_Exploring.The.Moon.pdf"], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10525469"]]}
{"q_id": "a5zq2d", "title": "If all it takes is moving charges to create a photon does this mean that simply waving a statically charged comb back and forth (or in a circle) is generating photons?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a5zq2d/if_all_it_takes_is_moving_charges_to_create_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ebqk39w", "ebql4kl", "ebu9z1w"], "score": [19, 14, 2], "text": ["Yes, any oscillating electric charge produces radiation.", "At low frequency and very low power, but yes.", "Yes.  Congratulations, you just created a (very bad) radio antenna. It will produce radio waves at whatever frequency you're waving the comb back and forth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cqgib", "title": "how do multiplayer online games play at the same speed?", "selftext": "To clarify, how do games like Overwatch, Fortnight, every MMO ever, etc... get all their players to interact in real time without lag? If I watch news broadcasters talking to field agents 10 minutes away there's a three second delay, but I can hitscan a man in Brazil while a man in Vancouver talks to me on mic with no noticeable delay. I'm sure there's some really cool computer science going on here and I'd love to understand it. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cqgib/eli5_how_do_multiplayer_online_games_play_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxgy6wg", "dxgy8cb", "dxgytdj", "dxh2t2i", "dxh3l1j", "dxh5vls", "dxhiy5x", "dxi2gyf"], "score": [19, 5, 25, 36, 2, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["Internet connections go via fiber optics, not satellite, so you can easily have a round trip in a fraction of a second, thousands of miles away.", "With video games like these, there is a central server, ran by the games developers, and all players connect to the same server and so the lag is minimal, the only lag will be due to their latency and connecting to the central server.\n(Internet connections also differ from satellite which produces faster speeds)\n\nHowever with news reporters there is no central server, each are directly communicating to each other. ", "There's a lot of stuff happening, but most of it happens via a protocol called UDP \n\nUDP stands for User Datagram Protocol. You can think of it like a set of rules whose job is to get you packets of information very fast, but not always accurately. \n\nWhen you listen to music, watch youtube, or game, the protocol's job is to input your commands quickly, and produce results quickly. Sometimes, if you have a poor internet connection, you'll notice stuttering, lagging, or buffering. That's because there's something in the way, usually slow connection from getting all those packets of data reliably. so to move on to the next packet and keep up with \"real life\" timing, the data is dumped. And when the data is dumped, it's like nothing happened. Your \"shoot\" command was dumped, so you start lagging, or your Spotify song stopped playing and skipped to the next.  \n\nAlternatively, the opposite protocol is TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). It's job is to make sure all your information arrives accurately, without respects to how long it takes. These protocols are good for things like downloads where every bit of information has to be in place in order to use the download (emails, offline  videos, etc.) \n\nTCP is also used when there's a good connection to \"cache\" information to appear like it's a seamless connection when connection issues happen. This frequently happens with music apps. Or even Youtube videos.", "So your internet data packets travel roughly 30% of the speed of light. That means, roughly 100,000 kilometers per second. So if you want to have ping of less than 20 ms, that is, 0.02 seconds, route from you to the server and back needs to be less than 0.02s * 100,000km/s = 2,000km. So if you live within 1000km of the server, you can achieve ping of 20ms, at least, in theory.\n\nThere are some extra troubles here. Server can't respond to you instantly, it takes some time to figure out what kind of response you want. Also you have some processing to do on your end as well, drawing a single frame takes about 10 milliseconds from your gpu, and also non-gaming displays can have like 20ms delay between fame being ready to be shown on your computer, and the frame being actually shown. But anyhow, if you are within 1000km of the server, you should be seeing whatever server wants to show you within 0.1 seconds of you requesting this information. This to a human is almost unnoticeable delay. If the distance grows however, ping becomes more and more significant factor in causing delay, and at about 0.3s, it's very close to impossible to not notice this delay.\n\nSo that's the basics of physics behind this. So how do games do this? A typical solution is that there is a central server, as before, which has something called \"tick rate\". Every tick, the server sends a packet describing what the server thinks the game world is like. Your computer then displays this world, and if you move or do something else in the game, your computer sends this data to server and once server receives your actions, it includes these in the next tick it composes. I know Valve games use tick rate of 64 ticks per second.\n\nWhich is sort of nice, but if your actions have to go through server to be shown to you, this means there is distinct feeling of lack of control that can cause things like nausea if the delay between actions you make and these actions being shown on screen grows too large. So games typically cheat a bit. They try to guess what the server is thinking at the moment, and incorporate your own actions onto game world immediately. This means what you're being shown isn't actually the world as server tick describes it, but prediction like \"if the last tick was sent 15ms ago(taking network lag into account) and said the world looks like that, what would the game world look like now, 15ms later?\" So there are two closely linked game worlds your computer tries to keep in sync.\n\nWhich usually works fine, but sometimes these worlds go off sync because of too much lag. This causes things like characters stuttering, warping around the map, things like that. But if everything works fine, your computer is able to make rather reasonable predictions about what's gonna happen next and these guesses and actual ticks stay in sync, so the game looks butter smooth to you even with about 100ms lag or something like that as game draws based on these predictions rather than waiting for server to confirm anything, and only after the fact it makes sure everything went as intended. If not, these sudden corrections are what cause warping, as your computer has to very fast fix position from predicted position to where the server tells that object actually is at. Lots of these kinds of corrections and everything just warps and stutters around your screen.\n\nWith voice communications, lag can become much higher before you start noticing the delay. You probably would not notice 1 second delay on a voice chat that easily.", "There *is* lag. Internet signals travel quickly, but not instantly and the speed of light imposes a fundamental limit on how quickly you can communicate.\n\nWhat many multiplayer games do is try to hide the lag. When you do something, the command is sent to the server, but the game does not wait for the server to respond before taking action. If you press the forward button, your character starts moving immediately while the input is sent to the server in the background. The other players won't see your character move until the server has informed them of that, but you see it immediately.\n\nThe problem is, this means that everyone's version of the game is slightly out of sync, because they are all receiving inputs at different times. Therefore, the server must periodically send corrections to the clients to keep them all in sync. If this is implemented badly it can result in players suddenly snapping into place when updated positions are received from the server. If it's implemented well, you don't notice the delay.", "What helps with video game is that it transfers a lot less information than what is required for TV. Your video game sends and receive information about what happened in the game, like \"Player x shoot player y\". There can be a centralized server that calculates the results and sends back to the game what it should do. As for peer to peer, it is a bit of the same, but mostly every client assume the same calculation.\n\nIt also helps that the infrastructure of the Internet is much better for data than what TV can do, most of the internet is through fiber, while most of TV is through satellite or copper wire.\n\nEdit: It is also good to note that, depending on the game, a lot of the calculations is done in your own game. This is why most hacks works; they rely upon the fact that the server doesn't really know what is going on. If there are no logic in place to check if what a hacker has done is realistic for the game, they can get away with a lot. ", "What a lot of people fail to add on is that game servers sometimes send data 1 tick behind instead of live. This allows everything to properly happen instead of not giving the server time to synchronize events, etc. 1 server time is a minuscule fraction of a second so it wont be noticeable to the player.", "interpolation and prediction. Long story short the games netcode compensates for lag. They design the game with the knowledge that there is no such thing as a lagless internet connection between a bunch of players spread across the planet as such they don't make it a \" 1 to 1: experience because it'd never work. Instead the can measure ping  and actions for all of the players and make adjusts to the game and what the players are seeing in order to make it feel seamless.  It's a much more complicated subject than that but for ELi5 that's all you need to know really."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yv5xw", "title": "why am i compelled to buy health insurance but doctors are not compelled to accept it?", "selftext": "Signed up for Covered CA only to discover that even on Anthem's \"platinum\" plan virtually no doctors accept it. Anthem's list of doctors who allegedly accept it and new patients includes doctors who have retired two years ago.  \n & nbsp;\n\n**1st edit** to add the following:\nOkay from what I can tell I just woke up to some earnest explanations, a fair amount of politics, some humor, and some cranks. I have a lot of reading to do. Thank you for your comments; I have read a handful of them and feel I should fill in the picture a bit for some people who have made some assumptions: I am a small business owner doing business as myself (not an LLC), I pay approximately $580 a month, I have the Platinum 90 PPO plan, and I make good money doing highly technical work. Before Obamacare I paid a private insurance company near $780 a month.  \n & nbsp;  \n**2nd edit** to add the following:\nIt seems that there is some objection to my usage of the word \"compelled.\" I get it. The language is loaded. If you take objection to it, please substitute it with the phrase \"incentivized with a the threat of a tax penalty.\" \nDo any professionals here know of any similar tax penalties in the face of non-compliance for the other two actors in this system, namely the insurance companies and doctors?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yv5xw/eli5_why_am_i_compelled_to_buy_health_insurance/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpdbc0q", "cpdbmdw", "cpdcsli", "cpde95y", "cpdet7y", "cpdexd4", "cpdf64t", "cpdfjqi", "cpdg0a2", "cpdg7gh", "cpdggfx", "cpdgr4k", "cpdhbi8", "cpdi7uj", "cpdimjk", "cpdjcw0", "cpdk3bp", "cpdk766", "cpdkfto", "cpdl6o2", "cpdm4k2", "cpdm7h4", "cpdmllq", "cpdmya8", "cpdnajj", "cpdnio1", "cpdnvsy", "cpdnzh5", "cpdoaq6", "cpdoc0j", "cpdouc7", "cpdpodv", "cpdrffz", "cpdry4o", "cpdtka0", "cpdtkpa", "cpdtoyd", "cpdu3p2", "cpdxjqm", "cpdxlqt", "cpdy5dn", "cpe0ta2"], "score": [79, 515, 22, 20, 2, 2, 16, 57, 5, 21, 11, 5, 3, 8, 7, 9, 66, 4, 3, 5, 13, 3, 2, 2, 8, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 4, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You are buying a product. They offer different things. Some offer lower prices, some offer better coverage, some offer lower prices AND better coverage but limited network. You're choosing what to buy just like you choose what brand of frozen pizza to buy.\n\nDoctors make their own negotiations. The doctors want the most money for their work and/or a huge amount of people that will visit them. They negotiate prices with the insurance companies. They only work with companies who pay them what they think they deserve. If I said I would pay you $1 to paint my house you would say no. Just the same doctors say no to insurance companies that won't pay what they feel is enough.\n\nThe companies themselves are looking to pay the least and charge the most to the buyers. The only reason they even offer better deals to doctors is to make their buyers happy. ", "I'll explain as best I can but to answer I need to explain a bit about how the insurance payments work. \n\nTL; DR: Doctors don't have to accept insurances that they feel don't pay them enough or are too difficult to deal with. Your question about doctors that have retired..... that's on the insurance company itself.\n\nThe insurance system we have in America is really screwy. I'm sure you have seen images and stories about hospitals and doctors charging several hundred dollars for a brace or Tylenol or whatever. Now, we all know that a brace doesn't cost $200, but payments made for supplies and drugs are hiked up to make up for the small (proportionally) fees that are paid to doctors. What is billed to insurance (and to the patient without insurance) is not what the insurance company pays. Most of the values billed are based on the Medicare rates. Then the insurance companies deal with hospitals and groups a % of what the insurance will pay. You will occasionally see on a medical bill something like \"Total Charge submitted : $100,000 (just making up numbers)........ Insurance write off : $40,000....... Account settled : $60,000. So insurance paid 3/5 of what is \"charged\", and most of that money doesn't go to the doctor.... it's for overhead.     Example, a carpal tunnel release surgery will pay the surgeon about $55 (from Medicare). Now, to you or me, $55 might sound like a fair amount of money, but after the costs of Malpractice insurance, taxes, and the time and money spent to become a surgeon..... it's not much at all. So, the compensation for doctors is fairly low at the NET level. This is even more true with Primary Care Doctors. A PCP has to have front desk staff, nurses/medical assistants, some kind of billing department, an office (in a medical building or campus) and a host of other costs that are really unavoidable. People/staff required wages that they can live on and that is going up all the time and the doctors can't raise their rates to meet this. So if the rate paid by the insurance is too low..... the doctor won't accept it. \n\nNow, some insurances will pay more to the doctors. Some insurances will challenge any charge by the doctor and make the doctor justify the charge/order to another doctor on the insurance companies payroll. The harder it is to get the money out of the insurance company, the more time is required to work on these conferences, the more paperwork required, the less likely the doctor will accept the insurance.  Problems like these can also happen with different types of policies from the same insurance companies. So a doctor will take Cigna plans A, B, and D but not plan C. \n\nI hope that gives you some understanding of why they won't accept your insurance. \n\n\n*EDIT* : THANK YOU random redditor!  I've never gotten gold before. P.S. This is as basic overview, It can get really convoluted due to the amount of regulation and differing standards. ", "Because if doctors were compelled to accept all health insurance, there would soon be very few doctors left in business, and the ones that were would be terrible.", "Per the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, you are *not* compelled to buy health insurance by the ACA.  You are taxed if you choose to not have it.", "So i see a lot of people arguing in the comments on whether it should be free/paid for/less of a retarded system. You're right. It's ridiculous we can't pay a reasonable amount. Either directly or through taxes so it's \"free\" but if you don't like it go vote. That's all we gotta do to stop all problems in our country but nobody seems to care.", "Doctors perform services. Insurance companies negotiate (force down) the price of the service or product. If the doctor does not feel they make enough from the transaction, no deal...\n\nSorry to hear about your insurance woes. I have had to deal with high insurance rates in the past, and some things that wouldn't get covered. Good luck getting the help you need.\n\nI would try getting assistance through the hospital if you are low income. They can usually work with you to get your bills reduced :)", "You aren't compelled to buy any specific company's insurance, and doctors aren't compelled to accept any specific company's insurance.\n\nAre you really on a Platinum plan with subsidies?", "Basically Anthem lied about their physician networks or put physicians on their network lists before they actually signed contracts for the health care reform plans (basically they just used lists of their pre health care reform physician networks).  A lot of the doctors balked at the new reimbursement rates and didn't sign on even after Anthem had put them on their list.\n\nThey ARE being sued for this, although it will probably be tied up in litigation hell for a long while: _URL_0_", "Because the government hasn't caught up with the fact that enforcing positive rights require slavery.", "Because the law compelling you to have said health insurance was never really about you actually getting health care. ", "Your government mandated universal health insurance, \nNOT universal health care.   I'm surprised that people equate the two.   The money goes to health insurance companies, a for profit organization, rather than directly to a fund that covers the cost of services.  Looking at how many new sketchy insurance companies that's mushrooming around you, you can see that it's likely a lucrative business not providing you with actual health care.   ", "The insurance company pays the doctors, since anthem has really cheap prices, the doctors don't get paid that much. So the doctors stop accepting anthem and only accept other insurance providers.", "It's more or less for the same reason that you are compelled to go to school but employers are not compelled to accept your education as adequate. \n\nBefore you buy an insurance plan, you have to check that its network includes the physicians you'd like to see; the ACA does not absolve you of this responsibility. If you want a law that compels physicians to accept insurance, you're asking for more intrusive medical legislation than the ACA, such as a single payer model. Although the political right complains about the ACA, it is in fact a fundamentally conservative solution to the problem of funding health care, and is thus significantly less intrusive than many other possible solutions. Ultimately the majority of medical care in this country remains a private enterprise.", "Because the whole system is just a scam to leech money from the US population. It's not designed to be fair or make sense.", "It's because our system is broken. Often it will be because reimbursement from the insurance is so low that the doctor would practically be paying to be at work instead of the other way around. I don't know a ton of details on that end but I know my pharmacy has dropped a couple of plans because what they wanted to pay us for drugs was literally less than the cost to acquire them from our (or any) wholesaler, and that's before you even consider the cost of actually dispensing it.", "If doctors are compelled to accept all insurances,  what is to keep insurance from not paying them anything for thier services? Compelling someone to offer a service is a form of slavery. ", "Because we don't have slavery. A doctor owns his own practice and is a free citizen. He can choose to accept or deny patients or health care providers. The real problem is the insurance companies.\n  \nWhy are we using health insurance as a charge card? The way it's set up encourages waste and doesn't control cost. We've turn a capitalist system into a socialist system.\n  \nHere's why:\n  \nWhen you buy car insurance, it covers actual risk. You get in an accident, hurt someone, it kicks in. It reduces the risk that a driver or a victim will be wiped out financially due to an accident.\n  \nIf car insurance were health insurance, your car insurance would cover: Oil changes, air filter changes, routine visits to the mechanic for 'funny noises'. Anything wrong with your car and you'd drop it off for repair. Your paint peeling? Let's see if your car insurance provider covers it. Tires going bald? Let's see if we have the tire rider. \n  \nThen you notice something strange happening. You bring your car in for new tires and ask for the price and they say 'we dont know but who's your insurance'. You start seeing less and less prices posted and more questions about what your insurance covers. Next thing you know, you can't get a straight answer about costs for ANYTHING. Your buddy works at the car shop and overhear him saying they're getting paid less and less of the stated price so they had to raise the billing rates. This puts cash payers at a disadvantage. Also the prices are getting so high its almost ridiculous because insurance companies are denying so much and paying so little.\n  \nYou see how that's ridiculous? How that would astronomically drive up costs? \n  \nThe greatest drops in health care prices have been in the free market. Lasik prices have dropped over 95% over the past 15 years. It used to cost nearly $20k for Lasik when it first came out in the late 90's. Now you can get Lasik for under $2k, and with financing too. It's cheaper to get cosmetic surgery than a simple insurance-covered outpatient procedure.  \n  \nWe did the exact OPPOSITE thing to fix health care. Instead of creating competition, we created a monster. \n  \nTo fix the system we should have created competition by treating insurance as insurance. Insure people for risk - say over $1k-2k. Medium to major medical coverage. The snotty nose doctor visits should be paid by the patient just as they can pay for their $200 cell phone bill or their $150/mo cable tv, or their $400/mo car payment. Yes I'm not opposed to health insurance for POOR children or for POOR adults but the vast majority of the system and its inefficiencies are spent on average, middle class workers spending $500+ on health insurance that they use once or twice a year. Where's that money going? To insurance companies pockets and inefficiencies in the marketplace. Remember, ALL INSURANCE COMPANIES MAKE MONEY on top of your risk - which means the more they cover, and the more they charge, the more they make. Insurance companies are as rich as the banks for good reason. You want to reduce inefficiencies - reduce what they cover. It won't be long until those $200 doctor visits are $49. Doctors will start COMPETING for business instead of being in a 'network' and just like Lasik came down, everything will come down. Doctors will make more because they will actually get paid, they can reduce waste by not paying a large majority of their costs for bill processors.", "Because the purpose isn't to improve access to healthcare, it's to add new tax burdens and government control.", "Murcia, where it only sounds good on paper, but who cares if it's actually any good as long a certain people make money. ", "As someone whos been involved with healthcare for a longtime and is a current medical student, I can tell you that healthcare in this country is a big cluster-fuck. There are too many chefs in this kitchen, and essentially the atmosphere is so toxic that you can't even start your own practice without a significant investment. A few things off of the top of my head.  \n1)in the US we can also have different types of healthcare providers. some are HMO where the integration of services is vertical(kaiser permanente comes to mind, although correct me if im wrong)  \n2)providers can be part of a network(this is where they accept different insurances and its their choice)  \n3)ICD-10 is basically a coding system that allows you to bill for different services, BUT those services have to be coded properly otherwise the insurance company rejects your claim. An Acute myocardial infarction(heart attack) has the code I21. now, depending on which anatomical place in the heart the infarction occurred is a different code ranging from I21.0-I21.9. Was it an older infarction? then its I25.2...you can see where I'm going with this. So as a private practice physican you have to learn to code properly, or have someone do it so you get paid for your services. Then you have to have a secretary who also doubles as your medical assistant so you can have the proper paperwork for YOUR records and so that she can do the basic shit like bp, hr, shots, and other basic tests.   \n4)Then you have to pay for the space for your practice. Think you are going to find deals? Nope, companies realized that they can charge ridiculous prices for rent knowing full well you can't go anywhere else.  \n5)That private practice that you have with all those fancy computers. Well those fancy computers need IT support because the government has mandated that if you want to take medicare then you have to have EMR. Do you know how big of a clusterfuck all those EMR programs are? Some paid programs are so complicated and resource heavy that you now need new computers.   \n6)Want to make money? Well now you have to see patients in 30 minute time slots so you can make enough to pay your expenses (including your salary). The bigger your practice gets, the more staff, the more IT, now start paying for workers insurance...  \n7)So may physicians thought they would be smart and have their own group. This worked really well for a while until they got sick and tired of the headache of running a practice and got bought out by local hospitals.   \n8)you go to the hospital and have a procedure. The hospital bills insurance and you(whatever is not covered by insurance). The rates of procedures vary greatly from area to area. A surgery such as a heart bypass may cost 30K in NJ but 23.5 k in houston. Btw, the 30k doesnt all go to the surgeon. You have to pay the 2 nurses, the anesthesiologist, the surgical tech, the bypass operator, the PA(sometimes), the  hospital for time in the room AND the surgeon. Don't forget the hospital needs to make a profit as well. So out of that 30k the surgeon may see 5k.  \n9)So how do they determine the cost for procedures? Really, its geography dependent. If you take medicare then every year or so the medicare payment advisory committee sits down with doctors from the AHA to discuss payments for procedures. The thing is, the size of the pot doesn't really change from year to year. So lets say you have $100 dollars, and you have to divvy it up by paying for certain procedures. Well next year derms want to get paid more for their services, so where does that extra money come from? Some other specialty is going to get paid LESS for the procedures that they do and you get this constant circle jerk/bitchfest.   \n10)Hospitals try to minimize cost by signing their staff to 3/5 year contracts so you slowly prevent the inflation of salaries.   \n11)healthcare is a money maker in this country so you have every tom dick and harry wanting to suck on the teet that is healthcare because they know that they will get rich doing it.   \n\nTheres a bit more to this issue, but I forgetting my train of thought as I'm late to start my studying. if you guys have any questions, ask away.  If i've made mistakes, let me know and ill fix it. ", "Okay, you've got tons of super-specific responses, but no one has really offered an answer that gets at the logic of it.\n\nEveryone is at risk for catastrophic medical disasters - I don't mean medical problems that would could $500 or $1000, although I'm sure that would set you back, but $100,000 - $10,000,000.  But the problem is that when someone has one of these catastrophes, we don't really allow the big hospitals that take care of really serious medical problems to say \"Oh, wait - this guy who just got mangled in a car crash doesn't have insurance? Well, why did you bring him into the operating room, then? Just dump him out in the back alley and let the rats take care of it.\"  Everyone gets treated whether they can pay or not.  But if lots of people *can't* pay and *didn't* buy insurance, then doctors have to pass the costs of that kind of care onto their paying customers, which makes insurance more expensive... which makes it harder for people to buy insurance... which means there are more uninsured medical disasters whose costs get passed on to paying patients... etc.\n\nTo fix this, *everyone* is required to either have medical insurance, or pay a fine to cover the possible costs of uninsured people. But the medical insurance you compel people to buy doesn't have to be extremely expensive.  The point is to get people coverage for extremely rare, extremely expensive catastrophes; beyond that, since presumably the people you are \"forcing\" to buy insurance would prefer to pay *zero*, you want to offer them a plan that is as cheap as possible, or in other words that offers as few non-catastrophic health services as possible.  So therefore you follow hardball negotiation tactics with all the doctors who offer non-catastrophe medical services: you name a really low price, and if the doctor says he won't take it, you walk away from the negotiating table.  That gives the people who (say they) don't want to pay medical insurance at all something as close to what they wanted as you can: some limits on who will treat them and what they can get covered for, but at as low a rate as possible.", "Because insurance pays them pennies on the dollar.", "Doctors pepper their practices with various types. United and Aetna being the 2 hardest to collect from they only take on a few of those. So they take on other patients from HMO's they are guaranteed a check every moth from these. They also pepper in Medicaid and Medicare patients as well because their contracts are negotiated at rock bottom prices. \n\nInsurance's also will drop doctors some times as well so she/he isn't in your providers coverage. \n\nSource: Wife does medical billing for 3 hospitals up here had to have her explain all this crap like I'm 2 when I got my cancer diagnosis. Also your doctors are as clueless as you about this this is why they hire office managers.", "Remember that its not just doctors that dont take insurance, but some insurances wont take doctors on. One of the hardest things for new doctors to establish is insurances that will include them in \"their network\".\n\nIt is also much harder for an individual doctor to get a fair payment from insurance. Hospitals control large amounts of money moving to and from insurances, so they carry alot of weight and can maximize their insurance payments. Insurance companies, on the other hand, tend to take advantage of individual PP doctors by reimbursing them at like 30% of requested, as opposed to the 50% or more they may offer bigger groups or hospitals. This leads to lots of individual doctors who have to fight for their payments. \n\n", "Because people don't have to give their services away. That's what supporters of this poorly thought out law can't seem to understand. By declaring health care a right you also declared a right to somebody's output. Health care is the result of the work of people and they deserve to be compensated. By the time the government and health insurance companies get their cut of covered california plans there is no money left for the people actually doing the work (the doctors). It's expensive to be in practice as a doctor especially in a very litigious society. It's not cost effective to take on patients they don't get paid for. The irony is the people demanding pay raises for minimum wage jobs also expect doctors to take a dramatic pay cut. No matter how many things you declare \"rights\" you still don't have the right to somebody's labor. There is a word for that and we fought a civil war over it.  ", "The simple truth is that the insurance industry paid the lawmakers to write it that way, that's how most laws get written.", "Covered California pays doctors 40% less to take care of you than any other insurance plan-- 60% less than the plans that pay doctors the most. \n\nWould you take a 40-60% pay cut for no good reason?", "Because insurance companies lobbied the government to force taxpayers to pay extra.   This allows them to collect money from you without having to actually provide a service.  They did the same with auto insurance, only, this is much worse because it is tied directly to your income tax, not the choices you make with regard to the automobile you purchase.", "Thanks to all who answered this.  I just went through the exact thing earlier this week --- I got a referral from one of my doctors for a specialist several months ago, and it took nearly 3 months to get an appointment.  A week before the appointment, I received a call telling me that they don't accept my insurance and that I would have to pay out of pocket.  Now I need to find a doctor covered by my insurance for this, and it is rather specialized, so I'm having an extremely difficult time and might just try paying out of pocket which would be very expensive.", "Thank god! I was afraid doctors would have to slum down the same lack of rights as us proles. But thank god those millionaire doctors have the freedom of choice to make sure they can still profit from the medical industry!", "Because Obama care sucks and once again another government run project has fallen on its face after the politicians took there cut.", "Because the law was written by the medical industry. \n\nIt is called \"Regulatory Capture\" if you are trying to sound neutral/academic, or \"Crony Capitalism\" if you disagree with it (there is no term preferred by supporters, because part of how you support it is to claim it isn't happening).\n\nThe whole reason the affordable care act passed is that insurance companies wanted to make more money by selling policies. Being able to use the policy is irrelevant (won't attract more customers) if customers are required by law to buy policies.", "Being a nurse - Obamacare isn't perfect, but we need SOMETHING in the U.S.  There is no reason why a person with Type I Diabetes should have to pay pre-existing condition prices (which are intolerable) when they got the disease at age 12 or 13.  Why punish them for that?  \nWhen Federal pushes the cost of the Affordable Care Act to State's we will either get a huge tax increase OR it will die.  The State's cannot afford it without a big tax hike.  Nobody has a \"Medicaid\" Tax on their pay stub (like Medicare).  And the State's can't steal social security funds like Federal.  ", "There are better detailed explanations here, but the short answer is that you're stuck in the middle of a massive transition between the way things are and the way things are going to be and it'll be at least a decade before it gets fixed, probably a generation, and you're screwed.\n\nI have no idea why we can't get together and make something actually work in this damned country but health care is the biggest and shiniest example.\n\nI'm not a Democrat and tend to lean right, but the current shambles of a health care system was specifically written in by Republicans so they could point fingers at Obama.  I don't even like that guy, but somebody screwed us for political points and I don't like it.  Hell, I even have expensive and nice insurance and it screwed me by screwing my friends and family.  It also made my country shittier and I'm fairly fond of my country so there.  It took the worst of the market that existed before and combined it with the worst of socialized health care so a bunch of assholes could point fingers at each other.\n\n...so yes, you're screwed.  That's why you're compelled and they're not.  It's half a health care system.  Very, very slowly things will fill the gaps but in the interim you're screwed.  There's not a good argument for why it should be this way, only a reason why it is.", "I'm in Australia, I pay about $200 month for my coverage which includes hospital and extras at 70% rebate (dental, optical, physio etc - I even get massage rebated) for hospital get a private room and coverage for obstetrics, hip/knee replacement, heart etc and have ambulance cover thrown in. I am about to switch insurers because I get a 12% discount through my employer who has  a corporate arrangement which gets me discounts on home, car and travel insurance too.\n\nMy husband has a chronic form of leukemia and the meds are $6000/mth but we pay about $30 because it's covered under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). I see a psych for ADHD and my annual  appointments cost up to $300 but I get about $200 refund from Medicare. Both of these are separate from our private cover- every Australian gets it no matter how rich or poor.\n\nI have private health insurance mostly because we otherwise have to pay a surcharge at tax time and it's cheaper to have it at a certain income point, and if we are injured at say roller derby or on a motorbike souring on a waiting list for 'elective' surgery would suck- also ambulance and the extras. We get 2 free checkups per year and free glasses.\n\nBut I don't need any of this if I go to hospital in an emergency, everything is covered, I just sign a form and walk out having recieved treatment. And even though I have private cover for pregnancy, it's debatable if it's even worth it since the public system is so good, and free whereas you pay a gap for private and aren't even garuanteed your chosen OBGYN.\nAnd we have reciprocal health care for UK citizens, Europeans and Canadians IIRC. They get free coverage here and Aussies who need care there are covered. \n\nThe US system sounds totally screwed and completely alien to me and I just don't understand it. Everything else costs more in Aus compared to the US, how is it healthcare costs so much more? I know there is a history of the gov not subsidizing and the need to recover costs for those who can't pay from those who can, but it just doesn't add up. I think your insurers suck, maybe competition will improve things over time.\n\nI was really happy to see 'Obamacare' come in for Americans- from an outsiders perspective it was like seeing women get the vote or something lol ", "It's all a scam until the government stops subsidizing agriculture to grow corn. Also, whytf does government allow insurance agencies to advertise if I am fined. Nothing better to spend all that $ on like reducing deductibles, better coverage. It's a scam.", "There is alot of BS thrown out here but the simple answer is: it pays terrible.\n\nDoctors have overhead for their offices.  Staff, rent, utilities, equipment, payroll tax, and a ton more.  While your insurance seems to help, when the doctor bills them, they get little money back or are faced with repetitive denials and a ton of paperwork.  Its not worth the effort to file the claim. (Also many policies are only good in certain areas--  more on that later)\nFor example, your doctor examines you for 30 minutes and charges $100.  The insurance may be 80/20.  So you owe 20, 80 gets billed to insurance.  The insurance looks at the bill and says for initial exams of that type, we only pay $40.  AND they need the doctors notes before they approve.\nSo at this point the doctor has 0 (except for maybe co pay) has spent 30 minutes on you, plus the staff time to file and wait 1 month only to be told they need more paperwork.  If the doc has to transcribe written notes, its another 30 minutes plus staff time to refile the claim and wait another months.  In the meantime he isnt making any income yet from you and he has 30 more letters from other insurances that are bigger cases.  He cant tell his staff, dont worry eventually we will get paid for those 100 outstanding claims from last month then he can pay them.  He cant tell Visa he will get them in a week.  He needs to not tie up his people working on claims to insurance companies that do not pay.  So the end result is, he wont accept the crap insurance.  (Sadly, the obamacare supporters dont understand what they have done)\nNow back to the area coverage.  In order to reduce rates, insurances contract with small amounts of doctors in tiny areas so they can reduce cost.  The doctors are usually starting out and need some kind of income, even if its poor.  So they sign on, get swamped and cant take any more patients.  The people that bought the insurance thought it was a good deal, and at first it might be.  But eventually the doctor has to leave that area because it doesnt pay\nTLDR: many obamacare policies force decreased payment and more paperwork  on doctors and its easier to take cash than fight a shitty system.", "I am a contract negotiator for a health plan and deal with this issue ever day.  The system is very complex and there are many things that go into it, but the simple answer is that health insurance does not equal healthcare.  The industry is changing, and very soon we will have a completely different looking delivery system that allows insurance to be used more like insurance and less like an HSA.  It will also have providers more in unison with each other to provide a more seamless delivery to the patient without so much interference from third parties.  \n\nI will be happy to answer any questions you have, but your original question is so broad I couldn't possibly give you a complete answer that would do justice to the issues.  If there is an interest, I would be willing to do an AMA (on sick leave and have nothing better to do!).", "I cut my finger off once. Went to the hospital and forgot my ohip card. They said thats alright we will get it later", "Forcing people to do work against their will for wages they don't accept is...  \nNot something we should be doing.  \nOf course, forcing citizens to purchase commercial products is also not, but hey, progress right?", "This was abolished during the Civil War.  To wit.\n\nAmendment XIII\nSection 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.", "I used to work in employee benefits, and this same question boggled me then. It was before obamacare.  Helping employees through this, I came up with this theory. \n\nSome doctors go into medicine to help people. \n\nSome doctors go into the healthcare business to make money. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-anthem-network-suit-20140820-story.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ek5o9g", "title": "Are creatures with exoskeletons able to become morbidly obese or even fat, like can they overeat even, what's the deal with excessive food intake and exoskeletons?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ek5o9g/are_creatures_with_exoskeletons_able_to_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fdesu64"], "score": [8], "text": ["Animals with exoskeletons have soft tissue filling in gaps between pieces of exoskeleton (chitin/cuticle/etc), and this is the part that expands.\n\n[This footage of a mosquito drinking blood](_URL_0_) illustrates how the exoskeleton on its abdomen is not interlocked but in fact resting on expandable soft tissue which expands considerably when its gut fills with blood.\n\nIn general, if an animal with an exoskeleton *does* build up considerable fat, it actually builds out relatively uniformly through the body, and puts pressure on the organs until the animal molts (if it does). \n\nTurtles/Tortoises, who have partial exoskeletons, can become obese, but in these cases their body just tends to \"spill out\" from between the top and bottom shells more than usual (also their legs get chunky). Naturally they suffer significant health issues if their internal organs come under significant pressure from the extra bulk."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVy67d_wozE"]]}
{"q_id": "rz78x", "title": "Is it possible to get too many vaccinations?", "selftext": "That is, if the immune system is trained to respond to very many different antigens, will that dilute the effectiveness of an immune response? (Surely the number of antibodies that can exist in the human body is finite.)\n\nNote: this question is NOT about possible side-effects of individual vaccines, or the economic feasibility of immunising everyone against everything.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rz78x/is_it_possible_to_get_too_many_vaccinations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c49tc09"], "score": [15], "text": ["Short answer, no. The amount of antigens the body recognizes is many orders of magnitude larger than the amount of vaccinations you can get. This is also where memory cells come into play. Your immune system isn't constantly creating a full response to every antigen possible, only the ones that make their way into the body. Memory cells hold information for how to make antibodies for sometime in the future when the antigen makes its way into the body. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "19zkra", "title": "Is it true that Marcus Crassus was killed by being forced to drink molten gold?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19zkra/is_it_true_that_marcus_crassus_was_killed_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8sqnjb"], "score": [250], "text": ["Cassius Dio, a Roman historian writing about 200 years after Crassus' death, [says this](_URL_0_):\n\n\n >  and while Crassus even then delayed and considered what he should do, the barbarians took him forcibly and threw him on the horse. Meanwhile the Romans also laid hold of him, came to blows with the others, and for a time held their own; then aid came to the barbarians, and they prevailed; for their forces, which were in the plain and had been made ready beforehand brought help to their men before the Romans on the high ground could to theirs. And not only the others fell, but Crassus also was slain, either by one of his own men to prevent his capture alive, or by the enemy because he was badly wounded. This was his end. **And the Parthians,** ***as some say,*** **poured molten gold into his mouth in mockery**; for though a man of vast wealth, he had set so great store by money as to pity those who could not support an enrolled legion from their own means, regarding them as poor men. [emphasis mine]\n\nHowever, Plutarch, a Greek historian writing 100 years earlier, [says this](_URL_1_):\n\n >  Some, however, say that it was not this man, but another, who killed Crassus, and that this man cut off the head and right hand of Crassus as he lay upon the ground. [...]\n\n >  Surena now took the head and hand of Crassus and sent them to Hyrodes in Armenia [...]\n\n >  Now when the head of Crassus was brought to the king's door, the tables had been removed, and a tragic actor, Jason by name, of Tralles, was singing that part of the \"Bacchae\" of Euripides where Agave is about to appear. While he was receiving his applause, Sillaces stood at the door of the banqueting-hall, and after a low obeisance, cast the head of Crassus into the centre of the company. The Parthians lifted it up with clapping of hands and shouts of joy, and at the king's bidding his servants gave Sillaces a seat at the banquet. Then Jason handed his costume of Pentheus to one of the chorus, seized the head of Crassus, and assuming the role of the frenzied Agave, sang these verses through as if inspired:\n\n >  *\"We bring from the mountain*\n\n >  *A tendril fresh-cut to the palace,*\n\n >  *A wonderful prey.\"*\n\n >  This delighted everybody; but when the following dialogue with the chorus was chanted:\n\n >  *\"Who slew him?\"*\n\n >  *\"Mine is the honour,\"*\n\n >  Pomaxathres, who happened to be one of the banqueters, sprang up and laid hold of the head, feeling that it was more appropriate for him to say this than for Jason. The king was delighted, and bestowed on Pomaxathres the customary gifts, while to Jason he gave a talent. With such a farce as this the expedition of Crassus is said to have closed, just like a tragedy.\n\nIt's kind of difficult to marry the two accounts: the one with Crassus being beheaded and his head then being treated as an object of mockery during a spontaneous performance in front of the king, and the other with the Parthians pouring gold into the mouth of his corpse. Unless they Parthians took the head and poured gold into its mouth after it arrived at the king's palace; or they poured gold into the open throat of the decapitated body. Or, possibly, Cassius Dio was merely recording an apocryphal rumour about the Parthians' treatment of Crassus. \n\nWe just don't know for sure.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://lexundria.com/dio/40.27/cy", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5tqah0", "title": "what do people on wall street actually do?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tqah0/eli5_what_do_people_on_wall_street_actually_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddo8v36", "ddo9450", "ddo9b4n", "ddoat9q", "ddoaz69", "ddob0co", "ddoc6eq", "ddoc7l8", "ddod5pf", "ddodbjr", "ddoeee1", "ddoemh0", "ddoepyd", "ddoer7z", "ddoesay", "ddoezpz", "ddof0uk", "ddof507", "ddofmoq", "ddofqj7", "ddofw48", "ddofz0s", "ddog04u", "ddog6ia", "ddogeyx", "ddogtyj", "ddoh18s", "ddoh50p", "ddohhky", "ddohrlg", "ddohwro", "ddoi2nf", "ddoih7d", "ddoiqth", "ddoj00p", "ddok8cx", "ddokjfx", "ddokrgp", "ddol021", "ddolbai", "ddom3qu", "ddom4cj", "ddon7ww", "ddop4q3"], "score": [3097, 3209, 168, 65, 4, 21, 100, 156, 2, 12, 7, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 6, 8, 20, 2, 11, 3, 5, 147, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 4, 7, 61, 2], "text": ["on a very simple level - they move around money. and they move this money between things which are all the time changing in value.\n\nso if $100 is moved over into the form of a share in a company, the next day (or the next minute..) that money could now be worth something else.\n\ngiven the size of wall st, we are talking about the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars. and when an investment goes badly and $100 million becomes $50 million, or vice versa, and when this happens all the time with BILLIONS of dollars - it effects the economy.\n\nSo what purpose does it serve society..? Not too much really... but what effect does it have? HUGE\n\nEdit: i have received some flack for my last line saying Wall St does not do much to serve society. What I meant by this is to be neutral - Wall St certainly has its benefits, but was also the cause of the global financial crisis in 2008. But I think its effects are more interesting to discuss then what purpose it serves society.\n\nEdit 2: I am receiving more and more aggressive messages about how wrong my post is, followed by long complicated answers which simply expand on exactly what I said - Wall St moves money around. And by moving it around, it causes ripple effects across the economy. I apologise for not being able to explain the ins and outs of Wall st in less than 100 words - shout out to SteelGun for his great response below\n\nEdit 3 (and final edit): HOLY CRAP REDDIT YOU'RE SO MEAN. While I am getting abused to death I still have not had ANYONE disagree with my fundamental explanation of what the people on Wall St actually do. I have however mislead people into believing that Wall St serves no purpose to society - I accept that this was written extremely poorly, and not meant to come out that way. Never have I even thought that Wall St is just a thing that's there that serves no purpose.. and you shouldn't either. I wanted to edit the post when it was on like 20 likes but only bad redditors remove things they said that people didn't agree with, so I'll leave it but yes that last line was fucking dumb. HOWEVER I have also received messages from many people backing me up and saying my answer was pretty well written for such a massive question in ELI5 terms. If you are new to this thread please read many of the long well written posts below for *other* good answers too. peace\n\nfucking lol i got gilded", "Let's say you want to make widgets, but you need money. You could ask out investors, but if every inventor had to talk to every investor it would be time consuming. So investors give their money to fund managers and the fund managers distribute the money to inventors (taking a cut off the profits from investments or charging or fees). \n\nEverything else is just increasingly more complicated ways of trading risk for money. \n\nIt's not much different than a grocery store. If every person that needed did had to contact and trade with every farmer it'd be insane. The grocer doesn't make anything, but they take a cut for facilitating a trade (essentially). ", "It's difficult for some people who work for a company that creates a tangible product to understand, but these financial institutes are almost always vital to a business' health at one time or another.", "Most people haven't touched upon that they help companies raise money by either issuing stock or bonds. \n\nBasically a company sometimes needs a lot of money at once to do a project or release out a new product, but they don't have that money. So in order to get that money they go to Wall Street and say \"hey I need a billion dollars to launch my new idea\". \n\nFor bonds, Wall Street banks get together and say okay we have found 5 banks interested in giving you that money as long as you pay us back in 20 years and 5 percent interest. They give the company the money and the company pays them back over time.\n\nFor stock it's similar but they are basically helping a company issue shares of stock for the public to invest in the company for a fix price in which the company gets the money while the investing public get potential future return from the stock in either dividends or stock appreciation. The incentive for banks to help the company issue the stock is that they get to be some of the first people who buy it. ", "Buy, sell, borrow and loan, basically.\n\nOn the plus side, they can diversify risk away and let people move money through time, which can unlock tons of economic opportunity and innovation.\n\nOn the downside, they can amplify risk and create a lot of useless friction, especially when they give into either excessive automation or let cognitive biases get away from them.  Or when they're selfish a-holes.\n\nBasically, those who treat finance as a zero-sum game destroy value, and those who treat it as a win-win create value.", "You're going to get a lot of bias on this one, my own included.\n\nLike most jobs, there is a purpose and it can be mishandled and cause significant harm.  The purpose at a high level is to create \"liquidity\".  Matching good ideas/companies with money so that they can grow faster. \n\nMay work best with an example.  Imagine an extreme with no banks.  I own a business that makes the best tacos in the world.  But opening a taco stand costs a lot of money.  I could work hard at other jobs, or sell tacos out of my house for a while to make the money to open my shop, but that takes a long time.  Investors/loans allow me to skip the step if I can convince people my tacos are indeed the best.  At a larger scale, a proven restaurant can grow much faster if they don't have to rely solely on the profits of the first restaurant to build new ones.  \n\nOn the other side of the bias, current wall street instruments include \"derivatives\" which basically allow someone to make more complex investments with more specific \"win\" conditions.  It is arguable whether these instruments actually provide additional liquidity.  Their complexity means it is easy to have unintended consequences that screw everyone over - hence the bad rap.", "There's a big variety of roles in Finance. At a high level, financial institutions essentially facilitate the growth of literally every other industry there is by finding someone with money to invest in someone with a plan/project. Think small business going to a bank for a loan, but it gets scaled up and more complex with huge companies.\n\nIn more detail, you have the \"sell-side\" and the \"buy-side.\" The sell-side is what you think of as Investment Banks. These are the companies like Morgan Stanley, Citi, JP Morgan, Goldman, etc. that work with institutional clients. This mainly happens through advisory and trading functions:\n- Advisory is what is \"Investment Banking,\" think analysts grinding away for 100 hours a week. Let's say a client retail company comes to a bank and wants to raise money/acquire a company/get sold. Let's say raise money for now, and they want to do that by selling equity (i.e. ownership stakes). First, the industry coverage group for retail learns everything about the company, and uses their expertise in this industry to put a value on the company. Once they do a lot of that, they hand it off to a market facing product group called Equity Capital Markets (the product meaning equity). This group sees what the market will accept and finishes pricing and marketing these new shares in the company. Let's say selling these shares raises $100 million. The advisory group earns a fee for doing this, as a percentage of the amount raised.\n\n- Sales and Trading. This is what you'd see in Wolf of Wall Street. Trading teams are called \"market makers.\" Someone wants to buy a stock/bond, someone wants to sell, they're in the middle. They buy the security from the seller and sell it to the buyer and a SLIGHTLY higher price and make a spread. They are out of the door at 5 PM and don't work weekends. Clients are large asset management funds (see below) and hedge funds and shit.\n\nThe buy-side is actual investing. You have things like:\n- Mutual funds: Pretty standard funds of stocks and bonds and shit\n- Large asset managers: Think Blackrock. Has many mutual funds and other strategies\n- Alternatives: Real estate investors, private equity investors (buy a whole company, grow it for a few years, sell it for profit), and hedge funds (similar to Sales and Trading but they're the ones actually buying and selling stocks/bonds)", "When movies refer to \"Wall Street\" professions, they often refer to investment banking (like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho). In real life, Investment banks often provide transaction services and advice to companies. Their \"clients\" are companies that are looking to either buy other companies, sell their company to another company, or merge their company with another one in order to increase enterprise value (this can be referred to as M & A Advisory or just simply an investment bank). \n\nOther lesser known \"Wall Street\" jobs are in Private Equity. A private equity firm essentially raises capital from outside investors with a lot of money (high net worth individuals, family offices, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies) and combines that money into a \"fund\". Private equity firms leverage those funds to own stakes in other companies, infrastructure, and more in hopes of providing returns to those investors. \n\nOthers, Hedge Funds, are similar to private equity firms in that they can raise and leverage massive amounts of outside capital, but hedge funds are able to invest in conventional securities like stocks, bonds, etc as well as non-conventional ones that are difficult for the \"average joe\" to understand like distressed real estate debt. Essentially, these employees are researching, analyzing, and executing  and combining many strategies including buying, selling, shorting to \"hedge\" investments and seek the highest returns for themselves and their investors. \n\nHope this helps.\n\nSource: work in finance\n\nEdit: Stakes.. not steaks - was probably hungry when I wrote this comment ", "People who work on walstreet manage money. Just like a farmer wakes up early and counts the eggs and chickens and keeps them safe from foxes. Someone who works on walstreet manages money. Just like the farmer and the chickens they wake up early and make sure that the money we save in a bank grows in value and is protected from loss. ", "Short basic explanation of how stocks work, which is a lot of what goes on at Wall Street:  \n\nImagine you have a company you own. You think your company could earn more money if you had some more cash, but you also don't want to go to the bank for a loan.  \n\nInstead you cut up ownership of the company into pieces (shares) and you sell them to people interested. People will want to own a piece of your company because you say that every now and then, you will give them some a piece of the profits you earn (dividends). So theoretically, if they buy a share from you now when it is cheap, then later when you're making lots of money, they will get their money back over time with the dividends.  \n\nIf your shares can be bought by anyone, then they are publicly traded. \nIf someone is buying stocks, they probably buy lots of different ones so that if one company fails, other companies will keep going and they won't lose too much. Keeping track of all this can be a full time job, so people hire other people (brokers, fund managers, etc.) to deal with this for them.   \n\nWall Street is where many of these brokers and fund managers work. Because they tend to be in contact with each other (this was more common in the past but works a little differently with the internet and high-frequency computer trading) this can cause ripples in the economy for investors.  \n\nFor example if one broker lets it slip to many others that, say, Samsung might be releasing a new device that will make them a lot of money (resulting in high profits, and thus high dividends) many brokers will encourage their clients to buy Samsung shares so that the brokers can get some of that money. Then if it turns out that Samsung aren't releasing anything new and actually accidentally made a lot of phones explode, people don't want that stock any more and will want to sell it to someone else quickly so they can use their money to buy something more profitable.  ", "Oooh I can finally answer a question!\n\nA lot of the answers here are riddled with misinformation.  The answer to your question is people on Wall Street do a ton of different things.  \n\nInvestment Banking: this department is essentially corporate finance advisory. There are a few different areas of IB, the most well known area of ibanking is mergers and acquisitions, investment bankers advise companies on buying and merging with other companies.  When you hear about Facebook buying WhatsApp, or mega mergers, investment banks were behind the scenes trying to help the deal go through.  There are also other areas of banking like restructuring, equity capital markets (releasing stock to raise capital), debt capital markets (issuing bonds and debt to raise capital).\n\nResearch/Sales/Trading: this is the part of investment banks that buy, sell, trade, and release research reports.  They trade investor money and try to make money essentially any way they can.  Some people trade derivatives, others mortgage backed securities, and many other products.\n\nThen there are other areas of finance like asset management which can range from helping people manage personal savings to helping manage pension funds etc.\n\nDo they create things?  Kind of.  Wall Street enables a hundred different industries by providing debt and helping to raise capital.  The asset management side of things help ensure that pension funds don't run insolvent to ensure that senior citizens have cash that they have rightly earned over their careers.  Obviously, there have been many unethical actions taken by financial institutions over the years, but historically have created far more wealth and value than they have destroyed.\n\nIt is incredibly difficult to get hired.  The majority of front office functions of banks (functions that are revenue generating) are held by Ivy League graduates with top gpas.  Many front office positions require a ton of hours and are incredibly high stress.\n\nSource: have worked a variety of different positions at a variety of banks.", "This is a generic question like: what does an engineer do? Hard to say without talking about the specific kind of engineer - so here are a few examples:\n\nFor the US folks: when you take out a mortgage for your new home, the bank pays the seller. The bank can only pay for so many of such homes if they only used the money they had with them. They need to get other people(or institutions) to pitch in with their money. To do that , they let them own the loan payments you make in return for cash (and keep a portion of it). This is done by packaging loans like yours into \"products\" (a bunch of legal documents) that let others buy them.\n\nNow if you think about it, this requires experts who can create \"products\" like these, experts who know how to price these(the prices can change often for all sorts of reasons) , people to sell these (and resell), buyers who want to achieve something ( for example a Japanese institution that figures its a better deal to buy this than a treasury bond) and so on. \n\nAll these things are pretty different skills of people in Wall St. Apart from that there are a bunch of support personnel, IT folks etc to ensure everything works.\n\nIn this example, we got the ability to have a vibrant market letting people buy homes and get home loans ( downside being the effects of the crisis were all over the world)\n\nThis packaging of \"products \" happens for a lot of other cases as well. You 401k has a fund that tracks a market index for example: someone's out there buying and selling different kinds of stocks (and other products) to closely approximate the behavior if that index.\n\nCommodities: an airline needs fuel for this year. They aren't paying at the current rate at the pump : they buy for a long time into the future for fuel that will be sent to them (\"an oil future\" is a \"product\") - someone is willing to give them a price and take on the risk if the price rises if you think about it.\n\nMany other areas: foreign exchange, treasury bonds, stocks, etc have a variety of tasks that financial professionals work on. (Facebook starting an IPO, exchange rates getting set, the government raising money,  and so on).", "What they're supposed to do, and some still do is connect inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses with capital to build the business. What a lot of them do is speculation on prices (e.g. buy a stock now with the expectation that it will be priced higher a year from now/tomorrow/ten seconds from now/etc..), although if the market rewards them with money then I suppose it finds this activity useful.", "The service provided by the stock market is resource allocation. By buying and selling, they find the market value of things. It allows successful companies to raise capital. \n\nWall St firms all have analyists, whose job it is to go over company's numbers, and make judgements about their future earnings, trying to find potential investments. This is basically why people hire brokers, because it's time consuming to do this reseach yourself.\n\nAnd the of course there is the shady side of it, collusion, insider trading, pump and dump. Those guys are all jerks. ", "Bank takes your money to protect it and pays your 3% interest, takes the money you're not using and loans it out for 6%. Then they go out for golf at 3. It's called the 3-6-3 plan. ", "If you're talking about big time CEOs or even your average level Wall Streeter, they spend a lot of time just meeting with people and talking to people.  People from insurance sales to top CEOs spend a lot of time meeting with clients, who can range from an average retiring couple to a very rich client.  A lot of time and energy is spent developing relationships and networking basically.  No matter what level of business you're at, you need to make business connections that you can call on in the future or to reel in certain clients/customers.", "Whatever everyone else says, there's at least a couple of guys on wall street who sell falafel.   I've met them.  ", "So imagine there's a cake. And when someone slices off a piece of that cake, Wall street takes that piece of cake and hands it to someone else. In that process, a small crumb falls off the piece and Wall Street people take that for themselves. \n\nSoon enough they will have their own cake made up of parts of other people's cake. Then they can sell their own cake to others. They can also slice up and package their own freakish cake as something \"special\" like the daily special at a restaurant. (LPT: don't ever order the seafood special at a restaurant and if anyone in Finance tries to sell you something special, run)\n\nThey also do other weird things with the cake and crumbs. Like letting people bet on whether the crumb lands on the floor, or the table. Or other things like having other people buy a piece of small cake today and promise them a bigger piece tomorrow. \n\n\n\n", "Former finance bro here.\n\nThe top answer is complete nonsense.\n\nAsking what is Wall St and what does it do is similar to asking what is a scientist and what does a scientist do?\n\nThere are many types of scientists, and likewise, there are many posititions throughout \"Wall St\" that serve a variety of value added functions.\n\nOne of the most important aspects of capitalism, at least in my country, the United States, is our free enterprise system that has taken shape in the form of the various stock exchanges - NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), NASDAQ, etc. \n\nEssentially when you see the ticker on CNBC for each respective company and a price next to it, that is the share value for a stock that means nothing except the price it costs you to buy one share of stock. A share is an ownership stake in the company being discussed.\n\nFor example AAPL, is Apple which trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange and is currently valued at $132 a share. When people talk about the \"market cap\" or market capitalization, that's the value of all the outstanding shares at $132 times the total number of shares issued. This gives you the idea of the complete valuation of a company. This number is based on all cash flows and takes into consideration assets and liabilities to give you an accessible idea on the value for even the most unsophisticated investors, or workers or anyone to participate in our capitalist system.\n\nIt's seriously accessible to anyone. You can buy stock for $8 a trade on some websites nowadays. \n\nSo one of the most important functions of \"Wall St\" is to help companies in the process of issuing stock. When Steve Jobs and friends built Apple, they created a company and sold computers. Their individual wealth was tied into the cash flows from their ability to sell computers at a profit.\n\nIn order to grow into the massive company they are today that has created technology that most of us use daily, they issued stock, which sold off shares of their company in exchange for capital.\n\nThis capital is used to rapidly grow companies, and is one of the most beautiful aspects of our capitalist system. That is why any entrepreneur with a dream, creates a business, employs people, does their best to sell the best product---with the dream of eventually seeing their company they created out of their blood, sweat, and tears up on one of those stock tickers on the various exchanges.\n\nThese Wall Street firms help companies grow and raise capital. That is but one function. I myself used to be a commodities trader, I worked in oil in hedging fuel prices for a major air line. We ensured stability in fuel prices which represented almost 35% of the cost structure of the company I worked for.", "If you want a really good insight, read Michael Lewis book, Liar's Poker. The Big Short is good too.", "I feel that these comments are leaving something out.  Are there scumbags and parasites on wall street? Of course.  But wall street also provides legitimate services.  Companies need capital (money) to grow.  Wall street provides that money.  The main ways companies raise money are by going public (stock) or selling bonds (debt).  Venture capital can only get you so far.  Amazon, Apple, Home Depot, Google are all publicly traded companies and wouldn't be as big as they are or might not even exist, if they didn't go public.  An investment bank helps you go public or sell bonds.  These companies need money, but have no idea how to go public (or sell bonds).  They go to an investment bank and the investment bank makes it happen.\n\nWall street isn't all hookers and blow like wolf of wall street.  There are a lot of really smart guys (nerds) working long hours in front of  computers.  These guys make good money but nothing to brag about, especially in NYC.  Most of these guys can't even afford to live in the city and are laid off every time there is a downturn.", "From a very basic view, they facilitate the movement of excess money (or capital) from people/funds/corporations (investors) to companies/corporations that require additional capital to create value.", "People on Wall Street get rich. That is their #1 goal.\n\nIdeally Wall Street's function is to allocate capital  properly. \n\nIn reality, due to unrestrained greed, regulatory capture,  etc., and with the help of Sen Schumer Wall Street makes money by cheating, scamming, high frequency trading, and the such. \n\nGoldman is the top bank of Wall Street, and in the word of Matt Taibi, \"the world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.\"\n\nEdit: typo, accurate quotation", "#**First lets define wall street**\n\n\nIf by \"wall street\", you mean the general financial institutions and markets around the world including in the United States, then this is a *very* broad question.\n\nWith that being said, I will give it my best shot.\n-\n\n----------------------\n\nWe have three basic divisions of the financial industry. This theory on the financial industry I learned when getting both of my undergrads is not all encompassing, and obviously one could come up with other divisions that would equally describe the market. Neither description would be wrong and this will suffice.\n\n\n\n#**Financial institutions**\n\nThese are (generally) the regulatory agencies that intervene in the market for various purposes. Examples include the SEC, the Federal reserve and so on. These (mostly) government institutions help regulate the market, provide various services (like issuing money), and pursue legal action against criminals. \n\n*example*\n\nThe federal reserve may raise interest rates to stop or curtail inflation or it may increase reserve requirements for banks for a variety of reasons. \n\n----------\n\n#**Financial markets**\n\n\nThese are the physical and virtual (ie: internet) meeting places where the various parties meet up to conduct business. In the same way you and I have a market to pick up our groceries or buy a car, markets in the financial industry are set up to reduce the cost of doing business and to allow for interested parties to conduct said business. \n\n\n*Example*\n\nA farmer wants to sell an options contract on the bushels of wheat he is growing for harvest. In order to meet with potential buyers, this farmer sells options contracts for a specified price on the Options market. He may do this at the Chicago Mercantile exchange, which was famous for exactly this kind of transaction. Without the Chicago Mercantile exchange it would be nearly impossible for prospective sellers and buyers of the options contracts to meet and conduct business. \n\n\nAnother example may include a company looking to raise revenue for planned business expansion by listing shares in the company on a market (through a broker, which we will discuss below). Without being able to have buyers and sellers meet, this task is made nearly impossible, and the benefits to this transaction would not occur, namely the business would be much less likely to expand and at the same amount, and investors would have less avenues for wealth creation. \n\n\n\n------------\n\n\n#**Financial Brokers**\n\n\nThis is a lot easier to explain. The brokers are the various clearing house associations and stock market intermediaries that facilitate these market transactions. To use the brief example I gave above about going to the store to buy groceries, if grocery stores *as a whole* are the market, then the Shop and Save company would be a broker in this analogy.\n\n\n\n\n\n-------------------\n\n\n\nNow that we have a Very^very^very basic understanding of the background information needed to understand the financial industry, lets start answering your questions. Keep in mind, I answer these as someone with two 4 year degrees, one in Business, and the other in Economics, both with a focus on finance.\n\n\n\n >  Do create anything?\n\n\nSimply, yes.\n\nTypes of services offered include, but are not limited to the following:\n\n* Trading risk from risk averse to risk takers, like in our options contract example above\n* Allowing groups of people, like corporations, to raise funds, including but not limited to debt and equity issuance\n* Investment banks provide a wide array of services like business appraisal, Mergers and Acquisitions, and identifying market trends.\n* engineering complex financial instruments (usually a type of derivative) to meet some kind of goal EG: collateralized debt obligations\n\nEtc\n\n\nFrom an economic standpoint, one might distill it down to simply this saying, That the financial industry allows \"Net-Savers\" (used broadly) to lend funds to \"Net-spenders\" for a return, who then generally use the funds for some end. These transaction *generally* only occur when both parties benefit more than they lose out, and everyone is left better off. \n\n\n >  Are they just playing with everybody's money\n\n\nNo serious person who has studied the financial industry believes this. There are *real* socially beneficial services provided by this industry. Furthermore competition in finance is intense, and those companies and individuals that are not serious about providing value for stakeholders are ushered out or lose money quite fast.\n\n >  I really have no idea\n\nFear not, most people have no clue. In a similar fashion to medicine, or physics, Finance is a highly specialized field with professionals that often need bachelors degree or higher to break into entry level positions. There is industry specific jargon, lots of math (which the general population has issues with), and abstract concepts that take awhile to truly understand on the second level.\n\nIt took me about a year of undergrad finance courses to really *truly* understand what the heck is going on in finance. \n\n\nI hope that helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and if I have the knowledge, I will answer to the best of my abilities. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Assuming you don't just mean stock markets, but generally the financial industry on wall street.\n\nSome people are brokers, like middleman finding two people who want to have a transaction.  Imagine you have a trainload of corn to sell - you need to sell that to someone who wants a trainload of corn.  Instead of calling all of your friends, you call up a Wall Street broker, who can put this corn up for sale, helping find a buisness who wants all that corn.\n\nOther people are investors.  Maybe they take the corn, and hold onto it for a few days, and when the price of corn goes up, they sell it.   They can also invest another way, by \"borrowing\" someone's corn at the current market rate, selling it now, and waiting for the price to go down before buying the corn back to return to the original owner.\n\nStill others are bankers, holding on to money for lots of people, and in turn lending some portion of that money out for others.  The people giving their money to the bank get more money back (because people who were lent money must pay interest back), and the bankers make some money on those loans.  People getting loans get money they need \"right now\" with the expectation that they can \"pay it back later.\"\n\nBut what really makes wall street tick is not each of these individual transactions, but rather these transactions in all together.  For every transaction that makes money, there's transactions that lose money.  Thus, the banker holding on to people's money and lending it out, might lend it out to people who don't pay him back.  Or maybe the price of corn goes down after you bought it and now you have to sell it at a loss, because what are you gonna do with all that corn?  Wall Street has enough outlets like this such that wall street businesses can protect these \"bets\" by placing opposite bets - maybe you buy the corn, but then protect that by also betting at worse odds that the market for corn will go down.  You can spread these buying and selling across different places, so that maybe you protect your corn by buying gold, or putting money in a bank.\n\nSimilarly, anything can essentially be sold.  Those loans that were offered by that bank? Well, those people are going to be paying interest over time.  Maybe the bank would rather sell off those loans now to someone else who wants to get those interest payments. Maybe there's four house loans together that cost the bank $1million to loan out, but over 30 years the bank gets $1.3 million back (the loan plus interest).  The bank could sell that to someone else for $1.1 million, thus making back their money, but now not risking those people forgetting to make their payments over 30 years.  The person buying those loans takes the risk that those loans might go bad, for $0.2million gain.\n\nThese sort of transactions help sellers with things, sell them when they want to, for a \"fair\" rate.  It also helps buyers who want things find the things they want.  In the middle, people make money off of the transactions.  \n\nSome people don't like the fact that the middle man makes money.  You can imagine wall street like a fancy Walmart.  Walmart doesn't \"make\" those nike shoes, panasonic tvs, or lays potato chips, they buy them for less than they sell them for.  What do you the consumer get? You get access to those goods in the same place, for a low price, because Walmart is able to negotiate the purchase of millions of units. Without Walmart in the middle, you'd have to find a way to get distributor-level access to all of those products, or go through a specialty shop, which would mark up the goods even more.  That's not to say middlemen are always good, but perhaps a necessary evil that must be somewhat limited with a few strict rules. ", "I work on Wall Street; excited when I saw your question (thanks for asking it).\n\nCompanies exist to make money for shareholders. Companies make money by selling services and/or goods. They do this with assets (factories, intellectual property, etc.). Assets cost money, and this money can come from the initial investors of the start-up (in the form of equity, by which the equity investors are shareholders and are entitled to profits of the business), from debt (like from commercial banks, e.g. 'loans' and 'bonds' as they're called), or secondary equity (selling equity of the company to private investors or the public, who also become shareholders).\n\nRepeat: companies must finance assets with capital in the form of equity and debt in order to make money.\n\nInvestment banks (for which Wall Street is a colloquialism) are middlemen for \"capital markets\". They connect companies with investors who can invest capital (debt or equity). \n\nInvestors include large pension fund managers, university endowments, hedge funds managing private wealth, and asset managers of corporate funds, who invest in IPOs and bond issues that the investment banks organize.\n\nInvestors invest in company capital in order to receive a return on investment; they want to grow the wealth that they hold. For debt capital, investors receive interest. For equity, investors receive profits (free cash flow) in the form of dividend payments, share price appreciation from the business becoming more valuable over time, and stock buybacks.\n\nInvestment banks do other things like M & A advisory (which is what I do; one company or investor purchasing capital in the form of an entire company's equity and debt (capital structure)) and sales and trading (providing securities trading services to investors).\n\nIN SUMMARY: companies need money to grow their business and investors want to invest in enterprises that can yield a return on investment. Wall Street facilitates these two needs by enabling investors to invest in companies, in the form of debt and equity.", "I usually grab a coffee at la colombe and then go to my office where i crunch excel spreadsheet between playing online games.\n\nsometimes i get a ham and cheese croissant.", "Wall Street's intended function is the optimal allocation of resources. With many investors choosing where to put their money, the theory is that this will result in the most worthwhile and beneficial projects receiving the most capital. \n\nThe incentive is pretty simple. If you direct your capital to a project you believe in (by buying a share of stock), you can later sell it for more money, once that enterprise has used your money to become successful. Or you can keep it and be entitled to a portion of the enterprise's proceeds (dividends).\n\nAnd for the most part, it works. The tricky part is that it leverages greed. And greed has a way of gaming it the system. The players can become less interested in the worthy allocation of capital and more interested in making a quick buck. That is why we regulate trading pretty heavily (and some would say not heavily enough).", "Wall Street Bankers do one thing: they connect people that want to save money with people that want to borrow money.  That is it.  Some poeple have more money than they need, and they want to earn interest on that additional money.  Wall Street Bankers connect those savers with people that have less money than they need who are willing to pay interest to borrow the savers' money.  If you are good at connecting people who want to earn interest on money with people who will pay interest to borrow money, then you can charge a nice fee for your services.   ", "They help with the exchange of goods and services as well as facilitate the movement of money. \n\nEssentially the value of everything is different everywhere, a programmer in new york gets paid differently from one in frankfurt, dublin, mumbai etc. This is even for food, like meat, fish to oil and even sand... basically everything.\n\nTo help elaborate a bit more i need a historical example. Traders in europe in the past used to travel all the way to India in the hope of buying spices at say 10$ a ton. They were based in europe and they knew for a fact they could sell a ton of spices for 25$ because it was harder to make spices in europe. So they would buy it at 10$ and sell for 25$ and make a nice 15$ profit. Some of the guys on wall street do this, theyre traders, they buy and sell platinum and ensure that the price of platinum for example is roughly equal around the world. This makes it easier for everyone to buy say platinum as there is (generally speaking) a single agreed upon price which makes it easier for everyone to do business.\n\nNow prices arent the same on a daily or even monthly basis. For example, sunblock will cost more in summer than in winter because more people use it. Another example is roses on valentines day or fireworks over new years. This can be called short term investing or trading depends on how you view things. You buy lots of sunblock when its cheap in winter and sell in summer. A problem that can happen here is, say now the economy was hit, lots of people lose their jobs and no one goes out in summer and you dont sell any sunblock. Or alternatively everyone does really well and you run out on sunblock. Obviously it would help if you knew in advance how much sunblock to buy, the guys that do this are called analysts they try to predict the future price of goods and services so that traders and investors can know whether to buy or sell something right now or hold onto it. (This is where the value of information comes in, if you know something sooner than everyone else you can make a lot or prevent yourself from losing a lot, imagine you knew about the 08 crisis on the day before, or even just one hour ahead of everyone else).\n\nLastly you get investors, now you get lots of types of investors. In general though these guys take money that belongs to other people and try to grow it for them. In exchange they take a portion of the growth or the whole, it really depends on how they operate their business. As a broad breakdown some of these guys buy goods and services, others buy companies (you get lots of different types of companies from a financial point of view), others even buy bonds (debt essentially) or even buy risk (insurance).", "They solve this problem, mainly for companies: \"I want to do something productive with a lot of money, but I don't have the money yet.\"\n\nThis is why companies sell ownership in themselves (stock) and promises to pay you back later a little more than you pay now (bonds). Doing this is very complicated, and Wall Street firms will hold your hand through processes like IPO and bond issue in exchange for a percentage of what you raise.\n\nThen, *lots* of interesting things happen because what people are willing to pay for those stocks and bonds can change over time. Wall street companies help themselves (proprietary trading) and their clients (investment banking) turn money into more money based on these price movements. This is (kind of) the same money that helps companies do expensive stuff.", "I'm going to give a very high level explanation to your question. I feel like Wall Street gets demonized and while undoubtedly Wall Street did a ton of bad things, it serves a vital place in Society. Like many others have said, the average Wall Street employee isn't a Gordon Gekko, but someone who makes a good living in exchange for working insane hours and having little job security.\n\nDisclaimer: I work at an investment bank. I am not a fiduciary. This is my opinion only and other people might disagree. This is only a broad overview and doesn't touch upon all the relevant risks. This is not investment or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell anything. Talk to your attorney and financial advisor and do your own due diligence. Investing has risks and you could lose money. Don't sue me.\n\nAt it's core, Wall Street does two things:\n\n**1) Match people who have money with people who need money:** \nPeople with money (investors) give money to companies in need of money to grow their businesses and in return, the investors receive an IOU (debt) or part ownership in the company (stock).\n\nThis is important to Society for several reasons:\n1) It's a fair way to give money to the most deserving companies. Since an investor can lose money if they give money to the wrong company, an investor is incentivized to do their homework and give money only to the best companies. \n2) This is a way for companies to undertake longer term projects. It's very hard for a company to grow solely through reinvesting their own money. For example, it's very hard for you to come up with enough money to buy your own house outright. Most people borrow a majority of the money to buy a house from a bank and pay the money back over time. Companies undertake investments in things like factories that are expensive upfront, but may be profitable in the long run.\n\n**2) Match people who want to take risk with people who do not want to take risk:**\nLet's say you are a farmer who grows corn. The price of corn today is $1, but you won't be able to harvest your corn now since its still in the ground. You are worried about the price of corn going down in 6 months, at harvest time. On the other hand, you have cereal companies that need corn to make cereal. These companies are worried about the price of corn going up in 6 months, since that would cause the price of their cereal to go up. Wall Street matches these people up, such that they can agree on a price today for the corn that will get harvested and delivered in 6 months. In this case, both parties are happy since the farmer is guaranteed a price to sell their corn (ie. no risk that the price of corn goes down) and the cereal company is happy since they're guaranteed a price to buy their corn (ie. no risk that the price of corn goes up).\n\nThis is important to Society because it lets people have certainty about prices, so they can plan around them. A farmer might decide that since he or she is guaranteed a price for their corn, they can go out and buy a tractor, which will help double the amount of corn they can produce. If the farmer didn't have certainty about the price of corn, they might not want to go out and buy a tractor since the price of corn might go down and it and they might not bring in enough money to pay for the tractor.\n\nWall Street gets into problems when:\n1) They don't do enough homework and lend too much money to bad companies that can't pay the money back.\n2) They take too much risk. Often times, there aren't two people with opposite risks like the farmer and the cereal company. When this happens, the farmer will enter into an agreement with a Wall Street firm. If a Wall Street firm enters into too many of these agreements and the price of corn goes down, the Wall Street firm loses a lot of money. If they lose enough money, then they might go bankrupt and might be unable to honor existing agreements. \n", "Here is the \"non complicated\" answer - Wall street is a place where people with money come to make more money and where people who need money come to ask for money so they can also make more money.\n\nAnd here are the answers to your questions.\nDo they create anything? Yes.  They create liquidity and opportunities for both parties in my definition above to make money.  They provide services for both parties so those parties can provide tangible products and services to you, the consumer.\n\nAre they just playing with people's money?  No.\nNo one would trust their hard earned (or easily earned) money with someone who just fucks around.  People want a return on their investment not someone to \"play\" with their money.\n\nDoes it serve any purpose to society?  Yes.  The roads you drive on, the buildings you live in are all built by money that is facilitated from wall street.  The products and services that are provided to you (iphones, toaster ovens, etc.) have all come from the help of wall street (loans and stock/bond offerings).\n\nIf you want to learn more about finance you can try khan academy or _URL_0_.  Don't listen to these fucking morons on the internet who think wall street serves \"not too much\" of a purpose to society.", "There's basically two thing happening on Wall Street at any given time.\n\nOne is basically greasing the wheels of Capitalism.  Bringing together those with money they want to invest with people who have investments they want to make in their business, and trying to do it in a way that the most profitable ideas get the most money.\n\nThe other thing is basically gambling.  Instead of looking at fundamentals, they're trying to make money on the random-ish fluctuations of the market.  The more gamblers there are though, the more profitable gambling becomes, as gambling causes a positive feedback loop on the natural market forces.  So when, for instance, a stock has some bad news, and the gamblers sell, they drop the price a lot more than \"market forces\" would normally cause.  Same for when there's \"good news.\"\n\nSo how efficient Wall Street is is mostly up the the ratio of greasers to gamblers.  When that ratio gets unbalanced, as when the [oil market was deregulated](_URL_0_) you start getting a lot more variation in prices, which is very bad for smaller firms who can't absorb significant fluctuation, whether in raw material prices or in investment capital.", "Really, Wall St right now is more residential than business.  Many of the larger financial firms have moved to midtown NYC and buildings are being quickly turned residential.\n\nEdit:  I should also add that the stock exchanges all exist in data centers in New Jersey.", " > Do they create anything?\n\nThey create **the market**. They do this by bringing the largest # of people together for whatever that thing is that is being marketed. A better question might be do they create *too much?* in terms of derivatives... probably. You can literally bet directly on the volatility of markets now, for instance. \n\n > Are they just playing with everybody's money?\n\nThey are happy to have the money. \"Wall Street\" makes huge money from; commissions, brokerage fees, data fees, exchange fees, application/platform fees, etc. - basically money is made every time a transaction takes place .\n > Does it serve a purpose?\n\nWall Street brings exponentially more people interested in buying and selling, ideally creating the best possible \"fair\" value for whatever it is you're selling.", "What do you mean Charlie? We create wealth", "I wish that I could give you a good answer, but the truth is that this video from our friends at Warner Brothers really explains it much better than I could.\n\nSo without further ado, I'd like to present our host for this evening, Mr. Elmer Fudd:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe purpose of Wall Street is to help facilitate the flow of capital between those with the money to invest and those who need that capital to expand or modernize.", "Wall Street is a massive term for banks on and around Manhattan in NYC. Hell, even banks and funds in NJ gets lumped with Wall Street, sometimes as far as Greenwich, CT. So for argument, let's define Wall Street as most serious financial institutions in the proximity of Manhattan. \n\nThese institutions can vary very much in size. From the smallest one man funds, to large investment banks with thousands of employees. The various companies focus on different things: Some only deal in certain markets and niches, while others have many different divisions that tackle these. \n\n**Investment Banks (IB)** = In general, they underwrite. That is, they raise capital for their clients (companies) from potential investors. But they also do many, many other things. Regular credit/commercial banks can't do this, because of the laws. So when you go to Bank of America (or whatever), it's not the same branch of the bank that deals with IB stuff. \n\n**Mergers and Acquisitions (MA)** = When two companies want to merge, or one wants to acquire another, they contact banks to help them structure the process. \n\n**Private Equity (PE)** = PE groups, or funds, strictly deal with private capital, and private companies. Large PE groups own private companies. If you go to a Investment Bank, and say that you want to sell your company to the best bidder, they usually get in touch with PE groups in larger banks, or smaller PE firms. \n\n**Real Estate (RE)** = Same as PE, but they own assets that are tied up to Real Estate. Want to start a fund that invests in the rising real estate prices? You contact the RE groups. \n\n**Private Wealth Management (PWM)** = The group and managers that handles the wealth/portfolio of private individuals.  \n\n**Hedge Funds (HF)** = Investment funds that minimize/offset risk by hedging. Basically, if you forecast that one investment is going to rise by a rate of two, and also forecast that another investment is going to sink by one (maybe it's even tied up to investment one, in one way or another), you invest in both. In  the end, you should end up with a net sum of positive one. This is a safety measure.\n\nHedge funds have been extremely popular for the 20 last years, and you've seen all sorts of \"exotic\" types.\n\n**Venture Capital** = These funds and groups raise money for promising and new companies, i.e Startups. This is by nature very risky, but the reward can be huge. \n\nAnd the list goes on. \n\nSo the banks either raise capital, advise, or invest on their own behalf, or on clients behalf. Clients can be individuals, trust funds, funds, global funds, companies, and what not. \n\nHow do they affect you? In many ways. Look at these examples \n\nAs a inventor / entrepreneur: \n\nYou come up with a great idea, but don't have enough money to develop it. What do you do? One option is to contact **Venture Capitalists**. You meet up with them, pitch your idea, and they love it. They offer to back up your startup, for a share of the company. No growth = no success, so you agree. Maybe they get 70% of the company, and you / early members get the 30%. \n\nYour startup turns out to be wildly successful, and 5-10 years down the road, you and the VC's agree that it's time to let in other investors. That is, you turn your company to a publicly traded company. Well how does one do that? You contact the **Investment Banks**! Or maybe a smaller firm that focuses on the whole process. \n\nIn the end, you settle for a couple of different groups, from different banks. Banks like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs. Either way, your company is now being traded. Everyone can buy shares, and own a bit of your company. \n\nYou decide to retire, and sell all your shares. Maybe you net a nice billion or two. What happens next? \n\nA) For your part, you can spend the money as you like. Maybe you want to invest them on your own, or maybe you contact a PWM manager to do that for you. \n\nB) For the companies part: Maybe some PE group now owns them, or a huge chunk of the company. Sometime down the road, maybe a competitor offers a Merger. Who knows.  \n\nEither way, all these banks and firms have been part of the deals. \n\nSorry for the long write-up, as it's a huge, huge topic. But the real **TL;DR ELI5** would be: Wall Street banks raise capital/underwrite, offer advisory to clients, invest money or their own, or their clients behalf. Everything that is related to Finance, they do. \n\nThere's no monstrous catch-all bank that excels at absolutely everything...different firms on wall street are good at different things. \n\nYou find these banks in, and in the areas around: Wall Street (NYC), City (of London), Frankfurt, Singapore, etc. ", "At the broadest level, the financial system takes money from people who aren't spending it (savers/investors/lenders) and channels it to people who need it (borrowers), either to smooth out their income or to make productive investments. \n\nThere are two main ways to do this: institutions and markets. Commercial banks are institutions that take money from savers (deposits, CDs etc) and lend it to borrowers. The US (for historical and regulatory reasons) has thousands of commercial banks, spread throughout the country. Some of the biggest ones (like JP Morgan or Citi) are based in NY, others (like Wells Fargo or Bank of America) are not.\n\nThe other channel is markets. Companies issue stocks (which are risky but offer upside because they pay a share of the profits)  and bonds (which offer a guaranteed return, hence safer (but not completely safe because the company could always go bust) but less upside) to investors. Other entities - especially governments - also issue bonds. Fund managers (such as Vanguard or Fidelity) put these stocks and bonds  together into funds that are diversified, hence less risky, and sell them to investors. Some funds (hedge funds) take on additional risk (but, in principle, better return) by borrowing money rather than just selling shares to investors. The main stock and bond markets in the US are based in NY, but the fund managers are headquartered all over the country. \n\nInvestment banks (like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) do many things, but historically have two functions: banking and trading. The banking side helps big companies issue stocks and bonds. They gauge the market demand, set appropriate prices, find big investors to take up the securities, manage the logistical aspects. Related to this, when there's a merger or takeover, investment banks provide advice and help arrange the financing. On the trading side, investment banks have proprietary \"desks\" that specialize in buying and selling stocks, bonds and other kinds of securities. Partly this helps them understand the markets so they can do better at banking and advisory, but also (some would argue mainly) it's a way to make money. Most investment banks are based in NY, so they can be \"close\" to the markets (there are some smaller regional ones).\n\nThe Depression-era Glass-Steagall Law put tough limits on what commercial and investment banks could do, and mandated that these institutional types be separate (in other countries, esp in Europe, \"universal banks\" have historically done both commercial and investment banking). Glass Steagall was gradually worn down over the years, until the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of the late 1990s essentially allowed commercial and investment banks to do pretty much anything the other could do. \n\nThey were still regulated by separate bodies, however, with the commercial banks under a still relatively strict regime run by the Fed and the Comptroller of the Currency (for larger banks) and the FDIC and state regulators (for smaller ones). The investment banks were under a \"light touch\" regime run by the SEC, which focused on making sure markets ran smoothly. Since the 2007-09 financial crisis and the Dodd Frank Act, the remaining big investment banks converted themselves into Bank Holding Companies (hence under the Fed for regulation) and have been supervised much more closely.\n\nDo they create anything? Well, they help allocate money more efficiently. That sounds pretty weak, but in a $17 trillion economy it can actually be pretty important. As we learned in 2008, when it goes wrong it can have some big consequences. There is research saying the financial system is probably bigger than it needs to be - and after a point, a larger financial system does not seem to help countries much in terms of growth. But that doesn't mean it's worthless either. ", "There is a Netflix documentary called The Pit.                           \nIt explains commodities trading and all those people standing on the floor yelling at each other.", "Wall Street does a ton of things and it's huge. Trying to say all of what wall street does in this answer is not possible. Instead, I'll talk about two big things that wall street does.\n\n1) Wall Street moves money from people who have it to people who need it.\n\n2) Wall Street moves risk from people who have it to people who want it\n\nAs for 1) when a company issues stock or bonds, they're doing that because they want to raise money. They want to invest that money in the business (hopefully) to hire more people or build more factories or w/e. These companies go to Wall Street (Let's say they go to our friends at Goldman sachs) and Wall Street will hook them up with the investors (hedge funds, pension funds, other asset managers, whatever). These investors are looking for a place to put their money and hopefully generate more money. Goldman Sachs will then facilitate the linking process between these two groups. \n\nThis is just one example of how Wall Street moves money from the people who have it to the people who need it. Another example might be when you invest your money by giving it to Vanguard. You have surplus money right now, and you feel that in the future, you will need more money (you'll be retired or w/e.). Vanguard will then take that money and invest it so that in the future it'll be the same (or hopefully more) amount of money. \n\nThere are a ton of other examples of how Wall Street moves money from the people who have it to the people who need it.\n\n2) Risk - Let's say you're McDonalds. You make burgers that ppl like to buy. But, as a part of your business model, you want to charge a constant price for these burgers. You want to always charge $5 for a big mac. But, the price of wheat/beef/lettuce/whatever ISN'T constant. If there's some disease that kills a bunch of cows, then the price of beef will go up. How do you, as McDonalds, still provide a constant price to your customers? Well, you'll go over to your friends on Wall Street, and try to arrange a deal, where you can acquire beef/lettuce/whatever at a price that you set now. In that sense, you can eliminate the risk of the price going up and you can charge your customers a constant price for your products. On the other side, let's say you're an expert on lettuce farming techniques, and you're sure that the price of lettuce is about to crash. You have info on a new GMO that will make lettuce a lot easier to produce. To exploit this knowledge, you'll take on the risk that McDonalds previously had by selling them lettuce at a set price for future delivery.  If all goes well, the price of lettuce will go down and you will be able to buy lettuce for cheap, and then give it to McDonalds at the higher price you set today. Wall Street facilitates these transactions. This is a small example of how Wall Street can help transfer risk from people who don't want risk to speculators. \n\n\nThis is a pretty short summary of what Wall Street does. There are a ton of other services that Wall Street provides to the public. If someone says Wall Street doesn't do anything important, then they really don't know what Wall Street does. Wall Street provides an essential service to the public. But yeah, obviously they do get greedy and stupid sometimes. ", "Hi, 15 years in an investment bank here, and I'm slightly disappointed with the top answers I'm reading, so here is my version. \n\n\"Wall Street\" is a pretty broad term and most of the big firms do a lot of things, however I'll broadly split them up as follows:\n\n**1) Corporate Banking / Advisory**\n\n**What is it?** Providing advice, lending, and all kinds of services to big companies, ranging from multi-billion dollar merger/acquisition to day-to-day payment processing\n\n**Who benefits?** This one is easy... the big companies benefit, or they wouldn't pay the fees. Every big multinational operating in different countries relies on the services the big banks provide.\n\n**Why do they get paid so much?** At the top end, the biggest transactions (e.g. the $85 billion merger between AT & T / Time Warner last year) are worth so much that the advisor's fee is like an afterthought. If you believe some good advice will get even 0.5% difference on the price paid, that's still almost half a billion dollars. Which makes a $50 million fee look like great value.\n\n**2) Sales  &  trading / intermediary services**\n\n**What is it?** This is probably the most complex to explain. Broadly it is buying and selling shares and other securities on behalf of other people, either private individuals or professional investors. That includes offering advice to and making purcheses on behalf of buyers (Broking), as well as advising issuers, creating derivatives, and marketing financial products on behalf of sellers (Sales). Finally there are pure intermediary services where a firm acts as \"market maker\" in other words offers to act as buyer or seller for anyone in the market to speed up the operation and avoid having to individually pair up every buyer/seller who wants to exchange their shares/securities. The market maker gets paid from the small difference (\"spread\") between buy price and the sell price. \n\n**Who benefits?** As before, many services have a direct fee that the client pays - so it is the client who benefits. In many cases the client is another bank or a professional investor.  Ultimately, any company that relies on the markets for funding, or any individual who has investments or pensions, will benefit from markets operating efficiently.\n\n**Why do they get paid so much?** In a word, volume. Not many companies can provide these complex services, and the amount of money that goes through big banks' trading floors is immense, so even small percentages or spreads add up quickly. It's not just traders on phones buying and selling, there are large numbers of mathematicians, lawyers, IT people, researchers and so on making sure the services are efficient, legal, and the advice is the best available. \n\n**3) Professional Investors**\n\n**What is it?** Operating funds and making investments. This is often what people think about when the term \"casino banking\" comes up. Fund managers operate funds with other peoples money, such as pension and investment funds. Proprietary traders use a bank's own money, but they often have to try and manage the bank's own risk to ensure it has a stable overall risk profile and is less likely to fail if there is a big shock or crash. Hedge funds use a combination of their own money and other (generally large) investors to borrow money and invest it, with higher risk but higher chances for rewards too.\n\n**Who benefits?** The investors, clearly, if the fund is successful. Everyone's savings and investments are likely managed by one of these fund managers and we all rely on them doing a good job for our own prosperity and retirement prospects. \n\n**Why do they get paid so much?** They manage large amounts of money and when they get it right, they make huge sums for their investors. The rewards follow the performance of the fund and it's a cut-throat world if you fail. \n\nOverall, the answer to the question of \"who benefits\" comes down to \"money makes the world go round\". There are people with money to invest (savers, pension funds, big companies with cash reserves) and many people who want access to that money (startups, governments, major corporations wanting to invest, individual borrowers). Banks help put two and two together, in all the hugely complicated ways that a modern economy operates. Everyone who needs money, who wants to borrow or invest or even just store and move money benefits from the banks doing their job properly, in all the different ways I outlined above.\n", "TIL how negatively \"Wall Street\" is really viewed by most layman. \n\nBeen working on \"Wall Street\" on both the buy and sell sides for 20+ years. Never thought the \"boogeyman' narrative that has been pushed in politics for the past few years would catch on so well. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["investopedia.com"], ["http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOX0_FUGM6k"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1l7w5l", "title": "Is there any scientific evidence that badgers can spread bovine TB?", "selftext": "A cull of 5,000 badgers is about to be carried through in southern England, but even the most hopeful figures say it will only reduce TB by 16%. Scotland have badgers vaccinated and don't have any evidence of bovine TB. There are so many conflicting views and, not being a scientist, I don't know where to stand on this. Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1l7w5l/is_there_any_scientific_evidence_that_badgers_can/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbwuedg"], "score": [3], "text": ["I'm no authority, but it's been 7 hours without a single reply, so- if you're interested, [this paper](_URL_0_) is an open-access paper on the subject."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1768/20131634.long"]]}
{"q_id": "dd6hz8", "title": "How evenly does CO2 spread out in the atmosphere, and are there regions were the level is a a significantly higher levels?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dd6hz8/how_evenly_does_co2_spread_out_in_the_atmosphere/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f2g19a0"], "score": [3], "text": ["This [video](_URL_0_) helps answer your question. It's a computer generated simulation, but I would be surprised if the trends in observed values varied dramatically. \n\n* Larger concentrations are found in areas with more CO2 producing sources, like industry and automobiles. \n* The variations are also seasonal due to CO2 uptake by vegetation in the spring and summer. \n* The concentration does depend on the wind patterns, but the model indicates the winds are not strong enough to disperse CO2 such that it's evenly distributed across the globe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04"]]}
{"q_id": "y5384", "title": "why do dogs start kicking their legs or can't stand up when you scratch that one spot?", "selftext": "For my dog, she can't seem to stand straight when I scratch her hind legs", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y5384/eli5_why_do_dogs_start_kicking_their_legs_or_cant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5sf97n", "c5sf9kf", "c5sf9oa", "c5sfli5", "c5sfmmv", "c5sfqa8", "c5sgx7q", "c5shuqm", "c5slq4l", "c5sneu6"], "score": [3, 20, 245, 5, 10, 18, 9, 4, 2, 7], "text": ["Kind of like us being tickled, but it feels good", "Nerves.\nThere are nerves that trigger muscle responses and when you excite these nerves, the leg twitches. It also does it in the ear usually.\n\nYou know that test the doctor does to test reflexes on the knee by hitting it and your leg kicks up? It's the same as that, but since the dog is physically different, especially with her legs, the reflexes are different.\n\nShe can't stand up when you do it because her leg is preoccupied with reacting to the nerve being excited; The scratch you are giving her is overwriting any signal the brain is sending the nerve / muscle that would help her balance.", "First result on google says it's a scratch reflex.\n\n[Literally the first result](_URL_1_)\n\n[Seriously](_URL_0_)", "If its like being tickled, then it must suck for dogs when they cant tell us they have diarrhea, and we start tickling them :/", "When my wife scratches my head, I'm instantly immobilized :-P\n\nIt probably works the same way for dogs.", "On the same topic... my friend likes to rub his dog's balls. He said his dog loves it and there's no shame in doing it in public. So he does it in public all the time.", "So this has changed from 'explain something complicated in an easy to understand way' to 'ask a fucking retarded question and get pointed to google'?\n\nGood riddance.", "Motorcycle kick start reflex", "This also works on Tapirs.  I have visual evidence!", "Okay, since it's ELI5, I'll try to make it that way, since the article's a little more adult than 5.\n\nSo, first, poke yourself.  You can feel it when you poke yourself because you have nerves.  Now, poke your dog, not too hard though.  Notice he felt it, and reacted, because he too has nerves.  Now, the dog has nerves in large bundles in some places, which make those places more sensitive.  You have nerves in large bundles too.  One of those places is on your knee.  If you tap your knee, firmly but not hard, you might notice your leg kicks out a little.  That's your muscles reacting to something that your nerves felt.  Well, when you scratch that section on the dog, his muscles in his leg react to something that the nerves on his belly feel.  In this case, he's trying to scratch at the itch he feels, or to kick away whatever's poking him there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.google.com/#sclient=tablet-gws&amp;hl=en&amp;tbo=d&amp;site=&amp;source=hp&amp;q=why+do+dogs+kick+their+back+legs+when+you+scratch+them&amp;oq=why+do+dogs+kick+the&amp;gs_l=tablet-gws.1.1.0l3.1609.7277.0.8697.20.12.0.7.7.0.417.1724.8j2j1j0j1.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1ac.tq8ip15wjoA&amp;pbx=1&amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&amp;fp=98601f0a8328f047&amp;biw=1024&amp;bih=673", "http://animal.discovery.com/guides/dogs/dog-training/behavior/why-do-dogs-shake-their-legs.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g44o3", "title": "I read that the earthquake in Japan shifted the country by 8 feet; would that mess up GPS maps in Japan? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g44o3/i_read_that_the_earthquake_in_japan_shifted_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1krwyo", "c1ks17m"], "score": [8, 2], "text": ["Published maps? Yes, they would need to be updated. But the coordinates that are calculated by your GPS receiver would be as accurate as they were prior to the quake.\n\nAll the satellites do is transmit accurate and precisely timed signals, nothing more. Your receiver does the real calculations using information from numerous satellites.\n\nIf you happen to have a pre-stored map in your unit designed to render your exact position on a raster using current data, your location will appear be off by about eight feet if in an affected area, even though it will still be displaying the correct longitude and latitude. ", "I must say thats an astute inference!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1vdmhb", "title": "why are cargo shorts considered bad?", "selftext": "I go biking very often, and if it's hot, i like to wear shorts. But I can't rely on the pockets of regular gym shorts to safely hold my phone, wallet, etc. Cargo shorts are the perfect solution, but I get crap from my friends for wearing them. Why the hate?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vdmhb/eli5_why_are_cargo_shorts_considered_bad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cer6oo3", "cer6rbn", "cer6rj8", "cer7756", "cer7foo", "cer7gph", "cer8jve", "cerb6qq", "cercz2z"], "score": [2, 12, 4, 7, 2, 5, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["Im in the same boat man. I guess its because people hate on any clothes worn for Function.  ", "Fashion doesn't need logic.  \n  \nI am also a fan of cargo shorts.  ", "I don't think it is so much of a problem when you wear them for a purpose like you said. But wearing them in social situations is pretty lame. First of all, they're just not a good looking article of clothing. Also, why do you need so many pockets? Put a pair of jeans on. The old joke goes: The reason people wear cargo shorts is to carry their virginity.\n\nWearing them for sports is fine but wearing them out to parties and such makes you look like water trash.", "they're generally not good fitting and therefore are not generally flattering. They also look kind of silly.  We make fun of lots of things that used to be in fashion, like fanny packs and mullets.  As long as your cargo shorts don't look like parachute pants, and are good fitting, there shouldn't be a problem.  I know I personally associate cargo shorts with kids, and not really an \"adult\" piece of clothing \n\nAlso people in fraternities generally don't like them, as is tradition. ", "Like fedoras, metal band t-shirts, and ponytails (on men), they are seen as a stereotypical fashion article for \"neckbeards\" and/or \"basement dwellers.\"", "They aren't bad in the overarching concrete way that, say, murder is bad, they are just considered to be unfashionable.  The main reason probably stems from a) the fact that they tend to be very baggy and bulky, which isn't considered to be flattering right now, and b) they have a strong association with high schoolers, skaters, and surfers.  People don't think they are very \"grown up\".  Whether or not it matters to you is, well, up to you, but do understand that the impression you give people impacts how they treat you.  I am not saying that it's right, but it happens.  Cargo shorts have a place -- when you are exercising people will give you a lot of leeway with your fashion choice -- but outside of that, people will probably judge you for wearing them.   If you are okay with that, by all means wear them all the time. ", "Simply put, they are ugly.  They are practical in some circumstances but they are the most unflattering article of clothing you can wear.  They actively make your body wider in the worst possible places aesthetically.  There are other alternatives if you need to carry a bunch of stuff other than cargo shorts, like a backpack or phone mount for your bike.", "Because by design they can never properly \"fit.\"\n\nGood looking clothes either accentuate a natural body shape (shoulder pads on suits) or go with the natural shape (fitted dress shirts)\n\nCargo shorts do neither. They accentuate an area that doesn't make sense by making your thighs balloon in random spots, and by just having the extra pockets don't go with the natural shape of your body. ", "forget what your friends say and wear whatever you want to and whatever is most convenient.\n\nit's most likely a trend thing though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jm1g4", "title": "why does the auto industry hate that tesla sells directly to the customer instead of going through a dealer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jm1g4/eli5_why_does_the_auto_industry_hate_that_tesla/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clcxlo2", "clcyhsv", "clcz8a2", "cld107k", "cld1kae", "cld6d0v", "cld90ed", "cldc5v6"], "score": [84, 25, 2, 5, 9, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["That should be pretty obvious...\n\nThe dealers want their cut of the profit.\n\n--------------\n\nThis is a point I've tried to make for many, many years.\n\nA car is a Toaster.  It's a product that can be sold at a Wal-Mart, at a cash register.  Traditional car dealers don't want you to think like that.", "Thousands of people depend on jobs at car dealerships, and they get a cut of the money the buyer hands over when a car is sold.\n\nCutting out that middle man means lower cost of cars, less people badgering you for the optional extras, but also redundant jobs.\n\nBasically, having no dealership is far better for the consumer, but they don't want you to know that.", "The traditional car industry operates similar to a cartel. From wikipedia:\n\"an agreement between competing firms to control prices or exclude entry of a new competitor in a market.\"\nSo if the dealers' association in a state is protesting the sale of Tesla cars without use of the cartel system of dealerships (limiting supply and access to control price) then competing companies will indeed work together to prevent competition to their profitable system.", "consider for a moment that you have a business, you have been doing it for a long time and you have gotten really good at it, you have been very successful and built up a bunch of connections to better facilitate the distribution of your product. you have a number of contracts with different dealers to distribute your product so you can focus on designing and building the cars in the most efficient way possible. now someone comes along and doesn't use this network of dealers so they can sell them cheaper than the dealers (since they aren't using any of those middlemen) but you can't STOP using your middlemen (you have contracts that have yet to expire, not to mention there are thousands or millions of people who would lose their jobs if you did that) they don't have any middlemen, they don't have any contracts so they don't have this responsibility on them...but you do.\n\nyou would probably feel pretty bad, if you do nothing you will be driven out of the market you have dominated for so long and all those people will lose their jobs, you can't legally break your contract to compete and if you could it would mean all those people lose their jobs, you are stuck...you can't do anything from a market standpoint to compete so you try the only thing you can: call foul. try to get regulators to prevent the new guy from competing in that way, make him use your network of dealers...or at least stall til you can think of something.\n\nnow consider you are a legislator when this argument comes up, this company tells you that if you let tesla compete like that it will mean the loss of many jobs in that city or state. there is nothing a politician fears more than economic instability, their job depends on people in their district having jobs, so you weigh the jobs tesla is bringing (very few, unless you are a state where they are building a gigafactory..those states LOVE tesla) against the ones they are taking (many) and you make a decision.\n\nin an ideal world of course the legislator would tell the incumbent automotive maker to suck it up, but they have to consider the economic and political impact of losing one of their biggest money makers in that state and ask if having tesla compete there would be to the greater good of the people there.\n\nsadly these things are difficult and not always down to corrupt politicians cackling as fat CEOs hand them giant bags with a $ on em. ", "Since nobody's mentioned this - there are laws that specifically prevent automakers from selling directly to consumers.   \n  \nSo it's really a case of \"no fair, if Elon gets to do it why can't I?\". And they have a very valid point.", "Listen to [this](_URL_0_). There are a ton of laws that used to make sense in the 40s and now car dealerships are thousand pound gorillas in local politics.", "Because it does an end-run around the car dealership cartel.  \n\n---------\n\ncar\u00b7tel / *noun*\n\nan association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition.", "The way I understand the existing legislation is that it was put into place to prevent an existing vehicle manufacturer from suddenly bypassing their existing dealer network and selling direct to the public in competition with the dealers.\n\nTesla isnt doing that , because they dont have an existing dealer network to compete with. They're new (and smart) enough to sidestep an antiquated and inefficient sales model.\n\nWhilst it may put some noses out of joint, it won't kill jobs because they're not competing with existing dealers in a manner that's any different from selling a cheaper competitor vehicle."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-435-why-buying-a-car-is-so-awful"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5s9ol4", "title": "Can a parasite change a human's genome?", "selftext": "I'm writing a science-fiction novel, and I'm wondering if it would be possible for a parasite to take over a body and change it completely. I don't need to know whether or not a parasite exists that does this, but if, hypothetically, it's possible. And if it is possible, how would it go about changing human DNA?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5s9ol4/can_a_parasite_change_a_humans_genome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddduohr", "ddenb9i", "ddiy8df"], "score": [17, 4, 2], "text": [" >  Can a parasite change a human's genome?\n\nYes, it happens all of the time by a number of mechanisms.  The most common way is for some viruses to insert all or part of their genome into that of their host ... host being a human in this case.  A large percentage of the human genome is made up of copies of ancient viruses, mostly damaged and incapable of being revived.", "Hope [this](_URL_1_) will help. \n\nParasites are usually unicellular or multicellular eukaryotes. They wouldn't be something that would invade human cells to take them over. Of course there is this [study](_URL_2_) that claims parasitic infections may lead to psychological changes in humans. \n\nAny change in human DNA would have to be through mutation, like how UV rays in the sun cause (thymine dimers](_URL_0_) or through millions of years of slow, natural evolution. If you want to work in parasitic infections, you're best bet is through personality changes caused by either the bodies response to the infection or though toxins produced by the organism. If you really want DNA change, then go with a viral infection that hijacks some cells and causes cancer or something as sinister. ", "I see two questions here:\n\n**1)** Are there parasites that interfere with their hosts' DNA?\n**2)** Does/can this cause visible physical changes in the host?\n\nThe answer to **1)** is a resounding yes, as many commenters have pointed out. DNA viruses and retroviruses very often insert themselves into our genome, and indeed much of our genome is comprised of old inactive or semi-active virus DNA. And on an *evolutionary* level, as in from one generation to the next, this does occasionally lead to changes in organisms. Some examples are listed in [this video](_URL_0_).\n\nBut that doesn't seem to be what you're asking about: you want to know **(2)** whether changes can occur as a result of a parasite altering the DNA of a *fully formed individual*. And this does happen quite a lot - in plants! A [gall](_URL_1_) is a sort of swelling that a small animal or microbe produces in a host plant. Basically, it's a sort of controlled tumor, that serves as a nice home for the parasite. Many galls are induced on a genetic level - *Agrobacterium*, famously, has a special DNA plasmid that it injects into the host plant's genome to start gall formation. (In fact, this bacterium has traditionally been used by humans to genetically engineer plants.)\n\nNote that this is a local effect - DNA is only transferred at the site of infection, and cells in the rest of the host's body are unaffected. In order to change DNA globally, the parasite would have to access *every single cell in the host's body*. Which is a tall order, but maybe complete change isn't necessary for your scenario. So does it happen in humans or other animals? Not that I'm aware of. Plants are modular, and can generally tolerate this kind of cancer-like event in one part of their bodies without the rest being affected much. But the basic required mechanisms are all there. It'd probably be easier for the parasite to affect the body of a growing child or fetus than to change the body of a grown person, because once a body is fully formed - well, it's fully formed, and cells only divide at the pace that they need to be replaced."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimidine_dimer", "http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/01/our-inner-viruses-forty-million-years-in-the-making/", "http://prfdec.natur.cuni.cz/flegr/pdf/rewtoxo.pdf"], ["https://youtu.be/WVIyA7MNS8Y", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall"]]}
{"q_id": "kzp9a", "title": "Can depression go away with out treatment.", "selftext": "Can depression go away with out treatment or are there changes that can be done to someones lifestyle to make it go away with out CBT or medication?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kzp9a/can_depression_go_away_with_out_treatment/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2oki0p", "c2okpfb", "c2olg0q", "c2oki0p", "c2okpfb", "c2olg0q"], "score": [3, 21, 3, 3, 21, 3], "text": ["What kind of depression are you referring too? Answers will vary depending on what your asking.", "Yes, it can and does.  There are tons of things a person can do that may be associated with improved symptoms of depression (i.e., behavioral activation, engaging in pleasurable activities, social interaction, exercise, healthy diet, appropriate sleep hygenie, etc, etc, etc).  That is by no means an exhaustive list, but just a few examples of things that have been scientifically studied in relation to resolution of depressive symptoms.", "It did for me. ", "What kind of depression are you referring too? Answers will vary depending on what your asking.", "Yes, it can and does.  There are tons of things a person can do that may be associated with improved symptoms of depression (i.e., behavioral activation, engaging in pleasurable activities, social interaction, exercise, healthy diet, appropriate sleep hygenie, etc, etc, etc).  That is by no means an exhaustive list, but just a few examples of things that have been scientifically studied in relation to resolution of depressive symptoms.", "It did for me. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "cbuiyp", "title": "Is the dilution of any acid exothermic?", "selftext": "From what I know, the dilution of sulfuric acid is exothermic due to the ionoziation of the acid, \n\n & #x200B;\n\nH2SO4 - >  H^(+) \\+ HSO4^(-)\n\nHSO4^(-) \\- >  H^(+) \\+ SO4^(2-)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nwhere the equation  \n\n\nH^(+) \\+ H2O - >  H3O^(+)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n...is highly exothermic. Does this apply to all other acids? For example, In the dilution of hydochloric acid, the acid ionizes like so:\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHCl - >  H^(+)  \\+ Cl^(-)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nH^(+) then reacts with water, so would the dilution of any acid be exothermic? If so, would they all be exothermic to the same degree i.e. same amount of energy released per mole of H^(+) ions?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cbuiyp/is_the_dilution_of_any_acid_exothermic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["etijj6g"], "score": [9], "text": ["The term you're looking for is called \"enthalpy of dilution\" and depends on how strongly the molecules interact with each other relative to how strongly they interact with solvent (in this case, water). If it's negative, heat will be released. For most acids this will be negative. I'll do some research and see if I can find any examples where it's positive.\n\nEdit: For ammonium chloride (which is technically an acid since it's the salt of a weak base) the enthalpy of dilution is positive for certain concentrations. See here: _URL_1_\n\nAlso amino acids (for example, glycine) have positive enthalpy of dilution. See here: _URL_0_\n\nSo there are exceptions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["www.jbc.org/content/108/1/161.full.pdf", "https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/j100383a011"]]}
{"q_id": "1cixhq", "title": "I've recently read a few theories about different historical figures having supposedly faked their deaths, but nothing definitive. Has there ever been a documented case of this?", "selftext": "Heard in conversation about Niccolo Machiavelli and most recently Captain William Kidd.  Any info on these or really ANYONE who has done this is much appreciated!\n\nUPDATE:  A lot of interesting stories here, thanks to everyone for all the feedback.  Still having trouble finding anything about Captain William Kidd (any leads, /u/eternalkerri ?) or Niccolo Machiavelli, if anyone has a good source.  \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cixhq/ive_recently_read_a_few_theories_about_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9gzsk4", "c9h0kvc", "c9h0t5k", "c9h0xjd", "c9h17oa", "c9h71ph", "c9hb6ek"], "score": [63, 3, 7, 32, 35, 15, 30], "text": ["If you believe ~~plutarch~~ Cassius Dio and Livy, cleopatra faked her death to avoid Mark Anthony's wrath. Once he was confirmed ~~dead~~ dying she revealed herself as alive.\n\n\"he [Mark Anthony] half suspected that he was being betrayed, and yet because of his love for her could not believe this, but pitied her even more, it might be said, than himself. Cleopatra, no doubt, understood this very well, and hoped that once he heard that she was dead, he would not survive her, but straightaway follow her example. So she hastened to take refuge in the tomb with a eunuch and two of her women attendants, and from there sent a message to make him believe that she was dead.\"\n[Cassius Dio The Roman History book 50](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd \n\n\"Marc Antony, defeated in a naval battle near Actium, fled to Alexandria and, besieged by [Octavian] Caesar, in a desperate situation and above all misguided by a false rumor about the death of Cleopatra, killed himself.\"\n[Source from Livy, Ex libro CXXXIII](_URL_1_)\n\nI just checked, the History of Rome by Mike Duncan tells the story as well. Episode 51 for anyone interested. Minute 17.", "An old gentleman turned up claiming that he was Billy the kid long after his execution with some interesting life details.  ", "I always quite liked the story of Marshal Ney escaping execution and living the rest of his life in America", "It depends on what you mean by historical figure, but certainly within the limit here of 20 year ago, there was such a case. However, the British labour politician and former minister [John Stonehouse](_URL_0_) was found to have faked his. It was alleged (but never proven in court) that [he had been working for the Czech intelligence service](_URL_1_) during the cold war.", "Author Ken Kesey \n\nIn 1965 the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tried to fake a suicide to escape arrest for marijuana.  He wasn't too successful though.\n\nHis suicide note read \"Ocean, ocean, I'll beat you in the end. I'll break you this time. I'll go through with my heels at your hungry ribs.\"\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "[John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan](_URL_1_), disappeared in 1974 shortly after becoming the chief suspect in a brutal attack where he was accused of killing his children's nanny and wounding his ex-wife.  He has never been seen since.  He was convicted of the crime in absentia, and has since been declared legally dead, though no proof has ever been found.  He's kind of an urban legend, where every few years people in various corners of the world claim to have found the lost Lord Lucan.\n\nIn fact, the British politician [John Stonehouse](_URL_0_), who had tried to fake his own death and disappear, was found because someone thought he was the Lord Lucan!", "According to Suetonius, some folks faked their own death to escape Nero's singing.  From his [Life of Nero](_URL_0_):\n\n > While [Nero] was singing no one was allowed to leave the theatre even for the most urgent reasons. And so it is said that some women gave birth to children there, while many who were worn out with listening and applauding, secretly leaped from the wall, since the gates at the entrance were closed, or feigned death and were carried out as if for burial. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://lamar.colostate.edu/~jgaughan/primarywebpages/courses/DioonCleopatra.htm", "http://www.livius.org/li-ln/livy/periochae/periochae126.html"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse", "http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5"], ["http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/12/clip_job_kesey.php"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan"], ["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "30xhw9", "title": "What impact has the Temporal Cold War (22nd-31st Centuries CE) had on modern historiography? How does one even begin to write history in its wake?", "selftext": "This would seem to be an historian's nightmare, given the constant alteration and re-alteration of history as a quasi-military tactic.  How do historians take all of this into account?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/30xhw9/what_impact_has_the_temporal_cold_war_22nd31st/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpwsnnh", "cpx5ayr"], "score": [40, 5], "text": ["Just a disclaimer, I am not a meta-historian, but I will take a few courses in temporal field theory and de-located event nexuses within the next ~35 years, so I think I can speak to this topic.\n\nOne of the real challenges that the field has been facing in recent years has been establishing a cohesive timeline and closing leaks with various heavily modified threads that have been severed from their rooting. Obviously, this has not been entirely successful, as we can see from the continued persistence of genocide \u2018denial\u2019 and evidence of extraterrestrial intervention in early megalithic structures, which are merely holdovers from alternate histories where collateral damage during the war will be very high. One of the most serious conflicts currently occurring is the first War of the Weimar Succession (~3950 BC - 2509 AD), with fifty or sixty alternate developments of the Hitler timeline currently in conflict. We obviously can\u2019t tell which will eventually triumph, but Minksy et al. have already identified potential splitting threads, using a regression analysis of toothbrush mustaches in the period. Charlie Chaplin has already been heavily affected, and it could spread to various other silent film stars and possibly some lesser-known U.S. presidents of the early 20th century. \n\nOf even greater threat is the growing body of evidence for volcano deification in Semitic cultures in the first millenium AD, which may indicate the proliferation of temporal alteration technology to a rogue state or terrorist group. In her work on pan-Pacific confederation pre-2721, Devadas will theorize that the perpetrators are a Polynesian splinter group, especially given the fragmentary hints of fleets of Hawaiian dreadnought-class warships and rocket artillery as early as 1850. Consequences from this could be dire, as Mecha-Israel will indicate that it will strike tactically at any unobtainium enrichment facilities possessed by its past or future enemies, giving potential for escalation of the conflict, especially in the space-time area of the Holocaust.\n\nNow, what\u2019s the upshot of this for us? Without violating the 20-year rule, I can only go up to the early 90\u2019s, back before our historiography was altered to make the Christian Dark Ages less prevalent. It\u2019s also becoming clear that slavery did not become a cause of the U.S. Civil War until about 1985 or so. In light of these and many other events, two competing schools have developed, one which seeks to artificially generate a \u2018mainstream\u2019 vision of history, using periodization and simplification of potentially contradictory events in order to construct a plausible timeline for the unsuspecting general public. Federal support for these efforts have led to their dominance of the education system and textbook publishing. The other, smaller group, supports what they call \u2018controversy theory\u2019, in which all potential interpretations must be simultaneously accepted as valid, and no evidence can be discounted in the search for the various competing versions of the truth. They see these mainstreamers as oppressive arbiters who seek to use consensus and their argument from authority in order to suppress debate and evidence of the temporal conflict to come. It really all comes down as whether you view history as an simple explanation of events leading up to the present, or a constantly shifting paradigm where new evidence is constantly coming to light and upturning previous theories. As to which of these schools of thought will eventually win out, well, only time can tell.", "This question is a common infinite recursion.  Please do not use the search feature."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1qdzeg", "title": "What is the closest a star can self-destruct to earth that would not effect us?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qdzeg/what_is_the_closest_a_star_can_selfdestruct_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdbybkw"], "score": [7], "text": ["A sufficiently large supernova could strip away at least half of the ozone layer if it went off within 26 light years or so. Get it closer, and it could potentially wipe out all life on Earth. Fortunately for us, current estimates show that on average, such supernovae can be expected to occur that close to Earth only 3 times in 10 billion years, so we're probably pretty safe.\n\nSee: \"Could a Nearby Supernova Explosion Have Caused a Mass Extinction\" by Ellis and Schramm for more details on how supernovae could theoretically upset our planet (though I was unable to find a copy that's not behind a paywall - apologies for that).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4fyy0m", "title": "why is \"cause of death\" public record? does our medical right of privacy end when we die?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fyy0m/eli5_why_is_cause_of_death_public_record_does_our/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2d5i5g", "d2d67um", "d2d6zwu", "d2d74m0", "d2d7b5e", "d2d7s2z", "d2d7tll", "d2d82n0", "d2d89rg", "d2d92bb", "d2d9zxa", "d2da2lc", "d2da7n3", "d2dam2r", "d2datvt", "d2datz7", "d2davi1", "d2dazb9", "d2daznn", "d2db0st", "d2dbvxa", "d2dduti", "d2de5o8", "d2de7x2", "d2deim1", "d2dfkur"], "score": [520, 1949, 5, 54, 11, 164, 6, 25, 11, 7, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Your privacy ends when you die... since you're dead....\n\nCause of death is a matter of public record because it is an important piece of data.  How you died can indicate a disease outbreak... or a murdering spree... or a serial killer... or the fact that you lived to be 103 and died like all old people do.", " It is important for public health purposes to notice if a large number of people are dying from a particular cause.  Epidemics used to be much more common than they are now. ", "I'm not sure about other countries, but in the UK the Data Protection Act specifically only applies to the living.", "once one is dead, there is no medical anything. \n\nstill can't access their medical records after death without a warrant, so.... \n\ndeath is factual, not medical.", "I am guessing this is brought up with the passing of Prince. It is public because as others have said it could be important to other people for health reasons. If you have a disease they may want to notify people you have been in contact with.\n\nIt is already being speculated that Prince may have had HIV/AIDS so if he died of that they would want to let people know so they could get tested. It seems morbid and causes a ton of speculation and conspiracy theories (like the HIV/AIDS thing above), but it is necessary for a few reasons.", "Many legal rules suggest that the dead do not have rights.  The right to medical privacy substantially erodes at death. A person's death relates to many things that affect the public at large. If you have a mortgage or are financing a vehicle it affects that car or home and what happens to it after you die as well as your debtors. If you have distant heirs who may have a claim to your estate it is pertinent to their interests. Additionally, some contracts prohibit certain activities (life insurance and sky diving) and if you were to die while engaging in that activity you would have a breach. \n\nTL;DR The consequences of your death on the public outweighs the right to privacy of a corpse.", "Legally speaking, the dead have no privacy rights. You also cannot libel or slander a dead person.", "Not all \"causes of death\" are made public. The vast majority of deaths are not, because they are \"natural\" deaths. It's only when there's a public interest (or need) to find out why someone died that a coroners inquest is launched.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is how things in the UK work anyway.\n\nEdit: To make it clear: in these cases the needs of the living to find out why someone died outweigh the needs of the deceased for privacy.", "The cause of death is not only public record, for a long time it was a public responsibility to determine it. UK common law (and thus US common law) included a [coroner's jury](_URL_0_) who was responsible for determining the cause of death. That presumption of public interest persists, even though the juries have largely been replaced by professional medical examiners.\n\nAnd it's also extremely important not only for health and crime reasons, but because the time and manner of a person's death is extremely important to many contracts - most notably life insurance.", "In New Zealand where I live. We have a piece of legislation called the privacy act that does indeed end when you die. Your right to privacy by law has ended because you cannot do anything with your information anymore. What do you need with privacy. You're dead. That's pretty private right there.", "The Medical right to privacy is an onus put on your healthcare providers.  Information that is publicly available or maintained by the state is a burden on the state.  Although I can see how there could be some overlap in content, each actor is obliged.  I don't know why cause of death is something the state is obliged to provide though.", "Medical right to privacy does not end when you die. This is so for many reasons, but for example, consider the situation where a family member might not want others to know your medical history. What if you had a sexually-transmitted disease, and then died (whether the two were related or not) - would it be fair to your partner if everyone could find out your disease status?\n\nDifferent states have different laws about giving out death certificates (they differ based on who is asking for them, what proof of identity they must provide, when the record is released to different individuals, etc). They are listed as public record because they can be accessed by members of the public - that doesn't necessarily mean the entire public, all the time.\n\nAlso conflating the issue is that cause of death is a data point we collect for public health records, de-identified. We need to know this information for the safety of the rest of the public. If suddenly 10 people die of the same disease in a short time frame, that might be an indicator that we should look for a reason and intervene. As I said, these records would be de-identified to a point where you couldn't correlate a cause of death to one given individual.\n\nFor a live example of this, use the census website to look at death/morbidity statistics for New York City. You'll find pretty detailed and robust statistics. Now do the same for some podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Sure, the same information exists, but if I told you one male in a town of 100 people died of syphillis, you could probably figure out who that is with minimal effort. So often, these records won't be available for you to view - the census will just put \"X\" or \"N/A\" where the percentages and counts would usually be.", "Question: when someone's obit lies about their cause of death, that doesn't necessarily mean the actual record of their death contains the same lie, does it?  Obits don't fact check, do they?  I ask because I have a relative who overdosed, and the obit claimed something else.", "Birth and death records are a matter of public concern.   If you die many legal implications come to play,  including with matters of insurance and estate,  and cause of death can be a factor.   Additionally,  if an autopsy or post mortem is performed,  taxpayer expenses are involved.   ", "What about celebrities? With Prince's passing I have been thinking a lot about this. Prince had a condition that he kept private for a considerable amount of time. What right does the public have to that information and his cause of death? Does his death negate all his wishes during life?", "Where have you seen \"cause of death\" as a public record? HIPAA laws apply to individuals for 50 years after their death.\n\n[The rule](_URL_0_)", "Sheriff:  This guy died... natural causes.\n\nCoroner:  But he's got three bullet holes in his head.\n\nSheriff:  Well ok, but you can't tell anyone else.", "I have lost fairly close aquantinces and old friends who died young of drug problems. And most of the time I couldnt figure out what happened for months. I don't think their causes of death ever became public. I only eventually figured things out from friends of friends who were with them til the end. \n\nI think mostly celebrity deaths are the ones that go public and a lot of times its just supply and demand, and someone can be bribed by TMZ to at least make a photocopy or take a pic with your iphone.", "I think it's because it's a government record. \nIn our Sunday paper there is a list of births, deaths, marriage license applications, divorce filings, and bankruptcy filings. ", "My best friend's parents died from AIDS. When applying for school, scholarship, or using some other official document that requires parents' names, she has had to tick a box showing she is an orphan, and then attaching copies of two death certificates, with the cause of death in clear print: AIDS. They did not die from a HIV infection, but the literal  full blown AIDS that had them waste away into skeletal forms. Even though she was a kid when they passed away, some things you just don't forget. Now every time she hands in her applications along with the two very sensitive documents, she is forced to relive the trauma, pain and humiliation from all the stigma. A clerk will flip through the attachments, give my friend a ones over (hmm..-dressed-like-a-slut-will-probably-end-up-like-her-mum, look). ", "Tl;Dr cause of death is not the same as current diseases at time of death.\n\n\nIt's also noteworthy the fact that cause of death is not the same as diseases you had at the time of death, if you have HIV/AIDS it is possible the cause of death was an infection, respiratory possibly, if you had heart problems it probably was cardio respiratory arrest or something of that matter, as the official cause of death.\n", "Yes, some rights end with life!\n\nAlso, I'm not entirely sure how \"cause of death\" would have anything to do with \"right of privacy\". Weird question, honestly.", "Open records attorney here. Yes, your right to privacy ends at death. In certain circumstances, your family member may have a right to privacy in things like gruesome photos of your body, but that's about it.", "You've gotten a lot of really bad answers here.  \nThe reason \"cause of death\" like in a police report is public information is because **police reports** are public information.  \n\"Cause of death\" as in a report on what killed your relative by a medical doctor at a hospital where they were treated is still protected under [HIPAA](_URL_0_). The short answer answer is it depends on the source and relatives are free to disclose whatever they want.", "Your existence becomes a statistic and what made you human becomes an object, ashes to ashes.", "UK doctor here. In the UK the cause of death is public record and so not private. Mainly for public health to be able to track disease incidences and prevalence. The medical records remain private to everyone. So a spouse/next of kin can't see them and police need a warrant. \n\nAs for what you actually write, it is at the discretion of the physician and coroner. These days if you die of a HIV related disease we tend to put the specific disease rather than sensitive things like that, whereas 10-20 years ago they would put AIDS. Usually it'll be something like pneumonia. Same with overdoses - you can word it like drug intoxication or poisoning.\n\nIt's poor form on the doctors involved to tell relatives of their positive status via a death certificate. Every situation is different but usually if a person needs to know for their own protection they would be informed in another way.  I.e confidentiality might be broken \n\nDeath certificates have 4 points that you can fill out. Only 1a is necessary. \n1a the cause. Eg pneumonia \n1b the thing that caused the pneumonia. Eg COPD\n1c the thing that caused 1b. (Often not filled out)\n2. Other conditions not directly causing the death but contributing.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.inquest.org.uk/help/handbook/section-1-3-what-is-an-inquest"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroner's_jury"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/health-information-of-deceased-individuals/index.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/health-information-of-deceased-individuals/index.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3z5rs0", "title": "Has Jody Foster ever responded or had anything to say about the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3z5rs0/has_jody_foster_ever_responded_or_had_anything_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyjuf4o"], "score": [75], "text": ["Yes. She published an article (entitled \"Why Me?\") on the subject in Esquire Magazine in December, 1982. \n\nIt is a fascinating read, and is freely available online in a few places (_URL_0_ has a copy). \n\nEffectively, she responded as you might expect a freshman at Yale to respond to being indirectly involved in a Presidential assassination: complete incredulity. She had been getting letters from Hinckley for some time, but could not believe it when the story started to tumble out. Her Dean called her to say that her picture had been found on Hinckley. She was told she had to talk to the FBI. She cried a bit...then started laughing. Her roommate thought she'd gone insane... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["douban.com"]]}
{"q_id": "72f57i", "title": "why does leaving your phone on a charger overnight degrade the battery?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72f57i/elif_why_does_leaving_your_phone_on_a_charger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dni1s4j", "dni2jei", "dni34ul", "dnialii"], "score": [214, 67, 9, 6], "text": ["It really doesn't.\n\nThe trouble with battery advice is that people keep repeating stuff that was written for entirely different battery types several decades ago. Sometimes they even refer to the \"memory effect\", which is something that which only applied to NiCD (a battery type that's been almost completely extinct for more than a decade and isn't used in phones or laptops), a very particular type of them at that (so not nearly all of them), and required such a regular usage pattern to reproduce that it's not seen outside of laboratories and satellites.\n\nYeah, overcharging batteries is bad. But given that lithium tends to explode or light itself on fire when abused, and that it costs companies big $$$ and it makes the news when anything of the sort happens... a bad lithium charger is pretty much nonexistent outside of really cheap junk from China. ", "I didn't read the article but this is basically how it works:\n\nPhones have chips in them that detect the power being put into the battery and regulate it. When the phone detects the battery is full and that there is still a charger connected, it kind of turns the battery off. Instead it just powers itself directly and skips the battery. \n\nOvernight charge degradation hasn't been a thing for a long time.", "And wow the contradictions here are many and frequent. How is anyone to find out what is the right way and wrong way to charge your phone/tablet from these comments ? ", "Op did you even read the article you posted?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1er8tt", "title": "British use of oddly pronounced words in determining German spies during the Second World War?", "selftext": "I cannot remember where I heard this (possibly QI).  I was just wondering if there was any truth to the story that during the Second World War the British would attempt to establish if someone was a German spy through their pronunciation of certain English words/names.  For example the surname Cholmondeley which is pronounced as Chum-li.  Is this true and how/when would such a method be used?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1er8tt/british_use_of_oddly_pronounced_words_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca2y7rg", "ca3305k", "ca37ud3", "ca382h2", "ca397ac"], "score": [73, 27, 2, 4, 6], "text": ["This is called a shibboleth.\n\n_URL_0_", "It's difficult to prove a negative, but I would be very doubtful of such tricks. Many English speakers won't be aware of these pronunciations, or that in fact there are multiple pronunciations. As an example, it is often said that name of the town Cirencester is pronounced \"Cissister\", so it would make a good shibboleth. It's perfectly true that many people do pronounce it that way, but there are also locals who pronounce it the more obvious way. This would be even more true of names like Cholmondely,  Festonhaugh (\"Fanshaw\") or St John (\"Sinjin\"), since they are not common in England and it would not be possible to guarantee that a native speaker had come across them.", "I've heard of \"Lieutenant\" (pronounced as Leftenant by Brits) being used this way. \n\nAlso, Scheveningen in Dutch (Germans would go with a \"sh\" or \"sk\" initial sound, instead of \"sX\" with X as in Scottish \"Loch\") and \"p\u00e3o\" in Portuguese (with a nasalized vowel, not a diphthong such as Spanish speakers would produce).", "May I recommend an excellent 1942 film called 'Went the day well' The film is about a group of Nazi fifth columnist's in an English country village and the title refers to their usage if English which arouse suspicion and subsequent uncovering. A review from the Guardian highly recommends it. _URL_0_ apologies for the mobile link.", "Not exactly the same thing ,but during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans sent infiltrators in allied uniforms to cause confusion, called [Operation Grief](_URL_0_). They had some success too, enough to make everyone suspicious of everyone else. Soldiers would throw up impromptu road blocks, and question people with weird questions. The story that I always remember from it is an American general who was asked what League the cubs played in. He said American League, so ended up under arrest until someone else came along to vouch for him.\n\n(Source... just read about it recently. I think it was Citizen Soldiers by Ambrose? Linked to the Wiki page for the operation which also mentions it though)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth"], [], [], ["http://m.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/08/went-the-day-well-film-review"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif"]]}
{"q_id": "1tbjxq", "title": "How did contemporary modern soldiers come to carry so much equipment, as compared to soldiers in say, WWI or WWII?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tbjxq/how_did_contemporary_modern_soldiers_come_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce6dh1k", "ce6dpfq", "ce6drg9", "ce6dtrl", "ce6dvqv"], "score": [9, 3, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["Andrew bacevich in one of his books (I forget the name)  does a really good job talking about how at least the american removal of the draft caused a huge shift to all-volunteer military that is much smaller, and every decision in military planning from that point on focused on how to get the absolute most out of each soldier", "Soldiers at these times were conscript, they were drafted, then went through some basic training, given a rifle and sent directly to the frontline. They were cheap, easily replaced and no as effective as today's soldiers. \n\nThe pack therefore consisted on things to eat, some ammo, some cleaning kit for the rifle, a blanket and that was about it. Investing millions for expansive gadgets would have been useless. They also had to walk a lot more as oil was generally needed by the huge armoured divisions in fashion at the time (for WW2).\n\nYou could compare them for example with Roman Legionnaries who are actually closer to modern militaries than WW1 infantry (professional, highly skilled troops with extensive training and with relatively low losses in combat). The standard Roman legionnaries had a more than 20 kg pack, to which you had to add a good quality armor that would easily bring him over 30 kg when in full marching kit which is about the same as today's soldiers. \n\nThis tend to show that armies tend to issue bigger, more extensive kits to soldiers that are worth it because they actually are a huge investment and issuing them anything that could keep them alive a little bit more is completly worth it because it protects an investment and is a real force multiplier.\n\nIn another way, issuing thousands of dollar in kit to a conscript that only had the most basic training and has great chances of not surviving a week on the frontline is lost money because it will not improve much his survivability anyway and will not help him much be a better soldier (as he won't be trained to make the most of his expensive gadgets).\n\n\n", "Certainly not a new issue.  S.L.A. Marshall's 1950 book \"The Soldier's Load and The Mobility of a Nation\" discusses the issue fairly in depth, and was required reading in the U.S. Marines for quite a while.  Not sure if it still is.  \n\nHis proposal was that soldiers should not carry more than 40 lbs of gear, though some might argue the size of the average fighter has increased since then.  Many of the U.S. military journals have had discussions over the last 10 years about the sustainability of the gear loads, and the high rate of joint degradation of soldiers carrying loads up to and often exceeding 100 lbs per fighter. Natick Labs June 1989 report T19-89 ( _URL_0_ ) was one of the earlier studies I know of that went into the actual, long-term physical damage of carrying such loads, and reviewed typical loads from WW I through the 1983 Falklands campaign.  For example, the French Foreign Legion in WW I carried an average 45 kg, and U.S. forces in North Africa in WW II carried 60 kg.  So, not far off from today's loads.  Obviously things may have been lighter in pre-industrial times.", "I don't have it handy, but I believe I read about this in *The Solder's Load and the Mobility of a Nation* by S.L.A. Marshall. It's a slim book and easy to find in a library. Anyway, the argument was that the total load of a soldier has actually changed little since the days of the Greeks, with a total load in the neighborhood of 80-100 pounds (35-45 kg) being a typical load expected of an infantryman. The change over time was in the relative proportion of that load that was weapons ( &  ammunition), armor, and \"supplies\" (food, water, clothing, etc.). \n\nClassical times had heavy armor, but limited supplies since campaigns ended for the winter and food was scavenged along the way. American civil war troops had no armor, but heavy armament and plenty of supplies. And now, with the return of effective armor, the balance is swinging back to more armor, and lighter weapons- the M4 is lighter than the M16 which was lighter than the M14. \n\nAs to your specific observation, I suspect many of the videos and pictures you see are from combat, and the soldiers have left behind their backpacks that contained their sustainment gear, e.g. their bedroll, extra socks and underwear, sewing kit, etc. etc.", "Individual soldiers became much more valuable as the life of loss became a much less acceptable thing. With that, came the end of Conscription. Conscripts weren't given the advanced training modern soldiers are, they were given basic training, a rifle, and some basic protective gear and told to go out there, kill some bad guys and let the other guys take care of you. \n\nNow that people are much more valuable(Not out of any real morality per say, it's the PR war at home), soldiers get more advanced training, and due to the monetary investment the government has put into training you, you have to be equipped with some of the latest, and some of the more expensive equipment, and the best chance of survival.\n\nThere also comes with this, the fact that warfare is much smaller these days. Instead of having battalions or platoons moving together comprised of specialized units, you have small, self-sufficient squads. Self-sufficiency requires you to carry more stuff so you can fill multiple roles and take care of yourself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA212050\u200e"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6k63pk", "title": "what would happen if you were exposed to the vacuum of space while wearing a sealed helmet and air supply, but with no suit to cover the rest of your body?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6k63pk/eli5_what_would_happen_if_you_were_exposed_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djjp7jh", "djjqjfb", "djjru9c"], "score": [7, 24, 86], "text": ["your lungs would rupture pretty quickly, as they and the surrounding tissues would be trying to hold back the pressure difference between your helmet's air supply and a vacuum.\n\n\nif your helmet was pressurized to earth normal, that would be about 33 pounds for every square inch of outer lung surface.\n\n\nif you were in a nasa suit, this would be 4.7 pounds per square inch. \n\n\nwhile that doesn't sound like much, those square inches add up quickly. a 10\u201dx10\u201d inch area, *much* smaller than your lungs, has 100 times the force...so that small area would experience 470 pounds of force. in our earth pressure scenario, that would come out to around 3,300 pounds of force, which is around the weight if a 2013 chevy malibu, or roughly 10,000 smallish bananas!", "The pressure differential between inside your body and outside your body does really bad things and you die from it.  Your body swells up, loses blood pressure, and your brain stops working in about 15 seconds. \n\nBut you know all those anime shows with the skin-tight space-suits? [Yeah, that's actually based on a real thing, space activity suits](_URL_0_).  If you just wrap the body in a strong fiber that will keep it's shape, and supply air, then you can have a fun time in space.  Temperature isn't that big a problem for a while. Radiation is a serious concern, but it's more of a long-term risk.     \n\nYou body WILL conform to the volume of the suit. Which means the suit has to be pretty damn accurate to the size you want your body to be.   Which was hard in the 70's so it really hurt the guy's balls when they tested it out. ", "If you find yourself exposed to the near vacuum of space, so long as you don\u2019t try to hold your breath, which would result in your lungs rupturing and thus pretty well guaranteed that the incident would be fatal, you\u2019ll likely remain conscious for about 10-15 seconds, with perhaps half that being useful consciousness. \n\nAfter that, you\u2019ll be fine as long as you\u2019re placed back in a pressurized environment within about 90-180 seconds.\nThese numbers are based on both human accidents that have occurred and on experiments run on animals. \n\nFor instance, in 1965, researchers at the Brooks Air Force Base in Texas ran a series of experiments on dogs. They exposed the dogs to 1/380th normal atmospheric pressure for varying amounts of time to see how the animals\u2019 bodies would react.\n\nIn most cases, the dogs survived without permanent damage, so long as the time frame was less than 90 seconds. Once they pushed it to two minutes, the dogs typically suffered cardiac arrest and died.\n\nSo that\u2019s dogs. **What about humans**? Chimpanzees were chosen here as the guinea pigs. They did much better than the dogs, with most able to survive for up to 3 minutes, with the record being 3 and a half minutes. For those under 3 minutes, they not only were fine, but the researchers were able to confirm that their cognitive abilities, with one exception, were not damaged in any way.\n\nWe don\u2019t just need to rely on animal tests though. One of the first such accidents was when a technician at the Johnson Space Center in 1965 accidentally depressurized his suit by ripping out a hose. He remained conscious for 14 seconds. During this time, he remembered feeling the water rapidly evaporating off his tongue. Around the 15 second mark other technicians started the process of re-pressurizing the chamber. He regained consciousness at around the 15,000 ft. atmospheric pressure level, which was about 27 seconds into the ordeal. \n\nThe only residual effect noted was that he couldn\u2019t taste anything for several days after the accident, though his sense of taste returned to normal within a week.\n\nOn the other end of the spectrum we have an incident involving a man who wasn\u2019t so lucky. According to a paper by Dr. Emanuel M. Roth, Rapid Decompression Emergencies in Pressure-Suited Subject, published in 1968, it took about 3 minutes to re-pressurize the chamber the man was in. Once it was re-pressurized, he gasped a few times, then ceased to breathe. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. So it would appear, much like with the chimpanzees, the **3 minute mark is roughly the upper limit for humans**."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit"], []]}
{"q_id": "6ldyfy", "title": "Why is the Irish head of government called the Taoiseach even in English but the head of state not called the Uachtar\u00e1n?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ldyfy/why_is_the_irish_head_of_government_called_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djummf7"], "score": [5], "text": ["The simple answer is because that is the way it is laid down in *Bunreacht na h\u00c9ireann* [the Irish constitution] in 1937. \n\nArticle 12 of the Constitution lays out the title and duties of President [Uachtar\u00e1n]  and states :\n\n > There shall be a President of Ireland (Uachtar\u00e1n na h\u00c9ireann), hereinafter called the President, who shall take precedence over all other persons in the State and who shall exercise and perform the powers and functions conferred on the President by this Constitution and by law.\n\nIn the rest of the constitution the office holder is referred to as \"President\". \n\nThe title of Taoiseach is more clearly described as being in Irish.  Article 13 describes the head of government as Taoiseach.  The office holder is referred to as \"Taoiseach\"  in the rest of the constitution. \n\n > The President shall, on the nomination of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, appoint the Taoiseach, that is, the head of the Government or Prime Minister.\n\t\t\n\n > The President shall, on the nomination of the Taoiseach with the previous approval of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, appoint the other members of the Government.\n\nThe reason for this is that the title of President went back before the Treaty of Dec 1921 when the title of President of Ireland was used by Sinn F\u00e9in and De Valera in 1921 after the establishment of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann in 1919 [the so called revolutionary D\u00e1il] and the declaration of independence.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4vfn2z", "title": "Were European ships \"drastically inferior to Chinese ships in every respect imaginable even as late as 1800\", as my textbook claims?", "selftext": "*Global Politics in the 21st Century*, by Robert J. Jackson, repeats the claim that European ships were \"drastically inferior to Chinese ships in every respect imaginable even as late as 1800\". This seems to be quite a claim.\n\nMoreover, its reference for this is a book called *The Genius of China*, which doesn't exactly encourage confidence. \n\nChina isn't exactly famous for being a naval power, either. I know for certain that at one point they had that exploring / treasure fleet, but aside from that? To say that China's ships were superior in every aspect at the start of the 19th century is just... huh?\n\nIn the 18th century, Europe had 200-gun ships-of-the-line, and I've never heard of China having anything even remotely similar.\n\nPlease tell me my textbook isn't a complete waste of money.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vfn2z/were_european_ships_drastically_inferior_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5y6h6k", "d5y9il3", "d5yuzfn"], "score": [37, 27, 10], "text": ["The Chinese explorer Daxi Hongtong reportedly reached the Arabian peninsula in 674 AD.  It wasn't until the Viking Age a few centuries later that Europeans could claim similar range.  The great admiral Zheng He (1371\u20131433) explored the coastlines of Asia in ships larger than that of Columbus and made it as far as Mombasa and Mecca.  Zheng He's flagship was about 67 meters long.  By comparison, Henry V of England's flagship, *Grace Dieu*, commissioned in 1420, the largest in Europe, was about 66m long.  These were both exceptionally large ships for their age, but I think it's safe to say that the Europeans caught up with the Chinese sometime during the 15th century.  In 1522 Magellan's fleet circumvented the Earth.  By 1800, European ships were far superior and this is a major reason why Europeans went on to dominate Asia and \"humiliate\" China for 100 years.\n\nOne innovation that Europeans did copy from the Chinese in the early 19th century was watertight compartments.  European ships were apparently superior in every other respect.", "The height of Chinese naval technology and power was in the early 15th century, but after the Ming Emperor Zhu Di, none of his successors saw need in developing the navy anymore. Well, that was partially the problem. The other part to the problem was corruption, or gross inefficiency when it comes to the navy. \"The Empire's troops [did] not take care of the ships\", as the famous Ming general Yu Dayou (1503 - 1579) has put it. He observed that \"the Empire [spent] lots of money on building the ships, but none [was] of usable quality\", and that \"most ships, after its construction for about a year, would be sunken and no longer be used\". His advice was actually \"[he would] rather have the ships built by the people than have it built by the Empire\".\n\nSource: China's Research On the History of Ming in the 20th Century (20 shi ji zhong guo de ming shi yan jiu).  ", "*Caveat lector*, I am in no way an expert on Chinese ships or shipbuilding, but I may be able to provide an answer on European ships and how they changed over time. Something to keep in mind is that there are a ton of fables that center around the admiral Zheng He, who seems to have bene a real person who existed and led several voyages of discovery, but whose achievements and the size of whose ships is substantially exaggerated. For example, [this image](_URL_6_) tends to circulate on the Internet when Chinese treasure fleets come up; it purports to compare one of Zheng He's ships to one of Columbus's ships, but the purported Chinese treasure ship would literally be impossible to sail, even if you could build it; the notion of having off-center masts is laughable and a wooden ship that size would hog, sag or twist itself apart in any sort of a seaway. \n\nOn the flip side, it's also worth pointing out that no such thing as a \"200-gun\" ship of the line ever existed; the largest of the age of sail was the *Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Sant\u00edsima Trinidad*, built to carry 112 but eventually enclosing a fourth gun deck to have a total of 140 guns. \n\nSo to get to the crux of your question, were Chinese ships \"better\" than European ships at the start of the 19th century? Well, is an apple better than an orange? What I know about the sea-going warships that were being built in China at that time is that they were meant for coastal patrols and as anti-piracy vessels, and also ships that could navigate up the large rivers into China's interior. Chinese trading ships were meant to be able to reach into its extensive trading empire extending to the Indonesian archipelago to the south, the Japanese islands to the north, and India to the west. I don't know the extent to which the Chinese state had a navy to patrol those sea routes or provide convoy or other systems of protecting trade, but that would be a good starting point. \n\nAnyhow, attached are some comments I've written and/or threads I've been involved with regarding *Western* ship design, hopefully this can be helpful to you. If you have follow up questions, please ask! \n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_7_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pn7v5/what_changes_occurred_in_the_construction/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2709jm/how_would_a_britishhms_frigate_built_in_1715/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/44sivx/ship_design_and_construction_in_the_age_of_sail/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l2ib8/what_breakthroughs_allowed_for_the_construction/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n5n5k/in_age_of_sails_how_various_navies_determine_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fs8qr/how_much_more_advanced_was_a_british/ckcdgbf", "http://premium.imagesocket.com/images/2016/01/05/2852814-cggn.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38sjil/how_did_britain_manage_the_logistics_of_fighting/"]]}
{"q_id": "vcll8", "title": "when you're swimming, why doesn't the water flood your ears and kill you?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vcll8/eli5_when_youre_swimming_why_doesnt_the_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c53apjt", "c53gchv", "c53hjf0", "c53i877", "c53jpw3"], "score": [94, 7, 4, 9, 4], "text": ["Lucky for you, your ear has a protective barrier called your tympanic membrane (eardrum). This keeps the middle and inner ear separated from the outside environment.\n\nEven if your eardrum gets torn, your body has a connection from the ear to the throat known as your Eustachian tube so if you were to go swimming with a perforated eardrum (a bad idea since the risk for infection skyrockets), you'd still be alright.", "So what fails when you hear the water move in your ear", "Seems like a good place to put this.\n\nWhere is the water when you can feel vibrations in your ear more sensitively? After a while, or by shaking your head vigorously, the water drips out.", "I am very curious to know why you think it would kill you even if it did flood your ear.", "I read arse instead of ears. I was confused."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "o2wcs", "title": "why america is so obsessed with its founding father's views", "selftext": "I was just watching [The Bachman Bowing out Video Clip](_URL_0_), and the way she refers to the founding father's struck me as very similar to the way that staunch religious folks refer to God - ie: she's trying to decipher the intentions of someone who's not answering their phone. \n\nBut, this type of rhetoric is very common, and many American debates seem to focus on what the Founder's wanted, who they were, and what their beliefs were. \n\nI understand that the constitution is an incredibly important document in founding the country, but I can't ever recall hearing such debates from any other nation (maybe I am just overly exposed to American politics), anyways, please ELI5. \n\nTLDR - People talk about the founding father's like their word is God's. why? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o2wcs/eli5_why_america_is_so_obsessed_with_its_founding/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3dx9jf", "c3dxk56", "c3dxvdh", "c3dycu0", "c3dz1pv", "c3dzmvo"], "score": [29, 5, 4, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["I think it's more like, \"How can I make what the Founding Fathers said appear to fit/support my viewpoint?\" \n\nPeople have respect for their beliefs and viewpoints because those ideas shaped the county they live in currently, which also makes it a matter of patriotism. I think others then use that respect as a way of backing up their own, personal ideology. ", "While I am only speaking from my own experience and education, a lot of it comes from how the schools teach about the writing of the Constitution and the early years of the United States. Especially in middle school and younger, the instruction practically is a hagiography of the Framers. It also ties into ideas of American exceptionalism - that America is a unique experiment in democracy and a city on the hill. If you buy into that, or if you want voters to think you do, it makes sense to talk about how the country's founding document and its founding figures are near infallible.", " > she's trying to decipher the intentions of someone who's not answering their phone.\n\nWhile I'm not sure how much Bachman knows about the founding fathers, scholars have a pretty good idea on how the founders viewed government and how it should work by reading material they've written such as articles, documents, and letters to other people.\n\nAs far as the great respect people have for the founders, I think this comes from how they proposed a completely different governmental system that had never existed before.\n\nBefore then, most governments were ruled by kings, dictators, oligarchies, theocracies, etc... The founders devised a system of self governance, in that the people are the ones in control of the government, and not a ruler chosen by birth, God, or a select few.\n\nThe founders took great care in crafting the constitution, in that they intended the federal government to be very limited in scope, with only a few responsibilities, while implementing checks and balances to keep the three branches in check.\n\nAs to why some politicians glorify the works of the founding fathers, I think they're just trying to appeal to the emotions of their constituency, as well as trying to say, \"Hey, I agree with these geniuses! You should vote for me!\"", "When politicians debate issues such as abortion, health care, defense, etc. They are actually debating the constitutionality of the topic. Nobody wants to force abortions, deny people help for their health, or leave America defenseless. Instead they are debating the role the federal government should have (this applies to federal politicians in this context). For example Ron Paul believes that if California wants to legalize medicinal marijuana then the federal government has no right to stop California.\n\nThe argument of constitutionality comes from how you interpret the constitution. There is strict and their is loose interpretation. Now politicians and the Supreme Court Justices won't say that. Instead they will say framers' intent (strict) or living document (loose). Conservative Justices will approach laws and if they rightfully fall under the powers of congress by seeing if it follows the framers' intent of the elastic clause. While liberal Justices will say that there is no way that the founders could predict everything that had changed in the world and with that we must change our views.\n\nTo answer your question about the \"obsession.\" It's not n obsession. It's the ultimate precedent that politicians use for their decisions.", "The way our (assuming you're American) Nation is set up is to idolize the founding fathers as virtuous and true.  Now despite the fact that they were generally rich, white, racist, plantation owners, many Americans treat them as the 'Ideal' politician.  The fact that they helped to create this Nation supposedly gives them the credibility that Politicians would like to add to their image. \n\nDon't get me wrong, I respect the Founding Fathers for what they did, but I don't believe that we should Idolize them the way we do.  That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't uphold the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  (Just for clarification, not trying to spread my personal opinion)", "That's patriotic rhetoric, many countries have heros. Listen to an Hugo Chavez's speech."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/bachmann-ends-presidential-run-20120104"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "44lljo", "title": "why do many people in the us opose to free universal things like health and education?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44lljo/eli5_why_do_many_people_in_the_us_opose_to_free/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czr0kwl", "czr0lmj", "czr0mah", "czr0niu", "czr11lv", "czr11yv", "czr13c5", "czr1454", "czr16ns", "czr1ltu", "czr3ckz", "czr3cxv"], "score": [15, 2, 5, 15, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because it is not really free.  The cost is passed on to taxpayers and republicans generally argue that leaving the government in charge of such tasks is inefficient and wasteful.  ", "Because many of us feel that it isn't moral to force one person to pay for things for another person, particularly if such things are not necessary or, in some instances, if they directly violate the moral code of the person paying (for instance, abortion services).", "Because it's NOT FREE!\n\nDoctors and healthcare workers still expect to be paid.  Schools and hospitals still cost money to build and operate. \n\nWhen you say \"Free Healthcare\" or \"Free College\" you mean healthcare and college paid for through higher taxes.  The folks paying the taxes don't like that all the time.  Some of the time, it's accepted like k-12 school or emergency room healthcare.  At some point there is a line where continuing to spend public money isn't popular enough.", "Because it isn't \"free\".  It comes out of the pockets of taxpayers anyway.\n\nThe basic argument is that the government pretty much sucks at running anything.\n\nThey can't even handle \"free\" healthcare to veterans- who make up a tiny part of the population.\n\nThe \"right-wing\" standpoint is that the job of the government isn't to provide for the people.  It's to safeguard people's rights to provide for themselves.", "America has been trained to hate communism and to view socialism as communism, despite being drastically different. Their government also encourages health insurance because that makes money for the companies providing it whereas tax dollars won't turn a profit. It's the same reason Cameron is desperate to privatise the NHS in Britain", "Where will you get doctors and nurses  to work for free?\n\n\nOr professors?", "On one hand, Americans are right. public sponsored healthcare and education is definitely not free. They are paid by taxes, which are collected by government. Government is not very efficient in using money, so there is a lot of waste. \n\nOn the other hand, the costs of healthcare and the costs of education are extremely high in the USA. Healthcare and Education in Europe are very, very good, equally good as in the USA. But the costs are much, much lower. For example, compare the costs of a doctor visit in the USA, with the cost of a doctor visit in Europe and you will find that a European doctor visit is much less expensive. Similarly compare the cost of a private school in Europe and a private school in the USA. Many times, a private school in Europe will be less expensive.\n\n", "1 simple example:  Because Americans don't want entry-level cars like a Toyota Corolla to cost 54,000 USD$, such as in Denmark, among other things.  \n\n'Free' is not 'free,' all of these programs come through VAT taxes and exorbitant luxury taxes.  \n\nAnd the government is woefully incompetent, would you trust your life with them?  There are many a story of U.K. hospitals so inefficient that it takes their ambulances 1 hour to reach a home 10 minutes from A & E.  Sure, my premium might cost a pretty penny, but at least I actually have competent care.  And the costs will make up for themselves when comparing 7% sales tax to 20% VAT that is common in Europe.", "A lot of people dislike government control, and would rather pay for things themselves than have excessive taxes to cover it due to the inefficiencies that our government has. \n\nAlmost all of our programs are more expensive per capita than the rest of the world, and it's usually not as good quality, so we don't have any faith free healthcare would be a very good idea. \n\nI am mixed on the idea of the government paying for all these things due to the track record. I'd rather see efforts for regulation to make it more affordable than to pay for it for people.", "The folks who are against equal health and education opportunities here (in my experience) are already getting those opportunities. It's easy to be smug, and think \"I got mine, what's their problem?\"", "If you've ever been to the DMV, then you know the answer to this one. Every time you're there, you're subjected to long lines, convoluted regulation, and bad service. Why is it like that? Because there is nothing for the DMV to compete against. The government essentially created a monopoly that everyone had to use, and flooded the system by making it so centralized, leading to the long lines and inefficiency. If you hate the DMV, but need a license, there is nowhere else to go to, so you have to deal with it.\n\nTake this system into education and you see the same things. Book shortages, crowded classes, flawed standardized testing systems, under-qualified teachers, and substandard conditions. \n\nTake this system into healthcare and you see hospitals being overcrowded, leading to people waiting longer for vital services or having to resort to lower quality healthcare since there are not enough good doctors to go around, so the government will probably be hiring bad ones just like they hire bad teachers.\n\nThe problem here is that you're paying so much through taxation for what is basically a shoddy product that could be produced better and cheaper if it were left up to a competitive market. Healthcare is already fully regulated even before obamacare, and all of it has been made unaffordable by the government. The one area where the government doesn't touch, the optometrist area, is the only area the average person can afford because it's legal for private doctors to bid prices down. If you're a public sector doctor, you have to serve these people at these prices, which makes it less desirable to be a doctor.\n\nA little known fact is that the most regulated businesses are healthcare and education, and they are completely unaffordable. The least regulated industry:technology. Computers are arguably just as complex of a field as biology, but one is affordable to the average person and one isn't. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the product, but how it's being economically handled. If you were to switch the political thinking here and say \"Computers should just be given to all\", you wouldn't own an iphone 5 for 200 bucks, you'd own a windows 95 desktop for 5000 if you could even get it.", "I just want to add my two cents that this is a highly debatable topic, OP is worded in a way that presumes something is wrong with objecting to government provided health and education, both sides of the argument are being provided in the form of debate, and OP seems more interested in discussion than learning the other point of view. I don't think this is appropriate for an ELI5. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ohiiu", "title": "in this day and age with vast technological advances, why do we still not have symmetrical charge ports so we don't put it in the wrong way the first time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ohiiu/eli5_in_this_day_and_age_with_vast_technological/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4cn2yg", "d4cn3wq", "d4co512", "d4cq4hk"], "score": [26, 9, 2, 6], "text": [" > why do we still not have symmetrical charge ports\n\nWe do.  It's called [USB Type-C](_URL_0_), and it's poised to become the new de-facto standard for most use cases.  Many new phones, tablets, and laptops already use it.", "We do. USB Type C is reversible. But it can't be backward compatible with conventional USB connections, so it's taking longer to get wide adoption. ", "We do. I used to live in Israel for most of my life and there we have a charge port that's just 2 circular, same-sized holes. Dunno if it's just an Israeli thing or if it's also a European thing (although it probably is) but it did very much confuse me having different sized charging ports when I first moved to the US of A", "Because creating a cable that can be plugged both ways is more expensive: you need either additional pins to create a symmetrical plug, or you can think of some more complex way where the devices detect the orientation of the plug ([like USB C does](_URL_0_)). And all that hassle because some people can't figure out that USB plugs have a logo on it that clearly always goes on top or front of the plug."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C"], [], [], ["https://kevinzhengwork.blogspot.de/2014/09/usb-type-c-configuration-channel-cc-pin.html"]]}
{"q_id": "60ue40", "title": "why is men's sport watched so so much more than women's?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60ue40/eli5_why_is_mens_sport_watched_so_so_much_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df9b0oa", "df9b3qo", "df9b7lw", "df9bw3o", "df9c3nm", "df9d26a", "df9fq3d"], "score": [28, 4, 6, 4, 6, 3, 4], "text": ["Because womens is the same but slightly dialed back. People want to see the fastest, hardest hitting, most amazing spectacles and that usually means men's because of physiological differences making men more able to perform those feats", "In the not-so-distant past, sport in general, and professional sport in particular, was seen as a male endeavour. Women occasionally played games for fun, but only men took it seriously.\n\nThankfully, this viewpoint is rapidly dying out, but women's sport is taking time to catch up.", "Because the male leagues are established and have some of the biggest names behind them. Womens sports are catching up, but the games are almost always scaled down versions of the same thing with lesser known athletes and advertising.", "Women generally lack the athleticism that males do in some sports. Also by nature (as in its in their DNA) men are a bit more aggressive. This makes me s sports generally (again not always) more entertaining to watch. Also some sports such as football are just too dangerous for females and can't be played due to body structure without having the game severely muted in rules and effect.", "The abundance of testosterone simply makes the male body much more effective at physical activity like sports. I'm still a huge fan of woman's UFC though.", "Generally speaking women's sports aren't as good athletically and therefore don't receive the same level of ratings, advertisers, etc.\n\nPersonally, I'm a huge fan of womens beach volleyball during the olympics, much better than mens. And although I'm not a soccer fan I prefer womens soccer to mens soccer because the men spend more time on the ground crying and the women have more balls.", "With a few exceptions like the NCAA or the Olympics, men's sports are rarely just men's sports. They are the \"open\" competition that happens to be filled by men, because of biological realities. Women's sports specifically are for women. It's not surprising to see that the open competition with the best athletes in the world draws more attention than the competition that restricts one half of humans off of the bat, and then puts on an inferior product because of it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4agvxg", "title": "how did people with celiacs disease survive in the 18th and 19th century? i feel like there weren't that many \"gluten free\" options..", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4agvxg/eli5_how_did_people_with_celiacs_disease_survive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d109k2c", "d109tv3", "d10aijr", "d10ap30", "d10asoz", "d10b5yn", "d10ekyd", "d10h22r", "d10hfri", "d10kyze"], "score": [28, 110, 28, 52, 8, 77, 32, 3, 9, 5], "text": ["Simple answer: They probably didn't.\n\nA lot of the things that people have now that are cured by modern medicine or have work-arounds thanks to science weren't survivable in past eras, and people with those problems pretty much just died", "True Celiacs make-up a very very small portion of the population. Were talking like 0.5-1% of the population. They wouldn't have even registered on the radar. Plus a true Celiac living back then would have probably died of something else way more prevalent and life threatening (e.g. nutritional deficiencies, infection) before their condition killed them. ", " >  I feel like there weren't that many \"gluten free\" options..\n\nYou might be surprised.  Grains were often grown as cash crops controlled by a landlord, while the peasants subsisted on perishable vegetables that could only be eaten locally.  That was the whole basis for the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.", "Almost the entire human diet, with the exception of a small family of grains (wheat, barley, rye) native to the Middle East that contain gluten, is naturally gluten free. So celiac disease would have only been an issue in places where wheat, barley or rye was a major part of the diet like Europe (and European colonies around the world), North Africa and the Middle East.\n\nBy the 18th and 19th century many gluten-free staple crops had been introduced to and were being grown in parts of Europe and North America, like potatoes, corn, millet and rice. Though nobody knew about gluten and its health effects on celiac disease, it's possible that some people noticed they only felt bad when they ate bread or pasta but not if they ate polenta/grits or risotto.", "What changed in the 1960's.  What we consider now as wheat is really \"dwarf wheat.\"  On the initiative to cure world hunger, the plant was modified to have double the kernels of wheat to double the produced output.  Unfortunately, a problem happened.  If you have ever seen a movie from the 50's based in farm country during harvest, you would notice bunches of 6 ft tall wheat stalks grouped together.  When the kernels would double, the stalk was too weak and it would tip over, this is called rowing.  The plant was altered again to make the stalk shorter and more rigid, around 12-16 inches.  The two alterations of the plant quadrupled the amount gluten proteins in the wheat which, I believe, is exacerbating the celiac disease issue.", "In reality sour dough bread doesn't have a lot gluten. The Lactobacillus breaks down the parts of gluten that people react to. It's faster modern yeast breads that are particularly high in gluten.", "Keep in mind that much of what you see today advertised as \"Gluten Free\" never had gluten to begin with. Like any newly recognized or popularized health risk, it will spawn much marketing to take advantage of consumers. Can't remember what it was I saw while at the grocery store the other day, but I noticed new packaging saying Now Gluten Free. thought that it was so stupid because it was something that never would have had gluten to begin with!", "They didn't. The keen ones noticed the foods that made them ill but coeliac disease has a very wide presentation. So unless they associated gluten with a certain symptom, they were bound to die from the complications on it. To grasp the idea, Insulin wasn't used formally until half of the 20th century. Prior to that, you just slowly died over weeks or months from high blood sugar", "The connection between celiac disease and gluten was only established in the aftermath of WWII.  Thanks to a German blockade the Netherlands had a severe famine towards the end of WWII.  Doctor Wilhelm Karol Dicke was in charge of a celiac ward at this point and noticed that the mortality rate of his patients actually went *down* during the famine and *up* after normal rations were restored. From this observation Dr. Dicke figured out the connection between gluten and celiac and developed a gluten free diet for people suffering from this disease.\n\nPrior to this there were a bunch of what were basically \"folk remedies\" available for celiac sufferers, some of which worked okay but many of which were basically voodoo.  The general state of medicine was pretty poor prior to the last half of the 20th century, so the situation that people with celiac disease found themselves in would not be so different from many other people who suffered from diseases that are easily treatable in modern times. ", "From personal experience I'd just like to add, some undiagnosed celiacs don't experience severe symptoms or noticeable symptoms at all. It is often when you remove gluten from a celiac's diet, their gut is given time to heal, and they are exposed to gluten again that the most severe reactions occur. Even though some celiacs may not be aware of their disease, due to the lack of symptoms prior to diagnosis, they are still at a much greater risk to develop severe illnesses at a younger age than a non-celiac. I'm not certain how widespread celiac was during the past centuries, but people who may have had it may not have noticed many of the symptoms and may have simply gotten ill and died younger than was to be expected for that time period. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3br75b", "title": "why are passwords shorter than 8 characters easy to crack? (according to snowden)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3br75b/eli5_why_are_passwords_shorter_than_8_characters/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csop1b5", "csop6l7", "csop8ms", "csowhoj", "csowz83", "csoxqr5", "csoy4af", "csozw3p", "csp0ya3", "csp1ijj", "csp1thp", "csp2ymi", "csp3p8n", "csp4a4v", "csp51lw", "csp5ke9", "csp6b9y", "csp7alz", "csp7aor", "csp8wxy", "cspguqp", "cspo9aa", "csprjzp", "csqvjq4"], "score": [154, 29, 1040, 95, 6, 10, 3, 8, 3, 2, 6, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Short passwords have small degrees of entropy. Smaller degree of entropy means that they're easier to guess randomly. Adding numbers and symbols does increase entropy, but it's still way less effective than simply adding more characters.\n\nThere's an xkcd that explains this pretty well, and I'm sure it will be posted 100 times in this thread because of that fact.", "Longer passwords result in exponentially larger sets of combinations brute force hacking programs would need to push through.\n\n8 Characters  >  645,753,531,245,761 (645 Trillion) Combinations\n\n9 Characters  >  45,848,500,718,449,031 (45 Quadrillion) Combinations\n\n10 Characters  >  3,255,243,551,009,881,201 (3 Quintillion) Combinations\n\n\n", "When you add a character to a password, the number of possible permutations goes up exponentially.\n\nLets assume we have a simple password requirement - only upper case letters.  Below are the number of possible passwords based on character count\n\n- 1 character - 26^1 - 26 combinations\n- 2 characters - 26^2 - 676 combinations\n- 3 characters - 26^3 - 17,576 combinations\n- 4 characters - 26^4 - 456,976 combinations\n- 5 characters - 26^5 - 11,881,376 combinations\n- 6 characters - 26^6 - 308,915,776 combinations\n- 7 characters - 26^7 - 8,031,810,176 combinations\n- 8 characters - 26^8 - 208,827,064,576 combinations\n\nSo, even in our simple system, an 8 character password has over 200 billion possible combinations. ~~This is getting beyond a computer's ability to brute force (just keep trying combinations until it gets it right) ability.~~  While this is still within the average computer's ability to crack, you can see how even in our simple system, more characters becomes more difficult\n\n*Edit:  Look, I am not suggesting that an eight-character, upper case letters only password is a good idea or even used by most systems.  I was just creating an easy to understand, ELI5 example of entropy.", "Most of these answers are correct but I'm going to try to put it in more ELI5 terms:\n\nIf a password is long, then there's more possibilities for what that password might be. If it's short, there's less possibilities for what is could be. \n\nIf it's TOO short, then a hacker can just write a program that tries every single possible password until it stumbles across the right one on accident. This is called a \"brute force attack\". \n\nRight now, passwords less than 8 characters are short enough that most regular computers can brute-force them relatively quickly. 8 or more characters and there's too many possible combinations; current-day computers would take a ridiculously long time to brute-force them. ", "Here's an example I can think of.\n\nLet's say you have an apple, an orange, and a banana.\n\nYou can sort these in any order you like to be your password, but if someone tries to sort them they only have to try a little bit to figure out what order you sorted them in.\n\nNow lets say you have 10 bananas, 10 oranges, and 10 apples.\nIf you sort them it's going to take a lot longer to figure out what order you sorted them in.", "think of it like a lock with the numbers you spin around, theres only 3 or 4 sets of 0-9, so you may simply try each and every possibility, sooo 000-999. it may take a few hours but you will find the answer eventually. \n\nbut with computers they may test every combination of letters, numbers, and symbols (!@#$%^ & *), at a very fast pace. so if a password is short you may test every possible answer until you find the correct one in a short enough time that it is still in use, and you do not spend so much money/resources than the password will provide. (meaning if you spend $1000 in time/money/resources, when you get the password, you must be able to use the password to get more than $1000 back) otherwise its just not worth the effort.\n\nnow just because a password is short or really long doesn't make it safer it requires a balance. a password like abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz may seem long complex and easy to remember but a dictionary attack would almost instantly crack this password ( dictionary attacks are common first step in password cracking ). and a password like A!B@C#D%, even though its so short it may be harder to crack than a longer password because it is not in a pre-built dictionary (i presume for argument sake), if it is not in the dictionary (most passwords aren't) then you must either try every possibility like (000,001,002,003,004,005) to eventually find the correct answer. or find another way of overcoming the password security. \n\n", "The comments I've seen so far are wrong.  Yes, length helps but none of you touch on exactly why 8 is key.\n\nThe reason why he mentions 8 characters specifically is due to how Windows hashes passwords.  See the section on Weaknesses here:  _URL_0_\n\ntl;dr:  due to how Windows stores password hashes, 8 is just above the threshold to require another hash.", "Every answer I've seen is correct, but maybe a little more complicated than you're looking for. Let's keep it simple and pretend you can only use the digits from 0 to 9 for your password:\n\n* If you only use one digit, your password only has 10 possible values: 0, 1, 2, ..., 9.\n* If you use two digits, your password has 100 possible values: 00, 01, 02, ..., 99.\n* If you use three digits, you get 1000 possible values: 000, 001, 002, ..., 999.\n* and so on.\n\nSo each character in your password can have ten values, and every time you add another digit the number of possible combinations gets 10 times bigger. That's not a coincidence! Let's try it again, but using *only* lowercase letters and nothing else:\n\n* One letter gives you 26 possible values: a, b, c, ..., z.\n* Two letters gives you 26*26=676 possible values: aa, ab, ac, ..., zx, zy, zz.\n* Three letters bumps that up to 26\\*26\\*26=17,576 values: aaa, aab, aac, ..., zzx, zzy, zzz.\n* and so on.\n\nNow, if you're only using lowercase letters, an 8 digit password can have 208,827,064,576 possible different combinations. Does that sound like a lot? I wrote a little program that can count that high in 37 seconds on my laptop. To a computer - especially a whole bunch of computers working together - that's not very many combinations at all.\n\nBut remember, adding a single letter makes it take 26 times longer! That would take 972 seconds on the same laptop. Another letter would take it 7 hours. Making it 11 letters long would take 7.6 days. 12 letters? 198 days. 13 letters would take 14 years. Bumping your password up to 16 letters would take my laptop 248,000 years, and AppleCare wouldn't even cover that.\n\nWhoa! Using 26 letters makes the time it takes to try all combinations get big a lot faster than if we're using only numbers. What if... we used uppercase letters, lowercase letters, the numbers from 0-9, and all the punctuation you can get by pressing shift and then all the numbers from 0-9? That would give each character in your password 72 possible combinations. If you made a password by picking 1 of those 72 at random, and you did that 8 times, it'd take my laptop 15 days to guess it. That's a lot better than the 37 seconds it would take if you only used lowercase letters.\n\nBut hold onto your seat: if your password was 16 characters long, it would take my little laptop 29,691,578,198,499 **years** to guess it! That's over 2,000 times longer than the whole universe is old!\n\nSo yeah, the time it takes to guess your password grows exponentially with its length. That's totally true. But most people don't appreciate what exponential growth really means, and exactly how quickly it goes from \"I could crack that pretty easily\" to \"wow, we better invent a whole second universe filled with computers if we want to crack it in under a gazillion centuries\".", "Allow me to paraphrase OP.\n\n\"Why do long things take longer to do than short things?\"", "Simplest ELI5 answer I can think of.\n\nImagine the dialing pad on your phone. \n\nGuess my phone number it's only 1 digit. How many guesses did it take you?\n\nGuess my girlfriends phone number, it's 2 digits. How many guesses did it take you?\n\nGuess my bank pin, it's 4 digits. How many guesses did it take you?", "Something I must post in every discussion about passwords:\n\nAt the places where I am prompted for a password, can we please include the same text as the password creation requirements?  Almost 100% of my \"lost\" passwords were remembered the second I logged in to set a new one and saw the criteria.", "Lets say I have a lock on my bike. It has 10 numbers on the dial. If you want to steal my bike, you just have to try each number until you find the unlocking number (7). This doesn't take very long, maybe just a few seconds.\n\nI want to keep my bike, so I get a lock where you have to guess two correct numbers in the right order, and it won't give you any way to know you have one of the numbers right until you get them both right. So now you have to do a LOT more guessing, so my bike is safer. You try them until you get to 73, which unlocks it. That took you a few minutes.\n\nNow, my bike is really nice, so I'm going to get a lock with three numbers to guess! You have to guess and guess and guess until you finally get to 190. You did your guessing in numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc.) so it only took about 10 minutes, but if you would have guessed randomly it would probably have taken quite a bit longer.\n\nI like to leave my bike parked in unlit alleys downtown for days at a time, so I've invested in an eight-level lock. This time you have millions of numbers to guess, so instead you just get a bolt cutter and break my lock.", "For each digit in a basic password,  there are 26 possible letters, 2 cases and 10 possible numbers. So that's a total of 62 possible characters. \n\nFor a 8 digit password, that's 2.18x10^14 possible combinations. Or 62^8.\n\n That would take an impossible amount of time for a person, a shorter, but still long time for a home PC. For a government supercomputer, it would still take a while, but you could still get in. \n\nFor every character, you can multiply the number of possible combinations by 62, so a 9 digit password would take 62 times as long to crack. ", "It was explained to me by Ars Technica in a single image:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEven if your kid doesn't know what \"brute force\" and \"keyspace\" are, the graph is pretty self-explanatory.\n\n[Source](_URL_1_)", "Think of it this way, if you are trying to guess a password, it is about the maximum possible number of passwords that your password can be.\n\nA-Z = 26 upper case letters\na-z = 26 lower case letters\n0-9 = 10 possible digits\nsymbols(~`!@#$%^ & *()_-+={}[]\\|:;\"',. <  > ?/) = about 32.\n\nIf your password is 1 character long, and could be any of 94 possible characters.\n\n2 characters = 94 * 94 or 94^2 = 8836\n3 = 94^3 = 830584\n\nSo as you can see, the number of possibilities grow exponentially.  This is why passwords often require at least 1 upper case, 1 lower, 1 number and 1 symbol, to increase the guess space.  But length also matters.\n\nThe length is determined by how powerful computers currently are.  In 10 years when computers are even more powerful, 8 characters might not be enough, because at that point passwords can be guessed even faster.\n\nThat being said, newer complicated security measures like custom salts per each user will hopefully remove the need for individual users to increase their password exponentially.\n\nIt is also important to mention that this assumes a purely random password.  Humans often base passwords off of real words reduces the guessing space.  And when they appear random, like \"yhnujm\" if you look at the keyboard pattern for this password, you'll see it is anything but random.", "Because of brute force attacks. Brute force attacks work by trying all possible combinations. A person trying all 208,827,064,576 combinations of 8 characters will take over six and a half years at one combo per second working non stop. But a $5000 computer with 3 GPUs can do it in a matter of days. This page from 2013 cites 8 million tries per second using 128 GPUs. That would be under 7.5 hours.\n_URL_0_\n\nConsider hardware keeps getting faster and cheaper and the future doesn't look very private.", "While the rest of the comments have explained the how and why of shorter passwords being cracked, they haven't touched on the logistical side of doing so.  They're easy because they're shorter, simple enough concept to grasp, ansuz07 explains it well.  I'm attempting to put the cost into real world dollars here, so instead of just numbers you can see the real costs associated with it.  \n\nWhat they don't touch on is that for a couple dollars you can use amazon's servers to crack one of those passwords in under an hour (Something like 2 and a half minutes), and for about 1000 dollars(For anyone wondering I managed to get a pair of 7990's for 200 bucks on ebay) I built a machine that could do it in under 30 seconds (making a bunch of assumptions about how the password is stored here, but the scenario I've assumed (unsalted MD5) is unfortunately rather common). \n\nEven if you expand it to all 128 possible characters available, and have an 8 character password, using the numbers provided by oclHashcat (one of the applications that allows you to brute force passwords) with my setup it would only take about a month to crack your password.  And I'm just a dude who stays at home and does this for fun. With 24 of my hash cracking machines, I could crack it in under a day.  \n\nPlus, this doesn't touch on the fact people have publicly accessible tables full of all passwords less than 8 characters that take seconds to search to see if your password is in them.  ", "This is how password security works:\n\nI'm going to give you an empty box and some coloured cubes. Your job is to create a pattern inside the box (so I can't see) and my job is to guess the pattern you created.\n\nI'll start by giving you one red cube. Go on, place it inside the box in any order you want. Done? Great! I'm going to guess that your pattern is... red! Am I right? Yay! Well, that wasn't very fair, was it?\n\nOk, I'll give you another cube. A blue one this time. Go on, place them inside your box. Ready? great! Now, let's see... is your pattern red - >  blue? No? Well, is it now blue - >  red? It is? Great! I'm GREAT at this game.\n\nWhat? Not fair still? Ok then, have a green cube.\n\nOk, so I'm now guessing it could be:\n\n* Red - >  Blue - >  Green\n* Red - >  Green - >  Blue\n* Blue - >  Red - >  Green\n* Blue - >  Green - >  Red\n* Green - >  Red - >  Blue\n* Green - >  Blue - >  Red\n\nIt is one of those? Ha! You can't beat me!\n\nWhat? You want ALL the cubes? But there's 9 of them! That's a lot of combinations... sit tight' this will take a while and I'm a stubborn fella.\n\nwait, what? You're only giving me 3 chances and after that I have to wait an hour before I can try again!? That's not very fair...\n\nWhat? you're increasing your number of cubes to 52? But that's impossible to guess in a few minutes!\n\nAre you... are you mixing stuff?! It was CUBES only! No spheres, pyramids or legos! I'm not playing this game anymore...\n\n---------\n\nYou see? I want to know your password, but you won't tell me what it is, so I have to guess. However, I have an advantage: I know, in advance, what are the elements of your password. In the above example, it's coloured cubes. I know you only have red, green and blue, so the amount of combinations is easily guessable.\n\nThe more options you add, the hardest it gets to guess. This is because there are many possible combinations and orders you could use. Tech-heads call this \"high entropy\". It just means \"lots of possibilities\".\n\nIn the real world, it's more complicated than that:\n\n* Passwords can have PLENTY of characters (at the very least, 52: all lowercase and uppercase letters), so from the start, you have a lot of possibilities to play with, even if your password is only 2 elements in length (still, easy to guess by a computer).\n* Passwords can be encrypted. This is just french for \"modified in a revertible way\". To decrypt (revert) your password, a spy would probably need to know how exactly it was encrypted in the first place, may require a key or know some secret you kept well hidden somewhere else.\n* Passwords don't have to be a single word or gibberish. You could use the chorus of your favourite song, a tongue twister, random words that sound funny together or some other easy thing to remember, but is really hard to guess. My main password is a 28 letter sentence to which I've added a few uppercases, some symbols and a few modifications (like writing \"bcz\" instead of \"because\"). It's pretty hard to guess.\n* Passwords are usually protected by a security guard. Unless stolen, this security guard will keep a strict protocol for anyone trying to guess your password: he won't let more than a few attempts, he'll stop anyone trying TOO fast, he'll let you know someone is failing too many times at guessing your password and ask you to change it, he'll become suspicious and ask the guesser some question to make sure it's a human and not a computer, etc. etc.\n\nSo, by making your password long enough, you're making life so much harder to anyone trying to guess it it just becomes worthless to attempt to guess.", "Because there's only ~260 million common passwords shorter than 8 characters, and even if you asked this question from a smartphone it can count to 260million in a quarter second.\n\nIt takes longer than a quarter second because testing a password is a littler harder than counting, but not much.", "it takes far less time to test every possible character than it does to test an additional character.\n\nIf there are 26 letters in the alphabet, and each can be either uppercase or lower case, then we have 2(26) possible characters for a one character password. If you can test one character a second, then it'll take 2(26)=54 seconds to test all. We'll call this 54 character-seconds. But if the password could be 2 characters, then it'll take 1.48 character-minutes to test all possibilities; 26 character, 2 states, 2 character password is 2(2(26))=2(54)=108=108/60 - 60/60=1 48/60=1.48 char-minutes. Therefore the number of possible characters takes seconds but each addition character in the password takes at least minutes", "This is a stupid question. \"Why are longer passwords more difficult to crack than shorter passwords!?!?11\"", "How long would it take to crack a completely random 20+ character password. I use [Qwertycard](_URL_0_) for all my passwords", "Also, NT LM Hashes on older versions of Windows broke up the password into 7 character chunks for hashing.\n\nHaving a minimum of 8 characters ensured that you needed to break at least two hashes to guess the password.\n\n_URL_0_", "Edward Snowden told Glen Greenwald to assume that the NSA could \"brute force\" the password at 1,000,000,000,000 guesses per second. At that rate it can crack an 8 character password in under a second."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LM_hash"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cracking3-640x480.png", "http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/how-i-became-a-password-cracker/"], [], ["http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/09/new-password-cracking-software-tries-8-million-times-per-second-crack-password.html"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.qwertycards.com"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LM_hash#Security_weaknesses"], []]}
{"q_id": "8kb219", "title": "in the united states, why is soccer such a popular sport for little kids, but not as popular among older kids (high school, college)", "selftext": "I see a ton of youth soccer leagues at local parks. Elementary school aged children grow up playing the sport. It\u2019s popular among both boys and girls, where a sport like football is (with very few exceptions) only played by boys. The phrase \u201csoccer mom\u201d refers to mothers who take their children to sporting events and activities, with soccer being a common one.\n\nOnce you get to the older age groups, like teenagers and young adults, soccer becomes much less popular. Football, basketball, and baseball are the big sports at high schools. They are the revenue generating sports at colleges.The best athletes play these sports. These are the sports where college scholarships are given out to. \n\nWhy such a decline in interest for soccer as kids become older? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kb219/eli5_in_the_united_states_why_is_soccer_such_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dz69n0d", "dz6ap2c", "dz6audb", "dz6chjo", "dz6ehfi", "dz6ln23", "dz6tmz2", "dz7byef"], "score": [31, 5, 47, 7, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["Soccer at a young age is taught as more of a physical activity rather than a defined sport in the US. People here are raised to believe that all you do in soccer is run and kick the ball. The youth levels aren\u2019t taught about proper positioning, shape, attacking, or goaltending. It\u2019s all very rudimentary. In order to learn more and develop as a player you have to be invested enough to seek out those few and far between programs and academies that actually do teach you about the sport.\n\nBecause of that and the popularity of baseball, basketball, and football you lose a lot of potential athletes for soccer. It really is a problem at the youth level, but until there is more interest in the sport here at the top levels, it will never fully adapt.", "Strangely similar in New Zealand, but rugby is the dominant sport. \n\nWe even called it 'soccer' when I was a kid and rugby was footy. I'm not sure about now though, it's been a while since I was home.", "For most people soccer is the cheapest sport to put your kid in as well. Until they move up in skill they need minimal equipment to play. ", "Soccer requires a ball, everything else is cheap or publicly provided. I think that is why soccer is so globally popular. Almost anyone can afford a ball or two between a dozen kids.\n\nAmericans tend to have more disposable income and that turns into more expensive sports.", "So, this is starting to change slowly, but at its most basic level, it is because soccer is not as established in North America. \n\nBecause North America is very isolated from the rest of the world, it developed differently. When football was being established on this continent, it was the Rugby Union game that dominated. Though the game has changed over the past century and a half, the basic structure of the game - scoring points by carrying an egg-shaped ball over a goal line and/or kicking it through a pair of uprights, defense being achieved via bringing the ball carrier to the ground - is shared. But by the time it was able to spread out of the US and Canada, other games had already established dominance (similarly, Australian football, while very popular in Australia, is virtually unknown in the Northern Hemisphere). The same is true in the other direction. By the time that large numbers of soccer playing immigrants crossed the Atlantic, we already had our own football, and soccer wasn't going to displace it. The immigrant communities did play soccer, but it was as much a cultural thing as it was athletic. \n\nWhen I was in high school, I found a copy of the 1959 yearbook, which was the year that the school first fielded a soccer team. It was noted in the blurb about the team that nearly all of the players had started the season having never played the game before. This scenario has an effect on future generations. A parent who doesn't know anything about soccer is less likely to put their child in soccer, and even if they do, they will have to learn if they want to be able to follow their kid's game or talk to them about the sport. As my generation, who grew up playing soccer, are now at the age where we are having children of our own, we are far more likely to choose soccer as an activity for them.\n\nAs for the age drop off, in the US, it is a big thing to keep kids in lots of activities. There's swimming lessons, karate, dance, music, and sports to fill your kid's time with. Sports tend to have defined seasons, and they don't necessarily overlap, so you can put your children in tee-ball in the spring, soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter. That way, they are always busy. Soccer is especially popular for younger children because it is easy to scale the field down based on age, and it is relatively low on contact, so children are less likely to get hurt. Up to a certain point, it is even reasonable to have co-ed programs. Once kids get older, the player base starts to diverge. It's especially noticeable with boys, as the biggest competitor for players is football, which is by and large the province of males. Let's say that most boys who are involved in organized sports play soccer from age 5-9. Once they turn 10, they are old enough for football, so a bunch of those kids will go off to the gridiron. As they get older, kids will start to specialize too. Maybe they play soccer, swim competitively, and take piano lessons. That eats up a huge amount of time, so at some point, a choice has to be made.\n\nThe money aspect is a big deal too. Colleges can and do offer full scholarships for soccer, but there isn't the kind of money in MLS that there is in the NFL or NBA. A good soccer player could try to go to Europe to play professionally, but they end up competing with players who have been playing in an organized club environment that is based around developing future professionals (rather than being just an extracurricular activity) from a very young age and likely started their professional career before age 20, compared to a 21 or 22 year old who is graduating from college, where they practiced and played during the season, but were restricted as to what they could do in the off-season, and also had to balance a full-time course load.", "I thinks it\u2019s about stays. Americans love their sports stats. And advertising breaks. \n\nWhen you play a game like soccer that is mostly uninterrupted and often go with very few goals it\u2019s hard to fit in with how Americans like to enjoy sports. \n\nIt\u2019s also likely that the common \u201ccheating\u201d and the fact that\u2019s it\u2019s \u201cEuropean\u201d may have something to do with it. \n\nA shame really. Fantastic sport. ", "Youth soccer is cheap, easy, and relatively safe. Put a bunch of kids in a field with a ball and tell them to kick it around. It's not really \"soccer\" in the sense of the competitive sport, but it keeps the kids occupied and gets them exercise.\n\nBaseball is more expensive \\(you need balls, bats, protective gear, and a more specialized field\\) and more dangerous \\(kids throwing a small hard ball at each other is not a great idea when they are too young\\) and requires more structure \\(need to teach kids where to stand and how to run the bases etc.\\). T\\-ball offers a safer alternative and was fairly popular when I was young \\(I played both soccer and T\\-ball as a kid\\).\n\nFootball has similar problems to baseball for youth. More dangerous. More rules/structure has to be taught.\n\nBasketball is probably the closest thing to Soccer in this context. Requires a bit more specialized court to play on, and might be too difficult to score for young ones \\(kicking into a big goal is a lot easier than throwing into a small hoop for a kid\\).\n\ntl;dr Soccer is just the most convenient sport for keeping kids occupied. It has little to do with the popularity of the sports for teens/adults.", "I don't think the divide is so much with youth to high school to college as it is between recreational and professional soccer.\n\nHigh school soccer is pretty popular. It's not football in Texas popular, but every high school with an athletic program that I'm familiar with fields a soccer team. \n\nCollege soccer is less popular than college football or basketball, but it's about as popular as any other college sport (wrestling, volleyball, crew, etc). Most universities with an athletic program offer soccer. \n\nOn the other hand, in US pro sports, soccer lags significantly behind football, baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, etc etc etc. \n\nI think the divide you're noticing between youth and teens/college soccer isn't so much that people shun soccer, but that once you are high school age there are a lot more activities available to do. When I was in grade school, there was soccer, karate, ballet, piano lessons, and maybe some other sport appropriate for younger kids like tee ball. By the time I was in high school you could be on the debate team or work on the school paper or play tennis or run track or hold a student government office. And then in college, extracurriculars that aren't connected to a specific career path (for example sports) are drastically de-emphasized for most students. You're not expected to play sports or practice an art form just for fun anymore. And I think that trail off from \"there are only so many kid-appropriate pastimes\" to \"doing any school-organized pastime is discouraged\" is what you're noticing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5ewbrj", "title": "most people who take lsd come out of the experience with the sense that we are all one/interconnected with all living things. what happens in the brain to induce this specific epiphany?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ewbrj/eli5_most_people_who_take_lsd_come_out_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dafmyr8", "dafns4w", "dafo59p", "dafo6ma", "dafoq2i", "dafq134", "dafq42z", "dafq9ep", "dafxhcr"], "score": [15, 3, 29, 11, 22, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I'd be surprised to see too many scientific sources as its a schedule 1 drug and difficult to study. ", "It comes from the idea that the boundary of where you begin and where you end isn't really that clear. Think about poop. Is your poop you? Even when it's inside of you? Does that mean there are portions of space inside your body that aren't you? \n\nWhatever you feel, there be dragons in this line of thought.", "The mechanism of action isn't well understood, but as someone who's done literally a couple hundred hits of LSD lifetime, on high dose experiences you begin to forget who you are and lose a sense of individuality and feel like you're just melting into the universe. There is no longer a \"you\", there is only everything. We are all a part of the universe, just groups of atoms and molecules spit out randomly and perfectly in just a way that we are able to identify ourselves and observe our universe. \n\nAt lower doses there isn't this \"ego death\" as much as you realize that anger is a choice and we are just another animal existing in a spec of dust in a universe grander than we could ever imagine ", "You may want to post this to r/askscience, an ELI5 of this nature will draw a lot of anecdotal evidence.", "It is because the duality between \"you\"  vs. \" the outside world\"  is merely a psychological construct. Taking psychedelics breaks this construct down, which puts you in a state of egolessness. This state is characterised by feeling one with everything.\n\nThe whole idea of \"the self\" as a singular, finite and bounded entity is flat-out wrong. \"The self\"  is an evolutionary mechanism, a model of you as biological machine, one that enhances your survivability. Since it is only a model, it is an imperfect representation of reality. While it is at the core of our being and perceiving the world, it is essentially, an illusion. \n\nIn reality, there is no duality: everything is interconnected and there is no boundary where \"you\" stop and the external world begins. Psychedelics can be a reminder of this.\n\nSource: Philosophy major that has taken load of psychedelics", "We don't really know. As someone mentioned its a schedule 1 drug so no studying can be done on specific brain pathways. \n\nWe do know:\nLSD-25 activates 5HT (serotonin) receptors directly on the target cell. \nthe overall response to this activation is dependent on what part of the brain you are activating or where the receptors are located, LSD activates receptors on raphe neurons that project all over the brain but in higher concentrations in the thalamus (known as our perception modulator, it filters incoming stimuli and passes it along) LSD binds to receptors, activates them and makes the thalamus freak out. \nThis is the mechanism of perceptual alterations and may be \nresponsible for interconnected experiences. \n\nLSD is a psychedelic, if you are looking for experiences of unity, dissociative hallucinogens (PCP, Ketamine) will give you a stronger effect.  \n\n", "In my opinion it's a fundamental truth that under just the right conditions can bubble to the surface. It's something we are for the most part blocked off from feeling in our day to day lives. I know it sounds strange considering how \"out there\" one can get on the stuff, but to me it's like a brief moment of raw clarity, that once experienced can deeply affect your perspective/world view. Potentially for the rest of your life. It's not for everyone, and the same truth can be realized through different means I'm sure. However, for me and a lot of people psychedelics like LSD have been the most accessible and reliable way to get that feeling. YMMV.", "When I took acid I felt an overwhelming disconnect between myself and my body, and could see other people as spiritual beings trapped in physical bodies.  This made me believe that we are all connected as we are all on a path that we cannot change due to our physical trappings. I understood that I am part of God because he is everything and anything and this world is only a collection of senses to us all, that is held together with spiritual glue, so to speak. The interconnectedness of everything was highly apparent in that it's obvious but subtle. ", "There is a part of the brain that processes all sensory info called the thalamus. It chooses the info that is relevant and relays them as senses as most of us experience. LSD lowers activity in the thalamus, and some theorize that this allows the user to break down the barriers they usually experience when perceiving the world around them, and that it is this that gives them a sense of connectivity they have not experienced before.\n\nFor more I would check out the LSD podcast on stuff you should know. Very informative stuff."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3atqp9", "title": "how do you sail into the wind?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3atqp9/eli5_how_do_you_sail_into_the_wind/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csfudjg", "csfv2g2", "csfwbfu", "csfz7iz", "csfz9eu", "csg8qvw"], "score": [9, 5, 5, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["You don't. You use a process called \"tacking\" which means you sail a zig zag pattern to get where you are going. Much like a switch back when climbing a steep hill. Putting the bow (front) of the boat straight into the wind puts you \"in irons\" (i.e. the sails are not catching the wind and you don't go anywhere).\n\nEdit: I've also heard the process called \"beating.\"", "You can sail to a limited degree (both senses of the word can apply here) against the wind. The sail can catch the wind at certain angles to go basically sideways, like east while the wind blows north, in a similar way to how you can hit a ball in the game of pool/billiards. With steering the boat can get a few more degrees and sail slightly against the wind. Zig zags happen because the movement is mostly sideways (like west or east for the boat while the wind is blowing north or south) .", "Most modern sail boats can sail within about 45\u00b0 of the wind.  Square-riggers can only come within about 60\u00b0.  The closer you try to go to the wind, the slower you sail, so there's a skill in knowing the angle to use to make best progress upwind.  Go too close and the sails flap about and you stop.\n\nIf you want to go directly upwind you need to alternately sail to starboard (right) and to port (left) of the wind.  When you change direction, the most common way these days is to turn briefly directly into the wind, hoping your momentum will keep you going until you can start sailing on the other side; this is called \"tacking\".  Alternatively, you can turn away from the wind, through a bigger angle; this is called \"wearing\".  Either way, you're \"beating\" upwind.\n\nWhen you're sailing to the starboard of the wind you're said to be on the port tack, because in square riggers, the rope holding the bottom corner of the sail forward is called the \"tack\".  The port side tack is in use sailing to the starboard of the wind and the starboard side tack is in use sailing to the port side of the wind.", "If you try to sail directly into wind you will be in a \"No Go Zone\".  To avoid this you sail at the Close Hauled position (This area is as close to the no go zone as you can get) with your sails trimmed in tightly.  If you are in a close Hauled position but want to be on the other side of the wind you will have to go through the \"No Go Zone\" using the Tacking maneuver.  Once that is accomplished you can take up the close Hauled position on the opposite side of the wind.  \nIf you ever need to stop a sail boat suddenly the best thing to do is to put the Bow of the boat directly into the wind.\n\nCheck this [page](_URL_0_) out for more info.  \n", "When sailing into the wind a yachts sail works exactly like an aeroplanes wing rotated through 90 degrees. What generates the forward momentum is the sideways lift being created by the aerofoil shape of the sail. This is  aided by the keel cutting through the water, which helps convert this sideways  lift into forward momentum.\n\nThe sail speed record is currently held by [Sailrocket 2](_URL_0_) which can sail at about 75 mph in 29 mph winds. This is possible because rather than just being blown along, the boat is powered by the lift its sail generates.\n\nSailing boats can only sail so close to the direction the wind is coming from though. Any closer than about 45 degrees from the wind (less for high tech race yachts) and the sails will stall, stopping the boat in the water.\n\nEdit: Link to [Sailrocket 2 taking the record](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: 29mph winds not 20mph , its good, but not that good!\n\n\n", "Oooh finally a question I can answer!\n\nShort answer is: you don't. If you point your sailboat straight in to the wind it's called \"getting caught in irons\". Most often your boat just drifts to a stop but sometimes the wind will actually push you backwards if you're light enough. \n\nIf you want to reach an upwind destination you have to do something called \"tacking\", which is basically just a fancy term for \"do zigzags.\"\n\nSo how small of an angle can you get to the wind before you get stuck in irons? It depends on a lot of factors - the wind speed, how light your boat is, how good you are at trimming your sails, etc. In the environment I usually sail in (very light 15 ft boat on a lake with average 5-8knot wind) I can usually safely tack about 20ish degrees in to the wind. I know sailors much better than me who can do better though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_sail"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas_Sailrocket", "http://www.sailrocket.com/node/400"], []]}
{"q_id": "3k10jn", "title": "What language did Siddhartha Gautama/Buddha speak?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3k10jn/what_language_did_siddhartha_gautamabuddha_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuua0w4"], "score": [32], "text": ["According to Buddhist tradition he spoke Pali, a Pakrit from northern India in which most early Buddhist scripture first appears, before the rise of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit as the liturgical language.\n\nThis is despite the Buddha's own urging of priests to teach in the local vernacular (sakay\u0101 niruttiy\u0101), instead Pali was preserved as a language of faith throughout much of the Buddhist world, particularly among Theravada Buddhism.\n\nIn reality, the Buddha was almost certainly multilingual, as a member of the Kshatriya caste he would most likely have been literate in Sanskrit, which was a language of prestige and learning, related to and sharing many features with the Pakrits or \"vernacular\" languages. \n\nMost of my information comes from Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler. It's a very interesting book, although as it is an attempt to overview language spread and change across the world over a very long timeframe it does probably gloss over some details."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32bjc5", "title": "Has a gang war in a city ever become embroiled in a true war or insurgency?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32bjc5/has_a_gang_war_in_a_city_ever_become_embroiled_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq9uhbz", "cq9vx1p", "cqa6tn5"], "score": [58, 27, 6], "text": ["To some extent, you can count the Nika Riots in Constantinople as an example of this. At the heart were the two big groups of chariot racing fans, the Blues and the Greens. These two groups were much bigger than just racing though, as they were also street gangs, and in some interpretation, proto political parties. They often rioted among themselves, but during the Nika riots, the two sides sort of found common ground in opposition to the policies of Emperor Justinian I, and the riot turned into a general revolt against the emperor. ", "We were never technically at war with Libya in the '80s, but we used [military response](_URL_1_), sanctions etc. against Moammar Qaddafi and his state-sponsored terrorism.  Everyone else here can decide if that counts.\n\nAt that time, one of the most powerful gangs in the history of Chicago was at their peak:  El Rukn (~~Islamic~~ Arabic for \"pillar\" or \"foundation\").  They had gotten powerful enough that they were [influencing local politics](_URL_2_), campaigning for then-mayor Jane Byrne, contributing to aldermen Ed Vrdolyak and Bobby Rush, and finally planning on running one of their own as an alderman.  In 1986, El Rukn leader Jeff Fort and 4 others were [convicted of contracting](_URL_0_) with Libya for the purpose of committing domestic terrorism (Fort's conviction was the [first of its kind in the US](_URL_3_)).\n\nEl Rukn was styled by Fort as an orthodox Islamic group but it bore more resemblance to black nationalism or Nation of Islam and was, in the end, a street gang albeit a disproportionately powerful one.  This is probably not exactly what OP was looking for but historically when one thinks \"gangs\" one does not have to necessarily be from the US to draw the correlation with the concept in major US cities, especially Chicago with its historic ties to organized crime.\n\nEDIT removed unnecessary editorializing", "In Detroit during the late 1960s until the early 1970s, there was arguably a relative level of insurgency, kicked off by the 1967 Detroit Riots and the spread of the Black Power Movement.  A lot of the militants in Detroit that were members of groups like the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party were drawn from local gangs.  Substantial income to the social programs pioneered by local militants (especially the BPP) came from robbing heroin houses in the city, which itself was a function of many of the armed militants formerly being stick-up boys who got their day-to-day income through this method in the first place.  \n\nSource: Williams, Yohuru.  Lazerow, Jama.  \u201cLiberated Territories: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party.\u201d  Duke University Press.  2009.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-10-31/news/8603210871_1_el-rukns-black-p-stone-nation-street-gang", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_United_States_bombing_of_Libya", "https://books.google.com/books?id=M01XXY9Dk74C&amp;pg=PA224&amp;lpg=PA224&amp;dq=el+rukn+influence+on+chicago+politics&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=WnNuElI1K8&amp;sig=-_FGKXkTjIC_Q4qemY-fijhsKbM&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=D5UqVZS9F4uuogTCvYH4Cg&amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&amp;q=el%20rukn%20influence%20on%20chicago%20politics&amp;f=false", "http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-1988/The-Making-of-Jeff-Fort/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2zbh5r", "title": "the us spends more money than any other country on education. why does the us continue to lag behind other developed countries in spite of our (more than generous) education budget?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zbh5r/eli5_the_us_spends_more_money_than_any_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cphdzf9", "cphe5md", "cphei5s", "cpheif1", "cphkxl5", "cphkyf6", "cphncsi", "cphnttj", "cphsigf", "cpi135s"], "score": [3, 23, 2, 15, 11, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Is that more per student, per capita or simply more than other countries in total? Are we talking higher education alone or primary and secondary education too? ", "If you look at [spending per student](_URL_0_), we're actually quite low, wedged between Poland and Romania.\n\nThere's also bureaucracy, standardized testing, and general teacher apathy caused by the profession being under perpetual assault by the broader public culture.\n\nSource: The World Bank for statistics, and I work in education at an American school.", "I assume you're looking at reports like [this one](_URL_0_). A couple of things to note about that study: it includes spending by students and parents, not just the government, and it includes college. The numbers are probably skewed, therefore, by our ludicrous higher-education costs.", "Looking at % of GDP spent on primary education, the US is not really that remarkable. We're comparable with other stable nations like Italy, Japan, Israel, Germany, and France. \n\nHow much value we're getting for that is another complicated question, but the continued per-capita GDP growth of the US - which must rely on school graduates as \"raw material\" is not expected to decline anytime soon.\n\nWe're the third-largest country in the world in terms of population, behind China and India. The per-capita income of a US resident is nearly 10 times that of someone in China.\n\nIf you compare the GPI of [various contries](_URL_0_) you will find that the amount they pay to educate a student **compared to average personal income** is actually surprisingly consistent, and - to my reading - says the US is getting a hell of a deal when taking into account the future incomes of the students we graduate.\n\n", "There are several reasons that higher spending doesn't always translate into better outcomes:\n\n* Underlying social problems (poor nutrition, unstable home life, low SES, lack of sleep, untreated medical conditions) affect how much students can take in, learn, and utilize. These things are factors from fetal development onwards (brain development depends on proper nutrition), and there are large segments of US society which may be overweight but are nonetheless not getting the nutrition and social support needed to grow and develop properly. \n\n* Cultural factors - the US has a profoundly anti-intellectual culture, glorifying athletes and businesspeople rather than those who devote themselves to knowledge. We look down on teachers (those who can, do; those who can't, teach), and in many states, only require teachers to have an education degree, rather than a degree in the subject they are teaching (this is not necessarily bad for those teaching younger students, but can be problematic once you get past elementary school). \n\n* Our schools are structured to teach compliance and make good workers, rather than developing creative thought or even fact-based knowledge. We focus on obeying rules (dress code, zero tolerance, don't be late for class) and observing a strict schedule (move to the next class at the bell, not when you're through with the material) - these things make good workers, but they don't necessarily reward thinking (and sometimes discourage it - if you're stuck working on a problem and the bell rings, you have to give up and move along, rather than getting the reward that comes from solving it). \n\n[Washington D.C. spends more per student on K-12 education than the rest of the country ](_URL_0_)(PDF, page 26 and 29), partially because they have fewer students than most states, but also because many of the public school students have low SES. Other states, like Mississippi/Alabama/Arkansas/Missouri, don't spend nearly as much but also have terrible education outcomes. \n\nThat said, it also depends how you measure education spending. If you're throwing college costs in, you're going to skew the numbers high for the US, because it costs a lot to go to college here, and the state isn't paying all that much of the costs anymore. If you measure state funding, you're leaving out places that use local tax $$ to fund schools (and thus have very wealthy and very poor districts). \n\nIt's also very difficult to compare countries across even uniform testing measurements, since populations differ so much - the US has much higher social inequality than Finland does; is it really fair to compare our education scores directly knowing that the US has many more students who face challenges due to home life (and not the educational system directly)?", "There's always the question of what do you teach kids, some states teach \"science\" from a very religious and strict way, this will mean that later on these students won't be as likely to get into college or score well against foreign counter parts.", "TL;DR Fix funding inequalities and watch our test scores catch up to the rest of the world!\n\nPeople make the mistake all the time of conflating education spending with federal education spending.\n\nThe Fed government spends only 0.8% of GDP on education. It spends around 3.8% on the military. \n\nStates and municipalities chip in the other 5%GDP or so that we spend.\n\nMake no mistake, this is a huge number. It also means jack squat for test scores if the money isn't spread evenly across school districts. So guess what? It isn't at all. \n\nStates and municipalities do a horrible job of distributing money evenly to school districts. We fund schools in an extremely disproportionate manner. 23 states spend more per pupil on rich pupils than poor pupils. Let that sink in. Taxpayers spend more, in 23 states, to educate the children of the rich.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nLive in an economically depressed area? Good freaking luck finding a decent public elementary school for your kid.\n\nI can't think of another first world country that concedes so much decentralized power to its states and counties for education. \n\nIt comes down to two major issues: \n\n1) Poor school districts are a huge drag on education scores because their districts barely have enough money for facilities and salary, let alone technology. The richer districts are essentially Scrooging their way to more tax dollars and hoarding good staff, equipment and buildings. (Performance-based funding only exacerbates this problem. Telling a school it won't get more money if its students don't perform well in an already unfair system of funding creates a predictably bad outcome.) \n\n2) A modest attempt at creating national standards for education has failed miserably. States HATE federal education intervention. Don't know why really. Every other country I can think of with a decent standard of living uses their national government to manage education.", "There's a few flaws with this rationale. First the assumption is, if you have more funding you get better education. These two things are not really related, see all kinds of statistical data on poor nations doing well in this area, failed funding in developed nations in education etc. There's a lot of precedent for this.\n\nSecondly we can not look at education as a stand alone entity.  Culture is a complex sociopsychological system. Many many factors may drive the quality of education, not just the methods and abilities of the educational institution, but also the values and expectations of a culture, the ideology behind it, the current paradigm of the culture as far as education and its goals and so forth. You couldn't even ignore less sociological factors like diet and health, the biological aspects of the environment.There is literally an infinite, but still examinable number of factors.\n\nIn the specific case of the USA I think its a huge cultural problem. Peoples values, expectations, morals and world view are getting more and more skewed. To put it differently, people are scared and confused and don't know what to do. The problem is, that this happens on every level of society and the ramifications of this are huge. \n\nThe rampant materialism also doesn't help. We rear people to be obedient workers who's main value is production, consumption and material gain. When you do this at the expense of all other facets of humanity you get something that's oddly out of balance.\n\nI've only given a few examples, but this is a very complex issue.\n\nThe main problem with modern society is that we look at aspects of it (education, health, politics etc) as separate entities. Thus when symptoms arise, in our overzealous quest for productivity, instant solutions and instant gratifications, we try to cure those instead of realizing the problem lies deeper and not in the symptom. This creates a whole new set of problems and unforseen consequences. \n\nIts not simple. That's why we have a hard time as humans. Its not simple and we lack the wisdom to recognize this. Nothing stands alone it will always be part of a system. If your  culture is healthy so will be your educational system, if its corrupt, twisted, ill or confused it will manifest symptoms of this illness on every level of society.", "The truth is we **don't** really lag behind most other countries. The thing is, many other countries when testing students for international rankings, only test or submit the best, where as the US submits almost every score. Adjusting for socio-economic factors, US students tend to perform as well or sometimes better as most other countries, and comparing specific states (NY, Mass.) that are strong on education, to other countries, we can see they perform very well too. \n\n[This](_URL_0_) article explains it very well.\n\nAnother example was the recently released technology literacy exam. The article posted to reddit stated US scores were 'abysmal'. Yet if you looked at the data; the spread for most of the top countries was within 10-15% and the US, while toward the lower end of the top countries, was within 5% of most other western nations. I would not call 5% 'abysmal'\n", "At least in higher ed, most of the money goes to the administrators and sports. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-first&amp;sort=desc"], ["http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/"], ["http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries/US--XS?display=default"], ["http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf"], [], ["http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/"], [], ["http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "4mohk8", "title": "how to television production companies produce and edit a memorial look back on the life of a celebratory who recently died so soon after the death?", "selftext": "Do they have pre-edited programs prepared early when they hear people are very ill or is it possible to create an hour long program in a day or so?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mohk8/eli5_how_to_television_production_companies/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3x1grr", "d3x1osa", "d3x1tc3", "d3x2bv2", "d3x2ont", "d3x5qmg"], "score": [13, 16, 11, 8, 7, 3], "text": ["They have much of the footage ready to go in advance. They don't necessarily even wait for someone to fall ill. ", "The pieces are pre-recorded. The BBC regularly practices high profile deaths (i.e. The Queen)", "As morbid as it might seem, when a celebrity gets older or is in poor health, news organizations make these memorials in advance.\n\nThis [famous SNL sketch](_URL_0_) makes light of this practice.", "They pre make them for celebrities. I know Fox News updates the \"Video Obits\" every 6 months. Then all they have to do is tack on the cause of death and it's ready to go. ", "It's very common to keep obituary stories or videos for famous people. In most cases, they go through and update them about once a year. Then, when the celebrity dies, all they have to do is add in what happened since the last time they updated this.\n\nThis has been a standard practice in journalism for over a century.", "In journalism it's quite common to prepare stories in advance if you know something is likely to happen. What you read the day after an election in the newspaper may have been written before the election even took place. Sometimes, they even get [published by mistake](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=566_1172267796"], [], [], ["https://twitter.com/bengreenman/status/670375731373936640/photo/1"]]}
{"q_id": "1qe0wv", "title": "What's the advantage of using multiple cells with a lower voltage over one higher voltage cell?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qe0wv/whats_the_advantage_of_using_multiple_cells_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdc2kmo"], "score": [2], "text": ["Sometimes it's not an advantage, but required in order to hit the required voltages. Lead Acid batteries like in a car, have 6 cells in them. Each cell puts out +2 Volts, so you need 6 of them in series to reach 12V."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6cytul", "title": "why can egg whites be used raw in cock tails without risk of food poisoning?", "selftext": "Saw this done in a documentary I was watching, really confused by how it works. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cytul/eli5_why_can_egg_whites_be_used_raw_in_cock_tails/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhyfi9t", "dhyge3w", "dhymbo8"], "score": [16, 49, 5], "text": ["It all can be to the best of my knowledge since alcohol kills the Germs. Source: been making eggnog from scratch for five years.  \n\nEdit... Germs not Germans Hahahaha fuck! ", "Only about 1 in 20,000 eggs in the US contain Salmonella so eating raw or under-cooked eggs it's minor calculated risk.   In addition, the whites themselves are not very suitable for bacteria growth.  ", "If you are buying a cocktail at a bar then it's most likely that they are using pasteurized egg whites out of a box.  The pasteurization kills bacteria and makes it safe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2556xb", "title": "PhysicsDid the black hole in the center of Milky Way already \"swallow\" the the gas cloud that was supposed to go nearby ?", "selftext": "I watched this documentary recently _URL_0_, its from 2003 and they said around 2013 a black hole should \"be swallowing\" a gas cloud and the astronomers could get a good look at it.\nI googled it and this is the newest info I got (march 2014) _URL_1_\nDoes anyone have any interesting info about this ? Thanks", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2556xb/physicsdid_the_black_hole_in_the_center_of_milky/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chdtpad"], "score": [2], "text": ["There were a bunch of papers about it, I'll link them: \n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmOY-hYHq40", "http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/massive-gas-cloud-collide-black-hole-get-watch-live/"], "answers_urls": [["http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.0349.pdf", "http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4386.pdf", "http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.1374.pdf", "http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/436/3/1955.full"]]}
{"q_id": "h6ty8", "title": "Which material has the highest power to weight ratio when used as a spring? ", "selftext": "In the construction of quite large springs (a clockspring) in the order of several KG of weight, what is the most efficient material interms of power stored in the spring to weight of the spring?\n\n\nIs there a list of materials somewhere that has the apprx. amount of Joules one can store in the material when used as a spring?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h6ty8/which_material_has_the_highest_power_to_weight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1t13ej"], "score": [7], "text": ["Making a few assumptions, the maximum energy stored per unit mass is 0.5 * \u03c3^2 / \u03c1E\n\nSo you want a material which is extremely strong (yield stress \u03c3), but not too dense (\u03c1) and not too stiff (Young's modulus E). By this metric, fibers such as Kevlar come out way ahead of metals and ceramics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3f595e", "title": "why sheep are symbol of innocence, while goats are symbol of the devil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f595e/eli5_why_sheep_are_symbol_of_innocence_while/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctle0p8", "ctle4d2", "ctle8ew", "ctljqzq", "ctlmzwl", "ctln0hi", "ctln6ar", "ctlpi4e", "ctlv1m9", "ctlvfle", "ctlz6w9", "ctm9b94", "ctmeiir"], "score": [28, 510, 12, 53, 2, 2, 6, 5, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Because sheep are cute and woolly. Goats have the weirdest eyes and behaviors and you get a bad feeling when they watch you.\n\nEDIT: also goats have the weirdest screams which can freak you out", "Sheep are a metaphor for good men that follow God.  They're cute, harmless  &  generally do what they're told but they occasionally do something stupid, get themselves into trouble  &  need help.  They're safe as long as they stay under the watch of the shepard.\n\nGoats, OTOH, are obstinate, uncontrollable  &  do what they damned well feel like - even if that means eating tin cans.  They reject all authority and insist on going their own way, regardless of what's good for them.  This, as a counterpoint to the sheep, nicely ties into the story of how Satan rebelled against God.", "Horns. Also, have you ever met a goat? They're horrible", "In the pagan religion, horns and antlers are associated with fertility, and the male aspect of divinity. Horned gods were then taken as the go-to image for 'devil', to help provide negative connotations for the established native religions Christianity had to compete with.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR \"Your god isn't a god of your religion, he's the devil of mine!\"", "Traditionally, goats were the symbol of lust rather than the devil. \n\nHowever, I suspect it may have something to do with the popularity of goats as livestock during the time most of these religious texts were made. They probably witnessed all manner of genetic mutation and deformity, and a peasant population could relate to this use of symbols because they had goats at home. ", "Have you seen goat eyes?", "We actually had a lesson about this last week in church (I teach a youth class for the LDS church).  And the lesson was based on Matthew 25:32.  For a visual lesson, we watched these two clips and compared animals...I think they liked it.  Then we talked about a whole bunch of ways to be nice and serve others.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n", "I think after watching this video you will no longer question that goats are evil: _URL_0_ \nIt shows the true nature of the goat. ", "Sheep = dumb, stupid, wandering beasts with a usually gentle disposition.  There's a great book called \" [A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23](_URL_0_) \" where he discusses what sheep are like.  I think he goes too far in trying make the analogy work, though that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong.  Best example of how sheep are sheep - they are so top-heavy with all their wool that they can actually fall over and get stuck on their back like a turtle.  They stay stuck like that and can die within a matter of hours due to gas buildup in their gut or something.  Add heat of the day and it gets worse.  Other sheepy thing: Shepherds the world over will break the leg of a sheep that stray too far or do not respond to the shepherd's voice.  They then have to carry the sheep around with them until the leg heals.  This stops the sheep from running off cliffs (which they often do), and it allows the sheep to learn the shepherd's voice/trust the shepherd, etc.\n\nGoats, like others have said, are jerks.  Generally.  \n\nStory from a missionary friend - On a mission trip, the people in the village were making the missions team dinner.  The men and women on the team were always asked if they would like to assist, and they usually agreed.  This involved the women getting to actually butcher a chicken or two on a daily basis - new for all of them - but the people in the village decided to make stew from goat and lamb one night.  So, my friend was asked to butcher them and he agreed.  The goat went first.  It was a small, young one, and that thing fought while being chased, fought while caught, fought while it bled out, fought until death.  Then the lamb went.  Didn't need to be chased.  Didn't disagree with being picked up.  When my friend laid the lamb on the table, on its side, it didn't fight or move.  It didn't even make a sound when it was cut.\n\nNot to get all religious, but: [Isaiah 53:7](_URL_1_)\n\nHe was oppressed and afflicted,\n    yet he did not open his mouth;\nhe was led like a lamb to the slaughter,\n    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,\n    so he did not open his mouth.", "Sheep are more a symbol of blind ignorant conformity, than innocence.  Or is this the modern take?", "Less serious response but true: \n\nIf you've ever spent time around a goat, you'll know. They're fucking terrifying assholes and they're smart. \n\nWe had a goat at my horse stable and I despised that thing. It was always trying to do evil to us. It used to be tied to a tree sometimes with a long rope as a tie. God forbid anyone get between it, the rope, and the tree because it was always waiting to start running around the tree immediately wrapping your legs up in the rope, purposely trying you up so become entangled and stuck. Then it would come at you with its head and rear up at you in defeat. You could hardly get near it even to feed it. When it came time to bring it in, it'd drag you all the way there but not before getting severe rope burn on your hands. The asshole even escaped its tether one time and tied up a fucking pony causing severe burns and injuries to the poor pony's legs. \n\nFuck that goat. Evil, ugly, soulless piece of shit that contributed nothing- I have no idea why the barn owner kept it at all.", " > The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.\u201d\n \n Terry Pratchett Small Gods", "A lot had to do with the Greeks. Satyrs were notorious for being horny and agressive, often painted as mechievious or downright malevolent. When Christianity went to Greece they made that form the symbol of the devil, while demonizing the pagan religions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_God#Theories_of_historical_origins"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFt7VeKRfj0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10S0-hgl_38"], ["https://youtu.be/CQ0gU3hzqzU"], ["http://www.amazon.com/Shepherd-Looks-Psalm-23/dp/0310274419", "https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+53:7&amp;version=NIV"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "30vy1j", "title": "how did this person get in to my iphone?", "selftext": "I accidentally left my iphone 4 at a coffee shop. Someone called me saying that they had my phone - they had called my friend first and got my home number (didn't have my home phone saved as a contact since no one ever uses it). \n\nMy phone is password protected (pw that no one would guess within the allowable number of tries because it is more complicated than the basic 4 # sequence), so I'm wondering how someone could access my private information without it. I'm probably just a tech dummy lol ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30vy1j/eli5how_did_this_person_get_in_to_my_iphone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpwcatd", "cpwcsl8", "cpwdk9f", "cpwfe41", "cpwfzsq", "cpwnpx7"], "score": [31, 14, 48, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["You can use siri when the phone is lock.. Call home, Call dad, Call last  etc... \n", "if you made a missed call to your iphone, it shows a notification on the screen saying there is a missed call from this number, all they have to do is swipe to the number to the right and it calls it automatically.", "I don't use an iPhone, but my Android has 'emergency contacts' that can be called whilst the phone is locked. Do iPhones have an equivalent of this, that you might have setup in the past and forgotten about?", "Why didn't you ask the good citizen that returned your phone instead of Reddit?", "If you want high security:\n- disable Siri while locked\n- disable notification centre while locked\n- disable control centre while locked\n- disable lock screen notifications\n\nYour phone will be much more secure, though also less convenient.  In this case for example, you might not have gotten your phone back.  (Turning on Find my iPhone would let you find the finder and send them a message though)", "Or...you could ask that person after you buy them a coffee for getting your phone back to you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8fq8hm", "title": "due to time dialation, are there places in the cosmos where the universe is only minutes old instead of 14 billion years?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fq8hm/eli5_due_to_time_dialation_are_there_places_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dy5ndqw", "dy5ngtx", "dy5u47x", "dy5upnx", "dy5uya9", "dy5wny2", "dy5wro0", "dy5xgn2", "dy5xmhd", "dy5xoxq", "dy5xqsq", "dy5yhyr", "dy5yqmg", "dy5z6q5"], "score": [1500, 549, 70, 30, 12, 3, 8, 3, 88, 6, 832, 2, 2, 20], "text": ["Theoretically, there are such places (relative to our frame of reference). However, we can't see them because the universe was not [transparent](_URL_0_) until about 400 thousand years after the big bang, or the universe was expanding faster than the speed of light at the time.\n\n---\n\nEdit: I probably mistook the question. My answer talks about the appearance of the universe due to the time it takes for photons to reach us. But time dilation is to do with relativistic effects such as matter moving relative to each other in actual space, or regions of high gravity.", "Minutes is actually quite a tricky timescale - primordial black holes could conceivably have formed before that, around 1 second after the big bang. About 3 minutes to 20 minutes in, the universe is cool enough for nucleons (protons, neutrons) to form, and dense enough to fuse them into heavier elements, but it's still opaque to light. After 20 mins, it's no longer dense enough to support fusion, but remains opaque for basically the next 377,000 years.\n\nWhy am I going on about opacity? Well, to get something that is still, subjectively, minutes after the big bang, we need something travelling at so close to lightspeed that it basically has to be a massless particle, but they're all being absorbed and reemitted, so I don't think they cut it.\n\nThe only thing I can think of is to assume primordial black holes exist, and have a photons orbit at the event horizon without being eaten until the black hole evaporates slightly after the 377,000 year mark, then it can begin its timeless journey across the newly transparent universe. With luck, it wouldn't hit anything, and would still be flying now, a particle whose perspective has the big bang mere minutes ago.\n\nEdit: the Cosmic Microwave Background, the earliest photons we're aware of, are the legacy of the process that made the universe transparent at 377000 years in - neutral atoms forming rather than plasma. The neutral atoms were still carrying a lot of energy, which they shed as photons in what must have been an incredible show. ", "The Big Bang isn't like an explosion at one point in space. Instead, it happened everywhere at the same time. You could maybe say \"everywhere\" was all at one point then, but it's unclear how physics works in that situation. Distant galaxies are moving away because space itself is expanding, not because they were flung away by an explosion.\n\nThere are places where, if you were able to observe light from them, you would see them as they were when the universe was only minutes old. But you can't say that they really are only a few minutes old now. Also, due to conditions at the time you can't observe them.", "I would suggest watching the episode of Stargate SG-1 titled \"A Matter of Time\" (S2 Ep15) because it illustrates the concept pretty well.", "I can never wrap my head around any of this. As much as I want too. I\u2019ve read tons of books and still get confused.  I even just read NDT\u2019s new book and sorta got a understanding of psychics. My question is so it all started at a single point in the universe, correct? The bang happened. And space started expanding outward? And has continued to do so since then? So basically the beginning of time itself is out there? But just super far away from us? And we\u2019re unable to see it? ", "So wait, does that mean there could be places \"older\" than where we are ? I've heard there's a theory that our universe is inside a blackhole, could that mean outside of said blackhole more time has passed ?", "It's because of the fixed speed of light. \n\nAccording to the rules we discovered when measuring magnetic fields (Maxwell\u2019s equations and Lorenz invariance), electric fields have to travel at a fixed speed regardless of the speed of anything else. Photons are a kind of wave in the electric field (electric and magnetic fields are really the same and relativity is what causes magnetic fields too). This is the speed of light.\n\nBut that\u2019s confusing. If you're on a train going nearly the speed of light and then flip on a flashlight, it seems like either you would perceive the speed of light as slower relative to your fast speed or your speed gets added to the speed of light and a stationary observer would disagree about the speed of light. But the equations say neither happens. Somehow both observers would see the speed of light the same relative to themselves. But are the equations right?\n\nMeasurements like the Michaelson-Morely experiment seem to back this up. When lasers are fired North-South and compared with lasers fired East-West (adding the rotational speed of the earth, roughly 1,000 mph) there isn't a difference in measured speed of light at all. \n\nHow can this be? Well Einstein figured out that of you do the math (simple geometry really) the implication is that a bunch of really counter-intuitive things happen to allow light to stay a fixed speed. *Space itself warps* to accommodate a fixed speed of light relative to all observers. \n\nOne of these warping effects happens in gravitational fields. At the big bang, things were really really compressed, so there was a lot of gravity. As the universe expanded, some parts remained dense with high gravity. Since space was compressed and really space and time are related just like electricity and magnetism are related it means time was compressed too. \n\nAreas that did not expand spatially, also didn't expand temporally. Time didn't pass in those places as fast as it has here. ", "Time dilation is based on perspective of where someone is to view it, but the age of the universe doesn't like time travel just because there is some form of time dilation when you are looking at something that happened in the past. This assumes that there is 1 finite universe across a spectrum of time though. Now if there were sort of 'snapshots' of the universe that somehow got created and by accessing some sort of wormhole or something unproven then you could essentially time travel to that sort of 'snapshot' that was created in time, then I guess there could be the possibility that you could go to a time when dinosaurs existed and stuff, but nothing that we know currently points to that being the case. Time is linear, but there are 'folds' in the universe that we can theoretically use to see into the past only because the light that has reached your current point has had to travel so far, so you would be looking at a glimpse of the past, not what it is currently.", "What really messes with my mind is that in a future when the distance between galaxies is so vast that we only know of our own, any new species that evolves and manages to get to a science age will base all of their scienetific understanding of the universe on the idea that there is only one galaxy. \n\n\"Yeah okay Boblor...the universe is filled with trillions of other galaxies we can't see because we drifted too far apart......riiigghhttt\"\n\nLeads me to wonder how much stuff we missed", "I notice a lot of comments saying \u201cexpanding into what? That doesn\u2019t make sense to me, I just don\u2019t get it.\u201d. \n\nWell, as a physics student who\u2019s studied some cosmology, let me tell you that you might not be missing any deep understanding really. Physicists get used to this idea, just by thinking about it over time. Once you\u2019ve thought about it for a long time it just kinda stops bothering you, even if you haven\u2019t really learned anything concrete that you didn\u2019t understand before.", "Ph.D. in Astrophysics here.  Time runs faster in places with less mass and slower in places with mass.  So how old the universe is is different in different places.  \n\nFor the age to be only minutes, time would have had to stop minutes after the big bang.  That would mean a black hole that formed minutes after the big bang.  There are theories that these so called \"primordial\" black holes exist, no proof yet.", "The balloon analogy is bad because the 2d balloon surface is expanding in 3 dimensions. In reality our 3d dimensional universe is expanding into a fourth. The universe as we define it is the surface of the balloon - the space that it expands into isn\u2019t really defined", "Not really an answer to your question, but I suggest you take a look at the [Kurzgesagt](_URL_0_) channel. That channel has educational videos (with amazing animations) that makes science seem so **amazing**, or as they say it:\n > Videos explaining things with optimistic nihilism. We are a small team who want to make science look beautiful. Because it is beautiful. \n\nThey have **countless** videos on all things space-related and I **HIGHLY** suggest you watch them! ", "What would happen if you placed a special live stream camera on a planet where time moves slower than on earth? Would a viewer on earth view everything happening in slow motion? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling\\_\\(cosmology\\)"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q"], []]}
{"q_id": "jnte0", "title": "what tor is, and why everyone praises it as the king of proxies.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jnte0/eli5_what_tor_is_and_why_everyone_praises_it_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2dn0f1", "c2dn4lc", "c2doda8", "c2dqw7x", "c2dulgp", "c2dn0f1", "c2dn4lc", "c2doda8", "c2dqw7x", "c2dulgp"], "score": [3, 16, 5, 2, 6, 3, 16, 5, 2, 6], "text": ["This is very simplified, but as specific as I can get. Will someone second this if it's correct, as I'm not 100% on it.\n\nBasically, you have an IP address, this identifies your computer. When you access the Internet via tor, your IP is bounced around to different IP's all over the world, making it near impossible to trace.\n\n", "Imagine the internet as a phone system.\n\nWhen you make a regular call, it's easy to see who is calling who (caller ID) and what they're saying (phone taps and the like). What TOR does is splits everything up and encrypts it. So instead of calling the person you want to talk to directly, you call a designated stranger, and give him your message in code. Then he calls another person, and re-encodes your message. Then that person sends it along again, each of them decoding and encoding parts of the message, but never the whole thing at once. Eventually, the message gets to where it was intended to go, and then the reply is sent back the same way. \n\nNow imagine that this is happening at the speed of light, millions of times a second, and instead of talking you're looking at a screen. That's TOR.", "Tor is not really a proxy in the traditional sense of the word (i.e. where your computer connects just to one other computer and then it connects to the Internet for you --making it appear to websites that you are where the other computer is) although it does route your data through other computers. \n\nTor is a darknet: It encrypts your data, breaks it up, and sends it through multiple computers (who are also running Tor) and then finally lets the data leave and join the 'normal' Internet. The purpose being that it would be very difficult (but not impossible) for anyone to find out who really did or said what. \n\nBecause your data has to be sent and resent by many computers, it will be much slower than accessing the Internet normally -- and probably not fast enough to make it useful for streaming video content -- but it provides the best protection for people who NEED to be anonymous. \n\nThere are also websites ending in .onion instead of .com that are hosted within the Tor darknet. Because the data never leaves the darknet it's much more secure. But these websites are probably not suitable for 5 year olds! Criminality, scamming and illegal adult content are rife. But that's the price of a truly free, anonymous network. there are also whistle-blowing, wikileaks and political .onion sites.\n\nAs a last note, running Tor as a server could mean that your computer could appear to download or do something nasty even though you didn't do it.  You would be unable to tell who the real perpetrators were and depending on where you live, it could get you in trouble. ", "imagine it's snack time at school. the teacher (web host) hands out a stack of 10 cookies (website/file/other content) to each student (user). this is what the internet is like.\n\nwith tor, instead of getting your snack from the teacher, you get 10 other students to grab 1 cookie each for you. You end up with your full snack, but you never got anything from the teacher yourself.\n\nit's a lot like bittorrent, but instead of each person having the full version, they are just passing things along.", "it's like staring at a hot chicks boobs while you're wearing sunglasses. only you're wearing 3 glasses. anyone (your ISP) can see that you're looking in a direction (on the internet) but they can't tell what you're looking at.", "This is very simplified, but as specific as I can get. Will someone second this if it's correct, as I'm not 100% on it.\n\nBasically, you have an IP address, this identifies your computer. When you access the Internet via tor, your IP is bounced around to different IP's all over the world, making it near impossible to trace.\n\n", "Imagine the internet as a phone system.\n\nWhen you make a regular call, it's easy to see who is calling who (caller ID) and what they're saying (phone taps and the like). What TOR does is splits everything up and encrypts it. So instead of calling the person you want to talk to directly, you call a designated stranger, and give him your message in code. Then he calls another person, and re-encodes your message. Then that person sends it along again, each of them decoding and encoding parts of the message, but never the whole thing at once. Eventually, the message gets to where it was intended to go, and then the reply is sent back the same way. \n\nNow imagine that this is happening at the speed of light, millions of times a second, and instead of talking you're looking at a screen. That's TOR.", "Tor is not really a proxy in the traditional sense of the word (i.e. where your computer connects just to one other computer and then it connects to the Internet for you --making it appear to websites that you are where the other computer is) although it does route your data through other computers. \n\nTor is a darknet: It encrypts your data, breaks it up, and sends it through multiple computers (who are also running Tor) and then finally lets the data leave and join the 'normal' Internet. The purpose being that it would be very difficult (but not impossible) for anyone to find out who really did or said what. \n\nBecause your data has to be sent and resent by many computers, it will be much slower than accessing the Internet normally -- and probably not fast enough to make it useful for streaming video content -- but it provides the best protection for people who NEED to be anonymous. \n\nThere are also websites ending in .onion instead of .com that are hosted within the Tor darknet. Because the data never leaves the darknet it's much more secure. But these websites are probably not suitable for 5 year olds! Criminality, scamming and illegal adult content are rife. But that's the price of a truly free, anonymous network. there are also whistle-blowing, wikileaks and political .onion sites.\n\nAs a last note, running Tor as a server could mean that your computer could appear to download or do something nasty even though you didn't do it.  You would be unable to tell who the real perpetrators were and depending on where you live, it could get you in trouble. ", "imagine it's snack time at school. the teacher (web host) hands out a stack of 10 cookies (website/file/other content) to each student (user). this is what the internet is like.\n\nwith tor, instead of getting your snack from the teacher, you get 10 other students to grab 1 cookie each for you. You end up with your full snack, but you never got anything from the teacher yourself.\n\nit's a lot like bittorrent, but instead of each person having the full version, they are just passing things along.", "it's like staring at a hot chicks boobs while you're wearing sunglasses. only you're wearing 3 glasses. anyone (your ISP) can see that you're looking in a direction (on the internet) but they can't tell what you're looking at."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9ypjru", "title": "Why does H2O expand when going from fluid to solid despite what the basis of physics might suggest?", "selftext": "I've always been told the distance between molecyles shrinks when cooled down, but water seems to be the exact opposite.\nI hear new research has come up, but my teacher couldn't quite explain it.\n\nEdit: that should have said basic physics*\n\nEdit 2: Whelp, apparently my teacher was dead wrong", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9ypjru/why_does_h2o_expand_when_going_from_fluid_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ea4k6rg", "ea4lco4"], "score": [13, 8], "text": ["That's because ice forms a rigid shape where 8 H2O molecules bind together repeatedly, leaving a hole between those 8 H2O molecules! This gap is large enough for other gaseous molecules to even get trapped inside! This gap and rigid structure makes ice less dense than water which is free to bind together as closely as possible due to its high level of attraction between the oxygen and hydrogen between H2O molecules and free movement of molecules", "There is no new research on this. It\u2019s been proven and explained ages ago. When water freezes, it forms a crystal lattice with some space between each molecule. This is because the hydrogens(positive) are pulling on the oxygens(negative) \u2018below\u2019 them, while their oxygens are being pulled up, so they get caught in the middle. When water is liquid, the molecules can nearly come in contact with each other and \u201cslide\u201d past each other. This is 100% in accordance with \u201cthe basis of physics.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1ymncp", "title": "if the international space station can retain about 93% of the water used on board, why don't we implement some of the technology used in everyday homes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ymncp/eli5if_the_international_space_station_can_retain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cflug4c", "cflulk4", "cflum8w", "cflv4ch", "cflv6c7", "cflvscx", "cflw39z", "cfm5yw1"], "score": [59, 6, 27, 6, 4, 3, 10, 2], "text": ["It is a very specific and expensive technology that isn't well suited for home use.\n\nIf we absolutely needed to conserve water like that, we would, but tap water is _really_ cheap (in the USA at least).", "It would be hugely expensive, and people who are not astronauts would be icked out by drinking their own urine, no matter how much it's been distilled.", "Water in your house costs a few cents per tonne.  On the space station it's more like $100,000 per tonne.  Call it about a million times cheaper and you'll understand why we do things differently.", "In cities where water is hard to come by Like Las Vegas or Los Angeles it is done to a  certain extent and will become more common in the coming years.", "[In Orange County, CA  20% of their water is recycled wastewater.](_URL_0_)", "It is expensive, and requires complex systems that would be difficult to install in buildings.", "[\"Grey\" water recycling is done in some houses.](_URL_0_)", "Just gonna point out since nobody else has...\n\nWe do recycle water on earth, it's called rain, and for the most part its a much simpler system."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.gwrsystem.com/the-process.html"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/bhoXBTP.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ya3gj", "title": "What are the origins of mathematical symbols like \"+\", \"-\" and \"=\"? Have they always been used (since we've had need for them at least), or were other symbols used in the past?", "selftext": "As an extension, what are the original origins of the numbers? I cans see how 1 to 3 were just lines of that number, and 0 is pretty simple, but what about the others?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ya3gj/what_are_the_origins_of_mathematical_symbols_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp7mqts"], "score": [93], "text": ["The symbols (+) for addition, (-) for subtraction  (=) date from the 15th and 16th century. The signs for + and - were used by Johannes Widmann in the late 15th century. They first appear in print in a book he wrote about accounting. You can see a reproduction [here](_URL_3_). In the book, they denoted surplus (+) or deficit (-) rather than operations, so he used them to distinguish between positive and negative quantities. However, Cajori writes that Widmann also used the symbols to signify the operations in other places.\n\nThe symbol for equality is due to the Welshman Robert Recorde in his 1557 book *The Whetstone of Witte* (math book titles used to be so much better). You can find the book [here](_URL_4_). You can see the part where he introduces the symbol [here](_URL_2_). He explains that he chose two parallel lines because \"no two things could be more equal\". \n\nAs you can see, these are relatively recent and certainly much more so than the need to express addition and equality. A complete survey of the symbols that were used before would be take a long time (take a look at the second chapter in Cajori - referenced below). Very often, operations would simply be explained in words, and only the numerical results expressed with symbols. Often, addition would be denoted simply by juxtaposition (putting the numbers next to each other).\n\nThe numbers we use now came from Arabic numerals around the 10th century. The Arabic numerals were themselves based on Hindu numerals (you can see a comparison [here](_URL_0_)). Apart from speculation, I don't think there is a definitive explanation for the shape of the numerals above 4 (which evolved from a cross).\n\nThe classic reference for all this is Cajori ([A History of Mathematical Notations](_URL_1_)) which, although a bit dated, contains beautiful illustrations. You can also look at Boyer and Merzbach's History of Mathematics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#mediaviewer/File:Indian_numerals_100AD.svg", "https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equals_sign#mediaviewer/File:Recorde_-_The_Whetstone_of_Witte_-_equals.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematical_notation#mediaviewer/File:Johannes_Widmann-Mercantile_Arithmetic_1489.jpg", "https://archive.org/details/TheWhetstoneOfWitte"]]}
{"q_id": "2ozr9o", "title": "why does the price of gold fluctuate so much?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ozr9o/eli5why_does_the_price_of_gold_fluctuate_so_much/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmrzyyr", "cms0sag", "cms1ks7", "cms4nr7", "cms4v2o", "cms5lrn", "cms69o3"], "score": [6, 19, 16, 4, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["Short, Economical answer.... its a commodity drifting on good old supply and demand. Less demand means lower prices.\n\n\nThe more in depth psychological answer? Perception. People think the fundamental currency is gold or other precious metals. The economy slips? Better get some gold because when the economy goes to crap that's all we'll use. And because everyone thinks that way, the value goes up. Getting more people into it. Increasing the value again.\n\nWhen the economy is good people buy less, dropping the value.\n\nThis is of course flawed. If society collapses that much we'll want to barter for food and supplies. ", "Comments are mostly right. The bit being missed is that people aren't always trading gold. Mostly they're trading certificates that say you own some gold somewhere. This is important mostly because real gold trades take time - you need to check purity and arrange safe shipping. That slows trades and smoothes out price movements. The shift to trading gold certificates made it more like shares - subject to herd trading and short term trading. ", "Economist here:\n\nFirst I would have to ask you whether you really understand what \"fluctuate\" means. It means go up and down, up and down, up and down... I really don't think that's what's happening to gold. [Here's a good webpage to check past trends and historical gold price](_URL_1_). There's just a couple of periods where there's high *fluctuation* - most notably summer 2011 - summer 2012 but otherwise it's more or less a simple up or down trend. There are minor fluctuations but those are the result of how markets work - it's never smooth.\n\nThe reason for some of the drastic changes however are quite simple. Gold is a very secure store of value in times of crisis compared to paper money, debt instruments and other commodities. It is important to realize that gold never \"goes up\" as much as everything else goes down. Gold only appreciates when other financial commodities become volatile and it's the result of flight of capital - people moving their money from falling currencies or risky treasury bills to gold. Gold is always worth as much as gold - unlike fiat instruments (created by government decree or a contract) it does have an *intrinsic value* and if enough people want it then supply and demand - boom - the price goes up. That's what happened in 2010-2012 because everyone first thought Dollar was finished and Euro would take the crown and then it turned out that Euro is actually weaker than the Dollar and people started running to gold - some to protect capital, others because they were expecting that and hoped gold will skyrocket.  The year 2012 was the most volatile period but after it turned out that no Armageddon comes people started looking to re-coup losses somewhere else. Again - gold is just a good store of value and appreciates only in panic times. So they went looking for more profitable instruments and the outflow of capital tanked the gold price.\n\nIn the late 90s and early 00s gold was at some of its lowest because many government sold their stocks so that meant that supply grew and outstripped demand.  Then when the crisis hit some of the countries - IIRC  Russia and China among them - bought some gold to try and hedge at least some of their currency reserves.\n\nThe reason why gold goes up and down \"like crazy\" is because gold is a very scarce resource (unless you're Indian) and the buyers are typically hedge funds and governments. So they're either buying or selling in bulk - therefore affecting the price more than ordinary consumer market would. It makes the market also more susceptible to speculation - which is why people talk about the \"gold bubble\" in _URL_0_ certainly was one. Still the price is around 1200 usd right now so it's still three times the base low in the mid-00s. when during the boom and because of those extra gold sales an ounce was worth less than 400 usd.\n \nInterestingly enough however many countries make trading gold very difficult for ordinary people. But why it is done - is a story for another day.", "Unlike stocks or bonds, whose value is based on what people are willing to pay for the income stream generated -- gold generates no income, and its value is purely speculative. \n\nThere is no cash flow being valued, so the price fluctuates wildly, based solely on buyers/sellers making guesses on what future buyers will pay.", "From an alternative point of view, as the utility and supply of gold doesn't vary that much, it's really money that's changing in value quickly, instead of the gold.", "In addition to basic commodity economicd and other comments,  _URL_1_  which has ressulted in some incidences of _URL_0_", "Related question: why, fundamentally, do we care about gold at all? And why have we cared about it for so many millennia? Because it's shiny and pretty and we made a collective social decision to value it just...because? I'm aware that it has loads of practical applications today, but ancient Babylonians weren't making integrated circuits. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["2012.It", "http://goldprice.org/"], [], [], ["http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA4M06620140523?irpc=932", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_fixing"], []]}
{"q_id": "8eb521", "title": "how is jeff bezos so rich when amazon turns little profit?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8eb521/eli5_how_is_jeff_bezos_so_rich_when_amazon_turns/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxtqqkh", "dxtr9p2", "dxttfl2", "dxtu9ty", "dxtve1o", "dxtxvei", "dxtycmh", "dxtz7m7", "dxu1epi", "dxu1ljs", "dxu4m6s", "dxuj6lt", "dxukw9z", "dxvkvsr"], "score": [112, 22, 35, 41, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["He has a large amount of Amazon stock so his net worth is dependent on how well that's doing", "He owns a decent sized 17% chunk of a company that has 180billion revenue and is worth almost 700billion.", "Jeff is a painter.\nJeff buys canvas and brushes and paints.\nJeff has no money.\nJeff paints and paints and paints.\nJeff makes a BEAUTIFUL painting.\nJeff has no money, but Jeff has a beautiful painting. \nJeff is told that his painting is worth $1,000.\nJeff is \u201cworth\u201d $1,000, but Jeff still has no money.\nJeff sells his painting for $900.\nJeff has $900 and is \u201cworth\u201d $900.\n\nJeff made Amazon and gets paid a lot to do his job, but his huge \u201cworth\u201d is the company that he owns.  He took basic cheaper stuff (paint, canvas, and brushes) and made a masterpiece (Amazon) that is \u201cworth\u201d way more than the original materials that made it. ", "Because Amazon makes a lot of **money**.\n\nMost of that money gets invested in growth, so they make even more money next year.  Which they invest in growth.  To make more money.  From growth.\n\nFor most of its history, Amazon has made **no** profit and focused on rapid growth.  One year they would make $10B and spend $11B so the next year they would make $12B and spend $14B.  Not making a profit or making a small profit, in this case, it almost a technicality, they are a wealthy company showing lots of year to year growth.", "Amazon\u2019s stock is worth a lot, and Jeff Bezos owns a lot of stock. The company has an extreme amount of revenue and has been investing the potential profits into growing the business even more. So maybe they record 1% profits instead of 10%, but that 9% plowed back into business means greater revenue down the road... when they pull back on the investment and book 10% profits, it might be on twice the revenue by then.", "Its a common misconception mostly by non\\-financial people to assume realized gain from unrealized assets.  Bezos actual net worth is private, probably about a billon give or take a few million.  And he owns 17 & #37; of a company currently \\(this moment\\) valued at 700B, until he sells his interest in the company we won't know what his actual net worth is.   \n\nAnd for all we know, he's reinvesting every dime to keep it floating one step ahead of the creditors and his actual net worth is negative several million dollars.  \n\nThis valuing of people based on unrealized gains is counter productive, and unfortunately the truth doesn't sell like War or Speculation does, so the press creates what sells \\(even if it is a lie\\).", "The value of Amazon stock isn't just based on their profits this year, it's based on expectations of future profits, all their real-estate holdings, all their infrastructure holdings, all the patents and trademarks they own, all the future products they're going to introduce, all the IT knowledge the organization has and so on.  Sure, maybe they only made $2B in 2017Q4 but the company has been *building value and constantly growing* for 20 years, making the whole company worth about $750B.\n\nBezos has a lot of Amazon stock so his net worth is based on having a percentage of *that*.", "The majority of his net worth is in Amazon stock.  That's why when Amazon gains $100 in stock price you always see an article about Jeff bezos net worth increasing $X billion.  He likely has under $10b in physical assets that contribute to his net worth.  What people in his situation do is sell off the stock very slowly until it is all gone which can take decades.  The fact that Amazon does not make much money YET does not affect his net worth.", "Most of Jeff's wealth comes from his holdings of amazon stock. He is as wea lo thly as people feel amazon is valuable. If people give up on amazon, he would lose a substantial portion of his wealth.\n\nOften CEOs/founders are on a scheduled stock sale so they can pull their money out slowly as compensation while also making sure they don't fall to 0 of the company fails.", "Revenue does not equal profit. As the owner he could give himself whatever salary he wants and write it off as a cost of business. ", "Amazon chose to grow horizontally. Some antitrust analists suggests their approach is borderline predatory pricing. Profit is the second part of the strategy of market domination.", "The overwhelming majority of Bezos' wealth is in his holdings of Amazon stock and options (future ability to buy stock at a fixed price) that he holds as a result of: a) founding the company; and b) leading the company and receiving options as part of his compensation.  \n\nAmazon's stock is publicly traded and its price is set by the market (i.e. whatever price buyers and sellers are willing to pay/sell stock).  \n\nAmazon's stock has risen in value since its founding because the company has experienced extraordinary growth in revenue since its founding.  Amazon has used most of its profit to invest in new areas of business, fueling its growth.  \n\nPeople are willing to pay high prices for Amazon stock because they believe that Amazon's strategy of using most of its profit to corner new areas of business will pay off in the long run - resulting in Amazon being far more profitable in the future than it is today, justifying the high price today for Amazon stock and providing reason to believe that Amazon's stock price will be higher in the future as the company grows larger and conquers new areas of business.  \n\n", "In May 2016, Bezos sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $671 million, making it the largest amount of money he had ever raised in a sale of his Amazon holdings\n\nOn August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares at a value of $756.7 million\n\nIn late-2017, Bezos sold $1 billion in Amazon stock.\n\n165,000-acre ranch complex with rocket testing facility in west Texas, 300,000-acre ranch in south Texas and he has other homes around the US\n\nHe makes money off of a venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions - he was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998 and the stock from it is worth about $3.1 billion in 2017\n\n", "Its an estimated value of what his assets are worth  , he does not have 120 billion in cash at the bank. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vassb", "title": "In 1912 Japan gave the US 3,000+ cherry blossom trees. In 1915 the US reciprocated the gift by sending flowering dogwood trees. What happened to those trees?", "selftext": "While reading the comments here (_URL_0_) I came across this quote:\n\n > The US government reciprocated with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan in 1915. In 1981, the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturists were given cuttings from the trees to replace some cherry trees in Japan which had been destroyed in a flood.\n\nBut I could not find a picture of those dogwood trees.  I would love to know what happened to them.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vassb/in_1912_japan_gave_the_us_3000_cherry_blossom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cog80tt"], "score": [68], "text": ["The Hibiya Park dogwoods appear to be later arrivals, [based on signs at the park](_URL_1_). Though the *Japan Times* reported that those trees arrived in 1915, it appears that the original dogwoods were [either burned during World War II air raids or cut down as \"enemy trees.\"](_URL_0_) The ones in the park today are [descendants of the original trees](_URL_5_).\n\nA small park near the National Diet appears to have a cluster of dogwoods from 1960, and [the Koishikawa Botanical Garden of Tokyo University may have had one](_URL_4_) until a few years ago when it died. There may be a surviving example at Tokyo Metropolitan Agricultural Horticultural High School and one at the National Institute of Fruit Tree Science in Shizuoka Prefecture. I've also seen another source say the one at Koishikawa Botanical Garden still survives.\n\nIn November 2012, 100 flowering dogwood [were planted in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo](_URL_3_). These were the first of 3,000 sent by the United States as part of the \"friendship blossoms\" program. [The U.S. Department of Agriculture developed appropriate cultivars to survive the Japanese climate](_URL_2_), and 1,000 will be planted in Tokyo. Another 1,000 will be planted in the Tohoku region, epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami. Another 1,000 will be distributed to schools and other organizations.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2v85tz/til_the_pink_cherry_blossoms_in_washington_dc/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.hokkoku.co.jp/sakura/washington_takamine_e.html", "https://tokyotree.wordpress.com/", "http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb13/dogwoods0213.htm", "http://amview.japan.usembassy.gov/wordpress/friendship-blossoms-strengthening-bilateral-ties-through-trees/", "http://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/www/contents/0000000000000/1274348645969/index.html", "http://www.kensetsu.metro.tokyo.jp/kouen/kouenannai/park/english/hibiya.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "49wqfo", "title": "if i close my eyes does my hearing ability improve because my brain has to process one sense less or is this just a placebo effect?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49wqfo/eli5_if_i_close_my_eyes_does_my_hearing_ability/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0vjac7", "d0vkyp7", "d0vrljy", "d0vtnfy", "d0vu1h9", "d0vvizp", "d0vvpgf", "d0vw9ft", "d0vwhib", "d0vzecn", "d0vzxti", "d0w1a5w", "d0w1drg", "d0w1smj"], "score": [2292, 81, 18, 9, 350, 5, 10, 3, 5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["Working memory can only handle a very small amount of information at a time, so closing your eyes does improve your hearing in the sense that it helps filter out distractions and increases recall for auditory information. Closing your eyes does not, however, increase the actual acuity of hearing.", "I would say it has more to do with attention. Humans are very visually oriented, so we tend to place a lot of attention of visual information. If you think about it, when you close your eyes you are not only limiting visual input, you intentionally focus your attention on auditory information. In the brain, attention can function as gain modulation. When you focus you attention on auditory, you boost the relevant neural circuitry, causing your hearing to seemingly improve. The benefit of closing your eyes is that there is less visual information to *distract* your attention away from audition and back to vision.", "I'm not sure about closing your eyes and immediately having increased hearing but I grew up needing glasses and never getting them. I was pretty much blind. I relied on colors and vague shapes when looking at stuff up until I was 14. I used my ears and nose for pretty much everything else. 23 now and I'm constantly hearing things others can't and I'm able to sniff stuff out very easily, even when others can't smell anything. I'm no dog, but there is truth the the whole \"weak senses give room for you other senses to become stronger.\" Either that or I was born really lucky. Minus the worthless eyeballs.", "It doesn't improve your hearing it allows the brain to focus on hearing.  \n\nTry this, blind fold your partner, then put ear plugs (noise protection) in there ears so they can't hear.  \n\nThen using a soft dry paint brush very slowly paint their exposed skin.  \n\nThis type of sensory deprivation forces the brain to only focus on the brush sliding on the skin.  It can be a very intense experience for many people.  ", "I have very bad eyesight.  My hearing gets really bad when i'm not wearing glasses, since I have to concentrate more on what I'm seeing.\n\nMy mates laugh at me when I say, \"I can't hear coz I'm not wearing my glasses\".", "It takes time. A whole lot of precious time.\n\nWitches used to suspend themselves in a 'Salem's Cradle', a leather cocoon in which they would shut off all five senses, to open and empower the 6th.\n\nI've heard.\n\nBut it took a few days, so they would essentially 'shut down', and even then, their hearing didn't improve; they were simply more aware.\n\nOver a LOT of time, your senses fill in the voids in the same way Natural Selection gives webbed toes to the dumbass frog that keeps being eaten.\n\nThough I never understood how the eaten frog would tell it's babies to grow webbed feet.", "This same theory can also be applied to other senses. As a former drummer, some of my best practice sessions were when I focused only on the sense of touch with both earplugs and huge over-the-ear sound isolation headphones (to try to block out as much of my sense of sound as possible). The brain works in some very interesting ways. ", "Actually, your hearing can be improved because of what you can see in several cases. This is usually called the \"Cocktail Party Effect,\" where you can focus in on one conversation while not paying attention to all the white noise. Some researchers have called this a form of selective attention (which it is), but it can be explained more simply by the fact that you can to see the other person's mouth move! Unfortunately, I can't find the video I wanted, but it involves you watching a clip of a girl at a coffee shop telling you two sentences with a piece of paper covering her mouth. You can't hear her! Remove the paper and say the same sentence? No problem.", "When you close your eyes and focus on a sound, your brain uses top-down control to filter out irrelevant information. In other words, you voluntarily put more attentional \"resources\" into processing the important information and ignoring the not important stuff (e.g., background noise, visual input, etc.).\n\nYour overall hearing ability does not change, but your sensitivity to sounds is affected. Closing your eyes reduces the amount of irrelevant, distracting information meaning your brain can focus more on processing the relevant auditory information. If you're super interested, signal detection theory shows how one's sensitivity remains the same while their \"criterion\" can shift.  \n\n", "Everyone is bullshitting, so let me give you a scientific answer:\n\nIt is not completely a placebo effect. Your hearing could improve because you can focus on it more when not distracted. People like to bullshit that they can multi-task, but empirical research shows that is impossible. Multi-tasking always reduces the quality of the activities you do; saying \"listening to music while doing my work helps me\" is a placebo effect. But the exception is a small percent of the population (like 0.1% iirc) who do **better** multitasking (the research was cool. They showed that these people drive safer while using a cell phone).\n\nNow, this is only for closing your eyes for a while. If you become blind, then your hearing physically improves. This is because the part of your brain that deals with hearing takes over the defunct visual part. We know this from brain scans of newly blinded people", "Hearing instrument specialist here!\n\nPerforming an audiogram, you will see no difference between having them open their eyes versus closing them. \n\nMost of hearing is involved with perception. Closing one's eyes might make someone feel like they are hearing better but what they're doing is actively listening to what's going on around them. \n\nHowever, most people with hearing problems rely on visual cues to aid in understanding. So someone with trouble hearing will *understand* better if they can read your lips to help them process what is being said. ", "Does anyone else turn the radio off when parking?", "It's not instant but over time it improves if you practice doing it.  I have some vision loss and I now rely more on sound and I have been hearing things I never heard before.", "I've tried eating with my eyes closed and feel that, for the first few seconds at least, the food has more flavor to me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "nycui", "title": "file names. why can't microsoft office save or open files that have slashes or colons in their names?", "selftext": "Sorry - more questions!\n\n* Why can't Microsoft Office save or open files that have slashes or colons in their names?\n\n* Why can I *rename* a file to something like \"30/60.doc,\" which makes it un-openable, but then when I rename it back to \"30 60.doc,\" it suddenly opens?\n\n* What is the benefit of saving a file with underscores instead of spaces? i.e. My_Awesome_Song.mp3 instead of My Awesome Song.mp3?\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nycui/eli5_file_names_why_cant_microsoft_office_save_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3cwviv", "c3cxsvo", "c3cxti4", "c3cxu7q", "c3cxzq0"], "score": [110, 6, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["Slashes and colons are used as part of the *file system*; that is, the thing that tells the computer where to look for a file with that name. The Windows OS has been updated to distinguish between a slash in a filename and a \"meaningful\" slash, but MS Office has not.\n\nBefore things like Windows and Macs existed, you had to make a computer do things by just typing commands. Spaces were \"meaningful\" when you typed in those commands, so it was impossible to have a filename with spaces in it. Because of that, some very old programs cannot handle filenames with spaces.", "what alienangel2 said.\n\nI also remember when you couldn't give any file a name longer than 8 characters. so if you called something 'thisismyfile.txt, it would be automatically shortened to 'thisism~.txt'", "This just reminds me how much I hate whitespace. Fuck whitespace! ", "In addition and like others have said, file names are limitations of the file system. The file system is like the drawer that holds the files. The drawer has sections and each section can only fit a certain kind of file. A legal sized file won't fit in a drawer that holds letter sized documents. \n\nAs a holdover from the days of the beginnings of Windows, many filename characters are not permitted such as  <  > ?!: etc., that is because the file system is not equipped to handle those types.\n\nUsing Microsoft Office on a Mac, you could save all kinds of filenames, save for those with a colon. This is because Classic Mac OS uses colons to separate files. The newer Mac OS uses colons at the basic system level, so it is reserved. All other types are permitted. ", "Slashes are used as a command parameter for programs which run on command prompt.\n\nColons are used to write a list of files to perform an action on command prompt, like copy or save.\n\n\" < \", \" > \" and \"|\" are used to join commands and/or send the output of them somewhere else.\n\n\"?\" and \"*\" are masks that allow you to make a search for something you don't quite know or for all files.\n\nBackslash is used to separate the folders on command prompt.\n\n**TL;DR: These characters are used on the command prompt.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "q890p", "title": "Is cancer preventable if we get a physical and blood screen once a year?", "selftext": "I've seen a number of stories lately about someone being diagnosed with life-threatening cancer and they ultimately die within a few months.\n\nIs this preventable by just getting a blood screen once a year or is it just impossible to protect yourself from cancer?\n\n**EDIT** thanks for all the responses and resources!  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q890p/is_cancer_preventable_if_we_get_a_physical_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3viwu0", "c3vkwtb"], "score": [7, 6], "text": ["Only one cancer (prostate) is routinely diagnosed via blood test.  Some cancers present on a physical (breast exam, for instance), but most don't.  Other specialized exams exist for other cancers (cervical cancer).  But for the most part, other cancers must be symptomatic before they are found.  Many of the most dangerous cancers are the ones that have almost no symptoms until it is too late, like pancreatic cancer.", "Diagnostic testing isn't going to prevent cancer.  It will let the patient and healthcare providers involved that it is present at an earlier state if detected earlier.  It is early detection which allows for a better prognosis and outcome.  Finding the cancer prior to it being able to metastasize could be the difference between life and death. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5vtf2g", "title": "I have an interest in Medieval History. Who are the most important historians I should be familiar with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vtf2g/i_have_an_interest_in_medieval_history_who_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de4zcmn", "de5445v", "de5dv01", "de5irzg", "de64x0c"], "score": [23, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Okay, this is a fun one. I hope some of the other medievalists will stop by and critique/add to my list.\n\nSo medieval history, the academic discipline, has got to be one of the most self-obsessed...er, self-*reflective*...er...out there. There is an enormous emphasis placed on \"where we came from\" as a field. So like other fields, we \"need to know\" the top people working right now or in the past 20 years on whatever more specialized topic you do (as a late medieval/Reformation historian, my list is going to look very different than /u/alriclofgar's as an Anglo-Saxonist, which will be different than /u/Yazman who studies al-Andalus, and yet we are all medievalists). BUT there's also a list of foundational figures from the late 19th/20th century that Everyone Knows. Offhand, I'd have:\n\nMarc Bloch ([Marc Bloch always goes first](_URL_0_)), R.W. Southern, Charles Homer Haskins, Henri Pirenne, Jacques LeGoff, Herbert Grundmann, Ernst Kantorowicz, Gerd Althoff, Caroline Walker Bynum, Johan Huizinga, Joseph Strayer, Eileen Power\n\nETA: Georges Duby\n\nA bit peripheral to the Middle Ages now, I think we'd also be expected to recognize Peter Brown, Eamon Duffy (or at least understand the phrase \"stripping of the altars\"), and Fernand Braudel.\n\nOh, and I think we're at a point of both being supposed to know Otto Brunner and being congnizant of his Nazi sympathies/activities.\n\nMany of these scholars, though not all of them, have a massive distinguished body of work but are best known for one or two of them that, in retrospect, drove a major paradigm shift in medieval historiography. Despite Haskins' wide-ranging interests in early and high medieval history, especially in England, his name is pretty much inseparable today from the phrase \"renaissance of the twelfth-century.\" Ernst Kantorowicz goes with \"the king's two bodies,\" a theory of medieval political thought. Southern said, \"Hey, but isn't culture as important as politics?\" Bynum was hardly the first scholar to study medieval religious women, but her perspective and argument were strong and compelling enough to basically invent a new subfield.\n\nSo what I'm saying is, it's not necessarily that you have to read everything that all of these people wrote. In fact, a lot of the individual points and arguments they made have been superseded by later scholarship. But their contributions to *shaping* medieval studies--*that's* what to know.", "For my own field, armour and weapons:\n\n* Claude Blair - His European Armour c. 1066-1700 is still the go-to general history of armour. He made a lot of terminology (always saying mail, not 'chainmail' and never 'plate mail') standard. His way of thinking about armour - in terms of its underlying construction, how it fits together - is still influential. \n\n* Alan Williams - The Knight and the Blast Furnace was a game changer when it came out in 2000. By analyzing the metallurgy of armour he was able to quantify a lot of what had previously been guesswork. For a field that is still very closely tied to art history, he did a lot to bring in materials science. He also collects a lot of previous work on the history of armouring.\n\n* Tobias Capwell - I suspect Capwell's best and most influential work is in front of him (he's not old!). For an analysis of armour's function, he's hard to beat.\n\n* Ewart Oakshotte - say what you will about his famous typology of swords and all the fanboys that slaver over it, his emphasis on blade geometry and function rather than hilt decoration is really important. Even if some of his functional explanations are guesswork.\n\nThen there's some historians that are important but haven't published much book-length works in the field. Pierre Terjanian has been an influential curator, first at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and then at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has written a lot of great stuff about the armouring industry in various German cities. Silvo Leydi has written quite a bit about the armour industry in Milan.", "Norman Cantor, *Inventing the Middle Ages*\n\nMarcus Bull, *Thinking Medieval*\n_____________________________________\n\nMarjorie Chibnall, trans., *The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis*\n\nWilliam of Malmesbury, *Gesta Regum Anglorum,* trans. R A B Mynors; Rodney M Thomson; Michael Winterbottom\n\nIbn Khaldun, *Muqaddimah,* trans. Franz Rosenthal", "This definitely isn't what you meant, but I'm gonna add to the great lists here by throwing in some literal medieval historians and works you should read if you want actual medieval perspective. These obviously aren't histories you take at face value, but they were big works in their time and help understand a lot of what we've learned since. I'm admittedly pretty Britain-centered, though.\n\n* Geoffrey of Monmouth's *Historia Regum Britanniae* (medieval bestseller on Britain)\n* Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris's *Flores Historiarum* (two chroniclers for one work)\n* Boethius's *De Consolatione Philosophiae* (foundation for medieval European philosophy)\n* The *Middle English Prose Brut* Chronicle and its continuations (lot of different versions and continuations exist, but this was the most popular book the late-medieval English world read, so it's essential propaganda reading)\n* Virgil's *Aeneid* (an old professor once told me you just can't be a Western literary historian without knowing the Aeneid, but mileage may vary for other historians)\n\nAs for modern historians, I'm still playing catch-up myself, but I'm seconding March Bloch. Even in a literature-focused department, he was first on the bibliography when I walked through the doors, along with Georges Duby. It's worth noting that there's kind of an ideological divide between English and French historians in the 'canon'. You'll notice that England and American put out titles likely to start with \"The Reign of...\" while France gives us ones with \"Society\" and \"Rural,\" if that makes sense. The best I can say is browse different areas and read abstracts of articles to see what pulls you in. Sometimes you can even search for \"[Subject] bibliography\" and get a reading-list other scholars have put together. Better yet, find a book that grabs your interest, then check its bibliography and see where their sources came from. If a subfield has a 'canon', chances are good they'll show up a lot in references.", "The classic medieval military historian has to be Charles Oman. He published his *Art of War in the Middle Ages* in 1885, but it's his revised two-volume edition of 1898 (Re-titled *A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages*) that really cemented his reputation as the father of medieval military history. \n\nAlso quite influential, and of a similar era, is J.E. Morris. His writings on the English longbow and Crecy are still being debated, and while I disagree with most of what he has to say, I cannot say that he's not very influential. \n\nWhile talking of vintage historians, it's hard for me to not mention Ralph Payne-Gallwey, whose history of the crossbow is still the most widely available book on the subject despite being over 100 years old. \n\nFor more recent historians I have to mention John Keegan (particularly his *Face of Battle*), as well as Kelly DeVries, Anne Curry, and Maurice Keen. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Bloch#Second_World_War"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1fl7kl", "title": "the turkish protests", "selftext": "I know some will downvote me and refer me to r/answers, but I purposefully ask here in the hopes of getting as bare-bones an answer as possible (hence the sub). \n\nHaven't particularly kept up with Turkey goings-on in the past few years, but I always thought they seemed like a pretty secular nation...", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fl7kl/eli5_the_turkish_protests/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cabcs6c", "cabd1bq", "cabd88m", "cabdmal", "cabdumf", "cabdvjo", "cabe23k", "cabf8xv", "cabfimc", "cabg4ec", "cabn2zr", "cabsvsq"], "score": [2, 2, 51, 25, 15, 12, 785, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3], "text": ["I actually came to post this... someone answer it like we're five.", "I third this post!", "Credit goes to /u/skylorelding for [this post on the worldnews sub](_URL_0_). \n\nBasically, there were plans to cut down the trees in the Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. A military barrack and possible shopping mall were to be built in place of the park. The people who were against this move decided to peacefully protest. The police decided to meet their peace with violence, and when others saw what was going on the fuse was lit. Turkey has now exploded in civil uprising. ", "Yeah, wasn't Turkey often cited as a model of democracy in the region/in muslim-majority countries?", "Taksim Square is basically the most famous square in Istanbul.\n\nRight nearby, there is a park called \"Gezi Park\u0131\" which is quite old and famous.\n\nWhen people heard that the government wanted to tear it down and make a mall there, they started a peaceful protest by basically sitting there, pitching some tents and over all minding their own business.\n\nWhen police reacted with unnecessary violence with teargas and water cannons, it elevated, and more people joined in on the protest.\n\nThe police also increased the brutality of their reaction, with hundreds of tear gas capsules, plastic bullets, water cannons blasting people from short range, beating up civilians etc, the situation elevated into an overall protest of the oppressive regime.\n\nWhat started as a peaceful protest in a park turned into a nationwide awakening.", "I'm no expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong but...\nWhat some other commenter said, there was a park that Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to destroy and build a shopping mall. A few protestors gathered. The police violently dealt with the situation, and when others saw the police violence the protests grew. It started as a 'save this park/environment' protest but quickly grew into a protest against the police, the APK (current Turkish political party) and PM Erdogan.  \n \n \nThere are a few reasons why everyone is angry with PM Erdogan. I don't know them all, but the few I do know are: \n* He is basically trying to turn Turkey, a secular state, into a non-democratic Islamic state. The Turkish have prided themselves on their 'separation of religion and state' for a long time now. He's trying to take that from them. This can be seen in his use of tax payer money to build mosques, and turn high schools to Islamic high schools and favor these schools and students for colleges.  \nHe also is trying to make alcohol and cigarettes ~~illegal~~ as I have been informed, he may have just been trying to 'curb' the sales and restrict when and where they can be sold, because they go against Islam. \n\n* Censored internet\n* Limiting journalistic freedom (arresting journalists, censoring news, etc.) \n \n \n\n**Tl;dr**: Small anti-park demolition protest erupted into anti-police/government/prime minister protest. Prime Minister has been doing bad things and trying to change Turkey in a way the citizens don't like.  \n \n \n \nAgain, I am **not an expert.** If any of this is wrong or gathered from biased, wrong information, please correct me. \n", "To understand why the protests are happening, you need to understand some of the history of Turkey as a nation, and the Ottoman Empire before it. To understand the Ottoman Empire, you need to understand the Islamic concept of a caliphate. So, here goes:\n\nIn the Islamic world, there has always been the concept of a \"caliph,\" which in Arabic means \"successor\"\u2013 a successor to Muhammad. Sometimes, people think of a caliph like a \"Muslim Pope,\" which isn't really accurate. The concept of a caliphate and a caliph isn't tied to any particular region. Instead, the idea is that the Caliph represents all Muslims, and has the authority to speak for them. In the most basic terms, it's a symbol of where power in the Islamic world rests at any given time.\n\nHere's where the Ottoman Empire comes in. As one of the most powerful states in the world for a few centuries, it was natural that the Caliphate was based in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, for most of that time. It's for this reason that the Ottoman Empire is often considered the fourth (and last) caliphate.\n\nNow comes Turkey. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the war's victors were already circling like vultures, ready to pick apart Ottoman territory. However, there was a guy named Mustafa Kemal (or Ataturk, meaning father of all Turks)\u2013 he is basically the George Washington of Turkey, and it was with his leadership that Turkey managed to survive as a single state. Here's the catch: Ataturk also established a strong tradition of secularism in the Turkish state, and he *abolished the caliphate.* \n\nAtaturk had seen how a reliance on Islamic thought had stifled the technological advancement of the once-great Ottoman Empire. He felt that to adequately \"westernize\" Turkey, he had to do away with the state religion. This choice upset a lot of people, and still does. The current reigning party in Turkey comes from strongly Islamic roots, which also rubs people the wrong way\u2013 it seems to fly in the face of Ataturk's memory. Much of Turkish political history since then can be viewed as the struggle between Western secularism and the Islamic thought of the Ottomans.\n\nGiven everything I've just told you, it should make a lot more sense why people got so mad about the bulldozing of a park to put up a replica Ottoman barracks\u2013 a symbol of Islamic military might. True, there was also a shopping mall, but ask any Turk, and they will tell you: the protests are about much more than a shopping mall. They are about the Turkish people's right to secularism, and about their right not to be swaddled in state-sponsored Islam.\n\n**tl;dr: The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, Ataturk made sure that Turkey was definitely not. The conflict is about bulldozing a public park to put up an Ottoman barracks, a symbol with strong Islamic connotations. Also, shopping malls.**", "This comment is a pretty good  and succinct explanation, includes info about religion not being a defining part of their country until just recently.\n\n_URL_0_", "I'm visiting Turkey at the end of this month.  Arriving in Istanbul June 28th and heading to other beaches on the 1st.  Anyone think it'll be slowed down by then?  Or are my plans pretty much screwed?", "Thank you! These comments are great. Big help :)", "[TheKing23 explains succinctly.](_URL_0_)", "The thing is the protest about the park was really just the catalyst for the whole shebang when the police started going nuts. Now that everyone's angry, they're expressing their concern with the increasingly Islamic and authoritarian ruling party. \nThere is also a media blackout because turkey has the highest number of jailed journalists in the world. So the press is too scared to cover any of it. That's why all us Turks are being so vocal. We have to do the press' job. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1fkovl/turkish_pm_to_me_social_media_is_the_worst_menace/cabaczx"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1fktaj/turkish_standoff/cabcjhs"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1fl25g/turks_are_closing_their_bank_accounts_and/cabcivb"], []]}
{"q_id": "hbuna", "title": "What is the current state of the art on brain-machine interfaces? And other questions inside.", "selftext": "1) is for the question above. :)\n\n2) Do we think in binary? I mean, the exchange of information between neurons are electromagnetic impulses (right?), so I suppose they are 0/1. But since a neuron has so many connections, how does that works out?\n\n3) How long do you think it will take for a complete brain-machine interface, alla science-fiction/Neuromancer? If it ever?\n\n4) Do you think we will ever be able to \"upload\" a brain, also again like science-fiction writers sometimes mention? (Accelerando by Charles Stross is interesting on this aspect).\n\n5) Theoretically, would it be possible to \"create new senses\"? See in infra-red or listen to subsonic sounds, for example?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hbuna/what_is_the_current_state_of_the_art_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1u6ccx", "c1u6jb4", "c1u6p4p", "c1u6x8u", "c1u8k5k", "c1u8orr", "c1u98ts", "c1ue8iv"], "score": [3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 4], "text": ["Here's a recent good read on the subject:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Doctors have been using ECoG since the 1950s to figure out which area of the brain is causing seizures in people with severe epilepsy. But in the past decade, scientists have shown that when connected to a computer running special software, ECoG also can be used to control robotic arms, study how the brain produces speech and even decode thoughts.\"", "1) We can throw in hearing and vision implants and get a fuzzy sort of input to work. We can also somewhat control computer mice by \"thinking\" now in a crude sort of way.\n\n2) George Boole was a guy who used to think that our brain worked on binary logic. His work was largely ignored by the psychology community but proved useful for computer technologies.\n\n3) Can't place a date but i'd say 50 years we will have something interesting.\n\n4) Singularity is interesting. The problem is that we'd need to be able to perfectly scan a brain. Most likely we will need to fill in the gaps and approximate it. Accelerando also has some interesting violations of things like halting problem in order for the novel to work.\n\n5) Yeah sure. geordi laforge can certainly exist in the future. ", "[controlling rats' brains](_URL_0_)", "5 - yea, in so far as you interface it.  (For example, body mod people implanted strong neodynium magnets in their finger-tips (and have the nerves grow back around it) can \"feel\" magnetic fields and currents.)  No, over very difficult, if you're talking about engineering neural circuits to accept new senses.", "1\n\nFrom the point of view of the computer think I and O.\n\nInput: We can scan using ECG, PET, MRI, and various kinds of electrodes. ECG is very, very fuzzy but has been successfully used to crudely control a computer mouse. PET/MRI are huge devices, are also super location fuzzy, have a slower time delay (in the seconds on MRI), but have also been used to successfully control a number of things (search pain biofeedback for some fascinating results). Electrodes are probably dangerous, fail after a few months (probably because of scar tissue impedance, possibly because of killing off layers of the network), and highly, highly localized (but still difficult to get single neuron reads) but are used in a lot of investigatory analysis.\n\nOutput: Electrodes, magnets, and normal sensory pathways. I have no idea how the magnets are working. Look up cochlear implants for what I feel is still roughly state of the art in electrode input.\n\nAnd then look up Paul Bach-y-rita for some fascinating options using, say, matrices of electrodes on your tongue to provide high fidelity input which your brain eventually learns to incorporate naturally.\n\nThere are lots of people working on all of those methods (and many others), but I can't say with any more certainty beyond this how those efforts are going. It turns out that the brain is both very sensitive and very complicated. Our typical methods fall short.\n\n---\n2\n\nNo, we don't. Lay mythology is that neurons fire spikes which are binary which makes them understandable like computers. That is true in detail, but very wrong in interpretation.\n\nThe first, most wrong, element is that the spikes are not binary in time. In fact, it's believed that lots of the information sent via neurons has more to do with frequency of spikes than any sort of sequence of 1s and 0s like binary coding works (except up to the point where you could get frequency out of a digitized signal). This is very much continuous and analog! It also plays into some very interesting theoretical neurophysiology such as resonant cells enabling multiplexed axons (see Neural Excitability, Spiking, and Bursting by EM Izhikevich, warning it's long and mathy)\n\nThe second thing is that we find that lots of neurons like to send bursting patterns. These have much more complex structure than simple 1/0 binary but are also likely to be more robust carriers of knowledge. Some people want to think of these bursts at a symbolic level where particular bursting patterns encode a much smaller family of signals which can be accurately send and decoded between neurons.\n\nThird thing, tied to the second, is that neural responses are highly analog. Neurons are modeled as low dimensional dynamical systems which is to say that if you want to get sensible models for them you need to have a number of parameters varying together, smoothly. This is not the sort of dynamics you see in logical circuits. Furthermore, these models tend to work for single, infinitesimally small patches of neural membrane. In general, the entire state of the neuron is linked and dynamic and thus so many, many more variables go into the computation involved. One interesting note is that it leads to the idea of dendritic computations where the specific timings and distances of synapses along the dendrites leads to a particular kind of multidimensional filter which might be useful in decoding complex neural patterns (think shaped bursts or accumulating responses from a whole network at once).\n\nSo, very much no. The binary interpretation of neuron firing has, to my knowledge, never been a serious scientific theory. It's just kind of cool.\n\n---\n3\n\nI think Neuromancer-styled high intensity, high throughput neural interfaces are off far enough in the future that I can't give you any stable estimate of an ETA. I think Bach-y-rita style interfaces which abuse neural plasticity to get low-throughput data to your brain in a highly integrated way are just waiting to go into style.\n\nIn particular, lots of body mod communities have experimented with augmenting their senses by implanting magnets in their fingertips. They find that their brains rapidly learn to integrate this new sensation and give them a global view of magnetic fields. Similar experiments have been performed with compasses. Imagine your cell phone constantly pumping low density, world practical information to your senses in such a way that it augments your reality without detracting from useful sensory experiences.\n\nThat I think could happen any time.\n\n---\n4\n\nThat's all sci-fi. By which I mean there's nothing making it physically impossible, but we don't have anything resembling the computing power or understanding of neural computing to see it happen. Accelerando-style slow integration is certainly more plausible than large scale brain scanning, but I pretty much refuse to speculate at this point.\n\n---\n5\n\nAbsolutely, theoretically and practically. See the magnetic fingertips, compass implants, or work by Bach-y-rita (he's just such a great example). In particular, the trick seems to be to hijack a sensory experience that's got low information density with some new consistent sensory experience that is correlated with something you care about. Live with it for a few days/weeks/months and your brain learns to incorporate that new information sensibly.", "How will memristors factor into brain-machine interfaces?", "1) Look into Frank Guenther's work (at BU). He's one of the most interesting and farthest along. But, his stuff is very specific. That is, highly trained algorithms and highly trained patients (locked-in and parapalegics). \n\n\n2) No we most certainly do not. We don't know what we \"think in\".\n\n\n3) Never.\n\n\n4) No.\n\n\n5) Yes, actually. Sort of... we can use some technologies for current senses (into the brain, such as cochlear implants). It's not unreasonable to think we *could* (but perhaps it is unreasonable to think we *should*) make an ultra-violet detector, but it would be transformed into something interpretable by the brain. That is, what we already hear, see, feel, smell, touch and taste. ", "I design thought controlled exoskeletons that take their control signal from EMG as opposed to a purely feed-forward (from the brain) signals.  It is necessary for a person to have a functioning (but not fully functional) limb in order to do this.  The challenges with these systems primarily relate to maintaining naturally efficient mechanics of motion during assistance so as to effectively reduce metabolic cost and discomfort for the wearer.  I have started doing some models of neuromuscular control and afferent feedback pathways in the presence of parallel assistance for a single muscle-tendon unit, and am developing an animal model to do the same.  Without going into too much detail (as I know there are others on this site who do similar work), I think that this can be effectively modeled using optical stimulation.  This basically works by creating Na+2 (excitatory) and Cl- (inhibitory) channels in neurons that can be opened with the correct optical stimulus (and can be engineered in such a way that excitation spectrum's do not overlap).  They can respond extremely rapidly to proper stimulus, and have different activation/deactivation time values (which would allow for modeling of different afferent feedback pathways with both myelinated and un-myelinated fibers).  It has also been shown that by using photo-stimulation, one can get rank order of recruitment as well as physiologically accurate excitation and fatigue dynamics in muscles (first reported here: _URL_1_ ).  It should be noted that this has not been achieved in electrical stimulation models designed for the same purpose (and those have been around since the 1920's).  It should also be noted that there are fluorescent markers that can tell you when a channel opens naturally.\n\nGiven that optogenetic methods have proven to be capable of effectively manipulating and observing biological systems, and are becoming more and more popular in neuroscience, what role do some of the other experts on here see them playing in neural interfacing?  The interface in the paper above is a simple optical nerve cuff, but I imagine more complex interfaces could be developed.  Especially given how well we can manipulate (think lasers, two photon microscopy, etc.) and observe (think about how good digital cameras are these days) light.  \n\nI do not claim to be an expert in this (although I have a decent optics background, studied physics undergrad and have done a lot of FRET and fluorescence microscopy), but I think there is great potential for optics in the field of neural interfacing.  I would be curious to know what others have to say on the subject.  Advantages?  Disadvantages?  I have been waiting for an opportunity to discuss this, and am glad it came up here!\n\nBTW, if you want to know more about optogenetics, this is a GREAT resource: _URL_0_  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.npr.org/2011/05/12/135598390/mind-reading-technology-turns-thought-into-action"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnyi-5S16Xk"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/", "http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/papers/llewellynnatmeth2010.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1gammh", "title": "Who was the first person to get shot and who was the first person shooter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gammh/who_was_the_first_person_to_get_shot_and_who_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caidr8f", "caihlen", "caiic2l", "caim40m", "cains0u", "cair1x4"], "score": [124, 21, 22, 4, 18, 4], "text": ["To put it quite simply: We have no idea. If you mean shot with a firearm, it could be anybody who had access to one of the early firearms developed in Europe, up to and including cannons. Cannons, however, were used mainly for siege warfare, so if somebody died by cannon before they died by arquebus (or something similar), it probably was as a side effect.\n\nIf you mean by any ranged weapon, then we will probably never know, as most ranged weapons such as slings, bows, etc. are centuries, if not millennia older than writing or recorded history.", "While it was not exactly what you have asked, your question reminded me of this article: [Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported](_URL_0_)\n >  A skeleton in an Inca cemetery near Lima, Peru, dates to about the 1530s and shows a wound that is presumably from a Spanish firearm.\n >  No similar evidence of a death by gunshot this early has been found elsewhere in the Americas.\n\nHere is another article from [ScienceDaily](_URL_1_)\n >  Edges of the holes in the skull and the entire bone plug were found to be impregnated with fragments of iron, a metal sometimes used for Spanish musket balls. It appears that a musket ball less than an inch in diameter had punched into the back of the skull and passed through the head, leaving pieces of iron deep inside the bone that stayed there for 500 years.", "The *Wu Jing Zong Yao* was a military compendium published in 1044 during China's Song Dynasty. In it, there were chapters devoted to early gunpowder formulas and weapons. While gunpowder may have been invented *up to 600 years earlier*, this book contains the first recorded \"official\" recipe. \n\nThere are also references to the use of a *huo qiang* - taken here to mean 'fire lance' but is also the modern Chinese term for firearms in general. These were (relatively) cheap and accessible disposable primitive firearms - essentially, a cheap gunpowder device that shot out fire and small bits of shrapnel at close range. Not what you would call a traditional 'gun' though...\n\nThese are *claimed* to have been employed in the imperial armies as early as the late 10th Century and references to their use in battle appear occasionally in early military histories.\n\nIt is more than likely that a projectile from a fire lance would have struck a soldier - friendly or otherwise, because these things would have been tremendously inaccurate - in the course of a battle.", "Given the responses in this thread to date, perhaps a better follow up question is:\n\nWho was the first person to get shot and who was the first person shooter in recorded history?", "The Danish King Kristian I was hit in the face by an arqebuis shot fired by someone in the Swedish peasant militia host (that won the battle) at Brunkeberg outside (nowadays inside) Stockholm 1471. He lost three teeth and had to retreat from the frontline.\n\nThis is one of the first recorded occasion of someone mentioned by name being hit by a hand-held gunpowder weapon in Scandinavia.", "There is a report of a British soldier being shot with an arquebus at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415\n\n* Keegan, John. The face of battle : a study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. London : Barrie  &  Jenkins, 1988.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/science/20inca.html", "http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070620081734.htm"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "f86hz", "title": "How much % banana are we? ", "selftext": "I keep getting different numbers as to how many genes we share with the banana tree. And also thank you mods and everyone making this subreddit so fucking awesome.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f86hz/how_much_banana_are_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1e0s22", "c1e1kj5", "c1e4ypy"], "score": [9, 7, 2], "text": ["about [60%](_URL_0_), apparently.", "This is relevant to my interests.", "You might be interested in having a look at BLAST: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/records/rec539.htm"], [], ["http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi"]]}
{"q_id": "3ff4zq", "title": "what happens when a police officer pulls someone over who doesn't speak english?", "selftext": "For example, let's say that a cop pulls over a french tourist in a rental car who speaks zero english, and the cop doesn't speak french. How does an officer handle that situation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ff4zq/eli5_what_happens_when_a_police_officer_pulls/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cto0ma1", "cto0pkx", "cto0vt0", "cto46i9", "cto95on", "ctoal6b", "ctokukf"], "score": [18, 28, 8, 4, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["I don't know about other places, but in the UK, they can phone an interpreter. The phone gets passed between the officer and the person they've stopped, and the interpreter translated for each of them in turn.\n\nSource: seen it happen many times on police reality programs on tv.", "They'll hold you there until they find a way to translate, usually by radioing in for someone who speaks the language. \n\nLast year I was pulled over in Japan for speeding and didn't speak enough Japanese for them to be able to deal with me. It was in a rural area so there wasn't anyone at the nearby station who spoke fluent English, and it was summer, so I couldn't call my company to translate. In that case, they had a phrase book they used filled with common violations \"Your charge is...[flips pages] speeding over the limit [flips pages] Your speed was 60kph [flips pages] the limit was 45.\"\n\nAfter that a bike cop with a nice cell phone pulled up and used google translate to explain how to pay my ticket. They didn't let me go until we both had a good understanding of what was going on.", "We had a similar situation here in Serbia when one of US journalists came here and police officer pulled him over for speeding.  \nPoliceman could speak zero English and the journalist guy couldn't understand a word which lead to that that American guy thought that policeman wants bribe.  \nHe recorded all of that and uploaded to YouTube.  \nThe thing was that the law in Serbia is if you pay your ticket right at the place you pay 50% of the ticket, if you want to pay it later you pay the full price. But there was a misunderstanding, apparently.  \n\nConclusion, policeman is not obligated to know any foreign language other than his language. He can, but he don't have to, call a 'backup' with someone who can help him to talk to a person. Or he should have a right to take that person to the closest police station in order to figure out what to do.", "By gesture, and by force if necessary.\n\nThey will either be held there, or if the charge is serious, brought to the police station until a means to translate is found.", "Back in 2006 when the WM was in germany, police officers got little booklets with common phrases translated into many languages. They read it to you or showed it to you, if they couldn't read or pronounce it (like russian or chinese for example). Some police officers still use it to communicate with tourists. \n\nStill, most police officers learn common phrases by default and tell you to wait for a translator. If they can't find a common language they use gestures. That's a typical roleplay in the academy, btw.", "The area I work in has a high Hispanic population. I took French in high school, which obviously does me no good. If the violation is serious enough then I'll request a Spanish speaking officer or contact a translator by phone. For minor violations, I can usually get by with some Spanish phrases I've picked up or the court can explain the ticket to them with one of their translators. One of the tricky areas come from Spanish speaking DUI arrests, due to the fact they need to be advised of certain things. Again, we can request a translator but sometimes that resource is not available. Instead the prosecutor's office here made a Spanish audio CD that advises the subject of all the necessary information. Any other language besides Spanish will be a little more difficult but I haven\u2019t really run into that issue yet. As others have mentioned, a smart phone can come in handy sometimes as well.", "We do whatever we can to communicate. Hand gestures and other context clues help a lot. We have SOME on the force who can speak spanish, which the is the biggest non-english language we deal with.\n\nfun fact: a LOT of the people who pretend not to speak english can speak at least a little bit. they're easy to find because if i tell them they're standing in a pile of ants, they hurry up and look down and move real quick. busted.\n\nsauce: cop"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1auptn", "title": "Is magnetism subject to the inverse square law? If not, why not?", "selftext": "It seems to me through simple experimentation that ordinary magnets have a strong field close to the magnet and virtually none a small distance away. Moreover, the earth's magnetosphere appears to have a distinct boundary, which is where ionized particles of solar wind collect and cause the aurora borealis. If it were subject to the same inverse-square effect as, say, light or other electromagnetic radiation, there would not be such a relatively sharp demarcation, nor would there be \"loops\" that fluctuated. Or would there? Is the magnetism I'm describing different in some fundamental way from electromagnetic radiation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1auptn/is_magnetism_subject_to_the_inverse_square_law_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c90wz5b", "c90xcq1", "c90ynwk"], "score": [12, 7, 3], "text": ["If you had a couple of magnetic monopoles, then there would be an inverse square law force between them; we know this because Maxwell's equations exhibit precise duality between the electric and magnetic fields.\n\nHowever, we have never found a magnetic monopole. We've never seen a magnetic field line which is not a closed loop.\n\nIf you know what magnetic field lines around a permanent magnet look like, then you can imagine how the magnetic field strength goes: it's just proportional to how closely packed the field lines are, and in the same direction. \n\nFor an inverse square law, the field lines would all be radial straight lines, (which would require a source at the centre, i.e. a monopole, due to Gauss' law).", "Definitely not...\n\nThe magnetic field from a magnet falls as 1/distance^3 . So, the torque on one magnet from another magnet drops as 1/distance^3 .\n\nThe force on one magnet from another magnet drops as 1/distance^4 .\n\nThe force on a paramagnetic or diamagnetic object from a magnet drops as 1/distance^7 .\n\n(These are all long distance laws, where the distance is larger than the objects/magnets in question.)", "Interacting permanent magnets go as 1/r^3. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5ojogp", "title": "when attempting to sneeze, why does looking at the sun/a light source trigger it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ojogp/eli5_when_attempting_to_sneeze_why_does_looking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcjt4p3", "dcjt5e8", "dcjt66o", "dcjtbli", "dcjtt8k", "dcju1fp", "dcjuwxt", "dcjvey8", "dcjvxx6", "dcjyf6m", "dcjz2rx", "dcjz9ag"], "score": [350, 224, 14, 13, 9, 3, 53, 2, 3, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Imagine your nerves controlling sight as a sidewalk in a neighborhood. Normally, there's a normal supply of people walking on it and everyone stays on the path. Sometimes, there's a huge burst of people (looking at something bright). The sidewalk is so crowded that some people end up stepping on the lawn of the neighboring houses. Mr. Sneeze, living in one of the houses, sees this and gets out of his house to yell at the people to get off his lawn.\n\nThe process is known as photic sneeze reflex and it affects 18-35% of the population. The mechanics behind it are not fully understood but it may be due to nerve signals being confused when there is a rapid burst from seeing bright light.", "It doesn't for everyone. About 18-35% of people are affected by this; it's called [photic sneeze reflex](_URL_0_).", "The optic nerve takes all the light information from the eyes to the brain. \n\nThe maxillary nerve causes the sneeze reflex. \n\nThese two nerves run next to each other for part of their course. When there is lots of electrical activity going down the optic nerve, then because they are next to each other, this activity can \"leak\" onto the maxillary nerve and push it over the limit, causing a sneeze. ", "No one really knows. \nSome scientists say it's caused by confusion in the nervous system. Since all senses are linked, the pupil dilation response to light is translated to a nasal irritation and causes a sneeze.\nOther scientists suggest it's evolutionary, a trait that helped our ancestors survive in primitive life. (Clear the nose of smoke/other smells after leaving a cave to help smell threats/food sources).", "As someone who does this, I've noticed that squinting your eyes moves the sinus cavity. I imagine this affects the process as well", "I actually have the same thing. Strangely enough it can apparently it can be passed down. At least my mom has it and apparently my grandmother did as well. It's kinda annoying but only because the sneezes come on so quick that I can't see what I'm going and have to pause. ", "I shit you not, there is another name for this condition that is way better than photic sneezing. It's Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst Syndrome. Or ACHOO for short :)\n\n[Proof](_URL_0_) ", "It's actually called the \"ACHOO\" syndrome or some such nonsense... \n_URL_0_", "This is known as [photic sneeze reflex](_URL_0_) caused by a genetic mutation that results in some sensory inputs to become \"crossed\" for example sudden bright light can be interpreted by the brain as nasal irritation.", "I was told that looking at the sun/light normally involved looking up, which opened your airways. And that was why it helps you sneeze.\n\nNo idea how true that is, though I've noticed it has the same effect in a dark room as when I'm outside. ", "I have this condition. Also, if i am clogged in the nose my wife plucks my eyebrows. It has the same effect and quickly clears up my nose. Lots of sneezes ensured.\n\nOften when we come out after being in a dark building my wife says \"Wait for it..\"", "I read somewhere that the nerve that controls your pupil dilation is in close proximity to the nerve that triggers a sneeze. When you look at a bright light your eye contracts and causes the nerve to fire. This can activate the nearby sneeze nerve."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK109193/"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1k5vn1", "title": "Could You Keep a Superconducting Wire Cool by Surrounding It With Thermoelectric Material?", "selftext": "Pretty much the title. I'm curious if thermoelectrics would be sufficient to keep a superconducting wire superconductive so long as it was cooled to a sufficiently low temperature beforehand.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1k5vn1/could_you_keep_a_superconducting_wire_cool_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbloum7", "cbm95j1"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["This would only be possible if the thermoelectric generator was 100% efficient. Not only is this physically impossible, modern TGs are only around 8% efficient at best.  It would be better than nothing at all, though.  ", "No.  No thermoelectric material can be 100% efficient at converting heat to electricity.  So some ambient heat would get through the thermoelectric material and warm the superconductor.  If the ambient temperature was above the critical temperature for the superconductor, then Tcrit would eventually be reached. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5fp8r3", "title": "when making pancakes, why does the first one always come out badly, whereas the rest come out fine?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fp8r3/eli5_when_making_pancakes_why_does_the_first_one/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dalxv4a", "dam0rc3", "dam2v1z", "dam7331"], "score": [44, 17, 22, 3], "text": ["Universally know as the 'sacrificial pancake' . Usually caused by haste and a pan thats not quite hot enough. ", "I wouldn't agree the first one is bad, but usually the difference is how much oil there is. Too much oil goes in, the pancake can't make even contact with the pan and you get the uneven texture and greasy coating. \n\nThen the second one goes in. Most of the oil left on the first pancake, so it makes good contact and you get a nice even cook. \n\nSome people actually like their pancakes the first way and actively try and reproduce it. Crepes in particular are much better when cooked in \"too much\" butter. ", "Because you're too anxious for yummy pancakes and you don't let the pan heat up enough.\n\nHere's how to tell if your pan is ready - run your fingers under the water at the sink, then shake a few drops of water off your fingers onto the pan. If the water spatters and dances on the pan, you're good to go. ", "Bro don't use oil, use butter.\n\nHeat the pan up good (when a drop of water fizzles away quick you're golden) then drop some butter in there, quickly get it to cover most your pan and then follow up with the pancake batter.\n\nRepeat every two pancakes IMO, the second one uses up all the old butter (this also means you're not burning your butter.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vuh9o", "title": "a long time ago, a person was able to work 40 hours a week and support a family. today two people need to work 40 hours a week to barely support themselves living together. what changed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vuh9o/eli5a_long_time_ago_a_person_was_able_to_work_40/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d61h7mh", "d61int6", "d61irr2", "d61isyz", "d61jd6e", "d61jh8h", "d61jo2e", "d61jrkm", "d61js00", "d61js57", "d61k6za", "d61k891", "d61k96x", "d61kb6u", "d61kf5b", "d61krtt", "d61kvd2", "d61lghb", "d61lje1", "d61lmk4", "d61loje", "d61lq4k", "d61ltk4", "d61ltnp", "d61lzlv", "d61m1iz", "d61m28g", "d61m9z4", "d61maeg", "d61mafv", "d61mft8", "d61mkja", "d61mn1r", "d61mqt2", "d61mrbb", "d61mu0g", "d61muas", "d61n74m", "d61n8x6", "d61nkp6", "d61nmf7", "d61nr0s", "d61nrj4", "d61o028", "d61oi0u", "d61okik", "d61oqry", "d61ot6f", "d61oth4", "d61pg93", "d61r9ei", "d61x6ut"], "score": [990, 50, 2, 2, 29, 4, 36, 108, 21, 224, 12, 467, 6, 3, 3, 11, 4, 4, 10, 2, 3, 5, 2, 11, 9, 56, 21, 6, 278, 18, 4, 45, 4, 13, 25, 3, 5, 36, 2, 2, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 9], "text": ["Stagnating wages, skyrocketing cost of living, poor transportation and heavy traffic make the less-expensive suburbs very difficult to live in while working in the city.  A huge increase in tuition costs resulting in everyone in their 20s being sacked with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.\n\n", "I have a friend who has a theory that it stems from (putting it bluntly) women getting equal opportunity at jobs and careers.  \n\nI don't really know if I agree with him or not, and it's certainly not a \"politically correct\" stance to agree with. But objectively, it makes sense... a massive influx of people into the job market over a couple of decades, more so than job growth could handle at the time. This means workers aren't a limited commodity anymore... they're in excess, so employers can pay less for them because everyone's just happy to have a job. \n\n", "There are people who aren't rich yet still can support a family by working 40 hours a week. One of the big things that's changed is our standard of living and the culture surrounding it. Back in the times you're thinking of, a \"good\" standard of living meant something very different than what we mean when we refer to a \"good\" standard of living today. It seems that our idea of what a \"good\" standard of living entails has grown much faster than have wages. ", "Selfish legislation passed by a slight majority of babyboomers has allowed them to reap the most possible benefits at the coat of their children's futures. ", "In addition to the other factors mentioned, it's not true that in the past one person could support a family.  In the mid-20th century, while the husband may have been the only wage-earner, the wife usually worked full-time in the home, cooking, cleaning, and raising the children for no pay.  These days, families with two working parents often spend most of one person's salary to buy these services.\n\nGoing back further in time, many of the older children in the family would also be working full-time jobs rather than going to school.\n\nIt may seem like we haven't gained anything with the two-worker household, but we have: it means more choice and self-determination for women, and better education and less exploitation of children.  (And despite appearances, households *have* become wealthier too.)", "A variety of things changed but a major factor is the expectations of what you should expect from life. People needed less money in the past because they had lower expectations of standard of living compared to now. \n\nThings a family in 1970 didn't spend money on: computers, video game systems, multiple cars, personal tvs, multiple phones, cable tv, and probably more that I can't think of offhand.", "I believe it has a lot to do with the devaluation of human labor. You may now only need one person to do multiple tasks that may have taken a team of people to do 30 years ago. Factor in population growth and you can probably picture how the supply side of labor is in excess, which in turn creates a cost decrease in labor. Now, this idea only works if you assume non-skilled labor. I do not believe skilled labor is feeling the \"change\" you mentioned, and if they are its probably because of a change in what we consider \"supporting a family\" means.", "If you lived a 1950s lifestyle, you could support a family on one salary. \n\nThen: One car per family.  Now: One car per person.\n\nThen: One phone per family. Now: One cell phone per person.\n\nThen: Over the air radio/TV.  Now: Cable, streaming services, etc.\n\nThen: Small house.  Now: Giant house.\n\nThen: Coupon cutting, smart shopping, cooking and eating at home.  Now: Take out/dining out every day/night.\n\nThen: Taking lunch to work every day.  Now: going out for lunch every day.\n\nThen: Hand me downs for children.  Now: Latest fashion accessory.\n\nThen: No internet.  Now: All the internets.", "At one time, successful companies passed their profits on to their employees. Modern business practices favor getting employees to work as cheaply as possible. \n\nSo the CEO makes 25 million dollars a year, plus bonuses, and the employees have all been fired and replaced by temps making close to minimum wage.", "Post World War II, US manufacturing sector survived. European manufacturing was decimated .  But now the competitors have recovered and now you've new competitors. And you're competing with all of them at once.      \n\nDoing business with other nations is the key to world peace, now that too many countries have nuclear weapons. It'll be foolish to pick a fight with a country you're doing business with without it affecting your own economy negatively. \n\nHuman life became more expensive, so many factory high risk jobs got shipped to countries where value of life is cheap to both government welfare and companies being sued.    \n\nHigh tuition costs. No major improvement to the education system. Blue collar workforce isn't being trained into white collar jobs .     \n\nChinese labor force(relatively debt free) is competing with American labor force (debt ridden). Initially it was blue collar manufacturing jobs, then white collar jobs and now small businesses and infrastructure. They're building roads and bridges in foreign countries. \n\nThe rest of the planet came out of slavery and started to educate their citizens. More competition.     \n\nAgriculture has improved, fewer people are dying because of poverty. And many countries also got their independence from the Brits. More Indians died under British rule because of famine, since the food was shipped to Brits at the cost of Indian life. \n\nHealthcare is better, which has increased competition. Experienced work force isn't retiring/dying and a healthy baby is born every second.         \n\nEasy loans have increased the property prices globally. You can work 40hours and have a family but your lifestyle needs to change. You probably can't afford the same neighborhoods as a couple 40years ago. ", "Low/no skill labor in the US does have it much tougher today. Much more of the world is industrialized and automation has progressed rapidly; so a lot of blue collar jobs are now competing with global labor and also with technology. That has put massive downward pressure on manufacturing wages, and has eliminated altogether a great many manufacturing jobs.\n\nToday we also have computers, smart phones, internet access, hundreds of times as much entertainment content, MRIs, a great many new drug therapies, much more complicated vehicles, many more vehicles per person, much larger houses, air travel for the masses, a much more varied food selection, etc...\n\nSo we have more to spend money on, and people at the lower end of the economic ladder have less money to spend on everything. The good news is the upper middle class and rich portions of the population have exploded. That is cold comfort when you are not in one of those groups though.\n", "Lots of good suggestions here, but most people seem to be talking about how we're all worse off. Personally, I disagree.\n\nAn obvious one is that lifestyles have changed massively. Everyone now has two cars. The household of the 50s might have had a few luxury goods, now 8-yr olds have iPhones. We go on more holidays, to further places, and spend more. More people go to college, which now costs more. Two people working means we need more childcare, which costs more. We look down upon manual labour, but we're excited for people to have Art History degrees.\n\nEssentially, we don't live the way we used to. Yes, house prices have outpaced wages, but we spend a lot more money on a lot more crap than we used to. People used to read books, now we all have 2 or 3 consoles, cable, multiple televisions, and a kindle if god forbid we deign to actually read. You're probably reading this on your phone, or tablet, or a pc.\n\nFight Club summarised it nicely, if you ask me - *\"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need\"*\n\nWhat you call 'good', and what the people 50 years ago called 'good' - they're waaaay different, man.\n\n(we could also discuss the division of wealth, or the population explosion, both of which are equally valid responses)", "You are assuming that what was true 50 years ago was also true 100 years ago. Most people weren't supporting a family on a single paycheck from 40 hours of weekly work a 100 years ago.", "Are you just talking USA? Because what you describe is entirely possible in some European countries.", "Two points some people are ignoring.\nExecutive salaries increased by about the same as middleclass lost (by stagnation)\nMost jobs lost through automation are middle-management not enrylevel or unskilled.\n", "Elizabeth Warren and her daughter wrote a book about it.\n\nThe basic premise is that families have taken their second income  and have gotten into bidding wars with each other and driven the price of basic living items higher. Housing being the prime example but also things like daycare and education.\n\n[Two Income Trap](_URL_0_)\n", "Trickle down economics didn't trickle down.  Globalasation/Offshoring of manufacturing jobs.  Population increasing more than the number of high paying jobs.  Accumulation and stagnation of wealth.", "This is an overly exaggerated way to describe today's economy. Most families in the US are not in a position where both spouses have to work full-time just to support themselves, far from it.\n\nIt's true that inflation-adjusted median income levels have stagnated since the 1980s (though they did not fall) and for that you can blame - if you chose to do so - globalization. If you don't want to blame anyone, you go out and get a useful skill-intensive degree and reap the benefits of today's knowledge-based economy. Like the wealthier Americans have done to much success.", "Your question is based on a strawman. It is absolutely not true for almost everywhere in the US.  Some places yes...most places, no.  \n\nI know plenty of 40 hour a week single income families that have boats, take vacations...you name it.\n\nThey don't live in SF or Manhattan apartments. ", "I also think that people have way higher expectation about what \"supporting a family\" means.  People used to have one car, smaller houses, simpler diets, fewer outfits, modest, if any, vacations; etc.  Our expectations of what we need has grown so much that we need two incomes to support our lifestyle.  ", "Wages didn't keep up with inflation and the current costs when they went up. People make less now than they did on minimum wage back then. You have to make at least $15 an hour to make a comfortable living. ", "So much rose-tinted googles and tear-jerking on here.\n\nIncome levels in the US are higher today than they were through most of the 20th century. It's true that in the past 20 years income levels have stagnated, but they are still higher than in 1990. ", "Maybe we have more access to things we \"want\" as opposed to \"need\".\n\nWe \"want\" the\n\nMobile phones\nDigital/Satellite TV\nInternet Access\nFancier Car\nLatest Computer/Gadgets\nBranded clothes...\n\nThen our kids want the same\n\nIf I only spent money (here in the UK) on what my parents did in the 1970s then we could probably survive comfortably on my salary alone.", "Something to chew on... In 1975 the Fair Labor Standards Act set the exempt from overtime level to $23,660. It's remained there for 40 years thanks to the 1%. All the money that would have gone to our families and communities instead went to the 1%. This was always supported by the Republicans. Shame on Democrats for letting it languish.\n\nPresident Obama will issue an Executive order in December of this year raising that number to $47,476. Adjusted for the Consumer Price Index, that number should be $106,003. Sorta starts to focus the economic picture we have.\n\nInterestingly, looking at what's considered the poverty income level for a family of four is $23,550. Boy, that's JUST UNDER the federal exemption from overtime of $23,660! I wonder if there's a correlation!\nIt's just sad that our legislators have allowed corporate interests to quite literally run over the American middle class and flush down the toilet. \n\nThere is no question in my mind that we have become a corporate state owned by the 1% (or now the 0.1%).", "2 main factors at play\n\n1) Wages have stagnated while the price of necessities have gone up.\n\n2) People buy more stuff they don't need.  Average house size has gone up.  Unnecessary electronics cost more.  No one truly needs a data plan. We spend less time on food preparation and so we pay more for \"convenience\"", "It's infuriating me that the honest to God and real reason hasn't been mentioned. **[The increase in world population.](_URL_0_)**\n\nWhen there's plenty of food production and less people, food is, of course, cheaper. But as demand, diversity, and required quantity increase, it's bound to go up.\n\nBut that's obviously only scratching the surface. You want to own a home? That means owning land. And that means being able to get land to own. \n\nLondon is a perfect example. [This is the population INCREASE of London over the past few years](_URL_1_). \n\n[But now look at the price of a typical London home over time](_URL_2_). (Make sure to check the years at the bottom, and sorry for image size). \n\nPopulation shoots up? Home prices shoot up.\n\nThis goes for everything, not just food and housing. More people want furniture? Well, more furniture needs to be made. But that means more factories/assemblies (and forests/materials), which needs more land. \n\nThat's not even scratching on non-renewables. And I don't mean just oil and gas. There are only so many metals, and recycling only goes so far. Yes, there's a HELL of a lot of iron, but getting to it becomes more and more difficult and, yes, requires more and more land.\n\nTl;Dr: Rising population requires more land. We don't have more land. This creates a cascading demand for land, which means it's worth more, which then gets washed into the rest of the economy since every business needs land at some point in its chain.\n\nEDIT: Spotted a comment further down mentioning how many people avoid this issue, it's just if you're in a densely populated area. This is somewhat true but it goes worldwide, think through the supply chain. If you live in the Mid-West, an area with a lot of free space, and buy bananas, that came from another country which might not have so much space, given it's all taken up by banana farms. Suddenly, bananas have a premium on them due to land prices due to high demand, low supply. So even though the grocer in the Mid-West has cheap land, what he's buying doesn't.\n\nThere's a catch here, and bananas are a weak example, since transport is cheaper now than it used to be. But you will see what I've detailed in my post in action over the coming years.", "When? If you look at it historically, very roughly:\n\n1) before the industrial revolution, you busted your ass working the fields 24/7 to have food on the table, and if you were lucky enough to live in a feudal society, most of it went to your lord\n\n2) during the industrial revolution, you worked 10+ hours in factories under terrible conditions\n\n3) that leaves us with say, the 20th century (and only in certain countries), where 40 hrs/week would allow you to get by, which historically is just a blip on the radar. If, for instance, you lived in the rural USSR, food shortages and general goods shortages were still common, so 40 hrs/week and a comfortable life was not universally true.\n\nObviously during each and every one of these eras there were certain classes of people that were exempt from this, but that was always a tiny minority of the population. So to sum it up, I don't think your statement is really true except in the view of recent history.", "The economy simply adapted for families with 2 incomes.\n\nNowadays, with women working we have an extra income in the house, but we also have extra expenses like a babysitter or a kindergarten for the kids, money spent on frozen food because the woman are no longer at home all the time to cook (which is cheaper than buying frozen food), women that work mostly likely will have an extra car to go to work (additional expenses), etc.\n\nThis type of economic adaptation is also seen when people that live alone get a raise. For example, let's suppose that your salary is 5k USD/month, but next month your boss decides to make your new salary 6k USD/month.\n\nAt the end of the first month after the raise you will probably be happy to see how most of those extra 1k USD will still be in your bank account, but a few months later - after you adapted to your new income and lifestyle - I'm sure that the amount of money left on your account in the end of the month will be basically the same that used to be before the raise.", "People keep saying, its all the luxuries we expect nowdays that are making it seem like we have less becuse we expect more. So you are telling me that because now i have a smartphone,internet and go out to dinner once a week that all of my disposable income is going there. Please. You are making it sound like people used to just sit at home watching paint dry. People used to purchase expensive stereo equipment instead of a smartphone, they used to go to the bar instead of \"racking up data with netflix\". The younger generation isn't spending all their money on luxuries that people back then didn't have, the luxuries are just different. Even if we have more nowdays, you can't honestly expect me to accept the fact that because i have some small luxuries that's the reason i can't possibly hope to buy a house anywhere even remotely normal. It has everything to do with globalization and national economic policies.", "The reason is NAFTA destroyed our blue-collar economy.  It made it possible for corporations to exploit developing countries unregulated work forces, which American plants can not compete with. They opened the floodgates to outsourcing and now that domestic workforce which defined our country post WW2 is almost entirely gone; there are still a few industries like steel manufacturing/fabrication, aeronautics, agriculture, and firearms, but even those jobs are being snuffed out by China's vicous maniplution of it's currency. The TPP and TTIP are the final nails in the coffin of the American middle-class, and that is why we are seeing so much bi-partisen blow-back and the elite attempting to fast track it.\n\nNAFTA and TPP is great for the people who own and run the companies; profit soars as American workers are laid off, and the CEOs, mop up all the money that would have otherwise gone to their employees. The economy does not reap any of the increased profits either, because often times the international coorporations shelter under tax-havens overseas, vis-a-vis the panama papers.", "Wealth accumulates upward and the social safety net was dismantled beginning in the 80s. Without a significant check to their power, the rich continue to get richer while leaving the rest of the country behind. The Reagan revolution has bankrupted America. That's why.", "Capital has suceesfully destroyed the labor movement. Simple as that's. Through propaganda they have convinced the people to vote out of their self interest and have undone the progress made in the 1880's through the 1950's", "Work went from meaningful and worthwhile to \"pay me enough to scrape by and I'll be your slave.\"\n", "Globalization.\n\nTwo generations ago, knowledge was sequesterable.  The people who had it (the West) kept it to themselves.  If you wanted to learn engineering, you had to go to a western university.  If you wanted to be a doctor, the same.  And, it was similar in almost every top profession.  If you wanted to do anything to a top-degree, you had to pay someone in the West to learn how to do it.  So, the people getting educated used to be almost entirely Westerners.  All the best jobs were in the Western World.  Etc...  The West had an absolutely MASSIVE competitive advantage.\n\nNot anymore.  Nowadays, if you want to learn anything - you go to the internet.  Knowledge isn't sequestered anymore.  Anyone can get it.\n\nWhen you want a bedside table, you can get a $25 one from China.  50 years ago, you pretty much had to get one hand-made for you, at 10x the price.  But, we can only do this now because wages are so much lower in China.\n\n50 years ago, you couldn't just ship your factory over to China to take advantage of the cheap labor.  Now you can - and, not surprisingly, all the factories have left the Western World (for the most part). \n\nIn fact, nowadays, you can do just about anything - just about anywhere.   So, wages in China/India/etc... will be rising (compared to American wages) as more factories move there.\n\nWe used to be able to get away with paying ourselves 50x what the same laborer in China was making.  We can't anymore.  Wages in the First World and equalizing with wages in the 3rd world (and everywhere else).  \n\nThat's why the West has been getting poorer for decades now.  The advantages we used to have over everyone else are pretty much gone now.  Luckily, we still have a huge economic advantage.  But, over the next few decades, expect everything to get worse for Westerners and better for everyone else.\n\ntl;dr:  The West used to have humongous barriers-to-entry and a lock on knowledge.  Today it's slipping away (and has been for decades now).", "People like to try to find one reason, but in reality it's almost always more complicated than that. Housing prices alone have seen a ton of growth. Here's a graph that has some price changes from 1980-2016:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you look at the last tab that shows real growth, The US costs have inflated 14% in real terms, with a lot of the major cities growing 40% or more. Real terms meaning inflation adjusted, as this is ELI5. So, for something that may have cost you 25% of your take home pay in 1980, you're now paying 35% for the same house. \n\nThe other variable to consider her is that these percentages are based off median household income. In laymans terms, as more women joined the workforce, more money went into each household, and even with that happening, housing costs continued to rise. Effectively, we've worked harder to pay more, at least partially.\n\nConsumerism is another major factor. Put simply, you probably buy a lot more shit than someone did 30-50 years ago.\n\nA third major change was the factor of productivity. This tends to be the most politically fueled subject of the bunch. I started typing a big example here, but there's no way to start without going on for longer than I have. In short, technology has allowed a single person to be significantly more productive, which changes profit payouts from employees to shareholders. \n\nThere are probably a lot of other valid reasons too, but these are the biggest three I can think of off hand.\n\nTL:DR; Your house costs a lot more than it used to, you buy too much stuff, and you're significantly underpaid relative to your value 50 years ago.", "Lets not forget that 40hrs a week is a privilege Americans had to strike/protest for. In the early 1900's workers were literally building the country working 16hr shifts each day. Workers were often cheated of their money, time and if nonwhite or nonblack, land. And with the World War's logistics devastating the country families were encouraged to grow their own food. I think after the 50th's the country seen the worst and got their shit together. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.", "The value of real estate is just like the value of everything else. It's worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. One of the biggest problems where I live in Southern California and other places where real estate prices are high is that super rich people from places like China are coming in and buying up everything as rental properties and paying cash. This lowers the inventory of available real estate and thus supply and demand drives up the value. It creates this extremely unfair playing field where regular folks who have saved get outbid and out priced. ", "I wonder what the wealth gap was like back then?\n\nThere are 1645 billionaires in the world today.\n14.6 MILLION millionaires.\n\nI know plenty of people say a million isn't that much anymore. But I would argue it is more than most ever see.\n\nHow many huge corporations are there today? and how much money do they have compared to corporations in the past.\nand how much tax are they paying compared to the past?\nThese would directly affect how much tax the person on the street has to pay, either directly, or indirectly through the purchases they make.\n\nA house in 1960 in the UK was an average of \u00a32500\nwith the yearly wage being around \u00a3700-\u00a31000 \n\nToday the average wage is \u00a327k\nwith the average house price being \u00a3282k\n\n3 years wage to buy a house in 1960.\nOver 10 years today.\n\nQuite a difference!!\n\n \nOther things are being kept artificially low, so it looks like our money goes further.\nMilk is only \u00a31 per 2litres\nBread is only 80p a loaf\nEggs are \u00a31.50 for a dozen\n\nWhich is near enough what they cost to manufacture.\nThis also goes for all the sugar and cheap shit they create 'produced food' out of these days.\nIt seems like our weekly wage isn't that affected by our weekly shop too badly.\nBut if you wanted to buy quality food. You know it is out of the price range of the average person.\n\n\nThere are far more other reasons, but we live in a consumer world today. Other people manufacturer it.\nIf it wasn't being made by kids in the third world, or low paid workers in the far east, we simply wouldn't be able to afford it on our wages.\n\nThe rich have got richer, and we are living a lie of wealth, with subsidised food, and dirt cheap products, made by even poorer people, but with housing it takes a lifetime to afford, and the inevitable global equality coming in the future.\nWhich will no longer bring the masses their cheap products.\n\nOur wealthy and educated will be able to compete in the global market, but our poor will face competition they cannot compete with, which will force the global poor to be on a similar level.\n\nIf the rich/corporations are taxed to prop up the poor, then a country could protect its vulnerable, otherwise the wealth gap will become bigger and the rich will Ayn Rand themselves away from the impoverished masses. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Well, I would like to add my two cents to this (I am not an economist, but I will try my best to explain what I believe is happening). First, inflation and second, wage stagnation. \n\nThe easiest way to explain what is inflation is that your buying power, of a consumer, weakens because products get more expensive (and there is a number or reasons as to why it happens- like the parts of the product gets more expensive to manufacture or transportation cost more. So the producer of the goods would have to start raising the price of the goods you want to buy at the store).\n\nThink of it this way. Every week you buy a few groceries at your local supermarket. There, you buy milk, bread, cheese, chicken, lunch meat, some fruits, and vegetables. At the registered, the cashier tells you that your total is $9.99. The next time you buy the exact same groceries (milk, bread, cheese, chicken, lunch meat, some fruits, and vegetables) the cashier will tell you that the total price of those items is now- $10.99. As a consumer, you just lost some buying power because you have to pay a little bit more to purchase the exact same goods. Now, imagine the same thing happen over time- and sometimes this can happen pretty fast. Which would hurt the economy of where it is happening, if inflation is out of control (think of places like the Weimar Republic) . The rate in which inflation happens is called the inflation rate. \n\nWage stagnation is basically when your paycheck isn't keeping up with the inflation rate of your society/time period. So even if you are getting a small raise it won't be enough, unless your new raise covers the current inflation rate. If you have wage stagnation, then over time, you can't really keep up with a same standard of living, that you started out with. So, usually, we now have a household where two must work to keep up with the standard of living we considered to be normal (owning a car, owning a home, paying bills/utilities etc...).", "Simply put, machines are putting good people out of work. My grandfather was a machinist in Milwaukee. No college, just on the job training. Married at age 23, raised 5 kids. Lived in a modest house for the rest of his life.\n\nHis job doesn't exist anymore. Not in the US, and if it does, it's being done by a machine. That's the point of machines; what they can do no one will hire a person to do. And not to sound like a Marxist, but the profits from that saved labor don't go to everyday people, they go to the people who own the machines.\n\nThis will only accelerate in the future. There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US who make pretty good wages. All of their jobs are in jeopardy in the next 10-20 years. Those jobs will *never* be coming back.\n\nYes, people spend more on stuff they don't need. It's the design of the beast. Our economy depends on people buying things they don't need. If people only bought what they needed our economy would collapse.\n\nWe need to ask some serious questions in the future about what we want society to look like, given the reality that more and more people will be automated out of a job. We need to shake the Protestant idea that people who don't work are just lazy. Maybe they are, or maybe they've just been left behind. \"Your skills will no longer be necessary.\"", "I think that it should be required on this thread to indicate your age. I am 56. I was born in 1960. My father worked and my mother stayed at home. We had one car, which we kept until it died. We had one TV, which was black and white until we eventually bought a color TV. There was no cable bill. We had two phones. One upstairs. One downstairs in the basement (where Monsters dwelt). Both were leased rotary phones wired to the wall. We paid a monthly bill for our phones. Long distance phone calls were incredibly expensive so when we called long distance, which was rarely, we kept it quick. We drove for our vacations. We did not fly. Hardly anyone flew. We ate out once a week at an affordable sit down restaurant. I did not have a computer, a phone, or a game console as a kid. No one I knew had expensive stereo equipment. We had single unit stereos that were cheap. Medical care was less expensive. But people died more from medical issues. Gas was cheap. Our mortgage was my family's largest expense by far. It was why all the other things stated above were true. The bottom line was that people were frugal. Coffee was out of a pot. Starbucks did not exist. Track your income. Control your spending, as your grandparents did. People largely nickle and dime themselves into living paycheck to paycheck. Live the life your parents lived at your age, not the life your parents live now. Oh, and max your retirement savings.", "A large increase in the labor supply tends to drive down wages. \n\nWomen entered the workforce in large numbers starting around the time that inflation-adjusted wages began to stagnate.", "A lot of issue to cover here, but a few easy ones to name  led to the decline...\n\nThe abandonment of the gold standard is one. When our currency was based on a rare metal it was much harder for the dollar to be manipulated. \n\nReturning the Panama Canal was another. The canal helped feed the coffers that helped Goverment run. It wasn't a huge hit, but it did take away our abality to control a powerful trade route. \n\nPoor trade agreements hurt a lot.  We as a country couldn't really compete with countries that subsidized the cost of thier manufactured goods. \n\nThe implementation of a minimum federal wage under valued labor is some parts of the country, over valued labor in others. Before a federal minimum wage, local markets controlled the price of labor. Pay too little and no one would work for you, pay too much and not be able to afford the price of labor.  The cost of labor was tied the cost of living in a more dynamic sense. Now, wages in some parts of the country are too low, and in other too high. Instead of the town/city/state basing pay off of a local scale, it is now tied to federal requirement that ignores a local market. \n\nThe growth of Goverment. This is a big issue. A major issue. This simple example of how poorly the Goverment spends money is a little old, but should give you a fair idea. No Child Left Behind. For every dollar collected in taxes, on average, 14 cents made it back to the schools. A lot of waste in the Goverment. Too much.\n\nThe rise of the welfare state. Very simple to explain. We support people who can not support them selves. The Goverment raises taxes to pay for it, people make less take home money, more go on welfare, more taxes are collected to pay for the increase of people on welfare, more people make less take home money, go on welfare.... Wash rise repeat.... Compounded by how bad our Goverment spends money. \n\nFederal grants and loans for higher education. So stupid that no one really sees this. Every single year the Goverment increase the amount of money it gives in grants and loans, the cost of higher education is increased to take full advangte of the increased amount of money the Goverment is willing to grant or loan. Have watched this happen for 18 years. No one says anything at all. \n\nThe rise of the 4th branch of Goverment. The regulator branch. Businesses spend billions to comply with regulations every year. That is money that could be used to hire more people. \n\nInsurance for every thing. Once insurance became mandatory, it no longer become affordable. This is very apparent for the current health care insurance we are now required to carry. \n\nTax law. Needs reform.  When a majority of people in the country don't pay any taxes at all, we have a problem.\n\n\nI think the biggest single factor though is probably the stupidity of the American people over all. We have become a society that doesn't respect debt and intrest. Very few seem to know how to live with in their means. Wealth is built over time, but requires spending wisely and only when really needed. \n\nThe average debt most Americans carry has soared in the last 15 years. \n\n\n\nEdit: spelling", "Lets go for specific data.\n\nnote: My examples are Canadian statistics\n\nBasically, the rate of income has increased similar to the rate of inflation.\n - **Income alone is not the problem.**\n\nWe have more debt at a younger age (student loans).  This is largely a policy problem (here in Canada) as we used to give more to universities.\n\nWe buy more stuff we don't need.\n\nWe buy on credit beyond our means of paying back.\n\n\nSince 1996, the [cost of living](_URL_1_) has increased 37.2%, or an average of 1.96% per year.\n\nFor a [longer range look from 1950 to 2016](_URL_0_) you see a steady increas of the \"consumer price index\".  The thing to remember about this index is that it tries to \"measures changes in the prices paid by consumers for a basket of goods and services.\"\n\nComputers and ipads are not on this list.\n\nLuxury items are not on this list.\n\n\nSo we probably have two distinct things going on here.\n\nIn the 1950s people often walked to work because they could not afford a car.\n\nThey worked close to home.\n\nThey ate local produce.\n\nThe didn't often  spend money on long distance calls or expensive phone services.\n\nThey may not have had a tv, and if they did it was small, and hey had only one.\n\nOnly the wealthy took expensive vacations.  Vacation time for many was a time to work on projects around the house like fixing leaks or windows that rattled.\n\nHere in Canada older people talk about frost on the inside of the house (not just the windows) and water frozen in the sink on winter mornings.\n\nMy mom first had indoor plumbing when she moved to the city (halifax) in 1946.  When she moved to Gimli Manitoba in 1956 because my dad was posted to a rural airbase, only a few homes had indoor plumbing.\n\nIn 1960, Mom bought [this home for $1500](_URL_2_)\n\nShe says **We lived differently in the 1950s**\n\nMom says she used a washboard for 6 years while they saved up to buy a washing machine.  (while teaching schools, while taking night courses to get her Masters of Education)\n\n", "There's a lot of propaganda in this thread, people spouting off on things they can't actually back with facts, just empty emotional proclamations.\n\nHere's a fact you won't see anyone else mention: at $45,000 the US has the world's second highest median disposable household income level (behind only Switzerland). For example, it's 20% higher than Norway, 32% higher than Germany, and 50% higher than Sweden.\n\nAnother: US household debt to income ratios are dramatically better than most Western European nations, including Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands.\n\nMore: the US unemployment rate is half that of the EU or Eurozone. US youth unemployment is also drastically better than most of Europe.\n\nMore: US median household net wealth is higher than either Germany or Sweden.\n\nAnother fun fact on this topic: the size of the median US house has nearly doubled since 1950, while the household size has been cut in half. However, keep in mind that the median American house is far larger than the median Western European house, and it costs less.\n\nSo what's the problem, given America has so much disposable income? Simple really: Americans have dramatically increased their consumer spending in the last 40 years, instead of dedicating that to savings. They have doubled the size of their homes, they've taken on multiple car payments, expensive cell  &  cable plans, eating out all the time, etc etc.\n\nHowever, that's not the entire story. If you believed the headline, you'd think America were actually struggling: it's not, news flash. More people have moved up out of the middle class in the last 40 or 20 year spans than have moved down out of it. The typical American is getting richer and moving up, not down:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "Men we're encouraged to have big families and women were all homemakers because they didn't really have workplace rights. Therefore, all jobs available had to support a family. The only people who went to college were doctors and big businessmen. Outsourcing labor was unheard of because corporations were very nationalistic (nationalism was viewed favorably during this time period, as opposed to now where it's viewed negatively and discriminatory) and also because we bombed every first world country to the ground during the World Wars and countries like China and India were just big farmland. The number of jobs that required no education were also abundant because the US gave a bunch of money to Europe (EDIT: Marshall Plan) to rebuild after the war but much of their money was used to buy US made good in order to establish their own infrastructures, so we could demand whatever price we wanted and no country had the resources or infrastructure to supply Europe's rebuilding needs. Lesser factors of living affordability were that women did not have vehicles. Companies also didn't have exposure to third-world populations who would work for lesser payment and benefits so corporations provided benefits for free.\n\n\n\nFast forward to present. The government gives out no-risk-analysis loans to go to college. Because loans are so freely given, colleges raised their prices exponentially because the government will loan citizens infinite money to attend school. So you have to get a $40k degree to make $12/hr working tech support. When you used to be able to make equivalent $25/hr as a high school dropout working for a plaant that manufactures electronics, furnitures, and automobiles. China and India are now rising industrial powers and not just farmland. Companies don't give workers benefits because their workforce China and India doesn't need the extra incentives to work so they'll just give your job to some Indian if you're unhappy with the work conditions. Companies feel no need to provide their fellow countrymen with jobs because nationalism has the negative connotation of being related to dictatorships. The new mindset is of diversity and tolerance, so the less numbers of legal American citizens working at a company, the better the company looks in the eyes of the new average consumer. \n\n\nPresent-day strong economy Nordic countries have protectionist trade policies, tough immigration laws, and less diversity. Present-day weak economy European countries are diverse with near non-existant immigration laws and very free trade.\n\n\nWhen trying to figure why America is less well off now, compared to the World War days, think of all the financially-invisible benefits of diversity combined with greater work opportunities that non-whites and women have now compared to the past. We could convert to Nordic policies and be like the America of old and that would be good for white natural born citizens but at the cost of quality of life for women, minorities, and the rest of the world. Without multinational, heartless corporations there would be many countries still farmland and many immigrants forced to remain in their shithole countries and never get to enjoy American quality of life.", "CEO and management wages went up, exceeding cost of living increases; while employee wages stayed nearly stagnant, continually failing to keep up with cost of living increases.", "I'm going to assume you live in the U.S. and break down the major points into ELI5 versions.\n\n1. Productivity of an employee has gone up roughly 60% in the U.S. since 1980, but compensation for that employee has gone up less than 10% in the same time period.  Additionally there are far less barriers to trade between countries than there used to be. Think of it this ELI5 way, the economy and individual employees are producing many more things you can buy, but not providing any additional compensation so that you can buy them.\n\n2. The debt burden on an individual is much higher than it used to be.  Essentially, the cost of cars, houses, and education are much higher now than they used to be.  [This website has a really good breakdown.](_URL_0_) Several factors have made them more expensive over that long period of time; union wages, more modern regulations for safety that prevent shortcuts, etc.  But the biggest factor is probably the difference between Need and Luxury.  A lack of education, a house, or a car places you in a fundamentally different strata of U.S. society.  You will be treated negatively for not having them.  That they represent \"Gateways\" to social success (like getting married or having good income) makes people need them more than iphones and fine dining.  ELI5: You want those things more so you will pay more for those things and the sellers know it.  Medicine had the same problem for a long time (buy me or die) but isn't growing as fast now that the Affordable Care Act has passed.\n\n3. Social mobility, or the ability of a person to change what level of income they live on, has nose-dived in the U.S.  The reasons are difficult to untangle: its a combination of the stratified education system, the high cost of the high end, and a reliance on a social network within the different strata to navigate them.  ELI5: If you are lower middle class, you don't know the business version of secret handshakes among the upperclass that let them recognize each other, and they don't know yours.  The result is our social classes act almost like rival tribes that avoid each other and don't like to let members of the other tribes in, especially when it comes to employment.  ", "Mrs. Economy next door makes a pie every day. She offers some pie to anybody who can help with yard work. You and other kids in the neighborhood used to go do some yardwork and Mrs. Economy would give you all enough pie for you and your whole family.\n\nOne day, you and your friends had to go beat up a bully a couple blocks down, and your sister did the yardwork that day. Mrs. Economy gave your sister the pie (though not as much as she normally gave you.)\n\nWhen you went back to work the next day, your sister did too because she preferred working for pie instead of depending on you for it. So now all the boys and girls in the neighborhood are doing yardwork. Mrs. Economy decided to give all the girls about 40% of the pie to rake leaves and pull weeds, and she gave the boys 60% of the pie to mow the lawn, dig post-holes, and put blacktop on the driveway. Overall, everyone's taking home a smaller amount of pie.\n\nEventually some kids borrow the riding mower from their dad and get the lawn mowed in half the time, but it turns out they actually get less pie because they didn't put in a full day's work. They got the same amount of work done in less time, but mower kids dad tells Mrs Economy that it's *his* mower so he should get the extra pie (not a very nice dad.) Mrs. Economy says she can only make so many pies in one day so thank you very much but the mower kid only gets an extra bite or two, and dad puts the extra pie in the freezer, under lock and key.\n\nYou and all the neighborhood kids are growing up and getting bigger, and so you need more pie to satisfy the demands of your bodies. Meanwhile, Mrs. Economy got an electric mixer and is actually pumping out more pies than ever. But because so many kids are getting in on the yardwork, and because all the neighborhood dads are loaning out riding mowers and leafblowers, you're seeing very little of the increased availability of the pie, even though you get more work done in less time, and just when your body needs more nourishment.", "A lot of people will answer stuff like wage stagnation or cost of living increases, but that isn't a cause, it is just data that shows the problem. A potential *cause* would be something like American business interests (what you might call \"capital\") defeating the workers' rights / labor movement. (I happen to agree with that one, but there are other possible causes.)", "The system's broken. It tends towards more and more wealth being held by fewer and fewer people because if you have money it's easier to make more money. So everything seems to get worse for everyone else. Only violent (usually economic, sometimes military, or possibly social) 'corrections' offset this trend, for a while, before it happens again under any capitalist system. Your life is worse because people in power can make money from it being worse and we don't seem to have a system to correct this in the normal course of events. ", "I could write a book on all the reasons it's hard to support a family today than it was in the 80's and earlier. But I'll summarize with this:\n\nCompanies don't give a shit about you. At the end of the day they're about making money and they can only get so far by making good products and services people want. At some point they need to maximize margins and to do that they condense, cut costs, and slow wages. Labor is generally the largest source of operating costs so it's the most attractive opportunity to exploit. \n\nThe government grossly underestimates cost of living because they're willfully ignorant to how expensive life is. Just look at food stamps. To qualify for assistance like food stamps you have to truly be living in a hell whole of depravity that makes you question why you're even alive. The reason is because the cost of living index heavily influences interests rates and seeing it for how depressing it really would benefit people and not businesses and banks, which as you know, own congress. \n\nThe housing market is in shambles. The quality of infrastructure in America is godawful. Homes are not up to code, large building are falling apart, and everything from our sewers to roads are in a state of disrepair that fails to meet regulations in more ways than you'd think possible, but this only benefits the people and would cost corporate America billions. \n\nIt's not about you and me, it's about padding the pockets of the top and making life more manageable for the average person (the vast majority of America) would be too expensive. So we stay poor and starved, too weak to do anything about it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1470172316&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=two+income+trap"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-population-1820-to-2010.png", "http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/cht2populationchange_tcm77-368323.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Graph-house-prices-1975-2006.gif"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/consumer-price-index-cpi", "http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ46a-eng.htm", "https://www.google.ca/maps/place/27+Central+Ave,+Halifax,+NS/@44.6536377,-63.6345742,3a,75y,316.46h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1soTETDlYJ5Rh3p_K6WjcD9g!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DoTETDlYJ5Rh3p_K6WjcD9g%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D325.93753%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x4b5a21a57f8c9857:0x48c1241bc27fbc54!8m2!3d44.6537223!4d-63.6348482!6m1!1e1"], ["https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-middle-class-moving-up/2016/06/24/214dc04a-3a28-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html", "http://finance.yahoo.com/news/middle-class-went-where-ll-000000086.html"], [], [], ["http://www.mybudget360.com/cost-of-living-2014-inflation-1950-vs-2014-data-housing-cars-college/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1uqpil", "title": "how long could the human race survive with our current tech if the sun simply went out (stop producing heat and light)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uqpil/eli5_how_long_could_the_human_race_survive_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cekqh35", "cekqpzq", "cekqsk5", "cekqyc6", "ceksxfi", "cekurhe", "cekvas5", "cekxj6o"], "score": [6, 7, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["the problem with the sun dying is that it won't simply \"go out.\" When it starts dying it's going to first become a red giant which will incinerate Mercury and Venus and turn our planet into what Venus looks like now.\n\nIf the sun did somehow blink off the human race has the technology to keep plants alive without the sun but I don't think we can possibly build anything to combat the 0 K temperatures that will follow so everything on the planet would die", "If we had a good period of advanced warning (like a couple decades), then a decent number of people could probably survive for a good while in underground bunkers. It would be a pretty miserable existence though. \n\nIf it happened without warning, humans wouldn't last too long. There are likely some underground military facilities that would be enable small groups of people to go on for a little while, but I don't think any of them are equipped to deal with more extreme circumstances like the atmosphere freezing. ", "the temperature would plummet globally, provided we knew it would happen we could build giant greenhouses to simulate warmth but still 90 % of the world population would starve, eventually the temperature would drop enough that not even greenhouses could sustain populations large enough to survive , the exact amount depends on the amount of forward warning we get ", "Vsauce actually did a video on this I found interesting. Maybe you will too. _URL_0_ ", "All of you are missing the point of this question. The human race could survive indefinatly using the heat from the mantle to survive and grow food. Number of survivors would be dependent on how long we had to prepare.", "Probably not too long. Solar panels would be obsolete, eventually the earth would freeze over and any hydroelectric power would be useless. ", "_URL_0_  \ndoesn't answer you're question but shows a lot of the positive stuff that would happen if the sun suddenly went out", "people, SPACE ISN'T COLD.\ntemperature is a property of matter and space is a vacuum. without convection, the only means of the planet losing heat is through radiation.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rltpH6ck2Kc"], [], [], ["http://what-if.xkcd.com/49/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3i2sdd", "title": "Was adopting pseudonyms a particularly Communist thing to do and when did it begin?", "selftext": "Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot etc. When did radical politicians/revolutionaries begin adopting pseudonyms and was it a 'left-wing' phenomena?\n\nALSO: If the cause was for safety why were they kept once power was achieved?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i2sdd/was_adopting_pseudonyms_a_particularly_communist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucyijw"], "score": [22], "text": ["I'd never thought about it before, but its Communist usage does seem to have started as a Russian thing, presumably reflecting the party's illegality, perhaps as a safeguard against police infiltration of party cells: I can use my name in everyday life, but within the Party I'm such-and-such - let the authorities hunt him instead. Prominent German Social Democrats conversely tended to use their \"real\" names even during the period of repression (1878-90), but they enjoyed some freedom in electoral activity. \n\nPseudonyms had of course been used in writings in the past - American revolutionary authors routinely adopted Roman ones, and even innocuous British tracts might be credited to \"A Merchant\", \"A Lover of His Country\", etc, but such names existed merely on paper rather than in their political life. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "45vb4g", "title": "why is marijuana \"impossible\" to overdose on?", "selftext": "Edit: totally forgot I posted this last night.  For the first time in probably 6 months I was not on reddit during work hours... fml\n\nThanks for the answers and upvotes everyone! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45vb4g/eli5_why_is_marijuana_impossible_to_overdose_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d00fm8t", "d00fofl", "d00foku", "d00fqjf", "d00fwj4", "d00gyrh", "d00gz6f", "d00jzxz", "d00mv8t", "d00o8j8", "d00ovgn", "d00pxi2", "d00py7z", "d00qd3o", "d00ren2", "d00rjm9", "d00rkfn", "d00rlyu", "d00rraj", "d00s9c2", "d00sy49", "d00tkk8", "d00tvtt", "d00uf1a", "d00uhha", "d00uj6j", "d00uqeb", "d00v0dv", "d00vcyc", "d00vq60", "d00x9q0", "d00y05n", "d00yend", "d00z7p3", "d00zkyv", "d010iq0", "d010yga", "d0187ok", "d019ow5", "d019scl", "d01fcx5", "d01j4hr", "d043lhf"], "score": [32, 3, 105, 14, 4575, 2, 1227, 30, 15, 7, 4, 8, 11, 311, 9, 2, 175, 40, 8, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 4, 7, 3, 2, 2, 18, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It is possible to overdose on THC, but to do it by smoking you would have to smoke a literal truckload of marijuana. \n\nTHC simply does not have the kind of significant toxic effects that many other recreational or medicinal drugs do,", "It's possible to overdose on just about anything, it's just that the amount of marijuana required to overdose on THC is astronomical and you would pass out before even coming close to that limit anyways.", "According to a court trial in 1988, you would need to smoke 1,500 pounds of marijuana within 15 minutes to OD on THC.", "There is no credible documentation of death due to marijuana overdose in history. Studies to determine an LD50 have been largely unsuccessful and have varied results.\n\nWhile the numbers from studies vary, one example is that it would take smoking 3 pounds or ingesting 46 pounds to reach a toxic level.\n\nAnd that study is on the low end, but based on larger mammals. Many other numbers cited are much higher. Regardless of which numbers you choose to believe, it's just not possible.", "Bluntly put, the median lethal dose (LD50) of THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) is so high and the methods of intake so dilute that you would have to do absolutely impossible feats to have it occur.  While there are a couple of different and conflicting sources, one estimate placed it at 40,000 times as much as the dose needed to get high.  This is contrasted with alcohol, where five to ten times the amounted needed to get you drunk can kill you.  To extrapolate, With pot brownies you'd die of sugar poisoning long before the THC got you.  With smoking, you'd have to smoke something like 1,500 pounds of weed in a period of 15 minutes.\n\nTo actually manage a THC overdose you'd have to spend a lot of effort to first purify a sizable quantity of THC and then ingest it rapidly.  This would never happen accidentally.", "It is effectively impossible,  though not theoretically impossible. \n\nThis is because the lethal amounts of the chemicals in marijuana are so high and the amount ingested in its use are so low compared to the effects it has on the consumer that it becomes effectively impossible to consume more.\n\nIn layman's terms, you smoke so much you can't move and therefore you can't smoke anymore.", "A lot of people are citing good numberss but missing the important info that makes those numbers matter. \n\nThe peak plasma concentration of THC, meaning the most your blood can physically hold at once, is 100-200ng/ml. This is when your blood is saturated and can not absorb any more THC (Think about trying to dissolve salt. Eventually you can't dissolve any more because the solution is saturated.). This is also way below what we think a lethal dose would be for a human.\n\nThis means there is a limit to how high you can get. Now you can still keep smoking pot, but you'd be wasting it, and to be honest most people never get anywhere close because why would you want to. But so when people say \"You'd need to smoke the equivalent of Xkg an hour\" the important thing they are missing is that that is chemically impossible. Your body can not absorb THC fast enough to kill you. **THAT** is why it's impossible to overdose. \n\nIf you did something to damage your kidneys or whatever so that you couldn't filter it out, and your tissues kept absorbing it because you literally were smoking tonnes per hour for weeks, then it's possible it could accumulate to a dangerous level, but really that would be the kidney failure and realistically you'd die of anoxia first. ", "You can drink enough alcohol before you pass out (or without even passing out if you've been drinking habitually for long enough) to raise the alcohol level in your blood high enough that it depresses the function of certain parts of the brain enough that it just stops telling the lungs to breathe or the heart to pump.  That doesn't happen with marijuana because 1) you can't imbibe that much to begin with, 2) the level of THC in your blood can only get so high and it isn't high enough to cause that effect, and 3) studies suggest that marijuana depresses with a different mechanism than alcohol and no amount of THC can cause that effect.\n\nWhich isn't to say that you can't kill yourself with marijuana, just that the death won't be directly attributable to overdose.  If nothing else, too much marijuana can make you pass out when you really need to be awake, like when driving or when the house catches on fire.", "Not ELI5:\nTHC is a partial agonist of the cb1/cb2 neurotransmitters in your brain (and other parts of your body) where as K2/spice (synthetic weed) is a full agonist which is why it is possible to overdose on it instead of natural thc/cbd.", "If I even tried to overdose on marijuana, I  would get stoned, forget to smoke more.  Damn short term memory effects! ", "The main reason is that it doesn't screw with as many biological processes as a lot of other drugs do. Its active ingredient, THC binds to a certain receptor in your brain (acting as a neurotransmitter), instead of releasing neurotransmitters or inhibiting the reuptake of neurotransmitters like other drugs do e.g. MDMA (speed). When it is broken down, it doesn't release any other highly toxic components, as is the case with for example alcohol. These two factors combined make it very difficult to overdose on THC.", "The same reason that you couldn't overdose on iron from eating breakfast cereal. Cereal contains added vitamins, but you can't eat that much cereal.", "\"Get outta here Dewey! You don't want no part of this shit!\"\n\n_URL_0_", "\n\u201cIn strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.\n\n[DEA Administrative Law Judge - 1988]\u201d\n\n\u2015 Francis Young ", "Here is another point I haven't seen made. Marijuana doesn't interact with your central nervous system. Much like Benadryl. Take too much and you go to sleep. Might wake up feeling quite groggy. Now other narcotics present a different problem. Take heroin for example. An overdose of heroin interacts with your CNS by shutting down your respitory system. You literally cannot breath and thus you die. THC only interacts with the cannabid receptors and therefore it is \"impossible\" to overdose. \n\nThe most often cited study for marijuana killing brain cells was when the scientific team pumped the equivalent of 160 joints into a monkey through a mask. There was no oxygen flow so the effects they saw where oxygen deprivation.", "This should be contrasted with opiate overdose:\n\n_URL_0_", "Virtually everyone in this thread is confusing \"overdose\" with \"lethal overdose\". \n\nYou absolutely can overdose on THC/marijuana. If you have too much, you're gonna experience negative symptoms that outweigh positive effects. Typically this is called \"greening out\", and it simply means you've smoked too much grass.\n\nFrom wikipedia:\n >  The term drug overdose (or simply overdose or OD) describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance** in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced**.\n\nWhen you green out, you can get:\n\n* Nausea\n* Dizziness\n* Temporary feelings of paranoia/fear/anxiety\n* Shortness of breath\n* Vomiting\n* Rapid heart rate\n* Trembling/feeling very cold\n* Disorientation\n* Hangover\n\n\"Overdose\" does not necessarily cause death. In the case of drugs such as heroin, overdose is often deadly, but sometimes it is not. There's a prevalent attitude in weed culture that insists that \"weed overdose is not possible\", and that smoking massive quantities is somehow a way to show how cool you are, when this is clearly not a good practice for your health. Of course, when you have a high tolerance to THC, the amount you'd need to overdose is much larger than if it were your first time smoking.\n\nTLDR: The process of smoking more and getting a better high does not continue ad infinitum. There's a point where you'll stop enjoying it, and that's an overdose, or \"too large a dose\".\n\n\n", "There's no CB receptors in parts of the brain controlling respiration: _URL_1_\n\n > Because cannabinoid receptors, unlike opioid receptors, are not located in the brainstem areas controlling respiration, lethal overdoses from Cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur.\n\nI also read that excessive Cannabinoids down-regulate CB receptor activity, a sort of natural overdose protection.\n\nEDIT: Here we go: _URL_0_\n\nEthan Russo MD.\n > If someone uses a great deal of cannabis daily, it will actually down regulate the receptor. In other words the body tries to prevent excesses of activity and it will do that by inactivating the receptor if there\u2019s too much activity.\n\nThis is why people can hit huge dabs or hotbox grams of kief, pure waste if you ask me!", "Sort of related, I found out a while back that I absolutely cannot tolerate edibles. I get overdoes symptoms really bad from them. I had a very very small piece of a brownie and I had some crazy symptoms like I was frying on acid. I know there wasn't other substances in the brownie because no one else that had some had anything like that happen. It was actually rather scary for me. Never had a reaction like that from smoking. ", "Your lings when smoking cant absorb as much of the drug as the smoke contents. You will die of carbon monoxide posing before thc poisoning.", "Is it possible for someone with a weak heart to have a heart attack due to increased heart rate while high? Could be made worse if the person is prone to panic attacks and the marijuana contributes the starting one off.", "It always seems like no one gets in trouble with smoking. Its seems its always edibles that get people crazy", "Marijuana doesn't interact with the Medulla Oblongata, the portion of the brain which controls heartbeat and breathing, like other substances do. Where an overdose of alcohol can shut down your body's ability to continue breathing and your heart beating while you're unconscious, even if you were to smoke so much pot as to pass out your body would be able to continue to function at a basic level to keep you alive.", "Years ago I smoked some butane hash oil that had some butane still in it and I smoked so much of it I collapsed a lung. Woke up in the worst pain ever. Went to the ER, was about 30 minutes from being dead. Pretty scary. Still smoke tho. ", "The lethal dose is incredibly high because the part of the brain that controls breathing, heartrate, and general homeostasis has very few THC receptors, so marijuana doesn't effectively interfere with the automatic processes that keep you alive.\n\nRats, however, have more THC receptors in those parts of the brain, so it is possible for rats to fatally overdose on marijuana.", "just a warning though, while marijuana may be impossible to OD on, it is possible to smoke too much. One of the first times I smoked, I called an ambulance, convinced I was dying. Shit plays with your mind. ", "No one is really going into sufficient detail for ELIF I think so I'm going to cobble some of these responses together and add some detail.  Explaining organic chemistry to a 5 year old is tough so... WALL OF TEXT.\n\nYou cannot lethally overdose because it's LD50 (lethal dose 50% of the time for an average person) is unreachable through normal means, even ingestion.  Almost all chemicals have an LD50 that is low enough to kill you if consumed. This is what 90% of people have said, but doesn't answer your question.\n\nFor example Aspirin has a lethal does of about 200mg/kg, meaning you would need to consume 200mg times your weight in kilograms, and this dose would have a 50% chance of killing a person like you.  So for a 200 lb man that's 40,000mg or about 125 pills.  LD50 is hard to determine because no one has died from it, EDIT: but in rats it's been shown to be 666mg/kg, which is an incredibly large amount.  Extrapolated to a human that's about 33 grams of solid chemical THC.  So it's possible if someone created the purest chemical THC extract in the world and then *injected* over an oz of it they would die, but you'd definitely die from just filling your blood with an oz of an oily non-blood chemical just for mechanical reasons. \n\nVery few chemicals have this property of being able to be consumed em masse with no issue because many chemicals have a job to do in the body and too much of this effect will cause an over/under activation of that process that leads to death. A body is essentially a sack of chemical processes that consume, convert and use chemicals to maintain what is called \"homeostasis\". It in only in homeostasis, a state where all processes compliment each other to keeping the system working, that you can be healthy. \n\nOne of the few other chemicals you can take in en masse is B12 which you can drink by the glass and just pee funny colors. It's LD50 is the order of grams (1000mg) per kg making it very hard to reach those levels. The reason why is biology and luck really; it just doesn't cause trouble.  Most chemicals in high doses will disrupt some bodily process you need to keep living either by increasing, stopping it, etc., and in high enough concentrations you die. Sometimes they just do their job too well, or they mimic other important chemicals but they don't do the job at all, or other times the chemical itself is simply destructive to your body directly. \n\nB12 is a simple chemical that does not mimic (is not shaped like) other important bodily chemicals, so it does not disrupt processes normally kept in homeostasis by those chemicals being present by replacing them (which is what THC does actually, but non-harmfully).  It doesn't produce harmful oxidation or release lots of free radicals that can cause tissue and DNA damage when it's metabolized. Whats more the metabolites produced when B12 is metabolized do not harm you either. In high concentrations it doesn't destabilize blood serum levels like water or salt does and make it impossible for your cells to respirate or get nutrients.  It just hangs out, being B12, waiting to be used or sent to the bladder.\n\nWhy?  Well your body likes B12, it needs it, so if you couldn't take in B12 without it screwing up everything we wouldn't use it. But lots of (most) chemicals we need will kill us in high concentrations because of the above.\n\nIf a chemical's job is keeping your body producing a certain hormone or regulating sodium channels in your nerves this can be super important and changing it can kill you.  THC fits in a receptor for another naturally occurring brain chemical called a canabanoid (named after cannabis even though it is natural in the brain) and changes your perception, and few other things.  It can change your perception *a lot*, but in the end a change in perception won't kill you unless you fall asleep somewhere you shouldn't.\n\nSo it's a combination being similar to something that occurs naturally in the brain, and won't kill you in high concentrations because the chemical it's mimicking won't either.  Also, we're just lucky nothing else about the chemical makeup of THC happens to kill us in high doses from to the hundreds of other ways chemicals can cause you to die.\n\nTL;DR Luck mostly. ", "There are no cannabinoid receptors in the autonomic circuits of the brainstem that control heart rate and respiration. So no matter how much one smokes or eats it won't depress those functions like alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines and so on do. Most of the celebrity ods are from a combo of alcohol and depressants or opioids. ", "**\"Bluntly put, the median lethal dose (LD50) of THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) is so high and the methods of intake so dilute that you would have to do absolutely impossible feats to have it occur. While there are a couple of different and conflicting sources, one estimate placed it at 40,000 times as much as the dose needed to get high. This is contrasted with alcohol, where five to ten times the amounted needed to get you drunk can kill you. To extrapolate, With pot brownies you'd die of sugar poisoning long before the THC got you. With smoking, you'd have to smoke something like 1,500 pounds of weed in a period of 15 minutes.\nTo actually manage a THC overdose you'd have to spend a lot of effort to first purify a sizable quantity of THC and then ingest it rapidly. This would never happen accidentally\"**", "Drugs which you can overdose on tend to be ones which (metaphorically) drive a whole lot of trucks at your front gate, proportional to the amount you consume. Marijuana however may provide a proportional number of trucks, but they wait patiently in line to get past your gate and some may even take a sliproad and another route  while waiting.\n\nIe. MDMA causes your body to go into overdrive and produce lots of neurotransmitters which can kill you, MJ binds to your limited number of neuroreceptors and replaces the normal chemical which binds to them. Anything not used waits its turn or goes straight through you.", "I am pretty sure that nowadays it is actually possible, but you'd have to go out of your way to actually do it.\n\nyou would need a boatload of \"pure\" (90%+) thc in edible form. and probably something that helps you not puke as well.\n\nedit: forget this, just read in another comment that your blood will be saturated long before you can reach LD.", "Many people don't know this but in one of the studies used as anti marijuana propaganda, they used monkeys as test subjects to test if high amounts of cannabis smoke were lethal. The test were unanimous many of the monkeys died. The study was operated by putting masks on the monkeys and pumping cannabis smoke into the mask. Years later if you research that study, you'll find that the monkeys didn't die from thc overdose or any over dose actually, but rather asphyxiation. They pumped nothing but smoke into the monkeys lungs, and the monkeys died from lack of oxygen.", "Cannabis dispensary worker here. We did the math on the 40k mortality dose a few years ago. You'd have to eat a ball of coldwater hash slightly larger than a basketball. Hash is a resin so you'd die of that resin creating intestinal blockage before you could actually eat the whole thing, which you'd have to achieve in a \"Man VS Food\" worthy 30 minutes or less. Some of the new method extractions are testing as high as 90% THC. You'd have to eat a ball of shatter/wax hash a little bit smaller than a bowling ball. The taste of these products in their natural form is enough to keep anyone from actually trying this, and the consistency of shatter hash is like a Jolly Rancher. It's just physically impossible. You'd have an easier time eating a bicycle, which I understand a couple people have actually done.", "ELI5: Why do people in this subreddit express controversial opinions but disguise them as questions that anyone can google an answer to in less than two minutes?", "THC is a partial cannabinoid receptor agonist meaning it has a plateau effect in which your natural bodily cannabinoid receptors can no longer be stimulated by additionally ingested THC.\n\n This is not true for some of the synthetically produced cannabinoid drugs that were marketed in the last 10 - 15 years and have since been scheduled in the United States. \n\nThat is why you had more emergency room visits for things like seizures and anxiety attacks and the like because it is entirely possible to overdose on those substances. But that is not the case with THC.", "After browsing through this thread I didn't see anyone mention one of the most important aspects of why it isn't possible. Forgive me if I missed it somewhere, and this won't really be ELI5, but it's important so hear me out. Many of the vital processes of your body are regulated by the medulla oblongata, which has nothing to do with emotions (turns out Colonel Sanders and Mama were both wrong) but helps run things like your breathing, heartrate, blood pressure etc. Now inside the medulla, which is located in the hind brain, or brain stem, there are a lot of different types of receptors, just like the rest of your body. Some of these receptors allow our brains vital processes to be affected by certain drugs. In fact, if you hear about someone overdosing on drugs, or dying from consuming too much alcohol, it is because those drugs got into the medulla and messed with the receptors and stopped the body's major vital functions. Now the interesting thing about the medulla is that it has no endocannabinoid receptors. The rest of your body does, in fact you have them all over, which is what allows you to get \"high\". But where it matters most, in the medulla, there are none, which means there is no way to fuck up the vital functions, it literally has no way to affect that part of your brain. More of an ELIAdult, and sorry for the terrible formatting, but hope that helps answer your question!", "[This chart](_URL_0_) has the ratios of how much gets you high vs. how much gets you killed. To overdose on marijuana, you'd have to have the dose equivalent of over 1,000 hits off a blunt or rips off a bong in your system at once for you to die. Nobody has reached the high score through traditional means. ", "You would black out from lack of oxygen before you would be able to come close to overdosing", "The active compounds in cannabis are very similar to those found in our body, so they are pretty neutral as far as any potential toxicity is concerned. Cannabinoids work by binding to the endocannabinoid receptors in the body and thus stimulating an effect. When all the receptors are bound to, that's it, your at maximum blazed, the remainder of the 'overdose' doesn't have any way to take effect.\n\nImagine the active components of cannabis is tea and your endocannabinoid receptors are mugs. Once you have filled all the mugs with tea, that's it, the tea is made. There's no more room for tea, so it either stays in the kettle or overflows all over the kitchen worktop. Either way the mugs are fine, you can drink the tea and clean up the mess in the morning. ", "Like joe rogan says the only way you can get killed by weed is if your walking around and a 1500 pound bundle is tossed out of a cia airplane and lands directly on your head.", "Most drugs with a lethal overdose risk (morphine,  opium)  involve the metabolic breakdown products of said drugs mimics or interrupts neurotransmitter (chemical signalling drugs in the brain). Morphine breaks down into one that can interfere with the signal to breath.   If you take enough of it,  the signal. Is blocked completely and you OD. \n\nMarijuana doesn't have similar breakdown products ", "The first time i tried, was at my little cousins. I took like 6 of the biggest bong rips, inside the timespan of 3 minutes.   \n\nWe were both in the bathroom with the vent on, and after each hit i said,\" dude i dont feel anything\". After thr 6th hit, i looked up at the mirror. I swear to god my face started swirling.   \n\nI gear giggling outside, its my 2 sisters and 2 cousins. I know they know we're smoking. I trip the hell out. And dismiss them and remember leaving the room. After that i blacked out and somehow made down the hall into the bedroom. I can relate that memory to when i was on ambien and woke up to take a piss. Stumbling and usuing the walls to bounce off side to side to make forward progress. Short 1 second pictures of memory, and somehow i made to the bedroom.   \n\nThen, i thought i was going to die. I laid in bed and puked into a trashcan until there was nothing left. I was clawing at my face and my body felt like it was burning. I was hallucinating and seeing things. Cant really explain what. I told my cousin to call the hospital and that i was going to die.   \n\nEventually i passed out.   \n\nThey say you can't OD. But that day, i saw god and asked him to save me. ", "u/WorkingMouse has a valid point, but the real reason is that there is a lack of CB1 receptors on the brain stem. That's why it would take so much to kill you. If the brain stem had a shitload of CB1 receptors it's lethal dose would be a lot lower.\n\nSource: Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience by Neil R. Carlson "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtube.com/watch?v=GvB1TVKrIjI"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_overdose"], [], ["http://www.ganjapreneur.com/ethan-russo-endocannabinoid-deficiency-medical-cannabis/", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0032740/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://puu.sh/n9aLC/fcde53de21.png"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4mm5vy", "title": "if heat is one of the most abundant energy sources, how come we don't have an efficient way of harnessing it yet?", "selftext": "How come we don't have something like windmills and solar panels for heat that is significant enough to power an entire house? I know Thermoelectric generators exist, but why are they so inefficient?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mm5vy/eli5_if_heat_is_one_of_the_most_abundant_energy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3wksgv", "d3wlakx", "d3wnpdw", "d3wqj00"], "score": [8, 5, 6, 5], "text": ["Nuclear energy is basically just generating heat to create steam to turn a turbine generator", "Energy conversion is inefficient in general. Everything we use needs to be converted into electrical for most purposes. Heat is pretty useless by itself, hard to store and transfer. Can lose a lot of it into the air and other mediums. A lot of energy is lost when converting from light / heat / mechanical into electrical. Thats just the laws of thermodynamics. And probably technology limits", " > How come we don't have something like windmills and solar panels for heat that is significant enough to power an entire house?\n\nA steam turbine could be called a \"windmill for heat\". Unfortunately the efficiency on steam turbines (or all engines in general) depend on the temperature difference: you have to have a heat source and a heat sink. The heat sink is typically at ambient temperature, so the temperature of the hot side limits the overall efficiency.\n\nBut we don't have abundant heat *at very high temperatures*. We have areas where the ground is hot (we use those in geothermal power plants), and we can build arrays of mirrors to concentrate sunlight (you can imagine that this is not cheap to build and does not work at night). Other than that we have to burn fossil fuel or split atoms to create concentrated heat.", "Thermal systems need a heat sink and a heat source. Basically heat flows from hot to cold. For a Carnot engine, which is basically any type of heat engine the efficiency is based on the absolute temperature of the hot (source) compared to the cold (sink), In most situations the source and the sink are too close together to generate any USEABLE power. \n\nYou can generate small voltages from temperature differences, but it is not usable. generally it only enough to determine the temperature difference between the two. Power plants that generate power from heat, say an steam electric plant will have a temperature difference in the 550F-600F range between the hot and cold."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5n8k81", "title": "crispr and how it'll 'change everything'", "selftext": "Heard about it and I have a very basic understanding but I would like to learn more. Shoot.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n8k81/eli5_crispr_and_how_itll_change_everything/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc9job1", "dc9oa7b", "dc9oxge", "dc9w8s9", "dca6d4x"], "score": [605, 3, 7, 9, 10], "text": ["Geneticist here!  CRISPR (or CRISPR-Cas9, if you want the full name), is a big improvement in how we genetically modify organisms.\n\nAll organisms, from single-cell bacteria, to plants, to animals, to humans, have long molecules inside of them, called DNA.  The pattern of different molecules in this chain of DNA, called the *genetic code,* provides instructions for building those bacteria/plants/animals.  Tiny little machines inside those cells read the genetic code and use those instructions to make every part of the organism, so that it can grow and reproduce!\n\nNow, one of the really cool things about DNA is that, because it's the \"blueprint\" for making an organism, we can make changes to the DNA and see the results in the resulting organisms!  For example, if we insert the instructions for producing a green fluorescent protein (called GFP for short) in a bacteria's DNA, that bacteria will make the protein, and will glow green under fluorescent light!\n\nUnfortunately, inserting a new chunk of instructions into DNA isn't as easy as making a change to a set of blueprints.  We can manipulate DNA when it's isolated from an animal, on its own, but there's no way to build a new organism around that naked DNA.  If we want to change an organism, we need to get at the DNA inside the cells, without killing them.\n\nIn addition, cells don't like getting random chunks of DNA shoved at them.  They see this as a threat, and will destroy that DNA.  So in order to get a chunk of DNA to stay in a cell, we need to incorporate it into the cell's own DNA - merge it in, like glueing a new sheet into the blueprints.\n\nIn order to add a chunk of foreign DNA, we need to add our chunk inside the cell, break the cell's own DNA somewhere, and then get the cell to fix its DNA by sticking our inserted chunk into the gap.  Three tasks.\n\n**Task 1:** getting the foreign chunk of DNA into a cell, can be accomplished by using electricity or soap to temporarily \"pop\" the cell's membrane.  Obviously, this doesn't work well on adult humans, but it works great on bacteria and single cells.\n\n**Task 2:** Breaking the cell's DNA somewhere.  This is the really tricky part.  Using certain (very nasty and dangerous) chemicals can make the DNA break in random places, but this is dangerous; what if we break the DNA in the middle of a gene that we need?  Our cells will die!  \n\nThis is where CRISPR comes in.  CRISPR is a combination of a scissor-like protein and a DNA guide that lets it only cut at very specific chosen locations.  Unlike old methods, we can be very precise with where we cut the cell's own DNA.  We can cut to turn off a gene, or cut at a place where there's nothing but junk so that we can insert our own foreign DNA pieces!\n\n**Task 3:** Close the DNA back up, fixing those cuts - with our inserted chunk inside.  Fortunately, cells have the machinery to repair DNA cuts on their own!  That was easy!\n\n******\n\n**So, CRISPR is a molecular pair of scissors that cuts DNA in very precise locations.**  There are still big challenges with genetic engineering - it's tough to get these scissors into a cell, the foreign chunk of DNA doesn't always get inserted, and the CRISPR scissors can still miss and cut in the wrong places.  But this is a huge advancement in making more precise cuts, a very important part in creating an organism with new abilities.\n\nFeel free to ask questions!", "[](/sbbook2-ar \"ping\")\nWell, this [video](_URL_0_) made it clear to me, but I don't know how \"ELI5\" it's really.  \n I understood it perfectly.", "This is more on the \"how it'll change everything\" side of the question.\n\nThe most popular thing that people bring up when talking about what CRISPR can do is designer babies.  CRISPR allows for editing our DNA very precisely when compared to previous methods.  As the methodology on how to use CRISPR is worked out it will likely become more accurate and safer.  Once it's deemed safe enough to use on humans we'll be able to cure all genetic diseases by changing who people are at the root, their DNA.\n\nThe sci-fi trope for this technology is where a living person can change their genetic code to make them faster, smarter, stronger, or even change hair color or physical features.  Currently though most of the talk is about making these changes during fetal developmental stage.", "There are some informative ELIHigh School Biology Student answers here, but here's an ELI5: \n\nDNA (the blueprints to your body) is like a Jenga tower, and each block does something different. Now we can swap blocks without breaking the tower. This will let us do different things to your body. Those things could make you healthier or better. ", "This is the best explanation i've seen so far _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k99bMtg4zRk"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY"]]}
{"q_id": "2ycqi3", "title": "what is honey? i know honey comes from bees, and i know honey is delicious on toast, but what is honey, and does it harm the bees we harvest it from? can you trace back a batch of honey to the hive it came from, or is all honey the same?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ycqi3/eli5_what_is_honey_i_know_honey_comes_from_bees/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp8a9yg", "cp8addt", "cp8alhb", "cp8b1zc", "cp8cgqk", "cp8eeyv", "cp8ijsf", "cp8ipyt", "cp8kmgj", "cp8l9zz", "cp8n65b", "cp90udh"], "score": [65, 6, 8, 4, 24, 286, 3, 7, 11, 8, 4, 2], "text": ["Honey is bee vomit, which the bees save to feed themselves later.", "in the simplest term its bee vomit, but its more complicated then that, do we harm the bees when we harvest? no the bees overproduce honey, and we also give suggar stuff to feed them.", "It is mainly water, glucose and fructose,  with some other sugars and traces of other compounds in.\n\nIf you take too much,  the hive will starve and die.  The hive will survive some being harvested though.", "You may not be able to trace it back to the exact hive, but you can trace it to what type of flower was the majority in pollination - clover, thistle, etc", "Honey is a bit more complex than just sugars. It also has antibacterial properties. It makes a decent wound dressing.\n > The healing property of honey is due to the fact that it offers antibacterial activity, maintains a moist wound condition, and its high viscosity helps to provide a protective barrier to prevent infection.\n\n_URL_1_ \n\nHoney can also be poisonous. \n > Poisoning can also happen if you eat honey made by bees that used the oleander plant for nectar.\n\n_URL_0_", "Many flowers secrete nectar as part of their biology. They lack the ability to move pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers so they entice bees and insects with nectar with the hope the while the bees collect the nectar they also move the pollen around allowing for the fertilization of the plant species.\n\nHoney bees have a special compartment in their body to hold nectar. This compartment (called the crop or honey stomach) is designed to allow the bee nectar storage while it is foraging. When the forager bee returns to the hive she passes the nectar to a receiver bee who puts it in a wax comb cell for ripening. Nectar has a high moisture content, perhaps 40+%, but the bees want to store the honey for future consumption. They regulate the humidity in the hive via wing flapping over fresh stored nectar and move air in and out from the entrances. Once the honey is at 17/18% moisture content it is ready for capping. The bees cap the cell with wax and that honey will stay in storage until they need it.\n\nIf the season goes well, the colony may collect for example, twice the amount of honey they will need for winter. The beekeeper can take that extra and this harvesting does not harm the bees at all.", " >  Can you trace back a batch of honey to the hive it came from, or is all honey the same?\n\nRead about Chinese honey dumping if you're curious about this sort of thing.  They filter out the pollen from it so you can't tell where it came from, and dump it on the market.  So yes, to some degree you can track where honey has come from, due to the pollens in it.", "Please support your local beekeepers! You can find their products at many farmer's markets and fairs.  Stock up for the year, it keeps well. Grocery story honey is often cut with corn syrup and is generally flavorless. ", "\"What is honey\" has been adequately answered already. Harming the bees? No, unless you're doing it wrong. Doing it wrong would entail destroying the hive and taking all the honey in the fall, after plants have stopped flowing. The bees need protection and food for the hive to survive through the winter. Typically, the hives are built so that you can easily remove frames full of honey comb. We had bees when I was a kid, and we would put on gloves, long sleeves, and a mesh hood, to keep from getting stung. We would blow smoke into the hive to drive the bees away, pull out the frames of honey that we wanted, and put the hive back together. \n\nTo get the honey, we would cut the surface caps off of the comb, and centrifuge the honey out.\n\nFinally, different flowers certainly have an effect on what the honey tastes like. I can't answer you about tracing it back, but there are certainly measurable differences between clover honey and apple tree honey. \n\nAlso, mass market honey you find in stores is almost certainly not real honey. It's far easier and quicker to make it from sugar and flavorings than to deal with bees. If you want real honey, go to a farmer's market or something similar.\n\nEdit: upon further review, my last statement is questionable. The \"fake\" honey is apparently ultra-filtered honey, which removes all the pollen. This process causes the honey to be less likely to crystallize, so it has a longer shelf life. It is still an open question whether some honey might be manufactured instead of bee-made. ", "I've always wondered -- is honey considered vegan?", "Note that honey isn't just evaporated nectar. Enzymes and digestive processes take effect while the nectar is in the bee's honey-stomach, changing the nature of the sugars.", "I've wondered recently what honey would be like if the bees had exclusive access to a cannibus crop."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002884.htm", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609166/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "10twax", "title": "[Physics, Quantum Optics] Help needed understanding Electromagnetically-Induced Transparency (EIT)", "selftext": "I'm doing reading for an undergrad research project on electromagnetically-induced transparency, and I keep coming across the term 'resonant' in regard to light (a laser) causing a change in quantum state. [This](_URL_0_) is a paper I am required to read and understand, among others, which uses the term. Also could anyone help elucidate how atoms are 'trapped' in a higher energy state and why this leads to lack of absorption of the probe laser?\nI'd be really grateful for any help, thanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10twax/physics_quantum_optics_help_needed_understanding/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6go818"], "score": [4], "text": ["\"Resonant\" means that the energy carried by the photons in a laser beam matches an atomic transition. In figure 2(a) for example, the incoming field \\omega_c is resonant to the 2-3 transition, because the arrow meets the line. If it ended up below or above that line, we would call that \"off-resonant\" driving (\"blue-shifted\" or \"red-shifted\", depending on whether the photons have more or less energy than the transition). \n\nPopulation trapping means that in the three-level scheme they show in figure 2(a) or 3(a), the electrons are trapped in the lower lying levels 1 and 2, despite being excited to level 3 with two slightly off-resonant pump fields. The trick is to tune the intensity and phase of the two driving fields such that they cancel each other out.\n\nNow, one field is the probe field, one field is the coupling field. The probe field is chosen such that it measures an absorption spectrum, i.e. in the absence of the coupling field, it would simply measure the spectral width of absorption of the transition it is tuned close to. Once you add the coupling field (and only if you choose your atom correctly), the transition probed by the probe field couples to a third level, which, as described above, forbids any transition into the higher energy level at a certain frequency. This creates the transparency window detected by the probe field.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.stanford.edu/group/harrisgroup/PAPERS/review.pdf"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "dodkqb", "title": "When smartphone batteries lose some of their capacity over the years, do they take the same time to charge?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dodkqb/when_smartphone_batteries_lose_some_of_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f5qij74"], "score": [2], "text": ["It depends on the battery internal resistance and capacity.\n\nSmartphone batteries are lithium ion chemistry. LiIon batteries are charged in what's called CC-CV, acronym for Constant Current - Constant Voltage. The first, big part of the charge will be at a constant current and this means the charging current is decided a priori. on a reduced capacity battery this will charge the battery faster (same current, less capacity, it will fill up faster)\n\n & #x200B;\n\non the other hand, when the voltage gets too high on the battery, the charger will switch to constant voltage mode because you don't want to exceed the maximum voltage allowed on the cell. this of course means the CV charge is slower. if the battery internal resistance has became much higher than new, or if the constant current uses a very high current, the carger will go in constant voltage mode sooner, and the charge will be overall slower.\n\nto recap:\n\n1. reduced capacity, same cell resistance - >  charge will be faster\n2. reduced capacity, high cell resistance - >  charge will be equal or slower depending on various factors.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT: problem is, batteries don't age the same, and the aging process is very complicated. by very rough measures, storage temperature and \"calendar time\" and storage at high levels of charge will influence preferably the capacity, while stress (e.g. pulling or charging high currents) will mainly affect internal resistance. but the processes are intertwined a lot.\n\nsee for example [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://hal-cea.archives-ouvertes.fr/cea-01791260/document"]]}
{"q_id": "d12xfn", "title": "The largest cavalry charge in history was at the Battle Of Vienna, where 18000 polish winged hussars charged the Ottomans. How would this have sounded? If you were in the Ottoman camp, Vienna, 1 km away, 10 km away? Would you have heard it or felt the ground shake at these distances?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d12xfn/the_largest_cavalry_charge_in_history_was_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ezk0961"], "score": [57], "text": ["This question might be more scientific than historical so I'll give a short answer from a scientific perspective.\n\nSince I can't find a measurement of the sound level of a galloping horse with an armoured hussar on top, I'll take a dB of 80 at a distance of 8 m to be a reasonable guess (according to this [link](_URL_0_) a motorcycle at that distance is 90 dB and a car is 70 dB).\n\nSound intensity drops off as 1/r\\^2, so at 1 km, the sound intensity is reduced by a factor of about 16,000.\n\nLuckily this is about the number of horses in your example, so the 18,000 horses at 1 km has about the same sound intensity as one horse at 8 m.\n\nAt about 10 km, the sound intensity is dropped by another factor of 100, corresponding to -20 dB, so 60 dB in total, which according to the above link corresponds to the noise level of an office or conversations in a restaurant. Or, according to the numbers above the sound of 18,000 horses at 10 km has the same intensity as the sound of one horse as 80 m.\n\nThis means that the wind would have been a major factor. If it blew the sound away from the Ottomans they should not have been able to hear 18,000 hussars galloping at 10 km, but at 1 km they should unless the wind was very strong.\n\nGrund shaking is a little more tricky. It is unaffected by wind of course, but the intensity may not fall off a 1/r\\^2, since some sound waves (in the ground) stays at the surface and would fall off only as 1/r. So maybe it could be possible to feel the ground shaking from a cavalry charge further away than you can hear it, but probably only if the wind was towards the charge.\n\nI'm guessing that the hussars only actually galloped the final short distance and held something like a trot at even closer than 1 km, so maybe bring the 80 dB above down to 60 dB if you want the effect of trotting horses, which brings the sound intensity at 10 km down to 'library' level according to the link..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.industrialnoisecontrol.com/comparative-noise-examples.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "71c62a", "title": "Why are non-differentiable continuous functions integrable?", "selftext": "We learnt that a |mod| function is  continuous yet non-differentiable and as integrals are defined as \"anti-derivatives\" sooo how come we can integrate a mod function yet we can't differentiate it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/71c62a/why_are_nondifferentiable_continuous_functions/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn9mhlv", "dn9v1i2"], "score": [39, 10], "text": ["Integrals are not defined as antiderivatives. Integrals are defined as the limit of a Riemann sum, i.e., area under the graph. (Or, in more advanced math, as limits of objects involving something called a *measure*.) The slope of the floor function is not always defined, but the area under its graph is.\n\nThe link between an integral and an antiderivative is provided by the fundamental theorem of calculus. Integrals and antiderivatives are not synonymous.\n\n**edit:** As an interesting side comment, the floor function cannot be the derivative of any function, i.e., the floor function has no antiderivative. It turns out that not only do *continuous* functions have the intermediate value property, but so do all derivatives (even if that derivative is not continuous). So, in particular, a derivative can never have a jump discontinuity. The only types of discontinuity a derivative can actually have are infinite discontinuities (like 1/x) and essential singularities (like sin(1/x)).", "Also note that the absolute value does have an antiderivative, |x|x/2. So just because you can't differentiate it doesn't mean it isn't the derivative of something else."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "23wkwb", "title": "Does evolution of life depend on natural background radiation?", "selftext": "In Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, there is a planet called Sanctuary, where the evolution of life is retarded by the absence of natural background radiation.  Is it true that evolution depends on background radiation to cause mutation or was that just 1950's Sci-Fi flare?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23wkwb/does_evolution_of_life_depend_on_natural/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch1d2jm", "ch1dcp6", "ch1jrr5"], "score": [4, 3, 2], "text": ["While certain radiation can damage DNA and cause mutations, it is by no means the only source of mutatgenesis. There are plenty of chemical mutagens present in the environment (this is why smoking is correlated with lung cancer - chemicals in cigarettes cause mutations in lung cells). The main method of mutagenesis; however, is simply mistakes during replication of DNA. Replication is usually very good and involves multiple error correcting mechanisms, but there is a constant low rate of mutations that is just part of cells dividing. In fact, it is fairly easy to argue that cells evolved their replication machinery to be able to evolve.\n", "Unlikely because there's lots of other phenomena that can cause mutations and because the mutation rate is a compromise between the negative fitness consequences of mutation and the cost of resources invested in preventing/repairing mutations. Lower mutation rates would likely mean that organisms would gain fitness by investing less in preventing them which would increase mutation rates although the equilibrium might be different. Also there are deminishing returns to lowering mutation rates such that selection becomes ineffective compared to genetic drift _URL_0_", "No, mutation can occur from an error in DNA replication during mitosis or meiosis. these processes are reproducible for reproduction in all living things. The error in gene replication causes a change in the organism's DNA and a different trait to be expressed. If the trait is beneficial it will be passes on causing evolution to take place."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/1107.full"], []]}
{"q_id": "1k31ye", "title": "why don't some planets in our solar system orbit the other way around the sun?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k31ye/eli5_why_dont_some_planets_in_our_solar_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbkuvbt", "cbkvhmz", "cbkvo6y", "cbkvwlq", "cbkwwqg", "cbl62jy"], "score": [155, 3, 6, 11, 2, 2], "text": ["Try to imagine the solar system before there was even really a star. There would have been a cloud of material flying all around. If everything was very random, then very little would have enough speed to avoid being sucked into the newly forming star. If some things had a velocity in one direction and other things had a velocity in another direction, then they would likely end up dragging on each other, slow down, and get pulled in.\n\nWhat we think happened is that as the sun was forming, it acquired a spin and that spin ended up transferring to the cloud of material, shaping it into a disc which eventually would collect together to form the planets. Without this spin, the material would have just fallen into the sun and it would have burned a little bit brighter.", "Before there were planets there was a larger spinning disk of gas yhat eventually formed into planets.  Since it was one disk everything is revolving the same direction.", "The real question is, do they all spin the other direction on the other side of the universe's equator?", "Retrograde orbits (orbits that go the opposite direction of the star's spin) tend to decay quickly and spiral inward. \n\nOften these kind of orbits are associated with captured natural satellites. Triton, for example, is thought to have been captured by Neptune and orbits in a retrograde motion compared to the planet's rotation.\n\nI think that would make a large body orbiting the sun retrograde very interesting -- likely captured from another solar system. ", "because that's how planets are made. planets started off as space debris that was compacted together.\n\n think of it like cars crashing. if two cars were traveling in the same direction and hit, they would be smashed together and keep traveling in the same direction, [like so](_URL_0_)\n\nif two cars traveling in opposite directions crashed, they in a sense \"explode\" apart. \n\nthus the only way planets could be formed would be if the space rocks traveling in the same direction joined together, getting bigger and bigger, destroying anything moving in the opposite direction. \n\nsorry if there's any confusion, I'm hungover and my brain isn't working", "They were all formed from the same large disk of spinning gas, thus were always all headed in the same direction."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://img.sparknotes.com/content/testprep/bookimgs/sat2/physics/0007/gum.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "2jtlsd", "title": "Why are there always pianos on the streets during WWII movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jtlsd/why_are_there_always_pianos_on_the_streets_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clfq762"], "score": [9], "text": ["I don't think there's ever going to be a truly historical answer to this, so let's consider it in a hypothetical fashion.\n\nThe piano is a great and easily recognizable accessory to have available as a backdrop for meaningful conversations between characters in a film.  They can sit at or near it, perhaps picking away wistfully at the keys, with all of the melancholy promise that an instrument in desolation can offer.  It's very similar in this fashion to the \"beat-up gramophone\" that also appears so frequently in such films, no doubt playing the languid notes of Ms. Edith Piaf.  The mood of nostalgia seems to be inescapable in the western WWII film (as compared to the hideous realism of something like Elem Klimov's *Idi i smotri* (1985)), and this sort of omnipresent musical accompaniment helps it along nicely.\n\nWithin the narrative world of such films, I can imagine a number of practical reasons why the piano would noticeably appear in streets with such regularity.\n\n1. Pianos are large and sturdy enough that they can still effectively \"work\" even after having taken some punishment -- though not a lot.\n\n2. Their size also means that they really can be visible in a way that a hastily discarded violin or harmonica or something can't be.  Who knows how many abandoned violins we've seen in the background of shots in such films without really noticing them?  And what untutored GI could pick up an abandoned violin (which also needs a bow) in the same way that he could pluck idly at an ivory key?\n\n3. That pianos should be in the street at all during such times is jointly a function of their commercial value and their physical size.  They're just expensive enough for a fleeing family to want to save them, if possible, but also so burdensome that they'd be among the first things abandoned during the act of headlong flight.  The value that would see them dragged towards the door or out into the street in the first place might also see them become popular targets for looters, both civilian and military alike.  These looters still wouldn't be able to get them very far from where they were found, unhappily.\n\nThese, at least, would seem to be reasonable explanations for the phenomenon you've noted."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6av2gl", "title": "Why does a rapidly spinning ellipsoid turn vertical?", "selftext": "Based off [this](_URL_0_) video. Initially the ellipsoid is spinning in an orientation that we'll call 'horizontal'. Then it 'flips' and starts spinning in a 'vertical' orientation. My understanding is that objects tend towards a ground state of lowest energy. So why is the vertical orientation one of lower energy at that particular moment? Is that even the right question? What's going on here? Basically my question is this. What causes the ellipsoid to flip like that? Additionally, why does the vertical orientation appear to be more stable?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6av2gl/why_does_a_rapidly_spinning_ellipsoid_turn/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhhrxgw"], "score": [8], "text": ["So what you have to keep in mind is that a spinning object, in a gravity field, has a different lowest energy state than a static one. The reason is that angular momentum involves forces moving through a rigid body, called torques, because one side is pulled by gravity more as it wobbles.\n\nSo imagine the metal egg from the video is stationary and you push down one end. The point of balance shifts toward your finger. When you let go it wobbles back and forth because there is literally more mass on one side of that point to be pulled by gravity.\n\nBut if it is spinning, when it wobbles the axis of spin shifts from the short axis, which has the greatest angular inertia (the most mass is furthest away from that line) to an axis that is biased with more mass on one side. In this situation gravity is still acting, but its pull is acting at a right angle to the spin, which results in a torque force. The greatest torque happens when the smallest angular change puts the most mass on one side of the spin axis, and that happens when the spin axis goes through the longest possible distance in the uniform ellipsoid."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://youtu.be/aOPquNeLtSI?t=1m36s"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "79acqg", "title": "[Meta-ish] How representative is this sub of the larger academia?", "selftext": "I am under the impression that quiet a few of the responders in this sub are professional historians or related professions. Now it would wholly improbable that this sub paints a 100% accurate picture of the whole of academia but I wish to know how close it is. \n\nFor example, I am under the impression that in general, users here reject the conflict hypothesis. Am I correct to assume that in general, the larger academia would reject it, too? \n\nEDIT: What I think I am trying to say is this sub mainstream or not. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79acqg/metaish_how_representative_is_this_sub_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp0epln", "dp0in53", "dp0lokq", "dp0o5ef"], "score": [61, 14, 23, 22], "text": ["AskHistorians requires that answers reflect current academic, peer-reviewed scholarship on the topics under consideration. Where there is a scholarly consensus, that means we require *posts* to observe it, even if the individual user disagrees. Where there is a historiographical dispute in peer-reviewed scholarship or where the poster in question disagrees with a theory or view, often times they will note the different perspectives and explain why the disjunction exists. \"Peer-reviewed\" is as close as you're going to get to a definition of 'mainstream', I think.\n\nI've also compared AH historians to the \"academic demographics\" of the profession in [this earlier thread](_URL_0_), if you're interested.", "Can I ask what is meant by \"conflict hypothesis?\"", " >  For example, I am under the impression that in general, users here reject the conflict hypothesis. Am I correct to assume that in general, the larger academia would reject it, too?\n\nHistorians of science definitely reject the conflict thesis. Would \"the larger academia reject it, too?\" It depends on who that is\u00a0\u2014 if that means non-historians of science, maybe not. But among historians of science, the conflict thesis is known to be totally false.", "Speaking as a former flaired contributor (under previous account u/tfrauline) and a working academic in 18th century literature, I think AH contributors are by and large pretty good about assessing the current state of knowledge on the topics they respond to.\n\nHowever, AH is still very much subject to the **huge** demographic bias that occurs across reddit. [Here's a 2016 Pew research center study](_URL_0_) of reddit's demographics, which determined that 70% of users are male, and 59% of all users are between the ages of 18-29. This obviously isn't AH's fault but as far as I've seen on both sides of the contributor/asker divide the subreddit is still very much subject to this bias.\n\nWhat this means as that the responses and discussions here are typically not coming from older more established contributors (particularly senior academics) and women contributors. These are two extremely important/large demographics within academic circles and therefore this does have an impact on the type of answers your getting. This is less about how valid the answers you get are, but more the angle or perspective of the question or answer.\n\n~~For example: there are a dearth of strong gender studies expertise in this subreddit which impacts the general tone of response to questions about historical sexuality or sexual practice. It's not that any of the answers you get are \"wrong\", far from it, but you'd get very different responses from a well-established women professor.~~\n\n**edit**: I've since reassessed this particular section related to gender studies after reviewing some AH answers. See my comment [here](_URL_1_)\n\nThis doesn't mean AH isn't a **fantastic** subreddit, probably the best reddit has to offer. Readers should just be aware of the website's demographic bias across every subreddit. It's part of the reason I've tried to ease off my usage of the site for anything other than entertainment."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48sywy/how_representative_of_the_field_is_raskhistorians/d0miyc6/"], [], [], ["http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-news-users-more-likely-to-be-male-young-and-digital-in-their-news-preferences/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79acqg/metaish_how_representative_is_this_sub_of_the/dp1dswt/"]]}
{"q_id": "gwakg", "title": "Is the Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD) diet safe - specifically regarding kidney stones?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gwakg/is_the_gallon_of_milk_a_day_gomad_diet_safe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1qr2nv", "c1qs479"], "score": [26, 6], "text": ["Anyone else notice how questions on related subjects seem to come in bunches on AskScience?\n\n7 minutes before this was posted:  [Is cow milk as scary as this article (link inside) makes it out to be?](_URL_0_)\n\nSo clearly some people think it's not so healthy!  \n\nIf you're lactose intolerant it's probably not a good idea, I think we'll all agree on that.  But people who can normally ingest milk without issues, does it make any sense for them would be the question.  \n\n[Many people drink a glass of milk daily for calcium and other essential minerals vital for healthy bones. Contrary to popular belief, milk does not lead to the formation of urinary stones or buildup of mineral deposits in the kidney. At the University of Chicago, D.R. Webb showed that even calcium-sensitive patients were able to consume milk or calcium-fortified orange juice without increasing their risk of stone formation. Patients drinking 600 mg of calcium in beverage form developed no kidney stones.](_URL_1_) \nThe linked article seems reasonably balanced, so I'd say there probably isn'ta  big risk of kidney stones (assuming you have healthy kidneys of course!)\n\nThe only caution I would give you is that eating a variety of foods to get the same amount of calories and nutrients would be a better idea, any sort of diet that has you doing any one thing excessively usually isn't well thought out. \n\nThat being said, most all of the weight-lifting protein powders are just whey protein, which is what's in milk anyhow, and if you're trying to gain weight, whole milk has a ton of calories.\n\n\n", "There are many kinds of kidney stones.  By far, the most common type is composed of calcium oxalate.\n\nThere is a common misconception that because these stones are made of calcium, one should limit consumption of calcium.  In fact, this is counterproductive.  The real issue is plasma oxalate levels.\n\nA good way to prevent high plasma oxalate levels is to prevent its absorption.  Besides limiting one's oral intake of oxalate, it is helpful to drink milk, because the calcium in it will precipitate with oxalate in the gut, preventing its systemic absorption.\n\nFor instance, a [RCT published in the NEJM](_URL_0_) found greater recurrence of kidney stones in a treatment group that had a low calcium diet."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gwahm/is_cow_milk_as_scary_as_this_article_link_inside/", "http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue3/features/lee_and_wei.html"], ["http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa010369"]]}
{"q_id": "12yja0", "title": "A Question of Velocity", "selftext": "Layman question about basic physics:\n\nA) If all matter on earth is constantly spinning and moving along with the earth as it orbits the sun, and for the sake of simplicity, if velocity is measured as an object's movement rate from one point to the next, how are we determining an object's velocity on earth given the fact that the object is already in motion in space (due to the whole orbiting and spinning thing) and that the start and end points are not really stationary?\n\nB) What mathematical theories or axioms/scientific tools do physicists and the like use to measure velocity between two points that are themselves moving? \n\nEdit: I appreciate the input, even if it goes beyond layman explanation, because the concepts being introduced to me give me concepts to research and try to understand.  If the research itself points to concepts still too advanced for my current understanding, then it gives me the opportunity to dissect terminology and at least glean a rudimentary understanding from its roots until such time as I get the formal education to understand the more advanced concepts. My thanks to anyone who contributes meaningfully.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12yja0/a_question_of_velocity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6z7vw5", "c6z7ynh"], "score": [18, 5], "text": ["Velocity is not Lorenz invariant.\n\nThat means, it is only defined relative to a frame of reference. There is no \"absolute velocity\". \n\nThus we can simply define our frame of reference fixed to the the \"moving points\" we want to compare the relative velocity of the body with.\n\nThat means, our frame of reference is moving with earth and now we can compare the speed of a car with this frame of reference.", "A. All motion is relative to something else.\n\nB. Measure the distance between the two objects at two different times. The difference of those distances divided by the difference between the two times gives the average velocity for that period of time. For something that we can get a spectrum of, like a star, we can look at its red/blue-shift and calculate its velocity relative to Earth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8045e9", "title": "why does the color drain from our face when we\u2019re scared?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8045e9/eli5_why_does_the_color_drain_from_our_face_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dustih3", "dusuwug", "dut2o8n", "dut62nr", "dut8y6a", "dutbw2g", "dutca3e"], "score": [1801, 81, 138, 10, 2, 24, 2], "text": ["Because all that red blood leaves your face when your body thinks it\u2019s in danger and goes to your chest where all the important stuff is. Your hands get white too. ", "Our bodies basically have two \"modes\" a calm mode and an excited mode. The calm mode is when we're sitting down or eating. The excited mode is when we're excersising and moving a lot. The way our blood is distributed through our body is different for each mode.\n\nThere's this thing called the fight or flight reaction that changes our body from the calm mode to the excited mode when we're afraid or angry. This comes from back when we lived in the wild. When we encounter a predator we'll either want to beat it upir run away, so we don't get eaten. And we need to go into the excited mode to do that the best we can.\n\nSo what happens in excited mode? Less blood goes to our hands, feet and face. More blood goes to the big muscles in our arms and legs. The heart also starts pumping much faster.You don't need a lot of precise movement in these cases, just as much force as possible. \n\nSo why does this happen when we're scared? It should be clear now. Fear is something that activates the fight or flight reaction. Our bodies become excited and the blood goes from our face to our arms and legs. We're getting ready to run away from what we're afraid of.", "Blood goes to your muscles where you need it most to run away from danger. You don\u2019t need it to think. At that point it\u2019s all about saving the body. ", "Fight or flight kicks in.  Blood goes to where it\u2019s needed most (your legs for running, for example).  ", "A simple answer: when we\u2019re scared we release things called catecholamines, like epinephrine for example (also known as adrenaline). One of the effects of these substances is too \u201cshrink\u201d blood vessels (ie. vasoconstriction). Since the color in your face is caused by blood flow through your face, when you get scared and release catecholamines, the blood vessels constrict and carry less blood, and less blood = less color. ", "Ironically, the response is not from the adrenaline response, but an overly active vagal response. Some people are wired in such a way that when they are exposed to something frightening or overly stimulating (ie. sight of blood, fear, strong emotions), they have an initial adrenaline surge, but the body attempts to counteract this by stimulating the vagal nerve. In those who are overly \"vagal\", this causes activation of the parasympathetic nervous system which slows the heart rate, drops the blood pressure, and causes people to turn pale, sweaty, and even faint. \n\nSource: medical doctor", "Your body sends blood from non critical areas to where it needs to be, legs if your going to run or body if your going to fight, ever get butterflies in your stomach when you see a cute girl same principle but it goes to your groin."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2l11dx", "title": "why my internet speed says 185 mbps on speedtest, but youtube videos still lag and take a long time to load.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l11dx/eli5why_my_internet_speed_says_185_mbps_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clqg3o8", "clqg9fp", "clqgxwy", "clqhfne", "clqia2d", "clqivjq", "clqkch5", "clql48k", "clqlogq", "clqmpgf", "clqmu0v", "clqmyq4", "clqn052", "clqnfyv", "clqnijg", "clqnmm8", "clqns3x", "clqo4a2", "clqpg1h", "clqqpv3", "clqqsan", "clqqxkl", "clqr0s4", "clqr2z7", "clqr7tc", "clqrb5q", "clqrjvp", "clqrvad", "clqs5cw", "clqt7gj", "clqu643", "clqufuz", "clqumw9", "clqvmss", "clqxaaw", "clqxd4p"], "score": [914, 769, 8, 2, 59, 8, 3, 295, 2, 3, 2, 2, 127, 3, 21, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 12, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Speed tests are done under ideal conditions from servers with the bandwidth possible to \"max out\" the testing program.\n\nMost servers you connect to on the internet are not like that.  They are often overworked and the bandwidth provided to them would be fine if they were serving 100 people at once, but its probably many more multiples of that.\n\nYou're basically fighting other people to get the same content.  You can only cram so much down the pipe then it has to contend with all the other traffic around it as well to get to you.\n\nMost ISP speedtests and speedtest applications look for the closest server to you so you can see your maximum throughput.  A lot of ISP based speedtest applications...you don't even leave their network, so you don't see any internet latency or congestion.\n\nA speedtest tells you the potential of your line.  In real life, you can only download as fast as the server you're connected to can send it...plus internet overhead.\n\nIts like taking a race car on an open track.  With no other cars around, you can push it to the limit.  But on the freeway at 5pm in bumper to bumper traffic, that race car will be lucky to see 15 mph.  It doesn't matter what kind of horsepower you have under the hood-you can't run into or run over other cars to use it to its maximum potential.  You know it can do 200mph, but in that case, its only going to do 15.\n\nEdit:  Thanks for the gold.  I didn't expect this to blow up.  I've tried to reply to a few people before I go do what I need to do this morning.  ", "Right answer:  Your ISP won't pay to upgrade their speed with other ISPs.\n\nELI20 version: Your ISP has peerage agreements with other ISPs to allow content to flow both ways unhindered.  Netflix outright *caught* Comcast and Verizon cheating at the edges of their networks to cause artificial lag that would encourage Netflix and Youtube to pay more for a \"fast lane\" (ie, the exact opposite of net neutrality).  Verizon actually sued Netflix for proving this; Netflix eventually caved and just paid more to get their content to their customers (pity really, not many have the same ability to take a stand), but make no mistake, your ISP takes **all** the blame.\n\n", "The short answer is you are probably getting the video from a caching server instead of the source. This was discussed in a thread over a year ago and I assume is still relevant. Take a look, maybe it'll help.\n\nEdit: the links in the thread are broken... bummer, maybe someone else has a more up to date discussion on this?\n\n\n~~_URL_0_", "Because Youtube or your ISP is throttling you.  Most likely both.\n\nI would suggest installing a program called Greasemonkey to firefox which allows you to install scripts that are peer-reviewed.  One of these scripts loads the video continuously.  I rarely have a problem with 1080p with 5 MBp/s bandwidth.  The script is called, Youtube Auto Buffer  &  Auto HD 1.2.87", "Your ISP throttles your bandwidth to certain websites to reduce consumption, e.g. Youtube, Netflix, etc.", "_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nCheck those links out, that should explain some\n\nI know there are a couple of reddit threads about this floating around", "Speedtest is a marketing gimmick. Try a 3rd party download website to measure speed. I usually download some obscure Linux distro CD and time it.\n\nISPs know when you are trying to measure throughput when you access Speedtest website. They let you have max throughput with Speedtest. This saves them from customer care calls. With other websites ( especially YouTube and Netflix) they will throttle the bandwidth that you receive. To test this theory, measure downl speed using some 3rd party website and then call customer care and ask them if they will accept results measured at other websites. ", "Check out this page: [Google Video Quality Report](_URL_0_)  \nIt details how Youtube videos get to you and how the ISP affects that. Also it rates many ISP on how well they work with Youtube.", "3 Possible reasons.    \n1. Youtube does not buy a large enough connection with their ISP.    \n2. Youtube's ISP and your ISP have a shitty connection between each other.   \n3. Your ISP is fucking you over by throttling your communications with youtube to protect your ISPs cable tv or video service.    \n\nMost likely the correct answer is #3.  \n", "_URL_0_\n\nAccording to this link it's all about the ISP's politics:\n\n\" But behind the scenes, in negotiations that almost never become public, the world's biggest Internet providers and video services argue over how much one network should pay to connect to another. When these negotiations fail, users suffer. In other words, bad video performance is often caused not just by technology problems but also by business decisions made by the companies that control the Internet.\"", "It's because your ISP throttles specific domains, either permanently or at different times of the day.  Everyday the net is a little less neutral.", "The ISP sees you connect to _URL_1_ and goes \"Oh, looks like Margington is trying to check his connecction, better give him all we can!(185 mbps)\". Then you connect to youtube and they go \"Margington is trying to watch youtube, that's a lot of data to process and fuck those guys, we'll only give Margington 400kb/s(or something to that effect) to watch youtube\". \n\nYou can check this is the case by using a VPN, in that case the ISP just sees some encrypted stream and will have no choice but to treat all traffic through it equally. \n\nCase in point \n_URL_0_\n", "ELI5 definition of throttling:\n\nImagine that Youtube and the _URL_0_ wants to send you a package delivered by a truck. Youtube owns a million trucks and can dispatch a truck to your house immediately.\n\n_URL_0_ rents 100 trucks from UPS (UPS is the CDN in this analogy), but fortunately, all you need is a package from one truck.\n\nBoth trucks leave the factory at the same time, but there are traffic police that can get in the way. If you happen to live in the wrong state, there are toll roads everywhere. _URL_0_ trucks don't have to pay a toll to use the highway, but Youtube trucks do.  The traffic police will target only some delivery companies to pay a toll and Youtube is one of them.  Youtube does not think it's fair that they have to pay a toll and others don't, so they refuse to pay. So thanks to the traffic police and their toll roads, speedtest trucks get on the empty, fast highway, and youtube trucks have to sit in slow congested roads.\n\nAnd that's how the _URL_0_ trucks always get there first and the Youtube trucks always take so long.", "Because your ISP hasn't given you a \"fast lane\".", "Just because you have a Ferrari, that doesn't mean you don't get stuck in traffic.", "Just because you have 185 mbps down doesn't mean Youtube has 185 mbps up dedicated to you for every single video they host. ", "There is a long road that you can run from one end to the other in 10 minutes. However, bad men put themselves at random points on the road. They say, \"Hey, you have to give us your milk money or wait here for 1 minute.\" \n\nThese bad men are essentially the ISPs. They have the capability, but won't because it is easy money. ", "Because YouTube doesn't have enough bandwidth for their content and knows you'll wait. Notice the ads load instantly, always, without fail.  ", "Because YouTube sucks. YouTube servers are slower (or throttled down) than your Internet connection.\n\nFor example, Vimeo has way faster streaming (and a bit better quality) than YouTube.\n\nAlso, SpeedTest tests your speed to closest test server which can even be your local ISP server so it's like testing speed to a building 10 km away from you. I always test Internet speed to UK (I'm in Ukraine so it's data going across whole Europe). My results: _URL_0_\n3 years old PC and some cheap TPLink router.", "Someone help me out here, was this a recent thing?\n\n\nMy internet (Brighthouse Networks) is like 10mbps, and for years, up until a month or two ago it was perfect all the time.  10mbps, while not much, was plenty to stream movies, or do my work.\n\n\nNow youtube sometimes defaults to 144p, and it sometimes refuses to buffer.  Every other website on the internet works wonderfully, but not youtube.  I tracert to youtube, no problems found.\n\n\nI alternate between China and the U.S. several times a year, and my god damn internet in China using a VPN can play several 1080p youtube videos at the same time....\n\n\u600e\u9ebc\u8fa6?!?!", "I liken it to speed limits on the interstate. \n\nYour computer can travel at 185Mbps, but the speed limit in YouTube's lane is set to 1.5Mbps, or some number smaller than 185Mbps.", "I'm from Ireland and comcast doesn't exist here. My internet is 10 mbps and youtube is still slow as fuck. It buffers the video just enough but it's always too little and hits the buffer. Then sometimes it will buffer and stops and won't change no matter what. I end up having to refresh the page.\n\nI know that youtube go way out of their fucking way to make you able to watch video uninterrupted. So if your watching something in HD and your internet isn't fast enough they'll pop you down to 480p or even 144p. You actually want to watch it in HD and switch it back and wait for it to buffer. Their videos are also in segments and not a complete video. So they have different segments in different qualities so it makes it easier to switch to a low quality stream or a high quality stream. They also store copies of more popular videos around the world. You can watch the clip below where the people themselves explain the problems with buffering. \n\n\n[How YouTube Works](_URL_0_)\n\n\nMy theory is that youtube are now not only trying to allow you to watch a clip uninterrupted (mostly fail at this). They are also trying to regulate their bandwidth to save money. So they are trying to refine their data output so you download just enough footage to watch the clip uninterrupted and they are trying to avoid people who buffer something and end up not watching it as this is a waste of energy and their money. They are trying to be efficient because youtube is so motha fucken big they need to prioritize how they deliver content, so their resources are used on things that matter.", "And I'm just sitting here with my 1.5. Fuckin showoff", "Try choosing a different / distant server on speedtest. If the server you chose has the same ISP as you, you'll always get better results.", "ISPs , in addition to throttling your traffic to select sites also prioritize it when checking out speedtest or a simillar speed testing service.\n\nIf it was truly 185mbps you could probably download a heavily seeded torrent at 20 - 23MB/sec.", "Dash playback. Youtube doesn't load the entire video, instead loading segments as you watch. If the server is busy, or there's a lot of traffic your queue request can get bogged down and you wait for the server to answer the request. Disable dash playback using youtube center plugin, or the user script. It has a bunch of other good stuff as well, UI hacks, download icons for video and audio conversion, blocking autoplay and more.\nDash Playback - _URL_1_\nDisable Dash playback via lifehacker - _URL_0_\nThe script - _URL_2_", "Because your ISP prioritizes which sites it wants you to go on. then it drops down to whatever they feel like giving you after. Speed test sites are given number two priority (after their bill-pay site of course)", "It's due to packet shaping. read: \"your isp is fucking you when you watch youtube\"", "I'd tell you a joke about UDP, but I don't think you'd get it.", "Imagine driving from your house to another, the other side of the city.  You'll be driving on residential roads, larger roads, and maybe a few minutes of highway, then more residential roads at the far end.  Just because the speed limit on your street is high, it doesn't mean it's the same everywhere, and it doesn't mean that traffic will necessarily allow you to drive at that speed limit.\n\nAlthough your end of the network may run at 185mbps, it doesn't mean that every section of the network between the server and you is fast and uncongested.", "I have a Mac too and whenever I watch a video it heats up like crazy and sounds like a jet engine. YouTube constantly lags and freezes. I have good internet so that wasn't the problem. The problem was Flash player, especially while using Chrome. It was eating up my CPU, literally hogging 90% of the resources. Its just something I have come to live with, its not so bad on Safari but its Flash's problem and its been happening for years. I don't imagine they're going to fix it anytime soon.", "One thing to always keep in mind is that whole you may be able to download at a certain speed that doesn't mean that a website you access can upload (allow you to download)  at the same speed. \n\nThough in this case it appears the isp screws with video stream traffic because they also sell TV. ", "I work for a major ISP --Not Comcast--and I don't know why youtube buffers and is so slow. I've never looked into it. I do know that no matter what tier of service/ speed you order , youtube sucks.  Netflix is fine, Hulu is mostly fine. Amazon is fine.  Youtube sucks.  \n\nI have parked next to utility pole , connected modem to wire at pole, and then surfed youtube within my work van on a wired / hardline connection, and it still sucks.   Most of the time customers don't believe you. And one of the first things people do when they get internet is hit up facebook and youtube.", "I think it is also worth mentioning that speedtest tell you the ping, down/upload speed between you and one of their nearest servers. NOT the ones between you and things like video servers of YouTube or whatever", "I pay for 75/75 fiber internet.  My YouTube streaming, especially during primetime hours is poor over my native IPv4 connection.  If I use an IPv6 tunnel to Hurricane Electric, I get fantastic YouTube performance.  This tells me that my pipe isn't congested, and the connection from my ISP to Hurricane Electric is fine, but the connection from my ISP to Google is congested or throttled.\n\nWelcome to 2014, when ISPs can charge you for service and charge companies additional fees to guarantee they can reach the customers who are already paying to reach them.", "This is a very complicated issue. In your local neighborhood, your isp connects you up to a backbone. From there, your isp has no control over the flow of data (other than saying X amount of users are having Y problem accessing something upstream) . This can have a huge impact on everything. For instance, if you live in the south east United States,  run a tracerout from your computer or other device and watch for packet loss.  Level-3 (a major network backbone carrier) can get pretty wonky when traffic passes through there Atlanta node,  espically during peak hours. Netflix and YouTube are getting smart tho. They cut deals with your local isp and send them some hardware called a \"cache box\". Its a glorified NAS device that holds many terabytes of storage. The most popular videos and movies are downloaded to the cache box and then placed inside your local isp's network. Source: I work as a tier 2 tech for multiple isp's. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/19h8d8/youtube_buffering_issues_give_this_guide_a_shot/~~"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13kmvd/have_time_warner_internet_but_can_barely_stream/", "http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28071070-How-to-Reddit-YouTube-firewall-rule-with-MI424wr"], [], ["https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/"], [], ["http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-youtube-buffers-the-secret-deals-that-make-and-break-online-video/"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vs3QhEx_3w", "speedtest.net"], ["Speedtest.net"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3877653456"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqQk7kLuaK4"], [], [], [], ["http://lifehacker.com/preload-entire-youtube-videos-by-disabling-dash-playbac-1186454034", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP", "https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki/Features"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "76z1m1", "title": "Why did Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht continue to fight even in the face of overwhelming defeat in late 1944-45?", "selftext": "In history, when most nations are faced with obvious military defeat, either the defeated's leaders call for an armistice/peace and end the war to prevent any further pointless deaths, or the army themselves desert or mutiny to force a surrender, as what happened in Germany during World War I.\n\nSo what kept the Wehrmacht fighting to the very end even when the situation was obviously hopeless? I know the party's inner circles secretly disobeyed Hitler such as Speer's refusal to execute the Nero decree, or even plotted against him to end the war such as the July 20th plot. But what kept German soldiers fighting all the way until even Berlin was a pile of rubble, rather than mutinying or deserting when defeat was obvious around the time the Soviets smashed Army Group Center in August of '44, or the failure of the Ardennes counteroffensive later that winter?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76z1m1/why_did_nazi_germanys_wehrmacht_continue_to_fight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doizwzf"], "score": [23], "text": [" >  But what kept German soldiers fighting all the way until even Berlin was a pile of rubble, rather than mutinying or deserting when defeat was obvious around the time the Soviets smashed Army Group Center in August of '44, or the failure of the Ardennes counteroffensive later that winter?\n\nWell, the Ardennes counteroffensive failed, but the fact that the Germans could muster such an offensive that late in the war and still cause serious concern on one front shows that the Germans themselves didn't think their forces were on the verge of imminent collapse and indeed still had strength left.\n\nLet me give you something from a military perspective on warfare. Remember a couple things:\n\nFirst, just because you're retreating on all fronts, doesn't mean defeat was obvious. You know the enemy doesn't have infinite troops and supplies (just as you don't), you're likely motivated to defend your homeland while their forces are farther and farther away from their own homes, and you the soldier assigned to a front may not have a full grasp on just how actually desperate the situation is. \n\nHow much knowledge would someone assigned to the Western Front have of how crushing their losses were on the Eastern Front? What awareness would, say, ground forces - who are being told to regroup to fight on better ground - have of the utter destruction of their naval forces and air forces?\n\nAs long as the chain of command remains intact, and you are getting communications and command  &  control from HQ, you're still given orders and thinking the war is being prosecuted. Meaning, you have a chance.\n\nA historical example of this is the Persian Gulf War: why did Iraqi forces surrender en masse once the ground campaign started? Well, a month of constant airstrikes that decapitated command and control and left many units without guidance from above would leave troops wondering whether the war was even being prosecuted fully anymore. If you're not even sure your nation is intact anymore, what impetus do you have to keep fighting?\n\nSecond, those who do have the full picture - the leadership - are thinking far more political in nature. Remember, warfare ultimately supports some sort of political goal. In late 1944, just because you are losing a war doesn't mean you are guaranteed utter defeat and Berlin in rubble - you may start thinking that sure, the war is lost, but you can bleed the enemy enough or make yourself unappealing enough for an invader that they settle for a peace that doesn't involve the dismantling of your country and giving up your sovereignty.\n\nYou also see this all over history. A particularly pertinent example to today is the Korean War: the course of the war ebbed and flowed as the US/UN entered the fray and then China entered resulting in a stalemate. The US/UN ultimately felt that they had achieved their goal of defending South Korea and didn't want to escalate the war into China. On the other hand, China had supported North Korea and kept them from capitulating. In the end, both sides agreed to a cease fire and pulled their forces back, creating the situation we have today. \n\nI do, however, want to point out one other thing now, from a historian's perspective:\n\nThe Wehrmacht DID start surrendering in larger numbers in late 1944/early 1945, but particularly so to the Western Allies, who treated POWs far better than the Soviets did.\n\nIn Eisenhower's *Crusade in Europe*, he stated that over 10,000 German POWs were taken by his forces *per day* in March of 1945. All told, over 300,000 German POWs were taken in March of 1945 alone to bring the total haul of German POWs to 1.3 million, and in April this was even more staggering: over 1.5 million more Germans surrendered to the Western Allies, the same month that nearly 100,000 German soldiers died resisting in the Battle of Berlin. By contrast, the Western Allies since D-Day suffered around 160,000 KIA and 70,000 captured\n\nUsing the *Biennial Reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War, 1 July 1939 - 30 June 1945* by General of the Army George C. Marshall. [PDF link here](http://www.history._URL_0_/html/books/070/70-57/index.html), note that this is an official _URL_0_ link, some important points:\n\n* Page 149 of the report (160 in the pdf) states: \"During the month of March nearly 350,000 prisoners were taken on the Western Front\"\n* Page 189 of the report (200 in the pdf) states: \"Following the termination of hostilities in Europe our forces were holding 130,000 Italian prisoners and 3,050,000 German prisoners as well as an additional 3,000,000 German troops who were disarmed after the unconditional surrender. \"\n* Page 202 of the report (213 in the pdf) has the following table on German AND Italian losses in campaigns the US was involved in, in Europe:\n\nCampaign | Battle Dead | Captured\n---------|----------|----------\nTunisia | 19,600 | 130,000\nSicily | 5,000 | 7,100\nItaly | 86,000 | 357,089\nWestern Front | 263,000 | 7,614,794\n---------|----------|----------\nTotal | 373,600 | 8,108,983\n\nNote that captured on Western Front includes 3,404,949 disarmed enemy forces after the unconditional surrender\n\nConsider those numbers in this context:\n\nFront | Germans Killed | Germans Captured | Total\n---- | ---- | ---- | ----\nEastern Front | 4,300,000 | 3,100,000 | 7,400,000\nWestern Front | 370,000 | 8,100,000 | 8,470,000\n\nGerman forces were far more likely to surrender to the Western Allies, and there are even cases of [German troops fighting West](_URL_2_) to surrender to the Western Allies.\n\nSo consider that there were those who chose to take the chance to fight and possibly die rather than surrender and be guaranteed to be treated brutally, like those who surrendered at Stalingrad, of whom only a fraction returned years after the war ended."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["army.mil", "http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-57/index.html", "https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pv49h/ive_often_heard_the_myth_about_german_troops_at/"]]}
{"q_id": "2jlvw2", "title": "even though america has spent 10 years and over $100 billion to recruit, train and arm the iraqi military, they still seem as inept as ever and run away from fights. what went wrong?", "selftext": "News reports seem to indicate that ISIS has been able to easily route Iraqi's military and capture large supplies of weapons, ammunition and vehicles abandoned by fleeing Iraqi soldiers.  Am I the only one who expected them to put up a better defense of their country?\n\nEDIT:  Many people feel strongly about this issue.  Made it all the way to Reddit front page for a while!  I am particularly appreciative of the many, many military personnel who shared their eyewitness accounts of what has been happening in Iraq in recent years and leading up to the ISIS issue.  VERY informative.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jlvw2/eli5_even_though_america_has_spent_10_years_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clcw5kk", "clcw63n", "clcw79o", "clcwaro", "clcwaxc", "clcwwv0", "cld0awk", "cld2ir8", "cld3hvj", "cld3lcn", "cld4054", "cld49fp", "cld4otf", "cld5cje", "cld5hpy", "cld5osm", "cld5px4", "cld5ryq", "cld5v4n", "cld5w3t", "cld5xon", "cld6423", "cld684u", "cld6p2l", "cld6v47", "cld7irn", "cld7rlo", "cld7yfr", "cld83v5", "cld87cv", "cld8jh2", "cld8o9s", "cld97to", "cld9cdd", "cld9oz5", "cldafhu", "cldawag", "cldb0k8", "cldb9ly", "cldbgtg", "cldblde", "cldbndm", "cldc5d3", "cldcaw4", "cldcj9x", "cldcmop", "cldd3tc", "cldemm9", "cldfam8", "cldhl9z", "cldhqo7", "cldhwf3", "cldisv0", "cldiyyl", "cldj7qn", "cldj7sh", "cldjepu", "cldjp5l", "cldk0y4", "cldm5pl", "cldmw0d"], "score": [2, 41, 7, 2726, 150, 113, 7, 17, 24, 8, 5, 2, 85, 12, 3, 16, 3, 2, 2, 6, 10, 7, 14, 6, 6, 3, 3, 10, 13, 5, 6, 2, 2, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 5, 3, 16, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 11, 3, 3, 2, 2, 8, 2, 5, 9, 10, 2], "text": ["Horrible leadership. Many want ISIS to take over since the Iraqi government has failed them in ever aspect and the US pulled out. ", "Someone over at the military subreddit put it best. \"You can't turn chicken shit into chicken salad.\"", "Poor leadership for sure. Part of me also thinks that when you are fighting for a belief like ISIS is, you tend to stay in the fight longer and are willing to die if necessary. ", "The US thought that the concept of \"The Nation of Iraq\" was something that the people there cared about.\n\nA US soldier will fight to the bitter end to defend an American city he's never been to filled with people he's never met.\n\nThat's not the case in Iraq.  The people there have much stronger allegiances to their religious, ethnic, and tribal groups than the nation as a whole.\n\nThe Shiite Arab soldiers in the army would rather leave the Sunni arabs and Kurds to their fate than bother protecting them.\n\nThe Sunni Arab soldiers in the army would rather let ISIS crush the Shiite led government and worry about the whole Sharia BS later.\n\nThe Kurds have their own military force that operates independently of the Iraqi military and has been far more effective.\n\nEdit: There's some good discussion in the later posts on this comment, so I'll address a few of them:\n\n1) Why hasn't there been any serious discussion of a three state solution?\n\nThere are a few reasons behind this (although it is a likely outcome in the long term).  For starters, the Shiites [control much of the arable land near the persian gulf](_URL_1_) (Thanks to u/perevod for the map).  The Sunnis have been mostly ejected from Baghdad and the surrounding areas over the years.  When carving up an oil rich, difficult to farm territory like Iraq you'll inevitably get conflicts about who owns what.  Neither side is likely to peacefully yield valuable farmland and oil fields to the other, regardless of who is currently residing there.\n\nThere's also the Turkey problem.  There are large populations of Kurds in Syria and Turkey.  The Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are effectively autonomous at this point, those In iraq have their own government, military, and utilities infrastructure.  The Syrian government has little influence in Kurdish regions of Syria, preferring to defend their strongholds and let the Kurdish Peshmerga, FSA, and ISIS fight over the rest.\n\nThe Kurds in Turkey have been fighting an on-and-off war of independence to break away from Turkey and join their Iraqi and Syrian brothers in forming an independent Kurdish state.  Turkey strongly opposes this and the US has been reluctant to support the Kurdish forces in ways that will strengthen the independence movement.  The US and Turkey have been close allies since the Cold War, but the relationship has broken down in recent years as the region has destabilized.\n\n2) Why hasn't Bashar Al-Assad's military dissolved like the Iraqi military?\n\nA large number of Syrian military forces actually did defect to the Free Syrian Army early in the conflict, but they weren't able to hold off the more numerous (and better funded) loyalist forces in the long term.\n\nThe loyalist forces are a minority religious sect known as the Alawites, and they've been targets of harassment and oppression in the region for centuries.  Al-Assad's remaining forces are fiercely loyal because they're defending their people from discrimination at the hands of the rebels and execution at the hands of ISIS.\n\nThere is a similar situation forming in Iraq.  The Sunni members of the military have largely disappeared since ISIS is a Sunni group and treats them reasonably well.  The Shiite members have retreated to the Shiite territory and joined forces with the old [Shiite militias](_URL_0_).  Together they actually do form a formidable fighting force, one that will be able to defend Baghdad from ISIS indefinitely if it comes to that.\n\nIn both countries you're seeing the military splinter along religious and ethnic lines, with the ruling party's forces staying loyal but opting to only defend their territory, not the nation as a whole.\n\nIt all comes back to the original issue, there is no Iraq and there is no Syria.  There are Alawites, Sunnis, and Shiites.  There are Arabs, Persians, and Kurds.  There are many groups fighting for many things, but none of them care much for the notion of Iraq and Syria in their 20th century form.", "Iraq has long been a deeply-divided country, split down both religious and ethnic lines. Under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship he was careful to ensure that one group (Sunni Arabs in general, and Tikritis specifically) were always ensured plenty of privileges, while being ruthless in suppressing any uprisings from other groups. After his regime was destroyed many bitter rivalries were brought to the fore, meaning that today  most Iraqis feel their primary allegiance should be given not to their country, but to their religion and/or tribe.\n\nBesides this, the almost complete destruction of the Iraqi economy in the last 10-12 years has meant that there are very few jobs available. One of the few growth sectors has been in security, so whether that be the police, the army, or private security, many people have joined not because it's a job they particularly want or identify with, but because it's the only job available that will pay a guaranteed monthly salary.\n\nSo these two factors combined leave you with a large army, but one that is at best reluctant to fight and which is largely ill-disciplined. When the proverbial shit then hits the fan it's not completely surprising that such reluctant soldiers decide they'd rather go home to their families rather than stand and be cannon-fodder for a well-armed and highly-motivated enemy such as ISIS.", "Iraq's borders , like a lot of middle eastern nations, were drawn by a bunch of white dudes dividing up spoils after WW1 with almost no regard for tribal/ethnic/religious divisions among the new countries' inhabitants. They have no national identity or unity because we forced nationhood upon them via colonialism.", "Soldiers are people and want to live, not die for a useless cause.", "The U.S. hasn't spent 100 billion dollars to train Iraqi troops. Yes, a lot of money was spent on the Iraq War. A LOT. But this wasn't towards training and isn't relevant to your question.\n\nThe Iraq military is inept because all the experience troops under Saddam aren't around anymore. It's a new force, rather than quality they have just tried to increase the volume. ", "Posted not that long ago, here is an extremely interesting and informative article that will thoroughly answer your question:\n\n_URL_0_", "Nation building is a waste of time and resources and is a failed  doctrine. When the people of Iraq collectively want peace, prosperity, security they will create it for themselves. This cannot be for forced on a society they must want it. All nations on earth have created their own realities. As for the Iraqi army, the men are like teenagers, almost even childlike in their disposition.  Sadly, nothing will ever amount to land that is Iraq, having spent time there I am convinced it is cursed, it's people destined to continue this existence of war, death, corruption, sadness. It is a failed state,  a failed people.", "Take at the Vice documentary [This is what winning looks like](_URL_0_) by the rather great journalist Ben Anderson. Shows a lot of what is wrong with the local forces.\n\nEdit: So I managed to forget which country it's about. Thanks for that, stupid brain. ", "They suck. Source: I was there and have met them.", "The issue boils down to 5 key factors: low morale amongst the Iraqi army, high-level military commanders that were not battle trained and not viewed as leaders, a lack of willingness to fight for their country, a lack of training (even in the presence of the $25b investment from US) and a deep rooted fear of ISIS. \n\nWhen ISIS began making inroads into Iraq a fear and panic spread through Iraqi troops. They were relatively well equipped, and certainly outnumbered ISIS (Some 30,000 troops left their posts in the first wave of desertions, in the face of a mere 800 ISIS soldiers). In fact, most of the soldiers deserted before engaging with ISIS \u2013 who were at least 20 miles away form most of their outposts. \n\nSo the issue isn\u2019t that the Iraqi army was defeated militarily. It was an issue of low morale, lack of a willingness to fight for their country, and a deeply rooted fear of ISIS. A lot of soldiers claimed that they felt abandoned by their commanders, and in the absence of strong leadership, they jumped ship. Furthermore, after hearing of the atrocities that ISIS was committing against their fellow soldiers in Fallujah and Ramadi, they were scared shitless, and got out of there as fast as possible. \n\nThe Iraqi army is so dysfunctional because of systemic deficiencies that were the result of Nouri al-Maliki\u2019s reign as PM, and the aftermath of the insurgency in Iraq. When Maliki assumed office in 2006 he began replacing commanders who had strategic military experience with Shia commanders that were loyalists (perhaps out of fear of an internal coup \u2013 what good is a strong army if it\u2019s against you?). \n\nThis left the Iraqi army hollowed out. In addition, most of the soldiers don\u2019t have the same sense of nationalism as we do in the west. Iraq has been rife with sectarian issues. And while the soldiers don\u2019t like ISIS, they also don\u2019t like the Shia government in Baghdad. The Iraqi nation doesn\u2019t exist, it\u2019s a state with Sunni\u2019s, Shia\u2019s and Kurds, who all have competing interests, and are all viewed as enemies of each other in specific parts of the country. \n\nSo it\u2019s not that surprising that the army fell so quickly. It was just a matter of time, and this was the first real test of  defending their sovereignty from an outside force. \n\n", "Dan Carlin had a pretty good podcast about the situation. including some of the history of how the region got that way and why this always happens.\n\n[Common Sense 277 - Riding Chaos to Stasis](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically the american method of propping up governments always crumbles 10 minutes after we leave, since the people we put in charge have no loyalty to it and no wish to die defending it. So they melt in the face of the first real challenge and the challengers pick up all the millions of dollars in weapons we gave the government.\n", "Vice did a video that covered this a little a while ago. They documented some US Soldiers on base with the Iraqi's. The Iraqi soldiers there had almost zero discipline, leadership and care for the cause. Most sat around smoking drugs and wouldn't do more than 5 minutes of work without taking a break or stopping all together. The higher-ups of the Iraq army where mostly corrupt, and often kept young boys as sex slaves, though this was hard for the US soldiers to actually prove, they also often sold off military equipment for personal profit. You tend to find the only really good fighters are the Iraqi \"Special Forces\", they had a lot of money spent of them and use fairly decent equipment, but they are few in number and won't be able to hold off ISIS forever. \n\nTL;DR Laziness, corruption and lack of care. ", "What went wrong is we invaded Iraq in the first place.  Thinking we could export democracy to them.\n\nThat's not how it works. US failure in Iraq was predestined the day we crossed the border.\n\nEDIT:\nIt doesn't matter really what the US has.  It comes down to what Iraq wants.  (Not what the US wants Iraq to have.)\n\nTwo quotes.  One is Poly Sci 101.  Another from Toqueville's \"On War\":\n\n101:  \"Every nation has the leader it deserves\".  This applies to Obama America, Castro Cuba, Kim Korea, and Hitler Germany.  That being:  the people of these nations, at some level, consent to being led by these people.  As did Saddam Hussein even.\n\nOn War:  \"War is an extension of politics by other means\".  This is the key one.  It says there's no such thing as military power in a vacuum.  Military will--no matter how advanced or trained--is nothing without the political will behind it.  Thats why the \"superior\" US got our asses handed to us in Vietnam.  It's why the \"superior\" British got their asses handed to them by the American colonists.\n\nBoth apply to Iraq.  Iraqis didn't want (western liberal Judeo) Democracy enough.  They HAVE to want it.  They have to suffer, and die, over generations, possibly, in order to want to get it.  Or else another nation is just tacking it onto Iraqi society, and it won't take.\n\nIt didn't take.", "I feel that Americans should really be more outraged at this. The U.S installing their own Government was constantly criticized. It was told that it wasn't going to work. Mainly because people didn't want it, most preferred what they had. So we're trillions in debt, and what do we have to show for it?  ", "It's not difficult ISIS forces have in their ranks many of the most experienced and battle hardened members of the Iraqi armies officer Corps that where sacked for being part of the previous Baathist ruling party under Saddam.  Therefore they know how to fight, they know where all the equipment is and are much more motivated than the current Iraq army.   ", "You can throw all the money and training at a military you want, but money can't buy that military loyalty. Iraq has long been more concerned with the plight of themselves and their cultural/tribal counterparts, not the plight of the country as whole. People run from battle because even though they have the equipment, they feel no loyalty to the area they're protecting and don't feel an obligation to risk their life defending it. ", "America left Iraq long before Iraq was ready to stand on its own. America left to please its own people instead of doing what strategically made sense.", "What went wrong? Someone removed the one guy who kept the whole thing in place.", "One factor, the leadership was installed by the US and propped up along the way. They weren't popular and only represented a fraction of the population. Many police and military probably don't see the need to die following the orders of such faux leadership, a leadership that likely sees them as cannon fodder.", "I wasn't in Iraq, but I was in Afghanistan and what I experienced there was that people became beggars. They knew we would hand them just about anything and they would ask for, or steal, just about everything we had, even if it was a personal item. There was no sense of discipline or pride from self-sustainment from them. You couldn't get them to do anything without bribing them into it and a cheap ($5) Timex watch was worth more than building a better future for their country/kids/etc. There's a hierarchy of needs argument to be made, but I think we just conditioned the country to be a bunch of lazy beggars I wouldn't be surprised if the same/similar thing happened in Iraq. ", "Iraq's [arab] army was never actually that great, anyway Iraq is a legacy of colonial misadministration, sure colonialism has its good and bad points, but lumping sworn enemies into the same country and just racing along a desert to create a border and/or splitting up the same ethnic group is not a good point.", "I think it is important to mention the existing Iraqi army that was disbanded after the invasion in 2003. Many of the low level soldiers were not necessarily loyal to Saddam. They were fairly well trained and organized. Many of them joined the insurgency against the U.S. because the Coalition Provisional Authority unilaterally stripped them of their income and to some extent their dignity. If the CPA had only gotten rid of the leaders of the Iraqi army and encouraged the rank and file guys to side with the U.S., I think things would have gone a lot more smoothly. Keep in mind, Iraq had a relatively modern and industrialized economy prior to the invasion. ", "We should never have bothered. Granting for the sake of argument we were going to go in anyway.. go in, knock the hell out of their military.. capture or kill Sadaam.  Leave.  ", "There are a lot of comments talking about culture, which is somewhat fair.  I spent quite a bit of time in Iraq over the last decade and worked with a lot of Iraqis, and there is certainly a cultural side of this. \n\nBut let's look at tactics. \n\nISI is fundamentally an insurgency.  Asymmetrical warfare (not force on force a la WW1, WW2, etc) is the tactic of choice for those in a traditionally weak position (lacking an organized AF, lacking govt funding, lacking all those supplies and logistics that a traditional force has).  The thing about asymmetrical warfare is, that there are precious few instances where those employing it have not won.  Evidence: the Afghans were successful against the Soviets, as they are against the US now, as the Iraqis were against the US, as the Vietnamese were against the US, as the Chechens are (somewhat) against the Russians, etc.  There are some places where it is still up in the air (Northern Ireland, although that is an entirely different discussion given both sides are western, the Basque region, but again, both western) and there are some places where the traditional force won but there are extenuating circumstances (wars in Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries), but generally, in the late 20th and 21st centuries, traditional forces cannot win against a group employing asymmetrical warfare tactics.  \n\nThe Iraqi Army was trained in what the US calls counterinsurgency, and the US lost the war in Iraq (I'm sure some people won't like that assertion, but other than removing Saddam Hussein, we didn't achieve our other goals).  \n\nSource: am US Army officer", "Iraq veteran here (Infantryman, 1-6 INF, 1st Armored, deployed to Ramadi 2005-2007). A few of the responses here are decent, mostly from the veterans and war-nerds. But man, some of the stuff I'm reading on this thread is so cringe inducingly wrong that I want to break my own teeth with a hammer just to make my head hurt *less*..", " > Am I the only one who expected them to put up a better defense of their country?\n\nIraq is not *their* country. Iraq is a fiction made up by the British.", "Yeah ill show up for a pay check.  But I wont fight for something I don't believe in.", "The problem is the corruption in the officer structure and the lack of respect from Officer to fighting soldier,\n\nYour officer will expect half of your pay  if you want to be exempted from the BS work,\n\nYour officer will sell the units ammunition and weapons on the black market.\n\nThe officers are idiot scum and that is why the Iraqi army does not fight well.", "Maybe all the Iraqis with brains and courage don't want to cooperate with the U.S.?  ", "I'm appreciating the comments here about the culture and so on, but it bears mentioning that, in my experience, we didn't actually to all that much training. When I deployed, it was under the mission statement of \"to mentor the police and armed forces of Afghanistan,\" the idea being, well okay now they can take care of themselves and we can all go home. We did very little actual mentoring. Not that we wouldn't have, we made a good attempt, but we weren't actually given the resources for that mission. We did patrols with the intention to mentor (police checkpoints, army inventory and so on)-- often that little exercise resulted in just having to defend ourselves. If the US really wanted to train Afghan forces, we'd have been running a training facility and probably would have suffered significantly less casualties. There's at the very least clearly a miscommunication between the people that write the mission statements and the people on the ground.", "The members of a puppet army enlist to get paid. They don't believe in the cause of propping up the puppet government. So when an actual risk appears, they bail out.", "The part where Saddam was ousted from power and killed.", "i would chip in patreus' army, the sunni militias who were well armed and trained (think tanks and sophisticated shit), who were paid what 100million a month or something, 100k men strong.\n\nwell that smartass maliki, a shia, stopped paying them.  Then replaced competent military commanders with political nominations who did not know shit.  or do anything.\n\nso ISIS comes along, fighting against maliki....now who would help them? well , maliki's enemies for one.  and he has many.\n\n", "Here's the thing. Different countries have different histories, customs, and politics. America is a relatively stable nation, if one troubled by wealth inequality and corrupt politics. But Iraq was only stable when ruled by a dictator, who belonged to a minority sect - and once he was toppled, the politics rapidly changed.\n\nAreas with political instability breed terrorism, corruption, and violence. People do not have the means or structures to simply escape their circumstances, and with a lack of education and political capital comes frustration and - that word again - instability. \n\nWhat is the motivation of the Iraqi army to even fight? They can collect a paycheck, yes, but they can also be targeted and executed simply for allying with western forces. For many there, allegiances change often as a matter of survival, and corruption is just a part of existence. Hard to change that with our rhetoric of justice and equality, especially when it doesn't translate to long-term changes.\n\nTL;DR: You can't change a nation into what you want it to be, although the colonial regimes tried their best. Countries have challenges unique to their culture and politics, and throwing money and weapons at those don't always fix the deeper issues. \n\n", "People have already given the reason--Iraq is a made-up country that people in the country don't feel any allegiance to.\n\nBut the thing is we should have known that. In particular, the Bush administration should have. The Iraq War was a waste of money and doing anything now to defend that nation is a waste. Just leave the Middle East and spend money on our slowly disintegrating nation.", "The debathification of the Iraqi army is the main cause... you had a what was a a fairly well trained and disciplined army that was pushed to the side rather than used. Now many of them fight for and command isis rather than the Iraqi state.\n\nAll this talk of Iraq isn't a nation and sectarian differences is all well and good... but the reason the Iraq army is a mess is that the people with the skills to run an army were all fired by the Bush administration. ", "Essentially iraq should be three separate countries. A Shia South, Sunni central to North and a Kurdish far North. The West insists on holding together a country with deeper divisions than most other nations. The Iraqi army is majority Shiite atm and they dont want to help Sunnis or Kurds. ", "A lot of Iraqi army units are separated into mostly one ethnicity. This doesn't help the army as a whole to cooperate with each other.", "It's not just Iraq. Almost* all Arab military units suck, because of lack of trust and cohesion. 1st and 2nd Cousin marriage and tightly-knit families are very common in the mid East. \n\n > In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins to each other. A 1986 study of 4,500 married hospital patients and staff in Baghdad found that 46% were wed to a first or second cousin, while a smaller 1989 survey found 53% were \"consanguineously\" married. The most prominent example of an Iraqi first cousin marriage is that of Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajida. \n\n[One US officer puts it like this...](_URL_0_)\n\n > The Arabs are what the sociologists like to call \u201camoral familists.\u201d This means that they are nearly or totally incapable of forming bonds of love and loyalty with anyone not a blood relation. Even then, the degree of blood relation determines where loyalty legitimately lies. The saying in the area is: \u201cMe and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against the world.\u201d This not only allows a superior to extort baksheesh from non-relations, but identifies him as an idiot \u2013 a weak idiot, actually \u2013 if he does not.\n\n > The Arab private? He\u2019s no more a coward than anybody else. Indeed, as an individual, I might rate him above, or even substantially above, the human norm. But he is just one man, alone.\n\n > With us, the very broad us within the western military tradition and some eastern military traditions, or with Israelis, who are very western, \u201cIt\u2019s all of us against all of them. They\u2019re toast.\u201d With him? With that poor dumb-shit Arab private? \u201cIt\u2019s all of them against me alone. I\u2019m toast.\u201d\n\n\n", "Iraq war veteran here (American).\n\nWhile I was there, I befriended an Iraqi translator.  From what he told me, Americans attempted to bribe sheiks, as sheiks are the influence leader for their community.  Get the sheik on your side, and the rest of the town will follow.\n\nOf course, America had no idea who was a sheik and who was not, so they basically announced \"if you're a sheik, tell us so we can give you money.\"\n\nSuddenly, everyone's a sheik.\n\n", "our army is not trained to BUILD nations they are trained to destroy them. to put it broadly", "Our tax dollars are being put to good use.  We should of never invaded iraq and used that money towards healthcare, education and so on.  \n\nLet's stop interfering in other counties affairs and fix the problems we have in our own country.", " > Am I the only one who expected them to put up a better defense of their country?\n\nWhy should a Shi'ite fight ISIS in a Sunni town where the locals hate him and are at best ambivalent to ISIS, at worst pro-ISIS? Would you fight for people that hate you?\n\nIf you look at Shi'ite towns, they have been much better defended, in fact, ISIS has not taken any. \n\nBesides that, the Iraqis are cowardly an incompetent, always have been, but the biggest factor is that they simply don't care about Iraq. \n\n", "Massive corruption, sectarian mistrust between Sunni and Shite soldiers,  the fact that 10 years isn't a lot of time to build a fully functional free standing army, Green on Blue paranoia, and your usual butt fuckery.\n\n\n\n", "you can pay a soldier to fight but can you can't pay them to believe in the cause. ", "Though there are exceptions to the rule, when faced with a \"choice\" -- invasion/war in their own country -- we should expect that most of the natives will choose their own -- i.e.  Muslims will choose Muslims.", "I think they should have focused more on healing the countries divided clans and sects. Seriously, that's been the main problem. Everyone is still mad and wants to kill each other. ", "I seriously doubt the actual goal was to rebuild the nation. What portion of that $100b went into the pockets of US Govt. employees, contractors,  and allied nations?", "why fight on behalf of a puppet government that you don't give a shit about, that doesn't give a shit about you?\n\nthey were there for a paycheque.", "99 billion went into someone's slush fund is what happened.", "You are just asking for a fight to start with this question", "Well you see Jimmy, a lot of American companies got big chunks of that money. You don't think it was invested in Iraqis do you? It was never about building an army. It was about making money. ", "Lithuim hit the nail on the head culturally, but I figured I'd flesh things out a bit more personally and politically.\n\nWe worked *damn* hard getting two groups of Iraqi Army up to snuff in 2004.  First was a regular Iraqi Army company and the other was a Kurdish group that had a small base on the other side of the Tigress.  The Kurdish group was amazing to start and worked their asses off, but that is to be expected.  As far as I know the Kurdish group is still going strong and I still see one of their Colonels post on Facebook from time to time.\n\nThe Iraqi group was an absolute mess when we got there.  They'd run and hide from anything.  Turns out they were barely armed and without body armor and ammunition.  Willingness aside, they were *unable* to fight.  They simply didn't have the rounds to do anything but spray their only mag over their shoulders while they ran.\n\nSo we equipped them.  They all got a bit of body armor and ammunition.  We brought them into our base and trained them.  Some of these guys were ex-republican guard and it was still a nightmare.\n\nOne time we brought guys into the range and had them pop off some rounds.  Sloppy and terrible.  So we had a chat with a guy who was a former Sergeant Major in Saddam's army.  We asked him how he could be such a terrible shot, hadn't he ever fired a weapon before?\n\nGet the interpreter over and the guy says \"Five times.\"\n\nThat's not a lot.  We were one of the first Stryker Brigades and we were *constantly* on the range.  I'd fired thousands of rounds before our deployment, maybe tens of thousands the year leading up, but five times at the range ought to have been enough to instill some sort of discipline.\n\nSo this guy corrects us.  \"No no, five times,\" he says and he begins pantomiming shoving rounds into a magazine, \"One, two, three, four, five.\"  Not five times to the range.  Five rounds.\n\nSaddam would line these guys up, they all got five rounds, and they'd pop them off and hand the rifle to the next guy. That was training.\n\nSo we trained them.  We trained the shit out of these guys.  We took them everywhere.  At first they'd shadow us on raids and cordons to learn the ropes and then they just sort of fell in line with us.  Then we're going out of our way to give them confidence boosting training.  We did an Air Assault class modified for them, completely useless really, but they got a little patch with a bat on it and it really motivated them.\n\nBy the end of the year they're handling all our heavy lifting.  Gave a lot of oomph to our 12 man teams having 30 well disciplined Iraqis to back us up.  Really, by the time we left, they'd handle clearing houses and performing security while we essentially tagged along to watch and make on the spot corrections.\n\nThey'd plan and execute their own operations with us standing by to observe and provide backup if anything went wrong.  They were competent and they were ready.\n\nThe core of all of this, was really the leadership.  Some really decent Sergeants and some excellent Officers.  All in all, those were some damn fine soldiers\n\nWithin two years of us leaving Iraq, those soldiers dissolved and lost their discipline.  Within two years of us leaving Iraq, those fine Sergeants and Officers are no more.\n\nSome were killed in combat, but that is the minority.  The real issue was mostly political or tribal.\n\nSomebody would get in a position of power high up and start fucking around with things.  The General of the area was reassigned to a border guard position, a Colonel was relieved of command, a lot of sergeants replaced.  All to make room for friends and family of people who came into power.\n\nIt wasn't cowardice that killed that IA regiment.  It was nepotism.  Hell, the General and Colonel that were removed had *serious* assassination attempts beforehand, car bombs at their personal homes, and they continued to show up and fight the good fight.\n\nI've had a far better experience with the Iraqi Army than anyone I've talked to outside of the unit I was with at the time.  We trained some damn good soldiers and leaders, bent over backwards to do it, and even by the time I returned to that region again in 2009 it was gone.  Fired, replaced, \"retired,\" and reassigned.\n\nThat region was steamrolled right after Mosul.", "of 100 billion 99.95 billion of it went to crony capitalism and bribery", "Well, looking back, the former Iraqi army was doing fine before they were decimated by the U.S. and their allies.\n\n", "Because you can't foster nationalism when you're an occupying force, because it seems disingenuous. And if you succede at fostering nationalism in a bunch of troops they'll end up firing on you because you're still an occupying force. The issue here is one of national identity, had the Iraqis displaced Saddam themselves that would have given them a sense of unity, but being forced into a group of loosely linked peoples by another group that is trying to distance itself from the whole thing, and is basically the cause of the damage to your nation in the last decade doesn't exactly make you well up with nationalist tears", "Who said \"in war truth is the first casualty!\"  Never a truer word spoken.  Some of the posters here need to educate themselves.  And \"I was there\" doesn't mean you have analysed what is going on.\n\nThe characterisation of Iraqis or Arabs in general as innately incompetent or cowardly is of course a racist ideology.  It's from the same ilk who characterise people of African decent as inherently lazy or intellectually inferior.  It serves an imperialist agenda at the top level and unfortunately a lot of the dumdums who don't even realise they are serving power swallow it whole.  If you dehumanise people it is much easier to behave atrociously towards them - and let us be in no doubt, the last 25 years of treatment of the people of Iraq constitutes an atrocity.  But much easier on the conscience to say \"They were always like this, it's not our fault, let them fight amongst themselves\" etc.\n\nRespectfully, a short history lesson.  Before the two gulf wars, and the crippling period of sanctions between those wars, Iraq was a highly functioning dictatorship, with dubious human rights records but nonetheless with the security that allowed the country to thrive.\n\nLiteracy rates were the envy of the region, higher education was greatly prized, there was a highly functional healthcare system (again amongst the best in the region) etc.  Though there were loyalties along religious, ethnic and sectarian lines (and by the way, there are in just about every western democracy I can think of too - look at the states) there was a degree of mixing and towns were not totally \"ghettoised\" - for example, Baghdad had a Christian population approaching 10% who were free to worship in their own way.\n\nWhat happened is Iraq was getting too powerful for the US's liking, expanding in ambition and throwing its weight around.  Students of history will know that:\n\nApril Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that the US would take no interest in the invasion of Kuwait - so he went ahead.\n\nAs a justification for intervention in Kuwait, \"Nayirah\" testified that Iraqi soldiers were taking babies out of incubators and leaving them to die - a campaign that was run by public relations company Hill and Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government - it was all proven to be lies - but a good pretext to garner public support for military intervention - familiar?!\n\nAs part of the US campaign depleted uranium was dropped in southern iraq, resulting in increased infant leukaemia and severe genetic mutations on birth.\n\nAfter Iraq was systematically bombed during the first gulf war, hugely crippling sanctions were imposed.  Ostensibly to prevent a military build up, they effectively prevented a rebuilding of the country.  Educational and medical standards plummeted, there was the beginnings of a \"brain-drain\" with the country's top talent seeking to relocate, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and many millions more were impoverished.  In the meantime, Iraq could only export oil under hugely restrictive Oil for Food programme, meaning the oil continued to flow whilst the country continued to stagnate.\n\nGulf War Two happened despite no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (in fact Hans Blix who lead the UN inspections likened the US Bush administration to witch hunters, with a predetermined view and seeking evidence to support a foregone conclusion).\n\nPerhaps the biggest single blunder as other posters here have mentioned was the systematic disbanding of the Iraqi police and military immediately after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  This left a power vacuum and an unemployed, largely Sunni sympathising group of highly trained soldiers.  \n\nIn this context, sectarian differences came to the fore - before the war, Sunni -Shia intermarriages were very common.  Tribal identity was less important.  In times of trouble, these identities become more important and more primary.  After the second war, mixed marriages dropped off.  Militia would go through towns, separating Sunni from Shia, in attempts to establish \"Shia only\" or \"Sunni only\" towns.  The maps showing the increasing ghettoisation of Baghdad during this period make for heartbreaking viewing.\n\nFor me most sinister of all is the violence against academics in post-invasion Iraq.  About 300 were killed between 2003 and 2007.   Robert Fisk stated in 2004 that \"university staff suspect that there is a campaign to strip Iraq of its academics, to complete the destruction of Iraq's cultural identity which began when the American army entered Baghdad.\"  What the hell is going on here?  A systematic attempt to rob the country of its intelligentsia, destroy its ability to educate its people, to eliminate any view of this place as the cradle of civilisation.\n\nIn short, our generation has borne witness to the systematic destruction of Iraq over the past 25 years.  Much of it was intentional, some of it was blundering, all of it was to serve a heinous political agenda.  The humiliation of the Iraqis along with the perpetuation of negative racist stereotypes about them is all part of the process.", "Just thinking out loud here... Perhaps the powers that be don't necessarily want a strong Iraqi army, just one that's strong enough to achieve whatever stated (or unstated) goals they may have.  Thinking down the road a generation or two, a very strong Iraqi army might be one we would have to contend with and perhaps we want \"just good enough\".  Kind of like building a door that no one else can kick in, but one you could should you ever need to."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army", "http://www.kurdishacademy.org/sites/default/files/images/Iraq_Ethnic_800.preview.jpg"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars"], [], ["http://youtu.be/Ja5Q75hf6QI"], [], [], ["http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/7/3/7/7374e4d975de4f47/cswdcc77.mp3?c_id=7316301&amp;expiration=1413668438&amp;hwt=33efce47c94e982e1563f0342ef2c5b6"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/09/01/politics/why-arab-armies-bad-worthless/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d4shs", "title": "Get Cultured! - Massive Cultural History Panel AMA", "selftext": "Hi everyone! Today's panel AMA will have a bit of a different tone than our regular panels; instead of focusing on a specific period or topic in history, we will talk about our work in a specific *subfield* of history: cultural history. My hope is to give some of our flairs with obscure specialties some exposure, while simultaneously introducing many of you to a subfield of history that you may be unaware of. Think of this panel as a half-AMA, half-workshop: we will all be glad to discuss questions about our fields of research, but we will also answer questions about the nitty-gritty of doing cultural history: how does a cultural historian conduct their research? What kinds of sources do we use, and in what ways do we use them?\n\nSo then, what is cultural history? Admittedly, it is a fairly nebulously defined subfield when compared to its sisters like economic or military history. Peter Burke answered the same question thusly: \u201cit still awaits a definitive answer.\u201d Cultural history can be done across time and space, and study nearly any aspect of a society: there exist cultural histories of animals, of clothing, of landscapes, finance, religious beliefs, warfare and so on. Burke posited that because cultural historians study such a multitude of subjects, it is their methods, not objects of study, which unites them: \n\n > \u201cthe common ground of cultural historians might be defined as a concern with the symbolic and its interpretation. Symbols, conscious or unconscious, can be found everywhere, from art to everyday life, but an approach to the past in terms of symbolism is just one approach among others.\u201d \n\nWe look at any aspect of a society, how it is created as a symbol and how that symbol is interpreted and by members of a historical culture. Accordingly, this will be a fairly open-ended panel where we invite you to discuss our objects of study *and* our methods. We are cultural historians, ask us anything!\n\nHere is the massive list of our panelists, their areas of research and the kinds of topics they would like to address today:\n\n* /u/depanneur is a historian of the imagination who is broadly interested in popular belief and the supernatural in medieval Europe, and is specifically focused on that topic as it pertains to early medieval Ireland. His other interests include the intersection of landscape and culture, magic in the pre-modern world as well as animals and animal symbolism. He is willing to discuss the forest in medieval imagination (especially in Ireland), the supernatural in early Irish history and the methods used to study popular cultures in pre-modern Europe, as well as their problems.\n\n* /u/vertexoflife  is primarily a historian of the book, but focuses specifically on the history of pornography and obscenity, with a heavy focus on histories of sexuality, marriage, and privacy. He has just finished writing a book on the history of pornography, the majority of which can be read at _URL_0_. He is happy to answer questions about the overlap between cultural and intellectual historians, or how the book can be a cultural force.\n\n* /u/TheGreenReaper7 holds an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from University College London. His research outputs have been on socio-legal culture in a comparative context in the Medieval West (c.1100-c.1300) with a special emphasis on pre-Conquest Wales. His other chief research interest is the development of the social and martial cultural phenomenon commonly known as \u2018chivalry' from its (contested) origins in the twelfth-century to the end of the Hundred Years War. Questions about cultural (vis-\u00e0-vis legal) bonds, masculinity, and military ethics very welcome!\n\n* /u/itsallfolklore has conducted work on Northern European folklore, especially as recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have also published on the social/cultural history of the American mining West, working with written and archaeological/architectural resources. My dozen books include studies of Virginia City, Nevada, the architectural history of Nevada, and work with letters from the California Gold Rush. Over three dozen articles include diverse subjects on the same and also dealing with Northern European folklore; I am currently working on a book that is a collection of essays on the folklore of Cornwall. I can address aspects of folklore (particularly as oral tradition manifests in historical documents) and the culture of the Old West.\n\n* /u/historiagrephour holds a master's degree in Scottish history and specializes in the concept of cultural gradation within the Scottish Highlands. For the purposes of the AMA, I can discuss issues related to elite Lowland and Gaelic cultures in early modern Scotland (roughly, 1500-1700) including cultural influences on marriage, fosterage, divorce, education, language, literacy, honor codes, and hospitality.\n\n* /u/WedgeHead is an historian of the Ancient Near East specializing in culture and identity. My interests primarily concern the way ancient people expressed their imagination of the self and other (identity/alterity) in texts. I have written on a variety of topics including cultural appropriation during the reign of Assurnasirpal II (Neo-Assyrian Empire), stereotyping and cultural identity in the diplomatic correspondence of the Late Second Millennium BCE (Amarna Letters), and a variety of topics concerning the Middle Babylonian period (c. 1500\u20131000 BCE) in Mesopotamia. My current research deals with the formation and development of the concept of ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. I am happy to answer anything I can about the cultures of the ancient world or the methods we use to study them.\n\n* /u/Mictlantecuhtli studies the Teuchitlan culture of West Mexico, a Classic period civilization centered around the Tequila volcano of Jalisco. The Teuchitlan culture is one of many of many cultures that make up the shaft tomb tradition of Western Mexico. What sets the Teuchitlan culture apart from other extensions in Nayarit or Colima is their unique concentric circle architecture called a guachimonton named after the principal site Los Guachimontones. My primary focus on the Teuchitlan culture is less on the hollow ceramic figures from their tombs and more on their architecture. I'm interested in how they were built, why they were built, and their distribution on the landscape. My in-progress thesis is on architectural energetics and labor organization in the context of the Teuchitlan culture's corporate power structure.\n\n* /u/Shartastic studies African-American athletes throughout the 19th Century into the early 20th Century. His focus is on African-American jockeys and the modernization/commercialization of sport, but he's happy to talk about other sports and athletes generally too.\n\n* /u/butforevernow is an art historian and gallery curator with a speciality in eighteenth century Spanish art. My current research (for my Master's) focuses on depictions of everyday life in Madrid from/in the later eighteenth century, so I'm particularly interested in the details and workings of that culture, especially the art, theatre, and costume/fashion. I'm happy and eager to answer any questions that I can in that or any related area :)\n\n* /u/TenMinuteHistory: My research is on the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1920s and 30s, My research interests more generally include bodies, movement and their cultural meaning.\n\n* /u/agentdcf: I am a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain, with particular thematic emphases in culture, environment, and food. My research is a cultural and environmental history of wheat, flour, and bread, and it stands at the intersection of several (usually separate) themes and methodologies: cultural history (which I would define as histories of \"meaning,\" broadly defined), social history, environmental history, food, science and medicine, the body, and consumption. I'm best-equipped to answer questions about food and ideas of nature, though I can take a stab at questions of cultural history across the West in the modern period. I have a lot of teaching experience in Western Civilization, world history, environmental history, and some US history (especially California, my home state); this has given me a long and global view of things, but a fairly spotty expertise.\n\n\nPlease note that not all of our panelists live in the same time zones, so some may answer your questions later than others. Please be patient!\n\n^^^^^^^Obligatory ^^^^^^^shoutout ^^^^^^^to ^^^^^^^/u/dubstripsquads ^^^^^^^for ^^^^^^^coming ^^^^^^^up ^^^^^^^with ^^^^^^^this ^^^^^^^panel's ^^^^^^^title", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct1r5gr", "ct1r9u6", "ct1rc5x", "ct1rcr6", "ct1re5t", "ct1ryeb", "ct1s0xe", "ct1seou", "ct1sh0n", "ct1sjzs", "ct1ti31", "ct1uc8r", "ct1v597", "ct1vb6s", "ct1wi45", "ct1zkc3", "ct1zrph", "ct26e3l", "ct2td3g"], "score": [6, 3, 7, 6, 7, 3, 9, 2, 13, 3, 8, 3, 4, 3, 13, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["/u/depanneur : How do histories of the imagination work? Do you trace elements such as \"representations of werewolves\" through chronicles and histories and how people would have thought about them?\n\nLike histories of sexuality, I imagine it is immensely difficult to talk about people's imaginations, as they are especially unrecorded and undocumented until much later in the historical period. How do you deal with this diffuculty?", "/u/historiagrephour how did concepts and particularties of marriage change in the late 1600s to the early 1700s? In my research, this is the period of time in which the English established a more or less five-step process when it came to marriage:\n\n > 1) A contract between the the families for financial arrangements and exchanges of property (in cases where there were finances or property to be exchanged.)\n\n > 2) The spousals--the exchange of promises spoken between the husband and wife in front of witnesses.\n\n > 3) The proclamation of banns for three weeks prior to the marriage. The banns were a loud public announcement on behalf of the marrying couple for three weeks prior to the marriage, to allow people to dispute or contradict it.\n\n > 4) The wedding in and the blessing of the Church (when the wedding actually took place in a church)\n\n > 5) Sexual Consummation. Legally speaking, anyhow--surviving evidence shows sexual consummation happened among the lower classes before the marriage in many cases.\n\nDoes this hold true in Scotland as well?\n\nAlso, in English literature and culture the bordertown of Gretna Green is described as a sort of old version of a Las Vegas wedding, where people could run over the border and get married quickly. Do you have any information on this?", "/u/itsallfolklore How do you work with oral histories and orality in folklore? I understand there has been a great deal of critique of early pioneers in the field such as the Grimm Brothers for writing down, well, essentially their own stories (middle class) dressed up in peasant clothes. How do folklorists deal with alternate or different folktales.\n\nAlso, I've been reading into erotic folk stories lately, any pointers you might have for me there?", "Directed at /u/Wedgehead, what sort of sourcework must you use to construct the identity of these Ancient Near-Eastern cultures? I imagine things that we might use now (diaries, letters) are somewhat few and far between.\n\nSecondly, abstractly related to the first, how can we use Ancient Near-Eastern religious belief, or folklore (i'm thinking Gilgamesh) to construct how these societies viewed themselves or their neighbors?", "/u/TheGreenReaper7 how would sexual masculinities be expressed? That is, what were they defined against? In England, for example, poets often defined themselves as masculine and asserted their masculinity by painting the Italian as effeminate, dissolute, and obsessed with buggery. Would this carry through to Wales or other places?", "For everyone: What kinds of sources do we use, and in what ways do we use them?", "To my mind Cultural History is, at its core, about the *meaning* of things. \n\nTake, for example, the recent debate about the meaning of the Confederate Flag in the United States.  This is the kind of thing cultural historians are interested in.  Of course, when talking about meaning you have to talk about meaning *to whom* because these are not universally agreed upon and might even be hotly contested. When historians turn their eye to this moment and talk about the contested meaning of the flag, they will be doing cultural history. Indeed there is already plenty of literature on the meaning of the Confederacy.  \n\nNote that the meaning might not be the same thing as what something is.  Describing the flag, how it was made, or even the battles of the American Civil War don't necessarily get you closer to answering the question.  You need to get at what people think, how they react, and what they say about things.  And that's not always easy depending on the sources you have available to you!\n\nFor my own work, I'm particularly interested in the ways that human bodies ascribe meaning and have meaning ascribed onto them.  When I study ballet in the Soviet Union, I am interested in the ways in which an aesthetic and style of movement that emerged in and represented an aristocratic and imperial era were reconciled (or weren't!) within an environment that was purportedly antagonistic to the aristocratic and imperial past. In what ways did Soviet artists and audiences understand ballet intellectually?  Did their intellectual understanding seem to conflict with their aesthetic understanding? (Spoilers: It seems to have!).  \n\nThe arts aren't the only things that carry meaning with them, the flag being just one example.  But cultural history can be done on practically an endless variety of topics.  Food, institutions, sports, art, political process, cars, and the list could go on and on. \n\nThe beginning of the AMA mentioned symbols - and I think this is at least partly correct.  The important thing to realize is that even things that aren't normally thought of as symbols carry a great deal of meaning with them.  Often time people don't even think of that meaning as culturally contingent. The usual give away is when people start talking about things that are \"natural.\"  Cultural Historians tend to question just how \"natural\" these things are and instead what to discover how the meaning arose, how it is expressed, and what people do with that meaning.", "This one is for /u/Mictlantecuhtli specifically, although of course anyone can chime in. \n\nI'm assuming that a great deal of work and debate goes into how we define a \"culture,\" particularly when what we have left is mainly archaeological remains. I'm also guessing that there's a great deal of work on the margins of cultures -- stuff like \"well this is definitely a shaft tomb, and that one over there is definitely not, but what about these things in the middle?\" \n\nI'm wondering if you can speak a bit to the other side of that, if possible. How do we study or how do we know what *internal* controls there were on a particular culture to, for example, keep building shaft tombs, or keep on creating *guachimonton* architecture, etc. Is it a conscious cultural choice, or is it something that people are so accustomed to that they don't even notice anymore? Who policed, internally, the outliers in that culture? ", "For everyone: why the resurgence of interest in material culture on the part of historians as of late? From the History of the World in a 100 Objects to Jane Bennet's *Vital Matter*, 'things' are pretty hot in the academy. Is it a desire to sidestep some of the messiness of texts, which were so thoroughly problematized by three decades of theory? Is it a move to make our methods and ambit more interdiscplinary? A simple matter of pragmatically working with a broader array of sources without unduly privileging text?", "I guess my question is mainly for /u/WedgeHead. \n\nHow *do* the cultures of the Acient Near East express their identity? Or, the other way around, what aspects do you study to arrive at an answer, what material do you use? And what social strata are present in the material, e.g., can you say anything about the middle/lower classes at all, or is it mainly elite communication? \n\nSorry for the many question marks and if the question comes of a bit broad! I'm mainly asking because my own research atm. goes into questions of identity and expression in Roman Germany, in the context of Epigraphic Culture. Which means that the things I look at are mostly names, liguistic peculiarities, the gods they worship and how they did that, the men/women they marry, their social status as well as iconography and portraits/statues (which allow us to look at the way people dressed or wanted to be portrayed to the outside world); so mainly funerary inscriptions and votive altars and the way they relate to the landscape and population around them - I'd find it *very* interesting to see how similar questions are asked in other cultural contexts (and with a different material corpus, I imagine)!\n\n", "Question for /u/TheGreenReaper7, I have a copy of Maurice Keen's *Chivalry* sitting on my bookshelf in the 'to-read' pile. To what extent is this book still a major work in the study of Chivalry and how has it been left behind in the ~30 years since it was first published? ", "How do you define a culture and how frequently do groups of individuals assert that they belong to one culture when in some real sense they belong to another culture.", "hello to user historiagrephour.   Did Gael and Gall of the same religion in Scotland see themselves as having a more important connection than Gael and Gael of different Christian sects?", "hello to user depanneur.  \nIs there any evidence that Irish people in the middle ages were consciously copying barbarian modes of dress and facial hair as reported in Latin texts?", "A kind of methodological question, do you think culture is \"real\" or is it created by observation? Given that \"culture\" imposes a uniformity on the lifeworlds of innumerable diverse individuals, can you actually talk about, for example, French culture independent if talking about French culture?", "This one is probably for /u/itsallfolklore. I recently picked up a collection of Russian fairy tales, which I'm very much enjoying. One of the things that's struck me though is the similarity to those that I learnt as a child (in Ireland). \n\nSome of this can be explained by open borrowing (eg Pushkin's *Fisherman and the Fish*) but it seems that a lot of elements of fairy tales are common (eg clever foxes, people-turning-into-animals, kidnapped wives, etc) across borders.\n\nSo is this a case of certain fairy/folk tales spreading across Europe? Or are these elements, and the stories that contain them, universal across peasant societies? Or indeed, are the various fairy tale taxonomies simply broad enough that you could use them to classify *any* tale, if you wished.\n\nBasically: how did fairy tales or their elements of these spread over time? If that's too broad a question, I'd welcome being pointed at any reading.\n\n[Edit: And, of course, thanks to everyone for doing this AMA.]", "What is the difference between a historical culture and a historical ethnicity?\n\nHow broadly can we stretch the category of \"a culture\" and still have it be meaningful? I imagine \"early modern Italian high-class ballet culture\" could be a useful construct, but \"Western culture\" might be near meaningless. ", "A question for all panelists:\n\nMy studies tend to focus on the fairly traditional aspect of high politics, diplomacy, and war. From what I've come across, it seems that historians like me (who I'll call \"traditionalists\" for lack of a better term) by and large neglect the methodologies of cultural historians. They are far more interested in things like interest group dynamics, theories of institutional behavior, and ideology (but ideology as it's studied in political science/international relations departments, rather than by cultural historians). Likewise, cultural historians seem to neglect those aspects of politics that traditionalist historians focus on. I'm probably being somewhat myopic here, but it seems that cultural historians focus almost solely on the \"holy trinity\" of race, class, and gender. This isn't to say that cultural historians are unconcerned with politics. From what I've come across, it seems that a major argument of cultural historians is that *everything* is political. Yet there appears to be a distinct lack of concern by cultural historians about the \"high politics\" analyzed by traditionalist historians. There are exceptions to this, with Krisitin Hoganson's *Fighting for American Manhood* being the example that first pops into my mind, but there does seem to be a general disconnect between the methodologies and findings of traditionalist historians and cultural historians. \n\nSo, to finally get to my question: Do you think this disconnect between traditionalist and cultural historians exists? If so, what explains it and how can it be reconciled?", "I was wondering what you all thought about the interdisciplinary nature of cultural history. One of you mentioned above that often art history departments are less interested in the thing-ness of things than actual historians are nowadays, which made me think about my own relationship to historical studies. \n\nIt seems like you are all trained as historians - which of course means very different things in different schools, nations, traditions - but nonetheless you must find yourselves often bumping into problems that are of a specifically literary nature, or a specifically art historical nature. \n\nI am trained in literary studies, but I would consider myself more of a cultural historian, and I often hear more textual people say that we are both bad historians and bad literary scholars. Jack of all trades, master of none! \n\nOf course these people are wrong, but how? \n\nHow do you overcome these training hurdles? Or do you think that the specific methodologies of cultural history are \"deep\" enough to cover all your bases? Or do you believe that we have to be one kind of cultural historian - more anthropological, more literary, or more iconographic? \n\nAnd finally, a practical question, why won't the rigid contours of academic departments soften to allow access to cultural historians? It often seems like if you have a degree in history, you can only work in history departments, and if you have a phd in literary studies, the only jobs open are in literature departments... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["www.annalspornographie.com"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5fpy11", "title": "what caused racial division and discrimination between hutus and tutsis in rwanda?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fpy11/eli5_what_caused_racial_division_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dan1yg2", "dam36g1", "dam51i7", "dameztp"], "score": [6, 29, 15, 2], "text": ["So before the Europeans arrived Rwandan and Burundian society had a hierarchy with Tutsis at the top and Hutus and the twa at the bottom there was no clear racial distinction because most Rwandans have the same features and the system was primarily economic with the those who were rich considered Tutsis and those without considered Hutus. Then the Belgians came and colonized the region and they saw the hierarchical system as a way to effectively control the people. In doing so they added a racial dynamic in which those with lighter skin,narrow noses and tall height were considered Tutsi while those who had more negroid features were considered Hutu or twa.                                                                        The Tutsis who ran Rwanda weren't very nice to the Hutus and this sowed the hatred and resentment for the Tutsis amongst Hutus. This changed with the wave of African independence movements which made the Tutsis demand independence(because being upper class they were more educated and were more exposed to pan Africanist ideas spreading at the time).This resulted in Belgium switching its support to the Hutus because with Tutsi leaders pushing for independence there was a fear that Rwanda would become communist and Hutus were seen as easier to control. Eventually the Hutus would overthrow the Tutsi monarchy in Rwanda which was then followed by a purge of Tutsi leading many into exile and installing a hardline regime that ruled until it was overthrown in 1994, by The Rwandan patriotic front led by Tutsi exiles based and supported by Uganda. ", "According to the excellent \"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed Along with Our Families,\" a book on the genocide, there had long been a divide in Rwanda between more agrarian and more trade oriented groups, which was loosely correlated to Hutu and Tutsi lineage.\n\nColonizing forces sharpened and deepened this divide as a way to ease their control over the society, making it more explicitly ethnic.  By the time colonization ended, the group identities had solidified as a basis for the political and social order. The divide continued to be used in politics and ultimately spiraled into the genocide.", "This is what I know of the topic from my time in Rwanda:\n\nInitially Hutu and Tutsi had recognizable differences (mainly the shape of their noses) and just focused on different things. With the arrival of the Belgians and their interests in controlling the people, they introduced a national ID paper where it would also state whether someone was a Hutu, a Tutsi or else (there were/are other tribes as well).\n\nAfterwards it was also possible to acquire the status of Tutsi depending on your wealth (how many cows you owned).\n\nThen Tutsi started being given more and more positions of power, which then became some sort of requirement.\n\nThis led to a growing distance between the two groups causing the rapture we know about.\n\nBasically tagging people and discriminating some (the majority) led to the genocide, especially because of the non-intervention of outsiders.", "Not an expert, but my understanding is that the colonial powers installed the Tutsis in a position of power. I've heard arguments that Hutu and Tutsi are constructed identities that didn't exist in a meaningful sense before colonialism. Try /r/AskHistorians, they're pretty good about this sort of thing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mzyn3", "title": "why do prebuilt gaming computers from companies like dell, hp, alienware, etc. have processors way more powerful than needed yet totally skimp on other components like video cards and ram?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mzyn3/eli5_why_do_prebuilt_gaming_computers_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvjkqgn", "cvjmel3", "cvjmtcn", "cvjohxc", "cvjrjuw", "cvjrw98", "cvjsdmv", "cvjtkvq", "cvju3ev", "cvjub3g", "cvjuhjk", "cvjvvep", "cvjw33y", "cvjw7l0", "cvjwnga", "cvjxnc7", "cvjxz2t", "cvjz9e4", "cvk15jj", "cvk1fow", "cvk2dk4", "cvk2dkd", "cvk2rb0", "cvk2sy3", "cvk35fn", "cvk35qo", "cvk3deq", "cvk5m3k", "cvk5w22", "cvk671j", "cvk6mrr", "cvk7ceb", "cvk7efv", "cvk7ret", "cvk814f", "cvk88k6", "cvk89k8", "cvk96qc", "cvk9tmh", "cvka3en", "cvkacjh", "cvkb1px", "cvkb1vy", "cvkdsfz", "cvke9yx", "cvke9zz", "cvkem2a", "cvkffem", "cvkfny0", "cvkftak", "cvkgh0e", "cvkh62z", "cvkhvmd", "cvkir07", "cvkjh3g", "cvkvwf2"], "score": [3487, 2554, 312, 503, 112, 60, 48, 14, 34, 11, 2, 7, 59, 2, 10, 33, 2, 31, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 31, 3, 3, 9, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They probably have a deal with Intel to push these heavyweight chips, and to maximize profit, they skimp on the other parts.\n\nThey are basically relying on peoples' ignorance.\n\n\nLook at any computer sold at say, Best Buy.  Sick i7 processor and a 2TB HDD?  Probably has a piece of shit video card.  Lower end processor and hard drive?  Probably has 8GB of RAM.\n\n\nThey basically use the expensive part as the selling point, and gloss over how terrible everything else is.\n\n\nIt's all about money", "* 1) Intel pays for producers to use their chips.\n* 2) Decades of marketing has convinced people that the processor is the sole determinant of a computer's speed.", "One of the reasons is that many people buying prebuilt computers don't really know what makes a computer good for gaming (the usual parent or someone who just wants to play games and not bother about the technical stuff). They read some big numbers and assume it is a good computer overall if the price is somewhat reasonable. \n\nOn top of that processors are much more advertised (heck I've never seen a graphics card ad on mainstream TV!) thus are in the spotlight when it comes to advertising \"power\" so people know what's the newest technology. As they know pretty much nothing about graphics cards and the rest they tend to ignore - or forget about them.", "it's a marketing term, it doesn't mean anything. it's the same thing as an automaker selling you a \"race-ready\" car.  Sure it might have 600 HP, but that doesn't mean the tires, brakes, suspension, and everything else is up for the task of track duty. ", "Probably something along the lines of people know a i7 is 'better' than an i5. However they don't understand the manitude of the differences in the line. With video cards they may know they want a nvidia 900 series card but not understand the magnitude of the difference between a 950 and a 970. There is a pretty large price premium there.\n\nSo basically its exploiting ignorance. A low end i7 paired with a 900 series looks good on paper to someone who doesn't know better, and its cheaper than a properly built system. The same thing with an i5 and a more powerful gpu in the same series is obviously better, but only checks one of the top end series boxes.", "If you are buying a pre built gaming machine it's because you don't know how to do it yourself. They are banking on this. I bought one strictly out of laziness then upgraded the parts of the build that I deemed under par. I've been upgrading and using the same tower for almost 5 years but at this point I don't think an original piece of the build is still inside of it apart from the power supply.", "people who want to get a gaming PC but don't know how to build one will see ***Intel Core i7 Skylake 5960K at 4.4GHz*** and they are just freaking out because it's super powerful, but they don't realize that they are also getting a crappy video card, and crappy everything else too.  Not only that, they are also factory made so they're almost impossible to service without using force so hard that you may break some of the components", "Intel has spent a lot of money advertising that PC's with \"Intel inside\" are better than PC's without. Intel is so successful that to the average consumer, the biggest discernable feature in a PC is having it or not. This makes it so that the driving force behind the decission to purchase is the intel processor and not other specs/hardware.", "Most properly clued up PC gamers will either build their own rig or buy from a specialist builder, whereas prebuilt systems are aimed at buyers who just believe that what they spend has a direct correlation with how good the system is.\n\nIntel have spent a comparative metric shit-ton marketing their brand name and their simply named (easy to remember) i3, i5 and i7 CPU's. You don't have to be very tech-savvy to know that i7 is \"the best\". Far fewer people would know if an Nvidia GTX 780ti is better or worse than a GTX970. It gets even more confusing if you compare it to an AMD 7870.\n\nGiven all of the above, and considering that buyers of prebuilt systems will have some sort of budget, it makes sense (from the OEM's point of view) to blow the budget on the CPU.", "Enthusiasts who know graphics cards are never going to be happy with any built-in graphics - there's always going to be something faster, more overclockable, or in other ways more interesting on the market. Sometimes, even just popular opinion - as what would happen if an HD7000 was suddenly more powerful than a top-of-the line graphics card.\n\nAdditionally, the newest kit is often less reliable than the standard stuff. Computers fail more often within their 1, 2, or 3 year warranty, costing money.\n\nAn enthusiast who puts it in himself is often not going to complain too much if it fails or becomes unreliable after some time - he was probably about to upgrade to a better card anyway. But consumer devices failing is going to cause a lot of ripple in the media, and nearly anyone with any issues is going to get the graphics checked.\n\nAlso, a computer with a good cpu and average graphics is going to be good for a wide range of tasks - even most games - while a computer of the same price with stronger graphics is mostly just going to be good for shooters.", "What I don't understand is the lack of SSD offering. Under $800, Dell have 2 portable with SSD, Lenovo 0, HP doesn't seem to have one, etc... Stop trying to sell useless 750GB hard drive in laptop. Put SSD in there goddammit!", "You have to remember who they are selling them to.  People that are knowledgeable about what makes a good gaming computer are just going to build their own.  Anyone looking for a pre-built computer is likely to think a killer processor is the most important part.  They also aren't going to know a lot about how RAM works or what a good video card is.", "Because 90% of consumers have no idea what any of the specs actually mean beyond the CPU and amount of ram. ", "People who buy prebuilt computers are the kind of people who only look at the CPU, if that. 3.2GHz? Wow! Must be a really good computer!\n\n\n3 weeks later, they start complaining about it being slow, because it only has 2GB of RAM which they didn't notice.\n\n\nPrebuilt sucks. You can get the same thing 3x cheaper with better, quality parts. Prebuilt usually uses really crap motherboards as well, so they never last as long as something that's been built by you or someone for you.", "So, a lot of people have mentioned the Intel marketing aspect, which is likely a big factor. But there's a larger business aspect these companies have to deal with - service and support / repairs and returns. Their customer target demographic isn't hardcore gamers, it's a \"typical\" gamer (or someone that thinks they are).  So, they have to make sure this group has the best experience with the fewest support issues. This means a couple of things.  First, they need to test the hardware in a wide array of configurations and a wide variety of software. This is a slow process, especially as they work with manufacturers on fixing drivers and the like.   It's going to take long enough so that \"current gen\" never really makes it to a product line. And product lines need to last months or longer, since they are expensive to test, develop, and market. \n\nWhy not the most powerful cards of the previous gen then?  Well, firstly this demographic typically doesn't want/need/willing to pay for them - so it's a high investment for small return to get to production. Secondly, these cards typically run hotter, need more tuning, and are likely to exhibit more driver related issues then lower spec cards - they're a support -nightmare-.  Simply put, the risk is too high for the reward. \n\n* edit.  Forgot to add, other components, CPUs included, don't typically have these same considerations. They \"just work\" most of the time. ", "My ELI5 answer to this is :\n\nBecause of all parts to upgrade in a computer the CPU is the most difficult to replace, and the most daunting for a person with little experience to replace. \n\nRAM and video cards are literally put in, latch, and boot your computer. \n\nBuy a computer with a good CPU and you can keep it for many years without worrying about motherboard and other compatibility issues. \n\n", "The hardest thing to change in a computer is the processor.  Anyone can install more RAM.  You just insert the RAM into the slot.  Swapping video cards isn't a big deal either.  Swapping the processor means you have to disassemble most of the computer, take the mother board out, take the heat sink off, swap processors, apply thermal paste, and put the heat sink back on.\n\nThe bigger problem is sometimes these companies skimp on power supply which limits your ability to upgrade in the future.\n\nSo for someone new to PCs (someone more likely to buy a pre-built) the better processor is the way to go with pre-builts.  They are probably going to hold off on getting a new PC for as long as possible.", "I'd say its an old habits thing.  You see, back in the day young younglings, the processor did matter.  386, 486, pentium, pentium 2, mmx, etc.  That shit WAS the most important part of the computer.  the chip.  By pentium 2 roughly, graphics card were becoming totally awesome (opengl etc).  Lets just say when Quake came out all of a sudden you needed an awesome graphics card.\n\n\nBut I guess the companies execs didnt change since then, because now it matters much less.  i5 vs i7 for a gamer, not much diffenrence.  486 vs pentium, pentium 1 vs pentium 2, HOLY BALLS.", "This thread made me realise I'm an \"enthusiast\" despite just buying a list of recommended hardware and slapping it together", "Cause your average human doesn't do the research. Many companies advertise it as something like \"2 TB ALIENWARE i7 8 CORE COMPUTER\" and people are like WOWZERS THAT SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD and they waste 2000$ > ", "Wintel PCs are a \"race to the bottom\" on price but also quality.  Low prices mean margins are thin so they cut corners.\n\nAny PC gamer can explain (it's why they often build their own).", "TL;DR most customers don't know squat about making a fast gaming computer, but they know computers need CPUs, and bigger numbers intuitively seem better.", "Whatever happened to Voodoo?  Back in my day they were the bee's knees.", "Anyone that wants to build their own computer can post what they want the computer to do and how much they want to spend to _URL_0_\n\nOr if you have some knowledge but just want to make sure everything will be compatible you can go here _URL_1_\n\nFinally, I recommend searching each part for consumer reviews on amazon and newegg and then buying the parts from newegg as they only charge tax if you live in california, new jersey, or tennessee. \n\nHave a knowledgeable friend or local computer repair guy put it together for you for a minimal fee, you will enjoy this much more than a premade system and so will your wallet.", "Wow all the comments here point to the manufacturer trying to swindle the consumer out of money... Now I have nothing against asking many questions when it comes to big corporations like HP and Dell... But as a technician, and someone who has built and sold many gaming and modeling PC's to many happy clients I can say that perhaps the reason is because the processor is the one  component that is very difficult to upgrade. \n\nYou buy a PC with a powerful CPU so that over the next few years you will only have to upgrade RAM and the graphics card as you need it, especially if you choose to place your operating system on an SSD drive.\n\nIf you have the money, then go with a system that has the best available CPU and the best RAM and Graphics card your chosen motherboard can handle.\n\nOtherwise, of you want to go with what the other posts are saying then sure, go ahead and upgrade your whole PC every year, or buy a mediocre CPU this year and then be ready to upgrade next year.", "Because it's simple to sell average-gamer or average-parent a simple plug and play RAM, video card, or hard drive upgrade after the initial purchase. More so than a high end processor upgrade that most users wouldn't get in the first place. Average-buyer doesn't know the implications of the specs, they just know bigger is better and since it's an Alienware/Dell/InsertWellKnownName, it must be good.  \n\nThis way the maker sells the high-end chip (and gets kudos from Intel) and likely gets the return business on smaller margin items like RAM which they mark up for upgrade prices. Now they've sold twice as much ram to a single buyer. \n\nFun fact: back in the dinosaur ages, Intel couldn't keep up with demand so they contracted AMD to make chips for them. Once Intel could handle demand they found they couldn't end their contract because of legal loopholes and AMD taking these loopholes to court. AMD and Intel chips were literally interchangeable for many, many years. Only when the court finally cut AMD off did they start relying on their own independent product lines. Intel has hated AMD ever since.", "Power video cards are more expensive, use more power and consequently require more powerful and expensive power supply units.\n\nAlso, in terms of marketing, and i7 is clearly more powerful than an i5 or i3. On the other hand, the average consumer can't tell if a 960 is better or worse than a 780.\n\nTldr: Easier to pad the marketing material to make a computer look more powerful by just using a more expensive CPU than an expensive video card.", "I work for one of the companies you just listed, so let me provide my two cents.\n\nI skimmed over a few answers and a lot of them were dead on, but here are my thoughts:\n\n* 1) Consumers are not knowledgable about the products they buy, and I think it's the absolute worst in technology. The alcohol market comes in a close second. How many people do you know who realistically understand how a computer actually works at the component level? People may not understand what differentiates Intel from AMD, but they sure do understand that 8Gb is a higher number than 4Gb or that i7 is a higher number than i5.\n* 2) People have been conned (sort of) to believe a processor is the sole determinant of performance. It's a conceptual mindset that has been baked in over time, similar to people in America believing foreign cars are better than vehicles made by GM or Ford. This is far from the case. On the enterprise side, corporations are much smarter and understand the whole picture. The consumer side is much more segmented and much more dependent market action. Look at what is happening with PC sales before the Windows 10 launch.  \n* 3) The chip manufacturers have a lot of leverage. I should really change this to manufacturer because intel runs a near monopoly. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if AMD went bankrupt or got bought out by a chinese company within the next five years. I think the last time I checked, less than 2% of the total volume we purchase is from AMD.\n* 4) There is a lot of incentive to move product. The processor industry is based on rebates as an incentives to purchase inventory. For instance, if company XYZ (Dell) forecasts to use 10,000 units of processor ABC (2.4Ghz widget) in a given quarter, there is a rebate that is negotiated into that volume. On the memory side, rebates are based at the bit level. OEM manufacturers like Dell or HP aren't stupid, and they will pedal products in order to meet volume based rebates. \n* 5) This is sort of a follow up to #4, but there is excess that needs to be used. What usually ends up happening is that companies will purchased remaining components that have missed the forecast, and you usually see this with higher end components since it is high dollar value, lower volume part. So going back to #4, let's say I forecast at the corporate level to use 10,000 units in a month but I have only used 5,000 by the 27th day of the month. I will purchase the last 5,000 pieces in order to hit my rebate, and then start using that excess to manufacture computers that have crappier components. All about segmentation and clearing inventory.\n\n* 6) Most importantly: markets are segmented based on price points. If a manufacturer created a computer with top end components, that would cost a fortune. We have to slice the pie in order to maximize market share and profit. ", "Look at it this way: \n\nLets assume you are selling something simple, yet multi parted and hard to understand. \n\nThink Modell helicopters. \n\nNow, for the actual helicopter, the store has a tiny profitr span. After all,m they are pre-built, and most people scarecly need more then one. Plus, all parts included, they come directly shipped from the factory. \n\nNow, think that this facility is selling out of the box helis. lIterally, put the battery in, and go. \n\nNow, thinking ahead, what is your mission as a business owner? \n\n- make enough money to pay all your employees. \n\n- make a living wage\n\n- make a profit. \n\nNow, lets see. \n\nThe whole helicopter costs 490 bucks, for a resale value of 500 bucks. So, per unit sold, you get a measly 10 bucks in profit, and you are prone to not often sell units. After all, they are shit quality, but with enough care, these last you for allmost forever. \n\nBut what is this? This thing needs batteries, which are not included by the company, and a remote, which is also not included, and so forth? \n\nNow, lets assume you have acess to high class batteries, medium class batteries, and low class batteries. If the battery life is too long, the customer will rarely get back to you to buy new ones, but you sell top quality. If it is too short, the customer will come back all the time, but you will have a reputation for shit quality. The shit ones cost you a buck for 12, the medium ones cost 12  nucks a piece, and the top of the line ones cost 30 bucks a piece. \n\nBUT, and this is where it gets interesting, you have found a third way. \n\nAssume you found out, just reccently, that you can sell low quality batteries, heck, shit quality batteries, scratch that, you can literally stuff diodes with a potato in the battery slot, and the thing will work. Hell, they are so cheap, you can give them away for free, in a sort of \"casual\" starter pack. But with that, you guarantee that the customer will come back, and at least want a battery that will work longer then 15 minutes. So, you market these as enthusiast batteries. And of course, they are what you actually make your money with. Because you can guarantee, that every schlub under the sun will want to be an enthusiast, even if he is still a bit ashamed of having spent 500 bucks on a modell helicopter that he does not need, he will invest the extra 50 bucks for the enthusiast batteries. \n\nSo, you sell those as well. \nAnd then, for the really really demented people, that spend way too much time on their helicopters, you have the \"Glorious master race \" batteries, that actually work pretty well, but because so many of them want those, you can charge an arm and a leg for them. So, most peiople will stick with enthusiast batteries, that work perfectly fine for the guy who wants to fly his heli every now and then, Only some schlubs will stick wioth the casual batteries, and get sneered at by the owners of the \"Glorious\" batteries, because those filthy casuals understand jack shit about helicopters. \n\nNever mind that every single one of these guys just gave you 500 bucks for a piece of shit modell helicopter that you imported from taiwan, and that noone really needs. \n\nAnd just as you thought the market clamped down, and calmed a bit, you discover that your main business area is not kids that cry to their parents to buy them a modell helicopter, but adults who buy these for yourself. Which means, you can jack up the prices some more, and when you discover that there is a magazine called \"Modding your modell helicopter\", by the Glorious battery fanclub, you allmost cum in your pants, because hol\u00f6y heck, you are overcharging some overgrown children for batteries that yoiu get for pennies on the dollar? So, you introduce several different varieties of batteries, give your staff exotic battery types, and make them swear up and down that this or that battery is better. \n\nAnd of course, since you do want to appear legit, you offer a service where you mod the helis for their owners, so they can literally put their battery in and fly. Because, lets face it, if they would do it themselves, you would make less money off of them, and everything you do, you can charge your rates for. \n\nAnd shocked, you discover that the adult children do not realize the only thing it has to do is fly the fecking heli, and they find data that supports your claims, because they do not want to look stupid for spending that much on a toy for 5 year olds. OOh, and how thy will go all out on \"filthy drone pilots\" That could never understand the peculiarities of actually choosing a battery for their heli, and that are too dumb to do so (Despite you having helped them build 90 % of their Helis. ), but the drone pilots on the other side will claim that nobody needs 60 screw on parts per units, and some people just want to start their fly thingie and go. And there will be war, in which all sides will heavily buy your batteries. \n\nAny coincidences with actual movements or naming conventions are purely coincidential and not intended. ", "I put together my own system after researching online and watching vids of how to do it.  8 meg ddr5 ram, a $65 dual core pentium that overclocks to 4 gig right out of the box, cheap msi motherboard, Raedom sapphire 260 that i got for $119 and has a $40 mailin rebate and it runs games at high settings better than the latest consoles.  total cost incluing the OS was ~$400.\n\nYou could spend twice that amount and never see an actual difference in most games.  Yes if you go all out and spend thousands you can get better performance and multitasking but man i just want to throw my game on and go!\n\nSo yes, for the reasons people are stating here, building your own is always going to give you more of whats important to you for less money and honestly, it's easy to do.", "Very, very few people actually need external video and 8 GB of RAM is enough for most.\n\nDon't believe me? The reddit crowd is mostly male gamers aged 18-35.\n\nThere are far fewer female PC gamers out there. That's 50% of the population right there. You throw in the elderly, naive (as others have suggested as the sole reason; it's not), non-gamers, casual gamers, home business users, and you have the vast majority of people.\n\nIn addition, your typical reddit male gamer builds their own PC in components. Or gets suckered into buying a basic machine and upgrading the video card later.\n\nSource: Sold computers for many years.", "any good gaming computers to look out for during Black Friday?", "For HP Specifically, the market for people looking to buy a gaming PC but not build their own is not easy to target. So a lot of times they have to work out deals and skimp on some features to keep costs down in order to be able to market them. I remember having an HP built gaming rig in the Testing room. The price for that machine was around $1500. It had Water cooling on a HD7870 which wasn't bad back then but that card ran around $200. Turns out it was a Deal with one of the VCard Manufacturers so that the cost of Marketing the system wouldn't fall completely on HP. So yeah tl;dr it costs alot to market things that not many people will buy. Source: I used to work at HP in a relevant department.", "Cost - That\u2019s it\n\nHaving worked in the Product Group of one of those companies you mention, I can tell you it\u2019s predominantly due to cost.\n\nHW vendors do not pay anywhere near retail cost for the components. Someone mentioned here that they worked for Intel and could get a $300 i7 processor for $70, so what price do you think Dell/HP pay for a i7?\n\nNow, they will only put in a graphics card/chip that is low cost. Nvidia are not going to sell them a GTX 980 for ~$50. so they will put in a low cost, low to medium spec graphics processor. Nvidia etc then markets their high cards to the \u201centhusiasts\u201d\n\nSo \"skimping\" on the graphics processor has nothing to do with marketing/specs/upgrading the proc or sales pushing the processor over everything else or even how much money Intel provides.\n\nNow, Intel provides a shit load of money, and so the processor gets \u201chero\u2019d\u201d in the Ads. If NVidia provided the same amount of marketing dollars, you would see their logo everywhere.\nAlso, I used to manage that money and Intel never said \u201cWe will only give you this money if you stop selling AMD\u201d. Obviously we could only use that money to market Intel based hardware. AMD just didn\u2019t give as much money. \n\nSo it all comes down to cost\n", "They cater to a tech illiterate audience who see i7 an think quality but haven't the faintest idea about graphics cards.", "Yeah,It pisses me off how gaming computers have badass processors, but shitty graphics cards and RAM. Thats why I built my own PC.", "I just wish rendering and photogrammetry could use a good GPU. Until that happens I'm going to keep cramming the biggest processors and largest RAM modules I can into my PC. Never thought that I would have a use for greater than my current 128gb of ram and dual 14 core Xeon 4660 processors. But plugging through 2200 22 megapixel images takes a shitload of ram and processor. ", "New CPUs are released less often than video cards.\n\nTherefore from a marketing point of view, CPU tech is more stable as a 'latest and greatest' selling point than other components. So it's easier to sell a machine by focusing on that area rather than video.\n\nAnd everyone knows you can just 'add more memory' to a machine to fix problems, duh! :)", "Because the CPU manufacturers encourage them to do it and because they can make more money by skimping on GPU/RAM/HDD components.\n\nOn a secondary note, a lot of people who build their own systems (myself included) will intentionally buy a very beefy processor, because that's often the hardest part to swap out, often requiring a new mobo along with it, which means pulling the whole thing apart and re-assembling it again. It's just easier to buy a chipset that you know won't need to be replaced for 3-4 years and then swap out other parts as needed while the core just chugs along.", "these companies dont care about what customer gets for their money,gpu's are usually expensive so they decide to cut corners on the gpu,power supply to maximise profit since the average gamer dosent thinks that more jiggahertza and cpu cores = better framerates which is wrong .Psu's that come with prebuilts are shit,prebuilts usually use gimmicks like a fancy case with a shitty interior to attract customers. \n\nOne is better off building a pc or getting a custom built one from newegg,ncix,pudget systems etc. \n\n/r/buildapc\n\n/r/buildapcforme\n\n/r/cabalofbuildsmiths\n\n/r/gamingpc\n\n for those who want to build a system", "Sales associate of computers here. From what i sell and who i sell to really varies. For the most part, people looking for gaming computers are a very small percentage of people that actually buy these computers. I would say around 10-20%. The vast majority of people that buy gaming computers are people who are getting these computers for work. Engineers, video editors etc. They either need the processing power and ram but have less of a need for high end graphics cards or are very clueless and just want it because it looks good. Honestly I'd say it's 50/50. Every other consumer knows what they're looking for. ", "In contrast to everyone else: The naming system of graphics cards is AWFUL. With a CPU, you have a single number, and it's easy to say whether something is better or not. In contrast, for AMD you have things like R7 260, R7 260x, and R7 265. Which of those is better? Well, it depends. And are they better or worse than a radeon 8450 (which has more numbers and a bigger value!).\n\nAnd is a 8450 better, or a 760Ti?\n\nYou need to spend a MASSIVE amount of time researching this, and GPU companies have basically done an awful job of providing a clear, comparable metric (e.g. 3DMark score) which could be used to clearly demonstrate graphics card performance.", "because anyone dumb enough to be buying a prebuilt gaming rig will be sold on the words \"gaming rig\". happy to help anyone who wants help over in r/buildapc", "To add to this, most manufacturers actually push the numbers of what they think people look for. \n\nSo usually (at least here in the Netherlands) they do push RAM, but they rather take very slow RAM and make it 8GB, because people look at that.\n\nFor graphic cards they usually do this as well. Most people look at the VRAM, so they push that number so people are like \"I have a 2 gb graphics card\", not knowing the rest of the card is shit. This even happens when advertising with integrated cards. *2gb of shared RAM? Great, 2gb card it is.*", "Along with all that was said, it also leaves room to upgrade and for them to propose options like to \"build your own computer\". In reality it's just commercial gimmick that will sell you those upgraded parts for more than what they're worth. Like selling an upgraded Video card for $200 when it's only worth $120, or 8Gb of memory $150 when it's only worth half that price.  ", "Video cards are a niche product. The onboard video can handle any 2D application ok and basic 3D graphics. For gaming or high end graphics, video cards are essentially like separate computers that do the processing. Prices can range up to $3k for graphics cards like the Nvidia Tesla or even for a decent gaming card you could be out $300. No computer company would stay in business building off-the-shelf computers with high end graphics cards. However you see that Alienware and some Dells that are built-to-order will allow you to add high end graphics cards. But their Best Buy models will never have more than a mid range GPU.\nSecond, with RAM, many people don't know the difference between RAM and Hard Drive. So if a computer has 4GB ram and 1TB hard drive, people think it would be faster/better than a computer with 16GB ram and a 250GB hard drive. Of course its not so. Its market driven and the good thing is that RAM (except for macs) are the #1 easiest thing to upgrade in a PC. ", "My best guess is that it's much less complicated to go in and replace a video card, or add in some new sticks of RAM, than it is to replace a processor.  Really, neither are all that complicated to do.  But I think people are more willing and open to just simply plugging in the video and ram, and they know that if they skimp out on that then many people are going to go in to Best Buy or get online and buy those.  Indeed, when I look at package deals the times I've been too lazy to get on Newegg (or insert your favorite site here) to build my own rig, I've looked mostly at the processor when factoring in my decision, knowing that RAM and video card are a simple fix right around the corner come another paycheck.  They are counting on this, and know they can get more money from us down the road later for adding this stuff in.", "ex AMD employee here.  Dell and HP, will run the bare minimum so save costs.  Its more than just RAM and Video cards.  The motherboards are stripped down OEM units, and the Power supplies are usually just on the threshold of being to weak to power the system.  This is one of the reasons your warranty will be void if you open the case.  They know if you add anything the system you will will start to overrun the power supply or the cooling system.  They do a ton of testing to just skate by on the bare minimum, right down to running a minimal amount of fans.", "I guess a ELI5 answer could be that it's the same as your father buying that 500HP car even though the speed limit does that he will never get the full effect of it, but he can still say to the guys at work that his car has 500HP and that's a point the car salesman used to sell him the car.", "Aussie here that works in one of our big box retailers.\n\nMost of the laptops we sell in both AMD and Intel have CPUs that might have a pile of cores but a lower clock speed (such as a 1.5gHz quad core) with 8gb of RAM and onboard video.\n\nBut even the ones with dedicated video still can be sluggish even with a SSD. I just wish manufacturers and stores wouldn't push this lower end stuff as performance gear. Even shoving 16gb of RAM isn't going to make it mega fast (sometimes it feels slower at least in my experience)\n\nThe only time I see people care about the display is either because they know their stuff, want to do graphic work or are using flash words like 'Retina Display'.", "How many gallons of CPU do I need to play Crisis?", "ELI5: What is a loaded question and why do Dell, HP, Alienware etc scam their customers?", "For the same reason that megapixels are the first thing mentioned when describing a camera that is for sale.  When computer shopping, most people hear (oh, this has a lot of those \"hurts\" things, so I guess that means that it is really good).  There is so much more at play in a computer, or even a processor, that effects performance.", "I built a gaming computer from 'scratch' and i skimped on the vid card and ram too, plug and play when it comes to updating those components , maybe that would be why? leave room for you to upgrade as you see fit.", "Because they are marketed toward people who don't know much about computers and those people have been taught to believe that better processors equate to better performance. The same with Ram. While shopping people will normally ask 'How much Ram does this have?' Even though they have no idea how much Ram they need. They just know more is better.\n\nIt doesn't help that naming patterns on various components are meant to make things much harder than they should be. ", "I see a lot of comments here saying how bad pre built stuff is and how ignorant the average user is, but no links to decent build sites or recommendations of what should be part of the considerations"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc", "https://pcpartpicker.com/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vskzd", "title": "why does salt water help your gums heal after a deep periodontal cleaning?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vskzd/eli5_why_does_salt_water_help_your_gums_heal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cokjmbr", "cokmp6b", "coknhtm"], "score": [16, 25, 9], "text": ["I believe it prevents bacteria from lodging in there and doing bad stuff to your gums\n\n(Because not many things can survive in such a saline environment)", "Osmosis. During a deep periodontal cleaning, the water jet blasts lots of bacteria and other debris off your teeth and into your gums, creating lots of micro-abrasions in the process.\n\nSalt water creates negative osmotic pressure, which draws water from your blood and lymph fluids through those micro-abrasions and cleans all the junk out of them. Clean wounds heal faster.", "Osmosis. In simple terms, the concentration of water inside the bacterium is greater than its outside environment. Therefore, water moves out of the cell into the environment by the laws of osmosis. Less water results In the death of the cell. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "71enqm", "title": "of all of the insects with the ability to fly, why were flies designated the vernacular name fly?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71enqm/eli5_of_all_of_the_insects_with_the_ability_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dna7ib5", "dna8f0n", "dnaf9sk", "dnagmmg", "dnahaxp", "dnaiooo"], "score": [40, 887, 11, 9, 4, 9], "text": ["not sure of the answer but...\n\nthe majority of insects have 4 wings: 2 fore wings and 2 hindwings. flies are the only insect order (group) that have modified hindwings called halteres (they look like little drumsticks). these halteres are what allow flies to have superior agility to other insects - they act as dynamic counter-balances in flight. perhaps this has something to do with their name...they're excellent fliers!!", "Originally all flying insects were called \"flies.\" Some would get more specific names (dragonfly, butterfly, alderfly, horsefly, etc.) What we typically call a \"fly\" is also known as the \"house fly\" and, its commonality is probably why it is the one that got to be shortened to just \"fly\" in the vernacular.", "Why do we call our moon Moon when many other planets have many other moons?", "A little more anecdotal but it might be because pretty much all other flying insects have something else identifiable about them.\nBees are the buzzy, flowery ones, wasps are the angry, stingy ones, dragonflies are the long, elegant ones, ladybugs are the pretty, spotted ones. \nBut with flies they don't do anything else. They are teeny black specks that fly around for about a day then die. They're only \"flies\" because there's almost literally nothing else you could possibly name them.", "I always thought about it once in Portuguese we have specific names for each insect and no one is named fly ...it's very awkward for who doesn't have English as first language...", "Good question, OP. Now you've got me wondering why cod aren't called \"swim\" and horses aren't called \"run\". \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mkko5", "title": "why are there so many fire doors that aren't allowed for regular use?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mkko5/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_fire_doors_that_arent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cca32h7", "cca35ci", "cca4d3n", "cca5fo3", "cca5j8a", "cca8108", "cca8svl"], "score": [9, 24, 114, 2, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Because they often have alarms hooked to them or exit into an area which may not be safe for the general public to use as an access area, but is far safer than running through a fire.", "Fire exits are necessary in stores to save you from fires, but they're undesirable to the store which wishes to reduce theft.  Each door that's used for general entrance and exit requires personnel, cameras, and theft prevention devices.", "Limiting access to emergency stairwells should ensure that they are in the proper condition to be used in an emergency.\n\nThere is often a concern in places like a university or a hospital that people will congregate in stairwells. Either to do something they are not supposed to do, or for whatever reason people seem to love stairs. Seldom used stairwells can become a prime place for storing old furniture or other equipment that makes evacuation hazardous when there is a real emergency. \n\nAdditionally, many emergency fire doors lead to parts of a building that are not designed for regular access. (I am looking at a fire door that leads to a creepy underground tunnel which terminates in an alley two blocks from the building. I would not want random people walking through that door thinking they are going directly out to the street and then getting lost in the emergency egress tunnel.)\n\nUnderlying your question is another question, why do buildings need so many otherwise useless fire exits? \n\nLarge institutional fires are horrific, and the death toll often results from lack of access to means of egress. If you have a fire in your building, you want as few wrongful death lawsuits as possible, the easiest way to save people (other than not having any fires, which is attempted though less obvious then fire doors), is having lots of visible means of safe exit. \n\nLastly, the more I see a fire exit that I can't use, the more I think about it and hopefully in a fire I would rush towards that fire door that I never use but always think about rather then the overflowing regular exit.\n\n\n", "Going completely on UK Building Regulations there has to be a minimum travel distance to a fire exit from any given point in a building regardless of use. Hence there might be doors in places not deemed essential other than for Fire Safety compliance.\n\nOther reasons may apply, but this will play a big part.\n\nSources: [Part B: Fire Safety] (_URL_0_) and I'm a qualified Architectural Technologist", "The people who designed the building didnt intend for this to be a main walkway.  \nIt either puts you into the building somewhere too far from reception, main lobby, or in an area that wont make sense to the flow of movement through the building.\nAlso, the pathways/halls on the other side of fire doors aren't maintained as well as main halls.  (whether it be cleanliness, peeling paint, or no security)\nAnd lastly, some fire doors lead to a fire escape that wouldn't be intended for daily use. (metal fire escape)", "I don't think anyone has mentioned it, but in many apartment/office buildings the sign \"Fire Door - Keep Shut\" doesn't mean you can't use that you shouldn't open the door, it just means that you need to make sure it closes behind you.\n\nFire doors are powerful tools in minimizing the rapid spread of fire in high occupancy buildings. ", "This has nothing to do with aesthetics or ease-of-general-use or anything else as some have tried to explain. (although /u/yudayajin was close).\n\nEven though it is true that most fire exits lead to undesirable locations, that is not the reason you can't use them. And even though it might increase theft if they were used, that is also not the reason.\n\nThe main reason (and /u/yudayajin touched on this) is this: those emergency exit paths must (MUST!) remain clear. If they become blocked for any reason, that's a massive hazard that could potentially cause death. As was pointed out, unused spaces like these can become easy storage (but that would break the fire code and the store manager would be busted, so it's less about that). What is more likely is that if a fire exit became a regular door, people would obviously use it more regularly. The building manager needs to guarantee that the exit path is clear at all times. Not just from old storage boxes, but from people!\n\nIf you have random people walking in and out of an entrance that 100's of scared people are about to go running through, that a recipe for disaster. Those paths must remain clear.\n\nSource: Managed a construction project and got this yelled into me on a daily basis."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/buildingregulations/approveddocuments/partb/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1m61ww", "title": "why do iphone models increase in price by $100 from 16gb to 32gb when that same additional storage only costs $10 in flash drive form?", "selftext": "flash storage is relatively inexpensive nowadays.  the only difference between the different 5S options are the amount of storage.  with subsidy, 16GB costs $199 while 32GB costs $299.  why does it presumably cost Apple $100 to increase the amount of storage from 16 to 32GB when that same storage is so inexpensive elsewhere?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m61ww/eli5_why_do_iphone_models_increase_in_price_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc63m5k", "cc63mos", "cc63mus", "cc63ntm", "cc63sxv", "cc63y8u", "cc640li", "cc642y0", "cc647l2", "cc67c2k", "cc686ro", "cc6bsgf", "cc6cdrw", "cc6ciyq", "cc6ee4a", "cc6eox7", "cc6h1de"], "score": [5, 17, 394, 4, 41, 107, 19, 29, 5, 13, 13, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["It is a marketing ploy. I agree, it is utterly ridiculous. ", "Its all for the Moneys", "Because it's not possible for the users to raise the space themselves and because no other company sells iPhones, they are able to ask whatever they want. So they do.", "The same reason why the iPhone 5C is still ridiculously expensive. ", "Well you could always get a micro SD card.\n\nOh wait.", "Because people will buy it. Only because most people don't know this.\n\nSent from my iPhone ", "I was hoping that the answer was more complex -- ie, that accommodating the extra storage required a different manufacturing process.  I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the consensus seems to be that reason is profit-oriented, a very easy way to increase margins.  my iPhone 4 just died so I am in the market for a new phone.  the 5S is intriguing but I am going to do my research.", "The actual cost of the extra storage is irrelevant to the pricing. Pricing is a complicated subject with many different economical and psychological aspects.\n\nPeople buy an iPhone because they think it's the absolute best phone out there (I'm not saying this is true, but it is the perception of many Apple/Iphone users). So they are willing to pay more an iPhone, more than they would pay for a technically identical phone made by any other company. This is known as \"paying for the brand\", and Apple uses it enthusiastically. \n\nHowever, not every iPhone user wants or needs an absolute top-of-the-line phone. They want the pretty design, but the specs are less important. So Apple gives them the option buy a slightly less powerful iPhone with the same design for a lower price. \n\nOther people just always want to have the best of the best. These are the gadget freaks. They will never buy the 16GB version, for the simple reason there exists a 32GB version. These are the people are willing to pay top dollar for their phones as long as they get the best available. So Apple charges them a lot more than the actual extra cost of the extra storage.\n\nThe TL;DR is, somewhat tautological, that top-tier iPhones are much more expensive then second-tier iPhones, because people who buy top-tier iPhones are willing to pay that much more money. \n\nHere's a [blog post by Joel Spolsky](_URL_0_) explaining some of the considerations that go into pricing a product. \nIt's about software, mostly, but it applies to nearly anything.  The software example just goes to show that actual manufacturing cost is all but irrelevant.\n\n ", "Without the increase, nobody would buy the 16GB Version. Why pay $199 for 16GB, when you could have 32GB for $209?\nAnd without the 16GB version, everybody would ask for the 16 GB. ", "They charge what the market will bear, not their cost price. Business 101.", "[Price discrimination.](_URL_0_)\n\nYou are right that the actual cost of adding the storage is low. \n\nHowever, that value of an addition 16gb storage is perceived different to different people.\n\nFor example, someone who just wants a simplistic phone to call/message and surf the net would not see much value in the 16gb. However, someone who is an Apple fan that insists on getting the best apple product may see the best version as absolutely necessary. \n\nCompanies will try to segment (separate) the customers into people with different needs and serve them according to their needs, and profit from the value differential they have.\n\nOne way Apple benefit from this scenario is to offer iPhones with different capacity to the market. This way, Apple will profit more from people who is willing to pay that much more for the extra capacity, yet also getting sales from people who just want a simpler iPhone.", "when i was your age 100 USD for 16000 megabyte of tiny storage was a mad mans dream.", "It's a really great way to maximize profit. People are going to jump for that higher storage, and if it doesn't cost that much for YOU (the company), it's pure profit.\n\nFast food does it all the time with super sizing. It costs the company BASICALLY NOTHING to give you that bigger meal, but you're like  \"f*ck it I want my money's worth\" and buy the bigger size. Guaranteed profit.", "Get a wireless hard drive that you can access through wifi.  Its way more inexpensive than buying 16 more gigs of storage for $100.", "Because pricing doesn't work like that. The cost of an item only determines how likely you will have competition and whether you are going to lose money on the sale.\n\nIf they sell iPhone 5S for $199, X people will by it, if they sell it for $299 Y people will buy it, where Y  <  X. By only offering the $299 option they maximize their return per unit, since as you said the cost difference is minimal. However they are losing out of Y-X sales. By making an artificial difference between the two, they get X sales, with some Z  <  Y of the higher price (people who don't think the memory is worth it don't pay extra).", "Because gullible idiots pay whatever they're told to pay.", "Just think about it. Nobody would ever buy a device with half of storage if difference in the price would be only $10."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qs2sw", "title": "why do infants lose their minds when they're tired instead of just falling asleep?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qs2sw/eli5_why_do_infants_lose_their_minds_when_theyre/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwhuiio", "cwhvw36", "cwhw2gx", "cwhw45y", "cwhwzvn"], "score": [2, 2, 15, 6, 7], "text": ["Would you be kind of passed and uncomfortable if you were super tired,  but instead of being able to go lay down and nap you were belted to an uncomfortable upright chair? ", "They find it uncomfortable and annoying. Do anything to a child under 6 that's annoying or uncomfortable and they will most likely throw a fit. They aren't used to it like adults are. We are a bit more logical than toddlers, so we know that crying and throwing a tantrum won't work. But let me ask you this. Have you ever felt like crying due to you being so tired? I know I have. They just can't manage it as well.", "Think how frustrated you feel when it's the middle of the night and you're nervous and can't get back to sleep.  You're kind of tired, but you can't shut off the anxious thoughts.\n\nFocusing on going to sleep is a skill that has to be learned.  You can *make* any baby go to sleep, but the trick is to have them \"choose\" to do it.  If they aren't taught the skill of going to sleep, they won't know how to do it.", "Could you imagine dreaming for the first time? I mean like crazy dreams because you're actually experiencing the real world.  Everything blows your mind man!! Sounds scary to me... ", "They actually don't know HOW to go to sleep. When an adult is tired, they understand that they can lie down, close their eyes and likely drift into sleep. A baby in utero sleeps through constant motion and sound, which is why they may fall asleep easier in a car seat. So, if they don't have the right conditions for sleep they are just going to get increasingly stressed until they finally just crash. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2pen6e", "title": "why every car i've driven only has the defrost option set to \"defrost the windshield\" or \"defrost the windshield and blow on feet.\"", "selftext": "I get up really early for work so I was super cold the other day...anyways, I noticed you can't really warm your hands and defrost the window at the same time. You have two options, you can just defrost the windshield or defrost the windshield and blow air on your feet.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pen6e/eli5why_every_car_ive_driven_only_has_the_defrost/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmvyu91", "cmvyy7s", "cmvyzaz", "cmw7gnf", "cmw8422", "cmw8dwc", "cmwaru6", "cmwb994", "cmwf2hi"], "score": [3, 28, 53, 4, 44, 3, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["Defrost the window so you can see, warm your feet that have possibly just been trudging through snow and efficiently heat the interior of the vehicle because heat rises in one simple setting. ", "I have wondered this 100 times every winter since I was 16. Self driving cars, auto-park, GPS, Bluetooth, and rear view camera? Or course, this is the 21st century. Blow air on the windshield and vents at the same time? What do you think this is The Jetsons?", "Heating the window is, of course, a safety feature.\n\nAs for the \"warm feet\", that's just blowing it at the bottom because warm air will rise, so it makes the most sense to send it out at your feet.\n\nYou might look for an aftermarket accessory called \"gloves\".", "I have wondered this for my entire driving life. I live in Canada and it gets cold. I also wear insulated boots and heavy socks. I do not wear some kind of insulated boot for my hands with gloves underneath.\n\nI would love defrost and hand warmers.\n\nI would also love a defroster like the one on my back window, those lines, right by my wipers. Those defrost much faster than the air and it would make sure my wipers don't get fucked up.\n\nThe. End.", "The main reason is it allows the car makes to keep the air conditioning ducting simple. \n\nFor example, [this is the ventilation diagram for a Subaru](_URL_0_) which shows that when the windscreen defogger option is selected, the two outer ducts at the top are actually still functioning while the top-middle ducts are off.\n\nThis is because there is a mechanism behind the centre-top ducts that directs air toward the windscreen.\n\nAlso, the more vents that are open at one time, the less efficient the air conditioner becomes. Think of it like blowing through a straw and then blowing through a cardboard tube.\n", "As you move the knob which selects the different air vents / modes, there is a paddle in the heater system which moves to direct air from the car's heater fan to different tubes behind the dash. These tubes lead to their respective air vents in the car. The more air vent combinations, the more complicated this paddle system would have to be. I'd guess thats the reason.\n\nI'd be interested to know the car with the widest range of blower configurations. ", "my vw lets me set it in between windshield and front vents or at my feet\n_URL_0_", "I want a blow on the windshield and blow on my hands option", "I drive a Mitsubishi Lancer, and the defrost option automatically turns on the upper heat fans. The feet warmer is a secondary option. I thought that was standard on cars for the longest time. There's even an in-between option that does both."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/5rdVWN9.jpg"], [], ["http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ou2rbuI9lEU/maxresdefault.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1xqd5e", "title": "why can i fall asleep in noisy environments (school lectures, public transport, cinemas, etc) but an even lesser amount of noise can disturb my sleep when i'm in bed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xqd5e/eli5_why_can_i_fall_asleep_in_noisy_environments/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfdopfi", "cfdrddl", "cfdumc0", "cfdv5ti", "cfdvuzo", "cfdvv53", "cfdw7dy", "cfdwarb", "cfdwkul", "cfdx0h1", "cfdxcgk", "cfdxd6j", "cfdxv32", "cfdz4fc", "cfdz4vi", "cfdz7p9", "cfe0tkg", "cfe0w0g", "cfe1233", "cfe25a3", "cfe2fmm", "cfe2iux", "cfe36cm", "cfe4fvq", "cfe5lfs", "cfe6zu4", "cfe7zi5", "cfea1uf", "cfea46k"], "score": [4, 64, 2, 6, 17, 2, 2, 5, 2, 45, 14, 2, 2, 3, 2, 9, 2, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 7, 2, 4, 4], "text": ["Not all sleep is created equal. The napping you're doing in public is not the deep, restorative sleep you're trying for in bed. If you're sufficiently tired and/or bored, most people can nod off for a few minutes almost anywhere. But settling down and attaining the much deeper sleep we get at night doesn't happen there as a rule.\n\nThis is why you can sleep for most of a cross-country flight and still be exhausted afterwards. ", "Much of our perception is focused on revealing differences.  Thus it is not the level of the noise but the uniformity of it.  Say for example you fixed tacos for dinner.  You notice the yummy smell of food as its cooking, you enjoy the aroma as you take your first bit.  Then after dinner you clean up, watch a tv show and relax.  Before you head upstairs to go to bed you take the trash out.  You notice the air smells brisk and clean.  You walk back in and the smell of mexican food nearly knocks you over.  You didn't notice this before you took the trash out because it became the new normal.  You mind adjusted to the mexican food smell and it became the new baseline odor.\n\n\nSounds even vision are the same way.  Right now your brain is rendering invisible tiny blood vessels in your eye because they don't move.  You mind erases them assuming you don't care about them, allowing you to focus your attention on the things that change.\n\nThink about how noise canceling head phones work.  They create a wave form opposite of the wave form entering your ear and play that back to cancel out the outside sound.  Essentially they are making sounds to fill in the differences of the outside sound.  You still have the same sound pressure level reaching your ear, but because its constant and causes no vibration you hear nothing (or less).", "Isn't it because to fall asleep in a lecture, public transport or cinema you have to be ultra sleepy...like 'I can't stay awake' sleepy but when you are in bed you are more like 'hey body I have to wake up in 6 hours so going to sleep now would be nice' kind of tired. \n\nYou stay asleep in noisy places because you are too tired to be woken by this kind of noise but when you are in bed you are not as sleepy and more easily awoken", "Your ears slowly adjust to their surroundings and ambient noise, and it's the sudden change in volume that cause you wake up.\n\nEx: I keep my car stereo at the same volume level. If I get into my car in the morning after quiet nights sleep, it can be a little overbearing and loud, however I get into my car after watching a loud movie/tv then it will seem quieter even though the volume level is the same.\n\nIf you heard a much louder noise while you were asleep in a noisy environment you would wake up just the same.", "Attempt fandeath or use white noise when you sleep. Trust me your sleep will be a million times better.", "I just want to know why loud noise *makes* me want to take a nap.  I go to a loud concert, and no matter how good it is, I want to drift off and snooze.  (I've actually done that in the movies, but to be fair, it was a calming movie and I was the only one there, and a bit worn out.)", "It could be that you actually know the noise is not being directed at you when in a public place but in your own house you are the only person that noise can be targetting. ", "Constant Average Vs Spike in decibels. ", "I wear foam ear plugs to bed. The master bedroom in my home faces the street and you'd be surprised how many car doors are slamming, engines are revving and car radios are blaring in the middle of the night. Only downside I suppose, would be if people outside were yelling ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!! and I didn't hear the warning. ;)", "I'm going to throw some confirmation bias into the mix here. You will never notice when a loud noise doesn't wake you up while sleeping. ", "In my experience it's more than just the sudden increase in noise. I can fall asleep on a noisy underground train, but I simply cannot sleep at all whatsoever if I can hear even the faintest sound of TV somewhere far away even if it's constant and monotonous.\n\nFor me I think it's psychological: if you're on the train, you accept that it's supposed to be noisy and you're okay with that. However, at home, someone watching TV might annoy you or make you angry which might prevent you from sleeping. It's not the sound itself, it's the meaning of the sound, as it may give you a sense of security or hostility.", "I really don't understand how someone could fall asleep during a lecture.  I find it impossible to tune out words and not think about them when I'm trying to sleep.", "Your brain naturally calibrates itself to its surroundings. Ever leave a concert and normal sounds seem muted? Ever hear of that room so quiet you can hear your own blood flowing?\n\nIn a very noisy environment, your brain becomes so desensitized to sound that basically *nothing* seems noisy. In a very quiet environment, even a simple cough can seem very jarring.", "the power of boredom ", "Because sensory adaptation, a phenomenon where your senses get used to a certain level of stimulus. If you increase the stimulus significantly, you will be able to detect it again. When you're trying to sleep at night in a quiet room, you are used to next to no auditory stimulus. A small noise will seem like a big disturbance because the difference between the initial stimulus and the noise stimulus is greater than that of the difference between the initial stimulus in the classroom and another secondary auditory stimulus on top of that.", "I just lectured on this.  Yay practical knowledge.  The process is called habituation, you adapt to the environment around you.  A specific response is guided by environmental cues (stimulus discrimination).  If there was a novel noise in the noisy environment, you might wake up to it.  This is because you haven't habituated to the noise.  \n\nIf you wanted a practice example type thing of this.  Sit in a room you're used to sitting in, then start focusing on all the little things you hear.  Every room we're in is much more noisy than you would expect.\n\nIf you want to learn more, look for a text on behavioral psychology, this falls in the classical conditioning domain.  I'd also be happy to send you my power point on the topic from my lecture.    ", "May I jump in and ask why (1) when I was 12 and lived over a bar I slept like a baby, (2) as an adult I prefer white noise like traffic, (3) hearing and anticipating noise from neighbors raises my heart rate ten fold, and (4) the thought of dead silence terrifies me. ", "I have this similar issue. I can fall asleep easily in my boyfriend's bed while he has his loud screaming music going but it's difficult for me to fall asleep in my own bed when it's quiet. Maybe his bed is comfier than mine. Maybe I just tune out his music, since I can't understand the lyrics/screaming and therefore can't sing along in my head. I can't fall asleep listening to my music, because I know the lyrics well and that keeps me awake.\n\nSo maybe the quietness of my bedroom at night just creeps me out. Any ideas?", "For me it's the *change* in noise, not really the volume. Our hearing doesn't turn off and our brain continues to process the incoming noises as we sleep, it just filters out noises it is ok (read safe) with. Anything unexpected and different then what it is expecting and the info is sent through to a different level of processing and you may wake up.\nI have done shift work for 30 years, can sleep anywhere with any noise level and this is how I figure it works for me at least.", "I've always found it easier to fall asleep when I'm not supposed to fall asleep.", "I always fell asleep when carpooling home from work.  One day, my carpool partner had something come up, so she arranged for a friend to give me a lift back.  How I fell asleep in a convertible with the top down, going 60 mph on a sunny day with my hair blowing all over, I'll never know.", "I haven't read all the comments here, but a large majority of them explain it as the difference in noise levels or your adaptation to the noises (how accustomed to them you are). I think it's slightly different than that, based upon my own experiences. \n\nI think that our subconscious mind hears, and is aware of, whatever noise occurs around us as we sleep, and it is our subconscious mind that 'chooses' which sounds it will allow to filter into our awareness. \n\nI'm a really heavy sleeper, REALLY heavy sleeper. I've had roommates come home from the bars with tons of people and have loud parties in my house that didn't wake me. But I had one roommate come home one night and quietly grab a quick snack from the kitchen that did wake me. The partying, regardless of the varying levels of noise entering a silent house never even stirred me, while I woke up in alarm at the gentle almost-silent opening of the kitchen cabinets. My subconscious heard the partying, but designated it as harmless, while it designated the sound of someone attempting to be quiet and sneaking around the kitchen as an intruder.\n\nI've slept through fire alarms, loud music and every alarm clock known to man, but have been woken by a cat meowing at me or a branch lightly tapping my window. I can and have slept in brightly-lit lecture halls, overcrowded subways, and pretty much any loud environment you can imagine. I never have a problem falling or staying asleep. But when something occurs that is not just out of the ordinary, but something seemingly in need of attention, regardless of how loud or quiet it is, my subconscious will wake me to attend to it. ", "as someone who was in the military....you quickly learn to fall asleep anywhere at any time....", "temporary threshold shift, when you are in a loud environment your ear canal gets narrower to protect your ear drum from loud noises. When you are laying in bed and it is quiet, your ear canal is completely open and thus you are way more sensitive to loud noises. ", "Run a box fan at night. No more being woken up by random noises.", "So, put simply, your brain chooses to ignore certain stimuli it deems \"unimportant\". I.e. certain sounds, smells. So, when you're in a loud area the brain mainly equates the noises to white noise and allows you to disregard them. In a quiet area any sudden noise cause the brain to react as it is different for them norm and could assist in alerting you to some information you may need to know about your surroundings.\n", "I never understood the concept of falling asleep in public (school lectures, public transport, cinemas, etc). I'm too paranoid people will steal my stuff, shove something up my ass, or general fuckery. I always keep a low level consciousness when napping publicly, and am always at least slightly aware of my surroundings. I just get that good old REM going. ", "Most people have mentioned habituation, which is fair enough as it goes, but fundamentally it is harder to sleep, and especially to hit REM sleep, in an objectively louder environment. You are probably comparing apples and oranges. When you are sleep deprived during the day, your body is dying to shut down, and it will do so whenever you are in a resting position and your attention becomes unfocused. On the other hand, if you decide 11pm is bedtime, but you just spent three hours eating, drinking, watching YouTube, or running, your body is physiologically unready to sleep and even very slight irritants (a street light, a car racing down the street) make it impossible to drift off.", "Ha. Bring deaf is awesome. Bet you guys are all jelly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "41gk4b", "title": "almost every radio station across north america can be live streamed via the web. why isn't this the case for tv channels?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41gk4b/eli5_almost_every_radio_station_across_north/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz29xps", "cz2bcq1", "cz2bdk2", "cz2cl3o", "cz2clv5", "cz2mgn0", "cz2p9wt"], "score": [3, 51, 2, 2, 26, 9, 3], "text": ["I don't know the legality of live TV streaming but here are a few thoughts on the technical aspects. The major networks broadcast the same content over the air at the same time all across the country so streaming is not really necessary if you have an antenna.  Also, the internet/network/server resources necessary to stream and rebroadcast video are considerably higher than streaming audio. Until recently many TV stations likely did not have the technology available to stream and rebroadcast live video.", "Radio uses less bandwidth.  Streaming cost are lower.\n\nMost tv stations get money from cable and satellite companies.  They dont want to jepordize that money by using live streaming.\n\nOTA companies have already partnered with hulu and other companies.  ", "TV rights are strongly tied down to geographical areas. Allowing people to stream TV would cause havoc with that system.", "I have a related question. Why isn't over the air television available to be streamed online? I can understand the networks not wanting to spend money on setting up the service but why did they shut down aereo and similar services which basically rebroadcast what I can already watch for free with an antenna.", "Over 850 radio stations are controlled by one company. They can make one program to distribute what they already have rights to.\n\nBeing so big means that they can have the rights and contracts written in their favor as no one wants to lose revenue by not being on such a huge number of markets.\n\n", "None of these answers are correct. A song copyright has several different parts: the right to display publicly, the right to reproduce, the right to distribute, the right to perform, and the right to make derivative works. Most musicians handle the performance aspect of their work by enlisting a Performance Rights Organization (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). These organization handle the payment of PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES, which come from the licenses that businesses and radio stations need to play music.  \n  \nRestaurant of a certain size playing music? You need to a blanket license. Radio station? You need a license. Concert venue? You need a license. A blanket license allows a venue or business to play all of the songs in BMI or ASCAP's catalogs \u2013the rate dependent on venue size, audience, etc.  \n  \nNow what makes this interesting is that terrestrial radio is unique from the internet in that terrestrial radio pays no performance royalties for the MASTER RECORDING of songs on the radio. When you listen to a song, the song is two copyrights: the COMPOSITION COPYRIGHT (the actual composition of the song, the melody, the lyrics) and the MASTER COPYRIGHT (the copyright for the actual recording itself. Often owned by the label). \n  \nImagine that Kesha has a song on the radio with millions of plays, but she didn't write it. She will receive NO performance royalties for her song on the radio. Instead, the songwriters will receive all the terrestrial performance royalties on the radio. This is due to master recordings not actually having a copyright until around 1972.  \n  \nThe digital space changed this loophole because digital radio is not really \"radio\" in the legal definition of the word. However, for non interactive radio streams (e.g. a online broadcast of the terrestrial broadcast), these streams can still stream songs with a performance license \u2013they just need to pay performance license fees for the master recordings as well.  \n  \nTelevision is not nearly as cut and dry as music is administering broadcasting rights. First of all, TV shows have tons of different copyrights going on. They have music. They have logos. They have a whole bunch of stuff. These differences make licensing television deals way different.  \n  \nIgnore typos it's late.\n  \ntl;dr performance rights for music are outsourced to performance rights organizations which facilitate playing music online/on the radio. TV has way more complicated broadcasting licenses.", "This has nothing to do with infrastructure as some suggest and has everything to do with rights. Rights for streaming TV stations are horribly complicated. Local stations are rebroadcasting video some of which they have broadcast rights to, some of which they license from the national network. Moreover they may have very specific rights in some cases and the people they get that license from may not have the right to sub license for Internet streaming. Worse sometimes rights have been broken down by device type (computer, mobile, etc.)\n\nEveryone wants to make this happen but consolidating all the rights take time and work and getting a lot of selfish people to agree. \n\nApple recently tried to consolidate some rights and provide a service but were unable to get everyone to agree to something everyone was happy with. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52gkzv", "title": "In conflicts like The War Of The Roses, Thirty Years War, and Hundred Years War to name a few. Did the noblemen of that time ever express regret, sympathy or disgust that their conflicts were responsible for so many innocent peasants or civilian caught in the middle of it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/52gkzv/in_conflicts_like_the_war_of_the_roses_thirty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7kqj2s", "d7ks0k6"], "score": [7, 57], "text": ["As a follow up question:\nHow often or common was the justification of the human cost of these conflicts for the leaders involved the \"injustices\" suffered at the hands of the other side? How often or common was it said that the actions of one side were only necessary to defend against the other?", "Well... define \"innocent.\"\n\nI can only really speak with any degree of expertise on the Hundred Years War, so I'll confine my answer to that scope. But I think it's important to acknowledge that military violence against civilians was definitely a topic being discussed and debated at that time, most notably from a clerical perspective. I'll make several references here to Honore Bonet's *The Tree of Battles* (1381 or thereabouts), as it's a book that directly addresses this topic and was written by a cleric for a noble audience.\n\nBut essentially, principals of military conflict in the Hundred Years War were such that attacking illegitimate targets of violence was generally condemned. What constituted a legitimate target was, however, the subject of some debate. The \"commonplace\" military thought process was more or less as follows: By paying taxes (in terms of food or coin or what have you) to the opposing political structure, the peasants were therefore directly supporting the ability of the enemy to directly wage war, and therefore inflicting violence against them (and, more relevantly, taking their stuff) was justified. This was, of course, a rather pragmatic position (it's a lot easier to feed an army when you can forage off the land), as well as one with underlying significance as a challenge to the feudal order of the enemy (if lords can't defend their peasants, then they're failing to adhere to a principal responsibility in the late medieval social contract).\n\nOf course, it should be no surprise that Honore Bonet and other clerics and writers (such as Christine de Pizan in her 1415 *Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry*, which draws heavily from Bonet) did not approve of these justifications. One of the most fascinating parts of *The Tree of Battles* is how Bonet lays out a variety of different situations where violence against apparent noncombatants might or might not be allowed. Can soldiers take an old man long past fighting years captive? (No, unless he's an important advisor for the enemy). Can violence be inflicted upon priests? (No, so long as they're living up to their obligations and not acting as combatants themselves, *and they're allowed to defend themselves against unjust violence without counting as combatants or violating their responsibilities as priests). And so on, and so forth.\n\nThe question that this begs is, of course, if Bonet's recommendations and others like them were ever actually followed. Well... that might be less likely. Generally speaking, military necessity was decidedly on the side of the looting and the pillaging, provided all the legal preconditions lined up.\n\nAnd that's a very important \"provided\". I don't want to get too much into Just War Theory in this response, but remember when I mentioned earlier that the fact that civilians and peasants were actively paying tax to an opposing governmental structure was a critical element of the justification? Well, for that, you require a legitimate opposition, which means you need a just cause of war against the crown. And you can't conduct a legitimate private war against the king just on your lonesome, you essentially need to be working for another king who has a legitimate cause of war. There are accounts of the English looting and burning through the French countryside one day, only to start paying fair price for goods seized the very next day, after news came that a truce had been signed. And legitimate war was a legally enforced concept - in his *The Laws of War in the Middle Ages*, Maurice Keen describes accounts of a trial of a notorious mercenary. He had served the English for a time, lording over a bit of seized territory in France and extracting \"taxation\" from the local countryside, but when a truce was signed he maintained the same behavior. A halfhearted defense that he had changed his allegiance and now supported the King of Navarre in *his* war against the French crown was submitted in court, tried, and found lacking, and the mercenary was put to death.\n\nSo, to answer your original question, the best I can say is this:\n\nSome noblemen probably did express regret, sympathy, or disgust at the demise of noncombatants during the Hundred Years War. They were human, after all. But fundamentally, in a war between princes, those noncombatants about which you ask were considered legitimate targets for physical violence - \"caught in the middle\" wouldn't be an accurate descriptor for their plight. The accounts that survive bemoaning the injustices inflicted upon them were not noble in origin, though they were intended for a noble audience and seem to have been read and enjoyed by nobles. And cases of violence being committed against targets that were universally considered to be illegitimate targets - peacefully serving prisoners, for example, at no risk of escape - there would have been significant social condemnation.\n\n**Primary Sources:**\n\nBonet, Honore. *The Tree of Battles*. Translated by G. W. Coopland. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1949.\n\nFroissart, John. *The Chronicles of England, France, and Spain*. Translated by Thomas Jones. London: William Smith, 1839.\n\nde Pizan, Christine. *The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry*. Translated by Sumner Willard. University Park: University of Pennsylvania, 1999.\n\nde Venette, Jean. *The Chronicle of Jean de Venette.* Translated by Jean Birdsall. Edited by Richard A. Newhall. New York: Columbia University, 1953.\n\n**Secondary Sources:**\n\nAllmand, C. T. *The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450*. Cambridge University, 1988.\n\nContamine, Philippe. *War in the Middle Ages*. Translated by Michael Jones. New York: Basil, 1984.\n\nKeen, M. H. *Chivalry*. New Haven: University of Yale, 1984.\n\nKeen, M. H. *The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages*. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1965.\n\nSumption, Jonathan. *The Hundred Years War*. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1991.\n\nSynan, Edward A. \"St. Thomas Aquinas and the profession of arms.\" *Mediaeval Studies* 50 (1988): 404-437.\n\nReichberg, Gregory M. \"Thomas Aquinas on Military Prudence.\" *Journal of Military Ethics* 9 (2010): 262-275.\n\nWright, Nicholas. *Knights and Peasants: the Hundred Years War in the French Countryside*. Suffolk: Woodbridge, 1998."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5uymk0", "title": "what happens to the information when you \"delete\" a file? (ex. empty your computer's trash, delete a picture)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uymk0/eli5_what_happens_to_the_information_when_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddxu6rw", "ddxu9nw", "ddxuaf6", "ddxujyq", "ddy5e6v"], "score": [2, 9, 6, 17, 11], "text": ["When you delete a file it moves it to the trash directory and removes it from your normal file directory. When you empty you trash bin it tells the OS that the portion of the hard drive that housed that file is available for reuse. It doesn't actually wipe the file from the harddrive. The file goes away after it has been rewritten over or you use special software to wipe the portion of the drive.", "Usually, nothing. It's still there, your computer just stops caring about it. You can think of the storage as like a long row of coins. If the coin is heads it represents a 0, if it's tails then it represents a 1. When you save a file, your computer flips the coins to represent the new data. When you delete a file, it just stops remembering that those coins represent that file. Later, when you save another file, it'll pick that same space to store it in and flip the coins around to represent part of the new file.", "Deleting a file just tells the OS to mark that memory space as unused, allowing it to be overwritten by new files. Until overwritten, the file itself is still there, just there's no direct way to access it. But with the right recovery software, one can possibly find the file again unless it has been overwritten.", "Trash is just a folder where files go when you delete them so that you have an option to restore them if you deleted accidentally, they work just as any other folder. When you empty the bin, the file is really deleted from the file system perspective. Typically the data that were stored in the file is not erased, only the reference to it (so called inode if you want to google) is deleted and the space the file occupied is marked \"empty\" so the next time a file is created, or an existing file gets larger, the data of the original file will be overwritten. It is done so because it's a fast way of deleting files, it takes practically the same time to delete a 100 GB file as it takes to delete 1 KB file and since many programs use files to communicate with each other, this prevents writing big amounts of data when deleting temporary files. If the data haven't been overwritten yet, i.e. shortly after deleting the file, it can usually be restored using some tools. There are even techniques to (at least partly) restore data that have been overwritten.\n\nThere are programs that try to delete the files in a way that is really permanent, i.e. they rewrite the data several times to ensure the data can't be restored. This is handy when you want to get rid of some sensitive data.", "When libraries had card catalogs, you would look up a subject and find the Dewey Decimal number for a book. Then you would find the shelf with that number and find the book.\n\nWhen you delete a file, it's like removing the index card from the card file. The book remains on the shelf.\n\nNow, suppose the library just removed the index cards for any books they wanted out of circulation, but when they got new books, they just dumped some of the \"out of circulation\" books off the shelf and replaced them with new books (and created index cards for them.) That's basically what happens on disk. The old data remains until new file data overwrites the old.\n\nI was the sole maintainer of the file system for a couple of operating system groups."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6xzsiq", "title": "how are humans able to hear tiny sounds they make inside their body?", "selftext": "For example when I'm gently tapping my teeth against eachother in my mouth (while closed) or playing around with my saliva I'm able to hear the sounds they make, whether they're sounds from my mouth or throat how come I'm able to hear them, shouldn't the soundwaves be isolated?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xzsiq/eli5_how_are_humans_able_to_hear_tiny_sounds_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmjmqda", "dmjmsku", "dmjqart", "dmjr307", "dmjrtyo", "dmjs89p", "dmjtrn1", "dmjxifk", "dmk2nmc", "dmk2x80", "dmk3qpa", "dmk43fj", "dmk4ggh", "dmkaoy7", "dmkd2rz", "dmkj15l", "dmkjei5", "dmkk17k"], "score": [63, 1256, 37, 6081, 120, 12, 2, 5, 3, 1135, 4, 9, 106, 15, 3, 2, 3, 6], "text": ["We have two routes for sound waves to reach the inner ear- through the external ear and through the skull. Anything in your mouth vibrates your bones and transfers sound waves up through your skull. Everything is in contact, so why would it be isolated?", "Sound travels remarkably well through solid or semi-solid materials. Since your mouth and throat are very close to your timpanic membrane (eardrum), the sound waves are picked up even if they are very, very quiet. \n\nAs a test - put your ear on one end of a long desk, and get someone to lightly tap the other end. You will be able to hear it. Sound travels fairly well through air, very well through liquids, and extremely well through solids.", "Bone does not isolate sound good at all, rather it's very good at transmitting sound, so the sound waves reach your ear through the skull and jaw bone (which connects to the skull just by the ear). \n\nFrom the rest of the body though, there are too many joints providing insolation so the vibrations can't really reach your ear, so you will not hear much more than what's going on in your head.", "It's actually quite the opposite. Your body is making a hell of a lot of noise (rest your head on someone's stomach some time), which your brain filters out. A disorder of the inner ear called superior canal dehiscence syndrome causes people to hear these sounds - including the sound of their eyeballs moving. \n\nNoises that aren't made internally (like tapping your teeth) pass through the solid matter in your head and manually stimulate the ossicles - which your brain can't filter out.", "You should read up on Bone anchored hearing aids(BAHA). They work buy putting sounds through the skull. It will answer this question and it is pretty interesting. My cousin has one and it came with a little attachment that allows him to put it on your skull and you can hear through it.", "if you tap ur teeth others can hear it too, just background noises cancel it all out , but its all very audible", "If you have ever watched jello ripple you have a good example of how it works. \n\nSound travels really well through simi-solid matter.", "Bone conduction of sound. If you put a tuning fork on your funnybone and your hand over your ear you should hear the tuning fork quite well.", "Sound is vibrations and those are so close to you ear drumw, that is why you hear thos so good\n", "The reason we find it strange to hear our voices recorded and played back is because we hear a combination  of our voice as soundwaves propagated through the air and vibration through our bones whereas everyone else just hears your voice as the sound propagated through air alone. Your ear converts vibrations into electrical signals sent to the brain it will translate information sent through vibrations in air or travelling though your bones.\n\nWe can hear very quiet sounds but often ambient noise will drown/mask it. There are rooms called anechoic chambers designed to be sound proof and have no reflective surfaces inside so no noise you make will return to you. They are not perfect but pretty close from what I have been told and have been told if you were to stand in one as you become used to the room you start to hear all sorts of things going on inside your body such as heart beat as they are the only noise being made. ", "The sound of your teeth tapping together vibrates through your skull, and is picked up by your eardrums much faster than sounds created externally.\n\nThis is why you can still hear your voice when plugging your ears.     ", "Sound is only heard when a compression wave in air enters your eardrum and oscillates it, causing the vibration of a chain of tiny bones to send the vibrations to your cochlea, further vibrating the fluid there, finally causing the movement of tiny hairs which our brain interprets as 'sound', with different hairs allowing the perception of different frequencies. One of the reasons young children can hear sounds adults cant, is that you lose some of these hairs over time as you get older and your hearing gets worse or damaged by listening to too loud music. \n\nAnything else which causes your eardrum to oscillate will be heard as 'sound'. Things which make compression waves that you can hear also tend to vibrate when you hit the solid mass that made the compression wave in the first place. When you click your teeth for example your creating a vibration which travels up to your eardrum , oscillating it and your brain interprets that as 'hearing' your teeth click, even though you quite rightly pointed out there was no sound wave. No, but there was a vibration, and you literally hear by making tiny bones vibrate, not by just sensing compression, or 'sound waves' but the vibration those 'sound waves' cause.\n\nDifferent mediums than air have different acoustic properties, water works very well for transmitting sounds, and over long distances, one of the reasons whales can talk to each other over kilometres. \n\nRhino's also stomp the ground to send mini shockwaves through the solid earth to be felt/heard miles away too. Air is actually a bad transmitter for sound, but we have evolved to hear in this environment, and all we need to hear is the rustling of some branches to indicate the potential for a predator, and of course understand sounds as language which builds on our social capabilities. ", "Sorry if this isn't allowed or something but, as a follow up question: can people who are deaf hear those sounds their body makes? Or do they 'hear' them differently?", "FYI: if you find it very difficult to hear people while you are chewing, you are a rare subset of the human population and most people can listen to others talking while they are eating just fine. It's genetic and originates from somewhere in Western Europe. ", "The opposite is the case! And it's the same reason why you think you sound different on any recordings.\n\nSound *waves* are *waves*, as the name would suggest, and they not only travel through air but also through any sort of material - like your body.\n\nSound that is being produced by or in your body might not go outside but still *would* travel from your teeth right into your eardrum through your bones.\n\nYour bones and eardrum vibrate and your brain processes it as sound.", "Vibrations. Like tapping a fish tank or rapping on a guitar, the sound is amplified through the solid matter to your ears.", "Sounds travel through solids and liquids (and we are about 80% water) really well. Because those sounds originate from objects physically attached to us (specifically our ears, which are also attached to us) , it's completely normal that we are *more* likely to hear them than those around us. ", "Have you always been like this, OP? There's a condition called [Patulous Eustachian Tube](_URL_0_) which is where the Eustachian tube that connects between your mouth/throats and ears remains open, when it is normally closed. \n\nWhen the tube remains open, you can hear all your internal sounds from nose/mouth/etc including blood pumping in your ears, as the noise travels up the tube. In most people the tube is closed normally, so they can't usually hear those noises.\n\nSource: had it for several months due, ENT diagnosed and said would stabilize and disappear over time. It eventually did, but was hella annoying. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patulous_Eustachian_tube"]]}
{"q_id": "bd90we", "title": "Are there any major differences between the last couple interglacial periods? (MIS 1, 5, 11)??", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bd90we/are_there_any_major_differences_between_the_last/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ekyc3hn"], "score": [2], "text": ["  \n\nWell, just looking at [this handy chart for marine isotope stages](_URL_1_), we can see that the last few interglacials arguably include to some extent some substages of MIS 7 (7a, 7c and 7e) and MIS 9e in addition to the ones mentioned in your title. This notation of letters for MIS substages has been in use for a while, but the chart shown is the most recent effort to standardise them all into a consistent scheme published in 2015,^(1) I\u2019ll be sticking with this particular arrangement as it is up to date and sorts out some previous discrepancies that were going on with MIS 9.\n\nOf these most recent interglacials associated with various substages of MIS 5, 7, 9 and 11 then, 7 sticks out as being more fragmented and not as significant as the others, which are all in line with the Mid-Brunhes shift to more extreme interglacials shortly before MIS 11 (The Brunhes Chron is the current period of normal polarity in magnetostratigraphy, extending back to MIS 19c at about 781 kya). \n\nWhether just MIS 7e is designated as the interglacial here or 7e, 7c and 7a rests upon how we define interglacials at all \u2013 a sea level definition encompasses all whilst orbital models based on the 100kya Milankovitch cycle allows for only 7e. I think it\u2019s a bit cavalier to start moulding reality to fit certain model expectancies so I prefer the former. More discussion on this and the various pros and cons of how we are to define interglacials at all can be found in the first few pages of a comprehensive review paper on the subject published in 2016.^(2) I\u2019m also inclined to include the 7a and 7c substages as they are centred around 200 kya which correlates with the so called Aveley Interglacial of Europe, taking its name from a small town in southern England in which important Neanderthal remains have been found from the time (along with both elephants and mammoths in the area \u2013 what a time to be alive!). In terms of North America, the correlation of MIS 7 to lithological strata is a bit more ropey, but I believe the top of an extensive paleosol unit (the Yarmouth-Sangamon Paleosol across the US Midwest) was formed at the same time, which would mean there really was a withdrawal of ice-sheets across both North American and European continents.\n\nOk, so having dealt with the slightly different interglacial of MIS 7, lets look more briefly at the others. Concerning the most recent interglacial it is specifically MIS 5e that is relevant, correlating with the Eemian Stage in America, known as the Ipswichian in the UK. The other MIS 5 substages are merely subsequent stadials/interstadials. MIS 5e is about 15,000 years long, MIS 9e is about 18,000 years long and MIS 11c about 22,000 years. So they are all of a similar length, though 11c is clearly the longest \u2013 it has also been called the warmest interglacial of the last half a million years, with sea level at least 6 m above present levels based on other evidence including plankton ecology, reef building trends and North Atlantic Deep Water production inferred from carbon isotope data.^(3) As far as the MIS oxygen isotope stratigraphy goes though, stages 1, 5e, 9e and 11c are all extremely similar in extent.\n\n(1) [Railsback, L. B., Gibbard, P. L., Head, M. J., Voarintsoa, N. R. G., and Toucanne, S. (2015), An optimized scheme of lettered marine isotope substages for the last 1.0 million years, and the climatostratigraphic nature of isotope stages and substages, Quat. Sci. Rev., 111, 94\u2013 106](_URL_3_)\n\n(2) [Past Interglacials Working Group of PAGES (2016), Interglacials of the Last 800,000 years, Rev. Geophys., 54, 162-219](_URL_2_)\n\n(3) [Howard, William R., \u2018A Warm Future in the Past\u2019, Nature 388, 418-419 (1997), Carbonate Marine System During Oxygen Isotope Stage 11, American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 27-30 May 1997](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nature.com/articles/41201", "http://railsback.org/Fundamentals/SFMGSubstages01.jpg", "https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2015RG000482", "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379115000360?via%3Dihub"]]}
{"q_id": "pvdxu", "title": "how did the first single-celled organisms on earth come about?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pvdxu/how_did_the_first_singlecelled_organisms_on_earth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3sjk35", "c3sjmgo", "c3sjoga", "c3sl8c0", "c3slhqw"], "score": [6, 58, 17, 2, 2], "text": ["I can lead you in the right direction if there are no other responses.\n\n[Abiogenesis](_URL_0_)\n\n\nOne theory is that there was a primordial soup of necessary components which in the right temperatures began combining to form larger components (amino acids, chemicals).  I really don't know much about it but there are several theories, the one of which I have heard most about I posted a link to above.", "University Biology student here. \n\nThe correct answer is: No one knows, and there is no real scientific evidence to help us understand why. \n\nNOW there are really good theories, as mentioned below, like abiogenesis. \nBUT it's not the like theory of evolution. (one of the most solidly 'proven' theories out there. ) There are literally mountains of evidence for evolution. The evidence for abiogenesis is, well, hypothetical at best in my humble opinion. \n\nI do believe it, but more than likely, all life on this planet was the result of the evolution of some type of [self replicating amino acid,](_URL_0_)after which evolving life would be a simple matter of time and good environmental conditions. ", "you might want to [/r/askscience](/r/askscience) this. Given by some of the answers, this topic might be a little too thick for ELI5.", "we just did this in my GCSE science class, so i'm no degree student! still, i'll give it my best shot.\nthe early atmosphere were gases like methane, ammoia, water vapour etc. one theory is that lightning was a starter source of energy and reacted these to make amino acids. amino acids make proteins, which are basically the building blocks of life, and from them organisms developed.", "Good question. I've been using eli5 to educate my daughter. hope someone gives a good answer (comment before reading thread)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3078ti", "title": "based on the financial success and cult-following of the original \"super troopers\", why are studios opting out of financing a sequel?", "selftext": "The original Super Troopers was filmed on a budget of $1.2M, grossed $18M in theaters and an est. $65M in DVD sales over subsequent years. (Also I'm certain TV broadcasts earned some money over that period as well). \n\nWith this data in mind, and the cult following of Super Troopers, how is a $2M asking budget not a safe investment for a Studio or independent movie financier??", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3078ti/eli5_based_on_the_financial_success_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cppt3uq", "cppt48r", "cppt7bh", "cpptnhk", "cppz5eo", "cpq35ru", "cpq6iep", "cpq8u8z", "cpq9gqh", "cpqacjg"], "score": [9, 72, 7, 19, 10, 11, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Why give a cut to a studio when you can get random internet fans to finance it for no cut?\n\nLook at the benefits you get through supporting it: you get merchandise. A t-shirt for $55? A poster for $100? \n\nI enjoyed the movie, but not that much. \n\n", "It's been a long time since it came out and sequels made a long time after the originals tend not to do all that well. (Sin City  &  300 are notable examples). Another crowd-funded movie, Veronica Mars, did quite poorly at the box office despite a lot of hype. While Super Troopers did quite well and has a cult-following, it never reached anything compared to a movie like Anchorman.\n\nAnother thing to consider is the cast. None of them are a huge draw that are essential to comedies. The likes of Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Kevin Hart or Steve Carrell will put bums on seats based on their names alone. Super Troopers has nobody like that.\n\nAll in all, there's a lot of risk to consider.", "From what I may understand they had massive difficulties getting people to support the first movie.  Despite its success, I think they felt the guys who ended up starring (and making it the most awesome movie as can be) weren't going to pull in money.  They wanted more known actors to be stars rather than the Broken Lizard Crew.  \n\nSo perhaps this time around they decided to circumvent that cluster fuck and have the movie funded by people who truly want it to happen.  IE: The people.\n\n", "Because they think it might turn into a Club Dread situation. And if you never saw Club Dread, well, you just kinda answered your own question. \n\nIt is...not a good movie. But Bill Paxton is great in it, might be worth it for him alone. ", "Something not mentioned yet is their track record. On top of the fact the original was so many years ago, they have made a lot of films since without a repeat of success. ", "I don't know, but I I'd love to see a Matrix sequel. One movie was not enough.", "The market has changed dramatically since.", "It was 14 years ago. And their recent movies have not done well. Plus they aren't as famous as Will Ferrell and Seth Rogen etc. who can carry a smaller budget film.", "There is no way this makes less than $20 million in theaters. Everyone I know can't wait for it. ", "I'm an independent film producer. I understand the studios not taking it on but I cant understand them not being able to get independent financing. I made my first film for $70k and it made $100k within 18 months. I had no problem selling that to investors to make the next one for quite a bit more. Turning any kind of profit is tough, and if you can do it on even a small level that's encouraging. SUPER TROOPERS 2 probably has over a 90% chance to make its money back. I don't know why they're not talking to a friend of a friend who makes millions on Wall Street or something. Because if I was investing I would think It would be highly likely that I would double my investment or better. \n\nI think it sadly comes down to this: They know they can get it crowd funded and giving away these little perks is a lot better than giving away 50% of the back end. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hq163", "title": "From 1840 to 1890, scholars seem to agree that the US had a long stretch of terrible presidents (excepting Lincoln and Polk). What are the prevailing theories that explain why the electorate was choosing bad presidents for roughly 50 years?", "selftext": "I'm also interested in whether or not the factors at play during that time have any analogous factors acting today.  \n\nI tried to think about why this may be: I thought that maybe since this time frame came on the heels of the Second Great Awakening, that there may have been some cultural influences.  Or perhaps that there might have been a lot of trying to appease diametrically opposing groups with candidates who were in the \"middle\" of the issues at the time (that contributed to the Civil War).  \n\nBut I'm more interested in what historians think about this.  For reference, Wikipedia has a table that collects various scholar rankings of presidents: \n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hq163/from_1840_to_1890_scholars_seem_to_agree_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dylskul", "dyn968z"], "score": [33, 7], "text": ["What standards are used to judge \"best\" presidents in a historical sense? How do historians disentangle their own political biases from these standards?", "Gosh where to begin!   This is a little disjointed as I\u2019m trying to fit a bunch of branches in one skinny trunk, but I\u2019m also wanting to challenge the terrible label\u2026 On the whole, these Presidents were middling, not terrible. \nI'm going to start with Richard C. White: \"Political parties mattered far more than presidents, but these parties were not particularly ideological. They tapped deeper loyalties that arose out of (identity politics of the 19th century). People became Democrats or Republicans because of who they were more than because of the principles they espoused.\" White in his Oxford series has a running theme of \"the sufficiency of the common vs insufficiency of the uncommon.\"   \nBut to answer the question, historians of the 19th century have a much different appraisal of the 19th Century presidents than an aggregate of scholars/political scientists do. It's why Grant is having a love affair, Arthur is getting some love, and it's why probably Andrew Johnson and Rutherford B Hayes will be reexamined (to perhaps say they were terrible!). \n Yet, while 19th century historians want to take a more critical look at the presidents and elevate the time and their Presidents, it does not mean that the rankings should be changed. These Presidents were middling. \nYet, let\u2019s take a look at why they get knocked with being terrible\nAs a collective: \n1. Corruption  &  Political Divisions: Every four years was a different tale of corruption, whether in the nominating process, in the Executive Office, in the nominating process, in the local exploits of the party of power\u2026 Yet, for most of the time, the Executive and Legislative branches were often split. It was hard to pass sweeping legislation. Meaning, so much of the \u201ccorruption\u201d was not as sexy as we think of today. It was political partisanship. The spoils system wasn\u2019t as nefarious and undemocratic as usually spoken of. It was the death of James Garfield that changed the spoil system. \n2. Take Buchanan and Johnson. They immediately look bad in comparison to Lincoln, and most importantly, they clearly were not up to the task of resolving the divisions. They did not have the moral arc to confront the change from slave labor to free labor. With Johnson, it\u2019s almost a reversal of a bold direction for the country. \n3. Aloofness: Many of the presidents were aloof, some rumored to be drunks. A president like Pierce was a drunk due to seeing his son die. Often times, in these rankings, they are comparing a Grant to a modern president\u2026 It\u2019s why with Brands and others you are seeing a Grant renaissance. \n4. Not giving enough \u201ccredit\u201d to certain issues of the 19th century: \n\ta. Indian Wars: The Civil War ends. War does not. But it seems many texts jump from Civil War to Spanish-American War to WWI and to WWII.   So in these rankings, they don\u2019t get the bonus points\u2026 \n\tb. Building of American infrastructure  &  A New American Way of Life \n\t\tWe forget tariffs, canals, railroads, mail routes, judicial circles, supply routes, emigration routes, confronting Chinese immigration, developing towns, and a list of other \u201cinternal improvements\u201d dominated the legislative cycle. \n\tc.  Reconstruction had many successes and possibilities, and yet, it was all but dismantled. But to some degree, it was done according to political engagement.  The results might be worth ranking low, but the political process was working according to the inputs. The common American wanted competency. (Disenfranchisement, illiteracy, political grafts, inequality, dangerous classes, etc\u2026 limited who would consistently have a voice). \n\td. Presidents were growing presidential power \n\te. Immigration  &  White Supremacy: It\u2019s always the toughest question, do you knock a historical actor for having an immoral view, even if at the time, it was accepted? \n\tf. Wage Labor Taking Over America and Urban America \n\tf. Overall, you are seeing a theme of these\u2026  The Gilded Age, like today, was a time of sweeping changes. The real detriment is that the overall health of the nation seemed to be suffering with regular panics, poor health, the entrenchment of Jim Crow, etc\u2026. \n5. Sources: Reformer and critics dominate the primary sources. Historians like sexier topics. So the time and presidents are forgettable. The sexier public figures were not politicians or never became President.\n6. Electoral Process  &  Citizenship: Huge turnout, great enthusiasm for voting. Politics were entertainment. You were born into a party. The press was political.  \nOverall though, these Presidents are clearly middling at best. The public wins the spotlight, and constantly, historians find themselves asking  wondering what if Lincoln lived, or what if a president had the courage of a Lincoln. For me and others, the Gilded Age is a great example of how the common produces wins, not a President creating a Great Society. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Scholar_survey_results"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "42j13d", "title": "why do football players have water boys squirt water into their mouths? why don't they drink from a water bottle on their own?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42j13d/eli5_why_do_football_players_have_water_boys/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czaq7oc", "czaqih3", "czawgv4"], "score": [6, 15, 7], "text": ["When there is a stoppage in play, it's only for a limited time. Having a waterboy run around to each player and give them some water is much more efficient than having each player run to the bench, find their bottle, take a drink, and put it back. Time is of the essence.", "Athletic trainer here - from my experience working with football players, they want the water squirted in order to keep the gloves dry. Getting the forces wet decreases the stickiness/grip.", "The waterboy knows that as soon as he hands water bottles to players the bottles will be dropped, left sitting somewhere, handed off, etc as soon as the player is called back into play. Only way the waterboy keeps track of his bottles and ensures they are full and ready during for timeouts is by not releasing them out of his grip. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1fx8zs", "title": "what is prism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fx8zs/what_is_prism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caep9jr", "caepnlf", "caeprnx", "caeq320", "caeqe85", "caer5tu", "caerqyp", "caess6l", "caeta6b", "caeuqwf", "caex7dt", "caf163w", "caf21wn", "caf5ot7", "caf7sy2"], "score": [1715, 83, 58, 7, 8, 36, 35, 27, 8, 2, 17, 4, 26, 2, 2], "text": ["***Real Simplified Version:*** PRISM is a tool used by the NSA that allows analysts to view data (\"foreign intelligence\") collected by legal methods. \n\n**Edit 5:** I apologize that this edit precedes the rest of the post, but much of the information from the original post has proven itself to be \"outdated\" (read: inaccurate) insofar as it incorrectly attributed power to PRISM, when it is at most a part of the whole. To be strictly correct, PRISM (\"Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management\") itself is simply the name of a tool used to access data gathered by the NSA by presumably legal means (in accordance with FISA / Protect America Act).\n\nI have now edited the post for accuracy. Be aware that as more information has come out, much of the related speculation has been disproved, at least so far as PRISM itself is concerned, and the articles upon which this post was originally based are themselves no longer the latest information on the subject. \n\n------------\n\nOk, for now I've finished editing. I've removed all the inaccurate information I could find, and replaced most of the original post with the most accurate information I could find, to the best of my knowledge. Please bring any inaccuracies you find to my attention.\n\n------------\n\nBelow is a slightly abridged version of the highlights from the following article: [CNET FAQ](_URL_3_)\n\nThis has replaced the previously posted information as it was not accurate.\n\n**What is PRISM?** \n\nPRISM stands for \"Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management,\" and is a \"data tool\" designed to collect and process \"foreign intelligence\" that passes through American servers. It has now been acknowledged by the Obama administration.\n\nIn the words of national security reporter Marc Ambinder, \"PRISM [is] a kick-ass GUI that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types provided to the NSA from Internet companies located inside the United States.\"\n\n**It only targets foreigners?**\n\nPRISM \"cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen (PDF), or any other U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States, according to a statement released by Director Clapper on June 8.\n\n**So how does this affect an American's data?**\n\nThe key word is intentional. The NSA can't intentionally target an Americans data. But analysts need only be at least 51 percent confident of a target's \"foreignness.\"\n\n**What is PRISM not?**\n\nIt is apparently not the name for an overarching secret surveillance program in affiliation with certain large tech companies, as was originally reported by The Washington Post. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has released a statement saying, \"PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program.\" Instead, the name PRISM appears to refer to the actual computer program used to collect and analyze data legally requested by the NSA and divulged by Internet companies. This matches reports from CNET and The New York Times.\n\nHowever, as the New York Times reported late Friday evening, it has come to light that the nine large tech companies first reported to be working with the NSA to divulge information have, in fact, made it easier for the government to access data from their servers.\n\n**Which companies are involved?**\n\nMicrosoft, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, Google, Apple, PalTalk, YouTube, and Skype. Dropbox is allegedly \"coming soon.\" However, 98 percent of PRISM production is based on just Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.\nAll nine of them have explicitly denied that the government has \"direct access\" to their servers. Reliable sources have confirmed to CNET that PRISM works on a request-by-request basis, rather than unfettered access, as was originally reported by the Washington Post. Here is a direct quote from our in-depth article on this issue:\n\n > Those reports are incorrect and appear to be based on a misreading of a leaked Powerpoint document, according to a former government official who is intimately familiar with this process of data acquisition and spoke today on condition of anonymity.\n\n\n**So someone has read my e-mail?**\n\nAside from the fact that Google's algorithms crawl your e-mail all the time to target ads at you, \"someone\" within the NSA/FBI/etc may have read your e-mails, *presumably with a proper warrant*.\n\n**Should I be outraged?**\n\nProbably! But maybe not. President Obama addressed PRISM on Friday and essentially said, \"Don't worry. You can trust us.\"\n\n**Is it even legal?**\n\nYes, under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 2008 and the Protect America Act of 2007. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement Thursday night saying that \"Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.\" FISA was renewed last year by Congress.\n\n\n**How does it work?**\n\nEssentially like this: The attorney general issues a secret order to a tech company to hand over access to its servers to the FBI. The FBI then hands that information over to the NSA.\n\nThis account matches what CNET has been told by our reliable source:\n\n > When the government delivers Section 702 orders, according to a former official, companies \"implement them just as though they would implement a wiretap -- there's no direct access to servers.\" The order has to be for account information or an intercept directed at a specific foreign person, and \"you can't say everyone in Pakistan who searched for 'X'... It still has to be particularized.\"\n\nAccording to CNET's source, both the contents of communications and metadata, such as information about who's talking to whom, can be requested.\n\n**What's the fallout?**\n\nWell, so far respected human rights watchdog Freedom House has downgraded America's freedom ranking. Last time their survey was released, the United States was the second most free country on Earth in terms of Internet freedoms. That position is about to change.\n\n**How can I avoid this?**\n\nYou can't.\n\n**What happens next?**\n\nA congressional hearing and an investigation into who leaked it. \"The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans,\" Clapper said in his statement.\n\nSo the answer is, nothing much.\n\n[Further Reading - DNI PRISM Fact Sheet](_URL_4_)\n\n[More - Parts of NSA's PRISM program declassified](_URL_1_)\n\n**Edit:** *Removed - Inaccurate* - Not quite right at this point\n\n\n**Edit 2:**  *Removed - Irrelevant*\n\n\n**Edit 3:** /u/spacedawg_ie Posted a relevant video of the [NSA Head - Gen. Alexander denying involvement directly to Congress about Domestic Surveillance](_URL_0_).\n\n[Link to discussion thread](_URL_2_)\n\n**Edit 4:** Thank you for the /r/bestof nomination. I'm not sure if my post is worthy, but to borrow from my other response: I'm glad you found it informative. I encourage everyone to be as informed as possible, and to inform those around them.", "Google and others have denied it so far, but the way they are denying it is very sketchy - claiming ignorance.", "Now someone graph the similarities and differences between PRISM and SHIELD.", "I honestly don't understand why so many people are acting like this is new.\n\nIsn't it quite obvious that the government has information of this data? I mean, they are the government.", "Not sure if OP already knew what PRISM is and wanted to make us aware, or sincerely doesn't know. Either way...", "Where does Reddit stand in this?\n\nEdit for clarification: When I say Reddit. I don't mean the users. I mean the owners and employees of Reddit. Put more simple \"What is Reddits' involvement with PRISM?\"", "It is the place where light waves go, when they commit a crime.\n\nI'll see myself out.", "We have always been at war with Eastasia.", "Sorry if this is a stupid question, but it's always bothered me when issues like data collection pops up. Would each company have its own proprietary ways to save data, that would make it incompatible with the data from other companies? How does the government deal with this?", "How did we find out about PRISM if it's so secret? ", "If you were actually five and i wanted to be completely honest, i'd tell you that there are really pretty colors coming out of your house that only the government can see with their special eyes. the red ones are phone calls and the green ones are google searches etc. The governemnt cant really see what these things are but they know what colors they are and they can watch them go to other places. And thats why you should google how to make a bomb at least 5 times a day.", "The media outlets do a terrible job of explaining it.", "I'm going to explain this as I would to a 5 year old.\n\nImagine you and Nick want to have a conversation with just each other. The two of you decide to write letters to each other. But, Daddy's creepy brother, Steve, opens each letter and writes down what you guys are saying to each other. \n\nHe also does this for every other kid in the whole world, he says he does this to protect all of you from each other, but really he does it so that he knows what you are saying and so that he can put you in time out if you say something he doesn't like.", "So my triple play bundle from my cable company. Since I have VOIP, all my calls could be recorded too?", "So we should start doing pointless things online and going to NASCAR websites if we like horses, or going to money sites if we like planting flowers just to skew their data?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://youtu.be/QNsePZj_Yks?t=12m24s", "http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/08/dni-declassifies-prism-data-collection-nsa-secret-program-obama/2403999/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1fuwa6/nsa_head_gen_alexander_lies_directly_to_congress/", "http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57588253-83/what-is-the-nsas-prism-program-faq/", "http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collection%20of%20Intelligence%20Pursuant%20to%20Section%20702.pdf"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g9pgh", "title": "Are diet soft drinks containing Phenylalanine safe?", "selftext": "I love to drink Pepsi Max, on the side of the bottle it says it contains Phenylalanine.\n\n\nNow, I have tried doing a bit of googling around to find out more information about it and I am stumped by the amount of conflicting information and mis-information.\n\n\nSome sources say that it is fine for consumption and I am aware its FDA approved as a food additive.  But other websites have all sorts of claims such as it causes cancer...\n\nAnyone out there have a definitive answer on the safety of Phenylalanine for human consumption; with facts from reputable sources to back it up? \n\nOr at least point me in the right direction?\n\n\nThere just seems to me to be too many blind accusations towards it and I get this, almost conspiracy like feel when I search for information.\n\nCheers!\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g9pgh/are_diet_soft_drinks_containing_phenylalanine_safe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1lycbc", "c1lyd3g", "c1lyhc3", "c1lykh6", "c1lzif1", "c1lzyqz"], "score": [66, 8, 2, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Phenylalanine is one of the twenty amino acids that every living thing on this planet uses in proteins.  It's an essential amino acid, which means your body can't synthesize it - you have to get it from dietary sources.  So you *need* to consume some phenylalanine.  But it's in nearly every food you eat - meat, fish, nuts, cheeses, Pepsi Max, so on and so forth.\n\nNow, phenylalanine can be dangerous, *if* you lack a certain enzyme that converts it to a compound called tyrosine.  If you lack this enzyme, then you have a disease called phenylketonuria.  Judging by the fact that you don't know what phenylalanine really is and you're not *severely mentally retarded*, you don't have phenylketonuria.  Congratulations!  (Take a look on a can of soda, and you will see a warning to phenylketonurics that it contains phenylalanine.)\n\nIn all seriousness, you need to eat some phenylalanine, but like everything else in life, it's probably best in moderation.  So drinking your Pepsi Max is fine, but the health risks from everything *else* in your Pepsi Max almost certainly outweigh the health risks from the phenylalanine in Pepsi Max.\n\nEdit: I'm sorry for not being able to provide links to fun studies that show that it's non-toxic or whatever; I don't mean to be snarky, but it's not like there's much money to test the toxicity of essential amino acids.  All the stuff I wrote is basic biology.", "Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid which means that you must get it from your food or you will start to have issues.  You really only need to worry about it if you have a genetic disease like phenylketonuria.", "I'm more concerned about the sweeteners myself.", "not only is phenylalanine safe for consumption by normal people, it is *required*.", "Your headline is a little bit misleading, and as a result, I don't think anyone has actually addressed your concerns.\n\nWhile your interest was probably piqued by the can warning you that it contains phenylalanine, you don't have to directly worry about that. As long as you don't have PKU, a metabolic genetic disorder, you don't have to worry about consuming phenylalanine and impairing cognitive function--like drvitek said.\n\nWhat you're worried about is the artificial sweetener aspartame which is made using phenylalanine. It's generally recognized as safe, and you really shouldn't be uneasy about ingesting it if your only concern is getting cancer or another disease. That being said, I wouldn't recommend using it or any other artificial sweetener. Your gut epithelium actually contains taste buds, and these taste buds help regulate the secretion of insulin. Artificial sweeteners bind to the sweetness receptor in the gut--just like they do to your tongue--and may signal the body to release insulin, impeding weight loss.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nJust stick with water, man.", "Aspartame is made up of aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methyl ester.\n\nAnything that you consume that contains aspartame will have phenylalanine in it.\n\nI personally don't consume anything with aspartame in it. [Here's a good video that explains why](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820175426.htm"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F66P277Eyac"]]}
{"q_id": "q8kao", "title": "How stable is our solar system?", "selftext": "Let's say that a large asteroid were to strike a planet, within our solar system, with enough force to cause a small change in its orbit around the Sun. Could this small change, amplify over time to create a chaotic behavior that would dramatically destabilize the entire solar system?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q8kao/how_stable_is_our_solar_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3vm6p6", "c3vme5j", "c3vmpux"], "score": [5, 4, 5], "text": ["It's possible for [some configurations of bodies to exhibit chaotic behavior](_URL_0_), like what you say: one small perturbation leading to dramatic changes. I don't know how to calculate the stability of the Solar system. Hand-wave: It *is* constantly bombarded by comets and such and we haven't seen any crazy changes in orbits, so that tells you it has some degree of stability.", "If there would be an impact on a single planet, it could cause that planet to fall into the sun or get out of the solar system (eventually).\n\nBut it would have little influence on the other planets, because the center of gravity of the solar system (barycenter) is very close to the center of the sun. So the other planets would still orbit on more or less the same orbit they did before.", "Wikipedia has an article on this topic: _URL_0_\n\nEdit: Fixed link"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_of_the_Solar_System"]]}
{"q_id": "wcjco", "title": "Why is the northern hemisphere jet stream so far south this year?", "selftext": "I'm in England and it won't stop bloody raining. I've heard this is partly to do with the jet stream being too far south. Could it be caused by global warming?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/wcjco/why_is_the_northern_hemisphere_jet_stream_so_far/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5cg04f", "c5cjygx"], "score": [2, 3], "text": ["We are currently in a [negative phase](_URL_1_) of the NAO ([North Atlantic Oscillation](_URL_0_)) which is typically associated with a southward shift of the Jet Stream. \n\nThe NAO, similar to its better known cousin El Nino, is a coupled atmosphere/ocean phenomena which influences large-scale weather patterns. ", "It's just weather. You can get large-amplitude Rossby waves year-round, although they're more common (in the Northern hemisphere) in winter. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation", "http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml#current"], []]}
{"q_id": "42ek2u", "title": "what would happen, hypothetically, if everyone immediately stopped paying back their student loans (in the u.s.)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42ek2u/eli5_what_would_happen_hypothetically_if_everyone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz9qxa7", "cz9rb4g", "cz9rbcx", "cz9s7id", "cz9true", "cz9u8c6", "cz9udnp", "cz9v4qj", "cz9v5lp", "cz9v8ai", "cz9v95m", "cz9vdwi", "cz9vq5p", "czassgs"], "score": [254, 41, 58, 19, 35, 5, 11, 2, 6, 2, 3, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["Well, anyone investing in them would take a massive hit. This includes everyday people, businesses, and to a larger extent, the US government. ", "There would be a lot of administrative wage garnishments happening. They'll get their money one way or another.", "They can garnish your wages and some forms of social security. They can seize your tax refunds. If you are a W-2 employee, your employer is required to withhold on you based upon the W-4 you fill out. Let's say you claim an inordinate amount of allowances or claim you're exempt on your W-4 to try to prevent you from having a refund to seize; in that case, your employer is required to provide the IRS with a copy of your W-4, and the IRS can change the amount in which your employer is required to withhold, and you would then need advance permission to change your W-4 again. So if you're a W-2 employee, it would be hard to prevent them from being able to seize a good amount of money through your wages and excess withholding/tax refund. As you know, student loans are almost never able to be discharged through bankruptcy. Therefore, your options are to pay the loans as required, or (1) not be a W-2 employee, which may entail a low quality of life in the United States, or (2) leave the country.", "It would be all over the media, and politicians would have to answer for why they let things get so out of control.\n\nThere already is a mass default underway, it's just not organized.  Over 7 million borrowers are in default on federal loans right now, and less than half are in active repayment.", "Could you not take out a normal loan, pay student loan with the new money then declare bankruptcy wiping out the other loan?", "Such a massive case of civil disobedience would be revolutionary in nature. Not unlike if everyone decided not to pay their taxes or mortgages. After a chaotic period of societal reorginization, life would go on. The agreements we share to consent to financial conventions are pretty hard to break on that large of a scale unless a given society is ripe for destruction. Basically all hell would break loose.", "Its interesting because there is nothing tangible with equity as collateral in a student loan.  You are basically gambling on a person's future.  I loan you $50k so you can go to school with the idea that of COURSE you will pay it back.  Why wouldn't you?  You are taking that money for a better future that is readily out there and available for you.  And you can pay me back with interest.  Its not like a mortgage where I need the house you are buying as collateral.  Or an auto loan.  In both those cases essentially the purchased product can be essentially legally repossessed by whomever the loaning authority is.  IE the bank gets your house or the credit union gets your car or w/e.  It isn't good.  And the value of the house can fluctuate so it might not be worth the value of the original loan minus payments and already paid plus interest.  And the car will most likely drop in value.  But STILL... there is something you can take back if loan payments aren't met.\n\nBut with education... what do you repossess?  Nothing.  That said in reality the government can garnish wages and do other fun stuff (like take all your tax refund) to get their money back.  And since there is income based repayment (since 2009) they can do it up until the day you die.  So really its impossible to not repay that loan.\n\nIF... IF somehow everyone just dropped off the grid and didn't repay their loans and couldn't be tracked down well then the government or whatever financial institution would be out a lotta cash.  It would be bailout season again I'm sure but on a much bigger scale.\n\nLikely wrecking the US and global economy for quite a long while!", "Does anybody know whether many of these loans have been packaged up and sold off (in the same way that ABS/MBS etc are)?", "Meanwhile I'm sitting here, remembering the good old times, when I was in my home country in Europe getting paid by my government to go study", "Mobs of people committing a action can be powerful.  \n\nOne of the possibilities of people doing this is lenders offering a reduced rate for those willing to break the strike. The government could also step in to provide a more favorable rate.\n\nThe negatives, besides people racking up more interest, is student loans becoming extremely difficult to get and interest rates could raise to cover the lost.", "I think a better ILI5 questions would be \"What would happen, hypothetically, if everyone immediately stopped paying back their PRIVATE student loans.\"\n\nObviously, the government will make you repay federal loans any way they can (social security, taxes, etc.). With private loans, a collection agency can sue you. If you (and the person that co-signed on the loan) have no assets (savings, house, etc) that they can sue you for, you can simply not pay it back and wait several years until, by law, you can't be sued again. I know this is the case because I live with a family member who's doing it.", "As a non American, who nevertheless loves America and *Americans*, I do find it a bit weird that it's a country where the bigger the fraud you commit the more you are rewarded (e.g. the shenanigans that led to the housing bubble whereafter the government paid a fortune to bail out the banks who then used the money to pay out massive bonuses to their execs), whereas if you try to be a decent citizen you get royally screwed by being made a wage slave because you had the temerity to want to get an education, or you can go bankrupt if you have an accident due to a predatory healthcare system, or you can be thrown into a for-profit prison if you are unlucky enough to be caught breaking some bullshit marijuana law (while the bankers are openly snorting lines of coke with impunity).  ", "If everyone did it?  500 would become a better than average credit score.", "School loans are just another government scam. Do you know that 94% (or is it 96%?) of a federal student loan is backed by the government? That means the tax payer all but pays off the entire load if a student defaults. So all those loans have been paid. Then lender can barely loose a red cent. The student technically owes the government. But then of course they sell off the loan at a lesser value to debt collectors who tack on outrageous fees. Meanwhile the student will never be able to buy a house or a new car or go back to school. No second chances for you!\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27u7cb", "title": "what are doctors looking for when they check your ears?", "selftext": "Just got a physical and it got me thinking. What are doctors looking for in your ear? Please help. \n\nEdit: Thank you guys. Some really informative explanations. Reddit never fails me. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27u7cb/eli5what_are_doctors_looking_for_when_they_check/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci4en5n", "ci4enzl", "ci4ewsm", "ci4gobn", "ci4hb0h", "ci4kbyx", "ci4ke1f"], "score": [4, 4, 21, 16, 2, 15, 2], "text": ["They look for signs of inflammation.", "Infection, primarily. Ear infections that aren't caught can cause a lot of issues down the road. ", "Doctors look for fluid in the ears, what the tympanic membrane (ear drum) looks like to look for inflammation, and overall condition of the skin inside to make sure there aren't cuts or full of cerumen (ear wax)", "I went into the doctors office for a checkup. I'd been having trouble hearing for years, there was always shlorping and florpming noises in my ears, and they were generally bothering me, despite going to several doctors during that time, who I guess didn't look at my ears. \n\nSo I went into this new doctor for a checkup, and they said there was a wax buildup, and proceeded to use some water pick on my ear for 1/2 hour.  All of a sudden, it was like birth. I heard a \"tunk\" in a pan next to my ear, and the nurse said, \"Check this out.\" There was green earwax the diameter of my ear canal, about 1/4\", and about 2 1/2 inches long. Holy *shit!* That was one huge-ass slobber of earwax. I'm so bummed I didn't take a picture, or keep it and bronze it. It was epic, in the true meaning of epic. And I hear perfectly now.\n\nLooking in ears is important. It is only bothersome when doctors to it, until it isn't. Earwax buildup is icky.", "The ear drum:  Is it there at all or is there a hole in it?  It is generally a translucent membrane.  Is there a bunch of scar tissue?  Is it immobile? (done with an 'insulflator' that blows a puff of air into the canal) Is it bulging?  If it is bulging, what's behind it?  Is the fluid behind it pus or clear serous fluid.  Is the canal itself angry and inflamed?", "Alright, I work in Audiology and do otoscopy (ear exam you refer to) all the time - I can't tell you the amount of ears I have seen. \n\nI preface this by saying that a GP doing a physical can't spend much time on any one area, so my experience is perhaps more involved then a physical's ear exam.\n\nThe scope is a magnifying glass married with a high power light - it's inserted pretty deep as the ear has 2 main bends, and we need to see around them to the ear drum (Tympanic Membrane) \n\nMain features I'm looking for are excessive wax blockage, abrasion/cuts/signs of trauma. Ear surgery is another one, as I swear 50% of those who have had it \"forget\" in their history. Middle ear infection can also be spotted, as either a retracted TM (It's \"sucked\" into the middle ear) or fluid buildup.\n\nEssentially the gyst is that we figure out if there is any structural damage we need to know about going forward. \n\n\nA normal otoscopy result should look like this\n\n_URL_1_\n\nSomeone with an ear infection might have a retracted TM - This beauty for example\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR - We know what a normal ear looks like, and if it don't look normal I call an ENT and he deals with it.\n", "the flu and throat infections can block something called the eustachian tube which is a tube that connects the ear to the mouth/throat so that the inside of the ear would have the same air pressure as the outside world. if it gets blocked, fluid builds up in the ear and can cause it to bulge and in mild causes cause distorted hearing and severe cases rupture the eardrum. Its actually incredibly common, almost 100% of children will have had it atleast once before they turn 5."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.entusa.com/Ear_Photos/20031103-retraction-pocket.jpg", "http://www.entbristol.co.uk/images/otoscopy/otoscopy_14.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "tbsld", "title": "Why can't I control my nearsighted eyes to have a different focus that is not blurry?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tbsld/why_cant_i_control_my_nearsighted_eyes_to_have_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4laru0"], "score": [6], "text": ["You've pretty much got it. The ciliary muscles of the eye bend the lens to adjust its focal length for seeing objects at different distances and projecting the image of these objects back onto the retina.\n\nWhen the ciliary muscles of an ideal eye are totally relaxed they can focus objects out to basically infinity. When the ciliary muscles of a nearsighted eye are totally relaxed they can only focus objects out to some finite distance, depending on the person. So it isn't possible to correct nearsightedness by manually refocusing your eyes, since you can't relax your ciliary muscles any more.\n\nThe defect occurs when the distance between the lens and the retina grows too large. The lens is set up to project an image back onto a retina about 2.5cm behind it, so if your eyes are even slightly deformed the image is projected a bit in front of the retina and your vision is blurry."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2vfma6", "title": "how do germany regain its strength and standing in the global community so \"quickly\" after starting two world wars?", "selftext": "I watched the Obama/Merkel news conference yesterday and Obama brought up the point that Germany is a great example of how a country we used to be enemies with, is now a friend and ally. \n\nIt also struck me that Merkel and Germany have a crucial if not indispensable role within the EU. The countries it once invaded and bombed now look to it for financial and industrial support. It also shouldn't be overlooked that Angela Merkel spoke with Putin in person the day before meeting with Obama. She and Germany, not Cameron and the UK, are the  ones negotiating peace for Ukraine.\n\nAnyway,, there's a lot more I could add to Germany's seeming reemergence, but I would like to know why it happened relatively quickly. Did being split in two and the Cold War garner sympathy for Germany's problems? Did the international sanctions beat them into submission? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vfma6/eli5_how_do_germany_regain_its_strength_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coh64kw", "coh67gq", "cohcj0a", "cohe3od", "coheo2m", "cohfb4y", "cohfhn5", "cohiokv", "cohknrq", "cohn4n7"], "score": [12, 2, 11, 8, 3, 3, 5, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because Germany wasn't really itself again until 1992. After WWII the main other competitors in the world war basically called dibs on a quarter of Berlin each, then there was the Cold War and while that was going on Germany started growing again, eventually ripping down that irritating wall and becoming united again. That union is what made it considered truly Germany again, but prior to that the country was still rebuilding and being productive. Resulting in it being seen as a quick recovery, but I'm not sure it really was quick so much as distracted from.", "germany right after WW2 was split ofc, and west germany had a bunch of skilled workers even after the top researchers and engineers got stolen away. marshall plan helped a bit, but wasnt the sole factor.\n\n_URL_0_\n\ntldr; germans r smart and hardworking people who dont need no help", "I dunno by what standard you are claiming Germany started WW1, and you could argue that WW2 was started by the harsh treatment of Germany after WW1. Maybe we learned a lesson", "It depends on what you define as \u201cquickly.\u201d  \n\nIn the years following WWII, the Allies actually attempted to prevent Germany\u2019s ability to wage war in the future by destroying their industrial base.  (See JCS 1067 and the Morgenthau Plan)  This had a detrimental effect on the German economy and the European economy as a whole.  Furthermore, both Germany\u2019s and France\u2019s economies lagged behind the US and UK for the decade or so after the war.  \n\nMoving forward, one very simple answer is that the victors of WWII rebuilt Germany with the intention of it being a political and economic ally.  \n\nIn 1949, the Marshall Plan was extended to cover West Germany, which contributed economic support to Europe.  By 1950, the Allies stopped destroying German industrial assets after realizing both Germany\u2019s and Europe\u2019s economies relied on the German industry.  In 1955 it joined NATO.  W. Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957, which was later absorbed into the European Union.  In 1973 it joined the United Nations.  And most importantly, Germany became a sovereign nation in 1991 when West Germany reunited with East Germany.  \n\nAgain, this all depends on your definition of \u201cquick.\u201d  It did take 46 years before Germany became a unified and sovereign nation, however in the grand scheme of the universe, I do suppose that it is quick. \n", "Aside an aside you mention that it's Merkel/Germany going to Moscow and not Cameron/UK, there's a rather simple reason for this beyond Germany's acceptance in international politics. It's simply that Russia's relationship with the UK is absolutely dire currently, even before the Ukraine crisis, we'd had a number of major falling outs including one of our bugs being found in a Moscow park, the Russians continually buzzing British airspace and the Kremlin murdering a defected KGB agent in London. Before Ukraine the United Kingdom probably had the worst diplomatic relations with the Kremlin out of all the major Western nations. Sending Cameron wouldn't be nearly as effective as Merkel, especially considering Germany is often more amenable and understanding to Russia than Britain/France/US.", "In short: denazification, rebuilding, and the desire to create a common front against the USSR and communism in general. The \"global community\" (i.e. America and the Western powers) decided it was more important to welcome Germany into the anti-communist team than to punish it, especially since discontent after WWI helped fuel the rise of the Nazis.", "The differences between East and West Germany were staggering. The Soviets treated East German as a colony. After WWII the Soviets striped East Germany of its manufacturing machinery and brought it back to the USSR. They basically pillaged the place. The Americans on the other hand by far had the most state of the art factories in the world at the end of WWII. The US made up 50% of entire global gdp. The US was lightyears ahead of Europe in productivity in both manufacturing and agriculture during this time period. The US poured tons of resources into West Germany. The Marshall plan did not just include money it included modern machinery and agricultural equipment. The West German government was essentially created by the United States and modeled after the US system, just like Japan was. As a result West Germany with the aid of the US rebuilt at an incredible rate. As did Japan. There were other factors as well and the resilience of the German people cannot be minimized, but the Marshall plan and US political assistance was huge. Don't listen to people who downplay it.  ", "I'll give the explanation for after WWI.\n\nIt happened relatively quickly but Weimar Germany had problems paying reparations.\n\nFrance and Belgium invaded because of this.\n\nGermany printed more money to pay reparations (thus hyperinflation began).\n\nGermany asked the US for help - Dawes plan started.\n\nGermany back on its feet for at least a few years.\n\nDepression in the US happened in 1929.\n\nBad things happened and Germany had to repay the US for all she borrowed.\n\nGermany back in bad places.\n\nHitler takes advantage of this.\n\nNazi Germany.\n\nWWII.\n\n*I feel like I went off topic slightly.*", "It helped that the German government was rebuilt from scratch, and the Germans took advantage of the latest developments in political science to create what is arguably the most sensible democratic government in the world.  German representatives are elected by [mixed member proportional representation](_URL_0_), a system that avoids the pitfalls of gerrymandering and third party marginalization so prominent in first-past-the-post systems like that of the United States.  But there is also a concept called the election threshold, which prevents the splintering of the legislature into numerous tiny factions that is often associated with party list systems.  Germany also has a separately elected Chancellor as head of government which gives additional stability to the government compared to countries headed by a Prime Minister who is de facto the head of the leading party of parliament.", "Germany is a resource filled area, lots of people, and hard working nature. The Germans have been prided as industrialist and manufacturers for centuries. Not to mention after the war we put a shit ton on money into rebuilding them. Germany is just a good spot to build industry."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cgp+grey+proportional+representation"], []]}
{"q_id": "qmstu", "title": "Why is dwarfism so much more common than gigantism?", "selftext": "It seems I easily see a dwarf in my moderately large college town every week, but I don't think I have ever met or even seen someone who suffered from gigantism. I know some pretty tall basketball players exist, but that is just natural height, not gigantism.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qmstu/why_is_dwarfism_so_much_more_common_than_gigantism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3yte1c", "c3yyg8y"], "score": [13, 3], "text": ["They can fix Gigantism.\n\nGigantism is the cause of many heath problems. From wikipedia: \"many of those who have been identified with Gigantism have suffered from multiple health problems involving their circulatory or skeletal system.\" Pumping blood to the extremities of someone so tall leads to heart desease at a very young age. Therefor it's ideal to fix the problem before these issues manifest. Gigantism is usually caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland which is treated with surgery or drugs before the person grows too tall. That's why no one will be claiming Robert Wadlow's record (8'11.1\") any time soon. This is also why all the current tallest people seem to be from poorer countries. Because they do not have access to treatment. Most of the tallest people you see in countries with modern health care are just naturally tall and rarely grow above 7'.\n\nAs for the relative commonality between dwarfism and gigantism. Dwarfism can be caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland as well. But can also be caused by other genetic problems. So Dwarfism is bound to be much more common anyway.\n\n", "The most common form of dwarfism, achondroplasia, is from a recessive mutation for which the heterozygous genotype has no drastic effects. This allows the defective gene to stay at higher frequency in the population. Acromegaly (pituitary gigantism) is usually from a tumor, which is much more complicated in origin than a single mutation, and is thus rarer. More things need to go awry in gigantism, so it's less likely from a statistics pt of view. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "447fej", "title": "why have corporate stores completely overtaken small and medium business retails stores and sandwich shops in past 20 years? for example, starbucks was an anomaly in my college town, and now virtually every indie coffee shop has been killed.", "selftext": "The corporate takeover can't be because of better marketing or better service: the indie coffee shops had much more interesting events at their shops, and usually much better tasting coffee too.  Starbucks was nicknamed \"Charbucks\" because their coffee tasted burned to me and all my friends.  \n\nAnd yet, now all indie coffee shops are dead.  What gives?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/447fej/eli5_why_have_corporate_stores_completely/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czo15fe", "czo15zv", "czo17v6", "czo1ag4", "czo1g5m", "czo2r9z", "czo4mwz", "czo69mo", "czo7g9g", "czogjvh", "czoh40i", "czoims2", "czojhx7", "czol08p", "czonxiw", "czoocp0", "czooylf", "czopesh", "czopxm1", "czoxeya"], "score": [8, 3, 205, 38, 8, 17, 4, 18, 5, 2, 9, 8, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Large businesses have access to more resources which lets them have more expansive marketing campaigns -- your small-town shop's interesting events don't matter if only a few people see them.\n\nAlso large businesses have the capital to survive long price wars, taking a loss for a while in order to drive competitors out of business and then raising prices afterward.  Wal-mart's a good example of a business that uses huge loss leaders to create an image of low prices on everything.", "It is cheaper to order supplies and ingredients in bulk...like having multi-year deals with entire coffee plantations to get their entire crop than it is to buy those supplies on the open market. This saves a bundle!  So, the same product (coffee in this case) can be purchased for way less for the mega-corp than for the single shop.", "Economy of scale. Mass retailers have a lower cost for goods so they are able to undercut smaller stores to take away their business. They could even operate a single store at a loss in order to force their competition out of business while absorbing the loss across the chain. Add to that the American consumers desire for conformity and familiar surroundings and you have the perfect recipe. ", "While your local coffee shops may make better coffee, Starbucks is better a business, generally speaking. By being able to do things in huge quantities, Starbucks can take advantage of economies of scale, and as such can make more money off of fewer sales.\n\nFor example, buying custom printed stuff, from signs to menus is expensive, but Starbucks can thin out that cost by ordering 10,000 of them, while your local shop pays a lot more for just one shop's worth of items. This holds true on all kinds of things, from cups to coffee beans to commercials. \n\nSo while your local coffee shops were selling more cups of coffee, they were paying a lot more for those cups, giving Starbucks a hire profit margin and a lot more staying power in the industry.", "Large corporations are built upon the very foundation of efficiency.  The bigger they are, the more money the owners have at stake, and the more savings are sought in order that the owners can make more money--and create more growth.\n\nThese sought-after efficiencies often spell death for the small businesses with whom the large corporations compete.\n\nThe most clear example is Wal-Mart.  The introduction of a Wal-Mart to a small town can both provide cheaper purchasing options to the inhabitants, but also pushes all the small \"mom  &  pop\" type convenience stores out of business, because they simply cannot compete on price.\n\nStarbucks does not necessarily sell cheap coffee, but they sell their product at a price that local coffee shops cannot compete with well, and they also have product consistency and name recognition that is unparalleled.  \n\nThe marketing is better, and it is paid for.  Local coffee shops have owners and workers who might have some extra time to put a cutesy little chalkboard sign together, while Starbucks has an enormous group of people charged with looking after their marketing.  \n\nThis is the product of capitalism, whether we love it or not.  The big guys always win the battle, and we can only hope we gamble well on the results.", "There's also familiarity. If I like Starbucks, it's easy for me to go to almost anywhere and grab the same latte I'm used to getting back home. Consistency is key and usually very comforting for the consumer. \n\n\n\n\nIn theory I like little independent coffee shops, but in reality I usually go to Starbucks because I'm used to it and it's easy. ", "Everything is being pushed into a corporate wall e world.  USPS lady told me that they are being slowly forced into full automation.  ", "One factor hasn't been emphasized yet: The consumer. If people wouldn't go to Starbucks there wouldn't be a Starbucks.", "A lot of the problem is trying to compete in price. Big shops sell low quality food they get mass produced from factories, and people expect to pay the same prices at local shops. I worked at pizzerias for years with fresh, made form scratch Italian entrees, and people would still prefer to go to Olive Garden and get something microwaved to order. There's also the problem of competent staff, which the chains couldn't care less about. ", "Starbucks used to buy out the leases of local coffee shops, so they couldn't renew and it could change to a starbucks.\n\n\n", "Another thing that I think is key, is the atmosphere and culture. Atmosphere and culture? Starbucks has no atmosphere or culture. Walk into an indie coffee shop with a bit of grease on your hands and dirty clothes. Maybe you have an odd way of talking, maybe you have a certain type of accent. In an indie shop, the person working there may or may not take notice and react a certain way, a kind of \"what are you doing here?\", perhaps a bit of condescension in their tone. Walk into a Starbucks, it doesn't matter. The people that work there are not there to be apart of the scene. They don't consider themselves really cool and interesting, witty and wild because they work at Starbucks, it a fucking job. They don't care about you or who you are or if you look weird or talk funny. Can you pay, is this going to be a hassle? You can pay, cool, what do you want. Here you go. And that is it. There is no having a discussion or interaction beyond, here is my money, thank you for serving me what I ordered, I hope your day goes smoothly. And that is really nice.", "37 cents, or less, if product within 2-3 miles.\n\nI used to work in Industrial Development for communities around 2,000 - 5,000 in population.  Walmart targeted communities that size that had a little money, and they basically wiped out every Mom/Pop store, or private change.  People just want 'that bargain', and new floors, new brighter lights bring people into the store.  This was before WM carried groceries, and larger electronic merchandise.  They killed off every store of any kind after that.  Everyone, and I mean, everyone, in about 9 months, except to get a small brand product for cooking, quit the private stores, and they had to close.  \n\nThere are some private owners who do win though, as 'they got there first, and built a good offense'.  Back in that day, a grocery store know as \"Bob's IGA\" fought of Winn-Dixie, Kroger, and even Walmart, only due to it's owner having a magic personality, a tremendous deli area, it's location in the county seat (plus a 99 year lease), and the North side of the county was unusually loyal to it.    It was in an unusual 'right turn' location, coming in and out of the city, plus it had a Dairy Queen in the same big parking lot, where people got their hamburgers and ice cream.  Even old sun brunt farmers like their ice cream handy after getting their groceries, and nearby John Deer parts.", "I'm really not satisfied with these answers, there are many places where larger chains don't take over everything or have to close down. I think it has more to do with the local laws, more so than economy of scale.", "This reminds me of a documentary on Netflix. It's called The High Cost of Low Prices. It's about Wal-Mart doing exactly what you're talking about. I would sincerely suggest you watch it to get a good understanding of what's going on. ", "Because people are generally loyal to brands and franchises have better brand recognition than local stores. There is virtually no difference in the coffee I could get (if I drank that disgusting bitter bean water) at the Starbucks down the street and a Starbucks on the opposite side of the nation. I know what I'm getting at every single Starbucks, because it's generally the same thing. \n\nNot so much for local stores. Their coffee may be better (like saying one turd is better than another IMO), but it's unfamiliar. I don't know their blends. I'm not familiar with their product. Hell, I may not even be aware of their store because it doesn't have a big fat sign with a naked mermaid in front of it. So I go to Starbucks because it's familiar.\n\nAnd if I'm ever a few miles away from where I live, I can find Starbucks within a couple miles and get the same coffee as I can from the store down the street from my house. I don't even know where or how good a local coffee house is once I get beyond a certain radius from my house. I can take a chance and try coffee at some strange and unknown local shop, or I can get exactly what I know at a Starbucks. So Starbucks is guaranteed to get all the commuter business while local stores rely solely on local business.\n\nThis goes for all major chains and local competition. ", "As someone from Wellington New Zealand, we have very few Starbucks and toooones of indie coffee shops , I think we have the highest per capita in the world, so it depends on where your from and the local cultural tastes. Here Starbucks is seen as cheap  and nasty by most of us.", "Starbucks generally out-competes their competition. They'll either buy the store directly or open a competing store nearby. When they open a new store, you notice that enough people don't care about the indie store having better coffee, they just want their cup of joe, and Starbucks is better or a little cheaper or faster or closer by, and the indie store has to fold because people go there instead.", "Something I haven't seen mentioned much here, is the manner of development that's occurring in the commercial real estate side of things.  \n\nConsider that most startups lack the capital to buy a spot, renovate, and actually succeed.  Can't buy it?  Fine, someone will lease it to you, but wait, you can't get the lease due to aforementioned funding.\n\nSo, at least in the sense of the sprawl, what we see is a handful of developers churning 5-30 acre tracts of land, generally retaining a healthy portion of ownership, leasing all the space (key), and then going to the easiest source of funds (corporations with pockets).\n\nWhat I find somewhat disgusting is when you have a single entity actually franchise several locations/businesses within a development.  The notion of choice is an illusion in that case.", "Corporations can figure out the most efficient way of doing things and then apply that across every store. An independent store might come up with a couple of good ideas, but a corporate store has dozens and dozens of little improvements that add up to them making more money. They can get better deals from suppliers because they buy in volume. Also, big chains can advertise in ways that an independent store can't. TV ads for example just don't make sense for a small store. So the corporate chains end up making more money and re-investing that money in marketing, location and efficiency. They just end up out-competing the smaller stores over time.", "My AP US History teacher told me about this along with monopolies. The reason the companies are able to take over the other businesses comes from 2 ways.\n1. They buy out the business, pretty self explanatory.\n2. The big company can drop its prices lower than that of the local company. This may affect their profits and the store may go in the red (in debt) for a short while, but the giant company can suffer the loss because they have more stores that are making profits to even out. The local company takes a harder hit trying to lower its prices with the giant company, and they cannot suffer the loss compared to the big company and the local business goes out of business because they have been in debt too long. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1kiwfx", "title": "in trading places (1983, akroyd/murphy) how does the scheme at the end of the movie work? why would buying a lot of oj at a high price ruin the duke brothers?", "selftext": "I have a vague understanding, but I'm hoping someone can explain it better to me. And maybe throw in some knowledge about the stock market in general while you're at it? Thank you!\n\nEdit: Hey everyone, thanks for all the great answers! I think I actually really understand futures commodities now. Who ever said Reddit was a waste of time, eh? So yes, this question has been answered, and yes, I've seen/heard that great NPR clip about this topic. Thanks again to everyone!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kiwfx/eli5_in_trading_places_1983_akroydmurphy_how_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbpe9fa", "cbped8p", "cbpfn6s", "cbpgbs3", "cbphr4r", "cbpi2m1", "cbpi8e8", "cbpk54s", "cbplo0q", "cbq1i5k"], "score": [7, 45, 56, 2, 2, 8, 7, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["If I remember correctly, they knew that the price of orange juice was going to fall. Normally this wouldn't matter, because you are supposed to buy and hold stocks, but they were buying what's called 'futures'. In a nutshell, they were buying contracts that afford them the legal right to purchase units of OJ at a specific price. Since they knew the price of OJ would fall (remember the dude with the locked briefcase?) they were buying option contracts to purchase OJ at a higher price. Anyone with half a brain would sell them these and of course that's what happened. For in depth knowledge, look up \"how futures trading works.\"", "They had an episode of Marketplace that addressed this a few weeks ago: _URL_0_", "The final scene involves future contracts.  This simply means entering into a contract to buy something (oil, wheat, even frozen concentrated orange juice(FCOJ)) at a specified time for the current price.  The person selling the future does not have to own the FCOJ at the time of sale he simply has to provide them at the agreed upon date. Futures help companies mitigate risk against the unpredictable price of FCOJ. If the price of FCOJ goes up the buyer wins the seller loses and visa versa.  \n\nThis price is often affected by fresh oranges. If there is a good harvest FCOJ price goes down and so on. The Dukes believed there  was going to be a bad harvest.  Their plan was to buy as much FCOJ as they could and basically corner the market then sell it at a much higher price due to a lack of oranges. \n\nSo here is what happened.  At first Winthrop and Valentine begin selling futures contracts at inflated prices caused by the Dukes (on the info from the fake report of a bad orange harvest) at approximately $1.45 per unit. When the report comes out that the orange harvest is expected to be good caused a massive selloff and the futures price plummeted to about  $.22 cents.  This is when Winthrop and Valentine begin buying futures instead of selling.  So now they can fill the futures orders of $1.45 with oranges costing $.22 earning something like a 545% profit.", "it was the margin call for the duke brothers.  as i'm sure others explained, the dukes shorted the market based on info from the phony crop report.  so when the price shot up, a margin call was due, even after the price settled a bit after billy and louie sold their holdings for huge gains.   when the market closed with the price still up, the movie shows the guy affiliated with the exchange saying \"Margin call.\".  In reality I think it would've been the firm that they trade through and that provided them the loan in the first place. (margin call means pay back the loaned amount)\n\nedit: maybe I had it backwards and the dukes were going to go long on OJ futures, but it's the same principle. margin call did them in after the market worked against them based on their false knowledge.", "Just want to say great question.", "NPR actually did a interview explaining everything pretty well.\n\n_URL_0_", "The unrealistic part of that flick is not the trading but Winthorp and Valentine being able just to waltz in to that pit and stand wherever they want.  Spots in a commodity pit are protected like gang turf.  They just go in and stand in the middle. Also if they deposit the cash from everyone's savings lets say 100k and the margin per contract is 5k per contract they can only buy or sell 20 contracts.  I don't know what the FCOJ margins are, but if they trade more than 20 the profit goes to the exchange.  At least that's how the CME rolls. ", "I feel so old.  People have been askinbg what happened at the end of this movie for what must be the last 15 years of my life.  It never stops.  Every year/month/fortnight, I see someone asking what happened, and someone explaining.  Andf it will keep on happening, until I am 90yrs old, in a home, with nothing but the Internet and my bladder to keep me going.  And there it will be: \"what happens at the end of Trading Places?\"", "Fun fact: In \"Coming to America\", when Akeem's character gave the money to the 2 homeless guys, it was the Duke brothers. :)\n\n_URL_0_", "odd things I noted -\n\n1. They didn't go in with that much cash. I understand they first sold high and then bought low. So how did they sell so much with just a small sum? They should've bought very little contracts of fcoj which would sell out in 1min with that frenzy and then the buyers would go somewhere else and price would rise even beyond $1.42\n\n2. They all look at the clock and then 9am (I think) strikes and crop report is read. Then they all panic because they need to unload whatever they bought and finding the 2 buying they sell ASAP. Again how can these 2 buy everything with so little money?\n\n3. Finally the closing bell strikes and trading stops. How did all this scheme happen so fast ? Doesnt trading happen 9:30am to 4pm at NYSE (why wtc was shown?) for such commodities. Did they spend that many hours there? It just seemed sudden and abrupt the time flow. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.wbur.org/npr/201430727/what-actually-happens-at-the-end-of-trading-places?ft=3&amp;f=201430727"], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/07/19/201430727/what-actually-happens-at-the-end-of-trading-places"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbTN945-iI8"], []]}
{"q_id": "2b4mrr", "title": "Why do plants secrete chemicals that heal animals that eat them?", "selftext": "What is the evolutionary advantage for willow trees to have aspirin on their bark, wouldn't that cause animals to eat the bark and hurt the tree? I know alkalines are supposed to be bitter and bad tasting but they still help the animal.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2b4mrr/why_do_plants_secrete_chemicals_that_heal_animals/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj1xf9s", "cj1zlmy"], "score": [4, 4], "text": ["You're making the assumption that animals would make the association between their pain lessening and them eating the bark.  This is unlikely in the animals most likely to eat the bark (mostly deer, moose, and similar creatures).  Instead the animal is probably more likely to not continue eating the bark because of the bad taste.  I think most medicinal compounds either a) serve to make the plant taste bad to animals who would eat it or b) serve the plant in some way, in which case the evolutionary benefit of having the compound for the plant outweighs the disadvantages.", "In the specific case of aspirin it has everything to do with plant defense actually. Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is a precursor for salicylic acid (SA), which is a [very important plant hormone involved in plant defense](_URL_1_). It activates many pathways that eventually lead to production of defensive compounds against microbe and herbivore attackers. It is probably also involved in [heat and drought stress](_URL_0_).\n\nThe effects these compounds have on other animals that are not directly targeted by this defense have nothing to do with this function. The prime attackers are deterred and thus there is a benefit. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006386800974", "http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s003440000026"]]}
{"q_id": "4bin2a", "title": "how do the authorities attempt to find the brussels bombing suspect when all they have is an obscure surveillance photo?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bin2a/eli5_how_do_the_authorities_attempt_to_find_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d19h5w1", "d19hv7f", "d19itnj", "d19nvjk", "d19pe3k"], "score": [76, 9, 5, 7, 2], "text": ["They may have more. Police often dont divulge all information. For instance if police told everyone they knew they drove a red truck, they would ditch the truck.", "Even if that is all they have now, it doesn't mean that's all they'll have in the future. You interview people. You view surveillance footage from surrounding areas. You gather forensic evidence from the explosion. You evaluate tips from the public. You examine the bombs and determine what would have had to be purchased to make them and who might have made them--bombs usually have a signature. See if you can determine how the train tickets were bought and if any identification can be made that way. \n\nAnd for that matter just the photo could easily be enough. It's entirely possible that somebody will recognize them. ", "I'm actually pretty interested in how this will play out. Not sure how similar this is to the Boston Marathon bombing, but Boston was basically shut down until they could finish the manhunt. I wonder if Belgium will go about things the same way. May be a good perspective on how different countries handle these things. Best of luck to them. ", "Both Turkish bombings where accurately predicted by USA intelligence, and alerts were preemptively published on the US embassy website, here: _URL_0_\n\nThey are tapping the internet, collecting the information they need.", "As a former surveillance officer that watched shitty resolution cameras. Its easy to back track and get a good foot print of where they were and because it was a act of terrorism they'll have access to every camera in the vicinity. Its not tough to work with that"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://turkey.usembassy.gov/sm-031116.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ircew", "title": "why are some animals' flesh (beef, salmon, etc.) fine to eat raw, whilst others (chicken, pork, etc.) cause food poisoning?", "selftext": "I understand it's a salmonella issue, atleast with chicken; but what causes some meats to be perfectly fine?\n\nUpdate: With a bit more thought, I suppose my questioning is addressing more the human body's ability to digest raw meats - a more appropriately aimed question would be: ' Why are some animals' flesh fine to eat raw, whilst others cause food poisoning? And how is this specific to current humans, as we have evolved from humans that survived solely on a diet of raw food?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ircew/eli5_why_are_some_animals_flesh_beef_salmon_etc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb7a36e", "cb7akff", "cb7blra", "cb7bpox", "cb7bwkj", "cb7bz6c", "cb7cla0", "cb7e4c7", "cb7ft86", "cb7icho", "cb7pxpd", "cb7q65c"], "score": [27, 287, 3, 2, 46, 7, 4, 2, 5, 2, 8, 3], "text": ["You can eat them all raw if they aren't infected, chicken just gets infected more.", "First, there are no meats that are 100% safe to eat raw. There is always a risk of bacterial contamination/poisoning, especially if the meat is not cleaned properly.\n\nSecond, in some places, people DO eat raw chicken...and horse, for that matter. See here from Japan: _URL_0_\n\nNow, to your question. \n\n* Saltwater helps kills bacteria, making fish less susceptible to contaminants than meat from land-based animals\n* Sushi restaurants still take precautions. A required step involves freezing fish at temperatures of -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) for seven days, or frozen at -31 degrees Fahrenheit (-35 degrees Celsius) for 15 hours, which kills any parasites (since these thrive in warm temperatures).\n* Salmonella on chicken rarely enters the meat itself, but rather thrives on the skin. Chicken sashimi (toriwasa), is often braised or seared on the outside before being chilled as above both to kill lingering bacteria and improve the texture.\n\ntl;dr: people do eat those meats raw, but not much in the US\n\nEdit: after more research, I have learned that raw chicken is rarely eaten in the US not only out of custom but also because our manufacturing process leads to high salmonella contamination (compared to chicken abroad)...", "I worked as a butcher in a shop that people brought their own pigs and cows and id say about 1/70 animals had worms and these were animals the people were going to eat themselves.  Not the dying old animals farmers take to plants for a few bucks.  Dont do it.", "While it's true that early humans didn't know how to make fire, it's been a very long time since the power of fire was harnessed, and cooking became commonplace. Humans are great omnivores, though so we're good at making do with what we can.", "Former parasitologist here. Please respect Diphyllobothrium latum, or the fish tapeworm. It can live in your intestines for 20 years and reach a length of 30 feet. That is something any 5 year old can appreciate.    _URL_0_\n\n\n", "Part of it is also that beef, lamb, and other 'red' meats are very dense compared to chicken, pork, and 'white' meats, and thus bacteria are only able to reside on the surface of things like steak.\n\nSince chicken is less dense, the bacteria and parasites are able to find their way inside the actual meat, which is why you're supposed to cook poultry to \"an internal temperature of 165F,\" higher than other kinds of meat.\n\nThis is also why it's ok to have steak still red on the inside, but since ground hamburger mixes up the \"outside\" and the \"inside,\" it's suggested you cook them a bit more thoroughly. In practice, it's not a huge deal however.", "muscle in healthy beef is sterile so you can eat it by just searing the outsideor like the french just eat it raw in steak tartar. \nin alot of chicken there is salmonella and or camplobacter in the gut and this gets transferred to the outside during peocessing a chicken is alot smaller than a cow so the amount of bacteria is greater.\n\ncamplobacter is a pretty amazing bacteria its infective dose is just 2 cells whereas other pathogenic bacteria infective doses are of the order of 100s to 1000s per ml\n\n\nfinally fish while cows and chickens and pigs have a number of types of bacteria living in their gut and on their skin that cause food poisoning the bacteria on a fish depend on the waters it lives in and on the boat that caught it\n\n so clean water = clean fish less chance of it having bad bacteria on it and evenless of a chance that it contains bad bacteria in sufficient quantity to cause illness", "I think it's not that the meat itself that's bad, it's the contamination it suffers while being processed.  It (or at least used to be) is not allowed to sell hamburgers here that aren't well done because of contamination being distributed throughout the meat while grinding, but rare steaks are OK, because the contamination is limited to the surface, which get killed because the surface reaches high heat.", "It has to do with the conditions and history of said animals. Industrial chicken coops are REALLY disgusting places, and the antibiotics are really the only thing keeping them alive. I believe these chemicals are the reason we're cautioned (speculation) but it's the unnatural living conditions that we force them into that really makes it necessary. \nPigs are pretty similar, except it more focuses on genetic engineering over the last few decades that drive that. Look up trichinosis and see if you want to fuck with that.\nALL WHOLE MEAT IS SAFER THEN COMPARABLE GROUND MEAT. It does have to do with penetration of bacteria. \nSalt water doesn't kill bacteria, at least not the kind that reside in salt water fish. We eat fish raw because they are generally wild, and you still shouldn't eat a lot of types of fish raw. The ones that generally aren't have higher levels of parasites, which tends to be fish that are popular but are bottom feeders (Cod, Catfish, Halibut). Look at the eyes of a fish. If they are clean and clear you will probably be OK. But if you want to be safe just cook the damn thing.\nAll raw products have bacteria, virtually EVERYTHING has bacteria, it's a matter of whether or not it will hurt you. If you're older than 12 and younger than 60 and have a reasonably strong immune system, you will probably not die. Consider yourself lucky that you live in a time when all of your food can be made safe (for now, we'll see in the long run).\nTL;DR Bacteria/Americans are pussies.\n  ", "I apologize if someone has already said this but pork muscle is where the tapeworm can be found in its cyst stage.  If humans eat improperly cooked pork, they may ingest a viable cyst. Said cyst then begins the next stage of its life cycle in the abdominal tract where they feed off of our nutrients and reproduce.\nThis is one of the wonders of nature that I point out when one of my students asks me, \"why do we have to know all this shit if we're not going to be a stupid scientist?\"\nEdit: sorry, forgot what subreddit this is? EILI5: If you eat pork that's not cooked enough, you could get a tapeworm and that sucks.", "Here in Germany we eat minced raw pork. It's called Mett and the best thing ever: _URL_0_", "Maybe a bit late, but here's what i know:\nSo i had a case of anxiety, concerning food poisoning, and became completely obsessive about how food was cooked by anyone who would prepare it for me. \nFish can be eaten raw, although it have to be frozen for at least 24 hours first. there can be natural parasites in fish, which dies when they freeze. thus making it safe to eat. \nPork also have parasites, and in order for them to die it needs to be cooked too a temperature of 75 degrees celsius in the middle.\nin Beef however there are no parasites, but there may be bacteria on the outside of the meat so the outside have to be heated, of course fresh meat is used in dishes as beef tartare, which reduces risks. if the cow was suffering from mad-cow disease however, eating the red meat might get you sick as well. (wouldn't be food poisoning but something worse) \nHope that answered parts of the question. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FmIQvAuJZXc/ShIm1PBngrI/AAAAAAAAB1Y/yZ_eZC8LZpw/s400/chickensashimi.jpg"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphyllobothrium"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett"], []]}
{"q_id": "4tb8x9", "title": "how come video game characters render in the \"t\" position?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tb8x9/eli5_how_come_video_game_characters_render_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5fz6fg", "d5fznuy", "d5g0sj1", "d5g2po0", "d5g2qdl", "d5g70pp", "d5g7qqq", "d5gg0vx", "d5glt5h", "d5gwecs"], "score": [16, 7, 364, 2, 2, 5, 2, 121, 2, 4], "text": ["Just a convention. Sometimes other poses are used.\n\nAs far as I can tell, it just seemed to be a relatively convenient position that was roughly in the middle of motion ranges for most models, which helped with things like them not looking terrible. Take a look at some discussion threads on other sites to get a better explanation than what I can give.\n\n_URL_0_", "The T position is the easiest way to 3D model a character as well as the easiest way to hand it over to the next person to rig.  A rig is the bones of the character - ie. what makes the character move. When the T position is used they can easily place the 'bones' and 'joints' in the correct spots. A T position is also considered more of a neutral position - not much in terms of muscle flexing or bending. This also helps the rigger when it comes to moving the character into these positions for the 'bones' to move and act correctly. They then can set up the script for how much each 'bone' pulls at the 3D model's polygons to move and act as close to natural as possible.", "The T-pose is the easiest way to model and rig a character - just extrude the polygons at the sides of the chest to create arms, when rigging the character the bones can be placed flat in a line.\n\nUnfortunately, while it's the easiest way to model a character, it also creates awful topology at the shoulders since it's a completely unnatural pose, with no defined shoulder blades. That perhaps didn't matter so much when the model in question is low poly, as older video game characters were, [but higher poly models with more accurate anatomy will more commonly be modelled in a more natural pose where the arms are around 45-degrees from the body.](_URL_0_)", "Aside from what a lot have said already, the T possition is also the position that many draw new characters in along with a front, 3/4ths and side position as well. \n\nThey then give these concept characters to the modelers to work on and depending on the program they could if they wanted load the drawing into the 3d program to use as a template which makes it easier to match the details.", "Usually, the models of the characters are created in a T pose, as this allows the modellers and riggers to more easily create the models and rigs. For example, when looking at a wireframe character side-on, if they have their arms down by their side it's very confusing since from side angles, the arms and torso are all inline.\n\nOf course, the T pose looks unnatural, so they apply an animation (even just an idle do-nothing animation) which keeps the arms down by the character's sides. If, due to a bug, this animation is not applied, the character will be in their default T pose.", "The two main human poses to model in are the \"T\" pose (legs straight down, arms straight out to the side) and the \"A\" pose ( feet apart arms down 45 degrees).\n\nModellers tend to prefer the \"A\" pose because it's a more natural resting position for muscles and looks better, it's also easier to skin because with the legs apart you get less influence overlap. Riggers tend to prefer the \"T\" pose because it's easier to set up IK systems if they align either vertically or horizontally. The \"T\" pose aligns the arms horizontally, and the legs vertically, so setting up an IK joint chain for the arms and legs doesn't need to be done off axis.", "Because, as others have said, you need to rig the model. This basically means putting bones inside the model. Every bone has an area of influence, that is, which vertices on the model it affects (what vertices will move along with the bone when you animate it).   \nNow, if the arms were close to the body, it would be a tedious task to delimit the spheres of influence of the bones inside the arms and of the bones inside the trunk of the body, because those spheres of influence would ovelap. But if the arms are as in the T pose, it doesn't matter if those spheres of influence are a bit wider than the thickness of the actual arm, because they extend into air.", "It has nothing to do with modelling and everything to do with character rigging. In the early days of 3D character rigging, riggers preferred the **\"T\"** because it was very easy to paint skin weights onto.\n\nOnce model fidelity got to the point where people wanted to see better shoulder/elbow/knee deformation, a pose called the **\"A\"** pose became in vogue. This has the arms sloping downward and the elbows bent a little.\n\nA few riggers preferred a different pose called the **\"Y\" pose**, where your arms are up and elbows are very bent. And I've even worked with a few technical artists who preferred the **\"motorcycle pose\"** where you try to bend every joint in the body (which ends up with someone looking like they're riding a motorcycle.)\n\nBut then came motion capture retargeting, and HIK. \"Motion capture retargeting\" is the wonderful world of capturing motion with one skeleton and then remapping it onto another skeleton. The most common tool for this in the industry is Autodesk's Motionbuilder and the HumanIK rig (though there are several others.) These tools standardized on the \"T\" pose to make the solve stronger, bringing the whole thing full circle.\n\nsource: 10 years as a techartist, yo.", "In addition to rigging, both the \"T\" pose and \"A\" pose reduce the likelihood of over-occlusion under the arms on the sides of the model when baking [ambient occlusion](_URL_0_) maps. If the character was modelled with their arms down by their sides, this would result in dark patches along the sides of the body when their arms lifted up in game.", "They really should just use this pose\n_URL_0_\n\nIt is the best pose. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://polycount.com/discussion/84508/t-pose-what-people-are-using-and-why"], [], ["http://eat3d.com/files/reincarnation_of_raphael.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion"], ["http://pre14.deviantart.net/f9e6/th/pre/f/2014/361/6/6/praise_the_sun_by_immp-d8bfvos.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "5qupij", "title": "how is being dyslexic in symbol languages (chinese, japanese, korean) different from being dyslexic in english?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qupij/eli5_how_is_being_dyslexic_in_symbol_languages/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd2dq0c", "dd2eqq5", "dd2fv0k", "dd2j0zo", "dd2kn29", "dd2maw8", "dd2mncs", "dd2mzyf", "dd2nadv", "dd2ndy4", "dd2nt30", "dd2obe5", "dd2q0mf", "dd2rqpd", "dd2rt2k", "dd2sz74", "dd2tme0", "dd2u16o", "dd2u4dn", "dd2usll", "dd2uzia", "dd2vstt", "dd2xull", "dd2zf7s", "dd2zr9k", "dd2zu66", "dd327i7", "dd335ay", "dd391zq"], "score": [92, 63, 98, 1747, 10, 318, 6, 130, 2, 53, 2, 885, 4, 2, 5, 23, 3, 8, 215, 2, 70, 33, 3, 2, 7, 22, 3, 603, 2], "text": ["Dyslexia is a problem with the brain's interpretation of relating written language to the sounds they make. In a nutshell, there is no difference in how dyslexia affects english-speakers vs East Asian languages.\n\nThe scrambling of letters explanation people give for dyslexia is an analogy for how the brain mixes up sounds/words. It isn't exactly what dyslexia does.\n", "Dyslexia is a condition where the brain struggles to translate a written language to a non written one, ie the voice in your head when you read or write. \n\nProsopagnosia is the inability to recognise faces. So you could look at a person and have no idea who they are until they speak or you recognise their perfume or some other non face que. It is not an inability to see, just to process faces.\n\nDyslexia is similar - you can see the symbols, you know they come together and create meaning, but your brain struggles incredibly hard to figure out what that is.", "Just want to clarify that while Chinese is a symbol language, Korean (hangul) and Japanese (hiragana/katakana) are alphabetical, though they often refer back to the Chinese symbols (especially in Japanese). ", "I am dyslexic and it is actually quite commonly said that dyslexia doesn't exist in China, it's a bit more complex than that, but basically, the characters do not affect dyslexics in the same way as letters do. \n\nThese are a few interesting links that should tell you more, firstly an article about someone who is severely dyslexic in English but not at all in Japanese - _URL_1_\n\nThe second is an article on the discovery that chinese 'dyslexics' actually suffer from a deficiency in a totally different part of the brain to english ones - _URL_0_\n", "I am dyslexic and its not that you see stuff backwards its that the siginaling from your brain to you hands gets messed up amd I end up writing the wrong letter or 8 just skip words all together when I write. I really hate grammar Nazi btw", "On a side note: Korean, or Hangul, is read kinda like English. Korean \"symbols\" are actually just a few letters crammed into a little block. It's like taking the word \"talk\" and rearranging the letters in a 2x2 grid:\n\nt a\nl k\n\nEdit: words ", "My dyslexia doesn't allow me to write down the correct number on a piece of paper or say it correctly. I always manage to be a full power off. IE 1,234.56 - >  12,345.6 or 1,234.56 - >  123.45\n\nIf I see the number physically or hear it I have no issue. I do know if I formulate the number in my head I have a 50% of output it wrong.", "I have dyslexia and have studied about dyslexia previously. Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty similar to dyspraxia, dyscalculia and ADHD. All of the overlap and it is extremely common to have more than one (I have dyslexia and dyspraxia). \n\nDyslexia has a lot more to it than just have difficulty reading and writing, it come with difficulties in memory, attention, word finding, organisation, time management and so many other areas. Other language difficulties can include difficulties knowing which sentence particles to use, confusing similar or opposite words (e.g. Left and right), difficulty structuring sentences so that they make sense, and knowing which tense to use and the different conjugation of words (e.g. What is the past tense of 'write'). These are all things that would be experienced regardless of the language you speak/read. \n\nAs an adult my main difficulties are not to do with reading and writing, they are to do with memory and organising my though processes. I make a lot of speech errors, I find it very hard to explain things in a logical way even though they make perfect sense in my head. In terms of writing my difficulties are in structuring my ideas. I do still have difficulty with reading and writing but I've learned to manage this over the years. \n\nTL;DR there is a lot more to dyslexia that spelling and reading, most of which would happen regardless of the language used. ", "Dyslexia/Dysorthography in Polish are also much different than in English.  \n_URL_0_\n\nPs. You could be dyslectic in one language and not in other.", "Good question, but an FYI. Korean is actually a phonetic language, and is in some ways, easier to use than english.", "So there are a few different levels of severity when we talk about dyslexia--there's the one that's commonly thought of when you say \"dyslexia\" that generally results from auditory processing difficulties during critical developmental periods where people mix up the phonemes of speech sounds, sometimes due to frequent ear infections, and there are the deeper forms of dyslexia where people actually look at the word \"giraffe\" and think \"cow! wait, no, giraffe?\".\n\nThe sound processing one is the typical dyslexia and it starts with speech sounds. If your brain hears different sounds when you're learning letters (someone says \"dog\" and shows you D O G while you hear \"bog\" once in a while) you're going to create neuronal associations that aren't typical, which sometimes persist into adulthood.", "My understanding is that dyslexia is primarily (in about 80% of cases) a disorder of phonemic processing; i.e. the capacity of the brain to order sounds into meaningful chunks. I assume that languages which represent *meaning* with characters such as Chinese and Japanese take some of this work out the equation: for example the Japanese character for fire (\u706b) can be pronounced a few different ways, but it always has the meaning \"fire.\" This versus English and other languages whose writing only carries meaning *after* you've done the phonemic assembly required, meaning that \"f.i.r.e.\" means nothing until you've put the letters together and translated them mentally into a sound. I would assume that what you would see in languages like Chinese and Japanese is people with dyslexia having an easier time unless something was written in the phonetic Pinyin or Kana (for Chinese and Japanese, respectively) at which point presumably some of the phonemic processing issues would emerge. \n\nThere is also a small subset of dyslexics (20% or so) where the issue lies in visual/spatial processing, and has to do with the brain not being able to correctly mentally orient letters. I imagine for these folks Chinese might be a little easier because the complexity of the characters would help you to find the meaning regardless of its perceived orientation, but you would probably still have a hard time. \n\nSource: I'm a pediatric occupational therapist who has read some books and articles in addition to working with lots of kiddos with language-based learning disabilities. The piece about dyslexia being based in phonemic and sometimes spatial processing is well-established neuroscience. The piece about why it might be different in pictographic languages is my educated speculation, so let the reader beware. ", "Obviously our P's, b's, and d's are very similar.  Same with lots of other of our letters.  It isn't as bad in certain languages because of subtle differences in the characters in general and written stroke patterns.\n\nSource: am person with dysgraphia dyslexia who can read Japanese katakana with little trouble.", "As someone who suffers from mild dyslexia (mostly when there are multiple rows of text such as in a book, i get stuck on the same line a few times, or re read a word a few times) \n\nI do not suffer any difficulty in japanese, i am currently learning japanese and i find that the kanji is very easy for me to remember.\n\nHowever, i do find that the katakana are very difficult for me to remember as they are in many cases quite similar, also in hiragana i struggle with \u308fwa\u3000\u308cre\u3000\u306dne and also \u3081me\u3000and \u306cnu\n\n", "Purely anecdotal, and without any formal training in learning disabilities, but from my experience teaching English in Japan I think it can exist for Japanese people l. How would i know if I'm teaching them English? \n\nWell i have a few kid students who have severe trouble memorizing the alphabet as well as reading and writing basic words. All children struggle at first but these are long term students who still can't even spell their names after studing for years. I speak japanese and ive started testing their japanese ability and even asked their parents about their regular school work and it seems they have a lot of trouble in school with Japanese. One kid couldnt even write his own name in Japanese as a 3rd grader in elementary. These kids are otherwise normal. ", "Just saying, the Korean language are not symbols, they don't have a meaning in each character. While Japanese (kanji) , Chinese do", "My understanding is that there are many, many types of dyslexias, too numerous and can exhibit themselves in various intensity. While phonemic processing may be one type that some dyslexics suffer less with iconographic scripts, there are others (ex. difficulty navigating through tables) that they would do rather badly in, regardless of what language type is used. ", "There is a profound difference in the number of dyslexics between English and Japanese speakers.\n\nThis article places it at 5-6% dyslexics among English speakers compared to 1.5% in speakers of Japanese.\n\n_URL_0_", "Just a side point... Korean is actually a phonetic language with an alphabet -- much more phonetic than English.  You could learn to read it in about 20 minutes if you have the time.  So dyslexia in Korea is pretty much the same as in English\n\n(Source, I've been living and studying in Korea now for several years)", "I'm suffering from dysgraphia, it's kinda like dyslexia but with writing (the \"drawing\" movements) and when I write language with Roman alphabet I can't write much more than 2-3 pages at the time while in japanese I could write a book (actually I don't know enough words for that but one day, maybe) without having intense pain in my fingers. That's a great way to face this problem and I'm still learning (second year at high school in France)", "Korean is NOT a \"symbol language\", btw. It has an alphabet like English. In fact, considering how shit our spelling system is, we're practically a symbol language compared to it.", "Korean is not a \"symbol language\" if by that you mean logographical. If Korean is a \"symbol language\" then so is every language in Europe. \n\nJapanese is hardly one, too. They use occasional logographs but also have an alphabetic system.  \n\nEdit: OP you might enjoy this:\n\n_URL_0_", "i think to get the conversation started on the right foot, we should all be aware that Korean is not a symbol language.", "Dyslexia is a problem with the brain's interpretation of relating written language to the sounds they make. In a nutshell, there is no difference in how dyslexia affects english-speakers vs East Asian languages.\n\nThe scrambling of letters explanation people give for dyslexia is an analogy for how the brain mixes up sounds/words. It isn't exactly what dyslexia does.\n\nAnd now I am an expert too!", "Korean is not symbolic, it's alphabetic.\n\nJapanese is a mixture of both symbolic and alphabetic. \n\nAnecdotally, it's very easy to be dyslexic in Chinese script and to even \"lose\" the written language. With an alphabet, like Hangul or Latin, it's hard to forget because you use letters to construct words and sounds - words are always being built when written or said without much memorization. Chinese characters don't carry sound and so must be memorized. If you didn't do well in school, you're kind of screwed. ", "I'm not an expert in dyslexia but am a Chinese speaker.\n\nWritten Chinese is not an alphabetic or syllabic language so dyslexia in Chinese is not really related with how sounds are represented but how the symbols are written. You know, Chinese characters are actually made up of components put in specific positions and written using a specific stroke order. If any of those components/strokes are **1)** missing or superfluous (e.g. \u5929 \"sky\" vs \u5927 \"big\", \u65e5 \"sun\" vs \u76ee \"eye\"), **2)** put in the wrong place (e.g. \u592a \"very\" vs \u72ac \"dog\", \u672c \"book/root\" vs \u672a \"not yet\" vs \u672b \"end\"), or **3)** wrongly written (e.g. \u7530 vs \u7531 vs \u7532), it could cause problems for the readers.\n\n**Examples:**\n_URL_5_\nIn the the circled character above, some strokes are missing. (The correct form would be \u9e97 )\n\n_URL_6_\nHere the upper part of the character is horizontally mirrored.\n\n_URL_2_\nIn image 1.9, the second character (\u592b) has an extra horizontal stroke.\n\nIn image 1.11, the characters are supposed to be \u5531\u6b4c , which means in this case the left and right of the first character got reversed, and the wrong component is used in the right hand side of the second word.\n\nApart from the mistakes in how a character is written, there are also problems with the mixing up of characters similar in form or related in meaning.\n\n**Examples:**\n_URL_1_\nIn image 1.1, \u6a7e (ancient wheel hub) is used instead of \u6fa1 (bath).\nIn image 1.2, \u70ae (a cannon) is used instead of \u8dd1 (to run).\n\nIn image 1.3, \u56de\u5b78 should be \u56de\u6821 . This happens because \u5b78 and \u6821 are often used together. (\u5b78\u6821 means school)\n\nOf course there are a host of other symptoms but I guess the above are several of the more obvious.\n\n**More examples:**\n_URL_0_\n_URL_4_\n\n**Reference** (in Chinese): _URL_3_\n\nEdit: formatting", "Dyslexia is mainly a problem between the spoken and the written language. It can happen when you read or write. In general when you have it with writing the fingers type faster than you actually think the word, so in many cases certain letters are mixed up. And even when you read that word, with dyslexia your brain doesn't recognize that you mixed these two letters up.  \n  \nI would imagine that this goes for all languages as people that have dyslexia in one language in general also have it in a 2nd or 3rd one they might learn.  \n  \nNow there are ways how to help kids with that and today with computers and word you barely see this happen in the everyday world as we all sometimes type faster than we think. And word knows how to correct these little problems quite well. ", "Hey Redditor!\n\nMy degree background is in Psycholinguistics, which is basically put: understanding how language functions in the brain. \n\nI actually did a research project on dyslexia and hope I can be a help explaining it.\n\nSo, symbol languages, in linguistic terms, is called a logographic system. This basically means that the language is communicate (in writing systems) through logos, or symbols, representing - usually - a \"chunk\" or what is called a morpheme. A combination of these morphemes in a particular pattern and combination represent a word or phrase.\n\nLanguages like English are considered alphabetic (cause - you know - the alphabet).\n\nThere's a lot of different things to consider you'd need more information from studying to field, but basically our ability to read has mapped on to previously developed parts of the brain, utilizing their functions to process language. For alphabetic system, they are usually called \"t-junctions\" meaning before modern times, letter like the \"o\" weren't actually round, but were a series of lines making almost a diamond shape that has altered over the years to the circular \"o\" we all know and love.\n\nAlphabetic languages actually access a part of the brain (which I can't currently recall) that has to do with your lexical phonetic storage system - meaning you link the letter to a specific sound (with has its variations between words in English... but that's a different topic all together). That is how it is simply organized.\n\nLogographic systems actually activate parts of the visual cortex not activated in alphabetic systems (or only activated minimally). There are actually MRI testing that has been done on this demonstrating the results.\n\nWhat's really cool is the fact that because these two systems of writing/reading don't full connect, a person who is dyslexic in one system, such as English, could be fully able to read and write with easy in another system, like Japanese, because of this lack of overlap between logographic and alphabet systems (you can find case studies on this which are actually pretty rad!) \n\nThere is much debate as to why dyslexia happens in the first place, but some of the best journal articles dispute that it has to do with the fact that writing and reading is a relatively new systems to our brains, and might have to do with the fact we are utilizing previous skills for other task that have evolved in our brain, to map the ability to read and write and make it accessible.\n\nIf you have any questions about it, or want me to send some academic literature your way, PLEASE reach out! I nerd out over stuff like this  < 3", "Korean is alphabetic, with each 'block' made up of a Consonant, then vowel, and third consonant.\n\nJapanese had two alphabets, Hiragana, consistanting od 46 symbols, katakana, effectively cursive/bold and Witten with sharp letters. Kanji is the Japanese name for Chinese characters used in Japanese script, and I'd slowly dying out, expecially with smart phones.\n\nKorea only stoped using Chinese characters after World War Two themselves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chinese", "https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/sep/23/research.highereducation2"], [], [], [], [], ["http://gindrich.tripod.com/dyslexiainPolish.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/sep/23/research.highereducation2"], [], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographies_and_dyslexia"], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/o3bLkJ0.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/lNnGoN1.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/fWXeril.jpg", "http://teachlike.hk/page.aspx?corpname=teachlike&amp;i=8044", "http://i.imgur.com/d0F4J0m.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/jB7ZX81.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/tyqyfm1.jpg"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6jw33w", "title": "how come software companies have to wait for hackers to find weaknesses in their system and not just figure it out themselves before rolling out a software package?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jw33w/eli5_how_come_software_companies_have_to_wait_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djhf7f3", "djhfjst", "djhfz0v", "djhg9ni", "djhgadi", "djhgnbx", "djhhx5w", "djhi1s1", "djhn26p", "dji0u9s", "dji43tb"], "score": [3, 5, 131, 39, 2, 3, 2, 5, 56, 2, 5], "text": ["There is a job called 'Pentester', i think, who are hackers for a job and on a legal base. They get hired by companies to test their networks and softwares for weaknesses.\nI hope i could answer your question ^^", "Let me rephrase the question:\n\nHow come hay distributors have to wait for professional needle hunters to find the needles in their haystacks instead of just finding the needles themselves before shipping the hay?\n\nHopefully that puts the scope of the problem in the correct frame of reference.  Hay distributors are not trained to find needles, and don't need to be, as 99.98% of all hay has no needles in it.\n\nOf course, looking at it the other way, ALL software has bugs in it; there are more possible logic paths that can be taken than a software developer can test for before publishing.  If they followed all logical paths and accounted for them, it would be faster and cheaper to do the task manually than to use computer software.  So developers pick some arbitrary point in testing as \"good enough\" and some set up a bug bounty reporting system for post-publish discovery.", "Try to think about all the ways you could break into your home if you were a burglar.  You get a bit of an advantage because you live there and know the layout.\n\nNow, ask 1 million burglars how they would break into your home.  I guarantee they will find at least one way that you don't.  All the internal testing in the world will never be as comprehensive as a huge number of people in your system finding things accidentally (or not accidentally).", "Software companies find 1001 vulnerabilities and close them before anyone knows about them. Most before its ever released. But ultimately developers are people and people don't always see everything, especially when it comes to their own works. \n\nSo hackers find the 1002nd vulnerability and exploit it. \n\nGood developers never stop looking for those holes in their software but you can't expect them to think of every scenario. There are far more hackers than  any one developer group has developers so it only makes sense that they can sometimes find holes before the developers can. ", "It's a nice concept in theory, but sometimes it's just not practical.  You and I might want a perfectly bug-free application, but sometimes the goal is just to be first to market.  If the product doesn't sell, then you scrap it and you didn't waste time fixing bugs to begin with.\n\nAnd obviously a thorough coder will try to cover any security holes as they are able, but another set of eyes will reveal things the author will not see...extend that out to the worldwide hacking community and there's bound to be *somebody* that will find a hole the company never would have on their own.", "You write a program\n\nYou write it 99% bug free, there are 1% issues now.\n\nYou have peer reviews when you're checking it in, they catch 99% of issues, you're now at 0.01% issues.\n\nYour QA team checks it over and Pentesters try to break it, they find some other bugs and remove 99% of the remaining issues.  Your code is now 99.9999% bug free.  Yay!\n\nYou release it into the wild.\n\nIf it is only somewhat popular and doesn't contain anything really valuable maybe no one every finds the bugs\n\nIf its really popular or contains/protects/operates something really valuable you're now a huge target.  There are now hundreds or thousands of software engineers pouring over your code trying to find a breach.  It is possible for there to be 10-1000x as many people searching for a breach once its out in the wild as touched it when it was in production.  You have way more eyes looking at it from so many different perspectives that someone will find something.\n\nNo code is 100% bug free, and its not possible to ensure that it is.  Sometimes built in functions provided by Windows or core HTTP functionality gets broken and there is nothing you can do to stop that.\n\nSecurity is about the most effective protection for the most reasonable cost.  If you are a small software developer you will never successfully defend against a nationstate attacker so if Russia wants to breach your system they're getting in so you just focus on making it fairly secure so the average script kiddy isn't going to get through", "Finding and fixing bugs costs money.  Finding all would cost a fortune.  You also have to ship the product - delays means costs.    \n\nSo you ship buggy code or you go out of business. ", "There is a more fundamental problem than others have mentioned.  If my business goes offline because Windows had a bug that allowed a hacker to shut me down, I suffer damage, but Microsoft does not. \n\nEconomically, the people who buy the software are the ones who have the incentive to make it hack-proof, but they have no ability to do so.  The developers, who get to choose how much time and effort they spend making their software hack-proof, have very little incentive to do so.\n\nUntil at least some of the economic harm caused by hackers falls on the companies who write the hacked software, they will always under invest in making their software bullet-proof.\n\nI am *not* saying they put no effort in, but ask any senior person in any software QA group in any company, and they will tell you that QA is underfunded in their company.", "There's an old story about a programmer that found the most obvious bugs in his software, then passed it over to his beta-tester.\n\nPart of the game took place in a cafeteria, and the programmer had written a 'red herring' into the game: the player could take a napkin from the dispenser on the table, but the napkin had absolutely no use anywhere in the game.\n\nThe tester submitted a bug report that said, 'Game crashes when taking more than 999 napkins from the dispenser in the cafeteria'.\n\nThe tester had done something that apparently serves no purpose; since it was a text-only game, that meant that the tester had sat at his keyboard and typed 'get napkin from dispenser' 999 times in a row, for no real reason.\n\nThe programmer later said, 'I hadn't bothered to test the dispenser, because it never occurred to me that someone might actually attempt to take a thousand completely useless objects.'\n", "They don't, they definitely do find vulnerabilities in house. You just don't hear or care about these cause nobody reports \"software development going according to plan, all is alright\".", "While everyone else here is going to give you broad answers, the difficulty involved, and much with the uttering of statistics and the doing of things, etc. The truth is more complicated. This is not a problem with security not being given due attention per-se, but rather a consequence of our field's lack of practicing good engineering. Let me explain from an example in a different field: Construction. On 9/11 two planes much larger than the engineers had ever foreseen crashed into them. Despite an event that critically wounded the tower, it remained upright for about half an hour. But they overbuilt the towers, they stayed up long enough for many to escape. The lessons learned from that collapse are now considered in future designs -- many planned skyscraper builds went back to the drawing board after, to be redesigned to account for this. \n\n\nSome of the very first laws in human history detail building codes -- \"If a builder buildeth a house, and it collapses and kills its owner, the builder shall be put to death.\" All of our buildings are built upon the knowledge of previous failures. Their designs are open to public inspection. There are libraries upon libraries filled with analysis and standards. All work (should) be inspected, and engineers cross-check with each other at every step of the design process, and even during construction. The towers stayed up as long as they did because humanity has had over 8,000 years of engineers learning how to build better buildings, and all of the lessons they have learned, we can learn today. \n\n\nIn my field... none of this happens. Designs are black boxed, considered trademarked, trade secrets, copyrighted, patented -- the point is, most of our technology is most certainly not available for public inspection. Consequently, when it fails we learn nothing. So why not? Because corporations don't want to admit to wrongdoing, so they blame esoteric reasons far removed from this truth. And so our community learns nothing about the failure, cannot conduct a root cause analysis, and cannot share this information with anyone so our mistakes are learned from. \n\n\nWorse, we have to redesign things from scratch most usually every time. Our software isn't modular (like buildings are). We rarely incorporate well-tested previous designs. In fact, the industry is actively averse to using a proven design because by the time its proven, it's considered \"out of date\". Put another way: We reinvent the wheel with every new model of car. \n\n\nBecause of all of these things, a person in our field, no matter how gifted, can only rise to the level of their own competence. They have no shoulders to stand on, and, being human, and unable to communicate with very many other humans for the aforementioned reasons, there are inevitably mistakes. \n\n\nThis is why \"hackers\" will win in every contest. Security is only as strong as the weakest link, and with all of these problems, it's almost a statistical certainty they will find not just one, but very many. The problem isn't that companies design badly, or that they didn't invest enough in security. The problem is that no matter how much of an effort you make... it's *your* effort only, not the collective efforts of hundreds of thousands of people. And so we are left with things like cell phones that can catch fire and kill us. We're left with hospitals all over Europe right now that aren't functional because of a \"cyber attack\". Everything that has a microprocessor in it has bugs. And as our society becomes increasingly dependent on information systems, this problem will only increase exponentially. \n\n\nWe don't need 8,000 years to fix these problems. Aviation is a relatively new field -- we only started a hundred years ago, and yet thanks to proper engineering *practice*, by applying first principles, it is now the safest way to fly. But until we start applying those principles, our technology will continue to with increasing frequency and severity. Security is defined properly as \"the computer doing what you want it to do, and not doing what you don't want it to do.\" Whether it's a hacker or an \"oops\" -- the end result is the same. And proper engineering would prevent both. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "mb1s5", "title": "the cthulhu mythos", "selftext": "I was wanting to pick up the books as I love most all mythology and such.  I would like to know as much as possible, books to read and things to watch.  I'm not bothered whether it's just a synopsis you give or a fully fledged answer.  Thanks", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mb1s5/eli5_the_cthulhu_mythos/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2zj7f0", "c2zjhpf", "c2zjm5u", "c2zmbca", "c2zj7f0", "c2zjhpf", "c2zjm5u", "c2zmbca"], "score": [9, 8, 9, 2, 9, 8, 9, 2], "text": ["H.P. Lovecraft wrote a whole bunch of really creepy books.  Many of them deal with ideas about ancient monsters and aliens which are too complex, strange, otherworldly, or terrible for human minds to comprehend.  He explores themes of sanity and fear in his works, and often describes his creatures in purely metaphorical terms.\n\nI'm not sure whether all of Lovecraft's stories are considered to take part in the same setting or universe or not.  I know they don't all include the same characters, as many of his protagonists end up dead or insane.  Also, other authors have since expanded on and added to Lovecraft's work.", "I suggest the H.P. lovecraft literary podcast. They summarize and discuss a different lovecraft work (in mostly chronological order) each episode. I've never read any lovecraft books but have really been enjoying it. ", "If humans were computers, then the Cthulhu mythos are magnets. Any contact that a human has with one of Lovecraft's creatures screws them up some how. Some only see/hear/smell it once and they are screwed up for life. One magnet is shaped like a squid, while another is shaped like a toaster. Regardless of how the magnet is shaped, by the time it gets close to you, your data is screwed.", "Okay, so there are a bunch of GIANT SCARY MONSTERS living EVERYWHERE in space. And these fuckers are so GIANT/SCARY that half the time Earth is so freaking tiny to them they don't even notice it. These guys tend to wipe out entire civilizations when being actively dicked with. The most well renowned one was written by H.P. Lovecraft, that one is called Cthulhu, a giant apocalyptic monster slumbering in a city called R'lyeh. If someone ever wakes him up, he destroys everything everywhere forever. Humanity comes first. There were a lot of monsters introduced by lots of other writers, but Cthulhu is the most well known. So basically:\n\n* Big damned monsters capable of destroying existence\n\n* More than one writer made it into the canon\n\n* These monsters(even the nice ones)don't really trouble themselves thinking about us tiny little humans. Also looking at them will drive you insane.\n\nEdit: R'lyeh is underneath the ocean.", "H.P. Lovecraft wrote a whole bunch of really creepy books.  Many of them deal with ideas about ancient monsters and aliens which are too complex, strange, otherworldly, or terrible for human minds to comprehend.  He explores themes of sanity and fear in his works, and often describes his creatures in purely metaphorical terms.\n\nI'm not sure whether all of Lovecraft's stories are considered to take part in the same setting or universe or not.  I know they don't all include the same characters, as many of his protagonists end up dead or insane.  Also, other authors have since expanded on and added to Lovecraft's work.", "I suggest the H.P. lovecraft literary podcast. They summarize and discuss a different lovecraft work (in mostly chronological order) each episode. I've never read any lovecraft books but have really been enjoying it. ", "If humans were computers, then the Cthulhu mythos are magnets. Any contact that a human has with one of Lovecraft's creatures screws them up some how. Some only see/hear/smell it once and they are screwed up for life. One magnet is shaped like a squid, while another is shaped like a toaster. Regardless of how the magnet is shaped, by the time it gets close to you, your data is screwed.", "Okay, so there are a bunch of GIANT SCARY MONSTERS living EVERYWHERE in space. And these fuckers are so GIANT/SCARY that half the time Earth is so freaking tiny to them they don't even notice it. These guys tend to wipe out entire civilizations when being actively dicked with. The most well renowned one was written by H.P. Lovecraft, that one is called Cthulhu, a giant apocalyptic monster slumbering in a city called R'lyeh. If someone ever wakes him up, he destroys everything everywhere forever. Humanity comes first. There were a lot of monsters introduced by lots of other writers, but Cthulhu is the most well known. So basically:\n\n* Big damned monsters capable of destroying existence\n\n* More than one writer made it into the canon\n\n* These monsters(even the nice ones)don't really trouble themselves thinking about us tiny little humans. Also looking at them will drive you insane.\n\nEdit: R'lyeh is underneath the ocean."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cnbov", "title": "classical music is still relevant es ever. nevertheless how come there are no longer super star composers like in earlier times and how do you actually transcend undying music of genius composers to be relevant today?", "selftext": "Yes, I am aware of world star performers like David Garret, Lang Lang but they still perform old repertoires  90% of the time. The closest star composer I know is Ludovico Einaudi but the music still sounds very modern and different. Is it because classical music no longer has a monopoly and because the world has become more diverse? \n\nTL;DR where is the next Beethoven or Vivaldi?\n\nThank you\n\nEdit: \u201eas ever\u201c as opposed to \u201ees ever\u201c", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cnbov/eli5_classical_music_is_still_relevant_es_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxg7tub", "dxg7z5b", "dxg8i5d", "dxga2yj", "dxgbxmy", "dxgjdl4", "dxgo5h1", "dxgtfbk", "dxh0f0g", "dxh46gt", "dxhd6wd", "dxhdho8", "dxhhxvv", "dxhjiwe", "dxhp2y2", "dxi686b", "dxiar70", "dxjb395"], "score": [15, 208, 21, 4, 8, 2, 2, 11, 3, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It\u2019s in film. John Williams is a great example of a symphonic composer. Old classical symphonies and ballets and operas were the entertainment of the day. Now we see movies, and amazing music is written for them. We might think it\u2019s \u201cjust\u201d a movie soundtrack, but the music can be held to the same standard as classical operas etc. ", "Well, the landscape of classical music changed a lot over the course of the last hundred and fifty years because there are other means of entertainment. It used to be that classical music was the music of the common man, but now it has the appearance of an aristocratic activity. Composers writing academic art music aren\u2019t necessarily writing for a wider audience, rather they\u2019re writing for academically trained composers like themselves. That doesn\u2019t mean that there aren\u2019t composers that everyone knows these days, take John Williams or Hans Zimmer for example. They\u2019re writing for the most popular media of today just like how Puccini, Verdi or Wagner wrote for opera, which was the most popular media in the 19th century.", "I like to listen to the musical scores nominated for the Oscars every year. \n\nJohn Williams work is amazing - the Star Wars series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Harry Potter.\n\nJames Newton Howard: the Fugitive, Prince of Tides, the Dark Knight.\n\nJohn Barry - Dances with Wolves (my favourite movie score).", "The Nazis killed it off.\n\nSeriously, since the times of Bach or earlier that had been a trend of increasing complexity, in ways that were sort of designed for intellectual analysis rather than listening to. (Bach is plenty complex too, but in ways that jump out at you at first listen.) This abstractness accelerated through the Romantic period until you get to the Modern period. 12-tone music seems pretty clever when you look at it on paper, but I don't think I'm really going too far out on a limb to say it sounds like shit. That's not what you hear on the classical music radio stations. And a lot of it did come out of Germany, which was the intellectual center of the world at the time. Afterwards, you get the Postmodern period, which has some pretty cool stuff (I'd recommend Philip Glass) but there was basically no further to go in the direction of intellectualism in music. And then of course there was also more competition from lower-brow \"folk\" music, which of course always existed, but could then be more easily recorded and reproduced.", "I studied music composition in college, and there are a couple other points I think might help understand. Pretty much everything said so far is spot on, but the market for New art music is also very limited. You can make some money writing for commercials and tv if you are lucky/good enough to get in but it is highly competitive and like most fields now they want you to start off working for free and doing more than writing the music. I quit altogether because I couldn't find  lucrative work even with a master's degree. Of all the people I knew,  I can only think of maybe one who is making a living at it. \n\nThe other problem with modern art music is that it is kind of hard to get performers to play it. There are people and groups that specialize in modern music but a performer 's bread and butter is still going to be in playing the classic repertoire. Most concert goers don't like new music (sounds like shit or it's scary) and just want to hear the old music. As a performer who needs to pay the bills you have to spend as much time as you can at being the best at what makes money in a very competitive field. Not much time left over to work out new music. \n\nIt's just like any other art. In today's economy with the abundance of talent and lack of real demand it makes the skills almost worthless. ", "You are right to say that \u201cclassical\u201d composers don\u2019t hold the same rock star status they once did. However it all depends what you mean by \u201cclassical\u201d. If you are referring to people composing in the style of the classical period then of course there isn\u2019t anyone famous doing that because music isn\u2019t static, it continues to change. However by saying \u201cclassical\u201d you mean high art music for a large professional musical ensembles then there are plenty of examples of contemporary composers of great renown. Others have already mentioned movie composers, I would contend musicals fall in that category as well. While some may regard them as \u201clow\u201d or \u201ccommercial\u201d in a few centuries we will look at them in the same way we look at the works of Shakespeare (I know he is not a composer but he was the best example I could think of for someone who\u2019s craft was actually quite raunchy and accessible to the masses who now is considered the epitome of high culture). Even among composers who write for other musicians there are \u201crockstars\u201d like Eric Whiteaker who enjoy some degree of mainstream success. Will a composer in this day and age ever be as famous as a pop star? Probably not. But I suspect that the reason history remembers classical composers has a lot less to do with how popular they were during their lifetime and a lot more to with how well their works were documented and talked about by their patrons (usually the rich and the powerful). I would guess that like pop music, the music of the people, folk music, has always been more popular, but until the printing press and recording studio became widely accessible to the masses there was no way of easily documenting and distributing the work of any one artist or band to a wider audience.", "Look at like this, while it is true that most musicians that play classical music only play old pieces it is not true that no more great composers are to come again. If someone were to write a piece of music that sounded like classical music this piece would still be unique in the sense that they aimed to create something similar to the greats. As they continued this trend it might bring about another renaissance of classical music. The only question now is whom will lead us towards this musical rebirth?", "John Adams and Philip Glass are probably the two biggest art music composers today.  Interestingly, they both practice their own unique take on the minimalist style, perfected by Steve Reich.  My sense is that we are in a transition phase culturally.  Our world society is changing and music is changing along with it.  Where things will land is hard to say.  The Internet is transforming so many paradigms.  I find out about new, good music from people who send me links almost instantly.  But it still takes years of effort and study to create anything of high quality.  So society is moving much faster, but composers still have to woodshed their work.  It\u2019s possible the \u2018slow  &  steady\u2019 efforts of composers are, in a sense, time capsules that bypass faster societal development.  So a piece is completed for a society that has changed from when they began.  The Rip Van Winkle school of composing, if you will.  Not a deliberate decision, just a by-product of living in a fast, changing society.", "Throwing my two cents in here, might not be worth anything:\n\nThe Classical circuit became inundated with increasingly experimental music in the 20th century. I've heard some argue that the last original thought in music was the Tristan Chord, which introduced dissonance in the 1860s. Later people like Arnold Schoenberg and Krzysztof Penderecki steered classical music into increasingly atonal directions and there was the similar rise of minimalism/serialism like Philip Glass. While I personally enjoy some of this music (Glass, Corigliano) it can leave a lot of people cold, confused and even angry. Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring's premiere was met with a literal riot, and listening to Glass's solo piano album is tough on a lot of people.\n\nAnd as the classical arena became more and more (pardon the term) academic in their writing, that doesn't appeal to a mass audience. Most people like melody and harmony and a great deal of these composers turn their nose up at this style - G\u00f3recki's minimalist but beautifully melodic Symphony No 3 was outright dismissed by his contemporaries (Story goes fellow composer Boulez shouted \"SHIT!\" at the end of the premiere), yet its one of the few classical works of the last 50 years that has gained real acknowledgement outside the classical music world: in the early nineties, a recording sold something like a million copies in its first year which is unheard of.\n\nSo while there are some amazingly talented people who write for orchestra - Corgliano, Goldenthal, John Williams, John Adams, Joseph Curiale are some I adore - the majority of the movement is not what most people want to hear.", "It only really seems like there are comparatively tons of old superstar composers because we've had hundreds of years to cement them as superstars. Gershwin, Stravinsky, Shastakovich, Cage were all active until the late (or late-ish) 20th century, and they're incredibly well-known composers. Their style of music might be different, but so are the styles of Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Handel. I guarantee you that in another fifty years, someone will ask this same question, and someone else will respond with another fifty years' worth of similar work that has become revered over the passage of time.\n\nThis segues into a phenomenon called \"availability bias\". Essentially, think about the statement, \"They just don't make cars like they used to.\" Well, they actually make cars _better_ than they used to--they generally last longer and crashes in them are more survivable (as well as getting better gas mileage and going faster and so forth). It only seems like old cars lasted longer because the few that lasted, have now lasted a _really long time_ and are impressive for it, and our brains take that notable data point and emphasize it when creating our understanding of time/quality relationships. At the same time, we don't see the ones that didn't last, so we don't think about their non-existence (our brain de-emphasizes them). This overweighting of what is \"available\" is the fundamental characteristic of \"availability bias\" (see also \"survivorship bias\", of which both of these are also examples)", "Most \"classical\" pieces are quite long \\(compared to modern pieces\\) and thus require time aswell as effort to listen to properly. As such they aren't really fit for a society that lives at a speed like today; you can't just listen to a symphony on your 10\\-15 min way to go grocery shopping and indeed not properly while driving at all. These pieces \\- and this gets worse both the longer and the better they are \\- need one's full attention rather than being a relaxing backround while driving and listening to the radio.\n\nOn top of that, they are very difficult to produce, requiring highly skilled artists, while some people with mediocre skills and a computer can produce one \"modern\" piece after another and better fit the speed of today.\n\nLastly, as for where the next Beethoven or Vivaldi are, consider this:\n\n1. They were towering geniuses of a nigh unprecedented caliber in their field.\n2. It may very well be that their form of music \\(the \"classical\" genre so to speak\\) has been maxed out in terms of skill and actual musical beauty.\n\nJust look at Bach's later work; He basically maxed out organ music halfway through his lifetime and though his later works were growing ever more **technically** brilliant and needed near genius level skill to just be played, they weren't any better in terms of musical quality, in fact, less people liked those brilliant works of pure technique and skill.", "interestingly - I just discovered Four Organs by Steve Reich - cool as cold beans - I hear a lot of its influence in post-punk.", "I have a theory on this and just discussed it today.\n\nClassical music is a very well established genre. There is not a lot of room for innovation and creativity - in terms of the genre itself.\n\nMost well-established genres are like this. Country music is similar but still newer than classical. Still, the genre is recognizable.\n\nRock and hip hop are very new, and EDM and electronic music is newer still There are many ways to innovate in the newer areas because it is not yet settled. But hard rock, not so much.  \n\nSo I can imagine a time when people just play rock or rap, with no major stars because, well, been there done that.", "Popularly of the genre, the social aspect of attending concertos (business is now done in the VIP boxes at football games), more acceptability of other kinds of music, the emergence of the 3-minute song, a whole lot! ", "When  it comes to the 'industry' of classical music a lot of the observations here can be boiled down to the following:\n\nComposition schools do not emphasize creating compositions that the public actually wants to hear. And major orchestras are run by people from that same milieu. So work that people enjoy is not commissioned. But they keep making music that is hard to listen to for status, class, and academic snobbery reasons.\n\nThis is not to say all current academic ensemble art music is bad. But it is obvious that large numbers of people don't want to listen to it. Because they don't.\n\nAt the same time composers like Williams, Zimmer, Desplat, and others delight audiences frequently. Outside the concert hall. If the classical music industry actually cared about delighting large audiences they would commission work like that. From new composers. They choose not to.\n\nRelated: for similar reasons many prestige buildings are ugly and leak.", "I wrote a paper arguing that film score composers  --- not all these postmodern composers like John cage --- are the true successors to classical- > romantic- > impressionist line. John Williams is a neo-romantic who (imo) borrowed heavily from Beethoven. Hans Zimmer, being a minimalist, reminds me of the French impressionist at the turn of the century.", "This modern and different type of music is a new style of classical music. In \"classical music there are 4 major time periods, Baroque, classical, Romantic, and modern. Modern is typically what newer composers write it because it's the current style of \"classical\" music just as baroque and romantic were at one point", "Critique people, whom regulates popularity, are really, really slow on recognizing genius if they are not motivated by money and social connections. Generally recognition happens after the genius departs. So maybe a hundred years later, there will be sayings about great musicians and scientists whom we didn't even noticed now.     \n\nAnother reason -I think this one is outright evolution- it takes many years of tests to prove something as worthy of attention and imitation. And those testful years are way more than lifespan of who created that thing.     \n\nIn either cases, good works are mostly done by those who selfless; they work for the work's own sake. They aren't interested in fame and they are generally getting none. On the other hand, with fame comes support -which makes difference in realizing the potential of the genius and increasing the quality of the work. But still, I think it's a lose for society because the genius will perform regardless; as much as he or she can do with available resources and abilities."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52fcxa", "title": "if the majority of both genders have interests in sex, why hasn't our society become open and blatant about who we want to sleep with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52fcxa/eli5_if_the_majority_of_both_genders_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7jrpfd", "d7jsed6", "d7jsm06", "d7ju8yu", "d7jug3x", "d7juwk7", "d7jv99m", "d7jw597", "d7jwn4l", "d7jxmdr", "d7k0z44", "d7k1qe0", "d7k1xrq", "d7k5rzq", "d7k5utf", "d7k7dbi", "d7k7fqz", "d7k8285", "d7k84ri", "d7k8lnj", "d7k8sju", "d7k8wu6", "d7k8yvw", "d7k950x", "d7k96e1", "d7k984b", "d7kadh7", "d7kamfe", "d7kanld", "d7kb01q", "d7kdgpz", "d7ke0sq", "d7keheg", "d7kf00u", "d7kfl3f"], "score": [45, 314, 163, 6, 503, 21, 5, 23, 3, 9, 3, 3, 10, 5, 19, 2, 2, 6, 2, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["I don't think there is a good and simple explanation for this, any more than there is one Christianity is considered the default worldview in the United States or why the Chinese did foot binding and the Japanese did not. (Thanks comments). \"How did the opinion arise that X\" is a question that is rarely answerable in more than vague terms.\n\nCulture is complicated and weird and how it changes over time is very poorly understood.\n\n**Elaboration:** Of course, you can give high level explanations like \"it's generally taboo in Christian settings to talk about sex probably because it's considered a sin in many contexts to have sex and everyone sins like that and has for centuries so it's not done to point out how morally bankrupt everyone is and that you and all your friends are mortal sinners\" but that doesn't really feel like an explanation to me because it doesn't give much of a mechanism for why Christianity has that opinion, and how that opinion got translated from Christian culture to American culture (many things did, others didn't so you need to be able to say why this one did) etc etc.", "I wouldn't say it's immoral,  just very bold and probably going to spin your friendship a little weird.  Just because both genders enjoy sex doesn't mean this one given person will want to have sex with you specifically. ", " >  why is it immoral for me to walk up to her and ask\n\nIt is taboo which is not quite the same thing as immoral. But views on sexuality likely stem from the desire to control the breeding of one's offspring.\n\nConsider that a child requires significant resources to raise. We also should recognize that organisms including humans have an ingrained desire to repoduce which is why sex is desirable in the first place. This leads to a biologically backed desire for partners to maintain the sexual exclusivity of their partners; the male doesn't want to sink resources into raising the offspring of another male while the female doesn't want to dilute resources toward the offspring of another female.\n\nConsidering these urges it is easy to see how constant offers of \"Eyy bby wan sum fuk?\" would tend to disrupt the social order and lead to conflict.  So it was made taboo and then in order avoid justifying the social norm was made into a religious edict.\n\n\n", "It just depends how someone was raised and what they are used to. Your approach might get you laid sometimes, if they're into it. \n\nBut it will likely often be received very poorly as well. A lot of people consider promiscuity to be a negative thing, and approaching them like that may offend them because you are insinuating that they are promiscuous, or that you think they are, and they think that's insulting because they grew up thinking that's bad.\n\nAnd the reason that's such a common attitude goes way back. Not too long ago a girl was expected to stay a virgin until her father could basically trade her to her future husband in exchange for land/title/etc (dowry).  \n\n\nBut if you're at a club/bar having drinks and you're attractive, you might be surprised how often \"hi, wanna skip the bullshit and go fuck?\" actually works.", "It sounds like you're unfamiliar with humans if you're asking that question...\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIgnoring religious views, sex is a nontrivial topic because it can lead to pregnancy (for heterosexuals) and complicate/ruin a friendship between the partners (for any sexuality). The burden of having an unplanned child can be enormous if you're unprepared mentally or financially, and it can be worsened if pregnancy occurs with a random partner (namely, someone to whom you ask, \"wanna fuck in my van?\"). \n\n & nbsp;\n\nIgnoring pregnancy, your relationship with a sexual partner can be harmed if sex is \"unsuccessful\" (e.g., partner 1 didn't enjoy sex with partner 2 and no longer wants sex from this partner. partner 2 still wants sex with partner 1). It can be difficult to distinguish between platonic and sexual feelings for many people.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nLastly, sex can make you physically vulnerable, in the sense that you do it in a private place (e.g., someone's home) and while naked and without immediate access to your personal belongings. This means both partners should trust each other at some level.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThese things combined, many people are hesitant to have sex with partners when they aren't already in a relationship.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Edit**: Many people pointed out that I didn't fully address OP's question and I agree. My guess *why* sex can harm a good friendship is as follows:\n\n\n\nIt might be the limbo of not having a well defined relationship that makes it awkward between non-dating people who have sex together. If you have sex with someone and then start dating, then your relationship has become more concrete and you can make plans for it. If you have sex but don't start dating, then it's unclear whether you two should escalate your relationship into a long-term intimate one, or if you are still available to date other people. Uncertainty in relationships (without considering pregnancy) can be uncomfortable and even frightening.", " > I'm asking for example, if I want to have sex with my friend why is it immoral for me to walk up to her and ask; \"Hey, wanna' go in the back room and fuck?\"\n\nPerhaps because there are often serious consequences to sex. Whether she responds casually to your question or not, and even if she answers affirmatively, you both potentially will be left with serious consequences. When you start off casual, the implication is you're giving each other a pass to disregard the potential serious consequences of your interaction. But what if she gets pregnant? You're probably not off the hook and she definitely is not off the hook no matter what she decides to do with the pregnancy. What if she gives you HIV or some other disease? \n\nSo the question is, if not 'immoral', quite rude because it disregards the seriousness of what you're asking them to do. And that's just the physical, if you include the emotional aspect it gets even ruder. Walking up on someone to hit them up for sex without knowing their history, their tastes, their emotional state both present and in general, their religious beliefs, their marital/relationship status, if female the state of their body (might be currently menstruating or pregnant or just had a baby or something), if male the state of their body that might affect how they feel, any mental imbalance both present and in general, etc. \n\nWhich is not to say it doesn't happen. Generally speaking in the US it is socially accepted that one-night stands/booty calls/hookups happen in or as a result of meeting in nightclubs, bars, dating apps, etc...but when serious consequences result, such as pregnancy or disease, it is judged as immoral because often everyone else (via the government) has to pick up the slack to deal with the financial impact of said hooking up. \n\n", "Because it is a personal and private thing.  If you shout it out, it is like screaming your social securty number.  Not everything deserves the private you.", "Among other reasons stated in comments, sex is incredibly intimate, perhaps the most intimate thing two(or more) people can engage in with each other.  \n\nJust as you don't walk up to someone you don't know and ask them...well pretty much anything beyond simple directions, or the time, or small talk, you don't engage in extremely intimate things like what they feel like, or what they are thinking, or if they want to have sex.  \n\n", "There are cultures which view sex with a much more blas\u00e9 attitude than the United States (assuming that's the \"society\" you're referring to). The U.S. happens to have a very conservative view of it, largely because of widely-held religious beliefs. It's gotten better (or worse, depending on your perspective) recently with more casual hookups and things but the underlying principals are still there. ", "Stranger in a Strange Land touches on this subject. Main character starts a religion where it is the norm.", "We used to be. It was called the 60's and 70's. Then HIV/AIDs happened and scared everyone.", "Let's say I want to go on a road trip. (1) I'm not going to ask just any old person to go on a road trip with me. Being stuck in a car is a big commitment. (2) If I'm on the fence about whether a person could stand being in the car with me so long, I might be hesitant to ask them in order to avoid the awkward moment of them wanting to say no while not being insulting. (3) I also don't want all other people who ever want to go on a road trip to just call me up.\n\nSpecifically to sex... It requires a lot of trust, since there are many dangers (STDs, pregnancy, rape). It requires a lot of comfort/intimacy (what are they thinking of your body, are you doing well). With many people, sex can change the way they feel about a person or the way they see a person, which may be risky if it jeopardizes the relation they previously enjoy.", "Historically the core reasons were Offspring and Property that drove society to inhibit the expression of 'free' female sexuality.\n\nUntil very recently (as a power accumulated male) there was no way to confirm that a child was yours, and inherit your stuff and legacy. So women's free expression of their sexuality was strongly inhibited by those in power.\n\nWhen the easy and reliable contraception became popular ('the pill' became available in the US in 1960) sexuality began to become more fluid, then the 70s when the expressions became more socialized outside of the hippy movement.\n\nThen the 80s brought AIDS which re-suppressed the 'free exchange' of sexuality, but also brought paternity DNA testing\n\nThe modern era of Tinder and the reduction of the 'death sentence' that AIDS promised has begun to reduce the suppression yet again.", "I see it as mainly an evolution thing.  It's easy for people to have kids, its hard finding a person you want to have kids with.  I know most sex is not for procreation, but in the lizard brain it still is.  Flirting and dating and such are very complex mating dances our overgrown ape brains have made up.  Straight up asking ruins the dance and can make shit really awkward. So I don't really see it as a morality thing, it's more about sexual selection and good timing.", "I feel like a lot of these answers are pretty much completely disregarding the whole hook-up scene, and how prevalent things like Tinder and Craigslist and OkCupid hookups are, or whatever else people are using these days. There's definitely a sizable and increasingly mainstream part of society that's pretty comfortable with casual sex, to various degrees.    \nThese people probably have the normal, practical concerns surrounding sex, yet lots of it is still going on 24/7, and *still* many of these people aren't casually fucking all their friends, they're seeking strangers, people they don't have social obligations and ties to.   \n    \nI'd say more than anything it's just social inertia. Especially in the U.S we've got some heavy puritanical/evangelical repression going on, even amidst the \"sex sells, reminders of sex everywhere\" kind of thing we have going on. It's sort of a schizophrenic relationship we have with sex in the public sphere.      \nIt's pretty deep in the social psyche, to think people that have many casual partners are \"icky\" (and all the scary/gross/deadly STIs that are out there reinforce that). There's also probably a caveman part of some people's  brain that gets turned off by someone who very visibly just plays the numbers game.   \n\nI find that even people who aren't particularly religious have a lot of hang-ups about nudity and sex, and they don't have much reasoning for it other than that's what the social norms are.    \nI think there's just a *lot* of history and social inertia that just keeps there being a \"free love\" type thing in general society. There's a sort of \"understanding\", about who you fuck around with, and who you don't, lots of pretending and decorum.  \n       \nAlso no one like to be rejected, and when someone in a social circle rejects another, that kind of just hangs in the air.\n\nReally there's lots of reasons why, take your pick. Why don't we all just get along? and share all of our resources according to need? and share all the work that no one want to do? and all clean up after ourselves?\nLots of reasons. Fuckin' people dude, they're complicated.    \nNot fuckin' people develop neuroses and become *even more* complicated.\n", "I think men might be more open to casual sex than most women because most men are not letting someone INSIDE their body.\n\nIt is a pretty intimate thing and regardless of past sexual suppression not everyone wants to carelessly exchange intimacy with just anyone.\n\nIt's not just a physical act", "Ummm that's not immoral.  Might ruin the friendship if the sex was terrible though.  Actually might ruin it if the sex is epic too.", "Apart from carrying inherent physical risks, sex is really intimate. Basically, we're all picky, and all in different directions.\n\nIt's like having guests over for dinner. Generally speaking, I like having company at dinnertime, but it doesn't mean I'm just going to shout down the hallway of my apartment building to see if just any old person wants to come over. Why? I don't want just *anyone* in my home. I want someone who will be **good** company. I'm thinking polite, entertaining, easy to be around, fun, friendly, interesting. I don't want to eat with someone I'm bored by, even though generally I like company at dinnertime. On the other hand I'm *really excited* to have the **right** company over for dinner. I'll plan something days in advance and bust out the good wine. From the outside, it might look like I'm often putting tons of effort into attracting a dinner guest, but in reality there are only a few people whose company I'm really thrilled by.\n\nSex is just like that! Everyone enjoys it if it's with a good partner. But it's boring with a boring partner, and gross with a gross partner, so we don't just do it all the time with anyone who happens to be nearby.\n\nSide note: it's theorized that women tend to be pickier than men because they have a lesser likelihood of getting off from the encounter. There was a study kicking around for a while about how women who were confident in their partner's ability and willingness to meet their needs were far more open to casual encounters than when the partners were selfish. So take the time to give her a big O, gents, and everyone will get laid more easily!\n\nTl;Dr we're all picky.", "Human dating is the ritual to try to figure out if you're sexually compatible. There's unspoken rules and asking out right is not following those rules. The key is not everyone is attracted to you and you are not attracted to everyone. So its a game to figure it out. \n\nIf you are a highly attractive person in general you will likely have more partners. At least, more access to partners. ", "Most answers have focused on religion.  While religion is a part of it, I don't think it's the sole answer.\n\nThe primary purpose that sex was naturally-selected for is procreation.  Procreation carries a pretty severe burden, and for humans that burden lasts for a very long time and depending on the family connection might not every truly end until the death of either the parent or the child.\n\nUnless there's a strong environmental push to have children, from an intellectual point of view it's a lot easier to *not* have children.  Children are expensive.  Children take a lot of time.  Children prevent the parent from simply doing whatever the parent wants to do.  This goes on in greater or lesser amounts for close to two decades.  As a society we've deemed it important enough for parents to at least financially pay for their kids that a parent that leaves the family will have part of wages taken by the government to be used to pay for that child.\n\nEven an animalistic approach to procreation though, someone has to raise the child.  For a lot of animals this burden falls almost entirely on the mother, for some others the father may be involved, even if only to help protect his children.\n\nThe point of all of this, is that this is an awful lot of work, and the trick to make it all happen is to make sex desirable.  Very desirable.  Arguably the single most desirable thing that one wants to do.  So desirable that it overrides any sense of reason and logic in the person, that the consequences of sex, like making babies, is downplayed or forgotten.\n\nHumans have figured out how to have sex while reducing the odds of making a baby, but this has only come about with any real reliability or ubiquity in cultures that allow it in the last century.  Up until the last century, even possibly the last fifty years, sex carried fairly good odds of pregnancy.  Even today, people misuse or fail to use methods to prevent pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy happens all of the time, even to people with easy access to means to avoid pregnancy and with the knowledge on how to use that means.\n\nCulture changes slowly.  Think about that culture has evolved over thousands of years, and that for the majority of that, sex meant that a couple engaging in it stood a decently strong chance of making babies.  Those babies have to be supported, and since the girl or woman bears the child, the woman and very likely her family may end up shouldering the burden of the baby if she chooses to have sex with someone that is not able to support the baby, or he may be able to provide support, but not as much support as if she had chosen someone that is more successful, so her quality of life and the baby's quality of life may get worse.  On the converse, if a boy or man impregnates a girl or woman that struggles to take care of her basic life responsibilities then he may end up in the unenviable situation of having to support both her and his child, and if she's really dysfunctional, while she herself is actively making it harder.\n\nParents with adolescent or adult offspring want their kids to do the best for themselves that they can.  Parents have already themselves been through a lot and from experience believe that they can tell when a potential mate for their kids is a good one or not, and they do not want to either end up supporting a grandchild or to end up with their kids' situations getting worse because of sex.\n\nIn short, it's the possible results from sex that dictate why society has the rules it does on sex and sexual desire and partnering-up.", "The simple answer is, not everyone is attracted to you, so you cant just walk up to some hot girl and ask her to fuck. \nYou are treating sex with a level of simplicity, that scares me. There are plenty of factors that initiate sex. They include MUTUAL attraction, emotional comfortbility, trust, desire, and reassurance that you wont exploit her. Obviously there are other factors, but these are the basics. If you want quick meaningless sex, i suggest you order a hooker.", "I was given the advice to ask every woman I was sexually interested in for sex. Apparently if you're not an impossible person then it isn't as strange as you think. The problem relates to whether I should try a little harder to win over a better selection - for everyone's sake. The social implications of sexual choice make fucking seem like the easy bit.", "1. Depends on the culture. In some countries it's very common for one person to ask another to be \"friends with benefits\" open and honestly. If you're specifically wondering about American culture, it's because we're incredibly prude. We can barely deal with tits being used for what they're made for, let alone confronting the fact that people like to have sex. I lived in a country where this was common. I once shared a room with three couples having sex. It was no big deal to them. Things like who you find attractive are more talked about, so it was no problem if you didnt find someone attractive, or only wanted to have sex once, or started developing feelings and had to stop. Everything sex was an open discussion. 2. It's definitely improving. For a long time, people would get very upset if women talked about enjoying sex. We still hear that stereotype, and it's mainly due to fitting in. Studies have shown that sex drive varies by person, not gender(sex). But it would be considered fairly emasculating for a woman to talk about her husband not wanting to have sex with her. Again, a cultural issue.", "A lot of people of both genders don't see sex as just an act but also associate strong feelings with it.  To them it would be rude to ask if they want to have sex for no other reason than to fuck.", "People have specific ideas about *who with* and even *when* they want to have sex. So unless said friend also wanted to have sex with OP, much awkwardness will ensue following such a direct request. \n\nSimple as that.", "Females need to be selective, because they are the ones that potentially have to bare and raise children. They have a limited amount of eggs, and have an unlimited supply of semen to fertilize them. They dont want that with just anyone. And males need to be competative because they are being selected.\n\nThe disire to have sex is different that the pursuit of sex. Women are just as horny as men, but most choose to show restraint or defence based on their standards and feelings. I say \"most\" because some have confidence in controception, birth control, or just dont care about baring children so their need for selection is deminished to shallower traits.\n\nWhen a girl says no to \"lets go have a fuck\" she isnt saying no to sex, she is saying no to sex with *you*.", "An interesting biological insight is the mismatch between male and female reproductive inclinations. \n\nWomen have a limited number of eggs and becoming pregnant/raising a child is very resource-expensive endeavor. Biology \"promotes\" females to be more choosy so that the undertaking of childbirth is optimized. A reason for not being so open/blatant is that it could maybe hurt the vetting process of males and lead to careless pregnancies/ harmful child raising. ", "I have never once went up to anyone including a girlfriend and asked . Hey want a fuck, hook up, etc.  I also havent ever been refused.  It's easy to know when the feeling is mutal.  But me wanting to fuck someone else and they have no intrest in me would be a flat out embarrassing situation to do as you have suggested.  I went out today with a friend whom I used to fool around with.  Haven't for years and she was talking about all the guys out of the blue that will send a dick pic or just say, hey want to fuck?   She flat out doesn't pay attention.   But invitation for a drink, a few hours of laughs and flirting. You don't have to ask.  ", "From The Selfish Gene, how do you determine the sex of any species, fish, reptile, mammal, whatever? You look at the sex organelle, or whatever it call, i.e. Sperms and Eggs.  The male strategy in reproduction is quantity over quality. Male species produce millions of sperms in a short time span. Female on the other hand, go for quality over quantity, one egg per cycle, in human case, so female strategy in looking for a partner is different than that of male.\n\nSo to answer your question, everyone want it, but the strategy to pick the partner is very much different between male and female.\n\nGo read the Selfish Gene, it blown my mind.", "There's tons of opinions on why it might be that way now, but I do think a lot can be attributed to left-over influence from history.\n\nRemember that things like birth control didn't exist until relatively recently.  Also, the responsibility (and blame) for pregnancy and child rising fell almost entirely on women.  Even the sex of the child was considered her doing.  And the double-standard for adultery was incredibly high: severe punishment for the woman up to and including death, and a wink and pat on the back for men.\n\nAs such, the consequences for casual sex were NOT even remotely balanced, \"interest\" levels be damned.  And so you have this entire set of social values, courting rituals, and institutionalized policies that sprung up around it.  To both control and restrict, but also to channel sex and pregnancy into pre-approved channels that reinforced the existing power structures and hierarchies.\n\nA lot of these only started to change in the past ~100 years, which is only barely longer than a single human lifetime.  Things just don't change that quickly, especially given a lot of people's concepts of \"appropriate\" sexual behavior are set in childhood and early adulthood.", "**We are a young species still discovering things about ourselves and learning how to best deal with them, so far things have certainly been interesting if not positive.**\n\nELI20\n\nContraceptives, condoms, etc. haven't been around that long, many old people are still stuck in the mindset of 'makin' babies', the governments are still wrapping their heads around the fact too, and this gen and the next few will lead interesting lives as technology speeds ahead of the old ideals and law lags behind. If we manage to not kill ourselves in the next few hundred years we'll be expanding (thank fuuuuuck) and there will be room for much *progress* and change.\n\n > ...if I want to have sex with my friend why is it immoral for me to walk up to her and ask; \"Hey, wanna' go in the back room and fuck?\". \n\nIt is not, immoral, online she might not blink an eye, but in real life it is much more blunt and truthful than the vast majority of this... *'society'* has prepared her, (and anyone who might overhear) for.", "They have. Have you never been on Tinder?", "If only one sex were interested, there would be a lot less babies in the world. Of course men and women both want sex. The complications come from social and societal pressures that have nothing to do with pleasure or human nature, or indeed the desire to start a family. \n\nYou may also need to define 'our society'. Our society as in US society? We were founded by many different people but a large number of them were very religious people who fixated on sin and sinners and brought their puritanical presence with them from Europe during the settlement of the new world. The founding of the colonies gave Europe a place to abandon all of their prudes and religious zealots which is one of the reasons Europe is mostly relaxed about these things, and America is mostly up tight. \n\nThe question of is it immoral to directly petition someone for sex depends on you and depends on the person. Sometimes it's better to be up front about what you want even if it seems crass. You'll get a lot of no's, but you will also get some yes's. However you're unlikely to enter a long term relationship and find the love of your life that way. \n\nSex is only one small part of a relationship and desire for it in a potential mate. Friendship, security, compatible lifestyles and values, all matter just as much as physical attraction. Having a relationship without all of those things is a recipe for disaster because you are either with someone for security and money but not for love an passion, or you are with them for love and passion and they are a trashy gutter person. \n\nIn so far as 'is it right or wrong' that's your decision to make. Don't do anything you cant live with or that would make you feel degraded, and don't ask anyone else to do the same. If you don't want a relationship, just a physical distraction, be up front about it and be prepared to get shot down. If you don't feel bad about being that way than be that way, there are others like that and it's just a matter of time before you find one. If you do feel bad about being like that, then don't be like that or you will feel bad about yourself. \n\nAnyway, America + Quakers and Puritans = prudish behavior. Europe plus religious and social freedom = wearing underwear is the kinky stuff. ", "Men don't get pregnant.\n\nMen don't get slut-shamed.\n\nMen don't get raped by women nearly as often as vice-versa.\n\nMake the risks equivalent, and you end up with, well, what you see in gay male culture, where hooking up with one or two new people every weekend is not considered especially promiscuous.", "As someone who has recently started having gay sex...the answer to your question is women. Gay men will literally just walk up to one another and say they want to fuck in some instances. Women have delusions of romance and sexual insecurities (yes you do) that hinder them from being this direct or sexually pernicious. This is because women are basically retarded. But yeah it's as simple as this: I go out to A nightclub: gay guy will literally say hey you're sexy I want to fuck you in the ass. Straight girl will just stare or dance in my proximity without initiating the interaction. Both people may be sexually interested but the dynamic is vastly different. \n\nBut women do not have less interest in sex than men--that is not the reason."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3gprap", "title": "Why was being an elevator operator considered so important? Why was it important enough to warrant a union?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gprap/why_was_being_an_elevator_operator_considered_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu0neq6", "cu0om3n", "cu0tmif"], "score": [22, 43, 2], "text": ["Because the automatic elevator was only invented in the 1930s. They didn't become common until after the war, as buildings were built with them. \n\nElevator operators hadto be able to smoothly bring a car level with the floor, without jittering up and down, or leaving a drop-off to the floor or a ledge to catch the toe and trip the person. This took skill and practice.", "I think the important thing to remember is that early elevators were heavy machinery used primarily for industry. Think large steam-powered things. The first Elevator Union in the US was for Elevator Constructors, not simply operators. The change of elevator operation from an industrial job to a hospitality job follows the improvements in technology that allowed automating the complex and sometimes dangerous mechanisms of an elevator.\n\nDeaths in early elevators due to people falling down shafts or being crushed or caught between the floors and elevator carriage made having a properly trained operator desirable. \n\nIt took some time to really create a fully automated system usable even by children. Early elevators would have an operator control a lever to stop the elevator properly level with the floor and operate the doors. This required training, and as technology improved building and business owners would add other services that operators provided so they became a part of the service and hospitality industry. Things like making announcements, escorting guests, and delivering mail.\n\nHave a look at:[Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower, 1889, by \nRobert M. Vogel](_URL_0_), it has lots of nice pictures that show the complexities of elevators at the time. \n\nThere's also [The History of the American Elevator Industry 1850-2001](_URL_1_)(pdf) that may be interesting to you.\n", "Follow up question, what happened to the elevator Union?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32282/32282-h/32282-h.htm", "http://www.elevatorpreservation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/historyofelevatorindustry1850-2001-wq.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "5juymk", "title": "Would burning off alcohol reduce the volume of a liquid?", "selftext": "I'm a cook, and we flambe a lot of alcohol before using it so that things will still freeze and set properly and there is always a significant difference in how much liquid is in the pan when we add it and when the flame goes out, but it is also on the burner so I would assume evaporation is playing a large part in that.\n\nThat being said, in a perfect situation where the alcohol was heated to combustion but not enough for it to evaporate and you let the flame burn as long as possible, would 100ml of a 40% alcohol liquid end up as 60ml?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5juymk/would_burning_off_alcohol_reduce_the_volume_of_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbjqeeq"], "score": [6], "text": ["The combustion products of the alcohol flame would mostly escape into the air, so yes it would reduce the amount of liquid in the pan.\n\nEvaporation is a part of it. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so quite a bit could be expected to boil off. Especially because the flame would further increase the temperature.\n\nBurning 100 ml of 40% alcohol would probably result with more than 60 ml because you need a fairly high alcohol content to burn. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would guess you would probably still have something like 75 ml left.\n\nYou could really easily run a little experiment to see how much burns off. Measure the liquid's volume before and after. You could check its density too to see if that changed. If you have kids this would be a great weekend activity.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1bbaqs", "title": "how and why is sushi safe to eat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bbaqs/eli5_how_and_why_is_sushi_safe_to_eat/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c95b1ub", "c95e9l5", "c95f1x8", "c95f91k", "c95hb5c"], "score": [24, 25, 3, 6, 6], "text": ["The type of fish used in real sushi is \"sushi grade\". it's been cut and prepared since the fish was caught to be used for sushi, so it's kept cleaner/safer throughout the whole process.", "Not all the bacteria present in the fish are harmful to humans. Some are, but not all. Even the harmful ones aren't always bad. Our bodies are constantly killing bad cells.  Any parasites or bacteria are generally put to the death quite quickly by our bodies defenses.  \n\nIf a fish shows any telltale signs of being unhealthy, then these fish are not used for sushi.  If a fish looks real good, it's cut up and shipped to a restaurant or market.  We have figured out VERY well how to tell if a fish is not healthy.  We also know exactly how to make things even healthier by caring for it properly.\n\nSushi fish is treated VERY well, and cared for as if a tiny baby.  If a person does not treat the fish properly, it can get contaminated from almost anywere.  If someone touches it without gloves, drops something on it, or lets it sit out too long, the bacteria could start to grow.  If the bacteria is given time to sit and multiply on a tasty piece of fish, it'll start growing into a colony.  One bacteria is easy to kill, but millions are much harder. Sushi is expensive because of the work that humans put into making it perfectly safe to eat.\n\nOften, not always, fish is put into a special freezer that won't harm the fish's taste but will kill the tiny parasites that are harmful for humans.", "Raw fish isn't unsafe to eat until it's placed in conditions that permit it to spoil.", "In Japan they eat raw chicken at some high end sushi restaurants.. All because how clean the are raised and prepped, pretty crazy.. ", "Sushi covers a very broad variety of foods.. What I think you are asking is why/how is it safe to eat raw fish.. The answer is, it is not exactly safe. All providers will warn you that you are \"eating raw meat at your own risk\" The reason that Sashimi (sushi) grade fish is safer to eat raw is because Sashimi grade fish is flash frozen to a very low temperature moments after it is caught, all done right there on the ship as fish loses its quality fairly rapidly. It is usually frozen using dry ice or something to that effect to bring it's temperature low enough to eliminate any possible parasites. Parasites are not commonly found in salt-water fish, so they pose very little risk.. While most fresh-water fish are very commonly host to some parasite or another.. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "56xf7f", "title": "what would happen if i injected myself with an epipen without suffering from an anaphylactic shock?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56xf7f/eli5what_would_happen_if_i_injected_myself_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8n6k7d", "d8n6owh", "d8nd6xh"], "score": [86, 24, 8], "text": ["I'm a certified Paramedic in Ontario and I've responded to epi-pen use when both needed and not needed. Seizures are not a common occurrence with anaphylactic shock, as mentioned below. \n\nAn Epi-Pen is the brand name for Epinephrine, which is adrenaline. It dilates the blood vessels in and around the respiratory tract, allowing someone with constricting blood vessels around the throat to breathe. \n\nIf you used the Epi-Pen when you didn't need it, you'd experience something similar to an extreme panic attack. Very high heart rate, jitteriness, nervousness, anxious, increased respiratory rate. ", "The LD50 (lethal dose where 50% of subjects die) is around 5 mg/kg (subcutaneous; ie under the skin like an epipen).\n\nA standard epipen in 0.3 mg epinephrine.  A standard adult is 70 kg.  So the dose per weight (0.3 mg divided by 70 kg) would be 0.004 mg/kg.  Well below the lethal dosage (LD50).\n\nYou would feel the common side effects like shakiness, anxiety, and sweating. A fast heart rate and high blood pressure. It may result in an abnormal heart rhythm.  But probably not at these amounts.\n\n", "You remember that time you were somewhere really dark and scary and your friend thought it would be funny to jump scare you? Or that time you were messing about near the edge of a tall building and legitimately thought you were going to fall? (Or something similar - everyone's got one of those stories.)\n\nYou remember how you felt afterwards? Heart beating really fast, really loud, you thought it was going to explode. Every sense heightened, breathing like you'd just run a mile? That feeling (also known as the fight-or-flight response) is caused by adrenaline, which is what the epipen delivers."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6okvnt", "title": "how do bugs in games occur?", "selftext": "Are bugs that we see in games just error in the coding of the game? Are the errors things like typos?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6okvnt/eli5_how_do_bugs_in_games_occur/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dki50hl", "dki51ia", "dki57l9", "dki92oo", "dki99js", "dkia1ee", "dkibgvm", "dkiikh0", "dkinlyx", "dkir5d8", "dkixxgw"], "score": [6, 77, 12, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I wouldn't call them typos. The game or application has many code paths it can take based on user input. And in games there is a lot of user input. There is a Q/A team but they mostly test out the sane code path as a normal user would take. They cannot possibly test out all permutations.  There will be odd cases which will uncover untested bits of code or high enough levels where they didn't anticipate anyone getting to. ", "Hallo, Computer Scientist here. \n\nBugs are almost never typos, they can be, but this is rarely the case as if you just misspell a variable, for example, your code simply won't compile. Basically, you push Go! and the computer just laughs at you in this case.\n\nMore often in any kind of software, not just games mind you, the code interacts in a way that the programmer didn't expect. For example, the programmer thought that some variable, X, could _never_ be a negative number. Then, when the code (game, in our case) is running, it ends up being a negative number, and the code interacts in a way the programmer never expected it to.\n\nThis normally happens at a large level because several, if not dozens or even hundreds, of programmers are all writing on the same code, meaning they cannot possibly account for every single thing that could go wrong. Consider that your average major title, like GTA, Skyrim, etc, can be hundreds of thousands, if not _millions_ of lines of code. It's easy for something to go wrong. \n\nIf you have further questions, lemme know :D", " > Are bugs that we see in games just error in the coding of the game? \n\nYes.\n\n > Are the errors things like typos?\n\nNo.  If there's a typo in the actual code, the code won't run at all.  Errors in the coding are mistakes in the structure of the code.  You can generalize code to things like \"If X happens, do Y, unless Z is true, but if A and B are both false, and C is equal to D, then do Q instead.\"\n\nIn reality, single statements aren't that convoluted, but it gives you some idea of what the complexity can be over dozens of lines of code.  And when you're dealing with **millions** of lines of code, a single mistake can cause unexpected behavior.", "In addition in games like skyrim and such, a LOT can go wrong on the game design end / map building. One group of programmers makes a set of rules the game follows (physics and etc.) and another group uses those to build the world. It's humans trying to design physics from scratch and then different humans using those to build things focused on aesthetic and not functionality. Theres even more groups Im leaving out, but the point is theres so much room for little mistakes to slip by and ruin things much larger than themselves. ", "Typos in code are, correct me if I'm wrong, called syntax errors. Syntax in language is the structure of a sentence, following certain rules.\n\nA syntax error in programming can be something as simple as using an uppercase letter where you really shouldn't. Syntax errors will be reported to you by your compiler. They can be hard to find sometimes, they don't always stand out. \n\nBugs are caused by what I have heard referred to as semantics errors. Semantics is the meaning of a sentence, the information the sentence is trying to convey.\n\n\nThere's a famous bug in the early Civilisation games. The AI Gandhi was nuke crazy. It seems this is because the aggressiveness of the AI was based on a score of 1 to 250 or something. Gandhi had a low base aggression to start off with but also had these  character traits that lowered it further into negative aggression, or what should have been negative aggression. They never programmed it for negative aggression so when Gandhi's score dropped below 0 it went all the way around back to around 250, back to the maximum score for aggression.\n\n", "As Zak pointed out, bugs are often the result of the code going through things that the developer never intended/expected.\n\nLike how hitting a certain block in Paper Mario billions of times, will crash the game, because the variable that stores how many times the block has been hit, overflows (goes over the limit for the amount of storage space it was allotted, and flips back to 0) and causes more blocks to spawn, eventually crashing the game due to too many objects in one area.\n\nThe developers never expected you to hit that block 128,849,018,850 times, so the bug happens.", "Lots of stuff here about code bugs, but art bugs are equally or more noticeable. Falling through the world, invisible or awkward collisions, weird or wrong animations playing, objects being held wrong, etc..To be fair most of the art bugs don't make it out the door, since they are typically more repeatable, visual, and usually easier to fix. As far as code compiling, the game running and stuff still being broken is pretty much every day in game development. Everyday is a new fire, everything is complex and intertwined so a change to fix one bug, may cause one somewhere else in the game. Months of whack a mole and refactoring till you get it as correct as you can before the deadline. No game has ever shipped bug free.", "The makers of Star Citizen are putting up \"Bugsmasher\" videos on YouTube, in which the presenter does an OK job of showing a bug, finding the problem in the code, and fixing it. A common theme is \"context\" e.g. a variable can have one value in one context, but a different value in another context. In a recent one, the player character's co-ordinate system (the meaning of up, down, left, right etc.) was valid in one context, outside, but didn't change correctly when the player moved in to a ship, so something as simple as dropping a box in the ship went haywire. ", "It's not just games - the [Mars Climate Orbiter](_URL_0_) disintegrated as it approached Mars as the  ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a US unit while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units.\n\nOne developer wrote their software to output one format while NASA was blindly using that number expecting it to be in a different format.", "Some errors can be typos, not all errors are typos.\n\nExample :\n\n\"If X is equal to 0\" is often written as \"if(x == 0)\".\nIf you forget a \"=\", the condition is now ALWAYS true, and X is set to 0.\nThis breaks stuff easily : \nIn a game, it checks for your position, but instead sets it to 0 ... boom you've teleported and did code you were not supposed to do because you weren't in that position.\n\nAs for the rest of bugs, they're just cases that the programmer did not think of when writing the code, most of the time.", "Bugs aren't things going wrong. They're what happens when the computer executes the code perfectly, but the programmer overlooked some type of interaction or edge case. The code behaves exactly as it is written, and the end user sees things that don't match their expectations because the way the user interprets the rules and the way the programmer wrote them are not a perfect match. \n\nWhen simulating physics interactions, bugs often stem from the digital nature of computers; movement is not calculated continuously, but rather in ticks. Say you have 2 objects moving on intersecting paths that will cause a collision between them. But one of the objects is moving extraordinarily fast, so its position changes by large increments with each tick. The distance it covers may be enough for it to completely bypass the collision point with no impact whatsoever, simply because the limited tick rate was not high enough to cover the point where the intersection should have occurred.\n\nOf course, checks can be put in to counteract this. Each tick could check if the paths intersect, calculate the point in time where one of the objects is at the intersection point, and check if the other object overlaps with that point at that same time. But the presents some of its own problems, and increases the complexity of the calculations for each tick, especially when you consider that there may be hundreds or thousands of these objects, all of which might interact with any or all of the others.\n\nTL;DR coding gets complicated very quickly."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mfzxm", "title": "What is causing the constant heavy rain over the Rocky Mountains, an area that is typically a rain shadow?", "selftext": "I'm sure you've heard of the flooding going on in Colorado. Well, the area is known for being dry. Boulder, CO got over 14in of rain on Thursday, which is about 75% of the annual average precipitation. \n\nIs there something unusual going on with the jetstream? or air coming off the gulf?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1mfzxm/what_is_causing_the_constant_heavy_rain_over_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc96h2i"], "score": [9], "text": ["Boulder resident here (but more importantly, an atmospheric scientist). The rain of last week (and to a lesser extent, today) was due to a very specific set of circumstances:\n\n* The upper level winds over the western US arranged into a pattern known as a [Rex block](_URL_1_). This type of pattern is called a \"block\" because it is dynamically stable, so instead of systems moving east bringing different weather systems in, the upper level wind pattern stays the same, sometimes for a week or more.\n\n* Because of this blocking pattern, the general wind pattern remained the same for several days. Unfortunately, this pattern featured mid-level winds from the south, which brought extremely moist air from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, and (quite unusually for this season) easterly winds near the ground, These easterly winds were forced up by the rising terrain, a wind regime known as [upslope flow](_URL_0_).\n\n* In upsloping flow, air is forced upward which causes it to cool via [adiabatic expansion](_URL_3_). Since cooler air can't hold as much water in the vapor phase, a lot of it condenses out and falls as rain (or, more typically, snow, since this is much more typical of winter patterns in the area). The more of an upslope componant the wind has, the heavier the precipitation can fall, so most of the rain fell along the [Colorado Front Range](_URL_2_), where the 4000-foot high plains rise up to 12000-14000 foot peaks over the coarse of just 40 miles.\n\n* So in summary, we had a stagnant weather pattern that was extremely efficient at transporting in moisture and dropping it as rain in a very localized area for a long period of time.\n\nFortunately the Rex Block pattern is not stable over *very* long periods of time, and it is finally starting to break down. We're expecting mostly sun for the upcoming week.\n\nI tried to strike the best balance between understandability and scientific accuracy with this explanation, so some of it may be over-simplified or too technical. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/112/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_%28meteorology%29#Rex_blocks", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Front_Range", "http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/sm1/lectures/node53.html"]]}
{"q_id": "6g1bnx", "title": "why is it that the constant orbit of electrons around the nucleus of an atom is not classed as an example of perpetual motion?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g1bnx/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_constant_orbit_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dimmf7k", "dimndj7", "dimrhp5", "dinakgw"], "score": [8, 15, 2, 5], "text": ["\"perpetual motion\" isn't disallowed, inertia means something moving will move forever unless a force changes that. People mean \"motion that self regenerates when slowed\" when they mean perpetual motion. \n\nBut at the same time electrons don't actually orbit the way people draw them in cartoons, electrons aren't really little balls, it's just easier to think of them that way sometimes. ", "When people talk about \"perpetual motion machines\" they don't mean the literal \"moving forever\"  they mean a system that runs forever but you can keep extracting energy from, or generates more energy than was put in without any other loss. \n\na rock could orbit another rock and both could hurtle through a vacuum forever. No work is being done no energy is being taken from the system. So it's happy to just keep moving forever. \n\n\nbut if you want to make those rocks do some work or touch them in any way they will stop moving or slow down.  same with an Atom, while there might be \"movement\" of sorts inside that motion does not perpetually generate energy. ", "One reason is that electrons don't really orbit around the nucleus the way planets orbit around the sun.  That's a convenient fiction that was once thought by physicists to be true, but hasn't been since around the beginning of the last century.  I guess it is still taught in schools because the real theory is rather strange and hard to explain to an adolescent. It's hard to explain to an adult.   \n   \nOne of the problems with the \"planetary model\" of atoms is that electrons are a charged particle.  If they orbited around the nucleus like that, they would constantly be emitting electromagnetic radiation.  They don't do that.  So the model was clearly flawed.  \n   \nAlong came the quantum mechanical model of the atom.  It was realized that electrons in an atom don't occupy a particular position within the atom, they are more like a wave with a particular volume of space within the atom that they are *likely* to be found in.  But that volume doesn't have a sharp boundary.  An electron in your nose has a very very very very small chance of suddenly being on Mars. \n   \nThe electrons aren't static, so I guess you could call what they do \"perpetual motion\".  They also aren't really in motion, though. They just might be here and might be there. It isn't really what people mean when they refer to a perpetual motion machine. \n    \n**TL;DR** - Atoms are weird. ", "Like explained in another post already, electrons aren't \"orbiting the core\" like planets orbit the sun. As said, they would emit electromagnetic waves constantly and end up falling into the core once their energy was radiated away; if they kept moving though, they would indeed be an actual ''perpetual movement machine'' (meaning they would basically generate energy from nothing). This problem arises because in most schools, you are taught to think of electrons as an actual particle (a classical concept), when in actuality they are quantummechanical objects i.e. excitations of their respective fields (probability \"waves\"/fuctions with partly \"particle-like\" properties so to speak). We can't measure their \"velocity\" and locality at the same time (or rather, the more precise you measure one, the less precise the other measurement gets), thus we assign them probabillities. We can calculate these probabilities and we find that they have a 0% chance of being in the atom's core, everywhere else however, that probability is not 0, even though it is infinitly small, on Venus for example, it may still be there. To get around that we calculate the arrea that has a 90%-99% chance of being and call them orbitals (basically what you get taught as the different \"shells\" of an atom in school (it's somewhat more complex than that, but that's *basically* it)). These orbitals are basically the \"room\" you speak of when refering to an atom minus the room taken up by the core (less that 0.1%).\nAs such, \"electrons\" aren't really moving, but are *dislocated* in a large cloud of their probable positions around the atom's core. You can collapse this *cloud* into a single position by measuring them, but as stated above, you are unable to attain their \"velocity\" then."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6zyeor", "title": "is vaping unhealthy? ive read different articles, some that says it might be bad, and some that says its harmless.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zyeor/eli5_is_vaping_unhealthy_ive_read_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmyzisv", "dmyzzde", "dmz05b9", "dmz13w6", "dmz3o2b", "dmz6up8", "dmz7faz", "dmz7gdj", "dmz7sev", "dmz8ztf", "dmz95ow", "dmz9kjp", "dmza9u4", "dmzabv1", "dmzayrf", "dmzazpu", "dmzbc07", "dmzcejs", "dmzcpws", "dmzcpz0", "dmzd07s", "dmzd2pe", "dmzdfm6", "dmzdysi"], "score": [3, 9, 157, 2041, 27, 3, 3, 94, 10, 562, 5, 81, 132, 3, 2, 4, 3, 3, 6, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Is popcorn lung a real thing or did Facebook make that up? Because that sounded pretty not good.", "It probably isn't great. It is likely worse than not smoking anything, but is much better than smoking actual smoke. Unfortunately it hasn't been around long enough for there to be enough evidence to be definitive.", "It's not harmless.\n\nIt's significantly *less* harmful than smoking, but most e-liquids contain nicotine, which has harmful effects of its own, and many contain at least some carcinogens (that's \"things that cause cancer\", this being ELI5).  That's just to *start* with; there are other reasons it's not good for your health.\n\nThe long-term effects are unknown, so no major effects have been established, but that's not the same thing as an *absence* of major effects having been established.", "The issue with vaping is that it is a relatively new way to use nicotine. It took decades of research and observation to identify the adverse health effects to chronic users of other tobacco products, and it will likely take a similar amount of time to confidently identify any problems that arise with e-cigarette use. That said, e-cigarettes do not contain the same harmful ingredients as cigarettes, which probably makes them safer, although I can't say how much.\n\nThere have been some studies that show using e-cigarettes increases your risk of developing respiratory symptoms such as coughing or increased phlegm production. It is possible that it could increase your risk for heart disease, although that risk seems to be hypothetical at the moment.\n\nAs far as cancer goes, while many of the carcinogens found in cigarettes are much lower in e-cigarettes, propylene glycol and glycerol (the main components in the liquid cartridge) both break down into several potential carcinogens. I can't say whether this makes lung cancer/disease more or less likely, however.\n\nAnd of course, nicotine abuse is bad for your cardiovascular system. That has not changed.\n\nTLDR; it's up in the air. The general consensus seems to be it is likely safer than cigarettes, however it's possible that there could be some bad stuff in the vapor. If there are negative health consequences, we won't really find out until people start getting sick, unfortunately.", "[Serious]: So how does that work for cannabis which is vaporized fresh using convection heat?", "[This](_URL_0_) is worth a watch.  Not the whole picture, but definitely some good basic science here, and just a straightforward display of how some information is getting skewed when it comes to vaping.", "Nobody ever talks about teeth in the middle of all this?\nIs vaping better for my teeth?", "I used to work for an e-cig company working for a friend. He made millions when it first became a big hit (here in Canada) 6-8 years ago. My job was to make the juices, i.e. liquids that go into the devices. I was labels as an \"E-Liquid Engineer\". It kind of made me laugh, and it was then I realised sometimes the words \"professional\" and \"highly trained\" gets thrown around more often then it should. \n\nEssentially, what I was tasked with doing was mixing the core ingredients of the chemicals. There are two main ingredients, PG (Propylene Glycol) and VG (Vegetable Glycerine). Depending on the type of vape you want, be it more cloud, or smoother vape, etc. you would change how much of each of those main parts go into the mixture. \n\nPeople normally want a flavour to go along with the vape. I would add from a variety of flavours to the concoction. These flavours would range from something sweet, to fruity, to ones that taste like normal cigarettes. Most of the flavourings were harmless in their own, with most being simple flavour shots you could get at grocery stores or bulk barns. Others were concentrates mixed with a few other harmless ingredients. \n\nThe last ingredient was the nicotine. It wasn't mandatory to have nicotine added to the bottle. There are many different \"strengths\" you can purchase, ranging from zero nicotine, to an extremely large amount (sometimes more then a regular cigarette). As others have mentioned, the nicotine is certainly a harmful chemical, and the vapes with in included should not be deemed \"healthy\". However, without that included, most vapes are relatively harmless. Of course what's even healthier then ingesting the PG and VG would be not vaping at all. \n\nI worked there for a couple of years, and I never vaped. I never smoked, so I felt no need to. It was a little odd being the only non-vaper, because vaping becomes a lifestyle of sorts. It's something a lot of people who begin vaping reaaaally get into. \n\nBottom line though, the nicotine in the is essentially the worst part of vaping. Without that, it's truly not that bad. I mean, eating a Big Mac could probably prove to be worse for you then vaping without nicotine. \n\n", "I'm not going to say it's healthy. Vaping is definitely healiER than smoking a traditional cigarette. Compared to the thousand of chemicals in cigarettes, vape juice has only 4 or 5 (vegetable glycerin; propylene glycol; artificial flavoring; nicotine, if you choose; and some add artificial sweeteners). Not to mention that the wires that are used (kanthol) is the same wire that are used in your toaster. While the PG is one of the ingredients that are found in medical IV's, asthma inhalers, shampoo (a lot of day to day uses). You don't have all the carcinogens because you aren't actually burning anything. Believe it or not, vaping has been around since the 60s, but because of technology only being available to those who had the money to afford it. It's more readily available today because technology is in general. Just keep in mind that anything you put into your body is potentially harmful to you. The biggest point that I always made to people was that vaping is a healthier alternative to smoking. ", "If we don't read into your question at all, the answer is of course, vaping is unhealthy.  Inhaling any foreign substance is generally going to be unhealthy.\n\nIf you're vaping or thinking about vaping just to vape, and not as a smoking cessation method, please don't, it's pretty dumb.  If you insist, at least use zero nicotine juice.\n\nAll that said, if you're using vaping to quit smoking cigarettes, that's a different conversation.  I smoked for 25 years and quit the day I got a vape setup.  I vaped for 2 years, slowly lowering my nicotine intake, and then I quit the vape, about a year ago.  It was pretty effortless, although I'll stress that using a vape to quit smoking requires \n\n1) a good investment in a quality kit\n\n2) another investment in a quality BACKUP kit and accessories so when your batteries are dead or you're out of coils or juice, you're not forced to go buy cigarettes.\n\n3) the right amount of nicotine in your juice.  If you're still feeling the need to smoke a cigarette, increase your nicotine.  I started with 18mg/ml, you may need 24mg/ml, or 9mg/ml might sate your craving.  It depends on the person.\n\n\nI felt respiratory improvement after 2 weeks of not smoking.  I certainly felt it in my wallet (vaping is ridiculously cheap compared to smoking), and I even felt it in my personal life, my wife really liked that I didn't smell like smoke.", "There haven't been many studies on vaping since it's relatively new. A few weeks ago, Vice featured vaping (in a different context), but cited a federal study which found vaping to be 95% safer than smoking cigarettes. \n\nI vape myself. I know it can't be as harmless as breathing fresh air, but it's a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. My doctor told me he looks at this way: cigarettes are known to have thousands of different chemicals in them, vaping e-liquid has 3 (glycerin, nicotine, natural/artificial flavors). \n\nSo, I view it as the *much* lesser of two evils. \n\nEdit: here's a [study](_URL_0_) conducted by the U.K.'s health department on vaping.  And a [PDF](_URL_1_) from the Royal College of Physicians, going into detail about the benefits to vaping over cigarettes. ", "Vaping is unhealthy compared to breathing in fresh air. It's healthy compared to breathing in cigarette smoke. It's healthy compared to inhaling aeresolized fat molecules from a deep fryer. It's all relative OP. \n\nThe ELI5 answer is that vaping has not shown any long term health problems for users yet, but that this is still being studied closely. Vaping can help cigarette users quit smoking and it has none of the negative health effects that inhaling cigarette smoke does. People that switch to vaping to quit cigarettes can look forward to similar health levels as non smokers. \n\nWhile all of the ingredients in e-juice are approved for human consumption, there may be different health effects inhaling an aerosol of flavorings versus swallowing them. For example soda pop is okay to drink, but if you inhaled it, you would not find it agreeable and it could damage the lining of your lungs. While eating flavorings is healthy, the jury is out on effects of different flavorings on the lungs. \n\nA cigarette is consumed by burning it and inhaling the combusted gases, tars, ash, and chemicals released from combustion. Combustion isn't perfect and so a wide range of chemical compounds, many of which cause health problems are released. Vaping is not burning something, it is converting a liquid into an aerosol and inhaling it. This does not significantly change the chemical makeup of the aerosol versus the liquid juice. \n\nMore details: \n\nThe main materials are vegetable glycerin and polypropylene glycol. Both of these are FDA approved and safe for consumption and have no known health problems inhaling. \n\nThe nicotine content varies from 0mg (none) to 24mg (around a cigarette strength). Nicotine is a drug, and in high concentrations it's a poison. This is mainly a concern for people handling 60-100mg/ml laboratory grade nicotine for mixing their own juice, but you wouldn't want a child to get a hold of a bottle of e-juice, or spill it on your shirt and ignore it. \n\nThe main point of contention are the flavorings used to make the juice taste good to the user. The majority of these flavorings are USDA approved for human consumption, but the long term study of inhaling them is on-going. Most of the dangers you hear about from vaping products are a class of flavorings known to cause popcorn lung in high concentrations and prolonged exposures. To date there have been no instances of this occurring in any vaper, and the evidence of this occurring outside of factory conditions where workers spent hours a day breathing concentrated diacetyl in are anecdotal. Still though, better safe than sorry, and most vaporizer juice companies avoid these flavorings and volunteer laboratory results of their juice tests. \n\n", "Source: Former smoker who now vapes, have read some news coverage and some actual scientific coverage.\n\nNicotine by itself is not actually all that harmful, its similar to caffeine. No reasonable person will argue that it is not addictive, it clearly is. However, it is well understood that people get addicted to cigarettes because it is a highly efficient nicotine delivery system, but they are killed by the other components in the cigarette.\n\nMany of the chemicals in smoke which are known to be harmful come specifically from the combustion. If you were to dry out some lettuce and smoke it, you would inhale many of the same carcinogens. Used properly, vaping does not burn anything - i.e. there is no combustion. \n\nHowever, it is possible to 'dry hit' a vape - such as when you forget to refill the tank. This causes the cotton to burn and therefore creates the same types of carcinogens to be produced as in cigarettes. Some studies of vape technology have reported very high levels of formaldehyde, specifically, but examining the materials and methods of these studies shows that they were almost certainly burning the cotton. Therefore, high levels of formaldehyde actually are a good litmus test for the validity of a study. If the levels are too high, they are likely studying older technology and using it improperly. This is not to say the scientists involved are incompetent or doing this deliberately, the technology has improved very significantly in the last few years.\n\nPublic Health England [has concluded through scientific study](_URL_0_) that vaping is about 95% less harmful than smoking. This does not mean that vaping is harmless, simply less harmful. \n\nWhat is **not** yet known is the long-term effects of vaping. The first e-cig was invented in 2003. There were only a handful of products on the market before the last few years. We have about a century of data on smoking and its long term effects. \n\nIs it possible that in fifty years we will learn that vaping was in fact more harmful in the long term? We cannot rule that out, but we have no reason to believe it will happen. However it is known that continuing to smoke will be harmful, so for people like me who have had no success quitting without vaping it is worth a try. We have a choice between something that will definitely kill us, or something that might but more likely won't.\n\n**TL,DR:** If you've never smoked, its probably not a good idea to start vaping. If you can quit smoking without vaping, quit smoking. However, many people have been unable to quit smoking without vaping, and reducing harm is better than continuing to smoke.", "Well, since there is a lot of misinformation being spread here, let me clear the air.\nVaping is not harmful, despite the false positive studies.\nThere are 3 main ingredients in the liquid used for vaping. All three are used in your day to day life whether you vape or not. Propylene Glycol, Vegetable Glycerin, and just about any flavoring. Nicotine, being the fourth ingredient, is optional. Now, with vaping, nothing is burning, so let's get that ignorance out of the way. The liquid is atomizing, not burning. Think of it as the same way a dog machine works. Heated coil, liquid atomizes in to a vapor. With actual studies form credible sources done, vaping has been proven to be 99% safer than smoking and has been 95% effective is smoking cessation and harm reduction. Who is said this, American Lung Association, Royal College of Physicians, American Heart Association, and now even the CDC. \n\n The scare tactic of vaping being harmful was a hype train implemented by the tobacco companies who are losing money and are so far behind the market when t comes to vaping that they are scurrying for a way to regain their losses.\n\n  Now, to anyone that wants to claim otherwise, throw your questions at me and I can easily answer them. I have experience in the vaping industry and the medical field, so unlike the majority of people buying in to the \"Vaping is as bad as smoking\" hype, I know the reality and the truth behind it.", "The short answer is we don't really know yet.\n\nThe longer answer is it's  question that many people care about significantly from either side, so they really want their conclusion to be upheld.  As a result, many of the \"studies\" cited are biased one way or another.\n\nIt's difficult to determine the longterm effects of something like vaping without, well, long enough time to test it.  Once we have better quality tests over longer durations (and done by impartial bodies), we will have a definitive answer to it. \n", "Please understand that nicotine is not bad for you unless you take in too much -it can actually kill you. ....kind of like caffeine. Too many energy drinks and you're a gonner. Nicotine is actually used as a stimulant (medication) for certain human diseases. It's also used as a primary ingredient in termite eradication liquids. It frustrates me when people think that Nicotine is the agenda that kills....usually it is NOT the catalyst.", "Source disclaimer: Extensive conversations with my mother-in-law, who is a 30-year Mayo Clinic nurse. Not published science. Personal experience. \n\nSo, according to my source, while vaping definitely doesn't share the same chemical hazards as cigs, the medical community has most definitely seen an uptick in health related issues that happen to correlate with the newfound popularity of vaping. She says that almost daily..DAILY..they are admitting people with extreme shortness of breath and early signs of COPD. Almost every patient admitted with these symptoms have self identified as habitual vapors. After tests, they have consistently found residual fluid in the lungs of the patients. \n\nShe described it as slowly but surely giving yourself \"Pulmonary Edema\" which will eventually lead to chronic COPD. Basically, you are slowly drowning yourself. \n\nAs I said, this isn't published science yet, but she says she wouldn't be surprised if in a couple years you START to see published science on the negative health effects of vaping. ", "The honest truth is that we don't know.\n\nAs someone else mentioned, it took years to measure and prove the negative effects of tobacco smoke (all smoke is carcinogenic) and although it seems that most ingredients in e-liquid and vapor (e-vapor is not smoke) are probably not carcinogenic its still not know if they could be harmful in the long term, as vaping is relatively new.\n\nAs a best guess it's probably much less harmful than smoking and not likely to cause cancer but might cause other lung/respiratory issues, especially if you're sensitive to that sort of thing. \n\nThe dangers of nicotine are also not well know, it seems that nicotine itself is not carcinogenic, but like most drugs it is indeed a poison, but only in very large amounts. It also might promote the growth of tumors but not enough is known to confirm this either. Its addictive effects are well know and because if this it is probably best avoided, although nicotine itself is not the most dangerous part of smoking.    \n\nMuch like smoking, its probably not to start of you can avoid it. However if you're curious its most likely a much better alternative than the proven dangers of smoking.", "I feel 100x better vaping than smoking cigs. Im not dead yet, and we are all but a blip in the universe..Have some fun while youre here. Take a chance-Colombus did! ", "The truth is that we don't really know. People are just now starting to hit the 10 year mark with vaping, so it might be 20 more years before we have a definitive answer.\n\nThat being said, it almost certainly has to be better than smoking. You'll be hard pressed to find any knowledgeable vaper who will say that vaping is completely harmless. For most of us it's about harm reduction.\n\nThe good news is that the legitimate studies support this assumption. Nicotine has passed the AMES test, which looks to see if a substance causes DNA mutations in bacteria, which points to it being a carcinogen. There are also a few more studies that show that it's 95% less harmful than smoking. The only real big unknown out there is the flavorings, but unflavored is an option. \n\nThere are a lot of bogus studies out there, though. I remember the big formaldehyde study a few years back had taken the crappy CE4 tanks and fired them at over 5V for 90 seconds. I've built some stupid big coils and I've never gone above 4.3V, plus no human is going to inhale for 90 seconds. Using those test parameters there's no doubt a bunch of garbage was produced (probably from the tank melting).\n\nAt the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you're willing to take a risk that some unforseen major illness could be caused by vaping, or are you willing to stay with something that you know is going to kill you. I know the choice was easy for me.  ", "But can you vape without the nicotine? ", "There's great documentary by BBC Horizon \u2013 \"E-Cigarettes: Miracle or Menace?\". I urge everyone to watch it.\n\nVaping is MUCH healthier than smoking. There's almost immediate health improvement as you switch and it's pretty much no-brainer. BUT you tend to vape more often then you smoke as vaping is easier and more socially acceptable. And nobody really knows about all the flavouring  side effect could have. If you're smoker, switch to vaping as it will improve your health immensely. If you don't smoke - don't touch any of it.", "For what it's worth, I smoked cigs for about 8 years then switched to vaping for two and a half years. I was diagnosed with cancer on my tongue in june, and had to have half of my tongue cut out and replaced with flesh from my wrist. I used a small pen style vape for about half a year and used a big sub ohm box mod for 2 years.", "In terms of healthiness? Smoking  <  Vaping  <  Neither"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxuFSGjZeBg"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-less-harmful-than-tobacco-estimates-landmark-review", "https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/sites/default/files/media/Documents/Nicotine%20without%20smoke.pdf"], [], ["https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-less-harmful-than-tobacco-estimates-landmark-review"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "92cia0", "title": "Is there a simple explanation for why autorotation occurs?", "selftext": "I don't really understand how autorotation can create lift by seemingly spinning the rotor. I understand air goes up through the rotor, but why does it make the rotor spin and how does it generate lift without forward propulsion? Thank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/92cia0/is_there_a_simple_explanation_for_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e35908w", "e35crgs", "e35uzcd", "e375f1y"], "score": [8, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["When your motor dies, you feather the rotor for least wind resistance, making the rotor blades parallel to the direction of rotation. This helps maintain rotor rpm which is what you need for the final flare. \n\nDropping quickly downward with a feathered rotor pushes the air up through it, like a kids toy pinwheel out the car window. It won't add much rotor speed but helps to maintain it. Then once you're close enough to the ground, you pull as much rotor pitch as you can and hope the rotor has enough rpm to flare and land! \n\nIt's all about momentum in the rotor and using it effeciently\n\n", "Imagine each blade of a rotor has a lift vector and a drag vector attached to it.  \n\nAutorotation works because you can pitch your blades down somewhat, and as a result a portion of your lift goes towards spinning the rotor back up.  By balancing the forces you can get the RPMs to stabilize.  The rest of the lift goes into upward thrust, allowing you to slow your descent.\n\n**Edit:** Typo.", "When the engine of a regular airplane dies, the pilot can glide by lowering the nose of the plane to maintain airspeed, and the airspeed over the wing creates lift.  The plane must descend to maintain this condition, but it is not uncontrolled falling.  Your paper airplane glides like this.\n\nA helicopter does the same thing by adjusting the angle of the blades to maintain rotation and therefore blade airspeed, and the airspeed creates lift.  But the helicopter must descend.  If the pilot times it right, he can use the rotational inertia of the blades and a last second increase of the angle of the blades to do a gentle touchdown.", "As the vehicle falls through the air, the angled rotor blades are pushed by that airflow, speeding up the rotor, and slowing down the overall falling speed. At the top of the fall, the vehicle has all potential energy, as it falls, that energy converts to kinetic energy. With a rotor that is set up to autorotate, some of that kinetic energy is put into spinning the blades, rather than going towards the ground.\n\nAt any time, a proficient pilot can start to convert the kinetic energy in the blades into lift, by adjusting the angle of the blades, coming to a complete stop, or even gaining a little altitude. This drops the rotor speed, so it can't be used to hover indefinitely, but it is usually enough to land safely eve. With total power loss, as long as the pilot still has control."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "325fy9", "title": "do people with alzheimers know they don't remember anything, or do they just not question it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/325fy9/eli5_do_people_with_alzheimers_know_they_dont/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq81gyp", "cq81jsg", "cq81ua4", "cq81whj", "cq83foc", "cq83ivc", "cq83qtm", "cq83w76", "cq84aik", "cq84vru", "cq859om", "cq85wek"], "score": [2, 42, 9, 24, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4], "text": ["They don't realise that they are forgetting things. If you keep pointing it out, they become very upset, stressed, and confused about everything. You have to just repeat yourself when they say they can't remember, without pointing out the condition.", "They don't, no. They slowly forget the world around them, to the point where it's not like a vague memory, or they know something happened but they don't know exactly, it's like it never happened at all. \n\nTo look at it another way - reincarnation is real. Can you remember anything about your previous life? Would you recognise the faces if you met them in this life?", "Alzheimer's is not simply about forgetting things.  It's a degenerative brain disease, and it affects the mind as a whole, not just memories.  \n\nSo yes, you forget things.  You also have a harder time learning new things, paying attention to things for extended periods, making decisions, engaging in abstract thinking and planning, etc.  People experience a reduced ability to properly process sensory information in general, and a growing inability to even move their bodies correctly.\n\nIf it was just losing memories, Alzheimer's would be terrible enough.  But it's a slow slide into death as you gradually lose the ability to function as a person *at all*.", "It's a very, very gradual downward slope, and it's difficult for the person to notice it. It starts with a few minor things here and there, but if the person falls into a routine, everything else tends to fade away. They aren't dealing with it anymore, so they have no need to recall it, and they don't even know it's gone.\n\nIn the beginning they may notice a few things, but they usually think they're completely fine, because they *feel* fine. If I asked you, \"What is something you don't remember?\" you wouldn't be able to answer, because you don't remember it. It's the same with them, but the things they don't remember eventually outnumber the things they do.\n\nSource: grandmother had it for the last ~15 years of her life, like watching a train wreck in slow motion.", "Years ago I saw a documentary a woman made about her mother having Alzheimers (I'm sorry I don't remember enough details to find it for you). At one point she described how her mother would get upset and depressed looking at the family photos on her dresser, because she knew she was supposed to know who those people were, but did not. They took the photos away, stopped trying to 'make' the mother remember, and she was then happy as can be.\n\nEdit: found it! [Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, by Deborah Hoffman](_URL_0_).", "My grandmother has been diagnosed and is at a point where she knows something is going on. She said to my aunt (her daughter) \"Why am I like this? What's wrong with me?\" and began to cry. It hurt my heart.", "Have you ever awoken and not remembered a dream? You know you had a dream and you know it made you happy but you can't remember the details or even why you were happy? \n\nHave you ever been somewhere and seen someone you vaguely recognize but don't know why or from where? They approach, so very glad to have run into you and you smile and nod politely but you can't remember a them. \n\nYou're talking to a friend and telling them a funny story but you can't remember someone's name, every detail crystal clear except a name. \n\nThese are similar to what can happen to people with various forms of dementia, and/or Alzheimer's. Sometimes the issues include depression and instead of remembering happy \"dreams\" it's like you have a nightmare and all you can focus on is scary, negative things. Early on, you know things aren't right. But you're old and forgetfulness is ok because people expect it. As it progresses, you are aware you are missing periods of time. It's like you had a daydream but don't remember your thoughts. Sometimes it lasts for a couple of minutes. With my grandmother it would last days. And it terrified her. She'd get mad about it. If you tried to finish a story for her because she clearly was \"stuck\"  she'd get pissed. Embarrassed. She knew she was declining. \n\nShe was pissed we put morning checklist in the bathroom. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Lotion on your skin. If we didn't, she'd forget. Eventually she forgot the list was for her. She'd forget to groom. She knew she was supposed to go to the bathroom but not what to do. She'd shit on the floor next to the toilet. Then she forgot the bathroom was a thing and she'd piss off the side of the bed. By then she was \"gone\" and didn't know she was missing a thing. ", "Toward the end with my Grandma when I would visit she would get very excited because she recognized me and knew I was important to her but, she just didn't know from *where*. Sometimes she would either remember after a while or she would ask and I just told her that I was her granddaughter. \n\nIt always seemed to me it was like a frustration of seeing someone you met at a party but forgetting their name, but my Grandma clearly knew that I was an important person to her and she should know who I am and what my name is but just couldn't do it. Sometimes it would upset her to tears, which sucked fucking dick. \n\nShe was a very nice lady too so other times she would make conversation with me and ask how I was and chat away so I would think \"oh today is a good day she knows who I am\" then she would ask something like \"did you ever meet my husband?\" or tell me stories about my family that I was there for or experienced, so she thought I was just an friendly face over for a visit.\n\nSo in my experience it was different day to day, Alzheimers sucks I wouldn't wish it on any one. ", "I don't think they don't know that they don't know. While running early one morning, we found an elderly woman standing in a drainage ditch. She had been there all night. Once we were able to help her from the ditch and sit her on a bench, we attempted to get contact information from her so we could call someone. She knew she had children, but didn't remember how many. She knew she lived nearby, but didn't know where. She knew that she should know the answers, but didn't. It stressed her that she knew she was supposed to know. Soooo, what I'm saying is that I do believe that they realize they can't remember, at least that was very clear with this lovely woman.", "In short, No. There are stages of progression in the level of dementia and unfortunately, they're permanent. However, this might be a good time to contrast a similar disease presentation. \n\nFor Example, a 65 year old who wishes to see their doctor because their memory has been failing them, they constantly misplace things, and find themselves in rooms of their house without rhyme or reason as to why they went in there. Sounds like Alzheimers right??? Classically though, a patient with Alzheimers is brought to the physician by a family member who says their (mom/dad/grandma/etc.) has been exhibiting these strange behaviors; lacking insight into their neurological disease. \n\nA patient who has insight into their \"Alzheimers\" symptoms more than likely has PSEUDOdementia - typically caused by hypothyroidism in the elderly. Its important to recognize the difference because this condition is totally treatable and reversible.\n\nSorry, that was a bit off topic, but I thought the community might find the contrast interesting.", "Depends on how far along they are. My grandma got diagnosed fairly early. In the beginning she'd joke around and say things like, \"Oh don't worry, you can tell me. I'll forget about it later anyway\" and \"It's not so bad, I get to meet new people every day\".\n\nOver the years, she became less and less aware of her actual condition, and her mental faculties degraded to the point where she was going to the bathroom in the driveway, wandering off at night, forgetting her family members, etc, etc. We eventually had her admitted to a care home where she could be adequately monitored (for her own safety). \n\nIt's now about 10 years later, and we're lucky when she's awake. She sleeps most of the day, and it's a struggle to get her active in any sort of conversation. We've figured out that if we bring her something sweet or a coffee and help feed it to her (she's no longer able to do it herself), that after about 30-45 minutes, she's stimulated enough to interact with people. She has no idea what's going on in her world anymore. We dig deep into our memory banks to pull out things that are near-impossible to forget -- funny family things -- and sometimes we'll get a chuckle out of her. I'm not sure if she laughs because she remembers... or if it's just because she's laughing along with us.\n\nIt's sad to see her like that. She was an active, sharp and incredibly witty woman in her younger years... now it's like she's gone and just left her shell behind. Alzheimers is truly a bitch.", "Nurse here. The brain is literally wasting away which means that those areas that they rely on to process information not only don't work anymore but are no longer there. \n\nA couple of my patients have realized that they are losing their minds. It's heart breaking when this happens. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.pbs.org/pov/complaintsofadutifuldaughter/film_description.php"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "58zlcx", "title": "Why do spacecraft use hydrazine in their maneuvering thrusters?", "selftext": "I get the principle behind the maneuvering thrusters--equal and opposite reactions and all that. But why does it seem like they always use hydrazine? Wouldn't any old gas work?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/58zlcx/why_do_spacecraft_use_hydrazine_in_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d95dk0o", "d960jpn"], "score": [10, 7], "text": ["Yes and no.  Any gas (or any material, technically) can be used to produce thrust, vis-a-vis Newton's Laws, as you point out.  However, there's a significant difference between operation of a [cold gas thruster](_URL_2_) and a [monopropellant thruster](_URL_0_) like most hydrazine maneuvering systems.  \n  \nIf we were just squirting hydrazine gas out of a port on the spacecraft, then these would be pretty similar.  The key difference is that hydrazine can decompose rapidly (and usually exothermically), greatly increasing the specific impulse produced by the thruster.  In order to encourage this, hydrazine thrusters contain some catalyzing material such as iridium.  Using hydrazine rather than, say, nitrogen, also creates some complications - you don't want it to start decomposing while it's still in the fuel tank or plumbing, for example!\n  \nHydrazine can also be used as a hypergolic propellant rather than a monopropellant.  I'll leave out the details for now, but here's a pretty good [breakdown of different propellant types](_URL_1_) if you want to check it out.", "Efficiency!\n\nA thruster works by expelling a gas, but there's a lot more that goes into what makes a *good* thruster. There are several key figures of merit for a thruster (or rocket engine): thrust (obviously), thrust to weight ratio, and exhaust velocity (which I'll get to in a moment). Additionally, there are common engineering issues such as weight, cost, complexity, and reliability.\n\nAs mentioned, a thruster works by expelling a gas. If you delve into the kinetic theory of gases momentarily you'll realize that gases are made up of molecules bouncing around at high speeds (similar to the speed of sound). As a gas is funneled through a rocket nozzle the molecules are constrained into mostly parallel trajectories, which maximizes the thrust from the motion of the gas in just one direction. This gets to thrust efficiency, exhaust velocity, or Isp (specific impulse). Isp is the amount of impulse (change in momentum, or thrust) imparted by a specific mass of propellant consumed by the rocket. This is comparable to exhaust velocity of the rocket which is related to Isp by a factor of Earth's gravity, 1 gee. The faster the exhaust leaves the rocket nozzle, the more thrust it generates because it carries away more momentum.\n\nThis is important because it relates directly to the rocket equation. In the rocket equation, the \"mass ratio\" of the rocket through a rocket burn (the ratio of the mass of the rocket plus the fuel used in the burn to the mass of the rocket at the end of the burn without the fuel) is equal to e to the power of the ratio of the delta-V (change in velocity) to the rocket's exhaust velocity, or:\n\n    (M+P)/M = e^(dV/eV)\n\nWhat this means is that the delta-V of the desired maneuver relates *exponentially* to the amount of propellant needed for it. Double the delta-V and you *square* the mass ratio (propellant) needed. Similarly, the exhaust velocity cuts down that exponential delta-V factor in the same way. If you double the exhaust velocity you only need the square root of the previous mass ratio. This helps explains why rockets that put stuff in orbit are so big, because the delta-V required (about 8.5 km/s) is so much higher than the exhaust velocity of chemical rockets (3-4.5 km/s) so we end up with an exponential factor around 2-3, and thus a required mass ratio in the 7-20x range (which, remember, must also factor in the mass of the payload). I won't get into rocket staging which adds more complexity.\n\nAnyway, as you can realize, you want the gas leaving the rocket nozzle to be going as fast as possible, because that means the propellant you have in the tanks will be more useful. If you just expel a pressurized gas you will generate thrust, but it'll just be going at around the speed of sound (just a few hundred m/s). What you want is a high temperature gas, because that has molecules with a higher average kinetic energy, and thus a higher molecular velocity. You also want a lighter gas, because for a given temperature (average molecular kinetic energy) that translates to a higher molecular speed. You could, of course, heat up a gas using various energy sources but this is fairly inefficient, especially since all those energy sources need to be on the rocket as well, which adds parasitic mass.\n\nThe obvious solution is to use a combustion reaction and simply use the hot exhaust of that reaction as the exhaust gas for the rocket, generating the energy to heat up the gas as well as the gas to be expelled from the rocket all in one go. Common examples of combustion reactions for rockets would be Oxygen and combustible liquids such as kerosene, Hydrogen, or methane. Liquid Oxygen is much denser than gaseous Oxygen, so it's often a good choice, and indeed the first liquid fueled rocket used liquid Oxygen and Texaco gasoline. The downside here is that these propellants aren't very storable. Liquid Oxygen requires being kept at cryogenic temperatures, and even kerosene has some difficulties if you just leave it around for a long time. So there are a variety of more storable propellants. Solid propellants are storable, but they have the downside that they can't be shut off, they need to be used all in one go. There are other storable propellants though, such as various types of hydrazines and, say, di-nitrogen tetroxide. This basic combo (and variations) has the advantage that when mixed together they ignite spontaneously, without requiring any ignition source, this is called being \"hypergolic\". Hypergolic propellants are a good choice for applications in space (as opposed to just getting to orbit) because they are storable and extremely reliable. All it takes is opening up some valves and the rocket engine is suddenly *on*. This was what was used for the Apollo astronauts to return from the Moon, as such an application required an extremely reliable engine. The downside is that this requires two separate fuels.\n\nHydrazine on its own can be used as a \"monopropellant\" fuel though, but it requires a catalyst in the rocket plumbing. As the hydrazine passes over the catalyst it heats up and decomposes, and this decomposition generates energy, so it basically self-combusts and generates a considerable amount of energy, producing a high temperature exhaust. With a hydrazine engine you can have an incredibly simple system (a self-pressurizing hydrazine tank, with just a few valves used for turning the engine on and off) which is also extremely reliable but very much more efficient than a simple cold-gas thruster. Hydrazine has a fairly low exhaust velocity compared to other propellants (only about 2 km/s) but because a hydrazine based system is so simple and reliable and can be scaled down very small, it's a very common choice for spacecraft attitude control systems or propulsion systems, especially for long duration spacecraft.\n\nConsider, for example, the Voyager probes. These are three axis stabilized vehicles (meaning they maintain a constant orientation in 3-dimensions) that use only their hydrazine thrusters for attitude control, they don't have momentum wheels or gyrodines or anything like that. Those systems have been operating for nearly 40 years continuously, as the vehicles have passed through the entirety of the solar system, and they still haven't run out of propellant. In fact, it was only after more than 30 years that the vehicles switched from their primary to backup sets of thrusters, which will now serve them for perhaps a similar or greater amount of time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine#Rocket_fuel", "http://www.braeunig.us/space/propel.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_gas_thruster"], []]}
{"q_id": "3cy3c0", "title": "Was Philosophy prominent in Africa?", "selftext": "I ask this because I want to know if there were schools of Philosophy in specific African countries, enough to distinguish itself as African Philosophy. \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cy3c0/was_philosophy_prominent_in_africa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct0acqm", "ct0gylz", "ct0jt7r"], "score": [23, 6, 2], "text": ["Do you have a specific time period and region in mind? Alexandria in particular hosted many Greek philosophers during the Hellenic and Roman periods, St Augustine was born in Hippo Regius (Algeria) and the Madrassahs in Morocco were particularly renowned during the Umayyad Caliphate and Cordoba periods. \n\nYet i somehow gather from your question that you might be more interested in Sub-Saharan Africa. Would I be correct in that assumption?\n\nedit: Augustine was born in a smaller town in Numidia, further west of Hippo Regius. ", "Another subreddit that may prove helpful is /r/askphilosophy.  \n\n", "Ancient Egypt had a pretty strong philosophical tradition. There are even some pretty admiring passages about Egyptian philosophy in Ancient Greek writing (e.g. Plato's *Timaios* or Aristotle's *Politics*).\n\nHere are some texts and names to get you started, if you are interested:\n\n* Imhotep (~2700 BCE)\n* Instructions of Kagemni (~2500 BCE)\n* Ptahhotep (~2350 BCE)\n* Instructions of Merikare (~1990 BCE)\n* The Debate Between a Man and his Soul (~1900 BCE)\n* The Eloquent Peasant (~1800 BCE)\n* Instructions of Ani (~1500 BCE)\n* Echnaton (~1350 BCE)\n* Instructions of Amenemope (~1200 BCE)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2l487h", "title": "Why are radiation hardened microprocessors on spacecraft much slower than the ones in consumer laptops?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2l487h/why_are_radiation_hardened_microprocessors_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clrlsyy"], "score": [8], "text": ["There are a couple reasons for this. The first is technical; the second has more to do with design and testing time-frames.\n\nPhysical shielding of electrical systems is of course a part of all space-bound electronics, but physical shielding alone can\u2019t protect an electrical system from all potentially interfering particles that may be encountered in space. There are some that can pass through shielding, and others that can actually interact with shielding materials to create secondary particles that can affect the electronics.\n\nSpecially designed radiation hardened chips utilize some form of redundancy in order to verify that results are correct. Either multiple simultaneous copies of the data are maintained at different places in the chip, or parity bits are added to assist in detecting errors. For example data may be triplicated and then the correct value can be known by \u201cmajority vote.\u201d A single duplicate or parity bits only tells you a value is invalid, not what value is correct. Data corruption can also occur within an active logic block, so redundancy is needed in the calculations as well as stored data. For example multiple arithmetic blocks can be used with each of the multiple data copies (spatial redundancy), or a single arithmetic block can be used multiple times (temporal redundancy). The results of the calculations can then be compared in the same way the multiple copies of the data in order to verify correctness. This kind of redundancy takes up a lot of space on the chips and reduces the processing speed.\n\nNow, those are the technical reasons. There are also a number of reasons related to design and testing. First, the time it takes to design, construct, and launch these systems is often measured in years. This generally means they were originally designed with parts available several years prior. Additionally, there is a substantial time requirement for a design to be tested for these kinds of operational conditions. The design process has to be especially rigorous; the latest-and-greatest technology is often not used as it can take time in real-world usage for possible flaws in a new material or architecture technology to become apparent. Additionally, a chip has to be tested in long-term operation in an appropriate test environment to know how well it preforms under special conditions. Combining these factors, the technology in a chip used in a spacecraft launched today may be based on the design of chips from years to decades prior.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5ymqlt", "title": "what would happen if everybody (us) paid the same tax rate?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ymqlt/eli5_what_would_happen_if_everybody_us_paid_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["der8lak", "der9070", "derbpum", "derc7b8", "dercw69", "deridkv", "dernhw4"], "score": [31, 6, 8, 88, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Assuming we took a middle tax rate as the rate, poor people would be poorer, rich people would be richer. The system would be less fair and reduce economy mobility. Tax revenue would be down which would mean less funding for programs ", "If you left all the deductions in place,to make everyone have the same adjusted gross income (AGI), you'd end up with about a 20% tax rate.  This would make the 'break even' point about $90,000/year in income for an individual and $150,000/year for a married couple. So if your AGI was below that level you'd pay more in income tax, and if your AGI was above that level you'd pay less. Keep in mind that AGI post-deduction incomes so the actual 'break even' pay rates would be higher. ", "Generally speaking, \"flat tax\" is beneficial to the wealthy, and harmful to the impoverished. \n\nIf the rate is on the higher end, towards what high income individuals currently pay, that massively increases the tax burden on low income individuals, reducing even further their ability to afford the basics of life. \n\nIf the rate is set on the lower end, towards what low income individuals currently pay, that is a huge tax break for the rich, and massively reduces the income of the government, resulting in cuts to government services, which are more likely to be needed by the less well off. \n\nThe specifics of what would happen depend entirely on the tax rate in question, but generally speaking it would devastate the economy, the people, and/or the government one way or another.", "Assuming that we took careful care to set the rate such that overall government revenues would not change.  In addition we'd have to look at deductions and credits, but let's say we eliminated them as well.  Let's assume that all of those problems are addressed and you find a perfect percentage to charge everyone and keep all government revenues exactly the same. \n\nWhat you are asking about here is called a \"flat tax\".  This is where everyone pays literally the exact same percentage of their income in taxes.  While this seems very fair, once you take a close look it's VERY not fair. \n\nThe reason it's considered unfair is because poor people tend to spend much higher percentages of their income on a class of expenses known as necessities of life. We're talking things like food, water, clothing and shelter.  Things that are required to keep you alive. \n\nLet's take a poor (but not too poor) person.  They make $700 per month and pay $500 per month in housing, the rest on food.  The housing that they can get for $500 is the cheapest available in their city. OK, but mostly shit and includes roommates.  They eat very little and fairly badly on $50 per week. \n\nIf you charge this person a 10% tax rate, they need to pay $50 per month in taxes.  Thie reduces their food budget by 25%, so now they don't get to eat for the last week of every month. \n\nNow lets look at a rich person.  They earn $10,000 per month and spend $5,000 per month on housing.  They eat well, spending $150 per week and have plenty of money leftover for savings and other luxuries. \n\nA 10% tax on this rich person will not impact their food budget.  It will mean they put less into savings, or spend less on luxury items, perhaps they might select a cheaper home.  But they will not go hungry.\n\nBasically what I'm getting at here is that poor people spend a much higher percentage of their income on the necessities of life than wealthy people do.\n\nEven in cases where a rich and poor person both spend the same percentage of their income on something like housing (a rare case, but one that can exist), it's still unfair because the rich person is able to spend less on a less nice home whereas the poor person is already in the cheapest home available. \n\nThis is where the concepts of discretionary spending come into play.   A wealthy person has not only more money to spend but more ability to decide where to spend the money that they have.  Poor people are restricted because they are already scraping the bottom of the barrel to get anything, so there's not really any room to move downwards. \n\nSo a flat tax actually is considered regressive (poor people pay more) because we should be looking at discretionary income, not total income.   That's the intent of our tax system, to take into account the fact that poorer people don't have as much room to move and save as richer people do.  \n\nSo we say if you make less than X amount you don't need to pay anything as you don't have any discretionary income.  As you move up the income chain, more and more of your income is discretionary.  therefore we charge you a higher and higher percentage of income.\n\nIf you make $1,000,000 per month, you likely have a VERY expensive house and some nice cars, but you don't NEED those things to live.  At that level, 99% of your income is discretionary. ", "You can't really live in America for less than $2,000/mo by the time you cover rent, utilities, medical, food, internet, phone, and transportation.  I'm sure someone will reply with \"yes you can\" but it's really tough to get much lower than that.  \n\nTherefore, each individual needs to come up with $24,000/year to barely meet costs.  Anything above that allows you to spend a bit more, or simply add to savings.  \n\nAssuming you're working a full time job, a low-end worker will only get about 2000hrs in a year after you account for unpaid vacation and sick time.  That means to just cover costs they need to be making $12/hr after taxes.  \n\nIf we tax everyone at the same rate, minimum wage workers are forced to choose between food, rent, and taxes each month just to get by.  Those making more than $24,000/year can cut some of their luxuries to get make ends meet.  \n\nPersonally, I'd like to see income tax be X% of all income over Minimum Wage X 2000.  Basically giving everyone a large deduction that scales well to all pay scales.  Nobody should choose between food and Government.  This would also give almost everyone a profit incentive to raise the minimum wage periodically, but also a profit incentive to keep raises reasonable. ", "A flat tax would destroy lobby groups and the loopholes. \n\nPoliticians are inclined to helping people that favor them. Every progressive tax system has scope for policies that allow even the rich to pay less taxes. I don't think there has been an implementation of progressive taxes where this has not been true. \n\nI take it as a given that people with total income below a certain level would be exempt from all taxes and this will be the only exception. Contrary to what's been mentioned, flat taxes increase total revenue mainly from reducing loopholes. \n\n", "Poor people would pay too much.\n\nThe less money you make, the more of it goes toward stuff you *need* just to survive: food, shelter, clothing, etc.\n\nLet's say everybody had to give half of their legos to Goodwill.\n\nSomeone with two million legos would have to give away one million legos, which is quite a lot, but they'd still be left with the other one million legos, so that person could still build pretty much anything they wanted to.\n\nSomeone with only two legos would have to give away one lego, and they'd only have one lego left, so that person wouldn't be able to build anything at all.\n\nTaking away so many of somebody's legos that they can't build anything isn't very nice.\n\nNow imagine that instead of just being unable to build anything with legos, the people without enough left were dying in agony and despair in the streets. Making them do that is a whole lot worse than \"not being very nice\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5i16hk", "title": "Why are so many basic Physics formulas in the form of 0.5ab^2?", "selftext": "The title pretty much sums up my question. To be more specific however, why are so many of the basic mechanics physics formulas all in the same general form of 0.5ab2. For example, Kinetic Energy is 0.5mv2, and spring potential is 0.5kx2. In the kinematic equation x=xit+0.5at2, the 0.5at2 shows up again. In the formula for energy of a particle in simple harmonic motion, the energy formula is once again 0.5kA2. It even shows up sometimes in some of the most basic electricity and magnetism formulas for potential energy.\nObviously some constant times x, when integrated, gives 0.5cx2, but I was curious is there is some other reason this form for equations shows up so often, or if it just a product of integration.\nMy apologies if this is a very basic question, or a meaningless one. I am still in high school physics and haven't reached anywhere close to a high level of understanding with regards to physics.\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5i16hk/why_are_so_many_basic_physics_formulas_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db4tnz9"], "score": [38], "text": ["You've more or less answered your own question. The form 0.5 c x^2 is obtained by integrating the expression y =  c x. And \"y = c x\" expresses that one variable (y) is proportional to the other (x). Two variables being proportional to eachother is rather common, so the relation y = c x appears often and by extension the integrated expression 0.5 c x^2 also shows up regularly.\n\nAs an example, the force of a spring is given by F = k x (k the spring constant, x the length difference from the equillibrium position). We know that the potential of a compressed (or extended) spring is equal to work performed to compress (or extend) the spring. This work is determined by integral of the force (as function of distance), so the integral of F = k x, which gives us W = 0.5 k x^(2).\n\nThe other relations of this form have a similar derivation, based on the notion of two variables being proportional to eachother."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2z4ppl", "title": "What makes today's rocket engines better than the V2 rocket engines 70 years ago?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2z4ppl/what_makes_todays_rocket_engines_better_than_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpg81w9", "cpgayki"], "score": [5, 6], "text": ["The advent of computational fluid dynamics is probably the biggest factor. Computer modeling of fluid flows and the associated optimization of parts in a rocket engine in contact with fluid applies to turbopumps, valves, nozzles etc.", "Actually, booster/upper stage rocket technology has not changed all that much since the 70's, the pinnacles of which were the RD-170 and SSME/RS-25. The advantage we have today with computers is that we can more effectively analyze and design rocket components instead of using trial-by-fire. Numerous full engines and prototypes catastrophically failed (spectacularly exploded) before they got these engines right. This isn't really acceptable in today's mindset/environment. We are also quite a long way out from designing a rocket system perfectly using computers and models.\n\nA great rocket engine has a few key engineering challenges: very high pressure, very high temperature, and must eject huge amounts of mass at high speed. As people say, a rocket engine is simply a well controlled explosion. The concept of direct thrust (i.e. jet propulsion) was relatively new during the WWII era when V-2's came to the scene. This was also just about the point in time where the first jet aircraft came into being. **Basically the fundamental understanding of compressible, supersonic flows, chemical/combustion processes, and combustion stability were really the key to getting the most out of rocket engines.**\n\nAfter that, it was developing all of the methodology and accompanying parts to handle these extreme environments. Of course, this meant the advent of new materials, new components, and new ways of thinking, allowing for the construction of lighter, more efficient, more powerful engines.\n\n---\n\nIf you had a specific question about why certain aspects are better, feel free to ask.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3lky13", "title": "How did paralyzed people get around prior to the invention of a wheelchair?", "selftext": "I'm paralyzed waist down as a result of an accident. \n\nI have a love hate relationship with my wheelchair. I hate it for what it is. But I'm forever grateful that a device exists which I can use to get around, keep active, and be independent.  \n\nSpinal cord injury while not very common still has always occurred..\n\nI wonder how those peoples lives were, say, 300 years ago? \n\nNot just the wheelchair but also other advances like medication for pain and catheters to be able to urinate. \n\nI know these weren't around until recent times. 19th century? \n\nSo what was life like for the paralyzed prior to the introduction of wheelchairs and medications to improve quality of life? \n\nWere they seen as NOT part of society?  Did they live their lives on bed rest? Did their life expectancy go down considerably?\n\nI'm so intrigued.... ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lky13/how_did_paralyzed_people_get_around_prior_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv7dmnu", "cv7hkzz", "cv7hx1p"], "score": [14, 23, 6], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion of an interesting topic, but you may find some more information in the answers to a past question like [How did different cultures in different time periods treat the disabled?](_URL_0_) I'm not sure any of those directly answer your question, but they are similar and interesting.", "Medieval western Europe:\n\nIn cases of paralysis or impaired mobility, medical texts prescribe care (treatment/hopeful cure) like applying heat, ingesting various herbs and spices, and the odd instruction to wrap the impaired limb in fox fur or breathe in vapors from the fires of purgatory. Based on modern medicine, I'd guess the first two, at least, were focused towards pain relief to some extent. I've never seen anything about help in urination, but medical texts aren't my specialty so that's not saying much.\n\nSocially, late medieval guilds generally had statutes to provide financially for members who became disabled, due to sickness, old age, or industrial accidents like carpenters who had a house fall down on them (London 1389 for the falling house; most are more general). Poor people without familial support generally ended up begging, although some found shelter in hospitals (shelters) typically run by religious houses. Most paralyzed people probably ended up financially dependent on their families.\n\nAs far as getting around, probably the best details come from saints' lives and miracle stories. Some mobility-impaired people were able to drag themselves to shrines (in hopes of a cure) with the aid of crutches, or by crawling. Most stories involve the person being \"brought\" or \"carried\" by others--family, friends, occasionally local people they paid. Carrying might mean in a basket, on a horse, in someone's arms, on a stretcher or a litter. A few miracle stories also let us know that the person seeking the miraculous cure had help getting dressed, out of bed, etc. from family members.\n\nI have zero clue about impact on life expectancy. A lot of the sources are concerned with impaired mobility that comes with old age, which skirts the question; the emphasis in the miracle stories is obviously on how the petitioner was eventually cured.\n\nIf you're interested in reading more about the Middle Ages, OP: the foundational source on this for medieval is Irina Metzler, *Disability in Medieval Europe*, although a lot of it is concerned with the theology and philosophy of disability. Her *A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages* is probably better for your interests here, but it is cost-prohibitive unless you have access to a university library. Sharon Farmer, *Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris*, draws on the miracle stories, so it actually reveals a surprising amount about navigating various disabilities including paralysis.", "Hi! You'll likely get more focused, in-depth answers if you could specify a region/culture/country and time period, but meanwhile, there's a short comment here from u/NurseAngela\n\n* [What was life like for physically disabled people prior to the invention of wheelchairs?](_URL_0_) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13nmgc/how_did_different_cultures_in_different_time/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j1zdl/what_was_life_like_for_physically_disabled_people/"]]}
{"q_id": "3vgv7x", "title": "Why did General Longstreet appear to shift his views so radically after the Civil War?", "selftext": "I realize Wikipedia is not particularly reliable, but I'm going to presume that it gets basic facts correct like:\n\n* He became a Republican\n* Led an African American militia against a mob of white supremacists\n\nWhile I realize the dude is probably far from being considered progressive by modern standards, this seems pretty extreme for an ex-Confederate General. What caused this relatively drastic shift in beliefs?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vgv7x/why_did_general_longstreet_appear_to_shift_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxnxmb5"], "score": [16], "text": ["Without commenting on Longstreet himself, I think it's worth noting that just because someone fought for a particular side in the Civil War that doesn't *necessarily* mean they were perfectly ideologically aligned with that side. In a society in which family and community ties were extremely important, people often fought for reasons of loyalty to their family/city/state to the exclusion of ideological considerations. Even Robert E Lee had complex and contradictory attitudes toward the issues of slavery and secession."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3w13kr", "title": "why is it hard to stop laughing while you are in a situation where laughing is inappropriate?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w13kr/eli5_why_is_it_hard_to_stop_laughing_while_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxshijc", "cxsiox0", "cxsj1ub", "cxsm4w5", "cxsm7vh"], "score": [40, 10, 5, 21, 7], "text": ["This article explains the psychology behind laughter pretty well ... _URL_0_\n\nTL;DR Turns out, they aren't exactly 100% sure what actually causes laughter - but they do know we can't actually control when we laugh,  &  most times we laugh isn't because something is actually funny. We laugh for a lot of reasons, most of them have to do with how our brains evolved as humans.  Their main point is that laughter is social  &  helps us bond with others around us.  In inappropriate situations, it could just be your brain trying to cope with the tension  &  break up the awkwardness..", "In general I think it's just kind of funny when someone laughs when it's inappropriate to laugh, which of course makes you want to laugh more.", "Because the hilarity of the inappropriateness kicks in after the humour has worn off... ha..ha", "You get caught in a laugh loop. Your initial social miscue leads to a deep sense of embarressment. In order to handle the embarressment, your brain says ,\"Let's smile and chuckle and everything will be okay.\"\nUnfortunately, being embarressed can cause your funny bone to fracture and this releases uncontrollable laughter into your system. The funny bone laughter leakage causes you to become hysterical and have trouble catching your breath and cackle like a hyena at your Uncle Freddie's funeral while everybody staring at you in horror.", "I've never gotten to tell this story but it's somewhat relevant to this. \n\nIn high school I hung out with the tight pants crew. One day in math class my buddy who was right next to me whispered my name. I looked over, and he nodded downward, so I looked into his lap. Right as I look down he flexes a boner and I see his pants bulge out. We immediately both bust out laughing. These are some no-nonsense laughs and they completely interrupt the lesson, it doesn't help we are in the front row. The teacher pauses for a little bit and tries his best to calm us down nicely, to little effect. We are crying and laughing at this point, mostly because we shouldn't be, not even because the boner. The teacher eventually gets upset and starts threatening to kick us out and send us to the office and stuff. We tamed ourselves as best we could but couldn't maintain silence for more than 5 seconds. We kept tittering back and forth until eventually we both busted out into full on laughter again. Eventually we got kicked out, and my buddy had to run out of the room leaning over because he still had a boner. That was a fun visit to the principal. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.webmd.com/men/features/why-we-laugh"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5jogr3", "title": "why is reverse-racism/reverse-sexism not the same as regular racism/sexism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jogr3/eli5_why_is_reverseracismreversesexism_not_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbhr8vp", "dbhr96u", "dbhs3pf", "dbhsfby", "dbhtm8v", "dbhtmfr", "dbhw3fd", "dbhy1nc", "dbi2htc"], "score": [28, 14, 2, 8, 4, 7, 4, 4, 2], "text": ["Most people think of racism as synonymous with discrimination or prejudice based on race. This will match up with the definition you find in most dictionaries.\n\nSome Sociology-related courses in college define racism and sexism as a political or societal system designed to hold back disadvantaged groups so that the prevailing group will stay in power. With this definition of racism/sexism, black people and women cannot be racist or sexist in America because they are not the ones with the position of power.\n\nYour professor would probably agree that black people and women can be *prejudiced*, but is probably using a different definition of racism and sexism than the colloquial definition. ", "In the academic sphere, racism and sexism usually refer to power, not individual cases. Reverse racism isn't a thing because the current power structure elevates whiteness above blackness. Any individual case where a black person discriminates or the system somehow rewards a black person over a white person (and it is perceived as unfair) is not an instance of racism because the systematic power in society is still in the hands of whiteness above blackness. \n\nSame with sexism. \n\nIn the every-day meaning of sexism and racism, sure. People can be discriminatory and prejudiced in any direction. But academics aren't interested in the individual level. They're interested in the systematic, structural level of society, government policy and business.", "I think this is why travel and experiencing other cultures is important. Racism is everywhere, in every country and culture.  You could study that for days...Bangkok Thais vs. Northeastern Thais has a real red state/blue state quality. \n\nIf you want an uncommon topic for a paper, examine what it's like being a white person in some Sephardic parts of the world.  You will find many examples where the system is rigged against those of white skin color. This is the norm in Asia. ", "An important general point is that dictionaries give terse, simplistic definitions to help understand words in a general context, not a deep academic discussion. For example, if you go by the _URL_0_ definitions of recession and depression, you'd wind up thinking that the only difference is that depressions have increasing unemployment and recessions don't; that's a good way to fail economics. \n\nTrying to prove the professor is using the word racism incorrectly by reference to Webster is a losing approach. The dictionary isn't a social science reference book. ", "I think we are entering an interesting time though.  I'm a 32 yr old white male.  My office at a major corporation has been concerned with filling roles with minorities for a while now.  \n\nI'm starting to look for a new job and I'm actually a bit nervous about getting my job if I compete against a minority.  \n\nObviously, growing up a white male in a middle / upper middle class family isn't a bad way to grow up.  I'm not complaining.  It's just that it's getting interesting..\n\nOn a related side note:\nThere's a man named Edward Blum that is trying to roll back all civil rights laws.  I'm sure he thinks of them as 'reverse racism'.  He was the guy behind the Fisher v University of Texas where the girl didn't get into school because a minority was given preference.\n\n", "There is no difference.  In fact, it's the definition of \"equality.\"  Everyone can be biased towards their own race/sex, and against others.  Some just get called out more often", " >  why does my professor say racism against white people (reverse-racism) is not an actual thing?\n\nBecause this serves to obfuscate the fact that they are racist against whites. They are heavily influenced by Marxism, and see interracial relations in the same way communists see the class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: black people will be oppressed so long as whiteness exist; all whites are automatically racist. So it's either the Alt-Right's beloved white genocide, or constant bashing of whites into a submissive position. The problem with most modern Social Justice positions is that they believe two wrongs make a right.\n\nDitto for third-wave feminism and its aim to deconstruct masculinity. See #killallmen.", "Reverse racism = no racism \n\nPeople of all races can be racist... its not reverse racism when minorities treat white different because they are white.. its just racism\n\n", "The way it's been explained to me, and this has caused rifts among me and some friends, is that racism is a complex and wide-spanning systematic effort of the government, culture, and a general way of thinking. This I can agree with, I won't deny that the system has been rigged against minorities for decades. But what I consider to be racism is simply treating someone differently because of their race. I'm not talking like, buying SPF100 for your white friends, which is probably aside from genetic medical conditions the only context in which I believe race matters. I mean, if you look at someone and treat them differently than you would treat someone of a different this or that, it's unnecessary bias to be categorized accordingly (racism, sexism, -phobias).\n\nHowever, some of the more far left don't see it this way. Because the system was designed to cater to white people, especially people with more money, since other races and people with less money have less opportunities, the system disadvantages them and is therefore racist against them. Because of the system failing to prevent these challenges to the rich whites, this racism does not exist for them, prompting people to claim that you cannot be racist against white people. I find the logic a bit convoluted but stick with me. \n\nLet me use myself and my partner as examples. I'm Latina. My father was an immigrant, but my mother is white. Because of this, I look white and have never experienced someone stereotyping me based on what they see, so I safely say I have not experienced racism. Since I am still Hispanic, and my parents are suburbanites (middle class) I had opportunities a lot of people never did. I was well educated and was designated a National Hispanic Scholar because of this, and in turn received auto-admission to a lot of colleges and a full tuition scholarship. My partner, on the other hand, is a cis, straight, white male, from a lower tax bracket than me. The university I go to has a whopping 80% acceptance rate. Despite having average grades, because he was a poor, white male, he was not admitted. \n\nThis of course begs the question, did the system favor me for being a minority and scorn him for being white? I will fully admit that I have led an easy life. I get the benefit of being Hispanic (scholarship, national recognition) without ever having any of the drawbacks of being exposed to racism. Doesn't seem fair, does it? \n\nI recognize that this particular case could very well be an exception to the rule but it's hard to base racism off of the system when the system changes who it favors depending on the situation. That's why I don't believe people when they say reverse racism doesn't exist. It may not be as enforced by society as racism towards minorities, but it is still treating someone poorly based on race. \n\nI think you can disagree on what to call it all day long, but the underlying message needs to be that IT IS A SHITTY THING TO DO.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["m-w.com"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8x3hom", "title": "with all the wireless technologies we use (wi-fi, satellites, cellphone towers etc), isn't it a concern that it might get \"congested\" and cause the tech to fail?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x3hom/eli5_with_all_the_wireless_technologies_we_use/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e20ivfv", "e20j47g", "e20j5do", "e20j7tk"], "score": [9, 3, 8, 5], "text": ["In the US there is an organization called the \"FCC\" or the Federal Communications Commission which regulates the frequencies which wireless devices can employ in order to prevent such interference and failures. Other countries have similar bodies.", "Wireless technologies are allocated frequency bands and within those bands, there are typically multiple channels available. As an example, WiFi has 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. The 2.4G band has 11 channels. 5G has many more. \nRadio signals have a limited range and so the bands and channels can be re-used, given some geographical separation.\nMost devices are able these days to change channels on their own to avoid congestion. \nBut yes, given enough devices in a small geographical area, congestion can be a significant problem.", "It does get congested. If you live in apartment with lots of people with their own networks there can be a lot of interference on certain channels. Usually, wifi devices will just pick up your router's signal but if the unit next to you uses the exact same channel you could run into issues. ", "There is a concern which is why most of the radio spectrum is regulated and licensed out.  If you have an application that needs to work then you have to buy a chunk of the spectrum for the area and then you get exclusive rights to it\n\nFor stuff like WiFi and Bluetooth which are in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band, we regularly encounter congestion issues especially if you have several WiFi networks in range of each other.  To help deal with this, the power of devices operating in the unlicensed band is limited.  Bluetooth and WiFi transmitters are restricted to 1 W of power, this reduces the range at which they will cause interference and keeps your network from shouting over one from across town."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3xdsid", "title": "Why does a function converge or diverge?", "selftext": "In my Calculus class we are studying improper integrals. We were given the function f(x) =x-3 and f(x) = x-1/3\n\nThe cube function diverges and the cube root function converges, but why? What happens near 0 at infinity that causes the different behavior?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3xdsid/why_does_a_function_converge_or_diverge/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy3z0sd"], "score": [14], "text": ["It's worded a little weird so I'm going to assume that your functions are f(x)=x^(-3) and g(x)=x^(-1/3) and your integral is from 1 to infinity. The integral  of f(x) converges and the integral of g(x) diverges. \n\nGenerally, we can look at the integral of F(x)=x^(-s), where s is some positive real number. For what s does this integral converge? The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus shows that the integral of F(x) from x=1 to x=T is going to  be equal (1-T^(1-s))/(s-1). If s > 1, then 1-s < 0 and so T^(1-s) will approach zero as T gets bigger and bigger. So when s > 1, the integral converges to 1/(s-1). When 0 < s < 1, then 1-s > 0 and so T^(1-s) will go to infinity as T gets bigger and bigger. So when 0 < s < 1 the integral diverges. \n\nAll of this is simply due to the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus and the Power Rule. You can think of this as happening because both the function and it's antiderivative are restricted. Even if the function approaches zero, the antiderivative might not. Said differently, a function that doesn't approach zero can have a derivative that does approach zero. For instance, if you have [f(x)=x^(2/3)](_URL_0_) then it's graph continues to grow, but it grows at slower and slower speeds. This means that the derivative will approach zero even though the function doesn't. So when we try to integrate the derivative, we get something that doesn't converge. \n\nAn interesting thing to ask is what happens when s=1? Does the integral of F(x)=1/x from x=1 to infinity converge or diverge? It's right in the middle between these two cases, so what happens? If we try to plug in s=1 into the formula (1-T^(1-s))/(s-1), we'll get 0/0 which is nonsensical. It could be zero, nonzero or infinite. (I tell my calc students that the value of 0/0 is \"You need to do more work\"). A quick application of L'Hopital's Rule shows that when s=1 we should have (1-T^(1-s))/(s-1) = log(T) (the natural log of T). This means that as T- > infty, the integral of 1/x from x=1 to T is infinity. \n\nIf we look at it, when s > 1 we get a positive power of T and when s < 1 we get a negative power of T. So when s=1 we should get a zeroth power of T. But this is unacceptable because there are other factors, like the s-1 in the denominator, that come into play when s=1. You can then intuitively think of log(T) as an \"infinitesimal power of T\". It's a power of T that is simultaneously bigger than 0 but less than every positive power. If the power of T were zero, then we'd get a constant and the integral of F(x) from x=1 to x=T  would be constant, independent of T. But this can't be, so the integral must be some nonzero power of T that is neither positive or negative, so it is an infinitesimal power of T, log(T).\n\nThis intuition fits into things kinda nicely. What is, for instance, the integral of 1/(xlogx) from 1 to infinity? It still diverges because logx is kinda like an infinitesimal power of x and so xlogx is only infinitesimally bigger than a power of 1, not large enough to get into the s > 1 range. But this intuition isn't exact, it's just a good way to understand how logx grows and why/how it fits into the power rules of differentiation and integration."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x%5E%282%2F3%29"]]}
{"q_id": "2iv46t", "title": "how did tumblr get its current reputation (i.e sjw's, \"check your privilege\", etc)", "selftext": "So I've been browsing /r/TumblrinAction and I am just amazed at some of the stuff people on Tumblr say. I don't use this site, but now I'm kind of wondering why it is the way it is now.\n\nI imagine it was never like this, with \"Social Justice Warriors\" posting all of the time and saying ridiculous things.\n\nSo where/when did this all start?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iv46t/eli5_how_did_tumblr_get_its_current_reputation_ie/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl5qw0e", "cl5u53f", "cl5ul4m", "cl5v7zy", "cl5wla1", "cl60gr2", "cl617b9", "cl63wke", "cl64cjc"], "score": [105, 36, 16, 12, 59, 11, 5, 8, 4], "text": ["There's a phrase my school teacher used to say, \"Water tends to find it's own level.\" \n\nI think porn sites actually is a great example of that. If you go to any random porn site, and then they have a lot of, say, pregnant porn uploaded by the users, people who do not like pregnant porn might stay away from it. The more people that stray because of the prevalence of pregnant porn, the more concentrated the pregnant porn has become on that site, until that site has a reputation for being the site for pregnant porn. \n\nTumblr's vocal social justice commentators have likewise turned people who aren't into that away from the site, leaving it more concentrated, so if you *are* into that you're more likely to post there. ", "I really like the medium. Tumblr is a really easy to use site, and there are tons of nice blogs on it. I agree with some of the obvious things with a grain of salt (feminism good, homo/transphobia bad). The vocal minority is present on any website, and when people find others that agree with them, they will move there.\n\nReddit has a vocal minority just as much as Tumblr. I always thought Reddit was full of militant atheists.", "The same reason Xanga become almost exclusively Asian.  At some point one group becomes so prevalent that it actually gains a kind of internet gravity.  People who want to be part of the community are drawn to it and/or are told to go there.  In this case for radfems and trans-demi-dragonkins when they've worn out their welcome on other parts of the internet, they're told to take that nonsense to Tumblr.\n\nTumblr isn't completely far gone because of the nature of the site.  Lots of people still use it for porn exclusively after all.  But what makes Tumblr interesting in this case is the echo chamber effect and the SJW ideology which is really cult-like.  The ideology of \"check your privilege\" and \"if someone claims they're offended you must never question them, just shut up and acquiesce\" creates an echo chamber where the most radical and crazy voices are pushed the hardest and people of lower status (ironically those assumed to be of highest status IRL) are never allowed to say \"hey whoa, you guys are getting pretty crazy\".  \n\nSo they keep getting further and further out of touch with the rest of the world.  And that's how you have modern Tumblr (and really modern 3rd wave feminism in general).", "I hadn't heard of any of that shit before tumblrinaction. So there's your answer.\n\nIt is interesting, though, that Tumblr is basically set up to be an echo chamber. The only way you can comment on a post is by reblogging it, so even negative commenters help to propagate whatever it is they're commenting on.", "To put it plainly, Tumblr is not like TumblrInAction describes it.  It's a social media platform that fills your particular part of it with what you follow.  It's entirely possible to follow people on Tumblr who post nothing but Doctor Who related quotes and images.  The dash is what you make of it, and since the individuals who are on Tumblr post what they want, there are always going to be people who post things which are outlandish (or appear outlandish).\n\nOut of the hundreds of blogs I follow on Tumblr, there are only 4 that I would class as SJW to one extent or another.  For one of them, they blog about Doctor Who, and the rest of their blog is SJW related stuff (feminism, biphobia awareness, mental illness awareness, etc.).  Literally none of their posts would I class as \"TumblrInAction\" material.\n\n[Also, considering that TumblrInAction literally has a link in the sidebar to \"How to Find Juicy SJW's on Tumblr\" with links to a 20 tags... I'm going to say that TiA is equivalent to me going into 20 subreddits that occasionally attract idiots and then only posting what the idiots say, then calling that a representation of Reddit as a whole.]", "Hey guys I was looking at pictures of Paris garbage trucks and I was wondering... How come there's so many garbage trucks in Paris", "You know, I use Tumblr and don't really see much nonsense.  It kind of depends on what you search for and subscribe to.  I think that /r/TumblrinAction members must be actively seeking out things that piss them off.\n\nWhich is fine, I guess, if being pissed off is your hobby.  But Tumblr is also a pretty good place to keep up with your favorite obsessive pop culture fandom.  Watch out for the Sherlock porn.  Or, you know, seek it out, depending on your preferences.", "I think that, also, people who stick around on Tumblr and view the SJW posts tend to develop thoughts and opinions to things they might not have known about before. While not always the case, it's easy for someone to read about some sort of social injustice and then develop strong feeling about it and then may speak out about it. Sometimes this speaking out may either not be well articulated by the speaker, or may not be received well by the listeners due to them being used to hearing the more vocal and less articulate of the bunch.\n\nSource: Joined tumblr for funny posts, ended up hating so many things.", "This is not an answer, mind you.\n\nI just want to say that I see the same shit on this site. It's more of an us and them kind of situation. We have the same sort of social warrior users on here. Tumblr is not simply full of those types, either. I use it to look at rad art. There is a looooot of rad art on Tumblr. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "191pyq", "title": "Sunspot \"rapidly forming\". What does this mean for us?", "selftext": "[Is this dangerous for us?](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/191pyq/sunspot_rapidly_forming_what_does_this_mean_for_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8k9hsw"], "score": [2], "text": ["Mostly, and I'm not being dismissive of you, it means that it's a slow news cycle. It's a sunspot, like any other, perhaps a large one, but more than anything else, the article you linked is evidence that the weather channel has long since abandoned accurate weather reporting for entertainment. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.weather.com/news/science/massive-sunspot-forms-20130220"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1uvkri", "title": "is orange juice really as unhealthy as soft drinks?", "selftext": "An explanation would be much appreciated \n\nEdit: Thanks for front page reddit, and hi dad!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uvkri/eli5_is_orange_juice_really_as_unhealthy_as_soft/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cem2p8y", "cem2xts", "cem39su", "cem3a0z", "cem3dxv", "cem3fp5", "cem3tfp", "cem3ud5", "cem3v2q", "cem42jl", "cem4dcr", "cem4eef", "cem4iqe", "cem4qbu", "cem4wbg", "cem5bf0", "cem5gdn", "cem5j0v", "cem6r0u", "cem7e8h", "cem7sfa", "cem7tep", "cem7y4i", "cem8tot", "cem8yps", "cem962r", "cembfno", "cemcojw", "cemcx4z", "cemdezh", "cemdk4g", "cemeax9", "cemerau", "cemetak", "cemfh7m", "cemgcoq", "cemgujc", "cemh4zy", "cemh77r", "cemh87y", "cemhmkv", "cemhwv4", "cemi8th", "cemmq5x", "cemmtq2", "cemntbq", "cemop5q", "cemp1vs", "cemp3ru", "cemp9xs", "cempama", "cemrlcz"], "score": [15, 3, 972, 406, 5, 2, 2, 2, 131, 12, 18, 22, 229, 4, 2, 690, 3, 9, 31, 4, 4, 2, 2, 9, 28, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 18, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["the problem with OJ is the high sugar* content.  I don't think it's unhealthy as soda though.  not at all.  Soda has almost no nutritional value, while OJ does.  Better off to just eat an orange instead though.  ", "It's because of the sugar. Juices have tons of sugar in them, especially those that would taste too sour naturally.", "Not at all. OJ has a lot of sugar and acids that can harm your teeth. It also has about as much calories as coke. But it also has vitamins (espcially freshly squeezed juice). Just do not drink too much of it and regularly brush your teeth.\nCoke, on the other hand is coloured with caramel color, which is quite unhealthy. Coke also contains phosphoric acid instead of citric acid because it is cheaper. The high sugar content and the phosphoric acid are both suspected of making, especially children, nervous and twitchy.\nYour conclusion should be: Too much of any of those beverages are unhealthy. Sodas much more so. So don't drink too much of them. Fruit juices in _moderation_ are healthy, though.\n\nEdit: Wow, this exploded into my most valuable post so far, karma-wise. I'll tell you where I got my info from: School. Many years ago in the mid-nineties. And you kno what? I still trust my old, long-retired chemistry teacher more on that subject, than any redditors here. I especially doubt the ability of redditors to judge the importance of papers on the subject, especially as I'm sure that not few of those papers are funded by the food industry. We are talking about an industry bigger than tobacco here, after all. And you know what kind of money _they_ poured into this kind of \"PR\" in decades gone.\n\nEdit 2: As I wrote below, I have the following suggestion: As an adult, drink as much OJ or soda as you wish. You are an adult after all. For children, in my opinion, a glass a week of soda is way too much. Give it only to them at birthday parties, fairs, etc. This way it will remain something special for them. And keep in mind: It is disputed here if soda is unhealthy. On the other hand, no one disputes that not drinking soda is definitely not unhealthy.", "The kind with \"pulp\" in it is slightly better. Fiber relieves blood sugar spikes. However, an orange is a much better choice than both orange juice and soda. ", "The answer is yes. Orange juice you would buy from a shop, has most of the fibre taken out, in order to preserve it for more then a couple of days. The fibre in an orange if you were to eat the whole thing (minus the outer skin) helps your body break down the sugar. Without the fibre it is exactly the same as having a can of coke (in regards to sugar) However, if you squeeze fresh orange juice yourself and leave as much of the pulp in, then it is certainly alot better then soft drink, as the pulp holds a large amount of the oranges fibre, assisting your body in absorption of the sugar. Oranges and orange juice both hold a good amount of vitamin C... but in reality the amount of sugar in the processed juice out ways the benefit of the vitamin C.\n", "In addition to; carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins, and water, there are also [Antioxidants](_URL_11_) and [Phytochemicals](_URL_7_).  Oranges [contain](_URL_14_): [rutin](_URL_10_), [ferulic acid](_URL_13_), [alpha carotene](_URL_2_), [beta carotene](_URL_6_), [phytofluene](_URL_0_), [phytoene](_URL_9_), [cryptoxanthin](_URL_12_), [zeaxanthin](_URL_1_), [lutein](_URL_5_), and [oxalic acid](_URL_3_).\nThese things are [good](_URL_8_) for you and generally seem to prevent things like [cancer](_URL_4_). In summary; orange juice good, soda bad.", "What about grapefruit juice?", "Can anyone suggest a good replacement? Whilst I'm not exactly unhealthy, I have been consuming about a carton of orange juice every day for most of my life and never realised any of this. What would anyone recommend?", "When you drink orange juice, you consume much more of it than when you would eat orange fruit. It takes effort and time to peel the fruit, avoid the seeds, and eat only the good parts. Your brain will tell you to stop eating after a few fruits. With juice, you typically gulp down eight oranges in a large glass. Usually, too much of anything isn't good. When it comes to making you drink a lot and consume too much sugar too quickly, orange juice is as unhealthy as soft drinks.", "OJ contains loose fructose (not just inside actual cells that you need to digest), and spikes your blood sugar similarly to the corn syrup in soft drinks. In fact, in one theory of diabetes, fructose (which makes up 55% of the corn syrup) causes fatty deposits in the liver, which leads to insulin resistance. In this way, OJ should actually be worse.\n\nThough, orange juice will have actual nutrients that you need (however, they are not exclusive to orange juice), and if you don't drink too much too often, it should be fine. Soda is also ok if consumed \"sparingly.\"", "ITT: Folkore and random factoids that people found on \"scientific\" websites or were told by their parents.", "ITT no one who knows the difference between sucrose, fructose, glucose, what fibre is and does and a whole wealth of poor knowledge of nutrition.\n\nOrange juice, when in similar quantities, is the lesser of two evils. The main sugar in orange juice is harder for your body to break down thus takin longer and giving less of a blood sugar spike. Fibre, by definition, does nothing but help push your poo through which is also good for you. \n\nTLDR: Use your common sense and learn a little about what you're putting in your bodies.", "Orange juice is somewhat good for you. A study looked at how well juice addressed blood pressure. When they measured they found that things didn't change much, however; for diastolic blood pressure (The lower number in your blood pressure) juice was found to help in a small way. This means that orange juice could help with hypertension.\n\nThe reason folks are talking about it being bad is because of the sugar in it. When you take sugar by itself its pretty bad. When you surround it in fiber it becomes much healthier. That means an actual orange is better for you than its juice. I would wait until people start putting some data up for you to look at. **I would take anything with a grain of salt if they didn't cite the source of their information.**\n\n-----\n\nHeavy data follows for you folks that like your peer reviewed sources :).\n\nSource:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Hypertension puts persistent strain on the heart, leading to hypertensive heart disease and coronary artery disease if untreated. Hypertension is also a major risk factor for stroke, aneurysms of the arteries (e.g. aortic aneurysm), peripheral arterial disease and is a cause of chronic kidney disease. Even moderate elevation of arterial blood pressure is associated with a shortened life expectancy.\"\n\nsource:\n\n Fisher ND, Williams GH (2005). \"Hypertensive vascular disease\". In Kasper DL, Braunwald E, Fauci AS, et al.. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (16th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. pp. 1463\u201381\n\n", "In moderation no, but it's not as healthy as you've been taught. (This is all coming from a Type II diabetic as well)\n\nAnything that has a high carbohydrate level and equates to dumping a load of sugar into the blood stream, effectively giving you a quick spike and then crash, is bad for your pancreas and beta cells. Put orange juice on top of a pancake breakfast with milk, butter, toast etc and you've got a huge carb load your insulin has to bring down now. \n\nOver time, and with a lower activity level, this can either cause you to develop insulin resistance or burn out your beta cells which have had to work overtime to counteract.", "It's all about pasteurization. Any bottled orange juice or and juice for that matter has been pasteurized. This is the process of heating it up to kill all the bacteria that could cause a problem for shelf life of the juice. In doing this process you also lose all the good thing like vitamins and other stuff. Any juice that has vitamin C has had it re-added after pasteurization. The process of pasteurization basically turns it into something similar to soft drink, since you are getting all that sugar, with none of the benefits of raw juice/fruit.\n\nIs it as bad as soft drink? No. Is it much better? No. ", "Your answer has been provided, but I want to give you the context in which people say this.\n\nOrange juice has as much sugar, and as many calories as a Coke (give or take). Most of the time Coke is mentioned as harmful in the context of obesity and diabetes. OJ will not be a better alternative in those contexts.\n\nThat does not mean it's unhealthy in general (it has vitamins, and fiber if you have the pulp in it) but it is not good for weight loss. In fact, for weight gain it's great.", "_URL_0_\n\nRead the part about OJ in this article. ", "From CBC Canada\n\n\"Tropicana orange juice is a pasteurized orange juice, and what they do is they store this juice, which is a full strength juice, in these million-gallon aseptic storage tanks for upwards of a year,\" Hamilton told Calgary's Eyeopener. \"And when the juice goes into the tanks, it's stripped of oxygen so it doesn't go bad in the tanks. However, when they strip the juice of the oxygen, they're also stripping it of the flavour-providing chemicals that are natural to the juice. So what companies such as Tropicana do is they hire flavour and fragrance companies, the same ones that make high-end perfumes and cologne, to engineer flavour packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh.\"\n\nFlavour packs don't grow on trees. They're created through an engineered process that breaks down oils from oranges into individual chemicals. These chemicals are then recombined into formulas that give pasteurized juice that fruity flavour. \n\n\"That's really what you're tasting in your favourite brand of pasteurized orange juice,\" Hamilton said. \"You're tasting the flavour pack.\"\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\n", "Ugh, the responses here are just going on about the minor potential health benefits to consuming OJ.\n\nThe real reason people say OJ is bad, at least in comparison to soda, is because of its high sugar and caloric content. When the topic vets brought up it's usually about losing weight and when you're trying to lose weight, it's better to not drink your calories because it adds up fast. People don't think about when drinking OJ, because it's \"healthy\"\n\nIn the case of OJ. An \"average\" size glass might be about 4 or 5 oranges. It's better to just have an actual orange and drink water. \n\nIt's the same thing with any smoothie or juice place. Jamba juice or juice it up. Nothing in the drinks are \"bad\" for you, but it doesn't change the fact that they're going to be half the daily caloric intake for some people.\n\nSorry if this isn't very coherent. I just woke up and I'm on mobile.", "well, it's full of sugar and carbs.", "Know what's great about juice? You can water it way down and it still tastes great, unlike soda.", "This is where juice is bad, or not so good for you. When was the last time you sat down and ate six oranges in a row? Probably never. However you can drink six oranges no problem in minutes. Most juicer take out the pulp, or fiber, that's one of the healthiest aspects to oranges. \n\nLess is more though. Orange juice is a much better choice than soda any day in moderation. ", "Its the sugar.  Always the sugar.  I love OJ.  I think theres something called Trop 50 which has less sugar and no fake sugar, I think.  thats probably a good alternative.  But I havent tried it yet.  \n\nIt's funny how super sugary drinks are the standard.  Now everyone is trying to release lower calorie drinks, and not diet with aspartame, but just regular versions with less sugar.  Personally, I dont understand why this is not the standard and the sugary ones are called like Coke squared, or coke with more sugar (im not a marketer obviously).  But can you imagine the difference in this country, if we actually highlighted the sugary drinks instead of treating them as the \"normal\" versions?  ", "[What's wrong with orange juice?](_URL_0_)\n\n >  The leading producers of \"not from concentrate\" (a.k.a. pasteurized) orange juice  keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year-round supply. Juice stored this way has to be stripped of oxygen, a process known as de-aeration, so it doesn't oxidize in the tanks. When the juice is stripped of oxygen, it is also stripped of flavour-providing chemicals ... If you were to try the juice coming out of the tanks, it would taste like sugar water.\n\n >  **Juice companies therefore hire flavour and fragrance companies, the same ones that make popular perfumes and colognes, to fabricate flavour packs to add back to their product to make it taste like orange juice.**\n\n >  A good example is the statement that appeared at the top of Tropicana's new and now discontinued carton: \"squeezed from fresh oranges.\" While meaningless \u2013 one would hope the oranges were fresh when squeezed \u2013 the statement could easily be misread as \"fresh squeezed\" by all but the most discerning shoppers.\n\nThis is why it's no better than pop. It's just high wavelength fructose water.\n\nI won't drink it anymore unless I see the oranges squeezed on site.", "I feel the need to point out that from an insulin perspective, OJ is much better. As its considerable sugar content is largely fructose (Glycemic Index: 19, lower than bread) as opposed to high fructose corn syrup (GI: 73), it causes far less of an insulin spike.", "I only drink freshly squeezed orange juice or not-from-concentrate orange juice. With vodka. I don't drink soft drinks. ", "Beverage Designer here.\n\nPretty much unhealthy yes. \nAs others are saying, a bunch of sugar (about 11,2% which is actually more that most soft drinks in europe at least). \nAlso pretty acidic, almost as much as an energy drink. \nVitamins, well you should be getting those from your daily portions of fruit and vegetables... And the fibers, that would be the only actually healthy thing, but there isn't a lot of it in there. \n\nAs other said before, an acual orange would be a much better choice! \n\n", "You should watch [Sugar: The Bitter Truth](_URL_0_)", "Really good rule of thumb: whenever you read anything health related on the internet these days that says \"x is as y as z\" it is going to be grossly oversimplified and heavily qualified. ", "All these people saying how much sugar is in orange juice is the same as coke, giving the perception that it is just as bad for you. Ok sure, it's the same amount in terms of calories. Calaries are just a number. You need to think of the bigger picture.\n\n(Fresh) Orange juice is natural. It has natural sugars in it along side the vitamins. Coke is processed and artificial. You are consuming natural sugars vs artificial sugars. Which do you think is better for you? Which do you think our bodies were intended to consume?\n\nYou also have to think about the other artificial flavour/colour/preservatives/sweetners. These are not the most ideal things to consume. Some of you will argue all day that there is nothing wrong with them, and that's fine. Everyone reacts differently to ingredients. There is nothing 'wrong' with nuts, right? Obviously, but there is a significant population who has allergies and tolerance/sensitivity issues to these. It's the same with these artificial ingredients. People have allergies to artificial preservatives like Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Nitrate, MSG, or artificial sweetners like Suclarose or Aspartame.\n\nNatural Orange juice doesn't have ANY of these in play.\n\nI am probably going to get down voted for saying all this. But the fact is, people are simply looking at sugar and calorie numbers and making judgements from that - of which, less aware people are taking that on board and associating orange juice as being something bad to consume, or that if I have a choice, I might as well have some coke as it tastes better and it's equal side effects. All the while, overlooking all the other important factors that are in play, not just sugar/calorie numbers.\n\nPlease, think outside the box and apply some logic here.", "Every drink that is bottled (excluding water) and contains sugar and high levels of energy or calories (Kcal) is very unhealthy ( i know it sounds obvious)", "This may have been asked, don't feel like scrolling but what about when you juice yourself? As in using a juicer.", "To the best of my knowledge, no soft drink prevents scurvy.", "water is your friend.", "OJ can be a lifesaver for people who become hypoglycemic.  For the rest of us, small amounts ( 4oz ) a day will provide some nutrients and fiber.  Squeeze it fresh -it tastes better, and you get to use your arms and hands for something other than typing. \nI figure that if it's an unprocessed, whole food, it can't be all bad.  \nIt's how I keep my vodka healthy. ", "Couldn't I just blend orange slices with some water to achieve a much healthier alternative to orange juice? Why isn't this a more common approach, I'd imagine it'd be easier to blend oranges than having to squeeze the juices ", "Fruit juices are only barely marginally less bad for you than the typical sugary soft drink.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "Well, it's still got sugar in it.\n\nBut its glucose, not high fructose corn syrup.\n\nGlucose is much better for your body, in fact, fructose can cause up to [seven times as much damage to your body than glucose can.](_URL_0_)", "Better sugar than aspartam.", "American food culture has always been rather utilitarian but ignorant (bare with me I this is related to OJ I promise). \n\nIn France you can spend your hard earned money on a tiny portion of some beautiful delicious delicacy, but people don't do this in America. We (Americans) want as much food for our money as possible. We love good deals, and lots of food. It's all very utilitarian, perhaps dating back to World War 2, the Depression, or all the way back from Pilgrim roots, etc. etc.\n\nNow that food is plentiful, this utilitarian food culture is a huge disadvantage. Nutritional science is stuck back in the days when we barely got enough to eat. Vitamins use to really matter for normal people. Now, normal Americans eat so much they never have to worry about how many vitamins you eat (except for alcoholics, some vegans, the elderly, and pregnant women).\n\nSo, we're stuck in the mode of looking for \"nutritional density\" or the most vitamins per calorie. But, the whole idea has become meaningless for the normal American (note \"normal\", not all Americans).\n\nUtilitarian, but also ignorant. Everything is apparently bad for us. Surprise, you ate *tons* of something and it turns out to be terrible for you. Our ancestors barely ate any sugar, and most didn't even have a consistent supply of carbohydrate for millions of years. Sugar wasn't bad for them, we just never evolved to handle the vast amounts that we eat today. We never really had much evolutionary exposure to plentiful food. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease... merely a evolutionary mismatch.\n\nWhy is this ignorant? Our food culture over simplifies and twists this idea. The fructose in high fructose corn syrup is bad for us, but the same fructose in fruit is good for us somehow? Coconut oil has gone from a something terribly unhealthy for you into a miracle food. And a million other nonsensical nutritional claims that show the ignorance of our food culture.\n\nThis is when I get to orange juice. It's a great source of vitamin C. So... it's great for pirates so they don't get scurvy. Unfortunately, for you and me, it's just sugar water. Sure, some pulp will give you a trivial amount of fiber (compared to our ancestors who ate a lot of vegetation), but don't miss the orange juice reality: \n\nOrange juice is a modern and highly processed version something our ancestors use to eat, metabolically similar to any other sugared drink.", "Discussing the unhealthiness of fruit juices, which surely are among the most natural of foods, kind of makes me sad for our modern society.\n\nNo food is really unhealthy just because of its calory content. The unhealthy part in this equation is sitting on your arse and not burning those however many calories that you took in.\n\nYour body needs energy, be it in form of starch/sugar or fat. In fact, the human body does not need sugar to survive, as opposed to certain kinds of fat, and yet, most people consider fat more unhealthy. In darker times, when food was scarce, the fat was regarded as the best part of the animal, healthy even, as in 'restores your energy after a hard day's work and keeps you from starving'.\nBut you body also needs you to use this energy. So, as I said, if you're to lazy to move/exercise, you can consider nearly every kind of food as unhealthy.", "I think the question is flawed in and of itself, as are the answers here I have read. While many address the differences betweens sugars types, calories, etc. , I think the real issue at hand is which is a better mixer with Potato Vodka. OJ is guilty!", "I love these articles, there a good way to appreciate all the crackpot ideas people have about what's healthy. Post the same in /AskScience and 95% gets removed. ", "actual juice from fruits wont have high fructose corn syrup in it", "People misunderstand the biological role of sugar. Most people think sugar consumption isn't necessary. Biologically, this is, in some sense, equivalent to stating that carbohydrates don't have to be consumed (Carbohydrate consumption is necessary for various reasons. In fact, the brain, under normal conditions, only metabolizes the sugar glucose). This is because sugars are the only carbohydrates that are absorbed by the gut and the only carbohydrates that cells can metabolize. We only derive energy from carbohydrate insofar as the carbohydrate is converted to sugar by digestion. In fact, the sugar glucose is the only carbohydrate that can be metabolized by human cells except for sperm cells which can metabolize fructose.\n\nThe unhealthy properties of sugar are the result of the kind of sugar and, mostly, the RATE AT WHICH IS IT ABSORBED. There is actually a scientific measure for this property, glycemic index. Although fruit has sugar, its glycemic index is usually low. In fact, it's usually lower than that of MOST OTHER CARBOHYDRATE SOURCES. \n\nAlthough fructose has been implicated in various metabolic and other adverse health effects, the sugar in fruit is only about half fructose.\nEven further, the micronutrient and antioxidant content of fruit is likely to significantly ameliorate the adverse effects of the consumption of their fructose.\n\nGlycemic Index Chart _URL_0_", "up vote for the \"hi dad\"", "I would also like to point out the difference between 'juice drinks', or juice made from concentrate and actual juice. With the former, you may as well be drinking a soft drink. It's mainly water and sugar. But with the latter (actual juice) it has all the goodness mentioned by the top poster, ie, all the vitamins and minerals ", "Drink apple juice.  OJ will kill you.", "First, let's set some ground rules for this comparison.  In terms of weight loss, the less calories taken in, the better.  In terms of nutritional value, the more vitamins/minerals/fibers available in a given food, the better.  In terms of impact on the pancreas/insulin production, the lower glycemic index, the better.\n\nLet's take 1 cup/8oz of each: Fresh orange juice, and Coca-Cola.\n\nOrange juice:\n\n112 cal, 26g carbohydrates, 21g sugar, 2g protein, 10% vitamin A, 207% vitamin C, 3% calcium, 3% iron.  \n\nThese are the most notable items on the nutrition label for orange juice.\n\nAccording to [Harvard's glycemic index list](_URL_0_), orange juice has a glycemic index of 50.\n\nCoca-cola:\n\n100 cal, 26g carbohydrates, 26g sugar, 0% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C, 1% calcium, 1% iron.\n\nAgain, using the GI list from Harvard, Coke has a GI of 63.\n\nComparing the amounts of vitamins and minerals, it is evident that orange juice wins in the nutritional value section.  In terms of calories, the difference is marginal.  Orange juice gets a small win against cola in the glycemic index department, however.\n\nOverall, I would say that drinking orange juice is somewhat better for you than drinking soda.  However, orange juice is not an ideal drink unless you desperately need vitamin C, which is not an issue for most people.\n\nIn conclusion: You should just drink water, but if you want a sweet drink with breakfast, I'd go for orange juice over Coke.", "No juice for those under the age of 18 so says the American academy of pediatrics! High in fructose, low in protein and fiber! Stick with the whole fruit! _URL_0_", "I'm not sure if this was posted already, but here's an article on that \"orange juice\" you can find at the store. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nI'd always choose orange juice (fresh squeezed, I'd never drink store-bought stuff) over soft drinks. Even though orange juice contains a lot of sugar, and probably can't be drank by some diabetics because of the sugar spike, it's mostly fructose, which is processed differently in your body than glucose, or any other kind of sugar. But obviously fiber slows down sugar digestion, which is why it's better to eat fruit in whole form. Again, apologies if any of this was already said.", "Neither one of them is really good for you, especially that store bought orange juice."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytofluene", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeaxanthin", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%91-Carotene", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalic_acid", "http://cancer.stanford.edu/information/nutritionAndCancer/reduceRisk/phyto.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutein", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-Carotene", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytochemical", "http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/carotenoids/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoene", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutin", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoxanthin", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferulic_acid", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_phytochemicals_in_food"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0061420"], [], [], [], ["http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html"], ["http://www.cbc.ca/books/2012/06/how-natural-is-your-orange-juice.html"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/nutrition/2009/05/20/whats_wrong_with_orange_juice.html"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM"], ["http://www.diffen.com/difference/Fructose_vs_Glucose"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm"], [], [], [], ["http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm"], ["http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM"], ["http://civileats.com/2009/05/06/freshly-squeezed-the-truth-about-orange-juice-in-boxes/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2j1x8e", "title": "Were entire villages in Europe deserted during the Black Death? If so, what became of them?", "selftext": "I've heard it said that entire villages were wiped out but I never knew if it was true. What happened to the towns? Were they just left alone until it was all over? Were they sacked?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2j1x8e/were_entire_villages_in_europe_deserted_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl869nn", "cl8ejkk"], "score": [19, 6], "text": ["Yes, entire villages were struck so hard that they were abandoned. In Sweden, there's a specific name for villages that were abandoned - \"b\u00f6le\" was added to the name of the village when it was re-populated again. It might not have been entirely eradicated, but enough so that people could move in from the outside and claim the abandoned land, farmhouses and so on.\n\nThere are hundreds of places in Sweden with the name \"b\u00f6le\" added before or after the village name, such as B\u00f6le, R\u00e4tansb\u00f6le, K\u00e5rb\u00f6le, Baggb\u00f6le, Klassb\u00f6le, Brandbol, Klassbol and \u00c4ndebol.", "Entire farms and villages in Norway were decimated after the black plague, in the span of two years the plague killed half of Norways population.\n(Some say two thirds of the population.)\n\nSome families would take names such as \u00d8degaard\n(\u00d8degaarden, \u00d8de-Raa, \u00d8de-Rud, \u00d8deg\u00e5rd) \u00d8de=Deserted/abandoned Gaard/G\u00e5rd=Farm.\nwhen they took over the land/farm.\n\n\nAfter the Black plague ravaged the country, there was no longer an elite or higher educated people that could hold the state and run the country.\n\nNorway gradually lost control of the country, Denmark seized controll and created an union.\n\nThe Norwegian goverment was disolved and the country became a part of Denmark.\n\nTo this day there stil is no elite in norway other than the royal family who are Danish descendants.\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "j444u", "title": "can anyone explain crying like i'm 5?", "selftext": "Why do humans cry?  Why is it that when we feel great joy or profound sorrow that our eyes produce tears and that we sob?  Is it a physiological or psychological phenomena?  Is it proper to humans or do other animals cry?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j444u/can_anyone_explain_crying_like_im_5/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c28zbq2", "c28zbsv", "c28zdi7", "c28zfpc", "c28zfun", "c28zg6t", "c28zilr", "c28zzzf", "c291wc9", "c2927rp"], "score": [63, 101, 71, 3, 3, 6, 10, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Well I'm no expert, but you don't have any answers so I'll share what I know.\n\nThe emotional crying you describe is rare if not unique to humans.  (There is evidence that certain other large apes like gorillas do this as well).  The tears that your body makes when you are sad (or happy as the case may be) are different from the tears that it makes for lubrication (like when dust gets in your eye).  Emotional tears carry more of the chemicals that are associated with emotion.  Some studies suggest that tears are ridding the body of these chemicals when there is too much in your system.  They also can produce a reaction in other people.\n\nAs for it's relation to sobbing, I can't really say.  I've never been taught that myself.  That's what I know about tears specifically though.", "I've heard about this from somewhere, not sure where now, and it went like this:\n\nIt's a silent signal that we are in pain and need help, so when the... flock? tribe?... see this they can help you. If we instead only shouted we would also attract predators who seek easy targets, so we were more likely to die.\n\nThen I would guess it evolved so that it just got triggered by strong feelings.\n\nNo idea if this is true though, but it seems believable ^^\n\nEDIT: I read this in [this humor article](_URL_0_) at the end, but the link to one of their sources is dead, [the other one](_URL_1_) says that crying strengthens relationships.", "People can cry for 3 different reasons:\n\n- One kind of tear keeps our eye constantly lubricated\n- The second kind happens when you cut onions or something gets into your eye, the eye is irritated and is producing tears to try and get whatever is bad out\n- The third, the kind you are talking about, is when an outside or inside (of you) source triggers your nervous system to tell your brain to cry, some believe that when someone is very upset, releasing these emotional tears can help our bodies remove chemicals that could otherwise make us sad, and then afterwards we feel better because these extra bad feeling chemicals have been pumped out.\n\nSo in a way, when we cry because we are sad, our body sends a signal to our eyes to produce these tears that can get rid of excess unhappy chemicals in our bodies.\n\nAnimals other than us do not cry for emotional reasons - possibly because they are not developed enough to understand feelings, but they do have other ways of showing they are upset, such as moaning, whimpering, etc.\n\nI don't have a medical background but this topic interested me so I hope my little bit of research has helped.", "It's been speculated that as a social animal that lives (typically) in large groups, we need a way to communicate non-verbally how we are feeling.  Humans have a huge part of the brain that is devoted to being able to guess what another human is feeling by physical clues, then imagining what that would be like if it were happening to ourselves.  That's the basis for empathy and, ultimately, altruism.  Humans are unique in a lot of behaviors that seem to do nothing but indicate our emotional state, like blushing when embarrassed, crying, etc.  Seeing this stuff activates empathy in the human brain.  \n\nWeirdly, sociopaths are able to do terrible things because that brain connection is stunted or not there.  They can look at human suffering and it doesn't trigger an emotional response.", "I've always felt that crying was proof of our reliance on each other.  We are social creatures to the extent that we physically NEED empathy from others when we're sad and we NEED to share our joy with the one's we love.  Crying helps us to show our social group those emotions.  There is a similar theory about yawning relating to the collective attentiveness of a social group that I've always liked.  ", "i find that when i cry really hard, it's because i'm very tense before, and then i'm relaxed afterwards. i think a lot of really strong crying is to help settle our bodies after stress.\n\nlaughter also does this, but it tends to be much lighter.  if you think about it, the shaking body is very similar in laughter and crying.  and if you laugh really hard, it squeezes tears out.\n\nalso, if you have a bunch of people around in a stressful situation (like a car wreck), some people will laugh, and some people will cry.", "FYI: there is also an [r/askscience](_URL_0_)\n\nBut I imagine there might be some overlap between here and there.", "I would say:\n\nWhen person A feel very very strongly about something, but they cannot find the words to tell their friend how they feel, sometimes person A will begin to cry. Tears signify that whatever they are talking about is important, and strongly tied to their emotions. The part of your body that makes tears is very together with what you feel is important. Usually, when you feel something is important but may not have the words to say why, you begin to cry. Crying is a deeper form of communication. When words do not show your friend how upset or how happy you are as good as you want, sometimes crying does.", "[All you ever need to know about crying](_URL_0_)", "Any profound emotion can overwhelm our ability to function.  We cry to help ourselves on the inside, and to let everyone else know we need help on the outside.\n\nSobbing is part of what helps us on the inside (taking big gulps of air calms you down when you're upset), but it also is a stronger outward signal that we need a different and deeper kind of help.\n\nIt's a physiological phenomena with psychological components.\n\nMostly just humans / really intelligent animals cry emotionally, though many mammals cry in pain.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.cracked.com/article_19224_6-wuss-behaviors-that-were-once-badass-survival-instincts_p2.html", "http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824141045.htm"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbtyPZhrETg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2vxk18", "title": "Is momentum conservation valid for a inelastic collision?", "selftext": "I am thinking of the case of an object under free fall hitting the ground and not bouncing back. I understand the energy conservation in this case, the kinetic energy dissipates as vibrations waves through the ground and the air and is soon converted into heat, but how about its momentum? Where is it stored after the collision?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2vxk18/is_momentum_conservation_valid_for_a_inelastic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["colsfje", "colshu8", "colvc42"], "score": [14, 8, 3], "text": ["Momentum is always conserved.\n\nA system containing a falling object and the Earth will have the same momentum after the object hits the ground.", "Conservation of momentum is always valid.\n\nIf you drop a metror into sand (inelastic collision) the two objects will remain attached, and share the resulting momentum. The momentum of the Earth will change slightly as it absorbs the momentum of the impacting object.", "If memory serves momentum is always conserved as long as one condition is met -- the net external force on the system is equal to zero. \n\nSo if you had a pendulum on a string with a block at the end swing into another block and stick together, momentum wouldn't actually be conserved since there is a net force of g acting on the system. \n\nDisclaimer: I could be wrong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4z8oyk", "title": "Why do video cameras show horizontal flashes of light right before it captures a lightning bolt striking the ground?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4z8oyk/why_do_video_cameras_show_horizontal_flashes_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6u09mv"], "score": [8], "text": ["Inexpensive digital image sensors use a [rolling shutter](_URL_1_), which means the image is captured one row or column at a time, instead of all at once.\n\nThe actual duration of a lightning bolt is much shorter than the time it takes to capture a single frame. If you captured a frame at exactly the right instant, the light would illuminate the entire sky. (And that's how it appears to your eyes, too, because of [persistence of vision](_URL_0_).) But because of the rolling shutter, the video camera only picks up that light while it's scanning a few lines of pixels."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter"]]}
{"q_id": "43dcv0", "title": "Is it true that heavy alcoholics were more resistant to the black plague?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43dcv0/is_it_true_that_heavy_alcoholics_were_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czhwu63"], "score": [8], "text": ["Where did you hear/read this claim? Was it sourced?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4hmve0", "title": "whenever a wound recovers, like from surgery, how does the blood vessels around the area connect itself to their right counterparts on the other side of the wound?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hmve0/eli5_whenever_a_wound_recovers_like_from_surgery/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2qwhff", "d2qwwik", "d2qxthh", "d2rd2q0", "d2rdp5n", "d2rgi6c", "d2rhcga", "d2rmrh6", "d2rrb8g", "d2s0pyy"], "score": [607, 24, 45, 2252, 4, 3, 116, 2, 10, 3], "text": ["They don't. Either they grow completely new or they don't and you  lack the vessel in future. This is why surgeons have to stitch major vessels together", "They don't,  that's one of the risks associated with having multiple surgeries in the same place. The doctors can no longer be sure where your vessels are and can accidentally cut through them", "The human body is a remarkable machine. It has evolved ways to deal with wounds inflicted from accidents and lions bites alike. The way it is done is through \"collateral vessels\". This means that when an area loses blood from injury or an obstruction, blood can reach that area through an alternate path, so technically, the vessels do not need to re-attach. In the case of small vessels (capillaries) that supply the skin, there is enough collateral flow that we generally do not care about cutting them. While Large vessels also have collaterals, we sow them back together because the supply from the collaterals to the area is not as good as the original path and in the long term it is not sustainable. With that said there are areas in the body that do not have collaterals and will suffer greatly from an injury to the vessel. One such area is the Kidney. Also an injury to the Aorta (the major blood supplier) is often fatal because it is a high pressure tube and when you puncture it, you are losing the pressure that drives the blood to the smaller vessels. ", "There are a lot of people saying \"They don't\". That is wrong.\n\nThey do.  In the healing process, a hormone known as VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) is released, and stimulates the growth of new blood vessels.\n\nThe details are complicated, but oftentimes instead of one vessel connecting itself on both sides, you have several to many smaller vessels forming from both sides, joining up with each other, and ultimately connecting the two sides. Imagine a big pipe that gets split into smaller pipes that all eventually connect back to the big pipe on the other side.\n\nThat's the simple version. The complicated version involves scar tissue, collagen production and breakdown, a host of hormones and humoral factors, but the bottom line is that vessels do, in fact, re-grow.\n\nWithout the ability to grow new vessels, healing would not be possible. They are necessary to transport the oxygen and nutrients required for re-growth and healing.", "[Angiogenesis](_URL_0_) is pretty much a trial and error process in wound healing, where cells will propagate to transfer vital fluids to a region.", "Blood vessels may regenerate to supply an area but they do not reconnect. That is, new blood vessels need to be formed to cover the severed area.", "Bioengineer here. I will attempt an ELI5 on the phone. \n\nImagine a city. The highways are big arteries and veins, the streets and alleys are blood capillaries, the houses are the cells in the tissues, and the passenger cars are red blood cells in the blood. Now imagine an asteroid hitting a part of the town and destroying a whole neighborhood the way that nobody knows where the roads (blood vessels) were before the impact. The first thing that happens is that fire fighter, police, first aiders and ambulances arrive to take care of the situation and take it under control. Those are the immune cells (lots of different types like neutrophils, macrophages, dendritic cells, and so on). Then they help the local people to reconstruct the neighborhood as much as possible. They start removing the bits and pieces and build new roads and houses from all the edges. It is a very complicated process called angiogenesis (meaning generation of blood vessels) that involves many growth factors (VEGF-A and VEGF-B) and cells to cooperate to form new vessels. They make junctions and they make merges until they have roads to all the new houses. This time though, they are not as nicely designed and blocked as before. After the construction is finished now cars can get from the high way on one side (artery) to the return highway on the other side. The neighborhood is never like before, but it is somewhat \"healed\".\n\nI hope it is helpful. I can answer any detail follow up question under the comment.", "As far as I'm aware blood vessels can't identify their 'correct' counterparts, but blood vessels have been observed to reconnect in skin grafts through the process of inosculation, whereby the end of one cut vessel in the graft connects to the cut end of a vessel in the recipient tissue.\n", "The VEGF answer is a good one, however it's important to note that many simpler molecules play roles in directing blood vessels to areas that have become ischemic (or in lay-terms, lost their blood supply), and they are produced as a direct consequence of the ischemic tissue losing its blood supply.\n\nFor example there is an increase in potassium around cells that have lost their blood supply, because their blood supply is also their oxygen supply, and these cells need oxygen to maintain the high concentration of potassium within the cell. When they lose their blood/oxygen supply, the potassium leaks out of the cell increasing the potassium concentration around these cells. Similarly, when cells lose their blood/oxygen supply, they can no longer undergo aerobic (or oxygen-dependent) metabolism, and they must switch to anaerobic (or oxygen-independent) metabolism. Anaerobic metabolism produces lactic acid (or the burn in your muscles when you exercise), and this decreases the pH (or increases the proton concentration) in the area around these cells.\n\nThe potassium and the protons diffuse away from these cells and a concentration gradient forms (think how a smell is weaker the further you are away from its source, but becomes stronger the closer you get). The cells that form new blood vessels are attracted to this increase in potassium and proton concentration and they grow toward it. Thus, the byproducts (potassium and lactate) of cells losing their blood/oxygen supply attract the growth of new vessels, and once these cells have their blood/oxygen supply back, they no longer produce these byproducts and the concentration gradient collapses, and the cell population no longer attracts blood vessels.\n\nThe body has magnificently elegant solutions to its own problems.", "You can cut down a corn field and replant, and the field will look the same and function the same but technically, it is not the same corn field as the one you cut down."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiogenesis"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1rafcx", "title": "why is masturbation considered a bad thing in many cultures and religions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rafcx/eli5_why_is_masturbation_considered_a_bad_thing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdl76n1", "cdl7i0d", "cdl7uxw", "cdl9jer", "cdl9k42", "cdla1kk", "cdla8g6", "cdlanqz", "cdlanuf", "cdlazqj", "cdlb0qi", "cdlb6am", "cdlbbra", "cdlcrdj", "cdld337", "cdle8st", "cdlfthx"], "score": [13, 4, 111, 23, 2, 3, 15, 3, 2, 3, 5, 17, 4, 3, 12, 5, 3], "text": ["Your baby goo is used to make more of your kind. Slapping the salami was believed to prevent you from having more people to carry on the cultural or religious beliefs. \n\n\"Be fruitful and multiply\" was used to spread your religion. That's also why the bible forbids bestiality.", "People try to avoid discussing it with their children.\nI think most religious concepts are born this way. By kids asking uncomfortable questions to their parents. \n\"Because God says so\" is exactly the same as \"because I say so\"", "Control over desires.  \n\nAnd realistically a large part is that it's a constant reminder and 'investment' in the group.  Take the whole Mecca prayer thing.  That's a reminder many times a day, and if you were to stop you'd feel pretty stupid for having wasted your time.  So you're invested and reminded.\n \nThe same with this.  Add in a good dash of self-loathing, and \"I work so hard for the group.  No one else has this problem, I do because I'm a dirty person\", and you've got a valuable tool.\n \nWish I was joking, and you can justify it away a dozen different ways, but at it's core that's your answer.  It's a reminder and investment.", "No evidence to back it up, but I suspect a lot of the negative attitude toward the practice might stem from particular societal groups (religious or secular) needing to encourage procreation for their continued growth, to ensure their survival. Unlimited sexual activity outside the procreative act is counterproductive to that end.", "_URL_0_\n\nSubstitute masturbation for dating robots.", "Because its fun.", "I don't know what your masturbation habits have been.  But speaking as someone who went from masturbating about 25 times a week, down to about once a week - I think I understand now why those cultures and religions consider it a bad thing.\n\nI grew up religious but only recently tried NoFap (/r/NoFap).  I didn't realize it, but masturbating every day was having an effect on me.  A negative one.  In particular, it had made me weak, slow, and painfully shy.  So I figure - if even a reasonable percentage of other people are wired like me - then what religion would want that for their people, particularly their youth?  \n\nA lot of people find my kind of story here, and /r/NoFap in general, outrageous.  Like some kind of placebo cult.  So did I.  All I can say is - read /r/NoFap, or try it for a few days yourself.  Then make your own conclusions. \n\nFor myself - now I know that abstaining from masturbation (indeed, all orgasms) for even a few days gives me a level of mental zeal at all times that I previously only knew very occasionally.  This zeal is, for lack of a better word, very compatible with religion and many aspects of what one might call an old-fashioned life.  It is incompatible with many aspects of our modern world.  I find it hard to explain.  \n\nOf course, I can only speak for myself.  Obviously I can't speak for all the religious people throughout history.  All I'm saying is - it makes sense to me now.  Even those brutal Victorian punishments for masturbation, and the once-common belief that it can ruin a person's life - it all makes sense to me now.  If you browse /r/NoFap you'll see other people saying similar things.\n", "Its free fun", "Along with the idea of not wanting to \"spill your seed\" and waste something that is supposed to contribute to human life, a lot of cultures once saw it as spilling your own life force too. It was understood that releasing that energy a terrible waste, so things like oral sex were considered silly because you were throwing away your energy to someone else. Alternately, in some cultures it was thought that vaginal fluid was the powerful and rich substance and cunnilingus would be used to obtain that. Energy drinks were a lot harder to come by in the past.", "If you don't masturbate, the traditional alternative is to marry and have children and perpetuate the culture. An extreme case is Japan, where guys seem to be refraining from dating in favor of masturbation to porn. The birthrate is collapsing. No judgement about whether it's good or bad, but I believe that's the real answer to your question.", "Sex is considered a sacred act in many of those cultures because it is necessary in order to produce children. Reproduction is also considered sacred because it allows humans to endure. Masturbation is for self-pleasure and not for reproduction (this was before artificial insemination was developed), so therefore when one masturbates they are engaging in a sacred act for selfish reasons, which is offensive to the followers of those beliefs. ", "I grew up Catholic, and for them the simple answer is this: sex is only supposed to be for reproduction, therefore sex for pleasure (ie birth control), homosexual acts, masturbation, etc are considered sinful. Why? I'm not honesty sure. It's one of the \"rules\" that never made sense to me. It's a big guilt trip. ", "It's just another method of control. ", "Religious(-)fundamentalism(-based fraud).\n\nThe idea is to dominate people.  \nIf you make the thing that everybody loves (like everything good about sex) a \u201csin\u201d, and make up a big horrible thing that happens if you \u201csin\u201d, to then offer an \u201ceasy way out\u201d, and people believe you (because they\u2019re stupid),\nthen you got control over people, and can make them do whatever you want.\n\nIt could just as well happened to eating/food. (Like: Everything but bread and water is a \u201csin\u201d.)\n\nIn essence it\u2019s the exact same method as mafiosi offering \u201cprotection\u201d, just that the violence is (usually) imaginary. Well, except in the dark ages / deep south / Pakistan / etc.\n\nThe churches used this to make shitloads of money in medieval times.  \nBut it\u2019s also useful to gain political power. Bach then they managed to pick who gets to become king after all.", "There are Jews in the world, there are Buddhists. There are Hindus and Mormons. And then there are those that follow Mohammed (but\nI've never been one of them).\n\nI'm a Roman Catholic and have been since before I was born (and the one thing they say about Catholics is \"they'll take you as soon as you're warm\"). You don't have to be a six-footer, you don't have to have a great brain, you don't have to have any clothes on - you're a Catholic the moment Dad came.\n\nBecause every sperm is sacred; every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate. Let the heathen spill theirs on the dusty ground, God shall make them pay for each sperm that can't be found.\n\nEvery sperm is wanted, every sperm is good, every sperm is needed in your neighborhood - Hindu, Taoist, Mormon spill theirs just anywhere but God loves those who treat their semen with more care.\n\nEvery sperm is useful, every sperm is fine. God needs everybody's - theirs and yours and mine. Let the pagan spill theirs over mountain, hill, and plain, God shall strike them down for each sperm that's spilt in vain\n\nEvery sperm is sacred.\n\nEvery sperm is great.\n\nIf a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.", "Catholic here: \n\nBack in the day they wanted to grow the church as big as possible and if people are doing sexual things for fun (as opposed to make more little Catholics), the Church's numbers won't go up as much. In the past century, the church isn't as into growing as it used to be, but these rules are still in place because the Church loves its tradition. \n\nIt's similar to how the church used to hoard knowledge and try to keep people from becoming literate. It's very much like a business. People will try to cite bible verses and such but the bottom line is, it's all about gaining numbers and keeping control.", "Who let the religious nutjobs in here?\n\nNo, but seriously, I grew up in a very religious family. I hated it every step of the way, it was forced on me, and when I finally told my parents how I felt about it all they damn near disowned me and still look at me as less of a person. \n\nMy personal bias aside, maybe you shouldn't crank it all day every day. But maybe it's not bad to crank it every once in a while. Me, personally, I won't masturbate for a week, maybe two. I just don't want to. I get busy and it never crosses my mind, or I'm tired, or whatever. \n\nBut every once in a while, maybe once or twice a month, on one of my off days I'll crank it throughout the day, maybe 10, 20 times in a day. Just to get it out of my system, \"clean out the pipes\" as it were. Sometimes I even break out the gigantic dildo and get freaky deaky in the shower for an hour or two. \n\nIs it bad? Well, sometimes I get chafed and I'm usually pretty exhausted afterwards. But I don't do it every day, or even most days. I just set aside a day or two out of the month to have an all-day fapathon. \n\nI really think the biggest reason the church isn't very fond of masturbation is because it's so much easier, and usually more gratifying, than sex. Or it becomes that way when you haven't had sex in a long time or haven't been in a relationship. Whoever circumsized me when I was a kid (Oh, hey, thanks for that one too religion - paragons of good and humanity, but only if you let us snip your dick when you're an infant) didn't do such a great job. Everything looks fine, and it's the right size and everything. But I have shit for sensitivity. Every time I have sex, even after not jackin' it for almost two weeks, it either takes me so long to get off that the girl gets exhausted, sore, or bored, or I can't get off at all. Even when I do crank it, it takes me almost 20 minutes to even get close. \n\nIt's all just about controlling people. If you think it's bad to masturbate, then you'll seek out sex to sate that urge. Just go around knocking people up, since your sperm is so important you can't even spill it on the ground. \n\nHypocritical, two-faced, holier than thou control freaks. Get mad, ban me, whatever. I don't care. You're all terrible people in some way, you just pray to the magical sky man and that suddenly makes everything all better. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://vimeo.com/12915013"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3uzq8i", "title": "What was the Panthalassic Ocean like? Wild massive waves and storms? Or basically the same as today's Pacific Ocean?", "selftext": "The Panthalassic Ocean was the vast global ancestral Pacific ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea, during the late Paleozoic and the early Mesozoic eras. It covered most of the globe. Given this size, was their an oceanic equivalent of the continental effect? What would the weather have been like? Super-cyclones and giant waves?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3uzq8i/what_was_the_panthalassic_ocean_like_wild_massive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxjcaww"], "score": [16], "text": ["There have been attempts at modelling the paleoclimate of Pangean and the Panthalassic Ocean with General Circulation Models (see [Brunetti *et al*, 2015](_URL_0_) ; [Moore *et al*, 1993](_URL_1_)). \n\nFrom those studies: Sea ice was restricted to high latitudes, Eastern Gondwana got heavy seasonal rainfall carried by the trade winds, SE Asia was subjected to a heavy monsoon and zones of upwelling were weak and limited. You might find the maps of Brunetti of particular interest.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095383615000267", "http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-2812-8_4#page-1"]]}
{"q_id": "2zgk0e", "title": "why can't dentists just paint a clear coat on your teeth to prevent cavities, enamel wear, etc?", "selftext": "How come?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zgk0e/eli5_why_cant_dentists_just_paint_a_clear_coat_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpioj69", "cpiok4r", "cpiqpkq", "cpir9q1", "cpjgg4u", "cpjgqcw", "cpjs94p"], "score": [7, 163, 21, 8, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Enamel is one of the hardest naturally-occurring surfaces in nature, and easily the hardest surface in the human body. Anything we'd put on teeth would simply melt away under the stress.\n\nAdditionally, we do have a form of \"clear coat\" so to speak. Flouride acts as a way to \"seal\" enamel from further wear, as it helps to chemically rebuild \"holes\" in your natural enamel. The problem is that we don't currently have a way to re-grow enamel. However, there is some pretty extensive research going in to this issue right now. I'd expect to see some advances in the next few decades.", "We do. They're called [dental sealants](_URL_0_). But, here's the problem:\n\n* They can't cover *all* of your teeth. They won't go below the gumline, for example, and the gumline is still a big part of dental health;\n\n* They can still wear down just from the process of using your teeth to eat and chew;", "Every tooth I had sealed at age 10 developed a cavity by age 13.  Subsequent dentists assume that they basically sealed in bacteria.  Awesome for me.", "Sealants must not be anywhere your teeth touch. If there was any material there it would have an effect on your occlusion, or \"bite\". This can cause problems with the jaw muscles. That's why if you get a sealant or a filling or an implant there is so much focus on the new material's \"fit\". The new stuff should never be felt, it should fit in a way that is indistinguishable to the patient.  ", "They do/ used to do the shit where they put some kind of enamel type stuff I the crevasses on the tips of your rear teeth to help I had it done when I was I toddler ", "The next question is - why doesn't my dental insurance cover sealants?", "While all the people here tell about their healthy teeth, i am sitting here, 20 yrs old with 8 fillings.\n\nDentist says i dont brush wrong and my teeth looks \"clean\" but i have a malacotic enamel, googled it, it means soft tooth or something.\nFuck genetics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.animated-teeth.com/tooth_sealants/t1_sealing_teeth.htm"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "p7th0", "title": "Can anyone tell me what language this is if it even is a language? (link in comments)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p7th0/can_anyone_tell_me_what_language_this_is_if_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3n7b4j", "c3n7biy", "c3n7dqx", "c3n7mgq", "c3n7nqx", "c3n7xfr", "c3n8fqn", "c3n8k3p", "c3n90ix"], "score": [11, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3, 9, 2], "text": ["[/r/linguistics](/r/linguistics) might be able to tell you.", "Someone else posted a suggestion to check /r/linguistics.\n\nI'm betting /r/freemasonry will serve you better.", "Im fairly certain that it is not arabic but urdu. At least that is what my friend from saudi arabia believes. unfortunately i have no one to reference for urdu exactly but arabic and urdu are similar.  \n\nyou can see if it compares _URL_0_", "If you're also looking for a translation, try /r/translator.", "This tool might be useful:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou draw a character, and it tells you what characters from what alphabets are similar to the one you drew.\n\n\nI'm not finding many close matches, though.\n\n\n\n\n", "I don't think it's Urdu. Unless it's a very old style of Urdu. I'll e-mail the link to the Urdu professor here and see if she recognizes it.", "It says you're a prince", "It's almost certainly Syriac or, perhaps, Nabataean.", "Arching my head to the side, the last word of the third line of the bottom circular thing looks like it says \"Mohammad.\"  That would be spelled pretty much the same in any language that uses the Arabic character set, I would think.  That said, it could just be a similarity or something."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu"], [], ["http://shapecatcher.com/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vqhkm", "title": "how did grapes become the most popular fruit to ferment into wine? why didn't we end up with like a blueberry or apple or banana fermented beverage as a cultural standard?", "selftext": "Sitting here sipping a spanish red and pondering how it came to be that grapes were the standard of fermented fruit alcohols and not the dozens of other fruits available. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vqhkm/eli5_how_did_grapes_become_the_most_popular_fruit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceut5x2", "ceutc3i", "ceuvk83", "ceuwjcd", "ceuyqn2", "ceuzhkw"], "score": [7, 8, 7, 23, 5, 2], "text": ["You can't grow bananas in the fields of France. Cider from apples was quite popular as well, but Europeans were not skilled enough to make alcoholic beverages from fruits they didn't actually have access to.", "Archeological evidence shows us that early man realized that grapes left in the hot sun for prolonged periods of time produced an alcoholic drink when crushed.  Grapes, probably, because they produce large amounts of juice and were naturally occurring and prevalent in Mediterranean regions.  This are is where early man lived and would have been hot enough for the juice to ferment.  ", "The next time you have some grapes, notice the white dust on them. I've read that it is the yeast necessary for fermentation. In other words, grapes come from the vine ready to make alcohol. Perhaps other fruits do too, but I believe that grapes do. \n\nA long time ago, somebody made grape juice, and a few days later got drunk on it. \n\nMaybe. ..", "Grapevines produce an enormous amount of fruit, and it grows in bunches that are easy to harvest. Grapes are soft and easy to crush for juice. Once you have the juice, it ferments all by itself and you're drinking wine.\n\nBerries are a possibility, but you have to pick them one at a time. Blackberries and raspberries grow on thorny vines, in dense brambles. I've picked them both, and it's not a volume task. You'll get all scratched up and very weary picking a gallon of berries, and they're so tasty you'd be an idiot to crush them for a jug of hooch. Other berries, like strawberries, are mostly very recent additions to our crops.\n\nApples produce abundantly, and are easy to pick, but getting the juice out of them is much harder than it is for grapes. A mechanical press of some sort is required. And they are the best bet of tree fruit. Stone fruits like peaches have the additional problem of a large, slightly poisonous seeds in the middle that you want to avoid crushing into the juice.  \n\nGrapes have it all. Easy to grow, easy to harvest, easy to crush.", "Grapes produce their own yeast. This means you can crush them and leave them to ferment. Other fruits require the yeast to be added separately. So leaving the grapes out in the sun made wine, other fruit just made rotten juice.", "the yeast culture that makes wine grows on the grapes themselves. i suspect this may not be true for other berries, or that their natural cultures are less palatable. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "66rl5f", "title": "How does proton-antiproton annihilation work?", "selftext": "Annihilation (matter-antimatter) made me think. Electron and Positron annihilate producing 2 gamma ray photons. I thought that this concept could also be applied to proton-antiproton annihilation. However, due to the quarks,gluons a proton contains (and the anti-versions of the antiproton), I've been reading different things. Some say that the proton-antiproton annihilation produces only gamma ray photons, some say that other particles like mesons are produced. What is the correct process? (If there is a \"correct\" process of course) ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/66rl5f/how_does_protonantiproton_annihilation_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgkulyg", "dgky3bb"], "score": [10, 7], "text": ["There are ***lots*** of possible processes. The most likely ones will involve the strong force because it is strong.", "Basically a lot of complicated things can happen, because protons themselves are complicated beasties.\n\nEssentially you get a shower of mesons, mostly pi-mesons (or pions, which are made up of up/down quarks, one matter one anti-matter). Now, naively you might think: ok you smash a proton which is \"made up\" of \"uud\" quarks with an anti-proton that is made up of the same set of anti-quarks and you'll just get 3 different pions, but that's not how it works, typically somewhere around half a dozen (and potentially up to 13) pions end up being produced. However, you can also end up with kaons (which involve strange quarks), partly because protons have a modest degree of \"strangeness\" but mostly just because quantum chromodynamics is incredibly complex and there's a lot of energy involved in proton/anti-proton reactions.\n\nSo you get a shower of mesons plus photons which carry away the total rest-energy of the proton and anti-proton. However, even though the proton/anti-proton combo is neutrally charged some of the mesons will likely be charged, as long as the overall balance is neutral. The mesons will then decay into other particles such as gamma-rays, muons/anti-muons which then decay to electrons and positrons, and neutrinos (from the production and decay of muons) within a matter of microseconds."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5bg7nj", "title": "\u2018Don\u2019t forget Harold, the last English King before the Norman Conquest, was Orthodox.\u2019 Has this any truth? in it?", "selftext": "The claim is [here](_URL_1_) but it is mentioned in a few other places, plus Fr Michael Wood also claims that \u2018Aristobulus, Britain\u2019s first bishop (in AD 37) was Orthodox\u2019.\n\nI understand that previous to the Great Schism (1054 CE) there were far more liturgies spread around Europe (including England) and that as the Roman Church has been preeminent for the last 950 years or so in the west, we have forgotten that it might not have been so before that.\n\nIt's also known that there was trade with Byzantium in the early middle ages, and even some evidence that Britain was considered part of [Byzantium's sphere of influence](_URL_0_)\n\nSo, further to my first question, how strongly orthodox was England in the early middle ages?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bg7nj/dont_forget_harold_the_last_english_king_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9pgvxv"], "score": [14], "text": ["I don't think there's a clear historical answer to this, since the split between churches was a process that wasn't complete until long after 1066. Certainly, English and Eastern Christians at the time did not consider themselves part of a single unified church opposed to Roman Christianity. \n\nThe theological answer is that the Orthodox church believes it descends from the original, literally orthodox, version of Christianity that once existed throughout Europe. At some point the Roman church fell into error and the two churches split. Before the split, most \"Eastern\" and \"Western\" Christians could be considered in some sense Orthodox (excluding Arians, Donatists, and so on). \n\nSo Eastern Christians can try to project their currently defined beliefs back on historical churches and say whether they were \"Orthodox\" or not. They commonly believe that the Roman church fell into error with the addition of the Filioque clause to the Nicene Creed, and that the split became permanent with the \"Great Schism\" of 1054 (although this certainly wasn't clear at the time).\n\nFor example, the English king Edward Martyr is accepted as a saint by the Orthodox, since they believe the Filioque was not in use in England during his lifetime. However, it's debated whether Edward the Confessor should also be considered a saint, partly because he died long after the Filioque was used by the Pope in 1014, and therefore possibly accepted the clause. \n\nIn any case, a fringe group of Orthodox theologians argue that the Anglo-Saxon Church was not in communion with Rome in 1054 and was only brought back into line in 1066, when William was given papal blessing for his invasion, apparently because Harold was an oathbreaker and the English Church was corrupt and failing to pay tribute to Rome. \n\nIf the Anglo-Saxon church did not accept the Filioque (very unlikely) and was not subject to Rome in 1066, then it could be considered \"Orthodox\" if you really want to stretch the definition. But it's a pretty silly argument in my view because it requires projecting modern religious definitions back to a time before they really existed. In any case, the Anglo-Saxons did not use the Greek Rite and were certainly more influenced by Rome than Constantinople. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/04/heptarchy-harun-ibn-yahya.html", "http://www.byzantineambassador.co.uk/hieromonkmichaelwood"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1vyt3j", "title": "Why do we need water to survive if a byproduct of burning glucose is 6H2O?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vyt3j/why_do_we_need_water_to_survive_if_a_byproduct_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cex2x0w", "cex32ex", "cex8kgr"], "score": [2, 8, 5], "text": ["The body doesn't just burn glucose. It has to do other stuff which requires more water than is present in the glucose. You still use water for other processes, such as in urine production, sweating, and anabolic synthesis. We also don't constantly burn every drop of glucose available, storage of glucose costs water as well.", "The amount of water produced by burning glucose is not sufficient to the proper functioning of the body. In humans, water is essential because all organic materials, nutrients, vitamins are dissolved in water and it is also used for transporting these materials to all cells (through blood). The large amount of water in our bodies is what allows us to maintain a constant body temperature: Metabolic processes such as the burning of glucose release a lot of energy as heat but we do not experience a change in temperature due to water's high specific heat capacity. Water is also needed to flush out toxins and aid with metabolism (hydrolysis of polysaccharides for example).  \nWe need a lot of water in order to survive and allow our bodies to function properly and the amount of water produced by the combustion of glucose would not be sufficient to satisfy those needs.   \n  \nSource: A lot of biology courses and this: _URL_0_", "On average our body produces about 500ml/d from burning glucose/fatty acids/proteines through a process called oxidative phosphorylation.\n\nBut we lose this same ammount unwillingly through breathing alone. Regulative functions such as cleaning the blood from toxins (kidneys) or sweating need at least another liter.\n\nOn the other hand, there are other mammals such as Jaculus spieces, which doesn't and needn't to drink. Small animals have a relatively big surface on a small volume, therefore they have to heat a lot more then bigger animals, to maintain the bodytemperature. Such much in deed, that the acquired water is more then they need actually.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/water-vital-to-life.htm"], ["http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jean.wright93/jj/jj.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "1203f7", "title": "why is february the month with 28 days, and not april, november or any other one?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1203f7/eli5_why_is_february_the_month_with_28_days_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6r0w8t", "c6r5ops", "c6r785z", "c6rdlg8"], "score": [1385, 11, 114, 2], "text": ["There was a time when the year began in the month containing the beginning of Spring, namely March. This meant that February was the last month of the year, and it originally had 30 days.\n\nJuly and August were renamed for Caesars of Rome and at the time those months were only 30 days. To honor the greatness of the Caesars, those months were extended to 31 days each and the days were taken from the end of the year, which at the time was February. ", "_URL_0_\n\nSlightly off topic but still very informative about another February oddity: the leap year.", "To correct you: All months have 28 days in them.", "Here's a video clip of when they originally named all the months, and how they made their decisions. It includes your question about February...\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX96xng7sAE"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTbzB89SC8k"]]}
{"q_id": "3s98n6", "title": "if the average temperature of the universe is \u2212454.76 \u00b0f, shouldn't ice be considered the naturally occurring state of water?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s98n6/eli5_if_the_average_temperature_of_the_universe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwv6k1i", "cwv6npy", "cwv6q8f", "cwvb4xr"], "score": [91, 11, 9, 3], "text": ["It is, In space. down here on earth though, it's not, and since that's where the term comes from, it stuck.", "An \"average\" figure is pretty much useless if the thing being measured is not evenly distributed. The matter in the universe isn't evenly distributed - quite the opposite - and so averaging the temperatures of that matter gives you a meaningless number. \n\n(Statistically, we talk about a \"normal distribution\" - the famous \"bell curve\", which is what you get if the quantity being measured is the result of a \"fair test\". The average is useful in that case, but not so useful if the distribution is distorted. It's like trying to average how rich people are: the 1% at the top have so much money that they distort the average upwards.)", "It's going to depend how you define the natural state of something. \n\nWe (generally) quote the \"standard state\" as the phase  at a temperature of 298 K (25 C) and a pressure of 1 atmosphere (roughly sea level). Why? That's just how it's been. It's pretty easy to reproduce in a lab environment too. ", "The average temperature of the universe *is not* the average temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background.\n\nIt's like saying since Sunlight has the temperature of 5700K, matter on Earth has the same temperature - which is ridiculous. The relation is backwards though as most of the matter have a higher temperature (far higher) than the CMB."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "11p19w", "title": "Could a data center use their waste heat and the stack effect to keep their servers cool?", "selftext": "I've been reading a lot about the [google data centers](_URL_2_) recently.  I've been intrigued in the past with the idea of [solar updraft towers](_URL_1_).  \n\nIf they vent the waste heat of the servers into a tower, and pull fresh air in from outside the building, could it create enough air movement to keep the servers sufficiently cool?  \n\nCould the air movement be enough to power a turbine to recapture some of the waste energy and still cool the servers sufficiently?  How much electricity could be captured this way?\n\nAssumptions for some round numbers:\n\n* A data center has 100,000 servers\n* ~~Each server runs at 10 kW (this is a guess, but I think it is in the right ballpark for high end servers)~~\n* Edit: Based on comments, lets assume 500W\n* Outside ground level air temperature is 70 degrees F\n* They want to keep the server temperatures at 80 degrees\n* They are running at full capacity 24 hours/day\n\n[Some equations in here (pdf)](_URL_0_) may be useful, but are too technical for me to make sense of.\n\nAny needed assumptions I left out?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11p19w/could_a_data_center_use_their_waste_heat_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6ofxw8", "c6oh7bv", "c6oigyi", "c6ol26k"], "score": [2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["I'm sure it would work, but the air temp outside isn't going to be 70 all day or year round, and the amount of humidity coming from outside is something else that could affect performance.", "Our newer servers run Dual 870W power supplies. So 10kW might be off a bit unless its a beast of a server.", "Well from the paper you posted it looks like they got speeds of about 20mph updraft. 20 mph isn't too shabby, for comparison a ceiling fan can do about 4mph. The problem that you'll be running into is the amount of heat that you'll be trying to extract. With 100,000 servers running at 500W thats going to generate a crap-ton of heat. Without crunching the numbers I highly doubt that a 20mph updraft in a 10m tube will draw enough heat to maintain a server at 80*F and thats assuming you have some fancy heat exchanger sticking out into the tube.", "The main problem here would be the inefficiencies of the motors/fans/turbines. \n\nBut looking at the main problem, you need to figure out how much energy needs to be removed from the room too maintain the temperature.\n\nFrom the spec sheet of those servers,  it said that 50 CFM of air is removed from the servers at a delta T of 10 Celsius.  In other words, each server raises 50 Cubic ft/min of air 10 degrees Celsius.  Using this, you can calculate the heat added to the room using Q=mCp\u0394T, where q is the energy added to the room.\n\nmass of air, m=100000 Servers*(50 ft^3 /min/server)*(.02832m^3 /ft^3 )*(.0946 kg/m^3 )=13395 kg air/min\n\nCp=Specific Heat capacity of air~= 1.009 KJ/kg-K at 80F.  \n\n\u0394T=10 Celsius= 10 Kelvin\n\nQ=13395 kg air/min *1.009 KJ/kg-K * 10 K= 135159 KJ/min= 2252000 Watts of energy added to the room.\n\nNow that you know that, you use any method of cooling that removes that much heat. \n\n\nThe problem you run into is in terms of inefficiencies of the equipment you are using to move air into/out of the room.  \n\nYour solar tower would need to provide enough electricity to cool the room back down to 80 F, or remove 2.52MW of thermal energy.  But, you can't just get a tower that produces that much electricity.\n\nUsing outside ambient air at 70F, and and Q=mCP\u0394T to solve for air mass necessary to remove that heat,  you get 24085kg/ min.  Simply\nusing refrigerated air at (40F), cuts the mass of air needed down to 6024 kg/min.   \n\nYou would need to calculate the energy cost of operating a fan (typically 70% efficient) with an electric motor (about 90% efficient) to move the required amount of air.  You would then need to size your tower to provide that much energy to to the fan.  Using these efficiencies, you would need to supply 1.63 times the electricty need to move the required amount of air to cool the room.  This is all dependent on the electricity needed to turn the fan, which is a manufacturer specific thing.\n\nI hope this helps, but I think this shows just how complicated of a problem this really is.  The inneficiencies of the fans and motors as well as the actual heat transfer (I was assuming perfect transfer of thermal energy) make it so that you can't just use the air leaving the system to make power to cool it back down.\n\nCheck out Carnot efficiencies and the Carnot cycle for more info.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org/solar/the_solar_updraft.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower", "http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yanj4", "title": "is it possible to just say \"im not apart of this country anymore\"", "selftext": "What I mean is when I was born in the US, I automatically became a US citizen. Is it possible to not be a citizen anymore, and therefore not being able to be persecuted by the US judicial system?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yanj4/eli5_is_it_possible_to_just_say_im_not_apart_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp7r391", "cp7r4cc", "cp7r8ed", "cp7r8pn", "cp7x92n"], "score": [4, 6, 16, 6, 2], "text": ["Yes, but to do so, you have to meet in person with someone at a U.S. embassy/consulate in another country. If you're on the run for a crime, it's not going to end well.", "As long as you're in the U.S, you're subject to U.S. laws regardless of your citizenship status.", "you can give up your citizenship and become a citizen of another country. However citizenship is not the deciding factor in being able to be persecuted under US law, being in the country is.\n\nIf you are in the US and commit a crime here the US has jurisdiction over you no matter what country you are a citizen of.\n\nYou can't for example travel to Canada punch someone and when the Canadian cops arrive to arrest you tell them that they don't have jurisdiction over you because you are an American citizen.", "You can renounce your citizenship so long as you are able to be a citizen in another country you cannot renounce your citizenship to make yourself deliberately stateless. Does depend upon if you meant prosecuted or persecuted, presuming the former you will still be subject to the legal process in the country after having served any required sentence you are then likely to be deported to your new country.", "Anyone can be persecuted if they commit a crime in the US."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29t9qb", "title": "For how long has \"denialism\" been a thing? Did people in other centuries deny important historical events ever occurred?", "selftext": "Obviously the most notable modern example is holocaust denial or extreme Japanese nationalists that deny the Nanking Massacre occurred. On a lower level, you have websites like InfoWars which rush to claim that virtually every tragedy is staged by the US government and didn't actually occur.\n\nIs this a strictly modern phenomenon, or has denialism been something which has always had it's \"place\" in society? Are there any notable historical examples of denialist movements akin to holocaust denial existing throughout history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29t9qb/for_how_long_has_denialism_been_a_thing_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cioxsry"], "score": [13], "text": ["One of the best examples of this would be the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.). He ordered the destruction of almost all books in the empire except for ones about astrology, agriculture, medicine, divination, and the history of the State of Qin. So all history and philosophy from before his reign. He literally wanted Chinese history to start with him, and he ordered the execution of hundreds of scholars who were found to be hiding forbidden books.\n\nThis was also the guy that was obsessed with immortality and drank potions with Mercury in them, which were likely one of the biggest contributors to his demise."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "31wvxv", "title": "why are most third world countries in warmer areas of the world?", "selftext": "Geographically, a majority of sophisticated first world countries tend to be in colder (maybe milder is a better word) areas of the world. Why is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31wvxv/eli5_why_are_most_third_world_countries_in_warmer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq5q1us", "cq5qfka", "cq5qj15", "cq5s4c0", "cq5seg7", "cq60497"], "score": [13, 10, 9, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["There was a scientific trend in the past called Material Determinism that attempted to explain that the tropical regions were not as developed for reasons such as being warmer and thus making people lazy. This theory has been discredited a long time ago. There is no causation, even if there is some correlation.", "To be fair, in their time Egypt and Rome were first world superpowers.", "Because tropical climates are better suited for agriculture.  You don't need advanced infrastructure.  You need fields and cheap labor.  So when the Europeans started colonizing Africa  &  the New World, they didn't invest in schools, higher education or pushing the native (and African slave) populations into an urban lifestyle.  They kept them poor and out in the fields.  The trend has continued with a very few wealthy elite keeping the status quo set up by Europeans.\n\nThat is a very gross  &  condensed version of European expansionism and its continued effects but gets the gist across.", "Warmer climate civilizations developed up to a certain level. Life was much harsher in the north. There was no need to invent stuff like pickling your vegetables or dry meats and sausages in the south. In the north it was because otherwise you'd starve to death. Clothes needed to be more robust. Houses as well. You had to get more yield out of land. All of this combined for culture of innovation and invention at a more desperate need than in warm climates. ", "Tropical countries tend to be burdened by poorer agricultural resources and disease. Major crops such as rice, wheat and maize are much more productive in temperate climates. This is partly because tropical areas have poor soils depleted by heavy rainfall or no rainfall at all. Additionally, the frost in temperate climates help farmers control insect borne crop issues and actually helps the soils gather organic matter. This matter in tropics is quickly broken down by insects not held down by frost. Poor agriculture means poor nutrition, which is something temperate climates have used to combat a lot of diseases. Insect borne diseases such as malaria are knocked back each winter and have been a lot easier to combat. Finally, solutions which have worked in temperate climates to help farming and disease control are difficult to implement in tropical areas, as they are easy to spread within an ecological zone, but not across them.", "Had a 6 hour lecture about this subject today... It has to do with a lot of historical events, but mostly with the colonial expansionism that happened between the 16th and the 18th century... For the European nations, territories in America were extensions of their own land for them to explore how they see fit. Most of the American colonies were based on the plantation system that consisted basically on big chunks of land belonging to a few people, on this land they made huge farms where they only cropped one single plant (mostly sugarcane) using mostly slave labor... This made the metropolis rich but didn't developed the American (south + central) society, that's why we have this disparity today. North American colonies (northern USA colonies) were an exception, where land occupation occurred mostly because of religious issues happening in England back then. Regular people coming to the new land were granted a piece of land and the predominant kind of labor was the family one, this developed a prosper internal economy.\n\n\nI tried my best, as I said, SIX HOUR lecture, really tired, on my way home and English is not my first language (not even my third)! Hope you can understand, if you need any clarifications, I'm here to help! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "mc1qh", "title": "the nba lockout and what the players decertifying means", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mc1qh/eli5_the_nba_lockout_and_what_the_players/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2zqm1y", "c2zqo44", "c2zrgrm", "c2zrlsw", "c2zqm1y", "c2zqo44", "c2zrgrm", "c2zrlsw"], "score": [10, 13, 9, 2, 10, 13, 9, 2], "text": ["Decertification is kind of sham to make it easier to sue the NBA.\n\nWhen the players join a union, they transfer some of their rights to the union.  But since the union is a group, it can only sue for things that damages players as a group.\n\nSo the union is basically saying \"let's pretend we are not a union for a while\".  During that time, players can sue the NBA as individuals...and a couple hundred lawsuit has really tie up NBA lawyers.\n\nThen, after they get some sort of agreement, they form a *wink *wink* *nudge* *nudge* \"new\" union, and act like it never happened.  ", "a lock out is the opposite of a strike, the owners are not letting the employees work until a new contract is negotiated.\n\nThe contract between players and owners expired this year. Players and owners needed to make a new contract that would establish how they split up the money they earn(Profit/Revenue).  \n\nOwners don't want to give up more than 47% of the money that the NBA as a whole earns. Players want 50%. Players do not want a hard cap on salary, meaning that teams have a set maximum for total salary to all players on the roster. The owners want to reduce the minimum salary. Owners are also complaining about the economic conditions of small-market teams such as (Toronto, The Pacers, The Bucks) versus large market teams (Heat, Boston, Lakers).\n\nThe major source of contention is splitting the Profit, the latest deal offered by owners was 49% of the money with a hard salary cap.\n\nPlayers did not like this deal and felt that the union, who is negotiating the deal on their behalf, was not doing a good enough job on their behalf, they want to leave the union (de-certify) and go to court for an anti-trust lawsuit. anti-trust being laws that are suppose to prevent monopolies, which the NBA has on professional basketball in the US.", "Basically the owners are claiming that the NBA doesn't make enough money and that most teams actually lose money. This claim may be true, but it's somewhat dubious as the NBA won't release all their financial data. \n\nThe Collective Bargaining Agreement or CBA, which is the contract between the players and owners expired, so they need a new one. \n\nThe owners want to keep a certain percentage of Basketball Related Income, or BRI, which covers everything from tickets to jerseys to the tv deal. They also want a hard salary cap set at a certain number. \n\nThe players want to keep a higher percentage of BRI and they want a soft cap, which means teams are only allowed to go over a certain salary based on certain exemptions. \n\nIt's really convoluted and complicated. The players decertifying means they break up their union so they can sue the NBA. It's basically just the process where they end private negotiations and go to the courts because they can't reach a compromise. \n\n", "A bit of background information: just like other jobs, playing in professional sports often includes a collective bargaining agreement, or an agreement between the managers and workers setting the rules for hiring people.  In basketball, this includes things such as rules of trading players, contracts, how revenue is distributed, maximum and minimum player salaries, the rules for the NBA draft, salary caps for teams, exceptions to the salary cap, and so forth.  The NBA's last CBA was signed in June, 2005 and ended June 30th, 2011.\n\nMuch like normal contract/salary negotiations, they are are centered around what you would naturally assume they would be centered on.  The NBA (the commissioner David Stern and the 30 NBA owners) wants less costs, while the player's association wants higher/similar salaries.\n\nThe NBA wants a hard salary cap (which means that teams are not allowed to go over a certain total that they spend on player salaries) at a lower level (so they spend less money, which means they can make more) while the player's associations wants to keep a soft cap (which means that teams have more exceptions, so players can make more).\n\nThe focus of the lockout is about the BRI, or basketball related income.  This determines the revenue sharing between the league and the players.  It's a bit complicated, but they total amount of salaries and benefits given to players through agreed upon contracts can't go over the amount that they agreed to through the CBA revenue sharing agreement.  If, for instance, it's set to 50% and the salaries and benefits of the players are worth a total of 51 million while the league makes 100 million, the 1 million for the players that would go over the set 50% would be given back to the league instead (there is a process where they hold a certain amount from paychecks, usually 8-10%, and then they check the BRI and payments at the end of the season).\n\nAs for decertifying, it means that the players no longer accept that the union is their legitimate representative to the owners.  The threat of decertifying would mean that in the event of a lockout, players could bring individual or class-actions lawsuits against the league for antitrust violation, that is, the NBA committed unfair business practices to create a monopoly.\n\nJust as a side note, but this has been done before in the Big 4 Sports, most recently in March of this year when the NFL player's association briefly decertified allowing Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning to bring forward a class-action lawsuit (Brady, et al. v. National Football League, et al.).\n\nEdit: For those interested, USA Today obtained a copy of the last proposal (WARNING: PDF) put forward by the league.  The players rejected it today. _URL_0_ proposal 11-11-2011.pdf", "Decertification is kind of sham to make it easier to sue the NBA.\n\nWhen the players join a union, they transfer some of their rights to the union.  But since the union is a group, it can only sue for things that damages players as a group.\n\nSo the union is basically saying \"let's pretend we are not a union for a while\".  During that time, players can sue the NBA as individuals...and a couple hundred lawsuit has really tie up NBA lawyers.\n\nThen, after they get some sort of agreement, they form a *wink *wink* *nudge* *nudge* \"new\" union, and act like it never happened.  ", "a lock out is the opposite of a strike, the owners are not letting the employees work until a new contract is negotiated.\n\nThe contract between players and owners expired this year. Players and owners needed to make a new contract that would establish how they split up the money they earn(Profit/Revenue).  \n\nOwners don't want to give up more than 47% of the money that the NBA as a whole earns. Players want 50%. Players do not want a hard cap on salary, meaning that teams have a set maximum for total salary to all players on the roster. The owners want to reduce the minimum salary. Owners are also complaining about the economic conditions of small-market teams such as (Toronto, The Pacers, The Bucks) versus large market teams (Heat, Boston, Lakers).\n\nThe major source of contention is splitting the Profit, the latest deal offered by owners was 49% of the money with a hard salary cap.\n\nPlayers did not like this deal and felt that the union, who is negotiating the deal on their behalf, was not doing a good enough job on their behalf, they want to leave the union (de-certify) and go to court for an anti-trust lawsuit. anti-trust being laws that are suppose to prevent monopolies, which the NBA has on professional basketball in the US.", "Basically the owners are claiming that the NBA doesn't make enough money and that most teams actually lose money. This claim may be true, but it's somewhat dubious as the NBA won't release all their financial data. \n\nThe Collective Bargaining Agreement or CBA, which is the contract between the players and owners expired, so they need a new one. \n\nThe owners want to keep a certain percentage of Basketball Related Income, or BRI, which covers everything from tickets to jerseys to the tv deal. They also want a hard salary cap set at a certain number. \n\nThe players want to keep a higher percentage of BRI and they want a soft cap, which means teams are only allowed to go over a certain salary based on certain exemptions. \n\nIt's really convoluted and complicated. The players decertifying means they break up their union so they can sue the NBA. It's basically just the process where they end private negotiations and go to the courts because they can't reach a compromise. \n\n", "A bit of background information: just like other jobs, playing in professional sports often includes a collective bargaining agreement, or an agreement between the managers and workers setting the rules for hiring people.  In basketball, this includes things such as rules of trading players, contracts, how revenue is distributed, maximum and minimum player salaries, the rules for the NBA draft, salary caps for teams, exceptions to the salary cap, and so forth.  The NBA's last CBA was signed in June, 2005 and ended June 30th, 2011.\n\nMuch like normal contract/salary negotiations, they are are centered around what you would naturally assume they would be centered on.  The NBA (the commissioner David Stern and the 30 NBA owners) wants less costs, while the player's association wants higher/similar salaries.\n\nThe NBA wants a hard salary cap (which means that teams are not allowed to go over a certain total that they spend on player salaries) at a lower level (so they spend less money, which means they can make more) while the player's associations wants to keep a soft cap (which means that teams have more exceptions, so players can make more).\n\nThe focus of the lockout is about the BRI, or basketball related income.  This determines the revenue sharing between the league and the players.  It's a bit complicated, but they total amount of salaries and benefits given to players through agreed upon contracts can't go over the amount that they agreed to through the CBA revenue sharing agreement.  If, for instance, it's set to 50% and the salaries and benefits of the players are worth a total of 51 million while the league makes 100 million, the 1 million for the players that would go over the set 50% would be given back to the league instead (there is a process where they hold a certain amount from paychecks, usually 8-10%, and then they check the BRI and payments at the end of the season).\n\nAs for decertifying, it means that the players no longer accept that the union is their legitimate representative to the owners.  The threat of decertifying would mean that in the event of a lockout, players could bring individual or class-actions lawsuits against the league for antitrust violation, that is, the NBA committed unfair business practices to create a monopoly.\n\nJust as a side note, but this has been done before in the Big 4 Sports, most recently in March of this year when the NFL player's association briefly decertified allowing Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning to bring forward a class-action lawsuit (Brady, et al. v. National Football League, et al.).\n\nEdit: For those interested, USA Today obtained a copy of the last proposal (WARNING: PDF) put forward by the league.  The players rejected it today. _URL_0_ proposal 11-11-2011.pdf"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/nba"], [], [], [], ["www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/nba"]]}
{"q_id": "5iy1qi", "title": "the science behind accupuncture", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5iy1qi/eli5_the_science_behind_accupuncture/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dimdr5o", "dbbt9dk", "dbbtnc8", "dbbtqxa", "dbbu7ld", "dbbwfus", "dbbxi1f", "dbc04g8", "dbc3xlv", "dbc5nuq", "dbc8uj3", "dbcazyo", "dbcbl66"], "score": [2, 49, 29, 176, 5, 18, 35, 3, 36, 2, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["Not quite the answer to your question, but I'm a very skeptical person  when it comes to alternative therapies (I'm attending medical school), yet I still benefitted from acupuncture. I had trouble with constipation and, after 2-3 sessions of electroacupuncture (acupuncture with slight electrical stimulation on the needles), my constipation cleared for short periods of time, which was the most relief I'd gotten in many months. (Mild laxatives would help elimination but not the consistency of my stool, whereas acupuncture helped both.) Although the effects weren't permanent and I couldn't afford to keep going back for weekly sessions, there WERE noticeable benefits. I believe the needles both relaxed the muscles of my intestines and, simultaneously, stimulated them so peristalsis could continue normally.", "There isn't really any, thus why it's called alternative medicine and not medicine.\n\nThat said, people do find it helpful if they believe it will work, though odds are most or all of that is placebo effect.", "Every decent scientific study every done shows that acupuncture give the same output as a placebo.\n\nIn short, there is no science behind accupunture.", "Acupuncture in it's \"pure\" form is complete bunk.  Studies have been done and found that poking needles into \"chi points\" vs. random points gives the same effect.  If the human body has \"chi points\", they aren't particularly responsive to being poked. \n   \nInterestingly, however, the effect in both cases is not zero.  The process does have a positive effect in some people.  \n  \nI haven't seen any studies which show whether this is pure placebo effect or if there is some other mechanism of action going on (or both).  ", "It is down to the placebo effect, basically the body releasing chemicals by itself to make it feel better in response to circumstances. For more on this - _URL_0_", "Dr Helene Langevin has done extensive research on the mechanism and effects of acupuncture since 2000. In one of her early studies, she found that traditional acupuncture points are often located at the intersection of muscles, where there are \"wells\" of connective tissue. Furthermore, inserting and manipulating an acupuncture needle into connective tissue results in the microscopic roughness of the needle to grab onto and pull the connective tissue (kind of like twirling a fork in spaghetti). When acupuncture is practiced, needles are generally placed, and then left in place for about 1/2 hour. Helene Langevin found some evidence that this long, slow stretch of the connective tissue had a significant effect on the structure of since of the connective tissue cells. When I studied this, she had yet to determine what, if any healing effect the change in connective tissue cells had on healing. If nothing else, acupuncture is able to produce a very specific connective tissue stretch.\n\n (Source: I read a bunch of her papers while a was a biomechanical engineering student at UVM, where she was conducting her research).", "\"So far, evidence supports its efficacy for some medical problems \u2014 especially certain kinds of pain. Research into how acupuncture relieves pain is still in its early stages and has not yet definitely answered the question. The study of pain is complex, in part, because it must rely on people's reports of their subjective experience. Studies of acupuncture are further complicated by the difficulty of finding an appropriate placebo. Despite these challenges, ongoing scientific research is likely to shed further light on acupuncture therapy.\"\n\nTLDR: We don't know. The above excerpt is from [this article](_URL_0_). \n\nAnecdote: I have Parkinson's Disease, and at least one scientific study (and my own personal experience) has shown that acupuncture is extremely effective at managing pain. I have no idea how it works, and it might be placebo, but I no longer rely on $800 in medications per month, and to be fair, we scientifically have no idea how those meds work, either. I'll take the qi voodoo bullshit if it helps. ", "I remember seeing a video / picture on it that explained it quite well, but I don't remember the link.   \n\nFrom what I recall, it had something to do with the body being extremely slow to repair damage to it that it doesn't deem needs \"immediate attention\". But when you stick a needle in that area, your body considers the area damaged by needles in need of \"immediate attention\", and starts to repair the punctured area. And while the body is working on the area in need of \"immediate attention\", since it is alreasy working in the area, it eventually starts repairing the previous injury that you got the accupuncture for. Hope this helps.", "Dude with degree in neuroscience here. Read some, but not all of the studies. I cannot add anything but an anecdote that was a powerful enough experience to convince me that more than the placebo effect is at work with acupuncture in some cases. My first girlfriend many years ago had an older greyhound rescued from the track. One day it was on its last legs with arthritis getting bad in her neck and legs. She got to the point one morning where she could not get up and was just whimpering in pain. I told my girlfriend we couldn't let her remain in pain; we needed to put the pup down. My girlfriend had heard about a guy that did acupuncture on animals and wanted to try it, but agreed to take her dig to the vet to euthanize her if acupuncture didn't work. I carried the pupper in to the place and laid her on the mat he had on the floor;  the dog was in so much pain she couldn't even pick up her head. The guy did his thing and poked her here and there. I had to step out to take a call but about 20 min later the pup came sprinting out of the room and centrifuged around the waiting room like a 9 month old border collie.  She lived another 3 years and when she started to get bad again, which usually was around  3-4 months, my girlfriend would take her back to see the guy. The pup died comfortably in her sleep something around 3 years from that day. I find it hard to believe the dog was convinced of anything in such a way that could cause the placebo effect. I have tried acupuncture myself a few times and got no recognizable benefits. I am not convinced there is nothing to acupuncture. Perhaps we have not done enough rigorous science to find it. Perhaps there are many crappy acupuncturists like the are many crappy Western doctors. Perhaps we should give it a few more looks before writing it completely off. ", "there is no western science behind it really. It's based on Chinese medicine which seeks to manipulate Qi. Qi is not measurable so western science ignores it or looks down it's nose at it. The one thing they get right though is that the elderly practice either Tai Chi or Qi Gong in the parks every day and although it's about as gentle an exercise as you can ever imagine, it gets them moving on their feet and just doing mild body weight resistance training. So whether it strengthens their chi or not it's better than in the west where we park out elderly in an an assisted living to die.", "Take an acupuncture chart. Overlay it on a picture of a human body without its skin on. The meridian lines end up being directly over the thickest areas of fascial tissue in the body. Fascial tissue is mildly piezoelectric. When you warm or deform it, it creates an electrical discharge. That's at least some of the \"science\" behind it. \nSource;  I've been a clinical massage therapist for 27 years and use acupressure daily. It doesn't matter if I tell the client what each spot will do. They still give me feedback saying \"whoa, my head just stopped aching\" or \"my reflux stopped burning!\" after I press those respective spots.", "There doesn't seem to be much \"proper\" science behind acupuncture. According to [this article](_URL_0_)\n\n >  carefully controlled scientific studies consistently show that it does not matter where you stick the needles or even if you insert needles (as opposed to just poking the skin with dull needles, or retracting needles, or even tooth picks). To further support this conclusion, the perceived effectiveness of acupuncture does not depend on the degree of training or experience of the acupuncturist (so whatever they are learning has no effect), but only upon how warm and nice they are to the patient. In short, acupuncture is an elaborate placebo.", "There was a study on mice [Adenosine A1 receptors mediate local anti-nociceptive effects of acupuncture](_URL_1_) which seems like a good start at explaining how acupuncture might work.  \n\nAdenosine is released in response to the micro-injury caused by the needle, and it has anti-pain and [anti-inflammatory properties](_URL_0_).  So it's plausible that acupuncture helps more than placebo with pain and inflammation.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/Uhk2rTIIpDw"], [], ["http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/acupuncture"], [], [], [], [], ["https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/an-industry-of-worthless-acupuncture-studies/"], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619132/", "http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n7/full/nn.2562.html"]]}
{"q_id": "59ntqu", "title": "why do swedish people speak english so well?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ntqu/eli5_why_do_swedish_people_speak_english_so_well/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d99wi5c", "d99x1bg", "d99x83s", "d99z8oa", "d99zkne", "d9a9tv6", "d9ac7oh", "d9ae9vp", "d9aeohg", "d9ak6h0"], "score": [107, 38, 18, 188, 6, 12, 4, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["It's not just Sweden. Most of the well-educated people in western countries are taught English from a young age, often starting around age 7-10, in school as an official required subject. With English being a dominant language in the world, it only makes sense to make it required study for anyone who wants to work in the modern world.", "Exposure to English/American movies and series with subtitles, rather than dubbed. \n\nThis is true for many countries with a small language footprint. Not entirely sure about Sweden, but that's definitely how it worked me for as a child. I'm Dutch btw. ", "They learn it in school from an early age and watch a lot of American TV and movies.\n\nThat's about it.\n\nSwedish is a language only spoken by Swedes (and a couple Finns) so you hold yourself back quite a bit only being able to speak Swedish.\n\nEnglish is also useful to speak amongst their Nordic counterparts, as some Danes are not able to understand Swedes and vice versa, and nobody can understand Finnish, and some words get lost in translation between all the different Nordic languages.\n\nsource: Brit in Sweden", "Am Swedish, can inform.\n\nAs mentioned, a majority of our entertainment is in English, and is subtitled, not dubbed. This means that we're exposed to it from a very, very young age.\n\nAlso, formal education in English is started from year 3 in school (might have changed since I was that young though). Back when I was educated, all education was in \"the queens English\" and not the American variety.\n\nLast, which is a bit trickier to explain, is that the \"sounds\" that make up the Swedish language includes all (and many more) \"sounds\" in the English language. Meaning, it's much easier for a Swede to properly pronounce English than vice-versa.\n\n(\"sounds\" is properly called \"phonetics\")", "English is Europe's lingua franca; the language that most Europeans have in common. If someone from Sweden wants to talk to someone from Germany, they will likely speak English to each other. ", "Seriously: The big European countries \u2014 France, Germany, Spain, Italy \u2014 are large enough markets to afford actors to dub all the American and English shit we consume. Here in the smaller countries, we have subtitles. ", "Belgian here, one thing I've noticed is that people who live in countries that dub over movies seem to be less proficient in English. I know I learned pretty much everything I know from movies and games.", "I'm an American who lived in Sweden and knew Norwegian before moving there.\n\n[Watch this for reference to see how closely a lot of the words are, and how similar it is to say things.](_URL_0_)  You won't catch all of it but it should be clear that we share plenty of words and sounds.\n\nScandinavian languages are closely related to English (and Scots, and probably Frisian, and definitely other Germanic languages).  Linguistically there are closer relatives, with Frisian being the closest, but realistically now it's *very* easy to learn one of the Scandinavian languages.  The reason being that you don't have to think very differently to say things.  They also have a lot of similar sounds, though there are *many* dialects and accents.", "My friend who teaches English answers thus:\n\nThe pressure points in the mouth and tongue used to create the syllable and vowel sounds in Scandinave languages are similar to English, in a similar way that Spanish and French use the throat and back tongue to enunciate. \n", "Yes, it's sad that I understand better a Nord than a Scott or an Irish. You know they're speaking English, just on another different level... And fast! So damn fast!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8QX037nhPU"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "yr2jb", "title": "the entire metal gear story", "selftext": "edit: this one's a toughy ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yr2jb/the_entire_metal_gear_story/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5y2c4a", "c5y4lb2", "c5y4ohw", "c5y753j", "c5y93gl", "c5y9u5k"], "score": [50, 16, 5, 31, 13, 3], "text": ["Why read when you can watch!! _URL_0_ did a fantastic six part series explaining the entire story. You can watch the first episode here: [LINK](_URL_1_)", "The reason that no one has answered your question yet is because even those who know all of it usually get the impulse to cave their own heads in when they have to repeat it all. It's just... stressful.\n\nI don't know how dedicated you are to learning the whole thing, but Chip and Ironicus do great Let's Plays of it: _URL_0_. They even have the original Metal Gear synopsis in there. I hesitantly recommend this? I mean, I did it, but I'm not really sure I can positively say I'm the same person anymore. It's also really hard on your eyes because you end up spending half the cutscenes squinting in confusion, and they are like forever long. I would say that if you like goofballs of all sorts, you should definitely watch these.", "Oh sweet Jesus this one would take a while... however, it is my favorite game series and if I wasn't on my phone, I'd gladly explain each one.", "[Check here. One of my favorite reddit comments of all time.](_URL_0_)", "Because I drank some beer and I am bored I shall elaborate (In hindsight at least what happened during MGS3 and some facts from the PSP games)\n\nThere once was a very sad girl named The Boss. She used to fight as a very brave soldier with her own team inside the second World War. After this war ended which was the last great conflict between multiple nations of our time the US, Russia and China split up a giant fortune that had been raised by a shadowy group called the Philosophers, one of which was the Bosses father.\n\nAfter WWII The Boss quite litterally lost her raison d'\u00eatre, since the purpose of a soldier is to fight for a nations interest and that only. However her maxim of \"Loyality to the end\" enabled her to keep working for the US as a CIA undercover agent on a top secret mission to infiltrate the ranks of a rogue russian GRU major that found the Philospher's fortune and planned on building a mobile launch platform for longrange ICBM Nuclear warfare missiles, planning on pretty much taking the entire world hostage with it and selling his invention to the highest bidder. \nThrough almost sheer coincidense her former prodigy student codenamed Naked Snake (Or John Doe) under the command of his special unit leader Major Zero, got tangled up inside this pastiche of a 60s spy agent flick double cross bonanza. \nHe learns that Big Boss and her super human soldier squadron the Cobras defected to serve Colonel Volgin as Merceneries and later is forced to return to russia and eliminate The Boss and Volgin's super weapon in order to prevent an escalation of the Cold War.\n\nDuring his mission befriends the shady femme fatale EVA and meets the young GRU special units member Revolver Ozelot, who unknowingly to Snake actually is the other CIA secret agent condemaned ADAM.\n\nAll are trying to get their hands on the microfilms to the secret funds of the Philosophers and it ends with Snake taking it from The Boss and being forced to kill her in order to finish his mission, thus finally adopting The Boss will and inheritance of both her name, becomiong Big Boss, and her maxim of \"Loyalty to the End\".\nBut Big Boss coins this into \"Loyality to the Mission\" and declares that soldiers shouldn't fight for the petty interests of nations but only for their own.\n\nStruck with grief he becomes almost mad with fulfilling the Boss' wish of a soldier's paradise. \n\nSnake however is betrayed by EVA who seemed to had been working for the chinese afterall but the funds are still lost and I believe are finally found by Major Zero and his team who set up an array of artifial intelligence computers all codenamed after former american presiedents \"JW, AL...\" with the main hub being located inside a satelite codenamed \"JD...John Doe\".\nThey envisioned a similiar world that the Boss was dreaming off but missinterpreted her to wish for a world without conflict and thus the sacrifice of a soldier.\nAfter the death of the philosophers the AIs were designed to control every poltiical, social and economic process inside the USA up to having complete control of electing the president and the governing body. They were all linked to Zero but slowly the AIs developed a sense of coniousness and went out of Zeros complete control. \nIn the end they entirely operated autonomously and through their own will. Zero ends up as an old vegetable being held alive by machines \nstrangely though he still manages to synch his vital signals to the Patriot AIs, thus the only way they will finally die is when he bites the dust.\n\nBig Boss ends up befriending many important characters in his career as a free mercenary among which are Colonel Campbell and survival expert Master Miller.\nDuring his time he also partakes in the infamous \"Les enfants terribles\" project, set to clone Big Boss (as he was teh greatest soldier alive) and preserve his genes for other purposes. 3 children with his exact genes are born to surrogate mother EVA all codenamed Solid, Liquid and Solidus Snake. \n\nTHis is only the prelude. I could continue but right now I feel its kind of pointless to. Ask me if you have questions.", "In the ridiculous Wilsonian optimism following WW1, the Allies formed a secret committee named the Philosophers who were to oversee the formation of a new world order.  Then the depression and WW2 happened.  As the Western Allies and Soviets drifted apart, the Philosophers were disestablished and individuals within the group took control of its assets and used them to promote their own interests.\n\nThe American Philosophers occupied a lot of government posts, but particularly in the CIA since the OSS was a Philosopher agency.  The Boss and Zero from MGS3 were CIA agents who believed in the Philosophers' original vision of one-world governance.  Power struggles depicted in Portable Ops and Peace Walker ensued; Zero ultimately was able to exert greater control over the US government with an apparatus he called the Patriots, but disillusioned Big Boss in the process.  Ocelot was a CIA/GRU/triple/I don't even agent who respected Big Boss, and both of them wanted to see the Philosophers done away with to plunge the world into a constant cycle of world wars that would make mankind stronger.  Or something.\n\nAs the Cold War went on, the Patriots had to contend with Big Boss trying to overthrow them (MG1, MG2), the Soviet threat, and the deaths of Patriot leaders in the Shadow Moses incident (Paramedic/Dr. Clark, SIGINT/Donald Anderson), they began to focus inward, becoming a technocracy obsessed with total control over the US.  This led to the creation of the five AI supercomputers from MGS4 that were meant to mine and edit digital data.  With control over US culture sort of established between MGS2 and 4 and the Russians almost wholly pacified since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Patriot AIs started to address global instability by funding PMCs to fight low-intensity conflict where the US couldn't intervene, not realizing that most of them were operated by Ocelot, who proceeded to use his private armies to blow up the Patriot AIs.  In MGS4 Snake is protecting to Patriot AIs to prevent societal collapse that would ensue should their economic functions go offline.  And somehow Big Boss was brought back to life and kills Zero and the AIs get shut down in a less jarring fashion because an 8 year old girl wrote a computer virus.  I dunno.  Nanomachines.  Metal Gear.  Meryl's hot.\n\nTl;dr Kojima never put any thought into this and made one big nonsensical mess.  Play the games as individual, self-contained stories and they're much more enjoyable, except for the clusterfuck that is MGS4."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["Gametrailers.com", "http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/s8rb6y/gt-retrospectives-part-one"], ["http://chipandironicus.com/games/games.html"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jhpo5/eli5_the_plot_of_the_metal_gear_solid_series/c2c84la"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "35wwlw", "title": "In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, there are slaves that that were only 1/16th and 1/32nd black. How common was this in the South and are there cases of slaves that had even less black heritage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35wwlw/in_mark_twains_puddnhead_wilson_there_are_slaves/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr8mwx5", "cr8okkk", "cr8u0kd"], "score": [50, 46, 10], "text": ["In that story, the percentages are meant to be satirical. Twain's drawing attention to the fact that really, there's no difference between the slave and the enslaver.", "First, it's worth noting that the percentage of African ancestry doesn't always represent the phenotype, since genetic expression is a complex thing. There are hundreds of accounts of quadroon slaves (1/4 black) who were reported to be whiter looking than most white people, whiter-looking than their own owners. There are a lot of reports from that era of people complaining - not about slavery, but about white slavery because these mulatto slaves looked too completely white.\n\nAs for how low one's black ancestry could go and still be sold as slave, there are plenty of examples of 1/16 and 1/32. Or even lower.\n\nFor example, Reverend Calvin Fairbank, a methodist minister and abolitionist from New York wrote about a girl named Eliza who was 1/64 black, and whom he purchased at a slave auction in Kentucky:\n\n*I only remember that it was early in May, 1843, that my sympathy and patriotism were roused in behalf of one of the most beautiful and exquisite young girls one could expect to find in freedom or slavery. She was the daughter of her master, whose name I withhold for laudable reasons, and was as free of African blood as Kate McFarland, being only one sixty-fourth African. She was self-educated, and accomplished in literature and social manners, in spite of the institution cursing her race ; and her heartless, jealous mistress had doomed her to be sold on the block, hating her for her beauty and accomplishments.*\n\n*Eliza had been confined in an upper room of the Lexington jail. She recognized me as I was walking in the jail-yard, and drew my attention by tapping upon the window. I called upon her in her room, learned her situation, and hastened to Cincinnati to Levi Coffin, then with him to Hon. S. P. Chase, Nicholas Longworth, Samuel Lewis and others, returning to Lexington with twenty-two hundred and seventy-five dollars, and a paper authorizing me to draw twenty-five thousand if necessary to save the girl.*\n\nHe goes on to describe that when she was put on the auction block, he got into a bidding war with a Frenchman who coveted the girl, but he outbid the Frenchman and was able to buy Eliza for $1485. Eliza was then freed and taken to Cincinnati, where she eventually married and lived as a white woman. Only a few people knew she had once been a slave.\n\nHe mentions that her master (who was also her father) was glad that she had been freed, and never intended to sell her on the auction block but was forced to do so by his wife. He contributed $100 towards the money that went into buying and freeing her.\n\nI haven't come across any statistics of how many slaves had 1/16 or 1/32 or 1/64 African ancestry, but there were certainly some. It would have been pretty inconsequential just how much African ancestry they had, because legally the one-drop rule or maternal inheritance didn't care about fractions, and appearance-wise it didn't take much to make the person look white. As lots of people have reported, there were many, many quadroons that looked clearly and unambiguously white but were kept and sold as slaves. The \"fancy trade\", which was especially prominent in New Orleans and Kentucky specialized in white-looking young women who were sold for prostitution in bordellos or as mistresses to the wealthy.\n\nEdit: The extract I quoted above is from the book \"*Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times: How he fought the good fight to prepare the Way*\" which was published by R.R. McCabe  &  Co. in Chicago in 1890.", "Not uncommon. There is a very striking picture of some emancipated slaves that appeared in Harper's magazine in 1864, with an explanation of who the emancipated slaves were. A couple of them were some kids who are white, but were slaves. The photo and description was designed to bring sympathy to the abolitionist movement by making people feel empathy with the white slaves, even if they couldn't identify with the black slaves. \n\n\nPic here:\n_URL_0_\n\nThe description of some of the people in the photos:\n\nTo the Editor of Harper's Weekly: \n\nTHE group of emancipated slaves whose portraits I send you were brought by Colonel Hanks and Mr. Philip Bacon from New Orleans, where they were set free by General Butler. Mr. Bacon went to New Orleans with our army, and was for eighteen months employed as Assistant-Superintendent of Freedmen, under the care of Colonel Hanks. He established the first school in Louisiana for emancipated slaves, and these children were among his pupils. He will soon return to Louisiana to resume his labor. \n\nREBECCA HUGER is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father's house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself. To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood. In the few months during which she has been at school she has learned to read well, and writes as neatly as most children of her age\u2026\n\nROSINA DOWNS is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister as white as herself, and three brothers who are darker\u2026 \n\nCHARLES TAYLOR is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he. Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave. First by his father and \"owner,\" Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave-trader named Harrison, who said them to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of our army, and his slaves were liberated by General Butler. The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less than a year he reads and writes very well. His mother \u2026\n\nHarper\u2019s Weekly, January 30 1864\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.frantzkebreau.com/uploads/5/4/8/7/5487562/2248303_orig.jpg?248"]]}
{"q_id": "5tulzl", "title": "What is the current state of light based computing? What are the problems holding us back?", "selftext": "I know the idea of light based logic has been around for decades and researched for just as long, but I hear little about it. With Moore's law starting to get caught up in physics problems, it seems like the logical way forward. Has light based computing even been prototyped? Is there no currently visible way forward? Whats holding us back?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5tulzl/what_is_the_current_state_of_light_based/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddpwrwt", "ddqixao"], "score": [8, 6], "text": ["I don't know what the current state of doing actual computing with light is. I suspect \"far off. Very.\"\n\nHowever, the field of silicon photonics is heating up like crazy right now. The distinction here is that we're only talking about the communications tech between the standard silicon chips, not changing how those chips do compute.\n\nPresently, 100 Gbps optical network links are rolling out, and 400 Gbps is in development, with 1-2 Tbps in research. The neat thing about silicon photonics is that it seems like it's in a similar position as early SSDs: every reason to believe that once this stuff gets going, it's going to comes down in cost hugely over the next few years, while getting faster and smaller incredibly quickly.\n\nSo this is starting as network links in expensive data centers and super computers, but it likely will eventually end up as a new connectivity approach replacing interconnect technologies like DDR and PCIe for connecting together your CPU, GPU  &  RAM inside your computer. These are already running into limits of how much bandwidth they're capable of shoving over ordinary wires. (PCIe 4.0 hits 16 Gbps per lane, and has enough trouble carrying that much bandwidth even 20 inches that they had to pay special attention to \"retimers\" in the spec, which are little chips that essentially act as repeaters.)\n\nSo light is going to show up first as interconnect, before it becomes compute (if it ever does?)", "A couple of critical issues with optical computing that rarely get mentioned:\n\n1. Photons are huge compared to electrons, and generally the devices that manipulate them are bigger than the photons themselves. A MOSFET for manipulating electrons can have a gate dimension of 0.5 nm and still be much bigger than the electron. An optical modulator for doing something similar with photons will have to have dimensions of at least a couple microns.\n\n2. Optical computing, at least in the areas where it has big advantages in \"processing power\", is essentially analog computing. For example, with a clever arrangement of lenses an optical computer can essentially calculate a fourier transform in a few nanoseconds. But the result is analog, subject to errors due to thermal noise and so on. It might still be a powerful tool, but there are compromises to be made."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6dmi82", "title": "if a nuclear weapon creates an emp, why didn't the planes dropping them in wwii experience it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dmi82/eli5_if_a_nuclear_weapon_creates_an_emp_why_didnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di3s58k", "di3s7y9", "di3shij", "di3txqa", "di3xdma", "di3yk6l", "di41u06"], "score": [2, 16, 13, 18, 5, 2, 5], "text": ["They probably *did* experience it to a small degree, but keep in mind that the WWII nukes were tiny in comparison to modern ones. Hirhoshima blast was 16 kilotons, while modern nukes are in the hundreds of kilotons (and sometimes megaton) ranges.\n\nWe also have much more electronics and wireless communication than during WWII, making modern technology more vulnerable to EMP than before. It's conceivable than a WW2 plane could keep flying even with all electronics completely disabled.", "Tube type circuits are much more resistant to EMP than transistors and chips. There was a period during the changeover to chips that a nuclear war might have left most of our fancy radios and electronic gear useless while the USSR was still running old tube gear that would have been okay. ", "Nuclear EMP's are highly altitude dependent. The higher the bomb, the further the EMP reaches. The atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were detonated so close to the ground that anything that could have experienced the EMP, was obliterated.", "They did, but it was not noticed because the electronics of the time.\n\nA World War 2 aircraft radio operating at 48 volts/ 15 amps would be able to handle an extra amp of electricity with out harm.\n\n it is 5% overloaded \n\nmeanwhile a modern radio with microcircuits operating at 0.0003 volts and 0.0001 amps would burn out with 1 amp added.\n\nit is 1,000% overloaded.   \n", "Little Boy and Fat Man while not small are a lot smaller than people think they are. The bomb dropped on hiroshima for example if your in a decently built civilian house about a mile and some change away and not near any glass other than being deaf now you would be totally fine.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPut your address in here and pick the hiroshima bomb (15kt)\n\nThe atomic bombs of the 40's were absolutely nothing like the civilization enders of the late 50's and 60's. Absolutely incomparable in destructive power. Its like comparing an infant impacting the floor when it crawls to the largest artillery used in ww1.\n\nAgain play with that map on your house and pick the tsar bomba (50Mt/100Mt) to see what I am talking about.\n\nThose planes had minutes traveling hundreds of miles an hour to get away from the blast. You as a fit human being if you knew it was coming could of out run the bomb falling before detonation IIRC .", "Their electronics did get hit. Most of the plane was operated with mechanical controls, and what few electronics they had were insulated and of high gaged wires capable of handling the EMP. \n\nModern electronics which have much smaller circuits and microchips are more vulnerable than the older tech. ", "There are two kinds of nuclear EMPs and people often get them pretty confused (which is fair enough, the science is actually pretty tricky). \n\nThe first is the high-altitude EMP, which is caused by a weapon detonated many miles up (e.g. 30-200 miles above the surface of the Earth). This is caused by gamma radiation from the bomb ionizing a large portion of the upper atmosphere and causing it to radiate electrons back down to Earth. This the EMP that the people who claim EMP is a big scary effect worry about, because one bomb can hypothetically affect a huge area.\n\nThe second is an EMP created by a surface or low-altitude burst, which is caused by the bomb ionizing (stripping electrons from) a region of air around the detonation point. This can be much much more intense than the high-altitude EMP but it has a very rapid fall-off in intensity. For a weapon the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, the damaging range of the EMP is not a whole lot larger than the other damaging effects of the bomb \u2014 if you are close enough for the EMP to be a problem, you have many other more pressing problems (e.g. being crushed or set on fire or irradiated). For much larger nuclear weapons (e.g. megaton range) the effects can go further, but are still on the order of being within the range of pretty intense blast effects (e.g. for a 1,000 kiloton bomb it extends about 8 miles, which is still within the range of the blast and thermal effects; by comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons).\n\nAnd as others have noted, the electronics of WWII were not of the sort that would be especially vulnerable to EMP anyway (vacuum tubes vs. modern chips). But separate from that the plane had made sure it was several miles away (slant range) from the bomb when it went off, so it would not have been affected by the EMP anyway. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5vwlqm", "title": "how did the whole world agree on the duration of a second?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vwlqm/eli5_how_did_the_whole_world_agree_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de5gu9i", "de5h8m2", "de5i4tr", "de5s118", "de5vuuj", "de5ysoc", "de65n52", "de67t7r"], "score": [34, 7, 177, 275, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["The definition of 1 second is \"the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom\".\n\nWith the development of the atomic clock in the early 1960s, it was decided to use atomic time as the basis of the definition of the second, rather than the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.\n\nFollowing several years of work, Louis Essen from the National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, England) and William Markowitz from the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) determined the relationship between the hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium atom and the ephemeris second. Using a common-view measurement method based on the received signals from radio station WWV, they determined the orbital motion of the Moon about the Earth, from which the apparent motion of the Sun could be inferred, in terms of time as measured by an atomic clock. They found that the second of ephemeris time (ET) had the duration of 9,192,631,770 \u00b1 20 cycles of the chosen caesium frequency. As a result, in 1967 the Thirteenth General Conference on Weights and Measures defined the SI second of atomic time as stated above.\n\nThis SI second, referred to atomic time, was later verified to be in agreement, within 1 part in 1010, with the second of ephemeris time as determined from lunar observations (the previous SI for 1 second)\n\nAlthough, for specialized purposes, a second may be used as a unit of time in time scales where the precise length differs slightly from the SI definition. One such time scale is UT1, a form of universal time. The SI second is not the 'legal standard' for timekeeping throughout the world, only that \"over the years UTC [which ticks SI seconds] has become either the basis for legal time of many countries, or accepted as the de facto basis for standard civil time ", "The international committee for weights and measures have conferences periodically to decide on the definition of different units. These are called SI units (basically the official metric system). These SI units are what people in stem fields all around the world use. ", "If the invention and initial spread of the second is what you are asking about, seconds minutes and hours were invented as timekeeping units by ancient Babylonian mathematicians.  The reason there are 60 minutes and 60 seconds is because Babylon's numbering system used a base of 60 instead of a base of 10.  This is also why we have 360 degrees for a circle.  \n\nBabylon was one of the first empires to attempt to standardize measurements in history.  The staying power of the second has much to do with the fact that it is just a very old concept that no one saw fit to replace.  ", "The first clocks were sun dials, and originally the duration of a day was divided into 12 equal segments by the Egyptians.  These became hours, and obviously over time we discovered ways of counting the hours during night time as well.\n\nThe Babylonians divided the hour in 60 minutes, but it took a long time before minutes could be accurately measured.\n\nIn Medieval times in Europe a wide variety of mechanical devices were created that mimicked the sun dial (which is what decided which direction clockwise was). The mechanical clocks started to measure out minutes, although they were frequently inaccurate especially at this level of precision.\n\nIn the 1600s Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, and this was the first device that could accurately and reliably measure minutes.\n\nOver time the pendulum clocks were improved and made more accurate, **it was only at this point that we were able to measure seconds**.\n\nAround this time we began to redefine time. Previously time was based on the Earth rotation, the passage of the sun across the sky, as reflected by the sun dials of old.  With these new mechanical devices we were able to have a more accurate way of measuring time.\n\nFor a while a second was defined as a fraction of a year,  1/31,556,925.9747\n\nIt wasnt until the invention of atomic clocks that we settled upon the now standard length of time elapsed by a second.  Technically a second is defined as:\n\n  >  the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom\n\nWe chose the caesium-133 atom because it has an extremely regular periods.  And we chose that 9.1 billion number because it was extremely close to the accepted length of a second at the time.", "Everyone needs to read the book called Longitude about John Harrisom, one of the coolest books I've ever read.", "My understanding differs slightly from others posters. The Sumerians (predecessors to the Babylonians) had a numerical system based on 60 as opposed to ours based on 100 (tens, decimals, whatever you want to call it).\n\nTheir system of 60 naturally resulted in their measuring of time based on 60.\n\nTheir system originated in using one hand to count to 12, so I doubt the claims that it was based on breaths or heartbeats.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_", "Nobody here is answering the question, merely explaining how a minute or a second came into being. I may be wrong but I believe OP is asking how come the whole planet uses the same units. We don't all use the same calendar. We don't all use the same definition of a month and we certainly don't all use the same language so how come we're all agreed on what a minute or a second is?", "The convention for hours and minutes started with Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians in Mesopotamia. These peoples ruled most of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean ring until the Greeks, followed by the Romans. The Greeks absorbed it readily and furthered the reach of these conventions in their trade routes, including the Vedic spread into India. The Romans spread that even further, and then Christiandom after that spread it further yet.\n\nIn the ninth century, after Islam had been established, religious reformers reincorporated many of the ideas from the Greek traditions, which now firmly was based on hours and minutes. Probably the last Eurasian cultures to absorb the convention of hours and minutes were in the Far East, assisted by trade routes through India. \n\nOnce the world was firmly established with hours and minutes, the rest was coasting. The second was introduced more or less as an afterthought, though it had been used sporadically throughout the previous centuries."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_units_of_measurement", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2tha4p", "title": "What is meant by \"an excitation of the quantum field\"?", "selftext": "Fundamental particles are often described as \"excitations in the quantum field\" - summoned out of the fundamental \"particleness\" that exists everywhere (as demonstrated by Henry from MinutePhysics: _URL_0_). What exactly does this mean? Why is it significant? What's the connection to wave-particle duality? This is often treated with a lot of hand-waving - what's actually going on here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2tha4p/what_is_meant_by_an_excitation_of_the_quantum/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnz2m28"], "score": [8], "text": ["A quantum field is a field that exists everywhere. Picture just everywhere in the universe is a number displaying the amplitude of the field at that point. So if we disturb the field, we create a bunch of numbers in the field. This disturbance propagates as a wave through the field. \n\nThese fields are subject to the rules of quantum mechanics which basically tells us that these disturbances can only come in particular shapes, sizes and amounts. These particularly shaped disturbances are what we call particles. We never actually have little balls of matter like you hear in layman terms, you always just have these little bundles of oscillating quantum field. \n\nThe connection to wave particle duality is due to the fact that we are looking at waves traveling in fields. Quantum mechanics requiring discrete bundles tells us that things are particle-like being that we can never have a 1/3rd of a particle or 5/4ths, only situations with one particle in and one particle out, for example."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxeb3Pc4PA4"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7b9038", "title": "How realistic are sci-fi planets that are almost entirely one biome?", "selftext": "Like how Star Wars has some planets that are just deserts, or just snow and ice, or just oceans, etc. I can kinda see how desert and snowy planets might exist (how far the planet is from their sun), but I'm curious as to how realistic they are.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7b9038/how_realistic_are_scifi_planets_that_are_almost/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dpgxi16"], "score": [20], "text": ["It really depends on the biome.\n\nIt also depends on how much detail about the fictive ecology has been provided. Generally there is very little fine detail about variation in local conditions. However, I believe you are correct in pointing out that the fictive worlds which are least hospitable to life as we know it are the most realistic - ice worlds, desert planets. \n\nWater worlds, which are potentially extremely hospitable to life, are another possibility - but perhaps only because we would be unfamiliar with some of the subtleties distinguishing various biomes in terms of temperature and chemistry. \n\nFor instance Hoth is [\"*... the sixth planet in the remote system of the same name ... It is a world of snow and ice, surrounded by numerous moons, and home to deadly creatures like the wampa\"*](_URL_0_). That's really a very crude description. You may gather a bit more from the movies (for instance the snow/ice cover is in places so thin you can see rocks poking out). But anybody who spent a bit of time in the arctic can tell you that there is room for more detail and nuance. Are there oceans? Are there Icecaps and how thick are they? Is all of the ice water ice? Is there an equatorial zone where snow cover is seasonal? We don't know.\n\nThat being said, it is tempting to compare a place like Hoth to known Ice worlds. In that sense, Hoth does not really ressemble much the Ice moons of our solar system. Those are water worlds with kilometric scale Ice crusts, canon imagery on the other hand [clearly shows rocks poking through the snows of Hoth](_URL_1_) (it *was* filmed in Norway, after all)... that's very different. The place we know of which Hoth might resemble most is actually Earth in the [Marinoan , during the so-called \"Snowball Earth\" period](_URL_3_). \n\nAnother one I like is [Arrakis](_URL_2_), not least of which because Frank Herbert knew his stuff in terms of both ecology and geology, and it shows. Yes it is a desert planet, but Frank provides a lot more detail than merely a sand/rock covered dry hell hole. We know there is some sort of interrupted water cycle there, but that most of the water is locked up in the local geology. There are evaporites, and a tenuous ecology. There are a diversity of small scale biomes: ergs, the deep desert, oases, and a few more. This makes not only for a richer story where the ecology is part and parcel of the big picture, but also for an easier case of suspension of disbelief. Arrakis is quite believable, broadly speaking; enough so that one is tempted to look at it *really* closely and pick it apart. I cannot say that \"believability\" would survive intense scrutiny and mass balance calculations, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. \n\nAt the other end of the spectrum, so-called \"forest worlds\" or tropical paradise planets are so completely implausible they destroy my ability to give the story any credence. Even our unbelievably lush Earth cannot maintain a complete and continuous cover of forest. Unless ... some device is used to maintain that habitat is one specific and limited location, such as a single unique micro-continent for instance. But then, that means a second important biome for that which is not a continent; and the limiting parameters of your question no longer apply."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.starwars.com/databank/hoth", "https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/Hoth_d074d307.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C1200%2C675&amp;width=768", "http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Arrakis", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinoan_glaciation"]]}
{"q_id": "bk1k9r", "title": "What did people do before modern medicine when they tore a major ligament such as an ACL or Achilles tendon? Was life over or did they attempt a rudimentary fix?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bk1k9r/what_did_people_do_before_modern_medicine_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["emdt9s4"], "score": [135], "text": ["First things first, ligaments are very different to tendons.  Ligaments connect bone to bone; tendons connect muscle to bone.  If you injure a ligament, your joint will be destablized; if you injure a tendon, the muscle it attaches to will no longer be able to usefully pull on anything.  \n\nIn response to your question, it wasn't until Avicenna, a thousand years ago, that tendon repair was well documented and recommended.  Galen describes one instance of tendon repair on an injured gladiator but generally recommended against it.   The vast majority of the world population even in Avicenna's time did not have access to Avicenna or the surgeons he trained, so the answer to your question is... live as best they could.  \n\nACL repair as a modern surgery is only about 100 years old.  You can function reasonably well with a torn knee ligament by the way -- you'll certainly have trouble doing anything athletic, and your knee may buckle frequently, but you should be able to walk.  \n\nFurther reading:\nInsights into Avicenna\u2019s knowledge of the science of orthopedics.  Behnam Dalfardi et al.  World journal of orthopedics 5 (1), 67, 2014"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1l0c8z", "title": "Stripping Enemy Armour in Battle, e.g. The Iliad", "selftext": "I had no idea whether to post this here or in r/Literature but just incase this is a true historical phenomenon, I'll ask it here.\n\nI'm currently on my first read through of Homer. I started with the Odyssey and am now on the Iliad.\n\nAn odd, recurring action I've noticed is opponents stripping their enemies of armour in the heat of battle. Now perhaps it's just me, but this doesn't seem particularly practical. Thousands of men fighting hand to hand, arrows flying everywhere, and soldiers are looting corpses.\n\n\u201cBut now the son of Mecisteus hacked the force from beneath them both and loosed their gleaming limbs and tore the armor off the dead men's shoulders... Antiphus he hacked with a sword across the ear and hurled him from his chariot, rushing fast to rip the splendid armor off their bodies... his knees went limp as Eurypylus rushed in, starting to rip the armor from his shoulders.\u201d - Excerpts From: Robert Homer  &  Fagles. \u201cThe Iliad.\u201d Viking.\n\nIs this poetic license, or did soldiers really try to loot heavy armour in the midst of a battle? Is it even looting, or is it some sort of desecration or signal of victory?\n\nIt's a strange question I'm sure and I hope I chose the correct subreddit. Thanks everyone!\n\nEDIT: I apologise that the thread title is not in the form of a question. I cannot edit it but if it needs to be changed by a mod, this might be better: \"Did the Ancient Greeks strip enemy armour in the midst of battle? (Source: The Iliad)\"\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l0c8z/stripping_enemy_armour_in_battle_eg_the_iliad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbuinjr", "cbulth4", "cbuo6f1", "cbuqf7t"], "score": [69, 15, 10, 4], "text": ["It has to do with the way Greek soliders gained \"glory\" or \"renown\" (these are English translations that probably don't do the initial concept justice). The Greek term was \"kleos,\" and in order to get this glory on the battlefield, you not only had to accomplish certain things, but you had to make sure that others saw you do so. Glory in private didn't really count; the point was to make people talk about you.\n\nIf you killed your enemy on the battlefield, maybe people saw it or maybe they didn't, but if you took their armor, no one could say that you weren't an accomplished warrior. Stripping the arms and armor of the vanquished was a physical sign of the presence of kleos, or glory.\n\nSPOILERS - This is why you'll see such an enormous fight over the armor of Achilles worn by Patroclus. When Patroclus dies, both sides realize that there's basically no bigger prize in Ilion than that set of armor. Of course, when Hector ends up with it, his fate is pretty much sealed. You'll also see that post-Patroclus' death, Achilles gets another set of armor made by Hephaestus and delivered by Thetis. Legend had it that, after the fall of Troy and the death of Achilles by Paris' arrow, Ajax and Odysseus both feel they deserve Achilles' armor and make their cases. When Odysseus wins by eloquence, Ajax falls on his own sword and kills himself. He missed out on the kleos he felt he deserved.", "From van Wees, he postulates that the battle scenes from the Iliad were modeled on Dark/Iron Age warfare into the Archaic Age (before the development of hoplite warfare. That warfare was essentially skirmishing between bands of men who clustered around warrior elites. Each person was expected to take a turn at the front skirmishing before returning to the rear. Occasionally they'd group up and rush, dispersing the other side back and that would allow them to quickly strip a dead enemy before pulling back. Skirmishing resumes. ", "Its fairly common in more primitive cultures for this to happen. There are documented cases of it occurring in Roman sources, where it's noted that, for example, the Gauls and the Bastarnae would strip the slain. I'm not certain whether these formulae in the *Iliad* represent a pre-Dorian tradition or whether they are a Dark Age tradition. However, this was probably done during the early Dark Age at least, when it seems probable that massed formations did not encounter each other. Keep in mind that in Homer anyone stripping an enemy rarely does so unopposed. Other champions will jump in to rescue their slain comrades from disgrace, and frequently the bodies of the slains become mosh-pits for confused and bloody melees. Also, keep in mind that these guys are *champions*. The rank and file soldiers, who rarely figure in Homer except as vague references to mobs of skirmishers running around (except for the great bit when the Greeks unite and form a phalanx before the walls). They don't mess with the champions, ever. Also, one other thing. Homer doesn't represent a form of warfare that was ever used, at least not altogether. There are instances when Homer refers to an actual practice that was done in war at some period or another, but they're confused and muddled and all sorts of warped.", "To add to the excellent answers on \"kleos\", do note that bronze armour was expensive, to the point of being a noticeable part of the assets even of landowners. A suit of armour, \"lightly used\", was a highly significant piece of loot - and more portable than livestock, which had to be fed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "acd7hb", "title": "Do birds, reptiles, and mammals other than us also use hydrochloric acid to break down food in their stomachs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/acd7hb/do_birds_reptiles_and_mammals_other_than_us_also/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ed8aebg"], "score": [5], "text": ["We do not use HCl to \"break\" our food. The acid is there to help activate the enzimes that do.\n\nThe Ph of the stomac goes from something arround 5 to 3 then 2 to have an optimun range for different enzimes (each enzime has its own speed of action, concetration and ph optimun. If they aren't in that particular range it does kot works as inteded)\n\nEnzimes are specialised for some kind of \" food\", and there are a lot of them. Some break fat others sugars and others proteins.\nSome are higly specialised and work on only a handfull of components othrrs are more broad.\n\nSry bad English.  Hope is understandable. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "35l523", "title": "why are gay men often friends with straight women but lesbians generally do not hang out with straight men?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35l523/eli5_why_are_gay_men_often_friends_with_straight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr5ef89", "cr5ek7c", "cr5eq85", "cr5fesf", "cr5fmy5", "cr5forh", "cr5g45a", "cr5g6dh", "cr5g6wv", "cr5g7f0", "cr5g95f", "cr5g9zl", "cr5gaoj", "cr5ghfz", "cr5gp3l", "cr5h0y6", "cr5h8a2", "cr5hbrz", "cr5hela", "cr5hh9p", "cr5hqp9", "cr5i648", "cr5ibxf", "cr5ij17", "cr5il5o", "cr5imkv", "cr5ip0x", "cr5ipiw", "cr5irys", "cr5iwdq", "cr5iyql", "cr5izf6", "cr5j0nc", "cr5j1g6", "cr5j55o", "cr5j57r", "cr5j5k8", "cr5jcfi", "cr5jcou", "cr5jgmc", "cr5jj9r", "cr5jnge", "cr5jofl", "cr5jrvx", "cr5jte5", "cr5jvcj", "cr5jw8p", "cr5k4j5", "cr5k7iw", "cr5k8hz", "cr5k8sx", "cr5kz0i", "cr5m9th"], "score": [36, 1318, 61, 59, 108, 19, 86, 16, 2, 45, 10, 6, 87, 13, 11, 2, 7, 5, 2, 3, 7, 7, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 22, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Who says they don't?", "Many lesbians feel, right or wrong that straight men still try to hit on them whereas straight women like the fact that gay men do not try to make advances on them.  Obviously this isn't true for all men and women, men have platonic female friends all the time and women hit on gay men all the time too.", "This does not at all match my experience. As a straight guy, i love hanging out with lesbians. Its like having a buddy, but with boobs.", "When I (straight guy) first turned 21 I had an older Lesbian friend that would take me out drinking all the time, which led to making more lesbian friends.  I understand what OP is saying but that has definitely not been my experience.", "One of the better friendships I've had in years was/is with a lesbian. There's an unspoken understanding that there is really no need to impress each other and no possibility of sexual tension that can creep up in many hetero friendships, like it or not. Probably one of the few people I've ever felt comfortable around .", "What about bi men and bi women ?", "I think Mitch and Cam can explain this in the simplest way possible:\n_URL_0_", "I know a lot of lesbians and have pretty much seen the opposite to what you describe. I have a lot of gay girl friends, and as a guy, I think a lot of them quite enjoy some of the more laddish behaviour that they don't get in a group of girls. Even if they're tomboyish or more 'girly'.\n\nMaybe it's a generational thing, still. I live in what could be described as a hotbed of gayness, so you've got your first generation of enlightened 20-somethings who truly feel unafraid and accepted. \n\nOlder lesbians were shunned by society in different nuanced ways than gay males were. Whereas there seemed genuine hatred and shaming of gay men, there was more confusion and isolation for women coming out. Anger yes, but a different brand of it. \n\nI think there's an iffy implication sometimes that a preference for women indicates that they want very little to with men. Anecdotally, I've found that to be totally false, and that there are other good reasons why lesbians would tend to stay out of someone's way that are less complicated than having a negative relationship with the male gender.", "That's not been my experience.  Here it is: \n\nDated a girl in hs, later in our early 20s she comes out of the closet.  At this point she's living in a different city than I, and I eventually move there in my mid 20s.  Meet all of her friends.  Go to a local lesbian bar with them and certainly do get those \"come near me I'll cut your balls off\" stares, but usually anyone I'm introduced to is very nice.  That all happened about 6 years ago.  I moved away but still keep in touch with everybody and they're always the people I see when I visit.  \n\nObviously everybody's experience is going to be different.  If you're a good guy any lesbian will be your friend.  ", "Straight dude here - in my late 20s, one of my best friends was a self-described \"gold star\" lesbian - had never kissed or slept with a boy. We were inseperable until I broke up with a woman who I met and dated while she and I were friends.  After I broke up with this woman, my friend straight cut me off, and I found out later she \"sided\" with this woman in our breakup and also had a huge crush on her the whole time. \n\nWhen I looked back on it, there was a surprising amount of sexual competition even when I was single and we would hang out at bars together.  ", "in my experience, straight men (me) get along with lesbians better than the gay men seem to get along with them.", "I am a straight guy who has lesbian friends. In the way that some men do not hang out with women, some women just don't hang out with men.", "I liked hanging out with my lesbian friend because she liked to have sex with me. That's how I found out I was also a lesbian. ", "That's not true in my experience at least. I hang out with everyone. I would rather talk to/hangout with a straight man over a bubbly girly-girl any day. All of my lesbian friends are like this. Not sure where the uptight lesbian thing comes from and if there's any truth to it. \n\nOnly two things annoy me:\n\n1. If they hit on me knowing I am obviously not interested.\n\n2. When they talk to me about sex and women. I am not a very sexual person so I don't care for talking about it and it seems like there's this misconception that if you like women then you must like talking about sex with women. ", "I'm a lesbian, mid 20s -\nI have only a few close straight cis guy friends, and in my experience this is because I come out quite early on when meeting an acquaintance, and then guys treat me differently. They either 1. Treat me like a 'bro', someone to objectify women with them - \"Check out pink dress's ass. Damn so fine.\" Me: \"Uh, her name is Sally, why don't you say hi?\" Or 2. Ask me weird invasive questions about my sex life before we've even gotten to know each other well. There's also the creepy third level where they try to \"get in\" on bedroom action.\n\nAlso, your typical dude can often say something a little bit sexist, sometimes not meaning to be malicious. My straight female friends sometimes put up with this (if it's not too bad) because they don't want to be seen as unfuckable, whereas I have nothing to lose so I can call them out on their bullshit, making them less likely to want to be my BFFL.", "Because television shows say so.\n\nLesbian characters don't often hang out with straight men on TV shows, so most people assume they don't in real life. Whether or not they actually do I have no idea since I am not a homosexual woman.", "Because that is a stereotype, and it isn't necessarily true. I bet that a lot of lesbians have guy friends. ", "Have you meet straight men? We are terrible. No wonder why both groups avoid them.", "As a lesbian/gay woman, whilst I have a couple of 'straight male' friends, mostly I would say my experience around other straight men (I will not say *all* men, but quite a few), is that my gayness is seen as challenge to them. It's a challenge for their masculinity that there is a women they will remain immune to their *charm* and pressure to conform to the sexual role that women fill in their lives.\n\nIn a social setting, where I just want to chill, talk about how things are with my girlfriend, and have a giggle... I do not want to have to endure the questions of straight male peers who will try and insist upon me that I \"*haven't found the right guy*, or that I \"*don't know what I'm missing*. Nor do I, want to have to remain constantly vigilant about how this passively stating this opinion could easily become something a lot more sinister. \n\nAs someone said in one of the comments below \"*Its like having a buddy, but with boobs*\", this is just another example of how often some men turn the existence of a woman into sexual entertainment, even when that woman has explicitly made them aware of no returned desire or attraction. It's uncomfortable and is not the basis of an equal friendship.", "Three of my closest friends are Lesbians. I've known one since the age of 2, the others are more recent friends. \n\nOur friendship is simple and doesn't deal too much with sexual issues and that's possibly why. I don't care who they love as long as it makes them happy. I treated them the same before they came out to me. It possibly helps that we are all in our 40's. \n\n", "Well, I'm a straight male, and I have a lesbian friend, 2 bisexual female friends, 1 gay male friends, and 3 bisexual male friends.  I don't even live in a big city and I don't 'go clubbing'.  Mostly we get high and play video games.", "I have to say, I have both gay and lesbian friends.  I don't really understand exactly what you're trying to say here.", "I'm actually not sure this is even true. I know gay guys with straight women friends, and I know lesbians with straight men friends.  Do you have stats to back up your claim?", "Am i the only one that thinks this statement has absolutely no truth to it? As a lesbian, I daresay that the majority of my friends are straight men. Also, all the lesbians I know have a lot of straight men as friends. ", "This is clearly anecdotal, but I'm straight and my best friend is a Lesbian. We like beer, dogs, shooting, and fire. I like hanging out with her more than the gay dudes I know. The gay dudes I know are cool, but not \"will help you move a couch\" type bros. ", "have you seen the way straight men tend to act towards lesbians?", "Straight man here. Best friends with a hot lesbian.\n\nIt is hard for men to be friends with a woman, especially an attractive one, You hang out with them because you like their personality, they make you laugh, they make you smile and generally life up your mood. Just like any friend, male or female would.\n\nBut we are instinctively looking for a mate, and naturally the fact that this friend is a woman triggers your natural straight desires for something more. Women know this, and know that if you are single, and they initiated some sort of sexy time, then the guy would probably go along with it. Lesbians are no different, but they probably feel the same about them being with you as you being with another guy. The only word I can describe that is a bit repulsed. Obviously I have no problem men being with other men but that's their business not mine.\n\nIf a guy can get past the initial desires of wanting to date that hot lesbian and her hot lesbian lover, then you can be really good friends. They pay for their half of a meal, they talk more about normal boy things, and you can both talk about the smoking woman with a nice ass that just walked past both of you without feeling liker a perv.", "SO for me at least, i tell a straight guy I am gay and he'll react with: \"Thats hot, want a third?\" Yes i have guy friends who dont care, but to hang out with a random straight guy that i havent known for a long time?  I dont want to put up with stupid-ass comments. ", "Cause straight dudes can't look at a lesbian women and see a \"dude\", they still see a women and often are still attracted to them.   Being attracted to your friend or having your friend attracted to you is awkward.", "I've had the opposite experience. As a heterosexual guy in a relationship with a girl who has TONS of lesbian friends, I've gotten along great with all of them because this particular group of lesbian girls love sports, video games and tons of other stuff that are generally of a heterosexual male's interest. I love when we talk about what we find attractive in women and sexual interests because they are basically the same conversations I'd have with male friends.", "One of my good friends is a lesbian. She and her wife, and I and mine like to go out to dinner and drinks because we're all into the same shows and books and stuff. \n\nAt least a few times, while we were out, some brah would try and get my attention and give me a huge thumbs-up, or something else shitty like that. \n\nWe've gone out a fair amount of times, and been in the company of hundreds of men (cumulatively), and only a handful have been jackasses like that. Most of them, like everyone else, just want to do what they're out to do, and disregard the \"background people.\" However, it's *always* the jackasses that make sure they catch my attention. \n\nFor me, it builds an analogy that I think answers your question. Lesbians pass by tons of men all the time that they have no reason to interact with (background people), and most of them (the background men) feel the same way. \n\nEvery once in a while, they meet a person who they share interests with, and is male, and is not a douche, and they become friends. But far more often the men that they interact with are just background people who jump into the foreground to give unwanted sexual advances, because two lades doing it is very attractive to (a lot of the) men (that I've met) and the brahs don't have the impulse control to see something that sexually excites them and not jump on it. \n\nAnyway, I'm a guy, so take it with a grain of salt. I don't feel qualified to speak on behalf of lesbians, this the just the perception that I got from \"riding shotgun.\"", "In my experience gay men have more female friends when they are younger and  get more male friends when they are older. Imo it's part they become more comfortable around straight dudes and straight dudes become more comfortable around gay dudes. Before i met my first guy friend i had so many strange \"facts\" about gays in my head, thought everyone of them looks and talks like a fag and then i met this dude who is \"normal\" just like me", "I'm a lesbian with a lot of straight male friends, actually. I think we have a lot in common and I tend to get along better with guys anyway. This has actually been the case with the majority of lesbians I'm friends with, with some exceptions of course. \n\nI love that guys aren't dramatic and the ones who are on that friend level with me aren't the type of guy to come on to me constantly, like the straight guys described in this thread a lot. We can just sit back with some Jack and discuss sports/ladies/the weather.\n\nI do find, oddly, that gay men and gay women don't tend to mix.", "They do.\n\nMaybe instead of asking a blanket question to the internet, you should ask this question specifically to the man or woman who's behaviour you seem to be basing it off of. They probably have personal reasons for hanging out with who they choose to hang out with.\n\nThe most likely reason? Because those are their friends.", "I definitely don't feel this statement is true for me. I'm a lesbian and have a bunch of straight male friends. Want to watch sports? Check, they'll watch the game with me. Want to be my wingman? Check, they'll come have a drink with me. Want to talk about work? Check, they show up and shoot the shit.  Want to talk about your girlfriend problems? Check, they'll bounce ideas off me. \n\nI'm not trying to sleep with them and they're not trying to sleep with me. They're friends with no intentions other than to be just friends.  ", "I have two friends. One male, one female. The female is gay, but still enjoys spending time with me. So... Quite frankly, I don't know. ", "Gay guy here. On gay men - straight women friendship:\n\n1. Women always are completely non-sexual to gay men. Just like the completely non-sexual friend for straight men would be other men, and straight men tend to have other men as friends. Likewise women can be relaxed with gay men, as gay men are not hitting on women. They don't really want anything sexual or romantic from each other. Both know this, and that's the reason they can talk about things like relationships, sex and so on without it being awkward for both. For many gay men, it could be somewhat awkward to talk about gay sex to straight men as gays know straight men could feel uncomfortable with the subject.\n\n2. Gender non-conformity is more common among gay men than in straight men. So fabulous fashionable platinum gays might more easily relate to women and their interests than straight guys do. (I underline that there's nothing wrong being a fabulous fashionable platinum gay). \n\n3. There are tons of gay men who have very few women as friends. Some gay men can be even sexist and look down on women, as women are completely irrelevant to their life. It is quite surprising that some gay men can be very sexist towards women.\n\nI don't know about lesbians though.", "What?  My three friends who are lesbian have equal amounts of straight friends from both sexes.\n\nMy gay friend has two best friends- one male, one female, both hetero.\n\nAnd of course, there's me:  hetero with an equal number of gay friends to straight friends (who are close friends to me) but on a scale of normal gay/straight ratio, I have way more hetero friends of mostly males.  I'm female.  \n\nI guess the point is, I hate bitches.", "I have a great friend who is a Lesbian and I'm a Married Straight dude. What are you talking about?", "I know this is anecdotal, but I am a straight guy who is actually really great friends with quite a few lesbians because we have so many shared interests, which is why I would imagine straight women and gay men get along. \nI honestly don't view them as very different than hanging with some of my straight male friends. We talk about almost all of the same things and the dynamics are really similar. \nI think it mostly has to do with the higher population of open gay and lesbian people in my town and the face that you really can't have a social life here without getting to know them. ", "The trend may also not be as strong as one gets the impression of from TV show tropes. I don't know if anyone have numbers on this?\n\nData point: Being a straight male with somewhere between 3 and 12 lesbian friends (depending on how often you must hang out to be defined as friends, as well as where on exactly how gay the woman in question must be to count for the friendship to count).", "While in the military I had a few women come out to me as gay. At the time don't ask don't tell was still in effect. I think the reason that they came out to me was because... Get this... I treated them like people before any particular gender. Grated the military is mostly male and they had to find someone that would to have any kind of social life. By and large after it was said, sexuality wasnt discussed. ", "I'm a straight male and I've hung out with plenty of gay men and lesbians at all different kinds of bars.  I think that the question by the OP is a perceived stereotype.\n\nAs for other's experiences.  I can't speak for them, but in my experience, I've definitely seen some douchebags that don't understand boundaries or how to be polite to others, and I've seen some very militant feminist types that actively avoid the opposite sex when out at social gatherings, but both groups are usually the minority (and generally not much fun to hang out with anyway.)", "Straight Male here, the street I live on has 3 lesbian couples, one is a Registered Nurse, Another is a handy jack of all trades, has a nice garage with all kinds of tools, the other one across the street is a welder and her partner is also a nurse. The couple next door is bar tender and locksmith. We all get together, drink alcohol and work on cars and eat good food. Some of the coolest women I know. Butch lesbians tend to like me for some reason...maybe I give off a non judgmental vibe? I am not very macho, just your typical white collar office IT guy. ", "One of my best friends is a lesbian. We enjoy many similar interests like sports, pretty women, bikes and all kinds of stuff. Though many do have men issues due to abuse I've found.\n", "My best female friend is a lesbian.  I'm a straight male.  She's one of my friend's sisters.  I hit on her for two years in a row,  hard,  and she never fell for it.  Then she told me and it all made sense.  I hit on her cause I like vagina,  I'm friends with her because she's a great person.  I don't hit on her anymore.  But I can see why lesbians don't generally hang out with straight men,  we hit on anything with two legs and a vagina.", "In my experience it's because hardcore lesbians think of other men as competition and are very standoffish for no real reason", "Making the argument that lesbian women don't hang out with straight men because they don't want someone to be hitting on them is totally reasonable, but that doesn't explain why many lesbians are averse to hanging out with gay men.\n\nIMO, female sexuality is less physical than male sexuality, in general.  A lot of women tend to have less emphasis on the physical nature of the relationship and a lot more on the emotional and stability aspects of romantic relationships.  In my experience the lesbians who are most hostile to men, are the ugly ones, i.e. the ones who have very few positive male interactions.  Some of it is a reaction to men treating them like shit, some of it is men just not giving them the attention they want, so they seek it elsewhere, and over time, some of them stereotype and villainize men.  And I'm sorry, it's almost a purely physical aversion.  There's plenty of masculinity within lesbian circles that would not be tolerated if it came from a man.", "From a tribal/early human standpoint I think it makes sense that way. (not saying this is the way it has to be or that we ought to seek out relationships that mirror early humans)\n\nThe gay men you're talking about might not want to go out and hunt/pillage so they stay home and help with the babies and the housekeeping and one article I read suggested they could stay behind to protect the womenfolk from hostile invaders while the other men go out and hunt. it's mutually beneficial for the gay men and women of the tribe to form a bond. \n\nLesbians aren't as strong as men typically so having them go out on hunting/raiding parties isn't really as mutually beneficial. They can, however stay home to help the women. Also, I think in this type of scenario the lesbian would still be paired off with a male and impregnated because her contribution as a childbearer is still important where a gay man can forgo his duty to inseminate while the more virile males get a chance. \n\nnot saying that's how it has to be, but it might be a natural reason for the way we tend to form bonds in that manner. \n", "Had a bisexual ex-girlfriend some years ago, we tried dating, it didn't work, as we were both young and wanting to do the \"single and mingle\" kind of thing, but we were still really good friends, and still are, and often hung with her lesbian/bisexual girl friends also.    \n\n    \nI didn't care for some of them because they always had to act tough and 'prove they could hang with the boys'. They usually wore skate-shoes and hoodies. One of them found out I used to be in wrestling in High School, so she demanded I wrestle her. Didn't want to do it, but after an hour of harassment, I gave in. I planned on taking it easy obviously, but she straight up speared me into my table, it hurt, a lot. So I got pissed, and put her in a chokehold. I felt bad right after, asked if she was alright, she was, but the was the last time I saw her.    \n    \nThe \"lipstick\" lesbian types always tried to \"one-up\" me when it came to getting girls. If I picked up a girl that night, it was often that I'd hear stuff like, \"I could have gotten her, but I figure I'd let you take her.\" or \"My girl was way hotter than yours.\"    \n    \nThen there's the other type, the, at some sort of music festival every weekend, flowers in the hair, sundress types, \"Men don't know the struggle of women\" and \"If I was a man, I'd be a millionaire\", \"Men wouldn't be able to handle having periods\" blah blah blah.    \n    \n**TL:DR**: As someone who's hung out with TONS of bi/lesbian women, to answer your question, they probably don't like hanging with us because they see us competition or something.. That'd be my guess. \n    ", "If they are truly gay men, they don't want to have sex with straight women.  Straight men still want to have sex with lesbian women.  Straight women consider gay men as \"safe\" or \"friend zone\", where straight men don't have categories like women do.  If they are a woman then the primal urge to reproduce with lesbian women is the same as with straight women.", "This is just a very generalized and unfair question. I used to ID as a lesbian and most of my guy friends were gay. I obviously liked them for other reasons, but our initial meeting was usually around a gay related even or bond. Gay people like to flock together at times because we share the same initial bond that straight people don't have. I love my straight girl friends but sometimes it's nice to talk to a gay lady friend who understands my feelings. Now most of my friends are straight guys because sexuality literally doesn't mean shit to me and I have found that guys in general fit my personality more. Back to my first point though, when I was heavily involved in the gay community, there were a lot of women at our events....most of whom were straight. In my experience, the women have tended to seek out gay friends than guys. Not sure how true this part is, but I've heard many gay men complain about women treating them like \"one of the girls\" and my guy friends just don't care about my sexuality. I get along better with guys. We don't hit on girls together or anything. I'm a very feminine girl but with a more masculine attitude", "This isn't true for me at all. I'm a lesbian in my twenties who loves hockey, video games, board games and comic books so even at a very young age I gravitated towards the other people enjoying those things, and that was usually the boys. I have of course encountered straight men who want to turn me, or are generally rude. However, for the most part the straight men that I've met have been fine, and my core friend group is awesome about it and always has been. When I was in my awkward coming out stage a guy in my group asked me out and I turned him down and we talked about why and he was so supportive of my confused feelings at the time and it was never an issue again. He's now married to a lovely woman and I am at his house every Friday for our board game group. \n\nI have more straight male friends than I do female friends of any orientation. But its never really something I've thought about. I make friends with human beings I find awesome and I don't exclude people based on their gender. Just because one or two straight guys I've tried to be friends with have been jerks, doesn't mean they all are. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_ZHP55gdjs"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6n5wmk", "title": "why are almost all boats white?", "selftext": "There are so many colors of cars and planes, just figured boats would follow in their footsteps. \n\nEdit: Thanks for the feedback!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n5wmk/eli5_why_are_almost_all_boats_white/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk70414", "dk74rux", "dk7aeb6", "dk7bidt", "dk7covd", "dk7enz9", "dk7mbhp", "dk7olbb"], "score": [30, 17, 14, 7, 4, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Ever notice that the line on the side of the road is white while it is yellow down the middle? That is because in fog it is vital to see the edge of the road. White shows up better in fog. White boats don't hit each other as much in fog, then.", "Most white boats are fiberglass. White fiberglass is the easiest / cheapest color to make and it doesn't fade. It also doesn't show scratches or dings as easy. Boats tend to last a lot longer than cars, so they need to look decent for a long time.", "White is one of the easiest colours to see against the blue background of the water and sky.\n\nWhen you're looking through binoculars for something kilometres away, a white boat is a lot easier to spot.", "_URL_0_\n\nThat article approaches it from the opposite direction, as they have a sailboat with a dark blue hull. In general, white is cheap and it reflects heat well, so most small civilian boats end up with a white deck if not a white hull.\n\nCommercial ships on the other hand tend to be other colors, including dark blue and red.\n\nSo it's partly modern tradition, partly that white fiberglass is a thing and partly that a white deck doesn't get as hot in the blazing summer sun.", "A red object absorbs every colour except red right? Well it is well-known that white is best suited during hot days as it is a mix of a few colours. Therefore white rejects those colours, those colours composed by photons, at the origin of heat. Thus, white allows the boat to reject, not get assaulted by heat, in the middle of the ocean.", "Hold on hold on. Have you ever seen a Jon boat. Hell any boat in the south?", "There are two main reasons for this: \n\n\n- White boats deflect the sun\u2019s heat more, so the boat stays cooler. \n- White boats can be picked up easier by radars. \n", "White is a common colour for a lot of things (boats, trucks, vans, caravans  &  campers, buildings...) because it's cheap (because it's popular...), reflects heat so it stays cool, reflects light so resists UV damage (a major problem on the water as you're floating on a big mirror with zero shade), it's easy to see and it's neutral  &  inoffensive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://commutercruiser.com/dark-hull-boats-fact-fiction/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jdnzm", "title": "can someone explain what is going on with the refugee crisis in the middle east and europe?", "selftext": "Somehow this big news has been going on for days or weeks, but I have been completely ignorant to it. Apparently hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of refugees are streaming from places in the Middle East to places in Europe - as far away as Iceland?\n\nWhy?\n\nWhat's going on?\n\nWhat are the places they are coming from, and what are the places they are going to?\n\nHow come they are going northwest into Europe?\n\nWhy not east into Asia, India, and Pakistan, or southwest into the African continent?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jdnzm/eli5_can_someone_explain_what_is_going_on_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuobl4i", "cuobuh0", "cuoc7at", "cuohctk", "cuoik0r", "cuoiyoe", "cuprogr"], "score": [11, 9, 16, 6, 4, 2, 6], "text": ["People are leaving brutal dictatorships, unstable democracies, and warlord filled states, mostly from Africa but also from the Middle East as well, in attempt to find land where they are not constantly being shot at.\n\nEurope is considered a Heaven on Earth, a new promised land full of peace, well paying jobs, and prosperity.\n\nThey are not going deeper into Africa because they would have to walk over the world's largest desert and only would find other unstable regions. India is not regarded as a place of perpetual peace and prosperity that Europe is, and if your going to go hundreds of miles to find a new home, why not try to find the best of the best you possible can?", "* The middle east is a shithole for a number of reasons. \n* People are leaving in masses. \n* Europe has land and sea borders with countries that are near the middle east. \n* People are overwhelming those borders and trying to get as far as possible away from the middle east.", "Most of this new refugee wave are refugees from the Syrian civil war and the following conflicts. Syrian civil war started in 2011 and during that civil unrest ISIS/ISIL also gained great foothold, now (according to Wikipedia) controlling an area with 10 million people spanning [large areas of Syria and Iraq](_URL_0_) (gray area in this map).\n\nWhen looking from Syria, the route to east takes them to ISIS controlled areas of Iraq. After that there, Iran, which is a [huge country](_URL_1_) and authoritarian.\n\nIt's also worth noting that most of the refugees from Middle East are to other Middle Eastern countries. So a lot of them are in countries like Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. The \"European refugee crisis\" news only tells about the refugees who try to come to Europe. ", "Here's the quick and nasty answer.  \n  \nWe ( the united states ) effectively sought out to remove dictators in the region who were previously holding order.  \n  \nWe can talk all day about how Sadaam did this or that, but at the end of the day there was order with him in power.  \n  \nNow Isis funded in part directly by the US government and indirectly by all of the gear they got from Iraq are raising hell in the region.  \n  \nThese refugees are running for their lives so they don't get raped and murdered by these extreme islamists and/or people posing as extreme islamists.", "I live in Turkey. We are a major part of the problem. I mean, we're not the problem but we have to deal with a large portion of it.\n\nAs per _URL_0_ , there are 4,013,292 refugees and 1,758,092 (~44%) are in Turkey. Around 30% of the refugees in Turkey are said to live in camps and the rest, they are just walking around looking for money, working illegally, doing illegal stuff such as theft, prostitution etc.\n\nMeantime, these are only the offical numbers. There is no physical border between Turkey and Syria, many more refugees are believed to pass to Turkey illegally. Some estimates are over 3 million.\n\nTurkey already has own problems and this much illegal immigrants create more problems. When they find out Turkey can't help them and they can't look after themselves in Turkey, they take small boats to Greece illegally. (You should note some Greek islands are only a few miles to Turkey) Of course, these boats they are taking are significanly under equipped, no safety at all and sometimes \"organizators\" fool them.\n\nThese small boats sink, runs aground and does all sorts of things you can imagine. Just imagine Mexicans or Cubans trying to reach USA.\n\nIn the end, many refugees die. We don't know how many.\n\nMeantime, Turkish government supports ISIS and the regime is basically suspended here in Turkey. The president will do anything illegally to continue his reign. Supporting ISIS is one example. ISIS attacks Turkey from time to time, just to allow the president to change the subject.", "Why doesnt the US offer to take some of these refugees since we are partly responsible for destabilizing several middle eastern countries? we arguably have plenty of land and can stand to take a few thousand of them. ", "Why is the news only covering this heavily now? These conditions/wars have been going on for more than the past year"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#/media/File:Syrian,_Iraqi,_and_Lebanese_insurgencies.png", "http://www.projectvisa.com/images/maps/middle_east.gif"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hvjuy", "title": "xpost from r/Science.  Can anyone speak to the legitimacy of study that says Roundup(glyphosate-based herbicide) causes birth defects?", "selftext": "Here's the [article.](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hvjuy/xpost_from_rscience_can_anyone_speak_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1yrctz"], "score": [5], "text": ["Just from reading the article you linked to.  . .\n\nIn that study, it looks like they diluted Roundup by a factor of 5000 and incubated frog embryos in it.  They see birth defects in the tadpoles.  They also inject  pure glyphosate (The active ingredient in Roundup) into frog embryos and chicken embryos and see similar birth defects.\n\nIt is always dangerous extrapolating from one organism to another, but based on this it wouldn't surprise me if human embryos exposed to similar levels of Roundup would have developmental problems.  A key question is what type of levels of Roundup do you see in humans that are exposed?\n\nIs this controversial or something?  I guess I should also say that I'm taking the authors at face value and assuming they interpret their data fairly.  Sometimes you see shady scientific publications slipping through the peer-review process."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx1001749"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8ganha", "title": "How does the aiming work for the lunar Laser Ranging Retro-reflector experiment?", "selftext": "How are the earth\\-based lasers aimed for this experiment?  Is it necessary to be accurate down to the precise location of where the reflector is placed on the moon? Or, is there enough beam dispersion over the long distance that you only need to be pointing generally in that direction?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8ganha/how_does_the_aiming_work_for_the_lunar_laser/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyad8mu", "dyaesvt"], "score": [6, 7], "text": ["It has to be fairly precise and it takes a pretty large telescope to do it.  The Moon's radius is 1737.1 km. The more challenging part is counting the few photons which are reflected and even fewer that make it back to the detector. \n\n[ > At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (4.0 mi) wide and scientists liken the task of aiming the beam to using a rifle to hit a moving dime 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) away. The reflected light is too weak to see with the human eye. Out of 10^17 photons aimed at the reflector, only one is received back on Earth every few seconds, even under good conditions. ](_URL_0_)", "Even lasers spread out over large distances, so perfect accuracy is not necessary, nor would it make a difference. Different lasers obviously have different dispersion properties, but according to NASA, the lasers used for lunar rangefinding have an at-moon-width of around six kilometers _URL_2_\n\nSo you only have to land the center of the beam within about six kilometers of the reflector for this to work, and that's still hard, but not as challenging.\n\nA more recent project in continued lunar observation uses a laser that has an at-moon-width of only 1.8 kilometers. _URL_1_\n\nSo, ok actually, you have to aim 1 kilometer from the retroreflector, since the moon is moving relative to the earth, and you need to aim at where the reflector *will be* when the laser gets there.\n\nUltimately, this can be achieved by aligning the laser to a telescope (or even pumping it through the telescope), and fixing the telescope's position relative to a visible landmark, as described in section 3.4 of _URL_0_\n\nThis proves sufficient to get the necessary accuracy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment"], ["http://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/apollo/0710.0890v2.pdf", "http://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/apollo/apollo.html", "https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3bdwgb", "title": "why do some americans treat the their constitution as a borderline religious text?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bdwgb/eli5_why_do_some_americans_treat_the_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csl9id3", "csl9mry", "csl9ms2", "csl9qix", "cslgelw"], "score": [6, 56, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["It's the \"rule book\" for the country's laws.  This isn't Calvin Ball where a guy can just make shit up to suit his wants.", "The United States has, since it's founding, taught it's schoolchildren the nation's history as a series of *narrative stories*. Discussions about the American revolution don't discuss the implications of post-war reconstruction on regional stability until the college level. As children, they learn about the Ride of Paul Revere and narratives about oppressed people being free.\n\nIn those stories, the US founding fathers take on the role of the Knights of the Round Table, acting as perfectly just rulers who advocate equality, bravery, and good government. It's designed both to inspire patriotism and to help kids to remember some of those early laws and ideas by presenting a simple narrative of Good and Evil as a mnemonic to remember them by.\n\nAs people grow up, the heroic tales of the Founding Fathers remain a part of their patriotism, and they feel a great attachment to the principles that those men said were sacred. The US constitution nevertheless changes frequently, with the latest change in 1992. Most of the changes to the document don't involve the 'core principles' of Right and Wrong that American schoolchildren are taught to remember though. Generally, when people say 'the constitution is a sacred document' they mean things like Freedom of Expression and the Right to Bear Arms rather than how the US constitution handles a sudden vacancy in the vice presidency.\n\nIn other words, the Founding Fathers are a channel for people's political opinions surrounding right and wrong. When they are morally outraged by a law, they argue that the Founders would be. When they are okay with a change, generally they figure the Founders would, with today's evidence and information, be okay with a change too. Their actual opinions have very little bearing unless people still agree with them. For example, many of the Founding Fathers supported slavery, which we don't really talk about anymore. But when a quote can be found that matches a Founding Father with your opinion, it makes you feel really patriotic, so people quote them all the time.\n\nPlus they were some quotable gentlemen. Very literary, good command of language.", "Because if the constitution isn't treated as the supreme law of the land, then there is no rule of law.\n\nIf congress makes a law that abridges freedom of the press, then they've done something illegal (though not criminal).  If congress isn't answerable to the law, then they're above the law, and they will act much more capriciously and be much more prone to abuse their power.  The same applies to the other two branches of government.  You don't want to be somewhere where the rule of law doesn't apply.  Then your life and livelihood changes to be conditional to a popularity contest (imagine if it were legal for politicians to acquiesce to an angry mob or, in the converse case, freeing a Barabbas), or knowing the right people.  Granted, that situation is true to a degree today, but it is true only to the degree that the rule of law is weak.\n\nIn short, who do you want in power, someone making up the rules as they go along to suit themselves, or someone answerable to an enumeration of pre-defined commitments?  The constitution is so important because it's the only way to tell when we go from the latter situation to the former.", "The constitution is the supreme law of the land. It lays out everyone's rights and pretty much what it says goes. We pretty much have to treat it like its a religious text, because its sort of like a list of laws on steroids and we hold it in such high regard because of how important it is for our own freedom and basic human rights. Unlike religious text though, we can change certain aspects of it as times change and more things are accepted by society and the government. That's what amendments do. And technically because the amendments are part of the constitution, they are at the same high regard as the constitution. Say, I don't know, 10 years from now, a new amendment is passed saying guns can no longer be bought by normal us citizens without some type of military training or discipline thing(not saying that would happen). That's the beauty of it. ", "I would not use the word \"religious\". For one thing, we are all perfectly OK with amending the Constitution, something you would never to do the Bible, for example.\n\nThe Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It trumps all other laws, and we use it to enshrine and protect our most important values--the values that define us as a nation. So, yes we revere it. It embodies what we hold most dear about ourselves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4zsx7j", "title": "When in history did the firebombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. start being considered as disproportionate?", "selftext": "After hearing about Dresden/Tokyo, etc. on Reddit for so long, I decided to form my own opinion and do my own research. I was familiar with the Blitz, and the concept of total war (i.e. \"gloves are off on all sides\" warfare), but I was unaware of the Coventry Blitz. Similarly, I did not know about the Rotterdam Blitz, when, on May 14, 1940, Nazi warplanes razed Rotterdam to the ground *while the city was surrendering*. \n\nWith atrocities like the Blitzes and Pearl Harbor fresh in the Allies' minds, I think it would have been logical if a small number of people had seen the firebombings in places like Dresden, Kobe, Hamburg and Tokyo as excessive and disproportionate. Especially in the era of total war.\n\nIt is often said on Reddit (and mocked by /r/badhistory), that the firebombing of Dresden on February 13-15, 1945 was a war crime since the Allies deliberately targeted civilians for no reason, and the city served no military purpose whatsoever. I was skeptical, so I did some digging. Sure enough, true to the principles of total war, Dresden was a key manufacturing, logistics and railway hub for the Eastern Front. It just also happened to be a city with an immense amount of arts and culture. However, to say that Dresden was purely a civilian city doesn't jive with how the Nazis pursued total war.\n\nI like to watch old clips of news broadcasts from Operation Desert Shield/Storm on Youtube. It was clear from hearing Gen. Schwartzkopf, Gen. Kelly, BGen. Neal, etc. speak that the commanders took pains to avoid indiscriminate bombing or targeting civilians, to avoid the kind of bad publicity that B-52 saturation bombing in Vietnam generated. Such pains were magnified by the bombing of the baby milk factory and the Amiriyah shelter bombing.\n\nU.S. commanders were keen to point out that Hussein weaved his war machine within the civilian infrastructure, such as the communications bunker in the basement of the al-Rashid Hotel. It turned out that the Finnish manufacturer of the Amiriyah shelter admitted (in an interview with a newspaper in Finland) that the Iraqi Army used the bottom floor of the shelter as a command post, and secretly placed civilians in the top floor at night, unbeknownst to the Coalition.\n\nAnd yet, the Coalition backed off striking places like the baby formula factory or the Amiriyah shelter more often than not, to avoid bad press in the west as well as in the Arab World. If Desert Storm had been fought by WWII total war standards, Baghdad would have been razed to the ground and hundreds of thousands of civilians would have died.\n\nPerhaps after WWII and the advent of nuclear weapons, it was finally decided that human beings are worth more alive than dead (as globalization spread). Or, maybe nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ICBMs became far, far more efficient than total war could ever be. In any case, I don't think there have been any large-scale wars that utilize the principle of total war, since WWII. Maybe the Korean War.\n\nAt any rate, the reason why I went on this tangent is because we are of a generation that has not seen the horrors of total war like our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. We weren't there, we don't know what it was like to survive the Blitz in Tube stations, or see half your city wiped off the face of the earth by B-29 firebombing runs. So that tints our perception of history. Maybe Dresden/Hamburg/Tokyo/etc. *wasn't* seen as excessive or as a war crime back then. I want to know when it started to be considered as such.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zsx7j/when_in_history_did_the_firebombings_of_dresden/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6ysklr", "d6zbdsf"], "score": [43, 6], "text": ["One of the more useful resources I encountered on this point was the excellent documentary *The Fog of War*, centered largely around conversations conducted with Robert McNamara. McNamara is most famous for his role in the escalation of the Vietnam War, but in my mind he is a central figure in considering the morality of saturation bombing by the United States.\n\nMcNamara worked under the somewhat infamous General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was the father of the doctrine of saturation bombing, and McNamara worked under his command conducting statistical analyses to study this strategy. McNamara would later go on to denounce this doctrine in stark terms. From the Fog of War documentary:\n\n > LeMay said, \"If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.\" And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?\n\nOf course, this is McNamara many, many years after the firebombing of Japan, with McNamara in his twilight years, likely trying to salvage his legacy by demonstrating remorse, though that's just speculation on my part. The fact that at the time he supported the logistics of firebombing suggests he did not have such a serious moral qualm at the time, however.\n\nWe can find a more useful measure of the time line of when the American Department of Defense began to critically evaluate whether firebombing, or just general \"saturation bombing\" constituted a war crime.\n\nThis evaluation may have began with the United State Strategic Bombing Survey, initiated by the US Secretary of War Stimson at the direction of President Roosevelt. This study concluded that saturation bombing failed to achieve many of its strategic goals, mostly relating to the productivity of Axis powers' war economies. If we interpret the above quote from General LeMay literally, we can see that this report in many ways began to implicitly call into question the morality of saturation bombing by calling into question its strategic soundness. This study was released in 1944. Interestingly, no such study was conducted by DoD to evaluate the effectiveness of the extensive aerial bombing campaign of North Vietnam, though by then the US military largely used the parlance of \"strategic bombing\" rather than \"saturation bombing\" to describe its aerial bombing doctrine.\n\nSo the short answer is that it may have been apparent to the US military *during* World War II, and it at least was implicitly considered distasteful by DOD at the time of Vietnam War. \n\nSources: \n\n* [Fog of War transcript](_URL_1_)\n* [US Strategic Bombing Survey](_URL_0_)", "Looking more at the European theatre, the area bombing campaign certainly was seen as disproportionate or immoral by contemporary observers. Things are a little murky though because of the differences between stated aims, actual aims, and actual methods. It's also important to note that the law on protection of civilians was more hazy in WW2 than now, so using the term \"war crime\" can be anachronistic.\n\nQuotes here are from *Bomber Command* by Max Hastings.\n\nIn the UK, bomber command held to the idea of using bombing to break the enemy's morale, by making conditions unbearable for civilians. This would clearly be considered a war crime by current standards. And at the time it was widely deemed unacceptable, including by Churchill and the US establishment. However early attempts at precision bombing proved futile. The smallest target the bombers could reliably hit was a city. Since the means weren't up to targeting anything other than cities, that's what the bombers targeted.\n\nIn theory this was aimed at the destruction of military targets, but this was effectively a smokescreen. In practice, they destroyed cities. Since this accorded with what Bomber Command wanted to do anyway they were happy to continue. When it entered the war, the USAAF was drawn into this approach. While it professed to be hitting military targets, in practice this was indistinguishable from destroying cities. Only later did it develop a more targeted (and, arguably, effective) approach, particularly its campaign against German oil infrastructure. Bomber Command resisted committing resources to this campaign, almost to the point of insubordination.\n\nQuestions of proportionality, and even effectiveness, were not high up for Bomber Command, and not much more important for US commanders.\n\nThis approach certainly drew criticism in the UK at the time, including in Parliament (I can't find the name of the most notable MP right now) and, oddly, the chaplain of Bomber Command itself. So questions over its morality were being raised, but probably not being given a great deal of attention.\n\nAs for Dresden itself, as an operation, the bombing was not notably different from the bombing of dozens of other cities. The aims, methods, and even level of destruction, were similar. However two things made it notable. The first was that it came at a time when Germany was clearly collapsing. The stated objective, which was essentially to cause disruption of German logistics and communications, was harder to justify as proportionate. Second, Dresden was a city known by educated people in England, a familiar name (unlike, say, Darmstadt), one with emotional resonance.\n\n > For the first time since the bomber offensive began, on the news of the destruction of Dresden a major wave of anger and dismay swept through Whitehall and the Air Ministry, echoed in Parliament, and finally reached the gates of High Wycombe. Urgent questions were asked by important people about the reasons for destroying the city.\n\n > Concern was heightened by the release of an Associated Press dispatch from [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] on 17 February, in which a correspondent reported that 'Allied air chiefs' had at last embarked on 'deliberate terror bombing of German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hasten doom'.\n\nChurchill composed a (somewhat self-serving) memo for the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chiefs of Air Staff:\n\n > It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing ... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon miltary objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.\n\nMax Hastings argues that Dresden was a turning point for opinions of the saturation bombing campaign, a point when its realities could no longer be ignored or excused so easily, and when a considerable ambivalence entered the national view of the campaign."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/#pto", "http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "4p2qa9", "title": "[Meta] Has there ever been a significant disagreement in answering a question on this subreddit?", "selftext": "I've been a regular reader of this subreddit for several years now.  Although I am not a historian, I recognize that there is some wiggle room in interpretation of data and historiography in general.  Pretty near every single answered post I have come across (to my recollection), however, has contained either one \"winning\" answer (by which I mean, one person answers the question so effectively that no one else attempts OR no other answer receives any where near the same amount of upvotes) or several harmonious answers.  Has there ever been a serious disagreement in answering a question on this subreddit though?  If not, why do you suspect that that is?  Or if it is merely uncommon to find disagreement, why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4p2qa9/meta_has_there_ever_been_a_significant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4hn6ff", "d4ho12g", "d4hqwsj", "d4iawca", "d4il75z"], "score": [98, 36, 8, 5, 3], "text": ["Cordial disagreement and discussion do occur on a fairly frequent basis here - indeed, differing scholarly interpretations have been the driving forces behind some of the best discussions I've seen on /r/AskHistorians in the past. I'll leave in-depth discussion of historiography to those whose prose can do it better justice, but just as an example of a couple of disagreements in which I've been involved in the past:\n\nIn [this](_URL_0_) discussion of naval aspects of the Winter War, I debated with /u/TehRuru34 about several aspects of the conflict. This was a fascinating and humbling exchange for me, as /u/TehRuru34 firstly caught me out on a mistake I had made in my own notes about the calibre of several Finnish naval gun emplacements - I had recorded the largest of them as 16 inch guns when the source I was citing stated they were 12 inch guns - and additionally because it highlighted the ongoing disagreements in more scholarly accounts of the conflict. As I discuss in my edit of the original post, the book from which I drew my discussion of the Soviet battleship *Marat* and cruiser *Kirov* clashes with the sources /u/Tehruru34 presented. Trotter, in *Frozen Hell,* claimed that *Marat* had been damaged in an engagement with Finnish coastal artillery in the early days of the conflict, while Soviet primary records indicate the ship resumed active operations so soon after the engagement that it clearly had not required repairs. \n\nIn hindsight, this was an exchange that really highlighted for me the deeply flawed nature of English-language historical accounts of the Winter War, and was a contributing factor to my resigning my flair on the topic. My reliability as a historian of the Winter War is only as good as the reliability of my sources, and the unfortunate reality of the situation is that those sources are by and large either extremely dated or lacking academic integrity. As I've found myself locking horns with /u/Holokyn-Kolokyn, Tehruru34, and others, who have often had a firmer basis in more recent, scholarly publications in Finnish or Russian, it's been a fascinating and humbling exercise in re-examining the reliability of the sources I draw upon.\n\nMore broadly, it's these kinds of discussions which I feel really can contribute to /r/AskHistorians in a truly wonderful manner. While it's of course embarrassing to make mistakes or indeed discover that the sources upon which you rely are flawed, highlighting these discussions really demonstrates the value of polite, friendly, scholarly disagreement. The real 'winner' from a disagreement like the one I highlight above is the readership. It provides a fascinating insight into scholarly review and puts on display the importance of both primary evidence and of the manner in which we interpret that evidence. It also provides everyone involved with a deeper understanding of the events being discussed - in this case, the naval theatre of the Winter War, and at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, helps us to become better historians by encouraging us to reflect on our own work, research and arguments, as well as the resources we draw upon.\n\n...Or at least, that's what I'll keep telling myself so I can feel better about being wrong on the Internet!", " >  no other answer receives any where near the same amount of upvotes\n\nWith regard to your question here, this is due to a critical weakness in Reddit. Early posts get *much* more attention than later ones. This is why you rarely see multiple posts with the same amount of upvotes. \n\nIt's also why we maintain a strict principle of moderation. It helps prevent a short, two-sentence answer from stealing attention from the several-thousand-word, in-depth reply that takes hours to draft.\n\nFor anyone who answers questions here, it's *enormously* frustrating to spend time writing a response to a post, only to have a shorter and much more cursory answer grab all the attention because it was posted 30 minutes before.", "I don't know if you'd call it significant but [here](_URL_0_) /u/Jan_van_Bergen and I discuss the different interpretations of the question if Germany was a sovereign state between 45 and 49.", "Can't find it now but there was a great discussion a while back about the cause of the USS Maine explosion. Got into very nitty gritty detail, even discussing the combustability of certain types of coal during that period. ", "one of them keeps recurring and seem to be about 50-50 divided, is: Did Russia's invasion or the atomic bomb compel Japan to surrender in WW II? granted, both sides have good pts. and it almost certainly was a little of both of these; but the sides seem to have equal advocates. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cigm8/yet_another_war_question_why_didnt_the_soviet/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fs8ys/did_germany_formally_cease_to_exist_as_a/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b7c0qf", "title": "Is the global polar bear population increasing, or decreasing? There are a bunch of articles on either side, including fact-checks. Not looking for political stuff.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b7c0qf/is_the_global_polar_bear_population_increasing_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejszi0o"], "score": [13], "text": ["The best source you're probably going to find on this is the [IUCN redlist database](_URL_1_).  To summarize, it's not entirely clear what the current population size of polar bears even is, let alone which way it might be trending.  According to the sources listed there, polar bears are divided into 19 regions for these purposes, and the most recent study (by the [Polar Bear Specialist Group](_URL_0_)) suggests that one of these is increasing in population, three are decreasing, six appear stable, and the rest had insufficient data to tell.\n\nYou might also find the supplementary document at the bottom of the IUCN popuation section useful, as it includes a few different population projections based on slightly different models of how polar bears will respond to declining sea ice and what their generation times are.  All three models that they used predict population decline by 2050, but in varying degrees (roughly -4%, -30%, and -43% for the different models respectively)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/pb-global-estimate.html", "https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22823/14871490#population"]]}
{"q_id": "3ptdla", "title": "why do so many cultures wear the western suit as their formal wear?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ptdla/eli5_why_do_so_many_cultures_wear_the_western/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw9c0hu", "cw9c0u0", "cw9cbm0", "cw9e8gg", "cw9gf9d", "cw9nd5y", "cw9ps3r", "cwazn1y"], "score": [46, 6, 9, 21, 13, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Most developing countries at one point or another were colonized by Europeans.  As they became independent and modernized, they equated Western things with affluence and power.  I would also guess that wearing a suit gets Europeans to take you more seriously than if you were wearing what is the equivalent of a dress to them.  For example, in East Asia, men will nearly always wear suits at formal functions while women can still wear traditional wear.  Look at North Korean military parades and look at what the crowd is wearing.  And that's in a country with a strictly Anti Western policy.", "(Disclaimer: based on conjecture) In the era of globalization, following the remnants of the age of Imperialism, many \"up and coming\" nations wish to emulate the fashion of the 'developed nations' i.e. the nations that they were once colonies of. Take India for example. It's ancient traditional clothing were merely clothes like saris and dhotis (similar to loincloths). As the mughal, and later british invaded India and cultures mixed, the clothing styles, among others, became a mixture of the different cultures as well.", "Have you read The Little Prince? There's an interesting bit about this in there.", "Besides Western cultural dominance and a history of colonization, the suit jacket is cut in such a way that it gives old men with no muscle broader shoulders while hiding their guts.  ", "Relevant excerpt from *the Little Prince:*\nI had thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that the planet the little prince came from was scarcely any larger than a house! But that did not really surprise me much. I knew very well that in addition to the great planets, such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope.\nWhen an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number. He might call it, for example, \u201cAsteroid 325.\u201d\nI have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. **But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. Grown-ups are like that...**", "For some areas like Arabia, they wear particular sets of clothing because if you were out there wearing Western clothing outside in the 120 degree fahrenheit sun, you'd pretty much be sweating like crazy. The arabic style of clothing is better at trapping in colder air, so it'll actually be more like 110 degrees fahrenheit even though it's a 120 degrees fahrenheit. Most of the world doesn't need heavy suits or Arabic style clothing to live, so some groups adopted the Western clothing because it felt more comfortable/easier to wear.\n\nAlso, it's because most of Europe tried to make colonies like literally everywhere in the world except for the Arabian peninsula. For example, take the Phillipines, it has gone through many European controls since it's beginning.\n\nAnother reason would be that you would want other nations to take you seriously. I mean, if you didn't have a shirt, and you had a robe as your pants, it would be quite awkward in a serious argument or discussion.\n\nThe last reason would be religion, and tradition. In places like India, many Hindu women wear traditional clothing, while men wear mostly Western clothing. Sikh men wear turbans over their head, while Muslim women usually put on clothing like hijabs.\n\n", "Europeans (and later Americans) have had a large amount of influence on the entire world.  They colonized a good chunk of the earth at one point in time, and spread  western languages, culture and lifestyle throughout the rest of the world.  ", "A lot of foreign leaders study in the US or UK and get accustomed to western clothes and habits."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3e2ude", "title": "how did american high schools end up being very sports-oriented?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e2ude/eli5_how_did_american_high_schools_end_up_being/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctay2dc", "ctayex8", "ctayrx1", "ctayxev", "ctaz8cv", "ctazbi1", "ctb0lna", "ctb0m78", "ctb0zs0", "ctb41w4", "ctbjz6h"], "score": [9, 3, 9, 5, 3, 15, 10, 61, 4, 9, 2], "text": ["Probably based on how much homework they got. I went to elementary school in Russia, where I would usually get home at around 3 or 4 and be doing homework all day, after which I would read a book and go to sleep. That doesn't leave a lot of time for sports, though I did do ballroom dancing twice a week. When I came to Canada though, I basically stopped doing homework after I finished my Grade 7 math textbook in a week, which left a ton of time for gaming and sports.", "Your teenage years are when you do most of your social development.  Sporting events are large social gatherings.  It's also a byproduct of the popularity of professional sports in America just trickling down.", "America is a large high school where jocks and rich, popular people rule and the rest of us just have to deal and avoid getting slammed into lockers. ", "At the end of the day its down to the dolla... \nCommercialization mixed with amateur sports is due to the general love of sport in American society.\n", "We live in a country where athletes make 200k and up, while teachers are making 35k.\n\nAlso consider the number of scholarships available from sports, as compared to say band, or art. ", "Because there is a nominal value placed on education in the States, we expect that everyone will be enrolled in school. So much so, that we have built our sporting development system into our educational system. The professional leagues draw their talent, by and large, from the university leagues, who in turn draw from the high school leagues. There are exceptions, but the expectation is that even if you are only there to play your sport, you will attend school.", "It keeps the kids in school closer to 5pm. So it acts as a daycare since both parents are working to pay the taxes which goes to the overpriced schools. ", "For the same reason America is sports oriented. It makes money (collectively), it's entertaining, it's considered healthy, and it's fun/social.", "It has to do with the size of the US and the availability of large Sports teams. Since not every city can have a professional team many people would attend friendly matches between schools, mostly colleges at first. Once the college sports began getting larger and larger schools would incentivize good players with scholarships to bring in good talent. High school sports grew because 1) games were local and cheep for local sports fans 2) some schools began putting more money in sports programs since they might lead to a student getting a scholarship to a university for the sports they play. ", "Simple: sports generate significantly more revenue than other programs.\n\nSports are made into a spectacle here, which draws fandom. The fandom is intensified by local rivalries, marching-band songs, histories. The events are monetized through jerseys, nick-nacks, memorabilia, hot dogs, etc. The events are sometimes televised - which get corporate sponsorships. \n\nProfessional Athletes in the United States make a lot of money. Often - they fund facilities for their alma mater in hopes of nurturing more talent. Then talent scouts come to tap shoulders. \n\nNot all schools are like this. My High School had a very modest sports program - and spent a lot of money on music and arts. I felt pretty lucky.", "I can tell you the main reason is money. Alumni donations are VERY strongly correlated with how well the football team is doing. Admissions are similar in the respect. Sports is like (nearly-)free advertising for a high school. Most sports program lose money from an accounting standpoint, but if you ask parents if they would send their kids to a school that didn't have sports, they'd say \"no\". This applies to both High School and College.\n\nHonestly the absolute worst effect of American sports-fetishism is the fact that so many high school teachers are just coaches who teach for the sake of being a full-time employee. I literally did not get any Civics or World Geography education because the coaches who taught the classes were revising their play books during class. They would often award bonus points for attending their games. I mean, WHAT??\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "motdk", "title": "why does the feeling of 'love' quite literally feel so heavy in your chest?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/motdk/eli5_why_does_the_feeling_of_love_quite_literally/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c32ns94", "c32nusm", "c32nyj9", "c32nyrm", "c32nzlp", "c32o0ag", "c32o6ls", "c32o77t", "c32o9s4", "c32oagy", "c32oor3", "c32pnuw", "c32pw5j", "c32ns94", "c32nusm", "c32nyj9", "c32nyrm", "c32nzlp", "c32o0ag", "c32o6ls", "c32o77t", "c32o9s4", "c32oagy", "c32oor3", "c32pnuw", "c32pw5j"], "score": [5, 7, 5, 24, 79, 17, 11, 12, 16, 6, 3, 2, 2, 5, 7, 5, 24, 79, 17, 11, 12, 16, 6, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I'm not sure if there's really a LI5 answer to this, the whole concept of emotion is a bit murky in psychology. I'd look up the James-Lange theory of emotion to learn more.", "It's supposed to feel heavy? Shit. I better let my gf know this.", "I'm quite sure that i've never had a \"Heavy\" feeling while in love... The feelings you have can vary from person to person.  Heaviness is usually caused by anxiety, or over-excitement for me. I guess I generally feel excited when feeling that whole lovey dovey feeling. Hopefully i can have those kinds of feelings again soon :)! All i've been feeling is a tight stabbing feeling around my heart every time someone mentions my ex-girlfriend. It's kinda painful.", "This sounds like an [/r/askscience](/r/askscience) question.", "The feeling of love is something that is pleasing to the mind psychologically (obviously). It is one of the most potent stimulator for the release of certain chemicals stored in the body into the bloodstream. The body releases a cocktail of chemicals into your blood every time the mind is filled with love that act directly on your heart to make it beat faster, among other things. The heaviness you feel is literally your heart squeezing more blood and beating faster. Not the most comprehensive explanation, but hope this helps.", "The feeling of \"love\" is your body's response to hormones (serotonin/dopamine) when forging a connection with someone (strongest when it's a new someone). Because each person's body can be slightly different, each person will experience something slightly different. And however their body feels when their brain tells them they're \"in love\" is the feeling they'll associate with \"love.\" \n\nFor me? My hands get swollen and my chest explodes. Not unlike an alien infestation.", "Love is actually something like a drug, you actually get high around the person that you love, and you can suffer withdrawal symptoms, most of which can be remedied by seeing a loved one. If you are reffering to the \"butterflies in your stomach\" feeling, its actually a combination of fear, anxiety, and nervousness, you can achieve this same feeling by doing things like going down a drop in a roller coaster and such. Hope this helps.", "*What is love! .....*", "Cardiac arrest, probably.", "Oh god queue the philosophers and poets.", "Adrenaline due to nervousness and excitement causing your muscles to contract?", "Good question. And, nobody really knows \"the answer\" to this question, but it's one of those things that *is*. However, the best explanation I can think of is related to the [chakras](_URL_0_). \n\nI like to view emotion as a type of \"e-motion, electric-motion\". When you feel love, or heartbreak, you feel it in your chest. When you feel that someone is lying to you, or that something is amiss you feel it in your \"gut\" mostly. And, when you feel repressed in your ability to express yourself, you feel it as a \"frog in your throat\" and your throat tightens up etc. ", "It's not heavy, it's my brother.", "I'm not sure if there's really a LI5 answer to this, the whole concept of emotion is a bit murky in psychology. I'd look up the James-Lange theory of emotion to learn more.", "It's supposed to feel heavy? Shit. I better let my gf know this.", "I'm quite sure that i've never had a \"Heavy\" feeling while in love... The feelings you have can vary from person to person.  Heaviness is usually caused by anxiety, or over-excitement for me. I guess I generally feel excited when feeling that whole lovey dovey feeling. Hopefully i can have those kinds of feelings again soon :)! All i've been feeling is a tight stabbing feeling around my heart every time someone mentions my ex-girlfriend. It's kinda painful.", "This sounds like an [/r/askscience](/r/askscience) question.", "The feeling of love is something that is pleasing to the mind psychologically (obviously). It is one of the most potent stimulator for the release of certain chemicals stored in the body into the bloodstream. The body releases a cocktail of chemicals into your blood every time the mind is filled with love that act directly on your heart to make it beat faster, among other things. The heaviness you feel is literally your heart squeezing more blood and beating faster. Not the most comprehensive explanation, but hope this helps.", "The feeling of \"love\" is your body's response to hormones (serotonin/dopamine) when forging a connection with someone (strongest when it's a new someone). Because each person's body can be slightly different, each person will experience something slightly different. And however their body feels when their brain tells them they're \"in love\" is the feeling they'll associate with \"love.\" \n\nFor me? My hands get swollen and my chest explodes. Not unlike an alien infestation.", "Love is actually something like a drug, you actually get high around the person that you love, and you can suffer withdrawal symptoms, most of which can be remedied by seeing a loved one. If you are reffering to the \"butterflies in your stomach\" feeling, its actually a combination of fear, anxiety, and nervousness, you can achieve this same feeling by doing things like going down a drop in a roller coaster and such. Hope this helps.", "*What is love! .....*", "Cardiac arrest, probably.", "Oh god queue the philosophers and poets.", "Adrenaline due to nervousness and excitement causing your muscles to contract?", "Good question. And, nobody really knows \"the answer\" to this question, but it's one of those things that *is*. However, the best explanation I can think of is related to the [chakras](_URL_0_). \n\nI like to view emotion as a type of \"e-motion, electric-motion\". When you feel love, or heartbreak, you feel it in your chest. When you feel that someone is lying to you, or that something is amiss you feel it in your \"gut\" mostly. And, when you feel repressed in your ability to express yourself, you feel it as a \"frog in your throat\" and your throat tightens up etc. ", "It's not heavy, it's my brother."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra"], []]}
{"q_id": "83tu5a", "title": "why do people get motion sick while being a passenger in a car, but don't get that same sickness if they were to be the driver of that car going to the same location?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83tu5a/eli5_why_do_people_get_motion_sick_while_being_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvkh3bm", "dvkiahe", "dvkj0pc", "dvkj4ux", "dvkqypg", "dvkwe02", "dvl9qxo", "dvle76o", "dvlhrhl", "dvlssn3"], "score": [8, 476, 71, 6, 10, 3, 3, 15, 2, 3], "text": ["I think it has something to do with the inner ear. If you're a passenger you might be looking at your phone or something and your periferal vision sees outside of the car so your brain gets confused. I don't really get carsick just from looking out the window so I'm not sure why that happens to some people ", "If you're the driver you're in direct control of the sensations you're experiencing. Its your input on the steering wheel or throttle pedal or whatever that's causing the things you're feeling now; being pulled to one side, or being pushed back in the seat, or being shifted forward into the seatbelt, whatever.\n\nIf you're a passenger, this stuff just happens to you, and some people can deal with that better than others. \n\nMotion sickness is theorised to be caused by a disconnect between what you're feeling and what your eyes are seeing; your brain thinks there's something wrong, so makes you throw up to at least limit the possibility of poisoning. \n\nSome are more sensitive to that disconnect than others and it can work in both ways. I know people who can quite happily sit in the back of a car and read a book and I also used to know someone who played the original GTA, (yes [this one](_URL_0_)), and got motion sickness from that. Of course in that case he was still and what he was seeing wasn't. As I say how sensitive an individual is to it will vary. ", "If you read a book in the car your visual system is looking at something that isn't moving but your balance system is reporting that you are moving.\n\nThe body assumes that if two senses give conflicting information, something's malfunctioning, and the most likely reason is poisoning. So the brains trying to make you sick to get rid of any more \"poison\" that you've eaten.\n\nBeing a passenger is a car isn't something evolution ever dealt with.\n\nIn the drivers case, they're (hopefully) watching the road. So the visual and balance systems matchup.\n", "I generally drive everywhere. But was riding as a passenger paying attention to the road (other people driving scares me) and even sitting in front looking at the same thing the driver does not reading or phone browsing. It hits me pretty hard and I just don't understand how just holding a steering wheel and having a foot moving on a pedal keeps me from not being sick. O.o", "From my own experience as a person who gets *very* motion sick if I try to read, etc. as a passenger: \n\nMy motion sickness is triggered by trying to focus on something that's stationary inside the car, while things are zooming past me outside in my periphery. When I'm driving, my visual focus is almost 100% on what's outside (aside from the meters in front of me), so my brain isn't struggling so hard to process both the stillness and the movement at the same time.\n\nI'm not sure if that makes sense, it's kind of hard to explain. ", "Motion sickness is a discussion between your eyes and body. So your body feels like it's moving while you look around and things are still or vise versa (that's why VR has motion sickness) so when you lessen that disconnect (like looking at the moving road or having a wider range of view of moving things) it lessens the motion sickness effect", "For me it is a battle between mind and body. I think much of what\u2019s discussed here insofar as a disconnect between sensation and cognition is true, but I also think if you\u2019ve got OCD or anxiety, it can largely influence the embodied response of a \u201clack of control\u201d causing physical discomfort. I used to get real sick as a kid to where I\u2019d have to lay down in the back, but now I just get sweaty and anxious to where I need Xanax. I think for me the motion sickness has transformed the older I get. It used to be more physical now it\u2019s more mental. Strange ", "Thanks to something that went haywire during my first pregnancy, I can now get car sick both as a passenger AND a driver! It is absolutely as fun as you might imagine.", "our brain knows to expect things and prepare for them. the Drivers brain knows it is about to turn, when and how steep it's going to be. so the input revived checks all the boxes. the passengers mind is not expecting motion and the signals are contradictory to that causing nausea.", "Generally motion sickness (whether car, boat, or video game) is caused by a disagreement between your eyes and the semicircular canals in your ears.  In nature there's usually no reason for your eyes to see violent motion that is not being also perceived by your ears (or vice versa) so your body will decide that it is being poisoned (eg: the \"spins\" when you've borderline poisoned yourself with alcohol).  The body's only real remedy for poison is to purge so you get nauseous then, if that doesn't solve the problem by making you stop making yourself dizzy, throw up.\n\n If you find yourself getting seasick or carsick watch the horizon like it's the most exciting thing ever.  Since the horizon is not moving, focusing all your attention on it will make your eyes and ears agree.  It also helps to look forward since we're used to looking forward so looking backward or sideways still has things (especially close things) tilting and moving the wrong way for what your balance expects.\n\nWith video games, you can move farther from the screen or use a smaller screen so that the stationary room provides a frame that anchors you visual perception of motion.\n\nsource: a sailor prone to seasickness and a gamer prone to gamesickness.\n\nThe driver has the advantage that they are looking forward with the best view and all of their attention is focused on the farthest things they can see."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.myabandonware.com/media/screenshots/g/grand-theft-auto-44n/grand-theft-auto_6.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5rgyw0", "title": "Why does the integral of 1/x result in a logarithm? Also, why does logarithm have base e?", "selftext": "I think it seems too beautiful and amazing that this is just a coincidence that the integral of 1/x results in a logarithm (much less for that logarithm to have a base of one of the most useful numbers in mathematics, e) for it to just be coincidence. Can someone come up with a proof, or at least a logical argument, for why this is the case?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5rgyw0/why_does_the_integral_of_1x_result_in_a_logarithm/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd78b46", "dd7bjxz", "dd7gczp", "dd7i0ka", "dd7pnu5"], "score": [11, 4, 5, 4, 2], "text": ["The function 'log(x)' (here I mean natural logarithm) is usually defined as the integral of 1/t from 1 to x. You can prove that the integral has the properties you'd expect out of a logarithm, if that makes you feel better. Try it yourself, first show that log(1/x)=-log(x) by using the definition (set the upper bound of integration to 1/x, and use the substitution u=tx), then show using the fact you just showed that log(xy)=log(x)+log(y) (set the upper bound of integration to xy, use substitution u=t/x). log(1)=0 is pretty straight forward\n\nFor showing that the base of log(x) is e, i.e. that log(e^(x)) = x, or alternatively that log(x) is the inverse function of e we can just suppose that we have some inverse function for log(x) and show that the function is e^(x). Let u(x) be such that log(u(x)) = x\n\nTaking derivatives of both sides and with the chain rule you get: 1/u(x)\\*u'(x)=1 meaning u'(x)=u(x), note also that log(u(0))=0 (meaning u(0)=1), this is a differential equation with a unique solution u(x) = e^(x).", "Explicitly, log(x)=integral of dt/t for t=1 to t=x. By the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, this is true because the derivative of log(x) is 1/x (and log(1)=0). You can prove this through the equation e^(logx)=x. Setting y=log(x) and implicitly differentiating e^(y)=x with respect to x, we get, through the chain rule, y'e^(y)=1. But since e^(y)=x, it follows that y'x=1 and therefore (d/dx)logx=1/x. If the base is not e is this, say we have y=log*_a_*x and a^(y)=x, then because the derivative of a^(x) is log(a)a^(x), we'll get log(a)y'x=1. e is when this constant goes away.\n\nIn this way, then, it is because (d/dx)e^(x)=e^(x). This actually implies that if we have any equation of the form e^(y)=f(x), then we'll get that y'=f'(x)/f(x). This is, in fact, called the [Logarithmic Derivative](_URL_0_), as y=log(f(x)), it's a pretty important concept.\n\n\nThere are some more intuitive reasons why this should be true. Note that an antiderivative of x^(n) is x^(n+1)/(n+1). If n=-1, then this obviously doesn't work, since the denominator becomes zero. But if that wasn't a problem, then it makes it seem like the function f(x)=x^(0) should be related to a logarithm. Of course, this isn't the case, since x^(0)=1, but, in a way, the logarithm behaves kinda like an \"infinitesimal power\" of x. *This is in no way to be taken literally.* But, you'll note that if you take any positive power s, no matter how small, then x^(0) < log(x) < x^(s) for large enough x. So the lognkinda plays the part of the missing power that's too small to actually be a power. \n\nAnother thing we can do is look at how the integrals behave. You can use u-substitution to show that if F(x)=integral of dt/t from t=1 to t=x, then F(xy)=F(x)+F(y), so it changes multiplication into addition which is a defining characteristic of logarithms, so it must be a logarithm. This has to do with the fact that a u-substitution of the form u=ty satisfies dx/x=du/u. In this way, the term dx/x ican be seen as a way to look at multiplicative properties of functions.", "Let's add a few things ;)\n\nFirst, bases of logarithms. Of course you can have any number of different bases, but is there a \"natural\" base? Yes! And that base is e.  Why? And what makes e^x special?\n\nAll logarithms are the inverses of exponential functions, a^x with some base a. The slopes of all exponential functions are *proportional* to themselves. You can convince yourself of that by explicitly looking at the limit of (a^(x+h) - a^x)/h for h to 0. You can factor out the a^x and are left with a constant that doesn't depend on x.\n\nNow then you can ask: If they're *proportional*, then is there a function for which they're *the same*? That is, a function for which the slope at a point x is equal to the function at the point x? Basically, setting the proportionality constant to 1 seems very natural.\n\nThat function, as it turns out, is the exponential function e^x, and that's why it's special, and that's one of the reasons for why it's such a useful number.\n\nAnd then the fact that log(x) is the inverse to e^x and that the slope of e^x is e^x itself then leads to the observation that the slope of log(x) will be 1/x using the inverse rule.", "My overall approach here is to make it intuitive that a logarithm is an appropriate limit of (shifted) power-functions. It's an \"infinitely slow x^(n)\". Coming from the negative direction, something like x^(-0.001) hangs out well-below its asymptote for a long time; the small power involved delays the approach to zero. The logarithm is what's left if you track what happens to the curve as it moves \"infinitely far down\" from its horizontal asymptote. Animate this [desmos graph](_URL_0_) to see how the shape of the logarithm naturally fits in, after accounting for these shifts.\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------\n\nTake the integral of t^n from 0 to x; we get x^(n+1)/(n+1). This clearly blows up as n - >  -1, but let's look at that more closely.\n\nif n is close to -1, then we're dividing by something really small, so our numbers grow rapidly. However x is simultaneously being raised to a very small power, and so is becoming \"increasingly constant\". While the function is blowing up it's doing so at roughly the same rate everywhere; this suggests that we can try to subtract off the blow up and make the limit reasonable.\n\nSo take the antiderivative, x^(n+1)/(n+1) + C. Any fixed choice of C, like C=5, won't help. But C *doesn't have to be fixed*. It has to be constant in *x*, but can vary with n. We can pick values of C to \"shift the function back down\", so that the limit behaves reasonably.\n\nA simple choice is to plug in x=1, get 1/(n+1)+C, and ask that this be fixed to zero for all n (i.e., set C=-1/(n+1)). That way at least one point won't blow up, and we can hope everything else behaves nicely around it.\n\nSo now we want to look at the indefinite integral of x^(-1) as\n\nlimit n- > -1 of (x^(n+1)-1)/(n+1).\n\nand see what (if any) function this is.\n\nNow check this out:\n\ny=(x^(n+1)-1)/(n+1)\n\nisolate for x to get:\n\nx=(1+y(n+1))^1/(n+1)\n\nNow relabel m=1/(n+1), so that n- > -1 (from above) is equivalent to m- > infinity.\n\nx=(1+y/m)^m \n\nand sending m - >  infinity is the definition of the exponential function! So an antiderivative of x^(-1) (assuming the limits all make sense, which I'm fudging over) is the inverse of the exponential function: the logarithm!", "A simple intuitive answer for why integrating 1/x gives something logarithmic: 1/x from 1 to 10 has the same area as 1/x from 10 to 100, because it is 1/10 as vertically large, but 10 times as horizontally large. So you would expect something logarithmic from the integral. See other answers for why it is base *e*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_derivative"], [], ["https://www.desmos.com/calculator/3qltcfbxjz"], []]}
{"q_id": "3maekr", "title": "What did slavery in Saudi Arabia look like in the 1950's and how and why was abolished accomplished?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3maekr/what_did_slavery_in_saudi_arabia_look_like_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvef981"], "score": [6], "text": ["Slavery in Saudi Arabia is a difficult topic to tackle, mainly because of scope and definitions.  (I know more about slavery in the 70's with wealthy families, so anyone who knows more on the 50s and general slavery can correct me if I'm wrong)\n\nThere are so many kinds of workers in very difficult conditions, so it's difficult to define what is what before talking about it without generalizing.\n\n1. There are families (usually wealthy) who have their own personal slaves.   The slaves are descendents of slaves and have been with the families for generations.  They might have no (known) connection to their homelands in Africa anymore.  They are born into slavery.  They may not have Saudi citizenship (despite being born there), almost certainly no Saudi passport and no other citizenship from another country.  They are most likely stateless.  Wealthy families employ them in domestic jobs - cooking, cleaning, babysitting, gardening, driving the women/kids, bodyguards and so on.  These slaves are not traded.   The families would have known the slave since s/he was a baby and would not trust someone new into their homes, with their women and kids.  The slaves travel with the Arab families and perform these same duties abroad.  There have been reported instances of the Qatari royal family traveling on diplomatic missions with their slaves to the United States and Britain, but even ambassadors do that too (bring slaves to the new country) and this is done even by non-royal families.\n\n2.  There was regular slavery.  Slaves traded in markets.  These slaves have a connection to their African homelands but could not go back because of conflict in their countries, poverty or because of exit-visa restrictions.  They were not tied to a specific family (not born into slavery) but they cannot leave.  I don't know much about this type, but there were some poor families that owned slaves.  They were used to do domestic work at home and to drive the women and kids.   I don't know if large-scale slave labor existed or how it was like.  I hope someone will add to this.\n\n3.  There are also a lot of abuses in employment in Saudi Arabia - from employers not paying their staff and not letting them quit or leave the country, or paying them very little for a lot of work, letting them live in extreme poverty (which is made worse by the workers sending most of their money back home), seizing their passports, hitting and beating them and so on.   Immigration and employment laws put migrant workers at a disadvantage, tying them to the company they're employed at and making it very difficult to change jobs or leave the country.  Sometimes poverty in their home countries makes it difficult to leave, preferring to endure the miserable conditions, but other times employers take the extra steps of seizing their passports, threatening to report them for crimes (stealing from the employer) which would get them arrested at the airport and imprisoned. \nMost of these workers work in construction - they don't live with their employers, they rarely do domestic jobs, they are not traded and are not considered slaves (not by language, law or culture).  \n\nThe lines between all these groups are blurry.  Is this last group slavery or not?  If a wealthy slave owner pays his slaves, treats them well, their quality of life is better than most people (including other poor slave owners), and gives them the permission to travel/leave, but they are stateless people who have no right to leave the country or work elsewhere, is it still slavery?  Let's say \"yes\" and now slavery is abolished, where would these slaves go?  They are still stateless and have no right to work elsewhere.\n\nThe issue is not a single problem (the legality of slavery), but a multitude of other problems such as citizenship and immigration, exit-visas, employment rights and economics that all work together to put certain groups at a disadvantage.\n\nNote:  Some slaves did have citizenship and passports.  There was a time when slave passports would list the owner of the slave on the (slave's) passport, but this was removed (I think due to diplomatic pressure.)    \n Listing the owner's name may have prevented the slaves from traveling without their owners' permission (border/airport security would check), but I don't know how this worked when this part was removed from the passports.   Slaves traveled with diplomatic missions and regular slave owners, but I don't know of any reports of slaves making a run for it once they were outside."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4961e2", "title": "Is there a maximum theoretical strength that a material can have ?", "selftext": "EDIT : And what about a \"pseudo\" material made of nano-machines \u00e0 la Terminator 2 ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4961e2/is_there_a_maximum_theoretical_strength_that_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0ppig8", "d0pq80o", "d0pq956"], "score": [8, 3, 2], "text": ["Sort of. Going fairly hypothetical, the speed of sound in a material cannot exceed the speed of light, which puts a constraint on the ratio of the tensile strength to the density. This was relevant in a [paper I read](_URL_0_) about trying to harvest energy from black holes by lowering a bucket to near the horizon.\n\nFor something with the density of regular matter, this limit is about 5 billion times the tensile strength of steel.", "The strength of any material depends on the bonds between its constituent particles. The strongest bonds are ionic bonds and their strength is given by the electronegativity of each of their atoms. Strongest bonds occur between alkali metals and halogens. These get stronger with bigger metals and smaller halogens. However, it is also important to note the lattice energy of each of these compounds. Large atoms like Rubidium will repel each other because there will be a strong repulsive force when their massive nuclei are brought within close proximity to each other. What material scientists do is play around with this lattice structure to figure out how to best pack atoms so that they have strong attraction between all the different ions and reduce repulsion between all the similar ions. \n\n**TL;DR** There is a limit but because of the many factors which give rise to material strength we are still figuring out what it is.  ", "Yes. In materials science, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied load without failure or plastic deformation.\n\nA material's strength comes from the bonds that hold its constituent atoms together and the orientation of the atoms in the structure (different orientations using the same atoms forms different allotropes). Assuming perfect crystal lattice geometry, the maximum strength of a material will be the total of all atomic and subatomic forces (and gravity, although I don't imagine this would make much of a difference until you get to a fairly large scale)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.3342.pdf"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "oi5ne", "title": "Does the electronegativity of an element in an acid (fluorine in HF) share any relation to how strong the acid is?", "selftext": "I know that acids basically just have a bunch of naked protons which \u201csteal\u201d the electrons from other substances, but does the electronegativity have anything to do with how strong this reaction is? If not, what does?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/oi5ne/does_the_electronegativity_of_an_element_in_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3hh43x"], "score": [6], "text": ["Electronegativity is the measure of how strongly an element will pull the electron density off of another atom in a covalent bond.  This is not a 1:1 measure of the acidity.  \n\nThe acidity of a substance doesn't depend on the species with a proton.  Chemicals do not give up protons because they want to get rid of protons.  The reason something is acidic is because when it does lose a proton - it becomes the conjugate base - the more stable this species is the more acidic the acid form will be.  \n\nSo you have these negatively charged conjugate bases that need to be stabilized.  To do this, the more the negative charge can get spread out the more stable it will be.  To do this, three things help:  \n\n1.  Size:  The bigger the molecule is, the more acidic it will be.  HI is more acidic than HF.\n\n2.  Resonance:  Resonance structures help pass around extra electron density so no one atom has to hold onto it.  All of the polyatomic ions that make strong acids have lots of resonance structures.  Also phenol is much more acidic than cyclohexane.\n\n3.  Electron withdrawing groups:  Here is where electronegativity can help.  Adding a nitro group to a phenol makes it more acidic.  A carbonyl on a carbon makes a hydroxide also on that carbon more acidic (carboxyllic acid vs alcohol).  \n\nTurns out fluorine is really small.  So even if it is electronegative, it isn't big enough to handle a negative charge on its own, so it makes a weak acid.  Chlorine on down are bigger and are much more acidic. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7gv5z3", "title": "Is it true that the root of the etymology of \"slavic\" comes from the word \"slave\"? Was this name self-applied, or externally applied, to the slavic peoples? Where did it come from, where did they come from, and who were these peoples' oppressors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7gv5z3/is_it_true_that_the_root_of_the_etymology_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqmaee0", "dqnr06u"], "score": [112, 3], "text": ["You actually have the etymology backwards - it is not that the word \"slavic\" comes from the word \"slave,\" but rather that the word slave comes from the word slavic. From the Oxford English Dictionary: \"medieval Latin sclavus, sclava, identical with the racial name Sclavus (see Slav n. and adj.), the Slavonic population in parts of central Europe having been reduced to a servile condition by conquest; the transferred sense is clearly evidenced in documents of the 9th century.\"\n\nI don't know much about the 9th century in Europe, hopefully someone will come along who can talk about the medieval Mediterranean slave trade in more detail. However, David Brion Davis discusses this briefly in his *The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture* (page 52). Davis's key point is that, even long prior to the beginnings of *African* slavery in Europe, the word slave had an ethnic/foreign connotation. Davis compares the latin word *servi,* which has no ethnic connotation, with the new word *sclavi,* which was used first by the Germans in the 10th and 11th centuries, and then by the Italians in the 13th century, to indicate captives brought out of the Black Sea region as part of a Mediterranean slave trade. The word rapidly spread into English and French as a way of distinguishing \"unfree foreigners from native serfs\" (Davis). When Spain and Portugal began to import African slaves in the 15th century, they applied this existing term, the meaning of which had shifted from denoting slavic servants with a notably lower status, to foreign servants with a notably lower status of any ethnic origin.", "There's no universal agreement on the exact etymology of the word 'slavic' and 'slavs', however, as usual with etymologia incognita, there's a number of valid theories.\n\nIn 18th century, the most common theory was that it stems from \"slovo\", a word that exists in a number of slavic languages that means either \"word, talking or letter\". In 19th century, Bohemian phililogists J. Dobrovsk\u00fd, P. J. \u0160afa\u0159\u00edk and F. Miklo\u0161i\u010d came forward with a theory that due to prefixes \"-en, -an, -enin, -anin\" in slavic languages, the base of \"slav/slov\" would imply some kind of a toponym. Due to the similarities to lithuanian \"salava\" - \"to flow\", they argued that Slava / Slova must've been the toponym of a river in whose floodplains the ancestral slavic tribes lived. Later, \"slava\" and \"slovo\" would come to form its own meanings in different slavic languages. The toponym theory is seen as one making most sense.\n\nOther theories claim that the name didn't come from within the slavic tribes, but from outside influences. Some theories associate Scythians with early Slavs, and thus connect the etymological development parallel to cultural one. \nAccording to some, it stems from the protoindoeuropean \"(s)lawos\", akin to greek \"\u03bb\u03b1\u03cc\u03c2\" , which means \"folk, population\" \n\nOne theory that's important to your question states that the word comes from the Gothic verb \"slawan\" which means \"to be silent\". This theory draws parallels to the fact that multiple slavic languages call germans \"mute\" (polish \"niemcy\", croatian \"njemci\"), as it probably stems from the fact that early germanic and slavic tribes couldn't properly understand each other, and thus considered one another 'mute'. The problem this shares with the theory you stated, that 'slavic' comes from latin 'sclavorum' is the improbability of a nation internally calling themselves by something that would be considered pejorative. ( aforementioned Niemcy still call themselves Deutsch, as that's an outsider's name, not a native one ) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7rrkjd", "title": "A cracked photoplasty post claimed that after the holocaust homosexual prisoners were not released but forced to serve the remaining of their sentence. Is this true? What happened to homosexuals after?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7rrkjd/a_cracked_photoplasty_post_claimed_that_after_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsz2fa1"], "score": [104], "text": ["From an [older answer](_URL_2_):\n\n**Part 1**\n\n/u/Kugelfang52 has gone into this before [here](_URL_1_). It is very important to mention here that this subject matter, as well as a more general history of Nazi persecution of homosexuals, both gay men and lesbian women, is still a subject that has not been researched very well yet.\n\nAside the problem of continuing social stigmatization and even criminalization of homosexuality in the decades following WWII (in East Germany, paragraph 175, the section of criminal law concerning male homosexuality, was ceased to be enforced in 1957 but remained on the books until 1968; in West Germany remained on the books until 1969; in Germany it took until 2002 to have all the Nazi convictions against homosexuals annulled), is the problem of sources.\n\nAs Kai Hammermeister showed in his article *Inventing History: Toward a Gay Holocaust Literature* (German Quarterly 70.1 (Winter 1997)), sources from the perspective of homosexual victims are practically non-existent and that even establishing the basic facts of persecution is difficult:\n\n >  The trouble already begins when we consider the historical facts. Though we do have a fairly good sense of the how and why of the persecution of homosexuals under Hitler, this sense nevertheless remains a rough outline without much color or detail. Historians have bemoaned this fact time and again; it seems that one cannot write about the gay Holocaust without lamenting the absence of enough documents, dossiers, confessions, reports, or simply stories. (...) Nonetheless, historians have agreed on a general picture regarding the persecution of homosexuals by the National Socialists. Without going into phases and specificities of this persecution, I only want to mention a couple of numbers that serve to emphasize the extent of these events. About 100,000 gay men were registered by the Gestapo, half of whom were sentenced by an NS court for their homosexuality. It is widely assumed that between 10,000 and 15,000 gay men wore the pink triangle in concentration camps; the number of homosexual inmates in other prison camps, for example in the so-called Moorlager, is still unknown.\n\nHowever, even the details Hammermeister gives are somewhat in dispute. There have been suggestions that the actual number of people persecuted is much higher. One of the few homosexual survivors coming forward after the war and relaying his experience, Heinz Heger, contends that the number of homosexuals persecuted and killed ranged into the 100.000s. Ruediger Lautmann: *\u201cGay Prisoners in Concentration Camps as Compared to Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and Political Prisoners,\u201d* in Michael Berenbaum (ed.): A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, (New York: New York University Press, 2000) 200-206 writes based on a comprehensive review that about 100.000 homosexuals were charged and imprisoned by the Nazis, 15.000 ended up in concentration camps and about 3.000 survived until the end of the war.\n\nOf these estimated 3.000 survivors only 15 men had come forward to tell their story, 6 of them anonymously, and the last known homosexual survivor of a concentration camp had died in June 2012.\n\nThe same principle problem applies to the study of the treatment of homosexual men under Allied occupation in Germany. What can be said with certainty is that in the American, British and French zones, paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code of 1871 remained in effect in its Nazi version of 1935 (this version had removed the previously held \"tradition\" that the a crime was only committed when penetrative intercourse had happened, in the Nazi version, criminal offense existed if \"objectively the general sense of shame was offended\" and subjectively \"the debauched intention was present to excite sexual desire in one of the two men, or a third.\", meaning that physical contact was not required anymore). In the Soviet zone, the pre-Nazi version of \u00a7 175 was applied.\n\nBefore going into further details, it needs to be stressed that as to why this remained in effect in the Western occupation zones, also a lot of research needs to be done still. However, it is an interesting trend that while the laws and provisions in many European countries at the time was to lessen or stop the policing of homosexuals relationships between men (Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland all decriminalized homosexual behavior in the 1930s and 1940s, Poland never legally criminalized homosexuality except during the German occupation), Great Britain and the US went in an opposite direction.\n\nIn the decades preceding WWII, GB and the Us increasingly started to police homosexual behavior. When it came to the occupation of Germany, the problem was further confounded by the fact that a large swath of US policy makers who were involved in setting up the occupation of Germany were convinced of the sexual immorality of the Third Reich and of the need to return to Christian values and morality in order to combat the corruption and sexual licentiousness they believed was a core element of the Nazi version of fascism (see Andrea Slane: *A Not So Foreign Affair: Fascism, Sexuality and the Cultural Rhetoric of American Democracy*).\n\nWhat shaped the Western Allies' policy towards homosexuals in Germany further was the plan on how to deal with survivors of concentration camps. The Handbook for Military Government in Germany Prior to Defeat or Surrender (published in 1944) specified that after liberation, one of the first duties of the Allied troops was to separate the victims of Nazi persecution into different and predominantly national categories, a huge and in practice incomplete feat that not only lead Jews to protest (for they wanted to be grouped in one category rather than their national category) and that lead the predominantly German category of victims of social persecution (asocials, homosexuals, criminals) to be grouped in the \"criminal\" category because their arrest and imprisonment was actually based upon laws. As Michele Weber writes:\n\n >  For American troops serving under military policies that increasingly penalized homosexual active in military service and coming from states where homosexuality was classified as a crime, it was not surprising that homosexuals were categorized as criminal under the American system of classification.\n\nThe procedure as laid out in the *Handbook* for this group of victims was explicit: \"Ordinary criminals with a prison sentence still to serve will be transferred to civil prisons.\" Meaning that if somebody convicted under \u00a7175 by the Nazis, which held a provision for imprisonment for up to 10 years, and imprisoned in a Concentration Camp could be imprisoned by the Allies if they believed that the person had not served their sentence in full. For those who had \"served their sentence\", freedom was guaranteed but fear of being arrested again under \u00a7175 remained.\n\nThis was not really in line with the guidelines of denazification set by the Allies themselves. Since \u00a7175 restricted citizenship, and it was the Allies explicit policy to remove all laws that restricted citizenship based on politics, religion or other categories, it should have been at least reverted to its pre-1935 version. Furthermore, Law number 11 of the Control Council concerning Nazi Law stated: \u201cNo German law, however or whenever enacted or enumerated, shall be applied judicially or administratively within the occupied territory in any instance where such application would cause injustice or inequality, \u2026by discriminating against any person by reason of his race, nationality, religious beliefs or opposition to the National Socialist Party or its doctrines.\"\n\nAnd yet, \u00a7175 remained in _URL_0_ practice this often lead to cases like that of Karl Gorath. Gorath, a homosexual survivor of the camps, was arrested by the American authorities in Germany in 1946 and sentenced again under \u00a7175 to a prison sentence by the same Nazi judge who had sentenced him in the 1930s.\n\nAs for numbers: Michele Weber states that under United States administration, an estimated 1,100 to 1,800 men were arrested yearly on charges of violating Paragraph 175, a number significantly higher than it had been in the Weimar Republic. A substantial study of how many of them were convicted and subsequently imprisoned does not exist yet.\n\nIt is interesting to note that in contrast, in the Soviet zone, not only did the Soviets return to the pre-Nazi version of \u00a7175 and argued for that to be adopted in all occupation zones but also the number of cases involving the legal provision was much smaller. Jennifer Evans counts 129 cases of persecution based upon \u00a7175 in East Berlin until 1952, which can be chalked up to the fact that under their rules of evidence, penetration had to have happened and it required physical proof, something not on the books in the Western zones. All that despite the fact that Stalin had re-criminalized homosexuality in the USSR in 1934 and that as G\u00fcnter Grau has argued, when it came to safeguarding the sexual mores of young males, the East and West upheld similar images of respectability and moral endangerment.\n\n\n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["place.In", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h399i/how_did_the_allies_care_for_holocaust_survivors/d2o01rp/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5911n4/ww2_holocaust_how_were_homosexual_concentration/d95cysz/"]]}
{"q_id": "2b1mr8", "title": "why isn't the westboro baptist church considered a hate group in the u.s. and has all the legal benefits of a religion?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b1mr8/eli5why_isnt_the_westboro_baptist_church/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj0vrvu", "cj0vwkz", "cj0wsep", "cj0xhb3", "cj0xjyb", "cj0xsrm", "cj0y4ha", "cj10ki4", "cj1a0ot", "cj1co96"], "score": [40, 185, 49, 18, 18, 5, 4, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["I thought it was because they don't actually advocate physical violence against those they target.\n\nThey just tell everyone that God's going to do it for them.", "In the US, \"hate groups\" are legal.  You can espouse hate all you want, because you have freedom of speech.  You just can't threaten people, or attempt to incite others to violence.", "There is no legal status as hate group in the US.  Private organizations like the South Poverty Law Center keep lists, and the FBI has a list of groups likely to commit hate crimes, but there is no official list.\n\nSo the statement \"Yes but hate groups are not tax exempt, like the WBC\" is not true.  You can lose your non profit status for committing crimes, inciting others to commit crimes, or improper campaigning.  But so long as you follow the rule for a non-profit, the First Amendment allows you to be as hateful you want.", "ELI5: Why does everyone on this sub feel the need to ask loaded questions that they don't want to hear a legitimate answer to, they just want to spout they're own uninformed opinion and bitch?", "To add on to what everyone is saying about hate groups technically being legal, many members of the WBC are actually highly accomplished lawyers. Scary to say the least, but they have actually won several lawsuits brought against them. They know exactly what they can get away with legally,  and use that to their own twisted advantage.", "Do they actually get a tax exemption?", "Ok. This may be hard for you progressive Christians to hear. But the Westboro Baptists aren't making up the shitty views they have. It is all in the same book that you pick and choose the good parts out of. And being crazy-religious-dicks isn't illegal in the United States. We have a secular government to protect your right to worship who you want. That means them too. They are monstrous people, yes. But freedom of speech is what makes America awesome, and not Iraq.", "WBC, KKK, Scientology - they all have protection.  \n\nI'm sure there are people who think that mainstream, \"normal\" Christians are just as wacky as the KKK.  And there are people who probably think the ACLU or NAACP are hate groups, too.\n\nIt's all kind of relative and the First Amendment protects them all.\n\nTL;DR - First Amendment allows crazies.", "There's no legal status of \"hate group.\" And the only legal benefit of being a religious group is tax exemption, if you are also not for profit. WBC claims non-profit status. That's about the only thing that's significant about them from a legal standpoint. They can believe whatever they want, say whatever they want and be \"religious\" however they want. Haters gonna hate.", "They are considered a hate group by many organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Centre (the SPLC is pretty much as high-up as it goes when it comes to \"hate group\" designation).  The American government doesn't classify \"hate\" because it would violate the first-amendment rights of the groups.  The courts have sided with this which is why flat-out bans on funeral protests have been unsuccessful.\n\nThe American govenrment only classifies terrorist, gangs and organized crime groups which WBC is not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6grj1e", "title": "how would puerto rico becoming a us state work? would the powers that be of usa want this to happen? what would the impact be to the country as a whole to gain a new state?", "selftext": "For what it's worth, I'm from the U.K so I know literally nothing about the things I'm asking. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6grj1e/eli5_how_would_puerto_rico_becoming_a_us_state/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dishj87", "dishuht", "disi7vo", "disiato", "disn2me", "disnbjg", "disnu9d", "disoyue", "dispduz", "disqxhf", "diss97s", "disuln7", "dit60cc"], "score": [63, 8, 226, 26, 3, 19, 30, 19, 4, 2, 4, 4, 2], "text": [" >  What would the impact be to the country as a whole to gain a new state?\n\nI can't speak for the rest of your questions, but I would imagine it would be a very lucrative time to be a flag manufacturer. Imagine needing to change every American flag in the country? Probably big business to be had. ", "Upgrading colonies to full states is a standard procedure in the US. Last time this happened were in 1959 with Alaska and Hawaii. There are both advantages and disadvantages to adding new states for everyone involved.", " >  > How would Puerto Rico becoming a US State work? \n\nPuerto Rico would have a referendum and decide if they want to be a state. \n\nCongress would vote if they want to start the statehood process for Puerto Rico\n\nCongress and Puerto Rico's territorial congress would work together to create a state constitution.\n\nOnce that constitution is agreeable to both Congress and Puerto Rico a final vote in Congress happens to admit Puerto Rico as a state.\n\nThe President signs that bill and The US has 51 states\n\n >  >  Would the powers that be of USA want this to happen?\n\nThe biggest hurdle the powers that be would have is adding Puerto Rice adds 2 senators and 4 or 5 congressmen, along with the 6 or 7 electoral votes that go along with those.  This would concern one party if the other was more heavily represented in PR also this would diminish the voting power of smaller states especially the 3 vote states.  Puerto Rico would also probably be a net taker of federal taxes but that depends on a lot of things.\n\n >  > What would the impact be to the country as a whole to gain a new state? \n\nDay to day nothing really changes, Puerto Rico is basically a state now. There is free travel to and from the territory and free work access.  it would really only effect election time.  Taxes would increase for Puerto Ricans as they don't pay Federal Income Tax, but their tax burden may shift around to even that out, it depends on the exact way they are admitted as a state.", "Exactly. PR is trying to access US bankruptcy laws via an upgrade to statehood. The vote there was \"nonbinding\" meaning it was basically a popularity contest. Only the United States Congress has the power to admit a new state. I doubt we'll be adding a new star anytime soon.", " > What would the impact be to the country as a whole to gain a new state?\n\nUpdated flag maybe?", "Side note. This has been the longest time in our history between adding states. It was very common in the early 1900s through 1959.", "Puerto Rico is likely Democrat-heavy, so there's a chance the current Republican-heavy government might slow-walk the process, or ignore it altogether", "There are many powers pushing for Puerto Rico to become a state. One of the biggest I'd say is Big Flag, the huge corporate flag companies with hundreds of flag lobbyists in Washington. ", "This video explains things pretty well.  Basically. there are a bunch of people in power have screwed over Puerto Rico over and over again to make a lot of money.  The last thing they want is to have to give up that cash cow and start treating those people like real human beings.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "Isn't PR basically bankrupt and this is them trying to get on dat welfur?", "Isn't Puerto Rico broke? Like in 'we can't afford schools and hospitals' broke? I vaguely remember John Oliver's show on it a year ago.", "1. Congress would have to agree.  \n2. The current ones, probably not, although the current president previously said he supported the idea. However, those Congresspeople with significant Latino constituents would probably be pressured to vote in favor.  \n3. ~~The House would gain 7 members and grow to 442 representatives~~. The Senate would grow to 102. Also, ~~9~~ 2 more members of the Electoral College that elects the President.  \n\nIn addition, I would likely expect that such an addition would only be done at the same time as adding *another* state,  one perceived to have the opposite political leaning, so as to balance out the possible political impact. Q. V. Missouri Compromise. \n\nEdit: Thanks to those who pointed out that the number of Representatives would not change. That means 7 states will lose one of their representatives in order to make room for 7 new ones for PR. Which sucks because that's a disincentive for those states to approve statehood. ", "Puerto Rico is still unlikely to become a state. In the most recent vote, only 23% of the people voted. Of those, 3% voted \"no\".\n\nSo we have a situation where 77% didn't vote (because of apathy or protest) and where only .23 * .97 = .22 = 22% (a little over 1/5) may want to become a state.\n\nThat leaves a LOT of PR citizens that don't care or don't want statehood."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-mpuR_QHQ"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "xdwox", "title": "why accutane is dangerous, and why it's still being prescribed by doctors.", "selftext": "My doctor suggested it to me, in the same breath admitting that it has dangerous side effects.\n\nIf it's relevant, I live in Canada.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xdwox/eli5_why_accutane_is_dangerous_and_why_its_still/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5liqqr", "c5livpm", "c5ljn0q", "c5ljxj1", "c5ljyuf", "c5lk3ca", "c5lkg7u", "c5lkj0w", "c5lkrtr", "c5ll9h7", "c5lliqg", "c5lmf0u"], "score": [12, 6, 39, 4, 3, 78, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 7], "text": ["Its still prescribed because there are some situations where no other medication will work for cases of cystic acne. So Accutane can still be used as long as you're very careful with it.", "I took it about 15 years ago and I'm fine...  so far anyway", "I can tell you from first hand experience using Accutane was a blessing, It was the ONLY thing that worked. after seeing the results of your Acne disappearing and NOT returning, the results out-weight any side effects I might have been feeling at the time. I know there were a lot of restrictions to use Accutane being a female instead of a male. ", "Most can offer testimonies of blessed luck from Accutane, but not everybody. I developed Crohn's disease as a result, and I could argue that I got off lightly. There is a large range of very unfortunate side effects from Accutane.", "I took it for I believe close to a year, about 6 years ago...\n\nIt dried me out, had to use a ton of chapstick, other than that, no side effects. Oh, also, it worked really well for me.\n\nOn the other hand, somebody else I knew took it and had to stop due to rectal bleeding.", "A medication I know of has possible side effects of nausea, dyspepsia, gastrointestinal ulceration/bleeding, raised liver enzymes, diarrhea, constipation, epistaxis, headache, dizziness, priapism, rash, salt and fluid retention, hypertension, esophageal ulceration, **heart failure**, hyperkalemia, renal impairment, confusion, bronchospasm.  What is this horrible, deadly drug, you ask?\n\nIbuprofen.  Also known as Advil.\n\nPoint being, nearly all drugs have the *potential* for harmful side effects.  It's important to also be aware of the frequency of those side effects.  A capable doctor can assess the risk of the side effects occurring and monitor the patient over time to continue updating that risk assessment.  To be sure, Accutane may have a higher risk than some other drugs, but as others have pointed out, it's sometimes the only thing that works.  It's all about the cost-benefit analysis - the likelihood and severity of the side effects weighed against what happens if you don't take the medication.", "I was on accutane about 10 years ago. It worked but very well but at the same time it made EXTREMELY depressed. I got off of it due to the depression it caused me. ", "I took it for about 2 years and it worked great.  Did have to lower my prescription because my triglycerides were way too high, but those were able to get back into check.  While on it, I had to use SPF 50 sunscreen, and stick after stick of chapstick (winters were brutal!).   On the pill container they came in, there is warning after warning about birth defects, which is no biggie since I'm a dude.  Had the facepalm of a lifetime after the doctor assistant ask if I was pregnant or nursing (she had to read from a script and was embarrassed after asking that).\n\nSince the last treatment, all is well on the acne front!", "The main danger related to Accutane is related to birth defects.  When an embryo is developing, there are a bunch of molecular signals throughout the body that tell the embryo where to form certain body parts.  One such molecule is retinoic acid.  Retinoic acid tells the spine how far down the body it is.  This allows the bones closer to the head to form a neck and the bones closer to the butt to form a tailbone.  Unfortunately, retinoic acid is really similar to the active ingredient in Accutane, so the embryo can't tell the difference.  As a result, if a woman gets pregnant while using Accutane, the baby may be formed with some major, horrifying birth defects.  \n\nIf you're a male or are not capable of having a baby during the time when you're on the medication, there are still some powerful side effects.  For example, I've read that it may be correlated with depression and suicidal thoughts.  I've also heard from a couple of people who used Accutane that their skin dried out and had some swelling.  Needless to say, this was painful.  Overall, Accutane is safe for human use, but it does have side effects like any other drug.  The main distinction is that when people get pregnant while they have this drug in their system, the resulting birth defects are horrific. ", "It made a friend suicidal, but it cleared his acne right up. (He's fine now)", "Accutane fucked me up pretty badly. About 4 months in, my knees/joints were shot and I couldn't run or skip a step without collapsing, had to sit out a year of high school tennis. I may have stunted my bone growth with it. I didn't regain normal movement for another 2 months.", "I just finished a 5 month trial of Accutane, and I have been incredibly happy with the results. \nBackground: I am a female in my late 20s, and have been struggling with cystic acne for my entire adult/adolescent life. I was lucky that my problem was not as severe as many others, but my acne was persistent, resistant to **any** other thing I tried, and incredibly emotionally painful. There is almost nothing that can sap your confidence faster than having eye-catching, unsightly problems... with your FACE. \nI was reluctant to go on Accutane, as I had heard about the potential for serious side effects and had someone close to me experience serious psychological effects that I believe were tied to the drug. The good thing is use of the medication is extremely closely monitored, particularly if you are a female of childbearing age. This drug can **only** be prescribed by doctors or nurse practitioners. You must have a blood test performed 1 month before taking it, and then every month thereafter while you are on it to ensure there are no adverse effects to your liver. As a female, I had to have a blood test to assess for pregnancy every month as well as a urine test in the dermatologist's office. You must use 2 forms of birth control simultaneously to make sure you do not get pregnant, as the drug causes some serious birth defects. You must terminate the pregnancy if you become pregnant. Every month before getting your medication, you must complete an online quiz to ensure you understand the importance of birth control, what methods are effective, etc. In short: they don't play with this shit. \n\nThe most important thing to do: **REPORT ALL SIDE EFFECTS TO YOUR DOCTOR**. There are some that just about *everyone* will experience, namely dry skin, dry lips, and dryness in the nose. With the right skin care products, this can usually be kept at an annoying, but bearable, level. You also want to invest in a shitload of sunblock, because you will burn very easily while on the med. Accutane works similarly to taking a HUGE dose of Vitamin A (and you will have to make sure you don't take any additional Vitamin A while on it. e.g.: I was forbidden from taking multivitamins) and the side effects are similar. \nSide effects like depression, suicidal ideation, etc are not very common at all, but are very serious and should be monitored carefully, particularly for those with existing mental health concerns. Many dermatologists partner with PCPs and psychiatrists to ensure continuity of care. \nIn short, talk to your doc. Ask all the questions that are making you concerned. Accutane might not be for you. Some people have had some very bad side effects that they feel are not worth it. For others, Accutane is like a miracle drug. At my last appointment, my doc said \"Your results are amazing. Now you could model skin care products\". I think she was laying it on a little thick, but there has been a **vast** improvement in my skin and my confidence. \n\n**TL;DR** *Talk to your doctor. Do what works for you. Best of luck!*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6tttp9", "title": "why does uk english just say \"in hospital\" when us english says \"in the hospital\"?", "selftext": "For example, the recent British news story about Jeremy Clarkson said he \"almost died in hospital.\"  In US English we would have said he \"almost died in *the* hospital.\"\n\nWhy does UK English not put a \"the\" in front of hospital?\n\nI can't think of any other nouns that have this same lack of \"the.\"\n\nNo one says \"he was in restroom\" or \"he was in grocery.\"\n\n**edit**: Thank you everyone for your answers!  I get it now.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tttp9/eli5_why_does_uk_english_just_say_in_hospital/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlngm9q", "dlnisdn", "dlnlmpq", "dlnomou", "dlnr9a2", "dlntgz4", "dlnvpae", "dlo0bjq"], "score": [227, 53, 6, 22, 4, 10, 22, 2], "text": ["There are other similar ones such as going to church/school/bed.\n\nThe distinction between those and things like the grocer, is that they convey the idea of being in a certain state.\n\ne.g. I'm going to church vs I'm going to the church.\n\nThe first implies you are going to church for Sunday service or similar.\nThe second just means you are going to the physical church building.\n\nI'm not sure why they diverged on some things like hospital but not others.\n\nEdit: to add...   so in the UK we might say, I'm going to THE hospital (to visit my friend), but I'm going to hospital (for surgery)\n\n", "It's an \"abstract state\", rather than a specific instance. So if I said \"I'm going to the hospital\", people would infer I mean the local one, or perhaps a specific one which is clear from context (eg we have an eye hospital in my town) -- and it may not be for treatment, I could be visiting a friend. But if I said \"I'm going to hospital\", it could be any hospital anywhere; it also clearly indicates I will be a patient (the state of being In Hospital).\n\nAnother case I can think of is clubs/societies: \"This one time, in Band Camp...\"", "You could ask why Americans say math and not maths when it's an abbreviation of mathematics. It's just a regional difference without much thought put into the grammar behind it. \"Could care less\" is one that sounds incredibly grating to me but normal to a lot of people. ", " I'm going to the hospital = I'm going to the place where medical services are performed.\n\n I'm going to hospital = I'm going for medical services. \n\n", " > No one says \"he was in restroom\" or \"he was in grocery.\"\n\nNo, but Americans do say things like *\"I went to space camp\"* rather than \"*I went to THE space camp\"*.\n\nAdding a \"the\" makes you sound like you are specifying a particular one out of many. If you just want to be generic and refer to any hospital you can say \"I went to hospital\". It simply sounds unusual to Americans because we always hear it the other way.\n\n", "Do Americans say \"he's in the prison\" instead of \"he's in prison\"? ", "When you drop a/the, you're implying that the next word is a transitive state.\n\nIn denial, in grief, in school, etc.; it's a state of being.\n\nSo in hospital would imply he's in the state of being treated, while 'in the hospital' has more emphasis on WHERE he is.\n\nI'm sure someone can explain it more technically correct, but you can see there's a difference plainly between the two, rather than just a difference in dialect.", "Same as when someone is going 'to college' (Ex. a student graduating high school) vs 'to the college' (Ex. a professor going to work). I suspect when doctors go to work in the UK they say 'I'm going to the hospital'. \n\nWe are the weird ones for adding 'the' in front. It doesn't really make sense. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hfd2h", "title": "how does \"intentional\" cognitive functions like thinking and memorization happen within the brain's cells?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hfd2h/eli5_how_does_intentional_cognitive_functions/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyjlko9", "dyjm7pq", "dyjnyi8", "dyjq70p", "dyjrdhd", "dyjy7py"], "score": [19, 13, 7, 2, 2, 5], "text": ["This is a hugely debated question in the philosophy of mind. I think it's fair to say that the answer is far from clear. It may be the case that intentional states cannot be realized in physical systems. Trying to give a physicalist account of intentional states is an active research program in the philosophy of mind. Try looking up \"qualia\". ", "This strains the limits of ELI5 for the best possible reason. I like to believe that it\u2019s true that if you can\u2019t explain what you know to a 5yo (given obvious caveats) then you don\u2019t really \u2018know\u2019 said thing. Since we really don\u2019t know this it\u2019s nearly impossible to ELI5. \n\nAdditionally, I\u2019d like to take this opportunity to take a swipe at those who believe the coming \u2018singularity\u2019 means we will be able to port our consciousness onto a digital framework. We are so far from understanding, let alone modeling a bees cognition to imagine us doing the same for a human, seamlessly is truly delusional. A century from now? Maybe but I\u2019d bet against. \n\nSource: GED with two years of undergrad. So.......", "Computational mind theory would say that it works similar to how data is stored on a computer, but instead of transistors the bioelctrical networks in the brain store information. \n\nAsking this question brings a cascade of questions from the nature of conscious thought  all the way to the deterministic/non deterministic nature of the universe. Perhaps the two concepts are inextricably linked, but that's another good question.", "Like everyone said, we don't really know, but also it doesn't. From what we *do* know, thinking and memories happen in the networks and connections *between* cells, not *inside* of individual cells. No one bird is planning it, yet the flock avoids the obstacle with apparent coordination.", "Intentional is a human construct. All healthy human brains are capable of thinking and memorizing so it's part of their intrinsic nature rather than conscious intent. Now which path they take in terms of decision making (free will) is hotly debated but one path must be taken which it always is (determinism).", "Well, there are a bunch of things that work together when you decide to do something.\n\nYou need to learn about all of these parts and how they work together.\n\nThe first part you need to learn about is the thalamus. The thalamus is the part that first gets vision from your eyes, sound from your ears, smell from your nose, taste from your tongue and feelings of touch from all over your body. It also gets messages about your balance and whether or not you're moving from a little organ in your ear.\n\nThe thalamus organizes these senses and sends them to other parts of the brain, on the edges, called lobes, but it doesn't send all of them! It has little switches that either turn on or off based on how much power the senses have. For example, when we see movement it usually turns on more switches than the other stuff that we see which stands still. Because the brain can only send so many messages at a time, only the stuff that turns on a lot of switches will be sent out. It's sort of the same for smell and the other senses. Something that smells really good will turn on a lot of switches. That's why, for example, even though your nose is on all day, you don't notice it until someone starts cooking dinner. The switches are turning on, but way more switches are being turned on by stuff you are seeing or feeling.\n\nNow we understand the first part played by the thalamus.\n\nAfter it sends out the powerful sensations to the lobes, the lobes go into action.\n\nThe lobes also have a bunch of switches, but their switches organize in a different way. They turn on if the sensations have certain qualities. For example, when you see an object that is moving, there are some switches that turn on if the thing has edges and other switches that turn on if the thing has a face. These switches are different than the switches in the thalamus, because even if they are off they don't stop the signal. For example, you don't stop seeing a baseball even though baseballs don't have faces, you just know that it's not an animal. All the different lobes for the different senses do this if the thalamus sends them sensations. When they figure out the qualities of the stuff that is sensed, they then send the senses to parts of another part of the brain: the hippocampus (hippocampus is greek for seahorse because it's a part of the brain that is shaped like a little seahorse!).\n\nThe hippocampus also has a bunch of switches. These switches make up what we call memory. Here, in the hippocampus, the senses that have been chosen for their power in the thalamus and organized by their qualities in the lobes are checked by memory. If the pattern of on and off switches that they came from matches patterns of on and off switches in the hippocampus, we call it remembering! If they don't match patterns that we know, the hippocampus takes those patterns of on and off switches and leaves them alone for the future. If it keeps getting the pattern of something it doesn't remember, the pattern becomes a part of it. Now, when it gets the pattern, it will remember it.\n\nThis is how a lot of memories work, though not all of them. You remember things like how to ride a bike in a different way. We're not going to talk about that today, because I have a lot of chores to do besides explaining all of this. For now, only one type of memory will have to be enough.\n\nNow, you want to now about how we decide to remember, and we will get to that, but first you need to understand that we remember stuff whether we want to or not. When we decide to remember, we still do the same thing, but we decide what we focus our senses on. If we want to remember some new words, we might look at the new words on paper and read them over and over. This makes the new pattern in the hippocampus, but have you ever noticed that it's hard to learn when there is a bunch of noisy people around? That's because the thalamus is still sending senses based on what the power of what our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin sense. If there is too much sound or bad smells, the stuff that we want to remember won't make it to the hippocampus. The other stuff will.\n\nThis still hasn't answered your question, though. In order to answer your question we have to learn about another part of the brain: the prefrontal lobes.\n\nThe prefrontal lobes have two main parts: a left and right side. The left side arranges words it has in patterns from the hippocampus in ways that that the hippocampus also has stored in patterns. For example, we know that a sentence in English needs a subject and verb. This is a pattern, and it's also stored in the form of a pattern. I know, this is getting really complicated, but hang in there. These words and the patterns about how we can arrange them help the left prefrontal cortex consider stuff. How do they do that? Well, this is sort of a tricky thing: the patterns of patterns are connected to other patterns, called associations, so that your memory of the word dog and your memories of dogs usually show themselves to the prefrontal cortex at the same time. Your memories of experiences with dogs, though, might show up in the right side of the prefrontal cortex. \n\nThe two sides are doing different things, but they talk to each other about what they are doing so that they stay coordinated. If, for example, you were ever scared by a dog, the right side might make sure that the left side doesn't make word patterns that say all dogs are nice. In this way, the two sides work together to make stories up about what could happen, what is happening, and what has happened. If these stories are strong enough, they can go into the hippocampus as patterns of patterns too. \n\nSometimes these two sides of the brain work in a different way. Sometimes the right side makes up images, smells, tastes, feelings and sounds, and the left side tries to make up sentences to describe it. We call this imagination. Sometimes we imagine something that we want but that hasn't happened, and the left part of the brain figures out a pattern that explains how to make it happen. For example, if I imagine a casserole, the left and right side might work together by trying to remember the list of words that has all the ingredients and the memory of whether or not I have them.\n\nNow you are starting to understand how all the switches work, but we haven't talked about the switches in the prefrontal cortex. That's because we don't really understand how all of those work together. Maybe the thalamus just sends us the powerful sensations, and then the rest of the parts figure out what to do according to what we remember. For example, if we get hunger senses, the hippocampus might just send patterns about hunger to the prefrontal cortex, which will then check the hippocampus for memories about what to do when you're hungry. When it does this, it might also have other things that it is working on, so it might focus on those instead. The truth is that this part of how the brain works is even more complicated! The switches turn on and off, but they aren't exactly like the switches in either the hippocampus, the other lobes, or the thalamus. \n\nThey are similar in that they have switches that turn on and off, but they turn on and off based on sending messages back and forth with different parts of the brain constantly, including other switches that are also in the prefrontal cortex. I can't really explain that part very well yet. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3g3nk8", "title": "whats the shortest flash a human can register?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3g3nk8/whats_the_shortest_flash_a_human_can_register/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctutn5t"], "score": [7], "text": ["A human can measure a \"flash\" of even the most discrete interval, provided there are enough photons. I am not sure how many is enough, but I remember it is absurdly small.  Less than 100.\n\n[Here is a good article.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt looks like the retina can detect even one photon, but the signal is filtered out unless there are 5-9 photons in 100ms or less. It would seem to follow that *the shorter the flash, the easier it will be to detect*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/see_a_photon.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1w1wtp", "title": "So Mendel's peas demonstrated that genes aren't blended. But aren't some traits a result of combination?", "selftext": "I'm subbing a biology class and would love to bring back a response from the community. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1w1wtp/so_mendels_peas_demonstrated_that_genes_arent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cexxb2b", "cey3ry3"], "score": [6, 3], "text": ["Mendel's peas demonstrated that simple traits are not blended.\n\nSome (actually most, as we find more and more as we delve further into GWAS and microarray sequencing) traits absolutely are. For example, skin color. Children tend to have the averaged skin color of their parents.", "I'm an AP Biology student who recently had this unit.\n\nNow many traits are considered Mendelian, meaning they follow those super simple rules.  But some are not this easy.\n\nThere's this thing called incomplete dominance where, say, a red flower and white flower breed and create a pink flower.  That looks like blending right?  But if two pink flowers breed, then you'll see half the offspring are pink, a quarter are red, and a quarter are white.\n\nCo-dominance is where both genes are expressed.  Like if a white flower and a red flower mated, and the offspring had white and red spots on it.\n\nAnother thing that kind of looks like blending is multiple alleles.  Like blood type.  A and B are equally dominant and O is recessive.  So AA is A type blood, AO is still A type blood, and AB contains both A and B carbohydrates.  O blood contains no carbohydrates.  Rh factor (positive or negative blood) is separate from this.\n\nSo if Tom has AA and Sally has BB their kid will have both carbohydrates and be AB.  So AB mates with BO the offspring of that could be AB, AO, BB, or BO.\n\nSo genes have a location on the chromosome.  Well you know how in meiosis chromosomes \"cross over,\" to mix up genetic material?  The closer together genes are on a chromosome, the less likely they will be separated.  So those close traits are more likely to be inherited together.   These are called linked genes.\n  \nSkin color is an example of polygenic inheritance, and since kids look like a more \"middle tone\" of their parents, it can appear to be blending.  Skin color has different alleles.  So if you're say, AABBCC, you're rather dark, but aabbcc is rather white.  But AAbbCC would be between the two.\n\nMy source is my textbook.  AP Edition Campell Biology 9th edition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6roka4", "title": "why is everyone that pleads \"not guilty\" in a court case, but later found guilty, not also given a perjury charge (along with their initial charges)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6roka4/eli5_why_is_everyone_that_pleads_not_guilty_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl6ld37", "dl6maq8", "dl6mraw", "dl6nchj", "dl6vvnu", "dl6wt4h", "dl6x60y", "dl7c58s"], "score": [75, 9, 12, 3, 14, 6, 2, 3], "text": [" >  Why is everyone that pleads \"not guilty\" in a court case, but later found guilty, not also given a perjury charge (along with their initial charges)?\n\nA plea is not sworn testimony from the defendant, it is just the demand of \"prove it\" to the prosecution.\n\nAlso it would act to derail the intended operation of the legal process; if you are going to be charged with perjury if you lose then why not lie your ass off at every opportunity? If you win you get off and if you lose you are going to be convicted of perjury for defending yourself anyway.\n\nAnd that is what it really comes down to: You have a *right to a legal defense*. To charge you with perjury just for pleading not guilty would violate your fundamental right to legal defense and would be a violation of human rights. You gotta' watch out for those.", "Just to add on to what was already said here, a charge of purgery would require a completely separate trial as its not the same as what ever you were charged with and can't you can't be charged with it before its happened (charges have to be filed before the trial starts). \n\nIt would basically double court proceedings of guilty people for little to no real gain to the public interest. ", "In the US you aren't required to incriminate yourself; it's the prosecutor's job to prove you are guilty. You have an initial arraignment, at which the charges against you are established, your rights are explained to you, and you submit your plea. If you say you are guilty, the case goes straight to sentencing. If you say you are not guilty, you get your day in court.\n\nA 'guilty' plea doesn't necessarily mean you are guilty; it means you accept the fact that the prosecutors *do* have enough evidence to convince a jury that you are guilty. A 'not guilty' plea doesn't necessarily mean you are not guilty; it means you *do not* accept the fact that the prosecutors will be able to convince a jury that you did everything you are accused of. Since there is often a laundry-list of charges sought against you, 'not guilty' might just mean that you don't believe that they will be able to make some *specific* charge stick, even if you are found guilty of the rest of the charges. If you plead guilty at the arraignment, you are accepting everything you are charged with up-front as a package deal.\n\nSo if you think that while you are technically guilty of breaking the law there are extenuating circumstances, and believe that a jury will agree with you, you plead not guilty and go to trial. If you hope to work out some sort of plea agreement, you plead not guilty and you go to trial. If you are totally guilty and you hope to weasel out of it, you plead not guilty and you go to trial. Pleading guilty, you're up against established sentencing guidelines and whatever mood the judge is in; pleading not guilty, you're (probably) up against a jury of your peers.\n\nAll of that said, if you plead not guilty and it turns out to be a complete waste of the court's time because everything but your plea shows that you really *are* guilty, the judge can and sometimes will punish you for that. But (in our system) on its own pleading 'not guilty' is not perjuring yourself, because you are not legally required to help them prosecute you.", "One reason: The initial not guilty plea is entered at the very beginning of a case - sometimes in the same court appearance when a defendant is assigned their court appointed lawyer. It is not advisable to do much of anything in court without talking to a lawyer. \n\nIt is very common for defendants to appear and be told by a public defender on duty that everyone gets a not guilty plea at the beginning because that first hearing is just the beginning for potentially dozens of people. Getting into a back and forth with the prosecutor and the judge at such an early stage a) risks tactical errors by defendants who haven't talked to a lawyer yet and b) would take forever in cities and medium to large towns. \n\nIf you're curious, go sit in your county's arraignment court for an afternoon then chat with the clerk. It'll be eye opening. Practices vary from place to place so don't assume it's the same in New Mexico as it is in New Jersey, but you'll leave way more informed about our criminal system. \n\nPerhaps obvious disclaimer: This answer centers on USA law only. ", "\"Not guilty\" doesn't necessarily mean \"I didn't do it.\"  Sometimes the defendant may be arguing that although they did the deed, the act itself was not a crime.\n\nI killed him, but it was self defense.\n\nI took the money, but it was mine to begin with.\n\n My brain tumor impaired my judgement. \n\nI was following orders.", "Pleading Not Guilty doesn't mean \"I didn't do it\".\n\nIt means (in effect) \"I am exercising my right to presumed innocence, and am requiring the prosecution to prove their case against me beyond reasonable doubt\".\n\nSo there's nothing that is a 'lie' about that. ", "* a plea is not sworn testimony\n* you can honestly believe you are not guilty and still be convicted, like when the case revolves around self-defense vs. murder\n* an innocent person might be tempted to plead guilty to avoid a perjury charge\n* a guilty person who pleads not guilty would have no reason not to lie about everything else\n* being punished for a not guilty plea is a form of self-incrimination, being compelled to admit your guilt ", "Don't know about the US, but in Sweden the defendant is explicitly never under oath. Even when testifying. You can lie about the colour of the sky and it's not illegal. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vvfkh", "title": "why aren't humans of different races divided into different species?", "selftext": "There's a brown bear, a white(polar) bear, a black bear, and a bunch of other bears in between. They are all their own individual species. There are three different species of gorillas, all of them look marginally different from each other, and yet humans, who happen to look marginally different from each other, are all one species. Is it a race issue? Were scientists afraid that KKK members and the like would look down on races other than white as \"not people?\" Is there something else that separates bears and gorillas, and not enough of that thing to separate humans? What defines a species? What is enough to make one species of animal classified separately from the rest?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vvfkh/eli5_why_arent_humans_of_different_races_divided/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d61pykp", "d61pzs5", "d61q39h", "d61q4ws", "d61qb9s", "d61r7cu", "d61rbt4", "d61s63z", "d61sdvx", "d61t8pa", "d622o5j", "d6258hu"], "score": [37, 52, 34, 13, 23, 3, 5, 50, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["because we aren't different species. bears are, there is more that is different between a polar bear and a black bear than just the color of their fur, some can't interbreed etc. we are anatomically all the same", " Two animals are considered to be of different species if they can't produce fertile offspring. This isn't the case for people of different races. Furthermore, race is not considered a particularly meaningful category in biology. ", "There's less difference between human 'races' than between breeds of dogs, and dog breeds aren't considered separate species.", "Taxonomy is based on genetics, not looks. Different species have different chromosomes and cannot reproduce with one another. A poodle and a bulldog look very different but are the same species, whereas a zebra and a horse are different species.", "Because \"looking different\" isn't enough to differentiate between species.\n\nA hairless sphynx cat isn't genetically different enough from a siamese to be a different species, even though they appear different. Similarly, a pomeranian and a great dane aren't significantly different genetically, despite the massive size difference.", "Part of the problem is the the term \"species\" . It is rather fowled up. The term came into usage as a classification before it had a clear definition. People still argue about it. But the bottom line is, basically, a \"species\" divides animals that can and cannot breed. I've heard some people try to put that definition of *genus*. But those people seem to have odd motives. In any case, despite the modern definition, there are legacy species names that do not fit the definition. Hence the confusion. At some point I expect a new modern taxonomic system is going to have to take over -- I just pray that it doesn't have to be written in a dead language anymore.", "human beings a extremely closely related compared to other animals, we diverged as a species only 250k years ago, from a small population, so there is little diversity if compared to chimps say who have been around 5m years.  All humans can breed with other, which is one of things that 2 different species find hard to do ( not impossible). \n\nAll the species you talk about have been around for mns of years, chimps 5m, gorillas 8m, and then were separated within the species sometimes geographically. ( with chimps with was the congo river, that split the caused common chimp, and bonobo chimp)\n\nSo although we look quite different, underneath we aren't.", " > What defines a species? What is enough to make one species of animal classified separately from the rest?\n\nThat's the crux of the issue. The word is a mess. Some people will tell you animals that can't interbreed, but that's only one common separating factor, and not the whole story. For instance, you have ring species where geographically remote members of the species cannot interbreed, but some other member 'in the middle' can breed with both. How many species is that? 3? 2? 1? You've got an entire kingdom that reproduces asexually. So they don't even have sex and breed. How many species is that, 1? Eleventy bajillion? You've got animals we already consider separate species, that can breed together. Oops?!\n\nThe main thing to bear in mind is that the differences between humans are very minor. Skin color? We've got all kinds of colored cats, but they're still 'domestic cat.' \n\nA white man from Portugal and a white man from Siberia may have more genetic differences between them, than a white man and a black man. After all, interracial marriages can produce children we consider to be one race, or the other. That means you can have someone with half the genetic code of someone else, and we consider them a different race. And their kid could be identified as the other race too. Does a distinction that can flip flop in a single generation make any sense? Of course not.\n\nWhat I'm getting at, ultimately, is that the way we classify race is very very arbitrary, just differences we think \"look\" important, but which have no particularly special place of importance in our genetics. ", "We have not had enough genetic isolation to become different species. We are only very marginally different in phenotypes but can still produce fertile offspring when we have sex. \n\nIn general to be a separate species they have to be unable to consistently have fertile offspring. If they can have fertile offspring they are just different variants of the same species. Within humans we call this races, within dogs and other domesticated animals we call it breeds, within wild animals we tend to call them sub-species. ", "One definition used in high school biology for a species is: \"A group of individuals who can and do interbreed of their own accord and produce fertile offspring\"\n\nHumans fit that definition just fine.", "There used to be different species of hominids/ns - species like neanderthals and denovians (although they did interbreed with modern humans) as well as the more obvious homo habilis, homo erectus, etc...", "Becausr all human races can pork each other real hard until they produce mix raced babies. With different species porking each other  you either get nothing, or sub species that are sterile. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6l215q", "title": "why did humans start shaving?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l215q/eli5_why_did_humans_start_shaving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djqi39z", "djqj3sv", "djql5f5"], "score": [17, 13, 31], "text": ["That's impossible to say for certain, it's been millennia since we started shaving. The ancient Greeks and Romans did it for combat as a measure against opponents grabbing their hair. The Egyptians copied their behaviour. But I doubt that was the first time people shaved. I guess the very first person to shave did it for the aesthetics, but since it's not even known when this was it's unlikely it'll ever be known why that person did it.", "The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is probably the oldest known written book, refers to shaving as a way in which humans distinguish themselves from beasts. I would guess that the EOG is probably sniffing at the right historical tree and that for early man shaving was a spiritual exercise.", "I think at the very beginning stands hygiene: You can easily get rid of lice by shaving, this \"cleaning\" aspect is especially true if you are in an area with little water so washing is hard.\n\nStarting from that you have \"fashion\", which is responsible for all kinds of odd behaviour you cannot explain.\n\nAs soon as you have a society where you show that you do not have to spend your day working for life but have time for other things (you are \"rich\" or \"noble\" or whatever it is in the current society called) tending after your body (muscles, cleanlyness, clothing and of course hair, makeup, ..., and beard) becomes a thing you can do to \"show off\" and what you can \"afford\". Again, fashion does hit and also embraces beards. There are many signs of a higher social status, as brighter skin (not working outside all day), soft hands (not working at all), fancy clothing, fancy hair, etc... beards (in general or the lack of one) are just part of that.\n\nThe above is also true for soldiers etc, as others have stated. Discipline is, even in modern armies, tied to how soldiers tend to their body. That is first true to keep up the fighting ability, but also discipline and self-image. \n\nI read a theory that the modern view on \"super clean shaven\" of the modern man started both with the industrialised cheap razor, so everyone could afford it, as well as with the first World War, where people liked to be *very* cleanly shaven so the gas mask would sit as tight as possible. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3i10px", "title": "why are stimulants used to treat adhd?", "selftext": "What is happening in the brain and how does the medication alter it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i10px/eli5_why_are_stimulants_used_to_treat_adhd/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuccc0f", "cuccet3", "cuccstf", "cucd0tf", "cuce42k", "cuce9pw", "cucf24a", "cuch4b0", "cuciiwx", "cucj43d", "cucjd72", "cuckdq8", "cucke1i", "cucl12f", "cucl219", "cuclekc", "cuclga9", "cuclz3w", "cucngdh", "cucnvc4", "cucoeby", "cucohz2", "cucoz1k", "cucpah4", "cucqqlg", "cucrcel", "cucrznx", "cucs2jq", "cucsi9i", "cucsomt", "cucsrda", "cuctsxs", "cucv92i", "cucw6yr", "cucwmel", "cud02sk", "cud2l0p", "cud84fo", "cuddi8z", "cudjg6j"], "score": [955, 127, 17, 2, 11, 117, 3, 2, 2, 24, 2, 4, 3, 3, 9, 4, 15, 9, 29, 3, 7, 561, 25, 2, 12, 3, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["The dominant theory regarding adhd is that its caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain. Stimulants correct this imbalance by causing a temporary increase in the production of dopamine,  allowing the patient to focus better.\n\nEdit: the above is apparently now believed to be an outdated theory, /u/ibelieveindogs and a few other users below have offered more up to date concepts\n\nsee one example at the link below:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI've disabled reply notifications for this post, lots of people below have made corrections and shared anecdotes, and I replied to some, I wasn't expecting this to get so popular and I frankly can't be bothered to keep checking and replying. Please don't be offended if I don't reply after this edit, if you want to discuss it further there's plenty of great replies and information following my post by other people, but I'm really not interested, I just wanted to share what I was told, I'm not an expert or doctor by any means.", "Stimulants, as a whole, are not used to treat ADHD.  The medications that happen to help with the symptoms (they sure as hell do not alleviate them) also happen to be stimulants.  I have ADHD.  Caffeine is terrible for me.  I never consume it.  My medications (Adderall, Concerta, etc.) do technically raise my resting heart beat, but they help me to simply \"zone out\" and focus on one thing at at a time.  Without the medication, I could never read a short paper in a room full of people talking, let alone just coughing and making random noises.  I am always on hyper-alert.\n\nThe medication does in fact speed up my metabolic rate and makes me heat up and sweat more, but the fact that it helps me to drown out all the background noise and just focus on one topic is what is often described as the \"relaxing\" factor.", "ADHD is thought to be caused by underactivity in the frontal cortex, and thus, it is believed that stimulants such as ritalin increase activity in this part of the brain which help treat hyperactivity and lack of attention. ", "When you are really tired, you have a hard time concentrating on one thing.  People with ADHD's brains behave kind of like tired people's brains.  Stimulants help \"wake\" their brains up so they can concentrate on things better.  ", "Stimulants have a paradoxical reaction in people with ADHD. When \"normal\" people take stimulants they get wired, but when people with ADD take stimulants it actually calms them down. Meth will make someone with ADHD tired.\n\nSources: Psych degree and Rehab.", "I've had ADHD since I was 7 years old, and I'm 26 now. I've been taking Adderall for a very, very long time. I can honestly say that it's very different for each person, so each individual situation can be catered to. For a majority of people with ADHD, stimulants affect them different than other people. For example, if a person without the disorder were to take Adderall, they would probably talk a lot, get really excited, bounce off the walls, etc.\n\n\n\nBut when I take my Adderall, I get very quiet, I don't talk, and I don't engage in unnecessary conversation with people.  You can obviously see how stimulants help me in this aspect. It literally forces my focus, and I have yet to meet someone else who doesn't have ADHD that has my same kind of reaction to stimulants.", "I've been on Dexamphetamine for a very long time. It helps tremendously with the concentration element of ADHD, but in no way with the anxiety or stress parts. \n\nMedicinal cannabis has been a brilliant treatment. Which I can look forward to being legal in Australia in 2098.", "I heard that if you have ADHD, medications with pseudophedrine in them (such as Advil Cold  &  Sinus) will make you feel more \"relaxed\" and \"focused\", and that this is a good way to see whether you might have it and should go talk to a doctor. Is that true?", "ADHD makes all the boring stuff you have to get through to live a responsible life extra unbearable. The extra shot of dopamine the meds provide tricks your brain into thinking whatever you're occupied with is actually somewhat interesting. Any stimulants or lifestyle changes that increase energy help because you need extra mental discipline to fight the symptoms and that gets tiring quickly.\n\nI'm in the process of weaning off Adderall because it didn't help much and has negative personality and physical effects. Trying to make my environment more stimulating by changing careers and trying to increase physical stamina with exercise. I have the inattentive type + fatigue with no known medical explanation so this is probably a fool's errand, but long-term stimulants use is no good either, would rather have that a tool for short periods of overwork if my career requires it.", "I have been diagnosed with ADHD hyperactive with impulsivity three times, maybe four, I can't actually remember. Doctors have been telling my parents I need to be on amphetamines since I was 13 years old. And the difference between me being off meds and on them is pretty stark. \n\nOff medication it's as though my mind and ability to concentration are susceptible to the most minor distractions. I could be in a class lecture about something I'm deeply interested in, hear the ac click on, and I'll spend the next ten minutes wondering how the ac unit in the building works, how's it's plumbed, how much air it has to move, and how much refrigerant it must take to cool a college building. When I was a teenager a piece of music could come on while I was driving, and if I really enjoyed it I would just inexplicably start hauling ass, and occasionally try to match my up shifts and down shifts to the tempo. It's a nightmare when I play guitar because I'll try to learn a song, think it sounds like something else, and then start trying to play that, until I'm reminded of something else. If I hear a door open I frequently start wondering about how the lever works. If I hear a car pass in the distance with a loud exhaust I will try to figure out the engine configuration, (was that a V6 or I6) often in the middle of a conversation. \n\nIt's like reading the first paragraph of a wikipedia page and clicking on the first link that follows in perpetuity. \n\nOn medication the crazy and intruding distractions are reduced to almost non-existence, and I can at least ignore ordinary stuff that would normally set my mind wandering. Although my friends complain that I seem irritable. One friend calls me \"Angry LAULitics\" when Im on them. But Im not actually angry, Im just frustrated because I see and can focus on problems I can't fix when I decide to zero in on them. I think I only seem irritable because I have less tolerance for small talk and bullshit when I'm medicated. If you want to tell me a story about a specific event, you had better get to the point quick, and not spend 15 minutes giving me a backstory or I'm going to inevitably and perhaps rudely ask you \"Are these details relevant to the story?\" Medication makes me from my perspective, feel hyper efficient, but I suspect, that in some sense this is what normal *is* to people without the disorder.\n\nI actually use ADHD to my advantage sometimes. I came up with a strategy in college when I couldn't afford my meds, that if I wanted to force myself stay on subject I would read articles or the wiki page about whatever the class was discussing so I could put it in a larger context. By loading my brain with an additional relevant source of stimulation it helped keep me from thinking about pointless shit, like how the desks could be better designed or arranged, or how shitty and unreliable dry erase markers are most of the time, and what could be done to fix them.\n\nADHD is weird, I still don't know what it is exactly, or all of it's ramifications, because I've had it my entire life. Hell Im not even sure if I have a disorder because this is a *normal* frame of reference to me. But I know it makes me absurdly curious about mundane things, which isn't a bad thing in of itself, in fact its actually quite helpful at times; but when your interest in mundane stuff takes precedence over shit you need to be able to force yourself to focus on thats when it becomes an issue worthy of medication. It's like being locked into a state of perpetual and often annoying curiosity about whatever is most stimulating moment by moment. \n\nI also like caffeine a lot, but mixing that with adderall is too much. Caffeine is my go to if I don't have my medication, and I drink about 4-6 cups of coffee in an hour or two to get dialed in.\n\n", "My psychiatrist, who relies heavily on 2 minute diagnoses, decided I had ADHD and prescribed Dexedrine. I do have ADHD-like symptoms,  but that drug made it feel like time was standing still, and I felt completely paralyzed on it. I felt nearly suicidal,  so I stopped taking it. I don't get what it was supposed to accomplish. ", "because curing the disease with genetic testing is not as profitable as giving some one speed and turning them into a zombie, and then a drug addict when they mature. \n\n/source.... i was raised thinking i had adhd, and on Ritalin... grew up in the system... eventually had genetic testing and treated the CBS mutation i had....all the symptoms went away.... and can be recreated at will if I play with the variables  that effect the CBS mutation.  its actually very neato... i can induce low level mania at will and stop it when ever i want.\n\n", "The part of my brain that helps me pay attention to one thing is too quiet sometimes. When I take my stimulant, it makes the part of brain that helps all of my brain work together louder than the other parts that keep distracting me. ", "Sorry what? I got distracted\n\nSource: ADHD", "Because, for a person with ADHD, the front part of the brain is a little slow. This isn't good, so the brain compensates by speeding up all the brain, which makes the front thinking part work like it should, but the rest of the brain is working too hard. This drug speeds up that part of the brain, letting the rest of the brain relax. ", "ADHDer here...  I honestly forgot the medication I took when I was younger/I didn't even care... but I recently (within the past two years) started taking medicine for it again to help my focus.  They started a mix of Adderall and Ritalyn... though I hated every moment of it. It made me super uneasy and filled me with anxiety, also lost all apetite. Though recently my new Dr. switched me to Bupropion and it works wonders, no anxiety, feel relaxed but focused, and hungry like the wolf. I take it in the morning with some coffee and I am a focusing machine.\n\nThis has nothing to do with your question, but I... I dunno just wrote it down... so enjoy", "It takes a certain kind of effort to focus. Most people don't notice this until they start to get fatigued from working too long. \n\nPeople with ADHD don't notice it because our brains don't flex that way.  Certain stimulants can help us focus normally, because they kinda \"prime the pump\" for that process.\n\nIt's worth noting that for folks like me who were never treated until adulthood, having the power to focus is no replacement for the lifetime of practice we missed out on.", "ADHDer here. You know how once you get in the groove of doing something, it becomes easier? How if you're on a run, the first step is the hardest?\n\nWhen I'm not on my meds, *every* step feels like the first step. I literally *don't have the ability* to get \"in the groove\" of working on anything. There is no positive feedback from making a little bit of progress, and in fact, I have no feeling of \"making progress\" as I work, unless I change gears and go quantitatively check how far along I am in whatever task I'm working on.\n\nI can't sit still because I'm always \"taking the first step\"- I'm always fidgeting and squirming around because I'm always getting comfortable in my chair for the first time. Most people might shuffle around in their chair a little bit to get comfortable before settling down, but I never settle down.\n\nAnother thing is that it's very difficult to filter out which details and sensations are important. Without meds, the very act of existing is like drinking from a firehose- way too much input to handle. At this very moment, you are probably actively filtering out 1) your physical tactile input stimuli associated with sitting or standing or whatever position your body has been in for the past few minutes 2) irrelevant audio input (there almost always is something - a fan humming, a train going by in the distance, background music) 3) irrelevant taste input (yes, you are ALWAYS tasting something) 4) irrelevant visual input (your eyes are probably focused on a screen of sorts) 5) irrelevant olfactory input (yes, you are ALWAYS smelling something...even if it's a \"neutral\" smell).\n\nWithout meds, I am bombarded by all of that at once, because I can't filter what stimuli I pay attention to. I'm hyperactive, so instead of paying attention to none of it (zoning out), I pay attention to ALL of it!\n\nEnter stimulant medication. Disclaimer time... the explanation to follow might not be totally medically accurate, but it explains my experience from the ADHDer's perspective: You'd think that stimulants make my fidgety, going-over-everything-too-fast-to-pay-attention manner of thinking even worse, but the stimulants help me to have a longer attention span. That means I can really get comfortable in my chair *the first time*, so I don't have to keep doing it. And I don't keep noticing how uncomfortable I am, because I'm locked onto whatever I'm trying to focus on (i.e. I'm not distracted by the sensory influx of my body constantly pressing against a hard chair). When I do math with meds, I have a long enough attention span to switch back and forth between the plan and whatever step I'm carrying out, without getting lost as to where I am in the problem (without meds, I get lost often and have to start over from scratch whenever I get lost).", "My father is one of the leading psychiatrists who specializes in the treatment of ADHD, specifically in adults. There are a lot of misconceptions about all of this, especially the mechanism by which psychostimulants alleviate the symptoms of ADHD. There was a video posted awhile ago about an explanation of Adderall might work: by keeping dopamine in the synapse longer . I showed it to my dad and he immediately said \"that idea was dismissed in the 70's. This isn't true or even all that modern.\" \n\n\nThe main question should be \"why would a stimulant help a person with ADHD slow down and focus? How does that make sense?\" And on the surface, it doesn't. But what if, and give me some time to explain this, the medications didn't act as stimulants? What if they acted as something else? As some background, out of all the stimulants we have at our disposal, there are only two that have any effectiveness in treating ADHD: amphetmamines and methylphenidate (and methamphetamine, but that is usually a last option treatment for obvious reasons). These molecules have a property called chirality, which means that even though they're connected the same way, they are oriented differently in space, like mirror images. The most common analogy is the human hand: they are exactly the same but mirror images (a right hand won't fit in a left glove). Anyway, only 3 of these forms have shown benefit for those with ADHD: both R- and S-amphetamine, and R-threo-methylphenidate. So, amongst all the stimulants we know, only two have shown any benefit for ADHD treatment and, of those two, only three of the six isomers show any efficacy. So we're talking a very narrow range here. \n\n\nNow, if these drugs worked by central nervous system stimulation, theoretically any stimulant should work right? But they don't. Case in point: caffeine. Anyone with ADHD will tell you caffeine doesn't help. So what else could be happening?  The theory my father subscribes to is one of a so-called \"replacement model,\" where people with ADHD are deficient in a naturally occurring molecule and the medication will mimic that molecule as a replacement. For instance, there is a testing program called TOVA which is used to test a person's attention. Patients with ADHD will usually score very low when compared to the general populace. However, if you give the patient 5 mg of an ADHD medication, their scores jump. Give them 10 mg, it will jump even more. Give them 15 mg, even more. Remarkably, these jumps are linear in fashion. This is where it gets interesting: it only happens up to a certain point. After a certain dosage, the scores begin to drop off dramatically. If a person's optimal dose is 20mg, by the time they're taking 40mg, they're actually doing worse than they were doing without any medication at all. If they worked by a stimulation mechanism, then the more you gave somebody the better they would do. But this isn't the case. This is similar to a person with diabetes who doesn't produce enough insulin. If you don't give them enough, it won't be effective. Give them too much, there will be health hazards. Give them just the right amount and they will function normally. And this is what ADHD medications do: allow the patient to function like a person with a typical nervous system. Pills don't give skills. They are a means by which to even the playing field.\n\n\nSo, if we assume that they act as a replacement/supplement for a naturally occurring molecule, where does it act? A lot of people think it is the prefrontal cortex which is associated with attention and so this would be the place that ADHD medications operate. But this may not be true either. It a very interesting experiment performed in the early 1990s (I'm a little iffy on the time period, I can find the paper if people are interested), a doctor was interested in where the main area of action was for methylphenidate. To determine this, she \"radiolabeled\" methylphenidate, meaning that one atom in the molecule was replaced by a radioactive isotope and when it decayed, it could be detected measured. After creating this special version of methylphenidate, she injected it directly into the carotid artery of volunteers. What she found was that it accumulated almost exclusively in a part of the brain called the corpus striatum. According to Wikipedia, the corpus striatum is associated with \"multiple aspects of cognition, including motor and action planning,decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception.\" All of these things play a role in ADHD. So if the ADHD brain is deficient in a molecule that acts upon the corpus striatum, it's activity will decrease and all of the above aspects will be impaired.\n\n\nThis is a very basic version of this. It's currently 3am so I don't have many of these sources in front of me, but if people are interested, I might be able to get my dad to write up a full discussion of this. It goes much deeper and gets way more complex, but since  this is ELI5 and I'm tired, this will do for now.\n", "Stumbled upon this while high as fuck on speed. I find it's a great buzz that doesn't necessarily distort your senses as much as it heightens them. Prolonged use tends to wear you down but the initial use tends to make me very sharp and able to articulate what would normally be difficult to express thoughts and opinions. Although sometimes it can lead to excessive stimulation which can derail the positive effects seen from a smaller dosage.", "I don't know any of the real science based theory of how it works. I can tell you I'm prescribed it and I take it as I'm supposed to. The best way I have ever been able to explain how it works with me is to imagine you're thinking about 10 different things at once. Not like a scatter brained schizophrenic way but like maybe a normal person would feel if maybe they frank to much caffiene. Able to focus on one idea for a second then another pops in maybe you're a little chattery. That was my life for awhile. Once I got an adderal script that normal way of thinking and functioning changed for me. The way I can best describe it was like once I could tell my addys kicked in I felt like a giant broom swept my brain clean of everything but the immediate important thing. Here's the thing though. I experimented with alot. Especially during college. Any amp was my fav. So like coke, kitchen speed even just dirty stuff like psuedophedrine (it wasn't so tightly controlled back then). the weird thing was while all those things made my friends grind their teeth, act creepy and talk to much I instead felt more and more steady the more I did (there was a tipping point o found out one terrible night). But essentially all amps made me actually feel in control and confident. I would stop second guessing I said to people and was so confident. I felt like it was my \"nutty professor\". Those nights were great and like everyone else that has taken amps know I could drink like a monster.  But what killed me was besides my prescribed Adderall dose any other hype drugs I took I had absolutely god awful come downs. Most often those super depressed two or so days when you felt like shit bit were smart enough to know it would pass. But when I took the \"sketchy\" kitchen crank or psuedophedrine I would become like a different person and go through like a 2 day paranoia period where I'd convince myself I had blacked out and committed a bad crime like robbing a bank. I only needed like 3 of those come downs before I quit all amps except my prescribed \n\n\nEdit: this post looks like im off my meds lol. I think for people who need it (adderal/ritalin etc.) does have the real affect of dropping dopamine when our brains aren't good at doing it. Science has figured out that Adderall is the safest way to make it a therapeutic dose. My explorations into elicit drugs that also elicit dopamine dumps always ended in dangerous and scary withdrawals.", "My cardiologist sister explained it best...\n\nFor reasons we have yet to fully understand, the ADHD brain is demanding an abnormal amount of stimulation all the time. So whenever you're not being bombarded with stimulation (sitting in class, a meeting, or doing repetitive tasks), your brain will start sending you signals demanding that you either find something stimulating, or start creating it yourself, leaving you no other choice but to focus only on things that stimulate.\n\nGiving an ADHD brain a chemical stimulant is feeding it the stimulation it's demanding, which literally frees you from having to seek it out or hyperactively create it yourself. Once the brain gets what it needs, it leaves you alone, free to suddenly CHOOSE whether you want to pay attention and focus or not.\n\n**TL;DR: An ADHD brain is constantly DEMANDING an abnormal amount of stimulation. Giving it a chemical stimulant frees you from that constant demand.**", "ELI5 Answer:\n\n**Orchestra and Conductor**\n\nIn the ADHD brain the orchestra is playing, but the conductor is asleep.  Stimulant medication wakes up the conductor to get the orchestra back under control.\n", "Stimulants make you more motivated to do useless shit the majority has  conditioned you to believe you need to do. ", "Literal ELI5 for the curious :\n\n   Imagine a class room,  with a dozen of noisy active kids,  a good- tough- teacher is the only thing stopping these brats from wrecking the class room,  \n\nteacher is very tired today , and  he naps on his desk,  kids goes CRAZY!,  Principal comes in, wakes the teacher, and situation is under control again. \n\nClassroom : brain. \n\nTeacher: cerebral cortex(higher functions). \n\nKids: subcortical functions. \n\nPrinciple : stimulant. ", "I live in Australia.  And in the area I live in there aren't any doctors that treat or believe in ADHD at all.  I'd have to travel 2 hours and pay around $1000 just to prove that I have ADHD when I was diagnosed as a child.  It's more then that, when I was a kid I showed such typical ADD results I would get all these requests to go into studies, the belief in Australia is once you hit adult hood you instantly grow out of it.\n\nAs a full time student/part time working independent.  I literally can't afford it unless I save.  But the amount of shit you have to go through just to get an appointment is INSANE that it is deterant enough.  Begging doctors to write stuff etc.  poving that you aren't a drug addict.  Sitting through doctors lying to your face when they know you know they are lying.\n\nIt's like trying to convince you're sane in a mental asylum in the 19th century.\n\nEdit:spelling.", "If you look at the different explanations here, you see that they don't add up. The top comment doesn't really explain anything: \"ADHD is a lack of dopamine and therefore it can be treated by adding dopamine\".\n\nBut what is dopamine?\n\nWhy is there a lack of it in ADHD?\n\nYou see stuff about how the front part of the brain isn't active enough. But what is the function of the front part? What does it mean that it isn't active?\n\nI think these explanations are hollow, and I believe this is because our understanding of ADHD is hollow as well. Methylphenidates are working really, really well. Discovering why they work so well is harder than experimenting to find that they work. That being said, I think there are some clues that can help connect the dots.\n\n**The amygdala**\n\nThose who have heard of this structure may refer to it as \"the thing that controls fear\". That's totally off the mark, though. And it's such a boring explanation for the fascinating almond-shaped structure that is the amygdala. While the function of the amygdala remains, to this day, disputed, it is obviously related to what we think of as willpower. If you remove one of the two parts of your friend's amygdala^1, she will become lazy. Ask her to do the dishes, and she will say \"meh\". She won't study, do chores, or do anything where the result requires her to wait. She will also not be willing to make a real effort. She will choose the easy way out instead.\n\nShe will behave as if she was running low on dopamine.\n\n**The locus coeruleus**\n\nAnatomical terms often sound pretty intimidating, but they are really just descriptions of what things look like. This one translates to \"blue spot\" because it's a spot that looks sorta, well, blue. Again, this structure is known for something boring: arousal. If you look beyond that, it becomes much more interesting. This blue spot fires a signal^2 whenever something weird happens. It tells almost the whole brain that \"something happened that we totally didn't expect, guys\". Now, surprise can be either good or bad, depending on the circumstances. When you're watching a movie, you would scratch your eyes out if it was completely predictable. You want some surprise, or else you will be bored. Yet, too much surprise is awful. It's confusing and strange and scary.\n\nWhat would happen if you started messing around with the blue spot? Well, if you partly removed it, you would almost always be bored. Life would feel like the most boring and predictable thing ever. You'd run around trying to make something interesting happen.\n\nYou would be hyperactive.\n\n**The basal ganglia**\n\nThe name of this set of structures really demonstrates how neuroanatomical naming conventions tend to be pretty banal. Basal is fine; it just means it's at the base of the forebrain. Ganglia, though, is pretty dumb. When a lot of neurons are clustered together and seem to serve some common function, they are called a ganglion, or ganglia. But we don't call them that in the brain. In the brain the very same concept is called a nucleus, or nuclei. So this name just means \"it's sort of a lot of different little things and it's at the base\".\n\nStill, this is a very, very interesting place. This is the only place in the brain that the locus coeruleus *doesn't* signal to. Why? Because it is responsible for the exact opposite function: signalling when something happened that you *wanted* to make happen. It remembers what you did when you did something that made something good happen. In other words, it is responsible for habits. And, as you probably guessed, dopamine is heavily involved.\n\nWhat is the deal with dopamine? Again, people tend to only know something off the mark and boring. What's with this tendency? Well, anyhow, people think of dopamine as the \"feel good\"-chemical or the \"pleasure hormone\". This can be ruled out easily: many drug addicts take narcotics that increase dopamine in a certain neural pathway^3, but without experiencing any pleasure. At all. They're miserable before they take them, and miserable after. Which is because dopamine is not about pleasure. What is dopamine about, then? Expectation.\n\nDopamine codes for what you expect will happen (how good or bad something will be), and makes you do more of the stuff that leads to good things. It is a confirmation signal that you are doing the right thing, and that you should do more of it. Which is why doing drugs that stimulate the reward pathway makes you take more drugs that stimulate the reward pathway.\n\n**Prefrontal cortex**\n\nThis is the thing we are the most proud of, for some reason. Laymen and scientists alike rave about this part of our cortex, but it is completely useless in isolation. It needs the amygdala. It needs the locus coeruleus. It needs the basal ganglia. It also needs other structures that I haven't mentioned. It's a really needy structure, to be honest. Still, it's a pretty sweet thing.\n\nHow can I explain how it works? Well, it's in fact pretty simple. It lets you move around. \"Oh so it lets you walk?\" No! That's not the idea. Moving around physically is fine and dandy, but there's another place that is often more interesting: your mind. And in fact, moving around in your mind works exactly the same way as moving around physically. It's just that we call it \"thinking\".\n\n**The cerebellum**\n\n\"Oh for crying out loud!\" I hear you say. This is the last structure, I promise! Hang, on this one is pretty cool. To put everything in perspective, I need to talk about this one a little bit as well, or the big picture will be incomplete.\n\nScientists used to treat this structure with a \"meh\" attitude. But that was only until they realized that it is maybe the most important one of them all. In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious: there are more neurons in the cerebellum than in the rest of the brain combined. Yes, you read that correctly. It takes up only 10 percent of the space but has more than 50 percent of the processing power. While the cerebellum is still subject to hot debate, it is clear that it is responsible for timing. With the cerebellum, you get clumsy. You walk clumsily, and you think clumsily. The cerebellum makes your behavior and thoughts flow smoothly rather than tumble along awkwardly.\n\n\n**Conclusion**\n\nWhat do we get when we put all of this together? We get explanations for the commonly observed behavior of people with ADHD, and insights into why stimulants work so well.\n\nThe amygdala is, as was mentioned, important for willpower. A way to show how this fits together with the rest is to say that the amygdala is about uncertainty. It motivates you to go from \"I don't want to be in this state I'm in now\" to to doing something about it. So the locus coeruleus sends a signal that you are surprised. This is also uncertainty. It alerts the amygdala to the fact that you are uncertain. The prefrontal cortex explores your mind to find a way to remove this uncertainty. The basal ganglia receives signals from the prefrontal cortex about what we should do in the form of *expectations*. The logic is as follows: the locus coeruleus tells the brain that there is uncertainty detected. The amygdala doesn't like uncertainty. The prefrontal cortex offers a way out of uncertainty. It tells the basal ganglia \"I expect to do such and such\". Since the basal ganglia's job is to do what is expected (habit) and to monitor whether it manages to do this through dopamine, it tries to reduce the uncertainty. The cerebellum makes sure the timing for all this is right, so it flows uninterrupted.\n\nIn ADHD, every single one of these structures are affected. And if you postulate that ADHD is about reduced dopamine and/or norepinephrine signalling, it all makes a whole lot of sense.\n\nThe inattention-part of ADHD can be explained thusly: every strategy the prefrontal cortex comes up with will be registered as failures. Because of this, the amygdala is pissed off. Everything you try to do fails in some way, and you can't control yourself. The rest of your brain won't \"listen\" to your prefrontal plans, because in their experience, they always fall flat.\n\nThe hyperactivity part can be explained like this: because the locus coeruleus is never telling you that you are surprised, you are constantly bored and starved of excitement. You run around looking for something interesting. Something to do. You run around physically, you run around in your mind. Always looking for excitement, but rarely finding it. Sitting still is torture. It is inhumanely boring.\n\n\nNow, this is obviously not a complete description or explanation, but it helps me to think about ADHD, and I hope it is of help to others as well.\n\n^1. The basolateral complex.\n\n^2. Noradrenaline/Norepinephrine.\n\n^3. The ventral-tegmental-nucleus accumbens pathway, or VTA-nA pathway, mesolimbic pathway, or simply: the reward pathway.", "Shameless plug for /r/ADHD. \n\nIt may seem like a lot of ranting at first, but when you read some of the answers from some folds who are suffering from it, it helps with an understanding. ", "Psychologist here. ADHD people have an underperforming frontal lobe, which is responsible for things like concentration and impulse control. A stimulant like Ritalin boosts the frontal lobe functioning back to a normal level, thereby increasing impulse control and concentration. I think other answers in this thread have been a little off base. ", "I'll explain it in common terms: \nStimulants are used because the brain is taking in so many stimuli that speeding it up allows it to receive and process all the stimuli and then focus on the stimuli chosen.  \n\nSo instead of bouncing from one stimulus to another, you can take them all in quickly and not have to devote brain power to each one individually. \n\nMake sense?\n\n(I have ADHD and have asked my doctor/ dad who is a doctor.)", "let me explain the big problem with the \"dopamine imbalance\" theory. If this was true, the absolute worst thing to do to treat a dopamine imbalance would be to introduce a drug that causes dopamine levels to fluctuate. That is like seeing a see saw and saying it is unbalanced and the way to balance it is to set it bouncing it up and down. Its stupid. Everyone who reads this, fails to understand, gets upset and downvotes it is stupid. ", "Cousin is autistic and has ADHD. I just asked his Habilitive Therapist this.\n\nShe says it's because the synapses in our minds fire off, causing thoughts and actions and such. When you have ADHD, these synapses misfire and rapidfire, and often they don't hit the other synapses like they're supposed to. This causes erratic, distracted behavior, thoughts, and movements.\n\nStimulants correct these synaptic discharges and make them able to complete their connections.", "I'm a mid 30s adult who has dealt with ADHD his entire life. I always resisted medication because I didn't feel like I needed meds to change a part of me that was just another part of what made me who I am. I got a promotion at work that required me to be very detail oriented and to have to sit through multiple meetings and technical discussions. I began to have real difficulty keeping on task and being able to function at a higher level of demand, so I talked to my wife and my doctor about options. I'm now on a 20mg daily dose of adderall XR (that's the 24 hour extended release version) and the change is amazing. The best way to describe it is that everything still moves at 900 mph in my head but now I can pick and choose which items I lock down on and use in a situation. ", "Thanks for this post! (This is a throwaway account)\n\nI am in my late 30's and while I would say I have always been on the depressed side, low energy, no motivation, I never considered myself \"depressed.\" The last couple years I have had a couple instances where the depression has significantly taken over my life. I finally decided I need to seek help and ended up seeing a wonderful Psychologist. Within 15-20 minutes of him asking questions and me explaining my life he determined I have one of two diagnosis. I either have ADHD of the inattentive type or an information processing disorder. I remember sitting there and feeling relief, it felt good having someone identify what it is I have struggled with up until that point. \n\nAs a child I was able to function just above the radar and do well in school. As I got older it became harder and most of my mental energy went towards making myself \"fit\" in and seem normal. Eventually I became so tired and drained I developed a coping mechanism - Avoidance. The past few years I have gradually sunk lower into depression as my life consists of work, and then going home to try and be a good husband and father. I have no energy left for anything else and can barely manage those things...\n\nBack to the present. I am awaiting a referral to see a local doctor who specializes in ADHD. My best case scenario is I have ADD (not the information processing disability for which there is no meds or cure) and we find meds that work and allow me to live. To reach my potential at work, or find a new career path. To be a better husband. A better father. Also, to be able to network and have friends again. \n\nAgain, thanks for this insightful post. Wish me luck!\n", "ADHD primarily Innatentive here, it's almost like ADHD with some depressive symptoms. Didn't get caught in school because hyperactivity was down and I was decently smart. One hour of work was equivalent to three hours for others. The buildup in order to do that hour was horrible, and made me frustrated because I knew I was capable of more.\n\nWorking on a paper due the next day was like playing one of Jigsaw's games. Graduated in physics with a 3.58. Would I do it over? No, but I wish I had gone on meds from the start. I was better in a crunch because I also had anxiety, and when the going got tough, my body would self medicate with some of the transmitters adderall helps to increase.\n\nOur brains are like a computer with an overclocked processor on a 32 bit OS. I would have to be told three and four times what to do, only to forget when I got to the task. Instructions were the bane of my existence (didn't help ADHD also causes you to misplace things, like grading rubrics).\n\nMy therapist told me the neurotranmisters help to stimulate metabolic processes in the parts of the brain with low activity (prefrontal cortex mostly). This is why we can focus on something we enjoy, have impulse problems, and only think about our interests. It's like only using the instinct driven portions our brains. Men are diagnosed more than women due to our hunter-gatherer hard wiering, that's not to say women have it less, but their symptoms are less apparent.\n\nAdderall allows us to use the logical/decision making portions of our brain to greater effect, as well as areas where we have less natural ability. Motivation is easier to muster, and activities outside our interests fell less like banging our head against a wall.", "I had to give a 15 minute presentation on Adderall when I was in college; its been almost two years now but i remember most of it. Adderall is prescribed to those with ADHD and ADD, and this is how I remember it working: your 30 mlg extended release capsule is composed of 25% dextroamphetamine and 75% levoamphetamine. The dextro (25%) does two things: it closes off some of the dopamine receptors in the brain which causes a surplus of dopamine to build in the synapse, as well as boost the levels your brain is already making. The levo (75%) also causes a major boost in dopamine release as well as increases your heart rate and blood flow. So your brain is getting more blood flow and at the same time feeding on this larger-than-normal dopamine release, its similar to plugging the drain and turning the faucet on. The result is the feeling of elevated mental sharpness and the giddy apprehensive feeling you get when you know something good is about to happen. I know this because I stayed up a whole week on Adderall while researching Adderall and writing the most in depth study of my life about Adderall. ", "Thank you for this thread.  One of my 10 yr old sons has ADHD and he's been on ritalin for 2 yrs.  I am always looking for information on how others act and react to see what kinds of adjustments I need to make to help him out.\n\nFor him, we noticed the issues before he was 1 yr old.  His behaviorial issues had not responded to therapy and it was a night and day difference when we decided to put him on meds.  His reading ability shot straight up and he's outstanding at math and he has friends.  There are still bumps with behavior problems but not as extreme as they were previously.  I am glad he is able to be calm and interact well with others when he is taking medication.\n\nIt's hard looking on the outside to try to help him because I don't experience what he does.  These explanations and anecdotes help a lot.", "**ELI5: Why are stimulants used to treat ADHD?**\n\n   Late to the party OP, sorry. But I felt it was important to answer your question. I am 58, have ADHD, and have been studying this disorder intensely for over 10 years. My goal is never to present the \u201cright\u201d solutions to others, it is only to share my experience, and the hope that others may benefit. Based on that, I would like to share my thoughts about what, and how I might tell a 5 year old child about their ADHD, and how a treatment such as stimulants might work.\n\n-------\n\n  And, this is similar to what I told my 11 year old son when he was diagnosed with ADHD and was prescribed Adderall - which I was also taking at the time. The following example is also a roughed out excerpt from a book about Adult ADHD that I have been working on for several years. It is still in development *[please forgive me, I promise this is NOT self-promotion.]*\n\n-------\n\n  If you have a young child with ADHD, who doesn\u2019t understand what is happening - and why they may have to take stimulant medication \u2013 please consider using this story example when attempting to help them cope with the concept. I\u2019ve been there - both with my son, and with myself. This may be long, but it\u2019s worth taking the time to share this with a young child who is almost certain to feel confused and frustrated about why they struggle so much, or why adults yell at them, or why they feel so different from the other kids at school, or why they feel stupid, or why they have no friends, or why they have to repeat a grade, or why it is so hard to read and study, or why they have to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist and, of course, why they may have to take stimulant medication.\n\n-------\n\n  As you read the following explanation - that I believe a 5 year old might understand - please think about how you might change or distill it to be more effective or appropriate for your own child, and in your own situation. I sincerely hope it can help someone deal more effectively with this incredibly frustrating and misunderstood disorder.\n\n-------\n\n  *\"Son / Daughter, I want to talk with you about your ADHD and about the medication the doctor wants to prescribe. But first, I wanted to tell you a story. Is that OK? Great, try and listen closely. But if you need to get up, move, feel bored or wanting to do something else, we can put the story on pause for a minute while you do it. I\u2019ll even help. But then we must come right back to the story, because it\u2019s really important. Is that a deal? Thanks. \nOK, so imagine tons of really big traffic intersections with 1000\u2019s of roads entering them \u2013 and they are extremely busy all the time. AND, all of the cars going through them are being driven by people traveling to their jobs - and these are jobs which are important to keeping the world safe and healthy.*\n\n-------\n\n  *BUT, because of the unpredictable traffic that change constantly, the city had a great idea. Instead of using the normal red, yellow and green traffic signals to organize the flow of all the cars, they hired really awesome, cyborg policemen with perfect programming. By watching the changing flow of traffic over millions of years, they have become experts at deciding WHEN each car should go through the intersection AND can even tell some of the more confused drivers WHERE they are supposed to go. With the policemen\u2019s direction, the traffic moves and flows perfectly, with each car moving through the intersection without being hit, cut-off by another car, or lost in the city. Everyone gets to the right location, and arrives at their jobs at the right time, and in the right order. The cyborg traffic policemen\u2019s awesome skills allow these people to work together perfectly with all of the other workers on whom they depend. Do you understand how this works? Good!* \n\n-------\n\n  *NOW, imagine that these policemen have a spell put on them. You\u2019ve seen different spells in the movies, and heard about them in the books I\u2019ve read to you? Anyway, the spell hurt our awesome traffic cyborg policemen. All of sudden, they either slowed down a lot, stopped working, or didn\u2019t work right. Guess what happened? Yup! The traffic goes crazy. All of our drivers are still trying to get to their jobs, but most of them really don\u2019t know when they are supposed to go through the intersection, or in what order. AND NOW, the more confused drivers still don\u2019t know where to go. The people in the cars eventually get to their jobs, but mostly not at the right times or in the right order, which makes it really hard to do their jobs well \u2013 no matter how hard they try. Sometimes their work doesn\u2019t even get done at all - which is super frustrating. Does this make sense to you?  So, what do you think might help us correct this problem? You\u2019re Right! We should try and take the spell off the awesome cyborg traffic policemen so they can get back to doing their important jobs, like they were programmed to do - properly directing the cars through the intersections.*\n\n-------\n\n  *Now as you think about this story, I want you to imagine that this traffic, these intersections, and the awesome cyborg policemen are really, really tiny \u2013 and they are inside your brain, helping make things work right. Because your brain actually has really cool things like these inside it. There are millions and millions of interconnected pathways that help move electricity and important chemicals from one place to another \u2013 at super-fast speeds. These are like the roads in our story on which the people in their cars move in order to get to their jobs. BUT, like in our story, the cars have to go through intersections \u2013 which are like the connections in our brain where the electricity and chemicals pass through, which also have things like the awesome cyborg policemen who properly direct the traffic.*\n\n-------\n\n  *So, remember when you went to the doctor, and he told you that you had ADHD. He also told you that ADHD is a disorder \u2013 or problem that messes up the connections which allow electricity and chemicals to travel properly inside your brain. With ADHD, your brain works very differently than most other people. It\u2019s not always a bad thing, but it usually makes it harder for your brain - and you - to do many things that, for most people who don\u2019t have ADHD, are easier or simpler. Everyone struggles sometimes, but with ADHD, these struggles happen way more often, and usually to the point that a bunch of things in your life get much harder to do - which can even make you frustrated and sad. Have you ever felt this way?*\n\n-------\n\n  *Well, let\u2019s go back to our story. Since ADHD is a problem that messes up the connections which allow electricity and chemicals to travel properly inside your brain - what does this mean? In our story, what allowed the cars and traffic to move well? Yup, the awesome cyborg policemen at the intersections \u2013 who are like the things in the connection of your brain - through which the electricity and chemicals must travel. So, if ADHD messes that up, then that must mean that ADHD is like the spell that messed with our awesome cyborg policemen.*\n\n-------\n\n  *So, the only thing we didn\u2019t discuss in our story, was how they were going fix the awesome cyborg policemen. Well instead of going back to our story, let\u2019s keep talking about your brain, and your ADHD \u2013 which is kind of like the spell on the awesome cyborg policemen. What do you think might help allow the awesome cyborg policemen in your brain to do their jobs the way they are supposed to, and allow your traffic to move correctly? Yup! The stimulant medication that the doctor wants you to take. It helps correct that part of your brain that is like the awesome cyborg policemen. It reduces the power of the spell. Whenever you take the medication, they can do their jobs more effectively without slowing down, stopping, or directing traffic in the wrong order. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions (of course you do.) Now does it make more sense? Great!*\n\n-------\n\n  *And remember, ADHD is a very confusing disorder that almost everyone has a hard time understanding - even doctors. So, if anyone tells you that you shouldn\u2019t be taking this medication, or makes you feel guilty or bad because you are taking it, they probably haven\u2019t heard the story I just told you. And, some people may have heard the story, but don\u2019t accept it because they think they are smarter and have all the right answers. They are not smarter, and there are no \u201cright\u201d answers for everyone. The only right answers, are the ones that work right for you. But that means they would have to know you as well as we do. And they never will. And, since they don\u2019t know you as well as we do, they can\u2019t possibly know the right answers for you. Does that make sense? The other, more important thing they don\u2019t understand is that - like the cyborg policemen in our story \u2013 even when things get difficult, you will always be AWESOME! And ADHD will never change that!*\n\n--------------------------------\n\n**[FOOTNOTE: There is, however, one aspect of ADHD that I would not discuss with your 5 year old; ADHD can last a lifetime. And without a medical breakthrough, or a flexible, encouraging, positive environment in which their ADHD is understood and accepted - where they can have a happy and productive personal and work life - they may be taking their medication for a very long time.]**\n\n    Thanks for reading!  \n", "As an adult with ADHD I describe it as my brain being a television, but someone else has the remote control..  Stimulants put the remote back in my hands and help me dictate what I focus on.  It's disappointing when others treat you like it's not a true disorder and that I just need to \"grow up and discipline myself\".  People without the diagnosis don't understand how much it effects my behavior and activity. ", " Your brain is actually a bunch of different systems, that are each trying to go in a different direction and do different things. It's total chaos, like a big flock of sheep.\n  \nFortunately, we have a part of the brain - called the **executive system** - that is in charge of making sure the different parts all work together. In a way, it's like the sheep dog herding the sheep.\n  \nIn people with ADHD, the executive system can't keep up with the rest of the brain, so there's a lot of mental chaos and distraction that happens. It's like the sheep dog is sleepy and keeps falling asleep, so the sheep keep escaping.  \n  \nStimulants that treat ADHD specifically target the executive system and give it enough of a boost that it can catch up to the rest of the brain. Those stimulants are like giving coffee to the sleepy sheepdog - now it's awake and can do its job!  \n  \nSource: Have severe ADHD (combined type), spent last several years studying to understand my condition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i10px/eli5_why_are_stimulants_used_to_treat_adhd/cucra3i"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3hu2ra", "title": "Two guys in Poland are claiming they found an old Nazi train loaded with gold deep in a Polish mountain, can somebody tell me more about this and are there more WOII myths/stories like these?", "selftext": "I saw quite some articles about it on news websites like this one from the Guardian but i would like to learn more about this story or stories like this one! \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf the train is really packed with gold it would be such a nice scenario for a new Indiana Jones movie! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hu2ra/two_guys_in_poland_are_claiming_they_found_an_old/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuavabu"], "score": [64], "text": ["Well, as the article says it is a local legend, but not an entirely unsubstantiated one. \n\nThe Nazis tended to plunder and loot art and other valuables basically everywhere they went. At the beginning of the Third Reich, Hitler came up with the idea for his [F\u00fchrer Museum in Linz](_URL_1_). They wanted to fill it with treasures of the Great Masters, basically showing the superiority of the Germanic people. Art was looted basically everywhere the Nazis went (at first they only took over museums but then that turned into stealing people's personal possessions pretty quickly). In addition to the museum, Hitler and other high ranking nazi officials wanted art for their personal collections. They didn't exclusively loot art, basically anything of value was stolen (gold, jewels, books, etc). there was actually a special task force, [the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)](_URL_0_) dedicated to the looting.\n\nAs the war's destruction became parent, groups of American and British curators and art historians formed a group called the MFAA,  short for [Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives](_URL_2_). You may know of them from the film \"Monuments Men\". They were on the front lines of the war, looking for art and helping to preserve whatever they found (they also often helped preserve buildings and architecture that was damaged from the war). The Nazis had caches of loot in salt mines, castles, underground tunnels. As the Third Reich fell, they destroyed many of these caches, but the MFAA attempted to find and save any art they could. In the [Bernterode Mine](_URL_3_) they found the coffin of Frederick the Great, along with many other priceless pieces. \n\nThe MFAA kept working until 1946 but they still continued their efforts to encourage preservation of cultural goods, a policy that the US usually (and that's kind of a big usually but I'll get within the 20 year limit if I start on this) tries to uphold today. There are many pieces still unaccounted for, but those could have been destroyed, stolen, sold on the black market or maybe they're still out there. \n\nSo not crazy that there might be a train full of Nazi gold in a mine. Happened fairly often. I didn't see the movie so I can't speak to how good it was, but there are a bunch of books about the MFAA. Momuments Men- Robert Edsel and  Salt mines and castles: The discovery and restitution of looted European art by Thomas Howe are good places to start.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/20/fortune-hunters-flock-to-polish-town-after-alleged-find-of-nazi-gold-train"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.errproject.org/", "http://www.artrestitution.at/F.prerogative.html", "http://www.aaa.si.edu/exhibitions/monuments-men", "http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/2/4/the-monuments-men-cover/?page=single"]]}
{"q_id": "3nrk23", "title": "why couldn't edward snowden return to america, where he would need to face a proper and fair trial, and appeal his case until it reaches the supreme court?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nrk23/eli5_why_couldnt_edward_snowden_return_to_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvqmjp4", "cvqmll2", "cvqmu5d", "cvqopqe", "cvqpnvb", "cvqv0uo", "cvqwovq", "cvqzbfe", "cvr14t4", "cvr1zoy", "cvr2rak", "cvr2zwg", "cvr4mtu", "cvr5tiq"], "score": [5, 16, 26, 391, 6, 4, 10, 2, 161, 2, 12, 14, 4, 14], "text": [" > why couldnt Snowdens case reach the Supreme Court and a ruling in favor of Snowden\n\nSure, that *could* happen.  Or Snowden could be found guilty, have his appeal denied by the supreme court (or have them rule against him), and spend the rest of his life in prison for treason.\n\nHe clearly doesn't want to take that risk.\n\n > and/or an Amendment/Act created that would deem the activities of the NSA illegal?\n\nSuch an act would not impact Snowden, because it wouldn't make what he did legal.", "He could, but he's afraid that he would lose. Which is reasonable, seeing as he almost certainly would. \n\nEven *if* we make the incredibly generous assumption that there's no corruption in the American government, and that there's no incentive to protect the NSA, Snowden still committed a crime. Someone else doing something illegal doesn't usually give you the right to also do something illegal. So it's entirely possible that while the NSA will be penalized for their actions, so will Snowden. \n\nAnd that's really the best case scenario, seeing as there *is* likely incentive for the government to protect the NSA. Or worse, there might be actual *justification* for the NSA's actions, which will seriously hurt any of Snowden's defenses. \n\nSo even if he gets a fair trial he'll probably be found guilty, and it's certainly a reasonable fear that he wouldn't get a fair trial. Coming back is really a no-win scenario for him. ", "The Supreme Court wouldn't need to get involved here. ~~They generally only get involved in constitutional issues (that is, interpreting the United States Constitution).~~ Snowden committed a crime, there's no two ways about it. What he did may or may not have been morally or ethically right or wrong, but under current law, he committed a crime. Even if SCOTUS finds what the NSA did to be illegal, it still wouldn't exonerate him of his crime.", "[In his own words](_URL_0_): \n\n >  A number of detractors have suggested that if Snowden, who disclosed controversial top-secret N.S.A. programs to reporters, truly wanted to commit an act of civil disobedience for reasons of conscience, then he should have faced the legal consequences, making his case to the American public while standing trial at home.\n\n >  When I asked why he didn\u2019t take this route, Snowden said that because of the way national-security laws have been interpreted since September 11, 2001, he believed that the government had deprived him, and other whistle-blowers, of ever having the opportunity to make their cases in this time-honored tradition. Instead of being allowed to make his arguments in an open, public court, he said, his lawyers were told that the government would close the court for national-security reasons. (When asked to comment, a Justice Department spokesman would say only, \u201cIt remains our position that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States and face the charges filed against him. If he does, he will be accorded full due process and protections.\u201d)\n\n >  Snowden said that he would \u201clove\u201d to return to the United States and stand trial, if he could be assured that it would be open and fair. He said, \u201cI have told the government again and again in negotiations that if they\u2019re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial, in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg got, and I\u2019m allowed to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so. But they\u2019ve declined.\u201d\n\n >  Instead, Snowden said, \u201cThey want to use special procedures. They want a closed court. They want to use something called the Classified Information [Procedures] Act.\u201d \n\nSo basically, two reasons. One, he doesn't believe he will be given a fair, impartial trial conducted according to recognized rules of evidence. Two, he fears that the American public will never hear the result of his trial. \n\nCritics might accuse him of demanding a \"show\" trial, open to the public, so that he can use the court to grandstand on issues important to him. But I think a more fair interpretation is that he has sacrificed his freedom and his career in order to expose abuse of surveillance within the US government, and he fears that facing a secret trial here would mean that that abuse would be covered up permanently. ", "* he doesn't believe he will be given a fair trial\n* even if he gets a fair trial, he pretty clearly broke that law, and likely will go to prison\n* he doesn't believe he will be treated fairly in prison", "Because he would die in a \"traffic accident\" before there was any hope. Also he technically broke a ton of laws(even though it was the right thing to do) the court would still lock him up", "Hypocrisy.  If you look at what Snowden released the gist of it is that the U.S. security apparatus (NSA in this case) is spying on everyone in the world including American citizens (without a wire tap warrant signed by a judge, aka due process) and foreign heads of state ( a breach of diplomatic protocol).  Snowden let the public know what was going on.  The powers that be call this treason and would like to do to him what was done to the Rosenbergs.  Up to this point the government sounds both reasonable and consistent.  Later, however, we find out that the Chinese are doing the same thing, as are the Brits, the Russians, and basically any country that bothers to do so is in fact doing so.  Now the situation is that Snowden didn't release any information to the 'enemy' because like the U.S. they had it all to begin with.  The only thing that Snowden did was to let everyone else know what the governments were doing.  He pissed off bureaucrats, nothing more.\n", "I just thought of something. Couldn't the defense argue that Snowden cannot be charged with violating the Espionage Act as he leaked the classified documents to Wikileaks, which is not a hostile government but closer to a corporation? Yeah he leaked classified information, but didn't actually hand it over to Russia so it isn't actually treason. ", "No one has mentioned this yet or at least not very succinctly:\n\n\nThe crime he is accused of (Violating the Espionage Act of 1917) doesn't allow you to defend yourself and the Supreme court has previously ruled this is not a violation of free speech.\n\n\n\nI feel like more people need to know that.", "Someone like Snowden would be tried for treason and espionage. This isn't a larceny charge or even a murder charge, where fair trials are your right and the burden is on the prosecution to prove guilt. That's simply not the case here.\n\nIf someone like Snowden ever made it to trial, it would not be the kind of trial you see on TV. In fact, it would probably be worst and more on-sided than Hussein's trial, and he was a monster.", "Are you really asking why the government wouldn't give Snowden a fair trial for exposing the government? Just think about it for a moment. It doesn't matter what the laws are, the government made and enforces the laws. He leaked stuff that the government did not want leaked. He would not get a trial, he would just be detained indefinitely, and indefinitely might as well mean eternally because only a super hero would ever be able to break him out, not any kind of lawyer, not even the next president or 5 presidents from now. That is what happens when you try to expose your own government, in nearly any country. America is no exception.\n\nThere's your ELI5 answer.", "Get real. He will never get a proper and fair trial in the US. He will either \"have an accident\" or \"commit suicide\".", "You know how manning was treated? \n\nThat's why.\n\nAnd he doesn't stand a chance, supreme court can't and won't help him.", "Alright since this is explain like I'm 5....\n\nEver see a bully on the playground harassing other kids,  not letting them live their lives fairly, creepily monitoring their movements? \n\nImagine if you exposed that bullying to everyone in town and move across state to avoid him. Then, the bully says, \" hey man its okay, just come talk with me in private and let's work this out? I promise I'll treat you fairly!\"\n\n\nWould you walk right into a sucker punch?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/video-snowden-love-stand-trial"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "88rc24", "title": "mkultra", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88rc24/eli5_mkultra/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwmona0", "dwmpyfp", "dwmqbay", "dwmra6s", "dwmrabc", "dwmrrvc", "dwms5it", "dwmshzo", "dwmswgs", "dwmt5gw", "dwmuuij", "dwmuuvr"], "score": [926, 187, 72, 15, 53, 19, 53, 6, 2, 4, 3, 5], "text": ["The MKUltra project wasn't about some kind of mysterious \"mind control\" ability.  It was a research project to investigate a wide variety of drugs and forms of torture that could be used to further the CIA's agendas.  The reason it's often called the \"CIA mind control project\" is because part of the project was investigating drugs such as LSD that they hoped would make victims vulnerable to suggesting and manipulation.\n\nExperiments of the project mostly include administering various drugs to people and then conducting behavioral tests, sometimes without the victims' knowledge or consent.  LSD was their primary focus, but they also tested a number of other drugs ([from the Wikipedia article](_URL_0_)):\n\n > Other experiments involved heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, cannabis, alcohol, and sodium pentothal", "Think less 'mind control' and more 'using drugs to torture people'. For instance, say you recruit a bunch of college students to do a scientific test, and have them sign non-disclosure agreements. This is a relatively rich market, as there are always college students willing to spend a few hours being poked in exchange for a token sum that can be spent on food or alcohol. Tell them whatever you want; it's enshrined in American law and scientific ethics that it's 100% ok to lie to test subjects about what you actually plan on doing to them, so long as they know they're being tested in a broad sense. Give them each their own room, pump half of them full of saline solution, the other half full of LSD, and blast them with light and sound and see if the LSD-dosed students beg for mercy before the saline crew. Afterwards, write down your results, hand each kid $20 and remind them that if they break their non-disclosure agreement you will send them to federal pound-you-in-the-ass penitentiary. \n\nAs for how they found out, the MK-series experiments left a pretty broad paper trail, and as time went on more and more of it made it out into the open air. At first it was mostly rumor and hearsay, hence how ULTRA got it's killer rep as a \"mind control\" program. But as the years ground on, stuff got declassified or released via the Freedom of Information Act, and the actual paperwork started entering public knowledge.", "I would very much recommend listening to The Last Podcast on the Left, episode 52 on mkultra. They also have more episodes on weird government programs, cover ups, and conspiracies.", "It's is proven the documents are declassified they laced the bread in France with lsd as well as other ways and conducted experiments on people when they were high", "The series \"Manhunt\" on Netflix about the Unabomber has an absolutely amazing depiction of Ted K's version of what he went through in MKUltra at Harvard. Some people are convinced that his experiences in MKUltra led him to what he became. The scenes are so sad I definitely felt bad for him. \n\nIn the series, a very young and lonely Ted turns to a larger-than-life professor at Harvard for support. The professor spends a year encouraging Ted's anti-technology ideas and builds-up his ego and trust. Ted absolutely worships the professor and participates in his experiments to please him. During the second year, the professor does a complete 180 and belittles Ted, destroying his ego and ideas. It is revealed that the professor never cared about Ted and only used him for his twisted experiments, and Ted is broken forever. I'm sure it's dramatized to some extent, but I believe much of the content of the show is taken from first-hand accounts and interviews. ", "Wasnt the unibomber subjected to these experiments? IIRC they basically broke him down and assaulted his views and it had long lasting effects.", "To piggy back off of other people's comments, apparently only 20,000 pages of the original document was found because the rest were destroyed. That's noteworthy, especially considering people claiming to be MKUltra victims went into extensive detail about how the program also entailed sexual abuse, the attempt to produce people that could wage psychological warfare through psychic means, and the act of inducing dissociation to create personalities that would do their bidding, kind of like pawns or figureheads. \n\nIt sounds crazy, but governments, which are comprised of people in positions of power, do crazy things in order to keep a grip on the power they already have or to obtain even more. I can't imagine that anyone wanting that much authority is sane, so it really doesn't seem like a far stretch that they actually tried all of those known things and worse. ", "\"drugs are bad.\" \"How?\" \"They can make you say and do things you'd never normally even consider.\" \"I bet we can use that to get people to do we want.\" \"Let's try\" fast forward twenty years \"ya that really didn't work. For some reason when we secretly give people large amounts of unstable mind altering drugs, that induce frightening hallucinations, without their knowledge or when they're our prisoner it's hard to predict or control what they'll do and even made some people very pissed off with us.\" \"Huh, who knew?\" ", "This is a subject I've been super fascinated with and have done a lot of research on. If you want to be thoroughly creeped out, check out the book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. The author, John Marks, went through a bunch of declassified CIA files and interviewed people involved in the MKUltra project. It's a fantastic read about the history and events of the project.\n\nOne aspect of the project I'm most intrigued by is they recruited a federal drug agent, George White, to set up a safe house and run experiments on people. So by day he's keeping drugs off the streets, and by night, he's testing them on unwitting criminals.\n\nAs also mentioned, Wormwood is an excellent documentary on netflix about someone else involved in the project who became a victim.\n\nNot to spam, but I'm also writing a comic series called North Bend, inspired by the events of MKUltra. It's about a Seattle DEA agent who is recruited by the CIA to test an experimental mind control drug on unwitting people. Our kickstarter for issue #2 just wrapped up. Here's a link though if anyone might be interested, if you're into stuff like Mindhunter, The Americans, or Wormwood.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)", "How it was discovered: in the 1970s there was a lot of Congressional interest in CIA misdeeds from the 1950s and 1960s. These included investigations into assassination attempts, the CIA's role in destabilizing democratic regimes, and its experiments on civilian populations. The Church Committee in particular held extensive hearings on all these things.\n\nWhat is most interesting here is that without CIA cooperation they probably would have been limited in what they could have unearthed. The head of the CIA, William Colby, decided for various reasons known probably only to him (he seemed perhaps a bit tortured by his participation in the Phoenix Program), to give them a ton of information. \n\nThere is a great documentary on Colby, _[The Man Nobody Knew](_URL_0_)_ (2011), that goes into this part of things.", "The wild thing is that  LSD testing wasn't esoteric to the CIA alone. At the time, many countries around the world where conducting similar tests but mostly as a means of incapacitating foreign armies for a short period. The theory was that by poisoning a supply of water they could incapacitate whole units without firing a shot. \n\nThis video isn't from MK Ultra but was a test conducted by the british army \n_URL_0_ \n ", "posted this as a reply elsewhere, but here's my contribution.\n\nMKULTRA is **proven** and was exposed during the 70s. It was discovered because someone forgot to incinerate a storage room full of boxes uncovered during an FOIA request. The papers in that storage room (along with rumors) are the **only** sources we really have on MKULTRA.\n\nThe origins of MKULTRA are largely based on continuation of work of Nazi scientists that came over here during Operation Paperclip. US Navy reports from 1945 included observations of Nazis using mescaline during interrogations at Dachau.\n\nIn 1947, the Navy started their own testing of mescaline, scopolamine and others during Project CHAPTER (1947) which then evolved into Project CHATTER (1951-1953). This is what then eventually combined with some other projects to form MKULTRA after numerous other names and projects (ARTICHOKE, CASTIGATE, MKNAOMI, MKDELTA, etc.)\n\nThe roots of the program were in drugs and interrogation -- but over the 20+ years that the program was in existence, it expanded well beyond that. Research into hypnotism (MKULTRA subproject 49, 84, others), brain concussions to erase memories (subproject 54), sensory deprivation (subproject 61), electric shock therapy (subproject 62), psychic driving by Ewen Cameron (subproject 68), neurotoxins and biological warfare (subproject 99, 101), study of adolescent gangs and social dynamics (subproject 102), children's summer camps (subproject 103), sabotage of petroleum resources (104), the infamous Witch Doctor Study by Dr. Raymond Prince at McGill Universtiy (subproject 121) the list goes on and on and on with more and more interesting subprojects.\n\nThere are all documented, I haven't brought up any that can't be backed up by redacted documents on _URL_0_ own website.\n\nTL;DR MKULTRA started off as research into drugs and torture as interrogation techniques, but it expanded into all things \"mind-control\" related. Implanting false memories, erasing memories, hypnotism, cultural dynamics, peer pressure -- if it had to do with influencing human behavior in isolation or groups, MKULTRA touched it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#Other_drugs"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776563028/north-bend-1-2"], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1931549/"], ["https://youtu.be/KWodyapGNxI"], ["CIA.gov"]]}
{"q_id": "62xtq7", "title": "why do undercover cops still drive the ubiquitous \"cop\" car, and wear uniforms?", "selftext": "You know when you see those black Ford sedans with the antennas out of the top? They're missing that cop paintjob, but when you pass them they're just sitting there in full uniform, in what is supposed to be an undercover police car. Why not have a fleet of PT Cruisers and Priuses and Escalades and Civics with plainclothes officers in them? Are the cops not allowed to be that sneaky? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62xtq7/eli5_why_do_undercover_cops_still_drive_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfpviux", "dfpvjo8", "dfpw5l2", "dfpwibu", "dfpxyl6", "dfpzg7r"], "score": [77, 31, 3, 8, 4, 19], "text": ["Those aren't undercover cops. They are just cops in unmarked cars.\n\nGenerally police officers who aren't on patrol or doing traffic enforcement drive an unmarked car because it's less conspicuous. They aren't trying to hide, they just don't necessarily want to stand out or cause a commotion.", "Those aren't undercover vehicles, they're *unmarked* vehicles.  They're not trying to actually hide the fact that they're cops, just be a little less conspicuous when driving down the freeway.", "Yeah undercover work is done usually with rental cars, or impounded vehicles that they still need to clear with the DMV.", "That is not an undercover cop. Those are normal officers in an unmarked car. They are not trying to hide, they are just trying to be less obvious than a full on police car. ", "That is not an undercover cop. Those are normal officers in an unmarked car. They are not trying to hide, they are just trying to be less obvious than a full on police car. ", "There are different grades of what lay people call an \"under cover\" car.\n\nObviously there's the standard patrol car with the light bar on top of the roof. High profile, let's drivers and criminals know a cop is in the area and to behave. \n\nThen there's the standard patrol car with no roof mounted light bar, just lights in the grill or window. Difficult to tell that's a cop car from a distance or rear view mirror, good for traffic enforcement. \n\nThen there are these [ultra-low profile police cars](_URL_0_). It might satisfy the legal requirement for a \"marked vehicle\" because it has the police logo. It might be used for traffic enforcement and patrol, depending on the local laws. \n\nSome detectives, police chief, and others in management might use a standard fleet vehicle that has the low profile lights, radios, etc but isn't painted like a patrol car.\n\nActual cars used by undercover and plain clothes officers can be anything the department feels is necessary to use."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://4498-presscdn-0-75.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/traffic-003.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "vsy2y", "title": "Will consuming meat from animals treated with hormones make your muscles grow bigger, than an identical person who consumed organic meat in the same quantity?", "selftext": "Just wondering if eating meat from animals treated with hormones will have any effect on human muscle mass.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vsy2y/will_consuming_meat_from_animals_treated_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c57jgrm"], "score": [2], "text": ["Not unless the animal was treated with Human Growth Hormone, which would have no effect on the size of the animal. And would probably long since been passed out of the animal in the urine anyway."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6sy8vt", "title": "You're in orbit around the Earth in a spaceship. You point the pointy end of your spaceship exactly at the center of the earth and fire your engines for 10 sec. What happens to your orbit?", "selftext": "I understand the basics of orbits (falling around the earth and all), but I've been pondering this for a while now.  Assume a circular orbit, never mind the atmosphere.  Your control system is nimble and keeps your rocket always pointed at the center of (mass of) the earth.  \n\nMy (wrong?) thinking is that since your thrust is perpendicular to your direction of motion, your orbital velocity does not change.  Physics says your orbital altitude depends on your orbital velocity.\n\nSo, when you have your burn, do you dip towards the earth and then...pop back up to the same orbital altitude?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6sy8vt/youre_in_orbit_around_the_earth_in_a_spaceship/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlgjmyd", "dlglb8e"], "score": [7, 20], "text": ["Motion in a circular orbit accelerates toward the centre at a same magnitude at each point of the orbit. If you were to accelerate towards the centre a little more,  the orbit would be smaller, however the orbital velocity does not change, meaning that the circular orbit is disturbed as the acceleration is uneven. This resulted in an elliptic orbit.", "Assuming you started in a circular orbit, you will decrease your perigee because you now have some inward radial velocity. You will also now have a higher speed because you added a radial speed while the tangential speed remains constant. This means your new orbit has a larger semi-major axis than the old one because the new orbit has a higher specific mechanical energy. This means that while the perigee decreases, the apogee increases more than the perigee decreases to account for the energy increase. However, if the perigee is within the atmosphere or Earth, the spacecraft will re-enter.\n\nWhen you perform your burn, you dip toward the Earth and pop back up beyond your original altitude. Your orbit is now elliptical with the perigee below the original altitude, and the apogee above the original altitude.\n\nIf you started in an elliptical orbit, it depends where you are in the orbit. If you are moving away from Earth, it will become more circular and smaller, and the opposite for when you are moving towards the Earth.\n\nEdit: fixed spelling"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2pz851", "title": "how was the first prpgramming language invented? what was the name of the language?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pz851/eli5_how_was_the_first_prpgramming_language/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn1bviu", "cn1bx45", "cn1c05l", "cn1cdco"], "score": [11, 7, 8, 5], "text": ["It depends when you start calling it a programming language. At first it was all programmed using \"machine code\" by putting just numbers. CPU was designed to distinguish some of them as \"operation codes\". For example when CPU read number 123 it knew it should read 2 more bytes and then add them. \n\nThis was a bit difficult for programmers to write and read, and prone to mistakes so programmers started using mnemonics and software that would then translate them into machine code. Eg instead of putting an operation code 123 you would put \"ADD\" word. This was then called assembly language. It was still working on CPU level, but the code was more readable and easier to write.\n\nLater people realised that some operations are used frequently and always looks the same, so they included them in the translation software / in the compiler. You would just put a certain keyword in the source code and it would be replaced by appropriate assembly code during compilation.", "A few possible answers.\n\nThe very first programming language used to write programs for computers was Assembly. It's incredibly \"low-level,\" meaning that it is not very different from the resulting \"machine code\" that the computer can read and run.\n\nA language called Short Code came about in the late 40s that was similar, but made some things easier. However, it wasn't \"compiled,\" but \"interpreted.\" Basically, instead of turning it into machine code once and always having it be in that form afterward, it was read and translated every time the code was run -- making it incredibly slow.\n\nThe first proper \"high-level\" language (meaning it's further away from machine code and easier for us to understand) was called Autocode. Basically, it was a fair bit easier to write than Assembly, and when you finished writing it it would be \"compiled\" and the result was the program in machine code form. This gave access to both easier writing like what Short Code offered and fast execution like what Assembly offered.", "Theoretically, the first programming language predates modern computers and was made by [Ada Lovelace](_URL_0_) in 1842 when she described the first algorithm for a machine.\n", "The first \"programming languages\" were just manuals. Imagine a calculator - you program it by typing it the right sequence of numbers and signs and if you do it right it will tell you the answer to your program. Just like the microwave makes your food just right when you give it the right input.\n\nOf course a computer is a bit more complicated and the resulting programming language is called machine code. \nBut programming on that basic level is really hard. Soon people thought about how to make programming easier and the result are our \"modern\" programming languages. The important difference is, that computers don't understand the programming language. You need a translator, the compiler. It basically takes your easy understandable programming language and translates it into machine code. Probably the first commonly used Programming language was Assembly language, it is very rudimentary and close to the machine code. Nowadays it's rarely used, usually only for applications that take too much time if not programmed perfectly on machine level. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace"], []]}
{"q_id": "2rngsw", "title": "if muslims commit murder like we saw in france, why is the media so quick to label it terrorism? if a christian did it while screaming \"praise be to jesus\", would that also be labeled terrorism or would we just call him crazy? is this biased journalism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rngsw/eli5_if_muslims_commit_murder_like_we_saw_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnhh9n3", "cnhhc83", "cnhhjzf", "cnhk4oo", "cnhlpqm", "cnhmm5o", "cnhnz9i"], "score": [37, 6, 13, 2, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["This is a very interesting question.\n\nI would argue that the bombings of abortion clinics by Christian groups fall under Terrorism since it is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.\n\nSo, if the killing of someone or group of people is to affect political change (in this case, the use of holy \u2014 christian or muslim \u2014 imagery in a manner they disagree with), then yes, it would fall under the basic premise of terrorism.", "Terrorists usually belong to a non-state organization that has specific political goals. They use violence and terror to achieve those goals. Someone who is acting on their own isn't usually considered a terrorist because they don't belong to any group with political goals. Whether an individual's own political goals are enough depends on the person asking.\n\nSo if a person acting entirely on his own blows up an atheist magazine while yelling \"This is for you, Jesus!\" we would probably call him insane. If that same person did the same thing, but belonged to a group like the Westboro Baptist Church and was acting on behalf of that group, then it would be tough to get around calling it terrorism.", "It's certainly biased, although not necessarily intentionally. The less familiar something is to the overall culture, the easier it is to simply ascribe it to the concept of 'otherness.' If someone from the middle east does something barbaric, we write it off as 'it's a barbaric culture' because it's unfamiliar, we feel threatened by it, we lack strong counter examples to force us to consider a more nuanced perspective. All the people \"not doing bad things\" in the Middle East don't tend to make much of a news story.\n\nIf a Christian does it while screaming \"Praise be to Jesus\" well, we're familiar with Christians, a lot of us *are* Christians, so we know 'Well that's not a Christian thing to do, because I sure wouldn't do it' and we search for alternative explanations. ", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the media also refer to white people who commit mass politically-motivated murder as terrorists?  Like, Timothy McVeigh was definitely called a terrorist in the media, and I believe abortion clinic bombers/shooters were too...  I don't remember McVeigh getting much sympathy or being labeled crazy.  I think he was just considered a straight up terrorist (and they executed him quick as could be, too).\n\nI vaguely remember hearing about \"home-grown terrorists\" a lot in the '90s to refer to people like Timothy McVeigh and others...  That was the big thing everyone was afraid of for a while, I think.\n\nBasically, to answer your question, it should be the motive for the murder(s)/bombing/whatever that earns the label (terrorist, not terrorist, crazy), regardless of religion or race.  Whether that will actually happen because it does or doesn't fit the Narrative of Scary Things at the moment is hard to tell.", "[The gunmen reportedly asked for the cartoonists by name before shooting them dead and yelling 'the Prophet has been avenged'.](_URL_0_)\n\n\n", "Because it is terrorism. And yes, your example would also be terrorism.", "OP other post is \"my girlfriend is giving me a blowjob and slips a finger up my butt\"\n\nI think that explains everything "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2900519/Cartoonists-mocked-Islam-refused-threatened-Quranic-law-killed-Charlie-Hebdo-massacre-terrorists-asked-name.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6lzqth", "title": "why are people against mandatory background checks before buying a gun?", "selftext": "I'm not trying to start a fight, although sure this will cause one. I'm not American so I honestly want to understand why anyone is against background checks before gun purchases to stop criminals or mentally disturbed people getting guns.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lzqth/eli5_why_are_people_against_mandatory_background/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djxtw51", "djxtyp8", "djxu22k", "djxuq7w", "djxv1d4", "djxv419", "djxwhqu", "djyaum4", "djyfz0r"], "score": [8, 14, 10, 16, 4, 8, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["Some see it as an infringement, and thus unconstitutional. Some say the constitution entitles all citizens to guns, not just those who can pass some kind of background check.\n\nSome feel if you give an inch on the gun issue, even a reasonable inch, the people they feel are \"anti-gun\" will push the issue down the slippery slope towards total gun confiscation.", "Most people that are against them aren't against them entirely for the most part people are ok with the current system of if you buy a gun at a store you get a background check. The debate is usually around whether or not the should be required for personal gun sales/transfers. So if i sell you a gun that i own I would be responsible for making sure you are legally able to own a gun. People dont want that responsibility placed on them they feel it could end up hurting them ", "Many people see it as a slippery slope situation, and they are not wrong, either.\n\nThere is an element of the gun control crowd that wants to ban all guns.  That's not politically tenable right now, so they want to do it in little steps.  First background checks, then broaden the prohibited categories until the background check becomes prove to us you really need a gun.\n\nSo even when a gun control proposal seems reasonable, the pro-gun people will oppose it, because they have no faith it will stop at \"reasonable\".", "In the US, there's already a [mandatory background check](_URL_1_) to buy a gun in a retail setting (if you buy a new or used gun from a store, you will have a background check).  Further, because the federal government can regulate sales of things that cross state lines, it's illegal for two people to sell a gun privately without involving a retail store (and thus a background check) if they don't reside in the same state.  There isn't a background check on private sales within most states.  \n\nSo when someone says, we want mandatory background checks on all gun sales, they mean they want them on private, in state gun sales.  \n\nThe opposition points out that we enforce the background checks on retail sales by [very strictly controlling the inventory of retailers](_URL_0_) (they must keep a log book of every single gun that goes through their store).  Gun owners are exceedingly concerned that a similar registration of the guns they own gives the state a tool that's much too useful should it ever wish to seize the guns (since it would know where every single gun in the nation is).  \n\nThis is why there's opposition, the current background checks cover almost all gun sales, and there's too little trust that the means of enforcing private background checks would eventually be the means to facilitate a seizure of private guns.  ", "The background check system in Australia varies a little from state to state. But **ALL** states check for *criminal history, mental health and domestic violence*. Some also have *other* listed, as well as *addiction, residential and physical*. What they mean by those last ones, I don't know.\n\nI believe the first two are the most important.\n\nBut we also have tighter laws here than the USA. For instance, even if you are fully licenced for a particular gun, you **CAN NOT** just sell that gun to another fully licenced person privately. **ALL** transactions **MUST** be done through a licenced dealer. **ALL firearms MUST be registered**, and the dealer is the one that supplies and files the paperwork with the government body.", "Personally I can agree with having background checks in private sales in theory. However were ultimately talking about a mountain out of a molehill argument. So few gun sales would be affected by a law of this nature that it appears to me and many others to be nothing more than a power grab. As it stands you can't legally buy a firearm in any store or gunshow without a background check. I encourage you to YouTube any of the videos of ppl going undercover to try and get a gun at gun show without a check(this is where supporters of laws like to act like a loophole exists. Hint: it doesn't exist). The only firearm sales that would be affected would be private sales or transfers between citizens who are not dealers which makes up a very very small minority of gun sales. Because of how little a law mandating universal checks would actually change things, it is better to oppose what amounts to be a power grab, to prevent further grabs, than to allow the law to go through. \n\nIt would be a lot better to come up with ways to help treat and prevent a mentally ill person from obtaining a firearm, or to end the root causes of most gun crime aka the war on drugs. \n\nAs far as the mentally ill are concerned, no background check in the world will ever screen them out because of our medical privacy laws. There are a lot of effective ideas that can be attempted if common ground could be found but it's not likely to happen any time soon. \n\nBTW the same amount of ppl are killed yearly from drunk drivers when compared to homicides. That's not including just regular old traffic accident fatalities. And yet we give 16yo kids the ability to drive alone in most states after barely needing to prove any proficiency behind the wheel. Even ISIS has begun to realize that all  they need is an automobile to inflict a mass casualty incident. That should scare everyone whole lot more. You will get into a car accident in your life, most will never hear a gun shot fired in anger and many more will never hear a gun shot at all in their lives. Let's solve problems that are real threats to the majority of ppls lives instead of focusing on red herrings given to us by those in political parties.\n\nThat's just my 2cents on the matter.", "They are mandatory when buying from a retailer.  Private sales in some states require background checks on private sales as well\n\nThe big argument is that it will lead to a national gun registry, making future gun bans a possibility.  They'll know who has what, and how many.\n\nThe problem with increased regulations, is that they never know when to stop.  ", "We already *have* background checks for purchasing guns. The issue surrounds private sales between individual citizens.\n\nYou'll also notice that most gun owners have no issue with said background checks, but they'd like to do it themselves and have access to NICS (which is the system used to perform the background check). If individual citizens can get access to NICS, there's no record of the sale, which is what we're interested in; having a third party (which would invariably have to be the government) do it means there *is* a record of the sale, which would invariably have to involve the name of the buyer and the seller.\n\nThat is, essentially, a gun registry, which is a big concern among gun owners.", "You have a few assumptions that are erroneous:\n\n* **People are against background checks that stop mentally unstable people from purchasing a gun** - That's not true. We already have mandatory checks in place for retail purchases that include, despite claims to the contrary from gun control people, purchases over the internet and gun shows. As it's been pointed out in the other comments, people are against the requirement to conduct a background check if you have a gun of your own that you'd like to sell. \n\n* **Including personal transfers in the background check requirement would stop more gun crimes** - The majority of gun crimes are committed either by people who have *illegally* obtained a gun by theft or by people who had a legal right to purchase a firearm, in which case, why would extending the reach of current checks to include personal sales have any impact on those legal purchases?\n\n* **Current background checks don't bar mentally unstable people from buying guns** (based on your comment) - Mentally unstable people are already barred from purchasing firearms.\n\nCalifornia is a prime example of what happens when you allow gun control politicians to have an unfettered ability to enact the gun control they desire. CA counties require you to [*prove* you have a pressing need for a concealed carry license](_URL_0_). At one time, they required gun merchants to send a list of all gun purchasers to the state every month. [They imposed heavy restrictions on the purchase of ammunition](_URL_1_). CA bans the sale of certain rifles that [use special features on magazines](_URL_2_). \n\nThe point is, the gun control politicians know they can't outrightly ban firearms so instead they make it as onerous as possible to own or obtain firearms, accessories, and ammunition. The rifle most gun control groups want to ban is the AR-15 even though handguns are the weapon of choice for mass shooters. Their reason for attacking the AR-15 seems to be that it *looks* military or scary, not that it's any more lethal than a handgun. Many groups even intentionally or unintentionally misstate that an AR-15 is capable of fully automatic fire. The accessories they try to ban have nothing to do with the lethality of the AR-15 ([barrel shrouds](_URL_3_), pistol grips, and flash suppressors. \n\nSo the argument that there's a \"gun show loophole\" is false. The argument that the majority of mass shootings occur because there is some flaw in the background check system is false. It's not that people are against mandatory checks, which is why there are in fact mandatory checks. Rather, it's that people object to gun control politicians from trying to make it onerous for legal purchasers to purchase or own something that they have a constitutional right to own."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.atf.gov/questions-and-answers/qa/how-should-licensee-record-his-or-her-records-transfer-frame-or-receiver", "https://www.atf.gov/file/61446/download"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.ocsd.org/about/info/services/ccw", "http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article124089319.html", "http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-gun-run-snap-20161218-story.html", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rGpykAX1fo"]]}
{"q_id": "5hr150", "title": "We all know swamps are humid and unpleasant. Why did the Russians (St. Petersburg) and Americans (Washington DC) insist on building cities on swamps?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hr150/we_all_know_swamps_are_humid_and_unpleasant_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db2zb6a"], "score": [41], "text": ["Somewhat different reasons.\n\nPeter the Great really wanted to emulate a beautiful European city \u2013 specifically the watery city of Amsterdam, filled with canals and along a riverbank. The Neva delta was very pretty to him, a lot of waterways and small islands and flat shores, so as Tsar he ordered his new city to be built there in the model of European cities. Supposedly, he saw the auspicious sign of an eagle as well while scouting the area.\n\nThe American Congress wanted to reach a compromise between the competing interests of Southern and Northern states, as well as create a capital distinct from the states that could maintain its own safety. (The previous Congress building in Philadelphia had been besieged by protesting war veterans, and the Pennsylvania government did nothing to stop them.) \n\nIn exchange for building the capital between the two northern-most slave states, Maryland and Virginia, the Southern states agreed to take on a share of the North's war debts. Maryland and Virginia authorized a tract of land to be given to the federal government along the Potomac River, though it was President Washington who selected the specific location along the river. \n\nHe chose a site next to the already-existing Virginian city of Alexandria, in which his family owned a fair bit of property, and which also happened to be just a few miles up-river from his home. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4z1xls", "title": "why does working a muscle to exhaustion with low weight and high volume vs high weight and low volume yield different results?", "selftext": "Why wouldn't doing 200 reps of a 10lb dumbbell result in strength and hypertrophy gains, even though i'm doing more stretching and contracting, and still working to exhaustion?\n\nedit: well then, this blew up last night lol. a TON of great replies and a lot of information showing just how much information there is to know and still learn about the human body as most \"truths\" with our physiology are still just accepted theories. Big thank you to u/cthulhubert for the great response, spawning the 3rd best analogy to use midgets that i've ever seen. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z1xls/eli5why_does_working_a_muscle_to_exhaustion_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6s7oty", "d6s9itg", "d6sba1k", "d6sceb5", "d6scfj8", "d6se9kt", "d6sende", "d6sffkx", "d6sgo4b", "d6sh6he", "d6shsi1", "d6si0vd", "d6si85r", "d6sjzk7", "d6sky6v", "d6sm5az", "d6snaop", "d6suowc", "d6svglf", "d6svk3q", "d6svr8m", "d6syacv", "d6szb87", "d6szoms", "d6szs7t", "d6tcti5", "d6tfjpo", "d6tkus7"], "score": [118, 2599, 141, 2, 86, 9, 2, 2, 6, 3, 236, 2, 35, 8, 5, 2, 2, 5, 2, 14, 12, 2, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["Growth comes from damage to the muscle fibers. When you exhaust a muscle, you've used up it's available energy and filled it with lactic acid as a byproduct. But if you weren't lifting enough to damage the muscle fibers, you won't see any gain.", "So the basic theory is that you damage a muscle just enough, it repairs itself and adapts to the stress that caused the damage. Very very roughly: a nearby ~~blastocyte~~ **myosatellite cell** is primed (including with the type of adaptation needed) by chemical signals the cell releases during damage, and after a threshold is passed, it grows in size and then fuses to the original, damaged cell.\n\nPushing the absolute limits of your muscles' basic work capacity (low reps, high weight), means that after refusion the muscle cell will have more myofibrils, the basic element of a muscle cell that causes contraction. The thing is, myofibrils aren't really big, and your muscle can increase their concentration without changing in size much.\n\nTesting muscular endurance, draining the reserves of the muscle cell itself (high reps low weight, high time under tension), means the new cell with have additional sarcoplasm (sarco = muscle; plasm = goo; cytoplasm is the generic name for cell goo). Sarcoplasm is filled with stuff that exists to maintain the cell and keep the myofibrils supplied and repaired. But it's mostly water, so double the sarcoplasm means double the muscle fiber size.\n\nNote that if you go another step out\u2014conditioning, stamina/endurance training, cardio, whatever you wanna call it\u2014the muscular endurance itself is no longer being tested, but only the rate that the body can resupply the muscle, so you get better heart and lung health, and denser capillary beds in the muscle itself.\n\nPower training is a mild outlier, though only compared to people that don't generally do strength training anyways. There's a certain minimum amount of sarcoplasm your body needs to do the extremely high energy rate required of stuff like Olympic lifting.\n\nedit: Oh, I almost forgot my final note, which is that while this has been generally accepted fact for quite some time, and reinforced by various studies, there's been a recent meta-study that found other studies that showed \"high reps low weight\" did not produce significantly more muscle mass increase than \"low reps high weight\". I wouldn't completely accept its conclusion yet, but it's easy to understand how confusion could persist in the sports science and physique competition community (in either direction). There are many confusing factors. Individual differences (some people just are genetic miracles); different methods and goals between the body building, power lifting, olympic lifting, and other sport training communities; the *incredible* proliferation of nonsense from laypeople and pretend-expert magazine writers; the beginner effect (almost literally anything with weights, the dumbest shit imaginable, will work beautifully for anybody... for about six to twelve months); performance enhancing drugs, pressures to lie about them... the list goes on.\n\nedit2: Another point of confusion is that there's no such thing as pure strength lifting or pure hypertrophy lifting. If you're lifting to the point where repair (and thus adaptation) is required, both will be improved, just one more than the other based on the type.\n\nedit3: /u/arcflash90 pointed out it's not blastocyte (which is a word I guess I made up). It's a kind of muscle stem cell called a myosatellite cell.\n\nedit4: I'm getting a lot of complaints like /u/Evil-Imp's \"I just read this to my 5 year old, and now he's crying.\" Sorry it's a bad habit of mine. In the engineering spirit of not reduplicating work, I'm going to steal /u/Almae's [great breakdown](_URL_1_) (please upvote them if you like it):\n\n > Training for power repairs muscles similar to adding more cylinders to the engine block of your car.  \nTraining for muscular endurance is akin to making your gas tank bigger  \nTraining for stamina is akin to building more gas stations along your route.\n\nI guess it maybe needs something like... muscle engine cylinders are small so you can pack them in tightly, which means muscle don't grow?\n\nedit5: [an even better metaphor](_URL_0_) (with midgets!) by /u/ElbowStrike\n\nedit7 ^(had a few people ask so) **TL;DR**:  \nfew reps per set (1\u20137ish) = stronger muscles  \nlots of reps per set (like 8\u201320)  = bigger muscles  \n*You always lift as much weight as you can handle for that number of reps!* High reps just means the weight has to be lower, high reps low weight isn't the same as actually going *light*.  \nMore than 20 reps affects muscles relatively little (some, but not much); it's primarily a cardio work out at that point. Your muscles might get sore from lactic acid, but it's not really the muscle itself that's being taxed, so they won't grow (at least not much).  \nA lot of exercise programming confusion is because weight training for intermediate lifters is totally different than it is for beginners; which is why advice aimed at people lifting for years is confusing for a beginner.  \nAnd one of the most common reasons for a beginners muscles to stop growing is because they need to eat more.", "If reps don't matter, why are long distance runners tiny and sprinters huge? Shouldn't marathon runners have massive quads if reps didn't matter? Or is that strictly a caloric issue?", "Strength gains are largely related to the weight being used (relative to your strength), while hypertrophy is more closely related to the total amount of work being done.\n\nThe increase in strength is caused largely by neural adaptations.\n\nIf you go to either extreme (as in your 200 reps of 10 lbs case), the strength gains will be almost non-existent, and you would be unable to overload your muscles further in the same exercise.\n\nConversely, you would be unable to recover from 200 singles with 100% of your maximum load (if you could do it in a session, which you wouldn't). This is both related to muscular factors, and to neural factors.", "Ah....time to dig up the old [80% 1Rmax vs 30% 1Rmax](_URL_0_) study.\n\nBasically the same hypertrophy with 80% (3 sets) 1 Rep max and 30% (3 sets) 1 Rep max when done to \"failure\".\n\nStrength was better in the 80% of 1 Rep max group (most likely from neurological adaptions to the heavier lbs).\n\nWith lighter weights it is important to keep more constant tension on them so to reach failure...otherwise going through the motions will not yield the same results.", "Now someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that there's two types of muscle growth sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar growth. \n\nSarcoplasmic growth increases the intracellular space of your muscle cells and increases their glycogen storage ability. This is the type of muscle growth targeted by high rep exercises since the muscle doesn't need to actually move a higher mass, it only requires more energy to complete additional reps. Think of it like increasing the size of your cars fuel tank. It won't have more horsepower, but it will be able to travel longer distances.\n\nMyofibrillar growth increases the mass of your myofibirils, the protein chains that actually make your muscle cells contract. When you do higher weights at lower reps the weak point isn't so much the amount of glycogen in your muscle cells, it's the actual strength of these myofibrils. So if you want to move larger weights you need more myofibrils so they can move bigger loads. This is like increasing the horsepower in your car by boring out your cylinders. You'll have more power, but you'll burn through fuel quicker.\n\nNow there seems to be some debate on this, but it would generally seem to be that microtrauma is required to trigger myofibrillar growth. You need to actually push your muscles to the point where small tears form in the muscle proteins so your body compensates and creates additional myofibrils. It would seem that the best way to do this is to overload your muscle cells with higher weights. Think of it like a truck trying to tow another car. If the other car doesn't weigh much the tow cable is going to be strong enough and the tow truck can just drive until it runs out of gas (high reps at low weight), but it the other car is too heavy for the tow cable the cable might frey and tear so the tow truck driver needs to replace it with a new larger cable that can support the weight (low reps at high weight).\n\n", "Neuromuscular facilitation,  motor unit recruitment and collateral sprouting occur different when lifting for power (low sets, low reps, medium to high weight, high speed) vs. strength  (low sets, low reps, high weight, low speed) vs hypertrophy  (medium weight, medium sets, medium reps) vs. endurance  (low weight, high reps, high sets). Things like rest intervals also change outcomes.  \n\nPhysical medicine journals are the laughing stock of science and statistician journals because they are almost always low power homogeneous studies. The authors tend to draw large conclusions from small, unrealistic data. ", "In my experience the lower weight higher rep is less likely to do damage, and increases the strength of the joint stabilizing muscles. \nEssentially it is better at creating a fit body as a whole that works well with itself and will last longer into old age. \nIf you want to be capable of lifting lots of weight, you have to train that way, but it's a less holistic approach to personal health, and it's basically only geared towards building lots of muscle and lifting high weights with a higher risk of personal injury and fewer long term benefits. \n\nIf you look at older weight lifters who concentrated on heavy lifting, they usually have big guts and walk a little funny. \n\nOf course that's not always the case, it is possible to be a heavy lifter with a well balanced routine, but it's of course harder work. Low weight high rep naturally works in more cardio and your muscles warm up at an easier pace, and by the time you're finishing the reps they are warmer and more limber and thoroughly worked than with high weight. \n\nYou also have the added benefit of giving yourself more chances to learn how to correctly do the motion, instead of powering through high weight with bad form, causing injury. ", "There is a study saying that it doesn't make a difference, unfortunately that study was inherently flawed because they didn't actually use low reps. The lowest range they used was 8-10, which to any body builder is considered high reps, 20-25 is just overkill at that point.  Normally a body builder will consider 3-5 reps being their low rep high weigh, and 8-10 being high rep low weight, and the weight should be heavy enough that on the final rep you are struggling.\n\nBut for the actual reason it's different, it's because of different types of connective and skeletal muscular fibres. The 3 types of skeletal muscle fibres are: Red / Slow (Type I fibres, 'slow twitch fibres') Red / Fast (Type IIa fibres, 'fast oxidative fibres') White / Fast (Type IIb fibres, 'fast glycolytic fibres').\n\nHigh rep low weight works slow twitch muscles, which contract slower and are more resistant to fatigue (think long distance running)  Low rep high weight works fast twitch fibres which contract faster resulting in a \"explosion\" of power, but they fatigue much quicker. (think sprinting)\n\nThat's why most athletes tend to stick to one or another, it's why we don't see runners who do long distance running competing in sprints, and why we don't see sprinters competing in long distance running. They strengthen entirely different muscles, which while they complement each other, don't do the exact same thing.\n\nMy opinion has to always been to cycle from high rep low weight to low weight high rep every 3 weeks, that way I never felt like I was hitting a plateau with my progress, and up until my motorcycle accident I was 175 pounds and able to bench press and squat 315lbs 5 times for three sets.\n\nThis article goes into a bit more detail about their differences.\n\n_URL_0_\n", "There are 2 types of muscle fibers, one is better at long-term, oxygen intensive (aerobic), endurance effort.  The other is for short bursts of high intensity, anerobic work.  The type of muscle fiber you engage most in your exercise is going to grow faster than the other.   \n\nBut, people are different, have different bodies/genetics, so this is a general rule.  If you want proof, just go to the gym look at which people do which types of exercises.  Everyone who works out should see gainz, but they won't see the same type of gainz.", "Think of your muscle like a rope. If you take a cross section of the rope you can see that it's made of a mixture of several smaller strands entwined together (muscle fibers). For the sake of simplicity, there are 2 types of smaller strand: skinny ones that aren't very strong but last a long time (type 1 fibers/slow twitch) and thicker powerful ones that wear out quickly (type 2 fibers/fast twitch).\n\nWhen these fibers contract force is produced. Slow twitch fibers produce the least force and fast twitch fibers the most. Therefore if you're lifting a light load for several repetitions then slow twitch fibers who don't produce a lot of force but have high endurance will do most of the work. If you're lifting a heavy load for a short duration  (~80% of your 1rm) you will need the help of those beastly type 2 fibers.  These bad boys not only produce more force but have greater potential for hypertrophy (grow bigger).\nSo, to answer your question- the difference in loading will affect what type of muscle fibers you recruit (ie, ones that can grow big or ones that can't get as big). \nTraining with low weights will help with endurance, heavy weights with strength.\n\nNow, there are several variables that contribute to muscles increasing in size. Muscles need a certain amount of volume (setxreps) to grow, so low volume-high weight workouts won't take advantage of stimulating maximal growth. Additionally, muscles can grow larger through means other than increasing the diameter of the muscle fiber (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy) which light weight, high reps take advantage of.\n\nBoth training parameters you mentioned can get you big in different ways, however to get strong like bull you need a heavy weight. ", "Because the muscles adapt differently depending on your weight load and reps that you do.\nDoing reps to exhaustion from 60-80% of 1 repetition maximum is most effective at hypertrophy.\nThe body creates more muscle fibers so that they can do more work in the future which results in hypertrophy.\nDoing it with low weight that enables you to do 200 reps, the body adapts so to tolerate lactic acid and your muscles adapt as well obviously.\nAlso your body learns to use muscles more effectively resulting in less fatigue.", "Though OP seems to know more than he's letting on, I'll try to lay out what I know in laymen's terms.\n\nMuscle bulk and raw strength is built by shifting higher loads with less repitition, this strains and even damages the muscle encouraging re-growth. Link for more details:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nMuscle endurance is built by shifting lower loads with a lot more repetition.  This trains in efficiency.  Better usage of oxygen, dispersal of energy, and finess of using the right amount of muscle for a given task.  Link for more details.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThere will always be some crossover, the two are just different optimizations towards different goals.", "Your body is essentially making itself more effective at the role you're taking. If you work heavy weights your muscles will rebuild themselves to be more effective at that specific task(and the physical form of that is larger muscles). If you go for endurance, your body will spec itself for efficiency. For example, without weights, my mother can do way more squats than me, even though she wouldn't be able to the same weight as me on a squat with a barbell. Essentially, everything in nature is a sidegrade with some cost attributed to it", "For me Carpdog112 has the best answer here, but I'll give my take on it. Sorry if my terminology is not that precise, English is my second langage. \n\nBasically, there's 2 main elements in your muscles : myofibrills, wich make the contraction and sarcoplasmic elements, wich support the contraction (oxidative enzyme, mitochondria, glycogene). \n\nTo train the first, you need 2 things : blood acidification (lactic acid), wich increase the secretion of growth hormone and muscle damage/tear. Blood acidification rise enough to increase GH secretion in sets of about 25 to 90 seconds. Muscle damage starts happening (in a way that stimulates myofibrill growth) in sets of 70% of 1 maximum voluntary contraction (1MR) or higher. Using 70% of 1MR usually gives sets of 30 to 40 seconds. \n\nIf you work under 70% of 1MR, you'll put a lot of stress on the sarcoplasmic elements, wich needs to give energy to sustain some very long contractions/time under tension. What will happen is an increase in mitochondria, enzymes and glycogene (for the later, you need to exhaust glycogene reserves, wich can need a some tweaks in your planning). \n\nIf your time under tension goes under 20-25 seconds, then you use heavy loads, wich causes a lot of muscle damage, but not a lot of growth stimulation, because not enough lactic acid is released in the blood stream. This kind of training need a lot of rest because it mostly trains the brain to send more electricity to the muscle, wich create a lot of exhaustion. (the nervous system recovers 5-6 times slower than the muscle under these circumstances). \n\nI hope it answers your question!", "Short answer: because they are *different kinds of stress* and hence yield *different kinds of adaptations*.  \nAlso, anyone who says that muscle grow *because* of damage to them is simply wrong. You should *not aim* for damage, but damage does bring more benefits than not.  \n200 reps is only possible with virtually no weight and thus would lead to virtually no adaptations. It's no different than walking around. You will be massively sore and sorry afterwards though.  \nAnd to address a not exagerated example, you will gain similar  hypertrophy gains when doing either a reasonable strength ( < 5reps) or hypertrophy (5 < X > 15) workout if total volume is the same. Naturally low rep workouts take much longer and are prone to burn you out, that's why few train like that. The advantage is a higher gain in strength as measured through a 1rm.\n\nBut ideally you would do most of your reps in the 5-8 rep ballpark, with some additional high and low rep exercises for extra gains.\n\nAs for the science behind it all, I can't explain that to you, so you are right to look at my text critically. If anybody replies to this I can look for good articles/papers about this subject in the morning, but they won't be ELI5 fit.", "You've received decent responses so far, but they've underemphasized the neurological element.\n\nFor extreme endurance (low weight, high volume), your nervous system needs to push itself and learn to use all its energy. Your body naturally wants to conserve energy. Training for endurance teaches your body how hard and how far it can push itself.\n\nFor extreme strength (high weight, low volume), your nervous system needs to allow your muscles to lift heavy weight. Your body naturally protects itself and holds back strength and force. If you used all your strength all the time, you'd risk tearing your muscles and straining your tendons and ligaments. Powerlifters learn to trick their brain into letting their bodies put all their strength into a single lift.\n\nProper training allows your brain and body to work toward your goal better.", "none of the above explain it like i am five years old.\nTHIS IS AN ELI5:\nThe heavier you lift, the more muscle fibers you have triggered to fire with your nervous system, your brain.  \nYour muscles need nutrients and energy and oxygen in the air to keep working, and the bigger your muscles are, the more they can work. \nIn order to get bigger, you must increase your endurance, the most common way to do that is to train until failure and then rest and eat and sleep. \nIn order to get significantly stronger, in other words, make your body able to fire more muscles fibers, or essentially, flex faster and harder, you must practice moving heavy weight quickly, and the best way to do that safely is the basic lifts which are considered the staples of all lifting routines.\nDeadlift\nBench press (i suggest incline)\nRows\nPulldowns(or weighted pullups)\nAnd anything in good form that is heavy and accelerated quickly.\nNow according to the guidlines set above, the optimum workout routine would be one which involves lifting heavy weights with explosive reps for up to 6 reps per set,  but essentially following the rule of thumb that if the rep is slow, its  best to stop. And keep doing sets until your weights that you can move quickly are diminished. There is a balance between fatigue, and power gains, since power gains are directly proportional to frequency of training, and muscles fatigue and need time to recover. \n\n", "Muscle growth is stimulated by both high intensity (muscle damage/tearing) and high repetition (build-up of metabolites). The former is generally a more effective stimulus for growth i.e. more time efficient, but the latter is generally considered necessary to truly maximize all of the chemical pathways that input into muscle growth.\n\nWarm up with some light stuff, progress to heavy, and then cap it off with a ton of reps at lower weights = cooked muscles = big muscles (plus fully sick pump bro)", "I upvoted a fuck load of shit today, reddit is the bees knees. So much interesting shit. Fuck. I've been surfing reddit since 2012 and I learn new shit every day. I can't remember any of it Cuz I'm a stoner but fuck man, such a vast catalog of random colorful grasping shit. Its like reverse Google, instead of me searching for random facts and ideas, they find me through reddit. And the porn ID, shiiiiieeeeeetttt, don't get me started. I love u all, dick head trolls to the braniacs who always have more depth to add to a subject. And I've never spent a cent on this website, goodshit.", "Strength = How much we can lift in one go\nEndurance = How long we can lift the same weight\nPower = How quickly we can lift a weight\nHypertrophy = Muscles getting bigger\n\nOptimal hypertrophy usually occurs when we lift heavier weights (to use more muscles strands at once) whilst completely wearing out the muscles energy (reps per set). \n\n*The ideal number is debated, but generally accepted to be between 6 - 12 repetitions per set.\n\nLifting a light weight until we completely fatigue a muscle over lots of repetitions doesn't use as many muscle fibers. It also does not cause as much damage to the muscle.\n\nIf you want to be strong, lift heavy weights and fatigue within 1 - 6 reps. You do not need to get bigger muscles to be stronger.\n\nIf you want muscular endurance, lift lighter weights for lots of repetitions - 20+.\n\nIf you want to get bigger, lift moderate to heavy weights, tire out as much of the muscle / muscle group as you can and allow the muscle time to recover between work outs.\n\n If you want to lift heavy weights quickly do moderate to moderate-heavy weights, with each repetition being as quick as possible.\n\nDiving outside of this would break-out of the ELI5, but quickly there are changes that occur to the muscle and neural pathway that enable us to lift heavy weights vs. weights quickly vs. weights over a longer period of time. Hypertrophy can be the side effect. A strong man has differing training requirements to a power lifter/ sprinter vs. a body builder vs. a middle distance athlete.\n\nOne last tid-bit, some athletes will purposely carry excess fat to cushion in impact sports and potentially to increase strength ", "What others are trying to say, and I think they are using a lot of biological terms that, while I am sure they are very correct, aren't always easy to make sense of. The gist is that the difference comes naturally from the body adapting to the work you're doing.\n\nIf you're lifting heavy, the body will adjust to that. If you're lifting many, the body will adjust to that. The body is able to make these adjustments by measuring what type of stress you put the muscle under. The cells in your body will send out distress calls when they are put under enough stress, which in turn means the body will send help. The type of stress will determine what type of help gets sent.\n\nWhen you lift heavy, the primary stress comes from the creation of microtears in the muscle. The body senses these and reinforces the muscle (or the muscle fibres, to be more exact), by rebuilding each fiber a little bit bigger than it was before. Increased muscle fiber volume = increased contraction strength. So basically, the muscle is yelling \"I cannot do this work, it is destroying me\", to which the body says \"OK, become bigger, so that this work won't destroy you the next time.\"\n\n(Unrelated, the same thing (microtears = stronger rebuild) happens with bone, which is why kickboxers can maul each other's shins for 30 minutes without even grimacing, but if Joe Average walks into the coffee table it feels like you've been attacked with an axe.)\n\nWhen you lift small, the primary stress is aerobic (or possible anaerobic, depending on how hard you train). Lactic acid build-up and glycogen/oxygen shortage signals the need for better bloodflow (to remove lactic acid and increase oxygen supply) and increased glucose/water storage locally in the muscle. Here, the muscle is saying \"I am exhausted, I have run out of sugar and/or oxygen and cannot do this work anymore\", to which the body replies, \"OK, next time I will make sure you have additional supply of these.\"\n\nThat's why, for example, many lifters use creatine either when starting out or when reaching a plateau - it pushes more water into your muscles, which means a direct increase in how much/many you can lift due to artificially increased muscle stamina.\n\nWhat's true for both of these, is overlap. You can't lift small without creating microtears, and you can't lift heavy without adding aerobic/anaerobic stress. If you're training one thing, you're almost always training both. But much like you can isolate muscles to some extent, you can also isolate stress type to some extent.", "Sorry for the shitty answers OP.\n\nAs your no doubt aware muscles react and adapt to stress.\n\nLifting a heavy weight stresses the muscles themselves, lifting a light weight doesn't actually stress the muscle. If you do it 200 times it doesn't get any heavier, it's still an easy task for your muscle, you are stressing the ability of your muscle to get enough fuel and energy to continue the task.\n\n", "I'm seeing a lot of confusion here, so I'll try to clear this up.\n\nLifting weights at  > 85% of your 1rep max taxes your nervous system.  This causes neuromuscular adaptation, which increases the strength of the muscle without adding more mass (should you be at a caloric maintenance).\n\n\nLifting lower weight (still heavy obviously) at a higher rep range allows you to do more work (higher total amount of weight moved) which in turn allows you to damage your muscles more ((more growth)  should you eat above your maintenance level).  \n\nSo it's not just how you lift, but also how you eat in conjunction with your routine that separates the two different training styles.\n\nSo think of it this way:\nOlympic lifters have weight classes.  77kg for example.  They remain at that weight and become stronger through neuromuscular adaptation.  Their nervous system is able to utilize the body's muscle mass more efficiently.  It's why you see some of those 170 pound dudes squatting 600 pounds.  That + caloric maintenance = no mass gain. \n\nBody builders want to create more muscle mass, so they aim to damage the muscle tissue in order to cause muscle growth.  That + caloric surplus = mass gain.\n\nThere it is in black and white.", "**After nutrition**, I think the key is likely innervation. Monkeys can pull more than us because they are wired so that more fibers pull with each nerve innervation.\n\nWe are designed for more intricate movements and so our nerves innervate less fibers and our movements are more precise.\n\nInnervation works on a few really simple concepts of action potentials and nerve endings speaking chemically with your muscles to pull. That's all great, we are going to glaze past all that. After your muscles get the message, calcium is released into the cell, muscles pull, muscles suck up all the calcium (recycling is efficient). Calcium is the key to your muscles working. We'll come back to this.\n\nWhen we train heavy, we are forced to coordinate our innervations and the coordinated efforts require a more anaerobic environment. Lots of laymen will tell you that they learned in Bio 101 that it takes oxygen to burn fat (which is true) so you will burn more fat walking the same distance than running it (which is false). Repeated studies have shown that the more anaerobic the workout, the higher your metabolic response will be. Which means of course you burn more fat running than walking. And even more doing HIIT workouts like sprints or crossfit. And even more doing workouts that require coordination of your major muscle groups like heavy squats or heavy deadlifts. (A second factor is time, doing more efficient metabolic workouts can save hours of trying to replicate the effect by simply walking.)\n\nNow we start getting into building muscle. It's pretty well explained how we build muscle all up and down this thread (and badly explained as well). Basically you can increase the # of muscle fibers, and you can increase the fuel supply chain. Thinking about innervation with small weight, you only trigger a few fibers, and with a larger weight you trigger many more. If only a few fibers are triggered, you can do more reps, and those fibers will tire out and you slowly trigger other fibers to pull the load. After lots of reps eventually you burn out as as your calcium reuptake is too slow to keep the process going [Step 8](_URL_0_) [and here](_URL_1_) (a key note here is that you don't run out of ATP or Glycogen or Glucose or any of the other types of fuel people in this thread point at, you simply can't recycle the calcium as fast as you can use it). With heavier weight, you trigger more fibers...hopefully all of them...and within very few reps and you start to feel burned as your calcium reuptake is too slow to keep the process going. The difference is that in the second scenario all the fibers are drinking up fuel at the same time. This creates anaerobic or near anaerobic conditions which trigger your metabolism. \n\nYour metabolism is a key factor here. Don't let anyone convince you it isn't. Triggering your metabolism includes burning more fat (but that's negligible at first until you start looking at all the compound effects), but more importantly, triggering your metabolism affects your hormone levels. \n\nYou know those drugs people take to get ripped, hit more home runs, cheat in the olympics, or get competition level fitness? They are based on real versions in your body. Lifting heavy increases your natural hormones. These hormones flip all the right switches in your body to increase your muscle, burn more fat, give you more energy, etc.  Hormones will affect your ability to build muscle more than anything else, **except nutrition**. \n\nTake care of your hormone levels. **Eat right, sleep right, lift heavy** that's the recipe for good hormone levels. \n\nHere's a secondary problem. A evil version of those good hormones I was talking about above. There's more than one, but let's just focus on cortisol, the primary stress hormone. High reps, low weight increases cortisol. Lack of sleep increases cortisol. Stress at work? You guessed it, increases cortisol. High levels of cortisol wreck you. Your ability to build muscle? Cortisol murders that ability. Your ability to cope well and solve problems easily? Cortisol buries it deep. You like belly fat? Cortisol likes belly fat. Think of cortisol like your body's way of downvoting your bad decisions, you think staying up late is a good idea? Downvotes. You decide stressing out about the past or the future are worth your time? Downvotes. You procrastinate at work and now it's crunch time stress? Hopefully you saved up some karma to outweigh that downvoted decision. \n\nThat guy who can get ripped doing low weight, he's got good genetics or he's supplementing with steroids. Have you been lifting heavy everyday for years but can't put on muscle? You've either got too much stress hormone, too low of the good hormones or bad genetics, a combination.....**or you haven't gotten your nutrition nailed down.**\n\n**My advice, get your blood work done, stress under control, sleep on a schedule, eat right, keep lifting, and don't give up.**\n\nEdit: I thought of another thing people don't realize is 100% hormones. If you have ever heard of someone trying to bulk but they just get fat. Assuming they were actually lifting weights (if not then duh), the reason they gaining fat instead of muscle is because of hormones being out of wack. Also the cut, have you heard of guys who try to cut but they lose more muscle than they lose fat? Hormones. \nThen you have bro-science creating terms like eating \"clean\" which don't add up. A man with crappy hormones (high cortisol, low good hormones) can eat clean for years and still be fat. Often these guys get in a cycle: thinking \"I want to build muscle,\" they increase \"clean\" calories and lift heavy only to get fat; pretty soon they start thinking, \"I want to lose all this fat,\" they decrease calories eat even more \"clean\" and lift heavy only to lose both muscle and fat. \n*Break the pattern, fix your hormones.*", "Isn't this supposed to be \"Explain like I'm 5\" ?\n\nI'm 30 and all of it went over me. Should I do cardio(small weight and more reps) or heavy weight(more weight and lower reps) to loose weight faster.", "The heavier the weight, the higher percentage of muscle recruited to lift it. If you want to make a muscle bigger through training, you have better results by recruiting a higher percentage of muscle. How much growth do you get if you water all of your garden vs a small portion?\n\nIf you lift something light that is not significantly heavier than the normal work your muscle does in a typical day, your muscle is already use to the load and your body doesn't feel the need to adapt--because it already has in the past. If you lift something heavier than the typical load your muscle experiences on a normal day, then your body senses the inefficiency of needing to activate such a high percentage of the muscle to complete the task and adapts. Your body is addicted to efficiency and lifting a heavy weight that you have adapted to is much more efficient than pushing yourself to 80% of your 1rep max. 80% is too close for comfort for your bodies safety mechanism, which is why it works so well. Efficiency is also the reason you lose muscle if you don't use it. It is highly inefficient to carry around 20 lbs of muscle weight that you aren't using.", "There are different metabolic pathways for your muscles to perform work depending on how the work is done: high intensity low repetition vs. low intensity high repetition. And muscles use a different proportion of motor units: fast/large/high threshold fibers vs. slow/small/low threshold fibers, respectively. Which motor units activate depends on the total force needed, with smaller units (slow twitch) always firing before larger units (fast twitch,) and with larger units fatiguing much more quickly than smaller units. Because of this \"size principle,\" you'll see most bodybuilders who advocate a high rep scheme also recommend going to failure so that all muscle fibers are utilized.\n\nWork done at lower intensity over a longer period of time (high rep resistance training) uses a lot more ATP/glycogen as a fuel source which is stored in the sarcoplasm of the muscle cell. Working in that rep range will force adaptations most specifically to those systems (more sarcoplasm in the cell,) but when taking that work to exhaustion you will work your high threshold motor units as well, because all muscle fibers will start firing before \"failure.\" \n\nLikewise, low rep, high intensity resistance training will force adaptations most specifically to systems that support maximal strength. Because you need to fire your high threshold tissue almost immediately and for the entire set just to keep the weight moving, and those same motor unit you're using the most fatigue the most quickly, most of what you're training is neural adaptations (firing muscles at the right time, order, and relative magnitude) and myofibril hypertrophy (new contractile tissue in general) to your fast twitch tissue. Additionally, you don't (and many argue that you shouldn't) need to always go to failure with lower rep work to activate your high threshold motor units and total poundage/volume ends up being a better indicator of progress.\n\nAs a rule higher threshold motor units have a much higher capacity for hypertrophy than low threshold motor units, so for most people you need to be training with heavier weight to see hypertrophy in general. It is worth noting that higher rep work works a lot better for people's lower body than their upper body for this very reason as those muscles (especially the quadriceps) have a higher proportion of slow twitch fibers than the musculature of their upper body, most likely as an adaptation to the human need to walk for large distances. Most programming reflects this as rep ranges recommended for the lower body tend to be a few reps higher for lower body than for upper body. You can also experience this phenomenon for yourself in training if you have ever tried \"rest-pause\" sets for upper body vs. lower body.\n\nAt a certain point when raising your rep ranges, lowering your intensity is going to leave you with very little hypertrophy as you start using primarily aerobic systems to fuel your muscles, which have very little to do with maximal contractile strength and a lot more to do with having an efficient cardiovascular system (stronger heart, better capillary system) to deliver oxygen and remove carbon dioxide/lactic acid to keep your slow twitch fibers chugging along. In a set of 200 you're probably going to give up from losing your air or the burn of lactic acid long before you actually push yourself to use your largest motor units.\n\nTL;DR the lower amount of force produced/second the fewer muscle cells that are most receptive to hypertrophy are recruited."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z1xls/eli5why_does_working_a_muscle_to_exhaustion_with/d6sg3no", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z1xls/eli5why_does_working_a_muscle_to_exhaustion_with/d6sl2qr"], [], [], ["http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2012/04/12/japplphysiol.00307.2012.abstract"], [], [], [], ["http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sclark20.htm"], [], [], [], ["http://www.livestrong.com/article/140765-what-happens-muscles-after-lifting-weights/", "http://www.gssiweb.org/Article/sse-54-muscle-adaptations-to-aerobic-training"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://goo.gl/QEq1ng", "http://goo.gl/evlj8y"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14mys0", "title": "Could I put up a satellite to provide free and unrestricted access to the internet to all North Koreans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14mys0/could_i_put_up_a_satellite_to_provide_free_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7ejofi", "c7ejons", "c7enlvr", "c7enou5", "c7eo1t7"], "score": [11, 2, 5, 2, 3], "text": ["My first question would be, how would they access it?  Most cant afford food let alone a smart phone. ", "[Do you have roguhly 8,000$ USD](_URL_1_), the willingness to break international laws, and the money to maintain an active connection [for a population of24,451,285](_URL_0_) ?", "The thing about cellular phones is that they don't directly connect to a satellite. They connect to local cell towers, which then communicate to the satellite. Those close enough to South Korea are able to connect to local South Korean towers. \n", "Uhm has nobody asked who sets up the transmitter to get information back to the satellite? the internet is not radio, it requires two way communication.", "If you mean usual cellular mobile phones then answer is no, because mobile phones work on protocols completely unmeant for this. Lowest possible LEO is 160 km above Earth surface by definition and no modern cellular mobile phone standard exist which can work on such distance because of limits of maximum power of phone transmitter, maximum delay and relative speed between base and phone.\n\nIf you mean special satellite phones then yes, such things exist ever with internet support:\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;met_y=sp_pop_totl&amp;idim=country:PRK&amp;dl=en&amp;hl=en&amp;q=north%20korean%20population", "http://www.universetoday.com/36639/launch-your-own-personal-satellite-for-8000-usd/"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_internet#Internet_via_satellite_phone"]]}
{"q_id": "20fb97", "title": "We hold our eyes closed, or hold our eyes open?", "selftext": "How do we know?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20fb97/we_hold_our_eyes_closed_or_hold_our_eyes_open/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg2u5wy", "cg31bth"], "score": [11, 2], "text": [" The orbicularis oculi muscles contract to close the lids.  The palpebral portion acts on its own when you are closing your eyes to sleep.  The muscles that contract to open the eyes are the levator and meuller's muscle along with relaxation of the orbicularis.  So opening and closing of the eyes require both relaxation of some muscles and contraction of others.\nTLDR: Both. ", "Just expanding on what has already been said.\n\nThe orbicularis oculi muscle closes the eyelid. It is divided into two parts; palpebral and orbital. The orbital portion is under conscious control, such as when you consciously close your eyes so tightly the surrounding skin of the face wrinkles. The palpebral portion is involuntary and is used for \"automatic\" blinking and sleep.\n\nConversely, for eyelid opening, you have two sets of muscles (which some consider one in the same, although they have different innervations). These are the levator palpebrae superioris and the superior tarsal muscles. These are \"voluntary/conscious\" muscles to some degree (superior tarsal muscle less so), although they are able to function without us directly thinking about it. Similar examples of this type of muscle action would include the diaphragm, which works on its own just fine when you sleep or are not thinking about breathing. Another example would be the muscles of your neck. I'm guessing you've been holding your head upright the entire time you've been reading this and haven't been consciously flexing and extending the various neck muscles to do so.\n\nShort answer is (as has already been said) depending on what we're doing, our bodies are able to hold the eyelids open or closed without our direct input, but we can easily override either state."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "605jh2", "title": "where did the asian yellow skin thing come from? maybe it's just me, but their skin doesn't really look even remotely yellow to me.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/605jh2/eli5_where_did_the_asian_yellow_skin_thing_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df3mz05", "df3nk2b", "df3nvb0", "df3shji", "df3sqix", "df3tb41", "df3thiu", "df3uoee", "df3vn6j", "df3vy5h"], "score": [16, 79, 120, 28, 38, 2, 54, 13, 28, 4], "text": ["Because back in the day China used colors for cardinal directions. China often considered itself the center of the map, which was identified by the color yellow.\n\nAlso China was said to be founded by the \"Yellow Emperor\" so that probably contributed too.", "it actually is sort of yellowish in southern China and Southeast Asia, not so much in Korea, Japan and northern China, they are as white as Caucasians and of course Indians are brown", "_URL_0_\n\nApparently yellow has been repeatedly been used to refer to Asia as a whole since the 400s BCE (Greco-Persian Wars, when \"Persia\" encompassed a bunch of different peoples). It could be similar to how society shifts it's perception of color (i.e. red hair is more orange to us today, or that the ocean was \"wine colored\" in Homer's Odyssey). The world yellow is also etymologically close to gold, and I would say that you could accurately describe some Eastern Mediterranean skin tones as \"golden.\"  \n\nEdit: New source of info and we're back to square one. \"Applied to Asiatics since 1787, though the first recorded reference is to Turkish words for inhabitants of India.\"\n\n_URL_1_", "I'm no expert but I'm half-Japanese half-Chinese; and most of the east asian people I know look distinctively yellow-brown tinged, especially in the light and when compared to the pink-white hue I see in \"white\" skin.  I'm wondering if it looks that way simply because my mind is incorporating the stereotype, or if the melanin actually reflects some shade of yellow.", "I myself am asian, and I used to think the same thing, however, if you actually compare skin tones side by side, the difference can be seen. Most of the time, I can spot a slight yellow tint, but from a distance, it's hard to tell. This doesn't apply to all asians, but it definitely exists.", "Oh it does, but obviously there is a spectrum that goes from brown to pinkish white, but most in my eyes fall in the light brown to yellowish tinge. I remember a Korean girl, in hs sitting next to a pink whitish friend, who would best be described as yellowish.", "I'd say some Asian people are as \"yellow\" as some white people are \"white\" or black people are \"black\"", "It's not that complicated really, look how accurate other slangs referring to skin color are. Do all white people look like white A4 letter paper? Do all black people have a complexion like black construction paper? No of course not, but humans have always had heavy motivations to categorize and label everything in our world. When we were closer to caveman it was for safety purposes really, and even the words themselves were simpler, who is looking to \"invade my tribe\" if you will. Just like there was \"deep blood\" before there was \"purple\", before there was \"mauve\", and etc.\n\nTLDR: We, as dumb humans, have a biological imperative to separate ourselves in a variety of ways, and create \"us vs them\" narratives. One of the easiest ways is to call on a visual image, our databank for visual 'stuff' is quite large because it serves an evolutionary purpose. Just like white people can be more red in skin tone, black people more light in skin tone, asian's can have a more yellow skin tone.", "Well, if you're talking undertones, we generally have yellow undertones. As opposed to a white person with pink undertones. When shopping for foundation we'd pick one with a yellow undertone or else we'd end up looking orange.", "It's probably due to the fact they have slightly thicker skin than Europeans, which is also why Asians seem to age less. It might not seem to be that different now but back when the upper classes of the world were in a race to become the pastiest the slightest variation from milk white was noted. It also may seem strange now because while the west have embraced tans many counties in Asia are still aiming for palour with huge sales of whitening creams, you aren't currently seeing fully natural skin tones in either area. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril?wprov=sfla1", "http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=yellow&amp;allowed_in_frame=0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3og1hx", "title": "Why are carp thought of so differently in Europe and America?", "selftext": "Growing up fishing in America, I was always taught that carp were \"trash fish\" and bottom feeders, but I am under the impression that carp are highly sought after as sport fish in Europe and were brought to the US from there. \n\nAre American carp really the descendants of European carp? What accounts for the difference in how they're perceived by anglers? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3og1hx/why_are_carp_thought_of_so_differently_in_europe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvwzjtc", "cvx0uqs", "cvx3bn9", "cvxaejk"], "score": [76, 11, 8, 5], "text": ["There are a lot of different varieties of carp.\n\nThe carp in North American, the common carp, is a terrible fish to eat. The meat is spongy, and tastes bad, and is full of intramuscular bones. Also, the carp are an invasive species that has hurt the populations of other fish, mostly by eating up a lot of the food. Carp are big fish, and they eat a lot. Their size can make them fun to catch though, so you do see more anglers fishing for them.\n\nAnglers in Europe like carp because they're big and fun to catch, and they don't have a lot of the bass and sunfish that American anglers prefer to go after. The European (and Asian) carp are also smaller, and their meat is supposed to be more enjoyable to eat, but still not very good. Most carp dishes have a lot of spices and seasonings to cover up the carp taste.", "There's two different types of carp fishermen. \n\nFirstly, there's the East Europeans who eat them. Then there's the mostly British who catch for sport. There are thousands of Brits who go to France every year, where they seem to thrive, to catch common, grass and mirror carp, some of which can be about 100lb.\n\nSome of the lakes in France pay a fortune for a prize fish.", "I just learned about this in an environmental science class.  Most of the carp in America came from Germany and spread throughout the country pretty quickly.  There are lots of reasons that Americans dislike carp, including bad to eat, invasive, and lead to the decline of other species.  Another interesting factor is that carp are one of the only fish to survive in heavily polluted waters.  And as a bottom feeder, they tend to disturb the bottom and make the water even more turbid.  People in North America then thought that carp were contributing to the pollution problem and were 'dirty', while in most cases it was just human activity polluting the waterways.", "Everything people say here is true about common carp, bullhead carp, or grass carp. Silver Carp however, the ones that jump out of the water behind boats, have a white meat similar to Cod because they aren't bottom feeders like the others. I have eaten Silver Carp and it is good but there is still a Y bone in it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1fj2aj", "title": "what is the purpose of singles in the music industry?", "selftext": "For a very long time I thought singles were supposed to be previews of an artist's upcoming album. I only just realized that this wasn't the case when two artists I listen to (Macklemore and Linkin Park) released singles off their new albums well after their the albums were released (Can't Hold Us and Castle of Glass respectively). Thanks for anyone who can answer this!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fj2aj/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_singles_in_the_music/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caar4zb", "caarqjt", "caartf1", "caawna2"], "score": [26, 6, 24, 2], "text": ["Purely to make money.\n\nThe singles release to great fanfare, get fresh radio plays, people who didn't hear about the album might buy them.\n\nThey normally have demos or stuff that didn't make it on the album to persuade die-hard fans to shell out for them.", "Singles used to have more of a defined purpose because you couldn't buy individual songs before iTunes, so if you only liked the one hit song by an artist, you weren't going to buy the whole album because that would be a waste of money.\n\nToday it's basically for the sake of being a single, which makes record companies more money. They are basically sorting the album out for you, noting that the single is the hit, or best song on the album. If a listener likes the single, they might check out the whole album and give the more experimental, or less popular songs a chance, rather than finding the experimental or not as radio friendly songs first and writing off the artist.\n\nTd;lr The single is the key to check out the room, which is the album.", "Singles are generally used as a way of promoting an album, before and after the release of said album.\n\nThese days it's fairly normal to release one, two, or sometimes even three singles prior to an album's release date, in order to generate a bit of hype. The first single usually comes out a month or so before. The song gets played on the radio, YouTube etc., and people start downloading it. Chart success, word of mouth or plain old plugging gets the hype train rolling. Then the second single is released either a week before the album or sometimes simultaneously with the album, and people who enjoy the song will hopefully then go and purchase the album right away.\n\nIt's not uncommon for the single released in unison with the album to be the most radio-friendly/commercial, in order to generate the most buzz  possible for the album and attract listeners from outside the artist's usual fanbase.\n\nSubsequent singles released after the album make extra money and serve to keep the album in the public eye - if the record label keeps the artist on the radio with fresh new songs, the label can continue to promote the album even if the artist is busy touring. Sometimes, the initial response to an album can be disappointing in terms of sales, but a strong third or fourth single can be a great boost. Consider the example of *Wonderwall* from Oasis' second album *(What's the Story) Morning Glory?*. *Wonderwall* was the third single, released 4 weeks after the album. The album did not sell well outside the UK initially but after the release of *Wonderwall*, a chart topper in several countries, the album became an international success.\n\nIf the artist has not yet released an album, the record label will sometimes use a single as a way to gauge the public's response to said artist and decide whether or not to record an album with them.\n\nArtists will occasionally release non-album singles, songs that are not meant to promote their album and don't appear on the tracklisting. This can be for a number of reasons, including: to keep the band on the radio while they are between albums, to give something extra to the fans, if the song was featured on a film's soundtrack album, or simply because the artist feels like it.\n\nHope this helped.", "In the past it was all about radio. When you made an album, the studio would put 1 or 2 songs on a record, radio stations would get the record and be able to play the 'hit song' the single easily.\n\nYou used to have to wait for records to play your favorite songs. They didn't have next and fast forward buttons, if you can believe that.\n\nSo an vinyl record with one song per side, was pretty good for the radio business. Well, record labels have always been about money. When they realized that they could sell singles, they sold them. People bought singles, they bought whole albums, because some people wanted the one hit song, while others wanted the whole album.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "295hgu", "title": "what is sacred geometry and why is it considered \"wrong\" by most mathemeticians?", "selftext": "I saw a discussion posted in r/math about it, but people were reluctant to discuss it because it's considered \"fake\" by the math community. So ELI5: what is is it and why is it wrong", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/295hgu/eli5_what_is_sacred_geometry_and_why_is_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cihm2c8", "cihm44v", "cihqy2o", "cihsup4"], "score": [29, 33, 68, 4], "text": ["Mathematicians don't give two shits about symbolism.  Discussion of spiritual matters is not part of math.", "Sacred geometry is a form of symbology that focuses on geometric forms found in nature, having roots in Jewish numerology and Hindu Agamas (rules for building temples). It tries to find deeper meaning in the natural geometry found in living things, using it as the foundation for a proof for the existence of a divine creator. ", "As I understand it, sacred geometry claims mystical or spiritual significance to shapes. Mathematicians think it's \"wrong\" because they believe that there is no evidence for these claims. As a consequence, they feel that sacred geometry has nothing to do with mathematics.\n\nFurthermore, you'll find many scientists, mathematicians and psychologists go further than simply considering a pseudo-scientific claim \"wrong\", but they will get actively perturbed by it. I find I'll do this as well. \n\nI think there's an analogy to free jazz or contemporary art. These fields are complex and nuanced, and you need to understand a good deal to appreciate them at all. To a layman free jazz might sound like indiscriminate tooting, and contemporary art may be reduced to a man nailing shoes to a wall and calling it art. Sacred geometry is akin to that layman getting on stage at a free jazz show and making noise with his saxamaphone or nailing his shoes to a wall at an art exhibit; he perceives no difference between what he does and what the artists do because he never actually understood what the artists do in the first place. You, as a professionally trained and dedicated free jazz musician or contemporary artist, have dedicated your life to this field and find the layman's performance a celebration of ignorance. To you it seems disrespectful that the layman has so little faith that there are deep levels of meaning to your artform, simply because he cannot perceive them. It feels like an effort to reduce your way of life to a gimmick.\n\nSo, beyond not believing in sacred mathematics, you'll likely find mathematicians outwardly derisive and hostile to the idea because they perceive it to be not just incorrect, but a mockery of the great catalogue of understanding compiled by centuries of geniuses who dedicated their lives to it.", "Humans are built to find patterns, even when they [don't exist](_URL_2_). Mix that with congnitive biases of [Observer-expectancy effect](_URL_3_)/[Selective perception](_URL_1_)/[Belief bias](_URL_0_)/[Confirmation bias](_URL_4_) you get Sacred Geometry."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_perception", "http://naturography.com/the-golden-section-hypothesis-a-critical-look/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias"]]}
{"q_id": "rv83z", "title": "Is food treated with Ammonia safe?", "selftext": "First we heard about \"Mechanically Separated Chicken,\" and now \"Pink Slime.\"\n\nOpponents are always quick to point out that these products are treated with Ammonia, but is that something we need to be concerned about?\n\nDoes Ammonia harm us beyond offending our noses?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rv83z/is_food_treated_with_ammonia_safe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c48xhqd", "c48xq8y", "c48zwu3"], "score": [15, 3, 2], "text": ["Ammonia is harmful (by virtue of being alkaline) in large amounts and harmless in small amounts (it's an endogenous substance, after all). It also happens to have a test and a quite strong smell (noticable in parts-per-million concentrations). \n\nOffhand I'd say that if the pH isn't strongly alkaline and/or it doesn't stink of ammonia, it'd be safe. [Salmiak](_URL_0_), which is liquorice with ammonium chloride (the salt of ammonia and hydrochloric acid) is pretty popular in the Nordic countries, and isn't known to be harmful apart from raising your blood pressure. \n\nI'm sure this was all tested and verified before they started using it on food, as well. While I do find 'pink slime' unappetizing, I don't see any reason to believe it's unsafe.\n\n", "Here is the MSDS (Material Data Safety Sheet) for ammonia:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nJust pulling out some of the relevant details; keep in mind that this is for a product that is 3-5% ammonia, the \"pink slime\" will have a tiny fraction of this amount:\n\nHMIS health rating 2 - this is \"moderate hazard: temporary or slight injury can occur\". \n\nLD 50 (the dose at which it is deadly 50% of the time) for rats, taken orally, is 350 mg/kg. Scaling to human size, you'd need 35 g for a 100kg person; that's not a small quantity. \n\nSo there is a potential for harm from ammonia, but you'd need to know the amount of ammonia in the pink slime to properly assay the risk. ", "[Here's](_URL_0_) a great comment from a post a few days ago about how it's actually used to treat food and why it isn't harmful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_liquorice"], ["https://sargentwelch.com/pdf/msds/Ammonia_Household_38.00.pdf"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rs2yr/pink_slime_evidence_that_it_is_harmful_or_simply/c487yal"]]}
{"q_id": "2fn1a1", "title": "vhs generation loss", "selftext": "Why does a copy of a copy of a copy etc, get worse and worse?\n\nA great example of what i am asking about \n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fn1a1/eli5_vhs_generation_loss/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckarinp", "ckartvu", "ckas9sh", "ckatqja", "ckav1lk"], "score": [34, 15, 11, 2, 4], "text": ["VHS is an analog system, meaning that the data does not consist of bits and bytes, but of a continuously-varying signal.  In most cases, you can't make exact copies of analog signals.  You can make copies that are \"close enough\" to the original, but with tiny, *tiny* amounts of variation.  But if you make copies of copies of copies, those tiny variations build on top of one another, until they're the only data left.", "The reading and writing of VHS is with errors. Let say that for example every reading or writing contains 1 glitch per minute. \n\nIf you watch perfect tape you see 1 glitch per minute.\n\nIf you make a copy of this tape you need to read it so you read it with 1 glitch per minute and then you write the signal with 1 glitch to the tape, during the write 1 additional glitch is created so you end up with tape with 2 glitches per minute written on it. \n\nIf you watch this new tape the reading adds additional glitch and you see movie with 3 glitches per minute.", "VHS tends to degrade (slightly) each time you play it as the magnetic tape is pulled from reel to reel. So each copy is copying a slightly worse version. Copy it enough times and the degradation becomes noticeable as the errors accumulate. This is a problem with direct copying of just about anything and why [masters are created](_URL_0_). The master ensure that all copies are from the same \"generation,\" each generation (copy of a copy) will drift slightly further away from the original and therefore be noticeably degraded). \n\n**Really ELI5** Its the same idea as trying to cut 10 sheets of paper to the exact same shape. If you cut the first sheet with a template, and then use the first sheet as the template to cut the second, and use the second sheet to cut the third, by the 10th sheet, the shape you cut out will be noticeably different from the template. Each time you will have some tiny differences, but as you get further and further away from the original, those differences add up. \n\nA lot of digital copying schemes work with error correction such that the data is not unidirectional; as the file is being copied, the duplicate is checked against the original for discrepancies. Anything errors are thus caught and eliminated. Thus you can copy a digital file an infinite number of times without a loss of data (assuming no compression and error correction algorithms). This doesn't take into account losses from compression though (such as with a .jpg of a .jpg of a .jpg). ", "That video is so awesome. ", "The paper cutting analogy is really good for analog copies.\n\nYou may be wondering why most of the time with digital copies, there's no generation loss:\n\nWith digital *file* copying, there is no loss between copies because a file is really just a long list of numbers - and when you copy a list, the numbers are still the exact same even if the handwriting is different. As long as the numbers are legible on each copy, the 2000000th generation will be the exact same list of numbers as the first.\n\nHOWEVER.... You have to watch out if you do anything more than just copy the file literally. With things like JPGs, MP3s, and MP4/AVI/MOV/etc., those files use *lossy compression* which means they're using complicated math to throw out numbers people don't usually hear or see, to save space. (One TV episode would take up several huge hard drives if the video and audio were not compressed at all.)\n\nSo the original, despite being compressed, is usually fine, but if you de-compress and re-compress the audio or video (like if you convert from one format to another), slightly different numbers are thrown out, and you start to get more and more blockiness, blurriness, and distortion at each re-compression step.\n\nIt's the exact same principle as the VHS generation loss, but has a different style/look/sound to it because the type of loss is different.\n\nOf course, if you just copy the *file itself* without ever de-compressing and re-compressing, then the copy is 100% perfectly identical to what you copied it from."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["www.youtube.com/watch?v=mES3CHEnVyI"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5jvc1v", "title": "why does nobody in america actually drive the speed limit?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jvc1v/eli5why_does_nobody_in_america_actually_drive_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbj9tx7", "dbjah4n", "dbjd3ar", "dbje4c0"], "score": [16, 20, 8, 11], "text": ["The speed limit is set based off the braking distance of cars 40 years ago. We can drive safely faster now, and we choose to because we're always in a hurry to get nowhere important.", "Until 1995, there was a national speed limit law that required speed limits of 55 (later 65)mph or less on interstates and tied federal highway aid to states imposing these limits on state roads too.\n\nAs a result, a lot of states (especially out west) implemented artificially low speed limits and enforced them with \"wasting a natural resource\" tickets that charged as little as possible and allowed the state to say they were doing something. As a result, you got a culture of taking speed limits as more suggestion than law. In 1989 Montana, for example, anyone caught going under 90 but above 65 could expect a $5 fine, payable on the spot.\n\nAdditionally, people tend to drive at a speed they feel comfortable at based on traffic, road quality, and surrounding obstacles. Things like trees, street parking, and pedestrians/bicycles tend to make people drive slower and open roads have the opposite effect. States, cities, and counties realize this and will do things like lower a speed limit right before a town and have a cop there to write tickets (the government keeps the fines).", "Also in the United States (or at least my state of Florida) a speeding ticket can't be issued if you're within 5 of the limit, though a Particularly irate cop can give you one for \"disobeying a traffic control device\".", "I am American man and I have dated a German and have spent a lot of time around other Europeans.\n\nI can tell you that Americans in general are far less apt to following rules, especially traffic ones. I think this is a cultural thing. I think the sheer amount of space available in the US is a factor. But if we were to go more in depth, Americans have long had a tradition of independence that stems from the exploration of the frontier and the rough days when we were a British colony. Once we won our independence, immigration from all sorts of countries exploded and this encouraged that independent, diverse spirit further. Very distinct groups formed and I believe this prevented a universal adherence to rules imposed on the people by the state governments. This in turn affected the overall culture of the average American.\n\nAccording to a lot of Europeans, Americans are somewhat disorganized and chaotic. I seem to remember a quote from a German general after World War 2: \"The reason why the Americans are so good at war is because war is chaos and Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3a5sr2", "title": "Indiana Jones and the Captioners of the Unattributed Artifacts", "selftext": "So, we've been playing the \"identify an artifact game\" in the Friday Free For All threads lately, but I didn't want to wait until then to continue. The mods said I could continue it as a floating feature, and that they'd even give my post special color treatment, so here we go:\n\nThis is [my entry](_URL_0_), first posted last Friday. So far, /u/Aerandir suggested (correctly) that it's Roman glass (and /u/Tiako was glad he didn't guess otherwise). I'd like to see if anyone knows anything more about these items though, because their function is at least as interesting as their form. \n\nIf no one can figure out the function, I'll pass it along to /u/Aerandir for identifying the historical context.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a5sr2/indiana_jones_and_the_captioners_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs9iwcg", "cs9k31y", "cs9li38", "cs9p4m4", "cs9ppms", "cs9q9w4", "cs9rx31", "cs9tj70", "cs9vkon", "csa35vl", "csa49rs"], "score": [2, 3, 11, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 11, 7, 5], "text": ["I really want to guess right because I have my own thingy I want to post, but I only know like 4 things about Rome, all of which are from the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series... \n\nDo these birds float? ", "Are they intended as a vessel? Were they meant to hold perfume or oil vessel, for instance?", "Okay, here's the [second object](_URL_0_), which I think will be hard for most of you to guess.\n\nAs a hint, [this](_URL_1_) is the same object from a different region. ", "Ok! Round 4, aka \"Suck it classicists!\" \n\n[Here you go!](_URL_0_)", "Alright [here](_URL_0_) is my offering", "So here's [something](_URL_0_) sort of more fun I guess... not really", "Here is another object, which should be familiar to some discussions that have happened here: \n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: bonus points if you can tell what this is _actually_ an image of.", "I present a [most curious scrap of fabric for our 8th round.](_URL_0_) What is it made of, what is it a part of, who might have worn it, when and where, etc. etc. ", "OK, round... nine I think?\n\nWhat is it!? Type, period, location, and manufacturer please! [Full view](_URL_0_) and [detailed close up.](_URL_1_) Edit: [And another close up](_URL_2_)", "since Sid_Burn is nowhere to be seen, I'll keep the game rolling. [here](_URL_0_) is your next artifact! Please to be identifying its purpose.", "Ok, I'll keep the ball rolling with [this toughie](_URL_0_), what culture, region, time period?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.rmo.nl/beeld/tentoonstellingen/Lugt%20Kroller%20Moller/Objecten%20700p/_480/Lugt_vogels_700p.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://museum.cjh.org/web/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=37762&amp;size=167x172", "http://i.imgur.com/Fxp0vjz.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/MuGkyRn.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/8Vh6Jcm.jpg"], ["https://i.imgur.com/a09eTFK.jpg"], ["https://jasongoodwinauthor.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/513angel.jpg?w=560"], ["http://imgur.com/7bqBH5p"], ["http://i.imgur.com/5pqXRMv.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/c4qmEnD.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/jXM7UxT.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/vKdVKLG.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/Ltuf6C8.png"]]}
{"q_id": "2tqlyg", "title": "With the Northeast Blizzard approaching, I was wondering when was the first time a civilization really had a handle on being able to anticipate that a large storm was coming?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tqlyg/with_the_northeast_blizzard_approaching_i_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co1lxjb"], "score": [45], "text": ["Good question. I'll answer only to the United States, since I don't have a good grasp on an answer for other places in the world.\n\n**On May 1, 1857, the *Washington Evening Star* published the first weather forecast in the United States.** This was the result of eight years of active work and decades of preparation by Americans across the country. Taking weather observations had been a common activity among science-minded people as early as the 17th century. Using new, accurate barometers made possible by the advances of the early modern era, they could measure air temperature and pressure, wind speed and direction, cloud cover and precipitation. \n\nEveryone knows about Benjamin Franklin's fascination with the weather, but Thomas Jefferson was an avid weather-watcher, too. He bought his first thermometer while writing the Declaration of Independence and bought his first barometer a few days after signing that document. He noted that the high temperature in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776 was 76 degrees. George Washington also made regular weather observations. The last weather entry in his diary is on the day he died.\n\nThrough the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Americans charted the weather. In the 19th century, weather observing networks began to grow across the United States. Americans would take their observations and send them in to a central collecting point, which would collate the results and publish them. Americans could see where it was wet and where it was dry across the country. One of the pioneering efforts was made by the surgeons of the U.S. Army, who recorded observations reliably from the 1820s to the 1840s at posts throughout what was then the frontier. The Army Medical Department's ostensible goal was to determine what effects the weather had on disease.\n\nThe data collected by these observers wasn't \"live,\" though. The mail took weeks or months to travel from state to state, which meant that the information was of historical value only. This changed with the invention of the telegraph. When Samuel Morse patented the practical telegraph in 1837, it became possible to send news of the weather faster than the weather itself.\n\nIt took time for this to happen. The telegraph spread rapidly -- almost everyone could see its value -- but charting the weather required an organized network of *both* observers and transmitters.\n\n[Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had the foresight to see what was needed](_URL_0_). In 1848, he began a project whose goal was to describe the climate of North America and learn about storms as they traveled across the country. At the time, it was not even known that in North America, storms predominantly travel from west to east.\n\nHenry had already recruited volunteers -- teachers, farmers, ministers, lighthouse keepers -- across the country to take measurements that they then mailed to the Smithsonian on a monthly basis. In 1849, he recruited a smaller group of volunteers who telegraphed their daily observations to the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian supplied these volunteers (many of whom where employees or representatives of the telegraph companies themselves) with calibrated instruments, standard reporting forms and guidelines for collecting data.\n\nThe telegraph companies realized there was value in sending this data free of charge, and Henry used the data creatively. Starting in 1850, he began preparing a daily *current* national weather map in the Smithsonian castle in Washington, D.C. This map was later put on display in the castle's main hall, where it could be viewed by the public.\n\nNewspapers and others took this information and distributed it. As people realized that the weather followed specific patterns -- notably from west to east -- they realized that not only could they observe the weather, they could predict what would come, based on what the weather was doing elsewhere.\n\nThere were problems with Henry's program, of course. Observations were based on local sun time, which meant they weren't taken simultaneously. The start of the American Civil War in 1860 disrupted the program for almost a decade, and the data was only as accurate as the observers were. If someone was sick or simply failed to take one of the four readings of the day, the information was missing. [In 1870, President Ulysses Grant signed the first legislation creating a regularized weather service within the U.S. Army's Signal Service.](_URL_1_) This service grew and became the U.S. Weather Bureau (today the U.S. Weather Service) in 1890."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/henry/meteorology", "http://www.weather.gov/timeline"]]}
{"q_id": "6lds45", "title": "how is this animal still alive when a human would have died of the same injury?", "selftext": "This morning on reddit's homepage I found this: _URL_0_\n\nA deer walking on bare bones. I can't find it on snopes, still not sure it's genuine, so if it ends up being a fake, sorry.\n\nI have so many questions, the main one being: How was this animal able to survive this type of injury?\n\nHow did it survive long enough to heal without starving to death first? How would an injury like this not result in a septic shock in the absence of antibiotics?\n\nThanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lds45/eli5_how_is_this_animal_still_alive_when_a_human/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djt0mxq", "djt1cyl", "djt9v2w", "djtaj8x", "djtdugs", "djtfl51", "djthrtd", "djtkken"], "score": [19, 38, 22, 2, 10, 3, 8, 5], "text": ["I think it's a matter of getting lucky, and did not acquire a life-threatening infection. Not sure how the animal acquired the injury, possibly ligature from a trap/snare, which would have cut off blood flow to the feet which would result in a somewhat slower and less traumatic injury.", "This animal eats plants.  You don't have to move fast to catch them.  There are many predators that prey on deer, but luck is still a possible explanation.\n\nShock doesn't always kill you, and prey animals like this are generally tougher than predators like humans.", "I'm going to call this fake. \n\nAnyone who has had horses or cows knows what a tremendous amount of pain even a thinning sole and some weight more directly on the bone can cause. \n\nThere's no traumatic I jury I can imagine that would result in a perfect disarticulation of the joint and clean lines. The only way this could be real is if a human did that on purpose. Injury to a wild animal would not result in this. \n\nThe bone would also wear down and penetrate into the medullary cavity and cause a severe osteomyelitis ", "Ive seen a deer with the back leg removed right above the knee area.\nIt did live around a grain elevator though", "People can live like this (probably don't want to click in the link it's nsfw/nsfl) \n\n_URL_0_", "I'm not going to look at the picture.  But do note that most animals can survive a bad injuries if they are lucky.  I'm a bit empathic, just the thought of such things makes my stomach ill. \n\nA human would have had medical help.  Chances are the human, if it lived in an area without good medical help might still have lived although it would probably be in pain.\n\nDepending on what caused the injury you might get a septic condition... you might not.  Flies would be a big concern as they can cause fly strike which is a deadly condition, but a wild deer might not be in an area with heavy fly populations (compare to the city with lots of flies).  If it rested lots, and no predators found it. It could have survived to heal.\n\nI live in Alberta, Canada.  There is a deer that lives east of me that some years ago was probably hit by a car and lost one of her hind legs.  She lives with three legs now and people post pictures of her every now and again to show she is still alive.  She was very lucky.", "Either the picture is fake or the deer died not much longer afterwards.  Considering its still standing and there's no visible blood I'm going to go with the former.  The pain alone should have put that deer out of commission for, well, the rest of its life.\n\nHumans are specifically good at recovering from wounds.  A wound that will kill a human will 99% of the time kill an animal.  Most animals will bleed to death or get lethal infections from wounds that humans could recover from.  And yeah, if an animal has its leg taken out of commission in any way it will starve to death before it recovers.\n\nThis is why many animal fights seem ritualistic.  The predators competing over territory will stare each other down until one backs off.  The squirrels and birds will chase each other around and maybe nip a bit but never quite seem to catch each other.  Its because unless an animal is already desperate, to engage in a direct full contact fight would be suicidally risky.\n\nThere's also a social aspect to recovery.  Even if an animal wants to help a member of its social group, most of what they can offer is comfort and a sort of \"preventative care\" in the form of grooming.  Meanwhile even the most low-tech humans can still bring food and water, carry each other around, and provide medicine of a sort.  Even bandages, faith healing and old wives tales is a pretty fantastic level of medical care for the animal world.", "Simply put: who said this was an \"injury\"? It could have been traumatic in nature, sure, but it could also have been something chronic (e.g., a disease) or even if traumatic, a lot more slow-acting than a sudden physical injury (e.g., frostbite). Either one might result in the loss of the deer's hind feet without the same kind of systemic shock or risk of septic infection that would come from something like a crushing or slashing injury. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/fH3lwx5.png"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://heavy.com/news/2013/09/krokodil-flesh-eating-drug-photos-pictures/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kffdz", "title": "What happened to Gliese 581g?", "selftext": "I remember the red dwarf star system, Gliese 581, being in the news roughly a year ago.  First it was the excitement over Gliese 581c, a super earth, which I believe was confirmed.  Then there was indications that there may have been a smaller planet (\"g\") that wouldbe more likely to support life.  It was better situated in the Goldilocks zone, and smaller than c.  It was to be only about 4 earth masses.  It's existence was also unconfirmed the last I heard.  I can't seem to find any new information on it, so I was wondering if anything has changed.\n\nI know many things in astronomy take time to conform because you have to give time to track star-wobble and use parallax techniques and all that.\n\nI know many more potentially life-hosting, extrasolar planets have been spotted, but I'm especially curious about the Gliese system for some unknown reason.\n\nHave there been any recent developments in confirming the existence or non-existence of Gliese 581g?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kffdz/what_happened_to_gliese_581g/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2jtpkj", "c2jtpkj"], "score": [5, 5], "text": ["I saw [this](_URL_0_) minutes after reading your post. Until then, I knew nothing of this Gliese 581c/g you speak of. Last paragraph:\n\n >  Scientists announced another planet in the same system called Gliese 581 g in 2010 that appeared to be right in the middle of the habitable zone. However, that planet was later shown not to exist \u2014 scientists had misinterpreted the data.\n\nSorry to be the bearer of bad news, but at least we don't have to worry about them coming here to steal all our water!", "I saw [this](_URL_0_) minutes after reading your post. Until then, I knew nothing of this Gliese 581c/g you speak of. Last paragraph:\n\n >  Scientists announced another planet in the same system called Gliese 581 g in 2010 that appeared to be right in the middle of the habitable zone. However, that planet was later shown not to exist \u2014 scientists had misinterpreted the data.\n\nSorry to be the bearer of bad news, but at least we don't have to worry about them coming here to steal all our water!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/09/13/science-habitable-expolanet.html"], ["http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/09/13/science-habitable-expolanet.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2fkxk9", "title": "the term \"sjw\" or social justice warrior and why reddit hates them", "selftext": "Over the last few weeks, redditors have been foaming at the mouth about \"SJWs.\" I'm failing to understand why anyone thinks working toward social justice is bad thing? How could SJW possibly be a pejorative?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fkxk9/eli5_the_term_sjw_or_social_justice_warrior_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cka7whz", "cka93u4", "cka95u0", "cka99cy", "ckabka6"], "score": [35, 4, 14, 6, 2], "text": ["\"Social justice warrior\" is a term used to describe someone who is purposely looking to be offended by something, or who wants to make an issue where none exists.\n\nSomeone who legitimately cares about (and is properly informed about) social issues is not referred to as a warrior, but instead as perhaps an \"advocate,\" \"activist,\" or \"concerned citizen.\"  The term warrior is more aggressive, and is used to someone who relentlessly pursues a false agenda.  Most SJWs don't even actually care about the issues they bring up, but rather are trying to get social attention for being \"progressive.\"", "It's important to distinguish actual social justice supporters from Social Justice Warriors. Actual supporters do stuff to try to better society. They improve access to education, campaign for decent working conditions, etc. Social Justice Warriors think themselves the modern incarnation of Rosa Parks because they shared a facebook post about how Super Mario is indoctrinating boys into Rape Culture. And then, there are the ones that are just batshit insane (google \"otherkin\" and prepare to have your mind blown).", "Oh man, I've written long papers on this.  To keep it at ELI5 levels:\n\nAs with most issues there's truth on both sides.  Some folks labeled as SJWs are more interesting in picking the fight to look progressive than they are an actual advocate for the cause.  \n\nOn the flip side, a lot of people who genuinely do care about social issues (a current example would be the sexual exploitation of women tied to the Fappening leak) will be dismissed as SJWs by those who don't want to be faced with arguments against their behavior or viewpoint.\n\n*Edit* - I'm going to throw this in with my opinion.  I think that, more often than not, \"SJW\" is used dismissively (just like 'White Knight').  I think they're problematic terms that both get thrown at folks trying to argue against a perceived injustice - regardless of motivation.", "People dislike SJWs because of two main reasons:\n\n* They're pushing for even more political correctness in the name of not having anyone ever be offended.  Example: mandatory trigger warnings for stories that contain violence, sex, or language issues.\n* They work towards being a professional victim.  Anything you do wrongs them.  Example: Suey Park complaining that only whites can be racist\n\nThe idea is that SJWs go overboard in how they push us to confront reality to the point where they themselves are detached from reality.  There are a lot of people who fight for social justice who do fantastic work, but people like to deride the most extreme examples of social justice advocates because it makes it easier to discredit things that make them uncomfortable.  I've heard it referred to as \"nut-picking,\" in that your example is almost but not quite a straw-man and makes it easier to make your point.", "The term is ironic.\n\nA social justice warrior is someone who is more interested in *looking* like they are championing a cause, than actually championing it.\n\nThey focus on low effort, high visibility tactics, often going out of their way to find fault and get offended, so they can pick a public fight over it.\n\nExample:\n\nSJW: goes to a friends birthday at a fancy restaurant, finds out the sausage appetizer has veal in it, throws a fit, ruins dinner for everyone\n\nReal animal rights activist: researches local restaurants, never sets foot in any that serve veal, calls out restaurants that server veal, organizes a veal boycott, organizes a protest day "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bmw7ee", "title": "If the French Revolution didn't see the establishment of a lasting democracy in France, why do we consider it so significant?", "selftext": "The French went from a monarchy, to a brief dictatorship, to an Empire, and to my understanding the French would proclaim 4 republics over the course of history to the present. If the Republic was so short-lived why do we consider the first French revolution to be significant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bmw7ee/if_the_french_revolution_didnt_see_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["en0wza9", "en19tzp"], "score": [230, 38], "text": ["Your question presumes the idea of 'progress' - that history is a linear development slowly building up to the world we have today, and past events should be remembered primarily in terms of how they led us here. This view is far from uncommon, but historians need to be very careful not to project modern values and assumptions backwards onto the past. The French Revolution was immensely significant *at the time* because it changed Europe socially, politically, militarily and ideologically. Many of those changes are still with us, others have faded away or been overtaken by subsequent changes.\n\nPolitically, socially and ideologically, the French Revolution is often credited as the birth of the modern nation-state. It began a process whereby the inhabitants of France actually became French, giving people a sense of national identity and standardising language, culture and administration. It changed people's political identity by both expanding it horizontally (no longer just Norman or Parisian, now *French*) but also vertically (not just a peasant, now a citizen). In doing so, it swept away the last cobwebs of the middle ages. By then exporting the revolution intellectually (Jacobinism) and militarily (Napoleon) this process was echoed across the continent. For example, the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved.\n\nMilitarily, the creation of a nation meant the possibility of a national army. With the *levee en masse* (conscription) Napoleonic France completely changed how war was fought. Gone was the gentlemanly manouvre of small professional armies. Instead, huge armies of enthusiastic patriots able to break free from supply lines and 'live off the land', only to come together and overwhelm the enemy in massed column melee attacks. As Napoleon put it: \"You cannot stop me; I spend 30,000 lives a month.\" Even bulwarks of monarchical conservatism such as Prussia were forced to respond by imitating the French militarily, but conscription isn't something the army can just *do* - ultimately, the state of Prussia had to make significant domestic political and social concessions as a result.\n\nIn summary, the French Revolution *created* the nation-state of France. Then, it gave Napoleon the tools to export that Revolution. By a combination of direct imposition and indirect imitation, this had a significant impact on countries across Europe.", "I'm sorry my english is actually pretty weak.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Part 1 on 2**\n\n1. **The idea of \"Nation\"**\n\n* **Actual historical consensus**\n\nThe idea of a ***creation*** ***from scratch*** of nation-state of France is actually forsaken by academic history.\n\nToday, the historical consensus is about a progressive construction of french nation-state since roughly the 10th century.\n\nIt's wrong to say that, overnight, one inhabitant of France would wake up considering himself french, a**nd the idea of a creation of the nation state of France only with the Revolution was largely diffused during the 19th and 20th century, exactly because the republican party had to legitimize himself in a century where everything was to built and France was seeking his equilibrium.**\n\nDuring the Ancien R\u00e9gime, the idea of nation was not evocated because we must understand that the concept of nation was not even created. And that is where the problem is : in fact, we see that what we today call as *nation* would, indeed, be seen in some ways (and more and more) during the Ancien R\u00e9gime.\n\nI will quote Alain Talon, a reference in History, who is criticizing the supporters of a creation of nation-state during the Revolution :\n\n & #x200B;\n\n > \u00ab Voil\u00e0 le d\u00e9faut de tenir la d\u00e9finition de la nation comme un concept intemporel alors que le contenu qu\u2019ils donnent \u00e0 ce concept est lui bien li\u00e9 \u00e0 une \u00e9poque bien pr\u00e9cise : le XIXe si\u00e8cle \u00bb  \n >   \n > \"Here is the fault of seeing the definition of nation as a timeless concept wereas the meaning they give to this concept is linked to a specific era : the 19th century.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy translation should be horrible, but what he tries to say is that people who considered nation as a Revolutionnary creation, used the values of the 19th century to seek for similarities in the past, which they obviously could not find.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI will quote Anne Marie Thiesse in *La Cr\u00e9ation des identit\u00e9s nationales, Europe, XVIIIe \u2013 XXe si\u00e8cle,* which she is a fervent defensor of the idea that nation was invented at 100% during Revolution.\n\n > \"La v\u00e9ritable naissance d'une nation, c'est le moment o\u00f9 une poign\u00e9e d'individus d\u00e9clare qu'elle existe et entreprend de le prouver. Les premiers exemples ne sont pas ant\u00e9rieurs au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle : pas de nation au sens moderne, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire politique, avant cette date. \\[...\\] \u00c0 l'aube du XIXe si\u00e8cle, les nations n'ont pas encore d'histoire. \\[...\\] L'id\u00e9e de nation est n\u00e9e du combat contre le pouvoir monarchique et la division sociale en ordres aux droits in\u00e9gaux.\"\n\nMy translation:\n\n > \"The true born of a nation, is where a group of individuals declares that it exist, and undertakes to prove it. The first exemples are not before 18th century : no nation at a political meaning before this date. \\[...\\] Before 19th century, nations still don't have an history. \\[...\\] The idea of nation is born from the battle against monarhcy et against social division in orders and inequals rights.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* **Why can we talk about nation before the Revolution ?**\n\nDuring the Ancien R\u00e9gime, monarchs but also peasants constructed ideals, true or non-true figures that would incarnate the kingdom, a part of the kingdom, or a value to fight for.\n\nJoan of Arc is a good exemple. Charles VIIth, after winning the hundred years war, reviewed the trial of Joan of Arc and sanctified her in order to cement the kingdom. Even if the actual military utility of Joan of Arc is largely question to debate, she was actually a way to unite the king's subject, which is what we consider today as a part of the definition of the nation.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI'll quote the pope who sanctified Joan of Arc :\n\n > \u00ab C'est que, par son conseil, les habitants de Reims sont revenus \u00e0 l'ob\u00e9issance \\[...\\]\u00a0Par sa p\u00e9n\u00e9tration et son habilet\u00e9 les affaires des Fran\u00e7ais ont \u00e9t\u00e9 solidement reconstitu\u00e9es. \u00bb  \n >   \n > \"By her advices, Reims' unhabitant came back to obedience. \\[...\\] By her penetration et her hability, the french's affairs were firmly reconstituted\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnother hero like that who is not known is *Le Grand Ferr\u00e9* who has the particularity of being a hero of the peasants. The recent works of the historian Colette Beaune showed that Le Grand Ferr\u00e9 was indeed, at that time, a very popular man and was constructing a collective identity and imaginary to the subject of french kingdom.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDuring the war of Spain succession, the kingdom of Louis XIV was in such trouble that the king had to write down a message which was read in every villages : an excerpt. (1709)\n\n > \"Je suis persuad\u00e9 qu\u2019ils s\u2019opposeraient eux-m\u00eames \u00e0 la recevoir \u00e0 des conditions \u00e9galement contraires \u00e0 la justice et \u00e0 l\u2019honneur du nom FRANCAIS.\"  \n >   \n > \"I'm persuated that they would themselves be opposed to received condition \\[peace conditions\\], that are opposed to the justice and the honor behind the word of FRENCH\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI quote Fernand Braudel : *Identit\u00e9 de la France*\n\n > \\[La nation est\\] un r\u00e9sidu, un amalgame, des additions, des m\u00e9langes. S'il s'interrompait, tout s'\u00e9croulerait. Une nation ne peut \u00eatre qu'au prix de se chercher elle-m\u00eame sans fin, de se transformer dans le sens de son \u00e9volution logique.  \n >   \n > \\[Nation is\\] a residue, an amalgam, additions, mixings. If it would stop, everything would crush down. A nation is at the only price to find herself without any ending, to transform herself in the way of her logical evolution.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* **And that transformation is leading me to : Why is indeed Revolution so crucial about nation.**\n\nWhat is certain is that Revolution have created a new society where the idea of nation was the main pillar, and yes, the Revolution actually was, maybe, the last stone of the nation-state construction of France.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI will quote Anatole Prevost Paradole in *La France Nouvelle :*\n\n > The French Revolution had found a new society, she would yet seek for her gouvernment\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBefore Revolution, the word of \"Nation\" would designate a minority community living in another majority comunity. After the Revolution, nation was indeed what was caracterizing France.\n\nTo understand that, I like the preface of the book : *1789 - 1815, Revolution Consulate, Empire*, which talk about the idea of nation and Revolution. Unfortunately, I cant translate it entirely.\n\nIn fact, what invented Revolution was the notion of sovereignety of nation : *\"La nation reprend toute sa souverainet\u00e9\"*, Choudieu, 10th august 1792. \\[\"*Nation is taking back all of her sovereignety\"*\\].\n\nNation was being the motive of dying and living, that is what is incredible with Revolution.\n\nDuring middle-age, dying for the homeland had striclty not a single oz of meaning. The only sacrifice you could do was for god : it's the crusade.\n\nBut I will quote Jean Tulard, specialist of Revolution :\n\n > \"En criant \"Vive la nation !\" \u00e0 Valmy, les soldats de Dumouriez avaient enterr\u00e9 l'Europe cosmopolite des Lumi\u00e8res et annonc\u00e9 les mouvements de 1830 et 1848 \\[...\\] La f\u00e9odalit\u00e9 dispara\u00eet ou recule de fa\u00e7on spectaculaire, les id\u00e9es de libert\u00e9 ou d'\u00e9galit\u00e9 font leur chemin sur le continent.\"  \n >   \n > \"By shouting \"Long live the nation !\" at Valmy, Dumouriez's solders had bury the cosmopolitan Europe of the Enlightenment et announced the movements of 1830 and 1848. \\[...\\] Feodality vanished or retreated in a spectacular way, the ideas of liberty and equality are making their way to the continent.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1qb4rx", "title": "If we all came out of Africa, does that mean the first Europeans were black? If so, why are there no longer any (native) black Europeans?", "selftext": "It's a pretty superficial question, I know. But I am curious as to how things became as they are.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qb4rx/if_we_all_came_out_of_africa_does_that_mean_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdb4t63", "cdbbn3b"], "score": [25, 4], "text": ["There's an evolutionary pressure for lighter skin at higher latitudes because exposure to sunlight is necessary for the production of Vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency can cause developmental disorders like [Rickets](_URL_1_). Given enough generations, there is sufficient pressure for populations at northern latitudes to develop lighter skin colors.\n\nThat said, you are correct in pointing out that skin color is subject to a high degree of variation on the phenotypic (and epigenetic?) level. Because of this, most anthropologists [do not consider skin color to be a reliable indicator of genetic ancestry](_URL_0_). ", "I think one of your basic assumptions needs checking.\n\nEven if you assume \"black\" refers to a skin color and not an ethnic group, the first peoples that emigrated out of africa probably weren't \"black\" as you'd imagine them. \n\nAs has been posted, higher latitudes have evolutionary pressure for lighter skin, and lower ones for darker skin.  The skin tones of the current peoples of africa have evolved over the same time period as the (generally) lighter tones of people in Europe... both could have ancestors with radically different skin coloration."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1440.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickets"], []]}
{"q_id": "698be9", "title": "why do schools prioritize funding sports over band/music?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/698be9/eli5_why_do_schools_prioritize_funding_sports/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh4jkq9", "dh4md6e", "dh4ok2j", "dh4ov8r", "dh4qnek", "dh4vlne", "dh4vves"], "score": [65, 32, 5, 14, 13, 9, 3], "text": ["It has to do with money. Lots of people are usually willing to pay money to see a sports game. Fewer people are willing to pay to see the band play. The sports team and band are like investments. The sports team usually has better returns. Build a bigger stadium, get more people at a game. Pay for a better coach, get a better team, get more people at a game. Get more people at a game, get more money. If bands made more money for a school than the sports teams, the band would get more money.", "You should note that this is very culturally dependent. In the UK I went to a state school (i.e. not private) that had loads of funding set aside for arts programs but very little emphasis on sports. We would have a number of large scale theatre performances every year that had decent runs and very well attended by the public, but I don't think anybody would go to sports games apart from the immediate family of the players, and even that wasn't guaranteed", "I live in smaller town and we just built and new football stadium and I asked the same question. The explanation I got was that more people attend sporting events than they do performing arts and music performances so that is why sports tend to be more well funded.  ", "The same reason they prioritize Math and English over Lesbian Dance Theory classes -- because that is what the community that uses the school expects.  \n\nSports are more popular in the US.  Sports allow competition at a level that doesn't exist quite as tangibly in music.  There is a sense of pride for communities in the prowess and success of a local school sports team.  ", "This is a complex issue, but in the US, sports are usually more popular, and better money-makers than arts and music. ", "My understanding is it's mainly a financial incentive. Football games at $5 a head plus concessions yields a higher profit than $5 a head at a concert. Plus, games can occur far more frequently than concerts typically occur.", "It's cultural. You been to rural America, Friday night lights is real in those towns. Sports for the most part seems like the best way to get out. It also drives up revenue for schools, college in particular thrives on this. The highest paid public employee in most states is a coach. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "20fe57", "title": "Does the clock arms (seconds, minutes, hours) ever split the clock face in three equal areas?", "selftext": "This is a hypothetical clock where the arms move around the middle axis with constant speed, so no tick tocks. If you extend the lines of the clock arms, do they perfectly split the clock face in three thirds at any point during the 12 hours?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20fe57/does_the_clock_arms_seconds_minutes_hours_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg2t4fv", "cg2tg1s", "cg2tlem"], "score": [3, 21, 8], "text": ["I might not be able to find the eventual solution, but I think a promising idea would be to consider the minute hand as stationary.  Then, in a 12-hour period, the hour hand would turn counter-clockwise and complete 11 revolutions; and in the same period, the second hand would turn clockwise and complete 59\\*12 = 708 revolutions.\n\nUpdate: One way, I guess, is to find all the (708\\*2 = 1416) points when the second hand reaches 1/3 and 2/3 of a revolution, and figure out where the hour hand is at those times, to see if it's at the opposite 2/3 or 1/3 point.  It seems unlikely to me, when I put it this way.  I'm guessing it'll come close 11\\*2 = 22 times in each 12-hour period, but it probably won't be mathematically exact.\n\nUpdate (2): I realized - silly me - the faster method is to find the 22 times the hour hand hits the required positions, and check the second hand.  And as others have already said, the answer is no.\n\nBut by my reckoning, the closest approach seems to be at ~~5:05:45~~.\n\nUpdate (3): I was wrong about the closest approach, it actually seems to be around 9:05:26.", "No. Consider a clock that rotates counterclockwise at exactly the rate the hour hand moves, so that the hour hand always points up. Now the minute hand goes at a rate of 1/60min - 1/12hr = 11/720min and the second had at a rate of 1/1min - 1/12hr = 719/720min. Any perfect split will happen when the second hand has gone around a multiple of 1/3 times, say n/3 for some integer n. At that time, the minute hand will have gone around 11/719\\*n/3 times. We need this to also be a multiple of 1/3, so 11n/719 must be an integer. Since 11 and 719 are coprime (11 is prime and doesn't divide 719; in fact, 719 is prime), this only happens when n is a multiple of 719. When n=3, the second hand has gone around 719 times, which takes 720 sec = 12 hr, a complete cycle. So we only need to consider n=1 or n=2. For n=1, the second hand has gone 719/3 = 239+2/3, so the second hand is pointing 2/3 of the way around the circle (i.e. 8 o'clock, but the 8 will have moved). The minute hand has gone 11/719 * 719/3 = 11/3 = 3+2/3, so the minute hand is also pointing at 2/3, so this is not the split you want. Similarly, when n=2, both hands point at 1/3. So there is no such perfect split.", "There are no solutions to your question, on a normal clock anyway.\n\nTo solve this, what we can do is get equations for where the second, hour, and minute hands are at some time *t* in the future.\n\nWe'll say that when t = 0, all the hands are pointing at the same place, and that t is in seconds.\n\nThen:\n\n    H_s(t) = 6t       modulo 360\n    H_m(t) = 1/10 t   modulo 360\n    H_h(t) = 1/120 t  modulo 360\n\nThe modulo 360 comes in because the equations are referring to the offset in degrees from the starting position of \"up\" = noontime. We can see that with these equations, when t = 0, they're all at the same location, and when t = 60*60*12 = 43200, they are again all 0.  This means we only need to consider values of t which lie in the interval [0, 43200].  What this corresponds to in the real world is that we are only going to consider times between 12 noon and 12 midnight on a single day.  Because any solutions outside that range will have a corresponding solution in that range, because of the properties of modulo.\n\nWhat does your question convert to, in terms of these equations?\n\nSuppose some time **T** is such that we divide the clock face into equal sized parts.  Because they are all centered, this means that each part is splitting the circle into a sector with angle 120 degrees.\n\nWhich means we have one of the following sets of equalities holding true:\n\n    H_s(T) - H_m(T) = 120  modulo 360\n    H_m(T) - H_h(T) = 120  modulo 360\n    H_h(T) - H_s(T) = 120  modulo 360\n\nOR\n\n    H_s(T) - H_m(T) = -120  modulo 360\n    H_m(T) - H_h(T) = -120  modulo 360\n    H_h(T) - H_s(T) = -120  modulo 360\n\nWe only have 2 sets of equations because when arranging 3 things in a circle, there are only 2 distinct orderings.\n\nIf we look at the middle equation in the set, the left hand side reduces to:\n\n    1/10 T - 1/120 T = 11/120 T = 120 modulo 360.\n\nThere aren't that many possible values of **T** such that the equation holds, and **T** is in the range [0, 43200].  Hence, you can just check them all by hand, or write a computer program to find all the possible values of **T** which work for this equation, and then check to see if the other two hold as well.  (Repeat for -120 == 240 modulo 360).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6h5ug8", "title": "Is there a maximum\u200b amount of light that a black surface can absorb?", "selftext": "Can there be enough incident photons that saturate the surface? If so, what happens to the extra photons? What would we see? Would the black object get damaged?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6h5ug8/is_there_a_maximum_amount_of_light_that_a_black/", "answers": {"a_id": ["divt7bk", "divtfiy"], "score": [8, 10], "text": ["Light is energy and as something absorbs energy it will heat up unless it can dissipate that energy. The hotter it gets the more radiation (blackbody radiation) it will emit. An object absorbing everything in the visible spectrum (like [this](_URL_0_) very nearly does) will still be radiating away thermal electromagnetic infra-red radiation. If it heats up enough that radiation will shift into visible areas of the spectrum.", "An ideal black body absorbs all photons. And at the same time radiates at a constant temperature. This means that the black body remains at thermal equilibrium, that is to say, that the rates of absorption of radiation and emission (not to be confused with reflection. The ideal black body doesn't reflect anything) of radiation from the black body are the same.\n\nSo there is no upper limit on the number of photons it can absorb. Because it keeps radiating them out to remain in thermal equilibrium."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-with-the-world-s-blackest-pigment-and-it-s-freaking-us-out"], []]}
{"q_id": "376vxx", "title": "why do the nations of the us and canada spend money on a no-touching rule at their borders?", "selftext": "So I know that the US and Canada have the largest international border so it can't be cheap to clear a 5.5k mile strip of land. Why would they insist on it?\n\n[Here's a pic](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376vxx/eli5_why_do_the_nations_of_the_us_and_canada/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crk6bcs", "crk6bfd", "crk7dmm", "crkh8gz", "crkiypo", "crkly4l"], "score": [83, 15, 34, 9, 3, 3], "text": ["Protecting your border gets much harder when you're not entirely sure where that border is on the ground.\n\nKeeping the border clear is a good way to maintain that distinction.", "[Here's](_URL_0_) a video that pretty much sums up all I have to know on this.\n\nNot sure how useful it will be with why they believe it's worth the cost. ", "The main reason is that for most of the border, there's no fence or anything like that. It's cheaper to clear a strip of land than to have a fence.\n\nSo, why have it at all? To keep people who are out camping or hunting from accidentally breaking the law by crossing the border. If you're out that way, and you come across that frontier, you *know* it.", "Imagine something as simple as a hunter. You are deep in the woods, but accidentally cross an imaginary line. You are now in Canada with one or two firearms, a serious offense. \n\nHaving a clear cut visible demarcation that is easily identifiable by anyone that happens to be hiking, camping or whatever in the northern woods keeps an accident like that from happening. ", "Prior to 9/11 this kind of crap almost didn't exist on the US/Canada border. \n\nIndeed, there is a town in Vermont called Derby Line that sits right on the border, and the opera house/library actually straddles it. Prior to 9/11, Canadians and Americans walked back and forth across the border freely a dozen times a day, and nobody cared. The local border patrol guys knew everybody, so if somebody was up to something shady, like trying to evade taxes on booze, they knew.\n\nAfter 9/11, Big Brother rolled into town. DHS, state police, and other goons were suddenly everywhere, and they didn't give a rat's ass if you'd been walking across the border your whole life, suddenly you were a terrorist suspect.\n\nThe town's pharmacist, Roland Roy, frequently stepped over the line to Canada to get pizza, but once the DHS goons showed up, he was arrested and fined, which created a shitstorm in the town.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTo answer OP's question, the reason they insist on this kind of crap is because the DHS is founded on \"security theater,\" the big, flashy illusion that your government is doing everything it can to protect you from the scary terrorists, when in fact, all it's doing is trampling on civil rights and throwing money down a black hole. \"Taking proactive steeps to secure the border\" is one of those bullshit shows they can put on to make people think they're really doing things.\n\n\n\n", "If someone (on the canadian side of the border) shot another person (on the american side of the border), what country would have jurisdiction over the investigation?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://i.imgur.com/aVZ1gdW.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkYlIA7mgw"], [], [], ["http://w.bartonchronicle.com/index.php/derby/in-derby-line-marchers-protests-border-clampdown.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "2yar61", "title": "why are universities horizontal buildings and not towers?", "selftext": "Wouldn't it be more efficient?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yar61/eli5_why_are_universities_horizontal_buildings/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp7s0vj", "cp7s3k3", "cp7secf", "cp7t20d", "cp7tqhe", "cp7zprl", "cp8amka"], "score": [9, 18, 3, 16, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["So that they don't have too much space for parking. Federal law states any university or junior college MUST maintain a 10:1 student to parking space ratio.\n\nedit: ok I guess it's not funny to anyone else how shitty most school's parking situation is.", "Once you build a building more than 3-4 stories tall each additional floor become far more expensive to build/maintain. In some places where space is very scarce it would be more efficient but most places, particularly in the US it is not so they build multiple 2-4 story buildings. ", "As people have said, land and cost efficiency. If you ever go to a school in the middle of a city, you'll find that, as land gets more scarce, buildings get taller. Like, the two buildings I have classes in are both in the 10-15 story range.", "Theories in education show that universities as \"villages\" instead of compounds are better for education. (Source Mary woods Thomas Jefferson and uva)\n\nEssentially, the multiplicity of buildings and the quad and gardens are more pleasant to hang out in and more conducive to learning. \n\nAlso, a second reason, a \"university\" is a collection of \"colleges\". Colleges are specific schools within a larger institution. (Which is why they often have separate names, ie MIT is a university with a \" Sloane school of management \" within, or within \"Harvard university\" there is \"Harvard college\" and \"harvard business school\" and \"Harvard medical school\")\n\nEssentially each college is a small self-contained school with its own dean, its own funding, and it's own admissions, etc etc. Therefore, although the university is large, each individual school is not sufficiently large enough to have a tower. \n\nFinally, horizontal buildings are easier to enlarge as that part of the school expands. (Imagine if the university tower had biology department on floors 10-12, and then they get a donation to expand that department, they would have to fight with the medical school on floors 13-15 and chemistry which was on for 9.\n\nLastly, imagine trying to move 30,000 students to their individual classes all around the building at the same time... Elevators would be crazy. \n\nMy own university, SAIC haa several towers. Elevators are a nightmare. Each tower is 8-12 stories, I need to budget at least 15 extra minutes just for elevators. And our school had just 3000 students. Imagine 30000...", "When land is cheap, it is easier to build out than up.\n\nMost university started out on large parcels of land out in the country, only to have cities encroach on them later.", "It's less expensive to expand horizontally rather than vertically.\n\nBesides, you wouldn't want all those college kids jumping out of high windows what with all those loans...", "Because, tall staircases and elevators are not efficient ways to move many people, traveling in different directions, quickly from one place to another."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8mhc9q", "title": "Has a link been found between red meat and heart disease in any mammal other than humans?", "selftext": "There are many obligate carnivores that eat red meat almost exclusively.  Can this diet cause heart disease? And if not, what are the adaptations that humans do not have?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8mhc9q/has_a_link_been_found_between_red_meat_and_heart/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzpnjao"], "score": [5], "text": ["There is no unequivocal link between red meat consumption and coronary heart disease. The previously assumed causal mechanism is that excess red meat consumption induces dyslipidemia (incorrectly regulated blood lipids) which in turn causes cholesterol build up and hardening of arteries and this results in the vascular stress which causes heart disease. However many of the steps in this causal mechanism are not well borne out by evidence and many other dietary factors may play a role in dyslipidemia (excess alcohol or excess fructose consumption to give two other factors).\n\nHere is a nice contemporary review of the current state of evidence for red meat.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHere's another study on lean red meats\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIn short it does not appear that lean red meat induces the required/causal dyslipidemia. Consumption of red meat (lean or fatty) within recommended guidelines is also not associated with CHD. Humans are well adapted to the kind of varied diet they might have evolved while exposed to.\n\nThat said, excess red meat and processed meat consumption is associated with increased colon (bowel?) cancer risk and has now been placed on the World Health Org's list of known carcinogens. That said the change in lifetime risk is fairly minimal, moving from 5 in 1000 to 6 in 1000."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5474906/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15927927"]]}
{"q_id": "8acp8n", "title": "why is the urge to breathe based around co2 and not oxygen?", "selftext": "When you hold your breath, it is rising levels of CO2 in the bloodstream that makes you feel the need to breathe again; your body is not aware of its oxygen levels.  This makes it possible to breathe a gas like nitrogen and suffocate without ever noticing that you can't breathe.  Additionally, if you lower your CO2 levels by hyperventilating, then hold your breath, it's possible to pass out without feeling the need to breathe, because your oxygen levels deplete before your CO2 levels rise to alarming levels.\n\nSince oxygen levels are what we need to stay alive, why aren't our bodies' reflexes based around that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8acp8n/eli5_why_is_the_urge_to_breathe_based_around_co2/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwxmfzl", "dwxmvpw", "dwxvw1y", "dwy1w0b", "dwy7vqr"], "score": [8, 44, 3, 9, 3], "text": ["Your urge to breathe is primarily driven by CO2 levels but is secondarily driven by oxygen levels. Once your CO2 reaches a certain point it will start to become a depressant rather than a stimulant. Your oxygen level that results will stimulate you to breathe at that point. So the short version is both of those cause the drive to breathe however CO2 is typically dominant.", " >  Since oxygen levels are what we need to stay alive, why aren't our bodies' reflexes based around that?\n\nBecause evolution simply finds a solution that works well enough to let you reproduce. Not always the best one.\n", "Interestingly, people with COPD become so used to having high levels of CO2 (because they have a hard time exhaling) that their bodies start to breath when oxygen is low instead of when CO2 is high. So if you give a COPD patient supplemental oxygen, they could stop breathing altogether", "CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 which is an acid. This can be detected better by the body because of chemoreceptirs. Basically imagine if the bad guy yelling \" I Am A BadGuy Catch me\" ", "You need a lot of things to live to include oxygen. You also need to remove co2 to stay alive. Breathing isn't just for oxygenation. Its used to reduce acid buildup in your body along with an acid buffer system, and through your urine output.   \n   \n  \nAdditionally, respiration is only primarily based around co2, it still senses decreased oxygen levels to stimulate respiration. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "jkef6", "title": "My brother's high school chemistry teacher told the class there are six states of matter?", "selftext": "She told them the extra two were dark matter and antimatter. Is this correct? If you are going to include these two, wouldn't you need to include some other states such as bose einstein condensates as well?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jkef6/my_brothers_high_school_chemistry_teacher_told/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2cu52b", "c2cud5s", "c2cuv9t", "c2cvchg", "c2cwxtz", "c2cu52b", "c2cud5s", "c2cuv9t", "c2cvchg", "c2cwxtz"], "score": [13, 8, 14, 3, 2, 13, 8, 14, 3, 2], "text": ["Since Dark matter is as of now an unobserved construct, and antimatter is a condition of charge and not of state, I'd say shes off base.\nthe 4 basic states of matter : solid, liquid, gas, plasma, add collapsed matter and B-E condensates? maybe.", "Antimatter isn't another state of matter, though it too should be able to exist in solid/liquid/gas states etc. There are many different 'states' of matter, classifying them isn't simple", "Dark matter and antimatter aren't states of matter. If you count everything that could be considered a state of matter, there are more than six. Wrong on two counts.", "i was taught that there are 6 but they are solid, liquid, gas, plasma, Bose\u2013Einstein condensate and fermionic condensate ", "What is the usefulness of classifying matter, other than trying to artificially group characteristics? Even then, there are always conditions which span whatever types of matter you make, [supercritical fluids for instance](_URL_0_) have properties of both gasses and liquids. \n\nDon't concern yourself with the names of things so much.", "Since Dark matter is as of now an unobserved construct, and antimatter is a condition of charge and not of state, I'd say shes off base.\nthe 4 basic states of matter : solid, liquid, gas, plasma, add collapsed matter and B-E condensates? maybe.", "Antimatter isn't another state of matter, though it too should be able to exist in solid/liquid/gas states etc. There are many different 'states' of matter, classifying them isn't simple", "Dark matter and antimatter aren't states of matter. If you count everything that could be considered a state of matter, there are more than six. Wrong on two counts.", "i was taught that there are 6 but they are solid, liquid, gas, plasma, Bose\u2013Einstein condensate and fermionic condensate ", "What is the usefulness of classifying matter, other than trying to artificially group characteristics? Even then, there are always conditions which span whatever types of matter you make, [supercritical fluids for instance](_URL_0_) have properties of both gasses and liquids. \n\nDon't concern yourself with the names of things so much."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid"]]}
{"q_id": "3m5gmr", "title": "In Saving Private Ryan, a few American soldiers open the hatch of a Tiger tank to drop a grenade inside , is there any documentation of this actually occurring in ww2?", "selftext": "In the movie, a few soldiers open the hatch of the commander's cupola and shoot him. They proceed to drop a grenade in the tank before being killed. Had this we occur in ww2? Didn't hatches have locks on them? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3m5gmr/in_saving_private_ryan_a_few_american_soldiers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvc67pq", "cvci82n", "cvcil4v", "cvclrqm"], "score": [164, 33, 7, 15], "text": ["Most tanks' hatches did have locks to stop the hatch from being pried open from the outside, and a system to stop the hatch from falling closed and bonking the unfortunate crew member on the head, and that included the Tiger tank. The commander of the tank in *Saving Private Ryan* probably foolishly left his hatch unlocked. \n\nTiger I tank commander's hatch. The three bars served to lock the hatch closed.\n\n_URL_2_\n\nThe commander's hatch of the \"Tiger\" in *Saving Private Ryan* is actually a rather poor representation, being just a flimsy piece of sheet metal. The real Tiger's hatch was quite heavy and couldn't be held open with just a rifle barrel as depicted in the movie.\n\nAnother example; Tiger I tank loader's hatch. You would turn the small wheel to move the bars and lock the hatch.\n\n_URL_4_\n\nin relation to your point about tanks' hatches being pried open and things thrown inside them, the Marine tank battalions in the Pacific devised a solution. In response to the suicidal tactics used by Japanese soldiers equipped with grenades and pole mines, each battalion systematically put combinations of chicken wire cages or nails on their tanks' hatches in order to stop Japanese bombs from actually touching the tank; this would reduce potential blast damage. Wooden planks on the tanks' sides were used to stop Japanese magnetic mines from sticking, and apparently provided minimal protection against light Japanese antitank guns. Sometimes, the planks were used as a form for a layer of concrete and left in place. Planks or poles were also sometimes placed across the suspension arms to stop things from being shoved inside and jamming up the wheels.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_3_\n\nLate model (lowered) Sherman split-hatch cupola. The torsion springs and toothed \"claw\" and catch helped hold the hatch open. Early Shermans did not come with this feature, and it was retrofitted.\n\n_URL_1_", "A Finnish soldier named Einar Schadewitz has been told to have jumped on a Soviet tank in 1940 and tried to open the hatch with his knife. When he failed to open it, he knocked on it and shouted in Finnish \"Open up Ivan, death is knocking!\". The enemy opened the hatch a little and Schadewitz was able to toss a live grenade in.\n\nI read about him from a book about recipients of the Mannerheim Cross, unfortunately I can't remember or find the name of the book anywhere. [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) cites [another book](_URL_1_) as a source though.\n\nSorry about lacking better sources, I think this is an interesting story and related to the question so I wanted to share what I know.\n\nEDIT: changed the source book link to worldcat.", "Tanks in that period definitely did have \"combat locks\" which would prevent anyone from opening the hatch from the outside for exactly this reason. \n\nI believe in the movie there is a scene where the tank commander comes out of the hatch to direct some of the infantry.  It can probably be explained by the commander simply forgetting to re-lock the hatch after this scene.", "In Russell Braddon's memoir of the fall of Singapore and time as a prisoner of war in Changi, The Naked Island, he tells the story of a fellow prisoner: \n\nDusty had escaped from Parit Sulong and had then swiftly be come lost. Eventually, he saw a British tank, so he knocked upon its side with his stick and, before it had occurred to him that the occupants who emerged from the tank looked strangely unlike Australians, had been captured by the Japanese. Here, however, native shrewdness intervened where intelligence could never shine. He, too, carried Mills bombs down his shirt front (a fact which the Japanese did not suspect in one who looked so harmless), so he shoved his stubby-fingered hand into his bosom, plucked out a grenade, deposited it carefully among his captors and then stepped smartly behind a rubber tree. When, after a shattering explosion, he deemed it safe to emerge, he was most gratified to observe that all the Japanese gentlemen were dead. He accordingly departed with great speed into the jungle and there, once more, lost himself. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/z6YQOsN.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/nj3R9Et", "http://i.imgur.com/k3V8bAP", "http://i.imgur.com/7WO2cUw", "http://i.imgur.com/B4IJiSt.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/wnHo7QG.jpg"], ["https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar_Schadewitz", "https://www.worldcat.org/title/kuolema-kolkuttaa-mannerheim-ristin-ritari-einar-schadewitz/oclc/820121699&amp;referer=brief_results"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ghv9l", "title": "How and why did painting various fruits on a table become a respected art form?", "selftext": "I was visiting a doctors office and on the way in I saw various paintings by different artists of fruits on a table. I'm sure we've all seen a few in our lifetime and even parodies of them on every cartoon growing up, the painter with his bowl of fruits has his artwork comedic ruined. \n\nHow did this start and why? I always assumed it was practicing for portraits. Thank you for reading and replying. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ghv9l/how_and_why_did_painting_various_fruits_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckjhehz"], "score": [74], "text": ["This is a better question to ask art historians. Pictures of fruit (and similar items) are called \"still life\" paintings. Their significance needs to be seen in context So, briefly: prior to the Renaissance, most paintings had a religious theme and painting a commonplace situation or people was unusual. As the renaissance progressed, still life paintings became more popular for several reason. They allowed the painter to show off their techniques, and, while fruits are to us the easiest thing to obtain at any store, they were much more prized in the 17th and 18th centuries, the height of still life painting. They represented a way to show off one's access to prized fruits that needed to be specially grown, perhaps in a hothouse, or transported from far away. In short, they were luxuries. Still life paintings also often included dead animals and household objects like dishes and pots and vases. These too were luxury items, representing some of the most valuable things the household contained. It was a way to show their artistic style and the harmony of their home, representing all of these different aspects of their wealth, their home, their hunting grounds, their agriculture, etc. It also showcased the painter's skill at painting immobile items. They could more completely show how well they could imitate life by focusing on these non-moving objects. In contrast, people who paint still life paintings today might not be entirely aware of all of this history, and might instead just be making a reference to a popular old theme, but without knowing why that theme was popular."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4zijn3", "title": "how do doctors know that patient is about to die?", "selftext": "Here I am not talking about patient who had been into a car accident or patient who was severely mutilated, I am talking about patients who suffer major disease like cancer, vegetative-state and so on.\n\nHow do doctors know that it is their last day to live and call one's families?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zijn3/eli5_how_do_doctors_know_that_patient_is_about_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6w5d6d", "d6w72qw", "d6wha5s", "d6wptwu", "d6wt7e3"], "score": [2, 149, 14, 6, 2], "text": ["You are asking for the the signals showing the patient is no longer circling the drain to where they are going down the drain.\n\nSince most organs are very important then any sign that an organ has failed is a sign that death is coming. Disseminated intravascular coagulopathy is another sign that Death Is Coming. That can be read in blood chemistries or noticing all the new bruising.\n\nIf the heart fails that is noticed on the EKG monitor or if you were taking a pulse you notice no pulse. It is a little late to call the relatives.\n\nBlood chemistry results generally show liver failure. Kidney failure can be treated with dialysis so it is not really the reason for death unless it is accepted to be.\n\nBrain dead people can be kept alive with intubation. Then when the artificial respirations are stopped and the last brain cells die they can spasm, sit the dead person up, or at least squeeze a grasping hand. Spooky.\n\nDoctors do not have to know. They can see it will happen and send the patient to hospice.", "Working in aged care, you get to know the signs.\n\nWhat doctors and nurses call \"work of breathing\" gets harder. The sounds of their breathing get either slower, or raspier, or shallower. Sometimes it sounds like they are snoring.\n\nBlood begins to not circulate as well, so the extremities (fingers and toes) get colder and turn faintly blue. Capillary refill is extremely sluggish - if you press the end of the finger or toe and release it, the finger or toe remains white for much longer.\n\nThe heart tends to beat more slowly and with less force, the different sounds of which can be detected with a stethoscope.\n\nConsciousness may fade in and out. The brain starts to shut down, and hallucinations are quite common. The eyes may track objects we can't see, they may speak to people who are not present. Generally speaking, there's no deathbed confessions or last words, they usually slip into unconsciousness some hours before death and everything just slowly winds down. \n\nIt's not uncommon for the kidneys to stop producing urine, although I do remember helping my mother in law to use a commode about an hour before she died. Usually we apply a continence pad, but it's almost always clean and dry  due to digestive processes having stopped.\n\n\nUsually the appetite and thirst mechanisms have closed down up to several days before they die. We offer food and water in small amounts, but it's more for the comfort of the family than the patient - the digestive system stops working and they just don't want to eat. As I told one family who wanted to give their mother food so that she wouldn't die - they don't die because they are not eating, they don't eat because they are dying. There is no hunger, but the mouth can sometimes feel dry so we will often swab the mouth with glycerin swabs for comfort, and apply lip balm.\n\nThey tell us hearing is the last sense to go, so even if the loved one appears unconscious, it doesn't hurt to say \"I love you\" one last time.\n\nIt is a privilege to care for someone at the ultimate end of life, and I know I for one do not take it lightly. Our elders have sometimes been in our care for years or even decades, and can be like family to us. I have shed tears leaving someone's room for the last time. I have hugged their family and felt their loss as my own. I have worked in my current job for over 8 years, and there is now only one resident left who was there when I started, but over a hundred have gone in the meantime. I remember them all.", "Registered Nurse - Oncology (cancer treatment), end-of-life, and Hospice care within a hospital setting.  \n\nIt can vary greatly and is highly dependent on the person's physical and emotional state. Heart failure vs. kidney failure. At peace or waiting on children to fly in. However, there are signs that place you on an inevitable time line. \n\nOf the hundreds I've been a part of in a hospital setting, I can safely describe 90% of cases like this:\n\nIt's a peaceful slip into a deep sleep. Your brain dies from top to bottom. You first lose more complex functions like being able to describe the situation or recalling one's own name, all the way down to less complex functions, like breathing, which is a comforting thought.\n\nTo place someone on a timeline, you can evaluate the organ systems. Vitals tell you just about everything you need to know.\n\nYou need a systolic blood pressure (the top number) of at least 80 to maintain kidney function. A person may be able to produce urine all the way to the end, but when it become less than 30 ml/hr, in this setting, it is safe to assume kidney failure. I would not give them more than 72 hours.\n\nTo maintain your blood pressure. Your body will pull blood into vital organs causing arms and legs to feel cool to the touch and weak pulses. The heart rate will often increase 20 or more points to around 100/min but will quickly tire out. The heart will inevitably fail and fall to under 60 and/or be unable to pump adequately. Generally I'd given them less than 48 hrs but can go longer with good oxygenation through healthy lungs.\n\nAs this domino effect of organ failure occurs, the brain is also dying (from top to bottom). Much like the heart, respiration may increase dramatically then decrease and change rhythm. This is also highly dependent on use of medications to treat pain and discomfort, which can suppress the brain's drive to breathe. The only timeline I can give here is in the presence of angonal breathing. It looks like slow gasping breaths, almost like hiccups. The higher brain is dead as is relying on the reflex action of the brain stem. They have less than 24 hrs.\n\nWith all that said, it is important to consult with your doctor and nurse, as this is a very complex question and is highly dependent on a number of factors.\n\n\n\n", "For me, working in elder care in a nursing home, it was always when a previously super tired or or or or patient was suddenly alert, talking, laughing with us. \n\nIts like they get one last burst of energy before they pass. Families don't get why we're calling them because \"she is totally fine, she's getting better!\" and we have to explain that the crash will happen pretty soon.", "One thing to remember is that dying is a process, and you can be actively dying.  Sometimes death spots appear on the legs - purplish splotches - and you know the end is very near."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3j0c9b", "title": "how come in the united states stores post their prices before tax?", "selftext": "Would it be better to know the \"actual\"  price?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j0c9b/eli5_how_come_in_the_united_states_stores_post/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cul7ni1", "cul7nw5", "cul7owk", "cul8le1", "culewud", "cull5fz"], "score": [7, 31, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["If items are pre-labeled, it's likely because sales taxes vary in amount \u2014 many states allow local communities/cities (or counties) to add on to state sales tax rate.", "In the US, there isnt a general VAT, the taxes is different from state to state even city to city and as far down as different insitutions in those cities. It is easier for the retaliers to just put the price minus tax on the lables, as it would be the same nationwide, but the tax would then be applied at the cashier. \n\nAlso there is an incentive to post prices without tax in the US because it \"helps keep the prices low\". compared to the retailers that do write the taxes on the price tag. If the retailers dont have to put the price + tax on the price tag, there isnt any reason for them to do it.", "Taxes vary state by state, county by county and sometimes even town by town. Focusing on the pre-tax price makes things quite a bit simpler for many businesses who operate in multiple jurisdictions. ", "There isn't a regulation requiring prices to include sales tax (except fuel).  Posting the higher, tax included, price will put customers off. ", "because every state, city and municipality has different sales taxes on items.  They calculate it at the register rather than beforehand.", "The tax is not applied to each individual item being purchased, it is for the sum of the price of all items purchased. Also not all items are taxed. I don't know about other states, but in Texas, food in grocery stores is not taxed. So you could go to Wal-Mart and buy milk, bread, and Madden 2016 and only pay tax for the $59.99 of the game and not the amount for the milk and bread. Now if buy the game and a pair of pants that cost $10.00, you will pay tax for $69.99."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4b3m9a", "title": "why has walmart struggled overseas when it was able to completely dominate the united states market?", "selftext": "And yes, I know every market is different, but what about their approach to the overseas market, or maybe the difference of overseas consumers, have made it difficult for them to expand overseas?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b3m9a/eli5_why_has_walmart_struggled_overseas_when_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d15rqw9", "d15rvh3", "d15ryuz", "d15s4zs", "d15s66d", "d15uw8h", "d15w3nj", "d1652b5"], "score": [5, 2, 2, 86, 18, 17, 3, 3], "text": ["It seems to be doing well enough with the Asda brand it bought in the UK. They're fairly buoyant in a difficult sector.", "Walmart requires massive supply chain and mature logistic infrastructure. We are not talking only if a 16 wheeler trucks can coming on time every morning at 4 am, but also also traffic data, ports, airport, customs clearance,  etc. all the way to china.\n\nsecondly, Walmart needs consumer database to decide what to sell and what to stock. They don't have that and it cost money to collect data until it is effectively able to compete.  In most places it means they have to compete from mom and pop store that knows what every customers around neighborhoods want to small chain competitors who knows local suppliers better.\n\nThen of course there is regulatory barrier. Most countries are aware of Walmart rather predatory and damaging effect to local mom and pop stores.", "it isnt struggling.   they recently closed about 160 stores overseas,  but the bulk of those were in Brazil\n\n _URL_0_\n\ntwo factors are in play,  brazil's economy is struggling, so sales are down across the board, and walmart is the 3rd largest retailer in brazik,  behind 2 of the larger ones that are much better established in brazil's biggest cities. theyre still profitable as a whole,  but some loxations are underperforming,  which often happens with aggressive expansion. ", "I live in Germany, where Walmart spectacularly failed. The biggest issue seems to be that Walmart failed to understand how cultural differences come into play; among the problems that are blamed for Walmart's failure in Germany are:\n\n* overambitious expansionist plans that went ahead despite the fact that a German company had successfully fought off a hostile takeover bid, at a time when Walmart was still very small in Germany;\n* attempts to cut costs by threatening workers with redundancy if they didn't accept working practices that were borderline illegal in Germany;\n* being forced by a German court to comply with German law by publishing financial statements, which revealed that the company was far worse off than it had claimed;\n* annoying employees and customers alike by insisting on policies that work well in the US but which Germans find creepy, such as employing greeters, or making staff offer assistance to any customer that comes within range (Germans prefer to be left to shop on their own, and to approach staff if and when they need help).\n\nThe mistake was to fail to understand that laws, expectations and cultural attitudes are very different in other countries, and that not complying with them can sink your business.\n\nThat's not to say that Walmart is completely unsuccessful outside of the US. For example, Walmart owns Asda, which until just a couple of years ago was the UK's second largest supermarket chain.", "I'm going to guess that labor laws in other countries probably don't help. Many other countries protect employees more, give the, more PTO and sick leave. It might not be as cost effective for them?", "The big box store is largely a North American phenomenon.  It relies on the fact there will be cheap land at the edge of town and everyone will own a car, can drive five miles to get there, and can load up that car with jumbo economy packs of toilet paper and drive home.\n\nThat model breaks down in countries than don't have that same kind of car culture.  When you primarily get around by foot and mass transit, you are willing to pay more to shop closer to home, where giant stores are impractical, and buy less at at time.\n\n", "Where they have struggled is where they tried to impose the Walmart big box and corporate way without trying to accommodate local values / ways of doing business. Walmart's International division is actually doing pretty good right now, even with unfavorable currency exchange rates.  They operate in 20+ countries under 50-70 different names, shoppers may not even know they are shopping at a Walmart owned chain.", "In Mexico, the thing that stops Walmart from being successful is price.\n\nYes, you can find everything in one location, but you will pay a bit more for the same item you can buy from a vendor that doesn't pay taxes and any licensed fee. \n \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0US2VR20160114"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "wla9a", "title": "Was there a 4,000 year old Sumerian tablet lamenting about the young being stupid?", "selftext": "The first chapter of Carl Sagan's \"The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark\" says:\n\n >  One of the oldest short essays in human history, dating from Sumer some 4,000 years ago, laments that the young are disastrously more ignorant than the generation immediately preceding.\n\nI can't find any reference to this. Did it exist? What's a source to prove/disprove this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wla9a/was_there_a_4000_year_old_sumerian_tablet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5ean8q", "c5ec08a", "c5ecga9", "c5efmjx"], "score": [52, 22, 11, 5], "text": ["This one?\n\n\"[There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end: Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.](_URL_0_)\"", "I've also seen that quote attributed to Socrates.", "\"When the poor man dies, do not try to revive him.\"\n\n\"I escaped the wild cow but the wild ass came upon me.\"\n\nAre two quotes I remember reading in \"Patterns in Prehistory\". I think that they are from the Sumerian period.\n\nTheir mordant humour makes them seem as if they were written yesterday. They remind me a bit of these... _URL_0_", "I find that every older person that complains about younger generations are simply not involved with them to a degree to make their views valid, and their involvements are rarely initiated by the elders, and even more rarely positive.  \nTo contrast, I find that those excellent individuals that are involved with youth and try to help them from their own experience mostly complain about the parents, and validly so, for the interaction are usually negative and numerous because of improper parenting.  \nEvery generation can be at least as wonderful and terrible as any that has come before it. Don't you want to help make a better future by helping the ones following you?  \nTL;DR: be excellent to each other, and party on dudes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bartleby.com/73/456.html"], [], ["http://www.chrisconnollyonline.com/2009/02/72-is-partial-compendium-latvian-humor.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "5qyc6e", "title": "what did common americans think when the us interned japanese citizens during ww2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qyc6e/what_did_common_americans_think_when_the_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd321dz", "dd35q4r", "dd3bcfl", "dd3cgvn", "dd3cshd", "dd3doq2", "dd3gobw"], "score": [41, 88, 72, 18, 11, 10, 2], "text": ["A lot of them were fully behind it. I've seen photos from the time with people pointing proudly to signs erected outside their house that tell Japanese people to keep on moving because that was a white man's neighborhood.\n\nThere were people who hated the Japanese for Pearl Harbor, and there were others who were happy to profit from the misfortune of others.", "Gallup was around then, and did a [survey](_URL_0_) among Americans.  Although not a majority, more favored preventing Japanese-Americans from returning after WW2 than did those allowing return.  This was not a bright moment in our nation's history, and one that people such as [George Takei] (_URL_1_) have worked to raise awareness of. ", "I asked my grandfather about this before he died.  He was in the Navy during WWII fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific.  What follows below are his words and opinions, not mine, so save your hate...\n\nHe said it was not necessarily a big deal at the time, in terms of media coverage or public debate.  However, most people supported it.  You have to realize how emotional the country was following Pearl Harbor.  People were scared and extremely angry.  The big worry at the time was that the Japanese would invade the west coast of the USA, especially since almost our entire Pacific fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor.  \n\nThe Japanese were able to get detailed intelligence on Pearl Harbor by having operatives blend into the large Japanese-American population of Hawaii.  With the threat of an invasion, the powers that be decided to not take any chances.  They did not have a way of ferreting out operatives, so the only option was to isolate the entire Japanese community in internment camps.  They tried to give them good living conditions as best they could (in their opinion at the time).  Everyone was just so focused on the war, that they really didn't think twice about these Japanese-American citizens.\n\nThat basically what he had to say.  Interpret it as you will.", "The US interned **Americans that were of Japanese ancestry**; not just Japanese citizens. Get it right!", "Give that US servicemen brought back Japanese body parts as war trophies and Roosevelt was presented with a letter opener made from an arm bone from a japanese casualty (he didn't accept it). There was serious hate for the \"Japs\" back then. I doubt most people gave a shit and thought it was a good idea. ", "Keep in mind that the United States will still segregating blacks at this point in history.  Overt racism was pretty widely accepted.  So the idea of throwing every person with Japanese heritage into internment camps didn't bother most people.  They had Pearl Harbor and the war to use as convenient excuses.   ", "Another point was that a good number of people in the farming industry were in favor of it because it was a chance for them to take what Japanese had worked to build. At that time, Japanese farmers were the largest force in the fruit and vegetable market in California, where I am from. The government via the US Farm Security administration helped farmers do exactly that by [extending special loans for them to acquire the property of their Japanese competitors](_URL_0_). \n\nAlthough some people did see exactly what was going on at the time and spoke up against it, their voices weren't enough to stop what happened (the newspapers, chambers of commerce and farmers' groups teaming up to push their agenda of Japanese removal into mainstream acceptance). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-support-japanese-internment.aspx", "http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/celebrity_news/2017/01/star_trek_s_takei_shares_his_family_s_internment_camp"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.fear.org/RMillerJ-A.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3746j7", "title": "those bidding sites where people pay pennies for stuff", "selftext": "How can this bidding sites that are advertised on TV have Macbooks or Samsung TV's that sell for like 9 bucks?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3746j7/eli5_those_bidding_sites_where_people_pay_pennies/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crjjh3z", "crjjxj6", "crjjyjl", "crjklry", "crjksvm", "crjkurm", "crjl3o8", "crjld3w", "crjlekl", "crjlzv4", "crjm9zt", "crjmv0q", "crjo4kk", "crjoruv", "crjpki8", "crjpo2o", "crjqjd1", "crjrdgl", "crjsl3c", "crjvb8b", "crjwyqx", "crjx309", "crjza4h", "crjzb4o", "crk2nqf", "crk4zbr", "crk6w2n", "crk95uj"], "score": [26, 1643, 126, 9, 9, 6, 58, 78, 3, 22, 3, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3, 22, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 7], "text": ["Most things don't actually go for those kind of prices. On those sites, you pay to bid. If you're outbid, you have to pay to bid again. With that kind of setup, the site could have an automatic process to bid to keep the prices to a profitable level, all while people pay to bid against it.", "They do really sell for those prices, but each bid is a penny over the last one (hence penny auctions) and you have to pay for bids.\n\nFor example, you might buy 100 bids for $60, and then you use those bids to bump the price by one penny.\n\nIf you happen to bump it the final amount, you can buy that $20 TV or whatever it ended up as, but you've also paid (# of bids * $0.60) for your bidding.\n\nAnd keep in mind that they're getting (# of bids * $0.60) from *everyone* bidding on that item, so if something starts at $1 and sells at $9, they've actually cleared $480 on that item.", "Last time I checked one of this sites out it broke down like this:\n\nYou have to pre-buy bids. They come in sets and usually are worth $0.10 each and adds to the time left to bid. So you see an item you like. Say it's an iPad, it's at $10.00 and the auction has 1hr. You spend a bid. Now it's $10.10 with 1hr 15sec. If no one else bids in the next 1hr 15sec you can buy the iPad for $10.10. Someone else sees it and bids. Now it's $10.20. Your $0.10 bid is gone into the ether and this person can buy the iPad for $10.20 if no one else bids. This keeps repeating. Eventually the iPad is at $90.00 and 30sec. People keep sending bids and time keeps adding until finally someone wins. Let's say it's you for $100.10 and you used 30 bids ($3.00). Your bids spent are counted towards the final price, so you have to pay the remaining $97.10. You can say you bought an iPad for $97.10 or $100.10, the site collected all the $0.10 bids ($100.10) and what you paid for the iPad ($97.10) and ends up making money. A lot of times they offer a  slightly discounted price to the failed bidders to just buy the item from the site, but with their profits on the bid they still end up ahead. Not to mention the money they get from people who buy bids and never use them. ", "They are more or less gambling. The goal is to be the last one who has clicked the 'bid' button when the timer reaches zero. \n\nThe catch is that each time the bid button is pressed, time is added to the count down timer. \n\nIt is a strategic play to try and convince everyone else not to push the bid button and let you win the auction.  \n\nI used to play on a site called SkoreIT! that eventually went out of business.  It was a lot of fun. The ending price of the auction that you paid if you won was not really a factor in how much you spent for the item.  What matters is how many times you had to push the bid button to be the last person to press it and win the auction.  Each bid cost about $0.50 and if someone else pressed after you then that is money lost.", "It is a gambling site, you hope you are the high bigger, each penny bid costs $1 or less, so an item that is normally $200 that goes for $9 will have cost $900 in bids. ", "yes, you are paying only like 9 bucks for that thing your bidding on, but there a big \"BUT\" in the end. \n\nto bid, you need to essentially buy a package of these virtual pennies. its not like ebay, where you just register and bid, you pretty much have to buy an allowance of bids for like 100 bucks or so, then you go about it. ", "I used to do _URL_0_ a few years ago back in 2012 and it was actually legit. Once you figured out the particular bidding system and figured out how to stay in the auction without bidding until the opportune time. Most people in the bidding would be some dumbass as well as five other dumbass who would queue a certain amount of bids so they auction would stay alive. I would just track the dumbasses who were automated and wait until only a few were left and then jump in to snag it. It worked a decent amount of the time. \n\nI ended up spending close to $1,000.00 on bids but won close to $3,000.00 worth of stuff but I didn't really need most of it. It was pretty damn addicting and I loved the rush when I won something big.\n\nHere is a list of some of the big things I won:\n\n$1000 Amazon Gift Card for $24.75\nAudioEngine Bookshelf speakers for $14.35\nGoogle Nexus 7 for $11.11\nXbox 360 bundle for $24.06\nXbox 360 Wireless controller for $0.04\n\nHowever, the majority of the items like iPads or Mac Books that sold for $2000.00 or so once people became \"too invested\" to stop bidding because they had already put in more than two thousand in bids. The bidder ends up paying  the cost of the product and then the site made 200000 bids * .10 (average) which equals $20,000.00 for one f'ing Mac Book. That is easily covered some of the bullshit like KCups or shitty video games that they sell. \n\nAmazon was shipping the majority of the stuff so DealDash didn't need warehouse space or shipping for anything. Keep the website up and running and run \"exclusive deals\" on bids so people keep buying them and pissing them away. \n\nIf the market wasn't so saturated, I was thinking about getting in the business side of the penny auction sites. They make a killing. \n\n", "Something you might find interesting for further reading is the concept of the 'Dollar auction'. \n\nIt involves how someone can auction off a $1 note for more than $1.\n\n_URL_0_", "You buy bids at X Dollars a bid (say, $1.) Each bid raises the price by 1 penny.\n\nIf a TV went for $30.00 that is 3000 bids at $1 a bid. If you win, the final cost to you is the price plus the cost of your bids, so if you bid 30 times to get that TV you spent a total of $60, not $30.\n\nThe real winner is the auction house as people feel $30 is a steal compared to $1000 for a \"new\" TV, but in reality the auction house walked away with $2k in gross profit.", "tl;dr Imagine if you could click as many times as you wanted at /r/thebutton, but had to pay for each click.  Also, there's a prize for being the last person to click. ", "Scams. I tried deal dash. It is impossible to win unless you way over pay.  \nWeirdos will pay more in bids than what the item can be bought brand new.  That means it is impossible to get a deal.    \n\nI canceled and got my money refunded.  I saw no practical way of winning without overspending.    \n\nMorons were bidding up a $600 tablet to $800.  Made no sense.  Everything of value went like that.  Between the sale prices and the bids the winner pays, they overpay than just buying from a store.  \nI had a feeling the winners were scam accounts to run up auctions.    \n\nPart of the scam is the auction has no real end time. Every bid adds seconds to the auction, so the auction will be stuck at like 5 seconds left for days.  It really is a scam.  ", "You know what a lottery is right? Its pretty much that except the last person to buy a ticket at the last instant wins and they call it an auction instead of a lottery.  ", "Each bid increases the price slightly (say 1p), but you pay for each bid (say 50p), after each bid a timer resets and counts down (say 1 min) if no one else bids before the timer runs out you will win. If you take an item that has a retail price of \u00a31000 the site will require 2000 bids to make its money but the final bid will only be \u00a320. What you have to ask is what is stopping the site injecting fake bids if the timmer runs out before they have made their money!", "ELI5: Scam.\n\nMore than that: Basically a lottery, with the added bonus that it's not completely random so there are probably people who  game the system. Many losers, one winner", "All bids must be paid.  So if I bid $2 for something, I have to pay that $2 even if I don't win the item.  So a bunch of people bid low amounts but the last one to bid before time runs out wins the item.  The seller makes the sale for $3 to the person that won the item but he also collects ALL of the other bids, making a tidy profit on his item while you get said item for $3.  ", "**tl;dr**\n\nIt's a raffle where tickets cost money, you increase your chances of winning by buying tickets (bids) late, so it's technically not a lottery.", "Honest people would call them raffles. Same concept, but now with a deceptive veil that preys on people with gambling addictions.", "I did a small script to extract how users were bidding on some auctions on one of these websites.\n\nI found it a bit shocking as on most auctions there's a handful of people placing hundreds of bids (in this particular site each had a cost of 50 cents) and usually winning nothing.\n\nSo, for example, [here's a chart](_URL_0_) I plotted for an iPhone 6 auction.\n\nEach bar represents the number of times each user placed a bid (there were more than 700 different users, I snipped the graph for the first ~200).\n\nSo, the guy who wasted more bids placed nearly 600 bids - pretty much wasted 300\u20ac. \n\nA few more people placed 300, 200 bids and so on...\n\nOh and the user who won? He's not even on the graph, he won with 3 bids.\n\nSo for a 700\u20ac device there were a total of 9300 bids placed or 4650\u20ac netted by the bidding site. \n", "The closes way to break even on sites like this is to go after gift cards. If there is a $20 gift card that you want to start bidding on, bid on it. Whatever you do, you have to keep bidding until the auction is over. Once it ends, you either win the card or can pay the remainder and just buy the card. Over the long run you might break even or be a little ahead(they charge for shipping the card), but you will have flushed hours of your life down the toilet for some walmart/homedepot gift cards and may have saved a few dollars(literally).\n\nJust don't bother. Those sites are there to suck money from the public and they do a very good job of it.", "I don't remember which one, but there is one site that started just below retail price, and each bid lowered the price and extended the timer. Someone would get a mustang for less than a dollar, but they probably made 200k from people bidding on it.", "I did a search for Quibids when it first came out and found dozens of people telling stories about how the whole thing was a ripoff.  They said it would say there was only one of an item left and they would use up all the bids they purchased and every time someone would swoop in LITERALLY at the last second and out bid them.  Then the whole item would reset and begin accepting bids for \"the last one left\" again.  \n\nRIPOFF - STAY AWAY", "Be careful when you sign up. I did just to see what it is; required a credit card to make an account. As soon as I logged in, they charged me $60. Apparently there's some tiny fine print that says creating an account is an agreement to deposit $60. They did give me a refund before I had to resort to a chargeback, but it was a pretty shady thing to do. ", "How do these businesses start up? I feel like the penny bid system works for the seller once enough bidders are buying bids. But what about at start? What about day 1 of _URL_0_?", "You buy bids. Usually around a dollar per bid.\n\nEach bid lets you bump the price of an item up by one penny. If the timer runs out you win the item. If someone else bids, they increase the price by 1 penny, the timer resets,  and you need to use up another bid to try to win. \n\nSo if you win an iPad for $8.50 the site actually made $850 because each bid cost $1 in the first place. At the same time though you could very easily spend $500 on bids and never actually win anything.", "You got to buy a $1000 TV for $100 so you're happy and that's great advertising however the company made $6,000 in number of bids sold to get to $100 in one cent bids. \nIt's not a scam but it seems to feed on the hopes of poor people. Much like a Lottery.", "Why don't the majority of people just wait until the last minute to even bid above a penny?", "We had these in Germany a few years ago under different names: DealStreet, Wellbid, QuiBids, Oopad, etc.. (An indicator that the system is shady.) The basic system is that you need to buy tokens/bids for e.g. 50\u00a2 each. If you bid on an item, the price of that item raises 1 or 2\u00a2. You only get to \"buy\" the item if you are the last bidder for several minutes. So everyone finances the product for one winner. It's similar to that Spanish(?) guy who sold his house in a raffle a few years ago.\n\nI made some calculations when the system was new here:\n\n___\n\n**Nintendo Wii package**\n\n(Amazon price at that time: 369,95\u20ac)  \nFactor: 0,01\u20ac (with each bid, the price raises 1\u00a2, starting at 0,00\u20ac)  \nFinal auction price: 51,99\u20ac\n\nSo we now know that there were 5199 bids, 0,50\u20ac each. That's 2599,50\u20ac. The winner had to pay another 51,99\u20ac. So they (DealStreet) got 2651,49\u20ac for the 369,95\u20ac product - the auction company made 2281,54\u20ac with this single auction.\n\n**Philips 32 PFL 5604 H LCD-TV**\n\n(Amazon price: 458,95\u20ac)  \nFactor: 0,01\u20ac  \nFinal auction price: 11,15\u20ac\n\nHere you'd think they didn't make any out of it. But if you run the numbers, there were 1115 bids = 557,50\u20ac plus the final price of 11,15\u20ac making a total of 568,65\u20ac. So they still made 109,70\u20ac with this auction.\n\n**Apple iPhone 3Gs 16GB white**\n\n(Amazon price: 749,99\u20ac)  \nFactor: 0,01\u20ac  \nFinal auction price: 79,20\u20ac\n\nNow it gets really weird. 7920 bids, 0,50\u20ac each = 3960\u20ac. Together with the final price that makes 4039,20\u20ac total and a win of 3289,21\u20ac.\n", "\"Penny auctions\" and \"All-but-winner-pays auction\"\n\nPenny auction is a type of auction that started appearing on the Internet around 2005 and 2006[1]. It works by having everyone participating pay a bidding fee, usually to the auctioning website, which gives you X amount of bids. Each auction has a time limit and a starting price (usually 0$). Each bid raises the final price of the item by 0.01 cent and adds Y seconds (for example 20) to the time left timer.\nLets say a site gives 100 bids for 20$, and an item sells for 50$. Bids = 50$/0.01$ = 5000 bids; which has a total price of 1000$. So the seller earns 1050$, which is usually a lot more than the value of the item. The winner can earn a bit if he did not waste too many bids, but everyone else looses money.\n\n\nAll-but-winner-pays auction (abwp from here on) is a type of auction where everyone pays what they bid except the winner. It is similar to Martin Shubik's Dollar auction paradox and the All-pay auction model, but differs in that the winner of the auction does not have to pay anything, which is meant to boost incentive to keep bidding on the item. Like the Dollar auction paradox, lets assume we are going to auction away one dollar. We have four players in this game: A, B, C and the seller S. A starts out the auction by bidding 0.05$, B proceeds to overbid A - lets say 0.10$. C joins in with 0.15$.\nThe three buyers continue to increase bids by 0.05$ until one of them, lets say A, reaches 1.00$. At this point A has a potential payoff of +1$ or -1$ if one of the other people overbids hem. For B and C they have a payoff of about -0.90$ / +1.0$. B may bid 1.05$ to still have a chance of winning and minimize his loss. This may keep going until the dollar sells for several times its original value.\n\n\nLet's first look at ABWP auctions from a game theoretical standpoint\n\n\nWe have the seller S and the players A, B and C. The players are perfectly rational and will do whatever they can to earn as much value in the short term as possible.\nAt any stage in the game the players are either the highest bidder, or have a chance to bid to get an item for free. Each bid increases the price by Epsilon, so the potential loss for each bid is small (Going in rounds of A, B, C, A, .. the potential loss is whatever you have already bid + 2*epsilon (The other two peoples bids) ). Epsilon is incredibly small, almost zero so players will just keep increasing the price to infinity.\n\n\nSo why does this happen to this type of game?\nIn normal auctions both seller and buyers gain between 0 and TV (True Value) value. That is all parties gain something from the trade. We can look at an auction as two groups of players - the seller group and the buyer group. The seller group have a valuation for the product of X, the buyer group have a valuation of {B1 .. Bn}  > = X, where B is the highest valuation. The final price the product sells for is Z. The seller groups profit is in the space {0, Z-X} and the buyer groups profit is in the space {0, B-Z}.\n\n\nNow lets look at ABWP in the same way.\nThe seller group still has a valuation of the product X, and the buyer group have a valuation {B1 .. Bn}  > = X where B is the highest valuation. Z is the price of the money transferred which means the sum of all the bids the loser of the auctions have to pay. At the start of the game when the bid is 0 Z is also 0. Each bid increases Z. The seller groups profit is still in the space {0, Z-X}, so when Z increases the seller group as a whole earns more and more. On the other size the buyer groups profit is still in the space {0, B-Z}, so when Z increases the groups profit decreases. This means that from the buyer groups point of view - each bid they put into the auction lowers their potential earnings, even to the point where it goes into negative. This means that if the buyer group cooperated they could earn value, but if they play as individual players they will lose.\n\n\nIn the real world, still using rational people - this means that the only way buyers will gain  > = 0 is if there is no buyers (buyer group has a gain of 0) or a single buyer, in which case the buyer group would gain the true value of the item. In other cases the price and Z will accelerate to infinity.\n\n\nPenny auctions use a slightly different mechanism. It makes the prices look ridiculously low by making most of the price of the item bleed out through a side channel - the bidding fees. A rational player will enter the game and see an item with a price a lot lower than TV. He will buy some bids and bid on the item. It may not seem like much, but when the buyer bid the seller earned money permanently and buyer lost money permanently. This repeats for several rounds with multiple buyers until the price is around TV.\n\n\nPutting this into the equation from ABWP from before we need to change Z a little. The new Z is the sum of the price of all the bids purchased by the buyers plus the final price. Variables would be the following:\n\n    * PB - Average price per bid\n    * N - number of bids\n    * PI - Price increase per bid\n\n\n    Z = N*PB + N*PI = N(PB+PI)\n\n\nThe trick to this auction type is that the seller only shows the buyer(s) N*PI (the current price of the item), leaving out N*PB (The price paid for all the bids so far), which is half the equation.\n\n\nWe have again that the seller groups profit is in the space {0,Z-X} and the buyer groups profit is in the space {0, B-Z}. With the same equation we draw the same conclusion - that this type of auction unfairly favours the seller group.\n\n\nThere are other problems with these type of auctions as well. The most common of the two - penny auctions is notorious for being involved in scamming operations where site admins go in and bid on items in order to artificially increase the prices of items, or prevent users from getting items at all [2]. One of the more commonly used CMS system for setting up a penny auction site - PHPPennyAuction had build in support for bidding bots that would keep bidding on items last second until they either reached a pre-determined price or would make sure to always have the last bid (if a bot wins the site doesn't get any complaint if they don't send out the item on sale). The _URL_1_ site is at the time of writing shut down, possibly due to bad reputation, but a site called \"_URL_0_\" has taken it's place[3]. Subjectively the new site does not look trustworthy.\n\n\n[1]\n_URL_3_ First mention on wikipedia.\n\n\n[2] _URL_4_\n\n\n[3] http://www._URL_0_/"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["DealDash.com"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/ELm90nE"], [], [], [], [], ["PennybidsRUs.com"], [], [], [], [], ["ajaxphppennyauction.com", "PHPPennyAuction.com", "http://www.ajaxphppennyauction.com/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bidding_fee_auction&amp;dir=prev&amp;action=history", "http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/01/pennybiddr-com-alleged-scam-with-shill-bidders/"]]}
{"q_id": "17ifzx", "title": "Is it possible to turn orange from eating too many carrots?", "selftext": "Just an old question i have always wondered", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17ifzx/is_it_possible_to_turn_orange_from_eating_too/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c85s543"], "score": [6], "text": ["I'd argue it's more of a yellow than orange, but yes.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis"]]}
{"q_id": "h62u5", "title": "When a crowd of ants gorge on a mound of sugar, is \r\nthat benefiting their colony in any way?", "selftext": "Or is it gluttony? [I tried askreddit](_URL_0_), but was met with only joke responses.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h62u5/when_a_crowd_of_ants_gorge_on_a_mound_of_sugar_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1supxg", "c1sut6k", "c1svk2e", "c1svml0", "c1svp19"], "score": [4, 6, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["I'm not an ant biologist, but my guess is that they can always find ways to use more sugar.  The very worst case scenario, they could just store the sugar to eat later in case they encounter a \"sugar drought\".", "Like any food, sugar is a form of food energy that can help sustain each individual ant. However, it is only temporary sustenance, similar to humans, so it benefits them insofar as it's caloric intake. I'm not sure what other \"benefits\" you had in mind.", "A follow up question - since insects are limited by their size of their exoskeleton, they can't grow fat.  What do they do with all the excess energy?", "I'm not an expert, only an ant enthusiast, however I will say many ants regurgitate their food.  Some specialty members of ant species, like honeypot ants, spend their whole life eating and barfing.\n\nI think in most cases the ant's first instinct is to bring food back to its colony, not to eat it out there--so you aren't that likely to see ants actually just eating in the field.\n\nAgain I'm no expert but unfortunately I don't think we have an etymologist...", "I've only ever seen ants pick up food and bring it to their nest.  Where do you see a crowd of ants gorging on a mount of sugar?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/h3d0y/when_a_crowd_of_ants_gorge_on_a_mound_of_sugar_is/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4f8ttw", "title": "how can journalists leak secret documents without any consequences?", "selftext": "For example here: _URL_0_\n\nI understand that they are using documents that were provided to them by anonymous sources, but what stops government from taking down the website or charging the journalists?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f8ttw/eli5how_can_journalists_leak_secret_documents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d26tp90", "d26u8fx", "d26vlom", "d26wqqb", "d26x74j"], "score": [30, 3, 2, 21, 10], "text": ["Against freedom of speech,  any information you can get your hands on is yours and you are free to speak it. They can declare that access to a server is illegal or entering an area is trespassing,  but if they don't know who did the trespassing then they have no one to punish.\n\nYou can bind someone to a contract that says, you cant let this information out without punishment,  but those terms have to be accepted legally by someone.", "So long as the journalist doesn't break the law or ask someone else to break the law, they can publish whatever they like, no crime has been committed.\n\nIf they gov't finds out about it before publication, they can stop them.  If they find out after, they can try to have the story removed, but by then it is usually too late, the information is out there, and all they can do is create the Streisand Effect.", " >  charging the journalists?\n\nThe government actually does by using the contempt of court clause. If the journalist does know who their source is and the court subpoenas the journalist then he must reveal the identity. If he does not reveal the identity then he will be jailed until he either reveals the identity or the court finds no need to hold him in contempt any longer. \n\nNow if the journalist truly does not know who their source is and says so in the court of law then the government can't do anything as he is not in contempt and fulfilling the court order to the best of his abilities. ", "You have some answers already, but I think you have the situation reversed a little bit.\n\nJournalists don't leak the documents. The documents get leaked *to the journalists*. \n\nThe journalists then publish them, and there's a long-standing tradition and precedent for them being allowed to do this. Freedom of the press and all that. ", "The US does not have an official secrets act like many other countries. What this means is that while information may be classified by the government, it's only a crime to release it by *those who have security clearance* -- that is, the people who have agreed to keep it secret.\n\nIf Joe has a security clearance and gets secret information and gives it to Cathy, a journalist, then Joe can be charged, convicted and imprisoned for disclosing the information.\n\nBut Cathy doesn't have a security clearance. She never agreed to keep information secret, so she can legally tell anyone she wants about it -- even telling everyone in a story in the newspaper.\n\nSo, what stops the government from charging the journalists is that it's simply not against the law for a private citizen to share information."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1nhajw", "title": "Were those of mixed (white-native American) descent treated differently in colonial Pennsylvania/America in the 1750s and 1760s?", "selftext": "The French and Indian War sent quite a deep animosity between white and native, so what happened to those that were mixed? How were they treated and how were they perceived? Were they considered white or \"Indian\"? Were there any benefits?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nhajw/were_those_of_mixed_whitenative_american_descent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cciqfnu"], "score": [10], "text": ["I'm going to start out by saying I can't provide any specific sources, as I learned this in class and really don't feel like going back through all of the books I read during that time.\n\nBut yes, they were treated differently.  It actually wasn't completely rare for the mixing to happen, especially with white men and Native women.  While it didn't really happen with the \"proper\" men of the cities, it happened often with traders and frontiersman who spent a lot of time outside of the cities (and people within cities didn't find it all too inappropriate for these types of men to have these relationships).  These men were outside of the cities, so this \"inappropriate\" behavior did not infiltrate normal society.  Also, it was viewed as a part of their business, as they needed guides and some kind of security and access from the local tribes.\n\nThere was mixed reaction for the women, however.  The opinion of Native women about themselves being involved with white men was split, as some felt white men were bad providers and wouldn't provide a real stable future, and the other half approved because white men could get them access to English goods and hopefully secure peace between the settlers and the Natives.  These relationships also fell under Native rules and laws, as they were outside of English societies, so that was viewed positively.\n\nThe colonists' views of the Native women did not match their accepting view of the white men involved with them.  They viewed the Native women involved with colonist men as taking advantage of the men (almost as a form of prostitution) since the Native women expected goods in return for the relationship.  They also viewed the Natives as savage in all aspects of life, including have multiple sexual partners (which wasn't necessarily always true) and going after just about any white male, as opposed to the civil, stable marriages the colonists participated in.\n\nBecause of these negative views of the native women, and the men involved not being a real part of civilized society, the children of these relationships were not generally accepted into society, as they had \"savage\" in them and were not proper.\n\nAlso, the reverse situation (Native men and white women) was not very common at all, and was more seen in captivity narratives and stories.\n\nAgain, I'll say I am not an expert in this subject, and someone who is can probably come in and give many more details.  But, this is what I've learned through my course of study.  Hopefully this can provide at least a little light on the subject until an actual expert comes in here."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "12npq2", "title": "What is the importance of theoretical physics?", "selftext": "When have theoretical physicists ever lead the way to benefit the human race? Most famous physicists I've known heavily relied upon experimental data to formulate their theories.  Looking at the institution on a whole, it seems all it does is create impossible to test theories to answer the question of our existence. Reddit, please teach my ignorant ass the importance of granting these scientists money instead of directing it towards other more important applied sciences to better mankind with water purification, disease control, medicine, energy sources, food production, etc.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12npq2/what_is_the_importance_of_theoretical_physics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6wn0ys", "c6wng7j", "c6wnlew", "c6wnliz", "c6wnm7i", "c6wnt6t", "c6wq6c9", "c6wqxq7"], "score": [18, 40, 6, 4, 5, 9, 6, 5], "text": ["This is a question *about* science and not really a \"science question\", so I should remove it. However, I'm allowing the question because the answer is important.\n\nI'll let some others reply first, before adding my own perspective.\n\nEdit: Here's my response:\n\nMany people here correctly point out that theoretical physics often lead to practical results. There's no way to tell which theory or conjecture will lead to the next semiconductor transistor, the next microwave oven, or the next hereto-unimagined application.\n\nThere's another consideration that must not be ignored: there is value inherent in scientific discovery. \n\nArt and science are the two aspects of the human condition that can be abstracted from our struggle for survival and prosperity. They have meaning outside of the mundane. What that meaning might be is up to philosophy to figure out. Of the two, science is (most) objective, and thus a unifying force for humanity. Although both art and science build on past work, science is (most) clearly advancing, and thus presents the most coherent goal.\n\nI, and many others besides, feel that a purely economic/utilitarian view of humanity is ultimately depressing. If all we try to do is maximize happiness or minimize suffering, I feel that we're a pretty narcissistic (self-serving, self-absorbed) species, and I'd rather believe we have loftier goals.\n\nScience is the loftiest goal we have at the moment. Instead of diverting attention from one branch of science in favor of other branches, let's try to advance everything we can.", "Well, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynmann and Stephen Hawking are/were all theoretical physicists... so that's a few famous ones there already :)\n\nEssentially, being a theoretical physicist doesn't mean you don't base your theories on experiment. It just means that somebody else does or has done the experiment for you. Furthermore, in practise, most \"theoretical physicists\" are actually *computational* physicists. We try to replicate experiments by throwing some physical laws and initial conditions into a computer and see what comes out. By seeing how things disagree or agree with reality, we can try to figure out whether we understand what's going on.\n\nAlso, theoretical physics is often used in very practical fields: things like superconductors or nuclear reactions for instance. These are practical fields where understanding what's going on can help us improve technology. We still aren't entirely sure how superconductors work for instance - we have some very popular models, and we can actually *build* superconductors, but we really don't know for sure what's fundamentally going on. If we could develop the theory enough to actually understand in good detail how superconductors work, then that would give us some major clues about how to build better ones.\n\nHowever, it may be that you're not really asking about *theoretical* physics within practical fields, but more about fields that how no direct application: astronomy for instance. (I will finish this answer later, it's dinnertime!)\n\nEdit: Okay. I'm back. So what's the deal with fields with no practical application? What's the point in finding the Higgs Boson or modifying General Relativity or looking at galaxies billions of light years away from billions of years ago? There are two broad answers:\n\nFirstly, impractical fields often turn out to not be as impractical as they seem, and things that were once impractical can become practical later on. Quantum mechanics is actually essential for understanding everything from transistors to chemistry Even something as simple as \"why does methane have four hydrogen atoms and not three?\" is really a quantum mechanics question. General and Special Relativity were not created to solve technological problems, but are now required for GPS - and our particle accelerators wouldn't work if we didn't understand special relativity. Furthermore, even impractical research can produce practical application, as scientists push the limits of technology to gain their results - however, these \"accidental\" applications are probably not as common as scientists like to suggest. Another way that non-applied science can be useful is that it allows us a different perspective that can reveal stuff about physics on Earth. One odd example is the element of Helium. As you know, Helium has a lot of practical uses in Earth. However, it was not discovered on Earth: it was discovered *on the Sun*. Astronomers analysed the spectrum of the Sun to see what it contained, and it revealed the presence of an unknown element. It was not until much later that this was detected on Earth - in this way, astronomy acted as a laboratory for testing physics that couldn't (yet) be tested on Earth.\n\nSecondly: all of the above is really an *excuse*. These are the things physicists say to get people off their backs. But this is not what really gets us excited about physics: people don't study cosmology because they hope that it'll accidentally produce something practical in the future. We do it for much more philosophical reasons: essentially, the universe is awesome and huge and we don't know much about it, and it's really fun and interesting to learn more about it. We just do it because we think it's fascinating. But this doesn't get us funding, so we have to show that there are practical benefits too - which is why your hear my first arguments a lot.", "To condense a very complicated subject:\n\nTheoretical physics occupies the same space as pure research.  It likely will never have a direct RoI.  HOWEVER, the benefit to new technologies and society as a whole is almost immeasurable.\n\nAs for your point about experimentation, it is important to recognize that, while theoreticians work from experimental data, experimentalists design their experiments from theory - there is a very definite interplay there.  A quick example:  in 1927 Einstein was working on some ideas from a then-obscure Indian theoretician named Satyendra Nath Bose.  In the course of his work, Einstein ran across an odd situation in which the statistics governing atoms' quantum states seemed to be nonsensical.  After much humming and hawing, he broke down and declared that he had discovered a new state of matter.  He was, of course, dismissed.  Flash forward to 1995: a team of experimentalists headed by Carl Wieman created the first Bose-Einstein condensate.  This earned him and his collaborators a Nobel prize and opened up huge new areas of research with applications in a myriad of fields (it also indirectly earned the head of the DoE, Steven Chu a Nobel for figuring out how to cool the atoms in the first place).  The point is, without einstein's off-the wall prediction 68 years previously, *no one would have even been looking for this stuff*.", "A quick answer to your first question would be with regards to GPS.  In fact Brian Cox claimed that the US military was unconvinced as to its effects until actually testing the results, although the veracity of this claim is examined in more detail here: _URL_0_.\nRelativity has lead to a far more accurate prediction of the behavior of our solar system (perihelion precession), light bending, laser cooling and a multitude of other effects.  Yet for common day usage the Newtonian approximation of these effects are mostly useless, and it would have been hard to predict how important it ended up becoming when we first understood its effects.\nQuantum mechanics has lead to a more through understanding of chemical structures (why orbitals have their shape and behave the way they do, where semiconductor energy bands come from, and many more results).  These understandings affect our understanding of chemistry, material science, nanofab, biology, and pretty much most hard science fields.  Just as one example, see SQUID imaging: _URL_1_.\nThe exact nature of superconductors is not fully understood.  The theoretical underpinnings of things like bell's theorem and quantum entanglement are still somewhat in debate.  One can easily imagine many possibilities that could stem from a more thorough understanding of these phenomenon.\nIn short there are fields that we *know* require a deeper theoretical understanding to further our abilities to manipulate them, and there are questions more disconnected from what we may consider practically applicable which may yield profound implications in our quest to manipulate nature.  \nTo determine whether it is \"worth it\" or not, one would need a resolute goal for humanity, as well as a clear idea of what a deeper understanding of the universe can truly accomplish for us.  For both these questions, I'd be surprised if anyone had a cogent answer.  But I can say that in the past, I think it has truly been worth it.  Why not now?", "There are two ways to handle this question. I'm also not going to limit this to just theoretical physics, for all of science needs to be treated the same. The first is an appeal to reason or informally, the \"no-stick frying pan\" method.\n\nIn general, the advances in any given science have historically benefited society in ways that are completely unrelated to that scientific field.\n\nGlobal positioning satellites using relativity to give accurate readings is an example of this. When PTFE was discovered, the chemist Roy Plunkett, was trying to make a better refrigerant. Nowadays you know this stuff as Teflon, a la' no-stick frying pans.\n\n[Here's a Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) about all the spin-off technologies and products and benefits of just NASA and it's engineering and science endeavors.\n\nThe following story is a bit apocryphal, but back when electricity was first being characterized by people like Faraday, nobody had any clue what to make of it. In fact, it was very well the \"theoretical physics\" of the 1800's and had no known practical applications.\n\nWhen asked by the Minister of Finance about the practical value of this seemingly useless thing called electricity, Faraday replied, \"One day sir, you may tax it.\" Can you imagine the world today if everybody stopped researching this little funny phenomenon called electromagnetism? We wouldn't be having this conversation right now.\n\nRight now, the value of the Higg's boson or the Pion has no real practical application, maybe it never will, but how are we supposed to know if we never try? Are we to abandon this line of curiosity because the payoffs are deemed \"too far away.\" Wouldn't such an assessment be short sighted of us? What if they lead to marvelous advances in the human condition? What if it's the next \"electricity\" or the next \"flying machine\"?\n\nThe second appeal I have is the appeal to emotion, the \"look how freaking cool this little gizmo I found is!\" I'd call science one of the best intentioned human endeavors known. We are literally, collectively as a species attempting to discover everything we can possibly know about the universe we happen to find ourselves in. There's value in knowledge in that we can communicate it. We're unlocking what those points in the sky really are and trying our damn hardest to tell everybody with ears to listen about it. That point of light is bigger than anything you can imagine and it's real, it has a life, a drama, it dies.\n\nThat little spike in this graph? It's a mu-meson on it's final decent into oblivion, created in the upper atmosphere, it's short lifetime seemingly extended by it's incredible speed! It's smaller than anything you can image as it plummets towards the Earth's surface. It's speed is so great, the distance it must travel decreases almost as if the ground itself was eager to meet it. It's death quick and violent leaving only a tiny blip on your monitor and as slightly quickened atoms inside your detector.\n\nIs there not value in knowing the truth that is around us and causes us to simply be?", "Let's go back in time two centuries and ask the question again.\n\nAt that time the sorts of theoretical science that were being studied were electromagnetism, chemistry, and physics. And many folks thought such things were esoteric pursuits, and indeed they were. For a while. But soon such knowledge became immensely practical. It led the way to the creation of the chemical industry, electric power, radio, industrial explosives, and essentially the very foundation of industry. Such knowledge was critical to the creation of literally hundreds of trillions of dollars of value to the human race and the addition of literally hundreds of billions of person-years of life.\n\nNow let's go back in time just one century and ask the question again.\n\nAt that time the sorts of theoretical science being studied centered around atomic theory and quantum mechanics. Such knowledge proved to be critical in the invention of semiconductor based electronics (microprocessors), lasers, fission power and nuclear weapons, MRI devices, digital cameras, solar power, satellites, and basically all of modern bio-chemistry. It's harder to estimate the economic or human impact of these advances but easily many trillions of dollars in value has been generated. Without such knowledge our modern, connected world of fiber-optic cables and ubiquitous computing would simply not exist, that theoretical work is as much responsible for the nature of the world since about the 2nd half of the 20th century through today as anything else.\n\nNow let's go to today.\n\nToday we are studying many things, but some of the more esoteric would be particle physics, cosmology, and planetary space science. Today we are studying things such as dark matter, the Higgs boson, the geological history of Mars, stellar evolution, and other pursuits equally distant from any immediate, practical uses.\n\nWhat is the importance or value of such research? Well, for the most part we do not know, that's the point of doing fundamental research. It illuminates new areas which otherwise wouldn't even be conceivable. And so far the track record in terms of return on investments in fundamental research has been more than sufficient to justify continued spending on new realms of knowledge without having any immediate idea for applications.\n\nBut consider some possibilities. Our studies of the light emitted from around distant black holes has drawn attention to the phenomenon of orbital angular momentum of light, which recent research has indicated may be usable to create wireless communication links capable of transmitting hundreds of terabits of data per second. Our continuing study of high energy atomic physics may result in practical fusion power. Our study of planetary bodies in our own Solar System may prove immensely practical as we build off Earth colonies throughout the 21st century. And our studies of exoplanets may eventually result in contact with alien civilizations, which would have a transformative impact on Earth even if we did not trade knowledge with them.\n\nMeanwhile, we will continue to spend money on fighting the immediate battles against disease, hunger, and poverty through conventional means. And as always that's where the vast majority of our efforts will be spent. But, if we are wise, we will also continue to fund fundamental research because the potential benefits to mankind are vast and unknown.", " > When have theoretical physicists ever lead the way to benefit the human race?\n\nHey, you know that thing you're typing into right now to ask that question?  Yeah, that came about due to the (originally theoretical) physics that lead to the discovery of the electron, and electromagnetism as a whole.  A great many of the things you take for granted -- your cellphone, your TV, your microwave, most of your household appliances ... came about due to the discovery of electrons and correct modelling of the electromagnetic force.  Lasers, for example, were given birth by understanding the quantum mechanics behind Bose-Einstein condensation.  And everybody has a laser -- they're in your CD drives today.  Same idea behind superconductors which are used in many industrial applications today.\n\n > Looking at the institution on a whole, it seems all it does is create impossible to test theories to answer the question of our existence.\n\nThat's because, mostly, that's all that's left.  Many things which used to be theoretical ended up either being discovered, or revised to match what was discovered, and it is no longer theoretical, now it's actual, and there is technology based off of it.  The few things that still are theoretical are either things that are so difficult to compute that current computers can't do it, or things that we haven't yet figured out the mathematics behind (how to unify all of the fundamental forces for example).\n\n > Reddit, please teach my ignorant ass the importance of granting these scientists money instead of directing it towards other more important applied sciences to better mankind with water purification, disease control, medicine, energy sources, food production, etc.\n\nWith applied sciences, you can do many things, but one thing you can't do with applied sciences only is increase the domain to which your science applies.  Hundreds of years ago, applied science couldn't build computers, or satellites, or electrical transformers, etc.  Applied science could not explain the planets, or the stars, or radioactive decay.  However, theoretical science came along and provided the next big models.  Those models were tested, many were thrown out, the few that were correct were kept, and the domain to which science could be applied increased.  Now we have more accurate cosmological models, we have fancy phones that can touch together and exchange information, and all of that.\n\nThe goal of theoretical science is to find models that better understand and represent reality than our current models (e.g. replacing Newtonian mechanics with special relativity).  That allows for the domain to which science can be applied to grow (e.g. now we can launch satellites and probes to other planets, due to understanding the model of special relativity).  Applied science is great -- but the only way to make it even *more* applicable is to do theoretical work.", "It's funded for the same reason that we funds the arts. It's a cultural pursuit, a sign of our civilization, and an effort to answer questions that humanity has asked for thousands of years. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=22777&amp;start=0&amp;sid=0bf93bcb24dfabf4574d59549de14c81", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies#Light-emitting_diodes_.28LEDs.29"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qgc27", "title": "why is the number \"70\" in french called \"soixante-dix\" (60+10), \"80\" called \"quatre-vingts\" (4*20) and \"90\" called \"quatre-vingt-dix\" (4*20+10)", "selftext": "I've always found it very weird that the French numeric system is seemingly normal till about 60 (loosely following the Arabic numerals), and then shit completely hits the fan with 70, 80 and 90.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qgc27/eli5why_is_the_number_70_in_french_called/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwexff3", "cwexjkj", "cwexp5t", "cwez22t"], "score": [34, 11, 4, 9], "text": ["There may not be a satisfying answer to this question, but one theory is that the French were originally going to go with a base-20 numbering.  Source: [Numberphile](_URL_0_).", "IIRC it's because of the base 20, or counting system that relies on 20s for grouping larger numbers (AKA vegesimal). This is just some really ancient way to count things and is present in other languages. It's similar to how other systems use dozens (base 12) although 12 has other important significance in religions and whatnot. You also surely know the decimal (10) system. :)\n\nNote that not all French speakers do this. In Swiss French, we say septante, huitante, nonante. Similar if not the same in Belgium.", "A good chunk of Europe used a base 20 system including French. Actually, you had the same in English. The word for 20 was \"score\". So, you'd say stuff like \"four score and seven\" for 87 or \"three score and ten\" for 70. In Old French, you could use both up to 99. The old word for 80 was \"uitante\" in base 10.\n\nThe French just kept more of that system than people in other languages did. Danish has an equally confusing system for numerals.", "This is because France was is a Gallic country and the Gauls used to count on a 20 based language. \n\nBut their is different way of saying those numbers depending on what part of the french speaking world you live on the Base 20 numbers are still in use in : (France,Quebec, Madagascar, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Mali, Rwanda , Haiti , Chad , Guinea, Benin, Togo , Central African Republic, Gabon , Comoros , Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti , Luxembourg , Vanuatu , Seychelles , Monaco)\n\nBut some french speaking countries or regions have switched to a based 10 using septante(70) octante or huitante (80) and  nonante (90): (Belgium, Republic of the Congo, Aosta Valley, Jersey Legal French, Acadia/New Brunswick, Switzerland, Burundi, Rwanda and a few other places)\n\nThe interesting thing is that this 20 based system was challenged during the french revolution, the french revolution changed the mile system and invented meter system that was a lot more logical, the calendar was changer to the French Republican Calendar with a 10 days/week base and the year 0 being (1789) year of the revolution, but out of all of those new ideas only the meter system and a few things survived today.\n\nAlso it is important to note that the 10 based system is always used in french stock trading to no get confused between 70 and 6010.\n\nI hope that my explanation helped. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220MB1uHKMw"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "37i2s1", "title": "i often watch westerns where people are wearing long coats and pants in the summer/heat. how was this possible back then without being uncomfortable all the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37i2s1/eli5_i_often_watch_westerns_where_people_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crmv8es", "crmviz6", "crmx5mm", "crmx9qn", "crmy26y", "crmyhxj", "crmze0k", "crn2513", "crn2feg", "crn2pza", "crn39pd", "crn3z57", "crn6heo", "crn7swt", "crnfch1", "crnfpdq", "crngbnv", "crnjsu6", "crnkeav", "crnkeh1", "crnlvfh"], "score": [280, 45, 709, 143, 20, 12, 300, 3, 2, 6, 2, 37, 2, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Clothing is insulation. It insulates you from the temperature outside. In the desert, for example, you wear clothing in order to keep the hot out (specifically, the sun). The clothing is essentially acting as shade that you wear on you. ", "Because Westerns are frequently set in the high desert where nights (even in the hot summer) can get [chilly quickly](_URL_0_).  ", "I belong to a reenactment group. We wear full wool uniforms all summer. It's really not that bad. It's better than getting sunburnt as sunblock didn't exist back then. ", "1 - no artificial fabrics. Natural fabrics tend to breath much, much better. \n\n2 - propriety. Going outside, under most circumstances, without a suit jacket of some sort was considered rather scandalous. Even if you couldn't afford a jacket, very few people would be willing to be seen outdoors without a hat. \n\n3 - protection from the elements. In the desert, it's not always 110 degrees, and can often go from hot to frigid in a matter of hours. Additionally, it's much better to sweat a lot (which cools your body) than suffer harsh sunburn. \n\n4 - hygiene standards, while not as terrible as you might think, were still relatively relaxed back in those days. ", "Try wearing loose, breathable, natural fiber clothes like linen and light cotton.  It's a lot cooler that shorts and short sleeves IME. \n\nThere's some weird physics around how sweat cools the body that I can't explain.  Something about clothing increasing the surface area of contact and the clingy-ness increasing thermal conduction.", "No one else has mentioned it yet, but conditioning. When you don't have air conditioning, 80F doesn't feel quite as bad.", "I spent a summer in the Emirates and believe me, the sun is absolutely scorching. Running around in a short sleeved shirt or shorts is something you do exactly once and, boy, will you regret that. \n\nI tried a lot of things, starting from cotton pants and long sleeved shirts to wearing linen suits (a significant improvement!) but once you tried a thawb (those white robes that look like pyjamas) you immediately understand why most locals wear them on a daily basis. \n\nThe way I was told it works boils down to this: you block the sun from your skin (obviously) and the light cotton fabric can't store heat very well, so whatever of the sun's radiation isn't reflected in the first place doesn't heat up the fabric that much. Secondly, air is a pretty good insularor and since these garments are relatively wide, you have a layer of air between your body and the fabric that keeps the most intense heat away from your body. Furthermore, your sweat will evaporate and thus cool that air significantly. The cotton then allows the humidity to escape relatively easily. \n\nThe combination of the loose fit and the light breathing fabric is absolutely killer, although it sounds counter-intuitive at first glance. ", "The longer clothing keeps you protected from the elements: sun, cacti, animals/snakes, etc.  Brushing up against a cactus is not fun without long pants on ", "Sun and wind applied directly to skin for hours at a time can result in 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd degree burns. That is worse than being \"uncomfortable\". ", "Would I also be correct in assuming that people used to stink a lot more back then too? I mean it's not like they had air conditioning to keep cool and sweat free. Plus no running water for easy showering. Did it just seem normal for you to go into a saloon and everyone smelled awful? Or did everyone (men and women) just douse themselves in cologne or perfume all the time?", "If it's 110 degrees in the desert, that 98.6 body heat starts to feel quite comfortable. So yeah, keep the outside heat out and give the inside heat the opportunity to get out. ", "For a true cowboy, the long coat and pants were essential.  If you ever have to ride a horse through thick brush, you'd understand.  Branches, mesquite thorns, other sharp pokey weeds, burrs, cactus, and brush are not your friends. All kinds of things seem intent on grabbing and clawing you from the saddle. Most long coats of the period were also oil cloth based or oil treated, meaning they shed water, too (for a while).  Most boots also went up to the knee for the same reason.", "ok, setting the wools and other natural fabrics a side, what about the leather chaps and full length duster. (were the dusters leather or fabric?)", "Grew up in El Paso TX,  NM and have horses.  Chaps or a long tailed coat will save your legs from catcus .   The long coats (dusters)  snap around your legs like Chaps. ", "Also, depending on the terrain you kind of want to wear long pants because you are very likely to get scratched up by plants and stuff. (Some varieties chaps are better, but lighter plants and stuff you might encounter in a forest, jeans or long pants are excellent.)\n\nNot that they had a lot of shorts in the 19th century, per se. Certainly not if you were working, outside. I believe garments with that length might have existed but anyone being out in the country or working on a farm or other area, would value the protection to their legs. Some places, not as much as say, going through scrub or what not in the woods, but somewhat. \n\nAnother funny thing is a lot of people, even cowboys, did not necessarily prefer cowboy hats to the exclusion of all other hats. There was a certain following of Bowler hats, which stay on your head well, and a lot of non-cowboy workmen and laborers wore that or other hats simply because of the fashion and the fact that they didn't necessarily need all the features of a Cowboy hat as much.\n\n", "I worked in kitchens for over a decade.  One day, they had a professional film crew in to shoot their commercial.  I got to 'show off' cooking steaks in my 4 broilers, ranging from 900 to 1500 F.\n\nI did this for an entire dinner shift, mind you.  I would stand there, load up all of them full, and be pulling and pushing steaks around all night.  I was fine in a full chef's coat and pants.\n\nThe poor guy with the camera though.  From standing near the broilers for about 4 minutes, he's completely dripping with sweat.  Breathing hard, and had to go take a rest after that.\n\nYou basically just get used to it.  Drink a lot of water, etc.\n\nIn the case of 'the wild west', that protective gear kept you from having your skin fried off, having horrible biting insects, spiders, and snakes getting to your flesh, and generally provided some defense against sand totally removing your skin from your body.  \n\nThe benefits outweigh the heat.", "Well firstly, deserts have very low humidity so 100 f is very different than it is on the east coast US. \n\nAlong with that, deserts often get very cold at night or in winter.\n\nSecondly, being hot is better than being sun burned. Its why in the middle east people where the body covering fabrics as often as they do. Like in UAE, its very hit there and the sun is painful. Thin cotton is very good in that area, wool clothing is more useful in the Mojave where it will get cold at times.", "Old adage: \"If it keeps you warm, it can keep you cool\" As long as what you are wearing can absorb the heat and disperse it before it reaches you, with airflow underneath, it's portable shade.", "I can't find the material I'm about to reference but I watched an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal and he said that he was much cooler in all the thick leathers and layers he had in Prince of Persia than the guys shooting it in t-shirts. I think it must have to do with the fact that the sunlight is absorbed by the clothes and because of the layers there's insulation. Keeping the 103 temp heat out.", "A lot of people are talking about the heat, but remember deserts aren't always hot. Westerns don't always take place in the summer, and even at night the temperature can drop quite a bit.", "Dusters, pants, and hats were more to protect against elements.  It gets cold at night, sand in high wind stings, oilskin dusters and hats keep the rain off you, dont have to worry much at all about bugs and throwns when going through brush or thicket, sunburn was a thing but not sunscreen back in thay day.  Trust me you do not want to ride a horse with shorts on.  Being maybe slighly more hot is a bit preferable to these things.  The material they are made of is more like a thin leather skin than a coat.  It can keep you warm, maybe even cooler if the sun is beating down on you.\n\nSource.  Im a Texan and I own these things and use them while camping."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_%28Oregon%29#Climate"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ikssn", "title": "why do pimples (zits) on the inside of your nostrils hurt so much more than any others?", "selftext": "Guess what prompted me to ask this question. Ouch. Fucking zit.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ikssn/eli5_why_do_pimples_zits_on_the_inside_of_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl2zk1u", "cl32edf", "cl32jxc", "cl34d8s", "cl35v7x", "cl367wu", "cl36ef1", "cl36syc", "cl373sw", "cl3750u", "cl37mo8", "cl37onf", "cl38ed3", "cl39v6y", "cl3afta", "cl3b49c", "cl3ch5z", "cl3ddi6", "cl3dynr", "cl3eypc", "cl3flir", "cl3i46h", "cl3k1bj", "cl3oz4n"], "score": [218, 20, 46, 11, 3, 7, 22, 85, 2, 1088, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 8, 26, 3, 7, 8, 2], "text": ["Not a dermatologist, but I'd guess it was due to the skin being thinner and also because the inside of your nose if pretty sensitive. It doesn't see much outside activity other than filtering small debri and the occasional nose pick. This is likely part of why materials that feel soft to our fingers, like tissue paper, still irritates and causes soreness to our nose as we get sick. Your nose just isn't used to the additional activity.", "I was just picking at mine when I saw this. It hurts bad! But, I can't keep my hand away. The answer I want is. Why can't I keep myself from poking at this horrid thing in my right nostril?", "Pimples on the inside of your nose can be a sign of MRSA, just so you know.\n\nYour nostrils are lined with mucus membranes and not regular skin. Mucus membranes tend to be more vascular and sensitive to the external environment than regular skin, so it gets inflamed more easily. ", "Can somebody answer this? Sometimes I get a random sensation on lots of random places on my body that I am being poked with a pin or being bitten by an ant. It is focused a little on my face though. \n\nI think it happens usually when I start to do some exercise like running. I read that this might  have something to do with my sweat pores being blocked by bacteria. Is this true? Thanks in advance.. ", "Your nose is very moist and has high plasticity.  Constantly stretching and tearing the zit.  Ow.", "Guys. Before you go to bed, coat the inside of your nose with Neosporin using a q tip. Wake up you'll be fine. Works every time. ", "That is not a proper asnwer, the reason is that pus from the pimple, has no room to expand.\nbecuase of the cartilage that behind it;thus causing more nerve compresion. >  pain", "Couple LPT's here:  \n\n1. There is a tool you should use to pop your pimples. It's made by Tweezerman. You can use this inside your nose and on all your exterior pimples/whiteheads/blackheads. \n\n2. There is a antibiotic tape you can cut up into little pieces put on your pimples. This literally changed my life. I cannot recommend this tape enough. Almost over night your pimples are gone. You just can't leave it on your skin for too long. Seriously every one that suffers from pimples should ask your dermatologist about this. \n\n3. Use Neosporin inside your nose. Especially before you go to bed. \n\nSource: I have a big nose and have played lacrosse/sports almost all my life and have constantly got zits as a result. ", "I never got them there, but in my late teens/early 20s I used to get killer ones on the fleshy lower part of my ear lobes.  They were excruciating.", "Real answer:\nThe tissue inside your nose isn't very thick and has tons of specialized nerve cells right at the surface, which means that when a pore swells with infection (a zit), the skin is pulled tight and the pressure under the already thin tight skin pushes against all those nerves, causing signals to fire and increasing the painful sensation. \nPlus there just isn't much space in there. ", "Are there any women out there that experience this phenomena (zits inside the nostril)?  I was trying to explain it to my girlfriend and she had no idea what I was talking about.", "Whenever I get these, after it's grown for a couple of days I take a clean swab and push it against one side from the inside while pushing the other side with my finger from the outside.  That pop is so satisfying.\n\nThen definitely use the neosporin on the inside of your nose, and don't pluck your nose hairs.", "Once, I thought it was a zit and it was really an ingrown nose hair...", "A zit inside the nose is mire likely an ingrown hair with a following infection. Infections + ingrown hair = pain.", "Probably has something to do with the fact that the skin around your face, especially nose, is very tight and taught compared to the skin on the rest of your body...", "It's not always a zit. Very commonly it can be attributed to Nasal Furunculosis...basically an infected hair follicle. If feels painful and swollen like a zit, sometimes even with redness on the outside of the nose. \n\nMoral to the story- don't pick your nose, as it is contagious. \n", "higher concentration of pain receptors located at the nose.  Based of of the homunculus map and is localized along the somatosensory map of the brain.  ", "It pains me to discuss this and I'm glad to be late to the game here. This is more just for you:\n\nSometimes it doesn't matter the location.  I have suffered adult cystic acne for years. The pain in a nostril doesn't come close to comparing what cystic acne feels like on your back.\n\nIt's not just about the location of the zit. It also depends the type.\nSome acne is far more painful than others.\n\nI started taking Acutane a year ago and had to stop because my triglycerides skyrocketed to unhealthy levels.\n\nI've cut back on my drinking, started eating healthier and working out regularly and am back on Acutane.  I hope to finally be over this shit. I'm 42 and acne free for the first time in decades.\n\nTL;DR: I hope what you are experiencing is only temporary and minor to what I and others have endured for years. ", "At the top of the nose is a, comparatively, thin barrier between the brain and outside nasties. It is called cribriform plate, part of the ethmoid bone.\n\nSee: _URL_0_ . \n\nAs a result of this the inside of the nose is highly innervated to keep you wise to the threat of impending doom.\n\nIpso facto, zits, knives, fire, angry cats - all going to hurt the inside of your nose more.\n\nSource: medical student", "PSA: do NOT put Orajel on one of these, thinking hey, if it numbs your mouth, surely it can help the discomfort of a nose pimple! \n\nYou will pray for death.  ", "Can someone explain the difference between \"acne\" in the nostril and skin tags? I call them skin tags, I don't know if that's accurate as to what they are, but they aren't similar to regular acne (they can't be popped or easily broken) I get those every couple of months. Should I be worried? ", "I don't know if anyone will read this, but resist popping any zits inside or around your nose/around your upper lip. This area is extremely vascularized and leads directly to your cavernous sinus, which is right under your brain. An infection there can kill you quick, and popping zits/pulling hairs from your nose is a very easy way to get an infection there. ", "Thinner skin and more nerves, those ones are painful bitches for sure.", "Pimples along your lip and moustache area are so much worse. My eyes water so much when I try popping them. I also end up swearing a lot too. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid_rhinorrhoea"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3vob0x", "title": "How do we know that dark matter interacts weakly with other matter. Isn't it possible that it doesn't interact at all?", "selftext": "Isn't it possible that it only interacts gravitationally?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3vob0x/how_do_we_know_that_dark_matter_interacts_weakly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxpd06n"], "score": [16], "text": ["Yes, it's absolutely possible. That's a terrifying prospect that people obviously avoid talking about, but it's there.\n\nIn most reasonable scenarios for dark matter and grand unification though, there's hardly any way of avoiding some very weak interaction with SM particles. A completely non-interacting DM is pretty hard to fit in most theories beyond the SM, so we stay hopeful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "257980", "title": "before aviation, how was it possible to make such detailed maps of the world?", "selftext": "Before we could see the world from above, how were worldmaps, like those used by the East India Company and the Dutch VOC made? How did they know the shape of the continents?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/257980/eli5_before_aviation_how_was_it_possible_to_make/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chedg30", "chefbm5", "chei424", "chek8ny", "chemi5y", "cheo6pt"], "score": [25, 3, 3, 3, 6, 5], "text": ["The maps weren't all that accurate, but they were made by using a ship to follow coastlines, plotting the direction and length of time taken to reach a certain point, all while staying the same distance from the shore. This allowed for maps that, while lacking in detail, showed enough of the area to be useful for navigation. ", "All points that can be plotted on a map need only a distance and a direction from a known point. if direction is unknown they can be plotted with two distances from two known points, and if distance is unknown they can be plotted with two directions.\n\nThis is the very basic idea behind information needed to start creating a map. Im not an expert in old surveying styles, but for coast lines i imagine a lot of angular measurements would be taken from a ship traversing the coast, using the compass or celestial bodies as datum points.\n\nGross measurements across oceans would have been based off time-speed estimates, checked against any other information that might have been avalible.", "By [Surveying](_URL_0_) the coastline from a ship.", "Before traditional Aviation, they used hot air balloons starting in 1783. Which greatly improved map quality. ", "The improvement in the quality of world maps had nothing to do with aviation.  Rather, it came from much earlier improvements in timekeeping: the [pendulum clock](_URL_1_) (1657) and the [marine chronometer](_URL_0_) (c. 1760) were the key inventions, along with discoveries in astronomy.\n\nWhy?  If you look at really old maps very closely and compare them to modern ones, you may notice that in the old maps the latitudes are normally accurate, but the longitudes are way off.  That's because without accurate clocks, it's basically impossible to measure your longitude.\n\nThe first accurate measurements of longitude were done by sending a pendulum clock, a specialized telescope (a [transit instrument](_URL_2_)) and an astronomer along with marine expeditions.  When they reach land at a point where they'll be staying for a few weeks, this happens:\n\n1. The astronomer sets up the transit instrument (which must be aligned precisely north/south)\n2. The astronomer has a bunch of tables saying at what times those stars reach their highest point in the sky when seen from Greenwich, England (or some other location).  Over the course of a few nights, he uses these and the transit instrument (telescope) to set the clock to Greenwich time, and adjusts the speed of the clock so that it shows the correct Greenwich time for every star he observes.\n3. After the clock has been set up and adjusted, he can observe the Greenwich time that the sun in this location reaches its highest spot in the sky.  After applying some correction tables, this tells him the longitude of his location: 4 minutes of time difference = 1 degree of longitude.\n\nThis process was incredibly expensive: it required sending a highly trained astronomer and very expensive, delicate equipment, and it took days to complete.  So it wasn't done very often.  Marine chronometers were a later invention that basically allowed ordinary marine navigators to determine their longitude at sea very quickly, using a much more affordable clock.  [Captain James Cook](_URL_4_) was one of the first people to use a marine chronometer for making maps (in his [second voyage](_URL_3_), 1772-75), and his maps were very accurate:\n\n >  Another accomplishment of the second voyage was the successful employment of the Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer, which enabled Cook to calculate his longitudinal position with much greater accuracy. Cook's log was full of praise for the watch which he used to make charts of the southern Pacific Ocean that were so remarkably accurate that copies of them were still in use in the mid-20th century.", "An interesting tidbit I've learned from a local museum:\n\nWhen surveying along the St. Lawrence and St. Mary's river in what was then New France (Canada), voyageurs would measure distance by the time it would take to smoke a pipe. This actually proved to be quite accurate, and many of the maps they created still exist today.\n\nApple tried this method for their latest Map application, but made the mistake of smoking something else altogether."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_clock", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_instrument", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_voyage_of_James_Cook", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ox12h", "title": "how does japanese culture hold dignity and reservation so sacred, and yet also have such perverse and absurd gameshows and the like be so popular?", "selftext": "I guess my question is about the cultural and historical origins of modern Japanese humor.  \n\nHas this sort of entertainment always been part of Japanese culture, or was there a time following the second world war that a shift happened?  If so, why and how?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ox12h/eli5_how_does_japanese_culture_hold_dignity_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw17azk", "cw17gl2", "cw17rib", "cw19c4y"], "score": [16, 5, 9, 3], "text": ["Just because those aspects are valued by the culture, it doesnt mean the need for perverse and absurd things go away. If anything, the cultural repression of those things make the need for them even higher. ", "That's the thing - the more repressed someone is, the more enjoyable they often find perversion and absurdity.  And of course, when most everyone you know acts very reserved and dignified, it can be a real treat to watch people acting insane or being humiliated, because it's so very different from what you're used to.\n\nIt's like if everyone you ever knew had brown hair, but one day you meet your first blonde  There's something really, really interesting about that person, because it's so far from the norm.", "A lot of the really perverse game shows you see people laughing about are actually porn. It's the equivalent of going, \"Why are Americans always fucking the pizza guy?\"", "I my experience most of those dumb shows are viewed as little more than background noise in most homes. \n\nPeople don't generally sit down and watch them they same way we might watch Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. Usually they are doing something else like chatting, eating, drinking, using their phones/ipads etc. \n\nI guess this only encourages the shows to get bigger, brighter, noisier and dumber to grab attention. \n\nThe real Japanese TV obsession is cheap food shows. They are fucking everywhere and they are awful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7dtqsh", "title": "do men\u2019s and women\u2019s hygiene products (shave gel, lotion, face wash) actually do different things for men or women, or is it a marketing thing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dtqsh/eli5_do_mens_and_womens_hygiene_products_shave/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq08sj8", "dq08waf", "dq09m23", "dq0dznw", "dq0knti", "dq0txed"], "score": [21, 9, 4, 59, 6, 7], "text": ["Yes.\n\nWomens products tend to have more fragrances and moisturizers. Which is why they're more expensive. \n\nOf course, that doesn't mean you can't use em if you're a guy, or vice versa.", "Men's skin differs from women's skin in a few distinct ways. Most notably is the fat content and hair texture along with different issues relating to aging (women lose their skin elasticity faster, for example, leading to earlier wrinkles). Various products *could* be designed with these things in mind, but there are plenty of men and women who use products \"for\" the other gender with no problems.\n\nIt's marketing.", "It's overwhelmingly marketing is the real distinction, but in many cases, the products are different, again because you want to market it, not because it makes a difference in its actual function. \n\n Women's stuff tends to have more scents and perfumes added as compared to mens products.  But overall the actual function is identical, its just marketed as women's or men's because that sells better than unisex.", "Most of the ingredients are the same, though some manufacturers claim that their gendered products are tailored more towards the different areas that each gender tends to shave more.\n\nThe main difference in ingredients is the scent.  Fragrances and oils can be incredibly expensive, which could go towards explaining some of the difference in price.  We know women place more emphasis on the fragrance of a product than men (some men being happy to purchase without smelling the product at all).  \n\nAt least when it comes to bathroom products, men and women discriminate on price differently.  Men are more likely to take a cheaper product and see that product as equivalent.  Women, on the other hand, are more likely to see a more expensive product as superior.  Thus reducing price could be a good strategy for men's products but could actually lose you sales on women's.\n", "They can be a little different.\n\nMen tend to have coarser hair and less smooth skin.  Women tend to have longer hair, and are more likely to color, treat, curl, and blow dry their hair, all of which can damage it.  Men don't worry about their skin so much because there will eventually be stubble no matter what they do.  Women wear makeup, which can clog pores and irritate skin\n\nThese all represent tangible differences.  Men want to step out of the shower, run a comb through their short hair, and wash their face, and be done.  Women want to spend more time and look nice.\n\nThat said, a lot of it *is* marketing.\n\n", "Men's shampoo comes in a black bottle, making it very manly. If you pay more for that, you are wasting your money."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "lxs4i", "title": "why does everyone hate the sound of their own recorded voice?", "selftext": "I've heard that because our voice resonates in our head, we sound different to ourselves than to others, but our recorded voice is how we really sound.  Is this accurate?  Can someone give me a better explanation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lxs4i/eli5_why_does_everyone_hate_the_sound_of_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2wfqwr", "c2wftts", "c2wfxud", "c2wge5f", "c2wghbv", "c2wgmob", "c2wgrxf", "c2wgt72", "c2wgun9", "c2wh0g6", "c2whe8e", "c2wi3i5", "c2wi6wh", "c2wica0", "c2wigxj", "c2wisyh", "c2wiv6d", "c2wj0jn", "c2wjaug", "c2wjq4t", "c2wkfgx", "c2wo29g", "c2wfqwr", "c2wftts", "c2wfxud", "c2wge5f", "c2wghbv", "c2wgmob", "c2wgrxf", "c2wgt72", "c2wgun9", "c2wh0g6", "c2whe8e", "c2wi3i5", "c2wi6wh", "c2wica0", "c2wigxj", "c2wisyh", "c2wiv6d", "c2wj0jn", "c2wjaug", "c2wjq4t", "c2wkfgx", "c2wo29g"], "score": [76, 4, 6, 3, 26, 15, 24, 442, 100, 2, 217, 2, 20, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 76, 4, 6, 3, 26, 15, 24, 442, 100, 2, 217, 2, 20, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["The voice you hear internally is the result of your voice transmitting through not just air, but also bone, muscle, and the cavities of your skull.  All of these things change the sound of the voice.  \n\nHearing your recorded voice, it's just transmitted through air.\n", "Well, depending on the fidelity of the recording device, you'll have some variation on what others hear. But yes, a recording of you is much closer to what other people hear than what you hear in your head.", "External sound make your eardrum vibrate but the vibration is then transmitted by three little bones before being detected by your brain. \n\nWhen you talk, the bones of your skull vibrate and therefore what you hear is the result of both the pressure wave travelling through the air (external sound) but also the vibrations transmitted through your bones. As waves do not propagate the same way in air and bones, what you hear when you talk is not the same thing as what other people hear.\n\nPhysically speaking, it's a matter of how different frequencies are attenuated depending on the medium but you'd have to be more than five to understand that.", "I was the vocalist in a high school band and after a while of hearing my voice recorded I got used to the way its sounds, at least when singing (I still talk funny). ", "Yeah, I sound like a huge dork. It's so embarrassing. But in my head I sound like a boss. ", "this is why people audition for american idol and think they can sing.", "I love the sound of my own voice.", "I would like to point out that this dissonance we all feel when hearing our recorded voices is not just a physical difference, but a percieved difference. When we hear our voices recorded, our brain has a certain expectation of what we will hear. Having become so accustomed to what our voice sounds like in our heads, hearing something we don't expect makes our brains mad. To a unbiased third party, it may very well be that the recorded voice is more desirable then the sound oof that voice through body matter. We don't hate our recorded voices because they are better or worse, we hate them because they are challenging something we have known our whole life as a truth. ", "I sound like a mentally retarded redneck. I might very well be one, but I don't like to be reminded of the fact. ", "I think it's because we're used to the way it sounds to us.  I originally hated the sound of my recorded voice until I started recording music.  Now I think I have a rather pleasant voice.", "So Morgan Freeman's voice sounds even better to him? Lucky bastard.", "If this is true than how does a popular recording artist stand listening to themselves so many times?", "Here's what puzzles me. Professional impersonators. Rich Little, Frank Caliendo and the like. If what we hear coming out of their mouths sounds very much like the celebrity they are impersonating, what they are hearing in their heads must not. Right? Because as we know, what we hear in our heads with regards to our voice, is not what other people hear.", "The reason it sounds different is because our ears are behind our mouth, so it sounds different. It just sounds so different when you hear it recorded that it's suprising. You can get used to it pretty easily though.", "No. Quite the contrary, I love my voice. Apparently many others do as well, as evidenced by the comments in [this](_URL_0_) video.", "I don't hate the sound of my own recorded voice.  I just think I sound like an asshole.", "I hate my voice recorded and in my head. I sound like a nasally 12 year old boy. I hate it so much I wish I didn't have to talk. No me gusta.", "But...but...I *like* my recorded voice...\n\n...when I use British or South African accent.", "I don't. I have an awesome voice. ", "I hate my recorded voice, which sounds like a fluffy soft little girl voice, when in my head I sound deeper and more assertive, especially when reading out loud. ", "Your voice sounds radically different travelling through your skull than through air, into a microphone, out of a speaker, and through even more air.\n\nIn our heads, we all hear our \"radio voices\" (lots of presence, bass, and warm overtones) so it's only natural that we get slightly disappointed when that effect is taken away.", "Because I sound like a fag. \n\n(I *am* a fag, I just don't want to sound like one).", "The voice you hear internally is the result of your voice transmitting through not just air, but also bone, muscle, and the cavities of your skull.  All of these things change the sound of the voice.  \n\nHearing your recorded voice, it's just transmitted through air.\n", "Well, depending on the fidelity of the recording device, you'll have some variation on what others hear. But yes, a recording of you is much closer to what other people hear than what you hear in your head.", "External sound make your eardrum vibrate but the vibration is then transmitted by three little bones before being detected by your brain. \n\nWhen you talk, the bones of your skull vibrate and therefore what you hear is the result of both the pressure wave travelling through the air (external sound) but also the vibrations transmitted through your bones. As waves do not propagate the same way in air and bones, what you hear when you talk is not the same thing as what other people hear.\n\nPhysically speaking, it's a matter of how different frequencies are attenuated depending on the medium but you'd have to be more than five to understand that.", "I was the vocalist in a high school band and after a while of hearing my voice recorded I got used to the way its sounds, at least when singing (I still talk funny). ", "Yeah, I sound like a huge dork. It's so embarrassing. But in my head I sound like a boss. ", "this is why people audition for american idol and think they can sing.", "I love the sound of my own voice.", "I would like to point out that this dissonance we all feel when hearing our recorded voices is not just a physical difference, but a percieved difference. When we hear our voices recorded, our brain has a certain expectation of what we will hear. Having become so accustomed to what our voice sounds like in our heads, hearing something we don't expect makes our brains mad. To a unbiased third party, it may very well be that the recorded voice is more desirable then the sound oof that voice through body matter. We don't hate our recorded voices because they are better or worse, we hate them because they are challenging something we have known our whole life as a truth. ", "I sound like a mentally retarded redneck. I might very well be one, but I don't like to be reminded of the fact. ", "I think it's because we're used to the way it sounds to us.  I originally hated the sound of my recorded voice until I started recording music.  Now I think I have a rather pleasant voice.", "So Morgan Freeman's voice sounds even better to him? Lucky bastard.", "If this is true than how does a popular recording artist stand listening to themselves so many times?", "Here's what puzzles me. Professional impersonators. Rich Little, Frank Caliendo and the like. If what we hear coming out of their mouths sounds very much like the celebrity they are impersonating, what they are hearing in their heads must not. Right? Because as we know, what we hear in our heads with regards to our voice, is not what other people hear.", "The reason it sounds different is because our ears are behind our mouth, so it sounds different. It just sounds so different when you hear it recorded that it's suprising. You can get used to it pretty easily though.", "No. Quite the contrary, I love my voice. Apparently many others do as well, as evidenced by the comments in [this](_URL_0_) video.", "I don't hate the sound of my own recorded voice.  I just think I sound like an asshole.", "I hate my voice recorded and in my head. I sound like a nasally 12 year old boy. I hate it so much I wish I didn't have to talk. No me gusta.", "But...but...I *like* my recorded voice...\n\n...when I use British or South African accent.", "I don't. I have an awesome voice. ", "I hate my recorded voice, which sounds like a fluffy soft little girl voice, when in my head I sound deeper and more assertive, especially when reading out loud. ", "Your voice sounds radically different travelling through your skull than through air, into a microphone, out of a speaker, and through even more air.\n\nIn our heads, we all hear our \"radio voices\" (lots of presence, bass, and warm overtones) so it's only natural that we get slightly disappointed when that effect is taken away.", "Because I sound like a fag. \n\n(I *am* a fag, I just don't want to sound like one)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdXs0vvNJc0&amp;feature=player_embedded"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdXs0vvNJc0&amp;feature=player_embedded"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2t269c", "title": "I have never seen a depiction of a native American with male pattern baldness. Did it just not exist among the New World populations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2t269c/i_have_never_seen_a_depiction_of_a_native/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnuzz0r", "cnv0qpe", "cnv5gpx", "cnvhorq"], "score": [24, 20, 10, 6], "text": ["This might be worth crossposting to /r/AskScience for their input on the genetics side of things.", "Also, as another question, based on the depictions of native Americans I've seen, it seems like facial hair was very rare. Is there any historical explanation or information behind that?", "[Here](_URL_0_) is a recent post on the facial hair question. I can't help you with the baldness question.", "Male pattern baldness is in fact virtually unknown among native americans - here's a magazine article which mentions the fact, but it doesn't give a source:  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/2mw2km/when_i_watch_movies_with_native_americans_i_never/"], ["http://health.ninemsn.com.au/menshealth/grooming/695086/the-bald-truth"]]}
{"q_id": "4xp2e9", "title": "Only one empire ever controlled the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea. Why is that?", "selftext": "In history, there are many empires which controlled roughly similar regions, but after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, no other power had sole control of the Medieterranean Sea. I wonder, why is that? Was there any other empire which positively tried to do that or is this question too arbitrary?\n\nGratitude. \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xp2e9/only_one_empire_ever_controlled_the_entirety_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6hka9l"], "score": [66], "text": ["I can't speak to the period after Rome, but the answer is likely to be the same one that applies to the period *before* Rome: the existence of well-organised rival states prevented any single power from achieving total control over the entire sea.\n\nFrom the sixth century BC onward, there were two major candidates for supremacy over the Mediterranean: Carthage in the West, and the Persian Empire in the East. Carthage had successfully settled the North African coast from its main city westward, as well as the coast of the Iberian peninsula, Sardinia, and Western and Northern Sicily. It was poised to take over the rest of Sicily and use the island as a springboard to further eastward expansion. The Persian Empire, meanwhile, had reached the Aegean by 546 BC; it had subdued Cyprus, Egypt and much of Libya. In a series of campaigns between 510 and 490 BC, it crossed from Asia into Europe, conquering Thrace, Macedon and all the islands of the Aegean. Both powers seem to have chosen the year 480 BC for their next great push. Persia had its sights set on mainland Greece; Carthage meant to take over the Greek side of Sicily.\n\nAt this point, however, something weird happened: both major powers were defeated by the Greeks. Herodotos, our main source for the events, reports the tradition that the great battles of Himera and Salamis occurred on the exact same day. At Himera, a massive Carthaginian invasion force was destroyed by Gelon of Syracuse. At Salamis, the Persian fleet was checked by a Greek alliance under Spartan and Athenian leadership and forced to withdraw. In the next campaign season, the Persian army was destroyed at Plataia, extinguishing the Persians' hope of conquering the Greeks. It is not easy to say how all this could have happened, but I gave it a try [here](_URL_0_).\n\nNeither Carthage nor Persia were broken, however, and for the whole century and a half that followed, their desire for further Mediterranean expansion periodically flared up again. The history of Sicily in the Classical period is one of repeated and desperate struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks over domination of the island. In 406 and 405 BC, two of the greatest Greek settlements on Sicily (Akragas and Gela) were razed to the ground, but in 397 BC a major Carthaginian army was destroyed at Syracuse, and the Carthaginians were soon reduced to a single settlement on the island. They tried again, repeatedly, to take control, but they were ultimately unsuccessful each time - mainly due to the presence of the powerful city-state of Syracuse and its dependent territories. Persia, meanwhile, gathered fresh armies and fleets several times, but the Athenians repeatedly destroyed them. The Persians ultimately got wise and chose a divide-and-rule policy that effectively turned mainland Greece into a dependent region (although priorities like consolidation and internal unrest meant that they never resumed active expansion further west than Libya and Greece).\n\nDespite their constant attempts to subdue their Greek neighbours and control more of the Mediterranean, there was never a time when either state was anywhere close to controlling the entire climate zone. Simply put, there were strong states in their way, and their repeated failure to subdue these prevented the establishment of an empire like Rome eventually became."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i1o75/why_was_the_invasion_of_greece_by_xerxes/d2ufyrc"]]}
{"q_id": "5meqrp", "title": "why do top nutrition advisory panels continue to change their guidelines (sometimes dramatically) on what constitutes a healthy diet?", "selftext": "This request is in response to a report that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (the U.S. top nutrition advisory panel) is going to reverse 40 years of warning about certain cholesteral intake (such as from eggs). Moreover, in recent years, there has been a dramatic reversal away from certain pre-conceived notions -- such as these panels no longer recommending straight counting calories/fat (and a realization that not all calories/fat are equal). Then there's the carbohydrate purge/flip-flop. And the continued influence of lobbying/special interest groups who fund certain studies. Even South Park did an episode on gluten.\n\nFew things affect us as personally and as often as what we ingest, so these various guidelines/recommendations have innumerable real world consequences. Are nutritionists/researchers just getting better at science/observation of the effects of food? Are we trending in the right direction at least?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5meqrp/eli5_why_do_top_nutrition_advisory_panels/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc300wa", "dc30hg9", "dc31bzc", "dc37523", "dc38div", "dc38ijx", "dc39fri", "dc3b2e5", "dc3bf2s", "dc3c7zs", "dc3d059", "dc3d3x1", "dc3d47j", "dc3dl0z", "dc3dnu1", "dc3ds8c", "dc3dwvd", "dc3f707", "dc3fzes", "dc3i60s", "dc3ixjq", "dc3kqdt", "dc3ldlo", "dc3lo41", "dc3n117", "dc3nf6s", "dc3ny35", "dc3ofyn", "dc3q89n", "dc3qo17", "dc3qp6n", "dc3qq4x", "dc3rc67", "dc3uipi"], "score": [234, 1219, 22, 19, 14, 365, 4, 110, 3, 7, 2, 2, 90, 6, 2, 2, 4, 2, 8, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 2, 7, 7, 23, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["I studied nutrition for several years before veering off into archaeology. I still have my textbook Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies, and it's that second one you want to focus on. \n\nThe biggest Achilles heel in nutrition science is politics. Take the case of beef. Several decades ago the (I believe) USDA came right out and said \"eat less red meat,\" in response to sound science, and the beef lobby sued like crazy. The revised advice became \"reduce intake of lipid-rich proteins,\" which is nicely innocuous and also applies equally well to PEANUTS. \n\nThe fact is the science is still very, very young, and meanwhile the politics of food have deep roots. Every time a new study that's both innovative and objective actually gets funded *and* published it's a goddamn miracle, and that'll be even more true in the next several years. So food officials jump on those studies like lions on a fat gazelle, and that's why things get massively shaken up from time to time. \n\nTL;DR - nutrition is a very new science and food is highly politicized, so new information will almost always be pretty game-changing. ", "The first commentor has it spot on but I would definitely like to double down on the notion that the science is young.  It definitely is, we learn new things every day.  When it comes to our bodies there is still a lot we don't know and sometimes we find out that certain cells interact with certain things in ways we didn't realize before.  For example my first year of college I took anatomy and phyisology, after the first semester had ended we had to buy a new version of the textbook because some cutting edge genetic information had just been solidified and it was important to our understanding of the body.  This filters out into the other sciences as well.\n\nAlso, sometimes we perform long-term studies that take many years to realize that what we are using/doing is harmful.  Take asbestos as an example.  We used to use it in *everything* because it was cheap, flame resistant, and had many many other properties that were desirable.  It was until much later that we realized that asbestos caused a good deal many health defects in humans and so had to complete revise construction techniques and methods.  This also applies to things like nutrition, we find things out after studying long-term effects that don't match with what we already know and have to change it.", "In addition to political issues, which have been well-covered, it's incredibly difficult to study human nutrition for the simple reason that you can't possibly control what someone eats 24/7. Every nutrition study has cheaters. It's not possible to know how they cheated, and therefore every study on the subject is subject to completely invisible skewing of the data. You could lock people in a facility and control what they eat that way, but that'd be unlikely to pass an ethics review. So, nutrition science is flying a bit more blind than other fields.", "Much of it has to do with the fact that back in the day, sugar lobbies paid off doctors and health officials to make it out like fat is the bad guy.  When in fact, it is sugar and carbs which cause most of our dietary problems.  The food pyramid we were all taught as kids is complete BS and will give you plenty of problems if you follow it strictly.  These days you must research everything on your own if you want real knowledge.", "Don't discount the effect of powerful food lobbies. The American Egg Board, the US  Poultry  &  Egg Council et. Al. fund a LOT of studies...all of which seem to confirm that eating more of THEIR particular product is good for you. This data is then used by researchers, cited to lawmakers, etc etc. The LESS flattering studies are buried forever.", "Food studies scholar here. It mainly depends on where culture stands at the time. If people think that certain things are clean and that health is defined a certain way, then dietary advice will follow. \n\nTake bread for example: brown bread used to be considered the stuff peasants ate and it wasn't healthful. In the middle of the 20th century, people thought that white foods were cleaner and therefore healthier. Now, white bread, white rice, and white sugar have been abandoned in favor of brown bread, brown rice, and raw sugar. Peasant foods are now good for you. \n\nNew science also changes things. As we learn more about how the human body works, we can better judge how food affects the body. Brown fat, for example, did not exist in the imagination in the 19th century, when moderation and bland foods were put forth as better for the body. \n\nThere are also powerful lobbyists who make their case. Using scientific studies (that they may or may not have funded) they petition to shape how we think about food at the level of public policy. \n\nThis scholar has a lot to say about the matter: _URL_0_. Marion Nestle's book is at the bottom of the list and is quite thorough in its study of how food policy and public stances on nutrition are shaped--and by whom. ", "Better and newer scientific studies can lead to changing guidelines, but lobbying efforts can also play a role. Also a lot of it is translating nuance to general guidelines that the average person can understand, not an easy task. \n\nThe Harvard School of Public Health has a great website called [Nutrition Source](_URL_0_) which has detailed nutritional guides and nutritional information; it's all based on science.  ", "One additional issue is that nutrition is difficult to study in a controlled fashion. First, unlike testing a drug, where you can give the control group a placebo and the experimental group the active drug, you cannot give a control group no/placebo food. You have to replace the food you are trying to get experimental data on with some other food. \n\nWant to test the effects of eating saturated fats? You have to create a control diet that replaces those calories with something else (or you run into another experimental problem where a lower-calorie diet may be producing the results you see), and it's impossible to know the full extent of what replacing those calories does. Do you replace them with unsaturated fats? Carbohydrates?\n\nDiets also tend to be very heterogeneous. This can be a problem when people like to compare population-level data (epidemiological study rather than a controlled study). People looked at the \"Mediterranean diet\" and saw people eating more monounsaturated (and some polyunsaturated) fats, but they tended to ignore MANY confounding factors, even things that probably have a significant impact like eating more whole foods rather than processed foods and even differences in total calories. Scientists don't tend to set up highly controlled studies where people all eat the same foods, but rather eat whatever they want (or what they are supposed to eat/avoid) and then report back occasionally, with varying degrees of accuracy.\n\nEarly research on fats didn't treat trans-fats as a separate category and lumped them in with saturated fats, which may have helped create stigma against saturated fats (although there were a lot of political headaches that go into this history).\n\nFinally, different organisms handle different foods and macronutrients differently! Yet people (especially media reporting a new study) will often take results from a mouse study as if it applies equally to humans or other animals. \n\nTL;DR nutrition is complex, heterogeneous, and difficult to control in large experiments, forcing us to rely on less rigorous methods.", "The guidelines change based on which industry is greasing the wheels. It used to be that fat is bad when the sugar industry paid for research. Now sugar is the enemy, and who knows in the next 5 years maybe we'll \"discover\" all protein is carcinogenic.\n\nAll of this exists to mask a simple a truth. There is no obesity epidemic. There is only a shit food and sedentary lifestyle epidemic. Our grandparents didn't need crossfit or paleo diets to keep in shape. They ate healthy food and moved a lot. \n\nBut it's hard to solve those problems now, when all the food you can buy in a supermarket is basically poison and all the jobs involve sitting on your ass in front of a computer.", "Because it's a bunch of Bullshit pushed through by lobbyists. Anecdotal but I was on a low sugar high fat diet  (healthy fats) and I never felt so mentally clear in my life. I could also comfortably get by eating once or twice a day. ", "Its twofold. \n\nThe first and biggest reason is money. Food companies spend a lot of money and effort manipulating public opinion, getting studies that squashed, and funding biased studies, or outright lying about what studies say. \n\nSo anybody that wants to do real research on nutrition has a very long, very hard road ahead of them fighting an uphill battle just to get funding. Even if they do manage to get funding their study will likely squashed, or ignored if it might harm the food companies. \n\nThats the reason there is no recommended sugar intake, if you read a can of soda and saw \"300% daily sugar\" you might be less likely to buy it, (and the number is likely higher). \n\nThis is the main reason. \n\nThe second reason is that its a relatively new science, and its been strangled so hard there just isnt a lot of publicly available good data out there.", "It's not just that the science is young when it comes to nutrition, young in capability to explain and predict the world (which is how you judge the quality of science) but also that scientific institutions are extremely slow to change in the face of new information. ", "Dietitian here, also formerly worked at the USDA (the people who make the guidelines), also formerly worked as nutrition researcher (the people who do the science). \n\nThe *science* isn't changing. If you look at all the scientific nutritional evidence in a row, it is going in a very clear direction and not swinging back and forth. More unbiased (well... not biased by big Agra) sources like WHO and AICR and even Kaiser Permanente have nutritional guidelines that are more steady and in sync with each other.\n\nThe POLITICS are changing. The US Dietary Guidelines are frankly shitty. I sat in on those meetings. Pork people say you can't cut red meat. Sugar people say \"ok you can say reduce grams of sugar but you can't actually say drink less sugar.\" Egg people point to a couple biased studies. Etc etc etc. If you read the recommendations from the committee of experts (the dietary guidelines advisory committee made up of experts in their fields) then the advice is good. Problem is that USDA refused to use most of that info in their published guidelines. Sigh. I was glad to leave that place right after the newest guidelines were released.\n\nAlso JOURNALISM - they'll take any research with a sensational headline and blast it onto the internet without any consideration of whether or not it is good science or pure shit. \n\nI recommend you read \"How Not to Die\" for a nice, easy to understand, entertaining read of the real science. Or watch this video _URL_0_", "The quick answer is the science keeps changing, the more bitter answer is that a ton of corporate interest changed official policy for decades. \n\nRemember \"breakfast is the most important meal of the day\", and \"cereal x is part of a well balanced diet\". They went past slogans, they did \"funny\" research and pressured government to literally build the food pyramid based on it. \n\nNow people are questioning, so more actual science is happening, so things keep changing. \n\nAs for flip flops, that's often media sensationalized. Gluten is somewhere between non-reactive and deadly to each person. You and I are on that continuum somewhere. My wife is mild celiac, she essentially gets the effects of food poisioning if she \"gets glutened\" as she puts it. Me, i get a big sluggish, but i had it for every meal so i didn't notice. \n\nSo people said wait a minute, gluten could hospitalize that guy there, it must be terrible for me!! Then it was a panic, and some people went off gluten and went... wow i do feel a little better, and swear by it, but it's just that they're 2's on that nonreactive to death scale and someone else might be a 0, where's perfectly fine. \n\nHence the swings", "Because, in short, the less mathematical a science is, the more likely it is to be giving you the wrong answer.", "1. New research\n2. Lobbying from food industries\n3. Lot's of people in charge don't know jack about nutrition.", "I know I'm late, and /u/pctech86 mostly has it covered, but I wanted to add one more part to why I think these guidelines struggle:\n\nThese sorts of guidelines tend to just offer a one-size fits all set of rules for everyone, in the interest of simplicity. Even though nutrition is still an immature science, we know that this is simply not the case - Nutrition is an individual trait that is as unique as the rest of our body. \n\nSome people will be okay with more of something than others. We all know people who eat a tonne of fast food and have no problems, whereas some people eating the same will become obese or have other troubles.\n\nTrying to fit everyone into a single set of guidelines will never fully capture proper nutrition, and will help lead to this constant pivoting in nutritional recommendations.", "Avid cook here.  We want to know and we want to optimize because now we have an embarrassment of culinary choices.  Though we're still animals who haven't changed a lot in the past 10,000 years, we know our life expectancy has been increasing and our height has been increasing and much of that is attributable to diet.  Thus, we must be improving our nutrition.  And now we're in a wealth of caloric riches.  For thousands of years, finding enough calories was difficult.  Now we have plenty of sources to choose from.  This has caused other problems like obesity and it's associated diseases.  That makes recommendations well intentioned.  But we're not machines where you can change the oil every 3000 miles and rotate the tires.  We desire different foods and we like variety and do we ever have a taste for things that are bad for us, perhaps, because those used to be rare.\n\nI follow Michael Pollan's advice. \"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.\"", "I don't know that the advice necessarily has changed that much. I mean, there's certainly pop science although I think that has a lot more to do with marketing. Things like saying margarine is better than butter for instance. \n\nHere's an excerpt form one of my old cookbooks called the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking. It was published in 1947. This is just a random paragraph from the section on meal planning but this and the rest of the book doesn't sound very different at all from advice you would hear now.\n\n\"To reduce small amounts of fat it is only necessary to cut down sharply on concentrated fuel foods (sugars starches and fats), being sure to meet all the other requirements of the basic four food groups. However a reducing diet should include enough fat to curb the appetite and carry a sufficient amount of fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids. Otherwise a person is likely to nibble between meals and often food available at such times, especially if one is away from home, are likely to be high in calories. By dieting correctly in this fashion, a new habit of eating will be cultivated which will hold over after dieting is no longer necessary.\"", "Its important to note the difference between these respected advisory bodies and any schmuck who cherry picks a study or two and writes a book about paleo, raw food, gluten free, or any other fad diet.  The advisory board guidelines haven't changed all that much over time.  Something like the Mediterranean diet with whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, vegetable oils, and limited meat (focus on lean meat / fish) has been a mainstream recommendation for a long time. After all these years, they're revising the cholesterol rec (but not the rec against sat. fat) but much has stayed the same. I haven't looked at the history of these guildelines, but I'm inclined to think they change much less then the latest popular opinions on diet.", "On cholesterol. They discovered high levels of it in your blood increases risk of heart attacks. As a result they recommended lowering intake. \n\nThe body produces it naturally and if you don't get enough it creates it. \n\nFurther studies found that drinking whole milk and eating eggs didn't seem to increase your cholesterol in your blood despite these foods being high in it. \n\nMany studies now point to whole milk being healthier than skim. ", "Most Diet tips are scams. Listen to this: all you have to do it eat at or below your maintenance caloric intake (about 2500 calories or less per day for most people depending on body weight and metabolism) and make sure you balance the three macro nutrients, (fat, proteins, carbs) evenly balanced in thirds is good or even better higher protein and fat and only about 20% carbs. (Yes liquid sugar drinks like soda and juice count as carbs) but other than that you can eat anything, as long as you're below the maintence intake, when you go above your body gets into a state of caloric excess and stores the extra stuff as fat.\n\nCongratulations you just beat every diet fad, pill, fat burner, schedule, etc. on the planet. Make sure you include good vitamin rich food as well for good micro nutrients and better health.", "It's harder to control in experiments. Nobody would volunteer to stay in a facility 24/7 long enough to study so it's all self reported. And people almost always underestimate things and they forget snacks they eat through out the day. \n\nThe show Secret Eaters touches on why self reporting is so inaccurate. ", "I do adherence for a nutritional research study. Basically I look at the subjects food journals and record if they're eating their prescribed amount of calories and the right amount of the food we're researching. I've looked at thousands of weekly journals and it's very rare that people actually adhere to these guidelines. From what I've seen, it's extremely difficult to maintain a viable control group and almost impossible to isolate a variable. Most of the subjects shouldn't even be apart of the study anymore, but sites are momentarily motivated to keep them on. I've lost all confidence in the validity of nutritional studies.", "I just wanted to add that nutrition is notoriously difficult to research because how they collect data.  ", "Nutrition science is extremely complex. Bodies are complex, food itself is complex, and how those two things interact is wildly more complex than we previously realized. We're constantly learning about how it all works. In the purest cases, recommendations are made based on the best available evidence, and adjusted as we learn new things. But the best available evidence isn't always accurate, the purest case doesn't always happen, and lobbying, bad science, and other things muddy the waters.\n\nThere are many different diets that seem to support healthy individuals, so the idea that there's one optimal diet isn't really scientifically supported, and attempts to find one will likely always be misguided. What we're starting to find out more and more is that a diet full of overly 'fake' processed foods don't seem to be one of those diets that people can stay healthy on. \n\nThere are some really interesting introductions to the complexity of nutrition science that are worth reading. They have their own flaws, but check out In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, or some of Marion Nestle's work.", "Love this thread.\n\nThis reminds me of the geochemist Patterson and his fight to get lead banned from food containers and other products.  He was constantly fighting against so called experts who had vested interests. \n\nAnother thing that royally ticks me off is the serving labels.  Companies blatantly getting away with stating that there are 3.5 servings in what is obviously a 1 serving size chocolate bar is ridiculous.  ", "The thrust is that we don't really understand human nutrition, and the attempts at doing honest, scientific research on nutrition through the 20th century has been bogged down in prejudice and confirmation bias, as well as good-intentions.\n\nFor a longer answer, I highly recommend [The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz]. (_URL_0_)\n\nIt is an extraordinary piece of journalism about nutrition science through the 20th century. It focuses on how we came to vilify fat of all kinds, but it is extremely illuminating about how nutrition science itself has functioned (and malfunctioned). It clearly explains how the field has become so muddled with information, how it is currently trying to self-correct, and how the reader can be better informed about understanding health claims.\n\nAlthough, I don't strictly think a five-year old could read the book. At least, not your average five-year old....", "**RANT**\n\nWhat pisses me off is the food pyramid went from [horizontal rows of foods](_URL_0_?) and the portions they recommend to [vertical wedges](_URL_1_) of those same proportions.\n\nThe only reason a pyramid was chosen was because it's wide at the base and narrow at the top. So the foods you are supposed to have more of are at the bottom and the foods you are supposed to have less of are at the top. By making it into vertical wedges, you defeat the whole point of having a fucking pyramid. It could be the food square, a food circle or a food icosagon if you're just going to negate the shape of the overall object and divide it into unequal wedges. ", "The real issue is that studying nutrition is extremely difficult to do. The scientific method relies on controlling factors and changing one thing and measuring the effect of that change, this is nearly impossible to do with people's diets. There are just too many factors too control. Nearly every nutrition study has flaws in it and the ones that don't are too expensive to attempt to reproduce.", "You've got some good answers here, but I'd like to address why the information is released without a great deal of fanfare. It's confusing if you seek it out and find something different from what you saw in the same place before. \n\nDecades ago the federal government released the food pyramid to help our citizens understand what a good diet looked like. The wide base of the pyramid was made of carbohydrates (complex sugars) and represented what we should eat most. \n\nThink about that for a moment. We were told that we should eat mostly carbohydrates (complex sugars). SUGAR!  This is just correlation, but we just so happened to start a diabetes and obesity epidemic at the same time. At about the same time fat was vilified. Linked (incorrectly) to high blood pressure and heart disease. The new science shows that fat does NOT cause high blood pressure or heart disease. Carbohydrates are more likely to cause these things. So while fat was vilified food companies started pulling the fat out of foods. That left them tasting bad, so what do you think food companies replaced the fat with to enhance taste?  SUGAR.  \n\nSo now the new science gives us the opposite. Fat is healthy. Sugar and carbs are not. But most people still haven't heard this. Why do you think that is?  Some folks are real bad at admitting a mistake. Especially the government. It would be nice if someone somewhere stepped up and reeducate do the public. \n\nTake all of this with a grain of salt. I'm just John Q Public. I'm not formally educated on this subject. However I did seek out and study this on my own. ", "Science is great.  I fucking love science, sorry about the language.  Does anyone dispute the fact that money drives what we 'ingest'?  Lobbies control everything.  That is why the dietary guidelines change.  ", "You want super simply advice on what to eat that will out last all these changes? \n\n-eat real food\n-if it had eyes, eat it\n-if it came from the ground or a plant, eat it\n-if it doesn't have a food label, it's generally good for you; ie eat primarily single ingredient foods \n-eat a colorful diet; try 5 colors per meal\n-eat 6-8 fistfuls of vegetables a day\n-drink about 1/2 your bodyweight in ounces a day (ex: I'm about 170 lbs. I strive for 85oz of water a day.)\n- avoid anything that comes from a package as much as possible\n\n\nIf you were to follow that advice 80%+ of the time, I'd be surprised if you weren't doing well. Add to that a little exercise, 7.5-9 hours of sleep, some stress management techniques, and a community to belong to and you'll grow to be a centenarian. ", "This is a good question, with a complex answer.. \n\nScience can be cheap, easy and easily misinterpreted, or it can be expensive, arduous and much more conclusive. The fundamental divide between observation studies and intervention studies, and the differing ability to draw solid conclusions from one or the other is hugely overlooked.  \n\nThe media love to spin a shoddy study into a sensational headline.  \n\"do you love this food? find out why it might be killing you!! more at 9\" \n\n Or.. \n\n\"Find out about this miracle food that can blast the fat! only available through our sponsors!\" \n\nMoney can be spent on countless modes of research, but the amount spent on research is still probably dwarfed by the amount of money spent on marketing drugs to treat a disease.  I don't like to sound cynical but people follow direct incentives.  If I make a living treating a disease, then I need to have a stronger set of incentives pushing me towards curing the disease altogether.  I don't think people are evil or malevolent, but people follow the incentives placed in front of them, and they are created by the massive economic system we have.  So you have many forces acting upon and contributing to this realm of discussion.  Big corporations, big agriculture and even bigger food processors want to make their most profitable products seem flawless and healthy.  They use their financial power to influence legislative bodies.  The media will take, twist and publicize the worst science in the interest of bolstering viewership/readership.  The average person will readily pass off misinformation without question.  Moreover, you have the fact that every person is unique and there is probably not one ideal diet that will suit everyone.  Very complicated but very worthwhile question to ask.."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.foodpolitics.com/books/"], ["https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1483752210&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+big+fat"], ["http://blogs-images.forbes.com/michaelpellmanrowland/files/2016/11/USDA_Food_Pyramid.gif", "https://www.disabled-world.com/artman/uploads/newfoodpyramid.jpg"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4tms2s", "title": "If an atom were at absolute zero, would it be possible to know both its position and velocity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4tms2s/if_an_atom_were_at_absolute_zero_would_it_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ixw02"], "score": [12], "text": ["First of all, the notion of temperature is not really defined for a single atom or particle. Formally it's only defined in the limit that the number of degrees of freedom goes to infinity. Although in practice it doesn't take a ton of particles before the formal limit is an ok, which is why it works fine for macroscopic objects.\n\nWith that said, for a system of many atoms at absolute zero, it is **not** possible to know both the position and velocity of any particle. By definition, a system at absolute zero is in its minimum energy quantum state, meaning that contrary to the usual thing people say about \"motion stopping at absolute zero,\" many systems become way more interesting near absolute zero because thermal effects don't wash away quantum effects anymore. It is in this regime, where the density of particles large enough that the wave functions of the particles overlap significantly, where one starts seeing quantum phases of matter which are really distinct from the classical solids, liquids, and gases you are familiar with.\n\nOne commonly cited example is helium, which becomes a liquid at low temperatures. This is because the system wants to minimize the kinetic energy of all of its particles, but the uncertainty principle then forces the positions of the particles to be very uncertain, resulting in a quantum liquid with very interesting properties including a vanishing viscosity. (There were recent posts [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_?) if you want more details)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4p7cg2/is_there_any_material_that_is_not_a_solid_at/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4c8276/why_is_helium_still_a_liquid_at_0k/"]]}
{"q_id": "3swapq", "title": "why exactly were the dixie chicks so hated for speaking out against the war?", "selftext": "I was recently watching their [performance of the national anthem](_URL_0_) and thought it was well sung.  Then, I remembered they essentially disappeared for expressing their opinions about a certain conflict. \n\nIs this not strange? While I understand de jure the 1^st Amendment is a protection of expression/free speech from the government, but is it not broader de facto? Do people today not cite this same amendment to say whatever they like, even hurtful lies? What am I missing?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3swapq/eli5_why_exactly_were_the_dixie_chicks_so_hated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx0x18z", "cx0x51p", "cx0x7sx", "cx0x8qu", "cx0x8vw", "cx10eww", "cx12cb1", "cx12smk", "cx12uux", "cx14zjn", "cx1lsi5"], "score": [5, 6, 63, 254, 21, 9, 3, 5, 12, 2, 2], "text": ["It had more to do with, on top of all they said about the war, that they said they were ashamed of the president being from Texas. It was to a foreign crowd but still upset people back home.  ", "It was not so much what they said about being against the war, but that they said they were against to war to a foreign crowd, then talked on behalf of all Texans stating that they were ashamed that the President was from our State to the same foreign crowd. This is a \"You do not air dirty laundry in public\" type of situation and they violated that concept. \n\nAlso the 1st Amendment means that they had the right to say what they want, but we also have the right to be upset about what they say and hold them accountable for any transgressions they make with their statements. ", "The 1st Amendment can only protect you from the government. It can't protect you from the potential consequences that offending people may have. \n\nFor celebrities, offending a large portion of the population can have huge career implications. For a country group (a genre that tends to play for folks that consider themselves patriotic) to denounce the President in a time of war...on foreign soil...  It was a career limiting choice. ", "If they were a punk rock band it likely wouldn't have mattered. But the Country Music fan base skews very republican and highly patriotic. So they basically shot their own fan base in the foot.\n\nIt would have been like the band Phish coming out in favor of high mandatory minimums for first time pot possession and claiming all users of recreational drugs are a blight on american society. Free speech.... but might have been particularly scorned by their particular fan base.", " Country music  has a pretty conservative fan base, and they spoke out against a Republican president. \n\nJust imagine a prominent rapper having a concert where they said Obama is a Muslim and #AllLivesMatter.", " >  I understand de jure the 1st Amendment is a protection of expression/free speech from the government, but is it not broader de facto? Do people today not cite this same amendment to say whatever they like, even hurtful lies? What am I missing?\n\nPeople today *do* cite the First amendment to spew all kinds of nonsense, but in many cases it's irrelevant to bring up the 1st Amendment unless it's the government trying to prosecute your speech. The government doesn't have to preserve your right to free speech when dealing with other private citizens, and a majority of the people parroting \"BUT MY FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS\" are usually mistaken.", "Because one of the better ploys when mounting a propaganda campaign is 'if you're not *with* us, you're *against* us'.", "America was going through its pro-war \" 'Murica / Freedom Fries\" phase, and using free speech to speak out against the Bush / Cheney wars was seen as a no-no.", "Short story: the Dixie Chicks said something their fan base didn't agree with. By the time said fans realized that they were in fact completely in the right about the war, their fifteen minutes of fame were up.\n\nIf you're looking for a rational explanation of why country music fans reacted the way they did -- to be frank, you're not going to get one. Sometimes, people prioritize their egos and their deeply-held personal beliefs over making any sort of sense. The people screaming the loudest against the Chicks back then on the basis that one just *doesn't* talk that way about a president during wartime have spent most of the last eight years saying even worse things about Obama and privately hoping that everyone will simply forget about their (now embarrassing) support for the Iraq war.\n\nIf you like the Chicks, though, I'd recommend their last album [Taking the Long Way](_URL_1_).\n\nSource: once upon a time, I worked on [this](_URL_0_).", "I think. You missing the idea that many people in America consider America to be Exceptional; the greatest. You are missing the ton of non profits that pay ceos large profits to collect money for veterans and all the TV commercials they sponsor. Your missing the fact we have in the past fought wars that were justified, but Iraq and Afghanistan were not apparently good ideas. You may be missing the fact that this was the second invasion of Iraq. You are missing the idea American schools teach their children from very young ages that along with America being blessed by and under the power of God, whenever America goes to war, everyone cheers on the President, even if he is wrong and evil. There is no questioning of the commander in chief. This man knows what is best and must be followed.\n\nPer First Amendment. I or You can say whatever we want and the people around us can and will think whatever they want and say whatever they want. And the general masses want to be seen as cheering on the winner, so they pick a winner and march blindly behind them. You are missing the fact that for the last 80 years, America has been exporting War in all its awesomeness as its chief means of Economic Development. People who say the opposite of whatever the crowd is saying are considered losers, and people love to hate on losers. You are missing the fact that in the USA, we can verbally assault others with nearly no repercussions legally, while in Europe, one can file charges. \n\nThat is Why. ", " > While I understand de jure the 1st Amendment is a protection of expression/free speech from the government, but is it not broader de facto? Do people today not cite this same amendment to say whatever they like, even hurtful lies? What am I missing?\n\nPeople cite it but they cite it incorrectly.\n\nThe 1st Amendment protects people from being punished by the government but that doesn't mean people can't punish you on their own.  There's no \"1st Amendment\" violation if your boss fires you for calling him asshole anymore then there is if you stop supporting an artist because they say something you don't like. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2dcVYdpm0"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udF-CKxzCF0", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_Long_Way"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2xq0gc", "title": "how did companies like google, mozilla, or yahoo originally make so much money?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xq0gc/eli5_how_did_companies_like_google_mozilla_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp2c444", "cp2cppk", "cp2mx55", "cp2n6s8", "cp2p5tp"], "score": [65, 150, 8, 5, 8], "text": ["Many internet companies don't turn a profit for years - they simply own a good idea and gather a large following in order to become worth something.  Investments keep the gears turning while the company stays in the red.  The site you're posting on now (Reddit) [wasn't profitable though to 2013](_URL_1_), and likely still isn't.  [Snapchat](_URL_0_), which turned down a $3 billion takeover offer,  just recently monetized (in a fairly inefficient way) with SnapCash, but probably still won't see profit for some time.\n\nMozilla makes over 97% of their money from royalties in the form of the default search engine in Firefox.  No doubt it cost Yahoo ([who make most of their money from their ad service  &  ads on their pages](_URL_3_)) a pretty penny for the [\"strategic partnership\"](_URL_2_) that changes the browser's default search engine to Yahoo, [even for people who will just update the browser](_URL_4_).", "Google started out at a PhD research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996 accessible at _URL_2_. They registered _URL_3_ in September 1997 as they started to realize that their research was valuable. Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, gave them $100,000 in August 1998 to continue to develop the search engine. User growth exploded in 1999 after _URL_1_ wrote an article in December 1998 saying _URL_3_ has the best search results. On June 7, 1999, they got $25 million in venture capital funding. It wasn't until 2000, after they'd built up a large user base, that they finally started selling advertisements.\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "As someone else mentioned Google received venture capital financing in their early days, Yahoo! did as well. If you ask that question of 95% of tech companies the answer will be VC funding.\n\nMozilla was originally spun out of Netscape/AOL and received funding from them and donations (Mozilla is not-for-profit). Today the vast majority of their revenue comes from affiliate deals to refer traffic from people using their browser to a search engine. By default if you start typing stuff into the address bar that isn't a URL Firefox will perform a search. Until recently that search went to Google, and Mozilla received 85% of their revenue from that deal with Google. A few months ago Mozilla switched to Yahoo! (presumably because Yahoo! is paying them more).", "In 2000 at nasdaq 5000, practically none of them were making money (Google, yahoo, eBay, amazon). Many of them made money from the sells of stock and many, many, many of them are no longer around because they never made another dime. ", "Most of tech companies get Venture Capital money. Usually, the founders(s) build the product (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) on their own time and once they show some promise, they go to Venture Capital firms such as Sequoia or Khosla Ventures and raise money.  In very early stages, the founders might raise small amounts (generally  < $1M) from friends and family (rich ones!) or high net worth individuals. \n\nUsually getting a product of the ground, takes either time or money or some combo of the two.  That's why many founders come from families that are well-off. Examples include, founders of Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Others, like Bezos of Amazon and the Whatsapp founders made some money in previous jobs. Most of these founders built the early stages of their products in small teams on lean budgets.  \n\nOnce you start getting Angel money then you try to hit your goals (number of users, or page views etc.) and so you can raise more money.  Each time you raise money, it's called a round. The first major round is Series A, then B, and so on.  \n\nIn the case of many of the big successful companies, each subsequent round is considerably larger than the previous one.  For example, Airbnb's Series A was $7.2M.  It's Series B was $112M, Series C was $200M, and Series D was $475M. (Source: Crunchbase).  \n\nUsually the money raised in the round comes from multiple investors.  In the case of Airbnb's Series C, those investors were Crunchfund, Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Ashton Kutcher. \n\nThe venture capital money helps pay salaries. Some companies are monetized very early, such as Airbnb which takes a transaction fee. Hence, they have another source of money. Others, like Pinterest are not. They depend mostly on Venture Capital. \n\nAnyway, essentially, the answer to your question is that there are rich people/institutions that are looking for places to park their money and get a good financial return. Hence, they give it to companies, which use that money for operations, salaries, etc. If all goes right, in a few years, the investors' money will be returned at many multiples (i.e. value will have been created). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.businessinsider.com/how-snapchat-will-make-money-2013-11", "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fhes_i0Dd1Q/UgE1mtOQZZI/AAAAAAAAAAM/B-Uh0j5UHyU/s1600/expenses_vs_revenues.png", "https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/yahoo-and-mozilla-form-strategic-partnership/", "http://adage.com/article/digital/yahoo-makes-money-search-ads-banners/295502/", "http://www.computerworld.com/article/2853435/mozilla-will-automatically-switch-firefox-search-to-yahoo-for-most-us-users.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google", "Salon.com", "google.stanford.edu", "Google.com"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5jel72", "title": "i've always heard that multivitamins aren't very beneficial because your body can't absorb all the vitamins at once and the excess is excreted. could your body absorb more of the vitamins if you cut the multivitamin into pieces and ate it throughout the day, instead of all at once?", "selftext": "Holy crap, my Inbox. Thank you everyone for all your responses. There are a lot of good explanations here. Looking through all these replies, it looks like the answer to my question is a resounding \"maybe.\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jel72/eli5_ive_always_heard_that_multivitamins_arent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbfkkuo", "dbfmflp", "dbfn4tp", "dbfnjqg", "dbfnou6", "dbfpb8m", "dbfq9z1", "dbfrmbq", "dbftqc5", "dbfuk3m", "dbfw1p0", "dbfwa9o", "dbfwpu9", "dbfx7ak", "dbfxb4e", "dbfy2nu", "dbfzl9a", "dbfzwmr", "dbg0dyd", "dbg19i4", "dbg1izj", "dbg1tqr", "dbg2w1h", "dbg39iy", "dbg5sg2", "dbg6wsj", "dbg77wl", "dbg789l", "dbg7bse", "dbg7ogp", "dbg7ro3", "dbg86no", "dbg8s3n", "dbg8ukh", "dbg94a8", "dbg99pe", "dbgae8m", "dbgbejl", "dbgc0jt", "dbgc0m1", "dbgc5t3", "dbgcdzi", "dbgdace", "dbgdkjo", "dbgdv14", "dbgdx0j", "dbgeaqx", "dbgf1bq", "dbgf9rd", "dbgfhxy", "dbghal7", "dbgiemd", "dbgieti", "dbgif2b", "dbgkmjv", "dbgmdof", "dbgmfbz", "dbgna12", "dbgncrv", "dbgnk7e", "dbgnsk2", "dbgny02", "dbgoeii", "dbgp0s5", "dbgqj96", "dbgqjib", "dbgr2mm", "dbgsdpr", "dbgt82w", "dbgtnev", "dbh4f0r", "dbi6gt0"], "score": [370, 25, 5, 3935, 20, 90, 80, 715, 6, 4, 36, 63, 321, 14, 333, 2, 3, 2, 4, 240, 4, 2, 169, 2, 2, 2654, 3, 5, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 52, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 267, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Your body doesn't absorb most of the vitamins from a multivitamin simply because it doesn't need them, not because it couldn't if there was a shortage. If you have a halfway decent diet a multivitamin is almost completely useless to the body regardless of the time of day eaten.", "I'm only going to speak to the part that I know clearly-\n\nCalcium messes with the absorption of other things including zinc and magnesium. Taking them in the same pill is wasteful. Also- zinc is a sleep aid on its own. It's just more reasonable to take some things in separate pills at different times of day.", "Does this include cod liver oil and b12 tablets? \n\nI don't eat fish and I'm often low on b12. I thought this was helping am I wasting money? And the thought of swallowing some fish's oil  makes me want to puke.", "Vitamins aren't like magic substances that boost your body's stats. Most are enzyme co-factors, which means that they are required for the enzyme to work.\n\nIt's sort of like keys to a car: if you have a shortage, that is a real problem since the car won't work.  Having 500 car keys doesn't make the car work any better than having 1 car key though.", "No major health organization recommends regularly taking a multivitamin. You should not supplement any vitamin/mineral unless you know you are deficient or not consuming enough of that specific nutrient. Excess nutrients are not always easily excreted. Fat soluble vitamins, for example, are much more likely to cause toxicity than water-soluble vitamins as they get stored in your fat. Many studies have been performed on multivitamins and they at best show no benefit and at worst show some harm from them.", "Multivitamins help fill any micronutrient deficiencies you may be missing in your overall diet.\n\nWhatever is needed is absorbed and the rest is flushed out as waste.\n\nWon't make a difference for the average person but I'd recommend a multi if you play sports or exercise frequently. ", "Look at it like a glass of water, with the water being the vitamins you need. If you pour in more than the glass can hold, the rest spills out and is wasted. But the glass gets topped off.\n\nOf course, the glass doesn't necessarily need to be topped off. And if we had an easy to read meter, perhaps tattooed on our side, this wouldn't be so much a problem. :)\n\nI can tell you that I take a doctor recommended multivitamin daily because I don't absorb Vitamin D, B, or Calcium efficiently.  ", "I wouldn't advise it. The latest thinking is, large doses of anti-oxidants, including vitamins A, C  &  E, don't fight cancer, they actually aid the spread of cancer. _URL_0_\n", "Many/most vitamins and supplements are synthesized and are believed to be less absorbable because of they come in a form your body is less adapted to assimilating (e.g. Cyanocobalamin vs methylcobalamin aka b12) We know certain vitamins and minerals work synergistically, for example taking calcium with magnesium and vitamin D aids in absorption.  It's also believed that taking a multivitamin with food can help increase absorption.  Not going to take the time to cite sources right now but if you think about it in simple terms it makes sense intuitively that your body is best equipped to absorb nutrients through\u2026 food.", "Mostly bullshit. Your body will absorb it over time. Think about this, they say only 30g of protein per hour can be digested. The rest is waste. \n\n40000 years ago, we didn't have 3 square meals. Particularly in winter. If the human body could only absorb so much per hour they would have all died. \n\nTldr Bodies are different, and your body is incredible at absorbing what it needs to survive and thrive. \n\nEdit: Don't think you can chug 800 of protein now. Your kidneys will fail. Also most supplements are horseshit. ", "Med student here: in all honesty it probably wouldn't make a difference. The real question is should you be taking vitamins at all? The answer is probably not. Unless you have a condition which affects your ability to absorb nutrients (e.g. Crohn's disease) or a diagnosed deficiency (e.g. iron, vitamin D) there is no reason for you to waste your money on vitamin tablets. If you're worried you might be deficient then talk to your doctor. Otherwise grab a copy of Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science' and start reading!", "That would probably help absorption and retention if you had any deficiencies, but it is also annoying and time consuming.\n\nOne of the big problems with multivitamin is that in the typical even half decent western diet you are already getting the vitamins you need.  Imagine how impoverished the average persons diet is historically and evolutionarily, and how diverse ours is (and particularly filled with meat and fruit).\n\nIn large part you can also synthesize some things you are lacking, and more importantly crave things you need subconsciously.  That time you realize you hadn't eaten meat for three days and were just dying for a burger was your body handling this shit for you.\n\nMultivitamins can be good if you think there is some particular medical or other reason you diet is going to be mal-nourishing you, or if your diet is extremely the same all the time.  But otherwise they just don't help much generally.  \n\nInterestingly they may help as an appetite suppressant, but you then perhaps end up eating too many carb focused foods.", "To briefly answer your question, no. Taking bites of that multivitamin throughout the day will not make them absorb better (maybe a little more but not to a significant degree)\n\nAnd to understand why, it may help to explain basic vitamins. \n\nVitamins A,D,E & K are all fat soluble and all the other vitamins are water soluble (ie B12, folate)\nSo, taking excess A,D,E, or K can be toxic because they get absorbed in your fat. \nExcess of the water soluble will come just make you have expensive pee. \n\nThe good news is you can get most of these vitamins through a healthy diet, but if you are like me and most other unhealthy Americans it may be a good idea to take a multivitamin to make sure you have enough!", "Each brand of multivitamins has a different % of daily requirenments on each pill, in Brazil for instance you would require 4 pills to get 100% of the daily need of some vitamins (apparently by law theres a limit here to limit the amount on each pill), while in the US some brands haver over 200% of the daily need in just one pill.  Some vitamins excess will leave through the urine, but some might give you issues over time and/or could become toxic, like excess iron.\n  \nYou have to research about what you need, and what you are buying.", "The idea that multivitamins aren't absorbed is simply false.  My doctor recommended a specific type of over the counter multivitamin which works well.  When I started seeing him, he had a blood test done which showed various vitamin levels in my blood D, B's etc.  I started taking the multivitamins and months later he had me repeat the blood test.  The test showed a dramatic increase in vitamin levels in the blood.  So they are absorbed but of course I suppose some brands are better than others.  \n\nTaking D and B vitamins are very important because if you're deficient (many people are) it increases your risk of heart disease and cancer.  This isn't some \"new age\" nonsense, it's backed by peer reviewed research.  As people age their bodies absorb less B12.  Few people get enough sun to maintain adequate levels of D.  C is essential for health and again many people don't get enough.  Scurvy is pretty common among young people today.  If your gums bleed easily it likely a sign you need a C supplement.  One NIH study found that 14% of adults were deficient in C.  \n\n_URL_0_", "Just from personal experience: over the last 5 years I've been on and off supplements (for a significant period of time each) and noticed absolutely no difference in health. This, from a middle aged male who lost 25kg by eating correctly and exercising without any fad diets or routines. ", "To answer your original question, cutting it up probably won't help or it will help some things (like water soluble ones aka vitamin C vitamin B and so on) \n\nYour body will absorb as much as it needs IF it's in the right form (most multis and supplements are shit and even expensive ones can be shit). \nThen you need to have a company that is not deceiving you which is not as easy as you'd think. \n\nWhat you can absorb and how much you need depend on what you eat and any disease you're experiencing or just plain genetic variance. \n\nPeople who say you get what you need through food are very very ignorant. You don't. You are deficient in things. \nAnd if someone disagrees with me about that then look up every vitamin and mineral (as I have) and then see what foods contain them and how much you're getting and even then those are generous estimates considering rdi is to not get very specific diseases (like vitamin C rdi is based on what you need to not get scurvy. Rdi is not based on optimal health) , not necessarily what you need to avoid chronic disease or if you're going through stress etc (emotional or otherwise) \n\nDef. Not like you're five but that's the best I can do.", "Some absorption has to do with other things being present. Certain vitamins help you absorb calcium etc. I don't know how much difference cutting it up would even make. It isn't passing through you and coming out as a whole pill.\nI will add that many sewage treatment plants report a layer at the bottom of the intake that is pretty much Centrum and similar multivitamin products.", "So very few sources or real information in a lot of these answers a few good ones though. It's 2016 and everyone fancies themselves a nutrition expert. \n\nThe truth is that most micronutrients work in conjunction with food to become bioavailable. That is to say an apple is the best source for getting the kinds of nutrients found in an apple. The best source of vitamins is through food, and not synthetic sources.\n\n Although many vitamins are good to supplement due to their inaccessibility to the body otherwise. The big one of vitamin D. magnesium is also one most people are deficient in and is also a major contributor in DNA repair. Take it before bed. Juice diets are a good source for high micronutrient meals but you should be fine with most diets that include fruits and vegetables and some red meats. \n\nThere's nothing wrong with breaking up your multivitamin up and taking it with every meal. Imo you'll get more out of it that way than taking it all at once but your diet is much more important. ", "This comment section is the most confusing mess of contradiction... I take a mix of vitamins every day to help with muscle gain and immune system because I'm too poor to have a decent diet, and I don't know how to feel anymore.", "Multivitamins are all-round retarded. Most people are not deficient in the multitude of vitamins in there. And if you are deficient in a vitamin, the multivitamin does not contain anywhere near enough of that vitamin to be useful, and in addition the quality or bioavaialbility (ease of absorption) of the type of vitamin they add is always very poor. If you're worried about a deficiency take some blood tests, it's very unlikely you'll be defiant in more than 1-2 things. Find out about the nutrient/mineral your deficient in and what type of that vitamin is most bioavailable and buy that. For example, most magnesium supplements are the cheap magnesium oxide pills, which is also used in multivitamins and isn't absorbed well at all, what you'd want to get is magnesium citrate. It gets even more complicated, certain vitamins/minerals affect the abortion of one another, for example calcium supplementation may reduce magnesium absorption.", "Just eat a well-balanced diet (the rainbow in fruit + veg) and you won't need to worry about supplements. I used to take a Multi + Fish Oil every day (for 2-3 years) and never noticed anything. Once I started eating healthier (in general), *that's* when I noticed a real change in my body. ", "There is so much junk in this thread I don't know where to start.\n\nThere is no evidence that taking any vitamins unless you have a diagnosed disease has any benefit to you at all. I don't know why people are obsessed with stuffing more things into themselves, but there are very, very few things that make healthy people healthier. \n\nThere are many claims of benefit based on theoretical benefits (anti-oxidants are good because they prevent ROS from causing DNA damage and cancer!) but turn out to be completely wrong in the real world (anti-oxidants don't actually do anything to prevent cancer.) Our knowledge of physiology is extremely incomplete, and guessing about a benefit based on a single pathway is an interesting way to come up with ideas for study, but it does not actually predict the actual effect things have on your body. Any time someone points you towards some sciency sounding explanation, ask to see the clinical trial. If there's no clinical trial, what they are telling you is *at best* a half-educated shot in the dark; the more likely explanation is that they have no clue what they're talking about but really want you to buy a product. \n\nThe area of nutrition are dominated by salespeople selling you things that are not proven to help you live a longer, healthier, or happier life. Trust well conducted, **prospective, randomized, blinded** trials, otherwise it's all guesswork. Spend your money making yourself happier, not on snake oil. If you're seriously concerned about your diet, make an appointment with a dietician. If you want the short version: Eat plenty of plants and don't get fat. \n\nTo bring this around to your original question, multivitamins don't help you if you eat a good diet because you probably don't need more vitamins. Vitamin deficiency causes disease; there's no reason to think you need more of any of that stuff than you get from eating good food, so unless you've been diagnosed with a deficiency just stop shoving things into your body.", "I was under the assumption that it is the size of the nutrients being delivered in the multivitamin that will affect the absorption of the vitamin.  \n\nThis link has a decent rundown:\n\n_URL_0_\n", "It has to do with curtain vitamins bio-availability, meaning how much of the actual substance your body can absorb vs how much is in each pill. Some supplements and vitamins like b12 aren't absorbed well by the stomach so in actuality you may only be getting 5% of the dose in each pill. Then the actual benefits of these vitamins are questioned making them even less effective or useful. ", "I've always assume many of us on reddit (myself included) know very little about what's being discussed but it's never been more obvious to me than in this thread. If I could down vote the top comment more than once I would, not because I care about multivitamins but because he's presenting as shitty an argument as the people that are trying to sell you multivitamins. \n\n\"The latest thinking is...\" This guys got the consensus of all scientists studying the vitamins A and C and cancer. GTFO. \n\nHe doesn't cite actual science but an article with a salacious headline discussing it. The article cites a \"vitamin e\" this was such a poorly designed study that one of the main researchers could not defend the findings at a GOED conference. Initially the headlines from the select study had something to do with omega-3s having some correlation to the rise in cancer. \n\nI don't know why I'm all up and arms. I better see myself out.   ", "Your body doesn't have trouble absorbing them because there's too much. It has trouble absorbing them through the method of delivery. As a result, the multivitamins are made available in massive quantities; if you're trying to throw a baseball into a small hole that's fifty feet away, your odds of getting a shot in are substantially improved if you've got 1,000 baseballs. Throwing 250 baseballs at a time, four different times, isn't going to help the overall odds of a given shot making it in. \n\nThat's grossly oversimplified, but that's it in a nutshell. The only benefit might be that it's easier on your digestive system to take the load in small doses, but a time release vitamin can help with that for a few dollars more per bottle.", "If you take them rectally you'll absorb a lot more of the vitamins as they won't be dissolved by your stomach acids.", "The body has a threshold for absorbing nutrients, which is exceeded by the dose found in a whole multivitamin. I eat half of the multivitamin in the morning and half in the evening. Another option is to eat a healthy, varied diet, which will cover all nutritional bases. With that said, most Americans do not come close to having a healthy diet (not sure about other countries). \n\nBelieve me... I'm almost a doctor -- >  medical student.", "You're better off just eating healthily tbh, which is the equivalent of eating small pieces of the multivitamin per day. And if you have some vitamin deficiency and on a prescription or something, you should probably just take it as it is. ", "The broscience behind this stuff is astounding.  A lot of it actually comes out of real research groups too.  Ive been doing statical analysis of peer reviewed journal articles for about 6 years now and I can tell you first hand that they are some of the most unreliable sources of information on the planet.  All the work is done by over-worked and underpaid gradstudents who are short on sleep.  The professors are under such pressure to publish that there is no real thought given out to quality.  One research group would be lucky to reproduce their findings in the same lab, having two research groups independently agree with each other would be almost a miracle.  So take what you read with a grain of salt.\n\nTake the vitamin, it it makes you feel better, keep taking it.  If it doesnt and you dont care, then stop.  Beyond that, no one really knows what they are talking about.\n\nI absolutely can tell a difference in how I feel when I take my multi every day and when I blow it off for more than a week at a time.", "Funny thing - last time I was at my Doc he said exactly this - the one-per-day he had me on?  Break it in half - take half in the morning and half at night.", "This is a complicated questions bc there are fat soluble vitamins, water soluble vitamins, minerals phytonutrients and so many other things that are all absorbed differently.  Mother nature made it all perfect with food.  When we try to screw with it our body can get more out of whack for normal healthy ppl. Obviously if you have mitochondrial disease and need CoQ10 supplements or Anemia and need iron that's different.  But if you are healthy you shouldn't need supplements.  ", "The main issue is what's called bioavailability, for a given vitamin or substance only x% can be effectively used by your body. It's not always a \"too much at once\" issue but rather it just cannot readily utilise it in that form.\n\nMany synthetic vitamins for example, which lack other phytonutrients that are present in plants containing them, which assist in your body utilising the vitamin effectively.\n\nOr, to make it really simple \"you body isn't quite sure what to do with 2000mg of ascorbic acid on its own\"\n\nWhen that is extracted from say, an Acerola Cherry, and the entirety of the fruit is utilised in making the supplement, then you also get all the nutrients that go along with it and your body sees it as an actual food and understands what to do with it.\n\nAs for peeing it out, your body simply gets rid of what it doesn't need. However you don't *know* what it's lacking, so a **good quality** multi just gives it a bit of everything and then it can choose, and get rid of what it doesn't need.\n\nFor sources, look up studies done by the Nutrilite health institute. I don't have any specific links on hand I'm sorry.", "I take over a dozen separate vitamins twice daily since 2007 as part of my weight training etc. I have gotten most of my info from _URL_0_, a site that publishes medical studies on fitness and vitamins etc. Taking vitamins among other things allows your body to be at optimum vitamin levels throughout the day. I am 36 yo and am the strongest I have ever been, feel the best I've ever felt and I've always worked out but haven't always taken vitamins etc. Some vitamins store in your body and others need taken in. Urinating out excess is fine because you're at optimum levels and this is fantastic for your body. Just don't take too much of something and research before taking anything. May I suggest the above site as it's an incredible source of the latest info on vitamins, supplements, medical studies and fitness.", "_URL_0_\n\n\nDepression\tEdit\nHypovitaminosis D is a risk factor for depression; some studies have found that low levels of vitamin D are associated with depressed feelings and are found in patients who have been diagnosed with depression.[21] Various studies on trial groups have been conducted to find a correlation between hypovitaminosis D and depression. A study conducted by Lamb et al., (2015) on perinatal depression, examined 126 pregnant women and their levels of vitamin D. In the women with the lower levels of vitamin D, a higher rate of depression was observed.[22] Hypovitaminosis D is also considered a risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms in older persons.[23] One study found low serum vitamin D concentrations in patients with schizophrenia,[24] and the active metabolite of vitamin D3 (calcitriol) acts as a catalyst in glutathione production, and low glutathione levels have been implicated in several mental health disorders. In 2016, a review conducted by Parker et al., looked at articles (most of which were published 2011-2016) that examined the link between vitamin D deficiency and depression. The authors found that \"empirical studies appear to provide increasing evidence for an association between vitamin D insufficiency and depression.", "Registered Dietitian here -\n\nThe poor absorption of many multi vitamins doesn't have much to do with the amount, so this spacing out method wouldn't make a difference. Poor bio-availability of many multivitamins is the cause of them not absorbing well. In other words, the type and source of the vitamins and minerals are poor quality.", "Certain vitamins interfere with the absorption of others. Most multivitamins are also synthetic!", "Some vitamins are absorbed through your blood stream.. along with carbs. So if you eat carbs and vitamins at the same time you'll absorb fewer vitamins.. thus increasing the required consumption to get what you need. This also makes the daily amount numbers kinda untrue maybe", "This thread has been a thoroughly useless read. Also, most people didn't address the question, but took the opportunity to \"inform\" us that multivitamins are useless -- and the especially annoying types were under the misconception that they were bucking the trend in so doing.", "I don't know if anyone has mentioned the addition of vitamin fortified foods in the average person's diet. A good example of this is cereal. Many cereals have more than the daily recommended amount of vitamins added to them.  I would think unless you are an extremely picky or unhealthy eater, you are getting your required nutrients. On the other hand, if you only eat fortified cereal(or power bars, nutrient shakes, etc.), you're going to make yourself sick. The body doesn't need or want the vitamin C of 100 oranges in one sitting--or over the course of the day. ", "Doctor here.\n\nVitamins are either water soluble or fat soluble. Their solubility determines how they're absorbed and if they're stored.\n\nIt's possible that by splitting a vitamin could increase the overall absorption (I don't know the specific amount before saturation of the channels that transport the vitamin from intestine to blood). \n\nThat being said, the majority of vitamins, with the exception of ADEK, are water soluble and the excess, even if absorbed is excreted in urine. Additionally, excess levels of ADEK cause various negative effects.", "One a day vitamins are a hoax perpetuated by the one a day vitamin people. Eat different fruits and vegetables. Scientists have not discovered everything your body needs yet. So how can they put the unknown into a pill?\n\nYou store more than a days worth of vitamins. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables over a few days.", "Have a doctor do some blood tests. Find out if you're deficient in anything. Then follow their recommendations. Other than that drink more water because  most people don't drink enough.", "I would cross post a version of this over at r/askscience. You'll get more thorough responses. ", "Hey, mods. Can we have this post locked for the continued misinformation?\n\nK thx bye", "Believe it or not but it all depends on if your body needs the vitamins (Water soluble vitamins are excreted from the body) or what you take with the vitamin (B12 needs folic acid, vitamin D needs calcium and so on). Your body will not excrete fat soluble vitamins, they are store in fat and can be toxic when to much is stored. Best bet......eat a balanced diet and you won't need vitamins!", "The way to get good information on vitamins is to google for *name of vitamin* efficacy.  Efficacy is the medical word for how effective, or useful, something is.  iirc I googled just 'vitamin efficacy' and found some charts with lists of vitamins and how they were rated. \n\nMy own opinion is that the body excels at synthesizing what it needs from eating food. No particular diet, just reasonable, varied foods. Want Vitamin D? Walk around in the sunshine, you'll make some.\n\nThe vitamin supplement industry spends quite a bit of money each year lobbying Congress to keep their businesses completely unregulated and free of FDA control. This does not mean they are bad, it's just food for thought.  \n\nNow, some of the products have good efficacy, and others not so much, so study efficacy and make your own informed choices.", "just want to add to all the comments saying a healthy diet is enough that if you live in scandinavia you are almost guaranteed to have a vitamin D deficiency and taking them as a supplement in the winter months might make you less tired", "Medical Student Here: there are 2 major categories of vitamins (fat soluble-A/D/E/K, and water soluble-Vit C and and all the B vits). Fat soluble will always be absorbed whether you like it or not, thus also lead to poisoning and are toxic, while excess water soluble vits are easily excreted. To answer your question, it's more a question of digestion and how well the Digestive enzymes are working, your adding in the factor of surface area and timing into digestion, where yes surface area helps but vits are designed to be separated into its components whether you throw it in as a big clump (whole pill) or smaller pieces, and timing really depends on many factors one being hormones, if your rest/digest aka your parasympathetic NS, is in play then more stuff will be digested. ", "The true eli5 explanation: All the studies are inconclusive, but most agree that the potential benefit is worth a shot.", "This is a good question. When my mom used to make me take a multivitamin every day, I would poop it out mostly undigested.  I think it was a total waste of money ", "Health food store worker and general geek for all things supplement-wise. \n\nHaving researched this and pretty much taken every vitamin under the sun, I would say don't look at the RDA of every vitamin that's listed but rather look at the _form_ your vitamin comes in. \n\nIf you look at certain vitamins in particular absorption rates differ by crazy amounts (according to research). Vitamin B12 is often given as injections in women mainly down to poor diet and (here in Ireland) is usually administered in the form of cyanocobalamin. This is a highly synthesised form and tonnes of scientists argue it's practically cannot be absorbed by the body, whereas if you includes a complex of vitamin b12 which includes methylcobalamin, the absorption rate shoots up.\n\nIt's a little different for minerals, basically look for any (iron, magnesium, zinc etc.) that come in a \"chelated\" form. That means it's been bonded with an amino acid glycine which makes it easer to assimilate in the stomach.\n\nI, myself, tend to not recommend multivitamins for the main reason that in order to get a legit good quality one, you'll need to spend at least \u20ac50 here (I'm not sure about the states). A good diet and figuring out what's wrong with you first will save you money in the long run. \n\nFeeling tired? B vitamins / Ginseng \nLow immune system? Zinc / Echinacea\n\nTL;DR - Don't buy multivitamins. Buy better quality separate vitamins.", "Vitamins are reductionist science. Does anyone really think you can extract one chemical from the thousands present in fruits/vegetables/meat and that will be equally beneficial? Or even remotely comparable? The chemical composition of food is so complex and the thousands of other chemicals that aren't absolutely necessary for life like vitamins are very important. ", "I once downed half a carton of multivitamin juice after a night of heavy drinking...about an hour later while a passenger in a car I felt something rumbling, then it became more than a rumble...had to pull over to the nearest toilet and I swear to fucking god my ass exploded with the power of a cannon. This continued on and off for about an hour. Every time I walked out the door I'd have to run straight back in....the worst part was, there was a lady at the door that you had to pay and ask for a roll of shit wipe every time you enter the place...that bastard bottle of multivitamin cost me a fucking fortune. \n", "Physician here, multivitamins have never been shown to be beneficial and have actually been shown to increase mortality in people taking them.  There's honestly no very hard evidence that you can look at to be 100% sure in explaining WHY this is, but based on what we know about the individual components in a multivitamin we can take an educated guess.\n\nFirst off, chances are simply that you are NOT deficient in most vitamins.  Our food is specially fortified in the developed world, that's why milk has Vitamin A+D added to it, and a ridiculous number of products have Vitamin C spiked into it.  Add in the other foods you eat and most of us get most of the vitamins we need with the exception of Vitamin D, because normally a lot of this is generated via sun exposure (though there is some literature that argues that you can still be deficient despite lots of sunlight mostly in dermatology literature arguing against telling people to get more sunlight due to fears of skin cancer) and many of us don't get intense enough sunlight in the northern hemisphere due to the weather as well as the fact that we wear clothing and aren't running around naked with all our skin exposed to the sun.\n\nNot being deficient in most vitamins, taking additional vitamins really doesn't actually do you any good.\n\nNow as for why there is possible HARM from vitamins, well a lot of vitamins are used by your cells to grow.  And the normal amount of vitamins we eat are plenty for our cells to grow and heal normally.  The one exception is that cancer cells like to keep growing and growing, so they're the only cells that are really limited by the normal dietary supply of many of the vitamins (in particular, B vitamins and folic acid).  So now if you have a few cancerous cells in your body and you start taking tons of extra vitamins, the only cells that actually need more than the vitamins you get in a regular diet are the cancer cells, so you're basically stimulating the growth of cancers.\n\nOn top of this, there is some evidence that many of the components that are popular in regular multivitamins aren't that great for you.  For example, there are studies showing that folic acid in the specific form found in vitamins seems to increase cancer risk while folic acid found in vegetables actually decreases the risk of cancers-in particular breast cancer in women who drink alcohol. The EXCEPTION to this is that if you are pregnant, taking the pill version DOES reduce neural tube defects in your child so if you're pregnant or expecting to become pregnant shortly it is beneficial to take a folic acid supplement via a prenatal vitamin, it's just not beneficial to continue supplementing folic acid after you're no longer pregnant.  But eating a diet heavy in fresh folic acid (via leafy greens such as spinach) is beneficial either way.\n\nThen on top of the fact that some of the components may not be beneficial or may not come in the version of the vitamin that occurs naturally, you have the fact that VITAMINS CAN INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER IN A DIFFERENT MANNER THAN IN A TEST TUBE WHEN PUT INTO YOUR BODY.  There are tons of enzymes as well as breakdown products of food in your digestive tract and in your bloodstream that interact with the vitamins to change their state and sometimes vitamins that may not have bad interactions with each other in a test tube may be changed by enzymes, or random lipids in your diet, or stomach acid, etc. into something that will interact with another vitamin to form chemicals that may not be beneficial to you.  And when you take a multivitamin you're basically taking dozens of vitamins all at once, and there's very little data about what interacts with what, you basically have to go look up research on every single pairing, and specifically research about it in the environments of the stomach, the small intestine, and the large intestine.  Basically we have no idea what the exact interactions are between all these vitamins in an in vivo setting when you add all the extra variable of the specific foods you're eating.\n\nTL;DR:  There's no good evidence that you should take a multivitamin unless there is a specific illness your physician has asked you to take one for.  Other specific supplements may be beneficial if you are deficient (i.e. Vitamin D) and some supplements may be beneficial in only specific situations (i.e. take folic acid in prenatal vitamins if you're getting pregnant or are pregnant) but may not be helpful at other times.  There's tons of vitamins in the food you eat too, so there's only a few things that really need supplementing.  Eat your vegetables instead of a multivitamin, because eating 7+ servings of vegetables has one of the tightest associations with better long term health.", "I have a related question: is it really beneficial to take a whole bunch of antioxidants? Or can I get most of the benefits by sticking to one? ", "I was reading my bottle of B12 after all this conversation. \n\nWhy is B12 best absorbed when dissolved under the tongue? ", "The idea that multivitamins aren't absorbed well at all, what you'd want to take prenatal vitamins?", "A lot of multivitamins have minerals that you will get in your normal diet. For the minerals you don't get the full amounts it will supplement that--any extras for the most part you will excrete in urine. Your body can also only absorb about 500-600mg of calcium at one time. So if you take your multivitamin with breakfast and you have milk to drink and cereal with milk you may not absorb it all at once. And obviously if your multivitamin has more than 600mg of calcium you won't absorb it. \nSource: Pharmacist ", "My question: If you're malnourished, will a multivitamin help?  Lets say you're stuck on mars with nothing but potatos.  Will a multivitamin keep you going?", "It wouldn't really matter whether you took the dose found in plants is not already getting the kinds of nutrients found in an in vivo setting when you really don't.", "R/microbiome. Everyone has a different composition of bacteria that make up their gut flora (their natural bacterial inhabitants). Like a bacterial fingerprint. What works for me supplementation wise might not work for you and vise versa. This makes blanket health statements totally unnecessarily one-size-fits all. We all have different health needs, histories, preferences, allergies etc etc. It your body was out of whack enough due to vitamin deficiencies, believe me, you'd know it. Our body does a great job as getting us what we need and letting us know when we need to get some more or get some less. ", "Get your vitamins from food sources I.e. Avoid synthetics. Orgenetics supplies extracted vitamins from whole food sources for example, those are the kind of vitamins you wanna go for. ", "This is very frustrating partly because of the way OP has worded it.\n1. Multivitamins are bad because you cannot absorb all the vitamins at once\n2. If you break a multivitamin into small pieces and consumed them throughout the day, would the body absorb more?\n3. (Implied: Absorbing more would make the multivitamin good for you)\n\nThis is leading to a heated debate of whether or not taking a multivitamin is good for you. Can anyone just answer the original question, disregarding the context in which it was asked?", "Hmm, I wonder if there's an easier way to get many small doses of vitamins throughout the day? Maybe 3 larger doses in the morning, midday, and evening, with mini doses between. Sort of like 3 \"meals\", and a few small \"snacks\". \n\nActually...... nevermind, it's a crazy idea. ", "well yes and no, to start off I am a nutritionist with a college degree, please disregard all the Google scholars and GNC muscle dummies below!\n\n As a general room of thumb the smaller more frequent doses you take a vitamin/mineral you absorb more. Most have a reduced absorption rate as the amount increase, but some vitamins/minerals boost or lower absorption. \n\nFor Instance Calcium and Iron compete for absorption and will lower the amount you absorb, however iron and vitamin C help each other and vitamin C increase iron absorption ", "All I know is that my ex gets loads of vitamin D from multiple sources daily and still seems to survive. ", "I took multivitamins every day my head would start to hurt, but if I took them every 2 days I was fine. Don't forget you're also getting vitamins from food too ", "Top comment is about anti oxidants and not multi vitamins.\n\nI want to know if eating a multi vitamin is helpful. Especially if you have a shitty low nutrient diet like me.", "Multivitamins can absolutely be good for you.  But remember too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.  Make sure you're not getting pills that has the first ingredient as something \"extract\".  Extracts tend to be made with head induced at some point which kills a lot of the good vitamins.   Also a lot of lower end companies try to sell you liquid vitamins that are 65% glycerine.   It's a scams in that sense.   Back to the biological standpoint, multivitamins are fine but you should always get a blood test first because treating an individual vitamin deficiency is more effective than taking a big dose of things you already get enough of daily.  ", "As my nutrition professor told us, only take what you have a deficiency in. So if you are lacking vitamin A take that if it's B take that. Taking what you don't need increases the chance for kidney stones and some other stuff I forgot. If anything else just get your blood work done and see what you need."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antioxidants-may-make-cancer-worse/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/11/scurvy_is_common_and_should_be_diagnosed_and_treated.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nutritionalwellness.com/archives/2005/mar/03_maher.php"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["ergolog.com"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_deficiency"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1czasx", "title": "Dumb Question: How did a city like Rome at the height of the Roman Empire manage to keep a reliable food surplus without refrigeration or fast transportation?", "selftext": "Something that had always puzzled me is how far food goes before it reaches me. So many things line up today to get a hamburger on my plate. How did ancient cities accomplish this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1czasx/dumb_question_how_did_a_city_like_rome_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9leist", "c9lf5u3", "c9lfeqa", "c9llbvu", "c9lp7k5"], "score": [19, 152, 145, 5, 10], "text": ["Salt was definitely a major factor for preserving meats, but granaries did their part too - grain was essential to the Roman diet. Roman granaries were able to store surplus grain from Egypt for years, which became especially helpful during crop shortages and the like. ", "The staples of the Roman diet were the [Mediterranean triad](_URL_1_) - wheat, olives, and grapes.  Unprocessed wheat, olive oil, and wine, shipped in enormous amphoras, kept for years and could be - and were - shipped from far-off provinces and stored in massive warehouses in and around Rome.  Beyond those staples, many people in Rome itself had gardens to supply them with potherbs, and the Italian countryside around Rome was filled with farms, supplying the city with eggs, honey, fruits, vegetables, songbirds, dormice, snails, and less ordinary delicacies (when in season, of course - and /u/Tiako's comment notes that the evidence for this claim is not certain).  Meat and fish were less common in the ordinary Roman diet than they are today, but cows and sheep and pigs could be driven into the city and slaughtered there (side note:  animals sacrificed on the altars of Rome's temples were often sold by the priests to butchers in the city market; this bothered Christians, as Romans 14 attests), and, of course, the fish markets in Ostia were only a little ways down the road.  \n\ntl;dr:  besides a few easy-to-keep and easy-to-transport staples, Romans, and pretty much everyone else before the internal combustion engine, ate locally.\n\nEdit:  I don't mean to imply that managing those easy-to-keep staples was an *easy* thing for Rome to do.  [Ensuring the grain supply](_URL_0_) was a matter of enormous importance to the government of the city; Rome - with more than a million people at its greatest extent - was utterly reliant on the essentially parasitic relationship it had with the grain-producing provinces; keeping the *panes* part of *panes et circenses* flowing was a major concern for all the Emperors; and when Rome's support network broke down in the 5th century AD, the result was famine, misery, and a massive population decrease.", "So far from being a dumb question, it is one that attracts an enormous amount of scholarly attention. One of the great works on the Roman economy in recent times is called [The Grain Market in the Roman Empire](_URL_0_) by Paul Erdkamp, one of the great modern scholars of the Roman economy.\n\nA quick, simplistic answer to your question: most importantly, you can't expect the diversity of options to be available to a Roman. Even the wealthiest Romans were not immune to the dictates of the season or to transportation. Animal product was primarily obtained in Latium, although artistic evidence clearly indicates that fish, almost certainly salted, was obtainable in the city. There has not to my knowledge been a systematic study of fruit and vegetable supply, and while it is sometimes asserted that the surrounding countryside must have specialized heavily in this I do not know of positive evidence to support. I also would not be surprised if urban gardening played a part in that supply. Olive oil overwhelmingly came from Spain, and wine from southern Gaul and northern Italy (actually don't quote me on that one).\n\nGrain, by far the most important source of food, came generally from Egypt, North Africa, and Sicily and took up a considerable amount of the Imperial attention. Ships carrying a certain amount of grain to Rome could import their other goods duty free, and the emperor owned considerable lands in Egypt devoted to supplying Rome.\n\nI may be able to provide additional detail for specific topics if you are curious.", "If I remember well my history classes, it was because of salt, actually salt was a very valuable asset in Rome, to the point that workers were paid in salt... that's the origin of the SALary word. Actually salt is used in a lot of places in the world where refrigeration is not an option, obviously food doesn't taste the same, but it's a very interesting flavor. ", "No one has mentioned fermentation, which was important for preserving food. Wine and _garum_ were both an important part of Roman cuisine, _garum_ in particular being very nutritious."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_supply_to_the_city_of_Rome", "http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art811.asp"], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=IIj9uvGtJFEC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2qs3ix", "title": "with all the lawsuits going around where companies can't be sexist when hiring employees how is hooters able to only hire big breasted women", "selftext": "Thank you for all the response and I do realize not everyone who works at hooters has a giant rack", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qs3ix/eli5_with_all_the_lawsuits_going_around_where/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn8zscw", "cn91jmo", "cn92xr0", "cn942sk", "cn951b2", "cn955im", "cn957f6", "cn95aei", "cn95bea", "cn95l9b", "cn95tke", "cn966bl", "cn967uq", "cn96e1s", "cn96ort", "cn96qby", "cn96tof", "cn96xq9", "cn97a3x", "cn97c3u", "cn97fp6", "cn97i8h", "cn97qrm", "cn98ds2", "cn98ecl", "cn99ga9", "cn99mfh", "cn9a8ok", "cn9a8q0", "cn9a8w4", "cn9anod", "cn9aomj", "cn9aq4g", "cn9avjx", "cn9awg6", "cn9ayha", "cn9b0ll", "cn9b0ri", "cn9b6by", "cn9b6qg", "cn9bdjg", "cn9bgz4", "cn9bhnt", "cn9bjgi", "cn9blu2", "cn9bnn6", "cn9c4tu", "cn9c6my", "cn9cl23", "cn9cq0c", "cn9dbac", "cn9dg03", "cn9f7d2", "cn9f95p", "cn9fgzy", "cn9ft4n", "cn9fwly", "cn9fzh4", "cn9g8wd", "cn9gbuc", "cn9gjp6", "cn9gysk", "cn9h4gd", "cn9hnvr", "cn9hvq8", "cn9i9of", "cn9igeh", "cn9izfw", "cn9kcvd", "cn9l5u1", "cn9lult", "cn9mhcj", "cn9mkw4", "cn9nmsf", "cn9p3nr", "cn9qkvd", "cn9rqsb", "cn9vmh8"], "score": [2556, 1663, 209, 126, 5, 48, 11, 4, 19, 3, 93, 66, 12, 3, 3, 16, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 13, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["They are hiring models.  It is legal to base hiring of models on physical characteristics.  They have already been sued over it and won.\n\nEdit:  Well I didn't think my short comment would be the at the top.  Hooters lost the overall case and had to settle.  However, they retained the right to maintain their hiring standards on their female wait staff.  They opened many other positions to males as part of the settlement.", "Legally, it's what's called a \"bona fide occupational qualification\" that hooters waitresses must be female. The federal law that protects from employment discrimination says that you can refuse to hire someone based on their gender if their gender is that specific to the job. HOWEVER, Hooters has to be willing to hire male cooks, busboys, etc, because those jobs are \"behind the scenes\" and so are not protected by the Hooters = women thing. Basically, it works because Hooters' entire brand is based on hiring women as waitresses. Doesn't mean they can get away with never hiring men for OTHER jobs, and doesn't mean any restaurant could get away with it. \n\nIf I had a restaurant that was 100% branded to be all about hot guys, I could legally hire only hot guys. But if I had a regular coffee shop that wasn't marked as a hot guy coffee shop, I could not legally refuse to hire women. \n\nETA: Race is not a BFOQ, so no, you can't refuse to hire someone based on race. It's not going to fly. \n\nETA 2: YES, EVEN FOR A MOVIE.  As I have said below, race is not a BFOQ even for movies, but physical characteristics associated with race are okay in some circumstances, and yes, it is a big complicated mess. When the law was passed in the 1960s, the Senators who wrote a sort of guide to the law (which does not carry the same legal weight as the law but is considered by judges interpreting the law) said while the law says race is not a BFOQ, physical characteristics that go along with race might be in the case of a movie. Later judges have said that this means you can't base your hiring of actors based on race, but you can based on physical characteristics. In the words of one judge, \"A film director casting a movie about African-American slaves may not exclude Caucasians from the auditions, but the director may limit certain roles to persons having the physical characteristics of African-Americans.\" ", "They don't 'only' hire women with large breasts. I dated a hooter's waitress, and a lot of her co-workers were small or average.", "You have obviously never been to a Hooters. \n\nReal vs. Ideal:\n\nIdeally Hooters would hire only big breasts. \n\nThe Reality is that Hooters hire breasts of all sizes. ", "This will get buried but...\nThey are protected under title vii of employment law. It is illegal to hire based on gender since gender is a protected class (also included is race religion, certain age groups, and orientation in California). This is called disparate impact. They only way they can hire base on gender is because of the BFOQ (bona fide occupational qualification) clause. This means that the discrimination is legal as long as you can prove that it's necessary for the job/service provided.", "They can also use this to set a weight limit to their employees, for example if you gain five pounds you are fired. They do the same thing in casinos. ", "Well big breasted men aren't usually confident in wearing tight fitting clothing, so its not that they're not allowed, they just kind of don't want to.", "I have been to a couple of hooters in the city, and some of the girls there are uuugglllyyy. Just plain eyesores. But then again, most people in said areas are ugly, so I guess standards are different.", "What I want to know is, how do the people that apply even know they were refused for being ugly/small breasted? Can't the people that interview them just say they didn't make the cut for another reason and hire someone else? Hell at my old jobs we didn't even send out rejection notices when someone didn't make it. I saw a few get the axe for (behind the scenes) things that would easily get the companies in trouble. One guy had a wandering eye that creeped out my boss for example.  They didn't come out and say \"your wandering eye is creepy so I'm not hiring you\".  \n\n(Edit: not that I condone that, my boss was a dick) \n\n\n\n", "Besides the model policy, allowing them to hire based on physical appearances, and going through several lawsuits, it's also not true that they only hire well endowed women. The men do non-waiter/ress work such as the cooking among other tasks.", "I asked a Hooters waitress if they had to have large breasts. The girl was pretty, petite, and had average size boobs. She said no, that she worked with a lot of beautiful girls who were flat-chested, and they either wore a push-up bra, or just wore a tighter top. Said management hired girls who were attractive in the face and body, not necessarily with giant breasts. Looked around and saw boob range from B to a D. This was at a Hooters in New York City. ", "Actually they don't hire big breasted women. I used to date a girl who worked at hooters, she just put on 3 bras before going to work.", "Simply put, human rights panels across both Canada and the US agree that if a workplace can provide justification that hiring otherwise would negatively affect their bottom-line then it is fine to have hiring practices like this. For example, say you own a restaurant in a primarily Korean part of Toronto and wish to only hire a person who speakers Korean so that they may communicate with the patrons. That is in your right as an employer as otherwise your bottom line may fall. This is the same case for Hooters.", "Not entirely true. The Hooters at my location has small breasted women also. In fact, most of the hooters I've been to has small breasted females also...", "The hooters in Mission Valley (San Diego) doesn't have many big breasted women.   If you go looking for them, you will be disappointed.", "The first time I went to a Hooters our waitress was flat chested. Hooters does not only hire big breasted women.", "It's essential to their business model. You can discriminate if it's essential to business operations. ", "Don't they just put their boobs on when they get to work? ", "Here's the skinny:\n\nThe suits relate to jobs wherein the work entails something such as physical ability, mental ability, or having certain skills. In jobs like these, it is illegal to discriminate based on sex or gender, as they have no bearing on the job at hand.\n\nHooters however, essentially hires models or actors, who are required to fit physical specifications. For example, in a movie, you may need someone to play the role of a male, threatening-looking biker. Are you going to cast the guy who looks like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Danny Trejo's hybrid, Bill Gates meets Harold Ramis, or an Ellen Degeneress-sized Gwendelon Christie?\n\nThe STCA/DJ person most visibly fits the role, and as long as his acting skills are good enough, he's probably going to be hired on the spot. Likewise, for a business that serves \"hooch, hotwings, and hooters,\" they are going to hire someone matching the description that can work as a server.", "I have a friend who works at Hooters, and her and many of her co-workers are in line with the model status quo, however, some are just moderately attractive female employees with a great attitude and good work ethic. The \"big boobs\" is a logo and actually a dress code, if you don't have em, Victoria invented the bombshell for a reason.", "Big breasted? Clearly you've never been the to branch in Singapore.", "Surprised Dale hasn't shown up in this thread.\n\n:/", "Employers can discriminate against an employee if the job the employer is hiring for requires a certain qualification.\n\n\"Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating in employment decisions based on gender, race, national origin, religion or age. Many states make it illegal  to discriminate based on sexual orientation or transgender status.\n\nTitle VII also, however, allows for discrimination based on protected characteristics (except race), when that characteristic is what is called a \"Bona Fide Occupational Qualification\" (BFOQ). To be a BFOQ, being a member of that group is essential to the job.\" \n\n_URL_0_", "Same thing happened to me when I applied for a stripper gig. They said I couldn't have the job because I am a guy. When I sued they changed their story to I couldn't dance. Mother fuckers! Lol", "I'm gonna guess they are hired as models, not waitresses. That means physical appearance can be taken into account. It's how A & F have gotten around that one for years.", "As a hooter girl I can confirm we are hired as \"entertainers\". Thus meaning they can discriminate on sex and physical characteristics. ", "I assume you've not actually been to a Hooters?  Rarely do I see women with big breasts in there.  Either that or you consider A and B cups big.", "I have not seen the real answer here, so I'll tell you:\n\nIt's because hooters won a lawsuit where they were being sued for this exact reason. The conclusion was basically if it is an integral part of their business model, it can be allowed. It's  called the bona-fide occupational qualification", "I'm going to open a new restaurant called Wieners! That'll show 'em. \n\nWait... No I won't.", "The fact is humanity works on a pendulum and right now and for the next 10 years or so its gonna swing way in the direction of womens rights, because 30 years ago it had just finished swinging the other way.\n\nHeres an opinion im no konger allowed to have.\n\nI think men and women should be much less over sexed, and we are loosing our ability to form intense strong bonds with more people choosing to spend their 20s in superficial relationships that start based on lust, imagination, and limmerence. \n\nie everyne is becomming slutty. Men and Women.  But for some reason me as a guy looking for a girl on my level is now somehow anti women. Even though I hold the samestandard for myself and guys in general too. Love is important,  and possibly the only spiritual hint left behind for us. Sex is the physical manifestation of it.  If I say that out loud than I must hate women.  ", "Are you suggesting they should hire big breasted men as well?", "Hooters girls aren't actually considered waitresses by the company. Your official job title is \"Hooters girl\", which is described as an entertainer in all of the paperwork you sign. As an entertainer, they can pick whoever fits the look they're trying to achieve. Which is not always big boobs haha, I know a girl who worked there who had average size boobs.", "I AM A MALE AND AM GOING TO REQUEST A JOB AT HOOTERS. I WILL SUE IF DECLINED.\n\n^^^Kidding ^^^^shut ^^^^the ^^^^^fuck ^^^^^^up", "Former hooters girl here.  It's not always true that you HAVE to have big boobs to work there but it helps.  If you were drop dead gorgeous,  they'd still hire you,  even if you were the president of the itty bitty titty committee.  Most of the girls I worked with,  including myself used cutlets (fake jelly like inserts) or padded push up bras.  It was never  encouraged,  but if you were smart,  you knew that that made you more money.  ", "It's part of their business model. Hooters gets sued all the time for discriminating against people who aren't big breasted women, they just pay up. They have a certain quota of law suits they can handle and while the number of times they get sued is below that limit, they're ok.", "Hooters doesn't hire women for the waitressing -- they \"cast\" for the position instead.  Because they are \"casting\", they can hire the very specific type of woman they want for the position because it's the exact same thing in acting.", "What Hooters are you going to where the waitresses only have big cans? I've seen plenty of Hooters girls that were fairly flat chested, and I've only gone there a handful of times.", "They aren't all busty. Just generally more visually appealing. Girl i liked in college worked at a Hooters in Virginia and was actually pretty flat chested. I tell you what though. . . she was adorable.", "Hooters actually was sued for this almost twenty years ago. They paid out a settlement and agreed to practice more diverse hiring in other positions to balance it out. \n\n_URL_0_\n", "Hooter's hires plenty of small breasted women as well for the servers. The large breasted ones are the ones they mainly use for advertisement. So they aren't really being that sexist. What they do discriminate against is the girls having visible tattoos, being fat, or simply not pretty enough for their standards.\nSource: Cooked at Hooter's for a few years.\n", "Known as bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQ) in US employment law and bona fide occupational requirements (BFOR) in Canadian employment law, there are some selected, few qualities or an attributes that employers are allowed to consider when making decisions on the hiring and retention of employees: qualities that would constitute discrimination when they are considered in other contexts and thus in violation of civil rights employment law. Such qualifications must be listed in the employment offering", "Have you been to a Hooter's? Not all of the models are abnormally busty. ", "_URL_0_\n\nYou might wanna read this article written by a girl who actually worked at hooters.", "Have you ever actually been to a Hooters? Plenty of the waitresses are B-cup or even smaller. Push-up bras, deep U neck collars, leaning on your table just so, and being casually flirty does the rest.\n  \nThe one thing those girls all seem to have is....baggage.\n", "I've seen plenty of small-breasted women at Hooters. \nThe way it was explained to me is you had to fit in the uniform", " >  How is Hooters able to only hire big breasted women\n\nHave you ever actually *been* to a Hooters?", "I've only been to hooters a handful of times, but I was always disappointed by the absence of large breasts.", "Ugly or small boobs aren't a protected class under FLSA, state laws, et al.", "Besides what everyone has already said, Hooters actually does not recruit only big breasted women. Many of the women working there do not have big boobs and rather resort to tricks and illusions to make them seem several cups above.\n\n", "Because sexism doesn't apply to men you silly bugger!", "If being female is considered intrinsic to the job, it's called a bona fide occupational qualification, or BFOQ.  Similarly, you can discriminate against black females if you're casting for a movie and you need a white male.  You can discriminate against paraplegics if you're hiring an acrobat.  You can discriminate against Jews if you're hiring a minister for a Methodist Church.  And you can discriminate against people over 50 if you're hiring a child model.\n\nHiring is a intrinsically discriminatory process.  Companies discriminate against people who are unqualified, lazy, late, poorly dressed, combative, rude, violent, thieving, et cetera.  Congress passed various laws to restrict discrimination based on certain characteristics.  Primarily, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, or sex.  The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 covers age-related discrimination.  And the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 includes disabled persons.  The federal government doesn't prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but many states, including California, have laws in place prohibiting it.\n\nWhen passing these laws, however, Congress knew the realities of employment, so it created exceptions in the form of BFOQs, in case the discriminatory characteristic is necessary for the function of the job and cannot be reasonably accommodated without undue burden.  The courts are always in a position to be skeptical if an employer tries to stretch the limits what can be considered a BFOQ. ", "This is a sort of related question... how come Curves - a fitness studio that caters exclusively to women - can exclude men... but you can't have men-only clubs?", "I believe and was told that they are hired specifically as \" female models \" and must maintain such classification that the company posts such as weight control and body \"wellness\"", "You've obviously never been to the Hooters here.. i have bigger moobs than any of the girls have boobs.", "you should go to my local hooters... all small boobies.\n", "I worked at hooters with a small C cup, however my ass goes on for days so I think that helped me out.", "Many businesses (including most major clothing companies) hire retail employees or in your case waitresses as \"models\" or \"actors\", \"performers\" job titles like that. Then they can put whatever requirements they want on applicants. The employees are hired under a totally different set of rules. Walk into something like a Holister and try to find an ugly employee, good luck, you'll need it.\n\nSource: Friend was a manager at a retail clothing store.", "As I remember it, there are restrictions on hiring men vs women, but there are not restrictions on hiring sexy vs ugly women because ugliness is not a protected group.", "Former hooter employee : we are hired as entertainers and models as to why they can discriminate.  Can also get fired for weight gain or changing our appearance. ", "Not all Hooters waitresses have big boobs. I think Hooters is able to skirt a lot of problems by saying that their staff must fit into the provided uniforms. If a 300lb woman can fit into the shorts and t-shirt provided as the uniform she \"can\" be hired.", "It's kind of the same way construction workers are usually big, strong men. The company is specifically designed to fill a need and Hooters need hot women the same way construction workers need to be bug strong men", "Big breasted? That's like maybe 1/4 girls working there, they only hire chicks.", "The answer to this is being an attractive female is a BFOQ. A Bona Fide Occupational Qualification - sometimes the very nature of the job requires you to choose candidates based on what are otherwise protected characteristics. Like age, gender, religion. For example: being attractive is  BFOQ of being a model. Being able to lift heavy blocks is a BFOQ of a construction job. For more information see: _URL_0_ Source: HR expert.", "I know what you're thinking, Dale Gribble. But it'll never work.", "There was an AMA from a girl that worked at the Tilted Kilt (newer than hooters, but same idea). From what I remember the job description is \"entertainer\", so they have to fit certain physical qualifications. They are hired to be models/entertainers who happen to take your order, bring out your food, and pour your drinks", "I worked at Hooters in Ohio back in 2003. I had an actual normal interview. I thought they would make me put on the uniform or something but nope. The only requirement was you had to wear the uniform and they are of course very small. We had girls who were anywhere from A - E cups working. Pregnant ladies were allowed to modify the uniform and wear a regular Hooters t-shirt and normal length orange shorts. Our uniforms has to be clean and we needed to have our hair/make-up done. Hair was supposed to be worn down - this was about the only thing different than other restaurants where my hair needed to always be pulled back. There were strict rules to ensure the male employees did not touch/harass us. I'll say where I worked the male staff were very nice and looked out for us - except for the 2 creepy male managers who were gross. Just wanted to share what my experience was like - feel free to AMA. ", "I just figured if Hooters is a privately owned company they can hire anyone they please. For instance, an obese old man would have a hard time proving he should be hired to strip at d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. ", "it's a job requirement.  \n\nall companies have a interview process and they get the best candidates that meet their requirements. hooters requirements is big breasts, so a small breasted woman may never get in, although, the hooters near my place has girls working of all breast sizes. but i get the thrust of your question.", "Former Hooters girl here! We were hired as models essentially and knew that our job was image-based. We had an \"image meeting\" every 90 days where our pictures were taken/updated. ", "My friend worked at Tilted Kilt and she said they called the interview an \"audition\" so they could decide if you got the part based on looks.", "Employers can discriminate on pretty much whatever basis they want as long as they can show that the characteristics they are hiring are required to function in the role. For instance, you won't see any handicapped construction workers because it doesn't make sense to make a construction site accessible\u2013they're the ones building the accessibility. It also wouldn't make sense to hire handicapped (or even weak) people as firefighters; if you can't carry or drag someone out of a fire, you can't do the job.\n\nThe same goes for casting a movie, for instance. If you're hiring an actor to portray MLK, Jr, for instance, you probably want a black male of the appropriate age. It would be odd to have an elderly Indonesian woman portray MLK.\n\nHooters has argued that their business model depends upon providing a certain kind of waitstaff, and they ended up settling when sued. IMHO they probably would have won if they hadn't settled.", "They dont. Thats just you, only remembering the big breasted women working there. I have two or three petite friends working at hooters who aren't very busty. Also, they will even hire a man as a hooters girl so he cant sue. He just wont make any tips.", "The Hooters in my town closed because no one in town wanted to be seen going in. And the real deal killer was if you went in, more than likely one of the girls is a friend of one of your kids. Awkward. I think it made it for about 2 months.  ", "The answer you are looking for is a occupational law called \"Bonafide occupational qualification\" BFOQ\n\nBasically an employer is allowed to be consider certain attributes or skills when it is a requirement of completing that job.  In hooters case, part of their selling is people come to see the girls.. It's a main point of the company and thus a bonafide reason as a requirement for the position of waitress.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "From what i understand, Hooters girls aren't Waitresses, They are actresses /entertainers. they don't do anything a waitress does. they don't run food, they don't roll silverware, they don't buss tables, they take your order and look cute. they are simply \"playing a part\". and in doing so, they don't apply for a waitress position, they audition for a hooters girls spot. its all int he wording and job title. ", "its the same reason the NBA doesnt get in trouble for only hiring tall men(or almost entirely) \n\nits because its a valid qualification, the law only protects against arbitrary issues", "Honestly Hooters doesn't only hire women with big boobs. Both locations I've been to, actually had more women with small boobs than not. They were still really attractive women, but not always stacked. I didn't mind though, I like em small.", "They don't. Ever been there on a Tuesday for lunch?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/title-vii-of-the-civil-rights-act-of-1964-equal-employment.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/01/us/hooters-settles-suit-by-men-denied-jobs.html"], [], [], [], ["http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-surprising-realities-life-as-hooters-girl/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/employment-law-and-human-resources/bona-fide-occupational-qualification.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifications"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hdzva", "title": "In a Christmas Story, Bob Cratchit earned 15 shillings a week in 1840. What was the spending power of a wage like that?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hdzva/in_a_christmas_story_bob_cratchit_earned_15/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dazxj15", "db07klk", "db0dy18"], "score": [62, 22, 8], "text": ["First off, the story you want is [A Christmas **Carol**](_URL_1_). [A Christmas **Story**](_URL_4_) is the one where Ralphie wants a BB gun for Christmas, but everyone tells him \"You'll shoot your eye out!\"\n___\nThat being said, I'm not sure how much historical information can be used to answer this question. Spending Power, by which I assume you mean Purchasing Power, is an economic measure of how much goods and services you can buy. You can calculate it, which means the question you've asked is a math question, not a history one.\n\nThe answer to your question that is the easiest to understand is to convert 15 shillings in 1843 money (the story takes place in 1843, not 1840) to 2015 money (the most recent year for which full financial data is available). A simple way to do this is to use the either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Retail Price Index (RPI), both of which are tools used to measure inflation, specifically measuring the change in costs of specific goods and services from one year to the next. There are plenty of sources for these. If you live in the UK, [here](_URL_5_) is the Office for National Statistics' page for it. If you live in the US, [here](_URL_2_) it is for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.\n\nAs for calculating the amount, you can find a calculator for CPI or RPI online very easily, and since they're all going to work off the same data (historical data you can find on the above sites), they should all give you the same answers. The problem is that a lot of them don't go back far enough to convert 1843 money. I found one that did, and your answer is [here](_URL_0_).\n\n15 Shillings per week in 1843, according this calculator (which uses the RPI), will be \u00a366.40 in 2015. And if you live in the US, [the IRS says](_URL_3_) the average exchange rate from US Dollars to British Pounds in 2015 was .681, which turns \u00a366.40 into $97.50. That site gives alternative methods to calculate purchasing power, but this is going to be the generally accepted answer.\n\nSo, imagine being paid \u00a366.40 or $97.50 weekly, or $2.44/hour last year. That's Bob Cratchit's Purchasing Power.", "This will be off by about 40 years, but [\"Life on a Guinea a Week,\"](_URL_0_) which appeared in *The Nineteenth Century* in March of 1888, offers some insight into what a clerk, earning 50 guineas,  (i.e. \u00a352/10/0) - might have in the way of expenditures.\n\nThe weekly expenditures listed are as such:\n\n\n\nExpenditure | Shilling | Penny\n---|---|----\nRent | 6 | 0\nBreakfasts | 1 | 8\nDinners | 5| 0\nTeas | 1 | 0\nBootcleaning | 0 | 3\nCoals  &  Wood| 1 | 0\nWashings | 0 | 9\nTobacco, etc. | 0| 6\n**Total** | 19| 3\n\nNow, to be fair, the article in question seems to be concerned with proving that it is possible to subsist on one guinea \"... and yet life not be a burden and perpetual misery to an individual.\" so, remember that. It's also supposed to be about a single man, not a family. Feel free to read the article linked above yourself. Since it was published in 1888 it's free to read on google scholar and it is quite short.\n\n*Roberts, W. \"Life on a Guinea a Week\" In The Nineteenth Century, 464-67. Vol. 23. Henry S. King  &  Company, 1888.*", "Adding to this: was Bob Cratchit's income supposed to be realistic, or was it exaggerated for literary effect?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.measuringworth.com/m/calculators/ukcompare/result.php?year_source=1843&amp;amount=0.75&amp;year_result=2015", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol", "http://www.bls.gov/cpi/", "https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/yearly-average-currency-exchange-rates", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/", "https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=foo7AQAAIAAJ&amp;lpg=PA464&amp;ots=a6scBTwOoZ&amp;dq=%22Life%20on%20a%20Guinea%20a%20Week%22&amp;pg=PA464#v=onepage&amp;q=%22Life%20on%20a%20Guinea%20a%20Week%22&amp;f=false"], []]}
{"q_id": "1hj9ov", "title": "Can you stab someone anywhere with a needle and press the plunger down quickly to sedate them like they do in the movies?", "selftext": "You see it in almost every movie/TV show.  Someone comes up with a needle, stabs another person pretty much anywhere they can, press the plunger down and clear the liquid in about .2 seconds, and bam they fall out.  Is that possible or do you need to hit a vein/artery?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hj9ov/can_you_stab_someone_anywhere_with_a_needle_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cav977b", "cava92w"], "score": [2, 9], "text": ["That's just Hollywood nonsense for the most part, because as any anesthesiologist will tell you, sedating a person without causing their automatic body functions like breathing to stop is a somewhat delicate balance. You must take someone's body weight into account, as well as monitor breathing and heart rate.\n\nFor example, if you take Dexter's M-99, which is used on large animals like lions and such, even a drop of it can kill a human. My ex is a veterinarian who did a rotation in Africa in her last year of school and they used M-99, and it had a huge safety protocol along with an \"antidote\" (can't remember the exact word) for it in case someone came into contact with it. If Dexter dilutes the M-99, assuming you had a suitable solvent, he would have to know the victim's exact body weight, and even *if* he managed to effectively sedate the person, to **keep** them safely sedated would be nigh impossible without proper equipment.", "It honestly depends on the drug. There are drugs that can do this but must be administered through a vein, administering through an artery will have little to no affect as the drug would just go to where the artery is going. If you inject in a vein you will get mixture in the right atrium and the distribute through the whole body.\n\nDrugs like Etomidate and Propofol can render someone unconscious in a matter of seconds when administered through a vein. I've personally given someone Etomidate while yelling at me. They stop mid sentence ~ 4 seconds later, eyes roll back in their heads and they are down.\n\nAs far as intramuscular injections, which is what you are describing, it can have similar effects but slower. IM sedatives can take as little as 5 minutes to produce an effect, but nowhere close to IV injection.\n\nSource: I'm in anesthesia school and have worked in healthcare giving these drugs for the last 8 years.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5o4caf", "title": "why did america lose the vietnam war despite having an overall superior army and economy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o4caf/eli5_why_did_america_lose_the_vietnam_war_despite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcghcxt", "dcghrld", "dcgicjg", "dcginsq", "dcgipfo", "dcgiud2", "dcgk2bk", "dcgmb0z", "dcgrth6", "dcgtvpe"], "score": [6, 28, 11, 2, 9, 5, 3, 3, 2, 6], "text": ["The US military was not trained for guerrilla warfare. Super dense jungle and it was often difficult to distinguish the enemy from civilians. These things along with the American technological superiority (napalm) led to huge losses on both sides.", "The Vietnamese were guerrilla warriors all the way and used ingenuity over might. Here are just some of the low-cost tactics they used to defeat the U.S. army:\n\n1) When they discovered that Americans were using \"jumping landmines\", as in when you step on them they spring up and explode in the air, they had their scouts follow US troops and spot where they were planting them and risked their lives to dig them up...and plant them in the tops of trees to that when US copters flew over the trees, the downward pressure of the rotors would cause the mines to jump and explode at the helicopters.\n\n2) Manipulate curiosity - The VCs noticed that many Americans had a childlike curiosity. So if they planted a Mickey Mouse doll in the middle of the jungle, troops would invariably be like \"wow, what's this doing here?\", pick it up and trigger a bomb.\n\n3) Insect warfare - Living in the jungle, VCs were accustomed to seeing scorpions and tarantulas all over the place and quickly realized they freaked out Americans. If they didn't have bombs at their disposal, the VC would rig boxes full of spiders or scorpions and a trip wire would bring them down on US troops who would shriek in horror, thereby giving away their position and getting mowed down by gunfire.", "It is said that America won the battles but lost the war. The intent of the US was never really to win the war in a traditional sense. It didnt try to invade the North and topple that government. However, there was not sufficent support in the south for that government as most people just viewed any foreign power as no different from the previous. This was exploited by the North which led to the toppling of the goverment AFTER US troops left. There are a lot of historians that view the entire intent of Vietnm as just being a demonstration of US resolve to not let China or Russia meddle in SE asia without understanding the US would act. \n\nThe comments about the soldiers being ineffective are inaccurate, the US consistently inflicted a 10+ to one casualty ratio on their enemies. ", "Note: History is but a topic of interest to me, I'm no authority on the subject and I haven't studied the war in some time, so there may be inaccuracies. \n\nThe main reason in my eyes for the loss of the war was the loss of public support, with the Tet Offensive being a major cause. Just before the offensive, there were public statements by the government that the war was nearing its end, yet not long after there was a massive attack on multiple American and South Vietnamese positions simultaneously. Though the attack was a military disaster for the VC and their \"communist uprising\" failed to take place, the shock of the attack convinced many Americans that the war was unwinnable. \n\nOverall, the United States inflicted great casualties on the VC and NVA, but they won the propaganda war. ", "The US couldn't win the war without invading North Vietnam and they couldn't win the war with North Vietnam unless they invaded China, which would've led to World War III. So they kept grinding for a while, hoping the VC would take enough casualties to give up but the willingness of the US to fight the NVA/VC wherever they were worked against them as they could choose the place of battle. This meant a lot of fighting where the US attacked carefully prepared defensive positions, where the NVA fought them in close quarters where the US couldn't bring its artillery and air support to bear. So the North, even though they lost more men than they killed, controlled the rate of attrition so that they never lost more men than they could lose. \n\nThe turning point of the war was the 1968 Tet offensive. The VC launched assaults on the cities of South Vietnam hoping to trigger the collapse of South Vietnam. This did not happen and the VC lost a lot of men, but it still proved decisive as it came after US military brass had repeatedly promised that they were winning the war, there was \"a light at the end of the tunnel\". Tet also showed that the South Vietnamese military was incapable of standing up against the North on their own. So the US had the resources to keep grinding, but it seemed that the war could go on indefinitely. \n\nThe factors that led the US to exit Vietnam were:  \n*Growing political unrest at home. Not enough to threaten the US social order, but growing and not seeming to stop growing as long as the war went on.  \n*Declining morale among the US troops in Vietnam. In extreme cases this was expressed in \"fragging\", where unpopular officers were killed by their own men with a fragmentation hand grenade, but also expressed in widespread drug abuse and refusal to follow orders. Not severe enough to paralyze the US military machine in Vietnam, but  growing and not seeming to stop growing as long as the war went on.  \n*The fall of the \"Big Domino\". The US entered the war partly because of the Domino Theory: if Vietnam went Communist, the theory went, the rest of SE Asia would follow with Indonesia being the crucial \"Big Domino\". After the Indonesian military had massacred the Indonesian Communists this was not a concern anymore.  \n*Distraction from the Big Show in Europe. The US military brass wanted to prepare for conventional warfare in Europe against the Soviet Union, not getting experts in fighting penny ante guerrilla wars and develop weapons for counterinsurgency. ", "The US \"lost\" the war in Vietnam because the US wasn't fighting to win but fighting for the sake of fighting. There was no clear criteria for what would amount to \"winning\" the war such as taking territory or seizing infrastructure. This lack of direction led to things like fighting to take a hill only to walk away the next day, then fighting for it again next month.\n\nAmerican was fighting to stop the spread of communism into South Vietnam. What that meant in practical terms is that the US was fighting the locals until the locals wouldn't fight anymore... and it turns out there is always more fighting to be done. A superior army doesn't matter when you aren't fighting a conventional army; the US could defeat their enemy anywhere they chose to settle down a fight, but they couldn't stop the guerrilla fighters from holding out somewhere and causing trouble indefinitely.\n\nIn effect the US military was trying to obtain a political objective and not a military one. You can put a weapon in a soldier's hands and say \"Secure that objective and kill anyone who would stop you!\" but you can't do the same and tell them \"Turn those people into a capitalist democracy!\" The military was just the wrong tool for the job, regardless of how well they fought.", "According to my vietnam vet Grandpa it was because of pressure from the public on the administration to stop fighting a war that wasn't ours ", "The US lost primarily because the US really didn't want to be fighting it. Soldiers sure didn't want to be there, people back home didn't want to be there, and there were a lot of communist sympathizers. The US could have won if everyone had been on board with it, but they weren't. Having difficult to work with rules of engagement didn't help matters at all.", "To answer this question you need to look at two Seperate conflicts with similar goals, that had drastically different results; The Korean War and the Vietnam War. Like Vietnam, the US had roughly the same agenda in Korea, to maintain a non communist State south of a pre determined parallel. That's where the similarities end. The US was far more respectful of North Vietnamese sovereignty than they ever were with North Korean sovereignty, launching a full scale land invasion in the latter case with a relentless air campaign to boot that lasted the entire duration of the campaign, and was so effective that it drew China into the conflict. By the time the Vietnam War rolled around, China had successfully tested a nuclear weapon. The threat of China entering the War went from being a giant pain in the ass to a risk of a thermonuclear exchange. That was a risk the US was never willing to take for Vietnam. Domestically there was a strong communist guerrilla movement throughout the duration of the War that destabilized the South's Government, and caused problems for the US Military(Viet Cong). There was no equivalent to this in South Korea. This insurgent movement was supplied through a porous jungle border with Laos and Cambodia that the US was never able to secure. South Korea is on a penensula and surrounded by water on three sides. During the Vietnam War a rising Civil Rights movement in the US joined forces with a simmering anti war movement to produce extreme domestic opposition to the War. This never occured during the Korean War. Finally, even after all of these issues, the US still successfully negotiated a Korean War style peace treaty with North Vietnam, with one major caveat; The vast majority of US forces had to leave South Vietnam. So while to this day, South Korea has 50,000 US Troops in place in case North Korea decides to break the truce, South Vietnam was relatively unprotected. When North Vietnam broke the truce in 1975, launched an invasion of South Vietnam, and made rapid gains, Gerald Ford went to Congress with an emergency request for funds to defend South Vietnam, Congress rejected that request, North Vietnam's gamble had succeeded, and the US had 72 hours to get remaining American military and embassy officials out of the country before the NVA takeover of South Vietnam was complete.", "The Vietnam War was not a traditional war. More like an extremely futile police attempt to squash and ideology (\"communism\"). But that never works, because people will not ever let you tell them they HAVE to think one way. So the U.S. ended up looking worse than the actual dictatorships like China. The reason people kept joining the Vietcong is ironically similar to why Americans joined in the Revolutionary War, because  apparently a far away nation was trying to bully them into compliance with their ideas. Might sound weird but to them, what the  U.S. was doing looked like that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "yxs4r", "title": "I noticed there was a Tuberculosis vaccine listed on \nthe CDC website. Is there any reason why it is not \nwidely used in the USA? ", "selftext": "[This](_URL_0_) is the link in question if you're interested.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/yxs4r/i_noticed_there_was_a_tuberculosis_vaccine_listed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5zqusi", "c5zqvei"], "score": [14, 4], "text": ["[It doesn't work very well.](_URL_0_)\n > However, a US Public Health Service trial of BCG in Georgia and Alabama published in 1966 showed an efficacy of only 14%,[7] and did much to convince the US it did not want to implement mass immunization with BCG. A further trial conducted in South India and published in 1979 (the \"Chingleput trial\"), showed no protective effect.[8]", "Because the vaccine is most efficient at treating [miliary TB](_URL_0_), which is also very uncommon in the US. Lung infections from TB are most common in adults, and are treated with antibiotics.\n\n[Children's Hospital of Philadelphia](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/vaccines/default.htm"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcg_vaccine#Variable_efficacy"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miliary_tuberculosis", "http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/a-look-at-each-vaccine/tuberculosis-vaccine.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2c4oc0", "title": "I read in another thread that the Japanese were oppressed by a dictator for decades prior to WWII. I was wondering what was the structure of the government in Japan and how did it function? Perhaps address how \"oppressed\" the people were, what was life like, and the relationship with the government?", "selftext": "I apologize for the amount of questions, I just feel like I don't know much about pre-WWII Japanese society. ESPECIALLY compared to Germany and America and whatnot. I would also be interested in any significant social movements pre or during WWII.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c4oc0/i_read_in_another_thread_that_the_japanese_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc0w6c"], "score": [29], "text": ["I love this question, The pre-war period is my favorite part of Japanese history, but I`m hundreds of miles away from my computer and reference materials so I can`t write a good response. Don`t be surprised if there is an edit in two or three weeks time with a lot more info.\n\nI`ll start by linking to [this](_URL_0_) monster post I wrote on Japanese militarism which you may find useful.\n\nPre-War Japanese society is fascinating. In the interests of brevity i`ll split prewar Japan into two parts, 1920 (The start of the heyday of the Taisho Democracy) to 1933 (assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi) and 1933 to 1941. But things are a little bit more complicated than that and I encourage further research as always.\n\nBy 1920 Japan was one of the economic powerhouses of the world. While the Europeans had sacrificed milllions of men and the production of their entire nations in the First World War, Japan had focused on its economy and came through mostly unscathed (For the first time, Japan changed from a borrowing nation to a lending nation). Japan had also had its share of the spoils of war, with new possessions in China and the Pacific as well as a seat at the League of Nations Security Council.\n\nJapan was also an increasingly liberal and progressive country. The new Emperor since 1912, Emperor Taisho, was (possibly) feeble-minded and was both pro-west and pro-liberlism as far as we can gauge from his few public appearances. Japan`s prime minister, Hara Takashi, was a party politician as opposed to the Oligarchs that had dominated Japanese politics before the war.\n\nJapanese Society during Taisho is nicknamed  Ero, Guru, Nansensu (Erotic, Grosteque and Nonscensical) if that gives you an idea of what it was like. People dressed in European style clothes and talked politics, philosophy and foreign poilicy in public. Young people who talked politics were nicknamed Marx Girls and Marx Boys, reflecting their likely political leanings. European Style Cafes and Bars covered the streets. Art-Deco Theaters, Opera Houses and flashy hotels were opened everywehere to service Japan`s growing middle and upper classes, which included an increasing number of Journalists which was a rising profession. Universities and Higher education were also becoming more common (the first womens university in Japan opened in 1918) and liberal and communist ideas filled their halls. Indeed, liberalism permeated every part of society, even the army. One army commander complained soldiers had become rebellious `due to the rise in general knowledge and social education.`\n\nBut a sickening stench covered this liberalism, the stench of ultra-nationalism that would later plunge Japan into WW2. Leading leftists in Japan supported Japan`s imperial adventures in Korea and China and 15 years earlier, when riots had wracked Japan at the end of the Russo- Japanese War because people felt Japan had not punished Russia sufficiently, some of the leading rioters had been members of leftist organizations.\n\nIn 1923 the vote was extended to all men over 25 who could prove a steady income. However, the same year the Peace Preservation law was also passed, which allowed the government to arrest anyone who was opposed to the `Kokutai` or national polity. What this meant in reality was members of far leftisist organizations were driven out of government and arrested. This back and forth push between Democracy and Authoritarianism characterized the government of the Taisho Era.\n\nOne interesting Characteristic of later Taisho Japan is that the `cool` intellectual thing became supporting Fascism, Imperialism and Authoritarianism. We imagine Paris in the 20s as a place where the world greatest liberals talked about democracy. Late 1920s Tokyo was similar, except Japans greatest intellectuals gathered to talk about utter devotion to the emperor and other authoritarian concepts. People like Kita Ikki and Tamakura Kotaro pressed ideas of Japanese Racial superiority and the neccessirty of an Authoritarian government. In the case of Tamakura Kotaro, he had started out as one of Japan`s liberal Marx Boys, but somewhere became disillusioned and became graudually more right wing and extreme.\n\nWith this in mind, its easy to see how the seemingly strong Taisho Democracy was balanced on a knifes edge and collapsed so easily.\n\nEDIT: Japanese Phone Keyboard:s don`t like me, excuse the bizarre formatting and any typos\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27rqb3/what_was_the_japanese_justification_or_rationale/ci3rahv"]]}
{"q_id": "23xtul", "title": "how to explain depression to my spouse who believes it's not a real disease and can be controlled by deciding to not be sad.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23xtul/eli5_how_to_explain_depression_to_my_spouse_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch1m1jv", "ch1mfaw", "ch1nwbi", "ch1o77o", "ch1ofvb", "ch1pgra", "ch1sr59", "ch1t7ao", "ch1thcj", "ch1tlhu", "ch1u6ad", "ch1ufxx", "ch1xcw7", "ch1yo79", "ch1zfbq", "ch21vwy", "ch22fbu", "ch2f8qd"], "score": [40, 19, 9, 226, 4, 7, 11, 2, 2, 8, 2, 13, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["This cartoon explains it as well as anybody or anything can . _URL_0_ . hang in there dude/dudette. ", "Go to a counselor/psychologist along with your spouse. You speak to the counselor first and explain your situation and then let the counselor speak to your spouse and explain why depression should be taken seriously. When a person is depressed, the immediate family also needs counseling on how to handle the situation. If someone gives you tough-love or compares your issues with someone else's, just ignore them.", "The hyperboleandahalf comic is probably the best representation I've ever seen. But if that doesn't work:\n\n1) Brain chemistry is real - it's responsible for every feeling. It's not 'feeling sad', it's a chemical reaction that makes it impossible to feel positive or happy. You can't think your way into creating another chemical reaction in your brain, it's like saying that you can think your way out of indigestion, or the flu, or cancer. You can't. Diseases are physical things, just because it has an emotional manifestation rather than physical symptoms doesn't make it any different. \n\n2) Now this isn't that helpful, but if my partner consistently told me that they think I could feel happier if I wanted to, I'd tell them to fuck right off. You don't need to understand depression or have it, but you do need to be a good spouse. That's basically his job. He doesn't need to understand something to know that it affects you or to support you. ", "Well, let me try to help. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist or health professional of aky kind, but I have experienced different levels of depression through the last few years, and maybe that qualifies me to provide you some input.\n\nThe main issue when trying to explain depression is simply the fact that the word \"depression\" is widely missused to identify \"sadness\". People say \"I'm depressed\" when, in fact, what they are experiencing is a normal reaction to a bad situation, such as the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship.\n\nDepression is NOT sadness. Far from it. Actually, if you are sad, and can pinpoint the cause of your sadness, you are not likely to be depressed. In my experience, the word that most accurately describes depression is \"numbness\".\n\nYou know when you spend too much time lying on your arm, or too long sitting with your elbows against your knees, and you arm/leg \"falls asleep\"? That's depression, but instead of not feeling anything in your arms or legs, you don't feel any propper emotion. That's why sometimes people DO get depressed after a specially traumatic event, just like your limbs get numb after too much pressure on a certain point. The parts of you that are responsible for feeling certain things simply fail to do so. They \"fall asleep\".\n\nDepressed people are usually seen as \"sad\" by others for the simple fact that they are not feeling anything and, therefore, show no signs of stimulation. You tell them something that should be really heartbreaking and they reply with a simple \"yeah, I know, that sucks\", because for them no emotional response was triggered by the information you just provided. It's just like poking a numb limb with a toothpick, and assuming that it is dead because it didnt jerk or twitch or cause that person to say \"ouch\". It is not dead, its just not feeling that poke.\n\nThat is tremendously hard to explain to other people for another very simple reason: your subjective experience of life cannot be shared with others. There is no way to do it, no way you can explain someone how the color red looks to you without resorting to some sort of comparisson (\"red is the color of tomatoes and Super Mario's hat!\"), which is a technique that doesnt really work since there is no way to tell if the other person sees tomatoes and Super Mario the same way that you do. Maybe the way I see the color of a tomato is, for you, what you would call green. There is no way to know.\n\nSo when your spouse sees your actions and perceives them as a sign of you being sad, he is naturally going to assume that it should be easy to fix by simply doing something fun and chasing the sadness away. He is failing to realize that you cannot experience the sensation of \"something fun\", because the parts of you that are responsible for feeling that are \"asleep\". And when you tell him \"this is not sadness, it is depression!\", what he hears is \"this is not sadness, it is sadness!\", since the word is so widely missused. And then he does something that should make you feel better if you were just sad, but you don't, and he assumes that you simply refuse to feel better, because he can't experience what you are experiencing.\n\nTry and get your spouse to do some reading about depression, and ask him to give you some credit and believe that what you feel is different than what he feels. If he is a reasonable guy, he'll get it eventually.\n\nFinally, I'm sorry you're feeling that way. Its a terrible thing, and it kind of feeds itself be keeping you away from the world. The more depressed you are, the less appealing the world seems to you and you end up doing less and less things, which gets you deeper and deeper into depression. But there is one thing your spouse is right about: you do have to do something about it. It feels wrong, it feels like nothing is going to help because you never feel anything anyway, but you need to look for help, maybe get a therapist, maybe get medicated. \n\nThink of it like getting up in the morning to go out for a jog - it feels terrible to do it, and once you do get to it you dont feel any thinner. But if you keep at it, keep doing it even though you are tired or sleepy or lazy, you WILL get thinner, you WILL feel less and less lazy, and it WILL be better for you.\n\nTL;DR: Depression is a numbness of the mind, and you cant explain that to people because nobody REALLY understands how another person feels, subjectivelly. Depression is not sadness, it is failure to properly perceive stimulation.\n\n(BTW, English is not my first language, so please forgive any grammar mistakes)", "That's like saying your leg got broken, why do you need a cast? Can't you just unbreak your leg? ", "imagine you are in quicksand, every move you make just seems to pull you down further but doing nothing still makes you sink. now imagine you just told the person in the quicksand to just decide not to be in quicksand.\n\nyou give the person a hand, pull them out. they need someone outside the quicksand to anchor to or they are going to sink.", "One of the biggest difficulties people have, is understanding the Depression is not a symptom, it *is* the malady.\n\nYou can have a loving wife, great kids, more money than you can count, a holiday home in the Bahamas, a nobel prize in science, be an Eagle scout and the love of everyone you know, and still suffer from depression. It's not simply being overly sad because small things are bothering you, it's being so compleltey smothered by an all infecting black pall which has sapped your will power, and drained your self-esteem that nothing feels good, nothing tastes good, nothing brings enjoyment.\n\nYour spouse is ignorant of depression because she doesn't suffer from it, and as much as her kind of ignorance irritates me, I'm glad for her to be that way. I wouldn't sic that Black Dog on anyone.", "Tell her its a chemical problem in your brain. Or divorce her", "Pull a Tyler Durden.  Put lye on their hand and tell them the pain doesn't exist, and to will it away.\n\nOr, some milder variation works too, I guess.", "[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nMostly Part Two, although Part One sets it up a bit.", "The best way to explain depression to someone who doesn't understand the concept is to show that depressed/suicidal people have physical differences in their brain that can be quantified and studied.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n >  MARK UNDERWOOD, NEUROSCIENTIST, NEW YORK STATE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE: We have found hat there are approximately 30 percent more of these serotonin neurons in the suicide victims than in the controls. To find more neurons would suggest something very fundamental, such that you may in fact be born with your biological risk for suicide behavior.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >  A meta-analysis of studies investigating electrodermal activity in depressed patients, suggested that electrodermal hyporeactivity is sensitive and specific for suicide.\n\n[There now exist devices that can determine if a person is depressed/suicidal by simply measuring certain physical quantities (i.e. sweat gland activity)](_URL_1_)\n\nIf your spouse still doesn't believe depression is real, then there is something wrong with her, perhaps she is incapable of demonstrating empathy.", "Does she wear eyeglasses? Take away her glasses and tell her to will herself to have better eyesight.\n\nDepression is just like that.", "Depression in my experience was like... living in molasses. The apathy, the numbness, and the inability to feel motivated to do ANYTHING was the characteristic. Yes, sadness was there.... the part of that cartoon that hit me was walking by the couch and sitting down \"for a minute\" and finding yourself still there hours or days later. I couldn't even get the motivation up to take a shower. Staying in bed, sleeping or laying there hoping I would sleep soon, that was all there was. I had a new husband, was accepted to a new PhD program, and should have been happy. There was nothing for me to be sad about... but yet I was in the blackest, darkest funk that I could imagine. I didn't even think about suicide... not because I cared if I lived, but because that was planning and thought and effort and there was no way that was possible. \n\nDepression is absolutely a real disease, caused by imbalances in neurotransmitters or the receptors for those chemicals. Does he believe that ANY mental illness exists? Do people with anxiety disorders need to stop worrying? Do people with bipolar or schizophrenia just need to \"act normal?\" I'm just wondering how depression is any different, in his mind. ", "As someone who has struggled with depression for almost 40 years,  people who don't think it is at all about being sad need to actually understand the disease before they speak.  Here is a link to the definition of clinical depression on Mayo Clinic's site:\n_URL_0_\n\nDepression is a complicated.\n\nDon't mean to be rude about it, but I think only trained people should give advice on clinical conditions.  Incorrect advice can lead to serious problems.  Even when you lead with I am not a trained professional, some people will take your word as the gospel, and people with serious conditions like depression are sometimes more ready to accept something because they do not have the energy to do the research themselves.", "Someone on /r/MorbidReality made a great post about it. [Although it is long I would say it is worth the read.](_URL_0_)", "This comic is widely regarded as an excellent portrayal of what depression really is.  _URL_0_\n\nThere are things you can do to mitigate mild depression.  For me, being a bum and sitting on the couch for a month encourages depression.  Getting out and physically fit reduces it, but doesn't end it entirely.\n\nWhen it gets really bad, working out (however you do it) won't help, it's just going through the motions.", "\"Have you ever tried not having cancer?\" ", "Have him read this - it's from Allie Brosh, who is the author of \"Hyperbole and a Half.\"\n\n[Depression, Part 2](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html?m=1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html", "http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html"], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24050778", "http://emotra.se/en/", "http://www.npr.org/programs/death/980429.death.html"], [], [], ["http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/expert-answers/clinical-depression/FAQ-20057770"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/23or37/heres_a_few_posts_to_rsuicidewatch_who_have_since/cgz8rs5"], ["http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html"], [], ["http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html"]]}
{"q_id": "rq171", "title": "why do laptop batteries have a shorter life after a while, and how can you best use a laptop battery so it has a longer life?", "selftext": "Edit: thank you so much for all the info, this helped me understand a lot.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rq171/eli5_why_do_laptop_batteries_have_a_shorter_life/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c47q6u4", "c47qs3j", "c47sruw", "c47su63", "c47sz66", "c47tnc9", "c47umgh", "c47x2mu", "c47xvbd"], "score": [8, 21, 6, 184, 21, 3, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["From what I hear, lithium-ion batteries last the longest when you charge them to about 2/3 and recharge them when the battery is about 1/3 charged.  Of course, it's not very practical to do this all the time.  ", "This is something that could just be googled, but Lithium Ion batteries do NOT have \"charge memory\". So if you're constantly plugging it in at 40 percent, it won't revert to that. Also, a lot of the reason batteries tend to lose power is the contacts wear out. That is where leaving it fully charged can be bad, because the contacts are constantly being used, which wears them out. \n\nEdit: The contacts, if I'm mistaken, are where the batteries touch and can power the laptop. I can't seem to find a good word for it. Anyway, those begin to degrade after use", "Heat and time kill modern day lithium-ion/polymer batteries\n\nThey have a limited lifespan and degrade in capacity from day one -- the aforementioned heat speeds up this issue. \n\nLifespan can also be calculated in cycles - one full charge/discharge - so you can drain it to 40%, charge it up to 80%, unplug it and use it for awhile and it will only count as a cycle when you hit 100% again. \n\nThe biggest danger to keeping it plugged in all of the time is due to heat as the battery has built-in circuitry to regulate its voltage to avoid overcharging and risking damage or exploding. \n\nKeep it cool and unplug it once in awhile to get those elections flowing, but avoid heavy discharging, like using 100% processor power for an extended period of time and you'll be ok. \n\nNewer lithium polymer batteries will probably outlast your computer if you upgrade with any regularity, and likely still retain about 80% capacity. ", "It has to do with the chemical structure of a Lithium battery.  The way a lithium battery works is that during operation Lithium ions are removed from a lithium bearing compound from one contact, transferred across an electrolyte, and deposited on the other contact.  When recharging, the process is reversed.\n\nThe degradation comes from the fact that each time the cycle is performed, impurities are introduced into the structure of contacts, reducing their effectiveness.", "My laptop has two modes called \"optimize for battery runtime\" and \"optimize for battery life span\". In the latter it never charges more than 75-80% battery. I have a Lenovo Y-Series for those wondering.", "If you want to increase the batter life of your laptop, you should take out the battery while your laptop is plugged in (unless of course you are charging the battery). Also if you aren't planning on using the battery for a long time, don't store it away somewhere while it is fully charged.", "batteries work off the theory that two dissimilar metals close together can create a flow of electrons. So essentially they're a series of metal plates layered very close together in an acid that assists in this process.  After a while of being charged, used, charged, etc. etc. the solution begins to deplete. There is no such thing as a battery that will always hold 100% charge.\n\nedit: sumg says it much better than i. upvoted", "About the \"how to increase life time\" part of the question. For Li-Ion batteries there's little the end user can do. A few years back I did extensive tests with inividual cells (for a project) and I found, that the way you charge and cycle has little effect (cells of the same batch tested in deep and low cycling), the difference in loss of capacity was  < 5% over a period of half a year.\n\nBut what makes **HUGE** differences are the cell manufacturer and the making of the cell. Basically cells that last long are built to last and cells that die early are built that way (planned obsolescense).", "I have a follow up question to most answers.\n\nAren't most laptops are designed to cut off electricity from the battery if:\n\n* The battery is fully charged, and the laptop is connected to power?\n\nSo, if that was true, we don't have to pull the batteries out. \n\nIf not, my battery is so screwed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vgjrd", "title": "In the HBO series 'Rome' set during Julius Caesar's dictatorship and later Augustus' bid for power, the two main characters come to run something called the Aventine Collegium by appointment of Mark Antony. Was this a real thing, and if so what was it?", "selftext": "The series is very unclear about this. It *seems* to be some sort of state-sanctioned gang, conducting murders and running brothels - at one point they're tasked by Augustus and Mark Antony with killing a whole bunch of men that could warn Brutus of their alliance. The series takes a lot of liberties with history so it might not have been a real thing, but I'm curious to see if it was. The leader is referred to as a Captain, but I think in Latin that just means 'head' or 'leader'.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vgjrd/in_the_hbo_series_rome_set_during_julius_caesars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ces3dfm", "ces9v9c"], "score": [37, 4], "text": ["It was actually. Rome, in those times, actually had no police force. It was also illegal to bring active soldiers into the city under arms.\n\nDuring the political reforms of the later stages of the republic, physical violence and force became common tactics used by different sects in order to suppress opposition and enforce their own agendas.  In the show Rome you can see an example of this when Marc Antony is trying to get to the Senate to veto and is attacked by a mob of club wielding thugs. Those thugs are meant to intimidate and threaten participants in the forum to promote a political agenda.\n\nSenators and Consuls eventually clue up to the fact that having armed gangs full of guys like that running around the city bullying your political enemies was a great way to make sure you win elections and stay in control.\n\nOf course that would not be without some backlash for the prestigious and eventually the oligarchy turns to organizing the gangs under proxies. Two of the first and most famous are [Milo](_URL_1_) and [Clodius](_URL_0_).\n\n[Here](_URL_2_) is paper further explain their activities within the context of mob warfare in Rome with a bit of editorializing. There is a bibliography at the bottom with further source material if anyone is interested. A few sources, particularly *Mob Violence in the Late Roman Republic: 133-49 B.C* by J.W Heaton and *Violence in Republican Rome* by AW Linott would be relevant.", "Great comment by /r/AFancyLittleCupcake\n\nAlso, when you they're tasked with killing people on the \"list,\" that wasn't actually murder, it was state sanctioned \"proscription.\" Like the original concept of outlawing someone, it was the state declaring \"hands off, you can totally kill this guy if you want.\"  They refer to this a few times in the show.\n\nAlso, there have been several threads here before about the historical accuracy of the show, which you might find instructive.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Clodius_Pulcher", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Annius_Milo", "http://papersiwrote.blogspot.com/2006/09/organized-gang-warfare-in-late.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "2juxgs", "title": "(Nautical) Historians, how were masts of tall ships mounted (stepped) before the modern crane?", "selftext": "For instance, during the construction of HMS Victory. Also, a corollary; were different techniques used in the East and West?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2juxgs/nautical_historians_how_were_masts_of_tall_ships/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clffwzf", "clfowuv", "clfrprs"], "score": [39, 3, 2], "text": ["In the West, cranes called sheers were used. These tended to be light wooden structures, fixed at the base. They were very simple, consisting of a few long beams. They were mounted either on masonry structures, as can be seen in the Copenhagen [Mastekranen](_URL_0_), or on old ships. Ships that carried sheers were known as sheer hulks. The cranes on sheer hulks could be smaller than land based ones, as the effective height of the mast could be increased by tilting the ship. This was done either by shifting ballast, or by physically pulling the sheer hulk over using ropes and teams of men. The collections of the National Maritime Museum include a model of a sheer hulk masting a frigate, which can be seen online [here](_URL_1_)", "It isn't a tallship, but I actually helped raise the topmast on the *Dove* docked in Historic St. Mary's City, MD. \n\nShips were made at the time so that they could raise or lower their masts in case of inclement weather so that they could minimize the risk of capsizing. \n\nOn the deck there is a large windlass. Imagine a six-foot-wide, maybe two foot diameter barrel perpendicular to the bow. It has several slots in which to attach a lever, you have to remove and replace the lever as you move the windlass. The huge machine works as a gigantic winch. On the *Dove*, it was placed just aft of the foremast.\n\nA line runs from the windlass, over the top of the mainmast's platform (you might think of it as a \"crows' nest\"), through the cap (on top of the mainmast, where the topmast will be attached), through an opening on the bottom of the platform. The line is then attached to the topmast, looped around the bottom then the top.\n\nAt this point you are ready to hoist the mast in place. Once the top reaches the platform above the mainmast, you undo the knots at the top and fix the line to the cap. You then attach the rigging to the top of the topmast (it's attached to a ring and attached to the platform ahead of time). After a bit more hoisting, you add the flagstaff and whatever else goes up there, hoist some more. The topmast is fixed in place with a wooden block that goes through a \"fid\" in the bottom of the topmast and holds it above the platform.\n\nI made a pretty extensive PowerPoint about it full of my own pictures. If anyone knows how I can upload it publicly, I'm willing to share.\n\nEdit: I should add that the *Dove* is a replica of a standard 17th-century vessel.", "I should also maybe mention if it would be interesting to you that the tradition of converting older ships into crane ships did not stop after the age of sail. The *USS Kearsarge* famously was converted into a crane ship in the 1920s. Here is a [before](_URL_1_) and an [after](_URL_0_) photo of her. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastekranen", "http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/67768.html"], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/USS_Kearsarge_as_crane_ship_AB-1.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/USS_Kearsarge_after_WWI_refit_1916.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "55r4gz", "title": "why is the racial makeup of american professional sports team disproportionate to the rest of the population? (ie a more even balance of white and minority players)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55r4gz/eli5_why_is_the_racial_makeup_of_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8cyzgv", "d8cz1ol", "d8czblj", "d8czeai", "d8czy0c", "d8d008p", "d8d1zpi"], "score": [16, 23, 3, 50, 86, 2, 5], "text": ["To be clear, I have no ill will towards the state of professional sports or the makeup of its players. ", "It's very hard to become a professional athlete.  Most people who try to become professional athletes don't make it.  Because of inherent structural forces in America, white people tend to invest less effort in becoming professional athletes because they have other more realistic opportunities to be successful.  For example, a white kid  whose father is a cardiac surgeon might be a very good basketball player.  However, his chances of becoming a basketball player is very low despite his natural ability.  However, his chances of becoming a doctor, like his father, are very high.  So, at some point, rather than pursue a slim chance of being a professional athlete, he chooses to become a doctor.  A black kid might not have the opportunity to become a doctor, so he invests himself entirely into become a professional basketball player. ", "Fuck the elephant in the room.  Because blacks were bred by white slave owners to be bigger and stronger for 300 years and therefore the United States has these humans that are bred to be the way they are.", "In really broad terms, it's just socio-economics.  If you look back at the history of boxing, for example, you see that the races that excel at a certain time also are the races that are somewhat disadvantaged at that time.  It was Italians for a while, then the Irish once the Italians became more accepted by the majority of the country, then Africans after the Irish became more accepted.\n\nWhen you're from a race that is discriminated against, and you're poor, and you don't have much chance of getting a good education, or getting a good job even if you have one, sports is one of the areas where you can compete on a level playing field, so a disproportionate number of those people focus they're efforts in those endeavors.", "No one wants to say it, but I will. African Americans in the United States are descendants of a 14+ generation selective breeding program to build big, strong, humans that would be better farm workers. The effects of this still exist today.", "It's fast-twitch muscle fiber. Black people have more, and more dense. It's just that simple.\n\nFast-twitch muscle fibers are indeed the largest and most powerful muscular movers in your body. Unfortunately, they're also neglected in most bodybuilders' programs. It's time to change this!\n\nThe human body is equipped with a variety of muscle-fiber types. These range on a spectrum from the smaller, endurance-based, slow-twitch fibers to the larger fast-twitch fibers designed for strength and power activities. But you're right that these larger fibers have physique implications as well. Aside from their sheer size, fast-twitch fibers also store a great deal of carbohydrates. For every gram of carbohydrate you store, you also draw about 3 grams of water into the muscle. Thus, bodybuilders who optimize fast-twitch fiber development will obtain a fuller and denser look onstage.\n\nThe balance of fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers in your body is determined by genetics, but there's still plenty you can do in your training to maximize growth and strength in the muscles you have. Specifically, consider two variables when trying to activate fast-twitch muscle fibers: the amount of weight you lift and how you manage fatigue during sets.", "Real reason :\n\nIt's the best place that many members of minority groups find opportunity. If you grow up in a poor area with bad education you can play football for a living, or create music. These 'break out talent '  type careers attract the disadvantaged \n\nSource: working on my sociology bachelor's. So that's what we've been taught. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "23txac", "title": "Do spherical ice cubes actually melt 80% slower than square ice cubes?", "selftext": "I recently saw a spherical ice cube tray online that was claiming that spherical ice melts 80% slower than square ice, thus causing it to dilute your drink less and keep it colder longer.  Is there actual science behind this (to do with surface area or something) or is this a complete fallacy?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23txac/do_spherical_ice_cubes_actually_melt_80_slower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch0nd0u", "ch0nqop", "ch0u7yq", "ch1j4li"], "score": [2, 21, 3, 2], "text": ["Well, seeing as how given the same volume of ice the amount of energy is the same therefore the change in temperature at equilibrium conditions must be the same. But this is only in a closed system, so not important to us.\n\nSpherical ice will indeed melt slower, because of the minimization of surface area. When the ice melts slower it will cause less of a change in temperature, which will be further mitigated by the liquid being in contact with air and the glass at room temperature.\n\nSo, spherical ice would last longer, but not make your drink as cold. Comes down to personal preference at that point.\n\nSome links I found in researching this:\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_\n", "Spheres minimize the ratio of surface area to volume.\n\nA cube with side length 1 has a volume of 1 cubic unit and a surface area of 6 square units. Ratio of surface area to volume: 6.\n\nA sphere with radius .62 has a volume of 1 cubic unit and a surface area of 4.8. Ratio of surface area to volume: 4.8.\n\n4.8 is about 80% of 6. The area where warm water can interact with ice is smaller by 20% even though the volume of ice is the same.\n\nHowever, ice cubes tend to not be cubes and they assume progressively rounder shapes as they melt. The difference in time to being fully melted will not be 20%, and could be a good bit smaller.\n\n", "Well, yes and no. \n\nIt does melt 80% slower than square cubes, but as mentioned in another comment, this is only the case if the square cube maintains it's square shape throughout the process. \n\nWhile this **does** mean it will chill your drink for a longer period of time, it also chills it at a higher temperature than it would with a square cube. Regardless of the rate of melting, if 10g of ice is needed to chill your drink by 2C, the same amount of ice would be needed to chill it by 2C regardless of it's shape.\n\nThe drink achieves a steady state when the *rate of heat loss to the ice is equal to the rate of heat gained from it's surroundings*. And the [rate of heat loss of a body is proportional to the temperature difference between the drink and it's surroundings.](_URL_0_) (You can look at slower melting as a slower rate of heat loss to the ice.)\n\nWhat does this mean? It means that the spherical ice cubes will achieve a steady state at a warmer temperature (a temperature closer to room temperature) than it would with an ice cube, albeit retaining that temperature for a longer period of time. \n\n\nEDIT: grammar\nEDIT2: thanks for correcting me ", "There is another angle (almost literally, as in 90 degrees) to consider. Most people use more than 1 cube.  \n\nIf you put 2 ice cubes in a drink, they may align, join up, and then each cube gets 1 side (17%) \"protected\" by the other cube. 3 cubes and the middle cube might get double protection.\n\nSpherical ice can only touch other spheres over a much smaller area. So spheres are always \"alone\" while cubes might have \"buddies\". Possibly \"buddy cubes\" melt more slowly than an equal number of spheres.\n\nThe trick is the heat transfer in the water between adjoining the cubes/sphere gaps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8566115_ice-cube-shapes-melt-faster.html#page=6", "http://hubski.com/pub?id=125142", "http://www.ginjourney.co.uk/oddments/in-search-of-the-perfect-ice-cube/"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer"], []]}
{"q_id": "161f78", "title": "why do game company's like microsoft and bioware use \"points\" instead of directly transacting cash.", "selftext": "Microsoft points, Bioware points whatever - why do they bother with the middle man exchange rate. What are the benefits (I know the negatives, It's really annoying.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/161f78/eli5_why_do_game_companys_like_microsoft_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7rsatb", "c7rsiqo", "c7rt4ru", "c7rw3o3", "c7rx7p0"], "score": [27, 9, 8, 6, 4], "text": ["It encourages people to spend more because it doesn't feel like real money, and also it's easier and cheaper to handle a single financial transaction for a block of points that can be used on many things than it is to have them send money for each thing they buy. ", "It also emphasizes the fact that once you convert dollars into \"points\", there's no going backward.  Kind of like stripper bucks.\n\nThis also avoids the scrutiny of the government in case someone starts making, for example, a poker game where you bet points and can come out with more points than you started with.", "As well as the other great responses in this thread, one more thing to add is that you have to buy points in different amounts that items are prices.\n\nExample 1: You can buy 200 or 400 points, but an item will cost 240 points.  \nExample 2: [Steve Martin on superfluous buns](_URL_0_) \n\nAre you a George Banks?", "Legitimate business reasons: These are benefits for the business\n\nRegional pricing: Things are priced differently in different parts of the world because of local economic differences. For instance, a new video game in the US is $60, but the same game is $110 in Australia. This is because of historical exchange rates... $110 in Australia takes about the same amount of \"work\" to earn as $60 in the US.\n\nUsing points allows you to have items be the same cost (in points) while accounting for the regional differences.\n\nFinally, it allows the company to only track ONE digital currency instead of having to support \"wallets\" in dozens of currencies. \n\nDiscounting: You can change the cash-exchange value of points in order to have sales or whatnot, without upsetting supply chains or causing dissonance. It's a lot harder to sell $10 game credit for $5 than it is to sell 800 points for $5 (in terms of the supply chain and retailers)\n\nLegal: Keeping values listed in real currency can make you subject to laws surrounding those (like store gift cards), which may include mandatory offerings of cash refunds, expiration or privacy implications. Conversely, points are exempt from all these considerations, making things infinitely easier on the legal department, who would otherwise need to track the laws in every single state and country they service.\n\nNot to mention that if you're managing a Stored Value System denominated in currency, you may fall afoul of bank laws and regulations. This happened to PayPal - it's legally considered a bank in Europe and Australia, and is subject to full banking regulations in those areas. Conversely, points are legally speaking a \"service\" (rather than goods or money)\n\nRefunds: ", "When you spend $20 in 1600 Microsoft space points and buy something for 1000 points, you're left with 600 points in your account (this is on purpose). You think to yourself, damn, I've got this money just sitting here, but there's nothing worth 600 points for you to buy until you fill your account up again to buy something worth 1000 points. You keep doing this, and no matter what, you can never get rid of those last few points to zero out your account. \n\nThese minuscule amounts of points in your account that can't afford anything are actual dollars in Microsoft's bank account that is generating interest. You paid them the $20 for the points, but you've only used $18.00 (don't check the math). That extra $2 that you aren't using is making Microsoft a boatload of money that they aren't even working for when combined with everyone else.\n\nTake this knowledge and apply it to the subway gift card in your wallet with $0.47 on it. \n\nKnow that when you go to Gamestop and put down $5 on a game preorder, you aren't really securing a hot commodity for yourself, you're giving Gamestop the opportunity to make money off of the interest of that $5.\n\nI personally don't think it's wrong of Gamestop or any other company that has gift cards, but I think it's very obnoxious of Microsoft to force their customers to give them money that they will never get back."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0A-DeOYOJ0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ilr3c", "title": "how can a computer that's been unplugged for a long time still know the time and date?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ilr3c/eli5_how_can_a_computer_thats_been_unplugged_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb5o4hh", "cb5o4m2", "cb5qudk", "cb5tfa2", "cb5wmdl", "cb61mrq"], "score": [78, 15, 23, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["There's a battery on the motherboard.  A little flat round one.", "Within the computer is a small battery.  That battery contains enough power to maintain the part of the computer (BIOS) that maintains the date and time.", "There's a small battery inside the computer. Just like a watch has a battery and keeps time. That battery lasts a really long time, just like a watch battery. So, it's kind of like there's a watch inside of a computer, because that battery powers a tiny clock.  When the computer boots back up again it just reads that clock and bam, time and date.\n\nNon-5-yo-version: Battery powers a Real Time Clock (RTC), typically running at 32.768 kHz, which in turn is connected to a tiny register of a few tens or so of bits that just keep incrementing once per second for all of eternity (until they eventually overflow, many years later).  When the computer wakes back up, it reads that register value, converts that number of seconds into a date and time, generally based of Midnight, Jan 1, 1970 + number of seconds in register = current time or something equivalent.  The computer can also reprogram that timer if it updates a more accurate time from the internet (using NTP).", "Hi there, new to ELI5.\nHoping not to be to much of a problem here:\nBut, I was wondering as a follow up question,\nDoes the CMOS battery recharge when plugged in? Or is it replaceable on the motherboard?", "picture is worth a thousand words \n_URL_0_", "There is an internal watch battery that keeps the BIOS(where the system Time and settings are stored) up to date just like a watch.  Except the battery lasts for years"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.chip.in/images/content_images/pics/bios2.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4yoww8", "title": "If a spacecraft somehow accelerates from a space station to 0.995c (relative to the space station), and the spacecraft shoots an electron beam (not light) going 0.990c at the space station, then would this electron beam ever reach the space station?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4yoww8/if_a_spacecraft_somehow_accelerates_from_a_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6pc1j0", "d6pcktm"], "score": [25, 3], "text": ["No, the electron beam will never arrive. Relative velocities still obey the sort of common sense you think they will. If a guy throws a ball 5 mph backwards from a car going 60 mph, then the ball is still going 55 mph forward with respect to the ground.\n\nSame principle here, but a little more special relativity. Since the electron beam is moving 0.990 c in the spaceship frame, which is in turn moving 0.995 c the space station frame, we need to Lorentz transform the velocity by the Einstein velocity addition formula:\n\n    (0.995 - 0.990) / (1 - 0.995*0.990) = 0.334\n\nSo the electron beam is still moving *away* from the space station at a third of the speed of light. ", "If the spacecraft moves away at 0.995 c from the station, then the station also moves away at 0.995 c as seen by the spacecraft. The electrons are slower, so they cannot reach the space station.\n\nAlternatively you can also calculate the speed of the electrons in the frame of the spacecraft, as /u/VeryLittle showed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1klurc", "title": "why do celebrities rarely get prison sentences that match the severity of those given to non-celebrities?", "selftext": "EDIT: thanks for all of the thoughtful responses, this turned into a really interesting thread. the side topics of the relationship of wealth and fame could probably make up their own threads entirely. finally, this question was based solely off of anecdotes and observation, not an empirical study (though that would be a fascinating read)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1klurc/eli5_why_do_celebrities_rarely_get_prison/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbq8qco", "cbq8s1c", "cbq9mfn", "cbqadu7", "cbqagwf", "cbqaqsj", "cbqb232", "cbqb4ev", "cbqbr58", "cbqbwnk", "cbqbyv4", "cbqc5w6", "cbqc7o9", "cbqcjwa", "cbqcmp1", "cbqcusm", "cbqdhxv", "cbqdjtu", "cbqf6xk", "cbqkqjs", "cbqldzp", "cbqp5ho"], "score": [838, 37, 34, 16, 42, 8, 2, 5, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2, 13, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["* Better lawyers\n\n* Often have positive contribution to society to become celebrities, so better prospects of rehabilitation\n\n* More money = easier rehabilitation for things like addiction/violence\n\n* Reputation damage is often seen as a large punishment which 'normal' people don't have\n", "Enough money will buy you freedom, i learned that the hard way", "One answer is that your premise is wrong. Most misdemeanors don't lead to substantial jail sentences for non-celebrities. There are a lot fewer convictions than crimes, even when the person is caught.\n\nIn fact, celebrities may have it harder sometimes, since there will be a lot of public pressure to take the case to trial rather than reaching a minor plea agreement.", "People with money usually don't go to prison for anything less than murder. ", "Good lawyers have good connections. I was charged with felony posession of marijuana and the prosecutor said that if I tried to fight it they would tack on intent to sell and take me to trial. I paid 5k for one of the best drug lawyers in the city. At the end of the first hearing the judge scheduled the second one, at which point my lawyer interjected that he would have to reschedule that date as he was going to be out of town that week on a fishing trip with the prosecutors husband. The criminal justice system is not good guys vs. bad guys. It's all about who you know and what you can pay for. ", "High-profile people getting locked away for 70 years would be a public display of how broken the system is.", "its called economic justice", "They can afford good lawyers.", "It's not the fame, it's the fortune. Rich people usually have great attorneys, social clout, more ways to serve time, better excuses for house arrest over jail etc etc etc ", "You'd have to provide numbers to support this conjecture, but the simple answer is money.  Rich people can pay better lawyers.  Better lawyers can get you a better deal within the confines of the law.    ", "Do you have any source to support that claim?      \nIt's obvious that celebrities have better lawyers, but prosectors, judges and juries love to charge celebrities. A prosecutor or a judge will think it's good for his career to appear as the though guy who's jailed a celebrity. And the common people think that a celebrity should be a model above reproach.\n\nSeveral celebrities have been condemned to prison sentence. And nothing proves they were not treated less severely than normal people.", "Robert Downey Jr.  Did lots of drugs and was into all kinds of shenanigans....... never killed, robbed or hurt anyone but did an incredible amount of prison time just because he was a celebrity.", "Because money talks.", "It would be nice to have real statistics on this. We hear about the celebrities who get off because they *are* celebrities and so the media reports on this. But how often do non-celebrities get off with a warning or a slap on the wrist? It may be more often than you think, but it just isn't reported when it happens.\n\nShort version: don't judge what happens based on what is reported in the media. They only go for the sensational stuff.", "It mostly comes down to money. It's the same reason why white collar criminals can steal millions and walk away with a small fine or a few months in a minimum security resort prison. They can afford good lawyers, while the standard street criminal cannot afford good counsel, and are stuck with inexperienced, overwork, and often uninterested public defenders.", "Celebs also have to be kept separate. Prisoners would love to be the one to kill OJ, Charles Manson, and other notable people.", "I would also like to add that it's sometimes favorable to let a celebrity get away rather than punish them. A few examples of this would be guys like the rolling stones, Wings, Led Zeppelin... etc being caught with drugs in the 70s. \n\nMost of them basically got released illegally but the chaos that would have ensued from dozens of thousands of fans actually \"justified\" them being pardoned.\n\nThere was a pretty well known incident when McCartney was arrested in Japan ( which is less \"forgiving\" when in comes to this type of shit ) for carrying marijuana but was released on official pardon because it would have caused potential dozens billions of dollars in damage from thing ranging from protest to tourism decline and trade decline.", "Who it is most definitely matters.  Celebrities like Mohammed Ali, The Hurricane, and Bob Marley made their legacy on the fact that they went to prison.  However them going to prison didn't hurt too many people\n\nOne of the big problems with sending the President of Enron, or Martha Stewart, or any other such person to prison for extended periods of time on the same terms as a regular inmate is that while they are in prison companies are losing billions of dollars and people are losing their jobs.\n\nIt doesn't make sense in any way to punish thousands of people because one person evades taxes.", "I would think generally it is better lawyers.  celebrities have money, so they can afford better lawyers, who can defend them in court thereby getting lighter sentences. ", "I still believe in the German model of law - fines based on income rates.  A DUI for a movie star in the US is not a punishment nor is it burdensome.  It's an inconvenience.  I believe (and could be wrong) that the average cost for a DUI is somewhere around $10,000.  For the average post 2007-crash American that's anywhere from 1/2 to a 1/4 of their annual income.  It affects them for the rest of their life or many years.  A celeb?  Probably a year to a few months.  It goes to show the dichotomy in our justice system.  Oh, sure contribution to society, etc, etc. - Bullshit!  Fine them a 1/4 to 1/2 of their income and you'll see them be a lot more sorry.  These judges and the juries that give them these reprieves are rigged at best and pure evil at worst.  Talk about elitist.  Isn't lady justice supposed to be blind?", "Better Lawyers is it", "The bigger question in all of this is what is the US's obsession with putting people in jail? Being at the top of the list of countries ranked by the incarceration rate is a pretty shitty place to be!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "55fc8h", "title": "If I used a phone in an American city in the 1930s, and someone hung up on me, would I hear a dial tone?", "selftext": "Or would it just be silence? Would an operator inform me I've lost connection? Not sure...", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/55fc8h/if_i_used_a_phone_in_an_american_city_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8avpoa"], "score": [16], "text": ["It's possible.\n\nBell felt that human operators gave better service, but after the operators strike of 1920 investments were made in switching hardware to support direct dial.  [The first dial tone service in Atlanta](_URL_0_) began in 1923, but adoption was gradual.  Nationwide, 65% of telephones were using dial service by 1947.  By 1956 the rate was 89%.\n\nThe procedure for using a switchboard was that when the caller took the phone off-hook it would cause a light to come on at the switchboard.  The operator would plug one end of the patchcord into the socket corresponding to the caller and ask who they were calling.  If it was a local call then the operator could complete the call by plugging the other end of the patch cord to the destination.  When the call was over the lights would turn off and the operator would unplug.\n\nLong distance calls required to operator to connect to other operators via the trunk lines, and patch it through.\n\nIn some old movies there is the trope where the caller bounces the hook up and down to make an urgent call.  This just made the light flash on the switchboard.  I don't know if it was effective.\n\nIf the callee hung up very soon after picking up, it's possible that the operator might ring back to check that the line was working.  Otherwise it would just be silence.\n\nIf you had dial service (like in the 70s) it depended on who was calling.  The line didn't drop until the caller hung up.  If the callee picked up the telephone again and tried to dial someone else they would still be talking to the first caller.  If, on the other hand, the caller hung up, the callee would get a dial tone.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.atlantatelephonehistory.info/part2.html"]]}
{"q_id": "29d4tc", "title": "Were there any feared knights from medieval history like the Mountain from Game of Thrones?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29d4tc/were_there_any_feared_knights_from_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cijw4vk", "cijwq5k", "cijzgkr", "cik100m"], "score": [111, 103, 34, 37], "text": ["Feared? Well, sort of. There were definitely some more famous ones. William Marshal comes to mind. He was a sort of proto celebrity and lived between 1146CE and 1219CE.\n\nHe was one of the younger sons in his family, and he didn't really stand much of a chance to inherent land. He ended up finding talent as a knight and spent a lot of time tourneying with friends, where he gained recognition with a few royals. He also had a reputation for playing rather dirty:\n\n\"The Marshal made a point of playing to win. Wherever he went he was ruthless on the field, mastering tactics (such as grabbing his opponent's horse's reins) that eluded others.\" (Nigel Saul, \"Chivalry and the Birth of Celebrity\").\n\nHe lived long enough, married the right person, and won enough tournaments to move up in society enough to live comfortably. One of his children commissioned an historical poem about him, and records tell a decent amount.\n\n\nWorks referenced:\n\nPRACTICAL CHIVALRY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY: THE CASE OF WILLIAM MARSHAL\nRichard Abels\n\nSaul, Nigel. \"Chivalry And The Birth Of Celebrity.\" History Today 61.6 (2011): 20-25. Historical Abstracts. Web. 29 June 2014.\n\n(Yes, I know, I haven't formatted my citations properly or similarly, but it's a Saturday, it's summer, this is reddit, and I'm tired).\n\nBasically, yes. And I'm sure that for every knight that we know about, there were many who have been lost to history. ", "Reynald de Chatillon comes to mind as a frightening knight of rather dubious morality, like the Mountain.  He defied the peace treaty between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin by raiding Muslim caravans and sparked what ultimately became the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem after the Battle of Hattin.  Baldwin IV told Saladin he couldn't do anything to stop Reynald, who could not be controlled.  He launched pirate ships in the Red Sea whose men plundered at will.\n\nSaladin was generally merciful after Hattin, where Reynald and Baldwin's successor, Guy of Lusignan, and most of the knights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem were defeated.  Saladin refused Reynald a drink of water and apparently sliced him up personally for his misdeeds.  The Templars were similarly not spared; they had a pretty brutal streak and Saladin thought them too fanatical to live.  The Crusades saw some pretty awful knightly violence in general with the captures of Antioch (1098) and Jerusalem (1099) during the First Crusade, and Constantinople (1204) during the Fourth Crusade.  \n\n\nOf the Franks (generic term for Crusaders at the time) at Constantinople, Speros Vyronis writes \"For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable.  They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church's holy vessels.\"   It was even worse that the Crusaders were giving up on the Holy Lands and sacking a Christian city after more than a century of East/West hostility and suspicion regarding the Crusades. \n\n\n\n\nThe Baltic Crusades had some pretty horrific violence, too.  The Teutonic Knights and Brothers of the Sword/Livonian Order were about as savage a \"spreading faith by the sword\" enterprise as the world has seen.\n\nThe suppression of the Cathars in the \"Albigensian Crusade\" in Languedoc was also pretty awful.\n\nI'm sure if you look into some of these events you can single out some particularly brutal and deadly knights.  \n\nsee: Runciman, Steven, A History of the Crusades: Volume 2, The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East (1952), Graham-Leigh, Elaine The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade (2005), Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace  &  World. p. 152., .", "Not a badass but noble:\nFearful for his enemies was Zawisza Czarny known as The Black Knight.\nHe lived ~1370-1428 in Poland.\nBest knight of his time, winner of countless tournaments.\nHe fought in the Battle of Grunwald (1410) where he is known for his act of bravado which was recapture of lost King's banner.\nHe participated in many campaigns with Sigismund of Luxemburg against Ottomans.\nIn Aragon he defeated  in a duel John of Aragon who was known as greatest western European knight.\nAs a skilled diplomat he proposed a peace treaty between Jagiello and Sigismund in 1411. Also he was a member of polish delegacy to the Counsile of Constance (1414-1418) where he was defending Jan Hus in Constance (1415) and also convinced Pope Martin V that John of Falklengerg's story about \"Good, catholic Tutonic Order and bad pagan Poland\" was a piece of crap.\n_URL_0_\nLess about diplomacy, more about fighting:\n\nHe died on 12 of June 1428 near Golubac, Serbia.\nSigismund was defeated by the Ottomans and had not enough boats to cross Danube. The Black Knight covered Emperor's retreat to the river and when finally Sigismund sent him boats to cross the river, he refused. He said he can't abandon any of his men (\"No men behind\") and was taken captured.\nIn Janissar's camp two of Janissars were diputing who's hostage is he. One of them lost his temper and cut Zawisza's head off.\n\nIn Polish Scouts \"Ten Commandments\" second one is to: \"[you can] rely on [a boyscout] as on Zawisza\"\n\nJan D\u0142ugosz: \"Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae\" (1455\u20131480)\nStanis\u0142aw Kuczy\u0144ski: \"Zawisza Czarny\" Katowice: 1980.", "Irish society before the 12th century was a direct inheritor of Iron-Age social structures, meaning it was dominated by a warrior-aristocracy whose legitimacy depended in part on their capacity to fight in battle. And by fight in battle, I mean at the front lines; Irish annals sometimes list dozens of kings who perished in combat in a single battle. This means that Irish kings were expected to fight alongside their retinue of household troops in battle, and that a few of them were famous for being relatively fierce warriors.\n\nCerball mac D\u00fanlang, king of Osraige immediately comes to mind. He was a 9th century king of Osraige, a small territory wedged between the provinces of Munster and Leinster whose almost constant military campaigns during the Viking Age saw his kingdom become a major power in eastern Ireland. He was renown as a charismatic warrior-king who became feared by Scandinavian raiders:\n\n > When the Norwegians saw Cerball with his army, or retinue, they were seized by terror and great fear. Cerball went to a high place, and he was talking to his own people at first. This is what he said, looking at the wasted lands around him: \u2018Do you not see,\u2019 said he, \u2018how the Norwegians have devastated this territory by taking its cattle and by killing its people? If they are stronger than we are today, they will do the same in our land. Since we are a large army today, let us fight hard against them. There is another reason why we must do hard fighting: that the Danes who are along with us may discover no cowardice or timidity in us. For it could happen, though they are on our side today, that they might be against us another day. Another reason is so that the men of Munster whom we have come to relieve may comprehend our hardiness, for they are often our enemies.\u2019\n\n > Afterwards he spoke to the Danes, and this is what he said to them: \u2018Act valiantly today, for the Norwegians are your hereditary enemies, and have battled among you and made great massacres previously. You are fortunate that we are with you today against them. And one thing more: it will not be worth your while for us to see weakness or cowardice in you.\u2019\n\n > The Danes and the Irish all answered him that neither cowardice nor weakness would be seen in them. Then they rose up as one man to attack the Norwegians. Now the Norwegians, when they saw that, did not think of giving battle, but fled to the woods, abandoning their spoils. The woods were surrounded on all sides against them, and a bloody slaughter was made of the Norwegians. Until that time the Norwegians had not suffered the like anywhere in Ireland. This defeat occurred at Cruachan in E\u00f3ganacht. Cerball came back home with victory and spoils.\n\nIn an annal entry below, it is said that Cerball \"was worthy to possess all Ireland because of the excellence of his form and his countenance and his dexterity\", implying that he deserved to dominate all of Ireland because of how mighty a warrior he was - Irish warfare depended on mobility and quick skirmishes without armour, so dexterity would have been an important skill for a fighter. In an entry that relates his victory battle against the king of Tara, it is said that \"the learned related that Cerball had great difficulty there because Tairceltach mac na Certa practised magic upon him, so that it might be less likely that he should go to the battle; so Cerball said that he would go to sleep then, and would not go to the battle.\" -- Cerball was such a fierce fighter that only magic could stop him from giving battle!\n\nThe Fragmentary Annals of Ireland attest to his fame during his lifetime; in an entry for the year 859, after Cerball 'despoiled the land of all its goods' in the kingdom of Mide, it is said that:\n\n > Many of the poets of Ireland made praise-poems for Cerball, and mentioned in them every victory he had won; and \u00d3engus the scholar, successor of MoLua, made the most of all.\n\nNow this is one of my favourite annal entries ever:\n\n > The men from two fleets of Norsemen came into Cerball son of D\u00fanlang's territory for plunder. When messengers came to tell that to Cerball, he was drunk. The noblemen of Osraige were saying to him kindly and calmly, to strengthen him: \u2018What the Norwegians are doing now, that is, destroying the whole country, is no reason for a man in Osraige to be drunk. But may God protect you all the same, and may you win victory and triumph over your enemies as you often have done, and as you still shall. Shake off your drunkenness now, for drunkenness is the enemy of valor.\u2019\n\n > When Cerball heard that, his drunkenness left him and he seized his arms. A third of the night had passed at that time. This is how Cerball came out of his chamber: with a huge royal candle before him, and the light of that candle shone far in every direction. Great terror seized the Norwegians, and they fled to the nearby mountains and to the woods. Those who stayed behind out of valor, moreover, were all killed.\n\n > When daybreak came the next morning, Cerball attacked all of them with his troops, and he did not give up after they had been slaughtered until they had been routed, and they had scattered in all directions. **Cerball himself fought hard in this battle, and the amount he had drunk the night before hampered him greatly, and he vomited much, and that gave him immense strength; and he urged his people loudly and harshly against the Norwegians, and more than half of the army was killed there, and those who escaped fled to their ships**. This defeat took place at Achad mic Erclaige. Cerball turned back afterwards with triumph and great spoils.\n\nHave you ever been so hungover that you vomited and gained immense strength? Cerball mac D\u00fanlang did! Most of Cerball's deeds from this entry onwards relate to him defeating Northmen in battle and taking their spoils of war, or raiding neighbouring Irish kingdoms and inflicting \"total devastation\". Unfortunately, Cerball died in the year 888, which is missing from the Fragmentary Annals, so we'll never know what his eulogy looked like (when Irish kings died, the annalists would often include eulogies mentioning their valour, righteousness and prowess in battle).\n\nCerball mac D\u00fanlang was a renown warrior-king, and likely feared by his neighbours and by Scandinavian raiders. A lot of what's written in the annals may be dynastic propaganda, but it is still most likely that people during his lifetime did actually believe these stories."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Falkenberg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2qcsfc", "title": "how come the us military doesn't stick to the simple idea of infantry in the army, boatmen in the navy, and pilots in the air force?", "selftext": "I obviously know very little about the US military, but it just seems like the most basic definition of these 3 divisions should mean that the Army only fights on the land, Navy in the sea, and Air Force in the sky. But I know that there are Army pilots (SOAR) and Navy infantry (SEALs)... what purpose does it serve to mix and match these things?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qcsfc/eli5how_come_the_us_military_doesnt_stick_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn4xowv", "cn4xoya", "cn4xpei", "cn4xxmw", "cn4ygsl"], "score": [2, 5, 16, 2, 8], "text": ["you have three/four different factions (marines are part of the navy). its much easier to communicate within the body of the militia when its uniform. for example, if the air force has to fly somewhere and land then take a boat and then attack on land. (that particular example very rarely happens but their are better im sure)", "You could think of it more of an avenue of approach for the three different sectors of the military.\n\nThe Army approaches on land, the Navy approaches on sea, the Airforce by air.\n\nHonestly, of the three sectors I think it's odd the Airforce even exists. Much of what it does should be consolidated into the Navy and Army.", "I don't know much about the army, but I do watch TV!\n\nI imagine it's because the navy/army/air force is best suited to the mission. For example, a navy seals team would take on a operation that requires access by water, the army would use helicopters to transport troops to a dense urban/jungle zone, the airforce would go to different planets through the star gate.", "\"... doesn't stick to the simple idea of ...\"\nWell, for one thing, it's not a simple world.  Warfare isn't conducted like it used to be. ", "Basically the answer is a little bit of history, politics,  and efficiency. \n\nHistorically,  the US originally only had an army and a navy.  Marines were/are technically part of the navy.  With the invention of the air plane,  both of these branches began using aircraft in combat.   These early air forces were primarily focused on tactical air support -- supporting the army and marine corps infantry in particular battles and attacking enemy navies.  It was ultimately recognized that air planes had strategic value for long range bombing that was far removed from any infantry activity and the army was slow to develop this facet of American air power because obviously their main concern was close air support for their infantry.   Thus the Air Force was born.   It's main purpose is to provide strategic (think long range) air superiority. \n\nNow come the politics.   Hey the navy had planes before the Air Force came along!   The Army invented air craft in combat!  There is a lot of politics in the military with everyone jockeying to get the most influence and MONEY for their respective branches.  So the navy,  army, and marine corps have always been loathe to give up all of their air power. \n\nTheir reticence does have some logic behind it which is where efficiency comes in.   The military is incredibly bureaucratic and ponderous.   So imagine a marine force trapped by enemy forces in need of close air support right FUCKING now.   The steps it would take to get an air force pilot there would be extremely complicated.   Paperwork, etc etc.  Plus because of the politics the various branches don't really trust each other anyway, so it makes sense for the marines to have a small air force dedicated to close air support completely at the beck and call of marine command.   Or imagine an air force pilot shot down behind enemy lines.   It makes sense from a efficiency standpoint to have a small special operations force dedicated to search and rescue. \n\nThese days the US military is far more integrated and cohesive, but now we're back to politics.   No branch wants to give up any influence they have because of money.   So we have a convoluted military where seamen,  infantry, and air men all drive boats, conduct land operations, and fly planes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ojjxf", "title": "When and how did crossing our fingers become the symbols for both luck and lying?", "selftext": "It seems strange to me that it's the symbol for luck and when we cross it behind our back to hide a lie. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ojjxf/when_and_how_did_crossing_our_fingers_become_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmnzv7a"], "score": [4], "text": ["Try /r/askanthropology. It seems like a more cultural thing than a historical thing "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "49kkvr", "title": "why do shows like netflix's \"house of cards\" release all their episodes on a single day once a year?", "selftext": "It seems to me that shows released weekly or in some sort of order (like Game of Thrones) generate prolonged publicity (news articles, online discussion) between episodes, while shows like \"House of Cards\" are super popular for those few weeks after release but then dies down for the rest of the year.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49kkvr/eli5_why_do_shows_like_netflixs_house_of_cards/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0sinye", "d0sj54y", "d0sj6zn", "d0sko16", "d0slfd9", "d0smvyc", "d0spfes", "d0spz7g", "d0su618", "d0sxtj3", "d0t2mgx", "d0t6jzb"], "score": [93, 7, 2, 33, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Its a different market approach.\n\nCable (and HBO) subscribers are used to the typical \"one a week\" format so that is how the shows are released\n\nNetflix users are more \"binge\" watchers, so they release everything at once to satisfy them.", "Because the Netflix model is primarily binge/multiple episode watching based, whereas HBO is not. It would seem odd to me if Netflix released their shows in a manner that didn't encourage bingewatching.", "Sometimes people will watch a show and it seems interesting and excitinf but with all the commotion that goes into being an active human, people forget about the damn show they watched and could care less to remember what time they saw it. Tv isnt something everyone is fascinated by. I don't own a Tv in my home. I use my family 's netflix account because when I do decide to watch a show, I can watch all of it and get it out my system or skip to the end.", "According to [Netflix](_URL_0_): \"There\u2019s no reason to release it weekly. The move away from appointment television is enormous ... most people watch those shows on demand and on DVRs and in multiple episode stacks....If you decide tomorrow you want to watch 'Breaking Bad,' you\u2019re going to spend the next two months watching all of 'Breaking Bad' before you move on to something else, which is radically different than, you know, a show a night viewing the way people used to do.\"", "In the grand scheme of things, there is still a prolonged period in-between seasons of whatever show. Netflix offers the viewer the option to not wait. For example, I could drag House of Cards out for an entire year if I wanted. I guess you could to the same with GoT but you get what I mean, Netflix is just offering the viewer a different option.", "Weekly episodes are a side effect of a dying model.\n\nI'm willing to bet that editing them at once saves money, and that binge watching saves money on bandwidth.", "I'm kinda curious as to what would happen if they released a show in 4-episode chunks 3 times a year.", "I don't know/think this is the reason, but I think one aspect is that more shows now are a lot more complicated and not as easy to wait a full week to see the next episode.   I know I have problems remembering all the story lines if I don't watch an episode of Fargo Season 2 every couple of days.   It seems like there weren't many shows like that in the past.   ", "Netflix allows for a different model than broadcast TV does. Shows don't have to be made a specific length per episode, since they don't have to fit into a time slot. They don't have to end every episode on a cliffhanger to get you coming back to watch it the next week. They don't have to make scenes end after certain intervals to have room for a commercial break.\n\nNetflix allows producers of their shows to determine how they want to format the show, and how they want to release it. Releasing the whole produced season all at once is the common choice because it allows the viewers the most choice of how to watch the show, since they can binge it all at once, or they can pace themselves at a slower pace.\n\nThe nature of it being a stream you can watch at your own schedule enables the shows to do things a normal TV show couldn't, and producers are experimenting with the freedom. Broadcast shows are usually entirely filmed and just need some post production before the first episode of the season broadcasts, so they could just release the whole season in one run, but shows are competing for prime time slots to have the most viewers, so that the ads running during the show are the most valuable. The actors still get the same amount of work in front of the camera either way, just how long it takes to become available to us varies, and a show can be cancelled before the produced episodes finish airing, ala Threshold. There are some shows on broadcast that only get produced half a season at a time, like V, since the writers strike about a decade ago made the mid-season hiatus standard.", "Money?\n\nIf you watch lots of House of Cards, you'll likely watch more of something else as well.\n\nThe more you stay on a site you like, the more likely you are to change the content you watch every once in a while.\n\nWhich likely means you are to more recommend the content to your friends.\n\nAs a result, Netflix gets more and more binge watchers.\n\nRepeat the cycle.\n\nGet money.\n\nProfit??", "Aside from many excellent answers already posted, I'll just add that the sudden rush of publicity seems to attract new subscribers who tend to stick with Netflix instead of dropping the service after watching the one show they signed up to binge. It is hard to convince people to sign up for any sort of subscription service if the service doesn't have any events - dropping a whole season of a show at once is still an event.", "Netflix is a very data driven company. I interviewed and ultimately didn't get a position there, but got to meet 4-5 reasonably senior people there. A lot of Netflix's quirks - like not having trailers, not having a viewable rotten tomatoes score, releasing all their shows at once, what they choose on their front page, etc, are driven by research they have done. \n\nNetflix believes the modern user does not watch in scheduled weekly increments, and doesn't even necessarily watch in \"one episode\" increments. You might watch 15 minutes here, 2 hrs there, 6 hr binge, then 30 minutes while you eat breakfast. \n\nIt's kind of like with video games - do you sit down and play \"act one\" and then take a week because that's enough gaming, and then sit down and play \"act two\" next week? No, you play when it's fun, and you stop when it's either not fun or you have to do something else.\n\nSince there are so many people who watch netflix in binges, AND there's so many people who watch it in 20-30 minute doses, they want a format where both types are catered to. That's the reasoning behind their focus on effortlessly continuing where you left off. \n\nIt's all set up to maximize how easy it is for you to consume media. \n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-refuses-to-release-a-weekly-show-for-these-reasons-2016-1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3gemf3", "title": "The Svalbard global seed bank is very secure, if a catastrophe wipes out most people and plants, how do we get in to replant the Earth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3gemf3/the_svalbard_global_seed_bank_is_very_secure_if_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctxkjyh"], "score": [15], "text": ["It's not the only seed bank. There are others in many other places. It's function is as a backup to those, often in much less apocalyptic scenarios, more in the \"our samples of X got hit with pathogen Y, can you spare us a few so we can rebuild our stock?\" case.\n\nIt's stark location also makes it good as an example for raising awareness. When someone is writing an article \"This bunker in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, may hold the key to saving it in a disaster\" sounds better than \"this warehouse is Colorado may hold the key to saving Earth in a disaster\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6kb210", "title": "on most standardized tests, why is it so important that we specifically use a #2 pencil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kb210/eli5_on_most_standardized_tests_why_is_it_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djknr3t", "djknx4p", "djkoar8", "djl923o"], "score": [12, 7, 46, 3], "text": ["The numbers relate to the hardness of the graphite (lead) of the pencil. At a guess, #2 is the best compromise to get a particular shade that the scantron machines find easiest to read, while not leaving a mark so soft as to be rubbed off easily.", "Other types of pencil are used for artistic purposes, like sketches, and they use especially hard graphite that creates a very light mark.  This is so it can be easily erased, or left invisible under the final paint or ink.  \n\nSince it's purpose is to be less visible than a normal #2 pencil, it is in fact invisible to the Scantron machines that grade millions of tests.", "It's a compromise between hard enough to make a mark that's readable by the machine (machines worked by sensing opaqueness so #3 and #4 weren't always dark enough to be readable) vs not smudging when erased (#1 is darker than #2, but is harder to cleanly erase without creating a bigger smudge patch that could also lead to errors).  \n\nIn truth, the machines have improved with technology and can read most types of marks very accurately, but since #2 remains in the sweet spot (and keeps people from using ink that's much harder to cleanly erase), they still recommend it.  ", "\\#2 corresponds to roughly HB to 2B on the HB scale. It isn't an exact standard, as it varies between manufacturers and countries.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHarder pencils, like a 4H tend to be used in engineering drafts as they make thin light lines. Softer pencils like 6B tend to be used in art for quick dark shading.\n\nIt's just a standard for text scanning and really would only be a problem with the H series of pencils as they tend to produce lighter grey shades which might not scan well. Something like a 3B should work just fine.\n\nSource: I mostly use a 3B for art and have of the pencil varieties among my art materials, so I've actually used most of them."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://pencils.com/hb-graphite-grading-scale/"]]}
{"q_id": "679xbu", "title": "what happens if you pay off 90% of your house but fail to pay off the remaining 10% and it gets repossessed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/679xbu/eli5_what_happens_if_you_pay_off_90_of_your_house/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgort1t", "dgory1o", "dgowdb8"], "score": [20, 10, 18], "text": ["The Bank sells your house, probably taking the first low-ball offer they get.  They are paid, and you get the rest of the money.  If you're in this situation, selling it yourself is probably (almost always) a better idea.", "If you owned 90% of your home and stopped paying your mortgage tomorrow, it would be a minimum of 6 months and more realistically more like 18 months before it would come to repossession.\n\nUnlike a car, which the lender will happily repo after ~60 days, repossessing a house, especially an owner-occupied one, is truly a last resort.\n\nThere are tons of other options to explore if you just can't make your mortgage payment, ranging from loan modification to refinancing to a short sale or forbearance.\n\nOnce you're about 60 days late your lender will start trying to work with you to figure out what's going on, long before they move to foreclosure, forced eviction, and then repossession. It's insanely complicated and expensive for them to do that, and there are tons of regulatory hurdles, so they really aren't in any hurry to do that unless they have to.\n", "The bank sells your house, takes the 10% that it is still owed, and you get the rest.\n\nSince the bank only really cares about the 10% they are owed, it is not going to try very hard to make a good deal, so there is an excellent chance it won't sell for full market value, and you won't get your full 90%.\n\nPractically speaking, it is unlikely to come to that.  Unless the homeowner was completely delusional, they would sell their house and pay off the 10% before it came to that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ro411", "title": "what is the significance of nasa's findings of the atmosphere of mars?", "selftext": "Edit: To be more clear, I meant specifically the anouncement made Thursday 11/5/15 on NASA's Live Stream. Thank's for all of your input. It has really helped put these findings into perspective.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ro411/eli5_what_is_the_significance_of_nasas_findings/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwpvhyf", "cwpw409", "cwpw7qa", "cwpw8qc", "cwpwafv", "cwpx679", "cwpxgmc", "cwq2oqt", "cwq54lu", "cwq5xth", "cwq98kk", "cwqgd7v"], "score": [391, 60, 2, 15, 2, 14, 8, 7, 2, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["I think the significance is a subjective thing - to me, it is the fact that at one time Mars behaved a lot like Earth did - it had an active core, and an atmosphere that was capable of generating and maintaining a water supply.  This in turn supports the possibility that at one time there may have been life on Mars (or at the very least that life could theoretically have been supported at one time).  This means that, even though many of the planets we've discovered are dead like Mars currently, they may not have been at one time.  That in turn means that, given trillions of planets, there are very likely to be some that are CURRENTLY not dead, and therefore could currently be supporting life.\n\nSource: NOT a scientist or someone educated on this matter in any way - this is purely my initial reaction to the announcement.", "1 comment, 1 hour old, 0 upvotes and close to the frontpage? Reddit is really confusing me these days.", "Not much.  It still has the amount and composition we all ready knew.  They now can measure the rate it gets 'blown' away.  ", "I find it quite terrifying actually, what 'killed' Mars?", "Is there any tectonic activity recorded on mars, I'm wondering if the core is still as active as earth's as well.  ", "I remember reading something about how the planets formed.  When a system first forms,  all the planets are still real hot.  Now the farther out they are from the star or sun,  the faster they will cool.  Then ones closer will cool slower or not at all. Earth just so happens to be in a great spot where the cooling happened and then we are just warm enough and close enough to the sun for life to develop before it gets too cold too fast or too hot.  Now other planets will also go through the stages of water and such and atmosphere,  but it may happen too fast for life to develop. Think of it as goldilocks and the three bears.  That one was juuuuust right. \n\nThis doesn't have as much to do with the atmosphere.  But it kind of shows that Yeah Mars probably was able to develop life but the planets stages probably went by too fast. We need to find a planet that is in the sweet spot for life like ours. Then again it is entirely possible there is life on every planet that we can't even conceive of how they would live or survive. Proof is here on earth already for that with the organisms at the bottom of the ocean that receive no sunlight and only receive energy from heat vents from the bottom of the ocean. \n", "As it has been mentioned in this thread, more so that at one point in time Mars was capable of harboring life. The question then is, what kind of life? If complex as life on Earth this would potentially mean that Mars may have fossils buried under the surface, which that would probably THE biggest discovery thus far in human history. Imagine finding fossils on Mars. Moreover, the next questions after that would probably be what caused life to die out? Where did the life go (assuming that it was similar to humans in critical thinking)? and how did the life look? Thinking about this atm makes me wish I could find a spaceship and fly out to Mars myself. \n\nEven further, if lets say fossils was very similar to humans, or dinosaurs, or other species that would mean we could have potentially originated on Mars.", "To me, the significance is the fact that in our very tiny solar system, located within our expanding universe which size can not be fathomed contains a planet which may have contained life at one point in its history. When you take into account the trillions of solar systems within our universe, and our solar system has two plants by which supported life. That, almost without argument, there are trillions of planets in our universe which could/have supported life. Basically, their findings give light to the possibility of extraterrestrial life outside our solar system. Their findings almost make it ignorant to think there isn't life outside of planet Earth. ", "The theory that the sun had slowly eroded the Mars atmosphere with solar winds, was just a theory. Now, they have evidence that this theory is correct. Science is built on informed assertions which must be tested to be confirmed or refuted. This is evidence which helps to confirm an assertion about the 4 billion year history of a planet which may have once been more like ours.", "It is one more step in our understanding of how planets form and live, which is why we study such things. It's also more confirmation that a planet would almost certainly have to have a robust magnetosphere (like Earth's) to be able to support anything more than the most simple lifeforms.\n\nBut if you want it in science-fictiony terms, it means that the notion that we could terraform Mars with any technology we're likely to have in the next several centuries just became even MORE unlikely than it already was. \n", "I know we're talking about science here, but I think there's something very poetic about the whole thing. Mars is dead, or at least not as alive as Earth. Earth is so strange, so alive and moving and active...and now Mars just seems to flat and still, like a corpse. ", "Because it proves mars had a magnetic field but it doesn't have one now.  Until recently, it was assumed that magnetic fields are stable and fairly permanent.  This proves a perfectly habitable planet can suddendly lose it's field and quickly decay into a wasteland"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3v5gbl", "title": "why is gerrymandering, a seemingly blatant grab for votes, not a bigger deal or not a public concern?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v5gbl/eli5_why_is_gerrymandering_a_seemingly_blatant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxkfn56", "cxkfrfq", "cxkfw2a", "cxkg147", "cxki3wx", "cxkjw6p", "cxkkxg7", "cxkmv4k", "cxknsa5", "cxko2dz", "cxko3zo", "cxkoqu7", "cxkppt6", "cxkqa9n", "cxksbut", "cxkt5e8", "cxktppo", "cxktuvs"], "score": [4, 162, 2, 416, 7, 28, 6, 3, 9, 6, 6, 49, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["In a word, apathy.\n\nFar too many people never learn how our government operates. Many of those that do, don't care enough to be vocal enough to enact change. In addition to this, though, is that our districts have all grown so large that you need to assemble a seemingly impossibly large group just to be heard in the first place. The large hurdle makes many just not want to try, which brings us back to apathy.", " >  Why is it allowed?\n\nFor every time that \"they\" gerrymander in a way that hurts your party, your party gerrymanders in a way that helps your party.  Both sides do it for the \"right\" reason, at least as far as their supporters are concerned.\n\nRealistically, though, it's hard to police or prevent \"gerrymandering\".  One guy's gerrymandering is another guy's proper representation.  The best way to combat gerrymandering would be to make voting districts set and scientific - but people would argue(correctly) that such a thing doesn't actually reflect the needs of the people.  ", " >  It seems like gerrymandering could lead to crazy corruption, and it clearly misrepresents the political affiliation of the people. Why is it allowed? Is it not obviously bad? Or is there some major thing which makes it good, something I'm overlooking? If it IS bad, can it be changed?\n\nIt *does* lead to crazy corruption and it *does* clearly misrepresent the people.\n\nAs far as changing it or outlawing it, the question becomes how.\n\nFirstly, to regulate or outlaw something, you need to enact legislation. Who's going to enact that legislation? The party currently benefiting it? Good luck! The party who aren't benefiting it? They don't have a majority.\n\nSecond, there aren't really any clear and simple answers for fixing it. We acknowledge that the government rightly reserves the ability to draw the political subdivisions for the purposes of representation, but the only numbers that matter are population. How could you define requirements for demographic make-up of any political unit? And that's not to say that any solution wouldn't be subject to different kinds of abuse that are worse.\n\nThird, while there are [\"obvious\" cases of gerrymandering](_URL_0_) it's the grey areas that are going to be the problem. Just because a district doesn't *look* gerrymandered doesn't mean it isn't and the opposite is just as true. So each time there is an attempt to redraw district lines, there will be heated battles among parties about which lines are gerrymandered or not.\n\nIn short: it's a problem, most people recognize it as bad, there is little incentive for the government to change it, and even if there was there really isn't a clear solution.", "Ok, lets take your questions one at a time:\n\nIt's not expressly allowed, but many states have \"built it in\" or actually codified it into their laws. Illinois for example is blatantly gerrymandered, but there is nothing we can do about it, because the law makers made a law that says they get to do it, which especially in Illinois' case, leads to the crazy corruption you correctly assumed would accompany the practice. \n\nIt's not obviously bad from the view point of the law makers, who do it to ensure an easier path to office for members of their party. If the repubs here drew the map, it would look vastly different than how it is now, and if a computer drew the map, it would be a 3rd version. The ensuring that your political party optimizes the possible number of votes in their district is the good of it, for them. There is no good for the people, you are overlooking, when it comes to gerrymandering. \n\nCan it be changed? That is a state by state question. I believe there are only a handful of states that currently draw their districts by \"impartial\" computer programing. And I say that, because the program is only as fair as the math used to create it, and it keeps evolving. \n\n[I submitted this post](_URL_0_) about fixing the map in Illinois, specifically, with a computer program. The links within can show you any state you want, how it is versus how the computer would do it, and you can see for yourself - given what the law makers think is fair, versus what raw numbers think is fair. \n\nHope this helped. \n\n\nEDIT: Thank you /u/NotABoxSocial! I will pass along the kindness. \n", "It's probably not a bigger deal because for many decades now, both of the major parties have engaged in it.  Currently, the Republicans probably benefit from it more than Democrats but that wasn't always the case.  Plus, the Supreme Court has upheld gerrymandering.  Or rather it has defined permissive gerrymandering and unconstitutional gerrymandering.  ", "It is a big deal, but we all convinced that only the *other* side is guilty of gerrymandering. ", "I want to jump in and try to answer why its not necessarily bad. \n\nThere are two types of gerrymandering, diluting and packing. In general the former is worse than the later. However, most gerrymandered districts in VA are the result of packing. Virginia has a diverse population, but its spread out. If you were to just draw squares you might find yourself without proper representation. So for example, Virginia created the [3rd district](_URL_1_) to be a minority majority district. This groups all the major black population centers together so they have their own representation. If you just drew squares they might have zero representation, which wouldn't be fair. Now they have someone to represent their interests where they might not have otherwise, I tend to see this as a good thing.\n\nThe opposite of this, would be Maryland's [6th district](_URL_1_). This is comprised of the very rural panhandle and the very densely populated suburban Montgomery country. This created controversy as it was seen as an obvious attempt to dilute the wants of the rural (read: more likely to be republican) parts of the state. The 6th district used to look like [this](_URL_0_), representing the majority of those rural, though not Eastern Shore interests. \n\nLong run gerrymandering can have some positive outcomes, however it can and is often used to dilute dissension. Which would be a negative.  ", "Best answer is going to come from [CGP Grey](_URL_0_). Popular video explains why gerrymandering exists and some solutions for it. Short and extertaining, but be warned, you may end up spending a lot of your day watching the rest of his videos. They are really good! ", "Because of population shifts, the boundaries of voting districts are adjusted periodically using census data.  There isn't really a way to do it automatically, so human intervention is required.\n\nUsually, it's done by whatever people are currently elected.  So, the charge is always that the \"party in power\" unfairly draws lines to benefit themselves.\n\nIt's subjective as to when it's \"gerrymandering\" and when it's fair and balanced.   And it's not as widespread as people think, since most areas of the country usually lean heavily to one side or the other anyway.\n\nThat said, there are places now where voters are working to switch to a neutral third party committe to draw these lines in areas where gerrymandering was particularly obvious.  Can't remember where it was/is, but Google probably remembers.\n\nCheers :)", "It's not so much that it is allowed as that it is impossible to eliminate bias in redistricting- obvious gerrymandering is bad, of course, but the question is how do you draw the line between dividing communities that oppose you in to larger districts of your supporters vs. dividing a large community in to districts based on population density(which may naturally split up communities) vs. dividing up based on racial groups in an attempt to preserve communities at the expense of carving cities to pieces where they might have had more in common as a city community than as a racial community.", "One thing I don't see mentioned here is that even when Gerrymandering is done for the advantage of one party, politicians from the other party still benefit. (Even if their party doesn't).\n\nThe basic \"packing and cracking\" method produces districts that are very safe for politicians on both sides. Sure the minority party can't accomplish anything, but if they keep getting elected without much effort... Many politicians don't care.", "It can and does lead to damage to democracy - but can also help. Think about it this way - let's say that there's a group of 100 pieces of fruit. There are 80 apples and 20 peaches. They're going to elect 10 pieces of fruit to represent them.\n\nIf you split them into 10 even groups to vote - you'll have 8 apples and 2 peaches in each group. If they all vote for their own type the representatives will all be apples.\n\nIf you split them up into 8 groups of 10 apples and 2 groups of 10 peaches - and again all vote for their own type - then you'll have 8 apples and 2 peaches as representatives - which is actually proportionate.\n\nSo, while gerrymandering can be a negative - it can also be used to make government more representative. It's a complicated issue.\n\nHere's a picture representing the same thing:\n_URL_0_\n\nOf course, applying this to the real world and actual geographic areas is super complicated and difficult.", " >  it clearly misrepresents the political affiliation of the people.\n\nWhy do you think so? Think of the alternatives.\n\nSuppose 49% of the people support one party and 51% support the other. How would you divide the districts?\n\nIf you do it in a totally homogeneous way, the majority party will elect 100% of the representatives, because they will get 51% of the vote in every district. Would you say it's fair? How do you propose to do it otherwise?\n", "For those like me who needed a crash course on gerrymandering, [this video](_URL_0_) by CGP Grey helped a ton.", "Many gerrymandered districts are expressly drawn that way to give under represented minorities a voice and something approaching proportional representation. It's a necessity in a diverse country. \n\nIf you have 10 districts in your state, and the population is split 70/30, it is better for the minority to have 3 representatives due to gerrymandering than i it is for them to have 0 because you just drew a bunch of compact squares. Now even if the state government isn't adequately representing them, at least their direct representative (and perhaps other local government) does. ", "I've always found it weird. We have a similar system for electing parliamentarians in Canada (like all Westminister Countries) and our ridings (districts in US-speak) are basically rectangles and squares. I think the weird freakin' geometry the US sees is just ridiculous. Obviously people are cheating. We use non-partisan panels made up of professional bureaucrats to draw the ridings. They are completely reasonable. Politicians are kept away from this sort of thing. Similarly, the whole supreme court judge politicization in the states is ridiculous. You hand it off to non-political bodies to make the recommendations. You don't elect judges. This is how you get judges who follow the law, constitution and conscience and not freakin' popular opinion. The US system is stupid. It used to surprise me that parliamentary elections in China were more competitive than US elections-and there is only one party to vote for there...but they get bigger turnover of parliamentarians than the US gets of congressmen. That is insane. Gerrymandering causes the creation of these ridiculous safe seats, and all it is doing is getting crazier and crazier extremists into congress. It is nuts. Democracy is basically dead in the US, because no matter what, almost no congressmen will be defeated in an election.", "It's allowed because it cements strongholds of both parties so neither raises a stink about it until it disproportionally favors one of them.  ", "Politics is nothing but vote grabbing.\n\nFree Healthcare? Vote grabbing. \n\nBorder wall? Vote grabbing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/05/crimes-against-geography.png&amp;w=1484"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/comments/3m5xbb/computer_programmer_designed_algorithm_to_end/"], [], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/United_States_House_of_Representatives%2C_Maryland_District_6_map.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_3rd_congressional_district"], ["https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY"], [], [], [], ["https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/gerry.png&amp;w=1484"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2cfkyy", "title": "I've always had electricity and magnetism explained to me as very closely linked forces. Are magnetism and electricity separable forces? That is to say, can you create one without the other?", "selftext": "I know you can generate electricity chemically as well as a host of other ways without magnets, but can you create electricity without creating some amount of magnetism? Conversely, can you create a magnetic field without generating some amount of electricity? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2cfkyy/ive_always_had_electricity_and_magnetism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjezswk", "cjf0bkp", "cjf0jyb", "cjf3aiz"], "score": [3, 3, 15, 3], "text": [" >  Can you create electricity without creating some sort of magnetism?\n\nNot in any really useful way, no. A moving electric charge in a wire (a current) creates a magnetic field around the wire.\n\nYou can create magnetic fields without generating electricity. Those fields just need to remain stationary, and only interact with other magnetic objects which are also not moving. If you move a permanent magnet in the presence of a wire or conductive object, the magnet will induce an electric potential (and thus, electric forces) in that object.", "Every time an electric field changes, there is a magnetic field created, and vice versa.", "There are two different aspects to this question depending on what observer is answering.\n\nFor any given observer, it is possible for them to both create an electric field without a magnetic field (any static distribution of charge will do it) and a magnetic field without an electric field (permanent magnets, for example). However, if either field changes in time, then that will generate the other one.\n\nOn the other hand, it is a consequence of special relativity that electric fields and magnetic fields mix with each other when you change from the point of view, or reference frame, of one observer to another. Given a magnetic field, there will always be many reference frames, moving at constant speed relative to the first, that observe there to be an electric field, and vice-versa.\n\nYour question, though, suggests that you may be using the word \"electricity\" to mean \"electric current,\" which is a net movement of electric charge. [Ampere's law](_URL_0_) says that a nonzero electrical current always creates a magnetic field.", "The two are inherently related, hence \"electromagnetism\" as one fundamental interaction.\n\nThink of any point charge. You can be at rest with it and say that any interactions between a test charge and that point charge is purely electrostatic. However, all you need to do is boost to another reference frame where that point charge isn't at rest, and magnetism will inevitably show up. They are two sides of the same phenomenon.\n\nIt's like you can point to some rectangular object and say it has a length of x and width of y, and another observer can flip it on its side and claim that its length is y and width is x. They're both describing the same physical thing, but what they called it depended on their reference frame. Electromagnetism is exactly the same."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere%27s_Law"], []]}
{"q_id": "32s8q8", "title": "what are parents with a \"baby on board\" sticker/decal trying to say, and why should i care about a decision they made?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32s8q8/eli5_what_are_parents_with_a_baby_on_board/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqe55wi", "cqe56h3", "cqe56mh", "cqe59rn", "cqe5ej0", "cqe5qt8"], "score": [2, 8, 12, 15, 7, 2], "text": ["I don't know really the objective of driving stays the same: get to destination without crashing. Stupid yellow sign does not alter this.", "It's designed to get your attention, and notify you that they have a kid in the car. The idea is that since you'd feel extra guilty if you killed a baby in a car crash, after seeing the sticker you'll be extra careful driving around them.", "I think it reminds/let's people know to drive a wee bit safer near them.", "It is basically in case the car is in an accident.  The sign is for emergency workers so that if there is an accident and they can see the parents,  they will look for the baby too and try to save the baby first.", "It's so anyone doing a rescue after you plow your car into them knows they need to look for the bloodied remains of a small infant.", "I think it's also meant to soften cops when they pull over a mother that may not have kids in the car."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "uebon", "title": "What is so groundbreaking about the Dragon Spacecraft?  Are they really developing new technologies or are they just reinventing the taxpayer provided wheel?", "selftext": "Seriously, are Space-X really developing new technologies or are they just charging a markup on something NASA could be/should be doing on their own?  It seems that the taxpayers are paying this company to restock the space station, something we've been doing on our own for years, what do we really have to gain as a society by doing it this way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uebon/what_is_so_groundbreaking_about_the_dragon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4ura68", "c4uurt5", "c4unwv1", "c4up85u", "c4uqhv5"], "score": [10, 3, 18, 3, 7], "text": ["No one has mentioned this fact, they manufacture everything they can in house to keep prices down. This includes engines, fuselages, electronics, etc. All parts are manufactured on an assembly line as well. They are the equivalent of Henry Ford to the space industry.", "The chief benefit of SpaceX's technology is that to date it is by far the cheapest method of getting a payload into orbit, *by a factor of ten*. With the space shuttle, it cost NASA about 14,000 dollars for each pound it put into orbit. SpaceX charges only ~1000 per pound. This is a huge benefit for NASA as well as taxpayers.\n\nThat being said, they have made some great innovations to achieve this monumental task. To name a few,\n\n* New technologies for friction stir welding lithium-aluminum fuel tanks\n\n* Carbon Fiber Rocket body manufacturing technology\n\n* Much, much safer, longer lasting, and cheaper heat shields\n\n* More reliable and redundant rocket engines\n\n* No solid fuels - The Space Shuttle's SRB's could not be shut down, which could be dangerous if there were an emergency.\n\nThere are many more. It is important to note that essentially all of what SpaceX has achieved would not have been possible without NASA's innovations over the last 50 years (The Merlin engine is based on those used in Apollo, the heat shield was developed at NASA Ames, and again, many more). SpaceX's eventual goal is to cut the cost of space travel by a factor of 100 while increasing reliability. \n\nWhat's the benefit for society? Here's an example: multiply that $1000 per pound number by your weight. It's approaching a cost many more people could save up for than the few eccentric billionaires who hitched rides to the Space Station this past decade.\n\n", "_URL_0_\n\nIt's cheaper than paying the Russians to do it.  That should be enough of a reason.\n\nAs far as innovative technologies go, it uses a [PICA-X](_URL_3_) heat shield, developed by SpaceX and much more cost effective than prior heat shields, especially since it's reusable.  The [RCS systems](_URL_2_) are very well put together, with multiple redundancy.  They're also developing an improved system that would allow a [powered landing](_URL_4_).  The primary use of this would apparently be as a safety feature for launch aborts.\n\nThe launch vehicle is the [Falcon 9](_URL_5_), also developed by SpaceX.  It's expected to be much more reusable than other launch systems, thanks to use of corrosion resistant materials and parachute systems.  Its [engines](_URL_1_) are expected to have the highest thrust to weight ratio ever achieved once the development cycle finishes. ", "You are mixing up two issues here, (1) is NASA paying for innovations and (2) is NASA paying for services. As Quarkster points out, yes, there are innovations. However, it is *also* valid for a scientific establishment to simply pay for services. \n\nFor example, say NASA buys a MacBook. Its Intel CPU, and the Internet it connects to, both inventions that the US Government helped to fund. Does that mean NASA should not buy a MacBook but instead go back to custom-building its own computers?", "First privately owned company to perform such a task. This raises hopes in most humans that space exploration (at least for leisure) is one step closer. Governments usually don't spend your average Joe up to space, they send highly qualified, highly trained astronauts or extremely rich individuals that sponsor a large part of the expense. Privately owned companies have to make profit, there's much profit to be made in civilian space adventures :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.fellowgeek.com/a-The-SpaceX-Dragon-has-Docked-with-the-ISS-ix2113.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(rocket_engine_family)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenolic_impregnated_carbon_ablator#PICA-X", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vleASILamss", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1pr6ng", "title": "why can't rob ford be impeached if 'the video' is in police hands?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pr6ng/why_cant_rob_ford_be_impeached_if_the_video_is_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd5526e", "cd55tmq", "cd56nsw", "cd56opt", "cd56rd4", "cd57b3y", "cd57cb2", "cd57l95", "cd57tmj", "cd588d7", "cd58dgw", "cd58owx", "cd58rfy", "cd58y7c", "cd59gw4", "cd5a3td", "cd5ahcd", "cd5ar9o", "cd5cdoj", "cd5co15", "cd5drsv", "cd5e8bq", "cd5ea2v", "cd5gah3", "cd5ganx", "cd5gqw6", "cd5gwf1", "cd5hqwp", "cd5hxf7", "cd5iyzq", "cd5nl7j"], "score": [302, 318, 23, 4, 31, 10, 16, 3, 7, 5, 3, 6, 2, 3, 2, 7, 3, 8, 19, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["There is no way whatsoever to remove a sitting Toronto mayor (well, that's not quite true, see below).  Neither the city council, the provicinial government, or anything like that have any power to do this.  There is no impeachment or recall mechanism.  This isn't the US.\n\nThe only exception at all is the municipal conflict of interest act, which doesn't really cover anything he has allegedly done in this video scandal.  That allows (requires really) a court to remove an incumbent if found guilty of certain forms of conflict of interest. This was already tried on another unrelated matter anyhow, and it failed.", "The video most likely is not sufficient evidence. The video shows what appears to be the smoking of crack but without supporting evidence such as the pipe with residue on it, witnesses who were present, the video itself is of little evidentiary value.", "And did you know if you were caught and you were smokin' crack  \nMcDonalds wouldn't even want to take you back  \nYou could always just run for mayor of D.C.", "There's not enough evidence. They have the video which shows him smoking but despite all the circumstantial evidence such as the type of bong he's using, how he's acting and if the places he's at is known for crack cocaine activity, they can't really charge him with possession of crack just from the video. So technically the video can't be used as proof that he smokes crack. Only way he could get impeached is if he's found with drugs on him, in his house or maybe (not sure if this is acceptable in Toronto) a drug test. Sucks because until there's substantial evidence this crack head is here to stay. He's even said he sees no reason to resign as it's just a video", "The only province or territory in Canada that allows for recall elections based on a voter petition is British Columbia. As Toronto is in the province of Ontario, there is no way to remove Rob Ford from office - unless he is convicted of a criminal offence. The Municipal Act requires that an individual wishing to hold office be qualified to be a voter, and the Municipal Elections Act says anyone who is incarcerated cannot be a voter in a municipal election. Police Chief Bill Blair, who has seen the video, has stated that there is nothing in the video file to warrant charges against the mayor. This probably means there is not enough evidence in the video to prove it is crack cocaine he is smoking. This is currently Ford's lawyer's argument, as he has stated the video cannot prove he is not smoking tobacco, which is technically true despite the fact that no one would smoke tobacco out of a crack pipe. The reason the video's existence is known is because it was obtained as part of an investigation into Alexander Lisi, Rob Ford's friend and alleged personal drug dealer, and has been entered into evidence to support the charge of extortion.\n\nTL;DR: The video wasn't recovered to charge Rob Ford, it was recovered to charge his friend Alexander Lisi with extortion. Ford is technically just collateral damage.", "It would be a real violation of democracy to remove Rob Ford. I know a lot of people hate him, but he isn't a dictator. He was voted into office and should leave office in a democratic way. And the video is not enough to prove anything. He could have been smoking weed, or tobacco.", "Two main reasons:\n\nFirst, the video shows Ford, impaired, smoking from a \"glass pipe of the sort used to smoke crack cocaine.\" While surrounded by people known to the police for crack-related activities, in a known crack house. That is not enough evidence to charge him with a crime, as, while it may be inferred that he was smoking crack, there is reasonable doubt that it could be any other smoke-able substance in the pipe, including tobacco. This means that the video by itself is not sufficient evidence to lay any charges.\n\nSecond, it is really hard to get rid of a Toronto mayor. The premier can hold a vote in the provincial parliament to remove them if, and only if, they are convicted of a crime. Ford has not, at this point, even been charged. The second way is if he skips 60 days of council meetings in a row. The third way is if the mayor is convicted of breaching the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, for which the punishment is immediate removal from office.\n\nIt should be noted that Ford was convicted of breaching the MCIA, and ordered to step aside, but that order was stayed pending appeal, and Ford won the appeal and was allowed to remain in office. The MCIA is also extremely vaguely worded, and widely regarded as an ineffective piece of legislation.", "At least in Ontario, the only way a  be removed is if they are convicted and jailed. \n\nSource: _URL_0_", "Let me first say that I am not defending Ford in any way, and I wish this loser had never been elected mayor, but it's impossible to prove that he was smoking crack in the video, and therefore, they can't charge him with any crime, or impeach him for it.\n\nI know he was smoking crack, you know he was smoking crack, but the law can't prove it, and for now he's a free man.", "My understanding is that if city council meetings fail to meet quorum for 60 days the province can declare the mayor's seat vacant. So it would seem that if the councillors want him gone, they have to stop attending meetings for some time. I can't find reference for this but I did read it somewhere. ", "Toronto has no impeachment mechanism, so Rob Ford would need to be convicted of criminal charges.  There is likely a lack of evidence for the Crown prosecutor to proceed with such charges.  People who are saying that the law is being applied to him differently because of his position are full of shit.  It's highly unlikely any Crown prosecutor anywhere in Canada would proceed with a simple possession charge (which they usually barely care about to begin with) on the basis of only a video.  If they did I imagine it would only be as a tactic to get you to cooperate in providing information to police about where you acquired the drugs in the first place.", "Can I just say how frustrating it is that this is what put Toronto into the minds of the globe? We're a damn good city and fuck our mayor for shitting on our image. David Miller, the previous mayor, was incredible and is now the president of WWF Canada. Ford might lead a crew in prison or introduce fucking IHOPs at best.", "To follow up on doc_daneeka 's explanation... Ford being unable to be removed as mayor is the reason that Toronto newspapers and citizens are calling for him to resign. They know that it is highly unlikely that he will be removed from his position, so they want him to step down as mayor on his own.", "according to police and video evidence he was at a known crack house.that he has not disputed( his lawyer via am 640 radio), am also  surprised nobody has mentioned his association with known gang members.", "I see your point but I think public opinion will hopefully carry some weight as I think people of Toronto are basically sick of the shenanigans. They will demand the ability to remove someone who isn't performing or who has become a distraction. In the end tho you're probably right and nothing will come of it", "Ford is the gift that keeps on giving", "Y'all cowards don't even smoke crack", "Because it is likely being saved for when shit blows up even further with Stephen Harper and Co.  \n\nShit will get worse for Harper. When that happens Rob Ford will be the flagship headline again. People will all of a sudden forget about our Prime Minister and his shady buddies and keep raising shit about Ford while the magicians in parliament continue to fuck us and keep us distracted with smoke-screens.\n\nMy fellow Canadians, we mustn't let this happen. Stay focused.\n\n Rob Ford needs the help to bring him back from the void, sure. \n\nAs for Canada? Perhaps we need a new Prime-Minister? This business goes deeper than we can imagine. What goes on with our PM is far more important than this business of a mayor with a drug habit. ", "Hamiltonian here. \n\nI live in Hamilton, which is a city an hour west of Toronto and commute to school in Toronto. I also worked in Toronto for a not-for-profit doing sandwich runs for the homeless, and was present in Toronto during the G20 summit/riots of 2010 and Rob Ford's election. I know a bit about Rob Ford. \n\nI remember when he was elected, myself and all my friends were not happy and supportive because his demographic was targeted towards parts of the GTA not connected to the downtown core (which is OKAY! everyone is entitled to their opinion) but this made us nervous because we knew his constituency wouldn't be concerned with problems concerning the marginalized, mainly.\n\nWhile he has served as mayor, he has waged a \"battle\" against cyclists, trying to remove bike lanes, saying that cyclists are a \"pain in the ass to motorists\" (see [here](_URL_2_) or [here](_URL_1_)) he has also said racists comments about members of city council and people from an Asian demographic (see [here](_URL_3_) ) he has also used city council letterhead to solicit money from lobbyists to support his football charity foundation. This was the matter referenced in u/doc_daneeka 's comment regarding the \"conflict of interest that was dropped\" (see [here](_URL_0_) ) \n\nThe crack scandal is the top of the pile. This scandal caused a tremendous deal of damage to the Somali community of North Toronto (as it became connected to them) and was humiliating for the rest of us in the GTA. What happened was that in May, the news website gawker alleged that they had seen a cellphone video from some drug dealers in Toronto of Rob Ford smoking crack, and were selling the video. The Toronto Star also verified that they were approached with the offer to buy the video, and confirmed they saw it. Gawker used a very public crowd funding campaign to raise the money to buy the video, and were successful at doing so, but the video, and the owners, went into hiding, and gawker, as they promised, donated the money to a number of charities supporting helping people with addictions, and helping members of the Somali community in Toronto. \n\nRob Ford denied the existence of the video, and now the police have found it. Ford's lawyer is now asking police to release the video on the defense that Ford could be smoking \"anything\" - tobacco, marijuana, etc. and that the video can't prove that he's smoking crack. This is unfortunate. He has brought public humiliation to the corner of the world I live in, and he's a horrible mayor that doesn't care about the marginalized, is racist, and doesn't care about taking action to create environmental reform, especially in a city that (believe me!) is a nightmare to drive in, any hour of the day. The only way he can be removed is if he is convicted of a criminal offense. (which I have mixed hopes about, given the lawyer's shoddy defense... however I remain hopeful that the Toronto Police Service have more evidence to offer than one video) Otherwise what will happen is that *hopefully* he'll finally be voted out in the 2014 municipal elections and we can be rid of this nightmare once and for all. ", "it's worth noting that his approval rating is up after all this. as it stands now, it's likely he'll be re-elected next year.", "I find it kind of funny that we're supposed to be a democratic government and have the freedom to decide our government but as soon as someone gains that leadership you can't get rid of them.. ", "I'm surprised this is front page material. Go Toronto :)", "What's ironic is that his father was an excellent man and politician that did a great deal of good because he was tenacious as well as consensus building. He also built a significant business that rob and his brother have inherited.\n\nBig shoes to fill. Personally I think this is part of his issue. He can't handle the stress and this has metamorphosed into all his addiction issues.\n\nDrugs are one, alcohol another", "The provincial government cannot removed Rob Ford from office unless he is proven guilty of the crime. He has the right to a fair trial, so only if he is proven guilty he can be removed. Nothing until a trial unless he steps down, which I doubt he will.", "Wow, if Rob Ford gets reelected, then most Torontonians are fucked up people. ", "I WANT TO SEE THE VIDEO SO BAD!", "Reminds me of Marion Barry.\n", "There's no rule that says the mayor of Toronto can't smoke crack every now and then.", "question: If i was on camera smoking crack or other illegal drugs, not dealing just using, and the police saw it, can i be hunted down and arrested?", "Does Toronto dominate reddit or something? I didn't think this story was popular enough for frontpage eli5.", "Ask yourself these questions:\n\n* How do we KNOW it's Rob Ford?\n\n* How do we KNOW what he's smoking is crack?\n\n* How do we know when it happened?\n\n* How do we know where it happened?\n\nIf you can't prove all of those points, then you have no evidence. Points 3 and 4 may seem trivial (they're often not) but points 1 and in particular 2 could be really difficult to prove.\n\nDespite popular opinion being very different, having footage of something happening is a LONG way away from proving a criminal offence."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.newstalk1010.com/news/2013/10/31/watch-province-cant-kick-ford-out-of-office"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Ford_conflict_of_interest_trial", "http://www.mediacoop.ca/blog/taylor-flook/18826", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwxiv2aznB0", "http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/11/01/2872601/5-toronto-mayor-rob-ford-worse-smoking-crack/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2t7tnn", "title": "can heart attacks happen randomly or are they always brought on by something?", "selftext": "And do they tend to be reoccurring?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t7tnn/eli5_can_heart_attacks_happen_randomly_or_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnwieex", "cnwiiz4", "cnwj73i", "cnwo3nu", "cnx1zts"], "score": [12, 7, 10, 5, 2], "text": ["Heart attacks, like all things, have a cause. A heart attack may appear random, but that's simply because you didn't see it coming. Heart attacks can be reoccurring, or they can be a once in a lifetime thing, it depends on numerous factors.", "They're always brought on by *something,* but that something isn't always very controllable.  Obviously there are several habits or lifestyles that can increase your risk, but there are always going to be people who smoke, drink, and eat fast food daily who live to 95 without a problem, and there are 40-year-old cross country runners who have a heart attack out of nowhere.\n\n", "The term \"heart attack\" refers to a myocardial infarction, which specifically refers to an obstruction of blood flow to a part of the cardiac muscle.\n\nThe obstruction has to come from somewhere. Most often it is arterial plaque, the bad stuff that builds up on the walls of your larger blood vessels. It could also be a rupture or collapse of a section of the blood vessel that interupts the blood flow.\n\nIt depends on your definition of random, but something pre-existing causes these blockages, ruptures, collapses. They aren't random in that sense.\n\nI refer to young healthy individuals getting severe cardiac conditions as \"random\" because they have no apparent risk factors for developing whatever disease it might be. That's a pretty loose definition of random though.", "After reading the previous comments the ELI5 answer is:\n\nStress from outside your body can trigger a heart attack, but the real causes are hiding *inside* your body, where you don't always see them. So, a heart attack can come at a random time, but *not* for a random reason. It just might feel random, because you weren't expecting it.", "If you're asking if someone can have a heart attack with none of the risk factors (stress, obesity, smoking, etc) the answer is yes. Most coronary artery disease has a genetic component. Participating in the risk factors just makes the end result (the heart attack) develop A LOT faster. \n\nSource: I am a cardiovascular intensive care RN"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3f5mc7", "title": "when the society goes fully automatized, what will be the \"normal\" people needed for?", "selftext": "ELI5: When the society goes fully automatized, what will be the \"normal\" people needed for? Some people will be still needed as the robots, factories and AI can not do 100% of work - so there will be some small need for specialists and technicians. But the vast majority of people will be just burden for the rich controllers of automatized society?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f5mc7/eli5_when_the_society_goes_fully_automatized_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctlhhki", "ctlhr49", "ctlhrju", "ctlirse", "ctlkhx9", "ctlone9", "ctlp4pn", "ctlrnj7", "ctlsas0", "ctm9hky", "ctmbx6f"], "score": [13, 3, 7, 9, 20, 2, 5, 5, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["We'll simply invent new jobs. 100 years ago people wouldn't have imagined a job called \"A/C technician\", and I'm guessing 100 years from now, there will be jobs that we can't imagine today.", "If all else fails, we can always start killing each other.\n\nSeriously. What you're asking is a real problem and it has not been solved yet. But we are going to have to solve it eventually. What do you think will happen if unemployment numbers reach 50% How about 90%? Eventually, people are going to rebel, and at that point people are going to die.", "We will need certain people to build the AI, but other than that, I'd imagine a hardcore socialist or even communist system would be viable since there would be no need for human labor, unless some idiot decides that AI have rights, then we'll be back to where we were.", "Machines are not able to innovate or follow creative problem solving practices yet. I doubt they will be able to do so any time soon. This means the majority of jobs are secure", "Call centers... I am being totally serious.  If your Sony TV is being completely fabricated by machines, shipped by machines, sold on amazon and delivered by machines, one of the few value adds companies will be able to deliver is GOOD customer service.  So calling that 1-800 number and being instantly connected to a knowledgeable, friendly, human being who is going to patiently help you fix whatever issue you have (FYI... you forgot to plug it in).", "These robots that will replace factory jobs and automate everything will still need engineers, computer programmers, a marketing team, and a whole set of other positions, in order to be made. So where jobs are \"lost\" due to automation, other jobs are created in its place.", "There's a really great youtube video about this: [Humans Need Not Apply](_URL_0_)", "Post scarcity economics will have a basic income or welfare equivalent that covers all basic needs. With little need for labor, people will be free to pursue the things they enjoy and leisure and creativity will become the demand driver. I'd imagine sex, art, philosophy, gaming, sports, and science will be the big winners, but maybe I'm too optimistic. Probably just sex. ", "No one has brought up the bigger issue with this IMHO. Boredom. So once automation starts happening humans will do what they always do when bored and with out a job. Either explore or war. ", "You are all so optimistic. Post-scarcity? Resources will run out eventually and yes there are solutions - but do any of you really believe the world elites are going to just subsidize everyone? If we don't produce anything of value then what value do we have? None. The average person is not artistically inclined nor are they philosophically inclined. What are they going to produce that is going to justify their existence? Call me a pessimist but I think there's going to be a rather suspicious mass die-off. The Earth's resources can't keep being stretched infinitely, after all. ", "Nobody knows. Here are some possible scenarios:\n\n* Most people move into non-automated jobs, like art and services. This is viable because, now that manufacturing is insanely cheap, more people buy those things using the money they're not spending on manufacturing. Also consider things like schools - try to imagine automated schools, and you just can't, without it ending up like the Matrix. (Maybe people won't need to learn anything when they've got robots catering to their every whim, but I also can't imagine how society would evolve to there from here)\n* As above, but eventually art and services get automated, and then one of the below scenarios happens.\n* Nothing. People starve and die. The income that would have gone to them now goes to giant corporations who get even richer.\n* More competition. All those displaced librarians go and research search engines, and all of them build Google competitors. As a result, worldwide search engine profit is split over several million people (instead of all going to Google). Google dies (or massively shrinks) because it can't sustain itself with its new share of the profit. Same for other big corporations, Google is just an example.\n* Progress is artificially impeded to prevent any of the above scenarios from happening (e.g. self-driving cars might be made illegal).\n* Basic income - you've probably heard about this zillions of times on Reddit already. The income would have to mostly come from rich people, who would be taxed very heavily.\n\nAgain, those are just some possibilities off the top of my head. Nobody knows for sure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "59u212", "title": "Would earphones work in space?", "selftext": "You are wearing earphones connected to a mobile while being in space without a spacesuit, let's imagine you would not freeze to death or suffocate in seconds.\nWould you be able to hear any sound at all, or feel any vibrations in your ears?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/59u212/would_earphones_work_in_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9boa06"], "score": [25], "text": ["First of all, you will not freeze to death in space. There is no medium of heat transfer.\n\nThe simple answer is no, there is no air to transmit the vibrations. The more complex answer is yes, the actual vibration of the headphones, coupled with it resting directly against your skin, will cause you to feel the vibrations and 'hear' the music minutely. It would be incredibly muffled. \n\nThere are headphones that work similarly to a cochlear implant and send the sound directly through your bones through vibration. These would work."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5ndkdx", "title": "I'm a German living in western Germany in December, 1944. Do I have any idea how poorly the war is going, or would Nazi propoganda have successfully hidden German setbacks from me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ndkdx/im_a_german_living_in_western_germany_in_december/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcanqlo"], "score": [129], "text": ["Modified from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_) \n\n >  Enjoy the war, for the peace is going to be terrible- popular German joke in the last year of the war\n\nAs the fortunes of war turned against Germany after the Battle of Stalingrad, German propaganda found an imperative need to readjust to this new reality. Prior to the military reversals of 1942, German propaganda had operated on the principle of presenting an \"ersatz reality,\" wherein the state-dominated media maximized Germany's victories and ignored the salient reality that Germany's war was not a short one and her enemies persisted in fighting Germany. The scale of defeats like Stalingrad, the growing Allied bomber raids, and the surrender of German forces in North Africa pricked this media bubble and German propaganda organs responded accordingly. \n\nThis retooling of the Third Reich's propaganda apparatus in light of defeat pursued several seemingly counter-intuitive strategies. For one thing, despite the fact that the Third Reich was a personalist dictatorship *par excellence*, the figure of Hitler disappeared from German propaganda. In contrast to propaganda from the earlier years of victory, post-Stalingrad news of German military operations seldom invoked Hitler's name or connected him too heavily to military operations. This was part of a deliberate strategy on Goebbels's part as he recognized connecting Hitler too intimately to Germany's military fortunes made him, and by extension, the legitimacy of the entire regime, culpable when these operations did not bear fruit. Rather than present images of the F\u00fchrer, Hitler was  invoked in late war propaganda as an abstract figure that stood for all Germans. This could just be from invoking his title, or oblique historical analogies such as films that made apparent the connection between Hitler and historical personages like Frederick the Great. Hitler, whose visage was omnipresent in state propaganda between 1933-1941, became an abstraction. By the same token, German propaganda also emphasized the severity and violence of German military setbacks, but with a unique spin. Allied bombing, the Soviet massacres of Polish officers at Katyn, and other actions of the Allies became staples of German propaganda after the tide had turned as it showed that Germany's enemies were merciless. The idea behind this emphasis upon the Allies' purported barbarity was to bind the Germans together through a policy of \"strength through terror.\" This dehumanization of the Allies' military underscored that no compromise was possible and this was a war in which there was to be no quarter given and none expected.  \n\nThese new strategies often dovetailed with established propaganda discourses that had been present within the Third Reich since 1933. The regime's castigation of the so-called \"November Criminals\" of 1918 also found new currency in this environment. Interrogations of German troops captured after 20 July 1944 often reported back that one key motivation for fighting on was to prevent a repeat of Germany's humiliating defeat at the end of the First World War.  One important component of the demonization of the Allied military was that German retribution was in the making. Since 1933, one of the central legitimizing planks of the NSDAP was that it had enabled German technology and genius to reach its full potential. The vaunted V-weapons tapped into this established narrative that German technical expertise brooked no rivals. But beyond rockets and other *Wunderwaffen*, National Socialism had always stressed the ability of the will to transcend any material obstacles. This propaganda's emphasis upon collective action in the face of numerical superiority fed into this notion that the will is superior to rational logic. Similarly, the destruction of German landmarks and the seemingly indiscriminate nature of Allied bombing heightened the sense that this was a cultural war and that the Germanic culture constantly trumpeted by the Third Reich was in existential danger. \n\nOne sinister aspect of the late war propaganda was its turn to a heightened antisemitism. Goebbels used the solidarity of Allied coalition of both the imperial Britain, hypercapitalist United States, and the Bolshevik USSR as evidence of grand global Jewish conspiracy against Germany. Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who by fortune escaped deportation and murder, would note in his diaries the increasingly shrill antisemitism in propaganda as Germany's fortunes waned. The widespread knowledge about the Holocaust amongst the German public imparted a weight to this propaganda that it might not have otherwise possessed. Although they might not have known the specifics of the Holocaust, most Germans were aware that something quite terrible had happened to the Jews in the East. Even though the antisemitism was troweled on so thick to strain credibility in this propaganda, it encouraged the expectation that the Allies would hold Germany collectively responsible  for the mass murder of the Jews. This does not mean that the German public accepted the NSDAP and Propaganda Ministry's antisemitism wholesale, but in some cases interpreted antisemitism quite differently than the state. One popular rumor among German civilians in 1943/4 was that Hungary had not been the target of any Allied  bombings was because the Hungarian government had spared its Jews. The SD recorded a number of complaints that because the Horthy government has ghettoized Jews in Budapest the Allies would not attack this human shield, and there was grumbling within the German populace that Hitler did not do the same for cities like Berlin or Hamburg. And some of this disgruntlement was not clandestine, but in direct petitions to Goebbels. There were a string of letters to the Propaganda Ministry after the mass operations to clear Hungary's Jews in 1944 demanding that they be used as human hostages against Allied bombing. But the general acceptance of some of the antisemitism produced by Goebbels's machine precluded any thought or possibility of a negotiated peace for much of the German public. News of the Morgenthau Plan, which would have deindustrialized Germany, the expansion of Allied bombing, and the scale of German reverses fostered the expectation of a Carthaginian peace.   \n\nThe effectiveness of this late-war propaganda is open to interpretation. While it could not rekindle hope in final victory, it did strengthen the resolve of some Germans to see the war to its bitter conclusion. Yet, even as propaganda turned to negative integration (uniting around a threat), it could not arrest the gradual estrangement of much of the German public to the National Socialist state. Goebbels himself appreciated this sentiment and his famous  February 1943 *Sportpalast* speech had veiled threats against the \"Golden Pheasants\" of the NSDAP who were thus far still enjoying a prewar lifestyle.  This late-war propaganda often worked in conjunction with greater arbitrary state violence directed against Germans, especially after the 20 July plot. Extralegal state violence had been embedded in the DNA of the Third Reich since 1933, but outside of political enemies and German Jews, most Germans' interaction with arbitrary state violence was the *threat* of it until around Stalingrad, when the security services began a much more thorough crackdown against shirkers and potential fifth-columnists. The 20 July plot helped to further this turn towards extralegal violence and other forms of domestic terror. \n\nIn this hypothetical scenario, a western German would have been obviously aware that the war had been going poorly. There were simply too many salient reverses to ignore. The Allied bomber campaign against the Ruhr and the sound of flak would have been something impossible to ignore. Their own government would have also publicized some of the Allied victories as an example that Germany's back was against the wall. By the the winter of 1944, the Red Army had begun to occupy German territory in the East (both in the Reich and those annexed in 1939) and Goebbels's propaganda ministry published lurid atrocity tales. Moreover, the advance of Anglo-American arms across France had eliminated what had been Hitler's greatest strategic victory in 1940. The retreat of German troops as well as the fall of the German city of Aachen in October 1944 would have been a reality that would have been difficult to ignore. \n\nThe mid- and late-war propaganda drive for mass action and a collective response to Allied aggression worked in often counterintuitive ways. While it stiffened resolve to not have a repeat of November 1918, propaganda along with the deteriorating war effort engendered a kind of grim fatalism for the future. Both rhetoric and reality heightened the sense of social anomie and the breakdown of society that came as bombing and wartime pressures destroyed the German infrastructure and stretched the civilian domestic economy well past its breaking point. The final agonies of the last few months of the war, as well as the violence meted out to Germans that shirked in their duties, helped to cement the postwar myth that Germans were double victims of the war- who were both subject to extreme violence from their military enemies, but also brutalized by a hypocritical criminal regime.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qu8ma/how_did_propaganda_change_in_nazi_germany_after/"]]}
{"q_id": "3l91la", "title": "Donald Trump claims that the writers of the 14th Amendment didn't necessarily intend for it to automatically grant birthright citizenship. Is there any truth to that? Did Lincoln or any of his colleagues say anything about their intent in crafting it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l91la/donald_trump_claims_that_the_writers_of_the_14th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv4ng57", "cv4obyn", "cv4pf4n"], "score": [15, 107, 5], "text": ["(on my phone, can provide sources on request, though most of what I am saying is easily verifiable) \n\nI am not aware of any evidence that it was not intended to grant birthright citizenship, and indeed, I find it hard to believe that it could be interpreted any other way. \n\nBut to pick up on the one kernel of truth that Trump is drawing from, the explicit, stated motivation was to ensure that freed slaves and their children would be granted citizenship. This is different from the dialogue around birthright citizenship today, which centers around immigration. In that sense, you can say that the amendment was not created with *today's* particular dialogue in mind, simply because the political climate and most important issues were different then. \n\nIf it sounds like I'm splitting hairs, it's because I am. But Trump isn't an idiot, no matter how he tries to portray himself in the media, and I'm willing to bet anything that he's intentionally twisting the \"technically true\" part of this statement into something outrageous that he can use as a political tool. ", "There is no truth to that at all, full stop.  Here's the abbreviated history of birthright citizenship in the United States.\n\n1. At independence, the United States inherited the citizenship laws of England.  Those were established in *Calvin's Case*, 77 E.R. 377 (1608).  Summarized, the court in Calvin's Case held that if a child is born a subject of the English king, they are entitled to the protections of the laws of England.\n2. When the United States declared independence, the state legislatures passed reception statutes establishing that the laws of England still applied.   New Jersey's 1776 Constitution, section XXII, for example, looked like this: \n\n     >  That the common law of England, as well as so much of the statute law, as have been heretofore practiced in this Colony, shall still remain in force, until they shall be altered by a future law of the Legislature; such parts only excepted, as are repugnant to the rights and privileges contained in this Charter;\n\n3. Between 1776 and 1857, this situation is more or less stable.  Then, in 1857, the Supreme Court decides the infamous case of *Dred Scott v. Sandford*,  60 U.S. 393 (1857).  Among other things, *Dred Scott* presents a pretty straightforward question of procedure, because the federal courts are only entitled to hear cases between *citizens* of different states.  If Dred Scott himself was not a citizen, he would have no right to file suit, and the case goes away.  This is exactly what the court did.  The *Dred Scott* court said that blacks were not citizens, should not be citizens, and could never be citizens, whether free or slave.  \n\n4.  *Dred Scott* becomes one of the major causes of the Civil War.\n\n5.  After the Civil War, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27-30 (1866), which says that \"all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.\"  This is under Congress' power to declare a \"uniform rule of naturalization\" pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution.  \n\n     >  \"Beyond question, by that act, national citizenship was conferred directly upon all persons in this country, of whatever race (excluding only 'Indians not taxed'), who were born within the territorial limits of the United States, and were not subject to any foreign power.\" *United States v. Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. 649, 682 (1890).\n\n6.  As the Supreme Court also noted in *Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. at 675, \"Congress, shortly afterwards, evidently thinking it unwise, and perhaps unsafe, to leave so important a declaration of rights to depend upon an ordinary act of legislation, which might be repealed by any subsequent Congress, framed the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and, on June 16, 1866, by joint resolution, proposed it to the legislatures of the several States, and on July 28, 1868, the Secretary of State issued a proclamation showing it to have been ratified by the legislatures of the requisite number of States.\"  \n\n7.  The 14th Amendment provides that \"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.\"  This re-establishes the rule of birthright citizenship in the United States.  The 14th Amendment is explicit about birthright citizenship because *Dred Scott* stripped the rights of citizens from free blacks.  \n\n8.  The clause that Trump et al. sometimes cite as a counterbalance, the \"subject to the jurisdiction\" part, is much narrower than most of the GOP candidates say it is.  \"Subject to the jurisdiction thereof\" was meant to exclude two categories of people from American citizenship.  Those are (a) Indians, who were treated as \"independent nations\" at the time, and (b) children of foreign diplomats.  *Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. at 705.\n\n9.  The *Wong Kim Ark* case is actually directly on point here, as Wong was born in San Francisco to two Chinese parents, neither of which were American citizens.  *Wong Kim Ark* isn't an outlier, either.  Previously, in *In re Look Tin Sing,* 21 F. 905, 910 (C.C.D. Cal. 1884), the California District Court held that birthright citizenship is something that attaches to American birth, full stop.  When discussing the citizenship status of the child of a Chinese immigrant, the court said, \"It is enough that he was born here, whatever was the status of his parents.\"  For over a hundred years, the right of citizenship has attached to the *fact of the child's birth here,* and has nothing to do with parentage.", "Related, but perhaps not to this sub question: How important is the perceived \"intent\" of the authors of the constitution vs what was written?  It seems like intent acts as a means of warping or filling in gaps via interpretation perhaps to conform to certain political views."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22bzex", "title": "Why didn't Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey become English counties, with territories fully integrated with England?", "selftext": "The islands are very near England, I can't understand how they become mere dependencies.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22bzex/why_didnt_isle_of_man_jersey_and_guernsey_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cglplsh"], "score": [33], "text": ["The reasons why they didn't become fully integrated with England were different between the Isle of Man and the channel Islands.\n\nThe Isle of Man had never been part of England before the Norman conquest, and it was not part of England after the Norman conquest.  It had been ruled by Norsemen or Vikings since about 850 AD.  From about 1079, Man was part of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles.  This Kingdom was split in two in 1164.  Both these Kingdoms were nominally subject to the Kings of Norway.  \n\nIn 1266, there was fighting between the Norwegians and the Scots and the  Norwegians ceded the islands to Scotland in return for some money.  The Manx did not really recognize this shift in overlords until 1275 when they were defeated by the Scots in the Battle of Ronaldsway.\n\nIn 1290, King Edward I of England seized Man, and it remained English until Robert the Bruce of Scotland took it back in 1313.\n\nMan was kicked back and forth between England and Scotland.  \n\nIn 1405, King Henry IV granted the island to the Stanley family as a feudal fief (the feudal fee was to render homage and give two falcons to the Kings of England when they were crowned - which was not a very burdensome relationship.)\n\nThe Stanley family governed the island until the English civil war, when they were briefly ousted  by the Parliamentary side, but the Stanleys recovered control with the restoration.\n\nBy the 1700s, Man had become a smuggling base.  In 1765, the British Parliament, to suppress the smuggling purchased the Stanley family rights (but not the 'National rights') pertaining to the Isle of Man.  This allowed Parliament to control foreign policy, customs duties and trade laws.\n\nThe laws and customs internal to Man remained largely unchanged.\n\nIn short, the Isle of Man, though owing fealty to the Monarchs of England since 1405 (and in various earlier periods), was never part of England (or Scotland, though it owed fealty to the Scottish Monarchs at various times). \n\nWhen the British Parliament gained some control over the external and trade affairs of the Island, they never incorporated it into Britain, and its internal laws and governance structures remain distinct.\n\nThe Channel Islands are two separate 'bailiwicks' or administrations (The Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey), each with separate laws and legislatures.  The Islands were annexed to the Duchy of Normandy in 933 AD.\n\nIn 1259, King Henry III surrendered his claim and title to the Duchy of Normandy, but retained the Channel Islands, which, since then have been possessions of the Crown, but not part of England.  (The Queen is often referred to as the Duke of Normandy in her role as sovereign of the Channel Islands, but this has not been formally true since the Treaty of Paris of 1259.)\n\nThe Channel islands have been invaded, and briefly occupied by the French and the Germans on several occasions, but have always reverted to the English Crown.\n\nThe Channel Islands have been possessions of the Crown of England since 1066, but have never been part of England.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1j25l5", "title": "if a sheep's wool never stops growing, how are they not extinct?", "selftext": "Reference: _URL_0_\r\rAccording to the article, if it continues growing it can cause the sheep to roll on it's back and starve to death. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j25l5/eli5_if_a_sheeps_wool_never_stops_growing_how_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbac3pa", "cbac6o3", "cbafyuf", "cbanf6t"], "score": [24, 98, 7, 4], "text": ["Only wool on domestic sheep keeps growing. This is because humans have been sheering them for so long that they have evolved based on the way we have groomed them.\n\nWild sheep still shed their wool.", "Because we -the humankind- have selected for centuries the breed that produces wool continually. Primitive sheep shed their wool.\n\n[edit] : sheeps... \n", "It's already answered that continuous wool growth has been selected by human breeders, but there's a misconception in your question that I'd like to address.\n\nEvolution doesn't select for what is best for *the individual*. Traits that help the individual don't necessarily survive. Only traits that ensure *procreation* survive. The quality of life is no concern to nature.\n\nThink of pain. There's absolutely no sense of us feeling excruciating pain. When you're dying, its about as much help to you as a sheep with meter long hair. Pain itself however is very useful during lifetime to avoid injury. An individual capable of feeling pain is much more likely to procreate than an individual which is not. \n\nThat said, it is very unlikely for an expensive trait like growing massive amounts of wool to occur in wild sheep. However, given the right circumstances, it could well occur. Provided it doesn't hamper reproduction too much.", "* [This is a wild sheep before humans start selectively breeding sheep to maximize wool capacity](_URL_0_)\n* [These small things full of seeds are wild banana's. Before humans started tampering with banana trees to select for size, sweetness and appearance](_URL_2_)\n* [This is a wolf](_URL_1_) The progenitor of modern dogs. Many established dog breeds suffer from a host of genetic ailments because humans selectively bred for looks and demeanor rather than good health. Take dalmations for instance, these poor dogs have a 30% chance of being born deaf, a 5% chance of developing hip dysplasia and a 10% chance of autoimmune thyroiditis.\n\nHumans change everything around them to their benefit. Animals, plants, environment."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1j1fky/til_that_a_sheeps_wool_never_stops_growing_and_it/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/1024/rocky-mountain-sheep-portrait.jpg", "http://www.jon-atkinson.com/Large%20Images%201/Grey%20Wolf%203.jpg", "http://tdo.sagepub.com/content/41/2/85/F1.large.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3ne6vu", "title": "why are matresses so expensive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ne6vu/eli5_why_are_matresses_so_expensive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvn7ogi", "cvn8ete", "cvna3pd", "cvna3w9", "cvnagow", "cvnbg7k", "cvnci8u", "cvnmtb9", "cvnr3xo"], "score": [190, 7, 3, 3, 7, 12, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["1) They last for around a decade. The per-day use price is very low.\n\n2) It's one of the highest profit margins in the furniture industry.\n\n3) It's impossible to comparison shop. The manufacturer's can, and often do, \"label\" the exact same bed with a different cover and name for two stores in the same market area.\n\n4) The used market is practically non-existent. It's like selling your used underwear. Nobody wants your filth. So everyone buys new every time.\n\n5) There are only a handful of suppliers for the basic ingredients for a mattress. Legget  &  Platt, for example, supply almost all the metal involved for the approximately 1,000 U.S. mattress companies. Latex is made by two major companies.\n\n6) Consumers buy when they need, not when they want. This makes a mattress set more of a last minute purchase, than say a car.\n\n7) There are limited sources online to understand the build of a mattress. Therefore consumers have no idea what they are sleeping on. Most people could not imagine a visual of what it would look like if they sliced their bed open.\n\nSource: Another post on Reddit. :)", "Earlier this year we bought a slightly used mattress from a neighbor to replace our lumpy sagging Bob's Discount Furniture knockoff pillow top mattress purchased 9 years ago. Only problem being, these mattresses are very heavy and unwieldy. I slid the old mattress into another room figuring I would remove it some time down the road. \n\nA couple month later I decided the only way to single handedly get rid of the mattress would be to dismantle it. Armed with a simple razor knife, I cut around the edges and tore apart the mattress layer by layer. Aside from the hundreds of cheap wire springs, deep inside the mattress, I could find nothing of value - just many layers of pretty cheap feeling foam like you'd use in a seat cushion. I had to make bundles of the foam layers tied off with string and gradually dispose of the components a little at a time until everything was gone. TL:DR version - expensive mattresses are filled with cheap components.", "I worked briefly at a mattress store, i'll give the same warning here I give to everyone when the subject comes up: buying a mattress is like buying a car and mattress salesmen make used car salesmen look like charity cases. \n\nThe prices you see on display are way, way marked up so they can knock some off and make you think are getting a deal, but even the \"deal\" you get is still 200%+ of what (where i worked) they call the \"burn price\" which is the lowest possible price they are willing to sell it at. \n\nAnd I know that at least all major mattress store chains in the US work this way. \n\nSo the TL;DR answer to why are mattresses so expensive? Commission sales. ", "Check out some independent Mattress companies.  A couple have already been mentioned so I'll throw in one more.  _URL_0_", "Which one of these is the best? They all seem the same to me \n\n_URL_2_     \n_URL_1_      \n_URL_3_     \n_URL_0_        \n", "I actually sell mattresses, so I can probably give a little insight.\n\n > 1) They last for around a decade. The per-day use price is very low.\n\n > 2) It's one of the highest profit margins in the furniture industry.\n\n > 3) It's impossible to comparison shop. The manufacturer's can, and often do, \"label\" the exact same bed with a different cover and name for two stores in the same market area.\n\n > 4) The used market is practically non-existent. It's like selling your used underwear. Nobody wants your filth. So everyone buys new every time.\n\n > 5) There are only a handful of suppliers for the basic ingredients for a mattress. Legget  &  Platt, for example, supply almost all the metal involved for the approximately 1,000 U.S. mattress companies. Latex is made by two major companies.\n\n > 6) Consumers buy when they need, not when they want. This makes a mattress set more of a last minute purchase, than say a car.\n\n > 7) There are limited sources online to understand the build of a mattress. Therefore consumers have no idea what they are sleeping on. Most people could not imagine a visual of what it would look like if they sliced their bed open.\n\nThis is all good info, however there could be some debate about number 2 and 7.\n\n I know people who sell all manner of furniture and living room furniture seems to be the highest markup. There is a reason for these large margins though. It's expensive to run a furniture store, because it's a small volume market you have to have your store in a place that is easily visible to attract more customers; this means rent will be expensive. You also have to pay your sales people, they will take a fair chunk of your profit just for making the sale. You also will have at least two delivery drivers, a truck, any related maintenance. After all that and other expenses, you are gonna want some money to take home at the end of the day. So while the margins seem high upon initially looking at them, it's necessary to maintain business. Also there is a new trend where companies price map their products, meaning that they have to be sold at the MSRP. You're really expensive products(i.e. Tempur-pedic) is probably going to last significantly longer than the decade they are warranted for, therefore you won't see a lot of repeat customers and have to make your money on the first time around.\n\nNow on the other side of the topic, mattresses may not be expensive to make when looking at a single mattress, but when you look at the process of designing and tweaking it they become far more expensive. Because some beds have a couple years between prototype to retail model, there can be quite a bit of money sunk into a project by the time it actually hits floors. Then you take into account the massive advertising dollars spent and it continues to drive the wholesale price up. So there are good reasons why mattresses cost so much, not necessarily just the people selling them.", "_URL_0_ is a website that helps compare companies, styles, and stuff like that.", "Here is a cheaper option. When our old mattress gave us sleeping problems due to the unevenness and lumpiness of the mattress we investigated and tested a lot of new mattresses. We did not find any we liked at a reasonable price. Then I remembered that when we relocated to Florida, we slept on air mattresses in our new home until our furniture arrived. So we decided to make a test to see if an air mattress was better. A year ago this week we found and purchased a king-size air mattress from Broyhill for about $230 and placed it on our existing box spring. It is fantastic. Way better then the far more expensive mattresses we have had in the past that hurt my back. It has dual control to provide different stiffness for my wife and I and has a separate setting for the outer ring support. We love it, we sleep better and even our dog loves it. And the dog has yet to puncture it when jumping up on it. We do need to add air to it weekly via the control device. The only problem we have had is that the top seam that covers the small gap between the individual mattresses separated due to our body movements. However, it does not affect our comfort or the stability of the mattress since the two mattresses are still connected together by the outer ring. I am 230 pounds and the mattress is unaffected by my weight.", "Because sellers can convince people to buy them. I've slept on a futon or foam pad on floor for years. It feels as good as a mattress, costs about one tenth the price. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["www.Leesa.com"], ["http://www.kissmattress.com", "http://www.tuftandneedle.com", "http://www.casper.com", "http://www.leesa.com"], [], ["www.sleeplikethedead.com"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "rxx9b", "title": "What's the physiological link between stress and bedwetting?", "selftext": "I ask because we are moving house in a week, and my six-year-old has started to wet the bed (he's also verbally expressed fears about moving)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rxx9b/whats_the_physiological_link_between_stress_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c49na36"], "score": [2], "text": ["Developmentally, it's very common to wet the bed and usually doesn't have a lot to do with stress. At an early age, is has more to do with bathroom and drinking habits. \n\nBut, to address the post title more effectively: There are two parts to the autonomic nervous system, which essentially tells your body what to do without you consciously thinking about it. These are the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. In this case, the sympathetic nervous system is what alerts you and is activated during stress (relaxing your urinary contraction muscles) and the parasympathetic relaxes you. Stress releases cortisol from your adrenal glands, which is the main sympathetic nervous system activator. When you have lots of cortisol in your system from prolonged stress, the balance between your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems is uneven, making your blood pressure consistently higher, your 'fight or flight' muscles tense, and your urinary muscles relaxed, which can lead to more frequent bedwetting.\n\n\nTL;DR Stress=Cortisol=Sympathetic Nervous System activation=relaxed urinary muscles=possible bedwetting."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3q0rkm", "title": "Panel AMA: Devils  &  Ghosts, Heretics  &  Witches, Miracles  &  Magic in the Middle Ages", "selftext": "'Tis that time of year where we celebrate the things *that go bump in the night*, and in the past they bumped as loud as they do now....maybe louder? \n\nIn honour of the season, we've assembled some historians who research and study the history and sociology of things that went bump in the night one way or another during **Western European Early, High and Late Middle Ages** (some of us will even go to the Reformation and Renaissance for your questions). \n\nWe're here to answer questions about the long list of things variously called Medieval religion, superstition, or magic: devils, demons, ghosts, spirits, heretics, witches, sorcerers, the living dead, miracles and magic. \n\nThe historians below are in Europe and North America, and they will be in and out of the AMA throughout the day - so give us your questions, and we'll get to them all.\n\n/u/depanneur is interested in the integral role of magic in the pre-modern European worldview and the intimate role that the non-Judeo-Christian 'supernatural' played in the medieval imagination, from high politics to warfare to popular culture. He is most familiar with magic and the supernatural in the context of early medieval Irish history, but is willing to speak more generally on the origins of medieval magical thought, its role in every day life and the difficulties of applying terms like 'magic' and 'supernatural' to societies who may have understood those concepts differently. /AH Wiki  [here](_URL_1_) (Eastern Canada/USA, CST)\n\n/u/idjet lives in Toulouse and researches the medieval origins of heresy and witchcraft persecution, of medieval demonology, and the invention of the inquisition in France. /AH Wiki [here](_URL_0_) (France, GMT -2)\n\n/u/sunagainstgold studies religion, women, and religious women in the late Middle Ages and early Reformation.  (Eastern Canada/USA, EST)\n\n/u/thejukeboxhero studies religion in medieval society, including the representations of saints, ghosts, and other dead(ish) things in ecclesiastical texts along with the social and cultural values and anxieties they reflect. (Central Canada/USA,  CST)\n\nEdit: Late addition: /u/itsallfolklore is joining us as the resident expert on western folklore.\n\n(You may also be interested in the AMA from the same time last year, [*AMA Medieval Witchcraft, Heresy, and Inquisition*](_URL_2_))", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3q0rkm/panel_ama_devils_ghosts_heretics_witches_miracles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwb2n74", "cwb2qx9", "cwb2yfo", "cwb39u9", "cwb3c8o", "cwb4gpr", "cwb4k39", "cwb4l8r", "cwb5ssk", "cwb67m5", "cwb79ze", "cwb7g4k", "cwb7igs", "cwb7smo", "cwb8wtq", "cwbc9ze", "cwbd5dm", "cwbg6oh", "cwbijii", "cwbllj1", "cwbm27t", "cwbn2am", "cwbq5ok", "cwbslr8"], "score": [9, 9, 7, 3, 15, 10, 3, 10, 3, 6, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 10, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I've read about the Roman and Byzantine use of curse tablets before. Did the use of such tablets or something similar continue into Western Europe in the Middle Ages?", "How did view of magic and people who 'did magic' change in the late Middle Ages/early modern period.", "Goblins seem to be part of the folklore of many cultures all over the world (although with different names). Where did this belief originated? How did it propagated so widely?", "Was there always a strong distinction between the categories that you give above, from the perspective of the Latin Church? Cathars in particular came to mind, as they not only swayed away from orthodoxy but rather believe the Latin Church was worshipping a false god.\n\nThanks in advance for your answers!", "I'm going to a seminar next week titled \"Werewolves in Medieval Europe\", which sounds awesome, but I know very little about this topic. Can you guys explain whether 'werewolves' were found in myths from across Europe, or were they limited to specific regions/periods? I've also heard that there were 'werewolves' recorded in [Roman traditions](_URL_0_) - was there continuity between these stories and later medieval tales? I imagine finding a connection during the early Middle Ages must be quite difficult! ", "For all of you: why were witch trials highly sexualized and focused on the body of women? I know there were wizard trials but largely they focused on women. ", "How were accusations of heathenism or noncanonicalism used politically?", "What do you think about the ecstasy of St. Theresa? Deliberately sexualized orgasmic account or a failure of modern interpretation?", "Were there studied / academic / scholarly magicians during the (High) Middle Ages, or are these a later occurrence? Court magicians (like later court alchemists/astrologers)? If they existed, how did the church treat them?", "I'm curious to know if there are any examples of nominally Christian rulers in western Europe who attempted to use (or employ others to use) magic, spell-casting, or supernatural powers to assist them in battle. It seems like if belief in magic was integral to belief systems, it would be surprising not to try and use that power for military purposes.", "I touched briefly on some of this topic when I was writing a paper on religious motivations in the First Crusade last year, but it's definitely not my area of expertise. I'd love to hear more in depth stuff.  \n\nIn my own writing I discussed the very real fear of hell, the devil, evil spirits, etc. and how divine punishment was seen as an actual, concrete thing.  People very much feared for their immortal souls.  Was I correct in this? Or did people have a more abstract view of religion and the afterlife, along with the actual existence of demons and evil spirits?", "My favorite anecdote from the *Malleus Maleficarum* is the story of the wizard Puncker, who kills an entire castle garrison with enchanted arrows and is later beaten to death by peasants with shovels. Are there any other sources that link archery and witchcraft/magic in general? ", "Why was there an increase in the burning of witches in 16th century England?", "1. Were people who dabbled with folk/herbal remedies persecuted for witchcraft at any time?\n\n2. Were there any areas of Europe that had no significant persecution of witches/magicians?", "Yay, an AMA on a subject I was actively studying two weeks ago, perfect! Perhaps my question will be a bit silly, but when I am thinking about medieval magic, I am always thinking about more \"pagan\" influenced magic on one side (all the magical objects that appear in the stories of the knights of the round table, or even Merlin, for example) that seems to have existed very early and then suddenly more kabbalistic and neo-platonistic magic appearing during the Renaissance, with for example the key of Solomon, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, etc. What I wonder is, first, if my classification corresponds to reality, and secondly, if I am right, how did we go from a mostly pagan magic to a kabbalistic magic? I was under the impression that it appeared suddenly with the better access to Greek philosophical books, but now I am wondering if perhaps it wasn't more of a slow process.", "The suppression of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century included accusations that they worshipped a goat-headed god named Baphomet. Do we know if there were any truth to the accusations?", "A lot of the folklore mentioned here (magic, demons, ghosts, witches, etc.) has transitioned into modern popular culture to some extent. Are there any concepts or pieces of folklore like that that you've come across in your studies that didn't make that transition or just seemed to disappear over time?", "All right, /u/thejukeboxhero, come on down.\n\nThroughout the Middle Ages, women are consistently possessed by demons more frequently than men, and female saints fight against actual demons increasingly more often than male ones--although neither situation is exclusively female. Are there any broad demographical patterns, gendered or otherwise, in reports of who sees *ghosts* in the Middle Ages? How/does it change over time?\n\n(Excluding visions of dead relatives in purgatory. I want revenants walking the Earth.)", "Am I late? I got a super retarded  &  nerdy question.\n\nI was wondering, whenever I read about magic in a historical context, it's always \"boring\" stuff like curses, wisdom, prophecy, religion, poisons, healing, witchcraft... no action, you know?\n\nBut are there any mentions of proper Dungeons  &  Dragons stuff? Like fireballs, magic missiles, magical shield bubbles, hitting enemies with lightning bolts, polymorphing into a giant dragon, summoning an army of skeletons, wizard duels, that kind of thing?", "I know I'm late to the party but I'm curious about early medieval Western Europe. My two-part question is: what sort of perceived presence did spirits/demons/etc. have in\n\n1) *Christianized* early medieval Scotland, i.e. Pictland, Dal Riata, Strathclyde\n\nand/or\n\n2) Visigothic Hispania?\n\nThe meat of the question is basically: after early medieval Spain and Scotland converted to Christianity, at what intensity did pagan beliefs in spirits/faeries/what-have-you persist?", "How was \"the night\" (the specific time when it was dark outside) connected to belief in the supernatural?", "How exactly did the papal/medieval inquisition work?  More specifically, what kind of person became an inquisitor?", "Are there examples of people questioning the actual existence of witches in areas where there were witch hunts?", "So a few weeks ago, I asked [this](_URL_0_) follow-up question about witchcraft. The gist of the comment before me was that people who prosecuted witches felt that they were safe because God wouldn't allow the witch's magic to harm good Christians like themselves. Which leads to the question, if witchcraft required God's permission to work, then why was it punished at all? Wouldn't the fact that it worked  be proof of his divine approval or at least his apathy? Or am I looking for logic and consistency where there is none?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/idjet", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/depanneur", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jlvnn/ama_medieval_witchcraft_heresy_and_inquisition/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.historyextra.com/article/international-history/what-was-werewolf-myth-ancient-rome"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kni3n/back_in_the_days_when_people_believed_witchcraft/cuz075w"]]}
{"q_id": "1it10m", "title": "Given the technology, political institutions, and social structures in the Game of Thrones series, which century does it most closely resemble?", "selftext": "I imagine there'd be some inconsistencies in these factors, and not all real world nation states were equally developed, but if we were to place this on earth, which time era would it be? (Not counting the dragons)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1it10m/given_the_technology_political_institutions_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb7rts9", "cb7t7ts", "cb7vmn9"], "score": [213, 19, 3], "text": ["This is mostly a ramble - I'm inserting things as they occur to me reflecting back on the shows and books. \n\nAt first glance, what we see in Game of Thrones is a bit of a mish-mash of various regions and periods of real-life Earth. The political structure of Westeros is strongly feudal, with the power very decentralised. The King of the Iron Throne is almost entirely dependent upon his immediate vassals, the Lords Paramount of the Seven Kingdoms, for actual troops, funds, and goods, having no standing army and only the tiny Crownlands as a personal demesne from which to draw his own military forces. There is essentially no real merchant class in Westeros, with all wealth passing through the hands of the noble families or their factors. The strength of the various duke and count equivalents relative to the king (do we ever hear of any ranks of landed nobility beyond Lords in the series?) means that the stability of the realm is highly dependent upon the personal qualities of the monarch and his relations with his vassals. Even within the series, we've heard about Robert's Rebellion, the Greyjoy Rebellion, the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and the War of the Five Kings, all happening within a single lifetime. All of this points to a kingdom in the equivalent of the Early or High Medieval Period.\n\nAt the same time, Westerosi bureaucracy is at a stage about equivalent to Europe in the 1600s - you have public debt (to the throne rather than to the king personally), an elaborate system of taxation and tolls for roads, customs, trade, etc, public works such as the Kingsroad, and the governmental post of \"Master of Coin\" overseeing the whole process. \n\nReligion does not occupy the same pride of place in Westerosi society that it did at any point in Europe. It seems to be largely a private affair - the Kingdoms tolerate worship of the Seven (the state religion) as well as the Old Gods in the north, and don't particularly seem to persecute (beyond a vague mistrust) foreign religions such as Rh'llor. We don't hear of any prominent schisms or heresies within the Faith of the Seven, nor is there any indication of persecution of interpretations differing from the orthodoxy. None of this bears any resemblance to the Catholic treatment of heathens or heretics within Christendom, though this can probably be put down to there being relatively little political friction between Westeros and the foreign heathens of Essos. \n\nMarriage is a religious affair in the South, requiring blessing from a septon to be valid. The state does not get involved in the process at all. Divorce doesn't seem to be possible, though you can break off a betrothal given sufficient cause (eg. Joffrey/Sansa). Marriage didn't become a religious sacrament in real-life Europe until roundabout the 13th century. The state and legal system began getting involved in the process by the end of the 17th century.\n\nJousting seems to be a particularly popular pastime amongst Westerosi nobility, and the form we see in the show (a single pair of warriors tilting at one another with a lance across a wooden barrier) only appeared at the turn of the 15th century. Prior to that it was mostly a general melee or a contest of a series of people trying to \"get past\" a single defender. Tilting finally disappeared in the early 17th century, but had been dying out for a long while.\n\nTechnology in Westeros is more comparable to the Early Modern Period than to the Early Medieval. We see windmills, watermills, and wheelbarrows. Castles are highly advanced, with the most impressive (such as Winterfell) able to hold off armies many *many* times the size of their garrisons. Barbicans, murder holes, very very thick walls and rounded towers, deep wells, etc etc all point to a long tradition of castle-building. Civic structures are shown with flying buttresses, gothic arches and vaults, as well as stone bridges with impressive spans such as at King's Landing. All post-12th-century in Europe (though Roman architecture had made use of arches and vaults, the technology had been lost for several centuries). And supposedly these castles have been largely unchanged for hundreds (or indeed thousands) of years. \n\nMetallurgy, particularly steel production, also appears to be well-established. Knights are invariably in full plate, which historically peaked in the 15th and 16th centuries. Even the common soldiery seem to be using steel armour and weaponry (rather than iron), which is particularly impressive/strange given the expense and difficulty involved.\n\nWe see plenty of examples of glass, both coloured and clear, in the TV series. Glass lanterns, glass windows, mirrored glass, \"far-eyes\" or telescopes. Primarily in the South, but still present and unremarked on as being particularly rare.\n\nLikewise the Wall. Ok, it's \"magic\", which is a good fudge factor, but just look at that elevator system in Castle Black, and consider the sheer logistics involved in repairing and maintaining a structure that size. Hauling blocks of ice to that height would be difficult without a vast slave army, let alone with the skeleton crew we've observed. Westerosi engineering is highly advanced, it seems.\n\nShipbuilding is somewhere between the 14th and 16th centuries. We see carrack equivalents, as well as cogs with forecastles and gigantic sails. We also see very large galleys in the east, equipped with catapults, ballistae and scorpions. Also, bizarrely, the longboats of the 9th-11th century Vikings dominate the northern seas.", "I think the author has stated much of it is loosly based on the houses of Lancaster (lannister) and York(Stark) in the [War of the Roses](_URL_0_) period of English history (late 1400s).", "[Tiako notes the influences he sees in this thread here](_URL_0_). It's quite a mish-mash."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ecbg1/what_wrong_ideas_about_medieval_europe_might_one/c9z0y4x"]]}
{"q_id": "88u4t9", "title": "why can there never be true randomness?", "selftext": "I remember reading a post yesterday asking what would happen if something was truly random, and the top reply said that there would have to be new laws of physics written, or something like that. \n\nSo why can't there be true randomness, and what do RNG (random number generators) do then?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88u4t9/eli5_why_can_there_never_be_true_randomness/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwn8nap", "dwn8ypf", "dwn9qn4", "dwnemdj", "dwnimsi", "dwny6ll"], "score": [2, 13, 18, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Random number generators in computers are really pseudo random number generators since they use a mathematical algorithm to generate the number.   Any mathematical algorithm is deterministic and therefore not random.    Whether there is anyway to create true randomness I'm not sure.  I suspect some mathematicians will have a dissertation on the meaning of randomness. ", "In computing, random number generators are technically pseudo random number generators, denoting that they aren't truly random. Most use some seed value, commonly the number of milliseconds since January 1st, 1970, then perform a variety of bitwise mathematical operators on that number to generate streams of bits. Chunks of those bits are then taken and interpreted as a sequence of numbers. A good algorithm will be spread evenly enough that it can be used as if truly random, but if you reuse the same seed value, you can reproduce the same sequence of numbers. This is actually good for computing in that you often want to be able to recreate interesting results should the sequence expose something in your program.\n\nIf you want to extend it beyond computing, the idea that there is no true randomness can be reflected in that if you knew the state of every atom in the universe in any particular moment and perfectly understood the laws of physics, you could theoretically predict everything that happens from that state.", " > So why can't there be true randomness\n\nWe don't know that there cannot be, and indeed certain physical phenomena that we observe appears to be truly random, at least on an extremely small scale. So the assumption is not supported by current evidence. ", "It's hard to know whether 'true randomness' randomness really exists. We have, perhaps, one example of values which might be truly random, which are measurements which can be taken on the quantum level. However, it is possible that these are not **actually** random, but are just impossible for us to predict, and if we knew the starting conditions and the method by which the values are changed, we might be able to guess them.\n\nFunctionally, what 'random' number generators really provide is either practically *unpredictable* numbers (in the case of cryptographic RNGs) or numbers that are less unpredictable but which are suitable for, say, games, which need to make the different possible values are all likely to be hit at some point.\n\nIn the case of cryptographic randomness, they use events, such as keystrokes, the current time, packets on the network card, etc, to use as inputs to the random number generator. These would be incredibly hard to reproduce or guess anywhere else, so the numbers that come out are unpredictable and thus 'random' for practical purposes.\n\nIn the case of non-cryptographic RNGs, a seed number is used as the starting point. This is often saved so that debugging can happen when replaying, say, a game to find out what values are being sent out. The RNG seed number is sometimes saved in games to make sure that reloading at the same point gets similar outputs each time.", "This is incorrect. Quantum physics makes it perfectly clear that many phenomena, such as the moment an atom decays, or the polarization of a particular photon, are indeed random.", "You *can* have true randomness. Quantum mechanics are legitimately based on 100% random outcomes, albeit weighted a certain way. One way to have a truly random number would be to put a smoke detector (contains radioactive Americium) next to a geiger counter, and time the wait between clicks. Weigh the time appropriately and voila, true randomness."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1bv6kh", "title": "why is soccer so ridiculously respected and revered in the rest of the world, and commonly sneered at and bashed in the usa?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bv6kh/eli5why_is_soccer_so_ridiculously_respected_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9ad9of", "c9agyrq", "c9aid06", "c9aiwy7", "c9ako7e", "c9aqjki", "c9atj1w", "c9atyo2", "c9b03o2"], "score": [11, 9, 6, 7, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Soccer is popular because you don't need special equipment or infrastructure to play it. You need a spherical object, and a relatively flat field. \n\nAll other sports need a lot of special equipment or infrastructure. ", "I don't think it has anything to do with how fun/exciting different sports are. Soccer has become a lot more respected in the US over the last twenty years. It\u2019s not huge here professionally, but the united states has had a very competitive (most companies gunning for limited customer base, not sports competition) professional sports market since the NFL was founded and the NBA and ABA merged in the 70s . Americans have always had multiple options, and soccer came about relatively late for us.\n\nKids in the US play what they are exposed to, which is usually football and basketball, and everything else is going to be, as you say, sneered at because people are just unfamiliar with it. \n", "It's kind of hard to generalize a country as large as the US ... where I live, soccer is very popular not only in the schools, but in the pubs.\n\nI think to watch it, you have to think (and it also helps if you played for 20 years and know what's going on).  It's much easier to drink beer, eat snacks and watch big men bash each other around (e.g. american football, basketball)\n\nWhat I don't understand is how people complain about soccer being boring watch 162 games of baseball a year.  I like baseball, but it is also slow ...", "I think the reason is two fold. First, the comments regarding wealth and the opportunities to play other sports in the US is valid.  I think the second reason is that the fans in the US have been trained to like sports with artificial breaks (tv timeouts, change in innings, end of quarters, etc). Also, we in the US like a lot of scoring and have not been told at a young age that there is beauty in a 0-0 tie.  We like our home runs, 3 point shots, power plays and hail Mary passes.  \n\nFinally, it also could have to do with the US not being that competitive at it nor is our league up to par with the EPL.  US spoiled US fans ant the bat and it we feel that something is not perceived as the best, we become uninterested.  \n\nI do love watching soccer but I am in the minority. ", "I don't know how much cost factors in (I'm sure it does) but people in the US tend to love high scoring, high intensity games. Before you go off on how soccer is intense, compare it to american football, basketball, even baseball and you should be able to tell that it is way down of eye-grabbing action. \n\nOn the other hand, part of America also loves NASCAR, and I can't imagine there being anything more boring than watching cars go really fast in a circle for hours. ", "The same reason why the rest of the world sneers at football. You generally grow to enjoy what is revered by your community.", "The cost of equipment does play a role but I don't believe its as great as some people think.  For example, take cricket which it could be argued requires more equipment then baseball.  However its bigger then any other sport in places like India and Pakistan where kids living in slums will play it with sticks and up turned crates for wickets. \n\nI think the reason for the popularity of a sport is down to who the kids playing it aspire to be.  If local news/sport is dominated by a particular player/sport, then kids will play that sport to be like their heroes.  Who in turn become professional players who are then heroes to another generation and so on.  If Messi or Ronaldo were American, \"soccer\" would suddenly become a lot more popular in the US.", "Americans like american sports. Basketball, football, and baseball originated in the US. Hockey and soccer, not from here, will always be distant 4th and 5th place sports", "I don't think soccer is sneered at and bashed, as a sport. We sneer at the disdain heaped upon American football, with the hand-egg jokes, and \"hurr, hurr, I thought you were talking about *real* football, not blah blah.\" \n\nNobody likes being looked down on by elitists. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3d9505", "title": "So Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old first cousin. Was that considered okay at the time?", "selftext": "So Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old first cousin. If you read the Wikipedia entry for her you can see that scholars don't agree on whether or not the marriage was scandalous, nor do they even agree on whether or not the two were earnestly lovers for more like brother sister.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nwhat gives? Were they passionate lovers? Was this type of marriage seen as scandalous at the time?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d9505/so_edgar_allen_poe_married_his_13yearold_first/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct2zaj2", "ct3kx1b"], "score": [99, 17], "text": ["The average age of first marriage in the US has always been above 20 years old for women. [The Census](_URL_0_) (warning PDF) only officially started tracking the number in 1890 when the average age was 22. That is of course well after Poe's time. But some researchers have combed through local marriage records and found that it really hadn't varied much throughout the 19th century.\n\nTeen brides weren't that uncommon though. But it much less common for younger teens. So while a 16 or 18 year old getting married wouldn't have scandalized anyone, a 13 year old getting married might have. But it was legal and sanctioned. The age of consent in Maryland in the 1800s was 10, assuming the girl's guardians approved. When young teens married, it was almost always to another teen. What would have been scandalous would have been the 27 year old Edgar marrying a girl literally half his age.\n\nAnd there is some reason to believe that Poe himself regarded it as suspicious. He put Virginia's age as 21 on the original marriage certificate. I've seen arguments that this was to make it socially acceptable. I've also seen arguments that this was to avoid any questions about her guardians. They publicly re-did the ceremony a year later. So he was willing to publicly marry a 14 year old, even if he thought marrying a 13 year old was scandalous. \n\nSo scandalous? Maybe. It was certainly unusual, if legal, at the the time.\n\nAs to their personal life? I have no idea. Couples of the time didn't usually confirm or deny whatever sexual relationship they had. It wasn't proper for public discourse. And very few people even included sexual discourse in private letters or journals. There is no real reason to suspect that they weren't having sex, as that would be the normal course of things in a marriage. But frankly even that is speculation. It is likely we will never know what Edgar's and Virginia's sex life was like.", "Possibly the first thing to address is that this is a question concerning a historical figure\u2019s private life and in the early nineteenth century, people\u2019s private lives were exceptionally private. What might at first seem to be the Holy Grail in unraveling Poe\u2019s marriage can still leave us with questions.\n\nThere is his letter to his aunt Maria Clemm and also to his cousin Virginia dated [August 29th, 1835](_URL_0_works/letters/p3508290.htm).\n\nIn this letter, which was very damaged when found, he addresses himself mainly to his aunt, but this is not all surprising. When writing the letter he had not yet wed his cousin and so was asking her mother to bring her to him. He was responding to a letter from her in which she must have indicated that she might take her daughter to [Neilson Poe](_URL_5_). Neilson was Poe\u2019s rival and cousin and it seems he did not care to think of his Aunt and cousin going to Neilson and was sure that this would mean the end of his relationship with Virginia.\n\nHe writes, \u201cIt is useless to disguise the truth that when Virginia goes with N.P. that I shall never behold her again.\u201d This might lead one to think Virginia was going to marry Neilson, but this was not the case. The general consensus was that Neilson just didn\u2019t want Virginia to marry Poe. If this was because of their age difference, because he didn\u2019t like Edgar, or some other reason- is not known. \n\nHe concludes his message to his aunt saying, \u201cAsk Virginia. Leave it to Her. Let me have, under her own hand, a letter, bidding me *good bye* - forever - and I may die - my heart will break - but I will say no more. E.A.P Kiss her for me - a million times.\u201d\n\nConsidering this it is hard to imagine someone pleading for another if the feelings were only that of a brother and sister. It seems hard to imagine that Neilson would have felt the need to keep Virginia away from Poe if it was only sibling love at sake.\n\nHe then writes a short note to Virginia.\n\n\u201cVirginia, my love, my own sweetest Sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your Cousin, Eddy.\u201d\n\nHe calls her Sissy, yes, but there\u2019s nothing that indicates this means sister. As a touch of affection he calls her his little wifey, before they have even been married, when it seems she is going to leave him so that she can go out in society. I\u2019ll leave it to you to decide if these are the words of a (possibly hopeful) lover or brother.\n\nPoe had enemies and competitors and around him swirled many rumors, it is difficult to find the [truth from the fabrication](_URL_0_people/poevc.htm): After Virginia died there were those that said Poe was strange in the way he showed affection (but we do not know what specifically made it strange). Lambert Wilmer in 1866 said that Poe was very affectionate, but that Virginia might not have loved him as much as he loved her. Still one of her last acts on this earth was to kiss a portrait of him that she had under her pillow.\n\nThe problem with peeking into the private life of someone like Poe is that the majority of what remains of him is his work: poems and stories. Much of the scholarship done on Poe has been in these areas. Yet, I think it is dangerous to read works of fiction in search of autobiographical information. There is no way to know that Poe was thinking of Virginia when he wrote [\u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d](_URL_7_): *I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than a love- I and my Annabel Lee.*\n\nThe question then is: Would this marriage have been scandalous or abnormal for the time?\n\nFor this we must ask: What was a normal marriage of the time (early nineteenth century America)?\n\n Legally speaking a marriage united man and woman into a single identity with the assumption that there was no backing out of the deal (Hartog, p.3-4). What Edgar and Virginia entered into was something that, at least legally speaking, was a very serious matter. This doesn\u2019t mean that there was no divorce or separation. There is nothing in Poe\u2019s letter, for instance, that indicates the marriage was done on a whim, but instead that when Virginia came to Poe- they would be married. We cannot know with certainty how exactly Poe felt towards the thirteen year old Virginia and if people, in general, would have thought that this was inappropriate.\n\nAge of consent laws were usually from 10-12 in the U.S. In fact, Stephen Robertson from the University of Sydney, argues that people of the nineteenth century weren\u2019t particularly preoccupied with a girl\u2019s specific age but more whether she fit their expectations of a child or not. By this rationale, it would matter more how Virginia presented herself. She was thirteen and could be seen as a woman. Suggestions have been made that Neilson\u2019s offer to take in young Virginia were to prevent her from being married at such a young age. I cannot determine the validity of this. In a [letter Edgar wrote to Neilson in 1845](_URL_0_works/letters/p4508080.htm) he is friendly and speaks hopefully of bringing Virginia to see her sisters even though she was in poor health from a busted blood vessel (this was actually the beginning of her battle with consumption that would end in her death). If Neilson was uneasy about Virginia\u2019s age when she married, he eventually got over it- which is not hard to imagine since, as each year passed, there was less to be concerned with.\n\nVarious questionable sources give the average age of a woman to first marry in the early nineteenth century as 15-20. This is wide range, indeed, but it shows that Virginia was still young regardless. However, there is no clear evidence that supports the idea that there was anything shocking about their marriage at the time. They had a private ceremony, but then a public one. Like so much about Poe- there is not really enough to go on. \n\n\n----------------------------------------------\n\n[Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore](_URL_0_) is a wonderful source and I encourage everyone to make a visit to the city and see the small Poe house and museum there and all explore the wealth of information on their website.\n\nHartog, Hendrik, [\u201cMarital Exits and Marital Expectations in Nineteenth Century America,\u201d](_URL_6_), Georgetown University Law Center, 1991, \n\nRobertson, Stephen, [\u201cAge of Consent Laws,\u201d](_URL_4_) Children and Youth in History- Case Studies\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/MS-2.pdf"], ["http://www.eapoe.org/", "http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4508080.htm", "http://www.eapoe.org/people/poevc.htm", "http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p3508290.htm", "http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/230", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neilson_Poe", "http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&amp;context=hartlecture", "http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151"]]}
{"q_id": "1n4lwa", "title": "how poverty can lead to obesity?", "selftext": "I'm having a really hard time making sense of this. I keep being told that some people can't lose weight because of poverty. Weight loss is all about burning more calories than you consume though. How can someone afford to over eat, but not afford to under eat? How can eating *less* be more expensive? You don't have to eat healthy food to lose weight. Professor Mark Haub lost 27 pounds in two months on a diet of Twinkies, sugary cereals, and other junky food. (Not saying poor people eat this, just that a calorie is a calorie.)\n\nShouldn't poverty actually be incentive to lose weight then, since a person will save money by reducing the amount of food they eat? Is there something I'm missing here? Please explain, because I feel like dick. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n4lwa/eli5_how_poverty_can_lead_to_obesity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccfbzs6", "ccfc0yc", "ccfc3m5", "ccfccuu", "ccfchls", "ccfct7m", "ccfcuag", "ccfgfz9", "ccfhw6r"], "score": [6, 3, 3, 8, 3, 16, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["But did he eat 5,000 - 6,000 calories a day worth of all that stuff? That is what makes people fat; not what they eat but how much of it. A same sized portion of \"poor food\" can have 1,000+ more calories than the same sized potion of \"healthful food.\"\n\nPoorer people / families tend to eat cheap, higher calorie food, and eat a lot of \"comfort food\" which is even higher in calories than their normal food.", "Bad quality food is very inexpensive. Restaurants like McDonalds serve a full meal for around $5, frozen, processed, prepackaged food is much less expensive than fresh fruits and vegetables. \n\nNow is it possible to lose weight even while living in poverty? Yes, you can compensate with exercise. Of course gym memberships are probably out of the question so its harder.\n\nThis is one of the big reasons Mexico has surpassed US for worldwide obesity. ", "Poverty leads to longer hours, less pay, and more stress. Stress itself is a direct component of weight gain, and lower pay combined with more hours worked means cheaper (read: tends to be unhealthier) food, more fast-food, and the inability to manage your daily diet as effectively. That being said, poverty doesn't always lead to obesity, of course.\n\nThe main component is that your definition of poverty takes into account mostly low-income first world people, where poverty is significant wealth compared to some of the third-world countries. (I am not belittling either of them, they are both very bad and very much a problem).", "Healthy food is expensive and it doesn't store well. Poor people can't afford meats and vegetables, nor can they afford frequent trips to the grocerry store.\n\nWhen poor people shop, they are concerned with satiating hunger, getting the calories they need, saving money, making one trip, and getting foods that will last as long as possible. Fatty foods and carbs store well and are cheap, and the carbs especially pack on weight.\n\nAnd why do poor people buy junk food? Because being so poor, they can't afford outtings and events, a bag of chips is sometimes the only little comfort they can afford.\n\n---\n\nAs far as Prof. Haub, I would argue that diet took a lot of effort to execute - to formulate and to stay on target. And eating is not just about calories. I can exceed my calorie needs with just a couple candy bars, but that doesn't A) meet my nutritional needs and B) doesn't satiate my hunger. Most people are going to eat until they are at least satisfied, and poor people are eating cheap food to do it. Carbs. They'll blow way past their caloric needs on cheap food until they feel satiated.\n\nAnd not all carbs are created equal. Don't undervalue biochemistry. Monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides are all going to be used differently in your body. A food high in polysaccharides are going to go straight to your thighs while your body consumes smaller and easier carbohydrates.\n\n >  Shouldn't poverty actually be incentive to lose weight then, since a person will save money by reducing the amount of food they eat? Is there something I'm missing here?\n\nYou can do it on a poor person diet, but no one wants to feel hungry. And another aspect I just remembered is that shitty food can make you feel shitty. I remember a doctor talking about this. I don't remember the technical words, but digestion takes place in two different stages: you're either breaking food down, or you're absorbing and processing it. When you're busy absorbing and processing shitty food, you might feel sick; what you might instinctively learn is that if you keep eating, you're always in the break down stage, and you don't feel so bad. Shitty food trains you to keep eating.", "It basically comes down to \"heavily processed foods are cheap and taste good but are also high calorie.\"\n\nWell off families can/will buy healthy, natural foods that will have more varied nutrients that are filling but lower calorie.  Families in poverty will buy heavily processed foods because they're cheap.  If they're heavily processed often times they carry less nutrients and are mostly carbs (sugars), which are easily absorbed by the body but don't last long in terms of making you feel full.  But since they're heavily processed, they generally taste good making it easy to overeat.  It sounds backwards, but it's cheaper to eat unhealthy than it is to eat \"healthy\".\n\nAlso a better off family will buy their children toys, take them to the movies, buy them clothes, electronics and the like to reward them or for entertainment.  A family in poverty can't afford to do that, so many will reward them in a way they can afford: buying them cheap tasty food (that are loaded with calories).  \n\nRemember, parents can't buy their children neat things or take them to places that cost money.  They often show their love in food (which if you're buying the heavily processed stuff, is probably much cheaper than you think it is).", "First off, let's be clear that we're talking about a link between poverty and obesity in the U.S. and not in some third world country.  We don't have food scarcity issues (generally) that cause famine and/or mass starvation.\n\nFirst off, it is expensive to eat healthy and preparing healthy well-balanced meals for your family only works if you have the time and means to do so.  In poor urban areas, it is much cheaper and easier to hit up the McDonald's dollar menu, get a big tray of chicken and rice from a food stand, or go to the grocery store whose shelves are loaded with enriched, unhealthy, processed crap.  There aren't very many Whole Foods' or farmer's markets in these neighborhoods and poor people who are working multiple part-time jobs dont' generally take the time to travel to more affluent neighborhoods to buy food.\n\nThen there's the portion-size issue.  Portion sizes have grown in the past 20 years at fast food restaurants and also in stores.  Poor people want to get the most for their dollar, so they buy bigger, get the super-sized fries, etc... On top of that, we teach/pressure our kids to \"finish their plates.\"  There's more pressure when the $ you used to put that food on the plate is more scarce.  \n\nWe're also talking about lots of single-parent households, fractured schedules, etc.. Lot of eating \"on the go\" or with minimal preparation which lends itself to more unhealthy options.  \n\nAnd lastly, exercise.  Really poor kids get less exercise, and tend to have parents who are less involved in making sure they get it.  That's why physical education curricula in public schools is so important (even though we make fun of gym class in affluent suburbs).    ", "I'd like to add here that this applies to america/so-called-first-world-countries.\n\nIf you're in a third world country (like me), fast food/high carb processed food is almost as expensive (in some cases, more) as a full blown restaurant meal (im not even joking, 10-15usd for going to burger king, vs 7-8 for a full meal+drink+dessert+coffee that you get in most restaurants).\n\nThe end result is that poor people here end up, as you imagine, a little more than skin and bones.", "One thing all these posts are missing is *time* and how poor people have less.\n\nThere's the multiple jobs thing which chews hours, but also commuting.\n\nTen minute by car can easily be 45 by bus. Both ways. To each job.\n\nAdd that up, and not only do you not have time to cook, you don't have time to exercise either\n\nForget affording it, poor people don't have time for the gym", "A calorie isn't necessarily a calorie. A calorie from say, a granola bar would be processed through the body a lot differently than a calorie from a potato chip. \n\nHowever to answer your question, it's more or less making poorer food choices mostly due to either time or money. Why waste time buying all the ingredients for a meal separately when you can have a processed boxed version of it? It takes too much time to try and watch the kids and cook, so let's go to McDonald's. Buying all this froo-froo organic stuff is too much for so little. $8 for a can of peanuts? Let's just buy 4 bags of chips instead."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "34a3fg", "title": "If Magnetism is the result of moving charge, then why aren't all Atoms magnetic if they're surrounded by a moving cloud of negative charge?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/34a3fg/if_magnetism_is_the_result_of_moving_charge_then/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqso270"], "score": [32], "text": ["They are, atoms have a magnetic dipole moment, from both the spin of the electrons, the orbital angular momentum of the electrons, and the nucleus itself. However, when you have many atoms, the magnetic moments aren't necessarily aligned and if they're all pointing different directions then the magnetic fields cancel out. Only special materials have the magnetic moments align naturally."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3m46r0", "title": "Does Mitochondrial DNA expression vary?", "selftext": "Given that they are not multi-cellular organisms I wouldn't expect individual mitochondria within a cell to have different roles.\n\nHowever within different cells on a multi-cellular organism (neurons, skin, eye, etc) do the mitochondria contained express differing genes of their own DNA to make proteins specific to that cell? Or do all Mitochondria in each cell perform the same function?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3m46r0/does_mitochondrial_dna_expression_vary/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvc5ki9", "cvcctfv"], "score": [10, 2], "text": ["As tempting as /u/Mitaines's logic is, a quick search shows that expression from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) does in fact vary between tissue types in humans. This actually becomes less surprising when you discover that many of the proteins encoded in mtDNA are involved in oxidative [phosphorylation](_URL_1_) (you know, the process that makes the mitochondria \"the powerhouse of the cell\"). If that's the case, it doesn't really make sense for every tissue type to express from mtDNA the same, since there's no way that energetic needs for different cell types are the same, and they're [not](_URL_0_). \n\nAnd that's not even to get into expression in other organisms, like [plants](_URL_2_). ", "Different genes as in gene A is expressed in tissue X but not at all in tissue Y, no. \n\nDifferent levels of the same gene? Yes, absolutely. High energy tissues will have comparatively higher expression of the mitochondrially encoded components of the electron transport chain. Mitochondrial mRNA and tRNAs are also post transcriptionally regulated with respect to demand. So while u/Mitaines is correct is saying that the origin and character of mtDNA transcription necessitates roughly equal levels of transcription. However, if you go in an quantitate different mRNA/tRNA levels you might get different ratios between tissues due to post-transcriptional regulation. In fact, there is extensive literature showing this occurs in disease states and mouse models of mtDisease, where levels of specific mtDNA derived RNA transcripts are down/up regulated compared to others, in a post transcriptional manner.\n\nBear in mind mitochondria have other roles beyond simple energy production, although the mitochondrial genome only contains components of the electron transport chain and associated translational machinery. \n\nHowever, in mitochondrial disease you can actually have cells with different mitochondrial DNA. Some mitochondrial diseases are what we can heteroplasic, in that, above a certain threshold, a % of mutated mtDNA in a particular mitochondrion, cell or tissue can cause disease. So you could say in this case they have 'different' genes (the majority are just point mutations). You can get different ratios of mutated:wt mtDNA due to the nature of mitochondrial replication (i.e. genetic drift occurs, as well as certain bottlenecks during zygote/blastocyst development) and this can change during life and development."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=18481068", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16807301", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12244222"], []]}
{"q_id": "2qhlfz", "title": "why are some redditors so apathetic toward rape victims?", "selftext": "I feel as though rape victims on Reddit are ignored more than victims of other crimes. There also seems to be a small number of redditors who actually *endorse* rape. It's just beyond me. Why is there such an attitude towards this problem?\n\nEdit: I realize on a site as large as Reddit, there will be people apathetic/supportive of virtually anything. However, I feel as though, relative to other major crimes, there is a high level of apathy from Reddit\n\nEdit #2: Well damn, this sure got downvoted.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qhlfz/eli5_why_are_some_redditors_so_apathetic_toward/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn661rr", "cn664p4", "cn66duo", "cn673w1", "cn67gpy", "cn69x3a", "cn6uqg3"], "score": [4, 3, 6, 5, 15, 6, 2], "text": ["Some of the endorsers are simply sad little trolls, some are either incredibly sick, sadistic, or simply don't understand the severity of the issue and choose humor (in incredibly poor taste) as their way of dealing with it.\n\nThose who seem more apathetic generally fall into a category of either not understanding what rape can do to a person, or feel as if things that don't affect them aren't worth their time.\n\nIn large part the response to rape on the internet derives from the approach often taken in the real world which is one of either willfully ignoring it because of the unpleasantness involved, or of blaming the victim either because \n\nA: They are the only person involved that  can be contacted. If the act itself is what is so terrible, and you want to condemn the act but only have access to the one person who was involved then victim blaming sort of makes sense to some people.\n\nB: Selfishness, entitlement, and a lack of empathy lead people to believe that wearing clothes of a revealing nature puts those around around the victim into such an unfair and teasing situation that the rapist was justified.\n\nC: The responder has had similar feelings, fantasies, or desires and justifying someone else acting on those desires is a good way to rationalize having similar thoughts. Sort of like living vicariously through someone else.\n\n\nThis is simply my understanding of it as an observant individual and someone else may have legitimate sources for believing something else. If so please ignore me.", "Reddit is one of the largest sites on the Internet. Its population is incredibly diverse. There isn't a single opinion shared by Redditors, you'll find active members of the community with just about any view.\n\nAlso, subreddits vary widely. If endorsements of rape are getting upvoted in a particular thread, I'd suggest notifying that subreddit's moderators - and if they don't do anything, unsubscribe.\n", "I think that a lot of it is because the definition of 'rape' has expanded a lot recently, and that some internet feminists want it applied to acts as ludicrously not-rape as farting loudly.\n\nRape is a serious crime, and a serious thing for a person. It can shatter them emotionally. But because the word has been co-opted by a political campaign, it's unfortunately become very hard to discuss.", "I think the exact opposite is true and I'm  really not sure where you're seeing all this rape endorsement?\n\nif there are two things in the world where the apathy of the general population isn't a problem, it's pedophilia and rape. \n\nYou can evoke visceral anger in basically anyone, from basically any walk of life just by bringing it up. Hell, even in prisons, full of murders and thieves, rapists and pedophiles are the lowest of the low and must fear for their lives. \n\nIf anything, on reddit this is even *more* true. There's no quicker way to get down-voted into oblivion than to question rape statistics or suggest that some people cry rape for nefarious reasons. ", "I'm sure I'm going to be downvoted to hell for this, but the reason it seems like people are apathetic to it probably has something to do with the UVA situation. Not that specific example, let me explain.\n\nA girl tells a story, a truly horrifying story that would disturb any normal person. She seems trustworthy enough, so it is believed as fact, life is disrupted for people who had nothing to do with it and people are punished. As the weeks go on people find a hole in the story, and another, and another. Low and behold the girl who cried rape had shown an old picture of a fellow high school student she hasn't seen in years as the main perpetrator of the rape. Now her whole story sounds sketchy. \n\nIn a perfect world, nobody would be raped, in a simple world we could believe everyone who said they'd been raped. But the fact of the matter is that people are crazy, some crazy people do the raping, some crazy people lie about being raped to fuck with somebody, or just for the attention. \n\nThe people who advocate rape are just fucked up.", "I'm going to make this short and sweet. 1.5-8% of rape claims are false. Take the UVA case. The police tend to rush the process of the investigation. I guess a lot of people belive in the Constitution. Innocent until proven guilty. We seem apathetic until we have enough evidence to say \"hey she actually was raped\". And the whole ENDORSING rape. It's easy to troll on the Internet.  Just look at those \"redditors\" on the YouTube comments. We don't endorse rape. Trolls do.", "Because a sizable portion of rape claims are from women who regret having consensual sex or need to hide their act of cheating from their significant other by alleging they were raped instead. Then you have the smaller but still significant portion of \"rape victims\" who are simply making their story up to get vengeance on a man for one reason or another. Rape is the only crime society expects you to accept at face value as soon as allegations are made. That is not how the American legal system works: \"innocent until proven guilty.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c8j2k0", "title": "How far underwater do I have to go to be protected from sunburn?", "selftext": "Will a standard swimming pool's depth protect me from getting sunburned?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c8j2k0/how_far_underwater_do_i_have_to_go_to_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["esnt5ho"], "score": [7], "text": ["There are a variety of factors at play here. First, how easily do you sunburn? Second, how intense is the light that this your pool? Finally, how long will you be in the sun. Usually to get a sunburn you have to be in a certain intensity light for a certain amount of time. This is why it is important to put on sunscreen on a hot summer day. It might only take you 20 minutes to get a sunburn if you stand in direct sunlight. On a winter day however the sun might be less intense and partially blocked so the light that reaches you is only half as strong. In this scenario it might take 40 minutes or longer to burn so it is less critical for you to put on sunscreen.\n\nNow back to your primary question, the intensity of light tends to drop off fairly quickly as you sink down. light is about 73% as intense only a few centimeters under water and continues to drop off at 1 meter it is only about 44.5% as intense as at the surface. So, if you were at the bottom of a six foot deep swimming pool it would take you much longer to burn than if you were standing on dry ground. Check out this website for more information on light intensity fall off in water ([_URL_0_](_URL_1_))\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnother aside, If you are playing around at the surface level of the pool you will actually get burned faster because you have the direct sunlight that hits you and some that reflects off the surface of the pool and onto you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://oceansjsu.com/105d/exped\\_briny/13.html", "http://oceansjsu.com/105d/exped_briny/13.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1ih4wh", "title": "What would happen to superheated carbon in a vacuum or in an environment with no oxygen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ih4wh/what_would_happen_to_superheated_carbon_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb4fopm", "cb4gqe8"], "score": [3, 6], "text": ["Probably like any other thing, it would melt producing liquid carbon, or carbon gas.", "I might add that the Edison lightbulb was a carbon filament in a vacuum, heated electrically. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3rir90", "title": "During Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, the Persian Empire used Greek mercenaries as elite troops. Did mercenaries from the time have loyalties to things other than money? It seems that the Persians trusted them to not simply defect to the highest bidder.", "selftext": "It just seems strange that the Persians would trust Greek mercenaries to be elite, loyal troops when a \"mercenary\" can in theory be bought quite easily by someone wealthier, as Alexander eventually came to be. Yet according to Richard Freeman's biography, these Greek mercenaries fought for Persia until the end. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rir90/during_alexander_the_greats_conquest_of_persia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwognst", "cwpjkg0"], "score": [22, 2], "text": ["To answer your question, I think it's best to understand that not all Greek Mercenaries were the same, although it's fair to say regardless of if they were rowers or hoplites that money was the primary concern regardless of if you were working for the Athenians or the Persians.\n\nThere's actually a large sum of documentation from Commanders and those like Xenophon that speak of the supply-demand system that was in place. Basically, each army had to pay the best, to get the best (which makes sense). It also wasn't unheard of to sign contracts that would guarantee a ration of food along with your pay, which would, to an extent prevent you from deserting or betraying your employer (honor was definitely a big deal when it came to these people, they weren't like the characters you see in movies that will betray whoever for their cut of the reward)\n\nIt's rather important to take into consideration the motivations behind becoming a mercenary, obviously many had military training, and many sought wealth through what they perceived as the best way (they weren't inheriting wealth by any means). In essence, whether it was a large monthly wage, or the promise of land and power; people often chose to align themselves with the highest bidder.\n\nTo be fair, this isn't always the case, Trundle's book on Greek Mercenaries mentions Xenophon stating \"Prince Cyrus did so not from need, but from a belief in Cyrus\u2019 good qualities\nand his arete or nobility (Xen. An. 6.4.8; Parke 1933: 29; Roy 1967: 319)\" so it is fair to assume that although the reward was the immediate inspiration for joining a cause, mercenaries also had other things influencing their choice of employer.\n\nHere's a link to the online copy of the book I mentioned, it basically covers any and all questions regarding the topic of Greek Mercenaries:\n\n\n\n\n_URL_0_", "Forgot to post this.\n\nBesides what was already said, Alexander had just razed Thebes to the ground (except for Pindar's house) so its likely there were a lot of anti-Macedonian Thebans in the Persian forces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Trundle_2004_Greek_Mercenaries_From_the_Late_Archaic_Period_to_Alexander.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "2p01qz", "title": "why don't americans have the lowest medical costs in the world... is it a failure of the free market or government intervention or something else?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p01qz/eli5why_dont_americans_have_the_lowest_medical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cms36n9", "cms3dav", "cms4q5s", "cms5oqw", "cms7rla", "cms83tq", "cmscjh9"], "score": [15, 23, 5, 66, 10, 16, 11], "text": ["watch this [video](_URL_0_) it is probably the best explanation of what you are asking ive ever seen.", "It's a for-profit service that people literally can't live without.  That allows these providers to charge pretty much whatever the hell they want.  Example:  My wife gets admitted to the hospital for preterm labor.  She stays there for three months straight.  We have awesome insurance and our total cost was a $10 copay for 3 months of hospital care.  Then my daughter was born at 32 weeks.  She was in the NICU for 5 weeks.  During this whole time, nobody told us that the NICU doctors were on strike and not taking any insurance.  They try to bill us $200,000 for about a week of service (they went off strike during those 5 weeks).  We basically told them we wouldn't pay because the hospital was in network and nobody told us the NICU was any different.   After about 6 months of fighting and threatening lawsuits, they finally caved and we settled on $2,000.  I still shouldn't have paid but that $2,000 wasn't worth anymore time wasted.  We also settled on a minimum amount that had to be paid each month.  I think it was $50 per month.  The moral of the story is hospitals/insurance companies/etc can charge whatever the hell they want.  They are used to people not batting an eye at the costs.  If you fight them, you can win.  If more people fought them and their true costs were exposed, their prices wouldn't be so inflated.  And in case you are wondering, we paid the minimum (interest free) until it was paid off.  They would call us asking if we'd like to pay it off early.  \"You are an engineer and your wife is a scientist.  Surely you could pay it off by now\" they would say.  I'd respond with, \"of course we could pay it off.  But fuck you guys, that's why!\"", "Because other countries negotiate prices with medical suppliers. Medical companies even admit that Americans are charged more for their healthcare to offset the loss in profits made when other countries negotiate. ", "Back during World War II some regulations were put in place regarding wages and salaries.\n\nBut the short version is that a lot of companies over time started offering health insurance as part of the benefits package, essentially to pay workers more without actually increasing wages or salaries.\n\nOver time this became more and more the system, and now most people in the US get their healthcare from their job.\n\nNow, this doesn't have all negative consequences.  For instance, the reason people will still say: \"The United States has the best health care in the world, if you have insurance\" is because when you're on the company policy, in many cases when you get a heart-attack you're treated just the same as if your CEO had a heart attack.  Flown to Seattle, put in a fancy hospital with top-rate doctors and surgeons.  etc.\n\nAnd while the \"*if you have insurance* caveat seems like a real catch, it's actually not so horrible.  The \"chronically\" uninsured in the country only constituted about 12 million people in the country (pre-Obamacare).\n\n\nBut anyway -  one of the bad parts of this system is that it *separates payer of cost from receiver of services.*  It's really not even this system specifically, but the *\"full-coverage\"* style of the insurance that's common to the system.\n\nWe now have an ingrained 3-party payment system for our Healthcare.  It used to be that you go to the Dr. Office with a spranged ankle, and he says: *\"That's a spranged ankle.  Stay off it for 2 weeks.\"*   You pay him $50 and you go on your way.  But the Doctor is worried about being sued if it was something worse than a sprang, so he says: *\"I think it's just a sprang, but I'd like to do an MRI.\"* \n\nMRI's are covered by your insurance, so you say: \"Sure!\" and go get an MRI.  It doesn't cost you any extra.\n\nAnd then every doctor and every patient does this, and so insurance rates go up.  Rinse, lather, repeat.\n\nIt doesn't change how much you pay if you get no medical treatment or open-heart surgery.  Your doctor doesn't gain or lose customers for what he charges, because that's paid by the insurance company.  Your insurance company just sees you as one part of a company, so it doesn't target or charge you specifically.  The end result is that nobody has any direct incentive to be efficient about medical services, or demand lower rates.\n\nIt is very much worth noting that Lasik eye surgery, and cosmetic surgery, are not covered by most any form of insurance.  And they're the only medical procedures to *drop* drastically in price over the last two decades.\n\n\nIf you want medical costs to go down in a free market, you need to make sure that the signals money sends out get received by the actors making the decisions.  Higher deductibles and less-full coverage would make be cognizant, discriminating shoppers for the services, and you'd see prices drop as a result.  At the moment there is no competition or incentive to reduce costs by anybody.", "Here's an ELI5 answer: medical care is one of a handful of services that is NOT best provided by the free market. For the free market to work, you need a few conditions to be met, one of which is that people have the option to not use the good or service. The fact that, at some point, everyone needs healthcare creates various problems that mean the service is probably best provided by the public (government) rather than private sector. Although you can certainly create a mixed market, in which some parts are done by the private sector and some by public...", "Because we don't have \"free markets\" in the US. We have a corporate oligarchy where access is controlled through draconian regulation and under the table campaign contributions. ", "I work as a physician, currently in Canada, previously in the USA.  Also, the American healthcare system was the focus of my major in university.  I'll have troubles explaining like you're five, but anyway, here's my answer:\n\n1) The free market works well WHEN YOU ARE ABLE TO SHOP AROUND.  If you're looking for socks, you'll look for the best quality at the most reasonable price.  You can't do that with healthcare-- nobody at the hospital will be able to tell you how much your care costs until you get the bill.  Trust me-- patients have asked me how much a test costs, and I honestly don't have a clue.  You can't shop around, and hospitals know that, so there is no limit to what they charge their customers.  I've seen one patient charged $19.00 for a single Tylenol tablet, plus $7.00 \"nurse\" fee for bringing it to the patient, plus a $15.00 \"administration\" fee for the nurse having to get the tablet and water.\n\n2) There are many uninsured/underinsured Americans.  ERs, though, are required to treat everyone, regardless of insurance.  A person with no insurance gets treated, gets a bill for $10,000, the bill goes unpaid, the hospital gets stiffed.  So, the hospital makes up for it by \"cost-shifting\", and they charge more for the services that ARE usually paid for, things like colonoscopies (covered by insurance).  This drives health INSURANCE costs upwards.  So, costs become lower for everyone when everyone is insured.\n\n3) Someone else mentioned that doctors have to practice in such a way to avoid being sued, so we order tons of unnecessary tests.  I wouldn't agree.  Here in Canada, we're not nearly as worried about being sued, yet we still order tests in order to make sure we're not missing a more serious diagnosis.  Practicing medicine in the States vs Canada is really not that different.  The threat of being sued does not drive up healthcare costs as much as Republicans would like you to believe.  I say that because tort reform seems to be the Republican party's only idea for lowering healthcare costs, but it's virtually useless.\n\n4) Someone mentioned that government regulation drives prices up.  That's partially true, but keep in mind that the purpose of the government regulation is to avoid unethical practices.  For instance, the EMTALA law requires emergency rooms to treat people that come in, regardless of insurance.  Could you imagine what it would be like if they turned everyone away that had no insurance?  Very unethical.\n\n5) Americans have come to accept that healthcare is expensive and that there's nothing that can be done about it.  That's not true.  Many other nations (including Canada) are providing an equal or greater level of healthcare at less than half the cost.\n\n6) Many Americans (mostly older Americans) are still suffering from Cold War-era propaganda.  They are under the impression that anything socialised is the same as Communism, and therefore, socialization is evil.  Many Americans don't understand that the police force, public libraries, firehalls, public roads, and public schools are all socialized services.  They're funded by the government because they're viewed as necessary services.  Wouldn't it be terrible if your local police force would only protect people who paid a monthly premium?  Healthcare is considered (by many nations) to be a necessary service, which is why the government funds them.  This is the definition of socialism-- when the public (government) controls or funds an entity.  Many Americans are under the impression that once the government takes over healthcare, then healthcare will suffer.  We in Canada had that same debate about 40 years ago when considering to move to a public system, yet look at us now-- we would never go back to a market-based system.  \n\nHope some of those points made sense!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjGouBmo0M"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4omquy", "title": "why green laser pointers cost only a few dollars more than red laser pointer but green self-leveling laser levels cost hundreds of dollars more than their red counterparts", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4omquy/eli5_why_green_laser_pointers_cost_only_a_few/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4dz9bm", "d4dzf2n", "d4dzsvs", "d4e0yi8", "d4e1chy", "d4e1erl", "d4e2j3f", "d4e3a6v", "d4e3lkf", "d4e4r8x", "d4e9942", "d4eafb2", "d4edmek"], "score": [261, 20, 3, 3, 53, 16, 2, 2, 3, 6, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Not my answer but an answer I found on a forum from 2004.\n\n > In a 640nm red laser pointer, there's a red-emitting diode and a lens to collimate (focus) the beam. \n\n > In a 532nm green laser (pointer or larger size), there's a BIG infrared laser diode that generates laser light at 808nm, this is fired into a crystal containing the rare-earth element \"neodymium\". This crystal takes the 808nm infrared light and lases at 1064nm (yes, deeper in the infrared!). This 1064nm laser light comes out of the NdYV04 (neodymium yttrium vanadium oxide) crystal and is then shot into a second crystal (containing potassium, titanium,  & amp; phosphorus, usually called KTP) that doubles the frequency to 532nm - the bright green color you see. This light is then collimated (focused) by a lens and emerges out the laser's \"business end\". Just before the lens, there's a filter that removes any stray IR (infrared) rays from the pump diode and the neodymium crystal.\n\nBasically, with green diode laser pointers there are lots of itty bitty parts, and they all need to be aligned by hand. If the polarisation is \"off\", one or both crystals need to be turned. The overall process of making and the parts make the green one more expensive. With red diode lasers, you just slap in the diode and slap a lens in front of it, which makes it cheaper. \n\nYou can also see an image [here](_URL_0_) which more or less shows how the green laser pointer is more complex. ", "Because green lasers (532nm at least) are DPSS or diode pumped solid state, which means that they produce the laser beam by passing the original (1064nm) beam produced through a frequency doubling crystal, which, of course, hales the wavelength.   \n \nThis adds an additional component which must be in perfect alignment in any kind of precision equipment, which increases manufacturing costs.", "Maybe I can piggyback off the question. How come the only light blue laser I've seen had to be plugged into the wall unit? What makes the baby blue laser so much more powerful? Or should I say why does it need to be plugged into a wall. Note: my professor said he'd lose his job if he let anyone of us operate it. Said if he pointed it at a sheet of paper long enough it would ignite.", "Which specific models are you looking at? For example, the DeWalt 12V MAX line has a red and a green variant that look identical, but the green model comes with a 12V lithium ion battery and the red one doesn't.", "Hand held pointers are less precise, you dont have to worry too much about accuracy and overall beam thickness\n\nLeveling lasers require a high degree of accuracy, they must be straight, and the beam must stay focused and the same thickness over a long distance without fault. \n\nGreen lasers have a lot more going on inside them, they have a lot of tiny parts that all must be aligned properly or they will not correctly for the job of a leveling laser.\n\nRed lasers are fairly simple compared to a green laser, so there is less to go wrong when making one, and thus less effort is required to make one. ", "Well, because green lasers are more visible than red lasers, three or four times more visible. On the one hand, it's good to have a laser line that is more visible. But on the other hand, it requires much more expensive optics.\n\nIt's because of beam spread. Even laser beams spread over a distance. The greater the distance, the wider the spread. This is not a concern with laser pointers, but it is a serious concern with laser levels. Because a green laser is more visible, it is visible at a greater distance, and so the optics must be designed to minimize the beam spread. With a red laser, it's not so crucial because the line won't be visible out at the distance where the beam spread could cause problems.\n", "Your standard green laser is DPSS\nSo you hit a crystal with Infrared and it lases to about 1000nm due to electronic transition. The crystal has Neodymium ions which are fluorescent. \n\nSomething like your standard glow in the dark. You hit it with light, and it glows green. This one glows even deeper infrared.\n\nBut you do not want infrared. So this is sent to Potassium titanyl phosphate crystal, which is a frequency doubler\n\nThe problem is that this setup is useful only for low power stuff.\nSo this is used in cheap pointers. In 2012 the true green laser was commercially sold by Nichia and Osram. They can be high power, but cost much more than the older method.\n\n\n", "IDK but here's a nice one on AliExpress for $25 bucks. \n\n_URL_0_", "While other answers are correct in explaining the difference between red and green laser modules, it doesn't really have much to do with what you are asking.\n\nSince the price difference between modules can be really low (about a dollar) it really boils down to marketing and availability of parts. While you can indeed buy a complete green laser pointer for not much more than a dollar from China, finding a reliable supplier of cheap green laser modules can still be quite difficult. Try finding a line laser module and it becomes much more difficult already.\n\nFor such products it usually takes quite a long time for the price of cheap parts to reflect in the prices of end products.\n\n", "The real answer is because the green laser is easier to see and you need the leveller to make money.  Has nothing to do with wavelength or whatever other theorycrafting other people in this thread are coming up with.\n\nI knew a commercial and industrial painter once. Ran a small one or two man shop. A small proprietary washer for his paint spray machine was 50 dollars instead of 50 cents. Why?  Because he needs the professional spray machine to make money. That simple. Just a small steel washer. \n\nAnd you know what?  He bought it. A small piece of machined metal for 50 bucks. Because he needs it to make money, and he doesn't make money sitting at home. So he bought it. \n\n", "While everyone seems focused on the cost of the laser itself, really it's because of their accuracy. Even the cheapest green laser level will out perform a high end red. To level a 1000' diameter plane to within hundredths of inch is where most of the costs are.  \n\nSource: worked as a surveyor", "For reference, purple(Blu-ray) lasers are 405nm, common blue lasers are 445nm, direct diode green lasers are 520nm(First produced around 5 years ago), Diode pumped solid state(dpss) green lasers, the ones that use crystals, are 532nm, red lasers are 650nm and infrared lasers are 808nm.\n\nA diode pumped solid state green laser uses an 808nm laser diode and two different crystals to produce coherent green light. The first Crystal pushes the light further into the infrared too to produce light at 1064nm wavelength. The 2nd Crystal is a frequency doubling medium which cuts the wavelength in half, resulting in green light with a wavelength of 532nm.\n\nSelf levelling green lasers have been around much longer than direct diode green lasers have been around. So to answer OPs question, the more expensive self levelling green lasers that likely used dpss(crystals) green lasers are very difficult and time consuming to produce with any precision. \n\nA cheap green dpss laser pointer like this one:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nis thrown together as quickly as possible and the laser beam being emitted may be \"off\" by as much as 20\u00b0, and depending on the quality control of the manufacturer, could be the size of a tennis ball at 100 feet. This is called poor divergence.\n\nFor a high quality and precise green dpss laser, it would take higher quality lenses and crystals, and it would have to be tuned and calibrated manually by the manufacturer in order to produce a laser beam that is aligned properly and doesn't expand(diverge) too much.\n\nDirect diode green lasers are coming down in price, so the price of red versus green self levelling lasers could even out in the next few years, but likely won't because of greed.\n\n", "The cheapest red laser pointer I can find on ebay is $0.99, the cheapest green is $3.29. \n\nThe dewalt DW088LR red laser level is $199.00\n\nThe dewalt DW088LG green level is $349.00\n\nWhat OP is likely seeing is actually overpriced red laser pointers."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/additional/large/green-laser-compare.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.aliexpress.com/item/8mm-532nm-DPSS-1mW-APC-Control-Green-Laser-Module-With-PD-Laser-Sight/32570633084.html?spm=2114.30010308.3.19.dClsmO&amp;ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_0,searchweb201602_2_10037_10017_507_10032,searchweb201603_2&amp;btsid=c5d54852-fd2e-41a5-b405-80b8350edd08"], [], [], [], ["http://www.dx.com/p/true-green-laser-pen-5mw-91"], []]}
{"q_id": "7zk22i", "title": "why does it seem like getting pregnant on purpose is hard, while accidentally getting pregnant is easy?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zk22i/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_getting_pregnant_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duol3ov", "duol4ww", "duola09", "duom4ic", "duomo4f"], "score": [11, 20, 7, 4, 2], "text": ["This is confirmation bias. People tell horror stories of acidentally getting pregnant so you remember them, the same as people trying to get pregnant and then it not working. The run of the mill is forgotten.", "Getting pregnant on purpose is super easy, unless it's not. Almost 90% of women have no problem getting pregnant, but for the other 10%, it's a very stressful thing, so that 10% gets a lot more sympathy and coverage.", "There's a bias here, I can't recall which one.  For the same reason that we tend to remember bad things that happen, and feel like they happen all the time, but have a hard time remembering good things.  Almost like we take them for granted.  \nEffectively, every failed attempt seems like it's EVERY TIME, LIFE IS SO AWFUL.\n\nThe other side of that coin is \"The ONE time we didn't use protection...\"\nRealistically, these people probably choose to forget about the other bad decisions/times they 'forgot' to use protection. \n\nThe odds are the same given the same 2 people, you just take note of strongly undesirable outcomes.  ", "Aside from what everyone else has stated about confirmation bias, we also think that this happens more than it does because of movies and television.\n\nA couple trying to get pregnant and cannot or an accidental pregnancy are both interesting plot devises that the overwhelming majority of people can connect with. A couple wanting to have a kid... and then getting pregnant, is just kind of boring.", "Confirmation bias. Those complaining are people who have slept around / not taken precautions etc. Those who try are trying because it isn't easy. Every human complains about everything that isn't easy I suppose."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "qtz2m", "title": "if matter cannot be created or destroyed... how do trees form?", "selftext": "Just wondering", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qtz2m/eli5_if_matter_cannot_be_created_or_destroyed_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c40fc9d", "c40fe80", "c40gpkk"], "score": [35, 6, 5], "text": ["Say you have a box of Legos with 500 pieces. With those 500 pieces, you build a bulldozer. Then one day, you decide to rearrange those pieces from a bulldozer to a monster truck. It's still the same 500 pieces, just in a different layout.\n\nThis is how trees are formed. The matter is just rearranged from other objects. Soil, nutrients, water, and even air. This is called \"Conservation of Mass.\"\n\nEDIT: added air. Thanks. :)", "Basically, the tree absorbs the matter from the air (Carbon Dioxide) and the ground (Water), then changes that via chemical reaction (caused by light particles, or photons) into a chemical energy battery of sorts (sugar) and the air we breathe (Oxygen).  It expels the latter, but holds onto the former.  Throw in the standard nutrients from the soil it also absorbs, and you can see that a tree is basically the sum of months and/or years of absorption from the nearby environment.\n\nNeed further explanation?  Comment here, and I will try to go into more detail on whatever subject you aren't sure about.", "a mommy tree and a daddy tree fall in love and the daddy tree rubs the flowers on the mommy tree and then she grows big succulent fruits on her arms and then the babies fall on the ground and sink into the dirt and when it rains wherever the baby trees are buried big trees will grow up"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cnnjj", "title": "why is human resources (hr) not an independent and objective unit reporting directly to board (like internal audit), in order to be pro-employee instead of pro-company", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cnnjj/eli5_why_is_human_resources_hr_not_an_independent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxgadui", "dxgaeil", "dxgag7n", "dxgagek", "dxgagf9", "dxgare1", "dxgauye", "dxgftds", "dxggfl1", "dxggsu0"], "score": [9, 4, 4, 19, 6, 25, 11, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You're kind of answering your own question in a way. If we're being cynical, it wouldn't make sense for a company to pay HR to do their job in a way that doesn't benefit them, but the employees.", "Because HRs job is to be pro company and keep the company from getting sued while also acquiring bodies at the cheapest price. \n\nWhy would companies give a toot (eli5) about being pro employee?", "The answer's in the name. Companies think of employees as a resource, and HR exists to manage that resource. HR can deal with some issues that employees have, but they exist for the sake of the company.", "Who says HR is supposed to be pro-employee? Its basic function is to handle everything that has to do with the workforce. They do their job within the framework of the law and the rules of the company. \n\nMaking it an independent unit wouldn't affect their job. It's the people working there that make the difference, not so much the org structure", "Because the Human Resources department in a company is set up by and paid for by the company. The company isn't going to pay for a department full of employees that aren't pro\\-company. \n\nA smart business will release that being pro\\-employee more often than not benefits the company and is also pro\\-company \\- but this isn't a requirement and is often not the approach businesses take.\n\nIf you are looking for an unit that is pro\\-employee you are thinking of a Union which is paid for by employees \\(by way on union dues\\). ", "HR is supposed to be pro-company. The entire purpose of HR is to hire and retain the employees that will bring the most value for the company.\n\nIf you are looking for some group whose primary focus is the benefit of the employees, and not the company, the organization you're thinking of is called a union.", "What you\u2019re describing is a union. A union\u2019s role is to represent the workers\u2019 best interests in dealing with the employer. HR\u2019s job is to manage company resources of the human kind, just as somebody my manage company assets or inventory.", "HR is not about being pro-employee. It is about preventing the company from being subject to lawsuit, and weeding out problem employees from the work force so that production/efficiency goes up. Any benefit to the employee is purely coincidental. \n\nThe function you are wanting is covered by OSHA governmental agency for safety concerns, and Unions for quality of life concerns. ", "Human Resources departments exist for the company, not the employee. Many people make that mistake, to their detriment.\n\nEdit for typo", "HR is Human Resources. In other words managing humans as a resource. They are NOT here for the employee, though they take care of employee needs. Ultimately they are a part of the company that defends the company not the employee.\n\nUnions are the thing you're thinking of. Unions are there FOR the employees, paid by the employees, work for the employee's benefits, etc."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5x51wd", "title": "why do britain and other english empire countries still bow to monarchs? what real purpose does the queen serve?", "selftext": "I just read the entire Wikipedia entry on Elizabeth's reign, and it seems like she does almost nothing at all.   She goes on tours, gives speeches, holds dinners, and gives her opinion on certain matters.   Of her accomplishments, the only things I can find read like \"The Queen's composure and skill in controlling her mount were widely praised.\" Or \"the Queen's \"calmness and courage in the face of the violence\" was noted.\"  \n\nTo me, an American, it seems ridiculous that anyone would respect such a person.  Nonetheless, when I make fun of her on Reddit, lots of people rush to Elizabeth's defense.  They seem very offended.  I suppose she is a symbol for their culture, but why?   Her office is completely unnecessary.  Is it just because they don't want to change the old ways?   Is there more to it than that?  I just don't get what all the fuss is about.  To me, she is an old bat in a silly hat.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x51wd/eli5_why_do_britain_and_other_english_empire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["def9yu8", "defa09d", "defbvy5", "defcoxz", "deffuy4", "defn592", "defocda", "defpb34", "defswwx"], "score": [15, 11, 36, 6, 5, 9, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["She's like a living historical monument to all of the monarchs that have ruled before her. You also have to remember that the monarchy creates an additional \u00a3300 million/year for the UK. Maintaining the monarchy costs the UK about \u00a350 million/year, BUT because of a hundreds of years old agreement, the monarchy owns land that it lets the UK government collect rent on to the tune of about \u00a3350 million/year.", "Probably because of the following: \n\n\"The monarch and his or her immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to non-partisan functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the Prime Minister. The monarch is, by tradition, commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces. Though the ultimate formal executive authority over the government of the United Kingdom is still by and through the monarch's royal prerogative, these powers may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent.\"\n\n[Sauce](_URL_0_)", "The monarch is head of state, as opposed to head of government (that would be the Prime Minister); in European republics, the monarch is usually replaced by a President, who may have more definite powers and is either directly or indirectly elected.\n\nThe head of state basically represents the country, while the head of government sets the broad agenda for the legislature and also chairs the cabinet. The US President effectively combines the roles of head of state and head of government, which is sometimes problematic in terms of diplomacy: a recent petition (signed by 1.8 million people) called on the government not to accord President Trump the honour of a full state visit due to controversies surrounding his conduct as head of government.\n\nIn the last few centuries, the role of monarch has declined, and since Victoria has kept out of party politics altogether -- in public, that is. In private, she has regular audiences with the Prime Minister in which they talk of matters of state.\n\nIn theory, the most important role the British monarch has is to ensure good governance, but it's unclear how much she can actually do to that end. It's also unclear just how much influence she does have on government policy, since the details of her meetings with the PM are confidential. It is known that Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative, once complained that if the queen could vote, she would vote Liberal Democrat. The murky nature of her exact role, given that she is unelected and accountable only to constitutional law (whatever that may be on a given day), obviously makes a lot of people nervous. On the other hand, given her very long reign (her first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill), her experience may well be extremely useful.\n\nDiplomatically, she performs a role that is arguably very important. As head of state, she meets other heads of states, and that certainly helps to oil the complex machinery of international relations. It may be helpful that, since she is a hereditary monarch, she doesn't have to toe the party line or keep one eye on her approval ratings.", "[Australia had a government shutdown once. In the end, the queen fired everyone in Parliament.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt's her royal prerogative as head of state to dissolve Parliament if it's in that country's greater interest.\n\nIt's the ultimate in checks and balances / separation of power.", "It is all ceremony and tradition, a way to keep in touch with the grand thousand year history that has revolved around the British Monarchy.  The British follow royalty like Americans follow Kardashians, there doesn't have to be much point to it.\n\nThe monarchy exerts almost no real political power, and should it try to exert what little powers it had against a Commonwealth member's wishes, the country would almost certainly leave the Commonwealth.\n\nIn practical terms, the monarchy is a significant tourist draw, and by some analyses, it pays for itself.\n\n", "She had a lot of diplomatic duties. She meets with foreign leaders and dictates broad policy. The Queen is basically the face of Britain. She represents her country in the global scale. \n\nShe also has religious duties as the head of the Church of England. \n\nAnd she has the public eye. She's basically the world's most famous celebrity. It's a power that can be used to a very strong effect if done right. Like if the British Parliment decides to pass a law she strongly objects to, all she has to do is say something. She can't legally stop it, but she is respected enough that going against her wishes would cause a massive public backlash. So she can use this to subtly influence policy by persuading voters to weigh in on things she wants done or undone.", "I'll take Sweden as an example.\nOur king has no real power. He serves only a purpose of representing the country. In the constitution, he is referred to as \"ceremonial power\", to give you an idea. So I guess it's more of a patriotic thing, that honnoring the monarchy is like honoring the history of the country.\nThe only real power he has is to accept the letters of credence (basically authorising the ambassador to be in the country for a diplomatic purpose) from foreign ambassadors coming to Sweden, meaning that in theory he could refuse a person coming for diplomatic purposes to stay in the country.", "In simplest terms, here's the British Public's relationship with the Queen: We agree to do whatever she says, as long as she agrees to never actually tell us to do anything. \n\nAs for what actual role the Monarchy actually performs, the Queen is a figurehead, similar to an Ambassador. If a world leader visits the UK and is invited to an audience with the Queen, it's a show of respect. \n\nThe other part is basically tradition. they're a huge tourist draw and a merchandising empire. They generate about \u00a3500m a year for the UK through tourism alone. \n\n", "The Queen of Canada (which is separate to her role in the other Realms) is the living embodiment of the Canadian state; politically neutral and a vital check and balance in our parliamentary system of government. The fact that check and balance is practically ceremonial in present day is testament to the stability of Canadian democracy. \n\nRead more here if you're interested in the way the Monarchy in Canada works (especially considering most will respond about the Queen's role in her British realm). \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_United_Kingdom"], [], ["https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/01/australia-had-a-government-shutdown-once-it-ended-with-the-queen-firing-everyone-in-parliament/?utm_term=.b79d4b07eb65"], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada"]]}
{"q_id": "2blkui", "title": "has there been an increase in the number of plane crashes lately or is reporting on them just a new media craze?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2blkui/eli5_has_there_been_an_increase_in_the_number_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj6ho7u", "cj6hznn", "cj6i1v9", "cj6i5o2", "cj6imhg", "cj6pzz8"], "score": [2, 24, 11, 5, 21, 2], "text": ["24 Hour News Cycles mean that anything anywhere at anytime gets reported.\n\nAlso add in the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and all of the other resources News Orgs. now have... yeah its just media craze. They have lots of airtime to fill and the resources to find things to fill it.", "Depends on what you define as lately. There haven't been many plane crashes with high fatalities the last couple of years so compared with 2013 and 2012, 2014 is looking to be a bad year. The number of plane crashes isn't higher than 2013, 2012 though, it is just that there have been a few crashes with a lot of fatalities. \n\nIf you go back to 2000 or earlier there were a lot more plane crashes and a lot more fatalities. Statistically speaking the risk of a plane crash have only gone down in recent years.\n\n_URL_0_", "Plane crashes are random events, and like all random events, they sometimes happen in clusters.", "_URL_0_\n\nAverage number of plane crashes per year is about 18*, although it's been going down since 1960. There have been 6 such incidents this year, including this Algerian plane as the latest one.\n\nThat's a year-to-date record of about 1 a month, so by now 2014 has been more dangerous than 2013, but even if the year ends with a dozen incidents that's still about average for the 2000s\n\n(Using the above website's criteria of any flight with more than 18 passengers)", "Looks like you have some good stats here on crashes, so keep this in mind. Whenever a big event happens (Shooting, Plane Crash, etc) that is bound to happen again the news tends to pickup and report more aggressively on recurrences. The Algerian plane today wouldn't have been such big news if it weren't for the two recent Malaysian flight issues. \n\nThis happens after every mass shooting in America, you see reports of violent crimes involving guns being reported with the slant of a mass shooting, even if it's regular everyday violence. That's just my 2 cents.", "The media latches onto topics that garner attention. Mass school shooting? Well, we better report 35 other violent school related conflicts because that gets attention. It's the same with airplanes. One airline crash got a ton of viewers, so constantly airing more feeds the fire. It may not be happening more frequently than normal, but it is certainly reported more.\n\nThere are tons of accidents involving planes, guns, automobiles, and other things everyday that go unnoticed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-planes-crash-every-year-how-many-people-die-plane-crashes-chart-1560554"], [], ["http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5w4c4k", "title": "if i am being asked questions by the police in a station and say \"i want to see my lawyer\". do i have to have a lawyer already or am i asking to be appointed one?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w4c4k/eli5_if_i_am_being_asked_questions_by_the_police/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de76swo", "de78br7", "de78ezi", "de7aaxe", "de7bi05", "de7chej", "de7cx7q", "de7da29", "de7el3y", "de7mvgv", "de7ncmr", "de7nxuj", "de7rgsz", "de7sqog", "de7tg6f", "de7yx2z"], "score": [5, 31, 96, 86, 9, 123, 9, 848, 405, 11, 23, 20, 7, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["How does this change from country to country? (I'm in the UK) \n\nEdit: looks like I need to clear up, this isn't my post :P thanks guys", "This only applies in the US: If you say some variation of \"I'm remaining silent and want to see my lawyer\" (the remaining silent part is key), that's the signal that the cops can no longer question you without a lawyer present. If you have one already you will be allowed to contact them. If not or if you need a public defender, you will also be allowed to arrange that. If you need a public defender you have to ask for one.\n\nPro tip: NEVER talk to cops regardless of whether you're just being questioned or are under arrest. Even if you think whatever you have to say will clear you. Cops are trained to twist anything you say into a reason to investigate you further or to use as evidence against you. Keep your mouth shut until you have a lawyer by your side.", "If you're in police custody you get a phone call to arrange an attorney. If it's a busy precinct there might be a defense attorney walking around that will talk to you, briefly, but won't give you much help unless you pay. You are usually only entitled to a public defender once you've been charged with a felony and you can be detained for up to 72 hours without being charged. \n\nIf you are suspected of a crime or are in custody, never, ever talk to police without an attorney present. If you have been charged with a felony, never, ever use a public defender. ", "This only matters if your in custody. Simply ask \"am I free to go?\" If the answer is yes, then leave and get an attorney.  If the answer is no. Say \"I refuse to answer any questions, without a lawyer\" \n\nThey should have read you the Miranda rights at this point.  Which is another opportunity to say you won't answer. \n\nA lawyer will not be appointed unless you are charged,  which you may ask.  If so.  Ask the court in relation to your case for an attorney. \n\nSource:  am a police officer", "Don't matter, the questions stop and you are available to get either counsel.  The thing is you are still jailed until that is all plays out.", "The following should only be interpreted to apply in Canada (in case the various \"In Canada,\" qualifications weren't enough)\n\nIn Canada, if you've been detained by Police and you invoke your right to a lawyer, the Police are obligated to \"immediately\" (which in application, generally means \"as soon as possible in the circumstances\") provide you a reasonable oppurtunity to contact counsel.\n\nImportantly, they're bound to hold off on questioning you further until you've been afforded this oppurtunity, barring exceptional exigent circumstances and investigative necessity.\n\nIf you're detained at a police station, this usually means the Police will place you in a designated private phone room with a phone book (sometimes ipads/tablets these days depending on the station). \n\nIn Canada, Police are also obligated to provide you with phone numbers for duty counsel, who are free on-call lawyers who provide limited immediate advice relevant to the circumstances of your arrest. Depending on what province you're in, this may be a \"1-800\" 24/7 hotline number or a list of lawyers which ought to be provided to you by police.\n\nDepending on the time of your arrest, you may be on hold for anywhere from 10 to 20 or more minutes trying to get through to duty counsel, due to wait time on a 1 800 number or non-response from listed roster numbers. If you do not wish to waive your right, its important you are diligent and patient and stay on the line/keep calling numbers. \n\nCutting myself off before this verges into legal advice territory, if you do not understand your right to counsel, or wish to speak to a lawyer but are having difficulty getting in contact with one despite your best efforts, its important to communicate that to police in unequivocal terms. The police are not expected to read your mind, but where its clearly known to them that someone doesn't understand their rights or is having difficulty excercising those rights,  they are generally bound to make further reasonable efforts to discharge their informational and implementational duties under 10(b) of the Charter.\n\nThis may not make a difference in whether you're charged or not, but it can make a huge difference when you actually retain a lawyer to defend you on those charges.\n", "Interview stops immediately. You are \nEither released if only detained or booked into jail where you can call your lawyer. If you don't have one yet, judge will appoint one for you at your arraignment hearing. Jail will let you call if you want to hire one from within the jail.", "If you are not being formally charged you will get released where you can retain your own lawyer or go to the public defender's office (or equivalent).\n\nIf you *are* being charged, you will get booked into jail. The phones are free to use until you get assigned a cell. You can try to find a free lawyer at this time but good luck, most require a judge's approval to become your court-appointed attorney, this phone call is usually to call family and bond companies to try and get bailed out of jail.\n\nOnce you go to a cell it's usually a temporary dorm until you go before a judge. If it's a misdemeanor charge you will see a judge pretty soon, if it's a felony, it can take up to 72 hours to see one. This is the point where you can request a court-appointed attorney, signing paperwork that basically says you can't afford an attorney.\n\nAfter this, if you haven't been bailed out of jail yet, you will probably get moved to permanent classification; another dorm.\n\n1 week - 1 month later (or longer) you will get mail delivered to your cell that has your court-appointed attorney's name, info, etc. If you have a felony charge and cannot bail out of jail, you will have to wait to be indicted (typically by a grand jury) to know when your pre-trial court date is. This can take anywhere from months to almost 2 years. I was in with a guy waiting to be indicted for 22 months.", "In the US, saying \"I want my lawyer\" is equivalent to saying \"I wish to assert my right to have an attorney present\".  Once you do that, the police have to stop questioning you whether you actually have a lawyer or not.  \n\nAt that point, they may choose to charge you with a crime, and that's when you have to worry about finding an actual lawyer.\n", "Quick tip.  If you are ever being questioned by the police at the headquarters do not talk to them until talking to a lawyer.  Keep your mouth shut.  Police are experts at twisting your words and getting false confessions out of you by threatening you.  They will say shit like.  \"We can help you if you just talk to us.\"   \"If you dont cooperate then things will only get worse for you.\"  And, \"we just want to help get this cleared up so you can go home\".  All bullshit.  Never say anything.  Don't let them record you.  If you are getting arrested shut your mouth and don't say shit.  95% of convictions are based off of shit people say whIle they are getting arrested.  They do not have to read you your miranda rights to hold what you say against.   Never talk to cops unless you have a lawyer.  Don't let them trick you into saying anything.", "Short answer: you do not have to have an already retained lawyer to use this, but you are not actually asking for an appointment either.\n\nIn the US, the phrase, \"I'd like to talk to my attorney before we go any further,\" invokes your Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Police can no longer question you, and answers they elicit out of you can be excluded from evidence on the basis of a constitutional violation. BUT - you can waive your Sixth Amendment protections by volunteering information after you have requested to speak to an attorney.\n\nOnce you have invoked your Sixth Amendment right, it is up to you to call an attorney. If you don't already have an attorney, you can ask for a phone book. You can also call your spouse/mom/friend etc to secure an attorney for you. If you cannot afford an attorney, you can look for a pro bono (free) attorney, but that is unlikely. Otherwise, you must wait to be before the judge to ask for an appointed attorney. If you can afford it, you may be able to bond out before that.\n\nIf the police are not charging you with anything, you can always ask, \"I am under detention right now?\" if the answer is no, then you are free to leave.", "I will speak from an Australian perspective. Here in NSW, at least for Indigenous Australians, police are required by law to call the 'Custody Notification Service', which puts you in touch with a lawyer once you are arrested, but *before* police ask to interview you. We [lawyers] ask certain questions of the police - the nature of the charges, whether the person is likely to be granted or refused police bail, and if refused police bail which court they will be attending. We then speak to the person charged and give them certain advice and answer any questions they may have at this point. Another law requires people refused bail to be brought before court as soon as possible - so on the weekend that is something called a Registrar, and during the week a Magistrate (a Judge in the lower-courts). We will have a lawyer there ready to represent them at their first court appearance.\nFor non-indigenous Australians, the system operates largely the same. If unrepresented at their first court appearance, the Magistrate will typically ask if the person would like a lawyer, at which point they can apply for a 'grant' (representation) from Legal Aid, a publicly funded defence-lawyer service.", "Just a side note - I know you always see cops on television shows try to convince a person that if lawyers become involved, they can't work any deals with you. Do not listen to this! Police officers do not have the authority to offer you a deal on a case - deals are worked out between your attorney and the district attorney's office. The DAs don't care if you wouldn't answer questions until you had a lawyer; they just want to move the case along and count plea deals as a win because there is, in fact, a guilty plea (which is how they boost their success rate so high). \n\n*DISCLAIMER: In some jurisdictions, police officers handle the prosecution of traffic violations and act in the same role as a district attorney. If they tell you won't get a deal if you use an attorney, they could be telling the truth because they have the authority to offer plea deals. However, most of them don't have the time to take every case to trial so they will throw the defense attorney an offer if it means being able to conclude the case without further effort on their part. ", "You do not need a personal solicitor. The state will appoint one for you for free. In Australia we call them legal aids and I would probably be in gaol if not for this service. Courts use a different language to what you and I use on the street. I'm not sure why, but that is the correct spelling for gaol in Australia. US spell checkers always want to change it to goal. ", "First and foremost if you are not being detained and you are not under arrest or being charged with a crime do not answer any questions with or without a lawyer. \n\nIf you are legally required to answer questions they will have to wait until YOUR lawyer gets there but it will be in your time", "People convict themselves all the time by talking to the police. You have the right to remain silent. I maintain you have the duty to self not to talk to police. There is nothing favorable that can come of it for you. Any attorney worth his salt will tell you to remain silent. You cannot talk your way out of being charged. Let your eventual attorney start with a clean slate. This goes double if you know you are guilty of something."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28kzgh", "title": "What is the most likely candidate for being the \"House of the Rising Sun\" in 19th century New Orleans described in the song of the same title?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28kzgh/what_is_the_most_likely_candidate_for_being_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cic2tyn"], "score": [17], "text": ["There's not really any way to be sure, the claim has been made of several establishments, but since the lyrics are so vague, with multiple versions coexisting, and the song's author(s) is/are unknown there's no way to compare the claims. It's also possible that it doesn't refer to a real place at all. 'Rising sun' could have been jargon for 'gambling house', 'brothel' etc. The type of place where punters are up all night  to get lucky and so see the sun rising in the morning. \n\nWe can approximate the origins of the lyrics from the earliest citations  - 1930s in the American South, but that's about it \n\nI recommend reading the article I've linked below as it gives details on the possible claimants and the origins of the song, many folklorists attribute the tune to an Old English folk song 'Matty Groves' which dates to the 17th c. or earlier.  \n\n_URL_0_ "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A12460772"]]}
{"q_id": "87qvch", "title": "What methods have been suggested to directly observe right handed neutrinos?", "selftext": "If they don't interact through Standard Model interactions, how can we ever directly observe them? And if we can't, how do we know that they exist? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/87qvch/what_methods_have_been_suggested_to_directly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwfeold"], "score": [3], "text": [" >  If they don't interact through Standard Model interactions, how can we ever directly observe them?\n\nWe can observe them if that part of the Standard model is wrong.\n\n >  And if we can't, how do we know that they exist?\n\nWe don't know that they exist. If our everyday low-energy neutrinos are Majorana fermions, then there are no missing neutrinos at low energy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "blj3w1", "title": "I recently learned that some insects release a pheremone when they're killed that attracts other insects to their corpse. What is the reason for this? Wouldn't it make more sense to release a chemical than warns of danger?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/blj3w1/i_recently_learned_that_some_insects_release_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["empwx37", "emqwlcc"], "score": [8, 4], "text": ["Ants for example have a graveyard where all the dead ants go. When an ant dies, it releases a pheromone which attracts other ants, who bring the dead ant to the graveyard. I assume having all dead ants, some of them probably dangerous because of infectious diseases, in one place that the ants never visit except to bring more dead ants, is less of a risk than having the corpses lie around where they died and have fungi and bacteria grow on them and attract predators.", "_URL_0_\n\nIn the case of wasps, if one wasp has been killed the killer may well pose a risk to the whole hive. It's to the hive's advantage to be proactively defensive, and the pheromone marks the potential enemy - rather in the way explosive dye capsules can be used to mark thieves/stolen items."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://phys.org/news/2015-12-arms-social-wasps-alarm-pheromones.html"]]}
{"q_id": "pc7au", "title": "Why can't some people do the Vulcan salute?", "selftext": "For some people, it is quite literally impossible to do. For example, Zachary Quinto had to have his fingers [glued](_URL_0_) together to do it in Star Trek. \n\nIs there some difference in hand muscle development or coordination that some people lack? Did they never develop some motor pathway in the brain that prevents them from doing so?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pc7au/why_cant_some_people_do_the_vulcan_salute/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3oc978"], "score": [3], "text": ["Fun fact: the \"Vulcan salute\" is actually an old [Jewish blessing](_URL_0_).  It's called the Birkat Kohanim (Priestly Blessing) and is normally done with both hands.  Leonard Nimoy is from a Jewish family, and he thought that the action looked suitably mysterious to be part of Vulcan culture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1179850/To-boldly-glue-Vulcan-glued-New-Spock-needed-helping-hand-pull-THAT-salute.html"], "answers_urls": [["en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_Blessing"]]}
{"q_id": "17np3i", "title": "Does the average person think s/he is smarter than the average person?", "selftext": "...much like the average person thinks s/he is more attractive than they actually are (from a study I've read on here before). \n\n\nSeems like the more people I meet, the more I realize how many ignorant fools think that they're more informed/intelligent/cultured than the great majority, when they usually aren't. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17np3i/does_the_average_person_think_she_is_smarter_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c878coh", "c87hi10"], "score": [7, 5], "text": ["Yes! It's called the [Dunning-Kruger effect](_URL_0_).", "Im on the phone right now, so I can't look up the article. But they once held a study in which people were asked to rate their intelligence and whether or not they were above average. Afterwards they were told almost everyone claimed to be above average and explained how this was impossible. Then, they offered subjects the opportunity to change their answers. Surprisingly, close to none actually thought they were at fault, just the rest of the study.\n\nI'll see if i can dig up a link later"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect"], []]}
{"q_id": "30r2pr", "title": "Would asteroids be classified as an igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary rock?", "selftext": "I've been pondering this for a little while, as I never really understood how they formed. Might be a silly question but I'm a bit curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/30r2pr/would_asteroids_be_classified_as_an_igneous/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpvk252", "cpvnt66"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["They would be classified as igneous if anything I think. They are definitely not sedimentary since they are not the product of depositional environments. They haven't undergone metamorphosis(heat and pressure) so they wouldn't be metamorphic. They would therefore be most closely related to perhaps an igneous breccia. I say this because they are mostly composed of fragments of solidified magma.\n\nAlthough using the 3 rock types for earth based rocks seems nonsensical for asteroids in a way. Asteroids are formed through unique processes compared to terrestrial rocks. They are formed by the conglomeration of cooled magmatic fragments. So in a sense they could fall into sedimentary rocks and perhaps metamorphic if the conditions permit.\n\nA more experienced geologist may be able to comment, but in my opinion trying to associate processes which are defined for earth's conditions and translate them to space based processes doesn't necessarily work.", "Just a guess from me on this . . . \n\n\n\n1. It depends on the source of the rock if you are asking about method of formation.\n\n2. If you are asking about appearance(when we find a chunk as a  meteorite on earth), many will appear like volcanic because they have been subject to extreme heat and pressure from landing and impact.\n\nLet's consider some situations . . . \n\n\n  An asteroid collects space dust over time because of either collision or gravitational attraction - this might look like sedimentary but without any evidence of high pressure compaction. \n\n  A comet collects ice and dust while it is far from the sun, but boils off water and possibly melts rock as it approaches the sun.  This might appear as igneous or even metamorphic.\n\n\n[This](_URL_0_) is really quite good."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Asteroids_Structure_and_composition_of_asteroids"]]}
{"q_id": "494n5h", "title": "Why can't an object escape a black hole if it's thrown in with a starting velocity?", "selftext": "Shouldn't the object get faster, pass the event horizon, make a sort of swing by, and leave the black hole again? (Assuming there is no friction).", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/494n5h/why_cant_an_object_escape_a_black_hole_if_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0p4xhx", "d0pc418"], "score": [12, 2], "text": ["This is a really fun question! Classically, it should be always true that you can slingshot around objects as long as you have a little angular momentum. The less kinetic energy you have, the closer you get to the attractive core before the slingshot happens. The \"effective potential\" looks like this,  \n\n > V*_eff_* = - a/r + b/r^2  \n\nThe first term is our normal inverse radial attraction which applies to Newtonian gravity and the Coulomb force between opposite charges. The second term is the angular momentum. We find that it is conserved and that it effectively \"repels\" objects. The farther away you want to be \"repelled,\" the more angular momentum you need. You can tell what kinetic energy you need by reading this chart,  \n\n* _URL_1_  \n\nSpecifically, pick energies which touch the curve. It is bounded from below, so there is a restriction on the negative energy you can have. If the energy is negative, you have an orbit of some form which loops back on itself. Otherwise, the particle will always bounce off and slingshot as it gets close to the attractive core.\n\nHowever, if your angular momentum is zero and your energy is just in the radial direction, all solutions coming towards the attractive core terminate at the singularity r=0. You can see the dashed curve. No matter what positive energy you have, you'll never bounce off the curve.\n\nThis described behavior is not true for black holes. Let's take a Schwarzschild black hole which has no charge and does not spin. It also have an effective potential, which looks like this,  \n\n > V*_eff_* = - b/r + a/r^2 - c/r^3\n\nWe have a new term which appears in the effective potential energy which mixes the gravitational attraction and the angular momentum. This curve looks quite different from the previous one,  \n\n* _URL_0_\n\nWe're interested in the red curve versus the dashed curve on this plot. The dashed plot is the Newtonian effective potential and the red curve is the general relativistic effective potential. There's no approximation here either, this is an exact result. Suspiciously the equation kind of looks like the Newtonian kinetic energy,  \n\n >  T = E - V\n\nExcept notice that it is the square of the energy which matters. If you are familiar with the relativistic limit you'd know that this comes from the transition between momentum-squared p^(2) in Newtonian dynamics to just momentum p in relativistic dynamics. To see this, just plot x^(2)+1, x and \u221a(x^(2)+1) and look where the limits agree. Anyway, this is a side note, let's get back to orbits. How come you can't always slingshot around black holes?\n\nUnlike the Newtonian curve, the new red curve shows the potential energy dropping to negative infinite *irrespective* of your angular momentum. If you solve the equation, you'll see that past the event horizon, the potential must always fall. There is no repulsive behavior\u2014the attraction dominates.\n\nYou can see that for further distances, the red curve behaves similarly to the Newtonian curve and it has the familiar set of orbits as before. But we have new orbits such as a second circular orbit, but it is unstable, you either get flung out or you fall in which you can tell because it is a maximum and not a minimum. Another way to state this is that there is a limited range of \"slingshot\" trajectories unlike the Newtonian case where it was unbounded for positive energies.\n\nSimply put, once you are within the event horizon, you are doomed. There is no escape. All inward trajectories terminate on the singularity r=0, even if you have angular momentum.", "If this was Newtonian physics, yes. The problem here isn't that there's a large force on the object pulling it towards the singularity. It's that spacetime is bent so much that the future points towards the singularity. Staying the same distance from the singularity involves moving faster than the speed of light, which is impossible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://i.imgur.com/TvRAzVM.png", "https://i.stack.imgur.com/0KSs0.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "olaax", "title": "how come some films that were made 20 years ago are now available on blu-ray?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/olaax/how_come_some_films_that_were_made_20_years_ago/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3i6zqy", "c3i7kyt", "c3i7nqv", "c3i8dby", "c3i9ti8"], "score": [202, 46, 12, 4, 6], "text": ["Films that were shot on real film (35mm) can be scanned again and a HD copy be made for BluRay release.\n\nYou see, film is great. Really great. So great, that even today, Digital Cinematography cameras like the RED One, Epic, Phantom, Cinealta, Arri, Panavision and such are trying to keep up with what film can really do.\n\nFilm captures a great detail of grays and very natural colors, and despite the fact that is was created more than 100 years ago, film is still the bar used to measure digital equipment.\n\nSo film is better than HD 1080p, as a matter of fact, digital projectors in theaters are about 4K resolution in order to keep up with what film could do.\n\nI have not shot a single foot of film for four years. Digital Cinematography it's getting there, and the speed and price of the process works in favor of digital.\n\nHope it helps\n\nEDIT: Added Arri", "Film was always really really high quality, we just previously didnt have the tech to bring that quality home.       \nFor VHS and later DVD, the high quality originals were converted into low quality video for home use. So the copies you always had sucked, but the original film was pretty nice.        \n         \nNow theyre just taking the original film and doing the same thing they always did: Converting it for home use. Except that this time, the tech is better so theyre able to give you a better copy.        \nYour Bluray copy *still* isnt as good as the original film, but it's a lot nicer than your old DVDs.          \n          \n**Side notes:**         \nThis is all assuming that the original film is still in good condition. Sometimes they deteriorate over time due to various circumstances, so it's harder to bring them to Bluray. It might end up looking crappy because the film is in bad shape. Sometimes if it's profitable enough, theyll fix it all up to look like new again. Not always.       \n       \nAlso, just because film is awesome, it doesnt mean old movies always look great after being converted. Back then, they had no idea that someday people would be able to take it home and look at their movie in such precise detail. They never planned for that, so sometimes things are a little fuzzy. For example, there might be a shot that is a bit out of focus, but it wasnt a big deal back then because no one would see it.             \nModern films have to try a lot harder because they know everyone will see every detail now. That wasnt true back then, so sometimes it shows on HD rereleases of old movies.  ", "As a side note, shows like Seinfeld were also shot on film, so they can be scanned and broadcast as high-definition. \n\nThe only problem with this is they end up cutting off the top and bottom of the frame to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio of hi-def. Which isn't necessary, but people expect HDTV to be in wide screen format. \n", "An interesting additional point... it's not always a simple process of re-scanning. When CG was used, it was often rendered at a resolution lower than that of the new 1080p scan (1920x1080) so in those cases, the CG must be re-rendered and re composited.", "My younger brother used to always ask questions beginning with \"Why come...?\" I thought it was stupid and always corrected him to say \"How come...?\" instead. Eventually I realized that it's best to just ask \"Why are...?\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7dmso1", "title": "Is there any difference between gambling and other behavior addictions such as shopping, eating, exercising, sexual behavior, video games, etc.?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7dmso1/is_there_any_difference_between_gambling_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dpzr0k4", "dq2l1b2", "dq2ucbp"], "score": [2, 2, 2], "text": ["I can't answer all of these question, but I've studied a bit of this and I remember a study about IQ and quitting smoking.  Also, the compare between addiction to power and cocaine and other drugs.\n\nI don't know that these are related directly, as one is about quitting an addictive behavior and the other is about engaging.  The power, sex, etc hit the same part of the brain as cocaine.\n\nI've also had a bout with video games and I can say they can be very addictive.  It got to the point where I refused to learn any new games.  I used to become upset when the servers were full and I couldn't get a spot.  Someone cheating bothered me quite a bit and just thinking about it made me want to go play.\n\nNow I only play a few times a year.\n\nThe dopamine hit is different, I think it depends on several factors, it's like a slow game vs fast pace game.  You might think of slow music vs fast paced music, the effect is not the same.  They do this with social media, it's really a science and different people control it differently.", "Interesting question - at present gambling is the only addiction disorder included in the DSM-5 (IIRC) that is unrelated to substance use.\n\nAt this stage there is no definitive criteria for what constitutes an addiction versus bad judgement or unhealthy behaviour. Some say that it depends on brain activity and 'reward pathways' others talk about the behaviour and whether it causes harm and/or the person attempts to stop it and fails. \n\nA very interesting recent focus has been on impoverished environments and their relation to addiction. So for example people being isolated, or not having a lot of other things to be doing other than their addiction of choice. This makes a lot of sense because when you have more options in your life for activity its a lot either to balance something potentially unhealthy like video games or shopping.", "It's believed that some people are biologically more prone to risk seeking behaviours, and this can make them more susceptible to addiction. The theory is that the brains of drug and gambling addicts have 'under-active' reward circuitry. That is they're less sensitive to the effects of dopamine so they seek out increasingly risky behaviour to feel a dopamine rush. It's also been suggested that repeated addictive behaviour can change the brain and cause people can lose sensitivity to a chemical rush. This is particularly prevalent in people with Parkinson's disease (which results in a loss of dopamine receptors). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8v9dn4", "title": "Is it true that, before invading a city or castle, the invading army used to put dead bodies in catapults and throw them into the city or castle?", "selftext": "I read it on the internet, that in the old or medieval times, this practice was common. Can anyone who has knowledge on this subject, confirm if this is true?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8v9dn4/is_it_true_that_before_invading_a_city_or_castle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1mrtqp", "e1n3qx4"], "score": [16, 5], "text": ["This isn't something I've studied in any detail so I condone the deletion of this post in case it isn't quite up to the sub's standards, however, this has come up in my studies once.\n\nWhen Nikephoros II Phokas invaded Crete in 960 CE he besieged the largest city on the island, Chandax. During Leo the Deacon's account of the siege he mentions the following,\n\n\"And now the general prepared yet another triumph on top of this \rnew triumph. He ordered his men to cut off the heads of the fallen host, \rand to put them in leather satchels to carry them back to camp, and he \rpromised to give a reward in silver\r to every man who carried a head. \rThe army, especially the corps of Armenians,\r received this command \rgladly, and cut off the barbarian heads and put them in satchels.Then the \rgeneral returned to camp by night. \r\nThe next day, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon and \rbegan to climb toward the vault of heaven, Nikephoros ordered his men \rto impale some of the barbarian heads on spears and set them up in a \rrow next to the wall that he had built, and to hurl the others at the town \rwith stone-throwing machines.\r When the Cretans saw the line of spears \rand the heads impaled on them, and the heads that were hurled at the \rtown and crushed against its battlements, and when they clearly \rrecognized them as the heads of fellow countrymen and relatives, \rstraightaway they were seized with horror and mental confusion, and \rwere paralyzed at the piteous and unexpected sight.Then the lamentations \rof men and the wailing of women were heard, and the town took on the appearance of one that had been conquered, with everyone lamenting \rand bewailing his loved ones. But even so the town would not yet yield \rto the Romans and surrender; but confident in the strength of their \rtown, they summoned up their courage and waited fully armed for the \rRoman assault, so that if anyone attacked they might defend themselves.\"\n\n\nNot exact bodies but it seems heads may have been catapulted over the wall during the siege. \n\nSource: The History of Leo the Deacon, Book I\r\n", "There were certainly instances where invading armies would use dead bodies as siege missiles.  I am not overly familiar with their use as an intimidation tactic but they certainly do come up when you look at the [history of biological warfare](_URL_0_) prior to the modern era.\n\nFrom the linked article on the siege of Thun l\u2019Eveque (1340):\n\n >  The duke caryed with hym out of Cambray and Doway, dyverse great engyns . . . and made them to be reared agayne the fortres, so these engyns dyd cast night and day great stones, the which bete downe the roffes of the chambers, halles, and towres, so that they within were fayne to kepe [to the] vautes and sellars . . . The ingens without dyd cast in deed horses, and beestes stynking, wherby they within had great[er] dystres thane with any other thynge, for the ayre was hote as in the myddes of somer: the\nstynke and ayre was so abomynable, that they consydred howe that finally they coude nat long endure\n\nIt should be noted that the primary function here seems to be to discomfit the defenders and not necessarily to employ biological warfare.\n\nHowever, from the same article, the siege of Caffa (1346) is more well known and is potentially the source of the Black Death plague's entry into Europe:\n\n >  But behold, the whole [Mongol] army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as though arrows were raining down from heaven to strike and crush the Tartars\u2019 arrogance. All medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humours, followed by a putrid fever.\n\n >  The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realising that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the\nhope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army.\n\nThe article goes on to say:\n\n >  While it is nearly certain that refugees from Caffa contributed to the spread of plague, it is less certain that the plague within the walls of Caffa was the result of biological attack.\n\nThere are several other incidents cited in the article and it's worth a read in its entirety.\n\nHowever, to answer your question, it's not clear if the practice of using corpses as siege ammunition was \"common\" but it certain was used to great effect in several instances."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://web.archive.org/web/20090326063758/http://microbiology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mwheelis/BW_before_1914.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "6rz7a7", "title": "Is it true that ancient Rome was 8 times as densely populated as present day NYC?", "selftext": "I think it has to be population across all boroughs. No way ancient Rome is more densely populated than Manhattan today. I read the statement on one of the LinkNYC billboards.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rz7a7/is_it_true_that_ancient_rome_was_8_times_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl9wij0", "dl9y9io"], "score": [19, 7], "text": ["The Aurelian Walls contain an area of 13.7 square kilometers, peak population within this area is estimated on the high end at 1m, at that population the density is 73k/sqkm compared to Manhattans 28k/sqkm all New York's boroughs are 10947/sqkm bringing a more accurate total to 6.63x more dense with Manhattan being about 1/3 as dense.  \n  \nSource: Maths  &  [The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome Population of Rome] (_URL_0_)", "According to [this](_URL_0_) comment by /u/Tiako on a slightly different topic, the population density wasn't as high as the numbers might suggest, since a lot of the city was outside of the ~14 square kilometers contained within the Aurelian walls."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=yaM0AAAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=The%20Cambridge%20Companion%20to%20Ancient%20Rome%20population%20of%20rome&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjKt4ik9JvPAhUL9IMKHfJoAIgQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14dtx4/there_were_more_than_a_million_people_living_in/c7c7y96/"]]}
{"q_id": "8l98i8", "title": "if corporations are legal \"persons\", why are they taxed at a special corporate tax rate, instead of the (usually) higher income tax rate?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8l98i8/eli5_if_corporations_are_legal_persons_why_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzdqbk4", "dzdqfj1", "dzdt1pd", "dzdtbbk", "dzdvhrw", "dzdvu6j", "dzdw2y6", "dzdw8uw", "dzdwaww", "dzdwe1z", "dzdwf1x", "dzdwlht", "dzdwlve", "dzdwxrg", "dzdwyxz", "dzdxqrn", "dzdxt1e", "dzdxz1q", "dze0k1u", "dze10fc", "dze1jic", "dze1ztl"], "score": [5, 560, 18, 90, 49, 221, 2, 2, 3, 1687, 10, 5, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Corporations are not legal persons, that is a complete and total misunderstanding of the law that was pushed by activists about a decade ago.\n\n*Corporate personhood* is a legal doctrine that allows certain legal entities to have some of the rights and obligations enjoyed by natural humans. Corporate personhood permits a company to be a party to a contract on its own, to engage in legal proceedings (sue, be sued), to be subject to regulatory oversight and criminal law, etc...\n\nCorporate personhood greatly simplifies our legal system, nothing more.", "Because law differentiates between natural persons and persons-as-legal-entities. Corporate \"personhood\" is important in some ways...like if I need to sue a business, the fact that it's a person just means it's an entity I can sue as a whole. \n\nThe biggest problems people have with it surround the fact that a corporate person has better abilities to do some things than natural persons, like immortality. A business can be passed from one generation to the next. \n\nCorporate tax benefits are intended to help boost an economy, but the extent to which they are successful is hard to measure.", "Generally speaking, a lower corporate tax rate makes foreign direct investment more attractive. For example, the irish corporate tax rate is relatively low compared to the rest of the world, so Apple decides to declare its income there, and Ireland enjoys the revenue generated by that tax.\n\nIf ireland had a higher income tax rate, then companies would 'shop' for lower taxes elsewhere, and the point of raising the tax rate (to increase tax revenue) would have been lost.\n\nCompare this to regular people, sure they can go emigrate due to high taxes (for example, French Actor Gerard Depardieu did this when France raised its income tax a while ago), but its harder for a person to do so, and most people just won't.", "Personhood doesn't mean that a corporation has exactly the same legal rights as a person...you can't marry a corporation or elect one to office, for example.\n\nIt is just a convenient fiction we use to allow corporations to do some person-like things, like own assets or legal responsibilities.  In most, if not all cases, different rules apply to corporate personhood than to natural persons.", "Because ultimately, the money will be taxed AGAIN when it eventually exits the company - to people. \n\nAnd if it doesn't exit the company - then it will be used to produce more goods which shouldn't be taxed as income anyway. ", "I'm surprised so many people took this as \"what is the legal explanation behind corporate personhood\" instead of your actual question. The answer is that this income is double taxed \\- it's taxed to the corporation at a lower rate, and then is ALSO taxed to the individual when the corporate income eventually reaches them in the form of dividends \\(remember that corporations are owned by individuals \\- shareholders\\). \n\nHere's an explanation: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)", " >   but I suppose my question is now what policy reasons justify taxing corporations 20% of 100k instead of 50% of a human's 100k.\n\nA common argument for corporations being taxed at a lower rate is that you are still double taxing:  the company for earning the money, and then at either the investor level, when money is distributed to them, or at the employee level, on their income taxes.  \n\n(side note:  there are incorporation methods that don't tax investors that are steadily becoming more popular).\n\nAnother argument is that money that's going to the government could instead be used to do things like invest in operations or hire new employees, which has a better effect on the economy.  This is _sometimes_ true, for companies that still have room to grow.", "Because the corporation is just a middle man. The tax will be passed on to consumers, workers, and *maybe* shareholders. ", "Taxes are a weird sort of tool.\n\nLets say you are the Mayor of city 'X'.  You have a job problem, people that live in the city aint got one.\n\nTax revenue is utter shit because unemployed people don't really pay taxes.\n\nCompany 'Evil Empire' swings by and they say, 'We want to build a factory and employee 10,000 people.  But let it be known, there is nothing special about city 'X', Cities 'Y' and 'Z' have the exact same problem as you - we are only going to build one factory.\n\nSo you say, 'Okie Dokie.  If you build we will let you run your factory tax free for 10 years'.\n\nThe neat thing is that those 10,000 people - at least those within city limits - are now employed and as such are paying more in taxes then what they did before.\n\nSo for the next 10 years tax revenue goes up, but year 11 it really goes up cause the agreement has aged out!\n\nTaxes are a tool.  I think by seperating types of taxes it allows people to do things like this.\n\n--------------\n\nHaving said all those words, I am a supporter or destroying our current tax structure and redoing it from the ground up.  I am simply describing how things work, not necessarily endorsing it.", "You are I are plumbers.  \n\nWe each bill 300K worth of plumbing work each year.  We each spend 50K on materials each year.  We each have 100K of business expenses each year.\n\nYou are incorporated, I am not.  How much tax should each of us pay?  The same.\n\nSince I am not incorporated I take the 150K I made in profit and pay tax on it like income at my personal rate.  Lets say I end up paying 50K in tax.\n\nSince you are incorporated you pay corporate tax on the 150K, and then distribute the remainder to yourself as a shareholder.  That's dividend income and as a person you are going to pay tax on it.  \n\nThe government plays with the personal dividend rate, and the corporate tax rate with the (rough) idea that it should add up to the same as the personal tax rate for regular income.\n\nThat's why, primarily, corporate tax rates are different from personal tax rates - the government knows the money is going to be taxed again when passed on to shareholders.", "Policy reason: double taxation. A corporation's income ends up going somewhere (be it dividends, income for workers, etc.), which is all subject to taxation as well (capital gains, income tax, etc.). Unless it's reinvested. And reinvestment is arguably something you want to incentivize because it's the basis of growth.\n\nAlso incentivize foreign investors (you'd rather do business in a region with lower corporate tax rates, all else equal). ", "Just FYI, corporations don't inherently *have to* pay the \"special\" rate, they can be organized as so-called \"pass-through\" companies, in which the taxes are paid by the individuals who own the company at the \"normal\" rate.\n\nObviously, people pick whatever model means they pay less in taxes, so you'll find people complaining that this is *also* a way in which corporations avoid paying.\n\n", "The point of it is to help businesses grow, since businesses have a lot of expenditures that normal people don\u2019t have to worry about (rent for the business, R & D, wages, etc.). \n\nIn Canada, even though corporate tax is lower than the personal tax amount, people who own the corporation aren\u2019t (supposed to be) able to spend it on personal things. So the corporation has to \u201cpay\u201d its owners, which is subject to regular tax rate. \n\nThe weird gray area that happens is what constitutes as a \u201ccorporate expenditure\u201d.", "One of the drawbacks of a corporation is double taxation.   First he corporation is taxed, and then all the shareholders are also taxed, so the same income is taxed twice.  ", "In my opinion a corporation is not a person - and shouldn\u2019t be taxed. Individual people making money out of the corporation, employees, board members, investors, should be taxed based on the income they receive. Other than that, I agree with the fictionhood aspect of corporations, such as being able to sue them or charge them for violating law, but you can\u2019t exactly throw a corporation in jail, so I don\u2019t think we should call them people, but legal entities. ", "Part of why I think lower corporate rates are justifiable is because corporations are already under a double taxation regime. They\u2019re taxed once when they make a profit, and then when profits are distributed to the beneficial shareholders (who are all the corporation is composed of), the shareholders are taxed again. This is at least how a C-Corp roughly works in the US, but it seems like you may be from elsewhere so I\u2019m not sure.", "The ELI5 is that they get special tax treatment because the government thinks they'll make better use of their profit than you will with yours.  Why does the government think that?  Likely due to scientific studies, gut feel, and lots and lots of lobbying.  \n  \nNow, you touched on an important point, that there's no constitutional *mandate* that corporations get a better tax rate than natural persons.  This is important because it leads to a solution to campaign finance reform.  The government has long-standing and constitutionally-vetted laws where certain types of legal entities (charities and other non-profit organizations) are given favorable tax status in exchange for *not making political speech* along with other distinctions.  That doesn't restrict their rights; they are welcome to make political speech, but then the government will treat them like everyone else and tax them.  \n  \nThat could just as easily be applied to corporations and other trade groups.  Tell companies that they can have a special reduced tax rate and trade speech (advertisements, research papers, data sheets) *or* the regular tax rate and full speech, and most every legal entity will choose the reduced tax rate as that aligns with their fiduciary duty to their shareholders.", "A better question is, why can't I dissolve my personhood and start fresh as a new person?", "People who invest in corporations are taxed twice.\n\nCorporate profits are taxed first at the company level, a rate of 21%, then when an investor wants to take funds out, in the form of dividends or capital gains, a second tax is levied at either 0, 15%, or 20% depending on your income level. So, for high income earners, the total tax on corporate profits is 41%.", "The owners of the corporation get the money that passes through the corporation and then they are taxed on it as personal income.\n\nIf you own a corporation your money is being taxed twice: once at the corporate level and then once again at the personal level.\n\nSo if you have a corporate that makes $10,000,000, you would get taxed 21% of income at the corporate level, and then once again on the personal level at 35% or whatever that tax bracket is.", "Because you really really cannot tax a corporation. A corporate tax is a tax on people, period. The corporate taxes are carried by a) consumers in the form of higher prices b) employees in the form of lower salaries and/or c) owners in the form of lower dividends. \n\nCorporate tax is an easier sell politically than higher taxes for people.", "In order to create a succesful corporation you need to have earned money. That money was taxed. Ypu could have just spent the money,  but ypu decided to create a company, which is risky, and only if that ends up being successful (aka creating value) is there profit to tax.\n\nTaximg that at the same rate would discourage further investment.\n\nThat being said, corporate tax should be lower than it is..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double\\_taxation.asp", "https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double_taxation.asp"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "932rdv", "title": "Can air pollution be accurately translated into smoking cigarettes? Is living in large Asian cities as bad as smoking, for example, 5 or 10 cigarettes a day?", "selftext": "After googling cigarettes pollution equivalent I found a lot of reports and studies that claim that the air pollution in large cities can be accurately represented as smoking X cigarettes a day. Is this true and scientific? Especially in terms of causing cancer and heart disease.       \n   \nHere's an example of a chart I found online:      \n \n\nAir Pollution Location, Equivalent in cigarettes per day   \nUS, average 0.4         \nEU, average 1.6  \nChina, average 2.4  \nBeijing, average 4.0  \nHandan, average 5.5  \nBeijing, bad day 25.0  \nHarbin, very bad day 45.0  \nShenyang, worst recorded 63.0     \n  \n From _URL_2_   \n   \nSome other links include:     \n   \n_URL_6_        \n_URL_7_    \n_URL_1_     \n_URL_0_     \n_URL_4_   \n_URL_3_     \n_URL_5_\n    \n   \n\nAre these scientifically correct, can breathing the air be represented in the number of cigarettes a person would smoke that day? Can it be \"measured\" that way in terms of causing harm to our bodies? And what would be the major differences and discrepancies between the two?   \n   \nThank you", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/932rdv/can_air_pollution_be_accurately_translated_into/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3a92r1", "e3a94j0", "e3aaa06"], "score": [10, 4, 2], "text": ["It's definitely a pretty shaky comparison.\n\nCity smog and pollution is made up largely of the by-products of combustion. This can be combustion of plastics, paper, wood, coal, as well as other micro particulates from diesel engines and moving parts.\n\nSmoking cigarettes is going to produce the by products of combustion for paper and plant matter.\n\nSo whilst there are lots of similarities, there will be significant differences in the spectrum of particulates and chemicals produced. It's a helpful comparison because humans are quite familiar with what smoking 10 a day looks and feels like. But is it saying that it will cause the same incidence of cancer as 20 cigarettes? The same intake of particulates? The same volume of smoke? The same risk of emphysema later in life? These things probably differ significantly because of the differences in the make up of the two pollutions.", "Individually? No. First and foremost to remember with *anything* that studies effects on humans is that each human reacts slightly differently. This may sound like a minor point, but it's a major difference. Someone who already has respiratory issues will suffer from more effects of pollution and will likely have more complications. \n\nNow, with that out of the way, the answer is still unclear. Are you asking about the overall total negative effect it has on humans? The answer is then, fairly easily, yes. Any type of damage/risk to human health can be represented as a percentage of another source of damage/risk: Taking in all possible mortality factors, putting an estimate on the value of quality of life, etc., it becomes fairly easy to quantize risk.\n\nHowever, if you're asking about the specific damage it causes to human lungs, that's less likely. Cigarettes do damage to lungs in many ways, but it has a fairly standard pattern. The hot air, the tar/ash/particulates, toxic materials, etc. Pollution likely will not perfectly reflect this damage as a scalar multiple of cigarette damage. \n\nLooking at the first link, it uses the first method I talked about: a statistical based approach the attempts to quantize the overall total risk. In this sense, yes, it's perfectly scientific. You could even compare it in terms of the risk of owning a cat. The only issue I have with this is the wording; I'm not sure whether or not the damage done by cigarette smoking is linear. It would be better to say, for example, \"living in City, Country has N times the risk of smoking *one* cigarette a day.\"\n\n(Edit: Typing on phone, accidentally submitted early. Also went back to change a typo.)\n\nEdit 2: I also would like to stress that I am not attempting to analyze the methods used in the first link. I don't have the knowledge to do that; I'm instead trying to provide a more general answer. ", "Air pollution is a very complex topic with a lot of active research going on. The comparison with smoking can only approximately represent by how much your life expectancy shortens through breathing polluted air. It's a good way to get people to realize what impact it can have and how dangerous it can be, but it's not scientifically comparable in how it causes harm to the body.\n\nThe major differencies I can think of right now are cigarettes causing dependency and air pollution being very dependent on the environment, and having far more diverse sources and effects. Air pollution is a very generic term that includes particulate matter the size of microns (PM1/2.5/10 depending on size classification) as well as toxic gases (COVs, NOx, O3, SO2, etc), pollens and even metallic particules from train/car brakes. Each will impact your health differently but will also interact with each others creating so called cocktails of pollutants that are very difficult to reproduce and study accurately (as compared to a fixed recipe of cigarette). It is therefore very difficult to assign a specific value to \"air pollution\" or even determine an index of air quality.\n\nYou can compare different cities with such representation (cigarette equivalent) so as to raise awareness on the topic. It is less accurate to compare the effect on life expectancy, and even less accurate to liken it to potential health risks, as those still aren't completely understood in the case of pollution at least."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4765726/", "https://www.epa.gov/particle-pollution-and-your-patients-health/health-effects-pm-patients-lung-disease", "http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-and-cigarette-equivalence/", "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f0dd0cc0-1e47-417c-9b44-802c24e63c28", "https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/air-pollution-cigarettes/", "https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/04/how-much-are-you-smoking-by-breathing-urban-air/558827/", "http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/pollution/is-pm2-5-from-air-pollution-the-same-as-from-smoking/", "http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/outdoor/air-pollution/particle-pollution.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3nuhgn", "title": "To what extent do we believe we've uncovered the major archaeological sights of the world?", "selftext": "I was travelling across Czech Rep/Slovakia/Romania and the Carpathians recently and the dense forests there stretch for hundreds of miles.\nIt made me wonder how many ancient ruins/artefacts could be preserved around the world, just because these places are too vast to explore and have too much coverage to photograph from satellite.\n\nDo we have a way of knowing where we are likely to find archaeological sites in such a vast world? Do we think we've found most of them? Or do we just sort of wait until they are stumbled upon?\n\nEdit: title should read 'sites', not 'sights'.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nuhgn/to_what_extent_do_we_believe_weve_uncovered_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvro9jq"], "score": [28], "text": ["There is undoubtedly a vast number of sites that have not yet been identified.  There are also a vast number of sites that have in fact been identified, but have not yet been excavated in anything resembling an organized manner.\n\nThe process of finding a site can take many forms.  For most sites with mentions in written records (this includes cities mentioned in holy books such as the Hebrew Bible), there are often clues about their location (other cities near them, mentioned distances to these sites, geographical features, oral traditions, etc).  For sites without these sorts of textual trails or written clues, sites can be found in other ways.\n\nIn the part of the world I work in, most ancient cities are in the form of manmade mounds, or *tells*.  These tells have a distinctive shape, and often do not fit into the landscape geologically (i.e. there is a mound in the middle of what should be a flattish valley).  Examples of tells include [Tel Hazor](_URL_4_) in northern Israel, [Tel Barri](_URL_3_) in Syria, [Tell Begum](_URL_1_) in Iraq.  So it is often possible to tell where a site is just by walking through the landscape, and seeing the distinctive flat-topped slightly out-of-place hills made up of cities on top of each other.\n\nIn cases where tells are not the primary form of occupation, such as in the Neolithic period or in Europe, archaeologists use archaeological surveys (they use them in areas with tells too).  This involves basically walking through an area looking for artifacts, and recording their concentrations.  An area with a high concentration of artifacts could be a site.\n\nIn the US, and presumably in Europe, often times an archaeologist will do a brief geographical study, and analyze areas where it would be logical to found a settlement (near a water source, along a trade route, etc) and they will conduct another style of survey, where they dig small holes with a shovel at regular intervals (called shovel test pits) to test for the presence of archaeological remains.  Again, the concentration of archaeological remains among the network of test pits can inform as to the location of a site.  I participated in an excavation of a very small site in New York state which was hinted at in colonial texts, and narrowed down using shovel test pits, and I helped out with the next step of excavation.\n\nSo it is certainly possible to set out to locate new sites.  In addition advances in remote sensing ([Dr. Sarah Parcak](_URL_0_), currently at the University of Alabama, has done a lot of excellent work on identifying new sites in Egypt using satellite imagery) have also proven useful in discovering hitherto unknown archaeological sites.\n\nTo be honest, we know the locations of many, many unexcavated sites, but have not had the available funding/manpower/a compelling enough reason to excavate them.\n\nOne example of a site that has been known for a very long time but has not yet been excavated is [Tel Shimron](_URL_2_), a site that has been a nature preserve, and has been surveyed, but has not yet been excavated.  Even in a country like Israel, that has hundreds of active archaeological excavations every year, many of which are sponsored by foreign institutions, there are many unexcavated sites.\n\nFortunately, Tel Shimron is set to be excavated beginning in the summer of 2017 by a team of archaeologists who are currently finishing up excavations at Tel Ashkelon (Hopefully I will be one of them, but we will see)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/sarah-parcak/", "http://beeldbank.leidenuniv.nl/index/parseimage/id/FT133198/thumbed/6", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimron", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Tell_Barri_1.jpg", "https://beautiesandbeards.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/hazor-aerial-from-north-tb112000205.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "33q55y", "title": "sunlight takes 8 minutes yo get to earth but in the perspective of light how long would it take to get to earth?", "selftext": "Traveling at the speed of light greatly reduces the time experienced by the object traveling. I know traveling at about 99% the speed of light can cut time in half. But would time stop traveling at 100% the speed of light and it would feel like an instant to get to earth from the sun or maybe instead of 8 mins it would take 4?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33q55y/eli5_sunlight_takes_8_minutes_yo_get_to_earth_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqnb01f", "cqnb62h", "cqnbeqa", "cqndzxu", "cqnf2nk", "cqnhmdj", "cqnq1tp", "cqnt9v7", "cqnvhjc", "cqny7o1"], "score": [144, 8, 7, 13, 3, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["If light could experience time, it would seem instantaneous. Time would not pass at all once you reach 100% of c. However, it would arrive here to see that we aged 8 minutes and 8 minutes of time relative to us Earth-dwellers has passed.\n\nBasically, at the speed of light, time is meaningless, as it's all based off of the speed of light.", "As I understand it, since photons don't experience time, the moments of their creation and destruction are the same.", "Time doesn't exist at the speed of light. Nor does space, really. The entire universe is \"compressed\" into an infinetly small point which takes you an infinity to traverse as time doesn't really pass from your point of view. Everything is compressed and frozen ", "Photons do not *have* a perspective. It's a weird side effect of Special Relativity. When we speak about observers going at high speeds seeing strange shit, we always talk about massive (i.e. with mass, not per se a lot of it) objects. Massive objects can *never* have a speed of c or greater, and we can always look from their perspective - the reference frame in which the object is stationary, and everything else moving.\n\nWith light this is impossible. Photons have a mass of exactly 0 and therefore must always be travelling at c (note: see below). This means we *cannot* look at their reference frame, because that would require thinking in a frame where the photon is not moving. However, photons must always be moving at c in all reference frames, so such a frame cannot exist. \n\nTherefore photons do not have a perspective.\n\nNote: You might be wondering about media like water in which the speed of light is lower than c. I'll let someone else explain that, I've never had a \"feel\" for it.", "Alright, plenty of good physics answers but I'll try for a more simplified answer.\n\nImagine you are sitting in a big box with no windows. You have no way to tell what time it was. You're sitting still, in a box, with no way of knowing what the outside looks like or how much time is passing. If the box were really softly picked up and moved, you might not even notice you were moving at all. If you zoned out for a bit, you might not notice that much time was passing. That's kind of like a photon as it \"moves\" between two places. It doesn't really experience time or distance, at the beginning and end of it's journey the photon is still pretty much exactly the same.", "Something traveling very incredibly close to the speed of light from Earth's perspective would experience less and less time.  \n\nThere is no lower limit to the amount of time that they would experience, except for the fact that they would experience some time.\n\nIf they experienced no time passing at all, then at a single point in time, they would be in multiple places.  ie: t=0 you are at point A, t=0 you are at point B, at t=0, where are you?\n\nAs you approach the speed of light from another observer's perspective, the time you experience relative to them decreases (if you were to go and meet up with the observer, where the observer doesn't go accelerating off in the interim)\n\nBut since you can't reach the speed of light, you can't really say what happens if you get there, because getting there doesn't really make sense.\n\nUltimately what reaching the speed of light would mean, would be that you stopped moving. Because moving would mean traveling some distance over time, and time would no longer exist.  It would mean that this mass would be everywhere at once, which can't even make sense because matter is composite and it has forces that don't really make sense.  For instance, matter gets held together by forces that act on it over time, gravity pulls mass together over time, electromagnetism attracts or repels based on charge over time, but that relies on some timeline.  If you're at A then at B, these forces affect you at your configuration at A, and then affect you at your configuration at B.  But if you're at point A and point B without some progression of time, so there's no A then B, then what? Does A experience any of these forces at all? Do forces from you at B affect you while you're at A? It ultimately doesn't make any sense at all.\n\nNow if it's a photon it does make sense, because it plays by different rules.  It doesn't interact with near as much, it is allowed to act like it's in multiple places at once, and when you think it is everywhere on its path at once, some of the experiments like the dual slit experiment or the quantum eraser experiment make intuitive sense.  But then you have to stop kind of thinking of light traveling at a speed at all.  It definitely has a direction, but it propagates without time, and the fact that we see it travel in time is more because we see it travel through space and we experience time.\n\nIt's like asking how the volume of a cube drawn on paper is.  It doesn't really make sense.  It definitely looks like a cube when we look at it, so why can't we get a volume? Say we have a cube made out of clay, we know the volume of the cube and we can flatten it so that it looks the same shape as its outline we drew on the paper.   We know that the volume stays the same when we flatten it.  When we flatten it it seems like it gets closer to the height of the cube on the paper (0). We keep flattening it trying to get it closer and closer to the height of its outline. We ultimately get it to the point where it's a 1 molecule high film over the paper, but still that's taller than the space indicated by the outline, so we even imagine what would happen if we could keep flattening it out even thinner, and the flattened cube starts to have an area that reaches infinity.  But this doesn't tell us anything about the volume of the 2d projection indicated by the outline. \n\nIt's not because we don't know how to flatten a cube well enough to figure it out. It's because while a 2d projection might resemble what a 3d object looks like to our eyes, it simply doesn't have a volume. \n\nSo light doesn't have a speed, because light doesn't exist in the dimension of time.  It looks to us like it exists in time, just like it looks to us that a drawing of a cube is 3 dimensional, but like the way that the angles on a paper give us the perception of depth, intervals in space give us a perception of time.  This is why spacetime is spacetime and not space and time. \n\nSince light doesn't experience time, it doesn't take an instant, because that would mean that there was some experience of time.  It's like saying a square is an incredibly shallow cube.  It's not a cube, it's a square, it doesn't have that dimension. You can't squash a cube into the shape of a square. ", "It's instant for the light.  The light doesn't even feel like it's moving.\n\nI've worked though the equations before from a particular perspective.  It turns out, basically, that all energy travels at c all the time.  Some of that travel might be in space.  You know mass-energy equivalence, Einstein's famous E=mc^2 equation.  The expanded form is E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2, where p is momentum.  Anyway, if you work through things hard enough (and you need other bits, like the Lorentz factor), if you assume that four-dimensional speed is always c, and you assume some nonzero spatial speed v, and work out what the speed in time will be, you'll come out with the same difference in \"time experienced\" as the time dilation equations describe.\n\nSimply put, a mass at rest in space is travelling through time at c.  A mass travelling through space is aging slower.  It is borrowing some speed from its time direction.  From the perspective of the moving mass, the rest of the universe ages faster, but the mass can't detect its own slowdown in time, because it never moves relative to itself, of course.\n\nThis is the concept of \"time dilation\".  The concept where you age slower because you move in space.\n\nLight travels at c through space.  Therefore, it cannot be experiencing any time.  It never ages, never decays.\n\nThere is also a concept called \"length contraction\", that goes along with time dilation when travelling at relativistic speeds.  What this says is that from the perspective of the thing that's moving, the distance between where it is and where it's going shrinks, by the same factor by which its rate of aging is cut.  Length contraction only applies in the direction of travel.  So, to a photon, the four-dimensional universe that we know is compressed into 2.  It loses the experience of time, and it loses the entire direction in which it is \"travelling\".  To its left and right, and above and below it, all else is as big and vast as you or I know.  But of course, a photon could not know that, because there is no time (from the photon's perspective) for information to get to the photon in a way that it could learn about the universe around it.", "Vsauce did an awesome episode related to this! [Link](_URL_0_) ", "Light experiences the universe instantaneously.\n\nBasically, time and space are the same thing.\nIf you move slower, you move through time faster.\nIf you move faster, you move through time slower.\n\nIf you move at the speed of light, time appears stopped to you.\nIf you move at true zero speed, space appears stopped.\n\nAs you accelerate, time appears to turn into space.\n\n", "For photons the clock never ticks. From their perspective, the very instant they are emitted, they get absorbed, even if they had to travel through the entire universe to get to their destination."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUuFg9Y9dY"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jxnno", "title": "why don't jet engines have a pointed mesh over them to keep birds and other objects out of them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jxnno/eli5_why_dont_jet_engines_have_a_pointed_mesh/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cut5gcl", "cut5pes", "cut7uil", "cut9eyf", "cuta8jf", "cutci81", "cutcyk2", "cutdbuv"], "score": [457, 20, 19, 4, 14, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["1) That would interrupt airflow\n\n2) Damage to it could cause the metal to get sucked into the engine, much more destructive than a bird\n\n3) A bird impaled on the mesh would still certainly interrupt clean airflow\n\n4) It would add weight. Even a single pound of additional weight is lost fuel efficiency, amounting to quite a lot of money over the lifetime of the plan. \n\nEDIT: 5) Such grating would only be effective at relatively low speeds; once the jet gets going the bird will smash right through it anyway (credit /u/Dr_Evil_Powers)", "In addition to previous answers, since most commercial planes operate just below sonic speeds a collision with a bird would just tear the animal apart and it would get sucked in anyway.", "jet engines are designed to handle a bird or two, they use frozen chickens to test them. when i was taking a aircraft power plants course at the uni, I remember seeing a picture of military jet engine that was taken out of the aircraft and was on a brace for testing. it had a mesh over the intake, and i asked my professor if that would affect the data, and performance. he said it was negligible so yeah  ", "Although not practical on most fixed wing aircraft for the reasons already posted, this does exist on some helicopters. It's called \"Engine air partical separator\". You can see it on most models of H-53 and H-47 helicopters. Mainly used to keep rocks/dust out when landing/hovering.\n\nIt does restrict airflow though and at least on the mh-53 there is a vent on the front that could be opened to increase airflow at higher altitudes where there isn't debris to worry about.", "Some military jets do, although they're there more to prevent ingestion of smaller debris particularly when taking off and landing on rough strips. They cause a slight performance loss.\n\nThe bigger problem is that you only need a fairly light mesh to prevent stones and twigs being sucked in at runway speeds. You would need a very strong, and so bulky and heavy, mesh to withstand being hit by a 5lb bird at 650mph. And if that mesh failed the engine would have to contain being hit by not just the bird but by several hundred pounds of metal as well.\n\nThe actual way that bird strikes are mitigated against is by having more than one engine. It is very rare (although, admittedly, not entirely unknown) for a multi-engine aircraft to lose all of its engines due to simultaneous bird strikes.", "What objects other than a bird would an airplane suck up? ", "For more answers from previous threads, check:\n\n[**1**](_URL_2_)\n\n[**2**](_URL_1_)\n\n[**3**](_URL_3_)\n\n[**4**](_URL_4_)\n\n[**5**](_URL_0_)", "We should use an active defence system around the engine to deal with the birds, heres an example. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xks8s/eli5_why_dont_airplane_manufacturers_put_a_screen/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w31ps/eli5_why_dont_jets_have_a_protective_mesh_over/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ev0nq/eli5_why_dont_aircraft_jet_engines_have_a_little/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o3izh/eli5_why_dont_airplane_manufacturers_add_a_metal/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22g4me/eli5_why_dont_airplanes_have_some_sort_of_fencing/"], ["https://youtu.be/YpmcmKwWzYo?t=1m7s"]]}
{"q_id": "crzceb", "title": "Is there any credibility at all to this \"discovery\" of ancient Chinese petroglyphs in America?", "selftext": "I was recently sent [this article](_URL_0_) by a family member regarding John Ruskamp Jr.'s study of petroglyphs in the continental US that he suggests are of ancient Chinese origin.\n\nSeveral things stand out to me, firstly that his field of specialty is biochemistry, not linguistics or archaeology; then there's the denigration of dogma and \"accepted history\"; and lastly he states some of the petroglyphs are Native American copies of Chinese ones which sounds like a thinly veiled cultural supremacy dogwhistle - perhaps suggesting that the Native Americans couldn't have come up with them otherwise? \n\nThe writer has an obvious bias towards this *underdog lone researcher trying to overturn the accepted worldview*.\n\nSo I'm pretty sure I'm right to be skeptical, but could anyone point me to more educated criticism or refutation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/crzceb/is_there_any_credibility_at_all_to_this_discovery/", "answers": {"a_id": ["exbubh3", "exd1b84"], "score": [132, 18], "text": ["No there isn\u2019t. I\u2019m a archaeologist working in the US Southwest and have had to deal with the pseudoarchaeology that Ruskamp has been promoting for several years.  He came and talked at a local archaeology society meeting on the request of one member who was a fan. I was later asked by the society to come in and correct the record afterward. His arguments are laughably sloppy and full of special pleading. In a language where changing a character even a bit alters the meaning or makes it illegible he allows for tons of variation and substitutions in his \u201cidentification \u201c and then abuses statistical tools to give his arguments a feeling of scientific rigor to those who don\u2019t have a background on those subjects. In reality he just makes wild claims that very different imagery is the same and then designs a statistical test to \u201cprove \u201c it using his already deeply flawed data. He has no knowledge of rock art traditions in the region and if he did, he would know that many of the images he uses in his arguments have long and well documented trajectories of change through time locally and certainly don\u2019t appear out of nowhere as he claims. He combines things from all time periods and claims they are contemporary. He\u2019s a big self promoter and offers to talk to avocational Archaeology groups and sell tours in China. He uses a lot of the same tools as other fringe archaeologists to get stories on his work picked up by fringe publications and then cites them elsewhere as proof that his ideas are accepted. Jason Covalito has a little bit of context on him on his blog [here. ](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: I just remembered that Angus Quinlan reviewed his book Asiatic Echos in American Antiquity (the journal of the Society for American Archaeology) for a special feature addressing pseudoscience. [link here. ](_URL_0_)", "As a Chinese art historian with a focus on ancient script, I can say for sure these in no way resemble any form of ancient Chinese (Not to mention or get into the sailing trajectories of ancient Chinese who largely went West, and the fact they never made it to the Americas in any large numbers or even at all as far as most of us know). Rectangular squiggles aren\u2019t enough to equate the scripts. And the author\u2019s insistence that Chinese writers were happy to rotate their scripts is flat out false. The fact his photo evidence of script isn\u2019t lined up into delineated into lines or distinct characters speaks to the inauthenticity of his claims. The earliest forms of Chinese text were written on oracle bones [(link)](_URL_0_) and were already organized into rows of consecutive and distinct pictographs. While Chinese pictographs were eventually broken into quadrant areas of individual meaning (due to the need to express more complex meaning) there is in no way a time when Chinese language organized itself into distinct squares like on a playground, where each square housed an individual character. If anything, I\u2019m much more sure that he falsified all of these images with chalk on some rocks across the US to garner acclaim and stir up controversy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/new-evidence-ancient-chinese-explorers-landed-america-excites-experts-003087"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/asiatic-echoes-the-identification-of-ancient-chinese-pictograms-in-precolumbian-north-american-rock-writing-second-edition-john-a-ruskampjr-2013-createspace-independent-publishing-platform-charleston-sc-vii-171-pp-3433-paperback-isbn-9781491042205/F4AF3B2A9F40032C25B2CECEF8385956#", "http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/you-wont-believe-this-one-amazing-trick-a-fringe-historian-accidentally-used-to-blow-up-the-internet"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script"]]}
{"q_id": "kscdh", "title": "what exactly is time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kscdh/eli5_what_exactly_is_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2mszp1", "c2mt2iu", "c2mulaw", "c2murrq", "c2mvv53", "c2mszp1", "c2mt2iu", "c2mulaw", "c2murrq", "c2mvv53"], "score": [6, 4, 6, 3, 15, 6, 4, 6, 3, 15], "text": ["Oh boy.\n\nThere are a few ways you can think about what time is. Simply, time is the change from one event to another. \n\nThere is a concept called the \"arrow of time\". I find this idea helpful when thinking about what time is. Basically, time flows in the direction of disorder. What I mean is, let's say you build a house. A nice, orderly, clean and crisp house. Eventually, over many years, that house will slowly decay and crumble and at some point, collapse into rubble. It went from an ordered state to a more disordered state. That's the direction time flows in. If time didn't pass, that house would never collapse (one could argue that it would never have been built, but...meh). \n\nI may edit this later. I found this question a little tougher to describe as I began typing. \n\nJust think of it using the \"change from one event to another\" definition.\n\n", "This thing all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. Gnaws iron, bites steel. Grinds hard stones to meal. Slays kings, runs town. And beats high mountains down.", "Hoboy. In my metaphysics class (and no, that doesn't mean metaphysics like astrology and shit - it means \"relevant to the works written by Aristotle after the Physics\") we spent about a month on this. \n\nBasically there are two perspectives in the philosophical literature, called the A theory and the B theory. The A theory states that \"time is a thing that goes\", that there is such thing as \"now\" and objectively the universe moves from one \"now\" to the next.\n\nSpecial relativity and other evidence from physics suggests that this can't be true. So, instead there is the B theory, which is more akin to \"time is a thing that *is*\", or a dimension along which to exist just like space. In the B theory it's hard to understand why the present moment is special, or more real than other moments. I think we are only capable of experiencing each point along the time dimension as \"now\", so even if all times are effectively simultaneous, we still perceive them in a linear fashion.\n\nI wrote a five page paper on this...it's buried within the depths of my deceased computer, back in my natal home, where I am not. I wish I had some way of calling it back up, but I guess I don't.\n\nEdit: I found a copy buried in my emails! Let me know if you happen to be interested. It's not a very good paper, but it's an introduction to some very cool ideas.", "Time is simply what prevents everything from happening at once. ", "**Like You Are 5:**\n\nYou are *always* moving through Time at approximately the speed of light. When you speed up, you begin to move through time less slowly. This is why it is technically possible to time-travel (though we can only go into the future at this point).\n\nTherefore, Time is our relative experience of moving through the fourth dimension. We can alter it by going faster and faster. If you were theoretically to accelerate yourself to 99.99% the speed of light, you would experience time-travel, where a few seconds go by for you, and perhaps tens to hundreds of years go by in the 'outside' world.\n\n**Like You Are 12:**\n\nWhen people call time \"the fourth dimension\", they are being technically correct. Basically, try to imagine the following in your head.\n\nIf I wanted to, using some coordinate system, find a specific moment in space and time, I could write it as so: (X,Y,Z,T) where X,Y,Z are the dimensions you are familar with (height, width, depth). It is important to note that our distinction of X,Y,Z are completely arbitrary and based solely on our perception of the world. For the sake of this next part, just imagine that moving from place to place is simply moving in some direction (let's just say X). Time is the fourth dimension, as stated above. Essentially, what makes time 'time' is the fact that at this very moment, you and I are both moving through the 'time' dimension at *the speed of light*. \n\nNow when I move in the X-axis dimension (which again is an arbitrary direction), I am taking some of my speed away from Time, and giving it to the movement in the X-axis. If you want a visual, imagine a compass in your head where the needle is pointing straight ahead. In this image, you are sitting still, but still flying through time at the speed of light in the Time direction. When you start to move in any other direction (e.g. our spacial dimensions), you start to take some of your speed away from the Time direction, and give it to the spacial direction. Visually, this would look like the needle on the compass creeping left/right away from being perfectly straight.\n\nIf I am on the space station moving 5 km/s, I am moving a tiny fraction of the speed of light. In the above compass scenario, my compass needle is slightly to the left/right. Thus, I am moving more slowly through time. This is why you have probably heard of something along the lines of time-travel and astronauts.\n\nAstronauts who spend a sufficient amount of time on the space station come back to Earth having aged ever so slightly less (I am talking microseconds less here). This is, again, because they were moving in the spacial dimensions at a fraction the speed of light. Thus, in the Time direction, they moved ever so much more slowly.\n\nOur perception of time stems from this phenomenon, which now that you have reached the end, I am proud to say that you now understand the bare-bones basics of Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity.", "Oh boy.\n\nThere are a few ways you can think about what time is. Simply, time is the change from one event to another. \n\nThere is a concept called the \"arrow of time\". I find this idea helpful when thinking about what time is. Basically, time flows in the direction of disorder. What I mean is, let's say you build a house. A nice, orderly, clean and crisp house. Eventually, over many years, that house will slowly decay and crumble and at some point, collapse into rubble. It went from an ordered state to a more disordered state. That's the direction time flows in. If time didn't pass, that house would never collapse (one could argue that it would never have been built, but...meh). \n\nI may edit this later. I found this question a little tougher to describe as I began typing. \n\nJust think of it using the \"change from one event to another\" definition.\n\n", "This thing all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. Gnaws iron, bites steel. Grinds hard stones to meal. Slays kings, runs town. And beats high mountains down.", "Hoboy. In my metaphysics class (and no, that doesn't mean metaphysics like astrology and shit - it means \"relevant to the works written by Aristotle after the Physics\") we spent about a month on this. \n\nBasically there are two perspectives in the philosophical literature, called the A theory and the B theory. The A theory states that \"time is a thing that goes\", that there is such thing as \"now\" and objectively the universe moves from one \"now\" to the next.\n\nSpecial relativity and other evidence from physics suggests that this can't be true. So, instead there is the B theory, which is more akin to \"time is a thing that *is*\", or a dimension along which to exist just like space. In the B theory it's hard to understand why the present moment is special, or more real than other moments. I think we are only capable of experiencing each point along the time dimension as \"now\", so even if all times are effectively simultaneous, we still perceive them in a linear fashion.\n\nI wrote a five page paper on this...it's buried within the depths of my deceased computer, back in my natal home, where I am not. I wish I had some way of calling it back up, but I guess I don't.\n\nEdit: I found a copy buried in my emails! Let me know if you happen to be interested. It's not a very good paper, but it's an introduction to some very cool ideas.", "Time is simply what prevents everything from happening at once. ", "**Like You Are 5:**\n\nYou are *always* moving through Time at approximately the speed of light. When you speed up, you begin to move through time less slowly. This is why it is technically possible to time-travel (though we can only go into the future at this point).\n\nTherefore, Time is our relative experience of moving through the fourth dimension. We can alter it by going faster and faster. If you were theoretically to accelerate yourself to 99.99% the speed of light, you would experience time-travel, where a few seconds go by for you, and perhaps tens to hundreds of years go by in the 'outside' world.\n\n**Like You Are 12:**\n\nWhen people call time \"the fourth dimension\", they are being technically correct. Basically, try to imagine the following in your head.\n\nIf I wanted to, using some coordinate system, find a specific moment in space and time, I could write it as so: (X,Y,Z,T) where X,Y,Z are the dimensions you are familar with (height, width, depth). It is important to note that our distinction of X,Y,Z are completely arbitrary and based solely on our perception of the world. For the sake of this next part, just imagine that moving from place to place is simply moving in some direction (let's just say X). Time is the fourth dimension, as stated above. Essentially, what makes time 'time' is the fact that at this very moment, you and I are both moving through the 'time' dimension at *the speed of light*. \n\nNow when I move in the X-axis dimension (which again is an arbitrary direction), I am taking some of my speed away from Time, and giving it to the movement in the X-axis. If you want a visual, imagine a compass in your head where the needle is pointing straight ahead. In this image, you are sitting still, but still flying through time at the speed of light in the Time direction. When you start to move in any other direction (e.g. our spacial dimensions), you start to take some of your speed away from the Time direction, and give it to the spacial direction. Visually, this would look like the needle on the compass creeping left/right away from being perfectly straight.\n\nIf I am on the space station moving 5 km/s, I am moving a tiny fraction of the speed of light. In the above compass scenario, my compass needle is slightly to the left/right. Thus, I am moving more slowly through time. This is why you have probably heard of something along the lines of time-travel and astronauts.\n\nAstronauts who spend a sufficient amount of time on the space station come back to Earth having aged ever so slightly less (I am talking microseconds less here). This is, again, because they were moving in the spacial dimensions at a fraction the speed of light. Thus, in the Time direction, they moved ever so much more slowly.\n\nOur perception of time stems from this phenomenon, which now that you have reached the end, I am proud to say that you now understand the bare-bones basics of Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4zf1pd", "title": "how does a spinning drum of concrete keep it from hardening?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zf1pd/eli5_how_does_a_spinning_drum_of_concrete_keep_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6v9bj0", "d6v9hfq", "d6vt82a"], "score": [10, 7, 8], "text": ["It doesn't.\n\nIf you're wondering why cement trucks rotate their drum it is to keep the contents well mixed. Continuous mixing helps delay setting by not allowing any one part to get drier than the whole mass. It will still harden eventually though no matter how much you mix it. ", "The spinning drum does not directly prevent the concrete from hardening. However when the trucks leave the cement plant the concrete have not been properly mixed and needs to be mixed further. Also while they are transporting it the concrete will harden faster in some areas then others. Continuously mixing the concrete will make sure it hardens evenly throughout the mix. It is also possible to mix in substances delaying the hardening process while they are driving and those substances needs to be mixed in properly. Eventually when you get the concrete out of the drum you need to agitate it to make it flow.", "Nobody here has yet mentioned *how* spinning the drum mixes the concrete.\n\nIt's because the inside wall of the drum has a big metal spiral on it.  When the drum spins, the spiral spins, continuously pushing concrete to the front of the drum.  Spinning the drum the opposite direction will push concrete to the back - this is how they pump the concrete out at the construction site without needing to tilt the mixer like a dump truck.\n\n[Here's a gif](_URL_0_) to illustrate."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Operation_of_a_truck_mixer.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "757q0q", "title": "On 18 April 1930, the BBC announced that \"There is no news today\". What are some events of your field of history that could have been reported?", "selftext": "[On 18 April 1930, the BBC announced that \"There is no news today\".](_URL_0_)\n\nWhat are some events of your field of history that could have been reported?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/757q0q/on_18_april_1930_the_bbc_announced_that_there_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do44od0"], "score": [108], "text": ["I'll leave it to others to actually hazard answers to your question, but I think the 1930 incident that you refer to is sufficiently curious to be worthy of some attention in its own right.\n\nIt does seem to be true that the announcement of \"No news today\" was made; the BBC's own *Yearbook* for 1930 makes mention of the broadcast. But it may help to contextualise. The announcement came at a very early point in British news broadcasting history. The BBC had only been permitted to prepare its own news bulletins, rather than broadcasting already-prepared copy produced by a press agency, in 1928; in 1930, the broadcasting of news was still the responsibility of the Department of Talks, and no separate News Section would be established until 1934. There were no portable sound recorders and no easy means of sending broadcast-quality sound back to a central studio from the field; it was only in 1936 (on the occasion of the great fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace in south London) that a telephone report, with the sounds of shouts, fire engines and flames in the background) was first broadcast live. \n\nFurthermore, 18 April 1930 was Good Friday \u2013 a then fairly strictly observed public holiday on which British newspapers did not publish. This latter circumstance created a significant issue for the BBC, since at this point in its history it did not have its own journalistic staff. The existing news organisations of the day had bitterly opposed any suggestion that radio be allowed to become a real competitor to the press, and it was prepared to insist on the copyright it held on its own bulletins to prevent their being used as a source by the BBC.\n\nThe Corporation - which was and is publicly funded via payment by its audience of a licence fee \u2013 was thus forced to choose between developing its own, enormously expensive, news gathering organisation from scratch, something the newspapers would have decried as a waste of public money, and of reaching an agreement with the printed press. News gathering was not then seen as central to the BBC's mission - even though this was famously defined by its first Director General, [John Reith](_URL_0_), as \"to inform, educate, and entertain\" \u2013 so, under a 1924 agreement made with the two main wire news services of the day, the Press Association and Exchange and Telegraph, it maintained a staff of two editors and two sub-editors to go through the agency tickers to prepare news bulletins. The BBC made no claim to creating or even curating news; a surviving recording dating to 1936 reveals that a copyright notice stating that the news was \"Copyright by Reuter, Press Association, Exchange Telegraph and Central News\" was read out before the broadcast itself began. \n\nAll in all, then, the radio news of 1930 was, according to its historian Tim Crook, \"an unselfconsciously amateur operation\" which was \"held in contempt by Fleet Street journalists\" - that is, the staffs of the country's intensely competitive national newspapers.\n\nIt would be very interesting to know in more detail than we now do exactly what combination of circumstances led to the announcement you cite. The newswires themselves certainly did continue to operate over holiday periods, but it's possible at least some of the BBC news editing team were on holiday on the Good Friday in question, just as at least some of their newspaper colleagues - with no Good Friday papers to produce - would have been. I would suggest it's also extremely possible that the BBC team had by this point developed the habit of turning to the press of the day for guidance as to what news stories were considered most important and pressing, and using these leads to arrange the radio news bulletin. (It would be fascinating to run a study of any surviving news broadcasts of scripts against the same day's London evening newspapers to check on this, but certainly it does not seem impossible that the BBC's shoestring news operation lacked the experience and confidence to shape a news agenda on its own, and that its \"unselfconsciously amateur\" ethos did the rest.) Certainly I don't think that anyone working for the BBC at this point in its history considered that it was the Corporation's job to do more than act as a digest of already available news produced by other sources. There were literally dozens of newspapers, from *The Times* downwards, selling many millions of copies daily, that were already doing that job.\n\nOne further point worth making \u2013 which is a factor [stressed by the BBC itself these days](_URL_1_) \u2013 is that in 1930,\n\n > those in charge of the Talks Department, where News was based, drew a definite distinction between \"BBC news values\" and \"journalistic news values\".\n\n > It was an absolute rule there should be no \"sensationalism\". Parliamentary news, not known for its ability to grip the listener, was given special prominence.\n\nNot surprisingly, parliament had not sat that Good Friday, and so it was impossible for the staff on duty that evening to rely on one of the most usual \"leads\" for the nightly news bulletin.\n\nThe reality, then, was that the 18 April announcement was largely a product of the absence within the BBC of any team capable of generating its own news agenda in the absence of the usual guidance provided by the proceedings in parliament and by the newspapers of the day. Even as late as 1936 - at a time of growing international crisis, let's not forget - a junior BBC employee called Richard Dimbleby (later to become an extremely eminent broadcaster in his own right) could still write to the Chief News Editor that\n\n > a member or members of your staff \u2013 they could be called 'BBC reporters, or BBC correspondents' \u2013 should be held in readiness, just as they are at the evening paper men, to cover unexpected news for the day. In the event of a big fire, strike, civil commotion, railway accident, pit accident, or any other major catastrophe in which the public, I fear, is deeply interested, a reporter could be sent from Broadcasting House to cover the event for the bulletin.\n\n > At the scene, it would be his job, in addition to writing his own account of the event, to secure an eyewitness [and Dimbleby went on to give an earnest definition of how an \"eyewitness\" was to be defined]... and to give a short eyewitness account of the part he or she played that day. In this way, I really believe that News could be presented in a gripping manner.\n\nFurthermore, [the BBC broadcasting schedule](_URL_2_) for 18 April 1930 reveals that there had already been broadcasts of national and regional sports bulletins earlier that same evening. These seem to have gone ahead as normal; it was only the 15-minute political news broadcast scheduled for 8.45pm that was affected.\n\nThe idea that anybody thought there was literally \"no news\" on 18 April 1930 is thus pretty implausible. The phrase may have been the product of an incautious or hurried scriptwriter, and I suspect that whoever was responsible would have been pretty amazed to see their phrase entering the historical record, and being discussed so earnestly here on AskHistorians 87 years later.\n\n**Sources** \n\nTim Crook, *International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice* (1997)\n\nJonathan Dimbleby, *Richard Dimbleby* (1975)\n\nJackie Harrison, *News* (2005)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20130709200049/https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/18/april-18-1930-a-day-with-no-news/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/culture/reith-1", "https://web.archive.org/web/20130530172222/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/newswatch/history/noflash/html/1930s.stm", "http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/national/daventry/1930-04-18"]]}
{"q_id": "1msi0q", "title": "why is the 2nd law of thermodynamics ignored/dismissed in regards to evolution?", "selftext": "\"No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found -- not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy (the \"first law\"), the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles.\"\n\nE. H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason, \"A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics,\" Physics Today (vol. 53, April 2000), p. 32.\n\n*edit* I just realized I probably should have posted this to ask science. If I need to move it, please let me know. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1msi0q/eli5_why_is_the_2nd_law_of_thermodynamics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccc6xkn", "ccc6xo1", "ccc72za", "ccc792p", "ccc7brd", "ccca4oi", "cccac35"], "score": [48, 19, 14, 6, 5, 3, 3], "text": ["The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to a closed system. Earth is not a closed system - it receives huge amounts of energy from the sun.", " >  The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases\n\nWe are not an isolated system, we have the sun blasting energy at us.", "I assume you're speaking of the property of entropy, which describes how order always moves towards disorder, and never the other way around.  You see, for the second law of thermodynamics to be applicable in the context of entropy, you need to have an *isolated* system.  Earth, on the other hand, is an open system.  In terms of evolution, which operates in the Earth environment, the second law of thermodynamics really isn't the property meant to describe it.  Associating natural evolution with it just doesn't make sense.  ", "Others have explained it, but I would like to comment on a potential implication that often goes ignored.\n\nThe problem is that if the second law behaved in the manner that creationists describe, no 'orderly' system could ever exist in the first place, including the human body.\n\nIn other words, if you were to accept the purported break between evolution and the second law, you'd have to also accept that there is something fundamentally supernatural about the human body or a tree, or a snowflake; which even Christians don't accept (note, they talk about the immateriality of the soul, not the physical body).", "Yup. Overall, the total energy in the *universe* is decreasing. But the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't say that you can't boil water, only that after boiling water, there will be less energy in the world than before you did. But fortunately, there's lots of places we can get new energy: burning coal, the Sun, critical masses of radioactive elements, and so on and so forth.  \nEvolution doesn't anywhere violate this principle. Evolution *does* imply that more complex *systems* come from less complex systems, but you can un-shuffle a deck of cards--can put the deck in the same order it was when you opened the box. But a more complex system isn't heat. Neither is a un-shuffled deck of cards more or less energy-related than a shuffled one.  \nEvolution is more about information than energy. Energy comes into play in the life of an individual, but a species (or a single cell, or a mitochondrion) changes generationally by changes occurring in the information encoded in its genome.  \nGoing from a light-sensitive chunk of brain to something that's a little more eyeball like is like getting dealt a royal flush. The juggling of the genome from mutation is like the shuffling of a deck of cards, and the royal flush wins more often than 7-high, so, it has more offspring.  \nOf course those offspring need energy to live, and they get it from the Sun, or from the local power company, and the overall level of energy in the Universe decreases exactly as the 2nd law requires.\n", "This question is a PRATT and is roughly equivalent to asking why airplanes don't get tickets for not ignoring the speed limits of roads that they fly over; asking this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of both the second law of thermodynamics and evolution and, if you don't want to google it for a billion answers, go to /r/askscience", "This one is a bit of a double-edged sword, or perhaps a karmic landmine, if you will. As someone who cares little for Internet points, I will step through the minefield to try to shed some light on the complexity of the answer for you.\n\nThose who have a vested interest in advancing the claims against evolution are usually in a poor position to grasp the science of their arguments. The deck is stacked against them, unfortunately: they have probably had a lifetime of people espousing junk science to further religious indoctrination goals. By the time they've reached an age where they can reason for themselves, they are already looking for ways to stay in the dark, versus ways to help illuminate their understanding of complex concepts (incidentally, this is where you separate yourself from that pack, and congratulations on attempting to educate yourself).\n\nWithout implying that better education correlates with atheism, I'll simply say that religious tenets do not survive the use of logic and reason, when an open mind is properly applying these tools.\n\nSadly, the *actual* answers to some of these pseudo-scientific questions are above the heads of many who are asking them. If you were to go to Ask Science and post a similarly-worded inquiry, you might not understand the answer (I know that my brain would have some trouble wrapping around what they're going to spit back at you, and I've got an undergraduate physics education!).\n\nIt ends up being a self-perpetuating cycle of parroting misunderstood concepts to people with an interest in accepting even tenuous tidbits that validate their belief systems. As a whole, the herd becomes weaker for it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "65r2jv", "title": "why dont police officers have to wear body cameras yet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65r2jv/eli5why_dont_police_officers_have_to_wear_body/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgchq50", "dgchwi1", "dgciwrl", "dgckm6l", "dgcpuvu", "dgcql5u", "dgcrsbu"], "score": [8, 12, 32, 15, 13, 3, 2], "text": ["Most departments that have the funding for them, have them.\n\nPolice departments can't just shit money and equipment.  It requires funding.", "1) They are expensive. \n\n2) There are privacy concerns for the Police. \n\n3) There are security concerns for Police. \n\n4) There are privacy concerns for the public interacting with the police. ", "Police unions. No one has mentioned this yet. \n\nAs most police officers are unionized, any change to their working conditions has to be approved through collective bargaining (negotiating with the union). Union contracts often run for 3-5 years so the state can't just tell cops to start using them. \n\nSince many police union members (cops) don't want the cameras the unions can delay or prevent departments from adopting them.\n\nPolice unions are often politically powerful and politicians generally don't like to ram things down their throats that they really don't want. This is why in many places they've either been slow to adopt cameras or haven't done it at all. \n\nNote: I'm not demonizing police unions. They are not the sole reason that cameras are not fully adopted. Money is probably the number one reason, but there are also privacy concerns as well.      ", "A lot of the answers so far are good, but they're missing one really important point: police are run by *cities*, not by states or the federal government.\n\nDozens of major cities around the country have already started using body cameras, and some of them for all officers.\n\nOther cities want to do it but haven't yet got the funding.\n\nIn some cities they're seeing resistance from officers or unions, it's true, but overall the trend seems to be to start using them.\n", "\u2022The most apparent and obvious is cost. Those aren't cheap and considering the area's where this would most beneficial are already cash strapped cities. Often the funds just aren't there.\n\n\u2022Privacy concerns of the citizenry. Can't record in people's residence, or interior of car. Also many states require both parties to consent to being recorded, so the cops could violate state law by recording a person. Doing any of the above could make such recordings inadmissible in court.  Also there's concern over the storage of said recordings, plus the distinction between essential and non-essential recordings. \n\n\u2022Their implementation and use would require training on there proper use, what one can and cannot record. Which again adds to the cost. Signed of from incumbent mayor's, governor's, chief's, police unions, etc., down to an individual officer(s) not wishing or wanting to do so if deemed non-essential to his/hers gear and uniform.\n\n\u2022Finally it's not the problem solver its made out to be. Yeah it has helped in some cases but those are few and far between (and more often than not proved the officer innocent from false claims made against them by the person they arrested.) They can be easily damaged, dropped, lost, and misaligned. And remember in situations where they are helpful the last thought on anyone's mind \"is the shot in focus?\" Whats filmed could be obstructed, out of focus, out of range, and sometimes only captures blur. \n\nIn all honestly the cost of body cams could be better spent elsewhere. They can be helpful but better training and equipment would do worlds better than having a recording of an event. ", "I'm not sure if this is allowed as a top level comment, but it's something that I'm very passionate about so I'm going to respond anyway and attempt to explain like you're five on why you don't want to push body cameras on law enforcement, you want to resist them having access to them.  \n\nI was a federal cop for 5 years so I've seen both sides of the body camera 'movement'.  The citizens who are forcing the issue of body cameras see them as a means to catch cops doing the wrong thing which on the surface makes totals sense, but when you dig into the subject a little deeper that argument for support starts to fall apart.  Employers have been monitoring their employees since the invention of closed circuit TV.  Almost everywhere you go there are cameras watching both the customers and the employees...but mostly the employees.  The average employee isn't bothered by this because they would never do something wrong, a handful of employees are dissuaded from trying anything on camera but if they find a weak spot they'll exploit it, and a select few don't care about the cameras and gamble that nobody is watching.\n\nThe same goes for body cameras.  There are over 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the US and the overwhelmingly vast majority of them will spend their entire career faithfully serving the public with honor, dignity, and respect with some of them selflessly and heroically giving their live in the process.  A handful of cops would be dissuaded from doing something questionable on camera but would exploit a weakness in the system if they found one, and a select few just want to watch the world burn.  The numbers for \"bad\" cops are no different than the numbers for \"bad\" doctors, \"bad\" lawyers, or any other profession.  Some people just suck and they choose a variety of different professions to fund their suck ass lives.  \n\nSo now you win and all 900,000+ cops are outfitted with body cameras and dash cams.  But most of the cops would never do anything wrong and now they've got these cameras with them all the time. So what exactly are the camera's purpose?  They become evidence gathering tools against you and you can't just think about today, you have to consider the technological advances of the future.  If we mandated 100% body camera compliance tomorrow, within five years every cop would be a walking talking license plate reader/facial recognition computer.  In ten years we'd have cameras on every street corner and on the highways because \"why pay cops to pull over speeders when you can just send them a ticket in the mail? Cops are needed for real crimes.\"\n\nYou also have to take into account what this would do to our criminal justice system. When television shows like CSI became popular it had a measurable effect on the system that has been labeled [The CSI Effect:](_URL_0_)\n\n > The CSI effect is hypothesized to affect verdicts in two main ways: first, that jurors expect more forensic evidence than is available or necessary, resulting in a higher rate of acquittal when such evidence is absent; and second, that jurors have greater confidence in forensic and particularly DNA evidence than is warranted, resulting in a higher rate of conviction when such evidence is present. While these and other effects may be caused by crime shows, the most commonly reported effect is that jurors are wrongly acquitting defendants despite overwhelming evidence of guilt. In particular, prosecutors have reported feeling pressured to provide DNA evidence even when eyewitness testimony is available. In one highly publicized incident, Los Angeles County, California District Attorney Steve Cooley blamed actor Robert Blake's acquittal on murder charges on the CSI effect. Cooley noted that the not guilty verdict came despite two witness accounts of Blake's guilt, and claimed that the jury members were \"incredibly stupid\".\n\nIn a world where every cop has a body and dash camera, anything that happens off camera might as well have never happened.  The solution to that?  Cameras everywhere!! The result? Hello 1984. ", "So one thing I havent seen written yet is server space cost and records requests. I'll go into them here:\n\n1. Server space. Video clips take up a large amount of space on hard drives, so finding organization and storage for these videos numbering in the thousands is a headache. It's expensive to purchase the server space, but also to have it staffed properly. There are mechanisms where video needs to be purged, and you run into legal issues there as well.\n\n2. Open Records Requests. Imagine you're drunk and somehow end up partially or fully nude (this is a pretty common occurrence believe it or not). Your video clip of you nude is now open to be requested by anyone connected to this case, including civil attorneys for any lawsuit that may occur. This video may also be shown publicly in court. There are mechanisms or software that can be used to pixelate or blur nudity, but again....cost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect"], []]}
{"q_id": "4wg3gd", "title": "why can some people function fine with only a few hours of sleep each night, whilst others need a full night's sleep (8-12h) to feel adequately tested?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wg3gd/eli5_why_can_some_people_function_fine_with_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d66qny4", "d66r72y", "d66ree3", "d66rfiq", "d66rra1", "d66szn1", "d66u0f1", "d66x0wd"], "score": [4, 231, 3, 30, 5, 8, 4, 4], "text": ["Diet is very important. It plays a vital part of your body's ability to sleep when it should, stay asleep, and wake up promptly once you are fully charged. ", "If somebody could answer this question, they'd probably win a nobel prize.\n\nSeriously, there's a lot we don't know about sleep. The short answer is basically \"genetics\". But exactly how that works for some people is largely a mystery.", "Honestly I feel so much better with 4-5 hours of sleep. But yeah the brain and body are just odd.", "There's [some research](_URL_0_) that shows that a certain genetic mutation, related to the part you that controls how much you sleep, causes some people to be react better when they're sleep-deprived.\n\nBasically, the people with this mutation will perform better when sleep-deprived than those without. But it's not clear if people with the mutation also avoid the health risks that come along with prolonged sleep deprivation. ", "Sleep cycles / stages. If our sleep is interrupted in one of the early stages, we can feel groggy and tired even if we've had 'enough' sleep. People who 'get by' on less sleep are accessing sleep cycles more efficiently, as opposed to someone like me who tosses  &  turns all night meandering between stages 1-3 with v little 4-5.*\n\n\n*Hopefully someone with those delightful letters after their name can confirm / expand on this, on mobile after heavy night so expecting some holes! ", "I think a lot can even have to do with how you are feeling that day or what your motivations are. I know I rarely am tired when i spring up at 6am for snowboarding, but if i were awakened for almost any other reason i would feel like death itself.", "There's definitely differences in ability to function versus amount of sleep each night, but I think a lot of instances of this are that these people probably aren't functioning as fine as they think. And these people are probably underestimating how much sleep they are getting.\n\nThings like \"Oh I only get 5 hours of sleep a night and I'm fine.\" Except they probably get 6 hours or maybe 7, they probably sleep in on the weekend. They probably drink caffeine like crazy all damn day. They probably have irritability, difficulty concentrating, distraction, inattention, etc. They are also probably completely wiped out in the evening and/or dozing off while sitting watching TV.", "Hello, I work in a psychology research lab studying sleep and memory, so this isn't exactly what I work on, but I feel its close enough that I can give an educated answer. \n\n\nThere are a number of interactions that lead to your observation, but the simple answer is that they aren't functioning fine, they only appear to be. With the right measures, a person missing only 1 hour of sleep can easily be identified.\n\nFirst, its important to distinguish between functioning fine after one night of only a few hour's sleep and repeated nights of only a few hour's sleep. While its possible to function relatively normally with one night of little sleep, repeated nights of little sleep will build a sleep debt in 99.9% of people. Your body will start prioritizing different sleep cycles as you become more indebted, and when you finally have the opportunity to catch up, you'll find your self sleeping 10-12 hours. Its also important to know that its not a straight 1-1 ratio of sleep debt to sleep catch up, and you'll often need more nights of catch up sleep than you missed. \n\n\nSecond, your body has two sleep clocks that are used to determine if you are tired. The first is based on how long its been since you were asleep. While your awake, a chemical (melatonin) is released that slowly builds up in your body. The more of this chemical you have built up, the more the urge to sleep grows. When you do go to sleep, the chemical build up reverses and the clock resets. The second clock is based on light exposure which is normally anchored to the night day cycle. In the morning, when your body detects an increase of light, it releases a different chemical (cortisol), that works to prepare your body for action. If these two clocks get desynced, it can lead to a state where you feel energized because its time to be awake, but your body still needs more sleep. This is often the case with frequent nappers, the melatonin build up was not completely reset because they did not get enough sleep.\n\n\nThe third reason people may not notice they need more sleep is that the part of the brain that is responsible for judgement (prefrontal cortex) is one of the first parts of the brain to be affected by lack of sleep. Simply put, you've lost the ability to accurate tell how tired you are. There is a similar effect that occurs when people drive drunk. They are too drunk to realize how drunk they are and so they make judgement that there safe to drive.\n\n\nFinally, people can seem to function fine with little sleep because we are rarely pushed hard enough to notice. You might feel like this is an argument towards not needing sleep, but in certain situations, your lack of sleep will become painfully obvious. Take for example an ER doctor who has only slept for 2-3 hours each night for the past few days. It might seem like he is doing fine since it would be obvious, and dangerous, if we wasn't, but most of his job is automatic. If a person comes in with a gun shot wound, the steps to save this person's life are already procedure and the physical motions are well practiced. Where you do see these doctors make life threatening mistakes, is in situations that require attention like prescribing conflicting medications or responding to atypical situations. Another example is a student who stays up all night partying and then aces a test the next morning. Recall is relatively easy, so if you were well rested when you learned the material, you should be fine, but learning new material while sleep deprived can be impossibly difficult.\n\n**Edit** Another point to consider is that many people get more sleep than they claim. Studies have been done where people are hooked up to a machine that measures brain activity (EEG) and then asked to push a button if they had been asleep when a buzzer sounded. The buzzer went off at different time intervals (1min, 5min, 10min, etc.) after they have fallen asleep according to the EEG, or randomly while still awake. Some participants who had slept up to an hour claimed that they were not asleep when the buzzer went off.\n\nNow at the begining, I said this was true for 99.9% of people. There are case studies of a family who only sleeps about 2-3 hours a night, every night. When given memory/alertness/health measures, they perform about the same as people who have gotten the standard 8 hours. Last I knew, the mechanisms of this were not understood, but given that it is most likely genetic, as it runs families, I think its easy to imagine that some lesser form of these genes could be at work in the average population. Not everyone needs 8 hours. Some need more and some need less, but it is incredibly rare to be healthy outside of 7-9 hours of sleep. If you think your one of these people, its much more likely that you've been tired for so long, you think its normal.\n\n\nTLDR: The vast majority of people can't function well on a few hours of sleep for multiple nights, they only appear to be. You can go a while with little to no sleep, but you will need to catch up eventually. There are extremely rare cases of families only needing 2-3 hour sleep. No one knows why this is yet. You are not one of these people!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/a-gene-makes-you-need-less-sleep"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "335ota", "title": "why don't the parts of our skin that are always touching, like our toes, get contact sores?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/335ota/eli5_why_dont_the_parts_of_our_skin_that_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqhrmow", "cqhrorr", "cqhsg03", "cqhswky", "cqhvxmh", "cqhymle", "cqhztau", "cqi00fg", "cqi021l", "cqi0rdf", "cqi1l5c", "cqi1wpc", "cqi22wv", "cqi3evz", "cqi4dzf", "cqi6296", "cqi68ja", "cqi7f2r", "cqiceht", "cqicruy", "cqidlnt"], "score": [117, 18, 235, 1496, 664, 7, 6, 4, 11, 6, 3, 2, 4, 3, 20, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 4], "text": ["They aren't in constant contact unless you've bound them together, your toes move quite a bit even inside shoes and socks", "Chafing can and does happen to people. \n\nAlso skin in those areas usually heals quickly or is smother in order to reduce friction.\n\n", "What about the inside of our butt cracks?", "Go hiking for several miles. Blisters and hotspots are a common injury. Many native people who walk barefoot, and long distance walkers develop a thick layer of hard dead skin on their feet to protect themselves.", "Simply being in contact isn't enough to cause a pressure sore. The force of the pressure on the skin is a much larger factor in determining whether or not a sore develops.\n\nPressure sores typically form over bony prominences in your body (think of your knuckles or tailbone) and are caused by prolonged periods of pressure on the skin. For example, the act of sitting places you at risk of developing a pressure sore on your tush due to the weight of your upper body pressing down on the skin and reducing the blood flow to the skin and tissue, leading to tissue damage or death (depending on the weight and the length of time). To increase the likelihood of developing a sore, you could increase the weight (force) pressing down, increase the time, or decrease the surface area supporting the weight.\n\nIf you were to press your toes together tightly for a great length of time, then they might be a small risk of developing a pressure sore, but even then the amount of force (in this case, weight) that would be pressing on the skin is probably unlikely to do any damage.", "The real question is why our dicks don't get blisters. ", "The skin in that area is constantly being replenished via epitheliazation. Also when you are younger and healthy the skin is held together with strong connective tissue. Elderly people are a different story, their skin is usually thinner and does not have as much water as a younger person. This causes the skin to replenish slower, and can become injured simply by putting pressure on the area.", "Like a callus or blister?  Jesus christ", "I'm in decent shape but I get rashes in my pits from everything even just driving whether I wear deodorant or not like wtf", "In the past before we wore shoes our toes were splayed out. Not all scrunched together like they are now. \n\nThis actually really bothers me and I hate how my toes look all molded together. ", "They are making contact but do not have pressure forcing them together. If they do, it's generally not for an incredibly long time. In order to get a contact sore similar to a bed sore, you'd need a ton of pressure smushing them together for an extended period of time (like days to weeks) and that would cut off the blood supply to the skin in that area and cause the skin die from the lack of oxygen that is found in the blood and it would break down, which would create a sore. There's also not much of them rubbing against each other unless you run a lot or are regularly on your feet for hours in shoes that don't fit correctly.", "Yeah I get that by walking in heels.. :(  doesn't look very feminine when I take my shoes off haha", "Wait... im the only one who gets fucked up between the toes after a lot of walking?", "I would like to know why is it when I go to the beach and play in the sand and water, I get chaffed around my scrotum and thighs? It hurts really bad, is it from the sand, salt and grit? Or is it something different?", "All skin is not created equally!\n\nSkin on areas of high contact (soles, palms, digits) is called thick skin and it is a bit different than skin elsewhere on our body.\n\nAll thick skin is \"keratinized' which means that in addition to the normal other skin layers, it has an a large outermost layer of dead skin cells.  \n\nThese cells all hooked together during their growth, then died and remain as the outermost layer of skin.  They're literally dead so they have no blood supply and no nerve supply and thus are pretty resistant to pain and prevent bleeding from occurring when there is friction on their surfaces.", "I sometimes get them between my pinky toe and the one next it, and the one next it and its mate as well.  This most often results from not changing shoes/socks after sweating a lot or getting feet wet.  But sometimes it is just from having to wear my dress shoes several days in a row, which don't breath as well as sneakers that I usually wear.  I actually make a habit of trying to pull my pinky toes away to make a \"gap\" just because they are so buried into the next to normally.", "Maybe not contact sores, but the parts that are always touching are at risk for fungal infections!! (Molds/yeasts love sweaty creases and confined areas!)\n\nLike Athlete's Foot, Candida infection in the fat creases especially in diabetics, jock itch (Tinea cruris), etc... ", "I just looked at my foot to see if my toes are touching each other!!", "You obviously don't work very hard/get very physical.", "What about buttcheeks?", "There are 5 possible layers of the epidermis- most outer layer of the skin. These are the stratum corneum, lucidum, granulosum, spinosum and basale. The fourth layer (stratum lucidum) is only found on the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands, it is composed of dead kerinocytes and allows for the extra contact\n-med student"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1g5277", "title": "Is there a particular reason why some people are risk-takers while some are risk-averse?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1g5277/is_there_a_particular_reason_why_some_people_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cagsmwx"], "score": [4], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nThis is probably where you want to start reading. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_game_theory"]]}
{"q_id": "8vf7al", "title": "What makes elements with the same number of valence electrons (like Carbon and Silicon) chemically different? What causes them to act differently at all?", "selftext": "From what I understand, the valence electrons of the atom are what determines how it interacts chemically with other elements, are there any factors, besides maybe electronegativity, that make them different from each other?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8vf7al/what_makes_elements_with_the_same_number_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1njz8s"], "score": [13], "text": ["There are a number of factors that can cause a difference in behavior.\n\nFor 4th row (and above) elements interaction with the d-orbitals (even if they are filled) is often a cause of different chemical behavior. (This is why tin is a metal). The greater availability of differently shaped orbitals means heavier elements tend to prefer covalent bonds (they are \"[softer](_URL_0_)\").\n\nHowever, heavy elements (row 3 or lower) tend to have less stable double bonds ([double bond rule](_URL_2_)). This difference in bond preference is the reason SiO2 is a solid while CO2 is a gas ([also see here](_URL_1_)).\n\nDifferences in the atomic radius forces atoms apart or forces them to push closer together. The effective radius is one of the main reasons why SF6 exists, but OF6 does not ([link](_URL_4_)).\n\nPart of the differences for very heavy elements is due to relativistic effects on the innermost orbitals ([see here](_URL_3_)), though the difference in the size and type of orbitals available is still the primary difference in bonding behavior."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSAB_theory", "https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/34591/why-is-sio2-a-solid-while-co2-is-a-gas", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bond_rule", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanthanide_contraction", "https://www.quora.com/OF6-is-not-known-but-sf6-is-known-Why"]]}
{"q_id": "2gm843", "title": "if american football is the most popular sport in the u.s., then why is there only one pro league?", "selftext": "Soccer is far and above the most popular sport in the UK and they have multiple tiers of it.  Why is it different here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gm843/eli5_if_american_football_is_the_most_popular/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckkfikr", "ckkfn73", "ckkfoft", "ckkfr6o", "ckkhq43"], "score": [14, 6, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["By that logic there are many tiers of football.\n\nNCAA football isn't \"pro\" but it's pretty much the minor leagues. There's also arena football, and tons of other leagues that would be the equivalent of the bottom tiers of English soccer.", "The career of a pro football player is pretty short compared to that of other sports. It doesn't allow a player the time to rise through the ranks the same way they would if they were playing something like baseball.", "It's a good question and I'm not sure there's a clear answer but here are some reasons I can think of...\n\n* College football serves as \"minor leagues\" for younger players\n\n* NFL rosters are pretty huge and contain many players that are just on the \"practice squad.\" And second-stringers have no problem getting playing time as there are unlimited substitutions so there's no need to move guys to another league just to get them \"match fit.\"\n\n* In some cases, Canadian football, Arena football (defunct), NFL Europe (defunct), or the German/Australian leagues can serve as second-tier leagues\n\n* Unlike golf or baseball where some guys can spend years in the lower-tier leagues for pretty low pay, football is very hard on the body and frankly isn't worth playing unless you're paid really well. You don't see a lot of adult recreational full-contact gridiron football leagues. Even good players sometimes retire in their prime because they don't want to play.", "College football, that's what different.\n\nThe UK doesn't have the same sort of tradition college sports being a gateway to professional sports that the US does.  College football lives in much the same niche as secondary tier soccer, and had capture the fan base to a degree that makes it hard for a secondary pro league to be profitable.\n\nThat said, there are other football leagues in North American...Area Football, various short term startups like the UFL and XLF, Canadian Football, etc.\n\n", "There used to be another professional league, but it merged with the NFL.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\n\"In 1966, the NFL agreed to merge with the rival American Football League (AFL), effective 1970; the first Super Bowl was held at the end of that same season in January 1967.\"\n\nEdit: Oops! I forgot to answer your question.\n\nIf you define a professional football league as an entity that pays its players, then we have the Arena Football League. It's in-door professional (American) football league.\n\nWe probably don't have another league on par with the NFL because it would be too hard to compete against them. The better players would most likely sign with the NFL because it's more established, and the new league would probably only sign not-so-good players.\n\nWe did, briefly, have the United States Football league."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League"]]}
{"q_id": "1fy17m", "title": "Do bigger cars have an advantage over smaller cars when the driver hits a deer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fy17m/do_bigger_cars_have_an_advantage_over_smaller/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caex3ht", "caex9lz"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["I couldn't find the height of the CR-V grill so based on the picture and height of the tire (215/70R16 is 27\" tall) it looks to be around 40\". White-tail deer shoulder height is 21\" to 47\". The CR-V would hit the body of the tallest deer, and the altima would hit the legs and probably end with the deer through the windshield. ", "You could look at this from a simplified conservation of momentum point of view.\n\nBasically, the heavier the car you're in, the less you are going to slow down after hitting the deer. Assuming it's over the same amount of time (Which has a lot to do with how much the hood of the car compresses, and some other factors) the bigger car would experience a lower acceleration, which would tend to mean a lower risk of injury. \n\nOn a frictionless surface, a 1000 kg car going 40 mph would slow down to ~36.4 mph after hitting a 100 kg deer, while a 2000 kg car going 40 mph would only slow down to ~38.1 mph.   \n  \nYou can model this with (mass of car) x (initial speed of car) + (mass of deer) x (initial speed of deer*)= (mass of car + deer) x (final speed of car) assuming the collision is inelastic. I'm also assuming that the deer isn't moving at the start. \n\nOf course this is a very simplified scenario, and the real answer depends a whole lot of other factors that would vary from car to car, but I think that in general you would be safer in a larger car. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "49kqmv", "title": "If Spartans were banned from keeping records, how do we know about that ban?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nThis video makes the cliam that Spartans werent allowed to keep records, so many of their accomplishments and descriptions about their activities came from outside observers; my question is if a) that is an accurate statement and b) which specific sources do we have that describe their society (were there rogue spartans, or just outsider spartaboos)?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49kqmv/if_spartans_were_banned_from_keeping_records_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0souzs", "d0srut9"], "score": [45, 3], "text": ["Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' makes note of Spartan customs and society in several places, principally in the 'Life of Lycurgus' and the 'Life of Lysander'. In the former especially he makes notes of how Spartan men were educated and raised. For your question, the following quote:\n\n\n >  None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so-called \"rhetras\" [proclamations] forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them. And as for minor matters, such as business contracts, and cases where the needs vary from time to time, it was better, as he thought, not to hamper them by written constraints or fixed usages, but to suffer them, as occasion demanded, to receive such modifications as educated men determine. Indeed, he assigned the function of law-making wholly and entirely to education. *Plutarch's 'Life of Lycurgus' 131-2*\n\n\nI am personally no expert on how long this custom may have lasted in Spartan society. It goes without saying, of course, that ancient scholars rarely listed their own sources and rarely were alive at the same time as the people/events they write about. In Plutarch's case, he was writing over 800 years after Lycurgus is thought to have lived. But I hope this provides something of an answer to your question, at least regarding sources.\n\n\nSource: Plutarch, 'Parallel Lives', Loeb Classical Library Edition, 1914", "Little follow up question,\nWhy were they banned from keeping records?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7V1a1I5BL0"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "36he0q", "title": "What is the oldest music video that still can be viewed today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36he0q/what_is_the_oldest_music_video_that_still_can_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crdzpmv", "cre1pah", "cre2aos"], "score": [22, 10, 74], "text": ["Just a reminder from the mods:\n\nIf you're choosing to answer a question in /r/AskHistorians, there are three questions you should ask yourself first in turn:\n\n   1. Do I, personally, actually know a lot about the subject at hand?\n\n   2. Am I essentially certain that what I know about it is true?\n\n   3. Am I prepared to go into real detail about this?", "How do you define 'music video'?", "Your definition is wide enough that I'm fairly certain the [Dickson Experimental Sound Film](_URL_0_) would qualify. This is a rather famous film, featuring the first known example of live-recorded sound synchronized to picture, created in either 1894 or 1895.\n\nI would assume silent film accompanied by live musical performance/phonograph playback wouldn't count based on your desire for it to be able to be viewed today?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s"]]}
{"q_id": "2lbukb", "title": "Why is work defined to be (force x distance) rather than (force x time)?", "selftext": "Given that dP = F_{net}dt it would seem natural to define work as net force times time (or the appropriate integral). One might argue that you could push on a wall with a very large force for a long time and not change either its KE or PE but in that case the \"pusher\" would not be imparting any net force. So why force x distance then?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2lbukb/why_is_work_defined_to_be_force_x_distance_rather/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cltcsp1", "clte8ba", "cltfxk4", "cltfzh5", "cltlrpf", "cluahx5"], "score": [7, 4, 2, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["Technically you will arrive at the same point, using the math you are thinking of. Net force implies acceleration (F=ma), integrated and you get velocity, multiplied by time and you get distance. Work is just force multiplied by distance, because measuring the distance moved is physically the same as taking the integral of some strange velocity profile that you may or may not be able to accurately measure.", "Work measures energy transferred. If I'm pushing a brick along at constant speed on a level road, there's no increase in momentum (P), but the energy I am imparting appears as heat of friction between the brick and the road. There's no increase in momentum because the friction force and my pushing force exactly cancel. So F_{net}=0, but definitely work is being done. Physiologically this makes sense too. If i push long and hard, I'll get out of breath. But if I push and the friction is so great that I cannot move it, I'll get sore muscles, but won't be out of breath.", "Work is the change in energy to an object performed by an outside force. If you push on a wall and don't move it, you didn't change its potential or kinetic energy so you don't get any credit for doing work no matter how long you pushed on it.\n\nIf you put a book up on a shelf you have increased its potential energy.\n\nPE=mgh. Think about that for a second. F=mg so I can substitute in and make it PE=Fh where h is the change in height. Well that could be considered a distance so PE=Fd. Kinetic energy is described by /u/ChipotleMayoFusion.", "perhaps you are confusing the idea of making an effort with the word work?\n\nYou are describing Impulse.   If a net force is applied to an object, then its momentum will change (as described in your equation). \n\nWork is a change in energy, and it usually is referring to a specific force. If you push a block at a steady speed (i.e. acceleration = 0) down the road, you are doing work (F_applied * distance = work = added energy) and that energy will transfer into heat (via friction) and sound and not into kinetic energy, however you have not changed the momentum (steady speed).\n\n", "Because we already have a word for force x time, it's [impulse](_URL_0_) :-P\n\nSounds tongue-in-cheek but this is actually a serious answer, if you think about it.", "The classical, practical, textbook answer is that the pusher does no work to the system.  In reality, there IS work done... all solid materials store applied forces as strains.  If the strains are small enough, we say that the strain is elastic (recoverable).  If the strains are large, then the strains may have an unrecoverable (plastic) portion which dissipate the applied forces (applied energy) as heat. \n\nWhile the W = F*d formulation is good, recall the law of conservation of energy, which states that [the change in total internal energy of a system equals the added heat, minus the work performed by the system.](_URL_0_)  \ndE = deltaQ - deltaW \n\nIt is work on an ***assumed*** free (no fields), rigid (no internal degrees of freedom like temperature, stress/strain etc.) body that we reformulate to W = F*d.\n\n[Molecular Description](_URL_3_)\n\n[Inter-molecular Force](_URL_6_)\n\nGo back to our wall example, [here's a quick & dirty steel wall](_URL_2_) (20'x10'x0.5') with fixed boundaries being pushed on with a ramped force (0lbf - 100lbf), colored by stress, view is a cross-section at the location of pushing, deformation is scaled x100,000.\n\n[We can look at the displacement of the wall](_URL_1_)\n\n[Here's a look at the stress in the wall](_URL_4_)\n\n[And here's a look at the total Strain Energy of the wall vs. the External Work Done to the wall](_URL_5_)\n\nSo we've got applied forces and we've increased the energy of the wall (we've even got a distance we've applied our force over, which coincidentally if we do Fxd_max in this problem we get bigO(dE) = bigO(Fxd_max)).\n\nHopefully this helps clear things up!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_%28physics%29"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_\\(physics\\)", "http://imgur.com/qg70t6G", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3nNDX1ebMM", "http://imgur.com/PH9JsmJ", "http://imgur.com/YGDccWl", "https://i.imgur.com/HXQXpHE.png", "http://images.tutorvista.com/content/solids-and-fluids/interatomic-forces-graph.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "6op0u2", "title": "if satellite phones provide near universal coverage and have been around for such a long time, why didn't they become the norm?", "selftext": "It worked for pagers, right?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6op0u2/eli5_if_satellite_phones_provide_near_universal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkj0jlj", "dkj0v1p", "dkj3hum", "dkj40nf", "dkj46zl", "dkjdlco"], "score": [3, 15, 11, 3, 7, 2], "text": ["Unreliable in adverse weather.  I had satellite once.  Everytime it got cloudy, connection would go to shit.", "There are multiple reasons but one of the biggest is the cost to make and receive calls.  From Wikipedia:\n\n > \n > \n > The cost of making voice calls from a satellite phone varies from around $0.15 to $2 per minute, while calling them from landlines and regular mobile phones is more expensive. Costs for data transmissions (particularly broadband data) can be much higher. Rates from landlines and mobile phones range from $3 to $14 per minute with Iridium, Thuraya[22] and Inmarsat being some of the most expensive networks to call. The receiver of the call pays nothing, unless they are being called via a special reverse-charge service.\n\n > \n > \n > Making calls between different satellite phone networks is often similarly expensive, with calling rates of up to $15 per minute.\n\n > \n > \n > Calls from satellite phones to landlines are usually around $0.80 to $1.50 per minute unless special offers are used. Such promotions are usually bound to a particular geographic area where traffic is low.\n\n > \n > \n > Most satellite phone networks have pre-paid plans, with vouchers ranging from $100 to $5,000.\n\n\nMost people are not going to pay that much for themselves much less buy satellite phones for their kids. ", "The cost associated with transmitting data too and from space is insanely high. Commercially, data is multiplexed together and sent in a giant stream from land to space, and then back again at the distant end. It's like a giant super-highway of data. That's cool, efficient, and fast. An individual stream of data going from the satellite to JUST YOUR PHONE is like building a super-highway to every single home in the countryside - it's still possible, but the return on the investment just isn't worth it. The resident of that home (user of the sat phone) has to pay for that highway and now can't afford to drive to work. \n\nSatellite communications providers like Direct TV have one major up-link to the bird, and then a single down-link. When you pint your receiving dish, you're just listening in to whatever's already being broadcast, you're not changing the requirement of the signal in any way. A sat phone requires a direct connection from the satellite to you, and you're the only one who can use that receiver at that frequency on that satellite at that time. Limited bandwidth + expensive cost of building/launching the satellite = high cost of calls. \n\n", "First, pagers aren't satellite based as far as I know. They use local radio signals just like cell phones. People think satellites are used for everything but fact is most of your telecom comes from tons of wires and radio antennas spread across the globe. Look up undersea cables if you want a good time.\n\nSecond, in addition to line of sight issues, satellites are really far away. It takes longer for radio waves to go up to space, back down, and to your destination than it does to just go across the planet's surface to your destination. Even at the speed of light, you're talking about a perceptible delay that can be annoying when you're trying to have a conversation. ", "There is a significant time delay in satellite phones and that makes them less desirable than cell phones\n\nThe satellites are generally in geostationary orbit 32000 km above earth which means it takes about 1/8 seconds for the signal from Earth to get to it. \n\nIf you're on a satellite phone and calling someone else on a satellite phone on the same satellite there is a 0.25 second lag in each direction. When you stop speaking they'll hear you stop speaking 0.25 seconds later, begin their reply, and you'll hear it 0.25 seconds later, leading to an extra half second before you hear them reply.\n\nIf it has to go phone-satellite-base station-satellite-phone then there is a full second of lag, the signal will have travelled 256,000 kilometers! This is undesirable for standard users\n\nYour standard cell signal travels a few kilometers to a tower then on fiber then to a tower then to the phone. The circumference of the Earth is 40,000 km, even with crappy routing you won't force the signal to travel more than 80,000 round trip for a worst case lag of just 0.3 seconds if you call someone as far away as possible. Still only 60% of the lag of calling your neighbor on a satphone", "1. It's much more expensive to launch a satellite that pop up another cell tower. \n2. There is a significant lag on calls. From experience, this is really annoying. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6l5l69", "title": "Where did the stories of \"court wizards\" come from? Were there ever people purporting to be wizards working for kings?", "selftext": "I'd be assuming it would be British or European history, middle ages or so. Where have these stories come from in fact? Were there ever people who had such jobs or was it based on advisors to kings? or?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6l5l69/where_did_the_stories_of_court_wizards_come_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djrjoju"], "score": [52], "text": ["The idea of a court magician stems in part from real-life positions such as court astrologers, alchemists, and the like, as well as less-official positions attached to the court. Dr. John Dee, for example, was the court astrologer to Elizabeth I, and Dee's associate Edward Kelley was patronized as an alchemist by Rudolph II. \nAs far as the ultimate origins of the practice, it's hard to trace. There are historical records of rulers drawing to themselves advisers and others of influence; there are records of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian rulers consulting priests, exorcists, astrologers, etc. and fictional versions of these individuals and their exploits were evident in the records like [the stories in the Westcar Papyrus](_URL_0_). \n\nTo expand on this a bit in the European court context, let me steal a bit from [an earlier answer](_URL_1_):\n\n >  **Was there a court wizard or something like it?**\n\nNot often *explicitly*, but Edward Peters notes in [The Magician, The Witch, and the Law](_URL_2_):\n\n >  It has been said of the court of Louis the pious, son of Charlemagne, that every great man at it had his own personal astrologer. The texture of Carolingian court life suggests the plausibility of this remark, because in the heady atmosphere of transforming an Iron Age assembly of warbands and settlers into an ideal Christian kingdom, the Carolingian Empire often presents (as it did to itself) the image of a composite of late Roman imperial and barbarian Germanic styles of life and thought. the classical works that Carolingian scholars discovered, edited, and circulated among themselves were the very ones that managed to preserve much antiquarianism along with Christian piety.  The religious basis of Charlemagne's and Louis's *renovatio* has long been recognized. What has often not been recognized as fully is how much of the old learned world of late antiquity came with the Christian materials. In the sophisticated, learned, violent, and self-serving Carolingian court world those who had access to, and even a rudimentary understanding of, learned magic could easily find employers. No residual pagan superstitions or folk beliefs were necessary. The Carolingian aristocrats knew how to value learned magicians as it valued learned chroniclers, holy men, astrologers, wandering Irish scholar monks, and any other successful means of making their way through the rapidly changing post-tribal world of Charlemagne's renewed Roman Empire and Louis's rapidly deteriorating Christian kingdom.\n\nEven if not formally holding a position at court, the concentration of money and politics often created a demi-monde were magicians could thrive; in 17th century France for example, you had  characters like La Voisin, who reputedly peddled poisons, love potions, abortions, fortune-telling, and black masses to the royalty of the court of Louis XIV."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/westcar_papyrus.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6fjwb6/how_did_people_think_magic_was_real/", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/magician-the-witch-and-the-law/oclc/36179703"]]}
{"q_id": "21cyq1", "title": "In statistics, what do degrees of freedom mean?", "selftext": "This question is a bit shameful for me as I've already passed three statistics courses, but what exactly do degrees of freedom mean? I understand why they matter, but none of my professors could intuitively explain to me what they were.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/21cyq1/in_statistics_what_do_degrees_of_freedom_mean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbuyug", "cgbvdjv"], "score": [5, 11], "text": ["oh boy. it's not shameful at all. I rarely meet statisticians who can explain this concept in human language. the concept of degrees of freedom makes intuitive sense only in a fisherian space (after R.A.Fisher who placed subjects, not variables on individual dimensions, a.k.a. \"subject space\", but that's just FYI). I explain the concept of DF to my students with the following metaphor: think of DF is not as of \"degrees of freedom\" (the term which, frankly, should not be taken at the face semantic value) but as of \"decrease in fidelity. Think of this like this. You data is a digital picture, where every pixel is a data point. If you make your picture grainier you express the original information with lesser number of unique pixels. It's good, because it takes less space and you can make general statements like \"this picture is mostly red, but that upper right corner is blue\"  Exactly the same thing happens in statistical modeling: you re-express the original information (data) with a fewer number of elements (parameters in the model) and this allows you to make statements like \"the mean of males is higher than the mean of females\" [](_URL_0_) hope this helps[](_URL_0_)", "Quite literally how many of your data points are free to be whatever number they want to be. If I had 3 numbers, and you knew the mean was x, as soon as you know two of them the third isn't 'free' to be whatever it wants to be anymore... it's fixed because it can be calculated from the known data.\n\nEg. mean is 5. Number one is 3, number two is 8. In this situation the third number has to be 4 to make the mean 5... thus it is not free, nor a degree of freedom."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/caDeEnw.png"], []]}
{"q_id": "455162", "title": "why can't members of congress and the senate vote remotely?", "selftext": "Hello,\n\nAllow me to begin by saying that it's my understanding that members of the US Senate and Congress are required to be present in the Assembly Room to cast a vote.  If this is incorrect, then I apologize and I'll go ahead and remove this post.\n\nWith that disclaimer, I recall a number of years ago when I visited DC as a kid, I went on a tour of Congress and the guide explained that members of Congress need to be present to cast a vote.  Now, back in the early 90s that made sense because in my mind, how else could they vote?\n\nHowever, now that we have the telecommunication infrastructure that we do... why are members of Congress and the Senate still required to be present to vote?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/455162/eli5_why_cant_members_of_congress_and_the_senate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czv8lwk", "czv8rlp", "czvis5c", "czvjzgi", "czvrfwk"], "score": [30, 7, 8, 2, 4], "text": ["Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution specifically allows Congress to compel the attendance of absent members, and to determine the rules for proceedings, which presumably include in-person attendance. As for why they don't expand \"attendance\" to mean teleconferencing, it's probably because of tradition, and because it would look bad for a member of Congress to be able to vote while absent. ", "Several reasons:\n\n1. Tradition\n2. Verification/security concerns\nIt's much cheaper and efficient to verify someone voting in person than it is to verify someone voting remotely. It's kind of like college students taking a test online: how do we know people are who they say they are? What about hackers or other attempts to tamper with the voting program(s)? You don't have those issues when conducting an in-person vote.", "Are you kidding?  \n\nIt seems like they vanish for weekends that last from Thursday to Tuesday. Every month they seem to go on a 6-day or 6- week vacation. And on work days they are never in the chamber... when the camera moves off the podium, most of the time what you see is a sea of empty seats.   \n\nWhy would we let them not even appear for voting, do you want them never to show up to work ever?   \n\n\n", "Tom Scott's fantastic video of why any form of electronic voting is relevant here.\n\n_URL_0_", "I have to say that the early 90s weren't some dark age before telecommunications. We had video conferencing as far back as the 60s. We could have had remote voting by telegraph in the 1800s if we had wanted to. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI"], []]}
{"q_id": "9cizs2", "title": "Would Jesus Have Thought Himself A Roman?", "selftext": "Would most of his original followers considered themselves Romans? What about most Jews? What about the other peoples of Roman Palestine?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cizs2/would_jesus_have_thought_himself_a_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5byyvi"], "score": [30], "text": ["Doubtful, only because the various peoples living  in the Roman Empire were not consider Roman unless they were citizens, and outside of Italy only a small percentage of the population were.  Citizenship was not broadly granted until Caracalla in the third century CE.  The peoples across the Empire generally considered themselves part of their ethnic background, or place of origin (Gauls, Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, etc.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3toyep", "title": "Can hitting your muscles make them stronger?", "selftext": "Hey AskScience!\nI was just reading about Wollf's law and was wondering if the same thing applied to your muscles? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3toyep/can_hitting_your_muscles_make_them_stronger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx8uqbt"], "score": [6], "text": ["Wolff's law applies to bone, stating that your bones will adapt to withstand an increase in physical stress, up untill a certain point. In a way muscles and a lot of tissues in your body do the same thing. Higher demand=organ grows in size and/or produces more to meet the higher demand. The higher demand (stimulus) for bone is physical stress. For muscles it's basically muscle contraction, which you can effectively train by working out. \nKept this simple, hope it helped!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3ln11h", "title": "why are human eyes usually blue, brown or green as opposed to any other colors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ln11h/eli5_why_are_human_eyes_usually_blue_brown_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv7ne6e", "cv7nhzo", "cv7x2yw", "cv7x3vo", "cv7ynh0", "cv8ctr0"], "score": [256, 42, 3, 8, 2, 3], "text": ["The stroma (top layer of the iris) is what determines eye color. For those with no melanin (pigment that makes eyes or skin a warm brown), the only color comes from the Tyndall effect of light scattering in the iris. This creates a blue color, like water with glacial flour or dirty smoke.\n\nWhen the stroma has a little melanin, it looks green because this blue combines with the the orangey brownish melanin. When it has a lot of melanin, the brown color takes over completely.", "The most unsatisfying but efficient answer is probably that there hasn't been a genetic mutation for a different eye color that has persisted.  It can happen though.  Blue is actually a relatively recent addition being traced back to a single mutation about 6000 years ago. It's possible that pigments that produce other colors would carry some sort of disadvantage either directly to one's eyesight, or at least they drastically lowered their suitability to potential mates.   I'm assuming you're counting Hazel as a shade of brown btw  Outside your list there is also occasionally gray eyes.", "Hey! Finally!!!  Anyone know how a person gets reddish-brown eyes with amber rings? Those are my eyes and I often get asked what color they are, to which I just say \"brown\", but people often correct me, saying no....they're like....goldish...or the color of watered cola....yesterday someone described them as \"indian red\" (she says its a crayon color...idk)\n\nMy mother has brown eyes and my dad has green. My sisters have blue-grey and green eyes.\n\nedit: sorry for the delay! _URL_0_\n\nedit: someone says amber but I think amber eyes are lighter than mine. I think mine are just both light and dark brown at the same time. Depending on the type of light reflecting on them they lean more towards red-brown or more towards yellow-brown.\n\nfor reference this was taken in the evening yesterday. My hair is auburn. I dyed it to match my eyes :)\n", "Follow-up to that: how can my eyes \"change color?\" I have a blue/grey look most of the time, but my eyes get more grey and foggy when I'm sick.", "Anyone else with silver/grey eyes?", "Everyone tells me I have yellow demon eyes or \"baby shit\" coloured eyes. Never know whether to take either as an insult or compliment "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://imgur.com/gADw7Hi"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1pyi8h", "title": "How did Mossad become such a renowned intelligence agency?", "selftext": "Is it because Israelis are so multicultural? \n\nIs it just good PR from high-profile operations?\n\n-Edit-\n\nI think maybe I'm unclear. I'm not presupposing Mossad is good or evil, nor am I asking about the public perception on morality of Mossad's actions.\n\nI am wondering how Mossad came to be regarded as a top-notch intelligence agency. What makes them effective? Is part of the answer the fact that Israelis have diverse backgrounds from all parts of the world?\n\nOr, if, as some people suggest, they're really not that effective, why do they have a reputation for being effective?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pyi8h/how_did_mossad_become_such_a_renowned/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd7hmh7", "cd7jwrl", "cd7rx0w"], "score": [55, 35, 10], "text": ["I'm not sure if renowned is exactly the word that you want. Mossad is very well known because many of their operations end up being things that can be seen by the public. In particular, they have absolutely no objections to [having people killed](_URL_0_). Now, if your goal is to have these things be public then you're doing a great job but you could make an argument that an agency like Mossad is doing it's best work if nobody ever hears about what they do. \n\nMossad has had [their fair share of failures as well.](_URL_2_) Their agents are usually caught with [fake Canadian passports](_URL_1_) much to the anger of Canada's government.\n\nSo I guess it comes down to how you define renown for an agency like that. ", "Mossad has pulled off several very high profile operations successfully, leading to the agency being perceived as \"punching above its weight\" for such a small country (Israel's population is only a few million). It's somewhat expected that former or current superpowers like the US, USSR/Russia, France, and UK would have large clandestine services. That Israel would be able to compete in the same class, so to speak, is unusual. For example, finding and abducting Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and bringing him to Israel to stand trial. (source: just Google it but the UNSC resolution #138 regarding the event is a place to start)", "Oh! Something I can actually talk about!\n\nSo there were a few factors involved in this, and they all kind of pulled together. I'm just going to go over them one by one.\n\nFirstly, Mossad got big by playing big. Israel is small compared to many developed countries, and you don't exactly look to the little guy to pull off big missions and such, but they did, and they pulled it off pretty well. There is an excellent little comment by /u/yetioverthere [here](_URL_0_) and one of the top comments on it by /u/gingerkid1234 is useful information for taking it with a grain of salt.\n\nSecondly, there was the way that tasks carried out by Israel were reported. Particularly in the Western powers who created Israel, and have a vested interest in keeping it around, any successful mission was reported and praised. World powers built them up so that the creation of the country would seem like a good idea, and so that the country would appear to be powerful and thriving.\n\nThirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Israel was a point of focus. Most developed countries have agencies or teams that have pulled off cool stuff, but we don't look at them. Israel, since its inception, has been a focal point for media attention. Particularly in the United States, Israel is talked about *all the time*. Do you even know the name of the French version of Mossad? Probably not. That's because we don't talk about it, but you bet we talk about Israel. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_conducted_by_the_Mossad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad#Norway", "http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/tourists-with-a-license-to-kill-a-look-at-the-mossad-s-assassination-squads-a-678805.html"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pyi8h/how_did_mossad_become_such_a_renowned/cd7jwrl"]]}
{"q_id": "21uhyv", "title": "War photography from WWII and earlier seems to only show \"neat\" corpses. Was this something imposed on photographers or something they limited themselves to?", "selftext": "I know this is a bit of a generalization, but for the most part photography from pre-Vietnam wars seems to be mostly of individuals who died of bullet wounds. That is to say, the body is mostly intact and is not terribly bloodied, relatively speaking. We know, however, that vast numbers of war casualties don't look that way. \n\n(Note: I'm most familiar with American war photography and to a lesser extent, photos taken by the Viet Cong. So, it's possible other countries did capture this more.)\n\nWas photographing corpses of this nature something that was ordered of the photographers? Did the photographers self-censor? Did they take more graphic photos but the photos just aren't as widely known?\n\nAs a photographer and former historian, this has always nagged me. Modern photojournalism definitely shows more of the reality of war and conflict. I'm thinking specifically of photos from Nicaragua, the first Gulf War, lots of work done since the start of the \"age\" of terrorism, and so on. \n\nThanks in advance. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21uhyv/war_photography_from_wwii_and_earlier_seems_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgh0khx", "cgh17ik", "cghqkbl", "cggq6uk", "cggqke6", "cggvown"], "score": [3, 7, 2, 5, 38, 9], "text": ["*Krieg dem Kriege* / *War Against War* (1924) by socialist/anarcho-pacifist Ernst Friedrich is one contemporary collection of grisly, sardonically captioned photos taken on the battlefields and in the hospitals of World War I. He founded the First International Anti-War Museum in Berlin, which was later destroyed by the Nazis, where he displayed many of these images.\n\nYou can find many scanned pages from the book (and other similar volumes) online with some uncreative Googling, but I don't have the stomach tonight to link them myself. It's very NSFL stuff, and includes many images of obliterated corpses and (perhaps more famously) veterans with horrific facial wounds. \n\nThere is also a well-known [Alexander Gardner image](_URL_0_) from the Battle of Gettysburg picturing a soldier disemboweled by a shell, which would have been displayed at the time with the rest of his casualty photography. I can't think of any other well-known American Civil War images depicting graphic wounds, but as the photographers often didn't have immediate access to the battlefield, there's often a lot of pronounced rigor mortis in effect.\n", "EDIT: Made all these sources up on the fly. Happy April Fools! \n\nNot only would photographers self censor, but the AP issued a style manual on corpse photography, and the US Army would issue makeup kits to their photographers, so that a corpse could be tidied up for public consumption first.  \n\nField Manual BS-39-341 Combat Photography, pp 69\nAP Style Manual 1943, Chapter 5", "Pre-WW2 war photography had a mix of self-censorship and ordered censorship but its not quite true that all the corpses were neat. Depended on the political and commercial incentives of the photographers. I'd definitely be very wary of saying that we see more of the 'reality' now; photos are still dictated by the same incentives as always. \n\nAlready noted in this thread were the American Civil War photographers such as Brady and Gardner. They were working privately and to a certain extent both self-censored and manipulated the corpses as already noted, to produce sentimental and shocking effects. However they were definitely seen as showing 'the reality of war and conflict' as you put it - quote from a New York Times review of one of Brady's exhibitions:\n\n\u2018If our readers wish to know the horrors of the battle-field, let them go to BRADY's Gallery... Blackened faces, distorted features, expressions most agonizing, and details of absolute verity, teach us a lesson which it is well for us to learn\u2019 (NYT, October 6th, 1862 - I did an essay on the topic at uni). \n\nObviously from that point of view they were taking pretty graphic pictures - perhaps not the most graphic possible and they did manipulate the photos but the commercial imperatives clearly weren't all the way in favour of hiding the blood either. \n\nWW1, as mentioned, was heavily censored by governments and yes, corpses of both sides were deliberately sanitised in images - as noted above, only the political incentive of a pacifist would lead to more disturbing images.\n\nThe Spanish Civil War is an interesting example - with many countries neutral in the conflict, the political incentive to censor images is somewhat lessened. On the other hand, the commercial incentive to publish horrific images is unclear. Doesn't mean they didn't exist - the Daily Worker on Nov 12th, 1936 published a series of graphic pictures of schoolchildren killed by a bomb dropped on Madrid by Franco's side, from a German plane, including close up faces and plenty of blood, the incentive obviously being the political message of anti-fascism, whereas other papers refused to publish the images because the commercial incentive wasn't worth it for them. They deliberately transgressed what Caroline Brothers calls  'the conventions regulating the representation of death in the British press' of the time (War and Photography, Caroline Brothers). \n\nAs such, I don't think it's right to say there's been some kind of straightforward drive towards more 'real' photos of war. Obviously nowadays it's hard to control all the photos like the blanket propaganda of WW1 and there's a vastly increased number of images. But even in the American Civil War, photographers were producing what were seen as graphic images - but which at the same time were manipulated. There's no neat line of 'neat and false vs bloody and real'. The political and commercial incentives are largely the same and we obviously still have taboos and codes on what can be seen for everyday journalistic consumption. ", "To provide one example that I've been reading about recently, during WWI the British heavily censored all official and press photographs for reasons of public morale, which was understandable given the already low popularity of the war. However, even after the war ended, they continued to censor what was allowed into the archives (which would have included photos that never went through official channels) and removed most everything that showed heavily mutilated corpses/wounded, large numbers of corpses, etc.- in effect, rewriting the history of the war to present it as less brutal! In this case, at least, it was absolutely a measure imposed from the top down in order to control how the war was presented.\n\nSource: *Death's Men*, by Denis Winter", "The photos of World War II that we most remember are the ones that were widely circulated. They were published in *Life* or *Time* or the various newspapers. And there was some Government censorship (especially early on in the war) and some self-censorship on the part of the publications. There where many photos taken by war photographers that never were published anywhere and only seen after the war was over.\n\n\nEarly in the war the American Office of War Information censored any pictures of dead American soldiers for fear of what impact they might have on morale at home. Any battlefield/frontline photograph for publication had to be submitted for review to them by the publisher. They would forbid publication of a photo and put it into their \"Chamber of Horrors\"^1 . Mostly publications and journalists self-censored though, they knew that submitting a graphic or inflammatory picture would be rejected so they didn't try.\n\n\nHowever in 1943 there as a change in policy from the OWI and they started to allow publication of pictures and film showing dead American soldiers. This change was largely driven by public opinion showing a weariness and detachment from a was occurring far away from the homefront.^2 It was belived that if people at home saw images of their dead servicemen it would bring home the reality of the conflict. The first published photo under this new policy was in *Life* which published [this photo of three dead marines on a beach in the South Pacific](_URL_0_).\n\n\nHowever, even under this new more relaxed policy the OWI still controlled what kinds of photos were published. Again they relied both on direct censorship and the self-censorship of journalists and publications. They may have allowed pictures of casualties but they wanted them to be \"faceless, as censors feared the impact of a frontal photograph, and the wounded were always being attended by medical personnel\"^3. They also continued to censor overly graphic or embarrassing photos so the ones that were published are rather sterile and peaceful.\n\n\nHowever, that is not to say that the photographers didn't *take* photos of the horrors of war. Many of them did and some of those photos were published after the war ended. The [cover photo](_URL_2_) from one of the sources I reference is one of those pictures. It shows an a dead American GI with a leg twisted up toward his body. Other photos such as [this one WARNING: B & W but Graphic](_URL_3_) of a Frenchman who collaborated with the Germans at the moment of being executed by firing squad exist and were taken by journalists on the front lines.\n\n\n**Sources**\n\n1. [The Censored War - George Roeder, Jr.](_URL_4_) - I have the book, but this is a link to the abstract.\n\n2. [Censorship and Wartime Propaganda](_URL_1_)\n\n3. Lights, Camera, War: Is Media Technology Driving International Politics. Johanna Neuman", "It depends on how you define \"war photography.\" I'm a [researcher](_URL_3_) specializing in the Pacific theater of WWII and research various topics at different branches of [NARA](_URL_0_). I didn't note the image number at the time, but a friend came across an [80G](_URL_4_) image a few years ago that had \"not for public release EVER\" written on it, yet other photos will show bodies with no such wording, such as [this one](_URL_1_) (WARNING, B & W burned bodies) I found and scanned last week. Damage Reports for the brass and other service men to learn from generally featured photos after some of the wreckage and bodies were cleared out,  but [not always](_URL_2_). So, photos meant for public distribution were a lot less likely to be as haunting, but the \"internal\" war photography wasn't as censored. \n\n*EDIT* fixed bad link code that swallowed part of a sentence."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647822/"], [], [], [], ["http://life.time.com/history/wwii-buna-beach-iconic-photo-of-three-dead-americans/#1", "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am485_98/lane/media/censor.htm", "http://yalepress.yale.edu/images/full13/9780300062915.jpg", "http://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-188.jpg", "http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300062915"], ["http://www.archives.gov/index.html", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Photos/80-G-469127.jpg", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB57/1944DamageReport/PSNSWarReport.html", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/", "http://research.archives.gov/description/520587"]]}
{"q_id": "4s5onj", "title": "Why do Sniper rifles in WW1 images and re-created gameplay footage have their scopes mounted to the left of the firearm? Is this accurate? What caused the change to top-mounted scopes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4s5onj/why_do_sniper_rifles_in_ww1_images_and_recreated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d576r4w"], "score": [22], "text": ["Could you be more precise? Which specific rifle are you thinking of?\n\nGenerally though, there's always been a problem with mounting scopes on military rifles for two reasons:\n\n-Interference with the bolt handle.\n\n-Interference with the stripper clip guide.\n\nIn WW1 in particular, there's also the issue of primitive optics. The Springfield 03 musket sight was an off the shelf product with (I assume) an off the shelf mounting rail. The sight is massive and appears in images that it was mounted on the side of the rifle to prevent interference with the bolt handle, As it does interfere with the stripper clip guide. Stripper clips were typically only used in military rifles, not commercial rifles so its likely that care was not taken to accommodate clips in the design of the commercial musket sight.\n\nAnother example of interference of a scope on both the stripper clip guide and the bolt handle is the 91/30 sniper variant: to mount the scope, bending the bolt handle is necessary.\n\nAnother example is the SMLE. The British MOD always insisted that stripper clips be used on the SMLE rifle, even in sniper rifles, so the scopes were therefore side mounted, on the left side to also avoid interference with the bolt handle.\n\nI'm not a historian but a target shooting enthusiast so I hope my fairly general answer will help."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1yo6bv", "title": "why doesn't tin foil feel hot to the touch even while it is in the oven or on a grill?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yo6bv/eli5_why_doesnt_tin_foil_feel_hot_to_the_touch/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfm8n8d", "cfm8nsg", "cfmb2vd", "cfmemm6"], "score": [24, 14, 6, 3], "text": ["Tin foil loses its heat very quickly. It heats up fast, and cools down fast. Once you take it out of the oven/grill, the temperature starts dropping fast.", "Since aluminum foil has a lot of surface area and is very thin and heat travels within aluminum very well, it is going to cool off very quickly in air when you remove it from the oven. In addition, since thin foil doesn't weigh much and thus can't hold much\"heat,\" when you touch it not much heat can transfer to your fingers and thus it doesn't feel particularly warm.", "q = m*c*(t2-t1) \rq is heat\rm is mass or weight \rc is material-specific (water is 4.18 j/gC, aluminum is 0.91)\rAnd that last bit is the difference in temperature.\r\rSo a thin sheet of aluminum isn't going to be able to \"hold\" that much heat because m is low. \rThe heat capacity constant, c, is higher for the watery human slime, all over you at all times, than it is for the metal.\rSo even if the difference in the temperature is 200C there isn't a huge total heat transfer. ", "Tinfoil absorbs and dissipates heat at nearly the exact same rate, so it doesn't hold onto enough of it to actually burn you"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qxy5l", "title": "if the golden rule of the stock market is to buy when low, sell when high, who is doing it the other way around?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qxy5l/eli5_if_the_golden_rule_of_the_stock_market_is_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwja5jm", "cwjaa07", "cwjae53", "cwjaev3", "cwjakc4", "cwjapel", "cwjb3zj", "cwjbncx"], "score": [14, 44, 5, 30, 4, 3, 2, 64], "text": ["That's the goal of traders. Most investors should buy now and hold for a while. \n\nAnd it's not like it is a binary system where the only two options are high and low. People enter and exit at various time and some make money and some lose money. ", "The person doing it the other way round is the person who mis-judges what the market is going to do.\n\nThey buy when it's a little high, thinking they ought to have bought yesterday when it was lower but it's still going up and still worth buying so they haven't missed their chance.\n\nThen, unexpectedly (to them, at least) it goes down and they lose money.\n\nThis might be simple poor judgement, or it might be that something unexpected happened that no one could have predicted... a profit warning, or am unfavourable news story, for example, which might catch out even the most diligent and experienced investor.", "People that get scared when the market falls. They sell low thinking if they don't their stocks will only get lower and lower. \n(In the long run they will eventually go back up tho)", "Everybody who isn't smart enough to know when exactly the high point and low point have been reached. Which is to say, everybody.", "Nearly everyone, unfortunately. Investing is the only place where people flock to buy when prices are high, and run away when you hold a bargain sale.", "also, side note, because this is what i thought you meant before i saw the comments. the people that buy low sell high are people that \"long\" (as a verb(to long or to *go* long)). the other people are said to short. they borrow some of a stock or currency in some respect, promising to pay back later with some interest. and immediately sell the stock or currency at high. then, they wait for the assumed low, and buyback only what they need to repay (original borrowed plus interest.) the assumption here is that the percent decrease in stock value exceeds the percent increase due to interest. the person is left with the surplus money after paying back the orginal stock or currency from the lender, who also profited, though marginally less so.", "It should be pointed out that you can also get money by buying high and selling low. It's called shorting stock and its relatively common when investors suspect a stock price will drop. It works like this. \n\nYou speak to your broker. You tell him you want to short some stock in ABC company. They then lend you the stock (either from their company's shares or sometimes from another investor's account) which you sell immediately. When the stock drops, you buy back the stock at the lower price and keep the difference.", "The golden rule of the stock market is basically akin to saying that the golden rule of roulette is to always pick the winning number.\n\nTrue, but not very helpful in practice.\n\nIf you knew exactly what a given stock was going to do in the next 24 hours you could make a fortune on almost any stock. In many cases you could actually do it without any startup money since under the right circumstances you can sell before you have to pay.\n\nThat's why insider trading is illegal, because even a vague idea of what a stock will do is really powerful. To reuse our roulette example it's like knowing whether a particular roll will be red or black. Not as good as knowing the number, but a hell of a lot better than random."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "59hjjo", "title": "why do well established brands (eg. coke) still market themselves so aggressively? what do they stand to gain when they're already a household name?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59hjjo/eli5_why_do_well_established_brands_eg_coke_still/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d98gb4w", "d98gi36", "d98gyae", "d98i5zw", "d98jxo1", "d98lcdw", "d98rkol", "d98uum7", "d98v9z9", "d98wrkz", "d98ywcu", "d98zd7v"], "score": [73, 27, 2, 64, 4, 66, 2, 2, 11, 2, 2, 10], "text": ["All that marketing is how they continue to stay a household name. These aren't video game achievements where once you reach them, you never lose them again. If these established brands stop marketing themselves, they will start losing market share.", "Because if you do not actively market yourself you very quickly fall out of the backs of people's minds and once that happens you stop being a household name. Shortly after that you stop being an established brand and either have to claw your way back to the top or you fail. It is far better to just continually market your brand. ", "People are subconsciously attracted to products that they recognize, so companies constantly advertise to ensure the recognition is always there. ", "If you pay attention to it, only a small amount of Coke marketing is actually intended to promote their umbrella brand. Instead they focus more on individual product brands (e.g. Coke Zero, Fanta, etc.).\n\nWhile Coca-Cola maybe well known, individual products and their \"positioning\" (summary of product characteristics, intended target group, benefits, etc.) may still benefit from increased awareness.\n\nAdditionally marketing and branding isn\u00b4t all about awareness, that\u00b4s just the first part of the purchase funnel (Awareness -- >  Image -- >  Consideration -- >  Purchase -- >  Repurchase), they also want to promote a certain image. This image may change over the years, even if the name and logo doesn\u00b4t or it may be under attack from outside reevaluations. So even a well-known umbrella brand is marketed to re-enforce and maybe update their brand image.\n\nLastly, Coke is a consumption good with relatively low involvement (small investments, no long-term effects of purchase decision, etc.) unlike, e.g. a car for example. So people often decide relatively spontaneous about which brand and whether to buy at all. That\u00b4s why it\u00b4s more important for Coke to promote themselves constantly than it is for a brand like GE.\n\nHowever we shouldn\u00b4t discount that many companies actually do invest in marketing activities that aren\u00b4t really helpful to them. Not every company investing in brand awareness has done the research and pinpointed brand awareness as their key lever to address. Most often marketing activities that promote the brand awareness are just the easiest and most salient measure to do for many marketing departments.", "The second biggest part of marketing, after drawing in new customers, is usually to make existing customers feel satisfied in their choice of brand.  Ensuring that people continue to drink Coke is at least as important as marketing Coke to new customers, or encouraging customers to leave the competition.", "I apologize for not having a cite to hand, but we did a case study in my intro to marketing class in college (this would have been in 1999, I think) on a trial McDonalds ran somewhere in Ohio.\n\nThey had the same thought you do: everyone already knows what McDonalds is, where to find them, what they serve, etc. So they pulled all their advertising from one city. The results were both quick and significant: they started shedding market share in that city within a month, to the tune of tens of percents (IIRC, it approached 50%, but since I don't have the data to hand and human memory is crap, I don't want to overbid).", "Kaepa had a few years where they were a household name and a top tier brand.\n\nDo you know what Kaepa is? ", "Products like Coca-Cola (and most of their sister products) are known as cash cows in marketing terminology - they bring in steady, large income streams and profits from these products can be used to fund expensive R & D and marketing campaigns for products that are new or not yet self-sustaining. However they still require a considerable marketing investment to ensure that brand awareness remains high in the medium to long term.", "Basically, brand exposure is mind control. Thinking about Coke makes you want a Coke. Seeing an ad for Coke while you're drinking Coke makes you feel good about drinking Coke, because you see other smiling, attractive people drinking Coke too. And now you want to have some Coke at home, so after you finish drinking that Coke you go to the store and buy a case of Coke. And you serve Coke with dinner because you want your kids to be smiling, attractive people too. Attractive people like Coke, of course - the TV told me so. Drink Coke!", "Coca Cola tried cutting advertising once.  They lost a ton of revenue that year and decided \"well, let's not try that again.\"", "You may know of it, but you need to make sure everyone does. New generations of people are born daily, and if marketing slows down, something will slowly replace it.", "There are many reasons, but the one that I don't see mentioned yet is something called \"top of mind\". Basically the core concept is this: When I say \"fast food\", what place immediately comes to your mind? When I say \"soda\", what product immediately comes to your mind? \n\nOccupying the \"top of mind\" of a person essentially sets you up for success because if people don't think of you or or your product when a need/want comes up, they won't chose you. \n\nConstantly showing advertisements for Coke keeps the brand in your top of mind, and you will more than likely think of it the next time you think about drinking a soda."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29wqf4", "title": "why do people who undergo brain surgery have to be awake?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29wqf4/eli5_why_do_people_who_undergo_brain_surgery_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cip7od2", "cip8rn3", "cipa35a", "cipbpwj", "cipbxla", "cipcy3s", "cipn6i2"], "score": [29, 11, 6, 3, 11, 2, 2], "text": ["The surgeon is in constant communication with the patient to be sure they aren't poking around in places that can cause permanent damage.", "It's because the brain is so delicate and confusing that they need to make sure they aren't doing the wrong thing. The surgeon could think they are just removing a tumor but in the process might lessen the persons ability to speak, or mess with their hand-eye co-ordination, this way if they do something wrong they can tell because all of a sudden the person is different", "hmm i had brain surgery and this was not the case. 2009 i had resection of a prolactinoma aka a benign tumor on the pituitary gland. I was put out by a kind anesthesiologist and woke up in the icu after the procedure. To my surprise, my attending nurse was my high school track team captain and I recognized her almost instantly, which was like a sign that everything went o.k. ", "They don't. I was in a coma during mine.", "I once assisted in a brain surgery and the surgeon asked the patient to speak throughout the procedure. The patient told \"blonde jokes\" for 25 minutes without stopping!!", "It depends on the procedure. It is pretty typical for the patient to be awake during brain surgery though. They usually show really basic flash cards, ask questions, keep communicating in simple ways to make sure everything is okay.", "TIL don't sneeze while having brain surgery."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "87z8y0", "title": "did apple and windows both skip the \"9th update\" coincidentally or is there more to the story?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87z8y0/eli5_did_apple_and_windows_both_skip_the_9th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwgol3z", "dwgoov8", "dwgpqq9", "dwgprfi", "dwgqk9l", "dwgql81"], "score": [19, 5, 6, 157, 33, 8], "text": ["Coincidence. \n\niPhone 9 still might happen, the X is sort of considered a different line-up versus their numbered series. More likely than not, the next iPhone with a physical home button would be called the 9.", "The iPhone X was the 10th anniversary special edition model, not the next iPhone in the regular release sequence after the iPhone 8.  [Their regular release schedule is about a year between new models](_URL_0_) and the X came out about a month and a half after the 8 was released.  There will most likely be an iPhone 9 later this year.", "I\u2019m sure their marketing teams have done in depth analysis to determine that the number 9 won\u2019t sell well. \n\nMaybe they figure people would rather wait for the 10. I think it\u2019s generally seen as a more significant number, and people might assume there will be a landmark tech leap with it or something. ", "iPhone 9 got explained by different comments, but the actual story behind Windows is far more interesting. It seems due to some sloppy programming, there is a bunch of MS applications which are checking the version of OS by verifying if it begins with '9' (to differentiate between Windows 95/98 and later versions, which have a different architecture). So they had to skip Windows 9 because of the risk it would be accidentally treated as an old Windows version by some apps, causing compatibility issues.", "I can't speak about Windows, but Apple has been doing this for ages to make their phones seem as advanced as their competitors (chiefly Samsung).  There's no iPhone 2, for example; they went directly from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G.\n\nWith regards to MS, it would make sense; they did a similar thing with the Xbox (which competed with the PlayStation 2) being followed by the XBox 360 (competing with the PlayStation 3).  Of course, then they went full circle with the Xbox One...  It's very possible that whoever is in charge of naming things at MicroSoft has no idea how counting works...", "A rumour started going around the internet as to why Windows skipped 9, which was some shitty programming to tell if the windows edition started with 9, then run for win 95/98. This is a lie. At Microsofts first Windows 10 briefing they said they wanted to do windows 9, but it was \"too much of a technological leap to just go up one number\". They also considered calling it Windows 1 to fall in line with their other products (Xbox One, OneDrive, OneNote etc) but then they realised Windows 1 already exists so they went with 10."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#History_and_availability"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "465ymy", "title": "if there are multiple universes where are they?", "selftext": "So we have a 3D universe, but if there are other universes where would they be? Could there be a 4th dimension people can't visualize where you can have multiple infinite 3D universes, but then could there be infinite universes, like the parallel universe theories predict. If this is all true, how could we get in the 4th dimension? I'm so confused! Also, I have some knowledge about this stuff, but try to keep it in simple terms ;)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/465ymy/eli5_if_there_are_multiple_universes_where_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d02pvls", "d02pzrd", "d02qhbv", "d02w8qf", "d02ynlf", "d030jmd", "d032pxd", "d032zr8", "d035blu", "d03qlbg"], "score": [6, 10, 5, 2, 106, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["If there are only 3 dimensions, how can many radios each tune into a different station moving through the \"same space\"?\n\nOther \"universes\" are similar as vibrations which dont much interfere with eachother. They are all here.", "Okay lets start with dimensions. \n\nYes we live in a universe with three physical dimensions. The fourth dimension refers to time, or more specifically, causality, the process in which a transformation or change causes changes another change or transformation within the universe; basically the concept of cause and effect as causality determines the direction in which time flows. \n\nThe important thing to realize here is that this model is what is defined by the Standard Model of Physics, or our current accepted \"interpretation\" of physical laws of the universe. Various other theories such as the multiverse theories, string theory, super-symmetry theory, or super string theory offer varying interpretations of the physical laws which govern our universe. Now I use the word interpretation not as in that these laws or somehow not concrete or defined, they are definitely defined and established, it is simply how we connect these laws.\n\nIn regards to the multiple universes, although our current model of physics doesn't account for the existence of multiple universes in a multiverse, the other mentioned theories and models do. I would recommend a book called Hyperspace by Michio Kaku which explains multiverses, branes, higher dimensions, as well as many other topics in great depth, though with layman's terms so it is easy for average person to understand.\n\n", "There are a few theories where other universes could be.\n\n1. Inside Black Holes: As Black Holes allow stuff to come in, but never let anything out, there could be entire universes contained with in them and we would never be able to see them.\n\n2. Contained within other dimensions. Alright, imagine a three dimensional box. In this three dimensional box, you can put an infinite amount of two dimensional squares, one layered on top of the other. If we could imagine these squares as two dimensional universes, there is always room for more two dimensional universes in a three dimensional box, and none of the two dimensional universes interact. The same is true for three dimensional cubes in fourth dimensional cubes (technically called tesseracts), or even higher dimensional constructs.\n\n3. Contained within our own. Now, if the universe is infinite, and the physical laws don't change, there would be an infinite amount of alternate Earths with an infinite amount of you and me. While it's all technically the same universe, the vast distances we can't even imagine on a astronomical scale, it's effectively different universes.\n\nOf course, this is all completely speculative, as we can't directly test any of these hypothesies.", "A different Universe would have different laws, and could theoretically inhabit the exact same space as our own Universe.", "Right over there.\n\nUnfortunately, I do not have the ability to point in the direction I'm trying to indicate. And, unfortunately, neither you nor I have sense organs optimized to perceive the direction I'm trying to indicate. But if we had those abilities, I could point you in the right direction - right over there.\n\nYou might consider reading *Flatland*. For a quick summary, imagine a 2-dimensional being - a square. It has no ability to point or look up or down because its limbs and sense organs are entirely 2-dimensional. Everything it knows and understands occupies this 2-dimensional plane. \n\nNow imagine a 3-dimensional being - a sphere - happily going through 3-dimensional space and it spots this cool 2-dimensional plane like a tabletop with lots of 2-dimensional shapes moving around \"on\" it. The sphere decides to pass through the plane just for fun and the square sees something very weird: a point that expands into a circle and then shrinks away to a point and then is gone. It's like magic. It makes no sense.\n\nNow the sphere decides it would be fun to pick up the square and lift it out of the plane it occupies. It does so and the square is aware only that the world has disappeared and been replaced to its sense organs as weird things never sensed before. Terrifying.\n\nNow the sphere tips the square. The square is suddenly able to see *inside* other 2-dimensional beings. As the tipping continues, the square sees its world in a series of cross sections and (perhaps) could be taught by the sphere to recognize friends, family members, buildings, trees, etc. So very, very bizarre.\n\nNow the sphere puts the square back on the plane where it was found and goes on its merry way up up and away. The square is left with a literally incredible experience. No ability to explain what just happened to it. Trying to indicate where it went and what it perceived is impossible - no one has language for the direction or perception.\n\nNow extend all this to a fourth dimension. A fifth. A sixth. There could be a 4-dimensional being \"hovering\" right \"over\" my shoulder watching me type this and looking inside me and this monitor... It might just decide it would be fun to pick me \"up\" and show me something I will be totally unable to describe to you afterwards. Even though all that happened is I went right over . . . there. \n\nEdit: Thank you so much, kind stranger, for the gold! Is there anything quite like the first time?\n\nEdit 2: Again, I really want to be clear that *Flatland* gets all the credit for this way of visualizing the problem. I just summed it up as ELI5 as I could.", "Its a bit like having different stations coming from the same radio.  They're all there in that one machine yet, separate.  Magic mushrooms are a good example of changing channels..", "Parallel universes hypothesis is the key place to start I think; some people believe these may exist in same place as our universe but we are not able to see them because they got different properties than our own universe; I think Sliders tv series has described parallel universes as realities existing in same time, in same place but with different \"frequency\" - like channels in tv. You can't see 2 channels on tv screen at once, you have to pick one.\n\nBut, to be able to see a theoretical construct that could represent all 3D universes - a [multiverse](_URL_0_), we would need to be somewhere \"above\" it to proceed with observation. Already mentioned Flatland in both book and film version will really help you understanding that.", "Does anyone know some good documentaries about different universes? I find this topic quite interesting and would like to educate myself on it more.", "If multiple universes exist in the fourth dimensions or fifth or sixth etc while we live in a 3 dimensional space, the universes are invisable.  If they are invisable then these ujniverses could be located anywhere and we would have no way of ever knowing anything about them other than conjecture.\n\nImagine if 1st dimension was going front to back, 2nd dimension was front to back, side to side, then if I lived in 1st dimension every time something in 2nd dimension moved side by side I would not be able to visulize it.  The side by side movement would become invisable to me but I would see the back and forth movement as the back and forth movement of the 2nd dimension exists in my 1st dimension.\n\nIts the same concept with multiple universes. ", "I know this doesn't completely answer your question but take into consideration we live in a 4 dimensional universe. Imagine yourself having to go to class. Which direction do you walk to get to the building north or south? That's one dimension. You're in the building, is your class upstairs or downstairs? That's the second dimension. Now do your turn right or left to get to the room? That's the third dimension. What times is your class? That's the fourth dimension.  If you didn't have the fourth dimension you wouldn't know exactly when the rest of the class would be there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3vxrvk", "title": "if women receive less than men for the same job, why don't companies just hire women?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vxrvk/eli5_if_women_receive_less_than_men_for_the_same/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxrkly1", "cxrkyqs", "cxrmy73", "cxrnwbk", "cxrr41g", "cxrrgbo", "cxrs4ia", "cxrsaan", "cxrsnir", "cxrspiq", "cxrsv77", "cxrtjxg", "cxrtl0o", "cxrtndr", "cxrtrfn", "cxrts49", "cxrudl5"], "score": [67, 11, 537, 9, 3, 8, 42, 6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 6, 4, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["because for the same job and same company they dont usually get paid less.\n\nWomen tend to end up in carreers that pay less, they ask for raises less, they dont climb the corporate ladder as quickly etc.\n\nWomen get paid less than men yes, just not usually for the same jobs.", "Entry level employees get paid less than C-level employees. So why not just fire all the C-level employees and replace them with entry level employees?", "There's an oft cited statistic that women make 70% what men do or something like that, and people interpret it as meaning that women get paid much less for the same job. In fact that number is a comparison of average wages for all women vs. Average wages for all men. They don't get paid less for the same job, they just take lower paying jobs on average. Aside from the dearth of women in high level corporate positions, a lot of high paying professions like engineering and skilled trades are staffed mostly by men, which results in the overall disparity. \n\nBut you can't really fire a guy and replace him with a woman with the same skills and experience and pay her significantly less.", "Because for the most part, they don't receive less than men for the same job.\n\nThey work in lower paying jobs, tend to have less work experience and career related education, and work fewer hours.  Discrimination factors into all of these things.\n\nSo if you need a patent attorney that specializes in agricultural applications, more of the qualified candidates are likely to be male, but those female candidate you fine will be expecting the same salary.", "There's always little factors to consider like which gender dominates a particular industry - but short of that, job for job, they don't make less. The main discrepancy is because women don't push for better positions as often as men, and value family/friends over work in most cases. They also go on maternity leave, which further skews things.", "Because they actually don't get paid less on average and its just a feminist myth to push the \"victim narrative\" they like to build.", "The pay gap is not a case of women being paid less for the same job. It is a case of women generally filling lower-paid jobs. It's not like female CEOs are paid 77% of what male CEOs are paid; they're paid similar amounts, but there are more male CEOs. That doesn't mean that sexism in professional life doesn't exist; it means that it takes the form of women being passed over for higher-paying jobs, not women being paid less to work in those jobs. Whether sexism is a significant factor in this, I don't know, but it's not as simple as \"women get paid less than men to do the same work\".\n\nAnother redditor gave this answer to a similar question a long time ago and I saved it for reference. I should have saved his name. ", "The answer is they don't and I'll try to explain it as eli5 as possible.\n\n Imagine there are 10 people in your kindergarten class (5 boys and 5 girls) and the teacher gives out fancy colored pencils as rewards for doing extra assignments. Out of the 5 girls, there is one girl, Suzy, that really really loves those pencils so she works really hard to earn them. By the end of the year, she has earned the most out of the whole class with 20 pencils. But the rest of the girls tend to be more interested in playing with their toys, and the other children and they all each only earn 5 pencils throughout the year. So in total, all of the girls earned 40 pencils combined, or an average of 8 pencils per girl. Now, looking at the boys, there are two boys, Johnny and Billy, that really like the pencils because the teacher has some cool super hero ones this year so they work hard to get as many as they can. Johnny gets 18 and Billy gets 17. Then the rest of the boys were more interested in playing with toys and the other children so they each only earn 5 pencils. So for the boys, all together they earned 50 pencils, or an average of 10 pencils per boy.\n\nAnd that is how the \"women make 70 cents on the dollar compared to men\" statistic was calculated. Industrious little Suzy didn't work really hard and only earn 8 pencils, she got what she worked for and earned the most out of the whole class, just like Johnny and Billy worked hard and were rewarded for that hard work. It just so happens that in this particular kindergarten class, there were more girls who were uninterested in earning pencils than there were boys. So the average is due to the choices made by group in general, not because the teacher favored the boys and made the girls work harder for each pencil. Applying this to the real world, there are obviously really successful women like Suzy who earn what they deserve for the work they are doing just the same as men. But even today, women are much more likely to make the choice to stay home with children, work part time to focus on family, go into fields which are maybe more \"emotionally fulfilling\" but pay less, while men tend to stay in the work force longer, work full time even when starting a family, and go into careers that may be less \"emotionally fulfilling\" but have a higher salary.\n\n**tl;dr:** Add up every dollar a woman earned in the US, then add up every dollar a man earned. The women's sum will be less than the men's sum, but that's because less women work and work in high paying positions, not because of sexism.", "As of 2008, the median income in the United States of childless, single young women in major metropolitan areas under the age of 30 is higher then men from 12% to 21% according to James Chung of Reach Advisors looking at the US Census Bureau Data.\n\n\nNew York \u2013 Women make 17% more income\n\nLos Angeles \u2013 Women make 12% more income\n\nAtlanta \u2013 Women make 21% more income\n\n\n\nChung\u2019s finds the reason why young women in metropolitan areas earn more than young men is that they are 50 percent more likely to graduate from college.\n\n\"As a result, they populate more of the entry-level knowledge-based economy jobs than young men,\" Chung said.\n\nWomen have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education.  This is a dishonest number because when you remove foreign born students, American women outnumber American men in college entrance by 2 to 1.  Due to the political nature of this study, no update has been done in a study like this that shows the gender gap in education or wages.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n", "A factor that may or may not play into it, is cost of benefits. All things remaining equal for a fresh candidate coming out of college, it costs a shitload more for health insurance for a woman. I wish I still had the chart we used to have at work for it, but it was astounding the cost difference. It's probably a drop in the bucket for bigger companies, but it was noticeable for a small company.\n\nIt may be a complete non-factor, but it is a piece of data that I haven't seen fully explored.", "Because they don't. It's a myth. A woman hired for a position will be offered the same amount of money as a man. ", "Funnily enough, I worked with a women in STEM group that inadvertently ended up promoting this.  We had a request for a finance-focused presentation for a company on why they should hire women.  It got twisted into \"Hire more women because they're used to getting paid less and won't demand raised.\"  Oops.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis is literally the best explanation there is for this question. I highly urge people to upvote this, not for the karma, rather for the information. This video explains the entire situation and debunks the myth. Sure it's 5 minutes long, but if you actually care it's well worth the watch.", "\"Women receive less than men for the same job\" is more of a half truth. \n\nThere are several factors you need to consider would looking at the gender wage gap. \n\n1. Occupational distributions \n\nOn average men make X and women make less than X. Vast majority of this difference is due to difference of job choice. How many women are nurses and secretaries vs lawyers and doctors?\n\nHowever this only helps explain the gender wage gap but not the actual reason why men make more than women.\n\n2. Group behavior.\n\nTypically, men have a more aggressive attitude with jobs. On the whole men will apply to almost any job that they might think they can do regardless of qualifications and more likely to negotiate a higher wage. Women are more on the opposite end of the  spectrum. \nMore likely to only apply to jobs they feel they have qualifications for and more likely to settle for offered wages.\n\nAccounts for minor differences\n\n3. Company-Employee relations \n\nMost important part of determining wages though is your training and qualifications. The issue here is that there is a cyclic stereotype against women being that since women are more likely to leave their jobs the company should not put time into training women. It's cyclic because since women are not likely to be trained and not earn higher wages, they are more likely to leave... Men are more likely to be fast tracked and train on company specific and desired skills leading to hire wages in same job. This is a form of statisical discrimination that companies get away with.\n\nBasically need to look behind factors of the wage gap. Men can make more for the same job over women. It's not illegal just because they make more. \n\nMaybe they got a raise for mertitorious work, maybe they have certain skills in that lead to higher wages, maybe they have more experience or seniority. Therefore just hiring more women does not solve anything as they would eventually have to pay them more as they accrue skills and qualifications same as men.\n\nHowever, and here's the big one. Women should not make less then men if they are similarly qualified. If they do make less simply because they are women, that is gender discrimination and that is the illegal part. It still happens today, and it's very hard to catch when it does take place. \n\n", "I think it's because women are *also* seen as being inferior in the workplace in comparison to men. Men will be able to complete the same task faster, better, and more effective than a woman can. Women are seen as talkative and stupid. \n\nBecause of all that they get paid less. Which is fucked up.\n\nI'd read up on Walmart's discrimination against women. It's a prime example of the whole situation.", "The simple answer is that they would.  The gender wage gap is a myth.  The difference in wages is essentially zero when you remove all of the conflating factors such as career choice, work experience, child bearing, etc.\n\nBy even asking this question, you pretty much answer it for yourself.  The vast majority of modern companies exist for one reason - to make maximum profit.  If you could save 20, even 30% on labor costs just by hiring only women and then paying them less for the same work, the workforce would be literally ALL women.  A man wouldn't even be able to find a job.  No company in their right mind would hire someone they'd have to pay 30% more to do the same work.  \n\nHere's an article that explains some of the key points more in depth:\n_URL_0_\n\n- Men are far more likely to choose careers that are more dangerous\n\n- Men are far more likely to work in higher-paying fields and occupations (by choice).\n\n- Men are far more likely to take work in uncomfortable, isolated, and undesirable locations.\n\n- Men work longer hours than women do. \n\n- Men are more likely to take jobs that require work on weekends and evenings\n\n- Even within the same career category, men are more likely to pursue high-stress and higher-paid areas of specialization.\n\n", "Women don't receive less for the same work, they earn less than men because of their own choices IE less hours and time off to raise children etc, the wage gap is there because biology not oppression as some idiots will insist. If women indeed were payed less than men for the same work then companies would indeed hire more women but the fact is men often choose more dangerous or technical work which pays more."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html?pagewanted=all", "http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/", "http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109140,00.html"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj_bN0L8XM"], [], [], ["http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/"], []]}
{"q_id": "126b27", "title": "why are yawns so contagious? eli5", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/126b27/why_are_yawns_so_contagious_eli5/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6six3h", "c6siyv7", "c6sj3r8", "c6sj4jy", "c6sj5cp", "c6sj720", "c6sj7uj", "c6sjpgp", "c6sjq8b", "c6sjtua", "c6sjzt7", "c6sk8rl", "c6sl3ri", "c6sl4a7", "c6sl7ml", "c6slm87", "c6sm6kn", "c6snpz9", "c6snrel", "c6snrt0", "c6spc4z", "c6srhcz"], "score": [27, 267, 3, 53, 189, 12, 27, 29, 3, 2, 2, 5, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["FYI - human yawns are contagious to many dogs as well.\n\n_URL_0_", "Nobody knows exactly why we yawn. It is not as good as getting oxygen to your lungs as actual breathing. The closest anyone has ever gotten to explain it is that it is something social. If you yawn when you see someone else do it, you're subconsciously communicating that you both belong to the same group and are not a threat. \"See, I yawned, I'm just as tired as you. Don't see me as a threat\"", "[Mass Effect 2 told me why.](_URL_0_})", "I read somewhere once (tried to find it but can't) that our yawning is a left over defense mechanism from when we were primates. The yawning acted like a wake up mechanism that was a signal to try to stay alert when we were on \"look out duty\". \n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: found a link.", "I yawned when I read this question as well. \n\nEDIT: Apologies for this making it to top comment. I realise this isn't Ask Reddit and I'm sorry I didn't contribute anything useful in answering this question. ", "When I read the question I yawned. See guys, I'm harmless- even on the Internet. ", "One time I yawned when I used the little \"yawning\" emoticon. I told this to my coworkers and BF and it was agreed that I have very little will power :(", "Yawning stretches a set of muscles that don't get stretched in regular activity, for instance, the Eustachian Tubes, which are lined with mucous. And just like your nose, that mucous needs to drain occasionally too. Stretching those muscles by yawning helps the mucous drain, maintain proper air pressure in your inner ear  &  helps the muscles remain limber. It is contagious because it is a sensation we all share, consciously or not.", "Yawns are a form of nonverbal communication, similar to how furrowing your brow indicates anger.  One of the things that is interesting about the contagious nature of yawns is that they are the only social signal contagious outside the bounds of perceived social rank. That means that you might be just as likely to \"catch\" a yawn from a wino as you are from a new boss that you are trying to impress.  Other signals, such as laughing, are less likely to be passed on from those that you consider socially inferior, whether consciously or not. you are more likely to laugh at a joke your date makes than that dick in the office, even if you do have to admit he's got a pretty good sense of humor. \n\nThe theory that I like best about yawns is that they are remnants from evolutionary history. They signaled when it was time for your ape ancestors to bed down for the night. Since a pack of apes is more likely to survive when they cooperate on things such as guarding each other from hyenas while sleeping it is useful to pass on. ", "Haha, yawn is such a funny word. Yawn yawn yawn. \n\n*yaaawwwwwn*\n\nDangit.", "Your mind naturally copies things that other people do when you like them. You're more likely to copy someone as they check the time, drink, stretch, or preform any other simple action within your eyesight. Yawning is just another simple action that you uncontrollably mimic due to a certain type of cell in your brain.", "I don't think we have a solid answer on why we yawn. BUT, I read somewhere that yawning's contagiousness has a lot to do with empathy.\n\nWhen you see someone, like your best friend or your mummy and daddy, yawn you react, without even realising it, by yawning. It's like when someone waves at you and you wave back, only instead of saying \"hello\" you're saying \"I'm tired.\" Even more interesting is that just like when someone waves at you, the less you know a person, the less likely you are to yawn in response.\n\n[Sauce](_URL_0_)", "Can't believe I have yawned twice already. It hasn't even been a minute since I opened this thread. Thrice now. Fuck!", "Well, humans and other mammals like cats, dogs, and rats all yawn, so all these descriptions of yawning being a complex social cue or a remnant from our pre-human ape-like ancestors is suspect. Yawning probably started much earlier along in evolution, probably among the first proto-mammals.\n\nSo why might yawining be so contagious, let alone exist in the first place? I can only speculate, really, but I'd guess it's a signal to synchronize the activity cycles of a group of mammals. Especially if you're one of the earliest, tiniest mammals, you don't want to be out and scurrying about all by yourself at bad times when predators could be out to get you. Yawning was probably a way for these mammals, who generally lived in packs, to keep the group strong by signaling to each other \"hey, don't go out, it's bedtime\". The yawn is probably contagious to ensure that the signal propagates.", "Some say it's empathy and mirror neurons. \n\nWiki: Yawn", "I just yawned from reading about all this yawning. ", "Since I started reading this discussion, I've yawned 5 times.", "Interesting fun fact: Children with autism are immune from contagious yawning. \n\nExperts believe that it has something to do with social awareness and/or empathy (citation needed - cbf looking it up now). Apparently psychopaths do get contagious yawning, which led experts to believe it had more to do with social awareness rather than empathy.", "I yawned when I read this. I had a teacher in elementary school tell us it was because we had too much carbon dioxide in our lungs and that's how we got it out. \n\nYep...", "I've been in the psychology/biology research field for about a decade and the research on positive correlations between \"levels of empathy\" and likelihood of yawning is a fairly accepted position. [sources](_URL_0_)", "You yawn to balance the pressure between your head and the outside. When you so this, it offsets the pressure for others so they have to do the same.", "I heard one time that yawns were the body's way of getting oxygen. So of one person takes extra oxygen, then a person close by has less oxygen, and they need to yawn to get more oxygen. See how that makes sense? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/pets/9257013/Revealed-why-canines-yawn-after-their-dog-tired-owners.html"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=He2sc3xIzIc#t=80s"], ["http://mindhacks.com/2004/12/15/the-social-yawn/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/jGIbUK4nw00"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=yawn+empathy&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C48&amp;as_sdtp="], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25m6nc", "title": "\"Two Native Americans landed in Holland in 60 B.C\" I just read that in a Cracked article called \"6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America\". what are they talking about?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25m6nc/two_native_americans_landed_in_holland_in_60_bc_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chikc04", "chikfyq", "chilbu5", "chimpi4", "chinzat", "chj0mtz"], "score": [4, 47, 54, 16, 7, 5], "text": ["Cite?  Original link?", "To quote Tiako from the [first time that this appeared here](_URL_0_), \"Huh?\"", "The people who were seen in what is now Holland were, in 60 B.C, referred to as Indians.  This should tell you that this claim is beyond moronic.\n\nThey were, in all likelihood, from the Indus Valley in *India*.  You know, where Columbus thought he had landed and named the people after.  *If* they had come from North America, they wouldn't have been called Indians--they would have been called by whatever group they came from, just like everyone else was everywhere else.  ", "Even though this particular story is apocryphal, there is some evidence of Native Americans (or Inuits) arriving in Europe before Columbus.  The evidence is from Columbus himself, who describes a story he heard about a couple from \"Cathay\" (China) when he visited Galway, Ireland, in 1477. \n\n > Men of Cathay have come from the west.  We have seen many signs. And especially in Galway in Ireland, a man and a woman, of extraordinary appearance, have come to land on two tree trunks.\n\nPossibly a couple of Greenlanders blown across the ocean in a log boat.", "What the fuck? Is this true??\n\n > One of the best examples of how we got Native Americans all wrong is Cahokia, a massive Native American city located in modern day East St. Louis. In 1250, it was bigger than London, and featured a sophisticated society with an urban center, satellite villages and thatched-roof houses lining the central plazas. While the city was abandoned by the time white people got to it, the evidence they left behind suggests a complex economy with trade routes from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.", "Always scrutinize the citation list of any online article.\n\n\nEspecially if it comes from a website that relies on click baiting, and is from square one pitched as a comedy site. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tocco/how_accurate_is_this_article/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fh8kq", "title": "Why do east Asians have an epicanthic fold?", "selftext": "I hope this isn't considered a controversial question, I've just always wondered what the evolutionary purpose of them is or what the leading theories on it are?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fh8kq/why_do_east_asians_have_an_epicanthic_fold/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1fxl5e", "c1fxqvy"], "score": [11, 3], "text": ["Khoi and San people in Africa have them too. I think it's just because a sub-population in African that had them made the first wave of immigration to Asia.", "I have a great book for you. Don't even think about it, just order it you'll thank me later.\n\nIf you have a library you can take it out of (any uni will have it), that works too.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/"]]}
{"q_id": "f8m8b9", "title": "Were Velociraptors as dangerous/deadly as Jurassic Park depicts them to be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f8m8b9/were_velociraptors_as_dangerousdeadly_as_jurassic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fima7ay", "fimb460", "fimb9r5", "fimfhkz", "fin49xu", "finh2g3"], "score": [4, 17, 7, 7, 10, 5], "text": ["If you were a certain size/animal, probably not.\n\nLions get their asses kicked all the time by herbivores or what would be considered a prey animal. As do hyenas.\n\nWhatever was smaller than the velociraptor, or was cut off from the herd, definitely.", "They\u2019re also nearly twice as big in the movies then they were in real life. The imagery is closer to deinonychus than to velociraptor. Working in packs if indeed they definitely did work in community they were probably pretty dangerous.", "The raptors in Jurassic park are actually called Utah raptors. They were actually discovered in Utah, (as the name suggests), either right before the film started shooting or during, can\u2019t really remember. Spielberg decided to keep the velociraptor name because he thought it was scarier.\n\n\nBut raptors had some of the largest brains of the dinosaurs and were thought to be exceptionally intelligent, (compared to other dinosaurs), so they probably were that dangerous.", "[Velociraptors were about the size of modern chickens](_URL_0_), so they would not be as deadly (to humans anyway) as the Jurassic Park movies portray. The movie probably modeled its \"Velociraptors\" on the real-life specimens of [Utahraptor.](_URL_1_) Because moviegoers probably wouldn't be very impressed by a pack of chickens.\n\nI have no idea if it's still in print, but I read a book by Robert T. Bakker called \"Raptor Red\". It's a novel describing the life of a Utahraptor female, and it paints a very vivid, complex picture of what the life of such a predator may have looked like. Check it out if you are a dino geek like me.", "The other comments are correct that velociraptor was really not even nearly as big as in the movie.\n\nHowever, I strongly disagree in comparing it to chicken. Rather than comparing it by the size of the animal, **I'd look at the size of the skull and the jaw**. This gives an idea of how hard they could bite.\n\nIndeed, the skull of a velociraptor is roughly the same size as today's wolves or dogs. Paleonthologists believe velociraptors hunted in groups, like wolves. IMO they would be comparably dangerous.", "Probably not.  Not because of their physical abilities but more because of their behavior.  Movie monster animals like the predatory dinosaurs in JP don't really behave like real animals, because it's more exciting to have them be extra aggressive and persistent.  JP (the first movie anyway) isn't quite as bad as some instances of this, but still...\n\nAnyway, I would not want to be stuck in a cage with a midsized therapod like the ones in the movie any more than I would want to be stuck in a cage with a wild lion or wolf. But just like mammal predators don't tend to go out of their way to hunt humans, I wouldn't expect a raptor to go out of its way to hunt humans.  Predators are almost always risk averse and fairly lazy as well - for good reason when breaking a bone often means death and spending too much energy when hunting means starvation.   That means they'd most likely be interested in picking off an isolated unaware human but unlikely to persist in the face of long difficult chases or dangerous situations.  \n\nAnyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that in a natural situation (eg, if they were just another animal living today) I would not expect them to be any more deadly than other large predators like wolves, lions, sharks, bears, etc.  All these animals can and do kill humans sometimes, but their usual interactions with humans involve a wary look from a distance far more often than a direct attack."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor#Description", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utahraptor#Description"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5w2ahr", "title": "Was \"Deus Vult\" ever actually used as a battlecry at any point in history?", "selftext": "What evidence is there that crusaders or Christians used \"Deus Vult\" as a battlecry? Are there even any recorded battlecries in history that we know of?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5w2ahr/was_deus_vult_ever_actually_used_as_a_battlecry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de7p3j7"], "score": [6], "text": ["There were battle cries during the Middle Ages. For example, Antoine de La Sale's *Le petit Jehan de Saintr\u00e9*\u2014a sort of late medieval book of aristocratic behavior\u2014proceeds almost as if an encylopedia mentioning the various regions of France, their arms, nicknames, and battle cries. All of these were idiosyncratic to the region or lordship in question. These most likely were used in ceremony or in the moments before battle was joined. In an example from the thirteenth century, Joinville narrates how while on the Nile the Lord Walter of Autreche, having mounted his horse and resplendent in his finest arms, charged at the enemy from his tent shouting \"Ch\u00e2tillon!\" Walter then falls off his horse and dies to the Egyptian army. You, the reader or listener, are meant to think Walter was foolish, drinking wine and suiting up on his pavilion before charging the enemy alone; but, it also lets us see how such phrases may have been used.\n\nA battle cry\u2014defined here as a cry employed in battle\u2014, however, was more frequently used as a marker of identification among combatants. For example, in his chronicle of the thirteenth-century Ibelin family, Philip of Novara recounts how in a fight outside the castle of Dieudamour a brave Tuscan knight was killed by his allies because he could not say the King's password, *vaillance*, but instead cried out *baillance*. A poor French accent could get you killed amidst the chaos of the battlefield. \n\nHistorians and cultural critics have often named *Deus Vult* the battle cry of the crusades since it is the phrased shouted by those listening to Pope Urban II's speech outside Clermont in 1095. This is attested in many of the accounts of Urban's speech, and is one of the few things the competing sources agree on. But, there are reasons why this latin phrase is not likely to have been frequently employed. First among many is that it is in latin. Knights would have known some latin, and certainly would have been able to recite some liturgical, biblical, or otherwise colloquial phrases as we do with other languages today. It is even likely that some, limited number of nobles knew how to read and write in Latin. But, particularly as the twelfth century went on, the use of the vernacular was far more common. Whatever battle cry people would use would almost certainly be in French, Middle High German, etc.\n\nA final example to demonstrate this fact would again come from Joinville, who when writing his history of the Seventh Crusade in his later years remembered the French knights on the Nile shouting not *Deus Vult*, but *Montjoie*. *Montjoie* is a French word recorded across multiple chanson de geste as a rallying cry of legendary medieval heroes such as William of Orange and Roland. It is best left untranslated as its meaning remains contested among scholars. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8obkkx", "title": "If a box made of mirrors is filled with photons that bounce forever, is the box heavier than if it was empty? If so, why?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8obkkx/if_a_box_made_of_mirrors_is_filled_with_photons/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e02cw5e"], "score": [36], "text": ["Yes, the box would be heavier, because of Einstein's famous formula, E=mc^2 . The photons have energy, so the box has energy inside it, and so the box behaves like it has mass m = E/c^2 . More technically, we would get \"m\" by calculating the [invariant mass](_URL_4_) from the energy and momentum vectors of all the photons. On a conceptual level, one  reason to expect this is that mass describes inertia (how much force it requires to get something to accelerate, m = F/a), and the photons exert more pressure on the front of the box vs the back when you try to push it, due to the [doppler shift](_URL_3_) of the photons as you try to accelerate the box. This is a neat calculation anyone can do at college-level to derive Einstein's E = mc^2 formula, and is also conceptually a neat way to see that mass is really just \"confined energy\" and that this is how the [Higgs mechanism](_URL_0_) can give mass to otherwise massless particles, by essentially confining them to a \"box\" due to interactions with the Higgs field (a \"force\" that, along with [electroweak](_URL_2_) and [strong](_URL_1_) forces, is described by the [Standard Model of particle physics](_URL_5_))."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_mass", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model"]]}
{"q_id": "2dc2uq", "title": "what happens when we jam a finger?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dc2uq/eli5_what_happens_when_we_jam_a_finger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjo28bg", "cjo2e2n", "cjo2jvn", "cjo4hh9", "cjo5es7", "cjo65gt", "cjo71pe", "cjo7jxa", "cjo7msj", "cjo88mb", "cjo8ims", "cjo9m79", "cjobnyr", "cjodywa", "cjoelgz", "cjofke2", "cjoibwv", "cjoitv1", "cjojn97", "cjok2nh", "cjok74g", "cjol030", "cjol8av", "cjooivw", "cjooj6u", "cjophly", "cjoq60o", "cjoq7vp", "cjoqrlj", "cjoqxn1", "cjoric2", "cjotgvh", "cjowt81", "cjphlgn"], "score": [13, 1324, 140, 40, 217, 23, 5, 5, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 11, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["I don't get it. can you elaborate?", "The impact causes inflammation.  One of inflammation's 'goals ' is to immobilize the affected area to allow for quicker healing.  Hence your finger feels stiff. \n\nEdit: a word for you /u/MrsAgentDaleCooper\n\n", "Basically, two things can happen:\n\n1. You sprain the ligaments around your knuckles that allow it to move.\n2. You sprain the joint capsule in the knuckles. (Think of it as a pad in-between your joints so the  bones don't rub directly together)\n\nIn either case, there is swelling.  This, coupled with the sprain, is what causes limited motion and strength.  \n\n*Edit: Grammar mistakes.\n\n* Edit 2:  Apparently I have missinformed you.  see u\\itssallgoodman's comment below.", "Thank you everyone for the answers. Now I have a satisfactory answer to why my fingers are jammed as fuck from playing football last night.", "Non native english speaker requesting an explanation of finger jamming.  \n\nEDIT: OH! I get it! Jamming, as in jammed, caught between two objects. \n\nEDIT2: I'm an idiot. ", "Worst thing I ever did: jersey finger.\n\nCaught my finger on something while falling, it went sideways and tore the ligament. I never went to the doctor so it stayed swollen for a month. Six monthly later I finally regained most of my finger flexibility but I dont think it'll ever be the same. ", "I'm pretty sure a miniature big bang occurs in an alternate universe when I jam my little finger", "Ran my middle finger straight into a wall 6 months ago. Mobility has gotten better, but it's still not the same as the other hand and the middle joint is still swollen. At the time it happened, a doc x-rayed it and said there was no fracture but it could take \"3 weeks\" to heal. After a month, I started getting concerned but I've had two friends tell me they've had similar injuries and it took them each about a year to heal! I know I should probably get it checked out again, but any other suggestions or personal experiences on how long this can take to heal?", "In addition to this, why is that my fingers still hurt in the same place, when under a lot of pressure, (popping knuckles, for example) from times that I had jammed the same fingers in the past? ", "Since were' on the subject, I sprained my finger 8 months ago and it still hurts when I bend it to the maximum (normal) amount.  Is this typical?  ", "You generally mutter a curse word.", "This is going to get buried,  but what happens when we give ourselves a black fingernail?", "generally my kids learn a few new words.", "I got told it was called 'mallet finger' by an NHS nurse and then a doctor. Apparently that's what we call it in the UK. I googled it and it's also known as Baseball finger. \n\nThey were both wrong. Here's a picture I took today when I was having the pins pulled out of my finger. \n\n_URL_0_", "Depends where you jam it.", "I done this about 4 months ago and the joint is still swollen as fuck and hurts to move. Google said a doctor wouldn't do anything and just to rest it, what does Reddit think?", "I cry like a little bitch... That's what happens.", "Damn, I came in thinking this was going to be about the delayed pain reaction that's very particular to fingerjamming. I can't be the only one... One time I shut my finger in the car door... I opened the door to let it out, and it was kind of numb and throbby for 10-15 seconds, and then BOOOOM, that sensation of all the blood rushing from your head, teeth clenching, feeling faint; the same thing when you stub your big toe; numbness, and then delayed pain and shock. I'm not alone with this, right?", "\u2022be councilman Jeremy Jam\n\u2022trick finger into giving you what you want in order to screw finger over\n\u2022finger has been jammed", "It becomes marginally spreadable and delicious.", "GRRRRRRRRR- Jammed and Jarred are two different things (in Australia)... Jammed is getting it squished (i.e. in a door) Jarred is when a ball bounces off the tip of you finger...", "God damn this is a genius ELI5 (Zero sarcasm)", "It tastes awful.", "Maybe it means something different where I'm from, but I've only heard of jamming a finger when specifically referring to the injury (most commonly occurring in sports) where your finger is \"jammed\" into the joint and feels like it needs to be popped back out.  That usually signifies a partial dislocation of the joint, also known as subluxation.  When it pops back into place, that's called a reduction of the joint.  It hurts like hell when it's subluxed because the misaligment causes increased tension (straining) or tearing (spraining) of the ligaments connecting the two bone segments.  When it's reduced, it feels better because the tension is relieved, but the strained/sprained ligaments can continue to be sore for a few weeks while they heal.  Reducing the joint on your own is generally advised against because pulling on the finger can do more harm than good, e.g. turning a partial tear into a complete tear, which will then require surgery, and also because these injuries can often be accompanied by a fracture.", "[this](_URL_0_) is what happens.", "The reason why I clicked this because I jammed my toe while walking and redditing.", "A jammed finger is another term for a finger sprain.\n", "It fucking hurts", "IT F  > _ <  KIN' HURTS!!", "Personally, I cuss.", "you get jelly", "We sit down in our cube, resigned to our fate.", "In Australia we call what you refer to 'jammed' as 'jarred', and reserve the use of 'jammed' for when something is actually jammed; like a finger in a door. ", "Jamming a finger causes physical damage to tissues at the site of the 'jam' and your body diverts some blood from your other muscles/organs to the damaged tissues.\n\nThe term 'inflammation' has been thrown about a bit: it comprises 5 main factors:\n - Rubor - Redness\n\n - Calor - Heat\n - Dolor - Pain\n - Tumor - swelling\n - Laesa Functio (or Functio Laesa, I've heard both) - Loss of function\n\nAll of these are due to an increased blood supply and this is to, primarily, swarm the area with white blood cells, platelets and many other blood components to prevent infection and produce a clot (preventing blood loss)\n\nThis is quite ELI5, but hopefully this answers your question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/Y1DVUbB"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.jammybodger.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/5saucertest2.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q9e9t", "title": "how did we learn to translate hieroglyphs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q9e9t/eli5_how_did_we_learn_to_translate_hieroglyphs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdai53g", "cdai9vh", "cdak6di", "cdaod5b", "cdarc3v"], "score": [48, 20, 10, 4, 2], "text": ["The [Rosetta Stone](_URL_0_) was instrumental.\n\nSince it had the same text written in three different languages it essentially handed us a partial translation of Egyptian to Greek.", "In 1799 they found the Rosetta stone, that contained the same passage in ancient Greek and in hieroglyphs. Since we knew the ancient Greek language we were able to translate the passage. From it we got some limited hieroglyph vocabulary which in turn could be used to translate other hieroglyph passages. Obviously the Rosetta stone didn't contain every possible hieroglyph but we were able to guess the remaining hieroglyphs based on the context they were used in  ", "By the way, if you want to see the Rosetta Stone, it is on display in the British Museum, London. ", "Short answer: The Rosetta Stone. It was written in Heiroglyphics, Demotic (basically Egyptian that normal people could read), and Ancient Greek. \n\nReally oversimplified: some guy who was really fucking good with languages figured out that Coptic, the liturgical language of Coptic Christians, was directly related to ancient Egyptian. He learned Coptic and Greek so he could translate what the Egyptian meant in Greek. Greek and Latin were still widely spoken, so that made translation a lot easier. Translating the Heiroglyphics meant just connecting the Demotic sounds to the Heiroglyphic words. ", "If you have Netflix, Carl Sagan can explain it to you really well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "awq14c", "title": "Gaius Valerius Catullus is known for writing Catullus 16 - a poem whose first line has been called \"one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin.\" What was the public response to this poem at the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awq14c/gaius_valerius_catullus_is_known_for_writing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ehp4mw4"], "score": [38], "text": ["I think it's worth quickly considering the context of the poem. \n\nIt is addressed to two friends of his, Marcus Furius Bibaculus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus, a poet and senator respectively. In Catullus-16 itself, it is referenced that both Furius and Aurelius believed Catullus' poetry to be rather effeminate. The exact word used is *molliculi*, which can be translated to 'tender', 'gentle', 'delicate', 'sensitive' etc. Taken at face value, the poem is a rebuke to the idea that Catullus himself is effeminate through threats of sexual violence against Furius and Aurelius. However, as these two were friends of his, and the poem is so atypical of Catullus' other poems, it is thought that the poem is supposed to be interpreted ironically, at least in part, and certainly has wider meaning. The point being made is that the poet does not necessarily match the poetry, and that crude poetry isn't as good as more 'sensitive' poems. Catullus-16 is complicated, but it is chiefly a rebuke to the idea that you can know someone through their public work. In the same way you do not know John Cleese by watching Monty Python, or Steve Coogan by watching Alan Partridge, you do not know Catullus by reading his poems. Inversely, Catullus is saying that even if he is masculine, that does not mean that his poems also have to be masculine.  \n\nSo how was this message interpreted? It certainly seems to have stuck a chord with other Roman authors of the time. Ovid makes what appears to be the same argument in his own work, though more explicitly:\n\n*Believe me, my character\u2019s other than my verse \u2013*\n\n*my life is modest, my Muse is playful \u2013*\n\n*and most of my work, deceptive and fictitious,*\n\n*is more permissive than its author.*\n\n*A book\u2019s not evidence of a life, but a true impulse*\n\n*bringing many things to delight the ear.*\n\n*Or Accius would be cruel, Terence a reveller,*\n\n*and those who sing of war belligerent.*\n\nLater on, he explicitly references Catullus as a further example of an author not matching the character of their work. Pliny the Younger sent some of his own poetry to his friend Paternus with the following message (from letter 4.14): \n\n >  Some of them will possibly strike you as being rather wanton, but a man of your scholarship will bear in mind that the very greatest and gravest authors who have handled such subjects have not only dealt with lascivious themes, but have treated them in the plainest language. I have not done that, not because I have greater austerity than they--by no means, but because I am not quite so daring. Otherwise, I am aware that Catullus has laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of poetry in his lines: \"For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself, though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous and not too modest.\"\n\nHere Pliny is pre-empting a criticism he knows he will receive; that he does not imitate Catullus' lurid style even though the subject matter warrants it. Pliny explains that he does this because he struggles to be daring enough and is restrained by his own sheepishness. It also reveals that sexually explicit poetry really wasn't unusual in Roman society. Modern society may view sex as taboo, but the Romans (largely) did not. Pliny is expecting criticism not for too much explicit sexual content, but *not enough*. Pliny quotes Catullus-16 lines 5 to 8. \n\nThere is a lot of scholarly literature on the relationship between Martial's works and those of Catullus. Martial was, at the very least, a big fan of Catullus and imitated some of the sexual language used in Catullus-16. \n\nThe Roman author Apuleius, writer of *The Golden Ass*, was also a fan of Catullus. He was accused of using magic to seduce a wealthy woman, and his poetry (which often included magic) was used as evidence against him. He quoted Catullus-16 lines 5 and 6 in his defence:\n\n >  You who are slanderous enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus? \"A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed.\nBut for his verses there is no such need.\" \n\nSo overall, the poem would not have been controversial. It would have been a bit shocking, especially coming from Catullus, but that was the point and it worked. The poem deals with themes which were particularly pertinent to Roman writers and, going by how many subsequent poets used Catullus as an example, it was actually quite popular, and for many it was the go-to rebuke to people who thought they knew someone because they had read their work. We also have to consider that Romans did not have the same sense of taboo around sex that we do in modern times, and that sexually explicit poetry was not viewed as scandalous. The public response to the poem, at least from the evidence we have, is that people thought Catullus had a very good point. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "10rm1o", "title": "Where are Anton Van Leeuwenhoek's nine surviving microscopes?", "selftext": "In a recent biology lecture, the professor mentioned the master craftsman of early microscopes, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek. He observed the first bacterium, not to be seen again for another 200 years. He challenged the class to find the locations of the nine remaining examples of his work. I'd be interested to know if anyone could find the location of these microscopes.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10rm1o/where_are_anton_van_leeuwenhoeks_nine_surviving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6g1k7r", "c6gbmph"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["I know one is in the [museum of the history of science](_URL_0_) in Ghent, Belgium; and one is at the [University museum of Utrecht](_URL_1_), The Netherlands.\n\nAlso, shouldn't you be doing your own homework?", "Cool trivia:  Leeuwenhoek prevented anyone from duplicating his feat: they all thought he was a master lens-grinder, when all he did was melt little spherical beads into the end of glass fibers, then pick out the best ones.  One of his single-lens microscopes was thought to be about 1200X power.  _URL_0_\n\nIf you want to re-start civilization after collapse, bang the rocks together, but to re-start microbiology, stretch little bits of glass and then melt beads on the end of the fibers.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sciencemuseum.ugent.be/", "http://www.uu.nl/NL/universiteitsmuseum/collectie/natuurwetenschappelijkeinstrumenten/Microscopenenoptica/Pages/vanLeeuwenhoekmicroscoop.aspx"], ["http://www.brianjford.com/wavintr.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "192egz", "title": "Can you develop a speech impediment by not talking for periods of time?", "selftext": "If talking requires muscles from your throat to your mouth, and muscles atrophy from lack of use, can you develop speech impediments by not talking for periods of time? Can the muscles in your mouth and throat degenerate to the point that they are not strong enough to speak properly, sort of like how other muscles degenerate and can not perform certain tasks?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/192egz/can_you_develop_a_speech_impediment_by_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8k7356", "c8k9r7m"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["No. If you actually did not use those muscles at all, e.g. feeding through intravenous tubes and etc., then yes. However, it isn't feasible to truly be that inactive just by not eating.", "Yes, but not through muscle atrophy, but trough changes in your neural network. It would be like speaking foregin language. If you speak often your pronunciation will get better and better, however if you stop speaking for few years it will worsen. You will know your pronunciation sucks, but you would be unable to do anything about it except for practising again. Not because atrophy of your muscles, but because neural network controlling those muscles lose its tuning."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3u0eam", "title": "how are refugees vetted?", "selftext": "Canada is now using a 'profile' and letting in women and children only  because supposedly they can't vet all of them by the end of the year.. But how does a country/government vet refugees in the first place? How do they know who is not bad vs who is good ? Is there a blood test, I doubt it", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u0eam/eli5_how_are_refugees_vetted/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxas5nm", "cxas7od", "cxas8j3", "cxasbtg", "cxat0ud", "cxb5nm0"], "score": [27, 7, 11, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["A very complicated series of checks by several different government agencies.  It takes a long time and gathers as much data as it can to make an assessment of need and risk.  Great infogrraphic (ELI12) here: _URL_0_", "They can't. This is the problem. Currently, it's a numbers game. The question is, does the amount of people who genuinely need help and refuge outnumber those who might intentionally be here to cause harm? The answer is mostly yes. There is no 100% way to get all the people out of those countries as well as verify the validity of their claims in a way that's both time and manpower efficient. They do the best they can and it's impossible to get it right 100% of the time.", "Before the replies start: ***I'm not debating whether or not we should or shouldn't take in refugees***. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nI live in Florida, in the United States. If I wanted to move to Canada, and Canada wanted to vet me, they can request information from several different places. They can get background info on me from the State of Florida, or from the Federal Government of the United States. Since the information is coming straight from the Government, Canada knows that they can trust the information.\n\nThat's generally how things work for refugees: we check with the Governments and Agencies in the countries that they're coming from, and get the information we need. The problem is, with a place like Syria, where there has been massive war and destruction, we might not be able to get the information we need, from a source we can trust. So then we have to use less reliable methods of checking them out, or we have to simple take their word for it.", "With the Syrian refugees they do interviews and check to see if their story aligns with events that happened in the country or with other people's stories. They collect fingerprints and biological information and go through several different agencies over the period of about a year and a half. I read that 50% of the refugees get rejected and the ones that make it through don't get to choose which country they end up in. \n\nDespite it being lengthy it's not the most thorough sounding process to be totally honest. Syria has no database of people that the west can access. The refugees have no identification. Worth the risk? Up to you to decide. ", "Definitive checks are costly and time consuming. Last I heard, US taking in 10k refugees will take two years for background check, which sounds like a really long time.", "**A friend of mine is an immigration lawyer in the US. He posted a really comprehensive answer to this question on Facebook the other day. Below is his description in full (rather long). Note, this applies to the process in the US.**\n\nMost of my friends know I practice Immigration law. As such, I have worked with the refugee community for over two decades. This post is long, but if you want actual information about the process, keep reading.\n\nI can not tell you how frustrating it is to see the misinformation and outright lies that are being perpetuated about the refugee process and the Syrian refugees. So, here is a bit of information from the real world of someone who actually works and deals with this issue.\n\nThe refugee screening process is multi-layered and is very difficult to get through. Most people languish in temporary camps for months to years while their story is evaluated and checked.\n\nFirst, you do not get to choose what country you might be resettled into. If you already have family (legal) in a country, that makes it more likely that you will go there to be with family, but other than that it is random. So, you can not simply walk into a refugee camp, show a document, and say, I want to go to America. Instead, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees) works with the local authorities to try to take care of basic needs. Once the person/family is registered to receive basic necessities, they can be processed for resettlement. Many people are not interested in resettlement as they hope to return to their country and are hoping that the turmoil they fled will be resolved soon. In fact, most refugees in refugee events never resettle to a third country. Those that do want to resettle have to go through an extensive process.\n\nResettlement in the U.S. is a long process and takes many steps. The Refugee Admissions Program is jointly administered by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) in the Department of State, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within DHS conducts refugee interviews and determines individual eligibility for refugee status in the United States.\n\nWe evaluate refugees on a tiered system with three levels of priority.\n\nFirst Priority are people who have suffered compelling persecution or for whom no other durable solution exists. These individuals are referred to the United States by UNHCR, or they are identified by the U.S. embassy or a non-governmental organization (NGO).\n\nSecond priority are groups of \u201cspecial concern\u201d to the United States. The Department of State determines these groups, with input from USCIS, UNHCR, and designated NGOs. At present, we prioritize certain persons from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Iran, Burma, and Bhutan.\n\nThird priority are relatives of refugees (parents, spouses, and unmarried children under 21) who are already settled in the United States may be admitted as refugees. The U.S.-based relative must file an Affidavit of Relationship (AOR) and must be processed by DHS.\n\nBefore being allowed to come to the United States, each refugee must undergo an extensive interviewing, screening, and security clearance process conducted by Regional Refugee Coordinators and overseas Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs). Individuals generally must not already be firmly resettled (a legal term of art that would be a separate article). Just because one falls into the three priorities above does not guarantee admission to the United States.\n\nThe Immigration laws require that the individuals prove that they have a \u201cwell-founded fear,\u201d (another legal term which would be a book.) This fear must be proved regardless of the person\u2019s country, circumstance, or classification in a priority category. There are multiple interviews and people are challenged on discrepancies. I had a client who was not telling the truth on her age and the agency challenged her on it. Refugees are not simply admitted because they have a well founded fear. They still must show that they are not subject to exclusion under Section 212(a) of the INA. These grounds include serious health matters, moral or criminal matters, as well as security issues. In addition, they can be excluded for such things as polygamy, misrepresentation of facts on visa applications, smuggling, or previous deportations. Under some circumstances, the person may be eligible to have the ground waived.\n\nAt this point, a refugee can be conditionally accepted for resettlement. Then, the RSC sends a request for assurance of placement to the United States, and the Refugee Processing Center (RPC) works with private voluntary agencies (VOLAG) to determine where the refugee will live. If the refugee does have family in the U.S., efforts will be made to resettle close to that family.\n\nEvery person accepted as a refugee for planned admission to the United States is conditional upon passing a medical examination and passing all security checks. Frankly, there is more screening of refugees than ever happens to get on an airplane. Of course, yes, no system can be 100% foolproof. But if that is your standard, then you better shut down the entire airline industry, close the borders, and stop all international commerce and shipping. Every one of those has been the source of entry of people and are much easier ways to gain access to the U.S. Only upon passing all of these checks (which involve basically every agency of the government involved in terrorist identification) can the person actually be approved to travel.\n\nBefore departing, refugees sign a promissory note to repay the United States for their travel costs. This travel loan is an interest-free loan that refugees begin to pay back six months after arriving in the country.\n\nOnce the VOLAG is notified of the travel plans, it must arrange for the reception of refugees at the airport and transportation to their housing at their final destination.\nThis process from start to finish averages 18 to 24 months, but I have seen it take years.\n\nThe reality is that about half of the refugees are children, another quarter are elderly. Almost all of the adults are either moms or couples coming with children. Each year the President, in consultation with Congress, determines the numerical ceiling for refugee admissions. For Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the proposed ceiling is 85,000. We have been averaging about 70,000 a year for the last number of years. (Source: Refugee Processing Center)\n\nOver one-third of all refugee arrivals (35.1 percent, or 24,579) in FY 2015 came from the Near East/South Asia\u2014a region that includes Iraq, Iran, Bhutan, and Afghanistan.\nAnother third of all refugee arrivals (32.1 percent, or 22,472) in FY 2015 came from Africa.\nOver a quarter of all refugee arrivals (26.4 percent, or 18,469) in FY 2015 came from East Asia \u2014 a region that includes China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. (Source: Refugee Processing Center)\n\nFinally, the process in Europe is different. I would be much more concerned that terrorists are infiltrating the European system because they are not nearly so extensive and thorough in their process."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infographic-screening-process-refugee-entry-united-states"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qamay", "title": "Why do 2 wheeled vehicles stay vertical when moving forward but not when still?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qamay/why_do_2_wheeled_vehicles_stay_vertical_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdbnrpf"], "score": [2], "text": ["It's due to a combination of effects:\n\n* The spinning wheels create a [gyroscopic effect](_URL_0_).  Basically it means that spinning wheels tend to stay upwards.\n\n* The geometric shape of a wheel (a torus) is such that if a rolling wheel tilts to one side, it will naturally change direction to \"catch itself\".\n\n* The rider can also help.  It's easier to balance a moving bicycle or motorcycle because you can steer the vehicle so that it catches your and its own weight, which you can't do with a still vehicle."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiTUiop9etk"]]}
{"q_id": "3er1oo", "title": "why is it that no one during the medieval times (or any historical period for that matter 1000+ years ago) could do photorealistic drawings? yet there are so many talented people that can knock one out these days just with a pencil and a pad?", "selftext": "It can't be due to technology right?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3er1oo/eli5_why_is_it_that_no_one_during_the_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cthksgj", "cthkvcr", "cthkw7f", "cthl186", "cthlux7", "cthn2j5"], "score": [5, 19, 2, 28, 4, 5], "text": ["It's a developed style, I think.  Same as realism.  \n\nOn a smaller scale, think of a group of 1st grade artists versus college level artists.  The first graders have a very basic concept of shapes.  For example, have a group of young kids draw a tree and pretty much all the trees will look the same.  This is because they have been taught to draw trees like this, regardless what the actual tree looks like.  Now if you look at college level artists and beyond, they have been taught more.  More or less, they have been taught to draw what they see versus what they think they see.  The tree is no longer a rectangle with a cloud on top, but more lines and shadows.  So, in the context of history, I think that may be similar to what happened.  Then there's also the cultural/fashion movements to keep in mind.  They're version of Photoshop, if you will. \n\nAlso, you see a lot of realism in statues starting from the Greeks and Romans (and possibly earlier?).", "2 things:\n\n1) painters today had both better equipment as well as a shorter art history to build on.\n\n2) they did not want to. it was a style choice, they where not frying to be realistic. [plenty](_URL_1_) of [realistic](_URL_0_) ancient paintings [exist](_URL_2_)\n\n.\n\nyou can google the long answer, but the shirt answer is lack of equipment, knowledge and it was not in fashion.", "You've never seen anything from the Dutch renaissance have you? Look up Van Eyck.\n\nArt styles have changed dramatically over the centuries. Just starting with the use of perspective, it's not like the byzantine couldn't do it, they just didnt. Art copied/borrowed from those nearby and before, so massive changes usually wouldn't be preserved on a wall or painting. Think Picasso or Dali would have gotten any jobs 800 years ago with the styles they're famous for?\n\nTechnology does have an effect. Certain paints weren't available until different years because the mixes weren't discovered yet. Especially the extremely vibrant cokors we have now. Others have faded over the centuries to their present state, and it's not like we can paint over them even if we know the original hue.\n\nPencils of the quality we have now didn't exist back then. Nor did the paper. We have easier lives now, so more people can spend time doodling and improving their skills without having to worry about starving to death. Most modern artists can just buy their tools too, they don't have to make their own brushes, paints, and canvases; which let's them focus on the art more.", "You have to trick your audience into seeing the illusion of depth, since all you really have to work with is height and width. This was a much slower process. You can see the eventual progressions of depth in the Greek painting on their [older paintings]( _URL_3_). You can see in this painting, unlike the Egyptian paintings that we get some sort of illusion of depth. People are now standing behind things. Our humans are still very flat, but painters are slowly getting the hang of it.\n\nBy the Roman era, we'd gotten pretty good with giving the face some depth. [This](_URL_5_) is a memorial painting found in Egypt around the Roman Empire period. Unlike the more flat featured Greek paintings, we have more definition of the human face. It still looks a bit cartoony, but it is an improvement. \n\nJumping forward to the Middle Ages, skills are progressing to a point where the artists understand the need for depth, but they are not quite sure how to do it. [Here](_URL_0_) is a good example. The painting seems \"off\" doesn't it? That's because there is no common vanishing point. The right side of the painting seem to be aligned with a vanishing point wanting to happen in the deep left of the picture. But the left side has vanishing points all over the place. Roof slants, walls and windows are places helter skelter. We're getting closer to realism though. \n\nAs far as humans go, painters are getting closer as well. [Here](_URL_2_) is a young woman. Notice, we have a lot more details now than we did back with the Greeks. It's not just a side profile of the face, but now we can get it at an angle. To our eyes, things still look off. The size of her face to the size of her head is seriously out of proportion as is her head to her body. But, we have depth.\n\nBy the time the Renaissance rolled around, humans had pretty much cracked the code of proportion, depth and vanishing points. Da Vinci's famous [Last Supper](_URL_1_) is one of the best uses of the Vanishing Point, drawing all of our attention to the center where Christ is. Michelangelo understood anatomy and proportion to give us convincing people in his [paintings]( _URL_4_).\n\nIt's a really rough explanation of a fairly complicated topic, but hopefully that is enough of an over view. It just took a lot of people a long time to learn how to do it, since all information back then was just transferred from master to student and they built on the previous person's knowledge. \n\nEDIT: Crosspost from a similar question I answered in r/askhistorians. Thanks, /u/Dubuious_Squirrel !", "Drawing photo-realism requires knowledge of geometry (for perspective correction), anatomy (to be able to draw bodies properly), and optics (to understand color and light).  The ancient Greeks knew of these elements, but were clearly more into statues than painting.  Nevertheless the Greeks clearly had [started a painting tradition](_URL_0_) that could have evolved into a photo-realistic style.\n\nWe know this is the case, because the Byzantines, who are the inheritors of this culture, basically lost their entire intellectual culture during the dark ages.  They could not draw with perspective like the Greeks could, their anatomy degenerated, and the quality of their art in general was just terrible.\n\nActually, the reason we draw so much better know is *EXACTLY* because of technology.  When the Renaissance scientists were fooling around with camera obscuras and interesting mirror tricks for tracing live images, working out systems for perspective drawing, and the creation of anatomy drawings from autopsies by people like Leonardo da Vinci, artists got a much better idea of how to do it.\n\nA guy named Tim Jenison, in fact, believes that Johannes Vermeer used [optical trickery in order to paint his lifelike pictures](_URL_1_).  Certainly programs like photoshop and Sketchbook  have allowed artists to use a lot more tools in the generating photorealism.", "Nowadays we judge the realism of pictures on how closely they resemble photos. In those times, there were no photos, so there was no such thing as \"photorealistic\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.oxpal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pompeiicouple_orig_big.jpg", "http://www.kdzdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Pompeii_Fresco_001.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Pompejanischer_Maler_um_70_001.jpg"], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Nuremberg_chronicles_f_72r_1.png", "http://i.ytimg.com/vi/l7JqSpQLphM/maxresdefault.jpg", "http://medievalpoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tumblr_mqly9pONdE1ssmm02o1_1280.jpg", "https://www2.bc.edu/~rhodesem/800px-NAMA_Sacrifice_aux_Charites.jpg", "http://artinbulk.com/image/famous%20artist/Michelangelo/Michelangelo_001.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum_mummy_portraits#/media/File:Fayum-35.jpg"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_Vettii", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_HUWs9c8c"], []]}
{"q_id": "4pmzko", "title": "how would someone who is fit be affected if they literally ate complete junk food for one day?", "selftext": "Let's say 6' 155 ate 10,000 calories of Chocolate, Milkshakes, cheesecake, fast food.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pmzko/eli5_how_would_someone_who_is_fit_be_affected_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4m8fjd", "d4m8hn4", "d4m8qmg", "d4m8uge", "d4m9r8b", "d4mbwph", "d4md91z", "d4mf6gz", "d4mt9at", "d4mtc2n"], "score": [27, 2, 19, 7, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["There's a show on A & E called \"Fit to Fat to Fit.\" It follows personal trainers who purposefully eat junk for 8 weeks to get fat. And then they lose the weight alongside their heaviest clients.\n\n\nMost episodes follow similar tropes. Typically, the trainers feel great for a week or two. The rush of processed sugars in their lean bodies and relaxation of regimens is a pretty common theme. After a while, they all become sluggish and disinterested in day to day stuff they used to love. They become flabby and all of that hits them psychologically since they pride themselves on fitness and their physique.\n\nTLDR while it might be fun for a little while to go on a binder, it would take a toll on your organs, your physique and quite possibly your mental state.", "You can also check out the movie Super Size Me. I'm pretty sure it's still streaming on Netflix. It explains pretty much the same thing hillrat mentioned on Fit to Fat to Fit.", "Well, if you've been considered \"fit\" for a long time, probably not too much, image-wise. You wouldn't magically get fatter like a cartoon character, so there's that.\n\nIt also depends on how fit you are. If you're training like Michael Phelps did for the olympics, you're actually **below** what he was consuming...around 12,000 calories a day during peak Olympic training! So if you're a professional athlete, eating 10,000 calories in one day will probably have a minimal affect on you.\n\nNow, as for an average, 9-to-5 office worker who's in \"good\" shape, i.e. slightly above their optimal weight/height BMI and good cardiovascular shape with low blood pressure, probably not *too* much either. Our bodies are capable of some pretty amazing things. If you ate all that food throughout the course of the day, the most might be indigestion, upset stomach, and possible vomiting due to over-eating. You'll probably feel lethargic, maybe a headache due to the rush of too much sugar, etc. Basically you'd potentially feel kinda crappy.\n\nActual detrimental effects? Probably minimal, depending on how much sugar/salt you had and whether or not you're diabetic or prone to high blood pressure. On average, bloated and yucky feeling, but otherwise probably okay.\n\nDisclaimer:  I am not a doctor nor a nutritionist. Consult a doctor or nutritionist before consuming mass large quantities of food.", "In the world of fitness, this is known as a \"cheat day.\" A lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters diet this way. Well, maybe not 10,000 calories extra... but they can eat junk food.\n\nI eat really clean throughout the week and I measure all of my portions, count every gram of protein, carbs and fat I eat. Then, on the weekends, I can have pizza, ice cream, whatever I'm craving. I don't binge or go crazy like 10,000 calories, but I can have a couple extra slices of pizza without affecting my physique or my strength.\n\nBasically, it all evens out over the course of a week assuming you don't eat 10,000 calories every two days or something crazy like that. You cannot get fat or ruin your physique/strength in just one day the same way you cannot get a six-pack and huge muscles in one single day. Your body fat and muscle mass change over the course of weeks, months, and years. So, one single cheat day is not going to make a significant impact. A 10,000 calorie cheat day is a little different, you'd gain more fat than a usual cheat day, but normal humans don't eat that way all the time.\n\nThis is all assuming you are a normal, healthy individual without any medical conditions. Obviously, if you have some pre-existing condition, it may not be quite so simple for you.", "It's still calories in vs. calories out.\n\n10,000 is a huge amount for one day but if you eat 2,000 the other 6 days and are doing enough exercise such that your total energy use is 23,000 calories that week you're still going to lose weight.", "they would throw up and then prbly get the shits.  If its just one day, your body is going to reject it because it is so different from your normal food intake.\n\neven if they didn't get sick, theyre still going to feel like shit for being overfull and filled with junk.", "One day? A huge poop the next day, maybe a little stomach pain, maybe fatigue. Maybe a few oz of body fat built up. ", "Only one day? You'll probably feel sick, but after you digest/vomit it all, no consequence is the likely outcome.\n\nThe risk is not eating 10k calories once, but eating an extra thousand everyday", "You would look the same, possibly a little bloated the next day due to all the excess salt.\n\nOtherwise you would:\nA) shit a lot more\n     i) possibly also diarrhea\nB) get really thirsty, drink more water, and subsequently pee a lot\nC) feel sluggish af\nD) want to food coma and just sleep\n\nSource: ate Wendy's, cake, chocolate, and pizza all day yesterday. ", "Doctor here,\n\nMy suspicion is that not much would happen from a one day calorie binge.  Given that we are talking about junk food, the most likely consequence is a temporary increase in weight via expansion of total body water due to the insane amounts of salt in low quality foods. I would also suspect that the subject would have some pretty serious diarrhea from the huge osmotic load that is being delivered to the small intestine."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "17rgll", "title": "Noether's theorem:  Are there any simple physics problems that can solved by making a symmetry argument directly rather than by applying the corresponding conservation law?", "selftext": "I'm not entirely sure this question makes sense.  What I'm asking for is a simple textbook-type physics problem that would normally be solved by applying conservation of energy, momentum, or angular momentum that can also be solve by making an argument directly from the corresponding symmetry principle.\n\nTake, for example, the frictionless roller coaster problem where you can easily calculate its speed at any point by conserving energy.  Is there a corresponding way to solve the problem directly from the principle of time symmetry without going through a fully general derivation of energy conservation via Noether's theorem?\n\nIf this question doesn't make sense, or is not possible, could someone explain why at a level understandable by an engineer with a decent grasp of undergraduate physics?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/17rgll/noethers_theorem_are_there_any_simple_physics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c888aes", "c888igt"], "score": [2, 14], "text": ["I belive that any system where you shift inertial reference frames qualify, as you are using Galilean symmetry which relates to conservation of momentum. Though most often the problems are still solved using a combination.", "I think what you are imagining isn't really feasible.  Here's why.\n\nIn Noether's Theorem, we are identifying a symmetry of the Lagrangian or, more properly, of the action.  This does not lead to a conservation law until you invoke the equations of motion (the Euler-Lagrange equations).\n\nWhile we can use symmetries of the action to generate new solutions from old ones, these symmetries are not overtly manifest in the individual trajectories of objects.  Thus, for example, in a theory with rotational invariance, individual trajectories are not rotationally invariant; rotations turn one allowed path into another.\n\nBut the kinds of problems you are asking about -- problems which one solves by invoking conservation laws -- are problems about individual trajectories.  These problems, either implicitly or explicitly, involve invoking the equations of motion.  And once you are invoking the equations of motion, you are in essence bringing in the conservation law, since it is the equations of motion plus the invariance that produce the conservation law.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3wb152", "title": "how are companies like snapchat and tinder, worth anything when most people don't pay to use them?", "selftext": "Obviously some services make money through advertising but it just doesn't seem like enough to really make profit.  What are the end goals of these free service companies?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wb152/eli5_how_are_companies_like_snapchat_and_tinder/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxusgy3", "cxush5p", "cxutjl8", "cxv21yw", "cxv4rpz"], "score": [27, 62, 8, 4, 4], "text": ["Snapchat makes a lot of ad revenue through advertising. They have deals with the NFL and stuff like that to have snapchat stories posted to everyone. ", "If you're not paying for it, YOU are the item being sold. \n\nThey probably sell your data to 3rd party advertisers. ", "They're worth a lot of money because of the amount of users and the frequency that the app is used. \n\nFor example (I'm just making up numbers here to get the point across). Instagram might have 1,000,000 users. Half the users look at the app at least 1 time every day and 1 quarter of the users make use of the app more than 5 times every day. \nSo, an advertiser can pay Instagram for access to those users. Maybe they only pay for female users in France that use the app at least twice a day, or maybe they only pay for Male users in Australia that follow certain types of accounts (surf companies for example).\n\nThis gives the company value because their user base is easily accessible by advertising companies. The data that we generate (views, likes, personal data like age, gender etc..) also provides value. In this example Instagram can show what different groups of people are into and what sort of trends are happening.\n\nAt the moment I don't think Tinder has any paid content. Snapchat has the discover page, but we don't pay to access that.\nFor companies like this, every single user is worth money to them and other companies are willing to pay to have data on what we do. ", "One possibility is that they have the *potential* to make money in the future.\n\nSay you're a big investing company with many billions of dollars. If you're pretty sure you could make $2B by adding ads to Snapchat, and you can buy it for only $1B, then why wouldn't you do that?", "Don't know about these two, but in college (BBA Marketing), we learned a lot about data mining. Two notable companies: OKCupid and Angry Birds are actually data mining (marketing research) firms, and when you agree to their terms of service, you're unknowingly granting them access to any and all information on your device, and giving them the right to sell said collected information for a profit to a third party. \n\nLearning about Angry Birds was totally out of left field, but OKCupid made a good bit of sense. If you or anyone reading this is unfamiliar with it, OKCupid is an online dating site/app that's less casual/hook up oriented than tinder, but more low maintenance and less serious than _URL_0_. Algorithms \"predict compatibility\" based on your answers to questions, combined with which answer(s) you want a SO to choose. There's thousands of different questions, and it gives unprecedented access to the personal details of people's lives you wouldn't be able to find out on a site that wasn't meant for dating. It's some pretty creepy stuff.\n\nI'm sure tinder and snapchat do similar things to an extent, but probably not identical to OKC or Angry Birds. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["match.com"]]}
{"q_id": "33n4wf", "title": "why do video game companies bloat their games with drm even though pirates always find a way around it? can't the experienced company programmers defeat the pirates?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33n4wf/eli5_why_do_video_game_companies_bloat_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqmh4ae", "cqmh6co", "cqmhjyg", "cqmk2zv", "cqml63y", "cqmlqts", "cqmmyyl", "cqmoifm", "cqmv923", "cqmwith", "cqmyl2b", "cqnkwqs"], "score": [37, 10, 52, 2, 3, 7, 14, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["DRM-bloat *is* the experienced company programmers' attempt at defeating the pirates. As you say yourself, the pirates always find a way around it.", "No matter how good you are at said skill, there is always someone better at it. With this logic, no matter how good they companies are, someone is better at breaking a game than they are at fixing it.", "Nobody believes that DRM is going to prevent piracy, it's there to slow it down and make pirating the game inconvenient. \n\nIt's the difference between having the game available on torrents an hour after launch that can be installed and run just by double clicking the icon and having it on torrents a couple of days after launch that requires a bit of reading to get it working. \n\nPeople are willing to pay to get things quicker and with less effort.", " >  Can't the experienced company programmers defeat the pirates?\n\nOnly by defeating the regular, paying users as well. This happened sometimes. It doesn't really need much experience.\n\nSome clever authors found smarter anti-piracy measures, such as allowing pirates to play the game seemingly as normal, but making it increasingly frustrating, towards unbeatable or unplayable. The protection is not harder to circumvent, but nonpaying players typically don't suspect there is a protection to circumvent. It lead to really bad review ratings, but those are easily pointed out to be a pirate's story.\nProblem: it doesn't seem to increase incentive to buy rather than pirate, while apparently DRM does.\n\n\n... Also, they still make bloating DRMs? I'm *such* a sucker for Steam and Blizzard -_-\u00b0.\n", "Because they have to show their shareholders that they are doing something to stop people from pirating the game, even if that something is going to be ultimately useless.", "All you have to do is make more money of the DRM than you would have if you didn't include it. Let's simplify and say that including DRM has the following associated costs (we'll ignore 'brand damage', like people not buying future games, and other costs for simplicities sake):\n\n-Development costs of the DRM: $500\n-Lost sales due to customers disliking DRM: $250\n-DLC sales lost from unhappy customers: $100\n-People returning the game because DRM prevents if from playing: $100\nLoss: $950\n\nHowever, by preventing the game from being torrentable immediately, a small fraction of people who were on the fence about torrenting vs buying now cave in and buy the game. If these people's sales exceed $950, the DRM is worth it. Furthermore, the DRM might be developed for one game, but used for future games, meaning including it in future titles won't even cost the full $500.\n\nHaving said that, the data isn't usually as clear cut (hard to quantify gained sales vs lost sales for including DRM, for example). However, I think it's fair to say that these companies have some reasonable data supporting their decisions. I'm not entirely convinced that DRM is 'useless' like most people seem to think. It might be, but the mere fact that companies, with access to way more data about their products than us, are so adamant about using it leads me to believe that there must be some argument for it. Or maybe it is costing them money and they just don't have the data to realise it.\n\nThe point is, whether it's actually good or not isn't just a simple case of \"people hate it\" or \"it'll get cracked anyway\".\n\nAnother pro-DRM argument is maybe the technology is costing them money on products sold today. But maybe they're just using today's products as guinea pigs to make better DRM for a future generation.", "Someone could just break your window to get in your house. Does knowing that keep you from locking your front door?", "Its a balancing act between putting in enough DRM to stop those who are looking for convenience (for whom a torrent, for its speed, may well be easier than paying), but not overdoing it and driving away too many real customers due to the DRM.  \nExamples of DRM messing up are SimCity, where it made the game almost unusable for a fair while after launch, or Windows Live giving certain people big issues, while others barely noticed its existence.  \nMeanwhile the Witcher series continues to ship with no DRM, and still sells very well, producing customer loyalty, although coming with the side effect of (looks like) no DLC.\n\nUltimately theres no right or wrong answer to the question of \"How much DRM should we use?\", but the implementation of more online interactions and Digital Game Stores with integrated DRM systems, developers are using less and less 'bad' DRM (at least, now the servers for those systems seem to be stable enough). The music industry found its middle ground, all be it not really applicable to games, and the movie industry followed suit somewhat, the games industry just has to come to that happy medium, hopefully without having to remember 20 different accounts, but if thats the solution then its better than always online requirements (that don't even work).", "Lots of people are answering the why question, but not really the other. \"Why can't experienced company programmers defeat the pirates?\"\n\nImagine that you have to build a castle that keeps undesirables out, but still lets you and all paying customers in.  In order to keep everyone \"bad\" out, you have to consider every single possible way that they could get in.  They could sneak through the front, they could sneak through the back, they could dig underneath, they could catapult over the walls, they could be ninjas, or have magic, bribery, proper disguises, and ALL the other things I didn't just think of.\n\nHowever, when you are a sneaky pirate, all you have to do is know a bit about castles, see this one, and figure out ONE of the ways the company dood didn't think of to get in.", "DRM is like the walls of a fortress protecting against an invader army, depending on the weapons and abilities of the enemy it will fall sooner or later, you just expect to make it so inconvenient so that the attackers either give up or you have enough time to get to safety. In this case the time will probably buy you sales and increase your profit. No DRM is perfect but some are advanced enough for people that really want the game to buy it and avoid the hassle.", "I'll answer in two parts because there are two questions:\n\n1. Games get bloated DRM because of the people in business suits. See, almost every game you see involves two main forces: the **developers** (the ones who actually do the programming) and the **publishers** (the ones responsible for distribution of the game, from the creation of the physical copies to marketing. Also, usually, they are the ones with the budget to enable development). Usually, the publishers, in a misguided attempt to generate bigger sales, bosses the devs around to include some sort of DRM to ensure that the game \"can't be copied\". This takes additional resources and development time. Done too much, and you will see the development studio go belly-up, screwed by the publishers, since they're usually the ones with the money. Developers really can't combat the publishers with regards to business decisions most of the time, so when they say it needs DRM, it WILL get DRM. Publishers are usually also not that tech-savvy, so when the DRM backfires they don't learn their lesson.\n\n2. No amount of experience can totally eradicate piracy. All code will eventually get broken, so the best you can do is to obfuscate it enough, so that the critical period (around 1-2 months of release) will more or less be pirate-free. The only true way to combat it is to treat your customers as the responsible adults they are, since DRM only adds inconvenience, which the pirated versions won't have.\n\nTL;DR: DRM is stupid and useless because pirates will break the copy protection anyway, regardless of the method used. DRM is the wrong way to combat piracy because it assumes guilt on the part of the paying consumer.", "At the end of the day, its impossible to write unhackable software without also controlling the hardware. As soon as someone gets a usable version of the code (buys the game), its over. A hacker can turn off whatever safeguards you have if you cant control them changing the memory. Its just a matter of time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7sbnyr", "title": "Is it possible to test a sample of ashes for organic substances, such as human remains?", "selftext": "For example, if a sample of ash was taken with burned wood matter and human remains mixed in, would it be possible to test the ash and come to the conclusion that a human had been burned to death in the area? \n\nI realize this is probably a silly question to ask, given that once burned, it is difficult to test for DNA from ashes. So the question is more can it be identified as human remains than can DNA be found. I'm trying to write something realistic about this in a story of mine, the scenario being some people were murdered by magic flames that burned them to ashes instantly and an investigative force is testing the ash to see what it is comprised of. \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7sbnyr/is_it_possible_to_test_a_sample_of_ashes_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dt3rvu2"], "score": [12], "text": ["Depends how hot the magic flames are, but with the right equipment and expertise, wood ash and people ash can be differentiated. The authors of [this paper](_URL_1_)(beware paywall, sorry), found that mitochondrial DNA can be amplified from remains cremated at temperatures up to 600\u00baC. However, this DNA was found in identifiable bone fragments, which would give away the remains without any testing. They also found that the ratios of strontium isotopes in bone did not change with cremation temperature (they tested up to 1000\u00baC, and would thus be a good forensic tool for completely burned remains. Look up stable isotope analysis to get a feel for what kind of information it can provide. It's not as straightforward as DNA, but sometimes it can reveal amazing stuff, like where the organism lived. \n\n[These guys](_URL_0_) used a particle accelerator to determine that a sample of ashes had not once been bone, since they lacked phosphorus. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2000/11/to-answer-cremation-questions-forensics-finds-unlikely-ally-in-physics.php", "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2010.06.004"]]}
{"q_id": "439937", "title": "how are people expected to know the difference between a lawful open carrier and an active shooter who hasn't started shooting yet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/439937/eli5_how_are_people_expected_to_know_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czggjgt", "czggrm0", "czggy8s", "czggyky", "czggyo0", "czgh2nt", "czgh7bv", "czgh7wd", "czgh9aa", "czgh9r5", "czgha5i", "czghe6a", "czghh36", "czghjic", "czghm87", "czghmf6", "czghog3", "czghs9p", "czghsyc", "czghzv8", "czgi3kr", "czgi41k", "czgic0y", "czgicx9", "czgicz3", "czgii2l", "czgiihu", "czgiio3", "czgimt4", "czgiqwm", "czgirnk", "czgit49", "czgiw6a", "czgj3ro", "czgj4y4", "czgjbir", "czgjc9n", "czgjcou", "czgjeyn", "czgjhlo", "czgjiy4", "czgjlig", "czgjmsw", "czgjpeb", "czgjyv4", "czgjz4u", "czgk58q", "czgk59k", "czgk877", "czgkhwd", "czgl18v", "czgl1fk", "czgl6v8", "czgl8tl", "czgl9yr", "czglac0", "czgld58", "czglnfu", "czglq82", "czglr9s", "czglsvt", "czgm0kh", "czgm3hg", "czgma3o", "czgman5", "czgn2gs", "czgneg1", "czgnjwo", "czgt927"], "score": [6, 102, 44, 54, 2058, 128, 78, 18, 84, 43, 19, 10, 8, 15, 3, 5, 17, 19, 8, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 36, 3, 2, 7, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 59, 4, 2, 2, 10, 2, 2, 16, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 11, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Normally a lawful open carry will have their weapon holstered/shouldered as opposed to the [low and ready](_URL_2_). I'm not sure what sort of legal obligation there is to this, but aiming a weapon at someone or in their general direction is a crime, [brandishing](_URL_0_). \n\nSide note: if you see someone carrying a weapon and in an active shooter situation: [run, hide, fight](_URL_1_). Do not yell he has a gun, you will only draw attention to yourself and cause panic.", " > Especially in light of the fact that it would be illegal to yell \"FIRE\" in a crowded theater, would someone who had a natural, panicky reaction to seeing a firearm in plain view in the grocery store and who yelled \"GUN!\" be subject to the same kind of punishment that someone yelling FIRE in a theater would?\n\n > Who, legally, if anyone, would be responsible for a mass hysteria situation in this instance? The open carrier or the person who yelled GUN?\n\nThe only reason you would yell \"FIRE!\" in a crowded theater if there was no fire would be to incite panic, which is why it's a crime. \n\nA person lawfully open-carrying in a venue that has not prohibited it isn't breaking any laws and can't be held liable for someone else's over-reaction. As to whether the person freaking out is liable is a question for someone with more legal acumen than I. \n\nAs for how can you tell, you can't definitively, but neither could you tell if the guy with a knife on his belt is going to pull it out and start stabbing people in the neck.", " > Who, legally, if anyone, would be responsible for a mass hysteria situation in this instance? The open carrier or the person who yelled GUN?\n\nWhy would the open carrier (not doing anything illegal) be responsible for anything someone else did?\n\nAssuming open carry is legal where you live: \n\nIf someone is carrying a gun in a holster, go about your business. \n\n If someone is carrying a gun stuck in their waistband, I would immediately leave the area, but otherwise not worry about it.\n\nIf someone is carrying a gun in their HAND, I would immediately leave the area and call police.\n\n\n", "An \"active shooter who hasn't started shooting yet\" is not active nor a shooter. \n\nWhen everyone carries guns it is nonsensical to yell \"he's got a gun!\" And no one would likely react if you did, any more than folks anywhere would react if you yelled \"OMG look behind you!\"", "Stories of cops being called on open carriers are common.  That's why the vast majority of people who carry, do so concealed.\n\nHowever, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between an open carrier and an active shooter:\n\nOpen carriers must have their guns holstered or otherwise out of hand, by law.  Walking around with a gun in your hand is an illegal act of brandishing under every state law I've ever seen.\n\nAmong the few people who habitually open carry, many also make a point of dressing nicely, because they find it greatly decreases the chances that people call the cops.", "If it's holstered, they're obviously not about to start a mass shooting. I understand that he could quickly pull it out and start shooting, but anyone I walk past on the sidewalk could push me into traffic. \n\nBut personally, if I see an open carry, my first assumption is that it's a cop. ", "Unfortunately, by definition an Active shooter is one who is actively shooting.  You may as well ask \"how can you spot a criminal before they actually break the law? \"  \n\nThat being said,  those who are practicing open carry legally will have their weapons holstered or slung.   You don't have to aim a weapon at someone to be brandishing it. ", "I had a guy in my neighborhood get shot for that exact reason. He was open carrying (although it was an airsoft rifle for vermin) and was shot by police. It wasn't ever noted if he was acting aggressive or not. So I think the point is that there isn't a strict black and white explanation.", "People can say \"it depends on how they're carrying it\", but the reality is you can't know. That's why if you open carry somewhere, chances are you're going to have the cops called on you.\n\nThis is why I think open carry is a bad idea, it does absolutely nothing except make the 2/3rds of the population who aren't familiar with guns terrified. If you see someone walking down the street with an AK47 strapped to their back, you're probably not going to think \"oh, he's just on his way to pick up some milk\". \n\nRegarding the panic, when someone with a gun is seen you aren't going to scream about it, you're going to run away as quietly as possible as to not attract the attention of the guy with the gun. People call the police from a safe hiding spot from open carriers all the time, and it's perfectly legal to do so. ", "The legal word here is \"brandishing\" and there are brandishing laws in most states. Its when the carry of a weapon becomes threatening. In most cases the officer will just arrest anyone accused of brandishing a weapon and let the legal system sort it out. Obviously the problem arises of when does a carry become a brandish and how can you be prepared. The answer is really that you can't. In your situation where a guy yells \"Oh my god, run. Hes got a gun\" - anyone who shot the guy would also be arrested and have to prove they didn't commit murder and the guy who yelled it... well I dont know. Hes an ass for sure though. ", "Carrying a weapon (on a sling, in a holster) is far different than actually *brandishing* it. The term \"open carry\" can be confusing to people who don't use guns, but it does not mean running around with their hands on the grip, ducking and dodging around corners Die Hard style.", "In instances where the police are called because someone is holding a \"gun\" and the police show up and shoot someone with a toy gun....\n\nIt does not seem like much responsibility is laid on the overly cautious caller or police. See the cases in Beavercreek Oh, Cleveland Oh and AZ.", "Just to clarify - it's perfectly acceptable, legal and encouraged if an actual fire breaks out in a movie theater to yell, \"Fire!\" When people use this example they so often omit the important part, being, it's illegal to yell, \"Fire!\" when there is no fire. And, that makes this whole ELIM apples to oranges and a really awful attempt at comparison. ", "point your finger at the person you suspect really fast and go \"hey why do you have a gun?!?!\". the lawful open carry person cannot shoot you legally and will show you his permit, the active shooter will proceed to shoot you", "People who live in states that open carry is legal are probably used to seeing people open carry and not freak out every time they see a gun", "i'm not a fan of open carry, i'm def. pro concealed. there should be no reason to SHOW your carrying a weapon, that makes you target # 1.  ", "[in case anybody is curious about their jurisdiction](_URL_0_)", "I spoke with a few friends of mine that are allowed to carry concealed.\nThey said, they wouldn't open carry..... they'd simply continue to carry concealed. It's just easier that way.  If I had a choice I wouldn't open carry, it draws too much attention. Just as I don't wear a Bluetooth headset while walking around. ", "Reading the comments in here... I am so stunned at how chill a lot of Americans seem to be about guns. Lots of \"if it's in a holster go about your business there is nothing to be afraid of\". I just... find it difficult to comprehend living in a world where you see a person with a gun and just go about your day!\n\nedit: Wow some people are so defensive! I wasn't criticising, I'm just saying it's strange for two countries that share such similarities to have such a stark difference. (I'm in the UK)", "Not really. Cops will tell you it's best to keep your gun concealed but other than that nothing happens. Honestly freaking out about someone doing something perfectly legal just makes you look like an idiot. If I wanted to walk into a diner with a Mosin over my shoulder I could, but the owner of said Diner also has every right to tell me to get the fuck out or he's calling the cops. But in public I can have it shouldered as I wish. Brandishing a firearm however is never legal in public and is typically only permitted in appropriate circumstances.", "Carried in non threatening manner is also in most laws. This goes for rifles as well as handguns. A holstered handgun or slinged ride is considered non threatening.   ", "Question from TX:\nAllowing open carry was recently passed in my state. I play poker socially at a local restaurant here in Austin. There was a guy that joined our group that had his pistol holstered, rocking his NRA hat, and with an \"all-access\" companion dog. (not sure of relevance, just adding for color).\n\nThis guy was drinking alcohol while playing. I was always taught alcohol and guns never mix, but am not sure of the law regarding drinking while open carrying. \n\nI'd love to be educated on the law. ", "How do you tell the difference between someone with no weapon and someone going on a shooting spree with weapon concealed?\n\nYou don't know. People need to wake the fuck up and realize we don't live in a utopia. There's bad people doing bad things everywhere, and you may never see it coming. \n\nIf I wasn't a felon I would carry.", "If I'm driving my car on the highway, how do I know that the guy driving alongside me isn't drunk and about to veer into my lane? If I call the police on him and there's a collision while the police are responding, who is liable, the person who is driving alongside me or me, who originally placed the call?\n\nThat hypo is the same as what you posed. The driver/open-carrier is doing nothing wrong, and you want to know if he can be found criminally liable for his lawful conduct.  It doesn't work like that. In the U.S., someone is only criminally liable for doing something that is illegal. Your question essentially asks if it is okay to hold someone criminally liable because a third person acts irrationally. The answer is no. The third person might be liable for inducing panic or disorderly conduct. ", "I can understand in a society where everyone is armed you would need to be armed for the event you are attacked. Having it openly displayed though is provocative and as the OP said could easily be mistaken for someone who is about to use the weapon.\n\nPersonally I live in a gunless society and am glad I don't have to live in paranoia and fear that come with an armed populace. It also means the police are less paranoid and the average 'beat' policeman doesn't need to be armed any more.", "If the open carrier is wearing a handgun, then it will remain holstered at all times. Gun in hand would be illegally brandishing the firearm, or else preparing to lawfully use it in defense. \n\nIf the open carrier is wearing a rifle, I believe most states that allow this form of carrying require that the gun is always slung behind the back, with the safety on. \n\nIn either case, it should be noted that their behavior is safe and follows the letter of the law. Perhaps someone could find a counter example, but I've never heard of a mass shooter exercising such prudence. They generally don't care since they don't have lawful intentions. Furthermore, a mass shooter isn't very likely to give very much time between exposing their weapon and using it; they probably won't be on an errand run while they choose to shoot everyone.\n\n\nAs for yelling \"GUN!\" upon seeing one: these stories pop up every once in a while on subs like /r/CCW and the reaction can vary quite a bit. Some stores will ask the carrier to leave, and the carrier will generally choose not to go there anymore. This is usually the case if a bystander doesn't incite panic but instead just complains very strongly about the carrier. \n\nSome stories posted have indicated that the authorities will in fact side with the carrier, as long as they are following the law, and sometimes charge the one yelling \"gun!\" for inciting panic.\n\nTL;DR: \nIf it's not in the carrier's hands, then it is very likely to be a lawful case of open carrying. Assess the situation for a second before you decide whether to warn others about it. Mass shooter probably isn't going to be filling a grocery cart with green beans right before going on their rampage, and inciting panic could sometimes mean charges against you rather than against the open carrier.", "Active shooter who hasn't started shooting yet? You need to rethink that one. ", "This is exactly why I would much rather have concealed carry laws. I understand the whole self defence thing but to me it seems the only real reason to open carry is because you love guns and you must show everyone else you love guns too.", "Don't you see cops and other security personnel open carrying all the time? How do you know they aren't active shooters who are just dressed that way to ensure maximum damage? Why aren't you in a constant state of panic?", "The reason I'm against open/concealed carry isn't that 'guns cause violence' etc. \n\nI don't believe humans are smart or responsible enough in general to have that kind of power.\n\nAll it takes is a few people in a busy mall or street carrying, and some jerk like me to shout 'He's got a gun'. Two carrying-folk draw their weapon to defend themselves, mistake each other as the gun man, fire off a round, which prompts other carrying-folk to draw and fire, panic ensues and a bunch of people get injured or worse.", "I don't have an answer, but had this very experience the other day, shortly after the Paris shootings. \n\nSitting outside a coffee shop in a strip mall, a large, angry looking guy gets out of his truck and walks purposefully over to the coffee shop with a handgun visible on his hip (holstered). He was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses. I was alarmed at the sight and wondered, how do I know if this guy is going in there to shoot up the place? Wait until I hear shots? Sure, he didn't have the gun in hand ... but he also wasn't inside yet. ", "There's a brilliant software developer that the company that I work for has been trying to get up to Canada to speak.\n\nUnfortunately, he doesn't feel safe without his gun and our gun laws won't permit him to carry.   Apparently he doesn't go anywhere that guns are not allowed.\n\nFair enough but to someone like me and many of my coworkers who aren't into guns, the mindset seems strange and totally outside of our reality.\n\n", "I live in a southern state in an area where open carry is pretty common. \n\nIf you take the time to focus on the person rather than the gun it becomes pretty obvious what their intentions are. As in, they are doing what they would normally be doing except they have a gun on their hip. So when I see a guy pushing a shopping cart of groceries at Walmart with a gun on his hip I have 0% feeling that he is going to cause trouble. Same thing for the guy in the parking lot tinkering with his pickup truck engine with a gun on his hip. \n\nI don't particularly care for open carry in suburban or urban environments, I think it draws too much unnecessary attention and causes distress to folks unaccustomed to it. ", "I took my daughter to the skatepark the other day and saw someone open-carrying for the first time. It seems inappropriate in any circumstance I can imagine, but more so at a public park with 40-50 kids. His kid was a shit skateboarder though, so that made it better.", "Here's my concern (genuine, not trolling):\n\nWhen cops are involved in shootouts, their accuracy is abysmally low, because \"holy shit, it's a life and death situation\" that goes above and beyond anything that they were trained for. In a \"good guy with a gun\" scenario, where a civilian (on average) has less training than a cop, it's likely that the GGWAG will harm themselves or other innocents.\n\n", "OP, I am a gun owner, and I sympathize with your position because I'm in that same position, too. We all are.\n\nThere are millions of weapon permit holders in the United States. We carry for various reasons, but almost all would cite 'personal protection' at the top of the list. Many carry a firearm in rural areas where it can be dangerous by yourself. We might have to deal with rabid animals, predators, or even people while tens of miles away from help. We just carry a firearm as a daily part of our lives and don't take it off in public because things could go just as badly at the 7-11 as they could in the woods.\n\nAn active shooter is a completely different situation. I'll lump gang violence in here as well, for good measure. Anyone like that is going to have an aggressive posture about them. They might be yelling, walking/running fast, making sharp movements of aggression at another party.\n\nYour average concealed carrier is likely much like myself. I wear nice khakis and boots, plaid over shirts, and my firearm on my hip (in my case, with the gun underneath my shirt so I don't offend or startle anyone not used to being around firearms). I'll probably be shopping at a local store calm, collected, and likely pushing a cart full of goods. I'm just minding my own business and living my life.\n\nI appreciate that you're interested in learning more about the differences. Please realize that 'gun people' are not bad people. There sure is a loud minority of gun owners that absolutely ~~espouse~~ live up to the stereotypes, but there are likely many more people with firearms that you never see or hear from. We are just going about our daily lives while carrying an extra tool to ensure that we always make it home to the ones we love.\n\n**tl;dr-** It comes down to posture and intent. People going about their business will appear as such, someone looking to make trouble will be aggressive or suspicious looking. There are outliers for sure, but that's where it gets into \"we can't prepare for everything\" territory.\n\n**edit:** Added tl;dr, changed espouse to 'live up to'", "It's called brandishing.  If they have pulled the weapon from it's holster or are pointing a rifle then they are performing an illegal action.", "How do you know someone carries \"responsibly\".  Do you just guess?  Everyone around the world gets mugged.  It happens. I don't think guns save that from happening. People on here are saying you would know the difference to a responsible gun owner and not one.  Come on.  Lipstick on a pig", "Not exactly answering your question but more so just explaining a bit more about the new open carry law and how it affects gun owners. \n\nAs someone has already said, most people who carry a pistol do so concealed. The catch with the CHL is (at least in Texas) if it accidentally becomes unconcealed then there could be legal consequences. Why so many supported the open carry ruling is that it protects chl carriers if it becomes exposed in public. \n\nHonestly as far as knowing if an open carrier is a threat or not, there's honestly no way to know. In my logic, I doubt any one who intends to use it would have it holstered on their belt for the world to see because then every one would already know there's a gun in the room. That's why in chl training they talk about the importance of your handgun not being visible to possible assailants because they would react differently if there was a gun in play. ", "The same way you tell the difference between someone who is driving a car legally, and a drunk driver who hasn't gotten drunk yet.\n\nMy point is that there's really absolutely zero reason anyone should be alarmed by someone conducting a legal activity.  Until the person IS an active shooter, why would anyone be worried about it?  That's like saying you're worried by bars that have parking lots, because obviously it allows drunk driving murderers to have access to their cars where they drink. You're right... But it also allows responsible people to have access to their cars when they want to go home after having some bar food and watching a football game. \n\nOur society is full of good guys and bad guys.  You tell the difference by what they're doing... Not what they might do. ", "Mt father is a handgun licence instructor and I do marketing for him.\n\nThe biggest thing that you will notice about a lawful open-carrier is their discreet nature. My father carries his weapon on his belt at a particular angle in a tension lock holster.\n\nWhen you're carrying a weapon, you have to have a licence. I licence means you have never comitted a felony, and one slip up with your gun could cost you your weapon forever. As a result, serious open-carriers often dress nice, wear a jacket over their weapon, or try to look like upstanding members of society rather than gun toting hoodlums.\n\nAn active shooter has a different psyche that often excludes others from the equation, unlike a lawful carrier who has their weapon on lockdown under strict circumstances.", "How do you tell the difference between a guy concealing a gun legally or with then intent of shooting someone? \n\nSame thing. You don't. ", "The same way you can distinguish someone lawfully driving a vehicle from someone about run over a crowd of innocent people but hasn't done it yet.", "any black or african-american open-carry folks on this thread? would like to hear your perspective.", "Well I personally think open carry is stupid. Don't get me wrong, I support the right to do what you want to do and if that's what you feel comfortable with doing then go for it. I just think, practically speaking, it's a bad idea. \n\nFirst off I don't want people knowing I have a gun. It's there for my protection. Not to show people some level of \"don't fuck with me\" or that you have a gun. I also don't want any harassment or being made out as a criminal by others, especially law enforcement, by openly carrying. I mean think about it from a leo's stand point when dealing with the variety of reasons an leo might have an interaction with you. Even just passing on the street. Lets say you get into a fender bender and the guy behind you smashes up your car because he wasn't paying attention. You get out of the car and start assessing damage and trading info. I police officer drives by and stops as they do. He is trained to assess potential threats in every situation. He sees two guys on the side of the road. If he sees someone openly carrying he is likely to approach the situation guarded and even with his gun drawn. So instead of dealing with the situation at hand the first reaction is hostile. It just doesn't set you up for success.\n\nAlso, what if for some reason you match the description of someone they are looking for. For any amount of reasons. This has happened time and time again where people who fit the description of a wanted criminal are stopped and questions by police. If you are minding your own business walking down the street openly carrying and an leo notices you are openly carrying you will be treated as if you are the criminal until they can determine otherwise. The officer would likely draw his weapon, have you lay down, cuff you, and disarm you until the situation is resolved. If you are concealed carrying the officer would approach you calmly. You can inform them of your concealed carry, he will disarm you, and the interaction can continue peacefully.\n\nMy biggest thing is that it is a big marker saying \"I have a gun\" and in many many situations you just don't want people knowing this. The climate surrounding interactions with you are different and for no real added benefit. ", "This is great. I just got an email saying I have to attend active shooter training because I'm a student employee at my uni. I think it's ridiculous and there are other ways we can handle this that don't mean teaching people how not to die.", "You're not.\n\nThat's why only the absolute stupidest of carriers will have their guns out.\n\nOpen carry really only has one tangible benefit, and that's letting ranchers and other outdoor types who occasionally have need to stray from within our fences not to have to stop and drop our belts just to chase down an escaped goat or cross a couple of gates. In those cases the cops of the area usually already know us anyway.", "This is [illustrated](_URL_0_) guide, details how you tell the difference between an honest patriot and a deranged killer. It's not my work and it has been doing the rounds for a while.", "They won't. This is just one of the many practical flaws in both open carry and concealed carry in the event of an active shooter situation. When guns start being drawn there will be chaos and innocent people being shot. This doesn't fit very well with the gun nut's hero fantasies though.", "A good starting point: roughly 99% of people who own guns do not intend to harm you with them. ", "I don't think guns are very useful in a robbery situation.  I've been robbed twice.  One time, a guy put a gun to my head and demanded all my weed.  Even if I had a gun, it would have done nothing.  I would not have had time to get a gun out at all.  Also, I had my best friend(female) there with me and I couldn't risk anything happening to her.  I had to just hand over my weed.  At least I kept the $75 in my pocket:)  The other time I was robbed was at work where I couldn't have a gun anyway.  I suspect people think having a gun gives you all this power but it really doesn't. The only ones with the power are the ones willing to do violence.  All you can do is do as they say and hope for the best.  They're not gonna let you pull a gun out.  I've served in the Army and definitely love guns, I just don't think they're as much of a help as people think they are.", "For the British guys and gals saying they can't even imagine this, all I'm picturing is David Bowie's \"I'm afraid of Americans\" music video.", "I went out for bbq a few weeks ago and a guy in front of me had a gun on his hip.  He looked 18-19 and was leaning against the counter while his dad ordered  dinner for him and his girlfriend.  I assumed he wasn't a shooter because he brought his dad and a date. That was all I really had to go on though.", "That's all the fun of an armed society citizen, stupid shit can happen at any moment and based on our current system liability may or may not fall on the living, but will NOT fall on the police.", "A good rule of thumb is that if you see a person with a gun in hand, get to cover.  Whether they are a \"good guy\" (i.e. responding to a bad guy) or a \"bad guy\" is a moot point.  Bullets are likely about to start flying and you don't want to be around for it. \n\n\nMy question... And I rarely hear of this happening, surprisingly... Is how do CCW holders identify if someone is a threat or not?  Isn't it plausible that you see a guy holding a gun as if he is looking for a target in a crowded place... So you draw your weapon.  You see him raise his gun as if he is about to fire, so you shoot him. \n\nThen it turns out that he was about to shoot a guy he spotted about to stab a child with a large knife.   So not only do you shoot a good guy, but the bad guy still stabs the child. ", "If you see a person, who has a visible gun, that is *in a holster*, the likelihood is 99.999999% that person is not about to go on a shooting spree. \n\nIf seeing a gun in a holster makes you afraid that a mass shooting is about to happen, buy a lotto ticket on the way out the door, then lay on the ground to reduce your chances of being killed by lightning, and prepare to punch a shark in the nose to stop it from attacking you. ", "I'm a huge advocate for responsible gun ownership, and my whole family carries.\n\nThere is nothing that open carry accomplishes that concealed carry can't... Most guys that open carry do it as a penis measuring exercise.", "On October 31st, this exact thing happened. Noah Harpham was spotted by a neighbor walking down the street with a gun. Police were called, but not dispatched since open carry is illegal. Not long after, he shot and killed three random people. ", "its probably safer to just shoot everyone you see, when you go out. None of them can be trusted........really.", " > someone who had a natural, panicky reaction to seeing a firearm in plain view\n\nThere's your problem right there...", "This thread is proof that guns **need** to be restricted to the actual, original intent of the 2nd Amendment in the USA (only allowable to keep stored for a \"well regulated militia\").\n\nI'm tired of the misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment by everyone including our own goddamn government just because they have this perverse, violent need to own a damn gun to use for whatever reason they think.  Our country would be so much safer if it wasn't for this diseased way of thinking.\n\n\"But only criminals will have guns!\"  Yes, well, do you want to make everything legal then, because this dumb idea could be applied to anything that's illegal.  Legality and the law isn't an all or nothing thing.  We reduce the amount of guns to a bare minimum, remove access to them, regulate them, and so on, and guess what?  Any event suddenly becomes more rare because not every single person is walking around with a gun or has access to same.  Only \"well-regulated militias\", meaning organizations that are actually responsible.\n\nThe USA needs to grow up and realize their little shooty toys is making this country insanely dangerous to live in.  ", "None of the answers to this completely legitimate question have really  given a way to differentiate between the two. I'm glad I don't live in the US, cause I'd be noping the fuck out of anywhere if someone who wasn't a cop walked in with a gun strapped to them. I'm not going to risk my kids' lives on the assumption that these are just assholes who think they look cool with their guns visible.", "Canadian. I think the \"I'm going to carry this AR15 with me into wal-mart because that somehow makes me a patriot\" mindset is the hardest thing about America to wrap my head around. What the hell are you proving? Aside from you not actually understanding the point of the second amendment?", "You can't. Hence the smarter choice being to not allow people to carry weapons in public. Less risk and less ambiguity.", "Seeing some random person with a tool designed only for killing in plain view, for no apparent reason while walking around the grocery store or something would make me uncomfortable, plain and simple.\n\nI've met plenty of reasonable, well-adjusted people I would trust to carry a weapon like that, and I've also met many that I wouldn't at all. These people aren't mass murderers, just assholes. We've all met them, and I'm sure many of these assholes have friends and family who love them, but some people are just unreasonable shitheads for a variety of different reasons. They should not be allowed to carry a gun on a daily basis.", "I know a few conceal carry permit holders who carry because their work either involves high risk (cousin drives an armored van for Brinks), or they work in high risk areas (dad works as a wholesaler for a hardware distributor, some of his accounts are in some seriously tough neighborhoods), my friend is also in the junk car business and keeps large amounts of cash on hand because most his customers and competitors deal in cash and he needs to to stay competitive.  I know where I live in NY its very difficult to get a concealed carry permit.  Personal defense is NOT a valid reason to be able to obtain one.", "Most of the comments are about how most concealed carriers and open carriers are law abiding citizens who carry to protect themselves and the average person should not feel scared or worried around people carrying.  That is perfectly understandable, but how do trust that the person carrying is responsible.  People are by nature fallible.  We make mistakes all of the time and misread situations constantly.  There is no reasonable way to know that the man behind me in the movie theater won't accidentally shoot someone or miss read a situation and shoot an innocent person. That's why I would not trust myself to carry a gun in public and I do not unconditionally trust the people around me, even if they appear to be law abiding.  ", "How do you know if someone is a heavily armed police officer doing his job, walking his beat, and not a spree shooter dressed as a police officer?\nOr even a cop who's gone over the edge and about to go on a rampage himself.\n\n\nWhen you ask 'how are people expected to know', you are dealing with perception of security vs actual danger, and I think the answer is: they aren't.\n\nHow are you expected to know that the car stopped at the light isn't planning on crushing you as you walk in the crosswalk in front of it?\n\nYou never know.\n\nHow are you expected to know that the cashier at the store isn't giving high-quality counterfeit bills?\n\nYou probably don't know.\n\nHow are you expected to know that your pharmacist hasn't dipped all your pills with a cyanide broth?\n\nYou can't really know.\n\nHow can you be expected to know if the hotel maid dipped your toothbrush in the toilet?\n\nYou'll probably never know.\n\nHow are you expected to know that your own government isn't covering up the fact that there are toxins in the drinking water?\n\nYou aren't, really.\n\nThe world has the potential to be dangerous and insecure, but generally we are getting safer and safer, at least here in the usa, things are getting safer year after year, and life expectancy continues to increase.\n\nBut there are never real guarantees. And if you come across anyone who guarantees your safety, your critical mind should ask, \"how do I know that this guarantee will keep me from harm?\"\n\n", "If we were to consider the millions of people already legally carrying concealed for many years, we'd be amazed:\n_URL_0_\nMy wife and I have been out all day with friends that conceal carry and we never notice... they don't mention it.. or show it. I won't realize until we get back to their house and they take off holster and lock it up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/brandishing-law/", "https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/active_shooter_pocket_card_508.pdf", "http://www.tactical.dk/images/lowready.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_carry_in_the_United_States#Jurisdictions_in_the_United_States"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/gallery/dCe5lOs/new"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://crimeresearch.org/2015/07/new-study-over-12-8-concealed-handgun-permits-last-year-saw-by-far-the-largest-increase-ever-in-the-number-of-permits/"]]}
{"q_id": "teq4i", "title": "- tactically, where did the us go wrong in the vietnam war?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/teq4i/eli5_tactically_where_did_the_us_go_wrong_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4lz8ru", "c4lz97v", "c4lzwmi", "c4m1doh", "c4m1wrv", "c4m2puu", "c4m31sz", "c4m5r80"], "score": [25, 6, 8, 5, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["You're not using the word \"tactically\" properly.  Tactics is the hour by hour planning of a single fight.  Wars are only lost tactically if there is a huge pitched battle that crushes an army or navy, like the Battle of Midway or Waterloo.\n\n*Strategy* is the overall planning of a war, from supplies, weapons used, units brought into the theater, tactics they employ, and final objective.  \n\nThe US did not have a strategy for victory in Vietnam.  In conventional war, capturing the enemy capital city is often the objective; the US never invaded North Vietnam at all, as this would have caused China and the USSR to become involved.  Instead, they tried to fight communists in South Vietnam and hope they would get tired of fighting and quit.  In fact, after the Tet offensive, the North Vietnamese were just about ready to stop active military campaigns in the south, but the threat wouldn't have ended at all.\n", "The US didn't do their homework- the Vietnamese had been fighting off invaders for hundreds of years, they were hardened guerrilla fighters who absolutely refused to accept foreigners coming in and trying to \"take over\" their land.  The US didn't realize the ferocity with which the Vietnamese would oppose new people invading Vietnam...and that was only the beginning. ", "Probably the biggest reason Vietnam was lost wasn't an issue of strategy per se but being there in the first place. It was obviously an extremely unpopular war throughout its conduct, and eventually Americans just had enough.\n\nThat being said, not enough was done by American and allied forces to engender themselves to the local populace. Kill counts and free-fire zones were ultimately counterproductive and inefficient, and oftentimes after clearing an area we would simply leave and NVA/VC would reoccupy within a day.", "Americans were able to take over any location on the map they wished, at any time they wished. the problem was that everyone there hated them, and so you had a problem similar to the shitty tint jobs you see on cars; you can squish the bubble to get rid of it, but it simply moves elsewhere.\n\nKinda like Iraq now.  if the people there dont want you there, and you can't nuke them into infinity, then eventually you will lose the game no matter what.", "The United States misjudged how the war should have been fought and the resolve of their opponents. They interpreted it as a fight against communism whereas the North Vietnamese saw it as a fight for independence. \n\nThe way they fought it was not practical. Moving villagers and peasants from their ancestral homes to \"safe zones\" lost them their hearts and minds and rendered many of them loyal to the Viet Cong and their backers in the north. Collateral damage caused by suspicious GIs, South Vietnamese troops, and air campaigns helped enlist many against the South Vietnamese. \n\nThe United States let the media have free reign in what was a gruesome conflict, who then relayed many of these images back to the United States, in the age of television. Night after night, Americans would have the atrocities of war displayed in their living rooms. The Tet Offensive was a traumatizing affair - the United States Embassy under the attack from the Viet Cong was a traumatizing event for many who thought that the United States, as a world power, was untouchable. \n\nThe escalation of the war (1965, half a million marines were sent) made it one of the biggest deployments since Korea. If it had stayed a limited engagement, it would have been much more manageable in the public sphere. Having a draft where the kids of the new middle class were being asked to fight did not help their cause. \n\nThese factors lost them the war on the home front and on the battlefield. ", "For an in depth analysis, see [this](_URL_0_).  the short version is that from 64-69, the army put way to much effort into killing NVA soldiers and not enough time and effort into doing what mattered, training the south Vietnamese army and protecting the south Vietnamese people from northern guerrillas and regulars.  After Nixon took over, this strategy changed and the South vietnamese got a lot more effective.  They were able to repel a massive Northern Armored invasion in '72 with out american ground troops (but with american air support).  The south didn't fall until 3 years later, when congress, in a fit of pique, made it illegal for the US to even give the south Vietnamese old ammunition stores, which they needed to use the equipment we have given them and trained them to use.  A colossal fucking waste.", "Tl;Dr: America did not lost the war per say, they just didn't win. the problem with Vietnam is that the guerrilla fighters didn't need to win, if they held out long enough the war would become unpopular in the USA and the USA would leave.", "Read *The Best and the Brightest* by David Halberstam. Also *A Bright and Shining Lie* by Neil Sheehan."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Army-Vietnam-Andrew-Krepinevich/dp/0801836573"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "17lde2", "title": "why people have birth marks.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17lde2/eli5_why_people_have_birth_marks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c86mf39", "c86qtdl", "c86qvf2", "c86rpyo", "c86t742"], "score": [79, 11, 12, 16, 2], "text": ["Birthmarks are caused by some body tissues, such as blood vessels, smooth muscle, and fat when they grow too much. It is not well understood why this happens, but one of the leading ideas is that there is an imbalance in the different factors relating to skin cell growth and migration.", "I have a blonde birthmark in my hair (reference to rogue or a skunk) right on the center top of my head. I'm also wanting to know why, a doctor of mine said birthmarks in the hair are sometimes a sign of a deeper medical problem/disease but thats all I got from her. Other than that I'd say its just a way to make you stand out from the crowd and rock what you got. If theres any valid responses to this subject, please someone, do tell!", "I have a birthmark in the back of my head the size of about a nickel. When I was younger my pediatrician explained that it's overgrown skin tissue that developed when I was in the womb. For the most part, it looks like a \"bald spot\", but there is some hair growing out of it. Just a little bit of information, I cannot feel if someone is touching it. I have people touch and poke at it and they ask if it hurts. The slightest touch cannot be felt. Even barbers ask if it it would hurt if they passed the clippers over it to cut some of the hair growing out of it. I'm not sure if this is hereditary, but my aunt has the same sized birthmark on the side of her head.", "I have a non-natural birthmark of sorts. My mom had a c-section and I was a mega huge baby or something. I have a scar on my ankle where the doctor cut me", "ITT: A lot of mystery about birthmarks :/"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "da5gsu", "title": "Why does U-Pb dating have a limit of 500,000 years ago?", "selftext": "My book just says that you can use Uranium-Lead dating for samples that were formed up to 500000 years ago. Why does U-Pb dating have this limit?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/da5gsu/why_does_upb_dating_have_a_limit_of_500000_years/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f1o79zj", "f1ofm03"], "score": [14, 10], "text": ["I'd typed a lengthy response, but for the sake of brevity, I'll assume you already know the basics of how radiometric dating works. If you have any questions, I'll address them as best I can case by case.\n\nPrimarily, dating methods are only useful on limited time scales because decay is fundamentally a random process. You cannot precisely say when a single atom will decay. With sufficient amounts of the isotope in a material, we can make more accurate assessments because a probability curve emerges.\n\nAfter many half-lives, the amount of isotopes present becomes so small that the probabilistic nature of decay causes our guesses to become less and less accurate.\n\nAlmost all naturally occurring uranium is uranium-238 or uranium-235. 238 has a half life of about 4.5 billion years, similar to the age of Earth itself. 235 has a half life of about 704 million years; that's over 3 times earlier than the first dinosaurs.\n\nFor short time scales, we have to use isotopes with shorter half-lives with methods such as potassium-argon or carbon 14. Uranium generally doesn't decay fast enough to give accurate results for kiloannum scales. A sample tested now and tested again in 500ka will have barely changed in terms of Uranium content.\n\nUranium lead dating is precise to within a few percent, but 500ka is less than 0.1% percent of uranium 235's 700Ma half-life. The margin of error makes uranium-lead dating useless at short time scales.\n\nEdit: I should point out that while carbon-14 has a short half-life, potassium-40 has a longer half life than uranium-235, although shorter than uranium-238. My wording is a bit clumsy.", "You got the direction wrong. It is largely useless for samples newer than 500,000 years because the amount of lead that accumulated in that time is small. Uranium-lead dating is better for older samples. The absolute uncertainty is still large, but \"635 +- 1 million years\" is a good measurement while \"0 +- 500,000 years\" is not. For more recent samples other dating methods are better."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1rhj3z", "title": "what is the logic behind a gluten free diet", "selftext": "It seems like this has just become a \"thing\" recently that people have started doing.  I understand the concept of basically just avoiding any product that has gluten in it, but what are the benefits of doing this?  \n\nI know I have a friend who's actually allergic to gluten, and she can't eat a lot of stuff that I eat by the dump truck load because of it.  But why exactly do people go on specifically gluten free diets?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rhj3z/eli5_what_is_the_logic_behind_a_gluten_free_diet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdnb1pa", "cdncc0q", "cdncdub", "cdncngu", "cdncwl4", "cdndbj1", "cdnelkq", "cdneorw", "cdnf9rn", "cdnfvkf", "cdng24k", "cdnh0by", "cdnh8at", "cdnhpl0", "cdni9k5", "cdnna65", "cdnnfrg"], "score": [51, 7, 9, 2, 9, 5, 3, 30, 2, 14, 19, 5, 18, 9, 6, 2, 4], "text": ["The idea is that gluten sensitivity and intolerance, with reactions less strong than normal Coeliac or Crohn's symptoms, are much more common than most people realise. Because there are differing levels of sensitivity to certain proteins and chemicals, particularly in food, many people may have health issues related to their gluten consumption that have gone undiagnosed throughout their lives. For example, one study on people who had recurring migraines (n=10, so not hugely definitive) found that 7 of them had a significant decrease in their migraine symptoms after excluding gluten from their diets. Other symptoms of gluten sensitivity or intolerance are believed to include non-migraine headaches, sinus congestion, digestive issues that don't have the same characteristics as Crohn's or Coeliac disease, unexplained weight loss (or gain, according to some people), lethargy,  and even Gluten Ataxia.\n\nAnother school of thought is loosely based on the Paleo/Primal diet and lifestyle, and holds that humans are not evolved to eat as much grains and beans as we do now, and the presence of gluten allergies, sensitivity and intolerances in our population is a sign that we should ditch grains and legumes.\n\nOf course, it's becoming more widely known and understood, so a lot of people are going to get on board the bandwagon and potentially misunderstand the reasons behind some people's exclusion of gluten from their diets.", "If you have coeliac disease or are allergic for some other reason, it's the only option you have. If you don't, there's no reason.", "All I know is that ever since gluten-free got popular many females in my social circle suddenly because intolerant to gluten. It's funny how that works. ", "For people like me, who have celiac, it's basically so that our small intestines don't rip to shreds. a lot of the health nuts think that going on a gluten free diet is good for anyone, but what they're doing is starving themselves if nutrients they need by avoiding wheat in its entirety. But I do like the health nuts, without them I couldn't get all my gluten free food as easily as I can now than five years ago", "_URL_0_\n\n\"Among the many potential environmental triggers for T1D, diet has been considered a significant contributing factor [7], [22]. Of the various dietary factors, gluten warrants special mention because epidemiological data suggest that early exposure of infants to cereals containing gluten may increase the risk of T1D.  Rodent studies have supported this claim [24]. Mechanistically, it remains to be determined how dietary gluten could facilitate the development of T1D. In the current study, we explored whether alterations in the gut microflora could potentially explain the pro-diabetogenic properties of dietary gluten.\"\n\n\nCeliac is a life threatening response to gluten.  However there isn't much science investigating the responses that aren't as pressing.  There is something loosely called gluten intolerance, which is characterized by a host of symptoms including \"bloating, abdominal discomfort or pain, diarrhea, muscular disturbances and bone or joint pain. It can also cause other unexpected symptoms such as headaches and vertigo, among many others.\" (from the wiki for gluten sensitivity).  \"Vitamin deficiencies are often noted in people with coeliac disease owing to the reduced ability of the small intestine to properly absorb nutrients from food.\" (from the celiac wiki) The response to gluten obviously falls somewhere on a spectrum, while a lot of the symptoms and pathology of those with celiac and gluten intolerance are the same.\n\nTo address your question.. Why do people go on a gluten free diet?  Well, there is obviously a pile of evidence indicating that its consumption correlates with a host of negative health outcomes.  To which part of that pile any one person pays attention may vary, and they may only have heard that such research exists and not done any investigation personally.  But nonetheless, often times the best way to determine if a dietary intervention will benefit you, is to implement it on a personal level and see what happens.  ", "I recently picked up a book, \"Grain Brain\", by a neurologist, Dr. Perlmutter.  The diet is similar excludes all grains, gluten- and suggests you get all calories from fat.  The premise is that eating gluten and grain lead to inflammation in your body, impact your blood hormone levels, and a bad diet is a contributing factor to many modern neurological issues like Alzheimer's, ADHD, memory issues, migraines, etc.  \n\nI thought his premise was interesting, and made me think of all the problems that happened with the inuit after they had changed from a fat based diet to carbs.  The end result so far for me has been an almost immediate loss of 15 pounds, and I look and feel much healthier... I do cheat a little (having wine with friends), but at the very least I stick to gluten free foods- even avoiding breaded chicken wings.\n\nI would highly recommend a diet like this or similar.", "Gluten free != Grain free", "A number of people have already mentioned that everyone has differing levels of sensitivity to gluten.  From personal experience with my wife, she is not celiac, but she has a gluten sensitivity.\n\nSince stopping eating gluten in May, she has lost a pant size (not from weight, but from bloatiness), she isnt constantly feeling like she is starving after eating any size of meal, she has alot more energy, and she is generally happier.  Also, she isnt nearly as constipated (she has supplemented her breakfast with flaxseed meal, which I highly recommend if you have digestive tract issues)\n\n\nEvery time she has a significant amount of gluten (like a large muffin or some rolls, she becomes irritable, tired, and the effects last for days.  \n\nIn the end, it boils down to this:  if you feel better when eating gluten free, eat gluten free.  Listen to your body.  The people in this thread who think everyone is an idiot if they don't have celiacs do not know shit", "For most people, the logic is similar to [this](_URL_0_).\n\nFor people who *actually* benefit from a gluten-free diet (read: people with celiac disease), refer to the other comments.", "I do not have celiac disease, but I do have a gluten intolerance that I've managed to pinpoint only by process of elimination.  Unfortunately no blood tests or doctors were able to diagnose me, so I fear for the sickly people who still have no idea what's hurting them.  The side effects for me can range from an upset stomach, to full blown violent vomiting, diarrhea, migraines, muscle/joint aches, iron deficiency, brain fog, inflammation, you name it.  The reason for such a wide range of symptoms is likely due to the fact that there are now over 200 strains of genetically modified wheat and I may be more sensitive to some than others.  It also builds up in your system over time. This is just my personal experience, but many doctors I speak to now are noticing many of their patients' illnesses are aggravated, if not caused by wheat or gluten consumption.  \n\nFor those that think this is a good weight loss diet, this is not necessarily true.  I've gained weight in my efforts to avoid wheat, so you still need to ensure that you're eating a balanced diet.", "I'm just curious why so many people care about non-celiac's avoiding gluten? Even if the logic is based in ignorance, it's not like they're taking away anything from true celiac's. In fact, one could argue the growth of the fad has made it all the more easier for celiac's to have greater access to GF foods. ", "[Bread makes you fat?](_URL_0_)", "The short and sweet answer is that many people are allergic or have and intolerance to gluten.\n\nIt is not necessarily healthier like most people assume.\n\nAlso, many confuse gluten with wheat.  Wheat is just one grain that contains gluten.  Now speaking of wheat, this is really the biggest problem.  The wheat we eat these days is ridiculously modified with little resemblance to what out ancestors ate and is causing many health problems, such as autoimmune disorders.", "I try to point everybody asking about this to this article. It's what got me on the \"Stupid gluten free diet for rich idiots\". In reality it got me on a lower carb GRAIN free diet.  I'm sure my stupidity is the only reason I lost 60 pounds and lost all of the rashes and other nasty things grains were doing to me: _URL_0_\n\nThis article gets somewhat technical, but if you want real  medical speak for the reasons why this all works you can go to this cardiologist's blog: _URL_1_", "I don't have celiac disease, but I do have a wheat allergy. It's a recent discovery and my mother doesn't understand that it's easier for me to avoid wheat products than it is for me to eat them and suffer. \"One day isn't going to kill you.\" No, one won't, but where does that line get drawn? \n\nThere is no such thing as gluten allergy, but there is a non-celiac gluten sensitivity and a wheat allergy. I cut all the wheat out of my diet and I feel so much better. I have more energy and sleep better and am way less bloated. ", "There aren't many ELI5 responses so I'll give it a shot. Gluten is a protein in wheat and other grains that causes an immune reaction. Some people have a greater response than others and since it is an autoimmunity deal, it effects people differently (digestion, joints, sinuses, etcetera). Just like a vaccine, when you have antibodies against something your body sees as harmful, they stick around as your soldiers and fight for you for a long time. If you got fat/sick/unhealthy while simultaneously eating a bunch of gluten, your \"soldiers\" don't want you to go back or continue down that dangerous road and fight for you anytime they see gluten. Cutting out gluten stops that immunity response (chronic systemic inflammation) and avoiding traces of it keeps your antibodies from getting to work without an actual threat. ", "I'd like to also throw in here that celiac is not the only..feasable reason people eat glueten free foods.  There's also a theory about a link between gluten and autistic children.\n\nThe theory is that autistic children have a hyper-sensitivity to foods containing gluten and that they process peptides and protiens differently than other people do. The idea behind the use of the diet is to reduce the symptoms that come with autism.\n\nSo..there's tons of studies for this, and tons against it.  I dont work with autisic kids but my son is autistic and we do things with the autism society here in my town, so i know MANY special needs kids and their parents that are advocates of this theory, and say it helps.\n\nI'd attribute the boom in gluten free products to this theory coupled with the rise of kids with autism, awareness of celiac, and health nuts in general.\n\nBefore people start jumping to the downvote button, id like to say that i'm not advocating this theory, and im not against it.  We know very little about autism as a whole, and if your child is afflicted by it, then you'll try anything to help.  Im simply letting people know its out there because it pertains to this post.  \n\nLink for anyone interested: _URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078687"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLc2hDHVHgo#t=42"], [], [], ["http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcxo2bNaQ31qavbfzo1_500.gif"], [], ["http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/", "http://blog.trackyourplaque.com/"], [], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/gluten-free-casein-free-diets-for-autism"]]}
{"q_id": "bxjbin", "title": "How accurate was the 'cause of explosion' presentation given by Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) in the final episode of Chernobyl?", "selftext": "Which aspects are technically accurate?  Which were over-simplified?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bxjbin/how_accurate_was_the_cause_of_explosion/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eq7roeo", "eq8cakz", "eq9baw4"], "score": [18, 2, 7], "text": ["Overall, the reasoning for running the experiment were correct.\n\n > There was a stop-gap in time for the water cooling system to activate in a situation where power was lost. There were backup generators that took 45 seconds roughly to achieve full speed to power the coolant system, potentially being dangerous. They were attempting to see if the residual spin from the core  &  steam could power this for that period of time. The previous tests were that this would not generate enough power. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe causes of the explosion were all correct as well.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n > \\- There was a build up in xenon in the core, which is a by-product of fission, but is usually burned off at high temperatures. Due to the test being delayed for a need of power on the grid, the stalled core at a lower temperature than normal, persisted several hours, which led to a build up of this.  \n >   \n >   \n >   \n > \\- The removal of the control rods **fully** was crucial to the accident occurring. They were attempting to generate the 700mw and due to the xenon build up, the core was not very responsive, so they attempted to quick start the core. The full removal will come in later when they pressed AZ-5.  \n >   \n >   \n >   \n > \\- Due to the test being conducted which simulated a loss of power, fresh water was not being fed into the reactor cooling it, so a build up of steam occurred as the core began to heat, causing the feedback loop he talks about.  \n >   \n >   \n >   \n > \\- When this began and the core heated, getting rid of the xenon build up created a large spike in power inside the reactor, which caused the team to panic. They then pressed the AZ-5 and SCRAM'd the reactor in attempt to stop fission from occurring. The beryllium control rods, which stop fission, were tipped with graphite, which encourage fission. Due to the rods being fully removed, the graphite was exposed to the already unstable core and it sent it super critical in milliseconds.  \n >   \n >   \n >   \n > \\- Any remaining water in the core or in the still pumps were instantly vaporized and a steam explosion blew the lid off of the reactor and exposed the core to oxygen and after it mixed with the superheated core, exploded.", "I can't find a reliable source that suggests a power surge happened before pressing AZ-5 - there is an unsourced statement on Wikipedia, but nothing reliable.\n\nThe official INSAG 7 report ( [_URL_2_](_URL_1_)) states that the reason for pressing AZ-5 has not been established, and provides some evidence that it was not due to any reactor issue that could be observed in the control room.\n\nThe report states that the slowing of the coolant flow during the test was countered by an increase in reactor pressure (because the turbogenerator steam inlet valves were also shut), and so there was likely to be only a small increase in boiling. Quoting from the report:\n\n > Thus, neither the reactor power nor the other parameters (pressure and water level in the steam separator drums, coolant and feedwater flow rates, etc.) required any intervention by the personnel or by the engineered safety features from the beginning of the tests until the EPS-5 button was pressed.\n\nFurther, the time constant for power increases due to Xe burn-off even running at 50-100% should be about 3 hours, so in principle any rise in power due to that should have been slow ([_URL_3_](_URL_3_)).\n\nDyatlov himself says that the reason for pressing AZ-5 was normal shutdown of the reactor after the test was completed ([_URL_0_](_URL_0_)).\n\nThe reactor was later established to be unstable in the state it was in at the time of the test, and would have shown a positive feedback to any increase in reactivity - as indeed it did when the AZ-5 was commanded due to the disastrous control rod design. But I can't find a source that suggests that there was any indication of an issue before AZ-5 was pushed, so in that regard I think the show is not quite right.", "There is a five episode podcast done by the creator of the show which goes into details about where and why they deviated from real life. Its an incredible listen and if you are asking this type of question you will love it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurewhy-insag-has-still-got-it-wrong", "https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.pdf", "https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e\\_web.pdf", "http://nuclearpowertraining.tpub.com/h1019v2/css/Xenon-135-Response-To-Reactor-Power-Changes-64.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "853iir", "title": "if electric cars are the future, why is interest(funding/research) really picking up today when they have been around for over 100 years?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/853iir/eli5_if_electric_cars_are_the_future_why_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvuezpt", "dvuftrd", "dvugo9n", "dvugryr", "dvuhy6a", "dvuq0zc"], "score": [8, 4, 8, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Back then there may have been electric cars but they were too expensive to mass produce and sell. And the electric cars were probably no more better than the fuel driven counterpart as far as efficiency. Also the technology of today has finally reached a point where it's do-able to mass produce and sell. Since we have electric cars that are mass produced... now it is only a race to see who can make them more efficient. The research and funding are geared to newer solutions to harnessing the electricity that powers them as well as finding alternate fuels such as water. ", "Guess battery power has improved alot. That is still the problem with an electric car. They don't have good range.", "Because lead-acid batteries have horrible energy densities. Nickel Cadmium too, anyone who has used RC planes before Lipos knows how blessed we are today.\n\nLi-ion only commercialized in the 90s and even now li-ion has a rather low energy density compared to fuel.\n\nBatteries (and supercapacitors) are very tricky, a lot that works in the lab doesn't work outside. \n\nIt also took us a very long time before we knew what to do with semi-conductors, sometimes it takes just takes a long time to improve something enough to make it viable.\n\nPeople are too quick to blame it all on \"corporate greed\".\n\nEdit: There's also the problem that batteries lose capacity from discharging, which has improved a lot over 100 years.(cycle durability has increased)\n\nCharge/discharge efficiency has also improved a lot over the last 100 years.\n\n", "A lot of improvements have been made in battery technology in the past 2 1/2 decades due to laptops and cell phones.  So instead of developing this battery technology from scratch, they just have to scale it up and apply it to a car, which saves billions in R & D.", "There are a couple key technologies that are important for electric cars, which just weren't good enough back then.\n\nOne is of course the battery. Batteries have improved more than fivefold since then - so any electric car would have had considerably less range than today. \n\nThen there is power regulation. In a car, you need to be able to precisely adjust the amount of power coming from the motor, which can be done quite easily with a throttle of a conventional combustion engine - but in an electric car, you need to change the voltage. And that is very difficult with a DC power source like a battery. Today, this is done with very efficient and fast switches made from semi-conductors, but 100 years ago, semi-conductors weren't even discovered yet. To get the same result with technology from 100 years ago, you would have to use a very bulky and inefficient circuit to control the engine.\n\nLastly, there's the problem of charging. A large battery needs a lot of DC electricity to charge quickly, making the charging infrastructure very expensive. That's still a problem today, even though electrification and technology in general is much better.\n\n", "Because batteries used to suck, and fossil fuels are really cheap and hold a lot of energy.\n\nIn 1910, battery-powered vehicles we competitive, mostly because internal combustion engines were still pretty terrible.  Steam-powered vehicles were even still in the mix, the Stanley Steamer set the land speed record for a while in 1906, going over 120 mph.\n\nAfter that, it turned out it was a whole lot easier to improve gas-powered cars, and they wound up being far more versatile and energy efficient than other types.  And because of that, they were the focus of research and development investment, and got even better.\n\nModern electric cars reentering the market is largely due to recent improvements in battery technology.  That, in turn, was made possible by the demand for efficient portable power caused by computers, phones, and tablets."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3hqj8w", "title": "What about their function dictates the different shapes of the mitral and tricuspid valves?", "selftext": "Learning some heart physiology and I'm trying to remember the orientation by things a little more logically than just memorizing. \n\nI know the tricuspid valve is on the right side and the mitral valve on the left. The left ventricle generates more pressure than the right, etc.\n\nSo the question: why does the tricuspid valve have a three part valve and the mitral valve two?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3hqj8w/what_about_their_function_dictates_the_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cua2rwe"], "score": [3], "text": ["Interesting question! [This page from 1997](_URL_1_) says that there's no definitive answer, but posits an embryological explanation: *in utero*, blood pressure is higher on the right side of the heart than on the left side, which is required to shunt blood past the lungs from the right heart to the left heart (until birth). This pressure differential causes the future ventricular septum (the endocardial cushions) to bulge to the left. This bulge *somehow* gets incorporated into the mitral valve by fusing two parts of the valve ring into a single leaflet, resulting in two leaflets on the left side. The right side of the heart bulges in the opposite sense, which ends up not fusing two of the three leaflets of the tricuspid valve.\n\nTo memorize this, picture a [bishop's mitre](_URL_0_) (hence \"mitral valve\"), and remember that all the other heart valves are tricuspid. If that's not good enough, here's my own completely unsubstantiated mnemonic: of all the heart valves, the mitral valve must withstand the highest pressure gradients (developed by the LV). The more leaflets in a given valve, the more intricately they'll have to mesh with each other, and the thinner they'll each be. Two leaflets *seem* more robust than three, so if any valve in the heart should have just two valves, it's the mitral valve."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://tachesterton.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/bishops-mitre.jpg", "http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-03/855255174.An.r.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5m7mrr", "title": "How do scientists calculate the necessary fuel to shoot a rocket (with astronauts) into space?", "selftext": "If you could go into detail about elucidating the force required, while also taking into account the fuel used to propel the object also has mass and will add weight!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5m7mrr/how_do_scientists_calculate_the_necessary_fuel_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc1n5fm", "dc1xhi8"], "score": [17, 6], "text": ["They just use the [Tsiolkovsky rocket equation](_URL_0_) to calculate the delta-v you have compared to what you need, and then add a little extra because nobody's perfect.\n\nThis requires a few things are known, delta-v needed (pretty well known, easy to calculate in space, harder at launch time), the engine ISP (easily determined through tests, but it changes with altitude a bit), and the rocket mass (not too hard to figure out), and fuel mass (very easy).\n\nIf you've ever played the game Kerbal Space Program (which I recommend), you'll know it's actually quite easy, do the math for what you think you need, design that rocket, and add a little extra fuel, you don't have to be perfect, not even close actually. You'll probably have too much fuel, but that's ok, you'll get to where you need to be, just turn off the rocket before your tank is empty, good nav systems are essential for this. If you're off it's easy enough to use a little extra to fix it after your in orbit.", "As /u/edman007-work pointed out, the short answer is the Rocket Equation. The wiki page he linked gives all the equations.\n\nThe more practical real-world answer is that the fuel loaded is basically determined by the rocket itself during the initial design phase and not by the mission specific payload weight. Any excess fuel weight just adds margin to the mission. So they will pretty much always load the same amount every flight. In my post I'm going to say \"fuel\" for short but really mean propellant, which is both fuel and oxidizer.\n\nI'll give an ELI-Layman answer without equations for how they get the fuel load during the design phase of the rocket.\n\nThe first step in the design is to know where you want your rocket to go. Is it ONLY going to low earth orbit like the Space Station, or is it going to the Moon and Mars? Once they know where they want to go, they design an engine with enough thrust to accomplish their goals (this is a whole other topic of discussion that I'll skip). With the engine thrust and efficiency know, they can then find the optimum trajectory to get to where they want to go. This involves using calculus of variations (also called Hamiltonian dynamics) to balance out gravity losses, air drag losses, etc. This also involves using a transfer to get from the initial altitude in space to a stable orbit, called a parking orbit, and then a Hohmann transfer to get from the parking orbit to the final orbit. This final optimized trajectory uses the thrust and efficiency of the rocket engines (called specific impulse, or Isp) to calculate how much mass you can lift to that target spot. If the answer is too low you add more fuel or reduce structure mass. You can iterate on that with lighter structure designs, larger fuel tanks, etc.\n\nOnce you have those general designs made, you run a Monte Carlo simulation to vary a lot of parameters randomly to test corners of the box scenarios (lower thrust but higher efficiency than planned, structure weight being higher than designed, hot temps at liftoff, high winds, etc) to ensure that with the amount of fuel you have loaded you can still lift your target mass to the target orbit even in worst-case scenarios. Then you start into final design and testing where you get more accurate weights for the rocket design, and more accurate air drag calculations, more accurate thrust and efficiency, etc. They will iterate the answers with these updated numbers to tweak the design. \n\nFinally, they build and do final tests of all the components, sub-systems, and systems. They put all that information together into a very large and detailed simulation to make sure that the loaded fuel amount can get the target weight to the target orbit with enough margin to cover worst-case scenarios."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation"], []]}
{"q_id": "1h8rwo", "title": "What would have actually been planned in Saving Private Ryan's climactic battle?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h8rwo/what_would_have_actually_been_planned_in_saving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caryfh4", "carz1t5", "carzhci"], "score": [3, 10, 8], "text": ["Not really sure this is the right sub. I would suggest [historical what if](_URL_0_) but I don't know if it technically falls there either, being that it's not actually historical.\n\nInteresting question though, would like to see what others plan out.", "I imagine they would have just blown the bridge and left the area.  If Tom Hanks' character had any competence he wouldn't have tried to face the overwhelming superiority of armor, especially when right from the get go they say that blowing the bridge is an option, albeit the last one.", "Well, one flaw of it that pretty much every war movie has is the engagement range... Most of the battle takes place at about 15-30m, whereas most battles in WWII took place at more like 100m-300m.\n\nThe Germans inexplicably move their tank up without infantry support - that's pretty much a guaranteed loss. The fact that the infantry behind the tank are crouched and seemingly using the tank for cover would indicate that the Germans expect resistance to their movement to the bridge.\n\nYet they advance along a narrow front (i.e. one street), do not screen their tank, do not advance by bounds, do not use cover... They're basically asking to be wiped out.\n\nNow, the Americans do not seem to have placed their crew-served weapons in places where they can be used to full effect. They're engaging with machineguns at grenade range, whereas the Browning .30's they're using are theoretically effective out to 1400m, and probably practically effective out to 500m or so.\n\nAgain, there are no screens for the crew-served weapons - they are in positions that can be easily flanked or approached under cover, and they are not guarded by riflemen/submachine guns.\n\nMore likely scenario:\n\nGermans send a few scouts out along multiple approaches, with the goal of identifying American strong points.\n\nAmericans have placed their machine-guns in fortified positions with long fields of fire, supported by riflemen. This would be several hundred metres at least from the bridge, to allow space for multiple lines of defence. Americans would have a few pickets out to attempt to identify the main axis of the German advance.\n\nBehind the American front lines, they would have prepared numerous other strong points for their troops (and especially crew-served weapons) to fall back on. At the front lines and the secondary lines, there would also be mock strong-points - unoccupied or lightly occupied fortifications designed to draw fire from the main points of resistance.\n\nOnce the Germans have identified definite or likely American positions, they would select fire positions for their armour, then their infantry would move up into buildings surrounding those positions to ensure that there are no hidden anti-tank teams.\n\nThen, the tanks would move into position, and begin machine-gun and cannon fire at long range to suppress and neutralize American strong points.\n\nWhile the Americans are pinned by the tanks, German troops would move up along several axes, advancing by bounds. This means that the squad machine gun and half the squad would take up an overwatch position, while the other half of the squad moved up under cover. Then the forward squad would take up an overwatch, and the MG and the rest of the squad would move up.\n\nDuring all of this, the Americans would be attempting to determine the German's main axis, so that they can effectively sweep it with MG fire, and move riflemen into position to flank it.\n\nIt's possible that the tanks would be too effective, so they might have to immediately fall back to their second line of defense, likely leaving a few soldiers behind to give the impression that their lines hadn't shifted.\n\nMeanwhile, the American pickets (hopefully still hidden) and select groups of Americans might try to infiltrate the German lines in an attempt to knock out their armour. Absence of bazookas is a big problem here, as it means any anti-armour teams would need to sneak or fight their way past all of the German infantry (remember, the infantry is deployed along a wide front between the Americans and the tanks, with constant coverage of their axes of attack), and get within 20m or less for their AT grenades or molotovs to be effective. This would be difficult, to say the least.\n\nIn all honesty, an understrength American platoon with no anti-tank weapons, no mortars, no fire support, no air cover, no tanks, no heavy guns would have little to no chance against a determined attack by what seems like at least a platoon (more likely a company) of Germans supported by two tanks.\n\nThey might be able to hold them off for a good while, as the Germans would be leery of moving their tanks up without sufficiently clearing the buildings around them, but attrition is going to get to them, and the cannons on the armour is going to make any strong point with a good avenue of fire more or less completely untenable.\n\nedit: source - years of study of small-unit tactics"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/historicalwhatif"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6karxe", "title": "how did the dalit (untouchable caste of india) originate and were they always oppressed?", "selftext": "Had an Indian friend tell me that India's mistreatment of Dalit (Untouchable caste) was something the British empire enabled, how true is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6karxe/eli5_how_did_the_dalit_untouchable_caste_of_india/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djkzphq", "djl1kna", "djl4ru2", "djl5uc0", "djl71f9"], "score": [22, 15, 8, 10, 2], "text": ["I don't think it's true. You can blame the British for a lot of the troubles in India (or just about any other country in the world lol) but the Caste system has existed in India for hundreds of years.", "No, this is'nt true, the dalits were lowest caste in india, the ones who lived on the rough side of the landscape, the only job they were given were to clean dirt, at its dirtiest level. And they were not touched by any higher than a dalits class (there were 4 classes i guess with dalits the last one) And all the caste were managed by pandits (hindu saints) so religion was the reason for dalits and not Britishers.", "The British may not have created the caste system, but they enforced it.  Long story short, they placed themselves at a higher rank of societial importance simply for being British, some may argue for being white.  This created rife when the country attempted to reach Independence.", "_URL_0_\n\nFrom the article:\n\nIt has origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and, modern India, especially the\u00a0Mughal Empire\u00a0and the\u00a0British Raj.\n\nThe collapse of the Mughal era saw the rise of powerful men who associated themselves with kings, priests and ascetics, affirming the regal and martial form of the caste ideal, and it also reshaped many apparently casteless social groups into differentiated caste communities.\u00a0The British Raj furthered this development, making rigid caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. Between 1860 and 1920, the British segregated Indians by caste, granting administrative jobs and senior appointments only to the upper castes.\u00a0", "The British did use the caste system to elevate themselves and keep the people under their control in colonial days, but the system itself has been around for a while. Dalit were just society's rejects that the caste aystem made sure they were kept seperate from the others in order to scare people into staying in their caste. Anyone who tried to elevate themsevles or marry into a different caste could be quickly isolated and removed from the system."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India"], []]}
{"q_id": "215cg8", "title": "why are they still looking for debris from malaysia airlines mh370?", "selftext": "I understand that they'd like to identify the cause of the accident, so as to prevent similar events in the future. At this point it just seems futile though. It's been two weeks. They talk about 'hope'. What is that all about? Is this just human desperation, or do we stand a reasonable chance of piecing the events together? How many millions of dollars are spent on this, and what is the benefit?\n\nMaybe I'm a defeatist, but I just don't understand. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/215cg8/eli5_why_are_they_still_looking_for_debris_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg9r5uv", "cg9rxsz", "cg9s4f5", "cg9t2bz", "cg9w42r", "cg9x3ud", "cg9xw6t"], "score": [14, 3, 19, 7, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Put it simply, we don't have much else to go on.\n\nSatellite imagery is extremely limited, and with the loss of contact we have no clue on its exact coordinates. Our only hope of finding the wreckage (as well as the bodies of the people on board to return to loved ones) is to look for debris, and to use it to trace back the location of the crash.\n\nIn terms of the urgency from an investigative/safety standpoint, all modern commercial jets require black boxes containing a Flight Data Recorder, used to record information about the plane's flight such as altitude and speed, as well as a Cockpit Voice Recorder, which records all sounds within the cockpit, not limited to just the speech of the pilots. The black box is fitted with a signaller which broadcasts a ping with a range of a couple kilometres, however its batteries will only last for 30 days. After this period, in order to find the black boxes you'll literally have to look and find it yourself. In the entire search area. Which is larger than the United States. And most of it is underwater.\n\nThe idea is that you can't put a price on a human life. The Boeing 777 is an extremely modern and popular aircraft. If there is a fault in the design of the plane, we have to know immediately or a similar accident may occur. If it's a terror attack, we need to know before they might strike again.\n\nIn our world where we are monitoring every little detail of every byte of information, where information and news can travel around the world in a minute, and where surveillence systems and eyes in the skies are becoming more and more prevelent and more of a concern, a 64 metre long, 65 metre wide, 300-tonne aluminium tube with 239 people on board has vanished.\n\nEmotions are running high, and people want answers.\n\nEdit: added that last bit there", "Closure.  Also it would be nice to know if people are a live hostage somewhere or dead in the ocean.", "Imagine if a plane with hundreds of people, 50 of them Americans and 150 Canadian, disappeared between Chicago and Montreal. Now imagine if we stopped looking after a couple weeks. That's why everyone is still looking. ", "Even if the passengers are all dead, we can still learn from what happened and hopefully prevent a similar experience from happening again in the future. The beacons can ping for a month, so there's still a reasonable chance to find the wreckage for the next couple weeks.\n\nMany improvements in airline safety have come from investigating wreckage and designing ways to avoid the same problem again.", "We do stand a reasonable chance of piecing the events together if we can find the blackbox. It'll take time, but eventually we can figure it out (assuming we find the plane), like we did with the Air France crash.", "I think they might be alive on an island somwhere.", "It's necessary to find out what happened, to avoid it happening again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "38e3a9", "title": "how do cotton candy machines work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38e3a9/eli5_how_do_cotton_candy_machines_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crubjuw", "crubomn", "crugkyu", "crujupc", "cruo1vd"], "score": [10, 106, 24, 6, 2], "text": ["Candy Floss is made by melting sugar in a machine with tiny extrusion holes.  The machine spins, forcing the melted sugar out into the air where it hardens into tasty goodness. [Here](_URL_0_ ) are more details.", "Sugar is poured into the center of a spinning drum and is heated to melting point. Once the sugar melts the spinning of the drum forces the liquid sugar through small holes outward towards the sides of the drum in small strings (imagine spider webs). These small strings of liquid cool and become non liquid sugar and then are wrapped around sticks as fluffy candy. \n\n\n\n", "Funny enough the same process is used for glass insulation... Melt glass, shoot the glass at high pressure thru tiny holes making lots of small fibers.\n\nAwesome use in my opinion.", "Would salt work in a cotton candy machine? I've been meaning to try this.", "_URL_0_\n\n^ slow motion cotton candy and explanation "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/cotton-candy.htm"], [], [], [], ["http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/time-warp-cotton-candy-tech/"]]}
{"q_id": "fmnn6l", "title": "Is it possible to create a \"lense\" to focus x-rays?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fmnn6l/is_it_possible_to_create_a_lense_to_focus_xrays/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fl5dl2z"], "score": [22], "text": ["[Sort of. It's not easily possible to form a lens, but it's possible to focus x-rays nonetheless.](_URL_2_)\n\nIt's a lot harder than with visible light because x-rays hardly slow down at all when they enter most materials, so rather than bending in a predictable way, they get absorbed or scatter off the atoms.  The scattering, because it's based on the crystal structure of what the x-ray is hitting, can be used to redirect x-rays in a known way, for example in a [Johansson monochromator](_URL_3_). Similarly, you can make another diffraction-based technology, a [zone plate](_URL_4_), which works to focus x-rays.\n\nOther strategies include using [grazing-incidence optics](_URL_1_), where the x-ray is only deflected a tiny amount when it hits a mirror (only a few arcminutes up to 2 degrees or so) and true x-ray lenses, [many of them \"stacked\" in an apparatus because each lens can only deflect the x-rays a tiny amount, meaning a single lens has a very long focal length.](_URL_0_) But these lenses are not made of material that's transparent to visible light - instead, they're made of low-atomic-number materials like aluminum or beryllium to reduce the absorption of the x-ray in the lens itself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_refractive_lens", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolter_telescope", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_optics", "https://www.rigakuoptics.com/crystals.php", "http://www.x-ray-optics.de/index.php/en/types-of-optics/diffracting-optics/fresnel-zone-plates"]]}
{"q_id": "5iavh6", "title": "Following World War 2, what was the global reaction to the reinstatement of the Colonial Empires of the newly liberated nations of France and The Netherlands? Was this not seen as hypocritical?", "selftext": "Having just returned from South-East Asia I have been made aware of the absolute carnage that de-colonization brought to the region. Was there any backlash from the Western Powers (USA, Britain, Canada) re. the reinstatement of the Colonial Empires of France and the Netherlands so soon after they themselves were liberated? Did this view change overtime as the Independence Wars continued?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5iavh6/following_world_war_2_what_was_the_global/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db7s0p1", "db8c6bj"], "score": [2, 5], "text": ["I find it a bit weird that you put Britain apart when it did belong with France and The Netherland in losing vast colonies to the Japaneses, who did invade Malaysia, Birma and parts of India.", "Well, decolonization definitely played into the Cold War.\n\nWhile the various European allies weren't keen on granting independence to all of their colonies, they didn't really have a choice. Postwar, the US initiated a massive economic rebuilding of Europe, known as the Marshall plan. However, there were strings attached to this; and the major one was decolonization.\n\nThere were a few reasons for US policy here; first off, the Soviets had an ideological reason for anti-colonialism, and were one of the major powers in favour of immediate decolonization, and they believed that would gain them many allies in Africa and Asia. Likewise, the US believed that these new nations would be good checks to Soviet expansion in these regions. As well, FDR and a lot of the American establishment were never big fans of European style colonialism; it had been a given in previous US foreign policy to prevent it from occurring within its sphere of influence in Latin America, and a decolonization push fit into their previous framework\n\nYou often hear of the moment of the \"end\" of the French and British empires when President Eisenhower demanded their withdrawal from the Suez in 1957, but this was just one of the more visible pushes from the US (and the USSR too) for the Europeans to quit their colonies"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "72yv2c", "title": "Did Henry II expect a war when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine immediately after her annulment from Louis VII? How is it that the king of England stealing (more or less) the king of France's wife (herself ruler of one of the richest duchies in Europe) didn't cause a war?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72yv2c/did_henry_ii_expect_a_war_when_he_married_eleanor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnmtupm"], "score": [29], "text": ["It's a rather long stretch to say that Henry \"stole\" the King of France's wife, either more or less. Eleanor and Louis' marriage had been annuled by Pope Eugene III on the basis of consanguinity, as they were related within the 4th degree and hadn't bothered to obtain a dispensation for marriage. Though Eleanor certainly favored this result, the decision to pursue it was entirely Louis'. Had the marriage produced a male heir Louis would have been far less willing to part with Aquitaine (and the Pope less willing to annul the marriage), but after two daughters with Eleanor, Louis and his advisers began to believe that a new marriage would best solve the problem of succession. \n\nWhat Henry and Eleanor stole was the French King's right to have a say in the marriage of his vassals. This was particularly true in the case of Eleanor. As overlord to an unmarried female vassal, it was by tradition the King's prerogative to choose, or at the very least approve, her future husband. Louis had, perhaps naievly, relied on this traditional 'feudal' assumption to keep Aquitaine within his patronage, but this is one of those places where reality slaps the feudal ideal upside the head. Henry and Eleanor married without the King's approval, without Papal dispensation (they were also related within the prohibited degree) and Louis was faced with a vassal who controlled vastly more of France than the King himself and who, after becoming King of England in 1154, would be in control of more European territory than anyone since Charlemagne. \n\nI can't say what Henry *expected* from Louis, but warfare did result and Henry, as was the case through most of his life, seems to have been quite prepared for it. First, Louis demanded that Henry come to Paris and answer for his behavior, an order Henry had no intention of obeying. Next Louis entered a coalition with Theobald of Blois and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry's brother. Both men had sought to marry Eleanor (tried to kidnap her actually), and now they, the King, and some rebellious Angevin vassals began to move against Henry's fortresses. You could say Henry was taken by surprise, as he was about to embark for England when news of all this reached him, but he moved very swiftly to drive Louis' forces back into the King's domain, suppress his brother's rebellion in Anjou, ravage the Vexin, and basically muscle Louis into a truce within two months. \n\nThis was hardly the end of conflict between the Angevins and Capetians over French territory and the extent of French Royal power. Louis' son Philip II would drive Henry's son John out of Normandy and the Angevin territories in 1204, but in 1152 Louis VII was not in a strong enough position to overcome Henry II.\n\nSources: \n\nRichard Barber - Henry Plantagenet\n\nAlison Weir - Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2fl905", "title": "[Physics] Why is acceleration always detectable (why is it not relative)?", "selftext": "So I know that velocity is relative, but acceleration is absolute and can be detected from within a frame of reference. So I would like to know the mistake I am making in the following scenario:\n\nImagine I am in space in a rocket. I see another rocket go pass and measure it to be accelerating. But someone in the other rocket will not be moving with respect to themselves. So if the other rocket's observer looks at me they will see my velocity increasing (in the opposite direction of the rocket's motion in my reference frame). That is, they will see me accelerating. Will/should they assume there is a force on me that increases my velocity? But the thing is that the people in the rocket themselves will feel a force pushing them back? (A dropped item will move). But form their perspective, I am the one accelerating, so I should feel a force pushing me back?\n\nI specifically thought of this question, after reading about Newton's bucket, but I think it would be easier to talk about and explain the question in terms of acceleration in linear motion. (So if you can explain the bulging of the water in the bucket in terms of Relativity, that would be nice too).\n\nThank you.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2fl905/physics_why_is_acceleration_always_detectable_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckadmkk", "ckafqs7"], "score": [5, 13], "text": ["You only feel a force in one rocket, the one that is accelerating. If you both have a weight suspended in the middle of a bunch of springs, only one observer will see the weight in an out-of-equilibrium position. The two reference frames are not equivalent: one is inertial and one is not.", "Wow, fantastic question.  You are right that if Alice is traveling at a constant velocity in an inertial reference frame and an observer (Bob) were accelerating past us, in Bob's non-inertial reference frame, he would be moving at constant velocity and Alice would be accelerating.  \n\nWhy do we say that Alice is moving at constant velocity and Bob is the one accelerating then?  The answer (as with many things in physics) is one of convenience.  In Bob's accelerational  reference frame, there is a mysterious force accelerating all objects in one direction, and Alice just happens to be accelerating in the direction of that force.  Alice's accelerational frame is the only one that does not have the mysterious force, and so we call it an inertial frame.  We find that calculations are usually a lot easier in inertial frames, so we usually use them, but there is nothing invalid with other accelerational frames."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1f19wh", "title": "Did throwing knives ever see widespread military use? Or we're they always just a novelty?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f19wh/did_throwing_knives_ever_see_widespread_military/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca5wf6k", "ca60f3b", "ca64eni", "ca66xw6"], "score": [73, 10, 3, 5], "text": ["Throwing knives in the military?\n\nI know of no example.  \n\nIn modern times, knife fighting has been taught only to commando troops (see the [Fairbairn\u2013Sykes knife for an example](_URL_0_)\\).\n\nAnother case were the [trench knives](_URL_1_) of WW1, a \"silent\" weapon used in trench raids (together with clubs etc.), first on an improvised basis, later as regular issue gear. \n\nBut as a throwing weapon, knives lack penetration, and require a fair amount of training.\n\nThrowing axes called [Franciscas](_URL_2_) were used by the Franks, a Germanic tribe of late antiquity. They were heavy enough to break shields at short range. \n\n", "Not a historian, just a military member for awhile. What we're taught about military history and tactics is that you generally don't throw away your weapons, thus the throwing knife lacks utility.", "In a similar vein, tomahawks weren't ever thrown.\n\nFrom a tactical standpoint, why would someone throw their weapon at someone, only to probably miss? If they did hit, can they get to their tomahawk in time to fight off other attackers? A lot of fighters would figure that it makes more sense just to keep your weapon in your hand. \n\nSource: A few degree-holding re-enactors had a very interesting seminar at a rendezvous on tomahawks and knives and stuff.", "[Chakrams](_URL_0_) are pretty cool... And way better than knives, they always hit with an edge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbairn\u2013Sykes_fighting_knife", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_knife", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisca"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakram"]]}
{"q_id": "jatvv", "title": "the history of canada", "selftext": "As an american, I'm kind of ashamed I don't know anything about this. Way back in the 1700s some British colonies got all mad started a war and made the United States. Go Us. But our history books make no mention anything north of Maine. So ELI5, how did Canada get settled by Europeans and how did they end up independent of the British?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jatvv/eli5_the_history_of_canada/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2akkdo", "c2al2kv", "c2alhno", "c2ao0su", "c2akkdo", "c2al2kv", "c2alhno", "c2ao0su"], "score": [5, 13, 5, 3, 5, 13, 5, 3], "text": ["Canada was initially settled by France and later Britain invaded and they took that shit but the French population stayed and kept their delicious poutine.\n\nLater some of the Southern British colonies rebelled against the King but the Northern colonies chose not to.\n\nA hundred years after that Southern rebellion the Northern colonies were granted their independence peacefully because we're cool like that.", "Technically, we are 'constitutionally independent', but we are not a republic. Technically, we are a 'Dominion'.\n\nThis means we are self-governing and can make up our own minds regarding national and international issues and how we involve ourselves. Prior to this, we basically had to do whatever the crown told us. (ie. Go to War.) It also often made Canadians second-class citizens in the eyes of the English (ie. 'from the Colonies').\n\nCurrently, our Head of State is the Queen (or Reigning Monarch), represented by a Governor-General, and his/her Lieutenant (Pronounced 'Leftenant') Governors, one for each Province/Territory. The GG's role is... nominal at best, but is maintained for the sake of show and tradition. In reality we are government by Federal Provincial and Municipal (where there are some) governments. The head of the Federal Government is the Prime Minister, who is elected from within whichever party has the most seats (not always the majority of seats, though presently, the current government is made up of a Conservative Majority). The provincial governments are similar, with both federal and provincial govts. made up of multiple parties which generally boil down to: Liberals, Conservatives, NDP (Moderates... ish), Greens, and Bloc Quebecois (think ethno-centrists whose platform is largely based on separation of Quebec and Canada). Provincial heads of government are 'Premiers'. \nMunicipal governments are based on towns, counties or both, depending on how the province is broken down.\nFederal law trumps Provincial which trumps Municipal. We elect our government by party, not leader (though its often pretty clear who the leader is going to be), and seem to do it very frequently. \n\nThat said, we are still a commonwealth country and enjoy certain benefits and relationships as a result. \n\nAs for the broader history of Canada, its a rich tapestry woven from many different cultures, though predominantly the Scottish, English and French (see Quebecois and Acadian, for a start), as well as, obviously, many, many Native ethnicities. Much of Canada was opened up by the fur trade, and the associated industries that sprang off them. Wiki The North West Company and/or the Hudson's Bay Company (they eventually merged) - The HBC is the world's oldest corporation, and at one time basically owned the majority of Canada. Their industry essentially recruited natives to provide animal furs in exchange (often at outrageous and exploitative rates) for Western and/or manufactured goods like linen, knives, axes, tools, guns, sugar, flour, etc.\nWestern explorers also pushed back the boundaries of the frontier by exploring Canada via waterways; travelling in the native fashion with canoes and portaging where they could not. \n\nEventually this was fleshed out completely by the railroad, which ultimately spanned Canada East to West, and opened up additional resources, such as timber, Gold (and other minerals) and linked the two sides of Canada. Traditionally, this railroad and its many, many assets were owned by Canada Pacific Railway, which, like the HBC, is now, sadly, a shadow of its former glory, though that glory can still be seen in the hotels they erected along the way, such as Chateau Lac Louise in Alberta, the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, and a few others I dont remember.\n\nIn terms of military history, Canada has an excellent war museum, in Ottawa, which is worth visiting and sums it up nicely. In brief, Canadian warfare has (chronologically) included a variety of conflicts with the natives, the French - who had originally colonized much of Canada but were essentially kicked out by the British, especially at such battles as the Plains of Abraham and Louisbourg. Many of the French were exiled back to France (despite being multiple-generation 'Canadians'.) others were resettled, giving rise to pocket communities like the Acadians in Nova Scotia. Canadians also fought in a variety of other international wars, including in Russia during the revolution there (though IIRC they didnt do too much), the Boer War in South Africa, WW1 and WW2. In WW1 they accomplished incredible things at terrible costs; more Canadians died in WWI than WWII. For highlights, look up Vimy Ridge (an entrenched fortification held by the Germans that had held off (and slaughtered) everyone else for years, that the Canadians essentially took in a day, by using their heads), Passchendaele and many, many others. \n\nIn WWII Canadians fought alongside the British from the outset, in Africa, and later in Italy, France and Holland - which they later liberated. Most Americans have heard of the Normandy landings; what most dont know is that the landings took place on five separate beachheads. The Americans took one two(Omaha and Utah) the British, with the Free French, took two (Sword and Gold), and the Canadians took the Fifth (Juno) and most heavily defended. \n\nWe also burned down the White House once. \n\n**edit1 - adding more detail**", "Oh, hey! Fur!\n\nAbout 300 years later...\n\nOh, hey! Fur!\n\nCanada.", " My own recollection of the history is quite sporadic, so I'll just mention some of the things that are mildly interesting/stand out. We spent a lot of time in history class talking about the difficulties of settling in the provinces and suchlike.\n\n* In the early days, when we were a french colony, the King of France wanted his colonies to flourish, so he sent over lowborn girls named the filles du roi (\"king's daughters) to marry colonials and create families. \n\n* [Samuel de Champlain](_URL_0_) is known as the \"Father of New France\" and is the founder of Quebec City.\n\n* The Coureurs-du-bois (Runners of the woods) were French trappers who fueled the fur trade. They learned the languages of the Aboriginals, often married them, and spent their lives in the woods trapping game and taking it back to outposts to be sold.\n\n* Jesuit Priests from France came over to convert the Aboriginals to Christianity.\n\n* Agriculture under French rule was pretty much Feudal; A \"seigneur\", or lord got the majority of your crops as payment for letting you farm the land.\n\n* [Louis Riel](_URL_1_) is something of a folk hero for the Metis People, and was hanged for treason. The Metis are Part French, part Aboriginal, likely descendants of the runners of the woods as mentioned previously (The french and the aboriginals had a better relationship with each other than the brits, although this might be a matter of discussion)\n\n* Britain and France eventually squared off against one another over Canada in the [Seven Years' war](_URL_2_). The General for the British side was General James Wolfe. The General for the French side was the Marquis de Montcalm. They both lost their lives in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The British won.\n\n* In the war of 1812, we sided with the British against the Americans. This is the war in which we burned down the white house, which later had to be rebuilt. Anyone care to tell me which side the french fought on? \n\n* Nowadays, the desire to separate from Canada has subsided in Quebec, as evinced by the fact that the Bloc Quebecois won a pitiful one seat in the last election. Although rumour has it that some right wing nutjobs in Alberta are also looking to separate...\n\n* When we talk about the different provinces and territories, we like to separate them into broad groups. Like the Prairie provinces are made up of the three central provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Then you have the Maritimes, which are New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. You have the three Territories, which are the North West Territories, the Yukon (where the gold rush happened) and Nunavut (a newly formed territory, the primary purpose being to give those regions more political representation. I think that's the reason, feel free to correct me on that). Ontario and Quebec are big enough to merit being on their own. And British Columbia is the pothead province, apparently.\n\nDoes anyone know how the french revolution affected Candadian governance, if at all? Or had the governance of the country passed to Britain by then?", "Canada was initially settled by France and later Britain invaded and they took that shit but the French population stayed and kept their delicious poutine.\n\nLater some of the Southern British colonies rebelled against the King but the Northern colonies chose not to.\n\nA hundred years after that Southern rebellion the Northern colonies were granted their independence peacefully because we're cool like that.", "Technically, we are 'constitutionally independent', but we are not a republic. Technically, we are a 'Dominion'.\n\nThis means we are self-governing and can make up our own minds regarding national and international issues and how we involve ourselves. Prior to this, we basically had to do whatever the crown told us. (ie. Go to War.) It also often made Canadians second-class citizens in the eyes of the English (ie. 'from the Colonies').\n\nCurrently, our Head of State is the Queen (or Reigning Monarch), represented by a Governor-General, and his/her Lieutenant (Pronounced 'Leftenant') Governors, one for each Province/Territory. The GG's role is... nominal at best, but is maintained for the sake of show and tradition. In reality we are government by Federal Provincial and Municipal (where there are some) governments. The head of the Federal Government is the Prime Minister, who is elected from within whichever party has the most seats (not always the majority of seats, though presently, the current government is made up of a Conservative Majority). The provincial governments are similar, with both federal and provincial govts. made up of multiple parties which generally boil down to: Liberals, Conservatives, NDP (Moderates... ish), Greens, and Bloc Quebecois (think ethno-centrists whose platform is largely based on separation of Quebec and Canada). Provincial heads of government are 'Premiers'. \nMunicipal governments are based on towns, counties or both, depending on how the province is broken down.\nFederal law trumps Provincial which trumps Municipal. We elect our government by party, not leader (though its often pretty clear who the leader is going to be), and seem to do it very frequently. \n\nThat said, we are still a commonwealth country and enjoy certain benefits and relationships as a result. \n\nAs for the broader history of Canada, its a rich tapestry woven from many different cultures, though predominantly the Scottish, English and French (see Quebecois and Acadian, for a start), as well as, obviously, many, many Native ethnicities. Much of Canada was opened up by the fur trade, and the associated industries that sprang off them. Wiki The North West Company and/or the Hudson's Bay Company (they eventually merged) - The HBC is the world's oldest corporation, and at one time basically owned the majority of Canada. Their industry essentially recruited natives to provide animal furs in exchange (often at outrageous and exploitative rates) for Western and/or manufactured goods like linen, knives, axes, tools, guns, sugar, flour, etc.\nWestern explorers also pushed back the boundaries of the frontier by exploring Canada via waterways; travelling in the native fashion with canoes and portaging where they could not. \n\nEventually this was fleshed out completely by the railroad, which ultimately spanned Canada East to West, and opened up additional resources, such as timber, Gold (and other minerals) and linked the two sides of Canada. Traditionally, this railroad and its many, many assets were owned by Canada Pacific Railway, which, like the HBC, is now, sadly, a shadow of its former glory, though that glory can still be seen in the hotels they erected along the way, such as Chateau Lac Louise in Alberta, the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, and a few others I dont remember.\n\nIn terms of military history, Canada has an excellent war museum, in Ottawa, which is worth visiting and sums it up nicely. In brief, Canadian warfare has (chronologically) included a variety of conflicts with the natives, the French - who had originally colonized much of Canada but were essentially kicked out by the British, especially at such battles as the Plains of Abraham and Louisbourg. Many of the French were exiled back to France (despite being multiple-generation 'Canadians'.) others were resettled, giving rise to pocket communities like the Acadians in Nova Scotia. Canadians also fought in a variety of other international wars, including in Russia during the revolution there (though IIRC they didnt do too much), the Boer War in South Africa, WW1 and WW2. In WW1 they accomplished incredible things at terrible costs; more Canadians died in WWI than WWII. For highlights, look up Vimy Ridge (an entrenched fortification held by the Germans that had held off (and slaughtered) everyone else for years, that the Canadians essentially took in a day, by using their heads), Passchendaele and many, many others. \n\nIn WWII Canadians fought alongside the British from the outset, in Africa, and later in Italy, France and Holland - which they later liberated. Most Americans have heard of the Normandy landings; what most dont know is that the landings took place on five separate beachheads. The Americans took one two(Omaha and Utah) the British, with the Free French, took two (Sword and Gold), and the Canadians took the Fifth (Juno) and most heavily defended. \n\nWe also burned down the White House once. \n\n**edit1 - adding more detail**", "Oh, hey! Fur!\n\nAbout 300 years later...\n\nOh, hey! Fur!\n\nCanada.", " My own recollection of the history is quite sporadic, so I'll just mention some of the things that are mildly interesting/stand out. We spent a lot of time in history class talking about the difficulties of settling in the provinces and suchlike.\n\n* In the early days, when we were a french colony, the King of France wanted his colonies to flourish, so he sent over lowborn girls named the filles du roi (\"king's daughters) to marry colonials and create families. \n\n* [Samuel de Champlain](_URL_0_) is known as the \"Father of New France\" and is the founder of Quebec City.\n\n* The Coureurs-du-bois (Runners of the woods) were French trappers who fueled the fur trade. They learned the languages of the Aboriginals, often married them, and spent their lives in the woods trapping game and taking it back to outposts to be sold.\n\n* Jesuit Priests from France came over to convert the Aboriginals to Christianity.\n\n* Agriculture under French rule was pretty much Feudal; A \"seigneur\", or lord got the majority of your crops as payment for letting you farm the land.\n\n* [Louis Riel](_URL_1_) is something of a folk hero for the Metis People, and was hanged for treason. The Metis are Part French, part Aboriginal, likely descendants of the runners of the woods as mentioned previously (The french and the aboriginals had a better relationship with each other than the brits, although this might be a matter of discussion)\n\n* Britain and France eventually squared off against one another over Canada in the [Seven Years' war](_URL_2_). The General for the British side was General James Wolfe. The General for the French side was the Marquis de Montcalm. They both lost their lives in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The British won.\n\n* In the war of 1812, we sided with the British against the Americans. This is the war in which we burned down the white house, which later had to be rebuilt. Anyone care to tell me which side the french fought on? \n\n* Nowadays, the desire to separate from Canada has subsided in Quebec, as evinced by the fact that the Bloc Quebecois won a pitiful one seat in the last election. Although rumour has it that some right wing nutjobs in Alberta are also looking to separate...\n\n* When we talk about the different provinces and territories, we like to separate them into broad groups. Like the Prairie provinces are made up of the three central provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Then you have the Maritimes, which are New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. You have the three Territories, which are the North West Territories, the Yukon (where the gold rush happened) and Nunavut (a newly formed territory, the primary purpose being to give those regions more political representation. I think that's the reason, feel free to correct me on that). Ontario and Quebec are big enough to merit being on their own. And British Columbia is the pothead province, apparently.\n\nDoes anyone know how the french revolution affected Candadian governance, if at all? Or had the governance of the country passed to Britain by then?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War"]]}
{"q_id": "5p9bcf", "title": "In his book \"Settlers\", J. Sakai asserts that the Cherokee nation had a very sophisticated and Westernized society immediately prior to their march on the Trail of Tears, boasting a supreme court, two-house legislature, official newspaper, and budding literary tradition. Is all of this true?", "selftext": "I have never heard of a Westernized Cherokee state besides their old designation as a \"civilized tribe.\" Has any good research been done on Cherokee life immediately before their removal by Andrew Jackson?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p9bcf/in_his_book_settlers_j_sakai_asserts_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcppq87"], "score": [97], "text": ["This is an accurate summary of the state of the Cherokee Nation in the southeast in the years immediately prior to Removal. The first [Cherokee Constitution](_URL_0_) was adopted in July 1827 and established a Westernized government modeled after the United States. If you visit New Echota, in northwest Georgia, which was chosen as the capital for the new nation, you can see a reconstruction of the building that once housed the Supreme Court, the General Council (which was divided into two houses - the Committee and the Council proper), and the national newspaper, *The Cherokee Phoenix* while the new capital was getting established. The adoption of the Sequoyah syllabary around this same time greatly boosted literacy rates in the Cherokee Nation as well, and *The Cherokee Phoenix* was published in both English and Cherokee. The rapid Westernization of the Cherokee was one of the many factors that prompted the United States to pursue the Removal doctrine. During his first State of the Union address, Andrew Jackson cited Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 (that no new state could be formed from an existing state) as a reason to force the Cherokee Nation and other westernizing Native nations out of territory already claimed by the States. No one really knew how to deal with new nations popping up within the United States. Jackson and the like certainly weren't entertaining any arguments that would have allowed them to remain where they were at the expense of the Euroamerican population.\n\nFor an easily accessible summary of how life change for the average Cherokee during the 1700s and early 1800s (pre-Removal), I always recommend Theda Perdue's *Cherokee Women*. While the focus is obviously on women, there's plenty in there about men too since changes in the lives of one sex usually results in and from changes in the lives of the other. This includes, for example, women being increasingly excluded from political engagement in their society as the nation westernizes. In general, though Theda Perdue's works are great and she has done a lot of work on the Cherokee during the Removal era if you're interested in more on that topic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://arts-sciences.und.edu/native-media-center/_files/docs/1803-1860/1827cherokeeconstitution.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "15roms", "title": "what feminists mean when they say \"empower women\" and how \"empowering women\" will lower rape rates.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15roms/eli5what_feminists_mean_when_they_say_empower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7p6pnh", "c7p6zsu", "c7p71dg", "c7p72rs", "c7paoti"], "score": [16, 74, 12, 8, 2], "text": ["Firstly, a large proportion of rape/sexual assault is male on female.\n\nWith that in mind, *feminist* is something of a misleading term.  I am male, but also a feminist.  I suspect most of my friends are 'feminists' without really realising it.  Do you think that women fundamentally deserve less than men?  If not, you're a 'feminist'.\n\nA lot of rape is predicated around the idea of power over someone else, and it is the case in some societies that men's perceived superiority over women makes it okay to discount their feelings.  Some women actually believe this too, which is all the more surprising.\n\nBy 'empowering women' to fight for gender equality, they send the message that rape is a heinous crime that men and women alike should scorn the perpetrators of.", "There are a number of stereotypes about sexuality in women in modern society, and many of them are problematic. The major one when it comes to rape, is that a woman\u2019s value lies in her genitals, and that sex is an object or \u2018treat\u2019, that a woman can \u2018give\u2019 or \u2018grant access to\u2019. To say it as simply as possible (minding that it is more complex than this), if someone believes that they are \u2018owed\u2019 sex (whether it be because they have been dating someone for a while, because they are married, or even just because they were being flirted with), and they are sufficiently violent, frustrated or mentally unstable, they may try to \u2018take\u2019 the sex that was \u2018owed to them\u2019. The \u2018empowerment\u2019 idea comes from reinforcing the idea to women (and men) that women are not objects, or gate keepers to sex, but muti-dimensional **people**. Who have choice. And the choice to say no is one that they are entitled to.\n\n\n(Subnote: Not all rape occurs in a dark alleyway with a stranger. A lot of the time, it is someone known, or dating; where the woman is either too afraid/feels unable to say \u2018no\u2019, or the man does not listen to that \u2018no\u2019.) \n", "I can offer my female perspective which is more generally related to women's empowerment than rape.\n\nEducation is the number one thing that would help women in countries with a poor record of women's rights and therefore higher rape / child marriage / abuse records. A woman who's had a chance to learn, to grow up without the role of wife and mother thrown at her before she's completed secondary school is a woman who is going to fight hard for her rights. If you look at the history of feminism you'll see educated women are treated better, have more choice and fight hard for their rights. Women who are married off young don't realise they may have other choices.\n\nAccess to birth control. That's another huge step in empowering women. I cannot believe that there are still so many women being denied the basic right to choose if and when they should have children. In many societies women are still considered the primary child carers (which I think is bullshit, having been raised primarily by my dad) which means that when they become pregnant, usually at a young age, their whole life is fucked before its begun. Having a child is a choice you should make mutually with your partner, not something you have no say in.\n\nReligion seriously needs to rethink its stance in women. I'm an atheist but I have no issue with people who follow a religious faith. What I do have an issue with is people using arguments and writings than are thousands of years old as a template for his women should behave in this day and age. If we had left our medical practices the same we'd all be dying like flies but the mainly male religious leaders seem perfectly happy to ask women to stay in roles that were outdated a thousand years ago. Because they benefit from it.\n\nAnd the biggest thing for me is the right to speak out without fear of reprisal or hostility from authority figures. If women don't have a right to voice their abuse then society is failing them. This occurs even in western 'feminist' societies. Here in the UK there was a specialist rape case unit within the main police force. They have been investigated and officers fired for, among many things,  flat out lying about cases being dropped by the victim, joking privately about women 'asking for it' and in one memorable case they pinned a rape victims underwear to their notice board because they thought they were sexy. Add this to the fact that most women are raped by someone they know and you have the fear of breaking families or friendships coupled with the fear that no one will believe you and a less than willing police force and its clear to see why so many women just don't report rape.\n\nTL:DR treat us like people, educate us, stop telling us god wants us to be second class citizens, give us the right to choose our pregnancies and for fucks sake, believe us when we report it.", "Uhh, well, an example would be India.  There is an ongoing scandal in India where a woman was gang-raped, which really highlighted the rape culture in India.  Essentially, the culture of India is *very* objectifying of women.  Not in the \"video game characters have boobs\" way but in the way that women are *constantly* groped and harassed in public.  Rape is a big problem because it happens a *lot* but the culture is very, very dismissive of it.  They rush to blame the victim for wearing the wrong clothes, for being in the wrong place, and even the police discourage woman rape victims from pressing charges.  \n\nThe idea is that rape cultures contribute to rape, either from rapists thinking rape is \"okay\" or \"justified\" in certain circumstances, or rapists think something that *is* rape, isn't rape, or because at=large rapists aren't being arrested and convicted because nobody gives a shit, and because the women are too afraid to come out and say she was raped because that would bring shame on her family.\n\nThe solution to this is to \"\"\"\"empower\"\"\"\" women.  Instead of being viewed as objects for sexual gratification in a man-controlled world, women should be on parity with men.  If women in India were equal to men and there weren't extremely restrictive gender roles, then maybe people would stop treating women like crap, and stop off-handedly dismissing rape.\n\nThe reason I octuple-quotes \"empower\" is because you seem to have an issue with that word.  Empower doesn't mean to give women *more* power than men.  At least, that isn't its intent, even if some feminists go a bit overboard.  My suggestion is to not get so hung up on words, and focus on the ideas.", "Empowering woman may lower rape rates or it may not - that also depends on the psychology of men who perpetrate those crimes. However, at least an \"empowered\" woman will have resources to whom she can get help and turn to for physical and psychological  help when she gets help. And at least she will have the support to heal over the situation as quickly as possible.\n\nEdit -I consider myself a feminist. There are many ways woman need to empower other woman within our community, but in this example I just focused on empowering victims of rape to report crimes and get protection through the use of outside resources."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28e8xp", "title": "Why is baseball more popular than football in Venezuela, unlike with what is the case for the majority (almost all) of the South American countries? Is there a specific historical reason?", "selftext": "I know that the situation slightly changes now, while football gains popularity there, but, if one looks the history of football in Venezuela, it is extremely poor compared to even not so successful national football teams like that of Chile.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28e8xp/why_is_baseball_more_popular_than_football_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciaffwz"], "score": [29], "text": ["The popularity of baseball in Venezuela is the result of two factors, geography and oil. Since it is located on the Caribbean, it has had more trade with the US since it is accessible directly by water. Therefore, there have been more American merchants in Venezuela to spread American culture. \n\nThe second factor is oil. When oil was discovered after WWI in Venezuela, the country sold the rights for oil extraction for the most part to American oil companies. Many American oil workers came to Venezuela to work, bringing along baseball as a pastime. Soon Venezuelans picked it up and it has been popular ever since. \n\nA book that will be able to explain this all in more detail is: \n\nElias, Robert. The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold US Foreign Policy and the American Way. New York: New Press, 2010. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4emkh1", "title": "Would it be possible for a less dense planet that is further from it's star to orbit faster than one closer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4emkh1/would_it_be_possible_for_a_less_dense_planet_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d21ehs8"], "score": [22], "text": ["Aha, this is a very important question, and the answer is absolutely critical to understanding gravity!\n\nThe short answer is that a dense (or massive) planet gets accelerated by the Sun's gravity exactly as much as a less dense (or less massive) planet does. So the density or mass of the planet doesn't matter here. The closer you are to the Sun, the faster you have to go to have a nice stable circular orbit.\n\nYou can understand this in a few different ways. Here's I'm going to look at Newtonian gravity. In Newtonian gravity, the force of gravity is\n\nF=GMm/R^2\n\nHere, M is the mass of the Sun, m is the mass of the planet, G is the universal gravitational constant, and R is the distance from the Sun to the planet.\n\nNow the actual *acceleration* of the planet is given by one of Newton's laws:\n\nF=ma\n\na=F/m\n\nWe can put these equations together to get:\n\na=(GMm/R^(2))/m\n\na = GM/R^2\n\nAnd now you can see that the \"m\"s have canceled out. The acceleration from gravity depends on the mass of the Sun, and the distance to the Sun, but does not depend on the mass of the planet. So any planet at a certain point will behave in the same way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1x6kpq", "title": "What would be the effect on the earth/solar system if all the stars except the sun were removed from the universe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x6kpq/what_would_be_the_effect_on_the_earthsolar_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf8kwav", "cf8nehv"], "score": [3, 4], "text": ["Well, gravity goes as 1/r^2, so all those stars doe not affect us gravitationally in a way that even comes close to being significant.", "* A supernova could end all life on Earth if it happened anywhere nearby, so that (incredibly remote) threat would go away.\n\n* Some energetic particles from outer space-- cosmic rays-- would go away, which could hypothetically have a very small effect on cancer rates. Larger would be the effect for astronauts, for whom cosmic rays are a serious danger, but I'm not sure what percentage of them come from the sun vs. outer space. My guess is most are from the sun.\n\n* A very small portion of the static on your TV screen (if you have an old TV) would go away. (Not the radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background, but radiation from actual stars, which is some small fraction of the radiation floating around). Again, basically no effect.\n\n* Lack of supernovae would mean that we don't have \"standard candles\" to gauge astronomical distances, so that would become more difficult; then again, there would be a lot less to look at.\n\n* You mentioned stars, but not planets or nebulae. So there would be a lot of planets flying around out there, and along with nebulae, would probably eventually ignite a few new stars.\n\n* You didn't mention black holes or dark matter either, so it's possible that many galaxies would actually retain their shape, and that when new stars did appear, they would be floating in the same galactic disc they are now.\n\n* Edit: Animals that use the stars to navigate (like the dung beetle, which was recently discovered to use the Milky Way to navigate), would get pretty lost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4n72nc", "title": "How was the Apollo 13 accident and crew survival portrayed in Soviet Media?", "selftext": "After watching the \"world response\" to Mark Watney portrayed in **The Martian**. I was wondering how Apollo 13 was portrayed around the world especially in the USSR. In my googling I was unable to find a review of the soviet media's coverage.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4n72nc/how_was_the_apollo_13_accident_and_crew_survival/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d41s65m", "d42354j"], "score": [23, 10], "text": ["I know they congratulated the success of Apollo 11, did they congratulate the successful return of the astronauts of 13 as well?\n\nFollow up question: when did the actual space teams (NASA and the Soviet space program) start to view each other as compatriots in the goal for space exploration? When did they both cheer each other's successes?", "I'm also unfamiliar with any reviews of Soviet coverage of Apollo 13 (at least in English), and if someone knows of such sources or sources on Soviet coverage on U.S. space achievements in general, I'd be happy for any tips!\n\nThat said, the histories of Apollo 13 mission do note that the drama united the world, and there are some grounds for that claim. As far as I'm aware from my study of Apollo 13 and of earlier US missions and their Soviet coverage (note that I don't understand Russian and hence my sources are very limited), the Soviets generally did portray civilian spaceflight in favorable light, although with a bit of \"sour grapes\" approach (\"manned missions to moon are little more than publicity stunts, extravagant waste of money and typical of Capitalist excess, when we Soviets can do everything necessary with Lunokhod robots!\"). Still, pioneers such as the crew of Apollo 11 were certainly congratulated, even if with reminders that the first man in space was still a Soviet citizen and that the Soviet Union led the space race in all the arenas that really mattered...\n\nThis was due to the fact that the Soviets were indeed reasonably serious if unfocused players in the moon race, but their hopes were irrevocably dashed when the supposed N-1 Moon rocket proved its fundamental unsuitability for this task by unblemished record of failure, in one case turning its launch pad and a large group of launch pad engineers to ashes in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever. Since they could not beat the Americans to the Moon, they did the next best thing (familiar to everyone with siblings) and denied ever having even been in the race, which furthermore didn't matter, really. Nevertheless, space exploration was fairly popular topic in Soviet culture, and given the cultural significance of Moon landings, they couldn't entirely ignore the U.S. successes. \n\nIn the Soviet media, there was nothing like the almost real time coverage of Apollo 13 mission, of course. But the drama was still followed as far as I know, and it is a fact that the Soviets offered every possible assistance they could render to the rescue and recovery efforts. The safe return of the astronauts was likewise hailed as a success, but unfortunately, I cannot really say anything about the extent of news coverage - only that it most likely was among other news from abroad. \n\nThe coverage of Apollo 13 mission specifically has been discussed to very small extent in Lovell's book *The Lost Moon* (republished as *Apollo 13*); recovery efforts are detailed in Gene Krantz's autobiography *Failure is not an option;* other sources would be welcome.\n\nEDIT: although I haven't seen or read The Martian, I very strongly suspect that the \"worldwide event\" theme really comes from real-life experience of Apollo 13."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6m6bc0", "title": "what makes us legally bound to follow the law, even though we have never formally signed a contract or agreed to it like you would read and agree to the tos for a game?", "selftext": "I understand to drive you are bound to follow the rules of the road as you agree to do so when you get your licence. What is it that legally binds you to follow the law? I've never had to sign a contract saying I agree to not kill people, or manufacture drugs, Or even to not jaywalk. In Canada I'm not legally able to sign a contract u til the age of 18 and I've never done so once I've turned of age stating I will follow the law. And I've never voluntarily chosen to even be a Canadian citizen. \n\n\nI'm not saying I want to break the law and not b3 held responsible, It's just occurred to me that I've really never even been required to learn the law or agreed to follow it. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m6bc0/eli5_what_makes_us_legally_bound_to_follow_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djz8jz1", "djz8m44", "djz8w8t", "djz8xyn", "djza7z1", "djzafdq", "djzbzm2", "djzvvst"], "score": [2, 4, 18, 5, 5, 12, 37, 3], "text": ["You're legally bound, because the law says you are. You cite contract law as an example, but even the validity of those contracts only becomes so, because a law says they were. The more brutish answer to this is a group of humans living in a particular area, in your case Canada, list a series of rules that need to be obeyed in that society, creates an entity to enforce these rules, and then banishes(imprisons) from society anyone who won't. The more philosophical answer lies in the Social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. If your interested in it, I'd suggest reading some of their literature.", "Its an unwritten agreement among the society. Your \"rights\" as a member of the society are also part of this agreement. Carrot and stick. ", "Because if we allowed people to opt out of \"signing\" our ability to create society is significantly diminished as anyone could say or simply not \"sign\" and break our rules we create for all so we stay at peace and all get what we want\n\nas for if you were taught the laws of our society, you absoloutely were. Your parents taught you them while you grew up, and the ones that werent taught that learnt them extremely quickly. The only places where you arent taught how to behave in the broader country you live in is ghettoized areas (verb, look it up). But thats not so true as they know the laws, they just dont care as they insulate themselves from them", "By remaining in that society you're implying your consent. If you don't like the rules, then leave. Yeah, that seems crappy, especially if you can't afford to go elsewhere, but that's what it boils down to. You also reap benefits from being a member of society. If someone mugged you and stole your wallet you'd be justified in expecting the State to do something about it. You don't get to have the benefit of being a part of society without having to follow its rules yourself.", "Your question seems to imply that voluntary contracts are the only valid legal mechanism. This is simply not true. \n\nEvery society has the ability to create rules which must be obeyed by members of, and visitors to, that society. Without this ability humans would be unable to survive as a species.", "So this is a really interesting area of philosophy. I'd suggest reading up on the social contract and consent of the governed. The TLDR version is that you implicitly agree, by not actively attempting to remove yourself from society, that you'd like to be part of society. Society in this context just means a collective endeavour by the whole - or a section - of the human race to live a better life than could be led if we didn't work together.\n\nSociety has collectively chosen to organise itself in certain ways through a series of historical processes. These processes weren't always fair, but at least since Rousseau there has been an attempt to promote the idea that you should have some sense of say over the laws to which you are bound.\n\nAnyway you are required, by society, to accept the laws even if you didn't have any say over them because life works better that way. Society has determined that your surrender of a small part of your personal sovereignty is a price worth paying for the better lives that we can all live if we all do this. And by and large the vast majority of people for the vast majority of history have agreed that this was the correct call. Which is why there have been very few revolutions and very few of the revolutions that there have been have been with the objective of setting up a society with no rules whatsoever.\n\nBut absolutely you can be an anarchist and reject that as being unfair. That's a perfectly philosophically coherent position, just not a very popular one.\n\nI do think your contract law point is a bit of a red herring though. Contracts likewise only work and have validity because as a society we have decided that they should, and if you sign a contract you are also implicitly agreeing that there should be a court system, and a system of rules and laws to make that contract meaningful. Contracts only exist if a state exists to guarantee them.\n\nNow I do get the point about contracts being opt-in whereas the social contract is opt-out but it's not really opt-in because you don't have any real choice. Contracts are legal documents between two parties, if you want to have a functioning society then you need the contracts to be between every person in that society, that's thousands and thousands of contracts, and the only way that then becomes feasible is if those contracts are then all exactly the same. Which then means you have basically no real choice at all, it's just \"sign or don't sign, and by the way if you don't sign you're basically not part of our community\", which is just a more explicit version of the social contract we have now.", "There's an entire field of philosophy called Social Contract dedicated to this thats as old as the field itself. It goes back thousands of years to Socrates, though it didnt really gain momentum until the 'modern' era (1500s-1700s). Like all of philosophy, it gives possible reasons but no \"100% true\" answers. \n\nA very, very brief (to the point of possibly being interpreted inaccurately) breakdown of some of the well known theories:\n\n* Socrates (Crito) - at some point, he chose to live in the society of Athens. By choosing to live in Athens instead of leaving, he implicitly agreed to follow the Law of Athens, since he always had the choice to leave. Socrates might say something like, \"You chose to live in Canada, be a Canadian citizen, enter into contracts protected by Canadian law, and benefit from the Canadian law. Therefore, youre bound by that choice - even if you want to break it\"\n\n* Hobbes - people are rational and people will act in their best interest. The 'original' way of living was the 'State of Nature' - kill or be killed, everything goes, and no morality or laws (since it was kill or be killed). But because people are rational and want to live outside such a brutal world, we came to the conclusion that giving up some of their freedoms to a sovereign will be better for their lives as a whole. He doesnt say this is exactly how it went down, but this is the reason why societies existed and why we derive our morals from the laws - we want to escape the State of Nature, so we internalize the laws of the society to become 'justice' and 'morals'. Hobbes might say something like, \"Living in Canada is better than living in the state of nature. Even if that means being bound by laws you never agreed to or never learned, anything is better than the State of Nature\". \n\n* Rawls (contemporary philosophy) - he goes through a thought experiment about 'Behind the Veil of Ignorance'. Basically, imagine yourself creating a society, but you dont know where you will eventually fall. You dont know if you will be male or female, rich or poor, what ethnicity you will be, etc. He that this \"original person\" will act in their own self interest - and because of that, there is no reason to give power to one side over another. You wouldnt give males more power than females, because you dont know if you would be male or female. Therefore, the \"original person\" would want a society thats fair for all sides, and this is from this position that morality and justice come from. He might say something like this, \"If you were behind the Veil of Ignorance you wouldnt know if you were the one wanting to kill or you were the one being killed. Therefore, you would want a set of laws thats fair for both sides - in this case, you would rather give up your freedom to kill but protect yourself from being killed.\"\n\nTL;DR Philosophy tries to answer this question in different ways, but at some point either implicitly or explicitly, you decided to follow the law and live with others who follow the law. You never signed anything saying you wont kill people, but you agreed to it - you dont kill people and people dont kill you. If you dont like that agreement, you can leave the society and all its protections or break the law and get punished for it. \n\nEdit-formatting", "The very fundamental reality is that the concept of law and a lawful society eventually boils down to threat of violence. That is the root of the entire system. There are of course a lot of flowery embellishments built atop this core principle, and certainly it's not the *first* resort of most systems of law, but it is the ultimate expression of authority and the foundation upon which all other laws lie.\n\nTake your jaywalking offense, for example. Why don't you cross the street where you please? You don't want to be given a ticket. If you are ticketed, why would you pay the ticket? You don't want to be arrested. If they come to arrest you, why would you acquiesce to an arrest? Because you don't want to have violence visited upon you by armed men.\n\nAnd there it is, the core of all law, just a few steps away from crossing a street.\n\nSo you asked why you are \"bound\" to follow the law. The reality is that you're not \"bound\" to do any such thing, but you can expect at best to be deprived of liberty by force, and worst deprived of life if you don't comply. For most people (as evidenced by simple observation of standing governments around the world) the burden of compliance is far less than the threat of said violence, so they simply obey."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "zz34k", "title": "Why is the concept of turbulence more baffling than even quantum mechanics according to some scientists?", "selftext": "Werner Heisenberg once said \n > When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.\n\nAnd in an eerily similar manner, Horace Lamb once quipped\n > I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.\n\nWhy is turbulence such a difficult concept?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zz34k/why_is_the_concept_of_turbulence_more_baffling/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c68zsq3", "c692fng"], "score": [7, 2], "text": ["In a very real sense, if we knew the answer to your question, we would almost certainly understand turbulence.  As it stands, we know the Navier-Stokes equations, which are the equations underlying the behavior of fluids.  But we don't know how to show when and how turbulence emerges from this equations.  If there is a conceptual framework which would allow something other than a brute force analysis (and I suspect there is), we would understand turbulence. Although there has been substantial progress in the field, such framework has remained elusive. \n", "One of the problems is that everything is connected and relates on so many different scales. For instance, nuclear physics isn't exactly childplay, but you can write down isolated reactions, let's say a pion decaying: pion+ = >  muon + neutrino_muon.\n\nAnd that's going to happen with certain probability and will be measurable. In the case of turbulent flow, there are eddies happening from the smallest scales to very large scales, depending on Reynolds numbers, inertia, viscous effects, etc, and vary in the time. [Take a look at this numerical simulation - mind you, this is hours or days of computation time](_URL_0_).\n\nRegarding Heisenberg's quote, though: with the power of numerical simulation and modern computers, we do have a reasonable grasp of what is going on in most situations, although 3D computations are expensive. In case of quantum mechanics, the concept of wave collapse/many worlds interpretation will never make sense to me in an intuitive way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9MMBT6vF_M"]]}
{"q_id": "1i0xre", "title": "why do ink refills cost more than an entire new printer, even if the new printer comes with ink?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i0xre/eli5_why_do_ink_refills_cost_more_than_an_entire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cazvw89", "cazwlah", "cazy0hb", "cb007c2", "cb02f7i"], "score": [31, 10, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["Because the product they are selling is the ink. The sell the printers at reduced price to get them in as many homes as possible so they can sell you the expensive ink. It is the same basic principle as video game consoles. They take a loss on the consoles and make the money on the games ", "Printers usually come with \"starter\" ink cartridges. They don't have as much ink as the refill. I've never actually done the math, but I've got to assume that, if you already own the printer, it's better to buy the refill than it would be to buy a whole new printer with a new starter cartridge. Although, then you'd have two printers. You could sell one. I don't know - somebody's got to work the numbers.\n\nI buy laser printers... every time. For some reason laser printers seem to be immune to the whole \"give away the razors and overcharge for the blades\" thing.", "Price is and always will be a function of the market.  It costs that much because that's what the market will bear, i.e. people are willing to pay it.  If people became unwilling to actually pay it, you'd see them either stop making it or lower prices.", "The ink cartridges in the printer will only print maybe 10% of pages the full refill will. They are not full. ", "You can get most ink cartridges refilled at Costco at low cost. Go to the Photo section. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7tty8l", "title": "why is butter sometimes measured in cups?", "selftext": "Butter is somewhat solid. You can't easily fit butter into a measuring cup and get an accurate measurement. Why did this practice start? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tty8l/eli5_why_is_butter_sometimes_measured_in_cups/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtf4wgw", "dtf4zo6", "dtf9ui7", "dtfb2as"], "score": [6, 4, 5, 6], "text": ["Butter has been around longer than refrigeration. Most likely people churned the butter and used it right away. ", "Because butter in cooking is/was often used in melted form. Or if your really go back you are using a measuring cup to measure out butter from the large butter churn/crock used in the home. It is also an easy measurement with butter. A half pound (2 sticks) is a cup. ", "Of course, sticks are labeled by the cup and teaspoon so practically speaking, it's actually pretty easy to measure out that way.", "There are only two ways to measure something you're introducing into a recipe. Mass or volume.\n\nThere was a time before it only cost $10 for a digital scale to keep in your kitchen. In that time, most recipes were made using volume measurements. \n\nIn addition, the butter churning process ends with setting your butter in a container to solidify again. If you have your 1-cup measures that you pour it into to let solidify, then you already have 1 cup of butter measured.\n\nIn more modern times, sticks of butter are a known size. A pound of butter is 2 cups, and a stick of butter is half a cup. These can be portioned off as needed for smaller measures."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6pbww7", "title": "the lack of biped land animals", "selftext": "When dinosaurs roamed the earth there were many species that were bipedal and were strictly land based. Now only some mammals and a handful of birds are strictly biped. Why is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pbww7/eli5_the_lack_of_biped_land_animals/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dko5asm", "dko5dgs", "dko5pzi", "dkpai0u"], "score": [46, 9, 14, 2], "text": ["First of all, birds are dinosaurs. Second of all, the quadrupedal mode of movement has advantages over bipedal in terms of stability, agility, and power. In order for bipedal modes of movement to win out, you need to make quadrupedal movement disadvantageous or impossible. One way to do that is to evolve delicate, sensitive, hands and an upright posture. Another way is to evolve the forelimbs into wings that cannot be used for walking as opposed to bats who can crawl with their wings.", "The dinosaurs evolved into birds, and they are all bipedal.  In that sense, we may have more bipeds now than ever before.\n\nNot many are *strictly* bipedal because almost that whole branch of life evolved to fly.", "Something you have to remember is that birds *are* dinosaurs, and inherited their bipedalism from their ancestors. As to why many species are not primarily bipedal, bipedalism has some advantages (it raises the head, increasing the field of view and making it easier to climb and wade) it also has severe disadvantages. Walking on two legs puts a lot of strain on the hips and lower back. To compensate, the hips narrow. This makes birthing more difficult and painful, which in turn leads to earlier births (so that the baby isn't as large) which in turn leads to more vulnerable, helpless, and slow growing children. Lower back problems are also common as people grow, which makes them more vulnerable to predation. Four legged movement eliminates some of these problems, increases speed, and makes crouching/hiding easier (good for both predators and prey).\n\nIt's also theorized that humans adapted to an endurance model of hunting, simply exhausting prey until they couldn't run anymore, then killing them, of which bipedalism is a byproduct to multiple skeletal and muscular changes.", "Bipedalism sacrifices speed and stability to increase efficiency, free up the forelimbs, and hold the head high.\n\nTheropod dinosaurs used their forelimbs to grab onto prey and as rudimentary wings to help maneuver while running. These wings became larger and more specialized, allowing the smaller theropods to glide and to climb up near-vertical inclines by flapping their wings. At some point these transitionary birds had wings that were large and muscular enough to lift them off the ground.\n\nBipedalism is a big shift so it can only evolve under very specific circumstances. Bipedalism doesn't provide enough benefits to most animals to warrant giving up the speed and stability found in tried-and-true quadrupedalism."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2chgqc", "title": "why is ebola more dangerous than other diseases?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2chgqc/eli5_why_is_ebola_more_dangerous_than_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjfipj6", "cjfj7fh", "cjfrdr0"], "score": [5, 27, 7], "text": ["In the scheme of things?  Its not.  \n\nIt just has a really high \"if you get this your ass is dead\" rate in Africa.  It also kills in a pretty nasty way. ", "TL;DR It's not.\n\nEbola is contracted in poor African villages when people have to resort to eating dead animals (fruit-bats mainly) they've found in the rain forest. It then spreads through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids (blood, sperm, etc). These people can't afford the necessary healthcare and it tends to just wipe out a lot of people quite quickly (up to 90% fatality rate in central Africa according to WHO).\n\nI think people fear it as the symptoms are quite violent, with extreme vomiting and diarrhea being the main case. The thing is, it's quite treatable in first world countries, and isn't really any more dangerous than a lot of diseases you could contract eating infected raw meat. The media has just blown it out of proportion like it always does with 'super' diseases.", "It's really a lot of reasons. \n\n#1 being the incubation time of the disease. You can have the disease for a very long time (2-21 days) without showing a single symptom but can still transmit the disease. Essentially if you had this disease you could infect everyone you come into contact with in almost a month, that's quite a large number when considering then those people would be infecting people as well.\n\n#2 is there is NO CURE. All we can do for people with Ebola is treat symptoms as they come and let them fight it off themselves, which contributes to the 90% mortality rate. Also they symptoms themselves in the early stages look appear to be the Flu or a bad cold, which includes..\n     \nFever\n\nVomiting\n\nHeadache\n\nMuscle aches\n\nSore throat\n\nGeneral weakness\n\nDiarrhea \n\nThen as the virus progresses that's when the dangerous symptoms start including...\n\nBleeding inside and outside of the body\n\nRash\n\nTrouble breathing\n\nThis can also lead to a very low white blood cell count which makes it harder for the body to fight off the virus. By this time it's likely too late for the patient to recover.\n\n\nLastly it is HIGHLY INFECTIOUS. As stated it is easy to spread the virus through human contact. And as you can see from the symptoms (i.e. Vomiting, Diarrhea, Fever (causes sweating), and Bleeding in later stages) it would be easy to transmit the virus while treating a patient without proper protection and extreme caution. Also it is possible to get the virus from a dead body that had the virus so as people die and embalming/burials are carried out transmission of the virus can still be taking place. \n\n\n\nBut there is good news for those who are afraid and living in first world! The main sources for the Ebola Virus is fruit bats, chimps, and other animals really only found and consumed in Africa. Also the 90% mortality rate is based on mostly outbreaks in Africa. Africa has a high rate of HIV as well and as you may know HIV severely inhibits immune function which is really the only way to fight the virus and any other infections that may come into play. And finally as we know Africa's medical establishments are not nearly as advanced as the rest of the developed world which also plays a part in the mortality rate. \n\nUPDATE/EDIT: as /u/nerdbebo has pointed out, infection does not normally take place until the patient is showing symptoms according to the CDC which would make the infectious period shorter but keep in mind that the first symptoms that show up mimic minor disease or the flu so people would still be going about like normal until they would figure out that something more serious is going on. \n\nSources:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_2_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/ebola-fever-virus-infection", "http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease", "http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/57205.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "6kgznn", "title": "what are sushi masters doing that is so masterful?", "selftext": "I know this is kind of an ignorant statement (this post is my attempt to combat that ignorance), but I watched documentary on a sushi master, and it looks like he takes a piece of raw fish, combines it with a clump of rice, and brushes it with a little sauce. And it apparently took him 30 years to master that, and he's still learning.\n\nWhat about that takes decades to develop, and how is it different from someone with less experience combining the same handful of simple ingredients would produce?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kgznn/eli5_what_are_sushi_masters_doing_that_is_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djlyoub", "djm0fiq", "djm7p7s", "djm8r3y", "djmj20l", "djmjnsd", "djmlv5v", "djmy799", "djnapn7"], "score": [57, 32, 2, 6, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["it starts by the chef choosing which fish to buy from the market.   is it a good fish?  a great fish?  what parts of the fish are good.  what parts are great?   \n\nonce the fish gets to restaurant,  how do you cut the fish?  what angle \n do you cut it?  what's the action of the knife cut?  which parts of fish fit which dishes?    \n\nalot of making sushi is in the making of the rice.   what kind of rice are you using?   how much water?   what temperature?  how long are you cooking?  how much rice vinegar are you mixing in?  how quickly are you cooling down?  is the action that you're stirring in the rice making it more or less fluffy?  sticky? chewy?\n\n", "It's all about subtle improvements in quality. \n\nAnyone with intermediate cooking skills can take the ingredients and make a tolerable piece of sushi. But the rice is very hard to get exactly right, and cutting the fish perfectly (as opposed to decently) takes a lot of judgement. Doing this all at high speed in volume, without reducing quality, is even harder.", "I understand the mastery of piscatorial nuances, but when it comes to rice I am stumped. Does a sushi master create the flavor of the rice to fit his own taste? Or is there a standard \"taste and texture\" to acceptable sushi rice?\n\nOR is this a simple case of the emperor's new clothes?   \n\n\n\n", "Sushi chefs also have to master 'nigiri' (along with other skills mentioned before) which involves the incorporation of air into the rice when they are 'squeezing' the rice into the ball. They have to use the right pressure for the appropriate length of time, and reproduce this consistently which I've heard takes a lot of time to master. ", "It uses expensive ingredients and is a high-status food. Therefore it carries extremely high expectations of quality, requiring chefs to perfect every aspect of the process to meet it. It's a 'practised one kick 10,000 times' scenario.", "Was it Jiro Dreams of Sushi? \n\nI found it really interesting but I'm kind of in the same boat as you.", "A lot of people here dont understand sushi. They think its some kind of pretentious bullshit and meant for rich snobs.\n\nMost people havent tasted good sushi by a legit japanese chef before. Almost everyone i know only tried cold sushi with horrendous rice made by chinese in all you can eat restaurants.", "I've had great sushi and dog shit and everything in between.  Sushi bars are tricky and fickle and it is really hard to find good ones (i currently don't have a go to place right now).  Watching jiro dreams of sushi makes me want to visit japan big time.  Starting from picking the right tuna or yellowtail or octopus or mackerel or whatever is just the beginning.  Preparing the sushi takes so much technique and specialized tools...\n\nI've made rolls at home before, and it is amazing how much work it takes to make a mediocre version of a very simple roll you can go to any sushi place and buy for eight bucks.  I love to cook as much as I love to eat, and I'm not ever fucking with making sushi again... Make sure to tip your master well next time you hit the bar.", "It is greatly exaggerated and essentially just a way to sell the product.  You can never have too much experience when picking out the raw ingredients, but actually preparing the sushi is something anyone can learn in a few months tops, and even less if you already know your way around the kitchen.\n\nI mean think about it, it takes what, 10 years to become a brain surgeon. Does it really take three times the amount of time to learn how to cut dead fish than cutting in someone's living brain? It's insane how the Japanese can get away with anything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4mdzp0", "title": "to increase literacy, mao zedong had the chinese language simplified. why was this never a problem for the japanese language?", "selftext": "I asked my brother who's taking Japanese in school and he didn't know, so now I go to you, dear Reddit, to help me understand.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mdzp0/eli5_to_increase_literacy_mao_zedong_had_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3ups5p", "d3ur4sw", "d3us6rn"], "score": [9, 9, 8], "text": ["Japanese is already a much simpler language.  They use kanji borrowed from Chinese as well which is very complex, but Hiragana is quite straightforward.", "Mao was not merely trying to improve literacy, he was attempting to scour Chinese culture for all references to the past and systematically destroy them in order to create an idealized New China. \n\nSimple Chinese is one of many cultural weapons Mao and the Chinese authority used to homogenize Chinese culture and strip elements like regionalism, Confucism, and liberalism from the language.  \n\nThe Japanese certainly had a similar bout of authoritarianism but Facism generally looks to honor the past while Communism as we saw in China was about destroying the past. That's one of the key differences between Communism and Facism as opposites on the far left and far right side of the political spectrum. ", "[Japan *does* have a form of simplified kanji, called shinjitai.](_URL_0_) Many of these are the same forms that Simplified Chinese took, while others are different. Some simplified forms are unique to Chinese while others are unique to Japanese, although shinjitai is not as extensive as Simplified Chinese was, which is likely due to the fact that Japan already used syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) in addition to kanji."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai"]]}
{"q_id": "fjk2of", "title": "Why do some viruses mutate faster than others (e.g. HIV vs. flu)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fjk2of/why_do_some_viruses_mutate_faster_than_others_eg/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkp5gqq"], "score": [34], "text": ["Influenza doesn\u2019t actually mutate faster than HIV or polio. Most RNA viruses, like measles and polio, and single-stranded DNA viruses like parvo and so on, undergo very high rates of mutation that are generally quite similar to each other. (Coronaviruses are a little more stable, but still have very high rates of mutation compared bacteria or mammals or even DNA viruses like herpes or pox.)\n\nWhere flu is unusual is in its ability to *tolerate* mutations. When a virus like measles mutates, it's likely to end up in a defective state. Influenza is amazingly tolerant of mutations in its surface proteins (hemagglutinin especially, but also neuraminidase). It's those surface proteins that antibodies recognize, so it works out that flu is able to avoid antibody recognition without suffering serious consequences otherwise.\n\nCompare to measles, which is very limited in its mutation tolerance; most mutations in measles that change its antigenicity also make it virtually non-viable. Or compare to HIV, which also can undergo mutations to avoid the immune system. But those mutants, although they can survive and persist in the face of an immune response, tend to be massively crippled and defective, and when the immune attack is removed the virus tends to mutate back toward its original, less crippled, starting point. \n\nInfluenza doesn't have to do that, because its immune-evading mutations don't cripple it badly, so it's possible for it to circulate continuously and keep moving along an evolutionary path that allows it to avoid population immunity.\n\nNote that this ability is mainly important for infecting long-lived species that are repeatedly exposed to the same virus. Influenza viruses that infect swine, which are short lived (at least in agriculture) don't show the same sort of antigenic variation. So this is mainly useful for influenza viruses that infect *humans*, instead of their more natural host, waterfowl.\n\nWhy or how does flu do this? It's kind of a circular answer. If flu *didn't* do this, it wouldn't be flu and we wouldn't know or care about it. At some point in evolutionary history, an influenza virus progenitor happened to luck into this configuration, and then eventually it turned out that it's really well suited for infecting humans. It's just evolutionary chance. In fact, influenza B viruses are much less tolerant of mutations. They accumulate fewer mutations than influenza A viruses, and are typically easier to vaccinate against. \n\nFurther reading:\n\n* [Accurate Measurement of the Effects of All Amino-Acid Mutations on Influenza Hemagglutinin](_URL_0_)\n* [Deep mutational scanning of hemagglutinin helps predict evolutionary fates of human H3N2 influenza variants.](_URL_2_)\n* [The Influenza B Virus Hemagglutinin Head Domain Is Less Tolerant to Transposon Mutagenesis than That of the Influenza A Virus.](_URL_3_)\n* [Mutational analysis of measles virus suggests constraints on antigenic variation of the glycoproteins](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4926175/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4464907/", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30104379", "https://jvi.asm.org/content/92/16/e00754-18.long"]]}
{"q_id": "6790qv", "title": "[meta] Why do you read/participate in AskHistorians?", "selftext": "Hello! My name is Sarah Gilbert. I\u2019m a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia\u2019s iSchool: School of Library Archival and Information Studies, in Canada whose doctoral research explores why people participate in online communities. So far, my research has focussed on the relationship between different kinds of [participation and motivation] (_URL_1_) and the role of [learning as a motivation for participating](_URL_0_) in an online community. I\u2019m also really interested in exploring differences in motivations between online communities. \n\nAnd that\u2019s where you come in!  \n\nI\u2019ve been granted permission by the AskHistorians moderators to ask you why you participate in AskHistorians. I\u2019m interested hearing from people who participate in all kinds of ways: people who lurk, people up upvote and downvote, people who ask questions, people who are or want to be panellists, moderators, first time viewers - everyone! Because this discussion is relevant to my research, the transcript may be used as a data source. If you\u2019d like to participate in the discussion, but not my research, please send me a PM. \n\nI\u2019d love to hear why you participate in the comments, but I\u2019m also looking for people who are willing to share 1-1.5 hours of their time discussing their participation in AskHistorians in an interview. If so, please contact me at ~~sgilbert@_URL_2_~~ or via PM. \n\nEdit: I've gotten word that this email address isn't working - if you'd like to contact me via email, please try sagilber@mail._URL_2_\n\nEdit 2: Thank you so much for all of the amazing responses! I've been redditing since about 6am this morning, and while that's not normally much of an issue, it seems to have made me very tired today! If I haven't responded tonight, I will tomorrow. Also, I plan to continue to monitor this thread, so if you come upon it sometime down the road and want to add your thoughts, please do! I'll be working on the dissertation for the next year, so there's a pretty good chance you won't be too late!\n\nEdit 3, April 27: Again, thanks for all your contributions! I'm still checking this post and veeeeeerrry slowing replying.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6790qv/meta_why_do_you_readparticipate_in_askhistorians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgokfl0", "dgokgb3", "dgokony", "dgokzgf", "dgol8wb", "dgoli8r", "dgomh2v", "dgomi5x", "dgomrwz", "dgoms6z", "dgon9c4", "dgonct9", "dgoo5vs", "dgoo61r", "dgoomy4", "dgopc00", "dgopk4b", "dgopniv", "dgopvf9", "dgoq7bb", "dgoqye0", "dgor0w2", "dgor9pk", "dgora5j", "dgosr78", "dgotac4", "dgotmnk", "dgou5fr", "dgougn7", "dgovlsp", "dgovr2l", "dgowe1t", "dgowmw8", "dgowwfr", "dgowxai", "dgox4l1", "dgox6g3", "dgoyd3v", "dgoyz1l", "dgoyzyj", "dgoz878", "dgp11ab", "dgp1dvn", "dgp31rb", "dgp5f0u", "dgp5stc", "dgp7bap", "dgp7vjt", "dgp7wud", "dgp8oyo", "dgpbtox", "dgpce5g", "dgpcfoj", "dgpioa0", "dgpizee", "dgpjrxt", "dgpkqbf", "dgpl2yq", "dgpq08x", "dgpu522", "dgpubcl", "dgq174g", "dgq8zu6", "dgqs1bc", "dgr8qgl", "dgt7ejw", "dgwdqcz", "dgzarb1", "dh6fcy5"], "score": [29, 3, 3, 5, 15, 3, 5, 3, 3, 31, 2, 3, 8, 11, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 8, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 11, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 10, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 3, 6, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Ultimately, history is my expression of nerd-dom. I love history, I love talking about it, I love being crazy enthusiastic about it...and most importantly of all, *I love getting other people as enthusiastic about it as I am.* :D AskHistorians is the perfect blend of casual and serious to allow me to get down and dirty with historical method but still have FUN with it.\n\nI can think of a lot of next level factors. I know SO MUCH MORE about the Middle Ages, especially off the top of my head, since I've been writing here. (\"If you want to learn something, teach it.\") I've made some fantastic connections with other AH regulars. AskHistorians needs more women both as readers and as panelists, and REALLY needs people who can talk knowledgeably about women's and gender history.\n\nIn the end, though, my significant participation (I am an active moderator as well as question-answerer) comes down to the fact that I believe AskHistorians does something special, important, and exciting. It's hard to think of someplace else that gets so many people excited about *understanding* the past for the past's own sake--not to fulfill a sense of WW2 hero-worship or to twist something politically. It's hard to think of another accessible place so committed to breaking down the barriers of proprietary knowledge that academia and academic publishing are so insistent on maintaining. AH does something I believe in, and the environment we've cultivated makes doing that FUN.\n\nI will e-mail you as well. :)", "Because sometimes there are interesting answers and/or questions. Most of the time I'm just frustrated by graveyards of what I consider to be perfectly acceptable answers, though. ", "If I'm interested in a particular topic, I can further investigate the source myself.  The contributors tend to provide good sources that are easy to read, as I usually don't know the first book to check out on the topic.", "Hi Sarah! \n\nI've been quietly following the dialogue as you organised this with the mod team, and I'm really excited that we have this chance to support you in your research! \n\nI forget exactly how it is that I stumbled across /r/AskHistorians. Like a lot of our readership past and present, I was a teenager fascinated by history around the time I joined. I'd graduated from school and just started a humanities degree, and when I discovered that Reddit could be useful for more than just cat pictures, I was overjoyed! \n\nAt first, /r/AskHistorians was basically just a place where I could procrastinate on my work while still feeling guilt free (or at least, less guilty!) because I was learning something. Sort've like how we always manage to discover those *incredibly interesting* around the time we're meant to be doing something more important. Even now there's a big element of procrastination to my involvement here, but this time I'm not just learning, I'm supporting community outreach, and promoting public interest in history! Whatever it takes to distract myself from my impending deadlines. \n\nBut if it were just about procrastination I wouldn't be here, four years and Lord knows how many hours later. It became clear to me pretty quickly that /r/AskHistorians really is something unique on Reddit and the wider Internet, and something which I wanted to be a part of. This project played an enormous role in feeding my passion for history, and I credit it above everything else for transforming me from a naive teenager interested in history for its wars and its battles to a naive early-twenties-er with a much broader and richer ~~understanding of my own ignorance~~ range of amateur interests. \n\n/r/AskHistorians has shown me how much there is to learn and why it's worth learning. It gives me fascinating windows into fields of study I never even knew existed. It's introduced me to an incredible community and a team of flairs and moderators who I am privileged to work with and alongside whom I feel woefully amateur. And it keeps bringing me back with something new every single day.", "I have two basic motivations for posting. The simplest is that I fill a gap. There's a dearth of fashion historians on Reddit in general - a lot of incorrect but popular history gets passed around on the subject, a lot of supposition or speculation, and personal experience (in modern clothes or reenactment attire) gets used as the be-all-end-all of proof. By having someone in my field here, I can correct misinformation and make sure that people asking questions in my area of fashion history - roughly 1660 though the 1950s - are coming away with an impression that's as close to accurate as I can make it. (Also, now that I'm a mod I can remove answers that might have stood previously, because I recognize the outdated assumptions they're based on even when they appear to be formally-written and cited.)\n\nThe other reason is that I'm a public historian at heart. I'm more into dating/sequencing than most fashion historians, which is certainly more of a \"behind the scenes\" issue, but my favorite thing about my day job (I'm a curator/collections manager in a small museum) is working on exhibitions. Recently I installed *Come On!: Portraits and Posters of World War I* and *Miner Street in 1900* (a map of a residential street in our town with photos and blurbs on the people who lived there); currently I'm working on making binders to hold labels for all of the objects placed on view in our historic rooms, figuring out what we know about them and what I can say to teach the people who actually want to read labels about their original owners (one rocking chair was from a Revolutionary War veteran!), their uses (the difference between an astral and a solar lamp), and their decorative arts styles (mostly Empire, some Sheraton).", "I'm generally insufferable about the minutiae about Italian society and culture, especially when discussing in the centuries immediately preceding the renaissance; so this is a great outlet for me.\n\nI kid (sort of). In any case, I find that anyone can name the Ninja Turtles and pass that off as cursory knowledge on the Italian Renaissance; however what most people don't know is that the Renaissance is the apex of centuries of economic, social, and political development; which left profound marks on Italy as well as the whole of western society. ", "Hello and welcome to our sub :).\n\nWell, ever since I have gotten interested in history or to be more specific Economic History, I have been something of an annoyance to my many friends, parents, cousins who had to put up with my lectures about rather obscure topics of which they had no interest in or anything to benefit from. It just so happens that my interests itself are very specific and there is no forum that is better for writing on such specialized topics.\n\nWhere else can I write long answers on topics ranging from [New Deal](_URL_0_), Socialism in [Soviet Union](_URL_3_) and [Yugoslavia](_URL_5_), the impact of liberalization of Cooperative Housing in Sweden, China's agricultural reform, [Marxism](_URL_1_), South Korea's [Industrialization program](_URL_2_) etc etc. I also [actively ask](_URL_4_) questions and I know the answer I am going to get is a quality one and which I can trust. The Moderators have been very kind in even granting me a flair.\n\nr/AskHistorians is truly a great place where you have a lot of people present who actually want to have an in-depth understanding of a topic and excellent moderation which ensures that there is a very conducive environment to do so. This combination of things is not present in other places. I view it as Singapore of Reddit.\n\n", "Hello Sarah and welcome!\n\nFor me personally, AskHistorians provided an incredble opportunity to expand and focus my hobby, which was at first very loose and could be defined as \"literally everything in the past is interesting and I need to know as much as possible\". With this attitude, I have devoured many answers on here as a lurker. When I decided to post questions of my own, I very quickly became attuned to the way inquiries on here are perceived and how it is best to approach them. Through the process of asking many, many questions I slowly became much more attentive and inquisitive in my normal way of approaching historical topics. Through this, I also started posting answers (to be sure - I still mostly like to think of myself as an inquisitive layman rather than anything else). Having posts removed or prodded for sources immensely helped in changing my approach to writing to something much more comprehensive. It also made me re-evaluate how much I know about certain topics and which areas can be called my \"expertise\". Subsequently I studied more of these particular topics and thus my interests became much more clearly defined. \n\nThe last step was recognizing how great the community on here is and having a desire to contribute, however slightly, to keeping the quality of the place high. Eventually this manifested in me accepting the offer to become a moderator.\n\nOverall, I love AskHistorians for its uniqueness among pretty much all of online communities and I cherish the ability of the sub to provide in-depth answers to the general public, as well as keeping the forum free of pettiness or rudeness, which tend to sour seemingly every facet of our collective online existence.", "I don't believe I'm a good candidate for an interview but, quite simply, history is fascinating. I love learning of (and researching) the things that have shaped the modern world: Conflicts that have drawn boundaries, people who have created recognizable modern artifacts, the stories of those who have made the world we know now.\n\nThis subreddit is a great resource for that. I've been able to answer a few questions myself but by and large I lean on the expertise of the more-qualified academic contributors.", " I am a \"people who lurk\" on AskHistorians. I will never post anything of significance in AskHistorians, such as this post. \n\nHistory is interesting to me, but not my strength. I am new to Reddit and up or down voting is not something I am used to, so that rarely happens either. \n\nI enjoy the well thought out questions and the very well researched answers by people that really have a passion for history. I usually get sucked into responses, follow their links and spend hours learning about topics I never knew existed or may have known about but not to the extent presented here. I found AskHistorians by chance when I was looking for good subs on Reddit as a new user. \n\nKeep the good stuff coming and I will passively sit on the sidelines learning about the history I never knew I wanted to know.", "I'm not an expert in anything historical, but I enjoy this sub because I love learning about random things. I do have an interest in history as well, obviously, though I'm not academic about it. The stuff people ask about here is really, truly random and there's nearly always someone ready to chime in with eclectic knowledge. This sub and ELI5 are a blast for me.", "I study history with a United States concentration at the University of Delaware.\n\nI come here to be among better historians than I (I hesitate to call myself one), to learn and ask questions, and maybe one day to be a panelist.", "I've asked enough questions on this forum to be highlighted for it so I'll answer from that point of view. Those questions have ranged from [fish tanks in ancient Rome](_URL_2_) to [Paul Bunyan and fakelore](_URL_3_) to the [Dyatlov Pass incident](_URL_0_) to \n[Mark Twain, medieval theology, and universal salvation with respect to Satan](_URL_1_). Those links show how AskHistorians rewards such inquisitiveness. The users in those threads (tagging to appease the bot: /u/QuickSpore, /u/itsallfolklore, /u/OnlyDeanCanLayEggs, and /u/sunagainstgold) have demonstrated over and over again that they are willing to take a good chunk of time to address the things that pop into my head while driving or reading or staring at my monitor at work daydreaming about being Spaceman Spiff. \n\nI can't think of any other venue in which such disparate areas of historical expertise coalesce into a knowledge pool this deep. Anyone who provides an answer here has clearly parsed through the reams of paper dedicated to their area of interest and distributed a product for users who seem to be looking for something between what you'd find in an academic journal and a well-written and sourced Wikipedia entry. And the best of the answers on here trend toward the former.\n\nSomeone else who answered you mentioned 'comment graveyards.' That's another reason I come here. I love those graveyards; they let me know that the moderators here are motivated individuals who are dedicated to keeping Snapple Facts far away from what I consider reddit's City upon a Hill. It's also how I've become comfortable with not tasking everyone who provides an answer to a question I ask to present a list of sources for me to go through to test the validity of an answer. That being said, I can already fill a library with the books AH has added to my Amazon wish list. \n\nThe users here also come from a variety of academic and professional fields, not to mention walks of life. The answers that they provide are clearly going to be informed in at least some way by those backgrounds. In that regard there's an aspect that I personally find appealing. I don't know from what angle any given user is going to approach my question and often that leads to the awakening of some latent area of interest in myself and other users. \n\nSo, learning is certainly the motivation for me participating here. I lurk around a lot of other places on reddit, but I rarely engage in any discussion elsewhere. The conversations that take place in most other subreddits aren't enticing enough to me. I got a guy at work who thinks people killed off the dinosaurs because 'they're fucking scary' and I can talk to him in person if I want. That's not to say that there aren't good conversations elsewhere on this website and across the Internet as a whole. Obviously, that's not the case. I just haven't found such a concentration of substantive discussion in many places outside AskHistorians.", "I first ran into AskHistorians when I was doing a Masters Degree in Ancient History, so I was already at the point of committing myself to further historical education beyond my bachelor's. I love history, I love talking about it, I love introducing things to people from history and being introduced to new things in turn. I was being exposed to a raft of new ideas and subjects during my Masters, and also on AskHistorians, the two fed off of one another in terms of expanding my historical awareness. Then I grew to love what AskHistorians was creating in terms of a particular community, and not long afterwards I was asked to be a moderator here, which I've now been for several years. I find it hard to imagine AskHistorians not being a part of my life.\n\nI don't post as much as I'd like any more due to having less time to do so, but I care very much about the community that I've been part of for so long, and I've made a number of very dear friends throughout my time here. That, along with my belief in what the community is doing, is probably why I've been a moderator for so long now. I feel that AskHistorians is a precious thing that needs watching and nurturing, its robust ability to maintain a polite discourse and avoid derailment is entirely due to human effort, both on part of moderators and the wider community.\n\nAskHistorians allows me to talk about history in a rigorous way that still employs a very different register to writing a paper; it's a public presentation that I'm in full control over. I'm feel like it's a creative and historical outlet, but also an opportunity to interest people, and hopefully change people's perceptions; a number of my historical focuses are considered fairly obscure, so I've always felt a little like I'm an advocate for them, simply by being around to answer comprehensively when someone does run into the Seleucids, or the Greco-Bactrians, and wants to know more.", "I am here because learning about history and sharing that knowledge is one of the most meaningful things I do. If I had to rank things that give my life purpose it would be something like 1)Family 2)Friends 3)Learning about history and sharing what I have learned 4) Career. This is a fantastic place both to learn and to teach. The q and a format means that rather than lecturing I am engaging with something the questioner already cares about. The need for rigor means that I must always refine my own knowledge - I know so much more than when I started. Compared with other history for this is a community much more dedicated to scholarship and  less interested in speculation or opinion. Indeed, I find that this place is uniquely respectful of knowledge (so many places treat opinions as equal, or hold people ability to participate more important than distinguishing between who knows what they are talking about) without being too deferential to outside authority. It is a blend of rigor and openness - anyone can answer, and their work speaks for itself. Since I am outside of Academia this is my chance to participate in a fairly substantial exchange about history; it is a great way for me to participate in something intellectual and stimulating and enriching. This also makes this a place worth maintaining and expanding and sharing, which is why I am a mod.", "I prefer the answers I see here even when the questions may be better asked in a different subreddit. The flaired users and mods provide a straight up better experience, including an effort at intelligent discussion and attempting to mitigate/disclosing biases. Not many other subs can offer that", "I'm a writer with a side passion for art criticism, and I study history in so far as it has to do with art and literature.\n\nIncidentally, it has a hell of a lot to do with art and literature, and so I study as much as my capacity would allow.", "I like to see a good scholarly rough and tumble.  \n\nNot just typical reddit BS but people who actually know things discussing them at a high yet accessible level.\n\nMy participation has lessoned over time, because most of the things I actually have read useful literature on have already been given high quality responses, so the effort of writing a high-quality response seeems less worth it.\n\nI still read a lot of great responses and back-and-forth though, and those are my favorite threads by far.", "Im a scientist and college professor, and I find thay r/askhistorians answers questions worth answering in a deep and nuanced way.  I also appreciate that the answerers often change poorly stated questions into better, more tractable ones.  ", "To me, AskHistorians creates some of the highest quality and most interesting content on Reddit. I was a History/Econ double major in undergrad and I've found so many questions and answers that have piqued my interest in the same way that many of my undergrad classes did. I love that people here are passionate about their fields of study and are willing to write in-depth and interesting answers on so many different types of questions. There are very few places where you can get such informed and interesting content and that's why I always excited to see what's new each day.\n\nI've had the opportunity to answer a couple of questions based on classes and research that I've done, and even was interested in a couple questions enough to go out and do a little additional research based on resources that I already knew existed. I know that I'm not always the right person to answer a question, but I always feel a little proud when I know that I can add something to this place. ", "I am not a historian. My focus has been scientific/computing, not history or sociology. However, history is important--it's referenced constantly, it informs current politics, and (to me, most importantly,) the methodology of the study of history is both interesting and useful to know more about. It's a way of examining data that I'm not directly trained in, and learning more about it helps me think and approach my own personal tasks differently. In short, not only do I learn about history, I learn new ways of viewing the world.", "There are a number of reasons I'm here. Let me count the ways.\n\n1) I love most areas of history, and I am absolutely guaranteed to find something new here every time I dip in. This was true when I was just reading, it was true when I started to contribute, it was true when I got flair, and now that I'm a (very new) moderator, holy shit, is it true. Even on questions with my areas of research and knowledge, where I think I know the answer and start typing, the mere act of telling someone else about something *always* leads me to question assumptions, do the digging into books and journals, and learn something new. And importantly, I get a deeper understanding, which is different and, I think, more important.\n\n2) I am a massive fan of online community as a concept. I've been a moderator and community manager in some form very nearly as long as I've been online, which is a little over 20 years now. Online communities have characteristics offline ones don't, which we're still only barely getting to grips with. AH has a huge sense of community even at the most public end, and that's all the more accentuated behind the scenes.\n\n3) I'm a re-enactor (sort of - I play in the Society for Creative Anachronism), and AH is fantastic for digging out the answers to thorny practical questions, because of the cross-disciplinary nature of a place where historians, archaeologists, literary critics, and others cross paths.\n\n4) I was a mature student on a distance-learning course when I got my BA (History  &  Literature). As such, I'm downright passionate about access to history for people who aren't in conventional academia, or indeed aren't in academia at all. As a graduate of such a course, I still have access to JSTOR and other such sources of information that the general public don't, and that's ridiculous. All of history should be available to anyone who wants to learn, not hidden behind paywalls or in ivory towers. AH fulfils that mission admirably, and not only gives access to that material via people who can assess it and explain it, but pushes it out into the wider world via social media and other outreach.", "I really enjoy how well regulated AskHistorians is, while still allowing the subreddit to have \"fun\" during April Fools. All the posts are informative and it allows an interesting look into how optimally reddit as a medium can work within an academic setting. I typically lurk and have thought about posting but I don't think I have enough expertise to answer most questions. For subjects that I know more about, I would probably answer if someone has not already, but I'm waiting on the perfect question to be asked for that!", "I just love the quality of answers, and the demanding requirements, that this sub has.\n\nThere are two areas of interest of mine, post WWII Nazi Germany, and LGBT rights.  I have asked questions here and there.  Unfortunately, not every one has gotten answered, but those that do are extremely impressive.  I just keep plugging away, though, here and there, and while I don't like to make repeated reposts and be annoying, I still look for the best ways to get answers.\n\nHistory was my minor in college, and it's fascinating to me, keep up the good work, and once again thank you to all who contribute and keep this site solid academia.  ", "Good people, good resource! I'm a first-year postgraduate going for a career in academia. Two big problems I've run into this year have been 1) not knowing what I need to know and 2) how to organize my thoughts on different things.\n\nTo the first, this place is great because I can look at answers from other medievalists here, and I can kind of map out how they ended up being able to give those answers, including some sources, if I want to follow that path myself. At the beginning of the year, I was a nervous wreck because of impostor syndrome--you feel like you're expected to know X Y and Z, everyone else knows all that by heart, and you're gonna get busted for not knowing those things that everyone else already knows. This place kinda helped break that. Everyone's asking questions, it's not a competitive environment. I taught myself to look at the great answers here and not think \"shit, why don't I know that already?\" and instead thing \"oh my god that's really cool, now I gotta ask more questions and get more out of this person!\" Basically, the closer you can get to approaching curiosity like a 5-year-old again, the better. Learn like a kid, articulate it later like an adult.\n\nAs to the second, answering questions genuinely helps me learn the material better. I figured that out when I was tutoring in undergrad, and it's still true here. Say I just read like five chapters from a history book on, I don't know, the history of literacy, and I'm still jittery from all the espresso I drank during. I could spend it writing down in notes, but if I'm totally honest with myself, notes are really time-consuming, and I don't retain them well. They're quick reference for essay-writing at best. But here, considering the volume of questions we get, chances are good I can answer someone's question related to what I just read or have read in the past month or so, and doing that is like...the best way I can describe it is that it's like laying all the pieces of a log cabin down in order, instead of just sitting on a pile of wood and rummaging through what you need. You don't really understand an idea unless you can package it in a way someone else understands easily. This is super lame and dumb and nerdy but I've started formatting my 'notes' that way. Instead of a bunch of bullet points, I'll make an imaginary question and write a paragraph or so answering it. I'm very aware that medieval stuff is a pretty inaccessible field, so being able to talk about it and show people how exciting it is can be fabulous.\n\nBasically, answering questions is universally good for everyone, and I get some nice selfish perks on the side! As long as I'm not a dingus and give bad answers, in which case none of the flairs here shy away from correcting each other in a helpful, respectful way.", "I just read stuff.\n\nThere is a great variety of topics and time periods on the sub. It's ways fun to read the well thought out responses and learn something new. \n\nI also find it fun to think about the person asking the question. What thoughts/discussions are going on in their lives. \n ", "When I first started posting here I was still in my last year of high school. I'm not sure I could say *why* I stuck around other than that I generally had nothing better to do and my girlfriend at the time thought I might as well write about stuff I enjoyed (she changed her tune later when she realized it took me upwards of an hour sometimes to put something together). Once I had determined I'd stick around, though, I realized that it was a good place to get used to articulating my ideas and synthesizing thoughts that I could use later for work. And it *has* been helpful, I'd credit AH with helping me gather my thinking together well enough for me to become confident in my understanding of how classical scholarship is actually done--I've always been good at Latin and Greek, but actually being scholarly is a very different thing. I dropped the Chemistry part of my double major about a year after joining AH and have never looked back. Even more recently it's helped me put together my thoughts better--a number of arguments in my undergraduate honors thesis started as posts here, and recently a user's question made me think about a particular politician's career more carefully than I had before. There's a lot of *really* interesting stuff that gets asked here, alongside the more regular \"what did Hitler think?\" and \"ELI5\" stuff that clutters the upper regions of the front page. Even those questions, until you inevitably get bored with them, are useful in helping understand how to formulate answers that, to a specialist, seem so trivially elementary as to be, at first glance, almost inept. And of course I just like teaching, mostly because I like the sound of my own voice. There's also the fact that, being one of the younger users on the sub, I can learn a lot from people above me. There are a lot of people here who are really useful if you need a little help with something. For example, /u/Astrogator, who works in one of the epigraphic databases, helped me out on some epigraphic work I was doing since the epigraphist at my university mostly does Greek stuff (btw Astrogator, one of the inscriptions, despite what I thought, did actually make it into the final draft of my thesis). And there's a certain degree of satisfaction in finding a nice little piece of the internet where people like me can hang out and not be swamped by the mind-melting barrages of memes that have destroyed at least one classics undergrad I know. There's something very satisfying, for example, in talking behind the scenes with /u/bitparity about some element of Greek syntax, only to realize it's in Byzantine Greek and looks utterly moronic to me. ", " Admittedly I tend to lurk. I'm finishing up my integrated masters in history and while my university is so bad it's largely killed my love of the subject, I still try to keep my eye out for any new theories and such, and if my knowledge is of any help then I will always seek to share it, if needed.\nI like to follow the philosophy of 'give no man neither advice nor salt, unless he asks for it' so try to stick to lurking until I can't contain myself any further. \n\nHope that answer helps. If you have questions, feel free to ask. ", "More of a lurker, but I'll post once in a blue moon.\n\nI'm a professional archivist, but I also publish history on occasion (mostly regional publications, and some pop-history for local newsletters). Browsing here gives me an idea of the kinds of topics that people are interested in hearing about. I like the variance in questions because the researchers I work with are sometimes so static, it gets very boring working, sometimes for months, on the same question.\n\nI also enjoy the open aspect of it. The academic atmosphere can be very authoritarian at times, and I like how anyone can participate here. It creates some problems with bad or incomplete information being passed around, but the moderation team here seems to be fairly good and proactive at forcing substantive participation. \n\nAll things considered it's a great resource for Reddit. I don't know that I'd put much weight in its value in my professional life, but after I've answered the same question about rural economics for the thirtieth time in a day, it's nice to unwind with something light.", "Finally, a question I'm qualified to answer!\n\nPlease allow me to begin with an anecdote:\n\nOne day when I was listening to NPR or some such programming, someone pointed out one of the virtues of listening to music on your favorite radio station rather than your MP3 player is that you have a chance to be randomly introduced to a song or singer you might enjoy which you otherwise might never have known about.\n\nIn a way, AskHistorians has been like my history 'radio' these past few years. Getting on here gives me the chance to learn about areas of history which I may not have even thought to explore.\n\nI've even been exposed to hypotheses and frameworks I would otherwise never have known. In turn, as any good armchair historian, I can apply them to my own areas of interest when seeking to understand or explain phenomenon.\n\nYet another charm of AskHistorians is a certain sense of solidarity I feel. I'm not really surrounded by many people who care or know much about the areas of history I'm most familiar with. By getting on AskHistorians I am reminded that there are not only others who enjoy the same kind of stuff I enjoy, but there are also regular people behind the computer like me who in fact know far more about this or that than I do. It feels reaffirming and provides me with a sense of solidarity I otherwise wouldn't have. \n\nEven though I'm a lurker, the tone of the subreddit and ability to respond to anyone (within community accepted boundaries) makes me feel more like a peer to some contemporary great academic minds rather than feeling like an anonymous fan connected only to such people through reading their books or articles.\n\nLast, and perhaps least importantly, it provides an endless stream of interesting trivia to whip out in conversation. I come here and generally feel comfortable with quoting things I've read because I have *trust* in the way this subreddit is maintained and moderated.", "1. I am interested in history, lest I inadvertently repeat it. There is little or no point in being interested about the present or future without being interested in the past.\n\n2. r/AskHistorians has such high standards that one is left with the firm impression that every last comment is peer-reviewed. It is even more reliable than r/AskScience.\n\n3. History is stories, and stories grab the imagination like facts cannot. I learned this crucial fact when watching the 2nd version of Cosmos, which was mostly (I think) written by Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife.", "I read and never comment. For me, this is a place where I can actually trust answers. The moderation team does such a good job, and other users moderate each other to such a degree that I feel fairly comfortable knowing what I'm reading is accurate. It's quite amazing how rare that feeling is on the internet. I can honestly say I have never read an article from the internet without seriously doubting most of the information in it. We live in an era where misinformation exists at every level, so it's nice to be a part of a place that cares so much about the truth. \n\nPlus I like history. ", "I dig through the archives often, looking for posts relating to subjects I'm interested in, either personally or as a question arising from a class I'm taking.  For the former, I'm generally treating AskHistorians as an encyclopedia, only better, because it tends to offer a diverse collection of answers.  For the latter, it's usually that I'm checking a lecture from a professor against other scholars within the field, to see how it matches up.  This is especially true if I already know that something I'm being taught in class is controversial, or else I'm hearing something that I recognize as wildly different from what I've previously heard.\n\nI also use AskHistorians extensively for getting an idea of the state of history as a discipline: what's the overall job market like; which fields are in most demand; what do historians think are the best/worst aspects of the industry.  I also trawl the archives to get insight into grad school.\n\nHonestly, I use it for a lot of things, the above just being the main ones.  AskHistorians is my one-stop-shop for all things history-related.", "I'll be your outlier I guess, to some degree, and that's why I am replying to this. Although, in a way, I am just a sort of nerd with great interest in history, and that puts me right in the majority group. Let me explain myself. I am a science teacher, raised in a house of economists, and a very avid reader of history/economy/sociology. My science education and frame of mind puts me off from historical romances, fantasy epics and unsourced historical claims or nationalist views of mankind common history and, instead, tells me to really value the process and production of the academic community. Here I can access snippets of that production, written at a level that I can keep up with. But that's not how I found this reddit, and I think that's the fun part.\nI also have a hobby. I have been creating a detailed alternative world for a long time. This alternative world follows all rules and logic of our World, be it climatology, tectonics or human history. Geology and Earth Sciences in general I can deal with myself, but, as I try to detail History for my con-world, I often find that my understanding of, for example, the bronze age society, is too limited. I have written a few specific questions here ([some answered](_URL_0_) - this by u/mrhumphries75 and others, [some not](_URL_1_)) that I don't think anywhere else on the whole internet would be answered to with sufficient quality and that I would never found answered in a wikipedia article. Often, just by lurking, I also get answers to questions that I hadn't even think of. This is what's specific and upmost nerdy about me as an AskHistorians user. I went from being a partially uncritical reader of Jared Diamond to a never-satisfied reader of everything beyond \"Guns, Germs and Steel\".\nI have also contributed sometimes. Nothing of significant worth or noteworthy but, as a portuguese citizen with some history books in my library, I can easily know specifics to some questions about Portugal and so I contribute to fill in, typically starting with \"while nobody more knowledgeable replies, here's something to get started\". I source what I say and stick with facts and very little analysis, because I know my limits as a contributor. Still (and I hope the mods read this in a favorable way), I've learnt to always expect \"removal\".", "I'm a lurker, not a historian.  I wouldn't even claim to be 'interested' in history more than any other topic of study.\n\nThe reason this sub appeals to me in particular is the high degree of academic rigour that goes into it.  I haven't found many online communities that care so much about the quality of their content.\n\nOne thing I find neat about askhistorians is how 'dumb' questions aren't discouraged.  There's always room to elaborate on a subject.  Contrast this with most technical communities where 'RTFM' or 'JFGI' are the go-to answers for many questions.", "I love history, but didn't study it at university. So I'm not qualified to answer questions. I ask them instead. I might be almost qualified to answer Napoleon questions. That would be great if I could one day do that :D", "Personally, I have a thirst for knowledge. Since I am only a junior in high school I obviously do not pertain the same level of information as other subs here, but I'll always make my attempts. History has been interesting for ever since I was in grade school reading books on Alexander the Great, and I hope to spend time in the future researching what is not known. Once again it is very hard for me to information, for example currently I'm researching Hellenic literature, specifically poetry, and have hit a wall trying to find a copy of Callimachus's \"The Pinakes\". While the members of this subreddit are extremely helpful some times stuff like this is mind-boggling hard to find. But I digress, my point is that I view this subreddit as somewhere to ask for directions, not to find answers. \nP.S. I've always had an interest in psychology, as well as philosophy, so I think what you're doing is super rad, best of luck with your studies!", "I read a lot of history, including getting pretty deep into primary sources on infrastructure and urban planning issues, but since I\u2019m not in the academic world, I don\u2019t really have any way to easily share that knowledge.  I would find it both daunting and a bit immodest to organize and write an entire book, or even a lengthy article.  I\u2019m much better at summarizing things into a succinct answer to a specific question.\n\nI'm happy to be interviewed, but my email failed.  You can PM me.", "I'm a lurker. I just like learning about history. Besides just a love of gaining new knowledge I think understanding history helps me understand modern events a little better. I'm not a historian so I don't believe I could actually answer anyone's questions competently. I suppose if I had a good follow up question I would comment. \n\nI will up vote some thing I find interesting, or a response I find particularly good. I don't think I have ever down voted anything here. Mostly because even if I dislike a comment or question I'm still interested in the discussion. ", "I'm a normal guy with no background in history, so I mostly lurk. I subscribe to this sub largely because the strict moderation results in top-quality content, something much of reddit -and the internet in general- is lacking in. Even if a fair bit of it goes over my head, I still enjoy reading the answers here and learning new things.", "I'm gonna go meta on a meta thread: this right here is why I love this sub and it sums up the reason why I have been reading every single thread that had been answered for at least 2 years now: in depth answers, follow up questions, great discussions...\nThis community is up there, a place where members agreed upon strict, deep, time consuming standards. I have a lust for knowledge and history is one of these things that interest me. But it's never easy to just take the time to read about it, to choose a book and get started. It's vast, both wide and deep. \nSo here I am taking a daily dose of random historical content. I love it. \n\nActually as I never post in this favorite subreddit of mine because of my inability to do so, I'll also take advantage of this occasion to thank all our great participating historians for what they do here. \n\nAlso, sorry for my English if I did any mistake. ", "* Practically the only sub where I can comfortably assume that what I read as answers are actually correct. A lot of other subreddits (if not all), if you read a comment that is purported as fact you sort of have to read it with skepticism (or at least should). A lot of \"factual\" comments elsewhere are either biased, incorrect, misleading, or some combination of all those. Here, I'm way more likely to trust the answers.\n\n* Interesting questions/answers.\n\n* I like history and I like learning about history.\n\n* Makes me wish that I could answer some questions. But alas, people here are smarter than I am. On very rare occasions, some questions I'll do some research on (particularly if the question doesn't have answers already) and learn more about it.", "I read AskHistorians because I find that the answers given are subject to an extremely high bar for quality. Therefore any answers that stay up absolutely deserve to stay up because they are well researched, intricately detailed, and are presented in a way that while adhering to rigorous academic standard, they are also very accessible to the layman.\n\nAskHistorians provides a new way of learning and thinking about the world, both historic and modern, and I can honestly say that this forum has contributed to my growth as a person. Meaning, my worldview, my opinions, and my thought process has been shaped by reading, studying, and processing answers that I've come across in this forum. Originally I had a passing interest in history and mythology in particular, but only passing (I'd read the history textbooks in high school to pass the time). But I can honestly say that every day that I come to this forum, I'll learn something new, many times things that I'd never consider as being a thing. \n\nFor example, I didn't even know, or could even conceive of there being a history of porn, a history of sleep, or a history of historic study itself! That's crazy, bruh. Answers here have helped me inform my political opinion, my thoughts regarding issues such as LGBT rights and feminism (it was actually an answer here that made me fully consider patriarchy theory!), colonialism and and its very subtle effects on today's society, and last but perhaps most importantly, have had an influence on my overall thought process and problem solving. \n\nI do not regret a second that I spend here, which is a lot more than almost any other website out there. ", "I like history and learning about it. I lurk here because I fear getting my comment deleted. I even double checked the comments here to check if it's legal to comment now. I do appreciate how strict it is here, as it is a very solid quality assurance. Admittedly it turns off my critical thinking radar which perhaps it shouldn't do, but it's comfortable to know that there are strict rules regarding the quality of comments.\n\nQuestion about your research though: do you take cultural context into consideration? I'm asking as I'm Dutch and people often assume redditors are American. ", "I started out posting here after someone linked an answer by /u/kieslowskifan \u2013 who is officially The Most Knowledgeable, Able and Impressive Contributor^tm here and probably on the whole internet \u2013 in another history subreddit and I was thinking to myself \"I can't do this exactly because that is impressive but I can at least jump in ans share some of the stuff I know\".\n\nInitially another motivating factor to start commenting here was that at the point I was right at the very start of my PhD, conceiving my research question and topic. During my MA thesis I had started to be very disciplined about writing daily and I though this might be a good way to keep up a \"writing regiment\" if you will and at the same time polish up my academic(ish) English (I'm a native German speaker).\n\nWhat I soon found that not only had I found a community of really interesting people, both in the users who ask questions as well in those who contribute, but also that the mission of this online space aligned very closely with something that has always been close to my heart: The spread of historical knowledge as a tool to educate and understand in a very open and accessible space. My original interest for my research topic (WWII Germany and National Socialism) arose in my teens because I was part of an anti-Fascist group in my home country that organized among other things, trips to memorial sites, historical workshops, and seminars for people who had no High School Diploma or had never visited university.\n\nWhat I found here was a space that aligned with what I see as one of the fundamental missions of the historic professions: The spread of knowledge. The fact that this space is driven not by traditional outreach or traditional academia in that content is designed by experts for an audience without their initial input but that it is in fact driven by user input, that experts answer questions they did not develop themselves is what in my opinion makes this space so unique.\n\nActually seeing how people perceive my field and what questions they have about it not helped me discover actual gaps that exist within historical research (who knew that there still isn't a definitive monogrpahy on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals in 2017?) but it also helped me devise my output better for consumption by a general audience and not just within academia.\n\nIt's has been amazing experience here so far, not just asking and answering questions but also having found new and good friends and a community that shares this passion for history.", "Hi Sarah.\n\nI started lurking AH maybe 5 years ago, when I left Digg and discovered Reddit in the search for something diverting to read during lunch breaks. I quickly found aggregators like /r/bestof and /r/depthhub, and the more those led me to /r/AskHistorians, the more I found myself just heading here directly. I have an armchair interest in history: I'm more after a good story, but I always prefer entertainment that has some intrinsic value, in this case actually learning something. Additionally, I have an armchair interest in knowing about other cultures and perspectives, so the diverse questions that come up here can be fascinating, especially when answered by people from all around the world.\n\nNot the type to just sit on the sidelines in any discussion, I used to chip in with answers here and there, but having seen flaired users provide links to previous good answers, I started \"helping out\" too: I had been an avid and thorough reader for some time so would often instantly recall great old answers and had great fun hunting them down. So that gave me a fun little hobby, a way to participate more often without getting banned, and a feeling of helping OPs. That activity brought me to the attention of the moderation team, who flaired me as a *Quality Contributor*. Some time afterwards, I was ~~pressganged~~ recruited to be a moderator myself.\n\nBecoming a moderator completely changed my relationship with this subreddit. Whereas before it had been a great place to hang out, with interesting people who had loads of interesting stories, now I could see what was *really* getting posted here, and how much work goes into giving participants that experience. So now for me, it's not a place to hang out anymore: it's volunteer work in service of a mission: to help to ensure that the OPs the best possible answers, and encourage expert users to feel welcome and valued so that they'll keep contributing, will stay, and more will come. So I still come here because I feel part of the team, and feel that the subreddit is providing something of value.", "I mostly just read and vote here, with occasional links to old answers and such. I would love to be expert enough in something to contribute, but it's actually kind of relaxing to have a place where you don't even think about upvotes because you're not commenting. (Am I the only one here with a compulsion to high score as soon as there's a number on something?)\n\nOne of the most appealing things here is how much it can surprise you. I can walk into my local academic library, poke around subject headings a while and come up with interesting reading. But it'll only be stuff I knew to look for. Here, you get to see other people's questions (about Hitler and otherwise), and the direction the answerer went with it, and frequently come across something unexpectedly fascinating.\n\nThe other thing AskHistorians excels at is giving you a peek under the hood. I get more historiography here than anywhere else, plus bonus academic catfights and research frustrations. \n\nAnd all in a shockingly civil space for the Internet. I don't even bother with sites I used to entertain myself with five years ago. I'd much rather learn something than waste a bunch of energy getting angry at random people I'll never meet.\n\nOh, and, you were interested in hearing from women, so  < raises hand > .", "I have little to no interest in understanding the \"big picture\" of most parts of history, it's just too abstract and broad to hold my interest.\n\nA lot of the questions that get asked (and find success) on this subreddit are bizarre and have a very narrow scope, which makes them hard to just find and grok using a search engine\u2014they're questions that absolutely require a \"real\" historian to put the answer into the appropriate context.  I find these kinds of questions and their answers much more interesting and entertaining to take in.\n\nPlus the sub is moderated with an iron fist, so the signal:noise ratio is great, making it a lot easier and more enjoyable to learn the answer to the asked question.", "Hey! I'm a bit late to answering this but I hope it'll help you out.  I started browsing AskHistorians years ago when I first created my reddit account.  At the time, I liked that there was a highly moderated forum where I could get answers to obscure questions I couldn't easily find on Google.  Over time, as I started studying history both as a hobby and in university, I began to realise that I could actually answer a few of the questions.  I remember exactly how excited I felt when I found my first question that I could both answer and that no one else had yet!  As soon as I felt that, I was hooked.  I'd also echo what some other users have said in that this is a great way to remember information.  I've found some great topics that really interest me that I otherwise never would have even thought about.\n\nIt took me 2 tries to successfully apply for flair which I really appreciated, as looking back at my first application it really wasn't up to snuff (I think I deleted the comment though, as I delete most of my unnecessary comments after some time).  Finally, I feel like I can reach an audience here that I otherwise wouldn't be able to.   People come to /r/AskHistorians with an open mindset, willing to learn.  Compare that to an area like the comments in /r/worldnews and the difference is stark.  In my area in particular there is a lot of misinformation spreading around.  Some of it is rather harmless but other bits are outright lies and demonise the Islamic community.  I personally have no problem if people have legitimate problems with something, but when they are basing their views on \"all Muslims are commanded to kill westerners and if they don't they're just lying to stay hidden until they strike\", it gets kind of annoying.  Thankfully, the moderation here takes care of fear-mongerers like that and allows the forum as a whole to actually delve into the issues.", "Fairly new here, unfortunately I don't have the time/ability to offer good answers so I lurk. I participate in AskHistorians because it is the first really good academically-oriented subreddit I have come across. The requisite high bar of quality for an upheld post and and heavy policing by the mods to maintain an academically rigorous environment means that there's a treasure trove of history and knowledge available from highly informed experts that I couldn't get even from an undergraduate setting. ", "I think that like most here I read this subreddit daily because I genuinely love history and engaging it in ways previously unknown to me. The greatest appeal, to me, is the insight given into the world of professional historians. It is a casual enough place to be accessible, but it is strict enough where intellectual rigor is required to be seen and appreciated. In a lot of ways, it seems like a useful bridge between being an armchair historian and a professional producing peer-reviewed works. In this sense, I've enjoyed testing my mettle against some of the titans of this board (many of you are tremendously impressive) with my methodology, subject knowledge, and prose and have been encouraged by my experience. Most importantly, I owe this community a degree of thanks to since my time reading and participating (albeit in a very limited manner) here was a partial factor in pursuing entry into a Master's program in history, which I will be starting in August- the \"So you want to go to grad school\" series of posts was particularly illuminating and I'm greatly anticipating starting my program and becoming a depressed, cantankerous burnout.", "As a lurker and a huge history buff since my childhood, I just love this sub. Not only has it suggested a wealth of academic books which I can read and enjoy (while being very accurate/presenting little bias), but it has also been a place for learning random, specific topics like Roman colonization during the Late Republican Era to Medieval sexuality to Bhutanese history that has expanded my knowledge past my comfort zone and has enriched me.\n\n\nLastly, the great amount of detail and sources backing the replies made on this sub are amazing, nay, inspiring. This is one of the few subs where people who are passionate and well learned on the topics come to meet.\n\n\nI rarely comment on this sub but when I do it's usually for books and Quebec history which is drilled like hell into us.", "Lurker, made some questions, maybe two or three. \n\nOnce I got to make a small two paragraph side-answer that wasn't deleted, and it made me so proud of myself. And I devoted a lot of research into it, which goes to show the quality standard in here. \n\nThe high standard moderation is what keeps me around. The everyday hitler questions gets somewhat boring but there is good stuff every week.\n\nI think the sub could improve if more historians from different countries and areas joined it, to wide the focus a bit, since many questions goes unanswered for lack of experts. I've tried to convince some historians into joining it, to no avail. Maybe send invitations or something? \n\nAlso, shouldn't you make a google survey? It may be tought to collect data from a comment section.", "I'm a lurker - I lack the knowledge to contribute in comments so I try to do my bit by upvoting and reporting. It seems to be almost the opposite here to the rest of reddit; in any other sub I would downvote a bad comment and only report in cases of offensiveness, whereas here I report bad comments and very rarely downvote. That is mostly due to the moderation policy (which I totally agree with)  where incorrect or inaccurate information is removed. In my opinion, that's what makes this place so great- I feel able to trust what I'm reading.\n\nI read this sub almost every day. Why? Because history is fascinating, especially when it's so well written and so welcoming to everyone regardless of their level of understanding. Oh, and you wanted answers from women, so \"hi\".", "Because I need to temper my thirst for knowledge with academical texts that aren't dry and sleep-inducing. ", "Oh hey I'm a UBC History BA grad.\n\nI love learning knowledge in general, and history in particular. It's too hard to find people interested in history in life. AskHistorians is a place I can read about history, offer my own knowledge, and engage with other people who really like history. It's basically where I can find people with a common interest as me.\n\nI'll email too.", "Because I myself do dream of becoming a historian. This isn't a possibility (currently), so I can ease the tension by reading answers by historians. Besides, answers here are very detailed and rigorously tested, which brings responses with amazing accuracy, contextualisation, and overall quality. It's unlike anything else in the internet, really.\n\nBesides, I also want that, when I become a historian myself, be able to actually contribute here. There's something about having a flair next to my username that brings unparalleled pride.", "I've always had s strong interest in wide range of 'history' topics (wars, economics, cultural norms, politics, etc.).   The internet is obviously full of information on all of this, but this sub stands out for two reasons:\n\n1) The oddly specific/strange, yet interesting questions.  I wouldn't dream up half of these questions if I tried, so I find myself learning about things that I quite literally probably would never do organically due to simply not knowing what I could/should even be asking.  \n\n2) Goes without saying the answers here are amazing.  Clear, concise, well sourced, etc.  In like two minutes I can learn something incredibly interesting that probably 90% of people don't know. ", "Mainly, it's because Public History to me isn't just a choice in concentration. I came up through the museum field, and talking to the lay public is pretty much my entire reason for pursuing history as a career. I am passionate about my interests, and I find satisfaction in sharing that passion with others in an informative way. I think that's particularly important here, on a website that both has a huge cultural footprint and can be kind of a cesspool at times. Participating in this place, I hope, makes the whole site better and gives me something to point to when people associate Reddit with the sprawling alt-right infestation on this site. \n\nI speak out in favor of public history and working outside the academia as much as I can as a somewhat distracted PhD candidate, but I'd be a hypocrite if I did not practice what I preached. \n\nI also find it easier to write here than on my own, more serious work. Part of that is just the freedom from needing to rigorously footnote everything. Mostly, its the knowledge that I'm engaging with another person to answer their question, with the immediacy of feedback and the fairly likely chance that I'll help start a larger conversation. It's entirely more gratifying than academic writing, though perhaps at the risk of being french fries to the kale salad of my actual work.\n\nI'll send you a PM to volunteer for a longer interview, if you're still looking for subjects.", "History is my passion. I originally went to college to be a history teacher but changed to straight history when I wanted to be a lawyer. Now I own my own firm and make my own hours, barely grossing six figures and trying to build my business. I have a house with a pool, a new car on a lease, health insurance, etc. However, I often fantasize about how it could have been if I rolled the dice and pursued my passion, to join the do what you love movement. Ultimately, the career prospects for historians are poor and the economic prospects poorer. I went to a state school where my professors wrote books and no one bought them. The best selling professor was a professor of historical tourism in national parks, who managed to sell a bunch of books in the gift shops of national and state park visitor centers. I had written almost a hundred pages between two 50 page reports on the history of the Cherokee Nation, but I as I read books that seemed like no one read them, I was worried about the futility of all that writing for an audience, essentially, of one professor and myself.\n\nAskHistorians was the first time I could try to answer questions to people who were interested in something to which I knew the answer. I have been banned three times and had a lot of comments removed. I finally created a new \"respectable\" username that I use only when I have the time to answer something in depth and in full accordance with the rules of this sub, and am even thinking about writing a history of imperial law in the new world that would utilize my trilingualness in English, Spanish and Portuguese, all because of the upvotes I got on this subreddit. And I am not even a flaired member of the community. My other username may eventually be, but I'm not letting that name get sullied by this trice banned username.\n\nAs a lawyer, I probably write about two hundred pages double spaced of legal writing a month, not counting copy and paste body text like you find in complaints or discovery. Yet an 8 page essay on here that's up-voted by five hundred people is more fulfilling than a win in Court... especially after having had so many answers deleted by the mods before I got my act together. \n\nSo, to wrap up, I write here because as a lawyer I constantly have to write academically (though the style is different) but not about anything people would find entertaining. Here, I feel like people are reading because they want to, and one essay potentially could be read by more people than everything else I write this year for 300 dollars an hour. ", "I'm one of those who lurk. I have no formal education beyond high school, but my upbringing and what education I did have gave me a love of learning and of history in particular.  I can thank my high school history teacher Mr Page for a lot of it. His genuine love of the subject was infectious and nearly 20 years later I'm still hooked. Unless questions arise about the film industry (my profession) I'm unlikely to ever be able to answer a question. \n\nFor as long as I can remember my go to books have been history. Now as an adult I have about two bookshelves devoted to the subject (though actual historians may turn up their noses at many of my selections). about half the tv I watch is documentaries. \n\nAskhistorians is always the first sub I check out. It's fascinating. People ask questions that would never occur to me and invariably I'm sucked into the answer. \n\nI don't know if this is of any use to you, but I hope it can add a bit of data to your project. ", "Very late, but since this is a long term project I feel justifying in still posting!\n\nI initially stumbled across Reddit a few years ago, around the end of my master's degree, and it was an escape for me from serious academic stuff. I came for memes, shitposts and endless references. I didn't even have an account for the longest time, because I just browsed looking for funny stuff. (I still do this, BTW, even though I'm actively involved only here. Contrary to popular belief, the mods ~~do~~ don't have a sense of humour. You wouldn't believe the amount of ~~shitposting and meme-swapping~~ deep intellectual discussion that goes on in the mod backchannel.)\n\nI created this account when I came across a post in r/history asking about the 'feudal system' for the purposes of game design. Since I had just started a PhD on the topic, I got super excited to actually contribute and did. The result was... underwhelming. The poster seemed a bit disappointed with the complexity of my answer and the difficulty of translating it into a workable game mechanic and other, more simplistic answers, got more attention. Like most of reddit, it was fun watching as an outside observer, but once I got involved it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I had hoped.\n\nThen through the r/history sidebar, I found AH. And it felt, all of a sudden, instead of watching other people, I was watching *my* people, people like me. They were talking about the kinds of things I like to talk about, in a way I found refreshing and exhilarating. It felt like a place I immediately wanted to contribute to, but I saw all the rules and restrictions on answers (which were a great thing) and so waited carefully to spot an opportunity for something I could answer. (To any lurkers doing the same thing now - the Tuesday Trivia provided the best opportunity).\n\nThe thing that really sold me on the community though was what happened soon after I had started answering some questions. Being just a baby-medievalist, I wasn't particularly confident and was very nervous about posting. But then along came a little orange envelope from none other than our very own /u/sunagainstgold telling me how much she enjoyed my answers and encouraging me as another medievalist to stick around. As anyone who's spent any time on AH knows, Sun is some sort of awesome answer-writing machine, and having someone like say they liked my writing was such a confidence boost. The fact that she was so encouraging throughout my time here is probably the reason I've gone on to be a flair and then a mod (both of which she prodded and encouraged me to do). While I'm still nowhere near her level, she's a model of how to be an engaged historian online and if I could even get close to the level of breadth, depth and entertainment-quality of her answers I'll be lucky. When I grow up I want to be /u/sunagainstgold.\n\nAnd through engaging with the sub and with Sun (and all the other awesome mods and flairs here) I feel I've really developed as a historian and developed my own thoughts on what being a historian means today. Writing semi-regularly here has given me much more confidence in pitching my writing to different audiences and really helped me in both academic presentation and in teaching first-year undergraduates. But what started as a way for me to practice writing and generally give myself an ego-boost by winning arguments on the internet has transformed into a belief that what's happening at AH is something genuinely worthwhile, that it's one very unique way of fulfilling a mission that I think all historians should undertake to inform the public in any way we can. And that's why I'm happy to be a tiny cog in this big history machine!", "I rarely use reddit, but when I found this subreddit earlier today I got very excited. The idea that hundreds of experts are willing to share their knowledge on a public forum, and that anyone can ask a question and receive numerous well-informed answers restores some of my faith in people! I studied History for 4 years at university and have a big problem with the research historians do being kept in an 'ivory tower' - it needs to be popularised. It doesn't seem enough, to me, for a select group of individuals to inform society in the light of history. Rather, society as a whole needs to inform itself in the light of history, and I think the most valuable historians in a given society are  those who work to get their research out into the open. An online forum like this is a wonderful way to popularise academic history!", "I am a bit late but... anyways.\n\nI used to read AskHistorians sporadically; one day I noticed an unanswered question about the experience of a citizen in Fascist Italy and though I knew enough about that to attempt an answer. And it happened to be in a fairly noticeable thread.\n\nNow, while general appreciation was welcome \u2013 perhaps a bit excessive \u2013 it also opened the door to some follow up questions that made me *question* how much I knew about the subject. Now, being not a professional, nor having studied history at higher educational level, I was aware that my knowledge was incomplete. But I believed that, no matter what, I had some clear well formed idea about the most relevant stuff.\n\nIn fact I was kind of wrong... The most interesting thing for me became the challenge to put a thought in a form that allows me to relate it to someone else: if possible retaining some degree of the real complexity of the issue \u2013 something that is not made easier by the fact that English is not my mother tongue. I do not think that knowledge implies the ability to relate everything to anybody; but it should mean that someone else who takes the time to read through it, should be able to get the idea.  This also encouraged me to learn more about a subject I like and allowed me to share some of it with other people who might have an interest in it \u2013 also, I think honestly that I can provide some decent content, especially since I can balance my non-professional approach with the availability of Italian sources, which may not be available in translated form.\n\nAs a reader, this process made me appreciate some answers more than I did before; I don't know how long it takes, or how much though goes into the process for others, but I can see how long it would take me to come up with something like that.\n\n\nA final note, and I believe a relevant one; while many focus on the high quality moderation, I have found this to be a rather welcoming community \u2013 one that actively encourages users who take some time and effort to contribute \u2013 which is an incentive to keep posting.", "I'm an assistant professor who teaches and studies history. I have been involved with many Internet communities over the years. I eventually gravitated almost exclusively to AskHistorians because:\n\n* It's a chance to practice explaining things to people. All writing is good writing in my eyes. \n\n* Sometimes the questions asked are, either purposefully or inadvertently, very good ones that stimulate a lot of thoughts for me. These thoughts can be along many different lines, but often things I write on here I can later use in teaching or blogging. Sometimes if I see a question enough times it makes me think, \"oh, this must be interesting to people, even if it's the kind of question academics tend not to ask.\" As someone who writes for popular audiences and is always looking for a fresh approach, that is useful. Some of my most popular blog posts were inspired by questions asked on AskHistorians (e.g., did the US warn the Japanese before Hiroshima? how much did the Germans know about the Manhattan Project? if Einstein hadn't been born, would the atomic bomb still have been built by 1945?). Occasionally something I will post on here will get a lot of traffic, as well, and that can be useful. (But self-promotion is not my primary motivation.)\n\n* As a form of procrastination it feels more intellectually useful than Facebook. (I suspect procrastination and \"time wasting,\" in limited amounts, is probably cognitively important; the brain seems to do work in such moments that it does not do when you are consciously trying to use it.) I enjoy answering other people's questions. It's part of why I do what I do, to feel useful and somewhat authoritative. I also sort of enjoy arguing with people (or at least correcting them), and it's a better outlet for that than the rest of my life. I try to limit myself to only about 20 minutes per day. \n\n* People seem to appreciate my efforts and answers and are nice to me on here, and I enjoy that. I only bring this up as a very basic psychological motivation, but also to contrast it with other Internet forums I have been involved with in the past \u2014 Wikipedia had too much of an anti-expertise bias, and the sourness of the whole endeavor got to me. \n\n* Lastly, Reddit is a powerful community if you write things on the Internet. It pays to know how it works, what it is interested in, how it responds to things. I suppose one could get that more passively by lurking. But seeing these things first hand is always better. The place has its ups and its downs. AskHistorians is heavily moderated to mimic the norms and idealized behavior of academia, so it is pretty comfortable if you are interested in those norms and idealized behaviors. The rest of Reddit is... not so much. But it's still something people who engage with the broader public ought to be aware of. ", "I'm very late to the party, but I suppose I could add my 2 cents.\n\nI have had a strong interest in history since I was 8 or 9 years old. I especially appreciated the vast variety of cultures and depth of time that there was to choose from when studying history. Throughout middle school, high school and college, I would become intensely interested in a specific cultures history for a period of weeks or months. I like to think that this fickle but intense interest gave me a basic knowledge about the history of lots of regions.\n\nAfter I graduated from college with a bachelors in History, I realized that my base of knowledge about the history of Africa was shockingly poor, outside of a simple understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and Egyptian history. So, I decided to buy some books and try to learn a bit more, especially about the era before Europeans came on the scene.\n\nAt the same time, almost 5 years ago, I found out about AskHistorians as a link on the r/history sidebar. For the first year or so, I answered a variety of questions about Finnish and Russian history, New England history, germanic kingdoms, as well as occasional answers about African topics. At the time, I didn't have an expectation that my interest in African history would last very long before I felt like reading about something else.\n\nBut, African history questions kept coming up, and very often the answers would not be very good, which motivated me to try and provide more informative, better researched answers and challenge mistaken assumptions. Also, I made a subreddit specifically devoted to African history, so that people interested in the topic could share book recommendations or otherwise discuss African history. Eventually, an African history flair messaged me privately and encouraged me to apply for flair. \n\nOnce I got flair, I really saw my role as filling a gap in knowledge, by trying to share information about the pre-colonial history of Africa. At the same time, because I am self-taught in African history, I felt motivated to try and encourage interest in others, and try and increase the number of Africanist flairs. \n\nThe mods noticed my enthusiasm for answering and activity on the sub, and they invited me to serve as a mod, which I did for almost 3 years. When I decided to serve as a mod, it was partly because I understood how big a job it was, and I felt \"many hands make light work\". But, I was also motivated by the hope that I could encourage other people who also have an interest in African history to apply for flair.\n\nHowever, in the 2 1/2 to 3 years that I was a mod, more Africanists were de-flaired for inactivity than new flairs were minted. When I first became a mod there were 12 africanists, and now there are only 8. Although the mod team did two separate flair drives where we specifically encouraged people knowledgeable about African, Indian, or other under-represented areas to apply, only a small handful of new flairs in those areas came out of it. The lesson I took away from that is Moderators and flairs don't have much power to encourage people to become experts/flairs in under-represented areas of history.\n\nSo, now I have tried to reset my expectations, and focus on providing answers to questions that interest me, without expecting to inspire anyone to become a flair.\n\nps- This answer focuses a lot on the activity of answering questions. I have asked a few questions about Indian or Pacific history, but they didn't get much response. I will ask questions about South African or Zimbabwean history because I know there are active flairs who will often answer them. Otherwise, I figure I am capable of researching any African history questions I might have. ", "I came to know about the r/AskHistorians through posting on r/genealogy . \nPart of the great enjoyment of genealogy is finding connections to history, and my research took me to very interesting places and times - and I find incredible intellectual satisfaction in learning as much as I could. \n\nI originally came on here asking a question as part of that, when I discovered ancestors who were part of the Africa trade after the abolishment of slavery. I realised that my question was too vague (basically I was trying to work out whether they were good people or not) and so didn't end up getting answered, but asking the question spurred me to think more and I went off and did a fair bit of research myself. \n\nI was drawn in by the sub, and absolutely in awe of the wonderful thought out answers. I can learn about so many different times and places. \n I haven't posted another question yet, but I have dipped my toes in to answer a couple of questions - mainly as second tier comments. My favorite answers are [this one](_URL_1_) where I talk about Aboriginal possum skin cloaks and [this ](_URL_0_) one where I talk a bit about the history of Japanese coins . After writing the second one, I made a little trip to the Japan currency museum and got to ask lots of questions to satisfy my thirst for knowledge. \n\nI studied history in university, but am now far from the academic world. I do have an intense interest in Australian history (my major) and as a long term resident of Japan I'm also interested in Japanese history around the time of the Meiji restoration. \n\nRecently, I've had connections with Christian schools in Tokyo, so questions about the history of Christianity are interesting - I just bookmarked a question about the treatment of Christians during the Second World War and I'll attempt to create an Ask Historians worthy answer. ", "I just found your post yesterday, when I was absent-mindedly letting the subreddit comment stream pass by, and somebody answered in here.\nSo, late, but better that than never.\n\nHistory has already interested me, and I spend some time in school working on extra-curricular local history research.\nTo be fair, it ended up with my teacher doing most of the leg work, but at age 14, that is maybe excusable.\nBut it gave me a first-hand experience of archival work, sifting through old files to find sources.\nTo this day, few things get me as excited as old documents: even the most mundane-seeming ones can shed light on the bigger picture.\nBut I digress. So, after school, I had to choose one from my quite diverging bunch of interests to pursue professionally.\nIn the end, history lost out to computer science, the tie-breaker being that I was worried about the job prospects in history.\n\nI made history my hobby: the majority of books that I read (sadly, not as many as I used to and as I would wish) concern history.\nThe majority are written by academics, but for interested laypeople with knowledge of the fundamentals, but not the specific niche.\nMost of them, by necessity of having to sell, focus on \"big history\": history of countries and regions, biographies of rulers, etc.\n\nThis is what I enjoy most about this subreddit: there are many questions asked about \"little history\" and specific details,\nsuch as the [history of the Stardust Club in Heidelberg](_URL_1_),\nthe [reasons for the dearth of variation in early modern given names in many European countries](_URL_2_),\nor [what were the working theories for the existence of twins before modern medicine](_URL_0_).\nWhile I often have a rough idea of what the answer might be, it's good to see it supported (or refuted!) by people who have the proper qualification and knowledge.\n\nThe downside with those questions is that more often than with others, one of two things happens:\neither they attract a lot of external commenters, which gives us many subpar and/or inappropriate answers, and means the mods have to work extra-hard;\nor, conversely, they get drowned by more popular topics.\nMilitary history, I'm looking at you... that is one of my pet peeves, the amount of military history questions here, because it's one of the fields I'm least interested in.\nBut they are popular, so I won't complain too much.\n\nMost of the time, I simply lurk and read.\nOccasionally, I answer the odd question.\nThis is always a hard decision for me, because I feel that for virtually every topic, there is a more qualified contributor here.\nI always feel that it's a judgment call.\nOn the one hand, I think that every inquirer appreciates getting an answer.\nOn the other hand, I think that not getting an answer is better than getting a bad answer, which is the reason for the heavy moderation.\nWhich I think actually makes this place more welcoming and helpful, even if that sounds counter-intuitive at first:\nby weeding out joke answers, rude replies, and speculation, we can all focus on the topics at hand, and on high-quality replies that we can actually trust.\n\nSo most of the time, I only pick up questions that haven't gotten an answer for at least a day.\nAnother reason I answer rarely is that it still takes me a long time to put them together: an hour at minimum, even for relatively straightforward answers.\nOne limiting factor here is that I have very few \"go-to resources\", and typically have to dig around longer for sources than I expect someone who works in their field had to.\nI also notice that phrasing and ordering my thoughts can take me quite some time.\nWhile I do academic writing in my field, computer science and history are far enough apart that they only share the absolute fundamentals of scientific research (don't plagiarize, provide sources for claims).\nThus, bringing my thoughts to paper in an ordered fashion is taxing and time-consuming for me, much more so than in my native field.\nHowever, I enjoy the exercise, so I keep going.\nAnd while I'm always a little worried that my answers are on the border of being acceptable, none of them has been removed up to now, so I guess my judgment of what questions I'm qualified enough to give at least a basic answer has been right so far.\n\nedit: I forgot to mention that I also spend a little bit of time every now and then on reporting inappropriate posts. I also point people to the correct section of the FAQ if I notice them asking a frequently asked question.", "I'm a bit late to this post.  I saw it last week, but I too am knee deep in graduate research.  I'm just finishing my MA thesis and will be starting my PhD in the fall.\n\nSome background for you, I was previously a working professional in the journalism world for more than a decade.  However over time, I developed an interest in ancient history as a means of bridging my two pasts, as someone who was born in Asia but grew up in the southern U.S.  \n\nAs my journalism work began to run dry, my involvement in history increased, not the least because those skills were quite transferable.  I credit this forum, as well as Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast, with getting me started on the path to professional history.  I've been on Reddit for six years, and have been involved in this forum in some capacity (as casual poster, a flaired poster, a moderator, and now an at-large poster) easily for the last five.  Even before Reddit, I used to frequent history forums on Paradox Plaza's web page (makers of historical wargames).\n\nI credit the sharp and critiquing minds of all caliber on this and other online forums with shaping me into the scholar I am today, not the least because when answering questions on this forum, I need to simultaneously navigate dual audiences: the academic and the lay.  I needed to anticipate and ready my responses to criticism.\n\nI continue to be involved because I think AH is one of the best forums for forcing historians to think critically about what their work means to a popular audience (which let us be honest, are our real funding bosses).  \n\nEven now, I consider this place to be a testing ground for my PhD comps.  Because if I can't hack it here, I certainly won't be able to hack it during test time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186715", "https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/41432/1/paper0283.pdf", "ubc.ca"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t7kkr/how_did_the_us_economy_recover_from_the_great/ddl6nhe/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z1m1w/socialism_definition_of/deunceh/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how_did_south_korea_become_such_a_powerhouse/de4agzb/?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lktbb/did_the_soviet_leadership_actually_believe_in/dbwv0vn/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=front&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=AskHistorians", "https://www.reddit.com/user/Shashank1000/submitted/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/64mfx1/how_different_was_the_yugoslav_communist_economic/dg4361u/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=front&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=AskHistorians"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ndbl2/is_there_a_consensus_on_what_happened_to_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5un69l/but_who_prays_for_satan_who_in_eighteen_centuries/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/663qa3/in_the_roman_empire_the_first_fish_to_be_brought/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5q448s/is_paul_bunyan_an_example_of_fakelore_what_would/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ea8bo/why_moscow_and_not_novgorod/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57ilen/economic_war_in_bronze_and_iron_ages_are_there/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57s6r2/why_are_most_coins_round_have_this_always_been/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/55vejx/it_can_get_pretty_cold_in_south_africa_why_are/d8eczp6/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rtzud/what_was_the_explanation_for_a_woman_giving_birth/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/63h1hw/my_grandpa_92_is_wondering_if_anyone_knows_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/62z39k/what_happened_to_the_given_namefirst_name_pool/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3wyefk", "title": "how do music royalties work? does a composer get a check every week or month for life? and typically how much for a hit song?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wyefk/eli5_how_do_music_royalties_work_does_a_composer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxzw4yp", "cxzx42g", "cxzygt2", "cxzzh98", "cxzzqtl", "cxzzznz", "cy00xd6", "cy018ww", "cy01hy9", "cy01sd6", "cy01way", "cy025md", "cy02quo", "cy03owr", "cy03y6e", "cy047wx", "cy04x25", "cy050oy", "cy05gni", "cy076xn", "cy080xx", "cy08p0v", "cy0aoel", "cy0ar7c", "cy0ba1r", "cy0d1ak", "cy0dei7", "cy0igp1", "cy0issy", "cy0jd0u", "cy0jl6r", "cy0jnv1", "cy0ju1a", "cy0k4y2", "cy0l9qw", "cy0ldsi", "cy0p3im", "cy0pq9j", "cy0u80z", "cy0wp0f", "cy0x0b3", "cy0y388", "cy0zx5t", "cy1w2tp"], "score": [130, 639, 64, 15, 21, 39, 4098, 3, 7, 14, 95, 774, 2, 9, 3, 32, 2, 4, 25, 2, 2, 8, 2, 3, 11, 2, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 10, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["and also how do the people in charge of royalties know how much a radio station plays the song? I get it when there's stuff on the system as it can just link straight up online but when stations play records or CDs is there a way of counting plays?", "Composers and songwriters are paid by performing rights organizations or PROs for short.  There are three in the US and one in every other country.  They are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.  I have included their websites at the end of this post if you want to go directly there to learn more.  Basically, radio, tv, restaurants/bar, the web, etc.  (Anywhere music is played AND money is made) must pay a fee to each of these companies.  A songwriter can only be signed to one of these companies.  They gather the money and distribute the royalties.  Most songwriters are paid quarterly.  They are generally paid three quarters behind so it can take some time to be paid for your songs.  Also, songwriters need to register their songs in order to be paid.  It is free to join SESAC if you meet with a rep.  It is a very small fee ($50) or something close to that for ASCAP or BMI and can be done online.  Also, it is hard to say for a #1 - depends on the genre  But it will be substantial.  Keep in mind, most songs are written by several people and those people often have publishers so it can be quite complicated and that number will be split and split again.  You can learn more at _URL_2_, _URL_1_, and _URL_0_.  \n\nTo answer the other question below.  These companies either use their own in house monitoring service to see which and when songs are played.  Or they may use Nielsen Soundscan which is pretty much the industry standard.  There are also companies that monitor the internet and pay songwriters for plays they find online and then pay songwriters either on their own or through one of the performing right companies mentioned above.  One is called TuneSat, but there are others too.\n\nHope this helps!", "I worked for a radio station about a zillion years ago, when it was two turntables and a microphone, and we were required to keep track of what we played.  With a pencil and a logbook.  I assumed it was so the artist would get paid, but I don't know for sure.  The DJ had a lot of discretion over what he played, so they couldn't rely upon a predetermined setlist.  Or maybe they just wanted to make sure we weren't playing lousy music.  But I think it was the royalty thing.", "I actually know this one! My stepfather was a recording artist. His royalty checks came monthly, they were small as he did not sell a lot of records in his later years. He passed away 6 years ago, now my mom gets them", "I actually do this for a living, in a few different projects: my band Canopy Climbers (_URL_2_), my licensing projects Tiny Houses (_URL_1_) and Monobox (_URL_0_). \n\nMost all royalties are handled through my PRO (performing rights organization), and in my case that is SESAC. Most pay out quarterly via check or direct deposit, although I think SESAC can do monthly as well, at least for publishing royalties. Those royalties will keep coming as long as it continues being licensed, played on radio, etc. So essentially, you get paid for the entirety of the songs life. \n\nI can't speak to a hit song on radio, but I can speak to having songs placed on tv. These can range any where from $500-$25,000+, including both up front payment and backend royalties. Until we got management, we were licensing songs based on back-end royalties only, meaning no upfront payment, only the royalties received after the show airs. Now we get smaller front end payments as well as backend royalties (thanks management!). We've been placed several times on MTV, E! Network, Style Network, and then online in a buncha different places. \n\nHow much the royalty is depends on several factors. Is is just an instrumental transition piece? Is it vocal-up, meaning a lead vocal singing in the placement? How long is it? The longer the placement, the more the royalty rate, as well as vocal up vs. no vocal. Also, the more the show airs, the more you are paid as it is paid per show.\n\nWould be glad to answer any other questions. Still kinda new at this but I'll do my best.", "Ok, I can provide a brief overview here but I'm sure lawyers and others more directly involved in the music business will have more to add and provide greater accuracy.\n\nWith every recorded song there are two copyrights, one for the composer and one for the recording artist. Sometimes those rights belong to the same person, sometimes not. \n\nAnyway, composers and recording artists both have groups that represent them and collect royalties on their behalf. The problem is that there are multiple types of rights that can be licensed to a song or composition.\n\nFor example, if you want to publicly perform a composition, you'll have to get with a performing rights organization (PRO) (or rather, the venue you perform at will). Want to burn your cover to a CD? You'll need a mechanical license but that's a different organization.   \n\nYou can see a flow chart of the process here: _URL_0_ Bear in mind that the chart is based on the UK so some terms are slightly different though the principle, to my understanding, is largely the same.\n\nTheoretically, these various groups who hold all of these different rights pay the artists they represent, usually quarterly. How they determine the payment is usually by how much the songs they created are used. How that is determined varies from group to group.\n\nFor example, record labels know pretty well exactly how many copies of a CD are sold or how many times a song is streamed on Spotify. But how many times a song is performed in a club? Well, that's a bit more difficult. \n\nTo that end PROs rely on bars and restaurants to provide reporting forms on what they played. Few, in my experience, do, so it ends up being like Nielsen, where a small number of clubs are used to determine what clubs at large are playing. Like I said though, methods vary depending on the rights at issue.\n\nAll of that being said, music licensing is a giant mess that leaves no one happy. This is one of the reasons it's a major topic for copyright reform in the U.S. over the next few years. I know it's not very ELI5, but hopefully it helps some. \n\nEdit: To answer the question about how long it goes on, it goes until the copyright in the work expires. So yes, the person will receive checks until their death and then their estate will continue to get such checks for quite a long period of time afterward.", "Here was my experience:\n\nEvery time my songs were played on the radio or on TV somewhere, I got a little bit of money - cents to dollars - depending on the use.\n\nOne song was played enough times that it put me in a higher royalty bracket so I was paid more (1.5x the normal rate, I believe) per use. \n\nIf played enough times, that money can really add up even if you're paid at the normal rate.\n\nI had a (brief) Top 40 Rock song in the mid 90s. To date, I've probably made $10,000 in performance royalties from it. Checks would come quarterly. At its peak, these checks used to be in the high hundreds to low thousands. These days, they're about 75 cents, if there's a check to cut in the first place. :-)\n\nEDIT: Reddit, you amaze me. Thanks for the love.\n\nEDIT#2: [Removed questionable link] Sorry!\n\nEDIT #3: Dammit Reddit! Thanks for the gold, kind Redditor. :-)\n\nEDIT#4: Thanks so much for all of this. Seriously. But my wife will kill me if I keep responding so I have to step away. Maybe an AMA one of these days?", "more complicated question: why is it so expensive now to produce sample heavy hip hop beats? in the 80's and 90's all this extremly famous funk, jazz and soul was used for hip hop, now those records are expensive to re-release and those kind of samples are more rare. does it have to do with the original artists wanting more money? As an artist, am I taking a lot less money using beat samples? Are there legal obstacles that make it inefficient? ", "I am a songwriter. Here is your basic breakdown of how you would make money. Say I write a song that gets cut (recorded) by an Artist that is decently well known. The first I would need to do is register with BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, or one of the smaller ones. We will use BMI for an example. What they do is take a very small fee with the promise of going out and collecting the money you are owed from record labels, radio stations, etc. Yes, money does come in the mail and you get it roughly every quarter. If you are doing well you might get more. That's what we like to call \"mailbox money\". The amount of money you make on a \"hit\" song has a lot of variables. For instance if you are self published or have an admin deal then you are making 90-100% of your money on a song. If you have a co publishing deal you make 50% of your money and the publisher makes 50%. There's also writing splits. In places like LA where people are assholes their lawyers negotiate really rough splits. You can see 5 names on a song but what you may not know is one of those guys is only getting 2 1/2 %. This stuff happens literally everyday. Nashville is a more respectable place where generally who ever is in the song. Gets an equal share. \n\nEDIT: If anyone has any questions about anything or I missed anything let me know and I would be happy to answer. ", "All the answers on here talking mostly about Performance Rights Organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, which take care of songs being played on the radio and live.\n\nHowever, if you're signed to a record label or a publishing company, and your songs are selling or people are covering your songs, you will be paid by the respective company.\n\nFor example, if you sign to Big Cool Records, they'll give you an up front advance, some money to record the album, and they'll spend a bunch on marketing, etc. and manufacturing the album.  Every time al album sells, based on how much royalty you negotiated with them (between 10-20%), money will be added to your account within the label.  Once they recoup all the money they've spent on you (essentially making that advance you got a loan), you will be paid based on your royalty.  Those checks come in once a quarter (4 times a year).\n\nIf it's a hit song, you will recoup your account quicker and get paid sooner but that depends on how deep in debt you are with the label and how big the song is and how much it is selling (real sales - like on iTunes and in stores)\n\nFeel free to PM me if you have any more questions!\n\nSource: I'm a music lawyer", "As someone whose rent is paid by this, here's my ELI5..\n\nTL;DR: here are two types of strictly royalties as far as composers/writers go. Mechanicals and performance. If you're an artist or producer there's also artist royalties, producer royalties, and neighboring rights. \n\nMechanicals: these are easy. The rate is set by the government and is paid on a per-sale basis at $0.091 per song sold, and that amount is divided up amongst the songwriters (so if there are two writers, each one of them gets $0.0455 for every song sold). They're collected and administered by either the record labels (who receive the gross money for the sale and pay everyone out) or in the case of cover songs, a company called the Harry Fox Agency. These payments are usually semiannual but sometimes quarterly. \n\nPerformance: this is a much wider net. Is your song in a TV show? Every time it plays you'll receive SOME money - how much is up to a complex formula based system put in place by the \"Performance Rights Organizations\" (i.e. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR, etc). I've made anywhere from 3 cents to over a thousand on a single TV play (depending on how long they use it, what time of day, how many people watch the show, what network, etc). Radio plays are also paid to the writers per play, and can be up to $15 per station per play. So if your song is getting 2000 spins a week (i.e. a hit song), that's $30k per week to split amongst the writers. Not bad. The PRO's all have different pay schedules, but to make things easy let's say they're basically quarterly.\n\nStreaming comes through both lanes depending on if you're published and how the song is released. Spotify/Pandora will usually come through the PRO (sometimes the former through the route of the mechanical). The rub with these services is that the music labels will license the song to them extra cheap in exchange for stock on the company or large non-specific advances that they don't have to pass along to the artists/writers - no bueno. Which is why artists/writers are complaining about streaming while the corporate side is suspiciously silent.. \n\nAnd lastly if you are the artist you'll get an additional artist royalty from the label once you've made back the money they spent on you (or making your album). Producers are entitled to a similar royalty, albeit much smaller. And then there's this thing called \"neighboring rights\" in other countries where the people who performed on the song (musicians, producers, artists) and the label owners get an additional performance royalty for that - but that is for another day. ", "Just a funny little anecdote.\n\nIn Disney's *The Emperor's New Groove* Patrick Warburton (David Puddy, Joe Swanson, and Brock Samson, depending on your age) plays a royal bodyguard named Kronk. \n\nThere is a scene in which Kronk is sneaking around transporting the unconscious body of Emperor Kuzco in a sack, which he throws over a waterfall,[(See here.)](_URL_0_) all while humming/scatting a little tune. Apparently, and I'm trying but I can't find my source on this, so forgive me (or back me up:) Patrick is infamously tone deaf, and was supposed to be humming something similar to the Mission Impossible theme. (Or Disney's knock-off soundalike version.) He botched the job so poorly that he was credited with an original composition ('Kronk's Sneaky Theme?' I have no idea) and Disney legal had him sign over royalties to them. ", "Kinda relevant. The same goes for PPV fights (WWE, UFC, Boxing, Etc.) I once saw a job on craigslist that wanted you to go to bars and be \"undercover\" and see if a place is broadcasting the PPV, and charging an additional cover.", "**Can we extend this question to television?**  My particular interest is in **how long** do royalties continue?  Is [Robert Clary](_URL_0_) still collecting from reruns of Hogan's Heroes?  Is Carol Burnett still picking up a check from MeTV airing old episodes of her show?  Going back to the early B & W 1960s, is Ron Howard still getting beer money from The Andy Griffith Show?\n\nIf so, **how much** would you guess such 30-, 40- and even 50-year old shows earn for their stars?\n", "So this thread reminded me that I'm a member of ASCAP, and I logged into my account for the first time in years. I have 12 \"works\" registered from an album that was released on a label in 2008, but nothing for all the singles, remixes, etc. that've been released on different labels since. My question is- do I need to be submitting my own releases to ASCAP or is it a label's responsibility?", "Fun fact: Simon Cowell's X Factor/ idol artists (one direction etc) almost all include musical samples played by Cowell (eg a single tambourine hit) on their records, so that Cowell personally receives PRS as a performer. \n\nSource: am in industry and know a writer for Olly Murs/1D \n\nfun fact 2 while we're on the subject, there is a music production company that specialises in quite literally adding 'the one direction kick drum' to other people's work. They get paid a shocking amount for this. ", "What I have learned from this thread: \n\n1. Turn a song you write and perform into a meme\n\n2. ???\n\n3. Profit\n\nRick Astley lucked out for sure.", "I am a registered artist with one of the big 3 PROs, but I have no idea how any of this works because my band never became popular :(.", "There are two components of a song that are distinct and separate and understanding how they are different is essential.\n\n1. The composition that a song writer composes and puts down in sheet music. This is the copyright and the royalty recipient is the songwriter. He is often represented by a Publisher.\n\n2. A recording of such a composition. This is the master and the royalty recipient is the artist. He is often represented by a Label.\n\nThe terminology is important. While \"artist\" seems like a fair way to describe someone who writes songs, it will cause confusion if you try to apply it that way in this kind of discussion. So songwriter-copyright-publisher and then artist-master-label is the way it is.\n\nBoth the songwriter and the artist receive royalties but they are quite different in how they are calculated and handled. Sometimes the writer and the artist are the same person, probably more often they are not, but even if they are, they will get checks from two different entities. Think about \"singer songwriter\" as a genre, it's referring to someone who does both.  Let's invent a writer and an artist for these examples - Joe Melody is a gifted songwriter and composer, and Bob Crooner is a singer with a killer voice. Joe Melody is represented by a Publisher, and Bob Crooner is represented by a Label. Each of those entities is responsible for tracking the usage of their intellectual property, gathering the income and distributing it to Joe and Bob. There are so many different revenue streams it's hard to break down who gets what from where but I'll try. I guess I will go by platform, and keep it simple. There is plenty of nuance and exception that will bog us down.\n\nCD, LP, Cassette or other physical format, and also digital permanent download:\n\nCrooner records an album of 10 of Melody's songs. His label gets him in a studio and manufactures a CD and gets it on Amazon and they also get the album on iTunes. On Crooner's behalf, his Label has requested from Melody's Publisher licenses to use the written songs. To keep it brief, these licenses are free and require only that Crooner notify Melody that it is happening. This license binds Crooner to pay Melody 9.1c for every sale he makes of him singing Melody's song. This rate is set by the government and the Label is responsible for paying it to the Publisher. The Label will administer this whole deal.\n\nSo a track gets sold on iTunes. iTunes receives 0.99c and the Crooner's Label a month or two later gets their 0.70c. Crooner's label then owes Melody's Publisher 9.1c. So what happens to the other 0.60c and what does Crooner get?\n\nThat depends. Because at first music could not be recorded and taken away to listen to again, we have a very well developed government mandated ruleset for compositions, but not for the master recordings. They were a relatively late development, and the free market has found its own level. Basically Crooner and the Label agree on a percentage of income that allows for both to earn something. Crooner agrees to a 15% royalty. Does that seem low? It's not really. Out of the 0.60c the Label is left with it needs to do a lot of things, including recoup the costs of the studio time, artwork, manufacturing, promotion etc. and also pay their rent and staff. The bargaining power of each party will ebb and flow over time and contracts will be renegotiated every couple of years. Three to five years is a normal range for a contract. If Crooner signs for 15% of net income on a three year contract and he really takes off as a singer, when the contract expires he can ask for more or shop around if he wants.\n\nRadio Play\n\nCrooner's song comes on the radio in your car. Crooner gets nothing. Melody's and his Publisher are members of a Performance Rights Organisation which arranges paid licenses with anybody who wishes to publicly play music and distributes fees to the songwriters based on how much airplay a song gets. This PRO will pay Melody his share direct and Melody's Publisher their share direct, this is not something the Publisher manages. How much it is depends on the PRO and what kind of deal they made with whoever is playing the music.\n\nRemember how I said Crooner gets nothing? That's just the way it is in the US right now. Luckily for Crooner, terrestrial radio is becoming a smaller piece of the pie. He will get performance royalties as an artist for digital radio and digital streaming services like Sirius, Pandora or Spotify. Melody is already set up to receive his songwriter royalty. For streaming it is set at 10% of net income, not 9.1c. A lot of streaming plays, especially if they are ad-supported might bring in a fraction of a cent.\n\nI'm going to stop here to see if I am getting at the info you want. I'm happy to expand and answer other questions. I've been in the business of operating label and publisher concerns for 15 years.\n\nETA: the royalty cycle is either quarterly or half yearly and you can expect to get paid 45-90 days after the end of a period for any income processed during said period. e.g. Jan-Jun might be a pay period, and everyone would received checks mid August or end September.", "I'm a media composer and write for a lot of trailers, commercials and tv shows. We usually get paid royalties every quarter (3 months). The amount is dependent on many variables, for example, the viewership, whether it's network or cable, time of day and what territory it's based in. However, some clients license your music through a \"buy-out,\" which allows them to just pay you a single (usually heftier) fee so they don't have to keep fulfilling royalty payments.\n\nI haven't written any \"hit songs\" but I've written music for quite large clients. I did an Ikea commercial about 5 years ago that still pay me every quarter. But for an example, I recently wrote music for a big kids animated movie trailer which screened on UK television for 2 weeks. I got approximately $8,000 for those two weeks of broadcasts so it **can** be a very lucrative business. (That's not including the fee I got to write the music.)\n\nI've written music for BBC shows and even shows like Kitchen Nightmares. BBC paid almost double in royalties beause it's network. The money is collected by your respective Rights Society, either PRS, ASCAP, BMI, etc. It's hard to wrangle in this business because fees, viewership figures and plays are all behind a curtain. You just have to trust your royalty society and their admin.\n\nBuyouts can be risky, too. I have a friend who had a client offer him 25K for a track for a beer commercial. My friend accepted without a second thought and a week later saw the commercial during the superbowl...he lost out on an insane amount of money because he accepted the buyout and didn't ask questions! That was a hard lesson that day...", "A guy I work with was on SNL in the 80s. He did a few movies around that time too, and he gets a check for about $0.12 - $0.25 a month. So to answer your question, (even though this is movie biz vs music biz) yes. [Gary Kroeger IMDB](_URL_0_)", "You mean a hit song now? Or a hit song when there was actually some money in the music business? Back then people actually paid for music, and even if you only had one or two good songs, a single hit could sell an entire album which would sell for about $12-15. There were big cuts being taken from that from the record company, reproduction costs etc, but the performance percentage earned artists something, and writers could still make money too. All of that is gone now. People don't buy CD's and most people get music for free on youtube. There are some legit services like spotify but the % is so low that you have to be a household name to make any decent money. Places like iTunes are a bit better but similar, and if you do get lucky enough to have a lot of people download your stuff, it is most likely just one or two songs - not a whole album. The reason most people don't care is because they still see people like Bieber in his Ferrari and assume pop stars are as rich as ever. But it's not true. The likes of Gaga and Bieber are not musicians or bands, but rather products that are sold with a huge company behind them. A company like that will put a million dollars down to promote a pop star like that, because they will get 50 million back. The problem is that all the smaller (real) artists and bands who used to maybe have a top 40 single in the past, do not make any way near enough money to survive anymore. In the past there was enough money in the business for bands like that to survive. Nowadays they make nothing from their music at all, and are in fact expected to just give it away for free because they need people to hear it and hear about the band. If you are lucky you will get people to buy tickets to your show and then you might make some money, although even then, many venues don't pay the performer at all unless they reach a certain threshold. \n\ntl-dr, big corporate machines like Rhianna and whatnot, are still making huge amounts of money. But everyone else makes nothing from music now. And for that reason, nobody is being signed, and in fact A & R departments don't even exist anymore. Nobody is out there visiting all the clubs and looking for the next big thing. Someone might pay some attention if you somehow go viral on youtube, but that is extremely rare. ", "I have a friend who's grandpa is a violinist for movies and TV shows. He played for Family Guy, Futurama, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. He basically told me what /u/dirtyfacedkid said, but he also gets paid by the hour during the actual recording sessions. He told me he gets around $200 an hour and afterwards he receives royalties after the movie/tv show is released.", "You mention composer, but there are actually two types of music royalties.  The composer receives what is referred to as the publishing royalty.  This royalty is collected for the underlying written work or composition of a song.  The second type of royalty is the artist royalty, which is collected for the exploitation of the master recording.  These 'masters' are usually owned by record labels who share a percentage of their sales with their recording artists.  To make the most money as a musician you need to both write and record your own music.  \nSince you mention composer specifically, I'll address that issue.  As a composer/songwriter, you'll collect on a quarterly basis from your publisher (i.e. Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell, or UMPG).  These publishers collect on your behalf for all exploitation of your works, whether that be CD sales/downloads, radio play, streaming, or sync licensing for use in TV/Film.  Your publisher is all associated to PRO, who licenses and collects fees for the performance of your works from radio, concert halls, bars/restaurants, and pretty much any other public place where music may be played.  The PRO will pay your publisher, who will then pass that money on to you.  Publishers pay their composers on a quarterly basis and keep an administration fee.  The more popular you works are, the more money you'll get paid.  \nAs for how much money a hit song can make, the sky is the limit.  As a composer, you will collect more based on the share of the song that you wrote.  Most songs are not written by a single person.  With that said, the best way to make money is to get as many sync licenses as you can.  TV and film producers are usually willing to pay a pretty penny for the right song in their movie, show or commercial.  On the flip side, royalty rates for streaming are so low, you'll need to millions upon millions of views to start to make some decent coin.  Mechanical royalties, which are publishing royalties for the sale of a CD or permanent download, have also declined substantially as music sales in the traditional sense are much lower than they used to be.  \nI'm happy to answer any other questions you may have as I've been in this business for over 10 years.", "I was in an indie band that toured a lot but never had a hit song (mostly college radio and specialty market radio), but which had music licensed for several TV shows and films, the highest profile of which was probably the TV show How I Met Your Mother. This was probably six years ago and I still receive quarterly checks on this. The checks have remained consistent mostly because the show continues to play on different channels internationally. The amounts have declined over time somewhat, but annually I would say royalties total about $3,000. However, I should note that I control both the writing \"side\" and the publishing \"side\" of our music. When you are paid royalties on music, the royalties are split between the writer(s) who are credited with composing the song and the publishers, who control use of the recording. It is common for bands to sell their publishing rights in exchange for up front money, or for record labels to control and/or own the publishing for bands they release. It would not be unusual for a song to have three to five \"writers\" and have the publishing controlled by a label or publishing company. In this case any individual band member would see a greatly reduced cut. Speaking from a musician standpoint, licensing is the best because you don't have to \"do anything\" and the money just comes in. Of course, they are few and far between, especially for a no-to-almost-no name band like mine was!\n", "Random related factabout James Brown's drummer. The dude tears it up in \"Funky Drummer\" and the world forgets about it until the 80's when someone rhymes over it. Hip hop is born. This drum track goes on to be the most sampled portion of a song in music history and the drummer, an old man today, has never seen a dime for it. Look up \"rhythm of the funky drummer\" for the full story. ", "My friend is the co-founder of Timex Social Club and song writer who put out [Rumors](_URL_0_) in 1986. They opened for the RUN-DMC 'Raising Hell' tour that same year.\n\nDespite being a #1 R & B hit in 1986, the amount he gets from royalties isn't enough to buy a loaf of bread most months.", "Back when the Dr. Demento Show was syndicated to about 50 radio stations one of my songs was played 3 times in a quarter.  I eagerly awaited my ASCAP statement for that quarter and was confused when I got one that said that none of my songs had been played.\n\nArmed with a complete list of radio stations that carried the show and the playlist for the 3 shows in question I called them and asked what was going on.  They said apparently none of the stations that carried the show had gotten sampled at that time and there was nothing they could do.  So despite the fact that I could provide them with a list of radio stations, dates, and times to the minute when my songs were played I got no money.\n\nRemember that next time you hear about ASCAP suing a bar for playing music without an ASCAP license because they \"want to make sure their artists get paid.\"  No, they don't.  If they did they'd actually count the plays.  We have computers, people.  It's really not that hard.\n\ntl;dr: Me: \"150 spins on the radio!\"  ASCAP: \"LOL NOPE!\"", "For ad supported models like pandora, royalties for all record labels are collected by a holding company known as SoundExchange. The rate paid by pandora is based on # of sings streamed. The per song rate is currently $.14 per 100 songs streamed. \n\nPandora pays about $400mn per year in these fees. \n\nThe rate is set every five years. \n\nAND you won't believe this - but this rate decision actually happens. TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!\n\nSource: This shit is my job - and this decision is wildly fucking important for pandoras stock price. Google CRB pandora. ", "You probably won't see this but Courtney Love wrote a letter about 15 years ago about what piracy is.  It explains how recording contracts work.\n\n_URL_0_", "It kinda sucks because streaming services should be better for artists. I've probably bought less than 20 CDs in my life, most of them at discounted prices. I used to just listen to the radio or get music from friends(perhaps not legally). Now I spend over NZ$100 a year on music in the form of music streaming services. By the time I die I'll have spent thousands. If I was still buying CDs it'd only be hundreds.", "The composer gets paid by performance collection agencies like BMI and ASCAP, and by Harry Fox Agency, which collects mechanical royalties (sales of CDs LPs Tapes, etc.)\nFor many years I received no check or $0.98. After I was performed more it began to average $100 a quarter. \n\nOne time one of my tunes was used as a theme song for a network TV talk show for a week. I think I got about $2000 for that.\n\nI had one major hit. A famous rapper sampled one bar of a funk track that I had composed back in the '70s. in one 18 month period, I received about $150,000. It was one tune on a CD of 7 or 8 tunes. I as composer, got half of the royalties for that song, about 4 or 5 famous rappers, split the other half. Now 15 or 20 years later, I still get 15 or 20 cents a quarter for that song.\n\nBut now my quarterly checks average from $50 to $1000.\n\nEdit: spell", "Well depends on what kind of royalty. Two types \n\n\n1. Royalty from the publisher(songwriter's version of a label, most of the time paired up with labels or extensions of labels) These are paid bi-annually. You get 9.1 for every song you have on a album for each sale, unless you have a controlled composition clause, which means the performer of the song also had some writing of the song, which most of the time is less. \n\n\n2. Performance rights organization. These are paid out every financial quarter, so end of March, June, September and December. There are two bigger public ones, BMI and ASCAP, and two private ones, which are invitation only which are SESAC and these brand new one I can't think of the name...These are the big money ones which know whenever your song is played on the radio you get paid. Depending on how popular it is on the radio it can be at a high tier than other, therefor a bigger payout. \n\n\n\nI have plenty of songwriter friends, and one, back in 1981 got his first check from BMI for 80k, and that's in 1980s dollars, and still gets enough payouts each month from them to pay a mortgage on a house he says, don't know how much that means to him, but probably at least a few thousand. Another friend, he's only like 24, but be wrote a song by a certain country duo, and in the first quarter it was a 210k payout, but was split with two other songwriters. His songwriting pay outs let him be able to jump start his own career which is pretty common. Brantley Gilbert who i don't really know, but we run in the same circles did the same thing, he wrote like a bunch of Jason Alden songs, which financed his own career before it really started, he also. This is also sometimes called \"passing down\" which a more popular country artist will have a single which a less popular artist wrote, to help them financially, and it's all part of the good ol boys club. ", "Music royalties are fun - and slightly crazy. :)  Quick credentials, I'm a director at a music licensing company that represents over 600 amazing artists.  Here's a basic rundown.\n\nThere are multiple \"royalties\" beyond just performance royalties, here's a description of each one:\n1. Like mentioned below, there are organizations called PROs which are \"Performance Royalty Organizations\" - in the US that would be BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC.  When a music artist creates a new song they register it with their PRO and that PRO collects royalties from radio stations, streaming sites/apps, and television plays from commercials or programming.  That is \"performance royalties\" and usually are cents or partial cents per play - very low revenue.  Which is why articles come out about artists being upset about Spotify and other streaming sites because they make so little compared to album sales.\n2. Sync licensing is another portion of music royalties.  When a commercial, YouTube video, Netflix show, or other content is created the filmmaker or production company must license the music that is going in the video content.  This is a huge deal and allows musicians and bands to make significant revenue on the front end of content creation.  Then when those films or videos go out they have time periods associated with the license that they can renew after 6 months or a year so for example the artist continues to make money as a tv commercial keeps running.\n3. There is also mechanical licensing which is required if a music artist wants to cover and record a song that they did not write.  So if I wanted to cover a Coldplay song and record it, then I would need to purchase a mechanical license.  That way the original author gets revenue from that.\n\nOne other note - it's important to understand the difference between the different types of ownership:\n1. Master owner - a person who own part of the recording (think MP3, CD, the actual noise on a recording)\n2. Publishing Owner - a person who owns part of the publishing\n3. Writership Owner - a person who wrote the song\n\nEach of those owners get paid based on how much they own.  Some people own 100% of their songs, while others might only own 50% of the publishing while their record label owns 100% of the master and 50% of the publishing.\n\nTL;DR: Yes, a song writer gets a payment each month from their representation like a PRO or their licensing representation which might be their label or a music licensing company.\n\nFeel free to ask questions.  I tried to write this on my phone quickly, haha.", "Could an artist (or friend of the artist) just put their song/album on repeat on spotify and rake in money?", "When you write a song that you want to earn royalties from, you register the song with whatever Performing Rights Organization you are signed up with (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are the big ones in America but there are hundreds worldwide).  When you register the song, you attribute 200% of the ownership. 100% for the \"writer's share\" and 100% for the \"publishing share.\"  So, if you have an ideal set agreement with whoever is exploiting your music you own 100% of the writers share as well as 100% of the publishing share (however, many libraries take the publishing share and sometimes part of the writer's as well). If a piece of music is placed in a television show or movie, for example, it is listed on a cue sheet (a document that is submitted with every episode of every show and film detailing what song is used, who wrote it, who published it, and what kind of use it is - Background Instrumental, Background Vocal, etc.). This is sent to your PRO who keeps track of how many times an episode/film/commercial aired and other royalty-generating means, looks at the cue sheet and sees for how long your music played, and pays it accordingly.  You get a check every quarter (3 months) directly from your PRO. \n\nThis is a pretty rough break down of it but hopefully it is helpful for those unfamiliar. I mostly work with TV/Film music, but I think radio play works in a similar way.  \n\nSource:  I work for a music publisher", "If anyone is interested in seeing how much a published artist makes in a year, Zoe Keating [made all of her 2013 financials public](_URL_1_). She also put out [6 months of income in 2011-2012](_URL_0_).\n\nIf it's TL;DR for you - she makes the lion's share of her money from Album sales, via iTunes and Bandcamp. I'm sure performance income helps out a lot, and she doesn't state if this is gross or net... still interesting, though.", "In my experience the singer takes all the royalties and doesn't pay the musicians for anything because it's a privilege to work with him.", "Finally, an excuse for my first post!\n\nI work for a European PRO (performing rights society) and from my experience,  each pro collects license revenue from music users and distributes this revenue to the composers and publishers in the form of royalties. A PRO will license music usage in their own territory from radio stations, television broadcasters, live venues/festivals, restaurants, shops, businesses, record labels and also online platforms like YouTube, Spotify,  iTunes and Amazon. \n\nOnce a PRO receives the music reporting from these users, royalties are distributed to the composers and publishers based on a distribution schedule. The amount a composer/publisher gets is based on where the music is used and how large that license revenue is. For example, you will get paid more from a larger radio station per minute then from a smaller station which pays a smaller license fee.  \n\nOnce we have received the reporting for your music usage, a matching system will usually link this information to the song registrations we have on a database which are then linked to a composer or publishers account. \n\nMusic usage in that PRO can usually take between 4-6 months to distribute but if your music gets broadcast overseas, it can take aslong as 2 years to receive this income from other performing right societies.  \n\nI've probably missed out a load of useful info so let me know if you have a further questions! \n\n", "For actors, in the UK and Ireland at least, you used to get royalties after doing any TV or film. Now, you get a bit more money to buy you out of the royalties.\n\nMy dad still gets royalties every year from a movie he did in the 70s. It was a small part. He'll usually get \u20ac0.50 if it's shown in South Africa or somewhere. He gets around \u20ac90.00 every year for a Christmas special he did in the 90s. It's not much, but it buys a present every year and it's better than a kick up the arse. ", "Label owner here - \nWe get a monthly payment from our distributor, which we then pass onto artists, less our fee. (60/40% Artist / Label split). It's always collected a few months behind but includes everything from itunes sales to youtube / spotify streams. \n\n\n If we've landed any synchronizations (music used in tv, video, movies and advertising etc) then we'll have separate terms for that. By no means are we a large label, but we do pull in about \u00a3500 a month from sales and streams.", "A decade ago, I was part of a comedy troupe (_URL_0_) and we at one point recorded some radio sketches, in hopes of making a \"record\" (like old skool Python). Anyways, last year I was informed about Sound Exchange. A company that started up to collect royalties for artists. Turned out SIRIUS XM had been playing our sketches for 10 years (legally and all that) but no one was collecting the royalties...so once we signed up with Sound Exchange, we got a cheque for $15k (!). Now I get like. $100 every 6 months. So that's cool. ", "a bit late to the tale but here goes. there are or at least were a few different types of royalties back in the pre internet days.\n\nRadio stations would pay differing levels of royalties depending on the size of their audience. If you had a hit record on radio 1 (the uk national broadcaster broadcasting to millions) the payment, i believe, could be up to \u00a345 per play. The collecting agency would take the payments from the radio station and take their cut which wasn't too much but lets say it was \u00a35. The rest was passed to your publishing company who you signed your deal with (who should not only collect your money and pass on your cut but should actively try and place your music on to say tv, film, compilation albums etc). A typical publishing deal would be a 70/30 split in your favou, so they'd take \u00a312 and pass on \u00a328 to you. If there were four writers you'd get \u00a37 each. It can get tricky though because there are royalties for the music and royalties for the lyrics.\n\nif you were to license your song to say an advert as my friend once did (a vodka advert for smirnoff, check out dylan rhymes - naked and ashamed) then there's two separate fees involved. The advert has to buy not only the music rights to use it (which are owned by the record company) but also the publishing rights. so they could pay the record co \u00a310k of which you'd get a cut depending on your deal and the publishing co would get paid \u00a310k and you'd get \u00a37k as per the split. EVERY time that advert is played you would get a publishing royalty for it, depending on the audience size.\n\nthere are also royalties for other things. If sheet music is produced of it then again you would get a royalty from that.\n\nHere's the interesting royalty which not many new about, mechanical royalties. these are paid to the producer (s) who may not necessarily be a part of the band. this royalty was paid for EACH AND EVERY physical copy that was made of a record or cd. I can't recall the amount, maybe 10%?, but it was worked out on the distributor price (which back in the day would have been circa \u00a32.20 per 12\" record). It would have been collected in the UK by the MCPS, the mechanical copyright protection society. So there would have been 22p per copy in mechanical royalties. I believe the MCPS took 10% so lets say 2p. that leaves 20p and again, 70/30 split, the producer would come out with 14p. Now imagine that that album sold 10 million copies. you can see how that adds up very quickly to \u00a31.4m. Just from one album. The producer probably didn't come up with any of the music creativity but would have crafted it all in to a song (ie, radio edits of 3m30s can be quite tricky to create from a full 5m30s song).\n\nBasically, the amount of money from royalties can be huge which is why Michael Jackson sold his Beatles publishing catalogue for $400m. Also, there was one occasion i recall that annie lennox had one of her songs played over 3000 times in one week on UK radio (details were published in Music Week). Publishing is HUGE. The guy who was Pink Floyds publisher owns/owned the Royal Berkshire Polo Club!!\n\nHope this helps!\n\n\nEDIT: In the UK there is also a collecting agency called the PRS, the performance rights society. In theory, every time a song is played in a nightclub, the club should be making a playlist of what was played and pay out a royalty for each song. When people in the UK will see PRS stickers in shops etc, it's because music isn't free. If you want to have music in your shop to entertain your customers as they shop, you have to pay for it. again, you'd end up with a cut of that. I think nowadays shops get around it somehow by having their own instore radio stations. you'd also get a royalty if your song is used as telephone \"hold\" music. and as ring tones, and in birthday cards, fucking everywhere actually.", "Streaming and piracy have destroyed royalties though.  My best friend wrote some #1 hits on Atlantic Records in the late 90s and very early 2000s.  His royalties were roughly $500,000 usd a year.   Around 2010 to now, between piracy and streaming his royalties have dropped to about $50,000 usd a year.  Granted his songs aren't #1 anymore but he's been in this business for over 40 years and knows the trends very well and even years after a song is no longer a hit, your royalties don't drop 90 percent even a decade later.  He's semi-retired because there's no more money in music so it's pointless to even do the work.  People are just gonna steal it anyway. \n\nHe did tell me though that what little work or writing he does is gear towards rock.  He told me that among major labels that rock music is seen as a better choice than EDM or dance music because even though EDM is ridiculously popular at the moment, almost every EDM listener steals music.  Stealing is much less common among rock music.  So for example, if you write a EDM hit, you might have 1,000,000 listeners but almost every one of them will steal it instead of buying.  It just seems to be the general behavior of EDM listeners.  But if you write a rock hit, while rock is much less popular at the moment, you might only have 100,000 listeners but odds are very high that a huge portion of them will buy it.  So you'll sell more songs to 100,000 rock fans than you will to 1,000,000 EDM fans.   Hell, Steve Aoki and AVCII have been caught in their youtube vids using pirated software.  I mean, they're filthy rich and can't even be assed to pay for the stuff they use...why would their listeners pay?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["www.ascap.com", "www.bmi.com", "www.sesac.com"], [], [], ["www.monobox.co", "www.themusicbed.com/tinyhouses", "www.canopyclimbersmusic.com"], ["http://static.myce.com/images_posts/2010/08/Music-Licensing-Flowchart.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km40jvV5lhM"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clary"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0471856/"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVtcp8XHhOo"], [], [], ["http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IZ3j67aNI4XBGKYLvgR6db5fIaB4sqrchVcim2XhBIo/edit#gid=0", "http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/24/zoe-keating-itunes-spotify-youtube-payouts"], [], [], [], [], ["www.theimponderables.com"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1uxi6n", "title": "how do internet service providers work and is it possible for me to connect to the internet without them?", "selftext": "I'm just curious as to how isps actually allow you to connect to the internet. They can't possibly just have millions of wires that connects everything...can they? And if I had the money, is it possible for me to connect to the internet just by myself and not through an isp?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uxi6n/eli5_how_do_internet_service_providers_work_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cemn5mm", "cemn78c", "cemnktu", "cemol6x", "cemu7iz", "cemub39", "cemukft", "cemuptk", "cemvc87", "cemvh2d", "cemy8gp"], "score": [11, 52, 4, 2, 5, 27, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["ISPs use an existing physical channel to transport signals from their site to your home. Multiple technologies exist for doing this, such as DSL (over phone lines), cable, and even fiber (such as Verizon FiOS). All these connections end up in a terminal box at their site. These terminal boxes then connect to an edge router using high speed ethernet connections. Most current boxes can handle up to 10Gbps connectivity without any problem and technology currently exists for speeds of up to 100Gbps on a single port.\n\nThese edge routers then connect to one of the internet backbones and run protocols to determine the routes to take your request to Google/Amazon/Dropbox/etc. On top of these, ISPs also run DNS servers that convert your easy-to-remember web address into an IP address, which is basically a sequence of 4 numbers (from 0-255).\n\nTheoretically, you could connect to the internet backbone directly, but the investment (both capital and operational) you need to do so makes it near impossible for most people to do so. Your ISP basically provides you a (more or less) consistent service for a relatively low monthly fee, as well as managing DNS, e-mail services, and hosting services (by some ISPs). In addition, the ISPs have multiple redundant connections to more than one backbone provider, so even if one link goes down, no matter how briefly, there is never any interruption in service.\n\nIn fact, web hosting providers usually have direct connections to the backbone rather than go through an ISP. But they also have dedicated teams of network engineers to monitor the connections and maintain the databases necessary to route packets properly.\n\nSource: I work for a company that manufactures the edge routers and specializes in network engineering.", " > They can't possibly just have millions of wires that connects everything\n\nYup. That's exactly what they have (obviously it's a far more advanced setup than just connected cables, but when you think about the fact that [this](_URL_0_) is just one network closet for one wing of one businesses building, it starts to make sense why they have so many. It wasn't built overnight.)\n\nISP's maintain their network via huge data centers and routing centers which manage all the traffic. Multiple ISP's interact by all connecting to large backbone routing centers managed by various groups (ICANN, I believe is one, I don't know if the government runs some or if ICANN has them all). \n\nIn theory, you could connect yourself directly to an internet backbone server to circumvent your ISP, but you'd have to physically run cable from your house up to the poles (owned by the ISP and regulated by the city/county/etc), across all said ISP-owned poles over to the internet backbone servers. Then they'd have to give you permission to run the line into that buildings server room and hook up to the server, then they'd need to configure the server to give you a connection.\n\nThe whole getting permission part (from the ISP who owns the poles, the city that regulates the lines, the multiple ISP-owned poles and lines you'd need to connect/use to get to the backbone, and the backbone itself) would never fly. You'd never make it up the pole behind your yard.", "The internet is just a collection of data networks run by different companies.\n\nIf you use *A* as your service provider and you visit a website hosted on a server on *A*'s network, the data can be routed internally (within the service provider's own network) without passing through the rest of the internet.\n\nIf you use *A* as your service provider and you visit a website hosted on a server on *B*'s network, the data may be routed one of two ways:\n\n**Direct Peering Connections:**\n\nIn this scenario, *A* and *B* mutually agree to establish a direct peering connection between their respective networks. The peering connection will be faster, less congested and better performing than alternative routing paths and will allow subscribers of *A*'s service to reach websites etc. hosted on *B*'s network and vice versa. The peering connection will be established at carrier neutral facilities / data centers where many different service providers are able to interconnect with each-other sometimes through a switching fabric / internet exchange service. These facilities are located in major cities all around the world, and if *A* and *B* are large enough, they will establish peering connections at multiple facilities.\n\nWhen *A*'s network and *B*'s network are roughly the same size and/or have similar amounts of data traffic, both network providers will usually agree to peer for free (since the peering connection is mutually beneficial for both parties). If one of the networks is significantly larger then (or dumps too much traffic on) the other network, a paid peering arrangement may sometimes occur. Paid peering connections are sometimes seen as violating the principle of Net Neutrality since it means one service provider is essentially paying for the privilege of having a faster/better connection (i.e. a 'fast highway lane') to the other network whereas other companies who can't afford to peer have to rely on slower routes via IP transit connections.\n\n**IP Transit Connections:**\n\nIf *A* and *B* cannot or do not wish to peer directly with each other (for a variety of different reasons), the only way to pass data between the networks is via a third-party transit provider which connects to both networks. In this case, the data from *A* gets routed through a transit provider *C* which then passes the data on to *B* where it eventually reaches its destination.\n\nTransit links or backbone connection are often more congested and slower performing as compared to peering links. Thus, service providers who peer with hundreds of other networks will generally be able to provide better internet service then a smaller provider who only peers with one or two networks and relies mostly on IP transit.\n\n >  Is it possible for me to connect to the internet just by myself and not through an isp?\n\nNo. Even if you wired a fiber optic connection directly to the nearest carrier netural facility, none of the carriers would agree to peer with you. The best you could do would be pay an IP transit service for bandwidth (i.e. a backbone connection) and then that IP transit provider would effectively become your internet service provider (however it would be a much better carrier-class service, not the residential service you get at home). The cost of IP transit services would be approximately $1-5 per megabit. So a 100 Mbit connection may cost $100-500 per month. However, this only covers the cost of internet access, you would still have to pay to install and rent the fiber line to your home which would be prohibitively expensive.", "In addition to other comments, the Internet is nothing but millions of wires and servers interconnected together.", "You see, it's a series of tubes...", "I'm going to try and make mine a little more ELI5 than the others.\n\nIs it possible to fill up your car with gas without going to a gas station? Well, theoretically, you could buy gas direct from a refinery... but it wouldn't be provided in a way that's convenient to you as a person. (No gas pumps, for example, and it's certainly not located conveniently)\n\nISP's maintain a lot of connections to a lot of other ISPs, and optimize them frequently. You **could** make these sorts of connections yourself, but it would take a lot of weird negotiations and a lot of work to keep this sort of thing up and running.", "How come universities are their own ISPs? Surely they don't have the resources to create one of these networks. ", "In addition to the great answers from the others I wanted to add a historical note.  An ISP used to provide more services than just a data link, and added value to the link in that way.  Most still provide an email address that almost nobody uses, DNS (site name to address number lookup) and time services.\n\nIn addition to this they used to offer ftp server storage, web hosting, network news hosting, chat server hosting, online games, host archives of useful files and much more.  Some sold premium access to online services such as stock ticker, law databases and many other things.\n\nBack in the day if your network connection upstream was just a data link and you set up what services of those you needed then you were your own ISP.  You could then provide those services and share your upstream network to any downstream connections you had set up - often just a few phones and dialup.  A few people still do this, but not many.  There is no sort of rule about who can do this - anyone can.  If you live next to a college that still allows this and has great connections for example you could be an ISP for your neighbors and run cable down the fence line.", " >  Is it possible for me to connect to the internet just by myself?\n\nNo, because internet is \"inter\" or \"between\" networks, and by that nature, you can't do it alone. You would have to negotiate with at least one Tier-1 backbone provider, so that you could lay your fiber optical cables linking your network equipment to theirs. This process is called [peering](_URL_0_) and since you're a new guy, you would have to pay a metric ton of cash to just have a Tier-1 backbone link. You're not going to do this unless you send and receive multiple gigabits of data per second.", "You have to understand the internet is a **network of networks**. That's what so magic about it! You don't need one company to own everything - only for several companies to be able to connect to each other at given points.\n\nThe road system is a good analogy for this. How do you drive from New York to L.A? All these roads belong to different states, are managed by different authorities. The NY grid-like network of streets, at some point will **connect** with an interstate. This interstate it itself, also connect with the U.S. Highways. And so on. Bit by bit, connection after connection between one network or roads to another network of roads, you arrive at your destination.\n\nWhen you take this analogy back to the Internet, various companies and governments own the infrastructure we use to send information. By law they are required to interconnect with each other.", "They subscribe to a lower level backbone ISP. \n\nSure you can subscribe to those, but you will pay an arm and and a leg to have aline ran to your home, run your own ISP, and support yourself.\n\nWhat the ISP normal people subscribe to do, is subscribe that backbone ISP to their central hub, and connect that to usually existing phone or cable lines going through a city, providing local install services, ISP services (email, DNS, and that), and customer support that caters to everyone. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.westerntel-com.com/files/site/0/houseofreps_telecomCloset.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6aunwo", "title": "What is the difference between human and fish blood?", "selftext": "At first I wondered if fish have blood like we do. They do, at least it's red (unlike insects). But when I looked at the images google gave me I noticed that their blood cells look different.\n\n[Fish blood](_URL_0_) (Rainbow Trout) seems to have nuclei in their red blood cells. \n\nWhereas [human blood](_URL_1_) does not. \n\nAre there any other differences between human and fish blood? And what is the purpose of these differences?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6aunwo/what_is_the_difference_between_human_and_fish/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhi82sf"], "score": [5], "text": ["It's worth noting that in terms of RBC, us mammals are the odd ones out, as  generally speaking most* other vertebrates use nucleated erythrocytes.\n\n(* It could well be all, but there's usually exceptions.)\n\nThe major difference between fish and human blood I'm aware of would be temperature - ours is invariably higher, us being endotherms. \n\nSome types of fish also have specific blood peculiarities, like icefish which lack haemoglobin, or sharks that have lymphocytes cells with an extra variable antigen receptor (NAR) relative to most other vertebrates.\n\nMostly though I think the broad molecular and cellular composition of blood is qualitatively (or at least functionally) conserved. I'm not a fish expert though, so there might be many more differences I'm not aware of. \n\nIt's also worth pointing out that taxonomically \"fish\" is an *extremely* broad term, covering a huge range of very diverse species (which might be argued to fall under classifications as separate as say reptiles and amphibians). There is a lot of room for variability here!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://fishpathogens.net/sites/fishpathogens.net/files/images/SA_blood_smear_20061013B_01a_x63bf_9_DQ.jpg", "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Iso4L5tPpvw/TzCtuwAqufI/AAAAAAAABqE/yDjkbbDuiyM/s640/Screen+shot+2012-02-06+at+9.48.34+PM.png"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1wyz24", "title": "How did polydnaviruses evolve? How do they work?", "selftext": "The fact that parasitic wasps like Cotesia congregata can actually create viruses to attack the hornworm has always been astounding to me.  I have always been fascinated as to how an animal could evolve to harbor and foster a *virus*, and yet the virus (as I understand) does not reproduce outside its body.  How did this ever evolve?  And how can the wasp create a virus that doesn't replicate? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1wyz24/how_did_polydnaviruses_evolve_how_do_they_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf70e24"], "score": [3], "text": ["It seems like the polydnaviruses underwent a long mutual selective evolution after being integrated into the wasp genome. \n\n\nThink of it this way. Once upon a time, there was a virus that commonly infected these animals. As with many viruses, this type of virus has certain genes and proteins that suppress the host immune system to allow for more efficient infection. Now, viruses commonly can enter into the host genome in a type of sleeper-cell/lysogenic capacity. The virus itself is part of the cellular DNA but normally isn't transmitted to further generations unless it becomes integrated into the DNA of the germ cells that will become the next generation. In these wasps, this occurs and the virus gets transmitted to the next generation via the germ cells and is now integrated into every cell of the new larva/wasp. At this point, selective pressures would pretty much kill every single wasp where the virus would continue to replicate to the detriment of their host, so the surviving larva that have the virus genome in their cells would end up with a virus that either can't replicate or has minimal replication in the host. After all, it doesn't really need to since it's already in every cell of the host. \n\nNow, as a result of this viral integration, the host animal picks up these viral genes as well, and sometimes expresses these viral proteins. Most of these viral proteins have no selective advantage so they end up getting deleterious mutations that make them ineffective or not expressed. Some of these proteins, however, may give a selective advantage to the wasp who is now expressing them. If this wasp that has expression of viral immunosuppressant proteins reproduces more reliably and effectively than the other wasps, there is a selective pressure to have those viral genes persist and evolve along with the wasp.\n\n\nThis is actually not that uncommon. One of my favorite examples is ourselves. There are types of viruses that affect humans, such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) which commonly affects kids, that have genes that make our cells band together to have multiple cell nuclei in a giant supercell with contiguous membranes. This is called a syncytia and is useful because the barrier that these fused cells provide hampers the ability of immune cells to come after infected cells.\n\nIn another part of our body, immune separation is super important as well. This happens to be the placenta separating the mother (and her immune system) from her baby. There was a virus long ago in the ancestor to placental mammals whose remains in our DNA allow for the creation of a reproductive syncytia that separates mom and baby's blood and immune systems. Without this virus infecting our ancestors and getting integrated into our DNA millions of years ago, there would be no placental mammals and there would be no us."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "w9uak", "title": "why do citrus and mint not work well together?", "selftext": "Like having orange juice after brushing your teeth, or a drink with lemon in it after chewing gum or having a mint. If you have never done this, it tastes bad.\n\nEDIT: Well, I guess I now have to try a mojito.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/w9uak/eli5_why_do_citrus_and_mint_not_work_well_together/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5bhy9q", "c5bi2ea", "c5bj2jk", "c5bj6vh", "c5bjrwj", "c5bk3an", "c5bk3zh", "c5bk6dc", "c5bkbcj", "c5bkm8e", "c5bknlk", "c5bkqox", "c5bksdp", "c5blfdv", "c5bn633"], "score": [104, 19, 5, 132, 10, 2, 11, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["On a phone so I can't link to a source, but I believe the orange juice after brushing thing is an affect of a chemical on toothpaste that makes it spreadable. You can purchase toothpaste without it.\n\nMint and citrus are fine together, especially with a little gin!", "because some chemicals in toothpaste/mints anesthetize your taste receptors. somehow the sweet and sour ones are more affected by this than the bitter and salt ones. \nso since you can't taste the sweet and sourness of the oranges you can still taste the bitterness, making your orange taste like a grapefruit. ", "If you're talking about toothpaste, it's not the mint, it's the soap (SLS). This chemical blocks your \"sweet\" taste receptors for a little while, so when you eat anything sweet, you don't get it (it is most apparent with OJ). \n\nThere are toothpastes with alternative soaps.", "You have obviously never tried a mojito.", "Here's the transcript from the relevant naked scientist episode: \n\nQuestion: Why does brushing your teeth alter the flavor of substances afterwards?\n\nBen -   It\u2019s a great effect and it\u2019s a lovely, lovely question because I actually had \u2013 I had to look this up and as soon as I read the question, I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s brilliant!  Why didn\u2019t I look this up before?\u201d  But it has all to do with the substance in toothpaste called sodium laureth sulfate.  There\u2019s a few similar chemicals that do the same thing.  It\u2019s a surfactant which means that it lowers the surface tension of a liquid.\n\nKat -   Those are classic cleaners, aren\u2019t they?\n\nBen -   Yes.  You\u2019ll find it in detergents, you\u2019ll find it in all sorts of different things that rely on breaking surface tension, and it\u2019s in the toothpaste, to make sure that you get a good foam from the toothpaste while you clean your teeth and look a bit rabid.\n\nKat -   Speak for yourself...\n\nBen -   But they also interact with that taste buds in two key ways:  They inhibit the taste buds that perceive sweetness, so whatever you eat afterwards will taste less sweet and then they break up fatty molecules called phospholipids and these phospholipids live on the surface of our tongue, and they inhibit the receptors for bitterness.  So, not only do we get the effect through the knocking down of the sweetness, but actually boosting the bitterness that you get as well.  So, that means anything you eat will taste less sweet and much more bitter which is why orange juice in particular, which we know is normally very sweet, is really quite foul.  There\u2019s also menthol in there, and that has a temperature effect which fools your sensory nerves into being more sensitive to cold.  So, fresh orange juice, fresh from the fridge may sound great and refreshing, will be good with your breakfast, but it\u2019ll taste bitter and it will be painfully cold.\n\nChris -   I met someone a little while back who\u2019s at the Oxford University.  He\u2019s a chemist and he showed me a wonderful trick with glucose because glucose comes in two 'handednesses'.  There\u2019s right handed glucose and left handed.  What that means is, it\u2019s a bit like if I had a glucose molecule and I put it in front of a mirror, you\u2019ll have a molecule in one configuration in your hand, you\u2019d have the molecule with its mirror image in the reflection.  And nature is just the same.  There are both forms of the sugar in nature.  It just so happens that the human body uses the D-form, the right handed form.  He brought with him some left handed glucose and I tasted it and guess what it tasted like?\n\nBen -   I have no idea.\n\nChris -   Do you think it\u2019s sweet?\n\nKat -   Cherries.\n\nBen -   I\u2019d assume it would be sweet because it\u2019s the same atoms, isn\u2019t it?  Built into their molecule, just kind of reflected.\n\nKat -   No, if it can\u2019t be recognized.\n\nChris -   No.  It tastes like salt, which is salty.  It was disgusting.  It\u2019s just a salty sort of (luhhrr) flavor.  It wasn\u2019t very nice at all because it\u2019s the wrong shape to fit into the taste receptors on your tongue, just like Kat says.\n\nBen -   Wow!", "Ever try lemonade with fresh mint? :D", "My Lebanese girlfriend makes mint lemonade all the time.  Shit is so cash.", "also Bun bo hue - a vietnamese soup, uses lime and mint together, as do many of the viet soups. ", "Well, there are mojitos made with lemons, limes, and oranges, and those are pretty good...", "op should read first paragraph on this wonky creation..\n\n_URL_0_\n", "I'm the only who thinks in lemonade with ginger and mint? Mojito was my second thought.", "[I don't think it's a gay drink... Mo-ji-tooo](_URL_0_)", "ever had a mojito?? citrus and mint work great together there", "My favorite drink at the moment is water with mint and squeezed lemon slices in it. I like it so much that I make a to-go cup and bring it to work, and I'm [drinking it right now](_URL_0_). I made it for my family, and they all love it too. It's awesome on a summer day. It's gotten to the point where I have four mint plants, just so I can go clip them every day for more drink. I'm thinking of getting a lemon tree as well\n\nELI5: Citrus and mint work awesome together", "Here in The Netherlands we take mint candies, place them on a half of a citrus fruit. Wrap the whole contraption with a cotton rag and tie is off with a rubber band, then we lick it.\n\nWe are a weird people.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonana"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_R6YpLpV90"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/dZP8b.jpg"], ["http://www.destentor.nl/multimedia/archive/02415/ST_18505957_185059_2415968a.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "8cec5m", "title": "When and why Hindu deities started to have blue skin?", "selftext": "I noticed that not all, but a lot of Hindu gods are represented with blue skin. I don't know if this due to religious, symbolic or technical reasons but certainly there may be and explanation and a moment when it started.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8cec5m/when_and_why_hindu_deities_started_to_have_blue/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxevr6x"], "score": [75], "text": ["It's important to note that this is a popular misconception. Hindus don't necessarily believe the skin of deities like Rama, Krishna, Shiva, etc. are blue, they believe that their aura is blue. Many Hindus believe that one's aura is affected by their spiritual vocation. It affects how people see them, but the skin's color itself is considered irrelevant because deities choose their forms anyway. \n\nA blue aura, for example, is attached to those who have attained a great deal in terms of spirituality, but still choose to intervene in the physical world. Blue is considered a color of all-encompassing nature, the color of the infinite, the color of things which are intangible to some degree, esoteric, the epitome of Brahman, the ultimate beginning and end. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2t5hga", "title": "what causes sociopathy?", "selftext": "Also, how do you recognize it in a person?\n\nEDIT: Thank you for all the informative responses! Although this was more of an academic query, people have said that I may have sociopathic tendencies so I wanted to learn more about it :P\n\nAgain, thanks everyone!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t5hga/eli5_what_causes_sociopathy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnvx6vp", "cnvxkq0", "cnvy1eg", "cnvy6o1", "cnvy8t9", "cnvyh19", "cnw6plw", "cnw70b2", "cnwbia4", "cnwbq0y", "cnwe9z7"], "score": [16, 3, 5, 4, 5, 8, 6, 11, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["You will not, it's part inherited, part developed through childhood trauma. You will not likely recognize it in a person, because a sociopath has learned to emulate all emotions like a regular one. \n\nHowever since they are unable to feel empathy or love you could approach them with those subjects.", "I have a little sort of hobby, where I try and find as much out of a person as I can by just looking, one guy who was a friend of mine always showed emotion and things like that but every time something sad happened or something unhappy was going on nothing, decided to look into it a little further.\n\nHe was a sociopath, never felt guilt, sadness or anything of the sorts, he cheated on his girlfriend more than once and managed to weasel his way out of it, until he then cheated on her with my girlfriend of almost two years after we had a fight. We split up and she made me promise not to say anything for fear this guys girlfriend would hate her.\n\nFuck me.", "Follow up: Why don't you ever hear of sociopaths just leading normal lives? Why do they often become serial killers, at least in the popular consciousness?", "They learn to hide it from silent observation and researching how they should display emotion.  \n\n", "Although I am not a psychologist, I believe sociopathic tendencies are much more complicated than they look. I would also love to see professional opinion about this.There might be people that develop it early in life, as a survival mechanism after a major traumatic event, there also might be people that just didn't have those sympathetic connections wired through their brains at infancy. There also might be a physical trauma that injures said connections in the brain.\n\nAs a \"condition\", as far as I know sociopaths are apathetic to other peoples feelings, and lack the conscience that says what is right and what is wrong on an emotional level. They might learn to define between those things, but they wouldn't care.\n\nWith that in mind sociopaths can learn to read and imitate emotional reactions that are hot-wired into normal peoples brains, and so be aware of everything you feel and everything they let you see about them. So they can manipulate sympathetic people to their benefit.", "I have had several serious head injuries and feel like I have sociopathic  tendencies as a result.  I definitely remember being more emotionally sensitive.  People are amazed about how cold I can be, and I know I wasn't always this way.  If someone is depressed or experiencing grief I do my best to comfort them but on the inside I am annoyed by what I perceive as weakness.  It depresses me because I also feel like less of a person.  ", "I wonder if there are various degrees of being a sociopath ?  For instance one can become emotional at some point, have a moral code within them not associated by emotions, and still on the larger scale lack the ability to feel in most situations.  Because they know they are considered off, they learn to mimic  behavior of the average person.  I doubt if all sociopaths manipulate their envirnoment any more than the average normal person.  ", "I am a diagnosed sociopath, I do not remember any traumatic event in my childhood whatsoever. Also, I have been like this for as long as I can remember so I think it's probably pretty genetic. My therapist says it may be because I didn't recieve emotional stimuli as a toddler so I didn't developp well the areas of the brain associated with that.", "If I recall correctly, personality disorders, like sociopath and psychopathy aren't rooted in any sort of neurotransmitter deficiency or overabundance like most disorders (depression, schizophrenia, etc.) So they're looking into genetic predisposition and environmental triggers. But I could be wrong, it's been a while since college.\n\nA great book, which I'm rereading currently, is The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. Entertaining and extremely informative, written by a phenomenal investigative journalist.", "There's and evolutionary response: you get the creeps or someone creeps you out.  It is a warning sign that your brain detects something not quite right,  even if you aren't aware of it.  ", "Genetics, natal exposure to certain chemicals, nobody really knows. Just be clear that a socio path isn't necessarily bad unless they actually do something bad."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ounz3", "title": "How can we see the solar flare with anticipation and say it will hit the earth later if the light goes at the same speed?", "selftext": "Shouldn't we \"know\" about that eruption at the same time we're being hit by it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ounz3/how_can_we_see_the_solar_flare_with_anticipation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3k67dz", "c3k67ti", "c3k6bdb", "c3k9aio", "c3kdcjs"], "score": [9, 27, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["The disruptive part is not light but the particles.", "The flare emits more than just photons:\n\n >  The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions, and atoms through the corona into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event.\n\nSo we see the flares light after 8.2 minutes, however, the particles carried by the [solar wind](_URL_0_) itself takes much longer to travel.", "It's a Coronal Mass Ejection. As in, part of the corona's mass is being ejected from the sun in our general direction. It's a cloud of plasma, basically. The sun isn't *made* of light.", "A coronal mass ejection is released from the sun. This is basically a big chunk of plasma and sun-stuff. The light from the mass ejection reaches us before the mass ejection does.\n\nIt's just like you can see a baseball coming at you before it gets there.\n\nIn short, the coronal mass ejection travels much, much slower than light is why.", "Surprised to see no one posted a quantitative response.  [Wikipedia has a \\(cited!\\) number:  20 to 3200 km/s, with ~500 km/s avg](_URL_0_)\n\nYou can see some predictions for solar flare (Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME) arrival times at the [Goddard Solar Weather Center website](_URL_2_)\n\n(Click \"Planetary/Spacecraft\", then one of the ENLIL icons.  Then click the \"play\" icon in the lower right of the window that appears)\n\n[Here's an example](_URL_1_)\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Physical_properties", "http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/20120119_183400_anim.tim-den.gif", "http://iswa.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSystemWebApp/"]]}
{"q_id": "1et0by", "title": "why is the general xbox one reveal feedback negative?", "selftext": "I mean... I can sort of understand the dislike of the name of the console, but since I don't understand why so many people here on reddit are as critical of it as they are", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1et0by/eli5_why_is_the_general_xbox_one_reveal_feedback/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca3fwus", "ca3g0on", "ca3gkfz", "ca3gl6e", "ca3hpjf", "ca3lptw", "ca3lwky", "ca3mf05", "ca3ol51", "ca3pe7r", "ca3s4lm"], "score": [46, 9, 23, 50, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2], "text": ["People on Reddit are overly critical of things when they aren't the key demographic.", "Well, one thing that bothered me was that Microsoft will be implementing some sort of fee for playing second hand games. That is the only big issue I have with it. That said, I wasn't going to buy it anyway.", "The Xbox One its goal is to be an all in one entertainment system aimed at whole families, but more of the vocal and hardcore gamers just wanted to see the games in action and raw power of the console. \n\nIn all honesty, whatever the feedback is right now will change after E3 which is in 19 days. To get a better review just wait until then because that's where they are going to show off all of the games and see the true power of this new console.", "A few items people don't seem to like:\n\n1. Games have to be registered to a specific console.  If you buy a game second-hand, you have to pay an additional fee for it.  People don't like this because when it comes to physical media, a lot of gamers buy games used specifically because it's cheaper.\n\n2. Many of the features explained at the reveal have nothing to do with gaming, making it hard for the demographic they're trying to appeal to particularly excited for them.  The idea of watching TV through my game console, while nice, isn't likely to sell the system on its own.\n\n3. Very few games actually got shown off.  Sure, we know they've got 15-ish exclusive titles, but little disclosure as to what they are.", "It's more of a media console than gaming console. That makes the gamers mad. And gamers being mad on the Internet means crazy angry shit goes down. And is almost always an overreaction. No idea why that group is that way, but it is. ", "All we know about it are the aesthetics, and it looks like a NES and they appear to have ruined what has the most ergonomic controller ever", "Add to all of the other reasons people have posted the fact that Kinect cannot be unplugged, and Xbox One won't be backwards compatible, which means it won't be able to play Xbox 360 or Original Xbox games at all. Also, it is a Blu-Ray disc reader now, so it likely will not be able to play HD DVDs.", "Very little new info, confirmed it will have worse specs than ps4, similar to 360/ps3, not much but a difference.", "Usually it has been Playstation versus Xbox for the \"hardcore\" gamers, such as  Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo etc. This has been consoles promoting the most popular games for the stereotypical gamers.\nOn the other side, we had Nintendo Wii with a focus on the entire family. Not games you usually play for hours and hours, online and achieving online fame.  \n\n\nTo me, XboX has tried to combine hardcore gaming with a family-focused box that will be the center of the living room where you can stream movies and update social network sites.  This has no use for the \"normal\" xbox customers, and many looks at these features as a waste of resources that would otherwise be used at improving gameplay graphics and so on.  \n\nI feel that XboX tried to please both gamers and appeal to families who wants to stream movies and whatnot, but ended up half-assing both.\n", "Gamers are incapable of expressing a positive opinion anything, ever.", "No Backwards Compatibility, Pay a license to play used games, Weaker hardware than PS4, Games are tied to your account, fixed what's not broken with the controller. No way to remove kinetic, More media centre than gaming console. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1vqjyc", "title": "was Tenochtitlan (circa 1450 if it maters) cleaner than large European cities of around the same time (say ....Rome)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vqjyc/was_tenochtitlan_circa_1450_if_it_maters_cleaner/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceuusn4", "cevaqmw", "cevlaeg"], "score": [14, 16, 3], "text": ["What about Venice? Since it was equally as \"watery\" as Tenochtitlan.", "There are ethnographic accounts (No sources for now, just from in-class discussion with my Art History/Mayanist/Olmecista professor) of the Aztecs being appalled by the hygiene of the incoming Spanish. This may be due to the fact that they were solider/explorer/15th century \"religious roughnecks\", but European culture of the time didn't place an emphasis on staying clean (in fact preferring the opposite). \n\nThe late epidemiologist Velvl Greene discussed European hygienic practices:\n > \u201cThe fathers of the early church equated bodily cleanliness with the luxuries, materialism, paganism and what\u2019s been called \u2018the monstrous sensualities\u2019 of Rome...\"\n\n > \"Cleanliness wasn\u2019t a part of the folk culture.\"\n\n > \"Within a few centuries, the public and private sanitation practices of Greece and Rome were forgotten; or, as Greene adds, were \u201cdeliberately repressed.\u201d\n\n\nAdditionally, Spanish Queen Isabel of Castille famously (and proudly) claimed to have bathed twice: at birth and marriage. \n\nFor the Aztecs: from David Carrasco's *Daily Life of the Aztecs*:\n\n > \"We can imagine, given all this emphasis on decorum, proper behavior, and guided training, that Aztec peoples valued clean, neat, and attractive personal appearance... Aztec peoples enjoyed bathing and personal cleanliness, and they used the fruit of a soap tree and the roots of certain plants for soap. They took cold baths but were especially committed to steambaths. Many homes had steam bathhouses, some of which have been excavated in the Basin of Mexico. These steambaths were used for ritual purification, during sicknesses, and to help pregnant wome, but also as part of daily hygiene.\"\n\nFrom Manuel Aguilar-Moreno's *Handbook to Life in the Aztec World*:\n\n > \"Cleanliness was one of the most cherished virtues of Aztec society for all citizens, not just women...Most people bathed often, and some bathed everyday.\"\n\nI have to go to class, but I'll expand from there later. ", "In addition to the ubiquitous *temazcalli* and emphasis on bathing (Motecuhzoma II was said to bathe twice a day) the emphasis on personal cleanliness most certainly extended out to the city. As /u/Ahhuatl alludes, there were workers employed daily to keep the streets clean, but my favorite example of the integrated hygiene practices of the Aztecs has to do with their poop. There were public latrines along the canals and causeways, whose bounty would then be collected via canoe to be used for tanning and fertilizer. \n\nHarvey ([1981](_URL_0_)) is a classic overview on the subject. It also includes a quote from the *Historia General* on personal cleanliness which comes up in just about any discussion of the subject:\n\n >  And when already thou art to eat, thou art to wash thy hands, to wash thy face, to wash thy mouth .... And when the eating is over ... thou art to pick up (fallen scraps), thou art to sweep the place where there has been eating. And thou, when thou hast eaten, once again art thou to wash thy hands, to wash thy mouth, to cleanse thy teeth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805201/"]]}
{"q_id": "1gbcl2", "title": "I found an orange expanse along the Quebec/Newfoundland border using Google maps. What's going on here?", "selftext": "[Google Maps](_URL_1_)\n\n[Bing has it too](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1gbcl2/i_found_an_orange_expanse_along_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caiovau"], "score": [12], "text": ["zoom in on the southern tip of the large orange part and I think your mystery can be solved. the low resolution photographs used in the unzoomed picture make the areas with dead trees (fire, beetle kill) appear orange when really they are just areas where the ground is visible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&amp;cp=51.854855~-58.498559&amp;lvl=11&amp;dir=0&amp;sty=b&amp;form=LMLTCC", "https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.79078,-58.455505&amp;spn=0.404751,1.056747&amp;t=h&amp;z=11"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4c5lpd", "title": "How safe would Ancient cities like Rome and Athens be to walk around at night, for an average man?", "selftext": "Would I expect drunken brawls if a robbery? I have trouble imagining they would be what one would call safe.\n\nThanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4c5lpd/how_safe_would_ancient_cities_like_rome_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1f8l1b"], "score": [186], "text": ["I made a longish post about this a while ago, which I still stand by. Long story short, we don't know:\n\nWe just don't know. A lot of people will use Juvenal, a satirist of the late first century who painted a very vivid picture of Roman life, to show that the city was very dangerous. However, this is roughly the equivalent of using a modern stand up comedian to get an accurate picture of life in Chicago--I have spent a great deal of time in Chicago and have yet to pay a bribe or get shot, but stand up comedy acts usually revolve around those two aspects. So Juvenal is funny, and he gives a good example of what the grumpy sort of conservative might say, but it isn't very useful in a statistical sense.\n\nSo another way people might look at this is whether the conditions for crime exist, although I personally think this is futile as I'll explain later. On the face of it, conditions for crime seem pretty ripe: there was very little in the way of active policing, grinding poverty and copious inequality. But these conditions can also be said to be fairly true for modern Mumbai, which had fewer murders in 2013 (187) than New York City (332), which is quite safe for an American city. Drawing straight lines from a set of observed material or social conditions to crime rate is usually not possible. After all, policemen are not necessarily better at reducing crime than, say, neighborhood organizations like what existed in Rome in the form of *vici*.\n\nBut this brings up an issue that is easy to miss: despite the common comparisons to third world cities, Rome is comparable to precisely nowhere on earth. In fact, this applies to every ancient city, as the industrial revolution and rise of globalization has irrevocably altered every settlement of significant size. There are places in the world where you can find villages or small bands that are relatively cut off from mainstream society and live in comparable material conditions as pre-modern people in comparable communities and then use comparative ethnography to understand how ancient communities lived. But there are no places in the world where you can find a city of a million in such material conditions. It is honestly one of the most frustrating and yet tantalizing parts of studying the ancient world.\n\nThat being said, it is possible to look at comparative stats from, say, Tudor London. One problem with this is that these statistics can be notoriously difficult to interpret--[this review](_URL_1_) of Stephen Pinker goes over some of the issues of pre modern crime stats. The second is that crime rates vary wildly in modern cities, so they probably would in ancient ones as well.\n\nEDIT: Wow, this got noticed. A great book on ancient Rome is Steven Dyson's *Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City*. It deals extensively with the city itself and is pleasantly \"fact heavy\". I can also recommend books on Roman urban life in general if anyone is interested.\n\nEDIT2: So apparently my quick comment about Mumbai got the most attention, which is great but further questions about that should be taken over the /r/AskSocialScience. [Here](_URL_0_) is a source for 2009 so you know I'm not making it up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/30/new-york-crime-free-day-deadliest-cities-worldwide", "http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2011/11/steven-pinkers-medieval-murder-rates.html"]]}
{"q_id": "6nmez7", "title": "tour de france racing strategy.", "selftext": "I'm watching it on TV now and have so many questions.  Why are there teams?  Why ride in one massive pack? How do riders/teams determine when to make their move?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nmez7/eli5_tour_de_france_racing_strategy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkajzyf", "dkal0tt", "dkalc5q", "dkalkgx", "dkarg8j"], "score": [41, 3, 8, 9, 2], "text": ["Bicycle races have few corners and so air resistance is the biggest factor. This is similar to for example NASCAR and speed skating. And the best way to combat air resistance is to sit right behind another racer. And when everyone does this then you get a big massive pack. Another problem in bicycle racing is that there are very few pitstops. There is usually one or two places along a course where a rider might get a bag of snacks but this is not enough to sustain him throughout the race. So the racers are followed by cars bringing water to them. But to get to the cars the cyclists have to drop out of the pack and then race them again with all the extra water. So most of the members of a team is not supposed to win anything. They are just paid to bring water to the pack, control the speed of the pack when needed and to help fighting for position within the pack. If you have watched a sprint you may notice that there is a lot of people starting early and then giving up far from the line. These are not supposed to win but supposed to help their team mates get a better start to the sprint.\n\nAs for the team tactics there is a lot of things going on. Tour de France have a lot of different objectives that teams can go for so the team manager have a lot of different options during the race. Every team also have a captain to help make decisions. There is also a lot of unwritten rules among the riders that help create a friendly environment for them all. So you very often see riders help each other during the race even if they do not directly benefit from this. Bad manners will make the three weeks very hard for you and may even prevent the team from getting invited for next year.", " >  How do riders/teams determine when to make their move?\n\nThe rider who wants to win the TdF has to be the best climber and (in most cases) the best on time trial stages. Therefore he has to make his move(s) on mountain stages, in most cases when the stage ends on the top of a mountain so that the others can't follow him.\n\n(All drugs aside) Lance Armstrong is a good example how such attacks work: _URL_0_", "Well I just started following cycling, but here's how I understand it.\n\n-Drafting is HUGE in cycling. That's why most riders stick together in a pack, i.e. the peloton, because it saves power and energy. That being said, some guys decide to breakaway and go for it. These \"fugitives\" have to spend a lot more energy to cover the same distance, and are usually caught by the end of the race.\n\n-Stages are usually either climbing stages (hilly) or sprinting stages (flat). Sprinters and climbers are a completely different breed of animal. Sprinters are explosive and produce 1000+Watts in a few seconds, while climbers are lanky and can sustain a huge Watt/kg ratio for long uphill climbs. Usually sprinters only contest for the \"Green Jersey,\" while good climbers and time trialists (time trials are pretty much all out stages by yourself) are \"Yellow Jersey\" or general classification contenders.\n\n-Teams (Sky, Astana, Movistar) are implemented to help one rider, usually. They basically help protect their guy (either a yellow jersey or green jersey contender) and set them up either or the last climb or final sprint.\n\n-When riders \"attack,\" they try to drop other riders and open a time gap. Note that riding behind or at another's wheel, such as in a group, results in no time differences (besides time bonuses).\n\nI know that this can sound confusing, but it's actually pretty easy to get a feel for. Just a year ago I was clueless. If I said anything wrong, please forgive me, but I've only been following cycling for a year, and don't ride much at all (besides a bit of Zwift). I'm mostly a runner, but cycling is a lot of fun to watch. Just look up the 2016 Olympics Womens Road Race Final. Amazing finish. ", "Most teams are built around one person. Wether it be a sprinter like Cavedish or Sagan, or a yellow contender like Froome or Contador. \n\nThe team protects that rider and always has them in the position they need to be. When it's a team designed around a sprinter, you'll see them get in a single file line (pace line) at the end of the race. The guy in front will ride as hard as he can, increasing the speed of the peloton (the big group). He'll pull off to the side, and his teammate will do the same thing until the lead out man (the guy in front of that team's sprinter) and about 100-200meters out, the sprinters will take off and try to win the stage. \n\nWhen the sprinter stages happen, their teammates are not expected to win the stages. His teammates sole purpose is to get him in position to win. As long as they finish the stage they're happy. \n\nAs for top contenders, if they don't have the yellow jersey, then their team might make it extremely hard on a course picking up the tempo and trying to string out the field. If the yellow jersey gets left behind or uses a bunch of energy, then the contender can attack on a climb and gain time on the yellow jersey. \n\nSource: former racer. \n\nIf you have anymore questions ask :). ", "On how they determine when to attack:\n\nYou will mostly see them attack on uphills sections because the aerodynamic drag is less of a factor. On a downhill or flat section it is very easy to sit on someone's wheel even if they are going all out. However, on a climb, almost all resistance is moving your weight up the hill, so sitting on someone's wheel doesn't help you very much. This means it is easier to open a gap.\n\nAnother reason to attack on a hill is the difference in speed you can achieve. On a flat, the difference between 35kph(22mph) and 45kph(28mph) is huge in terms of the power needed (double). Almost all of this is extra wind resistance. On a very steep hill, though, you might max out at 20kph(12mph), at which point wind resistance is negligible. What this means is that you can make another rider pop (give up), mentally or physically, by blowing by them at twice the speed. \n\n\nApproximate Speed per Power on Flat:\n\n300 watts (pro can hold for 2-3hrs): 40.5kph\n\n600 watts (pro can hold for 2-4mins): 52kph\n\n\nApproximate Speed per Power on 15% grade (quite steep):\n\n300 watts (pro can hold for 2-3hrs): 8.5kph\n\n600 watts (pro can hold for 2-4mins): 16.5kph"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdMdJAdzpYQ"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2fq9xh", "title": "In cultures that viewed lightning as controlled by or the act of a god, how were people who were struck by lightning and survived viewed?", "selftext": "Many cultures seem to have had sky-gods with control over storms and lightning: Zeus, Jupiter, Baal-hamon, Tengri, Yahweh, etc. Since people are struck by lightning and survive, I assume it had to have happened in the past too. I've never seen any accounts of lighting-strike survivors though, and I'm wondering whether being struck by lightning affected how they were treated in cultures where lightning had religious significance?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fq9xh/in_cultures_that_viewed_lightning_as_controlled/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckbvaea"], "score": [31], "text": ["I don't know of any specific details from multiple cultures, but I do think I can shed a little light on the issue from the Classical Roman point of view. I'm currently reading Virgil's Aeneid, detailing the life and travels of Rome's original founder, Aeneas, after the fall of Troy. Aeneas is the son of Venus, goddess of sexual desire and beauty, and Anchises, a mortal man of Troy. Naturally, Anchises got quite a big head from winning the love of Venus herself. According to the epic, Anchises' arrogance was so obvious that Jupiter, king of the gods, crippled him with a lightning bolt. Anchises was made humble again and became a key figure in his son's adventure.\n\nAs to the actual historical view of those who had been struck by lightning, I believe that the same sort of message would remain: due to some sort of sin or lack of piety, a god had sent a message to this person to repent or suffer harsher consequences. We understand that the Greeks and Romans saw nature itself as a reflection of the divine powers, and we can assume that should someone get a taste of the power of the god king, it was seen as no mere accident. I would be interested to know how other cultures saw the power of the lightning bolt and how surviving a strike could change a culture's view of an individual.\n\nEdit: Typos."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "qipko", "title": "how do you know something is done/said by anonymous, when they are, by definition, anonymous? can anyone do stuff/say things on behalf of abobynous, or do they somehow have a recognized leadership who are not anonymous to each other/their members?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qipko/eli5_how_do_you_know_something_is_donesaid_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3xwjdo", "c3xxflr", "c3xyoir", "c3xzcaf", "c3y1htk"], "score": [46, 32, 7, 22, 3], "text": ["Any unknown person can do or say things in the name of Anonymous. That's why you basically have to ignore everything Anonymous says they will do, and only look at what they actually do.\n\nThere's no leadership, but there are I believe certain core groups who know one another by persistent pseudonyms, and may possibly know one another afk. They are probably disproportionately influential, in that they run widely-subscribed youtube/twitter/whatever accounts which play a significant role in getting messages out to the rest of Anonymous, but they aren't leadership in any classical sense of the word.", "Abobynous. I shall henceforth be replacing anonymous with this wonderful word. ", "It's essentially an organization with a  [phantom cell structure](_URL_0_).", "We are Abobynous\n\nWe are begion\n\nWe do not borgive\n\nWe do not borget\n\nBexpect us", "Somewhat tangential, but perhaps this could alleviate some confusion you may have.\n\nA lot of people argue about the idea that anyone that *says* they're Anonymous automatically *is* Anonymous.  \"So does that mean that if an FBI says he's Anonymous, he actually *is*?\"  Some people insist that he would be.  This is nonsense.\n\nIt's pretty much just propaganda, chosen to make it look like Anonymous is legion, and also because it just sounds cool.  \n\nI'd say you are Anonymous if you fulfill two criteria.  1. You understand--to some unspecified amount--what Anonymous *is*.  2. You *identify* as part of Anonymous.\n\n1\\. makes it so my mom--who can't even use a computer nor understand the history of Anonymous or even what they stand for--can't call herself Anonymous just because she saw a brief newsreport on them and their support for OWS.  You need to have a somewhat decent understanding of who they are.  It just goes without saying.\n\n2\\. makes it so that FBI agents and such do not instantly become Anonymous just because they *say* they are.  You become Anonymous if you *feel* you are.  You can lie and say you're not Anonymous and still be an Anon.  A fed can lie and say he's Anon when he's working to subvert Anon.  \n\nThis is the same basic criteria to fit into pretty much any subculture.  Someone can feel that they are a goth even if they never wear goth clothing or listen to goth music.  As long as they understand what a goth is and think they're one of them, I'd argue that they are one.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3i313e", "title": "why does sleeping for 8 hours feel like only 5 minutes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i313e/eli5_why_does_sleeping_for_8_hours_feel_like_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucuqmy", "cucuylx", "cucvv63", "cucwu5a", "cucye1o", "cuczdou", "cuczjnn", "cud2jbc", "cud47du", "cud8zxj", "cud950n", "cud9e07", "cud9rwz", "cudb7ft", "cudb89u", "cudwzs6"], "score": [12, 2027, 317, 125, 103, 50, 76, 2, 7, 5, 1730, 2, 23, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["5 minutes? Don't you mean instantaneous? ", "**Because you are not conscious.**\n\nHow did you feel before you were born? What was the passage of time like before you were conceived?\n\nThe exact same phenomena will occur to you after your death.", "Do you people not dream?", "I've never felt like an 8 hour sleep is a short passage of time. I actually feel like I was out for 8 hours. I remember when I was young I wished it really would feel like 5 minutes so I could get to opening my Christmas presents faster. This is why I'm never quite soothed when people say death is just like going to sleep. I feel like my brain is still somewhat conscious while I'm asleep, even when I'm dead tired and in a deep sleep.", "It doesn't really feel like five minutes for me.\n\nIt just feels instantaneous, except for the part where I fall asleep. I can never place when I go under.\n\nSo I just know i'm closing my eyes, processing the sleep, and then i'm awake.\n\n", "Why does waiting 8 hours to repost something only feel like 5 minutes?", "I would be more interested in knowing why sometimes when I take a short nap for a half hour that it sometimes feels like I've been asleep for days. I wake up completely disoriented after naps sometimes, but generally speaking, after a full nights sleep I feel fine.", "Lol what? it only feels like that when you're ether in a coma, or under anesthesia from surgery. ", "Your consciousness, the system of bodily functions you call \"you\", completely shuts down. Just like when you die. This \"you\" does not exist while you're asleep, that's why you can't notice the missing time. When the body wakes up, a new \"you\" gets started. As all instances of this \"you\" have access to the same sensory organs and the same memory, an illusion of continuity and unity from day to day is created.", "Because the part(s) of the brain responsible for time perception are inactive during sleep.", "I'm afraid most of the comments, including the top one, are wrong.\n\n*Edit for clarity: This may be the top comment now, but when I posted this the top comment stated that you are unconscious when you sleep.*\n\nYou are **not** unconscious when you're asleep. Sleep is an altered state of consciousness. Unconscious means you do not react at all to external stimuli. You cannot be woken up when you are unconscious.\n\nThe actual reason those 8 hours seem to go by so fast is that the part of the brain involved in short-term memory is inactive during sleep.", "Have you ever been under full anesthesia?  Waking up from that feels as though no time has passed.  I've experienced it five times in my adult life and it is the same every time.  You wake up wondering where  they're going to start the surgery. \n\nAfter sleeping, however, I feel as though time has passed.  I dream a lot and remember a lot of my dreams, so I usually have a sense of whether only a few hours or many hours have passed. ", "Why does working 5 minutes feel like 8 hours?", "The only time sleeping feels so short is when I drink. Otherwise I have very vivid dreams and I wake up thinking what happened in the dream is real. It doesn't help that most of my dreams are very realistic.", "If you want to have some crazy dreams that you will remember and make your sleep feel longer try eating some stuff with B12 vitamins in it. The easiest way I've found is to eat some cheese or bananas before going to bed. ", "The scary thing about life, is that as you get older, time seems to pass you by faster and faster.\n\nAs a kid I used to hate waiting 5 minutes for something, nowadays I hit 5 minutes on the microwave and it's dinging before I can even get my shoes on, or I get on the train for my daily 40 minute commute and I barely get to make babies in Fallout Shelter and I'm already at work.\n\nI love my work, but 8 hours passes by in an instant, and I do get tired. Similar commute home, spend a couple hours playing games and browsing reddit, go to sleep, repeat.\n\nIt scares me, I need to do more with my time. :("]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9pvrm7", "title": "What is the status of the Bering Strait theory of Native American origins? What are the plausible alternatives?", "selftext": "I have always been taught that Native American populations originated from an overland crossing at the Bering Strait, but I've seen some Native American scholars on twitter recently claiming that the theory has been disproven. See, for example, Dr. Adrienne Keene: _URL_0_\n\nIs the popularity of the Bering Strait theory losing steam? What evidence calls the theory into question?\n\nOr was it always psuedoscientific and I had no idea?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pvrm7/what_is_the_status_of_the_bering_strait_theory_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e84osi2", "e84qs91", "e85y1hs"], "score": [47, 135, 5], "text": ["I'm no historian but a biologist, and I have a hard time understanding where the tweets you link to are coming from.\n\nThe current consensus is very much that the first humans to the Americas came from Eastern Siberia through what is today the Bering Strait. This has been pretty conclusively demonstrated not only through archaeology but from genetics. \n\nHowever, what *is* still up for discussion is when, how many times, and through which route these humans entered the Americas. The current mainstream hypothesis is that it happened over the dry land of *Beringia* which connected Siberia and Alaska  when the sea level was lower during the last Ice Age. The competing hypothesis is that they were a coastal civilization that followed the coast in boats, maybe similar to modern Inuits. If more than one group arrived, both hypotheses may indeed be right. [See this recent blog post for a  summary with further link](_URL_1_).\n\nThe timing of the migration is also hotly debated, as the main archaeological material suggests the Siberians arriving not much more than 12500 years ago. However, there are some (controversial) sites that may suggest an even older immigration event, which may not necessarily have left modern genetic traces. \n\nDifferent immigration events may of course have followed different routes. But they all have in common that they show immigration through the Bering region. There is one competing hypothesis, the so-called soultrean hypothesis, stating that at least one wave of immigrants came from Western Europe, but this is highly controversial and seems to have lost ground as the advent of ancient-DNA analysis have found no support for it. \n\nWhy it would be fashionable to deny immigration from Siberia, I have no idea about, but I would be interested in theories? What is the alternative they prefer?\n\n[Here is a popular science article referring to a relevant recent DNA study from the Univ. of Kansas](_URL_0_)\n\n[Here an article with a little background and links to other recent studies](_URL_0_)", "That paleo-Indians arrived in the new world by way of Beringia is now settled science. I recommend [this post](_URL_1_) by /u/RioAbajo with further commentary by /u/Reedstilt. There is archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence supporting that Native Americans are related to and likely descended from populations in central Siberia and entered the New World via Beringia and then followed an \"ice free corridor\" on the east flank of the Rockies (unlikely) or proceeded down the coast via boat or coastal route (most likely).\n\nDr. Keene is an accomplished  specialist in Native American Studies and appears to be arguing from a position that the origin stories of Native American groups should provide explanations of native origins in North America. Dr. Keene is a Native American and has written extensively on cultural appropriation. She has an Ed.D. from Harvard, but does not appear to have made any academic contributions to the question of the origins of Native Americans and routes to the New World. \n\nThere are two published theories of how the new world was occupied. The Beringia hypothesis has been around since the 1930s and was promoted in early studies by Paul S. Martin, Alex D. Krieger and others. Modern proponents of the Beringia land bridge theory include a number of prominent archaeologists, like Don Grayson, Tom Dillehay, Jim Adovasio, Gary Haynes and many others. Perhaps the most prolific current writer on the subject is David Meltzer. There was another very short lived theory on paleo-Indian migration that suggested that early humans in the New World got here via a land bridge or by boats from Europe and that the famous Clovis technology had its roots in the Solutrean lithic tradition. This theory, proposed by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian, has been largely discarded by now. As Meltzer puts it: \n\n > If Solutrean boat people washed up on our shores, they suffered cultural amnesia, genetic amnesia, dental amnesia, linguistic amnesia and skeletal amnesia. Basically, all of the signals are pointing to Asia as the origin of the first Americans.\n\nSo my take on the question is that the Beringian Landbridge theory is still the dominant paradigm in the discipline. ~~I will get some references for you in a minute.~~\n\nAddendum: Dr. Keene's assertion is based on a 6 part series of articles, that can be found [here](_URL_2_) that was originally published in \"Indian Country\" by historian Alexander Ewen. Ewen's approach (and this is necessarily a simplification) appears to be that the level of debate over facts about original colonization of the new world found in the archaeological literature, like controversies over dates and dating techniques, disputes over an ice free corridor, the [Solutrean hypothesis](_URL_3_) and arguments over genetics and linguistics render the entire debate pseudoscientific. This is putatively supported by \"evidence\" Ewen provides that American archaeology has its roots firmly embedded in a colonial foundation that suffers from an approach that has relied on social Darwinism and eugenics as explanatory vehicles in the past. While many of Ewen's assertions are worthy of careful review, his conclusion that the body of study on Paleo-indian movement into the New World is pseudoscience just cannot be supported. Further, his assertions that the historical level of debate over subjects like \"Clovis first\", \"Ice-free corridor\" and very early dates is evidence of illegitimate science is nonsense. The disputes are, in fact, evidence that positions and arguments have been and continue to be rigorously evaluated.\n\nSources:\n\nFitzhugh, Drs. William; Goddard, Ives; Ousley, Steve; Owsley, Doug; Stanford, Dennis. \"Paleoamerican\". Smithsonian Institution Anthropology Outreach Office.\n\n [The peopling of the Americas: Genetic ancestry influences health. Scientific American.](_URL_0_) \n\nStrangers in a New Land: What Archaeology Reveals About the First Americans\nby J. M. Adovasio, David Pedler\n\nFirst Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America by David J. Meltzer (2009)\n\n  ", "I'm going to go a bit against the grain here and say that yes, the popularity of the Bering Strait theory is losing steam. Since 1997, with the acceptance of an archeological site in Monte Verde, Chile, that dated human occupation back to 14,800 before present (BP), which was a full millennia earlier than it was previously thought humans had been in the Americas, there has been growing debate. A nice overview of it can be found at the National Parks Service website, which I will link here: [NPS Bering Strait and alternatives](_URL_1_)\n\nLets dive into the evidence though, and a bit of the history here. We can begin with Monte Verde. Thomas Dillehay has a great work on this titled The Settlement of America, a New Prehistory. What makes Monte Verde special is that it is widely accepted as an archeological site that does definitely showcase that humans were here before the Last Glacial Maximum. \n\nSo Monte Verde was discovered in 1975, and in 1977, Dillehay began excavating there. In 1982, radiocarbon dating of items in the site was done, and it was discovered that the site in general went back 14,800 years. It would take another decade and a half though for wide acceptance of this dating, and that occurred in 1997, when 12 other archeologists revisited the site. \n\nSo why is this important to this discussion? Because various studies have shown that the Monte Verde site is too early for it to have been occupied by individuals who migrated via the Bering Strait. One of these studies, from 2016, titled Postglacial Viability and Colonization in North America's Ice-Free Corridor, published in the journal Nature, argues that the Bering Strait route only became a viable path around 12,600 years ago, when the first plants and animals started showing up in the area. The authors of this article go on to say that it is unlikely that the earliest migration of humans to the Americas used this route, but that later groups may have used the path. \n\nJust a note on the Monte Verde site. In 2015, an article titled New Archeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile, was published in Plos One (it can be viewed [here](_URL_0_). Dillehay was one of the archeologists who went back to Monte Verde and helped author this study. What they discovered is that the site may go back 18,500 years. Interestingly though is that they also discovered the presence of items at the site that aren't found their naturally. Their argument is that those items were brought to Monte Verde from other people who brought them (or some of them) from far away. \n\nAnother take away from that article is the landscape of the debate now, that the authors point out in their introduction. They make the claim that the consensus among experts is that humans did arrive in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago. And while it is accepted that some humans would eventually travel to the Americas across the Bering Strait, the old model (the Clovis-first model, that said that the first humans came here via the Bering Strait) \"no longer explains the peopling of the New World.\" And this all has led to new debates, such as, how many migrations were there? Did the first humans arrive here by land or the coastline? \n\nThere are other issues though too. In 2010, an article titled Clovis and Western Stemmed: Population Migration and the Meeting of Two Technologies in the Intermountain West was published in American Antiquity. The authors were Charlotte Beck and George T. Jones. One thing that they point out is that the chronology of the Clovis-first model has broken down in recent years. For instance, in 2003, it was discovered that the Ushki site, which had long been held as the earliest site in Western Beringia, which also was seen as a prime candidate for a Clovis ancestor, wasn't as old as thought; it only dated back 11,000 years. This has caused a dilemma now as it erased the progenitor in Siberia, and has made the Clovis origins more complicated. \n\nAnother major issue is with the distribution of items associated with the Clovis people. For instance, the fluted point that we know as a distinctive Clovis technology may have actually originated in the east. As Beck and Jones point out though, while that may be the case (based on the distribution density of such items), we cannot be certain until more research is done. \n\nOne of the arguments that the authors make though is that the distribution of these items, that seem to spread across the continent very rapidly is that the Clovis people weren't migrating to these new areas, but that they were trading technology with other groups. The key thing here is that it is expected that other groups were here before the Clovis people. They actually emphasize that point, that people were at least in the Intermountain West before the Clovis people were present anywhere. \n\nTheir suggestion, and a view that they say is growing more probable, is a Pacific coastal route for early North American entry. \n\nNow, these authors aren't claiming to be drawing the entire picture. A main point that they are trying to get across is that the migration process is much more complex that we imagined. We have to consider that it may be that people migrated here in a variety of different ways, and entered the continent at different locations.   \n\n\nSo to sum up, the Bering Strait theory is losing steam. While it is certain that some people migrated to the Americas through the Bering Strait, it now appears that even before that, people were living in the Americas. Most likely, there were different migrations events into the continents, and the routes were varied as well. However, some of the things Dr. Keene is saying (or more specifically linking to, such as the 6 part article that debunks the Bering Strait theory) aren't correct either. As I believe this post shows, for instance, the Bering Straight theory isn't some unshakable idea within scholarship. While it isn't fully rejected, its accepted that we have to rethink it and acknowledge that it was only part of the migration. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://twitter.com/NativeApprops/status/1052993772685012993"], "answers_urls": [["https://phys.org/news/2018-05-dna-sequences-people-native-american.html", "http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/08/08/peopling-of-the-americas/#.W8tnws4zYkI"], ["https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090814111455.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jb2u8/what_is_the_main_evidence_proving_or_disproving/", "https://zenodo.org/record/1249986#.W8uHLRNKjVq", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis"], ["https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141923", "https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/other-migration-theories.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "fotgyh", "title": "Where does the patient breath go after breathing out while on a ventilator? Does it just vent into the room (hopefully filtered), and ventilated out by the room's HVAC extraction, or is it somehow pushed directly to the outside.", "selftext": "Additional questions while I am here :\n\nAre the air used by the ventilator the piped medical air, or just the air in the room pushed into the lungs?\n\nAre there oxygen added to the air?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fotgyh/where_does_the_patient_breath_go_after_breathing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["flj1mwj"], "score": [20], "text": ["The ventilator uses room air with added oxygen. \n\nThe amount of oxygen can be varied based on what the patient needs. It can be as low as 21% (plain room air) and as high as 100% oxygen. Very high oxygen concentrations are used only when necessary, because too much oxygen causes harm over time, but that is much less dangerous than having too little oxygen. \n\nThe ventilator also warms, humidifies, and filters the ingoing air. The body normally does that as the air passes through the nose and mouth, but the ventilator tubing bypasses the necessary structures, so the ventilator has to perform those functions instead. \n\nExhaled air comes back out of the patient through the ventilator tubing. It is filtered to remove bacteria and excess moisture, to prevent those things from collecting inside the ventilator and gunking up its delicate parts. Then the gas is released to the room. \n\nA regular hospital room has fairly normal HVAC, similar to what your house has. If there's concern about a severely infectious respiratory disease, the patient is instead placed in a *negative pressure* room. That means the air is constantly sucked out of the room and vented outside. The suction causes a steady flow of air from the hallway into the room, preventing any airborne microbes from floating the other way and infecting the rest of the hospital."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "53c04u", "title": "why does liechtenstein have a prince instead of a king?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53c04u/eli5_why_does_liechtenstein_have_a_prince_instead/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7rpwja", "d7rtfx7", "d7rtq7w", "d7rvbmd"], "score": [13, 6, 8, 3], "text": ["Because Liechtenstein was never a kingdom. It was a Principality in the Holy Roman Empire, and the ruler of a Principality is called a Prince.", "A monarch doesn't have to be a king in order to be a monarch. In fact, at the time when pretty much all of Europe was ruled by monarchs, there was a heirarchy of monarchies: emperors ranked highest of all, then came kings, archdukes, grand dukes, princes and dukes.\n\nHowever, there were many different kinds of prince (and we're talking about monarchs, not cadets of royal families, which is the more familiar meaning of \"prince\"), and the Prince of Liechtenstein is actually a type of prince known as a F\u00fcrst. This was a ruler of a principality within the Holy Roman Empire, so effectively the F\u00fcrst of Liechtenstein's boss was the Holy Roman Emperor.\n\nThat ended when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, Liechtenstein somehow managing to retain its sovereignty. It's now left as a microstate, a hangover from previous times.", "Basically Lichtenstein was a part of the Holy Roman Empire (Germany and some other bits) and became independent after Napoleon Bonaparte broke it up. Whilst a number of the stronger entities in the Empire changed the title of their rulers to king and most of the rest got gobbled up by these new kingdoms; Lichtenstein was too weak to promote itself and avoided getting eaten. Eventually most of the rest of Germany united to form modern Germany; but again Lichtenstein managed to avoid getting absorbed so it remains a modern state with a ruling prince. \n\nJust to be clear prince is a translation of Furst. It doesn't mean the same thing as the modern english definition of prince (ie male relative of royalty). Whilst there were a number of things that used the various forms of the title; generally it referred to something between a count (graf) and a Duke (Herzog). ", "Prince here is actually a translation of F\u00fcrst, Liechtenstein is a F\u00fcrstentum. F\u00fcrst was the ruler of a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, it doesn't have the same meaning as the modern definition of prince (a son of a king etc).\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3a9m1w", "title": "I have a very specific question related to the Third Dynasty of Ur in ancient Sumer.", "selftext": "I also just asked this in /r/askhistory but this sub seems a lot more populated.\n\nI'm writing a historical fiction novel that takes place in the years before and at the start of the reign of Shulgi, son of Ur-Nammu. I am trying to go by Middle Chronology, and using good old Wikipedia I can place the beginning of the dynasty at 2112 BCE (2047 short). 17 years later, in 2094 BCE (2030 short) Ur-Nammu dies suddenly in battle with the ousted Gutians and his son Shulgi takes over. I'm having difficulty doing the math here, as it seems like either Shulgi was an infant when his 48-year reign began, or he was possibly 17, or something else entirely. My question is, how old was Shulgi when his father died?\n\nBonus questions: Is there information on how long it took for Shulgi to come to power, whether it was immediate or took perhaps up to a year (poems indicate social chaos followed Ur-Nammu's death)? Perhaps if there was any sort of contemporary political intrigue that could be drawn upon for dramatic effect?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a9m1w/i_have_a_very_specific_question_related_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csaoe3i"], "score": [60], "text": ["All of the dates that you mention and that we know are years of rule, not years alive.  It is impossible produce anything more than a rough guess for the ages of Sumerian kings based on their reigns.  Google's algorithm confuses the start of the reign with his birth, so anything you see that indicates Shulgi's \"birth\" is a mistake for the start of his reign.  This issue is compounded by 1) the fact that there are Sumerian hymns that mention his birth (so reference works citing his years of rule are confused with his \"birth\" by a keyword algorithm), and 2) the chronology issues, which you already mentioned, confuse non-specialists, leaving only a vague sense of when things started and ended.\n\nWhen Utu-Hegal (of Uruk) died, Ur-Namma gained control of the region in 2112.  Shulgi took over when his father died in 2094.  Shulgi reigned a long time (48 years), so he was probably pretty young when he took the throne, but there is no way of knowing how old.  His first twenty one years of rule passed relatively quietly so he may have been very young, indeed, when he took the throne, but it seems doubtful to me that he could have been an infant since the dynastic control of the region wasn't that secure yet.  I'd reckon he was about 12 if you need a guess, but that's all it is.  It's a guess that allows him to live to be 60 years old, which is a standard number for the age of venerable kings in the Bronze Age so it has a certain mytho-literary charm.\n\nAs to your bonus question, I am not a specialist of the period, but I have never heard of there being difficulty surrounding Shulgi's succession.  Neither Van De Mieroop nor the Cambridge Ancient History mention it so it might just be a literary formula in a royal hymn to make Shulgi's reign seem more triumphant.  There doesn't appear to be any historical basis for it.\n\n* Marc Van De Mierrop 2007 - *A History of the Ancient Near East, Second Edition*\n* C.J. Gadd 1971 - *The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 2*, \"Ch. XXII Babylonia C. 2120-1800 BC.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6at5se", "title": "How come the mongols had a hard time taking European Stone Fortresses but not ones in China that were made out of stone?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6at5se/how_come_the_mongols_had_a_hard_time_taking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhhntcz", "dhhq82z", "dhi5avq"], "score": [9, 42, 42], "text": ["Follow up question, why didn't the invaders just starve them out? Surely the defenders had limited supplies. ", "did they have an easy time with Chinese fortresses? it took them si years to seize Xiangyang", "I'll start this with a caveat: my knowledge of medieval warfare is almost entirely limited to England and France, so someone with more knowledge and experience on the Mongols will undoubtedly provide a better answer. I nonetheless have a couple of books, namely Timothy May's *The Mongol Art of War* and Chris Peer's *Genghis Khan and the Mongol War Machine*, which look at how the Mongols fought and have information that I'll use to propose two complementary answers: that the Mongols did have a hard time taking Chinese fortifications, and that the nature of the European campaigns made siege warfare unwise.\n\nThe first thing to do is to put the Chinese campaigns in perspective: the war against the Jin Dynasty lasted almost 25 years and the war against the Song Dynasty lasted almost 40 years. The Jin Dynasty initially intended to use a combination of superior numbers and existing fortifications against the Mongols, but multiple defections by allies and client horse nomads saw their best pasture land cut off from them by the Mongols. Subsequently, the war became all about fortified cities, which the Mongols had to reduce one by one.\n\nThe Song Dynasty was protected by good natural defenses in the form of mountains between them and the Mongols and, though the Mongols did attempt to outflank them, they were able to hold off for quite some time and win several battles. Eventually the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng were besieged, and these held out for six years, until supplies ran out and the newly introduced counterweight trebuchet made considerable impact on the walls. With the fall of the twin cities, the Han River, and from it the Yangtze River, was now unprotected from the Mongols and they could strike wherever they wanted in Song China.\n\nWhat does this have to do with the European campaigns? Well, the important thing to note is that, after the initial 1241/1242 campaign, Mongol actions in Central Europe were almost entirely large scale raids, not actual invasions. Against raids, with a lack of time for circumvallations or heavy siege equipment, stone fortifications worked very well. Unless taken by surprise , they were difficult to damage with the equipment the Mongols would have had with them, thus making an assault a costly proposition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "186x97", "title": "What is the easiest example of dual nature of light?", "selftext": "How do I understand the duality of nature of light?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/186x97/what_is_the_easiest_example_of_dual_nature_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8c4yzg", "c8c54rb", "c8c5zdm", "c8c6oqi"], "score": [8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Photoelectric effect shows its particle like character, interference patterns show its wave like character.\n\n(Remember, both are just models of reality. Science describes models of reality, not reality itself. Those models have applicability in some circumstances but not in others. We are medium sized beings (on the order of metres) who have evolved to look at medium speed animals (on the order of metres per second), and can see things of medium size (on the order of millimetres to kilometres). Our brains haven't evolved to look at or understand very small objects which are dominated by quantum mechanical effects that our brains struggle to understand as we find them intuitively difficult.)\n\nEssentially the [photo electric effect](_URL_1_) shows that light can be thought of as discrete separate parts called photons. And [interference patterns](_URL_0_) are evidence of wave like character.", "It is not easy, and not intuitive. Light is both a beam of particles and an electromagnetic wave.\n\nTwo experiments demonstrating one of these aspects are aiming a beam of monochromatic light (light of only one colour) at a barrier consisting of either one or two narrow slits and recording what happens to the light beam after that.\n\nSpecifically, looking at the intensity of the light beam in these two experiments with respect to their location (angle) to the location of the slit, when the light passes through a single slit, the distribution will be such as that the most intensity of light is received by the point that lies in the continuation of the line between the origin of the light and the single slit. As you measure light intensity away from this location, it gets less in a manner consistent with a model where light consists of pebbles being thrown at an opening in a wall, and dispersing on the other side. Light is a particle.\n\nThe other experiment, aiming a beam of monochromatic light at a system of two slits some distance from each other in a barrier, makes it interesting. In this case, it turns out that when you measure the intensity of the light after it has passed through the slits, a pattern arises where at various angles between the slits and the point of measurement, intensity waxes and wanes. This could be explained by interpreting light as a wave, instead of as a stream of particles.\n\n[Here is an article explaining it in more detail](_URL_0_)", "As others have stated, it's not entirely an easy question to answer because it's difficult for the mind (esp. for someone who hasn't spent years in study of quantum mechanics), to grasp what duality means physically, let alone mathematically.\n\nEssentially here's an experiment that would show the duality of light:  This experiment will show that light diffracts into its' separate component wavelengths (wave property) as well as the physical ability to push an object through the release of kinetic energy into an object through momentum:\n\nIf you obtain a strong light source and pass it through a prism, you will see the light separate into its' component light waves (wave component) through diffraction and if you place a Crookes radiometer within a portion of the diffracted spectrum you will begin to see the vanes rotate, which is the result of photons imparting kinetic energy into the radiometer because photons have momentum (particle component).\n\nSo this shows, in an easy way, the dual nature of light.  The double slit experiment shows a more robust example, but most people don't have the equipment available to transmit and detect single electrons before and / or after they have traveled through the slit.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n", "Watch this: _URL_0_\n\nIt'll take about an hour of your time, but it goes into detail about the double-slit experiment, which not only shows both characteristics of light, but how they interact."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/light/u12l1b.cfm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect"], ["http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/lightandcolor/particleorwave.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prism_%28optics%29", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer"], ["http://youtu.be/hUJfjRoxCbk"]]}
{"q_id": "6z9i1m", "title": "why is fear of clowns such a common phobia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6z9i1m/eli5_why_is_fear_of_clowns_such_a_common_phobia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmti2mm", "dmti87a", "dmtjwg6", "dmtyxu7", "dmuj4x9"], "score": [95, 29, 13, 2, 9], "text": ["Clown's costumes distort and exaggerate their features for humorous effect. However, we naturally find feature distortions as worrying or frightening because deformities are indicative of disease. There's also the uncanny valley effect, in which we find things that are *almost* human in appearance far more disturbing than things that are obviously fake, probably for the same reason. Children are less easily able to tell that clowns are fake and are thus more likely to fear them, a fear that can carry over to adulthood.", "Our minds are keyed to recognize patterns, especially as they relate to the human face. We see faces on everything, from toasters to door knots to buildings.\n\nAnd when it is obviously inhuman, like a toaster, it is seen as cute or non-threatening.\n\nBut there is a point, as the object gets more and more human-looking, that we grow strongly averse to it. He hate it or fear it.\n\nClowns, with their distorted faces (thanks to makeup), fall squarely into this uncanny valley for a lot of people.\n\nThe reason the uncanny valley exists is because while we are trained to pick up on faces as children, and thus recognize them in non-human objects, when something is *trying* to look human and fails, it creeps us out. We either fear it or hate it.\n\nFactor in the fact that clowns' antics invade personal space and the fact that many young children are taken to see clowns at a formative age, and that phobia can last a lifetime.", "Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why do so many people fear clowns when they're supposed to bring us joy and laughter? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [[ELI5] Why are people afraid of clowns? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do people develop an irrational fear of clowns? ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do some people find things like dolls and clowns scary? ](_URL_4_)\n1. [People with a fear of clowns: What is it about clowns that scares you? ](_URL_3_)\n", "For me, personally, I don't like them. Perhaps due to the fact that I was held hostage in an armed robbery by a dude in a clown mask. So, yeah. Phobic. ", "I suspect most people actually lie about having this phobia under the assumption it makes them 'cool' "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v7kew/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_fear_clowns_when/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31rvxw/eli5_why_are_people_afraid_of_clowns/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1io7st/eli5_why_do_people_develop_an_irrational_fear_of/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6tgq48/people_with_a_fear_of_clowns_what_is_it_about/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m46ua/eli5_why_do_some_people_find_things_like_dolls/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6t1r0o", "title": "why is it instinctive to use a specific higher pitched voice when talking to young children/pets?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6t1r0o/eli5_why_is_it_instinctive_to_use_a_specific/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlhb1hr", "dlhm3gf", "dlhnc5g", "dlhospt", "dlhqadf"], "score": [160, 200, 49, 4, 33], "text": ["Deep voices are more intimidating. Testosterone is associated with both deeper voices and aggression, so by contrast higher voices are less scary to vulnerable creatures and children. ", "Why did I get a notification for this?", "The fuck is wrong with reddit notifications and \"trending\"? No offense to OP, personally I find your question interesting, but this certainly isn't trending", "Because biologically babies are more receptive to higher frequency sounds as their hearing abilities are still maturing. Thus through behavioral adaptation parents  &  older humans found better results in getting the attention of babies through high pitched voices. \n\nNot sure why we do the same with animals but I'm guessing that in many ways we see cute animals that we care for as analogous to babies and thus we unconsciously speak to them in a higher pitch too. Whether they are more receptive or not to higher pitches, you'd have to ask a veterinarian or zoologist. ", "Just posted this in response to a comment but wanted to post again so OP can get their answer: It's part of how the baby learns to speak. We speak to children in higher voices because it emphasizes the phonemes (the sounds that each letter makes) and when you talk higher it is softer on their eardrums and allow them to properly listen to the phonemes and understand every letter in the word. If you've ever been talking to somebody and had them say something you don't know how to spell, you know what I'm talking about. Babies don't know how to read or write yet so they can't identify what letter is making what sound. Because of this, they have to hear the sounds separately and concisely. Say hello to yourself in a high pitched \"baby\" tone and then a low pitched tone. The higher pitch will emphasize the sounds of the word, allowing the baby to better understand what sounds are present in what is being said. This allows them to better be able to make connections between speech and surroundings as well as replicate the sounds they can identify. As for dogs, we see them as dependents and \"teach\" them the same way. Completely instinctive. (Qualifications: BS in behavioral psych with concentration in psych of language)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3edgt6", "title": "If we made contact with an alien civilization, is it reasonable to assume we would be able to communicate the periodic table to each other?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3edgt6/if_we_made_contact_with_an_alien_civilization_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctdw1td", "ctdwgll", "ctdx8sj"], "score": [7, 2, 6], "text": ["It's not totally clear what you're asking.  Since none of us knows how another civilization would look, we're really guessing.  Let's put it this way: they wouldn't have some \"alternative\" table of elements because all the elements would be the same.  They may arrange it differently such that we wouldn't recognize its shape (for instance, maybe theirs goes down first instead of right).  But it would have the same information assuming they were sufficiently knowledgeable in chemistry to have correct information (i.e. their current table isn't a flawed attempt on the way to a correct table).  Does that answer your question?", "It depends on if they have advanced far enough to discover the elements. It is all very hypothetical, but they may still have \"alchemists\" as we did before chemistry was developed. Provided they have knowledge of the elements, and we can communicate with them in general, we would be able to talk about elements (more than likely communicated through the mathematical properties such as weight and size of atoms).", "I would like to add that we have sufficient inexperience in quantum interactions to assume that they would classify elements by atomic weight. Assuming that their knowledge is advanced, they might quantify substances differently. That won't change the physical nature in the universe. In this situation, it is quite likely that their analog of an historian or an anthropologist could find a way to communicate. However if we encountered a culture advanced enough that they worked entirely in quantum mathematics  (or perhaps a layer we do not understand yet), yes. It is possible for them to show us all the elements we know and understand in an entirely different way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "72piu3", "title": "What is the history behind why someone born on American Samoa can't be a U.S. citizen, but any pregnant person can travel to one of the fifty U.S. states to give birth to a U.S. citizen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72piu3/what_is_the_history_behind_why_someone_born_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnkuhf7"], "score": [62], "text": ["Any pregnant woman can travel to the US and give birth to a US citizen because of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The reason that the 14th Amendment exists is because of slavery.  \n\nLet's rewind a bit. Four years before the South seceded, the Supreme Court decided *Dred Scott v. Sandford,* 60 U.S. 393 (1857).  In *Dred Scott*, a black slave named Dred Scott had been brought into the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was banned.  Scott sued in federal court for his freedom, and the Supreme Court ruled that Scott had no right to sue in the first place.  Only citizens could sue, and slaves could not be citizens.  From the *Dred Scott* court's opinion:\n\n > In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.  [...]\n\n > [Negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.\n\n*Dred Scott* was a terrible decision, and is widely known as the worst decision in the Court's history.  Worse than *Korematsu v. U.S.*, legalizing Japanese internment, and worse than *Plessy v. Ferguson,* legalizing Jim Crow laws.  It was a major cause of the Civil War.  *Dred Scott* was a symptom of the dysfunction and disunion gripping the nation.  \n\nNow, let's fast forward to 1866.  The North has won the Civil War, reconstruction of the South is going on, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27 (1866), has extended citizenship rights to the newly freed slaves.  But there are doubts in the Congress whether the Constitution allows blacks and freedmen to be granted political rights.  A law passed by Congress could be reversed by a new *Dred Scott*, or a future Congress could decide to strip the citizenship of the freedmen by a future law.\n\nThe solution, of course, was to enshrine those protections into the Constitution itself, which was ultimately ratified by 1868.\n\nThis gets us to the relevant text: \n > *All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.*  \n\nIt means what it says: if you were born in America, you're an American citizen, full stop.  This includes children born in the United States to foreigners, *United States v. Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. 649 (1898), but not the children of foreign diplomats, *Slaughter-House Cases,* 83 U.S. 36 (1873), nor \"Indians not taxed\", *Elk v. Wilkins,* 112 U.S. 94 (1884).  (Later, Indians were granted citizenship by the Snyder Act in 1924, rendering that question moot.)  This is generally in line with New World citizenship philosophy, but distinct from what generally happens in the Old World, where citizenship is transmitted by blood.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "67f8si", "title": "why do elevators have an \"up\" and \"down\" call button, when you can choose any floor inside the elevator?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67f8si/eli5why_do_elevators_have_an_up_and_down_call/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgpy5kh", "dgpy6gb", "dgpymfr", "dgpzrn2", "dgq5em9"], "score": [11, 43, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["To explain it briefly, if you push the down call button, only an elevator on its way down or a vacant elevator will stop in your floor. An elevator on its way up will not stop in your floor. The up will call a vacant elevator or stop an elevator on its way up. An elevator on its way down will not stop in your floor.", "Imagine you're in a building with 20 floors. \n\nSomeone in floor 2 decided to click \"floor 20\", so the elevator isn't gonna stop going up until it hits floor 20.\n\nLet's say you're in floor 4 and want to go to floor 3.\n\nIf you pick this elevator, you'll do 4 - >  20 - >  3.\n\nSo, avoiding this elevator by only pressing the \"down\" button, you'll catch an elevator going down, and you'll do straight from 4 to 3.", "So that an occupied elevator going the opposite direction as you doesn't stop to pick you up.", "It's to prevent wasted time.When you press the up or down arrows, only an elevator heading in that direction will stop for you. If you were in a 10 story building, someone on floor 1 wanted to go to floor 8, but someone on floor 4 wanted to go to floor 1. Now let's say there was only one call button, not indicating intended direction. The person on floor 1 gets on, and the elevator heads to floor 4 to pick up the second passenger. Now where does the elevator decide to go? Should it go to floor 8? If so, the person on floor 4 has to go all the way up to the top of the building, then back down to floor 1. Or should it go to floor 1 first? If so, then the person who just came from floor 1 has to go back to floor 1, when that's where he started. So with having a directional call button, you'll only ever catch an elevator going in the direction that you want to travel, to save your time and also everyone else's.", "I'm assuming the question is \"why isn't same panel that is in the elevator available on each floor?\"\n\nIf you're on floor *x* and want to go to floor *y*, and indicate that on a full panel, you haven't told the elevator anything useful beyond \"I want to go up (or down) from my current floor\".\n\nA full panel on each floor would be more expensive, harder to maintain, and add nothing of operational value."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hihu1", "title": "Calling all Material Scientists!", "selftext": "Sorry if this isn't the right place, but I would love it if you could tell me why you're in the material science field and what you're researching (or have done research in previously).\n\nI had always planned to study physics in University, but I'm at a university where I didn't get to do straight physics until my 3rd year (this might be common in America, but not in the UK). So I took physics, materials and chem in year one, and am now taking physics and materials. I've decided to concentrate solely on material science for my final two years. I just find the course a lot more interesting.\n\nAlthough some people have criticized my choice, they think that I'm taking the \"easy option\" or that it'll be harder to get a job with a material science degree than with a physics one. It's getting a bit disheartening to be honest, so I'd like to hear your stories from the other side :)\n\nEdit - Just wanted to say thanks for the replies guys. Really interesting stuff.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hihu1/calling_all_material_scientists/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1vnr1e", "c1vnvvp", "c1vo6lm", "c1vpmxn", "c1vpndd"], "score": [3, 3, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Hi! Materials Scientist here. I'm doing steel research now for my PhD, but I used to work with thin films of magnetic oxides, which are slightly more physics-y. The stuff I do now is looking at the effect of nitrogen on steels containing aluminum.\n\nI'm hoping to go into consulting/failure analysis \"when I grow up,\" and the few firms I talked to while doing my undergrad were looking for PhDs, so I don't have much insight into the job market. \n\nFWIW, I love my major. I love the fact that as an undergrad you have the flexibility to study any of a wide variety of materials. I went into undergrad thinking I might be interested in doing electronic materials, quickly realized that solid state physics weren't my thing, and then  discovered how fascinating fracture is. But the fact that the defects that lead to ductility in metals are the same defects that physicists are looking at in [supersolid helium](_URL_0_) is really cool.", "Polymer chemist.  I'm researching stimuli-responsive copolymers.  In solution, they undergo some change in physical properties based on some external stimuli like pH, temperature, or ionic strength.", "I got into materials by a long a circuitous road. After high-school I studied enrolled in an applied physics program at a large university and promptly failed out twice. I then worked as an industrial mechanic while going to technical school to be an aircraft mechanic (a & p). I worked on airplanes for several years and was always bothered by questions related to material response that didn't make much sense to my mechanic brain. For example why do fatigue cracks in landing gear components make a right angle and not cross a weld or why do certain types of aluminum rivets need to be kept in the freezer to keep them from becoming too hard to buck?\n\nSo at about 30 I went back to school and received my BS in materials science and engineering. Then stuck around for my masters and Ph.D. I worked as an adjunct professor for a bit teaching mechanics of materials, strength of materials (typical mech e course) and intro to materials science.\n\nI am currently employed as a researcher at a large national laboratory in the atomic southwestern United States. My current research interests include polycrystalline plasticity in hexagonal metals, stochastic modeling of microstructure, in-situ stress measurement via electron backscatter diffraction and uncertainty quantification in microstructure evolution modeling.\n\nAs far as materials being the easy choice I guess it is all a matter of perspective. Materials has historically had a lack of people with good solid math skills. Often the people on the mathematical side of things are mechanical engineering or physics converts. If you find the classes more interesting then take them for pete's sake. No sense in studying things you don't like because someone called you a wimp.\n\nOn the job side of things, I know a whole lot of pure or theoretical physics people now working in materials. Look through the job adds. There are a lot more job postings for assistant professors in materials departments than in physics departments. A majority of the post docs in government labs in the US are in materials or materials related fields. Oh and chances are your advisor will have money to pay you, and you can probably find a tenure track or professional job with only 1 (or maybe even zero) stint as a post doc.\n\nPlease PM me if you want to talk more about it. ", "My bachelors was in physics. I am now studying structural bio-materials in a chemical engineering department.\n\nI do not regret majoring in physics and I love studying materials. I would say you can't go wrong either way. The job you get will be based on how you sell yourself and your degree. Either degree is easy to sell and neither degree is the easy way out.\n\nPhysics is more fundamental and the upper division will teach you techniques and ways of thinking which will be useful no matter what you do.\n\nIf you are more interested in materials then go for it. If materials is where you want to be there are plenty of jobs in the field and you will be more qualified than a physicist to study materials. Physicists are second best at a lot of disciplines, so choosing physics will give you more options, but then its on you to convince an employer why they should choose you over a materials scientist/engineer.", "Mankind has had computers, airplanes, cars, telephones, batteries, solar cells, etc, for about a century. Fundamental technologies have not changed much, but progress in many fields are limited by the quality of their available materials. However, many fields have progressed rapidly in the last 40 years due to the development of new materials with enhanced properties, enabling higher level engineering to take place.\n\nFor example, the new Boeing 787 is made of a composite material that is stronger than structural metals but significantly lighter, making it more fuel efficient, and also eliminates ear popping (see, structural steels can't stand the pressure difference at high altitudes, so they have to depressurize the cabin. This new composite can withstand it, so they can maintain ground pressure). Structural material engineering accounts for stronger, tougher, and cheaper materials for ship hulls, car engines, tank armor, building materials, concrete, nuclear fuel canisters, and more. \n\nComputational power has followed Moore's law for a few decades now, which says that CPU capability doubles about every 18 months. What is driving this increase? Typically, it's how many transistors you can fit on a CPU. We are now putting billions of transistors within a square inch, fabricating at the  < 50 nm regime - does that not blow your mind? Nanofabrication and device engineering is a huge field that drives the forefront of the electronic device industry. Transparent Conducting Oxides, and other novel materials, are what allow touchscreen phones to exist, as well as the flatscreen monitor you're reading this off of. Don't forget LEDs, LCDs, and more. Exciting things in the future include photonic CPUs (and quantum computers, but that's still in the theoretical physics stage).\n\nOne of the major concerns of humanity in this coming century is the energy problem. We have to figure out efficient ways of generating energy and storing energy in environmentally sustainable ways, ideally with resources that are plentiful, like sunlight and water. Often, the material used to convert and store energy *is* the device. Making better solar cells, lithium ion batteries, thermoelectrics (convert waste heat to electricity), etc, these are all *material* problems. Finding materials that can work with hydrogen is also a huge field of research - for generation from water with material catalysts, storage in the solid state for on-board vehicle transport, and conversion to electricity using fuel cells.\n\nNovel materials also open up entirely new fields of engineering. Metallic glasses, quantum dots, graphene, aerogels, conducting polymers, etc - these are drivers of future technology. The modern revolution in science is a materials revolution, and it's a good field to get involved in. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-frozen-helium-supersolid-state-liquid-like.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "a1ezvm", "title": "Are there predators in the microscopic world?", "selftext": "I've been thinking a lot about how life is sustained on earth by consuming. There are top predators all the way down the food chain [such as this cat](_URL_0_). I was wondering about microscopic world, are there any awesome predators in the microscopic world?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a1ezvm/are_there_predators_in_the_microscopic_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eapk1yc"], "score": [18], "text": ["The predator-prey relationship is pretty consistent across all life forms. In the microscopic world, there are bacteria that devour other bacteria and there are fungi that produce antibiotics to kill various bacteria. We can go a bit below the light microscopy world into the electron microscopy world and you will find that most of the viruses are predators that don't bite the necks of bacteria and devour their meat but instead hijack their cellular mechanisms and devour them from inside. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://youtu.be/s6d9rqhivQY"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "683y6v", "title": "I am a hot-blooded young British woman the Victorian era hitting the streets of Manchester for a night out with my fellow ladies and I've got a shilling burning a hole in my purse. What kind of vice and wanton pleasures are available to me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/683y6v/i_am_a_hotblooded_young_british_woman_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgzf1vk"], "score": [38], "text": ["O.K., so although this meme is pretty much played out now, there've been several comments that it was disappointing not to get an answer to the questions that flipped the original enquiry and asked about the experiences of young women, rather than young men. So I've attempted to provide a look at Victorian Manchester through female eyes. \n\nI need to caution that Manchester - which looked [like this](_URL_0_) in 1870 \u2013 has not been as widely written about as other cities, so I have drawn on some studies of other major cities as well; in addition, there would have been huge gulfs in experience depending on social class, and the \"Victorian era\" is in itself an extremely broad term, covering 60 years and some substantial shifts in lived experience and in the types of entertainment on offer. For all these reasons, consider this answer a rather broad one that attempts to cover young women's experiences in the big city generally, and mostly in the latter half of the Victorian period. \n\nLet's start, though, by considering what elements may have been unique to Victorian Manchester, which in the course of this period passed Liverpool and Dublin to contend, with Birmingham and Glasgow, for consideration as the \"second city of the empire.\" It was, to put it bluntly, an industrial hell-hole, albeit one that offered exciting opportunities \u2013 the main centre of cotton manufacturing in the UK at a time when Britain was a gigantic net exporter of finished textile products. This had several important impacts that we need to be aware of, of which the most important was that the city became a magnet for workers from rural or small-town backgrounds, who could easily find work in the myriad of factories that sprang up there, and lodgings in the vast swathes of slum housing that inevitably grew up as a result. All this meant that Manchester was home to a large number of young workers of both sexes who were a considerable degree free of the sort of restraints that they would experience at home. Adolescent and young women might live without parents, and sometimes siblings; the social bonds and restraints created by the church were also significantly weakened, and the Religious Census of 1851 revealed church attendance among working class people in major industrial centres to be scandalously low. \n\nBy the 1840s, then, Manchester was already the greatest and most terrible of all the products of the industrial revolution: a large-scale experiment in unfettered capitalism in a decade that witnessed a spring tide of economic liberalism. Government and business alike swore by free trade and laissez faire, with all the attendant profiteering and poor treatment of workers that their doctrines implied. It was common for factory hands to labour for 14 hours a day, six days a week, and the conditions in domestic service \u2013 which was the other main source of employment for young women \u2013 were only a little better. Chimneys choked the sky; Manchester's population soared more than sevenfold. Thanks in part to staggering infant mortality, the life expectancy of those born in Manchester fell to a mere 28 years, half that of the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside. One keen observer of all this was an already-radical Friedrich Engels, sent to Manchester in 1842 to help manage a family-owned thread business (and keep him out of the hands of the Prussian police). The sights that Engels saw in Manchester (and wrote about in his first book, *The Condition of the Working Class in England*) helped to turn him into a communist. \u201cI had never seen so ill-built a city,\u201d he observed. Disease, poverty, inequality of wealth, an absence of education and hope all combined to render life in the city all but insupportable for many. As for the factory owners, Engels wrote, \u201cI have never seen a class so demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress.\u201d Once, Engels wrote, he went into the city with such a man \u201cand spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful condition of the working people\u2019s quarters.\u201d The man heard him out quietly \u201cand said at the corner where we parted: \u2018And yet there is a great deal of money to be made here: good morning, sir.'\u201d\n\nFor all these reasons, it is hardly surprising that Manchester was also a noted centre of radicalism and an early hotbed of the labour movement in this period. The infamous Peterloo Massacre, in which cavalry had charged a vast crowd demonstrating for parliamentary reform, killing or injuring as many as 500 of them, took place in the city before Victoria's day (1819), but it cast a very long shadow over the decades to come. Manchester became of the biggest supporters of the Chartist movement, a (for then) radical mid-century organisation calling for a large-scale expansion of the franchise. \n\nSo, to summarise: to be working class in Victorian Manchester was to do work that was long, hard and dangerous; to be an interchangeable and expendable part in an industrial machine built by factory owners who laboured to resist unionisation; and to work in an environment in which \"health and safety\" was largely non-existent. Terrible accidents involving unguarded, whirring machinery and human limbs were hideously common. \n\nThere was every reason to seek escape in the city's entertainments.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://imgur.com/a/anqMa"]]}
{"q_id": "3huyqv", "title": "how do you get caught counting cards?", "selftext": "How does a casino catch someone counting cards if the method behind it is keeping a count in your head, completely hidden from the eyes of the casino? \n\nEdit: How often do casinos actually call people out on counting? Do they have to have real evidence or can they just kick you out on a hunch?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3huyqv/eli5_how_do_you_get_caught_counting_cards/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuar249", "cuar4qs", "cuar78z", "cuas3tq", "cuasjus", "cuaxrh8", "cub8mv7"], "score": [26, 8, 7, 2, 6, 2, 6], "text": ["You can tell by the way someone is betting.  When the situation is favorable based on the count, that's when you want to start betting heavy.  Also, card counters often work in groups and so if additional people start showing up at the table and everyone is betting heavy, it's a pretty good indicator that something's up.  ", "Because usually they work in pairs or more to game more tables at once to find the table with the better odds, then signal for their partners to come and place bets and signal them so they all take a piece of the house. Besides that, working alone, someone maybe moves from table to table erratically after a certain amount of hands, or looks like they're paying too much attention for an everyday gambler. Plus, become a regular enough and they'll take note of you. Best way to count cards be to hit multiple casinos in pairs of two, say as honeymooners, with the woman bitching you out the whole time and making a stink and the husband leaving the table to sit with her after she signals she's winning, say calling him over to go get her a drink, at which point he says someone will come by with one for her and he just sits to join her at her table.\n\nI have no idea what I am talking about BTW. ", "The point of counting cards is to identify when the undealt cards are very favorable toward the player and bet a lot then (vs only betting a small amount when the count is unfavorable).  The trick is finding a way to bet a lot when the count is favorable without the casino noticing.  If one doesn't take advantage of the count via betting, from the casino's perspective their counting doesn't matter at all.  \n\nThe MIT group did this for quite a while by having the bet a lot be a different person (who feigned drunkenness and moved from table to table so obviously couldn't be counting) while the counters always bet small and signaled to the large better when the count was favorable.  ", "The casino hires people who know how to count cards and can tell if other people are counting cards by the way they bet. Counting cards is a pretty well known system and if you know it, it's easy to tell if someone else is following it. ", "Card counters have a very specific betting pattern.  If you follow that pattern (and are winning) they will kick you out.\n\nCasinos kick people out for counting cards all the time.  They don't have to have any evidence, it all falls under the \"we reserve the right to refuse service for any reason\" that all businesses have.", "Counting cards does not automatically make you money.  It tells you *when* the cards are favorable to you, and you should increase your bets.\n\nCasinos have people observing players at all times, and if they spot a player who modifies his bet by 10x (betting $10 a hand, then suddenly $100 a hand), then they will watch them, checking to see whether their higher bets match favorable card counts.  \n\nIf they have suspicion that somebody is making a consistent profit, they will first take mild counter-measures.  For example, they will shuffle the deck more often (so 'good counts' don't happen as much).  But if a player is a consistent winner, especially over a number of visits, then the casino will ask the player to leave.\n\nDo they have evidence?  Sure!  They have a half-dozen different video cameras, facial recognition, observation reports from dealers and 'pit bosses' (dealer supervisors).  They are tracking players better than they can track themselves.  They won't kick you out on a hunch.\n\nThere are different levels of card counting.  The higher levels are difficult, but I understand they can result in profitable play with less modification of bets.  This means that a player is less likely to be detected.\n\nAnother way to 'hide' your counting is to use team play.  /u/r3solv mentions this below.  One person is just a 'grinder', playing little bets, but counting.  When the count becomes favorable, then the 'whale' sits down, lays down some big bets for however long it's favorable, then leaves.  In that manner, the 'grinder' doesn't turn a profit, but *the team* does.  Google \"MIT Blackjack team\" for more gory details.", "Why is it even a bad thing to do that? I mean it isn't cheating or anything is it?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2km7ff", "title": "If one were to fuse two hydrogen atoms together, would the resulting release of energy be visible to the naked eye?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2km7ff/if_one_were_to_fuse_two_hydrogen_atoms_together/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cln5ju8"], "score": [2], "text": ["Just the energy from two atoms fusing - no, you would never know it happened.\n\nLet's calculate the energy in one hydrogen atom (doing this for the sake of simplicity, the actual energy released would always be less than the energy in two hydrogen atoms).\n\n\nE = mc^2 \n\n= 1.6605402 x10^-27 * 299 792 458 m/s ^ 2 \n\n~ 2 * 10^-27 * 3 * 10^16 \n\n~ 6 * 10^-11 j\n\n\nLet's take a 60W lightbulb:\n60W = 60 j/s = 6 * 10^-2 j/ms\n\nSo you would need the energy in 10^9 or 1 billion hydrogen atoms to power up a lightbulb for 1 millisecond.\nAlso keep in mind that is the entire energy of the hydrogen atoms, which is significantly less than the energy that would be released when fusing that many atoms."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1cxpss", "title": "What proof is there for Endosymbiotic theory and how strong is it?", "selftext": "This is the theory that many organelles (such as mitochondria and chloroplast) descend from bacteria engulfed by other cells, that went on to have a symbiotic relationship and eventually became integrated to the cell permanently giving rise to the modern day eukaryotes.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1cxpss/what_proof_is_there_for_endosymbiotic_theory_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9l0ohy"], "score": [10], "text": ["Quite strong. For starters, mitochondria have their own DNA, ribosomes, etc.. Why the redundancy? The idea that a cell managed to enter a cell and start a symbiotic relationship where it lost most of its functionality, seems a lot simpler and a lot more plausible than the idea that a whole cell-within-the-cell would evolve in parallel.\n\nThey've also [seen these kinds of gene losses](_URL_2_) in symbiotic microbes that _don't_ live inside of cells, but who do live inside specific organs of specific organisms. \n\nOne thing I found very compelling is [this picture](_URL_0_) of the mitochondrial enzyme cytochrome c oxidase, when it was [RCSB's molecule of the month](_URL_1_). As the page says:\n\n > If we look at the cytochrome c oxidase made by a bacterium [Paracoccus denitrificans], PDB entry 1qle shown here on the right, it is much simpler. It is composed of only four chains. Three are similar to the core chains in our enzyme, colored yellow, orange, and red. [Note: these chains are where the active sites are, and where the 'work' is done] One additional small chain can just be seen poking out the bottom here, in blue. Notice how similar this enzyme is to the core of the mammalian enzyme, shown on the left.\n\n >  This similarity is compelling, but the story is even more interesting. Our mitochondria actually contain all of the machinery needed to build their own proteins--they have DNA, ribosomes, and everything. In our cells, the three core subunits of cytochrome c oxidase are built inside our mitochondria, but the remaining ten small chains are built outside in the cytoplasm and then added to the mitochondria later. So, our mitochondria build a bacteria-like enzyme, which our cells then decorate with other proteins to customize its function.\n\nThat's pretty amazing, isn't it? That one thing alone makes perfect sense in terms of endosymbiotic theory, but it really strains the imagination to come up with how the same state of affairs would come about through some other means. Why have part of the enzyme coded in the nuclear DNA and part in the mitochondrial DNA? -Indeed, why have mitochondrial DNA in the first place?\n\nNow consider that this is only one of _many_ mitochondrial enzymes that tell a similar story!\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/education_discussion/molecule_of_the_month/images/cytox_composite.gif", "http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/101/motm.do?momID=5", "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5797/312.abstract"]]}
{"q_id": "kq6zy", "title": "Can someone explain thermal conductivity units?", "selftext": "I mostly understand thermal conductivity. What really confuses me, is the unit for it,  watts per meter per kelvin (W/(m\u00b7K)).\n\nIn general, derived units seem to make some kind of intuitive sense. One meter per second is a speed at which an object travels one meter in one second. One meter per second per second (1 m/s^2) is a rate of acceleration of one m/s every second. An irradiance of 1 W/m^2 is a watt of radiated energy falling on a square meter of area. Et cetera. All of these seem to make sense without further explanation.\n\nI've read articles on Wikipedia and elsewhere about thermal conductivity trying to wrap my head around \"watts per meter per kelvin\", and for whatever reason I can't figure out how a unit of power, a linear distance, and a unit of temperature combine to form a unit of thermal conductivity.\n\nPresumably the unit of temperature is intended as temperature differential. I'm okay with that. And watts are the amount of energy transferred through the material in question.  But \"meters\" ?  Why a linear distance? Why not a surface area, and a distance traveled through the material at a normal to that surface?\n\n**TL;DR** For thermal conductivity, why the unit W/(m\u00b7K) ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kq6zy/can_someone_explain_thermal_conductivity_units/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2mafjk", "c2mardq", "c2marjc", "c2mb4gs", "c2mafjk", "c2mardq", "c2marjc", "c2mb4gs"], "score": [4, 12, 2, 2, 4, 12, 2, 2], "text": ["You could think of it as a diffusion distance of a watt per unit kelvin.\n\nTo put it in to more usable terms: a watt put into a \"good\" thermal conductor will distribute over a distance easily, while a watt put into \"poor\" thermal conductor will stay localized and not conduct outwards as easily.", "The units are simplified which makes them hard to understand. These are the non-simplified units:\n        \n    Thermal conductivity = (J*m)/(m^2*s*K)\nHere is a sentence copy/pasted from wikipedia that explains it well:\n > It is defined as the quantity of heat, \u0394Q, transmitted during time \u0394t through a thickness x, in a direction normal to a surface of area A, per unit area of A, due to a temperature difference \u0394T, under steady state conditions and when the heat transfer is dependent only on the temperature gradient.\n\n[Wikipedia Source](_URL_0_)\n\n\n     \n", "You're on the right path with surface area and temperature differential. But there's another relevant parameter: the distance over which that temperature differential is applied. \n\nTo sum up:\n\n- Thermal energy is transferred at a certain rate, i.e. there is a thermal power transfer (measured in Watts). Thermal resistance characterizes a material's ability to transfer this power.\n- Thermal energy can only be transferred over a temperature differential. Hence the Kelvin.\n- The larger the area of the region under consideration, the greater the energy transfer.\n- The longer the length of material the temperature differential is applied, the lower the thermal gradient, and the lower the amount of energy transfer.\n\nSo to get the amount of power transferred, you multiply thermal conductivity my the temperature difference and area, then divide by the length of the material, to get the transfer rate.", "To continue along the lines of explanation from pmacdon, first think of a slab or stuff with a cross-sectional area A and a thinkness t. Now impose a thermal gradient dT across the thickness of that slab. Then ask how much heat dQ is conducted through the slap. The answer is as follows:\ndQ=G dT A/t. \nFor irregular geometries, the answer will always be some geometric factor in units of length, like the A/t in this simplified case. The factor G is the thermal conductivity, a material property independent of geometric factors. If dQ is in Watts, and dT in Kelvin, then you can see that G must be in units of W/(m K). Its pretty much that simple.", "You could think of it as a diffusion distance of a watt per unit kelvin.\n\nTo put it in to more usable terms: a watt put into a \"good\" thermal conductor will distribute over a distance easily, while a watt put into \"poor\" thermal conductor will stay localized and not conduct outwards as easily.", "The units are simplified which makes them hard to understand. These are the non-simplified units:\n        \n    Thermal conductivity = (J*m)/(m^2*s*K)\nHere is a sentence copy/pasted from wikipedia that explains it well:\n > It is defined as the quantity of heat, \u0394Q, transmitted during time \u0394t through a thickness x, in a direction normal to a surface of area A, per unit area of A, due to a temperature difference \u0394T, under steady state conditions and when the heat transfer is dependent only on the temperature gradient.\n\n[Wikipedia Source](_URL_0_)\n\n\n     \n", "You're on the right path with surface area and temperature differential. But there's another relevant parameter: the distance over which that temperature differential is applied. \n\nTo sum up:\n\n- Thermal energy is transferred at a certain rate, i.e. there is a thermal power transfer (measured in Watts). Thermal resistance characterizes a material's ability to transfer this power.\n- Thermal energy can only be transferred over a temperature differential. Hence the Kelvin.\n- The larger the area of the region under consideration, the greater the energy transfer.\n- The longer the length of material the temperature differential is applied, the lower the thermal gradient, and the lower the amount of energy transfer.\n\nSo to get the amount of power transferred, you multiply thermal conductivity my the temperature difference and area, then divide by the length of the material, to get the transfer rate.", "To continue along the lines of explanation from pmacdon, first think of a slab or stuff with a cross-sectional area A and a thinkness t. Now impose a thermal gradient dT across the thickness of that slab. Then ask how much heat dQ is conducted through the slap. The answer is as follows:\ndQ=G dT A/t. \nFor irregular geometries, the answer will always be some geometric factor in units of length, like the A/t in this simplified case. The factor G is the thermal conductivity, a material property independent of geometric factors. If dQ is in Watts, and dT in Kelvin, then you can see that G must be in units of W/(m K). Its pretty much that simple."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity#Equations"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity#Equations"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2caf0i", "title": "Why is the city of Persepolis in ruins?", "selftext": "What caused the city to turn to ruin? Why are he ruins so well preserved? What have we been able to learn about their society?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2caf0i/why_is_the_city_of_persepolis_in_ruins/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjdx8f8"], "score": [12], "text": ["The primary cause of the ruin of Persepolis (from the Greek *Perses* and *polis*, literally the city of the Persians) was Alexander of Macedon. After defeating the remnants of the Persian army under the satrap Ariobarzanes at the battle of the Persian Gate, Alexander captured Persepolis and the treasury intact. He allowed his troops to loot the city, reserving only the palaces and treasuries for himself. After several days of looting and celebrating their victory, a fire began in the palace of Xerxes in the east and rapidly spread to the rest of the city. It is unclear if the fire was set accidentally, or if it was deliberately ordered by Alexander in revenge. \n\n\nDuring his invasion of Greece, the Persian king Xerxes had burned the Acropolis of Athens, including several temples. This had happened in 480 BC, and Alexander captured Persepolis some 150 years later in 330 BC, so I am not sure how much the average Greek and Macedonian soldier would have known of it; but Alexander and his commanders would certainly have been aware of it. Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Persian empire, and so similarly had many temples and palaces that could be destroyed.\n\n The most reliable testimony of the event comes from Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian writing in 30 BC. He was basing much of his work on that of the Greek chronicler Cleitarchus, who was a contemporary of Alexander, but whose actual writings have not survived. Diodorus claims that a certain Thais, a woman of Attic extraction, urged Alexander that it would be the finest of his feats in Asia if he were to lead a triumphal procession with torches and set fire to the palaces and temples of the city, and thus extinguish the great works of the Persians. As the celebration was far advanced at that point, Alexander and his men were extremely drunk and apparently found her prompting irresistible. They formed a procession in honor of Dionysus and to the sounds of lutes and pipes put the city to the torch, Alexander and Thais being the first to throw their own torches into the palace. The resulting fire was so devastating that the Iranian Muslim scholar Al-Biruni in 1000 AD when describing the incident in his *Chronicle of Ancient Nations* wrote that \"People say that even at the present time the traces of fire are visible in some places.\" \n\nPersepolis remained the capital of the province for several decades under the Macedonian empires that succeeded the Persian one. The lower city where the common folk resided had not been as heavily damaged in the fire as the upper city of the palaces and temples, and so many continued to live there. It declined gradually however, in favor of the city of Istakhr some 3 miles to the north. By 200 BC the governors of the Seleucid empire had removed the governors residence to Istakhr, and as Istakhr continued to grow in importance, Persepolis fell further and further into ruin. By 224 AD, Istakhr had been made the capital of the Sassanid Empire, while Persepolis was completely deserted. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1imlt8", "title": "why do we forget what happened in our dreams the following morning?", "selftext": "And please, actually answer as if I'm a five year old.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1imlt8/eli5why_do_we_forget_what_happened_in_our_dreams/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb5xshk", "cb5xtqy", "cb5xxy3", "cb5xyvj", "cb5z2bx", "cb5z43n", "cb5zsy0", "cb606rp", "cb60fz7", "cb60ijs", "cb6100z", "cb6121a", "cb61ezr", "cb622cv", "cb62deh", "cb62mdl", "cb6796e", "cb67m9s", "cb68fra", "cb68yh2", "cb6a4xh", "cb6ak2o", "cb6br55", "cb6crq6", "cb6dkwa", "cb6e5mu", "cb6eauu", "cb6g3ph"], "score": [1480, 2, 37, 69, 14, 21, 7, 2, 14, 2, 2, 6, 4, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 4, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Okay, so whenever you have your eyes open you can see your nose, right? But most of the time you don't even notice it, only when you actually think about it.\n\nYour brain gets a lot of information at the same time. You feel your clothes, see your surroundings and so on, all at the same time. Because it is hard work to save all those informations some stuff gets ignored, just like your nose.\n\nNow think of your dreams as the nose. Dreams are not important to your brain after they happened so the memory gets deleted quickly. You can usually remember it for a few minutes after waking up but it goes away quickly. \n\nNow, just like you can think about your nose and then see it, you can start thinking about your dreams and keep them memorized! If you concentrate on them, you tell your brain that they are important and it will save them. \n\nThis can be trained btw.", "Your brain is trying to protect you from the crazy DMT trip you just had by forgetting about it.\n\nEdit: There exists a lucid dreaming subreddit. Check it out. /r/LucidDreaming  ", "If you want to remember your dreams I recommend keeping some kind of dream journal you write in immediately after waking up from one.  I started doing this a few months ago, going back and reading what I wrote; I can see so many mental images and recall all of them. Just writing them down as if I'm explaining them to someone makes them very easy to recall anytime without even reading them.", "(I haven't studied memory directly for quite some time, but this is the essence as I remember it)\n\nThere are several stages to memory:\n\nLong term, episodic memory, this is what we normally think of when we talk about memory; I remember getting up this morning, I remember going on holiday last year, I remember going to the fun fair when I was six.\n\nLong term, abstract memory, this is where we store facts. Generally we don't remember where we have learnt something but we remember the information. For example, a formula, the average flight speed of the European swallow, how many Halloween films there are, etc.\n\nShort term memory, this is where we can store a small amount of information for a short amount of time. The best example I know if you read a phone number and then your dial it. There is a gap in between reading and dialing where you remember the number, but after it's dialed you no longer remember it.\n\nRight now we've got through that - why do we forget our dreams? The simple answer is they never make it from short term memory to long term memory. They are in the short term memory when we wake up, but they don't get encoded into long term memory so much as the phone number as I was talking about before, we forget them. \n\nIf you want to remember your dreams an easy way to encode things into long term memory is through rehearsal - so when you wake up, run through the dream several times in your head or describe it to yourself in detail. Both of these will help encode the dream into your long term memory and mean you remember it later.\n\ntl:dr - dreams never make it from short term memory into long term memory.", "If you do not have to remember your dreams don't sleep throughout the brain, forget about it. I think sometimes they think they remember well that is the reason why (can nightmare) why sometimes remember but others sometimes don't.", "If you're interested in improving your dream recall, you should pay a visit to /r/LucidDreaming!", "It's simple, really. You know logic, right? Of course you do, what a silly question! But what if I told you that you don't *always* know logic?\n\nBut I'm getting ahead of myself already, let's talk about general memory first, shall we? Good! \n\nNow, every time you recall a memory, an electric signal goes through your brain. This sounds scary but it's fine, you're brain is meant to do that. Those electrical signals are quite important.\n\nThose signals we call neurons (or so my memory claims, correct me if I'm mixing up terms). Neurons have a habbit of inviting their friends, other neurons they often hang out with. They hang out together because they go to the same places, the neurons that hold the name of your best friend and the neurons that hold the face of your best friend usualy go to the conversation with your best friend together.\n\nSo what does all this has to do with dreams? Well, not so fast! I'm getting there! \n\nFirst, think about how you got here, on this threat, on this sub-reddit, on this site, today. What did you do before this? And before that? You can probably remember all the way to this morning if you try hard enough. That's because the neurons who hold those information already started to become friends (or at least know each other a bit) and so, when you ask the neurons of your latest memory to come back and give you a recapp, it will take the neurons from the event before that with him aswell. If you ask him for a recap, he might invite the neurons of the event before that to come too!\n\nBut... how is it possible that those neurons already know each other well enough to invite them when you want to remember stuff? Because of logic. There is a special part of your brain dedicated to handeling logic. We trust logic. Every neuron is friends with logic. Thanks to logic, you can recreate the events of your memory, and the things you have forgotten can be filled to some extend thanks to logic. Even if you might not remember getting dressed, if you are wearing clothes. You probably did dress this morning. This 'realisation' might actualy trigger the neurons holding the memory of you putting on your clothes this morning.\n\nNow, when you dream, your brain is cleaning up after itself. To do that, it disables the part of your brain that handles logic.\n\nThat's right, no logic for you.\n\nLet me give you an example of what kind of effects that has during a dream;\n\nOnce I dreamt I went through a hallway in an appartment building, I went through a door, did something, and left through that very same door, when I left that room I was on a boat. And the strangest thing is; I didn't thought it was strange at all. My brain did not realize it was strange because it had no concept of logic at the time. \n\nNot only that, but in the dream I went right onto the next event. I never really have any moment in my dreams to just do nothing. While I might not remember it, I know I was constantly doing something whereas, while I'm writing this very comment, I take a moment every now and then to just sit and think.\n\nBy thinking and recalling what I just wrote the neurons holding that information become better friends. Therefor, I'm able to remember what I wrote much better because I only have to remember one part and the neurons inviting each other will do the rest.\n\nSo yeah, that's basicly it. In your dreams you never take any time to think about what just happened, and therefor the neurons don't really know each other and won't invite each other at the next party. Mr Popular - our logic system - was asleep during your dreams so he can't help you fill in the gabs of your memory because, quite simply, it doesn't make sense what happens in your dreams.\n\nThis is why you can't remember your dreams.", "One interesting theory on dreams that is probably not true comes from freud... Freud says that dreams reveal elements of our unconscious mind that we have suppressed, I.e. memories, fears, desires, etc... It takes mental energy to keep these suppressed, so when we sleep, our mind allows us to experience them, but in a disguised sort of way so that we don't realize that it's happening. Freud would say that if you forget dreaming, that means that whatever you dreamt was too obviously these repressed elements coming to your forethought, so your mind has immediately re-repressed them.... Again this is pretty much disregarded, but still interesting!", "Actually, I've found a trick.  As soon as I wake up, I can remember my dream for about 2-3 minutes before I forget it.  So if I want to remember it, I'll write down some quick notes, like...\n\n\"magical powers\" \"Took over the world\" \"black and red armor\" \"giant castle\"\n\nAnd if I go back and look at those notes later, I can remember EVERYTHING about the dream as if it were happening again.\n\nBut if I don't take notes... 5 minutes later, I'm lucky if I remember \"Uh... I was a knight or something, I think.\"\n\ne.g. I have notes written down here from two days ago: \"bridge, ice, driving, Sarah\" and I can remember the dream: I was in the passenger seat of my car, being driven by a friend (Sarah).  We were driving over the Chesapeake Bay bridge, there were no guardrails and the car flew off the side of the bridge.  The bay was completely frozen, and the car landed on its wheels with no damage. We continued to drive as if nothing happened, and I remarked at how much better it was down here than on the bridge because there was no traffic.", "Basically when we are awake and walking around we are getting a lot of sensory information, sound and touch and smells and sight, and all of this information is associated with each other and helps us create memories. When we dream, our brain is spontaneously making up this information, and so there is no actual visual or auditory information to associate with any of the activity, it is just a stream of consciousness. As such, there is nothing your brain has to associate with your dreams except the dreams themselves, which is why if you do not think about them after waking (very hard, mind you), it is very easy to forget them, because they are only a shadow of the real world with none of the substance. Sometimes they can produce emotions enough to remember though, but yeah, it's not that they aren't important for survival, it's just that there is no information to remember.", "What do you make of recurring dreams?  My husband used to (don't know if he still does) have dreams of being a black slave. He's a scottish redhead, so I find this a little odd. ", "My theory is that the dream identity is different from the waking identity.  As part of the process of waking up, we put together our identity, which acts as a filter, blocking non-identifiable content.  Dream content is a memory from a slightly different identity.  The you that was being chased by zombies wasn't the waking self.  To help piece together what the waking identity is, it rejects that content, which would confuse you about who you are.  DMT users report a similar phenomenon, that they must write down their experiences quickly or lose them.  It's like early childhood memories; the memories are there but our identity is significantly different as adults and the childhood identities didn't travel with us to adulthood.", "Survival instinct.\n\nWe'd all die if our girlfriends remembered how often we cheated in their dreams", "You can, indeed, train yourself to lucid dream. If you take Benadryl for your allergies and to help you sleep you may have noticed that you'll remember your dreams better. Benadryl was originally developed as a powerful hypnotic before it was marketed as an antihistamine. That helped me remember and control my dreams, but I wouldn't suggest you start popping those pink pills just for that reason. ", "There are several great responses here. If you'd like a really difficult, but no less interesting, professional explanation then I highly recommend you read *The Dreaming Brain* by J. Allan Hobson. he's a leading researcher in the field. It's a great book, but it's no easy read. \n\nHe explains that the region of the brain activated during REM sleep is the area designated for short term memory. Why your brain operates this way is not known, but it is theorized that since dreams are not actually happening that they are not important to remember. He also explains that you experience a lot of dreams that are anxious and fearful because the area of your brain that is stimulated and the chemicals released are not conducive to calm and peacefulness.\n\nEDIT: typos\n", "I don't know how many dreams I actually remember but most of the time I wake up and can remember a dream as if it was a movie I just watched. I can remember faces and conversations like I was just there. I wish I could rewatch them over and over. I should start writing them down. ", "How you wake up also effects whether or not you remember your dreams. You go through different stages of sleep every night. You only dream in one of these stages. The final stage of sleep usually is not the one with dreaming, so its more difficult to remember a dream you might have had that night. If you are woken up in the middle of a dream you will notice its much easier to recall the events of the dream.", "My trouble with dreams is:\nEvery so often, I have dreams where I am completely immersed in that world, and more often than not the world I am coming from does not have many things in common with my waking life.  I struggle with the transition and often bolt out of bed in complete surprise to find myself in the surroundings of my normal life.  It usually takes a few full minutes to remember: who I am, where I am, what I usually do.", "The comments in this thread are pure brilliance. ", "Why do you forget your waking life when you are in a dream?", "If you want to remember your dreams better you will have to train your brain to do this. Keep a dream journal in your bed or somewhere as close to you as possible so you don't have to get out of bed or move much. Then immediately write ANYTHING you can remember. Write down images, feelings, emotions, anything really. Then before you go to sleep that night tell yourself repeatedly that \"I will remember my dream\". Repeat this process and within a week you will be remember multiple dreams in detail. You will even get to a point where just laying in bed allows you to recall past dreams. Your bed will become a dream recall trigger. Next step is using these tools to have lucid dreams (the ability to control your dreams). Lucid dreaming is one of the most amazying things you can train your brain to do so go do some research over at /r/LucidDreaming and make your dreams come true...in your dreams ;). ", "After all the dreaming is over, after you wake, and leave the world of madness and glory for the mundane day-lit daily grind, through the wreckage of your abandoned fancies walks the sweeper of dreams.\n\n\nWho knows what he was when he was alive? Or if, for that matter, he ever was alive. He certainly will not answer your questions. The sweeper talks little, in his gruff gray voice, and when he does speak it is mostly about the weather and the prospects, victories and defeats of certain sports teams. He despises everyone who is not him.\n\n\nJust as you wake he comes to you, and he sweeps up kingdoms and castles, and angels and owls, mountains and oceans.He sweeps up the lust and the love and the lovers, the sages who are not butterflies, the flowers of meat, the running of the deer and the sinking of the Lusitania. He sweeps up everything you left behind in your dreams, the life you wore, the eyes through which you gazed, the examination paper you were never able to find. One by one he sweeps them away: the sharp-toothed woman who sank her teeth into your face; the nuns in the woods; the dead arm that broke through the tepid water of the bath; the scarlet worms that crawled in your chest when you opened your shirt.\n\n\nHe will sweep it up \u2013 everything you left behind when you woke. And then he will burn it, to leave the stage fresh for your dreams tomorrow.\n\n\nTreat him well, if you see him. Be polite with him. Ask him no questions. Applaud his teams' victories, commiserate with him over their losses, agree with him about the weather. Give him the respect he feels is his due.\n\n\nFor there are people he no longer visits, the sweeper of dreams, with his hand-rolled cigarettes and his dragon tattoo.\n\n\nYou've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and the mewl and they whimper. Some of them walk the cities in ragged clothes, their belongings under their arms. Others of their number are locked in the dark, in places where they can no longer harm themselves or others. They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. It is worse than madness. They will tell you, if you let them: they are the ones who live, each day, in the wreckage of their dreams. And if the sweeper of dreams leaves you, he will never come back.\n\n(Source: Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors)", "Your brain cannot tell the difference between dreams and real life.  As as result, your dreams are logged away the same as a waking memory.  The only difference is, your dreams are only logged in your short-term memory.  That's why you can remember them vividly right when you wake up, but then not so much later.\n\nDo this: Think hard about a dream you just had right when you wake up.  Play the whole thing through in your mind multiple times.  It will then be logged into your long-term memory, and you will be able to recall it later with ease!", "I believe in one bullet point for each year of age when explaining something, so here goes -     \n*Dreams last for mere seconds before you are dreaming something different.    \n*We remember a lot, it's the retrieval process that is difficult.    \nIn order to make retrieval easier, we rely on a few simple tools.    \n    *Repetition, Repetition, Repetition    \n    *Association with something - Something to jog your memory    \n    *Extraordinary/Unique/Odd - We are good at putting things in patterns, so things that don't fall in order stick out and are easy to remember.    \nBottom line - Dreams are not repetitive, if you're not a lucid dreamer then you can't form associations, and most dreams are not exceptional.", "If you want to remember, keep a journal near your bed and immediately scribble out whatever you can recall as soon as you wake up. It will be easier to remember them over time.... Plus it can be pretty entertaining to read on a rainy day. ", "I still remember dreams I had when I was as young as 6 or 7. I think this stems from the fact that I always told my best friend about my dreams on the bus on the way to school. Being fresh in my memory I recalled the dream to him and in a way solidified it in my mind. \n\nI can actually remember this one dream I had in kindergarten where my parents turned to zombies and I had to jump across a pool of jello shaped monsters that covered my driveway. Once I reached my friends house the dream ended like a movie and some texted appeared across my vision that said \"The End\" and credits started to role as my sight faded into black. Then I woke up. I will always remember that dream. Strange stuff. ", "TIL there are a billion psych majors out there, and either none of them go on Reddit, or none of them did their exams on their own.", "ELI5 Answer: Because the parts of your brain that make memories aren't all turned on when you sleep."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mdgxv", "title": "in regard to cars, what is the practical difference between torque and horsepower? i.e. what am i meant to think when someone specifically highlights a high torque number?", "selftext": "I just don't really get what I am supposed to think. They are both measurements of power. Am I meant to think that large horsepower numbers will make a car fast while large torque numbers will allow a car to rev high and accelerate fast? Although I am sure there is overlap.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mdgxv/eli5_in_regard_to_cars_what_is_the_practical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc85k1j", "cc85pp1", "cc85url", "cc86v0n", "cc878nr", "cc87dxy", "cc87vag", "cc87ytt", "cc88s0g", "cc8kdjc"], "score": [31, 43, 4, 4, 5, 2, 6, 51, 3, 2], "text": ["The simplest explanation is that torque affects how fast you accelerate, horsepower affects how fast you can go.  Higher the torque, lower the 0 to 60 time.  Higher the horsepower, higher the top speed.", "Horsepower measures work, torque measures rotational force. For instance: if you try to open a jar that is stuck, you're applying force. Once the lid begins move, you're doing work.\n\nTorque gets the car moving, horsepower keeps it moving and helps with passing acceleration. Or: torque is applied at low engine speeds, horsepower is applied at higher speeds. Torque decrease as engine speed increases.\n\nTorque is especially important for towing because you need a lot of force to get so much weight moving in the first place.", "Torque is how much force the engine is creating. Power is torque over time. So the two are related. \n\nImagine pushing a brick a metre along the ground. It requires a certain amount of force to get going, then some force to keep going. Now do the same thing in half the time. The torque is the same, but you need more power to do it faster. \n\nIn relation to cars, power is torque by revs, so for most engines, the harder you rev it the more power you get (over the usable rev range). You are getting around the same amount of \"push\", but as the revs increase it is making it faster, or for the same time period, making more of it. Which is why increasing engine revs makes you go faster.", "While all these other comments sum it up very well, I'd like to add that high torque output becomes more \"useless\" as the weight of the car becomes less. For example, Formula 1 cars weigh maybe 1600lbs; they have an output of 700+ horsepower, but only around 200-400ftlbs of torque. If they had a higher torque output, they would exceed the point in which the car can have any efficient stability.", "TIL nobody understands the difference between torque and horsepower.", "Might be oversimplifying this, and it might be bs, but my intuition tells me:\nPower = Torque x Angular acceleration\nSo for a given horsepower, you can 'trade' torque for acceleration.\nTorque allows you to haul really heavy things. Acceleration allows you to go faster/ish. \nExamples: motor operated winch. high torque to lift very heavy things, but does it slowly, so you can just use mains power.\nmotor in an electric toothbrush. low torque since there isn't much friction but very high acceleration. Since the torque is so low, using the formula, the power is actually little, and can be powered of a battery.\nreading it back, its slightly off topic. appologies", "Mechanic here. This is how I describe it to a five year old.\n\nA cars engine produces torques. HP is how quickly the engine can apply those torques to the wheels. So as your engine speed increases it applies the torques faster.\n\nEngine design plays a lot into which is a priority. Meaning a big block Chevy will have a ton of torques available but ultimately cannot apply the torques as quickly because it was designed to rev to only 5000rpm. Where a Honda S2000 has very few torques but when it gets near 8000rpm it is applying so many torques per second that the car is still fast.\n\nHope this makes sense.", "So there seems to be a little confusion with the relation between the two. This is because they stand for two different aspects of work and horsepower is calculated based on the torque. \n\nTorque is strictly measurement of force. Torque is defined specifically as a rotating force that may or may not result in motion. It's measured as the amount of force multiplied by the length of the lever through which it acts. For example, if you use a one-foot-long wrench to apply 10 pounds of force to a bolt head, you're generating 10-pound-feet of torque.\n\nHorsepower is defined as the amount of energy required to lift 550 pounds, one foot, in one second. From this definition you can see that the components of horsepower are force, distance and time.\n\nThe measurement of torque is stated as pound-feet and represents how much twisting force is at work. If you can imagine a plumber's pipe wrench attached to a rusty drainpipe, torque is the force required to twist that pipe. If the wrench is two feet long, and the plumber pushes with 50 pounds of pressure, he is applying 100 pound-feet of torque (50 pounds x 2 feet) to turn the pipe (depending on the level of rust, this may or may not be enough torque). As you may have noticed, this measurement of torque does not include time. One-hundred pound-feet of torque is always 100 pound-feet torque, whether it is applied for five seconds or five years. **So, if you want a quick answer to the difference between horsepower and torque, just keep in mind that horsepower involves the amount of work done in a given time, while torque is simply a measurement of force and is thus a component of horsepower**.\n\nTo see how torque and horsepower interact, imagine your favorite SUV at the base of a steep hill. The engine is idling and the gear lever is in the \"Four-Low\" position. As the driver begins to press on the throttle, the engine's rpm increases, force is transmitted from the crankshaft to each wheel, and the SUV begins to climb upward. The twisting force going to each wheel as the vehicle moves up the hill is torque. Let's say the engine is at 3,000 rpm, the gear ratio is 3, and the vehicle is creating 300 pound-feet of torque. Using the following formula, we can calculate horsepower:\n\nTake the torque of 300 multiplied by a shaftspeed of 1000 (3000 rpm divided by a gear ratio of 3) for a total of 300,000. Divide 300,000 by 5,252 and you get 57.1 horsepower that the SUV is making as it begins to ascend the hill. **It is interesting to note that, since 5,252 is used to calculate horsepower by way of torque and shaftspeed, it is also the number in the rpm range at which torque and horsepower are always equal. If you were to view the horsepower and torque curves of various engines, you would notice that they always cross at 5,252 rpm**.\n\nAt low speeds the transmission's gears work to transmit maximum torque from the engine to the wheels. You want this because it takes more force, or torque, to move a vehicle that is at rest than it does to move a vehicle in motion (Newton's 1st Law). At the same time, once a vehicle is underway, you want less torque and more horsepower to maintain a high speed. **This is because horsepower is a measurement of work done and includes a time element** (such as wheel revolutions per minute necessary to maintain 75 mph).\n\nSo to answer your I.E. a high torque number means the engine produces a lot of force. This is useful for moving more weight. That's why heavier older muscle cars need high torque while smaller lighter rice burners can get away with much lower torque. \n\n*Fun fact: Electric motors like that in the Tesla produce maximum torque at 1rpm. \n\nMost of this information was taken from and edited from [this article](_URL_0_) from Edmunds.  \n\nEdit: Here is a graph detailing a power curve of a Tesla motor. _URL_1_", "Horsepower and torque aren't independent of each other. Horsepower = (torque*rpm)/5252. When people give you see horsepower and torque numbers, those are the peak values, as opposed to average horsepower or something that would give you an idea of what the area under the horsepower curve would be. When it comes to the engines you find in cars (ignoring wankels, cause they work on voodoo magic) you'll find that cars with pistons with longer strokes will put out more torque, where as shorter stroke and larger bore (the circular area of the cylinder) will put out more horsepower.  This is generally the reason your muscle cars and trucks put out more torque, but redline are lower rpms whereas your souped up honda civics put out more horsepower and redline at higher rpm, but put out very little torque.\n\ntl;dr look at torque and horsepower curves, not peak numbers. Peak numbers can be misleading, looking at the area under the curve gives you a better understanding of the power put down (although you get values for given rpm values, not time values, which makes it harder to compare two cars)", "This comes up constantly here and no one ever seems to get it right. \n\nLet me make it simple for you. Horsepower is all that matters. When people say an engine has a lot of torque, they probably mean \"low end torque\". Since power is torqueXspeed, low end torque implies you still are producing a lot of power. Again, power=torqueX(rotational)speed. So if you don't have much speed, having a lot of torque will compensate and still yield good power numbers.\n\nThis gets slightly more complicated to think about with gearing but the end result is the same; if you're concerned with how quickly a car can accelerate, you're concerned with power."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/the-twist-on-torque.html", "http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/uploads/689/tesla_roadster_torquegraph_v2a.gif"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19xil1", "title": "In what language can you read the fastest?", "selftext": "There are some languages like German where many nouns are compound words to describe the object rather than a new short word.  Other languages like various Asian languages are single symbols to represent whole words.  You could fit a whole sentence of Mandarin the space it takes to write Hoechsgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.\n\nIs there a significant difference in the time it would take native readers will similar levels of literacy would be able to read a novel?  Do different languages communicate information quicker?  If so which do it quicker and which are slower?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19xil1/in_what_language_can_you_read_the_fastest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8sire0"], "score": [10], "text": ["--SCIENCE--\n\nTheoretically, all languages differ in their written information rate being dependent on numerous factors like reader skill, text comprehensibility and even language-specific features like complexity, ambiguity, and symbol density. \n\nHowever, to answer your question completely we would have to address an important aspect of how written language is recognized by human brains - pattern recognition.\n\nHuman beings have very good spatial skills (rapid eye movement and shape recognition) and their brains are exceptionally fast at pattern recognition. However, this does not mean that we can recognize a single-symbol \"\u00a9\" faster than the word \"copyright\". If we did, Chinese should be read at a significantly faster rate than English by native readers of the respective languages. But studies indicate that both languages are actually read at about the same speed. This essentially means that humans are not limited by pattern recognition in written language comprehension, and are as fast at recognizing long strings of shapes as they are at recognizing single shapes. The aforementioned research suggests that it is actually the higher level cognitive processes that limit language reading rates of individuals.  \n\nSources:\n\n[Sun F, Morita M,  &  Stark LW (1985). Comparative patterns of reading eye movement in Chinese and English](_URL_0_)\n\nSun, F,  &  Feng, D (2010). Eye movements in reading Chinese and English text Reading Chinese Script: A cognitive analysis, Eds. Jian Wang, Albrecht W. Inhoff, Hsuan-Chih Chen., 189-205 ISBN: 9780805824780\n\nYan, G., Tian, H., Bai, X.,  &  Rayner, K. (2006). The effect of word and character frequency on the eye movements of Chinese readers British Journal of Psychology, 97 (2), 259-268 DOI: 10.1348/000712605X70066\n\n--PSEUDOSCIENCE--\n\nThe real limitation of reading speed, therefore, is the underlying language processing power of our brains. When reading, we do not simply identify words, but invoke a plethora of concepts, ideas and knowledge about the words we read in our minds. Our brain takes time to process this information. From what we may easily observe, this is a much slower process than mere pattern recognition. The point of reading is to understand what we read, so the brain cannot possibly permit one to read faster than the rate at which it comprehends the written information. The brain's language abilities are scarcely researched yet we know that we tend to \"subvocalize\" and also \"visualize\" the words we identify in written language. There are claims by \"speed-readers\" that removing subvocalization will significantly improve one's reading speed; however, there is no hard science proving this. \n\nPerhaps, owing to our excessive reliance on visual technology (electronic screens and written media), humans may someday invent visual languages devoid of vocalization so that the reading speed may be maximized. But doesn't that go even beyond the limits of layman speculation!? Please let me retire now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2FBF03204913?LI=true#page-3"]]}
{"q_id": "34xful", "title": "how can mobile racing games have real cars/brands while gta v can't?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34xful/eli5_how_can_mobile_racing_games_have_real/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqyyg8u", "cqyzptd", "cqz1jn0", "cqz2yjf", "cqz3eb9", "cqz6eze", "cqz9qcg", "cqzacuz", "cqzat6m", "cqzbcfi", "cqzjfoy", "cqzo13f", "cqzsjfu", "cr07nip"], "score": [88, 898, 62, 15, 2, 23, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because racing games often are able to get the licenses from the companies to use their names and logos (and it's not just mobile racing game, Forza and Need for Speed also have real cars). Grand Theft Auto is a game about organized crime, murder, and theft. It's understandable for companies to be unwilling to license their brand names. ", "Seems pretty clear to me that GTA is satire, for which it is essential to NOT have real brands. The point is to make caricatures, parodies and general exaggerations of real life brands/makes/models/companies/people/pop culture. They would be censored on 99% of the things they said if they used real names, which they would never intend to do anyway.", "Because the best part of GTA in my opinion isn't the gameplay (though\nIt's amazingly fun). It's the world rock star creates, with it's fake adds, radio and television. It's fun to just wonder around san Andes and look at the billboards and the store names (my favorite being the carpet store \"floor skins\"). If they used real products they would probably have to sensor themselves, then GTA wouldn't be GTA. Besides the fake names are better in my opinion.", "Another reason I always thought this to be the case is also visual damage. I doubt car makers like to show damage in unrealistic ways on their cars, and it would be a lot of work to make it proper. \nMaybe that's why racing games often times don't show damage", "No real life company wants their brand to be portrayed in grand theft auto. So they will not license the names. Applies for guns and cars and everything else. They couldn't use the real names if they wanted to. ", "Not CERTAIN this applies. But I'm an independent film producer. There is such a thing as \"fair use.\"  So if I want to show two adults drinking Budweiser responsibly, that's no issue. I don't have to clear it. But if someone is drinking and driving or underage drinking, or even just like a super sinful party with hard drug use or something I would have to clear it, or more likely use a fake beer brand. So in GTA, Ford, for example, wouldn't want to see their car used for running people over or picking up hookers. They won't grant clearance either of course. So they use a fake car brand. ", "I went to play GTA San Andreas the other day for the first time in a year or two on steam. It had a HUGE update. Wtf game is old as shit? \n\nThey were removing over a dozen songs.\n\n\nI would not want games of today to use real products, if in 5 years the \"rights\" to the copyright/trademarks expires and they can force you via EULA to update and remove those brands.", "1. Car makers don't want to be associated with \"killer games\"\n2. They don't want their cars to be able to be used to run over people\n3. They don't want to have their cars destructed", "I don't think Rock Star wants to use real car models either.  They do such a good job of picking fake names for cars that make fun of them.", "I had something pointed out to me earlier about this. In gta, half of the time youre crashing cars and blowing them up. Its not a good look for a car company to have their cars depicted exploding. However in NFS, the objective is to go super fast and be better than the other racers, which is a good look for the companies.", "Lol have you read the car brands names? \"Faggio\", \"BF Injection\", shit is mad funny. GTA has always had great humor in that regard.", "Some car companies are actual really picky about damage models in video games, IE they don't want depictions of their car breaking apart/being smashed/blowing up due to impact (obviously), so while that may not be the main reason it would certainly make licensing the cars a lot harder.  Its part of the reason why games like Forza and Gran Turismo have damage models far below what technological capabilities allow", "A lot of answers here are hitting close to it but I never really saw the correct answer so thought I'd chime in. I learned this when I wondered the same question about Burnout Paradise City. The most basic answer is that car companies don't want to see their products exploded. That's why cars don't explode or get horrible damage in say Gran Turismo or Forza. But it gets more complicated, like anything, you need the permission of the original creator of something to use it in your game/movie/song/etc. So not only will you be paying a company for use of the image of 'car' you have to agree to abide by their usage rules, which is where the exploding part comes in. So, why pay a ton of money to a car company and then have to be careful about how its shown in your game (or possibly face a lawsuit when they aren't happy) when you can just make up your own car that looks a lot like this other car and you can explode it all you want.", "I read about a story about Gran Turismo.\n\nIn short, car manufacturers did not want to have their car disfigured or deformed in a crash. It seemed to have been a reason why Gran Turismo, being a great car simulator, never had body deformations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "89q7x9", "title": "why can animals drink dirty water safely but humans can't?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89q7x9/eli5_why_can_animals_drink_dirty_water_safely_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwsqczf", "dwsqgll", "dwtg18u"], "score": [29, 91, 6], "text": ["They can't, actually. They're just as susceptible to disease through dirty water as we are. They might have a little bit of a tolerance due to being used to it, but humans develop that, too, given the need.\n\n", "Animals cannot drink dirty water safely. Humans also cannot drink dirty water safely. As many humans have access to alternatives (clean safe water) we do not tolerate the risk unless forced to do so.\n\nAnimals have no choice but to tolerate the risk, and so they risk contaminants, toxins, parasites, and disease because the alternative is dying of thirst. Many animals are rife with parasites and other conditions we would not ordinarily tolerate. ", "Short answer, they can't.\n\nLong answer. If you go to some third-world country and drink the water the locals drink every day, you'll likely get a bad diarrhea. Basically, the water contains lot of bacteria - and your guts aren't used to it. The multitude of new bacteria invades your bowel and proliferates, so your bacterial flora can't work like usual and can't digest properly. Locals flora is used to this horde of strangers, actually, it has lot of them in it so it doesn't get shook so bad. However, most dirty stuff in it is still harmful.\n\nSame for animals, it is harmful but they are used to it so they don't get diarrhea from it, at least. But there is a reason why captivated animals live longer than wild ones, they generally end up having safer water and food.\n\nRelated topic: many animals need less water than we do, to the point that many can avoid drinking raw water altogether. We use lot of water to termoregulate trough sweating and our kidneys don't produce highly concentrated urine, which saves water. Many animals don't sweat or sweat far less (they termoregulate trough respiration, like dogs, or are cold-blooded, like reptiles) and have more efficient kidneys. Also, some animals eat lot more food than us and more watery food (erbivores, for example). Lot of animals are also small enough to make relevant use of natural, pure water sources (a squirrel can get lot of water from a dew covered bush). There is also methabolic water, H2O that comes from chemical reactions, which is more relevant for animals that can save mroe water and animals that have faster metabolisms (small animals)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2gp14y", "title": "how do we know water is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom?", "selftext": "Curious about how scientists came to discover this, google didnt help much.\n\nEDIT: thank you so much for the help!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gp14y/eli5_how_do_we_know_water_is_made_of_two_hydrogen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckl6qry", "ckl6qse", "ckl72j2"], "score": [26, 5, 14], "text": ["You can separate the two elements with an electric current, a 9 volt battery is plenty. It is called electrolysis. Look it up and you can see how to make or buy a small apparatus to do it. Fill two test tubes with the resulting gasses and you can measure the volume of gas, showing that the hydrogen tube has twice the volume of the oxygen tube. You can test the properties of the gasses (explode the Hydrogen, use the Oxygen to make something burn brighter, etc.)", "You can prove it with electrolysis.  _URL_0_\n\nOr, combine two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen and you get water with no hydrogen or oxygen left over.", "As to how it was discovered - Henry Cavendish first discovered Hydrogen as a byproduct of dropping some zinc in an acid.  Then later he found that when you have hydrogen + oxygen + a spark you get water.  Then scientists played with the ratios to find 2:1 "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.instructables.com/id/Separate-Hydrogen-and-Oxygen-from-Water-Through-El/"], []]}
{"q_id": "j4q93", "title": "could you explain schr\u00f6dinger's cat to me li5?", "selftext": "I know about the experiment, but it has never clicked in my mind. \n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4q93/could_you_explain_schr\u00f6dingers_cat_to_me_li5/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c294tg9", "c294xqc", "c2956d5", "c295a48", "c295t99", "c296l13", "c2977cx"], "score": [5, 92, 24, 8, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Not an expert, but I'll try.  Instead of thinking of a cat, picture that you have a coin with heads and tails.  You flip the coin and before you can see the result, you put a big box around it.  We know that the coin must be either heads or tails in the box (ignoring the rare case that it stood up straight).\n\nSince we cannot see whether it is heads or tails until we open the box, it can be said to be both heads and tails.  It is by observation that the actual result becomes known, but until that point it can be argued that either case is true considering they are equally likely.  My understanding is that it is an abstract / philosophical though experiment mostly dealing with the essence of scientific measurements and our perception of them.", "The cool thing about the experiment is that it's really quite simple, so I'd explain it to a 5 year old the same way I would to an adult.\n\nThere's a box with a cat in it. Also in the box is a bottle of poison. If the cat inhales the potion, it will instantly die.\n\nNow let's say that the bottle has a 50/50 chance of already haven broken. Because it's in a box, there's no way for us to be sure what has happened, and no way for the outcome to effect us. It's not until we open the box that we can see if it's dead or alive.\n\nSchr\u00f6dinger's point was that if we can not see the outcome of a random thing like this, for all intents and purposes the cat is simultaneously dead and alive, and stays like that until you observe otherwise.\n\nIt's a pretty cool thought experiment, but it doesn't mean to much in our everyday lives.", "This was already explained in detail [here](_URL_0_). Please search before posting.", "**Like you're 5:**\nA cat is in a box with a poison in a container that could break if the box is dropped, but you won't hear it. If you drop the box then you don't know if the container broke, the cat could be dead or alive, you won't know until you open the box and check.\n\n\n**Like you're a scientist:**\n\nA cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.\n\nIt's very difficulty to explain the true meaning of the Schr\u00f6dinger's Cat to a 5 year old, mainly because in the real explanation the cat is considered to be both alive AND dead at the same time. (As a concept of quantum mechanics.)", "The cat experiment is what scientists call a \"thought experiment\" - which means it's an idea someone had to explain something that is hard to explain any other way. Don't worry, nobody hurt a cat trying to do this for real - it's just a way of thinking about how the world works.\n\nSo let's think about something that could actually happen. There's a rock, millions of miles out in space, and it's hasn't really done much of anything since you were born. All it's doing is flying in a fairly straight line through space.\n\nThat rock is like the cat in schr\u00f6dinger's thought experiment - nobody knows or cares how heavy the rock is, whether it's cold or hot, or even if it exists. You could say that we, on planet earth, and the rock, out in space, are two totally separate \"systems\" - the rock has nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with the rock.\n\nOne day, the rock flies near a star, like our sun. The rock starts reflecting light from the sun and, as it spins, just for a moment it shines the light at earth, right at your back garden!\n\nThis is really important, because the rock now *matters* to you. You can see it from your garden using a telescope! Your world is now different because of the rock, since there's a new light in the sky - scientists would say that you and the planet earth and the rock are \"entangled\", and you're now part of one big system of things, rather than being two little systems with no effect on each other.\n\nSo when the rock was invisible to us, it was like the cat in Schroedinger's bag - whether the cat was alive or dead was unknown to us and had no effect on us. As far as we're concerned the cat could be either alive or dead, and as far as we're concerned the rock could either be out there in space or it could not. When we see the rock through our telescope, that's like opening the bag to see how the cat is doing. The state of the cat now affects us, and the state of the rock affects us too.\n\nThis isn't a way of saying \"stuff you don't know about doesn't matter\" - it's a real part of how the world works. In a very real sense, some questions don't have an answer until you look and find the answer yourself, by entangling yourself with the thing you're looking at.\n\n(I know a lot of information is missed in this - but the question isn't \"how does quantum decoherence work?\" - it's \"why did the bad man put a cat in his bag?\")", "I'd rather not talk about dead cats to a five-year-old.\n\nTo a five-year-old:\n\n\"When stuff is really small, I mean really really small, too small to see and so small things can't be any smaller, smaller than even our tiniest measuring stick, it's hard to say where they are.  Even the other small stuff can't tell exactly where it is!  So other things have to guess where it is.  The weird part is, if the tiny tiny thing is small enough it doesn't matter what the guess is, the small stuff always acts like you guessed right!  This is until the small stuff actually touches something else -- then you know where it is because we can see the bump.  This is all happening too small for anyone to see, so you never have to worry about your shoes going missing, or even belly-button lint.\n\n\"Now, Mr. Schr\u00f6dinger said 'what if we had some small stuff in a bottle, small enough that we could guess if the stuff was inside or outside the bottle, and connect this to a can-opener.  If the small stuff gets out of the bottle, the can-opener will open a tin of cat food, and if the small stuff stays in, the can-opener won't turn on.  So we put the bottle, the can-opener, and the cat food in a box with a hungry cat, and we close the box.  So, the small stuff could be in the bottle, or out, but we don't know because we could guess either way.  That means the cat could be hungry, or eating cat food, and we don't know because we could guess either way!  So if I guess \"hungry cat\", and you guess \"eating cat\", the small stuff will act like both guesses are true, and that will turn on and turn off the can opener at the same time!  We won't know until we open the box and look inside, because that's like bumping into the cat, and the guessing stops.\n\nBut Mr. Schr\u00f6dinger was talking about a make-believe cat.  It wouldn't work with a real cat because the cat can meow, and bump into the box, and play with the can-opener.  He was playing \"what-if\"", "The cat wasn't very well so we gave him to a lovely family who lives on on farm.  There he will be free from the evil Schrodinger who was trying to do bad things to him."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2f7a/schr%C3%B6dingers_cat/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "125uef", "title": "Circular weather pattern around large cities only at night.", "selftext": "Hey AskScience. I recently started the night shift in a NOC and in monitoring the weather I've noticed that as night falls across the US, strange circular formations crop up over many large cities, especially in the midwest.\n\nHere's a national radar image from a few minutes ago, from _URL_1_: _URL_0_\n\nNone of my colleagues know what causes this either. A search of the reddits reveal a few similar questions over the last year but no answers, just speculation.\n\nMy colleagues and I have speculated that it's caused by an increase in humidity at night, but that doesn't really explain why it's primary located around high-population areas.\n\nIs this an actual meteorological phenomenon or is it the result of some fundamental issue with current radar technology (considering weather radars tend to be located in high-pop areas)?\n\nIf anyone knows about weather radar tech or meteorology, if you could help us satisfy our curiosity we'd really appreciate it!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/125uef/circular_weather_pattern_around_large_cities_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6sgwdk", "c6sllpl"], "score": [6, 2], "text": ["UPDATE!\n\nA colleague with superior google skills figured it out.\n\nIt's caused by many nocturnal species of birds that tend to migrate southward behind cold fronts. Their nocturnal migration appears around radar locations as a circular formation with radars that are behind a cold front showing larger, darker formations (because the most dense area of the migration is right behind the leading edge of the cold front).\n\nThis is in line with the map image because a) there is a cold front moving across the US, and b) the darkest spots are right behind the cold front.\n\nThe effect is also visible when there are no large cold fronts (and appears the same way), but is not as heavy as when there is a notable cold front.\n\nYou can see a detailed explanation from last month here: _URL_0_\n\nIt is a forum thread but it seems to have good info.", "I've heard of this sort of thing referred to as a \"bird-burst\".  It's surprising to see them happening over so many regions simultaneously."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/l3xh4.gif", "radar.weather.gov"], "answers_urls": [["http://metabunk.org/threads/753-Circle-Sweeps-HAARP-Rings-and-Scalar-Squares-are-Often-From-the-Birds"], []]}
{"q_id": "2s9ckt", "title": "Why is brake fluid hygroscopic?", "selftext": "or to rephrase, why have automotive engineers chosen a hygroscopic fluid as \"standard\" for the brake systems when moisture is the leading cause for needing brake fluid swap and brake line corrosion?\n\nWhy not just choose a fluid that is non- (or less) hygroscopic to begin with?  For example... oil?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2s9ckt/why_is_brake_fluid_hygroscopic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnnlmjn"], "score": [11], "text": ["The hygroscopic nature of DOT brake fluid is actually an advantage in a major way.\n\nSo where does this water come from?\n\nGlycol based fluids are hygroscopic which means they absorb water/moisture from the environment at normal atmospheric pressures at a rate of 2-3% per year. This process is exasperated in more humid conditions and climates.\n\nThis water content finds it's way into the brake fluid via microscopic pores in brake hoses, seals, joints and seams. As we've learnt, water mixed with DOT fluid has an adverse effect on the brake fluid by reducing it's boiling temperature and therefore reducing it's performance.\n\nHere is how.\n\nAs water enters the system, instead of pooling in low spots (such as the calliper), due to it's weight in comparison with brake fluid, it is dispersed throughout the whole of the brake fluid. This helps to keep the boiling point of the entire brake fluid high rather than having pools of water in the system which will boil much sooner than the rest of the brake fluid.\n\nIt also prevents localized corrosion of internal parts which can be caused by water pooling in the brake system.\n\nIn some cases, Mineral oil is used in braking systems. \n\nUnlike DOT fluid, Mineral Oil is hydrophobic and does not absorb moisture from the environment. This means that there are no wet or dry boiling temperatures to worry about, the boiling point stays constant and never drops. That's the good news.\n\nThe bad news is that any water that does enter the brake system, via seals or microscopic pores in the lines etc., will effectively reduce the boiling point of the whole brake system to that of water - just 100\u00b0C. This is because as the fluid repels any water ingress, it causes it to pool at low points within the brake system, usually the caliper, since water is heavier than brake fluid it will settle at the lowest point. This is worrying because the fluid in the caliper is more susceptible to high temperatures as it's at the business end of the brake, where the friction is created.\n\nSo, picking a less hygroscopic fluid, does not necessarily mean less brake fluid swap and corrosion. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2a846b", "title": "why doesn't our moon have an actual name?", "selftext": "I know some may refer to our moon as \"Luna\" but as far as I know this just translates to \"Moon\" in Latin.\n\nWhy doesn't our moon have an actual name like other moons in the solar system, like \"Europa\", \"Ganymede\" and \"Titan\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a846b/eli5_why_doesnt_our_moon_have_an_actual_name/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciser0a", "ciseruc", "cises7w", "cisescg", "cisesx3", "cisev58", "cisfhfg", "cisgg8n", "cismsmi"], "score": [21, 2, 6, 4, 2, 5, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Because when it was named \"the moon\" no one knew that other moons existed.\n\nIts the same story with the sun, for a long time no one knew other suns existed\n\nBONUS EXPLAINER: The first non-moon moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter by Galileo, helping to disprove the geocentric model. Giordano Bruno, the first person to seriously suggest that the sun is just another star was burned at the stake for doing so\n\nEDIT: Grammar", "Basically because there's only one. There a whole bunch of planets and stars, so we give them names to distinguish them. But we only have one sun and one moon, so it's just \"the Sun\" and \"the Moon\".", "Moon have name - Moon (capital M), contrary to other moons. it's simmilar to God and god. ", "Dave the Moon", "I'm pretty sure the name of the moon is Luna.\nEDIT: Apparently, in English, the proper name of the the Earth's moon is simply the Moon, capitalized. Still, I like to think that our satellite has much more importance than simply making a common noun proper, so I'm sticking with Luna and Sol. Sounds way cooler than \"the Moon\" and \"the sun\".", "The scientific name of Earth's moon is luna.\nIn Latin, our satellite's name is \"Luna.\" Because a significant chunk of English comes from Latin, many terms associated with the moon are related to this Latin name \u2014 for example, the adjective \"lunar,\" and the noun \"lunatic,\" an old-fashioned word for a mentally ill person. (Madness was thought to be correlated with the phases of the moon.)\n\nIn Greek, our moon is named \"Selene,\" as is the moon goddess of ancient Greek mythology. The English word \"selenology,\" or the study of the moon's geology, derives from it.\n", "It does have a name, it's just the Moon ([source](_URL_0_) if you need one). Luna is not a scientific name for it (not in English anyway), it's just the name of the Moon in Spanish or Latin or a bunch of other languages.\n\nWhy would it need any other name anyway? How often do you run into situations where there's some confusion as to what moon someone is referring to? On the contrary, calling it Luna, or something else, raises eyebrows and even if people understand you, they'll start to wonder why you decided to call it that. So that creates confusion whereas calling it just the Moon is the clearest possible way to communicate what you want to say. In scifi this of course is a good, though clich\u00e9d, way of implying something about the state of the world people live in, hence why calling it Luna is commonplace in scifi. \n\nIf it ever becomes an actual problem that people mix up the Moon with some other moons, I'm sure we'll figure something out in no time. But for now, we have numerous other better ways to communicate than inventing a new name for the Moon. You can say our Moon or the Moon of Earth if you really need to specify which one, which hardly ever happens. Or you can say a natural satellite to make it abundantly clear that what you're referring to is not in reference to the Moon in specific.", "It does, it's the Moon, just like the Sun is the Sun. \n\nWhen these objects were named, they weren't thought to be individuals in a category. They were thought to be unique. When more like them were discovered the term was applied more widely. ", "The Moon is actually a natural satellite. When we reference other natural satellites as moons was used to the man who discovered the Titan (a satellite of Saturn) and them it stuck. More on it:  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/FAQ"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_satellite"]]}
{"q_id": "1a9yj9", "title": "what's the deal with reddit's obsession with graphene?", "selftext": "why are these discoveries important? e.g., [this recent post](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a9yj9/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_reddits_obsession_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8vf6hu", "c8vh9op", "c8vo3f6", "c8vq02a"], "score": [17, 6, 2, 9], "text": ["It's a new technology with a geometric make-up that has a specific effect on electricity and other things like water. Because it's such a low level technology its implications are vast. This is because it's quite generic to work with materials at such a small scale.  \n\n\nThe more generic something is the bigger impact it can have. \n\nEdit: [ELI5 Friendly](_URL_0_)\n\n", "It's made of very common stuff (graphite is everywhere!), is very strong and has lots of very interesting electrical properties that we don't fully understand yet.\n\nJust think of it a bit like silicon when transistors were first being developed - a common material that when treated the right way has a seemingly revolutionary property of acting like an extremely fast vacuum tube, so led to a complete revolution in computing and electronics.", "I'm not going to pretend to understand the science behind it but [this](_URL_0_) article gives a pretty good overview of projects in progress that make use of Graphene and includes links to in depth articles if interested.", "It's amazing stuff. If we can figure out how to manufacture with it, the consequences will revolutionize materials in every industry.\n\nAs I've heard Michio Kaku describe it, if you have a sheet thinner than a sheet of saran wrap, it would take the weight of an elephant standing on a tip of a pencil to puncture it.\n\nAnd its got all sorts of weird properties. Depending on how you grow your sheet, it might be the best conductor mankind has ever known, it might be a good insulator, it might have anti-bacterial properties, it might be flexible, it might be structural.\n\nI think I heard some are trying to use it to make solar panels, I think I've read some people are trying to make LEDs out of it.\n\nThe ramifications are astounding. Stronger, lighter planes, trains, and automobiles. Thinner, smaller gadgets, greater fuel efficiencies, better energy efficiency making batteries last longer... I don't even know what they're planning for in the medical field, as I don't really keep up with medicine.\n\nAnd it's made of one of the most common elements in all the universe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1a8adl/berkeley_creates_the_first_graphene_earphones_and/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a9yj9/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_reddits_obsession_with/c8vgr5f"], [], ["http://gizmodo.com/5988977/9-incredible-uses-for-graphene"], []]}
{"q_id": "ep93dl", "title": "How deep do the deepest sea creatures live that we know of?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ep93dl/how_deep_do_the_deepest_sea_creatures_live_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["femg887", "fej0o1k", "feke4o7"], "score": [3, 20, 2], "text": ["It is unbelievable how life can adapt to the environment . If they knew how deep they swim they would probably be scared. But maybe there are extraterrestrial life forms who say \u201c how can those apes exist with so much oxygen on  this planet\u2019s surface \u201c", "The deepest known part of the ocean is the [Challenger Deep](_URL_9_) within the Mariana trench, which bottoms out at just under 11 kilometres below sea level.  Here's [a neat diagram](_URL_3_) for some perspective.  And there are definitely plenty of living things there.\n\nApparently, no actual fish have ever been seen that far down; the current record for vertebrates is a snailfish seen in a different part of the Mariana trench at 8,178 metres, so still quite a bit short of the deepest point ([source](_URL_10_), including a [video](_URL_2_)).  However, there are several documented invertebrates including [sea cucumbers](_URL_8_), [sea anemones](_URL_0_), [acorn worms](_URL_11_), [scale worms](_URL_1_), [amphipod crustaceans](_URL_12_), and more ([Gallo et al. 2014](_URL_4_)).\n\nIf you're willing to go outside of animals, then there's also several known microorganisms, some of which are actually very large like [monothalamean foraminiferans](_URL_5_) (though that particular one is not from the Challenger Deep).  There's also plenty of evidence suggesting a thriving bacterial community there (e.g. [Glud et al. 2013](_URL_6_)), and this very likely extends even further, as suggested by studies in other locations which have found bacteria within sediment over 2 kilometres below the actual sea floor ([Inagaki et al. 2015](_URL_7_)).", "Kurzgezagt recently made a fairly detailed video about what different organisms lives at different depths of the ocean. Of course a 10-ish minute long video may not satisfy you and if so they provide further reading in the video description."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daphne_Fautin/publication/41537909/figure/fig1/AS:341341864251392@1458393650167/Specimens-of-Galatheanthemum-profundale-Carlgren-1956-A-B-Topotypic-specimens-from.png", "https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/SJhysX6AZMBTRUqqRa2jfE.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yG_sfow11Q", "https://viscomvibz.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/marianatrench.jpg", "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063715000060", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/XenophyophoreNOAA.jpg", "https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1773", "https://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6246/420", "https://www.ooi.washington.edu/files/sea_cucumber_dive_1715_2014a_large.jpg", "https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/16challenger/media/challengerdeep_800.jpg", "https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/deepest-fish-1.4263003", "https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/39/66/5a39669b5a0927c352e9ab233ab5cb8e.jpg", "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/photos/000/586/58675.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2oi37g", "title": "How are diamonds attached to saw blades that they can manage to stay on while cutting through steel and diamonds?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2oi37g/how_are_diamonds_attached_to_saw_blades_that_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmnpwv3"], "score": [2], "text": ["There are three common ways to hold the diamonds.\n\n1. Electroplating.  \nThe saw is dipped in a bath containing lots of diamond grit.  Nickel is electroplated onto the rim.  As it deposits, the layer of metal wraps around the diamond particles.  If the plating is stopped when the thickness of the metal layer is about two thirds of the thickness of the diamonds, the diamonds are encased in metal leaving some protruding.  This give a single layer of diamond.\n\n2 (a) Resin bonding  \nDiamond grit is mixed in a resin, which is then cured (chemically and/or heat and pressure)\n\n2 (b) Metal bonding\nDiamond grit and fine metal powder are mixed with a temporary binder then pressed into shape.  The assembly is put into a furnace to remove the binder then sinter the metal powder.  This requires a controlled atmosphere because diamonds are carbon and will oxidise in air."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "dktb9s", "title": "How do lemons grow?", "selftext": "I'm sitting in a pub, relatively drunk, staring at the lemon on my cup, thinking about how it grew. The cross section of a lemon consists of a number of pie slice shaped sections which are made of the juicy part, for lack of a better word. On the outside is the skin which extends in a somewhat vein-like way into the juicy part. My question is \"how does a lemon grow?\" Does the skin become the juicy part as it matures? How do the seeds develop inside the lemon? Just under the surface of the lemon there are a number of small holes which look like they contain more juicy bits; do these expand as the lemon grows? Why does it grow into pie slices?\n\nSorry if this is kinda incoherent or if this is the wrong sub; this is the kind of stuff I think about after a few drinks and I am really curious about this thing that does not matter at all.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dktb9s/how_do_lemons_grow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f4qqx8u"], "score": [8], "text": ["This is actually a pretty complicated question, and not one I am entirely qualified to go into. I can give you the perspective of someone who only knows about it because of how it relates to stem cell differentiation, a physiologist could give you a better answer.\n\nEssentially the juicy bit around the lemon is the ovary for the seed inside of it (the ovule). Most seeds have something around the ovule to give it some starting food when it first arrives at wherever it is going to start growings, though this varies pretty widely across different plants and different dispersal strategies. Some plants have developed a system to try and entice things to eat the fruit, thus dispersing their seeds (see fruit).\n\nThe skin is already in place when the plant first starts to make what will become the fruit. It then waits until it is fertilized (pollinated) and then the carpels ('female' reproductive organ) grow into the fruity bit surrounding the now fertilized ovule. \n\nThe pie slices are called locules, and their development is actually pretty heavily studied in tomatoes. The number of locules you get is dependent on some complicated gene regulatory mechanisms, but the short answer is that the carpels fuse after pollination and that results in different locules. humans have selected for more locules over the years because it makes bigger fruit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4c33y4", "title": "Why is a mylar blanket (first-aid blanket) effective against hypothermia/heat loss?", "selftext": "How can something so thin and flimsy be so good at keeping heat where it is?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4c33y4/why_is_a_mylar_blanket_firstaid_blanket_effective/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1ep0p3"], "score": [12], "text": ["Space blanket's work by providing a reflective surface. A fair amount of heat that escapes ones body is due to radiative processes (as opposed to conduction [touching], or convection [breeze]). By wrapping you in the mylar blanket, any heat that is radiated from your body just bounces back! In the meantime, it also provides a barrier for convection (the surrounding air can't touch your skin) similar to the way clothing would.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_blanket"]]}
{"q_id": "fyat8", "title": "I'm trying to understand atomic orbitals, and frankly, I don't.", "selftext": "I'm familiar electron orbitals to some extent. 1s, 2s, 2px, 2py, 2pz. I'm also familiar with the system of quantum numbers, if not exactly what they mean. I'm familiar with the shapes of the various electron clouds around atoms, and the fact that one cannot be certain of where an electron actually is. I'm in high school, and I'm trying to write a paper summarizing the history and basics of various theories of electron orbitals. I'm good all the way through the Rutherford experiment, but when I hit the details of the Bohr model, my brain is not quite catching it. I'm discovering that electrons are waves and particles, and my education thus far has skipped the \"wave\" part. So if someone could break down the basics of the Bohr model or modern atomic orbitals, I would be incredibly grateful. I should mention I've pored over Wikipedia, but the pages I've found are extremely complex. \n\nTLDR: I'm trying to understand the basics of current atomic orbital theory, and I'd appreciate a breakdown of the basics, if possible.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fyat8/im_trying_to_understand_atomic_orbitals_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1jjdoo", "c1jjg4x", "c1jk39q"], "score": [7, 2, 2], "text": ["It all started with Louis de Broglie who had a [hypothesis](_URL_1_). He thought that since the momentum of a photon was related to its wavelength, maybe a particle would have a wavelength related to its momentum.\n\nThat all worked out nicely, so then Niels Bohr thought that if electrons had a wavelength, maybe that would explain certain phenomena regarding electrons around an atom. So he took the wavelength of an electron and assumed you would always have to fit an integer number of electron wavelengths around an atom, and this became known as the [Bohr Model of the Atom](_URL_0_).", "Let me give this a shot\n\nThe atom consists of protons, neutrons and electrons.  The protons and neutrons are in the nucleus. The electrons surround the nucleus. The Bohr model tries to explain how these electrons distribute themselves around the nucleus.  So, to explain this I'm going to go in a bit of a tangent. Imagine a ball that can move anywhere in space. Theoretically, this ball could have any value of potential energy because it can move from any one place to another. Now we put this ball in a box that it cant get out of. Because of this it can only have values of potential energy that fit those for inside the box. Its the same thing for an electron. If you say an electron belongs to an atom then it has to be within a certain range of the nucleus. This places a neccessary boundary on the values of energy that an electron can have. This is what we call energy quantization - an electron can only have certain discrete values of energy. \nEach discrete value is called an energy level or orbit. Each orbit is given a name called the principal quantum number, n. Now within this energy level, the electrons can move around the nucleus in a bunch of ways*. Depending on how close the electron is to the nucleus, the number of different ways in which it can move around varies. These different shapes in which they move are called orbitals and s, p, d and f are examples of these. It was found that each of these shapes could orient in either the x, y or z axes and each of these orientations are given another quantum number. \n\n", "After you set up Schrodinger's equation for a hydrogen atom, you can perform a technique called \"separation of variables\", which is one of the few analytical methods of getting somewhere with PDEs.\n\nThe equation is in spherical coordiantes (r,phi,theta). Unfortunately the two angles phi and theta cannot be serparated, so you can factor the solution into R_n(r)*Y_lm (phi,theta). The functions you get for this angular component are called \"spherical harmonics\" and are labelled by two numbers: l and m. Here is a [picture](_URL_0_) of them (look familiar?). Any sum of such solutions is also a solution, but these are the building blocks.\n\nEssentially, the quantum numbers come out of solving the partial differential equation for an electron in an atom. If you want to understand it more deeply, study partial differential equations, especially separation of variables and Laplace's equation in spherical coordinates. Then try to follow the separation of Schrodinger's equation in spherical coordinates (can be found in any undergraduate Quantum Mechanics textbook; some better than others).\n\nIt's a good question, and I think it's unfair to expect students accept such things at face value (what's the point of science again?). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/bohr.html", "http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/debrog.html"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harmoniki.png"]]}
{"q_id": "14itp7", "title": "Why are there no spin 1/2 versions of the +2 and -1 delta baryons?", "selftext": "The +1 and neutral deltas have the same quark content as the proton and neutron, respectively. They differ in that in the deltas the spin of all three constituent quarks are parallel, making them spin 3/2 particles, while in the nucleons one quark has antiparallel spin, making them spin 1/2 particles. But the deltas also have a +2 and a -1 particle, with quark content of (uuu) and (ddd), respectively. Why are there no (uuu) and (ddd) spin 1/2 particles to complement them?\n\nEdit: Come to think of it, the same question could apply to the omega baryon (sss) since they're all part of the same decouplet. What is it about \"pure\" baryons that makes them unstable/impossible when their quarks' spins are not all parallel?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14itp7/why_are_there_no_spin_12_versions_of_the_2_and_1/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7dii6a"], "score": [6], "text": ["This is a result of the spin-flavor wavefunction being symmetric under exchange. The UUU and DDD configurations are necessarily symmetric. This means the spin part of this wavefunction has to be symmetric to make the whole thing symmetric. this results in the spin 3/2 you are speaking of. Baryons with only one type flavor of quark must always be symmetric, requiring the spins to add symmetrically as well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2ac7nm", "title": "why do semi trucks leave behind huge chunks of tires on the road?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ac7nm/eli5_why_do_semi_trucks_leave_behind_huge_chunks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["citk4xl", "citk5iy", "citk7g9", "citkh19", "citkisq", "citl62e", "citozal", "citpcbk", "citqnoz", "citrrn9", "citsm1a", "cituokg", "cityiwa", "ciu0w4s", "ciu7gy5", "ciucpef"], "score": [5, 8, 15, 2, 14, 4, 66, 3, 2, 7, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["What happens is they often have their bald tires \"re-treaded\" because it's cheaper than buying new tires. The new tread eventually falls off.", "They drive on low quality retreaded tires, I'm assuming to save money. The tire doesn't hold out long enough and blows out. ", "Semi trucks tend to have retreaded tires.  Retreading or recapping is a process of recycling an old tire by putting new treads on it.  Sometimes these treads give out and tear themselves off leaving a bit of a mess.", "For you to freak out and dodge.", "yes a lot of trucks use retreaded or recapped tires but the real reason is because the tire wear out and fail. \n\nIt common for a truck to go over 200,000 miles in a year. Thats 6.6 times more than the average car. Plus 4.5 times more tires means 30times more chance of tire failure over a normal car", "As others have said here, it is from retreaded tires.\n\nThat may leave you to wonder why/how they keep on driving after it. What you have to remember is that, unlike in a car, the driver probably can't easily feel if something happens to the rear tire on the truck. In a car, if you have a flat on the front tires, you can know immediately but it is harder (though you still know) on the back tires. Well, imagine a huge truck, on a trailer, and really far back. It would be easy to not notice.", "Can confirm what others have said: They use retreaded tires on tractors in any position except steer (the very front two tires). Retreading is a system by which a used tire has new tread applied to it at a tire plant, thereby making it a \"refurbished\" tire. Retread tires are used on every position on a truck except the steer axle, only new tires go on steer axle (this is the very front two tires on a truck, if they are not new then they are against DOT regulation). Is it safe? By and large, yes, we have never had a major failure across the board in a retread campaign. Do I recommend driving next to a truck or a trailer on the highway? Absolutely not. It isn't even so much because of the tires but because of the driver, sitting on the side of one they usually won't see you, if there is a blowout the tread may hit your car and damage it severely (we have large steel belts, sort of like in your car, but unfurled they would be about the size of your car). Another thing is that if a retread blows then it could blow out other tires, the truck could swerve and destroy your car. If you are on city streets being next to a truck is a lot like being next to a car so I wouldn't worry there but on highways I would suggest sticking as far as you can away from a tractor, especially one that has a trailer attached because trailer tire retreads tend to be several times retreaded tractor tires.\n\ntl;dr tractors have copies of copies of copies of tires and therefore trend toward the weaker side.\n\nSource: I am a parts manager (that deals with tires every day) for a national trucking company.", "Followup question: why the hell here in California freeways are littered with that crap that i have to swerve around all the time while I have never seen that living in France for 25 years?", "When you have that many wheels and a tire blows out, you may not notice it.  Keep driving on it and it shreds to pieces on the highway.  Blow out a tire on a 4 wheeled car, and you will for sure notice it right away.", "Truck drivers rarely  if ever take the time to check tire pressures on all of their tires. Under inflated tires run hotter causing the tread to separate. this happen more often on re-caps, but it will happen on all tires under certain conditions. You never want to run over one of these. They can have sharp metal in them and will flatten your tires in the process. \nOn a side note: never stop next to one of these pieces of tread in the southeast U.S. It might be a gator, the resemblance is startling. ", "\"Watch out for them gators, son\"  explanation:  truckers call them gators.", "In Florida, you have to look twice. What may appear to be a blown out semi truck tire may actually be an alligator sun bathing on the side of the road. \n", "I was once passing a big truck on my motorbike on a freeway in Australia. \n\nOne of the re-tread tires came apart and launched the entire giant chunk of rubber out the side, directly at me about a meter and a half off the ground. I managed to swerve hard and duck as it flew over the top of me. \n\nIt felt like a Matrix slow-mo as the huge section of rubber skimmed over the top of me. If it had hit me, it would have knocked me off the bike - it was a good 2m long. Hundreds of other little bits of rubber rained off my helmet and body as I accelerated past the truck. \n\nI felt incredible bad-ass, but it could have so easily fucked me up. I was wearing full riding gear, but coming off my bike at 110 km/h would have been very messy. ", "Why do they allow retreads in the US when they're so dangerous. I've heard stories of them blowing out near other drivers and risking their lives. I've almost been in accidents before where I or others have to swerve to avoid ones already littering the road.\n\nI wish they'd improve the rail network and get rid of semi's altogether.", "\nBasically, when you drive on a flat tire, it comes apart. Tractor trailer drivers are not always aware that they have a flat tire on the trailer, and the tire gets hot and comes apart from being driven flat for many miles.\n\nIt is not relevant if the tire is retreaded or not. Non-retreaded tires fail in the same manner. Usually when you pick up a road gator, the retread is still attached to the tire casing.\n\nIt is true that retreaded tires tend to be older, and very common on trailers and drive positions. They can spontaneously fail, but it is uncommon. Usually, road gators are caused by simply driving on a flat until it comes apart.\n\nsource : tire shop owner", "Alright, so I work in a truckstop tireshop and this is from what I know.\nDepartment of Transportation has rules when it comes to tires, the big ones are:\n -Cannot run a tire with 2/32nds of tread or less.\n -Cannot run a used tire/retread on steers.\n -Cannot run a tire with patches, sidewall or otherwise more than three          to a quarter of tire.\n\nNow this is where shit hits the fan.\nYou'll find drivers, whether they are aware or not,  running P.O.S. tires with WAY too little PSI (should be around 100-110 depending) while loaded. It isn't always retreads, but you will get Joe Blow trying to save a buck, and he will do the work at his fleets yard (parking for company trucks) not following any regulations.\n\n A good company/fleet might run something from Michelin, where the repairs to the casing of an older tire and the retread were done to DOT regulation. A good driver keeps up with maintenance and replaces what needs to be replaced, but do keep in mind shit happens.\n\nJust last night alone, I replaced 3 blown-out tires and I mean all that were left were sidewalls. Two were bad maintenance practice, which was evident from the rest of the trailer/tractor and looking for THE cheapest thing we carry. \n\nI wiitnessed an under-the-table deal between two truckers where one had low tread tires (4/32) and sold them to some guy to be mounted to replace his blow out.\n\nTL;DR: Some drivers/fleets are just out to make a buck, even if they have to cut corners and risk other drivers."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5vw0xq", "title": "Time Dilation from the perspective of a Muon?", "selftext": "Hello everyone. I've been trying to wrap my head around this fully for the past couple of days, but I haven't found a clear answer on this specifically. In regards to time dilation,we know that on earth, we observe a much longer lifetime for the muon than they do, with their proper time being around 2.2 us. From the muon perspective, though, shouldn't it also see us as being slower as well? Mathmatically, would it observe a time dilation of t/gamma^2, where t is the original measured time by a a stationary observer on the earth? If not, what am I missing, as I am still struggling with this.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5vw0xq/time_dilation_from_the_perspective_of_a_muon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de5gbi0", "de5it82", "de5km1s", "de5tm95", "de68crj"], "score": [8, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It is not about perception, but about the spacetime intervals between events.  Take two events, A) The muon is created in the upper atmosphere at point **R_A** at time t_A and B) the muon is detected at the surface at point **R_B** at time t_B.\n\nThe phrase \"We observe a longer lifetime\" simply means that the elapsed time in the muon frame of reference is shorter because of time dilation. You could also argue that for the muon the atmosphere is Lorentz contracted to be much thinner, so it can traverse it before decaying. Either way, you find that the two events A and B will happen, the rest is \"interpretation\". \n\nIf we had evolved in world where relativistic effects have a bearing on our everyday lives (when throwing rocks or jumping off trees etc.), we'd never think to confuse the spacetime distance between events A and B with either the time or the spatial distance alone.\n\n ", " > From the muon perspective, though, shouldn't it also see us as being slower as well?\n\nYes.\n\n > Mathmatically, would it observe a time dilation of t/gamma^(2), where t is the original measured time by a a stationary observer on the earth? If not, what am I missing, as I am still struggling with this.\n\nWhy gamma squared? The muon sees our time dilated by a factor of gamma, and we see the muon's time dilated by a factor of gamma.", " >  ... . From the muon perspective, though, shouldn't it also see us as being slower as well? ... If not, what am I missing, as I am still struggling with this.\n\nWe're so used to thinking that time is the same everywhere and for everyone that it seems impossible for two observers to both be slowed down for each other, but that's the way things really are.\n\nYour understanding is correct, and the confusion is - most likely - because you're still making assumptions that are true in Galilean relativity (where there is a universal clock), but not in special relativity (where there is not).   If you keep dealing with special relativity, it's not that hard to develop the habit of keeping track of which frame of reference each observation is in.", "lenght contraction. from out pov the distance from the point of creation to earths sruface stays constant, but the muons time ticks slower so it has enough time to reach earth.\n\nfrom the muons perspective its time ticks normally, but lenghts in the direction of its movement are contracted, which means that the earths surface it closer and so it can reach it even though it doesnt experience time dilation from its own pov.", "I guess what you're missing is that you're thinking of muon time and Earth time like two parallel axes, one of which (the muon, as we see it) has time intervals marked out in a more sparse fashion:\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|--- (Earth)    \n------|------|------|------|------| (muon)\n\nSo at first glance it seems like the muon must see Earth's events happening **faster** than normal, if Earth sees the muon's events happening **slower**.\n\nBut the reality is (slightly) more like this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nNote here that I've used a simple rotation to show the same scene from the two reference frames - this leads to the non-realistic impression that each sees time passing **faster** for the other. The reality, of course, is that each sees the other go **slower** - but this simple diagram is just to demonstrate the symmetry of the situation.\n\nI hope this helps - I'm not entirely sure I've correctly interpreted your confusion.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/MUsAtRa.png"]]}
{"q_id": "73v6vb", "title": "Is there a material that is the equivalent of a superconductor, but for light instead of electricity?", "selftext": "I understand that there are \"superconducting\" materials which can achieve an electrical resistance of zero ohms - is there a similar material or class of materials (not a vacuum) that can achieve a zero attenuation for light or other EM wavelengths?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/73v6vb/is_there_a_material_that_is_the_equivalent_of_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dntju4i"], "score": [12], "text": ["All materials (that are currently known) have tiny resistances in the absorption and emission of photons. This GIF is a good reference - _URL_0_ - which unfortunately means that any EM wave travelling through a medium will be slowed. \n\nIf such a \"superconducting\" material existed, it wouldn't violate any laws or anything, but it's resistance would be \u2248 0 meaning it wouldn't even interact with the wave.\n\nTl;DR : Not currently, but it wouldn't do anything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/waves/em.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "2c2qnp", "title": "what does it mean if russia leaves the 1987 nuclear treaty?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c2qnp/eli5_what_does_it_mean_if_russia_leaves_the_1987/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjbciak", "cjbcl5f", "cjbcqko", "cjbcsh2", "cjbdn0u", "cjbeyl9", "cjbfz9n"], "score": [56, 6, 25, 5, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["It means they'll start testing new missiles and nuclear systems. The other parties to the treaty (most importantly the US) will probably start too. \n\nIf it happens, you'll probably start seeing an increase in military development projects from both sides, along with more sabre rattling. However, it won't go any further than that. ", "Probably nothing. Russia has massively demilitarized over the past 2 decades, their military is far behind in terms of technology... The US has a huge edge in technology and doesn't need much more than our nuclear subs to take out enough of Russia.", "Potentially, a new Cold War-style arms race, although alternatively the U.S. may be too far ahead of Russia to get concerned.", "You can expect some sort of Cold War vibe if they do. Other than EU possibly implementing sanctions on Russia if they continue being assholes I don't think anything noteworthy will happen.", "Nothing. The military implications have already been realised with the entering into service of the missiles which broke the treaty. ", "[I got your answer right here, OP.](_URL_0_) (it's a video I whipped up for ya)\n\ntl;dw: Russia leaving the treaty will cause some tension in Europe, but this is mainly a temper tantrum.", "Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, it has been removed.   \n\nYou should try /r/answers, /r/askreddit or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience or others too numerous and varied to mention. \n\nRest assured this doesn't make your question *bad*, it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit.  Good luck! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1pveMgWLGE&amp;feature=youtu.be"], []]}
{"q_id": "23odr2", "title": "Has anyone ever been \"erased\" from history?", "selftext": "I was watching 300 last weekend, and in the movie, Xerxes tells Leonidas \"I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned, and every Greek historian and every scribe shall have their eyes put out and their tongues cut from their mouths! Why, uttering the very name of Sparta or Leonidas will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!\" \n\nI was wondering if this has ever happened to a person or group of people?  Are there any instances of someone attempting to do this?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23odr2/has_anyone_ever_been_erased_from_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgyysnq", "cgyz501", "cgz36lr", "cgz4ooe", "cgz7f7c", "cgzaxer", "cgzcvcl"], "score": [28, 120, 2, 31, 9, 22, 9], "text": ["/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov would be a good guy to ask on this. Zhukov was not erased per-se but a major attempt to play down his role in WW2 was made in the post-Stalin era. Mod Zhukov did a rather long post on it a while ago but i forgot what the question was.\n\nEDIT: Thanks to caffarelli for finding the question: _URL_0_", "The practice, in Roman history, is known as *damnatio memoriae* and involves the deliberate condemnation of someone to have their memory,, as much as possible, wiped from the record. Of course, it is historically impossible to show that this was ever done completely successfully since it would not be successful if it were complete.\n\nThree emperors received an official damnatio memoriae - Domitian, Publius Septimius Geta, and Maximian. Other Roman senators also suffered this penalty in the official legal sense. It involved seizure or property, destruction or re-utilisation of statues and other monuments, and the like.\n\nI would tentatively suggest that in the Roman context it is tied to an idealisation of \"legacy\", and so what is worse than death is to have that legacy and memorial destroyed.\n\nA similar practice emerges in early Church history, where theologians and writers deemed (even centuries later) to be heretical, are censured and their works actively destroyed in order to not only halt their influence, but erase their presence.\n\nI can go into some more detail if you'd like, but perhaps one of the Roman specialists will turn up and elaborate on the Roman legal practice.\n\nedit: as two commentators have noted, I should also add that *damnatio memoriae* is indeed a modern term for the practice. Also that it did not only apply to emperors. Apologies for not making this more clear in my original text.", "Can anyone comment on the supposed Nazi punishment where apparently should one commit a heinous enough crime then ones family and extended family would be killed and their records erased?", "An entire period from Ancient Egypt along with its probable five Pharaohs was \"erased\" from history: (Amenhotep IV) Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Neferneferuaten, Tutankhamun (King Tut), and Ay of the [Amarna Period](_URL_4_)\n\n(Amenhotep IV) Akhenaten started off this period, but most people are probably more familiar with his son [King Tutankhamun (King Tut)](_URL_3_), and his wife [Nefertiti](_URL_1_) because of the incredible works of art they're associated with and the stories of their discoveries. \n\nAmenhotep IV changed his name to [Akhenaten](_URL_0_) and moved the capital city from Thebes, where it had been for almost 300 years, to Akhetaten a new city. He radically changed the religious system of Egypt from polytheistic to one focusing on the worship of Aten, the sun disk (to the near exclusion of all other gods). His reign was one of extreme richness and the art style changed pretty dramatically. But the new religion created a lot of tension / chaos / hatred and his line of succession was messy. After his death, the newly reformed religion reverted back to what it was before.\n\nAfter a few successors came and died, Horemheb became pharaoh and wanted to distance himself from the past, unpopular Akhenaten. So the entire city of Akhetaten and all its temples was destroyed and abandoned. The capital moved back to Thebes. Akhenaten's name was erased and replaced with simply \"the enemy\" in places, and Horemheb erased the probable five pharaohs of the period from the record books. He extended the dates of his reign to make it seem as if he succeeded directly from Akhenaten predecessor.\n\nMuch of what we know about the Amarna period is possible because the city and temples were not fully destroyed before they were abandoned and because many temples and buildings were taken down and their stones reused. Many carved stones were simply turned around so that their faces were covered and re-carved. Others were just dumped in quarries or were crudely broken and have been reconstructed. The pieces of the puzzle are still being put back together today, for example this from late 2012 about the life/death of Nefertiti: _URL_2_", "Thuthmose III tried to have his stepmother and co regent Hatshepsut erased from history by literally chiselling her name and image of walls and having her statues destroyed. That said the campaign was haphazard at best and we know plenty about her, although not as much as we would like about Egypt's only female Pharaoh. It certainly didn't help that all the images tat show her show her as a man in the dress of a male Pharaoh but all the epithets are feminine. Gave the first people to decode the hieroglyphics a real headache since they could find no record of her in the lists of royal names.", "There was a serious effort to erase a man named [Herostratus](_URL_2_) from the historical record.\n\nHerostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.  The Temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and was the favorite of the man who made the first list of the seven wonders:\n\n > I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for \n > chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging \n > gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high \n > pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of\n >  Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their \n > brilliancy, and I said, \"Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on\n >  aught so grand\".[2]\n\n- [The Antipater of Sidon](_URL_0_)\n\nThe temple was not only the pride of Ephesus, it seems like they had somewhat of a tourist economy built around it.  Herostratus burned the temple because he wanted his name to live forever.\n\nThe authorities of Ephesus banned his name from being spoken under the penalty of death.  Their plan would have worked if it wasn't for the meddling [Theopompus](_URL_1_) who as far as I know was the only one to record Herostratus's name in his history.\n\nTheopompus's works became well known, and he dragged Herostratus along with him.  He probably would have been erased without Theopompus.  We still would have known that someone burned down the temple, but not his name and probably not other details as well.", "[The Aztec ruler Itzcotl and his adviser Tlacaelel tried to erase from history all memories of a pre-Aztec Past, including the memories of the nomadic Mexicas who first founded their capital city of Tenochtitlan.](_URL_0_)\n\n\n > Shortly after the formation of the Triple Alliance, Itzcoatl and Tlacaelel instigated sweeping reforms on the Aztec state and religion. **Tlacaelel ordered the burning of most of the extant Aztec books**, claiming that they contained lies and that it was \"not wise that all the people should know the paintings\". **He thereafter rewrote the history of the Aztec people, placing the Mexica in a more central role.**\n\n > **Tlacaelel recast or strengthened the concept of the Aztecs as a chosen people, elevated the tribal god/hero Huitzilopochtli to top of the pantheon of gods,[4] and increased militarism.**[5] In tandem with this, Tlacaelel is said to have increased the level and prevalence of human sacrifice, particularly during a period of natural disasters that started in 1446 (according to Dur\u00e1n). \n\n > To strengthen the Aztec nobility, [Tlacaelel] helped create and enforce sumptuary laws, prohibiting commoners from wearing certain adornments such as lip plugs, gold armbands, and cotton cloaks. **He also instigated a policy of burning the books of conquered peoples with the aim of erasing all memories of a pre-Aztec past.**\n\n\nThis was most likely done by Tlacaelel in an attempt to establish the Aztec Empire as the dominant regional power. He did this by bolstering nationalism and removing any reminisce of the old and weak nomadic-Aztec past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mera8/do_we_know_what_georgy_zhukovs_thought_of_the/"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nofretete_Neues_Museum.jpg", "http://www.dayralbarsha.com/node/124", "http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/01/07/king-tut_custom-d0ee41453f1a757002921cab83ab684624d63b91-s6-c30.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_Period"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Artemis", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theopompus", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire"]]}
{"q_id": "71w1ci", "title": "why is it bearable to look down from thousands of feet in the air, but terrifying to look down from only about 50 feet or so?", "selftext": "When flying in a plane, it seems to be easier to look down at the ground without feeling nervous or scared (at least for me). But when up on a roof, rock wall, or other \"medium\" height, my vision starts swimming and my legs start shaking.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71w1ci/eli5_why_is_it_bearable_to_look_down_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dndweba", "dndx491", "dndxc7d", "dndxx3v"], "score": [10, 13, 6, 2], "text": ["Part of it might be the angle you are looking down from.  Off a roof or rock wall you might have the opportunity to look directly downwards whereas in a plane you are restricted to looking from a certain angle.\n\n\nAnother aspect might be the conditions.  In a plane you are sitting in a cushioned seat in a temperature controlled area.  Out on the roof or rock wall, you are possibly exposed to the wind and other elements making you feel more like you will take a fall.", "Possibly abstraction.  At 50', you see a likely fatal fall.  At 40,000' you see an abstract landscape which is pretty.  At some point your mind may turn \"oh shit, I'm going to fall and die because I'm high up\" into \"that's interesting.\"", "Being on an airplane is so high it barely seems real, not real enough for your self-preservation instincts to kick in.\n\nAlso, you are not standing, there is no uneven surface, or open air, which are also cues to be afraid you might fall.", "Not everyone is like you, some people freak out at both, and some don't mind either!\n\nTypically in a plane you feel somewhat safe - you don't feel like you will suddenly fall.  You are usually also sitting down which does feel more secure.\n\nIf you are on a balcony looking down, or standing by a window in a tall building, you are feeling somewhat less secure and in your mind you may feel more likely to \"fall\" which causes the strange sensations of fear."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "40gdq0", "title": "why are hiroshima and nagasaki both inhabitable but not chernobyl?", "selftext": "I know they were bombs vs a meltdown but both spread radiation. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40gdq0/eli5_why_are_hiroshima_and_nagasaki_both/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cytxnij", "cytxq1g", "cytxsm6", "cytz0mu", "cytzbno"], "score": [11, 16, 7, 5, 2], "text": ["In a nutshell: the radioactive material used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was used up in making a big explosion. There wasn't *that* much left over after the explosion.\n\nWith Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excess steam build up etc., not through nuclear fission. This resulted in \"unconsumed\" radioactive material being thrown all over the place as a result of a non-nuclear explosion.\n\nThink of it as: a) you can light a firework and watch it go bang (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) or; b) you can grab a handful of gunpowder and throw it around (Chernobyl).", "In a nuclear fission reaction, heavy elements split to released energy. So,\n\n1. Fat Man and Little Boy ~~each had about 60ish kilograms~~ had 10 Kg and 60ish kg respectively of Plutonium or Uranium, Chernobyl had tons of Uranium.\n\n2. Fat Man and Little Boy were both very inefficient. The nuclear fuel within the bombs and the reactors is not dangerously radioactive, the byproducts of the fission reaction are. Both Fat Man and Little Boy only converted a tiny part of their fuel (if I remember correctly, about a kilogram each). A nuclear reactor tends to be far more efficient because it converts constantly rather than a single moment as what happens in a fission bomb, and this combined with the massive amount of nuclear fuel released a massive amount of these fission byproducts.\n\n3. Chernobyl was not a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion which flung around radioactive fallout. A nuclear explosion is far bigger and flings it far further, wider, and thinner coverage.", "Hiroshima and Nagasaki\n-\n\nThe bombs exploded spreading **radiation** (high speed particles, basically) around. The actual **radioactive material** however, was almost all used up in the explosion (that's the idea). Radiation is very dangerous short term, but once it's been absorbed or reflected up into space, it's gone.\n\nMost of the deaths weren't caused by radiation, but by the force of the explosion. Nuclear bombs aren't designed to kill you with radiation, they're designed to be really big explosions... the radiation is really a side effect.\n\nSomething like 80% of the radiation was released in 24 hours, over 95% within a few days. If you'd stood at the centre of the explosion (on the ground, called the hypocenter) a day after the explosion you would have only received 1/1000th (0.1%) of the dose of someone who had been there during the explosion.\n\nNote also that these were quite small explosions - 15 kiloton. I wouldn't have wanted to be there at the time, but it wasn't actually that much radiation in the first place.\n\nChernobyl\n-\n\nChernobyl wasn't really an explosion as much as a leak.\n\nMore importantly, it wasn't **radiation** that got out, it was **radioactive material**. Radioactive material can last for thousands of years, and releases radiation.\n\nBasically, then, Chernobyl threw a whole load of tiny radiation sources over a large area. Something like 500x as much radioactive material was released by Chernobyl than was released during the bombing of Nagasaki. That's a lot!\n\nMost importantly, where the fuel in the bombs was used up and the radiation went away, at Chernobyl the radioactive material keeps releasing more radiation.\n\nLet's think of it like hayfever for a minute, as an ELI5 example\n-\n\nHiroshima was one really big plant releasing lots pollen on one day and making everyone sneeze for a day, then the plant dying. It's nasty, but short term and a one-off event.\n\nChernobyl was someone going around for a few months putting thousands of smaller plants all over a large area, and the plants carry on releasing pollen every day for thousands of years. It's not as nasty up front, but goes on for a lot longer.", "Another thing is how much radioactive material there is.\n\nFatman had 6.2kg of plutonium.  Littleboy had 64kg of U235.\n\nChernobyl reactor housed 180-190 tons", "Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were detonated in the air above the city.  An air detonation causes more initial casualties but does not contaminate the ground as bad as a ground detonation.  Chernobyl had a reactor core open that was spewing radiation for months until the concrete sarcophagus was made."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "vbz0s", "title": "What evidence is there for gigantic (100m+ length) wooden ships in history such as Tessarakonteres, b\u01ceochu\u00e1n, and Caligula's Giant Ship? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vbz0s/what_evidence_is_there_for_gigantic_100m_length/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5366ug", "c537ngh", "c538gdd", "c539duk", "c53adcu", "c53cm75"], "score": [34, 28, 3, 8, 4, 2], "text": ["The Chinese [treasure ships](_URL_1_) have been well documented as being that large. [Here](_URL_0_) is a wiki artical about the world largest wooden ships. The 100m area seems to be the \"practical limit\" (MIT Museum) for the technology however.", "Some big roman ship hulls were actually found \n_URL_0_\nunfortunately they were destroyed in the WW2", "_URL_0_\n\nInteresting List; the Treasure Ship is the only true Ship noted that's over 100m, the Romans built a barge that was around 100m and it's verified; the Treasure Ships exact size is still debated to this day.", "Really interesting read about the Vasa, a large ship built Sweden; it sunk on it's maiden voyage and there was a huge court hearing to try and figure out who to blame, this is what they concluded:  \n\n > In the end, no guilty party could be found. The answer Arendt Hybertsson gave when asked by the court why the ship sank was \"only God knows\".[28] Gustavus Adolphus had approved all measurements and armaments, and the ship was built according to the instructions and loaded with the number of guns specified. In the end, no one was punished or found guilty for negligence, and the sinking was explained as an act of God. The sinking of Vasa was a major economic disaster; the ship's cost was more than 40,000 dalers, a huge expense for the small Swedish state.[29]\n\nsource: _URL_0_", "A former professor (Dr. Bill Murray) wrote rather extensively on this subject recently, this is his newly released book:\n\n  _URL_0_\n\nI think you'll find some pretty compelling evidence for these larger ships in the Hellenistic era.  ", "This is rather amazing for its time.\n\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_wooden_ships", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_ship"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_largest_wooden_ships"], ["en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_%28ship%29"], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Titans-Hellenistic-Hellenic/dp/019538864X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1340227746&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=age+of+titans"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6CsH9fBaE"]]}
{"q_id": "2maopl", "title": "what happens to someone in a wheelchair when they go to prison?", "selftext": "I can't imagine many prisons are wheelchair accessible, and I've been wondering for ages what happens. \n\nEdit: Apparently prisons **are** wheelchair accessible", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2maopl/eli5_what_happens_to_someone_in_a_wheelchair_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm2geow", "cm2l3hb", "cm2lt2a", "cm2p6kf", "cm2rt37", "cm2s6aj", "cm2sit8"], "score": [230, 40, 10, 7, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["They live in a unit on the ground floor. Other inmates help push them places, or help them up steps if needed. But they're pretty wheelchair accessible, with only additional living space (cells) in upper levels. I've rarely seen steps into buildings.  Every place inmates go is concrete and even if it's on a hill, there's a walkway, not steps. \n\nSource: former employee of a prison. ", "Correctional officer here. Offenders in wheel chairs really is not a hard thing to accommodate. The Americans with disabilities act of 1990 ensures that they be accommodated for their individual needs. This can be wheelchairs, canes, walkers,etc.\n\nThey will live on the first floor of their unit. They have oca's (offender care aid) which is another offender who has been trained in basic care techniques. ", "How do the other prisoners treat them? ", "Different perspective than some I have read. Where I work, the wheelchairs are accommodated. They live in bottom cells only, have approval to keep the wheelchair, and live in one of our few cells that are twice as big as a normal cell. If they act up or use their wheelchair inappropriately, it is take away and when necessary will be provided the wheelchair when they need to leave their cell. Staff escort these inmates (I work in a maximum security institution) and use the elevator when necessary to take the inmate to the top level (usually only for visiting or parole hearings). ", "I know someone who is paraplegic who never thought he would be incarcerated for long for selling pot because of his wheels.  He got caught in an election year and the judge threw the book at him.  It didn't even matter about the wheels.", "My mother went to prison for a parole violation. She had been framed for burning down the convenience store she worked at. But that's another story, and shall be told another time.\n\nWe moved back into the county where it happened, and the police saw her name come up somewhere and were like \"O.O Oh.\" And came and arrested her. She was sentenced to the county jail. But they let her out every once in a while, since she wasn't considered dangerous.\n\nNow you have the picture of the why, here's the how. She had her own cell. She was never put on any manual-labor details because she was unable to perform that sort of work. And the prison made sure she got her medicines as needed.", "I thought this was the beginning to a joke at first"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8s4wjy", "title": "How much did people in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian history know of their earlier history?", "selftext": "Did they know about Sargon? The Akkadian Empire? The Sumerian Empire? The Bronze Age Collapse?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s4wjy/how_much_did_people_in_neoassyrian_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0wwufj"], "score": [22], "text": ["The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal was credited to its namesake and rumored to be the inspiration for Alexander's idea for the library that was finished by Ptolemy in Egypt.  Assyria's ruler Ashurbanipal was said to be mastered in the Akkadian and Sumerian languages.\n\n  Most rulers at that time had a knack for stealing their neighbors idols and relics but Ashurbanipal is said to have had a much stronger interest, possibly coming from his days of a scribe apprentice or just as someone who knew these things helped you stay in power at that time in history.  \n\nWhen they found these tablets some of them were meticulously arranged on each shelf in the manner that they were originally collected.  The last line of each tablet was repeated on the next tablet.   Then they found other smaller tablets that showed the title of the works.  These were all the works of history, religion, natural sciences, astronomy, grammar and laws. \n\nThe tablets found were mostly in Akkadian in the cuneiform script; but a lot of those they still aren't sure where they originally came from.  There were also a bunch in the Neo-Babylonian Script and written in Assyrian as well.  \n\nWe may be able to thank the coalition of Medes, Babylonians and Scythians for much of the knowledge we have regarding this now as this library was in Nineveh and may have been burned by them which preserved some clay tablets by hardening them.\n\n*\"La biblioth\u00e8que du palais de Ninive\" 1880, Paris: E. Leroux  Menant, Joachim*\n\n*Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East. New York: Facts on File Roaf, M. (1990)*\n\n*Assyrian Library Records. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 42(1), 1-29 Parpola, S. (1983).*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4o21cl", "title": "what factors consistently make iceland, denmark, austria the most peaceful countries on earth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o21cl/eli5_what_factors_consistently_make_iceland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d48viei", "d48w92x", "d48wxy6", "d49r3s4"], "score": [27, 7, 8, 5], "text": ["a small, homogeneous population with a culture of non-violence and their size generally keeps them out of geopolitical conflicts (except Austria... not so peaceful at times)", "Spent a semester in Copenhagen. While the Danes are generally quite satisfied with their lives, the happiness rating has become such a thing that they always respond very favorably to quality-of-life surveys in order to maintain their reputation. Of course, some of these rankings are done with socioeconomic data so the survey tidbit doesn't apply. ", "Geographical size and/or population size.\n\nSmall countries with small populations don't cause major ripples in global politics. They don't lobby for world power because, well... they don't own/consume huge amounts of resources, they don't require a lot of global support, and other nations aren't looking to them for help either.\n\nIf you're a big strong football player, like 6'5\" 275lbs, and you drive a huge diesel pick-up truck, guess what? All of your friends are going to ask you for help when they move. If you're a tiny lady with slender wrists and you drive a Fiat, no one is asking you to help them move the 500lb marble dining room table. They'll stop by later to have a coffee and a chat.", "As an American who's lived in Sweden and visits Scandinavia annually, I'd say the biggest factor is that their government invests in its people.  It's that simple.  It invests and funds and supports education, healthcare, people's rights, and anything else you'd expect from a government.\n\nNot only that, but the government is far more transparent.  American's don't typically know how their tax dollars are being spent.  They don't know that most tax dollars go to subsidies for companies directly or indirectly.  People **still** don't understand that Walmart benefits from tax programs more than anyone, and that very, very, very, very few of your tax dollars go to food stamps.\n\nYou can't rule out the small populations or the simple fact that it's their culture, and culture gets passed on.  Vikings were the travelers of Old Norse society, but their societies back home were quite progressive.  They had child support and an anti-rape culture even then.  The modern idea of brutes killing and raping everything is only partly true, mostly myth - and it's not like they were doing anything everyone else wasn't also doing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qqj3w", "title": "what exactly is fire, in detail? how can light and heat come from something we can't really touch?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qqj3w/eli5_what_exactly_is_fire_in_detail_how_can_light/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwhiksb", "cwhj7j0", "cwhjn97", "cwhl8hr", "cwhld4z", "cwhljvh", "cwhloxk", "cwhm6x8", "cwhmjsp", "cwhnpll", "cwhoil8", "cwhowkp", "cwhp0jw", "cwhp6qo"], "score": [766, 20, 4, 3, 2, 8, 3, 2, 6, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3], "text": ["Fire isn't really a thing that creates light and heat, it is the light and heat that results from a process.\n\nWhen something is burning, it's a chain reaction of combustion, which is basically a fuel (the material that's burning) combining with oxygen in a chemical process that creates a bunch of heat. This process and all of the heat released by it creates a pocket of gas that's so hot that it glows and emits light. And that glowing gas is the flame that we see .", "When a candle or wood burns, the first thing that happens is heat causes volatiles to vaporize. Then those volatile gases mix with oxygen in the air right above the wick/wood and oxidize. This releases energy and keeps the whole process going.\n\nSo what is emitting light? Two things. First, there is chemiluminescence from the reaction, and that makes a bluish light. For a gas burner, this might be the only flame you see. But there is also yellow light that flickers above the blue light with wood and candles. That yellow light is from soot. It gets sucked up by the air currents, heated up so that it glows with blackbody radiation (just like hot iron or glass does), and then floats in the air a bit before cooling. That is why the yellow tips of the flame flicker so much - the soot is being blown up.\n\nOn the ISS, the microgravity means you never get a nice directed airflow, since the lighter hot air doesn't rise. Because of that, no air currents means no soot drawn up means no yellow flame. [See some pictures here.](_URL_0_)", "When something combustible (like wood products, for example) gets really hot, it breaks down into multiple parts, some of which is a gas. Especially when heated, this gas is lighter than the air around it (also aided by the convection of the air warming up and cooling down around it) so it will always travel opposite in direction to the pull of gravity. The density difference is also why the gas appears to stick together. This gas, being really hot (and therefore energized), reacts with the surrounding oxygen. One of the products of this reaction is light energy, which is what you see.", "What you see in fire is the excited gases escaping from a chemical reaction at the source of the fire and expelling energy in the form of light and heat. (so yes it is a thing) \n\nThe combustion reaction varies by material is usually O2 (Oxygen from the air) and the material (usually containing Hydrocarbons ie lots of Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen).  The result is CO2 (carbon dioxide) + H2O vapor+CO (carbon MONoxide) and leftover material that is superheated ash and junk.  The reaction itself being the breakdown of a complex or high energy state with a lot of bonds/bonding energy to a lower energy state (simpler molecules with fewer bonds), is ejecting A LOT of energy causing nearby material to also heat up and breakdown.  This is why fire spreads - it's a chain reaction of exothermic reactions.\n\nThe bright part of the fire is the superheated gases that are expelling energy in the form of light and heat (the color is dependent on the material being burnt - lots of physics/chemistry here).  The gas generation means it's initially pushed out in all directions.  Being super hot is also super light so it's gets pushed up by the denser colder air around it.  As it cools and settles into it's final form (there are a lot of intermediate states) it no longer gives of light, just soot and ash.", "Heat is essentially atoms and molecules vibrating/moving. \n\n\nEnergy is essentially what makes stuff happen. Without any energy, nothing would happen. When we burn things, we are taking them apart on a very small level and recombining them. They react with the air and create new stuff, for example exhaust, karbondioxide and ash. \n\n\nThe stuff that is binding these small parts, atoms, together into slightly bigger parts, molecules, is a form of energy. When a condition is filled, for example if it gets hot enough, bonds can start breaking. When this happens, energy is released. \n\n\nEnergy never dissapears, it can only be changed into a different form of energy. This means that when the energy is no longer in these bonds, it must go somewhere. And it goes to making everything around it move more, so it gets hotter. \n\n\nFire is just one of these reactions. It can happen when some things react with oxygen. For example if you light a piece of firewood on fire, you start a reaction. Or, if you eat something, there are small reactions like this in you that make you able to benefit from the energy in the food. \n\n\n ", "Fire is a rapid oxidation process that releases enough energy to sustain the rapid oxidation process. \n\nWhen a piece of wood catches on fire, there are 3 things that must be in place:\n1. Heat (energy to \"fuel\" the reaction\n2. An oxidizer (in most cases atmospheric oxygen)\n3. Fuel (the substance being oxidized)\n\nHeating up a log will take smaller fuels (grasses, leaves, etc.) catching fire to to heat it up. As the log heats up, it undergoes a process called pyrolysis, which is when the organic oils and other components are heated to the point they off-gas from the log. This off gassing is what forms smoke. \nWhen enough heat is present in the smoke and an ignition source is provided (like a spark or an open flame), the smoke will begin to react with oxygen in the air, and oxidize. This oxidation reaction occurs quickly and releases large quantities of heat, electromagnetic energy (light, IR), and less complex organic compounds. \n\nTo summarize, visible flame is created when smoke begins to rapidly oxidize, giving off light, heat, and combustion byproducts.\nIf you have any additional questions or need any clarification, I'd be happy to answer\n\nSource- Career Firefighter with thousands of hours of fire behavior and other fire service instruction and training. ", "The heat and light are not coming from the fire that you see. The heat and light are coming from the thing that is burning.\n\nRemember, that every molecule contains huge amounts of chemical and atomic energy. Fire just means that the substance which is burning has gotten hot enough that it set off a reaction to release some of that chemical energy. Molecules got too hot to hold together, and so they are breaking up into smaller molecules and atoms, releasing energy that previously held them together in the form of heat and light.\n\nThe fire that you see is only the pattern of that light being released.", "One thing I didn't see mentioned is the shape of a flame is defined by the velocity of the fuel and oxygen source, and the dispersion of the heat. So if you think of a bunson burner, it gives you a that nice shape due to the flow of the fuel going up. Some of it sticks to the sides and slows down, which is why it is longer at the center. If you think of a campfire, that shape is mostly the energy from the heat dispersing towards the sky since that is colder (really simple version) and I am very rusty on that part of my combustion theory. ", "Fire is 4th state of matter known as plasma. \n\nRoom Temperature Examples\n\n1)Solid - Ice, steel, wood, etc.\n\n2)Liquid - Water, Oil, Alcohol\n\n3)Gas - Air, Oxygen, Nitrogen, etc.\n\n4)Plasma - NTP and Atmospheric plasmas, very uncommon\n\nEach element and combination of elements changes between states of matter as the temperature changes. Cold starting at 1 to very hot at 4.", "You know how metal glows when it gets really hot? When gas gets really hot it will glow too. We call that glowing gas fire. ", "In simple terms, it's a self-sustaining chemical reaction that only needs heat,  a fuel source, and oxygen to exist. \n\nIf you ask any firefighter, he'll tell you it's a [living animal](_URL_0_) that breathes and eats, and goes where it wants. \n\nSource: firefighter", "Alan Alda had a contest who could explain this best. This youtube video was the winner (worth a watch):\n_URL_1_\n\nFlame challenge: _URL_0_", "What you physically see as fire is a mass transition of electrons, excited and bouncing into higher energy states due to the energy released from the chemical reaction of carbon combining with oxygen (and nearby excited air molecules, which bounce further away from the source).  Each electron naturally relaxes from that high energy state and, in doing so, releases a single photon of exactly the same energy of the energy difference of the two states.  \n\nA photon's energy level determines it's color, so for an incredibly hot fire, the color nearest the chemical reaction tends to be blue/violet, the highest energy photons that are still visible.  As you look away from the source (as the nearby excited air molecules start to dissipate their energy, and so impart less energy to excite the photons) it transitions backwards through the rainbow until it becomes red/orange on the outer visible area, which are the lowest energy visible photons.  Wood, however, only really gives enough energy through its chemical reaction with oxygen (which only begins when you kickstart it with enough heat, then keeps itself going) for, at most, yellow photons to be created, which is why you usually only see yellow to orange to red.", "_URL_0_\n\nRichard Feynman explains fire.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nasa.gov/missions/shuttle/f_fireprevention.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/qRnjswr1swo"], ["http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/the-flame-challenge-2/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ymAXKXhvHI"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE"]]}
{"q_id": "718rr5", "title": "why does alcohol leave such a recognizable smell on your breath when non-alcoholic drinks, like coke, don't?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/718rr5/eli5_why_does_alcohol_leave_such_a_recognizable/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn8zbnv", "dn8zrdk", "dn962xo", "dn992zv", "dn9a53q", "dn9d80y", "dn9dezz", "dn9f3um", "dn9fitt", "dn9g20s", "dn9jtkx", "dn9jvk9", "dn9mgup", "dn9tpmt", "dn9txb1", "dn9w5mj", "dn9wja6", "dna96cy", "dnaa56c"], "score": [21132, 553, 208, 2, 3, 4, 77, 20, 6, 21, 3, 2, 3, 2, 6, 3, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["The smell lingers as long as you're drunk because it's not coming from residual booze in your saliva, it's the smell of your blood itself.\n\nWhen you imbibe an alcoholic beverage, ethanol (the active ingredient that gets you drunk), is absorbed into your bloodstream. Ethanol is a volatile chemical (it evaporates easily), so when alcoholic blood passes through your lungs, some of the ethanol evaporates into the air that you exhale. It's this process that allows a breathalyzer to measure BAC based on your exhalation.", "Alcohol is volatile and easily vaporizes into the air, allowing you to smell it. Alcohol also is carried in the blood, which easily vaporizes in the lungs, from your blood stream, allowing you to breath it out. \n\nCoke is simply digested. You would only have residual coke after taste in your mouth, and would not be exhaling it from your lungs. ", "Because no one seems to know the right answer:  \n_URL_0_  \n  \nAfter an extended period drinking (exactly how long depends on a person's metabolism) alcohol is metabolised to acetone which is released through skin pores and through the lungs as you breath out. Acetone is the distinct smell that you find on drunks.  \n  \nA bit of trivia: diabetes sufferers are more prone to ketoacidosis than a healthy individual.  \n  \nedit:  \nAs u/3111111111 points out alcohol is not metabolised to acetone, it's metabolised to acetaldehyde. Over consumption inhibits the synthesis of glucose which leads to fatty acids being metabolised to acetone.", "Is it the same way that trained dogs can smell their owner's blood sugar level? ", "Same thing occurs with foods high in sulfur compounds, like garlic and onions. However, the sulfur compounds in these two foods tend to stick around a lot longer than ethanol.", "So would a self contained sample of blood from a highly intoxicated person smell like alcohol?", "Everyone is talking about drunks, but I can smell beer practically coming out of certain people's pores even after they've only had one. What gives?", "You actually can smell sugar in the breath of diabetics when their blood sugar levels get all fucked up, IIRC it smells \"fruity\"", "It also has to do with how alcohol is gotten rid of by the body. The liver stores it, then gradually releases it in the blood as it is metabolized, where it is then released into the air by the lungs. This is also how a breathalyzer estimates the amount of alcohol in your blood.\n\nThe smell is actually acetone.", "Pure ethanol has almost no odor.\n\nYour body metabolizes ethanol to acetaldehyde. Volatile aldehydes are potent fragrances. When you smell \"alcohol\" on someone's breath, what you are really smelling is acetaldehyde.\n\n[edited] As a PhD in Bacteriology, I have worked with ethanol and many other chemicals for a very long time.\n\n", "the alcohol is in your bloodstream and the smell is coming out via your lungs.  Thats why I always laugh at people who think mints and brushing your teeth will make the alcohol smell go away...  it's like \"dude, the booze isn't on your teeth\".", "One of the ways alcohol leaves your body is through your breath. You exhale it through your lungs. While a mixer like cola will leave your body when you pee. This is why you walk into a room where someone has been drinking heavily, there is a heavy alcohol scent. The drunken breath is lingering in the air. ", "Alcohol in blood. In the lungs there is an exchange between the blood and air, alcohol readily evaporates. Alcohol smell permeates. ", "Now how do you cover it up?", "Too add to this, Alcoholic ketoacidosis produces a unique smelling smell that is not quite liquor on your breath smell, but still quite noticeable and gross to those who are say, trapped in a car with you.\n\nStay healthy folks. Don't stop eating food.", "Non-alcoholic drinks don't really have much smell because the molecules in them are not volatile. The exception is the bubbles of CO2 (which is odorless anyways). Alcohol by itself is a liquid that has significant pressure around body temperature. So if your stomach has alcohol and you burp it will come out smelling of alcohol. If you have alcohol in your blood, it will evaporate from it inside the lungs and come out as the air you breathe out.", "How would you avoid emitting this smell? Wearing long-sleeved clothing and holding your breath?", "The natural burn off rate is .015%BAC per hour after you've stopped consuming alcoholic beverages. In case anyone was wondering", "Several things going on here:\n\n1. mostly you're smelling metabolized alcohol being _exhaled_ as an aldehyde.  \n\n2. secondarily, you can smell ethanol, it's kinda sweet.  So...if you've just drank some and there is residual, then it will smell.  In order to have something smell it has to make from liquid into the air and into your nose.  Ethanol does this, but coke doesn't actually do this.  If you had a flat cup of coke (no fizzles popping it into the air) you'd not smell _anything_.  In fact, most primarily water beverages don't much, but if you combine them with things that evaporate quickly then they do.  Take - for the obvious example - mouthwash.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketoacidosis"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6zb7vd", "title": "When and why did the patron system of supporting artists or scientists die off?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zb7vd/when_and_why_did_the_patron_system_of_supporting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmu5t8t", "dmupkr9"], "score": [6, 11], "text": ["Could you please define patron system in this context?", "For science, the right question is not really to ask when \"the patron system\" died off, but how scientific funding arrangements varied over time. There was never any \"patron system\" (which implies it was somehow formalized), there are just different arrangements by which people who were not self-funded got funding/support. In China, for example, scientific work was long part of the larger bureaucratic work of the state, which was a patron of sorts. In Europe, at different times and places there were very different modes of funding scientific work. Galileo deliberately worked to get himself embedded into the House of Medici, to be their \"in house\" scientist to bring them glory and occasionally be useful. Isaac Newton by contrast did his work in the context of a university, aided at times by the capabilities of the Royal Society of London, which as its name suggests was funded and chartered by the King. Charles Darwin paid his way through inherited wealth, but Thomas Henry Huxley originally made his wages by giving public lectures with charged admission. The German chemists and physicists of the late 19th and early 20th century made their money through affiliations with industry. And so on. \n\nThe way I think I would answer your question, though, is that science _professionalized_ in the 19th century. That is, its jobs and funding sources became much more regularized, and fell into a few specific categories, e.g., industry, government support, philanthropy, and education (the rise of the research university, which used undergraduate tuition to pay for faculty research time, happened during this period). The relative \"weight\" of those categories has fluctuated over time; in the mid-20th century, government funding became paramount. But even in the case of US R & D in the late-20th, early-21st centuries, [these trends have not been fixed](_URL_0_). The funding situation changes in important ways over time, and this does shape the kind of research being done. \n\nDoes individual patronage play a role? As a percentage of work, certainly less than it used to \u2014\u00a0there still are some cases of wealthy individuals who will pay for work to be done, or give money to foundations to dish out. But they don't make up a significant proportion of the work being done. When did that change? I'm not sure it _ever_ made up as much of a fraction as people sometimes think it did, but certainly by the 19th century that was seen as a more eccentric way of doing things, and by the 20th century, while there were still a few well-known individual patrons (e.g. Alfred Loomis), they were very unusual.\n\n(I don't know anything about arts funding.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://imgur.com/x43muWi"]]}
{"q_id": "3jh19p", "title": "why in older movies when characters are conversing outside, it sounds like they're dubbed or theres no distance to their voice?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jh19p/eli5_why_in_older_movies_when_characters_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cup4adv", "cup4m3y", "cup6ljs", "cup8pl9"], "score": [13, 16, 15, 5], "text": ["Technology back then wasn't so great, and sound was harder to pick up when outside, as it didn't have any walls to \"contain\" it. If they did use real voice recording from outside, it would often be very quiet or drowned out.", "Most dialogue in movies, unless its recorded on a sound stage, is dubbed later in a process known as Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR).  \n\nYou don't notice it as much these days because digital technology and recording techniques have improved the process.\n\nExample: [Jordan Pettle does ADR](_URL_0_) (additional dialogue recording) for Chris Donaldson's film, 2:14 PM ", "Most dialogue isn't done with ADR. \n\nADR is used in cases where the production audio is too noisy, or otherwise unusable (bad line reading, airplane fly-by, etc.) \n\nMOST dialogue is caught with a shotgun microphone on a boom pole or the actor has a hidden lav microphone on their body. Since most productions are shot in a quiet and sound controlled environment, ADR really isn't necessary. The added difficulty and expense make it really a poor choice for primary audio.", "They **are** talking to a microphone that is right next to them.\n\nMovie cameras typically don't record sound. Sound is captured by [boom mics](_URL_1_)\n\n[Imgur](_URL_0_)\n\nThis way, the mic is closer to the action, for better sound pick-up, while the camera is where it needs to be for the best picture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxSxIFwgqjo"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/EkgtGsu.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Tournage_de_film.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "1ajoeg", "title": "are females colder than males?", "selftext": "Why do females appear to be generally colder than males? For example, colder toes in bed. Do females have lower body temperatures than males?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ajoeg/are_females_colder_than_males/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8y0kvf", "c8y2ect", "c8y2jvm", "c8y3cx3", "c8y4iwi"], "score": [11, 12, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["Yes on average women's hands and feet are 3 degree's colder then a man's.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "Women have less hemoglobin, lower hematocrit (RBC concentration), total RBC count, and lower metabolism/caloric requirements than men.  Their temperatures also fluctuate based on hormone levels more than men.  I haven't directly heard that their temperatures differ, but with these differences I wouldn't be surprised, at least peripheral temperature.", "Women have less lean body mass than men. Muscles make warm.", "I respect your quest for knowledge, and I really hate to say this, but /r/explainlikeimfive is more about explaining things you don't really have a full grasp of, rather than just getting singular answers to questions you could post in /r/askscience or /r/askreddit.", "Biological stuff aside, women's clothing is thinner and even the more modest tops expose a lot more skin then their male counterparts."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/warm_heart_cold_hands.html", "http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/the-reason-couples-fight-over-heat-women-really-are-colder-than-men-2452566.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3egd8p", "title": "why do people paint the bottoms of trees white?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3egd8p/eli5_why_do_people_paint_the_bottoms_of_trees/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctenicv", "ctep3xo", "cteu9v6", "ctf5ic1", "ctf5ot7"], "score": [6, 16, 30, 8, 5], "text": ["Usually it's a protective coating that hepls prevent insects burrowing into the wood, or if they do its easier to see their burrows and get rid of them before they do any serious damage to the trunk.", "_URL_0_\nSun scald happens in the winter on the side facing the Sun. see treatment ", "I know this one. It is not paint, is a diluted solution of slaked lime, and yes, to protect the trees from parasites.\n\t\n", "The paint on the bottom of my fruit trees is a mixture of interior latex paint (white) and joint compound (used to finish drywall seams)  applied to prevent beetles from boring holes to lay their eggs. ", "On one of the many bases I was assigned to in the Navy we painted a wide stripe of white paint around all the trees at about chest height so people would not run or bicycle into them at night.\nI live in Florida now and several of the old timers around here have the same idea so their drunk friends on golf carts won't drive into them.  They are pretty easy to see at night."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_scald_(flora)"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2dz9kp", "title": "- credit card fraud. how did my credit card get used at a gas station? and a pharmacy? and a target? 200 miles away.... when it is still in my wallet?", "selftext": "How does this sort of fraud work? Where did they get the credit card number? How did they use it at these places without a physical card? Can anyone break down the process for me? I'm just curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dz9kp/eli5_credit_card_fraud_how_did_my_credit_card_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjuiiyc", "cjuiiyt", "cjuk4xu", "cjukrqr", "cjuln3h", "cjupjcc", "cjusocw", "cjutn4w", "cjux3zc"], "score": [6, 52, 6, 9, 6, 2, 2, 2, 6], "text": ["Just because someone doesn't have your physical card doesn't mean they didn't swipe it somewhere (or install a skimmer on an ATM or gas pump or something), then program your info onto a new card so they can swipe it elsewhere.", "At some point while you were out, the information on your credit card was copied. The attacker probably made a fake duplicate card, and then began making purchases elsewhere. Info in the magnetic stripe on cards is not encrypted, and can be easily read with a magstripe reader. The magnetic stripe contains the same information that is printed on the front of the card.\n\nLast December, a large volume of credit card information was stolen from Target - this is on the large scale. It happens on the small scale also when a local business stores customer information in an insecure fashion. I've also heard stories of dishonest cashiers or waiters who have stolen customer card information to then sell it on the internet.\n\nEDIT: Like the other replies said, definitely contact your credit card company and report the charges as fraudulent. They'll send you a new card and you won't be charged for the fraudulent purchases.", "The card itself doesn't matter. It is the numbers on the card.\nAccount number, secret codes...\n\nWhen you swipe it, the machine reads those codes and then charges your account. Here's the catch, if the machine can read it, a bad machine can be programmed to copy the codes. A criminal can then make their own card with your information and use it.\n\nThink of your credit card like a book with all your codes/information. When you swipe it, it is like giving this book to someone to look it. If they're a good person, they just look at it and make sure it is your account. If they're up to no good, they will look at it, and make a copy of your book, so they can pretend they are you.\n\nSo again, the card doesn't matter. It is the information on the card. Once they get that information, they can print their own card with your information and can be used.\n\nNow there are several security measures in place to help prevent this.\n\n1. New cards have a 'chip' What this means is the information on the card changes. So right now, a code might have a value of 10. an hour later, it will have a value of 50. It makes it much harder to copy. If they just do a simple copy, they will only copy the 10. Their copy won't work an hour later.\n\n2. Credit card companies do try and check purchases. So if they see a transaction in places 500 km away within 20 minutes... they could probably flag. Different credit card companies have different levels of security and technology to detect this. But they're working on it.\n\nJust a note. Often times, security can by be bypassed for convenience.\nFor example, your credit work will still work even if the store is not connected to the credit card company. They will just store your information and then send it to the credit card company when it is connected again.\n", "God I love reddit. Thanks ya'll.", "The American Credit card companies are really cheap and as a result, use an unsafe and outdated chip system that the rest of the world has moved on from.\n\nRHID. It's a piece of shit. ", "Several years ago I worked in a building that required a parking attendant. Well, apparently this one particular one was fired and then forced to work one final day. In that final day, she collected dozens of credit card numbers and went on a spending spree over the next two weeks. None of us noticed until our credit statements showed up. Boom, $2,000+ of charges on mine alone. Thankfully she was arrested. And all the charges were reversed on my card. She had great taste in items, though...", "My more recent credit cards have a visible 'chip' and some stores, like Walmart, require you to insert the card and leave it in for a while.  This is much slower than just swiping it.  Is there really enough security advantage for the customer to be worth the extra time? ", "There's an excellent example of this here.\n_URL_0_", "Just a friendly reminder to all not to do this: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv72936OWck"], ["https://twitter.com/NeedADebitCard"]]}
{"q_id": "5ia2ez", "title": "why still no solution to baldness?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ia2ez/eli5why_still_no_solution_to_baldness/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db6jsu7", "db6k9iz", "db6krgz", "db6kynk", "db6l2ye", "db6lc7v", "db6ldik", "db6leg8", "db6lk3j", "db6lxov", "db6mz55", "db6n2di", "db6ngun", "db6np9y", "db6nt9h", "db6nwt3", "db6o3iq", "db6o4nz", "db6ogyc", "db6ong8", "db6oukr"], "score": [52, 1820, 44, 4, 1551, 252, 22, 29, 35, 37, 20, 3, 8, 32, 2, 23, 12, 66, 12, 592, 3], "text": ["There are [expensive] solutions. Hair transplants have come a long way. Certain countries like Turkey do the procedure for a more affordable price.", "A significant part of male pattern baldness (the type of baldness i assume your are talking about) is due to genetics and the hormone dihydrotestosterone. baldness is caused due to the sensitivity of the hair follicle to that hormone. topical treatments can reduce the effect of the hormone on a patch of hair (Propecia and Avodart) but a \"cure\" would require major alterations to either the production of the hormone or to the sensitivity of the follicle.  either one of these would be likely to produce significant (possibly dangerous) side effects in the patient. so far no permanent treatment has made it through enough clinical trials to be considered effective and safe. ", "Changing eye color is removing the pigment with a laser. \"Curing\" male pattern baldness would require changing male genetic code in a way that it didn't interfere with normal male physiology. That's still very far away.\n\nSo that leaves hair transplants, minoxidil and finasteride as the only viable options. None of them are a cure, but can slow down the process.", "Let's not forget that progress usually requires funding, and not that a nice chunk of the world wouldn't pay for it, but since we rarely hear about progress in MPB I'd assume the big brains of the world mostly like to tackle other technology advancements like how to save mankind from itself. ", "24 here, almost 25y old. Using minoxodil for two years now.\n\nWe lose our hair mainly in the center part of the head 'cause the follicles in that area are susceptible to the hormone dihydrotestosterone. The follicles on the sides are much less susceptible, and we don't really understand why yet.\n\nThis hormone is a result of the processes that the much more known Testosterone endures in the body. To fight the presence of the dihydro variant, you have to fight Testosterone itself.\n\nFinasteride does exactly this. If you use it you're very likely to even get hair back. My granddad was using this at 70+ to help his prostate and was growing hair back.\n\nThe problem with Finasteride is that it will give you hair but you are also pretty likely to lose libido, to get erectile disfunction and there seems to be cases of sterility.\n\nThat's why I never accepted it. The alternative is Minoxidil, which will make the process slower by giving the follicles where you apply it more breathing room before the Dihydrotestosterone kills them. \n\nThis is what I'm using, till it gets to that point where shaving just looks better and then that's the way to go. \n\nWhen you're bald you can consider autotransplant: they'll get your sane follicles from back and sided and put it on the center part.\n\nElon Musk has had a transplant, if you're interested on how much successful it can be. He's a much more handsome man now\n\n", "Just a reminder here: although this is more visible (in most cases) in males, females also suffer from androgenetic alopecia.\n\nIt can be incredibly devastating emotionally and cause severe depression. \n\nSo the \"shave it, get used to it\" line is not always an option.\n\nPropecia (Finasteride) is strictly banned for women who are in a reproductive age, as it can cause feminization of male fetuses.", "Minoxidil worked for me till now. I started loosing hair and having itchy head mostly in the center of the head at the age of 24. I went to a good dermatologists and told my that this is the only medically proven HELP for hair loss. I am 28 now and i still got the 90% of the hair i had 4 years ago. If didn't use a product with minoxidil i might have lost more than 70%. Start early and don't skip your doses. The product had 5% content of minoxidil.", "Permanent solutions based on current understanding of the problem (which is incomplete) require either\n\n1. Modification of the area where the chemical (DHT) which causes the damage attaches.\n\n2. Modification of the chemical which causes the damage\n\n3. Destruction of the process/enzyme (5 Alpha Reductase) which causes the creation of the chemical.\n\n4. Modification of specific hair follicles. \n\nAll of these things are either genetic modifications which are expensive and going to be focused on other genetic diseases or issues in which we're not sure on how to manage without large-scale side effects. Much of the issue is that we just don't know enough about it, and that's because it's really a first-world problem and not a lot of funding gets to it. ", "They are working on it. I have alopecia universalis so im awaiting more jak inhibitor trials. Its just considered risky right now there are alot of potential side affects. Its defiantly as close to a cure I have seen. I know people in the trials who have regrowth for the first time so its pretty cool.", "There are solutions, but they are:\n\n\nA: Expensive\nB: Not permanent\nC: Cause other, possibly unwanted, changes to your body.\n\n\nA is obvious. Its a cosmetic situation. Implants and medicine that take care of cosmetic issues are expensive because they are luxuries.\n\nB is due to the cause of baldness being primarily a hormone issue. If you don't solve the hormone problem implants will fall back out in time.\n\nC is related to B. If you take testosterone blockers to keep and possibly regrow your hair, your libido will die. You may lose the ability to get erect and will likely be infertile and possibly grow breasts.\n\n\nC works for me. I take a higher dose of the main blocker, finasteride, which actually makes it cheaper than the lower dose that is only meant for cosmetic reasons. I am seeing regrowth, which makes me super happy.\n\n\nEdit: A letter.", "They DO! Its called JAK inhibitors... but its still a few years away from being on the market and i'm not exactly sure its safe.\n\nBut it works!.. they think. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "Platelet Rich Plasma injections seem to be a step in the right direction regarding hairloss.  We have finasteride which prevents the conversion of testosterone to DHT which is thought to be responsible for hair follicle miniaturization.  There is potential for side effects that deter most people however.  Minoxidil seems to help with blood flow to the follicles. ", "Can they do anything with hormones using CRISPR?", "Before I explain anything to address the question, I'd like to point out that these types of questions are really hard to answer. \"How does X work?\" or \"How did we cure X?\" is easy to simplify and present in a manageable format because we already have the entirety of the story, so we know what is important and what isn't. \"Why isn't there a X?\" or \"Why don't we understand X?\" is really hard to answer because we don't actually know what we don't know. There's no way to predict what is important for the solution to a complex problem and what is just a red herring until after you've solved the problem. Anyway...\n\nThere are actually plenty of solutions to baldness. But the problem is that they aren't viewed as acceptable (whether medically or socially). Toupees are a \"solution\" to baldness, but people think they look goofy. Women wear wigs all the time, and they can be difficult to distinguish from natural hair, and the same can be said of high-end toupees. But the toupee has become a meme representing socially inept or unacceptable schlubs. Hair transplantation is another option that quite literally eliminates the defining factor of baldness: the lack of hair in an area. People still question its ability to make \"normal-looking\" hairlines, but that is mostly informed by past techniques and not more advanced current approaches. So you're not really asking for a solution to baldness so much as an easily accessible, socially and medically acceptable solution to baldness with no or minimal side effects. And adding those caveats to \"solution\" makes it a great deal more complicated.\n\nIf you're talking about *pharmaceutically* treating hair loss, that's a slightly different issue. Firstly, male pattern baldness (or \"androgenic baldness\" because it can affect women too) is genetic, and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to \"treat\" genetic disorders. You can't really change the genes in a person (barring some exceedingly technical and/or experimental approaches). Your best hope is to eliminate the symptoms, which can be done with some of the approaches I've mentioned above. Secondly, baldness is related to hormonal signaling. Playing with hormones is difficult and can have some pretty severe side effects, most of which aren't acceptable when your goal is cosmetic.", "as a trans woman spironolactone reversed my male pattern baldness so..? it stops dht production \nbut straight cis men freak out when i tell them about this solution like omg i'll grow titties! um no i just take a fat ass dose to transition you don't need that ", "I see a lot of comments here talking about testosterone and male baldness. I know reddit is also a male dominant group, but what about woman with receding hairlines? Is it a different cause and are there easier solutions or cures?", "There are solutions. They just don't work for everyone and the side effects are often too much for people to cope with.\n\nPersonally, Minoxidil and Finasteride worked wonders. Got my hair back despite a severe bald spot. \n\nThe problem is that baldness depends as much on hormones as it does body physiology. Its also hereditary. We know dihydrotestosterone is the culprit in hair loss but the only way to stop is affects the whole body in several ways. It's hard to target and make medicine that's like: \"Don't affect the scalp\".\n\nHormones affects the entire body in a myriad of ways. Picking and choosing it's effects takes a lot of time and research.\n", "The cure of baldness will always be 10 years away.  \n\nBut in all seriousness, they are working on cures. It just takes a lot of money and even more time to get through all the clinical stages. \n\nI'd estimate that within the next 10 years, we'll have something new and revolutionary working. Something that REALLY works. \n\nThe balding/hairloss community is the most cynical you'll find. There's so much BS snake-oil out there, and so many otherwise expensive methods with ok effects. Hopefully I'll still have a decent head of hair 5-10 years from now. \n\n", "I'd like to know the opposite. Why do we still have no quick, easy, pain-free, permanent solution to hair removal?", "Depending on you what you qualify as a solution, one might say there *is* currently a solution to baldness. The solution, however, is surgical.\n\nThe hair on the top of your head is different than the hair on the crown/sides of your head. The hair on the top of your head is susceptible to [DHT or Dihydrotestosterone] (_URL_1_).\n\nThe hair on your head is in a constant state of shedding and regrowth. DHT strangles the follicle which makes the regrowth hair come back smaller and less healthy that the hair it replace. Eventually the follicle gets so strangled that the hair that replaces the original is microscopic and seemingly gone. This is when baldness occurs.\n\n[Medical Hair Restoration, or hair transplantation](_URL_4_) is an effective solution to baldness if the end goal is to *not* look like a bald person. What it involves is moving a specific number of hairs from the sides of your head to the top of your head. It doesn't cure the underlying \"problem\" but it masks the results of that problem to a degree.\n\nThe issues with this treatment is that if you get it prematurely (before you're actually bald), you will have to go multiple times as the non-surgically-replaced hair falls out. Some doctors only recommend 3 maximum hair replacement surgeries, so they often recommend waiting until you're significantly bald or start a regime of drugs after your first surgery.\n\nOften people will fix problem spots with the surgery, then start taking/using medications like [finasteride](_URL_0_) and [minoxidil](_URL_3_). The surgery effectively \"fixed\" the thinning/bald areas and the drugs prevent future hair from falling out.\n\nThe problem with the above mentioned technique is that often, the drugs can have [**serious side effects**](_URL_2_). In the end, however, you can be successful in \"curing\" the effects of baldness.\n\nUnfortunately there's no simple, non-invasive or potentially chemically dangerous solution.", "Do products like Rogaine not work then? I see that it's a vasodilator which is not something I see mentioned in these comments. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3286870/Have-scientists-cured-baldness-New-drug-reveals-regrowth-mice-ten-DAYS.html", "http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/23/20/2DB5E2B100000578-0-image-a-19_1445628527803.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.drugs.com/cdi/finasteride.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrotestosterone", "https://www.drugs.com/sfx/finasteride-side-effects.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoxidil", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_transplantation"], []]}
{"q_id": "1mfsvm", "title": "What was the reaction from the public when Japan switched to the Gregorian Calendar during the Meiji Restoration?", "selftext": "I would like to know whether a majority of the Japanese people just accepted this drastic change (especially since moving traditional holidays to the Gregorian Calendar has changed the season in which many of them are held) or if there was any significant resistance, and, if so, what kind.  Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mfsvm/what_was_the_reaction_from_the_public_when_japan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc8ujtw"], "score": [14], "text": ["While I wouldn't know where to start looking for an answer to this question, I'd like to point out that the historical calendar of Japan was not nearly as stable as that of the Western world. The calendar in official use underwent four revisions between 1685 and the Meiji Revolution. The last of them prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, known as the \"Tenpou\" calendar, was adopted in 1844; so older Japanese people would already have seen the calendar altered once in their lifetime.\n\nEnglish language information on this is scarce, but there's a paragraph about the Tenpou calendar in the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) on the era. By following the second citation in the paragraph [22] to Hayashi's article, you can find a little more information about Japanese calendar reforms during that period mixed in with a history of Japanese mathematicians."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenp%C5%8D#Calendar_revision"]]}
{"q_id": "1pxbdh", "title": "if verizon and the fcc were to overturn net neutrality laws, what will really happen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pxbdh/eli5_if_verizon_and_the_fcc_were_to_overturn_net/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd71mds", "cd71nmw", "cd71qoh", "cd71ruq", "cd71uyv", "cd71v4c", "cd71vsh", "cd71yc5", "cd721b9", "cd728z1", "cd72abl", "cd72auc", "cd72ie3", "cd72kbb", "cd72mhu", "cd72rwp", "cd73rzt", "cd73z4y", "cd73zlt", "cd740d0", "cd746d4", "cd74out", "cd7502o", "cd757sj", "cd75cys", "cd7606c", "cd761a8", "cd768q5", "cd76geq", "cd76gpv", "cd76kev", "cd76lze", "cd77gfi", "cd77gyk", "cd77skh", "cd77wsm", "cd7871y", "cd78p0l", "cd797lc", "cd79fgc", "cd79gfx", "cd7a3ux", "cd7a6ta"], "score": [2, 79, 7, 9, 84, 28, 1057, 64, 13, 14, 27, 12, 4, 6, 172, 8, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 12, 10, 3, 2, 10, 2, 10, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 8, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["This should [help](_URL_0_).", "Think of toll roads versus interstate highways. Verizon wants to charge either the users a toll for certain applications ie) Facebook, Facetime, Skype.. or charge owners of those services. This drastically will reduce competition and advancements because users are not going to pay money to try something new and unproven yet, and on the flip side if the owners have to pay more money there will be less money to put back into the business.\n\nAnother explanation is that all internet is already payed for on both ends of the line. If i run a website I am paying to host that website on the internet, and someone accessing it is paying to be connected to the internet. Verizon wants to have a say which sites/services should caugh up more money if their paying customers happen to go to said websites.", "Right now, we have the same access to everything on the big table that is the internet.  Slow downs have to do with how many people want a dish, and how slow the servers are in serving it up. \n\nWithout net neutrality, suddenly this internet table would have some plates easier to eat than others, the restaurant owner decides what you get served rather your communication to the servers or your ability to navigate the crowds.\n\nMaybe the restaurant has a problem with pork or prefers pepsi over coke.  Maybe you won't get the meals you prefer, like you can now, as your entire experience will be tailored by the restaurant owner.  \n\nThis hasn't happened before in a big scale before, so no one knows how it will affect our meal.  ", "I guess we would make our own internet.  We'd need Al Gore.", " > I know what a lot of people FEAR will happen, but what is the reality?\n\nPeople have reasons for having those fears. Go back a decade, and you'll notice people fearing the Patriot Act could be misused for dubious practices, a fear which has been realized. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nJust because the ramifications seem too far fetched for us today does not mean they will not happen.", "You know how when you pay for tv, you buy it in packages? You can buy HD packages, and sports packages, and packages that give you HBO?\n\nWell without net neutrality, companies can charge more for you to go to Youtube, as opposed to just checking your email.\n\nIt's the difference between paying money at a buffet, and being able to try everything, and having to pay for each course.", "A combination of the following (one, the other, or both, to varying degrees of limitation and/or price):\n\n* You own a website, online service, or mobile app; but Verizon slows it so it takes a long time to load *unless* you pay them.\n* You subscribe to the internet as an end user. Facebook and Google load slowly, Netflix and YouTube run at standard def only, and LiveLeak and BitTorrent are totally blocked. Your ping time in games is abysmal UNLESS you pay extra for a \"Premium Subscriber\" package.\n\nISPs then introduce their own content services, which will of course run much faster than anyone else's over their own connections. They take all the ad revenue, and you are stuck with their service which they can do whatever they want with (including charge for it - but charge less than what they charge to use a competitor's). The original content providers slowly die off, as people don't want to pay for the \"Netflix\" package since they already pay for Netflix, or for the YouTube package since YouTube is supposed to be free.\n\nThey make all the money and control all the information flow. Little startup companies who can't afford to pay for all their user's bandwidth? Gone. With the competition eliminated, these companies have no reason to really innovate, and the internet becomes a crappy text-based version of cable-TV: super-high subscription fees, crap content, and no freedom to innovate.\n\nIt's really a shit excuse to sap as much money from people as they can, but if it happens it will cost much, much more.\n\nEDIT: One silver lining is that we may see more startup ISPs who DON'T pull this kind of crap - but that will be very difficult because the big boys provide all the \"information superhighway\" wires that connect the internet across long ranges, and they'll just charge the small ISPs to lease bandwidth from the big connection lines.", "basically Telecoms want to turn the Internet into a tiered paid subscription. Just like television.", "Think of it like your standard TV cable package.\n\nYou will probably pay nothing, or very little for the most basic, minimal usage of the internet.  Like basic cable. You won't get a lot, but its cheap.\n\nIf you want more fancy websites, like Youtube and Facebook, you are going to have to pay a little bit more.  Its like adding ESPN, USA, or other networks onto your TV. It also costs a bit more.\n\nIf you want all internet, or the most internet, you are going to have to cough up the most.  Like HBO, Starz, and Showtime.\n\nThe reason people dislike it or are afraid of it, is because it makes it much more difficult for smaller and new websites to get any viewing, because no one will pay for that.  Think of it like living in NYC, and trying to pay for a local broadcasting in LA.  No one is going to do that.\n\n", "We all will be bent over and screwed even harder by service providers. 'Murica, for the corportations, by the corporations. ", "It would be the end of a golden era of shared information. It would turn a platform into a product. Instead of unlimited access to the internet at a price, it would be specific portions of the internet at varying qualities and prices, like tv. The smaller sites (Independant sites, blogs, ect.) would likely die out leaving only the larger corporation run sites (Facebook, google, youtube, ebay, ect), which would likely be offered in bundles and packages, featuring only approved content. *Please note that I am a dumbass on the internet with no real knowledge on the subject, this is just my two cents.*", "The big providers might get away with their tiered system for a while but only for a little while (1-5 years lets say).  Because just when they start to feel comfortable with the new higher level of revenue they are dragging in, the whole thing will collapse as soon as Google comes to town with not only significantly faster service, but no tiers and no bullshit, just wide open internet access 24/7.  You see Google saw this coming a years ago and they know that this greed on the part of the majors will only help them sell a newer better system, makes it easy actually.", "To answer this question, I'd think of the internet as having a bunch of train stations (IP Addresses) and a bunch of trains (Internet Service Providers - ISPs). Right now, everyone with an ISP pays some amount of money for unlimited train access - more money can get you a faster train, but it doesn't matter where you're going. \n\nThis court case is not really about who owns the tracks, but rather a question on whether an ISP can limit your train access or charge you more based on your destination. With this power, they can make renting a train on the way to Netflix more expensive. It remains to be seen if this can be be implemented and whether Netflix could use mirrors (copy-paste their train station) to circumvent this. \n\nWhy this could be really bad: ISP's are notoriously not competitive in most regional markets. Depending on the verdict, this could give them more staying power.\nWhy this could be irrelevant: Assuming the cost of traveling on a different set of tracks is not more expensive, economics would suggest that this is an unsustainable practice from a competitive standpoint.", "Verizon and the FCC aren't working together to overturn net neutrality regulations as the title somewhat implies. The FCC created the net neutrality rules, and Verizon is challenging their validity.\n\nIt's important to remember that these rules are very new: they were only adopted in 2010. The problem with predicting what would happen if the rules were overturned is that the net neutrality push has pretty much been preemptive, so there's not a huge amount of stuff to point to in terms of actual things that the rules were preventing.\n\nThe major actual examples that I'm aware of are Comcast's interference with BitTorrent (which predated the rules), and MetroPCS creating service levels that only allowed video from YouTube, not other providers.", "You can think of it basically like [this](_URL_0_) picture was a real picture on an ISP pricing page.", "Is there some way we can pool our money together and put Verizon out of business?  Maybe we can crowdsource our own isp.  \n\nAnyone got any ideas?  Lets talk.", "One (I think) important distinction is that ISPs are not planning to \"slow down\" certain sites/services, per se. What they are planning to do is use Quality of Service/Class of Service markings on traffic to sites and services they prefer (read - that pay them) to protect that traffic during congestion. \n\nSo, here's an example - I am Verizon or whatever ISP. My customers use Netflix and Hulu. Netflix, however REALLY wants my 100 million subscribers to use their service and is willing to pay me a ton of cash to ensure that connectivity to their service maintains a certain level of performance. Say Hulu is not willing to do that. I haven't \"slowed down\" Hulu traffic, I have only given Netflix traffic priority through my network to maintain the service level we have agreed upon.\n\nI don't believe this scenario will ever involve the ISP charging the end user, although it is possible I suppose that they may offer \"premium service\" at the higher rate. The golden ring for the ISPs is to get the content providers to foot the bill. ", "We'll just have to make our own Internet, with coke and hookers.", "The net would be like cable. They could charge you more for certain \"premium\" sites or for sites that they don't want around. Right now it is like by paying one price you get pretty much the whole internet. If the companies get their way the public would end up paying more for the same thing. \n\nThis also means some less popular sites may have less chance to stay afloat because of their inability to generate profits like the more mainstream sites. ", "Ultimately, ISPs will be regulated like utilities.  It is inevitable.  Unfortunately, it looks like companies like Comcast will have to destroy the internet before we move in that direction.  ", "The internet has jumped the shark.  \n\nThe new new is already making its way to a synapse near you. \n\nSoon you'll be thinking your way around the ol' BioGoogle wetwire.  A.K.A.the inner-net. ", "To anybody saying, \"oh, the ISP's won't abuse this new power without net neutrality\". Remember a lot of people said the same thing about the government with the Patriot Act.\n\nIf you give people power, it will be used. Period.", "As someone who does NOT live in the USA, do you think there will be significant flow-on effects for me?", "If you're feeling ballsy: instead of asking what would happen to users and startups in the case of overturning Net Neutrality, try asking what would happen to the USA as a whole. People tend to forget that the internet doesn't reside in America; when the USA is done chasing out it's intellectuals and emerging business people, all they'll be left with is poverty-stricken middle class and an oligarchy of business vampires that control the politics of the state. And nobody or nothing will be able to save the country and it will mark the end of an empire. Mark my words. ", "Browse google.  Instead of a colourful search box, you're greeted with: \"Hi! This is just a friendly reminder from Verizon.  Did you know what you can use **Bing** to search for things too?  Would you like to search for *horse p0rn* using **Bing** today?  \n\n**Yes** - OK!  \n**No** - Please wait 30 seconds and fill out this captcha to continue to google.\"  \n  \nBasically, the shit of nightmares.", "Can someone please explain to me why Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc are not flipping the **** out right now?", "Is this relevant in a worldwide scale? Will this have any impact on someone in Europe?", "Nothing.\n\nAt least not at first.\n\nThese companies play the game for the long haul.  When they get a ruling on their side they know that people are against them, so they don't act for a while.  They'll sit it out for a while as all the original hubbub dies down.  People have short memories and even worse attention spans.  But slowly and surely, they'll make moves.  They'll start to acquire companies that they'll use in the future to maximize their power and profit.  Then they'll start pulling t he crap that other people are posting about.  That's when certain sites will conveniently start to slow down and when certain other ones automagically become \"premium\" services.  \n\nHeyve already set the precedent with things like cable TV and cell phones.  Its all fucken data.  Its all 1s and 0s, so why do I need a separate voice, texting *and* data plan?  This is the type of shit they will pull.  But they'll wait.  They'll start implementingthese type of pricing structures slowly, and not too coincidentally, ALL the service providers will do it together.  Just like with cell phone plans... when vVerizon announces a plan, AT & T has a mirror image of that plan within weeks.  And its never to the customers advantage.", "this will happen\n\n_URL_0_", "Norwegian redditor here :) Is this something only happening in the US, or is the entire world going under? ", "[30 years from now](_URL_0_)", "This is where a Death Note would be really handy...", "I'll bridge the gap that people tend to leave open.\n\nWhat is this \"neutrality\" in Net Neutrality? It's the **indifference / non-interference** that we expect from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with regards to what **kind** of data they transmit to/from us.\n\nWe already pay for data transmission, and we already pay **more** for **faster** data transmission. Just not what **kind**.\n\n---\n\nI still haven't worked out exactly how someone with this power would use it to make money, but consider this ... contrived scenario:\n\n >  I subscribe to Comcast's package A, which promises to deliver 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream connection.  \n >  Scenario 1 (with net neutrality): Comcast lets me do what I want, so I can do the followings:\n\n >  - download large files at near-3mbps speeds: Maybe a 2GB+ Windows image in a bit more than 1 hour. Note: 2GB / 4Mbps ~= 1.14 hours.\n >  - stream HD movies without stopping to buffer: Maybe a 2GB+ movie that lasts 93 minutes. Note: 2GB per 93 minutes requires a 388KBps = 3.1Mbps internet connection, which is well under our 4Mbps capability.\n\n >  Now, let's play devil's advocate and try to come up with ways Comcast can charge me more.\n\n >  1) They can throttle my connection so that neither of those tasks finish as expected. My download takes more than 3 hours and my video stream spends ~100% more time buffering. Since this performance is clearly unacceptable, they'd then offer me a better package at a higher price.  \nI don't know whether or not they're already doing this.\n\n >  2) More discretely, they can throttle your data stream only for types of data that they don't like (for whatever reason). So your download would still finish in a bit more than an hour and you'd still be happy, but your movies won't play satisfactorily. In heroic manners, Comcast comes along and offers you a \"video package\" that \"boosts\" your video streaming connection for a \"small monthly subscription fee\".  \nI don't know the legal details, but they may get away with doing this because they actually *do* serve you the subscribed speed of your package (so they technically didn't lie legally when you signed the contract).\n\n >  3) Things can be a bit more bleak for a small start-up company, as their needs tend to be more \"focused\". This is wildly speculative, so feel free to ignore it. As a user, you may not die if video streaming is taken away from you; you can still watch cat gifs or play online games. A start-up company tends to serve only one type of service, which likely involves one data type. Take a DRM-free video streaming service for example (we don't care whether this can ever be a legal business). Their lives depend on video streaming. If the only ISP in their area throttle their video data transfer speed, they either pay extra or get screwed.\n\nAnd then of course they can jump into the service providing game, eliminating competition until they are the primary provider of certain services you depend on. Then charge you cut-throat prices for them.  \nI imagine this is what happened to the cable TV. Exclusivity of certain TV shows and hundred-dollar subscriptions.\n\nEventually, the internet may look like an amusement park. You pay once for the ticket to get into the area, then pay again for everything you do.", " >   I know what a lot of people FEAR will happen, but what is the reality?\n\nMost of the stuff in the other comments is fear based, although it's important to note that it all *could* happen if the law is changed without careful consideration, and we have good reason to be concerned.\n\n*Why* Verison is looking for change is important, and a valid concern on their part.\n\nThe ISP business model is based on overselling their capacity. If they have a 100Mb/s link in the network they can safely sell five 20Mb/s connections and never have an issue; but unless all five connections are constantly maxed out the network will be under-utilised, it makes sense to sell more connections until the actual usage gets closer to capacity. Higher return means higher profits and/or lower prices.\n\nTraditionally this has worked very well, customers (simplifying) only use the network when downloading a web page, and for most pages this is only a small amount of data and take a small amount of time (just think about how long you look at reddit pages versus how long you're waiting for them to load), you can put a lot of customers into a limited amount of bandwidth this way, unless everyone coincidentally tries to load a page at the same time the system will handle it.\n\nRecently though, steaming video has changed this, Netflix and similar services make up a massive portion of total internet traffic. When streaming data connections are sustained for very long periods of time, and if the video is HD it occupies a lot of bandwith. It's becoming more common for enough people to be using data at the same time to strain ISP resources, improving capacity severely cuts into the ISP's bottom line (remember, most people don't watch Netflix 24/7, during non-peak periods the network becomes very under utilised).\n\nSome ISPs use throttling to keep on top of this but to be neutral they can't discriminate, all traffic is sped up or slowed. ISPs would like to be able to prioritise bandwidth selectively, if they can limit Netflix traffic to a portion of their capacity they have the rest to service other kinds of traffic.\n\nObviously the business side of this could allow the ISP to sell additional capacity on their network to customers or sites that were otherwise limited. This would mean Netflix or its users would need to pay for the peak strain they put on the system, offsetting the ISP's cost of boosting capacity. This is of course the part people think will be abused, if an ISP could limit you to a tiny fraction of their capacity unless you cough up a hefty fee then this creates issues for all sites on the Internet.", "A lot of people are comparing this to TV, my question is what would TV be like if it had its own \"neutrality law\"?", "What is going to happen is that a company like google with tons of money is going to be forced to pay to pay money to ISPs so that internet users can use their sites quickly (a little bit faster than currently).  A website like reddit, in the red, not yet profitable without money to spare won't be able to pay nearly as much as to them.  That means users don't get a high speed connection and everything will load slower.  And new sites just starting out are going to be terrible", "Google will start its own internet. They will lay the wires and take over the world", "So, wealth wise, would Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., decide that this means war and combine forces to buy/create their own ISPs at a much faster pace than Google fiber is being deployed now?", "I am a network engineer for an ISP. I sit in big wig meetings and I can tell you that My company can not wait until Net Neutrality is gotten rid of. \n\nMy company's train of thought is this, they are the ones who paid the money for laying out the wiring, it is their network that people use. But services like, facebook, Skype, oovoo, etc are saturating the bandwidth forcing my company to expand and open higher Bandwidth only so these free video services can make money, While the ISP doesn't make enough from its customers. \n\nThis is a major schism of all ISPs. Skype has more bandwidth usage and airtime then any other phone, video conferencing service, and Skype is just raking in money with out having to do any work that ISP does for that connection. \n\nI'm sure by now it is understood that, when an ISP gives you  50 MB of bandwidth. What they are saying is that it is possible you you to achieve 50 MB download speeds as certain times of the day, when the bandwidth is available. so it not guaranteed 50 MB its Best effort 50MB. \n\nLets say 1000 GIG pipe was layed out for a specific neighborhood and all residence buy internet from that company. Even to some people are paying for 50 MB, they will only  be guarenteed 5 MB, so the ISP can put as many customers on that pipe as possible. Evening and night times, you will experience slow speeds because everybody is online after coming home from work. During Mid day, you will experience even higher speeds than 50MB, since not many of the customers are online. \n\nEDIT: I am only giving an outlook in to the ISPs agenda and reasoning. I am not justifying their actions. \n\n\n", "Won't overturning net neutrality laws in the US speed up the technology exodus started by the Snowden leaks? ", "I pay for the amount of food I eat, amount of gas I use, etc.  Why shouldn't everyone pay for the amount of bits they use?  Right now, lite users subsidize heavy users (people watching hours of Netflix, etc.\n\nPeople should pay for what they use, not ride on the backs of low-bandwidth users.", "What about the people that are not in the US, we shouldn't get punished for the ridiculous shit that America pulls.", "Google better hurry up with that Google Fiber and deliver us away from evil!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L11kLmWha6o"], [], [], [], ["https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/patriot-act-10-years-later"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/weqTlxD.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.bash.org/?142934"], [], ["http://www.asofterworld.com/clean/fist.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ek03nt", "title": "In 1945-1946, the US sent George Marshall to China to negotiate a unity government between the Nationalists and the Communists. Was it a forgone conclusion that the Marshall Mission would fail, or was there some real chance of them reconciling their grievances?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ek03nt/in_19451946_the_us_sent_george_marshall_to_china/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fd6zo69"], "score": [22], "text": ["I am sourcing this answer from The Rise of Modern China, by Immanuel Hsu.\n\nAs some background, Marshall became a special presidential ambassador to China after Patrick Hurley, the previous American envoy to China, resigned his post in protest of the change in American policy in China. The USA had adopted a new policy that continued their support of the Nationalists, but on the condition that they not use American arms to conduct a civil war and that they try to reach some sort of settlement with the Communists, as opposed to the old policy of unconditional support for the Nationalists. There are then sort of two perspectives to the stated question: from the American side, did they believe they could achieve some reconciliation between the Nationalists and the Communists, and from the Chinese side, did they think Marshall could really help them settle their differences?\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFrom the Chinese perspective, there was basically no real chance that Marshall could succeed in his mission. The Nationalists and Communists were deeply distrustful of each other, and they were both confident in their ability to win a full civil war. They both paid lip service to Marshall's stated goals of ceasing the civil war, forming a coalition government, and integrating KMT and CCP forces into a national army, but they basically had no choice but to play along for the sake of politics. Marshall's background and position gave him a lot of prestige, and the fact that he represented the USA with all its power and the fact that he appeared sincere in his efforts to mediate meant that it would've been a tremendous loss of face for either party in China to snub him. Beneath the surface, they both saw Marshall's presence as an example of American meddling, and extremists in both parties saw him as an obstacle to their respective ultimate victories. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThere was some progress towards the stated goals of the Marshall mission while he was there, but the robustness of the agreements he'd managed to negotiate were put to the test once he had to make a trip back to the USA in March of 1946. As soon as he was out of sight, the KMT and CCP scrambled to make maneuvers on the battlefield again, and the war escalated into large scale fighting within a month. Once Marshall returned to China, he was able to establish a 15-day truce on June 6, but the Nationalists and Communists were now both convinced they could win a full war and had no desire to go back to peaceful negotiations under those circumstances. Once the truce was over, they began fighting again, and the Nationalists won almost every battle over the next few months. The Communists accused the USA of using mediation as a smokescreen for their actual support of the Nationalists, and the Nationalists amidst their wave of victories ignored Marshall's pleas to stop fighting. With the Communists now doubting Marshall's integrity and the Nationalists ignoring his advice, Marshall realized he had failed in his mission, and he was recalled in January 1947.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFrom the American side, Marshall was sincere in his efforts, and while he was present in China his active mediation did allow him to make a lot of progress towards setting the terms of a coalition government and integrating CCP and KMT forces into one army. His early successes caused Truman to establish a United States Military Mission in China, staffed with 1000 officers and men. The commitment of a man with the prestige of Marshall and the commitment of these resources do suggest that the Americans believed it was possible for them to succeed in their efforts. The Americans probably believed they could serve as mediators, but in the end choosing to take this role ended up winning them the goodwill of neither party in China. And given the on-the-ground conditions, with both parties in China believing they could win a full victory in war, there was never really a realistic compromise that could've left them both satisfied in the long-term."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3h6xw3", "title": "why do movies and tv shows always have a fake google when they use the internet?", "selftext": "doesn't google like that publicity? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h6xw3/eli5_why_do_movies_and_tv_shows_always_have_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu4rrk3", "cu4rsy4", "cu4smco", "cu50s3n", "cu51hfm", "cu57u7u", "cu5a1up"], "score": [61, 30, 12, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["It's not about Google suing them, it's about Google not paying them. Movies get paid for product placement, so they aren't going to advertise a company who didn't pay.", "The movie don't want to give free advertisement to anyone. And as googles haven't paid to be a part of the movie, they rather make some fake search engine.\n\nAnd paid product placement is often terrible in movies and tv shows. [There are some hilarious examples of microsoft trying to promote bing, and make \"bing it\" a term mean search like \"google\"](_URL_0_)", "This is increasingly not the case. Many film makers accept the risk of the appearance of product placement in order to be realistic. In other words, once something is so typical/common that it's likely not product placement to include them, it can be more distracting to have the fake \"generic\" product. Most web search scenes nowadays will be Google, and most cell phone will be iPhones. \n\nAlso, there is usually a clear difference in how the product is shown when it's a paid product placement. Perfectly new and detailed cars with perfect lighting and panned shots are a dead giveaway (think Ford and BMW in White Collar for example). If it doesn't \"feel\" like product placement, it either isn't or they're doing a damn good job of hiding it. \nEdit: speeling ", "To put any real brand in a movie, you need contract negotiations. Everytime you see one, that company contributed to the budget of the movie. It's advertising pure and simple. Some movies have so much it makes your head spin, and I am convinced that the film \"The Terminal\" was *nothing but* a money making product placement commercial. Nearly every shot has a real life brand name in it. \n\nIf a production doesn't pursue a company for a contract or the contract sucks, the movie ends up with fake companies that appear similar enough so the audience gets it. ", "Could it have something to do with controlling the results?", "I remember the show Arrow being very obviously paid by Microsoft.  Everytime the \"hacker\" girl touches a computer or tablet, you see the Windows 8 splash screen for like 15 seconds.", "[Bing](_URL_1_) actually is a real search engine that you can even use on your own computer.\n\nFrom [Wikipedia](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Bing (known previously as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is a web search engine (advertised as a \"decision engine\"[3]) from Microsoft.\n >  \n >  Bing was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, California, for release on June 1, 2009.[4] Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions while queries are entered and a list of related searches (called \"Explore pane\") based on[5] semantic technology from Powerset, which Microsoft purchased in 2008.[6]"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4"], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing", "http://www.bing.com"]]}
{"q_id": "9os155", "title": "Did the year 666AD cause any Christians to fear that that year would signal Armageddon?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9os155/did_the_year_666ad_cause_any_christians_to_fear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7y7wkf"], "score": [11], "text": ["While it is hard to disprove the claim that *no one* made the connection between AD 666, the Mark of the Beast, and the end of days, we can safely say that their fears were not widely shared and that they would have been well outside the mainstream of those who concerned themselves with the calculation of such things. \n\nOne important reason for this is timing. Dionysius Exiguus devised the calendar around AD 525 to work out new tables that would calculate the date of Easter, but the calendar itself would not see more widespread use until the 8th century. The Dionysiac Easter table represented one side in a multi-faceted and **intense** debate over how to date Easter. The table was only officially adopted in England for Easter calculations at the Synod of Whitby in AD 664, to the consternation of those that preferred other methods. However, more widespread usage in England would not pick up until the eighth century, spreading to the rest of Western Europe over the next few centuries. The salient point is that in the first few centuries after its creation, the table was used primarily for Easter calculations, not as a widespread calendar for ordinary use, even among the ecclesiastical community. \n\nThe second reason is that in the years leading up to AD 666, early medieval writers preferred other dating systems when formulating countdowns. These 'countdowns', or *summae annorum*, drew largely on conventions popularized by Isidore of Seville in his influential universal history, the *Chronica maiora*. While Isidore employed the *anno mundi*(AM) system used by authors within the genre, historian James Palmer argues that he was the first to use the six-age conception of human time as an organizational framework within a universal history in combination with the AM system. Like the AM system, the idea that human history was divided into six ages was nothing new, but since Augustine the belief that these ages were comprised of a predictable or fixed number of years had gone out of style. Some of these earlier theories had revolved around the idea that each age would be 1000 years in length, with AM 6000 marking the start of Christ\u2019s millennium-long reign on Earth. According to Isidore, the Incarnation had inaugurated the sixth and final age in AM 5197. His readers in the seventh and eighth centuries picked up on this, and in Ireland and France we see a flurry of countdowns to AM 6000. \n\nI\u2019m going to skate over a lot of the disagreement, but it\u2019s important to point out that the popularity of Isidore does not mean there was consensus on the exact age of the earth. Julian of Toledo famously proclaimed that AM 6000 had passed in AD 675 without event. Julian was reacting to a group of Jews who claimed that the earth was much younger than previously supposed, arguing that Christ was born to soon to have been the messiah if the six 1000-year ages were assumed. Julian rejects the 1000-year ages, adhering to the Augustinian tradition that ages were not fixed and that the End could not be known. \n\nDespite disagreement about the exact age of the earth, Julian\u2019s position reflects one crucial trend that seems to be fairly constant throughout the seventh century: there doesn\u2019t seem to be a strong connection between AM 6000 and the apocalypse\u2014 Palmer argues that it wasn\u2019t until the eighth century that there is evidence of attempts to resurrect the connection. Even then, the AM calendar never experienced widespread use in the West. More popular was the use of regnal years. Think, \u201cin the *n*th year of King [Name].\u201d \n\nAll that to say, in the run up to AD 666 it was unlikely that many folks had the AD calendar in the back of their minds ticking away. On a practical level, people kept track of the current year using different frameworks. Additionally, while there was general agreement that Christ\u2019s birth had inaugurated the last age and that the End was imminent, there does not seem to have been any general consensus about when that would be. Most writers still adhered to the Augustinian tradition that the End could not be known. However, when writers did sit down to calculate the current date relative to the steady march of human history, they used a method more conducive to the task. \n\nSources:\n\n* C. Philipp E. Nothaft (2018). *Scandalous Error: Calendar Reform and Calendrical Astronomy in Medieval Europe*.\n\n* James T. Palmer (2014). *The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages*.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "227n14", "title": "why do dogs live a shorter life than humans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/227n14/eli5_why_do_dogs_live_a_shorter_life_than_humans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgk4qib", "cgk4w2s", "cgk7tzi", "cgkbprf", "cgkbvh4", "cgkbweq", "cgkkuuj"], "score": [2, 53, 14, 2, 6, 8, 2], "text": ["They evolved to reach maturity faster than us.  There's no good answer for \"why\" that's the case.", "Let's say that a species is being successful if it can continually create viable offspring and replace it's individual organisms at least as fast as they are dying. \n\nThere's multiple paths to this in terms of reproductive strategies. One strategy, is to maximize the number of offspring, even if that reduces the chances of any particular individual surviving. An alternate strategy is a lower number of offspring, but taking more care to ensure their survival. Dogs are somewhere in the middle, while humans are basically at the far end of the \"fewer offspring\" side.  \n\nAnd following those different paths through evolution has resulted in significant biological differences. The human brain is significantly more capable than a dog's, but it also needs much more time to fully develop to the point where you get a human being capable of self preservation and successful reproduction. \n\nA wolf (which dogs were bred from) is physically and mentally fit enough to reproduce and care for its offspring within a couple of years of its birth, can create a few litters of puppies, and then get old and die within a decade. Over that same 10 years, a human baby will still not even be developed enough to live on its own, much less create and care for a baby. \n\nIf you assume about 15 years for a human to develop enough to be in a position to successfully create and care for a child, and then another 15 years for them to care for their child to the point where that child can be independent, then that's 30 years. And that's just for one kid. \n\nBefore modern medicine came around, children died much more often, so the average mother might give birth to 5+ kids, so you're looking at being 35+ when your last child doesn't need you any longer. And 35 was a pretty typical life expectancy for much of the history of humanity. ", "*The real reason for humans living longer than other animals hasn't been found yet.* \n\nThere are a lot of theories concerning e.g. [energy conservation](_URL_0_) or the need for humans to live longer to keep our species alive, but none of these have a distinct reason (the question of why thats happening) to them.", "I was under the impression that this has to do with metabolic rate. basically higher metabolic rate - >  shorter life span. dont quote me on this though, because i have no literature to back it up. ", "Humans take a long time to mature, thanks to our complex brains. Thus, we don't reach sexual maturity for well over 10 years. Dogs reach sexual maturity at a much younger age. According to the [Grandmother Hypothesis](_URL_0_) it's evolutionarily advantageous for humans to live long enough to aid in the raising of their grandchildren. So we have a fairly long generational time, and also a distinct tendency to live to see at least two generations grow up. There are other reasons, like metabolic rate, but this one was not one I saw mentioned in the discussion, so I thought I should bring it up.", "I agree with the six year old who said, \"People are born so that they can learn how to live a good Life - - like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right? Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long.\"\n\nFor the full story: _URL_0_", "things that grow faster generally die faster"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20608928"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis"], ["http://www.vetwest.com.au/pet-library/a-dogs-purpose-from-a-6-year-old"], []]}
{"q_id": "2zcsui", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: Misconceptions and Myths on the Ancient World", "selftext": "[Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.](_URL_0_)\n\nToday\u2019s trivia theme was suggested by a question from /u/randomhistorian1 who asked \"What are some of the most common myths about the Roman Empire, and what is wrong about them?\"\n\nWe'll expand that to include the whole of Antiquity, from the earliest Egyptian kingdoms through to the Fall of Rome. So let's hear your tales of popular misconceptions that make you want to go \"Hulk Smash!\"\n\nNext Week on Tuesday Trivia: Lost in Translation!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2zcsui/tuesday_trivia_misconceptions_and_myths_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cphybbh", "cphz920", "cpi0c9d", "cpi0ggl", "cpi1mvc", "cpi3g4b", "cpi3xkm", "cpi6tcb", "cpia2sm", "cpiar3t", "cpiibtr"], "score": [22, 47, 65, 8, 29, 11, 16, 10, 8, 12, 12], "text": ["I'll kick things off with a question. Clothing: what did the different classes of Romans wear on a daily basis? Most popular entertainment sees them in togas (or a centurion outfit). What did the everyday Roman actually wear when out and about?", "I could be wrong, but it seems to me, in my experience, that many people today, particularly younger people, seem to hold a notion that ancient humans were somehow intellectually inferior to modern humans. To support this claim, they often point to the fact that modern civilization (at least in the industrialized world) is significantly more technologically advanced than ancient civilizations were. It also seems to me that such a notion is an important aspect of the various \"ancient astronaut\" theories that hold that extraterrestrials were the architects of the majority of ancient civilizations.", "I have to work hard to dispel my students of the notion that ancient Indian groups in America were passive simpletons who were inevitable victims of white greed. ", "How much of worshipping or spiritual service did the Romans do around Cesars reign?", "I guess the most famous one is the vomitorium. People say it was a room where they vomited. It basically meant exit.", "One of my favourites concerns the 'Vomitarium', which in the 'Horrible History' series by Terry Deary is described as a room where people could be sick during a feast so that they could then eat more food. \n\nI believed this to be true until last year, when I found it it couldn't be further from the truth. A vomitarium was the exit from an amphitheatre, so called because of the volume of people that would spill forth from it after an event. ", "My question is whether or not the Romans had a word for volcano. I have seen books and exhibits about Pompeii claim that there was no word for volcano, yet clearly Romans and Greeks referenced the root of Vulcan and observed ceremonies in his name. Additionally the roman empire was large enough that they certainly knew of the volcanoes in Cicely and perhaps elsewhere.", "Would the average person in the Roman Empire have it better or worse compared to someone in the Middle Ages? Call it years of Whig-influenced scholarship, but I can't quite pull myself away from the belief that Europe fell into a gigantic hole after the fall of Rome and didn't drag itself out until the Renaissance.", "I have often taken issue with the myths that tour guides spread about phallic decorations and graffiti in Pompeii. A penis in a street does not automatically mean directions to a brothel. The Lupanar in Pompeii was not decorated with an illustrated 'menu' of services offered, or it would have been a remarkably tame brothel. ", "\"Before people found out the world was round\u2026\" typically is mentally translated to 600 years ago rather 2500+ years ago. (I am uncertain of Babylonian/Near East knowledge of the matter, myself, though.)", "Roman saddles didn't have stirrups. In fact, the Romans barely had something that could be considered a saddle. The Roman saddles were most likely thick leather pads with four prongs (two in the front and two in the back) for support. They had no frames, trees, or weight distribution systems and therefore barely deserve the name \"saddle.\" Really, I'm more inclined to call them shabracks or bareback pads. \n\nThe Greeks did not have saddles. The had nothing like a saddle. If you were so inclined, you might use a blanket thrown over the horse's back. \n\nDespite not having saddles or stirrups, it's still entirely possible to use a weapon and ride effectively. And no, it didn't hurt their genitals. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4uynz2", "title": "lyme disease is often misdiagnosed, and seemingly a life altering illness. why is it that doctors in the us are so uneducated about it, or taught to dismiss it?", "selftext": "I know quite a few people who suffer from chronic Lyme disease, sadly. The most common issues they all consistently have is; lack of medical professional knowledge about the disease. Is Lyme disease the cause for many other diseases most people aren't aware of? For example: Depression, MS, fibromyalgia, ect. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uynz2/eli5_lyme_disease_is_often_misdiagnosed_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5u0qgf", "d5u0ytm", "d5u13y2", "d5u2y7g", "d5uknce"], "score": [7, 11, 4, 9, 2], "text": ["There is not much scientific evidence that chronic Lyme disease exists. It's considered a health myth just like \"vaccines cause autism.\"\n\n_URL_0_", "Chronic Lyme disease is kind of the flavor of the month for a certain type of personality disorder.\n\nThere's no evidence it exists, and since it doesn't exist it's impossible to prove someone doesn't have it.  And since it's impossible to prove someone doesn;t have it people who wish to believe they have it can never be dissuaded.", "I've heard Lyme disease used as a catch all for various indistinct ailments. I would tell your friends to be skeptical of their diagnoses. Make sure they are not being pandered too by naturopaths or something.", "Like morgellons and gang-stalking, chronic Lyme disease is a crowd-sourced delusional belief.\n\nThe internet allows the development of shared delusional schemas which are reinforced and developed by their online community.\n\nMyron May's [pre-shooting video](_URL_0_) is a great showcase of this stuff. ", "According to an article in Backpacker magazine a few years ago Lyme disease often goes misdiagnosed in places where it is uncommon. Apparently it's pretty rare on the US west coast and more common in the east. I assume it's because the west is dryer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease_controversy"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1vIkUZjRl4"], []]}
{"q_id": "4md01v", "title": "Can somebody debunk this for me?", "selftext": "Somebody posted this video on facebook...\nIt appears that he's using an \"electromagnetic radiation detector\"\nthat name sounds vague to me... as visible light is electromagnetic radiation too...\nAnd he's... waving around qurtz crystals and some amulet or something...\n\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4md01v/can_somebody_debunk_this_for_me/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3ui7vq", "d3valgj"], "score": [22, 2], "text": ["Everything emits small amounts of electromagnetic radiation, including you. There is nothing dangerous about \"electromagnetic radiation\" -- as you correctly point out, visible light is electromagnetic radiation, as is the feeling of warmth from a fireplace (infrared electromagnetic radiation). Your electrical outlets also emit a small amount of electromagnetic radiation, similar to the radio waves that are everywhere that your radio picks up. The \"electromagnetic radiation detector\" is basically just a fancy radio. And just as when you go through a tunnel or parking garage and it affects your radio signal, so does putting things near an outlet affect the electromagnetic radiation emitted by it. There is nothing special about crystals -- putting anything near it will affect it. ", "His \"Electromagnetic radiation detector\" might be just a coil or antenna with a peak detector on it. If you notice, the value gets stronger when he puts his hand near the meter. His body is acting like an antenna coupling all sorts of radio waves and the power-line AC signal into the meter. So the value goes up.\n\nPlacing the quartz has little effect...and placing the amulet (which must be iron) also detunes the coil and reduces the value of the detected signal. \n\nNothing magical, it's probably just those objects/his procedure is screwing up the cheap electronic meter he is using. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.facebook.com/100006776805286/videos/1643039052598639/"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1oao3o", "title": "Skin on my tomato soup?", "selftext": "Google was surprisingly un-helpful.  Maybe my search terms were off, but I kept getting recipes and the like.\n\nMy question is: Why does tomato soup get a \"skin\" as it cools off? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1oao3o/skin_on_my_tomato_soup/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccqazza", "ccqnjgn"], "score": [2, 3], "text": ["According to [*this*](_URL_0_), oils and the proteins from the meats, veg or dairy products used during the cooking process thicken the top of the soup.\n\nJust cover it as soon as you can, or:\n[How to stop skin forming on soup](_URL_1_)", "Think about the soup-air interface.  For hot soup in relatively drier air, moisture will evaporate at the interface, leaving a region on the surface that is enriched in all the non-volatile compounds.  Any of those compounds that are not very soluble in water may experience local supersaturation and precipitate out of solution.  Likely candidates would include waxes, lipids, terpenes, proteins, and starches.  These compounds are likely to stick to more of their own kind.  The long polymers of protein and starch will become entangled with one another and will be less likely to circulate back into the body of the soup.  Because they're stuck near the surface, they are exposed to ever more of their kind being left behind by departing water.  Once you stop the evaporation, by covering the soup, this precipitation also stops and the skin-forming compounds remain in solution and will continue circulating throughout the soup as it convects."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090410054905AA72fda", "http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Skin-Forming-on-Soup"], []]}
{"q_id": "25925v", "title": "If we get radio reception almost everywhere, does that mean that we are constantly being hit by radio waves almost all our lives?", "selftext": "If so, does this have and negative health impacts?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/25925v/if_we_get_radio_reception_almost_everywhere_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cheyhpq"], "score": [11], "text": ["Yes. We do get exposed to radio waves all our lives, but the wavelengths are too large to do any long lasting damage like X-Ray or Gamma rays, which are at sizes and energy levels that can interact with the smallest unit of our inner workings ( e.g. DNA nucleotides). \n\nAlso, keep in mind [humans emit their own share of electromagnetic radiation](_URL_0_), albeit at higher energy levels than radio waves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.papelonline.pt/revista/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/FAMILIA-NO-INFRAVERMELHO-Resize-of-FAMILIA-MENOR.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "6cq3fi", "title": "What is the earliest period of history that I, a modern man, could challenge a chess player to a match, and play with the same basic understanding of the pieces and rules?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cq3fi/what_is_the_earliest_period_of_history_that_i_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhwrjru"], "score": [36], "text": ["The short answer is around the year 1620 in France and 1880 throughout Europe (Italy held out on modern castling).\n\nIn terms of how the pieces move and capturing *en passant*, the rules were codified by Ruy Lopez de Segura in the late 15th century.  However, winning conditions differed at that time.  Then, you could win by capturing all pieces save the king, making it possible to win with king+bishop, which is a draw in modern chess.  Rules on castling were largely regional, and localities differed as to how the king moved.  Some allowed one king move per game in an \"L\" shape, like a knight.  This was inspired by chataraunga, the Indian precursor to chess.  Some allowed castling in two moves.  Some regions allowed a player to choose from several squares when castling.  France, then England, adopted our modern version of castling in the 17th century.  Italy held out, but eventually adopted the last of the rules we adhere to in modern chess.\n\nFor more, I highly recommend Murray's *A History of Chess*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "44omlb", "title": "if recreational marijuana becomes legal how would drug tests work?", "selftext": "Say you're a heavy equipment operator and you smoke everyday after work. One day you have an accident at work and they drug test you. Since marijuana stays in your system for 30 days, how would they determine if you were high when the accident happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44omlb/eli5_if_recreational_marijuana_becomes_legal_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czro2xo", "czrolq9", "czroo4l", "czrp2m3", "czrr643", "czrsmo5", "czrsueh"], "score": [21, 11, 8, 4, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["this is one of the interesting issues with legalizing marijuana; there is really no way of telling. To be fair, even if it becomes legal, thats no guarantee that companies will be okay with it. Its very likely that heavy machine operators wouldn't be able to smoke for this very reason. ", "Due to the testing issues, many types of employees (pilots, taxi drivers, etc) won't be allowed to smoke it in their free time.  Just because it's legal doesn't mean that the government and private firms can't have policies prohibiting their employees from smoking marijuana. ", "Employers can still require you to not use marijuana. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not. ", "Well in Canada with marijuana illegal and alcohol legal. There's a perfect court case for this already. _URL_0_\n\nBasically a rather quite dangerous paper/lumbermill which random drug tested for alcohol and more. This eventually went all the way to our supreme court and they came down against random testing. Right to privacy and human rights stand in the way.\n\nMind you this is all in the context of a very dangerous workplace. The equipment, processes, and environment made it a very dangerous place to work. In my opinion they should have the ability to drug test their employees. If the employees dont like it, they can go find another job. After this ruling this paper mill spent $500 million to improve everything. \n\nObviously this is a good ruling otherwise. 99% of jobs should not be able to drug test anyone. If Canada does legalize marijuana, the liberals will have to put provisions into the law immediately to make drug testing possible if they plan to do so. ", "There are plenty of things that are legal, yet against company policies. Take the second amendment for example. Most companies have no weapons policies that directly conflict with the persons right to legally own/carry firearms.", "Im sure companies will still act as if its illegal, however whats interesting is the question can be flipped a bit and be stated as \"Since alcohol stays in your system for a while, how would they determine if you were drunk when the accident happened?\" \n\nIOW, much like alcohol, it would likely not be all that hard to figure out you were stoned on pot. You would probably smell like pot, have slower than normal response times, and have an uncontrollable urge for doritos. (Ok last one is for funnies.. but you get the idea)   ", "Exactly. Just because its legal, doesnt mean that you cant be fired for being high. People think legalizing it will solve this issue and its this same misconception that will never get it totally legalized."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13106/index.do"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2e3zk4", "title": "from a legal standpoint, how much does diplomatic immunity actually allow a person to get away with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e3zk4/eli5_from_a_legal_standpoint_how_much_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjvtvbm", "cjvu001", "cjvu36s", "cjvu8oq", "cjvvsny", "cjvw6qt", "cjvxk4r", "cjvzuca", "cjw29wg"], "score": [14, 2, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2, 5, 6], "text": ["Absolutely anything, theoretically. In practice, it completely depends on the relationship between the two governments. Libya has gotten away with shooting a British cop dead in London on the grounds the person doing the shooting was inside the embassy at the time, and the British cops had no right to search the place or interview anyone. On the other hand a Russian diplomat here in Canada killed someone while driving drunk some years ago. We couldn't prosecute him, but the Russian government recalled the guy and charged him under Russian law. I'd be willing to bet it would have been much more pleasant for him to have waived immunity, but so it goes. ", "Not sure but I do know an American man with diplomatic immunity was driving 5x over drink drive limit (UK) crashed head on into my friends 8 month pregnant girlfriend, killing the baby, nearly killing her, walked into court stated he had diplomatic immunity and walked free.\n\nKarma is a bitch though as he liked to drink in a pub my brother ran, he went from court to the pub and got escorted around the back of the pub by 3 large regulars and shortly after returned by choice to the states with a few bruises and fractures to obtained from a \"fall\" (circa 1999)", "Nations can sever diplomatic ties, and can kick diplomats out (but may not get a new, different diplomat in return) but can't otherwise punish a diplomat without permission from the diplomat's home nation (which does happen on occasion).  ", "I had a professor who explained it like this:\n\nMost people who are granted diplomatic immunity, they're not the types to go out and murder someone. Sure it happens, but it's rare.\n\nWhen it does happen, they're not going to \"walk free\". In almost all cases the person will be returned to their home country immediately and charged or lose their position. It may not be the punishment they deserve or that you desire for them, but they don't prance off scot-free.\n\nEnd of professor's method.\n\nI don't know if he's 100% accurate, just had his word to go on. I believe he mentioned certain cases where the immunity is void but this was so long ago I don't recall.", "Pretty much anything.\n\nIt's important to note that the diplomat's government can waive immunity. So, if the Ambassador from Fredonia commits murder in front of a dozen witnesses and a video camera, the State Department can ask Fredonia to waive immunity. If Fredonia says no, all the US can do is expel him from the country. If Fredonia waives immunity, then he can be charged just like anyone else.", "Ju ju ju just like the bad guy from lethal weapon 2, ive got diplomatic immunity, so hammer you cant sue.", "From a domestic standpoint, nobody with diplomatic immunity can be charged unless they or their home government allow it. So if the Zebrofkan ambassador to Narnia commits a crime, no matter how big or small, Narnia cannot compel the ambassador to pay any fine or appear before court, or even really be arrested.\n\nThis began as a custom but it's currently enshrined in international law. The whole point of it is that it puts ambassadors safely out of the influence of the host government ... or it's supposed to, at least. That's why cars with diplomatic plates are such bad parkers in New York, for example--they can be ticketed, but they'll never be forced to pay. \n\nAs others have mentioned, though, in the interests of keeping the relationship healthy the ambassador's home country will sometimes cooperate with the host nation. The Narnian ambassador to Zebrofka might be recalled to face murder charges in his native Narnia, for example. Alternately, Narnia can waive the diplomatic immunity if it chooses, although this is rare. After all, it is Narnia's ambassador which possesses immunity (i.e. the position), not the individual who happens to inhabit the position.\n\nEssentially the only thing a host nation can do to punish an ambassador is deport them. This may be considered political, or an affront to the ambassador's nation, but if the other country is reasonable they will simply send a new ambassador in time.\n\nIt can be abused, and has been in the past. But the basis for diplomatic immunity is sound, and most nations consider the low risk well worth the advantages of hosting ambassadors from other nations.", "According to *Lethal Weapon*, anything except getting by Riggs. ", "Diplomatic immunity actually comes in a couple of forms.  High level diplomats have more or less blanket immunity, they can shoot someone in broad daylight in the middle of the street and not be prosecuted for it.  Though they can be asked to leave or have their immunity waived by their country.\n\nBut lower level officials and members of NGO's will have immunity related to their official duties, but not blanket immunity.  So if your job is to guard an ambassador you might allowed to shoot someone in broad daylight - if they are threatening an ambassador.  But you can't just randomly start shooting people.  \n\nEmbassy grounds are another matter, as they are considered the sovereign territory of the country based there, and the host countries laws don't apply.  Edit - not quite right.  Embassy grounds are legally protected territory but not always part of the sovereign territory of the visiting country (that has to be by special arrangement).  \n\nThe vienna convention does not actually cover civil liability, including car accidents and so on, at least not on personal business.  But most countries would be unlikely to try their luck on such matters, as the line between 'personal' and 'business' for high level officials is rather grey.  By definition they're always on business if they are a consular official living in a foreign country as part of their job basically.  Still, the official line is, that, for example, you are still subject to traffic tickets if you are in the US for example.  Though there's basically no mechanism to force you to pay.  This is why there is constant tension in new york with traffic tickets, the US requires that you pay but if you don't they can't do anything about it.  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5knf89", "title": "Was FDR's relationship with Theodore Roosevelt an issue in his elections? Were there any concerns of an \"elitist\" family winning the presidency twice?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5knf89/was_fdrs_relationship_with_theodore_roosevelt_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbpnyx7"], "score": [17], "text": ["Follow up, what ever happened to the Roosevelt's? They go from a prominent political family to what?  \n\nEdit: family not party"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "br8ibe", "title": "Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov was shot through the temples on two seperate occasions and survived. How is this possible given the caliber of firearms of the time and the near sureity of a gunshot wound to the head being fatal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/br8ibe/field_marshall_mikhail_kutuzov_was_shot_through/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eofobd5"], "score": [18], "text": ["If anything, this is one of the cases illustrating tremendous resilience of the human body can muster.\n\nGeneral Feldmarshall Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishev-Kutuzov has been wounded thrice in his career and, what is more curious, each time he was hit in the head. He received his first, and most serious wound on 8th August 1774 (all dates according to Gregorian calendar) during the fight in the vicinity of the village Shumy (now Kutuzovka), close to the town of Alushta, when a rifle bullet pierced his skull. Then, on 18th August 1788, during the siege of Ochakov, he was struck again by a bullet in the cheek. Last, and the least dangerous incident occurred on 2nd December 1805 during the battle of Austerlitz, when Kutuzov was again hit in the cheek by a small piece of shrapnel. This was most likely a minor injury, however, and Kutuzov refused to leave battlefield to be treated stating that this is an insignificant wound.\n\nThe first and most dangerous wound was a bullet through-and-through wound that entered somewhere in the upper part of the left temple and exited through the right temple, close to the right supraorbital ridge. Given that the wound did not caused vision problems in the left eye and only resulted in ptosis (drooping of the lid) and reported strabismus of the right eye it is very possible that the bullet traversed the skull above the eyes, most likely damaging right orbicularis oculi (circular eye muscle), superior oblique muscle and trochlear nerve. On the other hand this also mean that the bullet had to traverse the cranial cavity, damaging the brain. We cannot however exclude the possibility that the bullet ricocheted from the inside of the frontal part of the skull, changing its trajectory. Furthermore, Kutuzov was hit when he entered the trench located below the enemy positions and thus was hit from the above, making it possible that even though the exit wound was located relatively low, the bullet could have passed close to the skull surface, damaging the meninges and grazing the brain. Nevertheless, it is almost certain that such injury must have caused at least some damage to the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex. And there are reasons to think that this was exactly the case.\n\nAfter the recovery that was described as nothing short of a miracle, Kutuzov seemed to be experiencing frequent headaches, dizzyness and balance problems making him unable to dance, what can indicate chronic meningitis and cerebrospinal fluid leak, aggravated by a seepage during a long recovery time. It should be noted however that even brain damage could be alleviated over time by regeneration or re-routing due to relatively young age of the patient (Kutuzov was only 29 at the time and was known to be very healthy).\n\nAccording to both Alexander I, Kutuzov was known for his sexual apetite and the tzar himself was calling him 'a one-eyed satyr' while General Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron was apparently horrified of the Marshall's behavior, noting \"He would consecrate his evenings to love, or at least his idea of love. These women, such as they were, held over him a most absolute and scandalous influence; \\[...\\] He cannot exist without having three to four women around him \\[...\\]\".\n\nWhile characterizing Kutuzov, Langeron notes that the former appeared to be conflicted, showing vastly different traits of character, to wit:\n\n > No-one had more spirit but less character than Kutuzov \\[...\\] A prodigious memory, great education, amiable disposition, pleasing and interesting conversation, good nature \\[...\\], such were Kutuzov\u2019s charms. At the same time, violence, a boorish impropriety more suited to a peasant, especially in contacts with people of inferior status, rough simplicity \\[...\\] an overwhelming laziness and apathy, repulsive selfishness, a contemptible and disgusting libertinism, little discretion in financial matters. These were the flaws of this same man \\[...\\]  \n >   \n > He was capable of distinguishing good and bad advice. Knew his way in a discussion. Understood what the best course of action is, but all of this was paralyzed by indecision, an apathy in mind and body \\[...\\] During battles he would not move, not unlike a living statue, except to cross himself when he heard the whistle of a nearby bullet. He never ventured or even wasn't unable to change anything including dislocation of the troops. He never personally supervised reconnaissance, never investigated positions of enemy or his own troops \\[...\\] Large and fat, he could not sit in the saddle for long and was fatigued quickly \\[...\\] This same indolence poisoned his administrative duties: he had had to force himself to pick up the pen. His subordinates, deputies, and secretaries manipulated him freely and whilst he was undoubtedly more intelligent and better educated than them, he was unable to review and their work, not to mention supervise or direct it.\n\nThese passages are of particular interest, because they point out several traits that form a curious yet consistent clinical image. Emotional outbursts and asocial behaviour related to the diminished consideration of consequences (are axial symptoms of pre-frontal cortex damage, while hypersexuality, overeating, diminished response to fear and apathy are typical for the Kl\u00fcver\u2013Bucy syndrome resulting from lesions of temporal lobe. The prevalence of the former is consistent with the damage, as the bullet traversed the pre-frontal gyrus while only slightly and unilaterally damaging the left temporal lobe.\n\nIt should also be noted that Jean Joseph Massot, a physician in the employ of Russian monarch and assigned to the troops taking part in the Crimean theatre of war in mid-1780s (he tended to Kutuzov after he was shot during the siege of Ochakov), although very young, had an extensive knowledge concerning head wounds. He noted that this type of wounds is not uncommon among soldiers and although very dangerous and most often fatal, people are still known to recover even after suffering direct trauma to the cranium and resulting intracranial hemorrhage. He also made an observation that soldiers are not too unlikely to survive the shot itself and the removal of the bullet with apparently good prognosis, but they may still succumb to illness up to several days after the operation. Massot correctly assumed this is most likely caused by the combination of internal hemorrhage, exsanguination and increased pressure on cerebral structures that was impossible to alleviate with trepanning.\n\nThis indicates that it was not impossible, although still uncommon, to survive direct shot to the head. Furthermore, it is also possible that Kutuzov was shot by a Turkish marksman using not the heavy musket but rather a light hunting rifle, typically of much smaller caliber (I'm not an expert on Ottoman weapons, but contemporary German and Polish counterparts often sported caliber of .32 or .40). Small caliber could account for limited extent of damage and low velocity of the bullets meant much lower hydrostatic shock in soft tissue in comparison to modern firearms) meaning that direct hit to the brain would not result in wide temporary channel and resulting wide and most likely fatal damage.\n\nThe second wound. suffered in 1788 is sometimes said to be almost identical to the first one, as described by prince Charles-Joseph von Ligne in his letter to Emperor Joseph II, although this is quite likely a result of confusion and is contradicted by memoirs of Kutuzov's grandson and notes of Massot who has treated Kutuzov and described the situation in the letter to Catherine II. According to the latter, the bullet entered the left cheek, damaged the mandible and some teeth in the upper jaw and exited through the back of the neck, missing all important blood vessels (interestingly, this damage seems to be quite similar to one suffered by Henry V at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, although Henry was struck with an arrow). This time, although it was still a shot to the head, Kutuzov recovered quickly but soon after he noticed that the physiological symptoms of the previous injury increased, quite possibly due to strain caused by the wound itself and significant exsanguination.\n\nSumming it up, Kutuzov was wounded in the head three times, although only the first wound could have damaged the brain what led to psychosomatic problems Field Marshall continued to suffer until the end of his life and  that were worsening with subsequent wounds and progressing age. Contemporary medical accounts allow us to assume, that that recovery from such injury, although unlikely, was by all means possible.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nA.F. de Langeron, M\u00e9moires de Langeron, G\u00e9n\u00e9ral d\u2019Infanterie dans l\u2019Arm\u00e9e russe, Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris 1902.\n\nA.F. de Langeron, \u0417\u0430\u043f\u0438\u0441\u043a\u0438 \u0433\u0440\u0430\u0444\u0430 \u041b\u0430\u043d\u0436\u0435\u0440\u043e\u043d\u0430. \u0412\u043e\u0439\u043d\u0430 \u0441 \u0422\u0443\u0440\u0446\u0438\u0435\u0439 1806-1812 \u0433\u0433. \\[Notes of the Comte de Langeron. The war with Turkey 1806\u20131812\\] (Russian translation by E. Kamenskiy) in: \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0441\u0442\u0430\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430, 1908. vol. 134, no. 4., pp. 225-240.\n\nF.M. Sinelnikov, \u0416\u0438\u0437\u043d\u044c \u0444\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0434\u043c\u0430\u0440\u0448\u0430\u043b\u0430 \u041a\u0443\u0442\u0443\u0437\u043e\u0432\u0430 \\[Life of Field Marshall Kutuzov\\], \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0421\u0438\u043c\u0444\u043e\u043d\u0438\u044f, 2007\n\nN.A. Troitskiy, \u0424\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0434\u043c\u0430\u0440\u0448\u0430\u043b \u041a\u0443\u0442\u0443\u0437\u043e\u0432. \u041c\u0438\u0444\u044b \u0438 \u0444\u0430\u043a\u0442\u044b \\[Field Marshall Kutuzov. Myths and Facts\\], Centrpoligraf, 2003"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7vp9cr", "title": "what\u2019s inside a computer chip and how does its internals \u2018compute\u2019 things? essentially what makes the components comprehend the 1  &  0 of the computing lingo to produce/ process a given output?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vp9cr/eli5_whats_inside_a_computer_chip_and_how_does/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtu0yd3", "dtu11am", "dtu1693", "dtu1d8b", "dtu29fs"], "score": [6, 15, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["At its most basic they contain transistors, tiny electrical switches operated by electricity. By combining those transistors math and logic can be performed in binary.", "It's all built from the concept of logic gates.\n\nLogic gates are simple statements like:\n\n    if Input1 and Input2 are both true, then return true\n\nOr\n\n    if either Input1 or Input2 is true, but not both, then return true\n\nOr\n\n    If Input1 is false, then return true (or else false)\n\nBy stringing those together in lots of complicated and clever ways, you can make the computer do any kind of mathematical logic you like.", "Short answer: It doesn't.\n\nLong answer: Abstraction. Computers don't imbue the data they have with any sort of meaning, in the same way that your muscles don't know whether you're lifting a jar of peanut butter or a dumbbell. The microchips are essentially a lot of 'logic gates' (which do things like combine 1's and 0's in specific ways to get new 1's and 0's) that allow programmers to access and modify data in memory (like your hard drive). Eventually programmers got tired of dealing directly with loading and writing data all the time, so they started abstracting away details, giving birth to so-called \"higher level\" languages like C and Java. They're called higher level because they sit on top of levels of abstraction. Instead of saying 'create a label, allocated a bit of memory to store the information linked to this label, and then store the information in that memory address', you just 'make a variable'.\n\ntl;dr - People don't like dealing with complicated things, so smart people worked on it until it was simpler for everyone. But still, your computer doesn't 'know' what it's doing. It just works that way because we built it to.", "Just switches, lots of switches. None of them comprehend anything they just switch exactly like their build to switch. And we engineers just set them up i a way that solves math and simple logic problems. You can basically break it all down to AND and OR. \n\n\nProbably the simplest logic question is, is this switch turned on? To solve that problem you just need a single switch and some way to show whether or not it's turned on, usually a small lamp or a screen. Simple. \n\n\nAnd you basically build up fom there. Want to know when two switches are turned on? Just put two switches in a row. Now if you interpret this circuit as calculator you can interpret a turned on switch as 1 and the output led is part of the result  switch 1 + switch 2, if both are turned on (1) the result led glows that means the answer to your calculation is 2. A problem is that if the light doesn't go on you only know  that the result is either 0 or 1. Not that great so you have to build another circuit that makes a lamp turn on when any of the switches is turned on. Not that hard either just take two wires and two swtiches and connect them both to the lamp. Doesn't matter with switch is turned on a light will go on. It will only stay off if both switches are turned off. So now you have two result LEDs. One turns on if both switches are turned on (AND circuit) and one circuit makes a led glow when one or both of the switches are turned on (OR circuit). If the AND circuit glows the result is 2, doesn't matter what the other circuit does. If it doesn't turn on you have to check the second circuit is it on? The result is 1, is it off the result is 0.\n\n\nAnd from here you just keep going and make it more and more complex. It helps that there's already math that works with only 0 and 1 so you just learn that and keep building bigger and bigger circuits. Turns out you can break down almost all problems into a combination of AND, OR and NOT problems. Which is great. But this is on a very low level so usually if you look at a computer you just ignore that part and look at the big circuit that adds 8 bit numbers. You now it adds but you ignore how all the AND, OR and NOT circuits are connected because even for a simple addition you need tons of them. ", "There are many levels at which you could represent a 1 or a 0, the lowest level is very simple:\n1 means there is some electric current present, and a 0 means that there is no electric current present on a circuit.\n\nSome basic components in electronics are resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors. A computer chip is made up of millions of these components arranged in such a way that you can predictably send an electronic signal and have the chip give you a response, for example:\nIf I send the chip 5 volts then it will do nothing, but if I send it anything more than five volts, then it will start returning that voltage intermittently at a regular interval. This can be used to make a light blink or to control the speed at which something happens.\n\nA computer chip is basically made up of millions of tiny  circuits which you can think of as \"programs\" like these that can be used like puzzle pieces to make even bigger and more complex programs that can do things like hold a value in memory until a condition changes or to do math like add numbers.\n\nOnce you are able to get a chip to do these very low level types of computations, then you can begin to store 1's and 0's  and even group them to create more complicated values like representing the alphabet, for example:\nA = 01000001\nB = 01000010\n\nNow, programmers can come in and start writing software that does even more useful things like listen to input from a keyboard or a mouse and do something with that input, or draw graphics on a screen.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6cuxfk", "title": "Render unto Caesar: What was the effective taxation rate of the middle-class in Roman Judea during the time of Jesus?", "selftext": "There is quite a lot of discussion and documentation around what taxation was in ancient Judea and whether it was/wasn't biblical/just/sinful, but there isn't a lot as to what the actual rate of taxation was.  What I'm looking for is to understand what a normal middle-class person would pay in taxes per year and what the effective tax rate would be.  \n\nI'm also somewhat interested in whether there were progressive taxation rates or whether the Roman Empire operated on a flat/consumption tax model.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cuxfk/render_unto_caesar_what_was_the_effective/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhy37nb"], "score": [13], "text": ["Broadly speaking the Roman state in its mature form accounted for two types of taxation, the vectigal and tribute. While *vectigalia* was often used as a synonym for the state's revenues as a whole it in fact describes specifically the revenue collected from rents on public lands and possessions and the profits gained from such property. It also describes importation duties, taxes on wills, and other indirect taxation. As such the vectigal only was collected from individuals participating in such activities. Tribute was the direct form of taxation paid by the individual to the Roman state. As of 167 it was no longer levied on citizens. Provincial tribute varied according to the province. Some provinces paid fixed sums. Gaul, for example, paid a fixed yearly sum of 40 million sesterces. In other provinces (e.g. Asia) provincial tribute was paid as a fraction (usually a tenth) of the grain harvest, which was then sold by the state. Provincial tribute was therefore raised on a provincial basis (usually in grain rather than cash), not necessarily individually. The state leased out contracts for the collection of the vectigal and tribute to publicans, who bid a certain amount to the state in advance and were allowed to keep the surplus. The result is that provincial taxation laws were often in flux, and the \"real\" taxation was usually greatly in excess of the money paid to the state. Publicans also need not necessarily follow any pattern in collecting the tribute. While collection of the vectigal was relatively straightforward (you just collect a certain percentage of various activities) in theory a publican could force a single individual to pay out the entirety of his bid (provided this dude was rich enough). To add to the problem, provincial governors were able to levy extraordinary duties on the provinces in order to maintain their military forces--one famous method of extortion was to levy extra grain taxes in excess of the amount needed to feed the army and then sell the surplus at a premium. \n\nAugustus massively reformed tax administration in the provinces. In the Principate tribute was no longer collected by publicans, who were relegated to collection of the vectigal. Instead, the census was extended to the provinces and local magistrates became responsible for the collection of tribute, which increasingly became an individual affair rather than a duty levied on the entire province. *How* exactly the provincial paid his tribute and what amount he paid depended on the province. I'm not too sure about Judaea, but in Syria, for example, men above the age of 14 and women above the age of 12 were responsible for an individual tribute (in addition to the province's tribute as a whole), although I don't know if we know by how much (almost certainly a fixed sum). Despite these reforms, of course, tribute in the Principate was not necessarily so straightforward. Provincial procurators had just as many powers as the publicans had before them, and an unscrupulous procurator could cause a lot of damage, as the procurator of Britain did on the eve of the Iceni's revolt. The system was more centralized and more efficiently administrated, but the tribute of the provincials was still often in flux"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "77nkwm", "title": "why do you not feel like you're going fast while in an airplane, when in fact you're traveling 600+ mph?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77nkwm/eli5_why_do_you_not_feel_like_youre_going_fast/", "answers": {"a_id": ["don9694", "don9721", "don98g1", "don99ak", "don9dc5", "donaa8x", "donad66", "donclk5"], "score": [30, 3, 2, 3, 5, 5, 10, 2], "text": ["There aren't any forces acting on your body that would make you feel that way, except for when you are accelerating to/from that speed. \n\nEvery part of the airplane -- your seat, the floor, the air in the cabin -- is moving at the same speed as you are, so there is no way for your body to tell. ", "You and the air inside the craft all accelerate with the aircraft. As long as the aircraft maintains a relatively steady speed, there are no forces acting on you that would indicate you are travelling fast. Then looking out the window at altitude, objects on the ground are so distant that you don't have a good reference to know how fast you are travelling. The best time to see how fast you are travelling as at takeoff and landing when you have a better reference as to your speed with objects on the ground.", "In an airplane, you don't have much of a frame of reference.\n\nThe cabin is usually sealed off, so you don't experience the sensation of plane moving through air.   \n\nPlanes try to keep a pretty steady path.   Which means you experience few forces due to acceleration once away from the airport.\n\nPlanes fly pretty high off the ground.    If you look out the window, you might be able to make out a few houses or cars at the ground level, moving pretty slowly across your massive plane of view.     Their movement means nothing to you, thousands of feet above the ground or any other stationary object.   \n", "Because you don't feel velocity. You could be going a million miles an hour and you wouldn't know it. \n\nWhat you feel is acceleration, a change in velocity. On an ordinary plane flight, this occurs at the beginning (during takeoff) and at the end (during landing). You also feel it when the plane changes direction, which also requires a chance in velocity. \n\n", "The human body is not great at sensing speed in general, only acceleration.  We have a bunch of senses that all work together to let us know when we're changing speed or direction, but we have to rely on context clues to get a sense of constant speed.  \n\nThe next time you're in a car (as a passenger) close your eyes while the driver is going a constant speed on a straight road.  You'll notice that it won't feel different from sitting in a parked car.  Your sense of speed in a car is largely dependent on seeing objects in the distance and seeing how you move relative to those objects.  \n\nWhen you're in a plane, you don't get that kind of feedback.  Even with a window seat, objects are so far away that we don't have a good concept of how fast we're traveling.  When you're landing and taking off, you start to gain a sense of speed.  \n\n", "Also parallax; all the items moving relative to you are either so foreign (clouds) or so far away (ground), it's difficult to judge how fast you're moving relative to them.", "The Earth is hurtling through the air at many times that speed.  \n\nWe feel acceleration and deceleration, a change in speed, and you definitely feel the acceleration for the first 20 minutes of the flight or so as you take off and ascend.  That's why you stay in your seat!  Your seat is attached to the plane so it's *pushing* you up to the speed.  They get to that speed gradually so it's not too uncomfortable.  But once you're at cruising speed and altitude, everything in the plane is moving at the same speed as the plane, so it's like your not moving at all.  Speed is relative. ", "Speed doesn't create a force - acceleration creates a force.  That's also the reason why you don't feel the force of the earth rotating on its axis, or revolving around the sun at 30 km/second.\n\nWhat creates a force is a *change* in speed, which is what acceleration is.  Picture yourself in a stopped car.  You're going 0 miles an hour.  Do you feel any forces?  Not really, you're sitting still, things are good.  Now imagine you slam on the gas pedal, going up to 60 mph.  Now you feel a *force* because your speed is changing - your body is pressed backwards against the seat by that force.  \n\nNow you hit 60 and you ease off the gas, maintaining a nice freeway speed.  Do you feel any force while you're on the freeway?  No, you feel just about the same as you did parked - if you opened a window you could feel the air moving, but inside of your car, everything is just the same as if you were going 0.  Except now, slam on the brakes.  You're decelerating and changing speed - a force pushes you forward, straining against the seatbelt.  Once you hit 0, that force is gone.\n\nAn airplane works the same way - you accelerate up to 600 mph slowly, so that the force isn't too overwhelming, but once you hit that speed and stop accelerating, it feels just the same as being still on the ground.  Aside from any bumps or turbulence, which (just like in a car) change your acceleration by a little bit and affect you as forces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "10ki8x", "title": "Is there a way to get a large cut on your skin without breaking any blood vessels?", "selftext": "I don't mean like little microscopic cuts, I wanna know if there is a way you could get a large-ish cut without bleeding at all.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10ki8x/is_there_a_way_to_get_a_large_cut_on_your_skin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6e8rsx", "c6efp60"], "score": [4, 2], "text": ["Yes and no. You can have cuts that don't affect major blood vessels such as veins and arteries but without bleeding at all the cut can not go deeper than the epidermis (outer most layer of the skin). Once a cut reaches the dermis (2 mm at the most) you will start to notice some bleeding from sub vessels In the dermis. ", "Yes it could be very long and never cause blood loss, as the top layer of your skin is dead cells, but if it was deep it would break through the dead cells and cause blood loss. Without blood loss it would just be a whitish line on your skin.\n\nI feel the overwhelming need to ask why you would want to do this? I'm somewhat concerned you are contemplating self-harm.\n\nPerhaps you should look at [/r/suicidewatch](_URL_1_)\n\nOr maybe [/r/depression](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/depression/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/"]]}
{"q_id": "3qyq5p", "title": "[META] What is the Reddit Alien logo for AskHistorians?", "selftext": "I see this was asked [three years ago](_URL_0_), but I suspect this is a different alien. From the descriptions in that old thread I don't think this is the same logo.\n\nIt looks like the alien is wearing a crown and holding a book. Is it some monarch who was a historian?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qyq5p/meta_what_is_the_reddit_alien_logo_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwjfe8r"], "score": [39], "text": ["Hiya, our Snoo is Emperor Justinian - here's a thread \n\n[Who or what is Snoo dressed up as?](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wu4eb/meta_so_whats_the_explanation_for_the_logo_what/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1waa9b/who_or_what_is_snoo_dressed_up_as/"]]}
{"q_id": "zmhky", "title": "Would this design for a lava boat work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zmhky/would_this_design_for_a_lava_boat_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c65wc8y", "c65wzfl", "c65zyim"], "score": [6, 28, 2], "text": ["Whats to stop the tungsten from being damaged by a stray rock or something that is not totally magma? It would be really bad if your boat had a puncture.", "There are quite a few problems with the concept of a lava boat. I'm no engineer, so I won't comment on the design, but even a perfectly crafted \"lava boat\" would be wholly ineffective.\n\nLava is much more viscous than water. A lava boat wouldn't float in it so much as it would sit on top. Further, the lava transferring heat to the tungsten would cool the lava down so that it started to become a solid. Assuming the design itself was functional, the moment you set it in a \"pool\" of lava, the lava would harden and the boat would be stuck.\n\nEDIT: Lava is more viscous than water.\n", "You haven't created a lava boat, you've created a geothermal steam engine. The tungsten will get superheated and then continuously flash huge amounts of water into steam, cooling and solidifying the nearby lava rather rapidly.\n\nIf I were to make a lava boat I would have a thin layer of some refractory metal (such as Tungsten) as the outer hull backed by a thick layer of aerogel (thermal insulation) and then an interior superstructure. The idea being that the outer metal will get up to the temperature of the lava but not melt while the insulating layer protects the interior materials from overheating."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9bq772", "title": "When the ISS leaks air, do we send more up to compensate for the loss?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9bq772/when_the_iss_leaks_air_do_we_send_more_up_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e570gaj"], "score": [11], "text": ["The ISS constantly needs \"air\" anyway: Humans breathe. Sending air directly would be difficult (needs cooling as liquid air or massive tanks as compressed air), so rockets deliver water which is then split into oxygen and hydrogen at the station. The oxygen is used to replace what the humans breathe, the hydrogen is vented to space. A bit of nitrogen can be added if necessary to keep the composition similar to Earth's atmosphere. ~~CO2 exhaled by the astronauts is captured and vented to space.~~ Edit: Not any more, see below."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "iauaq", "title": "Does changing the polarity change the direction of an electric drive motor?", "selftext": "I collect dumpster junk. I have acquired three electric drive motors from various electric scooters (the kind kids stand on to ride - back in the day, they were like a skateboard with a handlebar and you pushed with one foot).\n\nSince none of these vehicles had any need for \"reverse\", however... I am in need of a specific drive \"direction\" for my intended recycling application... I'm wondering if changing the polarity is enough to achieve my desired end.\n\nSo, again, does changnig the polarity of a drive motor change the direction of its drive? Or are electric drive motors more complicated than that?\n\n\n**EDIT**: Per requests for more info...\n\n\nHere are the specs on the motors as best as I can give from \"stickers\" on them:\n\nThe three motors I have are all from \"scooters\". I have two different types of motor (3 motors, total).\n\nTwo of them are: PT-SM805 (from [BladeZ Powerboards](_URL_1_)).\n\nOne of them is: [MY6812B](_URL_0_) (from a smaller model Razor  < something >  -- No other info available.)\n\nAll three of these motors are 24 volt DC and have [only] two wires coming out of them. On the PT-SM805, the wires are blue and white. On the 6812, the wires are red and black.\n\nThe PT-SM805 has the following [more] info on the stickers:\n\nTYPE: DK5248A \n\nOUTPUT: 250W \n\nVOLTS: DC 24V \n\nRPM: 3750 \n\nAMPS: 0.7A \n\nDATE: 2003-10 \n\nTORQUE:  < blank >  \n\nNO: 0044230\n\n\nI'm wondering about the torque on this one if that can be discovered/recovered - these two (PT-SM805) are the bigger/more powerful motors, and I am interested in using them if they can be direction-reversed.\n\nTHANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR INFORMATIVE RESPONSES!!!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iauaq/does_changing_the_polarity_change_the_direction/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c22a8hc"], "score": [2], "text": ["It depends on the motor type. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.razorama.com/razor-e100-chain-drive-motor.html", "http://www.bladezscooters.com/en-us/dept_71.html"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2k7tpn", "title": "if ebola is so difficult to transmit (direct contact with bodily fluids), how do trained medical professionals with modern safety equipment contract the disease?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k7tpn/eli5_if_ebola_is_so_difficult_to_transmit_direct/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clips6n", "cliq7eb", "cliq7lr", "cliq99s", "clirc26", "clirhbi", "clirs1a", "clishva", "clisj3b", "cliste7", "clit281", "clit547", "clit5xj", "clit9v3", "clitbq0", "clitl4r", "clitmms", "clitreh", "clitt6u", "cliu3he", "cliudd1", "cliugnt", "cliurxu", "cliutx6", "cliuu78", "cliuwh3", "cliuxyn", "cliuyqo", "clivok2", "clivsv0", "clivtcs", "clivwmq", "cliw02q", "cliw0zy", "cliwb7f", "cliwd7w", "cliwnpb", "cliwoyw", "cliwsai", "clix4gt", "clixbjy", "clixf92", "clixj6t", "clixrhp", "clixtrh", "clixxyz", "clixzxy", "cliy3g9", "cliy44i", "cliya9v", "cliyeso", "cliyiai", "cliylyg", "cliyn65", "cliyq6a", "cliz52h", "cliz9n4", "cliz9vl", "clizdre", "clizeqv", "clizimy", "clizs1q", "clizx50", "clj03qc", "clj07cf", "clj0pft", "clj0s7v", "clj0vtc", "clj0xvt", "clj0ya1", "clj14d0", "clj16tx", "clj27kw", "clj2bix", "clj2i55", "clj2kex", "clj2r6o", "clj30ss", "clj38wc", "clj3a1q", "clj3fky", "clj3tkl", "clj3tx3", "clj43yq", "clj47rd", "clj4tso", "clj4x4a", "clj52zr", "clj59tz", "clj5cjg", "clj5h9d", "clj5hla", "clj5mii", "clj699l", "clj6h0r", "clj6lhx", "clj7hwt", "clj7kgy", "clj7p3m", "clj7pj5", "clj8c41", "clj8cxr", "clj8nw1", "clj8zyr", "clj990z", "clj9ge7", "clj9m3m", "clj9r0x", "clj9sg9", "clja7i0", "cljabs9", "cljassy", "cljb4i7", "cljbcsk", "cljc57k", "cljcdvv", "cljcmlh", "cljelq1", "cljfmh7"], "score": [2087, 2, 61, 1597, 138, 4, 3, 56, 5, 35, 3, 12, 47, 6, 3, 2, 1230, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 10, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 12, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 40, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 2, 4, 2, 9, 2, 2, 8, 5, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 8, 3, 3, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 5, 6, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 4], "text": ["They're in contact with bodily fluids far more often than you or I would be.  They take precautions, sure, but when you deal with something that frequently unlikely things can happen.\n\nEDIT - I should have also mentioned something about fatigue and how it can cause individual lapses in safety protocols.  This probably contributes pretty heavily, too.", "The more time you spend exposed to bodily fluids, the more likely you're going to make a mistake. It only takes something like 10 individual virii to infect someone.", "They come in contact with the fluids when they are taking off the modern safety equipment.  If done correctly, then you should be able to put on, operate, and take off the equipment without contracting the disease but missteps and misinformation lead to mistakes while taking off the equipment. ", "Ebola is, as you likely already know, transmited from person to person through bodily fluids (blood, mucus, etc.). The viral load in these bodily fluids only becomes high enough to infect another person AFTER he or she begins to show simptoms of illness. The combination of these two traits means that out in everyday society, where we avoid sick people and cover our sneezes, the disease doesn't spread very quickly. \n\nWhen these sick people are admitted into a hospital, the medical professionals that work there are in almost constant contact with this sick person. Though the medical professionals may have safety equipment in the form of barriers to avoid contact with the bodily fluids that transmit infection, the huge frequency of exposure to the sick person means that the risk of an accidental infection (such as accidentally contaminating yourself while disrobing from the protective gear) is significantly higher. This is true of every illness that you would be hospitalized for, not just Ebola.", "The biggest reason is that as the disease progresses the amount of virus get to be huge.  Early in the disease essentially no virus is being shed by a patient.  When a patient has reached the near death stage, the patient can be bleeding from eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and spewing bloody diarrhea containing billions if not trillions of infectious virions.  \n\nELI5:  As a patient gets more ill the challenges of not being infected go up dramatically.", "It essentially boils down to human error. The medical staff so something procedurally wrong and end up infected. The virus isn't infecting them through the gear. The doctors are messing up so that it's like the gear isn't there. ", "Those gowns are impossible to use perfectly, every time. If you're a nurse of an Ebola patient, you're spending hours cleaning up the vomit, diarrhea, and blood, etc, of the patient. You're spending hours surrounded by the virus that is extremely infective, and are more at risk every second, praying that no shit particles or cough droplets make their way through the seams on the plasticky sheet that's supposed to save you.", "The first Dallas nurse who was infected reported remembering accidentally rubbing her nose while taking off the safety equipment...human error is probably enough to explain the small number of infections we've seen in the US.\n\nEdit: Some folks are saying it was a nurse in Spain who recalled touching her nose, rather than a nurse in Dallas. I can't find a source to confirm either.", "While the personal protective equipment (PPE) does its job while you're wearing it, taking it off and disposing of it is a tricky and dangerous task. \n\nTaking the equipment off improperly is believed to be how the nurse in Texas was infected.  Removing gloves or the helmet/face mask, after handling a specimen (urine, poop),  in the wrong order can easily lead to contamination and subsequent infection.  \n\nJust as much training is needed for taking the equipment off as is putting the equipment on, if not more. One little slip up in the order of removal or disposal of the contaminated equipment and it could spell disaster. ", "According to this article: _URL_0_, which is a great read by the way.  It only takes 1 particle of ebola to be lethal.  There are about 1 million particles of ebola that fit in this \"o\".  I have the upmost respect for those selfless health care workers that are risking their lives for their fellow humans.", "1.) Mistakes happen\n\n2.) Mistakes happen when taking off/discarding all of the protective measures you put in place. They work wonders when worn properly, but they need to be taken off very carefully. \n\n3.) Mistakes happen when people wear too much protective clothing. So Ebola is not that contagious, you don't need a full protective suit with trailing oxygen line and all that jazz. But for some reason people keep wearing them and these suits are great for protecting you, but increase the chances that you'll make a mistake because of the decreased field of vision, sensory awareness, decreased tactile feel for objects, etc. Basically if you're handling needles, a needle prick might be more likely to happen if you can't pay attention/be aware of your surroundings. \n\nThe best way to prevent exposure is to only wear what you need and to know exactly how to take it off and to follow that procedure at all times. ", "Biggest danger is removing the PPE, while it's on it protects you, while you take it off it tries to kill you.", "My understanding is that\u2014in addition to the fact that medical professionals are exposed to bodily fluids far more than the average person (as others have written)\u2014Ebola is very *infectious* even though it isn't highly *contagious*.  That means that the virus is normally hard to catch (low *contagion*) but it takes very little of the virus to develop the disease (highly *infectious*). ", "The patients are vomiting, shitting like crazy, bleeding and sweating from their fever...and someone has to clean it all up....then take everything off in the perfect order so they dont get anything on them...", "The two nurses were poorly trained and equipped. Moreover they did not know he had confirmed ebola until after they had contact with him.\n\nThe Dr in NY was treating multiple patients in austere conditions.\n\nIn both cases it's insane to think that when you lack training AND adequate PPE that you *won't* get ebola ", "It isn't all that difficult to transmit. Direct contact with bodily fluids is extremely easy. \n\nMANY common diseases require contact with bodily fluids for transmission, it's a misconception that it is a hindrance to pathogenicity.", "I have a friend, he's a chef. He works with very sharp knives for 12+ hours, usually 7 days a week. He knows how to use the tools of his trade properly, and is quite good at his job. He also cuts himself (and burns himself) WAY more than I do. Then again... I'm only around a hot stove for about 30min a day...maybe an hour if I'm cooking real food for supper. I have one knife, I use it for almost everything, but even so I probably only hold it for a few minutes a day. His exposure to potential mistake or accident involving a knife or hot stove is simply much higher than mine, even though I have no idea what I'm doing in the kitchen. I think this is a pretty good analogy for health care workers dealing with Ebola...they're wading through the worst and most infectious area's. They're in the thick of it, intentionally getting involved with people who have the virus. They're careful, sure...but nothing ever goes 100% properly every single time. They're working in an environment where the margin of error is ZERO... as any mistake means potential infection. \n\nAlso, apparently the most dangerous part for the health professionals is when they're taking off their gear. I read an article about a nurse who voulenteered...she described how they're not supposed to be in the protective clothing for something like longer than an hour, and by the time you're done You're exhausted, hot, sore...your goggles are fogged up, your boots are full of sweat...and RIGHT NOW is the MOST dangerous moment of the day, because the entire outside of your gear is infectious, and you are at the very bottom of your game in terms of attention, co-ordination, and stamina. They're trained for it all, and professionals to the extreme...but they're still human. Combine these risks with the above massively increased exposure... I can see how it happens. \n\nEdit: [This is the article I mentioned.](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit2: Further info on sanitizing vs. sterilization from /u/TinyFishy, some [really great points](_URL_0_) that clarify the purpose and effectiveness of the sanitization procedure.", "Taking the equipment off is the most difficult part. That's where transmission is occurring. If you've never had the pleasure of changing a brief with explosive diarrhea we'll let me just say it can be messy. Plus we tend to make unconscious movements with our hands. It happens. Even to pros. ", "Hospital employee here. Of course we all use personal protective equipment for cases like this (i.e gowns, mask, goggles, and gloves). To my understanding the strongest theory out there is that the employees who got infected were removing their own PPE the wrong way, probably something as simple as brushing the outside of their gown against their forearm. \n\nThe problem with health care is people expect perfection when the grim reality is we can only hope for perfection. ", "I was reading something last weekend. I forget where, but it was a nurse explaining how easy it is to become infected with Ebola, even if you're wearing modern top of the line equipment. She volunteered for some infectious disease training, and said that when in the suit and it's properly secure, and all entry points are taped over multiple times, you're safe. The problem is when you take it off. Not only that, but your vision is altered, and it gets super hot in those things. So, when you're taking it all off, it needs to be done in teams. The process of safely removing the equipment can take 30-40 minutes. \n\nSo imagine, you're in this suit and you're burning up. Maybe you have someone helping you. Maybe you don't. Not only that, you're in an area where the virus is out of control. It's just very likely that you may come in contact with it. ", "Bodily fluids includes saliva. A sneeze and cough can potentially launch said fluid up to 3 meters at pretty fast velocity. There are some videos on youtube with super slow mo documenting this. \n\nAs just people in general, although health care professionals are trained, they still have a general tendency to touch their face etc. Just pay attention to your own hands and see how many times in the next hour you will touch your face without really thinking about it. \n\nThat being said, Ebola is much harder to contract than the flu. It is scary considering the fatality rate is ~70% with current strain, but overall, the flu will kill more people in NA this year than Ebola by a far margin. So, get your flu shots.", "As an RN I can not even answer this question.\n\nThere is no way they should have been exposed via bodily fluids, period.\n\n", "Ebola is difficult to transmit in that you have to be in close proximity with someone before it is easy to transmit.\n\nMedical professionals have to be in close proximity with someone with Ebola, so it's easy to transmit in those circumstances.\n\nThey take precautions, but there are lots of things that can go wrong. \n\nIt's like asking \"If it's so easy to avoid drowning by staying out of the ocean, why is it that sometimes deep sea divers drown despite all the safety equipment that they wear?\"\n\nYou don't have to worry about drowning just walking down the street. Similarly, you don't have to worry about Ebola just walking down the street.  But start sticking your head under water, or start touching people with Ebola and you need to be careful, and even with protective equipment sometimes something happens.", "First, I think there are bodily fluids everywhere because of the conditions. Overcrowded and under staffed.  While I am sure they try to keep things clean, keeping things sanitized is a different challenge.  Second, the protective equipment is not a completely sealed system.  Skin can be exposed from moving around, for example at the neck.  Gloves can also develop small holes that go unnoticed for a while.  Third, taking the protective gear off without contaminating yourself is hard.  It should be done with two people but even then you would need to be very careful", "Something thats really bothering is me is the fact that nobody is taking into consideration that he contracted it outside of a hospital, i.e. in a taxi in Guinea, or a store there, or in any other public crowded place.  Although its likely he did contract it at the hospital, there are thousands of ways he could have gotten it. It can be a random chain of events.  Maybe it was another healthcare worker who was careless and spread the virus on surfaces of the hospital that should have been safe (maybe a door handle, a desk, even a pen). The unfortunate thing here though, is that the more and more people that contract the disease, the more likely it is that people make careless decisions and can infect more people.", "I work in a hospital, and this was discussed at length by management and infection prevention.    The biggest factors were that there weren't protocols for dealing with that patient in that hospital,  there weren't specially trained people to deal with it, and the CDC did not get their team in place fast enough.   \n\nEbola is not contagious before symptoms appear and it doesn't really get bad until 72 hours after your fever escalates over 101.   At Emory,  a specialized team of 40 is trained to deal with patients with Ebola and are the only health care workers that come into contact with the patient or their body fluids.   At Dallas, they had almost a hundred different people in contact with that patient, and they treated the patient like a normal droplet/contact isolation at first.  I'd say that it is a testament to the low R0 of the disease. \n\nWe have now formed an Ebola team at my hospital that consist of 34 people.    The CDC has made arrangements so that any patient that is confirmed to have Ebola will be transfered to a regional center that has been set up within 72 hours.   I'm on that team, and I'm not worried even if we do get a patient.    I know what I'm doing, understand the disease, and we are well trained.\n\nI equate the panic to the Aids epidemic of the 80s where people didn't understand the virus and thought you could get it from hugging a patient or even using the bathroom.    There are many other things I would worry about more than Ebola.   I almost lost a friend to meningitis,  and I watched an 18 year old girl die from the flu last year.  In the US, influenza is estimated to facilitate the deaths of around 35,000 people in the average year, and people don't want to take the vaccine because they don't like needles.", "Just because they are educated doesn't mean they are smart.\n", "There is a difference between being contagious and infectious. Ebola is very infectious if you come in contact with it you are likely to get the disease. It is not very contagious meaning it is hard to come in contact with it especially in the early stages of the disease.", "I have a friend who is doing PhD/MD in Texas and he told me that when I enter the hospital I would also see it but he said you would be surprised on how many mistakes doctors and nurses make and how much protocol is skipped or forgotten or just not followed properly.", "They are in contact with these patients BEFORE the patient is confirmed to have the disease so many of these providers are not taking the necessary precautions at the time they contract the disease.  ", "Because they get itchy noses just like the rest of us.", "Direct contact with body fluids isn't all that hard. Somebody coughs or sneezes on you. I don't know why there's this strange campaign to discourage people from being cautious about serious illnesses. Wash your damn hands. ", "The medical professionals commonly contract the disease during the process of removing their safety equipment.  The equipment itself is quite good at keeping the virus on the outside of itself and not letting it inside, but that means the virus stays on the outside of the suit.  The problem comes when the suits are taken off, which must be carefully done or else you risk exposing your unprotected skin to the virus on the outside of the suit.  \n\nTo get a picture of the problem, try an experiment.  The next time you are taking your clothes off, try to take them off without touching the exterior of your clothing at all.  Mess up once and you have just been exposed to Ebola.", "Hey, it's supposed to be about as hard to get as HIV, but when's the last time you saw medical workers using full-on hazmat suits while treating an HIV patient?\n\nThink about that.", "Good stuff so far. Here's my stab. The answer to your question actually requires me to return to your question. The reason medical pros get infected is because they aren't truly \"trained\" and the equipment often isn't all that good. Breakdown below. \n\n\nTraining. Yes they *have received training* to handle this type of event but they don't regularly and rigorously practice and rehearse and *sustain* these skills in a realistic training environment. They do the equivalent of a player entering the NBA and deciding they've made it big and don't need to regularly practice free throws when fatigued, sweaty, and stressed at the end of every training session. Yes they'll still be able to make free throws because it's a simple basketball task but they won't be nearly as good when it truly matters. \n\nEquipment. They surely do have enhanced equipment for these events but is it truly modern, ie the latest and greatest equipment that's refreshed and updated regularly? No. Medical facilities only periodically update their rarely used gear. A decent analogy is the military. Compare today's military gear to that which was seen advancing toward Baghdad last decade. Today's soldiers look like space warriors because there was suddenly a need, and a budget, to constantly have the latest and greatest great at all times. Everything from trucks to guns to body armor to glasses to gloves has been updated and re-updated since then and the troops back in 2003 were actually using what at the time was \"the latest and greatest equipment from the last 5-10 years which will work for now but we need new shit.\" This essentially boils down to money and it affects every public and private organization. \n\nEdit. ELI3: because they came into contact with infected bodily fluids despite trying to be careful.  ", "My brother is an ER doctor in an urban setting. We had this discussion. The first thing is that while Ebola requires contact to bodily fluids, it appears that Ebola transfers very easily when there is such contact. This is in contrast to HIV, which is not easily spread even when there is a contaminated needle stick. I mean, with HIV, the calculated risk of infection is only 1/200 if you're having vaginal sex with an infected woman. So while Ebola requires contact with bodily fluids, it appears to be much more contagious than other diseases that doctors normally see once you do touch bodily fluids. \n\nFurthermore, most hospitals in the United States are not equipped to deal with quarantine situations. I said that doctors, prior to getting out of their personal protective equipment, should dip their gloves in a bleach solution and spray themselves with Lysol. He said that they have no facility at his hospital to do so. You just take your gloves off and hope you don't smear yourself with it. You might double bag just to be sure. However, to me, that is fucking horseshit. A bucket of bleach solution and a Lysol spray shower should not cost more than a few hundred dollars. He said that FDA approval of a medical device would ensure that it'll take forever to set up and it would cost a ridiculous amount of money. ", "Because those people have a lot more contact with infected fluids than the general populace. The more contact, the higher the risk as with any other infectious disease, including HIV.", "I mean the nurse who contracted it that was caring for the texas patient received from when they first got the call about his ebola. At the time, they didn't know for a fact that he had ebola, so they weren't wearing hazmat suits. When the call came in to pick him up, she came in contact with some of his saliva and it seeped into her pores. It's very easy to contract, despite popular belief. ", "Let me try to explain the logic here.***\n\nThe elevated risk for health professionals isn't limited to Ebola.  Hospitals are, ironically, high risk places to get sick.  Patients recovering for extended periods in hospitals, especially those taking antibiotics that kill most of the natural, balanced, healthy bacteria in our bodies, are more likely to get sick during their stay than they would at home. Increased risk of infection is especially true if you're a healthcare worker.  They are directly exposed to contagious people and a bacteria/virus-filled environment more than your average person.  \n\nIt's not really *because* it's Ebola; it simply makes sense that people with direct exposure to the fluids of a sick person are more likely to get sick from them.  It's the same with most any illness.  \n\nEbola in particular isn't easy to spread, but it is extremely infectious.  The distinction is that while it's harder to physically spread around, just one glob of infected mucus or one pinprick of an infected needle is enough to compromise a healthy immune system.  \n\nSo, while you're not likely to get Ebola from sitting near someone with it, you are likely to get it if you ingest their mucus or blood.  (gross!)\n\n^^^^*** ^^^^I ^^^^am ^^^^not ^^^^an ^^^^expert", "Same reason why professional drivers get in more accidents per year then non-professional drivers - they're around it more. They might be less likely than the average citizen, thanks to the medical equipment you mention, but they're more likely because they're dealing with ebola more frequently. ", "My friend who is a VON in Ontario, Canada has just been losing her shit about this. Her colleagues just lack fundamental common sense to use regular, expected safety protocols. How can one of the top comments on here say that nurses use \"no gloves\" and people aren't going bananas?\nYou're dealing with a patient's fluids?  WEAR GLOVES. AND wash your hands after. \n\nShit. Semmelweis figured this out YEARS ago. \nWith something so serious, so close to home, any nurse choosing to opt out of protocol is dumb. ", "People forget that sweat is also a bodily fluid. So just touching their bare skin and if they have even sweat a little, then boom.", "Well, if my experiences shadowing in a family medicine clinic are any indication, the cumulative effects of lax attention due to fatigue (\"I'm sick/haven't slept in 36 hours/haven't eaten all day, but my patients need me\") and arrogance (\"I'm a medical professional; of course I know what I'm doing\") are enough.\n\nLong story short, I've seen a doctor allow a scabies patient to disrobe and remain seated in the regular chair instead of the exam table that gets sanitized after every visit, then examine the rash barehanded, and go straight to the next patient without hand hygiene. Let's just say I'm as surprised at the rash of ebola infections among healthcare workers as I am about the recent scabies outbreak in my area.", "Biomedical scientist here and part of the Ebola response team at a large and prestigious hospital on the east coast.\n\n1) The most recent persons to get it is a doctors without borders doc. What people don't realize is that these doctors go into \"battle\" vastly under supplied in these foreign countries. They do not have Tyvek coveralls, respirators, gloves, and proper sterilization equipment. A lot of them because of supplies are forced to use the same pair of gloves on multiple patients for the day. Some don't use gloves at all. \n\n2) Taking care of someone with Ebola is hell. There are literally body fluids everywhere. Imagine bloody decomposed fluid oozing out of every pore in your body, plus gallons of diarrhea and vomit. The protective equipment people are wearing here is good, but only if it stays intact and it doffed correctly. 90% of the infections occur because the person contaminates themselves when removing the soiled equipment. \n\n3) there's more, but I'm at work and don't feel like typing. \n\nTLDR: taking the protective gear off improperly contaminates you, and 3rd world country doctors don't have the proper supplies. \n\nEdit: tubeless to Tyvek, damn phone autocorrect ", "Anyone that is infected has fluids coming out the wazoo.", "I'm in healthcare and what we've been told with these healthcare workers getting ebola is that it's often improperly using PPE (personal protective equipment).  There is a very specific procedure for putting on AND taking off the PPE, which includes double gloves, tape, impermeable floor protection, etc.  You also need a buddy to help/watch to make sure you do it right.  And you have to check your own vitals because the gear gets hot and suffocating...A lot of room for errors, especially if you're dealing with the numbers of patients in the outbreak over there!", "dont Ebola patients produce an insane amount of contaminated waste? sure you have to have direct contact but they're producing way more liquid than normal, right? maybe the 24 hour news cycle is just confusing me", "They touch their face or wounds with contaminated hands. That's why you see Liberian health workers  continually spray their gloves and suits with chlorine. ", "From what I've read, several reason.\n\n1.  Ebola looks like the flu, it gets misdiagnosed a lot.\n\n2.  People with Ebola spew fluids constantly from every orifice.  \n\n3.  Getting in and out of protective gear is a very precise procedure and people make mistakes.\n\n4.  Lots of medical people treating patients don't have the correct gear.", "Patients with an active ebola infection can have between 6-12 LITERS of diarrhea a day which, in the US, we try to avoid putting down the sewer system. Now, imagine if you are a nurse caring for a patient with 6-12 LITERS of diarrhea a day with lots of little ebolas in it and you have to keep the diarrhea in the patient's room (contained, of course) until biohazard company can incinerate it. There are so many ebolas all around you it can be difficult avoiding those little boogers. \n\nSource: health care worker\n\nEdit: I also want to say that I heard from a conference that those nurses in Texas had their necks partially exposed. Now, just imagine providing one on one care for someone shitting that much ebola out of their ass and vomiting ebolas constantly and trying to always replace that fluid for them so their heart can keep working so obviously they don't die on you from premature dehydration AND THEN you have to keep gallons of ebola infected waste in the room with you until a special biohazard company can properly dispose of all of the ebola infected trash and bodily fluids so that the rest of the population can be protected from little ebolas. I mean, sheesh! Nurses are heroes.  Please stop saying I would accidentally touch my face with ebola diarrhea and vomit. That is gross. There is such a high chance of those damn microscopic ebolas in that diarrhea to accidentally get on your exposed neck from the mass ebola chaos that is probably going on in that room trying to keep that person alive. ", "The difference between a doctor and God is that God doesn't think he's a doctor.\n\nArrogance usually preceded sloppiness.", "I am not a nurse or a physician. I work in the gross lab. We deal with a lot of cancer and any tissue that you may have removed. The threat if Ebola, in my opinion, is very under estimated. Incubation times have not been obviously studied and it's really unclear how quickly people can transmit the disease. The cdc says anywhere from 2 to 21 days. But the biggest threat is taking off protective gear. Obviously protecting yourself is important. However the protocol to remove protective gear is a bunch if garbage. Basically if you touch any protective gear that has been exposed, you should wash your hands. Most anti microbial soaps only lift germs and viruses off if your hands, they do not kill. The advantage of bio hazard suites is they have one zipper in the back where the whole suite can be removed. This is done by a buddy. Beforehand they can clean the zipper are with chlorinated disinfectant. This is what works. But it's not what the cdc calls necessary .  ", "Probably too late now but I work at hospital and have had so much preparation for this in the past few weeks. Apparently the issue lies in that you can wear all the protective equipment in the world, it just has to be put on correctly but even more importantly removed properly as well. A lot of the contamination is occurring because when the medical staff removes the safety gown, booties, mask and gloves they are susceptible to coming in contact with a contaminated piece. I'm guessing its like that because when you're putting on the suit you'd be extra careful as you would when you're in the room with a contaminated patient but would most likely let your guard once you feel safe again removing it.", "I work as a medical professional The typical person who does not work in the field would probably be shocked at how awful the typical employee is at adhering to standard precautions (gloves/hand sanitizing after every interaction). \n\nSeriously...that shit doesn't happen. ", "From what I've heard, the US medical professionals have not been taking the safety / biohazard protocols seriously enough. ", "Do you realize that the vast majority of medical personnel didn't contract Ebola, right?", "Doctors Without Borders: 700 served. Infected: 4. So maybe good old fashioned accidental, and most likely due to sleep deprivation. Add to that these 700 doctors are not working in state of the art facilities. ", "The other top answers are terrible\n\nELI5 - improper use of safety equipment, including the point at which you take it off.\n\nUnderstand that few nurses regularly deal with \"isolation\" patients, let alone a level-3 quarantine biological agent. So it's somewhat understandable that they aren't perfect when using protective gear. Unfortunately viruses aren't forgiving if you, for example, accidentally touch the outside of your gloves or headgear.\n\nSource - wife works with level 1 and 2 biological agents", "HERE IS THE REASON!  It is a droplet-borne virus, meaning that ANY of the tiny particles of a sneeze can carry a live virus that can infect.  MEANING that if an infected person sneezes in their hands, then touches a doorknob, then you touch the doorknob and then touch your eye or nose, you might get infected.  Sneezes spew millions of particles that you can't see all over the room, and Ebola gives you FLU symptoms - you are sneezing and coughing all over the place!!! \n\nNo, it's not airborne, but sneeze droplets can travel a few feet and land in your eye or mouth without you ever realizing it!", "I spent one year training as an EMT-Paramedic, and four years working as an EMT-Paramedic in a paid capacity.  The Blood borne Pathogens training is the module that would cover protecting yourself from pathogens such as Ebola.  Trust me when I tell you that the training is worse than a joke.  The course material is accurate, but the instructors' delivery and testing was simply a formality.  A 'going through the motions', if you will.  Most of the class attendees couldn't have cared less about the course content; they were just there to get the required continuing education credits so they could keep their professional certifications.  It would not surprise me if the infected health care workers had absolutely no clue about the proper procedures and practices regarding how to isolate themselves from the Ebola virus.\n  ", "During the acute phase of infection, the patient is highly contagious. The patient's blood can contain up to 100 billion virus per milliliter. The infectious dose for Ebola virus appears to be very low (1-10 organisms). While the medical professionals take precautions, their work involve frequent contact with bodily fuild and removal of the protective gear. If you considers all these things together, you can see why medical staff die. Not really ELI5 but I hope this help.\n", "As said before, nurses and doctors have to come in contact with body fluids one way or another. Most likely they're wearing a protective suit, but when removing that suit many times they accidentally expose themselves.", "Direct contact with bodily fluids includes folk with Ebola coughing and ejecting an aerosol cloud of viral laden micro drops all over the place. \n\nThese are humid countries they are coming from in Africa too. Being constantly covered head to toe in layers of scrubs is brutal, and I imagine they just get fatigued and make mistakes.", "As someone who works first hand in health care: Just because something is legally required/established protocol in a hospital does not mean it's going to be done ", "I'd like to add...\n\nas someone who recently went from never working with patients, to being in the rooms of 16 or so on any given day..\n\nMost non-healthcare associates don't really have a good understanding of just how often you come in contact with bodily fluids. A LOT, I'd dare say the majority of patients are sitting down on chucks pads (basically, diapers spread out without velcro) because they're too sick/physically unable to make it to the bathroom. \n\nThis means the nursing tech (usually 1 per unit....1 unit is anywhere from 10-16 or so patients) is essentially going room to room much of the day cleaning patients bed sheets and wiping their asses for them, literally. Gloves are great. Gowns are great. They aren't perfect though. And when you're doing it THAT often, its just a numbers game.\n\nNOW, think about how that nurse tech is one person going room to room. One mistake in one room is enough to potentially spread whatever germs to each person in the entire unit. \n\nAlso, family members/arrogant physicians often feel they are exempt to the disease prevention protocols. One huge issue at the hospital I work at is physicians being held accountable for not taking proper precautions. ", "I work for a hospital and can give you an idea. Basically our procedures have us double up on gloves and than wear usual personal protection. The difference here is after every piece of protective wear you take off you need to hand wash and/or disinfect everything. They even recommend bleach wiping your shoes even though they were covered. It's about a 25-30 minute procedure. Now when you are in a rush as many nurses are you cut corners because well it won't happen to you. ", "As a health care professional, I see people on a daily basis wiping their face off/touching light switches/brushing away their hair/all kinds of other things with contaminated gloves. With ebola, it takes one \"oops!\" to be infected.", "There're two distinct concepts at play, contagious and infectious. Contagious refers to how easily the disease is transmitted. If it stays on surfaces after someone touches it, can be spread through the air, etc. Infectious refers to how much virus needs to be present in order to infect someone. Ebola is highly infectious but not that contagious. The virus can only be spread by bodily fluids after a person has enough of the virus to show clear signs that they are sick. So the person can't wander around unknowingly infecting people. Unfortunately only a few virus bodies are required to infect someone, because it is good at evading the immune system. Hospital workers are exposed to the bodily fluids at the worst possible time, increasing their risk. The people most at risk of catching it are those that care for an Ebola victim. It's really sad. Tend to the sick, and put yourself in danger. ", "Because Ebola patients eject copious amounts of shit and vomit.  Which has to be cleaned up by the heath care professional.  This generally only effects people in the medical profession caring for patients or those with out modern plumbing and sanitation. ", "Man,kinda wish Chris Christie had read this threas before doing his bullshittt press conference and acting all tough and shit", "Try to concentrate very hard on your work and not touch your face a single time in the space of one hour.  It's harder than you think.", "Mental fatigue and the misplaced assumption of infallibility. \n\n\nAsk yourself why so many people get horrible infections, like c. difficile, during hospital stays every year - even though basic antiseptic hand washing easily prevents the spread of infection.\n\nWorse yet, typically those with compromised immune systems, and the elderly tend to get c.diff far more easily, and those persons are so fragile to begin with  - the infection can quite easily flick that first domino that starts them on a downward struggle to a premature end.  \n\nThe sheer number of people who move around hospitals as infection vectors makes controlling infection extremely difficult.  It's not just doctors and nurses.   Maintenance workers, housekeeping, orderlies that perform patient transport, support staff delivering meals, and swarms of friends and family visiting.   All these people touch handrails, doorknobs, elevator buttons, and walk past those GoJo santiizing foam dispensers with nary a second thought.  \n\nHospitals are **great** places to get sick.\n\nSource:  Elderly father got c.diff every third trip to the hospital.\n\nWork for company in the health industry that has stats on this stuff.  Not comfortable saying more.\n\n", "it is NOT difficult to contract, it's actually easy to contract. Sweat is a bodily fluid that can be infectious, so can sneezes, coughs, and even saliva. Ebola can be spread from an infected person to others if the healthy person touches a surface an ebola patient has touched. \n\nDon't believe this bullshit that this is not easy to spread. It is easy to spread, it's hard to contain. In times past we've managed to contain the outbreaks, this one is out of control and keeps trying to jump out of the effected area ", "I work in a hospital.  Right now, a lot of our medical providers are concerned that they don't have enough training in how to remove their gear in a way that doesn't infect themselves.  \n\nSay you're wearing latex gloves.  You use one glove to take off the other, fine.  But now how do you take off the remaining glove without touching it?\n\nThat's how medical staff members are getting infected.  They aren't trained in safe removal of their gear.", "I oddly enough just asked my friend this questions. She's a nurse in an Intensive Care Unit. \n\nWhen you treat really sick people like Ebola patients you were lots of protective gear. \n\nEbola patients unfortunately have lots of fluids coming out of them (blood, diarrhea, vomit) and that gets on all your protective gear.  \n\nThere is a very precise way that you are supposed to remove your gear so that you don't get fluids on your skin. But it's very hard to do perfectly. It's very hard to remove dirty gloves without touching skin. \n\nAll you need is one irritated hair on your body for the virus to sneak in after you accidentally touch skin with dirty clothes.  \n\nMost hospitals rarely practice the procedures since these types of diseases are so uncommon.", "I've heard, now this is just from the grapevine, that golden shower and scat parties are all the rage at hospitals at the moment, so I'd guess that's why they spread to medical staff as 'easily' as they do.", "Think of it like this:\n\nSoldiers wear a lot of body armor, and are less likely to die when being shot at than you or I, since odds are, they are well protected against most bullets flung at them... But they also have a lot more bullets flung at them on a regular basis, so are much more likely to die by being shot.\n\n", "An Ebola patient is like a time bomb. When it goes off infectious body fluid is actively expelled from all over the body, including through the skin, at a rate of up to 5-10 L per day. At that point it's very contagious. Fortunately that doesn't happen until the very last stage of infection, near and past the point of death. That is why health care workers have the highest risk exposure. To contain an outbreak infected people need to be isolated before they get to this late stage. The problem in west Africa is that they have virtually no healthcare infrastructure so, they couldn't do this.", "When personnel come out and remove their gear, why aren't they put in a shower stall and sprayed with a light bleach water solution. Wouldn't this clean off and disinfect their gear enough to bring down the risk of accidental contamination?", "This seems like someone playing Plague Inc. who has upgraded all of the symptoms but none of the transmissions.\n\nNo shame - had to look up how to spell Plague.", "My mom's husband had a stroke on monday morning. When I went to the hospital I watched the physical therapy doctor rub her nose with the glove on. Then touch his feet to check for sensation. Then touch his hands. Made him touch his face. Rubbed her hands on his face (to check for sensation). Then she scratched her chin. \n\nI just kept thinking how could you be so bad about this?", "People want to blame the doctors, but you're underestimating the situation. In affected African countries there are many people with florid Ebola infection producing large amounts of diarrhea and bodily fluids that they cohort in units not equipped to deal with this kind of situation. Infection controls depends on not just doctor and nurses but the people that clean the \"rooms\". The clean-up after someone shat the bed is not easy and small amounts barely visible after an inadequate clean up is what causes the problem. \n\nIn the US we'll do fine controlling this. It's not as hardy as c. diff infection from what I understand. It's in a range similar to other infections like meningitis, influenza, viral diarrhea outbreaks. The cases in texas were also very high risk exposure. Unfortunately the index case had a 103 fever, and being a nurse to a patient means you are placing an IV, collecting urine, stool samples, checking vitals including a rectal temperature. It's very close contact. ", "I feel like when they remove the safety gear, they get it then. Just my gut tells me that this is the weak point in the defense ", "Everyone can try this at home.\n\nPut on a jacket, hat, pants of a thin material of some sort, some sort of mask or skimask, plastic bags on your shoes and gloves. It will replicate the PPE (personal protective equipment) that people commonly wear.\n\nNow try to get all of that off without having any part of your exposed body or underlying clothes actually touch the outside part of your make-shift PPE. It's a lot harder than you think.\n\nThere are procedures in place to safely take off PPE... but mistakes happen, and easily.", "I was adding a receptacle in a hospital as an electrician. The room was where they had pieces of people and they examined them while talking into a recorder. The technician was examining this piece of spleen, then went over and opened a cabinet without taking his gloves off.\n\nI don't know, maybe everyone in that room knows to leave their gloves on when opening that cabinet, but it seemed to me that would be a major breach of the rules regarding dealing with the bodily pieces of diseased humans.\n\nEdit: It was the histopathology room, if I remember right.\n\n", "Being a healthcare worker who has currently been trained in donning and doffing PPE per CDC guidelines, it is damn near impossible to take off all the PPE we are supposed to wear without contaminating yourself and the surrounding area. ", "The hardest part of pathogen isolation is when removing the protective gear worn while in contact with patients. In some hospitals in Africa, they bathe the doctors/nurses with what is essentially slightly deluded chlorine-bleach after every layer of protective gear is removed. This same protocol was not adopted in the US, however they have methods that are just as effective. It is relatively difficult to isolate the pathogen from every single layer, every single time someone exits an isolation room with a patient. Some of the virus may have accidentally been transferred in that period.\n\nAs an example of this, you can put on a pair of rubber gloves and cover your hands in chocolate syrup. Now, try to take off the gloves without getting any syrup on your skin. It's pretty tricky, but not impossible, but imagine having to do that multiple times per day. Again, not impossible, but its relatively easy to slip up once. \n\nSource: most of family works in health care around the country.", "It's like the pink capsule you got in school when you learned to brush your teeth. There's a fuck-ton of cleaning you have to do to get rid of all of it.", "Put ink on your hands now try to take off your protective gear without getting ink on anything else. You will see that the ink transfers. Now switch the ink for an invisible virus. ", "I can't look up the exact figure this second, but as I understand it, Ebola can live outside the body for a pretty long time for a virus, too, if I recall correctly.", "The true question is... why has no one BUT trained medical professionals (here in the US, anyway) contracted the disease? That's also your answer (they're the ones with the closest contact with a person when they're at their most contagious).\n\nAll these other explanations do nothing for your average 5 year old.", "There's a neat video floating around out there in which a doctor uses chocolate sauce on a protective suit to show how easy it is to get fluid on yourself when taking the suit off. ", "In an extremely ELI5, it's not very contagious, but extremely infectious. Meaning it's not easy to be in contact with something contagious, but the things that are contagious can very easily infect you. ", "taking off a safety suit has to be done with a lot of care to avoid contact, pretend you have been wearing this bubble for 2 - 3 hours your very hot and tried and want to get out.", "Medical professionals are people too, meaning they can be smart and idiots simultaneously. \n\nIn this case they are smart in that they know its unlikely they will encounter, let alone contract Ebola, but stupid enough to not be on alert for it and contract it from infected people before they figure out what's wrong. ", "Hubris. \n\nThe same hubris that downplayed the likelihood that it would even reach the US, the same hubris that did not adequately prepare hospitals and medical staff when it did, and the same hubris that continues to allow those coming from Ebola-infected areas into the US without so much as a check up. Also the same hubris that keeps saying \"It's really hard to catch Ebola, nothing to worry about\".\n\nIt's also really hard to kill yourself with a gun that's not loaded, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't treat it like it is....", "Here's a Huff Post article from a trained professional. \n_URL_0_\nShe explains how the hazmat suits needs EXTREME care both taken on and off the body it's an informed article. ", "I recently got to observe a seminar on Ebola at a local hospital.  As a student nurse, my professor thought it would be an excellent experience to observe something that everybody was seeing and hearing in the news.  During this seminar, the infection control nurse ran though a demonstration of how to properly Don and remove the \"specialized\" Ebola ppe.  The demonstration was done by two veteran ER nurses. As this was going on, the nurses at the seminar kept pointing out how many issues there we're with potential contamination of clean surfaces. The response from the infection control nurse was \"we will have to alter this as we go and as the cdc updates their guidelines\". Even though the potential for an Ebola infection is essentially zero for this area, that is still certainly a nerve racking statement and mentality.", "1. put on a pair of latex exam gloves\n2. dip your hands in paint almost to the top of the gloves\n3. take them off without getting any of the wet paint on your skin\n4. imagine how dangerous it is with \"invisible paint,\" i.e., if the surface of the gloves is contaminated with Ebola viruses without visible blood/body fluids to indicate that\n\nThat's why Ebola can infect people who understand the risks while not infecting household contacts of sick people. Victims go quickly from not-sick/not-contagious to deathly-ill/very contagious, and the only people still touching them once they're comatose and need their bloody diapers changed are health care personnel.", "Hi, just an example: When my daughter was 2 years old, she got Rota-Virus. It is pretty nasty, because you lose fluid and electrolytes through diarrhea and vomiting. It can be transmitted through fluids and air. We took her to the infection hospital and my wife spent the night there. I took over in the morning. Our daughter was pumped with fluids and electrolytes (IV) throughout the night and in the morning she recovered enough to be hungry. I was allowed to take her home on the same day. My wife got the symptoms that very day. I got them one day later. Here I can state that I never contracted anything else from my daughter \u2013 virosis or flu, despite taking care of her when she got it. It is simply the fact that when you change diapers 20 times a day, there is a good chance you\u00b4ll miss something and get it into your system. I lost 6 kg in 4 days, feeling my body being drained of fluids. Good thing is that as a grown man, you can force yourself to drink and eat despite the symptoms and push through.  I have heard of grown people being hospitalized because of Rota-Virus and I don\u00b4t think that it can compete with Ebola any more than sniffles do. I learned to appreciate child creme at the time. Wiping 20 times a day can be...sandpapery. :) ", "since when in history is 'bodily fluids' not easy to contract?\n", "Ebola fetishists joining DoctorsWithoutBorders to form romantic relationships with Ebola victims.\n\nEither that or the CDC and Obama are dirty fucking liars.", "Because Ebola causes 5 to 10 liters of liquid diarrhea per day, and Nurses are the ones cleaning it up.", "The PPE/safety gear isn't removed properly, thus getting ebola on their hands and later in their blood stream via eye or mouth contact.", "Imagine this: get dressed in layers, covering head to toe including gloves and a big mask.\n\nThen stay inside where the temperature is 68-72.\n\nAfter an hour you can leave the room, but first you are doused in blue paint. \n\nNow try to take off all of your layers without getting paint on yourself.", "Pro-tip: they arent trained, and they certainlly aint equiped. ", "SHHH SHHH SHHH you're not supposed to ask logical questions like that or you'll be accused of racism!", "In the final stages, that direct contact is *very* dangerous. And bodily fluids include everything, including sweat. And these people are in contact with, and need to handle, patients at the precise point when the disease is at its most infectious. As I understand it, if you're unlucky it can only take one tiny mistake - bare skin touching something that touched something that touched the patient, for example. Or a minor, accidental tear in the wrong place in your one use, disposable garments, that no-one notices. And however professional and careful people are, mistakes and accidents always happen.", "Don't try to blame the doctors and nurses. Don't even think about it, OP", "People make mistakes. And even when they don't, flukes happen. Could be a number of things. I worked pest control for years and while we weren't supposed to get pesticide on the skin, were trained to avoid it and were wearing the proper PPE (Personal protective equipment) it still happens. I imagine with something like a virus the chances of an accident are even higher. At least with my compressed air sprayer I knew where the contaminant was coming from. ", "The fact that they are dealing with a person who is projectile vomiting and projectile shitting and are probably weeping from every hole or opening usually doesn't help", "Ebola has very very high concentrations of virus particles.  I drop of blood of an aids patient has maybe a million virus particles.  A drop of bodily fluids of an Ebola patient has ten billion.", "The nurses taking care of Ebola patients are not too tired to be safe. The adrenaline from taking care of an Ebola patient and fear of contracting this disease keeps them alert. They also do not touch their face with isolation gear on. Nurses wear gloves for almost everything and every nurse can relate to the itchy nose that always seems to occur as soon as gloves are applied. You just let it itch. Source: I'm a nurse", "Nurse here. Most diseases are transmitted in the incubation stage before a patient shows signs of symptoms. The patient in Texas had been to hospital before and no one knew he had ebola, so they figured there was no need to take precautions. ", "The CDC has said several times that Ebola is not airborne. Their [guideline for transmission](_URL_1_) states that contact with an infected person's bodily fluid is the only way.  However, the medical definition of airborne is when a virus can remain in the air (or on surfaces) for long periods of time. (IE, you have the flu and sneeze on your keyboard, then sometime later a co-worker uses it) Ebola cannot.\n[This](_URL_0_) researcher explains why direct contact with a patient could result in transmission through the air, which technically would not be classified medically as \"airborne\"\n > \"I think that what they are trying to convey with the idea that 'it's not airborne' is that you likely need to be relatively close to the person where there are some bodily fluids present,\" says Rachael Jones, who studies infectious disease transmission at the University of Illinois at Chicago.\n\n > She says if someone down the hall from you had Ebola and threw up vomit that contains the virus, \"those particles are not going to travel hundreds of feet or hundreds of meters to cause an infection.\"\n\n > But if a health care worker or a family member gets very close to someone who has a lot of symptoms, which is when people with Ebola are most contagious, Jones says droplets of body fluid could potentially travel through the air for short distances.\n\n > \"If you vomit there are projectile droplets that could spray up,\" she notes.\n\n > And she says there's reason to be concerned that an Ebola patient might produce even smaller droplets that someone in close quarters could inhale and get sick from \u2014 during medical procedures like putting in a breathing tube.\n\nEdit: Formatting", "The other replies in this thread cover it well, but...\n\nThere's a lot of conflicting information out there, causing confusion. Part of this is the usual suspects of gossip/cable news/ etc, but this time the people in charge are also part of the problem- their priorites are:\n1. Prevent ebola panic\n2. Prevent ebola infections\n\nIn that order. That's why NPR's article about R0 (Or R-naught) is getting shared, despite that metric being a really poor choice for measuring transmissability. Reading it, you're left with the laughable conclusion that HIV is easier to spread than Ebola (or that Hep C is less contagious than HIV). Just wrong. Better metrics would focus on minimum dose to cause infection, or method of transmission, or how long the virus survives outside a living host. \n\n_URL_0_\n", "Long story short - removing gowns and gloves without contaminating yourself is much more difficult than one would think after working your 8-10 hour shift, if you're lucky. Also it is not \"common\" and many medical staff get lenient with the proper way to ungown. Also what /u/keertus has stated.\n\nI'm a healthcare IT analyst. I sit in on a lot of meetings, technical and clinical. This has been a nearly constant discussion as of late.\n", "Complacency has a lot to do with it.  I work in the medical field and you would be amazed how often I see people caring for a patient, handling bodily fluids with no gloves on.  The longer someone does something the greater risk of an error.  This could even be as simple as replacing your mask regularly, checking gloves for holes before using then, proper hygiene, etc.  Don't rule out the amount of exposure either.  If you work as a nurse in a hospital you're at a far greater risk of getting the flu than a construction worker because of the frequency of exposure.  ", "Improper equipment removal. In their training, they'll put chocolate syrup on their gloves and then attempt to remove their suits. If any syrup gets on their body, they've done it wrong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/27/ebola-wars"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k7tpn/eli5_if_ebola_is_so_difficult_to_transmit_direct/clj0yat", "http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/20/volunteered-fight-ebola-sierra-leone-msf"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5998486"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/17/356966590/why-wont-the-fear-of-airborne-ebola-go-away", "http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html"], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1rcbrz", "title": "why can i usually hear when a person is black, without seeing them (phone calls or radio etc). and i don't mean accents.", "selftext": "Maybe it is an accent, and I'm just not aware I'm detecting it.  \n\n**Edit: Apparently talking about differences in the \"races\" is racist.**", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rcbrz/eli5_why_can_i_usually_hear_when_a_person_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdlsdny", "cdltd56", "cdltw9w", "cdlvpda"], "score": [15, 10, 3, 10], "text": ["There can be a very slight innate difference from race to race, but it's more to do with culture and accent than physiology - although physiology can sometimes play a part. However most likely if you heard a black guy who was, say, dutch or portuguese, you wouldn't be able to tell his race. \n\nTo make another example, Phil Lamarr is a black guy who's a prolific voice actor, if you didn't know who he was you'd never be able to tell the color of his skin. However I've noticed it's very difficult for white guys to do convincing voices of black characters.\n\nEdit: Come to think of it, Phil Lamarr's normal voice doesn't sound like any particular race. Watch some interviews of him and see for yourself.", "I can posit an answer to this from a singing perspective, but please keep in mind that it is a massive generalization and there are plenty of exceptions to the 'rule'. \n\nBlack singers tend to have particular muscle groups that are stronger or are used more/differently, and this creates certain colours in the voice. These same muscle groups also impact on your speaking voice. Im not going to say thats genetic, i have absolutely no idea. I guess it could easily be like how a family of loud talkers use more diaphragm support and then their kids would have that too because they had more practice at it.\n\n These singers also more often have a 'thicker chord setting' that sounds beefy. Different harmonic partials, a darker or warmer tone etc. This is what gives that strong sound. Yes, other not-black singers can do this and sometimes will do it naturally or can learn to do it. And yes, there are of course black singers that have different voices.\n\nBut you might be hearing the tonal changes that are associated with having strong muscle support. It would come across as warmer, fuller, richer sounding than someone who uses less muscle support when speaking.", "Have you ever noticed many black people can be very loud and often not lose their voice? This is not a racial or stereotyping comment, but literally a lot of black people have a different physical make-up of their vocal cords and muscles that support the vocal cords that actually makes the voice much stronger. This means that there is a noticeable strength and often deepness to the speaking voice. OBVIOUSLY there are many many many many exceptions to this, like black people with soft, weak, or high voices. But I do believe what I referred to above is what you are talking about.", "I have approved this submission despite it being reported. Please keep racism to yourselves and I suggest you cite sources when possible. We are watching this thread closely."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ft35oi", "title": "AITA for turning off my husband?", "selftext": "Some background: my husband has been married before, I haven\u2019t (although I was briefly engaged once). I come from a strong Protestant background, and my husband spent most of his life as a devout Catholic before seeing the light about ten years ago. He\u2019s also older than me \u2013 I\u2019m about the same age as his older daughter from his first marriage. Oh, and we\u2019re in kind of an arranged marriage, which is normal in our culture.\n\nI think our marriage has gotten off on the wrong foot. When I first met my husband, I was watching some entertainment and he came up in disguise and kissed me, which really startled me and I didn\u2019t respond well. It was awkward and I just tried to ignore this strange guy who was really taking liberties. Then he left and came back in his real clothes and introduced himself as my husband, and I could tell that he was annoyed that I hadn\u2019t known who he was.\n\nOn our wedding night \u2026 we didn\u2019t consummate. He was very nice about it at the time, and he has been every night since, but he\u2019s said some *really* hurtful things about me to his friends afterward, like that I smelled too bad to get near, and they all believe him. He\u2019s also telling them that I don\u2019t look like the pictures that made him agree to marry me \u2013 like, \u201cI\u2019m not even sure that they\u2019re her\u201d-levels. He basically thinks I catfished him, and he feels hurt and betrayed.\n\nI admit that it\u2019s possible that the picture was a bit touched up, and people may have been overly flattering in their descriptions of me because they wanted this marriage to go through. AITA for not making it clear ahead of time that I\u2019m a normal person and not a babe?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ft35oi/aita_for_turning_off_my_husband/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm685ot", "fm6ghlh", "fm4rq7g", "fm4szyn", "fm4t3vl", "fm4tas2", "fm4xzo6", "fm51awi", "fm599fy", "fm5a8lz", "fm5cv1e"], "score": [6, 3, 4, 23, 65, 16, 21, 15, 3, 6, 15], "text": ["NAH. I totally understand why you aren't into him. He sounds really narcissistic and overbearing. Accusing you of catfishing him just because your pic showed you in a cute outfit and flattering makeup is way over the line. \n\nBut, to be fair, your post history mentions this is his first time in an arranged marriage. I know they're pretty common in his culture, but if he's used to love matches, it could be a pretty big culture shock for him. \n\nHonestly, it sounds like you just aren't right for each other. Maybe cut your losses and get an annulment?", "NTA--  Some couples just aren't meant to be married but just good friends. You're probably more like a sister to him.  Since you've come all this way  maybe he'll set you up in a nice cottage. I think his kids may also benefit from your kind nature.", "YTA. The man started a fucking Church for you, you could at least be honest.", "NAH - maybe he'll offer you some money to pretend the whole marriage never happened.", "NTA he\u2019s calling YOU a catfish when he\u2019s the one who came over to you in a disguise?? That\u2019s a red flag and you should try and get an annulment if you haven\u2019t consummated yet.", "NTA.  Arranged marriages are often awkward, I know it\u2019s normal in your culture but maybe it\u2019s time to embrace making your own choice. What is the guy like, anyways?  You said he has multiple kids?  Are you sure you want to be a stepmom right from the get-go?  And what happened to his previous wife?  Is she dead, or divorced?\n\nAnd, ya, it\u2019s shitty to catfish, but was your picture that far off or is he just being a dick and looking for an excuse not to marry you. Perhaps you\u2019d be better of as friends in the end.  \n\nAlso, you\u2019re the age of his eldest kid?  Yikes!", "NTA- So many red flags it sounds like a July 4th Parade. Get out while you can!", "NAH - you're not compatible. He's kinda TA for trashing you behind your back, though. I don't see this lasting, but don't beat yourself up over it. If he's been married numerous times, it might be a \"him\" problem. If he won't consummate, you won't get pregnant and there won't be a child to complicate things if you decide to separate. You're young, you'll probably come out on the other side of this just fine. I wish you the best.", "NTA, you\u2019ve stepped into a nasty situation way beyond your control, get out while you can and go live your best life well away from all that nonsense.", "NTA. And if you go along with an annulment who knows, you could get Richmond Palace out of it. Just be sure to hang up all those portraits he doesn\u2019t like somewhere everyone can see them.", "Oh honey, I'd say you're NTA. Did he tell you he was a cosplayer before you met? If not, he's being silly for expecting you to automatically take interest in his hobbies. Especially from a conservative culture like you both seem to belong to--you can't be blamed for not wanting to kiss a stranger while you're engaged! \n\nAnd what does he look like? Were his profile pictures all filter-free? Especially since he's older than you? That's what I thought."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "54klja", "title": "What is the total volume of the sky?", "selftext": "So my sister had some silly quote on her facebook about \"The Endless Sky\" which got me thinking that there was no way it could be endless.  Is there a \"point x\" so many meters above ground that starts the sky and then a \"point y\" that marks the end of the sky and the start of outer space.  If so could you measure the volume and/or mass of the sky?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/54klja/what_is_the_total_volume_of_the_sky/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d82p2lo", "d83e5io", "d83ehhf", "d86uwwz"], "score": [10, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["There are several definitions to where the sky ends and space begins.\n\nThe US Air Force defines \"space\" as anywhere above 100 000 ft. (30.8 km) This is how people doing things like sending up high altitude balloons or jumping therefrom are said to have \"gone to space\".\n\nThe technical definition of space for spacecraft is the [Karman Line](_URL_0_), which is altitude air-pressure region at which the difference between an aircraft and a satellite disappears. Mathematically it's roughly 91 km in good weather but it's usually rounded up to 100km (62 miles, or 328 000 ft) for everywhere at all times. \n\nThere are a few others but those two are the most common. Earth's atmosphere extends as far as 1000km away from the earth but the difference between 150km altitude pressure and 750km is minuscule.\n\nThe Radius of the Earth is about 6370km. So we're talking about the volume of a roughly spherical shell 100km thicker than that.\n\n((4*pi*(6371+100 km)^3 )/3)-((4*pi*(6371 km)^3 )/3) = **5.18 * 10^10 km^3**\n\nIf you rolled that into a ball, it would be a bit bigger than the asteroid Ceres.", "On the other hand, I'd say that the meaning of the word \"sky\" is not necessarily the same as \"atmosphere.\" For example, [Merriam-Webster](_URL_1_) defines it as \"the space over the Earth where the sun, moon, stars, and clouds appear,\" while the [OED](_URL_3_) calls it \"The region of the atmosphere and outer space seen from the earth\", and [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) says \"everything that lies above the surface of the Earth, including the atmosphere and outer space.\" All of those seem to imply that the sky includes any part of outer space we can see, which makes the answer equal to the volume of the visible universe (minus the volume of Earth, but that's probably not significant). This makes sense, since we tend to say things like \"as many as the stars in the night sky.\"\n\nThis turns out to be around [4.35x10^32 cubic light years](_URL_2_), or 3.68x10^80 cubic meters, but since it's growing all the time, it might be endless.", "As a physicist, what I would interpret as \"the sky\" is akin to the last scattering surface - i.e. the spatial location where it looks like the sky is.\n\nThe important thing about this is that it looks like a surface. It's 2D and the volume of a 2D object doesn't make sense to ask about.\n\nIt all depends on what we mean by \"the sky\".", "Not mentioned here yet: the mass of the sky.\n\nAssuming by \"sky\" you mean the Earth's atmosphere, its mass is roughly [5,000,000,000,000,000 tons](_URL_0_).  It's roughly equal in weight to the top 15 meters (50 feet) of the Earth's oceans.\n\nYour sister's \"dreams as big as the endless sky\" aren't truly endless, just a tiny chunk of the whole world, but even that's dreaming pretty damn big."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky", "http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sky", "http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14613/what-is-the-volume-of-the-universe", "https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sky"], [], ["http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(1+atmosphere\\)+*+(surface+area+of+earth\\)+%2F+earth+gravity"]]}
{"q_id": "5hxwqz", "title": "Would a black hole's accretion disk actually glow?", "selftext": "Is this realistic or just popularised by Interstellar? If so, why would it glow? Presumably it wouldn't be able to sustain fusion in the manner of a star?\n\nThanks", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5hxwqz/would_a_black_holes_accretion_disk_actually_glow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db3zsuu"], "score": [10], "text": ["Yes, it glows! It's not fusing anything, but everything hot and optically thick glows! I glow, you glow, your stove-top glows, the Earth glows, a flaming armadillo glows in a couple different ways...\n\nThat glow is called \"blackbody radiation\" (it's also called \"incandescence\" in some high school physical science textbooks I've seen, but that's very...19th century). The hotter something is, the shorter the wavelengths of the light is where it emits the most power. That's why when you turn on a stovetop burner, the glow moves from infrared that you can't see, to shorter wavelength infrared that you still can't see but can start to feel on your skin, to a dull-red color, to a bright orange. \n\nWhen accretion disks are in an optically thick state (they aren't always), then the inner-most regions emit blackbody radiation in the X-rays! The outer disk glows in the optical and infrared wavelengths. The further in you go, the more energetic the light that comes out. When the disk is in the right state, you can even measure how close to the black hole the accretion disk gets by seeing how far inwards the thermal emission goes by looking for where the blackbody curves stop adding up (usually in the hard X-ray). Since the innermost stable circular orbit is influenced by the spin of the black hole, you can even use these measurements to put constraints on the black hole spin in a robust way.\n\nThe black hole in *Interstellar* was a supermassive black hole with maximal spin, and they gave it a fairly puny accretion disk coming from, I presume, accretion from the interstellar medium around it. Kip Thorne is almost certainly going to win a Nobel prize next year along with some others in the LIGO collaboration, he knows what he's about and made sure the black hole was physically very accurate (outside the event horizon, anyway.)\n\nI can literally talk about this subject for hours without stopping, so I'll just go ahead and cut myself off here. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2c4zmh", "title": "why do fight scenes in older movies look so fake compared to newer movies? isn't it just choreography? not cgi (mostly).", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c4zmh/eli5_why_do_fight_scenes_in_older_movies_look_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjbzqs9", "cjc11fl", "cjc1a7g", "cjc42xw", "cjc46n8", "cjc8ynj", "cjc90d8"], "score": [68, 11, 7, 8, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because that was good enough for audiences of the day.\n\nMost people have little exposure to real fighting, and up until the 60's, the only martial art they were likely to have seen was boxing.  Movies followed these expectations, and most fights were stand up punching.\n\nWith the rise of the Hong Kong movie industry, and martial arts stars like Bruce Lee, audience expectations changed.  Stand up punching seemed slow and ponderous, so it was necessary to mix in some more sophisticated fighting.\n\nAlso, the way audiences viewed their movie heros changed.  You used to have John Wayne cowboy type leads, who were better than everyone else by virtue of being special.  He won his fight because he was always stronger, tougher, and luckier than mere supporting roles, that all the reason the audience needed.\n\nToday's heroes are usually a little more nuanced.  If they are going to win a fight against a bigger, stronger opponent, the movie has to show how he outsmarts or outskills the big lug.", "If you mean older western movies, it's because it's BAD choreography. Watch some old chinese movies and you'll see some frighteningly realistic stuff. Jackie Chan talked about it in some documentary how americans and europeans were completely incapable of staging a good fight scene for most of the 20th century.", "In addition to kouhoutek's great answer, it's also related to technology. Specifically, old films have deteriorated, especially in terms of sound quality. Old films are often poorly rendered into video format for television, and as a result the \"sound design\" is much flatter and less effective than it would have been in a theatrical run of the original movie. Sound actually makes a huge impression on how you perceive action, and can even convince you to \"see\" things that aren't there (like, for example, a punch that would shatter a normal person's skull if it were real).  \n\nAdditionally, modern sound recording and production for films is light years more sophisticated, both in terms of equipment and in terms of technique, than it was in the 40's-70's. Plus, modern sound is recorded with video mastering in mind, so it's already designed to sound good both in the theater and on TV.  \n\n[From Russia With Love](_URL_0_) (1963) had some pretty good fight scenes. All in all this is a very \"realistic\" style of fight choreography of two people chaotically pulling every dirty trick they can to win a fight in the dark. But again, the hokiest thing about this scene is the sound design... not so much the dynamics of volume  &  depth which seem ok in this case, but simply the recorded sounds they used. That one punch to the chin uses a sound that could have come from a cartoon. ", "Hi, I do professional fight choreography.  The last century has seen a lot of innovation in staged violence.  Prior to the advent of film as a medium staged combat was only really used for theater, and the main type of serious violence that plays had been using for centuries was fencing. (pummeling someone would have been more slapstick, and likely would have just used an actual slapstick for the fight)\n\nThis meant that the fight choreographers of the early to mid 1900's were educated in how to put together a sword fight, with any hand to hand combat as a bit of an afterthought.  (there would also be firearms used, but that was more of an armorer's department, rather than a fight choreographer).  \n\nIn the 1900's brawling became the primary way to have physical violence outside of gunplay, as swords were no longer a modern weapon.  Unfortunately we did not have the stage combat \"technology\" to choreograph these fights well.  The blocking techniques used in film also did not lend themselves to good fight scenes.  (the scene of shatner punching the alien: look at how close their heads are to one another, there is no room for a realistic punch)  In film people's faces are generally closer than people naturally get to each other, so that they can both be in the same  frame.\n\nWith the advances in stage violence over the last 60ish years we now have some good western brawler choreography styles to use for knock-down drag-out fights, which also works well for simulating domestic violence, and we have a new generation of fight choreographers who can do a brawl as well as they can do a sword duel.", "Not sure if someone added this. But the new standard of quick cutting and camera shaking makes fight scenes appear more intense then they are a lot of the times ", "How can you even compare them with as many times as they change the camera angles these days?\n\nWhile kinda on topic, why so many dark scenes? In the old days I can understand. Maybe to help cover mistakes, and to make up for lack of resources at the time.\n\nBut these days? Sure let's go see a movie that'll probably give us motion sickness, if they ever turn up the lights enough to see what's going on.\n\nDirectors using those 2 tricks are pathetic.", "Have you seen James Caan as \"Sonny Corleone\" beating up his brother-in-law in \"the Godfather\"? THAT was some convincing butt-kicking!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DrMdQhz53Q"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qfyuh", "title": "if i fill a vessel with 1/2 oil 1/2 water will the oil covering the water prevent evaporation?", "selftext": "edit: yes it will!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qfyuh/eli5_if_i_fill_a_vessel_with_12_oil_12_water_will/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cweso6e", "cweuki9", "cwewitg", "cwf6510", "cwfz11a"], "score": [109, 11, 13, 4, 3], "text": ["Yes.  This is actually how some of those fancy no-flush urinals work: your pee sinks below a layer of oil, so it won't evaporate and stink up the place.", "Yes!  \n\nThis is how you can keep the basement in your house from smelling like sewer gas.  A lot of times the water in the trap of your floor drain will evaporate, allowing that lovely sewer smell in.  \n\nPut a little mineral oil in the drain in you'll prevent the water from evaporating.  ", "Yes.  This is how early preservation worked as well.  Pemmican is dried meat covered in fat.  The fat stops the meat from going bad.  The stuff stays good practically forever. ", "The actual answer to this question more complicated than yes or no.  Will it prevent evaporation no.  Will it reduce evaporation, yes, almost to the point where it completely prevents it.  There are a couple ways for evaporation to occur under this circumstance, but just to give one example the oil itself does partially evaporate and gets replenished by the water underneath at a very, very slow rate.  just because two liquids do not mix mechanically does not mean they do not mix chemically but it does mean they will have a much much slower and smaller chemical reaction due to the lack of *surface area contact*.", "Some people keep mosquitoes from breeding in standing water by pouring diesel fuel (or any other oil) on top of the water. It really works, the larvae get in the oil and smother, they can't breathe through it.\n\nBTW, this question, it's one of those rare ELI5's where you can easily do the relevant experiment at home!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ajiukj", "title": "Do light bulbs/leds care if the voltage is ac or dc?", "selftext": "When it comes to lights, like bulbs of leds, does it matter if the voltage is ac or dc, as it\u2019s just a resistance wire, would there be a difference?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ajiukj/do_light_bulbsleds_care_if_the_voltage_is_ac_or_dc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eewa9d4"], "score": [20], "text": ["Traditional incandescent lights don't care. In fact you will get very similar brightness if you give them 120 volts AC, and 120 DC. LEDs are a completely different story. A single LED typically wants somewhere around 2 volts DC across it (how much voltage it wants depends on its colour), and the amount of current it wants through it varies wildly, anywhere from a few milliamps to a few amps (i.e. 1000x difference). Because of this, LEDs, especially high power ones, need controlled current sources to power them. LED lightbulbs that you screw into your traditional light fittings already have the circuitry that steps 120/240 volt AC down so some DC voltage, and then deliver a controlled current through the LEDs. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6gfk75", "title": "Were any \"military comedies\" ever made by film companies of the Axis powers prior to or during WWII?", "selftext": "Hollywood made numerous [\"service comedies\"](_URL_0_) about life in the Armed Services during and just before WWII, mostly set during training with little if any combat onscreen. I've have searched for yet not found anything similar made in Germany, Italy or Japan, but would be fascinated to see one if it exists, especially a German or Japanese one.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gfk75/were_any_military_comedies_ever_made_by_film/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diq3gco", "diqh1hw", "dir6mbh"], "score": [17, 40, 2], "text": ["Follow up question. Would it have been legal to do so in Germany?", "Under the Nazi regime, the film industry became a very controlled enterprise. From June 1933, all cast and crew in Germany had to be licensed by the state and all films approved at every stage of production. By 1937 the industry had effectively been nationalised with the giant UFA forming the core of the business.\n\nWhile there were notable propaganda films such as *Jud S\u00fc\u00df* (Veit Harlan, 1940), *The Eternal Jew* (Fritz Hippler, 1940) and Leni Riefenstahl's seminal masterpiece documentaries *The Triumph of the Will* (1935) and *Olympia* (1936), these were in the minority. They are the best known German films of the era, but when Goebbels set the Nazi film policy, he prioritised entertainment over Nazi politics. In contrast to the Soviet Union, film was to be used to maintain public morale rather than to indoctrinate the population. Indeed, *Robert  &  Bertram* (Hans Heinz Zerlett, 1939) was the only anti-semitic musical comedy ever produced under the Third Reich, the exception in what was otherwise a highly popular genre. \n\nThat's not to say that Nazi cinema in the 1930s was untouched by \"light\" or subtextual propagandising in every film, with situations and characters conforming to Nazi values such as a nuclear family, honesty and ingenuity. Particularly as the war progressed it became more fervent, with the disaster in *Titanic* (Herbert Selpin / Werner Klingler, 1943) being directly caused by English and American capitalist greed at the expense of the noble yet poor European victims.\n\nBut the goal of Goebbels was to provide an evening's escapist entertainment. As such, films about the military are relatively uncommon; when war is confronted (of course with Germanic or Aryan characters in the heroic roles) it is most often through the veil of time, such as the Napoleonic war or Seven Years' War. Or, for those in modern settings like *Three Sergeants* (Werner Hochbaum, 1939), the focus is on the characters' private lives rather than on war glories.\n\nMilitary Comedies wouldn't fit in to the German cinema of the time, where comedies were mostly farces or comedies of errors. They were intended to draw attention away from military matters, so it would defeat the point to have characters in military situations.", "This is not related to the film industry but the Wehrmacht did have other ways to utilize humor.  The official Tiger and Panther tank manuals included funny/risqu\u00e9 situations.  This was mixed with technical information.\n\n\"The illustrations in the Tigerfibel were done by Obergrenadier Gessinger and Unteroffizier Wagner. These included allegorical sketches, technical drawings, photographs and cartoons. The cartoons often involved an attractive blonde woman named Elvira who frequently found herself without any clothes or in a romantic setting with cartoon Tiger crewman. The Tigerfibel also contained many short, memorable verses and limericks referred to as \u201cmorals\u201d or \u201cmottos\u201d. All of this was done to capture and hold the attention of the fledgling trainees.\"\n\nImages in the link are NSFW\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?genre=military+comedy&amp;decade=1940"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.alanhamby.com/tigerfibel.shtml"]]}
{"q_id": "1dm4pz", "title": "why are there so many people (grown-ups) struggeling with depression?", "selftext": "It feels like everyone here is either depressed, was depressed or knows someone who is depressed. Why are there so many sad people in the world? This is hard to understand for a five year old.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dm4pz/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_people_grownups/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9rmgwj", "c9rmqds", "c9rmv0l", "c9rn10v", "c9rog71"], "score": [16, 9, 12, 32, 3], "text": ["Being depressed is not at all like being sad, while a 5 year old might not see the difference it is pretty clear to anyone that suffers from depression that they are not quite the same. About the only thing you can tell a 5 year old is that a person suffering from depression has a brain that is telling them to be depressed. Sometimes medications help to make it harder for the brain to tell them to be depressed.\n\nThat said, there are basically two types of depression, there is situational depression (and this usually has a large component of sadness with it) and there is chronic depression which is not really a \"sadness\" as much as a feeling of apathy and a lack of motivation. Brain chemistry is a very complicated and while we know a lot about what is happening, there is still much we do not know, so medications involve a lot of trial and error. ", "There is evidence that depression is quite over diagnosed and over medicated.  (_URL_0_)  So, really, there may not be \"so many people\" with depression at all.  Everyone who is depressed is unhappy, but not everyone who is unhappy is depressed. ", "Depression isn't regular sadness. It's a disease.\n\nThe same way that you can have some sort of stomach or lung or heart disease, you can have brain diseases, where your brain doesn't work quite right.\n\nNow, like I said before, depression isn't like being very sad. Think of it this way: most days, you have loads of good bits, and bad bits, yeah? Depending on the balance of the good and the bad, you'll say you had a good, or a bad day. Now imagine that I selectively dull your capacity to feel the good parts of the day. Most days will, on balance, be bad. That's depression, in a nutshell. It's not necessarily that you feel things are especially bad, it's just that you have a lot of trouble feeling that the good makes up for it.", "Well Billy, it's like this...\n\nWhen you're young, being an adult seems like a really great thing. You get to have car, live in your own place, stay up as long as you want, eat whatever you like, and there's all that naughty stuff you're not allowed to do as a kid.\n\nBut the thing is... all of those things cost money. And to have money, you usually have to work for it. Not everyone gets be what \"they want to be when they grow up\". Lots of jobs require schooling or knowing certain people, and those things can cost a lot of money too. You don't really have to worry about money at your age, but the lives of adults revolve around money, for the most part.\n\nCars are expensive, not just to buy, but to keep. You've got to keep gas in them, have them registered and insured, do regular maintenance so they keep working... Even if your car is just sitting in your driveway doing nothing, it still technically costs you money.\n\nHaving a place of your own is like that too. Sure, you can leave your clothes and toys wherever you like, but you've got to pay rent, or a mortgage, or property taxes. You've also got to pay for utilities so you have water and electricity. If you want nicer things like cable TV, the internet or a cell phone, you've got to pay for all of those as well, every month. You may have lots of toys and clothes and furniture, but if you don't pay the monthly costs of having a place to keep them in.. you're not going to have them for very long.\n\nBut you can eat whatever you like, whenever you like. This is also sort of a problem. If you have poor metabolism, poor impulse control or other biological issues, you may give yourself health problems by being careless about what you eat. You could get fat, or get diabetes. You might have problems with dairy products or gluten, but if you've never been properly diagnosed, you may just be suffering with being gassy or congested after eating your favorite foods. So, if you eat too much of whatever you like, you may soon find yourself not able to eat what you like, and that can be distressing.\n\nBut you can stay up as long as you want! However, if you have a job to pay the many bills associated with being an adult, you most likely have to get up at a certain time to go to work. That means.. you're going to lose out on sleep, and feel awful the next day, if you stay up too late. And if you keep doing that, it's going to affect your job performance. And then your job might fire you. Which means you can't afford to keep your nice things. So you really should go to bed at a regular time.\n\nBut hey, there's all that good naughty stuff. Drinking, recreational drugs, sex, porn...  Except, too much of any of these things can outright kill you. Drinking can destroy your body over time if you have too much, and so can drugs. Sex generally won't, but... there's a lot of sickness that can be passed around by sex if you're not careful. And they can be far worse than any cold or flu you've ever had. Those sicknesses can kill you too, so you should be careful who you have sex with. Porn won't ruin your life, persay, but it can give you the wrong idea and expectations about sex with a real person.. and that can kind of ruin your fun.\n\nKids have a lot of time to do fun things. Lots of times, nice family members will help buy you things to keep you entertained or fuel your hobbies. Adults don't have as much time, and rarely do people buy things for us if it's not a special occasion. That means we often have less hobbies, particularly if we work a lot. And we get even less time to have personal hobbies when we start having relationships and families. Those things often take lots of time and effort to get right. \n\nAdults know all these things. It doesn't make us sad, so much as it gives us a sense of stress. This stress makes some people irritable and angry, it leaves others feeling tired and run down. Lots of people distract from this stress of adulthood by watching a lot of TV, playing a lot of video games, reading a lot of books or drinking.\n\nSome adults try to change all this by appealing to management and government. Not *every* country has it quite like we do. Some are better, some are worse. Some have more vacation days, some have none. Some are paid more on average, some are not. Some places don't have paid schooling, which makes learning what you want to do much easier, but those places may also have more difficult job markets to get into. But just like every person, businesses and governments have their own idea of what would be best.\n\nIt's a long, drawn out series of arguments for how to improve this system so things aren't so expensive and people have more time to enjoy themselves, rather spending most of their time working to merely support themselves. But because our management systems are complicated and our government seems to fight amongst themselves rather than listening to the majority of the people they represent, it often seems like the situation is never going to improve.\n\nThat's part of why people are depressed, Billy.\n\nAnd that's all without mentioning the wars and the suffering and the poverty in countries other than our own, places we would like to help because they're people just like us... but we're too busy struggling to get by ourselves, to really help them as much as we'd like.\n\nGrown up life is hard, Billy. I'm sorry.", "I read somewhere (I know, but I really forgot where), that one hypothesis for the rise in clinical depression is that there is a severe lack of sunlight exposure.  Also, the American diet which subsidizes grains may have something to do with it (something about what is metabolized and the omega 6:omega 3 ratio)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/05/01/study-depression-may-be-overdiagnosed-and-overtreated/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8c8gbj", "title": "Is there a statistically significant difference in any variable depending on the season of the year you were born?", "selftext": "Like a stronger immune system? A higher likelihood of having certain traits?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8c8gbj/is_there_a_statistically_significant_difference/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxe1w45", "dxfkm8x", "dxh8dku"], "score": [7, 3, 2], "text": ["This is more sociological than biological, but there is something called the Relative Age Effect where the arbitrary dates placed on age groups for youth sports leads to children born towards the earlier dates to be more successful and likely to become professional than the kids born later in the date range. \n\nFor example if you have a youth hockey league with teams based on kids born in each year, starting with kids born in the year 2012 (just for example) the kids born close to January will have about a year's growth mentally and physically more than the kids born in December, and will see more playtime and get more experience in games. The effect diminishes with age, for example [this study](_URL_0_) found very little evidence of the effect among Canadian NHL players (contrary to the popularly cited book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, which brings it up)", "There was a study done in Africa where they monitored the life span and health of individuals. They found that people lived longer when they were born in a certain time of the year. The later concluded that this was due to the harvest been present when the mother was carrying the child so nutrients from veg and other sources were absorbed in the early stage of pregnancy", "Seasonality is a strong predictor of air pollution (its higher in winter) and we now know that pregnant mothers exposed to air pollution can transfer some of it to their developing babies, so in a round about way, season can potentially change things like neurodevelopment through air pollution as a mediator."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4035396/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5j30ge", "title": "what is pus and what function does it serve in healing wounds?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j30ge/eli5_what_is_pus_and_what_function_does_it_serve/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbcyqhh", "dbd5ees", "dbd6qa8", "dbd7q68", "dbd8bip", "dbd9p0s", "dbd9rjp", "dbd9y1h", "dbda7om", "dbdb8j2", "dbdc3hd", "dbdc53z", "dbdcupf", "dbdd4gz", "dbdd6ci", "dbddw7o", "dbddygq", "dbde0d4", "dbdfcz6", "dbdhvbg", "dbdk4xx", "dbdkbc1", "dbdlvt8", "dbdn2y0", "dbdnekv", "dbdq9k8", "dbdyz7v"], "score": [3692, 74, 7, 198, 330, 551, 26, 4, 33, 6, 11, 2, 3, 32, 4554, 2, 9, 14, 3, 3, 4, 24, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["It's basically formed of dead white blood cells. When you get a wound that ends up being infected your body sends loads of white blood cells to target and eat the bacteria. Many of the white blood cells end up dying either due to old age or because the bacteria release chemicals that kill them. \n\nSo it doesn't serve a 'function' so much as it is a by-product of some types of bacterial (or fungal) infection.", "I would say pus is more of an outcome than a function, it is mostly made up of dead white blood cells which are the result of your body trying to fight an infection.", "Is this the same thing for a cyst or a zit or pimple? ", "Pus is a mixture of bacteria, toxic proteins, dead tissue, and white blood cells. It's basically what's left after your body fights off an infection. In most cases the body will absorb the pus and dispose of it, but in some cases it can form an isolated abscess which the body cannot drain on its own.", "It's like the cleanup after the war. You don't want any dead bodies lying around cuz then people would get sick. So you all put the corpses in one place and seal it off from the rest of the community. No one gets sick. And some outside force should drain the deadpool or else the dam might break and infect everyone. ", "Like many said, it doesn't aid in wound healing. It is a by-product of your body fighting an infection and can actually inhibit wound healing. \n\nToo much pus can cause a wound to get stuck in the Inflammation Stage of wound healing. The dead bacteria ( if gram -) release endotoxins and there are other inflammatory chemicals and whatnot floating around which don't help to heal the wound. \nTrapped pus can form an abscess~~, and sometimes a cyst~~ when your body tries to wall off the infection. \n\nAlso, wounds heal best in a moist environment. Too much pus and other liquids (called exudate) can lead to the breakdown of the surrounding healthy skin. \n\nEdit: thanks u/cclugston13 for correcting me about cysts... I know mostly about chronic wounds, not so much other health related things.\n\nFor those curious about moist wound healing- google up Dr. George Winter. This approach is used for many chronic wounds and is very successful. \nHealthy individuals with small wounds generally don't need this type of wound environment to heal, but it would still help it heal faster, but healthy people heal so fast that it really is more trouble than it's worth. Neosporin plus band-aid is generally *too much* moisture and leads to maceration- the breakdown of healthy skin (when your skin starts turning white and wrinkly). \n\nSource: product development specialist for wound dressing company.", "Follow up: why is some pus gooey and gross and other pus hard?", "Pus is dead white blood cells. It indicates an infection because there are white blood cells present (an immune response). ", "Not a doctor or anything, but I want to add that pus surrounds whatever the offending foreign body is. This allows it to be ejected from the body... Think popping a pimple. \n\nI once brushed my bare foot by a wicker basket. My toe hurt to walk on for weeks afterwards, but it looked normal. One day I squeezed it for a while and eventually out came a sliver of wicker. Hadn't even realized the connection until that point. My foot felt normal after that. Thank you pus. ", "Follow up: Then why do we have pimples with puss on our face from eating junk? I wouldnt think our body is fighting any infection there?", "It's formed by white blood cells kamikazi-ing into bacteria and then the lumps forming together", "Maggots clean wounds, right? Wonder if that would hurt. Yuck.", "To be extremely blunt, it serves no purpose in healing wounds as anything other than a byproduct. Pus is, very simply, a bunch of goo that is made up of dead things that your body killed and some of the white blood cells that killed them.", "Pus is dead neutrophils (a type of white blood cell). They are one of the first to arrive at the scene of injury. They release cytokines to attract other white blood cells to the scene and thus amplify the immune response. Not only are they the first to respond, but they are also the first to die. When they die, they become pus! The yellow-greenish color comes from the copper in the neutrophils.", "The comments about pus being a byproduct of infection and inflammation are quite right, although it's worth remembering that the creation of pus is specifically related to clearing infection from the body. White blood cells are attracted to the site of disease through processes like chemotaxis (migrating to sites that have high levels of chemicals either released by bacteria, or released by other white blood cells), and pus is formed as they engulf bacteria and then lyse/destroy them. All of the dead blood cells, bacteria and other breakdown products are what form pus (and by weight it's almost all white blood cells).\n\nLike most processes relating to infection, you can have too much of a good thing, and while the inflammatory response is necessary for healing, pus building up to the visible levels the OP is thinking of is a sign that infection is not under control. If pus collects into an abscess, it's best to drain it away - even if you are on antibiotics, the pH changes considerably in the middle of an abscess, and antibiotics may not penetrate to the middle or work as well.\n\nThe belief that pus was necessary to healing is an old one, so the question is common - \"laudable pus\" was though to be a good part of healing and so encouraged until fairly recently in medical history!\n\nSource: infectious diseases physician.", "The function of pus in a healing wound is, apparently, to make YouTube videos that so many sick bastards (myself included front and centre) seem to like.", "The green colour of pus comes from the enzyme myeloperoxidase, abundant in neutrophils: white blood cells that travel to inflamed tissues and attack bacteria. \n\nAdvia blood analysers use myeloperoxidade to count neutrophils. I pity anyone that uses one of those piles of crap and has to deal with the arrogant reps. Gold standard white cell differential, my arse!", "OK. I'm going to actually explain this to a small child. \n\nThe pus is there because when you get a cut there's bad germs and your body sends special white blood cells to the germs to kill it and keep your body safe. Then when the special white blood cells finish their job they turn into the pus. ", "Puss is the bodies of the fallen solders your body sends to fight infection.  Specifically, puss is the build up of dead white blood cells.", "5 is a little early to learn about da puss, isn't it?", "Its a combination of whiteblood cells macrophages and bacteria. The white blood cells and macrophages are attracted to the site of infection. If its small and just bacteria they essentially consume the bacteria and are excreted through the wound or into the pore. If its caused by a larger issue such as a foreign body they surround it and consume the bacteria forming a barrier to help prevent further infection entering the tissue and blood. Puss and blood can also form a scab on the surface of wounds which helps prevent more bacteria from entering the wound. \n\n\nIm a nurse. Its a basic understanding. I learnt way more in bio101 but tbh I've never needed a more in depth understanding of that particular mechanism. ", "If you think of your immune system as your body's military, pus is basically a battlefield after a battle -- it's a giant pile of the corpses of white blood cells (your body's soldiers) and the bacteria they were sent to fight. It's indicative that your body's military force is intervening and taking care of the problem, but if the pile of corpses gets too big, that might indicate that your side is getting overwhelmed by the bacteria. ", "Puss is the bodies of the fallen solders your body sends to fight infection. Specifically, puss is the build up of dead white blood cells.", "A medical practice that should be considered more often is sterile maggot abridement in active infected open wounds. Wound cleansing by maggots is precise, sterile, and works 24/7 under special bandages.", "I recently was bit by a feral child at work. It broke the skin. Pus came out a couple days later. Cool story, Hansel. ", "A few years ago I was swimming in the sea in Croatia when I slammed my hand into a big sea urchin, covered in hundreds of brittle spines. Hurt like hell, couldn't get them out. Next day I was contemplating hospital or doctor treatment but I was on an island off another island so I left it. Anyway, it got red and infected on the third day and, due to the build up of a tiny bit of pus around each spine, I was able to squeeze them all out and it was like new the day after. Bodies are well designed.", "If pathogens are the bad guys and white blood cells are the good guys, pus is the dead bodies of both of them after/ during the fight. White blood cells work by basically eating pathogens, but if the infection is very wide spread the will eat until they gorge themselves until they burst. When they burst they release partially digested pathogens back into the system that are less infectious that what they originally ate. That is basically what pus is. Now this is like on a cellular level and cells are tiny. If you can see like a little bit of pus, like a zit, you can imagine that this is millions of white blood cell remains. Generally speaking if the \"war\" is going this wide spread, the infection is pretty serious. You have to imagine white blood cells like policemen picking up little pathogens here and there all over your body all the time, so when you have a large concentrated area of large infection like a wound or something like a clogged pour, especially one clogged with a foreign object like a tiny rock or piece of dust, your body sends tons of white blood cells into fight the long fight. And that long fight definitely racks up a toll. Pus is the evidence of the wars toll and is generally an indication that the war is both very big and not exactly winning/ won yet, only on going with many large battles still on going. This is why generally if a wound has pus it is considered very serious because it's an indication that your body is fighting as hard as it can to fight the infection and struggling. This is why you treat cuts and scrapes with antibiotics like alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, etc. to prevent things from ever getting to this stage. It's also very hard on your body to have your immune system in like war mode for an extended period of time. Basically you are fighting the infection and pathogens on the outside of your body while your immune system fights it on the inside so the bad guys are fighting a war on two fronts. Your lymph nodes only have so much capacity to make white blood cells and it's important to note that even if your body is fighting a big war with an infection in your body, it's also still policing your body like normal too. If the fight is too long and hard somethings going to give, either your body won't be able to fight the existing infection and start losing ground or more commonly small infections your body would have been able to fight easily will now be too difficult to stop from growing by your over taxed immune system. Think of it like finals week when your procrastinate on your term papers until the last week of classes then a class throws a pop quiz at you that you can't study for because you've been putting all your time into your term papers you put off too long."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4j0zbd", "title": "Did many of the lands in the British Empire have a sense of how relatively small Britain was?", "selftext": "India, for example, or Australia, or take your pick. Would they have known that Britain is, relatively, fairly small? How did that knowledge, or lack thereof, impact the level of success the British Empire had?   \nI know this isn't a sub for theoretical history; so the idea of \"could that have changed Britain's success\" doesn't belong. I'm just wondering if the conquered lands knew that the size of Britain and were ok with it, or was that not really a factor in any case?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j0zbd/did_many_of_the_lands_in_the_british_empire_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d33h8pb"], "score": [28], "text": ["India and Austrialia are relatively later ventures, but one person with an infamously firm grasp of just how small the British Isles were was American independence supporter Thomas Paine. His pamphlet, titled *Common Sense*, was arguably *the* piece of literature which sparked revolutionary fervor in the Thirteen Colonies. I could summarize his viewpoints, but Thomas Paine says it as well as I ever could.\n\n > ...if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which when obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness\u2014There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.\n\n > **Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.** In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself. \n\nI don't know as much about the history of Canada/Australia/India/South Africa/any other particularly large British colony, but these themes of 'a continent perpetually governed by an island' - one of the most famous quotes in Paine's text - could easily be extrapolated onto any of those, especially India and Australia which are still sometimes considered continental landmasses in a way the U.S. never was."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5jf3u5", "title": "why do corporations who cause deaths only get fined, but people get imprisoned?", "selftext": "Why is it, if a corporation causes deaths through gross negligence, they only get fined, but, if a person did the exact same thing, they would be charged with manslaughter and imprisoned?\n\nSpecific (theoretical) example: If a company failed to check and enforce safety regulations regarding the securing of unstable large objects and one fell down and killed people, the company would be fined. But if a person fails to properly secure materials they are transporting on their car and some falls off and kills people, they get charged with manslaughter.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jf3u5/eli5why_do_corporations_who_cause_deaths_only_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbfms5v", "dbfmu21", "dbfmw5a", "dbfo6ju", "dbfsvqs", "dbg6sa3", "dbgb3in"], "score": [27, 13, 13, 4, 26, 2, 2], "text": ["To some extent it's a matter of scale and sadly, cost.\n\nWho do you put in jail? The people who marketed the product? People who developed it? Management? Upper management? CEO? For a corporation of 1000+ people, how much does it cost to conduct a thorough investigation to determine the difference between indifference, competence, and true criminal negligence?\n\nIn cases where companies knew something was dangerous and sold it anyways, a lot of times this information comes out decades later as scientific and medical knowledge advances. Sometimes it's outside the statute of limitations, and investigations in general are much more difficult years down the line.", "If it was negligence to the point of illegality then people could very well be arrested and imprisoned.  _URL_0_\n\nHowever, corporations do stuff that is dangerous and accidents happen.  If they follow the rules, accidents can still happen.  \n", "There really isn't a way to \"imprison\" a company.  And, at least in the U.S., companies can really only be convicted of crimes if some individual committed a crime (and that individual is usually punished).\n\nThere are places that have a \"corporate death penalty\" where the assets of a company are seized when the company is convicted of a crime, but that's not necessarily better than just fining the company proportionate to the crime it committed. (If you were the victim's family, would you rather the company be seized by the state or the company pay you money for your harm?)\n\n\n", "I'm studying criminology at the moment. A substantial part of the course that I'm studying is on the relationship between *power* and the definition of crime.\n\nIt's argued that those with power can influence the definition of crime in order to preserve their own interests. For (hypothetical) example, in the war on drugs, the government may decide to be particularly punitive to dealers who sell dangerous drugs to university students. As most of these dealers don't have much of a voice (what with being outlaws) this law will be unopposed. If the same government decides to extend the mandatory length of testing for a new antidepresent, following reports of student suicides, there's likely to be a lot of money thrown at the campaign and lobby groups to get them to reconsider.  So we consider one drug related death as a clear crime, whereas the other is never really criminalised, so can't be punished. \n\nEdit: or at least that's what I've gathered so far. I'm only about three months in to a year long course. ", "A corporation is an intangible concept. It's not possible to throw it in prison; the concept doesn't even make sense. All a company has are assets, employees, and activities, not a body. You can seize assets (i.e. fining them). You can restrict its activities (but see below). You can't just jail employees, because you can't jail anyone who didn't *personally* do something wrong.\n\nAs for fines vs. restricting activities, there's not a whole lot you can do to punish a company by restricting its activities that won't just kill it. If you suspend corporate operations for a year, every employee will have found a new job by the end of that year and the company is gone. If you bar a company from competing in its market, it'll likely go bankrupt (and again, employees will tend to jump ship). ", "Companies can be and are charged with manslaughter.   If convicted they can be fined, or shut down.  They can't be imprisoned, because the physical embodiment is a certificate locked in some lawyer's filing cabinet.  What are you going to, lock it in a different filing cabinet?", "How would you propose to imprison a corporation?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Construction-CEO-Arrested-At-SFO-In-Death-Of-Worker-281391831.html"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "92dh11", "title": "Are the quarks in a Proton in a constant superposition of the 8 color-charge states or do they have definite colors?", "selftext": "Since (to my knowledge), there are 8 color states that any given quark can be in, are these states ever fixed in place, or rather, definitive, or is each of the three quarks making up any given proton always in a superposition of these color-states due to interactions with the gluon field?\n\nAssuming they are always in superposition, is there any way we could destroy that coherence to create a definite triplet of color-states, and if so, would any specific configuration cause observable differences in that proton's outward behaviour? i.e. Would protons compromised of quarks which differed only in color act the same?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/92dh11/are_the_quarks_in_a_proton_in_a_constant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e350z7y", "e357a3r"], "score": [4, 14], "text": ["The 8 colour states are for gluons, not quarks.", "As others have pointed out, there are eight color states of gluons and three color states of quarks (plus three more color states for antiquarks). \n\nQuarks can't exist as free particles. If you try to pull one quark out of a proton, the binding energy increases until a new quark-antiquark pair is produced. That's why they're called color charges. All free [hadrons](_URL_6_) (composite particles made of quarks) must be \"white\" (red+green+blue, red+antired, blue+antiblue, etc.). However, quarks and gluons have a property called [asymptotic freedom](_URL_2_), which means that at very high energies, or at very short length or time scales, they can behave as free particles.\n\nThe result is that hadrons behave as if they are composed of a few *valence quarks* plus a *sea* of quarks and gluons. [Baryons](_URL_4_) (like protons and neutrons) have three valence quarks and [mesons](_URL_5_) (like [pions](_URL_0_)) have one valence quark and one valence antiquark. The valence quarks determine the quantum numbers of the hadron, like charge, spin, baryon number, and so on. The sea quarks and gluons are essentially invisible from the outside. Their presence and behavior really only becomes visible in things like [deep inelastic scattering](_URL_1_) (particle collisions that are high enough energy that you start \"pushing into\" the interior structure of the hadrons). The number of sea quarks and gluons is undefined. It's constantly changing as they pop in and out of existence.\n\nAll that to say that, since the color of any free hadron must be white (a [color charge](_URL_3_) of zero), the valence quarks of a hadron are, indeed, in a superposition of all possible color combinations. There is no experiment that can be done to determine the color of one of the quarks *without changing the state of the hadron*, which is essentially the defining characteristic of a superposition of quantum states."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pion", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_freedom", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron"]]}
{"q_id": "b4wi5m", "title": "What happened to all of the jewelry and royal accoutrements owned by Elizabeth I?", "selftext": " I\u2019ve always wondered how very powerful and famous persons posessions disappear.  I was thinking about Elizabeth I specifically, as was known to have lots of fancy items but only one ring survives that I know of (but any royalty begs the same question). What happened to all the other things like her necklaces and and rings? It seems like those things would be handed down... where does the jewelry end up when royalty passes on and how does it go \u201cmissing\u201d?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b4wi5m/what_happened_to_all_of_the_jewelry_and_royal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejab1qj"], "score": [24], "text": ["At her death, Elizabeth I had thousands of garments in her wardrobe, so it was assumed for some time that she never gave anything away. But, in fact, it was quite common for her to offer courtiers pieces of her own clothing (or new clothing made for them) in order to express her continued favor in a cycle of gift-giving that reinforced personal bonds between the monarch and her subjects. Receiving a gown that had been worn by the queen was significant because it was worth a very large amount of money, and also because of its having been personally owned and used by her. The enormous wardrobe she left behind reflects not just royal excess in personal adornment, but also the many gifts she received and her need to give gifts to others.\n\nThe wardrobe was inherited by her successors, James (I) Stuart and Anne of Denmark, and Anne had many of the gowns updated and altered to fit her. This has been interpreted by some as parsimoniousness, perhaps in part due to an anti-Scot prejudice - but it was very, very normal, even for the elite, to make over older clothes. Fabric was incredibly expensive and was understood as a sort of investment for just this purpose. Anne is supposed to have said at first that she would not wear \"cast clothes\" (that is, someone else's cast-offs), but they were simply too good to waste. Other pieces were held onto longer and given out to be turned into costumes for court masques.\n\nThere isn't much more to say about this, unfortunately! The English monarchy didn't hang onto garments as museum pieces the way those of some other countries did. Elizabeth herself had a good number of untouched garments of her siblings even as late as 1600 - seven gowns and twelve kirtles of Mary's, and formal robes, riding coats, doublets with matching hose, a dagger, and more that were Edward VI's. I don't believe Elizabeth deliberately retained any of her father's things, but through taking the old London home of the former Duke of Somerset, Anne of Denmark did end up with a number of Henry VIII's garments (formal robes, cloaks, coats, shirts, etc.) which she never did anything with, and after the execution of Charles I they were sold and subsequently lost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2eik0w", "title": "Looking back at it, how accurate/precise were your High/middle-school textbooks in relation to your field of study?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eik0w/looking_back_at_it_how_accurateprecise_were_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjzxu6c", "cjzyyoa", "cjzz9e7"], "score": [14, 6, 9], "text": ["Looking back, the history textbooks I was exposed to during middle and high school seemed to do a pretty decent job of presenting a basic and accurate historical narrative for most events (including the areas I studied in college and post-BA). While they obviously had their faults and gaps, I have a hard time really looking lowly upon them for what their publishers intended for them to be, basic narrative structures to assist the teacher in teaching the lesson/event. \n\nI'd also say that I personally believe that as far as teaching history goes, the textbook isn't nearly as important as the teacher is. Depending on how well the teacher is able to convey the material through lectures and notes, it can make or break whether or not students come away with an accurate yet rudimentary understanding of historical events. It'd be nice if everyone in high school learned the more intricate details of my field of study, but I don't expect that nor think it to be realistic. \n\nI myself did read books like James Lowen's [*Lies My Teacher Told Me*](_URL_0_) while in High School. Books like that certainly helped expand my interest and knowledge of history,  though I was lucky enough to overcome the \"second option bias\" and understand that while many facets of history are far more complicated than they are presented as in grade school, the basic facts and ideas are still presented factually (most of the time).\n\n/u/NMW wrote a pretty good post over at [/r/badhistory](_URL_1_) that discusses the idea of \"second option bias\" that helps give you an idea of what it is and how it can be avoided with good teaching and personal research.", "I mean ... there's just absolutely nothing in HS textbooks about my topic (not specifically shipbuilding, but 18th century navies in general). Weirdly, what I recall from high school is that the battle of the Virginia Capes wasn't even mentioned as being decisive in Cornwallis' defeat; we just got Concord and Lexington, Valley Forge and then suddenly the Americans won, because 'Merica. ", "In my experience: history as it was taught at secondary school (in the UK) bore almost no relation to the discipline I was taught as an undergraduate. The teaching of history at school was focused entirely on *what* happened, communicated entirely by events, dates and individuals. All that learning became almost useless when I got to university and they started approaching history as an interdisciplinary, analytical field concerned with *why* and *how* things happened.\n\nIn my experience, high school history teaching in the UK is guided entirely by survey textbooks, with almost no reference to or discussion of historiography. I don't think a teacher even uttered the *word* 'historiography' until my final year of school. I read history in my own time \u2014 thanks, in large part, to my father and grandfather being historians \u2014 but at school the teaching was so rudimentary that, looking back on it now, it just seems laughable. \n\nEssentially every British student leaves school able to give a rudimentary explanation of how the First World War started, and can parrot some pseudo-analysis about the alliance system, the naval arms race and pan-Slavism. But there's no deeper understanding, and I see that as a real problem: if you teach history as just 'things that happened in the past', you don't give any real sense of relevance. You just create this teleological narrative that misses out all the stuff that is: a) important, and b) *interesting*.\n\nI get that secondary schools have limited time and resources, and have to cater to a wide range of ability levels, so I'm not suggesting every student should be taught about Marxist interpretations of history, or should be forced to learn economic history. But I feel like you should at least teach students that history is an interpretive subject, and that it's about synthesising not just 'evidence' (which you're sort of taught to do, but mostly only with 'evidence' predefined as 'events') but interpretations, and that fundamentally there is no Unified Historical Truth.\n\nThe thing I really love about history as a field of study is that it teaches you to question assumptions, understand and interrogate biases, and to develop and substantiate arguments based on evidence and logical reasoning. But that kind of history isn't what you're taught at school; that's something I only learned at university. I didn't even go to university to study history, initially \u2014 I started out in political science, but transferred after doing some history classes and discovering this whole new intellectual world.\n\n... /endrant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.worldcat.org/title/lies-my-teacher-told-me-everything-your-american-history-textbook-got-wrong/oclc/29877812&amp;referer=brief_results", "http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1pqzx5/objectively_speaking_what_the_nazi_regime_did_is/cd54xw0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "140hy7", "title": "So now that water ice has been confirmed at Mercury's north pole, how feasible would a manned base there (compared to the Moon or Mars) be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/140hy7/so_now_that_water_ice_has_been_confirmed_at/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c78s8rm"], "score": [7], "text": ["It would still be impossible with current technology.  The extreme temperatures alone are a huge deterrent.\n\nMars is pretty cold, and has almost no atmosphere.  In mid-latitudes, temperatures range from about -60\u00b0C to 0\u00b0C .  The Moon has no atmosphere, so there's no air temperature, but surface temperatures range from about -110\u00b0C to 130\u00b0C.  Mercury has very little atmosphere, and has the highest temperature swings of any planet in our solar system, going from about -170\u00b0C to around 430\u00b0C.  So temperature alone would be a nearly insurmountable obstacle.  Based on temperature alone, Mars is probably the best contender.\n\nThe Moon is close to Earth, so it's relatively easy to get there, and one side always faces earth, so communication is relatively easy.  The Earth-Mars distance is obviously greater, and varies largely.  Mercury's closest distance is a little farther than Mars' closest distance.  The Moon is the winner in terms of distance and communication.\n\nIntense solar irradiance also makes Mercury a pretty forbidding place.\n\nSo in terms of feasibility, Mercury isn't really a good place for a manned base.  The presence of water doesn't do much to aid with the harsh environment.\n\nEdit: temperature. (I converted to F instead of C - thanks das_mime)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2lb6hl", "title": "When was the t-shirt created?", "selftext": "Wikipedia states it was sometime between the Spanish-American War and 1913. Why is there such a gap between speculative dates? Were there multiple sources claiming to have first created it around this period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lb6hl/when_was_the_tshirt_created/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cltb4lx"], "score": [30], "text": ["Around the same time as cotton jersey (the material they\u2019re made from) and the knitting machine were invented. The knitting machine dates to 1589 when it was invented by William Lee (1) and by 1598 it had been refined enough to knit finer fibres like silk, to make silk stockings, cotton stockings, and wool. His assistant John Ashton added a divider mechanism that facilitated the process after Lee\u2019s death. \n\nLater, in the 18th century many companies were working to refine the knitting machine to knit with silk, cotton and wool. One of them was the Derby rib, where knits and purls (backwards knit stitch) are alternated, which creates a fabric even more elastic than regular knit. This is just like that stretchy fabric that forms the wrist bands and bottom of clothes like sweatshirts. \n\nT-shirts could have been made as early as 1844 according to this website (2), here\u2019s a knitting machine frame from that era, which knit wide pieces of fabric which would be cut down to make t-shirts, and other underwear. Here\u2019s an image of men\u2019s underwear (3) from that era, made of the same fabric as a t-shirt. The fabric was called Jersey, because it was an export from Jersey in the Channel Islands, but there\u2019s nothing in my skim of sites that attributes that name to more concrete findings. \n\nIn 1916,  Coco Chanel started to use cotton jersey in exterior garments like sweaters, dresses and the like. Keep in mind, then, men wore what we know as tank tops and t-shirts as undershirts, so it would have been viewed as making clothing from a scandalous fabric. \n\n1- _URL_0_\n\n2- _URL_2_\n\n3- _URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3634", "http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/docEX3a04.html?doc=13678&amp;cat=740", "http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/docEX35a5.html?doc=13661&amp;cat=738"]]}
{"q_id": "2qbimw", "title": "why is alcohol withdrawal so intense to the point of being potentially fatal?", "selftext": "I tried to find an answer on google and found plenty on what the symptoms are, but couldn't really find anything on why this is the case.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qbimw/eli5_why_is_alcohol_withdrawal_so_intense_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn4mbdb", "cn4mfq1", "cn4p88z", "cn4r28l", "cn4r3cl", "cn4rh9q", "cn4rhbr", "cn4rqky", "cn4ru5h", "cn4s2ah", "cn4sbxy", "cn4se4z", "cn4th03", "cn4thuq", "cn4vh6m"], "score": [574, 26, 35, 56, 10, 14, 5, 66, 3, 3, 2, 250, 5, 2, 6], "text": ["Ely5 as much as possible: Your body stops making some chemicals in response to constantly having alcohol in your system.  When you suddenly stop drinking,  it takes your body a while to realize it needs to make those chemicals again. The lag time between stopping alcohol and chemical production can be a decent amount of time. That's \"withdrawal\", basically. With alcohol and benzos,  that chemical imbalance can be serious enough to kill you. \n\nEdit; as others have corrected me,  I figured I'd add this for clarity. My post is mostly right,  but backwards.  The brain doesn't stop making chemicals. It makes way too much,  and the alcohol stops the chemicals from working as much. So when you stop drinking,  the brain is still making a ton of stuff,  but it's all working now instead of being blocked by the alcohol. \n\nSorry for the mix up.  My source is a class I took in college a few years ago,  and I remembered the gist of it without the details.  Thanks again for the corrections! \n\nAlso,  as a word of warning, this shit is serious.  When you read that you can die from alcohol or benzo withdrawal, that means YOU CAN DIE. If you or someone you know is trying to get clean off these,  they really should check into a clinic or hospital to be safe.  Or at least have someone with some knowledge really closely monitor symptoms, and be willing to call for an ambulance if need be.\n\nEdit2. Benzos, not barbs. Fixed that in my original post.  I'm screwing up all over the details. Damnit.  ", "Basically, the neurotransmitter that alcohol mainly interacts with, GABA, also happens to moderate seizures.  When one is an alcoholic for too long, the body regulates itself by not producing as much GABA naturally.  If an alcoholic is an alcoholic for too long and tries to quit cold turkey, there may not be a high enough level of GABA production to prevent seizures.\n\nDeath from alcohol withdrawal really only occurs in extreme cases, but there are plenty of other withdrawal effects that are unpleasant.", "Never had withdrawals that serious, but have experienced the shakes after some serious weeks of binge drinking. Which is one reason why the alcoholic will keep drinking. The drinking ceases to become recreational, but will become almost medicinal. Think of the person who can't function without their coffee, but on a much more severe scale. ", "I made it about 60 hours before I had a seizure and pissed myself. Thanks for the info on why it happened.", "I always wondered this. Knew some body that died from DT complications.  Had a stroke and that was it.  ", "My mom is an alcoholic and she attempted to quit after a binge week gone bad and ended up having seizures. The doctor warned her that if she was going to quit she needed to do so a little at a time and basically ween herself off of it. ", "Like people have mentioned, when it comes to neurotransmitters, there are two major ones that work like a scale: GABA and glutamate. Alcohol (as well as benzodiazipenes) stimulate GABA tipping the scale to its favor. Your body compensates by creating more glutamate. Excessive glutamate is what causes the fatal withdrawals. Most other drugs we know affect the scale in the opposite direction (or affect different neurotransmitters) so there isn't an excess of glutamate. ", "ELI5 answer: Alcohol is a depressant and affects the brain by decreasing brain activity. With extended alcohol use, the brain tries to balance this effect by increasing its own excitatory activity. When alcohol use is abruptly stopped, the brain cannot adjust quickly enough and that leads to withdrawal due to hyperactivity of the brain. Physically, this typically starts with increased blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration later leading to confusion, delirium, and seizures, and can ultimately lead to death if not properly treated. People in withdrawal are treated by giving them alcohol or medications that act the same way (benzodiazepines) so that they can slowly be weaned off. \n\nSource: I am a doctor who treats alcohol withdrawal all the time.  ", "I've had a friend die from alcohol poisoning unexpectedly.  She wasn't even a serious alcoholic or drug user but that seems to be the case when it happens.\n\nIt's never the recreational drug users that will take anything that is handed to them.\n\nRemember kids, it can happen to you.", "I had a stroke last April from quitting cold turkey... It's no joke... ", "Alcohol  is a depressor drug to neurons. To overcome this on a long exposure, neurons double their effort to excite and function as normally. If you take away alcohol, neurons remain overexcited for some time before going back to normal. What you have then is an overexcited brain that can damage itself in various ways.", "Because it's legal, we forget that alcohol is really a pretty powerful drug. It affects countless systems and processes throughout the body and has many interactions with other drugs.\n\nNeurologically, alcohol acts as a 'depressant,' meaning that it causes an overall reduction in brain activity. Overtime, you brain can get used to this effect and stop producing natural chemicals that work to depress brain activity. This is physical addiction.\n\nWhen someone strongly physically addicted to alcohol abruptly stops, nothing is there to counter the brain's normal excitability, since it has stopped making depressants due to the chronic presence of alcohol. This excitability can continue uncontrolled and is responsible for many of the symptoms associated with alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures, which ultimately may lead to the alcoholic's death.\n\nYou can avoid the serious withdrawal symptoms by slowly tapering off the amount you drink.", "Alcohol is a depressant. In order to function while constantly using a depressant, your body compensates by producing excess stimulatory molecules (epinephrine, norepinephrine). Suddenly withdrawing the depressant (alcohol or benzodiazepines) will cause the excess of excitatory molecules to go unchecked, which causes your heart to seize (ventricular fibrillation).\n\nIt's like training for a marathon while carrying a bowling ball. One day you put down the bowling ball,  and then you start running too fast and fly off a cliff.  \n", "I had no idea about alcohol withdrawal until a month ago when it caused me to have a seizure for the first time in my life. It happened while driving on the freeway after a night of binge drinking, and I came out with pretty minor injuries. I've gone cold turkey since, it's extremely tough with all the Christmas festivities going on, but had to decide my health was much more important..", "Doctor here- alcohol and benzos both activate receptors in your brain that are specifically designed to \"slow things down\" - these are the GABA receptors. When you drink a little they slow down the part of your cerebellum that keeps you balanced, and they slow down pathways in your frontal lobe responsible for social inhibition. Almost any drug or chemical that relies on receptors like this eventually stops working as it originally did, as your body \"resets\" to the receptor saturation to some degree by a variety or mechanisms. Then you stop drinking and your brain, which has become medium functional again with the alcohol on board, becomes hyperactive... This causes all the main signs and symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, including delerium, hallucinations, seizures, and death. \n\nAlcohol and benzos work the same way, so we treat acute alcohol withdrawal with benzos. And withdrawal is VERY serious and deadly. Like all hospitals I know of, my hospital has beer, vodka, and whiskey on formulary, and I prescribe them regularly to heavy drinkers that I'm taking care of inpatient so that they don't withdraw and become much sicker!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33jl08", "title": "Other than Biblical sources, what is the earliest evidence of the existence of the Jewish people?", "selftext": "I know the Torah claims the Jews descend from a single patriarch Abraham (b. ~1800 B.C.E. according to the literal reading of the Torah), and formed a nation upon the Exodus from Egypt and the Revelation at Sinai (~1300 B.C.E.). According to scientific evidence- archaelogical, documentary, or other (maybe even contemporary verifiable accounts from other sources)- what is the earliest time and place that we definitely know they existed? And in what form- as a nation, religion, ethnicity or other.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33jl08/other_than_biblical_sources_what_is_the_earliest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqliwn1", "cqln7q3", "cqlq3g3", "cqm7kx2"], "score": [87, 20, 21, 2], "text": ["The first verifiable mention of Israel comes from the Merneptah Stele in Egypt, recounting Merneptah's victories over the lands around him.  One of the lines of the stele is \"Israel is laid waste and its seed is no more.\"  This stele dates to roughly 1208 BCE.  Not exactly what you're looking for, but the closest answer I am aware of.", "I actually just recently watched [this](_URL_0_) PBS documentary about the origins of the Israelite peoples. It's really quite fascinating, and I think will help to answer some of the questions you might have, albeit over the course of 100 minutes or so.\n\nBut to answer your question, the basic answer is that, as /u/PrincessAnika pointed out, the Merneptah Stele is the earliest known mention of the existence of a group of people known as Israel.\n", "Funny you should ask this as I just posted something about this a few days ago. Below is a snippet by world renown Egyptologist Eric Cline who wrote about the earliest mentions of Judaism outside of the Torah in one of his books, saying:\n\n >  Merneptah is perhaps best known to students of the ancient Near East as the Egyptian pharaoh who first uses the term \u201cIsrael,\u201d in an inscription dating to this same year (1207 BC). This inscription is the earliest occurrence of the name Israel outside the Bible. In the Pharaonic inscription, the name\u2014written with a special sign to indicate that it is a people rather than just a place\u2014 appears in a brief description of a campaign to the region of Canaan, where the people whom he calls \u201cIsrael\u201d were located.\n\n\n > Source: Cline, Eric H. (2014-03-23). 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) Princeton University Press. (pp. 6-7)\n\nI'm a grad student studying early Christian history but I also have studied other areas around ancient Mesopotamia and Near East and have studied ancient Israel as well so I am a bit well versed on the matter.  If you have any further questions please let me know.", "You're using Jew and Israelite synonynously, when they never were so in the Bible. Jew refers to the tribe of Judah, which is only one of the twelve tribes. I'm not even sure if Jew in the religious sense (rather than Judahite) is an appropriate term before the Babylonian exile of thwle sixth century, as Jew implies common membership in a faith community that many even in the Judahite kingdom (King Manasseh and King Amon) manifestly were not part of. Judaism as a religion isn't really in existence until the very end of the Old Testament era."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qalTJzk4kO0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2y00o9", "title": "how is wikipedia considered a reputable source when no academic instructor will accept it as one?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y00o9/eli5_how_is_wikipedia_considered_a_reputable/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp4yuut", "cp4yvio", "cp4yw02", "cp4ywg9", "cp4ywj6", "cp4z0k9", "cp4z3yw", "cp4zp41", "cp4zvop", "cp56fdq"], "score": [8, 2, 2, 4, 23, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["There are different levels of proof required for different situations.\n\nOften, a good enough source is \"my mate told me\". When studying for school exams, schools text books are considered good sources, although they're often not all that accurate. And in many other cases, Wikipedia is a good enough source.\n\nThe thing I like about Wikipedia is that it clearly lists its own sources - so if you want to read more, or you don't feel Wikipedia is a good enough source, you can follow the links. I often do this when I see links to Wikipedia on here and it's a subject I want to learn more about.\n\nFor academia, though, it's not considered a source - but it's usually ok to reference the same sources that Wikipedia references, so it can still have its uses.", "It is really not a reputable source. You can scroll down and check the sources' validity yourself, but there is no way of knowing just by reading the article itself that the information you're getting is legit. What I did in college was use Wikipedia articles to get sources for whatever I was researching. The vast majority of the sources were legit, but there's never a guarantee.", "Life Pro Tip:\n\nFind the section you want to use in your paper and there should be a reference number beside it, find the reference at the bottom as designated by the number and use that as your citation.", "No one accepts it as a scholarly (I think this is the word you're looking for) source.\n\nThe majority of articles provide valid references every few sentences and for that reason it's certainly a credible starting point for research.\n\nI usually use it as a quick summary of relatively current knowledge on a topic then head down to the references section and branch out from there. ", "When you say \"people\" you mean \"reddit\". And \"reddit\" isn't a qualified/peer reviewed institution claiming to be a source of factual information.\n\nThe generally accepted sources of \"factual\" information are journals which usually are collections of independently (or sponsored) publications which have been extensively peer reviewed.\n\nThis basically means that anything that's published is reviewed by qualified professionals to ensure that what is submitted isn't just a bunch of gobbledegook - which happens quite often.", "Academic groups have much higher standards than a typical person. Wikipedia is usually correct, but \"usually\" isn't good enough. \n\nThe fact that it changes over time (so referencing it is pointless as in a year it could be different), that its created and edited by unaccredited and possibly unqualified sources is a deal breaker as well.", "I've actually had a professor say that the only source we would ever need for his class was Wikipedia.  He thought it was great and that people should use it more often.  I'm sure there are others that agree with him but I wouldn't dare cite Wikipedia for another class, ever.  Come to think about it, He did spend a day telling us that it was totally acceptable to rob a bank if we used that money to explore Europe. . . \n\n", "Wikipedia is a secondary source, not a primary one.\n\nIt's got nothing to do with the fact that it's peer edited - Encyclopaedia Brittanica is not a primary source either and so you can't use it as a citation.", "Encyclopedias are not references.  They are TL,DR summaries that are helpful for a basic understanding of sources it should cite, giving you a direction for the actual source material.  ", "In academia a good source isn't just something that is accurate and peer reviewed. It's also ideally the originating work from which you are building on.\n\nBy definition wikipedia pages are not original works. Each page is a summary of important knowledge collected from independent original sources. For this reason wikipedia does not encourage editors to reference wikipedia.\n\nWikipedia does (or at least should not) do original work, research or draw new conclusions. It's second hand information and certainly not the literal 'source'.\n\nMy final point is perhaps the most important... Academics are judged by how many people have cited their work. It is part of how they build their reputations. It would be unfair on these hard working people to cite wikipedia because they are not counted towards their reputation in tools like google scholar.\n\nWikipedia is a fantastic and accurate resource, academics encourage its use for general understanding and **source discovery.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ewfgi", "title": "When, and why, did people stop living in houses on bridges in major european cities?", "selftext": "I've seen this in films and in some books I've read, that houses were placed on the actual bridges in cities like London and Paris. Why do we not still have people living on London Bridge, for example?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ewfgi/when_and_why_did_people_stop_living_in_houses_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d244gim", "d24a5dp"], "score": [84, 30], "text": ["They still exist in areas of France and Italy. [Ponte Vecchio](_URL_0_) is a well known example.\n\nHouses were built on bridges when cities were walled in, as it was difficult to [expand building space](_URL_1_). Once walled cities were no longer a viable defense, cities could grow outward again; so they fell out of favor. The ones that survived have mostly become novelty and been converted to merchant districts, since it's more economically viable.", "In Paris, at the end of the 18th century, there were four bridges (\"ponts\") that had houses: pont au Change, pont Marie, pont Saint-Michel, pont Notre-Dame. The houses had been built there for several reasons, the first one being profit (they were leased). The houses were destroyed between 1786 (pont Notre-Dame) and 1808 (pont Saint-Michel) because the French Revolution had put a temporary stop on operations. The destructions are documented by two famous paintings by Hubert Robert, *La d\u00e9molition des maisons du Pont-au-Change, en 1788* ([link](_URL_0_)) and *La d\u00e9molition des maisons du pont Notre-Dame en 1786* ([link](_URL_2_)). \n\nThere were several reasons for these destructions, from what I've read the main to reasons were harmony (on the pont Marie, several houses had been destroyed by a flood during which several people died, and there were wide gaps) and urbanism (the edicts of the king indicate that after the destruction broad sidewalks will be constructed).\n\nEdit: besides people dying in floods, there were also health concerns (for example the pont Notre-Dame had stagnating bogs that reportedly stank), practical concerns (there was not enough rooms to have wide caves so a lot of commercial professions could not settle there) and structural concerns (some arches of the bridges had to be rebuilt after the house's destructions because people had dug caves in the bridges' structures.\n\n\nSources:  \n[*Les maisons des ponts parisiens \u00e0 la fin du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle : \u00e9tude d'un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne architectural et urbain particulier*](_URL_3_), Youri Carbonnier  \n[*Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments*](_URL_1_), F\u00e9lix Lazare, Louis Lazare  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.aviewoncities.com/florence/pontevecchio.htm", "http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab97"], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/P1140649_Carnavalet_H_Robert_demolition_maisons_pont_au_Change_rwk.jpg", "https://books.google.fr/books?id=qjlfAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA414&amp;lpg=PA414&amp;dq=destruction+maisons+ponts+paris&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=kuxfORoNhB&amp;sig=0BrVUJ-R_LqnGW1Q3G2AT2vtV6g&amp;hl=fr&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwitwviQnZHMAhXMfxoKHXgeA9c4ChDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&amp;q=destruction%20maisons%20ponts%20paris&amp;f=false", "http://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/fr/collections/la-demolition-des-maisons-du-pont-notre-dame-en-1786", "http://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5702_1998_num_17_4_2009"]]}
{"q_id": "29vgjz", "title": "How far away are we from developing a way to control gravity?", "selftext": "For example, controlling gravity could be crucial for space stations/habitable planets with low gravity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/29vgjz/how_far_away_are_we_from_developing_a_way_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciovzp8", "ciow93t", "ciozsld", "cip1i9z"], "score": [10, 13, 5, 9], "text": ["Energy is the source of gravity.  So, controlling gravity requires manipulating the energy equivalent of the mc^(2) that we normally think of as gravitational sources.  The simplest way to do this is to move mass itself around.  We already know, in principle, how to do this.  It requires making planets, or similar objects.\n\nThat's why proposals for space gravity involve rotating habitats.", "Gravity is just the warping of spacetime. In the equations of general relativity, this warping is proportional to something called the stress-energy tensor. The stress-energy tensor is basically the density of energy and momentum at a given location in space. Mass obviously contributes to this to this as well, thanks to E=mc^2 .\n\nThere's no real way to \"control\" it like we can with the electromagnetic force for example, where we can create a magnetic field by running some electricity through a wire. The only way you can increase gravity is by actually increasing the stress-energy tensor at a given point, or in other words, just adding more mass (technically also through energy, i.e. photons, but that's incredibly inefficient).\n\nYou can however induce an acceleration that is indistinguishable from gravity (think of an elevator moving upwards). Basically you'd have a large space station that looks like a ring, and by spinning the ring at a certain speed, you cause an outwards acceleration that functions like gravity.", "Other responses have already explained rotating space stations, so I will focus on this particular point: *how far*?\n\nTechnologically, I'd say we're there. It's very easy to make an object spin once you have it in space. The only challenge would be making a structure that doesn't break under centrifugal forces and can resist internal air pressure, but that's not beyond our current technology.\n\nEconomically, yes, very far from that. If you want to do it for humans then you need a very low rotation rate (angular speed) to prevent motion sickness. Simulating comfortable gravity with a low angular speed requires a very large infrastructure, and launching that into space is expensive. In a [previous thread](_URL_0_) I put some numbers to this:\n\n >   To simulate Mars-like gravity at 3 rpm you need a radius of 1500m (4900ft) and a tangential speed of 187 km/h (115 mph). If you want Earth-like gravity, numbers become much bigger.\n\n >  Also 3 rpm is already too much. You would need 2 rpm to keep astronauts comfortable in the long term.\n", "I'm going to assume that you are referring the the \"science-fiction version\" of spaceships and stations having an \"artificial gravity on/off button\" that does not relate to some kind of rotation or acceleration of the vessel. If that is the case, then I'd say that we are infinitely far from it. As far as I know, there is no practical or theorized mechanism that could be used to do such a thing. Experts please correct me if I'm wrong."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/24kv50/if_we_built_a_rotating_spacecraft_for_emulating/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2pzivj", "title": "is there an end to j.r.r. tolkien's created universe?", "selftext": "I know there's quite a lot of history written about the world he created, but does it have an ending, like some sort of Ragnarok event? If not then at what point does it kind of stop? And why does it stop there?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pzivj/eli5_is_there_an_end_to_jrr_tolkiens_created/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn1em50", "cn1f3bk", "cn1fv32", "cn1h3n0", "cn1ld2d", "cn1p3cw", "cn1r0te"], "score": [8, 6, 6, 44, 10, 5, 2], "text": ["No, the ending of LOTR is the end of the 3rd age and the beginning of the 4th age. \n\nWe're currently in the 4th age. Some would argue the 5th ... but Tolkien himself never commented on a 5th age.", "Tolkien never a managed to write an ending to the whole universe. \"The New Shadow\" was supposed to be the sequel to TLOTR, but it was never completed.  \n_URL_0_", "He did do some writing that was never sort of integrated into the main history, where he described a final battle, the Dagor Dagorath, when Morgoth comes back from the Void and the world gets KO'd and is replaced by something different.", "Edited to include source at the end. [edited again because I Elendil-ed when I should have Earendil-ed]\n\nYes. At the end of the Silmarillion Morgoth (the scariest dude ever and Sauron's boss) is trapped in a void where he's guarded by Earendil (a guy who took one of the Silmarils and pilots his ship around in space). At some point in the future Morgoth will escape the void and bring about the end of the world.\n\nIt is very much like Ragnarok, with the free peoples (elves, good men, dwarves etc.) on one side and the forces of darkness on the other. This war would destroy Middle-earth, bringing about a new world that incorporates some of the better features of the Middle-earth while staying true to Eru Illuvatar's (that's the person who created Middle-earth) ideal vision for it. For example, snow was never part of Illuvatar's vision, it was created accidentally when Morgoth created cold. Something like that would stay, while orcs would not.\n\nHope that helped!\n\nSource: \"Unfinished Tales\" (1980)", "_URL_0_ Melkor finds his way back to the world, all the Elves re-awake, Hurin finally gets his revenge for Man, the dwarves learn the substance that made the Silmarils, Hobbits continue to eat and smoke pipeweed, and a new song is sung", "There is no end since Middle Earth becomes Earth as we know it.\n\nAccording to David Day's Tolkien Encyclopedia, after the War of the Ring humans start ruling Middle Earth, while the rest of the creatures leave to the Undying Lands. This place slowly fades away from the humans' comprehension and becomes something like Heaven, and all that's magic ends up disappearing as well. And so, Middle Earth turns into the real Earth and starts spinning around the Sun.", "Magic and the non-human races eventually disappear.  Human society advances to something like our modern one.  Archaeologists discover evidence that Mordor was a peaceful and technologically advance society going through an industrial revolution.  That the events in the Lord of the Rings were propaganda created by Gandalf to justify his war against Mordor in the name of keeping the balance of power favoring magic over technology.\n_URL_0_  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_New_Shadow"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagor_Dagorath"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer"]]}
{"q_id": "5sgfzh", "title": "parallel was faster than serial, why isn't there an upb - \"universal parallel bus\"?", "selftext": "The maximum data transfer rate of RS-232 serial is about 115kb/s whereas parallel is about 1.1Mb/s when using ECP.  When I discovered Laplink transferred files between computers via parallel much faster than serial, I always used the parallel port to transfer data.  So I was wondering, why wasn't UPB invented, and why USB is faster/better than a theoretical UPB?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sgfzh/eli5_parallel_was_faster_than_serial_why_isnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddeuw9e", "ddevh28", "ddevlm8", "ddevsn8", "ddf2ckv", "ddfscbx", "ddg50td"], "score": [9, 3, 38, 6, 11, 3, 2], "text": ["Parallel = faster\n\nSerial = cheaper\n\nFor most problems where USB is the solution: **cheaper  >  faster**.\n\nSCSI and ATA are still around, but SATA (Serial ATA) is displacing ATA because as the technology gets faster: **cheaper  >  faster**.", "Software developer here,\n\nThe problem with parallel cables is that the signals each have to arrive at the destination *at the same time*. As signal frequency increases, this synchronization becomes impractical.", "It comes down to being able to group that parallel data at very high speeds.  Say I'm tossing a ball to you and think of this as a serial bus.  Now take seven of your friends and I will get seven of mine and we will all toss the ball back and forth at the same time and that is the parallel bus.  Now start increasing the speed of the ball toss back and forth.  It becomes difficult to keep all eight pairs transferring the ball at the same time.  It is much easier to find one pair that kind transfer the ball very quickly than multiple pairs that can do it without one of the pair getting ahead or behind the others.", "There is. Thunderbolt use two lanes in each direction compared to the one shared lane in USB. USB-C is the same. USB 3.0 also have two lanes but shared between the directions. If you look at PCI-E they have up to 16 channels. When you are talking about multiple channels it is not exactly the same as a parallel bus since the signals is not synchronized but it turns out with modern electronics it is no problems synchronizing the data afterwards which improves the transfer rate and reliability. What Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 have in common is that they are more expensive. You suddenly need as much hardware for a single USB-C connector as you needed for an entire USB 2.0 hub with multiple connectors. And the cables are more expensive, thicker and more fragile. This is fine for some applications, for example when hooking up a TV. But it is not fine in cases where you do not need it which is where USB have found its market.", "At high clock speeds it becomes difficult to transmit and receive data in parallel because propagation delays cause the different data lines (wires) to be very slightly out-of-sync and at high frequencies you have to manage that synchronization. When you transmit the data in serial then you don't have that problem. Modern buses like Thunderbolt and PCIe are serial though much more sophisticated and faster than old RS-232 ports.", "To summarise others' contributions here and add a couple of minor points:\n\nProblems with parallel:\n\n1. Synchronisation of data across multiple parallel lines at very high data rates is very difficult due to variable propagation speeds of those lines (due to variations in capacitance, inductance and resistance of those lines)\n\n2. Increased cost due to increased complexity of the transmit-receive electronics and mechanical connectors and wiring.\n\n3. Increased size of the connectors and cable, which is at odds with increased miniaturisation and available space on the connected devices.\n\n4. Potentially increased noise due to cross-talk between the data lines, which can only be reduced by increasing (3) and hence (2).\n\n5. Not all data transfers need to be at the maximum bandwidths possible with either serial or parallel connections, since both the data source and destination are likely to have other internal systems that have more limited bandwidth, such as a mechanical hard drive. So, why not stick with the smaller, cheaper serial solution? \n\nBack in my day as an electronic engineer, when RS-232 was standard, few could possibly have imagined the data rates that are achievable in serial connections today. There has been an evolution over the past couple of decades in our understanding of the signal propagation and EM effects in wires at very high frequencies, and a corresponding evolution in the mechanical, material and production technologies necessary to deliver such wired connections. \n", "A friend who really knew his stuff explained to me that only way the parallel signal paths on computer mainboards can work is because the design engineers treat each individual conductor as an antenna and do all the calculations needed to solve for the fact that a) each line is transmitting EM energy, and b) simultaneously being affected by EVERY other line on the board, via EM. The calcs are therefore horrendously complex!\n\nMainboards are static - unchanging, and sealed inside a faraday cage, whereas cables are flexible and therefore unstable, preventing you from doing the calcs at all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5i74ml", "title": "aleppo and the syrian war", "selftext": "With the recent news regarding Aleppo, we've already had a decent amount of posts on the subject pop up in the new queue. Please consolidate those questions into this thread.\n\nPlease note that if you are looking for a summary of the recent news, you can try a subreddit like /r/OutOfTheLoop. Additionally, this is not the place for wild speculation. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5i74ml/eli5_aleppo_and_the_syrian_war/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db5x0th", "db5xom5", "db5xtdm", "db5yy0o", "db6217e", "db6an91", "db6dzx9", "db6g7r8", "db6h9gk", "db7aanl", "db81owl", "db85fi4", "db8wc02", "db9om39", "dbcyjur", "dbd7637", "dbdz1i9", "dbgk6vw", "dbglamg", "dblinab", "dblxt1f", "dbsm4ry"], "score": [10, 2, 9, 60, 226, 201, 3, 6, 3, 14, 39, 3, 2, 20, 4, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 58, 2], "text": ["Who is fighting who, and why?", "How many groups are fighting in Syria? ", "Why is no one doing anything? I get the argument that no one wants to be world cops, but this looks like a massacre. Why is no one but the Russians (on the side of Assad) getting involved?", "As a reasonably irrelevant and pretty ignorant-to-the-situation American, is there anything at all that I the single person, (as opposed to we the entity), can do to help these individuals? I hate reading these stories and then going back to my life having made no action to do something, anything. ", "Been watching this from the beginning. \n\nIt started out, as attempted revolutions do, with protests against the Assad Regime. It quickly escalated to an armed conflict. America backed the rebels and Assad responded with destruction of neighborhoods.  Many people fled and many people were killed. \n\nEventually a branch of al Qaeda started fighting Assad as well. When they had Damascus surrounded and it looked like the government might fall Iran sent troops in.\n\nSeeing an opening, ISIS moved in and seized a lot of territory in Syria and then Iraq. With the money they were making by selling oil they brought a lot of foreign fighters to the region. When ISIS was close to toppling Assad Russia joined the fight. \n\nAnd here we are. ", "I think it's important to point out that in the beginning, yes the \"Arab Spring\" was happening in other countries, however it took a while to get to Syria.  Of all the countries in the area, nobody really thought something like that would happen there, because of many factors, but including just how repressive the state was.  And when people did start protesting, they were lackluster at best, and were not even really against the regime, but rather protesting the bad economy, high unemployment, lack of oppurtunities, etc.  People by and large were asking for reform, not total regime change.  There was growing resentment and anti-government feeling but it bubbled well below the surface.\n\nHowever, that changed with Daraa.  In the city of Daraa, at some point, a group of school children were arrested by the government for painting the same anti-government slogan being chanted in other parts of the Arab world: \"The people want the downfall of the government.\"  A slogan they would have heard on television or radio.   The children were arrested and tortured, with reports of at least one being brutally killed, with his mutilated  body sent back to his family.  \n\nThis was a spark that sparked other sparks, and ultimately contributed to the growing seriousness of the protests.  The government's violent and disproportionate response, directed at children , their disregard for life in such a blatant way.  This was it for people who had had it and endured great difficulties and a brutally repressive government.  There was nothing left to lose once people saw so clearly that even the lives of their children had no value in the government's eyes.  \n\nThis is so simplified, but I thought it important to add.  \n\nEdit: spelling\n\nEdit (12/20/16): It should be noted that the arrests of the school children led to protests and came before the Seige of Daraa, and that the death of Hamza Ali al-Khatiib occured after the seige began.  ", "Who held the city of Aleppo, ISIS or the rebel forces? ", "Okay so I read through a lot of these comments and I understand everything except one thing: What was Assad doing that made people rebel? Was he being an evil leader?", "Why didn't the USA do more to prevent the human carnage?", "Why does Russia support Assad? What do they get from it?", "Please explain what is happening in Aleppo. I have read some of the news but the stories are very confusing. First and foremost, can someone explain the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of this \"conflict\"? Is this a 2 sided proxy war between US and Russia? Is this a 3 sided war? 4 or even 5? I see a lot of players in this conflict and I do not fully understand each one's interest(s). There is the ruler Assad who is being backed by Russia but then there is Iran. There are rebels who are fighting against Assad and the US is backing (?) the rebels? But then there are Al Qaeda and ISIS who are also fighting Assad? So is the US supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS? That makes no sense. Anyways, I am really confused and would love to hear a simple break down on whose is fighting one whose side and how many sides are there (apparently more than 2 but correct me if I am wrong).", "How many of the rebels are \"moderates\" who oppose the government and how many are what we would consider extremist Jihadis?\n\nDo these groups want to create an Islamic government in Syria? Do they also share goals with ISIS like wanting to attack the West?", "One of the main things I'm confused about is the United States' stance. At first Obama was backing the rebels because of the way Assad treated his people with chemical warfare and he was helping the rebels with ISIS. But just recently in Aleppo when the Syrian government had the upper hand and were going to take over the rebel territory, the US and Russia made negotiations that insinuated the US is with Assad in having the rebels surrender. Also, Russia had said that anyone who didn't surrender would be treated like a terrorist against the Syrian government. I looked on so many timelines/news articles today about this and Aleppo but haven't seen anything to explain this question yet.", "US Involvement.  \n\nThere are at least four sides in the war.  It can be understood that the US is both for and against each side. \n\nAlthough one can say that the US policy is to be 1) against ISIS   &  2) for the Kurdish SDF  &  3) for the Syrian rebels/Islamists \u2013 at least until recently.  Each of these sides may not see it as such.  \n\nThe Kurds\u2019 see that the US is providing them with support against ISIS but is also providing their Islamist opponents with a lot of arms and training.\n\nThe rebels see that the US is arming them, training them, and supporting them diplomatically, but also sometimes bombing their best fighters,  Jabhat al-Nusra, although without fanfare or media attention, so that Turkey and KSA don't get too upset\n\nThe Assad Government sees that the US is arming and training and diplomatically supporting the Islamist rebels, but it has also shared some useful intelligence with it and has killed off some of its enemies in ISIS and al-Qaeda and Nusra.\n\nISIS see that the US is bombing them and boosting their enemies, but has also helped arm them by equipping FSA\u00a0groups, which shared trenches and supplies with ISIS.\n", "Would it really be such a disaster if Assad won and Syria stabilised, much as it was 5-6 years ago?\n\nI mean yes, I know he did terrible things. But at this point, isn't it just the best thing for everyone if this war finally ends.", "Can someone explain to me why so many people are against Assad if he won the elections democratically?", "Can somebody explain all the outrage in media about the conquest of aleppo?\nas far as I know there are no more fights in aleppo, unlike the last month and years.\nmy question is: in how far is there a humanitarian crysis that didnt exist before?", "so after spending my french lesson reading this very informative thread i drew a graphic to make it easier to understand. maybe it will help someone! :) [Syrian War Graphic](_URL_0_) ", "Why was the Russian ambassador assassinated? Was the killer an Islamist, a rebel (whatever these terms mean).", "I read several answers... n I might have been late as the correct answer might alrdy be out...but here goes nothing. .\nYear 2011 - peace full protest (Arab spring) demonstration being brutally crushed.. \nCauses several Syrian army to defect and join NOW VIOLENT protestor to form FREE SYRIAN ARMY ... PROTEST NOW BECOMES CIVIL WAR . Extremist from other Arab nations join rebels. ( 2 party confrontation so far )\n\n2012 - suppressed Kurdish groups of North East uprise and break away from Asad regime  and starts fighting Asad.  Iran now intervenes as Syrian gov is Shia and Iran backs shia muslims... ( 3 party war so far )to reduce Iran influence almost all sunni states specially saudi arabia starts financially  backing rebel group (by now Al qaueda has made Syrian force ...name I don't rember ) this money mainly flows through Turkey Nd Jordan. .. conflict now is not limited to syria as entire middle east gets involved.. still 3 party war rebel , Asad and Kurds. \n\n2013 - hezbollah - lebanese Extremist shia group joins Asad. . As Asad was loosing ground.  Usa intervenes .. asks CIA to secretly train rebels..\nAsad uses chemical weapons on civilians.. usa full fledged back rebels now, Russia requests Asad to give up chemical weapons to un..but backs Asad unconditionally , mostly coz saudi russia oil competetors is against it and mostly coz usa ...it's super power competetors is against Asad. \n\n loads of Iraq troop of old Saddam army are also amongst the rebels..Due to some internal politics and conflict this troop parts away ..becomes isis and take huge land mass and oil fields forcibly in Iraq and syria. Now there are 4 parties.. isis fighting rebels more than Asad.  Kurds fighting Asad and now isis as land was forcibly taken. rebels ... now fighting Asad and isis and Asad. .. well happy coz isis came up as it was loosing ground. \nNow usa really gets mad and focuses more towards isis than Asad. . Full fledged military support starts from usa to rebels now.. and focus is towards end of isis. Us Bombing of isis happens...now there r 4 parties.. rebels backed by saudi led sunni Arab nations  &  usa , Asad backed by hezbollah , Iran and Russia ( no monetary or military support yet) \nIsis and Kurds. .\n\n2014 .. turkey starts attacking Kurds. ..their long time enemy in a way. Turkey doesn't fight any other participating force apart from Kurds. .\n\n2015 Asad loosing major ground. ..rebels and isis gain ground... russia intervenes on behalf of Asad. ..says it wants to bomb isis ..but bombs rebels including us backed specific groups..\n\n2016.. isis loosing ground coz usa and Russia both attacking it. . Asad gaining grounds.. rebels disintegrating or changing sides.. Kurds in bad shape and battling Turkey as well now. \n\nAleppo major strong hold... soon about to fall but none of the above forces are wiped out or have surrendered ...so this Syrian war is far from over...even if allepo falls. ", "You have many sides to this conflict all in support of a main objective which remains unclear for the most part.\n\nBattling groups:\n\nSide #1: Syrian Government,Iran,Iraq,Russia,Hezbollah and to a small extent China, Kurds\n\nSide #2: Saudi Arabia,Israel,United States,Qatar,Turkey, Moderate  &  extremists Rebels(Hard to separate),other western actors such as France And U.K,Kurds\n\nSide #3: Straight up Al-qeada and ISIS\n\nAll these groups are battling in some form or another. \n\nSide #1 has U.N legitimacy, but viewed negatively\n\nSide #2 has Popular support in media but no legal standing and is seen as an occupying force\n\nSide #3 Mixing in and out with rebels making it very hard to differentiate Moderates from I.S.I.S and Al-Queda  \n\nImportant Note:\nSanctions Placed on Syria in 2011 for continuing escalation of violence against the people of Syria through Executive Order 13573 by side #2 (Very early into the conflict worsening the economic situation arguably adding fuel to the fire.\n\nObjectives: \n\nSide #1: Maintain Syria as is, with President Bashar Assad in power, And keep a key geopolitical alliance destroy ISIS and rebels who Flip-Flop and ultimately re secure Syria to pre-2011 standing \n\nSide #2: (U.S,France,U.K)Regime Change, Dismantle I.S.I.S-(Israel)Secure Golan Heights and get rid of hostile bordering government.(Turkey) Destroy I.S.I.S but mostly destroy Kurdish entities on southern boarder. (Saudi Arabia)Greater influence divide \"Shia Crescent\" and partner Oil pipeline into Europe, (Qatar) Route Pipeline into Europe.(Kurds) Create Autonomous Kurdish state(Against Turkey but allied with U.S and Assad, tough to put on one side or another),also destroy ISIS.\n\nSide #3: Kill anyone who fails to agree with their extremists interpretation of Islam and create a 21st century Caliphate.\n\nThese are the Main points you can try to figure this debacle out but make sure to follow what the U.N is saying and various news outlets both those for the government of Syria and those against it. To try to get a clearer picture of whats going on. \n\nPro-Rebel new sources are CNN,Fox News,BBC, Aj+\n\nPro-Government news sources-SANA,PressTV,RT,Southfront\n\nIts very hard to find a neutral media outlet, all have an agenda they want heard. Its important to decode and read between the lines and determine which side you believe is justified.  ", "Some interesting reading (some self-promotion)\n\n- [Kevan Harris](_URL_1_) on the economic and cultural back story to the war from a leftist perspective\n- [Fractured Lands](_URL_3_) Fascinating NYT long read on the rise of Isis, but I do mean long, it's 43,000 words and the format doesn't work at all.\n- The book \"rise of Islamic State\" by Olivia Wilde's uncle is very good. Cynical, but very good.\n- [UNA](_URL_0_) statement on Aleppo war crimes, captures my view.\n- [Here's something I wrote](_URL_2_) 3 years ago. Bits of it have aged better than other bits, but I still think it's worth a read."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.imgur.com/sfNSttP"], [], [], [], ["https://www.una.org.uk/news/una-uk-russian-war-crimes-east-aleppo-are-stain-its-reputation", "https://newleftreview.org/II/101/kevan-harris-making-and-unmaking-of-the-greater-middle-east", "https://medium.com/freds-blog/firdous-e-bareen-1f4ee393bd03#.2umne32js", "http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?_r=2"]]}
{"q_id": "2b0l56", "title": "why are banks only open during the most inconvenient hours?", "selftext": "My bank is only open 9am-4pm Monday through Thursday, 9am-6pm on Friday, and 9am-12pm on Saturday. If you work a normal 40-50 hour a week schedule, it can be really annoying when you have to go to the bank - it's almost like having to schedule a doctor's appointment. \n\nI've never really understood why banks are generally never open late. Is it because of some sort of regulation, governmental or self-imposed by the industry? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b0l56/eli5_why_are_banks_only_open_during_the_most/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj0lqql", "cj0m0od", "cj0m7ev", "cj0m9tu", "cj0mj21", "cj0oq7j", "cj0r2on", "cj0sp9o", "cj0tmag", "cj0tuqk", "cj0tym3", "cj0u4vv", "cj0ufls", "cj0w15j", "cj0wlpl", "cj0wold", "cj0wqbd", "cj0x5uo", "cj0xmd2", "cj0yhqe", "cj1cq3n"], "score": [14, 489, 255, 38, 2, 10, 5, 6, 5, 2, 13, 3, 8, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 5], "text": ["These days, most banking functions can be completed over the internet, so to many banks, it's not worth staying open beyond certain hours.  There actually are banks that stay open late.  You just have to search around for those.  ", "They are open during extremely convenient hours for most businesses, and that's where the money is. ", "Banking hours (ie, the idea of being open to customers for only a short period of time during the day) originally came about because it took a very long time to actually record, process, and clear the transactions that people were making during the open hours. The banker might be working 8am - 6pm, but only available to take transactions from 10am - 3pm (the rest of the time spent processing the checks and transfers requested). This is pre-computer age. \n\nThen, banking hours started expanding. As computers allowed transactions to clear faster, the time period during which those transactions could be initiated was wider. Say, 9am - 5pm. This increased over time, and things like Saturday hours were introduced. At one point, it seemed that banks might expand their hours to the point of being open as late and as often as say, a grocery store. \n\nThen it reached critical mass. Computers got so good and fast at processing transactions and the number of platforms with which to access the tech increased, it replaced the need to speak with a person a majority of the time. So now it's costly to keep the bank open for so many hours. Many people don't go to one more than a few times a year, if that. So the hours you can physically access the bank are starting to taper off again. \n\nI'm not sure how old you are or where you're from, but it's worth noting that even up to the late 90's, the idea of a US bank being open on a Saturday was insane. The hours you describe are far more convenient than those same banks' hours 20 years ago. We literally just passed the peak of this parabola only a few years ago and the decline back to the old bankers hours has started (and we may even pass that to the point where we lose physical banks altogether at some point). ", "Because the average person walking inside a bank is only a tiny fraction of their business--so it's not worth it. Their money comes from investments and loans, which they make during their regular business hours (9am-4pm). As someone else pointed out, personal transactions can also be completed online, or are generally not urgent--i.e., you can come in and get a roll of quarters on Friday evening if they aren't open on Thursday at 5pm.\n\nIt's not a regulation thing; also, the *bank* is often open much longer hours than the *teller windows*. There might be plenty of bankers inside making business deals, but it's not worth it to hire someone to take $50 deposits at the front window at that time.", "Simply put: Banks are a business and they want their hours to be convenient for them also.", "You're with the wrong bank.\n\nIf it's a big deal for you, then shop around and choose a bank with better hours.  For example, the Toronto Dominion bank is open 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday; 8am to 4pm, Saturday; and 11am to 4pm on Sunday.  RBC is open until 8:00pm a couple of nights a week.  BMO is open 9:00-7:00pm on Thursday and Friday with 9:00am to 4:00pm Saturdays, and noon to 4:00pm on Sundays.\n\nFor me, I haven't had to step into a bank in years.  That which cannot be done 24/7 over the internet, can be done 24/7 by phone.", "What others said, but also, they are pushing you to use e-banking, Internet banking, because it saves costs for them, which they don't necessarily need to pass on to you.", "It's open on a Saturday? What a luxury! I need to book in holidays if i need to go to the bank.", "I used to work for a bank in Texa$ that was open 7 days a week and 9-8 m-sat and 9-12 on sun. They went away from it when purchased by another bank. The main reason was man hours required to make it function. We had 8 employees for a very small branch not including management. Was a manager at same bank for a while worked 60-70 hours a week because it was mandatory. As you can imagine the branch was closed for a lot of those hours. Banks are big and dumb for the most part. ", "Same thing with hair salons (in my area, anyway). I've always figured someone could really clean up by running a salon open only between 6pm and 10pm.", "On a side note, in Austria you have the legal right to paid time off to be able to go to the bank during working hours because of this.", "Maybe you should switch to TD because they make banking comfortable.", "But how often do people go to the bank?  In the last year I've been to the doctor more than the bank.  Banking I do online.", "I switched to TD in Canada.    Hours are awesome.  ", "I\u2019ll try to give both the short-winded answer and a long-winded answer. As a bit of background, I\u2019m an individual who worked in retail banking through school (for business, then changed to engineering), then stayed (probably shouldn\u2019t have, but I did). I\u2019ve been in banking about 11 years now. First in a small bank that was bought by a bigger bank that was bought by a bigger bank, and now in a small bank that became a mid-sized bank through growth. I\u2019ve held numerous positions from teller to management and now work in commercial real estate (on the banking side).\n\nTL;DR: The \u201cELI5\u201d answer, as some others have pointed out, is that banks are businesses and its biggest customers are other businesses. Thus, they need to be open when other businesses are open.  If ELI5 is exactly what you want and don\u2019t want any more information, stop reading now.\n\nTo fully understand why banks are open certain hours, you have to look at how banks make (and spend) their money. This is likely going to appear long-winded, but it\u2019s really simplified version of what happens, and mostly only on the retail side. The \u201ceasy button\u201d version of how banks make their money is that they lend money to people and businesses and collect a fee up front (for some loans) as well as collect interest. The money the banks lend to people comes from a couple places. \n\nThe bank can borrow it from another entity (the federal home loan bank, for example). The bank then has a \u201cspread\u201d over that loan, which the bank keeps for itself. \n\nThe other main avenue is deposits that the bank holds for its deposit customers. This one can be a bit less \u201ccut and dry,\u201d so you may want to hang on for a second, but I\u2019ll try to explain it as simply as I can. The bank offers multiple types of deposit products to multiple types of customers. The simplified version of this is Checking, Savings, and CD\u2019s. You can add in the retirement/pension version of these, but we\u2019ll skip over that for today. The bank pays interest to the deposit customer for (some of) these, and uses a portion of it to lend to borrowers. It\u2019s important to note that it\u2019s only a portion of the money that is allowed to be borrowed, and that percentage changes daily, depending on what the global deposit base looks like in each of those categories. Because CD\u2019s are \u201clocked in\u201d for a specified period of time, more of those funds are allowed to be lent out, as it is less likely that someone will come in tomorrow and close the account. Likewise, checking accounts are not only liquid, but are the most easily drained, as clients have debit cards, checks, and the ACH ability. Savings accounts are also liquid, but have some protections (limited number of withdrawals per month, etc). For this reason, not every penny you (as a consumer) deposit into the bank actually becomes borrowed funds, and if you only have checking and savings accounts, very little of it actually is. This is why your mortgage rate may be 4.75%, but you are earning \u201cnext to nothing\u201d on your savings account. If you can come in and withdraw it at any time, the bank can\u2019t count on it being there, and can\u2019t lend it all out.\n\nIf you\u2019ve ever been into an aggressive bank or seen commercials on TV, the above paragraph may confuse you. How could this be true if all banks seem to want my checking account? The answer to this is two-fold. Banks want you to have a checking account because it has a lot of moving parts. They\u2019re not actually all that profitable for the bank, but once you have a checking account (that you\u2019re actually using, hence the debit card/bill pay requirements), you\u2019re more likely to stay. It\u2019s more work for you to leave if you have automatic payments, checks that could clear, etc. Once you have an established checking account, you\u2019re more likely to establish more accounts (the more profitable ones). The more accounts you have, the deeper established you are, and it becomes even less likely that you\u2019ll leave. This is why if you\u2019ve ever tried to close an account, you may have experienced some \u201cgrappling\u201d trying to hold on to you, especially if you have a decent deposit in the bank. Retail employees are incentivized to get you to open more accounts (this is not a negative thing, so don\u2019t take it as such) and in some cases to \u201csave\u201d accounts.\n\nThere are two main approaches to the \u201cmost attractive\u201d client to a bank. Most banks try to utilize both, but some go after one or the other. The approach most consumers are familiar with is the \u201cblanket\u201d approach. This is where the bank attempts to get as many consumer (non-business) clients as it can. Consumers are agile and it doesn\u2019t take much work for them to leave. This makes it easier to steal them from other banks, but also more likely that they\u2019ll eventually leave. For this reason, one $1,000,000 account is often looked at as less valuable than ten $100,000 accounts. You\u2019re less likely to lose ten customers than one. At the same time, a windfall of $1,000,000 is incredibly helpful. The bank will likely offer them a higher interest rate to get them in the door, then if they threaten to leave, offer higher interest rates to get them to stay. One side-note on this topic is that checking accounts can often actually lose money for banks. They\u2019re really the \u201cgateway drug\u201d with the expectation that you\u2019ll be bringing more in. This is one reason that many banks stopped offering free checking, when they found their typical customer had a checking account (and that\u2019s it). The moving parts of a checking account actually cost the bank money, and they can\u2019t lend out a large amount of the money that is on deposit.\n\nThe other approach is the \u201cbusiness-customer\u201d approach. It can be harder to get businesses in the door, but once they\u2019re in, you\u2019re less likely to lose them. There are a couple reasons for this. First, they typically have many more moving parts than individuals. They have more cash management needs (for instance, remote deposit, cash couriers, online wires, ACH origination, etc), which the bank makes some money on, but they also often have more than one decision maker, and for the larger businesses, certain protocols for doing certain things. The banks can benefit from the bureaucracy involved in some of these cases. Again, this means that once you have a business client, you\u2019re more likely to keep them.\n\nIn addition to businesses being easier to keep (while higher maintenance, the bank usually offsets the higher maintenance with higher fees), businesses often keep higher balances. This means you\u2019re getting the best of both worlds. You get the $1,000,000 customer who also has a hard time leaving. As a side-note, if you look at business banking rate sheets versus consumer, you\u2019ll see that typically banks pay less interest to businesses as well.\n\nNow, you also have some costs to look at from the bank\u2019s perspective. One of the biggest costs being the salary cost. You have many departments that you have to pay, retail being one of those. Unless you\u2019re keeping retail hours open more hours than you find elsewhere in the bank, you pretty much have to align the hours somewhat closely. For instance, you need retail\u2019s support to be around when retail is. You need the various lending groups to be open when retail is (you have the same clients that will be utilizing both departments). You need the investment people around when retail is. You need management to be around when they are too. One of the departments (that appears to be going by the wayside in the industry) is the \u201cproof\u201d department. This is the department that \u201cre-processes\u201d all of the work that retail processed as a sort of double check. These people often worked much later, as they couldn\u2019t complete their work until retail was complete. With everything going digital, this is quickly changing.\n\nIf you need everyone around at basically the same time, then in some regards the \u201ctalent pool\u201d does make sense. You are not as likely to find a mid-to-high level executive willing to work second shift\u2026and they are managing people that work in retail. This is only a very VERY small part of it though and can almost be discounted.\n\nThe bigger piece of the puzzle circles back to what customers the bank really wants. The bank wants both business and consumer clients, but the business deposit clients provide the most money (for deposit) for the least amount of risk. That is where you will find the focus of most banks. Most businesses are open during \u201cbusiness hours,\u201d and thus that is where the bank aligns its hours. \n\nThere is some truth to the fact that the banks that are only open until 5PM will lose some of the consumer clients, and it\u2019s not that the bank doesn\u2019t want these clients (the truth is that it does), but there are a couple things preventing this ability. One of those is the salary cost. The number of clients that will come in the door between 5 PM and 7 PM is relatively low, especially when looked at from a depository standpoint. The bank is likely to see transactions, sure, but the big money is generally not going into the accounts during that time period. If you are keeping employees in the branch during those two hours per day (plus extra hours on Saturdays and Sundays), you are likely either increasing the amount of staff (read: increased benefits cost) or paying overtime, just to have coverage. Keep in mind that the bank still needs employees in the bank even if there are no clients, and for insurance purposes often needs at least three (security/safety reasons\u2026we can go further into that if you want). Often, by staying open those hours, you are literally spending more money than you are making, so it simply doesn\u2019t make sense from a business perspective to stay open. People often view banks as a utility, but the fact of the matter is that it is a business and has to make a profit and actually has to pay its employees.\n", "Bank drone here (using his own personal opinion).  There's a bunch of reasons...  Most of which though is that most people come in to do \"business\" (new accounts, loans, etc.) during the \"normal workweek\" and very rarely want to do them evenings or weekends.  Most of the business at that point is maintenance transactions or things an ATM can generally be used for (with the exception of actual check cashing).\n\nCheck to see if your bank has an \"In Store\" network.  Most of those are inside a large grocery store and are open into the evening and long days on Saturdays.\n\nAlso, usually the people aren't your usual stuffed shirt bank folks and a bit more casual.  After working in them for years, I VASTLY prefer them, but it seems like a lot of major banks have a tough time getting the business model right. ", "Because they can - you serve them, they don't serve you.  This malarkey about them needing time to run batch jobs stopped being an issue in the 80's.", "Because they can. What are you going to do about it? Put your money in a pillow? ", "Well, because it's perfectly convenient...*for us.*  \n\nQuiet citizen.  ", "The banks are open when businesses are open, the only customers banks actually care about.", "Reading through this list as a banker, there's one myth perpetuated that almost everyone here is taking for granted: **Banks exist to give you a free service**. They do not. Banks do not owe you, the checking account holder, a free account or a free debit card or ATMs or a 24 hour hotline. You do not actually do anything for us profit-wise, the opposite is true. Tellers cost the bank an average of $12-$18 dollars an hour, and there are usually 2-5 of them. So already, Corner Bank and Trust is paying $35/hour just to placate you. Why? Because you are not our business, you are a **necessary expense**. Basically, you aren't the sundae- you're the sprinkles and the cherries. The sundaes of the bank are Loans, Mortgages, IRAs, and any other kind of big ticket money making asset, *but no one will get those at a bank they can't actually bank at*. Feed the minnows to catch the trout.\n\nA lot of non-bankers are saying \"Businesses are where the money is\" as if it were the Bluth Banana Stand. A business customer is a marketplace to us, a place where we can sell the things that make us money and buy things we need to make money. We buy Sam's Pizza account with teller support and lobby hours and company credit cards, and we sell them Remodeling Loans and Building Mortgages. \n\nI could go on, but for brevity:\n\n**TL;DR** regular people are a necessary expense to banks, like electricity and heating."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "abdivo", "title": "How do multi-qubit quantum computers not violate entanglement monogamy?", "selftext": "My understanding is that a 10-qubit computer is one that manipulates a system of 10 entangled particles. How does that not violate the monogamy principle?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/abdivo/how_do_multiqubit_quantum_computers_not_violate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ed1uqby"], "score": [2], "text": ["Where do you expect a violation of it? A set of two particles cannot be entangled with a third one if this pair is maximally entangled. It doesn't have to be maximally entangled. Entanglement between more than two particles is routinely done in experiments, e.g. in [GHZ states](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenberger%E2%80%93Horne%E2%80%93Zeilinger_state"]]}
{"q_id": "1jcguf", "title": "do clip-on mosquito repellents work? if so, how?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jcguf/eli5_do_clipon_mosquito_repellents_work_if_so_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbdb46d", "cbdbzd0", "cbdc7rk", "cbdcife"], "score": [12, 45, 7, 3], "text": ["As one with severe mosquito allergies, as well as an unfortunate ability to attract them from miles away.... they don't work at all for me.\n\nThe only thing I've been able to find that actually works is high quantities of DEET (80% or more) applied to clothing or skin... even then it isn't very effective.   Sucks for long term exposure but honestly anything else just hasn't worked.\n\n", "My understanding is that the word \"repellent\" is a bit of misnomer.  \n\nYour body gives off various chemicals that mosquitos have evolved to sense.  They see them almost as you'd see a neon \"FREE CAKE\" hanging somewhere.  These \"repellents\" are designed to mask those chemical signs so that the insects don't see you as a potential target.\n\nUnfortunately, even if that neon \"FREE CAKE\" sign has been taken down, and the cake has been hidden away in a fridge somewhere, when you walk into the room, you  might see some other cake indicators, such as paper plates, forks, napkins, and milk.  Once you've gotten that much info, you might start thinking to yourself, \"Hey, there might be cake here.\"  The same happens with the bugs.  The 'repellents\" won't prevent them from flying near you or even landing on you, they are just meant to mask the fact you have delicious cake hidden somewhere in your veins.", "Good luck getting a mosquito to stay still long enough to clip something to it! ", "Here's something that you already have in your house that actually does work:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/a-low-tech-mosquito-deterrent.html?_r=0"]]}
{"q_id": "2ff7lp", "title": "Often, death from disease is actually caused by the immune system's reactions. Why does the body allow this to happen?", "selftext": "As I understand it, with some diseases, the body's reactions are what actually result in the death of the victim. Why does the body allow itself to be destroyed by it's own immune system? Is this a kind of self destruct system designed to prevent the spread of deadly illness in groups?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ff7lp/often_death_from_disease_is_actually_caused_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck8nr2i"], "score": [17], "text": ["It is often not correct to think of the body as a logical actor.\n\nSometimes, it is better to think of it as a glorified chemical reaction.  When given stimulus A, B will occur.  B is perhaps \"beneficial\" in the general case, but in a specific case may result in the death of the organism.\n\nIf there are instances where the body kills itself, there isn't necessarily a \"good\" reason for it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "12cmh3", "title": "How long could the brain last if the failure of other organs were not a factor?", "selftext": "I'm wondering how long the brain would last on average should we develop perfect artificial or vat-grown replacement organs? \n\nIs there a hard limit on the brain's functionality, or would it simply be a matter of how long it took to get brain cancer/go senile/etc.?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12cmh3/how_long_could_the_brain_last_if_the_failure_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6tzk2u", "c6u5hwq"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["The incidence of dementia increases dramatically with increasing age. I imagine this would be a limiting factor. ", "Since we have no way of supporting a brain outside of the body, we have no way to know. There is evidence that brain decline is affected by organs of the body (for example, beta amyloid produced by the liver seems to be contributory to Alzheimer's), but the brain absolutely produces toxins of its own. Recently there was a good link to an article about the effects of young blood on brain function in older mice. This also supports the idea that brain function is interrelated with body chemistry. \n\nIts likely that with ideal external support, the brain could last significantly longer than it would under natural conditions. However, this is likely true for all organs. In the death process failure of one organ leads to failures of others. This happens slowly over time as well (think about how renal failure negatively impacts other organs in the body). \n\nThere are some things we can draw hard limits on. For example, there is a limited number of times a stem cell can reproduce to generate somatic tissue. This is primarily due to damage from metabolic processes and is a safety mechanism against cancer (likely). Cells in the brain are replaced very slowly, so this is probably less of a limiting factor than it might be in other tissues. There is absolutely a limited amount of storage in the brain. How much that is is still up for debate (we haven't really nailed down how storage works, so quantifying it is impossible). \n\nIn short, there is no good answer. However, if we can develop the technology to support a brain outside the body we will probably also develop a sufficient understanding of the brain to answer your questions. \n\nSources: I have a BS in Human Biology and am currently a medical student."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "57h6ke", "title": "what is going on with the u.s. and russia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57h6ke/eli5_what_is_going_on_with_the_us_and_russia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8rwwe8", "d8rwwxy", "d8s0ye0", "d8sgdyg"], "score": [3, 14, 31, 15], "text": ["In super basic terms: Russia is making moves to retake more land and/or they're bombing countries in the middle-east. The US can't really stop them from taking more land for fear of starting an actual war between them. They also can't do much to interfere with Russia's bombing of middle-eastern countries because Russia has repeatedly warned the US not to intervene. Basically, the two don't play well together, and though the US feels as if they should intervene, they really can't do anything but make strongly-worded accusations or suggestions that they'd prefer Russia to stop.", "Russia is trying to reassert itself as a world power and the US is trying to block that from happening.  In Ukraine, Russia got Crimea which included important black sea military bases and in Syria by keeping Assad in power Russia can maintain its only military base on the Mediterranean sea. ", "The OP's question should really be: What the heck is going on in Russia?\n\nThe Russian economy has taken a nosedive due to being under heavy sanctions by Europe and the US. These sanctions were put on them for invading Crimea plus for Russia's involvement in the commercial airliner MH17 being shot down in Ukraine in July 2014. MH17 was heading to Amsterdam (with mostly European passengers aboard), and therefore Europe responded harshly to the incident. After these sanctions were placed on Russia, inflation went out of control in Russia. Almost overnight the cost of goods doubled in Russia. \n\nThese things have had a negative impact on Vladimir Putin's approval ratings. At first, the Russian people loved Putin for invading Crimea. However, after years of economic turmoil, Putin's approval ratings are starting to slip. Furthermore, Russia's federal reserve is quickly running out if money. The Russian government is due to completely run out of money by the end of 2017. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Western nations still refuse to lend Russia any money. \n\nPutin is digging himself into a deep hole. He is pressuring the West to drop the sanctions so Russia's economy, and indirectly his approval ratings, can rebound. Unfortunately for Putin, the West refuses to drop the sanctions. So Putin is quietly using his military to put pressure on the West. By flexing Russia's military muscle, Putin is basically saying to the West \"ease up the sanctions or I may have to do something else to keep my people happy\".  If Europe and the US refuse to play ball with Putin, there is a good chance that Russia invades Ukraine. Annexation of more territory would greatly boost Putin's approval ratings at home (which is really all that matters to Putin). Vladimir Putin is a dictator and he will do everything he can to remain in power, no matter what the cost. Invasion of Ukraine may be his only option if Europe and the US refuse to ease up on their sanctions. \n\nIt is a very scary situation. As long as Vladimir Putin maintains his control over Russia, the entire world is at great risk. ", "Russia is a communist country with communism being losely defined as a system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community(government) and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.\n\n\nThe USA are a capitalist country with capitalism being losely defined as an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.\n\n\nBecause both countries have such diferent social organization systems, they have a hard time time being friendly with each other.\n\n\nAfter World War 2 ended, the USSR (today's Russian Federation) used their military influence and power to establish communist governments in a lot of countries in eastern Europe, with one of the countries being Germany, one of the defeated nations in WW2. The country was divided in 2, West Germany, under the protection of the  european allied victors of WW2 and also the USA, and East Germany, under the protection of the USSR. \n\n\n\nSince both nations were on complete opposite sides regarding social systems, they tend to be unfriendly to one another. But shortly after WW2 ended, the USSR had no way to compete with the USA regarding military power because of the atomic bomb.\n\n But this changed in the 29th of August  of the year 1949, with the USSR first successful test of the atomic bomb. Given the destructive power of the weapon, you could say both nations were somewhat balanced in terms of military power. \n\n\nBut what happened next was something that was defined as a race to reach superiority over the opposing nation.\n\n The Cold War\n\nBoth countries started developing technology that could tip the scales, giving one of the nations an edge. Most research was military grade, like tanks, missiles, even more power atomic bombs like the Tsar Bomba, that was over 1500 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in WW2.\n\n Fortunately, research also focused on space exploration, with USSR putting the first man in orbit, Yuri Gagarin and the USA putting the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and  the second.. wait nobody cares about the second.\n\nHowever the space exploration race aided in the creation and improvement of more powerful weapons, like missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads over vast distances.\n\nThis so called Cold War reached a critical point when the USSR decided to carry nuclear missiles to Cuba, a country under communist influence. As you know, Cuba is very close to the USA, so the american president was very concerned about having nuclear missiles so close to them. This incident was called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The missiles were transported by sea, so the USA Navy blocked the way for the USSR convoy carrying the missiles. The russian captain decided not to go any further, preventing armed conflict and possibly WW3. Lets keep in mind that at this point both nations had enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planets surface.\n\n\nFast foward some years, and both countries are at each others throats again, with the USSR invasion of Afghanistan. The USA wanted to fight against the invasion but could not risk direct confrontation with the USSR, so they engaged what is called a proxy war. They decided to give weapons to the afghan people to fight against the USSR. The USSR was well aware that the USA was providing weapons to the afghans, but they had no real proof, could not afford to to lose even more face in the international stage and also could not afford full scale conflict with the USA.\n\n Eventually they retreated from Afghanistan due to the severe loss of equipment and some personnel, in what was considered the only defeat of the Red Army in armed conflict.\n\n\n\nA few years later, a man came to power in the USSR, that almost single handedly diminished the hatred between both countries and created a more open minded government: Mikhail Gorbachev.\n\nHis policies of open mindeness and the restructuration of the political system in the country helped soothe all the bickering between the USA and USSR. This marked the end of the Cold War and the fall of the USSR, giving birth to the Russian Federation and several other independent nations, most former soviet states, like Latvia, Lithuania. Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, to name just a few.\n\n\nThe Berlin Wall also fell and West Germany and East Germany were reunited as one country again.\n\n\nAll was well with the world (well not even close), and there was something that  could be considered peaced between both nations.\n\n\n\nThis so called peace last for almost 20 years, until a man called Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia. Putin was a former KGB intelligence officer, that retired from the military to pursue a career in politics in 1991. He quickly rose through the ranks and was even acting president in 1999, after Boris Yeltsin resigned.\n\n\n Vladimir Putin reworked the russian economy, managing to increase the country's GBP for eight consecutive years., gaining a lot of support from the russian people.\n\n After he ran 2 consecutive terms, the russian constituition prevented him to run a 3rd consecutive term. The following presidential election was won by Dmytry Medvedev, that appointed Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister. After the constituition was changed to extend presidential terms from 4 to 6 years, Vladimir Putin ran for a 3rd term and won again.\n\n\nOld hatreds resurfaced between both countries over the years, and Vladimir Putin disgruntled with the USA global influence and more specifically, their influence over the Middle East, started escalating actions to gain influence over their immediate neighbours, namely Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.\n\n The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula happened shortly after revolution deposed the Ukranian President, that was aligned with the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation claimed they were  acting in the best interests of the Crimean population, namely the desire to return to the Russian Federation. One of the aledged reasons was that with the ukrainian shift of power happening and the loss of free movement by the Russian Federation on ukrainian soil, their major naval instalations capable of operation during the winter, would be cut off from them, preventing most military maneuvers by sea  in that region during the winter. \n\n\nFast forward to now. Elections are happening in the USA and the Russian Federation has increased its threats and bold actions, knowing that current president cant do much, and putting pressure on the next president.\n\nDonald Trump is on friendlier terms with Vladimir Putin, so he is not that big  of a threat to them. But Hillary Clinton's foreign policies might be less friendly. Some say a second Cold War is already underway and if things dont slow down, a full nuclear war could follow, leading us all to the middle ages again.\n\nJust on a side note and something to make you sleep better at night, there were once rumors that both countries might have a defined security policy called the M.A.D doctrine.  MAD stands for Mutual Assured Destruction, which states that in the event of the  majority of the chiefs of staff are unable to perform their duties, for being dead or for being captured, all nuclear warheads should be fired against the opposing nation. This should prevent a nation with enourmous nuclear power to use it against another nation with similar power, preventing all out war.\n\n\n**TL:DR**  Diferences between communisn and capitalism, arms race, Putin's rise to power, aftermath of current US elections and what it means in the near future. And also the fact that i cant do TL:DR, so go read.\n\nI wont say im sorry for the wall of text, if you dont feel like reading its cool , im not the boss of you, just dont leave the stupid comments regarding how much of a wall of text it is.\n\nI googled most historical facts from wikipedia and google, so if anything is wrong , please let me know. I wont correct anything because i will be shitfaced by the time i finish typing this and wont remember wtf i typed until the next day."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hhjht", "title": "Can I use resonant frequency to crack ice?", "selftext": "In other words, would an oscillating harmonic force be sufficient enough to crack and separate compact snow/ice on a metal pole or driveway?\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5hhjht/can_i_use_resonant_frequency_to_crack_ice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db0xiqx"], "score": [3], "text": ["Yes you can, as is [described here](_URL_0_). But you need to supply enough force to break it up. I don't know what the exact frequency would be, but you would probably need to deliver a lot of energy at that frequency. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance_method_of_ice_destruction"]]}
{"q_id": "q14oi", "title": "Why are particulates bad for you?", "selftext": "I currently live in China, where there are constant worries about the pollution in the air and its heath affects. In particular, there has been a lot of talk about pm 2.5 readings - which I believe registers particles in the air smaller than 2.5 microns. So this is my question: Why are particulates bad, and why are smaller particulates particularly (bad pun intended) damaging? I sort of assumed that the damage is mostly mechanical in nature, that is, that particulates tend to clog your bronchioles and such, and that especially small particles can clog your lungs more efficiently, but I started thinking that its possible that these especially tiny little pieces of god-knows-what have a more pronounced toxifying effect because they can more efficiently deliver damaging compounds into your body. So how does all this work? Xie xie. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q14oi/why_are_particulates_bad_for_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3tvlp8", "c3twpjw", "c3twxww"], "score": [3, 2, 2], "text": ["Your assumptions are partially correct. Inhalation of particulate matter can cause a whole host of cardiovascular and respiratory problems. \n\nThe PM 2.5 readings they are talking about refer to particles with a diameter around 2.5 microns. They also monitor larger PM10 particles (Which of course have a diameter of 10microns)\n\nParticulates  around 10 micrometers/microns and smaller are deposited in your bronchioles and alveoli. The PM2.5 particles can actually enter our circulatory system.\n\nGod may know whats in PM but so does science ;). \n\nThe composition of the particulates depends on where and how they formed. Their general ingredient list includes carbonaceous species, volatile organic compounds (VOC), sulphates and nitrates. \n\nThese aren't compounds you want in your circulatory system. Through chemical interactions you could eventually end up with   various forms of cancer, asthma, cardiovascular issues, prenatal problems and god-knows-what-else ;)\n\n_URL_0_\nCheck out the video he talks about it a bit. \n", "As stated the PM2.5 is particles that have an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 microns.  There are several reasons why PM2.5 causes bad air quality.  First is the biological effects on your body (see the link for a list _URL_0_).  The body has no natural barrier to remove large amounts of PM2.5 so they bypass the nose and filtering effects of human airways and then are small enough to cross the barrier into your bloodstream.  Another biological problem is that people have many levels of health, age, and exposure to air.  example is older people are more seriously affected by PM since their body has a harder time removing it.  Youngsters are drastically effected since they move more air in and out of their body than adults so they have a higher exposure rate than an adult breathing the same air.\n\nThe second part of the PM2.5 problem is that it is hard to filter it out of the air.  There are chemical precursor emitted from automobiles that then turn into PM in the atmosphere.  You have to understand the chemical/physical fate of pollutants that come out of sources in order to control them. So how a people and country deals with this is critical.\n\nA study that directly links average longevity to air quality is the Harvard Six Cities Study.  Basically the more pollution an area has the lower the average life span of the population.", "I'm going to add that in the ultrafine scale, particles have different capabilities to enter deeper into your lungs, I'll just leave this link here _URL_1_\n\nLooking at figure 1 you can see how smaller particles end up deeper into the lung and have greater effect. This is by the way how a water pipe works better than just smoking: _URL_0_\n\nTo further answer your question, the danger is not mechanical but toxicological. I'm going to add heavy metals to MedicinalChemist's list also."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/user/ChannelMonster"], ["http://www.epa.gov/pmdesignations/basicinfo.htm"], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18946409", "http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2004/Nonoparticles-On-Brain2004.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "7rduum", "title": "how does nintendo's labo work?", "selftext": "I just don't get it? Is it just cardboard and you have to pretend that your doing something or is there more too it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rduum/eli5_how_does_nintendos_labo_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsw5hn6", "dsw5ijs", "dswadbg", "dswhbw7", "dswlf4c", "dswoff2", "dswvjxq", "dswyymn", "dswz2k9", "dswzw6u", "dsx0c7c"], "score": [2282, 47, 393, 57, 42, 1581, 12, 4, 3, 8, 3], "text": ["In conjunction with the software, the IR sensors in the right joy con allows pieces of reflective plastic inside the cardboard to sense different movements and then the software reacts accordingly.", "Remember the original Wiimote's motion functionality and its other accessories such as the crossbow, steering wheel, etc.? Well, the Labo are essentially cardboard accessories for the JoyCons that are a bit more exclusive to the compatible games. \n\nAs you saw in the reveal trailer, it went to things such as a piano, a fishing rod, and a house; clearly much more exclusive accessories that work with only a single game. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my take on it. We only had so much to work with.", "The right side Joy-Con has a little infrared camera and illumination LED. You can see how it all works in [this](_URL_0_) segment of the video (pause and look closely a the scenes from that point on). The moving cardboard bits have white markers attached. The camera captures an image, and the software looks for the motion of these markers to determine which pieces of cardboard have moved. It seems you can probably customize the layout of the detection (by defining rectangular regions of interest that detect when a particular white marker enters or leaves them) to build your own contraptions.\n\nEdit: Here's an [annotated diagram](_URL_1_).\n\nFor the moving \"robot\", the cardboard body is designed so that when the joy-cons vibrate, the robot moves preferentially in one direction (thanks to the angled comb-shaped \"legs\"). By choosing which side is vibrating (or both), you can steer the robot around.", "It is using the joy-cons to their fullest.  It uses the buttons (obviously), motion controls, and the IR sensor (least obviously).  I'm sure they will use the HD rumble which is apparently very good, though under utilized.\n\nThe IR sensor can basically read a layout of white objects in front of it (in a dark enclosed environment, especially).  Think of it as reading a chessboard equivalent (it can probably do much better), and reading the positions of things in the squares.  It is easy to imagine that moving one piece back and forth across one or more squares could easily be treated the same as a button push or motion control that we use so often now.", "If you watch the video closely you see that in all of the cardboard devices they Place one of the joycons in them. The joycons have gyro sensors in them and the red one has an IR sensor. These allow the movement of the cardboard devices to be translated to input for the games or applications, whatever you want to call them.", "The piano works by pointing the right joycon into the body of the box and pushing a key changes what the IR camera views (I'm guessing it lifts small paddles on the inside via lever motion). The camera can detect basic shapes easily and determine distance of objects so that must play into how it works too. The software the kit comes with interprets what the camera sees and outputs the corresponding notes.\n\nThe robot vr backpack looks like it uses the gyrometers (things that can sense motion) of the left joycon headset piece to determine view while it uses the other gyrometers on the right joycon to detect when your ducking. It then uses the ir camera again, to look at the position of markers inside the backpack controlled by pulleys, rubber bands and string. When you pull the strings it pulls on the tab with the marker on the inside up, and the camera can see that info to tell which arm your moving. \n\nThe rc car works like a hexbug nano but has dual drive lol the way the legs are shaped, the vibration makes it move forward incrementally. If only one side rumbles, it turns to ~~that~~ *the other* side.\n\n**TLDR**: This is really a kit for creating non electric peripherals that mechanically give info to the gyros and IR camera. It isn't pretending to play with that stuff you make, they interact with the joycon to become actual controllers of what your doing\n\n", "Labo is similar to google cardboard in the sense that the cardboard portion of your purchase simply holds your existing technology's multiple sensors (in this case your nintendo switch), and allows you engage in augmented reality play.\n\n[Here's a good demo video](_URL_0_)", "The right joy-con of a Nintendo Switch has a shiny black sensor at the bottom. This sensor, when you point it at stuff, can sense the shape and distance of the stuff. Sort of like a Kinect, if you\u2019ve ever used one of those.\n\nPiano:\n\nWhen you slide the right joy-con into the cardboard piano, then pressing keys down on the piano makes other things inside the piano move. The joy-con senses what those things are and, judging by the shapes and positions, the Switch is able to tell which keys are being pressed.\n\nThe Switch then plays notes that go with those keys, so pressing a cardboard key makes the Switch play the note for that key.\n\nThe piano is small so it won\u2019t have as many keys as a real piano, but it\u2019s a neat start.\n\nRC car:\n\nBoth joy-cons have a rumble feature, meaning that they can vibrate. Most video game controllers have rumble features now. Most games usually use it to make the controller shake when your guy in the game gets hit, which makes it feel more real.\n\nWith Labo, you attach the joy-cons to the cardboard RC car and then you press the Switch touchscreen which has touchscreen buttons for left and right. If you press the \u201cleft\u201d touchscreen button, the joy-con on the right will shake and that\u2019ll make the car turn left.\n\nThe RC car won\u2019t have wheels and so it\u2019ll need to be on a flat surface to work. Will it work on carpet? I dunno, I guess we\u2019ll find out.", "How does the \"vr\" robot set work? It looks like the vr acts as a single lense piece that you wear in front your eyes so when you look at your tv it acts as a pseudo vr thing?", "It's just nintendo taking a bit of the virtual out of virtual reality.. Like playing counterstrike with a cardboard gun instead of a mouse and keyboard", "It's a mixture of the motion sensing in the joycons and the IR camera in the right joycon for certain things like noticing which piano key is hit. There's a surprising amount of tech in those little joycons"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU&amp;t=129", "https://mrcn.st/t/labo.jpg"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "11d0yu", "title": "pee shivers", "selftext": "I think men for the most part have experienced it.\n\nCan someone please elaborate? Thank you for the answers!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11d0yu/eli5_pee_shivers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6ldzap", "c6le1m6", "c6le6nn", "c6ledm8", "c6leiyf", "c6leol2", "c6lh67r"], "score": [14, 36, 9, 55, 3, 3, 10], "text": ["no answer, a story: at boarding school in 7th grade I asked about this and was universally laughed at by the class and teacher for asking such a stupid question. Fuck them, answers are out there!", "Not just guys, fyi.", "Best I can do in 5 minutes of Google searching.\n\n_URL_0_", "There are a lot of possible explanations that have been offered, however there has been no scientific publication that narrows it down to a single one. These include:\na)  Exposure of body parts: Your body parts that are usually kept warm and snug in your unwashed underwears, are exposed to cooler temperatures. Your body reacts in the form of shivers to keep them warm.\nb) Loss of heat: Though not convincing enough, another theory goes on to say that if you urinate or micturate (man I love that word), your body loses heat, causing it to shiver.\nc) Mini orgasm: Yep. That orgasmic release when you've been holding it in for a long time, may in fact lead to a mini orgasm which leads to small convulsions. What usually happens is that your autonomous(edit: autonomic) nervous system keeps your bladder relaxed, while keeping your valves tensed. This is achieved by a hormonal play. When you pee you cause the valves to relax, and bladder to grow tense. This change in hormonal balance may lead to convulsions in the body.\nHope that helps. :)", "Got pee shivers while reading it", "Some friends an I stumbled on this question and did about a half day of research.\n\nWhat we found that makes sense is that the pee shivers are a collision between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.  Your want to hold it vs your body wanting to void it collide and shiver.\n\nI think the source had a fancy name for this.  I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.", "What's a pee shiver"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_terror/2008/01/the-pee-shivers.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6ghf53", "title": "I'm a wealthy 17th century Frenchman who wants to live in central Paris. Can I just go and buy an \"apartment\"?", "selftext": "I'm looking at an [early 17th century depiction of Paris](_URL_0_). Imagine that I want to live in one of the buildings in the background part of that picture (not the palace itself, but something reasonably close to it). Perhaps I'm a skilled craftsman, businessman, or lawyer; someone with above-average income by urban standards, but not royalty, nobility, or of \"extreme\" riches.\n\nI know that in the countryside or smaller towns, the wealthy tended to buy mansions or at least single-family homes, but I imagine even a well-off individual might not be able to afford an *entire* building in a prime location of the nation's capital, such as one of those depicted in the picture. \n\nDid Paris of that time have a concept of \"strata\", co-operative ownership, or otherwise ownership of a single apartment? If so, could I take on a \"mortgage\" to buy an apartment, or did I have to pay in specie in full? Or was renting (from someone who owned the entire building) the only option available to me? And what would I do if there was a problem in a shared part of the building, like a leaky roof?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ghf53/im_a_wealthy_17th_century_frenchman_who_wants_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diqab7c"], "score": [21], "text": ["Followup question:  As an \"bourgeoisie\" apartment dweller as described in the post, what social services were available to me at the time? Would fire protection or garbage pickup be part of what I could expect living in one of those buildings? Before the advent of modern policing, what protection against burglary could I rely on? And would I send my kids to a dedicated \"school\", or are church schooling or private tutoring the only education options available?\n\nI'm curious about these topics because based on a common narrative, \"modern\" city services and mechanics (police, fire departments, strata ownership, etc), is only considered to emerge in the 19th century. It's easy, therefore, to imagine cities before that as being archaic, unorganized population centers. \n\nBut looking at the picture above (early 17th century, i.e. of *The Three Musketeers* era), the city strikes me as a fairly complex and organized apparatus that would necessarily involve urban planning, building codes, civil engineering, and a bureaucracy to manage all that. So I wonder what other services and mechanics modern urban dwellers take for granted were in fact well-established in Paris or other capitals as early as the 17th century (or perhaps even earlier), but not well-recognized nowadays."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Palais-Royal.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7fo79c", "title": "can you protect electronics from emps/solar flares? if so how?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fo79c/eli5can_you_protect_electronics_from_empssolar/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqd73u4", "dqd9bwb", "dqd9e15", "dqdbzci", "dqdepto", "dqdf6na", "dqdfy9q", "dqdg7by", "dqdgxbu", "dqdjdhm"], "score": [25, 254, 137, 5, 2, 4, 2, 19, 4, 2], "text": ["EMP would iduce current in long conductors. Disconnecting things should stop large currents from forming. This should at least stop anything from catching on fire.", "The military does it all the time.  The movie fantasy of Russian or terrorist EMP causing military helicopters to fall from the sky is BS.  Source: former military communications tech.\n\nPulled off a forum: _URL_0_\n\nMIL-STD 188-125-1 HEMP Hardening (Fixed Facilities)\n\nMIL-STD 188-125-2 HEMP Hardening (Transportable Systems)\n\nMIL-STD 202 Environmental Requirements Component Level\n\nMIL-STD 810 Environmental Requirements Box Level\n\nMIL-STD 461 EMI Requirements (Subsystems)\n\nMIL-STD 464 EMI Requirements (Systems)\n\n\n", "EMP and solar flares affect different things.\n\nSolar flares affect very long cables (more than a few hundred miles) and cause DC voltage to appear on these wires. These very long wires tend to be things like power grids or telephone lines. \n\nThe DC voltage is a major problem for power grid transformers which require pure AC power. These can malfunction if exposed to DC voltage from a solar flare. The power grid operator can install DC voltage detectors and shut down the power line when DC voltage is detected. Alternatively, they can use \"series compensation\" of the power line which stops the DC voltage completely and can also boost the power line's AC efficiency (but is very expensive). \n\nEMP affects shorter cables from about 1-2 feet up to a few hundred feet. Very small electronic device like phones, watches, laptops should be OK unless connected to external wires. \n\nFor things with longer wires or bigger systems, industrial machines, cars, etc. Then these could be sensitive. \n\nProtection can be internal: adding ultrafast trainsient suppressor diodes at both ends of any wires. \n\nOr external: use of a Faraday cage. Don't forget that deep bunkers can use the ground as a Faraday cage and large heavy buildings with lots of concrete and rebar also axt like Faraday cages. So, in general something like a nuclear plant is immune because there is so much concrete surrounding anything electrical and the uncovered bits are already very high voltage, which is much stronger than  an EMP so aren't at risk. ", "Faraday cage. Get a 100% metal basket or trash can (with metal lid) and put your electronics inside. Protected by science^^TM", "Dumb question, would turning off and unplugging electionics during one protect them?", "You could always live in a lead bunker thousands of feet below the ground and that will pretty much stop anything from hitting\n", "I've done this for my gps and portable ham radio in my bug out bag, you basically just make a mini faraday cage. ", "True ELI5: \n\nThe sun releases a lot of energy. This energy comes in waves, just like you see in water at the beach, but the sun's waves move through the air. \n\nSome of the sun's waves you can see (light), but most of them you can't see. We call these by different names, depending on how fast they move. Some you may have heard of are radio waves, microwaves, \n and X-rays. \n\nSome of these waves you can even feel! When you feel warm sunshine on your skin, those are actually one type of wave. Lots of other things make these waves too. People can make these waves too, using special equipment, but we have to be very careful. The sun is the biggest thing that makes waves in our solar system. \n\nDifferent things stop different waves. A pillow or a blanket or your hand can stop most or all of the waves you can see that come out of a flashlight, but it can't stop the waves that you can feel - that's why a flightlight stil feels warm even when you can't see the light. \n\nThe waves that come from EMPs and solar flares are extra hard to stop. They go so fast that they can go through a lot of things that would stop other waves. That's why doctors can use X-rays to see your bones. It's also why they're so dangerous - they can change how your body works at a very small level, and make you sick. They do the same thing to electronics like your TV and cell phone, but those get even sicker, and immediately stop working. The atmosphere mostly protects you and me from those waves, but electronics are extra sensitive. Because they're so expensive, people spend a lot of time and money thinking about how to protect them better. \n\nOne thing that stops the waves from EMPs and solar flares best is a thick physical barrier. For example, a box made out of lead, or deep water. But those are big and heavy and not easy to carry around, so they're not very useful for things like smartphones. So they also work on special tools. One of the most famous ones is called a Farraday Cage. It's a box made out of metal, that has a bunch of holes poked in it. The holes are carefully planned to be just the right size to catch the waves and turn them away. ", "Does wraping the said electronic in aluminum foil count as a Faraday cage? ", " > \tI'll start with the grounding question, because that's the easiest to answer: Doesn't help a bit. All that matters is that the metal container is conductive and doesn't have gaps (ammo cans are bad at isolating from UHF on up because that rubber gasket only leaves the lid connected to the body at the ends, and that allows radiation in if the wavelength is short enough). If you're concerned about direct lightning hits, then having the can connected to ground could attract lightning to it, especially if it's much above ground level. I'd leave it ungrounded.\n\n > The paint can sounds like a great solution for anything small enough to fit inside. Since it's designed to make an airtight seal, you know you have metal-to-metal contact all the way around the edge of the lid. Trash cans aren't very good on that point -- the lid probably only touches the can at a few points, leaving long (also thin, but it's the long part that matters) gaps, so RF can get inside. They, like the ammo cans, will still protect well from low frequencies (such as indirect lightning effects). Insulation on the inside isn't really necessary (the whole point of the Faraday cage is that currents only flow on the outside surface), but I suppose it can't hurt.\n\n > \tRadios are a fine way to test isolation. It's better if you can control the signal strengths involved and have some basis for comparisons, so you can get an idea of how much attenuation the can provides. The point about testing at high frequencies is valid -- in all but a very very few cases, low frequencies will always be better-isolated than high frequencies. The microwave, I think, is one of those few counterexamples -- it's a resonant cavity tuned to one specific frequency (2.45 GHz), and the edges of the door are positioned at natural zero-current areas for that frequency. At any other frequency, the fact that the door isn't electrically connected to the body around most of the edge allows some RF through.\n\n > As for what frequencies matter for what sort of threats, it's time for numbers. Starting with the lowest, and therefore easiest for a Faraday cage to handle:\n* Solar flares and resulting geomagnetic storms: Hundredths of a Hz. Complete non-issue for anyone but the guys running the power grid and pipelines. Small risk of surges on the power lines themselves from transformer failures, but absolutely no RF risk (i.e. if it's not plugged in, it doesn't give a damn).\n* Lightning: Mostly below 1 MHz. That means wavelengths of hundreds of meters, so anything that more or less surrounds your electronics will protect from the electromagnetic waves (i.e. the indirect effects that extend hundreds of meters from the strike). Direct hits from the strike itself are nearly impossible to protect against, since a lightning strike can easily blow a hole through something like an ammo can. But those follow conductors, so don't store your Faraday-protected electronics next to that wire running to the old TV antenna on your chimney. For testing in this frequency range, try an AM radio tuned to the strongest station you can find.\n* Nuclear EMP: Worst below 100 MHz, but significant up to several hundred MHz. Wavelengths as short as several inches. This is where things become demanding. Gaps of several inches in length may allow RF to penetrate into a Faraday cage. Making sure the lid contacts the body around its whole circumference, or at least every inch or two, is important. To test isolation for this sort of thing, try at least UHF (FRS/GMRS radios operate around 460-470 MHz, which is a good example).\n* Non-nuclear EMP bomb: Up to several GHz, perhaps tens of GHz. Wavelengths down below an inch. Damn hard to shield against, but short-ranged and, in my opinion, not likely to be seen unless you're on the wrong end of a serious attack from a high-tech power. If you're still concerned about it, then look to absolutely, completely seal your Faraday cage. Consider soldering the lid on to that paint can. Testing at cellphone/wifi frequencies would be a start, but threats could go well beyond that frequency range. There just isn't much consumer hardware that uses frequencies this high.\nFirst off: The after-effects of solar flares abso-farking-lutely cannot damage anything that isn't connected to miles of metal. If it isn't plugged into the grid, and isn't a miles-long pipeline, and isn't outside the Earth's atmosphere, it doesn't freaking care. While removing batteries won't do much, removing antennas from radios is an excellent first step (having something that's designed to collect RF energy attached to your electronics is obviously a bad idea). Also, power lines can act as pretty effective antennas, particularly for VHF and lower frequencies, so removing that connection is also a beginning step. It's all a matter of degrees of protection, and something is better than nothing.\nI don't know exactly where you got [the idea that lead is the best EMP shielding], but I'm guessing you have nuclear EMPs confused with nuclear (i.e. ionizing, mainly gamma) radiation. They are very, very different things. Lead is popular for shielding from x-ray and gamma radiation because it's cheap and extremely dense, but there's nothing else particularly special about it. Its relatively low conductivity gives it a larger skin depth than other metals, which doesn't help for electromagnetic shielding.\nThere are several things wrong with [the listed requirements of quarter-inch-thick-steel]. It sounds like you're talking about a low-altitude or surface nuclear burst. Those don't produce any significant EMP except deep within the kiss-your-ass-goodbye zone. Unless you're inside a hardened blast shelter, you'll be rather too smashed, scorched, and irradiated to notice that your radio isn't working. Widespread nuclear EMPs come from bursts extremely high in the atmosphere -- we're talking low-Earth-orbit altitudes here, hundreds of miles up. The effects are continent-wide, and they don't weaken very much with distance until you pass the burst's horizon.\nNon-nuclear EMP sources (lightning and conventional, engineered EMP bombs) are short-ranged, but generally on the scale of hundreds of feet to hundreds of yards, not several miles, so your guidelines don't really apply to those either.\nAs for the shielding recommendations, those again sound like you're talking about gamma radiation. A quarter inch of anything is total overkill for RF shielding except at very low frequencies (tens of kHz, maybe?). Such low frequencies don't couple to small circuitry, so there's no reason to worry about them.\nIn response to insistence that all shielding/cages must be grounded:\nThe bit about grounding is simply wrong. Gauss's law does not care if your shielding is grounded, only that it forms a continuous, closed surface. If you don't know what Gauss's law is, or why it applies here, stop giving advice right now because you do not have the background to understand what you're talking about.\nI mostly agree about digital stuff being more vulnerable than analog. However, once again, lead is not special. Electromagnetic shielding is not a matter of absorbing energy, but reflecting it. Lead isn't uniquely good at either of those. You want conductivity and lots of it, but that's pretty easy to get from common sheet metals. The tough part is making sure that you don't have gaps with poor or nonexistent connections (like around the lid of a container, or at the door of a safe), so if you're choosing a metal you should go for something that makes good, reliable electrical contacts. Also, I'm pretty sure fire-resistant safes don't use lead in their construction.\nMy personal contribution to the thread:\nHERO. Hazard of Electromagnetic Radiation to Ordinance. HERO is defined as the threat to electrically and non-electrically fire ordinance and equipment from electromagnetic radiation. It's also one of the first things I learned about before the .mil let me within pissing distance of a blasting cap. Thing is, the military's been thinking about this EMP hoo-yah for quite sometime, and they are worried about both pulses, pulse weapons, and rapid accumulation, which has a tendency to fire ungrounded ordinance.\nSo, to prevent electrically fire rockets and sensitive electronics from malfunctioning or \"cooking off\" due to HERO and EMP (which presents a HERO threat) the solution is simple. Mylar baggies, about .7mil thick, and sealed on all four sides. No grounding, no lead, nothing else. Mylar baggies. Shit works too. Next time you order a small electronic component from some internet company, look at the little baggie it comes in. Sealed mylar. That protected that chip from air travel at 35,000 feet, land travel through rural, urban, and suburban areas, and all the electromagnetic radiation that the trip entails. No ground wires. No lead shielding. No safes.\nJust what I've learned both from electronic warfare specialists, and from my own training in How Not To Get Myself Blown Up Or Fry The Radios.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/to-what-extent-is-military-equipment-hardened-against-emps.353605/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.voanews.com/a/james-woolsey-warns-of-north-koreas-other-nuclear-weapon/4031550.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1ivwa9", "title": "how do we know whether or not global warming is a natural cycle - and how do we know which \"side\" has more objective scientists?", "selftext": "People say that we're looking at too small a snapshot of weather and temperature patterns to know whether we're making an impact on global temperature - could it just be a natural cycle?\n\nAlso, if the \"majority\" of scientists agree with this, how do we know that?  How do we talk about the quantity or quality of scientists supporting one view versus the other?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ivwa9/eli5_how_do_we_know_whether_or_not_global_warming/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb8j50n", "cb8ja71", "cb8jitj", "cb8lzuo", "cb8n4g1", "cb8opvs", "cb8pfup", "cb8pjw3", "cb8q3t6", "cb8ulaq"], "score": [30, 19, 10, 2, 16, 2, 8, 2, 62, 2], "text": ["Because one side has scientists and the other politicians. \n\nGlobal warming is not a controversial thing, science universally agrees it is real and a serious issue. Its only politicians who try and paint it as some controversy that has two sides.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >  The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is more than 90% certain that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels.\n\n_URL_1_", "It *could* just be a natural cycle. Most scientists don't think that it's just natural, but it's certainly possible.\n\nThe reason that we don't think that it's a natural cycle is that there's very good science that shows what effects greenhouse gases have on the environment. For example, it's commonly accepted that Venus is the way it is (a hellish nightmare landscape) because of a runaway greenhouse effect. The science that shows what effect carbon dioxide, methane, etc. have in the atmosphere is actually very straightforward and has been understood for a long time. There were plenty of scientists warning us that the Earth was going to start heating up before it actually happened, in fact.\n\nSo, we have a lot of direct evidence that shows that high levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases causes a warming effect. It's almost impossible to argue that we aren't in some sort of heating cycle right now. It's absolutely impossible to argue that humans haven't been putting a lot more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than is normal, starting in the past century or so.\n\nConnect the dots.\n\n > Also, if the \"majority\" of scientists agree with this, how do we know that? How do we talk about the quantity or quality of scientists supporting one view versus the other?\n\nThey've done a number of polls over the past few decades. The ones from the past decade show that most climate scientists agree that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. [source](_URL_0_)\n\nedit: If it wasn't obvious, my bias is that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. However, none of what I said is an opinion, other than \"connect the dots.\"", "From what I can tell, the best way to look at global climate trends is to go to Antarctica, drill down a couple hundred feet, pull out a long cylinder of ice, and measure the amount of CO2 bubbles from centuries and millennia past.  \n\nThe general scientific consensus is that yes, the planet does go through cycles of warming and cooling, but in the past couple hundred year when humans started burning fossil fuels, temperatures have gone up too far too fast to be part of a natural cycle. ", "Like Jim777PS3 said, the opposing side is politicians and non-climate experts, the other of climate scientists.  So which would have the objective view on global warming?\n\n\nClimate change per se is a natural cycle - earth has gotten through periods of \"hot\" and \"cold\".   Currently, the temperatures are constantly rising (ever year we get 'record high' temperatures) so we call it global warming.  However, the consensus is that rise in temperature is man-made as opposed to the more natural cycle because the increase has been so steep and it matches with our modification on the environment.  \n\n > \"The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in the last 150 years. [...]  They said the rate of increase in global warming due to these gases is very \nlikely to be unprecedented within the past 10,000 years or more\" \n\nYou can find on the NASA page:\n_URL_0_", "This is what is know as a false equality, the notion that every issue has two \"sides\" that deserve to be represented equally\n\nBut some sides are not equal...flat earthers, holocaust deniers, and pedophiles represent extreme minority views, not valid alternatives.  And client change deniers are rapidly joining that club.\n\nHere is the thing you need to know about scientists...they love to argue with each other.  Careers are made by proving someone else wrong.  So when you get 95%+ of these disagreeable people to agree on *anything*, that is pretty significant.\n\n >  could it just be a natural cycle?\n\nThere are ways to estimate temperate going back hundreds of thousands of years, using oxygen isotope ratios from bubbles trapped in ice cores.  They show that the current change is unprecedented.\n\n >  Also, if the \"majority\" of scientists agree with this, how do we know that?\n\nBecause we asked them.  If you limit your pool to related fields, their just aren't that many scientists you have to track down.\n\n >  How do we talk about the quantity or quality of scientists supporting one view versus the other?\n\nThe gold standard for scientists is publication in a peer reviewed journal.  You might have a degree and get paid to do research, but you aren't really a scientist until you get published.  So one useful method for taking the temperature of the scientific community is to review recently published papers.  We find the vast majority give evidence in favor of climate change, and the ones that are skeptical aren't necessarily against it, they are merely criticizing a particular methodology.", "With the snapshot, think of it like this:\n\nYou're trying to get in shape, so you decide to go jogging. You time yourself doing a mile so you can keep track of your progress. After a few months you look at the data.  You see that, overall, you're getting faster. The difference in your first time to your last time is significant.\n\nBut, if you look at each individual day, there is a lot of variation. If you look at your fastest mile in your last week, versus your slowest in your first week, you'll see incredible improvement. If you take your slowest time from your last week and your fastest from your first, there might not be much improvement at all.\n\nAlso, if you look at each week, you would see a little improvement, but nothing major. You could probably find a week or two where you got worse because of weather, a friends birthday party you partied a little too hard at, etc.\n\nSo with noisy data and statistical methods, it can be hard to sort out the data. Which is why there is a peer review system, where the method and data is examined and shown around. It's an attempt to limit mistakes and fraud. It is not perfect, but it works pretty well.\n\nSo, in order to increase the length of time you're looking at, you have to find methods and techniques for reconstructing what the earth was like before we were around. We have very good records going back to the 1700's from the British Royal Navy. We can use those records to calibrate other techniques, such as looking at fossil records for what type of algae and other plants/critters grow in waters of what temperature. Then, you can take fossil cores of mud from around sea and lake shores, and reconstruct what the temperature was.  But this data is not precise, there is a range of possible temperatures. So you try and compare it against other techniques and sources to see if everyone agrees, within a certain range. And you find that all of these techniques ***do*** agree, within a margin of error.\n\nNow, bias exists. Most certainly. But this is also one of the ideas behind peer review. If you have something, you have to prove it. You have to show your work, on the blackboard. And if your fudging the numbers, people will know.\n\nThere are some people with legitimate concerns about data collection and analysis. One who comes to mind was Dr. Mueller, who is a physicist who headed the [Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project](_URL_2_). This was a project started to address many of the skeptics claims. What they found convinced Dr. Mueller of the correctness of global warming. [Here is the OP-Ed he wrote after the study was completed.](_URL_0_)\n\nAs for how we know a majority of scientists agree,\n[here is a PDF](_URL_1_) of an article where the authors surveyed approximately 3000 scientists from various fields for their opinion on global climate change. They include a breakdown by how often that person publishes a peer reviewed research paper, and in what field. It also includes references to a public opinion poll for comparison. Basically, they break it down that the more that you study climate, the more you agree that climate change is happening. It approaches 100% when you get to published PhD's in climate science.\n\nSo, is it possible that 98% of people who study climate science are all biased and lying? Yes, but it's not very likely. \n\n******************\n\n*In my opinion* a lot of the confusion being caused is created by people with a financial interest in things staying how they are, with regard to fossil fuel usage world wide. This includes skewed studies, paid shills and bought politicians.\n******************\n\nBut, how do ***you*** know? Well, do some research. When you see a reference on the web, google it. then google the center or people who performed the study. Do they show up as having a history, or are they very recent. Check their donor list. Is it in a magazine, or a peer reviewed journal? See if you can find what other articles are posted in those same journals? Are they all for one side or the other, or does it have multiple topics under the same general umbrella.\n\nGoogle the people, and find there credentials. Is Dr. so and so an actual climatologist, a physicist, or a dentist? Don't take health advice from the guy who fixes your car, and don't let your dentist work on your transmission.", "[Between 1991 and 2012, there were 13,050 scientific articles on the subject of Climate change.  24 rejected the notion of global warming](_URL_0_).\n\nIn addition, [97% of 12,000 articles agree that Humans are the cause of or a primary contributor of global warming](_URL_1_)\n\nThis isn't a case of \"You have to give both sides a fair go of it\".. this is a case of 97 kids in the 7th grade telling you \"Santa is your parents\" and three of them insisting Santa is actually a magic fairy who brings socks and gummy bears.\n\nIt's beyond a quality/quantity argument.  If it was something like 40/40/20 Pro/Anti/Undecided, you could argue that.  Hell, if it was 70/30, you could even argue that.  97% is Nutters vs. People Trying To Have A Serious Talk.  The 97% represent a group that range from \"Everything humans do is horrible and we have to go back to living in caves\" to \"Look, we don't have to give up electricity and internet and cell phones, I'm just saying some solar panels here and there can't hurt\"\n", "Yes, the Earth has been warmer than it is now. But never this fast of a warming. The trends are different. There are so many factors put into the warming but mostly it's the greenhouse gases that cause the Earth to warm up. Burning fossil fuels create these gases. \n\nScientists have created models to show what the climate would be like today without human factors, and these hypothetical models show a cooler Earth. Factors that would affect our climate are volcanoes, solar cycles, other climate patterns like El Nino.\nBut the Earth isn't warming as much as we thought because the oceans are taking in CO2 and trying to balance it out, which is also causing the oceans to warm. But it's us humans who are causing this increase in CO2. \n\nThe opposing side to global warming does have less quality of scientists. They try to manipulate people into believing their views by reporting false facts or claim their work is backed up by bigger scientists when it's not. But there are a few quality scientists in the opposing view as well. It's mostly made of a bunch of scientists publishing papers to prove the other is wrong. \n\n", "SCIENTIST HERE.\n\nLet me explain. We have been measuring how much energy the sun puts out for the last 45 years (with satellites). So we know how much the sun contributes to global warming. We also know how much greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. Why? Because there is a law of physics known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law. If you plug the energy of the sun hitting Earth into that equation, and take into consideration the geometry of the Earth, you get an answer that says the temperature of Earth should be about 10 degrees Celsius or more colder than it actually is. So the greenhouse effect makes Earth at least 10 degrees warmer (that is a global average).\n\nWithout the greenhouse effect, Earth would be an iceball. That gives you an idea of how potent the greenhouse effect is. What drives the greenhouse effect? Well, most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor in the atmosphere. The next most important molecule is carbon dioxide. Some global warming deniers point to the water vapor fact mentioned above as evidence that global warming is a natural cycle. There is a major problem with that: water vapor is a \"feedback\" not a \"forcing.\" What do I mean by that? If you were to \"force\" vast amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, it would just turn into rain. That water vapor would not stick around for long. Why? Because water vapor rises in the atmosphere. It is cold in the upper atmosphere, and rain is generated when there is a) enough cold, and b) enough water vapor in the atmosphere. This is why we consider water vapor a \"feedback.\" It \"feeds\" upon the temperature of the planet. In other words, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by how hot the atmosphere and oceans are. If they are hot, there is more water vapor. If they are cold, there is less water vapor. There is nothing we can do about that. Water vapor simply AMPLIFIES the greenhouse effect.\n\nSo to explain the greenhouse effect, we are left looking at other molecules. Like I said earlier, CO2 is the next most IMPORTANT greenhouse gas on Earth (i.e. the next biggest contributor). There are more POTENT greenhouse gases, such as SF6 and methane, but they occur in trace amounts compared to CO2. CO2 makes up more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of the atmosphere. That means that for every million molecules in the atmosphere, 400 of them are CO2. That doesn't sound like much, but it has a large effect. You see, water vapor absorbs different wavelengths of light than CO2 does. CO2 \"fills in the gaps\" that water vapor leaves behind. This means that MUCH MORE sunlight and heat is trapped on Earth's surface, making Earth hotter on average. Many, many different climate models show that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change today. We know exactly how much CO2 levels have increased since satellites were invented. We know exactly how much the Sun's energy has fluctuated over that time period - it has not increased; if anything it has decreased slightly. \nIn short, there is no other way to explain global warming since the beginning of the satellite era than by CO2 levels increasing. \n\nScientists can look back farther in the past. We have instrumental records going back to the Industrial Revolution. Even though our instruments were not as sophisticated back then, they are enough to demonstrate that CO2 has been the major driver of climate change since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.\n\nLooking back even farther, into ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland, we see a close relationship between CO2 and temperature. The same is true when we look back millions of years and even billions of years. CO2, more than any other factor, seems to be the major driver of climate change over Earth's history. Some other important factors include large scale volcanism and plate tectonics, but plate tectonics happens too slowly to matter over a 100 year timescale and there is no evidence that volcanic activity has increased over the last 100 years. Furthermore, explosive volcanism causes cooling in the short term: volcanic ash is injected into the atmosphere, and this ash reflects sunlight back.\n\nSo this brings us back to the question: HOW do we know that mankind is responsible for CO2 increases since the Industrial Revolution. Well, there are many reasons. First, it is simply common sense. Combustion of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, etc.) releases vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Furthermore, CO2 produced by human activity has a unique isotopic signature. Some climate change deniers say that volcanoes could be responsible for CO2 rise over the last century. This is patently false. Across the world, volcanoes put out one-tenthousandth the amount of CO2 as humans do. Volcanic CO2 has a different isotopic composition than CO2 from fossil fuels. All the evidence points to the fact that CO2 rise since the Industrial Revolution is due almost SOLELY to human activity.\n\nFinally, one issue that climate deniers frequently bring up is the issue of \"heat islands\" - that is, that some temperature stations are installed in urban areas that are warmer than their surroundings. This heat island effect is well-known by climate scientists, and is corrected for. The only rebuttal to this is to claim that the entire climate science community is part of a highly organized scam. If you know scientists personally, you know pulling something like that off is like herding cats. It just doesn't happen.\n\nOn a final note, I will say that the satellite record of temperature change, sun activity and CO2 levels is outstandingly remarkable. That record alone demonstrates that global warming over the past ~40 years has been due ENTIRELY to human beings. If you extrapolate back, that statement appears to apply to the entire 20th century. Indeed, it seems to apply to human history dating back to the Industrial Revolution... and perhaps even further. In short, climate change deniers do not have evidence on their side. They are extremely dishonest, and most of them appear to be deniers because it gets them attention. If you pay attention to the news, the same dozen or so climate deniers are interviewed. That is how small the climate change denier community is among qualified experts. Sure, there are dentists who have signed petitions saying that they do not believe in human-caused global warming, BUT WHAT THE HELL DO DENTISTS KNOW ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING.", " >  How do we know whether or not global warming is a natural cycle --could it just be a natural cycle?\n\nBecause cycles have cyclical indicators.  That is to say, it would have be cycling back *to* something that happened before.  This is something you can search for in fossil, and ice core records.\n\nThe easiest ways you would see this is to see things like the tree line moving northward or the permafrost retreating northward or higher ground being submerged in ocean (due to glacier melt and a higher percentage of water precipitation).  Or just the oxygen and carbon dioxide indicators in the antarctic ice cores to correspond to those seen in proportion to higher temperatures that we are measuring right now.\n\nThe amounts of CO2 being measured in our atmosphere, and the average global temperature rises we are measuring are unprecedented.  They simply don't correspond to anything in the recent geological or ice core record.  (By recent, I mean in the past 80 million years, when primates first evolved.  The point is that we need to know whether or not primates, which includes us, have ever lived through such a climate.)\n\nNow of course, there are times in the Earth's past where in fact, it was *hotter* than it is now -- but during those times, the continents were joined together in a common land mass called \"Pangea\" and there were no vertebrae animals on the surface of the earth yet.\n\nThe point is that there is no way in hell that scientists could miss a cyclical trend that pushed the heat and CO2 levels up to what they are today, and not noticed this.  There would probably be a famous name for such a cycle, and we would hear about it from the \"skeptics\".  In fact, we hear of no such thing.\n\n >  Also, if the \"majority\" of scientists agree with this, how do we know that? How do we talk about the quantity or quality of scientists supporting one view versus the other?\n\nUh surveys?  [Jim777PS3's comment](_URL_0_) covers this.  Basically when 97% of the scientists (not just a majority) agree on something, it is trivial to notice, survey, and report that there is a scientific consensus.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists'_views_on_climate_change"], [], ["http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators"], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0", "http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf", "http://berkeleyearth.org/"], ["http://c1redgreenandblueorg.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2013/01/climate-change-papers-pie-chart.jpg", "http://www.skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-discredited.htm"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ivwa9/eli5_how_do_we_know_whether_or_not_global_warming/cb8j50n"]]}
{"q_id": "58as6g", "title": "how does modern sex trafficking work? are the victims owned, bought and sold like chattel slavery or is there something more subtle?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58as6g/eli5_how_does_modern_sex_trafficking_work_are_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8ytcb1", "d8ytifg", "d8zbxoz", "d8ze280", "d8zfcpc", "d8zfh9v", "d8zg1ah", "d8zhb0z"], "score": [165, 40, 24, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Women and girls are ensnared in sex trafficking in a variety of ways. Some are lured with offers of legitimate and legal work as shop assistants or waitresses. Others are promised marriage, educational opportunities and a better life. Still others are sold into trafficking by boyfriends, friends, neighbors or even parents.\n\nTrafficking victims often pass among multiple traffickers, moving further and further from their home countries. Women often travel through multiple countries before ending at their final destination. For example, a woman from the Ukraine may be sold to a human trafficker in Turkey, who then passes her on to a trafficker in Thailand. Along the way she becomes confused and disoriented.\n\nTypically, once in the custody of traffickers, a victim's passport and official papers are confiscated and held. Victims are told they are in the destination country illegally, which increases victims' dependence on their traffickers. Victims are often kept in captivity and also trapped into debt bondage, whereby they are obliged to pay back large recruitment and transportation fees before being released from their traffickers. Many victims report being charged additional fines or fees while under bondage, requiring them to work longer to pay off their debts.", "People are bought and sold just like the slavery back in the old days. The biggest difference is that the chains have been replaced by passports and threats. If a victim of sex trafficking escapes they will find themselves in a country far from home, without a passport, without work and no way to contact their friends and family to warn them that there is now some pissed off cartel that knows who they are and are looking for ways to get their priced possession back.", "The explanations here make me think we should have a universal sex trafficking/kidnap emergency number that is the same in every country. Or better yet, each country/language could have a number that works around the world so a victim can connect with someone who speak their language.  \n\nI know we have 911 but that changes around the world and there are a number of reason why a number dedicated to sex trafficking might work better. \n\n", "So this is a little bit dated, but Jared Leto and MTV of all people did a very good documentary _URL_0_", "Westlake centre in Seattle is the number one spot in the US for girls to go missing....... don't talk to anyone up there in the park by the carousel.. Just a reminder for y'all with the holidays coming..", "Are men susceptible to this?  Or is the main target women?", "Broadly, sex trafficking involves force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sex. Force is like physically forcing someone to do something; fraud is like when you tell someone that they are going to get something that they will not end up getting; and coercion is convincing someone to do something under the threat of harm. Force, fraud, or coercion have to be present for adults to be considered trafficked. An independent person, working on their own, involved in sex work isn't involved in sex-trafficking.\n\nHowever, there are two different types of sex trafficking: trafficking of adults and trafficking of minors. Minors are not considered old enough to make decisions about sex-work. Therefore, if a kid is involved in any kind of sex-work, it is always considered trafficking. This was intended to end viewing victims of sex trafficking of minors as \"child prostitutes\" and view them as victims of trafficking. For many years, these children if caught would be arrested.\n\nThe thing that we think about when we think of sex trafficking is someone being taken, housed, and forced to have sex with someone. However, domestic sex-trafficking can be way more subtle. It can be a husband pressuring his wife to sleep with someone for some benefit of the husband.\n\nMany of the domestic victims of sex-trafficking of minors (i.e. kids) were trafficked by their family members. It isn't that they were taken away. It could be that their parent letting their landlord could sleep with their kids in order to pay the rent.", "In Mexico, a lot of news articles have been released explaining different situations in which women and men were abducted, the most common are:\n\nYoung girls lured with offers of good jobs in Mexico City, Monterrey or Guadalajara; they reach their destination, the pimps rape them and then threaten them to tell their family about them being prostitutes or by threatening directly the family.\n\nWomen or men kidnaped in the streets, then beaten, drugged with heroin, making them addicts and unable to think clearly. Then forced to prostitute themselves.\n\nSome women are kidnaped with their children and then threatened with the promise of killing their kids, which become themselves pimps as they're brought up by the pimp's family.\n\nCurrently, young pimps make girls fall in love with them, then promised a lovely life as hubby and wife, which happens for a couple of months, then the \"husband\" changes, fakes a situation of lack of money and asks the woman to prostitute to help him. Sometimes, pimps have 5 or 6 women in the same situation.\n\nFinally, a couple of weeks ago, an article talked about a horrible human being who considers himself the last of the great pimps of Quetzaltenango. He kidnaps women, forces them to prostitute and the police and inhabitants of the city help him to keep an eye on the girls. If any women try to run away, the police delivers her back to the pimp's house where he has a crocodile that eats people. Yes, your read that correctly, he has a fucking crocodile in a pit in his house which is fed sometimes with parts of bodies and sometimes with living human beings. This idea really deters any women from escaping.\n\nFinally, when he considers the prostitute is old and has no value, he asks for money in exchange for her freedom or sells them to other pimps from the same town who have contacts in the US, Canada, France or Dubai.\n\nIf you need the references, I can share them with you but all of them are in Spanish."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG9Lp-Wsjzs"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "37bqr9", "title": "why does the general population see ceos as greedy and not deserving of their salaries, while not criticizing actors, athletes, and musicians who make just as much if not more as ceos nearly as much.", "selftext": "I know some people do criticize their pay, but on the news you always hear about CEO made 50 million while the average employee made 40K.  You don't hear Jennifer Lawrence made 10 million dollars from the Hunger Games while the average cameraman only made 30k.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37bqr9/eli5_why_does_the_general_population_see_ceos_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crlanvx", "crlarnp", "crlcerg", "crlcg65", "crlcsht", "crlcx4q", "crldxzq", "crlertr", "crlfgx0", "crli5to", "crlj2f7", "crlm54x", "crlmtl7", "crlopl6", "crlqdgr", "crlqgtc", "crlrba8", "crlsr1k", "crm87x1"], "score": [2, 87, 13, 29, 8, 2, 14, 4, 3, 24, 3, 2, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["I think its something to do with the fact that the general public sees the actress/actor and consumes and enjoys their work so they see them as deserving. ", "I think it depends what sources you're looking at. A lot of people criticise the vastly and ridiculously inflated salaries that athletes get in comparison to, for example, doctors.\n\nAnytime there's a story about a footballer demanding a wage rise because they're \"only\" earning \u00a3100k per week is generally met with scorn and derision, especially because 90% of the people paying money to watch them could only dream of earning that sort of cash. \n\nCEO stories are more compelling because there's an element whereby they can actually DO something about the disparity in wages, should they choose to, whereas the average sports star doesn't really control the wages of the other people who work for the team, say.", "most people dont even understand what CEO does or what skills CEO need to have, most people think CEO sits in office or away from office all day and does nothing.\n\nwhile its extreamly demanding possition that only very small amount of people have skills to be in and they are paid for that.", "It's not the fact that CEOs make a lot of money.  It's the perception that they do it at the expense of their workers, the environment, and the general good.", "You have to take the pay quantities as relative to specific industry and historical patterns.\n\nIt is no shock to people that performers make $x per year because they've been doing so for awhile, and the increases in performers pay have been relatively smooth. Also, in some sports pay is not guaranteed, and in others the guaranteed pay is tied to a series of contractual obligations not typically found in other jobs.\n\nCEO pay has not had a smooth rise. As bonuses, stock options, guaranteed bonuses, and golden parachutes added up quickly during the 90s to today. It is more of an exponential curve.\n\nA perfect example is _URL_0_, ex-ceo of Home Depot whose severance package eclipsed 200 million.\n\nStakeholders were upset by that for a couple reasons, but when you can't even afford a single bedroom apartment on your full time wage with Home Depot, it makes sense to say hey, why is that guy getting 200 million TO LEAVE, let alone the hundreds of millions he was given during his tenure.\n\n\n", "Associated pay disparity, many do not find it fair for a company to pay minimum or poverty level hourly wages whilst handing out multi-million dollar annual bonuses to the upper management of that same company.\n\nThat doesn't apply in general to entertainment because no one is going to McDonald's because they're huge Steve Easterbrook fans. A significant portion of fans go to see events/movies/competitions for a specific person. Switch cameraman B2 with someone else in his trade and I'm still going to see Avengers, but you replace any of the key actors and people will get upset. ", " >  actors, athletes, and musicians who make just \n > as much if not more as CEOs nearly as much.\n\nWow. Not even close. The difference between artist money and executive money typically runs to one or two more zeroes at the end of the paycheck.\n\nYou hear about Brad Pitt getting paid $25 million to do a single movie, but you DON'T hear about the film's producer, who will walk away with maybe ten times that, maybe a LOT more, depending on how profitable the film is. Furthermore, Pitt might only make that much once every 2-3 years, while your typical big company CEO is banking $25 million every year. PLUS bonuses.\n\nAnd of course, whether you're talking movies, music, or sports, there are only a *very* tiny handful of people who are making big bucks like that. Meanwhile every big studio executive is hauling in phat bucks day in and day out. The very richest people in show biz are management, no exceptions. Oprah Winfrey isn't the richest woman in show biz because she does a talk show, she made all that cash because she's the head of a media corporation.\n\nThe reason people are--properly--increasingly viewing CEOs as greedy thieves is because the worker/executive pay disparity has gotten obscenely out of control. Worker to executive pay is typically expressed as a ratio, which makes it independent of inflation, so you can usefully compare numbers from the past and present. Back in the 1960s, that ratio was around 1:30. Today, in the US, it's hovering around 1:390. \n\nWhen you DO account for inflation, the American worker has not had a raise since about the 70s. And meanwhile that executive pay just keeps going up. Where does all that money come from? Yup: a fair part of it comes from the kitty they USED to pay workers with.\n\nThe disparity is MUCH lower in the rest of the industrialized world, but even so, some countries are trying to put the brakes on it. Switzerland recently held a referendum to limit the ratio to 1:12. It didn't pass, but the issue isn't going away.\n\n > Jennifer Lawrence made 10 million dollars from the Hunger Games while the average cameraman only made 30k. \n\nFirst off, a cameraman is an artist, not management. And the average ACTOR makes about that much, too.\n\n", "Often what pisses people off are golden parachutes. A CEO can run a company into the ground or pollute a swath of important wilderness or help wreck the economy and receive a multi million dollar bonus when he is fired for it.   \nThose bonuses are negotiated when they are hired and are intended to encourage the CEO to take risks. The company is contractually obligated to pay.", "You'll recall the subprime mortgage crisis... at some point individuals are in a position to manipulate the economy of entire nations for their own benefit.\n\nThe subprime mortgage ~~crisis~~ disaster ruins the lives of countless people but the individuals who created it just had to pay back the loans they received from the government and walked away Scott free.\n\nYou hear a lot of talk in some circles about responsibility and accountability but those don't really apply to the extremely wealthy... A poor person committing a crime goes to jail, the super rich, nothing.", "Actors and athletes do not control the fortunes of others.\n\nWhen a CEO manages a company badly, lays off hundreds of workers, then walks away with millions, they are prospering at the expense of others.\n\nAnd that is the essence of greed...not just wanting lots of stuff, wanting it no matter who it hurts.", "for me...its hard to see how much actual work a CEO does. the workers do the work...\n\nwhat the hell does a CEO actually do?", "I think it is unfair to everyone when any one person makes a salary where they have obscene levels of expendable income, when simultaneously, there are two plus people households, all working, who can hardly meet their basic bills.\n\nOften my opponents argue from the idea of property and the accrual thereof, like a finders keepers sort of thing... They somehow deserve to be wealthy because they were in the right place at the right time, working hard. That's great and all that they worked very hard, but in the case of billionaires, I do not assent to the idea that they \"earned every penny\". ", "The difference between a highly paid actor or athlete and a CEO is that when the actor's movie bombs or tarnishes his image (think Shia LaBeouf) or the athlete fails to perform, there are consequences - the actor is no longer hired, the athlete may lose endorsements or he is traded to another team or cut.\n\nFor most CEOs there is no consequence for distrastrous performance. They still get their bonuses while their company gets downsized and even if they get terminated they get a golden parachute - and then they pop up two months later in another cushy job. So when you are guaranteed a huge salary and a bonus, why would you bother put in the hours? Why'd you even care? Spend time in the same elevator as the mouth breathers who work for you? Bitch please.\n\nAnother difference is: most actors and athletes work their ass off for what they get paid. Take Chris Hemsworth. His training for a Thor movie starts months in advance. He spends hours per day in the gym and is kept on a strict diet until the movie starts filming. Or take Kobe Bryant. The point is we can read about their commitment, we can see the results on screen. Can we see that with a CEO? The CEO 'who turned the firm around' - did they give a rousing speech and everybody put their shoulders under it and gave 120%? Did the CEO work 80 hours per week, like his employees did then? How much work is it to make a decision to fire 15% of the employees?\n\nMy two reasons to dislike CEOs.", "For every athlete, actor, and musician who makes ridiculous money remember there is a CEO/Owner that's signing the checks that's making money that dwarfs the amount he/she signs off on. \n\nAnd people don't hate Elon Musk or Bill Gates. People hate the CEOs that come in slash jobs (lives) to increase a profit margin and hit their bonuses. Or banks that almost destroy the country but still get bonuses. ", "Athletes, Actors and Musicians *are* the product and thus are compensated according to what the market will bear.  The CEO is not and as such one begins to question why they warrant a yearly compensation orders of magnitude higher than what their underlings make.", "People do criticize the money that athletes and actors make.  To the extent that people focus more on executive pay, it's mainly because actors and athletes are still labor even if they make a ton of money.  If the fruit of their labor is going to generate the obscene amounts of money that it does, then it's only fair that someone like Lebron James or Jennifer Lawrence share in that.  \n\nOtoh CEO pay gets criticized because a) there's a question about whether there is any [real relation](_URL_0_) between [compensation and performance](_URL_0_), and 2) these huge paydays are seen as coming at the expense of both ownership (the stockholders) and labor.", "CEOs are not typically as visible as athletes, actors and musicians so when you hear of a CEO making 7 figures, there isn't really a frame of reference. Many CEOs are actually worthy of the money they make. The same cannot always be said of actors, athletes and musicians.\n\nAlso, the vast majority of CEOs do not make entertainer salaries.", "People don't know what CEOs do. They also don't directly see value in what a CEO does. \n\nConversely people know what athletes, movie stars, and musicians do and they directly appreciate their work.\n\nAlso, CEOs are the figure heads of a company, so every bad thing the company does is a reflection on the CEO. Their pay then becomes contentious, because it seems like they're doing a bad job willingly and getting paid millions to hurt people and the environment.", "I think that professional athletes should be paid as much as a a fast food worker.  Why?  Because it is a game...playing football is not going to benefit society...it won't cure cancer it won't end world hunger.  Teachers, on the other hand, should be paid MUCH much more.  Why?  Because they are shaping the youths that will run future generations.  What those kids learn will ultimately affect who they are and what they do.  I don't disagree that athletes are finely tuned machines and that their sport takes considerable skill, BUT I do think they are way overpaid.  The same goes for actors.  I do commend a lot of them for giving up their time and money to charities and others (Keanu Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, etc).  More people who earn over 6 figures should be doing that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nardelli"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3plkbi", "title": "Is the amount of infidelity portrayed in AMC's Mad Men accurate? Was infidelity commonplace in married men during the 60's?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3plkbi/is_the_amount_of_infidelity_portrayed_in_amcs_mad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw7pfaz"], "score": [31], "text": ["The only study of human sexuality from anywhere close to that time period that I am aware of is the Kinsey study. \n\nKinsey estimates that \"approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives\" and that \"26% of females had had extramarital sex by their forties.\"\n\n[Extramaritial](_URL_0_)\n\nSo while it may or may not reach the levels found in a fictional setting, infidelity was something that was not uncommon. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html#extramaritalcoitus"]]}
{"q_id": "9uqu8t", "title": "What is the role sugar plays in our bodies in relation to cancer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9uqu8t/what_is_the_role_sugar_plays_in_our_bodies_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e98793u"], "score": [2], "text": ["Grad student going over a neoplasia unit in my pathology class right now. For context, there are several characteristics of tumors that allow them to grow uncontrollably. They sustain proliferation signaling which means the body recognizes that they\u2019re growing and need more nutrients to sustain their growth. That being said, our bodies have growth suppressors that prevent tumors from forming; cancer cells evade those and continue to grow. T-cells, part of our immune response, target cancer cells for destruction \u2014 cancer cells avoid t-cells and resist cell death. A very important component to tumor cells is their promotion of angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the production of new blood vessels. Tumors promote angiogenesis so they can have a rich, constant supply of nutrients so they can grow and grow and grow.\n\n\nThere are two different types of tumors: benign and malignant. Benign tumors grow slowly and do not outgrow their blood supply. Malignant rumors, however, grow rapidly and will outgrow their blood supply so the center of the tumor becomes necrotic. Keep in mind that all the while the tumor is growing larger. \n\n\n\nNow, the sugar. While there are different kinds of sugar (sucrose, fructose, lactose, etc.) glucose is the most easily broken down sugar by our body for energy. Carbohydrates are the chief source of glucose and our body efficiently shuttles the molecules wherever it is needed which, in this case, includes the tumor. The tumor has factors that avoid destruction, sustain is growth, and signal to the body that it \u201cneeds more nutrients\u201d. These factors, along with the creation of new blood vessels specifically for the tumor, equal a mass of cells that grow uncontrollably and are constantly supplied with the nutrients it needs to grow.\n\n\n\nIn short, sugar is energy and tumors need energy to continue growing. They have factors that promote their own growth and prevent the body from destroying them. \n\n\n\nSource: Robbins basic pathology (10th edition) but Kumar, Abbas, Aster (2017) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2shm05", "title": "in the lord of the rings, why do the orcs lose all the time even with numerical advantages?", "selftext": "sorry if this has been asked before ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2shm05/eli5in_the_lord_of_the_rings_why_do_the_orcs_lose/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnpjbvn", "cnpjdax", "cnpjdus", "cnpjl67", "cnppeki"], "score": [8, 10, 2, 40, 4], "text": ["Because they represent evil and evil never wins ", "As well as in the books they are usually out maneuvered by Gandalf or another main character. Or eagles. It's always the fucking eagles", "I guess it's because they were bred in excess to gain numbers but were never properly trained as an army like the rest of the middle earth population. So, even though they have strength in numbers, they lack the proper strategy to use their greatest potential. But that's just a theory.", "So, going way back (edit: more than 10,000 years prior to the War of the Rings), Iluvatar was the original creator of life on the world of Lord of the Rings (Arda), and of his creations, which included the Valar (beings of great power who basically run things from afar) and the Maiar (beings of slightly lesser power, including the istari (wizards) like Gandalf and Sauron), and the elves, the elves were Iluvatar's favorites. \n\nSo, one of the Valar, a bad guy named Morgoth, captured some elves and tried to use them to create his own \"children\" - but they were a perversion of the elves, lesser in every way. These \"children\" are the orcs that continue to live on well after Morgoth's departure from the world. Sauron and Saruman continue to use them as armies. These orcs live in the darkest places of earth, like Moria, and some of them couldn't stand being out in daylight (though Saruman bred some that could handle it). \n\nThe reason they lose all the time is because (1) they initially didn't do too well in the sun, (2) they're not as smart as elves because they're a cheap copy, (3) they don't have love or any other driving force to help motivate them to really TRY to win, and finally, because it is suggested in Tolkien's works that when it counts, *when it really counts*, the Valar and Maiar kind of step in and help out a little bit. Gandalf, for example, lends great power and wisdom to the armies of elves and men throughout the War of the Rings, and some of the goodness and power of the valar still run through the earth and water of Arda. \n\nIt's some supernatural shit. (Edit: for example, this is partially why the ringwraiths (black riders) are so hesitant to chase after Frodo when Arwen/Glorfindel carries him across the Bruinen, they don't want to go into the water, because the spirit of the Vala, Ulmo, still resides in some of the waters of Middle Earth). \n\nAnyway, it's been over 10 years since I was a real Tolkien scholar, but that sums it up pretty much in ELI5 terms, as far as I remember. Someone else might be able to provide a more accurate or detailed answer. \n\nSources: The Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales, Letters of Tolkien, LotR appendices. \n\nEdit: Someone else pointed out that they aren't as well trained, and this is probably part of it for sure. The men of Gondor and many different races of elves were well trained as warriors (especially because elves, who are immortal, had lived through previous dark periods prior to the War of the Rings), so they would have the tactical advantage in some ways.\n\nEdit: details and examples\n\nEdit: This is literally the only time I've ever felt I could contribute a useful answer in ELI5. Thanks OP. ", "Just based on the main battles of the Lord of the Rings, they are generally defeated either because of what's known as 'force multipliers' in military theory or just the fact that they may not actually be outnumbered. A force multiplier is something that makes a force many times more effective than it would be without it. I.e. a small force could do what it would normally take a much larger force to achieve.\n\n If we look at the battles at Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep/The Hornberg as the key battles of the lord of the rings, in both instances the good guys are holding highly defensible positions, allowing many waves of enemies to break against them with relatively minor casualties on the side of the good guys. We should also consider the fact that in both cases the defending forces are fighting not just for themselves, but to defend their homes and families, providing an incentive that the opposition does not have. \n\nWhile this defence obviously can't last forever, in both instances it does buy time for an additional, unexpected force to arrive. This is our second force multiplier (as well as just additional forces). The significant morale boost to the men at helm's deep at seeing Gandalf and Eomer arrive, and the men at Minas Tirith at seeing the Rohirrim, coupled with the dismay of the orcs in both cases, is an important turning point in the battles.\n\n Which brings us on to our third point; The Rohirrim. Or the force multiplier of superior weapons. The speed and skill of the mounted Rohirrim, facing a largely infantry-based foe allows them to sweep through many times their own number. I think this is more significant at Helm's deep where the forces of evil are entirely infantry, as opposed to the Mumakil (elephants) at Minas Tirith, but they are still important as in both cases it also allows for a two-pronged attack on the enemy's flank.\n\n\n Finally, I could point out that the good guys might not actually have been that outnumbered in the end. At Helm's deep the remainder of the  orcs are finished off by Ents and huorns (trees) that have been sent to help. At Minas Tirith, Aragorn arrives with an army of the dead and other people to rout the orcs from the back.\n\n\n\n\n I can only think of two significant instances where the good guys are significantly outnumbered with no other factors in their favour. The first is at Osgiliath where Faramir is overwhelmed by a vastly superior force. Most of his men die and he nearly does as they retreat.\n The second is when they march out from Minas Tirith to bring the fight to the black gates. This is a fight they *expect* to lose. It's purpose is to distract Sauron's attention and forces to clear the way and buy time for Frodo and Sam to get to Mt. Doom. They are only saved when the ring is destroyed and the will that has been driving the evil forces crumbles.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "70rsut", "title": "What is the ph of liquid co2?", "selftext": "I know this can only exist under considerable pressure, but I'm curious and can't seem to find an answer.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/70rsut/what_is_the_ph_of_liquid_co2/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn5lau5", "dn5qrxv"], "score": [7, 22], "text": ["Liquid CO2 doesn't have a pH. pH is a measure of hydrogen ion concentration in an aqueous solution. \n\nLiquid CO2 isn't an aqueous solution, so it doesn't have a pH.\n\n_URL_0_", "Measuring the PH of something requires it to be dissolved in water. This is because A PH test is essentially a measure of the concentration of hydronium \"H3O^+\" ions in the solution. PH is calculated by taking the negative log of the hydronium ion concentration. For example: Pure water has a hydronium ion concentration of about 1.0 x 10^-7 mol/L, and a PH of 7. Something with a hydronium ion concentration of 1.0 x 10^-4 mol/L has a PH of 4."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH"], []]}
{"q_id": "3dbqcl", "title": "In The Godfather Part 2, when Vito migrates to the US from Sicily, Immigration changes his last name from Andolini to Corleone (the town he his from), did this ever actually happen to immigrants in the 19th or early 20th centuries?", "selftext": "If it did occur, why? How common was it? Did it depend on the immigrants? What countries did this? Or was this all a myth created simply for a story?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dbqcl/in_the_godfather_part_2_when_vito_migrates_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct3oyvt", "ct3v5oa", "ct41c55", "ct4s4o4", "ct68569"], "score": [84, 38, 10, 4, 3], "text": ["Disclaimer - not historian just a hobbyist.\n\nIt is a myth, at least as far as Ellis Island is concerned. Individuals coming to the US might change their name to help with assimilation process. It could also have been done to signify a fresh start to a new life in the states.\n\nSome immigrants also changed their names to make them more \"american.\" By that I mean that their name could be more easily pronounced.\n\nAs the second link suggests, many name change stories are just that, family stories. They provided a flawed connection to the family's initial entrance to the states.\n\nSource - _URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "In the film, the Immigration official didn't deliberately change Vito's name- he misheard the Italian translator and marked his name down as \"Corleone.\" It was a bureaucratic mix-up that Vito never corrected.", "Hello everyone, \n\nIn this thread, there have been a large number of responses which break our [rules concerning personal anecdotes](_URL_3_#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes), only relating personal, family stories. While they're sometimes quite interesting, they're unverifiable, impossible to cross-reference, and not of much use without more context. [This comment](_URL_0_) explains the reasoning behind this rule. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_3_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. \n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_1_), or a [META thread](_URL_2_[META]). Thank you!", "In addition to the fact that there weren't actually Ellis Island name changes, surnames based on geographical origin are common in Italy anyway. Italians have more surnames than any other ethnicity in the world--despite the fact that regular people only really started using them after the middle ages. Most of them are based on personal characteristics (ie: Russo means red, so like, someone with red hair), who their father is (ie: pretty much any surname beginning with \"Di\"), what they did for a living (ie: Palmieri means \"palmer\" or priest), OR where they were from (Like Napolitano, Romano, etc.). \n\nInterestingly, the very common last name Esposito *possibly* indicates that someone's ancestor was an orphan (espositi were orphans, derived from the same latin word as our word \"exposed\").\n\nI know we're not doing personal anecdotes here, but just for example, my last name is also the name of a very small village in Italy. My family didn't move here from there, they moved from another town, but it is possible that they lived there originally--although the name is both descriptive and possibly indicative of an occupation. \n\nI'm not as familiar with the naming conventions of other ethnicities, but I'd imagine that geographical surnames are common in most. ", "I feel the prevailing view that no errors were made at Ellis Island is not correct.  I actually feel stronger than that, but I'll leave it as 'not correct.' A moderator has told me, essentially, to put up or shut up. So, here's to \"putting up.\"  Quoting from the Smithsonian magazine citation: \n > \u201cNo names were changed at Ellis Island because no names were taken at Ellis Island.\u201d Instead, inspectors only checked the people passing through the island against the records of the ship on which they were said to arrive. If the name was misspelled, it was done so on the ship\u2019s manifest documents when a person bought their ticket in Europe. (Some immigration clerks on Ellis Island even helped correct these mistakes.) Regardless, these spellings *didn\u2019t typically follow* people to their new lives in America.^1 [my emphasis]\n\nNote the closing equivocation, despite the opening broad claim to perfection. The cited USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) \"Immigrant Name Changes\" website makes this similar claim:\n > [The manifests] were created abroad, beginning close to the immigrant's home when the immigrant purchased his ticket. It is unlikely that anyone at the local steamship office was unable to communicate with this man. His name was most likely recorded with a high degree of accuracy at that time. It is true that *immigrant names were mangled* in the process. The first ticket clerk may have misspelled the name (assuming there was a \"correct spelling\"--a big assumption). If the immigrant made several connections in his journey, several records might be created at each juncture. Every transcription of his information afforded an opportunity to misspell or alter his name. Thus the more direct the immigrant's route to his destination, the less likely his name changed in any way.^2 [my emphasis]\n\nIn my view, a mangled name is a changed name. Now lets look at the New York Public Library's effort entitled \"Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)\".  It starts\n > Between 1892 and 1954, over twelve million people entered the United States through the immigration inspection station at Ellis Island, a small island located in the upper bay off the New Jersey coast. There is a myth that persists in the field of genealogy, or more accurately, in family lore, that family names were changed there. They were not. Numerous blogs, essays, and books have proven this. Yet the myth persists; a story in a recent issue of The New Yorker suggests that it happened. This post will explore how and why names were not changed. It will then tell the story of Frank Woodhull, an almost unique example of someone whose name was changed,...^3\n\nIf you are left-brained, the NY Public Library has provided our disproof by example.^4 \"Frank Woodhull, an **almost unique** example\" [emphasis added] is all we need to throw a flag on the claim of Ellis Island perfection. QED. Note the caveats in all the citations.\n\nBut most of us hereabouts are not left-brained, so let's try to bound the issue, and Google \"data entry error rate.\"  The first return^5 gives \"the average benchmark of a 1% error rate in manual data entry.\"  The third return,^6 from Panko and Shidler of the University of Hawaii, cites a study by Mattson  &  Baars [1992] \"Typing study with secretaries and clerks. Nonsense words. Per nonsense word.\" This study gives an error rate of 7.4%.  European last names might be considered more or less nonsense words, but Panko and Shidler say \"the error rate for more complex logic errors is about 5%\".^6  With 12 million people we have 12 million last names. 1% of errors in 12 million is 120,000; 5% is 600,000; 7.4% is 888,000. All non-zero numbers.\n\nBehind the _URL_6_ paywall on webpage _URL_3_ is the arrival manifest of SS Aquitania at New York, 28 Sep 1923.  My grandfather and the ticket selling clerk did their work properly (See the discussions above.)  Someone at Ellis Island, not of the cruise line, changed out a vowel.\n\n----------\n^1 Smithsonian Magazine. _URL_1_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^2 USCIS. _URL_5_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^3 New York Public Library. _URL_0_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^4 \"If we can find one member of the specified set for which the example of a member of the set for which the specified properties do not hold is called a counterexample of the statement. Stating a counterexample of a conditional statement will thus disprove the statement. Note that here by 'disprove it' I mean 'prove it to be false.' \" Disproof by Counterexample. _URL_2_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^5 When Good Info Goes Bad: The Real Cost of Human Data Errors \u2013 Part 1 of 2. _URL_4_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^6 Basic Error Rates. _URL_7_.  Accessed 16 July 2015"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/", "http://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/immigrant-name-changes"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sxxhd/meta_why_is_a_personal_account_given_by_a/ce2cyv0", "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&amp;subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&amp;title=", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes"], [], ["http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island", "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/#pABcoDkROUjz4Hk2.99", "http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/Logic/ProofTheory/DisproofByCounterexample.htm", "http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=try&amp;db=nypl&amp;h=4028173829", "http://ungerboeck.com/blog/when-good-info-goes-bad-the-real-cost-of-human-data-errors-part-1-of-2", "http://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/immigrant-name-changes", "Ancestry.com", "http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/Basic.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "1z74qh", "title": "How is it exactly that dark matter, located in the outer part of the galaxy, pulls inwards?", "selftext": "In the [linked image](_URL_0_) I tried to sketch the forces that would act on a normal star, located mid-way between the galactic center and the border. The central black disk represents the galaxy, the outer white ring represents dark matter, red arrows are distances and green arrows are forces. A more correct approach would require a continuous subdivision and integration, but I think this is good enough. Forces are not to scale, they should actually diminish with the square of the distance, I just wanted to show them smaller. Forces labeled A and B are just an example of opposing forces.\n\nFrom [this wikipedia article](_URL_1_) I can see that the rotational speed (let's call it v) is roughly constant. If a=v^2 /r then centripetal acceleration should be inversely proportional to r, as opposed to a Keplerian system that would be proportional to r^2.\n\nSo let's consider in my diagram that we move outward along r, picking each time an outer star. Each force should diminish/increase with r^2, but the number of forces pulling inwards should increase with r. Then the net force diminishes with r. So far everything makes sense.\n\nBut when I read in wikipedia that dark matter does not form a disc but a sphere, it follows that the number of forces pulling inwards should increase with r^2. Then my sketch is no longer valid and it seems to contradict the observation of constant rotational speed.\n\nWhat's my wrong assumption? Could someone shed some light here?\nThanks.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1z74qh/how_is_it_exactly_that_dark_matter_located_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfr5r9j"], "score": [4], "text": ["Dark matter is not a disk or sphere around the Milky Way (or other galaxies). It's also present inside the MW itself. The dark matter distribution is actually higher in the center than at the outside. \n\nThe reason for the misconception, I think, is because the dark matter halo is far more extended than the stellar body of the galaxy. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://imgur.com/YxoONxU", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6rvjqd", "title": "why do airplanes load passengers front to back instead of back to front?", "selftext": "I never understood why airline companies think it's a better idea to load passengers on a plane front to back. I understand that the first class passengers would like to get off the plane before everyone else. Which they could still do if they get on last (also opportunity to spend less time in an uncomfortable seat.) However, it seems it would be much more efficient to load a plane like literally every other form of mass transportation. First in last out.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rvjqd/eli5_why_do_airplanes_load_passengers_front_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl81lj7", "dl81qu6", "dl82k8j", "dl8a3xv", "dl8a8h8", "dl8e9k1", "dl8gjuz"], "score": [4, 153, 15, 2, 6, 2, 3], "text": ["One reason for this is that today's travellers are taking more carry-ons with them because airlines have started charging for checked bags. That extra luggage clogs the aisles and slows down how fast passengers can get to their seats.\n\nThere is no one way to board an airplane, but several studies have determined that some methods are more efficient than others.\n\nThe traditional back-to-front boarding method, in which passengers in the back are seated first, then the middle, and so on, is used by several major US carriers, despite being the slowest seating protocol.", "Airplanes do not load that way, nor do they load for efficiency.\n\nAirplanes load in the way that is the most financial advantageous to the airline (and this will vary between airlines). They give the best (first) loading to the customers they are making the most money from as an incentive to buy tickets like that and as a benefit of such.\n\nThey have done endless, endless research on this, and in the end, its all about the money, thats how they load. Thats how they should load. They are a business, they act in their best business interest and for airlines, its all about maximizing profit on each passenger\n\n", "Those that pay the most get to sit down first. I think that makes perfect sense.\n\nDisabled passengers are usually loaded on first before all of that anyways so that's not really a big issue.\n\nSimply put, then you pay \u00a34000 for your ticket instead of \u00a3850, the ***least*** they could do is seat you first", "JetBlue actually does load from the back, but that's because they don't offer as many upgrades to priority boarding or first class like United, Delta, and the rest of them do. Priority boarding is another opportunity to make money on seats.\n\nEdit. Not Southwest", "Mostly because it's not really much faster than back to front boarding. The best boarding methods avoid passenger conflicts and attempt to use as much space in the airplane simultaneously as possible. Random boarding is fairly effective.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nMore details.", "Aside from the obvious first/business boarding first... with checked bag fees, more people bring carry on luggage. If you board back to front, passengers will load their carry ons at random overhead bins towards the front of the plane, and then go to their seats in the back. Ask any flight attendant, they'll confirm it. It's strange to think people would be that inconsiderate, but it's definitely the case.", "It's not always the case.\n\nThe famous budget airline Ryanair often conducts boarding from two sides at once!\n\nWhen you print your boarding pass, it states which entrance you should use.\n\nBTW, you haven't seen airline cost optimization if you haven't flown Ryanair. Trust me :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14717695"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1t5gbu", "title": "Why is there a big jump in Earth's Magnetic Field in the south Atlantic", "selftext": "If you look [here](_URL_0_) you can see lines of equal magnetic latitude. The map shows that there is a big whorl in the south atlantic. Anyone know why?\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1t5gbu/why_is_there_a_big_jump_in_earths_magnetic_field/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce4issx"], "score": [3], "text": ["The effect is caused by the non-concentricity of the Earth and its magnetic dipole, and the SAA is the near-Earth region where the Earth's magnetic field is weakest relative to an idealized Earth-centered dipole field.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/World_Magnetic_Inclination_2010.pdf"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly"]]}
{"q_id": "1tclod", "title": "what happens when a happy person takes antidepressants", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tclod/eli5what_happens_when_a_happy_person_takes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce6le9t", "ce6m1li", "ce6m2jz", "ce6o82d"], "score": [5, 12, 6, 7], "text": ["I think it would depend on the drug, but antidepressants tend to make brain neurotransmitters (the chemicals nerve cells use to talk to each other) more available, either by increasing their production, reducing their removal, or preventing them breaking down. This is because neurotransmitter imbalances are one theory of depression\n\nYour brain can only use so much of these chemicals. It's like dissolving sugar in water - you can add more and more sugar until eventually, the water just can't take any more so it ignores it. \n\nThe same would happen in your brain and you wouldn't feel any different. You may however, get the side effects.", "Nausea\nInsomnia\nAnxiety\nRestlessness\nDecreased sex drive\nDizziness\nWeight gain\nTremors\nSweating\nSleepiness or fatigue\nDry mouth\nDiarrhea\nConstipation\nHeadaches", "I am not a Doctor but I have been on antidepressants before. It was a bad year and things looked pretty bad. Girlfriend cheated on me, dog died, lost a friend to cheating girl friend, Grandma died, and I was a poor college student on academic probation barely passing. The ones I was on took a long time to take effect first of all. So I am pretty sure if you took a couple doses nothing would happen. \n\nAfter I got a better hold on my life and things were going well the doctor kept me on them for a few more months. When I got off them I didn't really feel different. Going forward I just felt normal with or without them. Only other effects I had by taking them was sleeping longer and a major reduction in my sexual drive. \n\nSo from my experience longer sleep with reduced sexual drive. ", "Depends on the kind of antidepressant, of which there are many.\n\nSNRIs and SSRIs are probably the most common. They behave by inhibiting SERT, which is a membrane-bound protein which transports serotonin out of the synapse. In layman's terms, the drug increases levels of serotonin and, in the case of SNRIs, norepinephrine in the brain. Recent studies show the monoamine model of depression (i.e., that reduced serotonin levels cause depression) is wrong or unsupported, so no one knows *exactly* why these drugs work. The general theory these days is that they promote growth of new neurons in certain brain regions, which leads to a lessening of depressive symptoms.\n\nWhen a happy person takes these drugs, they may not experience any overt changes in their mood. They will likely just experience the side effects associated with elevated serotonin levels, including things like nausea, weight gain, dizziness, anorgasmia/sexual dysfunction, a \"flattening\" of mood or affect, etc. \n\nOther drugs will cause other effects. MAOIs work by inhibiting the enzymes that break down serotonin and other monoamines -- melatonin and other endogenous tryptamines. When a happy person takes MAOIs, they will have similar effects to SSRIs/SNRIs with the added side-effect profiles of having the *entire* spectrum of monoamines increased in their brains and bodies. \n\nUnique drugs like Mirtazapine are direct agonists/antagonists of certain serotonin, dopamine, and alpha-adrenergic receptors, meaning they don't necessarily derive their primary mode of action by increasing serotonin levels, but work by directly interacting with the receptors themselves in the brain. From experience, these kinds of drugs have more direct side effects, if that makes sense, including somnolence (mirtazapine and trazodone are used as sleep aids for this reason), increased appetite, strange/vivid dreams, and even odd things like increased erections in the case of trazodone. \n\nBasically, you will get the side effects of the drugs without the therapeutic benefit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6kxmqj", "title": "Was there ethnic cleansing in Israel/Palestine in 1948? What caused it? Is there a historical consensus on what happened?", "selftext": "Between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from  Israel/Palestine before/during/after the 1948 Arab Israeli war. In the Wikipedia article on the [1948 Palestinian Exodus](_URL_0_) there are reports that some claim the Arab generals encouraged them to leave, that most left on their own accord, or that many were forced to leave by the IDF or Haganah. I know this is a heavily politicized event and would just like to know what really happened. I could not find another post that relates to this exact question.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kxmqj/was_there_ethnic_cleansing_in_israelpalestine_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djqbkdw"], "score": [19], "text": ["Hi there,\n\nThis was something I explored extensively [here](_URL_0_), in a previous thread. It's an old thread, but I still think it rings true.\n\nSome basic responses, though:\n\n >  Between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from Israel/Palestine before/during/after the 1948 Arab Israeli war\n\nThis is incorrect. The number was likely closer to 700,000 total, with around 250,000-300,000 of them being expelled (though perhaps less, depending on who you ask; Benny Morris's estimates suggest closer to 225,000 at the most). There were around 800,000 (or up to a million) Jews who ended up leaving Arab countries before/during/after this war. I'm not familiar with anything that suggests 250,000-300,000 Palestinians left, and the Israeli government's estimates on its own were of at least 500,000, if memory serves.\n\nNow, whether that meets the definition of \"ethnic cleansing\" is actually a lot more complicated than one might think. The reason being, as I think I've explained elsewhere in this sub before, ethnic cleansing is both a politically charged and definitionally dubious term. There's no international law that clearly defines ethnic cleansing, and there certainly wasn't one back in 1948. So it's hard to retroactively apply terms. Nevertheless, if one defines ethnic cleansing solely as \"forcible deportation of civilians\", then yes, ethnic cleansing occurred on all sides of the war. However, if one adds in another component, which is the requirement that the main motivation be ethnicity, one runs into a problem: the motivations of these actions for both sides were more varied than ethnicity alone, and included things like legitimate security concerns where civilians had been aiding and participating in the war effort and would be left behind enemy lines. These types of questions have been litigated before, and are more complex than one might think. And when one considers another possible wrinkle, which is the meaning of the word \"systematically\", it gets even more difficult, as Israeli commanders acted essentially on their own for example and without any real central directive to expel Palestinian Arabs in particular. This is why Israel's population distribution of Palestinian Arabs after the war was lopsided; the south and north were handled differently, for example.\n\nI always try to veer away from using politically charged terms that have developed recently and applying them to historical events that predate said terms for that reason. I think there's an argument to be made both ways on the issue, and it's an interesting one, but of little value to ponder too deeply."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus"], "answers_urls": [["https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/244jny/on_a_forum_a_poster_claimed_today_that_all/ch3v5ni/"]]}
{"q_id": "2jvxcc", "title": "Did Nebuchadnezzar actually go insane and live in a cave like the bible said?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jvxcc/did_nebuchadnezzar_actually_go_insane_and_live_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clflbqi"], "score": [63], "text": ["So, the account you're referring to, for those who don't know, appears in Daniel 4:22ff.  \n\nFirst, the best commentary on Daniel out there is by John Collins in the Hermeneia series.  The thing is a master work.  I would encourage anybody interested in Daniel to check it out.\n\nSecond, we have a lot of historical problems in the book of Daniel--most notably the names of the \"Babylonian\" kings.  They appear out of order, the narrative turns to one king, then to another, then back to the Nebuchadnezzar, we have no idea who \"Darius the Mede\" is (likely a misremembering of the role of Media/Persia during later years).  \n\nThe answer to your question: no. Nebuchadnezzar did not go insane and live in a cave.  The text in Daniel is more likely about Nabonidus.  We know that Nabonidus was exiled, we also have a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrayerNab or whatever its sigla is--it was for sure found in cave 4 at Qumran...it might just be 4QPNab or something to that effect...either way).  This particular text, while fragmentary, is quite similar to what we see in Daniel 4, but actually names Nabonidus.  (There are also a lot of source critical issues with the Aramaic portions of Daniel...the Aramaic section of Daniel likely floated around in several pieces and was later brought together.  There's an article by a guy named Gammie [\"The Classification, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel\"] where he deals with all this stuff, but for the entire 12 chapter book.  I've been meaning to get back to /u/400-rabbits about doing another podcast with him on Daniel because of all the awesome issues with the book.  So keep your eyes out for that at some point.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "m25s8", "title": "what causes the pain from a headache?", "selftext": "And what are great ways I can avoid them?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m25s8/eli5_what_causes_the_pain_from_a_headache/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2xgwq9", "c2xgzie", "c2xhdoc", "c2xhxaa", "c2xi19w", "c2xiff1", "c2xikwt", "c2xgwq9", "c2xgzie", "c2xhdoc", "c2xhxaa", "c2xi19w", "c2xiff1", "c2xikwt"], "score": [10, 138, 8, 2, 2, 5, 4, 10, 138, 8, 2, 2, 5, 4], "text": ["The most common type of headache is caused from the muscles in your scalp and neck being too tense. \n\nWe don't know what causes Migraines though. ", "It really depends. There are several types of headaches: tension, cluster, migraine, and some others that are much more rare.\n\nELI5, round one for the major causes: Little pipes full of blood pump that blood to your brain. Sometimes the pipes get too big, which causes little pain wires to get excited. This hurts. (ELI20: vasodilation causes stimulation of the nociceptors, which your brain interprets as pain.)\n\nELI5, round two: sometimes we tense our muscles too much, which causes the same pain wires to fire. This hurts. (ELI20: tension headaches can be caused by muscle tension, often secondary to stress. Eliminate the tension or stress, or both, and the pain should subside. One way to do this is to flex the muscle that is causing the pain- often the trapezoids- shrug your shoulders to your ears until the muscles are very tense, then allow them to fall limp.)\n\nELI5, round three: Sometimes our bodies suck. Your head can get ouchy because of this. (ELI20: genetics can predispose us to migraines. This is unfortunate, and we should try to avoid any \"triggers.\" Triggers are usually things like caffeine, coffee, chocolate, etc.)\n\nNB: If you want to know more, I suggest reading [this section](_URL_0_) of the wikipedia entry for headaches. It has a lot of information, but what you should try to key in on is the type, location, and duration of the pain. This can help you when you talk to your primary care provider about fixing the problem.\n\nHope you feel better! :)", "Pinch the bridge of your nose.\nHeadache relief from doctor oz ", "similarly, what causes caffeine headaches?", "High blood pressure caused my daily headaches for many years. Get yours checked. 1 little pill every day and no more headaches for me...", "Most of the time when I had a headache, drinking a glass of water or two would make it go away in 30 minutes or so. Dehydration, because I was fairly active :)", "drinking water helps me\n", "The most common type of headache is caused from the muscles in your scalp and neck being too tense. \n\nWe don't know what causes Migraines though. ", "It really depends. There are several types of headaches: tension, cluster, migraine, and some others that are much more rare.\n\nELI5, round one for the major causes: Little pipes full of blood pump that blood to your brain. Sometimes the pipes get too big, which causes little pain wires to get excited. This hurts. (ELI20: vasodilation causes stimulation of the nociceptors, which your brain interprets as pain.)\n\nELI5, round two: sometimes we tense our muscles too much, which causes the same pain wires to fire. This hurts. (ELI20: tension headaches can be caused by muscle tension, often secondary to stress. Eliminate the tension or stress, or both, and the pain should subside. One way to do this is to flex the muscle that is causing the pain- often the trapezoids- shrug your shoulders to your ears until the muscles are very tense, then allow them to fall limp.)\n\nELI5, round three: Sometimes our bodies suck. Your head can get ouchy because of this. (ELI20: genetics can predispose us to migraines. This is unfortunate, and we should try to avoid any \"triggers.\" Triggers are usually things like caffeine, coffee, chocolate, etc.)\n\nNB: If you want to know more, I suggest reading [this section](_URL_0_) of the wikipedia entry for headaches. It has a lot of information, but what you should try to key in on is the type, location, and duration of the pain. This can help you when you talk to your primary care provider about fixing the problem.\n\nHope you feel better! :)", "Pinch the bridge of your nose.\nHeadache relief from doctor oz ", "similarly, what causes caffeine headaches?", "High blood pressure caused my daily headaches for many years. Get yours checked. 1 little pill every day and no more headaches for me...", "Most of the time when I had a headache, drinking a glass of water or two would make it go away in 30 minutes or so. Dehydration, because I was fairly active :)", "drinking water helps me\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headache#Primary_headaches"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headache#Primary_headaches"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3adehn", "title": "why do people hold their heads when something surprising/unbelievable happens? is this a defence mechanism?", "selftext": "Including but not limited to: Buzzer beaters in basketball, Kevin Owens beating John Cena, dropping and breaking my iPhone 6+", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3adehn/eli5_why_do_people_hold_their_heads_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csbol4p", "csboukf", "csbp9jq", "csbrfba", "csc16lb"], "score": [27, 9, 12, 2, 2], "text": ["I've heard that people cover their mouths when something shocking happens because they are subconsciously trying to slow their breathing by increasing the CO2 concentration in their inhaled breath. Bit like breathing into a paper bag when you are hyperventilating. I know it's not what OP asked but thought it was interesting anyway. ", "Subconscious body language. Your mind has less control over your feet and hands. You can read someone's emotions by their feet and hands just like when someone is stopping them self from saying something, they put their hand over their mouth. They are shocked and don't want to see something, they cover their face/eyes.", "It's a social construct. A meme, of sorts, that goes from generation to generation (much like clapping for example).\n\nWe aren't hard wired to do that, but we see others doing it and we learn that it's an appropriate reaction to when we feel that emotion. The gesture is simply arbitrary, much like shaking when no and nodding when yes. If you lived in a society where nobody did this gesture ever, you wouldn't react like that when shocked. It's simply other people uploading their culture into you.", "It's to protect your face so you can fight or run if need be. Hands shield the eyes and are near the face to defend yourself if in danger, mouth open to take a quick gasp of air and adrenaline to keep you on your toes. ", "I think it's a \"duck and cover\" thing.  Some where primordial we're probably protecting our head and face as a fear response when we see something shocking.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2w0lh5", "title": "i've watched several movies where the \"bad guy\" overrides every telecast in the country to broadcast their evil message. is this possible in real life? to override every broadcast in the country at the same time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w0lh5/eli5_ive_watched_several_movies_where_the_bad_guy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["comilud", "comksp2", "commyk8", "comoodu", "comqtjv", "comr51m", "coms9ik", "comvys8", "comvzq4", "con1eo2"], "score": [200, 32, 3, 15, 104, 3, 31, 5, 4, 3], "text": ["I think the assumption is supposed to be that the \"bad guy\" has found a way of either directly accessing the [EAS](_URL_0_), or he's found a way of duplicating it.", "I think I saw somebody do that in the third Tony Stark biography. ", "You could take over a single channel's broadcast, but there's no way to take over every single channel. For over the air you could use a transmitter more powerful than the existing transmitters, but you would need loads of them all over the country and people would notice your many hundreds of massive antennas towering over them.\n\nIf you're using an IP based system, even though critical IP based systems have little to no security preventing a malicious (or stupid) person from screwing with the network, it's rarely happened in practice. For example, DNS allows anybody to update any record and so could redirect every website to their fake website, although I don't know if anybody has ever actually used this as a method of attack. Secure DNS was introduced to fix this issue though.", "You could only reasonably achieve that by using a transmitter that was overwhelmingly more powerful than every other station, also accounting for distance-to-station, or cutting power to every other station simultaneously and then using a less-powerful-but-still-incredibly-powerful transmitter.\n\nTaking over the existing broadcasts for every station would be less impractical and virtually impossible.", "While limited to a couple stations in Chicago, the Max Headroom incident is probably the closest thing in real life. Pretty interesting and always creeps me out. _URL_0_", "_URL_0_\n\nIf you can't do broadcast TV you can do satellite. You might feasibly be able to supersede Netflix somehow as well. ", "The only movie I've seen that at least offers an explanation for this is V for Vendetta. V hijacks the \"emergency channel\" to give his speech, and it cuts to one of the media heads talking to the High Chancellor over the phone. \"That's what you specified, every television screen in England.\"\n\nOne tv show that joked about the concept was Frisky Dingo. It opens with the main \"villain\" Killface recording his doomsday speech. Afterward, he talks about wanting it shown on every screen in the world. They banter back and forth about the logistics of this. At one point he tries to promote it on daytime tv. Hilarity ensues. ", "It is not supposed to be possible to do this, which is why when it happens in fiction it's a shock to the audience. At least it used to be. The first half dozen or so times it has happened. Now it's just annoying. \n\nWhat's also annoying is when for purposes of exposition, any TV within earshot of the protagonist just naturally is turned to a channel that informs him and us of just what's necessary to know to further along the plot. Even when the TV is just there for set dressing to grant some 'realism' to the scene, usually somehow what just happens to be on TV is somehow alluding to whatever's actually going on. \n\nIf this were actually possible, it's in spite of every effort on the part of multiple networks. EBS in the states maybe makes it vaguely plausible, but in real life this would take much more than hacking into one mainframe somewhere. It's supposed to inform the audience that whoever the bad guys are, they're well financed and very clever. Nowadays though, it just tells me the writer of the story is a hack with limited imagination. ", "Imagine if a supervillain succeeded in doing this, but only got into a channel that nobody was watching.", "1. Hack into the tv networks.\n2. Broadcast your message.\n3. \n4. profit"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jrz9c", "title": "why can i not plug a double ended usb into 2 laptops and just transfer files across?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jrz9c/eli5_why_can_i_not_plug_a_double_ended_usb_into_2/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cleir64", "clem6mi", "clen1hv", "cleqjl4", "cleqo6h", "clerfu0", "cletvtn", "clexu2q", "cley0i6", "cleyj34"], "score": [161, 47, 5, 8, 4, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because USB protocol follows master-slave convention. One device is \"ruling\" USB bus and other devices must follow. If you connect two computers that way, both would want to be \"masters\". There is also electrical problem, because both PC are providing power to 5V lines. If that circuitry is badly designed it could just fail when there is voltage from the other side present.\n\nThere are however special USB cables designed exactly for data transfer. They act like external network card.", "Just like you can't connect to garden hoses together and transfer water between the two houses.\n\nIt was only meant for the water to flow in 1 direction.", "USB is tricky, because it was specifically designed to be one way, but you can easily use an Ethernet cable. In the past, this required a crossover cable, which is basically an Ethernet cable with some of the pins switched on one end so that each computer is on equal footing. Nowadays, Windows automatically recognizes that you are plugging into another PC, so you can just use an ordinary Ethernet cable.", "An obscure part of the USB 3.0 spec actually includes support for that. It works because the USB 3 system is smart enough to know not to push power when connected to another compatible device.\n\nHowever as far as I know this has only been implemented in [one case](_URL_0_), and so far no operating systems support it for basic file transfer.", "But you can..... get a system transfer cable at any office supply store.\n\nOr use Ethernet cable or wireless networking ", "use an ethernet cable and set up a local network using IP addresses 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2", "You can do this with Firewire and Thunderbolt-- at least on Macs.  They won't appear as external drives, though, but instead they'll connect through networking.  Or-- again, on a Mac-- you can put one of the computers into \"target disk mode\" which will make it appear as an external drive.\n\nPart of what might be confusing you is, these ports don't just hook into the hard drive.  When you plug a USB hard drive into your computer, it's not like the internal drive and external drive are two buckets, and the USB cable is a hose connecting them.  It's a lot more complicated.  There's a whole bunch of computer stuff in both the computer and the external hard drive that are talking to each other, and figuring out how to transfer data.\n\nSo you can only do that if Firewire and Thunderbolt because it's all been designed to work that way.  USB was not designed that way.", "Because that's what Ethernet cables are literally for. \n", "Did you ever see Requiem for a Dream? It's kind of like that scene with Jennifer Connelly. ", "OMFG man, if you can take that concept between any given two devices you're gonna be rich! \n\nDon't tell anyone else about it, just keep researching and network yourself with the right people. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh439372\\(v=vs.85\\).aspx"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6qecha", "title": "why are people from northern countries taller and have longer bones if there is less sun exposure (due to shorter days in summer and generally bad weather), which is the main factor responsible for vitamin d production in our organism, the vitamin that regulates bone growth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qecha/eli5_why_are_people_from_northern_countries/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkwnmkc", "dkwnosh", "dkwq5gx", "dkwy762", "dkx1igq", "dkx2lzf", "dkx5qm8", "dkx8fpz", "dkxcqhb"], "score": [76, 23, 72, 19, 5, 5, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["They're tall because of their diets. The Nordic countries have been eating well since World War II, and their diets consist of a good mix of vegetables, fish, meat and fruit, plus lots of high-protein staples. School kids in the Nordic countries are served hot, balanced lunches every day.\n\nVitamin D is not the sole contributor to height. ", "Pre and post natal nutrition and healthy parents. The average height of a Northern European man in 1800 was 5'4'' inches, now it is around 6'1''.\n\nEdit: 5 foot 4 inches", "If vitamin D had such a direct impact on height, you could take vitamin D supplements (which do work to replace sun-derived Vitamin D for people who don't produce enough themselves) and it would increase your height. It doesn't.\n\nA deficiency of vitamin D can prevent proper bone development, but outside of those conditions it doesn't \"control\" height or growth speed. ", "You're misunderstanding something, if you think summer days are shorter in the higher latitudes. The opposite is the case.", " >  if there is less sun exposure (due to shorter days in summer \n\nThat is false. The summer days are much longer in summer. \n\nMy sunrise today at 53,55\u00b0 N: 04:47 - 05:32, sunset: 21:19 - 22:03. And my place is not even nordic.\n\n", "You need *enough* vitamin D to grow healthy bones, but having more than you need doesn't lead to even longer bones. People from northern countries can still produce vitamin D (having pale skin helps) and also receive it from food like oily fish.\n\nMore generally, while it's true that malnutrition leads to stunted growth, getting more food than you need basically just leads to people getting fatter. Vitamins that dissolve in water just get excreted if you take in more than you need, while vitamins that dissolve in fat can sometimes cause health problems if you take too much.\n\nSome Northern European countries do show higher rates of osteoporosis though, which may be related to vitamin D. The height differences between regions are largely genetic - diet doesn't explain men being 2 inches taller in Bosnia than the US! There are identifiable genetic characteristics [e.g. see here](_URL_0_) that are associated with height and occur differently across countries. It's hard to say exactly why these differences occur, but it might be because of temperature (it's easier to stay cool if you're smaller/warm if you're larger), physical demands of hunting large animals vs farming (tall people are stronger but need more food) or sexual selection (preference for tall mates varies regionally).", "We're like plants and we attempt to grow towards the sun. Because we get less sunlight we have to grow taller to get a similar amount.\n\nSource: I'm 6'5 and full of bullshit", "Current theory is that it comes down to getting enough protein to grow to full potential. In general, areas of origin that have lots of available protein tend to produce taller people (and over a long period of time it affects their genetics).  Rice vs. wheat may be the main culprit, wheat is a lot higher in protein than rice.  For example, there is a line that divides China, below the line they grow rice (too hot for wheat), above the line they grow wheat.  Below the line people (on average)  are shorter, above the line they are much taller. ", "Vitamin D doesn't work on its own, it needs calcium which you can get best from milk. Northern Europeans have better tolerance for lactose next to Southern Europeans and Asians. There's also more and better land for breeding cows, especially if you compare to Greece or Italy where the land has been so severely over-farmed, there's not much growing there anymore.\n\nNutrition certainly plays a role on this too, but some differences between countries from similar regions can't be explained by that. Sami people for example (the only indigenous people of Europe) seem to be significantly shorter regardless of living in Northern Europe (for the longest). Or other speakers of the Finno-Ugric language family, despite living relatively North are shorter than their neighbors. Presumably due to genetic differences, since they're not as closely related to other Europeans.\n\nFinns even have a weird thing for milk (a milk company had a monopoly and affected a lot of studies advertising milk as super healthy for quite some time) and are one of the healthiest populations in Europe, yet they're barely the same height as Germans.\n\nCuriously enough, Basques, who are a small people in Northern Spain, also have better lactose persistence, and the name Basques has been theorized to have come from Celtic etymology meaning something like \"the mountain people\" or \"the tall ones\". I didn't find any statistics for their height specifically though, presumably they're always grouped with Spaniards.\n\nThere's no clear answer though, what I found through brief research."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I-M170"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1trusk", "title": "the \"crack epidemic\" of the 80s/90s and the alleged cia or us government involvement.", "selftext": "I've read around quite a bit, but I'm confused by the terms \"Contra\", \"Sandinista rebels\" and so on. Some of my friends who are obsessed with conspiracy theories say that the U.S. government is responsible for the rise of crack-cocaine in black-populated areas in America with high-poverty, or \"ghettos/hoods\". Is there any truth to this? If so, how did this happen and who was responsible? What would the government gain by doing this?\n\nSorry if this is a dumb question, but I've read around on Wikipedia and other places and am still confused. Thank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1trusk/eli5_the_crack_epidemic_of_the_80s90s_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceatot8", "ceau47j", "ceavxlf", "ceawl61", "ceawl9e", "ceawwpq", "ceax0l8", "ceax252", "ceayf3j", "ceayomv", "ceazczr", "ceazj4y", "ceazqp2", "ceb0gmn", "ceb0hjb", "ceb0i2j", "ceb0m3q", "ceb0v0n", "ceb17yv", "ceb18gm", "ceb1ctk", "ceb29yh", "ceb3kkq", "ceb43f1", "ceb472y", "ceb4vab", "ceb57ef", "ceb5dvi", "ceb5vrx", "ceb607r", "ceb73hc", "ceb901r"], "score": [26, 572, 30, 18, 4, 224, 19, 8, 128, 10, 22, 4, 26, 2, 9, 3, 3, 9, 5, 2, 8, 13, 2, 8, 2, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["Can of woms, meet the can opener. \n\nThis is gonna be *good*.  ", "The Reagan Adiministration wanted the CIA to back the Contras in Nicaragua, but due to laws passed by the congress, they were unable to. Congress didn't want to fund the CIA, but the CIA was sought funding elsewhere. So, the story goes that they had someone smuggle cocaine into the United States to be sold, and they would take their cut of the profit to in turn fund the Contras.\n\nHere are some wikipedia links about the event and some of the main players:\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nAlso, the book \"Dark Alliance\" by the late Gary Webb is a collection of articles that Webb wrote and were published in the San Jose Mercury News.\n\nEdit: Changed context and added link.\n\nEdit II: I seem to have struck gold. A special thanks to my anonymous benefactor.", "Let this be a lesson for those who think defunding the NSA is the answer", "[Gary Webb, Video AMA, C-Span live recording, 1998. 80 Minutes](_URL_0_)\n\nI've skipped ahead 17 minutes to the Dark Alliance bit. However the first 17 minutes are good and strange. At about 7 minutes the reporter pronounces Osama Bin Laden as \"Osammy Ben Layden\" with the newspaper right in front of him. It's surreal.\n\n", "Somewhat relevant, very interesting:  \n_URL_0_", "\"During the Iran-Contra hearings the two protesters who stood up and unfurled a flag and said, \u201cask about the cocaine!\u201d received more jail time than all the Iran-Contra criminals who were exposed\"", "Check out the movie American Drug War. There are parts of it on Youtube. While they cover a lot of different angles, the do a go job on the Oliver North and Contra scandal. It's really so much more insane than you can imagine. Next time someone tells you Reagan was a great president, just bring up the Iran/Contra scandal.", "Summed up, some of the money that Freeway Rick Ross used to buy his crack cocaine with, was later traced back to Iran Contra Funds. ", "Here's an ex LA cop that was in the CIA talking about it. (CIA embeds agents in major police departments)\n_URL_0_\n\nCan you explain some of the political adventures or misadventures that brought the CIA to the public eye around drug dealing?\n\nWell, if you go back historically, the Agency has been real active in Central America since the Second World War. I mean, the Agency was down there, even before it was CIA, with United Fruit and all the major landowners in Central America. In 1979, Anastasio Samosa, the dictator of Nicaragua, was overthrown by the Sandino movement--the Sandinistas. They were a \"Marxist\" movement, and Ronald Reagan mobilised the country to stave off this alleged threat of communist imperialism on America's doorstep. It was a whole lot of rubric and Congress didn't really want to get involved in it deeply. Congress passed some amendments to the Military Appropriations Act. They were known as the Boland Amendments, and were passed first I think in 1981 and again in 1984; they were Boland 1 and 2, which limited direct military aid to the Contras, the people fighting the Sandinistas.\n\nAnd so the CIA and Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey and George Bush (Vice President George Bush) were running the whole operation; we know that now. They circumvented the will of Congress and there was this explosion of drug trafficking all throughout Central America, coordinated by the CIA. And we now have the CIA's own documents, and I can show you one later. It's the CIA's Volume 2 of their own Inspector-General's Report from 1998 where, in its own words, the Agency admits that of the 58 known Contra groups, 58 were involved with drugs. And that the Agency dealt with them; it protected six traffickers, kept them out of jail. One guy moving four tons of cocaine a month was using a bank account opened by White House staffer Oliver North. Other CIA assets were caught moving 200 kilos at a time--200 kilos is not personal use--and he was saying, \"Well, I can't tell you what I'm doing because I'm doing it for the National Security Council\"--that's the White House organ that oversees the Central Intelligence Agency. So we saw this huge explosion.\n\nThe point I make in my lectures is that in the mid- to late '70s, we in America--those of us who are old enough to remember--dealt with cartels but we didn't deal with drug cartels, we dealt with oil cartels. We had an oil crisis and it almost crippled the American economy. We had been subsidised by very cheap oil that we acquired by, in a sense, exploiting other countries. Well, then we had cartels of cocaine and we went from 40 to 50 metric tons a year to 600 metric tons a year. And that money was moved through Wall Street and became, in effect, the capital that replaced oil in the US economy.\n\n ", "Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere. I'm not sure what the rules are for plugging things, but the \"Stuff You Should Know\" podcast had an episode \"How Crack Works\" that touched on this. That might be a good overall lesson for you. It would be like having somebody give you a summary of the wikipedia links posted in this thread.", "Your friends may be obsessed with conspiracy theories, but even some of the crazy sounding theories about the CIA are pretty soundly backed. We've done some really, really questionable shit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they also had something to do with the blood diamond trade in Sierra Leone. ", "[American Dad](_URL_0_) had a good skit on it.", "The bizarre thing is listening to people sneer \"conspiracy theorist\" towards anyone discussing the activities of an agency that is expressly charged with conducting black ops. As if the CIA should be expected to be baking apple pies instead of spying, overthrowing governments, and in the case of Air America running cocaine to fund itself.  \n", "They didn't sell crack, they sold cocaine, but there you have it. The war ~~with~~ on drugs", "Stuff You Should Know did a pretty good podcast on How Crack Works that touches on this and other facts around crack cocaine. It's kinda like ELI5 in podcast-y form.\n_URL_0_", "Treadstone was funded by cocaine money. ", "[This](_URL_0_) is a good read on the subject. \n\nDid the CIA run cocaine in into the US? Yes. Were they targeting specifically blacks in ghettos? Probably not. ", "My favorite part of this whole affair? While the government was selling m illegal drugs on their own streets, they were passing laws that gave harsher punishment to people convicted of having crack, not *cocaine*, crack. There was no other to say that this law literally targeted minorities, especially African-Americans.  ", "This guy was a CIA whistle blower back when he was doing drug runs in Honduras to fund CIA operations  &  goes into details on what happend.  _URL_0_\n", "So rappers could make and sell records about it", "Simple fact of the matter is  they are still doing it. A few years back the media was talking about a \"dirty bomb\" being smuggled across one of our borders, they didn't beat that drum for to long because obviously with tons of coke and heroin crossing the borders we can't keep anything out, unless\u2026\u2026.\n", "I've seen a couple docs on this, some good, some bad. The CIA model seems to be this: \n\n-set up rebels (contras) with guns. They pay the CIA with drugs. \n\n-CIA ships drugs to US(because what the fuck is anyone going to do about it?)\n\n-drugs are distributed to top level dealers in inner-cities. \n\n-crime rate skyrockets with drugs arrests\n\n-DEA and FBI get boosts in funding, as well as local police, and prison industry gets more money and tax dollars to \"fix the problem\". \n\nThe primary reason the government doesn't want you to have drugs is because you can then get cash off the books. They don't like it when you play their game. At all. This model has worked in South America with all sorts of drugs. Mexico is shifting to meth, and heroin is produced in Afghanistan and then shipped to Spain/Portugal after US tomfuckery in Afghanistan. ", "this is not a question you can explain to a five-yr old.  one of the issues, aside from covert involvement in the drug market, is the way crack was used to jail a large section of the black male population.  although it is basically the same as cocaine the sentences are about 100 times more strict.  some theorize that cocaine was made into crack and introduced into ghettos by counter-intelligence operations in conjunction with for-profit drug runners in order to destroy the urban blacks.  another reason that crack is prevalent among poor people is that it's harder to cut than coke, something the rich don't have to worry about.  either way the end result has been a targeting of black males and a degradation of black culture.  \n\nin nicaragua the target of destruction was (and maybe still is) the sandinistas who rebelled against the dictator somoza, a friend of washington and related business groups.  once the sandinista government took power the contras were set-up as a proxy army from bases in the mountains and honduras.  the situation is often misunderstood since it's an unusual case of the u.s. backing a rebel group in latin america.  check out noam chomsky's \"turning the tide\" for a detailed and gruesome analysis of the contra war and similar atrocities throughout the region.  to learn more about the c.i.a. and drug running go to _URL_0_", "There was nothing conspiratorial about the Contra war and the CIA and the executive branch, Reagan, illegally circumventing Congresses authority to control the \"purse strings\" of the US government. In many historians view these actions far more alarming than the Watergate incident 15 years earlier, yet it is rarely even discussed  today and many Americans who weren't alive during the hearings have little knowledge of it. I could rant for a while, I'll control my self though. Here are a couple other articles.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_", "Here's a great documentary, Planet Rock, narrated by Ice-T on the epidemic and the USG's role in it: _URL_0_", "Look up the real Rick Ross. He sold a couple million in crack everyday, only to find out in the end he was getting his coke from the CIA all along. Also Geraldo Rivera even admitted on television the troops in Aphganistan are not only there to guard opium, but they're helping to grow it. and personally I don't see why this is considered a theory, its a fact U.S Government ships in drugs while keeping them illegal to drive up the price on the black market and to keep for-profit prisons filled and to get people in the \"ju$tice\" system. Sorry people, your Government doesn't love you.", "The most important thing to take away is that this is not an isolated incident. I think many Americans would be surprised how much of a common practice it is for these agencies. They even have internal wars over the resources. It's fucked up.", "When reagan got into office, they started supporting every right wing tyrant in latin america they could find. And if none existed in a perticular oil or resource rich area, then they invented one.\n\nThe operations needed cash, and since we still had some semblance of an actual government back then, they wouldn't just shovel the hawks all the cash they asked for. So they started selling drugs, or rather, invited their central american buddies up to sell their drugs so they could fund their fights against the actual legitimate governments of whichever country they were from.\n\n", "Coke went really well with the glamour of the late 60s and 70s. The disco scene really pushed it as well as the [early hip hop of the 80s](_URL_1_). But it was a little pricey so allot of the upper class used it more often which meant it was seen as a \"white man's drug\". People started to smoke it too. When the poorer communities wanted to get involved, smoking it was seen as the thing to do but it was still too pricey. I think it was \"Freeway Ricky Ross\" who was the first but, not to cut it with baking soda but definitely the first to sell it big time, and essentially cutting it with baking soda and using a certain chemical method turned it into crack, which was A LOT more addictive. This made it cheaper so the poorer communities could get it more often. This occurred throughout the 70s but all the bad log term effects of crack use only surfaced after a while in the early 80s where long term users became zombified. Competition on the streets between dealers lead to the formation of gang warfare, rappers emulated the big time crack/coke dealers and they emulated the rappers in style and way of life. Thus birthed modern gangster rap music which spread through the ghettos along with crack. There is a really good documentary on the subject and the beginning of hip hop called [Planet Rock: The story of Hip hop and the crack generation](_URL_0_).", "Not sure if anyone has said this yet, but check out [Ricky \"freeway\" Ross's](_URL_0_) (The original Rick Ross, not the prison guard who became the rapper) story.  He was part of the distribution side of the Iran Contra fiasco.\n\nAlso worth noting in more modern time, the CIA had the President of Afghanistan's brother on their payroll for 8 years and was known to be a larger player in the trafficking of Heroin. _URL_1_", "the best contra is possible CONTRA III: THE ALIEN WARS for the super nintendo.", "Totally relevant comedy sketch\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danilo_Blandon", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Freeway%22_Rick_Ross"], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKE2XL24FG4&amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=1069"], ["http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/12/cia-plane-crash-lands-with-four-tons-of-coke-2-2512114.html"], [], [], [], ["http://www.whale.to/b/ruppert1.html"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bllb_-hr5w"], [], [], ["http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/crack-works/"], [], ["http://smile.amazon.com/Cocaine-Politics-Central-America-Updated/dp/0520214498"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxZqaxlOuac&amp;t=33m57s"], [], [], [], ["narconews.com"], ["http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-iran/", "http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/20/world/anti-drug-unit-of-cia-sent-ton-of-cocaine-to-us-in-1990.html"], ["http://youtu.be/BWKo8CLL3ks"], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWKo8CLL3ks", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsTJaP2tC0A"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Freeway%22_Rick_Ross", "http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hg625n5RjM"]]}
{"q_id": "5edo8s", "title": "Aqueducts are vulnerable to being cut during a siege. What measures have been taken historically either to mitigate the loss of external water sources, or to prevent the damage itself from occurring?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5edo8s/aqueducts_are_vulnerable_to_being_cut_during_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dacb0bz"], "score": [6], "text": ["Followup, does this also apply to rivers? has anyone ever tried to cut off the water supply by rerouting a river."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1jpdyq", "title": "Has a \"secret society\" ever held large influence over any government?", "selftext": "By secret society, I mean anything ranging from The Illuminati to The Knights Templar to the Freemasons. \nEDIT: I apologize, I guess this is more vague than I thought. Did any group that is not a political party have an effect on the outcome of history? An example would be \"The illuminati controlled President Nixon and forced him to do X.\" Basically what I'm looking for is... has any government/leader been used as a puppet, with any of these societies pulling the strings?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jpdyq/has_a_secret_society_ever_held_large_influence/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbgyjbj", "cbh20bu", "cbh3mlg", "cbh4tw1", "cbh6ma3", "cbh6p1k", "cbha6dx", "cbhah5f"], "score": [9, 14, 11, 6, 2, 26, 3, 6], "text": ["How are you defining a \"secret society\" in this context?", "The Knights Hospitalier owned at various time the islands of Rhodes and Malta, but I'm not sire they count as secret.", "How do you define \"large influence\"? A substantial number of major figures in the American Revolution and early American politics were Masons, so that may qualify in some sense, but I don't think membership in a society necessarily means the society itself has a \"large influence\".\n", "What do you mean by large influence? King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to The Knights Templar but then they were arrested and/or killed.", "While not exactly a society, you could say the Borgia's influence in both Spain and the Papal States. They had 2 Pope's (Callixtus III and Alexander VI), great influence over Pope Innocent VIII, bought the Papacy for Alexander VI, decimated the Papal Guard with his awful son Juan and his other son Cesare was insane, but an amazing commander whom he wanted to groom to become the next Pope. \n\nAll in all the Borgia's knew how to control through power, deception and finances. Both horrifying and beautiful in how they played the game of life.\n\nEDIT: I was referencing Alexander VI's (Rodrigo Borgia) sons ", "There were two fairly notorious, fairly initially-secret organizations in post-Restoration, pre-1945 Japanese society that were instrumental in shaping the face of Japense ultranationalism: the Black Ocean Society and its offshoot, the Black Dragon Society.\n\nThe Black Ocean Society was mainly composed of ex-samurai who were displaced by Japan's rapid industrialization. Over time, their numbers swelled. They eventually incorporated several criminal elements. This merely added to their nascent violence, resulting in a variety of criminal wars with the seedier elements of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese society.\n\n(At this point, it sort of becomes a pulp novel. The Black Ocean Society had - allegedly - a full-fledged training base. Stories tell of assassinations, bomb plots, prostitute-spies, moonlight chases across rooftops, knife fights, and more! Not *really* historical but definitely historically flavored.)\n\nBy the turn of the 20th Century, the Black Ocean Society was strong, influential, and pervasive enough to actually be of some use to the government. They were strongly nationalist and believed in the imperial mission as well as the superiority of the Japanese nation. In the Korean and Chinese wars, they served as informal intelligence agents and - some say - as saboteurs for the Army and Navy.\n\nHowever, given its criminal elements, the Black Ocean Society was still held as being a little distasteful and certainly not something the new members of Japan's middle and upper classes would participate in. Enter the Black Dragon Society. Its members included cabinet ministers and professional spies. It was said that the Black Dragon Society also had a spy school and a mini army of highly trained agents. In short, the Black Dragons performed much the same function as the Black Ocean and created all sorts of chaos in occupied China.\n\n---\n\nCuriously, it has been speculated that due to both societies' ultranationalist outlook, their adherence to ancient customs, and their strong vaguely quasi-mystical traditions, that they may have influenced the formation of the Thule Society in Germany.", "In pre-WWII Germany The Thule Society was an occultist group with strong nationalist and racial beliefs  that formed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei which Adolf Hitler would form into the NSDAP. There isn't much evidence Hitler himself was ever a Thule member, but its membership does read like a Who's Who of many power Nazi party officials. Many of the Thule Society's occultic teachings would find place with Heinrich Himmler who incorporated a lot of occultic symbolism and occultic ritual into the SS, even though such occultism was publicly suppressed by law among the general population. As a result there are a lot of conspiracies tying the Thule Society to the Nazis.", "The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was a secret society from 1858-1924 with its main goal of an independent Ireland. The Brotherhood prominently was involved in the election of Charles Stewart Parnell - Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and President of the Land League, altogether one of the most powerful men in Ireland from ~1879-1886. Allegedly (the source for this is pretty sketchy and we may never know if it's true) Parnell swore an oath to the Brotherhood after his release from Kilmainham Prison. \n\nIRB members infiltrated or founded almost every organisation of Irish nationalism and independence - from the Irish Volunteers to the Gaelic Athletic Association. In 1916 using their influence in the Irish Volunteers they orchestrated the Easter Rising against the British. Michael Collins was an enthusiastic member of the Brotherhood and President of the organisation from 1920-24; the first President of the Irish Republic Eamon de Valera was also a reluctant member of the IRB, though he joined it during the Easter Rising as a necessary way of gaining information about the Rising rather than an ideological inclination (he was opposed to secret societies).\n\nDuring the Irish War of Independence the IRA took prominence over the IRB and membership waned. The IRB split over the treaty issue - whether to accept the Irish Free State or to fight for full independence and a fully united Ireland - and finally dissolved itself in 1924.\n\nThis might make the IRB seem like a strong a centralised force that controlled every facet of Irish republicanism, but in actuallity the strength and organisation waned throughout its life - it was paramount in 1916, very effective during the Land War of 1879-1882 but throughout its life it was riddled with internal conflict over the direction of the organisation. While it never directly held influence over a formal government its connections along with the American Clan-na-Gael with the leadership of the Irish republican movement (Valera, Collins, Parnell) deserves special mention - though its connection with Valera and Parnell was more one of convenience and shared goals rather than actual commitment. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27n1j8", "title": "why do so many businesses use computer programs that look like ms-dos?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27n1j8/eli5_why_do_so_many_businesses_use_computer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci2duss", "ci2e2u4", "ci2e7bs", "ci2gdwk", "ci2hc43", "ci2hcpo", "ci2jicc", "ci2jkcq", "ci2k3tl", "ci2m724"], "score": [2, 16, 3, 5, 10, 2, 6, 2, 17, 2], "text": ["cost mainly, the developers can sell these programs for a decent amount to the stores but it costs next to nothing to produce", "Because businesses are cheap,and only see the short term cost of upgrade, and not the long term eternal hatred of their IT Dept.", "I work for a community college that uses an ancient student records system that's really clunky and un-intuitive and not even a tiny bit user-friendly...a lot like DOS.  It's used by most of the departments on campus, in some way, and everybody hates it.  The Enrollment office promises that they're working on a new one, and we'll have it...2016, maybe, or 2017?  They're actually trying to develop a new records system for use all over the state--which means that it not only has to get approval and buy-in from a disparate committee of users with various needs and agendas and biases on my campus, but the same committee at 34 different colleges around the state.\n\nThat's why in my world, at least.", "Most of the time, it comes down to a few things:\n\n* Hardware requirements\n* Cost associated with upgrading to something more modern\n* Whether or not the application warrants an upgrade\n\nThese types of application are still commonplace in point of sale systems. Often, you'll find that the terminal running them is a dinosaur hardware wise so if you can make the application less hardware intensive, then you can run it in more places.\n\nThen, there's the cost associated with upgrading. Will the new application run on all your current hardware without issues? If not, then you've got to buy new hardware. Will the process be exactly the same? No? Then you've got to re-train employees on how to use it. Also, you've got to buy the new program if you didn't create it yourself. If you did create it yourself, then you had to spend money in the form of time to have people create it and make sure it works.\n\nYou also have to look at the needs an employee has. If you're working in a checkout line, you don't need a fancy UI to do your job. All you need is to be able to press a few buttons to look up a price if a bar code won't scan or be able to punch in a coupon code or something. The fancy UI is nice to have because it looks better, but not required for this type of job since the application is only a means to an end. If you need the program, then you need it but for something like point of sale, your old system if probably sufficient for what you're currently using it for.\n\nThere's also other reasons. You've got to take the system down to upgrade it, plan for any issues that come up during that process, etc.\n\n\n\n", "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to be the first to say this.\n\nIn many businesses, mainframes are still a thing.  They are solid.  They just don't stop.  So if the shitty command-line interface is what you get with that?  So be it.  Not to mention that many of these systems have been in place for a very, very long time.\n\nI work for an automotive supplier, and my customer (one of the \"big 3\" in Detroit) has this *ancient* mainframe system to generate part numbers.  It's humorous, as I watch my co-workers fret at it constantly.  But it works.  And will keep working until the metal in the machine degrades to the point that electricity will no longer flow through it. (Edit: One co-worker has been using it since '84)", "A pure text based screen requires less bandwidth for the data line than a GUI does like Windows 7 as well.", "Command line interfaces (CLI) like MS-DOS, and various Unix shells, are an easy way to give the user a lot of control without the need for processing power intensive graphic user interfaces (GUI).", "Functionality  >  GUI ", "Changing a business computer system is like rebuilding your house while you're still living in it. It seems like a good idea at the time, so you start building new walls around the outside of your house. Then when you get about halfway finished your wife gets pregnant and now you have to work an extra bedroom into the new house. So you move something here and alter something there and you can just about get a new bedroom in. But now the house will cost more and it'll take a few more months to get done.\n\nSo your wife now decides that since the new house won't be ready in time she needs to have a new kitchen in the old house, so you stop building the new house and put in a new kitchen. But now you see some benefits to the new kitchen, so you change your plans and tweak some things so maybe you can use bits of your new kitchen in the new house.\n\nAnd then solar panels become a thing, so you decide you want them, which means redoing the roof.\n\nAnd then you get a promotion at work and a company car (this is akin to a business getting a new client who works a bit differently from the old clients) so you need to build a garage.\n\nAnd then you stand back having lost some weight and lost some hair, and realise that there wasn't anything really wrong with the old house in the first place, it just needed a bit of attention here and there. But now you have a mish-mash of old house and new house, and the garage is in the pool, and the nursery is nowhere near the main bedroom, and the kitchen is half upstairs and half downstairs, but at least the roof doesn't leak and you still have cable. Just.\n\nAnd that's why businesses don't like to change their computer systems.", "Relevant story.\n\nI buy a lot of hydraulic components from a local distributor. They used to have an older text-based ERP system. That system had been in use for ages, and served them well. The learning curve was a little tough (you needed to memorize codes and whatnot to make it work) but it was efficient. They could write an order and get you out the door in 30 seconds.\n\nA year ago, they \"upgraded\" to a new ERP system. That system had tons more bells and whistles, was easier to use, and by almost all metrics, was better. Except that it now takes the counter staff over 2 minutes to write and complete an order. So, by modernizing the software, they quadrupled the amount of time I have to sit there, waiting for them to process my order. \n\nAlso, the system crashes a few times a day...\n\nSo, why did they \"upgrade\"? They would have been in better shape if they had just continued using the same old, terminal based system...\n\nThe end reason really boils down to the simplest answer possible.\n\nIf it ain't broke, don't fix it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1y4m23", "title": "They say part of the heat in the earth's core is due to radioactive decay. How much radioactive stuff is there in the earth now, and how much was there when the earth formed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1y4m23/they_say_part_of_the_heat_in_the_earths_core_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfhb931"], "score": [2], "text": ["If all the current radioactive stuff were plutonium with a half-life of some 100,000 years, then 100,000 years ago there was twice as much as there is today, and 100,000 years before that twice more, etc. So each prior 100,000 year snapshot would show twice the previous amount. There are ten 100,000s in a million years, so that's 2 to the 10th power more plutonium. There are ten thousand 100,000s in a billion years, so that's 2 to the 10,000 right? And that's just the last one billion years.\n\nIf we do this type of calculation for plutonium and the age of the earth, do we end up with a required amount of plutonium at formation of the earth that would have weighed more than all the other stuff that went into making the earth, e.g. carbon, hydrogen, iron, etc, and is still here today?\n\nHas anyone figured this out and done all the calculations? And if so, how about the time it took before the earth formed, from the creation of radioactive stuff in a star, through all the time it took for this stuff to be blown away from it's parent star and collect here?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32sv1n", "title": "How did East and West Germany differ in how they dealt with the legacy of Nazism, both officially (school curricula, official policy, etc) and unofficially (popular media, culture)? To what extent did their respective systems of government enable or inhibit their reconciliations with the past?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32sv1n/how_did_east_and_west_germany_differ_in_how_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqeqqa7", "cqer42d", "cqestoo"], "score": [3, 27, 36], "text": ["Not an expert but as there's no real answer yet:\n\nWest Germany: a lot of Nazis became part of the system, judges and politicians (not the elite, but party members of the NSDAP). Sorting them out was a major point of the youth movements in '68 and the development of the \"German Fall\"  , the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The young Germans basically blamed their parents to be old Nazis and holding onto the old system. Though the allies forced the German population to look at the horrors of the concentration camp and the third Reich (also the Nuremberg trials made it clear for the German public what had happened) . So no one publicly stood by the old times, though a lot of people kept their copy of Mein Kampf. The Germans also quickly forgot the war because the economy was booming and life post war was good. German Gem\u00fctlichkeit and Heimatsgef\u00fchl (longing or feeling for home, kinda like patriotism but I wouldn't call it that cause it has a different meaning in Germany) developed in movies and music (Volksmusik, Schlager). The youth began to listen to rock n roll and rolling stones, and setting themselves apart of the elder generation. In Germany it was next to rebellion also distancing from the old times. Real  reconciliation started when the generation, which was born after the war or was to young, gained more and more social and political power (~70s).\n\nEast Germany (less sure about this): I think the Soviets portrayed west Germany as 'old Nazis' , and used it for their propaganda: west Germany equals evil. As far as I know real reconciliation never occured, but of course there were people from the SS/NSDAP living in the eastern zone, which was ignored by the regime. \n\nI don't know if it helped but that's what I recall from history class in (Western, but unified) Germany.\n\nEdit: the part with the movies", "East Germany, as a matter of political theory, displaced blame for the atrocities of the Nazis onto West Germany. Fascism was characterized as a bourgeois government form, which had naturally been eradicated by the rise of Socialism in the East, but was still alive in the bourgeois West. There's a lot more theory here, but that's the gist. Transferring the blame was made easier by the fact that most Eastern politicians were Communists from before WWII, and had thus been persecuted by the Nazis.\n\nThis is in contrast with West Germany, where after 'denazification,\" many former Nazis were allowed to return to positions of power. This was used in propaganda by the GDR (East) against the FRG (West). \n\nOn the other hand, official commemoration of the Holocaust didn't really happen in the East. Monuments listed the dead by country, but didn't differentiate ethnic Poles from Polish Jews, for example. \n\nOssies also focused on WWII as a class struggle. In Sachsenhausen, the closest concentration camp to Berlin, there is a huge granite obelisk, with red granite triangles on it. Red triangles were given to political prisoners in the camps--mostly Communists. (Pink triangles went to homosexuals, black to criminals. Communist Jews wore a red triangle and a yellow together to form a star. There are [more triangles](_URL_0_), as well.) So, rather than tell the story of the mostly Jewish victims of the camp, they focused on the Communist martyrs. There's a huge interpretive building outside the camp as well, with big Socialist Realist stained glass works telling how the Communists fought gloriously against the Nazis.\n\nIn the West, the crimes of the Nazis weren't really grappled with until the 1960s, when young people who had come of age after WWII started poking around and being outraged at some of the history behind the people in charge. In the 1940s and 50s, the control of the Western Allies over the FRG was more visible (the occupation of Germany only came to a legal end in 1991) and the Allies were worried about creating a strong, democratic, allied state more than they were worried about justice for past crimes. It was easier to cooperate with former Nazis than to wipe them out of the picture. (after all, almost everyone with experience in running the country for more than a dozen years was a Nazi).\n\nAs the Cold War dragged on, Eastern Europe became a haven for former Nazis--because the East used the former Nazis in the West as a propaganda tool, they didn't want to find former Nazis in their own backyards, and so didn't cooperate with trying or extraditing them. On the other hand, West Germany continued to grapple with its Nazi roots, and understand, atone for and come to terms with the horrors of the past in a way that East Germany did not, and, I would argue, that was based on the openness allowed by a democratic form of government, as opposed to a dictatorship.\n\nI hope this answers some of your questions.", "I'm not a historian, but I wrote a paper on how East Germany dealt with the legacy of fascism while I studied abroad in Berlin, so I've dusted that off. I can't speak to how W. Germany dealt with it, though, so I'll give half the picture and I'm sure someone else will come along with the other half. (Jesus Christ this became a lot longer than I anticipated, sorry in advance.)\n\nThe DDR (E. Germany), to begin with, had a problem of establishing state legitimacy that the BRD (W. Germany) didn't really have. To gain this legitimacy, the DDR essentially built up a \"foundation myth\" of sorts entirely centered on the history of communism in Germany. The liberation of the concentration camps (especially Buchenwald) was attributed to communist-led resistance within the camps. The promulgated narrative was of German communists leading ethnically and politically diverse bands of antifascists from within Germany itself to conquer fascism.\n\nSo, in tune with this narrative, after the workers' uprising in June 1953, which attested to the shaky legitimacy of the Communist regime, Buchenwald was turned into a national memorial, and a memorial was erected to Ernst Thaelmann, the murdered leader of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany, at the Buchenwald crematorium. \n\nLike Jews were forced to wear a gold star, communist victims in the Holocaust were forced to wear a red triangle, which became a symbol of heroic resistance in art. Socialist realist novelists like Marchwitza, Bredel, and Gotsche told stories spanning generations, constructing a specifically German socialist tradition, progressing from defeat to ultimate salvation by the Red Army.\n\nEast German historians used Marxist linearity and \"historical materialism\" to link the Communist Party to uprisings in German history like the medieval Peasants' War and the 1848 revolution. Marxist thought considers socialism the natural result of revolution stemming from the oppression of the proletariat inherent in capitalist structures, so Marxist East German historians re-interpreted fascism as the last gasp of the elites to protect their interests from the laborers. With this re-interpretation, antifascism and anticapitalism became more or less synonymous. The Berlin Wall was characterized as the \"[antifascist protective wall](_URL_0_).\"\n\nGerman monopolists were blamed for instigating WWII, and the non-resisting majority were not accounted for. WWII was a story of the superior social structures of the socialists inevitably defeating imperial fascists, and the DDR really pushed the narrative that it had always been communist and was the first victim of Nazi aggression. Non-communist Nazi resistance, the racial aspect of Nazism, and the mass collaboration allowing for the SS terror system went largely unmentioned. Mass exterminations were largely left out of the narrative as well, because DDR historians were only allowed to understand Nazism in the economic sense of state monopoly capitalism. Non-political victims of the Third Reich were by and large ignored.\n\nBecause of the \"scientific\" inevitability of Marxist history, individuals were largely absolved from blame, and the lesson taken from the rise of fascism was something akin to \"don't be capitalist.\" As (at least according to the narrative) antifascists, East Germany considered itself a co-victor in WWII. My paper has a quote from a DDR student saying \"When I imagined WWII as a child, it was as if everyone had somehow been a member of the White Rose or had met secretively in back courtyards and basements to organize resistance and print pamphlets.\" \n\nNaturally, considering the official historical narrative, many former Nazis made careers in the East German regime. Arno von Lenski, for instance, was an assessor of the Volksgerichthof in Nazi Germany, in a capacity where his signature was appended to multiple death sentences, but in the DDR, Ulbricht awarded him the \"Medal for Fighters against Fascism 1933-45.\" Ernst Grossmann was an SS guard at Sachsenhausen, which largely housed political prisoners, and served on the Central Committee of SED in the DDR, and was decorated as a \"Hero of Work.\" These are two of many examples of the blind eye turned towards the contributions of individual collaborators in the Nazi regime.\n\nOn committees such as the *Opfer des Faschismus* (Victims of Fascism) and the Union of Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (VVN), both party-sanctioned groups, non-political victims were originally included, but by the late '40s were already marginalized. Even non-communist political victims, like the supporters of the July 20 coup, were excluded from the VVN in 1949.\n\nEntire concentration camps were forgotten in the official record, like Marzahn, which held Sinti and Roma but not communists. It took until the 1980s until DDR historians could discuss Jewish persecution and bourgeois antifascist opposition, but even in 1984 lesbians were arrested for visiting Ravensbrueck, the site of persecutions of homosexuals. The Volkskammer did not accept German responsibility for the Holocaust until April 12, 1990.\n\n**Sources:**\n\nBrinks, J.H. \"Poilitcal Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic.\" *Journal of Contemporary History* 32.2 (1997): 207-17.\n\nDiner, Dan. \"On the Ideology of Antifascism.\" Trans. Christian Gundermann. *New German Critique* 67 (1996): 123-32.\n\nHell, Julia. \"At the Center an Absence: Foundationalist Narratives of the GDR and the Legitimatory Discourse of Antifascism.\" *Monatshefte* 84.1 (1992): 23-45.\n\nJurausch, Konrad H. \"The Failure of East German Antifascism: Some Ironies of History as Politics.\" *German Studies Review* 14.1 (1991): 84-102.\n\nMonteath, Peter. \"Narratives of Fascism in the GDR: Buchenwald and the 'Myth of Antifascism'.\" *The European Legacy* 4.1 (1999): 99-112. \n\nPlum, Catherine. \"The Children of Antifascism: Exploring Young Historians Clubs in the GDR.\" *German Politics  &  Society* 26.1 (2008): 1-28.\n\nTimm, Angelika. \"The Burdened Relationship between the GDR and Israel.\" *Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy.* Budapest: Central European UP, 1997: 166-180.\n\n**TL;DR** East Germany created a foundation myth regarding antifascism and socialism which promulgated the narrative that East Germany was socialist and had always been socialist, backed by Marxist historical materialism. The myth essentially turned East Germans from promoters, collaborators, and silent toleraters of Nazism to victims of fascism, at the expense of pretty much every non-communist victim of the Nazi regime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges"], ["http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistischer_Schutzwall"]]}
{"q_id": "5c466t", "title": "why isn't there so much ancient architecture left in africa (compared to europe, america, asia, etc.)? was the soil too bad? because most african tribes were nomads?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c466t/eli5_why_isnt_there_so_much_ancient_architecture/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9thicw", "d9thr7w", "d9thsf6", "d9tiolp", "d9tuq4q"], "score": [8, 16, 68, 3, 3], "text": ["Sub-Sarahan African tribes rarely built out of stone, and only stone architecture survived for many centuries.\n\nIn Northern Africa there are a great many surviving pieces. The pyramids of Egypt come to mind.", "Egypt is in Africa.  Why do people forget that?\n\nBesides that, there are plenty of other ancient structures and ruins in Afica.\n\nI guess I'm saying, your premise is flawed and overly general, and requires further investigation.\n", "Well, first of all, there's tons. The most famous and amazing examples of ancient architecture were left by the African civilization we call 'Egyptians'.\n\nSo, you say, okay, but they were Mediterranean. What about central Africa?\n\nWell, Mali is pretty central, and they left awesome looking stuff [like this](_URL_0_) all over the place.\n\nOr did you mean from the southern parts of Africa? Because [Zimbabwe has awesome ruins too](_URL_1_).\n\nA better question to ask is why we don't glorify the ancient African civilizations (other than Egypt) like we do the ancient mesoamerican ones. Both were wiped out largely by the Spanish and Portuguese, and both had their legacies wiped out by colonialism. In truth, I don't know the answer to that one. We just never did.", "If you're talking about sub-Saharan Africa, it is because they typically built buildings from non-permanent materials, like mud and wood, instead of more permanent materials like stone. For example there's a famous mosque in Mali, West Africa made from mud. It's been around for a long time, but it needs to be fixed constantly (presumably whenever it rains). If it wasn't maintained it would melt away and disappear without much of a trace.\n\nThere are some notable exceptions like Great Zimbabwe and ruins built by related groups in Zimbabwe and northern South Africa. \n\nI have no idea why they usually didn't usually use permanent materials.", "A lot of people have highlighted Egypt and other centres of African heritsge already.\n\nBut the question is why there's not as much of it, and that IS still a fair question. Africa is a huge continent but there is still a fairly restricted number of extant historical sites that are comparable.\n\nThe main reason, as.many have pointed out, is the nomadic lifestyle. The same can be found in Australia, and is directly related to the climate in the region.\n\nThe inability for farming to grow beyond a subsistence level in many areas of the continent is the main reason that a nomadic lifestyle remained prevalent through the ages. Those areas that have built from stone, or even more permanent mud-based bricks in some areas, tend to correlate highly with floodplain areas of large rivers, either with large rich floodplains like Egypt, or a lush forest area that still provides rich fertilisation.\n\nThe requirements for making larger and more.oermanent structures are quite heavy; often a society would require dedicated craftsmen for both tools and stonework to make quality materials. Those craftsmen can only dedicate to their craft if society can provide for them without them hunting, gathering, herding or subsistence farming. \n\nWith few exceptions, most areas that develop lasting ancient architecture are those with a temperate climate that support fertile soil, a reliable water supply, and can sustain this for several generations. This allows a society to put down roots in an area, building into a permanent settlement that cultivates larger areas of land more efficiently, providing. A surplus of food that can feed non-food producing workers.\n\nMost of Europe, Asia, and south America can provide much of this capacity, as well as the flood plains of predictable large rivers, like the Nile. Access to stone is the final key factor to this, which also tends to be why, despite their pre-disxovery population size, Native Americans lack much ancient architecture. They did in fact build quite large settlements comparable to European cities, however a combination of the preservation of their naturalistic cultural roots, and the additional climate struggles of north-america's varying geography and seasonal extremes, alongside a massive availability of wood, led them to mostly avoid permanent stone buildings.\n\nSo there you go. The short answer is because Africa is a hot, dry continent in many areas, where people didn't have time to develop crafts not immediately associated with imminent survival, except in a few safe zones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandiagara_Escarpment", "http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/image/great-zimbabwe.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8xkab5", "title": "why is (what we generally consider) tasty food mostly not healthy? i do understand that our ancestors needed a good amount of fat and calories to keep their body reliant activities going, but why didn't we adapt to consider low-calorie food tasty, better for our current calories intake needs?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xkab5/eli5_why_is_what_we_generally_consider_tasty_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e23sdai", "e23sttv", "e23sxmn", "e23t05j", "e23upzd", "e23zfcr", "e246csn", "e24b5a0", "e24o51a", "e25ksy7"], "score": [18, 7, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Our current levels of food production are still very new. And basically only a tiny blip on the timescale that evolution works on.", "Essentially, humans are designed to like sugar. Sugar and saturated fats mean calories. It's the easy way to tell something like a berry (full of calories and nutrients) apart from something such as lettuce (mostly water). In nature, it works pretty well. We eat berries, the seeds then are fertalized, plant grows more, we stay healthy and eat more berries. All parties benefit. Now that food is more and more processed, we add sugar and fats after the fact to make it taste better, which puts the whole system out of balance. Too much of a good thing is a very bad thing. ", "The natural biological evolution takes place in cycles of at least 20,000 years. \n\nFun fact: human civilization is only a few thousand years old and the age of modern technology is only two hundred. This means that the study of modern science is done by the brain of primitive humans", "In the grand scheme of things, humans change societally much, MUCH faster than evolution. This includes food production, food substitutes and fillers, etc. All these new things we are putting into our bodies are being used more often/ invented faster (pink slime, soy filler, artificial ingredients, etc) than it takes for us to adapt to a lower calorie diet. ", "Kills you slow (sugar + fats) vs kills you fast (starvation). \n\nAnd as many other people here have mentioned, our period of not being able to eat food as fast as we can grow it is very recent.", "if our weight determined if we could have offspring, we would have adapted quicker. but fat people do still have children. Give it a few million years. oh wait no, by then we will be silicon based robots traveling through space at warp speed. Just wait for a better diet pill. ", "Long ago, we evolved to find certain kinds of food \"tasty\". These criteria were mostly determined by blind natural selection, so there *was* a loose correspondence between the \"tasty\" stuff, and the \"if you eat this you will survive\" stuff.\n\nOver time, we've developed and refined how we make food, to the point where we can essentially make whatever we want. Consequently, lots of experimentation is made possible.\n\nNow, the economic system we live in has a sort of selection process \u2014 lots of different food is being sold, but it's the food that people *like* that makes more profit, and is thus sold more, and thus becomes more popular.\n\nThe effect this has is that, out of all the aforementioned experimentation, different foods emerge: some of them tasty, some of them not. Some of them healthy, some of them not.\n\nThe thing is, what people *like* is tasty food. So if you're someone who sells food, the tastier it is, the more money you'll make. So *everyone* does this, and everyone keeps trying to optimize *taste*, since that's what sells.\n\nThis brings us to the reason why we have an apparent divide between \"tasty\" and \"healthy\" foods \u2014 everyone's been optimizing for *taste*, which is only *loosely* correlated to what's actually healthy for you. It's kind of related to what was once foodstuffs that would likely help your ancestors live long enough to reproduce, but not only is the correlation *loose*, but much of that \"survivability\" food doesn't really fit our idea of a \"balanced, healthy diet\". People have been making ever-tastier foods, because that's what everyone is genetically programmed to like, but with the unintended side effect of neglecting healthiness and nutritional content. As a result, we have lots of different types of food that are *really* tasty, but at best \"meh\" for your health. \n\nThis isn't to say that there doesn't exist healthy *and* tasty stuff. It's just that so many people are making *really tasty* and not particularly healthy foods, that it might be a bit harder to find tasty *and* healthy foods.", "People who die of obesity related diseases have usually had children first, so their deaths don't affect human evolution as much.\n\nPeople who die of starvation are much less likely to reach a fertile age.", "Adaptations like that take at least tens of thousands of years to happen. Our current calorie intake needs haven't been current for nearly that long.", " >  why didn't we adapt to consider low-calorie food tasty\n\nvery broadly speaking, adaptation happens when not adapting kills you before you have babies. eating fast food all day will kill you, but it won't kill you until you're a bit older, so there's no strong selection pressure selecting for eating salads all the time. so for the most part, we're left with bodies that think that fat, sugar and salt are in rare supply, and that's why we want to eat them so much."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2w7e47", "title": "decades ago, how were people able to get married in their 20's, have kids, afford a house, live/strive rather comfortably, and still have enough saved up to retire?", "selftext": "Not specific to U.S. neither. Even my home country now in Asia - bachelor's degree gets you lower wage jobs, enough for food/rent, but barely afford a car, and almost no hopes for a house.\n\nWhat's changed in the past decades?\n\n & nbsp;\n\n & nbsp;\n\nEDIT: This is depressing.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w7e47/eli5_decades_ago_how_were_people_able_to_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coo819k", "coo86rq", "coo933r", "coo9hbe", "coo9xw3", "cooa5hy", "cooadvj", "cooatod", "cooav88", "coobc1d", "coobiva", "cooc41d", "cooc5lr", "coocci0", "cooch4i", "coocpmu", "coocsre", "coocukf", "coocvgy", "coocvsn", "coocxy5", "coodera", "coodg2u", "cooe5us", "cooe7rn", "cooe8t7", "cooebd2", "cooebtx", "cooeem4", "cooej6x", "cooeuaz", "cooezc0", "coof53b", "coofzbz", "cooh6z6", "cooi5ps", "cooiht0", "cooix4s", "coojcax", "cook2og", "cookdnf", "cookjzz", "coolexh", "cooly4m", "coombkx", "coomcey", "coomf9b", "coomkxm", "coomrid", "cooo9hu", "coop6hi", "cooq2fp", "cooqcek", "cooqlgl", "cootm3o", "cootqyc", "cootsx7", "coowg7t", "coox3qp", "cooxlvl", "cooxx4k", "cooy2l4", "cooyed2", "cooyik2", "cooytvb", "cooyweo", "cooz3m6", "coozbis", "coozi8z", "coozkwk", "cop00vz", "cop0gs8", "cop0ryl", "cop11iz", "cop1adn", "cop1cx4", "cop1kvp", "cop1zny", "cop2642", "cop2n1d", "cop3m0k", "cop458p", "cop5jdr", "cop61s4", "cop6qyy", "cop7jhw", "cop7ywz", "coplndx", "copyc1j"], "score": [38, 204, 144, 1344, 21, 18, 426, 151, 74, 12, 3, 37, 13, 3, 13, 31, 6, 15, 37, 7, 3, 2, 18, 2, 15, 19, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 8, 5, 23, 2, 63, 2, 16, 11, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 10, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Wow this is a complex topic that doesn't really have a simple answer. \n \nThe short and sweet version is that when women entered the workforce in larger numbers in the 1970's it made good housing much more expensive because married couples could now afford more expensive homes. Pretty soon if you wanted a good house in a good school district you HAD to spend more money because you were competing with two incomes to buy houses.\n\nBack then people didn't spend money on cable or cell phones and simple auto conveniences like power windows or automatic transmission weren't standard, meaning cars were less expensive. Houses were smaller, too.\n\nAt the same time we started competing with other countries for workers and manufacturing so that depressed wages.  A loss of unions meant less bargaining power for American workers.  ", "Back then, housing was very cheap.  The \"housing market\" as we know it today, with property owners, architects, engineers, land rights, insurers, mortgage underwriters, etc, did not exist back then.  They all are there today to pick your pockets when you buy a house.  Back in post-WW2, houses were built assembly-line style and sold cheaply (read up on Levittowns).\n\nAlso, college was cheap back then.  State governments actually pumped big money into state schools.  Not so anymore, tuition has increased twenty-fold and student loans are there to crush you.\n\nIt is still possible to live cheaply, but you are just not going to do it in a major city.  Head to some of the small towns in the US, and you can still find cheap housing.", "The responses so far are correct in that things were \"less expense\" in relation to income. But it's not that the things got more expensive in relation to income, its that income for most has not kept pace with the cost of things. Even food. \n\nThe sticker price on my 62 thunderbird was about $5000 when new,  and after inflation that would be about $39,000 now. You can buy a comparable mid-level car for about the same price today. \n\nOther items have gotten far less expensive. When I cleaned up my new to me 1968 pickup a couple years ago I found a newspaper from 1970 behind the seat. There was an ad from JC Penney advertising 8-track tape players for $800. \n\nWhat's changed is a combination of our incomes not keeping pace with inflation, meaning we have very little if any to set aside, and companies no longer offering pensions or any semblance thereof. They've routinely underinvested in 401k's and other pension obligations for the sake of profits, and that's left even long term employees with no more retirement. \n\nYes, there is a measure of our overspending, but by and large the reason that few of us are able to buy houses (with 20% down) and save for retirement is because, despite soaring profits, we are being paid less for more work and more productivity than any time since before WWII.", "I think it can be summed up by a conversation I had last week with one of my customers who used to work the same job as me 20 years ago.\n\nMe: The problem is they start our pay out so low in comparison to other companies, but the benefits are amazing man.\n\nHim: How much are they starting you at?\n\nMe: $40,000 a year.\n\nHim: Damn that's the same pay they started me at 20 years ago.\n\nSo, considering inflation, the rising cost of blah blah blah, and the ever increasing need for the world to consume, 40k isn't the same as 40k 20 years ago.", "The simplest answer is that a smaller percentage of the wealth generated by the productive capacity of workers is being retained by workers. Starting in the 1970's, workers productivity increases stopped producing rising wages and instead started producing increased profits for owners of capital.", "The short easy answer is that your average worker does not make as much as they did back then. \n\nI spent years trying to figure out how my grandfather was able to support a wife with a part time job, buy a house, have 4 kids, and go to collage while working a bottler at a Coke Cola plant. I came to three conclusions. One, wages were higher. Two, inflation was not as high and for some years was deflationary. Meaning that money he made was worth more. Three, cost of living was based off of single income economics. Since my grandmother had a part time job all of that extra money was icing on the cake. \n\nBasically, most single people these days will never be able to have that. \n\n", " > and still have enough saved up to retire?  \n  \nThey didn't.  They relied on pensions and social security. ", "Pertaining to the US, the simple answer is wage stagnation. The cost of virtually EVERYTHING has gone up and yet wages have remained the same. So you're having to pay like 10x as much for housing or health insurance or food as they did 50 years ago, and yet earning the same amount. ", "So many good answers but i'll still write mine. Jobs were easier to obtain. Not every job required education. There was more on job training for jobs that weren't too technical or important. Many people even started working at factories while they were children. My grandfather only has a 6th grade education, but because of how hard he worked and the decisions he made he ended up running a small office for the government by the time he was 40. When he retired, the people who were replacing him were all college educated with thousands in debt from education. ", "I will also suggest one thing changed. There is no threat of communism. The middle class was propped up post WWII to help fight communist ideals. Now that there isn't a red scare anymore, we can go back to the top pushing down on the bottom 90%.", "It has to do with where you live/How much is the workforce requirement and the level of skill/education said workforce has.\n\nIn my country minimum wage full time job is enough to live a comfortable single life with a car and the possibility of saving up for a home. For graduate studies and skillful jobs they tend to be enough to sustain a family of 3 or 4 comfortably. \n\nThe cost of living and the level of preparation increase the higher the population of a country/state/city get.", "A lot of these posts are quite cynical and some are quite wrong. It is difficult to talk about this subject without being political and I will try to avoid side step those ideas. \n\n1. Currently low interest rates - Part of it is due to interest rates being kept very low by the fed to help with economic growth. This means your savings account doesn't earn you as much as it used to.\n\n2. Globalization of the economy - Globalized economy is probably the biggest contributor. You arent competing against the guy down the street for a new job, rather you are competing against people across the world for that new job. Many positions can be done remotely because of technology. \n\n3.Education  Because of this greater supply in the workforce you now have to make yourself a better candidate for that job that your grandparent was able to get fresh out of high school. This means you have to dig yourself out of a hole when you get that entry level position, so you aren't even starting out at square one, rather you are starting out at square -100k.\n\nThere are a lot of other things that play into the new normal and that is why economics is such a difficult beast to work with.\n \nOne last thing, someone said taxes is a reason, but the marginal tax rate is relatively low since WW2. While it isn't the lowest it has been in the last two decades it still is lower than what your grandparents most likely had to deal with.\n\nThat last part applies to the US, I am not sure about other countries.", "Keep in mind, after World War II every major industrialized economy with the exception of the United States laid in ruin, and with a huge percentage of its 18-35 male population dead. The rest of the world was still basically colonies. The United States had a huge economic advantage that boosted a majority of Americans into the middle class. Then the rest of the world started to catch up, and could do the same work, as well or almost as well as the American worker for less. Additionally, there were more markets opening up internationally, so having a strong middle class to buy wares was less of a necessity. ", "It's got a lot to do with robots, automation, and the falling value of labor. Before robots existed, but after the industrial revolution, even semi-basic tasks needed a human being to accomplish. Machines could do some things, but not nearly what they can do these days.\n\nThink about how many jobs have been eliminated by computers/machines, and realize that all of those laborers are now competing for jobs in a tighter job market. Supply of labor is up, while demand for labor is down. This causes the price of labor to fall.\n\nSince a huge portion of American workers rely on selling their labor for a wage, this means wages have gone down relative to the total production of the country. The average American worker has no way to earn money except to labor, so the supply of labor continues to increase while the demand continues to decrease.\n\ntl;dr a guy doing some basic job used to be worth a lot more than it is now.", "Salaries haven't kept pace with rising expenses.  (Labor force of US must compete with all other countries now).  Medical Care didn't cost an arm and a leg.  TV was free.  Phone bills were darn near free (without long distance calls), No internet bills.  Education and all the associated activities were provided at no cost.  Gasoline and food were relatively much cheaper.  Interest rates were much higher and people utilized debt much less.  All that, plus we pay a ridiculously higher rate of overall taxes now, for which we seem to be getting less and less in return.", "It's rather simple.\n\nThey borrowed it from our generation, together with inflation of the high professional titles and moving all manufacturing to China, left us in a situation where the public debt is high, the supply for high-end jobs is high, and the demand for low end jobs is low.\n\nSo you get a situation where wages that used to be high are going down, paired with high debt left by your parents who lived beyond their means and left the bill to us. This, paired with housing bubbles and similar economic scams, left us in this situation.\n", "Keep in mind what was in that house decades ago. No cable, wired telephone, no internet, no computers, no cell phone. Older houses were typically smaller - if you're house hunting in the midwest, look at one built in the 50s. Central air was a luxury - often there was not-central air in a house built especially to circulate air well.  Prepackaged \"tv dinners\" were less common. Refrigerators and freezers were lower quality. Microwaves were still new, expensive, and way lower quality than you're $40 model today.\n\nIf you're willing to live exactly that lifestyle, you can today for much cheaper than what is considered \"poor\" in 1st world areas today.  However, I realize that doesn't answer the whole question and I do understand there are other factors.", "I think this entire thread is missing the fact that we just have more to pay for now. Decades ago, you didn't run $300/month electricity bills to fuel the cellphones, tablets, computers, fridges, microwaves, specialty lightings, and other things running in your house. \n\nYou didn't have a $75-140 cell phone bill, plus possibly a house line, plus an internet bill of $100+, and TV for $80+. Going to see a Movie didn't cost $30 for one person. \n\nThose are just small pieces, consider how much other random shit you spend everymonth on what wasn't considered essential 50+ years ago. \n\nLike the legally required $400/month in insurance for vehicles, house, health, teeth, eyes, toes, and pancake batters that weren't required to be paid a couple decades ago. \n\nAll the \"standard\" expenses now-a-days would have paid a full mortgage and car payment 50+ years ago. ", "My Dad had a regular job at a Ford Motors plant for many years.  His paycheck ( Late 60's early 70's) was usually around $460-$500 EVERY week.  He did work extra overtime and never worked on Sunday.  Those were the years of VERY STRONG Unions.\n\nIn the early 70's fresh out of high school, I got a job at the local Kroger's.  They too, had a very strong union.  My first Kroger paycheck was approx $98.00.  This was in May of 1973.  This check represented only a few days of work.  The clincher was that I worked about 4 hours on Sunday.  In those days the Union worked long and hard to make sure that anyone who worked on Sunday would receive double time and a half.  For me that worked out to about $8-$9 dollars an hour.   The Union was very aware of protecting employees rights and family values and making sure that anyone who had to work on a Sunday received good compensation.", "There are more people competing for less jobs.\n\nExplained in a little bit more adult manner:\n\nLike another poster, I do the same job my father did.  I make about 14k more than he did at his peak.  He had better health insurance (no copay at all!), and a shorter commute (15 min, to my 2 hrs).\n\nI am more educated, and our field is actually bigger now (IT).  So what happened?\n\nWomen in the workforce, Labor from non-citizens depresses wages, globalization, and a big chunk of our US manufacturing base is now overseas.\n\nOf course I have opportunities that were never open to him as well, it's easier than ever to open a business today, I have the internet to sell things to people, etc.", "_URL_0_\n\nSimple, wealth distribution is terribly skewed.  ", "I think one point that most aren't addressing, is now a days we buy a ton of stupid stuff that we think we need. With no internet, less TV, there was less advertising for dumb stuff to buy so people only bought what they needed.\n\nThere were no ipods coming out every 6 months, or ipads. ", "This is what's wrong with the world! \n\nHow is it that I graduated college and am near the poverty level working in the field I went to school for?? I can't pay my student loans. I went to a financial advisor and she recommended I take a job as a waitress to make more money than my current job. Wtf. \n\nFuck this. ", "Stagnating wages is part of it but there's more going on, in the US anyway. \n\nDecades ago the typical American house for a family of 4 was like 1200 to 1500 square feet, something that's very small by today's standards. You also had one car that you usually owned for 10 or more years, one TV,and a phone in the house. \n\nToday you've got 2 or more cars that typically get replaced every 4 or 5 years, several TV's with a bill for cable or satellite TV, a computer or 2 or three and a monthly bill for internet, several cell phones etc.  ", "Personally, I think consumerism, debt culture and the ease of access to credit are contributing factors. It is easier to borrow money than it was decades ago and so many people are willing to go deep into debt in order to acquire the things they want right now. Don't you think that helps to drive up prices and make it more difficult for primarily cash households? Generations before us really only borrowed money for a house or to start a business. Ours borrows money at 15% to buy groceries, xboxes and hdtv's.\n\nI also think there wasn't as much crap to waste money on back then. Families spent time talking at the dinner table, playing outside, etc. Maybe they gathered around the radio to listen to a program. Today we have 4 assholes sitting at a table each staring at a $600 phone. Meanwhile, there's a $600 tv in every room of the house subscribed to cable and Netflix, a stack of blu ray discs in the corner and that 50mb/s internet connection someone is using to buy some bullshit off iTunes.\n\nWe are insured out the ass to protect the \"assets\" we don't even own but rather are in the process of buying from the bank just because there are so many litigious bastards out there who will sue over anything or are willing to take advantage. I have to use my homeowners policy for a situation at my house right now. The guy from my insurance company was encouraging me to run up bills for all kinds of shit because \"everyone else is doing it too\".  I have never used the policy in my life and my premiums still go up $500 every year. It's fucking nuts. I pay something like $1400 a fucking month for health insurance. I'm looking out my office window and there's a billboard for the emergency room and another one for a personal injury attorney. There was no such thing as an emergency room in the 50's and when it did come along people didn't use it instead of a regular doctor. Who do you think is paying for all that stuff?\n\nIt's just a different world than it was a few decades ago. It was a simpler time back then. \n\n(Typed on my iPhone 6)", "They didn't 'save' for retirement.\n\nThey earned a pension from their employer.\n\nThen in the 80's pensions begin to be eliminated, with no equivalent rise in compensation, as corporations began to exploit an obscure line of the tax code known as 401k.\n\n", "Am I the only one around here who is getting married, has a kid, in a nice medium sized house with a car payment, who lives comfortably as a middle class family at 22 years old? Does nobody else get that? Cause every time I see a post like this, I feel so much more grateful that I have these things. ", "I was a kid in the 70s:\n\nThen: We ate out at the local steakhouse (Bonanza) about once per month. We got fast food once or twice per month. Now: most people (even starting out) eat out one or more times per week.\n\nThen: One phone line and we only called long distance for about 30 minutes PER YEAR. Now: most people have a smartphone with unlimited calling and a data plan. That's not cheap, but most people think of it as a necessity now.\n\nThen: we had one TV and used an antenna. No cable fees, and when the TV broke we paid to have it repaired. Now: Cable or satellite with expensive monthly subscriptions.\n\nThen: library and the daily paper (maybe a couple of magazines as well). Now: Amazon, e-books, iTunes, etc, etc, etc. plus subscription services like Spotify (which I LOVE). More outflows...\n\nThen: my Dad bought a CALCULATOR for our house (he worked as an accountant). That had real \"WOW\" for us back then. Now: laptops and iPads and other gadgets. More spending still...\n\nOverall, people now spend a LOT compared to what my parents spent in the 70's. We lived a much, much more frugal lifestyle back then, so money went farther. A frozen dinner was a luxury item!\n\nThe second big component (at least in the U.S.) is that healthcare and education costs have completely outstripped inflation -- and those student loans really make it hard to get started out as a young adult at the beginning of their career.\n\nOverall, though, a young person today that avoids the student loan trap still faces the fact that people spend a LOT more on luxuries instead of savings. Frugal living is a foreign concept to most of us.", "Maybe because there's an over saturation of degrees in the market? I don't understand why Americans are so concerned with having gone to \"college\". If it was really so great than why are these problems always brought up? \nWouldn't it be smarter to find an area where there isn't enough skilled workers and fill that void? \nIn Australia trades is where alot of money is to be had, I made more money as an apprentice than some of you college graduates make. I make 63k a year now and even that is lower than what other people I work with make. ", "[This](_URL_0_) happened.\nMainly the richest seem are benefiting from the economical growth. Whle the eduation and healthcare cost rise.", "So we know the problem, and now we know the answer. The real question is what can we do about it? What can we do to get back to that quality of life? ", "The retirement system in almost all countries that have them are or have been a straight up ponzi scheme (3-4 people are needed for every retired person)  . People who today are very old 85+ can have gotten many, many times the amount they put in to the fund in retirement payouts. The younger you are the worse off you are.\n\nToday you will likely not get more then  50% of your AVERAGE lifetime income unless you pay in extra to a private insurance policy either via your employer or your self. The current tax regulations decide what is best.  This extra money used to spent/saved.\n\n", "A fall in union participation rates is what has done it.  Many will argue otherwise but it is the reason we make the same amount of money as we did 40 years ago.  Real wages have been stuck at levels seen in the early 70s.  \n\nThe reason why we don't have so many unions anymore is complex.  Jobs have changed over the decades away from the more niche skilled labor jobs seen in the past that are union-type jobs and now are more diversified.  That is how labor has fallen behind.  We have been split up and separated so we cannot unionize.  Its also easier to replace non-skilled, think technically trained, labor, so if we unionize and strike at fast food establishments, they can find just about anyone to replace the striking workers.  Much harder to replace welders or steel workers.  \n\nThe truth is a bachelor's degree in many subjects does not make you irreplaceable.  Having a unique certification or skill does.  A couple of generations bought into then college degree idea and have homogenized the workforce.", "I'm not an economist, but I can say for certain that neither are most of the people answering the question here. ( My following comments are specific to the U.S., but probably apply roughly equal to any developed country.)\n\nThey sound like a bunch of Baby Boomers whining about how this generation's young people have access to so much convenient technology.\n\nDo people spend too much money on frivolous stuff? Yes. But, no amount of giving up your smart phone and cable TV package is going to pay for your college education which is required for you to even get a $30k/year job. Nor is it going to buy you a house, allow you to save for retirement, and support your spouse and 2.5 children. That was the situation in the 1960's in the U.S.\n\nThe world is a smaller place today than it was in the 1960s. \n\nThere was not mass globalization then like there is now. You can't fight for a higher wage because your company will just outsource it. It's all supply and demand. There are way more workers now than their used to be and not as many jobs.\n\nWomen didn't use to work. Now they do. Bam, 100% increase in number of workers. Naively, you could expect that'll cut the wages almost in half. \n\nWith fewer restrictions on multi-national corporations, all of the big companies go to third world countries where people can't even fathom the concept of a trade union.\n\nThen, thanks to technology, each individual worker is about a zillion times more productive today than they used to be (Okay, it's only up like 80% since 1970: _URL_0_). But workers are not paid more or asked to work for fewer hours. Instead, more people are just unemployed. So we have to fight with each other to work way harder than our parents did for less pay.\n\nIt is obvious that the simple answer is that there are more and more educated workers and fewer and fewer jobs for them to do. That coupled with the ease with which a company can just jump half-way across the world as soon as the labor conditions start to improve wherever it is means that this trend will continue for a long time to come.\n\nYou should *not* expect this to turn around. On the one hand, at least the standard of living of the poorest countries will probably start to rise a little bit. But if you live in the first world right now, the average standard of living will continue to drop until it meets the rise of the standard of living of the third world.", "I think the big change has been the entrance of women into the workforce.  Used to be that just the man worked, so the whole economy was built around this expectation that one salary had to pay for it all.\n\nThen women started to work.  And it was nice to have two incomes, and at first that doubled the amount of income you had.  You and your wife could have a house that was twice as large, two new cars, etc.\n\nBut soon everything got re-calibrated toward the expectation of there being two incomes in a household.  So now everything costs twice as much.\n\nThat's my theory, anyway.\n\nThere's also, at the same time, the issue of credential inflation.  A high school diploma is worth nothing now that everyone pretty much has to have one.  So to differentiate yourself, you got a college degree.  But now *everyone* has a college degree, so it's become the de facto minimum qualification.\n\nBut even that doesn't explain why you used to be able to reasonably come up with a 20% downpayment for a house, but now a \"starter home\" is a quarter million dollars.\n\nRampant greed, I guess? The banks and large corporations have invested time and energy into finding every niche in a person's life and maximizing the amount they can charge to accommodate that niche.  Is that what's done it?  Has capitalism become so efficient that it's become detrimental to the financial health of the individual?  Seems that way.\n\nWorkers have gone from being the engines of the economy... to being the fuel that it consumes.", "Because, adjusted for inflation, they made more money than you.  \n\nA car factory worker with a high school diploma in the 1950's made $40-$50/hr in today's dollars.  \n\nWorkers have become more productive since then but are payed a lesser amount.  That wealth has been drained away from the middle class and into the hands of a few.  Easy credit and inflation disguises this from you.", "unions and pensions are going the way of the dodo.\n\nall the profits go to the shareholders.  for the past 80+ years, business ethics/law has been that a company's **only** obligation is to its shareholders; no responsibility whatsoever to the society the company needs to be able to thrive.", "The Baby Boomers were born when there were only 3 billion people on the planet - i.e they were competing with a much lower number of people than people born today. There were so few people on the planet they didn't have to compete with people outside their country i.e. globalization didn't exist. The increase in population increased the demand for housing (and other non renewable resources) and therefore that house they purchased for bugger all in their 20s is now worth a huge amount more. For that same thing to happen to people born today, population would need to hit 14-16 billion, pretty sure the earth would be destroyed by that number of people on the planet at once.\n\nStory time: I remember when I was a kid, my parents were looking to buy land. They could purchase 65 acres of land 5km from the beach or 50 acres on the beach for around $70,000. Because stainless steel and other corrosion resistant materials were expensive or were unavailable, very few people lived near the beach - they purchased the property away from the beach. The plot of land at the beach they didn't purchase, sold 3 years ago for $60 million.", "I think a big part of it is we have added so many middle men. Every-time anything changes hands, people skim a bit off the top. \n\nWe now have HUGE investing, mortgage, insurance, and banking institutions, massive marketing budgets, hordes of legal team. All of these don't actually produce anything.\n\nI wanted to do a quick estimate of just how many large companies exist to move money around. (read around as, away from you, the consumer) [From Forbes Fortune 500](_URL_0_):\n\n**Advertising, marketing:**\n\n\nOmnicrom Group\n\nThe Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc.\n\n**Commercial Banks:**\n\nJ.P. Morgan Chase  &  Co.\n\nBank of America\n\nCitigroup\n\nWells Fargo\n\nThe Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.\n\nMorgan Stanley\n\nAmerican Express Company\n\nCapital One Financial Corporation\n\nU.S. Bancorp\n\nThe PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.\n\nThe Bank of New York Mellon Corporation\n\nBB & T Corporation\n\nAlly Financial Inc.\n\nState Street Corporation\n\nDiscover Financial Services\n\nSunTrust Banks, Inc.\n\nFifth Third Bancorp\n\nRegions Financial Corporation\n\nM & T Bank Corporation\n\nKeyCorp\n\nNorthern Trust Corporation\n\nCIT Group Inc.\n\nHuntington Bancshares Incorporated\n\nComerica Incorporated\n\nPopular, Inc.\n\nZions Bancorporation\n\n**Diversified Financials**\n\nGeneral Electric\n\nFannie Mae\n\nFreddie Mac\n\nINTL FCStone Inc.\n\nMarsh  &  McLennan Companies, Inc.\n\nAmeriprise Financial, Inc.\n\nThe Blackstone Group L.P.\n\nSLM Corporation\n\nAnnaly Capital Management, Inc.\n\nArthur J. Gallagher  &  Co.\n\nMoody's Corporation\n\nH & R Block, Inc.\n\nSpringleaf Holdings, Inc.\n\nOcwen Financial Corporation\n\n**Financial Data Services:**\n\nVisa Inc.\n\nFirst Data Corporation\n\nMasterCard Incorporated\n\nFidelity National Information Services, Inc.\n\nThe Western Union Company\n\nMcGraw Hill Financial, Inc.\n\nFiserv, Inc.\n\nAlliance Data Systems Corporation\n\nSunGard Data Systems Inc.\n\nDST Systems, Inc.\n\nBroadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.\n\nGlobal Payments, Inc.\n\nEquifax Inc.\n\nHeartland Payment Systems, Inc.\n\nTotal System Services, Inc.\n\nVantiv, Inc\n\n**Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care:**\n\nUnitedHealth Group\n\nWellPoint\n\nAetna Inc.\n\nHumana Inc.\n\nCIGNA Corporation\n\nCentene Corporation\n\nHealth Net, Inc.\n\nWellCare Health Plans, Inc.\n\nMolina Healthcare, Inc\n\nMagellan Health Services, Inc.\n\nTriple-S Management Corporation\n\nUniversal American Corp.\n\n**Insurance: Life, Health (Mutual):**\n\nNew York Life Insurance Company\n\nTIAA-CREF\n\nMassachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, Inc.\n\nGuardian Life Ins. Co. of America\n\nThrivent Financial for Lutherans\n\nWestern  &  Southern Mutual Holding Company\n\nMedical Mutual of Ohio\n\nMutual of America Life Insurance Company\n\nKnights of Columbus\n\n**Insurance: Life, Health (stock):**\n\nMetLife\n\nPrudential Financial, Inc.\n\nAtlac Incorporated\n\nLincoln National Corporation\n\nUnum Group Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated\n\nGenworth Financial, Inc.\n\nPrincipal Financial Group, Inc.\n\nPacific Life\n\nMutual of Omaha Insurance Company\n\nCNO Financial Group, Inc.\n\nProtective Life Corporation\n\nTorchmark Corporation\n\nSecurian Financial Group, Inc. CMFG Life Insurance Company\n\nAmerican National Insurance Company\n\nStanCorp Financial Group, Inc.\n\nAmerican Equity Investment Life Holding Company\n\nSymetra Financial Corporation\n\nNLV Financial Corporation\n\n**Insurance: Property and Casualty (Mutual):**\n\nState Farm Insurance Cos.\n\nNationwide Mutual Insurance Co.\n\nAuto-Owners Insurance Group\n\nCOUNTRY Financial\n\nSentry Insurance Group\n\nAmica Mutual Insurance Co.\n\n**Insurance: Property and Casualty (Stock):**\n\nBerkshire Hathaway\n\nAmerican International Group\n\nLiberty Mutual Holding Company Inc.\n\nThe Allstate Corporation\n\nThe Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.\n\nThe Travelers Companies, Inc.\n\nUnited Services Automobile Association\n\nThe Progressive Corporation\n\nLoews Corporation\n\nThe Chubb Corporation\n\nAssurant, Inc.\n\nFidelity National Financial Inc.\n\nAmerican Family Ins. Group\n\nW.R. Berkely Corporation \n\nErie Insurance Group\n\nOld Republic International Corporation\n\nAmerican Financial Group, Inc.\n\nAlleghany Corporation\n\nFirst American Financial Corporation\n\nThe Hanover Insurance Group, Inc.\n\n**Securities:**\n\nBlackRoc, Inc.\n\nKKR  &  Co. L.P.\n\nFranklin Resources, Inc.\n\nOaktree Capital Group, LLC\n\nThe Jones Financial Companies, L.L.L.P.\n\nThe Charles Schwab Corporation\n\nRaymond James Financial, Inc.\n\nThe Carlyle Group L.P.\n\nApollo Gloabl Management, LLC\n\nLPL Financial Holdings Inc.\n\nT. Rowe Price Group, Inc.\n\nThe NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.\n\nCME Group Inc.\n\nTD Ameritrade Holding Corporation\n\nLegg Mason, Inc.\n\nBGC Partners, Inc.\n\nAffiliated Managers Group, Inc.\n\nStifel Financial Corp.\n\nE*Trade Financial Corporation\n\n\nNot only are companies top heavy, but the way our economy operates is top heavy.", "Smaller everything... House sizes in America have doubled [since 1950](_URL_1_)\n\nThey didn't pay for internet, cable, or cellphone. Reduce your current expenses and a house will not be far off.\n\nAlso housing rates have been increasing/ at least being stable in [america since 1950](_URL_0_)", "Because they took all the fucking money and there's none left for our generation.", "They don't have access to nor need the frivolous things we have now", "Machinery, robots and computers replacing slower, inaccurate, expensive sleep desiring humans.\n\nHumans, as a product, didn't really increase their value in the past few decades.", "They didn't pay $170 monthly cable/internet bills or $100 monthly cell phone bills. They didn't have two cars. They didn't go out to eat but once a month or less. Their homes were very modest, usually with no air conditioning... you sweated through summer. One parent stayed home to take care of the kids so no child care. People also saved their money. Usually 10% but also up to 20% of every paycheck. They bought cheap beer and they liked it!  I could go on. ", "Money is being maniuplated in ways the unavailable to the common person.\n\nMel Tappan made this analogy: At the turn of the century (19th to 20th), a man's suit or a Colt Peacemaker (a very nice handgun) could be purchased for a $20 gold piece. Nowadays, $20 won't pay for a tie for the suit, nor a box of ammo for the Colt... *but the same amount of gold will get an excellent suit, or the handgun, with change left over!*", "Oh one more thing, people did not used to buy things on credit. They saved and bought them. So when times were tough the could not loose them. Now, if you have rough year, you could lose your car you haven't paid off, or all the furniture you bought on credit. Credit is evil. Basically the top things they advertise during the Super Bowls are bad for you, alcohol, while fun it's still bad, credit cards, soda, expensive cars. If you can afford them, great you don't need credit and are probably not drinking so much it's killing you.", "When you account for inflation, since about the 1970s, American workers have not had a raise at all, and minimum wage has actually dropped.\n\nMeanwhile, executive pay has skyrocketed to obscene levels. Usually expressed as a ratio of worker:executive pay, it was hovering around 1:30 in the 60s, and is around 1:390 today. Note that since this is a ratio and not an absolute number, it is independent of inflation or the size of the economy. The US has the highest ratio in the world, most other industrialized nations hover around 1:100-1:200 or even less. Switzerland recently had a ballot measure to limit it to 1:12. That didn't pass, but people are starting to make noise about it.\n\nIn short, for the last few decades, executives and rich people have been claiming a larger and larger percentage of the overall pie as their own, which leaves less and less pie left over for other groups, like the middle class. As a result, the middle class is being pushed closer and closer to the poverty line.\n\nThe thing that actually changed was the concept of upper management. Prior to the 1960s, the top executives in long-established companies tended to be people with experience in *that particular business.* That is, car companies were run by car guys, insurance companies were run by insurance guys. Think Disney, Ford, Lockheed, HP, Hughes, IBM. All run by geeks. Geeks who were savvy businessmen, to be sure, but geeks nonetheless.\n\nAt that time a degree in business was considered kind of a joke, something a football player might major in to avoid taking real classes. Then, sometime in the 60s, somebody came up with a new theory of management: a good manager can manage ANYTHING. Although there was no actual evidence for this, it somehow caught on, and suddenly, the MBA was the new sexy. Companies started hiring people who just knew *business in general,* not the business the company was in. Soon, car companies were being run by guys whose last job had been in steel manufacturing, computer companies were run by people who used to sell soft drinks (and how did THAT work out for you, Apple?).\n\nBecause none of these people understood the business they were in, all they could do was move numbers around on pages to make the company look more profitable. And once they realized that they were essentially in control of how much they got paid, they went nuts.\n\nEven in the age of the MBA, it is instructive to note who is STILL typically in charge of a company as it grows from two guys in a garage to making its first billion: geeks. After a company has been pulled up from nothing to being seriously profitable, the MBA goons show up and muscle in on the business.\n\nAnother thing that vanished around that time was the standard of the 40-hour workweek. Mountains of research, dating back to the time of Henry Ford, prove that a 40-hour week results in the highest *sustained* productivity. Work people longer, and you get a *temporary* increase in productivity, but eventually it drops BELOW the 40-hour line. Businesses USED to understand that, for the most part. But the modern crop of executives simply can't grasp how working people longer hours for the same pay isn't a win, so the 40-hour standard has largely disappeared.\n\n", "I may not have a popular answer but I'll tell my story anyway. Hard work and living within your means. At 21, I had graduated with a master's degree, all paid for with scholarship and student loans, which I'm still paying. My now husband and I bought a house that we could afford with our crappy first real job salaries. We didn't do/buy anything extravagant. It's been nine years and we now have higher paying jobs which makes life a little easier.", "Decades ago, the 'two-income' family didn't exist.  Dad worked, mom stayed home to take care of the house and the kids.  \n\nThen, mom wanted the option of working like dad did.  So, she got the chance.\n\nNow, the powers that be in this country have decided that the 'two-income' family would be mandatory and slowly adjusted wages to ensure that both parents would need to work to get by.  \n\nLike the frog in the stew pot, we didn't feel it happening because they slowly did it over a few decades.  \n\nWhere once, dad worked and it was enough to get by on, save for retirement and still have a two week vacation when the kids were out of school, we now live in a world where two parents work just to survive week to week.  \n\nYou can thank unbridled greed and unrestrained capitalism for that.   ", "I believe you could live in comparable conditions and save with a similar job. This would require us to redefine 'comfortable,' however. We need to remember the luxuries we have now. Government housing now is much better than any old-day housing, and we consider this the poverty line. The heating and air alone is an improvement.", "They had 1 car and 1 TV, no cell phones, no computers, no driving all over town every day for kid's activities, not nearly as many medical options (premature baby didn't cost the family $250,000 in medical bills because it just died.  Things like in vitro didn't exist, medical care was a ton cheaper in general, but quality was much lower.)\n\nInflation was lower and companies totally \"overpaid\" employees when compared to today's pay/productivity levels.", "actual wages have been steadily falling since the mid seventies.  Most people in western countries  between 18 and 35 are worse of than their parents at the same time.  Even in short terms I had the same job  as a courier with the same cash from 2006 to 2014, I cold easily tell that my cash didn't go as far after the price of bread doubled in canada after 2008.", "The real turn happened around the late 70's, lots of reasons overall to be sure. But the amount that executives started making vs employees started to skyrocket. \n\nYou can find other examples, but here's something from Washington Post. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Look no further than a few of America's largest corporations for evidence of the country's exceptionally large pay gap. An analysis from last year estimated that it takes the typical worker at both McDonald's and Starbucks more than six months to earn what each company's CEO makes in a single hour.\" -WP\n\nSo there's that..", "If you had to break it down to one word. Globalization.", "Australian sociologist here. There are a number of factors that have changed across the past decade, but they stem from structural changes to the economy.\n\nIn the 1970s and the 1980s most of the manufacturing in this country moved offshore. Manufacturing jobs were well paid for unskilled labour, and once they were gone there were few places that young people in their 20s could go to get high paying jobs without experience or tertiary education.\n\nOne of the biggest costs for any household is the cost of a home. New home building hasn't kept up with the growth of households, and the affordability index (which is roughly the price of a home compared to the annual income of the household) has risen from about 1.5-2.0 (which is considered affordable) to up to 9.0 in Sydney, somewhere around 7 or 8 in Melbourne, and between 4 and 7 in most of the other capital cities. You can start here if you're interested in looking up the historical trends:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn the 1970s Australia founded a whole bunch of universities and made tertiary education (temporarily) free, though now they are moving towards costing a great deal of money for a bachelor's degree, a la the US model. An influx of highly educated individuals into the workplace started a wave of 'credentialism', where employers started asking for degrees for jobs that didn't require them, simply because they were looking for the best qualified candidates. Now to get jobs where you will be trained to do the work on the job require a 3 or 4 year degree that isn't relevant to the career. \n\nThe cost of living has increased considerably in some areas, such as petrol and public transport (down in areas such as technology), due to a huge number of factors. All of this increases the difficulty for young people who have less resources to begin with. This is compounded when the most affordable housing is further away from central business districts, and you have further to travel for work.\n\nThe employment sector with the biggest growth in Australia has been the retail industry, which is low skilled, but also pays low wages and has little opportunity for career advancement. They are the ones who are most likely to employ young people in their twenties.\n\nSome people would also argue that there is a generational view of young people (Gen Y) as being entitled, self-absorbed and unreliable, which is not accurate, but affects how they are judged in the workforce. It does seem to be the case that Gen Y are less likely to be employed in the one place for as long as previous generations might have. Can add more references if anyone is interested, kind of in a rush at the moment.", "I could tell you multiple reasons for why it happened in Australia:\n\n1.) Housing prices doubled every 7~10 years since 1960. Making the most flea infested shit hole cost at least 400K AUD. This was due in large part to monetary policies by the government and large scale lending de-regulation by the banks. This has the side effect of every BB thinking their a financial wizard for buying a house in 1970 when they cost like $3000\n\n2.) Large scale exporting of jobs to Asian slave labour markets during the past 30 years. reducing the competitive advantage of skilled workers.\n\n3.) University was free in australia up until the 1980s. Now even the most pissy degree costs upward of 50k. So even once you start working your in debt.\n\nAnyone replying please dont say the its because we spend to much money on iPhones or TVs these days. People in AUS could by a thousand TVs before saving up for a deposit on a home. And please refrain from 'Entitled Generation' garbage. Pigeon holing an entire generation is moronic \n ", "I know you said your question is not U.S.-specific, but in the U.S., we have transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service-based economy and from skilled labor to unskilled labor. Think the difference from working in a factory (handling machinery, etc.) to working in a restaurant, coffee shop, hotel front desk, convenience store, etc. Plus as others have noted, the skilled labor force has historically been better at organizing for better wages and benefits. So we have a largely unskilled labor force working for low wages in this country with little hope/room for advancement. \n\nPlus, student loans. ", "Basically, the FED inflated all our money away and globalization kept our wages from ever appreciating with it. \n\nYou can thank the govt and their corporate cronyism for this result. ", "Various answers are saying it is because 'young people today waste a lot of money on unnecessary luxuries'. But these answers seem to make a lot of assumptions:\n\n* Eating out - this is often necessary. The complaint of \"Young people today are wasting money by not cooking at home!\" assumes that everyone has a well-equipped kitchen. But many do not. I live in a 200sq/foot apartment with a tiny kitchenette built into one wall. There is no stove, and no oven. The fridge is a tiny bar fridge, with a freezer the size of a breadbox (you can fit only one bag of peas in there). Many of us are in crappy studio apartments like this where we simply don't have the facilities to store food, nor the appliances to cook it. You can make some basic uncooked stuff at home but you have to supplement it by eating out fairly regularly.\n\n* Computer costs and internet bills - the assumption is that these are for play. But they are necessary for many people's jobs. The older generations normally did not have to take their work home with them. But it is very common now. 'Unfinished' work is not 'saved for tomorrow' like it was in yesteryear; you have to do it when you get home from work.\n\n* Extravagant life goals - this one confuses me. We have extravagant life goals? In the heyday of the Boomers, it was taken for granted that you would be able to have a home, car, marriage and kids. To us, that sounds like winning the damned lottery. Most people in their 20s that I know hope to one day be able to rent a larger shoebox than the one they live in now. And that's about it. Aside from trust fund kids from rich families, most of us are never going to own a home. My fiancee and I are together in a 200 sq/foot apartment. We don't own a car (too expensive). Have been engaged for seven years because we still can't afford a wedding. Financially, having kids is completely out of the question. Pretty much all we are hoping for is the chance to rent a bigger place someday.\n\n* This is reality for 'young people' only - another odd assumption. I'm in my early 30s, and know people even in their late 30s for whom this is still reality.\n", "And they had more kids, too! Most people today have only one, and two at most. ", "There is some validity to the complaints about stagnant wages and student debt, but also:\n\n1.  A lot of people didn't do the things you mention.  Today's baby boomers are tomorrow's retirees, and they haven't been saving nearly enough.  \n2.  They didn't do it all at once.  They had a shitty apartment in their twenties and lived cheaply until they could afford a shitty house, then eventually upgraded to the house you knew and loved.  \n3.  They didn't have a car for every driver and a cell phone for everybody over the age of six.  When I was a kid I shared a bedroom with my brother and most of my clothes were his hand-me-downs.  Today that sort of thing would be unconscionable.  ", "Cost of living was lower and a lot of jobs that used to be more skilled have now been simplified, made obsolete or completely automated.", " The Federal Reserve, Wall Street/financial sector and corporations had not yet ruined the value of the dollar, robbed us blind and sent all of our jobs overseas yet.\n\n Ross Perot warned in the presidential debates that if Clinton passed NAFTA we would hear a great sucking sound of jobs leaving the US and he was right. But I still put more blame on the Fed and Wall Street.", "CEOs/executives/people at the top of the ladder took a smaller share of the total employee wages their company budgeted for back then.\n\nToday your average executive in America would rather entry level employees be unable to afford an apartment without roommates than give up their 3rd yacht all the while telling those workers asking for more pay that they are greedy. Executives will also rather raise the prices they sell goods and services for when minimum wage rises than take a pay cut themselves to pay for it. The people who benefit from minimum wage increases are the people who end up paying for it it so they end up with a net zero gain.\n\nAnd last but not least, when companies experience growth, the executives are the only ones who get a real pay raise to go along with it. ", "No cell phone bills, no cable bills, no internet bill, people ate out less often, houses were smaller, most people had 1 car to pay for. All that shot could add up to $1000 really really fast. Maybe even more.", "It's possible, we also live a much more expensive lifestyle than previous generations. I know plenty of people that are doing it, some on only one income. Limiting going out to special occasions and not buying food outside the grocery store make a big difference.", "The man worked and the woman stayed at home. This halved the work force, doubling wages. That's not the whole answer but its a big factor. Also, people are required (needlessly) to be highly educated before they even start a job. In those days you learned on the job and people trusted young men to be capable (which they were).", "Required reading: /r/worstgeneration\n\ntldr; boomers had all the fun, didn't leave any for the rest of us.", "In 1975 the price of gas was 74.9 cents per gallon (in the USA), a loaf of bread was 50 cents and you could get day old bread as low as 10 cents per loaf. Breakfast cereal was only $1.00. A new car was less than $5000 and a 4 bedroom 3 1/2 bath home could be had in most suburbs for as little as $50,000 with even lower prices in many small towns throughout the country. There wasn't cable or satellite and nothing like a cell phone was even thought of yet. Also kids moved out at 18 and didn't hang around until they were 30.\n\nAdd to that women entering the workforce giving families two incomes allowing them to afford better cars and bigger homes, not to mention better food.\n\nNow a loaf of bread is $2.50 or even $3.00, gas is still over $3.00 per gallon and a 4 bedroom home costs you over $1 million. More and more major road systems and bridges require a toll to use (in addition to any taxes you pay).\n\nAdding all that up, a family needs 3 or 4 incomes just to live.", "An unpopular answer is the increase of women in the workplace. Companies used to have to pay a man enough to support his family. Now they have split that salary between a man and a woman. On top of that, families now have to pay for childcare and eat out more because nobody is home to watch the kids or  prepare meals. I'm not saying that woman should not work. I am saying that we were better off when a single person's salary was enough for a nuclear family. Children also would benefit from having a parent, mother or father, home to raise them instead of some sketchy daycare facility. Many jobs out there are just busywork anyways. ", "Homeownership is at a all time high. Automobile ownership is at an all time high. Food costs as a percentage of income are at historical lows. \n > What's changed in the past decades?\n\nIn the past decades the trend has been nothing but good. One blip rates through 1998 to 2008 led to a price collapse and a pullback in homeownership but it is still higher then before the run up began and the trendline is still positive. We had a recession so short term there have been issues but again trend lines ares still great. \n\nMore people have basic luxuries then they did in any part of the prior century. ", "Last it's definitely how you handle money.. my husband, myself, and 2 kids live off his 1 income of about 50000 a year. We're in our 20's, have a mortgage, own one car, and are paying off the other. I'm a part time student and stay at home mom. And we have money in savings.", "Here's an idea. Rent usually costs anywhere between 600-1000/mo... car payment 200, insurance etc... what a lot of people don't realize is that you have to budget your money right. Everyone says \"inflation\" this or that, but i know plenty of people making 10/hr with another person that cna buy a house", "Your parents generation spent money they didn't have and used your generations future as collateral. \n\nYour paying the bill for their easy life. That's basically why.\n\n(maybe not your parents explicitly but their generation)", "I'm no expert. But here are some possible answers.\n\n* People died not long after retirement, so there wasn't a huge group of old people to take care of. In fact, the people who had it good 40 years ago did so because they simply stuck us with the tab - they're now living on pensions that they did not fund, and we are now paying for. This is probably a big one.  \n\n* America had a huge economic advantage post-WW2 since it was the only place on Earth that wasn't a pile of rubble.  \n\n* The state of technology meant there were more solidly middle-class jobs for people to do, whereas today productivity is being concentrated more and more in the hands of the cognitive elite who can design and manage complex automated systems, leaving nothing for 92-IQ Joe Shmoe to do.\n\n* Everything we consume is safer and higher-quality. Back in the day, cars were unregulated metal caskets and houses were poorly-insulated tinderboxes full of sparking wires and asbestos. Your food would be contaminated with poisonous lead from lead paint and other unsafe products. Medicine was so bad that most people died in their 60's. Women expected to make clothes for their family and cook nearly everything from cheap bulk ingredients like flour, molasses, and sugar. Restaurant meals were rare, delivery meals rarer. There were no cellphone bills. People didn't go to expensive universities to get degrees with no economic value. They just graduated middle school or high school and went to work. Because everyone was poorer and new products came out at longer intervals, the rat race of conspicuous consumption was much less intense. One television technology would be current for decades at a time. You would buy a rotary phone and use it until it literally fell apart (could be decades). No new iPhone every 2 years. No new fashions every couple years. You'd buy shoes and wear them until they were worn out, then get them repaired at the cobbler. No LCD TV or home theater or trips to Europe. And it didn't bother you because nobody had these things; you weren't behind your friends. It was just normal.\n\n* No hard drugs and no drug war, thus no constant drain on social resources from drug arrests, imprisonment, treatment, and social de-cohesion in certain communities.", "My dad just retired recently. When I got my first job making 38k/year out of college, he went on a whole story about how he only make $9,000/year out of college. How lucky was I?!\n\nI looked it up online - back when he was working in 1972, his salary was the equivalent of like $52,000 today. We're getting shafted, salaries haven't kept up with inflation.", "Property prices. In the UK in the seventies,  people could buy a nice semi-detached with garage and gardens for 2.5x salary,  with plenty left over.  They would also most likely be retiring at 65 on a final salary scheme close to their annual wage.  This is unheard of now. \n\nIn Brighton right now,  a small room bed flat is around $275k.  Average wage in Brighton I would estimate to be about $25k.  Also,  wages today pay pensions to the retired so the pot has pretty much gone as wages are less and the nation is growing older.  The future is not bright.... ", "It is still like that where I live. Got married in mid 20's - bought a flat together, sold it before the financial crises, went on to purchase our first house at 28. We pay into a private pension for old age (we have government pensions here, but we are not counting on them to be there in 30 years, since our country does not have enough births to support the current numbers), and live comfortably. I am a stay at home wife, and my husband never finished college, but makes a good wage working in IT. He often asks for courses in management and new theories in his field, when he is negotiating pay rises. We live comfortable, within our means. \nI believe most of the nordic countries are very much like this. You can be poor, and you can have alot of debt, but you have to be irresponsible, try really hard to fail and just not be very clever (there is room for making mistakes, I have made some myself, but these countries really do try to give you a good start in adult life). School is free here, you get payed to attend from you're 18. You dont pay for hospital or doctors visits, and you can get student loans at very low interest rates. - Basically all the horrific methods other democracies have fashioned to leave their youth in debt hasnt really infiltrated into our societies yet. I am pretty sad to see how education has become a commodity sold to people in some contries. All democracies in order to be healthy, need well educated people. Putting them indebt to achieve this is like a slave collar around their necks. - Its actually pretty horrific.", "It's not as simple as inflation and price changes like everyone is saying. I believe it's also very important to notice the change in the distribution of the countries wealth. The average income in 1960 was $5,600 which adjusted for inflation is $44,000. The average income in 2013 was actually higher at $56,000 but even though the average seems okay it's because there are so many people skewing it with $5,000,000+ salaries. In 2011 25% of people earned less than $25,000 and another 20% earned less than $50,000 so most people don't make the 'average' salary... so some numbers are misleading ", "I'm willing to bet you wouldn't trade your cellphone and shitty rental apartment for a world where you own a particle board house and a dial telephone. ", "What did the tractor do for farming? Or the irrigation line? Or the cotton gin' Ok maybe that's not a super awesome examle.", "Wages are not equivalent to everyday living costs like the used to be years ago. \n\nGood examples are the cost of a tank of gas, in the 90's gas was maybe .99 on the high side.  My dad made the same money then that I make now, with gas being around 2.55/gal (this is a recent development).  So when he would spend $14 for a tank of gas, I'll spend about 40. Still makes the same amount of money at work. \n\nIm living at my parents house, loads of college debt hanging over my head, a car payment, cell phone bill, etc.... The thought of moving out and buying a house is a pipe dream. I make a pretty decent wage at around 17/hr. \n\nIt is really hitting me hard just typing all of this out, and it is actually pretty depressing. ", "During the Great Depression there was a great deal of poverty, unemployment, and most people didn't own their home. Then there came the \"New Deal\" which amounted to massive government spending. It employeed millions of Americans through all kinds of contracts, most notably, infrastructure contracts. But that didn't really pull us out of the Depression and get people buying houses, cars, and living the dream. Next came WWII. Millions joined the military and became employeed, millions went to work in factories which had military contracts, and many many people went into research and development as part of the war effort. So WWII was great for the economy in America. Following the War Congress passes the GI Bill. It was a beautiful piece of legislation which sent service men to college on the government's dime, assisted with the purchase of a first home, and cheap loans to start a business. Not only did it do what it was intended to do. It it had a multigenerational impact on the economy. Also important, building houses used to be expensive but with so many GIs coming home, marrying their gal, and having money for a house, a new way of building homes quickly was invented. Home builders Levitt  &  Sons built the first suburban neighborhood on Long Island. They used an assembly line method which spend up the building time and reduced overall costs. Also, because so many were able to go to college during this time, the university systems grew exponentially. So post war America was this land of prosperity who was this massive exporter to the rest of the world which was recovering from the war. Employers became so competitive for both skilled and unskilled employees that the started offering benefits packages which included vacation, sick time, stocks, and pensions. This is the foundation for why our grandparents and our parents generation were so prosperous. However, this is not the world we live in anymore. The government doesn't subsidize higher education, real estate is overpriced in urbanized areas, manufacturing in America is in it's twilight hours, and we emphasize college over trades when we are short of skilled workers in certain trades and have an over abundance of college educated people. The glut of the educated had driven down wages and benefits following the Great Recession. I tell young people I know to skip college if they're not sure on what profession they want to go into. Instead get a skill: carpenter, electrician, welder, hair stylist, mechanic. It might not be as cushy as sitting in a cubical on reddit all day but you will have a job that pays over $25.00 an hour, at least. The economy is driven by supply and demand.", "This video calls the phenomenon you're talking about \"gensqueeze\" it explains how lower proportional incomes now vs the 70s and much higher costs of education and housing have affected the financial life of millenials. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nDefinitely worth a watch, it explains this very well.", "There has been a steady rise in inflation paired with a not as steady rise in wages.  ", "They didnt save their money. The competition was low and the costs had been even lower. To add on to that people never embraced the idea of having enough money saved up to not just survive long term but to thrive in the next phase of life. \n\n", "No Cell phone bills\nNo cable bills\nNo student loans\nNo video games to purchase\nNo Netflix\n", "They didn't. My great grandfather worked himself to death in a logging camp and his wife remarried a wealthier man and had shitloads of children. They also didn't have gasoline, utilities or anything else to pay for out of pocket besides food, clothing and home repair. \n\nThey had less but did more with it and the lifestyle they created is not sustainable in the current market or environmentally speaking. Housing market and land is high, cars are not sustainable...It's just a different world but it assumes things remain the same.  \n\nAlso, the job market has changed. Some of the best paying jobs don't need a BA and a lot of civil service jobs start you off with a two year tech degree. Also, tuition was 35$ a quarter or free in the 1960s for a bachelor's of science.  Now it's 5-16 thousand dollars a semester. ", "I know a lot of people are talking about inflation, and that's true. The main factor of the inflation is because of the fact that companies are greedy. It's a never ending cycle due to greed.\n\n\n\nLet's say a few greedy stores, maybe Walmart raises their prices in a rural area,known for its farming. The locals are forced to buy at an increased price because they don't have any other options that sell certain supplies. They are forced to raise their prices for their crops just to live. This causes all of the places they sell the crops to, to raise prices because they want to make a high enough profit. It keeps going back and forth, until the store finds another, cheaper place to get the crops, one with people who are at a lower wage who can't live very well. \n\n\nProbably wasn't a good example, but I'm saying that the prices will get higher and/or the wages will get lower.  Because the prices are higher, people try to get a higher paid job, usually by getting a degree. Unfortunately with all of the people deciding to do this, corporations don't need to hire everyone who has the degree because so many qualified people want the job. This is where over qualification comes in - why would the company hire someone for an even higher wage when someone less qualified would work for lower, but still get the job done? Unless these huge corporations change, the current economy won't change for the better. Overpopulation is also a big problem, with more demand than supply for quite a few things."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-Income-Distribution.php"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.the-crises.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/income-inequality-usa-18.jpg"], [], [], [], ["http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/what-happened-to-the-wage-and-productivity-link/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://fortune.com/fortune500/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States", "http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/the-pay-gap-between-ceos-and-workers-is-much-worse-than-you-realize/"], [], ["http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/ABS@.NSF/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/b695ea6d16d6e0d8ca25779e001c481e!OpenDocument"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://gensqueeze.ca/the-squeeze/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "39wbpu", "title": "why do some video games alt-tab quickly and other's take ages or even crash trying to reopen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39wbpu/eli5_why_do_some_video_games_alttab_quickly_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs72bha", "cs72c3v", "cs72dco", "cs72dvw", "cs738ec", "cs73dij", "cs73pyw", "cs73vfc", "cs742gy", "cs74475", "cs748gl", "cs753x3", "cs756lx", "cs765gw", "cs772pb", "cs78lsd", "cs78yrz", "cs796x5", "cs79p3c", "cs7atqn", "cs7dh0p", "cs7hgpb", "cs7hy67", "cs7k10e", "cs7ncki"], "score": [12, 8, 1543, 66, 4, 1490, 4, 3, 2, 3, 46, 2, 8, 733, 4, 5, 2, 5, 2, 9, 2, 5, 3, 4, 4], "text": ["When a game is full-screened, it takes up all of the graphic memory on your computer. That's why there's a momentary black screen when you alt tab as everything has to be loaded on to the screen. This also means that no memory is being used on your game while tabbed out and so when you tab back in, it needs to load in all the graphics again. Obviously, different games will require different amounts of memory and so may take long to load.\n\n\n\n", "I thought it came down to windowed borderless vs full screen. In full screen your GPU doesn't render Windows (the OS) so it has \"to make that switch\" but in windowed borderless, Windows is being rendered so it snappily asked shows up. That's how I've understood it. Might be wrong though. ", "I can answer the first part of this question. Windows has two fullscreen modes: borderless window and dedicated. Older games generally used dedicated fullscreen because it gives full control of the screen to the game. When resources were significantly lower (power of the GPU if there even was a GPU), having complete control helped squeeze out every little bit of power you could. Switching out of the game via alt-tab will force the game to lose control of the screen and give it back to Windows. This can cause flickering, screen resizing, and in some cases (such as Source games) crash.\n\nBorderless windows are completely different. They are as you expect, simply a window within Windows that has the chrome (title bar, exit button, borders) removed. This means that to tab out of a game, you don't need to do anything fancy or invasive since the game is just another window. This allows Windows to keep control of the screen which makes your game have a little less available to it in terms of resources but since GPUs are so damn powerful these days (even Intel HD chips are noteworthy) it's not really an issue.\n\nThe biggest disadvantage in using borderless windows is that you cannot enable true vsync, you must rely on Windows' ability to properly sync output with your screen's refresh rate to ensure no tearing occurs. Games that allow you to enable vsync even in window borderless mode simply lock the FPS to your refresh rate and hope Windows performs as intended.\n\nEdit:\n\nSome people have suggested that a possible answer to OP's original question (if we ignore borderless windows) could be a difference in DirectX 9 and 10+, where handling the switch to and from exclusive control might be automated now where in the past developers had to handle this switch manually (to varying levels of success).\n\nAnother possible answer might be that the way the game manages resources could affect how it handles tabbing. Anecdotally, I will suggest that I've heard my hard disk spin up when I tab to and from some fullscreen games that might suggest that some data is being dumped to the disk which would definitely slow things down.", "When a game runs in full-screen mode, it can gain exclusive access to your graphics hardware \u2014 this is known as running in \u201cExclusive Mode.\u201d Windows won\u2019t render your desktop in the background, which saves on hardware resources. This means you can squeeze the most gaming performance out of your graphics hardware by running the game in full-screen mode, and that\u2019s why games run in full-screen mode by default.\n\nWindows doesn\u2019t just have to switch from one window to another when you press Alt+Tab. It has to minimize the game and start rendering the desktop again. When you switch back to the game, the game has to restore itself and take control away from Windows. For a variety of reasons \u2014 especially problems with the way some games are coded \u2014 the game may encounter a problem while doing this.\n\nYou can see this in action when you have a game running in full-screen, exclusive mode. If you Alt+Tab out of it, you can hover over the game\u2019s taskbar icon or press Alt+Tab again. You won\u2019t see a preview of the game\u2019s display area like you would for other windows. The game running in full-screen exclusive mode doesn\u2019t redirect its output through the desktop\u2019s display manager, so the desktop display manager can\u2019t display a preview.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "When you alt-tab, a well implemented game will enter a low resource mode. This is done by pausing graphics rendering. The game \"state\" may also be dumped from the RAM to HDD. At the same time, windows is starting it's rendering cycle. This can cause a clash if the game has badly implemented child processes or gpu controllers (memory leaks)because windows will reclaim what it thinks are leaks, while the game is still dependent on it. Essentially when the game tries to comeback, it doesn't find what it needs, and dies. With so many moving parts something is bound to go wrong, but higher RAM will avoid the most common issue. (need to get into multithreading and parallel computing for it to truly make sense but that's the gist).", "A lot of it comes down to the implementation of the video game. For example, if the video game uses Direct3D 9 or earlier, its responsible for recovering from a \"lost device\" state.\n\n[Lost Devices (Direct3D 9)](_URL_0_):\n\n >  By design, the full set of scenarios that can cause a device to become lost is not specified. Some typical examples include loss of focus, such as when the user presses ALT+TAB or when a system dialog is initialized.\n\nIf you read that page, there's a lot of stuff you're responsible for after a user ALT+TABs.\n\nDirect3D 10 and later handles this for you. When D3D10+ handles it, that's code the video game developer doesn't have to write and can't screw it up.\n\n(Direct3D 9 vs. 10+ isn't the only reason, there's lots of code that goes into a videogame and lots of ways you can implement code incorrectly.)", "And why does my BF4 go to windowed mode with a reeaaally small window if I accidentally press Caps lock or Num lock?", "Memory handling by Windows  &  programs.\n\nIf you have sufficient memory (assuming the programs you're running are handling memory efficiently) this will never be an issue. If you're running a high end game on a low end system, your computer has issues searching memory when switching between programs (ie: it takes a while for your PC to process)\n\nAt least that's how I understand it. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!", "When you switch between windows or applications, the state of the application is saved by the operating system (mostly) and then the saved state of the other app(s) is used by the cpu. Problem is, that not everything gets saved - graphics, exotic cpu and memory usage, files, information exchanged with other processes, and so on.\n\nWhen the game runs as a window, the os has some ways to solve most of the issues - like asking the game to re-render the last known screen, so that commands trying to manipulate part of it don't run into errors because the part is gone. In full screen, the app might do all that on it's own and the programmer might not consider the multitasking - maybe for performance reasons.\n\nIn the same way, games (which usually use graphics intensely) might leave artefacts in the graphics card when you quit them in an unexpected way, which then disturbs the correct functioning of the OS. When the game runs in a window, the os can see what belongs to the game and take care of it. When it's full screen (or when using the graphics card for calculations instead of graphics), the os might not be able to handle things correctly.", "There are a couple of things you are asking so i try to answer them one by one.\n\n---\n\n**Why do some games crash when alt-tabbing?**\n\nThis is mostly due to the fact that the programmers have not paused and protected the games resources in memory when you alt-tabbed. \n\nThis can lead to Windows trying to free up resources while the game is not aware of this and tries to use these resources but fails and then crashes. Modern games will go into Pause mode when alt-tabbed and unload resources themselves.\n\n---\n\n\n**Why do some games Alt-tab quickly?**\n\nSome games go into a pause mode and unload resources when alt-tabbed while others will go into a suspend mode. This is similar to the sleep mode or suspend to disk of Windows.\n\nIf the game is put into sleep it will wake up really fast as everything is still in memory.\n\nIf it is \"suspended to disk\", which for a game means unload all unnecessary resources it will take a little longer for the engine to wake up and reload the scene.\n\n----\n\n**The DirectX 7/9 screen exclusive bug**\n\nThere is a \"bug\" in DirectX 7/9 which makes it almost impossible to run 2 DirectX games at the same time. This goes deep into the inner workings of DirectX but in simple terms it will allow both games to write into the screen buffers of the GPU (also shaders etc.) which in turn will crash one or even both games/apps using DirectX.\n\nThis problem is fixed in DirectX 10", "ELI5? Depending on which graphics helper they use (DirectX, OpenGL, Custom, Software) the game must tell Windows and the helper how to switch properly. \n\nSo you have two states of the screen, Game  &  Windows (like two people wanting a cookie), and you have to try and give both people the correct cookie (data to switch to new screen rendering context). The game often wants a basic simple cookie, and Windows wants some weird cookie from an obscure hipster shop in an alley you can never find. \n\nSo, some games go to find the cookie shop for Windows, which takes time - but they get the cookie and everyone is happy. Others just go and buy a bunch of cookies and put them all together hoping that Windows won't notice. Often this works (and it is fast), but when Windows is not happy, it goes on a rampage and kills the Game out of spite. ", "What I'd really like to know is why, when I alt tab out of games the alt key seems to get stuck so that when I press tab the steam overlay comes up as if I was holding alt and it wont stop doing it until I tap alt again to \"unstick\" it.", "With DirectX 9 when you get out of an full screen game it removes all data the game has put in the GPU. If the developer prepared for that the game will start reloading all textures, models, or anything else it stored in the GPU, if they aren't the game will try to load a part of memory that is empty or has been taken over by Windows and not reclaimed, crashing the game. \n\nWith DirectX 10 it's handled by DirectX automatically, but afaik still needs to reload the resources.\n\nWith OpenGL I think the resources can stay in the GPU even when you aren't having the game on the screen, **but this is just my speculation based on that same games alt tab in instantly on Linux while they still take up time on Windows for me**", "Here's the actual ELI5 answer (as opposed to the explain like I'm a gamer who knows a bunch about games, DirectX, video cards etc):\n\nWhen you're a game running in full screen, Windows (mostly) gives you all of the things to play with. All the memory you want, nobody interrupts your processing, your work gets moved to the front of the line. This makes everything much faster. When someone presses alt-tab it tells Windows that the user wants you to share all the stuff. \n\nSome games, like some kids, are pretty good at listening. They get the message from Windows that they need to let go of some memory and that their stuff isn't the most important anymore and they just change what they're doing, try not to interrupt and play nice. Then when they get full screen again they set all their toys back up the way they had them and keep playing.\n\nOther games, like some other kids, don't listen. They ignore the message from Windows and keep playing as if they are the most important and only program running. Eventually Windows stops being so nice and forcefully takes away some memory and processing time and that makes the game either slow down or crash.\n\nStill other games, like kids, are brats. They hear the message and throw a tantrum. They scream that they don't know how to play with less toys. Instead of trying to work with less they get mad and just quit, sometimes knocking everything over on the way out.\n\nIt all comes down to the parents (developers) to teach the kids (games) to behave. Some parents are good, some are bad and that's reflected in the kids.", "I'm surprised that I haven't found the phrase \"virtual memory\" in this thread anywhere. This is likely a factor in the alt-tab performance as well -- when you're playing the game, more and more of your RAM is being used for the game. If you need more RAM for the game then is available, Windows will put the other less used parts of the RAM on your hard drive instead (this is the pagefile.sys file in C:\\Windows\\). When you alt-tab out, Windows tries to look for the part of the RAM that your OS was using. If the game pushed it out, Windows has to drop whatever else it was doing (known as a page fault) and go find that RAM on your hard drive instead. If you have an old-fashioned spinning hard drive (as opposed to a solid state drive), you may actually be able to hear it spinning up when you alt+tab. ", "Look for the following in-game settings.\n\n**Windowed fullscreen mode:** super fast switch, slightly lower fps\n\n**(classic) Fullscreen mode:** max performance, get the most fps out of your pc but switching between windows might take time and higher chance of crashing.\n\nAlso games do differently, some might be slower and more prone to crashing than others.\nWithout getting into too much detail this should cover it.", "I don't see this mentioned anywhere else, but having your desktop resolution match the application resolution can make a difference in how quickly a game alt-tabs. If they are different it can take a bit for your computer to change resolutions.", "There are devs out there who have taken the philosophy that the game should use all of your ram, because otherwise some of it goes to waste.", "This is likely because some games run full screen and some games run in a window without chrome that is sized to be full screen.", "I think many of these answers are great but at the same time I think an important part of the answer is missing in this thread:\n\n***Did the developers/management prioritize it?***\n\nAs with every other feature there is the question of *value vs time to implement*. Do we want to put our time on making it faster to alt-tab or do we want to make a better game.\n\nWhy does photoshop take ages to launch while similar programs take moments? Because they didn't care about startup-time.\n\nIf a program crash when alt-tabing, the developers knew about it, they just didn't think it was important enough to spend time to fix it. \n\nI'm a programmer myself, and if you want to release something you can't make every detail prefect, then you'd never release anything at all. In AA-games it's even worse than in other fields, they have to pump out games, it has to be *good-enough* not better. \n\n", "Follow up question, why does some games take ages to save while others save on less than a sec? \n\nOn my rig Skyrim maxed out use less than 1 sec to save while Fallout New Vegas maxed out uses more than 5 sec. ", "Imagine you and your dad drawing on the same paper in turns. When ALT+TAB is pressed  you have to remember everything you have drawn and use eraser to clean pictures of cars you drew since you are GTA 5. Then daddy takes over and draws some rectangles, since he is Windows. When ALT+TAB is pressed again daddy takes rubber and erases everything he have drawn (like you did before) and handles empty paper to you. SInce it's hard to erase everything nicely and even harder to redraw things exactly the same, sometimes paper gets smudged.\n\n(not native speaker here, excuse my grammar mistakes)", "It's based on how the game chooses to render itself, one method allows them more control but causes alt-tabbing to be weird, the other doesn't allow for as much control but allows alt tabbing to work, it also allows for multiple monitors to work.\n\nFor my original, less ELI5 explanation look below.\n\nSome of them rely on something called borderless window, also known as fake full screen, while others rely on what some call actual full screen. Actual full screen basically interacts directly with the monitor, allowing for things like V-Sync, Freesync, and G-Sync. Borderless window uses your OS's window rendering system instead of interacting with the monitor, this doesn't allow for the aforementioned things.\n\n*Here starts the actual explanation.* The transition from a borderless window to your OS's window rendering system doesn't require a lot because it doesn't change much on the OS's side, it merely conceals and reveals the taskbar. The transition from actual full screen to your OS's rendering engine and vise versa is a lot more invasive as it changes a lot on your OS's side, it can change anything from refresh rate to refresh rate. That transition can sometimes lead to crash as the game attempts to recover from the massive change.", "Why the hell did you put an apostrophe in \"others\"?", "Wow did someone write a trash answer and everyone else repeat it in a different way?\n\nThere are two it could be. The biggest is screen resolution (many pixels on screen). If the game has a different one than your desktop (which may be biggest it can do with your monitor) then there may be a second or two where the video/screen resolution changes when you alt tab. Some games prefer a lower resolution (less pixels) so it can draw more polygons (detail) faster. Think of it as an earthporn pic being small but looking good VS a cell phone pic being big but looking shitty.\n\nThe other possibility is fullscreen VS windowed. Window means it's just another app. Fullscreen means it can have more video hardware and IIRC (I tried in the windows 98  &  XP days) no other app can be fullscreen until that app is closed or decides it will be windowed. The delay is filling the video memory with desktop/windows data or it could be changing resolution or both"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.howtogeek.com/181761/why-pc-games-struggle-with-alttab-and-how-to-fix-it/"], [], ["https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb174714.aspx"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4388xt", "title": "How were headaches understood in pre-modern medicine?", "selftext": "I very frequently suffer from severe headaches/migraines,and recently became curious about how these ailments were diagnosed, understood, and treated before the development of (broadly speaking) modern medicine.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4388xt/how_were_headaches_understood_in_premodern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czgdtyw", "czgeywk"], "score": [6, 56], "text": ["I just read a book (The Technology of Orgasm by Maines) that states headaches were historically believed to be a common symptom of \"female hysteria\". Hysteria was believed to have various causes at different times in history. Some people thought it was caused by the womb wandering around the body and interfering with other functions, others thought there was a build-up of fluids in it that had to be coaxed out. There were a lot of other crazy theories, too many to mention. A common treatment was to induce \"hysterical paroxysm\" by pelvic massage, which as described sounds an awful lot like masturbation to orgasm (but doctors assured each other it wasn't because as they all knew, *real* orgasms could only happen during penetration). Funny enough, for mild headaches, sex or masturbation is still recommended as a treatment option.", "Classical medical writers understood there were different types of headaches. The basic classifications are picked up by their medieval Persian, Arab, Greek and Latin students, although the names and types can shift rather confusingly.\n\nAretaeus of Cappadocia in the 1st century AD described three types of headache based on duration and presentation. *Cephalalgia* are characterized by short duration (defined as \"even if it continues for several days\"). Chronic headache he calls *cephalea* or *heterocrania* based on location in the head. If it's a chronic or recurrent pain that jumps around to different places, *cephalea*. Oh, but then there is *heterocrania*:\n\n >  The pain remains confined to a certain part of the head. Once it has started abruptly, it brings about horrible and terrifying things. The face is distorted spasmodically. The eyes remain glassy and rigid like horns or move to and fro forcedly. The patient is dizzy. He suffers from pain deep in the eyes...His sinews hurt suddenly as if someone has beaten them with a piece of wood. He is nauseous, vomits, the vomit is bilious. He collapses...He moves away from the light, the dark makes the disease less serious. His sense of smell is disturbed. He is weighed down by life, searches for death.\n\n...You were asking about migraines?\n\nIn large part through Alexander of Tralles, Aretaeus' classifications are picked up by many Greek and Latin medieval authors. Heterocrania becomes *hemicrania*, I guess because it is clearer to say \"this specific headache is in one place\" instead of Aretaeus' \"a headache in one place, but it can be in different places in different people\".\n\nAlexander is more interested in what causes headaches than Aretaeus was explicitly, although the basics for what caused *hemicrania*--an excess of bad humors--were apparent in Aretaeus' prescribed treatment if hemicrania grew too terrible and lasted too long. Buckle your seatbelt, because here we go:\n\n1. Sometimes the pain is mild and the treatment is equally mild. (Really, that's all he says here.)\n\n2. If the pain lasts and gets worse, bleed 'im! \"Incise the vein at the elbow. First, have the patient drink wine for two days.\" (I *think* the point is hydration, but, you know.) And this must be accompanied by emptying out phlegm and toxins through existing orifices: \"empty out the bowels by a laxative or a clyster.\" Then \"At one time you drive out through the nose with sneezing remedies, at another through the mouth with expectorants.\"\n\n3. The next step is to bleed the patient on the forehead.\n\n4. After that: \"Shave off his hair and place a cup at the crown of the head...carry out a good-sized incision at the crown. Incisions that get to the bone are beneficial to hemicrania.\"\n\n5. And if that *still* doesn't work? Well, you might die, but otherwise you get to experience the thrill *again*. \"If the wounds [from the crown incision] have become scars, then cut out the arteries...one is situated behind the ear, clearly pulsating.\"\n\nShould you be so fortunate as to live during the 12th century, on the other hand, you might find the cures suggested by the *Antidotarium Nicolai* a bit more palatable. This text, as its name suggests, is a list of mostly herbal or herbal-ish antidotes for various conditions. It links headache with chronic upset stomach (which, by the way, Constantinus Africanus associates with his version of migraine *in women*, an interesting mention of gendered medicine), epilepsy, leprosy and paralysis as conditions that make it difficult for people to talk.\n\nThe *Antidotarium* prescribes an herbal remedy it calls *Yeralogodion memphytum*, which is germander, for its two types of headaches: \"cephalarcia\" and \"emigrania.\"\n\nCephalarcia is a recognizable corruption of cephalalgia, and I'm sure you can see where this is going: hemicrania thus becomes emigrania--and through French, our modern *migraine*.\n\nOh, and medieval headaches were as bad as those of 1st century Cappadocia. Miraculous cures for hemicrania are very fair game in the collections of miracles gathered and submitted for canonization of new saints in the later Middle Ages. And it's the *Antidotarium* that perhaps says it in the most medieval way possible:\n\n\"Those [suffering from headaches] who are so vexed by turmoil in the head that they seem possessed by a demon.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3tx8tl", "title": "why can't batteries be recharged infinite times?", "selftext": "Phone batteries for example - why do they decrease in capacity over time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tx8tl/eli5_why_cant_batteries_be_recharged_infinite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxa0ecb", "cxa2df8", "cxa3dt4", "cxa40xi", "cxais9t"], "score": [118, 3, 44, 12, 2], "text": ["The materials inside them actually degrade over time when used and recharged repeatedly. Due to this, they have a finite lifespan ", "Take something that is flexible and bend it a few times.  After a while, it tends to permanently deform, and does not snap back as much or weakens where it was bent, or just snaps.\n\nBatteries can be thought of in similar fashion.   The stress of recharge cycles eventually causes part of the battery to lose the ability to hold a charge.", "Batteries work by containing chemicals that react to produce electric energy. \n\nIn rechargeable batteries, applying electric energy can reverse these reactions to restore the original state in wich electric energy can be produced, effectively \"storing\" electric energy.\n\nHowever, neither process is perfect - a small part of the materials involved (which tend to be pretty aggressive) reacts in different ways, which are not reversible. This problem is excarbated by high temeperatures (which stimulate all chemical reactions).", "I think I read this analogy here once about this topic. I don't have the original quote, nor do I remember who said it, so I'm not claiming this as my own.\n\nThink of a battery as a cup you use to drink water. Imagine everytime you fill the water cup, it forms a very thin layer of ice on the bottom that never melts.\n\nThe layer is so thin that you won't notice the ice buildup until you've used it very many times. Eventually you've got a cup that can only hold a tiny amount of water. \n\nNow replace ice with rock salt and water with ions and that's the explanation with batteries. When Lithium ions move across the electrode while charging, they form a rock salt in the battery.", "In the case of lead-acid, the \"plate\" is a thin leaf of Pb (negative) and PbO2 (positive) and the reaction absorbs the sulfide ion from the sulfuric acid electrolyte to convert both plates to  lead(II) sulfate (PbSO4).  It's reversible, of course... but it's like this.  If you had an iron plate and it scales apart into rust, and electrolytically turned the rust back into iron, it's not a plate anymore, is it?\n\nLead plates can be cycled about 300 times total.  The material swells and contracts during discharge/recharge and slowly falls apart.  It flakes off bits of lead, it cracks which disconnects a part of the plate from the terminal.  There is a porous separator (a plastic or rubber mesh) between the positive and negative plates to allow them to be sandwiched very close to keep the resistance down, while separating them to prevent a short.  Flakes shedding off pack into the separator and can poke through, resulting in a short.\n\nYou might envision it as \"plating\" a new lead surface when it's recharged.  That's not it- *the lead never moves in either plate*.  The sulfide ion moves in and out of the electrolyte.  The plate must be thin and porous on a molecular level (because each lead molecute can only react with electrolyte it's in contact with, otherwise the lead is useless).  You might think \"well we could glue the lead to fiberglass cloth to hold it together\" but the lead will still flake and crack apart and come off at about the same point.  You might say \"well let's make the lead plate like 1/4\" thick\" but then the battery would only have like 5% of the capacity it should for its size- and the shedding flakes off the plate surface will STILL clog the separator.  \n\nPeople often ask \"well can't I just wash out the old electrolyte with new and fix the battery\"?  Well, each cell is like 200 plates of interleaved positive/separator/neg plates with flaked bits of plate packed into the separator.  The flaked stuff is insoluble and can't be washed out.  Replacing the electrolyte fixes nothing.\n\nIt can only be truly reformed by melting it back down and rolling it down into a new sheet during remfg.  \n\nIn the case of NiCd/NiMH/NiFe Edison cells (rare, used early 20th cent), it's different- the plates don't really break down.  Rather, every time we charge them, the electrolyte loses a bit of water.  In the typical sealed \"AA\" steel-can battery, there's no surplus electrolyte, and no way to refill them.\n\nBut there ARE very uncommon flooded-plate NiCd/NiMH/NiFe batteries which you can add distilled water to.  I have a lot of vintage flooded-plate NiCd that work fine that I sell on eBay.  These DO last basically forever.  It's crazy how long they last.  But they do require maintenance and their charging cycle management is a bit crazy.\n\nThe NiCd/NiMH/NiFe has one other enemy- carbonation.  Regardless of whether they're the sealed type or not.  The electrolyte is a strong base (not acid) of potassium hydroxide.  If exposed to air, it absorbs carbon from the small trace of CO2 in the air and forms potassium carbonate, which is chemically useless and charging doesn't reverse that back into hydroxide.   However... you CAN simply drain the electrolyte and mix up new KOH and refurbish the cell like-new again."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5vbny7", "title": "Is there a limit to the number of active Bluetooth connections in a confined space?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5vbny7/is_there_a_limit_to_the_number_of_active/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de1jym2"], "score": [10], "text": ["Yes, but it would be somewhat hard to calculate. The I can do is give an overview of how to get an estimate. All of what I am about to say comes from the 802.15.1 spec (bluetooth). You can request a copy of it [here.](_URL_4_)\n\nFor each transmitter receiver pair, as two tuning forks that resonate at the same frequency. You want to maximize the number of pairs in a certain area such that they will only resonate with their paired fork. First we need to determine the SNR which makes the fork falsely resonate, and then how to calculate the SNR at each receiver depending on physical layout. From there it would just be an impossibly hard optimization problem you would need to run. \n\nThe bluetooth standard \"requires\" a BER of .1%. Which more or less, requires a SNR of about 3dB. This is because bluetooth uses a few (crappy) error correction codes to protect against interference. The first is a 1/3 rate [repetition code](_URL_1_)  (undergraduate level stuff there), a 2/3 rate code [(11,15)- Hamming Code](_URL_2_) and a basic ACK scheme. Since you want to push it to the limit, this time we can assume the rate 1/3 code.\n\nSo the system will begin to bend before breaking. All in all, it does not really do much [as you can see from the graph](_URL_0_). But the BER of  <  .1% you means you need about 3dB SNR. \n\n\nSo now that we know that the power of the transmitter to receiver must be 3dB greater than the sum of all interference, how do we calculate interference. If we assume all sources of EM interference are from bluetooth devices, then we simply need to know their distance from the transmitter, and the frequency which they are transmitting at. Indeed from these two we can determine an estimate of signal power by [Frii's transmission equation](_URL_3_), and then how much the interfering signal will be attenuated by being at a different frequency. \n\nBluetooth is split over 79 channels at 2402 + k MHz where k = 0 , 1, ..., 78. The channel that is 1 MHz will have the signal attenuated by -10 dB, the signal 2 MHz over -30 dB, and all signals  > 3 MHz will be attenuated -40dB. There the dB is in reference to their received power as determined by Frii's. \n\nSo using all of that information it would be possible to write a program to estimate the maximum number of active bluetooth connections in a confined space (perhaps monte carlo?) but it would still be really hard and annoying to actually get. \n\nStill this number should be significantly large so that you will not be seeing this problem in normal use. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_code#/media/File:Repetition_Code_On_Fading_Channel_Graph.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_code", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation", "http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.15.1-2005.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1a894i", "title": "Wednesday AMA: We are UOUPv2 and alltorndown. Ask us anything about the Mongolian Empire!", "selftext": "From the rise of Temujin to the fall of the Khanate we'll answer any questions you have about the Mongolian Empire.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a894i/wednesday_ama_we_are_uoupv2_and_alltorndown_ask/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8uzcyo", "c8uzdgt", "c8uzf90", "c8uzfkp", "c8uzgoe", "c8v05q4", "c8v0csf", "c8v0t9n", "c8v12ac", "c8v12se", "c8v1b52", "c8v2nu9", "c8v310b", "c8v4azl", "c8v4rgl", "c8v50t2", "c8v527g", "c8v60xf", "c8v6fly", "c8v6v8x", "c8v7fun", "c8v8ggo", "c8va8qa", "c8vacc0", "c8vdmzk", "c8vfv9z", "c8vht25", "c8zcv6z"], "score": [13, 8, 5, 4, 7, 12, 4, 5, 5, 7, 5, 8, 3, 3, 6, 6, 3, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Thanks for doing this you two!\n\nPrior to the establishment of the Mongol Empire, how did the various groups in the region identify ethnically? And what effect did the establishment of the Mongol Empire have on establishing a congruent \"Mongolian\" ethnicity (assuming it did)?", "One thing I have heard repeatedly on this subreddiy was the Mongols haf superiot logistics.  Could you expand on this?", "What did the Mongols do with their plundered wealth and booty? Do they ride their horses wearing gold and trinkets? Also, who were the people that traded with the Mongols? Was there any backlash for trading with people that were conquering everyone?", "Could either one of you explain the origins of the legal code of Yassa, its importance, and how it may/may not ( I dont know) have had an impact on subsequent political development over the lands the Mongols conquered and ruled? was their a lasting impact of this law on the non-mongols they ruled?", "What was the greatest defeat the Mongols suffered and how did they rebound from it.", "How much do we know about the political situation in Mongolia before Temujin? I find figures like Khabul Khan and Bodonchar really fascinating, but I've never been able to find much about them beyond the tantalising, obviously at least semi-mythical references in the SH. Did they really exist? Did they unite the Mongols before Temujin did? Was it unusual that Temujin himself to be born into a period when the Mongols didn't have central leadership?", "How could the mongols maintain an empire as large as they had? What happened to a town if it surrendered peacefully? Are 'mongoloid' features (which I think is the formal term for people who 'look Asian') all derived from Mongols, or Gengiz Khan, or did Chinese people look like that even before that? \n\n\nWhat were the main reasons for the downfall of the Khanates (successors to the Mongol empire). Why did the mongols convert to Islam? Did the Persians convert to Islam due to Mongol hegemony?\n\n\nCan the Turkic empires (chiefly Ottoman and Mughal) be called successors to the Mongols?\n\n\nSorry in advance for so many questions, I've always been fascinated by the Mongolian empire!", "What was the relationship between Temujin and Timur?  I know they were distantly related at least, though with that bloodline that's obviously not saying much.  Is there any historical through-line from the Khanates to Timur's later conquests?", "Do we have anything like accurate figures for the death-toll or an idea of the lasting damage inflicted upon the conquered/invaded territories under Genghis Khan and his successors?", "What was Ulaan Baatar like at the height of the Mongolian empire? Did the Mongols concentrate wealth there?", "Is the tent thing true?  The one about how they'd put up a white tent for peace if a city surrendered, then another one for combatants would be killed, and then another for everyone?", "This was prompted by an earlier conversation with yodatsracist, but did Chinese peasants frequently flee from the tightly controlled society to the comparative freedom of the Steppe? He brought up the example of Cossacks, who were often escaped Lithuanian peasants, but I assume that can only work because they shared an ethnicity.\n\nwas there an inflow of wealth into Mongolia as a result of the empire, or did the riches largely remain with those who settled in the new lands? What happened to Mongolia after the empire collapsed, particularly after the fall of the Yuan?\n\nIs the story about the intellectual contest between a Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist true?", "I saw an episode of The Human Planet which talked a bit about Mongolians hunting with eagles that they had trained. How far back does this practice go? Was this a pretty popular thing in Mongolia?", "I'm not sure if this is within your specialty, but why did the Timurid Empire fall apart so quickly after Timur's death, whereas the Mongolian Empire under Genghis Khan lasted (although split up) for many years?\n\nSecond question, why was the Ilkhante so much weaker than the Golden Horde?", "1). Mongolia not being a densely populated place, I'd imagine that a large portion of the adult male population took part in the campaigns for them to be able to muster enough manpower to conquer their much larger neighbors. What happened to women, children, and the elderly while most of the men were away in Central Asia, China, Middle East etc. Did they follow the men, complicating the logistics, or did the stay in traditional Mongol lands? Would the women and children have any difficulty on their own, without the protection of men for extended periods of time?\n\n2). On lengthy campaigns, how did the Mongols procure the necessary weapons, armor and horses? Things like composite bows, armor piercing arrows were probably not easy to manufacture on  the go.  I'm sure they had trophy equipment, that may not necessarily be what the Mongols were comfortable or trained to use. \n\n3) Did the multinational, multicultural and multilingual aspect of Mongol armies complicate their organisation and discipline, something which the Mongols are famous for. How did they deal with this?", "How Mongol was the Golden Horde? From what I've read most historians seem to say the Golden Horde was in effect a \"Kypchak/Cuman successor state, just with some Mongols  &  Volga-Bulgars thrown in and Islam added to the mix\".", "What effect did the Mongolian conquests have on the middle east and, by extension, Islamic religion? I seem to remember reading something about the sack of Baghdad having a profound effect on the Muslim world at the time.", "I'm a foreign envoy attending a Kurultai.. How much is known about what went on there? I'm presuming there were at least a few people attending that would describe the events and relay word back home?\n\n", "I have read that Mongolians do not give their horses names, but called them by their color and other defining traits. One source I found said that the word(s) used included information about heritage, gender etc. but I feel like this would be a hell of a long calling. Do you have any information about this? \nAlso are there any cultural tidbits you'd be willing to share? I think the Mongolian civilization was just fascinating, but always to find the same mundane facts all over the web.\n(Sorry if this is more of a cultural rather than historical question, I've just never had the chance to ask anyone who might be knowledgeable and I find it really interesting.)", "I don't know if this question, qualifies, but the Timurid dynasty which later formed the Mughal empire in India were descended from the Mongols. But Wikipedia mentions that their patriarch, Babur, was greatly Persianized in Ferghana.\n\nWhat does this mean? Did he simply become fluent in Persian, did he marry Persian women? Did he even look anything like his Mongolian ancestors? I'm very interested in this period of Babur's life and I couldn't get hold of any copies of the Baburnama. \n\nThanks a lot !", "To what extent did the Mongols settle the lands they conquered? Did they migrate to China, Persia, etc, or did they just rule?\n\nDid more traditional Mongolian religion (like Tengriism) disappear as Mongol rulers adopted Buddhism, Islam, and other foreign religions?\n\nThanks for doing this! Mongolian history is fascinating, and I've been trying to learn more about the groups and events that high school history skipped over.", "Two years on, what's been the most interesting thing in your opinions to have come out of the [Valley of the Khans Project](_URL_0_)? Have they shortlisted any potentially significant previously unknown targets? Have investigations moved forward and discovered any new titbits?   ", "What was it about the Asian steppe that kept producing these unstoppable armies of horse archers?", "What are some common misconceptions about the mongolian empire?", "did the mongols really conquer x amount of territory in 1 year?\n\n(x = whatever huge amount of territory they conquered in 1 year according to a show i saw on the history channel. sorry, i'm tired and can't think straight but i'm genuinely curious.)", "Are you two still answering questions?  I was looking forward to this AMA all week, and now that it's here I see that I am 18 hours late!  \n\nIn case you are still answering questions, here's one: I have heard that, as a sign of respect/honor for particularly stalwart or virtuous foes, the Mongols would trample any surviving enemy combatants or generals under their horses.  If this is indeed accurate, why did the Mongols consider such a death honorable?  What was their reasoning for not letting the honorable but defeated enemy live?", "How come the Mongols never conquered India (except for perhaps a few of the northern/fringe areas)? Was it mainly due to the Himalayas and the humid climate? (That's what a few other threads have said)\n\nI know that later descendants in various forms conquered most of India (like the Mughals), but that wasn't what we would call the Mongol Empire", "When did the Mongols first start using siege engines in their sieges?  And if they didn't have such engines at first, because they hadn't captured Chinese or Persian engineers, how did they win their first sieges?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/07/mongolia-valley-of-the-khans/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8850sv", "title": "Does the habitable zone around a star get larger as the star's size increases?", "selftext": "e.g. our suns habitable zone starts at 0.95 a.u. and ends at 1.37 a.u. giving a range of 0.42 a.u. Question being do larger stars have a larger range?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8850sv/does_the_habitable_zone_around_a_star_get_larger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwi0pr0", "dwj2bh0"], "score": [13, 4], "text": ["The range of the habitable zone depends on power output of the star. Stars with a high power output have a larger habitable zone than stars with a smaller one. \n\nIt's important to note however, that the power output is not linked to size. Stars change dramatically over their lives, and their output is a delicate balance between their size, mass and composition.", "Sort of. As first approximation, the habitable zone is simply the range between two radiation intensities, something like 1.5 kW/m^(2) and 1 kW/m^(2). As the intensity scales with the inverse squared distance, this gives a fixed distance ratio between inner and outer edge. More luminous stars have their habitable zone at larger distances, which also means the range is larger in absolute numbers.\n\nLarger stars are not always more luminous than smaller stars, but there is a strong correlation between the two. Therefore: Sort of."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "a16y8o", "title": "Did the Founding Fathers of the USA really not envision career politicians? Was that aspiration ever attained at all?", "selftext": "I was watching a clip of Sen. Ben Sasse on Colbert, and he repeated an idea that I've heard countless times since forever:  \n\n > \"The Founders didn't have a vision of the world where people wanted to be in politics, move to DC, and stay there forever.  You're supposed to think the place you're from is the most interesting place in the world.  We use the term historically \"public service,\" because you go to Washington to serve for a time then go back home.  Right now most people in Washington, their biggest long-term thought is about their own incumbency.\"\n\nAs the audience did the obligatory applause for this feel-good truism, I realized that every Founder I could name off the top of my head was a lifelong politician with about 30 years working in federal politics and government.\n\nIs there any truth to this notion at all?  Certainly, it's wrong to say that Jefferson or Madison couldn't imagine it.  Was that ever the \"norm\" for national politics?  If it was merely an aspirational desire, was it ever acheived to any degree?  And why did so many of them discard that ideal to further their own careers?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a16y8o/did_the_founding_fathers_of_the_usa_really_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eas6lfq"], "score": [3], "text": ["There is a long standing debate about the nature of elected office. \n\nOn the one hand is the **delegate** model of representation. Our elected legislators are there to express the interests of the people who elect them. They should not express their own conscience nor invoke their own expertise where it conflicts with the interests or opinions of the constituency. In this model, the representative should be of short-duration for fear that their will be captured by the interests and fashions of the capital. Sasse is arguing this view. \n\nThis model was contested most famously by Edmund Burke in his formulation of the **trustee** model of representation in 1774. The people select a trustee who is somewhat autonomous and may act in the common good or the national interest, as opposed to the parochial interests of the constituency. Burke encapsulated this as:\n\n > \"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.\"\n\nBurke is considered the father of modern British conservatism. He was a leading MP during the Revolution, lending his support to the grievances of the American colonies and promoting a peaceful reconciliation between Britain and America in advance of Lexington and Concord. The founding fathers were not only aware of Burke, but intimately and actively involved in that exact debate. \n\nSources: \n\nBurke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll (1774) from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854)\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ry4im", "title": "What was day-to-day life like in a \"Hooverville\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ry4im/what_was_daytoday_life_like_in_a_hooverville/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdsbeym", "cdsq0o8"], "score": [11, 2], "text": ["It seems to have ranged from tolerable to utterly miserable, depending on where you ended up. The camp that sprung up in Central Park in New York City was known to be less harsh than some of the others, especially in the summer months. But it was relatively small (a few dozen families). There was a huge Hooverville set up in Washington DC by the Bonus Army (WWI vets seeking expedited benefits) but it was demolished by General MacArthur.\n\nOn the other hand is a famous account by John Steinbeck of an apparently typical \"squatter's camp\" located near an irrigation ditch in California. He writes:\n\n\"There is more filth here. The tent is full of flies clinging to the apple box that is the dinner table, buzzing about the foul clothes of the children, particularly the baby, who has not been bathed nor cleaned for several days. This family has been on the road longer than the builder of the paper house. There is no toilet here, but there is a clump of willows nearby where human faeces lie exposed to the flies - the same flies that are in the tent\" it goes on from there. \n\nThis account (titled \"Death in the Dust\") would eventually spur the writing of the The Grapes of Wrath.", "A little bit of a tangent, but can anyone elaborate on the sort of ideologies of the people in Hooverville? Were there socialists resident? If so, how prevalent was socialist ideology? What would the attitudes of residents have been towards race?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "al6zom", "title": "When a new particle like the Higgs Boson is discovered at LHC, how can physicists tell that the particle they\u2019re \u201cseeing\u201d is one they\u2019ve never seen before?", "selftext": "For example they say they have evidence of seeing the Higgs boson, but what do they physically interpret that tells them \u201coh, this is a new thing we haven\u2019t seen?\u201d ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/al6zom/when_a_new_particle_like_the_higgs_boson_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["efbemgy"], "score": [11], "text": ["Data analysis in an experiment like this is very nontrivial, there are many techniques used to discriminate between different kinds of particles.\n\nThe clearest signature in the case of the Higgs comes from measuring its mass. [Here](_URL_0_) is an example from the ATLAS collaboration.\n\nWhat's plotted is a histogram of the mass of a system of two photons (each photon has zero mass, but a system of more than one photon can have mass, the details aren't important for this thread), which may have resulted from the decay of a Higgs boson.\n\nYou can see that there's a small bump on top of some smooth background. The data can be fit to a function including a contribution from a background, plus a Gaussian peak. In the bottom panel, you see the spectrum with the background subtracted, and it's a very clear peak.\n\nA peak in a mass spectrum corresponds to a particle with that mass. The mass that they found for this peak doesn't correspond to any other known particle, and it falls within a range where the Higgs mass was expected to lie. So this tells you that it's not some other particle which has already been discovered, and that it's a candidate for the Higgs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://atlasexperiment.org/photos/atlas_photos/selected-photos/plots/fig_02.png"]]}
{"q_id": "1ludf4", "title": "if communism promotes social equality, why is there such a big poverty gap in china?", "selftext": "Recently learning about different economic systems and this question came to mind.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ludf4/eli5_if_communism_promotes_social_equality_why_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc2uh6i", "cc2usoc", "cc2v6v4", "cc2voog", "cc2vww2", "cc2wmgu", "cc30agx", "cc30nef", "cc31gex", "cc32y21"], "score": [7, 43, 11, 10, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["ITT people who don't understand communism ", "The People's Republic of China has been most communist in name only.  It is communist only in the sense of how the political party functions, and has had no responsibility to redistribute wealth since the 1990's. China has a capitalist economy that is state-driven, as opposed to the market-driven economies of the West.\n", "The long and short of it is that China is not communist, and there has never been a communist nation in the history of the world. Many nations have *claimed* to be communist, sure, but the inequality gap has always existed and sometimes even been wider win these countries. One of the fundamental aspects of communism is eliminating different social classes; this has never been achieved on a nation-wide scale. ", "1. China is not communist. Even when it abided by Maoism (which it doesn't really anymore), it wasn't communist.\n2. Communism requires full industrialisation of capitalism before it can be realised. This did not happen in any nation claiming or attempting to abide by a Marxist framework\n3. Communism is inherently globalist and anti-statist so whilst it could be under a dictatorship of the proletariat or democratically socialist it could never be classified as communist. (For the record, it attempt to have the first one, kind of, then very quickly disregarded it)\n4. Corruption from state officials\n5. China has a mixed-economy applying liberal economic policies combined with centralised statist ones, moving towards further liberalism.\n6. The protectionist, closed off nature off early Maoist China delayed industrialisation leaving an impoverished peasantry. China is currently in a similar state of economics that Britain was during the Industrial revolution, over time wealth will spread.", "It's a common perception in the western world that China has always been a communist country. It hasn't. If anyone is interested:\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's a capitalistic nation for most of its history. In 1911, a capitalistic \"Republic of China\" was established. The country's first president was Sun Yat Sen. Its second president was Chiang Kai Shek. Chiang Kai Shek's government was very corrupt. People were struggling to eat. The fact that income inequality was too great of a problem in China was what fueled the rise of the \"People's Republic of China\" in 1949 by \"Chairman\" Mao Ze Dong.\n\nAt the time, communism was thought to be the solution to the economic inequality problem. The only problem was - it killed productivity. Mao Ze Dong has a very idealistic world-view (most of the ~~communist~~ dictatorial leader does - Hitler for example). His idealistic world-view brings the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. This is what's portrayed by the Western world. In 1976, Mao Ze Dong passed away and gave a way for other leaders to emerge. One of these leaders is Deng Xiao Ping who initialized the privatization of enterprises in China - again.\n\nAll in all - the Chinese economy was a socialist from 1949 to 1978 - a 29 year ordeal. Western Propaganda is another issue though.\n\nBased on this: _URL_1_ , the Chinese government launched a $586 billion stimulus program in 2008. Do you remember who else had a stimulus program ?\n\nTL;DR - Income inequality has always been a problem in China. Communism was just another effort to minimize this.", "China is best described as [state capitalist](_URL_0_).", "Because China isn't actually communist.", "China switched to a capitalist economy decades ago. An economy that gives 1% everything and 99% nothing meshes nicely with ruling elites.", "Have you seen the AT & T commercial with the little kid saying \"We want more! We want more!\"? That's pretty much why. Because communism more or less requires a government that is more involved in the path of the economy, politicians and bureaucrats have more power, and since they want more they get more.  ", "because some people are more equal than others. Now back to the gulag for you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China", "http://www.policymic.com/articles/7356/china-s-economy-dances-between-communism-and-capitalism"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16fko7", "title": "okay, seriously though, please, can we bring this subreddit back to its original intention?", "selftext": "I know I'm far from the first and also will be far from the last to ask this, and maybe it's been addressed elsewhere and brushed aside, but one of the things that drew me to this subreddit was the both novelty and relative effectiveness of the whole strategy of explaining answers in a format that would be understandable to a five-year old. \n\nAt this point, however, virtually no threads here feature answers that follow this idea, rendering this subreddit virtually indistinguishable from r/answers or AskReddit. \n\nI think the answers are often *right*, and worth reading if you're willing to think hard, but that right there is completely counter to the entire concept of this subreddit. I know it's sometimes hard to legitimately answer hard questions as though they're being asked by a five-year old, but can you at least *try*? When someone asks \"ELI5 why dropping a needle on vinyl produces sound\" and the answer is some long, very esoteric answer, the whole point of this subreddit is then just moot. Even if the answer's right, OP could have asked /r/answers or AskScience or some other subreddit about it. \n\nWhat I'm saying is, why should I remain subscribed to this subreddit when essentially it's become in no uncertain terms \"Explain Like I Already Took A 200-Level Class On This Very Subject I'm Asking About\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16fko7/okay_seriously_though_please_can_we_bring_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7vkawi", "c7vkcqs", "c7vkqh8", "c7vkus5", "c7vkz9b", "c7vlyea", "c7vmuxw", "c7vmyk2", "c7vn050", "c7vn5sg", "c7vnifw", "c7voemy", "c7vqsbz", "c7vrqo6", "c7vs2e3", "c7vsn3a"], "score": [110, 42, 4, 7, 20, 3, 9, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["Yeah I kind of agree with you on that one.  I hate how many times \"Explain Quantum dynamics in mathematical terms like i'm five\" and the like has been asked on this subreddit.  It's kind of become a place where people who haven't paid attention in class go to ask about, like you said, their 200-level classes.  \n\nThat being said, I kind of like that we've moved away from actually talking in baby voice (\"pretend that your toy tonka truck fell out of your crib\").  We can still use simpler language, but no one is *literally* explaining things to a five-year-old here.  If you want that, go over to /r/explainlikeIAmA \n\nWhat this subreddit was designed for, is that if you don't understand what most would consider a simple thing, like how a car works or why protein is good for you, you don't have to go to /r/cars or /r/fitness and get laughed at.  You instead get a non-judgmental, simple explanation, much like a five-year-old would asking the same question.  \n\nThat is no excuse for not searching for your question though.  there were *103 separate fucking questions* as to what the fiscal cliff was.  Not okay.  ", "It has to do with questions as well. If someone asks an in-depth question that really can't be explained in one hour with zero prior knowledge of the subject, you really can't expect the kind of answer you seem to like. In that case, it's better to provide a thorough explanation rather than leave the thread empty, in my opinion.\n\nAlso, this thread should be marked as meta.", "Oh, another one of these threads. Another person who, may be well intentioned, but is really projecting their ideals of what this subreddit *should* be based on their own notions.\n\nI don't disagree with many of your points, but I freaking *hate* these threads and these kinds of titles -- like you're the authority on what's proper to a **massive** subscriber base.", "It's because most people don't reply to satisfy the OP question but to feel smart about themselves. (as proven by this comment)", "If you want to use explanations that are truly relevant to a five year old, that's fine. However whenever these threads come up, there is always massive support for the concept of explaining to a layman instead of strictly to 'little johnny' or whatever.\n\n The point of layman explanation being that you give simple answers using simple concepts and obviously gradated based upon the level of the question being asked, eg. \"What is coffee\" vs \"ELI5 The role of ferrogeneous bacteria in acid mine drainage\" where some knowledge is blatantly preassumed. This is often necessary because to fully explain the backstory of a question in many cases could easily take 10 seperate ELI5 answers and ain't nobody got time for that. The beauty of reddit is that you can always ask for more information and in a simpler format within the thread if you don't get the answer given. CHances are you'll get it as well.\n\n Personally, I am not a big fan of 'true' ELI5 as I think too often the simplicity of the response is clouded by needless situation building to keep it 5 year oldish. When it comes up, however; I don't downvote it because there is a large portion of ELI5's userbase that does appreciate it and I can live with that.\n", "Because 'explain like I did not major in that' is too long?", "Well ewest,\n\nSometimes people set things up in a way that they have a plan for, but other people decide to use it a different way.  If the people who set it up don't like the different way, sometimes they can stop them.  But if the people who set it up don't mind if it's a different way, it can be difficult for other people to stop them.\n\nIn the example of r/explainlikeimfive, the people who set it up have said \"please, no arguments about what an \"actual five year old\" would know or ask!\" so the post and responses in this post are exactly what they don't want!\n\nIf you don't like the questions and answers in the subreddit, you can always unsubscribe.  If you think you can do a better job, it's really easy to set up your own subreddit.  Otherwise if you've not got anything nice to say, sometimes it's better to say nothing at all!", "Okay, I'll try it.\n\nYou should remain subscribed to a subreddit like this one because sometimes, this subreddit gets back to its roots in a really fun way.  While it's true that you might get a really fast answer if someone tells you how something works using big, smart-kid language, sometimes someone else can see that answer and make it sound right for a little kid.  Maybe we should make some new rules about how it's okay to post the same response as someone else, as long as you're trying to make it easier for a kid to understand.\n\nI think it's hard to explain really tough answers in a quick format, and many times, the person asking the question is asking something about a very smart subject.  Maybe we can try working with other answerers to break up big, tough answers into little pieces over many little comments.\n\nI agree that this subreddit looks and acts a little bit different from what it used to look and act like. I think if we try really hard to make sure we behave using some good rules, we can play this game in a way that makes it fun for everyone who really wants an ELI5 answer.\n\nAll right, there's my answer.  I've tried to simplify the language so that a five-year-old could understand.  If anyone thinks there's a way I can improve the meaning of that argument with simpler language, hit reply!", "I concur with your statement have an upvote peter dinklage gif", "Do you really want to read those kind of \"Well when mommy and daddy love each other very much...\" answers? I can't stand that. I understand you want less complicated answers, but the literal version of an answer for a five year old is even worse IMO.", "Disagree completely.  For the most part, I think, the majority of answers have taken a layman approach as much as possible.  I think there's a bit of a problem that's dependent of the question, though.  You can't give a layman answer to a question regarding quantum mechanics, and you can't give a layman answer to something that requires foundational knowledge to *actually understand it*.  \n\nFurthermore, I think i'm actually *annoyed* when people take the \"explaining like i'm 5\" concept too seriously.  The answer will be riddled with stupid kid sayings, and \"Little Jimmy\", and \"mommy and daddy\" bullshit.  \n\nI've been subscribed to both /r/answers and /r/eli5 for some time now.  I would say that they are, pretty different - eli5 with just better quality in general.  ELI5 has a lot more conceptual depth, as opposed to /r/answers, when the literal jist of what you're looking for is just an answer.", "When I tried to point out on a thread that neither the question or the answers couldn't be understood by a 5-year old, I was downvoted and got replies that \"my comment was not funny\".\n\nIt sure wasn't, nor it was meant to be. I'd really wish this subreddit would be what it's intended to be.", "A good mark of understanding a subject is being able to put it into such simplistic terms, or in other words, teach it. You even learn more about the subject yourself. \n\nI also subscribed to this subreddit because I love the idea that it would break down that barrier that isn't often broken. When trying to learn about things online, there are so many assumptions that you already know this and that but often that isn't the case. \n\nEven on wiki it's impossible to learn things because you'll find yourself in a never ending string of articles that you just don't understand - they all assume you know this terminology and these concepts. \n\nExplaining like they're five drops this - there is no previous knowledge but a basic understanding of English and the world around them. Thats it. I love it. But explanations like that are not as common anymore. \n\nThere seems to be a population who simply wants a more basic answer that still has a lot of the assumptions and terminology but coupled with people prepared to explain them - that's no different than several other subreddits already in existence, I agree.\n\nI really hope that more people feel like we do so that more and more answers can take this subreddit back to it's unique origins.", "When I subbed it was nice, now I have to agree with you op", "Agreed 100% on this.", "Well, it depends. If you ask a question like \"what is the maillard reaction\". There is no 5 year old answer that you can get that will be correct. \n\nIf the question requires a understanding of very intricate concepts, there needs to be an intricate explanation. \n\nHowever your point still stands."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "412zym", "title": "why do aboriginal australians have it worse of than other natives people in developed countries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/412zym/eli5why_do_aboriginal_australians_have_it_worse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyz4y8j", "cyz56o8", "cyz9j9k", "cyz9km8", "cyzb3fi", "cyzb8xu", "cyzd0gh", "cyzd4p3", "cyzetas", "cyzf9ig", "cyzifzk", "cyzjunl"], "score": [21, 57, 125, 4, 3, 10, 6, 18, 4, 2, 4, 4], "text": ["I was going to type a really long reply to this...covering a lot of the historical abuses suffered by the Aboriginal people of Australia but I honestly think it's because those in charge don't give a shit.\n\nI live in Australia but I'm English so have a different perspective on things compared to my Aussie husband and friends. They say they're against the abuse of Aboriginal people but they really just turn a blind eye.\n\nIn the remote communities where some Aboriginal people live, there are little to no provisions for them such as medical help and education is poor.\n\nAussies usually come up with an explanation such as \"Well they don't want to be helped\" or \"They don't mind living like that...\"\n\nWhen in fact, all it is is that they don't have access to the same shit that my children do....we live in a white, middle class community...the schools are good, there are plenty of hospitals and doctors. \n\nThey also seem to segregate here...I've seen medical centres specifically for Aboriginal people...in CENTRAL ADELAIDE which is a metropolitan city!\n\nThe locals say \"Well they have different needs...so they need their own place...\" as though there are no alcoholic white people here!\n\nYes, alcohol abuse is rife in Indigenous communities but that's because there is generations of abuse to get over...and that doesn't just happen over night.\n\nAs I say, I am white, English and living in a middle class suburb and I never see any Aboriginal people here. They all live in the \"poor area\" Why? Because their education is neglected\n\nEDIT. I've just looked it up...why Aboriginals need a separate health centre and I feel very ignorant. It's because many Aboriginal people have such bad memories and fear of institutions due to their being stolen from their parents and made to live in orphanages and abused, that there had to be special environments set up where Aboriginal people could feel comfortable and happy to visit. :(\n\nThe abuse is very recent...in the 1970s children were still being stolen and abused by the authorities.", "Canadian here.   Indigenous people in Canada are in the same boat.\n\nSome tribes opened casinos but other tribes in remote areas have it rough.\n\nWe make the same claims here too.\n\nThe new PM is working to make some headway...", "I don't know much about the situation in other countries, but I know a reasonable amount about the situation here, although I am a white Australian so I won't pretend to understand the full situation.\n\n\nThe biggest problem is that indigenous Australians aren't one people, there's something like 300 separate nations. While they obviously share common ground, each group has different wants and needs so rather than trying to solve one problem you're trying to solve hundreds. There are various indigenous spokespeople, but some people don't like them either because they're from a different tribe or because they feel they've been whitewashed. All in all, even just organising a proper meeting to discuss the injustice indigenous Australians face (with all stakeholders involved) is a hard task, let alone actually solving the problems.\n\n\nIn terms of actually solving the problems, a lot of indigenous people distrust whitefella institutions like hospitals and the like. Up until 1970 the government stole indigenous people from their families to be raised by white families, foster homes and the church. Since it's so recent, a decent proportion of the current indigenous population were involved in that and understandably don't want that to happen to their kids/grandkids. On a similar note, a big problem in indigenous communities is child abuse, which is normally solved by removing the child from their abusers. Obviously after the horrors of the stolen generation this is avoided wherever possible, which means the abuse continues and can propogate through generations.\n\n\nAnother big thing is that Australia is so barren that some indigenous communities are so remote that it's hard to provide support, even where it's wanted. That said, a lot (but not all) of the more remote communities are happy living the way they do and we generally let them just do their thing.\n\n\nDeath in custody is a big issue too. Obviously there's cases of police brutality and the like, but there's also a high suicide rate too. Indigenous Australians have a VERY strong connection to the land and their extended family and depriving them of that by incarcerating them causes extreme mental anguish, often driving them to end their lives.\n\n\nThose are just a few of the things that I could come up with off the top of my head. I don't pretend to fully understand the problem, but it's 2.30am in Australia. Hopefully someone who knows a bit more will reply in the morning.", "I think at the moment the problem comes from both sides. \n \nUp to the '70s the Australian government treated the aboriginals abhorrent. That has changed now. \n \nHuge amounts of money are poured into the aboriginal communities. Some laws, to right the wrongs of the past are even completely over the top. However, all this hasn't worked very well yet. There are quite a few individuals that have done great, but not the majority.\n \nPartly because aboriginals don't trust the white people anymore. Partly because they are indifferent and as long as they get handouts they don't give a f.\n       \nThere are a few aboriginals on r/Australia and they seem to know that in order to move forwards, both parties have to pick up their game. The government has to work smarter, not just throw more money at it, and the aboriginal community has to realise that they are not just victims of the past anymore but have to work towards a better future. ", "No idea about australia, but the natives (indios) of central america got it pretty rough as well\n", "Government assistance to the indigenous of Australia is often literally enough have for them to not work and still have enough to eat, a house to live in, tobacco to smoke and beer to drink on the weekends (restrictions apply).\n\nIt's harsh to say but in small towns that's all many of them do. Alcohol and drug abuse rates are high, and work rates are low. Children are often taught to do the same.\n\nI'm mainly talking about the town-camp style areas, and have only the NT as my reference. I do realize that the indigenous are normal people and am not saying anything about race, merely groups and culture.", "Fundamentally I'd argue it is because the technological gap between them and their colonizer was the widest of any of those relationships.  In, say, the American colonies the English settlers had to at least pretend to deal with the American tribes as something like equals.  The level of English technology, on the other hand, was vastly higher in 1787 (First Fleet lands in Australia) while the level of technological sophistication (and social sophistication for that matter) among the Australian aborigines was much lower than North American Indians.  It would have been impossible, for example, for the American colonists to have treated North America as terra nullius as happened in Australia.\n\nEdit: and just to add a bit, this was true even within Australia.  The Tasmanian aborigine population, for example, was the least technologically advanced of all the native populations in Australia (they had lost the ability to make stone tools, for example) and were completely wiped out.", "Australian here, my Mother was Stolen Generation.\n\nShe was taken from her family at 5, put into abusive orphanages and foster homes, denied access to her biological family for decades and treated as an outcast by many. Nobody ever truly apologized for what happened to her, her story is not unique.\n\nIndigenous Australians are the oldest surviving culture on earth, descending from those who left Africa 75,000 years ago, when they arrived Australia was lush and full of mega fauna. Over thousands of years they changed the landscape, created hundreds of languages and over 250 separate nations. \n\nThe vast majority of Aborigines died as a result of white settlement due to disease, of those remaining many were massacred, put into slavery, bred out or hired to hunt other indigenous people as trackers.\n\nIndigenous Australians today face issues arising from the denial of education, the mental health issues and substance abuse that stem from those traumatic circumstances and the racism that paints such a horribly inaccurate depiction of many Indigenous Australians. The statistics for incarceration, substance abuse and violence in the indigenous population are shameful.\n\nOther countries have schemes in place to create awareness and fix the issues that were created in less accepting times. Australia has put little effort or funding into the areas it should, education and rehabilitation. In recent years they have done the opposite, they threatened to throw many communities off their land, cut funding to many schemes to help young indigenous to create a better life for themselves and closed others schemes that were beneficial but not important enough to keep according the Abbott government.\n\nI really love my country, but I hate how little they have done to right these wrongs, they seem to put more effort into sweeping these issues under the rug than actually creating solutions to bring back quality of life for the founders of this land.", "One of my best friend, until recently, used to work very closely with Aboriginal communities. He's a Redditor so would be more than happy to do an AMA I'm sure. He's got some... interesting stories.", "there's several things and it goes both ways. One is the Indigenous communities lack of education. The Australian Government WANTS indigenous Australians to go to University, get well paying jobs, good educations and improve their conditions but many Indigenous people don't take these offers, instead preferring to live off Centrelink.\n\nSecondly, welfare is an issue. The government provides more generous welfare towards Indigenous communities which is fine, many communities are in the middle of the barren Outback and require additional assistance but there are also a significant number of Indigenous Australians who take advantage of welfare which can be seen in some of the poorer suburbs of the main cities (Melbourne, Sydney etc.) where I can see this myself, many Aboriginal people abuse substances and just bum around not doing much.\n\nThird, there was an insane amount of mistreatment given to Indigenous Australians behest of the Australian Government many decades ago (Aboriginal Australians were considered \"native fauna\" until the 1960s) which adds to tension between the Government and the Indigenous communities and also kind of puts many Indigenous Australians in a repeating circle of low-income, laziness, vagrancy etc.\n\nFourthly, Indigenous Australians do receive a lot of shit from almost everyone here (although I notice it more in non-Anglo Australians) that they're shit-kicker junkies who drink goon (cheap bagged alcohol), smash darts (smoke cigarettes), hit the sniff (sniff petrol) and steal your shit. The problem is, this isn't actually a stereotype, a lot of Indigenous Australians (\"Abos\" or \"coons\" from the racist fuckwits) live like this which leads to high suicide rates and lots of substance abuse. This all falls into that whole repeating circle of Indigenous life that I mentioned.\n\nIn America, you really wont hear white people, Hispanic people or anything refer to African Americans as \"Niggers\" to their face, nor will you hear it out loud, Indigenous Australians can and almost always do get insulted non-stop just for walking past someone, it's actually fucking insane how much shit they get. People will move away from an Indigenous person and if they try to talk to someone, they'll get called a dirty abbo and told to fuck off.\n\nReally, there's motivation behest of the Government to get the Indigenous communities off the ground and get Indigenous Australians into well paying jobs and a successful life but they staunchly refuse to help themselves and they also get an un-godly amount of shit from almost everyone. They pretty much get decent money from the government and don't have to do shit for it, it's not too hard for them to get so they usually just end up going to that.\n\nI'm afraid I might come off as a racist or someone who hates Indigenous people but that's not the case, I grew up with a lot of Indigenous people and I used to have a family sleep in my father's truck because the father of their family would kick them out of the house. He eventually sold their mattresses for drug money then they moved in with us, that's the kind of life many Indigenous children go through (in regards to substance abuse) and am actually half Aboriginal myself (one of my parents were Stolen Generation).", "I live in the suburbs about an hour South of Perth, Western Australia, unfortunately some of the seamingly racist comments are very accurate for about 80-90% of the Aboriginal population around here.\nDon't get the wrong idea, I have met a very nice Chirstian Aboriginal family, but they are very much in the minority around here.\nHell, there's actually an Aboriginal \"mafia\" who tried to break into my friends house with axes.\nThis kind of reputation can make it very difficult for people to trust Aborigines, whether that particular person is a criminal or the nicest person in the world.", "It's a tough problem, and \"why\" can't simply be answered. If you had to look at broad reasons, I'd suggest the following. I now believe (I used not to) that the way to begin to address this is a formal treaty with the Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander people. Not all Australians would agree with me.\n\nBut a successful [referendum](_URL_0_) on constitutional recognition of the original inhabitants will be a fine start, and one I think will be successful.\n\n* Erosion of cultural identity through loss of land (either it being appropriated or the people forcefully moved)\n* Linked to this is loss of spiritual identity, closely related to place\n* Forced removal leading to a loss of practical parenting skills as well as the loss of opportuntity to practice traditional parenting\n* Clear past and present discrimination, leading to social and economic marginalisation\n* Grief and anger at these lead to mental issues, alcohol abuse, violence which is handed down across the generations. Patterns of behaviour establish themselves.\n* Sexual and physical violence (including genocide) perpetrated by whites to which aboriginals were powerless to respond\n*  All leading to trouble with the law, continued disadvantage\n* A basic misunderstanding (or refusal to understand) Aboriginal culture in the past leading to destructive policies that may well have been well intentioned.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.recognise.org.au/"]]}
{"q_id": "5hfn2q", "title": "What would happen if someone fell into a Gladiator Arena during a battle?", "selftext": "Say there was a fight going on and some spectator fell into the pit of the arena, either accidentally or on purpose. \n\nWould the unfortunate victim be brought back on the stands or would he have no choice but to endure gladiatorial combat?\n\nAre there any records of spectators falling into the gladiator arena's either on purpose or accidentally?\n\nSorry if this is a silly question. Just curious. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hfn2q/what_would_happen_if_someone_fell_into_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db0ix85"], "score": [27], "text": ["I have information about the closest thing to it, which is people being thrown into the arena by a guard, ordered by the Emperor.  This is a quote I found in a paper and I chased down each reference and it's the same thing basically, the Emperor is wronged in some way by someone.  They or their loved ones are tossed into the arena as a punishment/execution.  Here's the quote.\n\n\"The blood lust of the spectators, populus and emperors alike, the brutality of the combat, and the callous deaths of men and animals still disturb modern sensibilities. Certainly, Rome was cruel. Defeated enemies and criminals forfeited any right to a place within society, although they still might be saved (servare) from the death they deserved and be made slaves (servi). Because the life of the slave was forfeit, there was no question but that it could be claimed at any time. The paterfamilias of the family had absolute control over the lives of his slaves (and little less over those of his wife and children). In the army, decimation was the consequence of cowardice. The plague was ever present, as was the capricious whim of the emperor, who might seize a spectator from the crowd and have him thrown into the arena (Suetonius, Claudius, XXIV; Caligula, XXXV; Domitian, X; Dio, LIX.10).\"\n\nPerhaps someone with more indepth knowledge knows of specific incidents, but all I found were always intentional and by a guard throwing or the emperor pushing someone into the arena.\n\n\nThe Suetonius sections can be read in detail here:\n_URL_0_\n\nDio section here:\n_URL_2_\n\nOriginal thing I found that lead me to those (not really a source):\n_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6400/6400-h/6400-h.htm", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "48rgqb", "title": "why do airline passengers have to put their seats into a full upright position for takeoff? why does it matter?", "selftext": "The seats only recline about an inch. Is it the inch that matters, or is there something else going on?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48rgqb/eli5why_do_airline_passengers_have_to_put_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0lvozb", "d0lwpet", "d0lyoio", "d0lz68x", "d0lzagj", "d0m09fx", "d0m0d2l", "d0m1d4j", "d0m1j9j", "d0m250t", "d0m2s0g", "d0m4t0i", "d0m4x7t", "d0m5hf9", "d0m5iib", "d0m630d", "d0m6abu", "d0m9u3m", "d0ma35n", "d0maszy", "d0mbacq", "d0mblw3", "d0mbpa9", "d0mczyg", "d0mebe8", "d0mfyk6", "d0mifh8", "d0mixwb", "d0mkygp", "d0mmn47", "d0mmv72", "d0mnlo3", "d0mq3go", "d0mqvoe", "d0mrcfk", "d0mrlyf", "d0mt6l7", "d0mt8hq", "d0mvyui", "d0mx4c8", "d0n2wjn", "d0n5mwa"], "score": [4799, 101, 12, 4, 12, 2, 993, 749, 3, 14, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 4, 23, 4, 15, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 17, 4, 3, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2, 13, 7, 3, 2, 4, 3, 9], "text": ["You're most likely to have some sort of accident during takeoff and landing. This is also why your tray tables have to be up and you can't have laptops during these times: ease of evacuation. If your seat is back, and something happens and the plane needs to be evacuated quickly, you just made it harder for the person behind you to get out.\n\nEdit: I've gotten this message lots of times, and as has been beautifully explained, your window thing has to be up so, in the event of an emergency, emergency personnel can see into the plane/you can see a fire, should there be one.", "Two main reasons. \n\n1. When the seat is up, it is locked. When the seat is back, it's not locked. In the event of an emergency, an unlocked seat has more force during impact, and the thrusting forward of that seat can cause passenger injury\n\n2. It gives passengers more space to clear the aisles (in case of emergency) which is required by FAA regulations.\n\n", "Crash loads for airplanes are mostly down, unlike in a car where they are mostly forward.  In a hard landing you don't want to be leaning back because the backrest could collapse under your weight and trap the person behind you.", "Aside from what others have said, it's also so rescuers can see passengers in the windows (One of the reasons they also ask for all curtains to be drawn)", "You know that crash position they show you on the safety card? It's harder to get into that position if the seat in front of you is reclined. It's also harder to get out, or rescuers to get in. Also, imagine your face smashing into the seat in front of you. Would you rather it were reclined?", "Follow up question: why do we need to pull up the window covers during lift off or landing?", "Most of the answers are in the right direction but ultimately incorrect here. All the seats are tested for a very specific set of conditions, including seat up and table in the upright position. The seats pass or fail based on how much bodily damage they do, so adding more things that increase bodily damage, such as being farther away from hitting the seat in front of you or having a tray table down or a bag in your lap, cause you to make the test conditions not applicable anymore and cause a dramatic decrease in the survivability of a crash situation. \n\nAnd yes, the test conditions are only applicable in the times of flight that are most likely to crash, taxi, takeoff, turbulence and landing. In those situations, you prepare for crash situations by removing all items blocking emergency exit, put your seat in the tested position and fasten your seatbelt. \n\nSource: I do this testing for a living. ", "Aerospace Seat Engineer here...The reason passengers are asked to put their seats upright or in the TTOL (Taxi, Take Off and Landing) position is because the seat has been engineered, tested (dynamic and static) and certified in this position and only in this position. TTOL is the most structurally sound position the seat can offer in the advent of an emergency.  A few degrees off of the TTOL position can greatly affect effectiveness of seat safety devices.", "It's almost irrelevant anymore because reclining your seat back on a coach flight is the social equivalent of flex-farting in a church.  It's punishable by being systematically beaten by everyone in the last 2 rows.  And you know how pissed off those people are.", "There are two main reasons why flight attendants pester people to keep those seats up\u2014to keep injuries to a minimum during a crash and to clear the maximum amount of space for a quick exit.\n\n\nRead more: _URL_0_", "Why are passengers allowed to put their seats down during flight?", "I'm an aircraft seat engineer.  The seats are tested to keep you safe during a plane crash, which is more likely during taxi, take-off, and landing.  When the seat is tested and approved by the FAA, the test dummy in the seat measures the impact on your head as it hits the seat in front of you (or anything else).  Not keeping your seat upright or your tray table stowed could result in head injury to yourself and the passenger behind you higher than tested and approved by the FAA.  In other words, you could very well die and kill the passenger behind you by not having your seat upright.", "This is my job! I smash test dummies into seats for a living, to make sure they're safe. The regulations only require us to do this in the upright position, because it would drive more (expensive) testing and be much harder to desing seats if we had to qualify seats that were reclined as well.\n\nWhether or not the seat is reclined would have a huge effect on how the test dummy (or you) strike the seat forward of you.", "Google what happened in souix city Iowa in the 80's. The folks that lived where found scattered about the runway still strapped in to their seats.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWarning, some of that video maybe hard to watch. ", "Lights dimmed, blinds open, seats up and trays stowed are normal for take off and landing. Lights so your eyes are adjusted ready to evacuate in a dark cabin. Blinds so emergency response can see in before cutting fuselage. Seats and trays have been covered already", "It's an insurance liability. If they didn't tell you that they did not do \"everything within reason\" to ensure your safety. It might not matter 99.9% of the time but 0.1% will sue the living shit out of you.", "Safety reasons aside, it's also because they need all the seats upright for the next flight, which usually only has a 20 minute window for cleaning crews (like, one person) to work the plane.  If they had to deal with all the reclined seats in addition to the slop trail you filthy beasts leave behind, why there would be a ten minute departure delay that could only be avoided with some stupid boarding algorithm that solves a problem you didn't actually have.", "Yes, that single inch throws off the planes steep climb inclinometer, multiplied by 200+ passengers, all leaning in the wrong direction, this inclinometer will inadvertently send the plane into a back flip just as its taking off at the end of the runway and the nose is up and catching head winds.  So next time you think it's cool to bust out your sickest pimp lean, please remember, you're also about to do a dope ass back flip.", "As a flight attendant, I can tell you that it's all about evacuation. In the event of an emergency, the goal is to evacuate an entire plane, regardless of size, within 90 seconds. Ensuring the seatbacks are upright, and the aisle paths at your feet are clear, gives the most room possible for people to make a quick escape. Not all seats recline the same amount, so the upright rule allows for consistency in procedure. ", "They wouldn't want people to be comfortable when the plane crashes upon takeoff/landing due to someone not putting their phone into airplane mode.", "The reason is that you have to do crash tests on the seats and they are done with the seatbacks up. To qualify another position you would have to do another crash test. The tests are expensive and time consuming. The tray table is because you can whip forward and hit your head on the tray\n\nSource: designed passenger aircraft seats for several years", "It helps you survive a plane crash and explosion. It also helps if you have your lucky snorkel.", "i'm 6'4\".  that 1\" is a lot.  keep your seats upright at all times, even during flight!\n\ni don't even know why they recline...", "One time my seat back could be moved forward more than the others, so when the flight attendant came around they thought that the other 2 people had their seat backs reclined. XD", "Given that seats only recline about an inch, why do people get so amped when the person in front of them reclines?  I fly rather frequently, and I don't particularly care if the person in front reclines, but it seems to be a rather common gripe if the internet is to be believed.  Overhead bin hogs on the other hand...", "Actually, the reason for this us pretty interesting. Sitting upright shifts the centre balance point if the plane slightly forward making it easier to take off and therefore saving fuel. Planes can take off with people reclined but it makes for a more uneven takeoff, increases drag and turbulence and wastes fuel. Source: airline pilot for 35 years", "So the person behind you doesn't smash their teeth in on your seat?", "If you have a mass fatality accident, it's usually during takeoff or landing, and the cause of death is fire sweeping through the cabin.\n\nThe fuel tanks are designed to survive 5 minutes after impact, and the cabins are incredibly fire-resistant. That means you have 5 minutes to GTFO the plane in the event of a survivable crash. (Most crashes are survivable; on average, on planes that have fatal accidents i.e. one or more passengers die, 60% of passengers survive the accident).\n\nAnything that slows evacuation is a BAD THING when you have 5 minutes to get out and after that anyone that hasn't evacuated is dead.\n\nThe other factor is that seats are tested to survive at least 9 g-forces (EASA - the European authority - approved seats) or 16 (FAA - the American authority requirements). But they are tested in an upright position, and their crash resistance is not tested in other positions.", " > Is it the inch that matters, or is there something else going on?  \n\nThat's what she said. ", "I have been binge watching Air Disasters (Season 2, though Season One was equally terrifying). From now on, anything they tell me to do, I'm doing it. The amount of little shit that can go wrong and cost lives is overwhelming.", "At an airshow once years ago I boarded a plane, maybe a 737, I can't remember...it was a medical transport plane and all seats faced BACKWARD.    That makes more sense than anything and is the safest possible scenario.   All airplanes would come with backward facing seats if safety was indeed the top priority.   Safety is a very high priority but not enough to inconvenient passengers and ask them to sit facing the rear.  ", "You should have your Tray Table Up, And Your Seatback In It's Full Upright Position to allow everyone best access out of the Isle in the event of an evacuation. ", "Related:  ELI5 why it is so hard for people to listen to the stewards and put their bags into the overhead bin wheels first?  Like, hey, fuckbag, if you put it in sideways you inconvenience everyone else that wants to use that bin. Ugh. ", "I am somewhat sceptical of airline regulations, but this one makes sense. Some others don't. Ie, no radio receivers as they might interfere with the plane electronics, absolutely impossible. Source, work in the radio field. ", "Late to the party here, but the FAA has strict regulations (FAR's) that airlines must follow. FAR [121.577](_URL_1_) and [FAR 121.311](_URL_0_) outline the requirements for tray tables and seat positions. One of the many reasons for these regulations is safety. The airline is designed to be just as safe as it needs to be. Center of gravity shifts at points like takeoff and landing could kill everyone on board if the shift is extreme enough. These shifts could be caused by a collective tipping back of every chair on board. The tray table, I would imagine, is simply to prevent impact damage to a passenger during a sudden stop at takeoff or landing.\n\nSource:I'm an Aerospace Engineer", "Your seats need to be upright so the people behind you have unimpeded access to exit their rows in the event of an emergency. I know it's not much space, but it can be if one seat sticks out further than the others.\n\nThe tray table must be up for the same reason, and so it doesn't cut you in half in the event of a sudden stop.\n\nThe windows are sometimes required to be up so the F/A can see if there's smoke. Visibility. Usually only regional carriers require this, and then only a few.\n\nPro-tip: Unless you're sleeping on an overnight international flight, there's no need to recline your seat. Just don't.", "The Economist wrote a truthful in-flight announcement back in 2006. As your interested in this stuff, here: _URL_0_", "Essentially it will boil down to being the the best position for bracing yourself and having high accessibility from all seats to the corridor or the outside in the case of sudden interaction with the ground. \n\nBut also this request also makes the aircraft look uniform and inconsistencies are easier to spot and makes the aircraft look better after cleaning too, just removes a tedious task for the hosties.  ", "After being on a plane that had to slam on its brakes going 200 mph on the runway, I get it. ", "It's so the person behind you, in case of an emergency, can put their heads between their knees with their hands over their heads easier. Also, evacuating is easier when the seats are upright and people have free movement. ", "FAA regulations only require that aircraft and seat manufacturers analyze, test and certify their seats in the \"Taxi, Takeoff, and Landing\" (TTL) position. Therefore, occupant safety during an accident has been demonstrated by the manufacturer only ejected the seat is in the TTL position, which is most commonly fully upright with tray tables, headrests, video monitors and other equipment in the stowed position. To minimize cost, manufactures choose to use this TTL position most commonly. But it is possible to define a reclined position or even a bed mode ( in first class) as the takeoff position, but it requires that position be demonstrated to meet the occupant safety requirements. ", "**Why do you need to put your seat in the upright position and stow that footrest?\n**\nBecause in cattleclass, a reclined seat infront of you is going to slow you down from evacuating, and seats are also tested in the upright position (which is why First Class Passengers have to do it too). A reclined seat also makes it difficult for the person behind to get into the brace position.\n\nFootrests? Well those things will take your ankle clean off during a crash. \n\nBonus answers:\n\n**Why do you stow your personal belongings?**\nBecause they become missiles if the plane crashes or hits extreme turbulence.\n\n**Why do they dim the lights when landing/taking-off at night?**\nBecause if something goes wrong and you need to evacuate, your eyes do not have to re-adjust to the outside light.\n\n**Why do they open the windows before landing/taking-off?**\nBecause the crew need to be able to ascertain quickly if there is a fire outside, and on which side, and also emergency crews need to be able to see inside.\n\nSource: I fly A320s."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.airspacemag.com/need-to-know/why-do-airline-seats-have-to-be-in-an-upright-position-during-takeoff-21418903/"], [], [], [], ["https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhSoyUWDmt0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/2CE6D9B34E1C56578625708A00720A50?OpenDocument", "http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/37E923B0EBC0FFA8852566EF006DA60A?OpenDocument"], [], ["http://www.economist.com/node/7884654"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9dlnoe", "title": "The movie 'Apocalypse Now' mentions socialist weapons manufacturing workers in France intentionally sabotaging ordinance as an act of solidarity towards the socialist North during the Vietnam war. Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "I'm talking about the scene when the main protagonist comes across a small French colony in the heart of the jungle and the host at the dinner table is recounting his experiences of the Vietnam war.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9dlnoe/the_movie_apocalypse_now_mentions_socialist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5ihr1o"], "score": [42], "text": ["I wrote something on the French perception of the Indochina war (to call it the \"First Vietnam War\" is not common in French historiography, and could be said inaccurate as a lot of fighting was in places where the ethnic Vietnamese are a minority) [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThere was a relative indifference of the French population to this conflict, but the French Communist Party (PCF) and left-wing movements and intellectuals were quite involved in antiwar activism. To quote the 1952 op-ed of the March 6th, 1952 communist newspaper *l'Humanit\u00e9* : *\"F\u00e9licitations au succ\u00e8s du Vietminh. Nous sommes de c\u0153ur avec lui. Nous envoyons aux troupes du Vietminh notre fraternel salut et notre t\u00e9moignage de solidarit\u00e9 agissante.\"* (Congratulations to the Vietminh success. We are with all our heart with them. We send to Vietminh troops our brotherly regards and tokens of acting solidarity). Sabotage was not unheard of in communist trade unions (remember that we are only a few years after the R\u00e9sistance developped an entire art form of sabotage) : an example during the hard social conflict of 1947 (mostly unrelated with the war in Indochina) is the sabotage of the railway between Paris and Lille (which led to a train accident and 16 dead) : you can see  [here](_URL_1_) a very interesting newscast of the time. Later on, during the Algerian events, there would be a famous group of left wing French anticolonial militants that would engage in actively helping the FLN (called *porteurs de valise*, most famously with the *R\u00e9seau Janson*, defended in their trial by a renowned left-wing lawyer, R. Dumas).\n\nThere were strong rumors of sabotage among the troops, who deeply resented this : to quote an example, in the memories of Jacques Jauffret (a veteran of the 1er REC in Indochina in 1953-1955), titled *Crabes et Alligators dans les Rizi\u00e8res* :\n\n*\"A mon arriv\u00e9e en Indochine, en f\u00e9vrier 1953, mes camarades me mettent tout de suite au courant : il faut v\u00e9rifier tout le mat\u00e9riel venant de France: des ouvriers politis\u00e9s de nos usines d'armement ont pris l'habitude de saboter les armes et des munitions destin\u00e9es aux combats contre des communistes, nos adversaires en Extr\u00eame-Orient.[...] Nous sommes d'autant plus furieux que le mat\u00e9riel am\u00e9ricain nous parvient dans un parfait \u00e9tat. Il nous arrivait m\u00eame souvent de d\u00e9couvrir dans une culasse de canon de char, une cartouche de cigarettes Chesterfield, plac\u00e9e l\u00e0, \u00e0 notre intention par les ouvriers des usines de Milwaukee. \"*\n\nWhen I landed in Indochina, in Feb. 1953, my comrades put me in the know : one must check any ordnance or equipment coming from France : politically-minded workers in armaments factories took the habit to sabotage weapons and ammunitions to be sent to fight communists, such as in the Far East.[...] We are all the more furious that american supplies always come in impeccable condition. We even sometimes found in a tank cannon a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes left there for us by the Milwaukee workers\".\n\nSuch sabotages and their intentional nature (could also have been that the French postwar industry was lacking in quality) have been accredited in historical literature^1 yet both remain a matter of debate in France (the topic is obviously politically laden). \n\nIn any case, the scene in Apocalypse Now is definitely realistic and the result of sound historical research as it depicts the resentment towards the Metropolitan French Left-Wing such colonist hold-outs would have felt, and the idea of sabotage would have been a rumor frequent in former veteran circles.\n\n----------\n\n^1 : Pass\u00e9s \u00e0 l'ennemi. Des Rangs de l'Arm\u00e9e Fran\u00e7aise aux Maquis Vi\u00eat-Minh 1945-1954, Adila Bennedja\u00ef-Zou, Joseph Confavreux, Tallandier\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/98osk6/do_the_french_regret_the_vietnam_war_as_much_as/e4ig609/", "https://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu01014/deraillement-d-un-train-a-arras-suite-au-mouvement-de-contestation-de-l-automne-1947.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1akeoy", "title": "I've heard it mentioned in non-academic contexts, that the Roman Empire didn't die, it just became the Church.", "selftext": "I'm wondering if there's any truth to that saying.  Excuse my extra comma in the title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1akeoy/ive_heard_it_mentioned_in_nonacademic_contexts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ya05v", "c8yaxgm", "c8ye3ey", "c8yfnwp", "c8yhrtk"], "score": [60, 40, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, from one way of looking at it that is correct, but from another, perhaps more accurate way, that is not correct.\n\nI would argue that this thought comes from two different streams in scholarship: one is that the \"fall\" of Rome was really just a transition, and the other is looking at the Church as a source of continuity and unity. I think the first point has some validity to it but is *far* overstated, and can't comment on the second. But arguing that the Roman Empire didn't die because of the church has a certain degree of perversity to it. The empire was *much* more than just a church.", "The Church did provide some degree of continuity in several ways.\n\nFirst of all, the Pope had, for a long time, temporal authority over the city of Rome and Latium, the old center of imperial power. \n\nSecond of all, the church provided a universal source of authority for western European political institutions just as the Emperor had being in the past. Just as the emperor once appointed governors, the kings of Europe nominally derive their power from god, and the pope is the representative of god on earth. Obviously the nominal position of the pope vice-verse temporal monarchs was heavily contested but the idea is there.\n\nThird, the Church retained some of the old Roman administrative divisions in the west, the Catholic Church diocese were based on divisions made in Diocletian's time. It served as one of the strongest (maybe the only) continual institution from Roman times because Barbarian kings converted to Christianity and thus helped to preserve it. Churchmen also served in scholarly/bureaucratic functions for the rulers of their lands and thus a continuation of the old imperial bureaucracy.\n\nI wouldn't say that the Roman Empire -became- the church, but the Church was definitely a State institution of the late Empire and definitely the one which survived the most intact after 476 and thus provided one of the strongest lines of continuity to the empire.", "The Roman Empire didn't die, it just became the Byzantine Empire.", "I think this saying greatly exaggerates the authority of the pope. I'm not saying that he wasn't extremely powerful, but he rarely wielded the kind of direct authority you would associate with the emperor. Even a strong pope like Innocent III (pope around 1200 CE) had little control over the armies that supposedly fought in his name or even over his own legates, as his failed attempt to prevent the sack of Zara showed. \n\nThe old networks of the Roman Empire helped the Church establish itself, but it didn't wield anywhere near the same level of control. ", "The Pope did never command the legions. That is a pretty big difference.\n\nWell, the Papal States did have an army until the unification of Italy in 1860/1871, but it was a small, local thing.\n\nThe Pope did have a lot of authority (depending on the period) over the Christian kingdoms, but that is quite different from the authority of the roman emperors to send direct orders to the governors of the provinces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4v6glf", "title": "Why doesn't Oxygen react with the Iron in stainless steel?", "selftext": "I took AP Chemistry this past school year and being the nerd that I am, this question came to mind while staring at a pot. I know stainless steel is both an interstitial alloy and substitutional alloy with Iron, Chromium, and Carbon. When explaining alloys, many books say that stainless steel doesn't rust because the Chromium in the material reacts with the Oxygen creating a protective layer of Chromium Oxide on the surface of the material. \n\nSo I guess my real question is, \"Why doesn't the Oxygen in the air also react with the Iron on the surface of the stainless steel along with Chromium.\" Is it simply because Chromium has a higher electron affinity?\n\nThanks for all helpful replies!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4v6glf/why_doesnt_oxygen_react_with_the_iron_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5vxs38", "d5wafil"], "score": [15, 3], "text": ["\"The presence of the stable film prevents additional corrosion by acting as a barrier that limits oxygen and water access to the underlying metal surface. Because the film forms so readily and tightly, even only a few atomic layers reduce the rate of corrosion to very low levels. The fact that the film is much thinner than the wavelength of light makes it difficult to see without the aid of modern instruments. Thus, although the steel is corroded on the atomic level, it appears stainless. \"\n\n_URL_0_", "Bear in mind the term stainless steal is a bit of a catch all referring to many different metals.  The short answer is that it does interact but at a very slow rate.  When treating stainless steal you create a very stable oxide layer that keeps oxygen corrosion rates to bare minimum.  However under certain conditions stainless steal can become extremely susceptible to corrosion.  Cheep stainless steal tends to rust for two reasons.  The first is chloride based corrosions.  Seawater will eat through stainless steal under certain conditions relatively rapidly.  The second is pH induced effects on the solubility of the oxide layer.  At high pHs and  low pHs the oxide layer no longer provides that reduced corrosion rate.  However all metals are essentially going to corrode under these very specific conditions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-doesnt-stainless-stee/"], []]}
{"q_id": "6m4rr9", "title": "During a siege, what happened to the farms and the farmers outside the walls?", "selftext": "Were the people outside the walls be given refuge? Would a town or castle be able to support them? If not were they raped and killed? Was the farmlands destroyed to leave the people starving next year? If so was this used as a threat to get a surrender?\n\nIf I must pick a setting, I suppose the hundred years war since it saw sieges on towns and castles. But I would also like to hear from other points in history too.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6m4rr9/during_a_siege_what_happened_to_the_farms_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djzumgw"], "score": [23], "text": ["The country and people surrounding a fortified centre were just as much a target as the fortification itself. The answer to all your questions is \"yes\".\n\nI'm sorry to say I can't talk in depth about the Hundred Years' War, so you'll have to make do with an answer about Classical Greece. In the context of that period (as in many others), the main thing to bear in mind is that sieges are extremely difficult and expensive operations. In order to assault a fortified position or town, troops and engines have to be deployed against the enemy's best efforts to fend them off, and many men are likely to die. In order to starve out the defenders, a full encirclement of a fortified centre has to be maintained for months or even years. Neither of these things were easy to achieve, especially in an era or relatively small armies drafted from ordinary people who had no military training and who had their own farms and workshops to get back to. For the attackers, unless their army consisted of leisure-class men or mercenaries, a long siege was impossible and a siege assault wasteful and all too often pointless. For the defenders, hiding behind strong walls with a big food supply seems like a pretty safe option; it will be all but impossible for the enemy to hurt you.\n\nSo how do you hurt an enemy whose fortress you can't break, and who refuses to come out and fight? Simple: you attack the things they can't protect. Farms, fields, and agricultural infrastructure (irrigation canals, mills, oil presses) are excellent targets for destruction. Flocks can be led away; crops can be trampled; trees can be cut down; farmhouses burned, wells spoiled, etc. etc. Anything that can be carried can be stolen. In addition, it was normal Greek practice for war captives to be killed or sold into slavery.\n\nThis form of warfare had several advantages. First, it could be presented as a sufficient goal in itself; since major urban centres were rarely captured in Classical Greece, the mere opportunity to ravage a significant part of the enemy's land was considered a worthy achievement for a campaign season. The enemy had been hurt and humiliated, and their property had been reduced, to the enrichment of the invader. We are told that Thebes benefited particularly from the Spartan devastation of the Athenian countryside in the Peloponnesian War, since the Spartans went to Thebes to sell all the loot:\n\n >  They bought up the slaves and the rest of the stuff captured in the war for a low price, and, since they lived nearby, they carried home all the equipment from Attika, [starting with the woodwork and the rooftiles of the houses](_URL_0_).\n\n-- *Hellenika Oxyrhynchia* 17.4\n\nSecond, it could destroy an enemy's harvest for the year, which could have devastating consequences in a subsistence economy. There are several examples of Greek states brought to their knees by just 2 consecutive years of crop devastation. An army had to be quite large and stay in the field quite long to achieve a sufficient level of damage, but the chance to win the war without any real fighting was always worth the effort. Even a state as large and powerful as Athens was not expected to be able to survive the systematic devastation of its countryside:\n\n >  At the beginning of the war, some thought the Athenians might hold out one year, some two, but none more than three, if the Peloponnesians invaded their country.\n\n-- Thucydides 7.28.3\n\nAdmittedly, ever since the publication of V.D. Hanson's *Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece* (1983), the question of crop devastation has been controversial. Hanson argued that it was not possible for Greek armies to do significant damage to vines or to cut down olive trees with the tools they had to hand, or to effectively set fire to grain crops (except for a very small window of time just before the harvest). As a result, ravaging and devastation must have been more symbolic than actual. The source I've just cited seems to disagree, and there are several others, but it should probably be understood that the ravaging of the countryside was often much less severe, less all-encompassing and less permanent than our sources would lead us to believe. \n\nAccording to Hanson, the *real* reason for the ravaging done by Greek armies was its third major advantage: it might provoke the enemy to battle. This would allow the attacker to avoid the ordeals of assault or siege, and deny the defender the advantage of a strong fortified position. It might seem foolish for a defender to leave his walls and towers to go fight the enemy in the open, but the frustration and anxiety of a farming population forced to watch as its land is destroyed cannot be underestimated. In his account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides gives us a taste of the mood at Athens:\n\n >  When they saw the Spartan army at Acharnai, barely seven miles from Athens, they lost all patience. The territory of Athens was being ravaged before the very eyes of the Athenians, a sight which the young men had never seen before and the old only in the Persian Wars; and it was naturally thought a grievous insult, and the determination was universal, especially among the young men, to sally forth and stop it. Knots were formed in the streets and engaged in hot discussion; for if the proposed sally was warmly recommended, it was also in some cases opposed. Oracles of the most various import were recited by the collectors, and found eager listeners in one or other of the disputants. Foremost in pressing for the sally were the Acharnians, as constituting no small part of the army of the state, and as it was their land that was being ravaged.\n\n-- Thucydides 2.21.2-3\n\nThis passage also answers your first question. The population of farms and villages outside of the main urban centre would generally seek refuge within the walls. Greek cities tended to have very large walled circuits, often encompassing not just the built-up centre, but also various sacred and public spaces, as well as some farmland; in the event of a siege, much of the open area within the walls would be covered in temporary housing as farmers and their families and slaves sought to weather the storm. The source I cited above on Thebes during the Peloponnesian War is very explicit about this:\n\n >  When the Athenians began to move against Boiotia, those who lived in Eurythrai, Skaphai, Skolos, Aulis, Schoinos, Potniai and many other such unwalled places were gathered into Thebes, doubling its size.\n\n-- *Hellenika Oxyrhynchia* 17.3\n\nIf there was a proper siege, this would obviously put enormous pressure on available food supplies. The Athenian example shows that it also caused tension within the city, because the interests and preferred policy of those from the countryside didn't always align with those from the city. However, fundamentally, this is why walled centres existed in the first place. Sometimes those who lived too far from the main city would gather into local forts and fortified places, which was also often where flocks of sheep and goats would be kept from the invaders."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vOArr1dXU"]]}
{"q_id": "5m9asi", "title": "how come when you're sick you can blow your nose and they'll be completely empty and 5 minutes later they're full and dripping. how does mucus generate so quickly and where is it even made.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m9asi/eli5_how_come_when_youre_sick_you_can_blow_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc1u0av", "dc1ybl1", "dc23eut", "dc279b3", "dc2b2zc", "dc2betn", "dc2bg6f", "dc2c9si", "dc2cg70", "dc2d1bt", "dc2e0lm", "dc2eafz", "dc2ectv", "dc2epct", "dc2f503", "dc2fdp8", "dc2fort", "dc2g7z1", "dc2g9ef", "dc2ga88", "dc2ignm", "dc2n6c5", "dc2xbfr"], "score": [5029, 172, 3139, 17, 2, 3, 6, 157, 12, 13, 3, 39, 2, 2, 2, 6, 4, 2, 4, 2, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["The mucus comes directly from the surface of your nose, called a mucous membrane because it produces mucus to protect itself and as lubrication. This mucus is a combination of long, stringy proteins and water, which allows it to stick to most surfaces.\n\nWe produce a ton of it while we have upper respiratory tract infections like the common cold because our immune systems are trying to isolate the virus causing the infection and prevent more from getting in. This measure isn't actually that effective, as  it only slows down viruses and bacteria can swim right through it, but we do it anyway. Allergies do the same thing because they are an attempt by the immune system to attack something that isn't actually a disease, like pollen. We are less clear on why allergies happen, but some hypothesize that they occur due to infants and children living in environments that are far too clean. Their immune systems don't have anything to fight, so they start fighting random things instead. ", "^(i think part of your confusion is that you may not fully know the anatomy of the nasal cavity. the nasal cavity has a large surface area which aids in its function of moistening and warming air you inhale. mucus is also produced here by goblet cells which are interspersed amongst the nasal epithelium.) [^(here's a picture of the nasal cavity which might give you perspective on how large of a surface it is in there.)](_URL_0_)", "Some of the immediate fullness you feel is not mucus instantly generating, but your sinuses swelling back up and blocking the nasal passages.\n\nSee, your sinuses are inflamed when you're sick.  When you blow your nose, you kind of flex them as well so they get a bit narrower to let stuff out.  Then when you're done blowing/flexing those muscles, they swell back up.\n\nThat's why you can repeatedly blow your nose, have just a little bit come out, but still feel like you need to blow again.", "Follow up question: if this is a result of narrowing and expanding nasal passages, and certain people have more narrow sinuses so they need surgery, what is the evolutionary advantage of this? How did so many people (like myself) end up with chronic stuffiness and swollen sinuses? How would that be evolutionary advantageous?", "At the tiniest levels cellular messengers causes surrounding tissues that make up the nasopharyngeal openings aka sinuses to become inflamed. Once that happens the body naturally does its best to halt/slow down progression of any bacteria or viruses by producing more phlegm from epithelial goblet cells than usual. This is why when you are sick, your mucus is colored rather than being white or clear. Normally mucus production is stable to keep the membranes in our nasal cavities and airways moist and protected but when we get sick the cells that are responsible for mucus production is more responsive. ", "Related question: When I have a stuffy nose I end up usually taking over the counter nasal spray like Afrin, which works, but doesn't last very long.  Is there anything I can use that is just as (or more) effective?", "In addition to what u/frommerman said, there are also these kind of balloon things in the back of your nostrils called turbinates, which normally warm and moisturize the air you suck in through your nose. That feeling that your nose is stuffed and you can only breath out of one nostril? That's not so much mucus as it is these turbinates swelling up, blocking the passage of your nostrils.", "Not sure if posting this too late but I had some follow up questions. I never really seem to breathe out of both of my nostrils. One seems to always have a swollen nodule and it is usually my left notril. Sometimes throughout the day they will switch sides. I am wondering if it is a common occurrence.       \n\nSecond to that is I always have what I am guessing is post nasal drip. Throughout the day I have to cough to clear my throat of mucus and to me it seems totally gross. People think I am sneezing. When I first wake up in the morning I have to cough quite violently because I will have a small dried gobbet stuck to the back of my throat and it will take quite a while to get cleared up. Sometimes I give myself a sore throat because of it. It is always dark brown or green  in color and maybe about 2 cm in length. Doctor put me on some anti-histamines last month but they didn't do a thing. \n\nI figured it had something to do with being a smoker but I quit smoking cigarettes in 2013 and still have the issue. Then again I do vape. Been having this problem now for maybe 13 years now. \n\nEdit: Thank you so much for the feedback guys. Suppose I will be asking to be referred to an ENT soon about the drip.  ", "To answer the where it is produced part, the lining of the respiratory tract is made mostly of a type of epithelia (classification of cells) called pseudostratified ciliated columnar epithelium. The mucous is produced by goblet cells which are part of the epithelium. The cilia are tiny hair like projections that face the cavity or whatever they are lining and sweep the mucous around, usually toward an exit such as the nose or throat. The mucous serves to trap dust, debris and germs which would otherwise enter our respiratory system and cause infection. ", "Mucus is water plus a protein called mucosin. You only need to add a small amount of mucosin to a lot of water to make a lot mucus.  \n  \nIt's like gelatin you only need to add a teaspoon to a lot of water and it turns into jelly.", "Can I add a follow up question? (Or perhaps 2 if you wanna be picky) Why, sometimes, does only one nostril feel stuffy or drippy and the other one is totally clear? ", "Your body is responding to a stimulus - \"I am sick/foreign bodies detected\". \n\nIt then goes into security mode. \n\nSHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. \n\nWhile your skin does a great job at keeping most everything out, you obviously have openings all over. Your nose is one such place, but unlike your ears or mouth, it cannot be closed off/is closed off already (you have to breath). \n\nSo our mucus membrane produces mucus. It does this already, and just like your ear wax its job is to keep foreign stuff out of your body (for the most part). \n\nWhen you get sick, your body doesn't want any more bad things getting in because it's already fighting one thing. This is when you are arguably at your weakest. So it produces extra mucus to keep the entrance stopped up. \n\nUnfortunately your body has no way of knowing just how far to take its defense. It is an all or nothing response. So even if it is a virus you will be over in a day, or simple pollen in the air, it turns things up to 11 and \n\nSHUTS. DOWN. EVERYTHING. \n\nBut to be honest, I'd rather go hard on something than take that chance. \n\nThen again, that's how things like auto-immune diseases pop up. ", "Congested noses aren't actually (entirely) from snot - they're from swollen sinuses. Blowing your nose is like pressing on swolen skin - the blood will be squeezed out into the rest of your veins, but eventually they'll get swolen with blood again in about under a minute.", "I work with GI pathogens so I can't claim to be an expert in respiratory infections. In GI infections the body upregulates processes to poop. It hopes to flush out the bacteria or at least reduce the burden to a manageable level. Salmonella take advantage of this as a way to shed the host and hopefully make it to a new host. Sometimes salmonella will actively promote these processes as well. Bacteria and viruses must also take advantage of processes like this in the respiratory system. It sounds reasonable for mucous to produce as a way to drain the body of the intruder and at the same time this provides an excellent route of escape. For example if you have the flu then the more times you blow your nose the more chances the virus has to get on your hands or out in the air and spread. ", "Is it worse to swallow the mucus? I have allergies and always need to blow my nose, the mucus never seems to go away.... ", "One more thing that I haven't seen in the comments... excess tears drain into the nasal cavity... so if you're having trouble putting your contact lenses in and your eyes water a lot, you'll want to blow your nose.\n\nSo I guess if you're sick and you're eyes are watering, that contributes a lot to your runny nose.", "Hey maybe someone can help me here. It has now been 8 years straight of steady mucus drip down the back of my throat. It is very literally never not there. At all times. I'm now 33, started at 25. What could be causing this? Can I do anything to stop it? I've kind of taken it as 'this is my life now' but it'd be nice to get rid of.", "Sort of a follow-up for any docs in the audience. \n\nFrom what I understand, a virus like the common cold enters through your nose (usually) and progresses into your lungs from there. This results in mucus production. And if you're producing mucus and sleeping on your back, you get post-nasal drip, which sucks ass. \n\nSo when I'm coming down with a cold, I always ensure that I sleep on my sides. This definitely helps with the post-nasal drip, but my question is whether it prevents the virus from progressing into the lungs. If I let my body produce mucus to trap the virus, and I don't let that mucus drip into the back of my throat, does that improve my recovery from the virus? It *seems* like my colds have gotten less severe since I instituted this policy, but maybe that's just because removing the misery of post-nasal drip is enough to make a cold more bearable. ", "A lot of people are answering how, but here's why.  Your mucus acts for two reasons.  It acts as a protective barrier against some germs and helps to expel things already trapped.  So while your mucus can generate very quickly, it adjusts the pace to keep the nose at an uncomfortable level without overfilling it.  \n\nThe same property as ferrets; their sent is intentionally maintained, so when bathed too frequently, their glands overporduce and lead to more intense sent than would be typically present.", "Are you able to have any surgeries that will sear your sinuses shut so they won't produce as much? Because that would be awesome.", "There is a lot of misinformation and poor terminology going around.\n\nThe sinuses are really just voids in your bones, and typically do not change significantly in size. They don't produce most of the mucus that comes out when you blow your nose. The sinus *tissues* (their lining) can become inflamed and sensitive, perhaps due to infection, not suprising since they are dark, moist, and flesh-lined structures deep in your body, perfect so microorganisms can thrive. Making things worse, most of the sinuses have only small 'openings' to the rest of the nasal cavity.\n\nIt is actually the turbinate structures and their tissues which people are describing as 'expanding' (swelling) and 'blocking the nose'. These structures and other surfaces in the nasal cavity produce most of the mucus that comes out.\n\n_URL_0_", "I was going to ask this myself recently! Another question: Why is it that congestion can switch sides so quickly? One minute my left nostril is completely stopped up with no air passing through. Then it'll switch and my right will be closed. How's that happen?", "Your body always makes 1-1.5 Liters of mucus per day.  Typically this mucus is thin and drains down to your stomach with little effect.  When you get sick, the body sends lots of white blood cells to your mucus membrane, thickening the mucus and changing its color.\n\nWhen the tissue swells with white blood cells and your mucus thickens, it cannot all drain backwards, so it starts coming out of the front.\n\nsource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://bmb757.bsproject.eu/uploads/userfiles/doc/bombet_html_aa5af45.gif"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com.au/search?q=turbinate"], [], ["http://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/the-truth-about-mucus#1"]]}
{"q_id": "4lncwn", "title": "how can scientists say that if global temperatures rise even 1\u00b0, disasters will happen, even though temperatures can differ more then 1\u00b0 from day to day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lncwn/eli5_how_can_scientists_say_that_if_global/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3oogux", "d3opk4b", "d3oqksr", "d3oqoiu", "d3orww9", "d3osnu0", "d3ov4fk", "d3ov6yq", "d3owgle", "d3p1328", "d3pnuaa"], "score": [36, 3, 2, 2, 2, 15, 2, 11, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["A global temperature, in this instance, is the average of the whole globe over the whole year. The rapid temperature change you're asking about is a local temperature shift.", "An average rise of 1 degree across the whole year and the whole planet is a very large increase in the overall heat in the atmosphere.  Larger amount of heat means faster temperature swings as different climate systems move around faster.   Faster moving air masses mean more powerful storms.\n\nIt has little to do with temperature swings day to day in local areas.  ", "When we talk about a 1\u00b0 rise in temperature, it means \"a 1\u00b0 C degree rise in the atmosphere on average\". \n\nThis represents an incredible amount of energy. From Wikipedia values, it's equivalent to the estimated energy left in our ground in the form of oil. That's right : that degree that seems so small represents the whole global oil supply. \n\nWhen you've understood how gigantic that exactly is, it's no wonder that it's gonna cause such a shift in our ecosystems. A lot of ice is going to melt = >  more water. The surface waters are gonna get warmer = >  they will expand = >  higher sea level ! \n\nThat's the most obvious consequence. Clearly this is also gonna take its toll on biodiversity, since the change is too rapid for species to evolve accordingly at our scale. This mostly means that the tropical climate is spreading further away from the equator ; a side effect is the proliferation of mosquitoes.\n\nAside from that, scientists assume that more energy in the atmosphere means a higher number of hurricanes, storms and floods, but the observations over the last years have not yet confirmed it. ", "That 1 degree can cover a lot of stuff. 1 degree is the difference between having ice in the poles or having every coastal city on the planet under water. Its also the difference between having nice healthy forests and having acres of dead trees as invasive wood boring insects move north due to the warmer temperatures. This also means that other insects that dislike the cold, including those that carry diseases like malaria, can move northwards as well. Finally that 1 degree is the global average, some areas could have a much higher increase which can lead to droughts. ", "Heating up an ENTIRE PLANET by one degree is an amount of energy that is bigger than you can even imagine. ", "Raising the temperature of the atmosphere by one degree requires that you add [~5.95 x 10^21 Joules](_URL_1_).  That's equivalent to about [95 million Hiroshima bombs](_URL_0_).  That's a *lot* of energy that can power extreme storms, melt polar caps, fuel droughts and the like.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis picture sums it up nicely. Think of the average temperature as a bell curve with extreme temperatures being not as common and goldilock zone temperatures being much more common. If we shift this bell curve over to the right by one degree than those extreme temperatures start becoming more common as they are under more of the bell curve now. ", "Imagine not the temperature but instead the \"energy budget\" of the earth.\n\nThe entire planet is one big machine, in terms of weather and other macro-scale phenomenon.\n\nImagine that right now the \"energy budget\" is one billion.  That energy is \"used\" to pay for things, as potential energy, thermal energy and energy tied up in energy of fusion to make ice move and change form it drives our weather.\n\nYou're not just adding one degree you're adding several percent to the energy budget the earth has to drive it's weather. That one billion becomes 1.05 billion. Energetic phenomenon like storms, and hurricanes and set air flows that create droughts, those are all \"paid for\" out of that energy budget.\n\nThe end result, all kinds of extreme phenomenon get more energetic.  Because the energy budget is not evenly distributed that means very severe events can get significantly more severe.\n\n\nAn example: during the hot period of the earth aeons ago, supercaines were possible, hurricanes with winds hundreds of miles an hour faster than are possible in our current earth.", "As people have said, it's 1 degree average over the entire globe. It might not seem like much, but it's a lot of energy. That one degree means a lot more ice melts, a lot more water evaporates, and increasing pressures cause higher winds.\n\nThat's part of the reason why calling it \"Climate Change\" has started to replace \"Global Warming\", even though the overall trend would still be warming. It's because these small shifts of 1 degree could vastly effect local climates. A farmland could become a desert, for instance, or a dry area could start to experience severe storms and floods, or prevailing winds and ocean currents could change direction, leading to certain places becoming much colder. \n\nBut the real worry is that it can have a snowball effect. That 1 degree of temperature can do stuff like melt permafrost or increase ocean acidification, and sometimes release trapped sources of CO2 or Methane, further increasing the greenhouse effect. So just because we increase it by 1 degree, it doesn't mean the change will stay at 1 degree.", "Like you\u2019re five: sometime days you have an extra cookie at lunch. Some days you don\u2019t.\n\nBut if you had two cookies every day, you\u2019d eventually get fat. And once you\u2019re fat, you might not feel like playing outside so much, so you\u2019ll get even fatter.\n\nThe Earth\u2019s temperature is similar. 1\u00b0 high one day no problem, but that same 1\u00b0 over a long time period can melt glaciers, destroy forests, and bring about more powerful hurricanes. Some of these changes make the temperature swing even more.", "Do you know what a sine graph is?\n\nIt looks basically like a giant wave. It goes up and down everyone once in a while, at the same rate. Think of that as our weather. Now, if in one area, the temperature goes up 1 degree, that's just because the temperature was on the 'going up' part of the graph. And if you add up all the going up and going down parts on the wave, you'll notice that the total temperature is pretty unaffected by that little 1 degree of change on that one part of the graph.\n\nIf however, THE ENTIRE graph gets shifted up one degree, then every point on the graph changes, and in a world-wide perspective, that can be devastating. Especially since we don't have a solid plan to bring it back down."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5.95+x+10%5E21+Joules+%2F+hiroshima+bomb+energy", "https://scholarsandrogues.com/2013/05/09/csfe-heat-capacity-air-ocean/"], ["http://www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au/files/images/Target-and-Progress-Review-node-22/Chapter%201%20and%202/144305.png"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7t5nvk", "title": "So...what was the Dreyfus affair?", "selftext": "It was apparently so important that all the contemporary French books all mention the character's position on it. What was it and why was it so prominent in French culture?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7t5nvk/sowhat_was_the_dreyfus_affair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtaiv52", "dtaoh6r"], "score": [8, 57], "text": ["Adding to this, what did contemporary non-French people think of the affair?", "The Dreyfus affair occurred in France during the 3rd Republic in the 1890s. The backdrop here is the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 which was a resounding victory for Prussia (which would later serve as the heart of a unified Germany) and involved a devastating siege of Paris as well as the annexation of the border areas of Alsace-Lorraine (which had been part of France previously). The war also caused the collapse of the prior French government (the Second Empire) and the formation of the 3rd Republic. As a consequence of all of this the overwhelming sentiment in France in regards to Germany was one of hatred. Think of US and Soviet relations during the Cold War, the French viewed the Germans as their natural and inevitable enemy and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was felt very keenly.\n\nInto this environment insert an event, espionage on behalf of the Germans obtaining secret military information from the French military. In 1894 a French artillery Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was put on trial in secret for this crime, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment on Devil's Island, a penal colony in French Guyana (the Northern coast of South America). It should be noted that Dreyfus had a Jewish mother and antisemitism in Europe was rampant, this will become relevant later.\n\nThis event garnered little attention at the time but the family of Dreyfus began working in the press to clear his name, certain that he was innocent. In 1896 the French head of counter-espionage came across evidence that led him to believe that the true spy was Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. Esterhazy was tried by a military court in secret in January of 1898 and found not guilty. Also in 1898 Esterhazy retired from the military and fled the country to live in the UK.\n\nMeanwhile, there was a growing public sentiment that Dreyfus was not guilty of the crime he had been convicted of, and had instead been made a scapegoat. This came to a head in January of 1898 (only days after Esterhazy was acquitted) when famed author Emile Zola wrote an open letter published by a Parisian newspaper accusing the French government of antisemitism and injustice in the treatment of Dreyfus. This is the famous \"J'Accuse...!\" letter.\n\nBecause the details of the trials of Dreyfus and Esterhazy were kept secret it was difficult to make an objective assessment of the true nature of their guilt or innocence. It was instead a matter of relying on other evidence and indications. (One of the key items of evidence in the case was a note or \"bordereau\" that was found in a waste basket at the German Embassy by a French spy. Extremely questionable handwriting analysis was used to tag Dreyfus as the author of the note.) In broad strokes the case became a rallying point in the cause of battling antisemitism in France at the time. And for that reason became somewhat of a cultural dividing line.\n\nIn 1899 the French Supreme Court struck down Dreyfus' conviction. Dreyfus was returned to France from Devil's Island and put on trial again, and again convicted, in a military court-martial, of treason. It should be noted that during this time there were riots and siege-like conditions surrounding the trial, by people who felt that this whole process was a grave injustice. One day after the verdict the Prime Minister offered to pardon Dreyfus, on the condition that he plead guilty. He did so and was pardoned, being released from imprisonment only 2 days later.\n\nAfterwards there were tumultuous changes in French politics and elections as well as military leadership. In 1906 the Supreme Court fully annulled Dreyfus' convictions and he was reinstated in the army as an artillery major where he would serve for a year until his retirement.\n\nAnti and pro Dreyfus sentiment would continue to run rampant for a long period, serving as a proxy for right-wing and left-wing political stances as well as anti-semitic and pro-tolerance feelings. During the period where the \"Dreyfus affair\" was at its hottest (around the turn of the 20th century) there was a marked uptick in anti-semitic publications, for example.\n\nI should note that I've left out innumerable details here, but in broad strokes I think this captures most of what's relevant. Imagine the OJ trial mixed with Watergate and that gives you a sense of the cultural phenomenon at play."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5d9ghw", "title": "why is it encouraged to do your will with a lawyer.", "selftext": "Can't I just google what goes in a will and write it on a piece of paper, rather than spending money for a lawyer to write it on a piece of paper?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d9ghw/eli5_why_is_it_encouraged_to_do_your_will_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da2qyd9", "da2rf2o", "da2rpmi", "da2t5r7", "da2u9p1", "da2yv2b", "da35ef0"], "score": [48, 13, 8, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["A lawyer will be able to make what you write in the will legally enforceable and clear in its meaning. If you are a layperson who is Googling what goes into a will it is likely that you will be using colloquial language that you think is obvious in its meaning, but legal rulings are based very much on precedent. By precedent I mean if a particular phrase was ruled to mean the same thing for the last 150 years then you can be very confident what it means when you use it. The problem is that phrasing is 150 years old and sounds antiquated, but it is better than your modern way of speaking which has no precedent.", "English is a complicated language, and you want to be sure that everything in your will is 100% clear and without any shadow of a doubt, and you want to be sure that an objective third party with legal authority is aware of what everything means in order to settle any disputes. \nFor example, if I said \"Give everything I own to my wife and kids\", what does that mean? Who gets what percentage? Who gets the house? Who gets the car? Who gets the $15 on my desk? Who gets my desk? \nIf I said \"Give my wife everything, and let her decide how to share it with the kids\", what does that mean? Can she decide not to share anything with your children? Can she cut just one of them out completely? \n\nYour lawyer is there to think of everything for you. He's experienced in the matter, and knows what is likely to come up in court if something is called to question, and he can be called upon to be the arbiter of the will in the event something is questionable. It prevents long-lost relatives (like your drunk, meth addict second cousin) coming around and looking for handouts, and it ensures that everything is exactly how you wish it to be.", "In addition to the answers you've gotten here, a lawyer can also help to identify concepts or options you may not be aware of and that a website might not mention. \n\nSo, for instance, a lawyer might be able to flag when a trust would be more appropriate for what you want to do then simply giving money.  Or they might know that you are in a state that allows for certain gimmicks in wills that other state's don't allow (like allowing you to create an easily editable list of where certain items will go that is referenced in the will, rather than needing to constantly change or update the will). \n\nOf course, if you're sufficiently motivated, you might be able to find out these things on your own, but the idea of the lawyer is that they don't just know the answers, but also what questions you should ask that you might not even realize that you need to ask. ", "Wills / estates go through probate court, so it's best to have them structured, worded, etc. in the proper way understood by the legal/court system, to get your intentions across, particularly if you don't just want it to go to a spouse or evenly dividing among children. They will also know of issues that may arise due to lack of clarity (ie. you say all personal items are divided evenly among children... but what's the process? Is it by value? Draft of items with them taking turns? Picking in what order? Or have you specified who gets what specific items?); you say trust money can pay for grandkids' college... does that include culinary school, trade school, etc. or JUST a university? A lawyer can help get your intentions across in a legally enforceable way.", "Every state has different rules/laws and dependent on where you live and where you die you need your will to be able to hold up legally when you die.  A lawyer is more likely to write a will with all the appropriate legalese to suit your needs and to ensure that it is enforceable after you die and there can be less discrepancy or cause for a lawsuit to challenge your wishes.", "TL;DR: You can spend a little money on a lawyer now, and save big later, or not spend money now, and possibly have to spend big later.\n\nI'm a lawyer. In most jurisdictions, there are only three requirements for a will to be considered \"legal.\" (1) It must be in writing. (2) It must be signed by the testator (the person whose will it is). (3) It must be witnessed by a certain number of disinterested parties (the number depends on the jurisdiction). So, why can't you just make your own will?\n\nShort answer: You can. In fact, depending on your specific situation, a will may be complicating things unnecessarily. (That said, it's a good idea for most people).\n\nThen why should you consult a lawyer? Because even though those you only need those three requirements, there are nuances to it. For example, a lawyer can help you structure the will (through the use of trusts and other devices) to avoid taxes. Further, lawyers have to keep abreast of changes in the law. That is supposed to make us aware if, for example, a court has a ruling that would affect the way a will is construed, we should change the way we are drafting wills to take that into account. A lawyman may not know that, and if you are using a form from the internet, chances are it hasn't been updated.\n\nIf there are problems in the will, chances are you will have to spend more money on a lawyer as the will goes through probate than you will have spent on a lawyer drafting the will to begin with.", "An example of why you want lawyers involved in writing a will - someone I know got divorced shortly before they died. The divorce was amicable, and as he didn't have anyone else to leave his stuff to, he still wanted it to go to his ex-wife. His will stated that everything they had went to their 'wife, [wife's name]', so he figured it was fine and didn't change it. The probate court ruled that since the recently deceased did not have a wife anymore, the entire will was invalid. The estate was divided up based on state law, which said that his next of kin received everything, which was his kids. Legally his ex-wife wasn't entitled to anything at all. A good lawyer would have known how the probate court would interpret the will and had him change it to remove the word wife."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "iw376", "title": "Status and thoughts on brain computer interface science?", "selftext": "Brain computer interfaces, or BCIs, how much of a reality are they? Are some of them illegal in the US?\n\nYears ago Wired ran an article where a man who lost both eyes but still had a healthy visual cortex was given cybernetic eyes by patching a web cam into his brain. And lots of people every year get cochlear implants that I presume patch directly into their brain for audio. And I've heard that people have wired into a monkey's brain to control robot arms.\n\nSo my question is: who's working on this? And how far are they getting? I assume this is sort of 'mad science' from the perspective that you can't just round up volunteers and cut into their brains. If you're a quadriplegic or blind can you even volunteer for this type of implant? Wired mentioned that the eye-cam surgery took place in sweden because the FDA had banned that type of procedure. \n\nWhat's a real scientist's take on this field?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iw376/status_and_thoughts_on_brain_computer_interface/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c273ca8", "c273tt1", "c2748um"], "score": [2, 18, 2], "text": ["This got caught in the spam filter.  With hesitation, I'm going to let it out.  **While legalities and politics thereabout are *not* questions science can talk about**, the question about brain-computer interfaces might be an interesting one.", "This field is very much alive and expanding, and as far as I know a few devices have been approved for human trials in Europe.  FDA approval for human trial in the US seems to be a little more complicated but we're getting here.  However, all of these devices remain quite rudimentary and we're still very far from the bionic implants you would see in a sci-fi movie.  \n\nThe best-known neural prosthesis are cochlear implants.  They work very well when implanted in young patients despite being very rudimentary, and have inspired a number of other neural prosthetic devices such as visual prosthesis, prosthesis for paraplegic patients.  As far as I know all of the \"working\" devices rely on the same basic principles.  Neurons in the brain propagate signals electrically, and it is possible to measure neuron activity by putting close to the cells microelectrodes.  By sending electrical currents through these electrodes it is also possible to stimulate the neurons and elicit perception.  This is how cochlear implants work:  they have a little microphone and typically 12 microelectrodes that sit next to the cochlea, and the sounds picked up onto the microphone are translated into electrical currents.  Power is delivered to these implants by inductive means:  a coil sits under the skin of the patient, usually behind the ear, and a matching coil with a battery is on the outside of the patient. \n\nAmong current prosthetic devices those I'm most familiar with are [Visual Prosthesis](_URL_0_).  In this field the problem being addressed is degenerative retinal diseases, in which patients progressively lose the photosensitive cells in their retina (so their eyes lose the ability to convert light into signals the brain can understand).  However these patients retain some basic neural circuits in their eyes and an intact optic nerve, and it's on these neural circuits that you implant the microelectrodes and try to elicit response from the neurons.  I\u2019m aware of two groups (one academic, the other one a Silicon Valley startup) having started human trials with their devices.  Their initial findings seem to confirm that it is possible to partially restore sight in patients, however many very weird effects show up in these patients, so it\u2019s definitely not natural vision that\u2019s being restored.  Color vision was thought to be impossible to restore with this technology, but interesting results from Second Sight seems to indicate there could be ways to trick the brain into seeing colors, basically by trying to reproduce optical illusions.  As you can guess though, most of the research is not being done on humans.  Animal models, especially rats that have been genetically engineered to exhibit similar symptoms to human patients are the research subjects of preference. \n\nMotor function restoration in paraplegic patients is also something that people have been researching for a while now.  What has been proved in this area is that by implanting some microelectrode arrays into the premotor cortex of paraplegic patients, you can associate patterns of neuronal activity to movements.  It is what\u2019s going on in this [monkey moving robotic arm]( _URL_1_) video.  The Nature paper is linked in the video description if you want to read more about it.  To sum up quickly what\u2019s going on, when the monkey thinks of moving his arm to the left some neurons start being very active while others become quieter.  When the monkey wants to move his arm to the right different neurons become active and those that were previously active would typically become quiet, so you can decode these activity levels and relate them to arms movement.  After some positive reinforcement training the monkey becomes able to move the robotic arms fairly well and perform basic tasks with it.  For these types of prosthetic devices, monkeys are the subject of choice as they can be trained to perform basic tasks in a repetitive manner.  A few human patients have been implanted with the devices too, there was a Nature cover paper on it a while ago and if you\u2019re interested in it I can probably track it down.  \n\nOverall though, all these devices remain pretty rude.  We are nowhere near fabricating devices that can replicate the exquisite complexity of the brain, and we have no idea how the brain works anyway.  We don\u2019t even fully understand how the eye works.  But these things are promising, and I would expect to start seeing more of them in human patients in the next decade or so (this is wild guessing on my part).  It\u2019s also a little scary; people are putting stuff in brains without understanding exactly all that\u2019s going on so there could also be a few bad surprises in the field.  Other obstacles such as long-term stability of the implant have yet to be tackled.  For example in the monkey experiments usually after 5 years or so the microelectrodes have become completely covered in glial cells, the cells that protect the brain from the outside world.  So after a couple of years the implants become useless.  \n\nAnother promising field could be optogenetics, where neurons are genetically modified to be light-sensitive.  So neuron activity could be controlled using LEDs or lasers.  I know a quite a few people are trying to link these optogenetic experiments with brain-computer interfaces, but I have no idea what state their research is in. \n\nAnyway, I hope this helps a little, feel free to ask questions if you want clarifications on something. ", "As a related question, how feasible is it to use on of these interfaces to transfer one persons experience from his/her brain into another persons brain?  This idea is explored in the film Strange Days and would make a wicked entertainment platform.  I'm never going to attempt a wingsuit flight, but it would be fun to relive someone elses experience of it from the safety of my armchair."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnWSah4RD2E"], []]}
{"q_id": "1hehp6", "title": "Why wasn't Jefferson Davis executed for treason?", "selftext": "I realize they attempted to try him, but he made bail (with money from some northerners), but I was always curious as to why Lincoln never pursued the execution of Davis. I mean thousands of young men were killed in a war of secession, and it seems weird that Lincoln, and the north, would be OK with allowing Davis to continue his career and life after all the destruction that was caused.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hehp6/why_wasnt_jefferson_davis_executed_for_treason/", "answers": {"a_id": ["catkk3q", "catq8fc"], "score": [40, 17], "text": ["Leading Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were indicted on charges of treason, but they were all issued blanket amnesty by Andrew Johnson before he left office.", "In the context of Southern culture, leaving the CSA leadership alive amidst the ruin of their defeat was a much, much worse fate than death. \n\nAny execution would have signaled that the Union still had something to prove, or something substantial to gain by their deaths. Leaving them alive highlighted the total nature of the Union victory and the CSA leadership's unimportance once hostilities were over."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8o9zzm", "title": "why does adding one methyl group to adderall change it from being a common prescription medication to an extremely hard drug?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8o9zzm/eli5_why_does_adding_one_methyl_group_to_adderall/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e01r8i2", "e01rm80", "e01s1t4", "e01t05m", "e0205x7", "e022inv", "e025qtu", "e0394yj"], "score": [84, 6, 24, 10, 3, 8, 5, 2], "text": ["Why does adding one oxygen to water change it from being refreshing to a corrosive nightmare?\n\nEven seemingly minor alterations to a chemical structure can radically alter the way it interacts with itself and other molecules.\n\nIn this particular case, the methyl group in *meth*amphetamine is altering the electron structure around the adjacent nitrogen center, which significantly accelerates its reactivity.", "Chemistery is extremely complex, for example \"Mad cows disease\" is a simple protein that everyone has in their brain, the difference is that the \"diseased\" protein has a slightly different SHAPE its exactly the same except for its shape, causing it to change the shape of other proteins causing the disease.", "Adderall is not just a single amphetamine, it\u2019s a carefully measured cocktail of about three salts and one binder. The difference from what I can find is that straight amphetamine is less potent due to a lack of a methyl base, and as such is released into the brain on more of a drip-feed rather than a rush. This gives more time for the kidneys to filter out the remainder and place it into urine. On the other hand, the addition of the methyl base to amphetamine increases its potency when smoked, so you get a more potent compound flooding the brain all at once. This flood vs measured release is what makes it addictive, your body can\u2019t take having so much dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine all at once, so it needs them at such high levels to feel normal.  However, Adderall is not without risks and still has an addictive factor to itself.", "Adderall is a schedule 2 drug in the US. This is a recognition that **it is** a hard drug, it just has useful properties in controlled doses.  Meth is also schedule 2 along with cocaine, morphine and several other powerful opiates.\n\nThe big difference is that you take a single pill from a factory every day instead of doing lines of shit from some biker every two hours until you collapse from exhaustion after 4 days without sleep.", "It's usually about the molecular shape and the way it fits into a receptor site.  A slight change and it only *almost* fits instead of doing so exactly.  That may do anything from partially triggering the response, enhancing it, to blocking the site so the real substance can't fit into it's proper place.\n\nFor instance opiates are effective because they fit  into receptors that accept the bodies natural endorphins that are released in response the various stresses and inhibit the communication of pain signals.", "Methamphetamine is still legal and not necessarily \"harder\" than amphetamine. People are still prescribed methamphetamine legally for ADHD, narcolepsy or other conditions. It's a schedule II drug just the same as amphetamine or morphine.", "The methyl group makes methamphetamine more lipophilic \\(Fat soluble\\) which allows it to get through the blood brain barrier much easier than adderall can.\n\nA more detailed overview on the differences between the two can be found [here](_URL_0_) if you're so inclined.\n\nedit: oops forgot I was in ELI5. \n\nELI5: Meth dissolves better in fats than adderall so when there is a barrier made of fats \\(blood brain barrier, membranes in general\\) it gets through it easier and faster.", "It's not just what is added but where and how it's added.\n\nFor the methyl group, since it's a reactive functional group it primarily makes the resulting chemical much more reactive than the chemical that did not have it.\n\nMore reactive means it has a larger effect sooner even with less chemical being present. There are several ways to think of it.\n\n-----\n\nMy personal preference would be...imagine you have a glass of wine and you have a shot of vodka. The glass of wine is probably gonna last at least a few minutes, probably fifteen minutes to half an hour unless you drink it non-stop or chug your wine. The shot of vodka will be finished within thirty seconds, at the latest.\n\nEven with the same amount of alcohol, the vodka hits harder because it's much more concentrated and is fully introduced into the body much quicker than the glass of wine (which has a little bit of its alcohol introduced over a longer period of time so some of its effect has worn off by the time the next sip is had).\n\nOr comparing an IV drip to a spontaneous rush...that works as well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3475187/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3n04f0", "title": "why are most eastern religions more accepting?", "selftext": "So I'm reading a little bit about Buddhism and Hinduism.  Buddhism seems to be about staying within yourself and controlling what you can, and Hinduism seems like it allows and embraces other religions as an equal but alternate path to God.  Why are these religions so accepting of others when I've been brought up to believe that Christianity, Judaism, or Islam is *the* true religion?\n\nEDIT: I should clarify that when I mean more accepting, I mean of other religions.  Not accepting of people in general.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n04f0/eli5_why_are_most_eastern_religions_more_accepting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvjn8g1", "cvjnc26", "cvjnepj", "cvjoa8g", "cvjprr7", "cvk5glb"], "score": [7, 83, 11, 20, 15, 3], "text": ["Nobody knows for sure; though it is likely to be due to the cultures they arose in.\n\nOne reason that has been proposed is that the Middle East and Europe tends to have geography that favors tribes: smaller groups of people that identify as different from other tribes. Meanwhile, China and large sections of India tend to favor less tribal behavior: while there are many different cultural groups in both China and India, they don't have the same \"Us vs everyone else\" mentality you see in both Europe and the Middle East through much of history.\n\nAnd the religions mirror that: most Western religions tend to be very much about \"This is The True Way; and you either follow The True Way, or you will go to Hell\"; while many Eastern Religions are more likely to say \"This is one path, and there are other paths\"", "They aren't. Just ask the guy that was just killed for being suspected of eating beef. You just do not hear as much about it. ", "The religions you're talking about have different origins than Christianity Judaism or Islam, all three of which have the same origin.  So when you view those 3 religions it's not so much that western religions by their nature are less excepting but rather you are viewing 3 branches of the same teachings and those core teachings were exclusionary. \n\nThere is a long history of polytheism through Europe that has since been abandoned in favor of one of the 3 branches of these religions because the basis of the religion encourage (some times require) people to not only adhere to the religion but also to actively convert.\n\nAny group that actively and aggressively attempts to convince others their way is right will always spread faster and find more success than those who have more passive teachings.", "Perhaps we should start with your definition of accepting?", "Joseph Campbell has a whole theory about the way climate effects religion. Quick and dirty version:\n1. Religion A comes from a dangerous dry desert land with many warring tribes fighting over scarce resources - imagine mad max- and the religion that originates there is dangerous, apocalyptic, \"life is short there's a war going on\" and the afterlife is beautiful and wonderful and all the good things that your present life is not. And God is a vindictive asshole. \n\n2. Religion B comes from a tropical wonderland where food is plentiful, life is beautiful, and everywhere you look there are papayas and mangoes and coconuts and flowers and the rivers are full of fish, and there are many groups of people all with their local nature spirits that they revere, and God is totally imminent and is the source of all these wonderful things that you see.\n\nNot too hard to imagine, right?", "I actually know this answer!\n\nWestern religions tended to develop as an *orthodoxy,* which means that you have to think what the church tells you to think. Buddhism specifically (other eastern religions may have as well) developed as an *orthopraxy,* which means you have to practice how the authority figures tell you to practice. This is a very important difference, as early Buddhists were allowed to think whatever they wanted, so long as the chanted the right words and sat in the right place.\n\nThere are also ideological differences. As a Buddhist, I can account for the existence of other religions, since other ideologies do not threaten my beliefs or teaching. Western religions, however, tend to teach very polarized ideologies, which means that Buddhism cannot exist within Christianity.\n\nLastly, I've had multiple professors and religious figures say that eastern religions aren't actually religions, since they fundamentally have little in common with the practices in the west. Since Buddhism and Shinto are more about ways to live your life, it's easier to accept other religions and ideas, whereas Christianity is specifically concerned with being right and making a single choice."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6vrdvt", "title": "Between 1865 and 1901, three American Presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) were assassinated. In 20th century terms, that would be equivalent to Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton dying by assassination. That would cause 20th century people to freak out. What was the feeling toward this in the 1800s?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6vrdvt/between_1865_and_1901_three_american_presidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm2xwgy"], "score": [17], "text": ["To add on to this question, to what extent would the freak out (or lack thereof) be tied to the president's popularity? i.e. OP cited JFK, Reagan,  &  Clinton as possible presidential assassinations, but these are 3 supremely popular American presidents; Lincoln obviously has a certain legacy to him, but would Garfield or McKinley be more akin to a Jimmy Carter or Lyndon B. Johnson, thus setting off different reactions upon their assassination(s)?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6s1wl8", "title": "During world wars - were students still studying as usual or were there studies interrupted?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6s1wl8/during_world_wars_were_students_still_studying_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dla1otn"], "score": [5], "text": ["I feel as though your question needs a little bit of clarification. Students who weren't of military age didn't generally have their education disrupted, save extraordinary circumstances such as attacks or relocation. Many students, especially in rural areas of the U.S. midwest, customarily dropped out of school to help their families on the farm or for other reasons; only 41 percent of white U.S. riflemen (by its very nature, the Infantry ended up with many men of the lowest qualifications) in the European Theater of Operations had completed a full four years of high school or equivalent. With the passing of the Selective Training and Service Act by Congress on September 16, 1940 (Public Law 76-783), all men from the ages of 21 to 35 had to register for the draft and were liable for potential military service. Based on the initial provisions of the act, students who were in school and were inducted had their entry into service postponed until July 1, 1941 (a period covering about one more academic year) at the latest. After Pearl Harbor, men from the ages of 18 to 64 were required to register for the draft with the passing of Public Law 77-360 on December 20, 1941. Men from the ages of 20 to 44 were also made liable for induction into the military. On November 13, 1942, those men who were 18 and 19 who had already registered were made liable for service by the passing of Public Law 77-772. Many of these men, especially the 18 year olds, were still in school; these men were liable for service and could be called at any time; the student deferment did not apply anymore. Public Law 78-126 was passed on July 9, 1943 so that these men could formally petition their local draft boards to have their induction into the military postponed until the end of the current academic year if more than one-half of said year had been completed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5px08u", "title": "How do they make sure when building a tall skyscraper, it remains straight ?", "selftext": "ive always wondered when you see these 200 + meter skyscrapers, how do they keep them perfectly straight when building ? Considering most of the work is done level by level, a slight error in measurements will mean the tower will slowly taper off to being crooked. Is there special tools that they use ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5px08u/how_do_they_make_sure_when_building_a_tall/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcushq3", "dcv0koi", "dcv5jly"], "score": [16, 8, 2], "text": ["It used to be done with a theodolite, (link attached).\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is a precision piece of surveying equipment.  The surveyor would establish fixed points near the construction site and set the theodolite over the known point.   Then, observations would be taken on the work in progress to insure its location was accurate, and marks laid down on the newest work to guide the work above.\n\nNow, technology has moved on, and \"total station\" systems incorporate GPS data, laser ranges and a computer to establish locations accurately\n\n_URL_1_", "Brother in law is an engineer and i asked him this a little but ago. He said that buildings dont remain perfectly straight and we will calculate based on wind, resonance, etc how much the building will sway, even under an earthquake. He then chooses materials which will be suitable for that about of sway. \n\nHe said you can look down from the top of a really tall building and clearly see it isnt a straight fall.\n\nHope this helps i know my answer isnt completely to the rules... but you know", "The other answers are probably more knowledgeable about how modern skyscrapers are built, but I'd like to add...\n\nThe [plumb bob](_URL_0_) is one of the oldest measuring devices known to man. And I'd imagine the principle is adaptable even to structures 100 m high. Whether it can be used for really tall structures, I don't know."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodolite", "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_station"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumb_bob"]]}
{"q_id": "44wvn5", "title": "i've been told oxygen is what causes you to age. if you breathe pure oxygen your entire life will you age quicker than someone who breathes the quality of oxygen we have currently?", "selftext": "EDIT: So i'm learning you can not breathe pure oxygen for very long. So I guess to make it even more simple I'll use a different example.\n\n\nIf you worked in a casino in Vegas that pumps oxygen into the bar your whole life would you age quicker than someone who was just breathing the typical level of oxygen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44wvn5/eli5_ive_been_told_oxygen_is_what_causes_you_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cztfxxw", "cztfyxb", "cztg9jc", "cztgsl5", "cztgv7m", "cztkxdl", "cztmdin", "cztodwr", "czu5bul"], "score": [61, 14, 3, 12, 292, 2, 8, 2, 3], "text": ["I don't know whether it's oxygen that causes you to age. However, I can assert with certainty that if you stop drawing oxygen, you'll only age six more minutes or so.\n\nSeriously, however, your body can only take in a set amount of oxygen through your lungs. Pure oxygen conditions can be bad on you for other reasons (and I doubt you'd be able to breathe it for long enough to cause aging differences), but there would still be the question as to whether your body would simply exhale the oxygen it didn't need.\n\nTL;DR: As it is, you don't use up all the oxygen available to you with every breath.", "If you breathe pure oxygen your entire life won't last long enough for you to age. Breathing pure oxygen can be toxic for your body.", "Breathing pure oxygen is bad for your health, you won't age more quickly but you will simply become sick.\n\nPure oxygen at high pressure can be lethal. \n\n_URL_0_", "Your edit makes it seem like you understand why breathing pure oxygen at normal pressure would kill you, so I'll skip that part.\n\nWhen people talk about oxygen in the context of aging, they are talking about something called Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS.) These are molecules that have oxygen in them that are really unstable. They are each missing an electron, and they snatch it from wherever they can find it. Unfortunately, they often snatch electrons from important molecules like DNA, proteins, and the fats that make up the boundaries of your cells. \n\nThey can be helpful in some contexts. For example, when your immune system recognizes bacteria and other invaders, your body makes ROS's to destroy them. They keep them protected in a special cover to keep them from damaging your cells. But if they get out, they can do damage to your body. It's kind of like if a machine gun's trigger gets stuck and it starts spraying everywhere.\n\nNormally, your body has special chemicals to deactivate them. You can eat foods that are anti-oxidants. But your body is exposed to them all the time, and sometimes they get through. They can cause aging, or worse. If they steal electrons from your DNA, the can cause the DNA to become unstable and mutate, leading to cancer.\n\nIf you breathe a higher level of oxygen regularly, you will be exposed to more ROS's. Over time, this can cause problems. I'm not sure if I can quantify how much more likely you are to get cancer or age faster, and a lot depends on how many fruits and vegetables you eat and whether you smoke (The ROS's in smoke is a big reason why smokers get lung cancer.) But there would be some nonsignificant effect.", "I believe what you've heard of is the free radical aging theory. To be clear, in this terminology 'aging' is referring to the decline of the body through the accumulation of damage caused by free radicals in your cells. So if you are defining 'aging quicker' as acquiring more damage faster,  and so having a shorter lifespan, there is some experimental evidence to suggest this is at least part of the equation. I just want to differentiate this from some sort of 'passage of time' concept.\n\nHowever, this isn't the oxygen your breathe (or well, if it is, you're about to die). These reactive types of oxygen are products of metabolic processes in your body. Impacts to this type of damage to the body involve events that increase the production of free radicals, or decrease the ability of your body to clean them up. \n\nObviously, denying your body enough oxygen to engage in metabolic activity might thwart the production entirely, but it's a bit of a lose-lose proposition.", "If you're a healthy person your blood is carrying 98-99% of the blood it can carry when you're breathing normal air anyway, increasing the concentration of the oxygen you're breathing won't make that much difference. ", "_URL_0_\n\nbreathing pure oxygen can be dangerous. we are designed to live with around 21% oxygen. when you see divers underwater that is either compressed air from the atmosphere OR a custom blend of nitrogen and oxygen. \n\n\n\n\nNow what would happen if you breathed 100 percent oxygen? In guinea pigs exposed to 100 percent oxygen at normal air pressure for 48 hours, fluid accumulates in the lungs and the epithelial cells lining the alveoli.\n In addition, the pulmonary capillaries get damaged. A highly reactive form of the oxygen molecule, called the oxygen free radical, which destroys proteins and membranes in the epithelial cells, probably causes this damage. In humans breathing 100 percent oxygen at normal pressure, here's what happens:\n\n\nFluid accumulates in the lungs.\nGas flow across the alveoli slows down, meaning that the person has to breathe more to get enough oxygen.\n\n\nChest pains occur during deep breathing.\n\n\nThe total volume of exchangeable air in the lung decreases by 17 percent.\n\n\n\nMucus plugs local areas of collapsed alveoli -- a condition called atelectasis. The oxygen trapped in the plugged alveoli gets absorbed into the blood, no gas is left to keep the plugged alveoli inflated, and they collapse. Mucus plugs are normal, but they are cleared by coughing. If alveoli become plugged while breathing air, the nitrogen trapped in the alveoli keeps them inflated.\n\n\n", "YSK that casinos do not pump oxygen onto the playing floor. Doing so would be a felony. Source: _URL_0_", "Breathing pure oxygen will kill you fairly quickly.\n\nBreathing less than pure oxygen that's still in the livable range will _not_ cause you to age faster.\n\nYour body wants a level, and it's good at finding that level. So when your cells need oxygen they take it in, and when they need to get rid of carbon dioxide they push it out.\n\nIncreased atmospheric oxygen just makes that transaction easier.\n\nSome studies indicate that extra oxygen availability might _slow_ some of the degeneration we call aging by making sure that the cells never enter the more difficult anaerobic (oxygen-lacking) processes that produce more waste products and such.\n\n\nE.g. To make the mandatory car analogy, a little extra oxygen in your life probably keeps you cells from \"fouling their plugs\".\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity"], [], [], [], ["http://science.howstuffworks.com/question493.htm"], ["http://www.snopes.com/luck/casino.asp"], []]}
{"q_id": "9733zq", "title": "I'm Keagan Brewer, here to talk about medieval European wonders, legends, and supernatural beliefs. Ask me anything!", "selftext": "For a long time, I have been looking at the 'crazy' stories and beliefs from the medieval period to try to understand why they believed them (or seem to have). There are so many good stories that I wouldn't know where to start! I will be here for the next three hours. \n\nI've written two books, one on wonders in general, and another that brings together the sources for the legend of Prester John:\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)\n\nEDIT: 12:05pm I have to head to a meeting now so I\u2019ll be away from here for a while. Please keep posting your questions and thoughts and I will do my best to get to them as soon as I can! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9733zq/im_keagan_brewer_here_to_talk_about_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e454ava", "e454ffe", "e454j6i", "e454pdb", "e454x07", "e4560c4", "e4564qs", "e4568t8", "e456pkj", "e456t11", "e4573yo", "e4577aw", "e45783r", "e457afw", "e458jca", "e458n09", "e458tgt", "e4596yg", "e45aoen", "e45b8mq", "e45bshy", "e45cdjk", "e45dkqj", "e45e97b", "e45ebeq", "e45goja", "e45hpov", "e45hv0w", "e45lsj7", "e45nj9l", "e45w4eg", "e45zq6y"], "score": [6, 3, 4, 21, 7, 5, 6, 5, 7, 10, 12, 16, 7, 8, 11, 8, 7, 11, 7, 7, 9, 5, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 5, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["\nIf you were to be reborn as a woman in the Middle Ages, what place and year would you pick and why?", "What place did the Holy Grail have in Christian Theology? Like if I found it would my sins be forgiven or would I drop dead for being unworthy?", "Hi Keagan - I\u2019m wondering if, during your research, you came across any communications regarding the wholesale slaughter of Jewish communities in Europe. \n\nThe latest thinking that I\u2019ve been exposed to from right of center Rabbinic authorities is that crusaders were primarily rallied to a cause to keep them from being problematic \u201cruffians\u201d within their home kingdoms. Out of work soldiers looking to smash things types funneled into armies headed to the Levant.\n\nPrior to their arrival in the Levant, I\u2019m now told, they would destroy Jewish communities. \n\nWhen I originally learned about the Crusades, I was not taught that destroying Jewish communities was any part of their agenda. \n\nWas I misinformed then or am I misinformed now? Thanks for your time on this!", "/r/AskHistorians frequently receives questions about the belief in unicorns. As a folklorist, I answer that this was simply not part of folk belief in premodern cultures that were considered by folklorists or earlier antiquarians. It appears to me that this was a feature in bestiaries and an idea that circulated among the educated and the elite (in art, literature, etc). Have you seen any evidence that the medieval peasant in the field believed or even told stories about unicorns?\n\nThanks in advance for your thoughts on this - and for doing this AMA.", "When it comes to wonders and legends, I've heard a bit about monsters and animal saints in medieval Europe and I was wondering if you could shed some light on how the fit into a medieval worldview and theology. \n\nWere monsters such as the Cynocephali, Blemmyae, Skiapodes believed in and who believed in them (e.g. was it a popular belief, a scholarly one, both)? Did the belief in these creatures have any effect on theological questions of salvation? Could they be saved or be saints? \n\nSimilarly, for animals, I've heard of Saint Guinefort, so did at least some medievals think that animals could be saints and did that have any impact on their beliefs in the souls or rationality of animals? \n\nAnd, considering I've often heard these called \"monstrous races\" was there any connection between ideas concerning them and modern ideas of race?", " Can you share anything about the Knights Templar and there connection to Baphomet? Thank you.", "Hi Keagan,\n\nI\u2019m currently applying to English literature masters programs, looking to focus in Medieval Literature (and on folklore, legends, and supernatural beliefs)... pretty much exactly what you\u2019re here to talk about. So I\u2019m really excited to see some of the questions other people ask and the answers you provide. \n\nWhat have been your most useful resources during your time in the field. The ones you find yourself continually going back to, either to help with research or just for enjoyment?\n\nWhat would you recommend for someone who\u2019s looking to start their own research in this area?", "What are some of your favorite legends and beliefs you've researched?  Have you looked into the pictures of knights fighting human sized snails?  Also, is there any truth to the rumor that Slenderman is based off German legends?", "The Prester John Letter has been said to represent \u2018a medieval utopia\u2019. Is this view convincing? ", "What counts as a \"supernatural belief,\" in pre-Renaissance, pre-Enlightenment Europe?", "I hope this isn\u2019t too vague as I do not have it available to me at the moment, but I remember reading in the Annals of Fulda about a supposed demon that laid devastation to a village. I was curious about what prompted this to be included in the annals and why it did not discuss it more thoroughly. What events would be attributed to a demon in a village? Thank you. ", "I see your answer about the Church and belief in monsters - what about more supernatural beings? Was there any pushback against belief in things like fairies or brownies or changelings? What about things like hexes or wards? ", "Hi Keagan, thanks for the AMA.\n\nI would be in interested to know about what people in medieval Europe imagined for the future. Are there any examples of medieval science fiction or predictions of technological advancement from medieval sources?", "Does it make any sense to see the Arthurian legend as playing a role as a kind of legitimating propaganda for the Norman conquest?\n\nIf Arthur was a primordial \u201crightful king of the Britons,\u201d fighting against the evil pagan Saxon invaders (along with other forces of evil like witches, dragons, etc), then it seems to provides a kind of basis for regarding the Norman invasion as the overthrow of an illegitimate usurper-kingdom (along with the more conventional claims that Godwinson was a usurper, Edward left it to William, etc).\n\n(Also, Arthurian legend with its knightly court in Camelot resembles Norman culture more than Saxon culture (or, at any reasonable guess, sub-Roman Brythonic culture), perhaps further casting Norman invasion as a restoration of the rightful order -- although that might just be because the Anglo-Normans of the time had a hard time imagining a society in Dark Ages Britain which was too radically different from their own than anything else.)\n\n(Note: I'm not saying I actually think this is true, or that I'm advocating for it. I'm just laying out my reasoning in even considering this train of thought.)", "Were there any official manuals for how priests should deal with ghosts? And if someone suspected demons to be about, how would a priest or other church official determine whether or not that is the case?", "I hear the term \"cult of saints\" used in literature regarding European folk beliefs sometimes and am a little confused as to what it actually means.  Did people actively worship saints like they did gods, not as powerful of course, but under the subservience of god?  Or is this simply a term for the veneration of certain saints similar to modern Catholicism?", "Is there something like a concept of \"elf\", distinguishable from other supernatural beings, across Europe?  Or a \"dwarf\"?  More generally, are there any cosmopolitan classifications / systems for European humanoids?\n\nBy \"humanoid\", I mean intelligent and, well, vaguely human-looking animate beings but not with animal parts.  I'm thinking of Tolkein's elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls, not (say) satyrs, minotaurs, ents, Medusa, and such.  I'd like to exclude strongly religious beings like angels, demons, or Norse gods.\n\nBy \"cosmopolitan\", I mean similarities across cultures and times.\n\nBy \"classifications\": are there any inter-cultural clusterings where you can say, for example, multiple cultures have mischievous beings that hang around the house that you should bribe to prevent disorder, or beautiful and perilous creatures that live in some other place, or miners toiling beneath the earth?  Or are cultures pretty much *sui generis*, where knowing about (say) German humanoids doesn't really help in understanding Swedish humanoids?  Or do such humanoids just not have clusters: that is, there are so many different sizes, beauty, personalities, peril, and other properties, that reading a new tale with new characteristics for a humanoid would occasion you no surprise at all?\n\n", "Hi Keagan,\n\nHave you come across changes in supernatural beliefs during/after the Black Plague? I am aware of rise of morbid cultural motifs like the danse macabre, but I'm specifically interested in what ordinary people actually believed. \n\nFor instance, the Witcher videogames are heavily based on Polish mythology and feature a creature called a plague maiden (a hag said to carry the plague from town to town). Would people have actually believed that witches, demons, and other malevolent supernatural forces were behind the Black Plague?\n", "Do we know of any historical person who was believed to have been a changeling or a half supernatural being or were those ideas purely confined to folklore and fiction", "In the early medieval period, could a \"normal\" person be a miracle-worker, i.e., a farmer in the field one day does something amazing, magical or otherwise impossible, then goes back to being a farmer that evening, or is a miracle-worker by definition someone who set apart, blessed, cursed, in league with some otherworldly force, etc.?", "How did the Prester John legend originally start? If I remember correctly, he was claimed to be either the king of Kongo or Abyssinia.  If it was Kongo, wouldn\u2019t the legend be proven false because the Portuguese had to convert the king originally?", "I have always found folk remedies and health related beliefs fascinating. Are there any especially odd health/medicine related beliefs you have found in your research?", "I know this is past the medieval period, but I can\u2019t help but ask considering the nature of your work and the fact that you cited Game of Thrones as a current favorite. Hopefully you know about this:\n\nWas John Dee believed by contemporaries to be a sorcerer? Did people think he used dark arts in his role as an advisor to Elizabeth I? Was John Dee a master of whispers? Do you see him as possibly an inspiration for characters like Lord Varys or Brynden Rivers?  \n\nThanks for doing this AMA!", "First thank you so much for coming here to answer our questions! Since this weeks theme is the Mediterranean, can you speak to any legends or supernatural beliefs that were tied to the waters or coast of that specific sea?", "Hi Keagan, thanks for the AMA.\n\nAs a longtime devotee of Tolkien's writings, both fictional and non-fictional, I've often wondered how the community of historians views his broadly stated hints that his fiction was an attempt at positing a mythological history of English pre-history.  In particular, how are Tolkien's quibbles with Chadwick over the legends of Zealand and Nerthus viewed, and is the possibility that Tolkien saw Elendil as a fictional representation of Ing taken seriously?  If you'll allow me to sneak in a final question, I wonder if I could ask you about your opinion of Tad Williams interpretation of the Prester John legend in his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy?  ", "I've been reading the Vinland sagas and the fanciful tales of corpses sitting up and giving prophecies shortly after the death of their person really stuck out to me. The footnotes said it was a distinctly Icelandic thing, but didn't go into more detail. I'd never heard of other European tales like that. Can you talk about where that myth came from?", "In the medieval RTS game Age of Empires II, monks can collect relics, deposit it in a monastery, and thereby gain the player gold (the implication being that pilgrims come to view these relics and donate).  Is this an accurate reflection of how pilgrims were expected to engage with holy relics? Would poor peasants who journeyed for hundreds of miles be expected to donate a portion of their wealth like the old woman whom Jesus praises for donating two copper coins to a public treasury in the Gospels? Were the rich \u201cexpected\u201d to donate a larger portion of their wealth? Basically, my question can be summed up as: what\u2019s the relationship between relics and a pilgrim\u2019s wealth?\n\nAlso, did people similarly journey like that to view cabinets of curiosity, or did the nobility who had them keep them to themselves and fellow nobles they wanted to impress?\n\nWhat did Europeans think of the \u201chumanity\u201d of the Saracens? Did the Crusaders think they were demonic or just misled?\n", "Many Norman French ruling families were rumored to have \"fairy\" ancestors.\nRichard 1 joked about his family coming from, and returning to, the devil.\nDid these rumors have a practical effect? Did the clergy believe these stories? And if so, how could these fairy descendents be regarded as legitimate Christian rulers?\nDid the peasants have an opinion on this? ", "This might not be the right time period, but I have heard that demons could sometimes impregnate human women. How would one figure out that a child was fathered by a demon, and what would be done with the child? If such a child grew up, would they have any special traits or abilities?\n\nOn a somewhat related note, did medieval theologians believe that there were still living descendants of nephilim? ", "Considering a lot of these beliefs are no doubt remnants of pre-Christian Europe, have you found many/any good first hand sources on European paganism?", "In the song King Henry the ghost is depicted as having an insatiable appetite demanding the titular king henry kill his various animals in order for her to eat. Was this a common trait of ghosts in the period? ", "Hello, I am not sure if this falls under your categories, but I am interested in Bogomilism, their theology, relationship to Patarenes/Bosnian Church and Catharism and any possible beliefs that made it into later days.  Most sources I have found are in Bulgarian/Macedonian in which I am really only able to read road signs and ask directions.\n\nThanks!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.amazon.com/Skepticism-Routledge-Research-Medieval-Studies-ebook/dp/B01BC2QT54/ref=as\\_li\\_ss\\_tl?\\_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=&amp;qid=&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=askhistorians-20&amp;linkId=c80df003fd3e44b79ca1529946ad6e08", "https://www.amazon.com/Skepticism-Routledge-Research-Medieval-Studies-ebook/dp/B01BC2QT54/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=&amp;qid=&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=askhistorians-20&amp;linkId=c80df003fd3e44b79ca1529946ad6e08", "https://www.amazon.com/Prester-John-Sources-Crusade-Translation/dp/1409438074"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19d5m5", "title": "A great deal of movies and tv shows would have us believe that there was an abundance of pomp and ceremony required everyday of the royalty. So what exactly did a king or queen do during the average day?", "selftext": "This is directed to any ruling family throughout history but I am most interested in the Medieval time period.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19d5m5/a_great_deal_of_movies_and_tv_shows_would_have_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8n1hb9", "c8n4hln", "c8n6geg"], "score": [16, 39, 6], "text": ["What region and time period are you talking about? Western Europe? Southern Europe? In the \"typical\" 1200-1800 era or BCE? \n\nFor instance, ancient Greek kings would have had a much different day than Chinese Emperors who would have been different from British Kings. \n\n\n", "I'm no expert but Louis XIV the Sun King (a name he received after demonstrating his central position in divine order by dancing as the sun at a court ballet at the age of 15) is basically the Royal I think of when pomp is used. To set the stage it is important to note this is the age of absolute monarchs. God himself had set these blessed individuals on the throne and it was well within their rights to do whatever the hell they wanted. Louis XIV is the epitome of this absolutist ruler. He is well remembered for the beautiful and captivating [Palace at Versailles](_URL_1_) is literally a monument to the level of decadence he believed befitted a King. [Obligatory Hall of Mirrors](_URL_0_) Wildly impractical the palace at Versailles served as but a crutch for the ceremony instilled in the daily life at Versailles. As Mckay, Hill et al. put it \"Louis further revolutionized court life by establishing an elaborate set of etiquette rituals to mark every moment of his day, from waking up and dressing in the morning to removing his clothing and retiring at night.\" Basically if you wanted something from the King, and you did because he held all the power, you had to fight for the right to dress him in his nighty! (Saint-Simone wrote some memoirs that both of my sources use, but I don't read French let alone late 17th century French but the translated ones should still be good primary sources) \n\n**Sources**\n\nA History of Western Society Volume Two Tenth Edition Mckay Hill et al\n\nWestern Civilization Volume Two Seventh Edition Jackson J. Spielvogel", "For most of this period, in England at least, quite a lot of the time would have been spent travelling - between great houses of the nobility, to war, to treaty signings, on pilgramage - or just between seasonable residences.\n\nPretty uncomfortable, mostly, but with occasional spasms of pomp and ceremony as the King passed through towns."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chateau_Versailles_Galerie_des_Glaces.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Versaillespanoraama2.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4wg3st", "title": "what are those 'inside itches' we can't scratch?", "selftext": "The sensation of an itch, but it feels under your skin and you can't make it go away by scratching it. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wg3st/eli5_what_are_those_inside_itches_we_cant_scratch/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d66scm9", "d66sfvl", "d670wya"], "score": [3061, 69, 165], "text": ["It's because the nerves responsible for sensation **on your skin (called \"dermatomes\") look like [this](_URL_0_).\n\nEach one of those lines correspond with a region of the brain that causes sensation. Notice how there are 3 sections in the hands alone, but 3 sections in the entire leg. Your hands need to be much more sensitive, which is why there are more nerves dedicated to those areas than the legs or arms (for example). \n\nSo when you can't get that itch, it's not that it's *under* the skin, it's that it's in a different area completely. You just can't tell very well, because the nerves aren't as accurate in some areas, and you're just feeling that there is an itch in that general direction instead.", "Your skin is many layers thick, and there are different nerves present in each of these layers. Some nerves are deeper, others are closer to the surface. If the itch is being caused by a neuron that's in a deeper layer of your skin sending signals to your brain, scratching the surface of the skin might not stimulate that neuron enough to make the itch go away.  [Here's](_URL_0_)  a figure showing all the different kinds of neurons you have in your dermis and epidermis as well as their relative depth in the skin. They all respond to different kinds of sensation, such as pressure, vibration, pull, stretch, light brush, etc. If you find scratching an itch doesn't make it go away, try stimulating the skin in a different way! Rubbing it, pushing down, etc.", "Basically your sensory nerves are confusing your brain.  The nerves are telling your brain the itch is in one place when it's really in another.\n\nA common related example, though not an itch, is when someone has an injury near the groin - their entire leg may feel pain, or just a particular part of their leg or foot may feel pain.  The injured nerve near the groin is responsible for carrying the messages from the legs as well, and so it can send a confusing message to the brain when it's injured, signalling pain the leg, when there really is none."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/445845/Brittany_Blog_Images/Locating-and-alleviating-pain-with-the-dermatome-chart-and-estim.png?t=1469557207573"], ["http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v12/n3/images/nrn2993-f1.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4zl0mg", "title": "why didn't other industrialized nations at the time (france, great britain) participate in the space race?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zl0mg/eli5_why_didnt_other_industrialized_nations_at/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6wokuy", "d6wothh", "d6wryji", "d6wt3us", "d6wueax", "d6wx696", "d6xd3ks"], "score": [6, 82, 6, 20, 36, 6, 3], "text": ["Because the us and russia as the main players in the cold war had to show power. The space race was mainly to show who is better in technology. Europe was busy cleaning up ww2.", "France had the most advanced space agency outside of the US or USSR at the time.  They were the third country to design a satellite launcher, and the third country that put an [animal into space](_URL_0_).\n\nThe Space Race usually refers specifically to the feud between the US and USSR.  But France was heavily involved in the space sciences at the time.", "If I understand correctly, the space race was in fact about [ICBMs](_URL_0_)", "Many of their nationals did. If you haven't already, you might want to read about Operation Paperclip:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWernher von Braun, who headed the team that designed the Saturn V which put men on the moon, used to work for the Nazis when he designed the V2 rocket.", "WWII. \n\nThey were a few decades behind the US and USSR due to having to rebuild their infrastructures and cities after WWII destroyed relatively large segments of it. But some like France were involved to some extent. \n\nYou also have the fact that Germany was not allowed to do anything resembling weapons (which is what rockets were) and they lost most of their great scientists to the war, to the US and USSR after the war, or they were involved in the trials to punish the Nazi leadership. ", "Cost is probably the main issue. Space exploration is very expensive. That's why the space station (ISS ) is an international effort. $150 billion and rising is too much even for the US", "After WWII the British had an active [space program](_URL_0_).  They did some pioneering work on engine development, and launched a British-built satellite using a British-built rocket.\n\nThe program fizzled slowly over time.  Space programs are *very* expensive."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licette"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_space_programme#British_space_vehicles_.281950.E2.80.931985.29"]]}
{"q_id": "tw51v", "title": "Does anyone here know a lot about the walled city of Kowloon?", "selftext": "I was hoping someone here knew where I could find a good documentary on Kowloon or just rant for awhile about the city. It was mentioned in a post earlier this week and has piqued my interest.\n\nThanks in advance!\n\nEdit for spelling.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tw51v/does_anyone_here_know_a_lot_about_the_walled_city/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4q9h6a", "c4q9nl0", "c4qa116", "c4qaf85", "c4qb2or", "c4qc7nd", "c4qdzi7"], "score": [4, 11, 4, 35, 10, 21, 2], "text": ["not the most scholarly source but the funnest \n_URL_0_", "Lots of info [in this discussion](_URL_0_).", "Also try crossposting in /r/HongKong, there are a few people in there who have been in HK a long time", "My undergraduate adviser was an expert in this! He wrote this while still in school: _URL_1_\n\nIf you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I also wrote quite a bit on the subject, but mostly as an example of indigenous communities within the colonial context and ad hoc systems of administration working in tandem or working outside of the colonial system of administration.\n\nEDIT: I also had a hand in some translations that went into his paper: _URL_0_ I'd also like to recommend the book *City of Darkness* by Girard and Lambot, *Modern History of Hong Kong* by Steve Tsang, and *A Borrowed Place* by Frank Welsh", "[German documentary with english subtitles on YouTube.](_URL_0_)", "Just FYI, it's \"piqued\" not \"peaked.\" Weird english word #276\n", "Haha glad I piqued interest. I'll be following this thread, I'm interested in learning more myself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.cracked.com/article_19590_the-6-weirdest-cities-people-actually-live-in_p2.html"], ["http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=55357"], [], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=IAweAQAAMAAJ&amp;source=gbs_book_similarbooks", "http://juh.sagepub.com/content/27/1/92.extract"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lby9P3ms11w"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5t0r10", "title": "how pizza delivery became a thing, when no other restaurants really offered hot food deliveries like that.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t0r10/eli5_how_pizza_delivery_became_a_thing_when_no/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddj8kve", "ddj8tio", "ddja6tp", "ddjar6t", "ddjc965", "ddjfv47", "ddjulam", "ddjxuvw", "ddjyz48", "ddjzuh4", "ddk28zr", "ddk33i7", "ddk6m6x", "ddk79go", "ddk7btt", "ddk8oru", "ddka17i", "ddkb0hw", "ddkb822"], "score": [27, 17, 114, 2263, 43, 316, 11, 10, 2, 223, 5, 17, 2, 2, 387, 2, 161, 2, 2], "text": ["Becuase it's cheap and feeds a lot, like Chinese food, and even some sandwich places deliver, like Jimmy Johns. When people want nicer food, they usually go out to eat, and since there is a delivery fee, most people don't want to spend even more on expensive food. The food will also likely be in styrofoam food boxes, so not a quality arrangement. Services like Grubhub don't make a lot of money with nicer restaurants, it's lower class restaurants that can't afford drivers is where they do a lot of business.", "Many food services offer delivery, particularly in cities. At the time of the pizza delivery boom most Mom  &  Pop grocery stores would deliver food to your house if needed (because you were a member of the local community), chinese food delivered, most delis would deliver, even McDonald's delivered during this era. ", "What leads pizza to be something people get delivered instead of make at home?\n\n1.  Frozen pizzas until 10 years ago tasted like shit.  \n\n2.  In a larger city you usually have to compromise on living arrangements.  You may not have an oven at all, or perhaps a smaller counter top oven.  It can be faster for one person to take a small vehicle out than for 5 people to individually make their way to the store.  If you have a ton of orders backing up you aren't able to make the next order (where would you put it), so in general it is best to get as many deliveries out as possible.\n\n3.  The nature of pizza (usually people would order 1-2 pizzas), makes it easy to deliver.  You can stack up 5 deliveries on top of each other and they stay warm.  There isn't a ton of diversity in the packaging so you don't have shifting problems.  The technology on the bags is actually really advanced.\n\n4.  To make a supreme pizza you're looking at buying 3/4 too much toppings, because that is how they sell them.  You can't buy a 1/4 of a green pepper (usually).  The pizza store actually makes money by buying a bunch more, whereas a person at home would have to go through all the toppings or waste them.", "According to the story, the first pizza delivered was to Queen Margherita in Italy in the late 1800's. (Who still has a pizza named after her, the one with tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese.)\n\nPrevious to this pizza was considered peasant food.  According to the story, she woke up one day and said she was bored with the fancy, expensive food she's always eating and wanted something different.  The most renowned pizza chef in the area made the pizza, now called a Margherita pizza, with the colors of the Italian flag and had it delivered to her.  The queen declared it delicious, and as is frequently the case everyone wanted to try what the queen had tried and loved:  \n\nFreshly made pizza delivered to her door.\n\n\nSource: _URL_0_", "I think a forgotten reason is that pizza, wings and Chinese food stay hot and fresh in a way that McD's doesnt.", "Pizza's characteristics mean it's quite hard to make well at home (mainly, you need time to develop the dough, and a hotter oven than most homes have).\n\nYet pizza is also well suited to being delivered:\n\n- Single object, no complexity\n- No liquid components to spill, unlike curry\n- Doesn't degrade much in quality for a while after it's done, even when put into a package, unlike breaded fried foods\n- Takes only minutes to make once you've set up the right kitchen", "Any why aren't there drive-thru pizza places?", "Are we sure it's not actually Digiorno? ", "Well now there is food delivery with an app called postmates which you choose where you want to eat. They pick up your order and deliver it.", "I wish I had a concrete source to provide you with, but in searching the internet for the history of pizza delivery I did come across a few connections that may be helpful:\n\nPizza as a food took off in American following WWII, when soldiers returning from overseas found themselves wanting that delicious pizza they ate while in Italy.  During this time, car culture also began to pick up, with more people having access to a car, which is important to note for the whole \"delivery\" part.\n\nMoving forward into the middle of the century: work/life shifts that found both men and women in the workplace and spending more time traveling to get to their jobs found people with less time to cook dinner and greater interest in dining out or getting take out dinner.  Around this time somebody also figured out the better design for the pizza box, which made it easier to transport.\n\nOne other important thing for you factor in in regards to why more restaurants don't deliver is demand and profitability, etc.  If you live in an area that isn't densely populated, it may not be worth the time for a business to offer delivery if each delivery takes the person 45 minutes one direction for order number 1 and another 30 minutes another direction to drop off order number 2.\n\nedit: clarity", "Pizza has a huge markup, a low amount of required equipment and holds at tempature better than most things. The high markup and low startup costs lead to lots of pizza places around with enough income to attempt methods ti generate more sales. Since pizza is still good after sitting in an insulated bag for 45 minutes delivery was successful. There are other foods that work well ti be delivered but none of them have the combination of mark up and appeal that pizza has.", "Pizza delivery driver here. As others have stated pizza is still fine if you keep it in the bags for a long time. Pro tip if you have your pizza being delivered a long way away ask them not to cut the pizza. It stays better not cut. It also tastes fine after sitting on the oven at the restaurant for a while. We do this to keep them warm while we wait for people to pick them up. It keeps its taste too doesn't get soggy. I deliver other meals for my pizza place and those tend to get kinda nasty after about 20 minutes so we try to get those delivered first. Mozzarella sticks and pasta can get gross if you let them sit. ", "Fun fact: my city has places that deliver mexican, chinese, bagals, and even cookies.  \n\nAnyway, as for why pizza: It's hard to make a good pizza without a lot of experience, but besides that the profit margin on pizza is very, very good.  Because of this it is easier to assume the risks involved with delivery because the chance of profit is much higher than with other foods.", "You can get Chinese / Indian / similar food delivered pretty much anywhere.\n\nA lot of fancy food would look like a total mess on delivery, but everything that's inexpensive and delivers well is delivered.", "I have a book about New Haven pizza- New Haven is considered by many as the birthplace of American pizza. Pizza was seemingly always delivered since it came to America in the early 20th century. Here are some excerpts:\n\n\"...pizza was largely popularized starting in the 1910s when it was sold on the street and delivered to the factories and the Market Exchange, an important regional farmer's market.\"\n\nOne of the most famous pizza places/owners is even credited as the inventor of the pizza box to facilitate delivery. About Frank Pepe's:\n\n\"(Pepe) continued to deliver pies...but he employed a new method to package them, the pizza box. The National Folding Box Co., a local firm, began making them, creating the oldest record of a pizza box in the world.\"\n\nSo again, to reiterate what I stated above- Pizza seems to have started in America as a food that was typically delivered. The tradition was just copied and continued from these original locations.\n", "because it can feed groups of people and only requires hands to eat.  my theory is that most pizzas are purchased to feed social gatherings and are consumed in concert with other activities that make sitting at a table with plates and utensils unattractive ", "Three factors: the nature of pizza production, the physical and financial infrastructure available for that production in the United States after World War II, and the portable nature of pizza itself.\n\nFirst, production: a pizza parlor needs only two pieces of specialized equipment, a heavy stand mixer for the dough and an oven that will hold temperatures over 700F. If you are handy, you can build the oven yourself with brick and pipe. So long as you aren't trying to open a full-service restaurant with lots of seating and a varied menu, the only expensive piece of equipment you have to acquire is that stand mixer. \n\nSecond, infrastructure: after World War II, the US government had a lot of surplus items they were selling cheap: jeeps, canteens, army boots,... and huge Hobart stand mixers. The Hobart mixers were big enough to mix a battalion's bread, and they were going cheap. A veteran could get a small business loan from the GI bill, buy his mixer, rent a small storefront, build his oven, and boom, he was in the restaurant business. It's a restaurant that can make a lot of pizza efficiently, but it can't make much else. You aren't going to get a lot of sit-down trade. People want to take what you make to eat someplace else. \n\nThis brings us to the third item: pizza is a perfectly portable food. It doesn't need a knife and fork. It can be reheated multiple times without a discernable loss in quality. By varying the toppings of vegetables and meat, it can easily be a single-dish meal that makes the entire family happy. As pizza parlors spread from urban centers, owners realized there was a limit to the walk-in traffic they could expect. They knew from their urban experience many customers were taking the pizza home. How could they replicate that trade in the suburbs? By offering a new service: pizza delivered to the customer's house. \n\nEdit: something I forgot, which added steam to the spread of pizza delivery in the 1950's, particularly in the midwest: narcotics. Suppose you are an Italian organized crime boss in Chicago or Kansas City and you want to distribute narcotics in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can't just send a couple of Sicilian nephews to hang out on a street corner. Two Italian guys just stopping to buy gas in Lincoln would attract attention in the 1950's. People would notice. If the same two guys open a pizza parlor, however, no one cares. They can hire compromised people down on their luck as delivery men. They will learn soon enough who can move and consume their product. They have the perfect cover business: all cash, deliveries going all over the city, and open late. I don't know how much this happened in the East, and I don't think it happened at all out West, but I know this happened around KC and Chicago a lot. ", "Most commercial ovens are between 500 and 600. Your oven should be able to get pretty close. And even 375 is enough to get a crispy crust if you pre-bake it a little first. Not quite as good, but works if you don't have the best equipment   ", "Pizza travels well, and all the ingredients are tasty at the same temp. I think it makes sense, same reason Chinese and Thai food is good for delivery.      "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.foodandwine.com/fwx/food/political-story-first-pizza-delivery"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4cc72o", "title": "why do some people vomit when they see a corpse and/or witness a homicide?", "selftext": "Is it simply because it's gross? Sorry in advance if this is a stupid question.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cc72o/eli5why_do_some_people_vomit_when_they_see_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1gump1", "d1gut7o", "d1gwv77", "d1gwy8d", "d1h0a7a", "d1hb812"], "score": [71, 83, 7, 24, 7, 2], "text": ["It's fight-or-flee response. In intense moments of duress(or fright), the body decides to empty the stomach in order to make escape easier. This is not always followed by more familiar alarm responses.", "We essentially vomit at the sight of gory or bloody death as a defense mechanism. In the face of corpses or death, we are often at risk ourselves, and therefore vomit to remove possible biohazards from our system that may have been spread by the dead, as blood and gore are often good at transmitting biohazards. It also prevents us from possibly ingesting any biohazards by forcing everything out of the mouth that may have been headed for the stomach (i.e. blood).", "The smell, you never forget that smell.  It's a smell that will stay with you the rest of your life. ", "It's actually a reaction to the adrenaline dump... all that adrenaline flooding your system can cause you to vomit. (Especially since you aren't actually using it to fight or flee).", "Your body has two basic \"modes\": fight or flight, and feed or breed. When your body encounters the stress of a gory situation it activates the fight or flight (adrenergic) system. This shunts blood away from the digestive system to be used for the muscles, lungs, heart, etc. (the parts of your body needed most for running or defending yourself) so your digestive system no longer has sufficient blood flow to process food and it wants to get rid of it, so you get nauseous and vomit. The same holds true for why someone may vomit during intense physical exertion like a hard workout. ", "I don't vomit often, but on a related topic when I simply heard that someone close to me had died I vomited. Why is that? Same reasoning as the comments below or shock or what?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3vohhe", "title": "If hydrogen only has one electron, what keeps it \"orbiting\" around the nucleus? Why doesn't it just stick to it like two attracting ends of a magnet?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3vohhe/if_hydrogen_only_has_one_electron_what_keeps_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxpiq49"], "score": [23], "text": ["The stability of the atom is an old and complicated problem. It is a very good question, \"why doesn't the electron smack into the proton and stay there if they are attractive?\"\n\nThe answer is that the energy of the hydrogen atom is bounded to a minimum and cannot be forced to negative infinity as the classical 1/r^2 force law predicts. The reason the electron cannot do this is because of the uncertainty principle which is explicitly shown by Sobolev's inequality which states that,  \n\n >  T  > = K\\*(Int p(x)^(3) dx)^(1/3)  \n\nWhere T is the kinetic energy, K is some constant and p(x) is the wavefunction density which is integrated over space in a somewhat complicated fashion. The interpretation of this is fairly simply, if you squeeze the wavefunction into a small location, the kinetic energy must blow up as well. If the kinetic energy blows up, then the electron will quickly no longer be confined to a small location as it will leave. This is why atoms cannot collapse.\n\n* Lieb, Elliott H. [\"The stability of matter.\"](_URL_1_) Reviews of Modern Physics 48.4 (1976): 553.  \n\n* Lieb, Elliott H. [The stability of matter: from atoms to stars.](_URL_0_) Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1991.  \n\nThe first reference is more mathematically technical, the second is more reader friendly. Both discuss not only the stability of the atom, but of collections of atoms aka matter as well."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.bams/1183555452", "http://ergodic.ugr.es/statphys/bibliografia/lieb3.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4pd5p3", "title": "is there any advantage to suburban neighborhoods being twisty labyrinths of cul de sacs?", "selftext": "I see these layouts a lot on Google Maps, they seem counterintuitive, and probably cause delays for emergency responders.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pd5p3/eli5_is_there_any_advantage_to_suburban/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9c8uie", "d4jyncl", "d4jz7d7", "d4k0q7z", "d4k21e7", "d4k5ivn"], "score": [2, 37, 7, 9, 9, 2], "text": ["I always thought it was for aesthetics. Houses all lined up on little grids are hideous and developers (rightly) imagine the people who want to live in the suburbs don't want a city look/feel. \n\nOr it could be to imitate the gated communities in cities that are designed that way to be more park like. \n\nOr it could be to decrease cut through traffic, making it feel safer and family friendly. There are cities that build barricades on streets to make cul de sacs out of their perfect little grids, presumably to decrease traffic and therefore crime. ", "Some people like living on a street with no through traffic. It's very inconvenient, but they like the quiet.", "Why would it cause delays for emergency responders? They only have go up and down the main roads and then into the one cul de sac that they need... they don't drive in and out of every cul de sac looking for the right address.", "It is purposefully built to make it so that there is not through traffic and what traffic is there does not go at high speed. Yes it does slow down emergency responders but those are not needed often enough for the slight slow down to be a big enough negative  to make it a grid. ", "My grandmother lives on what used to be a small, quiet street, thirty years ago.  It's also straight and fairly well maintained, so it eventually started being used by the majority of the city.  It alternates between heavy, loud traffic, and light traffic with people going 40+ mph.\n\nLiving in a twisty labyrinth prevents this from happening.", "They allow their inhabitants to pretend they are living a semi-rural level lifestyle while demanding city level services and paying farm level taxes.\n\nThe usual result is a ponzi scheme of growth followed by municipal bankruptcy.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThese configurations result in a far greater land use consumed per person/household, which has a direct impact on municipal service cost per person/houshold.  If these ppl really wanted to live a rural life, with a dirt road, no water or sewage, etc, then it wouldn't matter.  But if they want someone else to pave their road, maintain water  &  sewer, and come put out their fires, then all those services costs scale inversely to density.  The less intensely the land is used, the more expensive it is to provide services.\n\nThis calculus is slowly percolating through cities, so change is happening, but it's slow, and people who are used to their cul de sacs and taxes too low to support them will push back hard against paying their fair share."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/"]]}
{"q_id": "2kpowy", "title": "What exactly are anti-bonding electrons?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2kpowy/what_exactly_are_antibonding_electrons/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clnlqas", "clntfll", "clo8kar"], "score": [7, 2, 3], "text": ["Atoms have orbitals. When atoms combine to form covalent bonds an orbital forms which covers the both atoms (molecular orbital). \n\nThe molecular orbital has energy states just as atomic orbitals do. \nThe electrons from an atom will fill the lowest energy molecular orbitals first. \n\nIf the electrons go into molecular orbitals that are lower in energy than the electrons atomic orbital, the electron has lowered its energy. This favours the atoms sticking together.\n\nOther electrons can go in molecular orbitals that are higher in energy than the electrons atomic orbital. These electrons would rather not be in the bond (anti-bonding electrons). \n", "What you are thinking about are actually anti-bonding orbitals, which are occupied by electrons. You can think about orbitals as being waves. Remember when you would rock back and forth in the bathtub to make the water level get higher and higher? You were constructively interfering with the wave. Sometimes you might rock at the wrong time and the water level would go back to almost normal, this is destructive interference. It turns out electron orbitals behave similarly in terms of constructive and destructive interference (they are described by wave equations.) It turns out that bonding happens when the orbitals constructively interfere and bonding is not favored when the orbitals destructively interfere. Plot sin(x) and then add it to another sin(x), the amplitude will double. Now add sin(x) to cos(x + pi/2). You'll see the latter addition results in 0 which is destructive interference. Destructive interference destroys the wave equations that describe orbitals, and this we understand to be energetically unfavorable. ", "An electron is an electron is an electron.  All are identical fermions; none different - within the same orbital (I use this term \"orbital\" pretty fast and loose throughout) they are identical except for *spin* - no two electrons in a single atom can have the same four quantum numbers.  Note that much like the **electrons** are *not really particles*, the **orbitals** are *not really places*; they are EIGEN STATES of the energy operator. An electron does not have a position but occupies all space with based on a probability distribution. \n\nThat said, bonding and anti-bonding orbitals are basic ideas for describing atoms which come together to form molecules. Bonding orbitals contribute to the formation of a molecule, whereas anti-bonding orbitals weaken the bonding and destabilize a molecule. Normally, bonding orbitals are more stable than anti-bonding orbitals in terms of energy and thus a molecule is stable unless sufficient electrons occupy the anti-bonding orbitals. \n\nTo help understand bonding and anti-bonding *orbitals*, it helps to have a basic understanding of molecular/orbital symmetry and point groups.  Then you will be able to interpret MO diagrams and also understand orbital hybridization/bonding, electron filling of lowest energy ground state, and also how excitations work with regards to certain types of spectroscopy (e.g., UV/Vis).  Ultimately, the allowed states of electrons are determined by the symmetry properties of their states. Particles which exhibit antisymmetric states are called fermions (i.e., an electron is a Fermion). Antisymmetry gives rise to the Pauli exclusion principle, which forbids identical fermions from sharing the same quantum state. \n\nRead this:  _URL_0_\n\nIf the bonding orbitals are filled, then any additional electrons will occupy anti-bonding orbitals. This occurs in the He2 molecule, in which both the 1s\u03c3 and 1s\u03c3* orbitals are filled. As you can imagine, this isn't very stable. The two electrons in the He2 bonding MO will achieve some stabilization relative to their position in the AOs, but the two electrons in the anti-bonding MO will achieve greater de-stabilization relative to their position in the AOs. Another interesting case is Graphene, where the bonding and anti-bonding orbitals are degenerate. \n\nHOMO/LUMO is also important to understand when studying why molecules form, and also why reaction mechanisms occur the way they do (e.g. *why* does an SN2 reaction proceed at all?)\n\nSo again, an electron is an electron is an electron ... and to complicate things further, the angular momentum of the electrons themselves cause splitting of the energy levels they occupy!  That's a different topic. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://depts.washington.edu/chemcrs/bulkdisk/chem312A_win09/notes_lecture_07_MO.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "243l7g", "title": "If a spectator fell from the stands into the games in the Colosseum in Rome, would he be killed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/243l7g/if_a_spectator_fell_from_the_stands_into_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch3fcly", "ch3lcw8", "ch3wbke"], "score": [4, 19, 16], "text": ["Didn't Caligula force a section of spectators to fight at one point?", "According to t[his source](_URL_0_) the first level of the Colosseum (the only part one could really fall from the stands into the games) is 34' high.  At this height, it's very likely that a spectator would suffer severe trauma (landing on one's head would almost certainly mean death) or otherwise life - threatening injuries.\n\nEDIT: formatting", "Gladiatorial matches are often misunderstood: they weren't orgies of blood and violence, they were spectator sports featuring highly trained combatants. You wouldn't be any more a part of the match for stumbling into the arena than a modern spectator at a boxing match would be.\n\nThe exception are the midday \"intermission\" events, but even those were executions of criminals, not just random guys."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/colosseum/dimensions-of-the-colosseum.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "12v56q", "title": "Why and when did the Roman/Byzantine garum sauce disappear?", "selftext": "Garum was extremely popular in ancient Rome and Byzantium and yet, the cultures that stemmed from these ancient Empires didn't seem to retain a liking of the sauce. Why is this? \n\nAlso: when did garum stop becoming a popular condiment? It seems like it was still consumed by the Byzantines during the late medieval era, so where did it go? Did it presumably die along with them? Why didn't the Venetians, expatriate Greeks, or Ottomans retain a liking for it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12v56q/why_and_when_did_the_romanbyzantine_garum_sauce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6ydb9z", "c6yf2ni", "c6yf7fj", "c6yiotk", "c6yljtw", "c8m1szl"], "score": [27, 7, 3, 3, 10, 3], "text": ["I don't know the answer offhand, but the economics of it seem pretty clearcut. \n\nGarum required a large fishing fleet. It took weeks to produce and required large beachfront facilities. Its specialist producers were in Spain and France, while its largest consumers were in Italy and Greece. \n\nSailors and ships were at a premium during the wars that attended the Roman and Byzantine collapses. The uncertainty of the times would have strained merchants who required large workforces, lots of land, and access to credit between shipments. War and conquest broke trade routes. Most importantly, new ruling classes, Germanic and Arab, entered the Mediterranean with no taste for fish sauce. \n\nSo: garum would have fallen in quality and become vastly more expensive even as it was falling out of fashion. ", "While not fully relevant, a British Chef remade some Garum (with some licence) with pretty good results.\n\n_URL_0_", "By the way does anyone know where one could find a recipe? ", "This question is why I love history, a short esoteric question turns into 30 minutes of research.\n\nNote on buying something like it: \n >  names including but not limited to nam pla in Thai, tuk trey in Cambodian, and nuoc nam or nuos-nam in Vietnamese", "So, essentially what I'm getting from these responses is that garum died with the Byzantines because it was expensive to produce due to the requirements of a large fishing fleet and a large trading network. \n\nWhile it is indeed true that the Byzantine Empire lost these two things during the last years of the Palaiologos Dynasty, I still don't quite understand why garum never caught on with the Venetians. They were a major maritime power that had a large fishing fleet, had access to pretty much all of the goods that Byzantines had access to (they basically took over the old Byzantine trade lanes), and furthermore, after the final collapse of the Byzantine Empire, harbored a large number of expatriate Byzantine Greeks (not to mention had been influenced by Byzantium for hundreds of years due to their trade to the Eastern Mediterranean). Why, then, was garum production not re-established in the Serene Republic? It can't be because they didn't like fish! Look at how many Italian (esp. Northern Italian) dishes are based on seafood, and remember fish consumption was a lot more common back during the late medieval period because it was by and large much cheaper than beef or pork. \n\nThere has to be some major reason that we're missing here.", "Ok, so I have been doing a research project on the Romans and in my reading I noticed that garum was central to roman self image (see ketchup for Americans). Needless to say, it piqued my interest as it came up over and over and over... they were obsessed with the stuff. So, of course I had to find out what all the hubbub was about. I did some research, found a little distillery in Milan that still made the stuff and ponied up the cash to have a bottle shipped stateside. I just tried it... it tastes and smells like death. I just brushed my teeth twice and the taste is still in my mouth. I'll chalk this one up as a loss and one of the rare times that my curiosity got the better of me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPX8dpKG48M"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33hf0k", "title": "I found an abandoned German gravestone on a Polish cemetery. Does anyone know anything about the symbol on top? Can anyone decipher the writing? Who's grave is this?", "selftext": "Edit 2: That is really interesting: I googled the name \"Otto Teichmann\" together with the name \"Rampitz\", the former German name of the town where the grave is located (now \"R\u0105pice\") and found [this](_URL_5_) issue of [Hamburger Anzeiger](_URL_6_) from 6th July 1936. In a small article with the headline \"Beisetzung der verungl\u00fcckten SS-M\u00e4nner\" (\"Funeral of the SS-men killed in an accident\") there is a paragraph in which the fate of Otto Teichmann is explained. Look [here](_URL_4_), it says:\n\n*\"Rampitz (bei F\u00fcrstenberg), 5. Juli. Der bei dem Kraftwagenungl\u00fcck des Musikzuges der Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler verungl\u00fcckte Otto Teichmann wurde am Sonnabend hier beigesetzt. Fast die ganze Gemeinde hatte sich zu der Trauerfeier eingefunden. Pfarrer Terno(?) hielt die Trauerrede. Nach der Einsegnung der Leiche formierte sich ein langer Trauerzug zum Friedhof, wo SS-Kameraden der Leibstandarte eine Ehrenwache gestellt hatten. Nach dem Gebet des Geistlichen und dem Abschiednehmen der Angeh\u00f6ren gr\u00fc\u00dften SS-Sturmhauptf\u00fchrer Garthe(?) und SS-Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Paulisch(?) ihren toten Kameraden und legten Kr\u00e4nze nieder\"*\n\nMy translation: *\"Rampitz (at F\u00fcrstenberg), 5th July. Otto Teichmann, who was killed in an automobile accident of the marching band of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was buried here on saturday. Almost the whole community has joined the funeral service. Pastor Terno(?) gave the eulogy. After blessing the corpse a long funeral procession headed for the cemetery where SS-comrades of the Leibstandarte kept an honor guard. After the prayer of the cleric and the leave-taking of the relatives SS-Sturmhauptf\u00fchrer Garthe(?) and SS-Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Paulisch(?) greeted their dead comrade and laid down a wreath.\"*\n\n--------------------------\n\nEdit: Solved!\n\nThanks to everyone who contributed! And very special thanks to [/u/LOOK_AT_ME_BALLS](_URL_2_) for deciphering most parts of the inscription and to [/u/chrxs](_URL_0_) for explaining the monogram.\n\nThe monogram consists of the letters [LAH](_URL_3_) for [Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler](_URL_8_). The [inscription](_URL_1_) says:\n\nOtto Teichmann\n\nUnterscharf\u00fchrer\n\nLeibstandarte\n\nSS Adolf Hitler\n\nFebruar 1916\n\n1936 (or maybe 1934?)\n\nSo it appears this Otto Teichmann was a member of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler: *\"The 1st SS-Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (abbreviated as 1st SS-Pz.Div. LSSAH) was Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard. Initially the size of a regiment (brigade), the LSSAH eventually grew into an elite division-sized unit.\"* (from the Wiki linked above). \n\nI'd guess he died in 1934 and not 1936 considering this information: *\"On 13 April 1934, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsf\u00fchrer-SS, ordered the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH) to be renamed \"Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler\" (LSSAH). Himmler inserted the SS initials into the name to make it clear that the unit was independent from the SA or army.\"* (also from the Wiki).\n\nSo we have an 18/20 year old member of the LAH dying before any of the events of WWII took place. What happend? Illness? Accident? Murder?  How could I find out more about him?\n\n--------------------------\n\nThat's the gravestone: [_URL_7_](_URL_7_)\n\nI found it laying on the ground of a cemetery in a small Polish village close to the German border. After the war the communist leadership of this town decided to bulldoze the former German graves to make space for new ones. \n\nMy questions: Can anyone identify the the symbol at the top of the gravestone? There definitely is a helmet recognisable. Did the grave belong to a German soldier?\n\nIs anyone able to read the inscription? I think I can read a \"1914\" and a \"193?\" at the bottom, but I can't decipher the letters. Maybe someone has experience in editing photos in a way that makes these letters readable?\n\n\"Fun\" fact: These two photos were the last ones I took with my old digital camera. Right after I took the last one the screen turned black... never to show anything at all again. This grave destroyed my camera and I want to know who is responsible! ;)\n\nThanks to everyone who wants to help! :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33hf0k/i_found_an_abandoned_german_gravestone_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqkwarz", "cqkx7pz", "cqkzopp", "cql3cly", "cql5lcd", "cql8euj", "cql8g17", "cqld5dt"], "score": [9, 24, 19, 4, 7, 32, 2, 5], "text": ["Consider crossposting to /r/whatisthisthing.", "I speak german but the letters are too faded. It is written in [Fraktur script](_URL_0_).", "Go back with some water and wet the stone, it might make the text more contrasted so we can make it out", "I played around with the colours for a bit and am pretty sure that the last two lines are dates. My best guess would be Some February 1876 and 1. July 1934.\n\nThe \"Symbol\" is most probably a monogram, i agree with the other commentor on that one.\n\nPlease pm me when you got a better picture.", "It's a Fraktur calligraph. You'd have better luck in /r/Calligraphy to have them identify the actual letters. It's likely the initials of the person buried there.", "My best guess:    \nOtto Teichmann    \nUnterscharf\u00fchrer    \nLeibstandarte    \nAdolf Hitler    \nFebruar 1916    \n1936    \n\n_URL_0_", "Pretty sure the 'symbol' is a rendition of IHS / IHC;\n_URL_0_", "I found this. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/user/chrxs", "http://i.imgur.com/8XD669d.jpg", "http://www.reddit.com/user/LOOK_AT_ME_BALLS", "http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/1._SS-Panzer-Division_%22Leibstandarte_SS_Adolf_Hitler%22#/media/File:SK_LSSAH.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/cQ92tcg.jpg", "http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/newspapers/issue/3000094646190", "http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Anzeiger", "http://imgur.com/a/18mud", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_SS_Panzer_Division_Leibstandarte_SS_Adolf_Hitler#Early_history_.281923.E2.80.931933.29"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur"], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/8XD669d.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram"], ["http://www.leaders-reich.co.uk/2015/04/otto-teichmann.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3yek0i", "title": "why do they call the sleeveless shirt wife beater a wife beater?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yek0i/eli5why_do_they_call_the_sleeveless_shirt_wife/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cycrku2", "cycrlqj", "cycrm6k", "cyd4dml"], "score": [6, 10, 26, 2], "text": ["Menfolk of lower socioeconomic status can often be seen beating their spouses in that type of shirt. One of those stereotypes borne out of police reports. ", "Because it's a white trash kind of reference. They often wear those undershirts and it's not uncommon for there to be domestic violence, from that the stigma was born. ", "It is, like many other things, based on a semi-humerous stereotype. \n\nFrom another site...\n\n >  ... in 1947 in Detroit, Michigan \u2014 when police arrested a local man (James Hartford, Jr.) for beating his wife to death. Local news stations aired the arrest and elements of the case for months after \u2014 constantly showing a picture of Hartford, Jr. when he was arrested \u2014 wearing a dirty tank top with baked bean stains on it\u2026and constantly referring to him as \u201cthe\u201d wife beater.\n\n >  From there, everything snowballed. From then on, men wearing dirty tank-topped undershirts were referred to as people who were \u201cwearing wife-beaters\u201d and the lexicon stuck from that point forward.\n", "My impression is that it is due to Marlon Brando's popular turn in the play and movie *A Streetcar Named Desire*. He wore that style of shirt and he was crude and beat his wife. The film is very well known and was widely seen in its time. His role in particular was iconic and Brando was nominated for an Oscar. It's affected the way actors depict crude people and wife-beaters ever since.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "468snf", "title": "if a cat is an \"outside\" cat, why does it return home and not go to another home?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/468snf/eli5_if_a_cat_is_an_outside_cat_why_does_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d036oej", "d037dzb", "d0389jb", "d038jl0", "d039cdf", "d03aq1w", "d03bfpk", "d03bsve", "d03ccf2", "d03df89", "d03dqdr", "d03e97s", "d03embq", "d03fc7u", "d03fcyv", "d03ffmo", "d03fhz5", "d03fsvb", "d03guu0", "d03i7nr", "d03kxxh", "d03ld9r", "d03nj34", "d03plgf", "d03q0j0", "d03r3fk", "d03r9sw", "d03rneh", "d03ru98", "d03s2k5", "d03ug1k", "d03v3uo", "d03vyra", "d0419ab", "d042blc", "d042i43", "d0435mw", "d04cdk1"], "score": [695, 3, 106, 169, 41, 45, 298, 19, 20, 36, 12, 32, 15, 42, 4, 13, 6, 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 6, 7, 2, 2, 14, 3, 10, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["A reliable food source, basically. Sometimes you can 'poach' cats by putting out a reliable food source. Had this happen to one of our cats once.", "Cats sometimes go to other cats homes for food. It's just their hunter instinct kicking in. They nearly always end up \"at home\" but not always.", "They want a reliable source of food, water, and (depending on the cat) affection.  \n\nBut sometimes they don't return home, and sometimes they move between homes. There's an outside cat that spends its time hanging around on my deck. Not sure if it's feral or just someone else's cat that likes my food better.", "Its for the food.\n\nFunny story, we have 3 outside cats and they always come home, but we feed 4 cats.  There is a neighbor cat who comes to our house for food.  We finally met the neighbor and talked to her and found out that she was putting her cat on a diet.  He would then come to our house and my daughter would feed him as much as he wanted.  He would come in our house and even sleep.  I think he was ready to move in.\n", "Cats can be weird. I inherited a cat that had beeen poorly socialized who was terrified of everything and everyone. I only got her to let me touch her by bribing her with ice cream. After I had had her for a year I moved to a fairly busy neighbourhood, with tons of foot traffic on the street. That cat's personality changed over-night, and she suddenly became everyone's freind. I'd come home from work, and find her getting pets and belly-rubs from complete strangers on the sidewalk. \n\nOne day, I was riding my bike along the next block, and sufdenly I saw her come scampering out of a neighbours house. The neighbour told me that she was well known in the area, and at least 3 different places let her in, and fed her. ", "Growing up we had two cats, one was predominantly an outdoor cat, the other was mostly an indoor cat. After a few years we'd see less of Rocky (the outdoor one) and just figured he was sleeping outside.. turned out he was sleeping next door and still coming back to our house just for food/treats.", "My childhood cat was an \"outside cat\" he started not coming back at night, then a couple days, then over a week. And eventually stopped coming back all together. He had moved into a neighbors house, they renamed him Bob and he still walks the neighborhood from time to time. that treacherous bastard Bob!", "Animals also have territories, or ranges, that they live in and consider home. Tigers and Lions have big ones. I don't know the size a house cat would have, but our next door neighbor's cat uses our yard as much as his own (unfortunately... but chasing him is one of the few forms of exercise our chihuahua gets, lol). Generally, if a cat is fixed so it doesn't feel the need to roam for mates, and has plenty of food and shelter, it doesn't have a compelling reason to leave. I'm sure there are plenty of antidotes to the contrary, but just think about it from the animal's perspective. If you don't need to leave to have sex, find food, or have a good place to sleep, why would you?", "Sometimes they do go to another home. My ex-girlfriend saw someone chasing after her outside cat once, and they actually got into a fight about whose cat it was. Apparently this cat that my ex had rescued from being a stray at a plant nursery had been going to this lady's house on off nights and eating her food and taking advantage of her hospitality. Cats also have defined territories they won't go beyond. When my ex would walk her dogs, the cat would follow sometimes, but would always stop at a certain street corner and just meow until she came back. It was calling her back as it refused to go beyond its territory into another cat's. Although there are frequently turf wars. The cat would occasionally come home with a bloodied ear and we'd hear some pretty crazy noises sometimes when cats were fighting over territory.", "So, this apparently happened when I was little...\n\nWe had a white outdoor cat (Mr. Cat, of course) that disappeared. Upon investigation and canvassing the neighborhood, we found out what happened. A neighbor had seen the cat on our roof while we were not home, assumed it was a stray (!?!?), brought a ladder over to \"rescue\" the cat, and had given it away to someone they knew. \n\nThankfully, we were able to get the cat back!", "All of our cats are outdoor cats with indoor privileges.\n\nSometimes they will go roaming for about 24-48 hours, but they always come back, because that's where the food and the warm place to sleep is.\n\nAt least 2 of them just hang around the house, but the other two will go through phases of roaming and hanging around.\n\nAlmost none of the cats prefer to stay inside indefinitely, so the semi open door policy seems to be precisely what they want. However, what they want often is in direct contrast with what we want. \n\nIf we want them outside, they want inside. If we want them inside, they will just stand on the porch and stare at us like we are stupid.  ", "Cats generally have two \"zones\" of territory: The inner, safe zone, where the food, water, bedding, etc. are.  Then there's the outer zone, where the cat will patrol, looking for potential new threats, new sources of food, and the like.\n\nIndoor cats do the same thing, dividing up the house into zones.", "Those kinds of cats often have multiple houses to visit or \"rounds\" they make. Source: Moved into a house in college that literally came with a cat. He had been at the same house for three tenants in a row and we met neighbors who had different names for him. ", "I've found that \"my\" outside cat liked to househop.  Kinda made me sad when I found out \"my\" cat was food-whoring a good portion of the neighborhood and I was just another notch in her profurrbial belt.  The only thing that made it better was knowing that I was the only one she would gift with decapitated chipmunks.  No one else got gifts.", "As many others have said, the food. But also, for some cats they could just legitimately be attached to you and whoever else lives there, especially if you're affectionate towards them. Cats aren't actually heartless bastards; they are more than capable of loving you even if they are frequently reluctant to show you that love. XD", "You are, presumably, an \"outside\" human. Why do you return home instead of going elsewhere?\n\nIt's safe, familiar, warm, you may have people you love living with you, etc etc.", "Some cats cheat on thier owners and have multiple homes.  Someone put a GoPro on a cat and found he had a double life.", "Why do you go home? There's food and love and it's their home! (This coming from someone who has an outdoor cat and is pretty sure he had another family for a while)", "Ive read several times that outdoor cats were the most efficient ecosystem destroyers on the planet. I believe one country (Australia?) Tried to ban them outright this link is a pretty good read.\n _URL_0_\nEdit : New Zealand, sorry Aussies", "It's all about food and survival.  When coroners find people that die in their homes with no one noticing, dogs will cuddle up next to their owners until they die too.  Cats will start eating the owners face.", "I worked at a cat rescue for 3 years and looked into this. The ELI5 answer is \"it often doesn't\". Life expectancy of an indoor cat is roughly 14 years, whereas an indoor/outdoor cat's life expectancy is 4 years. \n\nThe problem is everyone knows a person (or is that person) who thinks it's cruel to keep your cat \"trapped in a house\" all day and \"I've had this cat 15 years and he's fine\". Great. You got lucky. Doesn't make it a good idea.\n\nCars, diseases, and predators are big problems. Another big problem people don't think about is \"other people\". What I mean is some people will find an outdoor cat, befriend it, and coax it in and make it theirs. My cousin has done this at least 3 times with neighborhood cats.\n\nSo listen up people: don't let your cats out. ", "Cats do have a degree of loyalty to their humans too and are capable of affection to those who take care of them. \n\n ", "Why do your children return home after leaving school?  Except sometimes they have sleepovers, right?  Home is where the family lives.  \n\nSome cats will have multiple families.  Some cats are just rangy and like to see what 'over there'.  I had an abyssinian named Charlie that wore a collar with our phone number on it.  We'd get calls from miles away, saying \"He just walked in and flopped down in the middle of the kitchen floor.  What should we do?\"  I'd tell them to give him a scratch or two, talk to him, ask if he's OK, then let him out.  Same cat used to walk me six blocks to the train station every morning that wasn't raining.\n\nSOURCE:  have 27 cats.", "ITT Lots of people who feed cats that are not theirs. I thought it goes without saying that you don't do that. ", "Because cats are lazy, selfish, fickle whores and they'll go wherever they get the best perks for the least amount of affection in return.  ", "Didn't they attach cameras to a bunch of cats once and found out that they often had more than one home?", "I own no cats. I routinely have 5-6 cats come in for treats or snuggles. I have one sleeping between my legs right now. I don't know its name. Pretty sure its a boy.", "I swear my cat has other families that take care of him. Sometimes he will be gone for a week and come home clean and fed. The weird thing is that he has a collar on his neck with our information so the other family has to know he already has an owner. ", "Sometimes they don't return home consistently - our neighborhood was once plastered with \"missing cat\" posters and a few days later an update was pasted on top of them. It turned out \"Sam\" had been spending his time with two families on the block and one of them took him on vacation with them for a few weeks.", "Coming in a little late, also not sure if it had been pointed out...\nIsn't this why they say a cat has 9 lives?\nI.E. A life with you, the neighbours, the little old lady around the block. So on and so forth.", "They do -- growing up we fed our dingus neighbors' cat because they thought it would survive outside on \"field mice\". It hung out with me all the time while I played video games.", "Well, my cat has his own garage.\n\nHe normally goes out 'hunting' somewhere (we have a massive amount of land behind our house) and he returns at night. \n\nAccording to his breed he's not supposed to be outdoors either (he's a ragdoll) but he can't stand being inside the house for more than a couple hours. Maybe he has a girlfriend? ", "My mum's cat was an outside cat. Turns out when it went outside it was actually going into the neighbours house. They named it and considered it their own house cat. It wasn't until they showed my mum a picture of their cat that they both realised they were being played for fools! ", "My mom had a cat that went back and forth between her and a neighbor,they found out when there was a storm and they were both looking for the same cat. my mom ended up keeping the cat after that because the other family's daughter didn't want the cat anymore", "In some cases they will. When I moved to another house only a few blocks from the old one, my cat George would regularly walk back to the old house. ", "We used to have mice around or old house. this cat who didn't seem to belong to anyone would chill there for days, then disappear, then come back again. That thing was one sadistic fuck. played with the mice before eating them, and  letting people pet it for a few minutes, then turning around and biting the shit out of you. \n\nfuck that cat. ", "Same reason you don't feed bears, foxes, coyotes or other carnivores near your house...they'll keep coming back for more. ", "pretty much for food, or because they like you. it's not uncommon for a cat to be shared between several families without each other ever finding out. your cat is never really your cat."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://io9.gizmodo.com/5979891/domestic-cats-are-among-the-worst-invasive-species-and-could-be-destroying-ecosystems"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jbtib", "title": "How is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (\"zombie fungus\") able to affect an ant's behavior?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3jbtib/how_is_ophiocordyceps_unilateralis_zombie_fungus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuojr7i"], "score": [4], "text": ["At my laptop now, so I think I'll try again. This isn't my field, so it's a little speculative.\n\nThe fungus releases a cocktail of chemicals, [though we currently haven't characterized all of them](_URL_0_), so we can't know the specific effects of each one. \n\nThe effects that the fungus elicits include spastic, jerky motion, it's driven to move to the underside of a leaf, and to bite down hard to grip the leaf once there. I believe that's what you are asking? How could the fungus drive the ant to such a complicated behaviour?\n\nMost likely the chemicals disrupt or promote certain neural circuits that in turn influence the ant's behaviour. It's not a bite-this-leaf chemical, but a oh-it-feels-good-when-mandible-muscles-are-clamping-down chemical. That said, we don't know most of the chemicals or understand the neuroscience of ants very well, so we're left guessing. But if the chemicals modify simple things like the feedback loops responsible for general trends in behaviour, you can get what looks like complicated behaviour from simple substances.\n\n[Here's a good article that covers a lot of the most recent work on this fungus](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.livescience.com/47751-zombie-fungus-picky-about-ant-brains.html", "http://news.psu.edu/story/277383/2013/05/21/research/getting-bottom-zombie-ant-phenomenon"]]}
{"q_id": "3mxbqx", "title": "what happened to the documentary stations (history, discovery, tlc, nat geo) that caused them to focus on reality tv in lieu of documentaries?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mxbqx/eli5_what_happened_to_the_documentary_stations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cviyjbg", "cvj66jt", "cvjgnkr"], "score": [63, 8, 31], "text": ["Production costs for most reality shows are extremely low, making those kinds of shows a lot more profitable than traditional programming. ", "Market forces. Reality shows are cheaper to make than documentaries and pull in more viewers because most people watch TV to turn off their brains, not turn them on.", "Alright, sit yo ass down and get ready for a story. \n\nThe TLDR is indeed ratings and production cost. But if that's the why, we must ask ourselves \"why now?\" What happened to these stations, and why did it all happen at the same time? Well, the seed of change (or pestilence if you wanna be poetic) is TLC. Before The Channel Formally known as Learning gave us child beauty pageants and whatever the fuck Honey Boo Boo is supposed to be. \n\nYou see, in 2007 Discovery was kind of in a hole. As you may know Discovery owns, TLC, Nat Geo, Animal Planet and more. Despite their wide net, the brand was tanking. So they brought in a man from NBC (who would soon sell out to Comcast) to liven things up. The Discovery Channel store was closed, the main station started doing documentaries more fit for history channel with \"True crime\" exploitation pieces. This would in turn hemorrhage viewership from History (A sister network of A & E) who began showing programs like Gangland. Modern Marvels (which had existed since 1995) got a shiny update, and the content of the History Channel become the closest content rival for Discovery. \n\nBut then, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, or more accurately here comes TLC's shit shows. Ya see, part of the way Discovery was able to have so many networks was appealing to different demos for each one. History had been nailing the males over 40 crowd and discovery had been shooting for educated younger males. TLC was basically discovery channel marketed to women in their early 20s to early 30s, and you know what bored women of that age-range were watching? Soaps, MTV/VH1 reality shows and celebrity gossip. Taking a \"documentary\" series about child fashion shows and editing it like an MTV reality show with a healthy bit of exploitation (the fans of these shows are watching to laugh at these people, make no mistake) and they suddenly had a the right ingredients for what would become a network of cheep, exploitative, schlock across all Discovery Networks (well, except the Science Channel). \n\nSo What really happened? What really changed? Demographics. Say what you will about these networks being crap, they do a good job of not internally fighting with each other for attention. The Honey Boo Boo crowd doesn't want much to do with \"are Megladon's still around\" the age range, income level, and general education of the demo they're trying to reach can be reliably expected to enjoy the TV click bait. They figured out something Buzzfeed did before you wanted to inexplicably punch it in the face: people don't want to learn, they want to have what they know and like confirmed. This is how Discovery Channels' most profitable stretch, year after year, is telling people sharks aren't violent murder machines (except when they are but it's okay because not to people) like it's the first time anybody has heard this information. Apologies to Shark Week fans, but how surreal is it that the most educational thing on the network is telling a demographic that didn't grow up with Jaws shit they already know from last year?\n\nAnd then there's history channel. History is, again, owned by A & E not discovery. History is a tougher nut to dissect. In short, as they became more direct competition for Discovery they began duplicating what was making discovery successful. Deadliest Catch became Ice Road Truckers, bad speculative science docs became Ancient Aliens. History duplicated the pacing of TLC and marketed it to men, but dumbed its content down to turn the stuff with potential to be good into a filter for Discovery Channel's scraps. A & E went the way of TLC and now theirs no real market incentive to change. \n\nIf you really want to know whose to blame, look in the mirror. The original demographics have moved on. We're watching Netflix and are simply too educated to watch a show about convergent mermaid evolution. Discovery says they're gonna start making quality programming again, so demand might be returning as Millennials get more disposable income (Oh right, the other big reason! Because of the whole recession thing, cheaper shows became a must and Gen-Xers aged 34-48 had more money than the groups they were, on paper, marketing towards so include this disclaimer in the paragraph about TLC's market shift) and educated young people starting families in their late 20s is presenting itself as a important demographic to snag.\n\n\nIn short: The Economy tanked around the same time as the networks underwent massive internal restructuring. Networks that were in mild competition with each other entered a full race to the bottom and neither one went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6m4neu", "title": "how point systems, like on snapchat and reddit, motivate people to participate even though they contribute no tangible value like money or rewards?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m4neu/eli5_how_point_systems_like_on_snapchat_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djyvgly", "djyw8jk", "djyxehi", "djyzruc", "djz01ti", "djz0g21", "djz1acx", "djz1klt", "djz1ot9", "djz1rot", "djz2oau", "djz2v7y", "djz3jtg", "djz3yl3", "djz42yg", "djz4hey", "djz4me8", "djz4snk", "djz5gll", "djz5iz8", "djz5zxo", "djz64es", "djz6i3i", "djz6mth", "djz6vsh", "djz75d2", "djz7f4h", "djz7h9o", "djz7k0n", "djz94yw", "djz97wl", "djz99sj", "djz9d5l", "djzb1hy", "djzcdtn"], "score": [746, 14, 214, 2280, 320, 8, 4, 78, 2, 42, 142, 7, 68, 37, 8, 2, 12, 8, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 4, 8, 2, 368, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["A buildup of score, even a meaningless valueless score, still represents time invested. Reddit Karma is a numeric value for how much people agree with you, and therefore, like you. ", "In the case of Reddit and to some degree other social media, they help prop up the \"good\" content. As a user, I want that, and I don't want to spend time weeding through \"bad\" content and comments. I'm more likely to contribute to the conversation when the generally \"good\" and interesting stuff is given to me quickly and easily. It's not perfect, and there are pros and cons to different ways of doing it. But generally speaking with a glut of information, having a flawed but reasonable voting system for propping up good content/comments is valued. ", "Same reason that when I was five years, I followed the rules in school to get little star stickers. Never received anything in return for said star stickers.", "Note: I don't have a Snapchat, So I'll be speaking from a Reddit perspective. Disclaimer: There are so many other niches and elements of the system that I didn't touch on, simply because I didn't know about it, didn't think about it, didn't have time to mention it, or any other number of reasons. This post is just a surface scratch of why the upvote and downvote system works. Human psychology is an incredibly deep and vague subject of which I don't have nearly the credentials to really claim to know what's true and what's not.        \n        \nPart of it is purely because it indicates social acceptance. If someone likes your post, they upvote it. And social acceptance, if functioning correctly, should make you subconsciously feel a little good. It's built into human nature, otherwise we wouldn't be social animals. Another part of it is because it makes the system tangible and measurable, which commonly makes things more appealing to humans, as opposed to vague or entirely indeterminate measurement systems. Imagine if you wrote some blog post on some blog site: would you want it to have an indicator that simply says \"This post is doing well!\" with an image of a small fire next to it (and nothing at all if it does poorly), or a counter of how many views it's had? It's generally more fun to see it go from some number like 1,100 when you go to sleep, and wake up to 2,310. Even better if it suddenly made it big somehow and jumped from 1.5k to 300k overnight. Being quantifiable simply makes things feel more controllable, or at least observable.        \n         \nAs to motivation to upvote someone else's content: A common reason is to show appreciation because it was better than the average post or comment. Maybe it made you giggle, or they provided some extremely in-depth answer, or they're a novelty account that does its job well. In any case, showing appreciation is like an honest \"Thank you\", and makes both parties feel good on the inside. Another common reason is to help sort out what's good and bad content. If it's ad-spam; downvote and report. If it's some fan art of something you like, or a funny post, or an interesting video, you upvote it to help others see it, and also to help a post that you like get the attention that you think it deserves.          \nAs for comments, it's the same way. When sorted by \"hot\" or \"best\", AskReddit threads almost always sort themselves out into really good comments at the top, and mediocre comments at the bottom, save for the exception when an answer is late to the party and ends up sitting at 1 karma. That sense of helping a fellow human out also triggers that feelgood sensation, because again, if being positively social benefits the species, then it's a good system for the brain to reward.           \n            \n^^1 I forgot to talk about the case in which downvotes affect the user experience. Basically, it's the \"negative feedback\" response. So, like it seems, you downvote content that you don't like, be it because it doesn't contribute, because it might be factually wrong, because you don't think someone should see it, or because you disagree with it. In some of these cases--where you downvote because of the appropriate reasons--it ties back around to the feeling of contributing to society, which makes you feel like a necessary cog in the social machine. After all, you did your part in making that out-of-place NSFL shock link or extremely aggressive and rude comment more invisible from the eyes of the rest of the community. You've cleaned out part of the trash.  \n         \nIn the other cases--in which you downvote because you disagree--it provides a *different* rewarding feeling, albeit more self-aligned. It might make you feel superior. It might make you feel like you're \"more right\" for having more karma on your post. In a very heated Reddit debate, there might be one side which is consistently negative in karma, whereas the other side is consistently positive in karma (usually due to the audience which is viewing it). The side which is positive feels like they have a group behind them, whereas the other party is a solo individual who doesn't stand a chance, and might be completely wrong. In turn, you once again feel like you've aligned with society, and get rewarded for it.       \n\n---------\n          \nTL;DR it feels good to upvote content, and receive upvotes in turn. This TLDR doesn't help much. You should read the full comment.    \n       \n----------          \n   \n\nEdit: two comments have explicitly told me about their upvotes. It feels good. Let me express an honest thank you in return. This makes me even happier. (In case another example is needed, refer to this edit.)          \n          \nEdit 2: an insightful comment from /u/MNGrrl has prompted me to add another section to my comment---though not necessarily directly related to their comment, but rather a tangent of it which I failed to mention. It's notated with a ^^1 superscript.", "Validation in a community. Here it's Reddit community and larger, since a lot of it leaks out into the world. Look at IAMA's and news articles that have actually quoted Reddit users.\n\nIn my opinion everyone cares. Even you, OP, care. If this thread had zero, absolute zero comments, and zero votes. You'd be bum. Heck you created this to validate your answer. I am sure you had some idea of what the answer is already, you just need validation that it's probably right. You might even want to see that the majority agree with your answer.\n\nIf this thread received 100,000 up votes, you'd be darn happy. But will it make you richer in real life? Would it make you a better person? Probably not, but a smile because you made a thread that receive so many up votes, right?", "Social approval is a reward and voting based point systems like reddit's rely on that. If I get 100 upvotes on a post I know that 100 people like what I had to say an that, in and of itself, is nice. ", "The thing that motivates us most is feeling good. Acknowledgements, compliments, positive feedback...we have an appetite for it. Money doesn't satiate that appetite. \n\nThere are tons of studies and research on this, but this is ELI5, so whatever. There's an excellent TED talk on motivation, I think it's called \"the problem of motivation,\" and it's definitely worth a watch. ", "I think there's a difference between Reddit and Snapchat. Reddit awards you for posting good content which motivates people to be creative and post new content while Snapchat just increases your score by one every time you send or receive a snap. High Snap scores are just a result of people who are more social or who use the app for a long time and don't really have any meaning.", "It's the same reward system that encourages employees to work harder for something that is virtually non existent. Take for example a place like Dave and busters. Games that cost \"points\" (now 100 points = $1. So they will have games that cost 85 points to make it seem like you are spending less money, where in reality most people want to end on an even dollar as they do not know the next time they will be back.) Most of these games reward tickets, these tickets have 0 monetary value but are assumed to be valuable due to the rewards that they can \"buy\". This system encourages you to spend X amount of time, effort, and money just to \"earn\" a $3 teddy bear you can buy at Wal-Mart. \n\nWith this in mind, companies use this tactic to encourage workers to be more active, and in return they \"earn\" something. Reddit and Snapchat work off the same system, however with reddit the point system encourages activeness, trustworthiness, as well as \"rewards\" a user by allowing them to post and comment more often on different subreddits. Snapchat on the other hand works off of notoriety and the more someone promotes their snapchat, the more followers they gain, and in turn they \"earn\" internet fame for their tiny little corner of the interwebs. \n\nSo, while they do not earn anything tangible with immediate value, they do earn something that is valuable to them, which will cause them (because humans are fucking greedy) to continue doing so in a never ending cycle until something presents itself that offers more \"valuable rewards\". At least to that particular individual. ", "TIL snapchat has a point system... I just like sending useless and mundane photos to my friends without crowding my text message history or implying the photos are somehow important because they're not. \n\nSimilarly I don't participate on reddit for the karma, I don't have many IRL social connections and reddit fills that void. \n\nBut gamification is a real phenomenon, the illusion of reward can be as motivating as reward itself. \n\nFor example, a daily jog is rewarding in itself because you get exercise endorphins and you get to know you're doing your body good through healthy exercise. But it's still infinitely more fun to go jogging if you make believe you're running from zombies. ", "Hi all.  This is the sort of thread that is going to have a ton of removed comments.  I want to leave this here as a sort of explanation.  \n\nOur rule #3 outlines the expectations around top-level comments.   I'll post that rule here for convenience.  \n\n > 3) Top-level comments must be written explanations\n\n\n > Replies directly to OP must be written explanations or relevant follow-up questions. They may not be jokes, anecdotes, etc. Short or succinct answers do not qualify as explanations, even if factually correct.\n\n > Links to outside sources are accepted and encouraged, provided they are accompanied by an original explanation (not simply quoted text) or summation.\n\n > Exceptions: links to relevant previous ELI5 posts or highly relevant other subreddits may be permitted.\n\nPeople will tend to want to answer questions like this one through the lens of their personal experience and feelings on the matter.  This isn't a survey sub and those comments will likely be removed as anecdotal.\n\n ", "Can I just say that everyone is making a big assumption that but users on Snapchat and Reddit are motivated to participate by \"points\"?\n\nHow about the community aspect of it all? I would hypothesize that that is far far bigger of an incentive for people to participate. I hypothesize that Reddit attracts so many users to comment because it mimics social interaction and our brains love social interaction. Not this weird gamification based on points.", "I see a few mentions of gamification here but I\u2019m going to advocate a different perspective.  Particularly, I think gamification (i.e. the reward) isn\u2019t accurate because people don\u2019t do things for the rewards- they don\u2019t expect to get upvoted.  Well sometimes we do, but we usually don\u2019t and we shouldn\u2019t.  I\u2019ll expand on that point more, below.  The question then becomes why do we keep posting?\n\nThe answer is intrinsic motivation which is fostered by three ingredients: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.\n\nSelf-determination theory (SDT) is a psychological theory of motivation that explains human behavior in terms of these three ingredients.  In fact, when a lot of people talk about \u201cgamifying\u201d things, we are really referring to ensuring that the user is gaining a sense of autonomy (personal control and freedom), competence (via upvotes: their post is funny, their post is accurate, their post is relevant, etc and this affirms their view of themselves as competent) and it allows them to connect with others (obviously this is social media, after all).  \nThe behaviorist perspective prevailed throughout early psychology, which said that people do things \u201cin order to get a reward\u201d or because they expect a reward.  As I\u2019ve noted, it\u2019s foolish to expect to get upvoted.  Indeed, SDT research shows that when people do things for a separable outcome (e.g. reward, money, upvotes), they lose interest, do not enjoy the task, perform poorly, etcetera.  This is extrinsic motivation. If people do things because they enjoy the task (because it satisfies the 3 basic needs) they continue to do it.  They can even get a reward later, but as long as the reward is not the reason they do it, intrinsic motivation will increase and participation will remain steady.\nThere's TONS and TONS of research on SDT.  Read it.  It's cool.  It's the closest we get to a real theory in psychology instead of just a pet theory.\n\nTLDR; Thus, we keep posting because we enjoy it, not for the reward of upvotes.  The upvotes foster our sense of competence and relatedness (and probably autonomy), which helps us enjoy it more. \n", "An upvote is a pat on the back for making a good contribution. People need to feel valuable to others.\n\nI don't feel very valuable in my day-to-day life, probably because I get suspicious when other people pay me compliments. I think things like \"did they really mean that, or were they just buttering me up to get something from me later?\" Upvotes are honest because they're given anonymously.\n\nSource: I have over 700,000 karma.", "I compare it to a \"Skinner box\" mechanic, or \"operant conditioning\". We get so little positive feedback in our life, that when something says \"well done!\" consistently when you perform an action, you want to keep doing it. It's been tested with animals, and buttons which dispense food. They learn that good things happen when they press the button, and want to keep pressing it. Same concept applies for treats when training dogs", "Why bother getting a high score?\n\nBecause it makes people feel good that either they are good at something, are attractive, or have a popular opinion.\n\nAny type of reward, even fake ones, are going to make you feel good.", "Same reason people buy the latest iPhone or Galaxy when the old ones or even a flip phone would suffice, status.\n\nNo matter how much they deny it, every person (at least secretly) wants more than the next person, even if it is useless bullshit.", "Take a look at \"NoseDive\" the first episode of the 3rd season of Black Mirror on netflix. This is a great example of glamification and definitely seems to be the likely direction that the human race is headed in. Siednote: there is no need to watch Black Mirror in any order as the episodes do not correlate to each other.", "Any kind of positive social media interaction triggers release of oxytocin. It's the hormone that makes you feel good when you get a hug or applauded. By giving you a score to based on your acceptance and participation, you reward yourself by releasing pleasure hormones. The people that develop these social networks know this and have gamified their sites in order to keep the good feeling going which keeps people coming back.", "It's like a drug. When you see that like or upvote, you get a little hit of happy hormones in your brain so you keep coming back for more. ", "Read a book recently titled 'Solitude.' One of the chapters touched on social media reward systems, and how it ties into the fact that people are uncomfortable with solitude. It's all about feeling connected, and being a part of something with the luxury of being able to correct, edit, etc what you participate in to show off the part of your 'best self,' if you will. Great book. 10/10. ", "At least on Reddit, there is a tangible benefit in that low scores make you wait between posting. So you can 'spend' points by making the occasional controversial or risky post that attracts downvotes, and still be able to effectively participate.", "That IS the reward.\n\nYou post for a reaction. You get a reaction. If it's a positive one? You feel vindicated in your opinion and that's rewarding. If it's negative, you feel the need to defend your opinion, further reinforcing this feedback loop.\n\n \n\u00a0\n\u00a0\n\nI want to get off Mr. Bones wild ride...", "Snapchat and Reddit are diametrally opposite examples, but both valid. \n\nSnapchat purely gamifies the service (someone already pointed that out), and presents a reward mechanism so users would invest (content) in their platform. It's purely a ladder system, like Twitter followers, that pertains on one's ego (\"mine is bigger than yours\"), and with such point system Snapchat uses human ego extensively to thair advantage. \n\nReddit's point system (karma) on the other hand, is constructed to represent one's reputation. It's much more similar to Quora then Snapchat. While reputation itself can be (and usially is) gamified, i.e. falls under \"mine is bigger than yours\", it is also a cornerstone of service itself, as it helps maintain quality of service and surface and promote/demote content based on user's reputation, i.e. relevancy to a topic. Reddit e.g. won't allow new accounts, or users with very low karma (points) create new threads, so clearly point system is used to reduce signal vs. noise ratio. \n\nSo how does a point system motivate us when it doesn't provode any tangible reward?\n\nPeople have a tendency to climb a ladder, in every aspect of their life. 2000 followers on Twitter makes me \"more influential\" than someone with 1400 - so I'll be more active to gain larger follower base. Hence Snapchat. \n\nRewards for relevancy and competency helps people build their own brand and expand relevant reach, so they \"invest\" in themselves. Hence Reddit, Quora. \n\nTo summarize:\n- points as a ladder system pertain to human competitiveness and are extensively used as gamification mechanisms to \"trick\" users into spending more time on service (Foursquare, Twitter, Snapchat)\n- points as a reputation system pertain to increasing and maintaining quality of service, by providing relevancy, context, and reducing signal2noise ratio (Reddit, Quora). ", "It's the same online as it is in the real world. If you're chatting with friends and make a joke, it feels good when people laugh. You created something and somebody else appreciated it. \n\nOr if you write a paper and somebody cites it in their work. Somebody read my paper! Somebody out there I've never met got value from something I created. \n\nValidation can be a double edged sword,  though. When your sense of worth is tied to the reactions you get from others, a joke that falls flat won't feel good. Somebody ridiculing your paper.\n\nAny site can implement votes and comments,  but that won't suddenly give it that value. The value is the users. Yahoo Answers and YouTube are cesspools. The infrastructure is fine,  but without the quality users, you won't find the validation of participating.\n\nReddit has many widely different subs. The kind of people you encounter in one will be very different from another. The \"bad\" users tend to be hidden from view by the voting system, saving users from a YouTube like experience. \n\nAnd Snapchat is for sending nudes.\n\nEdit to add: I spend way too much time in /r/cpp_questions helping people who are learning to program in C++. It's a small sub, so if a comment were to get 10 votes that would be surprising. Instead of a large number next to a comment to make me think that a lot of people got value out of something I wrote, I'll have just one person that got value. Maybe they were just looking for the easy way out of a difficult programming assignment, but if I helped them understand a concept in a way that they weren't able to in class or with a TA, that makes me feel good. Teaching is incredibly rewarding. They won't remember me 10 years later but they'll maybe remember whatever concept eluded them, and that's kind of neat. ", "\"The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important\" -John Dewey\n\nThis is why. Nowadays it's admittedly a bit different, but the vast majority of people thrive on the feeling of being important or in other words feeling accepted. The momentary satisfying of this \"deepest urge\" is what motivates people to participate. People want to be heard and feel like they matter", "To understand this, we must look no further than the famous psychologists Pavlov and Skinner. The names might ring a bell ^^^^heh for the famous experiments sharing their names, \"Pavlov's Dog\", and \"Skinner's Box\".\n\nIn the experiment of \"Pavlov's dog\", Pavlov would ring a bell, feed his dog, and his dog would drool (an instinct associated with eating food). Pavlov kept doing this, until eventually all Pavlov had to do was ring the bell and the dog would start drooling regardless of food.\n\nWith this experiment, Pavlov was able to make the dog associate the sound of a bell with his reactions towards food (drooling, for starters); Essentially, Pavlov showed that *reactions* can be conditioned.\n\nThen came Skinner. In Skinner's box experiment, he put a pigeon in a box, and in the box there was a button. Whenever the button was pressed, food would be dispensed to the pigeon. Eventually, as the pigeon realized this, it would obsessively press the button in an attempt to get more treats. -There was also a second part to Skinner's findings: If food was given *every* time the button was pressed, eventually the bird would get bored of the button and quit pressing it. But if instead food was given *at random* for button presses, the bird was drastically more likely to keep pressing the button, even after the bird was full it would still want to press the button.\n\n\nWith this experiment, Skinner was able to make the pigeon associate the press of a button with the experience of receiving food, and by giving food at random Skinner was able to get the pigeon to want to press the button substantially more. Essentially, Skinner showed that *actions* can be conditioned.\n\n---\n\nEssentially, Reddit is a big skinner box. You have come to associate upvotes, and by proxy the act of giving comments people will like, with the feeling of social acceptance and gratification. Your brain desires this social acceptance and gratification, and believes it can gain that by typing certain words into this box on your screen. Yes, peck at your upvotes, pigeon, peck away.\n\n----\n\nFUN FACT: Professor Skinner actually was commissioned by the US government during WW2 to use the very same Skinner Box concept to create *Pigeon Guided Bombs!* Pigeons were put inside of a bomb, with a screen inside that displayed what the bomb saw. The pigeons were conditioned to associate Japanese naval ships with food, and would peck the naval ships on the screen to dispense food, and this pecking of the screen actually controlled the steering of the missile. Apparently the tests of Project Orcon proved surprisingly successful, however the pigeon-bombs were never actually used in combat.\n\n(If you haven't noticed, Skinner had a weird obsession with pigeons)\n\nAnd for your viewing pleasure, here are [two pigeons Skinner conditioned to play pingpong! :D](_URL_0_)", "Money is not a basic human motivator. However belongingness and self-esteem are fundamental human drivers (after things like safety), according to Maslow. It's all there in the Hierarchy of Needs.", "It's the same reason people want money even though it has no real value. It's a social game. People are naturally driven to seek social status, and any type of numerical measure of that is appealing. At some point, those points began to have a real world value simply because people want them.", "The simplest way of telling it would be that the point system shows that someone is popular or not in the perspective of the consumer. If you have 2K points but your friend has 30K then it would feel like you're not participating enough. ", "To actual to 5yo: Something something Sociological reasons.Like this, every culture had their norms and _URL_0_ reddit culture, karma points are the value.Therefore,its up to the individuals to either accept or reject the values.Maybe\u261d\ud83d\ude02", "When there's a voice we either agree with or find entertaining, we \"upvote\", which allows others to see and share our enjoyment with them. There's more to it than that but there's actually a redeemable purpose to points on sites like Reddit, and that's introducing others to something we like/agree with.\n\nEDIT: As far as Snapchat goes, that's more of a psychological 'thing'. I think people just enjoy easy, accessible challenges like streaks. \"How long will it last, who's going to break it first?\" etc. are fun questions to find the answer to.", "My idea is good because other people voted it up with their bias.\n\nThat's the most apt description possible.\n\nVirtue signalling.", "All these comments are quite sophisticated, but from a perspective of a teenager with 300k+ Snapchat points, it's all about the social hierarchy. The \"cool kids\" have more points, and having more points makes you \"seem cool\". Simple as that", "the points system decoys the 15% of redditors who are toxically stupid\n\nthese people think they have done something with a downvote and having done this then go away, otherwise they feel an unmet need to punish and pursue other avenues to flagellate more vigorously \n\ni have noticed my best OP's and comments are usually downvoted, but not always, they can be upvoted or ignored\n\nreddit never made any sense to me until they published some stats, say .1% of redditors post 10% of the content, you know these vociferous idiots arguing and disagreeing in an obsessively and traumatic way with anything of sense seem to be dominant, but its domination by the sheer volume of posting or focus\n\nso the vote system decoys these people somewhat since the next step they would take is campaigning for removal by the admins etc or more posting to try to \"swamp by content\" or [hassle](_URL_0_) !\n\nthe other interesting thing is people find high reading age or confronting ideas offensive, even though well worked out but are simply against conventional social norms\n\ni think they try to punish this as well because the implication is, their value houses are built wrong !\n\nso three cheers for downvotes !\n\nand the spell checker ! : o)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4"], [], [], [], ["values.In"], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/6lhdm5/how_a_dentist_fixes_tooth_decay/djuffn4/"]]}
{"q_id": "3ds29q", "title": "Can there be Earthrises on the moon?", "selftext": "I know that the moon is tidally locked with the Earth, so I was disappointed that there could not be Earthrises on the moon (if you were standing on the moon, not above it like the [iconic photo from Apollo 8](_URL_0_)). But then I saw [this](_URL_1_) video. If you lived on the edge between the close and far side of the moon, could you witness an Earthrise? If so, what would it look like? Would the Earth rise a few degrees in the sky then fall? I'm sure it would be breathtaking.\n\nThanks guys! I wrote a short story that went on the assumption that Earthrises existed and I want to make sure it is still scientifically accurate.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ds29q/can_there_be_earthrises_on_the_moon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct8f6mb"], "score": [11], "text": ["According to [this document from NASA](_URL_0_), the moon's longitudinal libration is about 8.2 degrees. That's how many degrees east or west of \"center\" the moon appears to rotate over the course of a month. So it's also how far the earth appears to move in the sky when observed from the moon. (There's also latitudinal libration, which I'm ignoring for simplicity.)\n\nSince the earth's angular size from the moon is only about 2 degrees, the wobbling effect would be plenty large enough to make the earth rise and set completely over the course of a month. You would have to be within a few degrees of the boundary between the lunar near and far sides in order to see it cross the horizon, as opposed to just moving up and down a bit in the sky.\n\nBear in mind that because of the relative slowness of the moon's orbit, this would be a much slower event than a sunrise on earth, or even a lunar sunrise. Calculating the exact speed is tricky, because it requires modeling the moon's elliptical orbit and rotation, but we can estimate it. Assuming the earth's position in the lunar sky follows a sine curve with an amplitude of +/- 8 degrees and a period of one lunar orbit, then its maximum angular speed would be just under 0.08 degrees per hour. So it would take (very roughly) about 26 hours to rise or set completely."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html", "https://youtu.be/6jUpX7J7ySo"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/lunar_cmd_2005_jpl_d32296.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "7vnayx", "title": "- does the human body really have a 24 hour body clock?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vnayx/eli5_does_the_human_body_really_have_a_24_hour/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dttkapp", "dttruee", "dttyuio", "dtu2qnz", "dtu3alu", "dtu3l5n", "dtu4sya", "dtu537p", "dtud70y"], "score": [88, 5, 9, 3, 4, 2, 5, 5, 2], "text": ["Kinda, yes. We have a [circadian clock](_URL_0_), a biological mechanism that works by releasing certain hormones over a 24 hour period, as well as taking external cues such as the Sun. Without external cues, the circadian clock can actually run a bit longer or shorter than 24 hours, and in babies it's still all messed up (which is why they have an irregular sleep schedule).\n\nNot just humans have a circadian clock, almost every animal does.\n\nThis has nothing to do with leap years though, since leap years just add a whole day, not messing with our circadian clock.", "I thought I had read somewhere that if humans are left in darkness for long enough their circadian clock extends all the way out to 48 hours.", "Sort of. The human body does have a natural rhythm, but we can manipulate these given the right stimuli. \n\nWould love for someone more knowledgeable to chime in here; but I\u2019ve heard that the US navy runs their submarines on 18 hour days, since there\u2019s no external light sources the sailors bodies adjust to the schedule. ", "We condition ourselves to be on 24 hour cycles.\nBut left to ourselves human internal clocks would vary anywhere from 12-48 hour cycles", "Sorry, no source. Long time ago i heard or read about a study where a person (woman) was put in a underground lab with no external indicators and marked her cycles of sleep/awake. It was just a little longer than 25 hours. So basically, afair, her \"day\" time (awake) was longer than noramal.", "I had read once that if put in a dark room long enough, the subject would naturally start a 36 hour sleep/wake cycle. ", "There have been a few experiments over time where people have isolated themselves to test this. [Michel Siffre](_URL_0_) did some interesting experiments where he isolated hiself in a cave for months at a time to see how his cycle would change. For him, his cycle was ~24hrs for the first few weeks and then became pretty erratic. ", "The [US Navy Submarine Fleet](_URL_0_) changed it's long-standing stance on the 18 hour days.  Aside from limited skirmishes around the globe, the military generally does not do things that significant without just cause.  So, I imagine the research supported that 24 hour days are more beneficial.", "Stefania Folini spent 3 months in a cave away from all indicators of time and the night day cycle.  Her internal clock first shifted to 28 hour days and then 48 hour days.  She would regularly spend 20+ hours awake and sleep for 10+ hours.  When removed from the cave she guessed that 2 months had passed.  The Wikipedia article on her is a short but interesting read."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_clock"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre"], ["https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-life-changing-shift-has-made-submariners-much-happier/"], []]}
{"q_id": "7p5u3c", "title": "Why are non-linearities essential to machine learning?", "selftext": "I understand why every other hyperparameter is necessary except the non-linearities like ReLU are needed", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7p5u3c/why_are_nonlinearities_essential_to_machine/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsfjw3i", "dsftu9g"], "score": [12, 17], "text": ["When you talk about ReLUs, you're specifically talking about neural networks, which are one of the most complex and powerful tools in the machine learning scientist's arsenal. I'll speak to that a little bit later but first I'll start off with why nonlinearity is important to begin with.\n\nSimply speaking, not all data is linear. Take [this chart](_URL_0_) as an example. How would you use a linear classifier to separate the ones from the zeros (zeros outside, ones inside)? It's simply not possible. The XOR problem is another example of this. There are some ways to \"linearly\" separate them as far as transforms and Z-spaces go (think support vector machines). Nonlinear models give us a vastly greater hypothesis space to search when trying to find our function approximation and when training our model. This comes at a cost, though. The more powerful a model is, the likelier it is to overfit given constant sample size. \n\nNow to return to your original question about ReLUs: ReLUs are just one of many options for activation functions in neural networks. The nonlinearities they introduce, as I said before, increase the hypothesis space size and allow us to more powerfully train our network. They also have some nice other properties that aren't strictly relevant to your question. There are other nonlinear functions one could choose from, too.", "A different view to /u/mmm_toasty on why non-linearities are important:\n\nA Neural Network can be desrcibed as a series of alternating matrix multiplications and non-linearities. If you remove the non-linearity between two matrix multiplications, you could just replace those two matrix multiplications by a single one since they are associative. If you remove all the non-linearities in the network, you end up with a single matrix multiplication (also called a linear model)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ58V2-VYAElfqH.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1z9t1n", "title": "if a person with a gun pointed to their head got shot, would they hear the shot or would it be too late?", "selftext": "I was wondering if the victim would hear the shot or die before knowing the guy pulled the trigger.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z9t1n/if_a_person_with_a_gun_pointed_to_their_head_got/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfrrivp", "cfrrjkz", "cfrrp6s", "cfrrpwu", "cfrrzjj", "cfrt3u8", "cfrtqbo", "cfrxlqt"], "score": [3, 8, 51, 9, 4, 2, 3, 7], "text": ["If the bullet was supersonic, then they wouldn't hear it. The bullet would arrive at their head before the sound wave.\nIf it was subsonic, then the sound wave would arrive first, so they would hear it.\nNone of this takes into account the fact that your brain doesn't die immediately, even if a bullet passed through it, so I suspect they would actually hear the shot either way...", "Depends on the round.  If it's a subsonic round, it's moving slower than mach 1, and you'll hear the shot before the round hits.  If it's supersonic, then the bullet is moving faster than mach 1 and you'll be dead before the sound arrives.", "a 45 caliber bullet travels ar 800 to 1100 feet per second through generally a 5\" length barrel. On the lower end 800x12=9600 inches per second for a 5 inch distance. My \"GUESS\" is that you would possibly hear the hammer fall... but 5 inches later at 9600 inches per second.... you aint hearing anything but Angels singing.", "Pistol rounds vary from slower than the speed of sound (like the .38 Special) to faster (like the 9mm.) Rifle rounds are overwhelmingly faster, with some .223 Remington rounds leaving the barrel at over three times the speed of sound. If a sniper from a decent distance fired at you, you'd see the flash, then the bullet would hit, then the sound would reach you.\n\nThat's not all you need to know, though. Gunshot wounds to the head are not always fatal, and when they are, they aren't always instantaneously fatal. It depends on where the round strikes and how much damage it causes as to whether you'll lose consciousness quickly or not.", "Supersonic has nothing to do with it if the gun was right at your head. You would hear nothing at all.\n\nIf it is much further away, long range rifle, then supersonic becomes a factor.", "Depends on whether the shot killed you or not.", "I feel like the deciding factor here would be how long it takes for your brain to process sound. The sound would physically hit your ears before you were dead (if we are assuming you die instantly when bullet hits), but your brain probably wouldn't register the sound until after you were dead. ", "Most of the people here are forgetting that we don't hear instantaneously, there is a slight delay. If the bullet is traveling anywhere *near* sonic speeds, you won't hear it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "73xzgd", "title": "how do we know that our translations of hieroglyphics are correct?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73xzgd/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_our_translations_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp6u58l", "dnu0jxj", "dnu2dza", "dnu35hm", "dnu3f30", "dnu9gz5", "dnuc7bt", "dnuecyq", "dnugn2e", "dnupqbu", "dnuxp9u", "dnuza8k", "dnv1ent", "dnv37kk", "dnv55oh", "dnvibi2"], "score": [2, 418, 260, 6281, 36, 7, 94, 39, 569, 54, 18, 4, 7, 1193, 4, 3], "text": ["IT'S HIEROGLYPHS NOT HIEROGLYPHICS. My Ancient Egypt professor got triggered so hard he had a mental breakdown whenever any of us students said hieroglyphics instead of hieroglyphs.", "The Rosetta Stone is a big help. A decree etched on stone in both hieroglyphs, which we didn't understand, and Ancient Greek, which we do", "The top and middle texts are in\u00a0Ancient Egyptian\u00a0using\u00a0hieroglyphic script\u00a0and\u00a0Demotic\u00a0script, respectively, while the bottom is in\u00a0Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering\u00a0Egyptian hieroglyphs.\n\n_URL_0_", "As others have said the Rosetta Stone was vital in beginning understanding. Beyond that we know because it keeps making sense. So as an example.\n\nWhy did the \u00a5 cross the road?\n\nThe \u00a5 we ate last night was good.\n\nWe had fried \u00a5.\n\nThe \u00a5s ran out of the coop.\n\nThe \u00a5 feathers were beige.\n\nWe can start narrowing in on what \u00a5 is because there are only certain things that can be filled in and make sense. In this case birds are really the only thing that work, in particular I started with chicken.\n\nSometimes we don't have an absolute answer but a close enough answer that can be used. As we see the symbols more we have more knowledge about what the symbol means.\n\nIt is actually the same way you learn new words, the context eventually reveals the information, and as you hear the word more often you can fix any mistakes you've made in the meaning.", "The importance of the Rosetta Stone is a bit overblown, but things like that help. Generally, we know through continued translations that match up using the same Hiero. Things would get very chaotic if the translations were wrong now. But we can still translate them fairly easily (the grammar is much simpler than Latin and Greek, thankfully.) \n\nEdit: If you're going to downvote me, at least challenge me in the comments. Or else you're only doing it because other people did. (I hate double editing, but for context I was at -7 when I made the first edit.) ", "For that matter, how do you know your tanslation of this english sentence to your native language (whatever that may be) is accurate?\nYou assume it is, for you have \"learned\" the meaning of every word and think you know how to grammatically decipher a sentence, but how do you KNOW?\n\nOn a less filosophical note, though, there's a video from VSauce that somewhere in the video goes on a tangent on how you could start to decipher any foreign language by noting how frequently some words and letters are used (also, the rest of the video is pure awesome). _URL_0_\nDefinitely worth a watch.", "Related question:  how are names translated from non-alphabetic languages?  I can understand how a name that's a combination of common words (like \"smith\" or \"underhill\") would be translated, but how did the Egyptians write down a name that's a random collection of sounds?", "Rosetta Stone as others stated.  Remember it was a tax code.  Meaning a lot of technical jargon. Not much room for interpretation. Had 2 languages we knew and 1 we didn't.", "Others have talked about how we have decided what means what in hieroglyphs, but that doesn't actually mean we know for sure that our translations are correct.  \n\nI'm going to give an example that I leaned about when I took a class on reading hieroglyphs in college; unfortunately, the details have faded a little.   \n\nBack in the 50s or 60s, egyptologists thought they had the translations down. Then, one discovered a pattern in verbs that indicated a whole tense no one had noticed before. This tense looked very much like present tense, but was subtly different. They had to go back and re translate practically every thing. The fundamental meanings didn't change a whole lot, but the subtleties did. I think this new tense is called \"second tense\"", "Besides inferring from translations, there is also some help in errors that have been made by the people who wrote in hieroglyphs. Because when you make an error with language, it's not random but rather reflects the system of the language. So if you find a phrase that is repeated in many places, but in one place there's a mistake in it, you can look how it differs and thus get a better idea about the phrase. It's a bit hard to imagine, but one example is Latin pronunciation - a writer might confuse I with E because the sounds are pretty close, but he won't ever confuse I with X because they're very far apart.", "BBC did an awesome documentary about this. It's on Netflix  &  it's called '[Egypt](_URL_0_)'. It's definitely dramatized but the facts check out. The first four episodes are about king Tut and the European race to find ancient Egyptian tombs  &  artifacts. The last 3 however are an account of the quest to decipher the Rosetta Stone's Egyptian Heiroglyphs.", "we use so many emoticons nowadays that I am wondering whether people in the future when they look back will think that we are in the age of hieroglyphics ", "There's a fascinating Nova special called \"Cracking the Maya Code.\" It covers this topic in regards to Mayan hieroglyphics instead of Egyptian, but it goes over the history of how we discovered certain things and how long-standing beliefs were changed after new discoveries. If you can find it, I highly recommend watching it.\n\n_URL_0_", "As others have said, the Rosetta Stone played a huge role in deciphering hieroglyphics since it included translations in languages we already knew. But how could it be deciphered if we didn't have that kind of cheat sheet? \n\nA fascinating example is [Linear B](_URL_0_), a pre-Ancient Greek language discovered on stone tablets on the island of Crete. It was long assumed that it would be completely indecipherable without some sort of \"Rosetta stone\", but we cracked the code in 1952, thanks to decades of study by [Alice Kober and Michael Ventris](_URL_2_).\n\nThe first breakthrough came after Kober diligently recorded the frequency and position of each symbol on the tablets (While this type of analysis is not hard to do with computers today, this took *years* of work for Kober). In doing so, she discovered many instances of the same groups of symbols, but with consistently different endings. Through this, she realized that Linear B was an inflected language with different endings based on usage, like verb endings in Latin and Spanish. \n\nShe also noted that there were about 200 unique symbols in total. Being an expert of many languages, she knew that this was too many characters to be alphabetic (each symbol representing a letter - English, for example), and too few to be logographic (each symbol representing a word, like Chinese). She surmised that each symbol in Linear B likely represented a syllable. \n\nNow we have a clear understanding of what *type* of language Linear B was, but how do we determine what any of it means? This is where Ventris stepped up. \n\nHe theorized that these tablets likely had location names, and knew that location names often stayed similar over long periods of time. So he basically did ~~brute force~~ trial-and-error using the ancient Greek names for towns in Crete: What if a particular group of symbols are syllables that mean something like, \"ko-no-so\", meaning the Cretian city of Knossos? After exploring this idea in countless ways, he eventually discovered a pattern that confirmed this: When he interpreted one particular set of symbols as \"ko-no-so\", other symbols began to make sense. Slowly but surely, that first bit of translation led to him fully deciphering the entire language. \n\nEDIT: As /u/QuarkMawp pointed out, brute force was not the correct term.\n\nAnd since this has gotten some traction, if anybody is more interested in this and other sorts of amazing cryptography achievements throughout history, I highly recommend [The Code Book](_URL_1_) by Simon Singh. It covers a broad history of immense achievements in cryptography including Linear B, along with things like development of new codes in Renaissance Europe, cracking the Enigma Machine code in World War II, Navajo Wind Talkers and modern Public-Key Encryption. It's very informative and engaging, and also very accessible for the layperson. ", "The story is long and complex and full of feuds, frauds and other issues.  Most people trying to decipher the hieroglyphs thought they were pictograms- for instance, that the duck was used for Son (which was a lucky guess.)  This actually hampered the decoding for decades.  One of the first clues, were the names of kings, like Ramses which were named in Coptic texts. Ultimately many sources of documents written in Greek, Coptic and other languages which had not died out - helped scholars build a larger and larger vocabulary.   There is a Learning Company DVD series that helps you learn to read them, and gives the full history of how they were decodes.  It's interesting to note that the breakthroughs still did not come until decades after the Rosetta stone was discovered. \n\nPart of the reason the language died was illiteracy and the rigidity of the scribes. The language changed over the centuries, but the scribes pretty much stuck to the same system. Imagine if all books today were printed in Gaelic - and you had to have a translator to read them to you, or write them for you.", "All these comments about the Rosetta Stone and not a single person mentioned the name of the person who actually translated hieroglyphics: Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone?wprov=sfla1"], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483603/"], [], ["http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/cracking-maya-code.html"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B", "https://simonsingh.net/books/the-code-book/", "http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22782620"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "506fe2", "title": "what is a lawyer supposed to do when defending a person who is obviously guilty of a crime?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/506fe2/eli5_what_is_a_lawyer_supposed_to_do_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d71if0w", "d71ih0b", "d71ilfw", "d71juo6", "d71l24t", "d71luta", "d71p858", "d71pkxu", "d71uu3u", "d71uvr2", "d7211s5", "d721lwo", "d722kn5"], "score": [307, 12, 101, 2, 172, 18, 6, 15, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3], "text": ["They're supposed to vigorously defend their client, to the best of their ability.  Even the worst person in the world deserves an advocate who will work to make sure they're treated fairly, no matter the circumstance.  Justice is blind, after all.\n\nOf course, that doesn't mean that the lawyer will always try to *win* the case.  In a lot of cases, the best defense for a client is to fight for a plea deal: in that case, the client is admitting guilt, but for a lesser crime, or in the hopes of a more lenient punishment.  ", "What makes it \"obvious\"?\n\nEven if it's a so-called \"obvious\" case, individuals still have the right to have the correct procedures followed, have the right to be treated properly, etc. etc. You don't just get to throw out all proceedings because someone looks \"obviously\" guilty.\n\nThe lawyer is supposed to do what they are always supposed to do. Use their judgement to determine what the best course of action is for the defendant and help them reach that goal. If it was truly 'obvious' that might involve making a plea deal to avoid all the court costs, or striking some other form of bargain like testifying against accomplices or something. If it goes to court, then the lawyer's job is to defend the client by pointing out anything they can that appears incorrect / faulty in the prosecution's case or how that defendant was handled by the police etc.", "If it really is \"obvious\" then the lawyer will likely liaise with authorities to negotiate a deal, or recommend a guilty plea and try to avoid the maximum sentence.\n\nNevertheless, criminal defense attorneys don't exist solely to prove the innocence of their clients.  They are there to ensure their client receives a fair and just trial.  The prosecution has incredible resources, unlimited legal knowledge and experience,  and will do anything to collect evidence, prove guilt, and sentence their client, so the *only way* for a fair trial to occur is if the defendant has a representative who will do the same for them.  ", "In the American legal system, all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, regardless of the weight of evidence. Even the worst person is entitled to a lawyer who will defend them to the best of their abilities, otherwise how can an innocent person expect the same treatment?\n\nOf course, if the weight of evidence is really that severe, defending someone to the \"best of their abilities\" will usually mean pleading guilty.", "One of the important roles of the defense attorney in an obvious situation that goes to trial is to ensure that the prosecution follows all the rules we as society have placed on the government to limit it; because we, as a society, delegate the government exceedingly powerful means collecting information and punishment.  \n\nIf the government can't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, without cheating, the client shouldn't be punished because there's a risk that a government that could cheat the rules could use them to punish innocent people as well.  It's the defense attorney's job to protect society from the government by forcing the government to show it's work every single time.  ", "I think about it a little differently. I think of a defense lawyer as a person who makes sure that the prosecutor is doing their job.\n\nIn order to convict someone of a crime, the prosecutor has to convince 12 jurors that this person did it beyond a reasonable doubt. \n\nIf there were not defense lawyers then the prosecutor could press charges on anyone.\n\nSo, a defense lawyer may not see himself as someone who defends the guilty, but perhaps as someone to make sure the innocent stay out of prison.\n\nEven if they think or know their client is guilty, it doesn't matter. They have a legal obligation to find holes in the prosecutor's charges. Perhaps they didn't get a search warrant properly (as an example). And perhaps because of this, they found the killer's weapon in his house with his fingerprints on it along with a video with his confession and him killing the victim. Well, we all now know that he's probably the killer. But you can't just go around searching people's houses all willy-nilly. So, now the defense lawyer might be able to have this evidence thrown out.\n\nThe prosecutor and/or police may have done a crappy job of getting a search warrant, but by the defense lawyer holding them accountable, we can feel a little safer that no one can just come search our houses without one.", "Henry Rothblatt, once F.Lee Bailey's partner, once famously said to a newspaper that 90% of America's lawyers are incompetent. The next day the Bar Association president called him demanding he retract his statement. Henry called the newspaper and said to the editor \"I was wrong, please retract the 90% and replace it with 95%\".\nI once stopped a guy on a middle-of-the-night drug and alcohol fueled rampage with a gun after fighting with him for 17 minutes while the cops waited up the street. I interviewed 30 lawyers to take my manslaughter case, brought by an inexperienced ladder-climbing prosecutor, and only found 2 CRIMINAL DEFENSE attorneys I would trust. (Do NOT use a 'jack of all trades' attorney for a criminal case). Your lawyer has the obligation to defend you vigorously but also to know enough to make every single objection that they can. If the judge gets mad or threatens them, that's how you'll know they are doing their job. It's important to make those objections in case an appeal is necessary.  In my case it was not. It was a bad case to begin with and that prosecutor ended up back in traffic court after a completely embarrassing loss. If you're in real trouble, first rule, never talk; that's what your 5th amendment is for. Go to jail, take the preliminary lumps you have to take, but don't talk. That's what I did and my lawyer said it made things much easier because the police and prosecutors had no words to twist. By not talking only one story emerges in the end. Secondly,  in response to 'slash', to the prosecutor I was \"obviously\" guilty. To the jury I was obviously innocent. ", "I'm a criminal defense attorney. Even if the evidence against your client is strong that still leaves a few options. You can often attack the evidence pre trial and keep it away from the jury. In the past, I've run my trial theory past some of the non-attorney office staff and they'll ask a question which I'll answer \"you won't get to hear anything about that\". It can frustrate them, because they think it's important to guilt or innocence but keeping damaging information out of evidence is a big part of my role as an attorney. They'll have to decide without that information, if they can't, I win. If evidence is based on science, you can sometimes attack the validity of that science. Experts can be expensive, and juries sometimes think the defense expert will say anything because he's being paid, but if used properly they can be very effective. If there is any question as to the constitutionality of how the evidence against a client was obtained, you can always try to have it suppressed. A successful suppression motion can acquit the guiltiest of clients. Witness identifications can be flawed, there's a lot of good science out as to that, you can't convict him if you're not sure he's the guy. Ultimately, however, if your client is \"obviously guilty\" the real work for the attorney is often plea negotiation and sentencing. Your job as an attorney is to zealously pursue the best outcome your client can achieve. In many cases that means spending less time in jail instead of being found not guilty.", "I'm a lawyer!\n\n1. Ensure that the police  &  prosecutor follow all lawful procedures -- just because someone did the crime doesn't mean they're guilty.\n2. Ensure that the Defendant has a right to a fair trial. If every attorney ditched a client because they were \"obviously\" guilty, they wouldn't have an attorney!\n3. You may be able to negotiate a favorable plea deal or otherwise reduce their sentence. It may be a foregone conclusion that he will be found guilty, but you still have the sentencing ballgame to play!\n", "Prosecutors also tend to use the spaghetti method when filing charges (throw everything at him and see what sticks) since they are allowed to enter in multiple contradicting charges. A defense attorney is supposed to ensure that a client only gets convicted of the ones that he/she actually did and can be proved. ", "They are supposed to ensure that the laws are applied to their client fairly. They are not necessarily supposed to do everything and anything to get their client off the hook.", "I prosecuted a case today of a guy who shoplifted a bunch of food and toiletries from a local grocery store.  The evidence of his guilt was overwhelming.  The defense attorney chose to have his client plead guilty, and instead focused his argument to the jury on mitigating the punishment as much as possible.\n\nThe Defendant had a long list of prior petty crimes, and I made the case that he wasn't getting the message and needed to be given a  jail sentence to learn that enough was enough.  The defense attorney successfully made the jury sympathize with the Defendant based on his life experience, and got them to give him only a fine.  The fine was more than 1200% of the value of what he stole, but he kept his client out of jail.  Sometimes the most important thing a defense lawyer can do is humanize his client.", "To put it simply:  I police the police.  The majority of police are fair and civic minded people that are doing a difficult, demanding, and dangerous job.  The police are the government in its most literal sense.  \n\nHowever, people have a fundamental (Constitutional) right to be free of unwarranted governmental actions.  Defense attorneys prevent the police for kicking in your front door and arresting you simply because they feel like it.  Defense attorneys prevent the police from beating a confession out of you.  Defense attorneys prevent the police from planting a bug in your house or tapping your phone (en masse) and then sifting through the tapes later to find crimes.  \n\nThe police are no different than any other people in that the police try to accomplish their jobs in the simplest and quickest way possible.  Consider the power wielded by a person with a badge, a gun and zero oversight.  How can you protect the innocent in that world?  Our system has checks and balances for a reason.  Those checks and balances apply at all levels of government action.  These checks and balances protect the average/innocent person too.\n\nEvery officer has had a bad beat.  Every officer has crossed a line and learned a lesson the hard way that they can't do what they did and win a conviction.  The most effective way to teach this lesson to the police is by allowing a guilty person to go free.  Good police teach each other these lessons and honestly try to avoid repeating them.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qdjpv", "title": "why wouldn't life on another habitable planet look similar to earth's?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qdjpv/eli5_why_wouldnt_life_on_another_habitable_planet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdbq3pu", "cdbq4n9", "cdbq8kf", "cdbqrdi", "cdbseo0"], "score": [30, 9, 12, 6, 3], "text": ["There probably would be similarities.  Things that were swimmers would probably be sleek, for instance, due to natural selection.  It's just that there would have been an entirely different evolutionary history and so different things may/would have been tried that didn't get a chance on our world.", "Life evolves through random mutations.  This image demonstrates how you could take one of two paths, and keep doing this over and over until your destination is incredibly distant. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nLife doesn't have to live in the same way we do. There are the radioactive fungi recently discovered for example. We just live by one set of rules and there's no reason why we couldn't have lived by another.", "There are many ways that human race could have turned out - the problems we needed to evolve for would, most of the time, have more than one solution. That means chances are that life on a similar planet to ours would have solved the problems in a different way - Maybe giving us more blubber and less hair to combat cold; more opposable thumbs; more eyes, etc etc. \n\nAlso, if other things on the world are a little different it could cause an evolutionary butterfly effect, making them much different to us. Another factor would be if there was an unlucky disaster that wiped out all of the species similar to ours maybe their version of the Neanderthal lived on and became the dominant species.\n\nSo many variables = a species with some similarities to us but probably much different", "I guess the first question is, what do you mean by habitable? Same atmosphere? Same atmosphere earth started with, or same atmosphere earth has now?\n \nLet's do a thought experiment. We'll take a bunch of different planets that started out identical to earth, but \"split off\" at different points. So, that would be like saying \"what if I hadn't gotten on the train last tuesday\". Your life might be different, you might have lost your job, or found your wife, but humanity would not cease to exist (nor would you not be born). You get the idea.\n\nFirst stop, a planet that only branched 5 million years ago. If you visited this planet, you will still recognize many animals, or at least animal types. Humanity may or may not have ever evolved (at least to the point you see them now) but other than that, the earth would look quite similar.\n\nNext we'll branch at 200 million years ago. Maybe now the planet you're coming to (in the present) still has dinosaurs, maybe mammals never took hold. No matter how evolution continued in this world, you may recognize very few TYPES of animals, but you'll still recongize them AS animals. Insects will be relatively recognizable, plants will as well. \n\nNext we'll branch at 550 MYA. At this point, it becomes more of a crapshoot. Depending on the circumstances, land plants might not have evolved. Sure, something would fill that niche, but that something might look entirely foreign to you. We're also missing vertebrates (all higher animals). Again, something would probably evolve to fill that niche, but that something would likely not have the body plan that's so familiar to us. The world would look increasingly alien. Of course, again, we could still recognize what lived there as life, and there would still be animals, and fungus, and all sorts of things we could at least SOMEWHAT relate to.\n\nNow for the gist of your question, what if the planets branched before life even evolved? That's where we really don't know, but we can speculate. The biggest question is, is the basic structure of our DNA a chemical necessity (as in, there is no other way to have a self-replicating molecule to build higher life on), or was it a fluke? Are there a variety of different molecules that could form, and could self replicate in the way DNA/RNA did, and the only reason why we have DNA is because once SOMETHING like that forms, it will immediately become the ONLY thing, and change the environment in such a way to prevent any other \"things\" from ever forming? If that's the case, a planet that started out like earth could very well end up with \"life\" that is so alien we might not even recognize it AS life. ", "it would be less of a question of *are they simalir* and more of a question *how far along in the natural history are we on that planet, and how are specific traits exhibited, and are there any traits that we have never seen before?*\n\nyou will have sleek swimmers, maybe they have fins. maybe they have jet propulsion, maybe they just float there. the major fluid present is a factor here.\n\nyou will have flyers. how many wings, or do they use buoyancy? air pressure becomes a factor here, as well as gravity, and atmospheric components.\n\nthey will have *mouths* or some way to eat/gain nutrition. but how, would they have a standard digestive system? maybe more of a venom based system is selected for, leading to a whole planet looking like Australia. would the plants ue sunlight, or be more like the fungi from earths early history? perhaps hey get selected more towards carnivorous plants, and you have things like giant Venus flytraps, or pitcher plants more common then here on earth. maybe they use a different system entirely, and it might be totally possible for a plant and animal symbioid to appear *think bulbasaur*\n\nyoull have things with legs, youll have prehensile limbs, youll have horns or a means of self defense. there will be a anolog for all of these things, its just how they are expressed that will be diffrent. and weather or not life on that planet has been around long enough for its life to get a chance to express analogs to our life.\n\nanimals will have some sort of camoflauge, we dont know what kind exactly, but we can guess it probably would depend on the local environment and selective pressure. but it will be there in SOME form.\n\nand if the planet has had life long enough MAYBE it might have a intelligent species. now...would that be a hive mind caste system like ants? like us? are they aquatic like dolphins or octopi? do they communicate with voice? or by pheromones? maybe they comunicate by flashes of light?\n\neyes will evolve unless its a very dark world. but where would they be? what would they look like? maybe compound style eyes are preferred. maybe the use their whole body to see.\n\nanother thing to consider, if you had visited earth a very long time ago, you wouldn't see much of anything that looks like today animals. giant bugs existed cause oxygen was so plentiful in the atmosphere. hell, go deep enough into the sea and you can find fish that can stretch their bellies like 5 times their size. and ones that entrance their prey with light. we have electric eels. ELECTRIC. FUCKING. EELS. if you have never heard of them, they delver a sizable shock of around 600 fucking volts. idr what amperage its at. but, hell i didn't think that was possible till i heard of it. and that's on EARTH.\n\npoint is, we wont know till we look. we can be sure the same niches will exist, its just how the alien life solves it would be the question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/An_example_of_infinite_tree_structure.png"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8paljz", "title": "What is the current state of research for \"Morgellon's Disease?\" Is it still regarded as a psychological issue?", "selftext": "Morgellon's Disease presents with sore from which \"fibers\" of red, blue, or black are pulled. Further, some report the presence of black bugs crawling on or in their body. \n\nI was unfamiliar with Morgellon's until yesterday when I was summarizing the medical records of a woman who was involved in car accident. Prior to the car accident, she reported pulling \"fibers\" that looked like \"stingers\" from her body. She also saw black bugs everywhere, and these led her to destroy all of her furniture and rugs. The lady in question also suffered from Lyme disease.\n\nFor several years, it seemed that research indicated that this condition was strictly psychological; however, some articles attesting to physical symptoms have been published. \n\nWhat is the current state of research for Morgellon's Disease?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8paljz/what_is_the_current_state_of_research_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0bwf86"], "score": [10], "text": ["Yes. Research has found it to be more or less a variant of delusional parasitosis, which has been described for many years. Patients are generally not convinced, leading to self-reinforcing Internet communities. This does not at all mean there is no suffering or lack of symptoms, but the fibers patients bring in tend to be consistent with coming from clothing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "28w6za", "title": "in the us, why is it allowed to potentially expose your child and other's children to deadly diseases through vaccination exemptions but other state mandated laws, such as vehicle child restraints or smoking age-limits, are non-negotiable?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w6za/eli5_in_the_us_why_is_it_allowed_to_potentially/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cif1m09", "cif25u7", "cif2jxo", "cif50xb", "cif59as", "cif5qo3", "cif6eyo", "cif7hw2", "cif7ike", "cif830x", "cif9tyn", "cif9w7m", "cifae4o", "cifagoo", "cifb6yi", "cifb7y4", "cifbdhc", "cifbikv", "cifbq9f", "cifbvem", "cifcabk", "cifcex2", "cifcjfm", "cifcpd0", "cifd74u", "cifddgt", "cifdpxj", "cifenoq", "ciff94f", "ciffqus", "ciffs09", "cifi96r", "cififw0"], "score": [24, 509, 54, 246, 3, 5, 2, 5, 5, 16, 48, 4, 3, 2, 15, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8, 5, 16, 2, 3, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["There is a really important part of U.S. belief system that revolves around the concept of the role of government, especially in terms of whether the government has the right to dictate individual parts of any given persons life - whether it be taxes, work-hour requirements, seatbelt laws, drinking ages, etc.\n\nThe idea that the government, state or federal, can mandate or require that you *must* undergo a medical treatment can seem to many a significant overstep of what government is supposed to do. It's a scary thought because it would lay the groundwork for additional government-required medical treatments, regardless of a persons personal beliefs. Especially as the U.S. operates under a 'winner-take-all' political system, the minority could find themselves faced with compulsory medical treatments regardless of personal beliefs. Think of the issues ongoing with pro-life vs pro-choice - depending on how the state/city government decides to swing, one of those two sides is going to have a bad time, which can lead to a lot of extended and deepened animosity.\n\nThis creates a rather complicated system - you want people to be vaccinated as it is important to help mitigate or eliminate the effects of infectious diseases, but you also want to respect a persons right to personal independence. Compromising one for the sake of the other can create a lot of political tension in either direction that is not easily settled.\n\nNow, that's the federal level - at the state level, it can be easier. You have a smaller segment of the population you are dealing with, so creating legislation that deals with these issues is easier. For example, you may not be able to demand that all children be vaccinated, but you *can* pass legislation (with public support) mandating that entry into a public school system from K - 12 requires a certain set of baseline vaccinations. Not everyone is mandated to get them - but if you want into a public school, you have to get those baseline vaccinations.\n\nThings like child restraints or smoking age-limits had their own political turmoil during their own time periods for the same reasons - the fight between government-mandates and personal freedom is fairly constant, and depending on your ideology, not easily resolved.\n\n", "Because you can get away with almost anything in this country if you claim it's against your religion.  Parents have let their children die, literally die, because they didn't \"believe\" in modern medicine.", "Because the US respects freedom of choice in medical matters. While there are certainly limits on this, because of some unethical physicians treating patients, we've swung on a pendulum toward patient-focused care--i.e., the patient more or less selects from a menu of options presented by the more-or-less advising but not commanding doctor. There are also religious reasons why someone may avoid vaccines, as well as allergic reasons, but that last one should be obvious. \n\nOn another note, the vaccines have a minimal risk to them, that you may negate by not being vaccinated. Whereas there isn't any benefit to smoking or not using child restraints. \n\nAll that said, I wish vaccines were mandatory. They have an excellent safety record, and are probably on par with penicillin in how successful they have been. \n\nHowever, a very vocal minority creates a great deal of trouble in confusing the incidence of diseases like autism and usage of vaccines. Blindly thinking that the rise of two things means that those two things are therefore causally linked, they have missed the statistical fact that we've only begun to characterize autism, and therefore its incidence rises naturally. If you pay attention to something, naturally you see it more often than if you don't. \n\nChoice is often an excellent thing. Some people think that the benignity of these childhood diseases is better than what they think the vaccines cause. However, they often miss the fact that, while the initial disease itself is benign, the disease may cause severe health problems later on. For instance, measles may cause male infertility. This won't be caught until much later, and I'm pretty sure some men are going to be quite upset at this eventual outcome because of their parents' choices in not vaccinating them. ", "Because driving is a privilege that is earned and education is a right. Compulsory vaccinations also imply the state has a right to violate bodily privacy in return for basic rights. \n\nNOTE: I'm in favor of vaccinations and believe they work.", "When you send your child to public school you submit a record of their immunizations. If you choose not to have your child vaccinated then you sign a form saying you object to vaccines for personal or religious reasons. Schools know which students are not vaccinated for which diseases and can bar them from attending school during an outbreak. [Here](_URL_0_) is an article the NY times ran yesterday about a Judge upholding a school's decision to bar students from attending", "I can imagine that some of it is because not being vaccinated is a \"natural\" state.  We evolved to deal with it ourselves, and the majority of kids can fight off the diseases. However, a simple majority on your side is a shitty reason to not take precautions (a 24week fetus has a 51% chance of surviving outside the womb, but we sure as hell don't allow elective c-sections that early).\n\nBeing in a car is not a natural state, so the argument of \"my kid was built to fight this off\" can't apply when we're talking about going through the windshield.", "Most of the time this is how things go:\n1. We have the freedom to make a choice on something.\n2. A large number of idiots abuse the freedom and/or make the wrong choice to the point that it affects the majority negatively.\n3. They make a law mandating the correct choice.\n4. People complain that the government is interfering in our lives.", "It started as a religious exemption. Some religions (i.e. Christian Science) object to vaccinations for long established doctrinal reasons. States that require vaccinations for schools made exceptions to accommodate people with religious objections, so as to not have a parent object that their first amendment right of freedom of religion were being limited in some way. \n\nNo religion (well, none I'm aware of) bars driving with a seat belt on or allowing children to smoke, so similar objections cannot be made. \n\nIt's really only become a problem in the last few years as parents began to think that the potential benefits of vaccinations no longer outweighed the potential risks. \n\nNote: I vaccinated my kids. ", "Honestly, our government is so corrupt that the idea of government mandated medication of any kind is pretty frightening. ", "Because government mandated vaccines would mean that the government can legislate what can and can not go into my body, and that of my children. The government being given a higher authority than the citizens in regards to their own bodies is a scary thought. ", "ELI5: why do people keep posting loaded rhetorical questions on eli5?", "It's not a law, but where I live, the school system requires that students are vaccinated. If someone doesn't vaccinate their children, they would have to homeschool them.", "I believe that it has to do with a perceived level of responsibility and thusly population that accepts a certain level of intrusion of a governing body.", "It is because we don't believe in forcing people to do things to themselves just to exist.  I don't defend these parents, but I understand why we don't force people to put a needle in their arms.  You don't have to drive to live, nor do you have to smoke.  But getting vaccinated changes your natural state of being, which is different than your examples.  ", "Stop asking loaded questions, you know damn well why.", "There are no US Federal laws requiring seat belt use or vaccines. These are all state laws, and they vary from state to state.\n", "Because one deals with purity of essence. That's why my kids are only allowed to drink grain alcohol mixed with rain water. POE.", "Because jamming a needle in your arm is a little more invasive than putting a seat belt on. Im for vaccinations but its important that they remain a choice, it seems like it would be a law that could potentially be abused.", "It's because acts are not made illegal in relation to other acts. They're taken on a case by case basis and in the case of the child restraints and smoking age-limits, you had insurance lobbyists and mothers groups that convinced congress to act. Since it's such a hot-button issue, I'd bet that within 12 months we'll see a bill introduced that will make it more difficult, if not illegal, to opt out of vaccinating your children.\n\n", "If your child is vaccinated then there is nothing to worry about is there.", "Another loaded question post, where you're just making a politically-charged statement.", "Simply put, because here we have Freedom. We have the freedom not to be forced into injecting our kids with something, even if the scientific community asserts it's 100% safe. On the other hand, you have many people working to take away that freedom for \"the greater good\" so we lose some freedoms when it comes to the 'smoking age' and child restraints.\n\nIt boils down to balancing the scale of \"the greater good\" versus personal liberties. America is founded on personal liberties which is why some of us fight so hard to keep them.", "This question was just an attempt to spark a\nCirclejerk.", "I believe the correct answer to this is that it takes much more explanation to convince someone that an injection will immunize someone from a disease they may or may not have than to explain to someone how a seat-belt can prevent their organs from rupturing in a high speed car accident.", "Might as well put mandatory Breathalyzer  ignition systems in every car also... And install narcotic detectors in all our toilets to protect us from ourselves... Let's make it so you need a licence to have a child... Let's install CCTV cameras in everyone's house so the government can protect us.... Oh and by the way... Let's let the government forcefully inject us with any medication/chemical they deem necessary.. That would be awesome! ", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure vaccines aren't free, which would be a good first reason they aren't mandatory.\n\nSecond, while vaccines don't cause autism, unlike seat belts, they can still have negative side effects. It's a general rule of thumb that anything with a potential negative effect will never become mandatory for every person\n\nThird, while the pros of vaccines usually outweigh the cons by a large margin, making the choice a no-brainer for many, the risk of dying thanks to not vaccinating is still a lot lower than dying in a car crash, even if you're wearing a seat belt, so I don't think it could be ruled as reckless endangerment.\n\nFourth, thank's to evolving diseases, vaccines are constantly changing.  Regardless of how safe we've found our current vaccines to be, ones developed fifty years from now could contain risks we didn't anticipate now.", "It might go back to when individual freedoms were more important to the average American. I think vaccinations are a good idea but I think the government mandating a medicine of any kind is a horrible idea. ", "If most people are immunized then you get something called herd immunity in a population - communicable diseases cannot spread if most people are immune even if a few are not immune, as the probability of them each encountering one another is low. So the right of the parents (religious, body rights, whatever) are balanced with the needs of the population. Other factors come into play of course - for example If parents refused to immunize their child for tetanus (relatively uncommon) it would likely be permitted, but if that child stepped on a rusty nail (dirty wounds are a huge risk factor for tetanus) a physician could (and would) invoke the power of the state and immunize the child without parental consent. ", "Because medicine doesn't provide visible protection from a visible hazard.\n\nWe can comprehend the idea of a car crash and a child flying through the windshield. We understand that accidents can happen. The cause and the effect are very apparent to us. With sickness, on the other hand, we assume that the cause is limited only to basic hygienics and common sense [i.e. don't literally eat shit]. Because so many people are vaccinated, the idea of your child contracting something like measles seems impossible as long as we wash our hands and keep away from sick people. We don't see or otherwise sense the invisible bacteria and viruses invading our bodies 24/7, so we trust our eyes assume they're just not there.", "Something called \"FREEDOM\" , I immunized my children by choice and appreciate that I had that choice.", "Because the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that people have the right to make their own healthcare decisions, and that parents are legally entrusted to make proper healthcare decisions for their children.", "Ok, I see a lot of misinformation here\nAn adult has the right to refuse any medical treatment for any reason, unfortunately a side effect of this law is that children, being legally completely under control of their parents, have no say in the shitty decisions their parents make in their health care.\nThe laws as they were set up make sense for protecting families who do not believe in blood transfusions being given one see Jehovah's witnesses, but now that crazier people have popped up it's a bit of a crap shoot.", "Making a law creates a situation when there is no exceptions and some children can not be vaccinated. For example many vaccines contains eggs or other proteins that a child may be allergic to. Or simply a child may have some immune or other condition that make unsafe to get the vaccinated. \nWhen people opt for not vaccinating their children , they actually putting these kids into risk. \nAnyway, you can not mandate things that  some people actually have a valid reason not to do.  Also there is some minimal risk to each vaccines. You can not force something on everybody that can harm some children.\n\n Although I may add there are countries, where they actually mandate some of the vaccinations unless the parent present valid reason like allergy papers sent to the health authorities. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/nyregion/judge-upholds-policy-barring-unvaccinated-students-during-illnesses.html?_r=0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8esufb", "title": "Is there a reason why so many notable events happened during the summer of 1969?", "selftext": "The Stonewall Riots, the moon landing, Manson murders, Gadhafi rose to power and Woodstock all happened in the one summer amongst other things. Is there a particular reason why so much happened during this time period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8esufb/is_there_a_reason_why_so_many_notable_events/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxywosl"], "score": [49], "text": ["I suppose the first point would be to look at the counter factual:\nDid more notable events happen during the time period you mention than we would otherwise expect given a reasonable year to year variation? That is to say, if you allow for a certain 'randomness' and variation from year to year, we would naturally expect to see some years to contain a greater number of notable events, and some years less. Even so, take a look at the wikipedia entries for June - August 1968 and 1970:\n\n\n_URL_6_\n\n* Assassination of Robert F Kennedy\n* Nuclear non-proliferation treaty opens for signature\n* Rise to power of Saddam Hussein after coup d'\u00e9tat in Iraq\n* Glenville Shootout and Riots\n* Czechoslovakia invaded by Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.\n* The first ever Special Olypmics takes place in Chicago.\n* France explodes its first hydrogen bomb over the Pacific\n\n\n_URL_5_\n\n* Tonga gains independence from the UK\n* Isle of Wight Music Festival takes place, which with ~600,000 attendees is 50% larger than Woodstock.\n* The Women's Strike for Equality takes place\n* Anti-Vietnam War protesters bomb University of Wisconsin-Madison (Sterling Hall Bombing)\n\n\nNext we might ask: How significant or notable were these events in the context of the time? Certainly the moon landing was an event noted worldwide that was a watershed moment for popular consciousness regarding space travel and to a lesser extent the cold war. However, putting that aside for now, we can largely compare them to similar events that occurred in the previous or following summer. Who is to say Gadhafi's rise to power in Libya was more notable that Hussein's in Iraq, or the invasion of Czechoslovakia? Why should we consider Woodstock more notable than the Isle of Wight festival? Clearly civil rights and anti-war protests were common throughout the period, not simply in 1969. The French hydrogen bomb over Fangataufa changed the politics of the Pacific, culminating in such events as the New Zealand Navy sending two frigates in protest, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the declaration of a Nuclear Free South Pacific, which substantially realigned politics across the region, and indeed the politics of Nuclear Weapons [1].\n\nNext, I would note that the notability or significance of 1969 is at least partially due to a mythologisation of that time period, particularly in the USA. Complex social movements like the interrelated Anti-War, Civil Rights and Hippy movements are difficult to understand or even parse in their entirety. We have a tendency to focus on key events, which act as stand-ins for the entire phenomena. The \"I have a dream...\" speech has become in retrospect a focal point for the decades long Civil Rights Movement. The image of the Grande Arm\u00e9e withering away in the Russian winter has become the focus of the entire Napoleonic Era. The large social changes that occurred in the USA and elsewhere during the post war era that  are often condensed into a sort of shorthand byword: ['The Sixties'](_URL_0_). In turn, this is often further condensed into simply ['The Woodstock Generation'](_URL_3_) or ['the summer of '69'](_URL_2_).\n\nWoodstock was likely a significant event to those who attended. But its enduring fame can be more easily ascribed to the sensational images of the artists, crowds, and traffic jams which made, and continue to make, great media. The images of Apollo 11 taking off, or Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the lunar surface, even more so. Critically, by 1969, television was now [nearly ubiquitous](_URL_8_) in the American household. Further, from its introduction in 1953 colour TV was [beginning to take off](_URL_4_). These technologies allowed the spectacle of these events to be captured and broadcast to a larger audience than ever before. What's more, high quality film and other images from these events survives to this day, allowing them to live on in the popular imagination in ways that events where television cameras were unavailable or even prohibited access such as the contemporaneous bombing of Laos, which remains the [most heavily bombed country ever](_URL_1_). With some 37% of the country still [uninhabitable due to unexploded ordinance](_URL_7_), people in Laos would undoubtably consider this event to be the more noteworthy.\n\nIn the end, no agreed upon definition of 'noteworthy' or 'significant' exists, nor can exist. History is the result of uncountable significant interrelated events. In the face of this immense complexity, we can only choose a few key phenomena, which we hope might serve as a lens through which to understand the wider context of that time. 1969 stands out in part because of media availability, and in part because the events you mention have been used by the generations since to mythologise that particular period of American history.\n\n[1] Clements, Kevin P. (1988) Back from the brink : the creation of a nuclear-free New Zealand. Wellington NZ: Allen  &  Unwin."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://edition.cnn.com/shows/the-sixties", "https://apjjf.org/Ben-Kiernan/4313.html", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c", "http://likethedew.com/2012/03/04/we-can-all-join-in-how-rock-festivals-helped-change-america/#.WuDxzYhua70", "https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-100-year-march-of-technology-in-1-graph/255573/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/03/laos-cluster-bombs-uxo-deaths", "http://www.tvhistory.tv/Annual_TV_Households_50-78.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "3aabsr", "title": "What are the differences between a cold dead star and a planet?", "selftext": "Other than one orbits the other, are the physical and or visual differences? Are dead stars still gas or are they more solid? Etc..", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3aabsr/what_are_the_differences_between_a_cold_dead_star/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csaq8fg", "csaqff3"], "score": [6, 15], "text": ["So, here it really depends what you call a 'cold dead star'.\n\n### Brown Dwarf\n\nThere are things called *brown dwarves* that are small stars with about 0.08 solar masses (about 80 jupiter masses) that can only really liberate energy by gravitational collase. Incidentally, this mechanism is the reason that Jupiter is so 'hot' - the energy from the sun it recieves is not enough to be the temeperature it is. \n\nSo these are just basically a 'big planet'.\n\nThese will eventually become *black dwarves*, which I will explain later.\n\n### White Dwarf\n\nThere is another class of star, called a *white dwarf*. These are 'stellar remenants' - hot balls of carbon and oxygen that have insufficient pressure and temperature to continue the fusion process up to iron, so the star simply stops and falls apart.\n\nThese are what are left from stars that are about the mass of our sun, and are held up by something called *electron degeneracy pressure*, which is a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, if you are familiar with that. They used to be stars, but got old and died in the way I mentioned above.\n\nThese stars aren't actually fusing anything - so eventually they will cool down and become a black dwarf.\n\n### Black Dwarves\n\nThese are what is left when the above 'stars' eventually cool down enough to stop glowing white/red hot. They are balls of atoms held up by the aforementioned electron degeneracy pressure.\n\nYou may have noticed that above I said that the white dwarves were made up of carbon and oxygen - these black dwarves eventually become giant, planet-ish-sized diamonds! They are much smaller than the stars that they were created by because they are extremely dense.\n\n### Neutron Stars\n\nNeutron stars are what's left when a medium mass (larger than the sun, not a huge hulk though) star ends it's life. They are usually what's left after a supernova, and are held up by neutron degeneracy pressure. They're essentially (we think) giant atoms.\n\nThese guys are nothing like planets. They are far too dense.\n\n### Black holes\n\nThe final stellar remnant. This is what's left when a huge star goes supernova. Again, nothing like a planet.\n\n### Conclusion\n\nSo, you can see that it's a scale. Planets, like Jupiter, are simply to low mass to become a star. Compared with the black dwarf (the closest 'cold, dead star' to a planet), they are considerably lower density, and have completely different make-ups - Jupiter is made up of hydrogen and helium, whereas the black dwarf is made up of carbon and oxygen - even if they are about the same size.", "A black dwarf is a stellar remnant of any star not massive enough to become a neutron star. Actually, a white dwarf is what I just described, but as a white dwarf cools over time, it will become a black dwarf. It's thought that no black dwarfs exist yet, as it takes longer than the age of the universe to cool from a white to black dwarf (estimates are on the order of 10^15 years).\n\nDwarf stars are composed of electron-degenerate matter: \n\n > Under high densities the matter becomes a degenerate gas when the electrons are all stripped from their parent atoms. In the core of a star, once hydrogen burning in nuclear fusion reactions stops, it becomes a collection of positively charged ions, largely helium and carbon nuclei, floating in a sea of electrons, which have been stripped from the nuclei.\n\nThe density of this matter can vary, but most dwarf stars have roughly the mass of the sun in the volume of the Earth.\n\nNote that \"cold\" is relative - the coolest dwarf stars observed are around 4000 K ( 6700\u00b0F )."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "hl06p", "title": "Does the expansion of the universe have any demonstrable effects in any experiment?", "selftext": "Does the expansion of the universe have any demonstrable effects on Earth?  As in, could an experiment be carried out on Earth to independently verify it's existence apart from the observed positions of the astronomical bodies and redshifts?  If not, then are there any experiments that could actually be done by humans to demonstrate the metric expansion of the universe anywhere?\n\nEDIT: At what scale do the effects become a reasonable hypothesis in a cosmic high school experiment?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hl06p/does_the_expansion_of_the_universe_have_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1w7v5f", "c1waj9k"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["Are astronomical observations somehow not \"experiments that could actually be done by humans?\" I'm not sure how an observation is less of an experiment than, say, staring at data from a particle collider.\n\nTo answer your actual question, it is highly unlikely. I won't say no, because you never know what wiley experimentalists will come up with next, but there's nothing that I've heard of.", "The closet thing I can come up with would be the LIGO experiment. It is trying to detect gravity waves, which would manifest themselves as propagating waves of expanding and contracting space time. \n\nSo while it's not measuring the continuous expansion of space time, it does (theoretically) have the ability to detect ripples in space time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5hg95m", "title": "why is a circle 360 degrees and not 100 degrees?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hg95m/eli5why_is_a_circle_360_degrees_and_not_100/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dazyasm", "dazykqu", "db0045s", "db030f1", "db0lxcc"], "score": [11, 7, 15, 3, 2], "text": ["360 is very very divisible, it's the same reason an hour is 60 mins and a minute is 60 seconds. \n\n100 is divisible too, but only into 5's and 10's generally. ", "Some brief searching indicates that the Babylonians, who used a 60 number system (compared to our 10), knew that the perimeter of a hexagon is equal to 6 times the radius of the circle circumscribed without.\n\nIn other words, you can take any straight object (like a stick, pretty much), define it to be the radius of a circle, then use that stick to make a hexagon (6 equal sides) and the perimeter (sum of all the sides) is equal to the size of the smallest circle you can fit around the hexagon (which you can make by spinning the circle around the center point)\n\nSo the base 60 * 6 = 360, which makes a good system for degrees.", "How divisible a number is comes down to, how many prime factors it has.\n\n100 is 2x2x5x5, or in other words, 2^2 x 5^2\n\n360 is 2x2x2x3x3x5, or in other words, 2^3 x 3^2 x 5^1\n\nHighly divisible numbers are useful. In the ancient times, due to whatever influences, base-60 systems were used because of their high divisibility, and although exact origin of 360 degree system is unknown, it's obviously related to the high number of prime factors it has. If you divide circle in three equal sectors, that's 120 degrees. If you divide it into 12 equal sectors, each of them are 30 degrees. If you divide them into 15 equal sectors, each of them are are 24 degrees. Half turn is 180 degrees. You get the point.\n\nThose times, base-10 was not really that universal. Base-10 really only become as dominant as we know it after 7th century when Indians came up with our Indian-Arabic number system. Clocks and circle division and stuff like that pre-date that by roughly thousand years or so. These systems have so much history, that despite the French trying to \"fix\" everything to use decimal, base-10 system during the French revolution, it really didn't go all that smoothly for all things. \n\nBut yeah, nobody knows for sure, but the real obsession with having everything be base-10 only started at around 7th century(and while indian-arabic numerals were massively successful, it still took time for them to spread during pre-industrial times), before that we didn't really have numbers in the same sense that we have them, and things that don't use base-10 tend to pre-date that by a lot. Something between 100 BCE and 2000 BCE.\n\nMathematicians actually don't use 360 degrees. They actually use 2 pi as the angle of circle, these units are called Radians(so 180 degrees = 1 pi radians). Reasoning for this is pretty different from why 360 is being used, but I thought this should be mentioned.", "For what it's worth, there is an angle measure that divides a circle into 400 units instead of 360, or a right angle into 100 units instead of 90. \n\n[1/400th of a circle is a *gradian* or *gon*.](_URL_0_)\n\nIt isn't very common, though.", "Because 360 has many more ways you can split it, making it more convenient to talk about parts of the circle.\n\n* Half circle? 180 degrees. Would be 50 otherwise\n* Third of a circle? 120 degrees. Would be 33.333 recurring otherwise\n* Quarter circle? 90 degrees. Would be 25 otherwise\n* Fifth of a circle? 60 degrees. Would be 20 otherwise.\n* Sixth of a circle? 50 degrees. Would be 16.66666 recurring otherwise\n* Eight of a circle? 45 degrees. Would be 12.2 otherwise\n* 1/9 of a circle? 40 degrees. Would be 11.111111 recurring otherwise\n* 1/10 of a circle? 36 degrees. Would be 10 otherwisse.\n* 1/12 of a circle? 30 degrees. Would be 8.333333 recurring otherwise.\n* 1/15 of a circle? 24 degrees. Would be 6.666666 recurring otherwise.\n* 1/18 of a circle? 20 degrees. Would be 5.555555 recurring otherwise. \n* 1/20 of a circle? 18 degrees. Would be 5 otherwise.\n* 1/24 of a circle? 15 degrees. Would be 4.166666 recurring otherwise.\n\n... and so forth. 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 are the only ones where the hundred degree circle gets nicer values.\n\nJust on a side-note: This is also why our clocks have 12 hours and 60 minutes. They are values that can be split into a nice number of fractions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian"], []]}
{"q_id": "4rggm5", "title": "Rules update: 'Trivia-seeking' is now 'example seeking' for purposes of removal", "selftext": "Not everyone always agrees on what trivia is. Partially for that reason, the moderators of /r/askhistorians have changed the wording of the rule against \"trivia-seeking questions.\"\n\nWe've often struggled with the wording of this rule [(it used to be called \"throughout history\")](_URL_0_), but while the name of the rule has changed, the meaning of it hasn't.\n\nBecause we have a limited number of moderators and a limited slate of moderation tools, we have to forbid questions that generate large numbers of low-quality answers. Without such a prohibition, we'd spend an extraordinary amount of time on a handful of questions, and the rest of the subreddit would suffer.\n\nSo please, keep your questions as narrowly focused as possible. If your question can be summarized as \"tell me random stuff about X\" or \"tell me about X in several centuries around the world,\" you're better off asking it in /r/history.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rggm5/rules_update_triviaseeking_is_now_example_seeking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d511hfd", "d5186dy", "d51ebmh"], "score": [15, 12, 3], "text": ["\"What's the earliest X\" questions-- yay or nay?", "I have an idea, not sure how feasible it is. What if, instead of removing such threads, you use AutoModerator to lock the thread so that only flaired users can make top-level comments?", "Since I'm more interested in using history to learn about stuff, I've always found myself tempted to ask questions that skirt pretty close to this boundary.\n\nFor instance, would it be removed if I were to ask a question about, say, wars that dragged on for more than a decade? If I asked if there tended to be commonalities between them, or simply what tended to cause wars to find no decisive end? I could specifically ask about the second Punic war, or the last Byzantine-Sassanian war, or the Mongol conquest of the Song, but I'm really only interested in the specific war for what it tells me about the bigger picture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nub87/rules_change_throughout_history_rule_is_replaced/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1xz3t1", "title": "Why did Hitler declare war on the US following the US's declaration of war on Japan four days earlier? Would the US have engaged in Europe otherwise, or just stayed in the Pacific?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xz3t1/why_did_hitler_declare_war_on_the_us_following/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cffz2ed", "cfg3u97", "cfg48f8"], "score": [80, 41, 9], "text": ["In *Zweites Buch* (Hitler's follow-up to *Mein Kampf*) he addresses his opinions on the U.S. and his view of the long-term future of Europe.  Straight copy-pasta from Wikipedia:\n\n*\"Hitler declared that for immediate purposes, the Soviet Union was still the most dangerous opponent, but that in the long-term, the most dangerous potential opponent was the U.S.\"*\n\nHe viewed America as a mixed bag... \"racially degenerate\" because of immigration from all corners of the world... yet also having an impressive base of German-Anglo leadership including some of the strongest eugenics projects outside of Germany.\n\nI think at the very least, we can fairly assume that he underestimated our economic/manufacturing potential and what that would mean to the war.  He saw it more than most people did, he says so in *Zweites Buch*, but I don't think anyone grasped the scale of the war machine the U.S. could become, and he probably underestimated the timeline it would take to develop.", "The US was already engaging in Europe before the declaration of war through Lend-Lease and similar policies.  The US Navy was guarding merchant ship convoys between the US and Britain.  German U-Boats, in turn, ended up sinking a couple of destroyers in late 1941.  After the sinking of the USS Kearny, Roosevelt gave [this speech](_URL_1_) declaring a planned increase in military capabilities in the Atlantic.  The Germans cited the speech in the [declaration of war](_URL_0_) delivered to the US.\n\nIn other words, things were ramping up well before the declaration of war.  The Germans had every reason to believe that the US would eventually enter the war and the US was already aiding the Allies.\n\nThe US declaring war on Japan and the Tripartite Agreement provided a convenient reason to openly declare war.", "This question depends on the common misconception that the United States was not already engaged in war in the European theater before the Pearl Harbor.\n\nAmerican ships were actively hunting German U-boats in the North Atlantic at least as early as July of 1941. American aircraft and ships, with American crews and flying the American flag were fighting Germans with casualties and lost ships on both sides for months before the declaration of war. Further than this, the USA was essentially allied with UK giving them all the direct support they were capable of giving. The American leadership was clearly intent on being a part of the war, only delaying actual declaration of war mostly due to PR reasons and because there was no actual reason to do so yet, while their army was still being raised.\n\nPearl Harbour was a convenient excuse to shut up the isolationists, and a nice flag to rally the people around, nothing more.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DECWAR.htm", "http://www.usmm.org/fdr/kearny.html"], ["http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/undeclared-war-in-the-atlantic-the-u-s-navy-versus-the-u-boats/"]]}
{"q_id": "15j3ax", "title": "Why didn't reindeer herding catch on with the natives of Canada, like it did with the S\u00e1mi in Scandinavia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15j3ax/why_didnt_reindeer_herding_catch_on_with_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7my0xm", "c7n0p8w"], "score": [3, 2], "text": ["The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society is one of the most significant shifts a civilization can undergo. Historically, it seems to happen in warmer climates first, with more temperate climates transitioning later. (Why it happens this way is another question...) There are very few examples of it reaching as far north as sub-arctic climates before the industrial era.\n\nNorth America seems to have lagged Eurasia in this transition, in general. (Again, another question, which *Gun, Germs and Steel* tried to answer, although its conclusions are disputed.) But at any rate, in the western hemisphere, domestication of livestock didn't get much past the 30th parallels (approx. Mexico, Bolivia).", "The Saami were originally hunters, and traces of this such as trap ditches can still be seen. The transition to a cash economy was forced by the northwards expansion of Swedish control in the 18C. As a result of this, they moved towards herding. \n\nThe lack of a similar change in North America may be as simple as different skins (e.g. beaver) being in demand for trade. \n\nThere was a similar transition to a trade economy in Canada among the Inuit, leading to a change in kayak hunting methods to a more team based approach, with a corresponding change in the design of kayaks. \n\nSorry this is a bit vague : it's from various snippets and archaeological studies rather than anything coherent. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6iqyx3", "title": "King James wrote the \"Counterblaste to Tobacco\" against the use of tobacco in the mid-17th century. What was King James's motivation in writing this and was this a common perspective?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6iqyx3/king_james_wrote_the_counterblaste_to_tobacco/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dj8u4cd"], "score": [11], "text": ["Not an answer but some cool digitized versions of related content!\n\nOpening page to the Counterblaste: _URL_0_\n\nAn image from a document in agreement with the counterblaste called \"Two broad-sides against tobacco: The first given by King James of famous memory; his counterblast to tobacco. The second transcribed out of that learned physician Dr. Everard Maynwaringe, his treatise of the scurvy\" as well as the title page of Maynwaringe's treatise:\n\n_URL_2_ \n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/hs87j7", "http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/peit76", "http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/03zht3"]]}
{"q_id": "2tmfry", "title": "In Renaissance Europe (~1300-1700) how difficult would it be for a poor person to become educated?", "selftext": "In the renaissance, prior to mass public education in Europe, how hard would it be for someone to pull themselves up by their boot straps so to speak? Would a driven but poor child be able to get an education through churches, libraries, ect? How difficult would that be? How rare would it be for someone who was born poor to become an educated, wealthy individual?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tmfry/in_renaissance_europe_13001700_how_difficult/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co0dzs8", "co15okc"], "score": [36, 2], "text": ["Where and who and the political and economic on-goings matter a lot.  There's an [excellent social history by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie](_URL_0_) that deals with your question very directly. \n\nLadurie follows a Swiss peasant, Thomas Platter (1499), as he rises through the world by catching on to the new Reformation humanism.  Despite beginning his life as a vagabond Platter was able to participate in a fast growing economy of education, typically seeking employment as a teacher no sooner than he had learned material himself.  Thomas Platter also benefits from the easy availability of credit-- gold from the monasteries destroyed by the Protestant Reformation or from the New World.  By wisely borrowing for investment in an environment of high inflation Platter comes to own several properties.  In turn he is able to send his sons to study medicine (a higher form of learning than classics) at the best French universities, and so in two generations education raises the Platters from pigpens to places as court physicians.\n\nPlatter was definitely a highly motivated individual, willing to do things like postpone marriage and invest his low wages (working at one point as a apprentice ropemaker) in books and Latin/Greek/Hebrew lessons.  His life isn't \"easy,\" but the main thing distinguishing him from his less socially mobile family is his consistent motivation and his luck in choosing a \"boom\" industry like classical education during the Reformation.  In many parts of Europe, definitely central Europe, the Reformation had the character of a broad social revolution, displacing classes and the values that had upheld them, ultimately creating many opportunities for social mobility in the revolutionized Protestant society.\n\nThough Ladurie would never slight Platter's gumption as a historian his work is dedicated to contextualizing Platter's success.  Much more could be accomplished in the favorable circumstances of Swiss humanism circa 1530 than say a French village circa 1400, if only because in 1400 far fewer people care about learning Hebrew and none of them would pay good money to a ropemaker who says he can teach it.  There's no single answer to your question, but asking it speaks to larger question about social mobility in different European contexts.", "There were regulations in medieval London providing for the education of poor students. Many schools were run by churches, but some were independent; there were even \"dame schools\" run by female teachers. As we can see by this and similar sources, in the late Middle Ages it was not too difficult for anyone in a town to get a basic education. This applied largely to commoners who intended to become merchants, lawyers, etc., but also to ordinary peasants who just wanted to be able to read their business contracts: there was a very active land market in the late Middle Ages. \n\nIt is a common myth that only people training to be clergy were educated; in fact, many children--both boys and girls--got a good basic education. This is testified to by the many surviving letters and wills written by both men and women. Universities, of course, then as now, were harder to get into. Also they, unlike the preparatory/grammar schools, did not accept women.\n\nP.S. this is really a medieval answer, not a Renaissance answer, but your time period includes two centuries of the Middle Ages so here it is"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.worldcat.org/title/beggar-and-the-professor-a-sixteenth-century-family-saga/oclc/34824285&amp;referer=brief_results"], []]}
{"q_id": "5tleoa", "title": "why was domestic violence decriminalized in russia ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tleoa/eli5_why_was_domestic_violence_decriminalized_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddnd35e", "ddndmrv", "ddndtdd"], "score": [234, 111, 26], "text": ["Domestic violence was not really decriminalized, they decriminalized the first offence. You still get a punishment for it, but if you and your wife had a big fight and it escalated to a physical one that ended *without injury* and that was the only time it's happened then you won't get in huge trouble but you still lose more than five hundred USD, 15 days jail time, or 120 days community service. You will get in bigger trouble if it happens again.", "The prior regulation was (subjectively) harsh in comparison to even regulations in the US. \n\nTake NY Penal Law 240.26 which essentially proscribes the same type of conduct and calls it \"Harassment.\" If you don't injure another party but you make contact, it can be punishable by up to 15 days and a $250 fine. The new Russian statute has the same sentence except a higher fine and NY is just pass a whole mess of new family regulations punishing repeat domestic violence offenders, so it isn't that the State is lax. \n\nThe outrage is just a media misunderstanding and geared at making the public hate Russia. ", "Domestic violence was reclassified based on the nature of the incident.\nIf it was physical and a party was injured you will head to court on relevant assault criteria. \nIf you called her a drunken whore (im assuming youre an adult eli5) then you will not be criminally considered. \n\nThe previous law allowed too much freedom to judges. The current law is less abstract and enforces minimum CRIMINAL charges. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "14iqst", "title": "what is the purpose of having baby teeth that fall out after a few years? why don't we just keep the same teeth for our whole life?", "selftext": "And also, why do we only grow two teeth in our life? Why not more like sharks and other animals?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14iqst/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_having_baby_teeth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8hsbhy", "c7deogq", "c7djwaz", "c7dlszv", "c7docx7", "c7doicg"], "score": [2, 31, 8, 11, 4, 2], "text": ["there's a lot of research stating that baby/deciduous/primary teeth are NOT a back up. In fact if you ended up with a lot of holes as a kid, that could be a reason you have heaps of fillings now. \n\nOF COURSE not everyone fits this mould. currently there's research into this but it should go without saying that you shouldn't let your kids teeth rot with the reasoning of \"they'll get their permanent teeth anyway\". first, think of the pain they're in - second, treatment is complex even without behavioural considerations. It's tough enough to get a kid to talk to a total stranger, let alone when they have to deal with sitting in a chair with that stranger prodding around and wielding needles and even taking out teeth. \n\n_URL_0_ - basically this research says they found kids with decay were 3x more likely to have decayed adult teeth.\n\ntl;dr - dont treat baby teeth like a practice set. lots of fillings in baby teeth may mean lots of fillings in adult teeth.", "There's several ideas why.  A child's jaw isn't large enough to fit a full set of permanent teeth.  Also, baby teeth may serve as kind of a placeholder so that there will be enough space on the jaw for the permanent teeth to grow in.  The baby teeth save the spot of its corresponding permanent tooth until it's developed enough to replace it.  Children that lose a baby tooth early might experience problems with overcrowding of their permanent teeth.", "Because babies would have huge fucking teeth! That's fucked up!", "This [cutaway view of a child's skull ](_URL_0_) shows you how permanent teeth are stacked under the temporary teeth--as the skull grows, the teeth exfoliate, pushing up the baby teeth. *shudder*", "Evolutionarily speaking, a [child that looked like this](_URL_0_) would be burned at the stake.", "I would just like to throw out a theory: since teeth that are not cared for tend to rot and fall out in about a decade, it makes evolutionary sense that an animal that had a backup set of teeth would live longer and reproduce more, since it wouldn't starve to death for lack of teeth with which to chew it's food."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/81/8/561.short"], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/QH0yO.jpg"], ["http://cl.jroo.me/z3/Z/b/K/d/a.aaa-Baby-with-adult-teeth.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4wqqey", "title": "why does a new pair of glasses temporarily distort your depth perception? what causes this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wqqey/eli5_why_does_a_new_pair_of_glasses_temporarily/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d694wo8", "d6965j7", "d69encr", "d69hvmb", "d69i284", "d6a269b"], "score": [5, 133, 10, 3, 10, 2], "text": ["your eyes adjust focal length constantly when you focus on further or closer objects.  Putting on glasses makes your eyes have to switch from \"muscle memory\" and what it's used to to have to judge distance again and refocus from preset positions to a new set of focusing positions to compensate for the glasses.\n\nOur brains are lazy and we have every shortcut we can come up with.", "Glasses have two effects: focus, and magnification.\n\nThe focus is what you want to change.  The reason you need glasses is that your eyes are miscalibrated, and they need a focus adjustment.\n\nThe magnification is a side effect and generally not wanted.  It's the reason that people with powerful lenses look like their eyes are either way too small (nearsighted) or way too big (farsighted) - the lens is changing the apparent size of their eyes.  The reverse happens, too: your new glasses are putting objects in focus, but they're also distorting their apparent size.  If you're nearsighted and you just got a more powerful prescription, objects look slightly smaller than they used to.  That messes with your depth perception, because your brain thinks everything is slightly farther away than it is.\n\nThe depth perception distortion will go away as your brain adjusts to the new relationship between how big something looks and how far away it is.", "Well the eye and brain are used to working in a certain way autofocussing and interpreting that information. But when glasses distort preception and the eye has to change its lense to focus again the brain interprets that in the old way. As in that certain position of the lense used to correspond with certain distance, so the brain tells you the object is further away or closer until it becomes used to that setting again.\n\nFun fact: You could wear glasses with mirrors that turn everything upside down and after a few days your brain would tell you everything is the right way up even though you are still wearing those glasses and technichally seeing everything upsidedown. And when you take them off afterwards your brain will tell you everything is upsidedown even though you're technically seeing everything correctly.", "This is just from my own experience, but when I first got new glasses, they were perfect.  When it came time to get my second pair (I can't remember if it was because I broke my first pair and/or because my eyesight had gotten worse), they used a device to measure my pupillary distance (or at least that's what I think that thing was) and I was looking at the wrong thing (I can't remember if you were supposed to look at the green dot or at the picture).  Either way, I ended up having to adjust to these new glasses and it wasn't distorted as much as they felt not centered.", "It was crazy, when I got my first pair of glasses (about 8-10 years ago), everything looked like a 3D movie, it was absolutely weird but cool at the same time. After a few days my eyes corrected themselves and I haven't seen that type of difference ever since. But seriously, it was a weird visual.", "Ive worn glasses since i was about 11. Each time ive gotten a new prescription, like everyone else, my depth perception was all messed up at first. This happened each time until like 8 years ago. For whatever reason, my lenses were cut diffrently. As soon as i put my glasses on, i had no issues with the new prescription. I found out a year later when i had my eyes checked again and got new glasses that again, my perception was screwy but after going back the guy cutting the lenses noticed that mybold prescription was cut from a less concave/convex portion of the lense to fit my frame.\n\nSo if you look through your glasses through the edges, it gets distorted because of the curve. Mine werent like that. I have perfect vision on close to 100% of the lense without distortion.\n\nIdk if this is normal and my previous lens makers were garbage or if it was just a coincidence that mine were made this way. I havent had a new prescription in like 6 years. Ive had new lenses but not a new prescription. Noe i have to make sure to tell the optometrist to make the lenses as flat as possible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "i3h4k", "title": "Looking to fund scientific research, not sure where to start. ", "selftext": "First I apologize in advance if this is not the proper place for this. \n\nI am looking to fund research into palinopsia -\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSay I have anywhere between 25k-50k with more on the way. \n\nWhere would I start? Should I hook up with a foundation that focuses on say migraines or contact researchers that have published papers on palinopsia already? Any advice well appreciated. \n\nedit: Great information. Have a place to start now. Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i3h4k/looking_to_fund_scientific_research_not_sure/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c20l58f", "c20l9f7", "c20lckn", "c20m0f4"], "score": [2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Are you a researcher yourself or you'd life to fund someone elses venture into it?\n\nIf the latter, I'd check out your local university and asks around for professors who do neurology research and tell them you have funds which you'd like to apply to that subject. If they themselves aren't doing it, ask if they know any one who is or try contacting another university.\n\nOddly enough the wiki article speaks about the difficulties in research of palinopsia.\n\nYou could try a science foundation, NSF might be able to point you toward an appropriate group, but I just like universities because I'm biased. ", "start a grant agency... that's how most of the science is financed by now.\nyou can specify general topic of research in your conditions and\napplicants will present their ideas about how they are going to spend your money. then you check their credentials, previous results and consider possible outcome (e.g. how you like their ideas) and with help of some wise people you can decide who do you give your money. plus you get report on how they were spent and you can sometimes even reclaim them if the conditions were not met and decide better next time.\n\njust remember - research with no immediate potential outcome might be as important as the so called \"applied research\"... and it possibly needs your help even more.", "With that level of funding you'd be best served by find a specific researcher who is studying/iterested in your topic.\n\nI'd spend some time reading medical journal articles regarding Palinopsia.\nOnce you find a possible researcher, you can directly offer them the funds through their own local channels.  Academic researchers can accept funds through a \"research foundation\" contribution through their own university that goes directly to them.", "[A good start](_URL_0_).\n\nIt's hard to just give money away, though. You need to be a foundation, if I'm not mistaken. You could donate to a foundation with some stipulations. With that small amount, my recommendation would be for small grants/fellowships/stipends for up-and-coming PhD (or PhD/MD) students working specifically on this problem.\n\nFrom the sounds of it, I'm not sure exactly which fields would study this. A cross between cognitive neuroscience, psychophysics and rat-neuroscience."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palinopsia"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=palinopsia"]]}
{"q_id": "24l24j", "title": "what are surveyors doing when i see them looking through that tripod?", "selftext": "How do they use that to figure what/how they are going to build?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24l24j/eli5_what_are_surveyors_doing_when_i_see_them/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch85sq8", "ch882yd", "ch889g7", "ch89bch", "ch8cog9", "ch8en15", "ch8ifs9"], "score": [7, 45, 15, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["They use it to measure the angle. If you look, it's normally looking at either another tripod, or someone holding a stick, there is a sensor that measure to angle of the ground between them.", "First year surveyor here. The tripods which surveyors use are just devices for holding instruments level. There's many instruments which surveyors use, but the most common would be the total station. This has a telescope on it which is used to sight a target or point, from which the angle and distance to that point can be calculated. Other instruments include; levels which are used for calculating heights, gps systems for positioning and prisms which are used as targets for total stations.\n\nBasically surveyors are using various instruments to find the spatial position of different points on the earth.", "And to answer the \"how do they use that to figure out what to build\".\r\rSurveyors measure a project site before, during, and after they build.  The first survey is to measure the existing site conditions (topography and locations for existing built stuff). After everything is measured and located, they draw up a site plan.  Then architects and engineers use that site plan to design the project (building, road, etc), and they pit their design on \"blueprints\" with dimensions, etc.\r\rOnce construction begins, a surveyor is back at the site to measure from the design drawings (blueprints) and locate or \"stake out\" the project on the site.  Foundation walls go here, columns go here, etc. Then, as construction continues, the surveyor double checks that the work is being built correctly - correct location and height for each floor level, etc.\r\rFinally, the after-construction survey is the \"as built\" measuring exactly what's been built, so if things were in a different place than the blueprints, the actual \"as built\" location is now measured, drawn, and documented for posterity.", "Measuring, angle from reference points, and elevation. They set the transit (instrument they look through) perfectly level and look for a measuring stick, being held by a person.\n\nThese days they would use laser and GPS to do much of that measuring.", "Surveyors seem mystical to me.  I have a general idea of what they do, but I have not idea how they do it!  ", "I've worked as an engineer in metrology (science of measurements). Leica produces such devices : _URL_1_\n\nThey are very expensive (100k$ and up). Basically they are very precise laser range finders. Sometimes they operate on similar principles than those you can find at home hardware, but some others have more complex inner working such as variable laser phase and what not.\n\nMost use corner cubes as target, which are fantastic little devices which reflect light exactly where it comes from without regard from where it comes from. _URL_0_", "Surveyors use levels to find level, theodolites for relative angle and tape for distance. Laser range finders have been incorporated in the last twenty years to make total stations that combine all three capabilities. There are also laser levels that draw a standard height or line.\n\nSort of common uses are to stake out the positions of the centreline of curve in a road. In that case they calculate the entry into the curve, then through the curve the radius is steady. For laying out a curve in a road the station can be set at the beginning of the curve then regular distances marked off along the curve with regular increases in angular divergence. So the first mark at 100m might be 2.5 degrees, 2nd mark at 200m is at 5 degrees etc. With computers there's no longer any need to setup in a simple way like that. The station can be put more or less anywhere nearby. The location of the station is only constrained by the error in the relative measurements. \n\nElevation, transit angle and distance all have errors involved. There are standard methods of determining positions and levels that seek to correct for, minimize and check for errors. A simple one is to 'tie back in' when running a transit level. So if our survey is measuring heights of roadways near a benchmark we don't just go out with a rod and level to determine the heights through 8 setups, we also have to setup a return route to come back after our survey and tie in our height to the original benchmark to show we haven't gone too far off level during our survey.\n\nA level survey is done by setting up the tripod near a hard point that is at a known height. That is called a benchmark. The rod is set on the benchmark. The level can measure the relative height of the eyepiece, let's say the eyepiece is 2'3\" above the benchmark. Then the first shot is taken maybe 45 m away. The level has stayed in its spot and now measures its height at the eyepiece relative to its height above the spot the rod was placed as 8'4\". That's recorded. It indicates that the rodman has the rod resting on an object that is 2'3\"-8'4\" or 6'1\" below the height of the benchmark. The level moves, the rodman stays at their spot and the level sets up to take a shot at the same spot the rodman was at before. Let's say the shot shows 4'2\" as the height the eyepeice is above the spot the rod is set. That shows that the height of the eyepiece is now -6'1\"+4'2\" or 1'11\" below the height of the benchmark. \n\nMy guess is that surveying will start using image recognition to automatically map topography and locations. It would speed things up a lot."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector", "http://www.leica-geosystems.com/en/Total-Stations-TPS_4207.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "4aoh2y", "title": "why can't someone be shocked back to life by a defibrillator like in movies?", "selftext": "It's often said on Reddit that this cannot happen like it does in movies but why not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4aoh2y/eli5_why_cant_someone_be_shocked_back_to_life_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d12341f", "d123em9", "d125106", "d126n64", "d128twd"], "score": [12, 7, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["A defibrillator 'resets' a heart in a way. If you have a bad rhythm, it stops it (hopefully), so that it can start back up with a correct rhythm.\n\nIf your heart has *stopped,* something is wrong with it. Maybe it is damaged, has insufficient supply, and so on. Trying to stop it *harder* doesn't fix the problem.\n\nDefibrillators don't repair hearts.", "a defibrillator stop fibrillation, a condition where your heart beats erratically rather than the a normal rhythm.  your heart basically is receiving bad electrical signals and not everything fires at the proper time, preventing blood from pumping properly.  the defibrillator shocks the heart to try and reset it to follow proper electrical signals and beat properly again.\n\nIf your heart stops, its because its not recieving any electrical signal.  the defibrillator doesn't create that signal, so it is useless in that case.", "Simple as I can get it.\n\nDefibrillators don't start hearts, they stop them.\n\nIf someone is already dead and their heart has stopped beating, you can't start it using a machine designed to stop it.\n\nWhen your heart develops an irregular beating rhythm you experience fibrillation. This is where instead of beating  as it should, the heart goes bat shit crazy and just basically wobbles about, not pumping blood around your body. The Defib will shock the heart into stopping, and your own electrical impulses will restart the heart in it's natural, normal rhythm, hopefully.\n\n", "When did television and movies decide to show it was a way to start a stopped heart?", "Alright. Down time on night shift. I'll see where we can go with this.\n\nWhen we see someone being shocked \"back to life\" in movies, we are essentially talking about consciousness. We moviegoers think someone is back to life when we see signs of consciousness (i.e. opening eyes, responding to rescuers, demanding for an ice cream). \n\nWhen we see someone \"die\" in movies, we're essentially talking about losing consciousness. This can happen in a few ways. Usually, this is due to lack of blood supply to the brain (people can lose consciousness from a variety of ways, but let's restrict our discussion to cardiac causes since we're talking about defibrillator).\n\nWe need to think like plumbers. To make it simple, think of the heart as a pump and the brain (consciousness) as a reflection of how good the pump is working. Good flow to brain = conscious; bad flow to brain = unconsciousness. Blood supply to the brain is compromised due to cardiac causes by a few ways:\n\n1. Low blood volume. If blood volume is low, ain't gonna matter how hard the heart pumps. Nothing is going to get up there.\n\n2. Weak pump. Might have good pump with good wiring in a solid 10 body, but if the pump is weak, nothing much will happen. Happens in cases like heart attack where the pump dies.\n\n3. Faulty wiring. For the heart to keep on pumping, we need good electrical wiring to tell the heart when and how fast to pump.\n\nDefibrillation only acts to fix the faulty wiring part. It can't do shit about broken pump or low volume. On a good day, the wiring makes the heart pump in a perfect, synchronised fashion. Let's use an analogy: imagine squeezing a tube of toothpaste. To properly empty the tube and get the most out, we squeeze it from the tail end, gradually pushing everything from tail end to the open end. The heart works the same way too, your finger squeezing in a coordinated manner being the synchronised cardiac muscle contracting to empty the heart chambers to squeeze all the blood out.\n\nNow problems happen in one of two ways.\n\n1. No electrical signal. This is what we call ASYSTOLE. Flat line on the ECG. This means the heart isn't stimulated, which means no squeezing happens at all. Kinda like leaving an opened tube of toothpaste on the table and stare at it. Nothing happens. In situations like this, the defibrillator doesn't do shit to the heart. Also where most medical professions laughs at TV doctors bringing patients to life by shocking a flatlined patient. This is where CPR (and some drugs/potion) is pretty much the only option to save the patient.\n\n2. Scrambled electrical signal. This is what we call FIBRILLATION. ECG lines become erratic. This makes the heart quivers like a very cold hamster. Kinda like poking lightly at random spots on a toothpaste tube. Doesn't squeeze very well. This is where defibrillator has a chance of working. It works by resetting the scrambled signals. Like how we fix most computer problems; turning it off and on again. It's in the name, deFIBRILLATOR. Get it? Oh, it doesn't always work too. Even if we manage to shock the patient back into normal electrical activity, the pump is sometimes too traumatised from the whole event to pump properly, which will result in problems like a weak pump, which the defibrillator can no longer fit.\n\nSo you see, there are plenty of reason why someone can lose consciousness and appear \"dead\" on movies, many more which I won't have space/time to explore here. Defibrillator can only fix a small subset from the bigass list of problems. Defibrillator can only work if used at the right time, for the right problem. And even if it does work, bringing a patient back to consciousness or appear \"alive\" heavily depends on post-resuscitation care, which is a topic for another day.\n\nTL;DR: defibrillator isn't magic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5q3iz2", "title": "what makes metal tarnish, and what is so special about gold that it doesn't tarnish", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q3iz2/eli5_what_makes_metal_tarnish_and_what_is_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcw0rek", "dcw1w60", "dcw38qd", "dcw68h3"], "score": [49, 7, 3, 47], "text": ["Since the process of 'tarnishing', or corrosion, is a redox reaction between the metal and oxygen and water, an incredibly stable and unreactive element such as gold will not be affected.\n\n**Edit:** As /u/nickbrisola pointed out, I should also say that gold is a 'passivating' metal. These types of metal react with oxygen to form an impervious oxide layer that prevents from any water or oxygen to be in contact with the metal, hence preventing corrosion. \n\nOther examples of such metals include Aluminium and Chromium. The opposite of these metals are known as 'active' metals and include Iron and Magnesium - which can be easily corroded.", "\"Tarnish\" is the surface of the metal reacting with various things it comes in contact with, producing the discolouration. Kind of like how orange rust forms on iron (Iron III Oxide)  or the bright green patina that forms on copper (copper carbonate).\n\nGold is extremely stable. It does not readily react with chemicals found in the environment normally. \n\nSo because there is nothing that can react with the surface of the gold, the surface stays exactly how it was at manufacture and does not develop a tarnish.\n\n", "Gold does not tarnish easily nor does it form a passivation layer like Aluminum, and while most tarnish is an oxidation reaction, silver and Gold tend to react more with sulphur than oxygen. Proof: when polishing silver, the tarnish being removed is black silver sulphide, whereas silver oxide is white.", "All chemical reactions are based on interactions between the electrons of atoms.  To understand rust and tarnish, you need to understand how metals react.  Rust and tarnish are generally made when a metal reacts with other compounds containing oxygen or sulfur in the surrounding environment (air/water/ground) and water. \n\nOther commenters have talked about how stable gold is, but the chemical reason behind this stability is due to gold's \"valence\" electrons; the outermost electrons in a gold atom.  These electrons are the ones that are able to react.  These electrons are found in regions around the atom called orbitals which can only take a certain amount of electrons before they fill up.  What we see in gold (and other group 11 elements) is that the orbitals which contain the reactive electrons are actually at full capacity.  Atoms like it a lot when these orbitals are filled and it ends up taking too much energy to add or remove an electron from a gold atom for a reaction to happen with oxygen or sulfur.  This makes gold really resistant to oxidation (rusting/tarnishing).  \n\nIron, on the other hand, is very reactive with water/oxygen and forms rust (Iron Oxide) pretty quickly.  It gets oxidized by oxygen really quickly because that reaction allows Iron's orbitals to be filled in a more stable way.  It then forms the oxide after reacting with water giving us the red rust we see everywhere.\n\nSide note, there's actually a difference between tarnish and rust.  Tarnish is a layer on top of the metal that insulates it and protects the deeper layers of the metal like the green tarnish on copper (statue of liberty) while rust generally flakes off and cannot protect the metal below (steel and iron rust).  This is why iron things left out will eventually rust completely through while the statue of liberty is still standing.\n\nThere are also quantum reasons for the increased stability of gold which explains why we see tarnish on silver but not gold, but that's a little beyond an ELI5. \n\ntl;dr: gold doesn't tarnish because it's happy where it is and it would take too much energy for it to rust or tarnish.\n\nP.S. looking up wikipedia's pages on rust, tarnish, oxidation states and electron filling of transition metals will explain everything a lot better than I can :)\n\nEdit^2: Iron oxide not aluminum."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7xn16i", "title": "olympics are almost never profitable, why would countries spend billions on it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xn16i/eli5_olympics_are_almost_never_profitable_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du9jo4y", "du9jquo", "du9lw92", "du9qttc", "du9unlq", "du9utal", "du9uvs0", "du9uyyv", "du9v22g"], "score": [102, 12, 60, 6, 3, 14, 5, 7, 6], "text": ["National pride is huge. And it's easy to sell it as a big, world shaping event. \n\nWhen done well, it can be profitable, but few places do it well. \n\nToss in a good dose of bribes and political pandering and you've got yourself a recipe for economic disturbances of olympic proportions.", "Event - Hosted the Olympics - -1000 Ducats / Gain Prestige +50. (if you play EU4 this will make sense)\n\nBecause of the prestige and opportunity to show off to the rest of the world.  The Olympics is something only \"big boy\" countries get to host.  If you aren't in the conversation for the Olympics you are basically a nobody internationally.  ", "Main reason is that it essentially subsidized additional infrastructure. If a country wants to make stadiums, transportation improvements, ect, for their public\u2019s general use (not just Olympic use), then it will cost them, hosting the olympics or not. However by hosting said olympics, they at least get a bit more revenue for more or less the same amount of money they would spend on infrastructure without the olympics, meaning the bill would be less.\n\nOr you have corrupt countries with corrupt politicians. Like Brazil, where said infrastructure was more or less abandoned after the olympics.", "Never underestimate the power of corruption. Hosting an olympics requires building stadiums, housing, and public transit. That costs billions of dollars. The contractors who get paid to do the building buy off the politicians who give them the contracts. That\u2019s assuming that the contracts aren\u2019t just handed out to close friends and family.", "Well, they get to keep the stadiums and infrastructure.  Most countries get some use out that.  Unless you're like, notoriously corrupt so location and costs get ridiculous.", "It is almost never directly profitable.  But sometimes it can have indirect benefits.  Salt Lake City might have lost money in the short term, but showing the world you are a great ski destination is probably still earning them benefits today.\n\nA lot of it comes down to prestige.  The Olympics makes places like Lake Placid and Lillehammer household names, doubly so if they pull them off well.  Often an advanced developing country, like say Brazil, will see hosting as a step towards sitting at the grown-up table in international affairs.  Unfortunately, they will often overreach and make bids too favorable to the IOC, resulting in an event thing can't afford.  This also can result in a poorly executed event that actually hurts their prestige.  \n\nAlso, the IOC has a pretty extensive history of corruption when it comes Olympic bids.  The games are sometimes are awarded to countries who can only host them with great hardship, so long as the right people got paid off.  Then corrupt politicians find ways to divert all the government money being spent into their own pockets.  That is part of the reason only highly developed countries are able to break even.  They already have much of the needed infrastructure and less corruption, which reduces costs significantly.  A country like Germany could probably throw the games together in half the time for significantly less expense.", "It's like a coming out party for some. When Tokyo hosted in the 60's, it was to tell the world that they have overcame the horrors of war and are now an economic might. Same for Seoul in the 80's, and Beijing in 2008. For London, they used it as a catalyst to regenerate a contaminated industrial wasteland into a thriving neighborhood. Same goes for Barcelona with its waterfront. ", "I remember once that someone proposed a permanent Olympic Village somewhere in the north. All Olympic games, Summer and Winter, would take place there. It would be a neutral area, the country who hosts the next Olympics takes it over between the actual Olympics, maintains it for those four years (and takes in all the inevitable tourist/resort money in the process) in between games, and improves upon the facilities if necessary. No one lives there full time except for Olympic Comittee officials. So, doping scandals like Sochi have less chances of happening because the facilities are group owned and people can spot differences once the torch passes hands and the facility is given to the next country.\n\nEdit: And so messes like the Rio Summer games don't happen again.", "Olympics were a net positive for Vancouver.  Sure , expensive , but a lot of that was infrastructure we still enjoy today \n\n   And we are a tourist city, so we likely get dividends paid back yearly.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "50kiku", "title": "what is depression and why is it such a difficult thing to deal with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50kiku/eli5_what_is_depression_and_why_is_it_such_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d74s96e", "d74sx2s", "d74tr01", "d74xqrt", "d74ya4u", "d7529m3", "d759mnq", "d75b987"], "score": [38, 82, 15, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I highly recommend watching _URL_0_\n\nIt won't take long, and you'll understand why.\n\nAlso... I am so thankful this is even a question you would need to ask.  It is nice to know not everyone has to deal with depression.  It's not something I'd wish on anyone.", "Think about it this way - what if you were hungry, but no matter how much food you ate, you were *always* hungry - you don't die of starvation, you're physically fine, you just *can never stop your hunger*. \n\nThat's what depression is like, but the hunger is -\n\n\n\n[I've had a number of people take umbrage with my usage of \"sadness.\"  Even though I suffer from it myself, I find sadness, more than other perhaps more technically accurate terms, helps best explain the sort of *weight* of the illness.  But out of fairness, I've expanded the metaphor to more accurately describe the way it manifests at least for me, personally, which hopefully both people who suffer from depression and those who do not can find a deeper truth in] \n\n\n\n\n-hopelessness, lethargy, despair: a gravitational black hole in the core of you that swallows up everything you take into it - all the love from people around you, all the achievements and accomplishments and accolades, all the fun and joy and parties and friendships, *everything* - and leaves you will this impossibly dense, cold, dead star inside you, and just as that dead star sucks in everything around you, so too does it pull *you* in, stronger and stronger, and every single day is a battle just to stay UP, to resist being dragged down into the blackness that is self-annihilation, self-obliteration, until eventually you find yourself wondering *why* you're resisting, why you're bothering, because the only thing you're fighting for is day after day of that cold nothingness with no visible respite.  You can't even *see* over the event horizon; its gravity is so powerful it bends the light at the end of the tunnel, convinces you that your future is oblivion, obscures your ability to envision any future where this endlessly hungry dead thing is *not* the core of you.  And it hurts - it hurts *physically*, because without hope, without a positive vision of the future, your brain will slowly stop pumping out dopamine and endorphins, all the hormones that wash away life's little aches and pains and bothers, because your brain has *no justification* to try and make life better; the dead star in you has eaten your aspirations, your dreams and ambitions, and your brain shrugs and gives up dispensing with the typical pharmaceuticals that get us up and out and running and jumping all around; you're tired, and you're in pain, and everything you eat, everything you do is like sawdust in your mouth, bland and purposeless, and at that point it doesn't matter who you are - a fifteen year old kid, a married mother of three, or even Robin Fucking Williams, who had more money and fame and talent and success and global admiration than almost anyone else on the planet - literally none of it matters, because there's no amount of *matter* that will ever satiate a black hole; and at that point it becomes a true testament to the strength of the human condition, when you look at depression not a question of *why do people who are depressed become suicidal*, but rather, *how do so many people with depression hold out their fight for so god damn long in the face of such and overwhelming antagonist*? \n\n\n\nDepression is, at its core, a recurring pattern of negativity.  Think of it like a loop.  You brain is constantly reinforcing negativity.  It doesn't matter if the events of the day are good or bad; your mind, separate of your conscious will, sends negative thoughts; self-loathing thoughts, hopeless thoughts, etc.  This becomes a feedback loop that reinforces helplessness - you know spending time with loved ones is *supposed* to make you happy, but instead you feel nothing, or it makes you feel tired, or terrible.  The fact that these positive things did not make you *feel* positive, in turn, makes you feel worse.  Imagine, to return to the food metaphor, if eating not only did not satiate you, but made you *hungrier*.  You would begin to associate food - normally the thing used to alleviate hunger - with the hunger itself, and begin to avoid it, and would likely feel helpless and frustrated that the *normal* course of action to dealing with hunger, eating, only made you feel worse.  This frustration and helplessness would lead to more negativity, and so on.\n\n\nWhen we think of something being \"hard\", in life, be it sickness or other challenges, we use our *minds* to overcome it.  We persevere, we find hope, we find happiness.  This is the human condition.  This is why depression is so insidious.  It takes away the very thing that people usually use to find strength.  Your happiness, your loves, your *reasons* - depression robs you of these things.  It strips you of your ability to find joy and beauty in them.  Depression makes everything, every moment of every day, a challenge, with no real respite.  Just a constant feeling of hopelessness, helplessness, and purposelessness.  \n\n\n\nThere are many theorized reasons for depression - hormonal imbalances, neurotransmitter defects, diet.  But regardless of the root cause, it almost always manifests itself as a feedback loop of bad thoughts.  Your brain gets \"stuck\" in a loop of thinking, where no matter what conscious thoughts you generate, you always get sucked back down into a cycle of negativity, sadness, and depression.  \n\n\n\nThis is one reason that psychologists are starting to seriously look at hallucinogenics as a possible treatment for depression: because they have a sort of dissociative effect; they can \"break\" this loop and elevate thought above or outside of it.  It is almost impossible to see outside of the loop while you're *in* it, but gaining the perspective offered by something like LSD can have a profound effect in \"teaching\" the brain how it can escape cyclical thought patterns in favor of more beneficial thought patterns. \n\n\n", "Depression is not grief. One never knows the exact reason why they are depressed. While depressed you don't feel much of anything. The things you loved doing don't make you that exited at all anymore. Even the things you hated seem to be less horrible. It's like a flat rollercoaster. No ups, no downs, and constant speed (if not . It almost feels like you're not even moving and instead the world moves around you. You're like a spectator waiting for something to happen in the movie called \"your life\". You want to make something happen, but you can't even reach for the remote. It's not lazyness or tiredness, it's more like those dreams where you are trying to run but can't seem to do it, and when you do you're too slow.\n\nIt's for that very reason that depression is so hard to deal with. You may want to change more than anything else in your life, but you are like a car in neutral. You can't just \"snap out of it\" because that's what you've been trying trying to do for a long time. \n\nSometimes it's anger, sometimes it's grief, sometimes is dissatisfaction, sometimes is regret, sometimes it's loneliness, sometimes it's the lack of purpose, sometimes it's the lack of having done something remarkable, sometimes it's the feeling of not being worthy of belonging somewhere, sometimes there is something wrong with your body. Often it's a combination of many factors. Either way it's not something that can be fixed by shaking your head and getting back into the real world. You can't decide to be cured of an illness, you can only decide to start the healing process. ", "I thought that the [Hyperbole and a half](_URL_0_) posts on depression matched my feelings pretty well.\n\nIt's kind of a combination of an overwhelming amount of pessimism and/or low self-esteem, that just completely saps your energy and willingness to do anything. It's almost freeing, in a way, to just stop caring about anything that happens. You just kind of...give up. Terrible things are happening, and you're a piece of shit who can't stop them, so why bother trying.\n\nWhen it really bad it really does almost feel like a physical symptom, a sort of wrenching feeling in your chest. ", "[Here are some previous questions on the subject](_URL_0_).", "Depression has many ways to manifest, so often people do not know that they are depressed. Because it is different for so many people I can only answer what makes it bad for me.\n\nI don't feel like I am worth fixing.\n\nThings get blown out of proportion in my brain (if a friend does not want to help on a project it is because of me not because of what is going on in their life).\n\nA complete lack of emotion. Take away love, fear, hope, and joy the world becomes very fatiguing. Those are three huge motivators to do anything. I sometimes do not even want to feed myself.\n\nShame for feeling this way, because really my life could be worse in so many ways.\n\nPeople who do not understand shaming you. My dad refused to let me have therapy, even free therapy.\n\nThose are the main ones for me anyway. And for the most part I am doing well so don't worry. Hope what I wrote makes sense. I am insanely tired but need to stay up to give my after surgery meds soon.", "Depression is a bit like a mental illness, your brain keeps feeding you negative thoughts without a proper stimulus.\n\nEveryone feels sad once in a while, maybe a relative passes away or they break up with a partner. You feel sad after something bad happens in your life. Depression doesn't work like that, because it makes you feel sad for no reason.\n\nWhen there's no reason for you to feel sad, yet you feel sad anyway, how are you meant to solve the problem? The things you previously enjoyed no longer bring you happiness and you begin feeling indifferent towards yourself and the world around you. This self-perpetuating negativity traps you in a cycle that's difficult to break out of. Eventually you'll start craving something - anything - that will make you feel human again.\n\nI suffered from depression for about 6 months a few years ago, my life felt like I was on autopilot. I woke up every morning and went on with my normal life but felt completely detached from the world around me, all while feeling increasingly frustrated and helpless about the negative thoughts plaguing my mind.\n\nThankfully, I got counselling for it and things started to improve after a while. Depression is an awful condition and one that's often misunderstood.", "It's a way of thinking that overtakes your mind. You have no control. Your ability to imagine the future is poisoned by negativity -- you can't imagine that the factors in your life they cause you pain will ever be different.  All the emotions you feel are negative, even if you're occasionally horny or laugh at something funny -- it's short lived. You return to baseline quickly. \n\nThey say depression is anger turned inward and that's certainly part of it. It's like having a \"hopelessness meme\" take over your brain and rob you of your free will. \n\nWe don't know what causes it for certain. It's so subjective that we dont even know what degree of normal, healthy melancholy turns into depression. And we don't know how much is nature or nurture.\n\nBut we do know that exercise, robust social networks, psychotherapy/meditation are proven to help, even if they don't necessarily cure you for good.\n\nMy own personal test for depression goes like this: if I have to wonder if I'm depressed, then I'm certainly not clinically depressed, though I might be melancholy, which is a perfectly natural and healthy way to feel depending on circumstance. Clinical depression is the intense, inescable, \"disease\" like condition that you have to aggressively fight, and will have to weather the storm. Not all people will ever experience this, but so many do. I envy those that don't. Fighting depression has certainly given me mental fortitude, but I'm also scarred from it. Overall, it's better to live life without ever having had a migraine than it is to have had one, I say. Depression is a migraine for your consciousness."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share?language=en"], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiHxNvalu3OAhUJmJQKHVhqBoYQFggeMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F10%2Fadventures-in-depression.html&amp;usg=AFQjCNHmAoaRaENLn9xjKZhnYukq-RBsxg&amp;sig2=SU11D2EhTVZL06MaF0Clhw"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=depression+NOT+York+NOT+recession+NOT+Glass+NOT+Freezing+NOT+ADHD&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=new&amp;t=all"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6g066e", "title": "why is russia the \"bad guys\" of the world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g066e/eli5_why_is_russia_the_bad_guys_of_the_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dimd8ug", "dimdrap", "dime06o", "dimeaf5", "dimee25", "dimhb25"], "score": [11, 4, 3, 7, 9, 2], "text": ["They're not. \n\nThey are, however, one of our chief competitors. So they're our bad guys. Just the same, we're their bad guys. ", "The U.S. thinks Russians are bad. Russia thinks the U.S. is bad.\n\nThe rest of the world is sick of your pissing competition.", "They're not the bad guys of the world. Just the bad guys \"of the west\". Just like \"western propaganda\" is the devil to them. It's easier to blame a foreign influence than it is to admit that fault may lie in your own country. \n\n\n\n", "Russia isn't inherently bad, but their government is. Putin made a power grab in 1999 after a series of bombings. Quite a few Russians believed that he was somehow involved in using the Russian intelligence agencies to orchestrate the bombings in order to manufacture a crisis. People who investigated this turned up dead.\n\nJournalists in Russia keep being assassinated, most likely by agents of the government.\n\nPutin annexed Crimea, violated international law, and sent troops with no identifiable national or unit markers into Ukraine to help the pro-Russian rebels in a civil war that continues to this day.\n\nPutin has been funding the Taliban.\n\nPutin used cyberwarfare and propaganda to influence the US election, and had already used the same capabilities against Ukraine in a \"dry run.\"\n\nI haven't bothered citing any of those claims, if you care to read about them just throw some keywords into google and pick reputable sources in order to read about it", "Nations by design put their own self interest first. Their allies interests comes second.\n\nThe U.S. and Russia have different interests, different geopolitical goals, and different allies. So that creates totally normal tension, competition, shit talking, espionage, and political scheming.\n\nThe idea being thrown around that U.S. and Russian tension is fabricated is nonsense. For people just waking up to politics this last year it seems plausible, but if you read the history of the world from 1922 to present there's nothing remotely surprising about U.S. and Russian tension.", "The US wants people to look elsewhere while they sell 200 billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4yl58j", "title": "Is there any serious evidence for settled civilisations during the last glacial period (i.e., pre-12000 BCE)?", "selftext": "It's interesting that states formed in six different regions around the world at roughly the same time (3000 - 0 BCE) _URL_0_.\n\nFrom what I understand, it wasn't until the end of the last glacial period that changes in the climate enabled humans to develop agriculture and settle into permanent communities.\n\nIt looks like this led to steady population growth, with states developing independently in different regions of the world as population density increased to a point able to sustain complex societies.\n\nDuring the glacial period, most water was held up in ice caps, so more land was either desert or tundra than currently. On the other hand, it's not the case that everywhere was inhospitable for agriculture -- only that favourable regions were less common than today, and in different areas. That makes it seem strange that humanity collectively waited until the same time period in different areas of the globe to settle down.\n\nIs it possible that complex societies developed during this period, possibly in areas which are now underwater? I'm not talking \"Ancient Atlantis\" pseudoscientific theories, but perhaps societies on the level of North American chiefdoms, with multiple settlements and agriculture.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4yl58j/is_there_any_serious_evidence_for_settled/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6os6q3"], "score": [22], "text": ["This is a frequently asked question, and we had a very similar thread recently. Take a look at [the answers](_URL_0_) by /u/Brigantus and myself. \n\nBy way of summary, it is **possible** that some society like that could have existed, but given everything we know currently is highly **improbable**. \n\nGiven that we have significant amounts of archaeological evidence for foraging societies, especially in the upper Paleolithic, it would be surprising for us to lack any evidence a society that should have a greater archaeological footprint (a chiefdom, like you postulate). That we should have so much evidence for societies with smaller archaeological footprints, yet none for societies with theoretically much larger footprints is pretty damning evidence from an archaeological stand-point. \n\nThe problem is that in archaeology we never seek to disprove anything - given the incomplete and partial nature of the archaeological record, it would be difficult to conclusively disprove any assertion. This is why I say that the existence of such a complex, Pleistocene society is **possible**. However, this doesn't mean anything goes in archaeology: we can use the evidence available to us to describe the *most probable* explanation and the likelihood that is the correct explanation. This is why I say is is **highly improbable** that such a Pleistocene society could exist, given all the evidence we have available to us. Unfortunately, this lack of \"certainty\" in a more scientific sense leaves the doors open for the kinds of pseudoarchaeology you mention, where they claim that we can't disprove that aliens built the pyramids, for instance. While they are correct in saying we cannot disprove that, that doesn't mean we can't say that is a highly unlikely explanation for the evidence we have.     "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_formation"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4x3811/if_there_had_been_a_large_empire_like_the_mongols/d6d1k1p"]]}
{"q_id": "25v9uj", "title": "why don't they serve milk as a drink in bars/restaurants?", "selftext": "It's probably the healthiest drink in the world (after water). So why not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25v9uj/eli5why_dont_they_serve_milk_as_a_drink_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chl1opz", "chl1w31", "chl1x4f", "chl2djb", "chl3613"], "score": [10, 21, 36, 2, 2], "text": ["You can usually get milk if you ask for it. Even if it isn't on the menu the kitchen should have some. I only see people do this for small children and babies. Most people don't want a glass of milk. Some even think drinking a glass of milk is gross. I'm one of those.", "Milk is not anywhere near the healthiest drink in the world. It has a few nutritional benefits that are more easily derived from other foods - calcium is abundant in leafy greens, and vitamin A (which is *added* to milk, it's not there naturally) is found in plenty of other vegetables - but beyond that, it's pretty worthless and doesn't even hydrate you that well. Add to that the estimate that 75% of the world's population is lactose-intolerant and unlikely to get any nutrients from it, and the fact that hormones given to the cows to make them produce more milk end up in the milk itself and are contributing to health problems here in the US, and it is far, far from the healthiest drink in the world. \n\nThat said, they do serve milk in most restaurants if you ask for a glass, and I'd wager you could find milk in at least half the bars in my area, if not yours. ", "You would only order milk at a bar if you were a McPoyle.", "Breast milk would be the healthiest natural drink out there but good luck finding that served in a bar. ", "Most restaurants I have been to do serve milk. It's what I always order for the kids. Some don't have chocolate milk, but most all of them serve regular milk. Maybe it's a regional thing. I'm in Wisconsin which is a big dairy state."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28i4xl", "title": "why do different european languages have such varying names for germany?", "selftext": "Allemagne, \u0413\u0435\u0440\u043c\u0430\u043d\u0438\u044f (Germaniya), Saksa, Deutschland, Germany, etc.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28i4xl/eli5_why_do_different_european_languages_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cib5mp0", "cib7pj4", "cib7t1d", "cib7yw9", "cib9dzh", "cib9g71", "cib9wca", "ciba1by", "cibaa9c", "cibaqcb", "cibaxdf", "cibb8h5", "cibb9sr", "cibbc1i", "cibblmn", "cibcoqh", "cibd05l", "cibd1j7", "cibdhrm", "cibe4bb", "cibexnw", "cibeza3", "cibeznw", "cibfd8d", "cibfua3", "cibg0eg", "cibgc17", "cibgr82", "cibh8q8", "cibhr77", "cibiqll", "cibiv09", "cibizwx", "cibj8hv", "cibj8z2", "cibjkrn", "cibkxyr", "cibkylv", "cibllc6", "cibmfed", "cibmrf9", "cibnarh", "cibo62y", "cibrq0u", "cibs9yk", "cibt8lx", "cibub3k"], "score": [1663, 29, 248, 3, 35, 12, 43, 44, 10, 2, 2, 6, 23, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 8, 10, 6, 2, 17, 7, 3, 6, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 9, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["The origin of the name for Germany in a certain language depends on that country's one time relationship with Germany. \n\nAllemagne, Alemania (Romance languages) -- comes from the Alemani tribe of Germany. \n\nGermaniya, Germany, Germania -- that is the name which the Romans used for the territory north and East of the Rhine. \n\nSaksa -- Finnish, named after the Saxons, yet another German tribe. \n\nDeutschland, Duitsland -- this was yet another German tribe which became the word for the whole country. ", "In Afghanistan they call it Alleman which confused the hell out of me. We have about 200 family members there. ", "The reason for Germany's many exonyms is due to France and their sneaky name-stealing ways.  \n\nThe language we today call 'German' was originally called 'Frankish', and its speakers, the 'Franks', and they resided in what is modern-day France.  \nThe area of France came under a lot of political-religious gobbeldy-gook which I wont go into right now, but the end result is, Latin became the major language south of the Rhine, while Frankish remained dominant to the north.  \n\nHowever, the Latin-speakers continued to call themselves 'Franks' and stubbornly refused to acknowledge that they had stolen the name! And as Latin was the Lingua-Franca of Christendom (tee-hee, puns) they got to keep it. Over time, the Latin spoken in France evolved into French.  \n  \nThis became a problem for the Northerners, they couldn't well call themselves *and* the Latins Franks, so they grabbed a word meaning just 'common' (diutsc) and named their language that (so German really is the 'common tongue'!) and over time, this became the word 'Deutsch' that we know, love, and can't spell to this day.  \n  \nHowever, other nations didn't seem to quite get the memo. The French (damn them!) decided to name their northern neighbours after one of their southern neighbours, the Alemannics, who spoke a similar language, and then passed this lie over to the Spanish.  \nOther languages, such as Italian and English, just used the word that had been used to describe all Northern peoples up until then; 'German'.  \nAnd in the East, they decided that the German language was too silly to be real, and so decided it probably wasn't real, settling on the term 'Niemcy' ('mute person').", "This is really interesting. Why is it called \"Tyskland\" in the nordic countries? (Sweden, Denmark, probably Norway also).", "My question is, why dont we call countries what they call themselves. Such as, we call it spain, but spain calls itself Espana. ", "_URL_0_ \n\nExplanation for your question. ", "Thanks for all the great responses reddit! This was really interesting to read", "N\u00e9metorsz\u00e1g in Hungarian. Originated from the word \"n\u00e9ma\", which means \"mute\" due to the funny language spoken by the germans. The hungarians dismissed the whole nation by calling them \"the country of mutes\". It sticked :)", "Fun fact: \"sakset\" means scissors in finnish. The first scissors came to Finland from saxon trade routes.\n\nEdit: I've been taught the whole thing upside down. The saxons got their name from the [seax](_URL_0_) (sax in old norse, v\u00e4kipuukko in finnish). \"Saksa\" came from the saxons. Sakset just means more-than-one seax.\n\nNow about the etymology of the saxophone ...", "Russian, Germaniya. Nemenski is the Russian word for a German. The translation of it is not German but mute. During the time of Peter the Great Germans were hired to help design and build ships. Since they could not speak Russian they were considered mute. There are still German populations west of Moscow from Peter the Great's time.", "In Japanese it's \"doitsu\" which is an phonetic approximation of \"deutsch\".\n", "In nahuatl (language of the Aztecs) is Teutotitlan. Teutons, another germanic tribe; -tlan, land\n\nEdit: corrected with the right word.", "It's important to note that there was no such thing as Germany until the forcible unification of several kingdoms during the nineteenth century. That also plays a part in different names for Germany, the people of the assorted nations would have had contact with different tribes and kingdoms. ", "I believe the Italians refer to Germans as \"Tedesco.\"", "I've never understood why we change the names of countries for other languages. Espa\u00f1a, Italia, Deutchland is so much cooler than Spain, Italy, and France", "Article on the subject: _URL_0_", "there is a wiki of it \n_URL_0_", "Germany's not the only one like that, to be fair.\n\nFrance: Gaul, Francia, Frankreich, Tzarfat\n\nSwitzerland: Suisse, Helvetia, Eidgenossenschaft\n\nGreece: Hellas, Ionia, Yunan, Saberdzneti, D\u017eieltimohk\n\nIreland: Inisfail, Eire, Hibernia, Erin, Scotia\n\nChalk it all up to the names of ancient tribes.", "Because the DEUTSCHLAND is the land of infinite possibilities  ", "I'm not sure why these questions are constantly getting to the front page without moderators removing them. This isn't an ELI5 question at all, it can be solved by googling \"Deutschland Etymology\" and clicking any link on the front page.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe name Deutschland and the other similar-sounding names above are derived from the Old High German diutisc, or similar variants from Proto-Germanic *\u00deeudiskaz, which originally meant \"of the people\". Almost every language calls it's country of origin \"the land of the people\".  \n\nAlso, *The terminology for \"Germany\", the \"German states\" and \"Germans\" is complicated by the unusual history of Germany over the last 2000 years. This can cause confusion in German and English, as well in other languages. While the notion of Germans and Germany is older, it is only since 1871 that there has been a nation-state of Germany. Later political disagreements and the partition of Germany (1945-1990) has further made it difficult to use proper terminology*.\n\n*Starting with Charlemagne, the territory of modern Germany was within the realm of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a union of relatively independent rulers who each ruled their own territories. This empire was called in German Heiliges R\u00f6misches Reich, with the addition from the late Middle Ages of Deutscher Nation (of (the) German nation), showing that the former idea of a universal realm had given way to a concentration on the German territories.*\n\nFor additional reading: *Roman authors mentioned a number of tribes they called Germani\u2014the tribes did not themselves use the term. After 1500 these tribes were identified by linguists as belonging to a group of Germanic language speakers (which include modern languages like German, English and Dutch). Germani (for the people) and Germania (for the area where they lived) became the common Latin words for Germans and Germany.*\n\n*In 19th and 20th century historiography, the Holy Roman Empire was often referred to as Deutsches Reich, creating a link to the later nation state of 1871. Besides the official Heiliges R\u00f6misches Reich Deutscher Nation, common expressions are Altes Reich (the old Reich) and R\u00f6misch-Deutsches Kaiserreich* (Roman-German Imperial Realm)*.\n\nAnd finally, if you are a foreigner, it's good to note that while the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is the complete country; \"Westdeutschland\" and \"Ostdeutschland\" are still the names for eastern and western Germany. Most people from Bavaria (Bayern) normally appreciate if you call them Bavarian even though they fall into Westdeutschland technically. \n\n**Edit:** Good work, downvote a comment that actually calls someone out for breaking the first rule of this subreddit. \"E is for explain. This is for concepts you'd like to understand better; not for simple one word answers, walkthroughs, or personal problems\" This question was answered in a few sentences and can easily be found, this material is not suitable for this subreddit. ", "Now I wonder what America may be called by other countries and in other languages. ", "Confusing things further:\n\nI've always been amused that Americans used to call anyone with a German heritage 'Dutch.' Think Dutch Schultz.\n\n Deutschlander ", "We call it Niemcy in Polish. Apparently derived from word \"niemy\" meaning \"mute\".\nIf you think about it, when over 1000 years ago our ancestors went east or south they just met other Slavic tribes which were speaking different, but somewhat understandable languages.\nHowever, when they went west they met Germanic tribes speaking language that in no way resembles Slavic.\nI reckon this is how Niemcy - the land of the mute, got their name.", "In Latvian it's \"V\u0101cija\" \n", "Nem\u010dija -- in Slovene (and some other Slavic languages). It is derived from the word *n\u00e9m* which could be translated as *mute* due to the fact that Slavic peoples could understand Germans, but they in turn, could not speak Slavic languages. Thus, being \"mute\" to them. ", "Some of the historic developments have been described. To really ELI5 it though:\n\nThere simply was no \"German\" nation until 1871. Before then, what is now called Germany (plus Austria and parts of France, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy and probably more) was known only as \"The holy Roman Empire of German Nations\". And there it is. There were many different peoples in that Empire. Most surrounding countries named Germany for the \"tribe\" next to them or to which they had the most contact.", "\"Niemcy\" and different variations in Slavic languages most likely comes from \"mute\" or \"mumbling\" people - those who cannot be understood and don't speak the Slavic tongue (Slava from word) :)", "I'm going to give you a MASSIVELY SIMPLIFIED rundown here. \n\nGermany as it stands today hasn't been a country for very long. Germany was used to describe a territory, or area the same way we'd use 'eastern Europe' and the 'Iberian peninsula'. Germany (the territory) is incredibly complicated to go back through, because of the sheer number of countries that has existed in that fucking region. \n\nGermany as we know it today is actually the unification end result of lots of little kingdoms and states. And I mean a fucking lot. These states have joined, and separated from other states over the years. It's mental trying to memorize them all. Before THAT cluster fuck there was the holy Roman Empire. Which as my history lessons taught me, wasn't holy. It wasn't Roman. And it wasn't an empire. I think it's the first time people in the holy Roman Empire were referred to as Germans, as it was much easier to just give them a demonym of German rather than HolyRomanEmpirites. \n\nBefore the Holy Roman Empire though, it was part of Francia, owned by the Frankish. Which was a rather large empire. That went from Northern Spain all the way to Poland. This empire was divided into East and West. The Eastern side and Middle empire is what was considered the very earliest stage of the German Empire. (Something that wouldn't be achieved until very close to the great war.)\n\nBefore that, there wasn't much governable country at all. It was mostly split into states or tribes. In fact, a big reason these tribes even formed was to rebel against the Roman Empire. Germans were very successful at rebelling against the Romans. And there were a lot of freaking tribes. The fact that Rome took the time to name all of them is a testament to how prolific they were. But basically, that is where other languages get their names for Germany. As far back as this. They get their names from individual tribe names that just so happened to catch on in other languages. \n\nAllemani tribe (allemagne in latin). Germaniya tribe (Germany in English). Saska Tribe (Saxons in Finnish.) Duitsland tribe (Deutschland in Dutch.)\n\nThere are however some countries that got their name for Germany a different way. But /can't be bothered to type them. \n\nPlease remember this is a huge simplification of the history of Germany and how their name came about. There is a shit load of stuff that happened between the paragraphs. \n\n\n\n ", "Top comments barely gloss over the actual reasons why most European nations have varying names for other nations. It mostly has to do with the point when said nation had first contact with \"Germans\". So for some nations its based on germanic tribe of Alemani, for some on german tribe of Saxons, for some on the fact that theyre \"similiar people\" (people with similiar language) or on the fact that they dont speak peoples laguage(for Slavic nations).\n\nIts like that for many continantal european countries. To push this even further, most countries arent called by their official names, but by the names established in historical connections. Several nations also have several names for some other nations. Yep, like the history fo Europe, its one giant clusterfuck.", "Because everyone in Europe likes calling the Germans different things.\n\nKrauts, fritz, squareheads, boches, doryphores, huns, schwaben, heinies, piefkes, chleuh, rottmoffen, I swear, it's just the best country to call names.\n\n^^^^please ^^^^don't ^^^^anschluss ^^^^us.  ^^^^with ^^^^love, ^^^^-your ^^^^neighbors", "Russians call german people \"Nememtsi,\" meaning, \"the mute people.\" During the napoleonic wars, a lot of germans were displaced and headed east. They had no idea what the fuck russians were saying, because they couldn't speak the language. Russians assumed this was because they were idiots/mutes, so the name stuck.", "in Norway Germany is called Tyskland...\nI have no idea why", "Brit here. We call it 5-1", "I was thinking about this yesterday! I am Norwegian where it is Tyskland!", "In the Welsh language, the word for \"German (language)\" is Almaeneg.", "In Korean, you are \ub3c5\uc77c (pronounced Doe-gheel). ", "I think it is because Germany hasn't been a country for a long time.  It didn't have an official name, so all the countries around it referred to it by different names.\n\nAlso because of geography.  Germany is in the center of Europe so it had lots of neighboring people who spoke different languages to give it different names.  Other countries that had fewer neighbors, like Wales or Ireland, would tend to be named by themselves or their largest neighbor (in this case England), and then that name would be disseminated around the world.", "In Poland we call it Niemcy. No idea why ", "And \u041d\u0456\u043c\u0435\u0447\u0447\u0438\u043d\u0430 (Neemechinna) in Ukrainian", "It is because the historic names for the German people are drawn from a generalized \"regional\" naming scheme. For instance the English Word \"German\" is drawn from the word \"germane\" or \"related\" meaning a region where all of the independent states are related by a common culture.\n\nThe German word for themselves is again regional and basicly descriptive. \"Deutschland\" simply means \"land of the people\" so again simple a regional description that means nothing. The more descriptive name used \"Rhineland\" is meaning of course \"Land of the Rhine\" which simply refers to the valley of the Rhine river which refers more to northern Germany (historically the most powerful area). \n\nMost importantly the countries that exist today with consistent names: France, Spain, England, Scotland, etc. all existed for most of their lives with a unifying monarchy. In order for a kingdom to be established the King needed to rule over a people. The French King ruled over the \"Franks\" the English King ruled over the \"Angles\" the Scottish King ruled over the \"Scots.\" Because there was no King that ruled over all of the \"German\" people there was never established a clear naming scheme for that group of people. Instead there were kings of different ancient tribal regions such as the King of Bavaria or the King of Bohemia. So in effect we have a number of countries forced to invent names for a region to describe a disjointed group of people who share a similar culture and language.", "Because the German national identity was late to the party of nations. For hundreds of years the geographical area that is now Germany was just the stomping grounds for armies.", "Tangential question: Why not just use the name of the country as spoken in their native language (eg Nihon for Japan, Espa\u00f1a for Spain) or translate it if more appropriate (eg Estado Unidos de America for USA in Spanish)?", "Well, one is the languages themselves just being unique. Two is the numerous Germanic tribes, and 3 was the Germanic regions were constantly taken moved, etc, before they were united first as the Prussian Empire and today as Germany. Also, Deutschland is the proper German term\n\nSource: Studied History A Level", "In Polish it's \"Niemcy\", what means \"those who don't speak\". That's because we could easily talk with almost everyone around us (slavic language group), but we couldn't understand a word from Germans.", "It should be Deutschland, the language shouldn't matter. I don't like it when other language change the names of traditional names from other languages, for example, Gothenburg I'm Sweden is not Gothernburg, it's G\u00f6teborg. I understand the history behind the names, but we should get past that ", "Back in the days of Feudalism and The Holy Roman Empire, Germany was not one country but a large community of kingdoms. After the many kingdoms decided to unite into one country there was much debate over which kingdom was dominant and should have its name inherited. Ultimately, all the different names we have today are based on the names of the many kingdoms that made up Germany.", "Better yet, why don't we just call the countries what they call themselves? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seax"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/443/why-are-there-so-many-names-for-germany-aka-deutschland-allemagne-etc"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2jlv7x", "title": "why do french fries taste awful if reheated, but something like pizza is comparable whether fresh or reheated?", "selftext": "Other foods don't reheat well, too. Rice, macaroni and cheese, etc. Why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jlv7x/eli5_why_do_french_fries_taste_awful_if_reheated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clcw185", "clcwm8x", "clcx2a0", "clcy5wn", "clcyk9u", "clczfkr", "cld2gqo", "cld4rtm", "cld6l3x", "cld7enp", "cldadsg", "clddd9w"], "score": [54, 2, 6, 13, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I assume you're asking about microwave reheating? Microwaving essentially boils your food. Oils will make your food more soggy, water will evaporate, drying it out. Something crispy like a fry becomes soggy. Something moist like rice becomes dry. ", "Dry foods need to have a bit of water in a bowl in the microwave as well to keep moisture. French Fries are incredibly starchy and oiled and neither react super well to microwaving a second time. ", "Only way to resuscitate french fries is to either put them in a pan in the oven with some olive oil on them or fry them in a pan with olive oil.", "Pizza reheated in the oven tastes a ton better than it does in the microwave.  Put it at 350 for 10 minutes and it's fantastic. ", "re-heating french fries in a toaster oven is pretty good actually. it depends on the food and where it is re-heated.", "Mallard reactions are what make food crispy. They are a class of reactions that **only occur in the absence of water**.\n\nThe breadlike texture of pizza, and the oil from the cheese, allow the water to be driven out of the food during re-heating.\n\nFor fries, the potato has less airspaces, and the fry holds less oil (no cheese or greasy meat), so there is no hot oil to push out the water, and no channels to push it out of.", "Oven man. Cant stress that enough for leftovers. Everything from pizza to chicken strips, fish and frys. All taste awesome reheated in the oven. \n", "Sort of related. Toaster ovens are the best thing ever for reheating pizza (among other foods). Takes a little bit longer than a microwave, but so worth the wait!", "In my experience, rice and macaroni and cheese reheat just fine if you cover them up and add a little water to rehydrate them. \n\nTo answer the title, I think it has to do with the structure of the food itself. Fries are crispy because the water in them has basically been replaced with oil which doesn't soften the starch. When you microwave them any water inside steams up and enters the fried area.\n\nPizza, on the other hand, is basically just bread, sauce, and cheese. Bread is already moist, the sauce has enough water to not dry out, and cheese has a lot of oil already which keeps it from getting dry.", "Rice - dampen a paper towel and place it over the rice and microwave. It'll come out like normal", "I disagree that pizza is comparable fresh or reheated. ", "Fries are loaded with starches that absorb water. They get mushy and stale if left to cool."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4a73gn", "title": "Why did nucleosynthesis in the early universe allow neutrons to merge quickly with protons, but not allow protons to merge with each other?", "selftext": "At the time, was the pressure and temperature too low for this to happen?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4a73gn/why_did_nucleosynthesis_in_the_early_universe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0y7fro", "d0yo3q3"], "score": [2, 5], "text": ["I think it's because \n\np + p - >  d + e^+ + \u03bd_e\n\nIs a weak-mediated process, while \n\np + n - >  d + \u03b3\n\nIs EM. So it's many, many times faster. I think this is the main factor.\n\nPrimordial nucleosynthesis happens a while after the decoupling of the weak force, so weak interactions have already become \"frozen\" and literally weak as they are at room temperature.", "Two protons merging forms Helium-2, which is very unstable and nearly always decays back to two protons. There is a (very) small chance that helium-2 might decay to hydrogen-2 (deuterium), which is stable. (This decay is what powers the Sun, incidentally)\n\nDeuterium is stable, but only just and at temperatures higher than 0.1 MeV (about 1 GK) it will be destroyed. So when temperatures are hotter than this, nucleosynthesis essentially does not occur. Overall the time for big bang nucleosynthesis is about 17 minutes.\n\nThe cross-section for this reaction is about 10^(-23) b, and the proton density is about 1^(19) /cm^3 during BBN. Combining these we can estimate a reaction rate of approximately 1^(-14) /s/proton. And so over the 17 minutes that BBN happens we get 1^(-11) reactions per proton. As you can see essentially we get no deuterium produced from two protons merging.\n\nEdit: I tried to find for comparison the cross-section for proton+neutron fusion, and it seems to be on the order of 1^(-3) b for these energies. So as you can see, that's about 1^(20) times more likely!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7f0cm3", "title": "Did Hamilton have a Jamaican accent?", "selftext": "Having grown up in the Carribbean til he was 17, did Alexander Hamilton ever have or retain an accent that made it a dead giveaway where he was from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7f0cm3/did_hamilton_have_a_jamaican_accent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq8nkmo"], "score": [83], "text": ["[Good answer here.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ivea3/did_alexander_hamilton_have_a_noticeably/"]]}
{"q_id": "5rip17", "title": "When and how did the title \"Paladin\" or \"Knight Paladin\" become popularly associated with a Knight who is also Healer? From the history of the term it would appear earlier usages were describing knights involved in mostly offensive operations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rip17/when_and_how_did_the_title_paladin_or_knight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd7um2l"], "score": [185], "text": ["Paladins are an invention of high medieval French literature, especially those *chansons* dealing with Roland and his exploits. They're also known as the Twelve Peers, and are, you guessed it, twelve highly esteemed noblemen who serve the (fictionalized) Charlemagne. In the most prominent of the chansons, they die with their leader, Roland, while defending Roncevaux Pass from the Moorish hordes. \n\nThat's pretty much it. There were no actual guys called paladins. Knights were not called paladins, except perhaps as a literary allusion. Charlemagne did not spend ten years campaigning against the Moors in Spain; he spent about four months there, before withdrawing his army to deal with domestic troubles. The historical Roland was a minor lord and killed not by tens of thousands of treacherous Muslims, but by outraged Basques whom Charlemagne's army had treated rather shabbily.\n\nMy guess would be that Gary Gygax or someone else involved in fantasy roleplaying games seized upon the name and built a player class around it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3o57io", "title": "if slouching is so bad for us, why is it such a natural position to sit/stand in?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o57io/eli5_if_slouching_is_so_bad_for_us_why_is_it_such/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvu5cds", "cvude8f", "cvug3xf"], "score": [107, 9, 9], "text": ["There is a ted talk on this. It's about [primal posture](_URL_0_).\n\nIn short, it's because of our furniture. From when we are babies, our posture is encouraged to slouch, like in car seats. Pelvis tilted in and rounded forward shoulders. This continues through our lives, in our couches and regular chairs. So it is difficult to train your body to sit properly, when it has been doing something else it's whole life.\n\nIn the talk she mentions, societies in non-developed areas, they sit and stand properly. Since they were from birth sitting and standing optimally, thanks to not having furniture encouraging bad posture.", "There's some work disputing that all \"slouching\" is bad:\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_\n", "Have you ever looked at antique furniture and thought \"man, that looks uncomfortable.\" The slouching posture is pretty recent. In the 18th century all children wore stays from the time they started sitting up/walking until they were around 4-6 for boys and for the rest of their lives for girls. These stays aren't cinching in the waist at all, just encouraging proper posture. The clothing of the 19th and early 20th centuries do the same thing. It's much harder to slouch in a well fit suit coat than a t-shirt. \n\nBut as mentioned by other posters, as you slouch your muscles change and it becomes easier to slouch. If you were to wear a pair of stays or a coat that pushes your body into the right position it will hurt for the first week or so. Not painful, but aching like you've been working out. And you have. The muscles across the chest are under-used when slouching as are the ones across the shoulders in back. After spending enough time in this posture it hurts to slouch. Also, those terrible straight chairs? Suddenly comfortable. And your overstuffed sofa that you curl into? It's awful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://youtu.be/k1luKAS_Xcg"], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6187080.stm", "http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/news/20061129/back-pain-eased-by-sitting-back"], []]}
{"q_id": "3dme7s", "title": "How has the way we teach mathematics changed in the last 50 years?", "selftext": "I just received 'Modern Mathematics' by Protter and Morrey, and am wondering how much things like linear algebra, calculus, etc have changed in the last 50 years. I took many many higher calculus classes and much of this still looks the same. \n\nAre the fundamentals ideas still the same? Do we just teach it differently but get to the same endpoint?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3dme7s/how_has_the_way_we_teach_mathematics_changed_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct6w6lx", "ct8987b"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["This might get a better response from /r/math", "Well, category theory has started to seep into everything, differential geometry has become more abstract, applied mathematicians show their students numerical simulations whenever possible, and number theorists talk about encryption."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1q8oum", "title": "what happens in the hospital after a person gets shot? do they just remove the bullet and stitch the person up?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q8oum/eli5_what_happens_in_the_hospital_after_a_person/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdab1qd", "cdab3m8", "cdabjf6", "cdacu36", "cdaenho", "cdaep16", "cdaer6w", "cdaes0i", "cdagkri", "cdail7d"], "score": [17, 5, 53, 3, 27, 3, 3, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["Being shot isn't a single thing and happens the same way every time.  You could be shot in the lung, or the liver, or the brain, or just some muscle or fat.   Bones could be broken.  Nerves could be damaged.  The bullet may have splintered.  It may be a through and through.\n\nQuite often though bullets are left in.  They're more worried about stopping bleeding and the like to go digging around to find the bullet.  ", "Likely to be a huge follow up with the PD about how/when etc.", "My understanding is that so long as the bullet isn't lodged in a very active muscle (i.e. diaphragm) or obstructing something in a way that cant be worked around, they simply isolate the bullet, stop the bleeding, and close up. \n\nVery rarely is it like the movies, where they go digging for the bullet above stopping the bleeding, and the moment the bullet comes out, that person will be ok. There are so many other factors at work, such as hydraulic shock, shattered bone that's been displaced by the entry, the exit wound, which can be several times the size of the entrance wound, severed arteries or damage to critical organs such as the liver, lungs, stomach and heart. Sometimes this means removing a section of intestine, relieving pressure in the chest from internal bleeding/lung suction to drain fluids etc, and all are a bigger worry than a 9mm slug that will sit lodged in muscle for a while, until the body grows around it and/or develops an infection, in which case secondary operation will be required. \n\nthirdly, depending on the caliber of the firearm; a 9mm parabellum will pass straight through most points from under 15 meters IIRC, a .45 ACP will ALMOST run out of energy, a .357 magnum will go straight through, leaving no bullet to remove, and most rifle cartridges from the same range, it's often hydraulic shock that kills first. \n\nI actually asked a surgeon about it a while ago and whilst he said he'd been lucky enough in 20 years to not have to attend to a GSW, he had heard, learned/read (was high as a kite on morphine at the time) that stopping the bleeding and restoring the bodies processes are primary, removing the projectile is secondary. Oftentimes they'll operate to stabilise, then operate a second time to remove if necessary. \n\ntl;dr: forget bullets, air goes in and out, blood goes round and round, any variation on these must be attended to. ", "I can't answer but I think OP is asking if they ask you \"Hey, how did you get shot?\"", "Speaking from personal experience, I took a .32 to the chest during an armed robbery. First thing that happened is I was rolled in (I was on a stretcher, obviously) to a room in the ER. There they did an ultrasound to trace the path of the bullet through me. Once they found out that I had been struck in some pretty serious spots (bounced off a rib, left bone fragments in my heart and lungs, punctured my diaphragm, and punctured my stomach twice before stopping against my back) they had to check for internal bleeding. This is when things get fun. They also didn't have my medical history, so no pain killers were being administered. Had to do this part cold turkey. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to check for internal bleeding, but, I guess in this case, the fastest and most effective way was to ram a pair of tongs with some cotton on the end up my ass. If I wasn't bleeding internally before, I damn sure was after. That's when the doctor informed me I was going to need surgery. And then they put a Foley catheter into my penis. Again, no pain killers. That, to this day, remains to be the single most painful experience of my life. I literally have nightmares about those ten seconds even today, and this took place in 2004. Finally they gave me some Morphine and rolled my stretcher to an operating suite. The last thing I remember is the anesthesiologist putting a mask on me, and telling me I was going to feel a little warm. I started to get warm. I woke up three days later. I had a scar running from my sternum to just below my belly button, they had opened me up for \"exploratory surgery\". Removing bone fragments and the like. The bullet was removed from my back. A chest tube was inserted into my left armpit. Interestingly enough, I don't remember getting that or having it removed. I'm told that's for the better. So, anyway, that, in a nut shell, is what happens in the hospital when you get shot. I don't recommend it. ", "I work in the Emergency Department and we've had a few GSW (gun shot wound) patients roll in. Treatment for the pt varies, depending on the location of the GSW and clinical condition of the patient.\n\nFor example, we've had a patient with 3 GSW to his chest. He had to be intubated and a chest tube was placed because his lung had collapsed. He was then transferred by a helicopter to a trauma unit. \n\nAnother patient was shot in the hand. In this case, a plastic surgeon was called to do the repair. \n\nThe bullet is usually never taken out by the ED physician. A surgeon will take the patient to the OR and remove the bullet themselves. In the ED, the physician will do their best to stabilize the patient (IV fluids, blood transfusions if neccessary, CT/XR/lab work) and the patient will then be transferred to the care of the physician. Also, the wound is not repaired. Again, that is the job of the surgeon/specialist. The ED physician will only try to stop or reduce the bleeding. ", "Surgical sub-specialist:  we don't care about the bullet.  We stabilize/fix you as best we can (sew up bleeding vessels, drain blood/air  from places it shouldn't be(lungs/pericardium), give you blood products, stabilize/fix broken bones, etc).  If we recover and bullet fragments while fixing you up they are sent to pathology and then given to the police ", "Typically the hospital will get advanced notification that a trauma is arriving, so the appropriate people will be in the trauma bay ready to receive the patient as soon as they arrive.\n\nIn the trauma bay, there is a standardized trauma protocol, and it can be pretty detailed, down to the point of denoting who stands where (e.g. trauma surgery to the right of chest, resident on left side.  ED doctor at head of bed.  ED nurse at right leg, etc).  Everyone has jobs to do and multiple things will happen at once, with people shouting out what they're doing and what's going on.  In high volume centers, this is more organized, in lower volume centers it can be more chaotic.\n\nThe goal here is to stabilize, identify injuries and then prepare for the next step, so depending on the degree of injury, patients will be getting IV fluid, often blood transfusions or a breathing tube.  They'll also get a chest tube if needed at this time (if the lung was shot).\n\nOnce they're stabilized to some degree, then they can go to the operating room.  With arms and legs surgery involves exploring the area, mostly to control bleeding.  The bullet (if present) is taken out and then they're closed back up.  \n\nIf it's in the abdomen, then an exploratory laparotomy is performed, where the belly is opened and all the contents checked for injury.  Injured structures are either repaired or removed (depending on viability).  Depending on severity of injury, the belly may be left open (e.g. skin not sewn back together).\n\nIf it's in the chest (and they survived), they'll already have a chest tube from the trauma bay.\n\nIf the bullet goes in the skull (and they survived), they'll get a craniotomy, which allows the neurosurgeon to decompress the brain and address any bleeding.  The brain isn't explored and the bullet is typically left in place.\n\nThe goals of all these surgery is to control bleeding and repair damage, not to take the bullet out, but bullets that are seen are typically removed.\n\n(This is how things work in a Trauma center in the US, it's probably different in other environments).\n\n", "I was on a ride-along with the local police department one night and there was a shooting between two local gangs and a dude got it to the chest and my cop and I were posted at the hospital to collect evidence. I will preface this by saying that no two gun shot wounds are the same. This particular guy was shot by a 9mm through a car window so there was some deflection and loss of energy from that, but the entry wound was middle of his right pectoral with no exit. They found the bullet with a CT scan in his lower back just under the subcutaneous fat layer. I asked the pathologist what was going to happen to him and he told me, \"Well, he's got a punctured lung and a couple broken ribs but he'll be fine eventually.\"  We kept talking and he basically explained that if they don't have to remove the bullet they're not going to, although, because this one was so close to the skin, they probably will at some time in the future. The pathologist said he was amazed that I didn't pass-out in the ER from the blood which I thought was funny because it's just blood, granted it was a couple pints on the floor, but it was just blood.", "I was shot 45 days ago.... They will leave the bullet in if it is not life threatening, it's extra to get it out.  I paid the extra so that I could walk for the rest of my life.  I have X-rays and proof if there's interest.  Don't get shot most painful thing ever."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fbwe9", "title": "How does ear piercing affect hearing ?", "selftext": "So the [pinna](_URL_0_ amplifies a range of frequences, and is like an audio filter. \nThere must be a small modification in hearing the sound, when you dig holes in the cartilage. Not perceptible, of course, but a modification nonetheless.\nI couldn't find any research on the subject.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fbwe9/how_does_ear_piercing_affect_hearing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1erzxh", "c1esn0h", "c1eswlo", "c1etvls", "c1eumnk", "c1ey00v"], "score": [7, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["The only thing I've heard like that is hearing loss that can accompany a [dermal punched conch](_URL_0_). This, obviously, stems from having a gaping hole in your ear...", "You can adjust to much larger changes in pinna structure rather quickly. I don't know about how the brain reacts to smaller changes though.", "I've had several cartilage piercings including a daith and a conch piercing and haven't found any change in my hearing whatsoever. I think the only time an ear modification affects hearing is with a large conch dermal punch or a large, stretched tragus piercing. ", " >  Not perceptible, of course, but a modification nonetheless.\n\nIf it is imperceptible, I am not sure we could consider it a modification to our hearing.", "I'd say that most modifications cause negligible (if any) changes in audition. As you may have read in that wiki article and in any basic auditory physiology text, the pinna assists in funneling sound toward the external auditory meatus and assists in amplification of certain frequencies.\n\nI'd imagine (though I have no literature to support it) that minor modifications would affect your auditory localization abilities, probably most along the mid-saggital plane. As sophophilic kind of alludes to, the brain learns to cope with these changes in a short amount of time, and the amount of time perhaps varies with the extremity of pinna modification.", "I asked the professor of an Auditory Perception class this question today. She said that it would probably produce a small (maybe noticeable) change in sound localization for the first few days, but you'd quickly adapt to it. She said that there have not been any real studies of it done.\n\nI mentioned that I might be getting a cartilage piercing, and she offered to test my sound localization before, immediately after, and a while after. Using that data, she could publish the first account of it ever."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinna_(anatomy)"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.obscure.org/~nosx/conch0.jpg"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ms4k9", "title": "if embarrassment and laughter are considered advanced emotions, as human brains develop will we pick up other emotions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ms4k9/eli5_if_embarrassment_and_laughter_are_considered/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvhrggz", "cvhusnw", "cvhvu16"], "score": [47, 22, 10], "text": ["There is no reason to expect we won't.\n\nThere is no reason to expect we will.\n\nOur evolutionary pressures are completely unprecedented. We have no effective predators, and enough capability to eliminate any earth created predator before it becomes effective. That leaves ourselves as our only evolutionary pressure. The last time this happened there was only 1 species on the planet. \n\nIt is possible that we lose emotions. Anxiety in particular is not much value any more.\n\nIt is possible to gain emotions. Ermlau could be a perfectly viable option (pretty sure I made that word up).\n\nWe could do both.\n\nWe could split into two species. Morlock forever. Although I think our breeding tendencies will prevent this.\n\nWe could go extinct. \n\nWe could evolve in a way that puzzles us, just like I had fried dinosaur descendant for dinner.", "It would be quite helpful if we developed a more generalized and strong empathy and compassion.  Might save us all.", "there was this post a couple weeks ago about...  [21 emotions with no english names for](_URL_1_)\n\nor [this other one](_URL_0_)\n\nfor example \"Hiraeth\" : A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, or a home which maybe never was"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.collinsdictionary.com/words-and-language/blog/14-untranslatable-emotions-that-english-cant-convey,155,HCB.html", "http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/emotions-which-there-are-no-english-words-infographic"]]}
{"q_id": "8aqqym", "title": "The U.S. Constitution, the 2nd amendment, and the \"comma debate\"", "selftext": "I remember being told multiple times, by both teachers and a few lawyer family members, that when the U.S. Constitution was sent out to each state for ratification there were \"typos\" in some of the copies. Most notably, the comma after Militia in the first sentence of the 2nd amendment was missing on some State copies.\n\nFrom a legal perspective this could change/shape the debate over gun control currently taking place drastically. However, I am unable to find any real reference to this \"discrepancy\".\n\nIs this just some \"wive's tale\" I've been sold my entire life?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8aqqym/the_us_constitution_the_2nd_amendment_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dx14f4e", "dx1knu6"], "score": [93, 27], "text": ["The short of it: the current debate over gun control has almost nothing in common with the debate that our founding fathers were having. \n\nStarting with the comma point though: I haven't heard of the typos before, but I have heard the rest. This is indeed a ubiquitous argument. There's even a pretty common meme out there that goes so far as to say that a [single comma](_URL_0_) gave Americans the right to own guns. I can't comment much on the validity of this argument. I'm sure as far as the contemporary Supreme court goes, anything is possible. If we're asking however what the original intent of the 2nd amendment was, there's a much more straightforward place to look.\n\nIn the Constitutional Convention, here the debate is clearly concerned with how to avoid the creation of a standing army, and so by extension, how to ensure that the militia remains a viable fighting force. That is, if \"viable\" is even the right word. The basic tension around this subject seemed to be that while on paper the militia was the ideal guarantor of a free republic, on paper, their performance left much to be desired. The \"shot heard around the world\" was the fruit of militias, but the victory at Yorktown was the culmination of Continental Regulars. Which do you choose?\n\nThere's a famous moment at the Convention. In a discussion about standing armies, Elbridge Gerry suggests a limit on the standing army of, \"two or three thousand men,\" to which Washington, \"silent for weeks now, turned in his chair and in a stage whisper proposed that the Constitution also include a provision declaring that, \u201cno foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.\u201d\n\nAnyone that knows how taciturn Washington typically is gets double the humor out of this anecdote. This is one of the fun parts about studying this angle though. Washington, understandably, has some things to say here.\n\nTo Gerry's credit however he was prescient other things. Namely he correctly anticipated that the Constitution-as-is would be poorly received by the public, and so it would be left to measures like the 2nd amendment to assuage peoples' fears about a tyrannical central government. At least that is the long and short of it. And where is the militia today? That gives you a hint about how effective the 2nd amendment ultimately was.   \n\nThere are many more details in between, truncated in the interest of time/length. Let me know if there's anything further required. \n\n*Sources*\n\nWaldman, Michael. *The Second Amendment: A Biography.* Simon  &  Schuster, 2014.", "It sounds like a wive's tale. The problem with most contemporary discussion of the 2nd amendment is that everyone forgets that prior to the [doctrine of incorporation](_URL_1_) The Bill of Rights only constrained federal government.  \n\nAt the time the Constitution was ratified, several states had the explicit right to bear arms and/or serve in a militia in their state constitutions. Here's the right to bear arms in [Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1776](_URL_2_):\n\n >  That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. \n\nThe Federalists did not think a federal bill of rights was necessary, but it became clear that without one, the Constitution would not be ratified. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was not to constrain state governments, but the federal one.\n\nStates, at the time the Constitution was ratified, were much more like sovereign nations than our modern notion. Each had long histories of self-government and individual rights. So the impetus for the Bill of Rights wasn't a fear that Massachusetts or Virginia would suddenly deprive their citizens of rights to assembly, worship, arms, et al, but that the newly formed federal government would. \n\nIn this context splitting hairs about commas is absurd. As second amendment scholar Glenn Reynolds [notes](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Madison's own proposal for integrating\nthe Bill of Rights into the Constitution was not to add them at the end (as they have been) but to\ninterlineate them into the portions of the original Constitution they affected or to which they\nrelated. If he had thought the Second Amendment would alter the military and/or militia provisions\nof the Constitution he would have interlineated it in Article I, Section 8, near or after clauses 15 and\n16.51 Instead, he planned to insert the right to arms with freedom of religion, the press and other\npersonal rights in Section 9 following the rights against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws.\n\nGiven the debate of the time and well-established history of individual rights in the several states, the wording of the second amendment would've been clear to any contemporary reader regardless of commas."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.businessinsider.com/the-comma-in-the-second-amendment-2013-8"], ["https://www.azcdl.org/Reynolds_ACriticalGuidetotheSecondAmendment.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Constitution_of_1776#Declaration_of_Rights"]]}
{"q_id": "56hfsp", "title": "what exactly do the companies visa, mastercard, discover, amex, etc. do?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56hfsp/eli5_what_exactly_do_the_companies_visa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8ja3fi", "d8jabsq", "d8jbm92", "d8jc0a7", "d8jdv45", "d8je14k", "d8jg1a2"], "score": [11, 6, 13, 108, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Mastercard, visa, discover, and american express,  otherwise known as the big 4, set all the requirements for any business that wishes to use their services. They are also the one who dictate who is able to investigate any instance of credit card theft. But they are able to do this because they are the ones who give banks and credit card companies cards.", "When you make a purchase with a credit card, Visa/Mastercard/American Express promptly transfers money from their own accounts into the vendor's account, less a small fee for the service. The vendor has now been paid and everything is hunky-dory. At the end of a billing period, Visa/Mastercard/American Express now expects you to give them the money they already transferred to the vendor.\n\nThere's a lot of complication in there, of course, but that's the core of it. You can imagine your card issuer as a big guy walking behind you with a bag of cash who pays for all your purchases, but expects you to refill the bag later, and will break your legs if you don't.\n\nCapital One has an arrangement with V/MC/AE where V/MC/AE will handle the transactions for cards issued to Capital One's customers. They're a middleman between you and V/MC/AE - they're the ones who hired the big guy to walk behind you and carry the money.", "The long and short of it is that credit companies have a fantastic network for instantaneous payment. If you're at 7-11 and swipe your card, the cash register calls your bank, gets info for the payment, and delivers the money to 7-11's account; this all takes place in a few seconds. But, who set up that network between banks and stores? Credit companies.   \n  \nCredit companies also allow you to borrow from their pool the way banks do, and originally that's how they made their money. However, the networks that they made were so well-established that when banks decided to do the same thing, they figured it'd be cheaper to pay a premium to the credit companies to use their network to transfer cash, rather then set up their own network.", "The credit card company runs the infrastructure that makes credit card transactions possible.  Whether a charge is made with a magnetic reader, a web page, a telephone call, or a paper impression, someone has to keep track of all that data, and let the merchant, the customer, and the banks know who owes whom what.  They make money by charging a fee for each transaction.\n\nThe bank's role is to put up the money that backs the transaction.  They make money by charging annual fees, late fees, and interest.\n\n", "Imagine that you were a local merchant. You want to accept credit cards. Would you rather deal with three or four credit card companies, or ten thousand different banks?\n\nIf you had to deal directly with the banks, you're probably only going to be able to have arrangements with the banks in your immediate vicinity. So, when people are travelling out of town, they can't buy on credit.\n\nLikewise, if you were a bank, you wouldn't want to have to have financial relationships with merchants all over the world. Set up contracts, payment terms, all of that. Heck, some of these merchants you may rarely if ever do any business with.\n\nThat's the entire purpose behind the credit card companies. They have one job: to maintain relationships with thousands of banks and thousands of retailers. It's really all they do, but it's a BIG job. And maintain the infrastructure that allows any of these thousands of retailers to request credit from any of these thousands of banks -- in about two seconds.\n", "Here is a great video that explains this perfectly \n_URL_0_", "I'm Visa's case they also do a lot in regards to technology surrounding the credit card industry. For example, for events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl people invited by visa wore either a bracelet (Super Bowl) or a ring (Rio Olympics) which they could use to pay things with as opposed to their physical card. Visa is looking more and more into the technology industry. (My father works there) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/interest-tutorial/credit-card-interest/v/institutional-roles-in-issuing-and-processing-credit-cards"], []]}
{"q_id": "3xjyiy", "title": "how did a 32 year old martin shkreli get to have so much power at such a young age?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xjyiy/eli5_how_did_a_32_year_old_martin_shkreli_get_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy5aofn", "cy5aqlu", "cy5eidh", "cy5jk5k", "cy5l3d9", "cy5n7i4", "cy5ncjp"], "score": [18, 399, 42, 12, 2, 9, 7], "text": ["Well business overall is a people game. Those who are better at interacting with people who have money tend to do better. In terms of Martin Shkreli if you have been reading the news he ran a partial ponzi scheme. I feel he couldn't produce enough investors at a point to which he turned to price gouging for sufficient funding. Overall I feel anyone can be a CEO you just have to know people and recruit. Most people only seem to focus on the fact that they need to produce the funds to build a business when all you really need to do is prove to a rich person why they should invest with you and boom you can make any company you want. I'm not saying you could sell miracle aids curing chicken to someone but skillful people could make someone wealthy believe that your chicken can cure or significantly reduce your chances of getting aids, it would be a very worthy investment. It's a bad example but it still shows a point. Make people believe.", "The short answer is that he had a knack for biotech stocks. He self-taught himself biology and chemistry and was able to comprehend complicated papers and study results that most people in finance cannot understand without the help of expensive industry consultants. This can be very helpful in taking short position against stocks of drug companies that have failing products, which so many in biotech do. Very few drugs in development ultimately get FDA's approval. It can also help you assess what company is undervalued based on its drug portfolio. His knowledge, apparently, also allowed him to convince a lot of people to invest in his firms.  Because they believed he really knew what he was talking about. It turns out that a lot of his investments, especially those made at his hedge funds, were simply too risky. He may have been cocky about his expertise and underestimated how much the biotech sector was influenced by other factors outside his control. ", "Powerful people have the ability to sell themselves as experts. They have big egos that project a presence people trust no matter how much they boast or lie. Which is why they tend to be the ones to get away with making money going bankrupt or with ponzi schemes or the superior natural leaders, culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny because of his perceived instincts over abstract and universal reason.", "Serious question: how much trouble is this guy in? I mean, I know Reddit got excited when he got arrested but is he looking at a slap on the wrist or something more like Madoff got?", "To be fair to him, he wasn't born into it. He's a complete bastard no doubt, but he did manage to get billions of dollars all by himself, which is pretty smart.", "Step 1: layout your plan to the board of directors\n\nStep 2: Buy a ton of stocks in the company, close to 2 million shares.\n\nStep 3: Now that you have a big stake in the company the board will appoint you as CEO so you can execute your strategy.\n\nStep 4: Acquire the rights to a needed drug and raise its price.\n\nStep 5: Profit from the 2 million shares bought prior.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nShkreli made close to 60 million in less than a month with this strategy on KBIO.\n", "Anyone notice that he worked at Jim Cramer's firm; Cramer, Berkowitz and Company?\n\nYou know.. that guy that Jon Stewart outed for his company training videos that showed him explaining to his employees how to pump and dump stock through the press and media to make a profit?\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI wish the media would comment on Cramer's legacy of unethical behavior."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli"]]}
{"q_id": "2e64wr", "title": "why do redditors all say 'so' instead of 'partner'?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e64wr/eli5_why_do_redditors_all_say_so_instead_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjweoj9", "cjwep69", "cjwepcu", "cjweq0k", "cjweu4j", "cjweual", "cjweuwv"], "score": [22, 2, 10, 5, 3, 2, 6], "text": ["Two letters to seven. We're lazy.", "Want to know that, as well. I'd go for: crowd based word bias.", "SO and partner can mean the same thing. \n\nBut partner sounds more formal (IMO). I might be dating someone exclusively but that wouldn't necessarily make them my \"partner\". Partner makes it sound like we live together and that we're, well, partners. \n\nThe phrase \"SO\" is wide enough to cover everything from \"we're dating exclusively\" to \"we're married\". \n\nAnd the word partner sounds sort of antiquated. I mean, it's not wrong! People use it and I have nothing against them. But it's not really hip -- and yes, I just exposed my lack-of-hipness by using the word hip. ", "You know what's funny? Just a couple of days ago, there was someone making a post about [\"ELI5: Why do people say \"my partner\" instead of bf, gf, spouse?\"](_URL_0_)\n\nIt seems no matter what word people use, someone else will be confused as to why some people are using it. \n\nBut if you've only been here a few weeks, you should know that your experience with redditors have been *extremely* limited, and you shouldn't make statements that they *all* do something. \n\nSo to answer your question like you're five: *They don't.*", "Why do people say partner instead of boyfriend/girlfriend. When people say partner, I think they are gay. But trends in words have changed, that is all.", "Because partner sounds ~~gay~~.\n\nEdit: homosexual.", "Partner is ambiguous.  I can have a business partner, a tennis partner, a rock climbing partner."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dw46v/eli5_why_do_people_say_my_partner_instead_of_bf/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2qj945", "title": "My father and brother both remember an ancient commander using mirrors to blind the enemy's horses, but I can't find anything about it on the internet. Did something similar actually happen?", "selftext": "Neither can remember any details, only that it involved horses and mirrors (and that it was a famous commander, apparently). I'd appreciate any help, thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2qj945/my_father_and_brother_both_remember_an_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn6qalj", "cn6rmsk", "cn6s133"], "score": [31, 9, 7], "text": ["I'm sorry, I can't find the specific source myself, but I remember this story pretty well as being in the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* (\u4e09\u56fd\u6f14\u4e49). I believe it was during a battle between Liu Bei's forces and Cao Cao's -- two of the three major warlords during the end of the Han Dynasty, in the early 3rd Century AD. I can't find the exact instance in my copy right now, so I apologize for this being unhelpful. Also, keep in mind that ROTK is a heavily fictionalized and romanticized account of the actual events of the Three Kingdoms period -- it's likely that the story of the mirror shields is more folk tale than truth. \n\nIf nothing else, the use of these mirror-shields to stop a charge is depicted in the film *Red Cliff*, [and a clip of this scene is at this link.](_URL_0_). Hardly an authoritative source though. ", "There is also [Archimedes and the Burning Mirror](_URL_0_) which Mythbusters also [did a thing on](_URL_1_).", "What you remember is probably  a [1959 movie](_URL_0_):  \n\n*Pursued by the Egyptians, who were sent to finish him off, Solomon thereafter devises a plan. He lines up the remnants of his army on a hill, prompting the enemy to charge. The Israelites, who have arranged themselves to face east, then use their highly polished shields to reflect the light of the rising sun into the Egyptians' eyes. Blinded, the Egyptians are prevented from seeing the chasm in front of which the Israelites have positioned themselves, and the entire army rushes headlong over the edge and falls to its death.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.traileraddict.com/red-cliff/move-aside"], ["http://www.unmuseum.org/burning_mirror.htm", "http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/01/episode_46_archimedes_death_ra.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_and_Sheba"]]}
{"q_id": "1409w9", "title": "why do people kiss?", "selftext": "I understand why mommy and daddy have sexytimes - survival of the species, offspring, etc. But why do we kiss? When you step back and think about it, it seems like a fairly weird (and unsanitary) thing to do. Yet it's a very natural, instinctive action for most humans. I haven't noticed any other animals \"kissing\" like we do, nor do I know of any people or cultures where kissing doesn't happen.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1409w9/eli5_why_do_people_kiss/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c78pxyp", "c78qhri", "c78r3kp", "c78ruuj", "c78s4uf", "c78sk3h", "c78tz0v", "c78vji3", "c78vwtn", "c78wd4c", "c78xi1w", "c78ykmo", "c78z7t4"], "score": [29, 157, 12, 9, 2, 5, 34, 3, 3, 14, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["It's the best way to share antibodies yo.  That's also why moms kiss their babies.  Share the anti-germs to keep the species strong and resilient. ", "We don't know.\n\nOne theory is that it's a way of testing blood types/immune systems - someone with a more compatible blood type or immune system will \"taste\" better than someone whose blood type will cause reproductive issues.\n\nSome say it's a bonding exercise, that because it involves gazing into each other's eyes for lengthy periods of time along with extreme trust (closing of eyes and shoving a tongue into someone else's tooth-masher is a pretty trusting thing) and as such will further cement the relationship between the two.\n\nSome say we humans just like shoving our whatevers into whatever hole we can find.\n\nBonobos also kiss.  But then, they fuck as a handshake or because they get bored, so there's that.\n", "Sex is a pretty objectively disgusting thing too. Sometimes shit just feels good.", "The lips are a very sensitive part of the body, so I'm sure that has something to do with it, but I don't really know. Maybe someone can elaborate/condense what's already in the thread.", "I also heard that saliva contains trace amounts of testosterone (responsible in part to our sex drives) so putting saliva in someone else's mouth gets them all ready to the dirty.", "Some people think it's a test for finding a compatible mate. You go in to kiss someone and they smell, or have bad breath or bad teeth and you know they're potential as a mate isn't that good, or in going in you sense they are sick, you're going to reject them. I would also think as you kiss and you touch each other it also signals attraction and compatibility of the two partners, or may give subtle signals that turn you off (aggressive, grabby, or maybe the other side of the spectrum and are shy or hesitant in their touch). ", "Check out this image of a [Sensory Homunculus](_URL_1_). Shows how dense the nerve distribution is at the lips. It is thought that kissing on lips is a part of the sexytimes ritual since it stimulates the brain so much. There might also be a relation between the feeling of lips, tongue, saliva and sexual arousal. There are also [other explanations](_URL_0_), most related to finding the right sexual partner. I don't buy into the immune system explanation, although it might be true.\n\nAbout kissing in other animals, apart from the bonobo example, I'm not sure if licking was an evolutionary precursor of kissing. Many animals lick their loved ones.", "In long term pair-bonding your immune systems clearly \"grow together\". Kissing seems like a pretty good way to urge that process along.", "It's thought to be a way of telling the major histamine complex of a potential mate. We're thought to look for mates with varying, and different histamine complexes than our own, as further assurance that your young would have a better immune system, and thus a better chance at survival.", "I always thought of it in this way... \"hey, that animal is putting their mouth on me, and isn't eating me. This is a good thing.\"\n\nDon't quote me.", "It's actually good for your health, as it releases serotonin and dopamine during the session (both of which are known to make you all around happier and calmer), depending on how pleasurable it is. However, I do not know where the instinct came from. Perhaps the want of a good feeling mixed with general foreplay arousal, which would lead to a want of escalation?", "Now that is a real 5 year old question.", "To exchange long protein strings. If you can think of a simpler way, I'd like to hear it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/11/the-science-of-smooching-why-men-and-women-kiss-differently/", "http://gc.sfc.keio.ac.jp/class/2004_14453/slides/09/img/64.png"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4nezbe", "title": "how does our brain \"choose\" how long to sleep?", "selftext": "Provided that there are no sudden stimuli like loud noises ( alarms ), sudden movement or anything.\n\nSometimes just falling asleep in a weird position makes me wake up automatically after 10 minutes, but when I lie down on a bed I'll knock out for at least 3 hours.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nezbe/eli5_how_does_our_brain_choose_how_long_to_sleep/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d43cxbu", "d43cy4u", "d43h3oo", "d43homr", "d43j5p1", "d43lv8q", "d43mdm5", "d43mfyw"], "score": [257, 2, 15, 67, 7, 9, 2, 2], "text": ["Your brain naturally produces chemicals like melatonin that \"signal\" your brain that it is time to sleep/rest. Your brain adjusts to light cycles and signals that it is time to sleep. However signaling to sleep doesn't factor into total deep sleep, where your body recovers the most. Also there is always outside stimulation when you are asleep, also factoring in what you ate and what you did during the day.   \nTldr: Your brain has established cycles for deep sleep, but various factors can affect how much actual sleep you get (ex. Food, drugs, dreams, position, good old genetics)\n\nEdit: it's also worthwhile to note, you used uncomfortable position as your example. The body responses to uncomfortable-ness (pretend it's a word) with signals of distress, which could potentially wake you up.\n\nEdit: Alphora corrected a misleading point I made, REM is NOT the stage in which the most recovery is had. He pointed out that this happens in the deepest sleep, in stage 3 NREM.", "Mods, if this can't be answered in.ELI5, can it be reposted in Askscience and linked? Excellent question!", "When my dog wakes up at 6 to go potty, I have to get up with him. My brain doesn't decide sh**. ", "Interestingly enough, sleep is our \"default state\", so to speak; we are kept awake by the presence of certain chemicals in the brain, and we return to sleep as they are removed from the body.\n\nAs you sleep, your hypothalamus produces a chemical called acetylcholine, which induces wakefulness by action on the neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). The longer you're asleep, the greater the buildup of acetylcholine in your brain, and eventually you wake up.\n\nThroughout the day, as you go about your routine, your brain begins to produce a chemical called adenosine, which acts as an antagonist to acetylcholine, progressively lowering its concentration in your brain throughout the day. This causes you to become tired, even in the middle of the day, if you've gone a long time without sleep.\n\nAt the end of the day, in response to a lower amount of blue-spectrum light, your brain begins to produce progressively larger quantities of melatonin. This chemical eventually interacts with the GABA neurotransmitter to enable you to transition into sleep, once concentrations of it exceed concentrations of acetylcholine by a fair margin. \n\nAs far as why you sleep less when uncomfortable: external stimuli cause your body to produce acetylcholine spontaneously, it's what causes something to suddenly grab our attention. If you lay in a position where your muscles are strained, this strain will progressively release more and more acetylcholine in response to the pain signals, much more than would be produced if you were sleeping in a position that didn't cause so much sensory information to be sent to the brain. Eventually the concentration of acetylcholine becomes great enough to wake you up.\n\nI hope this is a full enough explanation for you, if you have any questions, I'm willing to answer them.", "Sometimes, if I know I have to wake up early for something, I naturally do. What's the explanation for that?", "Your body has an amazing biochemical mechanism that can accurately measure a 24 hr cycle, and this is kept aligned with the day/night cycle by cues including light, food and temperature. This first system keeps the next three in check.  You've also got a mechanism that kinda measures how long youve been awake, it can be understood as accumulating  'tiredness' units at a constant rate during the day. You have a second system that accumulates a balancing amount of 'wakefulness' units during most of the day, but this second system slows down at night. Finally, you have a system that fires up near bedtime and this pumps out 'sleepiness' units.\n\nSo when you fall asleep you have high tiredness, low wakefulness and high sleepiness. \n\nTiredness = homeostatic sleep pressure\n\nWakefulness = circadian alerting system\n\nSleepiness = melatonin system", "The Headline of this question is the most Karl Pilkington sentence ever spoken, at least by someone who isn't Karl Pilkington...wait...Karl?", "Dark?  Check.\n\nComfortable?  Check.\n\nHave to go to work?  Check."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6l7f1r", "title": "if my eye pops out of the socket, will i still be able to see? how would it affect my vision and vision field?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l7f1r/eli5_if_my_eye_pops_out_of_the_socket_will_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djrmd8s", "djrmfel", "djrmg7j", "djrmgjt", "djrn1np", "djs9p5s", "djshaae", "djsk6ma"], "score": [2, 309, 5, 14, 92, 10, 2, 3], "text": ["Yes, it will be extremely confusing as your brain tries go make sense of what its receiving, you will most likely fall over", "Just the eye being out of the socket won't stop you seeing, assuming the optic nerve is attached and the eye is relatively undamaged from whatever removed it. The field of view won't really be that much expanded by being outside the socket, but the lack of muscles and support may allow the eye to deform enough that focus could be thrown off. Stretching the optic nerve is also likely to result in visual disturbance (and emotional).", "As long as optical nerves are still intact, yes. Obviously you'll want to get it back in your head but like a lazy eye, your dominant eye will take over. You can't just have your brain looking every which way possible. Dominance is why we exist. You currently have a dominant hand, leg, eye and more. ", "1. Would you be able to see: technically if your optic nerve remains intact, yes you could still \"see\". The issue would be related to how your brain processes the new visual inputs that don't have a common bearing and are not focused together. Currently, assuming both your eyes are in their respective sockets your brain can piece together all the \"images\" coming in from the eyes as they are focused on the same thing at any given time. \n2. How would it affect your vision: I'm not sure. Sorry. But my assumption is that since one eye can't focus (lack of muscle control once the eye pops out) you lose depth perception at the minimum. \n3. How would it affect your vision field: you would not be able to see a majority of things on the side of your popped out eye. ", "Five years ago, I had orbital decompressions for Graves Eye Disease, which causes eyes to swell and be pushed out of their sockets. The surgery allows them to resume a normal position.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nObviously, my eyes were taken out of my eye sockets and replaced gently and carefully by an expert team of surgeons with assistance from amazing anesthesiologists.\n\nThe visual side effects of this surgery took about four months to go away, but it was well worth the hassle, because my vision is now perfect, and the only maintenance I need is a few eye drops morning and night.\n\nAmong the side effects that came and went and were most disconcerting--double vision, which was most difficult when I was lap-swimming, because it was hard to tell where I was in relation to other swimmers and the lane markers; driving was impossible, because the road would randomly rise to the sky or the lanes would split apart so that a two lane road would look like it was taking five or six lanes. There is technical terminology for these effects, but the main point I am trying to make here is that even in the best of conditions, with the best medical care on the planet, this was not something anyone would willingly do. \n\n\n\n", "If your eye pops out of the socket, you've got much bigger problems than wondering if you'll see from the eye when it pops out. There are a crazy amount of connective tissues around the eye holding it in.\n\nHowever, I can attest to how delicate the optic nerve is. Any damage to it and the vision in that eye is gone. Unless it's like the delicate surgery others have mentioned for Graves disease, if your eye comes out, it's done for. \n\nSource: was shot in the eye with a bb gun. No actual damage to the nerve from the bb but the impact in the tissue behind my eye put some pressure on the nerve for a split second and it was gone forever.", "God this thread is oddly relevant to me as I was at the eye doctor yesterday and I thought she was going to pop my eyeball out. She was checking for a retinal tear and used something to push on my eyeball as she shined an incredibly bright light in my eye and had me look in different directions. I developed a raging headache and was physically ill the rest of the night.  I've never had such an uncomfortable eye exam and I'm supposed to go back in 4 weeks and I'm terrified. \n\nI remember watching some kind of vet show where a dog had gotten hit in the head by a slamming screen door and its eye popped out. It showed how they put it back in. That's all I could think of when my eyeball was being assaulted yesterday. ", "your eye is physically anchored where it is in multiple places to muscle, so you would be in a world of hurt.\n\nbut you would also be functionally blind. while the optic nerve could, hypothetically, still send information, the only reason you can understand what you're looking at is because your brain does an enormous amount of work putting it all together. physically moving the positions of your eyeball out of place would dramatically disrupt that process.\n\nassuming you closed the undamaged eye, the now-dislocated one wouldn't be able to change its focus. your eye uses muscles to change the shape of the lens and alter your focal distance (which is why the background looks blurry when you stare at your fingers)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/878672-overview"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64lqtl", "title": "with the universe constantly expanding in all directions, is there a centre of the universe and how do we find it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64lqtl/eli5_with_the_universe_constantly_expanding_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dg34f1l", "dg38g7d", "dg3akbb", "dg3ec4j", "dg3em7h", "dg3j2al", "dg3l6gi", "dg3r80b"], "score": [170, 10, 9, 4, 11, 9, 2, 3], "text": ["No, the general thought is that there is no center. Everything is moving away from everything else and there is no central point.", "It's all the centre. Like the surface of a balloon when you blow it up, but with the extra dimension.", "The more space between two object the faster the expansion is. This is due to dark energy. This means that where ever you are in the universe everything is generally moving away from you (with exceptions due to gravity). This means that all points appear to be the location of the big bag and the center of the universe from that locations frame of reference. Therefore it is not possible to find the center ( if there is one ) with this method. An easy way to demostrate this is to take a rubber band cut it so that it is a straight line and make different points on it with a marker. Stretch it and check the movements of each of the points relative to several different frames of reference and you will find all things seem to move away from the frame of reference you choose. ", "This [video by Minute Physics](_URL_0_) explains it rather well.", "The center is right where you are standing. If you hopped in a time machine that was stationary but could travel through time like the one in H.G. Wells's \"The Time Machine,\" and set the dials for the beginning of the universe, you'd zoom back through time as the universe shrank around you. The universe would shrink to a size too small for you and your time machine to be in before you got to the beginning though, and even before you got to the end of the [cosmic inflation](_URL_1_) period, at which time the universe was about the size of a grain of sand.\n\nOn the other hand, we can \"see\" all the way to the cosmological horizon already, the edge of the observable universe. What we see there is photons that were emitted about 380,000 years after the start of the universe. Before that, the universe was so densely packed with stuff that any photon emitted by one atom would be absorbed by another atom almost immediately. Those photons have been travelling for so long and so far that they are all [redshifted](_URL_0_) to microwaves, but in any direction, that redshift indicates a distance of 46.5 billion light years. The observable universe is a sphere 93 billion light years across, with you at the center.", "Since everything is moving away from everything else, it will appear as though the point of observation is the center of the universe. That makes you the center of your universe. Have a nice day!", "And what is it expanding into?", "Has any of this ever been animated? It might be a lot easier to understand if there was a visual to illustrate the concept.  I don't know, it may be so complicated that a visual model is impossible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_\\(cosmology\\)"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1ta8ok", "title": "if the president committed a murder in his bedroom and the secret service came and saw it would they legally be obligated to arrest him or still have to do whatever he says?", "selftext": "So would the President be treated like any other civilian and arrested at that point or could he technically tell the secret service to stand down and be quiet since he has authority over them.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ta8ok/eli5_if_the_president_committed_a_murder_in_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce5woq9", "ce5wret", "ce5wwv9", "ce6120p", "ce63ajl", "ce63jg6", "ce657xu", "ce65dyr", "ce65mew"], "score": [42, 4, 20, 8, 2, 10, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["The President is (theoretically) not above the law.", "They would not be legally obligated to arrest him, because members of the president's protective detail do not enforce criminal laws.", "The secret service is technically a law enforcement agency, and the president is technically a civilian.  However, non-VIP murder is not under their jurisdiction, so they would be mostly powerless in a legal sense.  In fact, protecting VIPs isn't even their full time job.  It's investigating financial crimes; counterfeiting and embezzlement and the like.  Most likely they would detain the president, and call the local police to take him *(EDIT: or her)* away.  ", "There's the theory that a sitting President is immune from prosecution by virtue of his position and allowing him to be prosecuted would unconstitutionally undermine the authority of the executive branch.  The courts have made overtures to support this, but it's never been directly tested. Mainly it's an interesting question for law students and Reddit to talk about. ", "Wasn't this premise of some terrible movie from the 90s? \n\nEDIT: [Found it](_URL_1_). Actually, turns out [there were two](_URL_0_) in the same year!", "Little tip for throwaway accounts Mr. P, don't make them rhyme with any part of your real name. Good luck with whatever you have planned though, looks like you're clear.", "Of course he'd be prosecuted, and impeached. But up the ante. If the Secret Service walked into a room where the president was committing a murder, would they intervene to prevent it, even if it meant shooting the president?", "He could just pardon himself and the secret service guys that help clean up the mess while sending the snitches to Guantanamo\n", "Apparently all you need to do is use a drone and nobody gives a shit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119087/", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119731/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "kdvel", "title": "why is a strong currency bad?", "selftext": "I read an article about how Switzerland's currency is increasing in value too much but I didn't understand how a strong currency could be cause for worry. Please explain.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kdvel/why_is_a_strong_currency_bad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2jh52m", "c2jhcl2", "c2jhi7t", "c2jhseq", "c2jh52m", "c2jhcl2", "c2jhi7t", "c2jhseq"], "score": [10, 16, 7, 3, 10, 16, 7, 3], "text": ["No one will buy your stuff because it seems expensive to other countries. Exports fall. People lose jobs.", "You have a dollar bill and want to go buy candy in Switzerland. You change your dollar bill and get about one Swiss Franc, with which you can buy, say, ten pieces of Swiss candy. Yummy. Swiss kids can also come to the USA, change one Swiss Franc for one dollar, and buy ten pieces of American candy. All's fine and dandy.\n\nIf the Swiss Franc were a stronger currency, Swiss kids could get *two* dollars in return for one Swiss Franc, so they could go buy *twenty* pieces of candy in the US (edit: they'd still get 10 pieces of candy in their own country)! Awesome, right?! How could this be a bad thing? Well, it's because *you* would only get half a Swiss Franc in return for your dollar, and so you could only buy five pieces of candy in Switzerland. So you'd probably go buy candy somewhere else. And the Swiss candy makers would be very sad, because nobody would want to buy their candy anymore.", "Its not bad.\n\nSome economists argue that its bad because according to them people wont buy stuff if they think the currency will appreciate and that will depress the economy, but all empirical evidences are against this. Somehow ignoring all empirical evidences these people keep repeating the myth as if its true.\n\nThe other reason they give is exports. They say exports become more expensive and nobody buys. But again all empirical evidences are against this. F.e. during this crisis Germany has had increases in exports while the euro was appreciating. Or you can check the japanese cpi and their exports and you will see there is no correlation. There are several possible reasons for this. First, is that its not easy to substitute a specific product. And second-, is that prices adjust, whit a stronger currency allowing to import raw materials cheaper, and thus produce cheaper.\n\nBasically its a myth.", "It's not. Ben Bernanke is stealing from you in a weak currency.\n\nEven Switzerland has the curse of *stupid central bankers.*", "No one will buy your stuff because it seems expensive to other countries. Exports fall. People lose jobs.", "You have a dollar bill and want to go buy candy in Switzerland. You change your dollar bill and get about one Swiss Franc, with which you can buy, say, ten pieces of Swiss candy. Yummy. Swiss kids can also come to the USA, change one Swiss Franc for one dollar, and buy ten pieces of American candy. All's fine and dandy.\n\nIf the Swiss Franc were a stronger currency, Swiss kids could get *two* dollars in return for one Swiss Franc, so they could go buy *twenty* pieces of candy in the US (edit: they'd still get 10 pieces of candy in their own country)! Awesome, right?! How could this be a bad thing? Well, it's because *you* would only get half a Swiss Franc in return for your dollar, and so you could only buy five pieces of candy in Switzerland. So you'd probably go buy candy somewhere else. And the Swiss candy makers would be very sad, because nobody would want to buy their candy anymore.", "Its not bad.\n\nSome economists argue that its bad because according to them people wont buy stuff if they think the currency will appreciate and that will depress the economy, but all empirical evidences are against this. Somehow ignoring all empirical evidences these people keep repeating the myth as if its true.\n\nThe other reason they give is exports. They say exports become more expensive and nobody buys. But again all empirical evidences are against this. F.e. during this crisis Germany has had increases in exports while the euro was appreciating. Or you can check the japanese cpi and their exports and you will see there is no correlation. There are several possible reasons for this. First, is that its not easy to substitute a specific product. And second-, is that prices adjust, whit a stronger currency allowing to import raw materials cheaper, and thus produce cheaper.\n\nBasically its a myth.", "It's not. Ben Bernanke is stealing from you in a weak currency.\n\nEven Switzerland has the curse of *stupid central bankers.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "h0nsq", "title": "is it safe to drink PURE water?", "selftext": "i saw [this post about ultra pure water](_URL_0_) on /r/technology and it reminded me of a question i've had for a while. is it safe to drink pure H2O? i know a lot of water has flourides, or salts, or chlorine in them. is it alright to drink pure dihydrogen monoxide? or is that basically what that article is talking about?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h0nsq/is_it_safe_to_drink_pure_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1rp63i", "c1rpaqx"], "score": [6, 24], "text": ["It's safe as long as you are getting the salts, minerals, etc, from other sources.\n \nBut as a general rule to those who don't consider dietary requirements.. no, distilled water is not safer than tap water.", "That article was written by someone who has some interesting misconceptions of how the body works.  Yes, we call water the \"universal solvent\".  Yes, \"solvent\" is a scary word in some contexts.  No, this does not mean that pure water is dangerous.  Drinking too much of any kind of water can lead to [\"water intoxication\"](_URL_0_), although I suppose you might get there a bit faster if you were drinking ultrapure, 18 mega-ohm water.  Remember that woman that died in the \"hold your wee for a wii\" competition?  That's what happened to her.\n\nThink about what happens when you drink that glass of water.  As soon as that water hits your mouth, it's mixed in with all the salts, proteins and other goodies in your mouth, and once it's in your stomach, it becomes a dilute acid solution.  Once it's in you, it's no longer ultrapure by any measure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-water-used-to-make-your-iphone"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication"]]}
{"q_id": "1uyyyo", "title": "In light of Sharon's death: What actually happened at Sabra and Shatila? Was it the israeli's fault or have they just been given the blame for Lebanese Christian terrorists?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uyyyo/in_light_of_sharons_death_what_actually_happened/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cen3nh3"], "score": [115], "text": ["Oh, I wrote my bachelor's thesis about this. Well, about the Kahan commission. The Kahan commission was an Israeli commission, led by several Israeli judges, who were tasked in finding out exactly that - what happened at Sabra and Shatila and how much blame falls on Israel. The conclusion of the report was clear: the Phalangists were directly responsible for the massacre, Israel was indirectly responsible and Ariel Sharon had a personal responsibility. It was seen as a bold and impressive move by the international community - a nation that looked to recognise its own mistakes and responsibilities, an exercise in democracy.\n\n\nThe problem, however, is that the Kahan commission was - despite its unprecedented admission of guilt from Israel - a whitewash. Well, not a total whitewash, since it did lay some blame at the feet of Israel and Sharon, something that was fairly unprecedented at that point. But it was hard to deny those facts - even if you believed the most hardline Israeli version of the events, they'd still carry that responsibility because it happened in territory occupied by the Israeli's. The Kahan commission was a whitewash, however, because while it was undeniably the Phalangists carrying out the massacres, Israel - and Sharon - played an active part in making it happen and can't get away with just an admission of \"indirect responsibility\". \n\n\nThe short version of what happened, then. Two months after Israel invaded Lebanon, a deal was struck after mediation by the international community. The PLO fighters and Syrian troops would get free passage to evacuate from West Beirut. All was going well, until the assassination of the recently elected Christian president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, on 14 September. The very next day, the IDF invaded West Beirut. By the 16th, the entirety of West Beirut was under Israeli control, having met little resistance after the evacuation. The IDF surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel's allies in the war, the Christian Phalangists under command of  Elie Hobeika, were sent into the camps under orders to remove any remaining PLO fighters. During the next three days, between 700 and 3000 Palestinian refugees were massacred under the eyes of the IDF. \n\n\nWhile the IDF later claimed they knew nothing of what happened and were powerless to stop it, even while the massacres were ongoing, the international press managed to catch wind of it. What followed was a storm of protest and outrage, even in Israel itself. At first, the Israeli government wasn't prepared to budge - they did nothing wrong, they claimed. In the words of prime minister Begin: 'Goyim are killing Goyim. Are we supposed to be hanged for that?' This position became untenable once 300.000 to 400.000 Israeli's came out onto the streets in protest. The pressure, both internal and international, was insurmountable and by the end of September the Kahan commission was born. \n\n\nThe Kahan commission - officially the \"Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in Beirut\" - was named after its chairman and then president of the Israeli High Court, Yitzhak Kahan. Along with another high court judge, Aharon Barak, and Major-General of the IDF, Yona Efrat, they were tasked in finding out what happened. In their conclusions, they lay the blame at the feet of the Phalangists. Israel and the IDF could not have foreseen the massacre, let alone stop it. They held an indirect responsibility. Then minister of Defence Ariel Sharon and a few military men (including Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan and director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy) were held *personally* responsible. As a result of this, despite his initial refusal to do so, Sharon left his post as minister of defence, yet stayed on as minister without portfolio. Saguy was fired and Brigadier-General Amos Yaron was suspended from leadership positions within the IDF for three years.\n\n\nDespite loud praise coming from Israel's allied governments in the West, there was a lot of criticism too. I'll keep these fairly short, but feel free to ask for more information. The commission was criticised for the following:\n\n\na) Ignoring witness statements it declared to be biased, such as the testimony of the Jewish-American nurse Ellen Siegel who was present at the camps at the time of the massacre and was about the presence of Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers and officers' testimonies were accepted without question.\n\nb) Assuming the presence of PLO fighters in the refugee camps. This was one of the major criticisms on the facts mentioned in the report. The IDF claimed that the PLO didn't keep their part of the evacuation deal and left a large contingent of fighters in West Beirut, including 2.000 fighters in Sabra and Shatila. No source is given for this claim, except press releases of the Israeli government. More damningly, the IDF claims the massacre resulted in 700-800 casualties - but what happened to the other 1200-1300 fighters then? And seeing as many of the casualties were women and children, how is this explained? Moreover, in the immediate aftermath of the takeover of West-Beirut, the Chief of Staff described the area as \"quiet\". An intelligence officer was quoted as saying that the camps contained no \"terrorists\". Worse still, the Phalangists that were sent into the camps numbered only 150 - if they were supposed to confront 2.000 soldiers, that seems a bit optimistic in the capabilities of the militia. In all likelihood, the camps contained no PLO fighters.\n\nc) The second point of major criticism was the ability of the IDF command posts to see what happened in the camps. The Israeli forward command post was a five story building a mere 200m away from Shatila. According to the report, the IDF command couldn't have seen what happened in the camps, not even with binoculars. A ludicrous claim, as independent tests shortly after the massacre proved this wrong - even without binoculars. And even if they couldn't see everything in the camps, there was a mass grave just 300m from the command posts that would have been very, very hard to miss.\n\nd) The report concluded that the IDF had no way of knowing that the massacres were ongoing. They reached this conclusion despite recognizing that the militia shared the IDF command post, where several Israeli\u2019s overheard and reported such communications as militia members radioing Hobeika with questions about what to do with 50 women and children and later with 45 prisoners \u2013 the responses being \u2018This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that, you know exactly what to do.\u2019 and \u2018Do the will of God.\u2019 respectively. Another message reported 300 casualties at that point. All these events were reported by members of the Israeli staff to their superiors, but were not acted upon. Even on the 17th of September, Israeli reporter Ze'ev Schiff got an anonymous tip from inside the military staff that a massacre was occurring. All these things are accepted as fact in the report. Nonetheless, the commission concluded that the IDF didn\u2019t know the massacre was happening. \n\ne) There were accusations that Israel even supplied material aid in the massacres, in the form of supplying bulldozers and illuminating the camp with flares at night. Supposedly, Hobeika\u2019s militia was flown into Beirut by the Israeli military as well. \n\nf) Another point of criticism revolves around the question if Israel knew of the possibility of a massacre before it even took place. This knowledge would imply criminal negligence or would even imply complicity. The commission mentions this possibility, but rejects it without giving any reasoning. The criticism here is summed up by the words of author Izhar Smilanski:  \u2018We let the hungry lions loose in the arena and they devoured people. So the lions must be the guilty ones, mustn\u2019t they? They did the killing, after all. Who would have dreamed, when we opened the door for the lions and let them into the arena, that they\u2019d gobble people up like that\u2019\nThere were in fact many reports of concerns and predictions shortly after Bashir\u2019s death about the nigh-on certainty of revenge and massacres, including by Mossad leaders, the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Prime Minister. \n\ng) In addition to the last point, Hobeika\u2019s militia was known for its brutality and for the massacres it committed, even before Sabra and Shatila. There were plenty of other militias who could\u2019ve been sent in, but the Phalangists were chosen. The implication is clear.\n\nh) The punishments suggested by the commission were often ignored. Sharon lost his minister of defense post, but stayed on as minister. He was even allowed to chair in several defense commissions, leaving him in de facto control of the defense post. Eitan wasn\u2019t punished because he was on the verge of retirement. Yaron wasn\u2019t supposed to have gotten a command for three years, but was appointed as chief of manpower and training shortly after the publication of the report.\n\n\nThese were just a few of the criticism on the report. Since then, there have been a few other commissions \u2013 most notably the MacBride commission \u2013 but these haven\u2019t been accepted by Israel. Any criticism has been sharply countered, with browbeating, lawsuits and disinformation. \n\n\nBut let me be totally clear: Israel holds a direct responsibility for what happened in Sabra and Shatila and there are some very damning pieces of evidence that imply that members of the Israeli government and IDF were well aware of what was going to happen beforehand, most notably Ariel Sharon. \n\nIf there are any questions or if you want to know more about anything, just ask. I left out a lot because this is long enough as it is. As for sources, should I just upload my Bachelor's thesis? It's not in English, though. \n\ne: How the hell do you leave space between paragraphs on this site? Goddamn.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "855bxe", "title": "why do \u201cselfie cameras\u201d flip a picture, but the rear cameras don\u2019t?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/855bxe/eli5_why_do_selfie_cameras_flip_a_picture_but_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvuszmf", "dvut9hi", "dvuvjzg", "dvv4ljq", "dvv5h1d"], "score": [315, 13, 135, 29, 2], "text": ["By making the selfie camera act like a mirror, it becomes easier to coordinate yourself for your picture.\n\nIt's all about a postive User Experience (UX)", "Selfie cameras flip the picture so our brains interpret the image as a *mirror image.* In a rear facing camera, the image is not flipped. However, you are facing the opposite direction as the camera, making you perceive it as a mirror image.", "People are used to how they see themselves in the mirror. I think a lot of people, in fact, _dislike_ how they look from another's person's perspective. I know I do.\n\nIn order to increase user comfort, and especially on apps like Snapchat and Instagram, where looks are very important, developers mirror the image so that the user sees what they would in a mirror.", "Fun fact: on iPhones, the live preview of your camera in selfie mode is flipped so that it behaves like a mirror and you\u2019re better able to easily handle it (we are taught from a young age to understand what a mirror does and how it behaves). However.... as soon as you take the photo, the image saved to your phone\u2019s memory is unflipped, because otherwise when someone else looks at the photo, they\u2019d realize it didn\u2019t look like you because our faces are not perfectly symmetrical.", "It's so that as you're taking the picture, things move the way you expect them to. If it didn't flip the front camera, you'd have a much harder time moving the camera/yourself into the position you want. Similarly, if they did flip the rear camera, you'd have a hard time moving correctly!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1e6cld", "title": "Since sound travels better in water, would a water filled stethescope work better?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e6cld/since_sound_travels_better_in_water_would_a_water/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9xcl0r"], "score": [6], "text": ["Sound travels *faster* in water.  I'm not sure what definition of \"better\" you meant, but you have to deal with lots of distortion when listening to something through water, due to its movement.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24lkd9", "title": "Why didn't Pedro II of Brazil try to reclaim his throne?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24lkd9/why_didnt_pedro_ii_of_brazil_try_to_reclaim_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch8h2fm"], "score": [22], "text": ["Pedro II was very old and ill by the time of his exile and also thought that exile was, at the very least, a somewhat \"honorable\" means of leaving Brazil. \n\nThere is also some debate as to whether or not Pedro II fully understood the circumstances of his exile. His aides and family members may have shielded him from the full consequences (Roderick J. Barman, Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825-1891, 2002).\n\nEdit: a word. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3akwjo", "title": "why do commentators/voice actors from old footage from the 40s 50s and 60s sound so different than reporters' voices today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3akwjo/eli5_why_do_commentatorsvoice_actors_from_old/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csdlb35", "csdmgpn", "csdr901", "cse0ot9"], "score": [148, 14, 11, 2], "text": ["I believe what you're referring to the \"transatlantic accent\" which was taught in boarding schools up through the early 60's (also many actors and the like learned the accent to be more marketable, as it was seen as an upper-class/well-educated way of speaking).", "Old recording equipment had different sensitivity to frequencies we can hear.\nJust like standard phone conversations sound of lower quality when broadcast on the radio.", "Here's a good article on the topic of the mid-Atlantic accent. Though the author prefers calling it \"that weirdo announcer-voice\" \n\nIt's especially good on describing how it disappeared. \n\n_URL_0_", "They practiced a lot of elocution. They thought of it as being proper and more sophisticated. No one really practiced this way of speech anymore."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/that-weirdo-announcer-voice-accent-where-it-came-from-and-why-it-went-away/395141/"], []]}
{"q_id": "7nhcgs", "title": "how do icy-hot gels work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nhcgs/eli5_how_do_icyhot_gels_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds1xosa", "ds27c2v", "ds282qh", "ds29n9j", "ds2cc5i", "ds2ez9u", "ds2ntry", "ds2yv9s"], "score": [665, 628, 2771, 36, 4, 53, 2, 2], "text": ["The active ingredients in Icy Hot formulations are menthol or a combination of menthol and methyl salicylate. The ingredients cause a cooling sensation followed by a warming sensation that distracts you from the pain by blocking pain signals sent to the brain. The cooling sensation dulls the pain while the warming sensation relaxes it away.", "Just like how hot peppers and spicy food taste \"hot\" some chemicals can make your skin feel cold. There temperature isn't changing, but your skin feels like it is. These hot/cold sensations can interfere with pain receptors so they're an effective analgesic (substance that makes you hurt less) for muscle and joint pain.\n\nDeeper dive, [cold recpectors](_URL_0_)", "A lot of answers are saying \"menthol cools\", but that's wrong.\n\nMenthol produces the *sensation* of cooling without *actually* cooling, by activating the nerve receptors that would normally react to cold temperatures.", "Follow-up question: is it possible to burn yourself with an overapplication of menthol?", "As people have said the chemicals stimulate the nerve ending in the area. The way this blocks pain is by bombarding those same nerve endings with signals that tell you its hot or cold, instead of pain. This is because the nerve can basically only send one type of signal at a time, and will send the strong signal first. If you're interested in understanding pain pathways look at ascending and descending pain pathways, for a deeper understanding. ", "There is a particular family of receptors that react to compounds like menthol and capcasin. They transmit temperature signals as well as pain signals. They submit the information of heating or cooling from external sources to your brain.  You brain, therefore interprets the binding of menthol or capcasin as a cooling/heating event on your extremities or skin. The relationship to pain is not well understood, but these receptors can also transmit pain signals. It is thought that loading these receptors up with the temperature-related compounds keep them from transmitting a pain signal as they are now more actively transmitting the temperature specific signals to the brain. ", "It\u2019s basically a chemical burn/reaction with your skin. Doesn\u2019t actually do anything except makes you think it\u2019s doing something.", "The creams such as Deep-heat are called counter-irritants. They cause the skin to react to a chemical inside the gel/cream. This only affects the surface of the skin, and causes a heating effect on the area"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRPM8"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5129rq", "title": "would a centralized currency throughout the world work well, if at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5129rq/eli5_would_a_centralized_currency_throughout_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d78qxfk", "d78r22p", "d78r73m", "d78uj4q", "d791tdr"], "score": [38, 12, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["One problem with a world-wide currency is neatly demonstrated by Greece and the Euro.\n\nOne major way that a country can deal with hard times is to allow, or even force, their currency to be worth less. That makes the things you, as a country, make cheaper, and things you buy from other countries more expensive. So the country loses less money paying for exports, and makes more money selling its now cheaper exports. They can also create new money to pay for government spending, creating employment and pulling the country back onto its feet.\n\nIf there is only one currency, a country can't do this. Their citizens keep buying imports, and their exports remain too expensive, and they can't recover without cutting back hard on government spending, which makes the hard times worse.", "A single currency isn't even working particularly well in Europe right now.\n\nBeing in control of the currency is incredibly useful for a government. They can use the power to inflate or deflate the currency in order to deal with financial troubles, create a more favorable trading position, etc. Not being able to do these things can lead to serious problems. \n\nImagine if you were a country with serious debts and a lagging manufacturing economy. It would really help to devalue your currency some. It makes your debts less valuable, and makes your manufactured goods cheaper for buyers. Now imagine you're in a currency union with a bunch of more economically successful countries and they don't want to devalue the currency. They want the currency strong, and tell you to pound sand. So now you're stuck with your debts getting bigger and bigger and your products getting less and less competitive and not a lot of options.", "Who would control the currency?  Some would say the IMF or UN or similar.  Those bodies are typically influenced by more powerful nations.  A central world currency would be subject to manipulation to the benefit of the powerful and to the detriment of nations already lacking influence.\n\nControl of a nation's currency results in tremendous power and responsibility.  Being able to set their own inflation and interest rates can build a nation or bring it to it's knees.  Giving up that control is not to be taken lightly.\n\nOne only needs to look at Greece as an example of what happens if a country moves to a centralized currency shared with other countries before it's ready.  With major economic and corruption issues, Greece was forced into default on it's loans.  Another country may have been able to print more money, causing inflation, but it would have allowed it to pay it's bills at the expense of the buying power of it's citizens.  Greece, however, was unable to print more Euros on demand as they would have been able to do if they still used Drachmas.", "For a world currency to work, you'd also need world horizontal fiscal equalisation. Effectively an agreement that every person in every country will get equal access to Government services. Without HFE, you get Greece. With it, you get Australia.", "judging by the comments...there is little to no chance that the global currency would work...mostly due to the inability of local governments  to fiddle with it. How do you explain the USA? There is a substantial differences between states and still the dollar seems to be functioning."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1oqt78", "title": "why is the age of sexual consent 16 but the legal age to watch porn 18?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oqt78/why_is_the_age_of_sexual_consent_16_but_the_legal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccun2fd", "ccun2xd", "ccun89t", "ccun98u", "ccunu8g", "ccuvcs9", "ccuw200"], "score": [38, 16, 19, 4, 4, 8, 3], "text": ["The age of consent varies widely across state lines, however there is still a charge referred to as \"corrupting a minor\". This makes it a crime to provide certain things to those under the age of majority.\n\nAs such, you cannot provide pornography to a minor, in the same way that a minor can't be in a pornographic film. That said, the Internet has made it pretty easy to obtain.", "Because you can't watch yourself having sex...unless you film it, but you can't watch that film until you are 18...:P", "They are both chosen arbitrarily and vary between states and countries, so the why is basically: because the law maker says so. \n\nIn my country it's 16 for both I believe. ", "Because if boys could legally get porn at 16, they may never get laid ever.", "Because different laws are made by different groups of people at different times. They aren't based on any kind of consistent logic but rather gut instinct and politics.", "Because pornography is an art form, it's better appreciated by more developed minds", "Because nobody is really sure where to draw the line between \"child\" and \"adult\", and because thinking about the question makes people uncomfortable."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2vvrni", "title": "When and how did plants and fungi move onto dry land?", "selftext": "I tried searching, but the closest I found was a question on when plants evolved into animals.\n\nSo, when and how did plant life, and (later?) fungal life move from the ocean to dry land? I'm fairly certain it happened well before fish decided that gills were so last millennium, but that's about it. \n\nWas it sea growing plants that somehow got relocated out of the water either growing above water level, or deposited on shore during high tides?\n\nWhat about fungi? I know they are (evolutionarily) closer to animals then plants, but still the split obviously happened before the first fish climbed onto land. \n\nWhat would the world have looked like during the time the plants and/or fungi were colonizing it? What would those even have looked like?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2vvrni/when_and_how_did_plants_and_fungi_move_onto_dry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["comdyih"], "score": [2], "text": ["1) Just so we're clear, animals didn't evolve from plants. We're two different lineages that share a common ancestor that was neither plant nor animal. :)\n\n2) The earliest traces we have of land plants are spores from something resembling [liverworts](_URL_0_). These spores are about 460 million years old, from the Ordovician period - for reference, that's before the evolution of the first vertebrates (fish), but after the evolution of the first [chordates](_URL_2_). Complex marine ecosystems with trilobites, cephalopods and whatnot already existed.\n\n3) The earliest traces of fungi on land are from around the same time. It's probable that fungi and plants benefited from one another's presence in early soils the same way they do in today's soils. Genetic evidence suggests that the largest groups of fungi had already evolved long before the Ordovician, though, so either they hung out in the water until then, or they were on land much earlier and we simply don't have fossils of them. (Or, of course, the genetic estimates are wrong. These things are very hard to know.)\n\n4) When we talk about life moving onto land, we often envision some enterprising creature scampering up a beach. While moving directly from sea to land is possible (and happens today in some species, e.g. mudskippers), it's equally (or more) probable that many groups moved onto land not from the sea but from freshwater. The closest relatives to land plants appear to be [charophytes](_URL_1_), a group of green algae that today live only in fresh and brackish water (also, many of the most basal and ancient land plants - like mosses - are amphibian, and live in fresh water as well as moist soil). So we don't *really* know, but a gradual colonization from the sea, to rivers and estuaries, to lakes, to marshes, and finally onto dry land seems feasible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchantiophyta", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charophyta", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordate"]]}
{"q_id": "3gs1u7", "title": "why is new zealand the 'freest' country?", "selftext": "Numerous freedom indexes have ranked New Zealand as the freest country in the world. \n\nWhile I can assume this is because of less government restrictions on civil rights along with less government involvement in the economy, I am really looking for a more detailed answer of why such policies exist in NZ and how they have developed over time. Thank you ahead of time to all you geopolitical experts. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gs1u7/eli5why_is_new_zealand_the_freest_country/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu124ol", "cu16jm3", "cu19t9d", "cu1c63o", "cu1d7zv", "cu1hckd", "cu1s5kr"], "score": [19, 11, 6, 6, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["First of all it has been ranked the worlds 3rd most safest country as of last year. Since it boasts the safe and secure environment, you can freely move around, explore the bush, climb mountains, play, picnic, catch the public transports, discover the beaches or enjoy anything to your heart\u2019s content without any fear.\n\nAlso NZ is widely accepting of cultures and foreigners that are not in tune with their own.", "Corruption plays a big part in this. Where it is low people can actively engage in the government process. Your access to the same as everyone else's. Unless you are a rugby player or related to a rugby player and you can do whatever the hell you feel like.", "As a New Zealander, I wonder this myself.\n\nOur head of country, Prime Minister [John Key](_URL_0_), made his fortunes on Wall St working for Merrill-Lynch as the head of global foreign exchange. During this period, Merrill-Lynch began their extremely risky (and highly illegal) period of deregulation which eventually caused numerous recessions and cost the world tens of trillions of dollars. Whilst he was there, he amassed millions of dollars from bonuses generated by short term imaginary income which inevitably crashed, and walked away a very rich man when things started to go a little sour. John Key still has shares with Bank of America (the company that acquired ML in 2008), a company which is a creditor \nto a large percentage of New Zealand's debt; i.e, the more debt NZ gets the more money he earns. [Our debt is growing at a ridiculously fast rate.](_URL_4_) He has been questioned a number of times about this and never directly answered the question. He has, however, been called out over some of his controversial money-making schemes in New Zealand when he was much younger than he is now; and [he was a lot more smug and condescending about it then than he is now.](_URL_1_)\n\nCurrently, he is participating in negotiations for the highly secretive [Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)](_URL_3_) with America and a number of other Pacific rim countries, which is currently very controversial and a bit worrying. The negotiations are secret and very little information about it is available to the public, but some of the little that is known is very concerning. To me, the worst part is how they want to set up off-shore \"investor-state dispute settlement tribunals\" that aren't regulated by any governing body, and give corporations the right to sue Governments for undue actions (eg new laws) that reduce their profits. Start a publicly funded wind farm? A coal company could sue your Government for stealing customers. Amend a law to include a new species and protect their only habitat from forestry? Off to the corporation court as that's lumber that now can't be sold. The Government wants to publicly fund a revolutionary, life-saving, cheap new medicine that could revolutionise healthcare? Oh, heellllll no, Pharmac and Pfizer ain't letting their business go down the drain thanks to competitors. Add to that the even stricter copyrighting and piracy laws that they're trying to implement, it's got the potential to be a very frightening agreement when it goes public and we find out all of the parts we aren't allowed to know currently. One speculation on the unknown contents is that there will be clauses around even more data exchanges and setting up new links for intelligence agencies between countries, as 4 of the 5 countries in the [Five Eyes](_URL_2_) intelligence alliance are big pushers of the act.\n\nThanks to our current Governance, I can't see at all how anyone would call our country the least corrupted and free in the world. \n", "Because it doesn't have an Air Force AT ALL - or Defence Force to speak of... so it's FREE for the taking! The FREEST country of all! ", "Can you link the freedom indexes?  Most of the ones I see don't assign a numerical rank, they just rate countries as \"free\" \"partly free\" or \"not free\".  \n\nIn that case, NZ is ranked \"free\" because it has the same political origins as many other Western liberal democracies: the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.  Many philosophers wrote influential works about the rights of man and equality. These thoughts eventually became law in things like Britain's Bill of Rights and France's \"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen\"\n\nNew Zealand became a British colony in the 19th century and established similar voting rights as the British had.  From there various social movements secured equal voting rights for everyone, as well as protection of civil liberties.  NZ tends to have a similar freedom score as many Western European nations, as well as Canada and the US, all of who have similar political origins and are liberal democracies.\n\nIf I had to guess as to why it's *most* free, I would guess population has something to do with it.  If you look at the most effective democracies, you see countries like NZ, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, all of who have populations of 10 million or less.  It's a lot easier for democracy to be effective and to stop corruption when governing a small amount of people.", "I fucking love NZ, the best Summer I had, or should I say Winter \"in NZ\", was in NZ, the people, the food, the weather, activities, I can go on forever, I love you Kiwis, you too Mauris.", "There are only 4 million people there and maybe 40 million sheep. Despite what people think you really can't control sheep. They'll drink their own piss. They'll shag the neighbour's wife. They'll do whatever they like because they are animals. So it's considered the freest country in the world because most of the population consists of free-willed animals."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Key", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i0HhLEKdgA", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership", "http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7l3hcy", "title": "How does our brains look for stored information?", "selftext": "So I saw a picture of Tom Cruise and wanted to google him. But I couldn't remember his name, I knew that I know what's his name is but at the moment it didn't come to me. Nicolas Cage, no, Brad Pitt, none of them fit. Then I thought; he's a scientologist which made me think of Jon Travolta but thats the other guy.. Suddenly I remembered southpark and the word closet and then the quote \"Tom Cruise wont come out of the closet\" and boom I had his name. But how does this all work?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7l3hcy/how_does_our_brains_look_for_stored_information/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drjbbgf", "drjsh7c"], "score": [9, 2], "text": ["Associations. Your memory is stored in neurons. Each memory neuron is connected to a bunch of another memory neurons. By remembering one thing, you activate memories of associated things. Say, you think of a ball, football game comes to mind, your favorite team, let's say, Lions, now to think of animals, savanna... Madagascar... And so on.\n\nAssociations help you reach the memory deep inside your brain.", "In the [holographic theory of memory](_URL_1_) the brain would perform the [cross-correlation](_URL_0_) of stored data looking for the highest cross-correlation value.\n\n > The holonomic brain theory, developed by neuroscientist Karl Pribram initially in collaboration with physicist David Bohm, is a model of human cognition that describes the brain as a holographic storage network.[1][2] Pribram suggests these processes involve electric oscillations in the brain's fine-fibered dendritic webs, which are different from the more commonly known action potentials involving axons and synapses.[3][4][5] These oscillations are waves and create wave interference patterns in which memory is encoded naturally, and the waves may be analyzed by a Fourier transform.[3][4][5][6][7] Gabor, Pribram and others noted the similarities between these brain processes and the storage of information in a hologram, which can also be analyzed with a Fourier transform.[1][8]\n\nIn holographic storage, cross-correlation is an easy function to do. So evolution would have favored something simple.\n\n > In signal processing, cross-correlation is a measure of similarity of two series as a function of the displacement of one relative to the other. This is also known as a sliding dot product or sliding inner-product. It is commonly used for searching a long signal for a shorter, known feature. It has applications in pattern recognition, single particle analysis, electron tomography, averaging, cryptanalysis, and neurophysiology."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-correlation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory"]]}
{"q_id": "fzaqqn", "title": "How do patients that have recovered from Covid, test positive again?", "selftext": "Is it an issue with the testing, does the virus turn dormant ?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fzaqqn/how_do_patients_that_have_recovered_from_covid/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fn3ti05"], "score": [28], "text": ["The media has made a lot of fuss about this, but few scientists are convinced that those repeat-positives are truly reinfections. Rather, they\u2019re probably false negative tests taken between two true positives. We know that false negatives are fairly common with the available tests, so this is by far the simplest explanation.\n\n > \tThere remains a lot of uncertainty, but experts TIME spoke with say that it\u2019s likely the reports of patients who seemed to have recovered but then tested positive again were not examples of re-infection, but were cases where lingering infection was not detected by tests for a period of time. ... Instead, testing positive after recovery could just mean the tests resulted in a false negative and that the patient is still infected. \u201cIt may be because of the quality of the specimen that they took and may be because the test was not so sensitive,\u201d explains David Hui ...\n\n\u2014[Can You Be Re-Infected After Recovering From Coronavirus? Here's What We Know About COVID-19 Immunity](_URL_0_)\n\nIt\u2019s also possible that some are false positives. I don\u2019t know what the false-positive rate is, but given that we\u2019re somewhere around 10 million tests, a 99.9% specificity rate would give us some 10,000 false positives. If some of those were on recovered patients, it would look like a reinfection."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://time.com/5810454/coronavirus-immunity-reinfection/"]]}
{"q_id": "q5hsx", "title": "- why is it that can some countries can have nuclear weapons while others can't, and who gets to decide?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q5hsx/eli5_why_is_it_that_can_some_countries_can_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3uvtru", "c3uw61g", "c3uwz0w"], "score": [9, 21, 22], "text": ["The ones who have nuclear weapons. It's that simple.", "A few countries developed them many years ago and now they have them.  They don't want anyone else to have them because then they would have less power.\n\nThat's pretty much it.", "Pretty much everyone got together and agreed to A. Stop building nukes B. Get rid of the nukes they have (this has been progressing slowly) C. Share nuclear technology for energy purposes. \n\nThe big countries benefit from number 1- no new nukes, so the balance of power swings more towards them. Less powerful countries like 3- they get free technology and don't have to rediscover nuclear power on their own if they want to have their own reactors. \n\nNot everyone signed the treaty- in particular, India, Pakistan, and Isreal. The first 2 have publicly shown that they have developed nukes, and everyone is pretty sure about Israel.\n\nIran *did* sign, which is why the UN is allowed to care about their nuclear program."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7n3m42", "title": "Did people really walk differently in medieval times?", "selftext": "This popped up for me on twitter, asserting that people walked using the ball of their feet first, instead of the heel.\n_URL_0_\n\nIt (and the video linked on the article) don't back the claim up with any sources.  Does evidence actually support their claims?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7n3m42/did_people_really_walk_differently_in_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dryy7al"], "score": [91], "text": ["A similar question was asked several months ago. Check out [this answer](_URL_0_) for more information."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://mentalfloss.com/article/505105/why-people-walked-differently-medieval-times"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/74penu/walkin_medieval_did_people_walk_on_heels_first/do0s36x/"]]}
{"q_id": "5m60ul", "title": "What was life like inside the Kowloon Walled City?", "selftext": "My father walked past the walled city every day, but he was too scared to enter for fear of being robbed. Was the Kowloon Walled City as dangerous as people thought it was? Also, what are some misconceptions people have about the walled city that should be cleared up? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5m60ul/what_was_life_like_inside_the_kowloon_walled_city/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc1kqqp", "dc2a15g"], "score": [35, 3], "text": ["Oh, hey. I never thought I'd see a question on this sub I'm semi-qualified to answer. That being said, it's been a little too long since I've done much reading on Kowloon to feel confident giving any kind of specific or full answer here.   \n\nInstead, I'll point you to Greg Girard and Ian Lambot's *City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City*, which is likely going to be the primary English source. It's most commonly known as a photo book, but includes copious amounts of text compiling interviews with the city's residents, along with substantial historical information. It's more thorough than one would expect, and covers education, employment, infrastructure, class, culture and the histories of particular buildings such as the central yamen/administrative office (which still stands), which had multiple lives as it was repurposed into different things, i.e. a retirement home run by the Protestant church. The book can be very expensive now, but luckily there was an updated edition in 2014 with apparently (I haven't read it) more information than the original, which can be found for reasonable prices (it's still a very photo-heavy book, so it will still be a bit costly).   \n\nAs for misconceptions, the popular idea of Kowloon Walled City was as a lawless, dirty, crime-ridden epitome of chaotic urban density and anomie, when in fact many former residents have described a strong sense of community in response to the poverty, density and poor infrastructure. Shared social spaces such as the former yamen seemed to be important, and there were several areas of charity/social work such as the school, almshouse and retirement/community center (most of which I believe were run by the Protestant church? though there were also [Hung Shin](_URL_1_), Fuk Tak and [Tin Hau](_URL_2_) temples, the latter of which is one of Girard's [more iconic images](_URL_0_)). Although the city's reputation is one of high crime, most residents were ordinary working class Hong Kongers, and several expressed concerns over finding adequate/affordable housing in the wake of the Walled City's inevitable demolition.  \n\nReally, I'm a little rusty, but the Girard/Lambot book is a wonderful resource for anyone curious about daily life in Kowloon at the height of the Walled City's population in the late 80s.", "Related question: Who built the Kowloon Walled City? Was it just local residents? Shady Chinese construction companies? How structurally stable were the buildings?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/05/article-2139914-12EF3370000005DC-213_964x630.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_Shing_Temple", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Hau_temples_in_Hong_Kong"], []]}
{"q_id": "422gd4", "title": "I read a claim that the Hutus and Tutsis are actually the same and were first split by the European colonists who entered the region. Is there any support for this claim?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/422gd4/i_read_a_claim_that_the_hutus_and_tutsis_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz7iu1t", "cz7ixer"], "score": [19, 4], "text": ["No, while there is substantial overlap, there are real generic variation between the two population groups and Hutu animosity towards Tutsis, who migrated into what is now Rwanda, is a source of long grievance in the local mythology. There's also clear physiological differentiation, to my untrained eye, as the Tutsi tend to look much more like Africans from the Horn, who I lived and worked with for some time, while the Hutu are a central African people.\n\n[Tutsi probably differ genetically from the Hutu](_URL_0_)\n\nWhere did you read that?", "Have you seen these?\n\n[How can the hate between hutu's and tutsi's be explained from a historic perspective?](_URL_1_)\n\n[The Tutsis during the Colonization of Rwanda](_URL_0_)\n\nThey are what cropped up in a search of AskHistorians for \"Hutu Tutsi\", and they seem to answer your questions.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/08/tutsi-differ-genetically-from-the-hutu/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13lysa/the_tutsis_during_the_colonization_of_rwanda/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kkm29/how_can_the_hate_between_hutus_and_tutsis_be/"]]}
{"q_id": "3ngwkn", "title": "why don't large dogs consider small dogs prey, but they consider cats prey?", "selftext": "This is assuming the dogs weren't trained or brought up with either. For example, my parents have a 7lb terrier. I had no concerns that when I brought my friendly Australian Shepherd to meet it that it would hunt it. Cats weigh on average 8-9lbs, but if I were to introduce them, I would naturally be concerned that the cat would be hunted. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ngwkn/eli5_why_dont_large_dogs_consider_small_dogs_prey/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvnzg1s", "cvnzny6", "cvo02bj", "cvo08fw", "cvofl6q", "cvoi473"], "score": [48, 19, 11, 10, 7, 2], "text": ["Large dogs do consider smaller dogs prey. Your dog is just socialized well/naturally has no or low prey drive. ", "Cats are more likely to run than dogs, triggering the prey instinct of the bigger dog. Small dogs are more likely to get in the bg dogs face, making the big dog think \"this guy's not food, he's not worth the trouble.\"", "It really depends on the dog's temperament and socialization. A large dog with a strong prey drive will go after little dogs if not trained not to. I've seen it happen when a relative's big dog went after my small one, grabbing and shaking her. Luckily we were able to separate them quickly and my dog suffered only minor injuries, but the big dog was definitely going for the kill. ", "Smell is a much more important sense for a dog than the eyes.  Small dogs probably smell much like big dogs and very different than cats and prey.\n\nHow an animal moves is another important aspect. Small dogs move like dogs, not like prey.  Even a big human can trigger the hunting instinct in a dog if you try to run directly away from the dog. Always show your side to an agressive dog, not your back.", "I don't think they see cats as prey, either. I think they see cats as competitive predators. They aren't killing cats to eat them, they are killing cats to eliminate them.", "When I was five, I had a dog named Mugsy. Used to eat stray cats, didn't find out until I was attacked by a cat. Bit it in half in a second, then proceeded to eat it in his dog house. Found the \"others\" behind the dog house, the heads anyway."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "os8r6", "title": "what exactly does the british monarch do?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/os8r6/eli5_what_exactly_does_the_british_monarch_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3jmkao", "c3jmqlu", "c3jmtn2", "c3jmu2g", "c3jmyqe", "c3jny9e", "c3jo8ej", "c3jp4xv", "c3jq6tm"], "score": [15, 89, 10, 5, 3, 8, 3, 9, 6], "text": ["Nothing really. She remains as a figurehead for the country. The monarch shows up for ceremonies, knights people, etc. Just think of the monarch as the mascot or face of the nation with no real political power. But since the British are people of tradition, they keep the monarch. In fact, a surprising amount of British politics is done with tradition in mind.", "She reigns over us. We love it.\n\nSeriously though, they're useful for legal matters - rather than having a relatively inflexible constitution, in theory our laws come from God, to the Queen and are more malleable as the Queen puts a lot of trust in her judges and Law Lords.\n\nShe gives \"Royal Assent\"* - a kind of seal of approval to any laws made by our leaders in Parliament or the House of Lords.\n\nAdditionally, the Royal family are handy for tourism and international politics. They can often be useful diplomats or representatives. They have a lot of training in this field.\n\nOur military is loyal to the Crown, and not any individual political party.\n\nOur government is chosen by the monarch after an election. She will (only) choose what the people have voted for, but the government rules by her consent.*\n\nSome people think they cost us a lot of money, but some people say they are wrong, in that the Royal Family are able to either support themselves, or that they cost each tax-payer a maximum of 6 pence per year.\n\nBritain has a long heritage based around our Royal Families  &  almost all of our military or government is based around the Crown.\n\nIt would probably cost us a great deal to re-order our society away from that, we wouldn't benefit a huge amount from doing it, and we would lose something that we feel makes us special in some ways.\n\nOtherwise we'd decapitate the lot of 'em.\n\n*but not really, because it's all made up.", "They also make the UK a bunch of money\n\n_URL_0_", "Tourism, diplomacy, trade missions, that sort of stuff.\n\nIf someone is thinking about setting up a factory in the UK or doing a massive deal with the UK, having the Queen come and twist your arm can make a massive difference. The official website is pretty informative:\n\n_URL_0_", "The government of the US exists because of the Constitution.  The opening phrase, \"We The People\".  The existence of the US government is based on this.  \n\nOver in the UK, the situation is different.  The *basis* of their legal system is that, while the king (or queen) is the root of legal authority, they put all the actual responsibility in a democratic government.  Their \"constitution\" is the [Magna Carta](_URL_0_).\n\nIn both cases there's a document defining how the government works  &  the rules it operates under.  In the case of the US, we had a revolution to overthrow the king's authority  &  were left with no 'natural' ruler so we had to base our government on our own need  &  desire for one.  Over in the UK, while they *effectively* removed the power from the king, it was easier to transfer the king's traditional power on to a new government than it would have been to completely overthrow them  &  set up a new system.\n\nSure, it's a technicality but they seem to like it.", "I might be mistaken but I believe that she is Canada's head of state", "I have this impression that modern royals are like celebrities that draw public attention to things (or just themselves).  Just like Americans have celebrity sponsors for a product or cause, supermodels and sports star appearances, etc.\n\nA lot of people will gather where a well-liked royal will appear.\n\nIf they have a lot of influence, people will listen to what they say and do as they do - donate to the same charities they do; wear the same or similar styles of clothing; participate in the same sports; take up the same hobbies; take on the same attitudes.", "Flutter around collecting nectar", "Prince Philip is a voice of sanity.\n\n > To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: \"It\u2019s a pleasure to be in a country that isn\u2019t ruled by its people.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey#p/u/7/bhyYgnhhKFw"], ["http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/HowtheMonarchyworks/TheroleoftheSovereign.aspx"], ["http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5x34xa", "title": "If general relativity is true and an orbit is just a straight line in 4d space-time and there is no preferred frame of reference isn't the geocentric model of the universe just as valid as the heliocentric?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5x34xa/if_general_relativity_is_true_and_an_orbit_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["defam30", "defivgn"], "score": [12, 6], "text": ["Yes.\n\nBut you should clarify what you mean by \"geocentric model\". There is a clear difference between what we usually mean by \"geocentric vs. heliocentric model of the solar system\" and \"geocentric model of the universe\". The geocentric model in both senses is valid, but for different reasons.\n\nThe statement that a geocentric model of the universe (i.e., Earth or our galaxy occupies a preferred central point in the universe) is just as valid as the current standard cosmology also offends the sensibilities of a great many people. That is probably because support for a geocentric model is often born out of some sort of appeal to religion. Also, frankly, many people, even those who have studied cosmology or general relativity, often don't come across a consistent geocentric cosmology. It's just not talked about too commonly.\n\nHaving said all of that, for all of the details, I refer you to [this old post of mine](_URL_0_) in response to a similar question, which I have copy-pasted below for convenience. (I suggest reading the follow-up response to /u/ididnoteatyourcat as well for more clarifications.)\n\n---\n---\n---\nA similar question came up a few months ago, which I answered [in this thread](_URL_4_). For convenience, [here is my top-level response](_URL_2_) and a [relevant follow-up response](_URL_1_). You should also see [this followup response](_URL_3_) that explains two distinct realms in which we use the phrase \"geocentrism\": in celestial mechanics and in cosmology. When people say they object to geocentrism, they generally mean they object to a geocentric cosmology. But they could also mean that they object to the notion that the Sun revolves around Earth. It's important to make the distinction.\n\nThe main point, and what a lot of popular science and grade school science gets wrong, is that a geocentric theory is perfectly fine as a physical and mathematical theory. The theory makes the same predictions as, say, a cosmology in which Earth is not at the center of a spherically symmetric universe. The geocentric theory is also consistent with all observational evidence. There are certainly *good reasons* we choose to assume the Copernican principle (CP). For instance, some calculations are certainly easier in a non-geocentric frame. There is also evidence that strongly suggests our planet does not occupy a special place in the universe (the Sun is an ordinary main sequence star, solar systems are common, the CMB is isotropic about Earth, etc.) **But there is no way to definitively prove the CP.** At some point we must appeal to philosophy to choose our model, whether we invoke parsimony or the CP.\n\nNow having said that, I must make it clear that when I talk about a geocentric theory of, say, the universe, I mean a cosmology that models the universe as spherically symmetric with Earth (or our galaxy) at the center. We can also talk about a geocentric theory of the solar system in which the Earth is at the center and the Sun and other planets orbit Earth. That is also a perfectly acceptable theory.\n\nI emphatically do not mean that Earth occupies a specially *chosen* place in the universe, as if by some divine or supernatural edict. That is nonsense and what is often espoused in pseudoscience documentaries on geocentrism. In particular, such documentaries often purport that geocentrism *must* be correct by way of some non-scientific or faith-based reasoning. In particular, they often claim that the CP is incorrect... I suppose by fiat. As I said, geocentrism is perfectly fine as a mathematical and physical theory. But just as we have no evidence (nor can we really ever have such evidence) *for* the CP, we have no evidence strictly against it either. So it makes no sense to say that geocentrism must be wrong or that it must be right, by whatever reasoning you give, scientific or not.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "I mean both the \"geo\"centric, in the sense of a pin holding the Earth in place, and the \"helio\"centric, where the pin is in the sin, have both always been wrong.  Gravitational systems orbit around their center of mass, there are no pins:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs a result, if you're sitting on the sun or earth you're constantly accelerating.  If you vehemently claim you're stationary then you'll notice weird \"fictitious\" forces representing the fact that you're wrong about being stationary (or more importantly, non-accelerating).\n\nSo, saying the sun is the center of the universe is a frame of reference you're free to adopt, but you're going to have to put up with all kinds of unnecessary corrections.\n\nWhen reference frames are equivalent one does have the freedom to say: \"this one! This is my favorite reference frame\".  It doesn't break anything.  Such a reference frame is however much more, needlessly, complicated relative to a number of other choices (like an inertial one)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4cdqav/how_valid_is_the_theory_of_geocentricism/d1haxpg/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qsiy7/why_doesnt_a_geocentric_model_of_the_universe/cwi4mvk", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qsiy7/why_doesnt_a_geocentric_model_of_the_universe/cwi3eut", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4cdqav/how_valid_is_the_theory_of_geocentricism/d1inmxt", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qsiy7/why_doesnt_a_geocentric_model_of_the_universe/"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter#/media/File%3AOrbit4.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "49tbty", "title": "what's the reason behind the \"corned\" in \"corned beef?\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49tbty/eli5_whats_the_reason_behind_the_corned_in_corned/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0upekj", "d0uqs9i", "d0urrsk", "d0urz6g", "d0us97b", "d0usb4k", "d0usfw8", "d0ushqv", "d0utrp3", "d0uvaqx"], "score": [63, 53, 36, 31, 2, 18, 8, 3, 14, 2], "text": ["Most weird terms are explained similar to this:\n\n > The word corn derives from Old English, and is used to describe any small, hard particles or grains\n\nThe meaning of the word changed over time. Your gran used to have lots of gay moments when she was a child, and she would have proudly told anyone and nobody would have found that strange. Nowadays, \"gay\" can still be \"happy\", but it usually is a different kind of happy.  \n\nThis is similar to the old English word \"apple\", which used to refer to any fruit:\n >  Old English \u00e6ppel \"apple; any kind of fruit; fruit in general,\"  \n _URL_0_", "All my life I have never heard the term \"Corn of Salt\" only \"Pepper Corn\" and today it's like a commonplace term that everyone's throwing around. Wikipedia, you ruin everything.", "I like ELI5 as much as the next guy, but the answer to this one is literally the second fucking sentence in the [wikipedia article on corned beef](_URL_0_). ", "It's derived from \"cornered beef\".  Its the way they kill the Cow by cornering her in the barn.  This creates an extra tender cut of beef due to all the fear being locked in the meat.", "To add to what another commenter said, corn for the longest time meant any kind of grain, or anything with that shape/texture, hence peppercorn, barleycorn etc. Corned beef used salt corns, which is where it got its name. The use of corn for maize caught on in the US, and now it's more often thought of in that regard by many.\n\nSomething else to note, the Irish don't really eat a lot of corned beef, even though in the US it's generally associated with Irishness and St Paddy's (notice the Ds) Day. Corned beef was cheap and plentiful in the States, and its thought that Irish immigrants starting substituting it for other meats (such as the traditional bacon and cabbage becoming corned beef and cabbage).", "The the word \"corn\" used to be a general term for things that look like granules - whether it be grain, salt or what we called corn today. Later on, this general umbrella term was used for the corn plant in North America (Maize). Corned beef is coated in rock salt (called corn back-then). So there is no actually \"corn\" on corned beef.\n\nNote: This is my first time trying to explain - sorry if I'm bad", "From salt corns, which are used in making it.  \n\nA faster way to find this would have been to google \"how is corned beef made\", which shockingly says exactly why the corn reference is used, at the top of the screen, even BEFORE any search results.\n\nELI5 is not a replacement for looking at least a tiny bit first.\n\nedit - in case anyone is wondering, I only put remarks like that if the answer is a Giant, **Obvious** first hit google search, that is not even a bit tricky or hard to understand, as in, not needing ELI5 at all.  In THIS case, it is the Google TIP, and answers it clearly. If you are trying to share your stuff with others, ELI5 is not the place to do it, there are many subreddits to share your newly gleaned info with others.  It says right in the rules...\n > ELI5 is for explanations of complex concepts - No questions that are just looking for straightforward explanations", "As an aside, I used to wonder if maybe CorningWare was meant to originally have been used to make corned beef, but it turns out it's named for the company that makes it that's named for the city it was founded in, which is named after a guy with the last name Corning. TIL", "Real corned beef doesn't come in cans, only the crazy processed shit. Corned beef is a cured piece of beef brisket\n\nEdit: I don't know the actual answer to the corned part of the question but the canned part irked me a little", "It's called corned beef because during the early part of the 20th century Italian potato famine the Irish immigrants used to make fake beef with corn (kind of like soy bacon) and add enough salt to mask the corn flavor before sending it as part of the rescue package to the starving Italians. The Italians wised up to the deception and assassinated the Irish PM, starting World War I. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apple&amp;allowed_in_frame=0"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corned_beef"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1j1zhb", "title": "if the big bang theory is correct, how could nothing exist before the universe existed? what existed before the universe existed?", "selftext": "I know it would be hard to explain to a 5 year old. Just want a better understanding.\n\nEDIT: question is somewhat unclear. How can nothing exist? What does it mean for nothing to exist?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j1zhb/eli5_if_the_big_bang_theory_is_correct_how_could/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd1axqv", "cbaaaka", "cbaabal", "cbaat0p", "cbab2j5", "cbac5ix", "cbacd0l", "cbadll2", "cbadz5q", "cbaersh", "cbafyoq", "cbag99e", "cbagzcz", "cbagztb", "cbah3cd", "cbahtmu", "cbai4fn", "cbai4kj", "cbaia9e", "cbaic20", "cbail53", "cbaiqnl", "cbais58", "cbait71", "cbaivl5", "cbaiwzv", "cbaj6yu", "cbajs0q", "cbajtp3", "cbajzz7", "cbak2dy", "cbak2wh", "cbak64z", "cbak8v8", "cbakxps", "cbakycz", "cbal1pk", "cbale2v", "cbale4f", "cbalkb8", "cbam2ca", "cbanm67", "cbany8v", "cbaod4j", "cbaoky0", "cbaoqlu", "cbaqu3b", "cbaqw1y", "cbar0ql", "cbardw8", "cbarhm6", "cbarxsq", "cbatcgm", "cbatei6", "cbatjoo", "cbau9h6", "cbav2gz", "cbb0095"], "score": [2, 232, 1976, 21, 45, 2, 8, 5, 204, 13, 2, 353, 128, 6, 13, 2, 73, 3, 11, 2, 3, 5, 24, 5, 8, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 6, 2, 3, 4, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 16, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Actually, it is theorized that there was a universe before the universe. The Big Bang was the result of a Big Crunch. The energy produced generated another Big Bang ", "We don't know. The Big Bang theory is a model for what we do know, but before that point we don't have any data to work with.", "1. The big bang only addresses the very early universe, and not the origin of the universe.\n\n2. Since time is a dimension of the universe, the phrase \"before the universe existed\" makes about as much sense as \"north of the north pole\".", "The closest you'll get to an explanation of \"nothing\" comes from Never Ending Story.", "The whole concept of nothing is very strange for us humans to grasp. Kind of like when you wonder what happens when you die, or what happened before you were born. Not existing is something I always wondered about as well. ", "Go check out an episode of Through the Wormhole. I think it's called \"Is the universe alive?\" That answered a lot of questions I had with theories that certain people are working on testing.", "Something to consider: just because a question makes grammatical sense, does not mean that it is not complete non-sense. The question:\n > What existed before the universe existed?\n\nMight very well be a string of words that just doesn't make sense. Like, \"what does the color green dream of?\" Colors are not capable of having dreams so this question is just nonsensical and has no answer. \n\nThe idea of 'before the universe' might be just as nonsensical. 'The Universe' as a concept might not be able to posses that quality of having something precede it. \n\nI'm no physicist so I don't really know, but this is something to keep in mind when talking about this stuff. Just because a question sounds good does not mean it is a good or answerable question. ", "There is a theory that there is \"stuff\", which is everything we know, and there is \"anti-stuff\" (which is not the same as antimatter).\n\nWhen you put the two together, you get nothing.  When nothing separates, you get the two.  Somewhere out there, there could be a pile of anti stuff just waiting to cancel everything out.\n\nThat's how you can theoretically have something come out of nothing.", "Like a Five year old:\n\nWe have no idea.", "Under some interpretations of the BBT, there cannot be a 'before' the big bang, as time did not yet exist. Instead there is a singularity consisting of all of the energy that makes up the universe as we know it. ", "There is no definitive answer but one I have heard is that time didn't exist before the big bang, or it didn't occur. No time passed until the big bang occurred. The big bang was the starting point for time. So because there was no time for anything to exist in, there was nothing before the big bang. That brings us to what caused the big bang to happen if there was nothing, including no time?\n\nEDIT: Added info to specifically answer question.", "I actually have the perfect Stephen Hawking quote on my desktop that explains this:\n\nSince events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them.", "This was a bad thread to open up right before trying to shut my brain off.", "Picture it this way: You put in a DVD, and hit play. The first thing you see is an explosion. There no empty frames before the explosion, and you do not come in after it has already started. The absolute first, *first*, ***first***, thing, the thing that comes on when the machine reads 00:00:00:00:00...01, is the exact start of the explosion. There is nothing before, because it was the first thing filmed.\n\nThe Big Bang is like that. Kinda weird to imagine there being absolutely *nothing*, but sometimes you just gotta admit you don't get something", "Here is a list of video links collected from comments that redditors have made in response to this submission:\n\n|Source Comment|Score|Video Link|\n|:-------|:-------|:-------|\n|[helgaofthenorth](_URL_4_)|23|[Origin of the Universe - Stephen Hawking 1 of 5](_URL_36_)|\n|[def_oj](_URL_28_)|13|[Cosmos - Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension](_URL_49_)|\n|[69Bandit](_URL_0_)|9|[The Elegant Universe - The   'M' Theory](_URL_2_)|\n|[slampisko](_URL_51_)|7|[The Ocean - The Origin Of God](_URL_23_)|\n|[ncwise](_URL_33_)|7|[There is no \"Fourth\" dimension](_URL_17_)|\n|[slampisko](_URL_51_)|7|[The Ocean -- The Origin of Species](_URL_35_)|\n|[CelebrityCamelToe](_URL_5_)|4|[Lawrence Krauss: A Universe From Nothing](_URL_40_)|\n|[image_engineer](_URL_57_)|4|[Comic Relief - Catherine Tate  &  David Tennant](_URL_20_)|\n|[JLBeast](_URL_8_)|3|[Tim and Eric: \"Dark and Massive\" Awesome Show](_URL_42_)|\n|[networklackey](_URL_39_)|2|[\"A Universe From Nothing\" -  Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins](_URL_50_)|\n|[JoeKneeMarf](_URL_52_)|2|[Alan Watts - On Nothingness](_URL_45_)|\n|[runfromgaga2](_URL_9_)|1|[Creation Seminar 2 - Kent Hovind - Garden of Eden FULL](_URL_41_)|\n|[Mr_Scruff](_URL_14_)|1|[Imagining the Tenth Dimension - 2012 Version](_URL_48_)|\n|[Sierra004](_URL_11_)|1|[Negative Energy - Stephen Hawking's Grand Design](_URL_46_)|\n|[Mr_Wary](_URL_53_)|1|[5 Unsolved Space Mysteries! - The Countdown #26](_URL_26_)|\n|[Dfely](_URL_1_)|1|[2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing](_URL_12_)|\n|[namrog84](_URL_56_)|1|[Isaac Asimov - The Last Question](_URL_30_)|\n|[mafiasecurity](_URL_21_)|1|[Morgan Freeman on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 2013 Full Interview HD](_URL_22_)|\n|[kumarsays](_URL_10_)|1|[Memento 2000 HD Trailer](_URL_32_)|\n|[TheStrayArrow](_URL_15_)|1|[Krauss-Dawkins: Something from Nothing  is Counter-Intuitive](_URL_24_)|\n|[HappyWulf](_URL_31_)|1|[Flatland: The Film 2007](_URL_37_)|\n|[dudewiththebling](_URL_55_)|1|[Family Guy - How the Universe was made](_URL_13_)|\n|[Somanytacos](_URL_27_)|1|[Dido - White Flag](_URL_54_)|\n|[Squiggy_Pusterdump](_URL_43_)|1|[Imagining the Tenth Dimension - Rob Bryanton FULL CLIP.flv](_URL_38_)|\n|[Padigun](_URL_29_)|1|[Dr Quantum - Flatland](_URL_16_)|\n|[68024](_URL_3_)|1|[Imagining the Tenth Dimension part 1 of 2](_URL_25_)|\n|[elstupidos](_URL_47_)|1|['A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009](_URL_6_)|\n|[canada686](_URL_7_)|1|[2. The Illusion of Time](_URL_34_)|\n\n* [VideoLinkBot FAQ](_URL_44_)\n* [Feedback](_URL_18_)\n* [Playlist of videos in this comment](_URL_19_)", "What if black holes keep sucking everything up until they consume themselves. Wouldnt that put everything into one tiny point until it couldnt anymore and then it would eventually explode and start over again?", "Don't think of \"nothing\" like a human would. Think of it like a machine would. A machine has data, which is always \"something\". When a machine detects the absence of data, it does not concern itself with the absence, like humans do (and like you are). The data that isn't in the machine simply does not exist in that machine's reality. \n\nWhen a human thinks of \"nothing,\" he needs to not converse about it. The more characteristics one attributes to \"nothing,\" the farther he gets away from what \"nothing\" really is. We cannot think of \"nothing,\" because everything that exists in our head is at least something. Even the number 0 is not in itself nothing, but can only be used in relation to something else, i.e. to say that that something else isn't present. \n\nI know this is overused, but think of what life was before you were born. You can't, because that's in the realm of the true \"nothing\" for you. That's the closest anyone can get to explaining \"nothing.\"", "Not necessarily 'before' but I've always been confused as to how there's anything to even allow for existence. Forgot time and the concept of past present future etc. However complicated the explanation of time and space can get, still can't get past the idea of why there's even a 'nothing' for something to come from. Can't even think of how to phrase the question. I need an 'ask it like I'm 5' to articulate that.\n", "The ELI5 version is: \"we have no idea yet\"", "We cannot measure anything from before the big bang, ergo we know nothing about it.  This doesn't mean that there was \"nothing\" before the big bang.\n\nFor instance, and I'm butchering this so please accept my apologies, cosmologists, but physics says that objects that exist can be run in reverse...like a black hole (I think, reverse, meaning in simulation, not violating laws of physics).  The reverse of a black hole being a white hole...instead of sucking everything within reach in....blowing everything out.  Big bang?  Who knows.\n\nFrom what I understand of the universe, I don't think that \"nothing\" existed before the big bang.  It just doesn't seem very likely...not that that means anything, of course.  Also, here's an episode of Through the Worm Hole that talks about the whole black hole/white hole thing:\n\n_URL_0_", "I m still in awe that we are evening capable of discussing this.  The universe thinking about where it came from...BRILLIANT.", "Not science: \n\nConsider the philosophy of causality. There can only be one of two realities \u2014 (1) an infinite chain of nonprimary causes (nothing ultimately responsible for all observable causes and effects); or (2) an uncaused primary cause of all causes (one absolute cause responsible for initiating everything).", "I'm an astrophysicist, and this \"before the big bang\" bugs me a little, too.  \n\nOne possible model is called inflation.  In inflation, before the big bang is a sea of this thing called the inflaton.  By one way or another, some tiny patch of this particle jumps up to a higher energy state.  Quantum mechanics lets this kind of thing happen all the time, as long as that jump isn't very big, and isn't for very long.\n\nThe cool thing about this inflaton is that when its in this higher energy state, it expands _really fucking fast_.  What's better, it causes _space_ to expand really fast, much much much faster than the speed of light. So it gets a factor of 10^{60} bigger in 10^{-60} seconds.  \n\nThen!  It had it's fun at this higher energy state, so now it's time to decay.  Remember that quantum mechanics lets energy giggle around, but not for very long.  That energy then gets released as photons that are _really fucking hot_.  That's the big bang.\n\nSo, in this model, before the big bang was this sea of particles that do _really_ strange things some times. And outside of our universe, this sea of odd particles.  Maybe another universe has popped up.\n\nThe other cool thing is that several things that were predicted by inflation have actually been observed.  So some variant on this picture has a high probability of being right.", "I have always thought of the universe as continuing system, being born and then dying again and again.  I believe that eventually time/space (the universe) will begin to contract (it's currently expanding.)  I believe when this happens eventually every particle of matter and energy will find itself in a black hole (where time does not exist due to  > c time dilation.\n\nFrom what I understand about physics, a black hole is so dense that it immediately destroys the matter it sucks in and immediately turns it into energy.  However, since time cannot exist inside a black hole, we will never see this happening.\n\nIf time/space ever begins to contract again, which it likely will (theories suggest that the expansion of time/space is caused by the energy in the universe repelling itself, as more energy cools and turns into matter / gets sucked into black holes, there will eventually be more matter than energy, resulting in time/space contracting,) then eventually all matter and energy will find itself in a single singularity, thus spelling the end of this \"cycle.\"\n\nThe next \"cycle\" would begin exactly as this one did, with a big bang as singularity erupts and time/space can once again begin expanding.", "The Big Bang theory is a scientific *theory*--it explains the evidence we have of the early Universe. \n\nWe do not currently have any known evidence of whatever happened *before* the Universe. The Big Bang theory does not even approach an explanation of the pre-Universe.\n\nIt is also presumptive to say that *nothing* existed. You weren't there; how do you know there was nothing? Scientists don't know either; they don't claim to know. They just do the best they can with the observations they've gathered.", "Well, Billy, long ago, before the universe was born, there was a mommy and a daddy universe. And they loved each other very much, so they decided to have a baby universe. Daddy stuck his supernova in mommy's black hole,  and it exploded there. And nine nanoseconds later, the universe was born.\n\nNow get the fuck out of here, I'm trying to watch the game.", "We must also remember Quantum theory. In the laws of Quantum theory, a particle may be in multiple places at once and even pop in and out of existance from nothing. In a way, that provides evidence (not proof yet) that the universe may have been created out of nothing, without the laws of Quantum theory being broken. \n\nOthers have referenced Flatland, observers in set dimensions being unable to see or grasp concepts of higher dimensions unless they are shown to exist by an observer of that dimension. That is an important concept to try and reconcile, as time is only a constant (variable by changes in speed and gravity) in our 4 dimensional world (3 spatial dimensions + Space-time). It is inconcievably difficult for someone living in a dimension where in everything, they observe a beginning and an end to understand that this may not be true for those living in higher dimensional states where the concept of a beginning and an end may sound as ludicrious as not having one for us.\n\nIt is entirely possible that Nothing existed before the big bang (without going into dimensional Branes or anything too complicated)\n\nSuggested readings on the subject include works by Dr Michio Kaku.", "Two things:\n1.  We cannot say what happened before the big bang.  Time is a property of the universe and therefore did not exist before it.\n2.  We cannot explain what happened before the big bang because it was a singularity, a pint in the universe at which the laws of physics we know break down.", "Because humans can only perceive anything that flows in time, basically it has always existed in a very condensed form. \n\nAll that makes up the universe was formed before time existed, I believe. That's one way to describe it, but that's only a theory. As far as time goes, the universe has always existed.\n\nThink of it this way. You've always had a packet of Grape Kool-Aid and a pitcher of water.. Recently, you decided to pour the Kool-Aid into water and turn the concentrate into a perfect drink. That's how the universe is. It has always existed, but in a more condensed form before the Big Bang.", "The universe is made of nothing interestingly enough, at least according to our  understanding. It's just a really interesting and dynamic nothingness. You have regular matter and anti matter and if you add it all up you get nothing.\n\nIf you think I'm full of shit just take a look at stuff like [Hawking radiation](_URL_1_) and [the Casimir effect](_URL_0_).\n\nHawking radiation is based off of the casimir effect and the casimer effect has been proven through physical experiments. Basically both state that vacuum space is actually full of subatomic particles popping in and out of existence. From nothing two opposing particles of matter and anti matter spontaneously appear out of no where, move apart for a short time, then come together and destroy themselves. But because they have opposite charge, spin and mass really nothing happened. Once you wrap your brain around that concept it's not a huge leap to getting a whole universe from nothing.", "I read something ages ago about the current understanding of the cosmos, and all I can remember from it was an artist's representation of what was being talked about, basically imagining the fabric of the universe as a flexible sheet, and in some places a bit would push out, like a film of soap just before you blow a bubble.  That precise moment when the two sides of the film snap together and a bubble is formed.  The snap is the big bang, and the bubble is our universe, which will split again and again, possibly in black holes.  Is that close to being right? Or just shit?", "The mystery is all we know and possibly all we'll ever know about this topic.  It's a pretty liberating idea to get used to.  This doesn't discount knowledge, not all all.  But all knowledge is discovered and passed down through man.  Sure, it's empirically verified and peer reviewed, but at the end of it all, we know deep down that nobody can truly prove anything, because we're all comparing and contrasting to each other!  Where is the objectivity?  This extends more into philosophy than science, but both are intrinsic to our understanding of existence.  It's when we let go of trying to grasp these larger bodies of understanding that, I feel, we tap into some truths that exist.  Big problem?  There's no way to test them, so they stay personal.  Another big problem?  Most people don't get that, so when they feel they have the answer (from Scientist to Zealot), they refuse other perspectives...or worse, try to convince others.\n\nFor me, the more I allow existence to exist, the more I feel truth start to seep in from the cracks of my preconceptions.  This truth can take the form of many ideologies...some are hardcore material and others are delightfully spiritual.  Either way, all I want is truth.  And the only way to truth, to me of course, is stop pretending we know a damn thing.  Especially about something as infinitely complex as the origin of our entire existence and universe.  Natural or mythical, scientific or spiritual...we don't know. And to me, that's so damn liberating!\n\n/rant\n\nEdit - For nothing to exist, that would mean nothing exists, which means existence (in the form of nothingness) is actually eternally existing.  Think about it...but not for too long.  :)", "I want answers damn it! But I'm afraid as humans, there's just things we can't understand or are brains can fathom. This whole topic crosses my mind quite frequently. Perhaps it's just something that will remained unsolved. ", "When scientists say there was \"nothing\" they really mean \"we can say NOTHING about it.\"\n\nThere might have been something before the big bang. But at the moment of the big bang, the fundamental laws of physics were warped/took a pause/TIFU. So all the formulas and measurements don't mean anything because for an instant, all bets were off and we can't really say anything intelligent about that moment. So we can't say anything about what happened beforehand either.\n\nIt's like a hot dog. There very well MAY have been actual meat used in the recipe. but once it came out of the hot-dog-hose, you got NO idea what it used to be in the first place and it's anybody's guess.", "We don't know right now, and we may never know, but a variety of different theories exist on the subject. Some still believe that the universe has always existed, though this is highly unlikely and has become increasingly less popular over the years. Some believe that there simply was no \"before\" since time has only existed since the universe began. One quite popular theory posits that the universe is cyclical and will continue to expand and contract for eternity. Others say that the universe is part of a larger multiverse, where our universe is just a bubble within the next largest universe. Brane theory, which IIRC, is tied to string theory, states that the universe exists between two parallel branes which, because they are actually wavy, sometimes come into contact and our universe was actually a product of these two branes touching. Some theorize that the universe exists within a black hole, which is located in a parallel universe.\n\nThere's all sorts of exciting theories out there right now, and we can only hope that some day we'll find the right answer to this impossible problem! Sorry for the wall of text. If you still want to know more [the Wikipedia page on multiverses](_URL_0_) is a great place to start.", "I have an explanation which I think would actually be pretty decent for a five year old, though I wouldn't recommend going and telling any five year olds, because it's pretty heavy.\n\n\"Okay, so remember when you were born? Sort of? Just barely? Okay, so remember before that? No, of course not, you weren't alive, nothing existed to you, you have no memories of that. That's what it was like.\"", "Nothing can't \"exist\".  The universe defines existence.  Nothing existed before the universe existed.  However, ~laws of being~ apparently create existence. People are too stupid to understand and explain such things.  We are products of universe-being, and probably have no insight into universe-making.", "I'm going to go out on a limb and say I wasn't the only one who thought it was about the T.V. show...", "I'm probably going to get downvoted into oblivion, but I must ask. The concept of no past, present, or future is difficult to comprehend. This would imply that the matter needed for the universe, has always existed. I find this difficult to believe, because my brain can not rationalize something with no beginning. In every aspect of my reality, everything has a cause and an effect, a beginning and an end. No one will ever be able to prove these concepts, because there are no records or witnesses to observe the early history of the universe. The only thing that can be proven is that the universe is expanding, therefore if the expansion is reversed, it leads to shrinking into nothing. I must take what came before the expansion, on faith. In short, everything always existed and arranged itself into people and trees by chance. How is this not any more ridiculous than an uncaused, eternal maker of everything?", "TL;DR - Nobody knows.", "All matter was condensed into a single point. Think of a point on a graph- no x, no y, no z. These dimensions include time as well. And according to a theory I'll refer to as GTD, the more matter/density something has, the slower time is, so with matter condensed into a single point, time would literally slow to zero, thus, there was nothing, but, something.", "My theory is that the big bang for our universe was just the next iteration of this cycle. It's not that there was nothing before, but that all of the mass in the universe was pulled together by gravity and BANG now the next iteration starts.", "ITT: difficult science spawns philosophical discussion", "I had a physics professor tell me that science can explain everything from a few nanoseconds after the big bang to the edge of the universe. Beyond those limitations,  anything is possible,  or nothing. ", "Not many people seem to have actually given an answer beyond \"impossible to know\" or \"this question makes no sense due to a technicality\". There actually are theories about the idea, involving quantum physics, it's not just a complete mystery. Unfortunately, I'm probably way too late for anyone to notice this, but here it is anyway.\n\nFirst off, we didn't know there was anything outside the Milky Way until 1925. *1925*. Seriously. Edwin Hubble first started talking about it in 1922, and some others even earlier, but they were all ridiculed until Hubble finally formally proved there was trillions times more in 1925 and it was huge news in the scientific community, like if CERN had turned out to be right about those superluminal neutrinos. Keep that in mind while thinking \"No, this seems too ridiculous.\" As Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle once said, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.\n\nSo, maybe we'll have found out that the Big Bang was actually just one of many explosions that's just now joining the rest of the smoke clouds, it would explain why some physicists theorize that the universe may actually be infinite. In the early 1900s, we thought only this galaxy existed. The concept of a universe blew minds. Maybe this universe will turn out to be like a galaxy.\n\nAs for where it all originally came from, with infinite time the most unlikely things can happen.\n\nFor example, a comparatively likely thing, such as an immensely dense ball of energy suddenly appearing in the middle of infinite nothing, due to quantum fluctuations. Quarks actually can appear out of nowhere, it's just that they appear for very short periods of time. Larger, even macroscopic things could also appear, but as they get larger they also become much less likely. If they're larger, they're also more stable and don't appear for very short periods of time.\n\nImmensely dense balls of energy are obviously unimaginably rare, but given infinite time? It's gotta happen at some point. And an immensely dense ball of energy is basically what the Big Bang started off with.\n\nImmensely dense balls of energy have very low Kolmogorov complexity, for obvious reasons. Basically Kolmogorov complexity is how much information you need to describe something, and though it's mostly used in computer science, once we get into this really crazy abstract physics stuff, anything can apply.\n\nImmensely dense balls of energy can be summed up thusly: They are x in radius, y in density, and made up of loads of energy. So, really low Kolmogorov complexity. So, if we start thinking about the universe in terms of a massive, massive quantum field, with infinite time for anything to happen, it's much more likely that the Big Bang would have happened randomly, than for something like an armchair to suddenly appear, or a whale plummeting to the ground out of Earth's sky.\n\nAnd that's what the Big Bang was, an immensely dense point of energy that suddenly happened for some reason and started expanding outwards, as immensely compressed things tend to do under such circumstances.\n\nOf course now we get into where the massive quantum field came from, and who knows, maybe we're just a simulation run by a computer programmer the next simulation level up who decided to start a program defining the rules for quantum fluctuation and quarks and all that shit and then specified a positively enormous (subjectively, in our eyes enormous of course) quantum field and just let it start running.\n\nBut at least we're one step further back in the quest for how it all began, assuming this is true.", "This entire thread makes my brain hurt so bad...", "The Big Bang does not preclude the existence of other universes or other dimensions, even though it is generally accepted that nothing existed pertaining to our particular universe before the Big Bang.  The mere idea that other universes could exist (reinforced by a myriad of scientific theories from the 20th and 21st centuries) invalidates the meaning of the word \"universe\" since now it cannot be said to encompass all of creation.\n\nAs for your other question \"How can nothing exist? What does it mean for nothing to exist?\" I would say this is more philosophical.  I would direct you towards Ontology, Metaphysics and even linguistics for erudition on said subject.  Here is a landmark lecture to whet your appetite by Martin Heidegger on the subject of being and nothingness:\n\n_URL_0_", "Time is a dimension, think of it as another direction like up or down. When the big bang happened is when all of the dimensions expanded. Before that there was no time, there was also no space. Space expanded and is still expanding. I know that is hard to grasp.\n\nThe \"nothing\" \"before\" the big bang was only \"nothing\" for a give value of \"nothing\" energy existed. Matter and antimatter popped in and out of existence constantly. As long as the anti-matter and the matter were balance nothing happened.13.7 billion years ago 3000 anti matter particles popped into existence and 3001 matter particles popped into existence(this ratios are correct but the actual number of particles is unknown, or at least unknown to me). They were not balanced so it caused the biggest explosion ever. This explosion was so big that until the universe was 300,000 years old there was no gravity. Gravity travels at the speed of light and the expansion of the universe was so fast that it took 300,000 years for gravity to catch up with the expansion. ( just like Wile E Coyote not falling out of the air until he looks down. It took the Universe 300,000 years to look down and be affected by gravity)\n\nWe are still learning about how the smallest particles pop in and out of existence constantly. We can entangle particles so as they pop in and out of existence, we can make them affect each other, this seems to happen independently from Time.  As we learn more about how the smallest particles of matter behave we will learn more about the \"nothing\" that existed \"before\" the big bang.", "Here's an interesting video you might like. It basically claims that the question as to the origin of the universe begins to break down if we assume that there is only one universe, and that quantum mechanics might imply that there are nearly countless similar universes. \n\nIts by Laura Mersini-Houghton, who developed a theory for the birth of the universe that made 5 predictions, four of which have since been observed (CMB cold spot, power suppression at low l's, alignment of quadrupole with octupole, dark flow, and Sigma8~0.8)\n\n_URL_0_", "Try to imagine the time before you were born.", "I actually really enjoy topics like this. One idea I really like is that the big bang is the exhausted matter from a wormhole. In many different areas we can observe the presence of black holes. We are not sure how they work past their event horizon and that can offer a lot of speculation as to what precisely they are. It is becoming increasingly apparent that mostly every observable thing in our universe has an opposite. The opposite of a black hole would essentially be what we should call a white hole, but in what instance has anyone actually observed that a whitehole existed? It is possible to assume that the big bang was the only known white hole that may have existed.\n\nIf I think of things this way, I would have to assume that before our universe must have existed an even larger universe. I suppose out of the black holes in our universe could be born even smaller universes. ", "There is a great difficulty in trying to comprehend or even \"see\" what is \"outside\" our Universe or what happened \"before\" the big bang. \"Before the big bang\" is not even a concept, because time itself came into existence when the big bang occured - so there is no \"before\". It is unreachable, unknowable (at this point) the same way that we could not see beyond our own Universe. If there are other Universes, contained within infinite space, we will never know it because the light will never reach us. The gross rate of expansion of the Universe exceeds the speed of light (imagine two trains racing away from each other) while each is going 70 mph, their combined speed of separation is 140. So if the gross rate of expansion of the Universe exceeds the speed of light, we will never be able to see light from a neighboring \"big bang\". we can only see the light generated within our own. In the same way - we are limited from seeing (we can postulate but not \"see\" other dimensions of existence) or \"the time before\" the big bang. We are locked in the spacetime of our own Universe so while we can postulate a \"time before\". We can't touch it. How can you prove a \"time before\" everything that is...existed? ", "There is no first cause for the universe. You're looking for causation; like the cause of a pencil is a tree or the cause of a rock is a volcano, something like that. Scientists say the Big Bang was the cause of the Universe. The name is misleading because it implies that it happened very quickly, almost like an explosion, but in reality, it happened much slower. But anyways, there is no first cause for the universe. The universe goes through a process of expansion and contraction over and over again, since time without beginning. \n\nAlso, you're distinguishing the qualities of existing and non-existing. You say that now the universe is existing, where-as before the universe was created, it was non-existing. In reality, things neither exist nor not-exist. Everything arises in dependence upon something else. No one thing exists independently of something else. Quarks and Gluons make Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons, they make molecules and so forth. Even if you look at a single elementary particle, the smallest thing in the universe, it will have a left side, a right side, a top, a bottom, a front, and a back. And even if you took one of those parts, they would have a beginning and an end, a beginning of the beginning, an end of the beginning, a beginning of the end, and an end of the end, and so on. This is called an infinite regression. \n\nThe universe is really like a mirage in the desert or a rainbow, it appears but it lacks an essence of its own. Our human bodies are also part of the universe. Our bodies are made from the same atoms that comprise the world around us, and so there is no difference at all between our bodies and the world around us.\n\nOur minds, however, are different. The definition of mind is clarity, and its function is to cognize objects. Because of the mind, we are able to experience everything. If we had no mind, then nothing would appear to us and we would be like a piece of dead wood. So, the mind is the real cause for the universe to appear. \n\n", "I enjoy how people explain using absolute terms.  If I change \"was\" to \"possibly was\" or \"could have been\" and change \"is\" to \"may be\" throughout this thread, there is some pretty good discussion.\n\nYour answer to a five year old, \"Assuming the Big Bang theory is correct, we do not know what existed before the universe.  There are competing theories and if you study hard you might be able to grasp one or two of them.  Chances are though, you do not have the IQ to ever contribute to these theories.  Now go play with your toys.\"", "What is the philosophical term for dismissing a valid question by stating that it doesn't make sense, even when both parties understand the intent of the question?", "All Big Bang theory says is that roughly 14 billion years ago the universe was extremely tiny and in an extremely dense state. We can model it very well up until a few (tiny) fractions of a second after \"it\" happened, but we can't say what it was because all of our physical models break down at that point.\n\nSo Big Bang theory doesn't really have anything to say about what happened at t=0, or before. There are lots and lots of ideas out there, but no way of telling which one might be correct (at the moment).", "I used to think I was reasonably intelligent. Fuck this thread. ", "Thanks for finally asking a question which has led to a sensible debate and series of answers! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbai1hn", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbaf9ez", "http://youtu.be/Pubb3QA_t1I", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbanopf", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbajyit", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbak0et", "http://youtu.be/7ImvlS8PLIo", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbamqpy", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbaibm8", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbakpte", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbamjm4", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbadp71", "http://youtu.be/1OLz6uUuMp8", "http://youtu.be/HoqSas2uFKw", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbam8o2", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbai43a", "http://youtu.be/BWyTxCsIXE4", "http://youtu.be/M9sbdrPVfOQ", "http://www.reddit.com/r/VideoLinkBot/submit", "http://radd.it/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbah3cd?only=videos&amp;start=1", "http://youtu.be/WxB1gB6K-2A", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbah97x", "http://youtu.be/EBtwavI0Jx4", "http://youtu.be/I6YcopmQKU0", "http://youtu.be/qY0EHI3Hg_Q", "http://youtu.be/JkxieS-6WuA", "http://youtu.be/RAsHLV7MOdA", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbalqrs", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbai2bp", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbalb0m", "http://youtu.be/ojEq-tTjcc0", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbakqgm", "http://youtu.be/UFuFFdK7i44", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbajadl", "http://youtu.be/yqzgYRBlslw", "http://youtu.be/Q5x4fB5QTPs", "http://youtu.be/nFjwXe-pXvM", "http://youtu.be/eyuNrm4VK2w", "http://youtu.be/8Q_GQqUg6Ts", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbae5mt", "http://youtu.be/-EilZ4VY5Vs", "http://youtu.be/PoRSBGD7vbA", "http://youtu.be/hhysLkKCWdc", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbajszz", "http://www.reddit.com/r/VideoLinkBot/wiki/faq", "http://youtu.be/dLrMVous0Ac", "http://youtu.be/orSwzXvYGs0", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbal3dy", "http://youtu.be/zqeqW3g8N2Q", "http://youtu.be/UnURElCzGc0", "http://youtu.be/EjaGktVQdNg", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbakna0", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbaedaw", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbampuv", "http://youtu.be/j-fWDrZSiZs", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbalyln", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbah384", "http://reddit.com/comments/1j1zhb/_/cbakf6p"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003U33OJS/ref=dv_dp_ep2"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heidegger5a.htm"], [], ["http://iai.tv/video/how-to-find-a-multiverse"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6kod7t", "title": "why do we enjoy a cold drink so much more than a warm oder medium temperature one (coke, cocktails, beer)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kod7t/eli5_why_do_we_enjoy_a_cold_drink_so_much_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djnkcug", "djnm5ks", "djnnjv4", "djnnz5p", "djno1bn", "djno46o", "djnon1s"], "score": [20, 42, 3, 4, 11, 3, 3], "text": ["The answer is mostly cultural. Some of us (like me) find cold drinks to be mostly unpleasant. \n\nIf you're American, you can trace cold drinks back to the time when ice had to be harvested and shipped. This made it very expensive, which means only the rich generally accessed it. As with any thing the rich do, those of lesser wealth will eventually ape it. With the advent of cheap tech that lets you make ice at home, it becomes fashionable to put it in everything.\n\nI only personally find really cold stuff appealing if I am sitting around in a hot room. ", "Temperature changes the flavor characteristics of food greatly. For example, cold makes you less able to taste properly compared to room temperature, in general. However, a lot of the draw of cool drinks is because it is a slight change on your system which is nice, like going from a snowy outside to a nice hot fire inside.", "In addition to everything else mentioned here: carbonated drinks have H2CO3 (carbonic acid) in them which will split into H2O and CO2. Heating it up will speed that up.", "I prefer most beverages to be at room temp or a little warmer - say comfortable enough to not burn your face off lol", "As far as beer is concerned not all beer is to be consumed super cold. Most american's consume American cereal lagers and do so at very cold temperatures. This [style of lager](_URL_0_) is not known for its taste in warm temperatures. I think it is safe to say most agree that it tastes terrible unless very cold. Many American's people associate this style with relaxing on a warm caribbean beach. I believe this is unique to the Americas, north, central and south. In Europe you'll find plenty of pilsner style and especially predominant in around the mediterranean but you will also equally find various other more complex styles. In the United States adjunct lagers are widely dominant especially when you leave areas where craft brewing has become popular. It has become a cultural aspect of the America's that these cereal based or adjunct lagers are what is thought of when discussing beer and also the cold temperatures that go along with them. I certainly could not imagine drinking a budweiser warm, yuck. \n\nMany, if not most, beer styles should be consumed slightly chilled or warmer and are most enjoyable in that range. Keep in mind beer was made long before refrigeration came about. Many more complex recipe's will lose their flavor if over chilled. These adjunct lagers are an exception to the typical 4 ingredient rule. IMHO they taste gross and if given the opportunity I'd drink something else anyways. Just as someone else called out Whiskey works the same way. Much of the flavor is lost if it is over chilled.\n\nLong story short, to repeat /u/stumbleOn , it is most cultural.", "It's somewhat cultural.  In China, cold drinks aren't as much of a thing.  You CAN get them, but in most little convenience stores, if you go in, the bottled water and whatnot is room temperature.  So far as I am aware, it has something to do with a traditional belief that cold drinks throw off your chi, and warm drinks are good for you.", "a very subjective question whose answer depends on the beverage, personal preference, situation and tradition. \n\nHot tea, coffee? Ice tea, coffee? Some people drink hot water, others cold, some beers are served at room temp, others cold, etc. \n\ntry r/food or r/askreddit "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjuncts"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8tdk19", "title": "when my phone is connected to my cars audio system via bluetooth, how does the person talking not hear themself through my speakers?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tdk19/eli5_when_my_phone_is_connected_to_my_cars_audio/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e16o1ck", "e16vc55", "e16xc9s", "e17fwy6", "e17h6rf", "e17lpe3", "e17sp0m"], "score": [1165, 102, 29, 9, 6, 8, 2], "text": ["Your car stereo uses active echo cancellation. It know what signal it's sending out of the speakers so it compares the signal it's picking up on the mic to the signal it's send out the speakers and tries to remove anything that is the same in both.\n\nThis is the same technology that works on your cell phone and on modern table stop speaker phones. ", "It seems that some people in the comments are mixing up two technologies.\n\nAcoustic Echo Cancellation is the technology that the OP is referring to. This records the incoming audio before it's played from the speakers, and then removes the *echo* after the microphone picks it up before sending it back to the other party.\n\nActive Noise Cancellation is the technology used in noise-cancelling headphones. This uses a microphone to pick up background noise and then plays back the inverted sound which effectively cancels it out for the listener.", "I often hear myself echoed back during phone calls at work, it is awful. So difficult to concentrate. I don't know what causes it, but it certainly happens. ", "I'm in customer service, we can tell when you're using car audio. There's a bad echo and loud background noise. We have to patiently ask you to repeat everything and often say it's hard to hear you. When you switch to your headset or handset, we usually say OMG I can hear you now!  \n\nI just wish my older co-workers would realize that shouting into their microphones doesn't help them hear better. Every day... \"I CAN'T HEAR YOU\" OMG Karen the microphone is 2 inches from your mouth, you need to adjust the volume in your ear, not your voice...\n\nAlso, if you're using car audio in the parking lot, everyone can hear everything from outside, Tammy. ", "If you own a Tesla Model 3 then every person you hear will complain that they can hear themselves. Can confirm. ", "One piece of advice for bluetooth users... when you go to your mechanics shop to have some work done, make sure you turn off the bluetooth on your phone. Countless times I've been working on a car and been inadvertently listening to someone's entire telephone conversation over their car stereo.", "My part time job is taking phone calls, and I can hear myself echoing on these types of calls. It's the worst."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "64522r", "title": "How would the energy of an explosion or bomb be dissipated in space if there is no medium to carry a shockwave?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/64522r/how_would_the_energy_of_an_explosion_or_bomb_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfzqb7d", "dfzt00a"], "score": [11, 2], "text": ["The energy would dissipate as an expanding ball of hot gas or whatever debris is left.       \nThe sockwave from a blast magnifies the damage but it isn't essential. If there isn't a medium to carry a shockwave the energy simply stays in the explosive.", "The molecules that are produced in the chemical reaction of the explosion would move away from it at high speeds without hitting any other gas molecules. While in a medium the kinetic energy of those molecules is transferred to medium molecules, when there is no medium the reactants do not loose kinetic energy, so there is no dissipation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3pfbbz", "title": "Would the DNA taken from my red beard hairs be the same as that from my majority black beard hairs? If so, what makes the red hair red?", "selftext": "My beard consists of 4 or 5 red beard hairs. What is the science behind those hairs?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3pfbbz/would_the_dna_taken_from_my_red_beard_hairs_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw6r9gm"], "score": [3], "text": ["Gene expression. Just like the DNA sequence in your nerve cells is identical to the DNA sequence in your skin cells, the thing that differs is gene expression. \n\nAll the steps of protein synthesis can be regulated to alter gene expression and even rate of protein breakdown can be regulated to alter phenotype. Ask if you want examples or further explanations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "y3tdl", "title": "Why did NASA not include a microphone on Curiosity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/y3tdl/why_did_nasa_not_include_a_microphone_on_curiosity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5s2q4o", "c5s3zne"], "score": [4, 8], "text": ["Very faint sound would be conveyed through the thin atmosphere, but space and weight on spacecraft is precious; unless an instrument has clear scientific goals it isn't going to be included.", "The idea of sending a microphone to Mars is one that NASA has considered and, in fact, implemented in the past; unfortunately, in both cases, this was unsuccessful.\n\nThe Mars Polar Lander that traveled to Mars in 1999 had a microphone on it, the [Mars Microphone](_URL_0_). Unfortunately, the mission was unsuccessful, when it appears a malfunction during the descent phase caused it to crash. The microphone was then incorporated into the Phoenix lander; this mission was successful overall, but because of problems with the subsystem of which it was a part, the microphone was never used.\n\nAs indicated [here](_URL_0_whatisit.html) on the web site of the Mars Microphone project,\n\n > While the atmosphere on the surface of Mars is indeed very thin, amounting to less than 1% of the pressure on Earth, laboratory experiments and theoretical calculations show that it is possible that sounds on Mars could be detected by standard microphone technology.\n\n >  Nevertheless, during the MPL mission we demonstrated that a low-cost ( < $100,000), small (25 cc) and lightweight (50g) instrument could be constructed for a major NASA planetary mission.\n\nSo why not on this machine?  It's just a choice.  For everything you launch, there is something you don't  launch.  For everything you include, you not only include the instrument, but the software and hardware to support it; that's more things that can go wrong, and could even affect other components of the mission (that's what happened in reverse to the microphone in the Phoenix lander mission).  So you have to balance possible payoffs against direct costs, opportunity costs, and risks in deciding what to include.  NASA apparently decided that the mission they went forward with was the better choice."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/marsmic/", "http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/marsmic/whatisit.html"]]}
{"q_id": "11od7z", "title": "Is it possible for a steak to be cooked by re-entry into the atmosphere?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11od7z/is_it_possible_for_a_steak_to_be_cooked_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6o7o3c", "c6o7p19"], "score": [9, 4], "text": ["The point about re-entry is that the speeds are WAY above the terminal velocity.\n\nAt terminal velocity your speed remains constant. During re-entry you break.\n\nThe orbital speed for a LEO is around 7 km/s. That's roughly 15000 mph or 25000 kmh. That is a good hundred times faster than terminal speed in the lower atmosphere.\n\nSo, yes, it would be possible to cook a steak through re-entry, most likely, though, it would just burn up.\n\nEdit: P.S. just read the question thread. If you simply drop a steak from a great height (not de-orbiting just dropping it from a stationary point over the earth) the answer gets more complicated as the speeds involved are much lower. Look for example at spaceship 1 which goes to space in a suborbital flight and has no need for re-entry heat shields.", "This was asked yesterday and the question then removed, whether by ops or the original poster I don't know. But [here](_URL_0_)'s the link to the discussion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11mf7a/xpost_from_rshittyaskscience_at_what_distance/"]]}
{"q_id": "6punjq", "title": "sharks, crocodiles etc. when they eat in the water their prey, where does all the water goes when they swallow? do they somehow filter meat from water or do they just swallow it all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6punjq/eli5_sharks_crocodiles_etc_when_they_eat_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dksd6fw", "dksdxhl", "dkseik7", "dksfyf9", "dksgh6w", "dkshnby", "dksjqum", "dkskvho", "dksm6ng", "dksme2m", "dksmtcp", "dksnurs", "dksoq8w", "dksqftv", "dksqkdp", "dksr7zg", "dkstvfz", "dksucyz", "dksvge4", "dksvqhs", "dkt0vds", "dkt2t69", "dkt3g5p", "dkt7ihk", "dktggqq", "dktiuaq", "dktr1w3", "dktykr2", "dkx6qnz"], "score": [2336, 453, 1476, 87, 7, 4, 1507, 4543, 173, 2, 66, 3, 2, 7, 4, 41, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 13, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It goes into the blood and is dispersed to the cells like anything else, then excreted as needed. The wastes are filtered and excreted as well.... \n\nYup. \n\nSame as what happens when you drink anything. ", "Crocodiles can't eat underwater. In fact if one grabs you and pulls you under your best bet is to put your arm in its mouth and try to force open the flap at the back of its throat. If it doesn't let you go it will drown. ", "Sharks differ from bony fish in the way they handle saltwater.  Most fish have to drink large amounts of water to make up for what they lose to the salinity of the ocean.  Bony fish drink a lot and their kidneys are powerhouses that remove the excess salt.  \n\nSharks instead generate a lot of urea throughout their body which counterbalances the salt in the ocean water.  The urea (and other chemicals) make their tissues nearly as salty as the ocean.  They also excrete salt using a gland in their rectum - a similar gland appears in birds and some reptiles around their eyes, nostril or mouth.  \n", "There is a great BBC series 'Inside nature's giants', look for the episodes abt the great white shark and the crocodile, you won't regret it. The whole series is fabulos. They open up those species and show and explain like everything, how do they breathe, eat, move, everything. Highly recommended!", "Another ELI5 could have been \"how do sharks manage to live drinking salty water?\", same answer, they dont \"drink\" as such as their bodies exchange water due to the fact they are totally immersed in it. A tiny bit like why you go all wrinkly if you stay too long in the bath.", "Most of the others answered this well, but consider this as a super ELI5 for fish. They live in the water and most breathe it. Where does all the air go when you swallow food? Definitely nota scientific answer but an easier way to compare apples to oranges", "Dunno about sharks but crocs actually have a false palette at the back of their throat to prevent swallowing water when gripping things underwater. They will certainly tear out chunks underwater but they will only consume the meat above water by tilting their heads back to swallow the chunks they tore off. Whatever water is swallowed using *this* method is not a big deal for the crocs.", "I feel like the question was \"Does it gulp a lot of water into it's stomach along with the food and does the water stay there or does it somehow get pushed out. And the reason this is an interesting question would be, does gulping large quantities of water mean that the shark is always ingesting way more water than food? And does that affect how it has to eat.", "As others have said, crocodiles have a false palate to avoid too much water in, but they still swallow amounts of water (they don't wait for the food or even their mouth to drain before swallowing). Think of when you eat meat in broth or soup. As for sharks and if they would ask if humans eat air, it's actually true. We ingest air which is why we burp, especially when eating fast (it's not all stomach gases like cows and methane). Moms have to make babies burp because they ingest air, and if people want to force a burp, you need to swallow air.\n\nIn fact we also get water from food. It depends on the food content because some food needs water to be digested, but there are some desert rodents that get all their water from the food they eat (seeds, insects etc). The point is that food and water consumption are not separate. ~~There~~ The body doesn't go into \"food mode\" then \"water mode\", but our digestive systems separate them.\n\nEdit1: There/The\n\nEdit2: To clarify about 'water burps', that was to explain the comments about 'eating air' in humans. Adding much more detail, trying to keep it Eli5:\n\nCrocodiles, as humans, could get water into their lungs when eating. Humans avoid this when swallowing, when our tongue and other muscles close the way to the thrachea (airway) while letting food and water into the oesophagus (let's say 'foodway'), but we can still breathe while chewing. Crocodiles, as OP asked, need to bite underwater which would mean water getting into their lungs. That's why they have the palatal valve, like a trapdoor, but it actually closes both airway and foodway. This helps while biting (they don't chew, they break off chunks small enough to swallow), but they need to get out of the water to open the palatal valve and swallow. Bonus fact, they have a special tube from the nostrils to the airway, letting them breathe even with the palatal valve closed, like a snorkel. They can close their nostrils when swimming.\n\nSharks of course don't breathe air, and they don't have lungs. They get oxygen by getting water though their mouth  (and spiracle, a hole behind the eyes) and filtering the oxygen then throwing water out through the gills. They actually need water getting into their mouth to survive and many species need to move to help this. When they eat they just take water in as usual, and some goes to their stomach, becoming part of what they digest and then expel. Like others said, [urea in sharks keeps water concentration in their body balances with the sea water so they don't need to 'drink' as other fish do](_URL_0_). If we keep talking about water burps then these would be when they expel water through their gills, although sharks can vomit and even turn their stomach inside out to clear it (you can search shark stomach eversion).", "I always thought some of the water can be expelled through the gills. Is this not a thing?", "Water that rushes into the mouth of gilled animals is pushed out of their gills. The water entering the mouth during feeding gets pushed out the gills, and any that is swallowed is processed by the body the same way it  is when you drink water. They've got special glands in their digestive system to get rid of the excess salt.\n\nEdit: a few words, more detail    ", "It might help to think of your food sitting in a giant pool of air. How do you eat without consuming vast quantities of air? As you reduce the volume of your mouth by clenching your jaw, you hold the food with your teeth or tongue or even just gravity while your throat is closed. Your mouth stays open and the fluid (air for you and water for sharks etc) leaves via your mouth and then, once most of the fluid is out of your mouth, you open your throat and swallow.", "In the case of sharks/fish the excess water is evacuated via the gills. This functions sort of like a net in that the water passes out while the solids are diverted to the stomach.", "Not 100% sure about crocodiles (think they often surface to swallow big chunks) but fish just swallow it.\n\nIn order to maintain the correct salt balance in their bodies fresh water fish actually constantly \"pee\", but their urine is highly diluted and pretty much just water. Their blood is more salty than the surrounding water so their kidneys retain most of the salt and rapidly pass as much water as possible. Salt water fish have the opposite problem, their blood is less salty than the water so they loose water though osmosis, their kidneys work hard to filter out excess salt from ingested water, but retain as much water in their tissue as possible, so they produce very little urine and it's mostly concentrated salt.", "I feel like asking another question to give you a different perspective.\n\nWhen we eat something, what happens to the air? Do we swallow it?\n\nRemember that even outside of water, we're still living inside a fluid.", "\"Once an alligator captures something, it will hold it in its mouth and drag it underwater to drown it. It must then get back above water to swallow it -- otherwise, the alligator's stomach and lungs would fill with water. Using its incredibly powerful jaws (which are able to exert up to 2,000 PSI), an alligator will break bones or crush shells (in the case of turtles) to create a chunk of flesh that can fit down its throat. Then it will raise its head, open the palatal valve and swallow the piece whole. An alligator can digest anything it swallows -- muscle, bone, cartilage, etc. are all digested completely.\"\n\nSo just like mammals can't inhale a bunch of water without drowning, neither can gators. They keep they're throat closed while underwater and come up to swallow their prey without getting a mouthful of water. As far as Sharks and predatory fish, I'm assuming they swallow water all the time.\n\nHere's the [link](_URL_0_)  where I found this info if you would like to read more about gators! ", "You know how sometimes you get air in your stomach?  Then you burp, because you live in air.   \nThings that live in water can burp water!", "A crocodile has a valve in its mouth that allows it to opens its mouth in the water by shutting of its throat so water wont come in. I hope this helps a bit. Crocodiles also dont eat under water\n", "The piece on sharks by the top poster is accurate, crocodiles are much different. Crocodiles have a filter called an endoplasmic reticulum. The endoplasmic reticulum helps to divert impurities out of the water, and the water that is taken in when they are eating prey does go to their stomach. The fatty cells digest the water and it is pushed out through the endoplasmic reticulum keeping the gator from becoming waterlogged. I would know as I am married to a crocodile.", "Think about this - when humans eat, where does all the air go when we swallow?", "Wait, do fish and reptiles in water always have water in their mouth or when they close theirs mouths does the water get pushed out?", "Where does all the air go when you eat?", "I know baleen whales, such as the humpback and Blue whale, filter feed. They take in large amounts of water making them twice as heavy in that state. The whale then pushes it's tongue up to force the water through the baleen acting as filters letting the water out but keeping the prey, such as krill, in allowing it to swallow. I hope that helps.", "This is a very great question! You have been getting a lot of information on sharks and other fish. This is all good information about how fish evolved to live in an environment entirely of water. So I am going to answer your other question related to crocodiles, caimans, alligators and others in Crocodilia group. Unlike sharks, crocodiles need both land and water in order to survive. This creates a dilemma for these species, as they had to specialize for two completely different environments. So all members in the Crocodilia group have developed biological methods to make sure the creature doesnt intake too much water. One evolutionary system they have is what is called a palatal valve. It is a large flap in the back of their throat that opens and closes when they need to. This prevents water from rushing into their lungs when they open their mouths underwater. It also helps when they are hunting and dragging prey underwater. (Or eating the prey they dragged into the water!)\n\nSource: Im about to graduate with my Bachelors in wildlife biology\n\nI am linking a picture of the palatal valve in the throat of one of these creatures. Hope that helps! (NSFW)\n\n_URL_0_:", "I can't speak about sharks, but crocs have a valve (called the palatal valve) that closes off their throat when underwater. They keep their heads above water when they eat, tilting their heads back in a series of snaps to maneuver the food down their throat without swallowing water.  \n\nSource: [Here](_URL_0_) and I watch a lot of nature shows! ", "I like how every single person has said something about the way it was written instead of answering the question. To answer the question. I'm pretty sure that's why fish have gills, not only to breath but to release the excess water. Why do u think whales and dolphins have blow holes....", "I'm not sure about crocodiles, but sharks filter water out when they are eating. They take a bite and any water they take in flows out though their gills. They can sometimes swallow some water, yes, and they also can expel food out of their gills by accident sometimes. I work as an aquarist with sharks and have seen a squid stuck in a sharks gills because of this.", "Hi! I'm a Marine Bio student and I think I can answer the part of your question pertaining to sharks. Sharks can regulate their internal salt content through what's called a rectal gland. Essentially they process the salt to keep their bodies at a Hyposmotic state, so that way Water can diffuse through their skin and into their systems. The rectal gland essentially let's them excrete any of the salt they do not need to maintain the osmoregularity. Their a bunch of extra complicated stuff involving urea in their tissues, but I'll avoid that for my above answer.\n\nTL;DR: They do swallow some of the salt water, they are just able to process the salt out of their body", "I'm gonna have to drink large amounts of air as well?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/water-h2o-life/life-in-water/surviving-in-salt-water/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://animals.howstuffworks.com/reptiles/alligator3.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/search?q=crocodile+palatal+valve&amp;client=ms-android-virgin-us&amp;prmd=isvn&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiGr9GXpKrVAhUHOrwKHYIVA7QQ_AUICSgB&amp;biw=360&amp;bih=513#imgrc=Df0aqVKCtKzweM"], ["https://beprepared.com/blog/15262/what-to-do-if-you-get-caught-by-a-gator-or-croc/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b6tqhw", "title": "Are HE Explosions additive?", "selftext": "I GM a weekly game of Eclipse Phase, a Tabletop RPG that tries to stick to real science whenever possible. During a fight one of my players pulled the pin on 13 [High Explosive Grenades](_URL_2_)  and 9 [Frag Grenades](_URL_1_)  and the session ground to a halt as we argued if the resulting explosion radius would be additive or do something else. \n\nI know this isn't a game subreddit, but we're curious what would happen in real life.\n\nThe resulting damage from this blast was 557 points, which is similar to the average damage for another weapon in the game, an [Antimatter Grenade](_URL_0_) which is described as having \n > a blast equivalent to 10 tons of TNT.\n\nif that helps", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b6tqhw/are_he_explosions_additive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejngud4", "ejnikb8"], "score": [8, 13], "text": ["I don't know the properties of your fictional grenades but typically you would expect the volume affected to grow about linearly with the amount of energy released. The radius is the cube root of the volume, so naively you would expect R=(r1^(3)+r2^(3))^(1/3) for two explosives, and similar for more.\n\n[Enrico Fermi used a similar approach to estimate the yield of a nuclear weapon](_URL_0_).", "I work for a humanitarian NGO removing explosive remnants of war.\n\nYes, many little bombs make a big bomb.\n\nThe longer version is a bit more complicated, but requires a few equations i don't have access to here (i am on holiday).Imagine two HE grenades lying next to eachother (but not touching). If they both detonate at roughly the same time, they would both send out a blast wave. When waves meet, they increase. If the target is at an equal distance to both grenades, they will be hit hard.\n\nIf only one of the grenades detonate, or it detonate before the other, the most likely case is that the second grenade will be sent flying away by the first blast wave, rather than detonating. For a detonation to propagate from one piece of ordnance to another (this mean, first grenades set off the second one), they need to be very close. In practice they almost need to be touching. If you google pictures of bulk demolitions of explosive items, you will see that they are placed very carefully to ensure all items are touching another item to ensure everything blows up rather than spreading items all over the demolition site.\n\n  \n\n\nEdit:  \nIf you are curious, the only formula i remember of my head is the safety distance for unprotected items (meaning things we haven't build a wall of sandbags around:  \n\n\nR=370(AUW)\\^(1/5)  \nR is the safety radius in meters  \nAUW is the \"all out weight\" (in kg) of the item. This is the weight of the entire item including the explosive fill, casing fuzes etc."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://eldrich.host/index.php/gear/weapons/explosives/antimatter-grenade", "http://eldrich.host/index.php/gear/weapons/explosives/frag-grenade", "http://eldrich.host/index.php/gear/weapons/explosives/high-explosive-grenade"], "answers_urls": [["https://fermatslibrary.com/s/my-observations-during-the-explosion-at-trinity"], []]}
{"q_id": "268krh", "title": "What did Native Americans think of Venus Flytraps?", "selftext": "I was looking the plant up and realized that their territory was the eastern United States. That would imply that the native nations would be aware of them. Was there any special interest towards the carnivorous plant, or were they just another little swampland novelty?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/268krh/what_did_native_americans_think_of_venus_flytraps/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chp3vln", "chp85tv"], "score": [6, 5], "text": ["Various Siouan bands including the Cheraw, Chicora, and Waccamaw of what is now coastal North Carolina were known to have used this and other plant species as part of traditional herbal healing. Many cultures from every corner of the globe from time immemorial to the current day both self-treat and/or have some version of a \"medicine man\" who collects plants, animals, and minerals to both treat and prevent physical as well as spiritual (curses etc...) disease. The VFT held no special place above and beyond the myriad of other natural cures traditionally practiced by the various native tribes. On the other hand the writings of  Peter Martyr D'Anghera, \"DE ORBE NOVO\", in the sixteenth century (written in latin) do seem to perhaps depict the ritual use of this plant.", "In the biological classification system indigenous to the Southeast the major categories of life, there's a major category for humans, four-footed mammals, birds, below-world animals (a category that combines what the Linnean systems would call reptiles, amphibians, and fish), and plants. The various invertebrates were sometimes placed in their own category and sometimes included as a subdivision of below-world animals. \n\nThese categories, however, were recognized as imperfect and that various species bridged the taxa. The [liminality](_URL_0_) of these species invested them with special cultural significance and power.  These included species like bears (between the Two-Footed humans and the Four-Footed animals) and bats (between the Four-Footed animals and birds). Carnivorous plants, the flytrap and the pitcher plants, were seen as linking plants to humans or to predatory animals.\n\nThe flytrap's liminal position made it particularly potent in hunting medicine.  The Cherokee would trade for *yugwilu*, (depending on the context, could refer to the flytrap or the pitcher plant, or the roots of either) even after the Removal. It was particularly favored by fishermen because a small bit of yugwilu (presumably the flytrap in this instance) would augment the bait, employing the liminal power of the flytrap to attract a fish and prevent it from slipping off the hook. The water from a pitcher plant aided in memory.\n\n**Sources**\n\n* [Ethnobotany of the Cherokee](_URL_2_)\n\n* [The Southeastern Indians](_URL_3_)\n\n* [Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality", "http://books.google.com/books?id=OdwKAQAAIAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Sacred+Formulas+of+the+Cherokee&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=a1R_U4HpG8ObyATt1IKgCg&amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=flytrap&amp;f=false", "http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2293&amp;context=utk_gradthes", "http://books.google.com/books?id=jw2GSQAACAAJ"]]}
{"q_id": "2u6xeq", "title": "what is the purpose of having the light switch to the bathroom outside of the room instead of inside?", "selftext": "I'm unable to understand or find benefit for why some homes and hotels have the bathroom light switch outside of the bathroom instead of inside.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u6xeq/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_having_the_light/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co5nk8k", "co5phoc", "co5rxfa", "co60k7r"], "score": [42, 16, 2, 6], "text": ["In the UK you are not allowed to have electrical outlets in the bathroom.  Similarly,  you can not have a light switch in the bathroom unless operated by a pull cord. The issue is simply electrical safety around water and wet hands.  \n\nFor a good discussion of the differences between US and UK electrical safety and reasons why,  take a look here _URL_0_\n\nEdit: typo and added link", "Electrical Engineer here...\n\nWhen placing equipment within a distance from water (here in phx it's within 6 feet) you must have a ground fault interruption circuit. That is why the plugs in your rest room have that reset button.. now if you were to place the switch outside the room it will not require this additional premium. Take into account that in the residental market all building desisions are cost driven to ensure turnover profit. In the industrial/Commercial design world you make your money from operation not selling the building so initial cost is not an issue. ", "For safety reasons in Italy is forbidden by law to have a switch you can reach from bathtub or any other water supply ", "So brothers can mercilessly torture their sisters for taking too long in the bathroom."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=239225"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "62o5lv", "title": "why did circumcision become the norm in the us?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62o5lv/eli5_why_did_circumcision_become_the_norm_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfo1qht", "dfo4613", "dfo685r"], "score": [5, 8, 8], "text": ["It started with the theory it would stop the kids later from masturbating, so they don't go to hell or smth.", "I heard this story on Adams Ruins Everything. Apparently, (if it can be believed) Mr. Kelloggs (the maker of Kelloggs cereal) thought that jerking off was evil so he thought that if people were circumsized they would jerk off less. He led a campaign to get more people circumsized and he was quite successful. After a while, so many people were getting circumsized that it became the norm.", "1) Anti-masturbation mentality in religious and secular (scientific) groups in the late 1800s. Spearheaded by many, including Kellogg. \n\n2) Medical reports from WWI stating that it was healthier. It was, in the horrid conditions of the trenches where people could not clean properly. It is not much of a difference in people who maintain hygiene. \n\n3) People trusting their doctors to know better than them what should be done with infants. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b6kbmc", "title": "How do plungers work, and how is it so effective?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b6kbmc/how_do_plungers_work_and_how_is_it_so_effective/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejmkejf", "ejn05zm"], "score": [11, 2], "text": ["Plungers work best when the plunger fills with water and moves a volume of water against the clog. The inside of a toilet is convoluted and curved, but since water doesn\u2019t compress (air can be compressed and gets smaller; water basically doesn\u2019t compress at all).  The water that the plunger helps you move presses directly on the clog; usually allowing you to move the clog. ", "It's a pump. You push down, you force water against the clog. You pull back, you pull water into the plunger. Repeat. Eventually, and hopefully, you dislodge the clog. \n\nIf it's too stubborn, you whip out your drain snake, which sorta hooks into the clog and you pull it out. Some drain snakes are meant to poke holes in the clog. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "fy0gvb", "title": "Does the \"tyranny of the rocket equation\" also apply to cars?", "selftext": "I recognize that there are large differences in terms of not having to constantly fight gravity. But if you attached larger and larger gas tanks to a car, would you still get diminishing returns in the way you do with rockets going to space? Is there a theoretical maximum to the distance you can go (or delta-v you can get?) from a car lugging around an absurd amount of gasoline?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fy0gvb/does_the_tyranny_of_the_rocket_equation_also/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fmy6kek"], "score": [13], "text": ["Kind of. Adding more fuel to cars does have diminishing returns, but the equation is different.\n\nCarrying more weight lowers the efficiency of your car - aside from starting/stopping and climbing hills, it increases the rolling resistance. Cars get more efficient (and/or faster) as they burn off fuel. This is more evident in NASCAR or Formula 1 than it is on a road trip, but the effect is there either way. \n\nAirplanes have a more pronounced effect. The amount of thrust they need to maintain level flight is roughly linear with mass (mass = weight = required lift, lift divided by lift to drag ratio = drag, drag = thrust). An airliner might take off with 40% of its entire mass as fuel and burn most of this off during the flight, flying higher and burning less fuel later on.\n\nTherefore, adding the next 10 kg of fuel improves your range by less than the previous 10 kg of fuel did. This is rocket equation-ey, and even has a logarithm term in it somewhere. But it's not ve x ln(m0/mf). In both cases, we're looking at system with zero acceleration - the amount of fuel required just to fight assorted drag forces and maintain your speed. And in practice, the effect will be much less punishing. If you double the fuel in your car, you will *nearly* double its range."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "28n0vu", "title": "why are conspiracies typically dismissed without investigation?", "selftext": "I realize most conspiracies are often ridiculous and contradicting, however, some are quite plausible but people typically just dismiss them out of hand. What is the psychology behind those that are willing to believe versus those that won't. Is there a middle ground? What are some conspiracies that you believe to be plausible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28n0vu/eli5_why_are_conspiracies_typically_dismissed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cicg8cy", "cicgds3", "cich67o", "ciclukv"], "score": [16, 6, 5, 2], "text": ["Usually, conspiracy theories **are** investigated, in some way. Quite thoroughly, in any instance where there could be truth to the allegations. But then the people who believe in them won't take \"that insane thing you said didn't happen\" for an answer. \n\nInstead, they decide that whoever did the investigating is part of the conspiracy. \n\nObviously, some things do not require investigation. Like the conspiracy theory which states that the Queen of England is a reptilian space alien. We can dismiss that one out of hand.\n\nEDIT: A perfect example of a conspiracy theory that's been totally investigated to death: the idea that the moon landing was faked. Ludicrous amounts of evidence has been amassed, proving that it wasn't faked. The footage has been examined to a ridiculous level of detail. The fact of the matter is, it was not possible to fake the landing, using 1969 technology. But people refuse to accept that, and go on believing what they want...in part because it makes them feel good to be \"in the know,\" or \"not a sheep like everyone else.\" \n\nThat's the main psychology, in my opinion. Conspiracy theorists are usually massive egotists. They can't stand the idea that they might not be smarter than everyone else, and they **certainly** cannot entertain the possibility that they might be incorrect.", "There is a saying popularised by Carl Sagan which states \"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof\". Most conspiracy theorys fail to provide such proof, instead relying on hearsay or laymans opinion.", "Most conspiracies that are widely believed, don't get called \"conspiracy\".\nFor example, it is widely believed in the US that a group of about 20 Sunni Arabs plotted to fly 4 planes into very important buildings in the US. This was surely a group of people secretly plotting some action. It was a conspiracy.\n\nBut by connotation, a conspiracy theory is not widely believed.", "As others have said, quasi-rational and evidence based conspiracies are debunked, but there is a primary factor that keeps them 'alive':\n\nGod of the Gaps - There are an endless 'long tail' of small details that can be highlighted and focused on with an ominous \"*Well... then how do you explain THIS?!?!*\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52etuy", "title": "what is exactly happening when someone is hallucinating? what is the brain doing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52etuy/eli5_what_is_exactly_happening_when_someone_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7jnlfe", "d7jslf3", "d7jwyt6"], "score": [11, 6, 10], "text": ["It would depend on what is causing the hallucinations.\n\nHallucinations from magic mushrooms are the result of psilocybin, the chemical in the mushrooms, suppressing the barriers between different regions of the brain.  This allows crosstalk to occur within the brain.  The senses get overloaded, and you see patterns, colours, and distorted reality.\n\nSource:\n_URL_0_", "In your brain, there are different areas that are responsible for different aspects (example - your Limbic System is in charge of emotional control, your Cerebellum is responsible for motor control, etc.)  In a normal individual, the neurons (brain cells) communicate with each other through different chemicals to either induce or inhibit certain things from happening.  For example, when you want to walk the neurons will induce your muscles to begin the actions of walking; in contrast, if you've ever been hyper-alert due to an adrenaline rush, you might notice you're not hungry due to your gastro system being inhibited.  In someone experiencing hallucinations, there are normal signaling pathways that aren't working, and parts of the brain are inhibited/induced when they shouldn't be.\n\nThere's also an interesting aspect of narcolepsy that applies - sufferers will often experience hallucinations (they're often thought to be dreams) right before falling asleep or right after waking up, because the \"dream\" part of the brain is activated while the person is about to lose/gain consciousness.  The \"dream\" part will overlap on the \"reality\" portion of the brain.", "Be warned:  This is, in the spirit of ELI5, simplified a great deal.\n\nMany of your brain's sensory systems have 'levels'.  Take, for example, the visual system.  In the visual system, low levels might encode the presence of light in a particular part of your field of view.  Neurons in higher levels might encode the presence of edges or corners in a particular part of your field of view.  The next level up might put those together into a more cohesive shape.\n\nSo, at the highest levels, you have neurons that encode relatively abstract things like \"dog\", instead of \"brown\" or \"furry\" or \"dog-sized\".  \n\nBecause of this, in order to hallucinate a dog, your brain doesn't need to accidentally activate the exact combination of mental \"pixels\" that form the image of a dog.  Instead, if some \"dog\" neurons get activated, you're going to see a dog.  \n\nOther neurons may not encode the presence not of objects, but of properties, or actions.  So you might have a \"running\" neurons somewhere, a \"barking\" neuron, an \"angry\" neuron, a \"happy\" neuron...\n\nAnd so you can get more complex thing represented by just a few neurons.  Activate the \"happy\", \"dog\", and \"running\" neurons, and you get a hallucination of a running dog, and you get the impression somehow that this dog is happy.  Activate \"dog\", \"angry\", and \"barking\", and you have a hallucination of a dog barking at you, and you feel sure that they are *angry* barks.\n\nNow activate the \"angry\" neuron while looking at a lamp, and you may become rather convinced that the lamp is angry at you.  Activate \"angry\" and \"menacing\" and \"predatory stalking motions\" while looking at the lamp, and you're going to probably hallucinate that the lamp is angry at you, it's dangerous, and it's going to come get you.\n\nEssentially, hallucinations occur when our mental representation of things get activated inappropriately.  Normally, your mental representation of things like \"dog\" should only get activated when you actually see or hear (smell etc.) a dog, or when you are thinking about a dog abstractly / remembering a dog doing something / whatever.  But if those mental representations get activated when there's no reason, then you might not know that they are not real, and you might automatically connect them to things you see around you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.iflscience.com/brain/magic-mushroom-chemical-hyper-connects-brain/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ljjxn", "title": "why american sport teams expect that the public should pay for their stadiums.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ljjxn/eli5_why_american_sport_teams_expect_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2t79oa", "c2t7fsq", "c2t8zyx", "c2t9dct", "c2t9fnb", "c2tavea", "c2tczz5", "c2uis80", "c2t79oa", "c2t7fsq", "c2t8zyx", "c2t9dct", "c2t9fnb", "c2tavea", "c2tczz5", "c2uis80"], "score": [31, 17, 10, 7, 4, 2, 3, 2, 31, 17, 10, 7, 4, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because they can.\n\nIn most instances where a team threatens to leave if the city/state/whatever doesn't build them a new stadium, they get their stadium. \n\nLots of people rely on the team for employment, and plenty of others like the team enough that they would hate to see it leave. This results in political pressure to keep the team around.", "Because politicians and the public are made to believe that the increased revenue and jobs for the surrounding community will eventually make back the money spent on the construction of the stadium. Basically, since the public would seem to benefit, it makes sense to spend public money on it. \n\nIn truth, there's no way to ever know if that has ever happened or would ever happen, because there's no real data to compare and say \"Look, you made X more dollars than you would have if you hadn't built this stadium!\" It's just speculation. In a lot of cases, though, it's plainly obvious that the stadium was a huge net loss for the community. Not so much in the US, but look at Greece after the Olympics, South Africa after the World Cup, etc.\n\nSource: \"Soccernomics\" by Simon Kuper and Stephen Szymanski", "I think its's because sportsteams have so much leverage. \n\nSports stadiums bring in tourism, jobs, economic growth, so it ends up profiting the public more anyway. \n\nIf City A won't pay for it, they'll find a City that will.", "For anyone looking for a more in depth look at stadium subsidies [Dennis Kucinich had a hearing about this exact topic in 2007](_URL_0_)", "There's a movement to get us a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. Part of the current budget proposal is a hotel and restaurant tax for those in the county where the stadium is to be built. These hotels and restaurants would benefit hugely by having an NFL stadium near them, and they know it.", "There are numerous reasons.\n\nThe first is that the city will own the stadium, not the team.  This means that the city has the power to lease the stadium out to any tenant for any purpose.  Thus, the city can use that stadium for civic events pretty much rent-free (and subsidized by the sports team and other tenants).  Also, they have some control over which other acts get booked: if they don't want, say, Lady Gaga coming to town, they have the ability to deny her the largest venue without overstepping their bounds.  Additionally, it gives the city some leverage with the teams playing in it--the lease can be conditional upon the team keeping proper order and ensuring riots don't happen (though the team really can't stop anything that happens because of people watching at home).  \n\nThat's why the *city* wants to pay for the stadium.  \n\nSports teams want it because while they only use the stadium during a part of the year, they would still have to maintain it through the *whole* year.  They would also have to pay taxes on it.  The fact is that event-specific rent is a lot cheaper than just flat-out owning the stadium.  ", "Oh give me a break. stadiums get built fine without gigantic subsidies in other countries for far less lucrative sport leagues. If it was any other industry, redditors would moan about the rich buying off politicians", "One counter-argument to the idea that a stadium brings jobs and an economic boost, particularly to the neighborhood it's in - a sentiment often pedaled by venue developers looking to get a sweet tax deal from another locality - is this:\n\nIf sports venues were always net positives to a community, then we wouldn't be taking old stadiums out of poor areas and re-building them in better areas.  Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park is a good example.  If Tiger Stadium were such a boon to the area it were in, there would have been a lot more political pressure to keep the Tigers where they were.", "Because they can.\n\nIn most instances where a team threatens to leave if the city/state/whatever doesn't build them a new stadium, they get their stadium. \n\nLots of people rely on the team for employment, and plenty of others like the team enough that they would hate to see it leave. This results in political pressure to keep the team around.", "Because politicians and the public are made to believe that the increased revenue and jobs for the surrounding community will eventually make back the money spent on the construction of the stadium. Basically, since the public would seem to benefit, it makes sense to spend public money on it. \n\nIn truth, there's no way to ever know if that has ever happened or would ever happen, because there's no real data to compare and say \"Look, you made X more dollars than you would have if you hadn't built this stadium!\" It's just speculation. In a lot of cases, though, it's plainly obvious that the stadium was a huge net loss for the community. Not so much in the US, but look at Greece after the Olympics, South Africa after the World Cup, etc.\n\nSource: \"Soccernomics\" by Simon Kuper and Stephen Szymanski", "I think its's because sportsteams have so much leverage. \n\nSports stadiums bring in tourism, jobs, economic growth, so it ends up profiting the public more anyway. \n\nIf City A won't pay for it, they'll find a City that will.", "For anyone looking for a more in depth look at stadium subsidies [Dennis Kucinich had a hearing about this exact topic in 2007](_URL_0_)", "There's a movement to get us a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. Part of the current budget proposal is a hotel and restaurant tax for those in the county where the stadium is to be built. These hotels and restaurants would benefit hugely by having an NFL stadium near them, and they know it.", "There are numerous reasons.\n\nThe first is that the city will own the stadium, not the team.  This means that the city has the power to lease the stadium out to any tenant for any purpose.  Thus, the city can use that stadium for civic events pretty much rent-free (and subsidized by the sports team and other tenants).  Also, they have some control over which other acts get booked: if they don't want, say, Lady Gaga coming to town, they have the ability to deny her the largest venue without overstepping their bounds.  Additionally, it gives the city some leverage with the teams playing in it--the lease can be conditional upon the team keeping proper order and ensuring riots don't happen (though the team really can't stop anything that happens because of people watching at home).  \n\nThat's why the *city* wants to pay for the stadium.  \n\nSports teams want it because while they only use the stadium during a part of the year, they would still have to maintain it through the *whole* year.  They would also have to pay taxes on it.  The fact is that event-specific rent is a lot cheaper than just flat-out owning the stadium.  ", "Oh give me a break. stadiums get built fine without gigantic subsidies in other countries for far less lucrative sport leagues. If it was any other industry, redditors would moan about the rich buying off politicians", "One counter-argument to the idea that a stadium brings jobs and an economic boost, particularly to the neighborhood it's in - a sentiment often pedaled by venue developers looking to get a sweet tax deal from another locality - is this:\n\nIf sports venues were always net positives to a community, then we wouldn't be taking old stadiums out of poor areas and re-building them in better areas.  Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park is a good example.  If Tiger Stadium were such a boon to the area it were in, there would have been a lot more political pressure to keep the Tigers where they were."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://house.resource.org/110/org.c-span.197402-1.raw.txt"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://house.resource.org/110/org.c-span.197402-1.raw.txt"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22d9su", "title": "Why is the Second Sino-Japanese War not lumped in with World War 2 like the rest of the fronts are? What are some interesting stories/facts about the conflict?", "selftext": "I've never understood this. China is never considered one of the allies and the conflict, apart from Nanking, is rarely discussed in history class (at least in America). In some way or another it involved almost every country that was a combatant and the outcomes are still being seen today yet I know hardly anything about the topic. \n\nSomebody fill me in!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22d9su/why_is_the_second_sinojapanese_war_not_lumped_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgltpbq", "cglu0tw", "cgm8ur2"], "score": [11, 2, 2], "text": ["Even at the time, the question was problematic. The United States, as a matter of foreign policy, had made the strengthening of China a priority well before the actual Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria infuriated the United States and helped unleash a chain of events culminating in the American economic sanctions that the Japanese used as pretext and justification for Pearl Harbor. \n\nDespite that, the conflict did not become international until the onset of world war II. While there was violence that occassionaly spilled over - the sinking of the Panay - they were limited in scope. Perhaps if the Panay had led to immediate war, the Sino-Japanese war would be considered the same as WWII, but it didn't and isn't. \n\nWhen the US formally declared war in 1941, it was on the basis of Pearl Harbor not China. Therefore they are considered separate (but linked) events. \n\nYour other question about China being considered one of the allies, this was also contentious. The United States pushed repeatedly for China's involvement, while the UK was skeptical. Ironically on France, the positions where opposite - the UK pushed for more French involvement, while the US was skeptical. Ultimately the final and most important outcome of membership as a allied power was a position on the United Nations (which is the formal name that Roosevelt used for the allies during parts of the war) security council, which was negotiated during the war. Both France and China made the list. ", "China was considered an ally hence their permanence seat on the UN Security Council  along with the other major allied powers: USA, France, UK and USSR/Russia. Their was some issue though since China itself was in a civil war between the communists and nationalists at the start of the war as well as for years after the end of WW2. Some people do consider the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War as the start.  that was a regional war though where as the invasion of Poland brought the UK and France into the war along with their empires which covered much of Africa along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.  You could argue it wasn't really a world war until December 7 1941 which saw America enter the war along with the Japanese invading European held Asian territory thus connecting the Pacific front and the European ones. It's really just a matter of choosing when you feel the term best applies.", "1939 is generally considered to be the start date of the conflict because it was at that point that multiple powers were at war (UK, France, Germany, Poland).  The Sino-Japanese War was, as the name states, between China and Japan, despite the fact that Germany, the Soviet Union, and the US were involved to some degree on the Chinese side.\n\nAs for interesting stories about the war, I have a few...\n\nOne of the direct causes of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was the Japanese annexation of Manchuria in the Mukden incident of 1931.  One of the prime instigators was an officer named Kenji Ishiwara.  For his work in the incident, he had expected to be executed for violating orders, but he was instead promoted, and became vice chief-of-staff for the Kwantung Army.  Once there, he rapidly grew disillusioned with the IJA presence in China, and became one of the few outspoken dissidents against Tojo and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, culminating in his forced retirement after demanding Tojo be executed for treason.  Talk about an about-face!\n\nIn the battle of Kunlun Pass, the Nationalist Chinese deployed a fairly large force of Soviet and Italian tanks to rapidly encircle and wipe out a Japanese force.  Amusingly, this might be the only instance of Italian tanks winning a pitched battle without German support.  Unless you count the German equipped infantrymen, at least.\n\nWhile the Marco Polo incident is typically seen as the moment when the 2nd Sino-Japanese war started, the war itself did not truly begin until Nationalist troops attacked the Japanese \"marines\" (which were really more ground troops attached to the Navy) in Shanghai.  Actually, the attack on Shanghai was a questionable idea.  Von Falkenhausen, the German military adviser to Chiang Kai-Shek, advocated a strategy in line with German defensive doctrines-namely, to pull back troops behind a massive defense line between Shanghai and Nanjing, which was heavily fortified and likely would have made the Japanese losses even steeper than they were in real life.  However, Chiang felt that the only way China could win was with external intervention.  Many foreign nations had concessions in Shanghai, and he felt that by \"bringing the battle\" to them, he could get their intervention.  Alas, the gamble failed.\n\nHersham's Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze provides several good stories about the Battle of Shanghai.  In addition to the 400 heroes of the warehouse, there's also a bit about the the Japanese cruiser Izumo, which was a 19th century rustbucket that was basically the IJN's way of saying \"we're helping.\"  That lone cruiser provided enough naval artillery support to stop the Chinese troops from overrunning the Japanese marines.  The Chinese tried to sink it many times, via divebombers, torpedo boats, onshore artillery, and I believe at one point the use of frogmen was considered, but all failed.  That cruiser would survive until the remnants of the IJN were wiped out at Kure Naval Base in 1945."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25h4n5", "title": "if helen keller was born blind and deaf, how on earth did she learn anything?", "selftext": "I don't even really understand how she wasn't a vegetable, since we learn about how to think and reason and communicate through either listening or reading. Yet she turned out to be a genius. How?!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25h4n5/eli5_if_helen_keller_was_born_blind_and_deaf_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chh3qbn", "chh3roo", "chh4cfs", "chh4daj", "chh4fhu", "chh5h8c", "chh6n50", "chh8n2h", "chh9syt", "chha9pl", "chhc1ci", "chhcbue", "chhd0gp", "chhqqnp"], "score": [149, 62, 3, 4, 16, 2, 38, 3, 7, 3, 17, 3, 20, 3], "text": ["She was actually born with both sight and hearing, but lost it to disease at 19 months.\n\nShe learned via touch and by having the words for various things spelled into her palm.\n\nShe learned to speak by feeling peoples lips as they talked.", "She had a memory of water from the time before she lost her sight/hearing. Her teacher spent a lot of time trying to teach her signs, but she didn't get it until the teacher happened to run her hand under water and then do the sign for water. She remembered water, associated the sign, and then she was off and running.\n\nHer \"signs\" weren't sign language, by the way--they were based on a system of tapping the palm of her hand.\n\nShe could also read and write braille.", "Imagine going through life in darkness almost nearly isolated, with alien like beings guiding you.. and then you graduate college. Remarkable work by Anne Sullivan.", "Go to NefFlix and download *The Miracle Worker.*", "Well, she wasn't really *born* blind and deaf, but she did lose her sight and hearing at a *very* young age to scarlet fever or possibly meningitis.\n\nThat said, she lived her early childhood without really any way to learn or communicate with others. But her parents brought in Anne Sullivan, who was blind herself. But Sullivan was also a certified teacher of the blind. She derived a system of signing where the listener would *feel* (as opposed to see) the hand signs. In short, she taught Keller how to communicate by touch.\n\nThere's actually a famous movie about the relationship called *The Miracle Worker.*", "Miracles... that were worked.", "the truth and only correct answer is that she had an amazing teacher. \n\n\nThere's a lot more to it than that but without Anne Sullivan her story would be very different or non-existent. ", "Don't you remember [The Miracle Worker] (_URL_0_)?\n\nAnne Sullivan managed to teach Helen Keller how to communicate using touch. ", "From what I've heard, she learned how to masturbate by reading her own lips.", "You can watch [The Miracle Worker](_URL_0_) on YouTube. It chronicles Helen Keller's lessons with Anne Sullivan. She learned sign language by feeling Sullivan's hands.", "I get what OP is saying... and I did a few units in school on Helen Keller.. but I STILL can't seem to wrap my head around it. Like ... how did she even learn how to structure sentences and write these great speeches? How do you teach someone by letting her feel something? a word or object and have comprehension? I know the method.. but HOW!!!? ", "Her flight instructor (Anne Sullivan) taught her everything.", "A lot of patience from whoever is working with her.  It's more frustrating for them than terrifying. I worked with a girl who is similar to Helen Keller  over the summer last year. The job wasn't the best fit for me, but I stuck it out as long as possible.  \n  \nThe girl I worked with was 12 years old, completely blind, and smaller than a fraction of hearing in one ear. With what minuscule hearing she had, she was fixated on music. It was the one thing that kept her grounded. \n  \nShe knew a few signs and could understand tactilly, but with a lot of repetition and patience.  I was basically her eyes, ears, interpreter, only way I connecting to the world around her. I had all the patience in the world, but I still couldn't work with her any longer. When we had to put the music away from group activities, she would throw tantrums (verrrry similar to Helen Keller). Because that was her only way of connecting with the world.  \n\nI give all the props in the world to Anne Sillivan. She is an angel among angels. \n  \nI had to quit because it was too much for me. She would hit me, kick me, throw my phone (the only way she could listen to music), tear apart multiple pairs headphones and get mad when she couldn't listen to music anymore.  I love working with deaf-blind individuals, but I had to do what was best for my health (mentally) and well-being. I was extremely close to withdrawing from working with this group forever.  This job required a lot of trust from her, and she didn't have it for me.\n\n  The kicker? She lives down the street from my parents. Maybe when she gets older I'll stop by and reintroduce myself to her. \n\nEdit: added some words and spelling corrections ", "Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with \"d-o-l-l\" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. In fact, when Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for \"mug\", Keller became so frustrated she broke the doll.    \n    \n     \n Keller's big breakthrough in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of \"water\"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056241/"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLTFr_KqVLE"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1mdysd", "title": "why are cats more likely to act affectionate when you're completely ignoring them, busy, asleep etc. than when you actively try to pet them or call them over?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mdysd/why_are_cats_more_likely_to_act_affectionate_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc8d4jq", "cc8dsb5", "cc8dz1v", "cc8e1eg"], "score": [19, 12, 136, 4], "text": ["As a life long owner of cats this is my expert opinion: Cats are dicks. ", "The aren't. And they are.\n\nEveryone will tell you \"that's how cats are\", but it's somewhat a false positive, it's how we have come to perceive cats and therefor what we remember about cats. You remember the cat trying to push itself on to your lap when you're ignore it because \"omg, kitty, so annoying!\", you do not remember it coming over for a cuddle when you randomly go \"c'mere\" one day. You remember it waking you up, stumbling over it, it being in the way when you're trying to get shit done. You don't really remember easy, trivial, unexciting stuff like the cat coming over to you to cuddle when you want it to. So you perceive the cat to only be attentive when you don't want to, don't have the time.\n\nSometimes, however, they are. Most tame cats are cuddly and will run up to you when they are called. Cats who are not called very often, and this will happen after the novelty of \"omg kitty!\" has ran out, and people have a tendency to give their cat a lot less attention than they think they do, they love the little creature and take pictures and are all lubby wubby wubby in their thoughts, but forget to give the cat attention. Which leaves the cat with the option of seeking out the human. Return to \"you remember it when it's annoying\".\n\nWe have humanized and built personalities for all the animals we keep at pets, because this is what we do as a species. If we are able to recognize a pattern we will however vague it is, and we will build on it to fit us. We're creative, loving creatures after all. \nCat's are more often than not solitary by nature which gives them several traits we perceive as \"douchebaggy\", among the \"I do what the fuck I want\"-attitude and the \"I must be free to roam as I feel puny human\"-demands. Combine this with selective memory and a prejudice\nyou get, well. Cat facts.  ", "Cats have some nuances in their behaviour that a lot of humans tend to overlook or misinterpret as lack of affection or being aloof.\n\nOne thing that a cat will do to display that they are comfortable around you, is look away from you. This lets you know that they do not perceive you  as a threat. This is often accompanied by a slow blink where they half close their eyes. If you reciprocate that slow blink and slightly turn your head away, it will show them that you feel the same.\n\nIf you pick a cat up or approach it in a manner that is very direct, they can interpret this as threatening behaviour. Some cats like to be picked up, some don't. That's kind of dependent on how they were raised.\n\nI have a kitten that I'm fostering, and he will come over which I call him with a particular sound or if I make eye-contact and slow-blink.\n\nThe problem is that a lot of people try to interpret cats in the same way as dogs. Dogs operate a lot like humans in their social structure, which is why we get along so well. For cats, we need to learn to adapt to how they socialise, because our methods do not have as much in common.\n\nSo, to address your initial question: A cat is more affectionate when you are ignoring them, because they perceive you as less threatening and see you as being more comfortable with them.", "every cat i've raised has been trained to come when i make a clicking sound with my mouth. they always come when i do it because they know it means pets or treats."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "18nwi7", "title": "how can we take a picture of the milky way if we're located in the milky way?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18nwi7/eli5_how_can_we_take_a_picture_of_the_milky_way/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8gew6h", "c8gfo1m", "c8gfst9", "c8gg24f", "c8gobt0"], "score": [58, 9, 4, 22, 9], "text": ["Same way you can take a picture of your house while standing inside your house.  Of course, what you can photograph of your house while you are inside your house is rather limited.  In the same way, what you can photograph of the Milky Way while inside the Milky Way is also limited, but at least the \"walls\" are largely transparent, so you can see much more than one room.  Continue the analogy with a transparent city: you can see the bathroom, you can see the garage, you can see the kitchen (but your view is obscured by the fireplace and the furnace and the water heater), you can also see into and *through* the neighbors' houses (but not through their fireplaces, furnaces and water heaters), you can see way up and down and *through* the block (except through fireplaces, furnaces and water heaters), you can see all over and *through* the city (except for fireplaces, furnaces, water heaters, sewers, water and power systems).  Much is obscured, but much more is transparent.  And different parts of the city are transparent to different kinds of light, so what you can't see because of all the water heaters in visible light you might see in, say, ultraviolet light.  Plot the positions of all these details carefully, and you could still come up with a pretty good map of your city.  Likewise, we can come up with a pretty good map of the Milky Way. ", "Let's put it this way: you're standing on the roof of your house and can't move. But if you look around, you can clearly see where your house ends, which rooms are which, and so on. We're in the middle of the galaxy (well, not really the middle) just like you're on the roof of your house. We can see all these stars and such around (though they're really far away, so it's not as easy to see as the edges of your house). From this, we can make observations about the shape of our galaxy.\n\nOf course, we can't take a picture of our house from a birds eye view when we're actually inside it. Pictures of the milky way like [this one](_URL_0_) are not real pictures. They're artists' concepts. From our position on earth, we can just see parts of the milky way like you can see rooms in your house ([example](_URL_1_)).", "Never walked around a city, taking pictures of it?", "I think he meant pictures of the entire milky way galaxy as if you see it in textbooks. How it shows a galaxy and says that's the milky Way. I believe the answer to that is that those pictures are not technically the Milky Way. They are of another galaxy that looks similar to ours. \n", "We can't. [This is the only picture of the milky way we can take](_URL_1_) (a side view). If you're thinking of [these images](_URL_0_) then they're always just drawings based on what we can see from the side and estimated what it would look like from above.\n\nIf we could actually travel far enough away from the milky way to take a picture of it then it would probably look similar, but not exactly the same, as this (especially the part on the opposite side of the centre of the milky way to us, as we can't see it properly).\n\nAlso what people think the milky way looks like is constantly changing as we make more measurements, for example it's only recently that the centre is thought to be bar shaped."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/ESO-VLT-Laser-phot-33a-07.jpg"], [], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg/600px-236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Milkyway_pan1.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4f6mno", "title": "why is it the deeper you go into the ground the hotter it gets, but the deeper into the ocean to go the colder it gets?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f6mno/eli5_why_is_it_the_deeper_you_go_into_the_ground/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d26b5cz", "d26ch4a", "d26dj6r", "d26dyj6"], "score": [9, 571, 10, 2], "text": ["(I'm going to \"answer\" the second part of the question)\nBecause water is a weird fluid. It is denser (heavier) when it's a fluid than when it is ice! This is why ice floats on water. When water reaches about 4\u00b0C (about 39\u00b0F) it's the heaviest it can get.\nNow, this means that, if you put an enormous amount of pressure onto on water, it is put in a state where it has a temperature of 4\u00b0C. All the water in the ocean is pretty heavy, which causes such huge amounts of pressure. Making the deep parts of the ocean about 4\u00b0C warm/cold.", "Water is liquid\n\nStone is not\n\nWarm liquids go up\n\nCold liquids go down\n\nThe earths core is warm\n\nThe warm stone doesn't go up\n\nThe warm liquid does go up", "It's hot deep in the Earth because of radioactive decay. The radioactive elements are very heavy, so they sank to the bottom (center) of the Earth. The crust is made of cool, lighter, non-radioactive elements that float on top. This layer acts as an insulator, so the deeper you go through it, the closer you get to the hot radioactivity.\n\nThe oceans are colder the deeper you go partly because there's less and less sunlight, as others have mentioned. There's also cracks in the crust that give local hot areas as some said, which are kind of like underwater volcanoes.\n\nI'm not sure how accurate the \"4\u00b0C at high pressure\" bit is - I'd have to look at a phase diagram for water - but cold, dense water will still sink to the bottom. There's also oceanic currents that bring this cold water to the surface in some places.", "Cause hot water is lighter than cold water, also because of thermal heat from the sun.\n\nThe deeper, or closer you are to the Earth's core, the hotter it is because of thermal heat that's being produced by the radio active decay? It's like our own mini Sun, but it's in the center of the Earthz\n\nRadioactive decay is caused bu radioactive elements that is ofcourse \"decaying\" For why it's in the center of the Earth, it's because while the Earth was still very hot, or when it was on its \"liquid form\" the heavy elements sinks to the center of the Earth, while the lighter elements goes up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cnm73", "title": "Did Reagan\u2019s Star Wars project really contribute to the fall of the USSR? Was the collapse mostly dues to internal or external factors?", "selftext": "I find it hard to believe that the US \u00ab bankrupted \u00bb the USSR because of Star Wars, since I\u2019ve read that, although the exact figures are unknown, the USSR\u2019s military budget was consistently decreased throughout the 80s (I unfortunately can\u2019t find the source right now).\n\nIf their military spending decreased, how can the Star Wars project, which was supposedly intended to force extra military spending, be considered a success?\n\nI\u2019ve read The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky, which talks a fair bit about the fall of the USSR and (although it\u2019s been a while since I read it) he doesn\u2019t invoke any external factors as causes of the collapse.\n\nWas the USSR\u2019s collapse only (or mostly) due to internal factors or did Star Wars, Reagan\u2019s other policies or some other external factor have a major impact?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8cnm73/did_reagans_star_wars_project_really_contribute/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxgq0lh", "dxgyo9f"], "score": [45, 3], "text": ["**Part I**\n\nThe short answer is that while the Soviet Union did collapse in no small part because of budget deficits and economic stability, and while SDI did play a complicated role in arms control negotiations towards the end of the Cold War, responses to SDI were not a major factor in either the collapse of the Soviet Union, nor in the end of the Cold War.\n\nFirst, about the Strategic Defense Initiative.  SDI, simply, was a defense program that was supposed to render nuclear weapons obsolete by creating a system of anti-ballistic missiles (or lasers) that would be able to intercept any Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads fired at the United States or its allies. The first call for such a program was in President Reagan\u2019s \u201cAddress to the Nation on Defense and National Security\u201d, [given]( _URL_1_) on March 23, 1983:\n\n > \u201dWhat if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?\nI know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. It will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. And as we proceed, we must remain constant in preserving the nuclear deterrent and maintaining a solid capability for flexible response. But isn't it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is.\u201d\n\nNow, while this was a momentous announcement, it is largely a concluding section to a larger speech, one that effectively is given to justify increased US military spending since Reagan came to office in 1981. The general thrust of the speech was: \u201cthe Soviets have increased their military spending and research since the 1970s, the US has fallen behind, and needs to spend more to catch up.\u201d Small note: while it has been argued, with some documentary evidence from Reagan\u2019s diary, that the film \u201cThe Day After\u201d had a profound influence on his desire to eliminate the nuclear threat, that made-for-TV film was broadcast in November 1983, some eight months after this national address.\n\nCongress [appropriated]( _URL_0_) $1.39 billion for the initiative in 1984, but this was largely for research. The project was considered to have a final cost of $70 billion, soon [rising]( _URL_2_) to $170 billion, with no operational defense before 2000. Ultimately SDI was renamed in 1993, and then reorganized again in 2002 as the Missile Defense Agency. While it continues to conduct anti-ballistic missile research, the results have been mixed, and to date there is no ballistic missile shield rendering nuclear weapons obsolete.\n\nSo, so much for SDI. Now let\u2019s look at the Soviet response to the program. The impact that the announcement of SDI had on Soviet strategic thinking has been debated. First, it\u2019s worth noting that the Soviet defense industry and the Politburo *did* plan responses to SDI:\n\n > A decision of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of 15 July 1985 approved a number of \"long-term research and development programs aimed at exploring the ways to create a multi-layered defense system with ground-based and space-based elements.\" It should be noted that no commitment to deployment of any of these systems was made at the time. The goal of the research and development effort was \"to create by 1995 a technical and technological base in case the deployment of a multi-layered missile defense system would be necessary.\"\n\nThese \u201csymmetric\u201d defense responses largely revolved around developing a ground-based missile defense, and a space-based defense. However, it\u2019s also important to note that the Soviet ministries proposing these measures were largely repackaging projects that they already had on the books, rather than creating entirely new systems from scratch, and that in any case no development to the point of deployment was considered for at least a decade. Furthermore, Soviet ministries involved in defense projects were confident in developing \u201casymmetric\u201d responses to SDI (ie, mechanisms for allowing ICBMs to bypass SDI defenses). \n\nUltimately, as stated by Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst on Soviet and Russian nuclear forces:\n\n > \u201dThe new evidence on the Soviet response to SDI largely corroborates the prevailing view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program does not present a danger to its security, for it could be relatively easily countered with simple and effective countermeasures. The evidence also helps answer some important questions about the concerns that the Soviet Union had about the U.S. program, the reasoning behind the choices that the Soviet leadership made, and the process that led to those choices.\n\nSo SDI does not seem to have greatly altered Soviet military spending. \n\nWhich is not to say that the Soviet government did not care about SDI! The key difference is that it is not that SDI caused a new round of massive military spending, but that there was the fear that it and similar programs might at a time when Gorbachev was already committed to lowering defense expenditures. It clearly was a major item in arms control negotiations between the US and Soviet Union, most notably in the Reykjavik Summit in October of 1986: Gorbachev offered massive reductions in nuclear weapons if Reagan would agree to scrap deployment of (the then-nonexistent) SDI. Reagan refused, but offered to share the technology with the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev was suspicious about (\u201cYou don\u2019t even want to share petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools, or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American revolution.\u201d). The end result was that both parties walked away without any agreement. As Reagan noted: \u201cGorbachev is adamant we must cave in our SDI \u2013 well, this will be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.\u201d\n\nSDI played a major role in US-Soviet arms control negotiations in the 1980s, but it was more of a complicating factor, rather than a decisive factor \u2013 if anything it made coming to a comprehensive arms control agreement more difficult. \n\nNow, I\u2019d like to turn to the Soviet economy and its role in the Soviet collapse.\n", "u/Kochevnik81 Do you have any idea why Reagan offered to share SDI? Was it a bluff on top of a bluff? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/us/cost-of-missile-defense-put-at-70-billion-by-1993.html", "https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm", "http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-12/news/mn-7383_1_star-wars"], []]}
{"q_id": "xc5nj", "title": "Have there been any observed changes in ducks due to feeding bread?", "selftext": "Got thinking, 'feeding the ducks' has always been a thing to do at the local park, feeding them bread. Families will likely be there every day to feed bread to ducks.\n\nI just wondered if there have been any anatomical/metabolic changes in modern ducks whose diets consist largely of bread?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xc5nj/have_there_been_any_observed_changes_in_ducks_due/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5l4kqa", "c5l5z77"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Can I add behavioral to the question? Around my lake if a human throws rocks in the water, the ducks (even ducklings) scurry over until they realize the object is sinking.", "There have been behavioral changes, with ecosystem impacts. In northern California, small lakes were previously only occupied by ducks and geese during migration. Due to human feeding, some geese now live at these lakes year round, and their increased defecation introduces greater amounts of parasites in the water. These parasites can enter the skin of humans in the water, causing annoying \"swimmer's itch\" ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1kh6in", "title": "Why is it easier to get a radio signal when it's cold outside?", "selftext": "I don't even know if the above statement is true as I've only heard it from people who most likely aren't radio technicians. However, if it is true, it really makes me wonder.\n\n**Thanks for all the answers reddit!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kh6in/why_is_it_easier_to_get_a_radio_signal_when_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbow924", "cbown2d", "cboxqpc"], "score": [10, 6, 3], "text": ["One reason might be that cooler air can hold less water vapour, so it's usually also drier. This is why they build some telescopes in the South Pole. Dry air is significantly more transparent to at least infrared and microwave radiation, and although the [effect becomes smaller as you increase wavelength](_URL_0_), I imagine you might still be able to see a difference.", "[Noise voltage rises as the square root of temperature](_URL_0_).  \n\nIf the radio signal size heavily outweighs the noise voltage, this is irrelevant.  ", "For all intents and purposes, radio waves travel in straight lines from their antennas, so no station should be heard beyond around 30 or 40 miles distance because of the curvature of the Earth. \n\nThis isn't strictly true, though. \n\nSome radio signals can travel farther because they are able to bounce off the [ionosphere](_URL_0_) back to earth. At night, when it tends to be colder, only the higher-up F layer of the ionosphere is ionized, so radio waves can bounce farther, off what amounts to a mirror for radio waves, that's higher up in the sky. During the day, the lower D and E layers are ionized, so radio signals reflect off the ionosphere closer to the ground and cannot travel as far. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%E2%80%93Nyquist_noise#Noise_voltage_and_power"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere"]]}
{"q_id": "86b9vz", "title": "in florida, why aren't gutters a standard for homes?", "selftext": "Seems as though every home i've seen does not have them. Do builders have some sort of agreement with gutter companies or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86b9vz/eli5in_florida_why_arent_gutters_a_standard_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dw3pnpx", "dw3pvym", "dw3qmo4", "dw45bn8", "dw4dr8f"], "score": [25, 16, 3, 4, 8], "text": ["Gutters are basically useless in torrential rains, and add wind loading to the house, which you want to avoid in hurricane-prone regions.", "Gutters are only useful in light to medium rain. Areas that have heavy or torrential rains, like much of Florida, have too much water falling at once for the gutters to be of any real use. This means all they are is an expense to maintain and a potential risk factor in high winds. ", "Most homes in Florida don't have basements, so draining rain away from the foundation is not as important. ", "We don't have gutters on the sides of our house and the soil is starting to get washed away up closer to the walls. If not gutters, then what? Rebuilding the dirt up closer?", "I live in Florida, have worked in construction, and my dad owns a gutter company.  Gutters are useful here because rain falling off an eave washes away the soil near the house since Florida soil is sandy.  Houses in Florida don't have basements, therefore they have no underground support other than the slab and footers.  Any water that repeatedly falls that close to the house is likely to cause small subsidences underneath the footers and crack the foundation.  Sandy soil sucks. \n\nPeople saying that heavy rains are too much for gutters have either never done gutter work, were too cheap to pay a reputable company to do the work and instead got a shitty product from a hardware store, or don't live in a place where local gutter companies have the need to provide more than 3-inch gutters.  If you have a gutter company, and know what you're doing (i.e. not using the bullshit gutters from the hardware store), you have the ability to do custom jobs and make gutters up to 5 inches wide and infinitely long.  If five inches isnt enough, special orders can be made to get wider ones so either way rain amount doesn't make gutters useless unless you have clogged up, too small, or shitty quality gutters.\n\n  \nThe reason most building companies don't do it themselves comes down to cost.  Gutters cant be installed until the rest of the house is finished and inspected, and builders don't want to pay for the additional vehicles and all the specialized equipment they would need when it would ultimately cause them to wait extra months for the house to be completed and collect their money from the contract.  Not to mention that it would also mean hiring additional workers that specialize in gutters and don't have any other function.  They're not going to have special trucks for gutter equipment that sit around unused for months at a time while the framers, concrete guys, or roofers (that would be required to double as gutter guys) wait on the electricians, drywallers, flooring guys, painters, and etc. to finish the rest of the house.\n\nIt's easy enough for the builder to contract gutter work out to an established company if the homeowner wants them on the house as part of the build.\n\n\nTL;DR: Cost.  It wouldn't be beneficial for a building company to buy all the needed equipment and hire more employees since it would take a long time and a lot of gutters to start making a profit.\n\nEdit: clarity. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2a8qcm", "title": "Was fragging in Vietnam real or just a myth?", "selftext": "Are there any documented examples of an officer being \"fragged\" during the Vietnam war?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2a8qcm/was_fragging_in_vietnam_real_or_just_a_myth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciskl0u", "cisvvxg", "cit0vs2", "citaj9b"], "score": [60, 27, 14, 2], "text": ["Yes, there are hundreds of documented cases of either attempted or successful fraggings among US troops during the Vietnam War. By \"successful\" I mean cases in which the fragger killed his intended target. All of these fraggings occurred in rear areas. We have no records for what happened in the field. Eyewitnesses have, in some cases, reported fraggings in combat, but eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Also, separating intentional from accidental friendly fire in a combat zone can be extremely difficult for investigators. In almost all of the documented cases, the fraggee was either a NCO or junior grade officer, and the fragger an enlisted man of lower rank. \n\nSources:\n\nCortright, David. *Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today.* Haymarket Books, 1975.\n\nLepre, George. *Fragging: Why US Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers In Vietnam.* Texas Tech University Press, 2011.", "What is fragging?", "It wasn't unique to Vietnam either. From my Grandfather's memoirs, who served in the British Army in WWII:\n\n > Soon we were off to Royston to a tented camp for the rest of the summer, there to meet the rest of the outfit, clerks, cooks, heavy lorry drivers, 47 all told.  The Commanding Officer of this new concept was a Major De Winton, an infantry officer, reputed to be a cousin of the Queen, and was a Regular Officer.  I didn\u2019t care much for him, there was this gulf, and I can\u2019t say I didn\u2019t smile when I heard later, when we were in the desert and he had left us to rejoin his regiment, that in an attack on some enemy position, he had been wounded by 5 .303\u2019s in his back. The Germans don\u2019t use .303 ammunition, we do.  At the end of the war, in Italy, now a Brigadier, a woman, a school teacher walked up to him while he was inspecting a guard, shot and killed him with a revolver, for political reasons, it must be said.\n\nCorraborating source: _URL_1_\nAlthough there's plenty to be found on the assassination, it should be noted I found it hard to find corroborating evidence for his wounding beyond the awarding of a DSO in 1944, which would be the right time period. I doubt somewhat that such a story would make it to print given the circumstances at the time. The relationship between the \"blue blood\" officer corps and the generally working class enlisted men was a source of much tension, especially after WWI (\"Lions led by donkeys\" and so forth).\n\nThe memoir itself: It's up on Amazon somewhere as an ebook but I'll be buggered if I can find it. Here's a dropbox link in the meantime: _URL_0_", "This is an interesting question, one that I'm not qualified to answer, but I'd add that the more interesting component is whether it was more common in Vietnam than other wars with comparable troop structures. \n\nIt plays into what I believe is the common myth of extreme military incompetence (drug abuse, officer murder, civilian murder) during the Vietnam War - arguably perpetuated by contemporary popular culture with a very specific anti-war agenda. Separating the fact from fiction in the US military during the Vietnam War is an interesting project I'd like to hear more about. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.dropbox.com/s/spsyldtnl43qplf/Archie%27s%20Memoirs.doc", "http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&amp;GRid=21622858"], []]}
{"q_id": "4vpdch", "title": "In \"1493\" Mann states Japanese samurai helped protect silver shipments from highwaymen near Acapulco in the 1600s. Is there any evidence to support this story?", "selftext": "The story in question is on [page 414.](_URL_0_) \n\nI admit, I would love to watch a movie about 17th century samurai protecting silver caravans through the mountains of Mexico, but I'm having a devil of a time verifying Mann's claims here. Demographically, we know Eastern Asian migrants added to the growing multicultural landscape of post-contact Mexico, but the samurai claim seems too good to be true. I wondered if one of our Mexican or Asian specialists can shed light on the story, and if it has any basis in fact. \n\nAre there stories of Asian mercenaries fighting in the wars of conquest in the Americas? Stepping back even further, where did the earliest Asian migrants to the Americas come from, and where did they settle in this New World?\n\nThanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vpdch/in_1493_mann_states_japanese_samurai_helped/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d60uhkp", "d6269jx"], "score": [9, 8], "text": ["Found a previous post from a few years ago, by someone questioning the same thing.\n\n_URL_0_", "The source of Mann's account is Edward R. Slack Jr., \u201cThe *Chinos* in New Spain: A Corrective Lens for a Distorted Image,\u201d *Journal of World History* 20 (2009): 35-67. Mann seems to have creatively misread the article - hard to resist such a tantalizing anecdote that underscores his narrative of early globalization (and which ultimately became the basis of a [graphic novel](_URL_0_) that he helped to write.) \n\nIt's worth quoting the relevant sections of the Slack article at length:\n\n > Spanish galleons transported Asian goods and travelers from Manila to colonial Mexico primarily through the port of Acapulco. During the two and a half centuries of contact between the Philippines and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a minimum of 40,000 to 60,000 Asian immigrants would set foot in the \u201cCity of Kings,\u201d while a figure double that amount (100,000) would be within the bounds of probability. From Acapulco they would gradually disperse to the far corners of the viceroyalty, from Loreto in Baja California to M\u00e9rida in Yucatan\u2026.\n\n > Among the scores of Asian peoples that were widely defined as *chinos*, in the early decades of the 1600s Japanese converts were held in high esteem by Spaniards in the Philippines and New Spain for their bravery and loyalty. In 1603 and 1639 when Chinese residents in the Pari\u00e1n of Manila revolted against their Iberian overlords, Japanese swordsmen distinguished themselves in combat. Without their assistance, Sangleyes would surely have made the Philippines a colony of the Middle Kingdom. Thousands of Japanese converts, traders, and ronin made the Philippines their home prior to the closing of Cipango to Iberians in the 1630s. They lived in a suburb of Manila called Dilao, with a population estimated at 3,000 by 1624.\n\nA couple of points need to be made here: the first is that the overwhelming majority of Asian immigrants to New Spain were Filipino or Chinese, and the Japanese represented a relatively small minority. The second is that the military service of the Japanese under the Spanish took place in the Philippines, not in New Spain. Mann makes a fanciful leap when he places katana-wielding samurais in Jalisco, defending silver shipments against escaped-slaves-turned-bandits.\n\nThe real story of Japanese migrants in 17th-century New Spain is a little more mundane, but still quite fascinating. The French historian Thomas Calvo has written about a circle of Japanese merchants who climbed the social ladder of colonial Guadalajara, whom he referred to as \"honorary whites\" in the racial hierarchy of New Spain. \n\nOne of them, Luis de Enc\u00edo, was described in a 1634 notarial document as being \"de naci\u00f3n jap\u00f3n,\" while also identifying his name as Soemon Fukuchi. (The suffix *-emon* might possibly indicate a samurai lineage.) Enc\u00edo operated a small shop in the bustling commercial city of Guadalajara, and was granted a monopoly over coconut and mescal sales in 1643 - the peak of his economic fortunes - although he complained of being broke when he died in 1666.\n\nHis son-in-law, Juan de P\u00e1ez - who was born in Osaka - had more luck in the business world. P\u00e1ez managed the finances of the city's cathedral, and was named as godfather to the children of various prominent Tapat\u00edo families. Although he was listed in documents as a \"merchant\", he seems to have provided a variety of financial services from money-lending and speculation to real estate deals.\n\nIt's not entirely clear how either of these men wound up in New Spain, but it's possible that they either were part of the retinue that followed ambassador Hasekura Tsunenaga during his 1613-14 visit to the colony, or - more likely - were Christians who fled religious persecution in Japan, possibly by way of Manila.\n\ntl;dr: No, there really isn't any evidence of samurai protecting silver caravans in Acapulco. But there were quite a few Japanese merchants plying their trade in 17th-century Mexico, and one of them became a member of the financial elite of Guadalajara.\n\nSources:\n\nThomas Calvo, \"Japoneses en Guadalajara: 'Blancos de Honor' durante el Seiscientos mexicano,\" *La Nueva Galicia en los siglos XVI y XVII* (Guadalajara: El Colegio de Jalisco, Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos), 159-171\n\nMelba Falck Reyes and H\u00e9ctor Palacios, \"Japanese Merchants in 17th Century Guadalajara,\" *Revista Iberoamericana* 22 (2011): 191-237\n\nSof\u00eda Sanabrais, \"'The Spaniards of Asia': The Japanese Presence in Colonial Mexico,\" *Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies*, 18-19, (2009): 223-251"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://books.google.com/books?id=-lB3sy0aH4AC&amp;pg=PA414&amp;dq=1493+mann+samurai&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjYrpadpqHOAhUBTSYKHRsaB5oQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&amp;q=1493%20mann%20samurai&amp;f=false"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/118ims/in_1493_charles_mann_makes_a_brief_mention_of/"], ["https://youtu.be/oS6iadiZtrQ"]]}
{"q_id": "3qdt4j", "title": "How long it takes to universe double its size?", "selftext": "I have done some calculation, but Im not sure if its so simple:\n\nHubble constant: 67.8 km/s/megaparsec (67800 m/s/megaparsec)\n\n1 Megaparsec = 308567757144092000000 km\n\n308567757144092000000 / 67.8 (and converting to years)\n\n14 421 697 482.514454 years (14.4 billion years)\n\nDid I missed something? Universe never \"doubled\" its size, most of space exists now was created during inflation period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qdt4j/how_long_it_takes_to_universe_double_its_size/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwem1iu"], "score": [8], "text": ["To shove aside all the details of the cosmology, what you've basically calculated is how long it would take for the universe to double *again*, at its current rate of expansion. The number you get is close to the age of the universe, which makes sense: if you assume the universe is expanding at a constant rate, and it took about 14 billion years to reach its current size, then it should take another 14 billion years to reach double its current size. Of course, the expansion is actually speeding up (thanks to dark energy), but that's a different issue.\n\nThe problem with applies this to the past is that the Hubble constant *isn't actually constant*. To a decent approximation, and after some unit conversions, it's equal to 1/(the age of the universe). So, seven billion years ago, if you did the same calculation you just did, you would say it would take (about) another seven billion years for the universe to double in size. Try it with H=140 km/s/Mpc and see what you get.\n\nThis is actually gives us quite a nifty little approximation: **when the universe was 1/n of its current age, it was about 1/n of its current size**. So when the universe was 1/2 of its current age, it was about 1/2 of its current size, and when it was 1/4 of its current age, it was about 1/4 of its current size. This is an approximation, and breaks down at big numbers, but it's a still a useful rule of thumb.\n\n----\n\nSide-note for astronomy students: you can pull this trick for redshift too. Add 1 to the redshift, and that's how many times smaller the universe was (approximately!). So at z=1, the universe was about half its current size and half its current age. At z=2, the about 1/3 of its current size and age. And so on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "70hfvd", "title": "how do video games play \"hide and seek\"? the game knows where your position is, how does it act like it doesn't know where you are?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70hfvd/how_do_video_games_play_hide_and_seek_the_game/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn34lsp", "dn352h9", "dn3555g", "dn366yo", "dn3atrf", "dn3egl4", "dn3evrn", "dn3fnh9", "dn3ghri", "dn3gyeb", "dn3hx84", "dn3i71i", "dn3jn5h", "dn3mmp6", "dn3nroh", "dn3pvt0", "dn3tzqy", "dn3uxcu", "dn3zbyi", "dn4gzeb", "dn4mpsg"], "score": [6, 4161, 331, 79, 2, 207, 8, 2, 11, 341, 2, 5, 573, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["The game isn't going to tell the players where you are if the game mode is hide and seek however if you're talking about bots then thats's a different story. Video game functions aren't all connected together, it's a bunch of different files of code, if you're talking about all the code then it most certainly knows where you are however the code for the bot doesn't know where you are unless you've given it the players location in the code.", "The game knows where you are, but the AI doesn't. The AI has some information about its surroundings, but the game engine does not tell the AI where you are (unless it is cheating to make it more difficult). \n\nso the AI actually has to look and try and find you normally, using the information it actually gets from the game engine. \n\nNot all parts of a video game (or any program) has access to all other parts. The part that handles the AI is distinct from the part that handles the graphics which is distinct from the part that handles player controls. The AI part can't access information it does not own.", "They explained this for alien isolation. There is one \"brain\" that knows everything and sees where you are, and a second \"brain\" that actually controls the alien.  The first brain sends HINTS about where you are without telling the alien too much information. ", "The game behaves the way the programmer tells it to behave, and a subroutine within the code can only see what you allow it to see. Either it's passed all the information it needs when you invoke it, or it includes instructions to go and look in specific variables or request certain information from the system. It has no initiative, and only looks where you tell it to look.", "By acting like it doesn't know where you are.\n\nWhen it calculates what a particular unit can or can't see, it doesn't use your exact position as part of that calculation.  Maybe it heard a noise or detected a door opening in a particular location, and will use that in the calculation, but not your actual, current location.\n\nBy way of analogy, imagine you are showing someone how to play the higher/lower game, where one person picks a number tells the other whether their guess is too high or too low.  You might have them pick a number, 82, and tell you, then proceed to pick 50, 75, 87, 81, and finally 82.  Even though you knew it was 82, you are following a specific process to zero in on their number.", "You've gotten some answers but none that are very \"ELI5\".\n\nYou seem to be confusing the game itself with the enemies in the game.\n\nOf course the game itself knows where you are, but it's not against you.\n\nIt wants you to play and sets challenges for you to overcome.\n\nThe enemies in the game are the challenges but are bound by rules.\n\nAs an analogy, the game itself is like a dungeon master in a tabletop RPG.\n\nHe knows everything about your character and, if he liked, could just bring in an invulnerable dragon who kills you no matter what you do.\n\nBut there's no fun in that.\n\nSo the dragon has weaknesses.\n\nBut just because the dungeon master put the dragon in front of you doesn't mean that the dragon can use all of the dungeon master's power at will.\n\nIn the same vein, an enemy in a video game can't just access the knowledge of the game at large and know your every move.\n\nIt's a slave to the game and can only work with what it's given.", "Software is designed in such a way that every part of it has to be explicitly \"allowed\" to talk to another part of it by design. Unless the programmers actually\n\n* Coded a way for another object to talk to it AND\n\n* Coded something into the other object that attempts to talk to the first object\n\nThose two things will just do their own thing without any direct conversation. Just because a game has a Soldier object wandering around doesn't mean that Soldier has access to the data that your Player object is storing about its own location.\n\nThe Solder probably has some attributes such as\n\n* Position\n\n* Model / animation assets\n\n* Speed\n\n* Max Health\n\n* Current Health\n\n* Weapon\n\n* AI Rules / script\n\n* Etc.\n\n------\n\nJust like your Player object also has some attributes:\n\n* Location\n\n* Model / animation assets\n\n* Inventory\n\n* Velocity\n\n* Level\n\n* Current Health\n\n* Max Health\n\n* Etc.\n\n--------\n\nThe AI Script is simply a chunk of code attached to an enemy Soldier object. Rather: A Solider object has an \"HAS A\" relationship with that particular AI Script - The Solider HAS A \"SoldierAIScript\". This script is responsible for controlling what the Solider object does.\n\nThe Soldier knows it has that AI script and it simply runs the code in that script. Note that this has nothing to do with directly accessing the Player object's \"Location\" attribute - That attribute is probably only being used by the game engine to draw your model and camera in the right place, maybe to trigger cutscenes/events - nothing more.\n\nYes,  AI could be coded in such a way to be able to access the player's \"Location\" attribute (though that would probably be bad coding practice unless you're using getters/setters...I won't get into that) but unless that was part of the design of the game there are probably more interesting ways to make an AI for your game.", "When you make a flash card you know the answer is in the back side but it doesn't mean you have to read it and spoil yourself.\n\nIts the same as the program. Part of the program responsible for finding you the player simply can be restricted to not have access information on where you are.", "The \"AI\" in video games is just a subroutine that chooses an action based on available information. It won't act on information that isn't sent to that subroutine, even if that information exists somewhere else in the program. So the game engine provides some way of defining the \"senses\" of AI-controlled entities, usually in terms of vision and maybe sound. So if the player character is hiding behind something, with an AI-controlled entity on the other side, then the rules for \"senses\" in the game engine will say that the AI-controlled entity cannot \"see\" the player character, and so the player's location is reported to the AI subroutine as \"unknown\", even though it is clearly known to the physics and graphics parts of the game. The AI will usually have some kind of \"fallback\" behavior in this case, either waiting where it is or walking around on some kind of search pattern until the game engine decides that it can \"see\" the player character.\n\nBasically, the AI in the game acts like a different \"player\" from the part of the game engine that basically serves as a \"referee\". The AI, like human players, can only act on limited information, whereas the \"referee\" parts of the game engine know everything that goes on in the game world, but does not cause \"cheating\" because it is impartial and does not act in the favor of either the player or the AI (assuming the game engine is designed to be \"fair\" in that way).", "Imagine you're playing hide and seek with your 3-year-old sister. Your sister is loud and terrible at hiding, so you know where she is every time without having to look. But she likes the game, so you want to play along and not find her immediately. You come up with a simple routine that you can follow every time, which will eventually find her:\n\n1. Pick a random room in the house.\n2. Look under every table and chair.\n3. Look behind big objects.\n4. Open closets and cabinets and big containers.\n5. Go back to step 1.\n\nSometimes you'll find her quickly, sometimes you won't, because your routine has nothing to do with where she actually is. You just follow the steps until you happen to find her.\n\nYour routine is a simple algorithm. Video games follow much more complicated algorithms, but the principle is the same. They aren't really \"trying\" to find you, they're trying to follow the steps of their algorithms.", "The AI doesn't know, so it's essentially just like if you were trying to find a friend in a game. You only have the information for your surroundings", "Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons? In DnD, the DM knows where the players and the monster are. The DM controls the monsters, but also keeps track of whether the monsters know you're there. It's the same in a video game, the game simulates the AI of the monsters but doesn't tell them where you are.", "First you must understand that AI in gaming is used in the loosest sense possible.  The AI is typically a term just applied to specific NPC actors within the game.  It's simply a series of commands an actor follows in accordance with their surroundings.\n\nFor every interval of time (cycles, ticks, etc), the actor will check what is around it in the game world.  They might have a hearing range that is 2 meters, so instead of asking the game engine where the player is, they'll check if they hear a player within 2 meters of their position.  They might have an invisible sight cone(really just a visualization of a geometric function that the actor runs) that projects 10 meters in front of them at 45 degrees, so they'll check if the player falls within that cone.\n\n\nBasically, the data is there and the actors could immediately access the player's location if that was the game designer's intent, but it's not as sporting or immersive as the actor seeking more conventional means to find you, like a clear line of sight or close proximity.\n\n\nOh, or like a DM and a group of Dungeons  &  Dragons players.  The game engine is like the DM; It knows all the stats, all the player's positions, and determines all the rules governing them, but the players still have to run Search checks and such by the DM.  Sometimes a player will just give a DM numbers and the DM will translate that into \"You see a Dwarf\" or \"Hit\" or \"You step in a pile of horse dung.\"  I guess you could scratch it up to compartmentalization of information.", "Depends on the game, but usually it's vision cones. The enemy projects a hitbox in front of it, if the player touches the hitbox then the enemy is either alerted of goes into search mode, where its movement becomes more aggressive and erratic", "The game itself is a big collection of code and data. In the data is your position. So yes the game knows.\n\nBut the AI is a specific routine. It's job is to simulate the actions of an intelligence. In a perfectly implemented example, it is only fed information it could see from it's own perspective. \n\nSo, for example... a 3d fps game. It renders out what you can see each frame. Some things are behind other things and you can't see them. Everything behind a hill is hidden. So in our perfectly implemented AI, each AI might get a simple version of this pass that doesn't render a frame of video, but returns a list of objects the AI can see, and their visible size -  a function of distance from the AI character and the size of the object.\n\nA few more steps. Filter this list down to objects that the AI might consider in its logic. The important stuff. Then work out a chance to see them and filter down to objects the AI notices. This could then be passed to another part of the AI that maintains state (what is the AI doing now? Wandering? Searching for ammo? Hunting? Is it scared? Angry? Aggressive? Chasing the player?) and makes decisions.\n\nYou could do the same with audio. Can the AI hear the players footsteps? What if a plane is passing overhead? Maybe that would mask the sound. It's a bit like calculating a throw for sneak in D & D.\n\nSound like a lot of work? It is. It won't scale very well. If we are checking what are all the things every AI can see and hear constantly then the computer is busy. We are taking up CPU cycles that could be used somewhere else and will make it run poorly on some hardware. \n\nPlus writing AI code is actually really hard and time consuming, and incredibly difficult to properly test.\n\nSo the reality of AI is generally a bunch of heuristics. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n > In computer science, artificial intelligence, and mathematical optimization, a heuristic (from Greek \u03b5\u1f51\u03c1\u03af\u03c3\u03ba\u03c9 \"I find, discover\") is a technique designed for solving a problem more quickly when classic methods are too slow, or for finding an approximate solution when classic methods fail to find any exact solution. This is achieved by trading optimality, completeness, accuracy, or precision for speed. In a way, it can be considered a shortcut.\n\nSo as we know from the start, the system does have all the information. Fast simple routines that get the AI to appear to simulate the whole process might be convincing 99% of the time. \n\nAnd if they have trouble? The movement routine always gets stuck on a certain type of landscape? Remove that landscape. You can tweak the AI and the world till it works together without getting stuck or doing strange things.\n\nBut of course the heuristic might be poor. Not everything gets done right. Deadlines exist. At 4am, surrounded by coke cans a bleary eyed programmer might decide that in order to deliver by 9am, the heuristic for \"does the enemy see the player?\" Is when they are within a radius of 40 feet around the AI.\n\nSuch a system will immediately cause visible issues. In a big open area, the AI wont see the player until they are close. In a building, the enemy will spot you through walls and rush in. Wall hacking AI.\n\nThe convincing ones are harder to write and sometimes still have weaknesses that get discovered by the gaming community over many iterations.\n\nIt is worth noting that game AI is generally not *real* AI, which is a whole field of study regarding emulating things that happen in a human brain. The future for game AI is probably in trainable *real* AI.", "An attempt at a true ELI5:\n\nImagine you're playing hide and seek with your parents. You hide, your dad seeks, and your mom just watches you both. \n\nYour parents know where you hid because your mom saw you hide. But as long as your dad doesn't ask your mom, then the person seeking doesn't know. \n\nSame in games: a part of the game knows where you are, but the part doing the seeking doesn't ask the part that knows where you are. ", "Better question is, how the fuck do enemies always know where I am when they shouldn't?", "Some other answers have said *how* (the AI doesn't access other parts of the game's \"state\" i.e. everything in the game from a God's-eye view), but a sort of implicit question in here is \"why.\" It's certainly *possible* to code a game such that the AI always knows your position and therefore always beats you - but the game's AI isn't actually designed to be *good* at the game; rather, it's designed to be *fun* to play against. Because of that underlying philosophy, the game coders will do whatever it takes and impose whatever rules they want on the computer-controlled players, whether that's imposing more restrictions on them, giving them additional abilities, or doing both in different circumstances (usually by \"rubber banding,\" causing an AI that's losing too badly an extra boost while giving an AI that's winning too much an additional handicap). But the fundamental thing is, the AI doesn't have to follow the same rules as the player, as long as the resulting game is *fun* for the player.\n\nSee also [this video by Extra Credits](_URL_0_).", "How do you play hide and seek with two year old? You pretend you don't know where they are.", "The programmer has made sure the part of the game that knows where you are (for graphics) doesn\u2019t share that with the part of the code that\u2019s looking for you.  The code that has to \u2018find\u2019 you really has to do that work.  Computers don\u2019t \u2018cheat\u2019, they only do what they are told to do.  Of course, programmers can (and sometimes do) cheat.  There probably are games where the computer \u2018opponent\u2019 does have more knowledge than seems fair.\n\nI faced the same questions in the late 70\u2019s in high school.  I wrote a program for my TI-58 calculator that could play blackjack.  It played a strictly fair game, but my friends were skeptical.  If the calculator knew their hand, wouldn\u2019t that bias how it played?", "First of all, /u/amorousCephalopod provided a fantastic answer and this is basically the foundation on which AI lays. I will just elaborate with some encyclopedic knowledge just because I love sharing extra, useless stuff.\n\nThe simplest implementation AI is based on a principle called the *finite state machine*. What this process really does is map all possible states of a system along with all possible transitions from state to state. In video game terms, let's say we are in a stealth game. As a *guard*, we have an AI agent with the states **Idle** , **Alert** , **Pursue** . The guard also has that imaginary cone Cephalopod talked about strapped on his nose, which the computer invisibly cross-checks for intersection with other game objects. If that other game object *happens* to be our protagonist, the computer will note that. He also has an invisible sphere around him which represent his auditory range and now works to 'capture' the sounds made by the protagonist. Anything outside that cone and sphere is artificially made oblivious to the guard. Think of it like the CPU is an omniscient being, a narrator if you like, that, for the sake of offering a challenge to the player, deprives the guard of that information, instead letting him get it on his own. \n\nThe above cone and sphere represent the guard's senses. As in a real human being, there's a feedback cycle which accepts sensory input, processes it according to predefined rules, and produces actions. That's *also* a finite state machine, albeit more complex and populated with combinations of choices. So, here are practical examples:\n\n* Guard is smoking a cig. Player produces a sound *inside* the guard's auditory sphere. Guard investigates. (IDLE - >  ALERT)\n* Guard investigates. Player intersects guard's vision cone. Guard chases after player (ALERT - >  PURSUE)\n* Guard chases after player. Player hides. Guard gets bored and returns to smoking a cig. (PURSUE - >  IDLE)\n* Guard is smoking a cig. Player intersects vision cone. Guard chases after player. (IDLE - >  PURSUE)\n\nYou get the idea. In fact, this may make you realize how *stupid the AI actually is*. It depends on pre-programmed variables and states to determine the next course of action; it isn't organic. But, as you add more and more complex interactions, it seems pretty darn smart. The computer might know your *exact* position, but for the sake of fun/challenge, lets its AI agents determine it for themselves.\n\nAs a side note, there *are* ways to make the AI more realistic. In fact, if you've ever played Alien: Isolation, you'll notice that the Alien *adapts to your behavior*. This isn't possible with a good ol' finite state machine, as the name implies that the states are, well, finite. What happens in this case is that there's an algorithm which processes information and creates new states and transitions, according to input and extreme mathematical gymnastics which are way out of scope from this article. This technique is called **machine learning** and is employed in real world applications like self-navigating cars, robotic vision and even Google searches. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FBGR6vmNeU"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "82dyhr", "title": "How do SONAR systems actually produce such loud noises?", "selftext": "It seems incredible that such a small device is capable of producing noise up to, what, *235* decibels? \n\nHow in the world is this possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/82dyhr/how_do_sonar_systems_actually_produce_such_loud/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dv9gzv9"], "score": [8], "text": ["They use an array of giant transducers.  When electricity gets passed through them, they vibrate and produce the \u201cping\u201d that gets transmitted into the water.  They are so loud that from the inside of the ship or sub, it sounds like a sledgehammer hitting the side of the ship.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "646sz4", "title": "how did the usa get the \"i have the right to be offended and you shouldn't offend me\" culture when they have protected free speech?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/646sz4/eli5_how_did_the_usa_get_the_i_have_the_right_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfztgh7", "dfztgr4", "dfzthnd", "dfztmio", "dfzuaav", "dfzuoap", "dfzv5nv", "dfzvbjg", "dfzvdqr", "dfzvfk6", "dfzvhjq", "dfzvhow", "dfzvjmb", "dfzvntc", "dfzvo1z", "dfzvotr", "dfzvr6y", "dfzvt2y", "dfzvusr", "dfzw11a", "dfzw20v", "dfzw3u8", "dfzw5un", "dfzw8vq", "dfzw9kb", "dfzw9qt", "dfzw9x1", "dfzwam0", "dfzweex", "dfzweyt", "dfzwj4f", "dfzwmt2", "dfzwo26", "dfzwp0n", "dfzwp4g", "dfzwp4n", "dfzwpvy", "dfzwtux", "dfzwty7", "dfzwukc", "dfzwuwz", "dfzx318", "dfzx3mx", "dfzx4pe", "dfzxaqm", "dfzzo2z"], "score": [4, 11, 236, 31, 7, 652, 24, 28, 114, 16, 2, 48, 6, 84, 4, 2, 3, 201, 7, 4, 7, 4, 7, 19, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Human nature. Look at the alt-right movement - one of their biggest gripes is they were talked badly about by those \"liberal elites\".  And they're the ones crying about a \"PC culture\" and having to watch what they say. It's hypocritical, but also human nature. ", "Freedom of Speech is only with regard to the federal government. From the Constitution:\n\n > Amendment I\n\n > **Congress shall make no law** respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or **abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press**; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.\n\n", "Freedom of speech only means that the government cannot take away your right to express your beliefs. Other people may pressure you into not expressing your beliefs.\n\nWhen you have people who say offensive things and use freedom of speech to defend themselves, they're wrong because the government can still censor anything without social value or anything inflammatory, ~~or anything hateful,~~ etc.\n\nNow, when people in America only want their opinions heard and not the other side's, we take it as a normal day. It's primarily because the US has been a country of combative ideals since the beginning, so people get really emotional over a lot of things.\n\nEdit: My bad, hate speech is not restricted unless inflammatory. Inflammatory speech is subject to the Brandenburg test, and so may or may not be restricted. \"without social value\" applies only to ~~offensive~~ expression, and is especially relevant when discussing the Court's opinions on pornographic content.\n\nEdit 2: \"without social value\" is for *obscene* expression, generally pornographic in nature.", "Think of it like this: *\"I dislike what you are saying, I really don't want you saying it because it offends me. I will defend your right to say it though.\"*\n\nJust because we would rather someone not spout... say, racist rhetoric and hope for a day people no longer do, doesn't mean we want it outlawed. We want the speech gone, but we do not trust the government to do so and we would prefer it to die naturally. The US is a society built on distrust of government: We made our government inefficient so each branch fights the other to make it harder for the government to fight us, Our constitution limits what government can do, etc.\n\n", "Politicians in America play in this all the time.  They select a segment of society from which they would like to get some votes, then \"champion the cause\" of whatever offends said segment's sensibilities.  For instance, Trump used the latent racism and xenophobia of Americans to become President. See: #BuildThatWall  &  #MuslimBan", "Social media/media has made it appear there are assholes everywhere, when it's just that assholes are the most vocal. The majority of us, I would imagine, would seem pretty normal to you. ", "What country are you form where people don't want to be offended? Is it Redditistan?", "Several people have explained how our first amendment only applies to the government, but so far I didn't see anyone explain how we got to the \"right to not be offended\" status.\n\nSo... Let's travel back in time to legal slavery, and before women's suffrage, and maybe even as far back as handing out smallpox blankets to Indians. There was a lot of bad laws establishing landowners (exclusively white males) as the only people with any legal rights. Period.\n\nWell times changed as people slowly realized that treating any human as less than human was reprehensible. (Very slowly... Some people haven't got the memo yet) ~~So laws against hate speech were established. Anything offensive aimed at a particular protected group of people qualified as hate speech.~~\n\n~~This was good. It allowed people to be backed by the full power of the government when often entire communities targeted them.~~\n\n~~The mistake was allowing people to take it as far as, \"What he said was offensive to me, it qualifies as hate speech.\" there's a fine line of what should qualify.... And they missed the mark by a long shot.~~\n\n~~So now offending people in many cases is established as against the law... and~~ businesses don't want to ~~spend money defending themselves against unwarranted hate speech charges~~ *drive off customers*, so they fire any employee that offends a customer. The customer feels this is how the world **should** be, so constantly ~~threatens to use legal action~~ *acts like it's their god given right to get their way* every time they get offended in any situation.\n\nThere's a lot of people like this now. ~~It's an epidemic, and I think the laws need a drastic overhaul... But our government is only focused on what their owners tell them to focus on... Which is to exploit the people for the profit of big businesses.~~\n\n---\nApparently I was grossly mistaken about \"hate speech\" laws being in america. Puts a large hole in my logic, but it still makes sense to blame it on businesses. Especially with the \"The Customer Is Always Right\" bullshit.", "As an American, that right to free speech protects my right to tell you something you said was offensive as much as it protects your right to say it. It basically boils down to the old \"sticks and stones\" argument, with a few exceptions such as extreme and inciteful hate speech and [fighting words](_URL_1_).\n\nThe big thing that most American students learned about (in terms of free speech and the first amendment) is [the KKK marching in Skokie Illinois](_URL_0_). Obviously, the nature of their expression is noxious and anti-social - but distasteful is not *illegal*. So they marched, requiring police protection to keep the substantially more numerous anti-KKK crowds from expressing their distaste illegally (physically). The important concept behind all of this is that you can say whatever you want, but I can think whatever I want about it and tell you as much; basically, intelligent, thoughtful people have nothing to fear from a person spreading falsehoods or socially unacceptable theories...\n\n...And given the dearth of intelligent, thoughtful people in the US at this point, maybe the concept is also a little anachronistic.", "People think that the freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want with no consequences. \nOn the flip side, people get in their heads that they can say whatever they want and have it be right and truth. \nThis is a much bigger issue than just being offended. ", "Because my generation is full of entitled, virtue signaling, thin-skinned brats who yell so loudly about every little thing that everyone else realizes its easier to appease them then to try to reason with them. ", "People who behave like that are actually a small subset of the population. It gets blown out of proportion on social media. Social media gives those people a voice so they get noticed more often. Then when they do get noticed, places like Reddit go off on them because everyone agrees they're annoying. There are more people complaining about the problem than there are people contributing to the problem.", "Can you give us some examples?", "There's obvious hypocrisy in anyone who espouses free speech while simultaneously wanting others' speeches censored, but I think your disconnect is-\n >  Yet, from an outsiders perspective when looking in at the USA, it seems like different groups of people only agree with free speech when it is their opinions being voiced and to silence people who disagree with them - but doesn't this go against free speech, the same free speech they are using?\n\nI imagine an outsider's perspective is going to be very limited to what the media is telling them - on reddit, I frequently see things about 'PC' and everything *but*, in real life, in my daily routine, with the people I ever speak to, I've never once met someone who'd advocate any legal restrictions on speech which is what I imagine you're implying (because if you just mean \"some people are touchy and wish everyone would talk how they want\", well, that's just a childish behavior that's inherent in many humans, no matter what country you consider)", "Sadly, it's rooted in trying to stop people from using language meant to marginalize and oppress certain groups, but it was taken too far by some on a high horse, and who ultimately go on to hurt the original cause.\n\"Niggers are destroying the country\" and \"you're overweight, you should really go on a diet\" are two VERY different points, but the 'snowflake' group sees the 2 as similar, in that they're both simply \"offensive\". So suddenly everything can get lumped into being \"offensive\" so they become equally 'wrong', when they're not the same things at all. It sucks.", "People use offense and outrage as a means of asserting power. It frees them from actually developing and supporting coherent arguments to support their views.", "When you have certain groups saying, \"Halloween offends me\" and the school districts take that away so they don't upset the one mom who doesn't celebrate Halloween. Instead of celebrating the masses wishes they are afraid of liability and kiss the ass of the few so they don't upset that one person, but they have no problem alienating the rest.", "In the US, free speech is enshrined in the Constitution. The government cannot privilege any religion or school of thought over another, it cannot restrict the press, and it cannot put people in jail for saying whatever they want (with limits -- you can get in trouble for speech that incites violence, for slander, for fraud/perjury, or for causing danger by, for example, yelling \"FIRE!\" in a theater just to incite panic, not because there's really a fire). \n\nSo basically, legally, you can say or write whatever the heck you want as long as you're not lying under oath, lying for financial gain, or lying to incite a chaotic or dangerous situation. \n\nAs for people taking offense, well, America has a very long, complicated, and often ugly history of prejudice against all sorts of people. People are understandably touchy about a lot of things as a result of that history, though I'd agree that sometimes it does get taken a little too far. The time when people would brutally lynch black men for looking sideways at a white woman wasn't too long ago. There are still Japanese-Americans alive today who remember spending World War II in camps in the Mojave Desert (George Takei, for one). We're still trying to deal with a lot of very hateful attitudes and mindsets, and so when people get offended by things and want them eliminated, it's a part of that larger societal shift. It can be a bit heavy-handed sometimes, but I think that it's not necessarily an evil thing. \n\nThe other thing is that allowing everyone to have nearly unrestricted freedom of expression means that you get every shade of opinion imaginable, and extreme opinions tend to be the loudest, or, alternatively, the squeakiest wheels get the grease, so when an extreme or just very offensive thing is said, the offended people, unable to use the law to stop hateful things from being said, must use public pressure instead. \n\nWithout taking sides in the issue, it's basically self-policing by society, since the law says that you can say and believe whatever you want. \n\nAnd if you want my actual opinion, I abhor hateful speech and I can get offended by things people say, but I also recognize that they have every right to say them, but on the flip side, I have every right to tell them why I think they're wrong. So it evens out in the end. ", "Internet, industries built on advertising, and boycotts. \n\n\nThe internet has allowed for the easy organization of boycotts against advertisers. Most industries are reliant on advertising for revenue. Advertisers don't want to be boycotted and thus won't show ads on any program whose advertisers get boycotted. Programs don't want to lose revenue so they curtail content so as to not instigate boycotts against their advertisers.\n\n\nWe now live in culture where most of the media never says anything that offends people, thus creating the impression that offending people is bad. Learning from the media, people now treat offending people as a serious \"offense\". ", "The right to free speech in the US means that the government cannot restrict your speech except in very limited circumstances.  Additionally, while we are free to speak our minds, we are not free from the consequences of doing so.  So while you are certainly free to go into a crowded shopping mall and scream racial slurs at people, you are not free from whatever consequences that might bring, to include other people shouting you down or the mall (a privately owned operation) ejecting you from the premisis.", "This 'culture' is not nearly as common as the internet or media makes it seem. There is also some tasty irony going on when people get offended by others being offended. \n\nFree speech is purely about preventing government censorship and doesn't have much bearing on this.", "Frankly, life is too good here. There aren't enough actual bad things going on. People love having things to complain about, it makes them feel important and we have maybe the most narcisistic and individualistic culture in the world. Hence they actively search out for things to be offended by.", "Short answer: people within the culture of \"don't you dare offend me\" have every right to protest and demand that they not be offended, that is part of free speech. You may use your freedom to demand that others have less freedoms, if that's really what you choose to do. \n\n", "I have thought about this one for a long time and it boils down to this... imho...\n\n1. Internet culture. To explain, I don't think anyone knew what the internet would be capable of. We all used it, but for the time (early 2000s) there wasn't  lot of communities.\n2. Enter the age of the internet war sometime after 2005. Websites began having social conflicts between users stealing memes. I think the main of this conflict was Reddit, Tumblr, and 4Chan. Reddit was also just going through the Digg migration.\n3. The meme wars escalate with the parallel rising of third generation feminism, social justice warriors, and flooding Facebook with political garbage during the first Obama presidential run.\n4. Once politics got involved in the content wars, everything turned into a culture war fuel by proto versions of SJWs, Black Lives Matter, Alt-Right, etc. The biggest issues that still plague the culture was is hyperbole (over exaggerations).\n5. Media saw this as marketable during the years of Obama's presidency and over time it just got worse. That's why we have seen large media shaken a ton after Trump. \"Fake News\" has made a huge wrinkle in media for every one because we really don't know who to trust anymore.\n6. Finally, Poe's law, going back to hyperbole. This law essentially defines how people cannot tell parody from extremism which is dangerous. 4Chan parodied social movements a ton but only their worst qualities. Over time, these jokes that are usually going around the net as memes, lose their source. They may get picked up by actual extreme or fringe members of movements, and bam, you get a group of people who accidentally believe bullshit because they think its their \"team's\" bullshit.\n7. HOW DOES THIS ALL LEAD UP TO LIMITING SPEECH -- The thing about the social movements going on today is they have a good message. End racism, bring about equal rights for all sexes and beliefs, etc. Here is where it gets funny.\n8. The rise of people against free speech -- the social movements mentioned above have the belief that the way we talk about things perpetuates the kinds of changes they want to see in the world. Things have gotten pretty bad where now in New York you can be fined for not referring to someone by their pronouns. People are choosing self censorship to avoid getting in trouble, but it's sometimes like bending over too much for these crybaby extremists. Thing is, again, no one wants to get in trouble. Especially with a group of people who have been known to seek you out just to make you lose your job or something. The American government cannot easily destroy free speech but I do feel there are powers that recognize a way to limit it by influencing our culture and it appears to be working.\n9. The ultimate blame is identity politics. People who believe they are owed something or have a right to something just by merit of their identity. Thing is, we all have an identity that we use to define who we are to be shared with other people. The issue became using this identity to get special treatment. Universities and public schools facilitated identity politics to create rules because they don't want trouble from parents or losing students. Now, identity politics is a real power to be feared by people who live under the policies.\n10. Tribalism by identity politics -- the real great thing about identity politics and I suppose you could say, identity psychology, is right now it's divided people. You pick teams that match your beliefs. Political leanings, race, sex, or sexual direction groups. Pages on facebook, content creators, etc. They have grievances with other groups that they occasionally complain about and these complaints, existing in the group, make **echo chambers**. An environment where an idea get repeated too much and grows in its communal pathos, ethos, and logos. The thing is, they also tend to go unchallenged because of what can be arguably seen as \"Over Moderation\". Have an opposing view? BANNED. DELETED. HIDDEN. Then you post \"Some people these days. Crazy [descriptor here].\" And its championed.\nFrightening stuff.\n\nIt's a crazy multifaceted issue that is still developing today.       ", "Poor parenting.   \n  \nThe last generation was raised being constantly told how great they are, how right they are, that everyone should like them, and that the world should be customized to their desires.   \n  \nThey were never taught how to deal with conflict, how to handle stress, or how to control their emotions.", "Here's the real answer. It has everything to do with people giving validity to their feelings. They wear their feelings with pride and if you hurt their feelings then they are offended. It's a bunch of bullshit.", "After hundreds of years of oppressing certain people, the efforts to undo that damage included making the language related to past oppression unacceptable. \n\n\nThen others with less to complain about saw how that worked, and used the concept for their own purposes.\n\n", "There is no right to not be offended. It's not wrong to ask people to not be jerks, but you have to understand that they may or may not comply. You don't have the right to have your request abided. The only exception is if the offensive speech somehow falls under anti-harassment or discrimination laws. Hate speech and inflammatory speech (which is very subjective) are not protected. Harassment and discrimination acts are illegal. Basically, the First Amendment is a general outline for free speech, but Court precedence and subsequent laws determine how it is interpreted and applied.\n\nFrom The Declaration of Independence: \"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness\" Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything self-evident and our legal history has shown many different sections of society being withheld those rights at various times. \n\nMy view on society right now: We are becoming more selfish and narcissistic so we think everything revolves around us. We are more offensive because we put our wants/needs as top priority and think we can do whatever we want if we deem it right and just. We rarely think of the greater good since we are operating from a personal, individualistic model. We think we know everything, ignoring the experts. However, society cannot operate this way without falling apart. There have to be some ground rules and a general respect and consideration of others. Truth is truth and fact is fact, regardless of whether an individual agrees or not. Until we can move out of this selfish, individualistic mind set, it will continue to get worse. ", "Americans generally only believe in free speech for themselves, not for people they disagree with.  Americans are afraid that others will believe the people they disagree with, so they preemptively try to stifle their speech.  Since Americans are hypocrites, they will claim to believe in free speech because the government isn't doing the stifling.  However, this is incorrect because the concept of free speech is much deeper than the First Amendment.", "Because many Americans often confuse 'freedom of speech' with 'freedom of speech without consequence'. They prefer the latter.\n\nIn my experience, I have found that many Americans act on the basis that freedom of speech means that they can say whatever they want and others have to respect it simply because they have a right to say it. Which isn't true! People are perfectly entitled to respond to something however they like. \n\nFor example: If somebody walks into a room and starts saying horrible nasty things, and the other people in the room don't like what is being said, they all turn their backs on that person. They don't want or have to listen to what they disagree with. So the person who made those initial comments is shunned, and feels *societal pressure* to be silent, because people aren't responsive to their opinions.\n\nThat is the difference. Feeling shamed into silence or having opinions disagreed with by your fellow humans is different from being stripped entirely of free speech. If they had no free speech, the government wouldn't have allowed them to say those things in the first place.", "I would like to add something to this discussion. There are a lot of individuals who believe that our right to free speech only falls under the jurisdiction of protections from government intervention. But the principles that were used to found our country were those principles hailed by political thinkers such as bastiat or locke. Following their logic the government has three purposes that lead to the protection of its peoples: Protection from coercion by force, settlement of disputes between individuals(Land disputes back in the day), and protection from foreign enemies. \n\nThe speech argument would fall under the disputes category because of the changing face of our country and our problems. \n\nTo say that the constitution only protects us from government and not from each other is to disregard the principles that it was founded upon. We have free speech laws because it is an inalienable right that we should be able to speak our minds without fear of harm. That being said, my personal opinion is that our culture is a dependent one. We depend on the government to protect us, and as such we sling all our problems their way and expect to be done right. This is a silly notion because someone is always unhappy with the results. But hey, as long as we continue to try to create a majority that will be happy with the results eventually there will be no opposition right? ", "Those two things are completely compatible with each other.  As an example, I have the right to be offended by Bill O'Reilly, and I'm perfectly happy to tell Fox news (the network that airs him) that they should not offend me because they're a commercial entity and I will refuse to support them (by way of not watching, and also refusing to do business with companies that advertise on his show).  That is my power as an individual.  If lots of people do the same, then that does not constrain O'Reilly's ability to speak, just his ability to make money doing it.  He's allowed to speak, but nobody is required to listen.\n\nWhat I can't do, and what almost everyone agrees is wrong, would be to pass a law that the government would enforce to make it illegal for him to speak.", "To add to the other comments, free speech pertains both to the person doing the speaking, and those responding to it. Lets say you come to reddit and say \"Dude, cat videos are just dumb.\" The government would violate my freedom of speech to prevent me from from saying \"you are wrong.\" This seems trivial, but during women's fight for suffrage, the civil rights movement, the fight for rights for disabilities, the a lot of the arguments against why we shouldn't have these was \"Dude, women are just dumb (too dumb to vote).\" And people stood up and said that they were wrong.", "Can I ask where you you from? Despite have a rise in sjws lately America is by far the country with the freest speech in the world. ", "Well whomever told you that about the US Constitution was wrong. Sort of. As an American we are protected for freedom of speech as long as it is not slanderous toward another. If I want to come out and say that I hate radical Islamic terrorists as an example and a radical Islamic terrorist who is also a citizen is offended by it well that's tough shit because my freedom of speech is protected. These fucking cry baby snowflakes who are offended by everyone and everything nowadays is a direct result of the \"everyone gets a trophy\" mentality. Also these same people seem to think they are entitled to things without having earned them. As Clint Eastwood said, this is the pussification of America. The majority of foreigners who are coming to America to make a better life for themselves and their families understand (for the most part) that hard work and respect of others leads to success and prosperity. Those ideals seem to have been lost on this newer generation. ", "I think people are neglecting the historical component of this. A lot of this change in public outcry is resulting from the history of treatment of women, minorities, members of the LGBT community in the US. \n\nIn decades past certain ways of speaking/treating members of these groups was\u200b generally socially acceptable but we've progressed to the point where everyone, rightfully so, wants equal treatment not just under the law but socially. That's where things get tricky. People who were previously able to do/say things without worry now can face social backlash for the things they got away with not long ago. \n\nFor example, when I was a kid (around 11-12 I'm 30 now) it was normal for our football coaches to tell us to \"stop acting like a sissy/girl/pussy\" if someone was being soft or complaining about being sore/tired. Now a coach would get in trouble if they said something like that to a preteen boy. Language like that makes it seem like being effeminate or a woman is outright a negative thing so women or members of the LGBT community would often take offense. \n\nWe're also now living in an age where members of these groups can quickly and easily find thousands of peers AND be informed of injustices (real and imagined) that occur to members of these groups. So people can quickly pile on through social media.\n", "My pulled out of my ass theory (like most \"informative\" comments on Reddit) is that it's just the result of rapid cultural change. The US went from an attitude of lgbt people being mostly not tolerated to lgbt people being very widely tolerated over just a couple of decades. I think this large swing in attitude simply got carried a bit too far and now there is a relatively small group of people that are a combination of stupidity and being high on fighting the good fight, resulting in the fact that they are completely unaware that doing things like making \"he/she\" pronouns illegal is insane and undermines every basic understanding of free speech that most of us still have. It's also important to know that the crazies trying to alter freedom of speech are a vast, vast minority. Yes, if you go to the most liberal places around the country, it will be very easy to find plenty of people who are like this, but for every one of them, there are 1000+ liberals who completely understand freedom of speech and know not to undermine it. \n\nTL;DR When any large change in society happens, there will be people who take it too far. This is a relatively small group of people taking the rapid social change of the past few decades and carrying it way too far, trying to undermine freedom of speech in a horribly misguided attempt to help others. ", "Born  &  raised in America.  Our political system blended with both mainstream  &  social media have led to this.  \n\nThe political system has polarized people instead of working to find common ground.  Each party provokes the other, then finds ways to paint a false picture that their conflicting point of view is somehow evil  &  manipulative - leading to a heightened sensitivity that has trickled into everything. \n\nMainstream media presents little bits of facts layered with strong opinions designed to provoke an emotional response - leading to viewers being \"hooked\"' on a story.\n\nInstead of embracing a diversity of ideas  &  opinions, we have a nation with a lot of entitled people who think that a different point of view is a declaration of war. That voice has been given a megaphone by the addiction to social media. \n\nMany parts of the world I've visited have zero issue accepting that a person's opinion is their own,  &  who cares if we disagree, let's talk about something else or have a discussion about it - while respecting where you are coming from. \n\nPlease don't think the \"pussification of America\" you are witnessing represents all Americans. Unfortunately it is just some of the loudest voices. \n\nOptimistically, I think more people are coming around  &  rolling their eyes at the strong, rash reactions out there. It seems to be viewed more as a sign of immaturity (as it is)......kind of like not agreeing with everyone on a Reddit thread lol! \n\n", "The most important thing to understand is that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. So many people say stupid and offensive stuff, then try to claim you can't get angry because they're just exercising free speech. Wrong. You are free to say whatever you like, but the rest of society is free to impose consequences on you for that speech. Your speech can get you shunned or ridiculed. You could lose your job. So when you say offensive stuff, don't be surprised if people take offense. The reason people say \"I have the right to be offended\" is because many people (and in particular the offensive ones) don't understand this.\n\nNow for the \"don't offend me\". The core belief that justifies free speech is that stupid and offensive speech is not dangerous because most people will identify it as such. So if neo-nazis decide to hold a parade, we don't worry that much because most people will look on in disgust. But this applies to a lot more than hate speech. The people you are asking about, the so-called \"Social Justice Warriors\" are just as free to express their beliefs. They have a belief that people have a right to not be offended. The also are free to vociferously demand it. And the rest of us are just as free to ignore them.\n\nBut all free speech analysis aside, you have to understand that this culture of which you speak is a tiny, tiny portion of the overall population. They just happen to be very vocal. Also, you are learning about our culture through broadcasts, which tend to isolate the most \"interesting\" parts of society for discussion. Just like every cop show on TV deals with a murder (despite this being a relatively rare crime), news tends to focus on the extreme parts of society, giving you an imbalanced impression of how significant that part of society is. After all, it makes for boring TV when you have a streetside preacher, and everybody just keeps walking.\n\nSo to sum it all up, we have the freedom to be stupid (which the SJWs are), and a broadcast industry that likes to give stupid people a platform so the rest of us can laugh at them. But this can give you a false impression of the importance of this part of society.", "The Internet has allowed for \"offensive\" statements to propagate further and attract the attention of a much wider audience, who are often also taking the statements out of context and making the offense that much deeper, or turning a statement that was designed for non-offense (like sarcasm or parody) into an \"offensive\" belief statement.  Having a wider audience means any statement encounters more people who believe in a \"duty\" to seek out the speaker and \"expose\" them to the full brunt of public opinion and ideally coerce society into shunning that individual, an Internet version of the old \"Scarlet Letter\", if you will.\n\nAnd to add to this, the very same Internet also allows for people with similar ideas to gather -- whether they have belief in the \"offensive\" ideas or if they are just into \"edgy\" humor or the use of sarcasm or even (what they consider) borderline \"offensive\" statements in order to get a real point across.  For any idea you can think of, there's likely some website (even if just an isolated forum on Reddit) that has a following large enough to make a reader of that site think their mindset is shared by more people than society has revealed.  With that comes validation and boldness, such that the idea that society could still come down hard on individuals expressing those ideas is discounted.  This also includes those who believe in the \"offensive\" idea that society should be empowered to seek out speakers of offensive ideas and shut them down.  So more people \"agree\" with the small group demanding the original speaker facing severe social and (by way of losing their job in many cases) financial pressure.\n\nThese are not wholly new concepts -- expressing an unpopular opinion in the past would still carry the risk of being shunned -- but the size of the Internet... for lack of a better word, \"mob\" means even a small demand for an \"offensive\" person to face severe sanction is being responded to.  I would even suggest it's not as horrible as it sounds, except for the fact that it can affect the innocent (ie, the so-called \"offensive\" speech is actually being misinterpreted and the speaker is having incorrect beliefs attributed to them) and the fact that it's often a disproportionate response.\n\nOh, and let me add: people with social agendas thrive on this sort of material.  It keeps their agenda on the front burner, so calling out the \"offense\" keeps the underlying issues on the forefront of the news.  To ignore the offense or acknowledge a misunderstanding means one less time they can use someone's words as a weapon with which to beat their adversaries down with.", "Spoiled babies who got whatever they wanted growing up. Then grow up, get to the real world, and still feel they have the privilege to always get their way. ", "I would guess its less people being upset easier and more people having a much better understanding of whats offensive.\n\n70 years ago it pronably wasnt considered blanketly offensive to suggest women cant be as smart as men. That right there covers a shit load of circumstances. Now implying a woman cant be CEOs, in congress, or in specialized positions are all considered offensive while being a subset of that first argument. Same with minorities. Same with the LGBTQ. \n\n\nFor the the next argument i am going to assume something, that you are under 20. People under 20 and especially people under 17. Are hyper active shit posters with too much time who feel like they dont fit in anywhere so will jump on any group without regard to whether or not they should. \n\nThis is all over the political/social spectrum. 4chan, /r/the_donald, tumblr, and a lot of other groups are held together by these hyperactive shit posters with nothing else to do. The problem is that these people and groups do not accurately reflect the real world. It just so happens theyre comparatively loud so it seems like its representative. But once you get older you realize that getting drawn into an argument with hyper active shit posters never pays off. So we avoid them.\n\nFinally what everyone else here seems to be saying. 1st amendment is government action and never has been about private communication. Its not an ideal we strive for within our community. Its a legal necessity.", "People want to conflate the meaning of 'freedom of speech' with the far different phrase 'freedom from speech'. In the same way, there is a desire to conflate 'freedom of religion' with 'freedom from religion'.\n\nAside from the above misuse of language, there is sometimes a basic misunderstanding about rights under the U.S. constitution. The 'freedom of speech' in the U.S. constitution simply means that the government cannot prevent your free speech. It is not a ticket to spew anything you want. Your employer can certainly censure your speech and terminate you if your violate the employer's standards. You can stand on the street corner and insult passing people. The government won't stop you, but someone will eventually take offense and put a stop to your activity.\n\nFreedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion all protect the citizen from oppression by the government. These freedoms do not compel the government to protect you from the consequences of bad behavior.", "\"Protected free speech\" is a right defined in the Constitution, but this is meant to apply to the government and laws enacted by said government.\n\nConversely, when a person argues that you shouldn't use offensive language, that is a request levied at a private individual or establishment. The target of the request has no legal imperative to be \"more polite\", and the requester has no legal restriction on making the request.\n\nThe confusion comes from attempting to applying the Constitution outside its intended scope. As an inverted example, the Constitution allows for the collection of taxes by the federal government, but if I as an individual came to your house and demanded you give me a share of your earnings for the year, you would be within your rights to refuse me, because the Constitution does not grant ME the individual that power.", "As someone who is Non-American, it is clear you don't understand that the 'PC culture is ruining America' mindset is massively overblown. In real life it simply isn't a large factor. Reddit especially has been guilty of this. Essentially a relatively small sample of situations and people have been drawn out to  represent the larger trends in society. This is largely untrue, and PC culture has a pretty low affect on everyone's day to day life. \n\nNow, to explain in depth:\n\nFree speech *does not* give you leeway to say whatever you want wherever you want. Period. It only says that the government can't be the one to decide what you can or cannot say. \n\nIndividuals, businesses, and other organizations are not restricted in how they treat your speech. They are not required to ignore it. I don't have to interact with you, or do business with you, or vote for you, or anything else because of free speech. Which also means that we can influence each other's behavior. \n\nIf Target has a 'God hates gays' t-shirt for sale, I don't ever have to shop there again. Target has a broad incentive to not sell those shirts now. \n\nMoreover, your free speech doesn't stop my free speech, with which I can tell you I am offended and I don't like what you are doing. This is pretty adversive for most people and also incentive to change your behavior. \n\nThese are the reasons why PC culture exists. However, like I said, the concern reddit seems to have over PC culture is far more absurd than the actual culture itself. What *exact* behavior do they think is problematic due to this phenomenon? Why is that problematic? What exact things do you want to say or do that you feel are being punished due to pc culture? Why do you want to do those? Why does your right to be a dick supercede my right to be offended? Why can't I tell you I don't like what you are doing or saying? Why do you get a free pass to do whatever you want regardless of what it does to myself or others? Why do you get the right to say what you want about other people and I can't get offended, but you seem to easily get offended about me not liking your opinions?\n\nTo put it simply, most of what PC culture is is 'don't be a dick'. Exaggeration about it is as absurd as this image that some people have that Europe has turned into an ultraviolent shit hole. It just isn't true.  ", "I got my first degree in the last 80s early 90s.  That's when the idea of speech codes was being discussed seriously.  Why this was taken seriously is studies had come out showing that verbal harassment in the form of racial slurs, threats, and so on harmed the ability of the students on the receiving end to study, work, and graduate.  Back then a lot of people were crying \"Free Speech\" for whatever right they felt they had to yell obscene things at others.  \n\nEventually the removal of such language on campuses was successful to a point.  With the election of Trump, those who think saying those things has had a resurgence.\n\nNow to other types of speech.  Everyone can agree that stereotypes are harmful.  A black person can't get a good job if people stereotype that person as a criminal.  A person of Asian decent wouldn't get hired for a sales position, because they are stereotyped as math nerds. Actions that feed into these stereotypes I think are what are referred to as microagressions.  Not illegal, but anyone who has found their life affected by these things would be understandably upset.   \n\nNext, we have \"triggers\" which can force a person to relive a traumatic event.  This is commonly seen in vets with PTSD, but it is also common with rape victims or in children of abusive parents.  It's seen as cruel to force people to have to continuously relive abuse.\n\nWhat this comes down to eventually is that it's nearly impossible to discuss any of these issues, or to study anything that may have any of these things in them.  This is all free speech, so the government isn't supposed to be getting involved, and some could construe a state university a government entity, but a school where one is constantly harassed is not a good learning environment.\n\nI don't think anyone really knows what to do.  It's excessive to kick someone out of school because they wrote something that suggests an Asian is a nerd and called a woman a bitch. It's not excessive to kick someone out for making a lynching effigy (that's a threat, so no, not free speech). \n\nHopefully this helps some."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie?redirect=free-speech/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie", "http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2002/scene_rosen_mayjun2002.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5li1yj", "title": "why is the golden ratio common to so many things of different nature?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5li1yj/eli5_why_is_the_golden_ratio_common_to_so_many/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbvvgem", "dbvwzv5", "dbvy95k", "dbvyn15", "dbw271t", "dbw84pl", "dbwnj19", "dbwns4d"], "score": [16, 439, 35, 93, 3, 107, 2, 4], "text": ["Because \"the golden ratio\" is a clever-sounding way of pointing out when something is approximately half-again bigger than something else. As you can imagine, such a vague concept can be interpreted to occur very frequently.", "Say you have a seed. Deep down in the genetic code of the seed is the simple genetic code that says \"have these cells build more of themselves.\" If you let all those cells grow, the ratio between old cells and new cells will usually be the golden ratio.\n\nThe golden ratio is so common in nature because it is the product of such a simple idea: the ratio between the first thing and the second thing is the same as the ratio between both those things and a third thing. It's what you always get when you tell cells or leaves or branches or scales to just \"grow more of yourself.\"", "[Vi Hart has an excellent 3 part video series explaining it better than I have ever seen it explained.](_URL_0_) This is part 1.\n\nThis ratio is the result of trying to maximize efficiency in using space. As she explains, it would be weird if these things *didn't* exhibit this pattern.\n\nThe first part is mostly showing how the pattern occurs in nature, the explanation starts in part 2. The actual biological rather than mathematical explanation is in part 3.", "There's a good amount of debate but here's the unpopular truth: it doesn't play a big role in nature. There are many things that are close to the golden ratio but it does not crop up all over as is often claimed. Here's an article about the golden ratio in people.\n_URL_1_\n\nAnd here's one about it in manmade stuff. \n_URL_0_", "Actually it does not play a main role in nature. You can \"occasioannaly\" find something that roughly is under this ratio. Such an unfortunate myth that needs to go away.", "The golden ratio is a beautiful mathematical *idea*, but it doesn't manifest in nature as much as is claimed in videos on youtube or books about the universality and even mystical significance of the ratio. It is 'pop' science, tenuously connected to a wide array of natural processes because people find that idea aesthetically pleasing.\n\n*Mathematically*, the golden ratio is fascinating. It is the irrational number with the simplest continued fraction expansion...\n\n >  1 + (1 / (1 + (1 / (1 + (1 / (1 + (1 / ...\n\n... and it is the limit of the ratio of consecutive Fibonacci numbers. \n\nFibonacci numbers *do* show up in science, in ((almost?) exclusively biological) natural processes, though this relationship also doesn't occur as much in nature as is often claimed. The number of spiral patterns in the arrangements of leaves around branches, petals around flowers, and scales around pine cones are often consecutive Fibonacci numbers - see [phyllotaxis](_URL_0_) - and the higher those numbers get the closer the placement of elements around those spirals is related to the golden angle (the golden mean as applied to the circumference of a circle). This arrangement arises because it is the simplest and most efficient way to arrange petals (for example) such that they all get the maximum amount of sunlight with the least amount of work.\n\nIn a sense the golden ratio is a lot like a Platonic 'ideal' - the idea that circles (for example) are always just approximations of some ideal perfect circle, that the forms of everything we see in nature are imperfect shadows of pure ideal forms that we cannot perceive directly. In that sense the golden ratio is the ideal, perfect relationship that is approximated in natural forms by the Fibonacci numbers. This leads some people to assume that there must be something universally important about the golden ratio, in the way that ideal-but-inaccessible forms were considered important to ancient Greek philosophers. But such ideas are in the realm of philosophy, not physics.\n\ntl,dr: the golden ratio is fascinating in mathematics as the eventual limit of the ratio of consecutive Fibonacci numbers, and as an organizing principle in some spiral biological processes. Claims that the golden ratio has some other significance or cosmic relevance might be interesting philosophically, but they have little to do with science.", "A combination of observer bias and selection bias.\nPeople expect the golden ratio and look for it in nature (selection bias), when things sort of fit, they claim to have found it. (observer bias).\n\nThe same results can be achieved with many other arbitrary ratios. Nature is big.", "Here's a recent article from Fast Company supporting the claim that the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Sequence is man-made bullshit\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXIMUkSXX0"], ["https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_07.html", "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mathematicians-dispute-claims-that-the-golden-ratio-is-a-natural-blueprint-for-beauty-10204354.html"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllotaxis"], [], ["https://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth"]]}
{"q_id": "2ynzv0", "title": "What was the reaction of the American public when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis?", "selftext": "Did the public think that this marriage was inappropriate or even a bad idea, as it was only 5 years after JFK's assassination?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ynzv0/what_was_the_reaction_of_the_american_public_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpbi4zw"], "score": [11], "text": ["I always heard the marriage was not consummated and was strictly a means of supporting her after JFK was assassinated. Is that true or was it a media cover story? Was Onasiss a friend of the family when JFK was alive? Was the marriage based on some sort of chivalrous tradition? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2roz9j", "title": "why do some muslims get offended about pictures of mohammad?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2roz9j/eli5_why_do_some_muslims_get_offended_about/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnhwjol", "cnhwphc", "cnhwssa", "cnhyivl", "cni0ldj", "cni0mdb", "cni6miy", "cni8bma", "cni9y7d", "cnia42k"], "score": [83, 29, 52, 2, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["In Islam,  portraits and photos of their figures is forbidden. \nCheck out a mosque sometime. . No photos but lots of geometrical art and Arabic calligraphy.", "Sunni Muslims believe that visually depicting their Prophet or their God is dangerously close to idolatry. Drawings of Muhammed, especially cartoons, are considered by many to be extremely disrespectful to all Muslims.", "Well, portraits or Mohammed were forbidden to prevent Muslims from worshipping Mohammed instead of God. And about what's happening nowadays, I was talking to my Dad about all this stuff and he put it like that these cartoons make him feel like the rest of the work is making fun of us, the normal Muslims. And that's because most of the pictures he saw on the front page were relatively offensive. We don't approve of any of the violence either. But we feel like the whole religion shouldn't be facing the backlash of just a few extremists.", "Drawings of Mohammed were made illegal around 16-17th century. There is nothing in the Qu'ran stating it is not allowed. ", "I know this has been stated before, but Islam forbids any depiction of any person or animal (be it the Prophet Mohammad or yourself), ie no paintings, no statues, no likenesses of any kind. You won't see people or animal designs on prayer rugs or in mosques, because either Islamic scholars or Mohammad himself (I can't remember witch) didn't want Muslims to warship idols.\n\nWhen television came to the middle east, many conservative Muslims protested for this reason. ", "It's not in the Quran but it's said in the Hadith that any representation of something with a soul is forbidden although from my experience even among incredibly devout or strict Muslims this isn't enforced. The idea is that you're representing a creation of god imperfectly. ", "Because they are childish morons who need to grow up", "From what I learned it was by his request saying that he and his image where not nearly as important since he merely the voice of Allah ", "Because they're idiots. Just like the fundamentalist Christians, they're not representative of the religion. We should think of them as terrorists who happen to have chosen Islam as an excuse to fuck about, rather than Muslims.", "Just to note that offence over depictions of religious figures isn't limited to Islam; To give 2 examples here's [Christians being offended over the \"Piss Christ\" sculpture](_URL_1_) and [Buddhists getting offended over tattoos of Buddha](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/02/thailand-ban-tourists-buddha-tattoo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ#Reception"]]}
{"q_id": "6gnb7x", "title": "why are short stay romantic hotels not common in the u.s.? (nsfw)", "selftext": "I've lived in the US for almost 10 years and I have never seen decent low price short stay hotels where people could go have sex. In Mexico city there are a lot of motels that offer privacy, clean rooms, discrete room service, charging for just few hours stay and depending on the price they can have pool or jacuzzi inside the room. They are very popular there. \n\nIn the US the closest to that that I have seen is cheap motels but they charge for the night an are usually not in great conditions. Is it that there is no market for such places or are they against the law?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gnb7x/eli5_why_are_short_stay_romantic_hotels_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dirk1vw", "dirl0el", "dirlo74", "dirvk0x", "dirvr8l", "dis0cl4", "disdxrh"], "score": [30, 6, 4, 5, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Americans like to pretend this would offend their morals while basically being bereft of actual morals that matter.", "Ordinary hotels and motels are so common that they meet this need adequately. The only extra benefit of a short-stay hotel is a cost savings, but motels are already pretty cheap.", "That's basicslly what every shady hotel is for. There isn't really a need for a chain specifically for one night stands when you have a dozen or so hotels of varying price within a town.", "\"No-tell motels\" exist in parts of cities where there is more prostitution, but there are fewer than there used to be. There are plenty of budget motels that rent out cheaply by the day, though. There may be vice laws in some cities that discourage hourly rates in motels and hotels in order to combat prostitution. \n\n\n\"[In the United States and Canada, certain motels in low-income areas often serve similar functions as a Japanese love hotel. Colloquially known as \"no-tell motels\", these are becoming scarce as local laws increasingly require renters' identification information to be recorded and given to law enforcement agencies. However, the Supreme Court recently struck down warrantless searches of hotel records](_URL_0_)\"\n\n\nProstitution aside, Americans just tend to go to their own places, if they're young they get together at one another's houses if the parents are at work, or...cars parked in concealed locations.\n", "I do think there would be a market for this in the US, to be honest. IME, a cheap hotel room in the US looks and smells like a cheap hotel room, and is not somewhere I would seek out for a romantic encounter with my husband. But it would be cool to have access to a place as the OP described, for lunchtime quickies and such. \n\nWe have two young children and have different work schedules.  Timing is tough. ", "The reason they're popular in a lot of parts in the world is because of the lack of privacy. In Japan, you live in a small apartment and it's not uncommon to live with your parents even as an adult. Love hotels provide a discrete getaway that you may not have at home. \n\nIn the US, shady motels and what not already fill such a role for those who need it.", "I live in Mexico and there's about 4 of those motels just around my area. There's even a webpage where you can discuss the most popular ones and get a preview of what it's like before you go and all of this information comes from another user, not the motel itself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1j7d0c", "title": "if polygamy is illegal in the u.s., how does the show 'sister wives' exist?", "selftext": "It's the same thing with that show on Discovery about people making moonshine. It seems like the authorities could find the people, but obviously they don't...but why? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j7d0c/if_polygamy_is_illegal_in_the_us_how_does_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbbu46z", "cbbu48j", "cbbucox", "cbbuwvk", "cbbvsmz", "cbbwhx7", "cbbx4jk", "cbbxn9z", "cbbybvl", "cbbz2nc", "cbccp61"], "score": [5, 2, 12, 65, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Not sure about moonshine, but I think polygamy is illegal the same way that gay marriage is illegal.  They are not legally allowed the marriage, but no one is arresting people for their plural marriages, just like no one breaks up a gay wedding ceremony", "If it is illegal in every state, and I had to guess, I'd say only one wife would be legally married to the man, and the marriages to the others are only recognised by their church of cult or whatever. However different states have different laws regarding marriage, and the federal government only recognises \"traditional marriages\" or at least until they reformed DOMA to recognise same sex marriages.", "For the moonshine one, there is a legality issue where they don't show all the steps so they technically don't make shine.", "Being lawfully married to more than one person at a time is disallowed everywhere in the U.S. But this only pertains to *lawful marriage.* You can engage in *holy matrimony* ('church wedding') with as many people as you want, and even beings and objects that are not people, if your church is up for that. A wedding (holy or not) by itself is not a legal marriage without a lawfully issued marriage certificate. And in some cases, even that might not be enough. For example, if you lawfully execute a second marriage in another state or county (because the first one would catch on before issuing you the license), that's *bigamy,* and the first result is that the second marriage is automatically annulled. In effect, you just can't do it, period.\n\nBut it's perfectly lawful to *treat other people as spouses even if they're not legally so,* so long as you don't extend that to any act that might constitute fraud. For example, you can claim only your lawful spouse as such on tax forms, or you're committing tax fraud.\n", "The same reason openly polygamous compounds exist in states with strong anti-bigamy laws; the authorities just aren't interested in prosecuting it.\n\nThis has a lot to do with the [Short Creek Raid](_URL_0_) in 1953. The Governor of Arizona invited tons of journalists to witness the raid in which they took basically every member of the community into custody, including children. This backfired, as what people saw on camera were hundreds of kids being ripped away from their mothers, and the public and media response was overwhelmingly negative. Tons of bad press, and the Governor lost reelection. Since then, authorities haven't really been in a big hurry to plan large scale raids of polygamous sects. Instead, what typically gets prosecuted is underage marriages that would qualify as statutory rape, or conspiracy to commit such, which is why Warren Jeffs is in prison.", "I don't know the legal details, but one of the major plot points of the show Sister Wives is somewhat related:\n\nThey originally live in Utah. The state of Utah somehow communicated that they intended to prosecute the family for polygamy, so the family had to uproot their entire lives and move to another state and area where the laws (or enforcement?) is more relaxed.", "According to Wiki, \"The only legal marriage is between Kody and his first wife, Meri, and the others' marriages are considered spiritual unions\" [Source](_URL_0_)", "Didn't they move from the state of Utah to escape law enforcement coming down on them? \n\nJust because it's illegal doesn't mean it cannot be documented on TV. I'm sure they are on the law enforcement radar wherever they live, but Nevada has much more lenient laws and liberal stance on sexual perversion. ", "The man on the show is married \"spiritually\"with his wives, or so he says. The show, according to him, is not meant to push polygamy on others, but just to show what it's like. I'm not sure if spiritual weddings are considered legally binding, but any person with internet and a passion for polygamy could find out.", "Reporting from about 8  houses up the street where the plig family on TV lived: It is is simply not prosecuted in most cases, if ever. In Provo, there was a sitting plig judge on the bench for decades: _URL_0_", "And just as was explained, that it's a church, not government marriage, in the show they were in I think Utah but became under suspicion for something technical, which is why a lot of the show revolves around their being pressured to leave and relocating to LV, Nevada."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Creek_raid"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_wives"], [], [], ["http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9904689/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/utah-high-court-hears-case-polygamous-judge/#.UfU1IW0vkxg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1h6ghq", "title": "Why does the Erie Canal parallel Lake Ontario? Why not just go through Lake Ontario? (Thanks!)", "selftext": "There MUST be a good reason . . .", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h6ghq/why_does_the_erie_canal_parallel_lake_ontario_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["carbap4", "carbfar", "carbzdt"], "score": [9, 93, 15], "text": ["I apologize in advance: I do not have a professional knowledge of this subject.  However, your question made me curious and I spent some time looking it up online.  Here are my conclusions.\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_2_) mentions that an earlier plan *was* to link up to Lake Ontario, but the company doing so ran into problems:\n\n*\"The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, chartered by the New York legislature in 1792, was the ancestor of the Erie Canal. The goal of this company was the creation of an uninterrupted water transportation route from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario by improving and linking the Mohawk River, Oneida Lake, and the Oneida River. After experiencing immense technical and financial difficulties, the company only created a one mile canal to by-pass the Little Falls of the Mohawk River. Although the company collected tolls for use of its canal, this revenue barely provided enough funds to keep its lock in working order.\"*\n\nA second web page, [An Economic History of the Erie Canal](_URL_0_) confirms this: \n\n*\"The initial thinking was to link the Great Lakes System to the Hudson River by way of a canal connecting with Lake Ontario. There was traffic on the natural rivers south of Lake Ontario which empty into the Hudson River.  The beginning of the Erie Canal project can be traced back to the creation of two Inland Lock Navigation Companies, a Western and a Northern version, as corporations in 1792. A corporation was a relatively rare form of business at that time and had to be created by special legislative act. The purpose of the Inland Lock Navigation Companies was to establish a water route connection between the Hudson River on the east and Lake Seneca and Lake Ontario on the west. The Inland Lock Navigation Company built dams and locks but was not able to build more than two miles of canal during the rest of the 1790's.\"*\n\nDue to this costly failure, investors could well have been wary of a second plan to link up to Lake Ontario.  This second source had the most information about the planning of the canal that I could find online (in a short time).  Unfortunately, the actual decision about where to build it is never fully addressed anywhere I could find, except to note that it was based on a survey and meant to link up New York city with Lake Erie. \n\nI have three speculations that probably do not belong in this subreddit.  \n\n1) The canal was, at first, very shallow and was designed to allow horses to pull cargo.  Such barges might not have been able to deal with the deeper waters of Lake Ontario.  \n\n2) New York City was a major port city trading with Europe, and may have worried that shippers could bypass it by heading up the St. Lawrence river (however, the St. Lawrence Seaway was not yet built at the time).  \n\n3) The decision could have been a political one; cities along the railroads (and later, highways) grew, while those bypassed by them shrank or disappeared.  The Erie canal connects many cities and towns in New York State.  The history of the canal is full of proponents seeking funding from the federal and state governments, and it was finally the governor of New York who began it.  He could have been thinking about winning or rewarding voters in those towns.  ", "In addition to the political reason of benefiting New York City and not Canada, there were good technical reasons.\n\nThere are also good technical reasons for going the way that they did. Going via Lake Ontario would have been much harder than going overland. Lake Ontario is at lower elevation than Lake Erie (577 ft above Sea level for Erie, 243 feet above Sea level for Ontario), and the lakes are only a few miles apart at the narrow point. There would have to be locks straight up and down that difference in elevation. To give you a sense, that's where nature put Niagara Falls.\n\nThe Canadians actually did build a canal to do just that -- the [Welland Canal](_URL_1_), started around the time Erie was built. It runs just 26 miles and connects the two lakes through massive locks. The original Welland Canal cost more than the entire 363-mile Erie Canal -- [$8 million](_URL_0_) compared to [$7 million](_URL_2_). And it only got you as far as Lake Ontario -- the Atlantic Ocean was still blocked by the Saint Lawrence river, which wasn't navigable without additional improvements at additional cost. The whole system wasn't finished until 1871, almost 50 years after the Erie Canal.", "Simple. While the canal and the lake both end at the same point in the West (Buffalo more or less) they don't START at the same place in the East. Lake Ontario connects to the the Atlantic through the [St. Lawrence Seaway](_URL_1_) which as you notice dumps out far to the north. This would add a considerable amount of travel time for ships wanting to use the seaway to access the lake. It also doesn't connect to the US anywhere before northern NY. It is however still the most important route in and out of the Great Lakes because even very large ships can make it through. \n\nNow if you look at a [map of the Erie Canal](_URL_0_), you will observe that it connects to the Hudson River in Albany. This is extremely important because the Hudson River connects to Long Island. New York City was, and still is, the most important trade hub on the East Coast. Prior to the Erie Canal any goods brought into NY could move north or south very easily but moving them west was a problem. The Erie Canal connects NYNY to the Great Lakes above Niagara Falls. \n\nThe significance of this cannot be overstated. The Erie Canal means you can go from NYNY, through the [Sault Ste. Marie Locks](_URL_2_) all the way to the tip of Lake Superior in Minnesota by water. If you really wanted to then you could sail down to New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Before the spread of railroads this was bar none the fastest way to ship goods so far across the country. And even with the trains it was more efficient to move bulk cargoes like timber and iron ore. The Erie Canal connected the East's busiest port with the entire North East. \n\nAs for Albany itself it is a low point in the mountains and the state capital so it was a good place to connect to the Hudson. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.applet-magic.com/eriecanal.htm", "Canals.org", "http://www.canals.org/researchers/Canal_Profiles/United_States/Northeast/Erie_Canal"], ["http://www.wellandcanal.com/hist.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Welland_Canal", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_canal#Proposal_and_logistics"], ["http://www.eriecanal.org/maps/canal_system-1903.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grlakes_lawrence_map.png", "http://www.exploringthenorth.com/soo/locks.html"]]}
{"q_id": "b7ilax", "title": "How accurate is the Bible in its account of Ancient Israeli history? What do modern historians accept as facts and what is rejected as falsehoods. How much do ancient historians lean on Biblical accounts of Ancient Israel to piece together knowledge of its history?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b7ilax/how_accurate_is_the_bible_in_its_account_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejtmlob"], "score": [5], "text": ["It is impossible to answer this in detail in a short manner, but I can give a few pointers. Generally the field can be divided into sort of a maximalist - minimalist way of interpreting the subject. On one hand you have researchers who consider The Old Testament a reliable source unless proven otherwise and on the other hand you have the researchers who don't accept anything that is not verified by external sources. Another way is to divide the academic research into positivist, humanist and ideological history (K.L. Noll). Positivists don't accept anything that is not verifiable or falsifiable and much of the ancient Kanaan history doesn't fall into either category.\n\nSo what hypotheses can be supported with reliable confidence regarding Ancient Israel and the Bible? The majority of the Pentateuch (first five books) are considered to be myth by scholars. There is no evidence to support the stories about tower of Babel, Noahs ark or even Moses and the Exodus although we have quite a good understanding of where the origin of these stories might come from (Epic of Gilgamesh for example). Joshua and Judges are also considered to be fiction although some poems might date to 11th century BCE. The emergence of the Israelites in Kanaan was a gradual process and didn't likely follow an exodus from Egypt. There are however theories that suggest that the exodus story might have had some basis on people called *Hyksos, Shasu or Habiru.*\n\nAfter this we start to enter accounts that are somewhat historical. I'm inclined to think that the stories about David and Solomon are not true as such, but this is not a view all researchers share. It is possible that the story of Solomon was copied from King Ahab of Israel and edited by Judean scribes to make their origin story greater than their more powerful northern neighbour Israel. Archeology supports the hypothesis that the Kingdom of Israel emerged first followed by Judah later in the 9th century BCE. Thus it is more probable that David and Solomon, if they have existed, were nothing more than tribal chieftains in Judah overshadowed by the Israeli kings in the north.\n\nStarting from the 9th century BCE we start finding external sources that confirm many stories in the Bible. For example the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in around 701 BCE is found in the Bible in Isaiah, Kings and Chronicles but it can also be verified by Assyrian accounts and archeological findings, more precisely from a boatload of Assyrian arrowheads. There are still many accounts where the Bible doesn't match what we know from other sources. For example the return from Babylonian captivity and rebuilding of Jerusalem in the supposed late 6th century BCE is contested by archeological finds which date it earliest to 450 BCE.\n\nIt's an extremely interesting topic and one greatly contested except for the earliest accounts which are widely considered mythological by historians at least. Two great books on this subject are *The Oxford History of the Biblical World* edited by *Michael D. Coogan* and *Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion* by *K. L. Noll.*\n\nEDIT: Grammar"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2rmga5", "title": "why do people throw up after extreme workouts?", "selftext": "Just curious as to why it happen. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rmga5/eli5_why_do_people_throw_up_after_extreme_workouts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnh7j0w", "cnhbz6y", "cnhcmbg", "cnhescw", "cnhf7vr"], "score": [107, 7, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["If you body is doing a lot of work, it needs all the energy it has, digesting food takes energy, so getting rid of it allows more energy to be used for task at hand.  Sort of a fight or flight response.", "AFAIK, high level endurance, strength, and other physical activities require a tremendous amount of energy. As another individual has mentioned, many metabolic processes require energy to regulate. However, when your body enters one of these hyper-activity states, all hands are on deck to get the best performance. Digestion stops, heart rate increases, breathing increases. The upset stomach/puking, is like due to a combination of stomach contents not being fully digested (tossed around in the stomach), and or the pausing/resuming of basic digestive processes.", "As others have stated, because your muscles require a large amount of blood flow during intense exercise, thus limiting the perfusion of the GI tract. If the stomach is full, and does not have adequate perfusion, it won't empty as quickly as usual, which can lead to nausea and vomiting. Chugging a large amount of fluid at once can compound the issue.\n\nSimilar to how a person in hypovolemic shock (such as from blood or fluid loss), their body will begin shunting blood away from less vital areas, starting with the limbs and skin, and eventually the kidneys and GI tract, to divert blood to the brain. Same effect, if the stomach is full of food, and isn't getting adequate blood flow, it'll eventually say, \"fuck, I can't deal with this! Eject!\"\n\nDehydration, hyponatremia (low sodium level), or heat exhaustion can factor in as well.\n\nAlso, people who are prone to motion sickness can experience it from doing calisthenics, especially if done with their eyes closed.", "I think, in my experience with physical fitness, I puke because of my lack of experience with physical fitness and it's my bodies way of begging me to stop.  ", "The primary cause for experiencing nausea and vomiting after a rapid and strenuous workout is dehydration. When you exercise, the effort used in the activity makes you sweat and lose both moisture and salts from your body. Both water and these salts are necessary for maintaining the electrolyte balance in the body. You may feel nauseated when your electrolyte balance is disturbed. It is a similar reason to why you experience nausea when approaching heat stroke. \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.livestrong.com/article/489620-why-do-we-vomit-after-strenuous-exercise/"]]}
{"q_id": "2yw01c", "title": "if the food and drug administration is so particular about the well-being of the consumers, why is tobacco legal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yw01c/eli5_if_the_food_and_drug_administration_is_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpdgph1", "cpdgqzi", "cpdhbqr", "cpdhjp8", "cpdjsdt", "cpdjwxv", "cpdpm8m", "cpdqyqh", "cpebrws", "cpfiush"], "score": [3, 26, 4, 7, 2, 3, 9, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Pretty sure it comes back to money. Nearly everything comes back to money ", "A big issue also revolves around freedom of choice. There's a fine line between making something illegal because it's dangerous and making something illegal because it's bad for you. People have the right to chose how they want to live their lives. Certain countries are making laws to control where smoking can happen so as to limit its effects on others ", "The Commerce Clause of the US Constitution gives the Congress the ability to regulate trade between the states and internationally.  This includes banning trade of certain items (a lot of commerce clause law in the 1950-80 butted up against freedom of speech arguments for pornography).\n\nSo, basically tobacco products are legal because the Congress chose to not criminalize a petty vice that is a great source of sin tax revenue.  I hear it also just grows outside in certain states, all natural.", "The BATF has co trolling over tobacco, not the FDA. They don't have any say over it.  It's the same reason that beer doesn't have a nutrition label.\n\nGovernment agencies are limited in the scope of their powers, they can't go regulate anything they feel like. The FDA can't regulate tobacco any more than the department of transportation can regulate shopping carts.", "Beacause too many people are addicted to take it away and it makes the gov lots of $$", "It should be illegal. While it may be a choice, if you live in a crowded city like NYC, then it can get all over the place", "Because it's 2 different agencies, The ATF controls tobacco\n\nThe FDA doesn't.\n\nAlso lots of ~~bribery~~ Campaign Donations.", "I thought this subreddit prohibited rhetorical questions to debate policy", "~~Corruption.~~ Lobbying. A lot of people with a lot of money put a lot of money in a lot of politicians' pockets to make sure tobacco stays legal (for some, not others) regardless of the actual consequences, so that they can make still more money from still more people.", "They did ban OTC rescue inhalers. I fought with them for years against this. What was a $15 life saving tool is now a bloated, over priced, non-working $50 piece of trash that requires working batteries at all time.\n\nTheir reasoning behind the ban? The cbc's released into the environment from using it. Yes, lets risk people's lives for the sake of \"environment\". Cows and cars produce enough carbon to tear a hole in the ozone, but lets take baby steps and ban inhaliers, no? When did the FDA become such environmentalists?\n\nIt's all about money, plain and simple. They care only about who pays them the most, not simple care.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "12unz5", "title": "Is there a minimum quantum of Force?", "selftext": "Is force subject to finite limits of quantisation, the way [length](_URL_1_) and [time](_URL_0_) are?\nIf so, are there any particularly interesting consequences? One idea, which led me to ask the question, is whether any gravitational force would exist between two bodies on opposite sides of the universe (obviously the force would be negligible by any measure, but does it even exist in theory?)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12unz5/is_there_a_minimum_quantum_of_force/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6y8v7e", "c6y8yxm", "c6y9hhl"], "score": [11, 8, 4], "text": ["Force is not really a thing in Quantum Mechanics, it's just a concept that emerges in a special classical limit from interactions of fundamental particles. So it's not that the answer is yes or no, it's just not answerable. ", "Ruiner has a great answer, but I would like to add that the Planck units are units for which gravitational and quantum effects are important, not necessarily a quantization. There are some theories in which length and time are quantized, but they are not universally accepted as true", " > Is force subject to finite limits of quantisation, the way length and time are?\n\nschets already pointed out that length and time are not necessarily quantized (and both quantum mechanics and general+special relativity model space and time as continuous, not discrete).\n\nHowever, force is in a sense both quantized and not.  In quantum mechanics, what's quantized are the *fields*, which means that the fields have \"quanta\" (particles).  The particles themselves are free to take on any energy (for example, there is no minimum photon energy), at least for massless fields such as the electromagnetic field, but that energy is transmitted only in discrete packets (particles) -- though the packets (particles) can be of any size (energy).\n\nA thought experiment that should show this as true could go ... consider any particle such as a photon ... now accelerate an arbitrary amount away from the photon, and measure it.  You will notice the faster you accelerate away from the photon the more its frequency redshifts or blueshifts, changing the energy.  You can accelerate at a continuous speed and acceleration is correllated with energy, so the energy change must also be continuous.\n\n > One idea, which led me to ask the question, is whether any gravitational force would exist between two bodies on opposite sides of the universe (obviously the force would be negligible by any measure, but does it even exist in theory?)\n\nYes, there would be, at least from a classical standpoint.  However, assuming quantum gravity mediated by a massless graviton (and also assuming a non-expanding/contracting universe), what you would see is each distant body emitting gravitons in various directions, but the further away the bodies are, the smaller the chance that one of those gravitons hits the distant body.  So with enough distance, that chance drops arbitrarily low.  Over a long enough period of time, eventually a graviton would make its way to the distant body.  The classical level deals with averages so classically you would say there is an extremely small force acting constantly between the two bodies. But in the quantum picture, there would be long periods of non-interaction followed by brief periods of interaction where a graviton is exchanged, and if you average out how much interaction there is over a long period of time, you'd get the classical answer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "609xpd", "title": "can the capacity of our brains be roughly measured in bytes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/609xpd/eli5_can_the_capacity_of_our_brains_be_roughly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["df4mei7", "df4vjsi", "df54kz3", "df58dmw", "df5aguc"], "score": [16, 53, 3, 23, 2], "text": ["Yes, our memory can hold anywhere from 1 to 100 terabytes. Combined with strong neurons (our processors) that could make our storage up to 2.5 petabytes. This of course varies per person .", "Computer storage and the human memory are not directly comparable. Computers store information as states of \"on\" or 1s and \"off\" or 0s. A single one or zero is a bit, and 8 of these put together (at least in most modern computers) is a byte. But brains don't work like that at all. We store memories as connections between nerve cells, so bytes is not a very applicable unit to measure brain capacity with. A more accurate measure of brain capacity is the number of connections in the brain.", "i think this is a bad comparison. our brain seems to plot experiences into the neuronal network and thereby is able to see similarities to a previous experience. thus, we have no \"storage\" and \"processing\". the overall activity at one moment is the information experienced.\n\ntechnically, the brain is non-binary (it does not store bits and bytes), it measures time between activities (neuronal firing) which is a complex number, and quantifies this information (threshold levels for input triggering activity from the cell); it can multitask and consider various levels of analysis at the same time -- this allows it to be fuzzy and very apt at pattern matching.\n\nwhen you count how much a person can learn, you get bytes, but this is really not the good way to see the brain. it does not store things in this way. the more you learn from one thing, the easier is the storage for still more, and so on.", "Most computer scientists would say yes. The brain occupies a finite amount of space and since the universe is discrete, there is a finite amount of information in there. Personally, I'm not too comfortable with the number of assumptions being made with that logic, but my position on that matter is controversial.\n\nI do know that to say the brain's storage reduces to the number of neuron connections is probably not correct. It's far more complex than that. There is also a dynamic electro-chemical state between and within the synapses which has some information storage capacity--various ion and neurotransmitter concentrations, for instance. Things like \"are you happy\" probably aren't stored in a chart showing which neuron is connected to which other. You can take a pill to change that variable.\n\nThen, unlike a regular computer, the brain and the body has evolved an extremely integrated interface with its environment such that it's often difficult to tell where you draw the line between brain and not-brain. For instance, what about your body temperature? It effects cognition, and is in a feedback path with the brain. Could that be considered a form of storage? There are many examples like that.\n\nIt's often forgotten that information is specific to context. A forgotten language can only be deciphered if we actually share something with the lost civilization-- feelings, biology, environment.  The brain is weird because it creates its own context.\n\nSince the brain is so closely integrated with its environment, its identity can become blurred and it can become unclear *where* the brain actually is. Your brain organized your room and now your room effects your cognition. Is your room information storage? You have a romantic partner. Your brain interacts with them and changes them. Now they interact with you and change your cognition. Are they storage? The [transactive memory hypothesis] (_URL_0_) builds on this idea and suggests there are memories that we can only have or have better when we're together with someone we've interacted with before.\n\nYou could say that these external sources are just external and thus we can ignore them. But your environment, which your brain is changing, effects you whether or not you ask for it. In that way, the external is really not so external. Your environment is not like a USB flash drive. You can't unplug it. There are numerous examples of what happens when you try to unplug it. Extreme isolation for example. The brain just breaks down in these contexts.  So environment is actually part of you.\n\nIf the brain doesn't have well-defined limits, then measuring its capacity is going to be incredibly difficult. It could still be a number in bytes depending on which physics you subscribe to. It's commonly believed that the whole universe has a finite storage capacity. If so, then even a brain without a skull limit still has a universe limit.", "This is a hard question to answer.  Of course, since we occupy finite space, our properties must be finite.  But the exceedingly complex structure of the brain and other systems (such as the nervous system) makes it hard to calculate the amount of \"data\" that we can store. \n\nWe don't have a way to measure resolution of life or the quality of everyday noises.  Such a calculation can vary extremely on a person's perceptive ability.  Most of our memories are vague recollections, barely any measurable data, linked in a series of firing neurons that connects those vague ideas into one clear thought in our RAM (Short-term memory).  \n\nHowever, we can estimate average capacity, although it has no clear meaning in our terms of cognition.  That number would be 2.5 petabytes (2,560 terabytes, or 2.814\u00d710^15 bytes).  \n\nEven so, this number varies as well from person to person.  The memory space used is also selective based on a subconscious \"hierarchy of importance\".  Some people remember numbers best, while some people remember images best.   These have a direct impact on how much we can know.  Other factors can influence it as well.\n\nTL;DR: 2.814\u00d710^15 bytes, give or take a few trillion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactive_memory"], []]}
{"q_id": "5xdtir", "title": "Why have there been so few Viking age arms and armour found?", "selftext": "I mean all they did was fight, fight, fight. The amount of armour and weaponry produced for their raids must have been huge. How then is it that we have only found one complete Viking helmet? I find it so hard to believe as there must've been hundreds of thousands if not over a million produced. Why then are archaeological finds from other cultures from that period (the Byzantines, Francians) yet so little from the Vikings?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xdtir/why_have_there_been_so_few_viking_age_arms_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dei7dmt"], "score": [38], "text": ["We have a lot of weapons from the viking age, but indeed very few helmets -- this is a bit surprising, as one would expect well-equipped warriors to invest in a helmet if at all possible, so why don't they survive? There are a few archaeological and social reasons to consider.\n\nMost of our swords, spears, and shields come from persons' graves, or else from water deposits. Both of these archaeological 'contexts' are what archaeologists call structured depositions or 'ritual deposits' (ritual, here, meaning that there is some sort of social 'rite' that happened that left these things behind; the ritual need not be a *religious* rite per se).\n\nWhen persons were buried, certain kinds of objects were commonly included in the grave (brooches for women, for example), while other kinds of things rarely were. When you compare cemeteries and settlements, you notice that, for example, only certain kinds of pottery (in England) make it into graves, while others are more common among the living. That is, there's a deliberate choice going into what kinds of things are put in the grave. The grave isn't a complete random sampling of everything people had.\n\nBurials of people with weapons have lots of swords, shields, spears -- but very few helmets (Gjermundbu being the notable exception). This is, incidentally, a pattern that holds true across most of the early middle ages. We have tens of thousands of weapons from graves between c. 400 - 1000, but only a few dozen helmets. Perhaps helmets were exceptionally rare, but it seems more likely that helmets were simply not the sort of thing you used in the burial rite.\n\nLikewise, we find a lot of weapons deposited in water, often lakes or rivers (and often near crossing points in those rivers). These include swords, TONS of spears, axes...but not helmets. Again, these deposits are structured / seem to result from rituals. Like burial, the helmet doesn't seem to have been as important in the ritual.\n\nSo...why not helmets, too? This is actually a really hard question to answer, because we're still struggling to explain why weapons of any kind were buried in the grave or cast into watercourses. Scholars used to think that weapons were placed in the grave so warriors could fight with them in valhalla, but there's actually no evidence to support this theory and it's largely fallen out of favor (especially since Christians buried their dead with weapons for hundreds of years, too; Effros 2002). Now, most scholars agree that burial with weapons was a way to show off the social status of the family who was burying the dead -- it showed (literally, in the case of cremation burials) that they had money to burn, and it made the dead person *look* like the kind of important person that his or her heirs wanted him or her to be remembered as. You buried corpses with weapons so everyone would remember what a great warrior they'd been, and to encourage them to support you -- the heirs -- on the basis of this legacy (Halsall 2010). The problem here, though, is that you'd think that anyone wanting to make the corpse look like a great warrior would include a helmet in the grave. And yet, the number of burials where you find a helmet with the corpse is extremely rare. There are the 'princely graves' in Valsg\u00e4rde and Uppsala from a century before the Viking Age, which include a *lot* of helmets. There are also lots of fragments of pre-viking helmets from Gottland, but there the helmets themselves aren't being placed in the grave. If social status is being claimed in the burial, the helmet isn't part of this ritual display.\n\nAnd something else is missing too, which is mail coats. We have 1 in a grave in early medieval England, and only a handful in Scandinavia. Why not?\n\nMy own research focuses on the burial of spears, and what I'm finding is that the burial of weapons with the dead wasn't just about the identity of the corpse, but also about the identity of the weapons buried with the human body. Spears and swords, like the warriors who used them, earned reputations and were (in the early medieval imagination) physically altered by shedding blood (Welton 2016). They actually absorbed some of the properties of the blood they shed into their metal, which could both make them physically and 'magically' stronger and also taint them / make them more prone to violence in the future. Texts talk about weapons with a lot of ambiguity: they are really important, but they also cause a lot of trouble. They have 'agency', that is they have the ability to do stuff on their own, to influence humans to make different kinds of decisions than the people would without interacting with the weapons. Hence, many of the weapons that are put in graves are broken or 'killed' before they are buried -- the burial rite, and the disposal of weapons in water, was a way to stop these weapons from getting out of control (Lund, in Carter et al. 2010)\n\nIn contrast to weapons, armor is described differently. In the English poem *Beowulf* (which was being sung during the Viking Age, but may have been written a century before it started), armor is described as part of the body that wears it (Bazelmans 1999). The poet blurs the lines between helmets and faces: Beowulf and his warriors' faces are 'hard under their helms,' as though the act of putting on a hard helmet can 'harden' your resolve / courage. Beowulf is recognized by his armor, not his body or his face. Grendel's actual skin is armor (Cavell 2014). When Beowulf goes swimming, he doesn't take his armor off. It's just *part* of who he is. In contrast, weapons in Beowulf are separable from the body -- a sword is stolen from a corpse, and causes no end of trouble. Another sword is loaned (and breaks!). A spear is described as continuing on the path along which it was thrown after its owner had died, a metaphor for how violence is difficult to control once it's set in motion. But armor stays with the body: it's personal, and it doesn't appear to be changed by the blood that its user sheds (unlike weapons, whose properties are tied to the violence acts they commit).\n\nSo, I think that there's a very good reason to bury weapons, and also a good reason not to bury helmets and armor. Weapons get tainted by bloodshed, and they need to be replaced every couple of generations so they don't get out of control. If thinking about it as a magical curse helps, I don't think that's entirely inaccurate: killing people made weapons cursed, and it's good to swap out a cursed sword or spear frequently so you don't have all that animus in your life. In contrast, armor takes on the positive qualities of the person who wears it -- Beowulf leaves his mail behind after he dies, and his loyal follower Wiglaf gets it. The armor kept alive the best qualities of the man, and allowed Wiglaf to take up the role of protector that Beowulf had occupied. Weapons are cursed and preserve negative associations with past violence, but armor is blessed with the positive properties of people in the past, and so you keep it around for generations, repairing or reforging it so that this 'magic' could continue to benefit the living.\n\n---\n\nSources / for further reading:\n\nBazelmans, Jos. By Weapons Made Worthy: Lords, Retainers and Their Relationship in Beowulf (Amsterdam University Press, 1999).\n\nCarver, M. O. H., Alexandra Sanmark, and Sarah Semple, eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Oxford ; Oakville, CT: Oxbow Books, 2010.\n - see Juli Lund's chapter\n\nCavell, Megan. \u201cConstructing the Monstrous Body in Beowulf.\u201d Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014): 155\u201381. doi:10.1017/S0263675114000064,.\n\nEffros, Bonnie. Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.\n\nHalsall, Guy. Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992-2009. Brill\u2019s Series on the Early Middle Ages, v. 18. Leiden\u202f; Boston: Brill, 2010.\n - Discusses why people were buried with grave goods, including weapons\n\nReynolds, A. and Semple, S. 2011. Anglo-Saxon non-funerary weapon depositions, in S. Brookes, S. Harrington and A. Reynolds (eds) Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G. Welch, 40\u201348, Oxford: Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser., 527.\n\nWelton, Andrew J. \u201cEncounters with Iron: An Archaeometallurgical Reassessment of Early Anglo-Saxon Spearheads and Knives.\u201d Archaeological Journal 173, no. 2 (July 2, 2016): 206\u201344. doi:10.1080/00665983.2016.1175891.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5oue1p", "title": "how do airlines outside of the united states provide such a great experience at a lower cost than those in the u.s.?", "selftext": "I flew on three different airlines in Southeast Asia for the first time the other week. They provided an actual meal, the attendants were extremely well dressed and mannered (almost like models - both men  &  women), and they put away everyones carry-on. The aircraft were new, equipped with comfortable seats plus movies/entertainment for short domestic flights. They charged on average $70 one-way.\n\nMeanwhile, in the U.S. I'm lucky if I get pretzels for $150 one-way when flying the same distance - yet they still go bankrupt?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5oue1p/eli5_how_do_airlines_outside_of_the_united_states/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcm6cpz", "dcm6mh3", "dcm7gdy", "dcm7x7q", "dcma80d", "dcmevk8", "dcmn4g3"], "score": [28, 6, 28, 7, 12, 2, 11], "text": ["Chinese airlines receive massive subsidies from their government. This allows them to operate on lower revenue. ", "Many countries in that region need tourism for their economy, so providing the best possible experience and best deals for travelers is in their best interest.", "Many of the legacy US airlines are/where encumbered by self-funded pension programs that have a lot of retired former employees. More older employees who have earned raises, and therefore cost the airline more in payroll. Maybe the employees have better benefits. \n\nLegacy US airlines may also own older aircraft which are not as fuel efficient, or have higher maintenance costs.\n\nForeign airlines, might have (younger) employees with lower pay and less benefits than their US counterparts. They may own newer aircraft which may be more fuel efficient or have lower maintenance costs. \n\nMaybe even lower taxes or subsidies from the nation. ", "There are a number of reasons.  First, labor is far cheaper in Asia than in the US.  The cost of labor is about the same as the cost for fuel for airlines in the US, at around 30% of total airline costs.  By contrast, it is usually around 15% for Asian airlines, with fuel being almost 40% of their costs.  Second, many Asian airlines are state owned or heavily subsidized by the state.  Those states recognize that bringing in people to spend money in their country benefits them.  By contrast, airlines in the US are (mostly) privately owned and only benefit by taking you from place to place.  Once you step off the plane, they don't get more money out of you until you get back on.  Third, the people who fly on Asian airlines tend to be upper class citizens.  A far smaller percentage of their population might fly somewhere, and those that do fly tend to be from the upper end of the classes.  By contrast, people from a larger variety of the socioeconomic spectrum fly in the US.  As such, the Asian airlines are dealing with different expectations of their customers (much like the US airlines did in the 1950s).", "No unions and lower wages plus there's actual competition amongst airlines.  One airline can't buy up all its competitors like US airlines can because the competitors are often partially state owned.", "Besides lower labor costs, there are also lower airport fees. They can actually amount to a good part of the flying cost, depending on airports", "There are a few reasons I can think of:\n\n1. Many airlines in Middle East/Asia are *the official* airline of their host country, and receive some level of state support. Countries that want to break out of the \"developing/3rd world\" stigma use the airline as an extension of their global brand image. Hence their governments buy newer planes that sip fuel and are cheaper to maintain.\n\n2. In keeping with (1), state support also means that domestic tickets may be subsidized. They may offset losses here with international tickets priced at a premium for the ultra-luxe experience they offer.\n\n3. All aspects of flying a plane require *highly skilled* labor (including the flight attendants), and the cost of living is much cheaper in Southeast Asia than the US. As an example - an experienced pilot can earn well past $100k in the US. In China or Thailand you can afford the same standard of living on far less.\n\n4. People in the US buy the cheapest ticket, and ignore most else. As a result, there's quite a lot of herd behavior amongst the airlines - if one airline gets away with charging a bag fee or eliminating snacks, others follow suit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bbrik", "title": "what is the purpose of the mesh lining inside swim trunks?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bbrik/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_the_mesh_lining/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cskpaw7", "cskpjet", "cskpjvh", "csku1i2", "cskxbl2", "cskyuu6", "csl1nri", "csl38te", "csl6aqf", "csl6bt9", "csle1up", "cslgsjo"], "score": [214, 38, 1389, 19, 248, 4, 50, 5, 9, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["When you jump into a pool, waterski, or engage in a number of other aquatic activities, your swim trunks have a tendency to ride up your thighs, creating the potential for your junk to flop out. The mesh lining is there to act as underwear so that the junk flop doesn't happen. ", "It acts like underwear, serving the same purpose. But it's a mesh, and usually similar material as the swim trunks so that it doesn't absorb water like regular cotton underwear would do. ", "Originally the mesh was used as a lightweight barrier to block men's wee-wee's from direct contract from the fabric of the actual boardshorts. When the cloth got wet it got heavier and would cause your sensitive bits to chafe and that's very uncomfortable. \n\nMore and more companies are starting to make boardshorts without the mesh now, however. They are able to do this because of the inventions of micro-fibers and quick drying technology. There's also a new stitch pattern called \"flat-lock\" stitching which is a non-abrasive stitch used a lot now in active wear clothing. You'll see it a lot in Nike and Under Armour.\n\nSource: Worked for both Under Armour and Hurley for several years. \n\nEDIT: The underwear underneath the boardshorts seems to have some mixed opinions from what I've read. I personally wear Hurley Phantom boardshorts without any underwear on and there is no chaffing issue. The only downside that I PERSONALLY see about wearing underwear underneath is that it takes longer for you to dry completely. I don't believe only douches wear underwear and I don't think it's a weird decision. It's all about comfort.", "OK everyone is picking one thing and saying that's why buy it's a few things.\n\nSwim trunks used to chafe but it's not as much of an issue now with all of the fancy weaves and fabrics.\n\nIf you're wearing short trunks, you don't want you balls hanging out one of the sides now do you?\n\nWhen they get wet, then you get out of the pool, there's a decent chance your trunks have just shrink wrapped your junk and are displaying it to the world.", "When I was a kid I went to a swimming pool with my big cousin. He trusted a fart and the mesh lining acted as a shit sieve trapping the larger particles of the rapidly expanding crumb cloud that was emanating from him in the water. For years after I believed that this was the reason for the mesh. \n\n", "So you could maintain junk control without the underwear being weighed down by water. The mesh lets the water move in and out of the shorts freely. ", "So far no one has given you the correct answer. Yes, it is true that swim suits use a double lining for modesty but the reason they use mesh is for one reason and one reason only.\n\nSAND\n\nPlaying in the surf and on the beach will collect sand in your shorts. But, with mesh the sand will fall away. No longer will you leave piles of sand where ever you change at. \n\nAlso, now you can spray off at the beach without having to take your shorts off since you can simply spray out what sand remains in your shorts while standing under the shower/hose with your shorts still on.\n\nI live on a boat most the year and in our \"guide to guests\" we recommend they buy swimwear with mesh just to keep sand from being tracked all over the boat. (That and spray off on the stern deck and take off their sand filled shoes.)  \n\nEDIT: This is also why beach bags, scuba bags, snorkel bags are often made of mesh. ...to allow the sand to fall out.", "I always thought it was built in underwear.\n\nOn a side not, most inner mesh was kind of a net design, but I had a pair when I was young, very shiny blue pair that had a silk like lining on the inside, I used to love those trunks, so comfortable.", "What I want to know is, why the fuck don't they have drawstrings around the entire waistband anymore? That is annoying as fuck. ", "You mean the \"inner net\"?", "I always assumed it acted like a jock strap when you were being active while swimming, playing volleyball, or in a training montage with Apollo Creed. Keeping the boys from flapping around all willy nilly.", "I always thought it was too keep your junk from falling out the leg of the shorts. And when I buy trunks without the mesh I wear the man equivalent of spanks to make sure I have no unintended junk lookers. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "g3n9j", "title": "Why are rats used so often to see how their brain work? Are their brains that similar to ours?", "selftext": "I always come across experiments where rats were used to see how their brain operates, but I just can't imagine that their brains would be that similar to ours. And why rats? Why not mice, guinea pigs, etc.?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g3n9j/why_are_rats_used_so_often_to_see_how_their_brain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1koer8", "c1koh9n", "c1kpdqy", "c1kq4i9"], "score": [4, 14, 3, 2], "text": ["Semi-layman answer (wife works with animal research), off the top of my head:\r\n\r\nRats are well-studied research animals (so-called \"models\") and being mammals they come at least close to humans, you can buy them in many well-controlled genetic \"layouts\", they're relatively cheap and easy to keep, they're kind when you handle them, they're not as freaking small as mice, and they fit into animal MRI machines.\r\n\r\nIn short, they're a convenient choice.\r\n\r\nEdit: Oh, and mice are of course also used.", "We certainly do use mice and guinea pigs to study neurobiology as well. As mammals, rats and mice do have a lot of similarities with humans, but there are of course also a lot of differences, but animal models often have particular advantages.\n\nAs other people have said, rodents are very easy and cheap to maintain, they have relatively quick lifecycles, and not as much red tape as working with primates. There are several heavily inbred strains that help eliminate genetic differences, and the fact that rats and mice have already classically been used as models is a huge part of the reason they are continued to be used- there is a lot of background information and previous work done on them. Rats are also pretty smart, and can be trained to do behavioral tasks that help determine the purpose of a specific circuit or brain region or w/e you are looking at. \n\nThere are also cases of some distinct properties that make studies easier in rodents- for example, in studies of somatosensory cortex (e.g. brain regions that sense touch), rat and other rodents' barrel cortex has this interesting structure where each column in the cortex is anatomically distinguishable and forms a one-to-one map of the whiskers on the rat's face. This has allowed for a TON of studies with regards to cortical processing and plasticity because of how easy it is to access, find, and manipulate.\n\nPerhaps most importantly now, mice have an extraordinary ability to be genetically manipulated. You can knockout genes you want, you can easily make new transgenic mice, which now can be controlled and limited to a single tissue, type of cell, or developmental period. This capability for genetic manipulation is now making mice and rats much more popular for experiments since you can do more complex and specific experiments with them. We use exclusively mice simply because of these genetic manipulations, despite the fact that we study vision and that mice have extremely poor vision.", "Argonaute gave a good long answer.  Here's a good short answer:\n\nRats have the highest human similarity:cost ratio.", "A colleague of mine uses rats and mice for his research.  The advantages have been stated, so I don't want to re-state them, but I would like to add that I have been around for the \"sacrifice\" in which scissors were used to behead them, and then we pulled the brain out to start a primary cell line for study.  It was pretty fucked up.\n\nAnother time, I was doing EM work and there was a guy that was working on a mouse, and needed fresh organs for EM.  I watched the guy pin the poor little mouse on a cork board and skin it alive (you could see all of the internal organs still pumping and whatnot).  He harvested organs for EM work.  It was so fucked up, especially how calm and cool he was while doing it.  I'm very glad that I don't have to work with animal models.\n\nBut yeah, I pretty much think of lab rats/mice as E. coli (I'm a microbiologist).  We can knock out genes, put new ones in, they have a fast life cycle making them easy to grow and maintain.  But damn, taking scissors to a mice head is an experience that I will never forget.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ifcvj", "title": "if you bear a resemblance with a stranger, are they more closely related to you than other strangers are?", "selftext": "...and if not, how do random similarities happen in populations? Also, can our perceptions trick us into thinking someone looks similar to someone else?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ifcvj/eli5_if_you_bear_a_resemblance_with_a_stranger/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl1pmbo", "cl1sy95", "cl1tehk", "cl1tkvv", "cl1tls1", "cl1vbzq", "cl1vvdf", "cl2200i"], "score": [17, 39, 6, 7, 3, 2, 8, 3], "text": ["I've always wondered the same. Everybody is actually much more closey related than they think, there was a very fine bottleneck to humans population in the relevant past.", "Your appearance is defined by multiple genes and multiple pathways. For example you can share a similar face through inheriting different set of genes. So \"external\" similarity doesn't necessarily imply shared ancestry. Height for example is a multifactorial trait which depends among other things on nutrition, it's hard to say you **aren't** related to someone because he/she hasn't the same height. \n\nOther backdraw, since you inherit half of your genetic material from one of your parents it's hard to trace certain traits like \"oh he has that kind of nose or hair* we have something in common\" (without having the pedigree of both subjects you are comparing). Maybe he inherited those traits from a russian father while you got them thanks to your irish mother instead of your russian father.\n\nAlso, -broadly speaking- the same genes are present in most of the populations or ethnicities, the diversity is derived from the frequency of said alleles (or variants within the genes) within the populations. In such way the sampling ~~bias~~ might affect your conclusions (If by chance you are in front of one of the few redhead from population X that hasn't anything to do with a shared origin with that subject).\n\n**Edit #2** There is no huge amount of genes that determine the physical appearance. And said gene/traits are the blank of strong sexual selection (let's say you prefer wide hips now). You are going to try to find a mate with wide hips regardless her ancestry whether she is from irish, italian or spanish ancestry (yeah I picked an actual example that could occur in my city/country). Then in a matter of few generations said traits are diluted or detached of some signal of ancestry (yeah you can actually say those hips look like someone from South America but that is all the \"geographical context\" you can provide or infer). No matter how long you are going to trace the problem or lineages the example works, I could have picked African descendants, or from Colombia for that matter and only think at a different scale.\nThen certain traits say little about ancestry since they are strongly selected.", "3+3 = 6, but 2+4 is also ~~3~~ 6.\n\n\nI like to think that this is how DNA works in an EXTREMLY simplified way, the processes are different but the result are the same. So it could be the same with DNA?", "Different genotypes can give rise to similar phenotypes. But it would be different for different traits.", "I think this is true in a probabilistic sense. That is, if someone looks like you, there's a better than 50% chance that she's more closely related to you than a stranger selected at random. But it's far from guaranteed.", "Sounds like a better question for /r/askscience", "My aunt and cousin once harassed a young man eating with his family because they were convinced he was me.  It was in a city about 10 hours away. And before anyone makes jokes about my father as a traveling salesman you should know i resemble my mother.  I have no uncles on that side and my grandfather died decades before I was born.  They took a picture of the kid and I'll be damed if he wasn't my twin, although a bit heavier and he wore glasses.", "Well Skin color, Eye color and hair color as well as facial shape are strongly associated with racial background so yes.\n\naddiionally facial structure has now been largely genetically identified so much so that some researchers now claim to be able to create facial reconstructions from dna analysis alone. _URL_1_\n  (more examples _URL_4_ ) \nThe latter doesn't mean you are related but it is far MORE likely you are more closely related if you have similar genomes so , again, yes.\n\nThe only exception might be lots of widely varied racial mixing but even then I would think you would resemble someone more who had similar widely varied racial mixing so again , yes, you would be more related than someone who didn't have widely varied racial mixing.\n\nSo yes.\n\nELIAPHD\n\nsome more evidence\nfrom\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"To take the idea a step further, a team led by population geneticist Mark Shriver of Pennsylvania State University and imaging specialist Peter Claes of the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium used a stereoscopic camera to capture 3D images of almost 600 volunteers from populations with mixed European and West African ancestry. Because people from Europe and Africa tend to have differently shaped faces, studying people with mixed ancestry increased the chances of finding genetic variants affecting facial structure.\n\nKayser's study had looked for genes that affected the relative positions of nine facial \"landmarks\", including the middle of each eyeball and the tip of the nose. By contrast, Claes and Shriver superimposed a mesh of more than 7000 points onto the scanned 3D images and recorded the precise location of each point. They also developed a statistical model to consider how genes, sex and racial ancestry affect the position of these points and therefore the overall shape of the face.\n\nNext the researchers tested each of the volunteers for 76 genetic variants in genes that were already known to cause facial abnormalities when mutated. They reasoned that normal variation in genes that can cause such problems might have a subtle effect on the shape of the face. After using their model to control for the effects of sex and ancestry, they found 24 variants in 20 different genes that seemed to be useful predictors of facial shape (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004224).\"\n\nand the original research\n\n_URL_3_\n\na graph is worth a thousand words\n\n_URL_2_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129613.600-genetic-mugshot-recreates-faces-from-nothing-but-dna.html#.VDLaMfK98UQ", "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/creepy-or-cool-portraits-derived-from-the-dna-in-hair-and-gum-found-in-public-places-50266864/?no-ist", "http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004224.g004&amp;representation=PNG_I", "http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004224;jsessionid=CAA49CFCC3193B646981799FD2498E6E", "https://www.google.com/search?q=create+facial+reconstructions+from+dna+analysis"]]}
{"q_id": "2gkeb8", "title": "why do we use gas, electricity, and chemical injections for executions when a noose and firing squads are proven effective and **way** cheaper?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gkeb8/eli5why_do_we_use_gas_electricity_and_chemical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckjwy0z", "ckjx0ge", "ckjx6il", "ckjxdsv", "ckjzr1m", "ckk02i2", "ckk3igq", "ckk68qf", "ckk6vav", "ckk7cvu"], "score": [25, 4, 34, 53, 2, 6, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Or one of those cattle guns which shoot out a slug directly into the cow's brain for instant death.", "Death from a death penalty is supposed to be \"Humane.\" Gas and lethal injection are supposed to knock the person out and make them not feel anything as they die. The kicker is that they don't really KNOW if the person feels pain using these methods because they haven't found anybody willing to test it out ;)", "Execution must be humane for both the convict and the executioner. Modern execution methods are designed to reduce suffering and to preserve the dignity and sanity of anyone in attendance, whether they're involved with the proceeding or not.\n\nFor example, back in the day, firing *squads* were intended to obscure responsibility for the execution. No one man pulling the trigger could say for certain that he made the kill shot. However, it was likely physically painful for the convict, as well as ugly to witness.", "firing squads and nooses are actually not all that guaranteed. If the hanging is not done right, the convict will not die instantly and will instead suffocate to death.\n\nFiring squads are similar in that you could perhaps only graze the heart/other vital organs and not kill the person.", "I think I heard they also try to do it in such a way as to preserve the organs for donation, if possible? ", "The electric chair is being phased out in favour of the lethal injection, same with the gas chamber.\n\nIt all comes down to what is viewed as being too cruel, or painful, or bizarre. \"Cruel and unusual punishment\" as they call it.\n\nAs said in another comment, the noose is easily botched and causes a slow and painful death if done wrong.\n\nThe firing squad can also go wrong. Usually a group of executioners are gathered and most of them are given a blank round, so nobody knows who actually shot the fatal bullet. So there are usually not many bullets being fired at the detainee, and bullets don't have a 100% kill rate either.\n\nThe electric chair and the gas chamber both cause a fairly drawn out death, again deemed as cruel and unusual.\n\nThe injection has a good success rate and causes a quick and seemingly painless death as the detainee is put to sleep first and then the lethal dose is administered. Since it's intravenous, it gets to work straight away and they're dead pretty quick.\n\nTl;dr - Gas, Electric, Firing squad, Noose are not all 100% effective and cause pain and suffering. For some reason causing pain and suffering to somebody who rightfully deserves it is not right.", "assuming you believe in the death penalty, it is done just to complicate things!\n\njust put the person to sleep like in an operating room, once asleep who the F cares how you kill them!\n\n\n\n", "I'm sorry if I'm breaking the rules by being slightly off topic, but I would like to commend the commenters in this thread for conducting this discussion in a mostly civil manner, even though it's a touchy subject. Many of the topics that usually divide people into conservative vs liberal quickly degenerate into angry name calling on this site.", "I don't know the specifics of it, but I'm pretty sure that CO poisoning is painless, so is N poisoning, I don't see the problem, other than seeming slightly, I don't know... [gas execution chambers seem familiar, don't they?](_URL_0_)", "I honestly think one of the main reasons is that using a method which isn't horrific to look at, and we can tell ourselves isn't cruel, makes it easier to justify continuing to execute people in the first place."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism"], []]}
{"q_id": "nr60w", "title": "why google chrome tabs can consume up to 100-150 megabytes of memory while many of them consist just of kilobytes of javascript?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nr60w/eli5_why_google_chrome_tabs_can_consume_up_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3bb6pi", "c3bbiag", "c3bbihm", "c3bbitx", "c3be05v", "c3bevho", "c3beyck", "c3bb6pi", "c3bbiag", "c3bbihm", "c3bbitx", "c3be05v", "c3bevho", "c3beyck"], "score": [85, 22, 3, 10, 3, 2, 2, 85, 22, 3, 10, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["I am not a chrome expert, but there are a number of possible reasons:\n\nThe biggest offender is probably the chrome sandbox. To limit the damage should someone figure out how to hack the browser, each \"tab\" is walled off from the others by running each in a separate process. Part of the increased security comes from the processes having separate memory. The downside is that each tab is essentially a full copy of the application, and that results in a lot of redundant memory usage.\n\nAnother is likely to be memory management strategy. It takes computing power to go off and free the ram when you're done using it. In a language like javascript this typically means halting execution and looking for objects which are no longer needed. What this means is that it makes more sense to wait until you're out of memory before you go off trying to free some up. \n\nI know there are (at least used to be) places in the code where the javascript engine would intentionally leak memory on shutdown because it's faster for the OS to dismiss it (on exit) then to go through a full shutdown.\n\ntl;dr - It's probably some combination of security sandboxing and memory management strategy.\n\nedit: It looks like someone else already mentioned [sandboxing](_URL_0_).\n\n", "Much of the memory reported to you usually stems from shared memory. While the Tabs are sandboxed, there's still a lot of common in them, they share several system resources, which are shared, but show up as individually allocated pieces of memory in process lists. Don't worry, chances are good that those 150MB are allocated only once.\n\nA new tab is opened, and it will also be mapped that shared segment of 150MB = >  *Boom* another 150MB showing up, that are actually no additional weight.", "This has been discussed numerous times, if you search.\n\nBasically it's because of Chrome's sandboxing. Each tab is its own separate chrome instance and javascript engine, as well as each extension/add on you are using has a process. This provides the \"sandbox\", as each process can't leak information to another, and limits damage from exploits (ideally).\n\nThe disadvantage of this is memory usage. But the developers believe this is a great trade off for the security aspects that this brings, as well as performance increases. Memory is really cheap and plentiful on most systems (and if you're not using it, it's being wasted). \n\nYou can type \"about:memory\" in the address bar for a breakdown of each process and its memory usage. ", "All this being said, is Chrome REALLY a memory-efficient browser for people like myself that have anywhere from 10 to 20 tabs pinned at a time?", "You decide you want to run a dog boarding kennel: somewhere for dogs to stay while their owners are off on holiday.  You buy some land to build it on.  You fence the land in, build a bunch of kennels and let them share a big, common area for playing, drinking and eating.  You have enough room for 40 dogs.\n\nOver time, this turns out to be a bad idea.  Some dogs don't get on well with other dogs.  Some dogs fight and bite each other and their owners complain.  You don't know which dogs are going to fight with which other dogs.\n\nSo, instead of having a single large fenced-in area, you built lots of smaller fenced-in areas.  Each pen has a kennel, bowl, water and some space to move around.  Each pen is much smaller than the big, open area you used to have, but now dogs can't fight with one another.  Because each dog has their own water and space, you now only have enough room for 10 dogs.\n\nThis is *sort of* how Chrome treats tabs.  It fences them off from one another to prevent malicious pages from stealing information or attacking your computer.  The problem is that each tab or pen has to duplicate all the stuff that *would* be shared if you only had a single, communal process, making the memory cost of each tab higher.", "The amount of memory JavaScript needs has little to do with the size of the code. \n\nThe code can ask for more memory in loops, consider the instructions:\n\n    DECLARE something as ARRAYLIST\n    while( 1 equals 1 )\n    {\n       Add one item to something\n    }\n\n(Note code is not actually JavaScript).  \nThis would use all the memory in existence and it can be measured in bytes.", "To see how even a small program can use up huge amounts of memory, take this ELI5-safe program:\n\n1) There is a stack of paper\n\n2) Write '0' on the first sheet of the stack\n\n3) Take that sheet off the stack and place it on the ground\n\n4) On the next sheet of paper, write the number you just put \ndown plus one\n\n5) Take that sheet off the stack and place it on the ground\n\n6) Go back to step #4\n\nMemory is like the sheets of paper laying on the ground. The above program isn't very long, but you can see how it will continue consuming memory until somebody forces it to stop. The program is even shorter when written in a formal programming language like JavaScript (haven't tested, but should be roughly correct):\n\n    while( 1 ) {\n        memory[i++] = num++;\n    }\n\nSo you see, even a small program can expand to use as much memory as it pleases unless somebody forces it not to. Even without Chrome's sandboxing and tradeoffs of memory in favor of CPU, a small JavaScript program can easily eat up gobs of RAM.", "I am not a chrome expert, but there are a number of possible reasons:\n\nThe biggest offender is probably the chrome sandbox. To limit the damage should someone figure out how to hack the browser, each \"tab\" is walled off from the others by running each in a separate process. Part of the increased security comes from the processes having separate memory. The downside is that each tab is essentially a full copy of the application, and that results in a lot of redundant memory usage.\n\nAnother is likely to be memory management strategy. It takes computing power to go off and free the ram when you're done using it. In a language like javascript this typically means halting execution and looking for objects which are no longer needed. What this means is that it makes more sense to wait until you're out of memory before you go off trying to free some up. \n\nI know there are (at least used to be) places in the code where the javascript engine would intentionally leak memory on shutdown because it's faster for the OS to dismiss it (on exit) then to go through a full shutdown.\n\ntl;dr - It's probably some combination of security sandboxing and memory management strategy.\n\nedit: It looks like someone else already mentioned [sandboxing](_URL_0_).\n\n", "Much of the memory reported to you usually stems from shared memory. While the Tabs are sandboxed, there's still a lot of common in them, they share several system resources, which are shared, but show up as individually allocated pieces of memory in process lists. Don't worry, chances are good that those 150MB are allocated only once.\n\nA new tab is opened, and it will also be mapped that shared segment of 150MB = >  *Boom* another 150MB showing up, that are actually no additional weight.", "This has been discussed numerous times, if you search.\n\nBasically it's because of Chrome's sandboxing. Each tab is its own separate chrome instance and javascript engine, as well as each extension/add on you are using has a process. This provides the \"sandbox\", as each process can't leak information to another, and limits damage from exploits (ideally).\n\nThe disadvantage of this is memory usage. But the developers believe this is a great trade off for the security aspects that this brings, as well as performance increases. Memory is really cheap and plentiful on most systems (and if you're not using it, it's being wasted). \n\nYou can type \"about:memory\" in the address bar for a breakdown of each process and its memory usage. ", "All this being said, is Chrome REALLY a memory-efficient browser for people like myself that have anywhere from 10 to 20 tabs pinned at a time?", "You decide you want to run a dog boarding kennel: somewhere for dogs to stay while their owners are off on holiday.  You buy some land to build it on.  You fence the land in, build a bunch of kennels and let them share a big, common area for playing, drinking and eating.  You have enough room for 40 dogs.\n\nOver time, this turns out to be a bad idea.  Some dogs don't get on well with other dogs.  Some dogs fight and bite each other and their owners complain.  You don't know which dogs are going to fight with which other dogs.\n\nSo, instead of having a single large fenced-in area, you built lots of smaller fenced-in areas.  Each pen has a kennel, bowl, water and some space to move around.  Each pen is much smaller than the big, open area you used to have, but now dogs can't fight with one another.  Because each dog has their own water and space, you now only have enough room for 10 dogs.\n\nThis is *sort of* how Chrome treats tabs.  It fences them off from one another to prevent malicious pages from stealing information or attacking your computer.  The problem is that each tab or pen has to duplicate all the stuff that *would* be shared if you only had a single, communal process, making the memory cost of each tab higher.", "The amount of memory JavaScript needs has little to do with the size of the code. \n\nThe code can ask for more memory in loops, consider the instructions:\n\n    DECLARE something as ARRAYLIST\n    while( 1 equals 1 )\n    {\n       Add one item to something\n    }\n\n(Note code is not actually JavaScript).  \nThis would use all the memory in existence and it can be measured in bytes.", "To see how even a small program can use up huge amounts of memory, take this ELI5-safe program:\n\n1) There is a stack of paper\n\n2) Write '0' on the first sheet of the stack\n\n3) Take that sheet off the stack and place it on the ground\n\n4) On the next sheet of paper, write the number you just put \ndown plus one\n\n5) Take that sheet off the stack and place it on the ground\n\n6) Go back to step #4\n\nMemory is like the sheets of paper laying on the ground. The above program isn't very long, but you can see how it will continue consuming memory until somebody forces it to stop. The program is even shorter when written in a formal programming language like JavaScript (haven't tested, but should be roughly correct):\n\n    while( 1 ) {\n        memory[i++] = num++;\n    }\n\nSo you see, even a small program can expand to use as much memory as it pleases unless somebody forces it not to. Even without Chrome's sandboxing and tradeoffs of memory in favor of CPU, a small JavaScript program can easily eat up gobs of RAM."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nr60w/eli5_why_google_chrome_tabs_can_consume_up_to/c3barva"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nr60w/eli5_why_google_chrome_tabs_can_consume_up_to/c3barva"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "w2gj6", "title": "how does an observer \"collapse\" the wave equation?", "selftext": "i was watching a video on the double slit experiment, and it was talking about how you get different results based on if you witnessed the event or didnt. i just don't understand how one can be true but not the other?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/w2gj6/how_does_an_observer_collapse_the_wave_equation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c59njlp", "c59obej", "c59ogag", "c59pard", "c59qj3w", "c59slhw", "c5a4vhk"], "score": [12, 25, 6, 3, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["In sciencetalk, we say that an \"observation\" is made when the experiment interacts with some measuring device. You consciously witnessing it has nothing to do with the effect.", "When we say we \"look\" at things that are very small, we don't mean we look with our eyes, not even with a very powerful microscope, we are looking at things that are smaller than the waves that make light. The equipment we use to look at these things is actually \"feeling\" around and drawing what it feels. We look at the drawings. Just like if I placed a ball on the floor and asked you to feel it very gently and draw what you felt on a piece of paper, you would probably move the ball a tiny little bit, even if you were very careful. So, when we are observing very small things, like it or not, we change them a little bit by feeling for them. If we didn't feel for them, they'd end up doing things a little bit differently.\n\nSlightly older than 5: it has to do with the wave/particle duality. A photon, for example, is a wave until it hits something, then it becomes a particle. When re-emitted, it becomes a wave again. If a photon hits our detector, it stops being a wave and stops following those physical laws and becomes a particle - following those laws instead. This is why observing the particles as they pass through the slits, borks what would happen if we simply just observed where they landed after going through the slits.", "Moved to a separate comment as this is a bit less relevant than my other comment:  \n\nAlso, because I love this stuff, did you know that big things can behave like waves too - even people with conscious minds and \"free will\"? Have you ever been in a huge crowd after a concert or a show and everyone is moving to the exits? Each individual person makes their own choice about which exit they will take, what side of an obstruction they will go around, which stairwell they will choose. They are making choices as individuals, but when you zoom out and look at the whole crowd, it behaves almost exactly like a liquid would and can be predicted in the same way.", "Let's construct an apparatus to observe the electron as it passes through a slit.\n\nWe turn on a bright light, and set up a photon detector inside the slit.  If we see the shadow of an electron inside the slit, then we know the electron went through there.  Now, the observation of a 'shadow' is really just noting the absence of a photon.  What happened to that photon?  It hit the electron.\n\nSo really, what is interesting is that when you hit an electron with a photon, it changes the behavior from wave-like to particle-like.  \n\nNow, it's well established in physics that *any* act of observation requires affecting the observed particle.  Ideally we would like to track the path of the electron in a nice dark room without any outside influence, but it's simply impossible to track it in such conditions.\n\nIt's not the act of observing the electron which changes its behavior.  It is the act of manipulating the electron so that we can see the consequences which changes its behavior.\n\nAdd: Here's a fantastic video.\n\n_URL_0_", "The idea is that when you notice anything in the world, something had to physically interact with it.  For example, you see a red ball because light first had to reflect off it and then hit your eye.  If light didn't hit the ball, you would have never seen it.  Same with sound and feel and smell, etc.  When it comes to physics, you're dealing with very small things that you can't directly sense, but the idea still applies.  In order to know that a particle is over there, you have to interact with it first.  So you bombard it with a bunch of particles and this tells you with that particle was.  However...when you do this, you interact with the particle and change where it is drastically.  \n\nIn order to observe a thing, something has to physically touch that thing first.  It isn't the act of a human observing, it's \"anything observing\".  That is...anything being affected by the phenomenon at all.  \n\nPhysics cares *nothing* about humans.  The fact that there are neurons firing relatively nearby makes absolutely no difference to how a particle acts.  There is no link between physics and human consciousness.  Do not trust *anything* that says otherwise....this includes Shrodinger's Cat (which is massively misunderstood by the public).  People who say that consciousness affects physics subatomically are trying to get at the idea that there's something \"special\" about human consciousness.  Don't believe it.  It's new age hookum.\n\nI assume the video you watched was [this](_URL_0_).  This movie is not respected.  This part is mostly accurate, but *very* misleading, in that it uses an actual human eye to represent observation and makes no effort to clarify what is meant by the term, in order to blow people's minds.", "Let's say you flip a coin. It's pretty easy to tell whether it's heads or tails once it comes down. But quantum physics is a lot like trying to figure out whether the coin is heads or tails *while it is still in the air*.\n\nA physicist would describe the coin's heads-or-tailsness in terms of probability: He'd say there's a 50% chance it's heads and a 50% chance it's tails. Another way he would describe it is by saying it's both heads *and* tails. That's rather counter-intuitive, and worse, it won't decide whether you and your girlfriend have Mexican or Thai for dinner tonight. So while the coin is in mid-air, you catch it and look at the result. Bam. You just *observed* the coin [see note]. It's collapsed to a specific position, either heads or tails. However, the coin is no longer spinning - your observation changed the coin and what it was doing.\n\n[Note] Observation in quantum mechanics doesn't necessitate physically looking at something; a particle can be observed using many different senses and instruments. As long as something is interacting with the particle, it is being observed.", "However, I believe I read that the uncertainty principle is NOT just a practical thing ( observation = interaction = uncertainty) but an actiual fundamental state of existence. What about that?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/w_vT1TaT3Mg"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4b7dtw", "title": "Did the German's consider that their communications had been compromised?", "selftext": "At some point during WWII did the German High Command consider the possibility that their communications were compromised, particularly the U-Boat force when their casualties started to rise? Or was it another one of the taboo subjects that Hitler refused to consider or discuss?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4b7dtw/did_the_germans_consider_that_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d16th51"], "score": [104], "text": ["Expanded from two [earlier](_URL_0_), [answers](_URL_1_) \n\nThere are multiple reasons for the German's myopia regarding Enigma and the consistent success of Anglo-American code-breaking efforts during the war. Firstly, the Third Reich partitioned out its cryptography and intelligence units into each military branch and civilian agencies. This fostered a degree of interservice rivalry for scarce resources and the lack of any central agency prevented any collective sharing of information. These intelligence branches at various points almost stumbled upon the Allies' efforts when investigating German losses, but because of their relative isolation of German intelligence, these investigations could never see the whole picture. There was little capability to pool and disseminate information even within the military. U-boat captains were increasingly apprehensive about Enigma's security as the Battle of the Atlantic dragged on, but there was no way for their concerns to filter to the appropriate channels. Therefore, much of the German investigations into signals breeches were reactive in nature, such as examining upticks in U-boat losses, in which the fog of war could always provide an alternative explanation to the fact that Enigma had been compromised. \n\nOne extreme example of casting around for alternative explanations occurred in January 1943. *Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote* (U-boat Command-BdU) had ordered two U-boats to circle and await a supply submarine in Quadrant DF 50, but the supply submarine ran too slow, and the BdU ordered the submarines to a different quadrant. In the meantime, the *Kriegsmarine*'s own cryptoanalysis division had decrypted an Admiralty signal that gave the position of two U-boats Quadrant DF 50. The *Kriegsmarine* launched a subsequent investigation and concluded that German signal traffic had not been compromised on the basis that the British had described the U-boats as returning, not circling, and that the British signal did not note the changed rendezvous point. The *Kriegsmarine* investigation concluded that the British communique was a coincidence and Enigma remained secure. \n\nBut interservice rivalries and deficient investigations are only one part of the puzzle for Germany's collective failure. One problem that hampered the Germans was the military culture of the *Wehrmacht* that fostered a mentality that was ultimately counterproductive. The German military establishment did not place much stock into intelligence work as a proper military occupation, and thus its staff were seldom the cream of the crop. The military also looked only to the military for recruits for cryptanalysis and ciphers. This was in stark contrast to Bletchley Park, which recruited experts from outside military circles like members of the national bridge team or porcelain specialists whose hobbies and occupations trained them to see unusual patterns. The military's elitist cliquishness frequently looked down upon non-military personnel and was one of the main rationales behind the wide-scale adaptation of Enigma. The device represented a mechanization of ciphering and therefore could be trusted to trained conscripts. This snobbery came to fore when discussing Enigma as a source of Allied successes, one common explanation was that the device itself was being used improperly by a poorly trained operator. As losses mounted in the Battle of the Atlantic, BdU often conducted surprise inspections of traffic facilities to uncover sloppy discipline and found little to none, thus contributing to the false sense of Enigma's security. Adding to German woes was the relatively insular German academic establishment which was loath to cooperate with the military given there was a long-standing prejudice against practical application of their research. The military men in charge of Germany's efforts also tended not to conceive of wider applications of intelligence analysis. The Germans' decentralized intelligence networks also was geared to find immediate tactical information; using cryptography for strategic information was something that never quite occurred to them. The *Wehrmacht*'s decentralization fostered a degree of hyperspecializtion that hindered its ability to shift focus. \n\nAnother handicap that hobbled the Germans was their past successes had inculcated a sense of complacency. Early war German efforts at breaking Allied cyphers cemented an opinion that the Allies' cryptography was sloppy and not run by professionals.  When estimating their opposites, they frequently felt that while the British and Americans relied far too much upon technology, and not upon human capital. For the Germans, cryptanalysis was fundamentally a human occupation. Therefore they assumed that any attempt to break Enigma would rely upon human calculations (*geistige Arbeit*) and the mechanization of Enigma would preclude a brute force attack using human beings. Several times during the war, the Germans instituted precautionary attacks upon the Enigma messages in exercises and concluded that the machine could not be broken using German methods. Such a preconceived notion proved fatal for investigations into Enigma security because it fostered the tendency of the Germans to look for reasons other than Enigma to be the culprit. Some of this resulted in simple scapegoating such as considering the Italians' allegedly poor security to be the cause or some treason committed by German PoWs. Other times, the Germans considered Allied superiority in radar and radio-direction finding to be the culprit. Allied successes in cryptanalysis counterintuitively played a great role here as the speed at which Bletchley Park could decipher German messages and disseminate this intelligence was far faster than what the German intelligence  establishment considered plausible.       \n\nPrior to 1974, both German historians and veterans were quite dismissive of any notion that their cryptographic system had been broken and their measures were for naught. Two German reviews of the 1967 Polish book *Bitwa o tajemnice* (*Battle for Secrets*) by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk which revealed that Polish cryptographers had broken Enigma dismissed his claims and other veterans described the idea that the Poles could have cracked Enigma derided its claims as \"wishful thinking.\" Heinz Bonatz, the former head of the *Kriegsmarine*'s B-Dienst wrote in his 1970 history of German naval intelligence *Die deutsche Marine Funkaufkl\u00e4rung* asserted that Enigma was never broken and Allied silence on this success confirmed that German security measures were sufficient. Bonatz instead blamed Allied successes on a myriad of usual suspects ranging from Humint, superior radio-direction finding equipment, to sloppy Italian code security. In short, the mainstream German opinion prior to 1974 ascribed Allied successes to everything except Enigma. After the UK government's confirmation of *The Ultra Secret* there were still some veterans in denial, but most German commentators were in shock about the scale to which their security system had been compromised. \n\nAlthough the various German intelligence agencies bear a great deal of blame for large-scale systematic failures surrounding Enigma, it is also important to underscore their mistaken conclusions had some logical validity at the time. Allied radar and other material superiority was increasingly apparent as the war went on and many Germans did spy on the Third Reich for foreign powers. The Germans did try to use a Hollerith punch-card computer in 1943 to aid their cryptanalysis. The initial focus upon immediate tactical information makes some degree of sense for the quick and sudden type of war Germans wanted to fight. Even a more centralized intelligence establishment would not have resolved all of the material shortcomings and personnel problems given that such an agency would have still had to compete with other components of the Third Reich's war machine for scarce resources. Rectifying these problems was so vast it made the willful ignorance of Enigma's failure an attractive proposition. \n\n\n*Sources*\n\nAlvarez, David J. *Allied and Axis Signals Intelligence in World War II*. London: F. Cass, 1999. \n\nRatcliff, R. A. *Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra and the End of Secure Ciphers*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pwkb8/after_wwii_was_over_how_long_was_it_before_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/376i0e/wwii_question_is_it_accurate_to_say_that_a_major/"]]}
{"q_id": "3y8qwe", "title": "the warm weather in eastern north america", "selftext": "It is abnormally warm for this time of year in eastern North America while it is cold and snowy in the West. Why is it warm in the East and not in the West?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y8qwe/eli5_the_warm_weather_in_eastern_north_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cybiltx", "cybkqek", "cybkqg5", "cybkslq", "cybkxwo", "cyblb69", "cyblgr3", "cybmxnv"], "score": [7, 35, 4, 28, 179, 24, 3, 2], "text": ["Northern Midwesterner here who lives in an ice-fishing town, can confirm lakes aren't even frozen yet... There is probably something to this global warming thing, but I'm no scientist. ", "This also happened in [1982, 1996, ] (_URL_2_) and [1955](_URL_0_) and [2007 and 1984](_URL_1_). As well as probably other years, but I found these 3 sites in the matter of seconds just searching for other warm Christmas days. \n\nI can't quite answer the queston, but this is hardly a new occurrence.", "Came from California to Pennsylvania, am disappointed to find the weather is more pleasant. I would guess its el ni\u00f1o and some climate change.", "El Nino is making it warmer and it should keep this way for the winter. The polar vortex is also around and it keeps cold air in the north, which could change.", "Mr. El Ni\u00f1o is especially angry this year and there's a meandering jet stream bringing up warm wet air across the eastern US. Expect the entire winter to be wet and mild. I imagine some wet snow in January/February once the cold really does set in a bit more and we get those days that range around 30 - 40.\n\nBasically think of this as nothing more than a warm front coming through what is already going to be a mild winter due to El Ni\u00f1o. Soon enough the cold front will arrive and we'll have our days about 30 degrees colder lol.", "Winter is busy heading to Westeros, well see it back in about 10 years when George finishes the last 2 novels. ", "You can look [here](_URL_0_) at a picture that basically shows how dense the air is above the US. The yellow colors mean that the air is more dense while the pink colors mean that it is less dense. The more dense the air is, the colder it is. \n\nYou can also tell from that picture which way the wind is blowing overall in the atmosphere. It blows along those black lines and from west to east. As you can see the wind goes strongly from north to south in the west and carries cold air with it. Then it goes from south to north, doing the opposite. \n\nOn top of this, there is a cycle that happens to the water in the Pacific Ocean between South America and Indonesia called ENSO. Sometimes, the surface water is warmer in the west and sometimes further east. Right now the warm water is further east towards South America. This cycle effects the weather around the world, as shown by [this picture](_URL_1_). As you can see, it makes the NE warmer than usual and makes the south a bit wetter (e.g. snowier). \n\nOne thing we CANNOT say here is that climate change is at fault. This event is too short of a time scale to be considered climate. We would have to average over several decades. While climate change is happening, this is a case of some crazy weather. \n\n(Edit: Feel free to ask questions, whether to dumb this down or expand on it. This stuff is cool. I study it.) ", "Should I get my motorbike out of winter storage?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/12/24/christmas-eve-1955-was-much-warmer/", "http://www.weather.com/forecast/national/news/christmas-week-forecast-warm-east", "http://abc7ny.com/weather/surfers-hit-beach-in-queens-as-nyc-has-warmest-christmas-ever/1134498/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.atmos.washington.edu/images/models/gfs/h500/2015122512_000.gif", "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7Ed6_oqIcdCYI7Qln4FYtI3vhmx_FZ8wDY4SOMRme70tSrBhptnDD0A"], []]}
{"q_id": "2c5037", "title": "What is a Harlequin?", "selftext": "A number of female rugby teams are named harlequins, the title rolls off the tongue and is foreign to me so I looked into the name. I can find no gender association, and in what I can find the actors are portrayed as male. Additionally, it seems the term is derived from a \"devil\" type character, but has evolved into more of a complex jester. Is a harlequin a fool or playing the fool?\n\nThe sources I've been able to find are not primary and seem lacking so I wanted to ask here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c5037/what_is_a_harlequin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc0y1q", "cjc6ary", "cjccl9b", "cjd19bu"], "score": [57, 16, 7, 2], "text": [" >  Walter Map, writing around 1190, tells the story of King Herla, whom he knew as its leader, and later adds:\n\n > \"The nocturnal companies and squadrons, too, which were called of **Herlethingus**, were sufficiently well-known appearances in England down to the time of Henry II, our present lord. They were troops engaged in endless wandering, in an aimless round, keeping an awe struck silence, and in them many persons were seen alive who were known to have died. This household of **Herlethingus** was last seen in the marches of Wales and Hereford in the first year of the reign of Henry II, about noonday: they travelled as we do, with carts and sumpter horses, pack-saddles and panniers, hawks and hounds, and a concourse of men and women. Those who saw them first raised the whole country against them with horns and shouts, and . . . because they were unable to wring a word from them by addressing them, made ready to extort an answer with their weapons. They, however, rose up into the air and vanished on a sudden.\"\n\nThis is a passage from \"Albion - A guide to legendary Britain, Jennifer Westwood, Granada Publishing, London 1985\n\nWalter White mentions this term in \"Notes and Queries\" also\n\nBasically a \"Herlethingus\" was the Middle English term that became an Old French term \"hellequin\" used by by the Norman monk Oderic Vitalis, who used the word to describe a group of bandits who attacked him in Normandy in the 11th century... separating it from its association with King Herla and coming to mean a band of unruly demons generally.\n\nEssentially the word was originally a pack of specific \"Wild Hunters\" associated with the soldiers of King Herla... which came later to mean a pack of demons generally.  A \"Harlequin\" is therefore a representation of the devil (or a devil).\n\nIt is a particularly apt description to call a Rugby team a familia herlethingi.", "I think the truth is that it's a disambiguous term that has been adapted by various people over the years to suit their own needs. In the case of the Harlequins rugby club, they wear a multi-coloured kit to echo their name in the theatrical sense but I think they'd much rather be described in the classical sense /u/zyzzogeton outlined :) The progenitor of the modern Harlequin is the character Harlequin from the Commedia dell'Arte, a sort of Italian pantomine.\n\nIn modern theatre, the Harlequin is often an MC or agent provocateur, who's role is... not quite a fool. There's a playful aspect to them that conceals a bitter truth or acerbic point. While the classical fool is about slapstick blunt humour, the harlequin will often use those same techniques to conceal a much sharper point. I think the phrase I am hunting for is \"Tragic Comedy\".\n\nFor example, in [\"Oh! What a lovely War!\"](_URL_0_!) the MC, often portrayed as a Harlequin, the only splash of colour amongst the white-uniformed clowns who portray the soldiers, is often seen playfully interacting with the soldiers - pushing them over, laying them down to sleep, handing them poppies, ushering them off stage - but the deeper meaning to the slapstick interaction is that each of these actions represents the soldiers death. This interaction between the clowns in their Pierrot costumes and the Harlequin also echoes the classical origin of the *character* Harlequin in Commedia dell'Arte.\n\nAn example of a classic \"Oh! What a lovely War!\" production:\n_URL_3_\n\nPierrot clown and Harlequin by C\u00e9zanne:\n_URL_2_\n\nI would thoroughly recommend looking up Richard Attenborough's adaption of the play on youtube. This is a great example of the Harlequins role:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThe chap in black is the one who'd be the Harlequin on stage. Note his role - he instigates the song, gets the soldiers moving, drives the train, hands out the poppies... he's driving the action without it appearing that he does.\n\nSorry if I'm waffling, it's a difficult concept to express :)", "Incidentally  the female rugby teams are named after leading rugby club Harlequins, who  originally formed as Hamsptead Football Club (Rugby being a variant of  football in case anyone was  wondering) in 1866. In 1869, not only were they forced to move from Hampstead, their membership was drawn from further afield so a name change was decided.\n\nApocryphally they were called Harlequins at the suggestion of one of their members simply because it was a frivolous name that kept the HFC identity that was monogrammed on their shirts.\n\nThe Harlequins: 125 Years of Rugby Football. by Philip Warner", "My favorite use of the term is in Harlan Ellison's short story, \"Repent Harlequin, said the tick-tock man\"\n\nIn this story, the \"harlequin\" is a whimsical-jester type character - who disregards conventions (in this case timeliness at all costs).\n\nA great read, if you're into thought-provoking, well-written short stories.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_What_a_Lovely_War", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr5ksOyxZRU", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_060.jpg/478px-Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_060.jpg", "http://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/archive/2002/ohwhatalovelywarcompany.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "21xza3", "title": "why is it we go into a state of \"feeling low\" for no apparent reason sometimes and how does it pass away?", "selftext": "Edit: Sleep pattern, exposure to sunlight, diet, hormone levels have been pointed out most so far. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21xza3/eli5_why_is_it_we_go_into_a_state_of_feeling_low/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cghirxb", "cghjhmg", "cghjn1b", "cghkwo3", "cghkyqy", "cghlfl4", "cghlw71", "cghm33q", "cghm6iu", "cghmh4o", "cghmtm4", "cghn24p", "cghnaa7", "cghnc8f", "cghnop1", "cghnv1f", "cghnvcn", "cgho08d", "cghobc8", "cghobtu", "cghoi4v", "cghol6a", "cghpoj8", "cghpvec", "cghqmbc", "cghqz9m", "cghr8qz", "cghrj6y", "cghrut7", "cghs1wl", "cghsjwm", "cght4kc", "cghtgge", "cghtx84", "cghugja", "cghumvs", "cghvmd6", "cghx7bb", "cghxet6", "cghxj8r", "cghxr4e", "cghyavj", "cghye9c", "cghyigj", "cghyppg", "cghzbsg", "cghzimk", "cghzt6b", "cgi06l2", "cgi4h4t", "cgi5rzt", "cgi6bpv"], "score": [417, 180, 1170, 999, 5, 2, 2, 133, 3, 7, 27, 4, 3, 2, 3, 15, 6, 5, 2, 3, 43, 2, 67, 6, 2, 10, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 11, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Hormonal fluctuations. The body has a natural cycle in which hormone secretion increases and decreases for certain chemicals within the body. Increased levels of certain hormones and decreased levels of other hormones cause your mood to shift. This is why women get so sensitive during menstruation. Not a lot of people know that guys actually have these hormonal fluctuations as well and their cycles can actually sync the same way girls menstrual cycles do.", "It was a revelation to me to learn how our thoughts affect our 'reality'.  I always thought, \"If I think it, it must be real.\" But that's not true. Thoughts are just thoughts, and they come and go on their own. So, when I start into a depressing thinking pattern, having all kinds of negative thoughts that lay me low, I now realize that I don't have to believe the thoughts. That helps me either snap out of it, or at least realize that the thoughts will pass on their own, and I can just be patient.", "In my Native tradition I call this the blue wolf. It came out of seeking a private vision for my life from the Creator when I was lost and going through one my lowest times. It was inspired by the medicine wheel teachings of my tribe and from the wisdom of my kind Elders. It saved my life, but I am not a therapist, I respectfully do not speak for other Natives, or even other members of my tribe. This was my personal vision that guided me to change the entire path of my life forever. Take what you like and leave the rest. Find out for yourself. If you choose that path, you have to follow the blue wolf into the forest and see where it leads.  If you try to control it your are not following. If you try to jump ahead and lead it you are not following.  Follow the blue wolf and see where it leads and more will be revealed. Your blue wolf may even lead your to your own private vision for your life. Aho! ", "Summer after Junior-year I caught a slump like this that must have last for over a month. Couldn't figure it out until I did a little self evaluation and realized that between Closing at work (5pm-2am) Staying up partying after (2am-7am) and then crashing for most of the day (7a-3ish) I rarely even saw the sun. after a couple days of sleeping out in my hammock and soaking up some of that sweetsweet Vitamin D I was right as rain.", "The Sweet is never as sweet... without the bitter", "Hormones are involved but it's more closely related to the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. (Although hormone levels do interact with these chemicals so its kind of a chicken-or-the-egg question) These are both responsible for feelings of happiness and pleasure (that is a massive simplification but I'm mobile so forgive me). Many things can interact with the amount of dopamine and serotonin. Certain vitamins and proteins aide in the production and uptake of these chemicals so if your body is lacking them due to a poor diet it can cause a dip in mood. The stress hormone cortisol interferes with the production/uptake of D and S so stress can do it. Even the amount of daylight we get can influence it. In cases of seasonal depression a lack of sunlight has been indicated to lower serotonin levels which cause the \"winter blues\". There is definitely more to be said on this topic and what i have said is simplified but like I said I'm mobile so hopefully that answers your question ", "Could be a lot of different things.  Get more sleep if you've been shorting yourself (especially if you frequently get less than 6 hours; evening naps don't count; get 7 to 8 hours of real sleep at night).", "How is your diet?  That is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear this question.\n\nWhat is a good diet constructed of?  A number of important things: \n\nSufficient fiber.  This means plenty of vegetables, some fruit, nuts, perhaps some dried fruit.  Fiber keeps the digestion system running comfortably and efficiently.  By eating plenty of vegetables for fiber you are also getting vitamins that you need to feel your best.\n\nPlenty of water.  Staying hydrated is very important to feeling at your best.  Avoid soda.  Soda contains salt which is added by manufacturers to dehydrate you so that you want to drink more soda.  They have to add a lot of sugar to mask the salt content.  Sugar spikes your blood sugar quickly and then it crashes making you feel tired within a few hours.\n\nSufficient protein.  Protein makes you stronger.  Your muscles need protein to recover and stay strong after daily use.  Remember your heart is a muscle.  Meat and fish contain complete protein as does dairy and whey protein powder.  If you want to avoid meat you need to combine foods such as rice and beans to get complete protein.  Meat also contains vitamin B12 which is particularly important for giving you energy.  Vegetarians need to supplement B12.  Most people need between 50 and 100 grams of protein a day.  People who are weight training often eat much more than 100 grams a day.\n\nAddressing food intolerances.  People can be intolerant to different foods.  If you have a food tolerance, avoiding that food can make an enormous positive difference in how you feel.  Certain food intolerances can cause a low feeling.  Some examples of food intolerances are dairy, eggs, wheat and soy.  There is a lot of information online about food intolerances.  If you want help finding whether you have a food intolerance a dietician (nutritionist) or doctor can help you.  \n\nSufficient dietary fat.  To function properly most bodies need 25-35% dietary fat as a percentage of daily calories.  Dietary fat gives long lasting, steady energy throughout the day.  Dietary fat is needed to absorb vitamins A, D, E, K, and carotenoids.  Each gram of fat has 9 calories, each gram of carbohydrates and protein have 4 calories.  Your body needs dietary fat for brain development, controlling inflammation, digestion and blood clotting.  Good sources of dietary fat are meat, fish, dairy, nuts, avocados, olive oil, butter.  Remember that body fat is a function of total calories and level of exercise and is not the same thing as dietary fat.  The fat you get from food are called essential because your body cannot make them itself, or work without them.  Dietary fat adds satiety and a sense of fullness after eating a meal and also affects hormone levels.  All your cells are defined by fat molecules aligned as a membrane.  Dietary fat is needed to provide central building blocks to all cells in the body.\n\nSufficient carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates are an important source of energy.  Complex carbohydrates found in rice, grains, potatoes and starchy vegetables digest more slowly and give longer lasting energy.  Sugar is a simple carbohydrate.  Sugar will spike your blood sugar and then you will crash.  Some sugar is a nice part of a diet but too much and you will not feel your best.  Too much sugar has also been linked to a number of diseases later in life.  Most people need between 100 and 300 grams of carbohydrates a day and often more.  If you are exercising a lot you will need to eat more carbohydrates.\n\nSufficient vitamin D.  Your body generates vitamin D naturally when your skin is exposed to sunlight.  Spend 10-15 minutes outside in the middle of a sunny day with exposed skin to get vitamin D.  This is difficult to do in the winter because often it will be overcast for weeks.  Take advantage of the sun in the spring and summer by spending time outside to restore your vitamin D.\n", "Cognition plays a key role in emotional state. Depending on ones perception of events, your point of view, then your mind will react accordingly. If one is content with his achievements and environment then the mood will be subjective to the thoughts and the way situations are perceived. If one perspective is unsatisfied with their life choices, and environment then their emotions will react accordingly.", "More than likely you started feeling low because you got on reddit. To make it pass, stay on reddit.", "**1. Emotional response.**\n\nSmells, songs, tastes, and other 'cues' can bring up emotions even when we don't clearly remember why. \n\nThe amygdala processes emotional experiences in the brain. Stress and time can affect memory, but the amygdala will still be able to process emotions.\n\n**2. Hormones!**\n\nSerotonin, estrogen, and dopamine can effect mood. (Lots of hormones can.)\n\nAs an extreme example, one reason why people suffer from PTSD is because the stress they experienced released so much dopamine that their brain became addicted to it. This makes their normal day-to-day life boring (and even meaningless) in comparison.\n\nBut dopamine is released in the brain in our normal day-to-day lives. \n\n >  \"Inside the brain, dopamine plays important roles in motor control, motivation, arousal, cognition, and reward, as well as a number of basic lower-level functions including lactation, sexual gratification, and nausea.\" \n[wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\nEvery time you orgasm, eat sugar, or achieve something you care about\nyour brain gives you a dopamine kick. Once that kick runs out you'll feel a bit low - and want to seek that thrill again.\n\nAddicted to something? Dopamine probably has a lot to do with it. \n\n**3. Health.**\n\nYour blood sugar levels, quality of sleep, and how balanced your diet is can affect your mood. (And pretty much anything that goes wrong in your body can make you feel like crap until your body sorts it out.)\n\nEven just one unbalanced meal can send your blood sugar up and down a mood-killing rollercoaster.\n\n*ETA: Fixed formatting.*", "I can only speak from experience but I often go through a state of feeling low for no reason. Lately, I found that if I throw myself into a task, the feeling goes away. Having a hobby helps a lot. I just recently started digging into music again and forgot how much I enjoyed that. It's all about finding the right balance. ", "It depends on how low you mean. It bothers me that a lot of people have offered cursory advice on something that could be clinical depression. I'm not prepared to answer unless I have more information from you. ", "We didn't evolve sitting around at home in front of a computer.", "Is this sub always in fucking comic sans?  How had I not noticed until now?", "**All it takes is one negative thought** ... \"I'm not good enough\", Then it builds up and your brain adds more and more to the mixture without you consciously being aware of it - Negative thoughts equate to low self esteem and that blip causes an immediate downer. \n\n\nThe way to stop it is to analyse every positive thing thats happened to you each and every day on a list which takes 2 minutes of your time - Think about how that thing made you feel and you will emulate it.", "Watch your caffeine intake.  Most people are addicted to caffeine. 3-6 hours after consumption, a caffeine comedown makes your brain's dopamine levels sink and this can cause depression-like symptoms for a while.  ", "Just fake it until you make it.\n\nI didn't make it yet.", "I had been feeling like this for a few months.  I was just sad.  Felt like something was very off.  Most people told me that it will pass.  And it has, for the most part.  \n\nWhat I learned from it: eating healthier made me feel better.  Gave me more energy and I didn't feel as bad.  Working out also helped.  I am Vitamin D deficient, taking the supplements made me break out in a rash, so when I can, I try to get out in the sun.  I know that you arent asking about peoples personal stories, and I am not sure why exactly this happens.  Reading all the responses down there do all seem to make sense.  However!\n\nWhat I really saw make the main difference in my outlook was taking a supplement called sam-E.  I credit my better moods and lack of feeling low mostly to it.  sam-E is naturally made in your body, it forms naturally when the amino acid methionine combines with the energy-producing molecule ATP, helps build proteins, hormones, fatty acids, nucleic acids, and other crucial substances.\n\nThis is becoming a blab-fest.  All in all, I dont know why we feel like this but I did find that eating better, exercising, and taking sam-E did help for me.  It took awhile, once I was doing all 3, but they definitely made me feel way better.", "Blood sugar and sleep weigh heavily into mood.", "There are many variables such as diet, current thoughts, current experience, location, environment, past memories, stress, amount of sleep, medication etc etc etc that affect mood (the list is virtually infinite). However, your question implies that you are simply sitting still feeling fine, while all of a sudden you feel low. It is important to note that if this scenario as you have implied plays out and persists (that is, it continues to happen) then it would be best to seek help from a medical professional (your doctor who may refer you to a therapist/psychiatrist). The professional would have a better time narrowing down the cause (whether it be biological such as a chemical imbalance in the brain, a physical defect in the brain, or whether it be psychological such as an event in your life that may be impacting your mood on a more general basis).\n\nAs for what is happening in the brain when you feel low - there are various regions in the brain that influence mood: hippocampus, thalamus, cerebral cortex, and amygdala. No one region is responsible for mood, but each can significantly impact mood per findings from more recent brain scans - but to which extent is highly debated. From a chemical standpoint, some researchers believe that Serotonin, (a neurotransmitter in the brain essentially acting like the chemical that facilitates nerve cell firing) is under-produced. When under-produced, scientists hypothesize that the brain is more prone to psychological stress - but it remains a question of debate in regard to its role. SSRI's or (Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors) are what depression medications are - each medication has a method of either increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain, or limiting the extent by which serotonin is removed from the brain) - by doing so and regulating the amount of serotonin has shown results for patients, though the full mechanism by which SSRI's function is still not fully understood. The observed outcome of SSRI's suggest that once serotonin levels return back to normal levels (pertinent to that patient's standard of normal), then depression can be eradicated or managed. It is important to note that other factors such as the stressful environment, or other environmental traumas must be addressed with the help of a professional. 'The passing of mood' as you state, though, is generally your brain's serotonin level, returned to balance.\n\nTo feel better generally, try to eat healthy foods, get lots of exercise, engage in meditation, and some studies suggest it may also help to stimulate your brain (read/movies/even games, etc). Improving your physical appearance has been shown in some studies to make you feel better naturally - take care of your body (hygeine, grooming, etc). Again, feeling down for extended periods without any obvious cause is not normal and you should seek professional help.\n\nhelpful information:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nTelephone Hotlines: \n\nUS Suicide Hotline\t1-800-784-2433\n\nNDMDA Depression Hotline \u2013 Support Group\t800-826-3632\n\nSuicide Prevention Services Crisis Hotline\t800-784-2433\n\nSuicide Prevention Services Depression Hotline\t630-482-9696\n\nAAA Crisis Pregnancy Center\t800-560-0717\n\nChild Abuse Hotline \u2013 Support  &  Information\t800-792-5200\n\nCrisis Help Line \u2013 For Any Kind of Crisis 800-233-4357\n\nDomestic  &  Teen Dating Violence (English  &  Spanish)\t800-992-2600\n\nParental Stress Hotline \u2013 Help for Parents\t800-632-8188\n\nRunaway Hotline (All Calls are Confidential)\t 800-231-6946\n\nSexual Assault Hotline (24/7, English  &  Spanish)\t 800-223-5001\n\nSuicide  &  Depression Hotline \u2013 Covenant House\t 800-999-9999\n\nNational Child Abuse Hotline\t800-422-4453\n\nNational Domestic Violence Hotline\t800-799-SAFE\n\nNational Domestic Violence Hotline (TDD)\t 800-787-3224\n\nNational Youth Crisis Hotline\t800-448-4663\n\n\n ", "There are a number of reasons why people can go into a slump, the reason why the reason is not apparent is because humans are complex chemical and biological machines and we aren't entirely aware of everything that's going on. Your slumps could be from seasonal allergens that you aren't seriously allergic to - but just enough to affect your mood, a spider bite, your diet, the weather, pollution, or a million other things. You could have a low level infection, an imbalance of candida in your gastrointestinal tract, you could have depression from something but because you don't think it \"should\" affect you you miss the connection. You might be reacting to a chemical that doesn't normally affect people, but perhaps you are more sensitive to it than most, like insecticides applied to the yard, or something in...hair gel (like maybe parabens?)\n\nMy point isn't that these are exactly why anyone goes into the slump. But, because each human is complex, and each human's reaction will be different from the next human's when exposed to identical environmental controls, so the reason why these happen and are largely unexplained is - life is complex.\n\n \n\n", "For me personally, I get depressed when I'm not doing deep down what I know I should be doing. \n\nTherefore fruitless activities depress me such as video\n gaming  too much, not lifting Weighr, not partaking in skateboarding or skiing, not learning, no goals, etc. \n\nPeople get depressed when they get stuck. They stop moving. In life, never stop moving, always better yourself and never be satisfied. \n(nothing to do with material wealth.) \n\n", "Well you see, when you go to the window, to the wall, to the sweat drop down yo balls, to all these bitches crawl. It creates a state of mind known as \"getting low\"", "I'll support \"hormone levels\". \n\nThe way I see it (I'm talking out of my ass, here. So if any of this is wrong, I never claimed to be right) is that the body can stop producing certain hormones responsible for happy moods (serotonin, dopamine, etc.). When that happens, there is an imbalance in the brain that can cause people to feel down for no apparent reason at all. Happens to me a lot.", "I know it's been mentioned before but I want to emphasize: EXERCISE.  It WILL pull you out of your slump.  Take it from a guy who spent 20 years with crippling depression.  My lows are manageable now, and if they start to get bad I just grab my gear and hit the gym.  An hour of cardio is the best cure I've found for the unwarranted blues.\n\nYou CAN do it, and it's far, far easier than you realize.  Two weeks in the gym, 3-4 days per week.  By the end of the second week you'll feel amazing.  ", "From my experience, food, sun, diet etc can play a role in the blues but working in the creative field I come across people daily that smoke, don't maintain healthy diets, and are stuck in a dark studio all day but are extremely positive and upbeat people.  What I have come to learn is this: Every time we have a though about something, a chemical factory in the brain called the hypothalamus releases a chemical or a 'peptide' into the blood stream.  This peptide matches the thought we just had so if we have an angry thought an angry peptide gets released into the blood stream and if we have a happy thought a happy peptide ensues.  These peptides are what cause us to 'feel' no matter what the feeling is.  Now since a very young age, we have been gathering thoughts and clumping them together to create different ideas and many of these ideas are ones that cause us 'sadness' and cause peptides to release that give us sad/angry/lonely/ etc feelings. Anything that we experience that reminds us of one of these negative ideas will trigger it's corresponding peptide even if that experience was just watching a movie and being reminded (even on an unconscious level) of some idea we have that make us feel crappy.  I think that there is something going on in your life that you are either subconsciously pushing away or not recognizing.  Our feelings are no more than indicators that something in the thought process is not flowing right.  I'm a certified hypnotherapist specializing in erroneous beliefs and 'false programming'  and have much experience with this, I'd be more than happy to talk more if you're interested.  Good luck and don't worry about it too much. Distracting yourself completely from the fact that you have the 'blues' for a short while will significantly start to lessen that particular peptide from releasing into the bloodstream.  An hour of playing in a pool always does the trick for me.  ", "Also, sub-concious thoughts can provoke low feelings.", "What the fuck is with this prestige worldwide ad I can't even read reddit ", "Vitamin D helps me immensely with this issue. It's rough in the winter here in Ohio so every winter I take a supplement. ", "I'll reiterate: sunlight exposure (get some), diet (don't eat crap), sleep (get enough).", "Um, capitalism. Striving for something artificial. Reaching for goals we don't need.", "Usually its due to my work load at school. They seem in direct correlation. ", "Oh my lord. Why is everything comic sans?!?", "For me it's the realization that even with a lot of effort things fail.  It's also the realization that the system we live in is corrupt and reflects human greed/selfishness.  I guess I expect more from our species, I think we are capable of so much more yet humans constantly choose money and corruption over nature and compassion.  That's the shit that gets me down.\n\nAnd then...\n\nI make plans with a friend to see a free movie and it falls through but we end up having a wonderful time talking, laughing, walking and encountering things we wouldn't have expected that make our hearts leap and create these amazing memories and life is good!  A feeling of being blessed comes over us as wild parrots land on our heads in the middle of the city....\n\nAnd then....the spiral begins all over again.  ", "Small bouts of depression are also thought to have an evolutionary origin.  I wish I could make this clearer, but if you think about it it's pretty a pretty simple scenario. For example, you have a situation/problem in your life, you get down on yourself about it, you think about it, you change/objectively look at it, and viola it's not a problem/unsolved situation anymore. Not very ELI5-ish, but none the less.", "[Your thetan levels are probably off. If you care to take a free personality test, we can help you!](_URL_0_)", "If we look at this question through the evolutionary-psychology lens, it is evident that a lifestyle that deviates too far from our natural state as hunters  &  gatherers is not without cost. For example, sitting all day at the office and not eating our natural food, the plants. We must return to the old way, for it is the right way.", "It is possible to have hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, which is the lack of glucose/sugar in the blood for cells to function properly. Where ones pancreas might produce too much of the hormone known as insulin. In this state, the bodies cells need glucose/sugar to function properly, so the pancreas then produces another hormone called glucagon to raise the blood sugar if it drops to low. The symptoms of this state bring upon feelings of hunger, thirst, dizziness, and fatigue. Most diabetics encounter this state because of over estimating insulin injections/doses (especially when exercising) and can correct themselves by consuming a serving of fruit or juice in the range of 8-20 carbohydrates.", "Also because the children grow up and move out, the dog dies, friends die, the marriage goes stale, recession destroys meager life savings leaving no chance for even the most modest retirement, looking forward to working until you die on your feet while some dude named \"Sam\" in India is forcing down the prices for your once economically viable profession. You can't get divorced because someone will be homeless, and you don't hate each other that much. Did I mention watching your own parents lose their ability to identify you? Getting old sucks and is known to cause people to \"feel low.\"\n\nBut I get coffee cheap at McDonalds, so there's that.", "Jesus titty fucking christ.\n\nThe top comments are fucking bullshit pseudoscientific anecdotes.\n\nWhy the fuck aren't they empirically based discussions centering around physiology instead of vague spiritual babbling?\n\nFucking sheeple.\n\nBy the way, my Blue Wolf told me you shouldn't vaccinate your kids or breed outside your pure line.", "For me it was directly related to drinking alcohol. I used to get major downs that I had zero control over and would just crush me. Like, not-get-out-of-bed-for-days type of depression. \n\nI've been sober ten months now and haven't had more than one crash since, and that was in the very beginning. With time, I've stabilised more than I ever did on medication. I wish our culture would take alcohol more seriously and let people know just how destructive it can really be. I certainly didn't know and it destroyed my life. Took almost a decade to get myself on track again.\n\nIn general to keep depression at bay, I get as much sleep as my little girl allows, as much sunshine as I can, and as much exercise as my schedule allows for. Treat yourself right and everything else falls into place.", "It really is the most bizarre thing.\n\nMy mood is constantly on a pendulum. I can be in the most fun situations, surrounded by friends and have something to look forward to, and still just feel as though nothing in the world has any appeal. No food sounds good, no jokes are funny.\n\nOther times I can be swamped with work or have just had to deal with some sort of rejection, and I can feel absolutely amazing, bursting with energy and alive. For both there's this meta-cognition where I evaluate my feelings as simply chemical imbalances in my brain.\n\n It's weird to think that I feel the way I feel at a given moment is merely the whimsical nature of neurotransmitter transduction rate.\n", "Seratonin production in the body has a lot to do with it. Seratonin is a neurotransmitter in your gut that regulates digestion, mood and social interaction as well as some other things. If your seratonin production is interrupted for some reason, a change in diet for instance, then it can manifest itself with feeling low or depressed until the body adjusts to the change. This is the same reason why a positive change in diet can help to increase your mood.", "That's also how depression can work.\n\nSeemingly unprovoked melancholia can occur by sheer biochemical under/overproduction. The result can be feelings normally resulting from traumatic or scary external stimulus. ", "as someone who's been 'feeling low' for 5 years, sometimes it doesn't.", "exercising helps too. men was not meant to stand/sit still and a lot of us still carry quite a lot of our ancestral hunter/gatherer genes. just think fish out of water.", "\"It's the economy stupid\"", "It's called depression. Stop being sad. STOP! STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. QUIT BEING SAD DAMMIT! STOP IT. JUST STOP IT! STOP.\n\nEverything should be better now.", "I find my happiness level coincides with my bank account levels.  Money can't buy happiness, maybe... but no money = more stress.", "You are clearly exhibiting signs of a depressive phase within bipolar disorder.  You need to go to your doctor and explain this mood swing so that you can be properly medicated.  There is no explanation for this other than the fact that your genes have made you depressed.\n\nIt is possible that anti-depressant medication will not work, but it will be good to try at first.  If it doesn't work, you will likely go off your rocker and completely lose touch with reality or be so intense that your depression is worsened or leads to psychotic or suicidal thoughts.  If this happens, call your psychiatrist.  You will need to be re-evaluated and put on anti-psychotics along with your anti-depressants.\n\nA good work-out routine will be necessary to deal with the anti-psychotics as these naturally lower your energy levels and make you feel a little \"out of it\" and working out will help boost those energy levels... even though you're probably already too tired to work out because of the anti-psychotics and the anti-depressants, in conjuction with the anti-psychotics, should be ultimately mellowing you out. (Treatment isn't easy!)\n\nIf those 2 drugs aren't working, it's likely one will need to be removed and you will need to be re-evaluated.  How are you concentrating, especially when you're feeling good?  You might have ADHD, along with bipolar disorder.  ADHD medication could be helpful.  Something like welbutrin would be perfect, as it acts as both an anti-depressant and as a stimulant for those with ADHD.  This could possibly be thrown into the cocktail.\n\nBut be warned, all of these drugs have interactions that we should be wary of.  With so much in your system, your blood pressure is likely to be affected, so you're going to need to be on blood  thinners and cholesterol medication, which will ultimately end up affecting your mood, so we'll eventually have to re-evaluate what other medication you should be on.\n\nAnd, at this point, should you really be working out?  With all of that stuff in your system, you should probably give up on that.  It's unsafe.  We'll increase your blood pressure and cholesterol medication so you can cope and if your energy levels drop, we'll just raise your dose of welbutrin or put you on another stimulant like adderall, and raise the dose of your anti-psychotic so you don't go completely manic, while cutting out the welbutrin entirely.\n\nDon't worry, /u/SevenIsTheShit, everything will be ok.", "Some evidence suggests that depression, or feeling low, can increase creative thinking.  This is possibly an evolutionary conserved mechanism to help the evolving homo sapien solve complex problems.  For example, if not getting mates or not getting enough food or other problems are facing the homo sapien, they could enter a state of depression, change their ways or solve their problem and promote their evolutionary fitness.  \n\nAdditionally, contrary to ideals of happiness, homo sapiens aren't made to be content at every moment.  An overly content homo sapien does nothing to improve his evolutionary fitness.  (think of sitting around not moving)  Whereas a mildly discontent homo sapien is more open to changes that would improve fitness.  ie hunting, gathering, building, trekking."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/what-causes-depression.htm", "http://www.webmd.com/depression/features/serotonin"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2013/01/25/1226562/010320-xenu.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ffl1v", "title": "What is the oldest legal document or contract that is still legally binding?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ffl1v/what_is_the_oldest_legal_document_or_contract/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck8r4lz", "ck8s6vf", "ck8tzv6", "ck8um0x", "ck8w4j7", "ck8zszl"], "score": [72, 8, 43, 14, 20, 2], "text": ["Three clauses of Magna Carta 1297 still have force of law in the United Kingdom  \n*\"1. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.  \n9. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, as with all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.  \n29. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.\"*  \n\nClause 29 also remains part of the legal system of New Zealand (and possibly other Commonwealth states).", "As /u/phoenixbasileus (nice username btw) has pointed out, this honour probably goes to the Magna Carta. The next best one I can think of is the constitution of San Marino dating from 1600, but since this is a really interesting question I\u2019ll try to remember if there\u2019s anything earlier than the Magna Carta.\n\nEDIT: There\u2019s probably something older than the Magna Carta in internal governing laws of the Catholic Church, a papal decree or similar. Maybe some experts on Catholicism could give us more info on that.", "Ireland has England beat on this one. The oldest piece of legislation on the books (since 2007, when most every law from before 1922 was repealed) is the [Fairs Act 1204](_URL_1_). From what I can make out from D\u00e1il debates and so on, it was an act setting up fairs and regulating castles in Irish cities. \n\nThere are also a bunch of other thirteenth century laws still in force. The oldest one that's readily available online is the [Sheriffs Act 1293](_URL_0_), which is about judicial practice and landholding. (And, although legal history is not my strong point, looks like a *very* important piece of legislation.)\n\nEDIT: Punctuation.", "In terms of international law, what I commonly see cited as the oldest treaty still in force is the Anglo-Portugese alliance, which dates to 1386 and was an extension of an older treaty cited in 1373. I'd be curious to know if my understanding of this is correct or if there are other legally binding international treaties. ", "The 1491 wedding contract uniting France and Brittany also contained a close forbidding France from placing tolls on any road or bridges in Brittany. As a result there is no freeway (130km/h speed limit, contains tolls) in Brittany to this day and only expressways (max 110km/h, no tolls).", "This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_0_). These poll-type questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. \u201cMost\u201d, \u201cleast\u201d, \"best\", \"oldest\", and \"worst\" questions usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers.\n\nAlthough there are a few good answers in here, most of them are trivia responses and many violate the 20-year rule."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1293/en/act/pub/0001/index.html", "http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2007/en/act/pub/0028/sched1.html"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "2587kf", "title": "Can microchip neural implants ever be used to enhance/manipulate neural function beyond what is naturally possible?", "selftext": "Much like computers contain RAM for fast processing and SSDs for storage, can there ever be a compatible brain implant that can control the brain's neurones? \n\nI imagine it would be an amazing technological achievement if we developed the ability to access microchip wirelessly with a laptop and simply drag/drop knowledge-sharing files (entire encyclopedias, textbooks and dictionaries), or delete bad memories etc. \n\nI believe similar technologies are being used to help stroke victims, but would such an advanced system be possible?\n\nThank You.\n\n\nEdit: Thank you for all of your responses. I hope that there will be a day in the future when we know enough about the brain and memory this question will be asked again. From your responses, there seem to be many positive advancements towards similar devices (perhaps a future field of exploration?).", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2587kf/can_microchip_neural_implants_ever_be_used_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chev8a9", "chew876"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["This is probably better-suited to /r/asksciencediscussion, but here are some thinking points:\n\nA human brain is an immensely complex, hugely interconnected system. To even design an implant that could work its way between the cells and connect to particular targeted neurons is well beyond the capability of current medicine.\n\nThen there's the problem that there's not even a consensus about how memories are actually stored in the brain, so even if you could hook up an implant to whatever neurons you wanted, we have no idea what cells to hook it up to.\n\nThere are a few neural implants that exist, but they're mostly very crude, the equivalent of a \"brain pacemaker\" that zaps part of your brain to stave off seizures, or a link to a mechanical arm that allows some amount of crude motor control.\n\nYou're probably better off tapping into the brain's \"peripherals\", rather than trying to wire the brain itself. Cochlear implants are some of the most sophisticated ones that are currently deployed, and they work well enough to allow deaf people to hear fairly well. A similar but much more-sophisticated version of the same thing could probably be made for stimulating the retina. On the \"output from the brain\" side of things, you can tap into motor neurons, translating from small motions to input to a computer.\n\n", "As an interesting aside using machinery to add senses  is very plausible. Imagine if you had a subconscious knowledge of which way north is. Something like this, _URL_0_, claims to do that if worn over time.\n\nIt is essentially \"plugging into the brain\" but it is via sensory information."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/"]]}
{"q_id": "6dxrvb", "title": "why are acids commonly portrayed as green in video games?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dxrvb/eli5why_are_acids_commonly_portrayed_as_green_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di67li8", "di6e7nu", "di6lglx", "di6mukg", "di7c2hy"], "score": [314, 42, 49, 6, 2], "text": ["It's the leftover color when you're trying to balance a system that involves elemental types of damage.\n\nRed has a strong association with fire and heat, and likewise Blue has a strong association with cold, ice and water. Electricity tends to be another very common damage type and is generally tied to the color Yellow -- signs warning about electrical dangers even tend to be bright Yellow.\n\nIf you're trying to deal with simple primary colors that leaves you with Green, and a common damage type that's left over once you've made your way through Fire, Ice and Electricity is either Poison or Acid, so those often get relegated to Green.\n\nIn short, it's often Fire=Red, Water=Blue, Lightning/Air=Yellow, Poison/Acid/Radiation/Earth=Green.\n\nThe concept of using sickly-green or greenish-yellow colors to represent acids and poisons goes back further than that, though. There's a TVTropes article about it: \n\n_URL_0_", "Acid=bile=bilious=green.\n\nPeople have been throwing up for a long time, and have understood  that stomach bile -- which is green/yellow -- is acidic.\n\nedit: I should have put \"acidic\" in quotes. There's a bunch of literary references going wayyy back that refer to bile as both green and acidic, I'll see if I can dig them up. We're talking a link between poetry about jealousy/vengeance and modern video games, not medical accuracy. :)", "Chlorine gas is *the* traditional chemical weapon. (WW1) since is easy and cheap to make. [And it's green](_URL_0_)", "It is a common trope in movies, long pre-dating video games or D & D as has been suggested here. I don't know how it started, but Disney movies used green to signify evil or danger as far back as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.\n", "Inspired by /u/blubox28 i did some further digging and found the origin story for the Joker in Detective Comics #168 from 1951.\n\nIt shows the \"Red Hood\" (the Joker before he became deformed) falling into a vat of \"chemical wastes\" which is... *green*.\n\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodAcid"], [], ["http://www.dugway.army.mil/PAO/Articles/2015/10/JackRabbit%20II%20October%20Version_files/image012.jpg"], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/Gy10QfA.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1psbj4", "title": "Of all the heavy things in the world, why did anvils become the thing that cartoon characters drop on each other?", "selftext": "Maybe not your typical history question but if somebody has studied the history of film and television they may have come across this? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1psbj4/of_all_the_heavy_things_in_the_world_why_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd5jhh0"], "score": [159], "text": ["While I don't claim to be an expert on animation or cartoons, I'm not sure there are any flaired users on this sub and I am probably the closest there is so I will try to answer you question to the best of my abilities. Please note, however, that I don't claim to be an expert in this field and that my claims could easily be disproven later. With that being said, we can begin....\n\nThere has been a fair bit of speculation on this answer so far and, while it is against the rules to do so, it is likely that we can only really speculate as to the answer to this question. I can almost guarantee that we will never know PRECISELY the decision making process that went into using an anvil as the archetypal \"heavy cartoon object\". I can, however, enlighten you on some possible answers. \n\nThe truth is that the development of Western cartoons and comic books are closely intertwined. They occurred at roughly the same time and, in general, followed the same sort of course as one another. Many techniques learned in cartoons were carried over to comics, and many techniques learned in comics were carried over into cartoons. The level of abstraction and general \"cartoonishness\" that both mediums share means that we see a lot of similar tropes and archetypes. \n\nIt is often difficult to understand in our modern day, but when looking at old mediums we have to recognize that certain tropes didn't exist at one time. For instance in comic books, there was once a time when things like \"movement lines\" or \"speech bubbles\" didn't exist. The idea that you could have panels of different sizes, or that you could have a speech bubble pointing \"off-scene\" to a character not featured in a panel were actual \"developments\" or \"breakthroughs\" in comic artistry. \n\nFor instance, many comics of the 1910s and 20s are very, very lifeless.  They are very static and repetitive BECAUSE comic artists had to play it safe. Even the original Superman comic (published in June 1938) was fairly lifeless compared to modern comics. Later artists like Jack Kirby would really revolutionize how comics were drawn. \n\nSee, animation \"tricks\" had to be developed over time. If you just threw down a copy of The Watchmen or threw on an episode of Fairly Odd Parents in front of a kid in the 1920s, a lot of the different tricks or tropes we take for granted would be confusing to them. \n\nNow, getting to your anvil question, in reality the \"falling anvil\" is just another one of these tricks. In order to show \"weight\" animators had to come up with some sort of symbol which denoted a \"very heavy weight\". Another example would be something like when a character touches something hot and their hand turns red. These are all animation tricks designed to express to the viewer a certain sensation without them actually feeling it. \n\nBut the thing is is that these \"tricks\" (movement lines, anvils, speech bubbles, etc.) have to be clear for them to work. Without a VERY clear meaning, they could never be adopted because they wouldn't make sense. I'm sure animation history is filled with examples of attempted \"tricks\" which never really took off because they weren't very clear.\n\nNow, the anvil works very well as a trick because it's meaning is very clear. After doing some research, I learned that it is generally accepted that the first time the \"anvil\" was used in a popular cartoon was in the 1942 Warner Brothers cartoon \"A Tale of Two Kitties\" (should have been a \"Tail of Two Kitties\", but whatever) which can be found here: _URL_0_ at about 4:30. \n\nNow, why did the anvil succeed as a symbol or \"trick\" denoting \"heavy weight\"? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, at the time it started to be used (again, if we're assuming the first one was in 1942) the anvil was still a fairly common item. While the \"medieval blacksmith\" may not exist anymore, anvils were still commonly used in general manufacturing and repair and most people would be familiar with it as an everyday object. Second, the only real attribute people would attribute to an anvil is that it is \"heavy\". In this way, it is a very recognizable and clear symbol. Other people have referenced pianos and safes as examples of other \"heavy objects\", but as you rightly point out, the anvil is the true archetypal heavy object in cartoons. The reason is that unlike a piano (which is attractive, expensive, heavy, makes music, etc.) or a safe (which is a complex piece of machinery, is used in bankrobbing scenes, holds money, etc.), the anvil is really, at its core, just a heavy metal object. There is no confusion about it: anvils are heavy. Finally, the anvil is an extremely easy thing to draw. We have to remember that a lot of cartoonists and comic artists were pretty lazy, and drawing a piano or a safe every time you want to use a heavy object was a pain in the neck. But an anvil is a very clear and very easy thing to draw which allowed other cartoonists and animators to adopt it without a lot of hassle.\n\nWhile it is tempting to think of the \"falling anvil\" as a trope, we have to remember that (historically speaking), tropes have to start somewhere. The \"falling anvil\" succeeded as a trope because it was a simple and effective \"animation trick\" like any of the others which were emerging in Cartoons and Comic books in the early 20th century.  Put simply. the anvil is an animation trick like any other: it is simple to draw, it has a very clear meaning, and is recognizable to many people, and for this reason it became a widely adopted symbol of \"heft\". The reason it has endured into the modern day is BECAUSE it was such a successful \"trick\". While it is safe to say that many people in our society would have no idea what an anvil was used for, 99% of them would recognize it as a symbol for \"heaviness\", which means that it was an undeniably successful animation shortcut. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyblox-p54"]]}
{"q_id": "b7z5zd", "title": "How did Britannia come to end its union with the European empire that was Rome? What were the repercussions of Britannia's Exit?", "selftext": "I imagine the people of Britannia were divided on the issue, but I'd love to know more!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b7z5zd/how_did_britannia_come_to_end_its_union_with_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejw7g9y"], "score": [39], "text": ["Ah yes, the sorry story of the 'Exitus Britannia' (ExBrit, in Classics jargon) - truly a tale of woe and sheer incompetence that has rarely been matched in the centuries since.\n\nThe question of Britannia's leaving the Roman Union emerged in the Fourth Century AD. Although discontent had long been brewing at the meddling of unelected Roman bureaucrats who tried to dictate minutiae such as how round an olive needed to be, the immediate catalyst was the lack of control of the border. Specifically, the northern border: Hadrian's Wall had ceased to function as an effective border against the unruly Pictish neighbours, whose predilictions for the odd passtime of 'fitba!' or the strange ceremonial beverage imbibed during the 'Fast of Bucks' made them seem alien  to their civilised southern neighbours. As Britons took up the cry of 'Secure our Borders!', political pressure mounted for an official withdrawal from the Roman Union.\n\nPart of the issue was the unwillingness of the Roman Union to create a true 'European Army', that could serve to protect the borders of constituent states. The irony, of course, was that Rome was not actually in charge of Britannia's borders by this point - the regional government in Londinium had been running Hadrian's Wall for decades at that point, but had cocked it up so badly they were happy to let their citizens continue to believe that Rome was to blame for the unwanted migration. Indeed, ExBrit did indeed suffice to discourage migration from within the Roman Empire - but did little to stop the migration of differently coloured (ie blue) people that Britons actually cared most about. Another element that was held against the Roman Union was the lack of expansion eastwards, particularly as the rich, prosperous Eastern Roman Empire - based in Turkey - was not part of the Union. This greatly upset the inhabitants of Britannia, who saw the inclusion of the inhabitants of Turkey as a key selling point of the Roman Union. Lastly, Britannic fishermen seemed annoyed that the inhabitants of a small, unremarkable village in Armorica got to catch more fish than they did - it's not clear why this was the case, though some evidence suggests that these Armoricans were unusually strong.\n\nEven with these differences, ExBrit was by no means assured, and to understand why it happened we need to look to political personalities of the day. Power initially resided with a Roman patrician by name of Cameronus, who was greatly troubled by the divisions among his followers, and the potential for a splinter cult of ardent Romoskeptics led by Nigelus to undermine their power base. He devised a plan: a rare, sacred ritual, involving auguries taken from the internal organs of a sheep and an eel. The results of this consultation would, Cameronus hoped, lay the matter to rest, and keep Nigelus quiet a little longer. Yet Cameronus miscalculated - he had assumed that the auguries would turn out the way he wanted (a similar calculation had worked out in his favour just two years prior!), and he neglected to beseech the gods particularly convincingly to show his plan their favour. Lo and behold, the auguries returned - the omens were divided, but showed a clear path for leaving the Roman Union. The Will of the Sheep-Eel had made itself known.\n\nThe omens said little, however, about what this should mean in practice. Cameronus himself resigned in disgrace, the very eventuality he had plotted to avoid. A power struggle broke out: Borus, the court jester, at first seemed likely to triumph, but was stabbed in the back by his erstewhile friend, Brutus Govus. Leo Vulpes, the eternally disgraced, was swiftly eliminated. In the end, Maius Roboticus emerged from the contest as the compromise choice. Maius had supported Cameronus, but indicated a willingness to follow through with ExBrit.\n\nMaius, however, proved a poor choice. No plan for ExBrit could be agreed with the likes of Borus, Ruddus or Moggus, all of whom had very different ideas of what should happen next, and complained bitterly when they thought Maius even hinted at favouring other ideas. Negotiations with an increasingly perplexed Roman Union continued, with few points clarified about what the future relationship might look like. Within the normal course of Britannic politics, another faction would have stepped in to take over, but the most powerful alternative figure - Corbynius - had seemingly little interest in doing so. Maius, when confronted by angry citizens about the chaos, merely repeated ad nauseam that it was 'The Will of the Sheep-Eel', though she did not take the perhaps sensible approach of trying the augury again to make absolutely sure that this was what the gods actually wanted.\n\nThe chronicles stop suddenly in 419. We cannot know, but can perhaps assume that Britannic society quietly imploded, to the presumed relief of the rest of the Roman Union who were getting a bit sick of the whole thing. However, they only had a few years to gloat before Putilla the Hun invaded and destroyed them all anyway.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Sources**\n\nI have relied chiefly here on the excellent Terrence Proudfish, *ExBrit: A Disaster Surely Never to be Repeated, Right?* (Edinburgh, 2014). His approach might be balanced with the more critical M. Python, *What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?* (Jerusalem, 32).\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**EDIT: ExBrit is in fact satire, unlike its anagram (somehow) - April 1, 2019.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "21tbt7", "title": "Have the bonefields of the mongol massacres ever been found?", "selftext": "I recently came across the pictures and writings of the bonefields in Volgograd / peschanka area from the remains of the soldiers who died there. My immediate though was of the mongol organized massacres at nishapur and merv, the seige of Baghdad and the destruction of shu and chengdu. Has there ever been evidence of the remains from those events?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21tbt7/have_the_bonefields_of_the_mongol_massacres_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cggdp0i"], "score": [127], "text": ["**Below is a post for April Fool's day. I am not an expert on Mongolian highway construction and this post should be seen as satire only. There does exist a road of bones, however it is in Russia that was built during the Soviet Union under Stalin, you can read more about that [here](_URL_0_)**\n\n\nThe \"bonefields\" as you put them, in the Volgograd region was actually an exception, rather than a rule. The large piling of bodies was really typically an exception, the Mongols saw this as a waste of good resources. Mongols in general believed that everything could have a purpose in their great Empire, and the bodies of their enemies was no different. \n\nThe Mongol's in the other regions typically let the bodies decay then use the leftover bones as pavement for their vast stretches of roads. Once beaten down with their horses, the bones would crumble and form a great pavement for their mighty armies to cross upon.  The reason why there exists bonefields in the lower portion of Russia is because of the cold weather, which would freeze the bones and create a nasty mix of frozen bone debris, water, snow, and ice, which was not good for the horses. Therefore, in a rare instance, the Mongols simply left the bodies to rot and decompose, without using the bones. \n\nSource: \u041e\u0442 \u041a\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0432 \u0430\u0441\u0444\u0430\u043b\u044c\u0442\u0435, \u0418\u0432\u0430\u043d \u0422\u0438\u043c\u043e\u0448\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M56_Kolyma_Highway"]]}
{"q_id": "3g3u3m", "title": "Why isn't what happened to the Indigenous people of Australia considered a genocide?", "selftext": "Especially what happened to the Tasmanian aboriginal people, who were killed on mass. Paul Keating in the Redfern Park speech acknowledged the killings and rapes, and cultural destruction, and Madley (2008) states that what happened fits the UN definition of genocide. Yet there isn't even a Wikipedia page to discuss it (as there is for other controversial genocides), nor is it heavily discussed. What is the reason for this?\n\nMadley, B. (2008) From Terror to Genocide: Britain's Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia's History Wars, *Journal of British Studies*, 47, no. 1: 77-106.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3g3u3m/why_isnt_what_happened_to_the_indigenous_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctulks0"], "score": [73], "text": ["There is a considerably complicated discourse when it comes to Australians and their native people and quite often the official narrative has been changed and adopted by different politicians for their own means. \n\nKeith Windschuttle is probably one of the most prominent of the conservative historians who has often played down the atrocities committed against the aboriginal people. Windschuttle became a favourite of former Prime Minister John Howard during his time in power to forward his own agenda. Howard rejected the 'black armband' view of history and wanted to instill a more proud, patriotic and ultimately white Australian historical narrative. \n\nStuart McIntyre, another historian, heavily objected to Windschuttle's methods and this started what was called [\"The History Wars\"](_URL_0_) in Australia which debated the severity of the force or violence used against the aboriginal people. If you also have a look at the page I linked to it does mention a little bit about genocide and it comes with quite a few citations.\n\nThe genocide debate revolves around the numbers and the official documents used. People like Windschuttle, a historical empiricist, would say that as there is no documented data of these supposed genocides, then there are no genocides. I suppose the key here, is that the reason much of the discussion about genocide has to do with a lack of contemporary documentation about it. The ambiguous nature of the wording of these documents too make it hard to make the final rule on a genocide.\n\nI'll wait for more expertise, but you should have a look at Stuart McIntyre's \"The History Wars\" as a good starting point on the aboriginal history debate. I also would recommend Jonathan Richard's \"The Secret War: A history of Queensland's Native Police\" as some interesting books to read more about this topic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars"]]}
{"q_id": "1fpguu", "title": "How many helium-filled baloons would it take to actually make an average human float?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fpguu/how_many_heliumfilled_baloons_would_it_take_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caci706", "cacifv9", "cackb14", "cacma4j", "cactf5m"], "score": [5, 3, 2, 10, 2], "text": ["3,235 for 100 pounds, Google says.", "Each balloon, assuming a one foot diameter, can lift about 0.014 kg (found here: _URL_0_).\n\nIf we assume a human of a mass of 75 kilos, then that works out to about 5450 balloons (from 75/0.014). That amount would merely make you weightless; to actually achieve lift would require more.\n\nEdit: Meant to say kg. Thanks to /u/narils", "There's a mythbusters episode about this, if you're really interested it's definitley worth the watch.", "One, if it's big enough. ", "45 8-foot weather balloons, but that includes enough lift for beer, sandwiches, and a pellet gun.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.howstuffworks.com/helium2.htm"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters#Preparation_and_launch"]]}
{"q_id": "14jqou", "title": "what is linux and what makes it different (better or worse) than other options?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14jqou/eli5_what_is_linux_and_what_makes_it_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8wkkwi", "c7domct", "c7dooaa", "c7dopx2", "c7dpb8n", "c7dqfaj", "c7dqpz8", "c7dre9a", "c7drh19", "c7dt8mk", "c7dtgzf", "c7dvvf1", "c7dw1ya", "c7dwdq3", "c7dwphx", "c7dxkwi", "c7dz20e", "c7e1bit", "c7e53z0"], "score": [2, 64, 3, 518, 16, 3, 2, 26, 21, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["Windows = Physical encyclopedia.\n\nLinux = Wikipedia.\n\nMac\\Apple products in general = [VTech Tiny Touch Tablet.](_URL_0_)", "It is a *series* of operating systems based on the \"linux kernel\". They are generally more \"optimized\" than windows, so they run some programs faster. They are usually highly customizable as well, and so \"power-users\" often prefer them. \n\nAn operating system based on linux is called a \"distro\" (distribution). Most can be burned to a \"live CD\" from which you can boot your computer, so you can try it out without reformatting your hard drive.\n\nLinux is \"free and open source\" which means many people from all over the world contribute to it (much like Wikipedia). \n\nHowever, the user-base is lower, so many popular applications, especially games, are not made for them. Drivers for certain hardware may also be nonexistent, so you would want to check this before installing a linux distro (or try a live CD).\n\nLinux is much more popular for servers than for desktop computers. Most people are probably familiar with it via the Android operating system (based on the Linix kernel). ", "Linux is just a base operating system, like Windows, or Macintosh. Given that this is ELI5, I feel the need to say that an operating system is a big program that turns confusing computer code into something that can be understood by humans. (Basically, it turns [this](_URL_1_) into [this](_URL_0_)).\n\nBetter: \n\n\nLinux is also programmed by random people of the public, which means that, assuming you are clever enough to do so, you can modify it however you want, unlike Windows or Macintosh where the source code is much more difficult to obtain. \n\nWorse:\n\nLess programs available to it than Windows or Macintosh, as it is less popular, and people want to sell their programs to more people. ", "There is a whole group of computer Operating Systems which are called 'linux' because they all use the linux kernel, which basically just means they all work in roughly the same way.\n\nThe main thing that differentiates linux from the other main operating systems (Windows and Mac OS X), is that it is \"free software\". With other \"proprietary\" software, nobody except for the company that made it is allowed to modify it, make and share their own versions, or even really see how it works. If there's something you don't like about a piece of proprietary software, the only thing you can do is ask the company that made it to change it, and if they don't want to, you just have to put up with it. If you find a problem with the software, even if you are a programmer and know how to fix it, you aren't allowed to.\n\nFree software doesn't have those restrictions, so linux is worked on by thousands of programmers all over the world, many of whom are not paid to do it, they just want to make the software better. Since so many people are making improvements and fixing bugs, linux is a very stable, fast and reliable operating system.\n\nSome advantages:\n\n- You can change, tweak, customise or replace anything about your system if you want to. If you don't know how, chances are someone else has wanted the same thing as you and figured it out, so you can just use their solution.\n- The type of people who work on linux tend to be a little paranoid, which is a good thing because it means the code they write is very secure. Combined with the fact that fewer people use linux, this means that linux basically doesn't get viruses.\n- Linux and much of the software that runs on it is free, as in you don't have to pay any money for it. Apart from being cheap, this is neat because it means installing and removing software is really easy, there are no keys or authorisation systems or whatever. You can casually install some big complicated program that would have cost $100 proprietary, and if you get bored of it uninstall it 5 minutes later.\n- There are loads of people who love linux and like to help people learn how to use it and help solve their issues\n\nSome disadvantages:\n\n- It doesn't run software that was written for Windows or OS X (well, it often can, but not without a little bit of work). This is mostly an issue for gamers.\n- Getting the most out of it, using the more advanced features, modifying it etc, requires you to know about computers\n- Because so many different people are working on different programs, there are a lot of options and variations. I think it's good to have choice, but it can be confusing.", "When you use a computer, you use something called an operating system. Operating systems are big, complicated things, and they're made up of lots of individual components. It's a lot of work to make an operating system. Some of these components are visible to you when you use the computer, and some of them are behind the scenes and you might never see.\n\nOne of the most important pieces is one you never see - it's called the kernel. The kernel is the foundation on which everything else runs. It's the stage on which the play is performed. Making a kernel is very difficult because it requires some very special skills - a kernel programmer often has to talk directly with the hardware that the computer is made of. If they get something wrong, they can make the entire system crash.\n\nLinux is a free kernel. But a kernel itself is only one component of a complete operating system. Fortunately people have made other free components as well, enough that you can put an entire operating system together. This is usually called a \"distro\" (distribution) and there are lots of them. Even though they mostly use the same components, they're often put together in quite different ways. They're commonly called \"Linux distros\" because Linux is the kernel that everything else is running on.\n\nThe main difference between these systems and \"traditional\" operating systems is the way they're developed. Operating systems like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are developed by commercial companies and sold. Linux systems are developed on the Internet. More specifically, there are lots of separate individual projects on the Internet developing the individual components.\n\nTraditionally these were made by hobbyists and researchers in universities. Nowadays quite a lot of them are made by commercial companies who have found ways to make money while still (effectively) giving away their work for free. Examples are Red Hat and the Mozilla foundation (who make Firefox). Unlike commercial software that you have to pay for, they give it away by licensing it liberally in a way that anyone can use it. There's a whole philosophy around the movement - see for example [What is Free Software?](_URL_1_), [The Open Source definition](_URL_2_) and the [Debian Social Contract](_URL_0_).", "Like you're five:  Linux is a free OS with a huge following.  (if you're into android it's the same thing)\n\nThe core of linux is free, so if you're a big enough nerd you can make your own OS out of linux.  There are communities that upgrade and update linux all the time.  People like linux because it's smaller, cheaper, and more customizable than windows or apple\n\nLinux's downside is that it's un familiar to new users, but more so is compatability--there are work arounds sometimes, but when you buy a program they usually offer it in for windows/apple", "There're some awesome explanations already posted here, but I think I'll try to explain it with analogy.\n\nImagine you have to buy a car. There're some really popular models, which come with many things built in, and are sold for a relatively expensive price. If you open one of them and look under the hood you will see a huge steel plate over the engine and other parts, making it almost impossible for you to modify, unless you are a specialist.  \n  \nYou don't care much though, since due to its popularity there're many things you can install over it to make your ride more comfortable. This, however, also makes quite easy for an average criminal to steal your car, because every thief knows about its weak points and has enough tools to make it work. That'd be Windows.\n  \nAt the same time there's a bunch of car models in the market built around blueprints, which were publicly issued some time ago. They come in different flavours: some of them are more like their popular rivals, with everything sealed from average driver, while others come with a very basic setup, and most of the time requiring some engineering skills (or a fucking PhD in machinery if that's gentoo) to make it work the way you want. \n  \nMost of the time you wouldn't really notice the difference from popular models, and while it lacks some awesome features you liked in more expensive cars, you still get a well-made car for a bargain price. Also, since your model is not that popular, it makes harder for an average thief to steal your car, because for instance, unlike most cars, yours can have its ignition keyhole in the trunk, or somewhere under your seat. That'd be *nix-based systems.\n  \nHope it helps.", "I always try to focus more on the EL5 aspect of this as a challenge.  Some of this may be vague to the point of slight inaccuracy, but I get asked this by kids a lot.\n\nThere are three layers of a computer.  The first layer is hardware.  That's the part you can kick.  Next is a layer called \"the operating system.\"  That's what makes the computer useful; it brings all the hardware inside the computer together to run software on.  On top of the operating system is the third layer, software.  That's your games and stuff.\n\nFor the last 20 years, you pretty much had only three choices in operating systems.  If you wanted to have a huge choice in hardware, you chose Windows.  If you wanted everything to \"just work out of the box,\" you chose Apple OS, but your hardware choices were what Apple gave you and get old rather quickly.  Then you had Linux, which worked on all sorts of hard ware, but was really hard to use until about 10 years ago.\n\nLinux is not \"better or worse\" than anything overall because it depends on what you need it for.  If you want something that will run pretty much any software out there on the cheap, you choose Windows.  Most people do, as a matter of fact.  Including people who want to steal all your names, passwords, photos, and use your computer to hack other Windows computers.  Because it's so easy to use, it's also easy to break into.  \n\nIf you want something that is much, much more secure, but still easy to use, you choose Apple.  But not a lot of software runs on Apple unless you are a serious writer, designer, or artist.  Only about half the stuff you can run on Windows can be used on an Apple computer.  Also, you can't really mess around with the hardware; you get what Apple gives you.  And it's more expensive than Windows or Linux.\n\nThen you have Linux.  Nowadays, Linux runs on pretty much everything: computers, Apple computers, cell phones, and lots and lots of teeny computers.  But the software is very, very limited to really serious computer software.  Very few games run on it, and since most of the users are programmers, hackers, and people who love computers to run other things... the games have gone to the wayside.  But Linux is very, very, very safe because is designed to only do what you tell it to do... and no one else. Also, there is such a huge choice in what program can do what (like 30+ text editors alone), you may find it hard because there is no one singular \"best of everything.\"\n\nSo asking what's \"better\" is hard.  \n\nLinux and Apple are more secure than Windows, although Windows is getting better.  It comes from how the creators think about their operating system.  Windows is \"permission inclusive\" while Linux is \"permission exclusive,\" and Apple is somewhere in the middle.  Think of it this way:\n\nYou are a duke of a land.  You don't have time to build a castle fortress, so you have one made for you.\n\n- Windows Castle Fortress is cheap, and all the doors and windows of the castle are open by default.  Also, it doesn't come with a lot of perks out of the box.  You have to buy the drawbridge, moat, and all the garrisons inside  and those can get expensive.  Luckily, you can find some pirate to get them for you for free, but you have no idea if they will come with enemy soldiers already hiding in them.  The Windows Castle is also incredibly obvious with bright colors and targets painted on it that glow brightly in the night with blaring horns, so it attracts more enemies than anything else.  It's a large target, has a lot of problems which cause it to fall apart depending on where you build it (aka \"crash on certain hardware\").  You add up the missing parts, the holes, and the main target problems... it's not ideal and you have to be careful.  Luckily, a lot of people use them.  Unluckily, so do your enemies.\n- Apple iCastle is expensive.  But it's much more secure, with only a few open things by default.  It also has a lot of expensive options, but it looks really, really nice.\n- Linux Kastle comes with a lot of options, but requires a lot of reading, even if you buy one fully assembled (known as \"a distro\" like Red Hat, Ubuntu, Slackware, etc).  It's so secure, you may have trouble at first figuring how to even get in the damn thing.  MOST of the software you can run on it is free. Now here's the best part: Linux Kastle is designed by castle fortress engineers FOR castle fortress engineers.  Once you figure out the damn thing, your fortress is like a fucking solid wall of defense with ninja-like hiding capabilities. Not only that, but it can run on any land condition you can think of like in the air, underwater, underground, and unlike Castle Fortress or iCastle, you don't have to have one huge block of castle: you could set up thousands of mini-castles all over the fucking place: in trees, in birdhouses, turn statues into golems, and so on.  Is that a river?  No, it's 200,000 Kastle systems so small, they look like a liquid, but they all work together as a single mind.  But again, you have to be fucking smart to get there.  For instance, you could tell your archers to shoot arrows, but if you forget to install arrow slots in the wall, none of your arrows will get to your enemies.  Also, you may have to tell the archers not to shoot one another.  You better be specific, which can get annoying until you write your own commands to tell them \"when I say fire at the enemy, open a slit in the wall, fire arrows only at the enemy, who wear red shirts, and then you are done, close the slit.  Also, don't get hit by an enemy.\"\n\n[Source: a Senior Linux admin for a large company, typed reply on a Kubuntu box I use at home as my main machine]", "The way I see windows/Linux/Mac is that Windows is like American cars. Cheap, and the parts and technicians are easy to find. Mac is like a foreign car that's more reliable, but parts and service are more expensive. Linux is like a hot rod that you can customize any way you want, but you usually have to know a thing or two about cars to keep it running.", "Like robertskmiles said, quite a bit has to do with it being free. Now for a ELI5 analogy:\n\nImagine there were a whole bunch of companies that make cakes. Many companies make really good cakes, but some of them only sell the cakes. Then one guy, we'll call him Lenny, decided to make his own cake. He knows a lot about cake making, so it's a pretty good cake. But Lenny thinks everyone that wants to should be able to make their own cake. So instead of sell pre made cakes, he goes out and gives out the recipe for free.\n\nNow you can go out and make your own cake yourself. Forums are started about the recipe, and about cake-making in general. Lenny had already thought about this, so he made his cake *really* generic. Now other people, who are also really good at making cake, use Lenny's base and make cakes much more suited to specific tastes, like vanilla or chocolate. And you know the internet, so soon there was a cake for any taste you could imagine.\n\nNow, not everyone is a cook. Some people are fine with getting a premade cake. Sometimes they just make their own frosting, and that's ok. But a lot of people like to tinker and mess, or just like a free cake, so they use Lenny's cake recipe. Nowadays, people put tutorials of how to bake Lenny's cake for those people who maybe aren't the best cooks, but would like to know how. Some people even give away pre-made cakes from Lenny recipe for free. \n\nTo sum it all up, it's mainly this sense of freedom and utility that drives this DIY cake community.\n\nDoes that help? At all?", "Linux's biggest PR problem is the behavior of its ultrazealots.\n\nThey're a lot like the Ron Paul people.\n\nI'd love to see a Venn diagram of this.\n", "Well, Tommy, Linux is what we call an \"Operating System\", it's a very big program that computers have to learn in order to know how to use other programs.  Think of it like the computer's big \"How-To\" book.  Windows and Macintosh are also operating systems; they have their own how-to books.\n\nYou know all books have authors, and the books are copyrighted.  That means if you want to have a book, you pay the author for it, and you can't copy the book to give to someone else.  The Windows book says Microsoft/Bill Gates is the author, and the Macintosh book says Apple/Steve Jobs is the author.  The people who started making Linux wanted other people to be able to write in the book without arguing about whose name would go on the cover, so they left it off and told their lawyers to make a new license: the GNU General Public License (GPL).\n\nHaving a GPL instead of a copyright means you're saying to people \"You can use and copy this book all you want.  If you want to write your own version, I'll let you look at my notes.\"  Programmers really liked this because they go in and fix the typos or add chapters they think need to be in the book.\n\nOf course, with many people making their own copies of the book, lots of versions of the Linux book have been put out.  The most popular one is Ubuntu-linux, which was written from the book for Debian-linux, which was written from the Linux book.  They all have lots of authors all working together, adding and revising pages all over the place and writing programs that the book has instructions for.\n\nPeople say this is a very good thing, because when people notice mistakes in the book, they can fix it or tell someone who knows how to fix it.  It also means that if someone tries to write a program that will make your computer do bad things, they can rewrite the book so that the program doesn't work anymore.  Because so many people are fixing the mistakes, your computer is sure to have a book that won't make it do something silly like turn itself off when you're playing your favorite game or drawing a pretty picture.\n\nIf your computer has the book of Ubuntu, it knows how to use programs written for Ubuntu best.  It knows programs for Debian pretty well, but if you want it to use programs for Linux it sometimes needs a little help.  Thing is, if you have a program for Windows or Macintosh, the computer won't know what to do with it.  There are a lot of programs written for Windows and Macintosh because they're so popular, but usually they don't write a version for Linux.\n\nThere is a program out there called WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) which acts like a Windows-to-Linux translator for your computer.  If your computer has a Windows program that says \"flob the jiggly\", your computer can pipe it through Wine, which knows that \"flob the jiggly\" means \"turn off the lights.\"  The problem with it is that the people who write the Windows book won't show the programmers who make Wine their notes, so \"flob the jiggly\" might actually mean \"flip the light switch.\"  So if you have a program saying \"flob the jiggly\" and it wants the lights to be on, your computer will turn the lights off instead.\n\nSo you can see, Tommy, Linux has good parts and bad parts.  It's a very well-written book, but not a lot of people write programs that it can use.  It's getting more popular, though, so more people are making good programs for it.\n\nI hope that answers your question.", "This should help:\n_URL_0_", "Windows: \"Cannot delete file: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.\"\n\nLinux: \"There was an error, program X doesn't want you to delete that file. Here's a helpful link to teach you how to get around that. Would you like some tea?\"\n\nLinux: \"You can't install that until you install these 50 libraries, update these 3 drives, downgrade this 1 driver, and pick my mom up from the airport.\"\n\nWindows: \"Click the next button over and over again until the program is installed. It will then work perfectly unless it doesn't.\"", "Not an ELI5, but in case you're up for an ELI16 or 20, [Neal Stephenson explained this pretty well some years back](_URL_0_).", "Linux is the umbrella term for a group of operating systems (often called distros) based off the Linux kernel(a kernel is sort of the core of you computer software, like the engine of your car).\n\nIn short it as a group of operating systems.", "Back in 1999, Neal Stephenson wrote an essay called [\"In the Beginning Was the Command Line\"](_URL_0_) that has a really nice metaphor about the differences between Mac, PC and Linux:\n\n\n > Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.\n > \n > There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.\n > \n > The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.\n > \n > Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.\n > \n > Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.\n > \n > On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.\n > \n > One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.\n > \n > With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.\n > \n > Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.\n > \n > Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.\n > \n > The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.\n > \n > The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:\n > \n > Hacker with bullhorn: \"Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!\"\n > \n > Prospective station wagon buyer: \"I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!\"\n > \n > Bullhorn: \"You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!\"\n > \n > Buyer: \"But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.\"\n > \n > Bullhorn: \"But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!\"\n > \n > Buyer: \"Stay away from my house, you freak!\"\n > \n > Bullhorn: \"But...\"\n > \n > Buyer: \"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?\"\n\nTL;DR: Macs are hermetically sealed Euro-styled sedans, PCs are station wagons, Linux turns your computer into a tank.", "Does linux run as well, or better, than windows 7/8?", "Imagine each different operating system is a machine made out of Lego blocks.  Windows and Macs are made out of Legos that are all glued together.  There are very few that are not glued that you can mess around with but for the most part you must rely on the companies to un-glue/fix/and re-glue things when you need something fixed or changed.  You must rely on the companies for changes.\n\nLinux which is basically a very similar machine as windows and mac but all of its parts are unglued.  You can freely tear down, rebuild, and make additions and changes as it pleases you.  Since anyone can change the structure of a linux based operating system, you can find many communities out there who actively contribute to these operating systems which means you must rely on the community or yourself to make changes.\n\nEach machine does similar stuff but Linux gets little support from the other major companies meaning some things won't work with it.  In those cases you must look for alternatives which many people in the Linux community have supplied already for free."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/03/41/77/61/38/0341776138200_500X500.jpg"], [], ["http://salamanteri.dyndns.org/wordpress/uploads/2009/07/windows7.jpg", "http://www.blackberryforums.com.au/gallery/files/1/matrix-1024x1024-wallpaper-3670.jpg"], [], ["http://www.debian.org/social_contract", "https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html", "http://opensource.org/osd"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpbFMhOAwE"], [], ["http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html"], [], ["http://files.organman.net/random/In%20the%20Beginning%20Was%20the%20Command%20Line.txt"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ccvzrx", "title": "Why / when were * and # added to the phone?", "selftext": "Looking at old rotary phones they only had 0-9, but modern (touch tone?) phones also have * and #.\n\nWhy / when were they added? What was the first use case?\n\nWere there arguments over adding these?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ccvzrx/why_when_were_and_added_to_the_phone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ett0je2"], "score": [4], "text": ["They had 8 tones in a grid. \n4 x 4  \nEach button was a combination of a row tone and a column tone.  \nSo from 8 tone generators you got 16 unique tones.    \n\nCivilian phones were 4 x 3  for 12 unique tones.  \nThe bottom row only had the number 0, but the phones were capable of 2 extra unused tones.  Early phones had no buttons in the * and # spots.  \n\nAs time went on, Bell found a use for the 2 extra tones so then they added the * and # buttons.    \n\nIn 1961 inventors at Bell Labs had to pick something to go there so they just chose two symbols found on a typewriter.  They went with * and #.   From what I read they chose them based on business usage at the time.  \n\nKind of as a joke, Bell scientists eventually officially named them:       \n* = sextile    \n\\# = octothorpe"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3mi5p2", "title": "Is handedness connected to cavity formation on one side of the mouth?", "selftext": "Like the title reads, does being right- or left-handed effect where cavities form in the mouth?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3mi5p2/is_handedness_connected_to_cavity_formation_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvfac9e"], "score": [6], "text": ["If you sleep on your right side then [you are more likely to experience acid reflux](_URL_1_).\n\nAcid will also pool on the right side of your mouth and damage those teeth first.\n\nYou are [slightly better at brushing on the side of your dominant hand](_URL_0_) though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122995/", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/nmo.12042/asset/nmo12042.pdf;jsessionid=10057F38C67FC011727E605D06F37BC1.f03t04?v=1&amp;t=if1pwjft&amp;s=89a7767f456750ffcd77f7fe33087bc4596f9add"]]}
{"q_id": "766zd1", "title": "why are erasers made of rubber, and what makes them able to erase graphite?", "selftext": "Is it a friction thing? When you erase little bits of rubber break off and are coated in the graphite. Why/how does the graphite appear to stick to the rubber?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/766zd1/eli5why_are_erasers_made_of_rubber_and_what_makes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dobv9kg", "dobvl00", "doc1w76", "doc3x98", "doc6c9w", "doc9lm4", "doc9mvv", "doccn8v"], "score": [2417, 20, 160, 206, 11860, 8, 6, 10], "text": ["Because graphite is very brittile and the rubber snaps the little pieces off the paper without tearing the paper. It doesn't work for pen because ink actually soaks into the page.  \n\n[Here is graphite on paper under a microscope](_URL_0_) \n\nThe graphite sticks to the rubber because it is sharp and rubber is soft. Little spikes of graphite get stuck in the rubber, weakening the rubbers structure, causing the forces that bind the rubber to itself to be less than the force of friction. This is why hard erasers suck ass. ", "It is a friction thing mostly. The friction from rubbing the eraser across the paper causes it to warm up slightly, this causes the rubber to become sticky. At the same time, this friction loosens the graphite from the paper fibers and allows it to stick to the rubber. This friction also weakens the surface of the rubber so that enough rubbing will cause small bits of it to roll up and tear off. Thus exposing fresh rubber for more graphite to stick to.", "Although erasers were originally made from rubber, it is more common today for them to be made from vinyl or plastic. Here is a video elaborating on the history of the change: (Start at 9:27) _URL_0_\n\nAs everyone else has said, erasers work through friction. The rubbing transfers the graphite from the paper onto the eraser, leaving the paper relatively undamaged. ", "Just a follow-up question: why aren't they able to erase coloured pencils effectively?", "OH MY GOSH, some of my useless chem knowledge can come into play.\n\nWhat other people have said is close, but not entirely correct.\n\nYou're not using friction per se to just \"rub off\" the graphite. What is happening is actually a solubility between two nonpolar solid substances, the rubber and the graphite. So the London dispersion forces (really weak intermolecular forces) between these molecules are attracted to each other and as you rub and create heat it increases the attraction and removes more graphite from the paper as it is attracted to the rubber. That's why you get dirty rubber dust.\n\nThat's also why your lead sticks to paper to begin with, those same London dispersion forces are attracting the lead to the paper. Those forces are actually a little stronger than attraction between the graphite and the rubber which is why you have to put a little energy into getting it all out. \u263a\n\n\n\nEdit: I was so excited I forgot to answer your question completely. Erasers are made out of rubber because it is a nonpolar solid material which attracts other nonpolar solids, like graphite. The way it is malleable and crumbles (like others mentjoned) makes it less abrasive to the paper itself. \n\nEdit 2: Rubber being nonpolar is also why it is an insulator and does not conduct electricity. Wooooo! SCIENCE!\n\nEdit 3: Thanks for the gold!! Can someone ELI5 to me what I do with it?! (Can't wait for all the unecessarily advanced explanations \ud83d\ude0b\ud83d\ude43)\n\nEdit 4: Whoa, my dudes. Did not expect my highest comment to be about sciencey wiencey erasers! This gal needs to go finish her homework and break away from the Reddit vortex, though. I need to make corrections on the rubber/conductivity (Edit 2- defo some misleading info) and will do it at some point later tonight! Thanks to all who shared their questions and knowledge! \n\nHope you guys are all off sciencing now! \u263a", "In extremely simple terms, graphite has a stronger bond to rubber erasers than it does to most types of paper. \n\nErasers are made of rubber because it reaches into the texture of the paper better than other materials.", "I saw this on how its made.  The rubber is actually the structural material that dissolves vulcanized vegetable oil.  The oil is more responsible for the erasing than the rubber. \n\n\n\n\n[episode](_URL_0_)\n\n\n", "so to add to the question: were erasers invented by a chemist with an understanding of the molecular attraction or was there a happy accident that led to erasers?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://worldundermicroscope.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img00220.jpg"], [], ["https://youtu.be/pgPxgJMW5A8"], [], [], [], ["https://youtu.be/7Y0zaYitGcA"], []]}
{"q_id": "q9re9", "title": "how do companies make money off free software?", "selftext": "For example, Google Chrome by Google.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q9re9/eli5_how_do_companies_make_money_off_free_software/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3vuxk0", "c3vuy2n", "c3vv4pi", "c3vv61x", "c3vvbn6", "c3vvcy2", "c3vvji1", "c3vw6f5", "c3vw8ao", "c3vwple", "c3vwzkf", "c3vy5s1"], "score": [2, 3, 2, 8, 7, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7], "text": ["Advertising, for themselves, and other companies.", "Advertising and paid support.", "Sometimes companies collect data about the user and sell it to other companies. For example, if you have to register with an email address, that's a bit of data.\n\nEven if you don't think that it's getting information, some can keep track of how you interact with it and use the game or application as a User Interface study.", "Upselling paid products, ad revenue, paid support for the free program, and the possible selling of personal information. If we are also talking games, mico transactions and similar things. ", "Google Chrome isn't about making money so much, and its more about market leverage. The more people that use Chrome, the more control Google have over things like browser standards (in the form of proposals to the W3C)\n\nBut back to your actual question, there are a number of ways:\n\n* Selling technical support and services\n* As a loss leader to attract people to commercial software they make\n* Selling commercial versions of software that's free for personal use (Avast Antivirus is a good example)\n* Corporate sponsorship. A lot of open-source software is funded this way. Companies find it useful, so they donate to the projects in order to make sure the software is kept updated.\n* In-app advertisements. Lots of mobile apps do this, as well as things like Evernote.\n\nBut as with the Chrome thing, sometimes software is free because companies have a motive that isn't directly related to raw revenue, or may be part of a much longer term strategy.", "Google makes money selling ads.\n\nIf they make a browser that works well with their web pages (Gmail, Google Maps, iGoogle, Google+, etc.), more people will use those pages and see their ads.", "Do you make safes, or do you mine diamonds?\n\nA lot of companies are realizing they mine diamonds, but are forced to also manufacture safes.\n\nWell, wouldn't it be easier if you held a constantly-running contest to see who could make the most secure safes, just use their designs, and allow yourself to focus on your diamond mining operation?\n\nChrome is a safe, in this metaphor. It's just a tool for getting your info into Google, which is their real money-maker. \n\nHaving a good browser means more people will browse in the way you want them to. A \"good browser\" to google is one like chrome, that you can sign in to. If you sign into chrome at home, and at work, then Google is twice as effective at building the demographic profile that they keep of you. ", "Some took a hint from the local crack dealer.\n\nHere, free version of __________. Time trial of course. After 30 days, youll be hooked on it and wont be able to live without it. Then youll need to buy the full version. And we sell it as a license you have to renew once a year for a few hundred dollars.\n\nExample : latest microsoft office (which sucks balls by the way)", "Heres another one.\n\nYou make a free ________. (the specific kind of open source license type it is escapes me at the moment...) Its awesome, people love it. You get a job at some company based on your rep as a developer from it. Voila, you now make money because of free software.(Example : no one would turn Notch away if he wanted to contribute to a commercial project). \n\nSame scenario, but someone takes your open source project, improves it, bundles it with other riff-raff, and sells it as a 'demo' cd. Example : back in the early 90s this was common in some computer magazines.", "I think I heard this terminology regarding Facebook (which, conversely, *does* have ads)\n\n > \"If you aren't paying for a product, you are the product being sold\"\n\nAlso, some smaller companies make things free, in the hope that their name will spread and they will gain acknowledgement, whereas others, often individuals just want to make something helpful.", "Drupal is a free open source package but there are companies out there that customize and build sites for their clients using the free framework.  They're still paid for their knowledge of the package and for the work they do even through the base software is free to use.  \n\nThe overall cost to the customer is less expensive than having to purchase licensing from a commercial product, which makes it a pretty good deal compared to paid/licensed software.", "As well as other reasons, in the case of Google Chrome, Google benefits when people use the internet. If someone has problems with the internet, they spend less time on the internet, and they see less ads.\n\nThis is also why they fund other projects like Firefox. If people spend more time on the internet, and if the internet is 'funner' then Google wins. Now in some cases these companies may be motivated by entirely altruistic motives, but this happens less as a company becomes dominated by more business minded people.\n\nLY5: John owns an ice-cream van, and see that kids tend to buy ice-cream if they see the van, or if they stay outside and get hot. So he helps make the local playground better so that all the kids spend more time outside and buy more ice-cream."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1tn8xr", "title": "why does everyone on reddit seem to have roommates? (i'm european)", "selftext": "As the title says,  frequently run into posts about the crazy/annoying shit their roommates do. Is this purely a college thing or is it because of high housing prices or what?\n\nIn my country, you usually have small private rooms in college (with a common kitchen and bathroom), and after college you usually live with your parents for a while until you move out and live alone or with your SO. Is this different in the US?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tn8xr/eli5_why_does_everyone_on_reddit_seem_to_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce9lssp", "ce9lv2v", "ce9mo77", "ce9mym2", "ce9o7j0", "ce9oaat", "ce9pdju", "ce9ramy", "ce9rj8c"], "score": [7, 5, 2, 48, 16, 3, 2, 3, 5], "text": ["My wife would be *pissed* if I told her to move out.", "Yes, normally people are ashamed of living with their parents so they try to get good apartments they can't afford and split it with someone else. They would both live together and also there are roommates in college because if everyone had their own room it would be too much.", "College dorms in the US typically consist of a single room with two people sharing that space. Typically as one progresses throughout school they move into new dorms more like you described or simply move off campus.\n\nIn the US independence is a very big concept. Culturally it is seen as a failure in ones personal and professional life if one does not move into their own home shortly after college. While living with ones parents is very financial sound, it gives the impression (especially if older) that they can not take care of themselves. In order to afford a place to live many younger people will simply find roommates to split rent with until they settle down with a significant other and are making enough money in their career to buy an actual home. ", "bias. when people have roomates, they do things and people post shit about it. When people dont have roomates, nothing about roomates is said. No one says 'i live alone and this happened'. so you notice the occasional roomate post and move on to the next ten thousand posts and then after a while you wonder why so many people have roomates.\n\nof course there are other reasons. many people have roomates. but i think the one i said before is probably the biggest factor here on reddit", "It's common in the UK as well. And in the UK people have *flatmates* instead. \n\nIt's just cheaper to share a house with five people. It makes financial sense. ", "A lot of it has to do with housing, where I went to college, the apartments were pretty underwhelming, but you could rent a pretty awesome four bedroom house with kitchen, garage, living room, dining room, yard, etc. and have it be much cheaper than a solo apartment. A lot of people can't stand apartments, myself included, and would way rather share a nice household with a group of friends. I've done it most of ny life and it's great. People tend to have problems when they room with immature people or strangers.", "Some have cited high housing costs and underemployment as the cause of this, but I don't think that's accurate. While these problems are real, they are often exaggerated (and upvoted) on reddit because reddit is disproportionally full of people experiencing these problems (young people bored at work). Regardless of the frequency or severity of these problems, it isn't what drives people to want roommates.\n\nHaving roommates just makes sense. Regardless of the housing market, the cost per person decreases significantly when you share a living room and kitchen. Even housing is cheap in your area, having roommates will save you a few hundred dollars a month, and in many cases allows you to live in a house instead of an apartment, which gives you more privacy from neighbors and other benefits.\n\nSome people move back in with their parents after college, but I think most people try not to. In many cases (maybe because the US is so spread out) that isn't an option because recent grads need to be close to their job and in most cases that's at least a few hours away from mom and dad. ", "Americans call people they share apartments or houses with roommates, English people call them housemates or flatmates. ", "Also people often use \"roommate\" to mean \"housemate.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "154mon", "title": "Wednesday AMA: I am Irishfafnir, ask me questions about 19th century America!", "selftext": "Sorry for the delay, I was gathering material for my master's thesis and the time slipped by.\n\nI am but a low Masters student studying the history of the United States in the 18th and 19th century, with a focus on what is commonly called Jacksonian America. I focus largely on the political history of the time, and I should be getting published( god willing) soon regarding the differences in political ideology towards Latin America between John Quincy Adams and James Monroe. I am currently collecting primary and secondary source material for my thesis regarding the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829, commonly referred to as the last gathering of the revolutionary generation. I am most knowledgeable regarding the era post war of 1812 to the election of Andrew Jackson, but I should be able to to answer many of your questions from lets say the revolution of 1800 to the collapse of the second party system in the mid 1850's.  \n\nI know the sidebar says the Civil War, but this was originally supposed to be a joint AMA with another user providing more of the post 1850 answers to questions. The user unfortunately bailed and I was unable to find a replacement, so I would appreciate it if we avoided the Civil War questions, unless they are in the context of an earlier time frame.\n\nI should be around all night, and if I can't answer your questions I will try to find someone who will or point you towards a source.\n\n\nedit: Going to cook some dinner will return shortly to continue answering questions\n\n2nd edit- Answering questions until bed\n\n3rd Edit- Heading to Bed! Looking forward to answering more questions tomorrow! very interesting thus far!!\n\n\n4th Edit- Have to travel to visit family, will answer any remaining questions over break. Have a Great Christmas everyone.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/154mon/wednesday_ama_i_am_irishfafnir_ask_me_questions/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7j8lqw", "c7j8sop", "c7j8vql", "c7j92w4", "c7j9fjp", "c7jax4n", "c7jb18e", "c7jb7om", "c7jbfx7", "c7jbjkq", "c7jbkgi", "c7jbuen", "c7jc52d", "c7jcce7", "c7jcpir", "c7jf1je", "c7jh237", "c7jhgld"], "score": [20, 10, 23, 13, 4, 11, 6, 2, 10, 2, 9, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Explain wild cat banks like I'm five. Were they really a better alternative to a national bank?", "At what time would you say the notion of an \"American Dream\" came into existence and how would you define that term? I ask in reference to the large number of immigrants coming to the US during this time period.", "How were the Founding Fathers viewed in the 1830/40s? Was there a deification/cult of personality type of outlook promoted or were the opinions of the time more realistic? ", "Can you talk at all about the particular currencies used in the US at this point? Were there regional variations at all (ie Florida more likely to use Spanish Dollars)?", "Who is your favorite public figure during this time period? I'm interested in your response from whatever angle you choose. \n\nAlso, what is your opinion on Daniel Webster, specifically his arguments about the nature of the union in his second reply to Hayne?", "What was the biggest technological advancement in the time period you study? I was thinking the steam engine but I'm guessing there is something even more revolutionary. ", "I understand the 19th century was when America began the great shift from cider to beer as our primary brain-cell-drowned. Exactly when and why did the transformation take place?", "what is your favorite eccentric person or strange event from this time period? ", "What impact, if any at all, did defeated Southern soldiers have on the homesteading movement westward? Did they try and stay ahead of their victors?", "How would slavery have continued after the civil war if the emancipation proclamation had not been issued? I always figured that it would have all been abolished anyways with the 18th amendment at around the same time it was abolished in the northern states.", "What were the differences in political ideology between JQA and James Monroe re: Latin America?", "What was the reaction stateside to philosophical movements like the Young Hegelians, which prompted the development of several strains of leftist thought in Europe - notably Marx, but many others as well?", "*How and why did the Temperance movement gain so much popularity as to create an amendment banning alcohol in the 20th century? Who, in general, were the people behind the movement?*\n\nDoes it have anything to do with Irish immigration and perceived vices of non-Protestant foreigners?\n\nWas Alcoholism rampant, was the alcohol stronger back then?\n\nI remember vaguely from High School that the Temperance movement was also tied with Women's Rights, as sobriety is supposed to have benefited wives?\n\nI also remember the movement was tied to religiosity and the church. Was it predominantly the Protestant church or did Catholics also push for the cause to limit or remove alcohol from America?\n\nThis last part is stepping outside 19th century America, but did the Temperance movement ever leave the English-speaking world? Did France, Germany, or Russia (I doubt it somehow...) ever have an equivalent Temperance movement?", "Separate comment for a wholly different question:\n\n*What turned America away from Isolationism at the end of the 19th century?* \n\nOr rather, was America ever more isolationist than others or was it always a contested policy since independence?\n\nEven into WWI there were strong supporters of \"keeping out of European affairs\". Yet by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th America was snatching up land from Spain, negotiating spheres of influence in China and opening up Japan, etc.\n\nWas this all in the name of continuing the isolationist policy (flank the coasts with friendly islands to dissuade attack on the mainland) or were there certain people (McKinley) trying to make America an Imperialist superpower?\n\nThis is definitely crossing a bit into the 20th century, but there's no such thing as clean lines in a historical timeline anyways so I thought I'd just throw these questions out there.", "Hi Irishfafnir, thanks for stepping up and doing this.\n\nI attend a smaller Canadian University and as such the only American History courses we have are survey courses, which is terrible for those of us who are interested in areas beyond \"America before 1865\" and \"America after 1865\". I was wondering if you could suggest a few books or articles that might pertain to life in the South during the Confederacy but aren't military history, or I suppose any prior to the civil war.I understand this is after your Andrew Jackson cut-off and I do apologize. I wish I knew enough to ask an intriguing question for you, so I suppose I will have to settle for this.\n\nIn the primary source material you have collected thus far, have you found anything that jumped out at you as weird or interesting or something you wouldn't expect?", " Hope I havent gotten in here too late.  What were the predominant forms of entertainment back then.  What were the social structures like at the time?  Had men and women started 'dating' yet or were arranged marriages still around?  Were parents arranging their childrens weddings or was it more a child's choice?  Im always particularly interested in how life was lived in different eras.", "Two questions: the ice trade has always fascinated me. Who were the major players and how were legislatures and justices dealing with conflicts/rights?\n\nWho are your favorite authors from the time period? They're all copyright free now and  I'm looking for good ebooks!\n", "What effect does the political ideals of Latin American slavery have on american policy between the Adams and Monroe era?  Is there a particular country you you like to focus on when dealing with Latin America? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yv2na", "title": "why do public toilet seats have an opening at the front, but home toilet seats are completely round?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yv2na/eli5_why_do_public_toilet_seats_have_an_opening/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpd9tru", "cpdegf1", "cpdhyr6"], "score": [81, 12, 22], "text": ["International Plumbing Code and Uniform Plumbing Code in the US dictate that open front seats must be used for facilities that are made for Accessible Design.  The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't require it but plumbing code does.  Nobody really likes open front seats so you usually only see them in commercial applications in the US.  Home use toilet seats are closed front because that is much more comfortable for non disabled users.  ", "Either way, I'd much rather have the open at home.", "I want a toilet with a bulge in front of the bowl so my knob doesn't touch the porcelain."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "453sxb", "title": "Did the Ostrich ever have a flying ancestor, or does it have yet to evolve flight?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/453sxb/did_the_ostrich_ever_have_a_flying_ancestor_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czvd9ha", "czvdjwq"], "score": [4, 11], "text": ["[Here](_URL_0_) is a nice paper on the evolution and distribution of Ratites, including Ostrich, Kiwi and Elephant Bird.", "Ostriches definitely had a flighted ancestor! I have an [answer on another post](_URL_1_) that talks about the evolution of flight in dinosaurs, and birds are (for the most part) flying dinosaurs.\n\nMore than that, the current thinking is that flight was lost multiple times in ratites, the group that includes the ostrich and other birds like emus, cassowaries, and kiwi ([source](_URL_2_) and [source](_URL_0_)). Kind of interesting, because you'd think flight would have been lost once in the group, but that doesn't appear to be the case!\n\nEdit: I should add that the \"yet to evolve\" line of thinking isn't really how evolution works. Flight wasn't a goal in the evolution of birds. Evolution has no goal. Even if the ancestors of ostriches hadn't been flighted, that doesn't mean their descendants would evolve flight. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.giantflightlessbirds.com/research/2007/12/did_ratites_fly_to_new_zealand.html"], ["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24855267", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1p7mss/did_dinosaurs_evolve_into_birds_because_flight/cczmzn9", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533212/"]]}
{"q_id": "13jhcz", "title": "What happens to the electrons of the original atom after nuclear fission?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13jhcz/what_happens_to_the_electrons_of_the_original/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c74i9ks"], "score": [4], "text": ["The electrons follow the protons, and go with the atoms that were a product of the fission reaction. In the case of ^235 U splitting into krypton and barium, 36 of the uranium's 92 electrons end up in krypton, and the other 56 end up in barium. This means you get two neutral atoms."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2kmfh0", "title": "Does human movement on board the ISS affect its orbit at all?", "selftext": "If so, how much?  How hard is it to compensate for?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2kmfh0/does_human_movement_on_board_the_iss_affect_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cln0jpd", "cln0n4w", "cln158n"], "score": [5, 3, 8], "text": ["ISS weights 450000 kg, adult human weights around 70 kg\n\nSo a human weights 0.01 % of the total mass of ISS, unlikely to make any difference on the position of the center of gravity.\n\nI would guess that they spend more time correcting altitude, rotation and position due to drag (there is some atmosphere left at the ISS altitude) and docking/undocking of the vehicles. ", "No, not on the magnitude that would be significant. The center of mass does not change once the shuttle has docked regardless of where the astronaughs move in the space station. If they move away from earth there is an equal and opposite reaction of the mass of the space station so the center of mass does not change. The station needs to adjust for the shuttle docking and leaving but that is a different issue. The minuscule redistribution of mass my slightly alter the gravitational interaction, but at the speed the space station is moving and the distance it is from earth, the effect from astronauts moving inthe station is less significant than interactions with solar particles or interplanetary dust.", "It doesn't affect its orbit. These are internal forces so the system will keep moving with the same momentum regardless of what happens inside.\n\nIf a human pushes the wall or pulls the handles to move then it may temporarily cause the station to slow down a little bit (ok, a *very* little bit considering that 70kg is nothing compared to 450t). But as soon as the human stops (s)he will transfer the momentum back to the station and everything will keep moving just as before.\n\nBut it does imply something for attitude control. If a Soyuz or a Progress spacecraft is currently docking then the station has to hold very precise orientation. Humans moving inside could, in theory, cause small rotations and misalignment of the docking ports. However the ISS has four **huge** [control-moment gyroscopes](_URL_0_) that spin at 6000 rpm so they can counteract any movements of humans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope"]]}
{"q_id": "xor9i", "title": "Can I train myself to like food, music, etc. that I currently don't like?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xor9i/can_i_train_myself_to_like_food_music_etc_that_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5o8jwj"], "score": [12], "text": ["To an extent.\n\nWe know that exposure to certain unappealing stimuli can increase our tolerance for it in a number of ways (adaptation, mostly). It's the same principle behind being exposed to a noxious smell, over time you will rate it as not quite as adverse as you once did (forget the cite on this paper, there are a few). However in terms of liking food, music, etc, that process takes longer.\n\nBut it will only work to a certain extent because a lot of what we like depends on biology and upbringing, and you won't always be able to trump that. For example, if you are brought up around country music and your parents like country music, you begin to associate country music with being happy because that's what you observe in your parents and that's what you were exposed to. That could give you a preference for country music (there's actually a psychology prof at my school trying to get their kid to like a certain type of music by using this sort of conditional learning)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4js67r", "title": "allergy medicine. since it is an anti-histemine, does it not suppress the immune system? is it easier to catch things like influenza or the cold while on allergy medicine?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4js67r/eli5_allergy_medicine_since_it_is_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d392jqh", "d398cdp", "d399e9w", "d39bgq2"], "score": [4, 22, 100, 7], "text": ["Anti-histamines don't mute the immune system.\n\nThe chemical bonds to the receptors that would normally take up an allergen, preventing that allergen from causing the undesirable reaction.", "Histamine is only one small part, of one part (the innate), of the immune system. The answer to your question is, it slightly does, but is basically negligible because the bulk of your immunity comes from other mechanisms.", "Your immune system is kind of like a highway. There are all sorts of things on the highway to prevent cars from driving recklessly. There are two ways to enforce traffic laws on the highway, physical ~~barriers~~ deterrents and cops. The physical ~~barriers~~ deterrents are your innate immune response, the cops are the adaptive immune response. Histamine is a physical ~~barriers~~ deterrents, in our analogy, let's call it a speed bump. Speed bumps affect all traffic on the highway. If you have speed bumps engaged when you don't need them, like if you are exposed to an allergen such as pollen, it's a hassle for everyone involved. Allergy medicine turns off the speed bumps, but the cops are still around, and there are other physical ~~barriers~~ deterrents still present. \n\nEDIT: Changed barriers to deterrents to prevent confusion with the physical barriers used by the human body.", "Anti-histamines work by blocking receptors in cells that would otherwise cause swelling/inflammation in those cells. Anti-histamines in allergy meds block the specific receptors that cause inflammation. They don't prevent all histamine action. There are separate classes of anti-histamines that work on other receptors, such as the receptors that induce over-production of stomach acid, causing ulcers. Researchers are currently working to produce an antihistamine that might help with auto-immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6zycpp", "title": "Athens at its height tends to be portrayed as some sort of utopia; what was it like for the middle class?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zycpp/athens_at_its_height_tends_to_be_portrayed_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmzn29g"], "score": [49], "text": ["It depends on what you mean by utopia, and also how we define \"middle class\". \n\nTo start with the latter, there was no middle class in the Athenian consciousness; there was a philosophical ideal of a middle between two extremes, but in practice the citizenry was ideologically divided between \"the rich\" and \"the poor\". The cutoff point was whether one had to work for a living, or whether one had the wealth (and slaves) to live off the work of others. Everyone who had to survive on his own toil was considered \"poor\". If we want to find an Athenian middle class, we will have to impose some modern standards on the sources. I suspect what you're looking for is not really a member of this artificial \"middle class\" (a term that comes with a lot of modern ideological baggage), but simply an Athenian citizen who is not desperately poor but also not one of \"the rich\".\n\nThe problem then becomes that this vague socio-economic class would have included a very wide range of people. The territory and population of Classical Athens was comparable in size to that of modern Luxembourg. Life for a skilled worker living in the crowded, urban, ethnically mixed Peiraieus would have been very different from that of a small farmer herding goats in the mountains on the border of Boiotia, three days' travel from Athens. The men who worked the land around Acharnai, the second largest settlement in Attika, would have had a different outlook on life from those who gambled their fortunes on trade with the Phoenicians and Etruscans. How do we define what their life was like in general?\n\nIt's worth pointing out that relatively few of the men in this arbitrary middle would have actually lived in Athens itself. Those who did not have enough wealth to have slaves do all the work for them would not have the spare time to hang around at Athens, hours or even days away from their fields and workshops. The city, then, was the playground of absentee landlords, who engaged in politics and the pursuits of leisured life, and of the so-called \"naval mob\", the urban poor who relied on the wages of the Athenian democracy for their livelihood. The Pnyx, the hill on which the Assembly was held, had a capacity of about 6,000; apart from the men in the Council, who were drawn from across Attika, most of the men who voted would have been wealthy political high-rollers and poor men eager to receive the compensation (1 drachma, a good day's wage) paid out to those who attended.\n\nFor the rest of the citizen body, the great democracy of Athens must have seemed like something that happened far away, unless they were specifically called upon to contribute. This could happen in a number of ways. Every year, a specific number of men were selected by lot from the citizen rolls to make up that year's jury courts - a nice way to make an extra buck, but also a way to exert direct influence over the laws of the state. Every year, too, the 500 members of the Council were selected by lot from eligible citizens, with a set number of Councillors provided by each of the demes into which Attika was divided. The Council ran the day-to-day affairs of the city and set the agenda for the Assembly, giving them considerable power to determine the course of the state. Finally, the citizen body was eligible for military service; many of the people on the high end of the \"middle\" would have been on the List, which meant they could be called up several times a year in wartime, and might be called up to fight overseas for years at a time.\n\nAll of these aspects of the democracy could be regarded both as an unrivaled opportunity to exercise personal power and influence (setting policy, upholding the law, defending the community) and as a terrible burden on the already difficult life of a subsistence farmer or skilled worker. The fact that the Athenian state eventually instituted pay for all the services it required (jury, Council, Assembly, and military service) was certainly one of its most democratic features, ensuring that no citizen would be forced to default on his public duties. Even so, it is easy to see why many Greek populations were happy to leave the business of government and war to the leisured elite.\n\nIn what other ways was life in Athens different? All Greek states had a calendar of public festivals, funded by the state or by generous contributions from wealthy citizens. Athens, however, famously had one of the most extensive such calendars, and one 4th-century orator complained that the city spent more on festivals than it did on its many wars. Great religious celebrations such as the Panathenaia or the Dionysia involved processions, theatre performances, dance competitions, sacrifices and public feasts - all of which both Athenians and foreign visitors could take part in. Like all Athenian public activities, the cost was largely shouldered by the elite, who were assigned the duty of funding parts of each festival as a responsibility to their community. The rich paid; everybody else enjoyed the results. These results - theatre plays in particular - remain among the most treasured and lasting products of Classical Greek culture.\n\nHowever, it is not clear to what extent the so-called middle was involved in any way other than as spectators. Tragedies tended to be about mythical kings and their trials and tribulations; they highlighted the lifestyle and works of the leisure class, often (as in Aischylos' description of the battle of Salamis in his *Persians*) at the expense of the achievements of ordinary people. Comedies may have reflected the common man more closely, but even there, the focus is often on prominent politicians or public figures; Aristophanes also liked to poke fun at the lifestyle of the very wealthy, whose sons served in the cavalry. While the Athenians stereotyped themselves as hoplites in wartime, rather than the more elite cavalry, even hoplites clearly still represented the upper stratum of society, unattainable by the majority of citizens. In many ways, the way the Athenians represented themselves in public (both politically and militarily) could be compared to the modern ideological \"middle class\", in the sense that few actually live the reality of it, and many more aspire to it and would like others to believe they are part of it.\n\nThis has ended up being a bit of a rambling post... Sorry about that - it would help if you could define the ways in which you've seen Athens described as a utopia, so I could focus my answer on the extent to which that is justified. Also, feel free to ask if anything is unclear."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ucg34", "title": "Cold War:Why the Fulda Gap?", "selftext": "Why was the US/NATO convinced the SOVIET Army would invade Europe by pouring through the Fulda Gap?  \n\nTactically for armored warfare it seems rushing across the flat terrain of Lower Saxony, driving a wedge between the US and UK sectors, as well as seizing or isolating Bremerhaven and potentially the major ports in the Netherlands would have been far more logically sound.\n\nNow that the Warsaw Pact has been abandoned for more than 20 years, do we have any knowledge of their actual war plans or tactical/strategic objectives had they invaded?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ucg34/cold_warwhy_the_fulda_gap/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ov4ws"], "score": [16], "text": ["They would have done both. The entire Warsaw Pact force wouldn't have gone through Fulda, a large part would have swept the North German Plain as you suggest. The drive through the Gap was intended to strike at the American military infrastructure in Germany, most of which was located in the Frankfurt/Middle Rhine area (such as the Rhein-Main air base and much of the pre-positioned equipment for American reinforcements.) If the Pact could hamstring the American military, the remaining NATO allies would theoretically have been able to be disposed of at the Pact's convenience. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3b08dm", "title": "Indiana Jones and the Mislabeled Collections Records", "selftext": "Back by popular demand*, it's the \"identify an artifact\" game. Last week I stumped everyone with [this ceramic head](_URL_1_) from the Sao culture of Cameroon/Chad.\n\nLet's start off with a new object. [What is the purpose of this?](_URL_0_) Extra kudos if you can correctly guess the culture, but that is not expected.\n\nEdit: [here is another view of the same type of object](_URL_2_)\n\n---\n*\"popular\" meaning \"one person asked us to do it\". Don't say we never did anything for you.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3b08dm/indiana_jones_and_the_mislabeled_collections/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cshm19r", "cshn7l8", "csho22j", "cshp4hm", "cshqd55", "cshr4cu", "csi6je7", "csi8amj", "csibi69", "csim621"], "score": [3, 3, 3, 8, 3, 6, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Totally out of left field, but is that some kind of fencing with a head on it? If it had some evidence of being in water I would suggest a fish weir but I've got nothing and just want to play.", "99% sure it's one of these [reachy grabby things](_URL_0_) decorated with a face", "So, this is my guess-\n\nThese are sacred representations of the deceased who attend meetings of the living, they are given seats (be they chairs, or the ground, or however else this culture sits down) and they are considered to be in active attendance to all of the meetings regarding important affairs, and the framework is to enable the face to be upright wherever it is placed.", "It extends outwards - towards the audience - so my guess is that its darting motion is meant to have some kind of shock value. So how about it represents a spirit (e.g. protective ancestors), and is used to scare bad spirits during a cleansing/healing ceremony.", "These posts are great.\n\nWas it intended to extend toward the person holding it, or toward another? And was it intended for large gatherings, small ones, or both?", "Is it to protect the graves of family by using shrunken trophy heads from captured rivals?", "Nobody guessed mine last week :( _URL_0_", "Since my items are relatively easy I think, you have to get BOTH of what these two items were for: \n\n[Sweet crumbs and carrots what does this cut off](_URL_0_) edit: it's just a pair of [sugarloaf nips](_URL_2_), why would you think anything else, identified by /u/vertexoflife\n\nand\n\n[Mother of pearl what is this supposed to squeeze](_URL_3_) edit: it just squeezes your hair, it's 2 different curling irons, the left one folds up for travel, the one on the right is a special one for making [papillote curls](_URL_1_), identified by /u/anthropology_nerd", "Hail from /r/archaeology! I am curious, how familiar would the average historian be with identifying artifacts such as these? Particularly such a wide range? \n\nI ask because I always imagined this kind of artifact identification was more in the realm of Archaeology rather than what a historian would spend time doing/learning? Please excuse my ignorance, I'm just curious. ", "Okay, new item, with a bioarchaeology twist. If you would have anxiety from viewing a human skull please sit this round out.\n\nHere we go. What would cause [this pathology](_URL_2_)?\n\nEdit: The lesions are called [cribra orbitalia](_URL_1_), and in the past was confidently linked with [advanced iron deficiency anemia](_URL_3_). Now, we understand [multiple pathologies](_URL_0_) can explain the presence of these lesions, and we oversimplify the diverse factors influencing health in previous populations by only entertaining one explanation for cribra orbitalia/porotic hyperostosis."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/0d6MP5v.jpg", "http://imgur.com/Ltuf6C8", "http://imgur.com/aGKpFZX"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.juvoproducts.com/filebin/images/products/full/REACHER32_2_FS.jpg"], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.imgur.com/UDCnVqN"], ["http://www.twgaze.co.uk/images/uploads/50a3bd4575eba-9549_7.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP9PJsY5__4", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_nips", "http://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/ARCHIVE_PICS/Misc_archive/Ivory/P7180423.JPG"], [], ["http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rhonda_Bathurst/publication/24195589_The_Causes_of_Porotic_Hyperostosis_and_Cribra_Orbitalia_A_Reappraisal_of_the_Iron-Deficiency-Anemia_Hypothesis/links/00463524194679271f000000.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioarchaeology#Porotic_hyperostosis.2Fcribra_orbitalia", "http://i.imgur.com/uhBOzlN.jpg", "http://plaza.ufl.edu/maurih00/paleopathology.html"]]}
{"q_id": "xsqxc", "title": "Learning Styles: Fact or Fiction?", "selftext": "Distinct [learning styles](_URL_0_) have always been presented as fact, \"Johnny is a visual learner,\" \"Susie is an auditory learner,\" \"Jack is a kinesthetic learner...\" etc.\n\nBut do these types specific learning modalities actually exist?\nIs there evidence to support these unique learning styles (barring a learning disability that prevents a child from comprehending a certain modality)?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xsqxc/learning_styles_fact_or_fiction/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5pafjj"], "score": [11], "text": ["According to a review by the Association for Psychological science, there is currently no credible evidence to suggest that such learning styles exist. At the very least, there is certainly no evidence strong enough to justify implementing such programs in schools.\n\n[Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence](_URL_0_)\n > **SUMMARY**\n\n > Our review of the learning-styles literature led us to de\ufb01ne a\nparticular type of evidence that we see as a minimum precondition for validating the use of a learning-style assessment in an\ninstructional setting. As described earlier, we have been unable\nto \ufb01nd any evidence that clearly meets this standard. Moreover,\nseveral studies that used the appropriate type of research design\nfound results that contradict the most widely held version of the\nlearning-styles hypothesis, namely, what we have referred to as\nthe meshing hypothesis (Constantinidou  &  Baker, 2002; Massa\n &  Mayer, 2006). The contrast between the enormous popularity\nof the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of\ncredible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and\ndisturbing. If classi\ufb01cation of students\u2019 learning styles has\npractical utility, it remains to be demonstrated."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/Assets/SGS+Digital+Assets/current/ELWS/Pashler+et+al+article.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "418u32", "title": "in recent wars (iraq, korea, ww2), were soldiers allowed to \"loot\" the dead bodies of enemy soldiers?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/418u32/eli5_in_recent_wars_iraq_korea_ww2_were_soldiers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz0fvlj", "cz0gjym", "cz0hb7v", "cz0he6r"], "score": [16, 5, 7, 4], "text": ["In principle the looting of bodies is frowned upon, so \"allowed\" is probably not the right word.  \nScavenging is ok, looting is not.  \nCollecting enemy weapons could be considered scavenging, \nremoving and collecting their gold teeth would be looting.  ", "Your not supposed to keep anything personally but a unit can keep trophy's after a bunch of paper work.  Old unit has a Iraqi aa gun in front of brigade hq we captured in Iraq. ", "My aunt's brother (aunt by marriage) was sent home from WW2 in a box. When my aunt's family took a look at his possessions, he had a bunch of Nazi stuff on him. She let me hold the bayonet with the swastika on it, which was fucking creepy.\n\nMy uncle (her husband) told me they never really looted much in Korea because there was nothing to take and they traveled pretty lightly until the end when it turned into a ceasefire and holding positions.", "Alot of times when American soliders would kill a German they would grab the Germans superior weapons. In the Pacific the Allied forces really liked taking Japanese rations also becuase they found it delicious compared to their rations."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "65tkfy", "title": "How are proteins able to \"know\" what task to carry out?", "selftext": "I understand that they form into particular shapes to allow various molecules through like the Na, K channels  &  pumps found in the axons of neurons that structurally can only let a particular type of ion through with very selective permeability, but how are some able to swim to where they need to go and carry out tasks? It's beyond me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/65tkfy/how_are_proteins_able_to_know_what_task_to_carry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgd6rvz", "dgdaahy", "dge7vr8"], "score": [12, 2, 5], "text": ["Protein structure has evolved so that the action that the protein needs to carry out is chemically the most favourable response to a certain stimulus.\n\nAs for the problem of location you mention, a lot of proteins move within the cell guided by the cytoskeleton. The direction of this movement is often guided by a gradient of the protein's ligand. And as for the protein's target, it's a matter of affinity. Inside the cells, proteins are constantly running into all kinds of molecules, but they only stay bound to - and consequently only act upon - the molecule which they have a very high affinity for; namely their ligand or substrate.\n\nThis is a very complex subject, so I hope this reply helps.", "In simpler terms: Some proteins are produced in surplus and will do their actions more or less randomly when they happen to find the right conditions more or less by chance. Others will not only have the part that does a certain action, but also another part that will make it more likely to end up where it needs to be - either swimming around randomly until it 'docks', or using the above mentioned cell structures. Then there are also specialised proteins which do nothing but push or pull things around. They'll attach to a protein near the nucleus where it was produced, move it along the cell structures, until it docks. The parts where such proteins are regularly needed will also have according attachment points, which in some cases react to stimulus (like 'brain activity: more of this or that needed) or have nearby 'sensors' do that to guide more proteins their way, or to even make the nucleus produce more of them.", "Something that no one has mentioned yet is that proteins often have embedded localization sequences in the form on their amino acid structures. A great example of this is the nuclear localization signal (NLS). This is a sequence of amino acids that tags said protein for transport into the nucleus. These proteins are often transported by cytoskeletal elements as others have pointed out. If you can get your hands on a copy of Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts, the authors go into great detail on this. Ultimately though, as others have stated, it all comes down to whether or not it is energetically favorable. I would go into more depth but I'm currently on a train!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6rabb3", "title": "Did the Soviets really send their infantry through minefields as if they weren't there?", "selftext": "I've stumbled upon something I find somewhat hard to believe in [this](_URL_0_) AH post:\n\n\n > Highly illuminating to me was his description of the Russian method of attacking through minefields. The German minefields, covered by defensive fire, were tactical obstacles that caused us many casualties and delays. It was out laborious business to break through them, even though our technicians invented every conceivable kind of mechanical appliance to destroy mines safely.   Marshal Zhukov gave me a matter-of-fact statement of his practice, which was roughtly 'There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a minefield our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with minefields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go.\n*(Eisenhower; Crusade in Europe, John Hopkins University, 1997)*\n\nI've also hear discussions about so called 'mine trampler' battalions, supposedly penal battalions sent to clear mine fields, a concept I find more plausible than presuming that the Soviets did that with every infantry unit.\n\nCan anyone help me figure out what the truth is?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rabb3/did_the_soviets_really_send_their_infantry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3wa6w"], "score": [140], "text": ["Russian historian Aleksey Isayev addresses this in [his lecture on Zhukov](_URL_0_) (1:33:05). The long story short is that the myth was born of miscommunication. There was no \"mine trampler\" units, the intention was to train infantry to disarm simple mines so that it could proceed through minefields and not slow down.\n\n > \"There's a very famous story, allegedly coming from Eisenhower, about how if Soviet infantry encountered a minefield, it would advance as though there was no minefield there. This is a retelling over a broken telephone. In reality, Zhukov insisted that regular ordinary infantry should undergo sapper training, because simple mine disarmament, removal of simple minefields, can be performed by a person who has certain combat experience, and the implementation of this in ordinary rifle units, so they would not be stalled in front of minefields waiting for sappers and deal with minefields that they could handle by themselves, moving forward, and not remain in place, vulnerable to artillery attack.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2s12ct/why_were_soviet_casualties_in_ww2_so_high/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQDGnkck_Yo"]]}
{"q_id": "t4bdu", "title": "Is there a formula for the motion of a body in an elliptical orbit as a function of time?", "selftext": "For a situation like a comet orbiting the Sun. I made attempts at deriving one based on things like that the shape of the path is known to be an ellipse, conservation of energy, conservation of angular momentum, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, etc. but failed to get all the way there. The closest I got was equating the time to an extremely complicated expression involving the position, but I lack the math skills to solve for the position and, well, I easily could have made some mistakes anyway. \n\nIt seems like central-force problems like this must be extremely well understood by now! Is there an answer floating around out there or did I hit on something that just has to be solved numerically rather than analytically?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t4bdu/is_there_a_formula_for_the_motion_of_a_body_in_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4jgqc6"], "score": [4], "text": ["[There's no closed form solution but you can come pretty close.](_URL_0_) See also [this discussion](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion#Computing_position_as_a_function_of_time", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eccentric_anomaly#From_the_mean_anomaly"]]}
{"q_id": "1mrt6e", "title": "What made the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia \"better\"?", "selftext": "I've been seeing assertions for years that the Army of Northern Virginia had some innate qualities that made it \"better\" than the Army of the Potomac, at least early on in the war.  This goes beyond generalship, but seems to imply, basically, that the rank-and-file Southerners were better soldiers somehow than their Northern counterparts.  But this is usually left unexplained.  Is there any truth to these claims?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mrt6e/what_made_the_soldiers_of_the_army_of_northern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccc1pal", "ccc5gr2", "ccc74fs", "cccc68i"], "score": [19, 13, 2, 3], "text": ["Early on in the War you had other factors that influenced the Army of Northern Virginia. General Lee took his cues for training and drilling the soldiers from General Jackson, who is undisputed as the greatest taskmaster of the entire war. He drilled his own brigade to the point that they could cover as many miles in a day as [cavalry](_URL_0_). \n\nThus you had soldiers who were just as well trained and drilled as the Union Army. Then superior [tactics and leadership](_URL_1_) resulted in the South winning the first real battle of the war. This set the mood for the rest of the war until Gettysburg, which was the first real defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia. So for the majority of the first part of the war, the Southern Army had better Leadership, Tactics, and most importantly, Morale. ", "One argument that's been made is that many of the Southern soldiers lived agrarian lifestyles and were already fair shots with a rifle, and were used to living outside exposed to the elements and doing hard labor. By contrast many of the Northern conscripts came from the large urban centers of the North and many had never held a rifle before let alone fired one, and were not used to living out of doors etc. The South also started out with vastly superior cavalry because horsemanship was highly valued for the southern elite, especially those that owned plantations or worked on them. Again, for northern soldiers growing up in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh etc. most of them had probably never ridden a horse before.\n\nsource is \"The Civil War: A Narrative\" by Shelby Foote", "I think the folks below made some good points in regards to the general statement that lifestyles of the front line soldiers had some impact on the general effectiveness of the soldiers.  \n\nI would also take a look at leadership as well.  While some of the fumbling around at the General Officer level is well noted and documented, I would argue it was the quality of mid-level officers (and to a lesser extent sergeants) that really make the difference.  \n\nI don't know the exact numbers of which side employed more West Point trained officers, but let's assume that it was relatively equal.  There are still several Military Academies in the South that are training large numbers of officer quality students.  VMI jumps to mind almost at once because that is where Stonewall Jackson was teaching prior to the war and where a good number of his Junior officers came from.  \n\nThis to me is the larger advantage.  Most of the troops were raw/green early in the war.  Southern troops may have had a bit of advantage in shooting and Northerner's may have had an advantage in discipline, but the true advantage is having low and mid-tier officers capable of carrying out simple and complex maneuvers under fire.  \n\nAs far as I can tell from what I have read and from courses that I've taken on the Civil War, this is where the real advantage for the South comes through.  There were many cases that the Northern General's actually had the correct tactics/counter tactics/maneuver/battle plan in place to defeat the Southern General's plan, but they are unable to have the plan properly executed by their battle units.  \n\nThe longer the war went on the less of an advantage this became.  Veteran Northern Officers that proved their capabilities moved up the ranks and helped pick their replacements with capable officers.  This is also where the numbers advantage started to pay off.  The attrition level of these mid-grade officers was rather high.  This meant that as the war ran on, education on the battlefield replaced other forms of military education.  \n\nIn summary:  The Generals and the front line soldiers were more or less interchangeable as far as my theory goes, but the mid-level officers made for a critical advantage early in the war.", "An additional point: in the early part of the war, the Union generals were under constant political pressure to capture Richmond quickly and end the war, regardless of their own strategic instincts. Defending against reluctant, ill-timed thrusts at Richmond was an easier task than carrying out those reluctant, ill-timed thrusts. It's easy to look like a good soldier when your army has a task that your general can execute.\n\nAlso about the quality of military leadership: the officers who broke their oaths and fought for the Confederacy were heavily concentrated among the junior officers of the US Army. (Overall I believe more West Point graduates fought for the Union, but the numbers were skewed by age and length of service.) This meant that the ANVa started the war with a huge advantage in regimental leadership. Later on, as these Confederate commanders were promoted above their level of competence and the Union was able to field its own battle-hardened regimental commanders, this advantage disappeared. But at the beginning of the war, it was very easy to look like a good soldier if you were reporting to an A.P. Hill or something like that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/worsham/menu.html", "http://kms.kapalama.ksbe.edu/projects/2002/civilwar/battle02/historian.html"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1nk94k", "title": "do people who learn to speak a second language think in that language as well as there original?", "selftext": "I've always been curious if someone with a full knowledge of two languages thinks in both, or just one, or if it changes depending on the situation? Thank you in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nk94k/eli5_do_people_who_learn_to_speak_a_second/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccjc7l7", "ccjcasi", "ccjcf54", "ccjcgoe", "ccjcsje", "ccjcz5t", "ccjd3z3", "ccjd5f3", "ccjd6tx", "ccjd9bz", "ccjdedp", "ccjdokx", "ccjdppx", "ccjdtuk", "ccjduaz", "ccjdzvo", "ccjee9k", "ccjefyi", "ccjem2y", "ccjeow8", "ccjep7u", "ccjescx", "ccjf587", "ccjf74z", "ccjfb29", "ccjffff", "ccjfmzx", "ccjfqem", "ccjfs46", "ccjfu56", "ccjfvgt", "ccjfydt", "ccjg00r", "ccjgdnf", "ccjggb7", "ccjgsdw", "ccjgvba", "ccjgyxv", "ccjhcg4", "ccjhdbw", "ccjhgoe", "ccjhh8z", "ccjhn58", "ccjhyq5", "ccji4lw", "ccji5t7", "ccjk8yn"], "score": [3, 4, 27, 13, 3, 3, 12, 4, 5, 3, 6, 3, 3, 8, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 5, 5, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I sometimes dream in Spanish, and when I spend time in a Spanish-speaking country, sometimes I catch myself thinking in Spanish.  But both of those things are rare.", "I learned Romanian as a second language but I rarely find myself thinking in it, if at all. The only time i may think in Romanian, or speak it out of instinct is curses to be honest haha", "Second hand knowledge here: a friend was fluent in three languages and told me that when he thinks, they all blend together, but it still makes sense to him. ", "I moved to the US from the Philippines when I was 10 and am now 28. I'm still fluent in both languages but English has become my primary. I only think in English now, but don't have to translate Tagalog when I hear it. I just instantly understand it. Unlike German and Spanish which I'm only partially fluent in and have to translate statements in my head to English. ", "After studying it for a four years, I went to Egypt to improve my Arabic. I lived with two Arabs, and by the sixth month I was dreaming in Arabic and would think of some things in their Arab words first. By the end, it depended what I was thinking about. If I was thinking about my internship (which was in Arabic), I would think about it in Arabic. If I was thinking about a joke I read on Reddit, the thought would be in English\n", "I speak mainly english but I believe spanish was my first language. Its kinda of a mix of both but obviously it depends on who I'm around.", "Was born and raised in Montreal, QC. My parents seperated when I was 2 and my mom raised me in English and my dad in French. If I am at work, where French is the only language, I'll think in French. (Although I'll occasionally catch myself thinking in English). When I'm at school, I'll think in English because I go to an English university. \n\nIt's pretty messed up, really. I think it really depends on the environment you are in. Most of my dreams are bilingual. ", "I find myself thinking in different languages depending on how I feel or what I'm thinking about. For most things I think in English but when I'm thinking about more emotional things or about my family, I tend to think in my first language. My first language, Afrikaans, is more visceral and emotional, while English is more intellectual. (To me at least.)", "I think in whatever language I'm currently using as my primary. While I'm in the states I think in English, Mexico I think in Spanish, Montreal=French.", "I live right on the border with the United States , English is my second language and I would say I think in English like 75 % of the time. Sometimes it does blend and I have like this combination of the two.", "I mix Mandarin and English pretty regularly, it all makes sense.  ", "I have lived in Japan for 10 years. Although I am not \"fluent\" I think in both English and Japanese. Sometimes I will have dreams in Japanese but no understand what is being said. ", "I usually think in three different languages depending on my mood, that way i practice and dont forget what i've learned", "I'm Danish, but I've lived outside of Denmark most of my life, so ENglish has pretty much become my first language. To answer your question, at least for me, it really depends. It is actually really strange now that I think about it. It usually ends up being one the following:\n\n* Think in English 60% of the time and Danish the rest\n* One sentence in my mind is English, the next is Danish\n* This weird mix of English and Danish in a single sentence.\n* If I am working in a particular language I will almost only think in that.\n\nIt sounds very confusing, overly complicated and strange, but I've never actually thought about it before. \n\nIt seems to work. It only sometimes becomes annoying of you are writing or saying something in Danish while thinking in English, due to the fact that there are quite a few English words and phrases that simply do not exist in Danish. This sometimes makes me say something that would make perfect sense in English, \"It's pouring down outside\", but makes absolutely no sense in Danish. \n\nThat's my take on it, hope it helps", "I am a native U.S. English speaker, but lived in Brazil for two years and studied and learned to speak Portuguese fluently. It has been nearly 6 years since I returned to the United States from  Brazil.\r\rWhen I first got to Brazil, I didn't know any Portuguese. I studied a ton, practiced daily, and was immersed in their culture. I rarely had the time or opportunity to speak in English. It was more or less a sink or swim situation, and was very difficult at first. I would have to think in my head what I wanted to say, try to compute whether or not I had the vocabulary to do it, then modify what I wanted to say based on my Portuguese vocabulary, and then translate my English thoughts as they traveled from my mind to my mouth. It was often a very slow and surprisingly exhausting thing to do all day.\r\rOver the course of several months, certain phrases, words, and ideas that I expressed often would begin to flow more easily. The time it took for me to translate and speak my English thoughts in Portuguese became easier and quicker. I'd say that around 5-7 months I was pretty good at being able to communicate almost any idea I had in Portuguese, although my grammar, accent, and vocabulary very clearly indicated I still had lots to learn. \r\rThroughout this time and process, there is no clear, \"ah ha!\" moment when you wake up and realize, \"I can speak and think fluently in Portuguese!\" It's so gradual that you don't really notice it, and I cannot clearly pinpoint a time when I can say I \"became fluent\" and could \"think in Portuguese\" from that point on. The process was too gradual.\r\rThrough this learning process, even from early on, there would be times when I would \"think in Portuguese\" naturally, even if it was in small phrases or sentences, or even single words. My brain would just think that way without me thinking about it. I would sometimes realize, \"Hey! I just had that tiny thought in Portuguese!\" The more fluent I became, the more frequent and fluid the Portugese thoughts were. It was often a mix of the two through this learning period.\r\rAfter a year or more in Brazil, I would converse so well and so often that my entire day would be spent thinking in Portuguese. I knew the language, it was how I spoke, and it was what I read. When thinking, English words would naturally fill in the gaps sometimes when I didn't know the word in Portuguese. The more I learned, the less my brain would plug in English. \r\rMy mind would naturally shift to English if I were placed in a situation where I was presented with English, usually when reading or speaking with other English speakers. As soon as those activities were done, my mind would naturally revert to thinking in Portuguese. \r\rThe same goes for me and English now. Although my Portuguese has deteriorated from lack of practice, my mind will quickly begin thinking in Portuguese when I read or watch a movie in Portuguese. My mind will keep thinking that way for a bit afterwards (like 10-40 minutes), but will then quickly revert to English since that's what I'm surrounded by in the U.S.", "I know Spanish, French, and Chinese.when I'm bored I just combine the 3 and have conversations with myself because I can. Other than that,I think in English.", "I taught myself Hindi, and although I'm not totally fluent, I have some friends with whom I always watch English movies, but we discuss the subtext between ourselves in Hindi, or I explain plot points or translate dialogue to them in Hindi.  Now I find that whenever I'm watching a movie in any language I think about the subtext in Hindi and sometimes start speaking Hindi instinctively to other people if they ask a question.  So I guess that's kind of contextual.  ", "Do you think differently with languages too? If you speak Hindi there's like 9 words for love. Does that affect how you perceive things at all when you're thinking in that language? \n", "For myself as a German, i also speak english and a decent amount of spanish.\nEspecially when it comes down to speaking with friends in english (Got several friends in the UK amd elsewhere, I actually have to think in english then, otherwise I end up in totally losing the direction my conversation is going.", "I speak three languages, english being my second, I think mainly in English because I will sooner or later have to speak my mind.", "I'm a native English speaker who has learned Arabic and Korean and yes I think in all 3 languages at different times. Sometimes there is just a better way to express an idea in one language compared to the others or sometimes the language you learned the concept in is the way that you think about it. \n\nI have dreams in all 3 languages, I randomly think of certain words or objects in the different languages. I have inner monologue as well in them. \n\nWith that said though, I predominantly think in English but it is definitely common for me to think in my other languages as well. It also depends on the environment, when I'm in Korea I think a lot in Korean and when I'm in the states I obviously think mostly in English. ", "For me it depends on the situation. In some cases some ideas are easier to express in one language than on the other. I also tend to think in English about stuff that I got into after I learned the language, while I tend to think in Spanish about stuff that I used to do before learning English. For example when talking about soccer I think about terms and conversations in Spanish, whereas when I am say talking about stuff I learned in class last week I think about it and process it in English. Dreams are a random mix of both though.", "I am fluent in Mandarin and English, and I can understand [Cantonese](_URL_1_) and [Hokkien](_URL_0_) (dialects of Mandarin). Where I am from (Singapore), we study both our mother tongue (Mandarin, Malay, Tamil) and English once we get into school. \n\nAnd yes I do think in both languages, sometimes mixing them up. And people here pretty much mix English and their mother tongue when they speak. We have had meetings which started in English and ended in Mandarin.\n\nOur local colloquialism is a mixed pot of languages from English to almost all the Mother Tongue of the 4 major races in Singapore.", "I spoke only my native language until I was 3.  English was the second language I learned but I did all my education in English which essentially made me think in English.  Now as a 23 year old who's lived in a predominantly English speaking environment for 2 years, I can't complete sentences in Tamil without shifting to English mid-sentence.  I've also heard that bilingual people dream in the language that they prefer.  Not sure how true that is but it has been in my case.  ", "Well, I don't know how to put it in ELI5, I can only share with you my personal experience. I spoke and was exposed to Spanish and only Spanish until I was 16. My family then moved to a different country where English is the only language spoken and Spanish is not used at all and there is a negligible Spanish speaking population. I am in my 30s now and although I can still speak Spanish, English is my main language and I think in English most of the time, the only time when I think in a mix of Spanish and English is when I have been speaking in Spanish for a while, say a couple of days, which doesn't happens often. ", "I speak multiple languages (English, German, French) and occasionally catch myself thinking in those languages, without knowing. It's really cool that I don't notice it at times.", "I dream in English, Mandarin, and Japanese. Usually when Japanese shows up it has to do with me struggling to understand it though. ", "I took a language acquisition course of which a portion was based on this. I also have first hand experience. \n\nWhat happens when we speak is that ideas/concepts come to mind and specific words are \"activated.\" Often, some words can be \"primed\" to be more readily spoken by using similar sounds before the word you're trying to induce. This priming function is what helps us to choose specific words when we speak unrehearsed. Often the word we chose is easier to say, but it can also often be the wrong word - a word that sounds like what we meant to say but is actually very different in meaning.\n\nStudies have found that after a certain point of familiarity of a word in a language, it will be about as likely to pop up when we try to activate a word for a concept as other words, given ideal circumstances (no predictable priming, etc). This is true for words in languages other than the one the person is primarily fluent in. Perhaps this is how we learn synonyms in the same language.\n\nLanguages can be primed for circumstances. We often compartmentalize this. I grew up speaking in my native language to my grandparents, even though one of them was quite adept in English. I often speak in French with some of my friends who also took it in high school because that's the mindset I'd adopted back then and I still stick to it. During the course of becoming fluent or learning, we learn to think in a language deliberately. \n\nFrom talking with my professor, it seemed that there's a lot of interest in the idea of the inner monologue. Many people say they think in complete sentences. I grew up speaking two languages, and learned two more while in school, and two more in college. I can never remember thinking in complete sentences unless I forcibly slowed down and deliberately thought things out. Or when I'm reading. When I'm searching for words - even when in my head - any language I'm fluent in its more or less about as likely to have its weird pop up as any other. I also code switch a lot (switching between multiple languages in the same sentence, beyond just substituting a word) and love doing it deliberately when I can (when the multiple languages will be understood). \n\nI'd argue from what I learned and my own experience that - all else being equal - we really think in concepts. For people who speak one language, that's really the only thing that's primed so we often don't notice. For people who speak more, I think because of the simple fact we can choose which language to force ourselves to think in, we're aware of the abstract nature of thought. Some will likely have more words primed than concepts and vice versa, and context is especially important, but, in a complicated and beautiful way, we think in a variety of the languages we know and sometimes bare concepts devoid of the associated words from any of those languages. ", "Raised in three languages here (English, Thai and Danish - what happens when only *one* of your parents is an immigrant)!\n\nMy language of thought depends on what I'm thinking of. I go to a Danish university, thoughts on that are in Danish, thoughts of personal and family matters are mostly in English. I exclaim stuff in Thai and English when I get surprised - and if there are Danes around, I elaborate in Danish. So I'd say it depends on the situation - although I had to think about my answer. In my case the language of thought is selected on a subconscious level, meaning I'm not instantly aware of the language I'm thinking in. \n\nMy dreams are in pretty much every language I've ever learnt - even those I'm not fluent in. ", "I'm fluent in danish and english and I honestly think more in english than in my native (danish)", "Almost fluently Norwegian here, originally from Belgium\nWhen i'm in Norway and hear Norwegian i think in Norwegian. But when i'm in Belgium and i hear Flemish, i think in Flemish.\nAnd when i'm reading on reddit i think in English.", "Speaking a few languages, Norwegian, English, Russian and some talk-see German, I've found that I change the language I think in depending on what I use the most at the time. \n\nWhen I haven't communicated, read or heard anything for an hour or two I either revert back to my native Norwegian or stick to the language most relevant to my current train of thought.", "i originally speak danish but when i learned english i slowly began to think in english which i now do", "I never actually learned English, I just kept playing videogames refusing to switch them to russian. Then I started to watch movies in English as well. I do often think in English, yes, even though I wouldn't say my English is much good. It's fine, I suppose, but far from perfect.", "I speak Latin, so when I think, the languages blend together to create a streamlined language \"I need to see pater nam he has money mihi\".", "As someone who speaks 2 languages, but have never lived outside Denmark, I only think in Danish. On the other hand, my moms new husband, who has lived in London for a couple of years says he began to think in English", "I speak English, Italian and Portuguese fluently. The language of my thoughts depends on the context that I'm in. I.e, if I'm watching a Brazilian film, I'll think in Portuguese etc.\n\nIt also changes when I go visit any of those countries. For instance: I live in the UK now so I usually think in English (though not always); however if I go see my buddies in Italy, I will have to translate from Italian, to English (for listening) then back to Italian to speak. Then after a while, I'll start thinking in Italian, dreaming in Italian etc. then no translation happens (unless I need to speak English or whatever).\n\nGenerally, however, my thoughts are usually one language with expressions/swear words etc. from the others thrown in. \n\nWhen I speak with my family, it can be a strange mixture of words from those three languages in a sentence structure from one (English, usually)\n\n(Weird thing: One time I was in a car with a Brazilian person and my Italian friend. Neither could speak the other's language. My brain got so confused that I ended up not being able to say anything coherently. It's as if my brain tied itself into a knot)", "I believe you meant \"their original\" instead of \"there\"", "My family is Afrikaans, but I went to English schools. I speak more English and come into contact with more English speakers; I speak English better than Afrikaans and; I think in English. English probably became my \"thought language\" when i was around 11/12.\n\nEDIT: although as other posts say, when I'm around people who speak only Afrikaans, I'll think in Afrikaans as it's easier than translating what I want to say from English to Afrikaans.", "I am fluent in 3 languages and dabble in 2 others. I think and speak in the other languages and in my mother tongue, depending on the situation. Sometimes, it takes some adjustment time to make a full switch to thinking in a different language (so, like if I travel from England to France, I can speak French upon setting foot in France, but I might forget a word or two, or conjugate my verbs incorrectly for the first, say, 24 hours, depending on how long it's been since I've spoken French). If I stay in an immersion situation long enough, I'll also start dreaming in the language of immersion - this is actually how I can tell I've internalized the language's fundamental sounds and structures, even if I'm not necessarily fluent in my waking life and just need more practice time).\n\nEDIT: I should add that when I'm not traveling and I'm in a multi-lingual environment (which in Toronto is frequently), I have no trouble understanding the different conversations happening in the different languages I have knowledge in. Sometimes, though, I'll have trouble speaking because I start to mix up vocabulary. Working in a mono-lingual environment is not as mentally taxing.", "Anecdotal, but back when I was reasonably fluent in Spanish, before 10 years of not using it set in, I used to occasionally dream in Spanish.  I never \"thought\" in it per se, though I could if I exerted the effort to do so.  The real breakthrough moment for me was actually when I stopped having to think of what I wanted to say in English first, before speaking it aloud in Spanish.  I'm not sure if that counts as \"thinking in Spanish\" or not.", "I had an SO who was born overseas. She always mesmerized me with how well she could switch back and fort between languages depending on who she was speaking to at the time. To me, she would speak English. Her mom calls, and BOOM Spanish and French. Back to English. So I always was inquisitive about this very question. When I asked her, she told me that she 'thinks' in English, because she primarily speaks in English. However, when she is in deep conversation or angry or stressed her brain defaults back to French. I also asked about numbers and when she counts or equates figures, to which she responded English. The interesting thing is that she learned math in French (primarily), but her brain works in English.\n\nI have seen and observed her 'slip' as well. When she was super mad or upset (at me) she would curse me in French or Spanish (or both). She would also occasionally choose to mix the three languages when she could not find the right word based on the context in which she spoke. This was always amusing to observe.", "I'm Swedish but I mostly think in English. I just like English better for some reason.", "Im german and also speak english and french. English with such frequency that my thougts are a horrible mixture of english and german. It macht me shudder.", "So, here's my personal experience. Until I was about six years old I spoke nothing but Greek. Now, living in Canada would cause this to be a bit of a problem and so my family stopped speaking in Greek to me and I started learning both English and French. \n\nI'm fluent in all three languages, with Greek being my first language learned, French second and English third. That being said, my English is far superior to the other two (since I grew up in different parts of Ontario) and I definitely think in English. \n\nI hope that sufficiently answered your question. ", "I live in Lithuania, but I learned English, spend almost my entire day typing English, watching English, listening to English, reading in English, and thinking in English.\n\nI know English better than I do Lithuanian.", "I can speak, think, and dream in 4 different languages.\n\nI just can't do math in 3 of them"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkien_dialect", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "n00aw", "title": "why cursive writing exists and why we still use it today", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n00aw/eli5_why_cursive_writing_exists_and_why_we_still/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c357yh5", "c3584ww", "c358fg8", "c358gvs", "c358j03", "c358lhn", "c358mjr", "c358wxv", "c358yn9", "c35955b", "c359aon", "c359b6f", "c359d8f", "c359k7x", "c359yjf", "c35b57z", "c35bb8s", "c35bn7q", "c35c7y3", "c35cl3x", "c35cr9j", "c35crkx", "c35d199", "c35d2dz", "c35efn9", "c35ew48", "c388vhd", "c357yh5", "c3584ww", "c358fg8", "c358gvs", "c358j03", "c358lhn", "c358mjr", "c358wxv", "c358yn9", "c35955b", "c359aon", "c359b6f", "c359d8f", "c359k7x", "c359yjf", "c35b57z", "c35bb8s", "c35bn7q", "c35c7y3", "c35cl3x", "c35cr9j", "c35crkx", "c35d199", "c35d2dz", "c35efn9", "c35ew48", "c388vhd"], "score": [156, 7, 12, 115, 9, 43, 34, 299, 97, 6, 68, 18, 11, 10, 2, 2, 4, 6, 3, 3, 4, 111, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 156, 7, 12, 115, 9, 43, 34, 299, 97, 6, 68, 18, 11, 10, 2, 2, 4, 6, 3, 3, 4, 111, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Because it's continuous, it's generally faster to write. Also, it looks nice and takes effort - but not as much as say calligraphy. \n\nMost people today have the handwriting of a spastic 5 year old because they type or text everything. ", "I still use it, today, because it is faster and easier. It took a little practice, but it's totally great now.", "I love cursive writing; I think it looks so pretty and you can write much faster. I am so sad to see that it is being weaned out of our schools though, pretty much every school in my home city has now stopped teaching cursive writing :(. I agree that it isn't a necessary thing, but it's so strange to know that kids won't be taught how to do a cursive zed (it was always the hardest one!)", "I sort of use a hybrid between print and cursive. It's basically printing but I lift the pen up as little as possible to maximize writing speed.", "It's a good skill to teach little kids -- hand/eye coordination as well as a \"rite of passage\" so to speak.", "What the fuck? Who doesn't use cursive writing? I'm not american, but in my school you needed to WRITE in notebooks, it was MUCH faster to use cursive writing.", "That's just how I learned to write (UK)", "[I can tell you in one word!](_URL_0_) (warning: musical on the other side of this link).", "I use it because I'm a goddamn gentleman. ", "Doesn't cursive writing derive from facilitating the use of quill pens? \n", "Cursive is for writing with quill pens, so that you make one continuous line and minimize removing your pen from and contacting your pen to the paper, minimizing ink spills and blotches. Yosemighty_sam has the right of why we still use it.", "You need it for the SAT.", "We don't really use it today here in the US.  A lot of schools have stopped teaching it.\n\nAs a person with family members in the teaching, alternative teaching, and specialty teaching fields I can say that despite the illegible nature of most people's cursive - it *does* have a positive strengthening effect on the way the brain makes connections and learns.  This is the only benefit I see to continuing teaching it.  Not for practical use, but as an outstanding exercise.", "I haven't seen anyone mention the primary use for cursive in the US yet: signatures. We learn to write in cursive and then develop our own signatures with exaggerated forms of cursive so that we can authenticate documents quickly.", "If it helps, most high school English teachers nowadays don't teach it, demand it, or even give extra credit for it. Generation Z (my generation) is very likely going to be the last generation that will use cursive at all, I'd guess that the next generation will hardly even know it.", "Well, it exists because it's faster to write since you can write a whole word without lifting your pen and the letters flow together.  This made sense to use more when there were no typewriters nor computers.  Now that most communication is done by typing block letters, cursive use is fading.  The older generations still use and teach cursive because that's what they grew up with, but it's use is fading now.  They taught me cursive in elementary school, but after that they didn't care. ", "Because we older people like having a secret language only we can read.", "Because little Bryan, in High School, all the teachers require you write in pen and cursive. \n\nLIES.", "Back when people used to write with pens dipped in inkwells, it was easier to write in a continuous line. If the pen was lifted off the page to form each individual letter, ink would drip onto the page and ruin the message. It was easier, neater, and the best way to write for its time.", "When you get to around about university, your writing just looks like that anyway. you print so fast that it devolves into a continuous unintelligible scribble. Teaching you cursive writing means that when it does, your muscle memory that was tortured into you in elementary school comes back into play, and everyone's random scribbles are sort of standard. \n", "Who's we, American?", "English teacher here.  Pretty much every aspect of language and writing can be traced to (im)balances of power among people.\n\nCursive doesn't just exist because it's efficient.  It lingers because it was once a strong indicator of three things:\n\n* social class - good penmanship demonstrated that one was literate, educated, and--depending on the script used--a member of a certain professional community.\n\n* authenticity - before the age of photography, a particular handwriting, and especially one's signature were signs (identifiers) of a specific person. (As you know, signatures have survived as a quick but not foolproof method of authentication.)\n\n* a particular attention to style - our current models of education are based on Victorian principles.  One of the many principles was the attention to refinement in one's expressions. Handwriting, according to this mentality, should be read as an expression of one's self, and that's why it has been taught to children for a long time.\n\nBasically, people used to read *a lot* more into a person's handwriting. The invention of reproductive technologies has eliminated many old [customs](_URL_1_). (This actually happens all the time with the invention of new communicative technologies. [Here's](_URL_2_) another interesting old custom that was made extinct by the invention of the telephone.\n\nIf you want to dig deeper, check out:\n\n* [the history of typography](_URL_0_).  Every type (aka font) has a history, and some are pretty exciting to read.\n* the development of [modern models of education](_URL_4_).\n* Tamara Plakins Thorton's [*Handwriting in America: A Cultural History*](_URL_3_)", "I've always considered it the \"human text\". Printing is for code / math / acronyms / etc. It's nice to be able to use it a lot like how on computers we use\n\n    monospace text\n\nor even simply *italics*.", "I've thought about starting an \"over 30\" subreddit. To prove you're over 30 you have to read a captcha written in cursive. ", "As well as allowing you to write more quickly and without looking at your paper, using it and developing the skill benefits a child's fine motor skills, meaning the child has more dexterity with things like using scissors, paintbrushes, colouring in neatly, etc.\n\nAs long as it's introduced when the child's ready and is given a suitable persistance with appropriate progression, it's a useful skill to develop.", "We never even call it cursive in the UK. We were taught 'joined-up' writing at an early age because printing was for children or for people that could only think one letter at a time.", "Handwriting matters ... But does cursive matter?\n\nResearch shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citation on request\u2014 and there are actually handwriting programs that teach this way.)\nReading cursive still matters -- this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.\nRemember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don't take my word for this: talk to any attorney.)\n\nYours for better letters, Kate Gladstone - _URL_0_\n", "Because it's continuous, it's generally faster to write. Also, it looks nice and takes effort - but not as much as say calligraphy. \n\nMost people today have the handwriting of a spastic 5 year old because they type or text everything. ", "I still use it, today, because it is faster and easier. It took a little practice, but it's totally great now.", "I love cursive writing; I think it looks so pretty and you can write much faster. I am so sad to see that it is being weaned out of our schools though, pretty much every school in my home city has now stopped teaching cursive writing :(. I agree that it isn't a necessary thing, but it's so strange to know that kids won't be taught how to do a cursive zed (it was always the hardest one!)", "I sort of use a hybrid between print and cursive. It's basically printing but I lift the pen up as little as possible to maximize writing speed.", "It's a good skill to teach little kids -- hand/eye coordination as well as a \"rite of passage\" so to speak.", "What the fuck? Who doesn't use cursive writing? I'm not american, but in my school you needed to WRITE in notebooks, it was MUCH faster to use cursive writing.", "That's just how I learned to write (UK)", "[I can tell you in one word!](_URL_0_) (warning: musical on the other side of this link).", "I use it because I'm a goddamn gentleman. ", "Doesn't cursive writing derive from facilitating the use of quill pens? \n", "Cursive is for writing with quill pens, so that you make one continuous line and minimize removing your pen from and contacting your pen to the paper, minimizing ink spills and blotches. Yosemighty_sam has the right of why we still use it.", "You need it for the SAT.", "We don't really use it today here in the US.  A lot of schools have stopped teaching it.\n\nAs a person with family members in the teaching, alternative teaching, and specialty teaching fields I can say that despite the illegible nature of most people's cursive - it *does* have a positive strengthening effect on the way the brain makes connections and learns.  This is the only benefit I see to continuing teaching it.  Not for practical use, but as an outstanding exercise.", "I haven't seen anyone mention the primary use for cursive in the US yet: signatures. We learn to write in cursive and then develop our own signatures with exaggerated forms of cursive so that we can authenticate documents quickly.", "If it helps, most high school English teachers nowadays don't teach it, demand it, or even give extra credit for it. Generation Z (my generation) is very likely going to be the last generation that will use cursive at all, I'd guess that the next generation will hardly even know it.", "Well, it exists because it's faster to write since you can write a whole word without lifting your pen and the letters flow together.  This made sense to use more when there were no typewriters nor computers.  Now that most communication is done by typing block letters, cursive use is fading.  The older generations still use and teach cursive because that's what they grew up with, but it's use is fading now.  They taught me cursive in elementary school, but after that they didn't care. ", "Because we older people like having a secret language only we can read.", "Because little Bryan, in High School, all the teachers require you write in pen and cursive. \n\nLIES.", "Back when people used to write with pens dipped in inkwells, it was easier to write in a continuous line. If the pen was lifted off the page to form each individual letter, ink would drip onto the page and ruin the message. It was easier, neater, and the best way to write for its time.", "When you get to around about university, your writing just looks like that anyway. you print so fast that it devolves into a continuous unintelligible scribble. Teaching you cursive writing means that when it does, your muscle memory that was tortured into you in elementary school comes back into play, and everyone's random scribbles are sort of standard. \n", "Who's we, American?", "English teacher here.  Pretty much every aspect of language and writing can be traced to (im)balances of power among people.\n\nCursive doesn't just exist because it's efficient.  It lingers because it was once a strong indicator of three things:\n\n* social class - good penmanship demonstrated that one was literate, educated, and--depending on the script used--a member of a certain professional community.\n\n* authenticity - before the age of photography, a particular handwriting, and especially one's signature were signs (identifiers) of a specific person. (As you know, signatures have survived as a quick but not foolproof method of authentication.)\n\n* a particular attention to style - our current models of education are based on Victorian principles.  One of the many principles was the attention to refinement in one's expressions. Handwriting, according to this mentality, should be read as an expression of one's self, and that's why it has been taught to children for a long time.\n\nBasically, people used to read *a lot* more into a person's handwriting. The invention of reproductive technologies has eliminated many old [customs](_URL_1_). (This actually happens all the time with the invention of new communicative technologies. [Here's](_URL_2_) another interesting old custom that was made extinct by the invention of the telephone.\n\nIf you want to dig deeper, check out:\n\n* [the history of typography](_URL_0_).  Every type (aka font) has a history, and some are pretty exciting to read.\n* the development of [modern models of education](_URL_4_).\n* Tamara Plakins Thorton's [*Handwriting in America: A Cultural History*](_URL_3_)", "I've always considered it the \"human text\". Printing is for code / math / acronyms / etc. It's nice to be able to use it a lot like how on computers we use\n\n    monospace text\n\nor even simply *italics*.", "I've thought about starting an \"over 30\" subreddit. To prove you're over 30 you have to read a captcha written in cursive. ", "As well as allowing you to write more quickly and without looking at your paper, using it and developing the skill benefits a child's fine motor skills, meaning the child has more dexterity with things like using scissors, paintbrushes, colouring in neatly, etc.\n\nAs long as it's introduced when the child's ready and is given a suitable persistance with appropriate progression, it's a useful skill to develop.", "We never even call it cursive in the UK. We were taught 'joined-up' writing at an early age because printing was for children or for people that could only think one letter at a time.", "Handwriting matters ... But does cursive matter?\n\nResearch shows: the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. (Citation on request\u2014 and there are actually handwriting programs that teach this way.)\nReading cursive still matters -- this takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn, and can be taught to a five- or six-year-old if the child knows how to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing it.\nRemember, too: whatever your elementary school teacher may have been told by her elementary school teacher, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (Don't take my word for this: talk to any attorney.)\n\nYours for better letters, Kate Gladstone - _URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw&amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=4s"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Western_typography", "http://www.erasofelegance.com/etiquette/letterwriting.html", "http://www.daysofelegance.com/callingcards.html", "http://books.google.com/books?id=g5cHxU9EXjkC&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/"], [], [], [], [], ["HandwritingThatWorks.com"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw&amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=4s"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Western_typography", "http://www.erasofelegance.com/etiquette/letterwriting.html", "http://www.daysofelegance.com/callingcards.html", "http://books.google.com/books?id=g5cHxU9EXjkC&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/"], [], [], [], [], ["HandwritingThatWorks.com"]]}
{"q_id": "1tgz0h", "title": "Why do strobe lights appear to stop time/motion?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1tgz0h/why_do_strobe_lights_appear_to_stop_timemotion/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce7u8rc", "ce7zprx", "ce8070f", "ce84brf"], "score": [7, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["Strobe lights blast nearly instantaneous flashes of light so if you are dancing in a dark room, you appear to have stood still when the light flashes because your appearance in the light is equal to the amount of time of the flash, nearly instantaneous. ", "This only happens with periodic motion, like a wheel rotating. If the period of the flashes is the same as the period of the rotation, then the wheel will be in the same position each time you see it, making it appear stationary.\n\nThe wheel doesn't actually have to be in the same position for this to happen. Say the wheel has 5 spokes, then it will have rotational symmetry every 72 degrees. If the period of the flashes lines up with any multiple of 1/5 of a rotation, the wheel will appear stationary. If it's slightly faster than this the wheel will appear to rotate backwards since it won't quite have had time to get to a symmetric position.", "Something really cool i noticed, I was playing guitar in front of the tv one day and noticed i could see really clear waves travelling through my strings as they vibrate. \n\nThis is because the television essentially acts as a strobe light i think not sure how that creates this effect but it amazed me", "Semi related very cool video... This works because the frequency of the sound from the speaker matches the frames per second of the camera. Adjusting the sound frequency up or down allows it to look like it is climbing or falling. This can only be seen via recorded video as your vision is a much higher frame per second rate UNLESS you do the experiment in a dark room but set a strobe light to the same frequency as the speaker. Thought you might find this cool. _URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/uENITui5_jU"]]}
{"q_id": "1rcqnv", "title": "How was the mechanism of mRNA translation determined experimentally?", "selftext": "I find myself a chemist, so I'm not afraid of a few difficult words :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rcqnv/how_was_the_mechanism_of_mrna_translation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdm5qng"], "score": [4], "text": ["If you're up for a bit of fun and history, here's an ancient (1961) paper that originally investigated various mechanisms of polypeptide assembly: [ASSEMBLY OF THE PEPTIDE CHAINS OF HEMOGLOBIN](_URL_0_)\n\nIt's actually a fun article to read if you've got an hour or three and you feel like working out a molecular puzzle using 50-year-old methods and logic. Scientists weren't sure if proteins were synthesized from one end to the other, or started at both ends, or if there was actually a giant cellular \"stamping\" machine that knit every amino acid of a protein together at once! Essentially, they used a series of radiolabeling and quenching experiments and froze moments in time as proteins were being made to mathematically derive a mechanism of N-terminus to C-terminus translation. Cool stuff!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC221568/pdf/pnas00219-0005.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "5gsbnq", "title": "What were the activities of the VOC in South Sulawesi at the end of the 15th century? How much of an impact did it have on everyday life in the region?", "selftext": "I know that by the middle of the following century there was all out conflict, but what was life like in the decades before this point? Did the average person have much to fear from the VOC/Dutch, or were their actions more directed toward political entities?\n\n**edit:** I'm an idiot and actually meant the 1600s, not the 15th century. Numbers are hard.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gsbnq/what_were_the_activities_of_the_voc_in_south/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daus2oe"], "score": [128], "text": ["The VOC had no activities and no impact anywhere at all at the end of the 15th or even 16th centuries, mainly because it didn't exist until 1602. But I get the gist of your question, so here goes: the turbulent relationship between the VOC and Gowa/Makassar, the empire ruling all South Sulawesi, up to 1656, and its effect on everyday life. The VOC had no relations with any other S. Sulawesi state until 1660, so I will discuss only Gowa.\n\nOh, and a nice Dutch poem to start us off:\n\n >  Gentlemen, there follows now something of the malevolent Makassar,\n\n >  In the island of Sulawesi; in the entire East Indies there was\n\n >  No more villainous race than this, rascally, perjured, malign,\n\n >  murderous, malignant, savage, perfidious.\n\n >  [...]\n\n >  In short, they were scoundrels\n\n >  spawned by Lucifer, the most desperate ruffians...\n\nBut war and hatred were not the only facets of the VOC-Gowa relationship.\n\n# **South Sulawesi and the Arrival of the Dutch**\nIn 1607, the representatives of the five-year-old Dutch East India Company (VOC) received an invitation from the king of Gowa, the dominant state of South Sulawesi, to trade in his country. Little did either sides understand the transformative century of immense change that both Europe and South Sulawesi had just undergone.\n\nIn the first decade of the 16th century the peninsula of South Sulawesi was fragmented into a number of small complex chiefdoms, of which the most prominent included Gowa, Bone, Wajoq, and Luwuq.^1 This geopolitical situation would begin to shift in the early 16th century, when Gowa emerged as the peninsula's first state. It began with Tumapaqrisiq Kallonna (r. c. 1511-1546) of Gowa, who subjugated his immediate neighbors, created the first bureaucratic posts, and generally set the stage for expansion across the entire peninsula. This rapid expansion was accomplished by his son Tunipalangga (r. c. 1545-1565), who conquered the entire peninsula save Gowa's archrival Bone, vastly expanded the bureaucracy, and - perhaps most importantly - oversaw the establishment of the first permanent Malay community in Gowa's port capital of Makassar.^2\n\nWith the establishment of the Malays^3 - by far the most important merchant diaspora in 16th-century Southeast Asia - in Makassar, trade expanded greatly. Tunipalangga had conquered the main competitors of Makassar in his great conquests and allowed Makassar to emerge as the natural entrepot for produces from across eastern Indonesia, especially the fine spices from Maluku. Gowa's expanding empire itself provided a source of commercial wealth, for instance by selling tribute from its newly acquired vassals.^4  \n\nBy 1600, after a brief interlude in the early 1690s when a tyrant discouraged trade, Makassar had emerged as the preeminent commercial center of all of eastern Indonesia. Just one year after the VOC was founded, the Dutch reported that their Portuguese enemies were annually sailing from Melaka, their base of power in Southeast Asia, to Makassar to load their ships with spices. In 1605 Malay merchants may have suggested the *tumabicara-butta* (chancellor/prime minister) of Gowa to convert to Islam, who was soon followed by the young king himself. But Muslim or not, Gowa-Talloq^5 (see note 5 for why I'm calling it Gowa-Talloq now) committed itself to a general policy of free trade, at least in the port of Makassar itself.\n\nThe Dutch, of course, wanted to join the game. After an invitation from the king of Gowa the Dutch arrived, hoping to convince Gowa-Talloq to surrender its support for Portuguese Melaka... and were very disappointed to learn that the king believed that\n\n >  My country stands open to all nations, and what I have is for you people [the Dutch] as well as for the Portuguese.\n\nThe VOC sought to establish monopolies on key Southeast Asian produces, especially the fine spices of clove, nutmeg, and mace. They could then control prices and raise artificial profits. The continual of Makassar's trade of spices made such a monopoly impossible. Furthermore, Makassar was providing safe haven for enemies and competitors of the Dutch, such as the English (who established a factory in 1613) and the Spaniards (whose agent first arrived in 1615). Already, by 1614, a Dutch commissioner was recommending that the Company attack Makassar shipping in Maluku, the Spice Islands. \n\nIn 1615 the Dutch informed Gowa-Talloq that there was now a Dutch monopoly in Maluku and that Makassar ships should refrain from heading there. The king of Gowa's response was simple:\n\n >  God made the land and the sea; the land he divided among men and the sea he gave in common. It has never been heard that anyone should be forbidden to sail the seas. If you seek to do that, you will take the bread from the mouths of the people. I am a poor King.^6\n\nAs for daily life, not much would have changed - just a new group of merchants on the scene, just like the Malays had arrived in the late 1400s and the Portuguese in the early 1500s. The Dutch had not yet established a definitive monopoly on any of the fine spices and hadn't even acquired Batavia.\n\n# **The First War**\n\nWar began a few months later, when the VOC factor Abraham Sterck got frustrated about the king of Gowa not paying some debts. Claiming the government in Makassar had failed to protect him from the insults of the Spaniards (with whom the Dutch were still at war), Sterck left abruptly with a number of Gowa-Talloq nobles. The nobles resisted and seven were killed, including a nephew of Gowa's king. The harbormaster of Makassar and another royal relative was taken as prisoner of the Dutch. This incident infuriated Gowa-Talloq and almost resulted in the ousting of the English as well, since the English factor had for some reason left with the Dutch. The English managed to stay, but the Dutch did not.\n\n*And...* I hate to end on a cliffhanger, but I'm not even half done, but I've hit 9988 characters and it's 22:52 here. I'll finish tomorrow, promise. \n\n---\n^1 [Map of the current regencies of South Sulawesi, many of which retain the old kingdoms' borders. Note that these are in Indonesian; Luwu here is Luwuq, Wajo is Wajoq, etc.](_URL_0_) \n\nThere is an emerging consensus that there were no genuine states in South Sulawesi in 1500, insofar as it matters to distinguish an archaic state from a complex chiefdom. This is best presented in *Tale of Two Kingdoms: The Historical Archaeology of Gowa and Tallok*, archaeologist David Bulbeck's thesis, which most archaeologists cite. But on chiefdom vs state in South Sulawesi, also see *The Lands West of the Lakes: A History of the Ajattappareng Kingdoms of South Sulawesi, 1200 to 1600 CE* by Stephen C. Druce and *Land of Iron: The historical archaeology of Luwu and the Cenrana valley* by Bulbeck and Ian Caldwell, both by archaeologists. \n\n^2 On 16th-century Gowa, a lot of sources. If you want the pure, undistilled facts, I refer you to William Cumming's 2007 translation *A Chain of Kings: The Makassarese Chronicles of Gowa and Talloq*. But check the notes, because Cumming's translation often differs from other historians'. The simplest narrative secondary source, if a bit dated on the archaeological aspect, is the first chapter of Leonard Andaya's *The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi in the Seventeenth Century.* A lot of articles mention the 16th-century as well, but few exclusively so.\n\n^3 Itself a catch-all term for merchants from the Western Archipelago generally. Anakoda Borang, the first leader of the community that would later be known as the Makassar Malays, said that anyone who wears a *sarong* - from a Cham in central Vietnam to a Minangkabau from southwestern Sumatra - is Malay. See Heather Sutherland's chapter \"The Makassar Malays\" in *Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity Across Boundaries*. Also note that in Makassar usage, the word 'Java' (*jawa*) just means anyone who comes from the Central or Western Archipelago, including Malays. So the Makassar didn't really differentiate different groups of foreign Southeast Asians in language.  \n\n^4 For the rise of Makassar and its trading networks in the late 1500s, there is good information in Leonard Andaya's chapters \"Applying the Seas Perspective to Indonesia\" in *Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1350-1800* and \"Eastern Indonesia: A Study of the Intersection of Global, Regional, and Local Networks in the 'Extended' Indian Ocean\" in *Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri*. \n\n^5 Talloq was a small maritime kingdom that was founded during a succession dispute in Gowa around 1500. It was conquered by Tumapaqrisiq Kallonna and brought into Gowa's fold. But when King Tunipasuluq, who apparently did so many horrible things that the *Gowa Chronicle* applies *damnatio memoriae* on him and refuses to mention what he actually did, was kicked out, it was Karaeng Matoaya - king of Talloq - who was at the head. As *tumabicara-butta* and regent for the new boy king of Gowa, Karaeng Matoaya became the most influential man in South Sulawesi. Archaeologist David Bulbeck's research shows that during the reign of Kng. Matoaya, Matoaya's kingdom Talloq was actually considered more powerful than Gowa, at least as far as we can infer from dynastic marriage trends. During Matoaya's reign Talloq also controlled the port of Makassar. See Bulbeck's chapter  \"The Politics of Marriage and the Marriage of Polities in Gowa, South Sulawesi, During the 16th and 17th Centuries\" in *Origins, Ancestry and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography.* So I refer to the kingdom as Gowa-Talloq to better reflect this change in the latter's status.\n\n^6 Primarily from Anthony Reid's narrative account \"A Greet Seventeenth Century Indonesian Family: Matoaya and Pattingalloang of Makasar,\" one of few English-language narrative sources on the relations between the VOC and Gowa-Talloq. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://flutrackers.com/forum/filedata/fetch?id=652657&amp;d=1286465304"]]}
{"q_id": "8btzne", "title": "why were olde time punishments for relatively minor crimes so severe? was death for crimes such as stealing not considered to be a tad harsh?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8btzne/eli5_why_were_olde_time_punishments_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dx9mtmb", "dx9n5mr", "dx9o5ib", "dx9sd42", "dx9vu0q", "dxah718", "dxajwjt"], "score": [19, 10, 3, 3, 2, 5, 3], "text": ["Your question is very general over a myraid of cultures and societies, but, in general, people had much less than they have today, and the things they had, they relied on to stay alive or directly provide for their families.  They didn't have WalMarts, Amazon, motor vehicles, and the internet, etc.  You couldn't just go get another one... in a couple days or maybe even a couple months... so if you lost something to theft, for example, it was a really big deal... (not that it still isn't a big deal, but you get my point)", "Not just harsh, but often public punishments. Hangings and floggings and such were carried out in public, for everyone to see.\n\nIt's meant to have a deterrent effect.\n\nYou see someone getting tied to a post and flogged in a public square for stealing, and you think twice about ever committing an act of theft yourself.\n\nAlso physical punishment or execution is less expensive than having to feed and house someone in a prison for years.", "They basically didn't have jails or prisons. Even large areas would have holding cells or dungeons for only 15 or 20 people. And the state didn't want to pay for jailers either. The goal was swift punishment.  So chop off a hand, flog someone, put them in the stocks for day or two - have the punishment, get it over with. \n\nBut in addition to administration, it was also about the power structure. Stealing from who?  It was generally poor people stealing from nobles. Servants stealing from the rich (or robbers). It was very much part and parcel of enforcing the power dynamics, so that someone starving who is thinking about attacking the rich knows it means his ass. ", "They were to deter people from committing the same crime, and to permanently mark you as a criminal (if you lived) so that you can be watched and ostracized by the public. \n\nThe world was also a lot harsher then. Food was scarce for just about everyone (even the wealthy) until about 200 years ago so stealing food means that you can kill someone else via starvation. Stealing a cow means you have prevented a family from getting milk, stealing a horse means you have prevented someone from travel which can be a death sentence in many places, etc. Theft was not something minor when resources are scarce. ", "Prisons are luxury only rich countries can afford, and in the past, no country was rich enough.  Punishment tended to be quick and often permanent.  The lucky would get a flogging, branding, or mutilation.  The rest would be executed or exiled, which usually amounted to the same thing.\n\nAlso, punishment isn't just about the seriousness of the crime, it is about deterrent.  Horse theft was often a capital offense, not because it was as serious as a murder, but because it was easy to get away with.  Without the threat of harsh punishment, certain crimes would occur so often society could not function.\n\nFinally, in many feudal societies, local nobles had the right and obligation to dispense justice in their domains.  There weren't elected politicians representing the people, it was one person's opinion whether something was harsh or not. \n\n  ", "It\u2019s partly for much the same reason parents used to beat naughty children but now don\u2019t (so much).\n\nIt\u2019s very hard to punish someone who has nothing and whose life is miserable anyway. It is much easier to punish people who have a lot to lose.\n\nSo nowadays a parent can confiscate a child\u2019s Xbox (or whatever). But a few hundred years ago their options were more limited.\n\nSimilarly life today isn\u2019t so bad for most people, so a wider range of effective punishments is available.\n\nNote, for instance, that imprisonment with a guaranteed roof over your head and guaranteed meals, is a punishment for most people today, but would have represented an improvement in most peasants\u2019 lives!", "crazy how all of these comments are defending it. The main thing was, human life wasn't worth much. Especially the life of the poorest and lowest class, if we're talking about medieval Europe for example they were the surfs, just a bunch of fucking peasants who were labor and nothing else. Don't forget that the \"nobles\" are usually just descendants of war lords who conquered the area, usually conquering the serfs who lived on that land as well, they were basically property and the relationship was always one of conquest and domination.\n\nThings are not quite as bad now, but I wouldn't say the situation has fundamentally changed. The poorest still don't have enough to survive and are viewed as labor (or if they're homeless absolutely useless). Our punishment system still ravages poor communities, breaking up families and making it very difficult for the primary wage earners to provide for their family.\n\nSo the situation moderates with hard fought for improvements, but it only moderates to the point where people will accept it, never an inch more. The relationship between the ruling class and the people has rarely been anything other than antagonistic, with that historic view democracy seems a clever tactic to ally ourselves with that rule, especially considering [your vote doesn't influence policy unless you're in the top 10%](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://ivn.us/2015/05/07/voice-really-doesnt-matter-princeton-study-confirms/"]]}
{"q_id": "6ch0lg", "title": "can cancer naturally cure on it's own without the person ever knowing they had it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ch0lg/eli5_can_cancer_naturally_cure_on_its_own_without/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhujv8n", "dhuk20e", "dhukm80", "dhuprtp", "dhuzgfj"], "score": [9, 3, 25, 27, 3], "text": ["The immune system is capable, although not perfectly able, to recognize and destroy cancer cells before they have a chance to form tumors.    \n\n[relevant scientific article relating cancer risk and immunodeficiency ](_URL_0_)", "Didn't read the link but think our bodies are constantly killing off cells with errors which are basically starting blocks of cancer", "Yes. In fact, the average person gets many cases of cancer over their lifetime, and destroys it.\n\nThe problem is that the body isn't perfect, and it only takes one cancer to kill you.", "Cancer is caused by a mutation in cell replication. Our cells go through checkpoints to make sure everything is replicating right. If something is wrong, the process is usually shut down. If it makes it past this point without being shut down, the immune cells typically will destroy the mutated cells before they can spread. Your body basically is constantly making and killing cancer cells. The problem occurs when these cells get past these protective mechanisms and are able to duplicate.", "Yes, the body has a whole bunch of natural defenses against cancer. It's important to understand that while a single gene mutation can make a cell cancerous, dangerous malignant cancers will have at least four or five mutations that they've developed over time.\n\n*Cells can repair most DNA mutations before they can do any damage. The body actually has a number of redundant [repair mechanisms] (_URL_0_). Often the first step towards a cell becoming malignant is a mutation, or series of mutations, that disables these repair mechanisms. The cell then accumulates more mutations that make it cancerous.\n\n*If a cell's DNA becomes irreparably damaged, that will often trigger a self-destruct sequence called [apoptosis] (_URL_1_). Often malignant cancer cells will have a mutation that disables the apoptosis mechanisms.\n\n*If a cancerous cell doesn't self-destruct, the job falls to the very aptly-named Killer T-cells, a special type of [white blood cell] (_URL_2_) that identify cancerous or infected cells and blow them up. They can trigger a cell's apoptosis mechanism, or release cell-killing enzymes. Often the body has inflammatory reactions to cancer tumours too (the same way it reacts to an infected cut) but that's just not enough to keep it from growing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026755/"], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytotoxic_T_cell"]]}
{"q_id": "1n7zm5", "title": "what happens to your account on sites like facebook, reddit, twitter, youtube, linkedin when you die?", "selftext": "Do your family members get access to your account? Do they get all the photos if it's instagram or flickr or facebook? Videos if it's youtube?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n7zm5/eli5_what_happens_to_your_account_on_sites_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccg7ei7", "ccg7yu6", "ccg815c", "ccg93sj", "ccg9due", "ccg9nwb", "ccgeyhq"], "score": [17, 46, 10, 15, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["nothing, i know a few people who have died, and i could still send them facebook messages", "I believe Facebook has a reporting option to report deaths. If a family member provides the proper documents they can turn it into a memorial type page. (Or maybe I just dreamed that.)", "I have a friend that died a few years ago that I'm still friends with on Facebook. His page was originally full of kind words of people that knew him, but now it's a mashup of random spam and the occasional \"I miss you\" post.", "_URL_0_\n\nHere is a collection of dead people's social media profiles. I don't know why they're being collected.", "If you want to say goodbye using social media and possibly creep people out, check out [DeadSocial](_URL_0_)", "Google has already created a solution for this \nIf you go the settings-account manager , you can actually choose a will. What it does is , after a specific amount of inactivity on your account - say 6 months  it will mail all your passwords and account details to a email address specified in the will.u can google it :)", "at least with twitter, if you leave it unattended for long enough it gets hacked and turned in to a spam account."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://mydeathspace.com/article-list.aspx"], ["http://www.deadsoci.al/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "70owzx", "title": "how is hd tv easily sent over the air with no loading/buffering but streaming hd video online takes a good internet connection and high bandwidth?", "selftext": "Curious how hd tv is easily sent over the air but hd video streaming online takes high bandwidth and a good internet connection. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70owzx/eli5_how_is_hd_tv_easily_sent_over_the_air_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn4utg2", "dn4v3ok", "dn4vxvj"], "score": [39, 22, 6], "text": [" >  Curious how hd tv is easily sent over the air but hd video streaming online takes high bandwidth and a good internet connection.\n\nA television broadcast is like talking into a loudspeaker system to address an entire stadium. Video streaming online is like holding an individual conversation with every person in the stadium simultaneously.", "There is some buffering when receiving video OTA, the buffering happens immediately after tuning. \n\nWith OTA the stream is always there, and it's always on, all you have to do is grab the first decipherable packet and start deciding, you know the next one will be along immediately because it's guaranteed, furthermore if you drop a packet there is nothing you can do about it, so the stream is encoded to be able to continue with minimum disruption but obvious glitches. \n\nWith internet streams the computer fetches a bunch of data because it doesn't know for sure when the next packet is arriving, the connection might at any moment stop delivering packets for a few moments, so you have to have sufficient data available to ride the gap and this riding the gap /can/ be invisible if you don't run out of buffer, so streaming video will pause and recontinue from the same location because in some cases you can do it without the user noticing.  \n\nWhy the gaps happen is because the internet is a series of pipes of different diameter.... the wire from your house to the exchange can handle less traffic than the wire from the exchange upstream, so obviously when you request a big file somebody has to rate limit the transfer because the internet itself isn't going to hold huge files in transit, the way that any part of the network shows it's over capacity is to randomly not transmit a packet - so YouTube thinks it's sent you the next instalment, but you never receive it, think of what this would do to a game of chess by post, how do you know that your move has been lost in the post? The answer is to resend your last move if you don't get a timely response, but this delay when viewing video causes skips. The most obvious restriction you can ease is the one between yourself and the exchange, buying fast internet means less dropped packets which means less stalls and a faster refill of your video buffer. ", "Adding on to the other excellent answers here, I will add that traffic and contention are an issue.\n\nYou are probably aware about how sometimes Internet traffic can get slower based on how many people are using it. This is a major cause of buffering with video streaming, because you're sharing almost the entire length of the connection with many other people.\n\nWhen you watch HD TV over the air, this isn't a concern. Nobody else is using that bandwidth. It's all 100% reserved for the television station. It's a specific frequency range that is legally reserved for them -- so they have all that bandwidth, every hour of the day, every day of the week.\n\nAlso, it's broadcast, so your TV doesn't have to interact with the source of the transmission -- just pick up the signal and show it.\n\nThis means that it doesn't matter if one person is watching it or a million. The full signal gets to you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "oqchp", "title": "What is the purpose of a biological library?", "selftext": "I've heard the term before in reference to cDNA libraries and genomic libraries, but I don't fully understand what it is or its purpose.  Can someone explain it please?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/oqchp/what_is_the_purpose_of_a_biological_library/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3j71t2", "c3j7387", "c3j7607"], "score": [5, 3, 3], "text": ["A cDNA library is just cloned complimentary DNA that has been incorporated into one or more \"host\" bacterial plasimids.  The bacteria serve to replicate the plasmid(s), therefore \"amplifying\" the clone (\"amplification\" is just a word meaning \"making several copies\").  This is a handy way to take an interesting coding gene, and make several copies of it so it can be properly sequenced (in order to sequence a piece of DNA, you use multiple fragments to deduce the sequence).\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a cartoon of the process.", "A cDNA library is all of a cell's RNA converted over to DNA by reverse transcriptase. We do this because RNA is a bitch and a half to work with - PCR doesn't work on it directly, it degrades if you look at it funny, it's difficult to reliably cut, and can't easily be transferred to other organisms. The other benefit of this is that introns have already been removed from RNA, so it's very clear what codes for what, and it can be easily transferred to bacteria who don't have introns.\n", "cDNA refers to complementary DNA of a cell.  This DNA contains the active or expressed genes.  Understanding this sequence and genes of a cell narrows down what the essential genes are for the cellular life.  The purpose of this is not only understand the cellular functions, but to be able to create pathways in a cell that is foreign to produce a desired product.  This is essential information when dealing with eukaryotes (such as S. cerevisiae, yeast) that have introns (pre-cDNA) in their genetic sequences.  Introns are genetic sequences that are only expressed in eukaryotes (pre-transcription), thus cannot be put into prokaryotes.  \n\nGenome libraries are strictly the genetic sequence for the organism.  This is all the information of the organism.\n\nThese libraries are very important to metabolic/biomolecular engineers, microbiologists, genetics...any cellular scientist, because of the informtion they can extract from these data in order to understand the cellular functions/shape/active sites and to construct a pathway (engineers). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Formation_of_a_cDNA_Library.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ahplj", "title": "why do truck wheels (the metal part) always go outwards in the front and inwards in the back", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ahplj/eli5_why_do_truck_wheels_the_metal_part_always_go/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d10frc2", "d10fxpc", "d10hdwj", "d10llvd", "d10mf3q"], "score": [6, 4, 2, 34, 11], "text": ["If you mean a regular truck then they don't. If you mean a semi truck it is because the back has dual rear wheels so the part you bolt onto the truck has to be far enough back so the tires do not touch.", "The front wheels and inner rear wheels are dished to accommodate the hubs and brakes. The outer rear wheels are exactly the same construction but just fitted in reverse, which essentially doubles the available load and grip for that axle, which is commonly a drive axle. ", "No expert.. But usually the duals at the back have a \"spider\" type of coupling which essentially bolts the outer wheel to the hub. If you made that connection any longer than it has to be, then all the considerable weight that is transferred to that wheel, has more leverage on the axle.\n\nThe front wheels are singles to, different setup with brakes etc, but they also only take a small amount of load. At best the bobtail (truck with no trailer) is likely only 8t and spread between the front and back wheels. When loaded, you don't really increase that load, but you may expect a lot more on each axle at the back.\n\nAdd to that the torque you create by turning. The inner wheels move a different distance than the outers, but they are in lockstep, causing a \"screwing\" kinda phenomenon. I don't know if this has anything to do with the hub design, but it is nevertheless a force acting on the wheels.", "They are the exact same wheel. All of them. Now you don't have to carry 3 spares based on whether an inner dual or outer dual or front wheel blew out. Cheaper to make one type too.  \nTake off an outer wheel on the back and you'll see the inner looks exactly like the front now. Flip the outer rear around and you'll see it looks exactly like the others now.  \nEdit: You can now see why they are so deeply dished compared to passenger vehicles. The mounting surface has to extend beyond the face of the tire in order for this to work. You'll also see the mounting surface is the same on the concave or convex side of the wheel.", "_URL_0_\n\nThat is a cut-away diagram of a set of dual tires.  You can see how the offset of the wheel allows both wheels to mount in the same place but still have a gap between the tires for flex.\n\nThe front wheels are typically the same because it allows you to 1) have a single spare tire and wheel for all positions, and 2) easily rotate tires to all positions for even wear."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.autoamenity.com/images/airplus-diag.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2e2aux", "title": "Is the Queen of Sheba a true historical person or is she just a biblical fiction character created to emphasize on King Solomon's greatness?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e2aux/is_the_queen_of_sheba_a_true_historical_person_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjvgsop"], "score": [68], "text": ["Sheba is normally taken to be 'Saba' - in Yemen in southwest Arabia. It was often argued that it should be in the northwest of Arabia, but there is nothing mentioned in any texts of a kingdom called Saba up there, but they do mention a lot of other kingdoms.   Assyrian sources mention Sabean caravans travelling north around the 8-9th centuries,  just after Solomon's time period.\n\nWhether she's a queen or not is up for grabs - she could have been a consort sent out as an ambassador (north Arabian queens did this), and there are accounts of women occupying positions alongside men during the period.  Queens with executive power exist in North Arabia between the 7-9th centuries BC but not afterwards, and their existence in historical terms seems to disappear between 690BC to 570AD - (only one queen is mentioned in any historical setting  during this period and that was about a kidnapping).\n\nIn short, we have queens who took on roles as described in the story, but all our evidence is North Arabian.  If the same goes for the South, there's no reason why the story couldn't have happened.  The fact that their activity in history disappears after 690BC indicates that the story might be old, and fits the 8-9th century information we have about North Arabian queens.  \n\nThere quite a substantial section of ANE scholars who argue that Solomon wasn't real and so the story must have been made up, but that's another question. There's nothing to preclude either her activity or her existence, but we simply do not have enough data to be certain.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6ksese", "title": "How can scientists measure the electron affinity and the ionization energy of an element?", "selftext": "I am pretty curious about the method that the scientists use to measure the electron affinity and the ionization energy of an element. If someone knows about it, please tell me.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6ksese/how_can_scientists_measure_the_electron_affinity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djommsm", "djwx640"], "score": [6, 3], "text": ["Photoelectron spectroscopy can very precisely measure ionization energies. Basically, a sample (Edit: this sample is in the gas phase) is irradiated with light of a known frequency (so known energy). Electrons are ejected from the sample, and the energy of the electrons is measured. The ionization energy can be calculated from the energy difference. (The reaction in question is X - >  X^+ + e^-  for the first ionization energy.)\n\nFor electron affinity, it's basically the same measurement, except starting with anions instead of the neutral molecules. (The energy required to cleave X^- into X + e^- is the negative of the electron affinity.) However, this is slightly more difficult to measure because the X that is produced may not be in the ground state.", "Electron energy loss spectroscopy, where a high energy electron is passed through a sample and its energy loss in the sample is recorded on the other side can and does measure ionization energies if different electrons for a material. The absorption edges for the different electron shells are visable in the data. I'm sure there are many other ways, but that's one. The shape of the post edge features can also tell you a bit about the bonding states of the atoms."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "jete0", "title": "what is a karat? how does it differ from diamonds to gold?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jete0/what_is_a_karat_how_does_it_differ_from_diamonds/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2bibke", "c2bibww", "c2bjzuk", "c2bk3wr", "c2bibke", "c2bibww", "c2bjzuk", "c2bk3wr"], "score": [10, 72, 11, 3, 10, 72, 11, 3], "text": ["For gems a carat is 200 milligrams.\n\nFor gold, a carat is a unit of purity, with 24 carat gold being pure gold.", "A karat in terms of gold is not the same measure as a carat of diamond weight.\n\nA carat of diamond weight is equivalent to 0.2g. Many other stones are also measured in carats, but due to varying densities, a carat of sapphire is physically smaller than a carat of diamond.\n\nKarat in gold terms is a measure of purity. Because it is measured as 24 times the purity by mass, 24k gold is pure (well, 99.9% pure) gold.\n\n18k gold is 75% pure gold. 12k gold is 50%, and so on.\n\nThe markings on the inside of a piece of jewelery may indicate the purity of the material. 24k is marked 999. 10k is marked 417. (99.9% and 41.7% respectively.)", "At first I read \"what is karate?\"\n\nEdit: then I finished reading the title.", "....Don't you mean waffles?", "For gems a carat is 200 milligrams.\n\nFor gold, a carat is a unit of purity, with 24 carat gold being pure gold.", "A karat in terms of gold is not the same measure as a carat of diamond weight.\n\nA carat of diamond weight is equivalent to 0.2g. Many other stones are also measured in carats, but due to varying densities, a carat of sapphire is physically smaller than a carat of diamond.\n\nKarat in gold terms is a measure of purity. Because it is measured as 24 times the purity by mass, 24k gold is pure (well, 99.9% pure) gold.\n\n18k gold is 75% pure gold. 12k gold is 50%, and so on.\n\nThe markings on the inside of a piece of jewelery may indicate the purity of the material. 24k is marked 999. 10k is marked 417. (99.9% and 41.7% respectively.)", "At first I read \"what is karate?\"\n\nEdit: then I finished reading the title.", "....Don't you mean waffles?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3wunwb", "title": "what happens if i inject a needle(medicine, drugs, etc) into myself and it isn't into a vein? for example into my palm, or in a random place on my arm.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wunwb/eli5_what_happens_if_i_inject_a_needlemedicine/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxz7ren", "cxz9q79", "cxzbt3r", "cxzc7os", "cxzdvfa", "cxze9cy", "cxzeles", "cxzimz9", "cxzjplq", "cxzmdhk", "cxzmtvh", "cxznhjg", "cxzvcmu"], "score": [92, 529, 2, 430, 3, 13, 2, 119, 9, 3, 2, 6, 3], "text": ["Depends on the drug. Some drugs, like epinephrine, are actually better absorbed through muscle tissue, which is why epi-pens are used on the thigh. Drugs which are injected into a vein, however, will likely cause tissue necrosis (death) or even worse things if improperly used.", "If you're driving at what I think you're driving at, the worst that happens is that you'll have a bump from the fluid being trapped under your skin that'll be tender and will be absorbed by your body within a couple of days.", "Some drugs, like Humira are designed to be subcutaneously injected - fine needle into the leg - fluid is absorbed over a day or so.  So, it all depends on the substance injected.  If you want to look at some (NSFL) tissue necrosis, google \"Injection Injury\" to see what the wrong substance can do under your skin.", "When dealing with livestock, we rarely inject into veins. Animals being too wiggly for that sort of thing.\n\nSo there are two other standard classes of injection, intramuscular (IM) and subcutaneous (SQ). Far more drugs are delivered these ways than IV.\n\nDrugs designed for IM use have a rapid effect as they end up transferred into the blood quickly. IM injections are painful in larger volumes. Most human injections designed for consumers are IM (insulin, epinephrine, vaccines etc) edit: OK, not insulin!  as they are hard to mess up. Most of these in fact should NOT be injected into a vein as side effects will result. This means if you are injecting into your own veins... you're probably not supposed to be doing that.\n\nSQ injections go right under the skin, form a lump and seep slowly into the body. If the volume is high, this method must be used I.e. standard emergency treatment for milk fever in sheep is 100cc Cal/Mag SQ. This must be spread over 5 locations as it is a lot of fluid! \n\nYou can also inject interperitoneal, which is into the body cavity. Rapid effect, huge risk of infection, emergency lifesaving procedures only. Don't even think of injecting anything this way.\n\nEdit: for those who want the direct answer to the question: either the effect will be weaker/slower as described above, or it may cause local tissue damage. Thanks to all the human docs who came in to clarify animal/human differences!", "Like everybody else said, theres a couple routes you can give a drug, and depending on the drug, it'll have different effects. For example, If you were to, say start an IV (intravenous), but you miss, and it goes interstitial (outside of the vein), and you inject dextrose (basically sugar, used for low blood glucose), it'll have a necrotic effect. it'll basically kill the tissue and blacken it.", "I had to self inject fertility meds, both IM in the butt  &  SubQ in the gut. Redness, a little sore but that's pretty much what's to be expected.\nI once had an IV in my hand and apparently the nurse missed the vein. It wasn't painful, but my hand looked and felt swollen. Was very unpleasant. \n\nSo really, it all depends on what your injecting. Either you'll be fine or you'll die ;)\n", "That is called an intramuscular injection, into a muscle but not a vein. Whatever drug will not hit the system as quickly as an intravenous (vein shot), so the effect will not be as strong and it will take longer to \"come up\" or hit.\nsource- worked in a nursing-related field", "MD here. Lots of medications are meant to be injected either under the skin into the fatty tissue (subcutaneous/SC) or into muscle tissue (intramuscular/IM). For example, insulin and some blood thinners are injected SC, while most vaccines are given IM. A lot of medications can be given either intravenously (IV) or IM or SC. The main difference with the SC/IM routes is that the drug will be absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly, which may be preferable in certain situations. \n\nHowever, other medications can be disastrous if they leak out of a vein (\"extravasate\"). These are often highly concentrated, hyperosmolar solutions such as hypertonic saline, calcium chloride, or the IV contrast used for CT scans. The result is often necrosis (death) of the affected tissue, pain, swelling, and compartment syndrome, which can cut off blood supply to the affected extremity and lead to amputations.\n\nWhen it comes to recreational drugs like heroin, the intensity of the \"high\" is relative to how fast the drug gets into the brain. Injecting into a vein, therefore, is going to deliver the drug to the brain in a high concentration within seconds, with the resulting \"rush\" that IV heroin users are chasing. If you miss the vein, the heroin is probably going IM or SC, so it will get into the bloodstream, and the brain, more slowly, with a less intense high. A lot of long-time heroin users have scarred up their veins so much that they have to resort to \"skin popping\", which is basically SC or sometimes a more superficial \"intradermal\" injection. This often leads to awful skin and soft tissue infections and abscesses. All those nasty pictures you've seen floating around Reddit of \"krokodil\" users and their horrid necrotizing skin infections are the result of chronic skin popping and IM drug injection.", "Nationally board certified infusion RN here. Generally, it is dependent on what is injected. Isotonic? Alkaline? Acidic? Caustic?  Sterile? \n\nLet's say it's just something that's not harmful to the body like sterile 0.9% saline. It will just absorb into the body over time.  Time absorbed is dependent on amount infused and which part of the body infused. Many different antibiotics and other medicines are given subcutaneously or intramuscularly. \n\nThen there is the other side of the spectrum.  Let's say you have a caustic antibiotic or substance that is harmful to the cells in your body. It will cause cellular death and necrosis, which could then cause an inflammatory response from the body and a whole new set of problems. \n\nThen what if you inject something that isn't sterile?  Like heroin in a dirty needle?  This is quite common with drug users that either miss the veins or \"skin pop.\"  This can cause abscesses, or collections of bacteria and purulent fluid. If not treated, these can become a systemic infection leading to sepsis and bacteremia. \n\nOn mobile.  Did my best while working!", "As somebody else has explained there are different types of injections: intramuscular, intravenous, and subcutanous.\n\nIntramuscular uses a long tipped needle and injects deep into muscle. This is typically done on your upper arm muscles (kind of where your triceps are) or the top of your leg (above the knee). This is how those epinephrine emergency pens work for people going into severe allergic shock. Large needle shoved into the top of the leg.\n\nSubcutanous is injected just beneath the skin or into fatty tissue. Insulin is subcutanous, you typically inject it into the fat on your waist/thigh area.\n\nI imagine most prescribed medicines given by injection are not IV because of the difficulty of finding a vein and the...tendency of veins to collapse/scar/etc.\n\nAs a recovering IV heroine addict I can give some further insight though. There are veins in your palm so it is possible to IV there with practice (and I have), but if you were to miss the shot would just sit in a bubble under your skin for some hours before being absorbed. (been there too) \n\nSame for pretty much anywhere else you SQ. Look at this trend in japan called \"Bagel Head\". They inject saline into their forehead and it just sits there in a bubble for a few hours before dissipating and having to be redone.\n\n_URL_0_", "If I'm not mistaken, aren't steroids injected into the thigh or buttocks?", "It would be extremely painful. For you.\n\nJokes aside, in pharmacology, we have three areas of administration for drugs, via the vein, into a muscle or under the skin. If you inject into other areas say, bone, it would be really painful since the area surrounding bone is the periosteum, a membrane filled with capillaries and nerves. If you inject to a body cavity, it will probably stay there until the body absorbs it over time. This is the principle behind treating Hydrocephalus( water in the brain), where they put a tube from the brain into a cavity called the peritoneum which acts like a bag that encases your guts.", "Something I can post about! \nStory time! \nI had kidney stones on New Years Eve 2011. I didn't know what was wrong at first, but it was THE WORST pain I have ever felt so I went to the Emergency Room.  I was in such extreme pain that they were going to put a needle in my arm to give me some pain medicine through an IV.  So the nurse guy comes in and puts the needle in.  I don't look because I can't stand the sight of needles.  So he does it and leaves. \nAbout 5 or so minutes goes by and I still have not looked at my arm with the needle in it but it starts to feel really weird and kinda painful.  \nIt's been almost 10 minutes and I am still in EXCRUCIATING PAIN. \nFinally, another nurse comes in and she looked at me with a terrified face and ran out. \nI finally looked down at my arm and it was freaking like 5 times the normal size.  My whole arm and hand had swelled up to the size of a large man's arm. \nTurns out that instead of putting the IV in my vein, the stuck it in my artery. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.amplifyingglass.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1-2MZErcs.jpg?9de8c0"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2mqewg", "title": "It's to my understanding that no machine can be built that can solve the Halting Problem. Does this also apply to human brains? Can't we solve the Halting Problem by looking at programs and using our intuition?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2mqewg/its_to_my_understanding_that_no_machine_can_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm6tvbv", "cm6u6yp", "cm7a2fy", "cm7au56", "cm8j8tp"], "score": [21, 5, 14, 2, 2], "text": ["We don't really have a good definition of \"solve\" for things that aren't computation. We've proven that no computational method (algorithm) can solve the Halting Problem. Are there things that humans can do that aren't algorithms? What does it mean to solve a problem without using an algorithm? This stuff all remains unknown. But remember that there is no reason to believe that \"intuition\" isn't a thing that can be expressed as computation. \n\nAlso remember that to solve the Halting Problem you need to be able to provide the correct answer in finite time for all possible programs, not just a specific program. Computers are really good at solving the Halting Problem for specific programs. The whole field of program analysis is predicated on this fact. They just can't get it right for all possible programs. ", "Intuition is based upon experience and is by no means reliable, just look at common mind games/problems like the Monty Hall problem.\n\nAlso, the halting problem also contains the inputs to an algorithm.\nSo, the question is: Does an algorithm halt for any given valid input?\n\nAnd what Alan Turing already prooved is, that there is no algorithm that can answer this question for all algorithms and all inputs. \n\nBy this conclusion you may argue that no human can provide a reliable way to proove the halting problem for all algorithms, because this for itself would be an algorithm Alan Turing prooved to be non existing. \n\nAnd for example an algorithm that calculates the Collatz-Series may halt for any given input, but you can not proove it as long as you did not proove the Collatz conjecture. ", "We've been working on [this one](_URL_0_) for over 250 years now:\n\n    for i from 2 to infinity\n        found = false\n        for j from 1 to 2 * i\n            if isPrime(j) and isPrime(2 * i - j)\n                found = true\n        if not found\n            halt", "This video answers that question in the description.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"The video shows the proof that machines can't solve the halting problem. An interesting question is whether humans can solve it. Some people think the human brain is basically a computer, so the proof applies to humans as well. Other people think the brain is so complicated physically, that it cannot be described fully in a blue print, and therefore this proof doesn't apply. Yet other people believe humans have souls in addition to brains, so of course such a proof wouldn't apply. *Interestingly, though, even if some human can solve the halting problem, he or she will not be able to prove their answers. Rigorous proofs are something computers can search for, and if there were proofs, computers could have solved the halting problem too.*\"\n\nTo restate: If a human could solve the Halting problem, they would couldn't prove it, because if it could be proven, we could use exhaustive search with a computer to find that same proof, and then the computer could do it. Because computers mathematically cannot do it, neither can humans. \"Intuition\" might be good enough, but it wouldn't give us proof. Is a statement without proof worth anything?", "Initially, it would seem that the answer is by definition, yes. The Church-Turing thesis informally defines functions as computable if they are solvable by a human with an infinite quantity of pen and paper. The notion of Turing completeness basically rests on this informal (though near universally accepted) definition. As per their original thesis, all functions on natural numbers are computable 'by human clerical labour, working to fixed rules, and without understanding.'\n\nHowever, this is not the end of the discussion. I wish to point out that the clerk-based notion of computability deliberately states 'without understanding.' This says nothing about intuition (as you ask in your question), or even insight or intelligence in general. Indeed, there is a field of research called [Hypercomputability](_URL_0_), which investigates models of computation that are above Turing completeness. Though it is very hotly debated, and there seems to be no consensus either way as to its practical existence. One of the most important questions in the field of hypercomputation is whether the human brain is a hypercomputer. \n\nSo the long answer to your question is maybe. My intuition is that hypercomputability seems to be a red-herring, and that the answer to your question is likely to be yes, but it is still an open question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach's_conjecture"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92WHN-pAFCs"], ["http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=hypercomputation&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;as_sdtp="]]}
{"q_id": "42tb8b", "title": "why are eye colors only blue, green or brown and not other colors like purple, orange or yellow?", "selftext": "EDit 1: Wow, front page! Also, can genes be manipulated to change the melanin content itself?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42tb8b/eli5_why_are_eye_colors_only_blue_green_or_brown/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czcwtle", "czcxkfa", "czcz0s1", "czdal15", "czdjdv6", "czdno2r"], "score": [10, 670, 64, 2, 18, 2], "text": ["There's only one color that's ever present in people's eyes and that's brown- it's the same pigment that makes people's skin dark. Blue eyes are caused by the same effect that makes the sky look blue. Eyes look green (or hazel) because of the same light-scattering if they have a little, but not a lot, of pigment in them. People with brown eyes have a lot of pigment.", "Eye color comes from the amount of a specific pigment/dye in your iris called *melanin*.  Melanin is a brown pigment found in many places throughout your body, including your hair and skin.  The more melanin in your skin, the darker it is.\n\nWith a few exceptions (I'll get to them later), every eye color comes from a different level of melanin in the topmost layer of the iris.  The more melanin, the darker and browner the eye.  The less melanin, the lighter and bluer the eye.  Green eyes are just blue with a slight tinge of brown.  Hazel eyes are a moderate amount of brown.\n\nThe reason that no melanin = blue is the same reason the sky is blue.  It's an optical effect called [Rayleigh scattering](_URL_0_).  The light waves get mixed up and \"scattered\" by the tiny transparent molecules of the top layer of the iris.  Blue light is scattered more than other colors, making the whole area appear blue.  There isn't actually any blue pigment in the eye (or in the sky); it's all an optical illusion.\n\nThere are eye colors that are outside this blue < - > brown spectrum, though.  These are amber (gold-ish), gray, and violet.\n\nAmber eyes come from a different pigment called lipochrome.  \n\nGray eyes are \"cloudy\" blue eyes.  The molecules in the iris have banded together into larger \"clumps\".  The optical effect of this is the same as water molecules clumping together into water droplets and forming a cloud, creating a gray sky.  \n\nViolet eyes occur only in albinos.  There is so little pigment in the iris (not just the topmost layer is pigment-less, but the lower layers as well) that light can actually shine through from inside the eye.  This gives you an eerie highlight of the blood vessels running through it, which can appear red or violet depending on the lighting conditions.", "What determines your eye color is primarily influenced by the presence of melanin in the eye.  To put it very simply, melanin effectively makes things darker.  Although, the colors you mentioned do exist rarely.\n\n* Brown Eyes: These are the easiest, tons of melanin!  The melanin darkens the eyes to a brown shade.\n\n* Green Eyes: Melanin is present but, in smaller amounts than you would see in brown eyes.  One interesting thing is that melanin still creates brown pigment, there is no actual green pigment in green eyes.  The reason that the eyes appear green is because of the way light scatters after being reflected by the eye.\n\n* Blue Eyes: Very little melanin (but, not necessarily none).  There is still no blue pigment, appearance of blue eyes is caused by the same light scattering mentioned for green eyes.\n\nNow for the rarer colors, including the ones you mentioned! \n\n* Hazel Eyes: Hazel isn't an agreed upon color but, hazel eyes are usually between brown and green in terms of melanin production.  The light scattering explains a lot about how people with hazel eyes tend to seemingly have blue or green eyes depending on lighting.\n\n* Grey Eyes: Very little melanin, like blue Eyes but, also thought to contain collagen deposits in the colored part of the eye that influences how the light is scattered.\n\n* Amber/Golden Eyes: This would be the orange/yellow eyes that you mentioned.  Animals have this a lot more than we do but, it's not unknown in humans.  It's caused by a pigment called 'Lipochrome', the eyes also have melanin but, not as much as someone with brown eyes would have.\n\n* Red Eyes: Severe albinism can cause you to have near zero melanin.  This can result in eyes appearing to be red in the right light.  This is caused by the underlying blood vessels showing through.\n\n* Violet Eyes: Violet or Purple eyes can also be caused by albinism/near zero melanin.  There is a theory that a separate genetic trait called 'Alexandrias Genesis' can cause violet eyes.  Elizabeth Taylor is thought to have potentially had this trait, but, others believe it may have just been a trick of the lighting.  There are a tremendous amount of positive traits connected to 'Alexandrias Genesis' that make it seem like pseudoscience, it is most likely just a very mild case of albinism.\n\n**tl;dr**: Eye color is primarily determined by melanin which works on a scale of less brown - >  more brown.  Extra colors are caused by light scattering combined with the brown of the melanin but, some other factors exist to produce rarer eye colors.", "Eyes are blue, the move through different colors towards dark brown the more melanin is in them. \n\nThey are blue for a similar reason the sky is blue.  Melanin is also what makes skin darker. ", "I saw an African American female back in the early 70's at a department store that had gray eyes. I've never seen anything so beautiful ", "Black eyes. I'm a black woman with eyes so dark people almost always think they're black. But they are in fact brown, just a lot darker than brown eyes seen on white people."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aqlht6", "title": "If a reactor used weapons-grade material (plutonium, uranium, etc.), would an ensuing meltdown look like a nuclear bomb?", "selftext": "Also, what do you tag for nuclear stuff like this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aqlht6/if_a_reactor_used_weaponsgrade_material_plutonium/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egh0t8m"], "score": [21], "text": ["In order to explode, a nuclear bomb needs some degree of \"containment.\" The fuel needs to be held in a supercritical position for long enough for many generations of fissioning to take place. While the fissioning is taking place, the fuel is rapidly heating and expanding. So if it is allowed to just expand willy-nilly, the reaction will stop prematurely. There might be a tiny explosion, or none at all \u2014 just a flash of radiation, for example.\n\nSo let's take the simplest kind of nuclear bomb as an example of this. In a gun-type bomb, like the sort dropped on Hiroshima in WWII, one piece of highly-enriched uranium was shot into another piece. [The part of the bomb where these two pieces combined was surrounded by a lot of tungsten, a pretty heavy/dense metal](_URL_2_). As the pieces reacted, the tungsten both reflected some neutrons back into the core and held the expanding core together for an extra microsecond or so. This allowed the reaction to build up to city-destroying levels (15,000 tons of TNT equivalent in that case).\n\nLet's imagine that instead of doing it that way, I just dropped one piece of the same highly-enriched uranium onto another piece from the height of a few feet. Would I get an explosion? In this scenario, not only is the joining of the two pieces much slower (which affects the reaction), but I'm neither shielding the neutrons correctly nor confining it with a tamper. If you run the math on this, the odds of it being a very large explosion are low\u00a0\u2014 at best, maybe a few 100 tons of TNT equivalent. Getting a 1,000 tons would be lucky. \n\nIt's also possible you might not get any significant explosion at all: you might get just enough energy to move the two pieces apart, ending the reaction. This is what has happened with some \"bare core\" reactors (basically bomb cores used as tiny reactors for experimental purposes) when they've had \"criticality excursions\" (accidental criticality). The \"Godiva\" reactor, for example, broke in this way: a critical mass was inadvertently formed with three pieces of highly-enriched uranium and the result was that the machine had a very tiny energy release [that the moved the pieces apart](_URL_4_). In criticality accidents, like the [Slotin accident](_URL_1_), you have systems that briefly became critical but did not explode \u2014 they just released a lot of radiation. \n\nAnyway, back to the reactor question. If you had a reactor made out of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium, would a major accident like loss-of-coolant lead to a large explosion? Such reactors do exist (submarines use enriched-fuel, and plutonium-fueled reactors have been used), and some have even had accidents. In the worst-case scenarios, you can get an out-of-control reaction that can result in a small explosion, but one that will serve mostly to break the reactor. This is what happened with the [SL-1 reactor in 1961](_URL_3_), which released enough energy to [break its core](_URL_0_). But not nearly the size of a nuclear bomb.\n\nCould you imagine a reactor design that, if it went wrong, allowed for the reaction to grow to a hugely explosive size? (With reflection, confinement, etc.) I mean, you could \u2014 but it'd be a very bad reactor design, and presumably people would be smart enough not to do such a thing. But you can design a reactor to maximize certain characteristics \u2014 if you wanted to design one that would explode like a nuclear bomb when something went wrong, you could. But pretty much no reactor designs (I hesitate to say \"none\" because there have been a _lot_ of experimental reactors) would do this.\n\n(I'd tag it as physics, personally.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1#/media/File:Sl-1-ineel81-3966.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy#/media/File:Little_Boy_Internal_Components.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Godiva-before-and-after.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1ir0ro", "title": "When do you refer to something as a civilization? Why is there an Incan civilization but no French civilization?", "selftext": "I suppose I'm asking what you would define as a civilization and where the difference lies in calling something a kingdom, empire, culture or civilization.  \n\nEdit: Thanks for the responses, I realize now that it isn't a simple rigid set of criteria, this also puts a lot of history in a new light!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ir0ro/when_do_you_refer_to_something_as_a_civilization/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb776tv", "cb778di", "cb7beqc"], "score": [60, 16, 10], "text": ["I'm rushing so bear with my oversimplistic comment:\n\nI wouldn't group kingdom, empire, culture and civilization together.\n\nKingdom is a form of governance. Empire requires a nation or established country forming ties and exerting dominion over vast regions. A culture is an amalgam of traits, traditions and ways of life (infrastructure, social organization and an ideology) that tie a people together. A civilization is a descriptor for a type of society. Cultural evolutionists and other anthropologists have (at first very tightly, now rather loosely) use the term civilization to differentiate between groups and societies that follow a particular way of life which includes: sedentarianism, some form of food production (like agriculture), social hierarchy, and writing system.\n\nThere is a notion for a French civilization (although it is usually grouped with others of Western Civilization). \n\n\nAs an anthropologist, we currently avoid the use of talking about \"civilization\" although it is a handy term to denominate specific traits (specially when dealing with architecture and writing systems).\n\nWhy you hear more of an Incan civilization not su much of a French civilization? I think it has more to do with the current general public perception of both cultures. French culture and history is known to be part of a Western civilization. Incas, for many -specially in the general public, would be considered closer to the notion of \"savages\" (a very very problematic term). By using \"civilization\" alongside with Inca it provides as air of complexity and development.\n\nSorry for the oversimplication (hopefully it is not confusing). I'm on the road!", "These terms don't see consistent use. Traditions pop up using them when it seems convenient.\n\n\"Civilization\" refers to a culturally similar group, regardless of political structure. We often refer to neolithic agrarian peoples and Bronze age peoples using the term \"civilization\". Modern France is regularly spoken of as being part of Western Civilization, but there's no rule to keep from speaking of \"French civilization\" and people do use this term.\n\nA kingdom has a king. An empire conquered lots of territory. A culture has some set of shared practices.\n\nThese terms aren't exclusive, nor are they used entirely in some clear, consistent way.", "The word Civilization comes from the Latin word for \"city\".  So, literally, a civilization is a group of people that build cities.  And with cities usually come some form of written language, laws, stratified class structure, official religion, etc.  In this sense the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs would all be Civilized, while, say, the Lakota Sioux and even the Mongols (initially) would not be.\n\nNow, in the age of colonization and *especially* in the 19th century the word became morally loaded.  \"Civilized\" people behaved in a certain way that was especially particular to Northern European Victorian-era people.  To call someone \"uncivilized\" meant they had bad English manners.  Many Brits would have called the Indians \"uncivilized\" in spite of the fact that their civilization beats ours by about 2000 years.\n\nMore recently we've begun using \"civilization\" to be nearly synonymous with \"Culture\".  I mean, \"the Mongol Civilization\" seems to make sense, right?\n\nIt's all still up in the air.\n\nKingdom, Empire, and Culture are all more easily defined.  A kingdom has a king ruling over it, and usually some sort of feudal structure where regions are centralized under other dudes who have sworn an oath to the king.  An Empire has an Emperor, and usually involves having one central city that's the economic and cultural center to which the goods of the \"colonies\" or \"provinces\" feed into.\n\nCulture refers to the materials and ideas that come out of a group of people.  Stuff, like pottery, clothes, weapons, buildings...these are \"material culture\".  There's also art and written culture as well.\n\nSo, the French have French \"culture\" because there's a lot of things and ideas that are particularly French.  But they're part of Western Civilization because their way of life--their cities, economy, laws, *and* some aspects of *culture*--all share similarities with the other places that inherited the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.\n\nThis is why, when I teach my Western Civ. class, I speak of Islam as being part of Western Civilization.  But I'm rambling now..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7ojsp3", "title": "how do birds that dive from the air into the water to catch fish manage to get back up into the air? wouldn't the water soaking their feathers weigh them down?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ojsp3/eli5_how_do_birds_that_dive_from_the_air_into_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds9z6gz", "ds9z7tu", "dsa0veo", "dsa0zb0", "dsa3g74", "dsab775", "dsacm7e", "dsad7bx", "dsadb9e", "dsadzy0", "dsaf9jw", "dsafh4w", "dsai396", "dsajse5", "dsalf2b", "dsaq4l5", "dsay2u4"], "score": [7209, 22, 115, 11, 610, 17, 29, 262, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Birds have an organ called the Uropygial gland, which is an excretory gland that produces oil for their feathers. Birds will use their beaks to spread this oil over their feathers.\n\nOne benefit of this oil is that it makes the feathers waterproof.", "Birds have a gland at the base of their tail that produces a waxy oil. This oil helps to make their feathers waterproof. This is why oil spills are so harmful not just to marine life but also birds. The crude oil mixes and sticks to their feathers which is thicker and heavier than their natural oil, which stops them from being able to fly.", "Adding to the oilyness the other dudes talked about.  \nThe feathers also acts as insulation keeping air inside - so they dont lose body heat when in cold water.  \nAnd birds are generaly vary light.", "They oil their feathers.  Just like you oil your hair.\n\nYou just wash the oil out regularly", "Others have mentioned the oil mechanism, which is an excellent point. After an osprey takes off from water and shakes water out from the air, they look virtually dry. \n\nIn addition, ospreys, which eat fish pretty much exclusively, have extra long powerful wings in comparison to other raptors. I assume that's a factor in their ability to fly straight of water they were immersed in, often clasping a heavy fish. They're remarkable animals.", "There's also penguins that trap air in their feathers and release it as micro bubbles to reduce drag when jumping out of the water through air lubrication.\n\n_URL_0_", "Oily feathers makes sense, but how do they take off with no ground to push off of? I wouldn't be able to jump out of a pool if me feet didn't touch the bottom.", "Although many people have commented on the water-repellent qualities of bird feathers (most water birds), and the strength of their wings (ospreys, kingfishers), there is another method that the largest diving birds use to get airborne again. They have to free themselves from the surface tension of the water by running on the surface until they are moving fast enough to become airborne.\n\n[Here is a brown pelican doing it.](_URL_0_)", "Birds, have this gland under their wing that makes oil for them to rub all over their feathers, it makes them waterproof and water just slides off", "Or they have lungs that are filled with air. Or their feathers close to hold air. Their bones are hollow. Their feathers don't soak water. So many fuckin reasons, brah", "Birds feathers are coated in a hydrophobic waterproof coating. That's one of the reasons you see ducks rubbing their beaks all over their feathers. They are spreading the oil that is produced from their glands. That's why you see ducks swimming without getting wet. ", "Along with oils, beak characteristics, wing characteristics, etc., how they dive into the water plays a role as well. It\u2019s not like say a person diving who goes in head first and that\u2019s it. They will also five in a way that allows them to easily grab the fish and come back out of the water quickly.", "Some do drown if they pick a fish that's too large--bald eagles, at least. Apparently they can't retract their talons to let go until they're on land (or in a nest or whatever), and the fish pulls them right under.", "As a complete idiot doing nothing but take pics of pelicans in key West right now. They just fucking muscle their ass into theair. The are huge and I imagine really light. The drop repeatedly in the water at dawn and don't do shot all day and then dive again afternoon. I don't know what the do at night but the roosters cross at 3 am  jess christ", "Fun fact, not all birds that do this can take off from the water. Example, a bald eagle can grab a fish while flying but can't take off from the water, whereas an osprey can take off from the water. ", "\"Like water off a duck's back.\"\n\nBecause of the oil on a duck's feathers, it just rolls off. Just like what your should do if someone ever calls you a name. Just let it go and fly away.", "Those type of birds have oil coating that make those particular birds feathers water proof, also as a interesting bit, during oil spills the crude oil sticks to them because like oils like to stick to other oil like things. Reason why cleaning birds is important, the natural oils return after a while but till then the birds need to be cared for or else they would drown if released immediately back into the wild after a soapy wash."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://asknature.org/strategy/plumage-releases-air-to-propel-body-out-of-water/#.WlEjSMuvBnE"], [], ["https://gfycat.com/EmptyScratchyEmeraldtreeskink"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1bvbdt", "title": "How did Einstein know that time dilation alone would not account for the constancy of the speed of light in all reference frames?", "selftext": "How did he know that lorentz contraction would also be needed?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1bvbdt/how_did_einstein_know_that_time_dilation_alone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9ae90o"], "score": [17], "text": ["I think you're thinking about it backwards. He started with the assertion that the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames and then figured out how to transform between them."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5jtpa9", "title": "How do you determine experimental certainty?", "selftext": "I'm conducting an \"experiment\" for a game, and I was wondering, how do you determine how certain you are of your answer?  Eg. if something happened 7 out of 100 times, are you certain to the tens or the ones place?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5jtpa9/how_do_you_determine_experimental_certainty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbiw9l4", "dbixl03", "dbjl7w6"], "score": [13, 4, 3], "text": ["An extremely important part of any experimental measurement is quantifying the errors on the measured quantities. There is no simple answer; you can (and we often *do*) take entire semester- or year-long courses on data analysis where we learn how to do this.\n\nWe experimentalists borrow lots of techniques from mathematicians and statisticians to qualify the errors on our measurements. And there is no single method which is used in every case. Every experiment is different, and each one calls for its own unique analysis.\n\nUsing your example, say you are attempting to estimate the success probability of a binomial distribution. If you perform 100 trials and get 7 successes, a good estimate for the true parameter is 7/100. How many significant figures should you use? That's determined by your error.\n\nSay you estimate that your error (sample standard deviation) is 0.026. If you wanted to report your result as a 1-sigma confidence interval, you'd say 0.7000 +/- 0.026, or simply 0.700(26).", "[The Central Limit Theroem](_URL_1_) is what does it, and the [Hypothesis Testing](_URL_0_) learned in any statistics course are like the basics of how to apply it.", "As /u/RubusEtCeleritas states, you can quantify the uncertainty in a measurement using various assumptions. First, I'd like to note that systematic errors in the measurement can be very important. These factors are difficult to account for precisely and can dwarf the ordinary statistical error.\n\n As an example, the statistical margin of error in presidential polls is generally around 3%. By combining many polls, this error should naively be reduced by a factor of sqrt(N), where N is the number of polls. For the last week of an election (say, 100 polls), this predicts an error in the mean of polls of around 0.3%. But in reality, systematic errors mean that the standard error of the aggregate of polls is around 3%, the same as the statistical error of only one poll. \n\n\nOK, let's assume you have no systematic error. Then the usual way of calculate the error is to make various assumptions:  \n\n1. The errors have some known distribution, usually the normal distribution. This assumption can be wrong: the financial crisis happened partially because black-swan events with huge consequences are much more likely than predicted by a normal distribution.\n\n2. The hypothesis you are testing on your data is the correct one to test for some theoretical scientific reason. If you test 1000 flavors of jelly bean separately for contributing to cancer, you are nearly certain to get a very convincing-looking correlation for one of the jelly bean flavors by pure chance. This is why scientists don't claim discovery of a particle without 5sigma significance.\n\n3. Finally, you use some aspect of your measurement device to estimate the magnitude of the error for each experiment. Combined with the assumption in (1) about how this error is distributed (normally, binomially, Poisson)\n\nFor your experiment, in the absence of any quantitative evidence of uncertainty, the usual assumption is that the error over many trials is equal to the square root of the number of trials (this is the method used for election polls). So your error under this assumption is +/- 10 - a very large error. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem"], []]}
{"q_id": "65zpvr", "title": "why do we have that voice in our head that narrates what we are thinking?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65zpvr/eli5_why_do_we_have_that_voice_in_our_head_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgeklxs", "dgettts", "dgew8w4", "dgeyg2j", "dgeyg9b", "dgezo5x", "dgf4hce", "dgf4m1g", "dgfvqyu"], "score": [17, 15, 7, 3, 5, 6, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["_URL_0_  Maybe?  I don't know.", "I'm only a first year studying educational psychology, but I'm pretty sure this relates to Lev Vygotsky's ideas about language. Language is one of the most important mental tools, as it plays a major role in socialisation as well as cognition. We use it to regulate our thoughts and structure our intellectual activity. When you use the voice in your head to narrate a thought process, it's called private/ internalised speech. This can be observed in young children, who often talk to themselves aloud to help them work out a problem. This is gradually internalised as a child develops, but even as an adult sometimes reading something out loud can help you understand it. \n", "Remember, not everybody has that.\n\nThe idea of an \"internal voice\" is fascinating to me, precisely because I've never had one. I always thought it was a poetic phrase (similar to saying your heart \"told\" you something), not that people literally have a voice in their heads.", "This is actually really interesting to me because I do have that narrator thing, but I remember a time when I didn't. I was very young at the time and got confused when other other kids would say stuff like \"don't say _____, not even in your head.\" Then one day, still when I was very young, I just started \"hearing\" what I thought as I thought it.", "I'm not trying to be cute asserting this, but the more in-depth answer to this involves endogenous\u200b DMT, and we should be doing far more research in this area\n\nwithout studying humans' relationship to DMT, exploring consciousness and conscience is speculative and dizzying.. people with the most experience with it insist that this substance is the basis for human self-awareness, it is our inner voice, however minimally and randomly accessible\u200b without ingesting more..\n\na discussion on this topic without involving endogenous tryptamines would seem like \"trying to understand astronomy without a telescope\", as a wise man once said ;)", "I hope its will help I get from [_URL_0_](https://www._URL_0_/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech)\nMost of us will be familiar with the experience of silently talking to ourselves in our head. Perhaps you\u2019re at the supermarket and realise that you\u2019ve forgotten to pick up something you needed. \u201cMilk!\u201d you might say to yourself. Or maybe you\u2019ve got an important meeting with your boss later in the day, and you\u2019re simulating \u2013 silently in your head \u2013 how you think the conversation might go, possibly hearing both your own voice and your boss\u2019s voice responding.\n\nThis is the phenomenon that psychologists call \u201cinner speech\u201d, and they\u2019ve been trying to study it pretty much since the dawn of psychology as a scientific discipline. In the 1930s, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued that inner speech developed through the internalisation of \u201cexternal\u201d, out-loud speech. If this is true, does inner speech use the same mechanisms in the brain as when we speak out loud?\n\nWe have known for about a century that inner speech is accompanied by tiny muscular movements in the larynx, detectable by a technique known as electromyography. In the 1990s, neuroscientists used functional neuroimaging to demonstrate that areas such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca\u2019s area), which are active when we speak out loud, are also active during inner speech. Furthermore, disrupting the activity of this region using brain stimulation techniques can interrupt both \u201couter\u201d and inner speech.\n\nSo the evidence that inner speech and speaking out loud share similar brain mechanisms seems pretty convincing. One worry, though, is whether the inner speech we get people to do in experiments is the same as our everyday experience of inner speech. As you might imagine, it\u2019s quite hard to study inner speech in a controlled, scientific manner, because it is an inherently private act.\n\nTypically, studies have required participants to repeat sentences to themselves in their heads, or, sometimes, count the syllables in words presented on a computer screen. These lack both the spontaneity of typical inner experiences and the conversational quality (think of the conversation with your boss) and motivational purposes (\u201cMilk!\u201d) of inner speech. Although the experience is undoubtedly different for everyone (not everyone reports having \u201cconversations\u201d in their head, for example), what does seem clear is that inner speech is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.\n\nWhy does it matter whether we have an accurate understanding of what\u2019s going on in our brains when we use inner speech?\n\nOne reason is that understanding typical inner experience may be the key to understanding more unusual inner experiences. For example, psychologists have argued that hearing voices (\u201cauditory verbal hallucinations\u201d) might simply be a form of inner speech that has not been recognised as self-produced (although there are also important competing theories). Neuroscientists have found some evidence in favour of this theory. When they scanned the brains of people who reported hearing voices, they discovered that many of the same areas of the brain are active during both auditory hallucinations and inner speech. Broca\u2019s area, for example, is often active in people when they\u2019re hearing voices.\n\nBut if we really want to know what the difference between what happens in the brain during inner speech and voice hearing \u2013 and how inner speech might become hearing voices \u2013 then first we need to understand what our internal talk is usually like. A recent study by researchers in Finland attempted to address flaws in previous brain-imaging studies of inner speech. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they studied the difference between activity in the brain when participants experienced an auditory verbal hallucination, and when they deliberately imagined hearing the same voice. In this way, they controlled for aspects of the experience such as the sound and the content of the voice.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThey found the main difference between the two conditions was the level of activation in a cortical region known as the supplementary motor area (SMA), which contributes to the control of movement. When participants heard voices, there was significantly less activation in the SMA, which fits with previous hypotheses suggesting that recognising actions as one\u2019s own might rely on signals from motor cortical areas reaching sensory areas of the brain.\n\nOf course, none of this is to say that understanding what happens in the brain is the only, or the most important, aspect of research into hearing voices. We also need to understand what the experience is like, how we can help people who are distressed by it, and when there\u2019s a need for psychiatric care. But to do any of this, we first need to know what typical inner speech is like, and the underlying neuroscience is part of that understanding.\n\nPeter Moseley is a PhD student in the psychology department at Durham University, working with the Hearing the Voice project\n\nThe Hearing the Voice project is conducting a survey in collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival to explore the ways readers imagine, hear or even interact with the voices of characters in stories", "I'm a PhD student working on the network that creates this voice in our heads. \n\nThe narration in our heads occurs when the Default Mode Network (DMN) is active. \n\nThe DMN is a network of brain regions that are found to be active (from fMRI studies) when what Psychologists call self-referential narrative occurs, in other words, mental-chatter. \n\nIt is found to be inversely related to other networks known as Task Positive Networks (TPN), which activates when one is focused on their immediate environment. This is why you find yourself mind-wandering a lot in the shower when you have no incentive to be focused on the immediate environment. You could even extend this to say that the DMN is the source of your identity. \n\nOther activities such as meditation by experienced meditators also tend to deactivate the DMN by reducing self-chatter. ", "HAHAHA, I literally just laughed out loud and showed my housemates your comment. PLOT TWIST - I'm on some kind of Truman Show where I narrate my own life.", "The voices told me to do it??? Lol"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8"], [], [], [], [], ["theguardian.com", "https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/21/science-little-voice-head-hearing-voices-inner-speech"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1nieos", "title": "What material has the highest energy-density (J/g) when in the form of a tensator-(or motor-)spring?", "selftext": "I'm looking for the spring-material that can store the most energy compared to its weight. The volume is insignificant.\nNote that this is for a tensator-spring or a motor-spring (not a compression-spring).\n\nBonus points for showing calculation of the energy-density. \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1nieos/what_material_has_the_highest_energydensity_jg/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cciw4yp", "ccizzfg", "ccj1pog"], "score": [7, 5, 2], "text": ["Mechanical engineer here.  The spring energy can be derived in terms of a number of variables, but one way of expressing it is:\n\nEnergy/unit volume = 1/2 * Y *  \u03b5\u00b2 where Y is Young's modulus and epsilon is the strain.\n\nSo you need a very stiff, strong material to maximize the energy storage (per volume).  This is generally contrary to a design goal in a sprung system, where usually the spring stiffness must be a much lower value in order to achieve the correct spring rate for the application.\n\nTo convert to energy/weight, you just need to find a material that maximizes Y/\u03c1 (aka specific stiffness or specific modulus).  I'm not sure what material has the highest theoretical value here, but I would think it would be carbon nanotubes, diamond, or carbon fiber.  Again, these all usually make poor springs (especially since it sounds like you're asking about a torsion spring, where you need a material capable of withstanding high strain).\n", "The parameter you are looking for is called *resilience*, which is defined as the elastic strain energy density and can be expressed on either a per unit weight or per unit volume basis. Since you said you don't care about volume, on a per unit weight basis the resilience is sigma^2 /(rho * E) where sigma is the yield stress of the material, rho is its density, and E is its elastic (Young's) modulus. Although a low stiffness may be counterintuitive, a low stiffness in conjunction with a high strength means that the material can experience a large elastic (recoverable) strain prior to the onset of plastic (non-recoverable) strain.\n\nI am not aware of any tabulations of resilience online, but you are likely to find that materials already in use as springs (e.g. spring steels) are among the best available. Metallic glasses can also be very good in this regard.\n\nNote that other materials properties (e.g. fatigue or corrosion resistance) may also be important.\n\nMore information on resilience [here.](_URL_0_)\n\n", "Since a Tensator spring is a strip of material in bending, it already has a non-uniform strain field.  Specifically, the outermost material has the highest strain magnitude, while the midplane has the lowest.  It could be made more efficient (higher average strain energy density) if the midplane region were partially hollowed out, like a series of I-beams set side by side, or a sandwich panel.\n\nAs for materials, we want something with low density, low modulus, and high yield strength.  My approach would be to start with a low density, low-modulus metal, then look for other alloying elements to achieve higher strength.  Alloying can substantially increase the strength of a material without significantly raising its modulus.\n\nFailing that, I would look at a selection of the most expensive high-strength alloys available."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://materion.com/~/media/Files/PDFs/Alloy/Newsletters/Technical%20Tidbits/Issue%20No%2022-%20Elastic%20Resilience"], []]}
{"q_id": "3i37jp", "title": "Suppose we have a photon we're examining. Can we measure how long that particular photon has been traveling?", "selftext": "If so, can we determine its source based on that data? If not, why not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3i37jp/suppose_we_have_a_photon_were_examining_can_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cud2sgm"], "score": [11], "text": ["No, we can't. How long it's existed for isn't a piece of information that the particle carries. One of the big rules of quantum mechanics is that all photons are identical: you can't tell which is which.\n\nImagine I have a system with two photons. One photon is in state A, the other photon is in state B. Since all photons are identical, there's no way to know whether or not they were sneaky and switched places while we weren't looking. All we know is that one is in state A and the other is in state B: we can't know which specific photon is in which state since they may have exchanged.\n\nImagine we do an experiment where we prepare a photon in state A, and then five seconds later we prepare a photon in state B and add it to the system. Ten seconds later we know that there has been a photon in state A for fifteen seconds and that there's been a photon in state B for ten seconds.\n\nWe'd like to be able to measure a photon and determine whether it's existed for ten or fifteen seconds, but that's not possible. The photons may have exchanged, and all we can measure is which state they're in, not whether they exchanged or not. If we measure state A, we might be measuring the photon which was originally in state B! Since we can't know which photon we measured (really it's not even a meaningful question to ask), information about how long it's existed clearly can't be something that it carries.\n\nThe same applies to, say, measuring starlight and trying to examine the photons to see how long they traveled for. All we know is that we're measuring photons which are in states that look like starlight: we don't know if we're measuring the photons emitted by the star.\n\nExamining the light in general - not the photons specifically - can give you clues about how far away the source is and how long the light travels to get from there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3cr4d1", "title": "How easy was it for American soldiers to sneak war swag home after WW2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cr4d1/how_easy_was_it_for_american_soldiers_to_sneak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csyk1rn"], "score": [30], "text": ["Well, it depends what you mean, seeing as there wasn't much need to sneak it. War trophies were permitted by the Army, and really the most important limit was weight and portability. Main restrictions were on explosives, 'nonmilitary articles removed from enemy dead', and personal effects of POWs (although they could be bought from the POW, just not taken), as well as a few other items listed in the Circular cited below. The government even footed the shipping costs for occupation troops to send stuff home after the war, not exceeding 25 pounds, plus a premium for officers. In the case of firearms, all war bring backs were supposed to have capture papers though. Here is an [example of one](_URL_2_) for a .25 pistol. It basically showed that the soldier had gotten permission to send it back, and someone had inspected the weapon to make sure it was eligible. Weapons with their capture papers these days fetch a very high premium from collectors. \n\nAs far as what eligibility meant, originally, you could even bring back machine guns, as long as you registered it under the National Firearms Act upon importing it to the country (Side note: My old HS history teacher has an MG42 his father shipped home). Concerns that they wouldn't be properly registered, if only out of ignorance, meant that it was decided that they were no longer allowed in mid-1945 , but this didn't prevent other firearms from going home, either in shipments by occupation troops or carried along when sent back stateside. [To give you a sense of the numbers, 5,000 men of the 28th Infantry were sent home in '45, carrying about 20,000 trophy firearms with them!](_URL_0_)\n\n[Circular 155 is the main document that deals with this policy](_URL_3_), and as it states, the reasoning was one of morale:\n\n > In order to improve the morale of the United States forces in the theaters of operations, the retention of war trophies by military personnel, merchant seamen, and civilians serving with the United States Army overseas is authorized under the conditions set forth in the following instructions [See pages 3-7]\n\nSo anyways, the point is that it was exceptionally easy, as there was no need to sneak most items. There were restrictions in place, and a lot of paperwork intended to ensure that *non*-authorized items weren't sent, but as to how effective that was... not very. [To go to a rather macabre example](_URL_1_), Pacific theater trophies of human remains, mostly Japanese skulls and ears, but also items such as letter-openers made from arm bones, were being sent home by the thousand, despite the fact that orders prohibited the possession of enemy remains (Officers often didn't care, \"not want[ing] to discourage expressions of animosity toward the enemy\" - I would recommend Dower's \"War Without Mercy\" for more treatment of the racial underpinnings of war in the Pacific). Soldiers returning home, even before the war was over, were asked by customs whether they brought human remains with them, but it seems that efforts to actually check if their \"No\" was truthful were not very strenuous. A skull trophy, of course, was not quite the display piece that a rifle is, so combined with the lack of documentation, estimates are not easy to make, but could easily point to tens of thousands brought back to the US, with generally great ease.\n\nTL;DR: The military helped you send back most stuff, and the stuff you aren't supposed to, if it was small, was easy enough to sneak."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/occ-gy/ch18.htm", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/4092567", "http://i416.photobucket.com/albums/pp244/wleoff/CapturePapersEM.jpg", "http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/WD_Cir_No_155_28_May_45.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1z09l2", "title": "I've heard a story that Stalin's first wife was the only person he ever loved; and that after she died early, he became permanently cold and bitter towards the world. Is there any truth to this story?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1z09l2/ive_heard_a_story_that_stalins_first_wife_was_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfpeeod", "cfppxii"], "score": [132, 12], "text": ["Amateur psychology aside, I don't think there is too much evidence that  his wife's death contributed to his politics particularly much.  I'm sure it did in fact cause him grief, but I have a feeling there is an underlying \"and therefore, he did what he did as leader of the Soviet Union\" being asked in this question.  To that end I would answer that no, I don't think there is a radical change in Stalin's pattern of behavior/ideology at any point.\n\nI wrote a post several months back about the consistency of his positions (more or less), which is somewhat relevant in this case, so here is the link if you'd like to read that as well: _URL_0_", "This does not directly answer your question, but to give a little insight on Stalin's personality three years before his wife died, here's a quote from *Ivan's War* by Catherine Merridale:\n\n\u201cIn 1904 a group of comrades were out for a walk along a river swollen from spring rains. A calf, newborn, still doubtful on its legs, had somehow become stranded on an island in the middle of the river. One man, the Georgian Koba ripped off his shirt and swam across to the calf, He hauled himself out to stand beside it, waited for all the friends to watch, and then broke it legs.\u201d\n\nStalin called himself Koba after a character in *The Patricide* by Alexander Kazbegi.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nI first heard this on Hardcore History \"Ghosts of the Ostfront,\" which gives a pretty interesting, albeit dramatized, portrayal of Stalin and the eastern front."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1olmdl/did_stalin_introduce_harsh_repressive_policies/cct9rir"], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=JmvyWJQpg9YC&amp;pg=PA36&amp;lpg=PA36&amp;dq=ivan%27s+war+calf&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=XHaJ8i1qoz&amp;sig=FtFN6-v4wkpgW-Ip2OfUNMuR_ak&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=mZ4OU6T_CrChsASshICQBg&amp;ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=ivan's%20war%20calf&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "6gnvh5", "title": "Did any Western Romans flee to the Eastern Roman Empire during the final stages of the Western Empire's decline in the 5th century? (Repost)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gnvh5/did_any_western_romans_flee_to_the_eastern_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ditxgme"], "score": [5], "text": ["This isn't really an answer to your question, but there has been a general recognition in the field that the \"decline\" of the Roman Empire was not obvious to Ancient Romans like it is to us. If you look at Rome at the beginning of the fifth century, things are great! Egypt and North Africa are growing lots of grain. Taxes are being collected annually. It's a Christian Empire, ordained by God and claimed in the blood of the martyrs (or at least that's how fifth-century poet Prudentius presents it. \n\nI would say that Ancient Romans didn't think of their Empire as being in decline. Augustine, who lived through the sack of Rome in 410, seems relatively unaffected by it. Even Justinian in the 6th century still has a sense that the Roman Empire is the whole Mediterranean. \n\nThis is not to suggest that people didn't flee the cities during moments of actual destruction. For more insight, check out Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6ff3qs", "title": "why are a significant amount of the best opera singers fat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ff3qs/eli5_why_are_a_significant_amount_of_the_best/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dihokho", "dihoy85", "dii68h5", "dii6ely", "dii6h7z", "dii8at6", "diik1kg"], "score": [5, 136, 4, 3, 519, 5, 4], "text": ["I don't have specific data to refer to, but your body composition has much to do with the tone of your voice.  Those with larger torsos will have different properties to their voice than someone who is much smaller. \n\n", "In short, no one really knows for sure why, but there are a few theories. Opera singing requires extensive use of the diaphragm. Some theories suggest that the singers' bodies undergo changes over time due to this (such as expanded ribs). Another theory suggests that a larger mass (mouth, lungs, chest, really everything) helps project the voice over the orchestration. This seems to be backed up by the singers who insist that when their weight fluctuates, their voices suffer. For singers, in general, it's a propagated cautionary tale that weight loss surgery ruins the voice. Additionally, opera houses currently think that slimmer singers will heighten the interest in opera (here's looking at you, Patricia Petibon). However, the opera houses often insist that it is very difficult to find slim people who have powerful voices. \nBut on a totally different note, a lot of studies show that a larger body mass doesn't necessarily mean that the voice resonates better. So, a lot of people now say that stomach fat must help pull on the diaphragm and thus helps support the voice.", "Are they though? Isn't this an old stereotype?", "This isn't the primary reason but just an interesting thought, what if it has to do with the opera culture that makes you gain weight? After parties, hours spent signing(not excersizing the body), etc. Maybe being in the opera makes you fat, not being fat makes you good at the opera", "Actual opera singer here.\n\nThe same reason why anyone gains weight when they are in a high-stress job that requires a lot of travel. It's a stressful job with intense hours during production periods, and it gets really easy to neglect exercise and just eat crappy foods, especially because you usually celebrate after performances with your friends/colleagues/family. You often don't get a lot of sleep, and that can also mess with your overall health.\n\nAs far as actual singing goes, there's actually no evidence that being overweight makes your voice bigger, lets you sing louder/over an orchestra, or anything like that at all. If anything, vocal scientists are finding that being in better physical shape actually IMPROVES vocal stamina and quality, just as being in shape improves performance in any physical activity.\n\nHOWEVER, being fat has some \"advantages\" when learning to sing classically. Some of the most common phrases to singers is that they need \"to be grounded,\" \"sing from their diaphragm\", \"have low-breath,\" etc. When you're carrying around a lot of extra belly weight, you have a constant tugging-down feeling. You have extra weight physically pulling the breath mechanism downwards. It can help in learning to sing.\n\nAlso, until recently, it didn't matter if you were fat and unhealthy. If you had a god-like voice, you could look however you want and still perform and get good work. Opera used to be (and, IMO, SHOULD still be) about the voice and music over anything else.\n\nNow that there is a big push for opera singers to LOOK like the roles they play (nobody wants to see a 300 lb Juliet anymore), many professional singers have taken to losing weight in unhealthy, crash diets. They lose weight so quickly, they are unable to feel the changes that happen in their body and take time to make proper adjustments. They no longer feel \"grounded\" because they don't have the weight actually \"grounding\" them. So their technique suffers, their voice gets \"lighter\", they have an existential crisis, say they can only sing when at a certain weight, and eat themselves into oblivion again.\n\nThose who lose weight responsibly and healthily rarely, if ever, have any problems singing.\n\n**TL;DR It's a big, mental game. Some singers think they can only sing at a certain weight and size, and actively try to stay large.**", "This is just a fun story to add to the discussion. I can't offer any scientific evidence. Only an anecdote told to my by my opera singer professor back in group voice. \n\nShe said that different bodies sometimes just produce different qualities of sound. She talked of a very large opera singer who had a large voice with \"girth\" to it. She said her voice had this immense warmth and depth to it that utterly entranced audiences. But due to health issues she absolutely had to lose weight. When she dropped a significant amount of weight, her voice's timbre seemed to have changed from deep and warm to somewhat brighter.\n\nPerhaps it was a hormonal change that caused this. Being healthier might have balanced out her hormones and maybe taken some pressure off her throat and various core muscles and organs. She was by no means any less talented, nor was her voice any less beautiful and graceful. However it had shifted in its previous qualities.\n\nI'm thinking that finding an ideal weight for oneself is most important. Breath control and health don't just spring from nowhere. You must be healthy to sing well and for long periods of time, and must practice all the time. And health is probably definitely most important nowadays.\n\nPerhaps being an abundant opera singer was a sign of decadence and wealth and maturity? Who knows.", "A significant amount of the best opera singers are not young. \n\nAt 30 years old, your only at the very beginning of your career. A succesfull pop singer can be 17 and thin as a stringbean. Not in opera. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2nouaf", "title": "why do mac users always give the advice of having more and more ram to improve your computer, while windows users say once you have 4gb, you're good (or 8 go for some things, but more than that is excessive unless you're doing something very highly specialized).", "selftext": "I'm moving over to Mac, and this point is just confusing. They say it gets an even bigger boost than an SSD. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nouaf/eli5_why_do_mac_users_always_give_the_advice_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmfhk0s", "cmfhk4a", "cmfhnvt", "cmfingr", "cmfjzdr", "cmfk21v", "cmfkjoz", "cmfkola", "cmfks0j", "cmfncb5", "cmfo93f", "cmfsb4h", "cmfuy5x", "cmfyqlk"], "score": [21, 56, 2, 2, 67, 2, 4, 11, 2, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Macs are often used for things like Photoshop and Video Editing etc. Those types of programs require a lot of ram to function efficiently. However, PC's also can also be used to run these types of programs and will need the extra ram just as much as the macs...  ", "Who is telling you this? I mean in reality more ram is always better. Over 4gb isn't wasted in windows anymore. It obviously depends on what you are going to use your computer for though. I'd say 8 gb is a good number now days but 4 would work fine if you aren't doing anything intensive. SSD is always a great boost to boot times but that's really all it adds. ", "The amount of RAM doesn't affect your performance if you don't use it.\n\ni.e if you have 16GB RAM and only use 2GB the excessive 14GB RAM is a a waste, although you can have a few GB as a safety margin.\n\nWhat will boost you performance is the speed of the RAM. Higher Hz = better performance. If you are doing heavier stuff i recommend 1600Hz or higher.", "Depends on your usage. Without knowing what you will use it for it doesn't make sense answering the question.\n\nAlso the boost an ssd gives you is very different from the boost of more ram.\n\nAn ssd lets you access your files and programs faster. Thats it. Ram lets you save more information at the same time in a very fast accessible memory (so yeah, faster than ssd). If you experience performance issues with a program an ssd won't help you. More ram or a better cpu will.", "Because neither of the users you are hearing this from know what the fuck they're talking about ", "My mac seems very ram hungry.  It will use as much as it can. ", "Pretty simple answer:  both groups giving you advice are morons.  If you're having performance issues with your machine, *regardless of platform choice*, you should diagnose the cause of the issue and act accordingly.\n\nIf you're buying a new machine, 8gb+ and an SSD are a no brainer.  Again, regardless of platform choice.", "Whatever might have been the case in the past, the advice you cite is wrong. (As I imagine you realize.) Both Windows 8 and Mac OS X 10.9 and up are very efficient with RAM. Four gigabytes is probably sufficient if you don't *know* a specific reason you need more. On systems where XP or even 7 had trouble running with 2gb, you'll likely find 8 runs better. Likewise but maybe slightly less so, OS X 10.9+ works well with 2gb. \n\nMac OS accomplishes this by, IIRC, compressing the content of RAM and using quite fast solid-state memory in nearly all current laptops and some desktops to handle virtual RAM needs; windows mostly by being very efficient --possibly due to it being designed to run on a wide range of hardware types, now-- with the RAM it does use - i.e. needing less to start with. \n\nThe reasons for this shift are interesting, I think. And here's what I suspect drove the changes: prior to these latest versions of OSs, RAM and CPU efficiency wasn't of high importance to manufacturers since...  \n  1. users were accustomed to updating components or systems every ~3 years, which is good for computer companies, so no incentive to make things more efficient  \n  2. Increases in CPU capability were easy and everyone could expect next year's PCs to be a lot more powerful than this years  \n  3. the current desires for longer battery life, less heat and power usage, and the ability to run full powered OSs on less than full powered devices weren't things enough people wanted. That is all now changed.  \n\nI now welcome the deserved criticisms on the accuracy of my post, of which I'm sure there are many.", "Most people running windows until recently (5ish years?) were running the 32 bit version which could only address (use) 4GB of ram. I haven't used windows in a long time, so I'm not sure which version went mostly 64 bit but I think it was Windows 7. Mac OS however went 64 bit a while earlier allowing the OS to use more than the 4GB.", "I'm a long time Mac (and Windows) user and while I would generally advise people to upgrade their RAM as the 'most bang for the buck' to speed up their computer operation, an SSD drive would be a close second.\n\nThe 4GB limitation would be a holdover from 32-bit OSes. My mac is only 32-bit and if I put in 4GB of RAM it will only address 3.5GB of it.\n\nThis sounds like one of those rules-of-thumb that has just become outdated.", "I am not sure about windows, but osx and Linux use ram to cache opened file data. Reading the same file a second time is very efficient if the data has not been evicted. Perhaps windows is not as aggressive in caching file data?", "Absolutely no PC users say that 4gb is all you need. 4gb is good if you play no games and only use the PC for writing up papers, very basic work programs, and browsing the internet. If you game the standard is 8gb and 12 is preferred. ", "OS X dumps everything into memory and keeps it there.  That is until you're out and it has to recycle. \n\nWindows returns it usually. ", "For most users, 4 GB of RAM is sufficient to run programs smoothly and efficiently. Depending on the application, 4 GB might not cut it. For example, photographers with heavy duty applications like Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator might require more memory if you're working with large graphics files.\n\nThe situation that you want to avoid is paging. Your computer (regardless of OS) virtualizes the total capacity of your RAM. So let's say you have 4 GB of physical memory ... this doesn't mean that you're limited to 4 GB. Virtualization allows the OS to allocate more memory (but is resident on your hard disk rather than DRAM). If you exceed the initial 4 GB of memory (stored in DRAM), the OS will start using your hard disk like RAM (but much slower).\n\nTL;DR: It all depends on your needs. Having more memory won't hurt and will help you avoid paging if you're using heavy duty programs."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1z06p8", "title": "what are some good and simple arguments that favour the use of nuclear power compared to fossile fuels?", "selftext": "I found another thread with som arguments against nuclear power, but being the non-nuclear-or-fossil-fuels-knowledge-guy, I wanted to know why nuclear power seems to be so popular within some groups (at least here on Reddit)? Why would it be good for me and the environment, if my country changed to nuclear power plants instead of fossil fuels?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z06p8/eli5_what_are_some_good_and_simple_arguments_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfpatsb", "cfpay73", "cfpclyp", "cfpimt9", "cfpm4fx"], "score": [19, 8, 6, 3, 2], "text": ["1) Less atmospheric pollution.\n\n2) Not as tied to transportation networks.\n\n2a) Allows building in more remote areas.\n\n2b) Not as subject to potential issues of transportation failures.\n\n3) Possibly perceived as not being reliant on foreign imports.\n\nedit: As per BunchOAtoms, 4) Long term total cost of ownership may be lower (i.e. it is supposedly [slightly cheaper to run](_URL_0_)).\n", "Pros:\n\n* It's incredibly efficient\n* It doesn't produce any pollution\n\nCons:\n\n* Small possibility of nuclear meltdown  \n* Produces nuclear waste, which is incredibly dangerous and a bitch to dispose of. Though, in the context of waste produced by fossil fuels, the volume of waste is substantially smaller.", "People have noted the Pros already, so I'll try to make a simple note about the misconception of the Cons:\n\nNuclear reactors are given a very bad rap and deemed as extremely dangerous by many anti-nuclear groups. They are actually very safe, but their problem is that when they fail, they can fail *very very* big. The two biggest well known incidents - Chernobyl and Fukushima - we extreme cases of misfortune (9.0 magnitude earthquake and a long list of slip ups and mistakes that bypassed all safety protocols and redundant fail-safes). It may be a 1 in a million shot for one of these things to fail, but they do eventually happen, and when they do... dayum. What a mess. \n\nBut with enough forethought on location and safety/environmental protocols, and then *not* ignoring those protocols, nuclear can be a 'green' way to produce energy. And cheap.", "The US Navy is a fantastic argument in favor of nuclear power.  They use it for most of their submarine and aircraft carrier fleet (and maybe other types of ships as well, I'm not sure) and have never had a single nuclear accident.\n\nOn the other side of it, the reason they've never had a nuclear accident is that they maintain extremely high safety and security standards.  It's hard to translate that level of regulation to the civilian world since special interest groups are always trying to weaken regulatory agencies to make their jobs easier and more profitable.\n", "Two cons that haven't been mentioned about nuclear generation:\n\nFirst, to build a plant requires locking up very large amounts of capital in a project that will take 10 years to build and start generating returns.\n\nYou just can't finance that. No investment bank will put their money in that when they could invest in shorter term projects with faster returns. That makes nuclear power very reliant on government funds to set up.\n\nSecond, in countries with a national or large-region electricity market, profitability is in the ability to ramp up production quickly to chase peaks in the real time electricity spot price. Baseload power generation is important but not as profitable. \n\nNuclear power is great for Baseload but terrible for peak chasing. That makes its profitability relatively low, which in turn discourages private investment into building the projects."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://world-nuclear.org/assets/0/16/660/4455/86239cf5-7772-4175-a2ec-a85f257bae0e.jpg"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "vxicr", "title": "scientology. i know next to nothing about it and would like to learn", "selftext": "I know next to nothing about it and would like to learn enough to formulate a valid opinion before jumping on the bandwagon of slagging it off. Cheers :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vxicr/eli5_scientology_i_know_next_to_nothing_about_it/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c58h1qy", "c58hmds", "c58hnzc", "c58iz9x", "c58j1xk", "c58j9ut", "c58kjcq", "c58lbdr", "c58lcc4", "c58leqc", "c58lhyh", "c58o55p", "c58ohbw", "c58qy8g"], "score": [60, 44, 9, 12, 2, 11, 9, 5, 5, 3, 45, 5, 7, 3], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nWatch this.  Seriously.", "L.Ron Hubbard was a mediocre science-fiction writer who got into a discussion with other writers about the gullibility of human beings. \n\nHe bet them that he could invent a completely nonsensical religion, and get people to take to take it seriously.  The result was Scientology. \n\nInitially,  the whole thing was a con for the rubes, and he was role-playing. However, the rule of unintended consequences took over, and he came to believe what he was preaching, and then the whole scam took on a life of its own. ", "if you pay them enough they'll let you be your own god.", "You know next to nothing. You're over-qualified for Scientology.", "It's not like they won't go to great lengths to explain it to you...", "It's all based on the platform of \"Self Help\" and talk therapy that is familiar to everyone, except its super twisted.  They get folks in by playing on the fact that most people have a difficult time with things in life; work, relationships, depression, feeling like you need meaning, learning difficulties, drugs, anger, death, coping with stress, existential crisis, etc, etc.  The Thetans or \"souls\" depicted in the South Park video are the **CAUSE** of all of these negative anguishing aspects of our existence.  Scientologists believe that they have discovered or rather have been gifted by Hubbard, the *ultimate* self help regime.  For them Hubbard is the guy who free'd himself from the Matrix, if you get my drift.  So the rest of Scientology goes through life trying to \"free\" as many other people as they can from this mental entrapment.  They do this by auditing, which is very similar to talk therapy, and they measure your readings with an E-Meter.  You go to classes, you meet new friends, and everybody is jazzed about life... you know the life that you are trying to fix when you started talking to these guys anyway... but I digress.  There is no morals to be taught because all moral depravity is rooted in the body Thetans.  There is no lessons to be taught other than lessons on how to get \"clear\" of your negative influences.  This all gets very convoluted as you dig further.  Keep in mind that the crazy stuff is introduced at a very slow pace, not all at once. \n\nTL:DR  New Scientologists are basically people who are seeking self help for their existential issues and they know nothing about space ships and Xenu.", "The important reason that people dislike Scientology is not because of their beliefs, but because of their subversive tactics.  I recommend reading through _URL_0_.   Here's a sample:\n\n >  In 1978, a number of Scientologists including L. Ron Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard (who was second in command in the organization at the time) were convicted of perpetrating the largest incident of domestic espionage in the history of the United States called \"Operation Snow White\". This involved infiltrating, wiretapping, and stealing documents from the offices of Federal attorneys and the Internal Revenue Service\n\nSimply put, they are incredibly corrupt and will do whatever it takes to gain more power and influence.  Quite a few countries actually consider Scientology a cult.  France fined the church $900,000 a few years ago.  _URL_1_ has more info on international views of the Church of Scientology.\n", "They believe that humans evolved from clams living in the sand, after being mutated by the radiation from all the nukes they dropped on the sleeping bodies they placed around volcanoes.  And all of us evolved clams are infested with the ghosts of those nuked space people.  You can read more about their wacky beliefs [here](_URL_0_).", "Could start here:  _URL_0_", "Imagine if a sci-fi writer wrote a story that people liked, then suddenly decided it'd make a good cult. Charge money to advance in the rankings, and convince people with big egos and spare money to join (celebs).", "Coming from a Scientologist family myself, I will try to explain my understanding of the beliefs in a non-biased manner. I do not have a perfect grasp on it, as I do not practice it myself (I'm Agnostic, and my parents know you can't force something like religion on someone who doesn't want it).\n\nI'll say this up front: I do not know it the Xenu is true or not. I've never heard the name Xenu it mentioned in my house or any times I have been dragged along to the local Mission. From my own viewpoint, it doesn't seem to fit in with what I've seen of the group, but it could be that it's kept for higher-ups.\n\nNow, a quick disclaimer: I have never done any of the religious Scientology courses, such as Dianetics. I have, however, been shown the movie a couple of times in the past, so I will summarize the beliefs to my understanding. There may be information missing, or some things I have misunderstood. I do not represent Scientology in any way. Now, let's get onto it. I'll begin by explaining some terminology I know.\n\nScientologists believe in the Thetan, which is comparable to a soul. It's the \"essence\" of the person (more or less the personality, from what I can gather), not having to do with the body or anything else physical.\n\nScientologists believe that the mind is split into two parts: The Analytical Mind, and the Reactive mind. The Analytical Mind, as you might have guessed, is more or less conscious thought. It's what you would use to read this post, or do a simple mathematics problem. The Reactive Mind, however, is more along the lines of instinct and thoughts and feelings you do not have control over. An important thing to take note of is that they believe that the mind is ALWAYS recording what is going on, even if one is unconscious. (Ironically, it's my observation that the idea of the Reactive Mind is almost identical to Freud's theory of the Unconscious Mind, which most Scientologists I know eschew.)\n\nOne thing you will hear about when talking about Scientology are the Dynamics. They are \"urges towards survival\" though many different mediums. The first Dynamic, for example, is through yourself. Cleaning yourself, feeding yourself and getting yourself better when you're sick are all examples of surviving through your First Dynamic. These Dynamics expand outwards from yourself (think of concentric circles, with the First Dynamic at the heart), moving to survival through your family and reproduction, to survival though groups (such as your basketball team), to mankind as a whole. From there the dynamics begin to cover more broad areas, such as all living things, all physical matter (called MEST, Matter Energy Space and Time), spirits, and the Supreme Being (or whatever you want to call it, also known as the Infinity Dynamic).\n\nNow, it is Scientology belief that people are all basically good. They want to do good acts and survive with their fellow beings along all eight Dynamics. The reason this doesn't happen, however, is because of aberrations in their nature called Engrams. Engrams are caused when some form of traumatic experience happens to a person, such as getting sick, getting hurt, or other such phenomenon. Engrams can frequently be made when one becomes unconscious.\n\nEngrams cause people to act in weird, irrational ways. For example, let's say a person became sick by eating a hard-boiled egg that had gone bad. From then on, he would have an Engram stemming from that event, and become sick when confronted with another hard-boiled egg, whether or not he remembers that original sickness.\n\nThis is where auditing comes in. Now, I have never been audited, but I will do my best to explain what the end result is. The goal of auditing is to become \"Clear\", or to get rid of all engrams from your current life, including ones that happened while you were in the womb (called pre-natal engrams. I have my own personal criticisms towards this theory, but I'll keep them in check. They are explained by your Reactive Mind recording the sounds and sensations outside the womb, which your mind can figure out when it becomes more developed.). There are different courses in different areas after you become Clear, but I know little of them, outside the fact that you eventually do auditing for engrams outside this life.\n\nI could tell a bit more about some nomenclature that they have, but I feel like that's a basic understanding of Dianetics and their basic beliefs. I would be happy to tell about my own experiences with Scientologists, and the Study Technology they use, as well as any other questions you may have.\n\nEdit: TL;DR: Basics of Dianetics, Auditing, and other beliefs that I can't explain in a TL;DR sentence. Go read it if you want to be a bit more informed.", "Back in the 1950s a lousy science fiction writer, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard started a pseudo-scentific medical self-help scam called \"Dianetics\". In this new \"science\" of his, you would be \"audited' by someone running something called an \"e-meter\" an extremely simple biofeedback device measuring current and heat on the skin of the palms of the hands of the person holding the device's \"cans\". Think cheap bar-room novelty love-tester type device, that's basically what these things are.\n\nAccording to Hubbard all of man's problems in life, and even most mental and physical ailments are caused by an abundance of \"thetans\" which Dianetic auditing can \"clear\" you of if you simply sit in a room, and let a Dianetic auditor ask you a whole lot of questions.  \n\nWell as it turned out the suggestible people he was managing to scam into this sort of therapy got even more suggestible and easy to manipulate when he has them telling them their deepest secrets, or even admiring to things they * never* actually did by asking lots of probing and leading questions. In just a few years Hubbard had managed to get an awful lot of very devoted followers, and he had all the material he needed to emotionally blackmail them if they decided to call it quits.  As Dianetics grew, Hubbard decided to make it an outright religion for tax purposes, and he began writing new materials such as the Xenu-story, and coming up with all sorts of barely coherent writings on philosophy and morality, slowly turning Dianetics into  a quazi-religious belief about alien ghosts.\n\nThere's an awful lot more to the story than that, and frankly the more you learn the more disturbing it gets - Hubbard was almost certainly some sort of psychopath, and that sort of behavior is still institutionalized in the church since his death, but that's basically it in a nutshell.", "They're a lying, evil cult. \n\n[Operation Snow White](_URL_0_)\n\n[Operation Freak-Out](_URL_2_)\n\n[Documented wrongful death](_URL_1_)\n\n[Another tragedy](_URL_3_)\n", "The founder Hubbard literally said \"If you want to get rich, you start a religion.\" That's pretty much all you need to know."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104274/what-scientologist-actually-believe"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_status_by_country"], ["http://www.xenu.net/"], ["http://www.xenu.net/"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_snow_white", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elli_Perkins"], []]}
{"q_id": "8ksgf3", "title": "if women were able to get rights in time periods as old as ancient greece, why did it become so hard for them in more modern times such as when america was already established?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ksgf3/eli5_if_women_were_able_to_get_rights_in_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dza4s87", "dza4voc", "dza6oql", "dza6zq5", "dza7eme", "dza8e3i", "dzakqz4"], "score": [34, 10, 3, 107, 3, 6, 2], "text": ["you mean voting rights? If i remember correctly, women couldn't vote in ancient greece, just free men", "Because humanity is far from a perfect collective with a perfect memory, and a lot of social achievements get badly wrecked over time due to the actions of single people or interactions with other cultures. So social factors like progressive women's rights effectively vanishes as their parent country loses power or vanishes.\n\nCountries get invaded and prejudice and suppression become features of the replacement culture. Others are wiped out by natural disasters. Still others are taken over by totalitarian dictators that stomp on anything that they feel threatens their power.\n\nReligion has been a cause too, because many are highly oppressive since their roots are from male-dominated historical societies. There's amazing pictures from Iran from just before the Taliban's insurgency, and women appear to have many very standard civil liberties like driving cars and walking around wearing modern fashion. After the imams took over, all of that disappeared.\n\n", "On top of what people are saying, there were also some things we call rights now that were more of privileges during early America. One major example is voting rights; most women didn\u2019t want them, because it was a privilege afforded to men as part of the draft. It was all interconnected, so unless they wanted all women to be draftable getting the right to vote wasn\u2019t straightforward. I don\u2019t know of many others off the top of my head, but I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a few other examples where they struggled to get a \u201cright\u201d that was tied up as something they wouldn\u2019t want", "Women in ancient Greece  had very few rights. In Athens, foreign women were able to own property, but the number of such women was very small. Athenian women did not own property and had virtually no participation in public life. They were not citizens and were part of their master's (father's or husband's) household. They married very young and had limits on education. Women in some other Greek states (Sparta for instance) had higher status, but not equality by any means.\n\nA few (possibly legendary) exceptions to these rules cannot be taken as evidence of general status of women, which was very low through out the classical period.", "We need to understand the background. \n\nMost importantly, women were incapable of sustaining themselves financially. Pretty much all jobs required intense physical effort, which women are incapable of.\n\nAlmost all the jobs women do today were nonexistent in the past. No healthcare, no state education, no services like hairdressers and manicure (except for the very limited aristocracy), no secretaries nor clerks, no machines to operate. Even traditionally female jobs like cooking and sewing were very limited in numbers because nobody could afford to outsource them (most clothes would be made in-house for the family, for example).\n\nAs such, a woman needed somebody to support her. Thus marriage, which legally obligated a man to support a woman until death do them part. It was an exchange of female child-bearing abilities for male provider ability.\n\nA woman could remain independent and own property if she remained unmarried. It was possible for aristocrats who inherited fortunes or widows running successful businesses but otherwise nearly impossible.\n\nSexual rights were a natural consequence of the above. In those times, sex meant pregnancy. There was just no way around it. As such, parents were making sure their daughters aren't going to get pregnant without a man to support her. Remember, women would marry within their teenage years, which means they were \"controlled\" by their parents for actually shorter time than currently. Also, young people are just dumb and easily abusable. We don't let them drink, drive, make serious financial decisions, own guns or make their own choices in almost anything. That was no different at the time of the past. Once married, they were obviously legally obligated to not cheat on their husbands.\n\nLastly, voting rights. Nowadays the state has crept into our lives to totalitarian levels but in the past, people have much more freedom. Your vote, originally, would give you a little bit of control over three main aspects: taxes, the spending of those and foreign affairs (wars mostly).\nNow, women didn't (in general) make money nor paid taxes. Women did not fight in wars. In such case, why give them a vote over something that only affects men? \n\nNow, back to the original question: why would women gain votes in Athens and in the 20th century West? in both cases, women were capable of sustaining themselves financially. In Athens, because they could own slaves and in the West because they could work in the newly established light industries.", "Not sure by what you mean by \u201cwomen were able to get rights\u201d but you are wrong and comparing apples to oranges. ", "Every time society breaks down it is just reset to survival of the fittest/right of the strongest, meaning the most physically able just establish dominance."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "poba5", "title": "Question about computing", "selftext": "I am not sure if this is r/askscience worthy or not but in a lot of media when it is assumed to be \"futuristic\" or involving digital technology something always [sounds like this](_URL_0_) why is that? \n\n I remember my grandma had a dial up modem and I would use it for AOL but the modem sounded nothing like *that*.  Did they sound like that early on, and exactly what made them make noise to begin with?  Considering computers currently do not make that noise (or have evolved past it) why would they in the future?\n\nIs that actually the data or is it only making noise so that it is clear to humans that it is actively operating?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/poba5/question_about_computing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3qy7c1", "c3qzz0t"], "score": [14, 3], "text": ["It's just a \"computer sound\" clich\u00e9 of that time that really didn't have anything to do with actual computers. (I think it was generated on an analog synth) Before that, you had the clich\u00e9 of the [Westminister font](_URL_0_) being what _all_ computer/futuristic text should look like, and before that you had the clich\u00e9 that computers had to have lots of blinking lights everywhere to work. \n\nWe've got different ones today. Like the 'rule' that computers searching a database must visually display everything they're looking through.\n", "It's just a storytelling form, like bad guys wearing black hats in old westerns.  \n\nComputers are mostly boring boxes, so you had to give them blinking lights and whirring noises to make them look more like computers.  An audience who had never seen a computer after a while could go, \"Ahhh, that's a computer doing computer things that are somehow important to the plot.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WKCGPxkG-U&amp;t=0m47s"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_%28typeface%29"], []]}
{"q_id": "1z113i", "title": "how come eyebrow, eyelash, arm hairs, ect only grow to a certain point, but when you shave them they grow back? how does it know it's been shaved? why don't they continuously grow like head hair?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z113i/eli5_how_come_eyebrow_eyelash_arm_hairs_ect_only/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfpj8cx", "cfpj9dv", "cfpjtp5", "cfpmiha", "cfpnym9", "cfpoeho", "cfposbu", "cfpoz4b", "cfppdnt", "cfpprbq", "cfpqhtm", "cfpqsv7", "cfpryc4", "cfps1z2", "cfpsgtt", "cfpsr5p", "cfptf5x", "cfptrov", "cfpu7na", "cfpu9jy", "cfpvpj6", "cfpwvyr", "cfpxgbl", "cfq14t9", "cfq17hr", "cfq17jx", "cfq1q4s", "cfq2oq7", "cfq34wz", "cfq4x4l", "cfq5n56", "cfq6nmx"], "score": [23, 1469, 69, 2, 1282, 2, 19, 5, 3, 15, 4, 5, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["every type of hair folicle is genetically programmed to produce a certain type of hair.  But hair in general has 3 stages of \"life cycle\" to keep you body supplied with the proper amount of hair only roughly 1/3 of your folicles are active at one time.  So when you shave its not necessarily the hair you shaved that is growing back, its the next group going through the growth cycle.  Facial and head hair is more on the continuous growth, thus producing hair that doesnt stop at a certain length.", "Hair length is dependent on how long each hair lives in a certain area. On your head hair can live for years before it dies and eventually falls out. Arm and leg hair might only last a month or so, so it stays short.\n\ntl;dr\nYour hair is always growing, it is how often it falls out that makes it stay short, or allows it to become long. ", "The rate at which hair grows is fixed. The rate at which hair follicles die off is also fixed. Given an arbitrary amount of time, these two rates establish an equilibrium so that hair in a region always appears to be the same length. \n\nIf you shave off a whole bunch of hair, now the system is knocked off its equilibrium point. The growth that appears to be faster than normal is just the same growthrate that it always has been, you just don't see the decay+ loss because you artificially clipped all that out.", "Michael from VSauce comes to your aide [here!](_URL_0_)", "Hair follicles go through different life stages in a cycle.\n\nFor one cycle, the follicle will be growing a hair. For the next, the follicle just lets the hair already there chill out. Then the follicle will let the existing hair fall out and remain hairless for a while and repeat.\n\nHow long each of those cycles lasts is controlled by a few different hormones, which is why hair density, length and color will change based on where you are in your own life as hormone levels change.\n\nFollicles in different areas of the body react differently to different levels of hormones. So hair on your arm spends very little of its life in the Grow New Hair portion of the cycle, and hair on your head is almost always in the GNH portion. \n\nTL;DR\nYour hair just knows to grow for a certain amount of time, then chill out for a while and fall off. It has no clue how long it or its buddies are.", "I asked this question like five times in various subs over the past few months and never got a single response. It's nice to finally know.", "I occasionally have very fine hairs that appear out of nowhere in places where I don't normally have hair. For example, one day a 1\" long hair, again super fine, that was in the middle of my forehead.  Only happened once.  Another time, it happened on my ear.  Do hair follicles just fire up at random for no reason?", "And why does one of my eyebrow hairs always grow out to be three times as long, twice as thick and white compared to all my other eyebrow hairs? it started when I was 8. Does this happen to anyone else?", "This is the first eli5 I've been genuinely interested about. That is such an interesting question for some reason. ", "You should go to r/askscience with this question. There's a lot of b.s. here.", "YOU GOLDEN PRINCE YOU. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE TWEETED THIS ALMOST EXACT QUESTION. I AM SO HAPPY SOMEONE IS ASKING THE REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IN LIFE.", "It doesn't \"know\" anything. It's dead cells. Each hair follicle is genetically programmed to grow a certain length, then fall out. The hair on your head has a long fuse, and will grow to about your waist before falling out if you don't cut it, but it won't go down further like cousin It or Rapunzel. Same is true for beards in men. The other hairs on your face and body have short fuses so they only grow a bit before falling out.", "The mechanisms that control hair growth sometimes break or do not work right. \n\nThe pubes and the hair on my feet don't stop growing (for the most part). So I shave my feet and pubes, regularly.\n\nI let my pubes grow out for about a year when I was a teen. I had to part my pubes towards the end to keep from getting piss on my pubes. [This is a nice visual of what it was like.](_URL_0_) I felt like the Moses of pubes. ", "I can't help but feel I should have known the answer to this.", "Read everything. Still don't know the answer to question. Want to shave eyebrows. ", "I don't think they stop growing.   The hair on your arms, etc., continue to grow, it's just that they fall off and you don't see them because new ones are there to replace.", "I believe those facial hairs are continually growing. They just fall out sooner than head hair.", "There are different types of hair-vellus, terminal, androgenic affected pubic hairs-each is given more or less support and bloodow by the cells beneath the skin. That hair has its own timetable for turnover-and will grow its rate of growth for however many weeks, months, years, then it will rest and shed.  That length of time creates the hair's terminal length.", "Note - in female and male eyelash/eyebrown is about the same, not true for other body hairs - why? eyelash/eyebrow are not Androgen dependent, hence when people go bald d/t plain ole \"Male Pattern Baldness\" they don't lose eyebrows/eyelashes", "I got the eyebrows that try to grab small animals and children.  Good to know they will always be like that for me! ", "I don't think my pubes got the memo that there's a max length they're supposed to grow to.", "It doesn't know. It just keeps growing, falls out quickly (short hair) or slowly (long hair), and repeats.", "I'm actually saving this because I wonder it pretty often and I will probably forget this explanation if anyone I know ever happens to ask. Great question for ELI5!", "Once again. search function.\nThis was already asked.\n_URL_0_\n\nI'll get downvoted into oblivion for this but seriously....\nPeople need to learn how to internet...\n", "What about those random hairs that are like an inch longer than others?", "Lmao i love the \"how does it know its been shaved?\" XD\n The hair has a mind of its own lol", " >  eyebrow hairs only grow to a certain point.\n\nSon, you clearly ain't 50 yet. ", "Quick note: the hair on your head has a set length, too, we just never allow most hair to get to that point. ", "Every hair on your body has a predetermined length. Once a hair reaches that point, it no longer grows-- this includes the hair on your head.\n\nIt is a popular misconception that the hair on your head continues to grow after you've died, as an example. The illusion is caused by your head shrinking as your body decays.", "Each hair follicle has a certain length of time that it grows a hair before it goes into a resting period and the hair falls out. They don't all reach their resting period at once so you don't go bald periodically. This determines the maximum length each hair can grow, assuming it isn't cut or pulled out.\n\nThe hair on your head has a longer active period than the hair on your eyebrows, armpits etc. So your head hair can grow longer.\n\nI'm approaching senior citizen-hood and I notice that my eyebrow, ear and nose hair seems to grow longer than it used to do!", "Why is so much of this thread deleted?", "You shave your eyelashes?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/kdrTQlClb08?t=3m9s"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://images.monstermarketplace.com/novelties-and-party-supplies/afro-puff-wig-black-897x1000.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nb3an/eli5_why_does_headfacial_hair_grow_indefinitely/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "joa4k", "title": "Why is it when you look at a scratched surface in sunlight, the sunlight on the reflected surface seems to make a circle pattern? ", "selftext": "Hold up a scratched CD case in sunlight. Is it just...because circles or something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/joa4k/why_is_it_when_you_look_at_a_scratched_surface_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2dr4vj", "c2dr783", "c2dr4vj", "c2dr783"], "score": [13, 8, 13, 8], "text": ["[Try organizing the scratches better.](_URL_0_)", "Because the far larger number of scratches that *aren't* aligned in a circle of some diameter don't reflect sunlight into your eye.", "[Try organizing the scratches better.](_URL_0_)", "Because the far larger number of scratches that *aren't* aligned in a circle of some diameter don't reflect sunlight into your eye."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html"], [], ["http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "74zw4l", "title": "It's been said that being clean shaven only came into style because soldiers from World War I had to shave regularly in order to properly wear their gas masks, and the habit stuck after the returned from the war. Is there any validity to this assumption?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/74zw4l/its_been_said_that_being_clean_shaven_only_came/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do2m6kw", "do2omq9"], "score": [13, 78], "text": ["I\u2019m hoping that posting this isn\u2019t against the rules, but said by whom? I\u2019ve never heard this claim before, and it\u2019s not as if renaissance art\u2014depicting life well before the Great Wars\u2014only features men with facial hair. ", "This presupposes two things: firstly, that soldiers wore beards before WWI, and secondly, that they shaved for convenience in the field. For the British Army, both are false. \n\nIn the years before WWI, moustaches were essentially required by regulations. The regulations in place in 1914 stated that \n\n > The hair of the head will be kept short. The\nchin and the lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers, if worn, will be of moderate length.\n\nThis meant that, for soldiers old enough to grow facial hair, they were wearing moustaches. In civilian life, however, being clean-shaven was already fashionable - some men got into trouble for shaving before leave. Holmes mentions an incident where two officers from the Accrington Pals, who had shaved before going on leave, were upbraided for their choice. The reservists and new volunteers had never paid much attention to the regulation in any case. \n\nDuring the war, this regulation would change. During the summer of 1916, an officer was court-martialled for shaving his upper lip. In civilian life, he worked as an actor, and felt that growing a moustache risked a rash when he shaved it off at the end of the war, one which could jeopardise his ability to find work. This defence failed, but he was saved from being cashiered by the intervention of the adjutant general at GHQ, Lieutenant General Sir Nevil Macready. Macready was not a fan of his own moustache, and so quashed the sentence and had regulations changed to allow for the upper lip to be shaved. However, shaving in the trenches was not always practical. While the men did the best they could with razors and whatever hot water they could find (or even tea), many found it impossible to stay clean-shaven. Beards were, thus, not uncommon in the front line. In 1917, Joseph Maclean wrote, describing conditions in his trench, \u2018I haven\u2019t washed or shaved for a week and look like a Boche prisoner\u2019. However, when they went out of the line, men found shaving to be an essential part of the process of cleaning themselves of the dirt of the trenches. \n\nSource:\n\n*Tommy:\nThe British Soldier On The Western Front 1914-1918*, Richard Holmes, HarperCollins, 2004\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "35ogzw", "title": "what socialism actually means.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ogzw/eli5_what_socialism_actually_means/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr6bhff", "cr6biqr", "cr6bqd1", "cr6bt1b", "cr6es3g", "cr6h4ed"], "score": [8, 2, 4, 21, 20, 2], "text": [" >  almost entirely as a bad thing\n\nThat's not necessarily the case in many countries in Europe, where it's mostly viewed as another political orientation; like the green, conservative, liberal or christian-democratic movements; which exist in many European countries.\n\nBut I suspect that this perception is equally inaccurate in it's depiction of socialism in it's original form", "Socialism at its rawest form is everyone collectively trying to help each other.  However, just like democracy where everyone is suppose to get one vote, it doesn't necessarily work out in its rawest form.  So what you end up with are different takes on Socialism.\n\nSocial democracy is probably what you have heard the most of recently if you have heard of Bernie Sanders and references to Nordic countries.  In Social democracy the economy is still ran in a capitalist economy, meaning private ownership (still some public however), and companies ran how the owners want,  but government usually taxes them heavily to provide social programs like education, housing, healthcare, minimum wages and so forth. \n\nMarxism-Leninism is the other style of socialism.  Where one person or a small party is in charge as a dictatorship (so no removing them), the economy is ran under communism ideologies, so  the  government owns and controls most of the needs of production, wages, food supplies and everything. \n\nAnd then you can find other types as well, like China which is a dictatorship, that has allowed capitalist ideologies into the countries, but any powerful company is usually going to have a communist party member inserted into their company to watch things.  ", "Socialism means that the means of production (factories, farms, etc) are controlled by the workers.\n\nSo how can that manifest in practice? Well you could have market socialism, for instance. In this case, you'd have a free market just like you do now, but a company would be jointly owned by everyone who worked for it, and the leadership would be elected democratically. If democracy works for states, why not companies? Another option might be a centrally planned economy with a democratically elected government. The \"democratically elected\" part is key, because if the people doing the planning aren't held accountable to the workers, then its not really worker control of the means of production. This is why many socialists would say that the Soviet Union was 'state capitalist' - the means of production were privately controlled by a single ruling party.", "EDIT: Done\n\nSocialism is the social/democratic ownership of the means of production.\n\nIt's considered bad because socialism took over a third of the world and was the biggest threat to the American way of life since Nazi Germany, and even then that was a European war.\n\nThe rallying against socialism movement started when the US put the CPUS (Communist Party of the United States) on trial, and arrested them due to fears of an American Bolshevik revolution which would topple the capitalist system. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis event destroyed socialist leadership. It was very public and served as a warning to ALL socialists in America.  This is the origin of socialism's lack of precedence in the US and its hatred.\n\nSocialism is no longer practiced by any countries except Cuba.  Europe is not socialist, but a Social Democracy.\n\n\nNow, I want to explain what the definition of socialism means, and I am a socialist and have been for a few years now.  \n\nSocial/Democratic ownership.  This means that society as a whole has ownership, and society can democratically control whatever they own.  Think of a table of kindergarteners and they have a box of crayons in the middle.  This type of ownership would look like 5 of the kids voting that they use yellow to color the sun, while 3 kids vote for the sun to be colored green.  Because 5 > 3, they color the sun yellow. \n\nThis is opposed to capitalism's private ownership, where instead of society as a whole having ownership, it is one person or a group of people.\n\nNext, means of production, the thing that society is owning.  Means of production means any facility, resource, or tool that can create a physical and tangible product.  Factories, assemblies, oil, uranium, trees, maybe even basic tools like a hammer and nails. (though sometimes the tools are considered too insignificant to qualify)\n\nUnder socialism, personal property still exists.  Family photos, heirlooms, personal belongings, and cars are things you can still privately own because they are NOT means of production.\n\nMoney does not count as a means of production because it does not directly create a physical or tangible product. Rather, it is used as a medium to exchange for products created by the means of production.\n\nOk, so thats the definition. Next I am going to talk a bit about the different types of socialism.\n\nLeft Libertarianism: Anarchism and socialist minarchism.  Contrary to popular belief, anarchism denotes a socialist economy unless specifically stated to be anarcho-capitalist.  These socialist ideologies actually make up the most of the socialist community right now.  Most socialists are libertarian socialists.  \n\nDemocratic Socialism: A type of socialism where a representative democracy like what all western civilizations have now is used alongside a socialist economy.  Contrary to another popular belief, Europe is not democratic socialist, and one of the more famous examples of this was the Paris Commune.\n\nMarket Socialism:  I'm not a market socialist and I'm not too clear what the exact mechanics are here, but socialism does not always mean planned economy.  This ideology wants socialism AND free market to coexist.  Market socialists, feel free to expand on this.\n\nMarxist Socialism:  I don't really want to call this a well fleshed out ideology, because Marxism was a critique of capitalism, not really an ideology of socialism in itself.  However, Karl Marx did vaguely go over his idea of socialism. \n\n > Karl Marx had said in his works that socialism is ONLY possible if the transitioning country is INDUSTRIALIZED and DEVELOPED.  \n\n > His thought process on how society would transition was something like this:\n\n > **PreCap(feudalism?)** \n**- > ** \n\n > **Capitalism(industrialization/developing)** \n**- > ** \n\n > **Proletarian Revolution** \n**- > ** \n\n > **Socialist state** \n**- > ** \n\n > **Abolishment of state(communism)**\n\nLeninist Socialism/all derivatives(Marxist Leninism, Maoism, etc)/Communism:\n\nBEFORE I explain this, I must first note something that even socialists get wrong. The word 'communism' is a capitonym.  This means that its definition changes based on capitalization.  'C'ommunism is what I will be talking about right here.  It refers to Leninist states or states with a vanguard/Communist Party.  'c'ommunism on the otherhand, means stateless, classless, moneyless society.  It is the end goal of most socialist ideologies, including the one I am going to talk about here. \n\nSo, Leninism/Communism is when the 'best of the best' of the workers take control of the government and establish a Communist or Vanguard Party, which should mean a technocracy because the government is controlled by the workers, but this elite group in the government, the state, owns everything as opposed to society. This is justified by saying that the technocratic government is representing the interests of society, so it is social and democratic ownership by an extension. Unlike Marx's idea of socialism where socialism can only be achieved in a developed capitalist state, Leninism was practiced ONLY in undeveloped, newly capitalist or precapitalist states. Lenin seemed fine with this, but he agreed with Marx that the best place for revolution was in a developed country. (which at the time of the early 1900's was Germany)\n\nAdditionally, when the 'conditions' are 'right' (world socialism has been achieved) the state 'withers away' and the end goal of 'c'ommunism is achieved. \n\nIn Leninism, there is supposed to be a counteracting 'checks and balances' system called the soviet councils.  These are councils across the country made up of workers.  Just like how in the US the courts scale all the way to the Supreme court, the councils scale all the way to the Supreme Soviet.  This was supposed to exist to counteract the power of the Communist Party.  When Stalin came along, he consolidated his power by stripping many of the capabilities of the soviets, including the Supreme Soviet, so that the checks and balances was weak to nonexistent.\n\nNext, Social Democracy:\nSocial Democracy technically means 2 different things.  It originally meant socialist reformism: the idea that socialism can be attained through reforming of the current system. Social Democracy calls for the reform of our system to democratic socialism. This was unpopular at that time (1800-early 1900's) as most socialists were revolutionaries and believed that the only way for socialism to exist is through a revolution. (democratic socialism was still popular, but most supporters were revolutionaries)\n\nNow? Social democracy means a powerful welfare state and a government that actively looks after their citizens.  Progressive taxes, free healthcare and education, some state ownership, all hallmarks of a social democracy.  This definition of social democracy is NOT socialist, nor does it actually want to be socialist.\n\nI'm not going to talk about how socialism could be good or bad for Americans, or how if it works well with other countries, because it seems to boil to opinion and semantics on what 'works well' and 'good and bad' means.  If someone wants to share their opinion, yeah go ahead, but OP you will always get a different response. \n\nI will finish this off with a real ELI5 example to help understand socialism: \n\n\n", " > The concept of socialism is incredibly warped in the west, almost entirely as a bad thing.\n\nNo, not in the West. Just in the US.", "There's no more distorted view of what \"socialism\" is than what you have probably picked up in the American public. \n\n\n**Neither Europe nor any other 1st world county is socialist** or even anywhere near to being socialist. The idea that socialism could be a threat to American freedom is just one big fake concept that some people are holding the American public hostage with. \n\n\nYou might have heard that Europe is socialist because we get free health care, maternity leave or lots of paid days off. It's almost embarassing that politicans feel like they can actually get away with non-sense like that; maybe they even believe what they are saying but that would be even worse, I guess. These benefits are just as much part of our society as the government buildings roads and highways."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_Party_leaders"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2pt9wb", "title": "besides actually getting people there, what other problems does science need to overcome before humans could live on mars?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pt9wb/eli5_besides_actually_getting_people_there_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmzteiz", "cmzto7x", "cmzu6ch", "cmzu6h6", "cmzyor8"], "score": [6, 4, 9, 2, 21], "text": ["The next big problem is sustainability. The ISS has regular shipments of supplies to keep its residents with sufficient food, water, and breathable air. Such shipments would be more difficult on Mars (thus the importance of finding frozen water on the planet). I'm pretty sure the technology exists (using hydroponics to grow plants to scrub CO2 and generate oxygen), but it is still a huge logistics problem to get such an thing set up and running efficiently enough to sustain life between shipments from earth.", "They need to be able to start the reactor to melt the glacier deep within the mountains. C'mon Cohaagen, give these people air!", "Improved radiation shielding is a big one. The amount of radiation is less of a concern than the prolonged exposure the astronauts would be subject to on a 500 day mission. ", "Air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, shelter from cosmic radiation to live in, air pressure to keep their bodies from exploding; all the basic things the Earth provides are missing on Mars except for gravity and sand to stand on.\n\nWhile Blue Mars is a fabulous science fiction concept, and a great trilogy, it's a logistics problem that's beyond our current capability to solve.", "Oh, let's count the ways that all those science fiction dreams of huge colonies on Mars aren't quite as feasible as the self-appointed futurists seem to think:\n\n--The radiation. Once you leave the protection of the Earth's magnetic field, you begin to die of radiation exposure. Just a \"fast\" trip to Mars is enough to significantly increase your risk of developing cancer. To live on Mars full-time, you'd need shielded habitats, covered in, say, a meter of concrete. But how do you intend to BUILD those habitats? Schlep cranes and bulldozers to Mars? And how do you propose to shield people when they go outside (or when they're building the habitat)? A shielded habitat also means no windows to look out of and no sunlight coming in. Hope you brought lotsa Grow Lights or a fuckton of vitamin D. Actually, even full Martian daylight doesn't contain enough sunlight to be healthy to humans.\n\n--The atmosphere. Mainly CO2, very low pressure. A colony will need air. Now, if you have plenty of water, and plenty of energy (solar power probably ain't gonna cut it here, that's a whole other can-o-worms), you can break water down into hydrogen and oxygen...but air is almost 80% nitrogen, and that's something Mars is noticeably short on. The ISS requires regular resupply of both oxygen and nitrogen, but that's low Earth orbit we're talking, not Mars (and oh yeah, by the way, for practical reasons, you can only launch a vehicle to Mars from Earth about every two years).\n\n--The gravity. The gravity of Mars is only about 38% that of Earth, so long-term colonists are going to find that they lose significant muscle and bone mass, even with exercise. We have no idea what the long-term effects of living in reduced gravity are.\n\n--The soil. You wanna grow food in dirt on Mars? Then it sucks to be you. The soil on Mars contains toxic levels of perchlorates. That's good news if you want to open a planet-wide chain of dry cleaning stores, not so much if you wanna live with the stuff. Be careful not to track any back into the habitat when you go outside (to, um, frolic in the deadly radiation), because that shit will start to build up in the atmospheric system. For a permanent colony, keeping it from building up in the habitat is essentially impossible.\n\n--The habitat. We simply don't know how to build a self-sustaining habitat on Earth, let alone someplace where the environment wants us dead. Not a clue. We don't even know *for sure* that it's possible on a small scale. Resupplying a small colony, let alone a large one, from Earth would be ruinously expensive, and perhaps not even technically feasible.\n\nAnd those are just the big ones.\n\nOn top of all this, howzabout a reason it SHOULDN'T be done? I mean, aside from the obvious that it would cost hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars, yet serve no useful purpose beyond the gee-whiz factor (we can do the science for about a *tenth* of the cost with robots).\n\nContamination. We have had a few tantalizing clues about past or even current life on Mars, but the moment we plant the first muddy human bootprint there, it's game over for science. It's hard enough to sterilize a robot without reducing it to a pile of ash, but people are walking contamination machines. It is simply not possible to put people there and NOT hopelessly contaminate the environment. After that moment, any discovery made of life on Mars would come with built-in doubt about whether it was pristine, or the result of Earth contamination.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fusoc", "title": "What does it take to send something into orbit?", "selftext": "Where can I read up on the methods and the physics of getting something into orbit.\n\nAlso, could a science enthusiast with a low budget possibly pull it off?\n\nJust teach me all you can about sending something into orbit of a planet from the surface of the same planet.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fusoc/what_does_it_take_to_send_something_into_orbit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1is5f9", "c1isudz", "c1it3eg"], "score": [3, 2, 9], "text": ["Unfortunately, I highly doubt that a regular enthusiast would have the money or effort to spare to put something into orbit. You could make something that could reach \"space\" like [this](_URL_0_), but putting something into orbit is a completely different story and much much more difficult, since it would need significant propulsion and energy in order to accelerate it fast enough to maintain orbit.", "You might want to try your hand at [Orbiter](_URL_0_), a spaceflight simulator designed for maximum realism. \n\nIt may seem a little intimidating at first, but it's not very hard to learn the basics. And once you get into a simulation you can see how different kinds of maneuvers affect an orbit in real time. It's hard to explain in words, but actually kind of intuitive when you get used to it.", "You need two things to achieve orbit: altitude and velocity. Altitude because you need to be above enough of Earth's atmosphere to prevent aerodynamic drag from causing your orbit to degrade. Velocity is what keeps an object in orbit. The easiest orbit to get to from Earth's surface is roughly 200km altitude and about 8.5km/s speed. Naturally, if you have a device capable of getting to 8km/s the altitude won't be much of a problem.\n\nHere's the trouble, the rocket equation is exponential and orbital velocity is significantly higher than the exhaust velocity of chemical rockets. Imagine a rocket accelerating up to a speed until it runs out of fuel, and then imagine time running backwards as the rocket slows down and fills up with fuel. Then divide up each tiny little time slice of the rocket accelerating, backwards in time. Consider the last little time slice, where a small amount of fuel is used to add a small amount of speed to a mostly empty rocket. Then imagine the previous time slice, where the same amount of fuel adds just slightly less speed to the rocket, since at this point it is heavier (due to the weight of that last drop of fuel). And then the slice before that will accelerate it even less, due to the weight of the last two drops of fuel, and so on. For higher and higher speeds it requires exponentially more fuel to get to those speeds.\n\nA rocket engine using a specific propellant combination has a characteristic exhaust velocity (in reality exhaust velocity will vary over a range for any given rocket engine, but for simplistic analysis this model is sufficient). The rocket equation relates the amount of fuel it will take for a given rocket engine to propel a single stage vehicle through a specific change in velocity (aka delta V). Specifically the rocket equation is: \n\nmass ratio = e^(delta-V/exhaust-velocity)\n\nwhere \"mass ratio\" = (dry mass of rocket + fuel mass) / dry mass of rocket\n\nNote that the empty mass includes the cargo. Now, let's take some characteristic numbers: using aluminum as a structural material it's possible to achieve a 17:1 mass ratio for LOX/Kerosene rockets (the Saturn V first stage achieved 16.9:1 using 1960s era technology). And LOX/Kerosene rockets have an exhaust velocity near 3km/s (2.989 for the Saturn V first stage again). Reverse the rocket equation and you get: delta V = ln(mass ratio) * exhaust velocity, or about 8.5 km/s for our figures here, which is only just barely enough to reach orbit (given minimal losses due to aerodynamic drag and fuel wasted keeping the rocket hovering without adding much speed), but it doesn't give any margin for a payload.\n\nAs you can see, this isn't such an easy business. This is why multi-stage rockets are common. You start off with a really big rocket and a fairly low delta V, which gives you a lot of margin in mass ratio, that margin is used for payload. You launch the rocket and then let the payload loose on its own, free of the dead weight of the empty rocket (which was needed only to hold all the fuel). Except the payload is itself an entire rocket stage, which kicks in its own share of delta V. And so on, up to as many stages as you can manage (2 or 3 is generally the sweet spot for Earth orbit with modern chemical rockets). As in the above example you take a Saturn IC (2,286 metric tonnes fueled), which could barely reach orbit on its own but with negligible payload, and you put a Saturn II on top of it (491 tonnes), and you put a Saturn IVB on top of that (119 tonnes), and finally you put your payload on top of that, and then you can put over 100 tonnes into low Earth orbit, instead of almost nothing, because you're shedding unnecessary weight throughout the flight.\n\nIn order to get a really tiny payload into orbit you still need a pretty big rocket, the Vangaurd 3-stage rocket had a payload of only 20 pounds, yet it's liftoff weight was 10 tonnes. You'd be hard pressed to do much better in your backyard."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/balloon-camera-duct-tape-shoot-earth-pictures-space/story?id=10210658"], ["http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/home.php"], []]}
{"q_id": "7y0j18", "title": "why are spain and portugal under franco and salazar considered \"merely\" authoritarian and not fascist like italy and germany under mussolini and hitler?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7y0j18/eli5_why_are_spain_and_portugal_under_franco_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ducoa2g", "ducoa6c", "ducrckn", "ducw7ms", "ducz0ft"], "score": [11, 56, 10, 8, 3], "text": ["They became our allies against the communists after the war. Fascism becomes acceptable under those circumstances.", "Fascism doesn't mean \"very authoritarian\". Rather, it's a particular flavour of authoritarianism \u2014 the communist dictatorships are most definitely not fascist, as anti-communism is one of the pillars of fascism!\n\nFascism was, amongst other things, anti-religious (though they eventually toned that down), whereas both Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships appealed strongly to a catholic base. Fascism is anti-conservatism, while both Franco and Salazar were quite conservative.\n\nWhile they were both right-wing dictatorships (and, therefore, shared more similarities with Fascism than they did with communist dictatorships), they didn't quite go along with all the tenets of Fascism.", "Franco was more or less a fascist, just a heavily Catholic one. Spain had a fascist party - the Falange - and Franco merged the fascist party with the Carlist party to create his movement. The Carlist party was very conservative and actually based on the idea of \"Spain was better when ruled by a king\" and so this mixture of arch-traditionalism and fascism marked the early years of his rule. \n\nLike other fascists, Franco was skeptical of capitalism, but softened this after the war.  But he was an authoritarian that cared very much about a unity of the spanish people. Most other forms of fascism focused on war and imperialism, and Franco did not, but that may have been more out of weakness than anything else; Spain was in no position to expand the empire. \n\nSince fascism was certainly not a good thing to trumpet in 1945 Europe, Franco made efforts to distance himself from fascism. ", "Fascism comes from the roman word Fascis which means a bundle. \n\nEssentially, it's the ideal of a unified, strong, monoculture.  Fascism is the idea that one particular group represents an ideal, that people not belonging to that group are detrimental to that ideal, and that the most important thing is to be unified.  It believes in unquestioning acceptance of the norm and of authority so long as that authority is in the same culture.  It believes that essentially anything goes towards outsiders. Violence, war, murder is OK as long as it benefits your group.  Questioning, wavering, disobedience, free-thinking is antithetical.  Fascism is about Autarky- self-sufficient, self-reliant, strong, ignoring tradition, ignoring the weak, banding the strong with the strong, improving themselves by excising the parts they feel bring them down.\n\nAuthoritarianism is about who controls power.  If a government is authoritarian, they are going to be making rules unilaterally, and enforcing them strongly. This doesn't mean fascist, it just means authoritarian.  On the other hand, a fascist government is necessarily authoritarian because a key concept is the unquestioning loyalty to authority. \n\nFascism is when you start to side with your faction regardless of the outcome, agree with your faction regardless of the truth, call those who disagree with your faction traitors, distance yourself from, hate or exile people within your faction for expressing views opposite to the prevailing thought, feel that your importance is tied to the importance of your faction, become unwilling to accept individuals from outside of your faction, willing hurt individuals outside of your faction without remorse but are unwilling to tolerate any injury to anyone within your faction without exception (though if the injured individual is found to be not worthy of being in the faction after the fact, then it's OK). \n\nIf you start to parrot the lies that your leader says, and attack anyone who calls the leader out on their lies.  If you start to dismiss anyone who disagrees with the leader as not a \"real\" member of the faction and work to distance them from the faction, if you think that your faction is strong, and the mere presence of outsiders is weakening the faction, and that they should be removed, punished or killed.  These are the things that lead to fascism. \n\nAuthoritarianism is about how a government acts.  Do they make the rules themselves? Do they enforce them harshly? Are they unwilling to compromise? Do they ignore the will of the people if it doesn't suit them?", "The easiest answer is that wiki is simply wrong. Portugal and Spain were absolutely fascist. They just adapted fascism to their own cultures and thus differed somewhat from the Italian Standard. But saying that makes them not fascist would be akin to saying Maoist China wasn't communist because Mao adopted his own twist on Marxism-Leninism. \n\nThe harder answer is... More than I can type from the phone. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2qtx5z", "title": "why does the ride share app uber catch all the heat while its competitor lyft seems to be slipping under the radar?", "selftext": "Maybe I'm just missing it, but it seems like Uber has faced lawsuits, shutdowns, and even banned from cities while Lyft has remained unspoken about when they are both a ride share program. Are they different in some way that I'm missing? Am I missing all the news about Lyft catching the same heat as Uber? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qtx5z/eli5_why_does_the_ride_share_app_uber_catch_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn9gkub", "cn9h6dy", "cn9hdwv", "cn9o72q"], "score": [6, 6, 8, 2], "text": ["Same reason that McDonalds catches all the heat even though Burger King and Wendy's are basically the same - they are the biggest/best known player.\n\nUber was first, Uber is the most well known... so Uber has to lead the charge.", "No, Uber is under fire for a lot of bad business practices. Lyft has been operating cleanly and has pulled from cities that deny it access to function in.\n\nUber's CEO is also a giant dick, so there's that. It's like if the CEO of Mcdonald's was a douche, lied about pink slime, etc while Burger King is sitting there chilling like \"we have low fat fries now\".", "I could be mistaken, but my perception is that the founder of Uber is a bit of a loudmouth jerk who gets himself in the papers for all the wrong reasons, while the founder of Lyft keeps his mouth shut.", "1) Uber is bigger 200+ markets vs. 65 for Lyft\n\n2) Uber is already international, Lyft isn't yet\n\n3) Uber has become synonymous with the segment\n\n4) Uber has been more aggressive at challenging regulations and flouting restrictions (or at least is seen to be)\n\n5) Uber has been caught conducting some shady business practices and had a few PR gaffes/CEO has a bad rep. \n\n6) I think Lyft was a bit more proactive with background checks and inspections and things (although they are probably comparable in that dept. now).  I could be wrong on that. \n\n7) Lyft has managed to get better PR as a \"friendlier\" and more \"community\" oriented program.  \n\n8) Uber has not handled the issue of surge pricing well, which has made people angry. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "56lcx8", "title": "how did the united states fail when to trying establish a \"democracy\" in iraq?", "selftext": "what went down? were people not qualified to start a democracy? conspiracy?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56lcx8/eli5_how_did_the_united_states_fail_when_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8k94f5", "d8k9di7", "d8k9i95", "d8ka5rq", "d8ka8zo", "d8kad2i", "d8kafxw", "d8kb5f2", "d8kugrv", "d8kv7ds"], "score": [11, 4, 18, 13, 8, 2, 12, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Sadly enough it was a simple lack of oversight. The political climate in the US made it such that a hands-off policy was the most beneficial stance to take, and that resulted in a very unstable region finding itself with a power vacuum that was far too valuable to be ignored. The vultures did what they do and are still doing it to this day.", "Technically, there is a democracy in Iraq. Currently there is a parliamentary system of government in place. They have issues controlling some parts of the country but for the most part it's working.", "Iraq has a severe religious and ethnic divide. The democracy that was established had no systems in place to prevent that from becoming a problem, so the majority party filled the government with people of the same ethnicity and religion (Shia) as the leader. Those of other ethnicities and religions (particularly Sunni) felt that they had zero representation in government, and rebelled.\n\nA democratic Iraq would require a pretty complex constitution that enshrines representation for minority sects and ethnicities, but that was never put into place.", "According to some (admittedly subjective) first-hand accounts I read, another factor is that democracy is a really new concept to most of the people. The US didn't develop from a dictatorship to a democracy in a single day when they signed the Declaration of Independence. Britain was already a constitutional monarchy and most of the way to a representative democracy at the start of the American Revolution. Abrupt shifts in political stance are usually very difficult to make. The overthrow of fascism after WW2 was kind of an exception. So when the soldiers who were in charge started trying to help with establishing the new government, you had language and cultural barriers on top of ideological ones. Imagine that you were told \"I know you've spent your life being told that your voice counts, but that's not true. The only person who can decide things is this guy we call a King! Isn't that fantastic that now you don't have to worry about any of that stuff any more?\" Wouldn't that take some getting used to?", "America's version of Democracy is pretty unstable and not a good model for nation building. And the US has a perfect lack of success in creating stable democracies. The Iraqi's gave it a good go but with the State department functionally complicit in ensuring US companies could thwart the peoples will at their whim, they were basically on a hiding to nothing.", "It was a lack of understanding of the region and the politics.  It was a very inspirational goal to push for a democracy in Iraq.  Islam is not like Christianity.  Islam is a social, religious and political system.  Changing the political system of any nation is a difficult task as it is, changing a political system that is tied to the religion of the nation is even harder.", "Listen to this. It's about an hour, super entertaining,and pretty informative: _URL_0_\n\nTldr: fuck putting competent people in charge. We'll put people who agree with us on everything instead.\n\nMore than anything else, we put ideology before competence and did things that, at the time, were incredibly stupid, let alone with 20-20 hindsight.\n\nTldr tldr: paul bremer is a fuckheaded chucklefuck who shouldn't have been put in charge of organizing a gangbang at a brothel, let alone a warzone/country.", "The truth is the US administration believed that they would be welcomed with open arms and people would just go back to normal. \n\nHowever all of the infrastructure of Iraq was maintained by Saddams party. While they removed him from power, they also removed that infrastructure. For a point they had to hire back people to get stuff done. \n\nThey also didn't realize when your country has gone to shit, people look out for themselves. In the case of rampant looting, sanctioned for a while by the US. ", "Having served in Iraq as a political and military intelligence analyst and focusing on the issue for over a decade, I can tell you that this is an immensely nuanced issue.  But what it can be distilled down to is time.  You cant stand up a functioning and healthy democracy in just a few years.  Let alone in the midst of horrific violence, economic collapse, and sectarianism.  \n\nFor instance, the US constitution wasn't fully implemented until 1789, 13 years after the declaration of independence.  And as messy as the revolution was, it paled in comparison to the crushingly complex socio-economic turmoil in Iraq.\n\nI can dilate further on anything regarding the issue if anyone is curious about specific things.", "Last I checked, Iraq's democracy was looking pretty good when we left.  After we departed, the Shia in power immediately turned on the Sunnis and the whole thing went to hell.  Most people forget that in 2009 and 2010, violence was at an all time low and Iraq was actually in pretty good shape."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://thedollop.libsyn.com/122-the-iraq-war"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aeakmm", "title": "How does a computer know what \"type\" of data is being stored?", "selftext": "Suppose that I store a 32 bit \\`int\\` in memory. AFAIK, it will find 32 bits of space in free memory, and then write the serialized data into that spot in memory and give you a pointer to where it assigned it.\n\nHowever, when this is read from memory, how is the computer determining that this is an integer exactly? Where is that data stored? If I access that pointer and read 32 bits, how is it known to be an integer, and not a string/char/some other data type?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aeakmm/how_does_a_computer_know_what_type_of_data_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["edo8t15", "edo9a7a"], "score": [27, 2], "text": ["The short answer is:  it doesn't.\n\nEvery piece of information stored on a computer is represented as a series of bits.  There is no difference between the bits used for a number versus the bits used for a letter versus the bits used to represent sound data or graphical data.  It's just bits, and at the storage layer the computer has no semantic knowledge of what those bits are for.  They're just bits in an address space.\n\n\"Knowing what to do with specific sets of bits\" is the purpose of the instructions that make up a program.  If you were to hand-code a program in assembly, you need to keep track of what memory you are using, what those memory addresses are, and what sort of data you have at each memory address.\n\nProgramming languages make this somewhat easier.  In a typed language (like C, C++, Java, C#, Ada, and many, many others) you tell the compiler what type of information is stored in a given variable (an abstraction for a memory location), and the language provides certain functionality to ensure you respect that.  Procedures and functions in typed languages have specified input and output types, and the compiler can ensure that what you pass in is of an appropriate type.  Due to this _type safety_, a given subroutine can typically feel safe as to the types of operations and representations it uses for data satisfy those of its type; if they don't, the compiler can/may emit an error or warning, warning the developer that they've tried to use a variable flagged as one type for a different use.\n\nFor many compiled languages (such as C), the type information is lost after the code is successfully compiled.  Some more complex typed languages may keep metadata in memory to describe the expected types of stored data, so that dynamically loaded code that isn't linked at build time can also enforce type restrictions (Java does this, for example).  Even here, however, this typing is enforced by the instruction code for the language runtime -- it isn't something intrinsic to the computer itself.\n\nBy way of an example, here is a very brief piece of C code that stores the letters ABCD as a series of bytes, and then displays them both as a string and as a numeric value^0:\n\n    #include  < stdio.h > \n    \n    int main(int argc, char** argv) {\n      char* data = \"ABCD\";\n      printf(\"Print address %p as string: %s\\n\", (void*)data, data);\n      printf(\"Print address %p as unsigned int: 0x%X\\n\", (void*)data, *(unsigned int*)data);\n    }\n\nThis output from this if you compile it is as follows^1:\n\n    Print address 0x10185df5e as string: ABCD\n    Print address 0x10185df5e as unsigned int: 0x44434241\n\nNote that in both cases, we're outputting the data from the same address.  The unsigned integer output is being displayed in hexadecimal to make it easy to differentiate the bytes that make up the different letters (44, 43, 42, 41, which in [UTF-8](_URL_1_) correspond to 'D', 'C', 'B', 'A'^1.2).\n\nHTH!\n\n-----\n^0 -- note that the code contains some judicious use of _casting_, whereby we can tell the compiler to treat our _data_ variable as different types of data -- in this case, as a pointer to text (``char*``), as an address (``void*``), and as a positive integer value (``unsigned char*``).   \n^1 -- your output may be slightly different due to two factors:\n1. You may get a different address, depending on your underlying operating system and hardware platform, and\n2. The integer representation of \"ABCD\" can differ based on the \"[endianness](_URL_0_)\"your CPU.  Endianness determines the order in which bytes are stored and read in a word by your CPU; little-endian processors like those by Intel will display the unsigned int value as above, whereas big-endian CPUs would display it as ``0x41424344``.\n", "It's in the way that you write a program.  \nNo matter how abstract and high level your program is (minecraft redstone logic, perhaps), to actually run, it will eventually be translated into simple machine instructions like \"add 8 bit words at adresses 1 and 2\". There are different instructions for adding bytes and adding 32bit ints for example."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness", "https://www.utf8-chartable.de/unicode-utf8-table.pl"], []]}
{"q_id": "4hwnpv", "title": "how can antidepressants cause depression?", "selftext": "In pretty much every antidepressant commercial, while they list side effects, \"worsening depression and suicidal thoughts\" are almost always mentioned. Why is that, if the entire point of the medication is to prevent it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hwnpv/eli5_how_can_antidepressants_cause_depression/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2sz8zo", "d2szeck", "d2t0ho8", "d2t2yg6", "d2t2yqe", "d2t3xge", "d2t4ucl", "d2t55g4", "d2t5hz0", "d2t69se", "d2t9mor", "d2te6ft", "d2txcae"], "score": [531, 7, 38, 14, 3, 9, 4, 2, 2, 146, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["Because of the effect they have on the brain.  Once you start taking them, they start giving you more energy for a brief period *before* they start enhancing your mood.  So if you were suicidal before, you'll still be suicidal for a while, but now you may also have the energy to want to *do* something about it.\n\n[More info.](_URL_0_)", "We don't know.\n\nWe don't even know how antidepressants cure depression.  They just seem to have a positive effect, so we keep using them.  We know that they mess with the neurotransmitters in your brain, but the fact that the anti-depressant effects are delayed and unpredictable from person to person suggest that this is an indirect downstream effect.\n\nThat's why there's a trial-and-error period for a person starting depression medication.  There are a ton of anti-depressants, and some of them work in different ways than others.  Some raise the level of one neurotransmitter, others lower the level of another one, and so on.  The resulting effects vary widely, and certain drugs in certain people can make the whole situation worse.  Changing to a different drug may or may not help.\n\nWe really just don't understand the brain right now.  We're getting better at it, as newer scanning technology is coming out that's allowing us to really dive into research.  Maybe in five or ten years we'll have a real answer to this question.  But brain science is still in its infancy.", "I thought the same thing when I started taking meds for my depression. Along with how these other explanations, here's mine. Some anti-depressants are more like a mood stabilizer than anything. They make you feel normal, not sad anymore. The thing is, it also cuts into your ability to feel super excited and happy. I would always get worsening suicidal thoughts after about 6 months because of this. ", "Antidepressants are still very much trial-and-error. Say one antidepressant opens up more receptors for dopamine. Some people have an inefficient neutron firing process when it comes to delivering dopamine, so for them, more receptors is great. However, other people might be completely fine with their dopamine regulation, and opening up more receptors upsets the balance, sending a message to the brain that says 'these receptors aren't being activated; thus, we're not getting enough dopamine', even when the brain's overall dopamine levels are good.", "Because they aren't \"anti-depressants\" in the way people think they are. They are not \"happy pills\". They remove depression by removing all feelings to a degree. For some people this can make them apathetic towards activities and things that give them their last bit of joy in life, which in turn causes a worsening of depression.", "Some people have depression that makes them numb, lethargic, apathetic, anhedonic, zombie-like, going through the motions while others have depression that leaves them in a vortex of sadness, anxiety, self loathing, guilt, bed-ridden and in crippling emotional pain.\n\nSNRIs and NDRIs are often better for the former, and SSRIs are better for the latter. Sometimes the former group does well on stimulants, i.e. ADHD meds like Adderall or Ritalin. Sometimes the latter group does better on antipsychotics. Then you have older Antidepressants like MAOIs or TCAs. Above all, lifestyle changes (usually with the guidence of cognitive behavioral therapy) and physical health (diet/exercise) do the most. I'm trying to fight some depression I've realized I've had since puberty. I'm quite the zombie.", "Well, this has to do with a number of things but let's just touch on the basics.\n\nYour brain has little chemicals called neurotransmitters. There are many different neurotransmitters,  and each one has different purpose. They jump between brain cells through a synapse. After they accomplish their job, they return to the original brain cell they came from.\n\nWhen we use drugs, specifically mood enhancing drugs, like cocaine for instance, they have an impact on our ability to complete the \"reuptake\" process, and the neurottansmitter (in this case dopamine) stays in the post-synaptic cell.\n\nWhen this happens with dopamine you get really happy!!!\n\nBut, your brain stops recognizing the need to produce more dopamine, because it's being supplied by the drugs. This causes withdrawal,  or a negative physical or mental reaction to losing the provided comfort of a drug.\n\nWith anti-depressants specifically, the neurotransmitter effect doesn't always work the way it's supposed too, and often times you can see a reduction in the production of dopamine or serotonin,  without the \"high\" given by the drug.\n\nAlso, if you are misdiagnosed as having a deficiency in something like dopamine when you don't, the drug can cause you to become deficient accidently, so the pharma companies cover their asses by laying that on the doctor for misdiagnosis.\n\nThere is a lot more complexity to the neuroscience that takes place here, but this is a basic run through of the major issues.", "Antidepressants give you more chemicals (serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine) in your brain. A lack of these causes you to have a decrease in control of your emotions. Increasing them can help you can back some control, but the thoughts that you do have in your depressed state dont go away. Without proper behavioral therapy to combat and challenge your old way of thinking, the antidepressants just give you some short term relief which will eventually susbisde. But if you have persistent negative thoughts, they dont go away with antidepressants alone and you can just continue to spiral down because even though you have more energy and control, you also have mostly negative thoughts. You gotta get a different, more positive outlook on your situation otherwise you're still just having negative thoughts.", "I've suffered with depression for a long time and the first time I've felt tablets have actually worked was when my doctor prescribed an SNRI. It's side effects were grim, not in the sense it increased my willing for suicide but the nausea and headaches were absolutely crazy. \nI have the night sweats and I still have days were picking myself up is a challenge but I'm far better than I have ever been. Much less angry for certain too!\n\nI can't actually remember if increased suicide tendencies are a major side effect of Venlafaxine but I could understand if they did, they sometimes have a numbing effect on emotions to start with.", "A lot of these comments are missing an important point, which is that two common symptoms of major depression are quite paradoxical: suicidal ideation and apathy. few but those who have experienced it can truly understand the type of physical dullness that this sort of apathy really entails. it's not just feeling *bad* or *sad* but having zero motivation to do anything. so you might feel like continuing to live is pointless, but actually killing yourself is a huge change of state, it's an amount of effort major depressives may find difficult to muster. \n\nThe way my psychiatrist explained it to me is that after a couple of weeks of medication, enough motivation might return that I would be ready to actually do something about my depression. luckily I had a wonderfully supportive therapist and what I did was to slowly return to my life. but for many people the action they take at this point is a suicide attempt, because if life is miserable, the logical solution is to end it. having a sudden feeling of motivation, but not yet having a sustained period of happiness, after months of major depression is dangerous. SSRIs can be a very effective treatment but the nature of the disease is that it is very important to keep track of and understand the emotions that psychoactive drugs can produce. ", "My mom was on them forever. I'm not sure if they helped. My impression of what they do to someone is; they take the emotional aspect out of life. She started taking them and she wasn't such a train wreck, but she was never happy either. It kind of gave her a mediocre base line lifestyle, where she could function and be a part of society... but never really improve her position. It took away her crying, but also took away her ambition to acheive. \n\nAnyway the whole point... antidepressants don't free you from oppression, they only hide it. They don't make you feel good, they make you feel less. They don't do anything but take away from your ability to feel, which is everything that life is about. ", "imagine you are suicidal. But you are also depressed. you are so depressed that you cant even muster enough energy to kill yourself. then you take some medicine. this medicine makes you feel just good enough that you now have enough energy to follow through with your plan to kill yourself. ta-da, your anti-depression medication has successfully given you the boost you need to kill yourself. \n\nSame deal with it maybe making you more depressed. when you are rock bottom, things cant get worse because you lack the capacity to think of how they could get worse. but when you take antidepressents, you may find yourself with enough energy to now think about how things could be worse, and thus you become more depressed.", "Research shows that some depressive symptoms are alleviated in some individuals by *reducing* serotonin.\n\nSSRIs address a deficit of serotonin (which inhibits neurons from firing as far as I know) as the cause of depression. This is clearly not the case universally speaking. Therefore when you mess around with the serotonin re-uptake in the brain you get **??? who knows ???**."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.camh.ca/en/hospital/health_information/a_z_mental_health_and_addiction_information/antidepressant_medication/Pages/antidepressant_medication.aspx"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "68xn6f", "title": "what is jury nullification, and why do people refer to it as a \"get out of jury duty\" free card?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68xn6f/eli5_what_is_jury_nullification_and_why_do_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh246ud", "dh24bys", "dh257lp", "dh25g64", "dh2kxzx", "dh2nsa5"], "score": [33, 7, 7, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["There's no legal mechanism to overturn a not guilty verdict - no amount of proof will do it. So essentially, a jury that decides they don't want to punish a criminal can just refuse to do so, even if shown video of him doing the deed and narrating a confession.\n\nIf you tell a prosecutor that you've heard of this power and plan to use it, you're not likely to be selected.", "Jury nullification is when, despite there being overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the jury renders a verdict in favor of the defense. Suppose there was a man on trial for murder, and every piece of evidence presented proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty. But, the jury decided to find in his favor. Because of the double jeopardy protections of the 5th Amendment, if the jury nullifies and finds the defendant guilty, the State can't bring those charges against the defendant again. This includes both a new trial or appeal. ", "This is a little off topic, but part of the reason that jury nullification has a bad rap is because it was used during the civil rights era to get white supremacists out of jail. An all white jury would say that they weren't guilty of a crime (that they clearly *were* guilty of) so that they would walk.", "It is kind of a loophole judges and prosecutors would rather jurors not exploit.\n\nJurors cannot be held accountable for their decisions.  This is necessary, otherwise, they might be afraid of the consequences and not vote their conscience.  This also means that if a jury wants to, they can simply ignore the law.  That is what the nullification is, they can side aside the law when they reach their verdicts, and not face any consequences.\n\nThis isn't necessarily a good thing.  In the past, jury nullification has been used to disregard unjust laws, but it has also been used to protect lynch mobs.  But since there is no way to avoid it, so judges and prosecutor keep quiet, and defense attorneys are not allowed to bring it up.  If you mention it during jury selection, you will likely be excused.", "Jury nullification isn't exactly laid out in the law book as something that can be done. However, there are a few laws that exist that, when combined, allow for the jury to find a defendant not guilty of a crime despite irrefutable evidence against the defendant.\n\nThe first statute is the double jeopardy. When a defendant is found not guilty, they cannot be tried again the same crime.\n\nThe second one is that the jury cannot be punished for whatever decisions they choose to make. Meaning that they can choose not guilty for a defendant despite all the evidence, and the jury member will get away scot-free.\n\nThe third is that a judge cannot overrule a not guilty verdict. A judge can only overrule a guilty verdict from the jury, but not the other way around. So if the jury choose that the defendant is not guilty, despite all the evidence, the judge cannot overrule that.\n\nThe reason why you will be barred from jury duty if you give a hint of knowing about jury nullification is that it is literally gaming the system.", "'Jury nullification' in a trial is when the jury believes the facts of the case would mean the defendant is guilty, but decides to find them not guilty anyway. (Or vice-versa, but then the defendant can appeal.) It is in most countries considered a fundamental right and power of the jury.\n\nThe practice evolved over the centuries, primarily in English law. Those in favour of it regard it as a safeguard against unjust laws being imposed by a government. For example in the USA when alcohol was prohibited, juries would often refuse to convict people for 'crimes' involving making and transporting alcohol.\n\nOf course the government that writes the laws doesn't like this. The right of jury nullification remains, it may be protected by the country or state constitution, but the government attempts to suppress knowledge and use of it. During the process of jury selection, indicating that you know about or would consider using jury nullification will normally cause you to be removed from the set of possible jury members."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8t7s1p", "title": "why are some peppers so hot that they require people to use gloves when handling/eating/cooking with them, yet those same peppers are safe for us to eat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8t7s1p/eli5_why_are_some_peppers_so_hot_that_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e15eqt8", "e15er6m", "e15kx5x"], "score": [8, 54, 10], "text": ["You use gloves when you're handling them because they're freaking hot and you don't want to get the heat all over you. It's not that its dangerous, it sucks to get hot on your hands, then in your eyes, and then on your junk when you have to go pee later.\n\n", "They wear the gloves to help prevent the juices from getting into eyes and other places they shouldn't get, which are extremely sensitive and will suffer permanent damage. Your stomach on the other hand is designed to eat stuff that may be dangerous for your eyes (think lemon juice). ", "The science behind hotness of peppers is actually really interesting. Capsaicin, the active 'hot' ingredient in peppers activates the channels on our tissues which signal heat (as in fire). Capsaicin literally sends your brain a signal of burning! This can happen to your tongue, skin, and eyes because we have these heat sensing channels pretty much on every tissue which comes in contact with the environment.\n\nIt's worth mentioning that theoretically capsaicin doesn't cause permanent long term damage, but may cause extreme discomfort, however there HAVE been some anacdotal cases of permanent damage caused to people that did stupid things (like eating a raw whole pepper with over a million scoville for a bet).\n\nEDIT: I noticed I didn't answer the original question entirely. Capsaicin and chili peppers are safe to eat because while they activate the heat channel, that's all they do. They don't actually burn us, just send the brain a signal of heat.\n\nSource: Biochemistry Masters student studying taste mechanisms (although hot is NOT a taste!)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7lv0ze", "title": "Is a tree's photosynthetic efficiency affected by its age?", "selftext": "I am curious to know if a tree becomes more or less efficient at converting carbon dioxide into oxygen as it ages.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7lv0ze/is_a_trees_photosynthetic_efficiency_affected_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drq4pv8"], "score": [2], "text": ["There is a noticeable trend of decline in forest photosynthesis as the canopy ages. A group in Malaysia looked at this using maple and ash trees, trying to control for size vs. age to determine whether its just size-related causes or age-related causes (or both) that lead to photosynthetic decline. They reported that while size VASTLY decreased CO2 exchange rate, age did not. \n\nUsing grafting based techniques, they grafted older meristems onto saplings such that the tissue developing the leaves was aged, but these grafted leaves wouldn't be at full size. \n\n >  \"We found that leaf-level net photosynthetic rate per unit of leaf mass and some other leaf structural and biochemical characteristics had decreased substantially with increasing size of the donor trees in the field, whereas other gas exchange parameters expressed on a leaf area basis did not. In contrast, these parameters remained almost constant in grafted seedlings, i.e., scions taken from donor trees with different meristematic ages show no age-related trend after they were grafted onto young rootstocks. In general, the results suggested that size-related limitations triggered the declines in photosynthate production and tree growth, whereas less evidence was found to support a role of meristematic age.\"^1\n\nInterestingly, a different group in Southwestern China did however find that older leaves (just separated into old leaves / young leaves category) had noticeably smaller stomatal conductance (the rate of passage of carbon dioxide entering, or water vapor exiting through the stomata of a leaf) and net assimilation of carbon in a species of oak. There was no effort, however, to control for leaf size.^2\n\nSo, aging might be vastly different tree to tree, but it's hard to specifically say that the age of the leaves, outside of their sheer size has a large effect on photosynthetic efficiency. \n\n[1]. **Abdul-Hamid H, Mencuccini M.** Age- and size-related changes in physiological characteristics and chemical composition of _Acer pseudoplatanus_ and _Fraxinus excelsior_ trees. _Tree Physiol._ 2009 Jan;29(1):27-38. doi: 10.1093/treephys/tpn001. Epub 2008 Dec 3.\n\n[2] **Zhou H, Xu M, Pan H, Yu X.** Leaf-age effects on temperature responses of photosynthesis and respiration of an alpine oak, _Quercus aquifolioides_, in southwestern China. _Tree Physiol._ 2015 Nov;35(11):1236-48. doi: 10.1093/treephys/tpv101. Epub 2015 Oct 8."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "65nyid", "title": "why was the historical development of beer more important than that of other alcoholic beverages?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65nyid/eli5_why_was_the_historical_development_of_beer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgbt8rg", "dgbtg7z", "dgbtp5l", "dgbvtgy", "dgbvtwh", "dgbx4b4", "dgbxd6k", "dgbyqhr", "dgbyrji", "dgc05j2", "dgc0tb6", "dgc246o", "dgc2izw", "dgc2s1f", "dgc36v0", "dgc3stn", "dgc3zcx", "dgc71n4", "dgc7tq0", "dgcdf5g", "dgcfjcw", "dgchlp3", "dgcljil", "dgcm3h1"], "score": [136, 122, 902, 3, 1954, 51, 32, 7, 9, 223, 5, 33, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 7, 345, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Because you can provide weak beer to people in times of clean water scarcity without getting them too drunk.\n\nOld castles have records of beer quotas for men women and children. The beer was very weak by today's standards. If memory servers correctly it was 2 pints for children, 4 for women and six for men. \n\nChina has a rich tea and porcelain culture for similar reasons.", "Fermentation of liquids and the creation of low-alcoholic beverages was revolutionary for several reasons.\n\nFirst-off, it's due to the fact that the creation and treatment of alcohol cleansed the liquid. Early man had no reliable access to clean, drinking water on a consistent basis sometimes, and as they did not understand the method of treating water, or boiling it to cleanse out impurities and kill bacteria, the creation of drinks like Mead and Beer allowed for a reliable way to create healthy, safe drinking fluids that could be drunk regardless of the water content (to an extent).\n\nNext, its storable. Water, back in the millenia ago, could easily become tainted. Leaving out barrels filled with water could inadvertantly introduce pests or contaminants that would ruin an entire barrel of fluid. Low-ABV liquids made contained just enough alcohol to make long term storage a viable means of transporting or storing liquid. This was especially important when out at sea, as water would only be good for 2-3 weeks before becoming contaminated by some means. A barrel of mead however, would stay good for weeks, or months, and if properly stored could keep a crew hydrated long after water would have gone bad.", "So, some real booze historians could give you more info (consider asking r/beer or r/wine), but to me there's two ways to take this.\n\n1) Beer isn't the sole important alcohol in history, you're forgetting wine. Wine dates back thousands of years, and in the AD calendar the importance of wine can't be underestimated (especially considering the rise of Christianity). There are monastic orders that have made beer for centuries (Trappist, others), but to my understanding wine has been an essential part of Catholic/Christian ceremonies for a long, long time. Wine even did relatively well during prohibition in the US because of church usage. So, I would argue wine is equally important, if not more.\n\n2) Include beer and wine, same question. My best guess would be that a lower alcohol percentage drink allows people to still be functional after consumption, where something like Brandy is going to make someone drunk, worthless, and a social outcast (you can't function when you're hammered, and especially in early cultures you had to be able to contribute to the group in some way).\n\nAlso, distilled liquor required, well, a still. Wine or beer (I think) can theoretically be made in any kind of clay pot or vessel. Then liquor has to taste good. You still can't drink too much of it if it's high proof. There's centuries old liqueurs and Brandy and grappa that fit the bill, but for the few historical successes there must be thousands others there were lost to time because they didn't do a good job tasting good, being easy to produce, and allowing people to be functional.\n\nJust my best guess, I'm not great on the technical side of booze but I work in the restaurant industry and these conjectures are based on my limited understanding.  \n\nEdit: One of the big things I missed is the ease of growing grain compared to fruit (worldwide). Also, the proof is less important than the actual ease of making wine/beer. \n\nSome people are pointing out beer was safer to drink than water, but some people are disputing it. I don't my know, I'm not a German beer doctor.", "You can survive solely on beer. It may be a rough existence, but you'd survive. Not the case with other alcoholic beverages.", "Beer (and wine and mead) come first. All other alcoholic beverages are products of refining (properly \"distilling\") the various beers into stronger mixtures.\n\nSo to make vodka, for instance, one makes a potato mash, then ferments that mash into potato beer, then uses heat and condensation to separate the alcohol from the water, concentrating the beer into a liquor.\n\nSo beer isn't \"more important\" as a comparison of equals, it's a predicate. So the invention of the wheel is more _significant_ than the invention of the tire, because you have to make the wheel _first_ and wrapping that wheel with padding makes it into a tire.\n\nWithout the predicate the follow-on technology never happens.\n\nSo without beer there are no other alcoholic beverages.\n\nIn general the historians talking about this subject are talking about the \"big three\" - beer, wine, and mead - when they talk about the discovery of beer. Since wine needs specifically grapes, and mead needs the domestication of honey, while beer can be made from any grain or sugar in general, it's something of an understood generalization.\n\nThere is far more beer-making land throughout the cradles of civilization than there is wine or mead producing land.\n\nSo the beer is though to come before the domestication of bees for mead, the domestication of the grape for wine, the domestication and enrichment of fruit trees for cider.\n\nSo the various grain beers was likely first and foremost, and certainly lead to the invention of the other alcohols.\n\nThere is some evidence that it also lead to the domestication of yeasts and so the baking of leavened bread.", "IIRC there is even a theory that we became farmers (instead of hunter gatherers) for beer. Not because of it, for it. In order to produce beer you need grain, and in order to ferment it you need to stay put for a while.", "So many incorrect/urban legend answers here. Stuff like this should be posted in askhistorians because otherwise you just get factoids or old wives tales for answers. \n\nHere is a link to get you started. \n\n_URL_0_", "Some people believe that beer was the main reason for the agricultural revolution. Early man found that growing large amounts of grain in one place made it easier to produce beer, rather than just gathering it as they go. ", "Beer requires grain which requires time so you can't be moving around following animal migrations. So beer helped us settle down.\n\nUnlike wine or mead beer requires boiling. So that nasty water that gave your buddy the shits, well, you just boiled it to make beer and now it's okay to drink.\n\nFun aside, for the majority of human history up until about 200 years ago it is extremely likely that all beer was slightly sour and smokey tasting.", "Food Scientist here. One of the fundamental importances of beer is the fact that it was the only safe form of drinking water for many people. As old towns grew, the water supply became more contaminated and disease was quite prevalent. The water supplies were full of bacteria.\n\nNow, bacteria don't thrive in alcoholic solutions, even low alcohol, and so by fermenting the water, it was effectively disinfecting it for drinking. Why beer though, and not other drinks?\n\nGrains are very prevalent and have been for millennia, they offer nutrition which carries through to the beer and when malted, are easily fermentable. \n\nOriginally the beer was spiced and flavoured with all sorts of plants to make gruit. The switch to using hops was because of the superior flavour, and more importantly, the antibacterial properties of hops which further improved the benefit of drinking beer over lake or river water.\n\nEDIT: I hurriedly wrote this out and missed an essential part, which is the boil, which kills a lot of the bacteria. Much of the rest of the brewing and fermentation makes it harder for bacteria to grow. Just because not all bacteria will die in beer, does not mean it is just as unsafe as some water sources in the past.\n\nMany breweries formed because of the increase in populations and industrialisation when the water was at it's worst (last few hundred years)", "Was it though? I've never heard this,   what made you think that's the case?", "Because it goes hand in hand with the rise of agriculture!\n\nBeer and bread were invented simultaneously in ancient Sumeria. as they involve the same basic ingredients - ground wheat and yeast. Yeast would have been airborne to start with, and both processes would likely have involved soaking the kernels to soften them. You could make bread from the solid bits, and the liquid bits would have been beer. It's an ancient drink. \n\nIn the Americas, the Wari went through a similar process with corn. Agriculture spread quickly across ancient Peru, because the Wari realized that by growing slightly more corn than you needed to live, you could brew it into a fantastic party drink. Their empire spread based on this teaching, they built huge stone terraces and had dance festivals, and worshiped gods of drink. The drinking cup was sacred. It was basically corn beer, and is still popular to this day. ", "Something everyone seems to be missing.  Stop thinking of ancient beer like beer we have today.\n\nAncient beer was essentially liquid bread.  Imagine Guinness time 100 with a 10th of the alcohol.  \n\nSo unlike other alcohols, beer could actually be consumed as a meal.  It had all the nutrition of bread, but had the added benefit of having water to stave off dehydration.  And on top of that, you could brew massive amounts of beer at a time, literally enough to support small towns, with a fraction of the time and energy it would take to make the same amount of bread.  Now add to this that you can store beer for much longer than bread.  And you have a revolutionary new way to support the population!", "Harder to get drunk off of, easier to make more with less, made diseased or parasitic water potable. Same applies to wine", "One reason is that unlike wine or cider, beer does not make itself.\n\nIf you go out and pick a bunch of apples/grapes and crush the juice out of them and leave it for a few days it'll start to ferment. Leave it alone for a week or so and you'll have cider/wine.\n\nBeer requires a much more involved process that requires processing the grains to get the enzyes in them to chemically change starches into sugars that the yeast can ferment, then the extraction of those sugars from the grain, and then the manual addition of yeast. So it's a much more delibrate process and represents technological developments that wine and cider do not.\n\nFor another - while grapes or apples are somewhat geographically limited, grains are more ubiquitous. Meaning that you can make a beer of some sort anywhere in the world that grains can be grown, which is almost anywhere humans inhabit - so it was a technlogical development that was relevant on a global scale.", "_URL_0_\n\nPyramid workers may have been paid in beer.\n\nI would like to add a few obvious things from somebody who lives in an agricultural area.\n\nGrains and grapes grow in different climes. Grapes prefer colder climates whereas grains are more temperate and have a larger climate range.\n\nWith wine, you harvest once per year (autumn) and have to process and store on the spot. When grains, they  can be grown at least half the year (winter to summer), you can transport them, and you can make beer all year round wherever you like. Each \"batch' of beer takes one month (12 batches per year) whereas your one wine batch must start in autumn.\n\nGrains are multi use - the can also be used for bread.", "Lot of people are missing the point here.\n\nMost of the early ferments are easy. Wine, cider...You can get those by accident. Leave some grape juice out, it gets the right yeast, and you get wine (I made some cider like this recently: most delicious paint thinner I've ever tasted).\n\nBeer is different. Beer requires steps and a process. You can stockpile the raw materials and make it on demand. You need science and organization. Wine is an accident.\n\nBeer is science.", "Beer, especially the lower alcohol (1-2%) unfiltered stuff, is essentially liquid bread. It's good for you! The alcohol in beer preserves the grain much longer than if you were to just bake bread with it thus stretching out your grain supply. Also it was very easy to make. Vikings would use a yeast covered stick to stir their sugary grain water concoction and it would magicly start fermenting. \n\nI have also heard some accounts that give beer credit for causing man kind to settle as farmers. This was because they learned how to grow barely to make beer. \n\nYay beer!", "So there's actually a book called something like \"the history of the world in 6 glasses\" and it goes human development in the stages of what we drank: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea,  and coke  (coffee and tea might of been switched) I read it years ago for school but here's what I remember\n\nBeer: started a few thousands years after the agricultural revolution, or main crops were grains, so what water was inevitable. There's evidence in pottery about how out brewing skills improved\n\nWine: only existed in vast quantities once the Greeks appeared and then the Romans who exported it everywhere. It also helps this reigned through the Middle Ages warn period, when favorable climate conditions allowed grapes to be grown even in England\n\nSpirits: the process of distillation had been invented, and the age of exploration made it useful. Spirits did not spoil on long voyages, sailors were willingly paid in it and the new triangle trade found a perfect use for the waste material from sugar production (molasses made to rum). Also, one of the first cocktails called old grog featured a lime which helped the English with scurvy and gave them the name limeys.\n\nTea and coffee:both related heavily with trade and the exploitation of India/south America and colonialism. \n\nCoke: it came after the industrial revolution and the invention of carbonate water. There was a trend of pseudo medical drinks that would do all sorts of things. Coca of course coming from cocaine, and cola coming from a nut. Most notably, coke promise during world war II that every American soldier could have a coke for a nickel, and it became export all over the world. \n\n\nI know nobody asked for 5/6 of this info but it's a good book. Of course some determining factor of popular drinks are the materials avaliable but also technology of production and transportation. Most of the drinks can be liked to one or many powerful empire/nation that helped spread is influence ", "This is something I can contribute to very well. I've given lectures at universities and museums on the history of beer. It's a fascinating topic that I love delving in to. If I go long my apologies, but beer is so important to our civilization. \n\nAs has been stated several times in this thread, it's the reason why we became an agricultural society instead of just hunter/gatherers. It's the reason we have society. In early Mesopotamia it was also used as currency. Hell, Jewish slaves were paid in bowls of beer, it wasn't beer as we know it today, but it was a porridge-like substance that was created with grain and water. The pyramids were built on beer.\n\nI stated earlier that the reason why wine is used in Christianity is because it was easy to grow grapes in Italy and as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire that became the norm. If you couldn't grow grapes you had to buy it from Italians and thus helping their economy. It that time beer became a lesser drink in the eyes of many. \n\nAs beer became a drink and not just for food its secrets were passed down through the monks. Which has also been stated several times in this thread. What I havent seen mentioned is the importance of Reinheitsgebot. In 1514 Bavaria passed a law stating that beer could only be malted grain (barley, oats, wheat, rye), hops, and water (later amended to include yeast).  This is significant because it was the first food law passed in the history of humanity. At the time people were trying to balance out the sweetness of beer with whatever they could find. It was called gruit  and it could include figs, dates, sticks, and even charcoal (again, not as refined as we know it today). Beer was important because it kept people alive, but some of the ingredients were killing people or making them sick. They decided on hops because, like the Counsel of Nicaea, they chose an available crop that was easy to grow in the area. Hops.\n\nHops became the standard for the bittering agent in beer because both Germany and England could grow them and it helped the local economy. \n\nBeer also helped the Champagne region of France with exploding bottles. The Belgians have many styles of beer that have residual sugars still in them, much like champagne. The Belgians figured out that if you have a flat bottom bottle the residual sugar can continue to build up CO2. If it builds up enough over time, it'll explode. The Belgians put a divot in the bottle to break up the amount of concentrated sugar in one area and thus the bottles wouldn't explode.\n\nPasteur was looking at wine when he discovered yeast, but IIRC refrigeration was developed to cool wort quicker. I have to look that up though. \n\nBeer took a big hit after prohibition in America. With the WWII soldiers coming home from Germany and developing a love for the taste of pilsners, and the rise of Bud and Miller, beer was thought as a one trick pony.  It wasn't until Carter passed a law in the 70's allowing for homebrewing that we see the start of the rise of craft beer in America. Styles that were dead became revitalized (i.e. IPA) and depth of the beverage really started to emerge.\n\nBeer is incredibly important to us as a society. It helped form us and shape how we became. I can literally talk for hours on the subject. This is the cliffs notes version that I can pull from memory, I'd need to do more homework to get it down a bit more proper. But, until I can get paid for it, why the hell am I going to do it.", "Because other alcoholic drink were created to make you drunk. Beer was initially used to store calories and other nutrients in a preservative.", "There is a great book called The Thinking Drinkers Guide to Alcohol by Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham. I'll put a couple quotes from the book below:\n\n\"Beer, lest we forget, is the world's oldest recipe, first scribbled on a clay tabled by the Ancient Sumerians. It sustained early civilization; it helped build the Pyramids; it oiled the wheels of the Industrial Revolution in Britain; it stoked the fires of discontent that sparked the American one; it's what Elizabeth I had for breakfast; it's what Winston Churchill drank regardless of the time of day; it was the heartbeat of the British Empire; it started wars and it finished them; it was the drink of Henry VIII and Homer Simpson; and it is as Jack Nicholson so succinctly pointed out, 'the best damn drink in the world.'\"\n\nWhen Jesus Christ turns water into wine at a wedding \"It's his finest trick yet it fails to withstand even the most rudimentary form of scrutiny. Jesus would never have done that. We're not saying it couldn't be done, but if Jesus was going to turn water into any alcoholic beverage at a wedding, then it would definitely have been beer.\nYou don't have to delve deep into dusty tomes dating back centuries, as we have done, to know that Jesus was a beer guy. Just look at his clothes. As anyone who's ever been to a Real Ale festival will testify, Jesus bore all the hallmarks of a beer boffin--a beard and sandals. And he hung around with other men who had beards and sandals.\nLet's hit you with some historical fact here: Ancient Israel, where Jesus lived, was flanked by Egypt and Mesopotamia--both big beer nations. Mesopotamia was where the Sumerians first scribbled down the formula for brewing and in Ancient Egypt, beer was used as both an enema and currency (not the SAME beer). The chaps that built the Pyramids were paid with 10 pints of ale every day--which is why they forgot to put any windows in.\nGeographical evidence? In Ancient Israel, barley was grown and consumed in big quantities and not used only for bread-making. The soil was better suited to growing grain than grapes and regardless of gender or class, every Ancient Israelite would have drunk beer in Jesus's day.\nThe Bible is rife with references to beer (shekhar). Yahweh, God of Israel and the Judah kingdoms, drinks around 4 pints of beer every day (and even more on the Sabbath day), beer is eulogyzed as a medicine for melancholy (Proverbs 31:6), and moderate beer drinking is recommended--Isaiah 5:11, 28:7 Proverbs 20:1, 31:4) with over-indulgence discouraged.\nDespite numerous mentions in the original scriptures, beer often goes missing in modern translations. Why? Well, the etymological bone of contention centres on the Hebrew word shekhar, meaning \"strong drink\". Many attribute it to wine, but there's every indication to suggest that \"beer\" is the more faithful translation.\nOf the 20 times shekhar is mentioned, only once does it appear without the accompanying word for wine. What's more, the word shekhar derives from Sikaru, an ancient Semitic term meaning \"barley beer\".\nBut we reckon the real reason veer vanished from subsequent versions of the Bible is sheer scholarly snobbery. When the Bible was first translated into English in the early 17th century, beer was considered a pauper's drink, while wine was popular among \"posh\" folk.\nIn an astonishing display of academic arrogance, translators transformed Jesus Christ from a charitable beer-drinking friend of the people into a nouveau-riche playboy with designer sunglasses and leather loafers.\nBut that's not how Jesus rolled. He was a blue collar Messiah with no wish to drink wine. After all, the Romans drank wine and, as we all know, Jesus didn't get on with the Romans.\"", "Beer was used instead of water during long sea journeys. The alcohol in the beer killed bacteria that forms in water. So sailors drank beer because it kept them hydrated and they didn't get sick from contaminated water. The alcohol content was low enough so they didn't get drunk and could still perform their duties. Without beer, Colombus might not have reached America, that's why beer is more historically important then other alcoholic beverages.", "Beer has all of the ingredients as bread: grain, water, and yeast. Historians are pretty sure it was made by accident and not all at once. For most working class people, beer was both an essential source of nutrition and hydration  (it wasn't very alcoholic or carbonated. Think of it like an ancient protein shake.) The most important thing, however, was that it was cleaner than most water sources. Boiling water as a sanitation process wasn't quite known, but part of making beer is boiling wort (beer before beer becomes beer) which also sanitized it and made it safe to drink. The alcohol content would also help to keep bacteria and viruses at bay."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2z8d4f/you_often_here_anecdotal_that_alcohol_was_so/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-stub-shows-that-ancient-workers-were-paid-in-beer"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3319gc", "title": "Why is one C=O bond stronger than two C-O bonds?", "selftext": "Current Orgo 2 student here. Ever since we started learning about aldehyde/ketone chemistry, our professor has said probably 100 times \"the carbonyl group is a special group in chemistry because one C=O bond stronger than two C-O bonds.\" And that's shown up constantly on all of our mechanisms, and especially now in enol(ate) formation and such. But why? What's special about C-O but not C-N or any other element?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3319gc/why_is_one_co_bond_stronger_than_two_co_bonds/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqh4hhf"], "score": [2], "text": ["There is a correlation between bond strengths and bond distances.  In general, shorter bonds are stronger bonds.  Double bonds are shorter and stronger than the corresponding single bonds, but not twice as strong, because pi overlap is less than sigma overlap. This means that a sigma bond is stronger (relatively speaking) than a pi bond, with the difference in energy being equal to the amount of energy required to cause rotation around the double bond.  The approximate bond energy of a C-O bond is 355-380 kJ/mol while that of a C=O bond is 724-757 kJ/mol. The bond length of a C-O bond is 1.3-1.4 A while a C=O bond is 1.1 - 1.2 (approximate numbers). You can even have CO triple bonds. In a carbonyl, the distribution of electrons in the pi bond is heavily distorted towards the oxygen end of the bond, because oxygen is much more electronegative than carbon. This distortion in the pi bond causes major differences in the reactions of compounds containing carbon-oxygen double bonds vs single bonds.\n\nAs far as C-N or C=N bonds (or nitriles), they behave much like the corresponding C-O, C=O bonds, etc.  Oxygen has a different electron configuration in its valence shell, and has different bonding and reactivity properties, of course. \n\nHere's a page with some interesting reactions for you: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enamine"]]}
{"q_id": "3m594p", "title": "say i'm 70 years old, only got a few years left, what's stopping me from spending a lot of money and racking up a load of debt?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m594p/eli5_say_im_70_years_old_only_got_a_few_years/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvc3i08", "cvc3z74", "cvc7vnx", "cvc86ow", "cvc9adu", "cvc9ybd", "cvcahbx", "cvcaqvq", "cvcase2", "cvcawtq", "cvcb3ip", "cvcb5zo", "cvcbak6", "cvcbs7b", "cvcbwwf", "cvcc2j3", "cvcccyp", "cvccrmf", "cvcd023", "cvcdsdc", "cvcdu6s", "cvceiks", "cvceziv", "cvcf0xb", "cvcf1m2", "cvcf2tn", "cvcf9p8", "cvcfcfh", "cvcg4rn", "cvcg6t4", "cvcghte", "cvcgml3", "cvcgmq7", "cvcgn29", "cvcguia", "cvcgwcp", "cvcgx1l", "cvch3wx", "cvch5lr", "cvcha6w", "cvchhcx", "cvchkkv", "cvchn2d", "cvchs44", "cvchvoy", "cvcj33k", "cvcjlob", "cvcjlrs", "cvcjvx3", "cvcksrt", "cvclfzf", "cvcm8i2", "cvcmpf4", "cvcmt9g", "cvcn4nl", "cvcn6rw", "cvco6h6", "cvco8pg", "cvcohn8", "cvcooil", "cvcoque", "cvcpke9"], "score": [3, 4094, 1790, 710, 15, 37, 70, 33, 6, 3, 2, 541, 4, 3, 2, 2, 14, 2, 2, 2, 2, 22, 3, 2, 6, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 7, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 11, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["People are less willing to give you credit if you are less likely to pay it back. That includes old people.", "* Most 70 year olds don't work...lenders don't give big loans to people who don't have jobs.\n* You sure you only have a few years left?  It would kind of suck to blow all of your money then be broke from another 10-20 years.", "I feel like everyone in this thread is missing a big point- most older people want to leave money to their families, especially their kids. If you die with a huge debt, they get nothing, and all of your property (including your family home) will get sold to pay your debt.", "The correct answer is nothing, but its generally risky and the reward is limited.  Its basically the same reason that 70 years old don't do heroin.  They just keep doing what they've been doing.  They mostly try to enjoy time with their loved ones, have sex with other elderly people, stay healthy, and hope to live for another 20 years.\n\nFirst, it is generally possible to do what you're asking because many 70 year-olds have terrific credit with no assets or significant income.  Credit has very little to do with assets, liabilities and income.  It has a lot to do with a documented history of willingness and ability to pay back debts as agreed, on time.  Although a personal financial statement is a valuable tool for a bank to assess risk when making a 6+ figure construction or real estate loan, it is not an effective predictor of whether an individual will reliably pay back a 4-5 figure unsecured debt. A documented history of paying back such debts -- e.g. a credit score -- is a valuable predictor.  This leads to counter-intuitive situations, such as where a 90+ year old man has a credit score that qualifies him or her for a great mortgage rate, but the bank refuses to offer similar terms to his (also elderly) children who are still employed, even with the father as a guarantor.\n\nAn elderly person with a good credit score, but limited financial acumen is exactly the person who is taken in in their old age by Spanish lottery scams.  This is why those scams exist:  because what you're asking about actually happens.  Older people with good credit, no assets, and no income get sucked in.\n\nThat said, even though nothing would be stopping you, your hypothetical is rarely so uncomplicated.  Most people do not know how exactly how long they have left.  Maybe you have never seen a completely destitute old person in your life.  Their lives are hard.  If you are not sure that you will die around the time the money runs out, you may be better off not going bonkers.  \n\nAlso, the 50-100k you can borrow doesn't go as far as you would think.  How do you envision spending the money?  Giving it to your loved ones is fraud and they can get into legal trouble or have to give it back.  Cocaine and strippers are okay, but then what?  Is it worth your dignity or your pride to be a fool when you're that close to bowing out gracefully?\n\nFinally, most 70 year olds have figured out that blowing cash isn't all its cracked up to be.  Most 40 year olds know this too.  Mostly you end up wishing you still had the security.  Mostly you think, I could have just used my personality and a couple bucks to wander the earth for awhile, doing some good deeds and having some laughs.  \n\nBut you're 5 and you'll have to learn all that the hard way. \n\n\n\n", "They'll loan you plenty of money if you have an asset, especially one you might have some equity in. It's called a reverse mortgage. And feel free to outlive your life expectancy because this thing will pay out until you and your spouse are dead...\n\n_URL_0_", "Using actuarial tables you've got 14 years if you're male and 17 if you're female. Plus for every year you survive you get another 1/2 year of life.\n\nMight want to reconsider that if you hit 90.", "As a banker I've seen it happen. Also seem people max out lines of credit, credit cards , sell their assets and leave the country. It's a calculated risk that the rest of us pay for. ", "I remember reading that when you die, the debt you have does not fall on anyone. Debt collectors can try and collect from your family and friends but they are not legally obligated to pay it. I think there are special circumstances but I don't think it really falls on anyone. Anyone know about this sort of law, here? ", "A credit check. \n\nPeople only lend money because they expect to get more than they lent back. For that to happen, the borrower has to demonstrate present or probable future income to pay off their debt. If you're 35 and working full-time, your current job is proof of your ability to pay off a home loan. If you're 19 and going to college, your intent to graduate is (theoretically) proof of future income that can be used to pay off a student loan.\n\nIf you're very old, your ability to repay debts is probably lower than others'. Now, age is prohibited from consideration in credit worthiness (so long as you're a legal adult), but other things related to your age aren't. For instance, as a 70 year-old, you're probably not working full-time in a good-paying job. You're probably retired, or semi-retired with light pay. If you have an income at all, it's probably fixed and below a level reasonably calculated to pay off a significant loan.\n\nYou can still get some credit - a few cards, a car loan, etc. But you probably can't qualify for outrageous loans.\n\nThen, when you die, your creditors (the people who lent you money) get dibs on any assets you left behind. They are prioritized over people who might otherwise inherit from you. Your inheritors don't pay your debts, but their inheritance is diminished by whatever is necessary to pay the creditors back. \n\nThis is all tweaked by various locals laws of course, but that's basically it: If you're really old, you probably aren't making enough money to convince someone to lend you more money.", "Inheritance is the main reason not to do this. Sure you can spend the money on yourself, but being able to pass funds onto your loved ones is just as good as spending it to some extent.", "I know the completely opposite situation.\n\nA man who owned unused houses priced by several thousands of euros but refused to sell them. Although he was retired, he continued working everyday. In morning he went to an ice cream shop and helped doing the mixes and the rest of his days was spent taking care of his little (illegal) urban farm where he grow rabbits, birds, chickens... to sell.\n\nFinally he got mentally ill and ended in a care home, and not having any family, all his money went  50-50 between the care home and a orphanage.\n\nHe spend all his life working and ended with alzheimer in a care home without having enjoyed his money.", "I've worked in credit cards in fraud and collections.  Nothing stops you.  A lot of old people have done it.  \n\nUsually, they run up their cards because of inadequate retirement savings and they charge a little each month to cover food, rent, or medicine.  With those people we have little recourse as their assets are basically nil.\n\nOnce in a while someone does exactly what you are talking about usually buying a ton of stuff right before they die.  But usually people are so ill can't actually get out to the store to buy the stuff themselves.  So they give the card to relatives or give the relative their own card on their account as an authorized user or co-signer.\n\nIf someone racks up a ton of debt and has assets the Fraud dept will get involved.  \n\nOne of two things happens.  \n\n1) We put a claim against their estate.  While credit cards are unsecured credit we can still put liens against the estate.  If their only asset was the home they owned that will have a lien on it.  So if you want to pass anything on to your kids the card companies will make sure they get their share.  \n\nUnsecured debt is last in line for any payouts on assets with secured debt like mortgages and car loans having first cut on the assets they are secured with.  Retired people have usually paid off their homes so we would could get first dibs if we file our lien before other debtors.\n\n2) Once the person dies their account is closed as of time of death.  Fraud has caught a surprising number of people using credit cards after death.  Often they are authorized users who have a card but are not account holders so the charge is fraudulent.  The threat of jail time if they don't pay often gets people to take on a large amount of debt they thought would be clear.  \n\nIf you are a co-signer then you are now on the hook for the whole amount.   ", "If you are 70 and don't have significant assets (that a lender could go after if you tried to duck your payments by dying), you would have bigger problems than credit card companies.", "As a follow on to this question; what if you were planning on killing yourself, you know offing yourself in a couple of days, what is stop someone like that from taking out a loan and spending it all then committing suicide?", "Alternatively, what if you planned to commit suicide and decided to borrow lots of money? ", "Everyone saying that age is a factored in what is being loaned to you is wrong. In the US discrimination for age is illegal. You can only write loans based on quantifiable factors, like income, assets, credit history, etc.", "Often the come after the families of people that do that.\n\nAnyone that had a terminal illness could rack up hundreds of thousands in credit card debt.\n\nwait... who am I kidding... this is America... if you've got a terminal illness you're already in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for medical bills and nobody is going to give you a loan anyway.", "Ultimately, the system has a bunch of checks and balances, but in regards to most of the comments (in the US) -\n\n* They can't legally come after your family / next of kin, unless they are co-borrowers - that doesn't mean that scum debt collectors won't try though.\n\n* If you've protected your assets appropriately (trust / living trust), then you've covered the inheritance aspect.\n\nHowever, there are a ton of systems in place to attempt to prevent this, no matter what your age -\n\n* You generally need your accounts open for a while to use it wildly. They might give you that initial $15k limit on a CC, but go and try to max it out 3 months after opening it. They can decline charges based on suspicious patterns. Having a particular credit limit doesn't mean that they will approve all charges.\n\n* You can't open a bunch of accounts at once due to the inquiries showing up. So, the accounts would have to be open for a while.\n\n* If you have a pretty good credit score and have open accounts with $10k + credit limits, then you're probably a pretty responsible person and know how to live within your limits - so you wouldn't necessarily be interested in this approach.\n\n* Income is a factor for new accounts (doesn't have to be documented, necessarily), but if you have established credit if they're the same accounts you've had for a while you're good to spend whatever\n\n* You will have to make payments until you die, or spend all you can (and they will allow you to) within a month or two before they start shutting down your accounts. Making payments would be lame, since in about 3yrs you've already paid more than whatever you spent just based on minimum payments (minimum principle of 1.5% + interest monthly). So, if you live past 73 or so, you're fucked.\n\n* A single 30 day late, and most of your accounts will CLD (credit line decrease) and / or close. Add this to the point above about spending suspiciously and being declined - you won't get away with $100k in charges in 30 days unless you have the history / assets / income to back it up. They will decline the charges and call you.\n\n* Ultimately, you might get away with $20k worth of charges if you do it all right and had great credit to start with with at least $50k in open credit to start with. ", "Sadly the top answer isn't really the REAL answer. If you have good enough credit to be able to blow 100k on credit cards before you die, you have assets. If you die the creditors will come after your estate, so your kids won't be liable for your debt, but they may get nothing from your trust / will and could even have to foot the bill for your funeral. \n\nTL DR you can rack up debt if you don't care about your family facing consequences. If you have no family go ahead and live it up. \n\nEdit: It should be noted that outside of your estate the creditors cannot come after your family for your debts that your estate doesn't cover. (ELI5: If you die with $100k in debt, but own $75k in assets (your estates value), the creditors will get all $75k. Your family will have to cover your funeral expenses.)", "When you die you will have creditors.  Before your family get any of your estate (assuming you have anything to leave them) your creditors get first pick.  If you don't have anything to leave them then chances are you are a deadbeat that won't get anywhere near enough credit in the numbers you're talking about anyway.", "Credit cards won't stop you. But, what if they come after the next of kin for payment? \n\nHowever, I did know a guy who had cancer and he decided he wanted a brand new Harley. So, he bought one thinking he wouldn't live past making his first payment. Well, he did live past that and was pissed he had to pay for the bike. But, he didn't live too long after. ", "This is basically what my father did when he knew he was dying of cancer. All assets were transferred to my mother or a legal trust he had setup. His life insurance paid out to the trust only, and not his estate. He then opened and maxed out as many lines of debt as possible, which he used to pay off the mortgage. When he died, the house and cars were paid off, but yours estate had no assets to recover the debt. I believe of mother had a tax bill for the payments made to *her* assets, which was paid to keep the IRS happy. As far as I know, it was all perfectly legal. ", "Could we theoretically target a bank and have a group of seemingly random individuals who use this bank dedicate their lives by racking up enormous amount of debt and then dying? With enough individuals could we fuck over a bank? ", "I read about that, guy gets diagnosed with terminal cancer so he borrows $40,000 and heads off around the world. Comes back 3 months later to be told it was a misdiagnosis. ", "real reason - you could do it but all the stuff you want to buy doesn't exist anymore and all the new stuff doesn't make any sense to you", "Nothing can stop you, LEGALLY.  You incur debt against your eventual estate which is settled posthumously.    The lender is responsible for determining credit worthiness and within the confines of the law, extending or withdrawing credit.     It's not just with credit cards, which have written agreements with lots of little details.  It's relevant to other debts, too.    Say your dad borrows $100,000 from you and verbally promises to pay it back and then dies.   You have a claim against his estate.  If he has sufficient assets, the probate court and the estate executor will discharge it in full or in part and you can sue to prevent asset distribution that doesn't meet your own standards of fairness.  \n\nYou are perfectly free to run up as much debt as you want as a 35 year old and then die.  What happens after you die is exactly what happens to a 50, 70, 90 year old.    Surely you don't think age is a GUARANTEE against death, do you?   For every heart attack an old person can suffer, a young one can drink themselves to death or fall of the ski lift or crash their motorcycle.\n\nWhen death arrives, society will settle your debts.  ", "The amount you can borrow will be dictated by your existing assets which can be borrowed against and your earning potential.  No lender is going to let themselves be out of pocket.  You may be able to swing a $5,000 credit card... or 5.", "Good answers here.  Let's add to it that if you were doing it intentionally, it would be immoral and it would effectively be stealing, but if you have no problem with that I can't help you.", "Nothing. Go for it.  There was a book called Broke a few years ago. It's hypothesis was that your last check should bounce. Of course if you outlive your money, you will be eating dog food.  Buy the chunky Alpo. Quite tasty. ", "The only thing stopping you is finding people willing to give you money. In Switzerland unsecured consumer loans from banks or credit institutes are not done for retired people by law.\n\nNow if you find some poor private bastard to lend you some money you're all set. Your heirs on the other hand will inherit the debt. The can refuse to accept it though.", "If your credit card debt is less that 10k per bank they won't go after the estate. I just dealt with this. Having minimal assets helps too.", "I had a Grandma who was a bum. She lived in a subsidized apartment and collected welfare. Her rent was only $25 a month. She had every credit card and store card you could think of and ran them all up. When she passed there was little any of the creditors could do. She had no home or savings of any kind. However, if she did own a home or had savings that would have been put into the estate when she passed and I'm sure that her creditors could have made a claim against her estate. I'm thinking in your situation if you owned your home and it was worth say $250 000 and you owed $100 000. When you die your house would be sold, your creditors paid and the rest would go to whoever you will it too. But if you have nothing then I don't think there is much they can do other then write it off... ", "After his 2nd heart attack, my dad started living like every day was his last, and spent the following 5 years racking up about $75k in debt on various credit cards plus a mortgage. When he died after heart attack #3, I was left to help my mom go through all the paperwork, which mostly involved getting tons of copies of the death certificate to mail to debtors to close the accounts. The only one that caused any problem at all was the loan against the house, which *could* have been dealt with as well, but my mom ended up abandoning the house since there were \"too many memories\" to stay there.   \n  \n", "Nothing stopping you.  The estate can be levied to pay any debts after death so if you do this you should make sure all your assets have been distributed prior to taking on the debt.", "So do you want us to explain like your 5 or explain like your 70?", "Back in the early 90's when AIDS was in full swing this was a valid financial planning approach. When an otherwise healthy young man developed full blown AIDS he would acquire as much credit as possible and spend it on items that we easy to covert to cash. When he died his heirs (usually friends) would sell the items to pay for his funeral. The credit card companies would be left holding the bag. ", "Depends on the country you live in and their rules concerning inheritance of debt.\n\nHere in the US, you cannot inherit debt. So at least here nothing is stopping you outside the personal desire to leave some inheritance or legacy for your family. ", "ITT: People getting caught on the specifics of the question instead of answering what OP is asking.\n\nForget about the number 70, forget about current assets or wealth or credit scores for the imaginary old person.\n\nThe question is: If someone is at the end of their life, and they rack up a lot of debt (forget about credit and assets, this is a hypothetical), what happens to that debt when they die?", "Lots of good replies.  I'll add another reason it might not be a great idea: you're screwing other people over and ultimately all of society is a little worse, so somehow after a full lifetime you didn't figure out how to go out better than a selfish jackass.", "I work for a retirement system. I heard a story of a guy who took a lump sum of his retirement pay because he was diagnosed with cancer and told he only had a year or two left.\n\nThe guy lived it up and blew the whole stack. Then, his cancer went into remission.\n\nThe way they tell it here, he's got to be in his late 70's or early 80's with no money, no credit and only social security/medicare.", "I think the main point of Ted talks is to make the general public more science literate. Hence why it's free to watch and generally interesting. Yes, I believe that it does have an argument for being a sermon type of thing but, for me, I think it's great what they are trying to do overall. ", "Gay's revenge: a gay man I know in Texas when gay marriage wasn't recognized, had terminal liver disease. He divested all his assets and lived on credit cards for his last year. He had a $25,000 balance on an Exxon card. Then when he died without assets the debt was left unpaid. hahahaha Texas.", "Honor, respect, dignity for your name? Being able to sleep at night? Be able to look at yourself in the mirror?", "i work as a mortgage broker. the term limits are 35 years or till the age of 70 years old. \n\nif you are 30 years old, you can borrow for a 35 year term\n\nif you are 65 you can borrow for a maximum of just 5 years\n\nif you are 70 then we wouldnt give you a damn penny. \n\nyou can, however, do a joint loan and include someone younger than yourself as a co-borrower and the term limit would refer to the younger person's age ", "If you wanna fuck the bank take out as many mortgages as you can on your house and when you feel like your about to die, give all your cash to random homeless people, then burn the house down. Since you destroyed all your assets and died in an \" accidental house fire \" your family just collects the insurance money. Probably some stupid shit I over looked but I think it's a solid last middle finger to the bank.", "I hope that after I die, people will say of me: \u201cThat guy sure owed me a lot of money.\u201d\n\n-- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey", " A couple of things:\n\nYou might not be able to get a loan/credit thats very high becuase retirees dont have a high income and are at risk for not paying off the debt\n\nIf you do manage to get a loan/credit, and you blow through it in a couple of years. You cant get anymore money bc you have little income and are already in debt. Whats to say that you will die around 73-75?? My great aunt is currently still living independently well into her late 80's. Repossession is a terrifying thing for seniors because you may not have much else or any family to go to. \n\nAnd finally, unless you or your family have some sort of insurance, debt is not simply wiped out if you die. There is a certain amount of debt forgivness, but it still exists and you still owe money to the bank, except now your imediate family owes the bank this money.(The laws are different depending on the country/state, but its likely you would need a cosigner to get the loan, which would make the legally obligated to the debt) On top of having to pay for funeral expenses, the have to pay off your debt, as well you will not have anything left to give as a inheritance to you family. Which would just make your family resent you after you died. ", "I just finished up a house sale with folks in their 70's.  This was their very first house purchase and always had been a dream for both of them to own their home.\n\nDuring the entire process, they were terrified that something would go wrong or denied the loan because of their age.  I repeatedly assured them, that in no way, would they be denied because of age.\nOf course it closed and they were the happiest people on earth that day.  \n\n[realtor]  ", "My plan for when I'm 70. Is to begin spending literally all my of money, and liquidate all of my assets to 0. \n\nI'll ensure no debts are passed on to my descendants. Next, I'll write a personal letter to everyone in my life I care about, saying goodbye. \n\nFinally, I'll euthanize myself and leave this world peacefully and happy. \n\nFuck that, rotting away in some depressing ICU unit, or even worse, a lifeless nursing home. And costing society hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep my old and spent body breathing. \n\nI'm happy to leave this world. Why people insist on fighting and scraping and clawing their ways to the grave is a mystery to me. ", "Former process server here.  I have served several old folks lawsuits for credit card debt.  They don't care the age, they will get their money one way or another.  If you have assets you'll have liens put against them so any inheritance that is left for their children will be less cause the banks will get their cut before the family does.  If you don't have assets, there isn't much the creditors can do to be honest.  It also depends on the state you live in on what they can garnish/take etc.  ", "None. My dad passed away with a fuckton of credit card debt and took a second mortgage on his house that had 100 acres attached to it, then he sold the acreage and let the bank foreclose on the house.\n\nYeah, mom is doin pretty good in her retirement.", "Estate seizure is the short answer. When you die, the government doesn't call it quits on your debt. There is a sect of law practice aimed entirely at saving one's nest egg for their inheritors after they pass. They will collect on every penny they can. And they'll seize your life insurance less burial expenses, your home, property like jewelry, etc, to ensure they get theirs before your family gets a dime.\n\nBut if you've no family or heirs, live it up if you can get the credit. Just hope you don't need long-term care.", "Well The babyboomer Generation did turn the our country into the economic mess it is now....so why not", "If you have a house take out a 30 year refi-mortgage and then party like tomorrow never gets here. The devil pays your last bill. :)\n", "Thats why the government doesnt let you know the exact date of your death. Oh, and for the auto moderator: yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.yes, we can answer a question in a single sentence.", "Well my uncle did something like that but with no debt.  He was always concerned about leaving his children all his money.  However, his children turned out to be less than stellar and never came to visit or see him in the hospital.  So one day he had enough, took all his money, bought a luxury car, went on trips, spent most of it.  Left my mother some and had his burial finances, but he lived like a king the last 5 years or so.", "Historically, it was because people weren't total assholes and they also had kids they wanted to leave something to.\n\nNowadays with the selfish Baby Boom generation and more people not having kids, I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing this sort of thing more often.  Of course, there tends to be only so much money you can borrow if you're not working or don't have a lot of assets, and so realistically you might be only able to rack up tens of thousands in debt you wouldn't pay.", "Do you see that, internet? That moment when op realized that there wasn't anything really stopping them from doing this? That's why it's called credit. It's a risk, because at the end of the day, they can't actually *make* you pay them. Oh they can get court orders to garnish your wages or try to repossess things and a host of other nasty stuff things to make your life miserable, but ultimately they can't actually *make* you pay them.\n\nAnd they doubly can't make dead people pay them. Though I recommend if you plan to leave any assets behind you turn it into gold and bury it so those you want to find it can get to it years later when the heat dies down.\n\nEdit: I know the above can sound kind of stupid but this fine point is one of the common reasons why groups like the Better Business Bureau recommend you use credit instead of debit cards. With credit, in the case of fraud or dispute, you always have the \"nuclear\" option of telling someone to screw off. They might eventually force you to pay via court or other means but *no one wants to go through all that*, and the fact that you *could* go that route affects their actions. They are going to want to play ball with you, especially if it costs less than not playing ball. Where as with Debit, you're on the other side of that fence. You've already given them the keys to your bank account. In a worst case of fraud or dispute, they have your money, they don't have to give it back to you, and if they decide not to there's nothing you can do about it until you get a court to order it back.", "Basically they can't BUT if there is enough evidence that you spent a lot of money using credit but intended to never pay them back then that is fraud and, technically, could be charged with a criminal offense.\n\nHowever, that would be very difficult to prove and the individual can just claim they didn't understand.  So would take witnesses that the individual actually TOLD he was going to buy as much as he could without paying back.\n\nLastly, assuming this individual doesn't already HAVE the credit cards and access to debt my guess is after he applied to two or three, and they each gave him, say, $5000 each as an available balance and started using, it wouldn't take long before further cards would be \"denied\". \n\nAnd let's not forget that when this individual dies his ESTATE owes the money!! So unless this person really had \"absolutely nothing\" (no cars, no houses, no savings, no collectible guns/art/etc., and so on) then the estate could be sued and the items sold to PAY for the debt owed.", "I'm a banker and I have a customer that is determined to do this. He's 92 years old now, retired military, and up until about a year ago had a few hundred thousand in retirement funds with us. He gets VA benefits and SS every month, but since he doesn't have any family, all he does is give his money away to random people. In the course of the last year he's blown through all the money he saved, and has actually taken out a few loans to give people money. I've actually tried to talk to him a few times about this, and I'm almost certain he's a victim of elderly abuse, but the guy just does not care. He gets irate whenever I try to talk him out of giving another one of the leeches that hang around him another $5000, stating \"I'm gonna die soon, what the f*ck do you care what I do with my money!\" Since he has income, a great relationship with the bank, and great credit, he's automatically approved every time he wants a loan. It's really sad, but like he said, he has no one to give it to, and you can't take it with you when your gone. ", "If you have no plans to pass anything on to your family?  Nothing stopping you.  My grandmother has taken this to heart--- reverse mortgaged her house, and has charged the hell out of any and all credit cards she owns. Her life = the casino. \n\n It's sad, really.  She used to be so well-traveled, and now her end-all, be-all is sitting in front of one of those damned slot machines. :(  And she's in pretty good health for a woman close to 80.... really sad what she COULD have done with all that debt she's racked up.  ", "Gift all your property to family, next year  go out with a blast debt. Die happy?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/housing/sfh/hecm/rmtopten"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3q86h6", "title": "Are there any important films we've lost forever because of the instability of nitrate film or just poor management in general with later film formats?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3q86h6/are_there_any_important_films_weve_lost_forever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwd4nle", "cwd99ch", "cwddn57", "cwddwqd", "cwdgrwy", "cwdk9ye"], "score": [97, 48, 9, 14, 11, 4], "text": ["Oh heavens yes!  Lost films are [actually an extremely common phenomenon](_URL_2_) and professional archivist groups such as [NFPS](_URL_6_) and the Library of Congress [Film Preservation Board](_URL_5_) work actively to slow the loss.\n\nNow as to the question of whether any \"important\" films have been lost, that's a bit subjective, though the Library of Congress estimates about [75% of silent films have been lost](_URL_1_), which is a simply incalulable loss for those wishing to study the history of film.\n\nIf you're looking for specific examples of notable lost films, probably the most famous example is [Metropolis](_URL_0_), though restoration attempts have been largely succesful, so that doesn't quite meet the \"forever\" criterion.  [Cleopatra](_URL_4_) might be a better example, because it was quite significant in the history of film making, and essentially none of it survives today.  On a personal note, if there was one lost film I could find, it would be [Humor Risk](_URL_3_), the Marx Brother's first film, now totally lost, probably forever.", "Poor management? How about a huge chunk of the popular TV series \"Doctor Who\"? Back in the 1960s, the video tape that British TV episodes were shot on was incredibly expensive, and the cost of storage was very high. Further, because of the expensive rights, many shows didn't *seem* to have much hope for future reruns. So, a decision was made to wipe the master tapes of \"Doctor Who\" and reuse them for other productions. This junking continued up until the early 1970s, when fans realized the horror of what was actually occurring. A huge number of episodes were wiped, but a good number of them were recovered because fans realized that a few copies still resided in the UK, and more existed throughout the worldwide British Commonwealth due to overseas transmission. Nevertheless, 97 individual half hour episodes of the program remain completely missing. (As an interesting side story, the audio tracks of every one of those episodes survive thanks to an incredibly zealous early fan who, in the days before VCRs, hooked up a reel-to-reel audio recorder directly to his TV!) This happened with a number of other British TV shows in the 1960s as well. Most notable is the missing first season of \"The Avengers\", and three extant episodes of the popular show \"Dad's Army\", but Doctor Who is by FAR the most famous example due to its continuing worldwide success.", "*London After Midnight* with Lon Chaney might be the most famous lost movie. [Here's a list of famous lost films](_URL_1_) from Mental Floss and a [more extensive list](_URL_4_) at Shadowlocked. Wikipedia maintains what is probably [the most complete list](_URL_2_). For more in-depth details, you might read [Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared](_URL_3_) by Frank T. Thompson. \n\nYou might also be interested to know that some films once considered lost were rediscovered because when they were submitted for copyright, the filmmaker was required to print each frame of the film on paper and submit it to the Library of Congress. The paper prints have been scanned and the film reconstructed and the quality is remarkably pristine.  Some of these films can be found on the excellent [Treasures of the American Film Archives](_URL_0_) collection. ", "Not sure if this is completely relevant here, but the original moon landing videos from Apollo 11 are lost. The original tapes holding recordings from the lunar module in SSTV format were all reused for later missions, and the only videos we have left are those of the TV broadcasts, converted from SSTV.", "Many popular South Korean films were lost due to poor storage and management, and recycling of film for other uses.  For instance *The Housemaid* was a blockbuster that was thought lost for many years, but two reels were found in storage, with subtitles scrawled on them.  \n\n\n > After owners of factories that manufactured a kind of straw hat popular among farmers realized that a strip of celluloid lent the headgear\u2019s otherwise flimsy brim an extraordinary sturdiness and, at the same time, made for a stylish decorative border, they began to purchase apparently worthless, worn- out 16 mm and 35 mm prints in bulk, once the films had finished their dollar- theater runs. Many classic titles were chopped into thousands of pieces as they were moved on a conveyor belt from exhaustion to extinction. When the popularity of the straw hats dwindled in the 1970s because of a rapid decline in the farming population, innovative chemists developed a way to efficiently extract silver from celluloid film. More invaluable works evaporated in that alchemical process, causing irreversible damage to South Korean film history; over 70 percent of films made before 1960 are now reported missing.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere's an interesting possibility that many of them are preserved in Kim Jong-il's film archive; he had a longtime program to copy popular films and ship them to Pyongyang.  ", "Much of Super Bowl I was lost due to the tapes being taped over. It's been mostly reconstructed now I believe but some parts are still missing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film\\)#Restorations", "http://www.thewire.com/culture/2013/12/most-americas-silent-films-are-lost-forever/355775/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor_Risk", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(1917_film\\)", "http://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/about-this-program", "http://www.filmpreservation.org/"], [], ["http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvds-and-books/dvds-and-books", "http://mentalfloss.com/article/26045/10-famous-lost-films", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films", "http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Films-Important-Movies-Disappeared/dp/0806516046", "http://www.shadowlocked.com/201101211323/lists/15-historically-significant-lost-films.html"], [], ["https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2993-the-housemaid-crossing-borders"], []]}
{"q_id": "ir7pp", "title": "Why speed is relative, but acceleration is absolute?", "selftext": "I'm confused about special relativity. If there's no such thing as absolute reference frame, in relative to what objects accelerate?  \n  \nAlso, I have question about time dilatation. If we consider time as extra dimension, then speed unit (m/s) is just how much distance object travels in one axis relative to other. Given that, could we explain relativity analogously by taking other dimensions, for example x and y?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ir7pp/why_speed_is_relative_but_acceleration_is_absolute/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c260895", "c260tp2"], "score": [4, 6], "text": ["Acceleration is what you measure on an accelerometer. And an accelerometer can be something as simple as a mass on a spring, or even *your own body* if you don't need a lot of precision of measurement. You can *feel* acceleration.\n\nYou don't need to compare your motion to anything else in order to determine whether you're accelerating. You can measure it empirically, and locally. That's why acceleration isn't relative to anything else.", "Acceleration is also a frame-dependent quantity, just like velocity is. They are both 4-vectors.\n\nActually, there are two different things called acceleration.\n\nThere is _relative_ or _differential_ acceleration, which is comparing the distance between two objects (two time derivatives thereof). This quantity is only meaningful when the two objects are very close to each other (they can be considered in the same tangent frame; or if spacetime is flat).\n\nThen there is proper acceleration. This is the rate of change of one's velocity 4-vector, measured along one's world line. This is always an honest 4-vector, whereas differential acceleration is not.\n\nBut still, they are both 4-vectors, and are therefore \"relative\", not absolute, in the sense that if you transform frames, the numbers change."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "33hlh2", "title": "when we say that solar power is not (yet) efficient, what exactly do we mean?", "selftext": "Does this imply that the amount of energy used to produce a single panel is greater than the total amount of energy that panel will be able to generate in its lifetime? This is the only way I can see it being inefficient. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33hlh2/eli5_when_we_say_that_solar_power_is_not_yet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqkxycm", "cqkxzia", "cqkyyo1", "cql0wjp"], "score": [10, 30, 7, 10], "text": ["At the most basic level, it's possible to measure the efficiency with which a solar panel takes the energy from the sunlight hitting it and turns it into electricity. There's only so much sunlight striking a particular solar panel, and there's only so much space on a roof or wherever to put a solar panel, so you want the panel to be as efficient as possible. \n\nIf a solar panel only converts 1% of the energy hitting it into useful electricity, then even if I spent tens of thousands of dollars to cover 100% of my roof with them, I won't get enough electricity to run my air conditioner, even on a bright sunny day. So that's not a very appealing option to me. \n\nBut if your solar panels are 15% efficient, then I can spend significantly less money only covering half of my roof with panels, and still get way more electricity than my entire roof would've made with 1% efficient panels. \n\nEspecially because efficiency gains tend to outpace the cost increases. A 15% efficient panel probably isn't going to cost 15x what a 1% efficient panel would cost, despite providing much better performance. ", "Typically when using the word \"efficiency\" in a comparative fashion for energy production the measurement refers to the source-energy relative to the converted usable energy.  E.G. if gasoline has X amount of energy in it, the combustion engine can only create about X*.3 of that to its usable energy (movement, in this case).  \n\nA solar panel converts about 20ish percent of the suns energy.  If we compare that to other forms of _electricity_ production (the most reasonable analogue for your not-well-defined statement) then we'd be saying that \"compared to the efficiency of capture of energy from coal and conversion to electricity, solar panels are significantly less efficient\".\n\nThe REASON we might emphasize this statement however is that increasing efficiency of the panel in this dimension is correlated with requiring less physical space, likely high return on investment of actual purchase of the panels and so on.  Its perceived that improved efficiency - amongst other things - is the path towards more economic viability for widespread solar.", "When people talk about the [efficiency](_URL_0_) of solar panels, they're referring to the amount of electricity it creates compared to the amount of solar energy it recieves from the sun.\n\nMost solar panels only convert 15-20% of the sunlight they're exposed to into electricity, so they are 15-20% efficient.\n\nThe theoretical maximum efficiency (a \"perfect\" solar cell) is thought to be around 86%.", "At least colloquially, speaking as someone who studies the economics of climate change, efficiency in this context is usually referring to cost-efficiency.  That is, how much money does it cost to make, install, and maintain enough solar panels to create [X] watts of power capacity.  Right now, solar is still being developed, and it cannot yet compete economically with more established conventional electricity generation, mostly coal and natural gas, with nontrivial amounts coming from hydroelectricity and nuclear. (Wind and biomass are pretty small compared with the other four I listed, but are most of the remainder.)\n\nConsumers demand electricity, and rational economic agents would seek to get it at the lowest possible price, so in the absence of regulatory action, they would get their electricity from coal and natural gas, which are cheaper per watt-hour (i.e. energy/Joules).  However, coal and natural gas both have pollution externalities - the pollution produced by burning coal is really nasty (not just carbon pollution, which contributes to climate change, but also sulfur, NOx, and heavy metal contaminates, which are ugly stuff), and consumers aren't paying for the harm caused by this pollution.\n\nTherefore, we want to steer policy in the direction toward cleaner fuels, of which solar is a part.  The problem is just what your title asks - solar isn't yet cost-effective enough to compete with natural gas and coal (though it probably will be in five years).  This is because we are still making great advancements in developing solar technology (it's a relatively new and highly technical field).\n\nSo, in order to stimulate investment into the solar industry, we have to subsidize it somehow, generally either through adoption credits (giving tax rebates to people who install solar panels), feed-in tariffs (mandating that your utility company compensates the supplier for the electricity that household/business generates), or carbon taxes (not exactly a subsidy, but a tax on coal acts in a similar manner to a subsidy on coal).\n\nThe hope is that with a temporary subsidy, we can get enough investment in the industry to make solar cheaper than natural gas and coal, after which point we permanently move into a clean-energy world.  If there is enough demand for solar (because of government subsidies), this encourages innovation into the solar industry, which should lower the cost of adoption (either by making the photovoltaic cells themselves more efficient, cheaper to produce, lowering installation costs, economies of scale, etc.) to the point where solar can compete as a cost effective alternative to conventional electricity generation.  But we're not quite to the point where solar can directly compete on the basis of costs alone. (Storage capacity is a big part of this.)\n\nI'd be glad to elaborate further on any part of this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency"], []]}
{"q_id": "mnrf8", "title": "Does the gravitational constant change over time?", "selftext": "I was reading an article from the NASA site: _URL_0_\n\nThe interesting part is here: \n >  (3) The universal force of gravity is very stable. Newton's gravitational constant G has changed less than 1 part in 100-billion since the laser experiments began. \n\n1 part in 100-billion is well bellow the error in G. So what does this statement mean? And if G is changing, how did we measure it so accurately?\n\nAre any other constants we know of changing? If they are, how much of a change will be needed for someone to notice the change using only our physical senses?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mnrf8/does_the_gravitational_constant_change_over_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c32e26l", "c32f7ug", "c32fxk1", "c32e26l", "c32f7ug", "c32fxk1"], "score": [5, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["It's possible, but - as that site you linked to has said, in one form - there's no evidence for such a thing having happened. The change in G (or its first derivative) is a separate quantity to G itself, so there's nothing wrong with measuring that to a greater precision than we have (from separate experiments) in G. These lunar experiments aren't measuring actual values of G, just measuring its change.\n\nAs for other \"constants,\" there's some evidence from quasar spectroscopy that the fine structure constant, which determines the strength of the electromagnetic force, may have varied over time and even space (see [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_), for example), but those are not universally accepted results and I don't believe they've been reproduced by many other groups (though to be fair it's hard to get access to the very nice telescopes that the Webb group uses). At the moment there are no constants of nature which we know are changing, but the search is still on. In fact, this is one of the things I work on!", "This doesn't answer your question but it does clear up some confusion in this thread:\n\nThe attractive force that a particular quantity of matter exerts upon another particular quantity of matter, which is more or less constant regardless of location in the universe, is the universal gravitational constant and denoted by an upper-case G. \n\nThe gravitational constant we know to be ~9.8 m/s/s is the local gravitational constant, denoted by lower-case g. This local constant will change whenever new matter is introduced to the earth, or matter removed from our sphere, or when our planet's formation changes, tectonic plates, etc. Local gravity can be specified for different 2D locations (latitude, longitude) and by altitude, not to mention different planets or heavenly bodies.\n\n[Here is a *very* interesting _URL_0_ paper on variations in G depending on orientation with reference to 'background' stars (as far as I understand the article at least)](_URL_1_)\n\nedit: can anybody comment on the rationale of the linked publication? is it a logically sound idea?", "Ok, so I can't find it anywhere, but I remember reading a sort of related mindblowing factoid in a Feynman book: The ratio of the gravitational constant to the electromagnetic constant (in the Coulombic force) is roughly the same as the ratio of the size of the universe to an atom (I think, I believe he wrote it in the Character of Physical Law.) Can anyone confirm this? I might've said it wrong, he might've said proton and not atom. \n\nWe might conclude that since the universe is expanding the gravitational constant might therefore change to keep this ratio. On the other hand, the ratio might remain the same regardless and so it wouldn't. Or it could just be a lovely coincidence. ", "It's possible, but - as that site you linked to has said, in one form - there's no evidence for such a thing having happened. The change in G (or its first derivative) is a separate quantity to G itself, so there's nothing wrong with measuring that to a greater precision than we have (from separate experiments) in G. These lunar experiments aren't measuring actual values of G, just measuring its change.\n\nAs for other \"constants,\" there's some evidence from quasar spectroscopy that the fine structure constant, which determines the strength of the electromagnetic force, may have varied over time and even space (see [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_), for example), but those are not universally accepted results and I don't believe they've been reproduced by many other groups (though to be fair it's hard to get access to the very nice telescopes that the Webb group uses). At the moment there are no constants of nature which we know are changing, but the search is still on. In fact, this is one of the things I work on!", "This doesn't answer your question but it does clear up some confusion in this thread:\n\nThe attractive force that a particular quantity of matter exerts upon another particular quantity of matter, which is more or less constant regardless of location in the universe, is the universal gravitational constant and denoted by an upper-case G. \n\nThe gravitational constant we know to be ~9.8 m/s/s is the local gravitational constant, denoted by lower-case g. This local constant will change whenever new matter is introduced to the earth, or matter removed from our sphere, or when our planet's formation changes, tectonic plates, etc. Local gravity can be specified for different 2D locations (latitude, longitude) and by altitude, not to mention different planets or heavenly bodies.\n\n[Here is a *very* interesting _URL_0_ paper on variations in G depending on orientation with reference to 'background' stars (as far as I understand the article at least)](_URL_1_)\n\nedit: can anybody comment on the rationale of the linked publication? is it a logically sound idea?", "Ok, so I can't find it anywhere, but I remember reading a sort of related mindblowing factoid in a Feynman book: The ratio of the gravitational constant to the electromagnetic constant (in the Coulombic force) is roughly the same as the ratio of the size of the universe to an atom (I think, I believe he wrote it in the Character of Physical Law.) Can anyone confirm this? I might've said it wrong, he might've said proton and not atom. \n\nWe might conclude that since the universe is expanding the gravitational constant might therefore change to keep this ratio. On the other hand, the ratio might remain the same regardless and so it wouldn't. Or it could just be a lovely coincidence. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr/"], "answers_urls": [["http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012419", "http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907"], ["arXiv.org", "http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;ved=0CCoQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2Fphysics%2F0202058&amp;ei=mmPOTpGrNIqxsAL8yZHqBA&amp;usg=AFQjCNEuunEqGPCNRveb33aditiBF5gi9w&amp;sig2=flILDLer8hzlJZMMhCnXdQ"], [], ["http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012419", "http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907"], ["arXiv.org", "http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;ved=0CCoQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2Fphysics%2F0202058&amp;ei=mmPOTpGrNIqxsAL8yZHqBA&amp;usg=AFQjCNEuunEqGPCNRveb33aditiBF5gi9w&amp;sig2=flILDLer8hzlJZMMhCnXdQ"], []]}
{"q_id": "3nyxjd", "title": "Why did a number of Hellenistic rulers leave their thrones to Rome, a foreign power, in their wills?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nyxjd/why_did_a_number_of_hellenistic_rulers_leave/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvt4jdl", "cvt5r21"], "score": [7, 31], "text": ["If I may expand this question, why did rulers of many cultures do this? I recall that Boudicca's husband did this as well.", "Lots of reasons. Often times the Romans would make a conquered territory a \"client state.\" A client state was a kingdom that did not have sovereignty, so that the inhabitants were still subject to the king's rule, but the king was subject to a Roman noble such as Julius Caesar or, later, the Roman Emperor. In these cases it, leaving the kingdom to be ruled by Rome was not such a crazy thing as the kingdom in question would have already been indirectly ruled by Romans for some time. \n\nThe reasons were various. If there was a lack of a successor or if there was political instability in the kingdom, it sometimes made sense to leave the kingdom to be ruled by Rome. A notable example is Pergamon, which was granted to Rome by Attalus III. There had already been a precedence to call Rome to assist in Pergamene conflicts, so Attalus was merely taking precedent one step further in order to prevent one Aristonicus, a bitter political rival, from gaining any power in the ensuing power gap. \n\nSources: Plutarch  \nThe Hellenistic World and the  Coming of Rome, Erich Gruen"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2n19a5", "title": "Were the LA Riots of 1992 really all about Rodney King verdict or was that just a catalyst for underlying tensions that were already building toward a boiling point?", "selftext": "I have always wondered this because in the US we are taught majorly about slavery and the civil war but continue education I saw that there are a lot of underlying principles besides slavery. I just find it hard to believe that the people would go crazy just because of one verdict. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n19a5/were_the_la_riots_of_1992_really_all_about_rodney/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm9ip65", "cm9mhwb"], "score": [57, 9], "text": ["You're asking a pretty big question because it deals with race relations and the way that the city of Los Angeles developed in part as a response to those relations. \n\n[The Death of Latasha Harlins](_URL_2_) is something that was thought to be a contributing factor. A Korean grocery owner believed Latasha Harlins was stealing some OJ. She tried to stop her, a scuffle ensued and then Harlins tried to leave. Du (the owner) got a gun and shot Harlins in the back (and the head). \n\nShe was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter which carried a max of 16 years in prison but the judge gave her 5 years of probation, 400 hours community service and a $500 fine. \n\nIt was seen as one of many double standards when it came to meting out justice. The King verdict was yet another slight to the African-American community. \n\nYou're also dealing with a region in Los Angeles that has had an incredibly complex relationship with that community from the time that the major migrations from the South occured. You have housing covenants which forbid certain homes to be sold to blacks or anyone of color. You have a history of rioting going back to the [Watt's Riots in 1965](_URL_1_) and people in the community who experienced them still being alive in 1992. Then you have the influence of the Black Panthers and the subsequent efforts by the FBI to undermine the Black Panthers and other groups for being subversive. Gang culture creeps in and changes whole communities. There's the effect that crack has on the community. That drastically changes the relationship many black communities have with law enforcement (and this is a development that has being going on for years before crack). \n\nThere are a lot of complicated socio-economic and racial issues that served as kindling for the riots and you could really take at least one course simply on Race in LA (as I did) to understand why the 1992 riots happened at all. I really gave huge broad brushstrokes because you're asking about something that spans the better part of 50 years but the point is that Los Angeles and the Black community have had a simmering and sometimes boiling tension for years and years by the 1992 riots. \n\nThis is mostly from memory but I remember one good source of info on the growth of LA and how various forces, races and interests molded the city (and thus how these forces might have impacted the black community in 1992) is [City of Quartz by Mike Davis](_URL_0_)", "There were a lot of simmering tensions in LA at the time of the riots. There were a lot of simmering tensions across the USA at the time of the riots. But they need never have boiled over into full-on riots--they didn't resulted in riots in other areas of the country. So saying that the tensions were building towards a boiling point anyway is to provide an inevitability to the riots that was simply not there. There were no riots when the Rodney King tape first came out, even though people were really angry and upset about it. There were no riots during the trial. There were no riots after the Latasha Harlins verdict. People were controlled and expressed their anger and search for justice verbally and in print. Sure, there was a lot of anger--basically every black person I knew in LA, from janitor to doctor, had been stopped by the police for \"driving while black\" or \"walking while black\". In other words, for existing. For being black and being in a nice neighborhood. That sort of situation. And there had been a lot of complaints but no change.  When the Rodney King trial  happened, people put their trust in justice, not rioting.  If you go back and read newspaper archives of the time, you'll see that people were controlled in their anger. They believed that now that this tape existed, which showed an  unresisting black man being viciously beaten by police, the police would be punished. When that didn't happen, *then* some people began expressing their anger in a violent way. But keep in mind, it wasn't \"the black community\" as a group that was rioting. There were some people who were rioting due to anger at this socio-political situation, and then there were a lot of others who were piggybacking on the riots to loot because they wanted to loot. Once you start to have a situation spiraling out of control, it has a way of self-perpetuating for reasons that were unrelated to the reason it started."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/dp/1844675688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1416622415&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=city+of+quartz", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Riots", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Latasha_Harlins"], []]}
{"q_id": "8eopyz", "title": "Why Belarus called as White Russia", "selftext": "I know there are lot of topics on the net but i couldnt trust them and want to ask I read 3 theory for a main reason\nFirst one those pieces of Slavs werent occupied by Tatars\nSec. they(byelorussians)wear white clothes\nThird one is they were Christianised when the others were still believe old Slav paganism. Thanks for every answer", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8eopyz/why_belarus_called_as_white_russia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxxf1pv", "dxxgp72", "dy21gsd", "dy41x0d"], "score": [46, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["Belarus comes from Belorussia, which is literally just \"White Russia\" in Russian. Historically several different regions in the area were defined as \"Russia\" or \"Rus\" with a modifier in front: Black Russia (modern Western Belarus), Red Rus (Southeastern Poland/Northern Ukraine), Great Russia (the historic lands of Russia centred around Moscow), and Little Russia (mainly Ukraine). Now why White Russia was called White, there is no definitive answer. Various theories exist, which you've noted, but the only thing we can say for certain is these terms date back centuries (White Russia, or a version of it, is first recorded in 1381).", "Hi, it seems that there's no definitive answer. You may be interested in these responses in previous threads:\n\n* [Would the average citizen in the USSR call themself a Soviet or a Russian?](_URL_1_) by /u/kieslowskifan \n\n* [Is there any connection between the term \"White Russian\" for anti communists and the translation of Belarus \"White Russia?\"](_URL_2_) by a now-deleted account\n\n* [\"Ukraine\" versus \"the Ukraine\": A mere difference of terminology, or a politically charged statement?](_URL_0_) by /u/watermark0n\n\nThese posts are all archived now, so if you have follow-up questions for any of the users, ask here and tag their username to notify them.", "1. Slavs used colours as attribute of cardinal directions. So you had for example tribes like White Croats or White Serbs,  areas like Red Rus, White Rus, Black Rus. So White Rus = Northern Rus.\n\n2. Rus =/= Russia. Rus was country of East Slaves, that was created in IX century by Vikings that traveled by rivers to the Black Sea and the Byzantine Empire, in X century it was christianized, next there was fragmentation of country to the many small principalities, and ceased to exist after mongolian invasion in XIII century. Most of Rus principalities were occupied by Mongols and had to pay tribute to them to the XIV century, until they were strong enough to reject the dependence to them. There was several centers of unification of country, one of them was Great Principality of Muscowy, that latter created Russia from areas that was conquered by them. The other was Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that conquered areas of modern Ukraine and Belarus, later merged with Kingdom of Poland in Commonwealth of Both Nations. So Rus is ancestor country to Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, this 3 countries have many common with each other, but because they weren't part of one country by several houndreds years the differences between them are so big, that they have separate cultures, languages, ethnicity.\n\n3. English language doesn't takes it into account. Maybe because in XVIII and XIX century Russia tried to justify the conquest of the areas of Belarus and Ukraine as reconstruction of Rus, and their propagand tried to claim that the Ukrainian and Belarussian are local dialects of Russian, and people from this area are Russians.", "* Nobody knows why it is exactly \"white\", even here in Belarus there are plenty of mostly romantic versions.\n\n* The most accepted theory now is the concept of a Belarusian historian Ales Bely, saying that \"Ruthenia Alba\" (White Rus) is a cabinet term used by Western medieval scholars and maybe originated in Arabian sources\n\n* The fact is that the name \"Ruthenia Alba\" was used mainly for a Novgorodian lands for centuries, and was moved to modern Belarusian lands just about 500 years ago. So it is a migrating name and therefore this \"White\" part cannot have any real meaning.\n\n* Belarusian nationalists in 19th century selected the name Belarus for their nationalism just because it was slightly more popular than other variants like Kryvia. Their initial idea was to use a name \"Litwa\" (Lithuania), but it was already taken by Lithuanian nationalists."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f4rct/ukraine_versus_the_ukraine_a_mere_difference_of/ca75ddg/?context=10000", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gcq3j/would_the_average_citizen_in_the_ussr_call/disrn5r/?context=10000", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a6wqu/is_there_any_connection_between_the_term_white/csafo0e/?context=10000"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8h1299", "title": "why do people sometimes get very giddy/laugh uncontrollably after nearly dying?", "selftext": "Is this a stress response/nervous reaction, or some other biological mechanism like your body trying to flood you with reward mechanisms for not dying, or what? What's the biochemical idea here?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8h1299/eli5_why_do_people_sometimes_get_very_giddylaugh/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyg6oxn", "dyg79cf", "dyghsl9"], "score": [12, 11, 8], "text": ["Full disclosure: Nearly just got killed by a semi that failed to notice a speed table while walking back from lunch break; it actually grazed me enough as it passed me by to sort of pirouette me around and into a mailbox. Semi just kept on going, a nearby homeless guy ran over and made sure I was alright, but I couldn't answer him -- I was just too busy laughing and giggling, and I don't know why.\n\nI've heard of other people reacting this way to nearly dying though, especially if it's sudden, so I assume there's something going on here.", "There is one theory that laughter developed to let the tribe know that there wasn't a threat anymore.  If you were hunting in the bush and you say the grass move, it might be something that was about to kill you.  When the tiny rat came out of the grass, the person who saw it would laugh and the rest of the group would know \"OK, that thing in the grass we were scared of isn't anything to worry about.\"  \n\nThis kind of fits in what we find funny today - humor is typically when the actual result is different than the expected result.\n\nIn your example, it seems to make sense that you would laugh after nearly dying because the threat is over.  You are safe and you are signalling to other that there is nothing to worry about.", "That's a common side effect of the fight-or-flight response. When you're suddenly in a dangerous situation like an incoming car or an animal attack, your brain sends signals to your adrenal glands (little lumpy bits on top of your kidneys) to start producing various hormones, such as adrenaline and dopamine. When that happens, your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, your hearing is muffled, your digestive system slows down, and your muscles start burning energy faster, all so you can focus on either defending yourself or running away without having to stop and think about it.\n\nOf course having all those hormones suddenly flooding into your system has side effects, one of them being giddiness/laughing. This is likely caused by the hormone dopamine. It's typically produced when you feel pleasure, but also when you feel pain (physical and emotional), to help suppress it and calm you down. This can sometimes result in giddiness and nervous laughter in some people when they are really hurt or upset.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bdvdur", "title": "What happened to the tons of lead in Notre Dame's roof, will it be a health hazard to firefighters or the river in the future?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bdvdur/what_happened_to_the_tons_of_lead_in_notre_dames/", "answers": {"a_id": ["el3i2nc"], "score": [5], "text": ["This site: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_), in French only, sorry, measures and reports air pollution levels due to fire at Notre Dame, and to this day, there is no significant decrease in air quality. But that's for classical pollution sources and measured over larger areas, so the measurements are not very local and very near the cathedral, the situation might be different. As for the lead, since it's no longer a concern nowadays (since cars use lead free fuel), they say we'll have to wait a few more days for trustworthy results.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nNB: I'm basically translating the post..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.airparif.asso.fr/actualite/detail/id/262"]]}
{"q_id": "2dghfa", "title": "do different types of hard alcohols, say vodka vs. tequila, truly affect your mood in different ways? if so, why?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dghfa/eli5_do_different_types_of_hard_alcohols_say/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjp8rqk", "cjp90l8", "cjp9bt3", "cjpch84", "cjpdml9", "cjpg255", "cjpkxkm"], "score": [28, 3, 8, 8, 2, 7, 2], "text": ["One possible explanation: mixers. Lots of people shoot tequila straight, whereas rum is commonly taken in tandem with something else \u2013 cola, for example. If you're combining gin with tonic, or vodka with something super-caffeinated like Red Bull, whose to say the drunk you're experiencing is due to the alcohol, and not because of what you're drinking with it?\n\nDespite the fact that there are no scientific studies (to my knowledge) that examine the behavioral effects that different alcoholic beverages may or may not have, the most common explanation for the differential effects of booze is that it's all in your head, and that your experience with a given alcohol is dictated largely by the social situations in which you choose to consume it.\n\nFundamentally, alcohol is alcohol whichever way you slice it.", "Think of the situations in which you'd drink different kinds of alcohol.  Something like vodka or gin, you might be at a swanky party.  Rum, tequila, or beer, maybe you're at a more casual, much louder party.  Wine at a quiet dinner or a night at home with a friend.\n\nHow are you drinking?  Shots, like you normally do with tequila?  Mixed drinks, mainly vodka, gin, or rum?  Are these mixed with something sugary or caffeinated?  Drinking two heavy beers while having dinner at a casual bar with friends, or drinking 4 light beers at a beer pong table? \n\nAlcohol is alcohol, they're all ethanol.  But what we drink them with, where we drink them, how much and how fast are all going to affect our drunkenness. ", "In general, no, it's all just ethyl alcohol affecting you. As jhaake said, though, you can expect some differences based on the mixers you use. Red Bull will give you a different reult from club soda, because you are adding a stimulant.\n\nThere's a *possibility* the different congeners (the byproducts of fermentation and distillation in different alcohols, or in other words, the other 60% of the fluid that isn't alcohol in your standard 80 proof liquor) may have some unknown affect on people, but nothing has been isolated that seems to be able to affect mood like that.\n\nWhat is more likely, and the generally accepted definition, is that you get self fulfilling prophecies. If you expect to be a raging party animal when you drink tequila, then you drink tequila, you'll be a raging party animal. If you expect to get angry and hit people when you drink irish whiskey, that's what you'll do.\n\nOn that note, I've seen someone get stupid drunk on a non-alcoholic beverage they thought was alcoholic.", "Why does whiskey disable my penis?", "I suspect it's a conditioning process. If you have a couple really wild nights the first times you drink tequila, then the smell and taste of tequila is going to bring up memories and put you in that crazy party mood.\n\nAlso a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect to be wild on tequila, you will, and if you make that widely known to friends, then they'll treat you differently as well.", "Bartender of almost 10 years here...I don't know if it will actually make you act different if let's say, you didn't know which type of alcohol you were drinking but I do know that certain regulars are not allowed certain drinks (tequila, jager) because of how they act when they drink it. Some alcohol is stronger than others obviously.  If.you are drinking Malibu rum it is only 42 proof(21% alcohol) whereas if you drank Bacardi 151 you would have 75.5 % alcohol. Mixing with any carbonated beverage does get it into your blood stream faster, as does caffeine. To my knowledge the reason people act different of certain liquors is because they like it better and drink it faster", "I was a bartender with a psychology degree for many years. I believe that if you have an experience that you associate with certain kinds of alcohol  you tend to blame those experiences on said alcohol. For example, if a person got into a fight while drinking whiskey, they tend to believe later that whiskey made them angry and they fought because of it. This belief will effect their behavior to the point they believe they get angry drinking whiskey. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "58vfx9", "title": "why does sweat from our armpits smell significantly worse than sweat from other parts of our body?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58vfx9/eli5_why_does_sweat_from_our_armpits_smell/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d93ife0", "d93ilb0", "d93nkio", "d93pynk", "d943lf7", "d947vqo", "d9483ju", "d948ra9", "d948vyl"], "score": [2177, 286, 35, 116, 34, 2, 34, 8, 126], "text": ["The human body has 2 types of sweat glands.  The first type is called an eccrine sweat gland.  These are located all over the body and produce mostly watery sweat.  The other kind is called apocrine sweat glands.  Apocrine sweat glands are found in the armpits and groin areas.  Apocrine glands make sweat that has more protein and other nutrients than sweat from eccrine sweat glands.  All the proteins and nutrients from apocrine sweat are good food for bacteria.  The bacteria are responsible for the odors you smell. \n\n~~Anyone who has an old, white, undershirt can see this.  Armpits turn yellow because of all the proteins and other nutrients that is in the sweat in there.~~\n\nEdit:  So I guess yellow sweat stains are actually from compounds in the deodorant itself and is unrelated to the sweat.  Learn something new every day.  Thanks for pointing that out.", "There's bacteria in your armpits that digests minerals in your sweat and produces volatile (smelly) compounds as a waste product.  This is deliberate - your body produces and secretes some of those chemicals on purpose, to feed those bacteria.  Those chemicals aren't present before puberty, mostly, which is why children don't smell bad, but teens smell *awful*.  Exactly why that happens, no one is entirely sure.  But it's probably something to do with attracting a mate.  The strong scent would indicate that the person has extra resources to waste on feeding unnecessary bacteria.\n\nEDIT: A few people have asked why BO smells bad if it's supposed to attract a mate.  Well, it smells bad *now*, we have germ theory and hygiene.  Our fitness is demonstrated by our cleanliness now.  Technology and culture has changed faster than evolution.  Assuming that BO *was* used to attract mates, which is speculation anyway (not mine, but speculation of scientists).", "It isn't the sweat itself that smells, but the bacteria that feeds on it, and the armpit is an ideal place for these little critters to live", "So many years ago I was an anthropology major.  The amount of apocrine  glands in certain areas (armpits, genitals) varies in races.  Interesting stuff", "Hey I get to put my undergrad anatomy study to work!\nWe actually have two types of sweat glands, eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine are found all over the body and typically have the odorless sweat you're talking about. Apocrine glands are found in the same parts of the body as hair follicles I.e. pubic areas and armpits, in which the sweat passes through the hair follicle before releasing the sweat. Apocrine glands also produce milky fluid that produces odor when bacteria come into contact with it. Incidentally these glands tend to develop body odor around the same time you grow hair in your armpits and groin, that is puberty, hence why most lessons about \"bodily changes\" during puberty include body odor.\n\n", "Simple answer: Bacteria. Here's an article I googled: _URL_0_", "Though the difference between eccrine and apocrine sweat glands has been thoroughly explained, there's a little more to the \"why\" part of the question.\n\nBefore mammals had developed nipples and dedicated mammary glands to provide milk, some mammals just secreted milky sweat that was enriched with fats and protein from certain patches of skin, in order to feed their young.  The echidna is one of the few animals that still does this.  Though the thought of nursing your children on underarm or groin sweat is disgusting, the apocrine glands are still producing an \"enriched sweat\" that may have originally been used for that very purpose.", "Follow-up question: what's the purpose of having different types of sweat glands, and specifically having sweat glands that feed bacteria which produce an odour? ", "I feel like this is important and hope it doesn't get removed bc it's not a direct answer to the question...but it's important to know the difference between the two types of sweat glands we have. Others have already posted that our armpit and groin sweat glands are different than the rest on our body.\n\nAnyways here's what I wanna say. For years I thought I was getting ingrown hairs on my bikini like from waxing/shaving. It was incessant and very painful. Several times I had to go to the doctor and get antibiotic shots. I stopped shaving/waxing and was STILL getting the \"ingrown hairs\" so I went to a dermatologist and was diagnosed with Hidradentitis Suppurativa. It's a condition that causes apocrine glands to clog and become infected. \n\nI wanted to post this bc many women may be suffering from this condition but think they're just getting ingrown hairs or shaving bumps. There's no cure but treatment is easy and can drastically reduce the number of infections and their severity. If you think this might be you, go see a doctor because relief is possible!\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: spelling error "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/31/396573607/meet-the-bacteria-that-make-a-stink-in-your-pits"], [], [], ["https://www.nobsabouths.com/what-is-hidradenitis-suppurativa/symptoms?cid=ppc_ppd_ggl_hs_da_sweat_gland_infection_bmm_65U1844132&amp;gclid=COCqzsiS8c8CFSJWMgodsh4Kig&amp;gclsrc=ds"]]}
{"q_id": "1q8w59", "title": "\"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.\" I know this idea has been debunked, but I like saying it anyway. My question is: *How* debunked? Completely? Or just somewhat? I know we have gill-like physical structures in the womb for a short time. What's up with that?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1q8w59/ontogeny_recapitulates_phylogeny_i_know_this_idea/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdam0d0"], "score": [3], "text": ["Well, it is only true in the sense that some stages of a species' ontogeny do in fact look like fully developed individuals of a lesser (in evolutionary sense) species. But in terms of this being an actual evolutionary law has been completely debunked. There are many examples where this is not the case."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8hyogk", "title": "When was the \"why did the chicken cross the road?\" joke first popularized, and by who?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hyogk/when_was_the_why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyo3sms"], "score": [14], "text": ["I wrote an answer [in reply to a similar question here](_URL_0_) - hope that helps!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6bqp6c/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_how_did_the/dhpmwgw/"]]}
{"q_id": "n9de8", "title": "A teacher showed us Masaru Emoto's study on frozen water drops when given \"good\" and \"bad\" emotions. True or False?", "selftext": "I was in a class and a teacher was speaking about how prayer helps people and how miracles appear from prayer. Then she started speaking about Masaru Emoto and how he discovered that when you talk \"nice\" to water, its structure changes to a \"nice\" structure showing a crystal-like image.\n\nAny thoughts? Fake? Real?\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n9de8/a_teacher_showed_us_masaru_emotos_study_on_frozen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c37arit", "c37ax0r", "c37b2de", "c37bft7", "c4awk5y", "c37arit", "c37ax0r", "c37b2de", "c37bft7"], "score": [17, 9, 13, 3, 2, 17, 9, 13, 3], "text": ["What kind of class was this? [Emoto is a faker](_URL_0_).", "That guy is associated with a company that sells small jars of water for $100 each.  The website is full of fake science.\n\nThose photographs were hand-picked to show whatever it is he intended to show.  Emoto admits to this:\n\n >  Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist, and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs.\n\n_URL_0_", "This man is making an extraordinary claim. There is no known mechanism that would explain his results, and they run counter to what we currently believe to be true about the natural world. Therefore, his evidence has to be of an extremely high quality, and it would have to be independently verified and replicated before it gained any credence.\n\nIn particular, the things one would want to consider when assessing an experiment like this would be:\n\nWere all the water samples used in the experiment prepared and obtained in the same way at the outset - that is were they identical?\nIdeally a chemical analysis of water samples from each group before and after the experiment should be provided.\n\nWas there a control group that was not exposed to any stimulus?\n\nWere the people who assessed the \"niceness\" of the crystals blinded to which stimulus the water had received?\n\nThe actual numerical data:\nHow many samples in each group?\nWhat exposure, how many times, for how long?\nHow were the results graded - a simple \"nice\" or \"ugly\" or perhaps a numerical scale from 1 to 10?\nHow many people assessed each sample - was there only one or were there multiple assessors?\nIn each group how many samples were there, how many assessments were there, and what were the results from each assessment?\n\nThese are only a few questions off the top of my head, I am sure there are others that people can think up. The first step in assessing this claim would be the obtaining the answers to these questions, and if they are not published anywhere it is not worth considering the claim any further. ", "Fake. The person making pictures knew what the words that were written on the glass that the water was in, meant. So for nice words he would look for the crystals that turned out beautiful, while for bad words he would look for the most dramatic/ugly chrystals.\n\nDo you have a microscope somewhere in the school? Repeat the experiment for yourself. Try to make it scientific by making it a double blind experiment, and/or by having more than two dishes and more than one observer. ", "Lol my dad used to tell me it was bad listening to metal and the like because of this shit. He said it would alter the water inside our bodies negatively. \n\nI think a class in statistics, learning about the scientific method, the design of scientific studies, types of studies (which would ideally be peer-reviewed double-blind placebo controlled), etc. would really benefit people as well as using critical thinking.", "What kind of class was this? [Emoto is a faker](_URL_0_).", "That guy is associated with a company that sells small jars of water for $100 each.  The website is full of fake science.\n\nThose photographs were hand-picked to show whatever it is he intended to show.  Emoto admits to this:\n\n >  Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist, and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs.\n\n_URL_0_", "This man is making an extraordinary claim. There is no known mechanism that would explain his results, and they run counter to what we currently believe to be true about the natural world. Therefore, his evidence has to be of an extremely high quality, and it would have to be independently verified and replicated before it gained any credence.\n\nIn particular, the things one would want to consider when assessing an experiment like this would be:\n\nWere all the water samples used in the experiment prepared and obtained in the same way at the outset - that is were they identical?\nIdeally a chemical analysis of water samples from each group before and after the experiment should be provided.\n\nWas there a control group that was not exposed to any stimulus?\n\nWere the people who assessed the \"niceness\" of the crystals blinded to which stimulus the water had received?\n\nThe actual numerical data:\nHow many samples in each group?\nWhat exposure, how many times, for how long?\nHow were the results graded - a simple \"nice\" or \"ugly\" or perhaps a numerical scale from 1 to 10?\nHow many people assessed each sample - was there only one or were there multiple assessors?\nIn each group how many samples were there, how many assessments were there, and what were the results from each assessment?\n\nThese are only a few questions off the top of my head, I am sure there are others that people can think up. The first step in assessing this claim would be the obtaining the answers to these questions, and if they are not published anywhere it is not worth considering the claim any further. ", "Fake. The person making pictures knew what the words that were written on the glass that the water was in, meant. So for nice words he would look for the crystals that turned out beautiful, while for bad words he would look for the most dramatic/ugly chrystals.\n\nDo you have a microscope somewhere in the school? Repeat the experiment for yourself. Try to make it scientific by making it a double blind experiment, and/or by having more than two dishes and more than one observer. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/myths/myths.htm"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto#Criticism"], [], [], [], ["http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/myths/myths.htm"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto#Criticism"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7x7zgl", "title": "do you have a higher chance of winning the lottery if you place your bets based on the last 60 years of drawn numbers?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7x7zgl/eli5_do_you_have_a_higher_chance_of_winning_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du66y4b", "du671vq", "du6aa7p", "du6dmzw", "du6ipwl", "du6j6p6", "du6m029"], "score": [2, 12, 53, 7, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["Well mathematically the chance of a number drawn is allways the same. If you feel it will work then bet on it but its a luck game.", "Nope.  What you're looking at here is called the Gambler's Fallacy.  Past games do not affect the chances of future games.\n\nThe only thing I can think of is if they were using the exact same system every draw for that time period (like the same set of ping-pong balls or the same computer) then it could be showing a bias due to something like a bad random number generator or irregularities in the balls.  But lotteries generally audit their equipment and change equipment to prevent exactly this.", "I think most people here are forgetting that lotteries are not pure mathematical constructs.  It is a game built by, and manipulated by people.  Yes, the Gambler's Fallacy suggests that all thing are equal in an equal game, but the game is rarely equal.\n\nFirstly, saying that the odds are the same assumes that each lottery ball is built evenly.  It is very possible some balls weigh more than others, changing how likely they are of being picked.  In this example, it is possible that the No.3 ball is the lightest ball, and more likely to fly to top and be picked.  Also, it's possible that when they put the balls in the machine, they do so numerical order.  This might make lower numbers more likely to surface than the higher numbers.\n\nSecondly, some lotteries are fixed.  Intentionally using balls of different weights and sizes make more numbers more likely to appear.  In some draws, people heat the key balls up so that someone picked them by hand could identify them.  For whatever reason, No. 3 could intentionally chosen more often, maybe because the mob boss' son was born in March.\n\nThe classic example of the Gambler's fallacy took place in Monte Carlo when the ball landed on black 26 times in a row.  A lot people lost money because they kept betting on red, think falsely that there is no way that a ball would land on the same spot for as long as it did.  Myself, I would have bet on black, because at that point, I would suspect that the mechanism helping the ball land on black was jammed or something, causing the ball the land on black over and over again.\n\nFor those that doubt me, [something like this happened in a casino in Montreal](_URL_0_).  To summarize, the casino reset their Keno machines every morning, so their sequence of numbers repeated each day.  Somebody figured this out and won $600,000", "If you think the game is broken or fixed, then that site could be used to help benefit from that. If the lottery isn't broken or fixed, that site is a public random number generator. With lottery, the problem with public random number generators is that shared wins are split. If multiple people guess correctly, you win less than if you were correct alone. This statistics site is therefore problematic as it instructs everyone equally to play same numbers, so if those numbers came up, you'd win less than if you had won alone.\n\nSo basically, the question you have to ask yourself is, how likely do you think it is that the lottery machine is broken? And if it is broken, how do you capitalize on that while keeping in mind that popular numbers mean pot is split. And if it isn't broken, well, all you have to do is avoid those popular numbers.\n\nGiven how small the variance is between numbers, if I played lottery, I would specifically avoid both most common and most uncommon numbers on that list. Even if there was something going on, the effect is way smaller than the expected loss in winnings because you have to share the pot.", "I actually did this experiment\n\nIn Computer Science class I had to do a semester-long project, and I had just discovered that I could get a complete archive of the lottery results just by asking for it, so I combined the two... because I wanted to win the Lottery. \n\nI spent the whole semester writing a program to analyse the historical data for trends, to generate thousands of entries for each draw based on those trends to see what would have happened if I had used my 'system', and finally to pick random numbers based on a seed created by extracting random 24-digit sections of PI.\n\nIt was all pointless. There were no statistically significant trends... and even using non-significant trends there was zero difference between the 'system' numbers, and the random numbers. ", "It depends whether lottery are in fact truly random or if they are weighted somehow by whatever mechanism is used to draw the lottery.  \n\nIn dice terms, whether the die are fair and balanced, or \"loaded\".  As much as we'd like to think they are fair, they may or may not be, and it depends on how well the equipment is audited.", "It would be interesting to model this. Assume that the winning numbers are generated by a mixture of a fair process and a biased process. Also assume that Others are observing and overweighting past winning numbers--you have to share winnings with them if you pick the same numbers. You might be able to estimate the sharing effect by looking at how many people win each past drawing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Casino#Keno_scandal"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2poly2", "title": "Were the British fooled by the Boston Tea Party participants' Mohawk costumes? Or did the authorities assume they were colonists right away?", "selftext": "Of course, we know it was colonists. But were the British authorities at the time fooled? Or was it pretty transparent?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2poly2/were_the_british_fooled_by_the_boston_tea_party/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmyorh0"], "score": [126], "text": ["Think critically;  a bunch of white guys with turkey feathers and some buckskin shirts and hatchets hopped up onto a merchant vessel after marching through the streets with torches, and then didn't kill a single soul as they deliberately and carefully only dumped tea into the harbor, taking care not to destroy the ships or other cargo. \n\nThis page offers up a number of contemporary accounts, and none of them seem to peg \"Indians\" as the primary culprits.  It was pretty widely known at the time that this was a civic protest against the recent taxations levied. Contextualize it today, and imagine a bunch of guys disguised as Mexican luchadores marching into the LAX harbor and dropping brand new Lexus convertibles over the side, taking care not to disturb the medicine or Apple laptops in adjacent shipping containers. Would you be fooled?\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.boston-tea-party.org/account-boston-gazette.html"]]}
{"q_id": "4xkckg", "title": "is there a reason that animals do not try and reproduce with other species?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xkckg/eli5_is_there_a_reason_that_animals_do_not_try/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6g54ao", "d6g5a53", "d6g9iny", "d6gdh6f", "d6ggnrk"], "score": [18, 71, 17, 6, 5], "text": ["Typically they are aroused by cues from their own species. Mating displays, certain smells, etc. However, there can be confusion. For example, otters have been known to rape baby seals to death. For the most part though, an animal that tries to reproduce with other species won't have offspring and won't pass on it's mating desires.", "first of all, they do. Ducks try a lot. There are species of flowers that release pheromones of female wasps/bees to attract males and trick the males into pollinating. Dolphins do all kinds of things.\n\nSecondly, most animals have behaviors specific to their species, mating behaviors, chemical scents, physical signals, etc specifically so the animals avoid such confusions because wasted mating is wasted food/energy/risk", "There's a youtube video out there of a monkey using a frog as a fleshlight waiting for you.", "From an evolutionary perspective: Individuals that expend energy on reproductive activities that have a chance to succeed will tend to pass on their genes more often than individuals that do not. Therefore there is selective pressure in favor of individuals that can distinguish other species, and prefer members of their own.", "Horse  &  donkey = mule.\n\nThen take my dog, (Please!), ... any thing on 4-legs or 2-twos and it wants to start a new species with. Hm, pillows included."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5uop8u", "title": "how can south korea make it illegal for its citizens to smoke weed outside of south korea?", "selftext": "EDIT: My question isn't \"how can they make such a law how dare they\", it's more \"how is it enforceable in any way\".", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uop8u/eli5_how_can_south_korea_make_it_illegal_for_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddvnfcj", "ddvrqkf", "ddvvpku", "ddw4aj3", "ddwc142"], "score": [75, 9, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["They make a law saying they can't smoke weed outside of South Korea, and then they punish the offender upon their return.\n\nFWIW, this is called extraterritorial jurisdiction, and many countries have it.  Most often it is used for things like piracy or terrorism, although sometimes you see it used for other things like sex tourism.  The intent is that if something is illegal, you shouldn't be able to get away with it just because you stepped over an imaginary line on the ground.  Whether these ideas can effectively be enforced is another matter entirely.", "In Ireland it is illegal to get an abortion or go to England for one. However the government won't do anything about it because if they stopped it they might have to deal with the issue themselves.", "AFAIK, the authorities may conduct drug tests on individuals that are suspected to have taken any drugs while abroad. For example, small traces of THC can be detected in your system through hair samples for up to six months. The \"suspects\" are often well-known celebrities who were recognised and reported to have taken drugs. Other cases may include people who attempt to bring drugs into the country, shown erratic behaviour during or after their flight, or become implicated as part of a larger investigation. Drug use is considered a felony in Korea and those who are caught will often face jail time (even more severe for possession). Even if they don't detect anything in your system, eyewitness testimony may be used against you as a means of forcing confessions before the official reports come out (although such testimonies will not necessarily hold up in a courtroom). Check out the G-Dragon or E Sens cases for more detail.\n\nTldr; drug tests on suspicious individuals + confessions prior to results", "It's really not that enforceable unless you're testing people returning from abroad either randomly or as a matter of practice.\n\nAmusing considering how much Koreans love their booze though.", "Its easily testable too. Unlike alcohol, which the body metabolizes, THC stays in your system for a while. For example. If I smoke on a Thursday and get into an accident Monday, I would still test positive on a blood test for THC and I could get a DUI.\n\nSource: my leadership professor is also a cop. Also he is pro-weed. Just a heads up\n\nEdit: autocorrect"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2dh23h", "title": "how tide detergent became a drug currency.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dh23h/eli5_how_tide_detergent_became_a_drug_currency/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjpf2p8", "cjpge9e", "cjpjzmg", "cjpk8m6", "cjpkr6h", "cjpkxvt", "cjpkyhs", "cjpl25e", "cjpl486", "cjpld7y", "cjplegw", "cjplgpc", "cjplhti", "cjplq51", "cjplvlp", "cjpmbxm", "cjpmwui", "cjpncfi", "cjpo02r", "cjpo38s", "cjpo51a", "cjpoc2k", "cjporhl", "cjpoz7t", "cjpp74r", "cjppbtb", "cjppkdl", "cjppqij", "cjpqd2p", "cjpqsio"], "score": [1089, 131, 10, 27, 51, 2, 9, 2, 17, 4, 397, 7, 22, 5, 2, 6, 3, 6, 3, 5, 2, 13, 4, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 4, 3], "text": ["Tide has the best name recognition and a large market share.  It is one of the top three brands with solid brand loyalty (people only want to use that brand and not other brands).  \n\nBecause of this Tide costs more for stores to buy compared to other brands.  At the same time they can charge more for it because customers are willing to pay more.  Stores want to pay as little as they can for Tide so they can keep more of the money they get for selling it.  \n\nSome of these stores are willing to buy Tide from shady sources because it costs less than buying it from the manufacturer.  This way the store pays as little as possible for the Tide and can sell it for the normal price.  As long as the store doesn't care where the Tide came from, criminals can sell Tide to the store.  Tide is such a popular and widespread product that they can steal it from just about anywhere.\n\nTL:DR: people want Tide, stores want to pay as little as possible for Tide, thieves steal Tide and sell to stores for less than distributor\n\nsource: _URL_0_", "One should note that this story was somewhat questionable when it came out some years ago, and has never really been properly corroborated. It seems to originate from just a single source, with every other \"reporter\" writing about it just parroting back the original.\n\n", "My friend was pretty addicted to heroin and homeless for a stretch in LA and he would make money by stealing the large tide bottles from places like target and resell them for around half the price to small bodegas and such. Considering tide goes for 30-40 bucks a bottle it would add up pretty quick if my friend hit up multiple targets/walmarts.", "Since when did this become a thing?", "We have a local grocery chain that gives discounts on groceries if you buy gas at their gas stations. I used to save up all my points until I had the max (20% off) and then buy the maximum dollar value of goods allowed ($300) in something that wouldn't spoil. One time I decided to buy $300 of Tide laundry detergent. The store manager needed to get some out of the stock room because I cleaned out the store shelf. He was giving me a really weird vibe the whole time. I related this to a co-worker who happily informed me about it being used in the drug trade. ", "Is tide that much better, or is it just a name thing? ", "Everyone needs to wash their clothes. It's just a simple commodity they sell in stores that you can easily steal. Not everyone from the ghetto needs your stolen laptop.", "Hygiene products can generally be flipped fairly easily. Everyone needs them, they don't have any serial numbers, are fairly portable, easy to sell and companies will buy them at because there's not really much chance for stuff getting traced back to you. In many European countries packs of razor blades among others are kept locked up so people can't steal them and flip them to a market or whoever's willing.", "I used to work in a grocery store in North Dakota...\n\nI was told that the bar code on the Tide bottles are all the same from one store to the next. Small stores (such as the one I worked at) were frequently targeted. We even busted a couple trying to take an entire cart (20+ bottles) out without paying for them. *smh*\n\nHow it was explained to me is they will then take these Tide bottles to stores where they accept returns without a receipt/without question. Since the bar code is the same, they accept it and hand out gift cards to these people. They then turn around and either use the gift cards, or turn these into cash through other means.\n\nedit: clarified\n\n", "ELi5: what the hell is OP talking about.", "It isn't just Tide. Not by a long shot. There's also Revlon, Lego, Carhartt, Nike, Duracell, steak, Similac, Folgers, Red Bull, Robitussin, Always, Dr.Scholls, Gillette,  Marvel, Weber, Advantage, Downy, Fram... I mean, the list goes on. Pick a brand name, easily recognized, and likely had a long term presence in the homes of most Americans. \n\nSo hard core drug addicts who have no source of income will steal these name brand items. The dealer will exchange the drugs for the merchandise. The dealer then either uses that merchandise (even heroin dealers want their babies wearing Pampers) or sells it to a fence. That fence is either a distributor (who collects certain things, like baby items or auto stuff) or a person who sells it themselves (swap meets, craigslist, a LOT of Amazon and EBay). Sometimes the dealer sells the merchandise themselves, as well (diversify!). Of course, this whole process happens without drugs being a necessity, but that wouldn't have answered the question, would it? \n\nSource: am shoplifter-catcher, and I like to talk to them", "Planet Money did a story on this a couple years ago.\n\n\"Tide is recognizable, easy to steal, hard to track, and can be re-sold for $5 to $10 a bottle.\"\n\n_URL_0_", "Would it be a stretch to say people use Tide to \"launder\" money? ", "It's been fairly widespread for about 8-10 years. On the street it's referred to as blue gold. I used to work in a pawn shop. People even tried to pawn Tide. Tide is relatively easy to steal, sneaking it in the bottom of the cart or rushing the door with a cart full of it. dealers will give about $5 in drug on a $20 bottle of Tide and then fence it through eBay, swap meets, or a family owned grocery store etc.", "Sorry, I am on mobile or else I would link better, but here is an interesting TED talk (10 mins) on the subject and a few other emerging economies. Worth the watch. Another one that falls into the situation, for more reasons than one is infant formula. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: ok, so crypto-currency isn't exactly emerging but w/e", "[theres a great TED talk on this.](_URL_0_)", "OP since when was Tide a drug currency? Please show me what you are talking about.", "Man, you really like Tide", "What did I miss. I avoid expensive detergents like the plague, there no value added. How could drug dealers except it as currency?  And counterfeiting detergent would be so much easier than counterfeiting the weed.", "A large thing of tide can go for around 20$ in some places. Its easy to snatch and grab. Drug dealers can return it without a record and get store credit. 20$ in store credit at some places (walmart or similar stores) is just as good as cash. Usually this is only in real economically depressed areas, and with hard drugs. Good luck buying weed with tide lol. I remember hearing a similar story about how people were using pepsi as currency in Appalachia, but I can't recall the source.\n", "Laundry detergent is expensive and you use it a lot. Drug addicts don't have money so they try to barter with Tide. Addicts go into stores that sell it and fill up empty pop bottles, and then barter the bottle of detergent for drugs.", "TIL. Tide is a drug currency. You learn something everyday. ", "because it's used for money laundering", "here is a news article from 2013, I tried to cite an earlier source but for some reason I can not get it to load\n_URL_0_ ", "I live in a shitty city in upstate NY with some less than savory residents. My local CVS had to take tide off of the shelves and keep it behind the counter. Now when I ask for it at the counter, I feel like the clerks are running some shady bodega- \"I got what you need homes, you looking for that basic or that spring fresh swag?\" ", "TIL Tide is used as a drug currency.", "I sell pallet loads of Tide every week in a very rural area. People go bat shit for Tide.\n\nRight now it's on a sale (like $2 off all 92 or 100 fl.oz. bottles) and has been all summer long. I lose a few nickels with every sale, but people go where Tide is cheap.\n\nMy source of Tide is legit though, maybe I can find myself one of these Tide thieves.", "You are not allowed to buy beer, cigarettes, or weed with the EBT card (like food stamps for the poor). But...you CAN buy Tide with it, and then trade the Tide for cash or underground market contraband. ", "It makes money laundering easier.", "TIL Tide Detergent is a drug currency"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/12/148448368/people-are-stealing-lots-of-tide-detergent"], [], [], ["https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_kemp_robertson_bitcoin_sweat_tide_meet_the_future_of_branded_currency"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-ts8fUhB8"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1l2wfu", "title": "Can you empirically measure metabolism?", "selftext": "People state that they have a fast or slow metabolism. For a lot of people dealing with body weight issues this is a major crutch or excuse. So is there a way to get a definite measure of metabolism? Know the calories your body burns at rest per minute/hour. \n\nWhat are some of the medical benefits of knowing and tracking metabolism? Would it even be useful?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1l2wfu/can_you_empirically_measure_metabolism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbv9gjo", "cbva3w7", "cbvb8np"], "score": [3, 5, 3], "text": ["Metabolism is important and is related to thyroid function which is commonly tested and asked about in medical tests.\n\nA person with hyperthyroidism has a fast metabolism and a person with hypothyroidism a slow metabolism and this is tested using thyroid function tests and thyroid stimulating hormone levels.\n\nMetabolism testing in the UK at least is not a commonly done test, but it is done using equations or something known as indirect calorimetry by measuring the consumption of oxygen or the removal of carbon dioxide.\n\nMetabolism can be altered by exercise and also by food consumption.", "You can measure metabolism by the amount of CO2 you produce when breathing. This is because CO2 is directly linked to how much energy your body is producing.\n\n_URL_0_", "You can measure metabolism using doubly labeled water:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is water where the hydrogen has been replaced by deuterium, and the oxygen 16 by oxygen 18. The oxygen 18 leaves the body via water loss and respiration (CO2), but the deuterium only leaves via water loss. Administer a small dose of doubly labeled water, measure baseline deuterium and oxygen 18 at T1 (e.g., in a urine sample), and then measure both some time later, T2, and the change in deuterium vs. oxygen 18 will allow you to compute the loss via respiration, i.e., metabolism."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respirometry"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubly_labeled_water"]]}
{"q_id": "2x8q97", "title": "why do we feel warm and go red when we are embarrassed?", "selftext": "Like why does blood come to the surface ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x8q97/eli5_why_do_we_feel_warm_and_go_red_when_we_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coxvqrx", "coxxv4c", "coxyd6s", "coy3bdy"], "score": [15, 101, 4, 8], "text": ["I have heard that it is an evolutionary trait that helps show humility and undercut chest bumping.\n\nIn caveman times there was a mire strict social hierarchy and blushing may have been a way to show deference to whoever you were in a confrontation with. \n\nI don't remember where I got this information so take it with several grains of salt.", "It's a metabolic response. Sort of like adrenalin. Blood rushes to the skin of your body, making you warm. And the blood is red, making you reddish. increasing blood to your head/skin helps you to physically move muscles in the area. \nFor example, If you're scared shitless or cry, the same thing can happen, so blood moves to an area where it feels you need it. In this case, facial expressions/responses. \nI always think of animals when I think of this, and how they try to chase other animals away by making scary faces when they're scared.\nIt's unneeded for us, but evolutionary. \n_URL_0_", "If you get red faced due to nerves/anxiety I've found a miracle drug that works for me, and many others (usually performers).  Propranolol.  Its a blood pressure medication, but at low doses it suppresses the sympathetic nerve which is what stimulates the red faced response.  ", "Embarrassment is an anxious response. Anxiety and fear are closely related and both initiate a stress response. The stress response is essentially the bodies flight or fight mechanism. From an evolutionary perspective the animals that had a greater change in physiology that improved their ability to escape a predator tended to live and reproduce. (Blood rushing to surface allows one to cool off faster) So the stress response makes sense and it is useful. Humans or maybe all higher order or all mammals (dogs maybe, or even rats) have social hierarchies that outside survival pressures there are social pressures. Embarrassment is a stress response to social pressures. Evolution is not purposeful, it just sticks with what already works. Embarrassment taps into the primitive stress response and we get some seemingly unnecessary physiological changes."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.realself.com/question/ma-face-turns-red"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4n4vvz", "title": "What made local iron in feudal Japan fundamentally inferior to the European equivalent?", "selftext": "I understand that a large difference is that European smiths typically worked with material containing raw iron ore, whereas the vast majority of iron in Japan is primarily found in the form of iron sand as opposed to ore.\n\nI've heard countless times that Japanese iron/steel was fundamentally \"worse\" than the European counterpart.\n\nWas this a result of iron sand being that much more difficult to successfully process than iron ore, or was there something inherent in the raw material that caused the outcome?\n\nMy other suspicion is that the Japanese-style forge (tatara) made it difficult to create high-quality steel in large amounts, with good steel only forming on the outer edge where it was able to sufficiently oxidize. As iron sands are far more labor intensive to mine and collect in the quantities required to feed the tatara, this would make the \"good\" steel incredibly valuable as such little raw material actually becomes usable steel.\n\nIs this completely wrong or is this on the right track?\n\nI apologize if this question seems all over the place and includes a bit of my own guessing. Ultimately I'm looking for a solid explanation as to what made Japanese steel/iron so ubiquitously \"inferior\" that it required such advanced techniques just to create a usable product.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4n4vvz/what_made_local_iron_in_feudal_japan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d412ri6", "d419u97"], "score": [3, 3], "text": ["From what I've read, it's mainly because the iron sand was so difficult to smelt properly. The best iron from the smelting was used to make swords as japanese style swords require high quality steel to be effective. The rest of the iron was full of impurities. I remember reading an article that went over the entire process of forging a katana from the sand to the blade, but I know longer have the link. \n\n\nI also remember reading that sword smiths would sometimes wait until lightning would strike the sand during a storm and use the iron created from the heat to forge blades that they thought would possess mystical powers. Who knows how true that is? ", "If you don't get an answer here, you can try /r/askhistorians"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "21brli", "title": "The Romans knew that lead is harmful, yet we used it in paint, pipes and other places until very recently. Are there other materials the ancients knew were harmful that we still use today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21brli/the_romans_knew_that_lead_is_harmful_yet_we_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbso9y"], "score": [14], "text": ["The definition of \"harmful\" is incredibly broad here.  I think the old idion \"The poison is in the dose\" leaps to mind.  After all, ancient civilisations knew that water could drown you, fire could burn you, and steel could poke a hole in you.  We still use all of those things.\n\nSo, that gets us to the issue of how harmful the Romans considered lead, if we are going to use that as a harmfulness benchmark.  After a quick look, it seems that Vitruvius was one of the first to really talk about the dangers of lead pipes in the 1st century BC.  (There is a quote here _URL_0_ )\n\nHe talks about observed illness in lead workers, but as far as I can tell, his writing doesn't actually cite illness in the general population due to lead.  Obviously, population statistics and modern epidemiology weren't really available to him, so he really had more of a well informed hunch about how dangerous the lead pipes were, rather than a full understanding.  The real observed danger was in making the pipes.  Inhalation of lead fumes has a very obvious and immediate effect on a plumber, so it would have been quite reasonable to conclude that the only major danger of lead was in working with the molten form making pipes.  Virtruvius obviously figured out that wasn't true, but he's notions obviously weren't universal.  Besides, when you get right down to it, clean drinking water that somebody says might be unwholesome in the long term in some vague, abstract sense, is always going to seem better than a slowish death of thirst.  So, the safety focus for centuries would have been on \"don't stick your face in the boiling lead, or you'll go a bit stupid.\"\n\nSo, by that benchmark, what are the things that we use today that at some point in history, somebody had a hunch might be harmful?  Pretty much everything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html"]]}
{"q_id": "76uy0c", "title": "How do fractional derivatives work?", "selftext": "Highschool student here, a month in to my first semester of BC calculus.  The other day our class did an activity in which we generalized derivatives of functions to the nth degree, which lead me to question what happens when n is not a whole number.  What happens when you plug in fractional, irrational or unreal values to that generalized formula? What will the resulting graph represent? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/76uy0c/how_do_fractional_derivatives_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dogxc4p"], "score": [21], "text": ["If a function is differentiable on some interval, then this means that the derivative takes the function as an input and produces another function as an output. We say that the derivative itself is an operator, which is a fancy for for a function that inputs functions and outputs functions, and denote it as \"D\", so D(f) is the derivative of f(x).  In this way, the second derivative is D^(2)(f)=D(D(f)). The third derivative is D^(3)(f)=D(D(D(f))). And so on.\n\nA Fractional Derivative is then an operator H, that takes in functions and outputs functions, so that H^(2)(f)=D(f), where H^(2)(f)=H(H(f)). In general, an A/B-th derivative operator is an operator D*_A/B_* so that D*_A/B_*^(B)(f) = D^(A)(f). You might then be able to extend it to irrational numbers via limits. There are a few different ways to construct these fractional operators:\n\n 1.) You can use Laplace Transforms. A [Laplace Transform](_URL_4_) is a special kind of operator, and its most useful property is that it turns differentiation into multiplication. The Multiplication-by-x operator is a very basic operator that inputs the function f(x) and outputs xf(x). If L is the Laplace transform, then it turns differentiation into this operator. That is L(D(f))=xL(f). So, in Laplace-world, multiplication by x is the same thing as differentiation. Pretty cool (and useful). In general, multiplication by x^(N) in Laplace-world is the same thing as the Nth derivative. So to do derivatives we can just take a function, put it into Laplace-world, multiply it by x, and then send it back to where it came from. This looks like D(f) = L^(-1)(xL(f)). L(f) first sends it to Laplace-world, x just multiplies it by the variable, and then L^(-1) sends it back. Why not try to do this for *any* power of x? If r is any power that we can consider, then we can say that the r-th derivative of f(x) is \n\n* D*_r_*(f) = L^(-1)(x^(r)L(f))\n\nThis is one notion of Fractional Derivatives. It should be noted that the Laplace Transform is kinda like a \"continuous\" version of a Taylor series. We're taking advantage of this to define arbitrary derivatives. \n\n 2.) Another way we can do it is through Complex Analysis. Complex Analysis is a magical place where amazing things happen to really nice functions. Particularly, we have the [Cauchy Integral Formula](_URL_5_). This says that if we integrate f(z)/((2pi\\*i\\*(z-a)) around a circle, that has the point z=a on the inside, on the Complex Plane, then the we get the value f(a). This generalizes a bit. If we look at the value of the same kind of integral but of the function f(z)/((2pi\\*i\\*(z-a)^(n+1)) then we get the value D^(n)(f)(a), the nth derivative of f(z) evaluated at z=a. As above, nothing is stopping us from replacing the n with any arbitrary value. So we can say that the rth derivative D*_r_*(f) evaluated at z=a is the corresponding integral for f(z)/((2pi\\*i\\*(z-a)^(r+1)). It should be noted here that the Cauchy Integral Formula is a way to pick out Taylor coefficients for a differentiable function on the complex plane, and so we're taking advantage of this to define arbitrary derivatives.\n\n 3.) You can expand the limit definition of a derivative to get a formula for the nth derivative. This formula is not too messy, and  only involves combinations of the derivative, along with [binomial coefficients](_URL_0_). Luckily, we can define binomial coefficients that have arbitrary real valued inputs. This can then be used to define arbitrary derivatives. [See here](_URL_2_)\n\nIf you want to see how all this might look, [Wikipedia has a nice animation](_URL_1_#/media/File:Fractional_Derivative_of_Basic_Power_Function_(2014).gif) of fractional derivatives of the function f(x)=x. You can [read the article](_URL_1_) for more info. There isn't really any universal interpretation for these things, like \"velocity\" or anything, but there are a few applications."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_coefficient", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_calculus", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnwald%E2%80%93Letnikov_derivative", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_calculus#/media/File:Fractional_Derivative_of_Basic_Power_Function_(2014).gif", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_transform", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy%27s_integral_formula"]]}
{"q_id": "jh5l6", "title": "Is there any deep reason why there aren't any elementary particles with spin 3/2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jh5l6/is_there_any_deep_reason_why_there_arent_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2c25h8", "c2c3c5k", "c2c4594", "c2c25h8", "c2c3c5k", "c2c4594"], "score": [4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Depending on whether certain beyond-standard theories are correct, the gravitino would be.", "[This wikipedia page is relevant](_URL_0_). I'm sorry that I can't help more. I don't know this stuff.", "[Answered on quora](_URL_0_)", "Depending on whether certain beyond-standard theories are correct, the gravitino would be.", "[This wikipedia page is relevant](_URL_0_). I'm sorry that I can't help more. I don't know this stuff.", "[Answered on quora](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg\u2013Witten_theorem"], ["http://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-no-spin-3-2-or-higher-fundamental-particles-in-the-standard-model-of-particle-physics"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg\u2013Witten_theorem"], ["http://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-no-spin-3-2-or-higher-fundamental-particles-in-the-standard-model-of-particle-physics"]]}
{"q_id": "ufqse", "title": "why do some judges in criminal cases sentence a defendant to \"two life sentences\"", "selftext": "If you're serving a life sentence, then you're incarcerated for the entirety of your lifetime so what is the point of sentencing sometime to two life sentences? Is it just for effect? Is there any practical reason for it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ufqse/eli5_why_do_some_judges_in_criminal_cases/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4uzf73", "c4uzmst", "c4v0vvn", "c4v0xsj", "c4v2h8v", "c4v2u0b", "c4v3vln", "c4v4i6v", "c4v72y9", "c4v7t56", "c4v7z5j", "c4v8cbm", "c4v8ex1"], "score": [359, 50, 3, 60, 2, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4], "text": ["This can happen when there are multiple counts of a serious crime involved.  If some of the counts happen to be overturned on an appeal, the sentence will still be life imprisonment due to the other counts.\n", "I think in many cases, even if you're given a life sentence, you're still eligable for parole after a given amount of time, like 25 years or so.", "They send you here for life... and that's exactly what they take.", "Two things; parole, and appeals. Also,  Like hgritchie and possibly others have said, the sentences may be back-to-back (consecutive) or served at the same time (concurrent).\n\n\n**Appeals** The benefit of not giving one sentence is, say you appeal one of the two counts you have been convicted of, and you win the appeal; you were not \"wrongfully imprisoned\" and you still have to stay in jail, because you are serving another sentence. If you are drunk, hit another car, and kill 4 people, you can get convicted on 4 counts of manslaughter. Suppose you appeal, stating that the two people in the back seat were already bleeding to death and the driver was taking them to the hospital, then you might possibly win an appeal, possibly, but you still haven't won an appeal for the other two deaths you caused. Now let's say you appeal because the driver of the other car had a higher alcohol blood concentration in their blood than you did, you might get off on all 4 counts; the passengers of the other car got into a car with a driver drunker than you were, whatever, I am just speaking hypothetically to paint an illustration of times you would want to keep sentences separate, for appeals.\n\n**Parole** A life sentence can be \"without the possibility of parole\" or \"with the possibility of parole\" and if you can get parole, then you may be eligible for parole in, say 25 years. If you have 3 consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole, you serve 75 years before you go in front of a parole board.\n\nThe reason the sentences can be so confusing is that each crime carries a maximum penalty, by law, and the judge **cannot** give you a longer sentence. The just does not have to give you the maximum sentence, but almost always will, because if you are being sentenced, then you pleaded not guilty, and you made the prosecutor work hard for the conviction. If you had just pleaded guilty, you could have entered a plea bargain for less time, and the prosecutor would not have had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt you did it, and would not have needed to select a jury. You plea bargain for less time, the judge gives you the sentence you agreed to with the prosecutor. If pleading guilty carried the maximum sentence, very few people would ever plea guilty, because they have nothing to lose by pleading innocent, so this gives the defendant an incentive to bargain with the prosecutor. Even if you bargain for the max sentence, it may be the max to a *lesser crime*, so if you planned a murder and you are eligible for the death sentence, you may bargain down to manslaughter and get the max sentence. Mind you, the max sentence for manslaughter is already specified in the law; possibly, and IMHO, to prevent cruel and unusual punishment, but IANAL.\n\nSo the sentences for crimes are mandated by law, and you can bargain for a shorter sentence for the same crime, or the full sentence for a crime that carries a shorter max sentence. Also, you can appeal to a higher court and get one charge overturned, but not all charges. The judge cannot sentence a jay-walker to the death sentence, because the max penalty for jay walking is explained in the penal code that prohibits jay walking, and some crimes do not allow \"life without parole\" but they allow \"life with parole\" for each crime, and the same crime was committed on multiple counts", "Part of it is statute; each count may have a mandatory sentence, so the Judge may be required to rule in such a way.\n\nHowever, it also has some practical value. Should one count be successfully appealed, the other sentence must still be served. Additionally, parole eligibility is often done as a percentage of your total time served; consecutive sentences therefore also extend the time until the prisoner is eligible for parole.", "You are not incarcerated for the entirety of your lifetime. A life sentence only means 25 years, so two life sentence means 50 years.", "It's a precaution against the zombie apocalypse. In case they try n' come back and give it another go. ", "I don't know the actual reason, but maybe judjes do this in case that in the future a long-life pill gets invented. Lets say that in thirty years they invent a pill that makes you live 300 years, the judge maybe want to be sure that you pass ALL of them in jail.", "Two life sentences usually indicates there was two victims. By imposing two life sentences it suggests justice was served for both. ", "1. In a lot of places a life sentence doesn't actually mean serving for life, it means serving for some specific high number of years(weird, I know)\n2. The purpose of our justice system isn't just to sentence people for their crimes, it's also to find and record as accurate an account of those crimes as possible(in theory), part of that accounting is following through every count of crime or enhancement of a count to its sentencing consequence, even if that doesn't change what actually happens to the criminal.\n3. Sometimes these sort of things do change what actually happens to the criminal, there are prison programs one might be eligible for with a life sentence but not a double life sentence, or vise versa.", "If you are convicted, you must be punished/incarcerated for *each* count for which you are convicted.  If you killed 3 people, planned it prior, and executed it, that's 3 counts of 1st degree murder, and you serve a life sentence for each count.", "I am not sure about other states, but in Texas a \"life sentence\" is only 65 years, so theoretically, if you are sentenced at 18 or so, you could outlive the sentence, so occasionally they will slap on a 2nd sentence to ensure you do not get out.", "They saw what happened with Jesus so they said, \"Not this time bitches.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4kqdwb", "title": "how did wild humans deal with the pain of walking barefoot?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kqdwb/eli5_how_did_wild_humans_deal_with_the_pain_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3gx97q", "d3gxstz", "d3gy639", "d3h0jki", "d3hbcti"], "score": [33, 7, 6, 9, 3], "text": ["They didn't.  Their feet developed calluses, thicker and harder skin, which meant that they didn't get hurt as badly from stepping on stuff.\n\nYour feet are only as vulnerable as they are because you protect them with shoes all the time.  There are barefoot runners even today with callus-armored feet.", "There is quite a [striking difference](_URL_0_) between feet that have never worn shoes. The toes are further spread and that provides a more natural gait. Obviously the adverse impact is that you are open to more damage. ", "Their feet were very calloused.  We file off out callouses because we want our feet to look pretty.  \n\nThey also walked on ground, not cement or rough pavement.", "after years of working and living more or less constantly barefooted, I moved to a city and did the shoe thing. After about a month, all that deep husk of skin starts to crack and try to detach, it was a huge pain in the arse.", "Most islanders or third world people walk everywhere barefoot.  When I was growing up in Guam and the Mariana islands, my friends and family never wore anything on our feet.  We'd go to the beach, store, school, everywhere barefoot.  To someone who never does it the asphalt/sand will be extremely hot and little thing will hurt, but as time goes on you get used to it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://file2.answcdn.com/answ-cld/image/upload/w_760,c_fill,g_faces:center,fl_lossy,q_60/v1400789796/nuipoudpy350f1aumn4n.jpg"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8vo3sf", "title": "- why do cooking instructions tell to boil and then immediately turn down the heat?", "selftext": "It seems like in just about everything you cook with instructions they'll tell you to \"bring to a boil\" but then THE IMMEDIATE NEXT STEP is to \"reduce heat\". So why did I bring it to a boil in the first place??", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8vo3sf/eli5_why_do_cooking_instructions_tell_to_boil_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1oyagi", "e1oycf5", "e1p0rjh", "e1p2dub", "e1pbcoj"], "score": [18, 16, 8, 9, 2], "text": ["Because a simmer is just as hot (within a few degrees) and much more controllable. It won't smash delicate tortellini apart and won't splash or overflow violently.", "By boiling it, you can be sure that it has reached 212F/100C. It is difficult to tell the temperature by sight otherwise.", "Because you want the water to be at or around 200\u00b0F, just shy of boiling, and most people don't use a thermometer to check their pasta water. Nor can most people stick their finger into hot water (hotter than, say 130\u00b0F) and estimate its temperature\u2013 they just know *ow, that hurts,* which covers anywhere from 150\u00b0F onward.", "It takes more energy to get the water boiling than it does to maintain the boil. Once the water reaches a critical energy then the internal molecules have a much easier time transferring heat. It's actually called the boiling curve if you want to look it up and find a VERY complex answer.", "Outside of variations in altitude, water mostly boils at the same temperature. Since pots and pans, and stove tops don't measure the temperature of the food, boiling water provides a good reference point for how hot something is. Boiling water can never be hotter than the boiling point because it will flash into steam and take the heat with it, leaving the rest of the water at a steady temperature that will drop unless replenished. However it removes a lot of water so turning down the temperature to a slow simmer provides a similar temperature control effect, while conserving water. Many sauces and stove top meals account for the loss of water by adding more than is needed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28xqme", "title": "Is separation of variables just a tool for solving PDE or is there a more intuitive explanation of the assumptions it makes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/28xqme/is_separation_of_variables_just_a_tool_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cifkw1n", "cifv24b"], "score": [10, 2], "text": ["Let *s*(*x*,*y*) be a function of two variables and let *y* be fixed for the time being. If *s* is analytic in *x* for every *y*, then we can Taylor expand.\n\n*s*(*x*,*y*) = sum(*i*) *a*(*i*,*y*) *x*^*i*\n\nThe coefficients depend on *i*, as is normal with Taylor expansions, but they also depend on *y*, because we do a separate Taylor expansion for each *y*.\n\nNow, if *a* is also analytic in *y* for each *i* (which is the same as saying that the derivatives of *s* with respect to *x* are analytic in *y*), we can Taylor expand those too.\n\n*a*(*i*,*y*) = sum(*j*) *b*(*i*,*j*) *y*^*j*\n\nIf you insert this in your original expression, you get\n\n*s*(*x*,*y*) = sum(*i*,*j*) *b*(*i*,*j*) *x*^*i* *y*^*j*\n\nWhich is a sum of functions with separate variables. This is usually the clue: we're not really interested in separate-variable solutions, but we *are* interested in their sums. If the PDE is linear (and homogeneous), sums will still form a solution. (You can use an affine trick to do the same thing with inhomogeneous PDEs, so basically linearity is the important part).\n\nOf course, you can do this with other kinds of expansions too, not just Taylor series but also Fourier series and other more exotic things. You just expand in one variable, and then expand the coefficients in the other variable. Combine and voila! Some theoretical work is of course required to figure out precisely under which conditions on *s* such expansions are well defined and behaved.\n\nSo the moral is: if your solution is suitably well behaved, it will be expressible as a possibly infinite sum of separate-variable terms. Thus, we do not suffer a loss of generality when making this assumption, at least so long as you don't forget to take linear combinations afterwards.", "Suppose you have a PDE like \n\n    \u2202_t u = \u0394 u\n\nor \n\n    \u2202_tt u = \u0394 u\n\nin a bounded domain, with some prescribed boundary condition.\n\nSuppose further that you know solutions of the so-called eigenvalue equation\n\n    \u0394 \u03c6_k = \u03bb_k \u03c6_k;      \u03c6 satisfies same boundary condition\n\nfor some constants (basically, these are the fundamental frequencies of the region in which you are solving the PDE) \u03bb_k. Then, it is easy to come up with (some) solutions to the PDE and boundary conditions: write (for some unknown function a, depending only on t)\n\n    u(t,x) = a(t) \u03c6(x)\n    \u0394u = a \u0394 \u03c6 = \u03bb a \u03c6\n\nand further (let's work with the wave equation)\n\n    \u2202_tt u = a'' \u03c6\n\nmatching these up, we see that a needs to satisfy\n\n    a'' = \u03bb a\n\nSince this is a function of a single variable, the solution is easily obtained (sine and cosine, with frequency sqrt(\u03bb) ). (**the solution u(t,x) = a(t) \u03c6(x) is a standing wave with frequency determined by \u03bb**)\n\nOk, so this is a really easy way to construct solutions to the PDE / boundary value problem (note we haven't dealt with initial conditions yet), provided we know solutions to the eigen-equation. Further, any **countable** linear combination of this type of solution is also a solution (because the PDE is linear and homogeneous). Thus, if we can find coefficients c_k such that\n\n    u(t,x) = \u03a3 c_k a_k(t) \u03c6_k(x)\n\nalso satisfies the initial condition, we are done. This is where we use world-famous Fourier series: if we can write the initial data in terms of a Fourier series, we can use those coefficients to write our solution. \n\nAllowing arbitrarily perverse initial data won't lead anywhere, so we place some mild restrictions on things: we require the functions to be \"square integrable\", meaning the integral of the square of the function is finite, and denoted by L^(2).\n\nSo then the remaining question is, \"Can all initial data be written as a Fourier series?\" i.e. can every function f in L^2 be written\n\n    f = \u03a3 c_k \u03c6_k(x)\n\nfor some constants c_k? There are basically two concerns here: that there might be some f that can't be \"built\" out of eigenfunctions \u03c6_k, or more subtly, that there is some f that requires uncountably many \u03c6_k to \"build\".\n\nBut, both of these concerns are addressed by the following remarkable fact about \u0394:\n\n**The eigenfuctions of \u0394 on a bounded domain form a countable basis of L^2**\n\nmeaning that **yes, all initial data can be written as a Fourier series**.\n\n(Further: the same fact is true of a larger class of operators, for instance div( c^(2)(x) grad), if you want a non-constant speed wave equation).\n\n**TL;DR The relevant intuition is that all solutions can be written as superpositions of standing waves**\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4l5i7l", "title": "What were attitudes in the US towards WWII and Hilter in the USA when Captain America made his comic debut?", "selftext": "Today, it seems obvious for a superhero to be punching Hitler on the cover but what were attitudes of the US when Captain America debuted (in a comic with a  March 1941 cover date)? Was that cover seen a confrontational to Nazi sympathizers and isolationists who didn't want the US to get involved in WWII? Was that a big statement when it was published? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l5i7l/what_were_attitudes_in_the_us_towards_wwii_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3kvhjk"], "score": [30], "text": ["Captain America Comics #1 was cover dated March 1941.  \n\nWhile the United States was not at war with the Axis at this time, the war was in full swing and Winston Churchill had recently given his famous \"Give us the tools\" speech, pleading for additional support from the US. (1)  \n\nOne national survey the year before (1940) had found that 67% of respondents believed that a German-Italian victory would endanger the United States, and that 71% supported \"the immediate adoption of compulsory military training for all young men\". (2)  \n\nIndividual Americans were volunteering (illegally) to fight against the Axis powers in other nations armed forces.  One example is the three \"Eagle Squadrons\", fighter squadrons of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) made up of volunteer pilots from the United States which were formed between September 1940 and July 1941 and which flew in the Battle of Britain. (3)\n\nSources:\n\n1. _URL_0_\n\n2. \"What the U.S.A. Thinks\". Life. 1940-07-29. p. 20.\n\n3. \"Eagles Switch to U. S. Army\". Life. 1942-11-02. p. 37."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/97-give-us-the-tools"]]}
{"q_id": "5gdg8c", "title": "There's a rich heritage of Arabic architecture in Spain and Portugal today. But after Reconquista, were there any efforts to get rid of Arabic art and architecture because it was made by \"heathens\" and to wipe the slate clean with a new Christian kingdom ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gdg8c/theres_a_rich_heritage_of_arabic_architecture_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["das9rp1", "das9xxc"], "score": [2, 23], "text": ["On this note, a lot of traditional Spanish music seems to be in harmonic minor keys, a mode more readily associated with Islamic music. Any connection?", "Mosques were converted into churches and some minor buildings would be lost but there was no major effort to get rid of Andalusi art. On the contrary. During the Reconquista the Muslim South was artistically and culturally superior to the Christian North and that was something the Christian rulers recognised, adopting some Andalusi styles in things like clothing, boardgames, etc and having important scholarly works translated from Arabic into Romance vernacular. As more and more of Spain was (re)conquered, many Muslim remained under Christian rule. They were skilled builders and craftsmen and there's an important body of, uhm, Moorish-looking work that was built by these Spanish Muslims for Christian rulers and prelates. My favourite example is the funerary chapel for the Archbishop of Zaragoza, Lope Fern\u00e1ndez de Luna, at the cathedral of that city, said cathedral itself being a former mosque, by the way. [That's] (_URL_3_) what it looks like from the outside (and [here's] (_URL_1_) a closer look). Now, this was built - rebuilt, actually, as the Archbishop was not satisfied with the first wall that he thought was too plain - in 1378. That is, a full 260 years after the Christian conquest of Zaragoza (1118) and 130 years after the conquest of Seville (1248), the city that the two masters that did the wall came from. The [ceiling](_URL_2_) over the Archbishop's tomb inside contains a lot of Arabic calligraphy - some of it just vaguely Arabic-looking squiggles added for effect and some featuring actual verses from the Quran.\n\nChristian builders and artists in Spain were heavily influenced by Moorish art until, at least, well into the 16th century. Some Moorish designs like geometric patterns - most notably, the eight-pointed star - are very prominent in Christian Gothic art in Spain all the way to the so-called Isabelline Gothic, the latest form of that artistic style. This was the style in the Crown of Castile in the late 15th and early 16th century, with many of its major works being built by Flemish and Northern German masters (hence it is often called Hispano-Flemish Gothic). So you have accomplished masters who were not even Spaniards moving to work to Castile and adding Andalusi-influenced designs to their repertoire. In Burgos, the Castilian capital, you can see the Moorish eight-pointed star, for example, in the [Constables' chapel] (_URL_4_), designed in the early 1500s, in [the lantern tower] (_URL_5_), designed by Jean de Langres, a Frenchman, in 1539, both in the cathedral, and in the [double sepulchre] (_URL_0_) of King Juan II and Queen Isabella, built by Gil de Silo\u00e9, who was a Fleming or a German, in the late 1400s, in the Miraflores charterhouse just outside of the city. Even when Emperor Charles had a Mannerist palace built for himself inside the Moorish palace grounds of Alhambra in Granada, the architects merely demolished a minor pavilion, conserving the rest of the palace. The artistic merits of Alhambra were definitely very much valued and appreciated no matter how 'heathen' it may have been.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://s3.amazonaws.com/classconnection/223/flashcards/9600223/png/sepulchre_of_juan_and_isabel-1532E3946B225B2A479.png", "http://gozarte.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/parroquieta-ventana.jpg", "http://www.fotoprisma.es/images/pf/parroquieta/05a.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Fachada_de_la_Parroquieta.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Cupula_de_la_capilla_de_los_Condestables.Catedral_de_Burgos_%284952356182%29.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Burgos_Cathedral_Intersection.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1lpl0s", "title": "Do people who exercise regularly have a different tolerance for pain?", "selftext": "In my head there are two reasons why this could plausibly be true. One is that exercising regularly trains you to be psychologically used to being in discomfort. The other is that people who are more tolerant of discomfort to begin with are more likely to find exercise enjoyable. Have we done tests on pain tolerance and propensity to exercise? Is there any correlation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1lpl0s/do_people_who_exercise_regularly_have_a_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc1sbjm"], "score": [3], "text": ["Yes, they do. All people have the same pain threshold. However, athletes have a higher pain tolerance than their non-exercising counterparts. A study by Jonas Tesarz found the highest tolerance levels in football players  &  cross-country skiiers.\n\n\n\nOther studies have mentioned the psychological impact of frequent exercise, noting that repeated exposure to muscle soreness/pain brings a higher tolerance.\n\n\n\nTo read more on the subject, you can always check out [The Journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.journals.elsevier.com/pain/"]]}
{"q_id": "2lwvhi", "title": "why have humans not evolved to enjoy the foods that are best for their health?", "selftext": "I'm trying to eat healthy.  Not just calorie-counts or dieting, I'm trying to eat foods that are recognized as very healthy foods  The best foods for your body never seem to be the best tasting. Why? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lwvhi/eli5_why_have_humans_not_evolved_to_enjoy_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clywet2", "clywik9", "clywo6l", "clyx01i", "clz1zvu", "clz2kfq", "clz4zdt", "clz8im8", "clz9pf1", "clzkrpq", "clzmai0"], "score": [4, 255, 30, 3, 7, 2, 3, 9, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["The ones who don't eat completely healthily still reproduce. That's what I always thought, but I'm no expert.\n", "We have.\n\nHumans and their ancestors spent millions of years on the dry plains of central Africa.  Food was scarce and we've evolved to like calorie dense foods that best prepared us to survive food shortages.\n\nFor most of human history slamming as much food as possible into your face *was beneficial*.\n\nOnly recently has it become an issue due to an overabundance of high calorie food.", "Remember, we evolved to be hunter-gatherers. \n\nIn that situation, fats and sweets are rare and calorie-dense; it makes sense to seek them out (and gorge on them and stock up on calories when we find them). So we evolved to really really like them.\n\nMeanwhile, nature didn't have to worry about us eating our vegetables: veggies were everywhere, they didn't fight, and they didn't run away. So it wasn't as important to love them in the way we do fatty and sweet things.\n\nToday, fats and sweets are just as easy to acquire (often easier) as vegetables and our hunter-gatherer habits get us into trouble.", "Evolution takes time and the current climate of having to many calories available is a relatively new development. The human body is still in the mindset of eating more calories and calorie dense food. ", "Something nobody has touched on is that certain foods aren't 'good for you' or 'bad for you'.\n\nHaving X calories, Y protein, Z vitamin B12, etc. is good for you. It doesn't matter how you get there.\n\nAs an addendum, 'why not' questions about evolution are often pointless. Maybe no human was ever born with the random mutation that made vegetables taste like cocaine chocolate. Maybe they were, and they died in a car crash before they could reproduce. There are too many unanswerable variables.", "Evolution is an extremely slow process, the 200 thousand years that humans have been around is but a mere super fast blink in the context of all life on earth. If you look towards nature today the animals that survive are the ones that take every opportunity to eat (which is especially important to us warm blooded mammals as most of our energy is used just to try and regulate our body temperatures.) The ones that eat survive, the ones that survive reproduce, the ones that reproduce pass on their genetics into the future.\n\nWhere it sits right now we are slaves to our current brain chemistry which tells us fatty, rich, high caloric foods are what is most desirable to us because the more calories we take in, the more fat reserves we can store letting us live longer until we find our next meal. Because of agriculture we stopped our hunting gathering ways staying put in a single place letting us build large societies, much larger then any band of forging nomads would be able to sustain without things like crops. This all happened so fast in terms of world history, that what was best for us has now tipped in the exact opposite end of the scale and our diets are now killing us in terms of obesity, heart and liver disease and various other autoimmunities tied to diets too high in calories, sugar, and bad fats like trans fats. We are victims of our own outrageous success at survival.\n\nNow, one could speculate that if we don't blow ourselves up first, ruin the earth with global warming, overfish the oceans, or run out of the means to produce fresh drinking water along with a myriad of huge unforeseen obstacles we will most undoubtedly face that maybe in a million years people who aren't able to control themselves and binge on junk food until they develop life threatening diseases will suffer from drastically shorter life spans. Leading to less opportunity to reproduce meaning the fit people who are able to control what they eat and even come to enjoy it will, over the course of many generations, pass on enough of these healthy diet traits that maybe your great, great, great, great to the power of 10 grand kids will love their asparagus and kale and for desert will choose a cut up grapefruit over ice cream not because it's the healthier choice but because their brain chemistry is wired to push them towards that food source over others. But we are far way off from seeing any of this develop and the hurdles we as a species face is great.\n\nSorry this response got way out of hand.", "I read this while shoving a Reese's in my mouth. ", "We have. \n\nWe have only had stable surplus in food supplies for give or take 200 years, and that is not even true for all of the planet. In nature we live in near starvation like most animals and so evolved to seek out foods that provide the most nutrition for the lease amount of effort. That type of food is fat, sugar, and salt. ", "To put a coevolutionary spin on it, vegetables have expended a great deal of effort evolving to taste bad to us and other herbivores*. All of the compounds that give vegetables their distinctive flavors have been selected for by their ability to discourage herbivory, and incidentally, are likely at least part of the reason pregnant women become taste and smell averse, that is, because they are toxic. Fruits are sweet, in many cases, to be eaten and encourage seed dispersal.\n\n*before anyone tries to \"correct\" me, by herbivores, I mean anything eating vegetative plant structures, exclusively or otherwise.", "Natural selection doesn't select the characteristics that are \"healthier\" for the individual (whatever this means). It selects traits that are likely to make you 1) have kids and 2) not die before having said kids. \n\nIn order not to die before 15-20 you just need to eat whatever it is that you have available. And being overweight doesn't immediately and dramaticaly make you less likely to have kids in your teenage years.", "There's a few reasons\n\n-Evolution takes longer than a few years. Humans have only had a concept of eating healthy for maybe 2 generations if that. Really since the 60s-70s. That's not nearly long enough of a time line.\n\n-Evolution means there is a trait that is 100% meaningful to our survival. Like black polar bears in the artic dying out because their prey could see them from miles away. Eating badly isn't something that as of yet has significantly reduced the human population. Plus with things like Insulin, we can medicate people who have diseases due to poor eating habits.\n\n-Also while people who live healthier lifestlyes are in theory more sexually desirable, thus more likely to reproduce there are just as many overweight people of each gender willing to procreate with each other\n\nRealistically we probably won't see any evolutionary affects from poor dieting for at least another few decades."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1t1j8z", "title": "What is the significance of the wise men bringing Gold, Frankincense  &  Myrrh?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1t1j8z/what_is_the_significance_of_the_wise_men_bringing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce3k0rp", "ce3lgbe", "ce3lk2a", "ce3nmvt", "ce3rur6"], "score": [45, 7, 56, 47, 12], "text": ["Allegorically, these refer to different aspects of Christ:\n\nFrankincense - Used to perfume the Temple, it refers to Christ being the ultimate Prophet and Priest.\n\nGold - Symbolizes Christ the King of the Universe.\n\nMyrrh - Used in funeral proceedings.  Foreshadows His death.\n\nIn a more practical sense, these were all high-value, easily-liquidated items which would allow a carpenter and his new family to travel to Egypt and live there for a good while.", "Isn't that a myth?\n\nSerious question. ", "Frankincense, Gold, Myrrh \n\nAUGUSTINE.  **Gold,** as paid to a mighty King; **Frankincense**, as offered to God; **Myrrh**, as to one who is to die for the sins of all.\n\n-St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, A.D. 396.\n", "I recently gave a paper at ASOR about the frankincense trade in the Roman Empire. These gifts are meant to be HIGH status items, shown to contrast the low stature of Jesus's birth in the manger. Gold is obvious, but Frankincense and Myrrh were imported to the Mediterranean world overland from south Arabia (the area of modern Yemen) at considerable cost and risk. EDIT: And these aromatics were important cultic and luxury items (rituals (especially funerary ones) demanded incense burning, and the ancient world was a smelly place, so in the absence of soap elites would often burn aromatics to cover bad smells (similar to modern air fresheners but more pungent and effective). For more information on Frankincense and Myrrh check out: _URL_0_", "Since you asked for the significance, I'd like to refer you to the church fathers. My first place to go is usually the Catena Aurea (Golden Chain), a composition of quotes on the gospels, composed by Thomas Aquinas.\n\nYou can find the quotes on the 2nd chapter of Matthew [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThe text of the gospel regarding the gifts is verse 11b:\n >  they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. \n\nLet's go through the quotes:\n\n > Gloss, Anselm: in these offerings we observe their national customs, gold, frankincense, and various spices abounding among the Arabians; yet they intended thereby to signify something in mystery.\n\n > Greg., Hom. in Evan., 1, 106: Gold, as to a King; frankincense, as sacrifice to God; myrrh, as embalming the body of the dead.\n\n > Aug.: Gold, as paid to a mighty King; frankincense, as offered to God; myrrh, as to one who is to die for the sins of all.\n\n > Pseudo-Chrys.: And though it were not then understood what these several gifts mystically signified, that is no difficulty; the same grace that instigated them to the deed, ordained the whole.\n\n > Remig.: And it is to be known that each did not offer a different gift, but each one the three kings, each one thus proclaiming the King, the God, and the man.\n\nThis is a good example of medieval hermeneutics of the bible. First the literal sense is applied, then an allegorical sense, giving each literal element an specified meaning. \n\n > Chrys.: Let Marcion and Paul of Samosata then blush, who will not see what the Magi saw, those progenitors of the Church adoring God in the flesh. That He was truly in the flesh, the swaddling clothes and the stall prove; yet that they worshipped Him not as mere man, but as God, the gifts prove which it was becoming to offer to a God. Let the Jews also be ashamed, seeing the Magi coming before them, and themselves not even earnest to tread in their path.\n\nIn this quote, two heresies are rejected. Marcionists believed that the Jewish god was a different entity to the tri-une Christian god. The Jewish god created the universe, but was eventually replaced with the coming of Christ. According to these beliefs, matter and thus the physical presence of Jesus wasn't of importance. Paul of Samosata stands for Monarchianism, a concept where trinity is in fact a unity, meaning that there is no difference between the Christ and the Father. A polemic against Judaism follows.\n\n > Greg.: Something further may yet be meant here. Wisdom is typified by gold; as Solomon saith in the Proverbs, \u201cA treasure to be desired is in the mouth of the wise.\u201d\n\n > By frankincense, which is burnt before God, the power of prayer is intended, as in the Psalms, \u201cLet my speech come before thee as incense.\u201d [Ps 141:2] In myrrh is figured mortification of the flesh. To a king at his birth we offer gold, if we shine in his sight with the light of wisdom; we offer frankincense, if we have power before God by the sweet savour of our prayers; we offer myrrh, when we mortify by abstinence the lusts of the flesh.\n\nHere we have another allegorical interpretation of the gifts.\n\n > Gloss, Anselm: The three men who offer, signify the nations who come from the three quarters of the earth. They open their treasures, i.e. manifest the faith of their hearts by confession. Rightly \u201cin the house,\u201d teaching that we should not vaingloriously display the treasure of a good conscience. They bring \u201cthree\u201d gifts, i.e. the faith in the Holy Trinity. Or opening the stores of Scripture, they offer its threefold sense, historical, moral and allegorical; or Logic, Physic, and Ethics, making them all serve the faith. \n\nThis medieval quote (Anselm of Laon, 12th century) expands the allegorical sense of those gifts. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.worldcat.org/title/frankincense-and-myrrh-a-study-of-the-arabian-incense-trade/oclc/7677022&amp;referer=brief_results"], ["http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/catena1.ii.ii.html"]]}
{"q_id": "dgeepe", "title": "How do I explain to a FLAT EARTHER friend that gravity exists and what we experience is not just an effect of density?", "selftext": "So I have a friend who is a flat earther and he believes that gravity does not exist and what we experience is due to only density I have tried to explain to him that density is not a force but he does not understand or believe me. What else can I do to help him believe in gravity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dgeepe/how_do_i_explain_to_a_flat_earther_friend_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3bbf39", "f3bbome", "f3bcdqo", "f3bcqyd", "f3bcv8o", "f3bd1bc", "f3bfies", "f3bfqhp", "f3bgnea", "f3bi6la", "f3bj4qj", "f3bxyul", "f3c8tkr", "f3edh7r"], "score": [24, 54, 20, 4, 3, 5, 3, 10, 2, 2, 4, 6, 21, 3], "text": ["If I suck all the air out of a box and drop something inside it, that object still falls. Not only that, the density or even mass of that object is completely irrelevant. It all falls at the same fixed 9.8 m/s^(2) acceleration.\n\nYour flat Earth friend might not appreciate it, but you might enjoy one of my favorite science experiments ever: Astronaut David Scott dropping a hammer and feather on the Moon,\n\n* _URL_1_\n\nHere's the same experiment on the Earth, done by Brian Cox,\n\n* _URL_0_", "You probably cant. Conspiracy theorists move the goalposts. However, density and buoyancy don't have a vector. If you release a stone that's more dense than the air around it then it should logically go left or right or diagonal sometimes. It doesn't, instead always traveling downward. This vector could be explained several ways but the only way that appears consistent is a force towards the earth. \n\nMost fe people hate math but you can show that. Otherwise ask why the rate of fall is universal if it's about density. (After removing air resistance of course.)", "That depends on whether he's just naive or whether he wants to believe this.\n\nIf he simply lacks knowledge, you could tell him about experiments that have detected gravity, such as LIGO. You could tell him about demonstrations routinely done by high school students showing that objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum, which rules out any effect of density or buoyancy. You could tell him about the observation of gravitational lensing during solar eclipses.\n\nSadly, if he's a flat Earther, he probably refuses to accept anything that doesn't fit his worldview, and you will not get through to him. All those experiments could be a NASA conspiracy, even the ones done by high school students and the one in 1919. These people want to believe that they see a reality to which the rest of us are blind, because that makes them feel special and gives them a sense of agency in an indifferent world, and reason will not penetrate that kind of thinking.", "The density thing is easily disproven. Just find a chunk of lead or something really dense and ask to compare the gravity of that dense object to Earth.\n\nYou'll probably (hopefully) get a response that notes the size (volume) difference. At which point you just point out that what you're talking about is mass.", "You can present all the evidence you want but these people usually have their mind set and don't want to change no matter how much evidence you provide. \nMy main suggestion is to be kind. No one changes their mind when its seen as an attack on their core values, in fact presenting evidence makes them dig in their heels more.  Its complicated but it takes a conversational intelligence I dont posses to make them come to the conclusion on their own.", "An earthbound experiment directly demonstrating gravitational attraction between large masses other than the earth is the Cavendish experiment, published in 1798, using a torsion balance in which weights at the end of a stick are attracted to large stationary weights sitting on the ground.  This [Scientific American story](_URL_0_) includes a video of a version of it set up by high-school students.   That video might help your friend, or you might set one up yourselves.", "We have a 9.81 m/s\\^2 acceleration downwards due to gravity. Disregarding air resistance, all objects on Earth fall with that acceleration, no matter their density or any other material property.\n\nIf gravity doesn't exist, and instead things fall because of density, ask him to derive you a mathematical function that takes in densities of two interacting objects as an input and gives 9.81 m/s\\^2 as an output for all combinations of densities.", "I mean, he believes the earth is flat. A belief which he could easily disprove with his own experiment. He has already established himself as too lazy and science-averse for you to waste time trying to teach him. You will be using words and phrases which he will not understand and will not want to understand. He has essentially just renamed gravity \u201cdensity\u201d because he is rebelling against the perceived authority of scientists and it is easier than learning the actual concepts those words represent.", "It isn't clear why this is an avenue of approach that would have any positive results. If someone says \"belief\" or faith transcends empirical observation and experiments, no amount of logical reasoning would be effective. Just cut your losses, see if you can agree to disagree and never discuss this topic again and maintain some kind of friendship. Don't get your ego involved in these matters - there is no \"winning\" or \"I am better/smarter/more correct than you\" involved in this. I'd also advise against a \"noble\" pursuit of \"improving someone\" - ultimately (despite the idea of \"we are a village\" or loyalty etc) we make our own choices as individuals, especially in this age where education and information (from reputable sources) is so easily accessed.", "It might be best to have him work through things instead of telling him. Like ask him what he expects his density theory to behave in a certain experiment. Then do it and try to have him figure out why what his theory predicted wasn't what happened.", "You can't really tell conspiracy theorist they are wrong. If they are insistent they believe it they are usually so deep that they have a prepared response to everything. Or they will default to \"you blindly believe x or y, it hasn't been proven.\" Literally you would have to show them. The only way to really do that would be to take them to space of course. Or alternatively if you are near a beach, it is somewhat possible. \n\nI've never had the chance to try it but supposedly if you wait until sunset, probably when the waves are calm, you can see an interesting phenomena that shows that the earth has curvature.\n\nLay on the ground, completely prone, as the sun starts to reach the horizon. Wait until the last bit of that giant glowing orb disappears behind the horizon, and stand up IMMEDIATELY. You will see the top edge of the sun again, and you will watch it set a second time. \n\n\nAs far as I understand, it's this subtle phenomena that allowed Eratosthenes to calculate the approximate size of the earth, like 2,000 years ago.", "Ask them why, when the air around an object has the same density on all sides of it, it would know to fall *down* in particular. Why not left, or up? Actually the air upwards is *slightly* less dense, so it really should fall up.", "Well, I once tried going back to basics with a guy online and he stopped replying. That doesn't mean anything of course, but here's what I did. \n\n1. Newton's Laws are the model that we mostly use. They will most likely agree that \"Yes, scientists believe in this model\"\n2. Tell them of the three rules  \n Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving  uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change  its state by force impressed.   \n Law II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive  force impress'd; and is made in the direction of the right line in which  that force is impress'd.   \n Law III: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or  the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and  directed to contrary parts.   \n\n3. Explain what the first Law REALLY means. A thing that isn't moving won't suddenly fly away and a thing that is flying in the air won't suddenly stop midair. They will most likely agree to this. If they say \"but what if..\" then just explain that if NOTHING is messing with it, it will continue in motion or not start moving. \n4. Explain what the second Law REALLY means. A thing will move equally much as the force that was applied. If you kick a ball really hard, it will fly really far, if you kick it really lightly, it will move really short. They will mostly agree to this as well. So far everything can be tested. \n5. Explain what the third Law REALLY means. Every time a force is exerted on something, it will experience the same amount of force. You can test this by standing feet together a few feet from your friend and then push on their hands, both of you will fall over if you don't adjust your legs. If you punch a wall, it will hurt. If you run into something heavy it will hurt. They will most likely agree to this. \n6. Now drop something in front of them. IF the Laws are true, which we tested, what is pulling the thing down? If the first rule is true, then gravity must exist to pull it down. If the second law is true then that force must be towards the middle of Earth. The third law doesn't really apply in that example. \n7. Now give up as they will most certainly have moved the goal posts.   \n\n\nThis was all for my first post, thank you for reading.", "Ask what causes the more dense item to sink. Without a force pulling it down, why doesn't it just stay in place? Newtons laws are pretty universal. Why would F=ma work for your car or pushing a heavy box or your computer (electronics don't work if F=ma isn't true), but not for gravity.\n\nThere is a documentary on Netflix about the flat earth movement called *Behind the Curve*. The take away is that the flat earth conspiracy becomes such a core belief that giving up on it would push believers away from the only community and friends they have left. It might be frustrating, but now might be your chance to save your friend from this fate. (That is, unless they also believe much more dangerous conspiracies, then it might be too late.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://youtu.be/E43-CfukEgs", "https://youtu.be/5C5_dOEyAfk"], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-wire-was-used-to-measure-a-tiny-force-of-gravity/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4nktw9", "title": "what was the difference between the socialism of nazi germany and the socialism of the soviet union?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nktw9/eli5_what_was_the_difference_between_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d44t1li", "d44td5b", "d44vc38"], "score": [14, 33, 11], "text": ["Despite the similar-sounding names, the ideologies of National Socialism (as practiced by the Nazi Party) and Socialism (as envisaged by Karl Marx) are complete opposites.\n\nMarx described his socialism as using the unity of the working class to bring about an end to capitalism. One of Marxism's most well-known phrases is \"working people of the world, unite\".\n\nFascism (of which National Socialism is a variation) is a doctrine which deliberately fosters enmities amongst the working class to bolster up a form of state capitalism. The Nazis were more than happy to turn sections of the working class against each other (by telling Germans that Jews, homosexuals, socialists, etc, were their enemies). The idea of a united working class, as perceived by Marx, stood in complete opposition to what Hitler wanted to achieve.\n\n", "Despite the name of \"national socialism\" the Nazis were not actually socialist and very far from anything that could be considered socialist ideology.\n\nThe Soviet union at least was in the same general ball park. They were communist with a Marxist\u2013Leninist ideology. An extreme and specialized outgrowth of the general socialist ideology but socialism none the less.\n\nThere are some conspiracy theories popular in places like the United states of America that would make you think that the Nazis were leftist or part of some communist, Jewish or homosexual conspiracy when they were very much the opposite of that and doing their best to persecute and kill everyone who actually was.\n\nThe Nazis were far right and the Soviets were far left.\n\nDue to the nature of the political spectrum the two extreme points actually did have some things in common. Many of the things they had did have in common were however less outgrowth of their respective ideologies but rather a result of them both being undemocratic and not tolerating dissent as well as accumulating as much power as possibly at the top and removing possible competitors.\n\nNazism was all about race and with some great mythology build around the concept how the Aryan race was destined to throw of the shackles of the lesser race and eventually rule.\n\nCommunism had a completely different ideology that was less centered around race and more around the fact that their political ideology was destined to eventually overcome all others.\n\nBoth were willing to bend and twist their ideologies to suit their needs, even to the point of briefly allying with each other despite being on the face of it natural enemies.\n\n", "Hitler even said himself that Germany wasn't socialist. They just said it was to win the worker vote because the USSR popularized socialism.\n\nThe USSR actually was socialist, of the Marxist-Leninist variety. Their state was controlled by class conscious workers and their means of production were controlled by the working class through this effect.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2v4n6z", "title": "why doesn't the west openly say the russian military is fighting in ukraine?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v4n6z/eli5_why_doesnt_the_west_openly_say_the_russian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coeed29", "coeer29", "coeo5my", "coevek3"], "score": [7, 25, 7, 2], "text": ["even if they had had firm evidence of it, it would do nothing to solve the situation. It would most likely make it even more tense, and bring the situation futher away from a solution than it already is.\n\nWhat do you think they would gain from doing it?", "West excluding Russia: not enough evidence.\n\nRussia's military doctrine is called 'maskirovka', and revolves around deception. It's a tactic that has been used for approximately a millennium, and is still as effective as ever. Basically the Russians deny everything, admit nothing, and play dirty; for example there is some evidence that they painted trucks white, disguising them as an aid convoy, and used them to ship ammunition and soldiers into Ukraine. \n\nAny other nation would probably admit that they have invaded another country, but Russia's MO is deception, disguise, and denial. ", "The West a) doesn't have enough evidence and b) even if they did have hard evidence, what would the West do about it? It's a cost benefit analysis issue, save Ukraine and piss off Russia, potentially sparking further conflict, or just leave the situation alone, and maybe sanction Russia a bit. The West is trying to deescalate the situation. Openly saying that Russia is fighting would be escalation, which is not something we would want. ", "Because it's not. There might be military aid/advisors. But the actual Russian army is not fighting in Ukraine."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6q1ybm", "title": "How far does an average atom travel in one day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6q1ybm/how_far_does_an_average_atom_travel_in_one_day/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkubj3d", "dkue1ae"], "score": [3, 5], "text": ["Net distance or total distance?  On average a given atom in a solid doesn't make any progress anywhere.  It may undergo some random walk perhaps of atomic diffusion:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd thus the \"standard deviation\" of its position may grow in time but its average value will not.  As for the time scale of atomic diffusion it can vary by many, many order of magnitude depending on the materials and the situation.\n\nIf you're talking about total distance covered (even if you end up back where you started) of say an atom in a gas, it depends on the mass, you can make an estimate from the classical Equipartion Theorem which says that the average kinetic energy (for a monatonic gas) is\n\nE = 3kT/2\n\nwhere k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature.  For room temperature on Earth is about 25 milleelectronvolts (a unit of energy) or 4x10^-21 Joules. The velocity is then\n\nv = sqrt(2E/m) = sqrt(3kT/m)\n\nan element n at the periodic table on average weights 2n times the mass of a proton the mass of a proton is 1.67x10^-27 kg \n\nso we get \n\nv ~ 1.7 km/s x 1/sqrt(n)\n\nor, since there are 86,400 seconds you get a distance of\n\n~150,000 km / sqrt(n)\n\nSo for Helium (n=2) it makes it about 100,000 km.  For Uranium (n=92) in our number model where mass is 2n (Uranium actually weighs 238, not 184) we get ~15,000 km.\n", "Most atoms are hot hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space, with a temperature of approximately 10^(5) K. The typical kinetic energy of a particle with temperature T is E=1.5 k_B T. (k_B is Boltzmann's constant) Because hydrogen atoms have the same mass as a proton, their velocity is given by: v=sqrt(3 k_B T/m_p). \n\nFor our parameters, you get a velocity of around 50 km/s. This means the typical atom will travel a total distance of 4,300,000 kilometers in a day, around 1/30th of the distance between the Sun and the Earth.\n\nThe net distance the particle travels is more difficult because the particles are thermal and constantly change direction. This can be thought of as a random walk in 3D, so the distance travelled will be approximately \nD=L sqrt(4,300,000 km/L), where L is the mean free path of hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space. Unfortunately, L may depend on the magnetic field because collisions are probably very rare in the extremely diffuse intergalactic gas. I believe (but cannot prove) that the collisional mean free path is larger than 4,300,000 km, so that the total and net distances are the same."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_diffusion"], []]}
{"q_id": "43b7ey", "title": "Why are ancient musical modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, etc.) named after certain Hellenic ethnicities?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43b7ey/why_are_ancient_musical_modes_dorian_phrygian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czh6n37"], "score": [79], "text": ["First of all, it's very important to understand that in music theory the word \"mode\" has existed since antiquity and has been applied to a vast number of *different* concepts. Unfortunately, people aren't always clear about what they mean by \"mode\" and the names (\"Dorian,\" etc.) associated with it. The words have become something of a floating signifier: everybody knows that the terms exist, but nobody is convinced that they refer to one particular real musical phenomenon. (For instance, although people speak of \"the ancient Greek modes,\" they equally often speak of Dorian etc as the \"church modes\" and associate them with the medieval and Renaissance musical practices of the Roman Catholic Church. For informed skepticism about the value of those terms in that context, I'd encourage you to read Harold Power's essay \"Is mode real?\" in the Basler Jahrbuch f\u00fcr historische Musikpraxis, 1992; and Cristle Collins Judd's \"Modal Types and \"Ut, Re, Mi\" Tonalities\" in *JAMS* 45/3 (1992): 428-467.) \n\nAs for how the names themselves worked their way into Western cultural consciousness, we do have a pretty good picture of the process by which it happened. They first show up with their contemporary meanings in an anonymous 10th-century treatise referred to as *Alia musica.* This document attempts to retransmit musical knowledge contained in Boethius's 6th-century *De musica,* but it garbled certain key aspects of Boethius's description. Boethius does discuss the 7 species of the diatonic scale (which is what jazz musicians mean when they refer to \"modes\" of a scale), and Boethius does use the ancient Greek ethnic names (along with one extra one, \"hypermixoldyian,\" that nobody refers to any more). But in antiquity, the two weren't connected exactly as they are now: the ethnic names referred to certain aspects of musical style and performance, particularly how high or low your reference pitch was. (That is, imagine that \"Dorian\" means tuning to A440 whereas \"Phrygian\" means tuning to A315.) Even by Boethius's time, those ethnic names were probably purely arbitrary and without a great deal of significance. (Music terminology is, historically, full of concepts needing names that get supplied by more or less randomly borrowed sets of labels. Consider, for instance, the \"Neapolitan,\" \"German,\" \"French,\" and \"Italian\" chromatic chords studied by college sophomores.) But *Alia musica* misread Boethius, applying the ethnic names to the octave species (in the wrong order!), producing the system of modal names that is more or less still familiar today.\n\nFor a long time, these ethnic terms still didn't have great popularity: most medieval and Renaissance treatises prefer instead to refer to \"mode 1,\" \"mode 7,\" and so on, only occasionally mentioning \"By the way, mode 1 is also referred to by the ancient name of Dorian\" as a show of erudition. Two 16th-century treatises helped popularize this conception of modes (Glarean's *Dodecachordon* and Zarlino's *Istitutione harmoniche*), but even these still use numerical designations alongside the ethnic names. It's not really until modes themselves have fallen out of practice in favor of major  &  minor keys that, in retrospect, people start using the more colorful ethnic names as the usual designator of mode. (Thus, for example, Beethoven's Op. 132 refers to \"der lydischen Tonart\" -- the lydian mode -- though it's clear from Beethoven's composition that his conception of what that means is worlds removed from Palestrina.)\n\nWhere do the ethnic names originally come from? We probably will never know. They are attested in what is basically the oldest extant work of music theory, Aristoxenus's *Harmonic Elements,* which is probably from the mid 300s BC. Although Aristoxenus documents the use of the terms, he didn't invent them: \"The association of ethnic names with the octave species probably does not come from Aristoxenus himself, who criticizes their application to the *tonoi* by the Harmonicists.\" The Harmonicists, were, unfortunately, a school of musical thinkers who failed to leave behind written records  &  are remembered almost solely because Aristoxenus criticizes them.\n\nThat last quote is from Thomas Mathiesen, \"Greek Music Theory,\" in the *Cambridge History of Western Music Theory,* edited by Thomas Christensen (CUP, 2002), 125. Mathiesen's chapter on sources from antiquity, and David E. Cohen's chapter (\"Notes, scales, and modes in the earlier Middle Ages\") from *CHoWMuT*, are the main sources I'd point you to for the content of this post."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4hwnkm", "title": "Did the early universe have an escape velocity higher than the speed of light?", "selftext": "With my limited understanding of physics I would think that in the moments after the big bang, the escape velocity of the incredibly dense universe would exceed the speed of light. Applying my (again very very limited) understanding of physics that would mean that all the matter fell back into a singularity, while space itself would keep expanding practically empty.\n\nWhy is this not the case? Was the space between quarks/early matter simply expanding fast enough that all the objects were effectively moving away at FTL speeds?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4hwnkm/did_the_early_universe_have_an_escape_velocity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2t2w22", "d2tezes", "d2uxeyw"], "score": [14, 3, 2], "text": ["It makes no sense to talk about the \"escape velocity of the universe\".\n\nIn Newtonian gravity (and in some limited contexts in GR), the escape speed of some gravitating mass is a useful concept, but the fundamental assumption is that the mass from which you want to \"escape\" is finite in extent, e.g., a planet, a star, a single galaxy, etc. We consider some massive particle in a gravity well due to some bounded distribution of mass, and there are no forces acting on this particle except gravity. (Such a particle is called *free* in this context.) We want to know how much energy we must impart to the particle so that it has just enough kinetic energy to escape to infinity against gravity. Since the gravitational force is conservative, this is equivalent to asking what speed the particle needs to escape. Also, \"escape\" in this context really just means that the particle can reach an arbitrarily large distance from the gravitating mass.\n\nFor example, the escape speed of Earth at the surface is about 11.2 km/s. This means that if the universe consisted only of Earth and some test particle, as long as the test particle had a speed of at least 11.2 km/s near the surface of Earth, the particle will necessarily get arbitrarily far away from Earth.\n\nBecause the concept of escape speed *requires* that the gravitating mass is finite in extent, it makes absolutely no sense to talk about the \"escape speed of the universe\". For one, escape to what? You can't very well escape to point outside of the universe... otherwise those points would be part of the universe.\n\nSecondly, cosmological models often assume that the universe is *homogeneous*. This means that on large distance scales, the matter of the universe is smeared out evenly. That is, the mass density is constant throughout the universe. *A fortiori*, there is no mass distribution of finite extent for which we can even talk about the escape speed. On large scales, you may escape from one galaxy, only to move into the gravity well of another, and you will eventually become bound to some cluster of galaxies. There is no way to escape to a point where you are outside the influence of *all* mass.", "In the [metric expansion of space](_URL_0_) it is not the case of mass moving through spacetime that causes the expansion, but rather that the space between masses is expanding.\n\n >  The metric expansion of space is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. This is different from other examples of expansions and explosions in that, as far as observations can ascertain, it is a property of the entirety of the universe rather than a phenomenon that can be contained and observed from the outside.\n\nThe expansion of the early universe would be the same phenomena.\n\n >  Because of the high rate of expansion, it is also possible for a distance between two objects to be greater than the value calculated by multiplying the speed of light by the age of the universe. These details are a frequent source of confusion among amateurs and even professional physicists.\n\nYou can even get \"apparent speeds\" between distant masses that are greater than the speed of light.", "The important thing to note is that the Big Bang expansion is an expansion of space, and not of objects. Space can expand at any speed - it is not bound by the speed of light, and in fact in the era of inflation it expanded much faster. \n\nNevertheless, there is something to what you are speculating about. If the universe were made purely of matter, its history would depend on the initial kinetic energy of the expansion relative to the (negative) gravitational energy resulting from the pull of that mass, and if it was too low the universe would eventually collapse. Note, however, that this is an energy rather than a velocity, and energy has no fundamental limits. So with enough initial energy the universe would continue expanding forever no matter how dense it was.\n\nBut the universe isn't just made of matter- dark energy exists, which has negative gravity (because its pressure is negative), and this can drive an expansion even if the matter has little energy of expansion. Therefore, you can't actually define an analog to escape velocity for the universe.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space"], []]}
{"q_id": "3xmuty", "title": "because alcohol dehydrates, water hydrates you, and beer is primarily water, is there an alcohol-by-volume threshold in which beers below this threshold hydrate the body and those above it dehydrate the body?", "selftext": "Or is this a false dichotomy?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xmuty/eli5_because_alcohol_dehydrates_water_hydrates/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy5zt7g", "cy60a69", "cy67je9", "cy6fiue", "cy6fwzb", "cy6h8dk", "cy6ilzx", "cy6j96o"], "score": [165, 20, 8, 27, 15, 8, 13, 3], "text": ["There was a study that made headlines indicating some low ABV beers might be better than water, but it was never published and doesn't appear to have been repeatable.  However, this summary of later studies [seems to indicate](_URL_0_) that beer with less than 2% alcohol (essentially 1 Bud/Coors or similar and 2 cans of water or the ultra light styles) hydrates about as well as water.  ", "In England years ago everyone drank beer, even children. It was low strength but the alcohol killed many of the bugs which would otherwise kill you. It was known as small beer.   This went on until safe drinking water was available in the late 19th and early 20th century.", "Mathematically, yes. \n\nThis is because of the intermediate value theorem. If you go from positive hydration to negative hydration, you must get to a point of no hydration in-between (assuming continuity or you can have nearly infinitely small increases in alcohol)", "One of the issues with alcohol is that it inhibits anti diuretic hormone. So I'm sure that factors into threshold of how hydrated you are. ", "I saw a documentary which had two identical twins drink juice mixed with vodka or water.\nOne of the twins had 21 shots of vodka with the juice, the other had 21 shots of water. They measured hydration levels in the blood of the brothers and found that through the night, and the next morning, they were equally hydrated, except one of the brothers felt like his skin was about to fall off.\n\nThe feeling of dehydration is caused by oversensitivity, not by actual hydration apparantly, not sure if I can find the documentary again.", "Alright, I see a lot of things floating around in this thread, and just want to toss my hat in the ring for clarification. I can't speak for hydration of yesteryear's beers. I don't think anyone has actually been able to prove this. \n\nWhat i can do is clear up some things here. Before WWII beers tended to be lesser ABV. These table beers were thirst quenching quaff-able beers that refreshed workers and helped restore morale. Much like you'd go and get a pesi or a redbull or some other beverage of choice. You dont grab these things for hydration. The point was they were full of nutrients that you would lose throughout the day, and you'd feel a lot better after a hard days work than a measly glass of water.\n \nThese beers were in affect somewhat safer than poor water resources because of the boiling process. however, during the fermentation process you're inviting all kinds of nasties bugs to come settle in. Brewers are looking for saccaromyces for Wort fermentation. Some styles look for brettanomyces, and lacto. However, before Louie Pasteur we didn't know about them. There weren't yeast banks, or packs of viable strains you could get on the market. Most fermentation was a wild fermentation, and that can be tricky. \nAs for hops. They're not anti-microbial, and they're not antibiotic. They're a preservative. While they do share some antimicrobial assets its mostly the prevention of becoming rancid, browning, and mold growth. \n\nAs for the special beers (higher ABV) we see them really come forward during industrialization. Small brewer's needed that something \"Special\" to compete against large manufacturers in their towns, village, whatever. ", "Alcohol reduces the production of a hormone called vasopressin, which tells your kidneys to reabsorb water rather than flush it out through the bladder.", "This might get buried, but if you are interested about some pretty cool facts about alcohol theres a book called \"Alcohol, a history\"  \nBeer used to be drunk for its dietary benefits, it has many nutrients and in many places was much safer to drink than the water.  \nAles were given to people of all social statuses as part of a wage (writing these stats from straight out of my book) from the years 1341-1424, on average, ale provided up to 41% of the daily \"value of meals\" served to harvest workers in Norfolk. The daily volume of ale given to harvesters as part of their wages was 6.36 pints in 1424. Mixing work and alcohol wasn't seen as a bad thing because they would drink it throughout the day to stay hydrated.  \nI don't believe there is an alcohol-by-volume threshold because lets say you have 6 pints of beer, its not really normal for you to drink 6 pints of water within a short period of time (drinking fast enough to give you a hangover for example) and your body will get rid of the excess water but the alcohol will stay in your system, dehydrating you more and more as the night carries on.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://io9.gizmodo.com/could-you-drink-beer-instead-of-water-and-still-survive-457081579"], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8ypjb3", "title": "Early Christian history is full of infighting over seemingly minor theological differences (such as whether Christ had two natures in one or one nature in two). Would ordinary laypeople actually have known or cared about these issues enough to cause the division it did?", "selftext": "Certainly your average modern Christian would not be able to distinguish a Chalcedonian from a Nestorian or Miaphysite, but would an average 4th-century Christian have?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8ypjb3/early_christian_history_is_full_of_infighting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2djhpu"], "score": [25], "text": ["As a general rule the average lay person in early Christianity knew less about theology than the bishops did.   However,  in regards to the various Christological and Trinitarian controversies of the 4th and 5th century, the average Christian probably had at least some basic understanding of what was going on,  and certainly cared, because these issues often had a personal impact on his/her religious life.  There is not a source from the ancient world that gives us any kind of poll of religious feelings of average Christians, but a few points of evidence support my conclusion. \n\nFirst,  the Arian controversy (318-381) frequently led to the removal of bishops.  These bishops were replaced with someone who supported a different theological idea.   Early Christians seemed to have a close relationship with their bishops.  They appointed them by acclimation.  They cared for them as the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch seem to demonstrate.   For a bishop to be removed this meant that the people's spiritual leader had been taken from them.  Riots broke out in 339 and 356 in Alexandria when Athanasius was desposed on the two occasions.\n\nThe removal of a bishop was would also bring with it a change in preaching that an average Christian would have been aware of.  In Ancyra, Marcellus was replaced by Basil, changing the theology of the city's leader from the idea that God was one person who morphed into another over time (modalism) to three separate, but unequal persons (homoiouisianism).  Certainly the bishops presented their theology to the people and did their best to do so in a way that they would understand.   For instance, Hilary of Poiters' Tractates on the Psalms, which are presumed to have begun as sermons, frequently refers to Christ as existing in the form of God and as the form of a slave. This is Hilary's technical language, based on Phil 2:6-7, to demonstrate the full divinity of Christ. It's clear to me that Hilary is instructing his congregation on proper Trinitarian theology. This certainly doesn't prove that his listeners understood all of the technical details, but it does show that this debate over the nature of God was actively being presented to the laity; it was not something they would have been ignorant of.\n\nThere does seem to be some indication that not only did this preaching increase awareness of the issues,  but that many people did come to care about the issues directly.   As u/Foojer points out, Gregory of Nyssa spoke to the interests of the people in the debates of the time:\n\n > \u201cEverywhere, in the public squares, at crossroads, on the streets and lanes, people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.\u201d (Oration on the Deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit)\n\n(I hope I have not broken a rule here by incorporating his/her very good point here as part of my answer, if so my apologies and I'll edit this.)\n\nSuch concerns over theological issues continued into the 5th century.  The Nestorian controversy was started over whether Theotokos or Christotokos was the appropriate title for Mary. The Christians in Constantinople had taken an affinity to calling Mary the Theotokos to which Nestorius objected. The ensuing controversy would have an impact on liturgy and prayers and as such would have an impact on the average lay person.\n\nTo be sure,  the interest of the laity would not have extended to the highest levels of technical expertise.  Getting to the specific example of OP, Chalcedonian Christianity versus miaphysitism, this is one of the most philosophically difficult issues of the early Church to illustrate.   Regarding the Arian controversy,  I am sure that the average Christian got the just of the debate, was Christ fully God or was he a subordinate deity?  I have my doubts,  even if the average Christian's cared, that they could articulate the issues at play when it comes to miaphysitism.  Even experts today on early Christianity will shy away from articulating the technical issues at play because the distinctions being made by each side were rather small."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "axbfnr", "title": "Why are large physics detectors like LHC and Super K buried underground? Is it because they are dangerous?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/axbfnr/why_are_large_physics_detectors_like_lhc_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ehsjte8", "eht0n61"], "score": [29, 5], "text": ["I can only answer this question for the LHC, but the main reason is simply that the device is too big to economically build above ground.\n\nThe LHC reuses the tunnel previously used for the LEP (Large Electron-Positron collider). It has a diameter of 27 km and building such a large structure above ground would require the purchase of large amounts of land and/or building the device in a very sparsely populated region. Now, the ring can run underneath several towns and is centrally located in Europe, making it easy for scientists and engineers to visit (note that many scientists working at CERN / LHC do so on a temporary basis and frequently travel between Geneva and their home institute).\n\nAn additional benefit of underground construction is some extra screening from outside interference. Cosmic rays can interact with the detectors and cause anomalous readings. In its current setup, cosmic rays were used to help calibrate the detectors after they were brought online but before actual collisions in the pipe had started. Even 100 m below ground, cosmic rays caused noticeable events in the detectors. Had it been above ground, this would've increased considerably.", "SuperK is underground to shield it from ambient and cosmic backgrounds.\n\nThe LHC is underground to shield to the local environment from it. Even if the amount of synchrotron radiation is much less than LEP, you still have other losses from collimators and collisions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "100o95", "title": "Towards the end of Rome, were Germanic barbarians still dressed in furs, or were they in fully roman clothing?", "selftext": "I was thinking about this as I watched a Capital One credit card ad, with barbarians giving advice to normal citizens dressed in classic barbarian garb.\n\nIn a lot of movies about Rome, even ones dealing with the end of the Roman Empire, the barbarians are still seen wearing furs and leather like they just came straight out of the forests.  \n\nI'm assuming this is inaccurate, but I don't have any particular proof.  I mean I know that early medieval kings wore royal garbs that were based off of Roman military tunics, but what about the rest of the  German warrior population?\n\nBasically, how Roman or how \"Germanic\" did the Germans look in the era close to the end of the western empire?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/100o95/towards_the_end_of_rome_were_germanic_barbarians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c69dqui", "c69f1rq", "c69gtn0"], "score": [80, 16, 2], "text": ["The term barbarian is fairly misleading when you talk about the sacking of Rome. \n\nAn average person would be hard pressed to tell a Vandal, Visigoth, or what have you, apart from a Roman, simply due to the fact that they were so intertwined during this time period. Roman generals were often half-Vandal, or married to \"barbarian\" princesses, and so on. Roman soldiers often joined these invading armies via defection depending on how the wind blew, so they might appear completely Roman, because they were Roman. \n\nThe image of fur clad barbarians with horns on their helm is probably fiction, and makes for funny commercials. Invading barbarians probably looked more [like this](_URL_0_)", "Roman historians like Tacitus had recorded that in their time, the Northern European tribes, not exclusively the Germanic lot, were in-fact quite proficient smiths with some rather interesting techniques that allowed longer swords that didn't shatter as easily in addition to more malleable alloys for helmets and breastplates and such. They were by no means as heavily-clad as the Roman legions, but it would be unjust to broadly define all of the invading armies as being fur and cloth hairy beasts screaming \"bar bar bar!\".", "The current issue of National  Geographic has a fairly detailed piece about Rome's deep influence on the hoards beyond its \"Empire Limits\".  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/Alaric_entering_Athens.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8fvkcr", "title": "the difference and jurisdiction between police, sheriffs, state police, fbi, highway patrol; who handles what?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fvkcr/eli5_the_difference_and_jurisdiction_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dy6suky", "dy6syr3", "dy6t5p3", "dy6t8ii", "dy7cjd0", "dy7iduq", "dy7n1ck"], "score": [155, 8, 5, 36, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Very simply:\n\nPolice = City\n\nSheriff = County\n\nState Police = State =P\n\nHighway Patrol = State highways, interstates.\n\nFBI= Country Wide - Federal crimes", "And aren\u2019t sheriffs in the US elected officials (I\u2019m Canadian - we don\u2019t have sheriffs as such)?", "It's area based mainly.. Police have jurisdiction inside the city limits..  Sheriffs Deputies have jurisdiction inside the county.. State and then so on..  but yes, some small towns don't have a Police force so the county has jurisdiction. ", "Police have Jurisdiction within a city or town. \n\nSheriff's Departments have jurisdiction within a County. That technically includes cities though they normally defer to the city level police and focus their actions outside of city limits and in towns too small to have their own police, as well as crimes that happen both inside and outside of a city or in multiple cities within a county.\n\nState Police, Highway Patrol, etc have jurisdiction within an entire State. Some departments are focused on specific things, such as highway patrol being focused on traffic safety on highways. Others like State Troopers or the Texas Rangers deal with crimes that happen in multiple counties and deal with the transfer of prisoners across county lines. \n\nNational level police such as the FBI, US Marshals, Border Patrol etc are also fairly specialized. They have jurisdiction in the whole US but have specific jobs. Border Patrol, or ICE deal with immigration and customs imports into the US. US Marshals deal with witness protection, transport of prisoners across State lines, deal with crimes on Federal lands such as national parks, and deal with some crimes on Native American Reserves. The FBI deals with crimes that happen in multiple States, specialized cases such as serial killers, and the like. ", "Many think that the US policing system is a mess, and without a doubt I would say it\u2019s complicated but very orderly in that every jurisdiction has its own entity. \n\nOthers have mentioned that Australia is much simpler, with Federal police, and then state authorities taking care of local policing, ambulance and fire. Very clear cut. \n\nIn Canada it\u2019s a bloody mess. At the federal level you have the RCMP, and various other agencies for specialized areas, though the RCMP often have jurisdiction in these areas too, ex. CBSA is our customs and immigration agency, yet RCMP has jurisdiction over patrolling the physical land and sea borders. \n\nAt the provincial level, you also have the RCMP taking care of provincial crimes ONLY if said province chooses to opt in for RCMP service. 3 provinces opted out (Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland) and as such have the Ontario Provincial Police, Suret\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec, and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary taking care of their own provinces\u2019 crimes.\n\nOn the municipal level you again have the RCMP but ONLY if the municipality has opted in. Otherwise, municipal police services can be organized (e.g. the Toronto Police). But municipal forces derive their authority from the Crown at the provincial level, giving them authority anywhere in said province. \n\nIn the territories up North, sovereignty/border integrity is again taken up by CBSA and RCMP but also with the Canadian Army Rangers - essentially dudes with red hoodies, hatchets and Lee Enfield rifles. \n\nOn Indian reservations, some have Indian police services and others have RCMP - unfortunately I don\u2019t know the distinction. While I\u2019m not very knowledgeable about this, I have heard that some treaty lands have the ability to refuse entry to federal authorities.\n\nIn other words, we need some help from the UK and Australia!\n\n\n", "In my state, Texas, all police officers have statewide jurisdiction and can enforce state laws anywhere in the state. It doesn't matter if you're city, county, or state employed. Its not a heirarchy per se. Rather that each entity has a different function. Cities typically have better funding and are made as cities have bigger needs. Counties have less, but have larger jurisdictions. While it may seem that doesn't make sense, it does, if you think about it in that most of the populace is in cities. Counties are usually rural with less demand. Unincorporated areas typically take up most of their time. \n\nState police are stationed usually with a responsibility for a few counties, but there are less of them in any given area. State troopers primarily work highways, as they often enter/exit cities and counties. This works as those agencies have responsibilities to their city/counties, and highways cross jurisdictions easily. Also, some state police are game warden, dealing with specific wildlife law in a few counties. Leading me to my next point.\n\nFederal agents... first think of how city, county, state cops are stationed. Usually they have districts within their jurisdictions. City has sectors theyre assigned to patrol, same as county, and state with their multi county, they don't all just freely patrol the land. Although they can, and sometimes do if they get bored. \n\nNow... federal agents get assigned to an area in a state. Technically, as the city cops have state authority, these agents have national authority. However, they still have an area within a state that they're typically assigned responsibility to work in. Also, federal law and state law is different. They actually have separate constitutions and rights.. go read your state constitution... with that said, the federal agents have significantly less scope than a city cop for example... I'll explain. A city cop has city ordinances (local laws ie. Don't skateboard here) as well as any county law (no fireworks), and the regular state laws. In contrast, federal may have a very specific law set that they deal with, but can enforce that law set over a vast area. (Nationally) when needed. They work together with other agents stationed all over different areas.\n\nOne is not necessarily better or higher up than the other. They all work with different responsibilities. They all work together, with joint efforts, task forces, and work to share information as needed.\n\nIt's important to note that federal cops cannot enforce state law and vice versa. For example, marijuana. Currently under federal law marijuana is illegal. A state cannot make it legal. States can however, remove their state law making it illegal, thereby \"decriminializing\". This is different than \"legalize\". A state cannot contradict a federal law, although states can make stricter laws. And a city can make stricter laws than a state law. It goes downward so to speak.", "To make matters even more interesting, there are frequently police forces for special jurisdictions. For example, railroad police, school police, hospital police, etc. In these cases, these organizations are authorized to set up and run their own police forces for just their area. \n\nThey are still enforcing the same law, but it allows specialization for training and coverage for their unique circumstances."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1n6hk4", "title": "Why does sexual intercourse consist of a stimulation through going in and going out (friction?)? Also why do we need to be stimulated in order to reproduce?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1n6hk4/why_does_sexual_intercourse_consist_of_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccfvoxc"], "score": [11], "text": ["Sexual intercourse isnt exactly friction. In a normal intact male and a normal intact female there is very low friction. The penile sheath rolls over the glans and stimulates both partners in the in and out motion. \n\nAs to why do we need to be stimulated to reproduce, someone else will have to answer that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2cpivr", "title": "Did Ancient Greek Architecture implement factors of safety? Were there \"building codes\" to abide by?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cpivr/did_ancient_greek_architecture_implement_factors/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cji1seg"], "score": [10], "text": ["Follow up question: did the romans do this as well?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6es9qa", "title": "Is it true that Roman slaves had more days off per year than the average US modern day worker?", "selftext": "A friend who is a historian said this is true through most of the Roman empire's history the other day. And it disturbed me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6es9qa/is_it_true_that_roman_slaves_had_more_days_off/", "answers": {"a_id": ["did1vee"], "score": [14], "text": ["On a related note I once heard Dan Carlin talk about medieval peasants and he claimed that due to religious holidays they only worked 3-4 days out of the week. Is this true and can anyone give more information on this? Also what did peasant farmers do for work in the winter? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "26794z", "title": "Could we detect Russell's teapot?", "selftext": "Would it be possible for us to detect a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars or is our technology not advanced enough?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26794z/could_we_detect_russells_teapot/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chobl2x", "chobueg", "chobw6p"], "score": [16, 2, 7], "text": ["No, not unless we were lucky.\n\nAs a case in point, there are several spent rocket stages in solar orbit near Earth. However, we've lost track of many of them. In one case we've detected one again after several decades, mistaking it for an asteroid initiall ([J002E3](_URL_0_)). That turned out to be a S-IVB stage off of a Saturn V, which is a 10 tonne, 18 meter long metal hulk. We only found it again because the nature of its heliocentric orbit carried it very close to Earth again where it actually entered into orbit around Earth for a time.\n\nFor a much smaller object that is more likely to be farther away (for example, it would be easy for an orbit between Earth and Mars to never approach Earth closer than many millions of kilometers) we would be hopeless to detect it.\n\nPlanned surveys of near Earth asteroids will attempt to find every asteroid larger than about 140 meters, but even that is a challenge and will require special equipment designed specifically for the task (space-borne telescopes). It's also far, far below the level of being able to detect every object larger than about 10cm between Earth and Mars, which would be close to the requirements of what it would take to find Russell's teapot. Even worse if the teapot doesn't orbit in the plane of the planets.", "Nope. Not even close.\n\nThe best equipment we have can resolve about 0.02 arcsec. This isn't even enough to see lunar landing equipment still on the moon, let alone something the miniscule size of a teapot that would be orders of magnitude farther away.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAny recent pictures you can find of lunar landing equipment left on the moon were not taken from Earth. They were taken from satellites orbiting the moon.", "That's sort of beside the point of Russell's teapot - the idea is to postulate something undetectable.  So if we were ever able to detect something the size of a teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars, it would become Russell's paperclip, or Russell's ball bearing, or it would be orbiting in the Kuiper belt.\n\nThat said, I believe the smallest asteroid we've detected is about 5-10 m diameter, so an order of magnitude larger than a teapot, and that's only because it comes very close to the Earth, less than 0.003 AU away (about 400,000 km). Somewhere between Earth's and Mars's orbits means anywhere from 0 to 0.5 AU away from Earth. So, for a reasonably sized teapot and the vast majority of orbits, no, we couldn't detect it. Someone better versed than me would probably be able to give you a size vs distance vs probably some other parameters at the threshold of detection, but you're going to have to be real close to Earth for a normal sized teapot. I suspect you're not going to get further than geostationary orbit distance (where we have many communications satellites, at 36,000 km from Earth).\n\n_URL_1_ \n_URL_0_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3"], ["http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/lunar_lander.html"], ["http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=1991BA;cad=1#cad", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_BA"]]}
{"q_id": "1ph2l4", "title": "Why and how do pumpkins grow so fast?", "selftext": "I'm not aware of any other plant that can grow to several hundred pounds in the relatively short time frame of a pumpkin. (4-5 months, I believe?) There are countless stories of them growing 600, 700 or 800 lbs or more.  So, why (and how) is this possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ph2l4/why_and_how_do_pumpkins_grow_so_fast/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd2ixze"], "score": [5], "text": ["Those are pumpkins that have been rigorously selected over the last 130 years specifically for extraordinarily large size. Read about the history of giant pumpkins.\n\n_URL_1_  \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you plant the seeds from an ordinary grocery store pumpkin, you will never get an 800 lb pumpkin, you will get a 30 lb pumpkin.  \n\nSo the answer to  your question is, pumpkins that have been selected for 130 years for growing to 800 lbs in a single season can grow to 800 lbs in a single season."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Giant", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin#Giant_pumpkins"]]}
{"q_id": "fji9b", "title": "If a steel rod is bent, does it still have the same strength as if it were straight?", "selftext": "Specifically, if a steel rod of known mechanical properties were heated and bent to a 90 degree angle, does it still have the same strength as the straight rod? Are there stresses in the bar from the bending?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fji9b/if_a_steel_rod_is_bent_does_it_still_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1gdv2x", "c1gdwzk", "c1ge76n"], "score": [8, 15, 5], "text": ["The mechanical properties will change. You're basically describing [Work Hardening](_URL_0_). There are many tiny imperfections called dislocations in the structure of the metal, and by plastically deforming the bar you cause these dislocations to get stuck and resist further movement. The result is usually a bar which has a higher yield stress but is more brittle. There are residual stresses left in the bar, and these can be exploited.\n\nThere is a huge variety of heating, forming and cooling techniques used by industry to produce metals with different properties.\n\n", "I'm not sure if you're asking on the structural level or the atomic level, so I'll attempt to cover both questions but I'm not really qualified to speak at the structural level. But to warn you, I haven't had a large-scale mechanics class since my sophomore year in college. Also, there are a lot of terms and definitions for material properties: strength is different than hardness, which is different than toughness. Also, there are multiple types of strengths as well (yield strength, ultimate tensile strength), but luckily a simple explanation will cover most of these terms.\n\nIf you have an ordinary steel rod and bent it 90 degrees, a number of things will happen. You mention that you want to heat the rod up before you bend it. Depending on how much you heat it, different things will happen on the atomic level.\n\nLet's say you completely remelt the rod so it is liquid, and let it solidify in the same manner that the original straight rod was solidified. Right now at the atomic level, there isn't a whole lot of difference in \"strength\" of the material at the corner of this bend or throughout the whole piece. The neighboring atoms are still spaced fairly evenly, just as they were in the straightened piece of metal. However, if you were to look at the entire structural piece, I'm pretty sure the structure would fail under a smaller load than it would have in the straight piece of metal. Especially if there is a *sharp* 90^o bend on the inside corner: sharp corners on any piece of material are \"stress concentrators\" and the strength of the piece diminishes quickly. If you are more curious about the structural strength of the piece, then I'm not the guy who should be answering.\n\nNow let's say you bent the rod without melting it. Let's say you don't heat it up at all. When you bend a material in the solid state, interesting things happen at the atomic level. The piece of metal is actually made up of grains of atoms that are packed in neat order. [This is a picture of these grains](_URL_2_). Do you see how within each grain, the atoms have a neat pattern? And then between the individual grains, the same pattern exists but at a different orientation. Well when you bend a piece of solid metal, these grains will shift and slide past each other, and a stress will develop in between these grains because they are pushing and pulling on each other. This internal stress can do a number of macroscopic things on your piece of metal, both strengthening the metal and weakening the metal depending on the condition.\n\nBut that's not all that happens when you bend a piece of metal. Again, within each grain there is a lattice of atoms that have a pretty pattern. In our picture, they appear perfect. In real life, this thing called \"entropy\" demands that these lattices aren't really perfect. There are actually many defects in the lattice which ruin the periodicity. [Here is a picture of this imperfect lattice](_URL_0_) which will be present in basically any macroscopic piece of material. Sure, in some materials there are more defects, and in others there are less, but this picture will give you ideas of what the defects look like. Well, when you bend a piece of metal, these defects travel throughout the lattice to different locations. [Here is a video to picture how these defects can travel throughout the lattice- they are sometimes called dislocations](_URL_1_). When a defect hits the edge of a grain boundary, [which are the blue lines in this picture](_URL_2_), then it generally stops. Many defects will travel towards the grain boundaries, and they will pile up on top of each other. The defects concentrate themselves at the grain boundaries, which once again, adds a stress to the material. Generally, these stress increase the strength of the material to some extent, but it also makes them more brittle at the same time. This process is called work hardening, and there are many different forms of work hardening. Basically, you can bend a piece of metal a bunch, you can press the metal through gigantic rollers with make a sheet of metal thinner, you can hit it with a gigantic hammer- all of these are called \"cold working\" the metal if done at low temperatures, and then you can do hot work as well. Depends what you want to do with your piece.\n\nThird case: now let's say you take the steel and heat it up to about 0.7 times the melting temperature. Now what happens? Well, there is still movement between the grains, and there are still defects forming inside the metal. So that means it's changing, right? Well, if the temperature is hot enough, there is actually enough energy for each of the atoms to vibrate to new positions and into a more relaxed ordering. So if you heat it up to a high enough temperature and bend it, these stresses don't build up quite as much. The amount you heat the material will change the amount the stresses build up, and therefore it will affect the strength of the material in different amounts. This is why we sometimes \"temper\" our steels after we quench them; we want to increase their toughness so they have a little bit of room to bend before they snap.\n\nFun example that everyone can do: take out a cigarette lighter and a paper clip. Carefully straighten the paper clip so you can pinch it with the thumb and forefinger on each hand. Now bend the paper clip back and forth between your fingers and pay attention to how hard it is to bend it the first time. Now, bend it back and forth at the same spot, and pay attention to how hard it becomes to bend the paper clip. What you'll notice is that when you bend the paper clip over and over, it gets harder and harder to bend. This is because there are all of those defects, those dislocations, that are traveling towards the grain boundaries inside the paper clip that make it harder. If you bend the paper clip too many times, it will be harder each time to bend it, but it also gets brittle and will eventually snap.\n\nNow, take out another paper clip after you snapped the last one. This time, do the same thing but stop bending the clip before it snaps. Now take out your lighter and heat up the paper clip for about 30 seconds. This hot flame will actually relax those defects inside the paper clip. The paper clip metal is actually hot enough to where the atoms can migrate past one another easily and the stresses mostly go away. After you let the paper clip cool, you can now bend the paper clip once again and it will be easy to bend just like it initially was!", "I don't mean to be pedantic but you really need to define what you mean by strength when you ask that question. You question can mean one thing to an engineer and something quite different to a materials scientist (myself). I am assuming what you mean by strength is the ability to resist stress without failure. \n\nWhen you bend a steel bar you are deforming it plastically (see Sad_Scientists comment about dislocations as to how plastic deformation works). In bending it you are putting in dislocations which become tangled and the material becomes harder (work hardening). You could say the material is stronger because it will withstand more force before bending again.\n\nOn the other hard it is more likely to fracture than an unbent bar. So you could say it is not stronger, since it is more likely to fail in a catastrophic manner. \n\nEngineers usually think of strength vs toughness. In engineering terms strength is a measure of stress (force/area), yield stress is the stress at which plastic deformation starts, ultimate tensile strength is the stress at which something actually breaks (ductile or brittle failure). Toughness is a measure of energy required to break or crack something. Picking materials for structural engineering is balance between the two.  You can make your steel rod steel very strong by heating and quenching but you are also making it very brittle. You are strengthening it while lowering the toughness. You wouldn't want a hammer that shatters would you? Now is you temper the steel you lower the strength (making it easier to bend) but raise the toughness so you can actually use it as a hammer.\n\nI am sorry that this really doesn't answer you question, and I am sorry if I wrote it at too elementary of a level.  Please think about what you really want to know and ask away. PM me if you wish I have taught mechanics of materials at both the graduate and undergraduate level in both materials science and mechanical engineering departments. My current research is in plastic deformation processes in hexagonal metals such as titanium and magnesium. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_hardening"], ["http://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?w=&amp;h=&amp;cache=cache&amp;media=point_defects.png", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpKxyeU2dc0&amp;feature=related", "http://www.insula.com.au/physics/1250images/Image486.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "7efz23", "title": "what stops pop up ads and viruses from simply making the \"no\" or \"cancel\" button take users to the same place as the yes button?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7efz23/eli5_what_stops_pop_up_ads_and_viruses_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq4r2wg", "dq4r2zr", "dq4t4dc"], "score": [14, 44, 89], "text": ["Nothing. Plenty are simply an image link and will direct you regardless of where you click. It's why protection with Malwarebytes and uBlock Origin is so essential.", "Below is one reason why they can't do this. There may be workarounds or other methods I'm not aware of. \n\nTo hijack your browser and prevent you from closing the tab most of these companies use an alert window which is different from a regular popup. This window is a terminal event you must interact with it before you can do anything else. \n\nThis window is actually generated by the browser not the website you're visiting. So the website can launch the window but can't really control what happenes if you press cancel (the browser handles that)", "Nothing.\n\nPersonally, I never click popups.  You can easily get rid of them by:\n\n- F12 (open devtools)\n- click the \"Select Element\" button (top left of devtools, looks like a mouse cursor)\n- mouse over the popup so it is highlighted and click (won't trigger a normal click)\n- adjust if the popup is inside an iFrame or similar\n- right click the element and \"delete\"\n- profit.\n\n(With practice, this takes me ~1-2 seconds)\n\nEdit:\n\nApparently this can be brought down to about 15ns using /u/ajgz 's shortcuts below :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1lmzov", "title": "Is there a history of soldiers writing messages or images on their armor or weapons, similar to how modern soldiers have done on helmets, bombs, etc.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lmzov/is_there_a_history_of_soldiers_writing_messages/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc0vo6n", "cc0zlxr", "cc12g6g", "cc19gan"], "score": [41, 31, 11, 2], "text": ["Lead sling bullets have been found with inscriptions. [Here are some from the British Museum.](_URL_0_)", "Louis the XIV, King of France, had \"Ultima Ratio Regum\" carved on to his cannons. It translates from latin as \"The Final Argument of Kings.\"", "For the Vikings the answer is yes.  Runic inscriptions could be used to mark an item as ones property such as [bone combs](_URL_0_) and [brooches](_URL_2_) that have inscriptions or possibly carved runes to enchant them or give them power such as in Sigrdr\u00edfum\u00e1l from the Poetic Edda where the mythic Brynhildr says:\n > Victory runes you must know\n > if you will have victory,\n > and carve the on the sword's hilt,\n > some on the grasp\n > and some on the inlay,\n > and name Tyr Twice.\n\nWhile the Poetic Edda is not the greatest source for an actual practice of carving runes into swords there are actually swords that have been found to have runes inscribed or inlaid.  One example is the [S\u00e6b\u00f8 sword](_URL_1_) which has what looks like inlaid runes and a swastika on the bottom of the blade.  Archaeologist George Stephens interpreted the sword to be Nordic runes but in a paper by Fedrir Androschuck he says that it has been misinterpreted as runic script naming \"one Norwegian sword datedto the 13\nth century has a runic inscription, inscribed on a ring around the handle\" (pg 2, Swords and Social Aspects of Weaponry in Viking Age societies.)\n\nWhile Androschuck stated that there was only one example of a sword with runic inscription, I believe the reason that there haven't been more found is that many of the Viking age swords that were found, many of them were from burials and many fine details if not inlaid could have corroded away.  The are still digging up Viking burials here and there and possibly in the future we will have more answers but I hope this still helps.", "An interesting example from literature is Shakespeare's 'Titus Andronicus' (4.2). Titus wraps verses from Horace around his arrows, as well as engraving them into his armour:\n\n- Demetrius, reading:\n\u201cInteger vitae, scelerisque purus,\nNon eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.\u201d\n\n- Chiron:\nO, \u2019tis a verse in Horace, I know it well,\nI read it in the grammar long ago.\n\nAlthough a fictional character, it demonstrates the idea that weapons could carry messages (as part of their violence) was recognisable to an audience in Elizabethan England."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?searchText=sling+bullet+inscription"], [], ["http://www.uib.no/imagearchive/produktbilde_Kamm_004.JPG", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Saebo_sword_Bergen_Museum.jpg", "http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/graphics/pagecontent/MelbrigdaOwnsThisBrooch.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "3gi8aq", "title": "why does the united states use closed-source, partisan-built, \"faith based\" voting machines that people are just supposed to trust aren't compromised?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gi8aq/eli5_why_does_the_united_states_use_closedsource/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctycrxi", "ctydk5c", "ctyepv0", "ctyewbl", "ctylxar", "ctyn87s"], "score": [5, 4, 8, 6, 6, 15], "text": ["Almost as silly and absurd as the electoral college system. Why bother even counting votes when all-in-all it doesn't really matter who the general population chooses?", "A major strategy in software testing is called black-box testing, in which the code is essentially closed-source as far as the tester is concerned.  \n\nFor most purposes, in my SQA engineering days, I wouldn't like it as a sole strategy.  But then, most software has a much more complicated UI than voting machines, at least the sort used in my town which use paper ballots on which you fill in the block.  For something with a UI that simple, particularly when there's paper backup, black box testing is surely good enough.\n\nAs for screen-based voting systems - nah, I wouldn't trust those.  ", "Because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of clerks of court. Each of these clerks of court is responsible for voting in their county. Some states will impose a single voting system, but the clerks can still alter things.\n\nThere might be somewhere in the US where an open source system is used. But there are lots of officials and lots of systems.", "Not really. because lets say the supporters of one party are able to compromise a key state like Texas or California to sway elections towards them.\n\nThat means when and believe me it will come out, then you have half the country which will be making sure that they get what is coming, and even more if borderline or middle voters are turned off by the wrong doing.\n\nTo compromise a voting system on any sort of impactful scale requires too much organization and people to ever remain  secret. ", "The United States does not use such a system. Some *states* do, but the country as a whole does not.\n\nIt's a good question at the state level but misguided at the federal level.", "There was a software programmer who testified under oath that US representatives tried to pay him to design software that would flip votes on the voting machines. According to him, the software exists. Strangely, nothing ever came from it; imagine that. [Video here.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1thcO_olHas"]]}
{"q_id": "13nqt2", "title": "can someone please open my mind to the crazy things going on in saudi arabia? specifically with regards to women's rights?", "selftext": "I always try to see the other side of the coin when it comes to issues I may not agree with. But every once in awhile something comes up that I really just can't understand. \n\nTake for example [this article](_URL_0_) about Saudi Arabia implementing tracking devices on women. Stories like this make me think of Saudi Arabia as a crazy backwards country that refuses to acknowledge the rights of women. However I know that this view is heavily distorted by the media which only report on the craziest most sensational stories. I don't want to jump to false conclusions, but it does seem like almost every piece of news to come out of that country is just crazy. \n\nCan anyone out there enlighten me on the \"bigger\" picture? Maybe fill in the holes that I don't understand about why this country is like this or tell me where my perceptions are wrong?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13nqt2/eli5_can_someone_please_open_my_mind_to_the_crazy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c75j9ts", "c75k9yd", "c75kmhu", "c75kolr", "c75ky54"], "score": [20, 13, 6, 3, 12], "text": ["No, Saudi Arabia is actually a crazy backwards country that refuses to acknowledge the rights of women. \n\nThis is for two reasons. They're completely ruled by the royal family, so they don't have to respond to democratic pressure. And they have a lot of oil, so nobody wants to apply that much international pressure.", "They really are that crazy.\n\nMost countries have to function in a reasonably sane way, because actually having a productive economy requires a certain degree of sanity. Saudi Arabia, because it has easy access to large sums of money generated by oil exports, is relieved of this burden.\n\nIt's sort of like how rich people can get away with being eccentric. They can afford whatever costs are associated with their eccentricity, like having to get every meal delivered because they refuse to leave the house or whatever. And people will by and large put up with their eccentricities, because they're rich \u2014 they have something other people want. In contrast, if you're a regular working stiff and you act too eccentric, you'll probably be unable to hold a job. You'll end up homeless and on the street. So you have to act pretty sane.\n\nSaudi Arabia is like that rich eccentric guy, in country form.", "I just add: Saudi Arabia has no constitution, no bill of rights, no trial by jury, and no checks  &  balances (independent legislature etc.), things that western democracies take for granted. It's a medieval country in the 21st century, flush with cash and modern technology. Slavery still exists there too. OTOH if you're one of the many thousands of princes  &  princesses of the extended Saudi royal family, life is good... because you own the country and it's money is there for your own enjoyment and consumption.\n", "I have friends teaching in Saudi Arabia. One of them is an American woman, who recently had a crisis when her friend was jailed for days. The charge? Riding in a car with a Saudi man who wasn't her husband. Of course this is hearsay, but not at all unrealistic.\n\nFor instance in Malaysia, which is fairly moderate compared with Saudi Arabia, Malays can be arrested by \"moral police\" for entertaining women who aren't their wives: _URL_0_\n\nAnd Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban in Pakistan for wanting education, is another example of radical Islam's contempt for women.\n\nIt appears to be the doctrine of Muslim extremists that women are subject to the will of men, and while it's outrageous, so are all extremists. I don't know much about Islam in regards to women, so I apologize that this is just a scattered list of examples.", "This story has been blown totally out of proportion.\n\nAlright here goes: In Saudi Arabia, for a long time now, all women have been listed as dependents of wither their father or their husband. This means that much of their legal standing in govt is derived from this dependence. If foreign workers come to work in Saudi, they are listed as dependents of their sponsors.\n\nNow, all women need permission/approval from their guardian in this system to leave the country. Until about 2 years ago, this was done by women needing to have a yellow slip signed. 2 years ago however, the govt instituted an electronic system to allow approvals to be done faster (online). This was merged with the system that Passport office uses to control the permissions for foreign workers as well.\n\nJust this year however, someone decided that it would be a good idea to send an SMS to the sponsor/guardian whenever one of their dependents left the country. This option was always available as an opt in, but has just been changed to opt out so suddenly everybody has started getting these SMSes.\n\nThe whole sponsorship system in Saudi is pretty backwards but what is going on here is not a malicious attempt to track women, its more of an upgrading of a system thats outdated and should be scrapped.\n\n[Here's the details from a popular English blogger in Saudi Arabia](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/13mvnr/saudi_arabia_implements_electronic_tracking/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240510/Malaysian-police-arrest-52-unmarried-Muslim-couples-hotel-rooms.html"], ["http://riyadhbureau.com/blog/2012/11/saudi-women-tracking"]]}
{"q_id": "23qj93", "title": "how are ants able to build colonies/civilizations with such a tiny brain?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23qj93/eli5_how_are_ants_able_to_build/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgzmml1", "cgzmy9u", "cgznpkr", "cgzoujg", "cgzpu6j", "cgzq42l", "cgzq7mk", "cgzr1z9", "cgzsq6b", "ch03ddh"], "score": [3, 2, 9, 19, 6, 2, 2, 8, 2, 2], "text": ["chemical markers guide them to food, warn of danger, or whatever.  ", "Hard wired instincts", "Their colonies are big, but not really complicated-there is no master plan about how to build. They just know basics - \"if it's too hot - drill a hole\", \"if it's too cold bring more sand\" etc. That simple \"programming\" together with ability to recognize and amplify chemical trails allows them to make coordinated effort towards one goal. ", "\"Civilization\" is a bit of a strong word. AFAWK, they do not create art. They do not recount epic legends. \n\nThey are able to build colonies by use of pheromones. They recognize the behavior they should have in certain areas by chemical trails. Foraging ants know to bring extra back to the hive. nursing ants know to tend to the queen. The queen knows to give birth once it has sufficient food. They know when it is safe to leave their hole when it is warm enough outside for them (They use body heat and heat of decomposing waste to stay warm in colder situations). \n\nThey don't need large brains. Every ant has hard wired, instinctual roles. Narrow in scope, there is little need for a larger brain. They overcome difficult challenges not by out thinking them (a common tactic of primates) but instead by throwing more brood at the problem. With the high rate of egg laying done by queens, this is a much more economic solution to the problem.", "There was a good video about this, I cant find it though.\n\nThe video stated they basically follow very simple rules that yield seemingly complex behavior - the video talked about how a certain type of ant that lived in rock crevasses found the ideal habitat and it was super interesting.\n\nThe ant would walk along the boundary of the habitat, and then walk back and forth between the walls. The number of times it crossed its own pheromone trail let it decide between \"too crowded\" or \"too large\" of a space. So essentially the act of finding a good habitat is boiled down to simple counting. \n", "It depends on the ant really. But many ants follow the same principles. Every time an ant walks somewhere it leaves pheromone trails. If the ant goes somewhere where it will find food it leaves pheromones making other ants go there to find out what it is. Then they also leave pheromone as they find the food and even more ants will come. This means that there become established roads to food that the ants will go to. For homes it is very different from ants to ants. But some ants for example go around potential homes and leave pheromone trails along the walls. Then all potential homes in the area ants will do the same and then the ants flock to the biggest home.\n\nI hope this makes sense to you! All the ants do is based on pheromones, not intelligence : )", "A single ant leaves a small pheromone trail.  Another ant following that trail strengthens the smell of the pheromones. A good food source ends up having a very strong pheromone trail to it.  When all the food is picked, that trail is used less and the pheromones fade.\nRadioLab covered some of this, and how we are similar, on their podcast at _URL_0_", "Complex patterns can arise out of a number of relatively simple rules. This is known as [emergence](_URL_1_).\n\nWater molecules have no brain at all, yet they build [fairly complex-looking snowflakes](_URL_0_) through interactions.\n\nIn a same way ants can build colonies by following relatively simple rules and interacting with each other.", "Here is an amazing video about ants: ANTS - Nature's Secret Power (Full): _URL_0_", "You seem to think that ant colony or mound or whatever is complex. Think of something else. Like immune reaction to viral or bacterial infection in living organism. Or digestion. Or breathing. What decisions brain has to make and what \"forces\" (cells, circulation, muscles, acids, etc) to lead and direct to accomplish those tasks.  Isn't this million times more complex than simple motor function of stacking pieces of dirt in a pile or digging tunnels?\n\nWhile such things are not what we call conscious and happen automatically, they are still controlled mostly by brain. And every ant can do this, however tiny their brains are."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/story/91500-emergence/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SnowflakesWilsonBentley.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence"], ["http://youtu.be/Z-gIx7LXcQM"], []]}
{"q_id": "3wn71y", "title": "Rules Roundtable #1- Explaining the Rules about Sources", "selftext": "Hello everyone, and welcome to the first of an ongoing series of Rules Roundtables. Our tentative schedule is to have new posts ever 2 weeks, written by volunteers from the mod team. This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.\n\nTo start off our program, today's topic will be a discussion of our rules for comment sources. First off, let's consult [the rule](_URL_0_):\n\n > Sources are **highly encouraged** in all answers given in r/AskHistorians. A good answer will be supported by relevant and reliable sources. Primary sources are good. Secondary sources are also acceptable.\n\nI want to draw attention to the fact that we encourage sources for all answers, but strictly speaking sources are not required. Sometimes users, flairs or [even mods](_URL_1_) will dash off brief comments without bothering about sources.  However, a crucial caveat is that sources become required upon request, so people should always be prepared to provide sources, as stated here:\n\n > Even though sources are not mandatory, if someone asks you to provide sources in good faith, please provide them willingly and happily. If you are not prepared to substantiate your claims when asked, please think twice before answering in the first place. Please keep in mind that all posters who fail to substantiate their posts when asked in good faith run the risk of having their posts removed.\n\nMost people will not be able to respond to a source request instantly. They may be away from reddit, they may be sleeping. They might need to go to their bookshelf or the library and pull the book to find the exact page. In instances where sources have been requested but have not been provided yet, mods will exercise our discretion with the post. If the post is comprehensive, and the presiding mod knows it to be substantially correct in many points, the post might be left up. Similarly, if a source request is not challenging the main assertions of an answer, but asking for more information/reading recommendations about a minor point of the answer, such an answer will likely be left up.\n\nConversely, if an answer is making very bold and sweeping assertions and sources are requested, that answer may be removed by a mod. At a mod's discretion, they may choose to make a modcomment noting that said post has been removed, and offering to restore the post when sources have been provided. It is not possible to provide everyone with such notification, given the number of comments that the modteam reviews every day.\n\n**What about Anecdotes?**\n\n > It is also important to point out that you are not a source. \n\nThis part of the rule is pretty simple, and plainly stated. In addition to the points raised in that linked META post, which is well worth a read, I also want to mention that \u201csources\u201d like:\n\n > Source: I took a course with Professor Thompkins, and this was in lecture number 5\n\nor\n\n > 20 years of reading about Caesar\n\nis not acceptable. \n\nIn pretty much any academic or quasi-academic discussion of history, sources are used to establish a commonly agreed upon basis for argumentation. Sources allow you to speak from knowledge, so that an argument can have weight to it. At the same time, a person who is familiar with your sources and their arguments can also speak from knowledge. Take for example [this exchange](_URL_2_). Notice that since /u/shlin28 points out his source as Conant, but also that Conant in turn refers to [Richard Bulliets famous study about medieval conversions](_URL_3_). Because that was disclosed, /u/Yodatsracist can contribute a perspective about what questions Bulliet leaves unanswered.\n\nWhen you reference course notes for a class you took, it is very unlikely that a person reading your comments can look up those notes, and speak about those notes themselves. \n\nIn the same spirit, anecdotes are not acceptable as the basis for answers in this sub. The reasons for this are substantially the same. Because of the anonymous nature of the internet and Reddit specifically, it is possible for a person claim to have lived through a historical event, but it can be quite difficult to verify such claims. Additionally, anecdotes need to be treated with caution because of the nature of memory. [This comment explains it better than I could ever try to](_URL_5_)\n\n**What about Wikipedia?**\n > However, tertiary sources such as Wikipedia are not as good. They are often useful for checking dates and facts, but not as good for interpretation and analysis. Furthermore, Wikipedia articles are open to random vandalism and can contain factual errors; therefore, please double-check anything you cite from Wikipedia. As outlined here, Wikipedia, or any other single tertiary resource, used by itself not a suitable basis for a comment in this subreddit. \n\n Lectures and course notes are considered to be tertiary sources in the same vein as an encyclopedia or Wikipedia article, which are not considered acceptable sources in this subreddit. Incidentally, the mods do notice when an answer provides the exact same list of sources and page citations that the relevant wikipedia page contains, and treat such answers with suspicion. \n\nIn other cases, users will simply copy-paste text from a wikipedia article (or other source) and not mention where the words come from. **That is plagiarism, and will result in an immediate ban from this sub.** So don't do that.\n\nThere can be much more said about Wikipedia, but that will have to wait for a separate one of these posts specifically dedicated to discussing wikipedia as a source.\n\n**Why don't you just require sources for all comments? That seems simpler/better?**\n\nThis is an idea that the modteam has discussed more than once, and there are a few different reasons why we feel the current policy is better than simply requiring sources for all comments. Firstly, requiring sources does risk scaring off users who know something and are possible flair material. It shouldn't be a surprise that saying \u201cyou must provide a source for everything you say\u201d would become a barrier to entry, and turn people off from saying something at all. \n\nSecondly, not all sources are created equal. Users have and will write up whatever they want to write, and then go and use google or mine through wikipedia footnotes to add \u201csources\u201d to make their comment look respectable. Requiring sources on all comments won't slow that type of user down.\n\n**It says in the rules that only top-level replies really need sources, but follow-up answers will be more loosely moderated**\n\nNope. The rules used to say that there was a distinction between top-level responses and follow-ups. That rule was changed two and a half years ago^1, because we felt that the two-tier system allowed too much room for speculation and bad answers in the longer comment chains. All comments are now held to the same standard or moderation for quality and sourcing.\n\n**Why does the rule bother talking about 'good faith' when it says \u201c if someone asks you to provide sources in good faith\u201d**\n\nThat specific wording was chosen to tie-in to the [rule about civility](_URL_4_). There are kind ways of asking about sources, and there are unkind ways of asking for sources, and the kind way is always preferred. \n\nFrom a style point of view, a source request that looks like \n\n > Your conclusion about the influence of Jose Marti's writing in the 20th century emigre community runs counter to what I know of the topic. Can you point me to where you drew your conclusion from?\n\nIs a much more polite way to ask for a source than \n\n > got a source?\n\nAlso, the mods are well aware that people can have strong feelings about interpretations of history. We ask that source requests be made in \u201cgood faith\u201d because we really do not want a source request to become a bludgeon to win a history argument.\n\n**If I see an unsourced comment, should I report it or should I ask for sources?**\n\nIf you can politely ask for sources, please do. You may also report the comment, if you think that it is simply a bad answer.\n\nOf course, if you happen to be *Mrs Tenured Professor in Neo-Assyrian Archaeology*, and you know exactly what is wrong with that post about Nebuchadnezzar, we prefer for knowledgeable people to rebut bad answers with good ones, rather than simply deleting the post. We will sometimes leave up bad answers that get a very good response, so that it is clear exactly what points the response is referring to.\n\n----\nIf anyone has any further questions about [the sources rule](_URL_0_), please ask and one of the mods would be happy to answer your question.\n\n----\n1) This rule was changed in July of 2013. For some context, 17 out of the 30 current moderators of AskHistorians were not yet mods back then. In July of 2013, I was a freshly-minted flair in the 5th panel of historians. Two and a half years is *ages ago* in subreddit terms.\n\nEdit- changed footnote format so that it displays in mobile, hopefully.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wn71y/rules_roundtable_1_explaining_the_rules_about/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1ymqr9", "cxxs2do", "cxyjqae"], "score": [3, 24, 10], "text": ["From reading the bit about how lecture notes are (understandably) not considered valid sources, I wondered how videos from a university's open courses fit in. Would they be considered valid sources? At the very least, I could see the value in saying something along the lines of: \"for a good introduction to the topic, I recommend [video link] by Dr. Jane Doe of XYZ University, speaking in Lecture # for Course Title.\"", "I'd add that simply saying you're a grad student or author in a particular field is not acceptable sourcing, either. We have no way to verify that information \u2014 we don't know you are who you say you are, and there's no way to know what sources you're drawing on or if there might be any problems with those sources.", "I just stumbled in here by recommendation from [this post](_URL_0_), and I have to say that just reading your rules for sources has restored a very real little bit of my faith in the sanity and good faith of humanity.  I mean it, your honesty, transparency and sheer wisdom here are exemplary.  I  seldom see such a coherent statement of intent, purpose and honest method as you present here, you have created a rare degree of philosophical integrity.  Thank you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uy4r7/why_was_medieval_europe_and_asia_so_advanced/cxiw9kc?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ur9fk/why_did_christians_disappear_from_the_magreb/cxhqpb5", "http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb00867", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_civility", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sxxhd/meta_why_is_a_personal_account_given_by_a/ce2cyv0"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/3wqud6/good_mainly_text_subreddits/cxyirt2"]]}
{"q_id": "8w0b3z", "title": "why does cold air come out when we go \"hoooo\" with our mouth but warm air comes out if we go \"haaaa\" with our mouth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8w0b3z/eli5_why_does_cold_air_come_out_when_we_go_hoooo/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1rqmd6", "e1rs3m8", "e1rto3o", "e1rtye9", "e1rv3tk", "e1rx9wb", "e1s2reo", "e1s5dsv"], "score": [23, 355, 3, 30, 6, 18, 10, 2], "text": ["It depends on the way your lips are. When your lips are pursed and going \u201coooh\u201d, the air that comes out has a narrower exit point which increases the air\u2019s speed thus decreasing temperature. When opened, there\u2019s a larger exit point thus slower speed and maintaining heat. Basically, the faster the speed, the faster the cooling. ", "Hooo mouth shape makes the air go faster which pulls other air along with it. So the warm air from your mouth is closer to normal temperature air because it's mixed more. The faster moving air feels cooler because it can absorb a little heat from whatever you're blowing on and move away to let other air do the same.\n\nHaaaa mouth shape doesn't pull other air along with it as much so ends up being closer to the temperature inside your body (warmer) which is normally warmer (and more humid) than what you're blowing on so it feels warmer. ", "I would have thought it would be the breath going from a high pressure to a low pressure making it cool. ", "Actually, the air coming out of your mouth is (almost exacty) the same temperature. To prove this to yourself, \"hooo\"-blow on the back of your hand from a very short distance away. The air is warm, just like when you \"ha\"-blow. But move your hand farther away, and the \"hooo\"-blown air feels cool. The reason is that \"hooo\"-blown air is moving so fast, it can pull a lot of surrounding, cooler air with it. Ha blown air, doesn't move very fast, so it doesn't pull surrounding cooler air along and keeps feeling warm and humid.", "The reason is that when air is forced through a small opening in your lips, its pressure drops, which forces its temperature to drop also. This is the principle used to power air conditioners and refrigerators. ", "Hoooo air is compressed therefore expands upon exit. Expanding air cools. Haaaa air is less compressed and doesn't expand that much upon exit. ", "You saw that meme, right?", "If you blow through a tight mouth, there is a smaller volume of air but a higher velocity. This pulls in and mixes with a lot ambient air  (Venturi or Bornoulli effect)- in fact the air stream is only typically 40%  body warmth and 60%  ambient so it will be marked colder. As a experiment you pucker  and blow threw a tube held to your mouth, this excludes the ambient air and you will get reduced airflow but at a higher tempeture again. \n\nBut with a wide mouth there is hardly any air entertainment. It's tempeture will be almost the same as the air in your lungs wich is higher than the ambient air. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33j1jt", "title": "Why is drowning such a problem? Isn't the ocean salty enough that the average person can just lie back and float?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/33j1jt/why_is_drowning_such_a_problem_isnt_the_ocean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqleidl", "cqlel14"], "score": [26, 7], "text": ["You can do exactly that, if the winds and waves allow the water to be calm enough to.  If it is rough, you will have to constantly actively be swimming/sculling/treading water in order to breathe regularly.  \n\nThis all assumes you went into the water without any injuries, of course. \n\nIf you are able to successfully float, and the waves don't just exhaust you until you surrender, then hypothermia will be the next challenge you face.  Your body will lose heat to the water surrounding you much faster than in air, and any clothing you are wearing will become saturated and likely will weigh you down.  \n\nObviously,  the colder the water, the faster hypothermia will kill you, but even in relatively warm water, your body cannot sustain your body temperature.  \n\nAs you cool, you will lose muscle function, and eventually either drown from not being able to maintain your body, or lose consciousness and drown that way   \n\nAssuming you went into water warm enough, or you have some sort of exposure suit to ward off the cold, you're now in it for the long haul. \n\nYou're drifting with wind and tide.  Do you swim for shore?  Do you know which way shore is?  \n\nWhen you are in the water, the visible horizon is only about a mile away.  If you went in 5 miles offshore, you will never glimpse a sight of land from the waters surface.  \n\nThe next killer to come along will be dehydration.  It'll be tempting, as your thirst mounts to drink the seawater, but this will kill you quicker than going thirsty.  \n\nWhy?  The salt in the seawater that you drank.  NOAA explains why best here:\nHuman kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier.\n\nWhat this does, is force your cells to excrete water, to dilute the massive rush of salt that has entered your body.  \n\nI hope that answered the question?\n", "The salinity of the ocean varies but for practical purposes 64 pcf is used for sea water. Fresh water is 62.4 pcf so you only gain an extra 2.5% buoyancy (64/62.4) in saltwater than you do in freshwater which is not very much.  The problem with drowning comes from struggling to stay above water and get air into lungs, and seawater just isn't normally dense enough to keep you that high out of the water without effort, especially when you are frightened and aren't breathing normally because you aren't a strong swimmer. You could also just be held underwater by a current or waves which buoyancy won't help you much in those hydrodynamic scenarios.\nTl;dr: not enough salt and minerals to make a big impact, there are still waves and currents too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3dmqfz", "title": "why is the u.s. so notorious for using africans as slaves, when africans had been using and selling africans as slaves long before europeans brought them to the americas?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dmqfz/eli5_why_is_the_us_so_notorious_for_using/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct6m2kt", "ct6m6wo", "ct6md4p", "ct6mlo0", "ct6mueg", "ct6ovq0", "ct6t9vd", "ct6u0is", "ct6u1pb", "ct6uu89", "ct6vo63", "ct6w5ns", "ct6xka7", "ct6y0ll", "ct6ziz2", "ct6zlwp", "ct6zn5d", "ct6znnp", "ct70uqg", "ct70xim", "ct718sl", "ct71dww", "ct71i17", "ct71okc"], "score": [5, 46, 799, 104, 9, 37, 15, 5, 6, 11, 86, 5, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["From what I learned in Black History class in the 90's, the African concept of slavery was radically different from the US concept. As in slaves were treated as human beings and could even eventually earn their freedom and marry into the family. \nI guess it wasn't as barbaric? ", "Doesnt matter who started it. What matters is that the US continued using slavery long after its contemporaries banned it. Also chattel slavery was much worse than any other type of slavery. Stuck in the situation for life while the master could kill a slave for any reason. Just property", "There is more than one type of slavery.\n\nIn ancient Athens, conquered people became slaves, but their children were born free. They retired as free people, and it was really more like having your country invaded then being given a job you have to do.\n\nOthers like the Romans would keep foreigners as slaves, and you could be born a slave. These slaves were invisible though to society - they belonged to a household and had to do the jobs they were given, but they had time off, sometimes got paid, they fell in love and got married and had families. You couldn't tell if someone walking up the street was a slave or not. These slaves are the ancestors of the European peasant, the common folks. It was only in about the 17th century or so that we got the idea that people should be allowed to say 'no' if their Lord told them to do something.\n\nThe American South did not view Africans as human beings, but as animals. They broke up families, they engaged in forced breeding programs where men were beaten until they raped the woman they were told to breed with, they recklessly endangered slaves lives, they did not allow any sort of dignity. 'Chattel' slavery is the most powerfully dehumanizing form of slavery, and it only ever existed in the Caribbean and American South.", "What do you mean by notorious? If you mean, \"why does it get talked about so much?\" it's because of the importance of the U.S. in the world (and especially to itself) and the importance of slavery to the history of the United States. \n\nThe United States was one of the last major countries to abandon chattel slavery, and---as far as I know---the only major country where so much of its structure and history was shaped by slavery and dealing with the aftermath of slavery. It is also a country that, more so than almost any other, thinks of itself as a \"free\" country open to all, something that is directly opposed to the idea of slavery. \n\nThese things just aren't as true of other places that had slavery, even where conditions might have been worse, or occurred earlier. ", "I don't think people really care that America HAD slaves because everyone had slaves but care that the US is still dealing with the social consequences of slavery.\n\nIn WW2 many soldiers stationed in the Europe where surprised that there was less segregation and that mixed raced dating was more acceptable. The civil rights movement happened in living memory and many people believe that blacks still aren't given fair treatment. The debates about the confederate battle flag shows that at least one group in society isn't moving on from the past.", "The main difference in my opinion is that slavery in the US was based solely on RACE. You cannot change your race, and you are born with that race. In addition, American slaves were objects/chattel, not people. And you were a slave for life, your children were slaves, etc. \n\nSlavery in Africa was usually the result of war or conflict. And they were treated like people still- albeit with restricted freedom. And depending on the status of the conflict, etc., your status could change. They were considered people, not objects. \n\nNot to mention that the south created an entire economy based on the enslavement of african americans. ", "I'm going to diverge a bit from the other answers. From what I recently learned studying the American Revolution, like the French one, it was centered around ideas of liberty and self-determination. The American Revolution did not deliver on those promises for all, just like the French Revolution did not free slaves also. However, by the time the AR happened there was pressures within revolutionaries and from French intellectuals (including Lafayette) about the disconnect between AR ideas and the continuation of slavery. IIRC by this time, France had abolished slavery. Haiti had also had a revolution and freed itself from slavery. What this meant was that while the FR and its ideas continued to have resonance around the world, the AR was seen as hypocritical and one that did not deliver on its promises. Even Jefferson, who was Lafeyette's buddy, contemplated freeing slaves but did not ultimately deliver. \n\nSlavery has been on the American conscience for a long time. Combined with the U.S.'s rise as a superpower and self-proclaimed moral authority, slavery and civil rights continued to be an issue that actually undercut the way Americans imagined their country, revolution, and projected the image of their country. Some historians like Barrington Moore, thus, in part do not even consider the AR as a revolution, opting instead to count the Civil War as one, because they believe there was not enough revolutionary change during the AR. \n\nI hope this answers at least part of your question.", "Because they were the only civilised country still doing it after others stopped?", "The slaves in African communities at the time were more like servants, they were a part of the community they could have children, they sometimes had relationships with their \"owners\" they were given time off to be with their families. Yes they worked hard but they were still treated relatively well. \n\nThe slaves in America came on ships, shackled to the floors, with four feet of space between decks of other slaves. Have you seen those trucks on the highway packed to the brim with cattle or pigs. That was the amount of space given to these men and women. They did not have a place to relieve themselves so more often that not they were lying in their own filth for the duration of the journey. More than half of the slaves died on the month long journeys to the new world and more than a few lost their minds by the time they arrived. \n\nThe conditions they faced when they were here was reprehensible as well. They were worked 14-16 hours a day, punished severely for minor \"misdemeanors\", hurt or killed for sport or boredom. When and if they did have families they were often separated and sold to other plantation owners, if you were born into slavery, you were the property of your mother's owner. \n\nThere was a discernible difference between the kind of profit driven slavery of the americas that sets it apart from most other places at that time. \n\nMost of this is well documented in \"A people's history of the United States\" - Zinn, a long read but it's a no holds barred retelling of the history of the U.S. ", "Selling to who? Other Africans or Westerners? Could you clarify?\n\nIf you mean selling to Europeans and Americans - you need to remember that you are applying a modern and Western definition of blackness that does not apply to Africa at this time.\n\nAfrican nations do not really consider themselves \"Black\" in the American sense. They consider themselves African and whatever nation they come from. This also applied to pre-Atlantic Slave Trade Africa - they were not \"black\", but instead identified based on whatever kingdom or city-state they lived in.\n\nTaking this into consideration, Africans were not \"selling their own\" because they did not consider these people their own. They were often selling prisoners of war from rival states. They did not relate with these people. It would be like Italians selling French people into slavery - just because they are both European doesn't mean they consider each other their own.\n\nThere were also economic and political pressures for African kingdoms to do this. And after the Atlantic Slave Trade boomed - Westerners began to kidnap many Africans instead of buying them directly. The demand for slaves was just so high that Westerners resorted to this and could get away with it.\n\nYou also need to recognize that these African states did not realize what the Atlantic Slave Trade would entail. They didn't know that people would be chained and packed into slave ships where they would be laying in their own vomit and filth. They did not realize that many of these people would die before even reaching America and that the rest of them would be brutally beaten and dehumanized. American slavery is talked about even today because it was a vile and gruesome form of slavery that was unprecedented at the time.\n\nSo while, yes, Africans did sell other Africans into Western slavery initially, that does not mean that you can hold them accountable for the atrocities that American slaves lived through.", "OP clearly had an agenda he's trying to push, he's arguing with everyone in the comments. You should probably post this in r/changemyview.", "True there was slavery all over the world including Africa but we all know that U.S slavery was not the same slavery (servitude) happening in other parts of the world. Part of the reason that the U.S is getting crap for slavery is the fact that it hasnt been that long since it was banned (at least overtly)... the after affects still continue to this day. Most of the time when slavery of other cultures is brought up, the period of time when it happened was long ago and the after affects and ill feelings about it have had more time to subside... \n\nWhy is it that when African slavery is brought up we get this rebuttal of: \"They sold themselves into slavery\"? As if thats supposed to make it ok or excuse the terrible treatment of PEOPLE (not animals)... \n \"oh they did it to themselves so we may as well do it them as well. And their children, and their childrens children.\" When did excusing that become a thing? \n\nIf you like to cut yourself with razors, is it ok for someone else to come along and tie you up with razor wire and cut you with a machete simply because \"you did it to yourself first\"... (im not intending for that to be a trigger or mock anyone.)", "Because we're Americans. So we're interested in American history. Not African history.\n\nOther countries had slaves too. But America is far more self-critical than most countries.", "Hey OP, I see some folks have engaged you in good faith, but it quite obvious that your efforts here aren't.\n\n\n\n", "Large scale farming and plantation was possible because of slave labor; without its valuable agricultural exports, America wouldn't have achieved economic sustainability. America's ability to be independent was thanks to slave labor, making slaves a vital part of the country's history.\n\nThe African slaves also created a unique community which adds to the broader American identity as a mixing pot, like any other immigrant population - though they were the only one brought here unwillingly, incidentally. \n\nLastly, owing to that agricultural foundation, the American practice of slavery continued past that of other superpowers and its cessation lead to global consequences.\n\nSlavery was a cruel practice with no room in civilized society, and it's important to study and preserve its roots in order to appreciate its continued effect - including the first-world's current dependence upon third-world slave labor.", "Black slaves were brought to the US, pretty much because, if they ran away, as white indentured servants had been doing, you could pretty easily tell they were slaves, and be returned.\n\nAfricans had slaves, but they weren\u2019t slaves just because they were black, they were slaves because they were captured. \n\nIt\u2019s kind of f\u2019ed up to make someone a slave just because they were different than you. \n", "The UK and the US abolished slavery at about the same time.\n\nIn the UK, slavery was ended through typical legal means, racism didn't flow as strongly, and blacks quickly assimilated into a culture that was willing to right it's wrongs.  If you listen to a black UK native speak, they sound just like the whites.\n\nIn the US, slavery was ended as a result of the civil war.  This did not lead to a natural death of the ideologies that supported racism, and even after slavery was abolished it was another 100 years before blacks had civil rights.  The centuries of bigotry resulted in blacks developing along a distinct path culturally in the US, which still shows today.\n\nThis is why slavery is seen as such a big deal in the US.  Whites continued to look for ways to perpetuate the injustices of slavery even after we ended it.", "Because in the U.S. slavery was organized into the visual and spatial differences classified through race. Slaves could not work for their freedom, as they did throughout other historical periods. Instead, belonging to a racial group slaves in the U.S. were forever classified as property. It added a different element from a socio-economic caste system or other form of organization found in other cultures, and the images and depictions which were largely a result of modernity, the racial element, and the inscription into society is what made the U.S. so \"notorious\".", "Because you likely live in the US dumbo. And not to mention we go around talking about land of the free and shit and people love to knock someone who tries to be a moral authority/world police down a peg or two. Kind of like when Palin was all abstinence only education and has gotten knocked up twice or those homophobic lawmakers who keep getting blowjobs in airport bathrooms. We are held to a high standard because we set ourselves up to a high standard. ", "The book, *The Half Has Never Been Told* will give you a good understanding of American slavery and how it was different. Others here have covered the main points, which are Americans 1) based slavery on race alone; 2) created a religious theology which sanctioned slavery; and 3) treated slaves as property and not as human which led owners to destroy families and community.\n\nWhen one truly understands the evil of American slavery, one can only stand in awe of African Americans who overcame, survived, and thrived.", "Brazil also imported close to twice the number of slaves as the US. Working conditions in Brazil were so severe that they were not as successful at having native born populations. ", " > Edit: so far the majority of this thread only proves that the issue in question is not only very real, but will be defended rather than questioned or discussed logically.\n\nLol. So it's true then. You just wanted to stir up beef, you don't actually care for the question.", "Because most people don't care about what happens in Africa.  They care about what hits closer to home.\n\n > so far the majority of this thread only proves that the issue in question is not only very real, but will be defended rather than questioned or discussed logically.\n\nYou're just a fucking idiot.", "This thread is full of /r/badhistory. Don't ask a history question on ELI5. Go to /r/AskHistorians, read the FAQ, then ask your question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2pu8xs", "title": "when thieves steal famous artwork as rare as it is, who do they sell it to, and how?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pu8xs/eli5_when_thieves_steal_famous_artwork_as_rare_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn02ki7", "cn06xfp", "cn0773c", "cn09x5q"], "score": [27, 10, 8, 3], "text": ["Generally a specific collector will commission the theft.", "Nice try, art thief!\n\nJust kidding, they either sell it to a private collector or through some kind of  black market", "High value art is also used by criminal organizations to move dirty money around. It's a lot easier to get one $10 million painting through customs than a giant crate of money. ", "They usually use a fence (middle man). The fence is part of the supply chain of art crimes. The fence knows who to approach to sell to. Also sometimes buyers or collectors will hire people to steal a artwork that is wanted. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5yev0e", "title": "how does a hacker or internal employee download such large amounts of classified documents from cia or nsa which are highly secured or are world's top intelligence agencies.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yev0e/eli5_how_does_a_hacker_or_internal_employee/", "answers": {"a_id": ["depg64q", "depg932", "depgk9p", "depiq7e", "depj3lg", "depjbqb", "depjh5j", "depjp7j", "depjwka", "depkcc1", "depkd5j", "depkgko", "depkha4", "depkqj1", "depky13", "depl1vq", "depl4t5", "deplf3n"], "score": [102, 211, 7, 53, 119, 8, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 16, 5, 15, 3, 2, 10, 2], "text": ["Short answers: These organizations hire incredibly smart people. These people who do this have the knowledge and access to the facilities needed to copy these large sets of files. And they know how to fly under the radar while doing it.", "\"\u201cOur whole system is based on personal trust,\u201d an exasperated Clapper said, adding that there were no \u201cmousetraps\u201d in place to guarantee there wouldn\u2019t be another Edward Snowden.\n\nThe NSA has enacted tighter restrictions on when and how agents can access classified documents since Snowden\u2019s heist, including a \u201ctwo-man rule\u201d requiring two administrators to work jointly when dealing with certain files.\"", "A hacker doesn't.  An internal employee works with the data every day.  I don't know about American security clearances (Er nor do I know about any others, my friend told me) but most employees working in these situations all require the highest level.  Security in these instances relies on heavily vetting employees before hire.  They work hard to narrow it down to people who won't drop leaks, even if they aren't the best and brightest candidate, if you don't get that clearance, too bad.  Edit, like another person has posted here, there's a huge amount of personal trust involved, plus a bit of fear.  Edit 2, hehe I can't believe I'm getting downvoted for this.", "The security team needs to get it right 100% of the time. An attacker only needs to succeed once.", "I work at a research site. A few years back an employee pulled all the drives out of the machines in his area and was in the wind for a year. Only got caught because he tried to sell them to an undercover FBI agent.\n\nThe reality is that stealing data is actually fairly easy. It's the getting away with it that's hard.", "Your security is only as strong as your most idiotic employee.. it only takes one dumbass to compromise the whole thing. Something as simple as a cell phone with hotspot on and connecting to that while on their internal network... many reasons people can be stupid on the job.", "Having had several Secret clearances, a top secret goes back even to childhood friends and info to prove you existed.  The problem with clearances are that they cannot determine the future and even a ploygram is not a real time graph.  They can be fooled.  Smart IT people are many times loners and introverted, and humans let down their guard, even the smartest and especially if they do not feel positive about the acts done with data.", "Stuff like this is usually accrued over a very long period of time, there often a lapse in security, and people usually don't escape 100% clean. We're also talking about some of the best minds in the field and as others pointed out, due to the very nature of what they do there's a lot of trust placed on the individual. The highest levels of national security are politicians and strategist, not hacking experts. They could be watching these contractors steal information and would be none the wiser. These contractors were hired because of their expertise so if they find an exploit chances are the CIA doesn't have the fail safes to stop them until the information is released and by then hindsight is 20/20. ", "Excerpts from Stratfor's internal jargon file:\n\n**CIA**: [...] Imagine the Post Office with a foreign policy.\n\n**NSA**: [...] Completely out of control. It is so\ncompartmentalized they refer to other offices as B1 or D8\nand genuinely don\u2019t know what anyone else does.", "The simple answer is that no security system can be 100% secure, ever. This has been proven. It's just a matter of time.", "With Manning what he/she did is fairly classic, sure they had all these secure pcs and terminals but with the ability to transfer files via USB and a unsecured terminal available it was as easy as \"just going to take a piss\" with a USB stick in their pocket. ", "The simplest answer is that the information is not that secure to begin with. Many people have access to top secret data but don't leak it. \n\nAs for the size of the data they just take a small bit at a time over many months if not years. These days you can easily get a multi gigabyte micro SD card in and out of even the most secure places without much trouble. \n\nData security is very hard and the only reason we don't have even more leaks is because people don't want to put themselves at risk. Getting the data is pretty much the easy part. The hard part is finding someone willing to exfiltrate it and then leak it. \n\nI know it is set 30 years ago but the TV show The Americans does a great job of showing how people are manipulated to do such things. ", "Well, for internal employees, it's because they trust people who are given access to sensitive stuff. There are very, very thorough processes you must undergo to get a secret or top secret clearance. But that's not perfect, there's no device for seeing into someone's soul. A trusted person would have a very easy time stealing data because of that very trust. All it takes is for someone to get disillusioned, or blackmailed, or something, and that person can steal whatever they have access to.\n\nThis is very simplified, but who would have a harder time stealing from your office, me or you? I'm external, nobody knows who I am, there are systems in place to keep me out. But you're supposed to be there, you indeed have to be there to do your job. Much easier for you to walk out with stuff.", "The Vault 7 leaks were from a piece of software called Confluence which is basically an internal wiki. Confluence is made by Atlassian and usually run on a local Atlassian server. Not only are the servers very tricky to secure (they are pretty notorious for this) but also Confluence itself isn't particularly secure. You can normally log in from anywhere rather than on local network, and commonly isn't linked to Windows' Active Directory where you would sign in with your company login details. It doesn't require mandatory password changes, and because it isn't linked to AD when someone leaves the business it requires someone to manually go and close the Confluence account separate from all AD accounts. It's not clear if that happened in the Vault 7 or Year Zero leaks but it could be. ", "If you can't access this data easily, you can't do your job easily either. Restrictions are always away from something.\n\nI suspect that the data was simply downloaded from a central storage document by document. Probably anyone with a high authorization level could have done it fairly easily over a year or two.", "And why can't the same thing happen in order to get SOMEONE'S tax returns from the IRS??", "I consult at places with reasonably high security and the way I've seen these kinds of problems crop up is this way:  \n\n* You have a massive list of contradictory and incomprehensible rules no one actually understands.   \n* You have organizational goals you can't accomplish with these rules.   \n\nSomething has to give and in the end it almost always comes down to \"fuck the rules we need to get shit done.\" That happens because not being able to get something done gets you in trouble now for sure and breaking the rules only gets you in trouble if something bad happens because of that and you get caught. ", "There are systems designed to find out when computer files are copied without permission, and to make a list of when the computer files are copied by users who are allowed to so the Government can keep track.\n\nThere is a person who's job it is to set up these systems, and to fix them if they break. They can control who gets permission, and whether or not to add this copying to the list. It's pretty easy for them to make copies of the computer files without anyone knowing, or help other people do the same thing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "48yikx", "title": "why is growling such a common way to show aggression in the animal kingdom?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48yikx/eli5_why_is_growling_such_a_common_way_to_show/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0nncbc", "d0nnef3", "d0nw3rx", "d0nynjm", "d0o1jqi", "d0o2uhp", "d0o2z7c", "d0o5yf1", "d0o6klr", "d0o8glt", "d0o92ra", "d0oa9xb", "d0oeiab", "d0ogqeq", "d0ogumd"], "score": [4, 3113, 17, 25, 86, 16, 41, 2, 5, 2, 15, 15, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["As a dog owner and in no other way qualified to answer this question, I'll proceed in ELI fashion:  \n\nGrowling is typically a lower-pitched noise, and larger things tend to make lower sounding noises. So, by making yourself very loud and appearing to be larger than you actually are; you might give another dog (or animal) the frighten, thereby avoiding an actual conflict. Consider it an evolutionary development of adrenaline and \"fight or flight\", and to some degree communication/behavior, as typically animals capable of 'growling' tend to be pack-oriented (dogs, lions, wolves etc). \n", "Growling in dogs isn't a show of aggression. It is a show of unease - you're invading its space or you represent a threat and (s)he wants you to back off.\n\nIt's actually a sign the dog would prefer for this to not evolve into conflict.\n\nAggressive dogs attack without any growling.", "1. It makes an unsettling/scary noise in order to intimidate \n2. In most cases the animal in question must bare their fangs to do so, and fangs be scary homie.\n3. It's a basic and easy to make sound that can translate emotion very easily", "Is growling that common? I feel like hissing is actually more common, but I'm going by what I see in nature videos when I'm bored, not by any educated assessment. It probably depends on the breed of critter. When I think of \"aggressive behavior\" in animals, I tend to think of nonverbal cues, such as direct eye contact or puffing itself up to look big.", "Remember, although we may like to trot out explanations that are anthropomorphic (intentions, desires, goodness, etc.) the cause with the most leverage is natural selection. Basically only three things are required for natural selection to take place: heredity, variation, and differential survival. \nVariation gave the planet a creature that exhaled and constricted its windpipe. Sometimes it did this when there was a situation of contention (for a resource). It turns out, a vocalization like this can be an honest signal about lung capacity (and perhaps capability in general). Pecking orders save communities from entering costly fights. So the communities that had these vocalizing creatures had something they could use for signaling and respecting a pecking order. This allowed them to outperform (have more offspring) communities that did not have this form of signaling because those communities enter costly fights more often.", "because it often releases [Infrasound](_URL_0_).\n\nInfrasound are really low tones, humans can't even hear them actively, even if they affect us.\n\nThe low frequencies of infrasound makes others uneasy, induces fear, disturbs the usual mood in life because it's not always there and if, it might be something deadly like an earthquake, storms like tornados or an erupting vulcano.", "A professor from one of my audio classes explained that low frequencies to to frighten people and animals. Just because in nature low rumbling sounds usually means bad news. Earthquakes, thunder, stuff like that. Maybe animals evolved to make the same sounds that they fear? I'm not sure if that's any where near the reason, but it sounds possible", "growling is usually accompanied by showing teeth or looking mean in general. The sound itself alone might not be enough", "When an animal wants to show you that it could bite and kill you, it bares its teeth and makes a loud vocalization to draw your attention to its primary weapon.", "My dog growls so loud when he plays with other dogs he sounds vicious, a lot of people get turned off by it and think hes trying to start a fight, it's how he plays, whys this?", "I don't think it is.  I think growling is common in *carnivora,* but outside of that, I can't really think of another clade where it occurs as a sign of aggression.  Primates certainly don't growl when we want to be aggressive, for example.  We make eye-contact and grimace and try to puff out our chests and may even grab and smash nearby objects while vocalizing, but we don't growl *per-se*.  \n\nNeither do birds, or reptiles or amphibians and so forth.  \n\nUngulates certainly don't growl.  They snort, paw the ground and swing their heads menacingly, but they do not growl.  \n\nWhat about rodents?  Do rodents growl? I am pretty sure they don't, but I could be wrong.    \n\nWhy does *carnivora* growl is your real question.\n\nI don't have a good answer to that.  My guess is that it's to do with physical features common to the order. ", "It's not that it shows aggression, it lowers your opponents attack which makes them less likely to harm you.", "Try this:\n\n1. Bare your teeth in a snarl (to show how big and scary they are) .\n\n2. Try to make any noise that ISN'T a growl", "Can you think of a better way to show aggression?", "Growling is a way for an animal to express his bodily size. The bigger the body, the deeper the growling. It's meant to prevent another individual to attack, or it's meant to intimidate, and it's done by referring to one's own body size. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bn5ei9", "title": "Can cosmic radiation trigger neurons in any significant or cognitively noticeable way?", "selftext": "I\u2019m led to understand cosmic radiation can trigger transistors within electronic circuits. Was curious if it could also energise a neural pathway in the brain to any degree", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bn5ei9/can_cosmic_radiation_trigger_neurons_in_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["en2t0y2"], "score": [12], "text": ["Yes, some of the Apollo astronauts, who were passing through the Van Allan radiation belts reported seeing occasional, bright flashes of light, even with their eyes closed. This is assumed to be caused by radiation penetrating either their retinas, their optic nerves, or their visual cortex, we're not quite sure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "gxhpw", "title": "Do the Voyager spacecraft experience time dilation and has it been recorded?", "selftext": "Seems to me that since the Voyager spacecraft are the fastest vehicles ever built by mankind, they would be experiencing the most profound time dilation ever recorded by humans.  So, has the time dilation that they are undoubtedly experiencing been recorded?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gxhpw/do_the_voyager_spacecraft_experience_time/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1r0of3", "c1r0ry1", "c1r0sgz", "c1r1uzu"], "score": [6, 3, 4, 3], "text": ["Voyager I is moving at 17000 m/s, which results in a negligible amount of time dilation. You're looking at a difference of ~.05 seconds per year in length of time experienced.", "I'm not a physicist, but I would imagine the most profound time dilation humans know of would be that of the particles in the Large Hadron Collider, which are moving at .99999999c. That's eight 9's, and it means time moves 7460x more slowly for those particles (assuming the information I gleaned is correct).", "The way you'd detect this is by measuring the Doppler shift of its transmissions, and comparing the relativistic and classical predictions to the actual value. As PGS14 mentioned, it's going too slow to make a difference.", "I think that the Voyager 2's downlink signal was more than accurate enough to measure that effect.  As far as I can tell, the main downlink was at 8.4 GHz and this channel had an oscillator that was accurate to ~.3 Hz.  That's according to this link: _URL_0_\n\nThe difference between the reletavistic and classical doppler shift is given by:\n\ndf = (sqrt(1+beta)/sqrt(1-beta) - 1 - beta)*f\n\nWhere f is the carrier frequency.  Taylor expanding, I get,\n\ndf = beta^2 / 2 * f + O( beta^3 )\n\nHere beta ~ 20 km s^-1 / c = 7 X 10^-5\n\nSo,\n\ndf ~ 18.7 Hz\n\nIn other words, the radio downlinks from voyager were infinitesimally but detectably longer than what one would expect without relativity."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://pds-rings.seti.org/voyager/rss/vg1sinst.html"]]}
{"q_id": "27a31a", "title": "do black holes \"move\" through space?", "selftext": "I've read that our universe is expanding as a result of the big bang. I've also read that it's accepted that most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at its center. Does that mean that black holes are also \"moving\" through space? If so how? How does something that has such a massive gravitational pull that not even light can escape move? I would think that something like that would act like an anchor in space. Please explain this to me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27a31a/eli5do_black_holes_move_through_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chyt730", "chytnp9", "chywwzu", "chywzew", "chyy2mx", "chyz4rb", "chz1nd8"], "score": [13, 338, 54, 2, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["Note: Movement through space is entirely relativistic. One can only determine the movement of objects in relation with another object. For example , on Earth , if we were to observe the universe , we would come to a conclusion that we are stationary - that we are not moving in space, and that everything else is. The same goes for black holes. If one were to observe the universe at the location of a black hole , one would conclude that it too, like the previous observation , is stationary, and that other objects are rotating around it. \n\nTherefore, as to wether or not black holes are moving through space depends on the perspective in which one is observing through.", "What many people dont understand is that black holes are not more \"powerful\" when it comes to their gravitational effect on other objects than any other object in space. If you would take 1kg of matter and compress it as much as matter is compressed in a black hole, you would get an event horizon and all that but standing next to this 1kg black hole would not affect you in any other way than what the same mass already did to you before it was compressed.\n\ntl;dr black holes are just dense matter, they move around in space like everything else.", "Black holes have a lot of mystique and awe around them, but they really aren't that complicated. If you live somewhere with snow, you have probably played around with the basic concepts.\n\n\n\nImagine we start with a cloud. It is really big.\n\nThen the cloud gets compacted. Parts of the cloud condense. It turns into snowflakes. Same amount of stuff, smaller space. The snow falls to the ground. What was once a very large part of cloud has the same mass, but is now a smaller pile of snow.\n\nThen you compact it some more. You start with a small pile of snow, compress it, and you have a snowball.  Same amount of stuff, smaller space. It might be the size of a baseball.\n\nCompact it some more, you have a small iceball. It might be the size of a golf ball. Same amount of stuff, smaller space.\n\nThat is exactly what happens with a black hole.\n\nThe same is true for planets and for stars, black holes, and even the super massive black holes in a galactic core.\n\nLet's see how.\n\nStart with a big gas nebula.  It can be hundreds of millions of miles across. But it is very sparse, like a cloud.\n\nCollapse part of the nebula and you get a star, some planets, asteroids, comets, and other material. It is much like collapsing your cloud to snowflakes. Perhaps a big star, perhaps a yellow giant or a blue hypergiant. Let's say it is a 10 million mile diameter yellow giant. The Sun is about one million miles across for comparison.\n\nPush and compact a giant star and eventually it will collapse into a neutron star. Just like collapsing your pile of snow into a snowball.  It is very small and whitish, but has the same amount of stuff as the star before it.  It has the same amount of gravity, just squished a bit more.  The star collapses from roughly ten million miles down to roughly five miles. It shrinks to about a millionth of the size, but it still has the same amount of mass. The planets and other objects will still orbit at the same distance, assuming they survived the giant explosion that took place when it collapsed. When you read online about a supernova, it can be caused by one of the giant stars collapsing this way.\n\nThe big difference with a neutron star is that since it is compressed so much, it shrunk from ten million miles to just five miles, things can get MUCH closer to the central mass. If a comet or asteroid or planet gets too close, it won't be able to escape and will eventually crash into the star. Other than that, it still has the same amount of mass, the same amount of gravity, the same amount of matter that the giant star had.  It is just squished together tighter.\n\n\nCollapse it again and it turns into a black hole. It still has the same gravity, but because it has collapsed the things near the center are able to get closer to the central mass.  What started as a ten million mile star, or a hundred million mile nebula, or a five mile neutron star, has been squished down to the size of a large marble, probably just a few inches across. It still has the same amount of stuff in it, and again any nearby planets or other objects orbiting it that survive the explosion will continue to orbit exactly the same.\n\nIt gets so small, so tight, that now stuff that could have only come within a few miles of it can now come within inches of it.  Just like before, things that get too close cannot escape, and will eventually crash into the star. The difference is that at some distance near the star, perhaps only a mile or two away from the tiny marble, not even light can escape directly. But these very tiny objects still have the same mass, 10^32 or 10^33 kg of mass, just squished down really tight.\n\nBlack holes are just really squished stars. A cloud that was once millions of miles across has been squished down to the size of a marble. They still move around, they still do what stars do, they are still just a really tightly compacted iceball. The only difference between a black hole and a star is they are just so squished that light has a hard time escaping.  \n\n\nAnyway, the centers of galaxies are super massive black holes.  They are like thousands of stars that have been squished down, just like you can squash a whole yard worth of snow into one snowman. The stars are squished and squished and squished, maybe down to the size of a basketball or the size of a small building. They might have a mass of 10^36 kg, give or take an order of magnitude. They have so much mass that millions of stars (including black holes) orbit around them. These galactic cores also move around.\n\nWe have a local cluster of galaxies that are all moving around.  The galactic cores, those collections of super massive black holes, are moving in their own dance around the universe.  We have the Canis Major Galaxy, and the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, that are already crashing into the Milky Way Galaxy. We are on a collision course with another, the Andromeda Galaxy. It was just on the news that scientists updated when the Milky Way is expected to crash into Andromeda. We still have around 3 billion years, so we'll be long dead, but our Sun will likely entering old age when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda and will probably become a big elliptical galaxy. \n\nOur local cluster of galaxies is part of an even larger dance with other clusters of galaxies, all moving around crashing into each other.\n", "Think of it this way. Everything in space is \"falling\". You, me, the stars, planets, comets, dust particles, etc are all in a big free fall in a vacuum. Through observation, everything seems stationary because of the incomprehensible amount of empty space in the universe. Since mass warps the fabric of space, large objects influence smaller object's trajectory (this includes matter and light or energy) influencing them and creating orbits. But still even with gravity, everything is \"falling\". Black holes, even with their copious amount of mass twisting and distorting the space-time fabric, are not an exception to this principle. They still follow Newton's laws of motion. So yes, there is no \"anchor\" so to speak and they are moving along with all the other matter and energy around them.", "Absolutely. There's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy right now. In fact, there's one at the center of every galaxy, and it's theorized that galaxies formed because of stars and debris being attracted to these black holes - basically, everything in the galaxy orbits the back hole the same way everything in our solar system orbits the sun.\n\nAs all galaxies move through space, so do their centers. In fact, it could very well be that the black holes are the primary objects being moved; the rest of the objects in the galaxy follow. Think of it like this: when you make a model of the solar system, all the planets are attached to the sun. Now make a model of the solar system where the sun model is a weather balloon and let it go. The weather balloon is moving, and because of that, so are the objects attached to it.\n\nAlso, as others have noted, a black hole should not be thought of like a literal hole. The \"hole\" portion of the name likely comes from it's dark appearance. It's really a sphere of matter, similar to a star or planet. You don't get to see the matter though, you can only see the event horizon, which is the gravitational field around this sphere of matter. It's black because the matter is so densely compact that the gravity is too strong for light to escape.\n\nOf course, I'm not an astronomer or cosmologist, so I'm only stating my somewhat limited knowledge here. If any of the information is incorrect, feel free to correct me!", "A few misconceptions here.\n\nFirst, the expansion of the universe is not motion.  It's space itself that expands, not objects that move through space.  You can think of it as two ants on an inflating balloon: even if the ants don't move, the distance between them will increase.  Similarly  it's possible for two black holes to drift apart due to space expansion, while staying \"motionless\".  But that leads to our second point:\n\nThere is no such thing as a motionless reference in the universe.  There is no favored reference frame to which you can compare objects and determine if they are moving or not.  There is nothing you can anchor to.  It's all relative.  A black hole that is motionless relatively to a specific reference frame will be moving compared to an infinity of other equally valid reference frames.\n\nThird, mass doesn't prevent *motion*, it only makes *acceleration* more difficult.  That is, a black hole that is moving will keep moving at the same pace until you apply a force to it.  Also the mass of black holes may be very big but it is not infinite, meaning a force applied to it will have a small effect, but it will have an effect.\n", "People seem to think of black holes as sort of 'holes' in space, when they are really not.\n\nAll a black hole is, is a massively dense clump of matter.\n\nIt could be bright, or orange, or red for all we know, but it looks like a hole because it sucks up all the light that passes near it.\n\nIt doesn't break any laws of physics, it is just a super dense ball of matter."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1iq01h", "title": "if tears are a natural lubricant, why do our eyes sting so badly after crying?", "selftext": " I know our bodies naturally produce tears to clean and lubricate our eyes, but why does crying cause so much irritation when the day-to-day tears we produce don't?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iq01h/eli5_if_tears_are_a_natural_lubricant_why_do_our/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb6w4mk", "cb6wgeg", "cb6x96e", "cb6yrcp", "cb70jh8"], "score": [18, 6, 3, 8, 3], "text": ["Crying makes your eyes sting?  Never makes mine sting.  Wonder if something's wrong with you or with me?", "One possibility is that you may have rubbed your eyes a lot while you were crying, which can give you very small cuts on the front part of your eyes. These are called corneal abrasions and can hurt a fair amount.\n\nDoes the stinging usually happen after you've been crying a while or more at the beginning/during? If it's the second one, your problem might be dry eye. Some people's eyes don't make enough tears, or the tears aren't made properly. This can cause your eyes to get dry really quickly and it can hurt. When this happens, a signal goes to the brain telling it to make more tears. But it often goes overboard and makes way more tears than you need, so you cry for a little bit until the stinging goes away.\n\nI don't know of any reason why just tears would make your eyes sting.", "It may be the higher concentration of Saline in tears when they are being over produced.", "Am I the only one here that wants to try and masturbate with tears now?", "Maybe it's stuff on your face (sweat, oil) that gets into your eyes when you wipe the tears."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hblr0", "title": "Do two peas in a pod share the same DNA?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hblr0/do_two_peas_in_a_pod_share_the_same_dna/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cat26c2"], "score": [11], "text": ["[No, they don't.](_URL_0_) Typically each seed (pea) comes from a different ovule and a different pollen grain. The peas in a pod are related like siblings (or fraternal twins) are. (Even if the pea plant self-fertilizes, which they can do, the individual peas will have different genes because of reassortment and crossover during meiosis.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.dnalc.org/view/10896--Illustrating-Mendel-s-cross-of-yellow-and-green-peas-.html"]]}
{"q_id": "7fy1hh", "title": "Why were women's, ah, undies noticeably more pointy in the 1940s-60s? Fashion? Body shape?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7fy1hh/why_were_womens_ah_undies_noticeably_more_pointy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqfioax", "dqfnnta"], "score": [2, 136], "text": ["Can I ask a follow up to see when the modern, rounded design became popular and what made that change?", "The answer has a lot to do with the materials and methods of construction used in brassieres in the twentieth century.\n\nDuring the first decade of the century, the overall focus of the corset was moving lower, with the lower edge covering more of the hips and the top edge doing less and less to support, as the fashionable figure changed from [the upright Victorian hourglass](_URL_6_) to [the forward-tilted Edwardian S-bend](_URL_8_) with its full, low bust. While some women simply went with it, others required *something* supportive to replace the higher corset, and the brassiere was invented. At this time, [the brassiere](_URL_4_) was a fitted but unboned garment worn on top of the corset (and therefore also on top of the chemise under the corset) that typically went down to the waist, rather than just being for the upper torso. The support it provided was based on the tension of the fabric, which would mainly work to hold the bust in a \"natural\" position, rather than pushing it up in the way many now think of as the primary purpose of a bra.\n\nOver the course of the 1910s, the bottom half of the garment was abandoned, essentially, bringing it to something we recognize more easily as a brassiere, as in [this version](_URL_0_). (The use of heavy cotton lace or material covered with eyelet embroidery was very common by the end of the decade.) As you can see in the linked example, the idea of \"cups\" was simply not present, and the basic flat/gently rounded shape continued to be used into the 1920s.  Brassieres of the early 1920s tended to be heavier material intended to compress, while the [lightweight bandeaux](_URL_1_) made out of sheer silk and/or delicate lace date to the end of the decade - it's possible that this represents a shift, with bras coming to be conceived of as something all women would wear, and therefore lighter versions that wouldn't actually do much to support the bust started to be made.\n\nEarly in the 1930s, the flattened look left fashion, but the brassiere remained. (So did the corset/girdle, but it was strictly a below-the-bust garment by this time, except when girdle and brassiere were combined into one, as the \"corselet\".) The bra took on the responsibility of bust definition, which required shaping. A *lot* of experimentation went on in the interwar period as to construction techniques to achieve this, but the most common method was for each cup to be made out of an upper and a lower piece shaped in convex curves, with a horizontal seam across them, [like so](_URL_2_). Another common method, though a bit less common, was the use of [one or two darts to shape each cup](_URL_5_). Both of these methods, particularly if stiffened with quilting to support a larger bust, tend to produce a rather pointed shape - and it has to be said again that the desired shape was *still* not very \"pushed up\", with the volume instead pushed (or, perhaps it's more accurate to say allowed to flow) outward. In most cases, the effect was relatively subtle, but then there are the few with more extreme points - typically formed by the use of shaped padding worn on a smaller bust - that get posted all over the internet as normal examples, because the internet loves to take things out of context.\n\nThe more structured type of brassiere began to fall out of favor in the 1960s, as the concept of the \"natural\", unaided figure (unaided except by the proper genes that would give you the shape deemed fashionable) came back in. Rudi Gernreich's \"[no bra](_URL_3_)\" is often given a certain amount of credit here for capturing the anti-artificiality spirit of the time - as you can see, there's essentially nothing supportive about it, so only a slender and small-chested woman would be able to comfortably wear it. The [molded foam cup](_URL_7_) (now typically used in bra construction) came in in the late 1960s or early 1970s, helping women who couldn't just be \"natural\" leave behind the brassieres with cups shaped with seaming or darts."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/109121", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/83316", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84257", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/86537", "https://patents.google.com/patent/US933265A/en?q=brassiere&amp;before=priority:19091231&amp;after=priority:19000101", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84259", "http://kent.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/B447A10A-8732-45B6-ADD6-049454674700", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/108873", "http://kent.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/55DB65D9-D916-40BB-B1C0-419716969510"]]}
{"q_id": "h6pdi", "title": "Is it possible that blowing your nose to relieve sinus congestion could have more drawbacks than benefits?", "selftext": "I've read a few articles linking blowing your nose to higher possibility of a stroke due to a brain hemorrhage. I was just curious if anyone had any knowledge on the subject. Obviously it is commonplace to blow your nose when you are sick, but I sometimes wonder if it is counter-intuitive to the body's reaction to swallow mucus. \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h6pdi/is_it_possible_that_blowing_your_nose_to_relieve/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1t06pc"], "score": [4], "text": ["Daily mail health articles  are less medically accurate than a nice cheese sandwich.\n\nIf this is all you've got to go on I wouldn't worry about it. I don't know anything about the specifics of this article though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/health/10real.html", "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1383868/Sex-coffee-blowing-nose-lead-stroke.html"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "cdwmq7", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: People Using Really Cool Technology! (This thread has relaxed standards\u2014we invite everyone to participate!)", "selftext": "Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!\n\nIf you are:\n\n* a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer\n* new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community\n* Looking for feedback on how well you answer\n* polishing up a flair application\n* one of our amazing flairs\n\nthis thread is for you ALL!\n\nCome share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don\u2019t just write a phrase or a sentence\u2014explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.\n\nAskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. **We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes.** All other rules also apply\u2014no bigotry, current events, and so forth.\n\n**For this round, let\u2019s look at:** Fifty years ago we went to the MOON! Let\u2019s celebrate by telling stories about people inventing and using really cool technology, from the wheel to, well, the moon!\n\n**Next time:** Heroes of the Battlefield\u2014When They\u2019re *Off* the Battlefield", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cdwmq7/tuesday_trivia_people_using_really_cool/", "answers": {"a_id": ["etwtn7o", "etwwcc4", "etwybtl", "etx23nj", "etx2o89", "etx4r9a", "etx65yr", "etx7qy5", "etxcju8"], "score": [36, 13, 23, 26, 11, 12, 25, 17, 25], "text": ["From a chapter I wrote as part of a book proposal that unfortunately never ended up going anywhere:\n\nThe patent for the first commercially produced electric guitar, the Ro-Pat-In \u2018Frying Pan\u201d, was filed in June 1934. But if we step back: the acoustic guitarist in the age before amplification has a major problem: volume. A well-made acoustic guitar, strummed hard, certainly can fill a room. However, in a club full of people, or in a theatre, the acoustic guitar just wouldn\u2019t be loud enough to compete with, say, a big band full of trumpets and saxophones and clarinets. This issue is amplified by the fact that a melodic part on an acoustic guitar is even more likely to get drowned out by noise than strummed chords; the carefully plucked single notes of a melody or a solo are considerably softer than six strings strummed rhythmically. Which is to say that, before consistent amplification, the best a guitarist in a big band could do was to provide a plunky-plunk rhythmic backing.\n\nIn 1926, George Beauchamp, a guitarist making Hawaiian music \u2013 a style very much in vogue in the 1920s, and a style based around acoustic guitars \u2013 visited the Los Angeles shop of a Slovakian-born instrument maker, John Dopyera, despairing of the lack of volume of his acoustic guitar. Together, they designed the resonator guitar, made of solid aluminium, and featuring a design that channelled sound to \u2018resonator cones\u2019, both of which helped to significantly increased the volume of the guitar. With backing from Beauchamp\u2019s rich cousin, and with Beauchamp\u2019s connections putting the guitar in the hands of some of the more prominent Hawaiian guitarists, the National guitar was a hit. However, Beauchamp and Dopyera butted heads and bickered over designs and copyrights, and Dopyera left the company in 1928, starting another resonator guitar company with his brothers called Dobro. Dobro eventually bought out National in 1932, by which time Beauchamp was thinking beyond National and resonator guitars.\n\nThe components that would go into the electric amplifier were essentially all assembled by 1921, when the modern speaker \u2013 the kind that uses electricity to convert electrical signals into vibrations of paper cone to create sound - had been created by a collaboration between General Electric\u2019s Chester Rice and AT & T\u2019s Edward Kellogg. The modern speaker solved a problem that had been created by Lee De Forest\u2019s invention in 1907 of the vacuum tube/valve tube. The vacuum tube used electricity to heat up metal plates inside a vacuum; this had the effect of increasing the voltage of the electrical signal, thus amplifying it. De Forest saw its potential, saying that it was \u201can Aladdin\u2019s lamp of our new world, a lamp by which one might hear instead of read.\u201d With the ability to amplify a signal thanks to De Forest, and the ability to then vibrate a material to turn that electrical signal into a reasonably accurate sonic representation of the signal, the amplifier was born. \nThe first way in which vacuum tubes and paper cone speakers changed the way that people heard the world was in radio. The clarity of the sound that could be heard on AM radio signals via vacuum tubes and paper cones was unprecedented, and in the swinging optimism of the 1920s before the Great Depression, vacuum tube-powered radios were an enormous commercial sensation, with a speed of take-up that rivalled the internet in the 1990s. Less than a decade after the technology arrived, in 1929, 35-40 percent of American homes had radio receivers. The rapid take up of radio meant that there was now a viable radio industry, with radio stations playing a world of different music suddenly available to people in the privacy of their own homes. This was a period of genre cross-pollination; on record, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong played on recordings by Jimmie Rodgers, the biggest star of a newly popular genre that would become known as \u2018country music\u2019. And why not?\n\nMusic was no longer regionally or ethnically limited. In Bob Dylan\u2019s (admittedly sometimes-unreliable) memoir, *Chronicles*, he discusses how, growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, he would sometimes be able to listen to signals from radio stations from stations in places like Memphis, 1500km to the South. Similarly, Elvis Presley, a white boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, grew up listening to the black radio stations of the South, exposing himself to music that his parents wouldn\u2019t have been able to teach him.\n\nThe principles of the vacuum tubes and speakers in radio would soon impact other sonic mediums. In 1924, technicians at Western Electric, essentially reversing the principles of vacuum-tube/paper-cone amplifiers, came up with the first viable electrical recording system, with electrical microphones that convert sound waves into electrical signals.  Before this point, recording was acoustic; musicians essentially played into a horn much like a gramophone horn, and the vibrations were channelled through the horn onto a medium that would record the disturbance of the vibrations. Acoustic recordings in this format sound almost unlistenable to most modern ears; they had a limited frequency range and sounds needed to be loud indeed to be heard. For example, in order for violin sounds to be heard on such acoustic recordings, instruments like the Stroh-violin were devised, which added a metal horn over the Violin\u2019s soundholes in order to amplify the sound. But after electrical recording became the norm, the Stroh-violins of the world got turfed into junk shops \u2013 once sound quality improved, it was obvious that they didn\u2019t sound as good as a proper violin.\n\nAdditionally, if amplifiers exist, and microphones exist, public address (PA) systems are possible. As PA systems in music venues came to be the norm, a singer no longer had to sing in full-bore operatic style to be heard over a loud band. This enabled singers like Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra to sing in front of a band in the style of a \u2018crooner\u2019. Such technology also enabled the move from silent films to \u2018talkies\u2019 like *The Jazz Singer* starring Al Jolson. Such technology also enabled the electric guitar.\n\nFresh from inventing the resonator guitar, but still wanting guitars to be louder, Beauchamp began experimenting with amplifying the guitar. Initially experimenting with early carbon button microphones, Beauchamp eventually pulled apart a Brunswick phonograph for its \u2018pickup\u2019, an electromagnet and a coil of wire which picked up the sounds made by the needle as it navigated the grooves of a 78rpm record spinning around. Beauchamp\u2019s crucial insight \u2013 perhaps born from a similar place to his insight with the resonator guitar that the body of the guitar need not be made of wood \u2013 was that if he put a pickup near the strings of the guitar, it didn\u2019t matter what the rest of the guitar was. The pickup would pick up the vibrations of the string, converting it to an electrical signal to be sent to an amplifier.\n \nBeauchamp devised pickups more optimised for the guitar than the phonograph pickup he started with, and he fashioned a prototype with the help of Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth and Harry Watson, now nicknamed the \u2018Frying Pan\u2019. By 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Beauchamp\u2019s formerly rich cousin was rather poor, and so the funding to manufacture the \u2018Frying Pan\u2019 was put up by Adolph Rickenbacker and his wife Charlotte. Perhaps for this reason, the brand Ro-Pat-In faded, and the new electric guitar became known as the Rickenbacker Electro. The Rickenbacker Electro became accepted as an instrument useful for the \u2018lap steel\u2019 style common in Hawaiian music, where the guitar is placed on the lap of the musician. In this style, instead of pressing down on the strings with the fingers of one hand while strumming with the other, the strings are pressed down on with a \u2018slide\u2019 \u2013 a metal or glass cylinder that can be placed against the strings and slid around. However, the principle of the electric guitar could also be applied to other ways of playing the guitar.\n\nBeauchamp didn\u2019t successfully patent his pickup design until 1937, five years after the Rickenbacker Electro went on sale. In the intervening years, numerous competitors \u2013 Dobro, Gibson and Epiphone included - put their own versions of the electric guitar on the market. Many of these had considerably more graceful designs than the ugly Frying Pan, and some of them were designed to be played \u2018Spanish\u2019 style \u2013 i.e., with the guitar on a strap around the body, facing outwards from the standing musician (in other words, the normal position for a guitar in the second half of the 20th century that you\u2019ve seen in thousands of photos). One electric guitar designed to be played Spanish style was the Gibson ES-150, released in 1936. This was a semi-acoustic hollow-bodied guitar \u2013 meaning that it\u2019d still make a decent sound even if it wasn\u2019t plugged in \u2013 which cost $150USD, a sizeable amount in the Great Depression \u2013 thus the name of the guitar, code for it being an Electric Spanish guitar worth $150. One ES-150 fell into the hands of a jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian. \n\nChristian was perhaps the first guitarist to see the true potential of the electric guitar. Where other guitarists had seen it as a sort of Hawaiian guitar novelty, Christian had the dexterity and the imagination to see the electric guitar into an instrument that rivalled the saxophone and the trumpet for sheer power, versatility and solo within a big band context. Christian\u2019s licks and riffs were, of course, very widely imitated, though he only recorded a few \u2018sides\u2019 \u2013 songs or tracks that were on one of the sides of a record, in other words - before passing away in 1942.", "Somewhat related to yesterday's Age of Empires thread, [here is a guy firing a repeating crossbow](_URL_1_), also known as a Chu Ko Nu. It is named after a general from the Three Kingdoms Period in China, Zhuge Liang, where Chu Ko is Zhuge in an older Romanization and Nu means crossbow. He lived around 200 AD but didn't actually invent the repeating crossbow, it is older than that. It is the [Chinese unique unit in Age of Empires 2](_URL_0_).\n\nThe contemporary Greco-Roman world had ballistae, but the Chu Ko Nu was seeing use in China about 1000 years before the crossbow became common in European warfare. It was [used to defend Korea](_URL_2_) when the Japanese invaded in the late 1500s, squaring off against the Japanese firearms. \n\n Anyway that's all I got, I just thought it was cool to see it in action in that video, and that it's neat that there was a machine gun crossbow being used in China almost 2000 years before machine guns were invented.\n\nSome sources:\n\n*Prenderghast, Gerald. Repeating and Multi-Fire Weapons: A History from the Zhuge Crossbow Through the AK-47. McFarland, 2018.*\n\n*Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. 1994.*", "Some of my favorite moments from history are how often the people of Belgium go out of their way to make a mockery of both themselves and everyone else. \n\nExamples include: \n\n\u2022 the Mannekin Pis, the mascot of Brussels which is just a little boy peeing. They purposely hype up the presence of this statue so that people come from all over to see the magnificent Mannekin Pis only to laugh at tourists when they see a disappointingly small statue of a little boy peeing. When I visited it I also got to watch the mechanic increase the water pressure so it peed all over a crowd of tourists.\n\n\u2022 Lions Mound Park which commemorates the Battle of Waterloo. It\u2019s an amazing feat of landscape architecture and engineering but the designer also made the enormous lion statue to be roaring toward France and simultaneously show its hind to England.\n\n\u2022 the 2016 Brussels Bombings were a tragic terrorist attack on an otherwise peaceful nation and while conducting a search for the terrorists, the federal government asked that Brussels citizens stay off social media to keep themselves and the officers safe. Instead of staying quiet, the citizens spammed websites like Twitter with cat pictures and bad puns to make any useful information that had been leaked to terrorists impossible to find under a mountain of cats. \n\nAll of these moments plus the overall attitude of the country\u2019s people is hilarious to me, where some people are proud of their country\u2019s tenacity in war or devotion to faith I am proud of my country\u2019s lack of f***s to give to anyone.", "Technology in Greater Iran is almost synonymous with two things: icemaking and irrigation.\n\nPerhaps the most iconic among these is the [Yakhdan or Yakhchal](_URL_2_) (literally, \"Ice container\", \"Ice pit\"). These were used in the form of simpler pits from ancient times (1st milennium BC), evolving into the domed towers (with ice stored below ground) widely used well into the mid-20th century; a few dozen remain today. It isn't exactly clear how this evolution occurred; rudimentary ice storage is first documented in Assyria in the 2nd milennium BC, but there seems to have been an expansion in advanced irrigation systems and consequently probably ice-making structures during the Achaemenid era; Pierre Briant suggests that it was the result of a tax relief for irrigation granted by Artaxerxes II. The structure encourages hot air to rise and escape, while colder breezes can enter through the holes in the structure, making for a surprisingly effective refrigeration system. These could also be combined with [Badgirs](_URL_3_), wind-catchers, for even better ventilation. In its most extravagant form, water is continuously allowed to flow around the dome to cool by evaporation.\n\nThe most impressive feature is perhaps the shallow pools ([yakhband](_URL_4_)) used to make ice in the winter, exploiting the cooling achieved by evaporation and radiative cooling toward the clear night sky. When a nearby mountain top was not available for harvesting ice, these were capable of enough ice production to keep the yakhchal stocked. \n\nThis brings us to discuss the irrigation channels, _karez_ or _qanat_ (the latter is an Arabic loanword more common in the Western regions), the ingenuity of which are illustrated by [this diagram](_URL_1_) courtesy of Encyclopaedia Iranica. Essentially, in the highlands, you extract water from the saturated aquifier. Then you allow this water to flow through a canal into lower field lands where it will end up above the aquifier, seep into the ground, and thereby irrigate the field land. This essentially increases the elevation of the aquifier.\n\nThe major advantage of this system is that it is _continuously discharging_, which is to say, unlike surface level channels which depend on the river level, it cannot dry out in the summer (though the rate of discharge will vary). The major disadvantage is the labour and know-how needed to maintain the underground tunnels (often cited as a reason for population declines following e.g. the Mongol invasion, when these systems were disrupted). The systems required significant investment to be constructed, and according to [this interesting Iranica article on the socio-economic context](_URL_0_) it is unlikely that small communities of farmers could get together to build one. Rather, wealthy landowners or perhaps royal stipends would be necessary to construct them. However, the process of inheritance meant that they could end up in communal hands.\n\nThe combination of simplicity of construction (however laborious!) and conceptual ingenuity inherent to these technologies never ceases to amaze me.", " >  Saw a demonstration of television last Saturday. Very vague  &  flickering.\n\n- H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 25 Oct 1933, A Means to Freedom 2.654\n\n >  Saw a demonstration of television the other day at a local department store. Rather like the blurred, flickering biograph films of 1898.\n\n- H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, October 1933, Essential Solitude 2.612\n\nWhat Lovecraft saw was a demonstration of the [Sanabria Mechanical Television System](_URL_0_). This was well before television was a household appliance - it was basically a novelty, dragged out at sideshows and demonstrated to crowds that still primarily went to theaters, nickelodeons, and silent films.", "This comes from a lecture I gave last year at the Catholic University of Chile.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLet's travel to one of the most popular time travel destinations in many people's minds: renaissance Florence. We'll take a look at the invention of one of the most important and famous instruments in the history of music, both in the West and in the whole world: the piano.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn *The early pianoforte* (1995), Stewart Pollens, a luthier and musical instruments expert, quite renowned in the musicological sphere, describes the process by which a 33 year old man from Padua came to be in the service of Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany. From the beginning of his principate, Ferdinando dedicated time and resources to the preservation and promotion of the arts in all its forms. He was also very interested in engines and machines in general, fascinated by their complexity. This two interests may have led him to recruit Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Venetian musician an luthier, to work for the court. While there is no concrete evidence of Cristofori being appointed as an inventor, it seems likely due to the nature of his work.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDuring the later years of the XVII century, Cristofori worked on the invention of several variants of the harpsichord, and, according to Pollens, he may have started a new project in 1698, but evidence of this date is inconclusive. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nFor the next years he worked on an idea: to create a harpsichord that was able to produce less metallic, more harmonious sounds. Making some fascinating changes to the traditional structure of the harpsichord, most notably the use of larger, softer, leather covered hammers that, according to Denzil Wright caused the sounds to be less metallic by affecting the vibration of the strings. The strings were also modified; Pollens notes that the surviving instruments that Cristofori created had iron and brass strings. He named his instrument the arpicembalo, which translates as harp-harpsichord, because of the harmonious characteristics of its sounds.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWe don't know what those instruments sounded like, because the only surviving ones are simply unplayable, but we know this much: according to *The Piano: a history* by prof. Cyril Ehrlich, the first instrument was recorded in one of Ferdinando's inventories of instruments, dating from 1700, as \"*Un Arpicembalo di Bartolomeo Cristofori di nuova inventione,* ***che fa' il piano, e il forte****, a due registri principali unisoni, con fondo di cipresso senza rosa(...)\"* , which translates to \"*An \"Arpicembalo\" by Bartolomeo Cristofori, of new invention that produces soft and loud, with two sets of strings at unison pitch, with soundboard of cypress without rose(...)\".* \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe invention, later known as forte-piano or pianoforte, became the preferred keyboard instrument in Florence and, gradually, became popular in the rest of Europe, eventually becoming the XVIII century piano model that we know today.", "In early 1896, a young medical student in the *Mekteb-i T\u0131bbiye-i \u015eahane* (Ottoman Military Medical School) named Esad Feyzi read an article in a French medical journal on a certain Roentgen\u2019s photography through opaque objects. Inspired,the young doctor acquired a Ruhmkoff coil, a Crookes tube and a powerful battery, installed the Roentgen apparatus and immediately replicated the experiments in the military hospital in Istanbul, using a younger medical student\u2019s hand. Though this probably wasn't the first usage of Roentgen's photography technique in the Ottoman Empire, this was the one that's most influential. Esad, alongside with his collaborator Rifat Osman and helped by physicians and lecturers in the school created their x-ray machine that year.\n\nBy the time the Greco-Turkish war broke out a year later in 1897, the medical students were eager to put this invention to use. A temporary hospital had been set up on the Sultan\u2019s Yildiz palace grounds to treat the wounded, and Esad Feyzi and his collaborator wrote to its medical director, Cemil Pasha. In their letter they spoke of their patriotic gratitude upon reading the news of the wounded being treated in the palace\u2019s hospital, and offered the services of their x-ray technology to help determine the exact locations of bullets or shrapnel. They went on to suggest that the application of this new technology would lead to the rightful recognition of Ottoman medicine in the civilized world as the first to use x-rays in military surgery, and could also save the wounded from long suffering. Permission was granted in 1 May and Mehmet of Boyabat was the first wounded soldier x-rayed to determine the precise location of shrapnel in his right wrist. The head surgeon of the hospital removed the shrapnel, and the radiographic film of the arm was presented to the Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid by Divisional General Cemil Pasha. The team then was awarded by the Sultan with medals.  When a team of German Red Cross doctors and surgeons arrived in Istanbul in 22 May with an x-ray machine from Berlin, they were surprised and amused to find a Esad's cobbled-together version of the machine already in use at the temporary hospital for the wounded on the palace grounds, and expressed their admiration at this early application of radiography which was then, an emerging branch of medicine all over the world. The German team then installed their x-ray machine, and both the German and Turkish doctors at Temporary Yildiz Military Hospital continued working on the radiographic captures\n\nAfter the war, Esad Feyzi, by now officially a doctor, published his knowledge about x-rays in a book aptly titled \"Roentgen Rays, its Medical and Surgical Application\" issued as a manuscript in 1898. The book comprises the author\u2019s experiences on X-rays in a 2-year period. Esad Feyzi gives information on electricity, introduces tubes, explains the X-ray photography technique and film development. He also excerpts various medical and surgical applications of Roentgen rays, ending with a list of possible uses for this new technology. In addition to military surgery, forensics and prenatal diagnosis he suggested that x-rays would help identify fake diamonds and investigate packages sent through the newly reorganized postal system. The book includes many sketches of upper and lower extremities drawn by Esad Feyzi himself, and supplemented with 12 X-ray films in original dimensions. The third X-ray machine was imported from Germany and installed in 1899 at that Military Medical School Clinic under direction of Cemil Pasha.\n\nAfter Esad Feyzi\u2019s sudden death of sepsis due to erysipelas in 1902, Sufyan Bey worked and led the Roentgen laboratory alongside Cemil Pasha from 20 June 1903. Protection from the harmful effects of X-rays was unknown at those early years, and many doctors died because of it. For instance, Ibrahim Vasif, Sufyan Bey's successor who worked as assistant at the same laboratory, died of cancer due to the severe damage of X rays. The fourth X-ray machine was brought from Germany to Gulhane postdoctoral clinic attached to the Medical Faculty at the disposal of Dr. Deycke, the chief of staff and Rifat Osman who was charged in the Roentgen department. The fifth machine was installed at Haydarpasha Military Hospital in Istanbul, the sixth at Hamidiye Children\u2019s Hospital under the direction of Rasih Emin, who was raised by Esad Feyzi and died due to radiodermatitis. The seventh machine was the first to be installed in the provinces, that is Selanik Civilian Hospital in 1902 operated Kamil Mazhar Bey. The eighth machine was also installed in the province, that is in Izmir in a clinic operated by a Greek doctor George Illiadhes who was offered the civilian title of Pasha in recognition of his services to the public after the devastating earthquake that hit the area around Aydin in 1900. In the following years oculist Albert Englaender started his career as radiologist by opening a private laboratory in Istanbul in 1905 and published his first radiological findings on cancer therapy by X-rays in 1906. In 1908, the Greek Hospital in Istanbul installed an X-ray machine that was operated by Dr. Vassilios Savvaides. Dimitrios Chilaiditi, another Greek national opened his practice at Istanbul in 1910 and soon acquired international recognition due to his observations of the syndrome that bears his name.", "When we think of some technological inventions and the eventual success they become, we oftentimes forget about how most inventions failed or how some of these *eventually* successful inventions had a more than dubious start to them, as the *vroedschap* (city council) of Doornik (Tournai) in Flanders would experience in 1346.\n\nThe members of the *vroedschap* had invited master Pieter van Brugge - an engineer and an expert on gunpowder weaponry - to their city in order to witness a demonstration of a primitive form of cannon. The field outside the city was considered to be a suitable location for this demonstration, and as such master Pieter van Brugge did the honours, primed the cannon, and fired it. It worked! It did not blow up in the faces of the master engineer or the *vroedschap* members. However, it was not a success either. The lead covered wooden ball, for reasons unknown, veered off course, over the city walls, and struck a man in the street, killing him instantly. This man had the dubious honour of being the first recorded casualty of gunpowder weaponry in the low countries.\n\nSadly, the sources do not record how the demonstration influenced any further decisions on the matter by the *vroedschap* but one could imagine they were not immediately impressed by the device's accuracy.\n\nSources:\n\n*Ronald de Graaf, Oorlog om Holland 1000-1375 p. 51, in turn using quotations from Gaier, L'Industrie des Armes, p. 120.*", "Checksums are useful for various programming purposes.  What a checksum is, is that you add up something to check for errors.  For example, a human checksum would be checking that you entered your credit card number correctly by adding the digits and making sure it matches a known value.  This allows a computer to check for corrupted data much more quickly and easily than actually checking the data.\n\nBut, contrary to what big computer science would tell you, this wasn\u2019t invented by programmers\u2014it was invented by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages (well, they used it anyway).  Before spellcheck, scribes faced a problem\u2014it\u2019s very hard to copy a text by hand with perfect accuracy, even if you\u2019re really trying hard.  This became a big problem for Jewish scribes, who wanted to copy the biblical text perfectly.  Hebrew has somewhat flexible spelling rules and there are many words that are sometimes spelled in different ways, so even just reading through a text won\u2019t make errors obvious.  Even checking side-by-side can make it tough to spot minor spelling differences.\n\nFor scrolls in ritual use, there wasn\u2019t much of a solution.  But when books started being used, which Jewish tradition didn\u2019t mind having annotations in, a solution was developed\u2014the checksum.  Basically, scribes would add up letters and sentences in a portion and note the proper value.  Scribes would know the correct value (using a convenient mnemonic) and could count up letters or words, and know the text was correct.  This was aided by the system in Hebrew for assigning values to letters, which meant that the values could be summed, in addition to the quantity of letters which makes two errors that cancel each other out somewhat less likely.  This also makes it easy to come up with mnemonics\u2014you just figure out a word or phrase whose numerological value is the checksum.  This way scribes can check not just that everything says what it ought to, but that every word is intact.\n\nBut they went even further.  This method still is susceptible to errors cancelling each other out, as I noted, and makes it tough to find errors\u2014you know there\u2019s an error, but you won\u2019t know exactly where because the checksum covers a potentially lengthy portion.  Here the checksum methods go further.  The scribes began to note unusual spellings of words, and made marginal notes (in an opaque system of Aramaic abbreviations) to note the spelling and occurrences of a particular word.  By comparing notes a scribe could check for the most likely errors in spelling of a text.  These marginal notes also noted when a word in an existing text might look like a scribal error, but isn\u2019t, and the scribe should be attentive not to \u201ccorrect\u201d the text, either accidentally by copying from memory or intentionally.  Of course in a complex and old manuscript tradition what version really is \u201ccorrect\u201d is not always discernable, but these scribes were attempting to maintain a standard.  They also noted traditional unsual letters, such as letters that are traditionally extra-large or extra-small or have some other unusual appearance.\n\nBy and large they succeeded\u2014within the Jewish tradition there\u2019s a great deal of uniformity in the consonantal text, which is what the checksums cover.  Unfortunately nowadays these features are not printed generally, because computers allow much faster and more reliable checking, and printed Hebrew bibles do not all have the features for scribal writing.  But some still have the checksum for portions, and either way it\u2019s a cool historical innovation to maintain an accurate text."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/7gvcgv/unique_unit_discussion_chu_ko_nu/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4reL9No73s", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Navalzhugenu.jpg"], [], ["http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kariz_3", "http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Kariz/kariz-fig01.jpg", "http://iranontrip.ir/public/user_data/images/The-Ice-Chamber-of-Meybod-1.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher", "https://i2.wp.com/www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/DSC07977.jpg?ssl=1"], ["http://www.earlytelevision.org/sanabria_theater_tv.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8motj4", "title": "why does the periodic table list the average mass of elemental isotopes?", "selftext": "Why not just list the atomic weight of the \"non-isotopic\" element? If you are working with an isotope then the atomic weight is literally in the name.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8motj4/eli5_why_does_the_periodic_table_list_the_average/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzp939e", "dzp9g0l", "dzp9zmj", "dzpohqy"], "score": [8, 6, 13, 6], "text": ["It gives average masses because in many real world cases you won't have a sample that's purely made up of only one isotope.\n\nFor the most part, if you obtain a sample of an element, it'll contain a mixture of isotopes. For instance, if you take a sample of carbon it'll contain Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 atoms, in the ratio of about 99:1 - this smallish number Carbon-13 atoms pushes the atomic mass up a little bit, giving the average.", "Isotopes are the same element, but with different numbers of neutrons, which changes the atomic mass.\n\nFor some elements, there is a much greater abundance of a particular isotope (Helium-4, Carbon-12, Oxygen-16) but for other elements the split can almost be 50/50 (Bromine-79 and Bromine-81), or there are several main isotopes, so there isn't always this \"non-isotopic\" element.\n\nThe relative atomic mass also isn't just the average, it's the weighted mean, which means it takes into account the relative abundances of different isotopes, meaning the relative atomic mass more closely represents the actual mass of one mole, so your calculations are more accurate.\n\n\n(not sure how ELI5 that last bit is, but I think it's the most important bit for your question)", "There is no 'non-isotopic' element,only one isotope which is the most abundant. The periofic table values are there to be used for calculations in relation to how many moles of a substance you have. In nature you will never get a sample of an element which is isotopically pure so it makes more sense to adjust the molecular massses to be a weighted average of all the isotopes in the element relative to 1/12 of the mass of C12.", "There is no such thing as a non-isotopic element, all atoms are isotopes.  Some elements have multiple stable isotopes, some have just one, some have zero.  Nor do all elements have a primary isotope, tin has 10 stable isotopes, the most common of which is less than one-third of naturally occurring tin.\n\n >  If you are working with an isotope\n\nThe thing is, you usually are not working with an isotope, you are working with a mixture of isotopes.  It is difficult and usually unnecessary to separate elements by isotope, a weighted average of naturally occurring isotopic masses is the value you want to use in most of your calculations.\n\n >  the atomic weight is literally in the name.\n\nNot quite.  Protons and neutrons don't have the same mass, and because of binding energy, an atom's mass does not equal the sum of the masses of its protons and neutrons.  An isotopes mass number (protons + neutrons) is usually within 1% of its atomic weight, but they are not the same value."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1wlu96", "title": "Regarding aircraft, what are the differences to positioning wings on the top, middle, or bottom of fuselages? Is it merely a design preference?", "selftext": "For instance:\n\n* War planes (WWII era) - Mostly bottom of fuselage\n\n* Passenger planes - Mostly middle of fuselage\n\n* Cargo planes - Middle *or* top of fuselage\n\nSo I'm lead to assume that it's a size/weight issue. Is that correct?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1wlu96/regarding_aircraft_what_are_the_differences_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf38p7z", "cf3a7y6"], "score": [2, 5], "text": ["Not just a size weight issue. Design and function mainly. Cargo aircraft largely have highish wing design to get the wing box / centre section out of the lower fuselage so they can load more easily and carry large items ie C5 Galaxy, Hercules Antonov 124 and 225 etc. Amphibious aircraft usually high wing ie the old Catalina and the grand old flying boats. Wing design and where they are in relation to the fusleage have many other contributing factors but what the designer wants and what customers need would decide. Efficiency, how it looks, function, stability, performance all have a hand in it.", "No passenger or cargo planes have mid wing designs, as far as I'm aware. Why would you want a wing box going through the middle of the cabin / cargo hold?\n\nIn general:\n\n |High Wing|Mid Wing|Low wing\n:---------|:---------:|:---------:|:---------:\n**Interference Drag**  | average | low       |  high\n**Roll Stability**         | stable    | neutral  | unstable\n**Visibility**               | good     | average | poor\n**(Un)loading**          | easy      | average | difficult\n\nHowever, wing-mounted landing gear on high wing planes tends to be very heavy and fuselage-mounted landing gear tends to cause high drag.\n\nAll information from the lecture notes of Dr. Deiter Scholz of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3i5txi", "title": "if times new roman ft. size 12 is so commonly used, why isn't it the factory default setting for word documents?", "selftext": "shouldn't word document be smart enough to save your used fonts and change the preset to your most used option?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i5txi/eli5_if_times_new_roman_ft_size_12_is_so_commonly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cudkgmm", "cudklye", "cudknvb", "cudx1wz", "cudyzbx"], "score": [75, 39, 233, 108, 5], "text": ["Times new roman is the text for printed documents. It has serifs, and that's for making reading easier on paper. However, on a computer screen you should use a non serif font like Ariel (the most common default) because it is easier to read on screen. ", "Up until Office 2007, the default font in Microsoft Word used the Times New Roman typeface. It has since been replaced by Calibri.\n\nYou do have the ability to customize the default themes and styles that are included with Office, if you should choose to do so. If you asked Microsoft why it doesn't update those themes automatically, they would probably tell you that it's to avoid surprising users and maintain consistency. The users who want to change the default themes can, and the users who don't care won't be impacted by unexpected changes.", "I believe once upon a time Times New Roman font size 12 was the default size and then to signify the changing of times from the printed to electronic age Microsoft changed it to what it is now.\n\n_URL_0_", "Honest question, because I'm curious: how old are you OP? Do you not remember when TNR was the default? It was default for like 15 years.\n", "Finally something I might be able to explain. Times New Roman size 12 is the easiest font to read on paper, but slightly harder to read on a computerscreen. This is because it is a fontstyle called serif. \n\nNow the default is Calibri which is easier to read on computerscreens, but slightly harder on paper. This is a fontstyle called sans serif. \n\nSince most of all reading is on a screen nowdays it made sense to change the default font. Before people would print out most documents, and thats why it was default."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Microsoft-change-the-default-font-to-Calibri"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "29hg0x", "title": "why are so many 7/11s and dunkin donuts owned and staffed by indians?", "selftext": "Not sure if it's a regional thing but I noticed it locally and when driving in nearby states as well", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29hg0x/eli5_why_are_so_many_711s_and_dunkin_donuts_owned/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciliz48", "cikxcym", "cikxvg0", "cikzbr2", "cil00a9", "cil01w8", "cil1x7f", "cil4hre", "cil8tnw", "cil9ai2"], "score": [3, 10, 9, 95, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["It's like a snowball effect. When you are new to the country and you don't speak the language, you stick around to those who speak yours. You probably have no college education and maybe even no high school. The people who talk your language own convenience stores. They are probably families who came to America before you and have a firm footing and know the ins and outs of the business. They offer you a job. You see they make good money. They help you open your own store. The snowball gets bigger. My dad got his store with the help of his friend who got his store through the help of his brother. ", "They are cheap franchises to get into.\n\nPretty much all you need is a small store and enough money to buy into the franchise, and then you have a steady source of income that doesn't cost too much to upkeep since it's all mass-produced mass-traded stuff there anyways.", "That's a regional thing.  I'll assume you're in California?  If you come out to Las Vegas, it's varied.  In fact I'd say most of the people are non-Indian Asian (specifically Filipino)", "When immigrants come to the USA and are looking to start a new business they often go to the US department of labor and ask about trending industries and see what areas are projected to be a growth market. \n\nWhen for political reasons or whatever you get a large spike of immigrants from a specific country. They then all show up at the same time and all of them ask what business are trending and they all get the same answer. \n\nSo now you have a large population from a specific region all working the same type of business. After a while new immigrants come over and they want to find work, if they are lucky enough a cousin or something came over before them and is now a business owner. So they go work with their family members. The first immigrant who opened the business now has a bunch of family members working for them and might want to expand. Maybe try and get a store for their son or nephew to run for themselves. \n\nOnce you already have a successful franchise with a company you can get a large cut on the franchise fees for opening up a second location compared to opening up the first. Also you have been doing this for a while so you now know what works and what doesn't and can improve your chances for the second branch being successful. ", "I believe there are [programs](_URL_0_) in place that assist Asians (this includes Indians) to start their own businesses. Families pool their money together to buy a store or motel or something, and they all work there and usually live together as well.  \n\nIt's possible that the employed family members don't receive a regular paycheck. They don't have the American ideals of needing to buy things to be happy. Their culture is more about family and supporting the family business. \n\nPlus, it's proven to work. So a new Asian/Indian family wants to come to America .. they can already see how others have done it, and that they've had success.", "I doubt it's regional. Same thing here in Wisconsin. And I believe they're Arabian not Indian. It has something to do with the tax benefits they receive. ", "I've noticed that too, apparently here in New York, an indian couple ran about 30 7/11s and was caught by the FBI because their workers acquired fake SSNs from deceased indians...o.o go figure. ", "I believe that must be a regional thing. Where I am from it is all Portuguese people that own the dunkin's. My family included.", "Indians, open up a 7/11 in rockwood tn....", "There was a post from a year ago by /u/t_bone26 on the whole immigrant niche industry thing.  Fantastically-written piece on chasing the Chinese Dream.\n\n[Not meant to be racist. Why do immigrants usually own and run specific types of businesses (i.e. Dry cleaners, liquor/convenience stores, etc.)](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.national-caaba.org/"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/166st1/not_meant_to_be_racist_why_do_immigrants_usually/c7tfljy"]]}
{"q_id": "1sq2q9", "title": "Women in Iran and Afghanistan in the 70s", "selftext": "Following a post in /r/atheism , and my despair at seing such generalizations built upon a few pictures, would you be able to explain what were the legal status, rights, and living conditions, of women in these countries during the seventies?  \nfor reference : _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sq2q9/women_in_iran_and_afghanistan_in_the_70s/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce0arhv", "ce0g59h", "ce0q1rs"], "score": [21, 27, 3], "text": ["I have removed all personal anecdotes as per [our rules](_URL_0_). No offense intended to those who contributed these, but it is not what our subreddit is about. People looking for personal experiences should turn to /r/AskReddit. Again, no offense intended to that sub, as it sometimes features interesting stories. The intent of /r/AskHistorians, however, is to provide in-depth, source-based answers from people who have studied the area or topic under discussion.\n\nThis is not meant as a reprimand, as I am sure of everybody's good intentions.", "I can speak for Iran to an extent, less so for Afghanistan. The trouble with posting images like those without any context is that you assume that the women before and after the Islamic revolution were either being forced to dress a certain way or are dressing in the manner they please. The fact is, both are true. Many women of religious persuasions couldn't wear veils, even if they wanted to, under the Shah. Many women of the Islamic Republic would dress with a veil if they had the choice. The sad fact is, the sartorial choices that women had at their disposal in Iran was limited by law -- veiling was outlawed under the Pahlavis, it was made mandatory by the Islamic Republic.\n\nFurthermore, this image of western-looking women in miniskirts is itself one that was subtly imposed on the women of Iran by its male leadership. By adopting a western-looking vision of a national modernity the Pahlavi regime was active in supporting the importation of western culture, holding up a very specific (and acutely sexualized) image of what a modern woman looks like. As one of my mentors says, \"When they held up western women to us, it was never Mme. Curie or Eleanor Roosevelt, it was Twiggy and Farah Fawcett.\" When it came time to revolt against the Shah, which was a wildly heterogenous revolution united mostly by anti-imperialist feeling, certain groups revolted not only against the imposition created by American and British political power, but against these images as well.\n\nI think that's the most important thing to consider with that image, but rights and social status is important too. Women got the vote in Iran rather late, in the 1960s I believe (don't have the date handy), and even under the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, familial laws were awfully paternalistic. One example being the heavily pro-natalist programs of the late 60s and 70s -- including a government sponsored campaign against the Pill (a policy the Islamic Republic would adopt at times too).\n\nAnd furthermore, taking women-specific issues aside, resisting any of the Shah's policies later in his reign was an incredibly dicey move as SAVAK became a more prevalent force, instituting a regime of torture, fear and exile against ideological opponents. In more ways than one, Iran of the 70s and Iran of the 80s was the same sort of place for women. Of course there are some pretty fundamental differences -- the ideologies are wildly different, and that has a huge effect on what limits are placed on women's agency -- but the point is that it is very unhelpful to assume that women are somehow worse off (or better off) just because they dress a certain way.\n\nSome sources for further reading: \n\nFiroozeh Kashani-Sabet, [Conceiving Citizens](_URL_0_)\n\nAfsaneh Najmabadi, [Women with Mustaches, Men without Beards](_URL_2_)\n\nM. Camron Amin, [The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman](_URL_1_)", "This my first stab at answering an Askhistorian question. The history of Women in Afghanistan during the 1970\u2019s is, alas, a mostly ignored area of Modern Afghan history. You would not think so, but compare how much literature there is for the Mujahedeen of 1970\u2019s (well 80\u2019s really, but most of the main player\u2019s were active in 1970\u2019s as well). \n\nI don\u2019t know about Iran, but the pictures of those Afghan women in Miniskirts and western dress is highly misleading.  It could said that, yes, some women in Afghanistan wore Miniskirts and western dress; most Afghan women did not. However, this was mostly confined to small group of liberal elite in Kabul, who were mostly out of touch with the impoverished rural majority who were much more conservative then the Kabul elite (although it should be noted that the majority were not as conservative as the Taliban at the time).  \n\nIt should be noted that Photos, like those presented in the Reddit thread, could be propaganda by either the Royalists or Communists in an attempt to put out a good image of its sometimes brutal attempts at modernization (for example, King Amanullah\u2019s attempt to turn Afghanistan into a Central Asian Turkey by following policies of Ataturk led to his violent overthrow). \n\nSources\n\nBrodsky, With all our strength. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, New York\n2003.\n\nMehta and Mamoor, Women for Afghan women. Shattering myths and claiming the future, New\nYork 2002.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://fr.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1sotpt/women_in_iran_and_afghanistan_in_the_1970s_before/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_speculate"], ["http://www.amazon.com/Conceiving-Citizens-Women-Politics-Motherhood/dp/0195308875/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896619&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=conceiving+citizens", "http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Modern-Iranian-Woman/dp/0813029163/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896718&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=camron+amin", "http://www.amazon.com/Women-Mustaches-Men-without-Beards/dp/0520242637/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896649&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=afsaneh+najmabadi"], []]}
{"q_id": "4snh54", "title": "is there something that the president or a higher official cannot do that your average civilian can?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4snh54/eli5_is_there_something_that_the_president_or_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5am5y7", "d5amd75", "d5amnce", "d5an25s", "d5ao3ls", "d5auzir", "d5aw6n8"], "score": [10, 26, 6, 10, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["From a legal point of view, no. From a practical point of view, yes.\n\nYou can tell everyone you meet that Vladimir Putin is an idiot and a coward and all sorts of unflattering things. This really isn't something the President can do without undermining the relationship with the Russians.\n\nI just use the Russians as an example. You can substitute any country whose relations we care about.", "Yes. You can accept a gift from a foreign government. Officers of the United States (such as the President) need the consent of Congress to do so.", "Poop in a regular toilet. If a foreign intelligence service was able to get their hands on a sample of the president's poop they could analyze it and learn things about his health and what not. For this reason the president travels with a portable toilet rather than using the regular facilities.", "He is not legally permitted to refuse Secret Service protection. So he never has the degree of privacy or personal freedom that an average citizen can.", "The president or ex-president can't dance at a memorial of a mass shooting during gospel songs without all hell breaking loose on the media as to why he's dancing or what it means. If I dance at a memorial no one looks twice. ", "The President can't legally dismiss Secret Service, meaning if he just wants to pop out of the White House for a coffee or hang out somewhere, he can't.  Not unless Secret Service accompanies him and clears the area.  He certainly can't be out on his own.", "Send a text. I saw Obama on the Tonight Show, and, according to what he said, he was excited he was finally given a smartphone, but he was told he couldn't text on it, email, or browse the internet because of security."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4b939c", "title": "why are window screens so uncommon throughout much of the tropical world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b939c/eli5_why_are_window_screens_so_uncommon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1757lf", "d1767qx", "d176nto", "d176qag", "d1774rj", "d1775ee", "d177nf9", "d177nv9", "d177qfg", "d177qfo", "d17808n", "d1783mw", "d1785vy", "d1786j7", "d178f9l", "d178kli", "d178krc", "d178yvh", "d179kg5", "d17a28y"], "score": [29, 16, 42, 9, 10, 14, 16, 12, 2, 40, 4, 9, 8, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["What exactly do you mean by a screen? I'm from Caracas and I had a metal 'mesh' thing in my room's window to keep bugs out ", "I traveled across tropical countries and this was also the case, even super rich people didn't have screens. Insects, lizards, rodents, and even cats came through the windows. The people just deal with it as part of life. Most of the places I went to didn't have glass windows either, just wooden shutters, and most buildings are not made of wood. Attaching sliding screens might be difficult. ", "A lot of people in St. Croix don't have them, because they have to be shipped in from elsewhere, making them expensive, because they blow off and get damaged in storms, making them a hazard, and because they get in the way of the opening and closing of the window louvers which are the main ventilation of most homes (air conditioning is considered a luxury, not a given).", "I lived in a tropical country and always felt they increased the heat. I'd rather deal with mosquitoes than that horrible heat. The obvious solution is to close your windows and put some A/C but that's expensive, so not everyone can afford that.", "In Australia it is unheard of four a home to not have screen. Now I'm in NZ it's the opposite! And it's so necessary particularly in the Waikato where the flies are ever present. I'm thinking of going into the fly screen business.", "I live in Florida, which is semi-tropical climate. Screen in doors and windows are total common here. Honestly, I have no idea you guys on Brazil are surviving without them. \n\nI love opening all the windows and airing out the house.  ", "I worked as an architect in S.E Asia. Most houses are not Air conditioned so  we keep our windows open most of the time. The windows are made out of timber and are side hung as opposed to the double hung type that you see in the US. To install the mesh it should be open-able. With the side hung window to have a mesh is a bit tricky, not impossible but tricky. So you might think, why cant we install double hung windows? with the weather and humidity the timber gets warped easily and the sliding get screwed up pretty easily.\n\nIn one house that I designed, the client specifically requested meshes for all windows and open-able doors. We opted for aluminum windows, with a three layers. The outer layer would be the side hung window, the middle layer would be a protective metal grill (for security) the third inner layer again would be a open-able side hung mesh panel. We could have done the double hung type window, but the client did not like the appearance.\n\n", "In puerto rico they're common,  never lived in a house without them....really explains why Brazil has such a high incidence in these diseases", "I lived in SEA for a while, and they wouldn't have worked very well, at least not in the neighbourhood I lived in. The buildings seem to favour very large windows/big sliding doors or open walls (things which leave huge open spaces) and the buildings aren't quite uniform in shape so it would be difficult to standardise sizes.\n\nIt would likely be quite expensive to have an assortment of small and large screen doors custom made to fit every house, and since ceiling + stand fans are very cheap and do the same job good enough most people just don't bother.", "My parents are from India and I remember about twenty years ago, when I was a little kid, my mum's parents house didn't even have any glass windows. Just metal grids. We always slept underneath mosquito nets. Oh my god, if you accidentally moved against it in your sleep, the mosquitos would bite you dozens of times on the skin touching the net. Or when you needed to get out to pee, couldn't remove the net properly, your one leg got tangled in the net, the other was already on it's way to the floor and then you just smashed your face into the ground. Bonus points if the dog was lying there and was having an nightmare about the postman...\n\nBut the worst thing was when one of the tiny suckers got caught inside of your net. I imagine them thinking something like \"Thanks to that genius net I can have these three blood bags all by myself. Yeah, Patty, Jenny, I can see you hating from outside of the club. But you can't even get in... Haha\"\n\nOk, maybe there's some brain disease contracted by mosquitos. And I caught it. ;)\n\nEdit: just wanted to add, why the houses didn't have any windows, or sometimes slanted ones. Because it's something \"we've always done this way\".\n\nEven after my father built a new house for his parents and my mum's parents, the windows had to be properly installed afterwards and my dad had a lot of trouble with it. Also the windows aren't see through and are installed on top of the metal grids.  And most important, for ventilation purpose they are left open during the night... Hello mosquitos!", "Living in Puerto Rico, almost all houses don't have screens. The reason I assume is because houses have louvered windows which are unable to be screened.", "Have you ever taken the screens out of your windows and seen what is was like? It's pretty amazing how much more air comes through. Screens block a really significant portion of the airflow, more than I expected.\n\nIt may be that in addition to the obvious factors like cost, they're  seen as counter-productive to the obvious purpose of the open window in a tropical climate --cooling the house.", "Look... I don't know the answer... I don't have them because I don't like screens. Could be a cultural thing. But what I do know is not a monetary thing like many have said or suggested.\n\nI just goggled, and if I wanted I would spend 120-160 Reais (30-40 dollars) to put screen in all my windows. This is not a high monetary burden even for the poorest of people. I'm not saying that is cheap... but is not expensive for something you only pay once.\n\nI would say it's culture... I lived my whole life in houses with open windows... when I lived a short time in a house with screens was weird... I didn't liked, it was like the windows were constantly closed. In the end I think is taste... people here just don't like having screens in their windows.", "I don't have an answer for your question but I noticed the same thing. I went to Ecuador and all the more Americanized or touristy places had window screens but the local houses did not. Even with the screens our room was still constantly full of bugs and spiders (we were in the jungle though so I'm not sure if it would be the same somewhere like Quito). We still had unwelcome visitors like botflies that we had to shoo out, its like they were just waiting for us to open the door so they could crowd in. Maybe the locals just have more of an immunity? I'm not sure.", "Window screens are virtually unheard of in South American countries.  Source:  lived there for a while.  It's not a money issue, people just don't buy it.  When they do, they buy netting for their beds.  \n\n\nThey do buy a lot of moth balls though.  But over there they're called \"alcanfor\". ", "Puerto Rico: the vast majority of houses have screens, but you can still find an odd house here and there without them, for some damn reason. ", "Australian here - Typically the \"old Queenslander\" design is built on stilts to combat against mosquito, flooding and marsh lands as they (usually) can't fly that high. As for the screens - it depends. On our newer houses there are screens but for the older houses this isn't the case as the old window designs have to be pushed from the inside out - making it a real big hassle to fit screens. Plus - you know cleaning them (because Australia is so fucking dusty) is a real cbf, we'd rather drink beer. \n\nAs for all the dangerous animals that could sneak in at night... Staya breakfast for champs. Just add some vegemite. ", "Another Brazilian here hahaha.\nI live in Sao Paulo, great city :)\nI live in a 2 stores house, no window screens here, our my neighborhood, also mosquitos are quite rare (where I live, to be clear) I must say.\nAnd God, not that hot at all hahaha \nI've been to some places in Europe that were way hotter than here.\nAs obvious as it is, the closer to the equator more warm you are. ", "Was just rereading my journal that I kept while studying abroad in Brasil...one entry reads \"while Brasil is a lil on the ghetto side you'd think they'd have invented these things called window screens to keep this fucking wall of mosquitos that feast on me every night out of my room since I have to open the window since it's too damn hot in the room at night to sleep!\" \nStill loved Brasil and can't wait to go back and experience that again ", "I currently live in the interior of SP, Brazil and I often asked myself this question DAILY. I have also traveled throughout Latin America and Northern Australia, and I don't remember seeing screens in those places either. But, I'll just give an explanation based on what I've noticed in Brazil.\nNot sure about the houses in your city OP, but where I live, many windows are long, thin and opened by a lever. Putting a screen in those windows would be virtually impossible as the window moves up/down, and in/out therefore, it would slice the screen if the lever is moved. \nI could foresee you placing a screen in front of the window, but then the action of the lever may be inhibited. \nIn my case, I had a family member in the US send me screens based on window measurements taken from my normal looking, single-paned windows.\nFor those of you who have never lived in a tropical place, it sure becomes annoying when the temperature gets to be 100 F (38C) and you can't have any ventilation or cross-breezes because the windows need to be closed to avoid insect intruders. \nI've asked many people at hardware stores here and they look at me like, why the hell would you want a screen!? Just culture I guess. I've considered trying to import some to sell, but really, the variation in window types here would make it very tricky.\nLove the question, OP."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8qvyb2", "title": "i would have a difficult time describing my wife's face even though i see it every day. how can someone describe the face of a criminal suspect they only saw for a moment?", "selftext": "Legit just found out I have aphantasia, the inability to picture things.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qvyb2/eli5i_would_have_a_difficult_time_describing_my/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0mhn5e", "e0ml2lx", "e0ml67j", "e0mlgrd", "e0mwfsu", "e0mwgqe", "e0mykg3", "e0n4aj8", "e0n9hoq"], "score": [6, 7, 27, 14, 3, 6, 2, 24, 2], "text": ["Sometimes, you just can't. Some people are really good with faces, and some are really bad with them, but a face is the easiest way to describe a person so they can be identified by others.\n\nThat said, negative stimulus is more effective at creating a memory than positive ones, and sketch artists break down the face into parts to try and get a full picture.\n\nThey'll ask about whether the jaw was square or round or pointed without worrying about the lips, then ask about the thickness of the lips without worrying about the jaw.", "There\u2019s social pressure to describe a criminal to the police, but if I ask you to describe your wife to me I\u2019m no-one and so there\u2019s no pressure. \n\nI\u2019m betting if she went missing and you needed to describe her to someone drawing a sketch you\u2019d be able to. \n\nOn a side note our memories are massively fallible. And it\u2019s very normal not to be able to describe a face you see every day. ", "Actually [eyewitness testimony](_URL_0_) isn't all that reliable. \n\n > Mistaken or flawed identification has assumed a newfound prominence in recent years: It's been cited as a factor in nearly 78 percent of the nation's first 130 convictions later overturned by DNA testing, according to the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to free the wrongly convicted. As a result, a number of researchers are turning their attention to helping police departments and juries better understand the circumstances under which eyewitnesses observe crimes and later identify a suspect", "I think OP was saying he couldn't DESCRIBE his wife's face, not that he couldn't pull it up.  I can absolutely remember what my Mom looks like, I can see her face in my \"minds eye\".  I'd have absolutely no idea how to describe her.", "Here's an excerpt from a security guard sample/examination report I wrote:\n\n > Subject was a male roughly between 16-30 years of age, of average height and average body type.  Had brown hair was short near the ears, perhaps curled or wavy, eye color dark, thin eyebrows, light pale complexion, no facial marks or features, has a sharp chin and profile, and may or may not have ear accessories.\n\nThings are broken down top-to-bottom and leaving most of the more distinguishing and unclear features to the end.  Everything should be written down in points before submitting the report and then formatted to make some sense but if something is unknown given an approximation.  I haven't ever had any of my reports go to court but I have done a settlement outside of court with my report infront of lawyers and my technique and what I was taught works well enough that I don't have to stay more than a hour most times.\n\nThis is more generic rather than precise and I've never had to deal with any professional sketch artists or anything like that.  But I imagine that a lot of examples and sketch lines are used to create multiple profiles that get fitted for more detailed parts.", "I can pull up the picture of some one in my brain, but my question and I think OP's is, how would you describe the face you are seeing in your mind so and artist knows the correct way to draw it on paper. For example what kinds of words would you use?", "It's more about vocabulary than memory.  Try to describe a particular house to someone without knowing the right words to describe the features and you run into the same problem.  If you know the difference between a ranch and a dutch colonial and a craftsmen - you're going to be much more accurate than if you're trying to describe the shape of the roof in your own words.  If I show you pictures of those houses you can say \"Oh, it was like this one, but with bigger windows.   And the door was in the middle instead of off to the edge.\"  And...  now you have a decent idea what the house looked like.\n\nSo when an artist of any kind is trying to draw an image based on a description, the first thing they need to do is teach some vocabulary, either verbally or visually.  \"Okay, here are 5 kinds of nose.  Which one is closest.  Now... we call this part the bridge.  Was the bridge higher like this... or lower like that?\"  etc.  \n\nSo the answer to your question is that you don't have the anatomical knowledge to describe your wife's face, which is why you have trouble.  When a witness gives a good and useful description of a subject, it's usually because they were interviewed by someone who DID have the anatomical knowledge required to get a good description out of that witness. ", "Eyewitness testimony is bullshit.\n\nObligatory psych 101 anecdote: guy came in to class claiming to be from the bursar's office, looking for a student. Prof says he isn't here, then goes in to side room to set up a video. On the way out, guy takes prof's phone off of table. Lots of murmuring by class, did that just happen, was that prof's phone, wtf, who was that, etc. Prof says it was, but will call police after class and starts the video. Video is actually a presentation, first slide is about 8 mugshots, and we have to identify the guy who took her phone. Whole scenario was set up by her to show how unreliable memory is, especially for unexpected situations. Hardly anyone got the face right, or details such as clothing color, physical appearance, what fake student he was looking for, etc. Really eye opening considering how much our justice system relies on witnesses.", "Cop here:\n\nGenerally, police will ask for basic descriptors on-scene.  Sex, race, height, weight, clothing, hair, facial hair, etc.\n\nIn the event that you're asked to help with a composite sketch (which is rare and only done in specific circumstances), you'll be put with a professional who will walk you through it.\n\nThese days, it'll probably be a computer program.  They'll ask you for a face shape, and give you several pre-set options.  They'll then ask you what the mouth looks like, and give you different mouths to choose from.\n\nAt the end, you have a portrait built.\n\nIt's not intended to be a 100% accurate depiction- it's intended to be a reference."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr06/eyewitness.aspx"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fa32o", "title": "Could I survive jumping from a spaceship into open space and into an airlock while not wearing a spacesuit?", "selftext": "I had a dream that some friends and I were in some sort of space craft. The craft wasn't able to re-enter the atmosphere or land so I was thinking of boarding the International Space Station. Our ship was small, the cabin only seated about six people and it didn't have an airlock. For the sake of the argument the door opened outward. If we were to open the door would the decompression be too violent for us to survive? would it shoot us out into space? If we made it into the airlock would it be able to pressurize fast enough for us to survive?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fa32o/could_i_survive_jumping_from_a_spaceship_into/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1eeo1m", "c1eeq0e", "c1eexgr", "c1ef47h", "c1ei3ic"], "score": [6, 6, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["[How long can a human survive in outer space?](_URL_0_)", "If the initial decompression was violent, I'd imagine you'd end up with popped lungs and/or ear drums. If you exhaled all your breath before blowing the door, that may be prevented.\n\nI was under the impression the coldness of space is of little concern(relative to the other ways to die) since there is no air or matter to conduct heat away from your body. If you entered sunlight that would be a different story. \n\n", "I read an article a while back (I think on io9) that talked about this. I'm pretty sure it said that if you were to purge your lungs before decompression (like PostalPenguin mentions) you would be in better shape, but you would probably lose consciousness after about ten seconds from brain hemhorraging. I would need to dig up the article, but I'm pretty sure it said that if you were to do it quick and were able to get re-pressurized pretty immediately, you could make it. ", "It worked for Dave.\n\n_URL_0_", "They did this in the movie Sunshine, so sure why not."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.howstuffworks.com/question540.htm"], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQJKBq9g64"], []]}
{"q_id": "5ezowd", "title": "why is it that some pregancies are described as the best overall feeling a woman has ever, and for other women, the worst they have ever felt? why is it great for some and terrible for others?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ezowd/eli5_why_is_it_that_some_pregancies_are_described/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dagb26e", "dagb4kg", "dagbmuh", "dagbqzy", "dageu2p", "daggy4e", "dagrjc4"], "score": [9, 17, 31, 15, 8, 3, 2], "text": ["I've never been a pregnant woman, but I've been around two with very different pregnancies. Based on this ridiculous small sample size:\n\nEmotions seem to get ratcheted up. If you're in a good place while pregnant, like you're stable and have few worries and have good support, then everything feels great. If you are worried about things, or lack support, etc then you'll feel it more. Of course, even if you have all those things or don't, your biology may make you more inclined to be happy or sad as well so it's not strictly external factors. \n\nSo for some, pregnancy is a time of enhanced optimism, getting ready for the baby, looking forward to having the baby, etc. For others, it's a time of increased stress. ", "Person A is lying in order to get others to think being pregnant is awesome in order to further the species. Person B is honest. ", "Obnoxious hormones. It was novel to me to see such drastic changes. I liked that I became curvy, but just standing made me short of breath, and sleeping was a struggle. Depending on the hormones, I felt one way or another. It's similar to drinking in that you have happy drunks and angry drunks, and it's usually based on how they felt before they started drinking. ", "Not an expert, but I have some experience here. My wife has been pregnant twice. The first time she felt really good, the second time was hell for 9 months. The biggest difference for her was her lifestyle before getting pregnant. \n\nBefore pregnancy 1, we were living in a warm climate; hiking, biking, and camping often. She was in great shape and handled the pregnancy well.\n\nAfter the first baby we moved to the city so I could get a better job. That change plus the addition of a child meant we were much less active. When she got pregnant again 2 years later, she wasn't in as good a shape as she was before, and she had a harder time with the pregnancy. \n\nNot sure if this info is relevant to your situation/question, but my wife and I felt it played a big part in her experience.", "One thing I've noticed as a labor nurse is that women who have gone to classes or educated themselves about the process tend to have more enjoyable pregancies. If nothing else, it seems like the less-prepared moms find everything stressful or scary (any twinge or ache or pain or symptom in general), whereas prepared moms understand what are normal things to feel during a pregnancy.\n\nThen of course you have things like HG (intractable nausea and vomiting, aka the Princess Kate disease) or PUPPs (ridiculous itching) which would make any happy, prepared pregnancy miserable.", "I would say a lot of it has to do with your state of mind. \n\nLast year was my first pregnancy, and i carried twins. I never had morning sickness, never had bad cramps until 4 weeks before delivery when they were just too big to flip around proper. Honestly the only time i felt like i had an issue was when i was not comfortable with the obgyn. He just didn't have the bed side manner i expected of the person to deliver my babies. I had 2 appointments with him, then switched. I was much happier and more comfortable with the woman i got, and any discomfort i felt went away. \nI also refused to let people tell me about their negative pregnancy. I stopped them in their tracks and said i only wanted to hear it if it was positive, that their horrible pregnancy experience is not mine. ", "I think it depends on a number of factors: genetics, weight, pre existing conditions, mental Illness, etc- and of course, how your body reacts to hormones. Every person and every baby is different and thus some people have fantastic pregnancies and others have challenging ones- this is coming from a woman who is at 34 weeks of her first pregnancy; I have had a lot of difficulties despite being generally healthy, so I have tried to research this extensively. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6h8cqd", "title": "how come low unemployment rates don't directly translate into higher wages?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h8cqd/eli5_how_come_low_unemployment_rates_dont/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diwan0s", "diwcsgr", "diwdm61", "diwej87", "diwlw6l", "diwug5p"], "score": [7, 3, 35, 4, 11, 3], "text": ["There was some extra padding in the labor force from the recession. The \"normal\" unemployment rate that the newspapers report, called U3, measures \"is everyone who is looking for a job able to find one\", rather than \"is everyone who wants a job able to find one\". In a lot of cases, this measure is a good yardstick for how the economy is doing. But during the recession, a lot of people gave up on job search or accepted part time work when they wanted full time. If you look at the broader measure of unemployment, which includes these people, we're [just now](_URL_0_) getting back to where we were in 2006. So these people re-entering employment is expanding the labor pool.", "It does sometimes but you either have to have basically 100% employment or a skill shortage meaning you have to pay more to attract people away from other jobs.  \n\n'Low unemployment' still has plenty of scope for there to be more people than available jobs. ", "Because wages are also a signaling mechanism.\n\nIf you operate a business, you've got employees at all levels and you pay those employees enough to keep them happy enough that they don't leave.\n\nThat means what you pay them is strongly related to their expectations.  People expect to be paid around the industry standard for their profession.  They expect to be paid in accordance to their years of service/experience.  They expect to be paid based on their level in the company.  They also expect to be paid more than they were in the past.\n\nIf you violate these expectations, you'll end up with workers leaving - even if their pay is competitive in the market.\n\nSo let's say you've got a line of widget wranglers.  You pay all of them $10/hour.  Unemployment drops and you simply can't find new widget wranglers to replace the ones who retire or drop out of the workforce at $10/hour.  So you offer $12/hour to new hires.\n\nHow do you think that makes your existing employees feel once they find out?  Probably pretty angry.\n\nSo before you can offer $12/hour to new widget wranglers, you've got to give all your *old* widget wranglers $12/hour.  Which means giving a raise to all their supervisor so they're not being paid less than their subordinates - which means giving a raise to all *their* supervisors, etc.\n\nNow you've give a company-wide raise to everyone just so you can hire a few widget-wranglers.  Suddenly a recession occurs.  Now you've got a massive payroll you can't afford.  But you can't simply cut wages - your employees would feel insulted and leave.  So you're losing money hand over foot simply because you needed a very junior level of employee.\n\nThe alternative?  You could have simply not hired that extra widget wrangler at $12/hour and waited it out until you found someone willing to accept $10/hour.\n\nThe latter strategy is almost always the more sensible one.", "It takes time for the system to adjust -- employers don't simply give a raise because unemployment drops below 5%.\n\nWhen they realize they are losing too many employees to other jobs and they want to retain workers, they will begin to raise wages to keep them happy and employed at their present job -- it's cheaper for a warehouse to pay an extra $1/hour than have to train/onboard new employees to fill half your positions. But even so, it's likely don't at the end of a quater or fiscal year, or when they can adjust a budget to compensate for the new labor costs.\n\nSimilarly, when companies hire new positions, they'll raise the wage they offer when they see they aren't getting candidates or ones that are qualified. If you're hiring a marketing manager and offering $50k but not seeing the quality of candidate you need, then you start offering $55k to try and get better candidates.", "Wages are \"sticky\" - the don't immediately react in response to changing market conditions. When unemployment is high, people don't want to take a pay cut. So a boss isn't likely to say \"things have slowed down, so you all get a pay cut, and I'll raise them when things go well.\"  The boss is more likely to let one person go or institute a hiring freeze. \n\nSame when unemployment is down.  The boss doesn't say \"everyone gets a raise so I can ensure your retention in this tight job market.\" The boss thinks \"they are working for me now at this wage, I'll just keep them at it.\" They will increase wages as a last resort - only if it proves necessary to retain or attract workers. ", "With high unemployment rates, you have a lot more people all looking for the one job you have to offer so you don't necessarily have to offer high wages. If someone does not want your job that pays minimum wage, there are 100 more people who will.\n\nConversely, if you have only 2 people interested in the one job you have to offer but neither one is willing to accept minimum wage then you need to raise the pay if you want that position filled."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5a8vh9", "title": "what is eczema and why is it only in small areas of skin only? why do only certain people get it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a8vh9/eli5_what_is_eczema_and_why_is_it_only_in_small/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9emta6", "d9enkor", "d9et6s0", "d9etdc3", "d9ev4ju", "d9ey9a3", "d9eyod5", "d9ezn26", "d9fht6t"], "score": [6, 62, 10, 3, 4, 145, 3, 3, 2], "text": ["I recommend checking out the info available on the National Eczema Association's web page. There are many types of eczema and different treatments. _URL_0_", "The tendency to have eczema goes along with a tendency to have allergies and asthma as well. If you don't have all three of the triad, you're lucky. Eczema tends run in families and is likely to come and go throughout your lifetime. During early childhood, the rashes show up often on the insides of the elbows and the back of the knees. They can be on the neck as well. They may return later and affect a different part of the body. Hands and feet are another common location for rashes. I was told that it is actually a dry skin condition, so moisturizing with good stuff like Eucerin and Cetafil lotion can help. In my experience, I stopped having eczema symptoms after my mid 20s. They problem was terrible with my fingers during my time in food service age 18-20, but later, it went away and I haven't been bothered by it for many years. I have severe allergies though that have gotten worse over the years including bouts of angioedema (swelling). ", "The short answer is, it's autoimmune in nature but no one knows much about it other than that there's some genetic element that isn't understood. Or in other words, the body is fighting itself and no one knows why. \n\nI have \"atypical\" eczema: it's not associated with allergens, not associated with asthma, and doesn't itch. For added confusion, it usually improves on exposure to salt water. ", "Eczema is causes by a skin barrier defect which allows micro-organisms to infect and inflame the skin. But it's a problem that cascades from from initial gut problems and food allergies which promote inflammation and immune reactions.\n\nEczema breakouts tend to occur where the lymph nodes are concentrated.\n\n_URL_0_", "If you're interested in learning more, check out /r/eczema it's a community of people who deal with eczema every day. Also National Eczema Association", "I have eczema and my husband is a dermatologist. I have made him explain eczema to me multiple times. This is what I have learned. Eczema (atopic dermatitis) is a skin barrier function problem. The skin is supposed to keep stuff out- think of a slice of cheddar cheese. People withe eczema are born with skin like Swiss cheese. Stuff gets in more easily and moisture gets out more easily than normal skin. Because things get into the skin, the immune system responds to them as foreign objects- you get inflammation that makes you itch. You scratch the itchy spot and you get more skin breakdown from the trauma. Often the eczema patches are areas of friction- elbows and knees. Eczema treatments revolve around moisturizing to add a layer of protection from allergens getting in. Or topical steroids that decrease inflammation. I get UVB phototherapy. It kills immune system cells (lymphocytes) in the skin surface. The allergens still get into my skin but I have less lymphocytes to catch the allergens and cause inflammation which decreases the amount of itching that I have. The only way to permanently cure eczema would be to permanently improve skin barrier function. Since it is a genetic problem, some researchers are working on gene therapy trials that would change the skin cells to work correctly. The reason many childhood eczema sufferers improve is that skin naturally thickens as you become an adult and it overwhelms the problem. Some people aren't so lucky. Also, people with eczema are more likely to have asthma (allergens get into the skin first and you develop an immune sensitization to the allergen. When you breathe in the same allergen your body sees it as something to fight so you get inflammation and bronchorestriction in the lungs - this is asthma). If you could fix the skin at birth, you would not get the allergens getting into the skin. There would be no inflammation and no itch. We can't do that yet do we target inflammation with immune suppressing drugs like tacrolimus or topical steroids. Moisturizer helps too by improving skin barrier. Right now I have eczema on my eyelids (thin skin), left wrist (friction from watch), hands (loss of natural oils from washing my hands all of the time), both inner elbows and back of knees (areas of friction) and armpits (from clothes rubbing against my skin). ", "I have chronic eczema all over my body and have been told the skin is extra dry and sensitive. Since it's hereditary (or so I've been told) my family concluded that I got it from my dad, who has psoriasis. I use prescription meds which include strong cortizon. I also use fragrance free shower products. Anything else result in breakouts. My skin reactions can range from getting rashes on hands and feet during the summer, scratching my face or body till it bleeds, getting big red spots on my arms covered in a liquid fluid in the winter, to just simply scratching any place until it turns red. I scratch all through the day and usually use something like a guitar pic :)", "Eczema (technically called atopic dermatitis) is basically having skin that's really reactive to all sorts of irritations. Things that most people don't even notice will result in a rash when people with eczema are exposed to them. So I get patchy rashes when the air is dry or if I wear wet clothes for too long. My sister gets rashes when she wears wool or if she's in a house with a cat. Eczema also results in unusually dry skin. I go through 3ish large bottles of Aveeno by myself every winter. ", "Just as an addendum to what other people are saying, it does not only occur in small areas of skin. That's how most people have it, but some people, like myself, basically have it on every inch of the body. It ain't fun. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://nationaleczema.org/eczema/types-of-eczema/"], [], [], ["http://www.skininc.com/skinscience/physiology/16124582.html"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27uwc4", "title": "why does dennis rodman hang out in north korea?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27uwc4/eli5_why_does_dennis_rodman_hang_out_in_north/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci4mgcw", "ci4mh4w", "ci4mkt4", "ci4mxpz", "ci4oahr", "ci4oh8u", "ci4tweo"], "score": [12, 5, 25, 12, 3, 14, 3], "text": ["Cracked out delusional moron that thinks he has found purpose other than being a fucking lunatic, which he ironically still is. ", "He likes the attention ", "Kim Jong Un is a basket ball fan.  Rodman is treated like a king by him.  Basically a free vacation hosted by a nutty dictator.  ", "If you're going to go to Korea you might as well go to best Korea ", "Kippumjo. The pleasure groups.", "Because he is a hundred times smarter than anyone else.\n\nWhat needs to happen with NK is that they need to open up the doors. A little by little. This is something that has to be worked on for a long time. Dennis Rodman has started. He is meeting North Koreans, talking with them, showing them western culture, even talking with Kin Jong-Un.\n\nHe's starting to open the door. Fox News and a lot of other news outlets would have you think he's just a crazy guy that sympathizes with NK. But he is smarter than many.\n\n\"But some news people asked him what he thought about the crimes against humanity that is happening in North Korea, and he said that he didn't know about any of that and that Kim Jong-Un is a good guy!\"\n\nYeah, do you think NK would let him come back if he spoke against the regime? No.\n\nTL;DR He is cracking open the door into North Korea.", "It's attention, he's going to North Korea because it's a spectacle, and  just in case you didn't follow a lot of rodman's hi jinx  here's a pic of him in a wedding dress.\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/search?q=dennis+rodman+wedding+dress&amp;espv=2&amp;tbm=isch&amp;imgil=8wyYWXdNc1RuTM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRx7PZaceHn8HAg5Dkocs4fC4TQGtkwDUNX2AlLdDCd-Q9HXTIZ_g%253B546%253B800%253BSgpNfKJ36xVPFM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fmantisnseamore.wordpress.com%25252F2012%25252F02%25252F05%25252Fmale-wedding-dresses%25252F&amp;source=iu&amp;usg=__6MSIbFplRGBCxT2THGm566U7A78%3D&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=AXKYU6b1BseayATOhoCgBA&amp;ved=0CCUQ9QEwAw&amp;biw=1093&amp;bih=551#facrc=_&amp;imgdii=_&amp;imgrc=8wyYWXdNc1RuTM%253A%3BSgpNfKJ36xVPFM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmantisnseamore.files.wordpress.com%252F2012%252F02%252Frodman.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmantisnseamore.wordpress.com%252F2012%252F02%252F05%252Fmale-wedding-dresses%252F%3B546%3B800"]]}
{"q_id": "172vuz", "title": "The average G-type star shows a variability in energy output of around 4%. Our sun is a typical G-type star, yet its observed variability in our brief historical sample is only 1/40th of this. What range of temperature increase/decrease would this variation have on our climate?", "selftext": "Also, given that we are so worried about changes so far, what is the equivalent to variation in solar output that we have seen over the past few centuries to produce the temperature changes we have seen so far \n\n(not that this is the only explanation, of course, but to have some sort of consistent yardstick)\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/172vuz/the_average_gtype_star_shows_a_variability_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c81qrtp"], "score": [8], "text": ["First, I want to say I question that first claim, as I've only seen it in the past few days on some alarmist blogs.  I believe these two papers contradict that claim:\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nTo answer your question, though, assuming the above claim is true, is beyond our current understanding of Earth.  From [here](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Researchers still aren't sure how small changes in the Sun's output nudge Earth's climate in one direction or another. To find the answer, they need to monitor our climate and keep a finger on the Sun's \"pulse\" for many decades running.\n\nYou could, however, determine the change in effective temperature as a baseline number, but this disregards climatological effects, which would surely play a large role.\n\nThe effective temperature is the calculated temperature of a planet based on it's distance from the sun, solar output, and the albedo (refelctiveness) of the planet.  This neglects atmospheric effects.\n\nIf the solar constant were increased by 2% (from the current value of 1366 W/m^2), it would raise the effective temperature of Earth by 1.26 \u00b0C (2.3 \u00b0F), and if it were lower by 2%, it would lower the effective temperature of Earth by about the same amount.\n\n**TL;DR: The answer is not precisely known, since the global climate is so complicated, but +/- 2% change in solar output would cause at least +/- 1.3 \u00b0 C temperature change as a result of energy balance alone.**\n\nEdit: Also, further reading: _URL_1_\n\n_URL_3_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/17jan_solcon/", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002EO000336/abstract", "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.40.2379&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf", "http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm", "http://kepler.nasa.gov/files/mws/batalha.stellvar.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "13jscm", "title": "What would happen if water didn't expand when frozen but instead contracted in its solid state? Would life have been possible?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13jscm/what_would_happen_if_water_didnt_expand_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c74lonr"], "score": [2], "text": ["I think this question would work well in /r/AskScienceDiscussion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2cfrvb", "title": "What happened to Roman Emperor Valerian after he was captured by the Persians in 260 AD? Was there a precedent for how to treat leaders in this situation?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cfrvb/what_happened_to_roman_emperor_valerian_after_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjffho6"], "score": [58], "text": ["Keeping in mind that Valerian's troops were hit hard by plague in 260, and despite his recent victory near Edessa, Valerian I decided to try his hand at some good old fashion negotiation. It didn't work out that well for him.\n\nValerian I, along with his top men, were captured by the Sassanian King Shapur I, somewhere between April and July of 260. Shapur had no intention of negotiating, and took Valerian I captive. \n\nNow, on to what happened to him after he was captured. Things get a little sketchy as far as when he died, but we do have some accounts as to what happened to him while in captivity, and it isn't pretty.\n\nValerian I was used by Shapur, basically, as a living trophy. He is said to have used the aging emperor as a stepping stool when mounting his horse. When not being tortured and humiliated, it is said that he was kept in a small cage.\n\nThe history then goes; after his death his skin was removed, dyed, stuffed and preserved and was kept on display at the Royal Palace for a very long time. It would make for an interesting archeological find!\n\nBriefly, regarding your question as to how emperors or ranking officials were treated when captured, this story is a good example of how it was done during the 3rd century. Valerian I had fought some of the toughest warriors around, and for the most part was very successful. He got a bad rap from later Christian writers, but he deserves much more credit than he has gotten over the centuries. \n\nSource: Coinage and History of the Roman Empire, volume one, David Vagi.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4tlzjl", "title": "what makes up the \"old lady\" smell in perfumes/powdered cosmetics?", "selftext": "We all know that smell. What is it that makes it so distinctively remind us of 'old people' smell? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tlzjl/eli5_what_makes_up_the_old_lady_smell_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ic9jb", "d5idpaw", "d5ieale", "d5ifsyf", "d5ijdvo", "d5ijk2y"], "score": [11, 7, 29, 15, 2, 27], "text": ["Part of the smell is moth balls and preferred perfumes, but a lot of it is chemical changes humans go through as they age which makes older people have a distinct body odor.", "\"Old ladies\" don't actually have that smell naturally. The \"old lady\" smell is just a combination of scents of products that women from a previous generation used more often. Some of those smells we rarely come across anymore except when around a woman from a previous generation who is still using the products that cause that scent.\n\nWhen you come across a scent that reminds you of it, you may instantly think \"old lady\" because that's where you've smelled it before. \n", "I believe it is their attraction to scents based with two choices, either rose water or lilac.  These smells seem to be targeted or coveted to an older audience. Not sure which.  My granma liked rose based. Ugh. ", "Chanel no.5 is often what people think of when they think of \"old lady smell\" in regards to perfume. Like another user said the smell is based on strong, sometimes \"powdery\" smelling floral scents like rose. Rose is the big one. ", "This is going to sound stupid.  There's a certain men's cologne that I smell on  ocassion that has a spicy musky smell. I really like the scent but would feel like an idiot asking a dude what scent he's wearing. Does anybody know what I'm talking about.?  And no its not old spice.", "Oh, I know this one!! I believe what you're thinking of as \"old lady perfume smell\" is from aldehydes, which is a category of compounds that are present in a wide range of perfumes.\n\nThe perfume that popularized aldehydes (though not the first to use them) was the classic Chanel No. 5, released in the early 1920's. At the time, I believe it felt distinctly modern and avant garde to feature a synthetic smell as a prominent note in a lady's perfume, instead of traditionally feminine florals; I'm sure you can imagine how that turned things on their head! This character of perfume was duplicated and riffed on through the 50s and 60s.\n\nBut of course, as with so many fashions, the effect is now dated. Combine the outdated trend with the fact that most of the people still wearing it are probably using very old bottles of the stuff (and perfume does change in character as it ages, never in a good way), you get \"old lady smell.\" \n\nFashion is cyclical, though, so don't be surprised if aldehyde-based perfumes start to get popular again, though I predict they will be far more subtle and nuanced this time around."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2x103h", "title": "How accurate is the HBO series Deadwood, about a gold-mining camp in South Dakota in the 1870s?", "selftext": "I'm just starting to watch Deadwood, and I'm really enjoying it.  I'd be interested to hear informed opinions about the realism of the show.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2x103h/how_accurate_is_the_hbo_series_deadwood_about_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cowfovn"], "score": [43], "text": ["As to language, there is a great little article [here](_URL_0_) that analyzes the use of languages (and profanity in particular). And the summation is that he's at least some people in a town like Deadwood would have sworn like that. The article does however highlight that the language has been modernized. There would have been a lot more blasphemy related profanity in a real 1890s town. And it would have been considered more serious. Today we view sex related words like cunt and fuck as the higher end of profanity... back then apparently goddamned and the like would have replaced these. We just don't take blasphemy as serious today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2428&amp;context=greatplainsquarterly"]]}
{"q_id": "2mog5u", "title": "what happens if a parking ticket is lost/destroyed before the owner is aware of the ticket, and it goes unpaid?", "selftext": "I've always been curious. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mog5u/eli5_what_happens_if_a_parking_ticket_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm62wml", "cm63doh", "cm649if", "cm6aqw9", "cm6c53x", "cm6pyoc"], "score": [14, 3, 2, 11, 11, 2], "text": ["In my city you also get something by mail to the registered address on the car.   Failure to pay increases the fine and eventually it goes to collections.  For us,  parking citations are a civil violation and there's no possibility of criminal prosecution.", "in my case a bench warrant was issued (failure to appear).  I got pulled over in another state and they let me know about it.  When I called the court they told me court cost and a fine to take care of it.  mailed it in, all taken care off.", "In the UK you will get a reminder in the post, if you don't pay you will be summoned to court. ", "This happened to me. I got a letter a month later about an overdue parking ticket, now with an additional fee. I tried to explain it to the girl at the window but she was just like \"Well, you gotta pay it.\"", "I'm so glad you asked this, I once swiped a ticket off someone's car.  I was young and dumb.  I always wondered what happened to the poor sap.", "This will depend on where you live. California adds them to your registration renewal. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "58a7t1", "title": "how \"haaaa\" produces warm air, yet \"whoo\" produces cool air from your mouth?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58a7t1/eli5_how_haaaa_produces_warm_air_yet_whoo/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8yohv6", "d8yolt5", "d8ypfdb", "d8ypw84", "d8yus3g", "d8yxext"], "score": [3, 45, 7, 34, 2, 2], "text": ["\"Haaa\" requires you to spread your lips wide and blow gently; that means that warm air from your lungs is moving slowly and so feels warm.\n\n\"Whoo\" requires you to purse your lips, meaning that warm air from your lungs is moving quickly over your lips, which feels cold via the same mechanism that wind feels cooler than the air it's made of.", "The air that exits your mouth is both at the same temperature. However there is a windchill effect. If there is no air movement your skin will heat up the surrounding air and create a warm layer of air around your body. However if there is some draft it will blow away this layer of air and replace it with colder air. The more wind there is the colder it feels. Even though your breath comes from your lungs it is still a bit colder then your skin.", "If you create a jet of fast moving air through stationary air it tends to drag the stationary air along with it, essentially due to friction. This is called entrainment, and the effect is stronger the faster the air jet is moving.\n\nWhen your mouth is open the air coming out will entrain some cold air, but the air which reaches your hand will still be dominated by the warm air from your mouth.\n\nBut when your blow hard through pursed lips the jet is moving a lot faster so it entrains more air, and there is less warm air there to start with, so most of what reaches your hand is colder room air. Although this air is slightly warmer than the air in the room it moving so it is much better at removing heat from your hand both by conduction and evaporation so it feels cold.\n\n\n_URL_0_", "It's more about air speed leaving the mouth and throat then it is about the sounds you are making, we just happen to make the HAAAA sound slower than the whooo sound because the bulk of the sound haaaa is at the H-A connnection but most of the whooo sound is the o-o connection.\n\nTry saying haaaaa very quickly with a quicker breath of air. Same sound, different temperature.\nThe same works for saying whooo slowly with a start from the diaphragm and full outblow.", "Anytime your exhale, you produce heat. Take your finger and make the WHPO sound, and feel the air coming from your mouth (put your finger really close and blow hard.)\n\nThe air is warm because of the CO2 and H2O from energy production. The cold air you normally feel is the rapid air pushing the air in front forward.", "I can answer this, at least in part.\n\nFirst off, when you purse your lips and blow, you're limiting the amount of air you can expel at once. When you say HAAA you can expel your entire lung capacity in a second or two, whereas with WHOO it takes a bit longer depending on how tight you purse your lips. \n\nThis air has the same temperature either way, so when you WHOO you put out less energy per second than when you HAAA. \n\nThis isn't the whole explanation, though. Put your finger really close to your lips and WHOO. Feels warm, right?\n\nWhen you WHOO, the air stream is small. That stream has just been forced through a small opening and is ready to expand.\n\nDue to something called the [Joule-Thomson Effect](_URL_0_), that stream of non-ideal gas cools as it expands. It only cools to room temperature because our \"valve\" in this case isn't well-insulated, so now you have a room-temperature stream of air moving past your hand.\n\nAnd here's where the wind-chill factor mentioned by some other commenters comes in. That stream of room-temperature air absorbs energy from your skin and keeps going, making your hand feel \"cool\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/experiments/exp/why-is-your-breath-sometimes-warm-and-sometimes-cold/"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule%E2%80%93Thomson_effect"]]}
{"q_id": "1f2pgy", "title": "the islam situation in europe.", "selftext": "Those people on /r/worldnews seem really mad.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f2pgy/eli5_the_islam_situation_in_europe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca682ee", "ca68bpk", "ca6a71b", "ca6a7d1", "ca6a7t5", "ca6am1h", "ca6aq6u", "ca6cwy3", "ca6mgj5"], "score": [67, 30, 58, 15, 32, 12, 4, 5, 2], "text": ["Muslim immigrants to Europe aren't really assimilating very well. This makes a lot of native Europeans scared; they think that Muslims are going to stage some sort of cultural takeover.", "Muslims, an extraordinarily large and diverse group of people, have been migrating to Europe, and a combination of the entirely normal problems that people have when two different cultures collide and post-9/11 islamophobia has lead to a growing fear among some that Muslim extremism will be the collapse of the Western World.\n\nI'm sure that when Catholic Irish or Italians migrated to the US they were treated with similar hate and forced into their own insular societies, and people would claim the 'Catholic tide' was going to overwhelm Protestantism.\n\nPersonally, I don't think it's anything to be too worried about.  /r/worldnews really is a cesspool - don't go there for an objective opinion on Islam in Europe.", "Sikhs/Hindus/Poles/Chinese and almost all other immigrants all make an effort to integrate into the society they *chose* to move to and live in.\n\nA large number of Muslims don't, and want special laws and special treatment which rubs people the wrong way. Especially considering Islam has a certain \"Reputation\" in the west nowadays as violent  &  hate preaching.\n\nOversimplified, but this is ELI5.", "Okay, many people seem to forget that there is also a political perspective in there.\n\nFrom what I can tell about Germany, immigrants are usually alienated by putting them somewhere in the outskirts and leaving them to themselves. They get little financial support but that's about it. \"Integrating\" isn't usually easy if you don't even get the chance to visit a language course as they can't pay for them themselves and the government doesn't really seem to care.\n\nOnce the immigrants move into their new homes they are usually surrounded with other immigrants. They know little or nothing about the life in Europe and usually stick to the people with a similar cultural background and who speak a language they can communicate in.\n\nSo the Muslims \"not willing to integrate\" don't even get a real chance and often Germans don't even want them to integrate because they don't want to have to deal with \"foreigners\" anyway. \nIn Germany we even have something called \"Residenzpflicht\" for some immigrants which means that they are only allowed to move in a certain radius and if they leave that radius they commit a criminal offense. So even if they tried to get to know their new country they can't even get outside the town they live in.\n\nSo all this then leads to districts where Muslim immigrants are kept to themselves and build up their own habitat, including things like Mosques. Of course they have it harder to learn the language because they don't really need to know German when they are surrounded by people who all speak Turkish or Arabic or some sort of mix between those two and German.\n\nIt is basically a vicious circle for them because the conditions they have to live in are very poor and there are very few jobs and the educational system fails entirely. Getting out of those \"Ghettos\" isn't easy as well because they face institutionalized racism (from police and other government agencies to landlords who won't rent their apartments to immigrants) pretty much everywhere and just don't get the money to get out of these conditions.\n\nThat of course leads to problems like criminality, drugs, prostitution etc. And although many people have been put in those situations politics and media did a great job making THEM the scapegoats. So what you now have is major parts of Europe blaming most of the national problems on Muslims and their unwillingness to adapt to a living in Europe. And since it is a popularizing issue some political parties of course jump the bandwagon more or less successfully (in the Netherlands for example [Geert Wilders](_URL_0_) right-wing populist party PVV).\n\nWhat happens now is simply immigrants being fed up with their situation, tired of being treated as second class citizens  and not been given a chance that their frustration can turn into violence. People too long didn't give a shit about those people's problems and needs and now they wonder that the immigrants are frustrated and won't adapt.\n\nAlso, many people here don't seem to understand that \"integration\" is a reciprocal act and not just \"them\" living how \"we\" want them to. People are only fine with foreign culture if it benefits them directly (like Kebab houses, cheap kiosks or water pipes) but if they don't benefit they go crazy and think that the Muslims want to turn their country into a sharia state and everything that has got to to with Islam seems an imminent threat.\n\nOf course there are plenty more aspects but I think this should suffice for now. I just wanted to give you another perspective away from Muslim demonising. ", "If I can just speak for the UK here, a guy killed a soldier in London the last week, killed him on a busy London street using a knife and a machete. He then, hands and knives covered in blood went over to a news camera and tries to justify why he had done. He apologised women had to see what they had seen but that 'women in our lands have to seen the same'. \n\nHe went on to tell us to get rid of our government and such. This was broadcast on TV. \n\nIt obviously got to a lot of people. As someone who still has a fair few college and high school aged friends I have noticed a massive increase in racist and derogatory comments towards Muslims and 'foreigners'. I will not quite but the things some people are posting are actually quite scary.\n\nAnyway this is escalating. The EDL (English defence league) is staging demonstrations and marches as well as, I believe in an unrelated way, the BNP (British national party) are too.\n\nIn the news today, or yesterday it has been reported of people attacking mosques and helplines for victims of racial or religion based abuse have had a massive increase in incidents.\n\nThere have been claims (of which I cannot find the source again) by the EDL I believe that there is a risk of a predicted civil war between different cultures breaking out over this.\n\nMy personal opinion is that the problems in the UK are all down to a lot of people getting massively confused with Muslims and extremists. There's a lot of tension, anger and very inappropriate comments being made towards people who have had nothing to do with the murder.\n\nThere's always been a lot of anger towards illegal immigrants and people again very wrongly assume just because someone is of a different descent, color or otherwise that they 'shouldn't be here'. \n\nThe guy who appeared on national tv covered in blood made his claims with a thick south London accent. He is I believe not only legally allowed to be here but has a British passport.\n\nAgain people are picking Islam, pointing the finger and just blaming everything and anything on a lot of innocent people.\n\nIt's disgusting and it needs to stop, but a lot of people are so riled up they won't even listen to anyone but themselves.", "So this opinion of mine may or may not be relevant--I'll let Reddit decide--but here goes: in NY we have this place called [Kiryas Joel, an insular Hasidic Jew community.](_URL_0_) I work in construction, and very often have to do work for the Hasidics who live in this community because they're ALWAYS expanding. Whenever I go into KJ I pass the same sign (I should take a pic of it one day) and it explains that men who visit KJ should not wear shorts, tees, and that KJ maintains gender separation. Now they don't really say anything to a worker like myself because I'd just laugh at them and get back to swinging a hammer, but the point is the law is there and in their community they wholly abide by it. \n\nAnyway, the point I'm trying to make is this: for all the wackiness that KJ has going for it (can't work past 1PM on Friday, can't work there Saturday even though I'm not Jewish) it still manages to be a community that isn't destroying the fabric of the neighboring towns. Yeah, its customs are definitely foreign, its omnipresent apartments with TERRIBLE framing are ugly but life goes on. And if we're to assume the majority of Muslims are just normal people, I'd expect that to be the same too. Now I know people are going to say Sharia law is fundamentally disenfranchising women--I can't argue this because I know very little about it--but there can still be common ground when allowing these minority groups in, just as we here in NY have done. ", "Sometimes the upvote/downvote comment ranking system is very good for sorting truth from ignorance, while other times it acts as a sort of \"filter bubble\" where the same ideas get promoted and dissenting ideas hidden. \n\nI suspect r/worldnews has fallen victim to the filter bubble effect and this is why we see a disproportionate amount of news about rapes in India and problems with Islam in Europe, etc.\n\nPersonally I have unsubscribed from r/worldnews, but haven't really found a good alternative subreddit yet.", "I heard this summary:\n\nMuslims leave stirct, oppressive middle eastern countries to find a better life. End up making their neighborhoods as strict and oppressive as the lands they left.\n\nI'm not sure how entirely accurate it is, but at a glance it seems to be the popular opinion.\n", "You're probably hearing a very reactionary viewpoint. The majority of Muslims integrate very well here in the U.K. Put it this way: my M.P (Member of Parliament \u2014 think like a State Representative on a small scale) is a Muslim woman. There are Muslims of both genders in all professional roles, and there is rarely any problem whatever.\n\nThere is a significant minority portion, though, who would like to see their version of Sharia Law respected in the UK, and an extremely small portion who resort to violence to try to shake up the country.\n\nOn the other hand, the right wing press and some right to far-right parties and groups (anyone in the U.K will know exactly who I'm talking about!) seem to blow the situation out of proportional, probably a lot like the right wing press in the U.S.\n\nThe wider Muslim community has condemned the recent murder (the killer said \u2018Allahu Akbar!\u2019 after committing the murder), both online and in real-life demonstrations in the streets.\n\nThat said, there are some areas which are considered high threat for Islamist terrorism, and some towns like Luton with significant communities with active Sharia Law advocates and \u2018radical\u2019 clerics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel,_New_York"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5johuj", "title": "Would an object dropped straight down from a geosynchronous orbit land directly under the point from which it was dropped?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5johuj/would_an_object_dropped_straight_down_from_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbhufot", "dbhuk93", "dbhvp2d", "dbi659p", "dbicy3t"], "score": [22, 2, 16, 2, 4], "text": ["An object in orbit is already in freefall. If you \"dropped\" something from it in the usual sense, it would orbit right next to the first object.\n\nTo get something to \"drop\" the way you're thinking, you would need to shoot it backward from the original object. Where it lands would depend on how fast you shot it out the back. ", "If you're in any orbit and drop an object it will just continue to orbit. If you throw it towards the earth the object will end up in a slightly different orbit. If you launched it with enough velocity towards the earth that it impacts the earth, where it landed would depend on a number of factors, but unlikely in the spot directly below you. ", "No. The object would just orbit at geosynchronous height. For many more details and mathematical derivations, you can read [my post here](_URL_1_). Here is a copy-paste if you don't feel like clicking. (See the sidebar of /r/math to render LaTeX equations in your browser.)\n\n---\n\nYou would simply orbit in a geosynchronous orbit about Earth.\n\nA more interesting question though is what would happen if you stepped off at some other height. Suppose this mysterious space elevator were some structure fixed to Earth, so that the entire elevator is rotating with the Earth. A \"real\" [space elevator](_URL_0_) is not actually a fixed structure, but a cable attached to Earth, with a counterweight at the other end. So the cable leans and sways with the wind, and more important, is affected by Coriolis forces. In the analysis that follows, I am assuming that Earth is perfectly spherical and that the elevator is a fixed, rigid structure that does not sway or lean. It's just a hypothetical device that juts out of the Earth and lets you exit at any desired height.\n\nSince the elevator is rigid, the entire structure has a uniform angular speed, fixed at `[; \\omega = 2\\pi/T ;]` where the period `[; T ;]` is 1 day. Now, by Kepler's third law, we know that the radius of a geosynchronous orbit is related to the angular speed by `[; r_{geo}^3 = GM/\\omega^2 ;]`.\n\nSuppose you step off the elevator at a height `[; h ;]` (as measured from the center of Earth). You will end up in orbit, but let's assume for now that it is a bound orbit (i.e., a circle or ellipse). Your orbit has a semimajor axis given by\n\n`[; a = -\\frac{GMm}{2E} ;]`\n\nand a semiminor axis given by\n\n`[; b = \\frac{L}{\\sqrt{-2mE}} ;]`\n\nwhere `[; E ;]` is your (conserved) energy `[; L ;]` is your (conserved) angular momentum. I am also assuming, obviously, that your mass is much smaller than that of Earth. At the moment you step off the elevator, your energy and angular momentum are given by\n\n`[; E = \\frac{1}{2}mv^2-\\frac{GMm}{h} ;]`\n\n`[; L = mh^2\\omega ;]`\n\nYour speed is given by the formula\n\n`[; v^2 = \\dot{r}^2+r^2\\dot{\\theta}^2 ;]`\n\nwhere dots refer to time derivatives. We are assuming that you simply step off the elevator, and that you do not jump off. (We will return to that part later.) Stepping off means that your radial velocity is initially zero. So we have `[; r = h ;]` and `[; \\dot{r} = 0 ;]` initially. Now let's measure your step-off height as a fraction of the geosynchronous orbit. So define the dimensionless parameter\n\n`[; \\lambda = \\frac{h}{r_{geo}} ;]`\n\nNow before we do anything, we can combine the equations with energy to get\n\n`[; -\\frac{GMm}{2a} = \\frac{1}{2}m(h\\omega)^2-\\frac{GMm}{h} ;]`\n\nThen eliminate `[; \\omega ;]` in favor of `[; L ;]`, which itself can be expressed in terms of the semiaxes. After a bit of algebra, the result is the following equation.\n\n`[; h^2-2ah+b^2 = 0 ;]`\n\nThis is a quadratic equation with solutions\n\n`[; h = a\\pm\\sqrt{a^2-b^2} ;]`\n\nThe eccentricity of an ellipse is a number between 0 and 1 that describes how much the ellipse deviates from being a circle, with eccentricity of 0 corresponding to a perfect circle. It is given by\n\n`[; \\epsilon = \\sqrt{1-(b/a)^2} ;]`\n\nSo our solutions for `[; h ;]` can be written in the more illuminating form\n\n`[; h = a(1\\pm\\epsilon) ;]`\n\nWhat does this say? This equation says exactly that your height `[; h ;]` is the apogee (plus sign) or perigee (minus sign) of your orbit. The apogee is the point on your orbit farthest from Earth, and the perigee is the point closest to Earth. This is pretty interesting. If you simply step off at any height, you are automatically in an orbit at either apogee or perigee. How do you know if it is apogee or perigee? Simple. If you step off lower than geosychronous height, it is apogee. If you step off higher than geosynchronous height, it is perigee. In the general case of jumping off (up or down) and not simply stepping off, you initially give yourself some radial velocity. So although you are still on an orbit with the semiaxes in those formulas, your jumpoff height is just some general point on the orbit, not equal to apogee or perigee.\n\nNow let's return to the general equations, where we are measuring height in units of geosynchronous height. We can combine all of these equations to get the following expressions for the semi-axes of your elliptical orbit:\n\n`[; a = h \\left(\\frac{1}{2-\\lambda^3}\\right) ;]`\n\n`[; b = h \\left(\\frac{\\lambda^3}{2-\\lambda^3}\\right)^{1/2} ;]`\n\nYou can verify explicitly for yourself that `[; a = b ;]` (i.e., your orbit is circular) if and only if `[; \\lambda = 1 ;]` (i.e., you step off right at the geosynchronous radius). You can also verify that `[; a \\geq b ;]` for all values of `[; \\lambda ;]`, as a sanity check on our calculations. Indeed, the eccentricity of your orbit is\n\n`[; \\epsilon = \\sqrt{1-(b/a)^2} = |\\lambda^3-1| ;]`\n\nAlso note that the actual value of `[; \\omega ;]` does not really matter; these formulas hold for any planet. We have removed all scaling by defining everything in terms of the natural scaling given by the geosynchronous height, so this makes sense. (Of course, the geosynchronous height differs for each planet.)\n\nNow let's go back to the assumption of the bound orbit. You should notice that `[; a ;]` becomes infinite if `[; \\lambda = 2^{1/3}\\approx 1.26 ;]`. At this stepoff height, your total energy is actually `[; E = 0 ;]`, which means that your motion is not bounded; it is parabolic. This critical value of `[; \\lambda ;]`could also be derived by simply computing the height that corresponds to Earth's escape velocity. The critical height occurs at about [53,220 km](_URL_2_) from Earth's center.  If your stepoff height is even higher, then your energy is higher, and your orbit is still unbounded, but hyperbolic. What went wrong with the equations exactly? Well, they are derived under the assumption of a bound orbit. So beyond `[; \\lambda = 2^{1/3} ;]`, the equations are just not true anyway.\n\nSo, in summary, if you step off too high, you just end up floating away from Earth, never to return. (Well, the analysis of your motion just gets more complicated, since you would still be in a bound orbit about the Sun. But for the analysis here, we were assuming your motion was dominated by Earth's gravity.) (In reality, the atmosphere will also apply a drag force on you, thus lowering your tangential speed at a given radius. So you will drop to a lower orbit. Your orbit will continue to decay unless you accelerate yourself. Also, in reality, this space elevator doesn't really exist. But it's fun to think about anyway.)\n\nThere is also a practical lower limit to your stepoff height. There exists a stepoff height such that your orbit will just barely graze the surface of the Earth. How do we find this lower critical height? Remember that if you step off below geosynchronous height, then you are at apogee. So the condition for your orbit to just avoid not colliding with Earth is that perigee is at a height equal to Earth's radius.\n\n`[; r_{Earth} = r_{perigee} = a(1-\\epsilon) = h\\left(\\frac{\\lambda^3}{2-\\lambda^3}\\right) ;]`\n\nThis equation is equivalent to\n\n`[; \\lambda^4-k\\left(2-\\lambda^3\\right) = 0 ;]`\n\nwhere `[; k = r_{Earth}/r_{geo} \\approx 0.1507 ;]`. The approximate solution to this equation is `[; \\lambda \\approx 0.706 ;]`, which corresponds to a height of about [29,820 km](_URL_3_). If your stepoff height is lower, your orbit will eventually collide with Earth and you will come crashing down in a blaze of glory.\n\n**edit:** Fixed up some typos and some language. I also forgot another interesting part: your period, the time it takes for you to complete an orbit. Again, assuming your mass is negligible compared to that of Earth (why would it not be though?), Kepler's third law gives us the answer. So\n\n`[; \\tau^2 = \\frac{4\\pi^2a^3}{GM} = \\frac{4\\pi^2}{GM}\\cdot\\frac{h^3}{(2-\\lambda^3)^3} ;]`\n\nIf we express the period `[; \\tau ;]` in terms of the geosynchronous period (which is, of course, 1 day), we get\n\n`[; \\tau = \\tau_{geo}\\left(\\frac{\\lambda^3}{2-\\lambda^3}\\right)^{1/2} ;]`\n\nYou can verify for yourself that `[; \\tau = \\tau_{geo} ;]` if and only if `[; \\lambda = 1 ;]` (i.e., if you step off at geosynchronous height. Otherwise, your period is longer or shorter, depending, respectively, on whether your stepoff height is higher or lower than geosynchronous height.", "If by 'dropped' you mean all it's forward momentum were to be cancelled, it would begin falling straight towards the planet. Geo orbit implies the planet has enough rotation that you can orbit it within it's gravity well, so if you stop moving forward, the planet will continue to rotate under you while you fall. I could demonstrate this in KSP fairly easily if I could find a way to record it :)", "Other comments have addressed what would happen if you \"drop\" something from a geosynchronous orbit - it would just stay right with you in the same orbit (as it would for any other orbit), assuming you just let it go with no relative velocity to the parent body (and neglecting differences in distance).\n\nWhat if you were at a geosynchronous *altitude* above the equator, but stationary while the Earth rotates around you, and dropped an object? If you neglect air resistance that it would encounter toward the end of the trip, how long would it take to fall to the surface, and what would the Earth do beneath you?\n\nWell, if we assume that the body you're dropping is much less massive than the Earth, and the Earth is a nice, uniform sphere, then the gravitational acceleration is GM/r^(2), where G is the universal gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth, and r is the distance from the center of the Earth. Our gravitational parameter is u = GM = 4 x 10^14 m^(3)/s^(2). We are starting at a distance of r = 42 * 10^6 m from the center of the Earth, and falling to a distance of x = 6.4 * 10^6 m.\n\nRecall that acceleration is the second derivative of position. That gives us the differential equation, d^(2)r/dt^(2) = -u/r^(2). This is not so easy to solve, so I'll just skip to the solution, per _URL_0_, down near the end of that section. The time to fall from height r to height x is\n\nt = r^(3/2) * (arccos(\u221a(x/r)) + \u221a((x/r) * (1 - x/r))) / \u221a(2u)\n\nPlugging in r, x, and u, I get a fall time of 14700 seconds, which is a little over 4 hours. So the Earth is going to rotate underneath you by about 60\u00b0."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator", "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3dgt3b/what_would_happen_if_you_jumped_at_the_top_of_a/ct57y6u/", "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%282*G*%28earth+mass%29%2F%28%282*pi%29%2F%281+day%29%29%5E2%29%5E%281%2F3%29", "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.705958*%28G*%28earth+mass%29*%281+day%29%5E2%2F%284*pi%5E2%29%29%5E%281%2F3%29"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equations_for_a_falling_body#Examples"]]}
{"q_id": "8mnwv5", "title": "how much does a guilty criminal confess for his/her lawyer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mnwv5/eli5_how_much_does_a_guilty_criminal_confess_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzp2y8x", "dzp3lzo", "dzp46zd"], "score": [9, 17, 74], "text": ["You tell the lawyer everything because speech between you and your lawyer is privileged and cannot under nearly every circumstance be used against you. Lieing in court is a good way to end up in jail for perjury. ", "If you want the best possible defense from your lawyer, don't admit your crime to them. It's up to the state to prove you guilty, not your lawyer to prove you innocent. So keep your trap shut.\n\nA defense attorney cannot lie to the court. Even though you are paying them, they are still an officer of the court.", "It depends on the person really. \n\nSome people will admit things and let us do our jobs.\n\nOther think they only need to outsmart their own lawyers and the issues will go away, because they think the prosecution and judge won't care for some reason. A lot of them spend much of the time trying to fool us or convince us, and get upset when we point out obvious flaws in their stories. \n\nMost people will tell a distorted version of the truth, which contains both admissions and twists to make it 'excusable'.  Of course what they think is 'excusable' is often totally different to what the law thinks.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5s7ksf", "title": "why do we use an tiered income tax system, instead of something more precise (like an integral-based tax)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s7ksf/eli5_why_do_we_use_an_tiered_income_tax_system/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddcxszv", "ddcxvtd", "ddcxxr5", "ddd9qae", "dddhgqj", "dddkcou"], "score": [116, 35, 6, 18, 2, 6], "text": ["It's way easier for the average person to do the math if the tax rates are stepwise rather than continuous.  The average person isn't very comfortable with formulas, but can deal with subtraction and multiplication.", "I have a feeling that using a formula to calculate income tax is more complicated and harder to understand amongst the un-educated, which make up a significant portion of a country's population. I know a couple of relatives who cannot grasp the concept of \"x-squared\" but have no problem with the current tax code. Hell, there are even people who don't understand the brackets system and think that accepting a raise will make you poorer. \n\nAnother main reason is that it is hard to find a polynomial curve that fits into what the government wants. Try plotting US's tax system with a parabola, I'm sure you'll end up with very strange coefficients.", "That would be more complicated.  And whether or not it would be theoretically more efficient, that can end up being less efficient in practice due to the complexity of implementing it.\n\nIf every single additional dollar you make changes the tax rate you pay, the accounting calculations become a bit more complicated than if you can simply apply a single arithmetic calculation for everything you make under a threshold you may be nowhere near.\n\nA business can handle that, but just some random person might find it frustrating, easy to screw up, and untrustworthy if they don't understand how a number is arrived at.", "H & R Block, Intuit (who owns TurboTax), etc. actively lobby (i.e. bribe) lawmakers to keep the tax code as confusing as possible because their industry depends on individuals not being able to prepare or file taxes on their own.\n\nImagine if we had a flat tax that was simple and automatic, and based on the income statements that the government already has access to. Why would anyone pay to have their taxes done?\n\nThe system isn't broken, it works exactly as designed. It was just designed to serve them, not us.\n\nThat's not the sole reason, but it's certainly a contributor.", "I think we need new formulas that consider GDP, Cornflation, Home Inflation, Cost of Living and adjust for each region. After all, Fort Wayne Indiana and San Fransisco have different costs of living. \n\nThat said, rich people should pay more. Period. Paying more doesn't stop them from earning it right back and it also doesn't take away their billionaire and millionaire status.", "A very common misconception is that your tax burden immediately jumps up to a higher percentage if your income (AGI) crests into a higher bracket. What actually (currently) happens is that your first $x of income is taxed at the first bracket's percentage, the next $y of income at the next percentage, and so on. For example, if the next bracket is 20% at $86,000 and your AGI was $86,091, only $91 would be taxed at 20%, and the remaining $86,000 is separated into lower rates (e.g. 10% of your first $30,000, plus 15% of $56,000).\n\nIf you were to graph taxes paid against AGI, it would have a slight curve. Against gross income, there would be a \"landing area\" corresponding to the standard exemption.\n\nGraphing percentage paid as tax against income might actually look somewhat like a parabola, depending on the number of brackets and the rates in between.\n\n[add] [Actual tax brackets for 2016](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.irs.com/articles/2016-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions"]]}
{"q_id": "1b0jz0", "title": "the bioshock universe", "selftext": "With Bioshock Infinite coming out I would love it someone could help me understand the chronology and the universe of Bioshock. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b0jz0/eli5_the_bioshock_universe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c92h4dt", "c92haf4", "c92hal1", "c92hc3u", "c92jghm"], "score": [5, 2, 2, 44, 17], "text": ["I couldn't sum it up any better than the [wikipedia link.](_URL_0_) I think this is what you want to know. Besides, the Bioshock games, though they share a common universe, are two separate stories with two separate leads (not counting Bioshock 2 which is still unrelated to Infinite). It seems like what you'll need to know for Bioshock Infinite will be self-contained.", "A:  I don't think Bioshock Infinite is chronologically related to Bioshock 1 and 3.  I think it's a completely different story in a completely different universe.  that said, you should *really* play Bioshock 1 and 2 just because they're great games with some really good writing and characterization. (1 more than 2, but 2 had it's high points)\n\nB: General Overview\n\nBioshock pokes a lot of fun at Ayn Rand, and Atlas Shrugged in particular.  It's set in the 50's, and is about a wealthy industrialist named Andrew Ryan who decides to build a city at the bottom of the ocean in international waters that will be a libertarian/capitalist/objectivist utopia.  What follows is about what one would expect.  It all falls to shit with backstabbing and infighting, but not before discovering both DNA and a way to completely rewrite a person's genetic code (which tends, upon repeated use, to drive people insane), thus giving them what amounts to superpowers.  \n\nAlso it's additive.\n\nSo there are a whole bunch of drug addicted, insane superhumans wandering around this war-torn and crumbling underwater city when you, the player character, shows up and gets caught in the middle of it.\n\n", "The original Bioshock took place in the undersea city of Rapture in the year 1960. Rapture was constructed by the industrialist Andrew Ryan who dreamed of a utopian society separate from the rest of the world. The construction took place in the 1940s and Rapture thrived in the early 1950s. By the arrival of the protagonist in 1960 everything has gone wrong, terribly terribly wrong. \n\nBioshock Infinite takes place in the flying city of Colombia in the year 1912. It is a completely separate story from the original Bioshock, though it takes place in the same broader fictional world, so in some respects can be considered an indirect prequel. ", "I played 1 and 2 so I'll try to explain, here it goes...\n     *MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*\n   Andrew Ryan was a man who believed that there shall be no rulers, only men. This idea led him to build an underwater city where artisans and scientists could live and prosper, advancing like never before, without impedance. The city was named \"Rapture\". It was all good for a time, until the scientists discovered these sea slugs that produced \"Adam\", a psychoactive and mutating drug. It was eventually used to make plasmids which were injections that gave you super human powers and tonics which granted perks. Then, shit went down...way down. \n     \n   They needed a way to recycle the Adam from dead people so they abducted little girls (5-6yo's) and implanted them with a sea slug. They would meander around with large syringes and stab bodies to draw blood. They lived in an ignorant haze and thought the people were \"angels\". People tried to steal the \"Little Sisters\" for their own Adam gain so men were drafted and grafted into large diving suits to follow the sisters and protect them with their lives. They're \"Big Daddies\". \n     \n   Andrew couldn't have children so he had an embryo created. A super criminal stole this, programmed it to grow hyper-fast, leave rapture and grow up, come back, and kill Ryan. You're the embryo. You board a plane and kill the pilot, crashing near the island to enter rapture via bathysphere. You traverse rapture, find all this out, and kill the super criminal and Ryan (by his own request). \n    \n   If you saved all the little sisters, you get the ending where you help them escape and they grow up and have lives and come to you when you grow old and die. If you killed them, you take what you want and leave them there. That's the first game. It's a dystopian first person shooter with a very eerie and dark tone. It's very sea-oriented and is placed in the 50's. \n    \n   In 2, you're a big daddy who used to be a famous diver which was kidnapped and turned into a big daddy after he found rapture(10 years after the first game) You're awakened by something and struggle to survive the city once again. Now, \"(Dr.) Elanor Lamb\" is in charge and has a large cult following. \n     \n   You're an alpha series big daddy so you were bonded with your little sister as an experiment. She and you can't get far away or you die. She can also mentally contact you. She is now grown up and is(and always was) the daughter of lamb. She is helping you find her and you do and blah blah blah fight scene....you two escape and she releases you into the water because you die on the way up.\n     \n   It's heart breaking and I hate watching the ending because of that. You should play 1 and 2 before infinite, seriously. I'm not kidding. You'll have a better experience. You should consult wikipedia for a more detailed recounting of the campaigns.\n\n", "I'm also going to throw things into this answer...\n\nFirst things first, the \"*Shock\" universe is a collection of different games with similar play-styles and stories but, there are not many connections between the games.  Specifically, there are three different settings within the universe, and some common elements introduced by designer Ken Levine once he was on the project.\n\n**System Shock/System Shock 2**\nThese games were the start of it but, I'm not too familiar with them.  They're old PC games from the 90s set in a futuristic cyber-punk universe.  They were first person games with RPG elements so the player could build their character.  In this setting, the player could augment his abilities with OS units and nanites while using melee and ranged weapons to fight against enemies.  The player also gets a set of psionic powers that they can upgrade as well.  These powers are more \"magic\" than \"science\".  Ken Levine first worked on System Shock 2 and he's been the backer of every *Shock game since.\n\n**Bioshock/Bioshock 2**\nThese games were spiritual sequels to the System Shock line.  Nothing was directly related but, gameplay and story elements were common between the two series.  The setting was Rapture, a dystopia built underneath the Atlantic Ocean by Andrew Ryan in the 1950s.  Ryan believed that true freedom meant that people should own their own work, and that they shouldn't be stopped from doing something because of another moral agenda.  Artists shouldn't be censored, researchers shouldn't have to muck about in red-tape to advance their fields through experimentation on humans or animals, etc.  One of the inventions of Rapture were plasmids, which granted magical powers, and were quite addicting.  The player comes in after Rapture has fallen apart and a bunch of junkies have taken over.  Bioshock 2 picks up years later, after the first game's protagonist has left, and they play through another aftermath of Rapture's demise.\n\n**Bioshock Infinite**\nThis is a spiritual successor as well to the System Shock and Bioshock games.  The title is a little misleading, and there may be more story elements of Infinite tied into what is to become Bioshock but, for the most part, the setting is completely separate.  Infinite takes place in Columbia, a floating All American City, in the 1920s.  There are fun magical augments like the predecessor games and the general story elements are going to be the same as the others.  You can play Bioshock Infinite without ever having played any other games in the *Shock series.  There may be some references to the past titles but, nothing story-wise is going to be tied together to the other games.  I would highly suggest playing through all of them though if given the chance (or at least the Bioshocks... I can't really comment on the System Shock games because I've only read about them)\n\nHope this helps and doesn't give too much away.  The main thing I'm trying to get at, I guess, is that Infinite (to my knowledge) isn't related to any of the other games in the series via plot elements.  Nothing you know or don't know about Bioshock 1/2 is going to have an impact on the plot of Infinite (although being familiar with the gameplay elements may be useful)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Plot"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "25moge", "title": "When did the corporate ladder structure we're familiar with today (For example: C level executives - >  Junior executives - >  Vice Presidents - >  Directors - >  Managers - >  Staff) become standard in Western businesses?", "selftext": "Some additional thoughts:   \n- >  Would it be possible for someone in the early 1800's to climb the corporate ladder?    \n- >  Was it possible for a person with humble beginnings to work their way up to the top without starting their own business?   \n\nEdited the format\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25moge/when_did_the_corporate_ladder_structure_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chj04id"], "score": [25], "text": ["Henri Fayol was the first person to create a comprehensive theory about management. In his book, General and Industrial Management, he describes a pyramid hierarchy for management, similarly to what we see in the corporate world today. About the same time, Frederick Taylor published his book The Principles of Scientific Management. These two books laid out the foundation for management of modern corporations and industries."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1j2fkc", "title": "Why do physical relationships tend to have small integer exponents?", "selftext": "Are these values just approximations, where a given phenomenon could be better modeled by a more complex relationship?  For example, could e=mc^2 actually be modeled more accurately e=m^1.02 *c^1.998, or some other such non-integer values?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1j2fkc/why_do_physical_relationships_tend_to_have_small/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbaho61", "cbaio8a", "cbajg3r", "cbaqiyb", "cbatmgg"], "score": [5, 14, 3, 5, 2], "text": ["In rheological studies the models used to relate various fluid properties (i.e. viscosity to strain rate) often leave the exponent to be determined. For example the [Carreau model](_URL_0_) leaves the power arbitrary. In [this paper](_URL_1_) on the velocity of air bubbles rising in non-Newtonian biopolymer fluids the power n was determined to be between 0.29 and 0.71 depending on the fluid, see section 3. (note the model used in the paper is slightly different from the model stated in the wiki page)\n\nNon-newtonian fluids are a great example of a region of physics where the models aren't so clear cut. \n", "One strong constraint is that the units have to work out. Consider E = m^1.02 c^1.998 . E has units of kg m^2 / s^2 , while m^1.02 c^1.998 has units of kg^1.02 m^1.998 / s^1.998. Since the units don't match up, it is meaningless to equate these quantities and this equation could never be a physical law. However, this doesn't completely rule out weird exponents: you could imagine equations like E = (1/2) m v^3.168 / c^1.618, which does have the right units.\n\nSome small integer exponents are the way they are because we live in an integer number of spatial dimensions. For example, in d spatial dimensions, gravitational and electric forces obey 1/r^(d-1) laws. For d=3, this gives the familiar 1/r^2 laws.", "There have been some good explanations so far, but one thing worth noticing is that we're much less likely to notice laws that use other values. The simpler the numbers in a law, the more likely we are to notice it and be able to work with it. ", "In order to understand why there is a number in the exponent you have to trace it to where it comes from. It's not that you simply write down your formula like this.\n\nMany of the *physics* formulas can be derived from differential equations. Often, when you solve differential equations you will do the integral or the derivative of some formula. That's how you end up with 1/2x^2, it's just the integral of x. That's also how you end up with formulas that have `ln(x)`, that's the integral of `1/x` which may appear in a simple formula.\n\nAnd btw, if you invert your `ln(x)` you'll arrive at `e^x` which you often see in formulas.\n\nThe reasons I described can probably explain 90% of the formulas in high school.", "Am I the only one who disagrees with the premise of the question? I agree that there are many physical relationships that are power laws. But there are equally many that are not.\n\nFor example lets look E=mc^2. This equation is actually a special case of the equation E=sqrt(1/(1-v^2/c^2)) mc^2. This equation does not have a \"integer exponential relationship.\"\n\nAnother example is the strong force. People are quick to point out that both the electrostatic and gravitational force have a 1/r potential and thus the force scales as 1/r^2 . The strong force which is equally important in shaping our universe does not have a such a simple representation. A semi-classical approximation for the potential that is sometimes used is (f(r)/r + kr) where f is an exponential function of r. This simple approximation of the strong force is certainly not a power law.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carreau_fluid", "http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~debruyn/pdfs/shahram-bubbles.pdf"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fipneb", "title": "Is there any good science behind Earworms?", "selftext": "I hear it's established psychology that an earworm (song you hear in your head) is the result of the mind not being very busy. However, what is happening when the song is the same song (or, frustratingly, the same few lines of a song) day after day after day? This considers several days of sleeping/school/work/normal daily activities, but the same song pops up. Then after a few days, that song will be gone, and not even easy to recall what it was.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo what's going on with that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fipneb/is_there_any_good_science_behind_earworms/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkmx793", "fkj2qod"], "score": [2, 6], "text": ["IDK if this is relavant, but I have a mental illness called Obsessive Compulsive Thought Process and in times of stress, the sentence \"(my name) killed herself.\" Over and over again for days or even weeks. Before I met my current psychiatrist I just had to live with it as I have bigger problems so the doctors didn't care. When I met my current doctor (who is AMAZING in every way) I told him about it on my 1st visit because this had been going on for over a month. He simply said \"Take 360mg of Ginkgo Biloba every day  &  call me in 4 days.\" In 3 days it was gone  &  although it still pops up for a few hours occasionally, it's pretty much gone. It's been 14 years  &  I still take it every day. The relevance is that Ginkgo Biloba is thought to increase memory (even in regular individuals) by increasing blood flow to the brain. I'd be interested to know, should you find a good answer, if they even mention oxygen depletion in the brain causing it or if it got really annoying for a person with an otherwise healthy brain would 360mg of Ginkgo Biloba would make it stop?", "It\u2019s been a decade since I\u2019ve listened to this, but this [radiolab](_URL_0_)  talks a bit about earworms (and turns its title into one\u2014to this day it gets stuck in my head"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/91513-behaves-so-strangely"]]}
{"q_id": "8w361l", "title": "My understanding is that there's no evidence that Ben Franklin wanted the national bird of the United States to be the turkey. Where did this myth come from and how did it get to be so widespread?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8w361l/my_understanding_is_that_theres_no_evidence_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1sjulq"], "score": [112], "text": ["There is evidence. It's in letters to his daughter. \n\n\"I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk; and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice he is never in good case; but, like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the kingbirds from our country; though exactly fit for that order of knights, which the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie.\n\nI am, on this account, not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours; the first of the species seen in Europe, being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is, besides (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards, who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.\"\n\n\\-- Ben Franklin, letter to his daughter Sarah, January, 1784\n\nHere's the full letter, if you're interested: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0327"]]}
{"q_id": "32803h", "title": "how do holocaust deniers legitimize their viewpoint?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32803h/eli5_how_do_holocaust_deniers_legitimize_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq8qgfl", "cq8qj6v", "cq8qkpt", "cq8qo4d", "cq8qt5b", "cq8rsn0"], "score": [14, 6, 6, 6, 8, 26], "text": ["Go look at /r/conspiracy and you will find people claiming stuff like 9/11 was faked, and that happened largely on camera in a city of millions of people watching. ", "They use exactly the same methods used by creationists, moon landing deniers, etc: tell the audience half the truth (hoping they won't look deeply enough to see how you're misleading them), ask a lot of leading questions, and act like victims, noting loudly and often that powerful people and groups are afraid of the \"truth\". When they get around to trying to make actual arguments, they almost invariably constitute an excellent primer in logical fallacies too. \n\n[tl;dr] They don't. They have nothing but deliberately deceptive arguments and very bad logic. ", "People can easily deceive themselves. The angrier they are, the easier it is for them. They only have to shout \"lies\" and go \"nananana, I'm not listening\", and the world is suddenly a lot easier to understand.\n\nWhy they contest it? Because somewhere, deep down, they know it's not good to kill people, and certainly not to kill millions of people. At the same time, they adore the Nazi-ideology and Adolf Hitler. So, the easy way out is to claim that the Holocaust never happened.\n\nTl;DR they can't say: sorry, I was wrong.", "They don't.  They simply ignore evidence or dismiss it without basis.  Some people mistakenly believe that simply arguing something is evidence of truth....as though facts get voted on.   Instead of critical thinking and evidence based discussion they use rhetoric and emotion.  See any anti science position for examples.", "In short: Cherry picking the evidence\n\nif you take 1% of evidence available, remove it from the context, and focus purely on that for the basis of your argument, linking it to other nonsense and half truths. when brought together with fluidity it can be a convincing argument for people who are a bit more ignorant of the facts", "Originally, Holocaust deniers based their \"reasoning\" off three basic facts:\n\n\u2022 Lack of public access to physical evidence. At the end of WWII, the remaining evidence regarding the Holocaust in Germany (that wasn't destroyed by the Nazis when they figured out they were going to be defeated) was effectively locked up \u2014 it was made accessible solely to academically credentialled researchers, in order to prevent it from being stolen, destroyed, gawked at, glorified, touristed, worshipped, etcetera. Germany took whatever steps they thought necessary to prevent Nazism from continuing \u2014 which included stamping it out from any sympathy or legitimacy. Which leads to:\n\n\u2022 Outlawing of non-academic criticism of the Holocaust and Nazism. It was a crime in Germany to question the official, academic account of the Holocaust, even when small amounts of evidence were debunked. This smells to many people like a cover-up of a fabricated story. \n\n\u2022 Lack of Germans willing to step forward publicly and claim that they witnessed part of the Holocaust. If one knew directly, firsthand of the crimes, and allowed them to happen \u2014 no-one *wants* to admit that. One could be prosecuted, be shunned, face retribution, be sued \u2026 Most people wanted to rebuild, not spend their lives wallowing in Hell. \n\nSo there are very few survivors, very few survivors with direct knowledge, very few with any reason to speak out about it, very few with the academic credentials to do so.\n\nThere is no money, and no academic legitimacy, in lending credence to holocaust deniers and treating them like their claims are legitimate, factually based, and worth addressing. Letting them set the agenda and decide what should be talked about in History and Academics regarding the Holocaust is effectively saying \"Okay, you may have a point, please make it.\" It lends a veneer of respectability, a colour of legitimacy that they haven't earned. So the historians and academics and most political bodies do nothing more than say \"well, babies poop their diapers too, but it isn't my job to wipe their bottoms.\"\n\nSo the Holocaust deniers are effectively allowed to operate perpetuallyin an environment of drama \u2014 the same environment of drama that every cult and conspiracy research culture and underdog political movement operates in \u2014 the [Karpman Drama Triangle](_URL_0_). There is a Persecutor, a Victim, and a Saviour. There is a struggle. This lends everyone involved a sense of purpose and meaning, and to many people, a sense of purpose and meaning for their life is much more important than treating others with fairness and respect, and the struggle is carefully calculated so it can never be resolved.\n\nThat is their poopy diaper situation, which the academics decline to become involved in.\n\nThe same narrative \u2014 that there is a Persecutor, a Victim, and a Saviour \u2014 was used very effectively by the Nazis in the first place, who cast the Jews as the Persecutor, the Germans as the Victims, and the Nazis as the Saviours. \n\nSo of course, anyone buying that drama triangle must, by necessity, deny that the Jews were the victims of the Nazis, that the Nazis were the Persecutors, and that there was no saviour of the Jews. \n\nEven though the US and Britain and their allies knew of the Holocaust, and won the war, and Britain gave Palestinian territory to Israel to make a homeland for Jews that survived the war \u2014 there was no saviour. There were individual heroes that smuggled Jews to safety. There were those who sabotaged the Nazi efforts. But no-one in WWII was a saviour, no-one saved the world, no-one saved the Jews. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle"]]}
{"q_id": "15ry4x", "title": "How accurate is this \"eye witness\" account of pre-WWII Austria? It's being passed around facebook and contains no sources.", "selftext": "Here is a link to the story: _URL_0_\n\nI first saw the story on Facebook.  I googled it to try to find more info, but it mostly just leads to seemingly biased conservative websites.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15ry4x/how_accurate_is_this_eye_witness_account_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7p9whm", "c7pajue", "c7pavza", "c7pbd69", "c7pcj38", "c7pdtgt", "c7pe7b4", "c7pet2j", "c7phwm7"], "score": [26, 96, 19, 50, 15, 16, 25, 5, 3], "text": ["That's a very long, crunchy article that makes a lot of quantifiable claims I can't confirm or deny, but in general yes, the German annexation or \"Anschluss\" of Austria was military bloodless.  However, the \"98% vote\" the article refers to took place nearly a month after German troops entered the country, which they did in response to the Austrian chancellor's announcement of a public referendum on the subject of unification with Germany (they arrived in time to help Austrian Nazis oust the elected government and prevent it).  I probably do not need to tell you that referenda held before a foreign power's troops are in your country come out differently than referenda held once they are there watching you vote!", "I have to admit that I skipped a bit reading through it. A lot of the stuff rings true, especially about the annexation of Austria and public support for Hitler. It should be noted, however, that it took a major protracted terror campaign by Austrian Nazis to force the democratically elected Austrian Government to finally agree to hand the country to them. The Austrian Nazis, much like the German Nazis, never won a democratic election (in the sense that they never managed to get more than 50% of the vote).\n\nHowever, other parts are somewhat more problematic. At one point, she talks about Hitler socializing medicine, which ends medical research and forces doctors to leave the country. It also drives up waiting times. That statement is very, very problematic. I have no doubt that this woman (assuming she exists) did see doctors leave the country - but medicine was one of the fields that had a good number of Jewish practitioners. Now why would a Jewish doctor leave Germany in 1938? The war also meant that waiting times for elective surgeries increased - hospital beds were needed for injured soldiers, and doctors were taken into army service. Furthermore, medicine had been socialized under Bismarck in Germany, in the 1890s, well before Hitler. Yet somehow, Germany had managed to become a beacon of medical research during the early twentieth century.\n\nAt another point, she talks about how the Nazis were trying to abolish religion, leading to women having children out of wedlock and (godbewithus!) working men's jobs. This is also not the entire truth. The Nazi ideology also decreed that women should marry good aryan men and bear many health aryan children, preferably sons who could serve as soldiers. It took a long while and some major setbacks in the war before the Nazis even considered using women in the workforce. \n\nThere is probably a lot more that I have missed. The entire article reeks of trying to paint Obama as the new Hitler and progressives as Nazis, which is somewhat shaky to say the least.", "The Nazis being anti-religious or atheist seems to be a common trope in these narratives that attempt to paint the Nazis as progressives. There is of course some truth to it. The Nazis and the various religious institutions had there share of conflicts and Hitler and some of the other leaders privately expressed distaste for religion multiple times. However, it's ridiculous to say the regime was anti-religious on any wide scale. Rather, they sought to make Christianity work for them. It was quite common for Hitler to say that God was on their side in speeches, and of course there was the old phrase \"Gott mit uns\" (God is with us) inscribed on the military uniforms. The regime also actively promoted [Positive Christianity](_URL_0_). ", "The thing which baffles me the most on this ridiculously biased article is the implication that Austria was somehow a country full of freedom before 1938, when in fact [they had a fascist government since 1934.](_URL_0_) This \"Austrofacist\" government was heavily tied with the Catholic Church, partially to distinguish Austria from the mainly Protestant Germany, so it's no wonder the church lost lots of influence after the Anschluss.\n", "Germany in 1938 is **not** America in 2013.  It's an easy comparison to make and gives a lot of people ammunition for a variety of agendas, but it's ultimately a flawed and lazy comparison.\n\nTo be fair, she didn't say that, however you don't exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the subtext and conclusion the average reader is likely to draw.", "A pre-emptive reminder to all potential commenters: \n\nEven though the person being interviewed in the article is making connections between 1938 Austria and modern-day USA, the OP's question is focussed on **the accuracy of the description of Austria under German occupation**.\n\nPlease keep all discussions focussed on this historical question, not the modern-day comparisons.", "Two statements here do not compute:\n\n >  She wasn\u2019t old enough to vote in 1938 \u2013 approaching her 11th birthday\n\nand\n\n >  \u201cThree months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.\n\nThe annexation plebiscite was held on 10 April 1938, ww2 did end in April 1945 (Vienna fell on 13 April).\n\nAs she was approaching her 11th birthday on 10 April 1938, she would be approaching her 18th on 10 April 1945. The air raid would have been inconsequential to her \"having to go to labor corps and military service\", when she would have been eligible the Reich was nearing collapse.\n\n", "If you are interested in a more neutral and scientific research about Nazi welfare politics, I would highly recommend the book [Hitler's Beneficiaries:\nPlunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State](_URL_2_) by the German historian [G\u00f6tz Aly](_URL_1_). The author analyzes how \"social\" the Nation Socialists really were, which programs they established and how they were financed. [NYT review here.](_URL_0_)", "This is largely inaccurate.  The election she refers to was not a free one, but held under a military occupation.  \n\nTo be sure, *Anschluss* was a popular idea--Austrians (including Hitler) thought of themselves as Germans and largely resented being denied a place in Germany after the war.  They had a point, to be honest: self-determination was one of the announced hallmarks of the postwar settlement, but not for ethnic Germans.  \n\nThe posted article is profoundly polemic, part of a grievous trend that insists on describing National Socialism as a leftist ideology.  For a better sense of the nature of the Nazi welfare state, try Aly's book, as recommended below, or David Crew's *Germans on Welfare*, or the work of the late Detlev Peukert.\n\nThe assertion that Nazism insisted on equality for women is especially ridiculous. For an accurate and nuanced sense of Nazi attitudes toward gender, see *Mothers in the Fatherland* by Klaudia Koonz, or much of the work of Atina Grossman."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://blog.beliefnet.com/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars/2011/04/she-survived-hitler-and-wants-to-warn-america.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrofascism"], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/review/Herzog.t.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G\u00f6tz_Aly", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Hitler_s_Beneficiaries.html?id=hOIpGubiiZYC"], []]}
{"q_id": "cbmoyp", "title": "Why Were Ruthless Battles and Mass Killing of Civilians considered Justified in the Classical Era/Antiquity?", "selftext": "I've read a fair bit on Julius Caesar, and Roman mid-late republic and early Empire, and I'm amazed by how comfortable people are with extremely harsh conquest and war. For example, it is said that Julius Caesar killed one million Gauls and enslaved another million, ( by his own account, I admit ) when the total population  of the region was only \\~8-16 million. He cut the hands off of all of those people in Uxellodunum and routinely burned entire cities to the ground, killing everyone he could just as an example. Even his most bitter foes in Rome had not one bad word to say about it. They exploded whenever *Romans* died however. To them, it was just the way things were. Yet more fascinating, Adrian's Goldsworthy's has a theory he discusses *Pax Romana* , the romans didn't need to justify brutal wars of conquest. considering Julius Caesar's specific actions in Gaul I can't help but agree. I am aware of the idea of roman 'pacification' and that breaking treaties with foreigners was heavily condemned, so they're not absolute. In the Middle ages, people used religion as a way of \"othering\" people, thus allowing brutal action against them, but even then this doesn't mean they can do whatever they want. Later on it became more focused on race. When the Europeans colonized Africa, most of them though they were helping them by 'civilizing' them and 'teaching them so they can one day be independent'.  The Romans understood race and nations and religion, but they never stressed it enough to justify war, it was just a minor detail. The Romans, including Julius Caesar, seem to believe that 'history is written by the victors', 'we have a right to serve ourselves' and 'woe to the vanquished'. They don't go out of their way to be cruel, they are simply pragmatic and Machiavellian. If it benefits them they can treat the Gauls very well, enslave them, or kill them. There were no hard and fast rules of war, no moral obligation to the rest of the world, no absolute human rights, very few customs that foreign civilians as being a less appropriate target to kill than pedophiles and serial killers in Rome. What changed from then, and why doesn't that fly anymore? When did this mentality start and end? I'm sorry if I sound moralizing or critical of the Romans, I don't mean to. And of course, feel free to tell me if I've been misinformed.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cbmoyp/why_were_ruthless_battles_and_mass_killing_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eti9cxi"], "score": [26], "text": ["I would disagree with strongly with Goldsworthy there, in fact Caesar's conquest of Gaul is one of the better examples of how the Romans *did* feel the need to construct justifications, both because we have the first have account of the person who led the conquest, and because of the historical circumstances around it. The second point first, the circumstance being that Caesar actually faced a credible threat of prosecution for the illegality of actions in his war in Gaul (in particular, the invasion into Germany) and this among other things was the inciting spark for his crossing the Rubicon. And we actually have evidence of debate in Rome itself at the time of his wars as to their justification in the form of Cicero's speech \"De Provinciis Consularibus\" which, among other things, is an extended justification for Caesar's actions in command. As for Caesar's words, On the War in Gaul *constantly* provides justification for each of his actions. Caesar never argues for his conquest from a purely utilitarian position either (ie, simply saying he thinks it would be *useful* to conquer this or that) rather he tends to argue he was defending either himself or his allies. This accords with what Cicero wrote in \"De officiis\", that Rome had gained its empire only fighting defensive, justified wars.\n\nNow this is not to say that we need to take this claim seriously, or that the justification for conquest had to be particularly robust in modern terms, but they absolutely did require a justification of some sort."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2wkegl", "title": "Why are ancient seers and oracles portrayed as being deformed in historical fiction?", "selftext": "I've noticed in that seers and oracles are often portrayed having some kind of deformity, like in Vikings, The 300, even Greek mythology with the Stygian witches.  Is there any historical evidence to back this up or reason why they are portrayed this way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wkegl/why_are_ancient_seers_and_oracles_portrayed_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["corxg2t"], "score": [39], "text": ["This is more a question of literature than history. Blindness is the most common deformity among seers and oracles, and it's a metaphor that works on multiple levels. The first is that wisdom has a price -- nothing comes free, especially not the gift of prophecy. The second is that only those who shut out the immediate can see what lies beyond. \n\nLet's take Sophocles' Theban plays, *Antigone*, *Oedipus the King* and *Oedipus at Colonus* for an example. \n\nIn these, Oedipus is praised for his \"clear sight,\" but in reality he's blind to what's going on around him. Tiresias, who is physically blind but a prophet, forecasts what will happen to Oedipus. Only when the aging Oedipus blinds himself does he gain limited prophetic vision.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3zwn3k", "title": "Have we ever seen a star orbiting a black hole pass behind it on our plane of view? If so, what did we see, or expect to see?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3zwn3k/have_we_ever_seen_a_star_orbiting_a_black_hole/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cypxmat", "cyq8sp8"], "score": [17, 3], "text": ["This is a question with a long answer! \n\nSo, first, it's important to note that *every* stellar mass black hole we know of in our Galaxy that we *also* can prove is a black hole by constraining it's mass (why that's considered firm evidence is maybe better left for another thread) has been found when the disk of material around it being fed by an orbiting star has become suddenly unstable. This happens when the temperature of the disk reaches the ionization temperature of hydrogen and changes the viscosity of the material. When this disk instability occurs, the inner disk gets *incredibly bright* in the X-ray - millions of times brighter than all the energy the sun puts out at a given time! This lets our instruments in orbit see the system, as a satellite all sky monitor will suddenly say \"Holy crap, that's bright!\" and then we know where it is to study further. The disks eventually run out of material and quiet down, and the orbit of the donor star can be studied in greater detail, leading to mass measurements (among other things). (Also, some systems are persistently bright, making mass measurements very difficult, but the vast majority of these are neutron star systems instead of black holes - but then, it's hard to show that they're black holes without a mass measurement...)\n\nThe thing of it is, the accretion disk around the black hole isn't perfectly thin, it's a little thick, and much thicker towards the edge than in the middle. For edge on systems that might eclipse, then, we could miss the outburst entirely! In fact, **of all the stellar mass black holes in our Galaxy with mass measurements, NONE of them are eclipsing**, probably because the outburst is blocked by the disk. \n\nOne of the things I work on is trying to identify new black hole systems before they outburst, while they're still very faint. There are several good reasons to do this, but the most relevant one for this discussion is that this way, we can find an eclipsing black hole in our Galaxy, which hasn't been done yet. Eclipsing systems are also exciting because they tell you the inclination angle of the system in space relative to your line of sight, which is the largest uncertainty in all our mass measurements. By saying \"Hey, this thing eclipses, so I *know* sin(inclination angle)~1\", we can remove the largest systematic uncertainty in black hole mass measurements. The closest a system comes to eclipsing is \"dipping\" where a part of the accretion disk is blocked in part of the orbit. \n\nWe have, however, seen stars pass behind black holes that they do not orbit. Projects like OGLE began searching for dark matter in the form of MaCHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects) a couple decades ago and quickly discovered that there weren't enough black holes or bowling balls or flaming armadillos or whatever else out there to explain dark matter, so they moved on (largely to exoplanets at this point). They did (and do) observe microlensing by black holes, though. What it looks like is that the star behind the black hole gets brighter and brighter over the course of weeks to months and then fades again. The duration and change in brightness depend on things like the mass of the lens and the offset of the lens to the line of sight with the star. The way the star appears in the sky does not change enough for our instruments to see it, but if we could resolve it, it would look like it was being smeared into an arc of light, or even a full ring, and then back again as the foreground blackhole moved on. This sort of lensing is observed in [galaxy clusters](_URL_1_) all [the time](_URL_0_). (Also as an aside, the other candidate for dark matter, as opposed to MaCHOs, is WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.)\n\nFor an eclipse of the donor star orbiting the black hole, the relative distance to size means that we don't expect a dramatic lens event, though. If you could get close enough, the images from the movie Interstellar are actually quite good (with the help of Dr. Kip Thorne, the design team used real general relativity to create the image of the material around the black hole), though they leave out a few effects like Doppler Boosting and Doppler Shifting of the disk. ", "The star will be many, many orders of magnitude larger than the black hole. This would look less like the moon passing in front of the sun and more like a satellite passing in front of the sun. Only much further away. We wouldn't be able to tell.\n\nIf you were really close to the black hole, so that its event horizon actually did eclipse the star, you'd still be able to see the star, since the black hole would bend the light around it. For example, consider the [black hole from interstellar](_URL_0_). It looks like there's two rings around it or something. There is one. It's flat. It would look just like Saturn's rings if light went straight and space was flat. But because of gravity bending the path of the light, you can see the part of the accretion disk that's behind the black hole by looking above and below it. Light from behind it passes below and then bends back up, and passes above and bends back down. It also orbits any number of times, so in theory you could see the ring infinitely many times if you looked close enough."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.roe.ac.uk/~heymans/website_images/abell2218.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/A_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG"], ["https://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/dnews-files-2014-10-binterstellar-black-hole-670x440-141029-jpg.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "8z85jn", "title": "why even after 8+ hours of sleep that i still feel so sleepy in the morning. yet, when night time comes, i feel wide awake an focused?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8z85jn/eli5_why_even_after_8_hours_of_sleep_that_i_still/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2gt0ki", "e2gv4qc", "e2gvulq", "e2gwqqv", "e2gz7bb", "e2h1qk8", "e2h2dga", "e2h2w5p", "e2h4mwm"], "score": [71, 37, 92, 17, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Lack of time in R.E.M. cycle during sleep, nighttime alertness could be due to both interruption in sleep and lack of \u201cwhite noise\u201d in your current environment.", "Could be dehydration. Try 8oz water before bed, 8oz water when you wake.\n\nCould be how you sleep, constricted blood flow.\n\nCould be caffeine.\n\nCould be vitamin D.\n\nHard to say without knowing more about your day.\n\nI'm like this too. Drag through the day and come alive as the sun sets...if I don't pass out first.", "Your body goes through natural rhythms of more being sleepy and more alert. When you are asleep, you go from deep to light to dream sleep and back again. Same for when you are awake. If you wake up during deep sleep, you will be more sleepy. \n\nYou can see this rhyme in lots of places. It explains the post lunch coma, even if you didn't eat a big lunch. If you try to pull an all-nighter, you'll notice some parts of the night when you get super sleepy and others when you are ok. People have different cycles leading to morning larks (morning people) and night owls (people who are more alert at night). Babies have shorter cycles which is why they nap more.\n\nThe cycle is somewhat regulated by daylight and involves a bunch of hormones in your body like melatonin. Artificial light like phones and TV can disrupt it which is why they advise people not to use phones or watch TV near bedtime. If you put someone in a room with no windows, they daily cycle will eventually stretch to 36 hours.", "You feel wide awake in the evening for the exact same reason that most people feel wide awake in the morning: that's the time that your body thinks it's appropriate to make you feel awake.\n\nIt think so because it's like a clock that's simply set to a different time than most clocks. When your friends' body clock says 12am, yours says 12pm. You can force your clock to change, with some effort. But, like a clock that's off, it'll shift over time.\n\nOf course, I'm just guessing at the why, nobody could diagnose you from a sentence. But [delayed sleep phase disorder](_URL_0_) is well known and affects a large number of people, so it's a good bet that you're describing it.", "As someone who was tried a lot of stuff to help optimize my rest and energy levels, a big trick is light.\n\nTry to avoid looking at screens in the evening, switch to reading a book by indirect lamp light, and try to sleep somewhere where you get sunlight in the morning.\n\nYour brain unconsciously reassesses what time it is based on light cues, less light in the evenings will tell your brain it's time to sleep, more light in the mornings will tell it it's time to wake up. The effect is more significant than you might think.", "I think I saw that you sleeping cycle between deep sleep and light sleeping is 90 mins, if you wake up during the deep sleep you feel groggy. I am exactly the same and I hate it!!!!!! ", "A lot of things here already said what I haven't seen yet: how's your eating? if you don't eat for the latter half of your day your body will be flooded with certain hormones and neurotransmitters that also a play a big role in askesis, so especially people with bad eating habits and anorexics will turn up a few notches in the evening or at night and from there it often reinforces reciprocally with other effects your alertness. \nIn people with certain mental and psychic problems this is often a sure fire way to trigger certain lofty moods (mania, hypomania, psychosis and more stuff)\n\nAlso for some people it's really important to get to bed at more or less the same time every day because their rhythm isn't capable of adapting well, the downside to fucked sleep rhythm in that case is that it would take months to years to fix, which will be hard since alertness is then often highest at 8pm and later and lowest at 11am to 14 am, tho that's not fixed just one possible outcome for very prevalent distribution of sleeping disorders.", "Are you under 20 years old?", "I have an unorthodox explanation which has proven true for me.\n \nMy first hand experience has shown me that I do this because night time is when you have privacy and freedom. Society is going on during the day, it sucks, people suck, interaction sucks. Phone calls and knocks on the door, commotion and activity happen during the day. Night is way better so I always want to be awake to experience it but check out from people during the day which causes drowsiness, sleep it away and bring on the night time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4awvq1", "title": "99% of western europe don't fluoride water, yet the us still does, why?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4awvq1/eli5_99_of_western_europe_dont_fluoride_water_yet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1471uy", "d147bca", "d14fkuj", "d14g3n4", "d14g821", "d14i2zu", "d14i55n", "d14iy8r", "d14j2zb", "d14j3zx", "d14jffr", "d14jpck", "d14k41n", "d14k9wi", "d14kos1", "d14l3ij", "d14lvc8", "d14mi1z", "d14n39k", "d14n8py", "d14oe4g", "d14okrd", "d14oly4", "d14ortm", "d14ot0s", "d14p5h9", "d14pyr0", "d14q7pf", "d14qc2s", "d14qem1", "d14qmms"], "score": [2953, 364, 278, 9, 16, 3, 15, 3, 4, 33, 11, 3, 5, 3, 2, 22, 3, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 3, 3, 2, 6], "text": ["Much of Europe has natural levels of fluoride high enough to net the benefits of fluoridation. Many regions of the US do not. ", "Water fluoridation never caught on in much of Europe. It was held back by the same ethical question as in the United States, whether it is permissible to use the public water supply for what is effectively distributing medication. But it's certainly not true that \"99% of Western Europe don't fluoridate water\"--Ireland has national water fluoridation, and some people in other countries live in communities with artificially fluoridated water as well. Natural fluoridation must also be mentioned.\n\nThat said, it's not really universal in the United States either. Only two-thirds of the population receives fluoridated water (natural or artificial). About half of Canadians have fluoridated water, with it being very common in some provinces though nearly absent in others.", "From _URL_0_ :\n\nstartquote\n\nIn fact, more than 13 million people receive fluoridated water in England, Spain and Ireland. A few European countries have fluoridated milk programs. And fluoridated table salt is sold in nine European countries, reaching more than 80 million people in Germany, Switzerland, France and elsewhere. Most European countries fund programs that provide fluoride varnish and/or fluoride rinses to school-age children. One reason that Italy lacks a national water fluoridation policy is the fact that a number of areas in Italy have water supplies with natural fluoride that reaches the optimal level.\n\nSalt fluoridation reflects the position of the World Health Organization, which has recommended that \"salt fluoridation should be considered where water fluoridation is not feasible for technical, financial or sociocultural reasons.\" Fluoridated salt reaches the largest percentage of residents in Germany and Switzerland. Interestingly, these two countries have among the lowest rates of tooth decay in all of Europe. Of course, people on salt-restricted diets won't receive the full benefits of fluoride, which is one reason why fluoridating water is a better approach.\n\nendquote", "We do it here in my province in Canada and I'm very thankful for it. It's been scientifically proven to be a great benefit for all of our citizens.", "Just curious, is it possible to intake too much flouride through drinking a few gallons of unfiltered tap water daily? When I was living in Charleston, SC for college I drank so much unfiltered tap water and am worried if I have done any long term damage to my brain/body? I know my question may sound uniformed or ignorant, but I feel that I have never really received any straight answers on the subject. Google doesn't seem to be a reliable source for flouride information, there is a lot of conspiratorial talk about how it can lead to cancer etc. \n\n TL:DR- Can you overdose on flouride by drinking shit tons of unfiltered city tap water, specifically in the lowcountry of South Carolina? Truly curious, thanks. \n\n", "Do you know the reason Americans make fun of British peoples teeth is because the American Government doesn't provide free Universal health care to its tax payers and the British Government does so the Americans put out a bit of spin  about how bad our teeth are to detract from the fact that we get dental care that is nowhere near as costly as theirs. ", "I never really understood water fluoridation because it only helps prevent cavities when used topically, not systematically (through ingestion). When consumed systematically over time at higher levels, it has been known to cause fluorosis of the bones and other tissues. Also, a lot of it is going unutilized in showers or when we flush toilets.  I know here in Des Moines, IA, they spend over $120,000 annually to put fluoride in the water while they're  needing more money to upgrade their filtration system. The topic came up on whether they wanted to stop water fluoridation three years ago but because so many dentists came to speak out against the idea saying children would be negatively impacted, they only lowered the levels. You'd think some of the money saved could be used to help get toothpaste (the topical, effective method) to those in need. ", "Because we don't believe in the mind control capabilities that fluoride has... Your government is poisoning your water supply and turning you all into robots *dons tinfoil hat*. (_URL_0_)\n\nIn all seriousness, I think it's just because we don't need it...", "for good dental health. And also because fluoride is the by product of industry and some schmo was able to rope the us government into buying it. ", "I'm not in Western Europe but in Europe nonetheless (Estonia). The town where I live, Tartu, uses ground water for the local water supply. The level of fluoride in tap water is between 0.2 and 1.06 mg/l which means you don't really need to add any more. The recommended level in the US is 0.7 mg/l. \n\nThe level of fluoride in tap water can even vary within a single city. In Tallinn there are areas which get their tap water from a lake. In these places the level of fluoride is between 0.04 and 0.2 mg/l. Other areas, which use ground water have a level of fluroide between 0.4 and 0.8 mg/l.", "This is a somewhat misleading statistic. For instance, (some regions in) Spain doesn't do potable tap water so floridating it would be a waste of money. It's not that they don't think people should be getting fluoride (in fact my school made us use fluoride mouthwash every morning) but that it doesn't make sense for the water system they have. ", "Have you seen the teeth of Europeans?\n\n_URL_0_", "A related question: why is fluoridated water, milk, and salt deemed safe to swallow while flouridated toothpaste is not?", "Ever hear the term 'British teeth'?", "Not all people have to do the same things. 99% of people can do one thing and the remaining 1% can do something else, regardless if they are from Europe or the US. Even other splits are possible, any number of people can do one thing and that doesn't mean that any other people must also do that thing.", "Most people seem to think it was proposed because it strengthens teeth, but that was just what could sell the bill. It was proposed and isn't discussed today because it saves money on preventing corrosion in pipes while still being considered safe to drink, by at least politicians. \n\n_URL_0_", "Anyone know if the fluoride that binds to teeth can come off again, and if so, how hard is it to break off?\n\nAnd does it bind within that tiny time it typically stays in the mouth? \n\nAnd if it's only for teeth, but most water/drinks don't actually get swished around our teeth, isn't it missing the point? ", "How do they get the fluoride percentage correct in the first place? ", "Once a gravy train gets rolling in the US it is virtually impossible for it to stop because all the lawmakers work for the gravy train. ", "Quote from the late Col. Jack D. Ripper - \"Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.\"", "Because fresh water, unlike salt water, doesn't immediately precipitate out heavy metals, like gallium, strontium, or cobalt. This presents a danger in that fresh water inherently allows such ions to travel the full distance from the reservoir to your sink. However, fresh water with even the tiniest amount of fluorine atoms dissolved in it, acts very rapidly to bind heavy metals.  \n\nSeeing as how we've done a drastic amount of above ground testing in our own backyard, we really shouldn't question it. WWIII, or not, such isotopes exist scattered across the land and get carried into streams and ponds every time it rains.\n\n**TL;DR** it's a cold war safeguard which protects our drinking water from nuclear fallout ", "Have you seen those Western European teeth?", "Keeps everyone in line.....call me crazy\n....??? same as the \"chemicals\" in your food.........  mind reporgramming in your tv...sound crazy to you.....?? Look it up.....gov't already keeping tabs on population.. _URL_0_", "Because the companies that provide the fluoride to water facilities want to hang on to that revenue stream? No pun intended.", "The US is all about mind control.  Haven't you been paying attention to our presidential election?", "In my city (Calgary,Alberta) we ha flouride in the water a few years back and people got mad. They took out the flouride (cost a ton) and noticed people teeth got worse as flouride is used for cleaning, now the people want it back :))))", "Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of fluoridated water, Mandrake?", "is fluoride actually that bad for us?\n\ni heard a lot about it, but never looked into it really", "If the only reason flouride is good for you is the teeth then I don't know why we consume it. They should just hand out free flouride mouthwash packets instead.", "Europe is strongly influenced by a sense that certain things are unnatural and therefore undesirable.  Compare European and New World attitudes to genetically modified organisms.", "I live in an area of high natural fluoridation and yet an application was made by some unknown company to add more, for free.\n\nThe local council was all for it. The local paper ran articles from the dentistry people saying how good it was. Then our corrupt local MP (Conservative) went on record to say that it was getting his full support and think of the children.\n\nSo the local newspaper got all suspicious and dug deeper, and found that the fluoride is a waste product from some industrial process, and its disposal is heavily regulated and expensive. Shoving it into the drinking water was making this company a handsome profit, and guess what? The local MP was a non-executive director of this company. That pretty much sank the whole project."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.cdhp.org/blog/262-fluoridation-what-a-real-debate-requires"], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy"], [], [], [], ["http://images.amcnetworks.com/bbcamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/460x300_austinpowers.jpg"], [], [], [], ["http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/factsheets/engineering/corrosion.htm"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.mrconservative.com/2014/01/30924-secret-fema-death-camps-already-at-a-location-near-you/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3289yy", "title": "why are plays considered to be literature, but film scripts are not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3289yy/eli5_why_are_plays_considered_to_be_literature/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq8tcn2", "cq8tnhn", "cq8ufqo", "cq8vgxp", "cq8w70l", "cq8w7dd", "cq8w8xi", "cq8w96q", "cq8x6pw", "cq8xqqd", "cq8y0iv", "cq8y77a", "cq8y9ty", "cq8yaan", "cq8ycaw", "cq8yrkb", "cq8yxo3", "cq8zizf", "cq9021n", "cq91nt6", "cq932hp", "cq95cva", "cq960z6", "cq97703", "cq97eb4", "cq99yv2", "cq9a5vz", "cq9cjnq", "cq9et62", "cq9fhxf", "cq9izgw", "cq9mans"], "score": [20, 839, 166, 155, 21, 12, 31, 16, 418, 4, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2893, 9, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 5, 2, 3, 7, 5, 2], "text": ["In my experience film scripts have been considered literature. ", "I believe because plays are written in such a way that you can simply read it like a book. That is why plays are \"interpreted\".\n\nMovie scripts are more like directives and instructions along with character lines.", "Because film scripts generally aren't published and consumed by the public. ", "Reading these answers makes me feel like I'm in college again and everyone is just being pointed at by the teacher and they HAVE to give their answer to the philosophy professor .", "A play varies from one performance to another. *Significantly* varies. You can turn a tragedy into a comedy or vice-versa by changing the acting and delivery of the same lines. Good directors can take Shakespeare and alter the themes and setting to make the play about current events and the modern world, without changing any part of the play that's contained in the script.\n\nBecause the performances vary so much, it's not really fair to consider them all the same piece of art. So what happens is that the script is treated as the \"real\" play and a piece of art in its own right, while the performances are also each treated as a work of art in their own right. The performances are performance art, while the script is written down so it's categorized as literature, although its own category.\n\nBy contrast, the \"performance\" of a film is unvarying from one viewing to the next (with some exceptions, like what George \"Hitler\" Lucas did with the original trilogy). The delivery, the pacing, the acting, the cinematography are all the same from one performance to the next, and the script is often made or changed in tandem with these aspects. Because of this, the whole production with everything all together is considered the \"real\" piece of art, and the script is considered just one component.", "They are, or at least they were when I studied literature. Heck, I wrote my BA thesis on a video game. Film scripts were definitely considered acceptable.", "It's a question of interpretation and finished product.\n\nA film is the piece that is the artistic statement, not the script.  A film script is often changed over and over and sometimes completely rewritten during the process.\n\nWhile a script for a stage production is often the same during the first run of a play, after that, the script is a static piece. It's then open to interpretation by reading and also by other productions. \n\nThat's the key difference, and it's recursive, but true: a film script is not presented as a finished work of art.  A theatrical script is.\n\n", "Time is a part of it.  Plays are 2000 years older than film scripts.  With time pop culture becomes culture.", "They are. It is just a new medium and taking time to catch on. Plays are only read for convenience, they were never intended to be read the way we do in schools.", "Well I thought they were, we studied the film Paradise Road for English, along side the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the play Twelve Angry Men.", "I think if you asked most dramatists, they wouldn't consider their work to be literature. They're writing with the intent that their work would be performed on stage and most people would consume it by watching, not by reading. \n\nPlays have been around a LOT longer (so there is a larger body of un-copyrighted materials), and one of the ways in which modern plays make their money is by licensing additional performances. Play opens on broadway, does well, they license the rights to a publisher who reprints the play, someone in Ohio wants to put the play up, they buy copies of the play and pay a performance rights.  Films, on the other hand, don't typically publish their screenplays.  And if they did, they publish, they're probably not publishing a screenplay but a transcript of the final edit.  There can be 100s of revisions made to a script while it's in production, and then the edit can completely change that (depending on the director).\n\nTL;DR - We treat drama like literature because it gets published and distributed. Film is a relatively new art-form that doesn't usually publish its screenplays.\n\n", "Film is a visual medium; traditionally it is driven by visuals, not dialogue. A film may have dozens and dozens of different scenes, with a lot more going on visually compared to your average play. It is considered a director's medium, which is why directors get so much more credit and acclaim in Hollywood than screenwriters typically do. \n\nPlays, on the other hand, are much more dialogue-driven; the visuals are fairly static and scenes change less often. It's considered more of a writer's medium, and writers get the acclaim. There's an old tradition of audiences calling out \"author, author!\" while cheering at the end of a play, cuing the author to come out and take a bow. The writer is more the \"auteur\" of a play, while the director is the auteur of a movie.  \n\nScreenplays are short, and producers/directors won't even look at them if they're too long. Too much dialogue is considered a very bad thing in a film. It's referred to as \"black shit\" -- too much type on the page. Your average play is going to have a ton more dialogue than a film. It simply has more written words, and that's partly why it's considered more literary. Also, the writer more directly controls the medium. \n\nLastly, I think another part of it is that the history of plays goes back much further and there's more of a literary tradition there; it predates the film medium by thousands of years (going back to the Greeks). Shakespeare's plays survive only as written words. We have no video of the original productions. Screenplays, on the other hand, become films. ", "Plays are meant to be performed regularly by different groups of people.  As a result, plays are published and, if popular, widely read.  A film script, on the other hand, is meant to be performed and filmed one time.  As a result, scripts are not frequently published or widely read, regardless of how popular the film was.", "Ooh! I'm actually qualified to answer this! \n\nI'm an English teacher, I minored in media, and I wrote several scripts for plays, television, and short films in college.\n\nHere's the thing, scripts for plays are not complete works, and your English teacher knows that. A play is made complete by the interaction between the script, the director, the actors, and every member of the crew. The script alone is not a complete piece of literature.\n\nUnfortunately, we cannot bring a play into the classroom. They are not portable experiences. So, in order to teach students about Shakespeare, a lot of teachers have them read it, usually showing a film version of the play if they can. I'm personally not a big fan of this method as plays tend to be horrible for high school students to read. \n\nWith films, however, you are not limited by the need for a theater and several dozen human beings to put on a production. Instead, you can put a disc into a machine and view the entire finished product.\n\nI still have several plays (including the complete works of Willie) on a shelf at home, but that's because I enjoy reading the dialogue. The entire experience of the play is far more enjoyable.", "I'm seeing a lot of misleading answers here, so -- as someone who teaches film in an English department -- I feel like I ought to speak up.\n\nWhen you look at theater, the written play (the \"script\")  *is* the text. It's not written for one specific production, but rather it exists and may continue as the basis for multiple productions. When someone puts on a new production of Hamlet or Death of a Salesman, they go back to the same original script by Shakespeare or Miller and perform a new rendition of that same written work. Sure, every stage director may take some creative liberties, but rarely does one perform Hamlet and hire a new playwright to write an entirely new version of Hamlet. And when we refer to \"Hamlet\" as a historical piece of culture, we're referring to the written work of Shakespeare, not a specific performance of it.\n\nIn cinema, however, the script is more like a blueprint, written as the basis for one specific production. When Steven Soderbergh remakes Ocean's Eleven, he doesn't go back to the same script used for the 1960 film (as we would with Hamlet on stage), but rather Warner Bros. hires a new writer to write an entirely new script written specifically for *this* production. If, in 40 years, we get another remake of the film, the producers would hire yet another screenwriter to make yet another new script for that production. We don't hold up the original script and feel any obligation to remake that specific collection of scenes and dialogue the way we do with a play. And so, in cinema, the film itself is the \"text\" that continues through the years. When we refer to \"Ocean's Eleven\" as a historical piece of culture, we are speaking of a specific film (we wouldn't say \"Ocean's Eleven\" to  mean \"that general story that Clooney and Sinatra and various other actors have performed at various times in various ways\").\n\nIn short, when we talk about \"Hamlet\" as a cultural product, we're talking about a written text; the script is what lasts through the years. When we talk about \"Ocean's Eleven\" as a cultural product, we're talking about a specific produced film. And this is partly dictated by the nature of theater vs. cinema. There is no one performance of Hamlet (on stage) that lasts through the years; as a live performance, it doesn't have permanence. A stage performance is not a \"thing\" that we can keep. The script is what lasts over time; it's the \"thing\" that lasts. In cinema, on the other hand, the performance does last, recorded on celluloid (or a hard drive), such that the film becomes the \"thing\" that gets passed down through the years. Just like a building, we can go back and look at the original blueprints, and compare it to the final thing that was produced, but when we discuss architecture, we wouldn't hold up the blueprints for the Empire State Building as the \"thing\" in question -- we would look at the actual Empire State Building.\n\nEDIT: Got my first gilding on my cakeday. I feel like a grown-up redditor now. :D", "Film scripts are literature. Many have been published in books and are read for their own content. There are published film scripts that have never been made into movies that are read, as well.\n\nIn literature all kinds of writing is read and studied. Personal letters, diaries, rough drafts, outlines--all of these are studied in literature courses despite never being intended for publication or performance.\n\nBefore there was written literature, poems were performed orally. So literature itself originated as the writing down of a pre-existing performance. Too bad they didn't have a video camera back then.\n\n", "Screenwriter here, so I'll try to provide my insight. I don't think there's a definitive answer, and this is just my assertion. \n\nFirst, let's address the terms. We're discussing plays and performances, screenplays and movies. Playwrights and screenwriters. \n\nNo writer of either medium views his work as the finished product. These are texts used as the foundation for a production-- either on stage or on a movie screen. The text of a dramatic play or a screenplay will be interpreted by the people who bring it to life-- the actors, the directors, and the production team. \n\nThe benefit of a screenplay is in the end we have a singular version of the interpretation: the movie. This exists in perpetuity, and we can always study the finished product by popping in a DVD or streaming the film. So a class in Los Angeles can study the same film that a class in Hong Kong, London or Wichita will study. There's a standard version to view. Movies are what we study, not screenplays. \n\nWe don't have that benefit with plays. Usually there's only one initial production the playwright is involved in. One where he/she worked with the director and actors to bring it to life. After that, there will be many interpretations by different directors, with different actors. Each performance will bring something different to the text. \n\nWhile it would be great for a class to attend a performance to study it, that's not always feasible. Trying to assemble and pay for a school is cost prohibitive, and that's even if there's a production nearby to attend. And it's certainly not possible for every class to attend the original performance and analyze it together. And every performance will provide something a little different. And no play is performed with any regularity. Also, we can't stop and start a play to break it down and analyze it. We can with a movie, the same way we can with a book. \n\nSo what is the next best thing? Studying the text of the play. It's not ideal, but it's the best available method of a standard text that can be studied by every class, in every school, year after year. So a kid in Toronto can read and analyze the same Hamlet play as a kid in Sydney.  \n\nSure, we can always view a performance of a play in a movie-- but that's a movie. It's no longer a play. And even then, there are dozens or hundreds of versions available of any single play. Some are abridged, some are not. So again-- no standard version. \n\nThis is my two cents. ", "[Because this is what a script looks like](_URL_0_)", "Copying this from my response to the top comment:  Simple - plays and books were considered 'literature' long before movies even existed. It's snobbery and brand management, the same as when they changed the Hugo Award rules after the graphic novel 'Watchmen' won. They don't want Transformers 15 compared to Death of a Salesman, or even considered similar in any way.", "Film scripts rely on the fact that the film itself will express the aesthetics (visuals) that are minorly described in the script. A novel, and even a play rely heavily on the language expressing these visuals and lean on the fact that the audience will create the visuals for themselves (unlike a film where it's fed to your eyes). The props and backdrops in plays are minimalist, and representative, the language relays the visual. Film scripts are more a guidline of language that the visual will follow during the movie. ", "A script contains instructions and directives, and the dialogue is such that it is designed to be seen visually. It is fundamentally not a complete work without the film that it is designed to be a part of. ", "Professional Shakespearean actor here. \n\nTo me, literature is a living piece of text that can have many different interpretations. It relies on unique imagination to bring it to life. When you read a great novel, you're actually creating the story in your head. It will be unique to you and you alone! \n\nPlays themselves are timeless. They can be read and interpreted in an unlimited amount of ways. You can produce a play any time, anywhere, and it will be utterly unique. It will have a different director, design, actors, interpretation, etc. Furthermore, each *performance* will be unique- you'll never have the same exact performance twice, because each day and each audience brings a different energy into the room, which greatly affects a performance. Theatre is living art. A play is literature because the text itself stands the test of time. \n\nThis is not to say a film cannot stand the test of time! But consider the medium of the *text* of a film. A screenplay has one interpretation and one interpretation only - the Director's. A film only exists once and for all -  it will be exactly the same every time you view it. Even if you remake a film, you won't use the same script. You'll use a different interpretation of the base story. \n\nSo they are different in that a play can be done an unlimited amount of ways, throughout the history of its existence. A screenplay, however, exists only to serve as a skeleton for the film itself. Consider the difference between 'Macbeth' and 'The Lion King'. Macbeth is known for its text, whereas The Lion King is known for its movie. When you think of Macbeth, you could be thinking of any number of productions/interpretations of it. But The Lion King has just one. \n\nNeither is superior! I'm a huge film buff, and I think film stands the test of time in a different way altogether. But talking *text*,  I think all of the above is why plays are considered literature where screenplays aren't. ", "If you consider them literature then they are considered literature. Goddamn is sentience dope.", "I wholeheartedly contend that they are - they're really only a little different to playwriting and, if film scripts are approached as literature, they make for better performances. I state my case:\n\n'Withnail  &  I' had absolutely nothing going for it at the time of it's release - no budget, no big name stars, a novice director, not that much a plot - two out of work actors go on holiday by mistake and get horrendously drunk on the way. But it had one distinct advantage - it had a diamond-hard script. \n\nIndeed it nods towards Shakespeare at the end, yet it makes for delightful reading and coaxes outstanding performances from all involved by its own merits. It doesn't just make for a witty or interesting film, it elevates what should have been an indie curiosity into a bona fide classic.", "I have to challenge the assumption in the question. Who says that film scripts aren't literature?", "As a writer, I'm just gonna say that the biggest reason is that a script is ultimately a blue print, no matter how beautifully written, and simply a step in a larger process involving many artists, a bunch of luck, random money problems, editing choices, the list goes on and on.  A script isn't necessarily reflective of the film that's made from it.\n\nWhereas the writing of a play very often has more control over how the final product is executed.", "And what about perl scripts?", "Because Film Scripts are not literature. They are simplified versions of stories.\n\nMost great scripts are also based on literature.\n\n", "Film scripts are literature. The difference is that films are produced once, while plays are generally produced several times throughout the years. So there is less reason to mass produce film scripts than there is to mass produce play scripts. This leads to more people reading plays like books or studying them in high school/college.", "A film script is not the finished piece of art, it's more like a blueprint. \n\nThe script of a play is different, because as has already been explained, the script *is* the play. Each individual performance of the play is just an iteration of the original document, the written play.\n\nSince there's only one production of a given film script, which is recorded for posterity and considered to be *the* finished work, it's not exactly the same thing. \n\nAlso, screenplays typically aren't published, and when they are published, they're not necessarily published in any form that would be recognized by a person who actually worked on the film. Most published screenplays are closer to a transcription of the finished film.\n\nNot to mention, that opens up a whole can of worms, because what even *is* the final form of a script in a literary context? Is it the script that was originally bought by the studio? The script as it was when principal photography was completed? Some kind of idealized re-edited version of the script that reflects the film in its final form? This is why things like The Blacklist and the like can be kind of problematic, because there's an implication that not only is a script a piece of literature, but that the script that was shopped around to producers is the \"real\" artwork and not just a blueprint for a work of art yet to be created.", "Literature means any written work. So, yes it is literature.\n\nFeature and TV screenplays are very different from novels, and even plays. The screenplay has its own unique format and structure.\n\nBeing a great writer of novels doesn't mean you will be a great screenwriter. Structure and pacing is almost always more important to a script than tremendous descriptive ability.", "My degree was in English, I would definitely consider scripts work of literature. There were also several classes I took that had films in the syllabus and counted it as lit. \n\nSimply put: someone had to write or type it for an artistic purpose, it's literature. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Matrix,-The.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8kx0vz", "title": "What allows horses (and other equines) to carry so much weight?", "selftext": "More specifically, to carry so much weight without injury. I know other mammals, such as dogs, can sustain serious injuries \\(such as hip dysplasia or back injuries\\) when they carry large amounts of weight, and that being the reason why parents should never allow children to 'ride' these animals. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8kx0vz/what_allows_horses_and_other_equines_to_carry_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzbasq9", "dzcucnz"], "score": [15, 2], "text": ["It's all about weight ratios, larger animals can absolutely carry more weight. Recommendation for maximum loading shouldn't exceed 20% of the weight of the animal so a 1000lb horse can carry 200lbs and be fine. So for the relative weight for a dog: a 50lb dog shouldn't be expected to carry more than 10lbs.\n\n[Evaluation of Indicators of Weight-Carrying Ability of Light Riding Horses](_URL_0_)", "I went to a talk by [Dr Stuart Sumida](_URL_0_) at an animation company where he consulted on the movement of large (sometimes fictional) animals. He mentioned that large herbivores require large guts to facilitate the digestion of massive quantities of cellulose. Such animals have stiff, arch shaped spines to hold up that weight. This has the side effect of making them great beasts of burden.\n\nUnfortunately that means you can't really have the fantasy scenario of riding giant tigers. Carnivores have much more mobile spines that give them flexibility but can't bear as much weight.\n\nThis general rule of thumb applies only for quadrupeds. Bipedal animals and animals that fly have other concerns that dictate spine shape. \n\nSorry I can't get more technical. It was a talk for animators so it was greatly simplified. Here's [a pdf on the topic.](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.j-evs.com/article/S0737-0806(07\\)00413-3/fulltext"], ["http://www.stuartsumida.com/SumidaResearchGateway.htm", "http://www.stuartsumida.com/ANIMATION/LocomotionImages.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "15gfzc", "title": "how did people in the olden days have sex without any forms of birth control?", "selftext": "Whenever I watch shows or movies that take place in Rome, or even as recent as the 1940's, I always wonder to myself what form of birth control they use. I understand these are fictitious portrayals, but it still always baffles me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15gfzc/how_did_people_in_the_olden_days_have_sex_without/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7m8ooo", "c7m902i", "c7m9r1i", "c7mah64", "c7maq10", "c7mb13w", "c7mb3ai"], "score": [21, 24, 3, 11, 3, 4, 5], "text": ["Well, for the most part they didn't use any effective forms of birth control.  They just had the kid.  ", "They had. There are various herbs that when eaten, made a woman miscarry and ancient (we are talking even before Rome) people also had other means of performing abortion. As for first condoms, they were made from animal gut, or fine leather, or oiled silk or various other materials and were reusable. \n\nEDIT: Typo", " > How did people in the olden days have sex without any forms of birth control?\n\nDiscreetly, preferably in the middle of the night what with all the children they shared their homes with.", "Well, there was a plant whos name escapes me, it was considered a *VERY* potent birth control when processed and used properly, and unfortunately it was cultivated to extinction. \n\nI believe it was related to Pennyroyal. ", "People had sex the same way they do today. That hasn't changed in millennia, except to become more or less public knowledge as societal mores change.\n\nBirth control, on the other hand, has had varying methods over the centuries, with differing levels of success. There is the [rhythm method](_URL_0_) where the couple only has sex when the woman is off her menstrual cycle. There's pulling out, lamb skin condoms, several natural abortifacients (herbs that kill babies, for you pedants who don't read the sidebar rules), all of which have some to no usefulness, but none of which are 100% guaranteed effective.  The only sure method of birth control, even today, is abstinence, which is why so many religions preach it so fervently.  In \"olden days\" it was much easier to get people to follow an idea if it came from god, so that's what they did.  Today we have a more relaxed view of religion and better methods of birth control, so abstinence is not as imperative as it once was.", "Exclusively breastfeeding a baby (no bottles or pacifiers and very frequent nursing day and night) can greatly postpone the return of fertility. I wouldn't count on it 100% but many cultures do rely on this to space out their pregnancies. In my own experience my period didn't return for almost two years after each of my kids. \n\nRead Malcolm Gladwell's article about how the inventors of the birth control pill got their facts wrong. Long but fascinating. \n\n_URL_0_", "Here's the most important thing to keep in mind: First off, in a lot of these societies, if your birth control (spermicide or barrier, usually) or abortion (usually herbal) failed, infanticide was still considered as an option. Second, if you're not well-nourished, it's harder to get pregnant, and as couples struggling to conceive will tell you, one drop of sperm in an unprotected vagina does not necessarily a baby make. Third, access to birth control of some form is common to most human societies, but sometimes it was in some way \"secret knowledge,\" so it was lost in times of great social upheaval. The stereotypical huge American families of the prairies, for example, might have had something to do with the fact that Ma had no one to buy pig-intestine condoms from . . .\n\nIn the \"fictitious portrayals\" usually what you don't see is women putting spermicidal substances in their vaginas between foreplay and penetration, or whatever; the right-wing myth of \"all of the past was like middle-class Victorians\" in terms of sexual mores is patently false. Since clearly you did not Google this question before you asked it, I will now just put a bunch of links easily found on the first page of Google searches like, \"History of contraceptives,\" where you can find more information about what specific methods were known to be used in different historical times and places:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_2_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods"], ["http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.html"], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/books/the-secret-history-of-birth-control.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control#Up_to_the_19th_century", "http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/6/82.06.03.x.html", "http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/13_2%20Birth%20Control%20in%20Antiquity.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "2h5ki9", "title": "What did Washington think of the French Revolution? More specifically, did he ever have correspondence with Robespierre or the King?", "selftext": "I've always been interested in the Washington administration, but I can't really find anything about his response to the French Revolution. What were his thoughts/actions relating to it, and did they change as the revolution went on? Specifically, did he ever have any correspondence with Robespierre or Louis XVI? I imagine he'd be concerned about the execution of the king, but that's pure speculation. Also any recommended texts would be amazing, as I like to learn about how these major world leaders/events all tie in together.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2h5ki9/what_did_washington_think_of_the_french/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckpmqgt"], "score": [98], "text": ["Washington did believe that the French Revolution was an extension of the ideals of the American Revolution, and he did have a good deal of gratitude towards the French (and affection for the Marquis de Lafayette), but Washington was careful to preserve America's neutrality in world affairs.  America's position on France later ended up being a politically divisive issue.\n\nThere was a strong push from the Republican camp, led by Jefferson, to push Washington into adopting an explicitly pro-France position.  Jefferson was much more in favor of a permanent French alliance, seeing the French Revolution as a natural extension of \"The Spirit of '76\".  In fact, this later caused a rift between them as Jefferson tried to paint Washington as anti-French in their newspaper the *Aurora*.  Washington thought they were hypocrites: he wrote to Lafayette that \"they had no more regard for that Nation [France] than for the Grand Turk, farther than their own views were promoted by it.\"^1  Basically, he thought that Jefferson saw only validation of American ideals in France, not what was best for America as a nation.\n\nWashington's policy on France was that America should stay out of European affairs.  In his Farewell Address he urged America to stay out of \"foreign alliances\", and the alliance he was undoubtedly referring to was one with France:\n\n > It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.\n\nEffectively, he sympathized with Revolutionary France, but unlike his Republican colleagues, he still felt that France was a different nation with its own self-interests that we ought to stay out of.\n\n1: Letter, Washington to Lafayette, 25 December 1798"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2xpjyu", "title": "if fires go out when oxygen is removed, how is the sun burning?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xpjyu/eli5_if_fires_go_out_when_oxygen_is_removed_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp2768u", "cp276ox", "cp27752", "cp29wof", "cp29x8b", "cp2huc8"], "score": [5, 103, 15, 20, 2, 5], "text": ["The sun isn't burning. Stars are heated by nuclear fussion in their cores. Hydrogen and Helium are under such high pressure (due to gravity) that they begin to fuse into heavier elements, releasing tons of energy in the process.", "Short answer: the sun is not burning.  It is too hot to burn.\n  \nThe sun is a nuclear fusion reaction (mostly hydrogen into helium), which is far and away a higher energy than simple oxygen combustion.", "The sun **isn't** burning.  The core of the sun is undergoing nuclear fusion.  The intense pressure is enough to force hydrogen atoms to fuse together into helium atoms, and that reaction releases energy.", "The sun isn't burning. Nor is it exploding.\n\nThe sun is *glowing*.\n\nNuclear fusion is what keeps the sun going. As the gas rises towards the surface it cools off quite a bit, but is still very hot. The light you see coming from the sun is due to the exact same physics behind why that metal pot you left on the stove glows red.  ", "Basically, the sun takes a couple smaller atoms and puts them together into bigger ones. Doing so releases a lot of energy, which we see as light/electromagnetic radiation.", "Like everyone says, the sun is not burning. \n\nBut another thing to realize is that there are fires here on earth even that do not need oxygen to burn. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3xx3mh", "title": "why are rick santorum, george pataki, and jim gilmore still actively campaigning, even though they have no chance at all of succeeding?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xx3mh/eli5_why_are_rick_santorum_george_pataki_and_jim/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cy8kjn3", "cy8l9mm", "cy8lmqj", "cy8m6uk", "cy8v1w8", "cy8vnqa", "cy8vxgw", "cy8vysr", "cy8xs61"], "score": [4, 68, 22, 20, 2, 9, 2, 4, 2], "text": ["Because people keep giving them money.\n\nWhy would they stop when someone else is funding it?", "there are still successes to be had, even when it's clear that you won't be the nominee. For example, your polling this cycle can be shown as a success story to potential campaign contributors next cycle (\"Look, this poll shows I had 15% of registered party member's votes, with your help, I know we can push this up and succeed this year!). Also just because you aren't the lead candidate doesn't mean that you don't have a few good ideas that gain popularity...you are doing a service to the political party you represent, and the country as a whole by bringing light to these ideas/issues as often the main stream candidates will pick up on them.\n\nFinally, as unlikely as it might be, politics is a fickle bitch. A controversy with the current leader in the polls could suddenly change the game in your favor.", "A few points:\n\nCitizen's United has really opened the flood gates to candidates who would normally not be able to have enough support to fund a campaign. Now all you need is a single billionaire to keep a campaign afloat.\n\nAlso, at this point, anything can happen. Although Trump seems to be able to say or do anything, a single piece of news could still derail his campaign. People are still hoping for the opportunity to fill the vacuum that many still expect Trump to leave if or when his campaign fizzles out. \n\nAdditionally, there is a lot to be gained for candidates like Fiorina and Ben Carson, who after this process is over will be guaranteed to have book deals, opportunities for paid speeches, and perhaps a cushy paid contributor deal with Fox News. Similarly, for other candidates, they have an opportunity to raise their political profiles, both nationally and the local level. ", "Because campaigning for highly visible offices can be lucrative, and is a good way for people to pass money along to friends etc. \n\nFor example, a candidate or more often now their totally unconnected (wink, wink) PAC gets 2 million from donors. They then spend that money on salaries, offices, polling and analysis. So, how do they select who to hire? A large percentage of the time they hire people that they or their donors would like them to hire. So by giving money to a candidate they can tracelessly fund people and groups that they don't want their names directly attached to. \n\nIf this sounds a lot like money laundering, well you're right.", "Running for president is a great platform to get your voice heard and get loads of media exposure. Even if you don't win you can still do speaking engagements, write a book, run for office again in the future, etc.  The more exposure they can get the better. ", "If they keep their faces on tv they make more money after they drop out.  They get higher speaking fees.  They get better spots on Fox News.  They get better lobbying jobs.  Etc. Etc.", "They definitely have higher than a 0% chance of receiving the nomination.\n\nThere are goals outside of being top of the ticket: VP, bringing up the topics that are important to you, next election cycle, spreading your \"brand\" towards business ventures, etc.\n\nMaybe they actually believe that they are the best choice and that voters might see that, eventually, in the right circumstance.\n\nYou could make a similar argument about the Paul's Kasich's Christie's Huckabee's but I think some of these candidates might have some shot at being the last guy standing when Trump fall over. Things happen in the race.", "High visibility can help them get a powerful job other than President.  The new Prez could pick them for VP, appoint them to the Cabinet or some other high-level position.", "They are exploiting their fanboys and fangirls for money while giving said fans the red meat they crave, even though said fans should know better, they want to put money toward their hopeless ambitions. Plus these politicos may also be shilling for their book, stuff like that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1kkahx", "title": "Can I create a perfect vacuum in a hydraulic cylinder by pulling on the piston hard enough?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kkahx/can_i_create_a_perfect_vacuum_in_a_hydraulic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbpsmzg", "cbpuz2q", "cbq26ih"], "score": [10, 6, 16], "text": ["No. You can get arbitrarily close to vacuum, but won't actually have zero pressure.", "Creating [ultra-high vacuums](_URL_0_) (having air pressures less than 10^-12 normal atmospheric pressure) requires special materials and procedures. Even fingerprints need to be avoided within the chamber, besides even avoiding certain metals.", "I used to work in a computer chip factory, so I worked with vacuum chambers every day.  A perfect vacuum would be the absence of *any* molecules of gas in a chamber.  Even with the best vacuum pumps, you cannot achieve this; you would need the complete absence of any volatile materials in the chamber and you would need a vacuum pump capable, essentially, of exploring the chamber and grasping every last stray molecule of gas.  You could spend billions of dollars trying to accomplish this (and you would fail), but to what end?  The high vacuums we are capable of achieving now are good enough for what we need them to do.\n\nFor example, one of the highest vacuums we use is for physical vapor deposition, or PVD.  This is the method used to place thin films of metals (Aluminum, Tungsten, Copper) onto wafers of Silicon that will ultimately be sliced into individual computer chips.  This is done, for example, by knocking atoms of a metal from a \"target\" with a beam of ions.  In a chamber with a sufficiently high vacuum, the metal atoms have essentially a clear path to deposit themselves upon a Silicon wafer to form a thin film of metal which can be patterned during later process steps to produce circuitry.  The vacuum necessary to do this is around 1 milliTorr, actually a fraction of that.  A Torr is 1/760th of atmospheric pressure (atmospheric pressure is measured in millimeters of Mercury in a barometer, and a standard Atmosphere is about 760mm of Mercury), so a milliTorr is less than 1/760,000th of an atmosphere.  That's a very good-quality vacuum, and PVD is actually done at a bit less than that.\n\nAnd the vacuum pumps we have are far more impressive than a simple piston pump.  [Here is a cutaway picture of one of the more \"basic\" vacuum pumps used in a computer chip factory.](_URL_0_)  The two clawed rotors counter-rotate at high speed.  This is considered a piece of support equipment for the machine that is processing the wafer of Silicon; this vacuum pump \"lives\" one or two floors below the production equipment in a wafer fab and is connected to the process chamber via 4-inch diameter stainless steel piping.  This \"backing\" vacuum can, by itself, pump a process chamber down to about 5-10 mTorr.\n\nBut that pressure still isn't low enough to process wafers.  I worked in the Etch department, where we used ionized gases flowing through the process chamber to etch away portions of the wafer.  So, we needed a pump that could acheive pressures of about 1 mTorr even with gas flowing through.  [Introducing the Turbomolecular Pump.](_URL_1_)  If you're thinking \"that sort of looks like the front half of a jet engine,\" you would be right.  But where a jet engine's *compressor* works in the atmosphere, a turbopump cannot tolerate pressure above 100mT or so.  As you can see, the pump consists of alternating layers of vanes pointing in opposite directions.  The alternating layers either spin, or don't.  The spinning ones spin at speeds of 20,000 to 30,000 revolutions per minute.  Why so fast? When the pressure is *that* low, the molecules are spread far apart there is no mass flow, *and they still tend to travel in every direction.* \n\nThis is an important point.  A household fan works by batting those few gas molecules that *just happen* to be traveling towards the fan blades in your general direction.  But in a vacuum chamber, you need to swat a much higher percentage straight down.  The vanes in a turbomolecular pump are traveling at *supersonic speeds* because gas molecules travel at similar speeds and the only way to be sure the moving vanes are really likely to swat the molecules down is to have them traveling at such high speeds (the stationary vanes assist in keeping molecules from wandering back up).  The speeds are so high, the bearings for the rotor are magnetic.  If the pressure goes up too high, the rotor will have to land on its emergency mechanical bearings as it spins down, this makes a hell of a racket.  Imagine the Death Star \"commencing primary ignition\" to destroy a planet, *that's* what it sounds like.\n\nThe turbomolecular pump is attached directly to the vacuum chamber.  The aperture of the turbomolecular pump is a good 8 inches or more across, because it only ingests the gas molecules that happen to be headed its way, and a bigger opening means a greater likelihood the gas molecules are headed in the right way.  And you know what? even this pump isn't good enough for depositing a layer of metal on a wafer of Silicon.  That requires a cryopump.  It looks a little like a turbomolecular pump, but it has no moving parts.  Instead, the cryopump has one or more arrays in the path of the stray gas molecules.  These arrays are cooled by *liquid Helium* and the gas molecules you want to get out of your vacuum chamber wander in and get frozen to the arrays.  That's it.  It's a \"roach motel\" for pesky gas molecules.\n\nTLDR: You don't have to get all of the air out of a vacuum chamber to do practical things, just most of it.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high_vacuum#Achieving_ultra-high_vacuum"], ["http://www.vacuum-guide.com/images/hw_dry_claw_northey.jpeg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Cut_through_turbomolecular_pump.jpg/220px-Cut_through_turbomolecular_pump.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "mfyrg", "title": "why are so many priests pedophiles.", "selftext": "Seriously.  & #3232;\\_ & #3232;\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mfyrg/eli5_why_are_so_many_priests_pedophiles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c30lepn", "c30lgy0", "c30loef", "c30moy1", "c30lepn", "c30lgy0", "c30loef", "c30moy1"], "score": [4, 15, 14, 5, 4, 15, 14, 5], "text": ["Do you have evidence that paedophilia is more common amongst priests than the general population?", "It's not actually that much more common for priests than anyone else.  The controversy comes from the churches trying to cover up the scandal and protect their priests/pastors.  It's also a little more sensational, because religious leaders are often trusted with children.", "They aren't actually. Incidence of pedophilia among priests is a bit less than among the general population. The problem was that the church hierarchy was protecting them and hiding them from prosecution while allowing them to continue to work among children.", "Explain like you are five? Ok..\n\nHey little boy, do you love Jesus and candy?\n", "Do you have evidence that paedophilia is more common amongst priests than the general population?", "It's not actually that much more common for priests than anyone else.  The controversy comes from the churches trying to cover up the scandal and protect their priests/pastors.  It's also a little more sensational, because religious leaders are often trusted with children.", "They aren't actually. Incidence of pedophilia among priests is a bit less than among the general population. The problem was that the church hierarchy was protecting them and hiding them from prosecution while allowing them to continue to work among children.", "Explain like you are five? Ok..\n\nHey little boy, do you love Jesus and candy?\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1hsvrd", "title": "why is cranberry juice good for your kidneys?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hsvrd/eli5_why_is_cranberry_juice_good_for_your_kidneys/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caxl2wm", "caxl4qm", "caxl5wu", "caxl80u", "caxl9dp"], "score": [21, 2, 22, 180, 17], "text": ["Most are acknowledging that the cranberry works to prevent bacteria from being able to colonize but nobody is saying why it works. I was taught that cranberry is acidic and lowers the pH of urine. Lower pH makes it harder for bacteria to colonize bladder and urethra surfaces because they basically use a protein \"grappling hook\" to attach to cell surfaces in the first place. These proteins behave differently when pH changes are induced, so it can reduce incidence and rates of colonization and therefore urinary tract infections and possibly kidney infections. ", "From what I remember ( I'm on my phone) there is an acid in the juice that is excreted into your nephrons (functional unit of your kidney) which then is collected, sent down collecting ducts, then sent into your bladder via the ureters. If you have a UTI (urinary tract infection) this acid can harm the bacteria (I think from concentration of an acid) so this acid help prevent and treat the UTI. \n\nI will go look this up and report back!\n\n**Edit** it does have to do with solutes entering the urinary tract! I mention an acid above as potential solute, but I don't remember where I heard this. The solutes hinder the attachment of certain bacteria and the formation of biofilms in the urinary tract. **Consult a doctor if you think you have a UTI.**", "It isn't, particularly. Some people use to think that the acid in cranberries stopped bacteria growing but that's been shown to be wrong.\n\nThere is some vague evidence that cranberry juice can help *prevent* UTIs, though. It's thought that cranberries might contain a chemical that stops bacteria sticking to the cells lining the walls of the urinary tract, but no-one knows for sure. Once you have a UTI, though, no juice will cure it.\n\nThe real reason that cranberry juice, lemon barley water etc are good for your kidneys is that you need to flush them out. Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day (2-3 litres of fluid daily), THAT is what is good for your kidneys.\n\nMy daughter gets a LOT of UTIs, even with prophylactic antibiotics, and several members of my family have died from kidney disease. All I ever hear from well-intentioned friends is \"have you tried cranberry and/or barley water?\". Sigh.", "When you drink lots of cranberry juice... Actual juice, not the concentrate(and by this I meant to say the mixtures that are mostly water... So cran-apple juice), it doesn't allow bacteria to stick to your pee hole. This lowers risk of getting infection. It isn't exactly good for your kidneys, just to decrease risk of urinary tract infection. Source... Pharmacist and I tried to explain like you were 5. Edit: forgot to mention it does not cure a UTI.", "I haven't heard of cranberry juice being good for you kidneys. Most I see is it being good for UTIs.\n\nI'm a medical student and part of our Critical Evaluation module (teaching us how to read scientific papers properly) was debating whether or not cranberry juice helped to get rid of UTIs, so I'll try and relay some of that here. \n\nWhen you have a UTI, most of the bacteria (usually E.Coli) causing the infection make a biofilm inside your bladder or your urethra/ureter (your pee tubes) which helps them resist the flow and acidity of the urine. \n\nHow cranberry juice was theorised to help was that they contain proanthocyanidins, which are large molecules which may interfere with the way the bacteria causing the infection form a biofilm. The research was ambiguous but from what we could tell, due to the difference types of bacteria infecting young women and elderly men (I can't remember which I'm afraid), some of the studies suggested that cranberry juice might be more effective in the elderly men category. However, since the vast majority of studies were looking solely at young women (who are at risk of E. Coli cystitis) there wasn't enough evidence to say either way and to be honest antibiotics/medical therapies are almost certainly more effective.\n\nEDIT: I was discussing this with some friends whilst I typed and someone mentioned that cranberry juice might prevent the formation of kidney stones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7eo9dy", "title": "In my Psychology textbook it says that cortisol (a result of stress) reduces telomerase activity, therefore speeding up the aging process, however, I know that exercise also releases cortisol, yet is known to combat aging - how?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7eo9dy/in_my_psychology_textbook_it_says_that_cortisol_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq6nt40"], "score": [9], "text": ["Your primary question relates to article: [Choi et al. 2008](_URL_1_). The experiments specifically look at T lymphocytes.\n\nA higher telomerase (an enzyme that adds TTAGGG sequences onto the 3\u2019 ends of telomeric DNA) activity leads to a longer telomere that promotes genomic stability. Higher levels of stress (which releases cortisol) are correlated with significantly reduced telomerase activity (so shorter telomere length and lowered genomic stability). \n\nModerate to high intensity exercise increases cortisol levels while low intensity exercise decreases circulating cortisol levels; [ref](_URL_0_). Extending this further, high-intensity aerobic interval (HIIT) training reverse many age-related differences in the proteome (particularly mitochondrial proteins); [ref](_URL_2_). This should mean that at higher cortisol levels (due to for example, high intensity exercise), we should have decreased telomerase activity (and subsequently shorter telomere length). We have a paradox which you pointed out.\n\nThe reality is that we cannot generalize the results from T lymphocytes for the whole body as different cells may regulate the telomerase activity differently under the direct influence of cortisol.\n\n**TL;DR** : Exercise is good for health and combats aging. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18787373", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18222063", "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28273480"]]}
{"q_id": "1f5p49", "title": "what is the true difference between crackers/hackers and script kiddies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f5p49/eli5_what_is_the_true_difference_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca71gdn", "ca71k3z", "ca71kju", "ca720s9"], "score": [6, 50, 4, 10], "text": ["Crackers study software and systems to determine faults that allow access that was not intended. Hackers use that info to commit crimes, often by hand or with tools. They understand the workings of those tools to some extent. Script kitties are people following cookie cutter instructions to perform a hack, they don't necessarily know how what they are doing works. \n\nThis is at least one interpretation of the terms. Some would say Crackers and hackers are the same, some would say a person following instructions is a hacker too. Some say that hackers are not inherently malicious, as the term hacker can even mean someone who enjoys creating their own things versus controlling others, but in the most commonly used sense of the words the above is true. ", "Hackers, in the classical sense, are a lot like a good baker. They can work from scratch without directions, know what they're doing and why, and can adapt to different things if they don't get the result they expected. \n\nScript kiddies are like someone following a cookie recipe off a bag of chocolate chips. They have to follow the directions exactly and won't know how to fix it if things don't come out right. ", "Put simply, a Script Kiddie doesn't understand what they're doing - they just get a tool from someone else and hope it works. Someone worthy of respect will take the time to learn why the tool works, and perhaps improve upon it.\n", "There are multiple definitions for hackers:\n\n* A hacker is someone who will find a shortcut to do something hard. It's the smart lazy guy in your class.\n* A hacker knows something inside out to find and exploit its weaknesses\n\nThere are 4 main types of hackers\n\n* White hat: Someone who finds security flaws and fixes them, usually employed. *The ethical hacker*\n* Black hat: Someone who exploits security flaws for personal gains or 'for fun'. *The criminal hacker*\n* Grey hat: A combination between the black and white hat hacker. He exploits flaws to send a message to the admin that his system just got hacked. He could ask for some money to fix it. *The unethical-ethical hacker*\n* Blue hat: Someone who tests and patches flaws in a system before it's official launch. *the other ethical hacker*\n\nA cracker is generally the same thing. ^According ^to ^wikipedia\n\nA scriptkiddie is someone (usually inexperienced) who uses his own limited knowledge in combination with 'hacker programs' and advanced information to do stuff that's generally not accepted by other programmers. \n\nIf you need examples of scriptkiddies, visit youtube and enter *'how to make a virus'* or *'how to hack x'*.\n\nSources:\n[Wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\n[My own knowledge](#Azeirah)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_\\(computer_security\\)"]]}
{"q_id": "5ryqio", "title": "is there anything in the constitution that prevents the 3 branches of government, if a party has majority of all 3, from following partisan politics and bypassing all checks and balances?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ryqio/eli5_is_there_anything_in_the_constitution_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddb795g", "ddb7pwg", "ddb7r20", "ddb8kr2", "ddb8nxs", "ddb8u7g", "ddb91rr", "ddb9n5k", "ddbepzj", "ddbf594", "ddbopui", "ddbq9op"], "score": [4, 13, 278, 49, 10, 8, 3, 69, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["No.\n\nThe Constitution is worth exactly the paper it's written on and what it's worth to those who profess to uphold it.", "When the Constitution was written, they didn't necessarily expect there to be parties. (Notice how they aren't mentioned in the Constitution.)\n\nThere is one theory, based on the Tenth Amendment, that the states (and the people) have the power/duty to disobey laws and other actions of the federal government that are obviously against the Constitution.", "The Judicial branch is not elected. It is non-party affiliated. That is the primary check against what you are describing. ", "I think you misunderstand the meaning of \"checks and balances\". Checks and balances is a philosophy that states that each branch should have the power to regulate the actions of each other branch. It does *not* give power to the parties in any way.\n\nThe entire purpose of the structure of the government was to prevent a single organization from supplanting the power of the others, meaning that governmental power could be as decentralized as possible. If a party wins control of the majority in the House, Senate, and Presidency (yes, I know that's not the three branches of government, but it's the real focus of this discussion, so bear with me), then it is entirely within their rights to push their agenda. The government was built precisely to allow for this type of change. The support of a wide variety of people in disparate states was necessary to pull off the current Republican domination of the government, and the Constitution was written specifically to allow the people to enforce the desired change by electing representatives that support their wishes.\n\nAs much as it may upset you, there is nothing unconstitutional about the current situation in government. In fact, the Democrats were in much the same position in 2008. The constitution was written precisely so that this type of radical shift in policy could be implemented by the voters if they felt that the government acting in accordance with their wishes. ", "Nope.\n\nThat said, it's kind of intentional. If they're popular enough to get all 3 branches of government, the thinking goes, people must want them there for a reason.\n\nYou don't even need all 3!\n\n All it takes is ~2/3 of Congress(or 2/3 to propose, 3/4 to pass state legislatures), and voters willing to keep voting you in, to make literally any changes to the Constitution/government you want. Again, the founders thinking was \"don't like it? vote for someone else\"\n\nedit:\n > The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress;\n\nDo that, and you can do whatever you want.", "If it does that then it's not bypassing the checks and balances at all. It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do, enacting the will of the people. ", "It depends on what you mean by bypassing all checks and balances.  If you just mean getting a highly partisan agenda made into law, that can definitely be done if Congress passes laws supporting that agenda, the President approves those laws or makes corresponding executive orders, and the Supreme Court is willing to rule that the actions are in line with the rules in the Constitution.  However, that would probably be more like an agenda being approved by or surviving checks and balances, rather than bypassing them entirely.\n\nIf you mean something more extreme like enacting laws that blatantly go against the Constitution or cause changes that would alter a branch's power, that could also be done, but it would require an amendment to be passed.  An amendment generally requires approval from 2/3 of each house in Congress plus 3/4 of the states.  If passed, an amendment can't be rejected by anything other than another amendment and it could even alter the balances between branches.  An amendment can be as partisan as possible, although it's unlikely that a partisan amendment could pass.  Also, the criteria for getting an amendment passed are very different than just having a majority in Congress and the Supreme Court, plus the President. ", "There are some constitutional law theories that may allow it, but they haven't succeeded in practice. They stem from the fact that while the federal government has 3 branches, that's only half of the picture. The individual states have rights as well (although they can really only challenge the federal government if they act together).\n\nThe first is called [nullification](_URL_1_). This is a legal theory that each state has the right to nullify any federal law that the state believes is unconstitutional. This isn't explicitly laid out in the constitution, and has been rejected by both state and federal courts every time it's been tried.\n\nA similar option is called [interposition](_URL_2_). This involves multiple states acting together to prevent the ability of the federal government to enforce laws considered unconstitutional. This would buy the states time to go through the process of challenging laws. It would also wait out the clock until the next election which could correct the issues (the members of the House of Representatives have two year term limits).\n\n\nThen there's an option that's never been used and is rarely discussed in Article V of the Constitution. Article V discusses how amendments to the constitution are proposed, and so far they have all used the first option - a two-thirds vote by both the House of Representative and the Senate (then ratification by the states). But there's a second option, often called an [Article V Convention](_URL_0_) - If two-thirds of the state legislatures apply for a convention to propose amendments, the states could decide to directly change the Constitution *without any say from federal government*. The state governments would be able to restructure the government at will, as long as three-quarters of the states agreed on new amendments proposed.\n\nChanging the Constitution directly isn't something to do lightly, of course. An Article V Convention is really just a last resort in case the three branches of government unite to do something extreme, like amending the constitution themselves to make the president a dictator for life. But it's a good reminder that the federal government is only given power by the states, who are given power by the people of the states, which is noted in the very first line of the Constitution. The power comes from \"We, the people of the United States\" - nowhere else.", "Roosevelt tried to do this by adding justices to the Supreme Court, but if I remember correctly the current court wouldn't allow it.", "A very disturbing part of current politics is that it is the concept of checks and balances that makes it work.\n\nI read parts of the constitution of the Soviet Union which stipulated that printing presses would be available in the basements of public buildings for all to use. This was clearly the dream of revolutionaries who had finally come to power. The Soviet Union had nearly 100 % voting in every election. On paper the Soviet Union had a very democratic government. In practice it did not work that way.\n\nThere are other governments in the world which are democracies. I call them failed democracies because they have not really served their citizens well. On my list are Venezuela and Greece. But I do not want to argue which countries should be on the list or which ones have truly failed. My point is that democracies sometimes really do not work. Germany was a democracy. Hitler rose to power in it.\n\nOur country could slide down into something like those.", "It's not about the three branches of government revolting - it's about the people revolting. What's in the Constitution on this is the Second Amendment. ", "The second ammendment\n\n\nIt applies to the People rather than the branches of government \n\nAnd it allows the people to keep their republic "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_\\(U.S._Constitution\\)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interposition"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6rb518", "title": "why does getting your own place and leaving your parent's home such a big goal for americans even though it could set them back financially.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rb518/eli5_why_does_getting_your_own_place_and_leaving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3owjn", "dl3paxr", "dl3ptlx", "dl3q7pc", "dl3s548", "dl3u3t5", "dl3uc9k", "dl3ufyx", "dl3uobl", "dl3ur7m", "dl3uw49", "dl3uzuc", "dl3v4ho", "dl3v75d", "dl3vajo", "dl3vl0e", "dl3vmlf", "dl3vn4d", "dl3vq8y", "dl3vt25", "dl3vv1p", "dl3vvlq", "dl3vwaz", "dl3w0gh", "dl3w3oh", "dl3w3u6", "dl3w7dk", "dl3w83f", "dl3w8yp", "dl3wccw", "dl3wm6z", "dl3woe3", "dl3wqxb", "dl3wrcz", "dl3wsk2", "dl3wts9", "dl3wu20", "dl3wu6q", "dl3wvdz", "dl3wxmy", "dl3wy13", "dl3wzmj", "dl3x37m", "dl3x77z", "dl3xblg", "dl3xdgy", "dl3xgci", "dl3xh99", "dl3xhfk", "dl3xi97", "dl3xiio", "dl3xirt", "dl3xjpl", "dl3xlpn", "dl3xm5z", "dl3xmtn", "dl3xq23", "dl3xt7f", "dl3xtvk", "dl3xvx6", "dl3xwq4", "dl3xyh6", "dl3y610", "dl3ycg8", "dl3ydhp", "dl3yfqr", "dl3ykry", "dl3ylmz", "dl3ynca", "dl3yp6r", "dl3yppk", "dl3yprb", "dl3yq3m", "dl3yslz", "dl3yvoy", "dl3yxcj", "dl3z0zb", "dl3z1th", "dl3z2l1", "dl3z2ur", "dl3z4y7", "dl3z7a4", "dl3za09", "dl3zgb2", "dl3zlen", "dl3zm35", "dl3znyl", "dl3zpnl", "dl3zqlj", "dl3ztbo", "dl3ztm7", "dl3zuc2", "dl3zv3n", "dl3zxk6", "dl404sb", "dl406bz", "dl40d31", "dl40h7j", "dl40lhg", "dl40t0g", "dl40vo9", "dl40zkf", "dl416zx", "dl418pf", "dl41chr", "dl41cm6", "dl41ctm", "dl41f6g", "dl41gen", "dl41gra", "dl41hy4", "dl41vav", "dl42426", "dl42ag9", "dl42b2z", "dl42crx", "dl42j0v", "dl42nrh", "dl436ph", "dl43hti", "dl43raf", "dl4436w", "dl444h8", "dl445vm", "dl44680", "dl4488k", "dl44p1e", "dl45en6", "dl461a7"], "score": [74, 118, 2625, 22, 6, 11, 2, 17, 8, 26, 4, 121, 6, 22, 6, 3, 103, 92, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7, 2, 2, 27, 3, 23, 49, 2, 16, 3, 2, 8, 2, 107, 32, 2, 3, 1955, 5, 3, 291, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 7, 2, 2, 17, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 16, 4, 4, 2, 2, 3, 8, 3, 5, 2, 2, 5, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 7, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 4, 8, 4, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 5, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["There is no single explanation for this as life is too fluid and everyone has their own reasons specific to them. In my opinion, as a Yorkshireman, my parents effectively put their lives on hold to raise me and my brother. We both felt leaving home and setting up lives of our own would be the grown up thing to do and give our parents the space and freedom they deserved. Having your own home is much more satisfying than having just a room in someone elses house. Also, I couldn't wait to get out of our shit pot town.", "I think its a cultural thing. \nEverybody does it and its a sign of growing up. Therefore you want to do it too.\nAlso you can do what you want if youre not home. \nSpeaking for myself even if youre in your late 20s your mother asks you \"where are you going\" \"why are you doing this\" \"take a scarf with you\" \nSo I think its a mixture between cultural \"pressure\" and beeing fed up to justify everything you do. \nAlso I guess its natural behavior even by animals. If youre raised you leave and found your own family. ", "*TL;DR*: **It's not all about money**. There's all sorts of different reasons why it's worth shelling out a lot more cash for.\n\nA big one is pride due to social expectations. There's a certain negative and slightly embarrassing status associated with living at home versus a more adult-seeming being-in-charge of your own surroundings when you're living in a bachelor pad or equivalent. It's doubly so when your peer group of friends or workmates all have their own places and you don't have the freedom to invite them over. Ditto the mooching aspect of being a stay-at-home adult/child. Eventually, to a lot of people, it just doesn't seem... right or fair and so they move out. And we as humans want to \"own\" stuff, and be able to look around at our own little spot and say \"this is mine because I'm paying for it / renting it out of my own pocket.\"\n\nSome people find that being too close to their parents eventually drive them nuts. They want to live a certain way or not have any limitations on their behaviors. But there's often conditions on having someone else's roof over your head and those eventually become too onerous. OP asked about this from an American perspective, and so it's quite appropriate that one of the key reasons is \"freedom\". :)\n\nOthers reach a point in a relationship where it's too clumsy and confined to enjoy that relationship at their parents. Most parents don't appreciate their kid having a sex-buddy in their bedroom for a whole weekend. Thumpthumpthump from the second floor becomes old rather quickly.\n\nThe parents have a say too, particularly if they're approaching retirement. \"Junior, get the hell out so we can live our own life and we won't have to waste our limited money on feeding you!\". They want the house to look and feel the same as before they left for that one-week tour in the camper, not come home to an empty fridge and an unwashed sinkful of dishes. \n\n", "Well, if you can't provide for yourself, you're surely not going to be able to provide for anyone else.  Think of it less about being set back financially and more about actually setting off financially, i.e. demonstrating an ability to manage your own affairs.", "Because at one point in history the government made it extremely easy for white middle class men to get their own suburban home, decent car and steady job in the city. This ideal image stuck with the culture until today, which is problematic because some of those opportunities are now gone or have been warped.\n\nIt used to be incredibly easy to buy and pay off a house. Now it's basically impossible because bankers and our parents seriously messed up the housing market.", "Yeah ive learned now from talking to people of other cultures that they believe it completely taking care of all expenses and housing until a child is finished with school. Thats usually not the case here. My parents took advantage of me and was taking my money since i started working so i left when i was 17 and been on my own since :)", "Because 18 year old kids want to be \"cool\" like everyone else and drink whenever they want.  I desperately wanted my own place when I was that young, but I made about $100/week and there was just no way I could afford it.  Thankfully, I was practical and had friends that made bad decisions so I could just go to their apartment.\n\nLooking back - 15 years later - I ended up saving SO much money by moving out once when I was 23, rather than back and forth a few times like most of my friends that age.  ", "The reasons would vary depending on your family, but I believe most people leave the parent's house so they can have more independence.  For the most part, if you depend on your parents financially then they have a greater influence the decisions you make. For example, lets say you like to stay out until 3 am in the morning.  If your parents don't like that, you're going to hear about it.  If you lived on your own it wouldn't be an issue.  \n\nThere are an infinite number of examples, all different depending on the family dynamic, but it's all about independence.", "Even asking this question would make you look like a loser in America. The mindset in my culture (mexican american) is have a bunch of kids, baby them until they're adults, then kick them out when they're done with school and can work. ", "I moved out because I wanted to sleep naked. I never could because my mom always snuck into my room to kiss my nose while I was asleep and if my cat was my little spoon and sleeping with me my mom thought it was the cutest fucking thing in the world and would take pictures. Tbh they are cute pictures. I'm glad I have them now that my cat is dead. ", "I think it's foolish. It's a way to\" prove \" your grown up. It's a selfish thing some parents do... ex. When you're 18 your outta here, so we can live our lives. Like you were a mistake", "The simplest way I can put it... \n\nFrom the time you are born, your parents are trying to develop you into a self sustaining, functional member of society.  When you move out of their house and start your own home, it is your first proclamation of freedom and maturity.  Until you do that, you are just living off of someone else, which suggests that you haven't properly developed into an adult yet. ", "Even try sneaking a date past your parents?", "For the most part, being *truly* independent can't happen until you move out of your parents house. Most adults like their independence.", "I'm a grown up and like to make my own decisions. If I lived with either my mom or my dad they would try to run my life like I didn't make more money than both of them combined. \n\nNot saying I have it all figured out, but I'm no moron and I don't need anyone reminding me when to get haircuts. ", "I mean at 27 I'd still live with my mom and just stack cash, but what kind of life is it when your even 21 and still living at home, meet a nice girl, your both adults but can't decide who's moms house to go home to, lol ", "This is a somewhat complex question because I believe many factors come in play. In more eastern cultures, children don't move out until they have graduated university or landed their main full time job (source: am easterner). In many western families it's 18-out. And I think a comparaison of these two philosophies goes a long way. And I think it's hard to ELI5 it. Basically IMO the western culture one (note: not every western family does this obviously) puts you in a shit position at first, you're young and poor and clueless. But you learn on your own and become very responsible because of that. On the opposite, the eastern one, you move out only when you're comfortable financially. You live no pressure and arguably an \"easier\" young adulthood. But is that good? Maybe it causes more happiness due to less stress. And it might also make you less responsible and auto-sufficient because you haven't been through the shit those 18-out people have.\n\nI think a middle ground is ideal. But to answer your question, it's a mixture of social expectations in the west, and also getting the person to be able to live on their own. Kinda like the bird mama who watches the baby birds jumping off the nest so they can eventually fly on their own thing. Idk.", "Well, money wasnt an issue in my decision because my step mother was making me pay at least $500/month for just a room in a house which I felt was a shitty deal. She had no job so I was pretty much paying her to be lazy at that point. I'll GLADLY take a bit more of a financial hit for 100% freedom!\n\nI wanted to actually see my GF, of 4 years at the time, every day without needing permission from both my parents and hers. \n\nI hated my step mother so I wanted to get out as soon as possible.\n\nI wanted to be able to throw parties and let friends crash at my place if they drank too much. \n\nI wanted the satisfaction of knowing I could make it with out my parents help and wanted to make sure I was ready for the real world and what ever came next in life. \n\nI wanted a BIG dog and I wasn't allowed to have one. Now I have a big doofy Lab/Malamute mix that is fucking adorable!\n\nSocial expectations had nothing to do with my decision. I am a home owner at age 22 (bought an awesome double wide mobile home :D). All of my friends still live with their parents still so no real pressure at this age. \n\nAfter I started looking for my own place, my father was looking to move 3 hrs away and my first career job was here so I definitely needed to find my own place. \n\nBiggest priority tho - Being able to walk around my own place naked as the day I was born", "My parents are abusive. I needed to get out for my sanity and I have never once regretted it, even when money has been tightest.", "American parents are more likely to be prohibitive of sexual liberties.  Got to get to the bone some man, it's important. ", "Mostly independence, a feeling of finally being accountable for yourself at all times. All the whole lie asking yourself will I fail or succeed? What am I really made of? ", "As a 36 year old living at home I can give you my 2 cents.  I was in financial trouble, and had to move back in with the parents 6 years ago.  I've been digging myself out of debt since then, looking for a job that pays enough to do so.  One reason I want to get out is independence.  I'm at a point in my life where I need to be away from my retired father, who is home literally 24/7.  I have no privacy, my bathroom is right near my room yet I still need to be clothed when I go the 4 steps from my bathroom to my room.  I feel like they always need to know where I'm going, where I am etc.  My dad will get worried if I don't leave a note saying where I am.  I'm 36.  Yes, you read that right, 36.  I appreciate what they've done for me, but not having the things I was used to for 10 years of living alone or with a girlfriend/roommate, is wearing me down.  It would be completely worth the monthly payment to leave.  Anyway, that's what I am dealing with, hope this sheds some light on things :) ", "From a parent's pov, we want you to go to college or whatever and start your own life, making your own choices. On the flipside, we also want you to stay because we can protect you.\n\nAlso, we've put in our effort, get out so we can have naked time. We're going on a vacation next week, can you come home to watch the dogs? ", "Is there a country where people live with their parents their whole lives? \n\nWho doesn't want to get out, take control and start their own lives?", "Menopause.  Literally impossible to live with my mom right now.  Moving on Sunday.  Love her to death but if I leave my shoes not perfectly straight in the hallway she'll yell at me for an hour.  ", "I have an uncle who still lives with his parents at the age of 50 and doesnt have a job. Growing up my dad always reminded me of not being like him (the uncle). So I moved out when I went to colloge at 18. ", "It's a cultural thing.  For the baby boomer generation and most of Gen X, the economy was so good that living with your parents meant you were a failure or there was something wrong with you.  As a consequence moving out and getting your own place is viewed as a rite of passage. \n\nNow things are different.  Personally, I don't understand the stigma.  I did move out between my third and fourth years of university, but there was plenty of room.  Looking back, it would have been much smarter to stay there for another few years, even contributing ~$500/m back for rent/groceries/etc I would have saved a TON of money I wasted on shitty apartments.   ", "Maybe it's got to do with the US being a land of immigrants, so the virtue of being independent, venturing out, and surviving on one's own is valued more. In our region, which is South East Asia, clannishness is the name of the game. The interesting thing is that the degree of emphasis on sticking with your family no matter how old you get actually varies too. The concept of clannishness, staying with your core family to expand it, is stronger in areas that have been historically agricultural. This is less emphasized in areas where fishing and hunting were the main points for sustenance. While it's easy to say it is how it is, it's also interesting to see how some of our \"assumed as natural\" behaviours have roots in how our society evolved historically speaking. ", "33 year old successful Hispanic male here who married a woman with two adult children. First being a stepdad is hard and being a stepdad to a mom who coddles her kids is even harder. The reason leaving home is such a big goal is because success and maturity comes with struggle. When I was younger my family couldn't afford to send me to college and could barely afford to feed me. I knew it was best for me to move out and make a good life for myself so that's what I did. Now I am married to a woman with a 21 and 19 year old. They live at home don't pay rent, complain when asked to do chores, and just have this crazy sense of entitlement. Overall they are great kids, good grades in college, don't steal and not on drugs. However, I know they would be more mature, successful, and appreciative of the little things if they just went out on their own and learned how the real world works. Sometimes taking risks and being on your own is good and will teach you who you are as an individual instead of always relying on the safety of others. ", "Not american, but nobody could get me back to live together with my parents. I have a good relationship to my mother and my step dad, but hell no thanks.\n\nHaving an own home and be it just a room and a toilet is so much better.\n\nMoney is not the point here in my eyes. If it works for you - nice, stay with the fam. But it is really nice to be independent and have some space of your own.\nEdit: Also - girls.", "I moved out when I was 19 and never looked back. I have great parents but the money I spend on rent and food is 100% worth the freedom that comes with it. I can invite anyone over any time, I can sleep peacefully or be as loud as I want around the clock, I don't have to deal with their obnoxious dogs and best of all I can choose my own ISP and service plan. Even when I'm struggling financially I don't regret moving out for a second. ", "Not American here (Swedish), but this was important for me as well.\n\nPersonally, I moved out when I was 16 (country-side and senior high would have been a 2 hour commute one way).\n\nIt would have taken A LOT to make me move back after that.\n\nI like my parents, but living with them is a different story. They expect conformance to what they consider \"normal\" in terms of daily rhythm, activities, etc. No more balancing my personal needs and wants with my parents' idea of what should be or happen. I got to decide when meals will be had is, I got to cook my own food, I go to bed and get up when I do and I keep as much or little order as is natural for me.\n\nJust as I would not move in with a room mate who expects the house to be dead quiet between 10pm and 7am.\n\nI still occasionally visit my parents for a week or so at a time, but anything longer than that and I can see old roles starting to set in.\n\nIf you really get along with your parents and your lifestyles are compatible then it's a different story, of course. For the people in bigger cities the situation is a bit different since housing is more expensive and harder to come by, so people live with their parents for longer.", "Personally speaking my wife and I both lived at home with my parents but it was cramped. 3 bedroom house with my parents, sister, my niece and my GF at the time. We lived there for 2 years and after saving up 15K bought a house. Now we're married and have a daughter of our own. In the states it's viewed that when you get out of school/engaged/married you SHOULD have your own place. \n\nMy sister is being heavily judged because she's turning 25 and will be married living at home with mom and dad with her husband and 2 kids. Heck even I'm judging the shit out of her for putting her wedding cost before a house. ", "Because who the hell likes living with their parents??", "I like my family better when I'm not living with them.  We fight constantly now and it's really tiring.\n\nI also like being independent.  I don't like relying on people at all.", "I moved out because there was no work at home. Even if it costs more to live on my own, I earn much more money by heading West", "Independence is pretty important in American culture. That's why so many Americans move far from their hometown upon graduation, this usually begins in College. Americans get their first taste of \"freedom\" from the dominance and control of their parents. We want to be able to do the things we like, without judgement from the previous generation who may not agree with the decisions we make.\n\nOn the flip side, not leaving your parents home in your 20s is seen as negative here if you are a healthy fully functional adult. It is viewed as incompetence or laziness from some Americans because you don't have the financial independence or education to provide for yourself, let alone a family.\n\nIt is also seen as more acceptable for a woman to be living with her parents than a man. That I don't really have an explanation for besides maybe it's a sexual/dating thing. If both parties live with their parents then who's home would you go to? Since still in this day and age men are primarily considered the providers, they're the ones more likely expected to have a place of their own. This also speaks for financial independence which because of the previous statements is typically viewed favorably on a man by the opposite gender.", "I think a lot of it depends on your culture.  I'm 100% Italian (3rd generation.  Both sets of my great-grandparents came over from Italy.)\n\nIn my family, you simply do not leave home to move out until you're married.  That wasn't just my own parents' house - my cousins were all the same, as were both of my parents  &  my aunts  &  uncles.\n\nMost of my friends (all of who were not 100% Italian) were chomping at the bit to get out of their parents' house.  They wanted all the freedom and \"Adult\" status.  Though I really didn't like living with some of my parents' rules, I was able to save a lot of money so that when I did meet my SO, we were able to move into a nicer house than we would have, had I left when I turned 18.\n\nI would infer that the Italian tradition to stay home until you're married is b/c family is so important and strong a bond.  Honestly I never really thought much about it and when I was younger I thought most families were the same.", "My fiance and I moved to the city at the age of 17/18 from small towns 300 kilometres away (470 odd miles) to go to university.\n\nIt was basically the same as immigrants coming to a new land.\n\nWhat a ride. We learnt to be independent. Now 30 years later we are still together and still enjoying the ride. \n\nLIFE IS FOR LIVING.", "Because of a concept known as the \"nuclear family.\"  I.e. everyone \"starts a family,\" every single generation.\n\nAll our media is geared both subliminally and superliminally to driving families apart to keep this concept going.\n\nIt makes the plebeians easier to control when they only work together the minimal amount required to procreate.", "Most cultures have \"coming of age\" rituals, whether they realize it or even recognize what they are. For Americans, getting a car is one, as well as moving out on your own. A lot of this is stemmed from the fact that we value independence and self motivation so much. Staying with your parents implies that you are being lazy, or continuing to be a burden on them. It's similar to people judging someone who is letting their children breastfeed at six-years-old. By staying with your parents, who don't need your help and are often eager to get you out of the house, you are \"delaying\" maturity.\n\nPersonally, I think this stems from a couple of different things. Historically, Americans had their children young, and had a lot of them. My grandmother never went past the 4th grade and had three children by the time she was eighteen. While she was married, my grandfather was in construction and would use that as an excuse to leave them months at a time, drinking all of the money he earned and never giving her any. So she stayed with her parents. This was considered shameful. While she was working in a shirt factory, my great-grandfather was the main means of support for them, even though he was older and had health issues. She was a burden on them. \n\n\nIn Asian cultures, there is a big emphasis on staying with your parents and getting a good job so you can send them money in their old age. But in the last fifty years or so, American culture has gotten accustomed to the idea that parents are wealthy enough to take care of themselves, so your filial duty to your parents is more akin to making sure you visit them. But even then, when the economy has required most people to move for their jobs, it's commonplace that children live states away, which compared to Europe, is like having all of your children live several countries away from you.\n\nNow, we have a conundrum. Young adults struggle to find non-service jobs, and when they do, they are still struggling to support themselves on one income, leading them to stay with their parents. While they are belittled for this, within a decade or so, that same generation will have little to nothing saved up for retirement. With medical expenses looming, they are starting to demand that children who don't live with them to come back and help them.\n\nOnce upon a time, our society was capable of the older generation sustaining themselves while the younger generation did the same in the same immediate area. This led to a lot of our current perceptions. But now, good work is scarcer, causing people who stay in their hometown to have jobs that barely keep them floating above water, or moving and not being able to care for the family that once wanted to kick them out.", "Just moved out last month. \n\nFor me, after living on my own for 4 years, it is tough to go back to a place where you are treated like a child still. Being our on your own, you can do whatever you want, when your want, because you want to. At home, it is always under a watchful eye who wants updates constantly and with parents who don't give you a choice on the matter sometimes.\n\nFor me, I felt my life was on hold after moving back with my parents ", "Canadian here.\n\nFor me, it was about having a place where I could more freely express myself and organize. I love my family but I needed the space and home was feeling cramped.\n\nI live in a townhouse that's a little off the beaten path but close enough to the places I love to visit. It's also helped me to feel more confident than I have before and it enabled me to do things I've been wanting to do but couldn't at home. Like play Mario Kart with friends, or listen to music that wouldn't fly at home.\n\nSo for me moving out meant I didn't feel judged and I'm less inclined to judge myself. It's made me feel more comfortable with being me. It's a pretty cool thing to experience!\n\nFor others it suggests financial independence, confidence, and reliability. ", "As an middle aged American, there was a time especially in the 1970s \n and early 1980s that you would be publicly ridiculed if you hit 19 yo and you were not:  1. At college, 2. In the military, 3. Living in your own apartment while working a full time job. The terms \"loser\", \"moocher\", \"deadbeat\" were common insults heaped upon those legal adults still living at home with their parents. The reason was that apartment rents, cars, college tuition, food, utilities and entertainment were ridiculously cheap compared to today's world. You could work a factory job 40 hrs a week and could afford a new car and your own apartment if not your own home. That world is gone today. Wages have generally stagnated for the past 40 years but the cost of living has skyrocketed. I can't think of a single person including me who borrowed money to attend a university because it was pretty cheap especially the state colleges. Unfortunately, parents today who are my age think that their kids are not doing as well as they did due to their own fault. This is ignorant and naive thinking. Smart kids will not even go to college at all today and start a small business like a pizza place or get a skilled trade. Animal house is long, long over folks.", "Mine progressively got more and more about me needing my own space. I have a lot of hobbies and tend to vary greatly on when I come home. \n\nI lived with my parents during summers away from school.  I started at my Mom's place which is a one level apartment. Did that for one summer and we were about ready to tear each other's heads off. So the next semester I stayed at my Dad's house. It was where I grew up and I had my old bed room in the basement that had it's own bathroom, fridge and microwave, and most importantly an exit. So I basically didn't see him or my step mom the entire summer. I'd leave early in the morning and drive to the city my school was in for work and then come home late. Started to realize I was spending more on travel than an apartment in the city would cost, so I got one up between my school and my friends school further north. He moved in and we lived together till he transferred to another school in another state and I left to study abroad. When I got back, I moved in with another friend from high school and a friend I had met in College. \n\nAfter about 3 years, I decided that I had had enough of living with roommates and my girlfriend and I wanted a place so we got a newer nicer apartment. Now I'm biding my time saving up for a down payment on a house so that I can start my garage and yard requiring hobbies back up!\n\nIt does just come around to personal space and finances for me. My mom drives me nuts in medium to long term proximity. My dad too but it I saw him infrequently so it wasn't bad living there. Now I go down to visit them every other week or so and we get a long great! \n\n", "I actually just had a conversation about this yesterday! I think it comes down to the expectations from past generations carrying forward without any regard for how things have changed. The expectation has always been you graduate, you get a job, and then you start a family, but what has changed is the requirements to hit each of those milestones and the true cost of education. It used to be you could graduate high school, get a good paying job, and buy a house. Then you had to graduate college, but you were almost guaranteed a good job, and you could start a family soon after. Now, we're at the point where having a college degree is the minimum requirement for any career but you're paid less than the investment you put into college. So buying a house and starting a family is out of the question from the start, and getting a good job is hardly guaranteed. I think for the next generation, the expectation will be greatly diminished, but I know from my experience, it is still a pressure you face.", "In most countries (south Korea for example), kids live with their parents until they are married and can afford to buy a home of their own. ", "I've lived on my own four a combined total of 4 years in the 6 years since I graduated college.  I'm living with my folks now because I was diagnosed with a series of crippling illnesses and then succumbed, for a period, to major depression that debilitated me in every way you could imagine.  But I'm back on my feet, I'm working full time and making decent money.  I really want to venture back out because, while I love my family, I have a lot of anxiety just because they have something to say about everything I do (or don't do) and they've just become unbearably pushy about a lot of seemingly inconsequential things.  I feel I'd benefit from being out from under them but I'm afraid that if I try to buy a house and I take a turn for the worse, I may find myself unable to honor my financial obligations if I'm unable to work.  I'm really conflicted as to what to do next.......", " For what it's worth, I moved out young, got married young,  and had my son young. All of this was without financial backing from my parents. I moved out because I couldn't stand being treated like a kid and because I was anxious to transition into adulthood. \n\nNow... I'm young and have success in a well paying career which i am excited to go to.  I believe that my success is the result of growing up faster than the people around me.  There are plenty of guys my age who will never endure real financial hardship.  I learned a lot of lessons about life during the hard times and can now appreciate where I am and what I have. \n\nTLDR; The reasons may vary for moving out but there are definitely benefits to growing up and becoming independent. ", "I love all my family  but I typically use the 3 Day rule. As in I will stay for 3 nights and leave before everyone wakes up in the morning on the 4th day(I just say good bye the night before) because typically the fourth day is when arguments start. I think there's just something about waking up with someone(weather it be a relative or friend) in your house that just pisses people off. Thats why I typically make an excuse about a business trip if someone tries staying longer than 3 nights at my house", "27 and still at home here. My dad is a verbally abusive jerk and I'm in somewhat of a Cinderella role, so I am desperate to leave but can't. I do believe in helping out and honoring parents, but in this case it's gone *way* too far. \n\nI know someone else my age desperate to leave home because his dad is *constantly* harassing him to fix things and do things for him, cussing and throwing baby-like tantrums if he doesn't do it and calling him terrible things, etc. (He has given up *loads* of time to his dad, to the point where he doesn't have any free time at home.) His mom talks to him like he is thirteen still, and that drives him nuts. Neither of them let him watch what he wants on TV, complaining to him as if he is a child and has no right to it, only they do.\n\nI know most people don't have experiences as harsh, but it usually comes down to \"I'm an adult but the parent still restricts me in some way.\" ", "All my family members warned me that I would regret moving out, miss home cooking, etc. Looking back after nearly a decade or living on my own, I can honestly say moving out was one of the best decisions of my life. So not only was everyone wrong, they were extremely wrong for this to be considered one of my best decisions. And I do not miss home cooking at all, still do not. Lots of independence, learned to be self reliant, more responsible in paying bills, better at managing money, and became more social. Stuff like this is worth more than the money saved. But I should note that I moved out when I had a steady job, paid off my student loans, and saved up an emergency fund.", "i'm 22 and about to move back in with my parents after being in the military so i can go to school full time. personally, i don't feel ashamed at all. the fact that i have an educational goal makes me fully grasp the fact that this is a financially smart decision for me, not to mention the support of my parents.\n\ni think a big reason why people make it such a goal to move out of your parent's home is because there is such a focus on independence in american culture. it's too bad because a lot of people are screwing themselves because they have too much pride.", "For the same reason that people take vacations, even though it could set them back financially. Life is there to be lived. \n\nLiving with parents = flush with cash, but suffering from an inactive sex life and lacking self esteem.\n\n\nMoving out = cash poor but happy as a clam. A sense of Independence, can host dinner parties with friends... And yes, sex. \n\nDid I mention the sex? ", "At least for me, and I suspect for many other people, when you get a taste of the \"living without your parents life\" in college, you get used to it. You're either living by yourself or with roommates who are close to you in age (and who you hopefully get along with) for at least the last couple years of school.\n\nDuring that time, you're responsible for most of the things that your parents were responsible for as you were growing up. Making meals, washing clothes, every household chore, etc. However, you're now unrestrained by any of your parents' rules. It doesn't matter if you walk around your house/apartment at any hour of the night, you don't have to worry about waking someone up **who might ask what you're doing**, you can drink alcohol, watch whatever you want on TV, etc.\n\nNot to mention it makes dating 100 times less awkward, especially if you're just bringing someone home for the night.\n\nAfter college, it's common for people to move back in with their parents, but most of the time, they want to get back out on their own as soon as it's feasible. Usually this ends up being when they get a job in their chosen field. If it's in a different area than where your parents live, it's either take the job and spend money on rent/mortgage or don't take it and have either no or low rent with your parents.\n\nAt a certain age, your friends and others you meet are going to start thinking different things about you living with your parents. Romantic partners are going to find it much more strange than people who you have known for years. \n\nIt just becomes worth it to people to move out depending on how well they get along with their parents and how much they would have to spend to be on their own. If the only options are 80% of your income goes to rent or living with your parents, only the people whose parents forbid them to live in the house will be living on their own (or with an S/O, etc.) At 30% of your income, moving out on your own is far more tempting and plenty of people with great relationships with their parents will move out at that point.", "But, why would you want to stay there? \n", "Autonomy.  Being able to control your living situation is a big deal.  The financial burden is often worth it if it means a better love/personal life and less day to day stress. ", "Because the social/economic system doesn't want cooperation. It wants every individual/atomic family fending for themselves. It does not want an extending family sharing resources like roofs and vehicles and televisions. It does not want efficient, multi portion meals being cooked. It wants to maximize isolation and alienation.\n\nFurthermore, due to a lack of ritual initiation, parents are encouraged to view their offspring as life-long children (\"you'll always be my baby\"). This holds true for the person themselves also, leading to an eternal pseudo-infantalization that feeds into a complex about \"making it on my own\".", "I'm 24 and moved out recently after 2 years post college living at home.  It got really depressing living at home.  Made me just feel like my life was in a standstill and was going nowhere.  Now I moved an hour away and am so much happier.  I'm saving less money but it doesn't really matter because I will eventually get a raise basically covering the additional costs of having my own place.  Its the feeling of independence and the mindset that goes with it that makes it worth it.  Its really hard to live on your own in college for 4 years then go back to living at home. ", "I've been trying to find a decent paying job since I was 24. A very bad experience in 2015 forced me to make major career changes. I don't know what to do with my life at 26 and despite having a Bachelor's degree, I cannot find a Full Time job that pays more than $13. I know everyone thinks I'm a joke and I really want to die of embarrassment. Not everyone can afford to move out or have a circumstance which will allow them to move. ", "**MILLIONS OF YOUNG ADULTS REPLY:**  *have you met my parents?*", "My brother-in-law is 34 and has never left his parents' house. He is socially awkward. Goes to work (in IT, shock!), comes home, and plays video game. His parents cook for him, wait on him hand and foot. It's weird and has always baffled me, but it's not discussed.\n\nHis dad, my father-in-law, will sometimes talk about how silly and arbitrary it is that people feel the need to move out of their parents house, and how back in the old days, families all stayed together on the farm.\n\nAnyway, to that point, I think that was true for a long time.\n\nAfter the Revolutionary War, veteran Jim Jones got a 2,000 acre land grant. Had 5 kids and each of them got 400 acres of it. Their kids each got 100 acres. Etc... etc... Then, some of the kids wanted more, so they headed west, got a 1,000 acre land grant, and it all started over again, but only lasted for half as many generations.\n\nNow, we're mostly growing up on quarter acre lots, so we have to up and move every generation.", "I moved away when I was 17, a thing I still talk about with pride today.\n\nBut then I look at my own 17 year old here in the house and I think \"OMG don't leave me\".\n\nI don't think he thinks about leaving - his lifestyle is very different from what mine was at his age.  And I think the social stigma of living together with parents, at least in my part of the country, is starting to die down - we've got big houses, we're pretty liberal with our policies, most of us aren't home all that much anyway because we're working our asses off to pay mortgages and debt still...so, the kids being at the house, saving money, etc...I think they're getting fine with it (in the general sense).", "I moved back in with my parents for about 9 or so months after I graduated from college, but while I was waiting to see if I'd get into pharmacy school.  I had a great full time job, I was just saving money.  When I unfortunately didn't get into pharmacy school, I immediately started looking for my own place.  I love my parents very much, they're absolutely wonderful, but I LIKE my dad a lot better now that I don't live with him all the time.  He had a hard time when I was 23 accepting that I wasn't \"his baby girl\" anymore, so when I could go out and spend time with the boyfriend without having him ask where I was, what I was doing, etc, it just made things much much nicer.  ", "Because most parents are narrow-minded, hypocritical, selfish ass hats who realized they had a kid and now they cant let you die so they do it anyway. This creates a very tense and toxic environment, and it almost always stems from money or being taken \"advantage\" of. Really, the main reason is that american parents think at 18, youre supposed to be gone and doing your thing and the hard part of thier job is over. But it doesnt turn out that way for most kids and they are stuck at home for a couple more years with aggravated annoyed parents who just want you gone so they can do the exct same things they were with you there, alone.\n\nThe sadest part about this is when the child finally does leave the parents think \"oh man think of all the things we can do now!\" But what really ends up happening is the parents start to get very sour toward each other becuase there is no one else in the house to blame. Most divorces do happen after all children have left the house. \n\nTL;DR - american parents are not that great of people. Specifically baby boomers and early gen x.", "American parents are prudes that don't acknowledge thier kids have become adults and capable of making thier own choices.  They have statements like \"not under my roof\" and other stupidities. One year away at uni and most \"kids\" would never want to go back to the people's republic of mom & dad.\n\nCost wise, well, freedom isn't free?\n\n(Serious folks, have a bidirectional relationship with your kids not a commanding one)", "Just had a flood with 3-4 inches in every room of my house. Because of this I had to move into my parents house with my wife, 2 kids, and dog. As grateful as I am that I had my parents here and as much as I love my parents I really thing living with them actually jreally hurt our relationship. There are things that I do that they don't aprove of and vice versa. When you are an adult having your parents dictate your life is obnoxuious and belittling. The last 5 months have easily been the hardest 5 months I've had in over a decade and it wasn't because my parents and I don't get a long it's just at some point your life deviates from being your parents \"child\" to being their \"loving offspring\". It's hard taking orders from your parents as 32 year old with his own family. Especially if the way that they parent differ from the way you would like to parent.\n\nIt is nice being able to visit my parents. But having my own home and my own space gives me confidence and let's me run my home the way I intend to run it. I don't know if this make sense and may just be babbling but yeah.", "I live in America but I come from a Indian family from Guyana. Basically, I grew up in a different culture. To me, you stay living with your family until you get married. That's just how it works for us. Except for things like going to college and moving away for work. Now my older brother though, he lives with us still, but he acts like a child. I don't think this is the intention of my culture's ways. ", "Many parents fail to realize that they have to stop being the way they have been all your life and begin treating you as an equal or how they would any other adult. Its a hard balance of trying to do whats best for you, but also letting you learn on your own by your own failures and experiences. Parents need to make the shift of a guardian to an adviser and its a hard one. Most young people value their parents opinion, but crave the independence that comes with being on your own. Constantly having that caged bird feeling is a very stressful way to live your life. Ultimately these two issues combine and it simply just becomes to much to deal with. So they move out, regardless of the cost. This allows them to keep their sanity and also a healthy relationship with their parents.", "Im 36 and still live with my parents it sux. I have a job i drive a forklift in a warehouse i have been there for 8 years and onky make 11.05 an hour i smoke weed so i cant fet a better job i live with my parents because rent is to high everywhere from 800 month for a shack to 1150 a month for a 1 bedroom i have a phonr and a car and insurance i have to pay for too so i have very money leftover. My parents hate that i am there but they understand i want to go back to school but im scared i will fail and will go even deeper into debt.", "Follow-up type question: does the US having a lot of really low-wage jobs and a huge gap between the lowest earners and the highest earners have anything to do with it? My logic would be that if your parents are struggling to live their own life comfortably and are still (partially or fully) supporting you, and you're in a position to support yourself, you'd be quite selfish to stay living at home. Cf your parents being perfectly content and able to eat the food they want, see movies when they want, travel when they want etc and so you living with them isn't a huge burden.\n\nI'm probably completely wrong because the individualism vs collectivism thing in the US vs Asian (etc) countries is probably right and that goes against this completely.", "Basically it is a benchmark of growing up. To become a full-fledged adult, you need to be independent of your parents so that you can begin taking charge of your own life. A big part of that is having your own residence, especially if you are going to marry and start your own family by having children. Multi-generational homes are not bad and are common in some parts of the world, but (correct me if I'm wrong) usually the home is owned by the working-age children who house not only their children but their parents as well. That still meets the independence criteria because you own the home and provide for yourself and your dependents. That is what makes you an adult: you take responsibility for yourself and those who naturally depend on you.\n\n**tl;dr** An adult is someone whom other people depend on. A child is someone whom no one depends on and who depends on others for their basic needs.", "Skip all the stories of abuse and curfews, and just know it's about one thing: freedom. We move out because it gives us freedom to become an adult and do what we want.", "I've seen a lot of replies that are mostly right. One thing I haven't seen yet is that an integral part of American society is independence. It's why we can't have universal healthcare and/or welfare. \"Why should I pay for someone else to have kids they can't afford?\"\n\nIt's an argument I can't outright refute. No one likes it when people abuse the system and a lot, but not all (or even most I'd argue), Americans assume the worst. Sure there's people that take advantage of the system, but there are plenty of good people that need it.\n\nWith that said, part of being independent is getting your own place. This is important because it tells others that you're responsible enough to take of yourself and not rely on others. ", "someone in their late twenties living at home: \n\nThere is a social stigma of living at home. That is, you haven't succeeded well enough to be able to afford your own place.\n\nAdditionally, In the dating world if you ever want to \"take them back to your place\" its a no go. As a guy this makes dating a little bit harder, but usually the women I click with don't care about it. \n\nIn my case, a modest apartment in a modest neighborhood is $1500 (Brooklyn) without roommates. Given the average cost of a home in the same area is well over 700k I am using the money I am saving to amass a large down payment on a home. ", "Short answer: It gives you independence and freedom. \n\nLonger answer: It forces the individual to mature enough to take care of themselves. It costs money, but if you're living on your own you have freedom to do as you please and the responsibility of keeping afloat. You also don't have to worry about parents/siblings getting into your business or judging your lifestyle. \n\nPersonally: I moved out because I couldn't handle living with my parents another year. I found a good paying job I could work through college and paid for my housing with it. Best decision I ever made. It sucked, but I definitely matured in a lot of ways from it, and it also helped me get grounded in who I was. I actually just moved back in with my parents for a year to save money for a house for my soon to be fianc\u00e9e. ", "\nI did it to escape from a shitty environment. \n\nI got grounded for having sex when I moved back in for a few months. My stepmother was bred in a lab and set loose to punish Man. She forbade everyone from eating in the living room becvause she was afraid of food ruining the leather furniture even though her dogs would piss it all and drag their dog balls all over them. \n\nMy curfew was always changing based on mood. Once I when I was 16 my curfew was 6:45 PM on a Friday night and the next day it was 3:00 AM.\n ", "Not American but I can give you my take on it as a British person. So at 17 I joined the army then after basic and all my other training I opted to start renting a flat(sure it's not the same as buying) and for the 5 years I was in the army I had my own place, my own rules. It was pretty damn sweet. Then I decided to leave the army and move back home to be closer to the family, it took a little longer than I thought to get a job so I ended up moving back into my parents house I eventually got a job and then had the mindset that I would be back at theirs for a year and then move out to my own bit. After that year I hadn't moved out, was paying dig money which is completely fine by me. I ended up learning that where my family live it's almost impossible to have your own place up here(more so for renting) on your own I've been living in my parents for the past 5 years and that freedom I once enjoyed the memories of it have almost faded. I kinda got a little comfortable in living back at home but I've refocused my mind on goals that are achievable and hopefully I'll be out be his time next year back into my own place. For anyone wondering who's still reading, my refocus? It's all down to meeting a girl, not one that you are just happy hooking up with but one that I can actually see myself being with for a long time. ", "This is quite the opposite in most Asian countries. In my country Sri Lanka, living with your parents is something to be ashamed of. Rather taking care of your parents is considered as a virtue. So extended families are pretty common but in more urbanized areas, people move out of their parent's house after getting married. \n\nI suppose the biggest reason is the Buddhist culture in my country but this is true to other Asian countries like India as well. So being an Asian, I really don't see this thing with Americans about moving out even if it means getting yourself into a huge debt. It's so pointless.", "I left home at 15 years old and got my first place. \n\nThe only reason I left is because I was the scapegoat on the isles of Narcissists. I didn't have a choice if I wanted to live.\n\n", "Capitalism. It forces people to split from their families and thereby creates more and more consumers.\n\nStaying with parents under parents insurance \nComing out buying independent insurance\n\nPaying rent is not even a thing \nPay your own rent \n\nVehicle your parents bought\nUsing your own by borrowing loans\n\nAnd many more", "Moving out got me out of a toxic situation with my mom. My sister had I are pretty confident that she has a personality disorder, but she feels her behavior is perfectly okay and everyone else is in the wrong, so she'll never get herself help. \n\nOur landlord stopped renting his place out so we moved in with my future in-laws. I appreciate them letting us stay, but honestly we're at the mercy of their shenanigans. It was a lot better when we were in our own place.", "I can answer this. \n\nAs soon as I landed a job out of college, I started looking for apartments. Sure, I could have lived with my parents. I could have used their hot tub and pool every single day. I could have lived like a king in their million dollar mansion, but I wanted out. I cannot live with my family and keep my sanity at the same time. I also wanted to start dating and get out there and start slammin' pussy. My choices were simple:\n\n1. Stay at home. Save money. Lose my sanity. Lose any potential relationship.\n\n2. Fork out some cash every month and have total independence.", "First generation immigrant (of Romania) College student who stayed home and commuted instead of moving into dorms here. \nFor reference, I live in columbus and attend the Ohio State University (obligatory go Bucks). In my high school, about 200/530-ish students were admitted to OSU and I'd say maybe 10-15 are commuting from our district (a 15-35minute drive based on traffic). \nIn America, you really do see  freedom in every social aspect of life. Those born American don't notice the subtleties, but I sure do. My school district was probably 65% upper middle class (not including me lol) so many went to live in dorms either accepting of the fact that they'd have the debt, or not having to worry about it because parents would pay for it (I personally think this hurts in the long run). \n\nI was perfectly comfortable with staying home even though it was definitely a daily hassle, but I get to say that I saved $11,000 every year I wasn't in dorms (osu requires 2 years) and that makes me pretty proud, more proud than saying \"I'm independent of my parents\". What's even more is that because of that choice I'll graduate debt free. Man that'll be a good feeling. So I guess it's really about the culture and family you grow up in that can shape these ideas. \n\nTL;DR immigrant college student decided to save money by community instead of being \"independent\". These ideas differ between culture and the place you grow up around. ", "when I turned 18, my dad asked me... College or military? Because your sure as hell not staying here.", "Americans value self reliance and independence. It says something about you when you can handle things living on your own.  It's not just paying bills. There are a lot of 20somethings that pay their parents rent. But it's all the little things you learn how to cope with when you're living on your own. Car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, what'd you do? Plumbing springs a leak in the middle of the night, what'd you do? State says you didn't file your taxes, what'd you do?  These are little things that when you live with your family you're more likely to have someone else help with rather than figure it out on your own.\n\nI've lived on my own since I graduated college at 21 and never even had a roommate. 44 years old now. I'm proud of my independence. ", "In my case, my parents were charging me $750/month to live at home and deal with all of their restrictions. Couldn't go out without asking and doing the \"You know you can have people come over!\" dance with my mom. Couldn't date because I was expected to introduce everyone to my mom before the first date. I couldn't even go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without having my mom slam the door open and demand to know what I was doing up. Then, when my sister was home from school, I couldn't even get a good night's sleep because she wanted to take a ridiculously long shower and then blow dry her hair every night around midnight, and we shared a bathroom. I was expected to be home for every meal, as well as clean the entire house for my mom on my only day off during the week. I was yelled at for attempting to do my laundry so that I could have clean clothes for work. I was expected to be buying all of my own groceries. I had zero privacy. And I was paying basically the same as living in an apartment. On top of that, I got to deal with my peers and coworkers giving me a hard time for living at home because, in their minds, I was living rent-free. And when I tried to discuss my \"rent\" with my mom, she insisted that she wasn't charging \"that much\". So I left. \n\nI ended up getting a great apartment and my base rent is only a bit more than what my parents were making me pay them. I live completely alone, close to where I work and any company I may work for in the future. I have my own routines, and most importantly, the privacy and freedom to do whatever the hell I feel like. I still visit my parents for dinner once a week, but I just could not keep living with them. I felt completely trapped and there was no financial benefit for it.", "I just graduated college and contemplated staying back home to find work around my city. Ultimately, I decided to get an apartment in my college town and found career related work there. \n\nReturning to home is looked at like \"going back\" on your life. All of my friends are either still in school or moved across the country to pursue their careers *straight* after college. In reality, I'm hoping I can move out of my college town within 6 months. Staying here kinda makes me feel like I'm being left behind.\n\nThere is a huge pressure to keep moving forward in life as an American. ", "Just going to say, I don't think this is exclusively an 'American thing', but more a part of Anglophone culture.\n\nMoving out when you're a young adult is still, culturally, the 'done thing' in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, NZ etc. \n\nIt's about independence, and being 'king of your own castle'.\n\nI only live a couple of miles from my Mum, but have lived away from home since aged 18 (apart from a 6 month stretch when I was 21. \n\nI was happier in my own space.\n\nI does help that I'm in a part of the country where property prices are dirt cheap - moving out in your early 20s or before is still the norm.\n\nMy wife has family in South East England, and they don't have the same luxury; it's causing them quite a lot of upset and frustration tbh. Their parents want them to be able to move out, but even a small flat is about \u00a3200k, and rent is extortionate. \n\nI expect, culturally, we're going to see more of a North/South divide on the whole 'moving out' culture in the UK.", "Some people are leaving emotionally and physically abusive households. I moved out when I was 18 and work my ass off at 2 jobs so no one can talk to me like that or put their hands on me again, so I think it's probably a little different for everyone. ", "Let's be real-  it's so you can rip bong hits in the living room and get drunk and bring home whores from the bars at 3am and fuck all over the house", "Americans? Mate, everyone does it. It's not everything about Murica in this world. ", "For me, it's about struggling. When I become too comfortable, I get complacent and lazy. I always aim to be uncomfortable.\n\nI made a string of poor financial decisions so I'm back with my parents for now but my goal is to be out by New Years.\n\nMy purpose in life is struggling. Jihad. Mein Kampf. It is not a new concept. When you get comfortable you die, and right now I'm too comfortable. ", "I realize this is only some of us, but r/raisedbynarcissists could shed some light on why many of us moved out much earlier than financially wise. ", "I was 13 when I \"ran away\" (mom knew where I was and would stalk me frequently to make sure I was safe) and didn't move back in with her until she divorced my dad and was no longer homeless. I was 17 by then and she was so eager to have me safe with her that it wasn't a big deal for me to be home. No curfew, no rules. By that point I was very self sufficient. I didn't move out of her place until I was 25, minus one year. She didn't put pressure on me to become independent because I already was. We were just both poor so it was better for us to stick together. \n\nFor most people I believe that's what it boils down to. America's culture of Independence and individuality. Living at home is mostly frowned on. From what I understand a lot of poor families (like my Mom and siblings) will stick together for some time if only to pool resources. So it seems to me that the need to be out of the house at 18 is a middle and upper middle class thing.\n\nI could be wrong, though. As I have no resources or statics to back me up. Just my experience.\n", "I can only speak for my self. I'm 27 now and still live at home. I' m now saving money to get my own place. Not renting but actually buying my own place. My parents have always told me: move put when you feel you are ready. Stay at home as long as you feel you need to stay home. They always helped and supported me. The way I'm saving now, within a half year I will be able to afford my own place. I however contribute financially at home. I don't want to live on my parents expenses. So what we do, is we have a same bank account and on that account everybody at home deposits money every month. This makes it a little bit easier ( more money for our expenses ). My goal was and still is to buy my own place. I don't want to rent as that, in my opinion, sets you back. Why pay for somebody else his/her bank loan ( your rent ) in stead of paying for your own loan. That's my 2 cents anyway because to make this work, you need to have a good relationship with your parents and everybody should stick to the plan. I'm also used to live in a full house, don't know if I would like to live alone without a wifey or somebody to keep me company ( grew up in a house of 7 people ). ", "My parents expected me to go to college, sent me to college saying they'd work out the money with me, got me thousands in student loans then said they wouldn't help 2 years in (yea I was an ignorant 19 year old, thought they knew best).  Nice enough way to say, \"You're on your own buddy.\"  Wasn't an option to live at home after that.  There was a pride aspect involved but lived on my own supporting myself because it was needed and my parents showed they had no intention of supporting me after I graduated high school.  ", "I'm originally from Venezuela, lived there till age 32 when I moved to the US. I'm 40 now, so I've been here almost a decade.\n\nA poor economy has made the last two generations of Venezuelans live with their parents longer and longer, even after marriage, as low wages, high demand and low supply of housing make getting your own place really difficult. Most people I knew back there were desperate to get their own place, but few could afford it, even with a good job. When I got married, we lived with my mom till I was approved to come to the US. I hated it. I love my mother, but being 30, having a good job, and STILL not being able to afford even a small apartment without roommates is no way to live.\n\nOnce here, I got to experience what most Americans experience by the time they're done with school: Running my own home. It was an amazing experience. So I guess as someone who's had it both ways, I'd answer your question with \"because delaying taking charge of your life in full is a terrible way to live\". It's more expensive and you have more responsibilities, but it's also much more enjoyable.", "If I missed someone else saying this, my bad, but another aspect of getting your own place ASAP for Americans is that until recently(last 10 years), rent for Americans was very affordable almost everywhere except NYC, LA and SF. \n\nSo most of the US, you'll see plenty of people move out at age 18 because rent (especially if with roommates) was extraordinarily cheap, and can be had with 25-35% of a person's wage, even if that person was making minimum wage.\n\nNow fast forward to today, where minimum wage is definitely not keeping up with the rent in major metropolitan areas, you're already seeing more people (and more acceptance) living with their parents longer.  Funny enough, when I first moved to the NYC area, I judged those people in their 20s still living with their folks, because of the same social expectation I had growing up in a cheap-rent area.", "If the question is purely financial, why not get roommates? You still split the costs, but have less restrictions on your behavior. Many of the experiences I shared with roommates *are not* ones I would want to share with my parents.\n\nUnless of course you're talking about getting a free ride entirely, which is wholly unreasonable. I don't think there are many culrures that look favorably on those who dont contribute. Correct me if I'm wrong, but even in cultures where families live together into adulthood there is an expectation that the adult children provide for the *parents.* Not the other way around.\n\nThere is much more to being an adult than meeting some arbitrary age requirement. Truly becoming an adult means being able to survive on your own. Being able to independently support yourself and/or your family shows the \"tribe\" that you aren't dead weight that they have to compensate for. When someone in their 20s, 30s, or even 40s and beyond still require the support of their parents for no other discernable reason aside from personal choice, it serves to indicate that person is psychologically and emotionally incapable of truly being an adult. A 30-something year old *child* is understandably something of an oddity in most people's eyes.\n\nFurthermore, and this may just be my opinion, but if you can tolerate living with your parents well into adulthood, they have failed as parents. Their purpose is to raise you, not to be your best friend. That isn't to say you can't have a good relationship with your parents, but there needs to be a clear  line of separation between the two roles. And to reiterate what I said earlier, if your parents allow you to do the things that *I and many others* have done as adults in *their* home, they clearly have not raised you with proper boundaries.\n\nPersonally, I couldn't wait to leave home so that I could live my own life on my own terms. My mother wasn't some insanely strict authoritarian or anything, but it was her house so as a guest (which as the child, you ultimately are) I understood that I had no say in the rules of the home. \n\n**TL;DR** The Japanese refer to adults that live at home as \"parasite singles.\" I think this aptly describes why such behavior is generally frowned  upon. ", "The main drive to leave: Independence. Societal norms are probably the actual biggest driver, but those are frequently wrong and a poor way to gauge one's life so I won't focus on them. Independence is worth striving for. If you're living with your parents and helping them pay the bills, keep up with things, or maybe even taking care of them, there's nothing at all wrong with that. However to make the most of yourself, your life, and those around you, you should be striving to be at minimum able to 100% support yourself financially. \n\nMain drive to stay: time with family. Again, the actual main reason is financial and general laziness, but again this isn't a good way to gauge one's life so I won't focus on it. The truth is if you get along and have a mutually beneficial relationship with your family (note the *mutually* beneficial part there), you should spend as much time as you can with them. After you leave, you'll have spent the vast majority of the time you'll have with them in your life ([check this out](_URL_0_) for more perspective). We have limited time on this Earth, and you should spend as much of it as possible with those you love. \n\nSo if you look at the balance of those two very important things, central to one's happiness and fulfillment throughout one's life, you'll see that you need both in balance. If you frame everything in societal norms you'll leave as soon as possible and get a baby and buy a house no matter how much debt and misery it brings you. If you frame everything as what's best financially you'll miss out on many of the things that make life worth living (some things will never be the best financial outcome but are still very much worth doing if they bring you true joy). \n\nThe main thing is that you forge your own path that benefits you and your family the most, and don't let external forces dictate your life for you. ", "From what I've noticed, its not all about about social status as some comments are suggesting. Yes that is a piece of it. But mainly, in my opinion, its about job location. Most parents live in suburbs and most jobs are in cities. Its just not practical to live with parents when they live in the middle of nowhere.", "Independence is the spirit of America.  I can do it myself, I can succeed.  I can make my dreams reality. ", "American parents forbid their children to have sex under their roof. Even their grown children. \n\nWhen I lived in Denmark, my Danish language and culture teacher told us that when her son was 16 she would have to check the shoes by the door to know how many plates to set out for breakfast. She and her husband would look at a pair of girls shoes and discuss things like \"Pink heels, those are Mia, right? What happened to Carolina? Was Mia a coffee or tea drinker?\"\n\nThis chill attitude about one's offspring's right to have a normal and healthy sex life is completely, absurdly foreign in the U.S.", "Independence and Freedom was my driving factor.\n\nMy parents were not bad people, quite the opposite, but we did not agree on almost anything. We were very cash poor (we had a roof over our head, food to eat, and some nice things but no \"spending money\"). Both parents worked but tried to impose many restrictions that just did not work. Even though I would only see them for a few hours each day before going to sleep, it was constant arguing, tension, and disagreements. I needed more freedom than they wanted to allow yet I did more for them than most anyone Ive ever known did at my age. \n\nI had chores that took precedent over all other things once homework/studying was done from about age 7. From the age of 12 I found odd jobs to make a little money for the things I wanted and not only did chores but cooked dinner for the family (mother, father, 2 younger siblings) on a daily basis. Mother would come home after picking up siblings from daycare at about 5pm and dinner was usually done by then. From 16 I had a job as well as got very good grades in school and provided for all of my own needs (food, clothes, laundry, cooking, activities, vehicle, insurance, etc) while playing football for my school and still doing some chores. At 18 I was a full time student at university with a full time job, student loans, no financial support from my parents (they couldnt, not that they didnt want to) and only went home to sleep a few hours before being gone all day again. Even so, each time we were in the house together, there were arguments and disagreements and fights over how I should be doing things differently. Nothing was good enough. \n\nMore and more days would pass at times before I went \"home\" again since I either slept in my car or stayed with a friend. By 20, there was just no point in commuting over an hour each way to \"go home\". A friend of mine and I found a 1 room apt (studio) near school for very cheap and since we were both gone most of the day with varying hours, it worked out very well. \n\nAfter that, there was just no reason to go back to living with my parents and siblings. I was on my own for so long it didn't make sense, although, financially it would have been the best thing I could do for myself, my sanity was more important. \n", "Another thing is that American Parents live in suburbs. New College Grads/young adults want to live closer to city centers where there's a more active social life for people under 40.\n\nSuburbia is not a fun place to live if you want to have late nights out and meet people.\n\nIf I did live at home I'd be constantly waking my parents up coming home at night. I'd have a smaller room, not my own bathroom, and it would be very weird to bring any girls home or have people over in general.", "I moved out just for freedom even though it's more expensive... I can walk around I'm my underwear in my apartment completely free and nobody can tell me I cant... if i did that at home my mam would be all like \"you've gained weight\"", "One reason is that I want to own a dog. My parents do not want a dog in their house. I need my own place so that I can do what I want.", "Among the many other reasons listed, one is that some parents never give their children the freedom an adult needs. Some parents will keep curfews and enforce rules that a 22 year old might now want to live by anymore.", "The biggest thing is perhaps the \" my house  my rules \" most parents decree ,\n that young adults find constricting.", "Because most Americans are too worried about what their peers and society think, so they have something to prove. I stayed until I was 27, banking money and traveling the world. Now I have a nice house with a small mortgage, almost zero debt outside of the mortgage, and a ton more life experiences than people my age. All because I didn't give a damn what people thought. And thanks to the decent financial position I find myself in, I get to continue with my traveling, though admittedly not to the same extent as when I had no mortgage.", "I'm a 20 year old american, last year I had gone off to the military, then due to some personal circumstances was medically discharged and was sent back home to my parent's house. I left for good within one month of coming back because I was in love with someone they didn't approve of and was tired of their shit. I moved into my grandma's house and was married 2 months  later. Me and my husband scraped together the money and we moved into a nice little apartment together. I was working full-time and was a full-time student, and my husband was a over-the-road truck driver and was gone most of the time. I'm not gonna lie, it was the hardest thing i have ever done, but now he has gotten a much nicer new local driving job, I was able to go down to working a couple days out of the week and we have made a very nice and comfortable life for ourselves! I am even pregnant with our first baby\u2764\ufe0f\u2764\ufe0f\u2764\ufe0f! I love my husband more than anything else on earth and I would go through anything as long as it meant that get to be with him\u263a\ufe0f", "I see a lot of answers about money and independence but there were some other factors.\n\nFor a long time women weren't allowed to own property or even make \"large\" purchases without their father or husbands permission and signature. For this reason daughters tended to live at home until they got married. Fathers were giving their daughters away, away from the house, away from the family, and under different head of house to care for. A similar instance happened with men, young men weren't to live alone, they were supposed to have a woman at home to care for him. That would be the mother until he got married. \n\nGetting a house separately wasn't always expected, but it was symbolic of moving on to being fullfilled adults and creating their own families. This gave the children stability and learning how to cope being on their own and have their own children, while the parents get a number of years not supporting additional people. For a long time it was expected that your parents would move in with you when they get old, until the rise of retirement homes and ad campaigns focused on making older folks feel guilty about \"burdening\" their children. \n\nAnd once women could start getting more variety in their jobs and education, less time spent at home meant a more equal share of household chores. And independence was built culturally over time as pay evened out and people waited longer to get married. ", "I'm an adult American living at home with Mom\n\nFor me, I don't think it is right to be constrained by cultural norms.  You do what is best for you - I'm under the same expectations as other Americans, but I've so far ignored them and focused on what will work best for me in the long term.  I've been planning on moving out for over a year now, but I'm not making the move until it's the right timing.  In the meantime, we live in an above average 4-bedroom house, and it is just my mother alone.  We don't see each other much.  I have my own space and bathroom that I maintain myself.  I help with utilities and food.  I'm not constrained on going out or coming home or essentially doing what I want.  The only differences with me having my own place is on how the common areas are maintained and what's in the fridge.  I'm making over $100k so I don't get hassled by my mother to do anything, since I am doing fine, I just haven't chosen to move out yet due to financial reasons.  I decided to buy property first and rent it out, so I've already established enough rental income that I could sustain myself indefinitely if I ever lost my job.  Now that I've established that, I am looking.  I think it's worth the extra few years of staying at home that I did to have that.\n\nPeople talk about Asians vs westerners, but really I have seen plenty of Asian friends move out immediately after HS and never return, and Caucasians who have lived with parents into their 30s, and with children.", "It's weird to see the financial trends and over all economy change so much over a few short years. \n\nThe entire way Americans and the rest of the world does things is changing economically, as well as psychologically. \n\nIs it because we are so much worse off financially, or is because the younger generations are just tired of trying?\n\n  History of such atrocities like ww1 and ww2 behind us too far in the past, it may become a Grimm future. We need to put our youth first, stop being so selfish and wilfully ignorant. Knowing the newer generations are staying closer to family and utilizing a multi income situation is key in the world today.\n\n Stuff is expensive, and only 10% of the world falls into exec positions, 30% professional, the rest are just meaningless replacement jobs. \n\nThose jobs are not moving in scale with the current economy. That's why people are struggling. Not because they are choosing to.", "Because you must get out into the machine as soon as possible or you're a nobody with nothing!  Enjoying life is at the bottom of priorities.", "Sometimes its about growing up. I couldn't be myself and learn who I was until I moved out. I moved out once I graduated college and it was a blessing. My parents and I get along so well now. I don't burden them with anything and we have a pleasant time every time we see each other. ", "Because my parents live in bumfuck nowhere with a shitty ass economy and everyone I know that stayed in that town had children too young, got married too young, and have IQ's approximately room temperature along with meth addictions. \n\nGetting out of my parents house was a matter of survival. And I grew up in the lowest third of the lowest third of the income bracket in the United States. ", "I'm from UK and Im living with parents still now (21), why? Spend as much time with them as possible and when I get older then move out. I pay rent so I'm paying my way but as I see it I'd want to live with my parents as much as I can because one day they won't be here :(", "There are a lot of really long answers here, but what it boils down to is that its what american children are taught through marketing and advertising.  Our economy relies on breaking up family groups.  It keeps the economy moving.  People pay more for things like housing, childcare, transportation.  When the reality is that it makes much more sense to do exactly the opposite and build family groups so that financial and other responsibilities are shared.", "'Cause here in America we have this thing called freedom that every TRUE American adores above all!\n\n*bald eagles soar overhead while I fire pistols in both hands*", "The irony here of course is the fact that by continuing to live with your parents into your own adulthood, you are setting your parents back financially in similar fashion. ", "I can tell a lot of these responses are from young adults.\n\nAs an old(er) adult, with a man-child at home, I can explain my reasoning.\n\nI want him to have a job and be able to live and function on his own. I want him to be a productive member of society. I may die tomorrow or in 30 years. He needs to know how to survive without me and his mother providing for him.\n\nWhere he is right now? Watching Twitch 90% of his free time, with no prospects for work other than working as a helper at a car wash. When he does leave the house, it's to go smoke pot with his friends. In other words, he is not doing one single thing to better himself.\n\nI guess I should just let him do whatever he wants?\n\nNo. He needs to learn how to take care of himself so he will be successful in life.\n\nI dont care if he is a doctor or a janitor or a mechanic or a lawyer, etc ,etc. He just needs to do something and he does nothing.\n\nThat is the problem with kids living with parents as an adult. They dont learn that you have to work and pay for things in the real world.", "As an American who moved out last year, I can tell you that even though it wasn't a financially smart decision, there is a lot of value coming from moving out:\n\nI've had to teach myself how to manage going to college while working and paying my own bills.  I've learned a lot about money and time management in the past year, thanks to this.  I've also learned how to handle stress a little better too.\n\nIt also feels really good to know that you don't live under your parents rules anymore.  Like what another user stated already, moving out is a rite of passage here in America.  It's supposed to make you feel like you're actually being an adult now.\n\nSome people have no choice but to move out; once they turn 18, their parents either tell them to leave, or their parents may make them pay rent if they stay.\n\nI hope this helps you understand what kind of culture Americans are rooted in.", "Something I haven't seen mentioned is the post-WWII manufacturing and housing boom.\n\nAmerica made a ton of factories during the war - but of course, once the war ended, these factories had nothing to do, so they turned to tremendous domestic manufacturing. Meanwhile, lots of soldiers were coming home, and if you don't have any other training, then the easiest job to transition to as a soldier is construction.\n\nNow, it doesn't just benefit the housing market for a kid to buy a house and move out of their home - it benefits almost all the markets. Because then you have to buy furniture, appliances, linens, etc. to furnish the home - which is what all those former WWII factories were now being repurposed for.\n\nSo there was a tremendous media push to spread the idea that everyone had to have their own home, and that you were a failure if you weren't buying your own home and filling it with goods. It's one thing to cajole people into spending money on a luxury - it's another thing to get them to spend money on a perceived necessity.", "I am 39 years old.  I share a 4-bedroom place with my brother and two very long-term friends.  We are all single guys with no kids, so splitting all of the living bills 4 ways makes it so much easier.  To find a 1-bedroom place on my own that is worth living in and is not someone's closet, I would have to substantially pay more than what I am now.\n\nA couple weeks ago, I was talking to a woman on the phone and my living situation came up.  Her response what \"So you have never had to be an adult yet.  This is not an episode of Friends, you know\".  Never before had I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle someone as I did with her.  She assumed that since I was not living by myself that I was not acting like an adult, rather than not wasting resources for no good, goddamn reason.\n\nIf I ever ended up meeting someone and it progressed to the point where I would want to consider living with that person, I would definitely look into getting a place together, rather than her trying to move in to this place (which is patently ridiculous).\n\nAs a single guy, why would I be required to have a place that is empty all the time except for when I am there?  Why is it expected that I live in solitude to be considered an \"adult\"?  \n\nFuck, now I am pissed off again.", "Some of us don't want to put any additional burden on the people who brought us into this world. 18 years of providing for a kid is damn hard work. I am always amazed at the number of people in my generation who are perfectly comfortable putting their parents through another 10+ years of our mooching.", "Because that's the way of the world. It's what every animal does and being able to fend for yourself gives both purpose and security. If you live with your parents what happens when they die? You wouldn't have developed the skills to be independent, it stifles development.\n\nAlso, who wants to meet a girl in a bar and suggest going back to their mummy's house?", "As a female, I needed to establish my exclusive territory to begin mating and building my own pack. By age 16, I was sometimes running the household for my mother including parenting my younger siblings while she succumbed to depression in bed. Or defending them if she lost her temper.\n\nI decided I was the alpha and that it was the priviledge of the alpha female to have sex so I quickly grew tired of the anti-sex propaganda of her church and the restrictive rules which prevented any expression of mature feminity or contact with the opppsite sex.\n\nWhile it would still be a couple of years until I had sex and a decade before I had babies, all of my attention turned toward financial independence so I could leave my house as soon as possible. I did this by working several jobs and earning academic scholarships. I was driven by my desire for sex and children but I was strategic in that I felt that I would be still dependent on my parents if I chose my mate badly or didn't get a good enough financial start.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5a5kve", "title": "- tesla's solar shingles and power wall. how do they work and could they mean something today or are we still generations away from potential ubiquity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a5kve/eli5_teslas_solar_shingles_and_power_wall_how_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9dwo24", "d9dy73w", "d9dzq9d", "d9e4vxy", "d9e5353", "d9e5ve8", "d9e68r7", "d9ecrax", "d9end18"], "score": [775, 103, 4, 8, 33, 7, 3, 26, 5], "text": ["I have only watched Musk's presentation, so there might be details elsewhere that I have missed.\n\nThe main purpose of the shingles is aesthetics. These solar shingles are designed to look like regular house shingles. This starts serving the community who had the money and desire for solar power but did not want the big ugly panels.\n\nUnless there is an efficiency edge (I don't think so) or a decreased cost edge (He kept saying they were a similar price of a regular roof, but I have no numbers to back up this claim) the only thing these new shingles do is aesthetics.\n\nPowerwall is a newer technology that is supposed to solve the problem of uneven use and generation. Solar panels only make energy during the day, but people still use energy at night. \n\nPowerwall is just a giant battery that will store your solar power made in the day, and let you use it at night. Again, batteries are not new, but the affordability of giant batteries is a new thing. \n\nAlso note, he specifically says that he does not intend for this kind of technology to replace utilities. He says if we get off gas heating and gas cars, we will triple the amount of electricity we need. That means we need to increase production by three times of what we currently do. \n\n", "Only for one problem they solve: The current traditional solar setup is problematic for high wind areas like Florida, Louisiana, tornado alley etc. This is due to the extra nail/screw holes for mounting and the possibility of water penetration. Water getting past the mounts and softening the wood (plywood that the roof covers) added with high winds under the panels creates a sail like a sailboat. This can create a bigger hole and roof leaks so not only can it be a problem for the homeowner but also for them to have wind mitigation insurance (hurricane insurance). There are some integrated solar solutions that have the blue or black panels in between roof shingles like John Cena's house and also some flat solutions for rubber or roll down flat roofs. It's not a completely new idea for integrated solar, but rather a more elegant and functional solution. I'm most excited for the Mediterranean clay/cement style tile roofs because the individual tiles can break more easily than other roof styles. I would look into replacing my current roof in 5-8 years with a Tesla roof. ", "doesnt it also solve for sunlight aspect? ie, some tiles are always sun facing. although maybe they are not as efficient, and make up for it in coverage and exposure", "Just finish a university paper on the powerwall.\nPowerwall, although being the most unexpensive home energy storage system at the moment it still is very expensive to invest for your home, unless you have solar panels and a multi-function inverter  already paid-off. Mainly because of the savings on the electricy bill aren't big enough to cover the investment.\nAnother reason is the application you give it... if its meant for a daily usage the battery life goes considerably down and a newer investment on a new battery is needed before you can have the payback of the original powerwall.\nAn this is why Powerwall isn't ubiquity, but Home Energy Battery Systems will become a thing in a near future when the manufacture of lithium increases (main compound of the powerwall and similiar techs). Lithium is fairly east to come by nowadays, since it comes from salt.\n\nEdit1: an inverter, is a switch that toggles the source where you get your power from. From the eletrical grid or from the solar panels.", "Has anyone seen information on individual tiles are connected? Does each tile have a + and - terminal, all of which need to be connected together? Could a miswiring \u201cshort out\u201d your whole roof?", "they mean something today. if you were building a house right now, it would be a good idea to get that tesla set up, battery+solar tiles. the solar tiles themselves arent that huge of an idea but the advance battery pack+ the system makes it very easy to do. ", "There's supposed to be a cost edge.\n\n\"Solar Shingle Roof\" is supposed to be less expensive than \"New Roof\" + \"Separate Solar Panels\" mounted on top.\n\n", "No one knows what the future of solar holds. I feel strongly that adoption is going to become more and more ubiquitous. Prices keep getting lower. What form factor we will we see on homes remains to be seen. I think there is room for a larger more squarish panel that is more integrated than current style. Here may also be room for tiles like Musk's. \n\nI have been in the solar industry in California for 14 years. I started with a company that was doing this exact thing. Back then, no one thought that homeowners would ever go for the big rectangle panels. They were considered very ugly back then (still are to many) Building Integrated PhotoVoltaics (BIPV) was what the industry thought was needed. \n\nUnfortunately BIPV performs much worse than regular panels. Solar panels run on photons from the sun, but they really don't like the heat part of the sunlight. Heat cuts down on performance significantly (0.5% drop per deg C). When you have a panel that is flush to the roof, no air circulates around the panel. So a flush panel always loses versus a box panel with a gap for air to flow. \n\nOn the technical side, it's tough to make these. Imagine all the connnections. Where are the wires and plugs? What about the heat? Suntech's modules of this sort were literally burning houses down due to serious heat related issues. Can they be made at a reasonable price? Are the labor costs going to be too high? Will this be a niche item for high end customers?\n\nI worked for SolarCity for 8 years. A big part of what drove us to success was the move from BIPV to regular panels. We made it cool to put regular panels on your roof. The cynic in me says these tiles are a vaporware distraction by Elon Musk to build the hype to continue the momentum he needs to get the SolarCity Tesla merger done. The bright side part of me hopes they really have something here. This has been tried for 20 years and the ground is littered with failures. Huge companies have tried and given up. Unisun, Suntech, BP, Dow Corning, etc.\n", "- Aesthetics: no \"ugly\" panels sticking up above the roof\n- Longer life: when compared to regular shingles\n- Insulation: glass is an excellent insulator, Musk briefly mentions this in his presentation. Would be great in northern states.\n- More durable: video shows nice demo of being hit with direct force\n- Power generation: certainly less efficient than a panel system because trade-offs were made for aesthetics, but makes up for it in a few ways. 1) greater area covered, look at traditional panels, they only cover part of the roof, this would cover the whole thing. 2) Not all panels face south allowing capture during all times of the day instead of losing late-afternoon or early-morning sun with south-only facing panels (_URL_0_). 3) If install truly is easier as claimed then more houses will have it 4) No more pre-planning for installation, hiring a solar company to assess your site to determine whether installation on your house makes sense - if you need a new roof you just install this instead, similar process and similar effort to a regular roof making it a practical option even for those who would normally never think twice about installing solar.\n\nAs to how they work, I can only assume they've developed a click-together system to make quick install with special pieces for the top and edges. IMHO there would be no point in distributing a product much more complicated than this; their company doesn't already have a network of installation specialists so spending a little extra on R & D up front to make it installable by someone with minimal training would make sense for them. If you think about Tesla, Musk already has a network of supercharger stations all over the US even before tesla has become numerous enough to make sense to allow rapid growth of tesla as able. If these needed specialized equipment I would have expected him and the company to already be involved in developing a network of installers and companies to train them. \n\nLets say these shingles pan out and are a practical and cost effective roofing alternative, we're probably about one, maybe two, generations away from general use. to amp up production in a meaningful way I would estimate would take 5-10 years (look at how long it's taken Tesla to increase production from small-scale to large-scale production although subtract some time from this number because they've got the gigafactory already rolling). there will likely be some adustments, recalls and bugs to work out in the first few years. the majority of people won't adopt this until it's been proven for a decently long period of time, and then the rate of replacement of a roof is 20 years so most people wouldn't switch over until they're due for a new one even once the practicality and longevity is proven. \n\nTLDR: I'm going to go out on a limb here and guessing that this will be wildly successful technology that will ultimately help decentralize power generation for all the reasons listed above, but will still take a long time to become ubiquitous. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/why-more-solar-panels-should-be-pointing-west-not-south.html?_r=0"]]}
{"q_id": "n3zw6", "title": "- they are finding \"earth like\" planets, but if they are for example 600 light years away, the fastest message we can send will take 1200 years round trip? or is there a faster way that i don't know? will there ever be a faster way?", "selftext": "I tried r/askscience but I guess this is a \"dumb\" question because they ignored me. :(\n\n\nI hope someone here can explain this to me!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n3zw6/eli5_they_are_finding_earth_like_planets_but_if/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c36357e", "c3635pw", "c3637fp", "c3638le", "c363agm", "c363k28", "c36357e", "c3635pw", "c3637fp", "c3638le", "c363agm", "c363k28"], "score": [25, 38, 24, 4, 2, 2, 25, 38, 24, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["From this perspective the speed of light seems pretty slow", "Did you make sure that your question wasn't caught in the spam filter?  Message a mod there to make sure. \n\nAs per your question, you are correct, 600 LY distance means light takes 600 years from one point to the other. Which means that we are not seeing said planet as it is right now, rather we see the planet as it was 600 years ago, when the light left there in our direction. \n\nIf a large asteroid destroyed said planet today, we would have no way of knowing it until 600 years later, when we would witness the event as if it was happening just now. ", "welcome to the fun of the cosmos... 600 light years is close relatively speaking.  it's in our own galaxy.  think of the stars you look at every night that are a million light years away.  looking into the sky is essentially looking into a time portal of what the universe looked like hundreds, thousands, and millions of years ago... depending on the object you're looking at.", "The whole concept is hard to explain to a 5 year old but from what I understand, you can get anywhere in the universe in just under two years because of time dilation. You just wouldn't be able to come back and tell anyone you care about. Interestingly though, if you were to come back to earth you'd be visiting earth hundreds of years in the future. I'm sure you could even time your trip to come back 5 or 10 years into the future. ", "As a follow up to this question (one I also asked in askscience and was subsequently ignored): Is it possible for organic matter to travel at the speed of light? I would think in my (uneducated) mind that matter of any time would break down to its molecular, or even smaller, structure moving at these speeds. \n\nIf my thinking is correct, what would cause that? If space is a pressure-less environment, would the pressure we feel on earth from rapid acceleration be felt? Can G-Force be felt in outer space?\n\nIf an object travelling at the speed of light, or close to it, such as 95%+, doesn't break down, then would there be any damage? What is holding us back from those speeds in outer space? Our physical makeup? Our lack of technology to accelerate to those speeds?\n\nAlso, I apologize if this is posted multiple times. Reddit is screwy today.", "One thing you might not understand is that, while it takes 600 years for light to travel that far, time slows down as you approach the speed of light, so if you went on the first near-light-speed ship, you would think that only a few years passed in that several hundred year span.  Eventually, with the addition of FTL (faster-than-light) travel, we could have space ships arriving for vacation at the destination planet long before the previously mentioned NLS (Near-light-speed) scouting ship even arrived.", "From this perspective the speed of light seems pretty slow", "Did you make sure that your question wasn't caught in the spam filter?  Message a mod there to make sure. \n\nAs per your question, you are correct, 600 LY distance means light takes 600 years from one point to the other. Which means that we are not seeing said planet as it is right now, rather we see the planet as it was 600 years ago, when the light left there in our direction. \n\nIf a large asteroid destroyed said planet today, we would have no way of knowing it until 600 years later, when we would witness the event as if it was happening just now. ", "welcome to the fun of the cosmos... 600 light years is close relatively speaking.  it's in our own galaxy.  think of the stars you look at every night that are a million light years away.  looking into the sky is essentially looking into a time portal of what the universe looked like hundreds, thousands, and millions of years ago... depending on the object you're looking at.", "The whole concept is hard to explain to a 5 year old but from what I understand, you can get anywhere in the universe in just under two years because of time dilation. You just wouldn't be able to come back and tell anyone you care about. Interestingly though, if you were to come back to earth you'd be visiting earth hundreds of years in the future. I'm sure you could even time your trip to come back 5 or 10 years into the future. ", "As a follow up to this question (one I also asked in askscience and was subsequently ignored): Is it possible for organic matter to travel at the speed of light? I would think in my (uneducated) mind that matter of any time would break down to its molecular, or even smaller, structure moving at these speeds. \n\nIf my thinking is correct, what would cause that? If space is a pressure-less environment, would the pressure we feel on earth from rapid acceleration be felt? Can G-Force be felt in outer space?\n\nIf an object travelling at the speed of light, or close to it, such as 95%+, doesn't break down, then would there be any damage? What is holding us back from those speeds in outer space? Our physical makeup? Our lack of technology to accelerate to those speeds?\n\nAlso, I apologize if this is posted multiple times. Reddit is screwy today.", "One thing you might not understand is that, while it takes 600 years for light to travel that far, time slows down as you approach the speed of light, so if you went on the first near-light-speed ship, you would think that only a few years passed in that several hundred year span.  Eventually, with the addition of FTL (faster-than-light) travel, we could have space ships arriving for vacation at the destination planet long before the previously mentioned NLS (Near-light-speed) scouting ship even arrived."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q8vee", "title": "what do you listen for in an album if it is said to be well produced?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q8vee/eli5_what_do_you_listen_for_in_an_album_if_it_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdadfms", "cdadohi", "cdae7jx", "cdaer3b", "cdafbze", "cdafucm"], "score": [21, 2, 2, 15, 2, 7], "text": ["I don't know that there is any ONE DEFINITIVE way an album can be well produced. There are pros and cons to different styles and everyone is going to have their preference. \n\nOne example is the \"loudness war.\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\nOver the years many producers have been pushing to make all things as loud as possible for every element of the song. This makes listening in the car or on a crappy radio nice because you don't have to reach for the volume to pick up on all the subtle elements (or be surprised by explosive percussion). However, in a quiet room with average speakers the difference is noticeable; with nuanced mixing the producer can draw your attention to different aspects of the song. For example, a drum solo can shake your windows or a unique instrument can take the forefront. If everything is the same volume it is easy to be quickly fatigued by the wall of noise. \n", "I think the key to understanding what makes an album well produced has to do with the intent of the artist, mix engineers, and producers.  On a well produced album there should be a noticeable level of cohesion between the way the songs are performed, mixed, mastered, ordered/named.  There should be detectable threads throughout the tracks that prevent the album from just being a collection of unrelated songs.  Beyond that I think that it's just a matter of opinion.", "The music alone should make you feel the same as the lyrics would. \n", "My Time to Shine.\n\nI've been a freelance recording engineer for 15 years in nashville. I've worked with Toby Keith, Rascal Flatts, and countless other artists. My all time favorite thing to do, however, is listen to other music. And, if you have a trained ear, you can tell when the other music you hear is well-produced or not. Well produced usually means Zero (and I mean Zero) mistakes. But some mistakes commonly occur. For example:\n\nWhen the drums are too quiet, the song seems less dynamic because the guitars wash everything out. \n\nWhen the vocals are over-processed, you can tell, and it makes the song sound cheap.\n\nA good mix involves the engineer listening for sounds that stick out from the mix. Like, if an acoustic guitar's picking noise on the strings is on top of everything, it makes the drums sound like they're clipping. A problem that occurs a lot for me, anyway.\nBut it's all relevant to the engineer and what he wants.\n\nTL;DR No mistakes and easy to listen to.\n\nSome Albums I think are well-produced are\n\n21, Adele\n\nBoston, Boston\n\nAlbatross, Big Wreck\n\nAny Beck. And I mean All Beck. Beck's engineer is amazing. He actually records in Blackbird studio.\n\nThe new Kings of Leon Album. Who, if I'm not mistaken, Record in Blackbird, too.\n\nProducer have a lot to do with how an album sounds, too. They Are basically engineers, but don't touch anything, and tell the engineer how they could do it better. \n\nThe best producers in my opinion are mutt lang, quincy jones, and lesli howe. \n\nSome of the worst sounding albums, in my opinion, are\n\nAnything by Green Day (although I like them)\n\nMost rush (too compressed)\n\nEarly RHCP\n\nand some foo fighters. (just amateur sound)\n\nSo there you have it.\n\n\n", "There are many different things to look for. Some of them are\n\n1) Is the track to loud. In today's [loudness war](_URL_0_) typically a lot of tracks are pushed through a limiter so much that the track begins to distort, you lose the dynamics of the track, transients and so on.\n\n2) How clean is the track. Is the overall track distorted. Even if you're listening to very distorted music, death metal for example, the track itself should be clean. There should be no fuzz, there shouldn't be anything breaking up. You should be able to turn your speakers up without the track breaking up.\n\n3) Is the track overly compressed. An overly compressed song sounds very squished and weird. The job of the master compressor is to level out the overall volume. It makes gain (volume) reductions based on the input threshold and reduces the volume based on the settings (attack, release and ratio). You want the track to feel somewhat open so you can get immersed into the music but also glued together so it sounds tight.\n\n4) How good is the EQing. The track should be well balanced between the lows, mids and highs. Not all tracks are going to be balanced the exact same. You want to be able to listen to a track without the bass completely overpowering everything. If the highs are to loud the track might feel weak and harsh to the ear.\n\n5) How well can you hear each part of the song. Is the drums easy to hear, can you tell what the guitars are doing, is the vocalist clean and clear. The parts of the song have their own space they sit in. Example kick drums/bass sit in the low frequencies and vocals sit in the higher frequencies. There are many overlaps though. Low end typically is the hardest to keep clean. You have things like the kick drum, guitars and bass, piano fighting for those frequencies.\n\n6) Is it over processed. Basically if there are way to many effects a track can sound bad. You have to strike a balance between how dry or wet the mix is. To dry it will sound boring and \"flat\". To wet and it will sound muddy.\n\nThere are many more things to look at when trying to figure out if a song is well produced. Those are just some examples. Hope this helps.", "Well, it's ELI5, so let's start by asking a very simple question. What do you imagine the actual, procedural, making-the-record *difference* would be between a $500 debut album produced in a bedroom, and a $200,000, label-financed *third* album produced professionally? Nothing subjective, no talk of sounds just yet - what would be different between those two processes?\n\nWithout even going into detail, you'd assume every step in the process would be *much* more refined, from the quality of the recording space, to the equipment and instrument configuration options -  having more than one, for instance - to the recording equipment, to the amount of time dedicated to recording every basic (main instrument track) and overdub (secondary instrument or vocal layer added later), to the knowledge of the engineer, to the musicians available, and to the time dedicated to the project. \n\nAnd you'd be right.\n\nNot that a home-produced album can't be fantastic, and not to say a *word* about the *music* on the record - when it comes to producing a sound, lower-case p, there's a *lot* of expertise to be had in a lot of tiny areas throughout the process, and it's unlikely that someone without a budget has access to a significant amount of that expertise. A lot of folks making records on their own have *some* ability to Produce (capital p) and, more importantly for your question, *Engineer,* but it's amateur stuff learned by necessity. Some girl who has been playing guitar for a few years and has been mostly focusing on her playing and songwriting has almost certainly sorted out how to record that into a computer and lay it over a drum beat in a pirated copy of Pro Tools, but that's probably about as far as her knowledge goes. If you asked her how to re-record the exact same song again and make it sound much better, she'd probably stare at you blankly and ask if you meant for her to bring in an orchestra or something. She's not dumb, and I like the song we're imagining she wrote - it's just that you don't *know* how to do that unless you *do,* and it's not knowledge you randomly have, it's knowledge you seek out and attain and build on. \n\nAdditionally, she only has one guitar, one or two guitar cables, her laptop and built-in sound card, a couple pedals, and an old amp she bought at a garage sale. Maybe she bought a mic at Radioshack for vocal stuff. Not that she has shitty taste, not anything like that - a great artist can make great art out of whatever materials they have on hand - but the artistry we're talking about now is *engineering sound*, and she's not a great engineer. So you're stuck with what you get - line buzz, distorted audio, probably low-fidelity recording. (And no mental skillset for analyzing *why* it sounds bad and fixing it in the recording phase, or in the mix afterward.)\n\nMeanwhile, for an album produced (lower-case p) in a studio with a team of professionals around her, right off the bat there are eight or fifteen guitars at their disposal - they're just in the studio, all the time, for recording purposes. God knows how many amps, and a whole *bunch* of instrument cables - all of which were bought by someone who knows instrument cable better than she does. And, most importantly, an engineer who really, seriously, knows what the fuck is *up* with sound. And specifically *which* combination of guitar, cable, amp, and mic will get her the exact sound she has in her head for the guitar track. (And then the engineer will do that again for drums, bass, vocals, and every other thing they lay down.)\n\nSo here's where we're at now, having only asked ourselves a simple question, and gotten the simple answer. A poorly produced album was produced by someone who doesn't know what they're doing and probably only knows the one (wrong-ish) way to do *every* thing that needs doing on an album. A well produced album was not. Everything above permutates into each little aspect of \"the difference;\" in short, it boils down to attention to detail. \n\nNow, to specifically address your question, since you seem to be looking for criteria and thresholds, I'll start by saying that knowledge of any one little qualitative distinction can a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. At the least, it can lead to someone feeling unduly superior about their (inferior) knowledge of the subject - \"mmm, you see, the ends of lower-case letters in Arial are slanted, while the ends of lower-case letters in Helvetica are flat, ha-*HA!*, you savage, know you no fonts?!\" - and at the worst, it can stifle creativity, both on the part of you the critic and you the possible artist. So don't be all goin' around, taking what you learned in this thread, calling albums out for being poorly produced here or works of art there.\n\nThat said, just think of the difference between the home album and the studio album above, and ask yourself if every little detail in what you're listening to sounds more like the home version or the studio one. From *recording* - does every instrument and vocal line come through clearly and unaffected by unwarranted distortion - to *engineering* - do tracks of similar-sounding instruments or vocal parts get muddied together and become hard to separate? - to *mixing* - does each track sound attractive and cohesive unto itself? - to *mastering* - is the album as a whole a consistent piece of work, quality-wise, even throughout variations in musical style or intent? Really, *really* isolate, consider, and speculate about everything you hear. Do you hear something you wish was better?\n\nAnd the fun part is, without being an engineer, our girl with the guitar *still* couldn't tell me how to make it better, and you probably can't either. But hey, now you've found the distinction you were looking for, a poorly-produced album. (Or so you imagine. Maybe there's a very specific artistic or technical reason for something to sound the way it does. Who knows.) \n\nIn the spirit of wrapping this up with as honest an answer to your original question as possible, what do *I* listen for? Among other things, I listen for imaging. (\"image\"-ing).  That is, the placement of sounds in the metaphorical \"3D space\" of the mix. Left/right (stereo recording, panning), front/back (reverb, clarity) up/down (pitch, volume). Keeping all of the sounds at work clear and distinct and not overlapping each other, while also being *near* enough to overlapping each other that I don't feel an undue sense of sparseness or wanting between them. Once all that imaging work is done with individual assets in the mix, what is done in the mastering process to the entire mix simultaneously is another thing to keep an ear out for, and this is when - among other things - you'd pick up the faux-\"wall of sound\" compression style that people on the internet love to talk about without really understanding, and other dynamic tricks.\n\nBut, honestly? The more I learn about producing and engineering sounds, the *more* I find myself able to appreciate something. Especially weird choices, like, say, a distorted recording of a hand-me-down guitar and a crappy vocal mic. And it's great to find an artist like that, toss them some basic tips and an SM58, and watch them sort it out on their own."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://toogl.es/#/view/3Gmex_4hreQ"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war"], []]}
{"q_id": "3uaby6", "title": "What does it mean to be a French Grenadier in the 1840s? How is this different than a tirailleur (infantryman)?", "selftext": "Military history is definitely not my thing!\n\nWorking through different combat logs and accounts from the 1840s and while I know the difference between a matelot (sailor) from a grenadier, tirailleur, or voltigeur; I am not sure exactly what differentiates that last group?  In this case all four are serving together.\n\nObviously the difference is important enough for the sources to usually be clear about what type of soldier/unit to which they refer (though not all the time).  \n\nWas the training different?  Command structure?  Responsibilities?  Armaments?\n\nThanks in advance for any and all input.\n\n*edited to add voltigeur to the list; forgot it the first time!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uaby6/what_does_it_mean_to_be_a_french_grenadier_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxdb487"], "score": [36], "text": ["Partially it's historical tradition--if a soldier is assigned to a unit with \"grenadier\" in the name, he's called a Grenadier. Similar to how modern tank units are still officially called \"cavalry,\" despite no longer riding into battle on horseback.\n\nInitially, Grenadiers carried grenades--hence the name. By the 1840s, though, designated grenade-throwers had been phased out. Militaries are anything if not big fans of tradition, so units that had originally been grenade-throwers retained the name. Often, Grenadier units--even late in their history--selected or recruited the biggest, toughest guys they could get a hold of. By 1840, the \"grenadier\" epithet was frequently used for elite line infantry units.\n\nTirailleurs and Voltigeurs were both light-infantry skirmishers. Skirmishers were trained to range out ahead of the main body of the army to harass, scout, and disrupt the enemy--and prevent the enemy from doing the same in return. While the heavy line infantry were armed with muskets, light infantry skirmishers were most frequently armed with rifles or rifled carbines. \n\nThe Voltigeurs were so named due to their original intended mode of deployment--to \"vault\" onto cavalry horses behind the rider, and be carried forward by their cavalry comrades. This didn't work out so well, so they reformatted into skirmishers like the Tirailleur. Being tradition-bound, they kept the name. They were a peculiarity of the Napoleonic area, and by 1840, the Voltigeurs had long since been disbanded.\n\nTo get at part of your unasked question about deployment, yes, grenadiers, line infantry, and skirmishers would all be serving together, but in separate companies. Generally, an army would be made up of divisions, which were made of brigades, which consisted of regiments or battalions (depending on who's army we're talking about). Battalions would be made up of companies. In an infantry battalion, most of these companies would be line infantry, at least one would be a skirmisher company, and one or two could be grenadier companies (the elites of the battalion). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2rbdmg", "title": "how a suicide hotline works", "selftext": "It has always intrigued me wondering how they work and how successful they are.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rbdmg/eli5how_a_suicide_hotline_works/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cne8rmq", "cne9xel", "cnea1sv", "cneore8"], "score": [10, 21, 61, 3], "text": ["Broadly, it's like any other call-in: people answer the phone and talk. The people who work suicide prevention are trained to \"talk people off the ledge\" and point them toward more significant help.\n\nGoogle turned up a great article that goes into serious detail about this topic: _URL_0_", "I'm a cop and deal with attempted suicides at least once a week.  I am also a crisis intervention team officer which means I have several times more mental health training than the average patrol officer.\n\nI have found that a lot of people call in their own attempts like \"I just took 30 vicodin\" or something of that nature.  These people seem to be looking to see if people care whether they live or die.  Now we honestly do care *at that moment*.  They'll get several officers, fire, paramedics etc.  One problem is each time they do this, they run the risk of actually dying.  Suicide help lines give them someone to call before resorting to attempted suicide and may save their life.\n\nMost of these people are either alone or feel isolated from their family/friends for a variety of reasons.  ", "I know someone with years of work at a crisis management center. what i thought was really interesting is she told me when someone calls in and they immediately say they are going to kill themselves, it's a cry for help thing and they don't really worry too much.\n\nBut if the person talks about everything but suicide, THAT is a huge red flag. like if they start listing all their problems and mistakes. That is when you need to be the most worried  because this person has already decided they are going to die, they just want to explain themselves to another person first. ", "yeah i don't get it i don't wanna sound insensitive but i would think if i really wanted to die i wouldn't call someone to stop me if thats what i want"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/13/inside-the-national-suicide-hotline-counselors-work-to-prevent-the-next-casualty/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "24ca63", "title": "What were the warships used by the Chinese Navy in World War 2, and who were some of the captains of these ships? What are some famous battles?", "selftext": "I'm curious because my grandpa is one of these captains, but with my currently 5th grade level Chinese, I'm bad at understanding all the things he talks about. I'd like to know some more background about the things that happened during this time, and especially objective history about the battles that the Chinese Navy fought in world war 2.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24ca63/what_were_the_warships_used_by_the_chinese_navy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch5vg4b"], "score": [24], "text": ["The Chinese navy consisted of a motley collection of vessels in 1937.\n\n\n\nForemost of these were 6 light cruisers, all small and several aging.\n\n\n\nSupporting these were a motley collection of 53 gunboats, motor torpedo boats, riverine vessels, converted trawlers, minelayers and patrol boats. \n\nAll the cruisers and almost all the other vessels were sunk in operations trying to prevent the Japanese from moving upriver from Shanghai, Tsingtao and Canton. \n\nSome were scuttled to create a barrier against Japanese shipping, some were sunk and a few were captured.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese navy faced problems of being controlled both by the nationalists and by various warlord cliques nominally allied to the nationalists, but essentially independent in operation of their vessels.\n\n\n\nThe fate of the cruisers:\n\n\n\n**Ning Hai**\n\n\n\nComissioned: 1932.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 526 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x2x140mm, 6x1x76mm, 2x2x533mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 22 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 361.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-23 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga* in shallow waters in the Yangtse river. Raised and repaired by the Japanse and taken into Japanese servce in 1944 as the *Ioshima*. Sunk again 1944-10-10 by the US submarine *USS Shad*.\n\nNotes: Very small and very slow compared to other light cruisers.\n\n\n\n**Ping Hai**\n\n\n\nComissioned: 1932.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 448 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x2x140mm, 3x1x76mm, 2x2x533mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 21 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 340.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-25 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga* in shallow waters in the Yangtse river. Raised and repaired by the Japanse and taken into Japanese servce in 1944 as the *Yasoshima*. Sunk again 1944-11-25 by US carrier based aircrafts.\n\n\n\nNotes: Very small and very slow compared to other light cruisers.\n\n\n\n**Chao Ho**\n\nComissioned: 1912.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 725 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 2x1x152mm, 4x1x102mm, 4x1 76mm, 6x1x47mm, 2x1x37mm, 2x1x450mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 20 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 283.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-30 by Japanese aircraft from the carriers *Hosho* and *Ryujo*.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Hai Yung**\n\nComissioned: 1898.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 680 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x1x150mm, 8x1x105mm, 6x1x47mm, 3x1x356mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 19,5 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 244.\n\n\n\nFate: Scuttled in the Yangtse river 1937-08-11 to block Japanese advance up the river.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Ying Swei**\n\nComissioned: 1911.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 460 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 2x1x152mm, 1x1x102mm, 4x1x76mm, 6x1x47mm, 2x1x37mm, 2x1x450mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 20 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 270.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-10-24 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga*.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Yat Sen**\n\nComissioned: 1931.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 1 650 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 1x1x152mm, 1x1x140mm, 4x1x75mm, 1x1x47mm.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 19 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 182.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-25 by Japanese aircraft. Raised by the Japanese and renamed Atada, returned to to the Chinese 1946 and served the nationalist government until decommissioned 1958.\n\nNotes: Probably more aptly described as a moden gunboat or sloop."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1kfbfm", "title": "what exactly is the church of scientology and why is there such controversy around it?", "selftext": "There has been plenty of post on reddit about the church of Scientology by I don't understand what the taboo around it is. My understanding of it is very little, I only know that it's a controversial church with a few Hollywood actors in it, but where has that controversy come from that makes it seem like a mystical cult in American culture and why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kfbfm/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_church_of_scientology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cboc5py", "cbocxz0", "cboczy0", "cbohngo", "cboj5zn"], "score": [9, 3, 10, 3, 6], "text": ["Well, not to speak on the actual religion's dogma (as most religions when examined are usually odd beliefs), the reason for controversy is the level of control they try to exert over their members, ex-members, and anybody who tries to criticize them.  The means by which they have done this at times have been considered at a minimum, highly unethical or moral, or just plain illegal.  They have been accused of fostering a \"cult-like\" mentality among their members.\n", "The church of scientology has been attacked by many as a scam in the form of a cult. Members are coerced to attend auditing sessions, which are essentially therapy sessions that contain no scientific backing and cost hundreds of dollars. ", "A prolific SF writer named L. Ron Hubbard reportedly said to some colleagues one time \"The real way to get rich is to start your own religion.\" He later wrote a book called \"Dianetics\" which gave people advice about how their own BS was holding them back from success in life.  It was mostly stuff he made up, but the book became a best seller. The book became the basis of the teachings of the Church of Scientology, which Hubbard founded. (He later claimed that Dianetics was revealed to him when he died in a dentist's chair and then came back to life.)  \n  \nPeople have many, many issues with Scientology. It isn't really much like most other religions, and a lot of people believe that its status as a religion is just a tax dodge. (Including the German government.)  You have to pay to get in, and have to continue to pay over time. As you go up in levels and learn more of the core teachings, you get to some stuff that isn't just New Age psychobabble, it's certifiably crazy. (Of course, you have to invest a lot of time and money to even get to the point of those being revealed to you.)  If you really want to learn more, google \"Xenu\" or \"Thetans\".    \n  \nThere's a fairly recent book called \"Going Clear\" by Lawrence Wright that goes through all this, if you are interested.  I've heard some interviews with the author, and he's done his homework. It's actually quite interesting, in a slightly sad sort of way.  Hubbard was a complicated guy...talented and perceptive, but deeply insecure and more than a little nutty. Some of his SF is pretty decent.  \n  \nIt can be hard to find good information about the CoS on-line because in the past they have been very vigorous about attacking anyone who said anything negative about the church, although it's gotten a lot easier in the last few years. And as /u/Infohiker correctly points out, they seem to try very hard to control everyone in the group and information about their teachings.  If you create a website about Scientology, they will probably eventually attack you.  But with so much social media these days I think they've had a hard time applying pressure on-line like they used to.   \n  \n**TL;DR** - It's mostly crazy bullshit, but *profitable* crazy bullshit.", "The control thing is the major reason, including murder, both directly and indirectly. The case of Lisa McPherson is a major one: _URL_0_ Also interesting is Jason Beghe's testimony about his time in it. It's not as controversial but enlightening to have this famous (and thus protected from much of the worst) ex-member: _URL_1_", "watch this...it is all explained.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nScientology is explained at 10:30"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Lisa_McPherson", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHb0BZyF5Ok"], ["http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e12-trapped-in-the-closet"]]}
{"q_id": "1c8gt5", "title": "why is it that when i look to myself in the mirror i think \"damn i'm hot\" but when i see myself in pictures i seem to be comparatively uglier?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1c8gt5/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_i_look_to_myself_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9e294p", "c9e2c5h", "c9e3fn6", "c9e44ys", "c9e58er", "c9e5rzz", "c9e5wjy", "c9e6iys", "c9e6sjz", "c9e7ox4", "c9e7s1e", "c9e96ec", "c9e9y17", "c9ea0ok", "c9eag19", "c9eb5o0", "c9ebixt", "c9efnwy", "c9ehsf0"], "score": [147, 103, 9, 1122, 247, 5, 26, 83, 15, 3, 41, 5, 5, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["You're seeing, funny enough, a mirror image of yourself while at home. You're used to seeing your minor asymmetrical features on a certain side of your face in the mirror, so seeing them on the other side in a photo is unusual to you. Whereas everyone else in the world sees you the same way as a photograph, you have a \"backward\" view.", "When you look in a mirror you're likely not making funny faces or in the midst of talking, chewing, yawning, nor are you drunk, sweaty or reacting to some thought you just had. In front of mirror, looking for beauty, you'll deliberately seek out the expression that flatters you the most. \n\nAdditionally, while you're used to the lighting around your mirror, the lighting in photos can be all over the place, playing tricks with your appearance. \n\nI'm sure you look lovely in any medium. ", "You have a skinny mirror", "this comes up frequently around here and other parts of reddit.\n\nMost cameras have a narrow focal length and it can distort the way your face looks, like so.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhen you look in a mirror you're seeing yourself as others see you, and not how a camera sees you.", "You're lucky. I see myself ugly in both.", "My understanding is that a sensor on a camera does not have binocular vision like we do, and it tends to ever so slightly alter appearances.", "Stoopdapoop has a great answer... but that's not the whole story.\n\nThe other part is that maybe you just don't know how to photograph well. Models, actors, and other camera personalities actually work to learn their angles. They figure out (usually with a coach) what body/head positions and angles make them look the best on a camera. This is emphatically not the same thing as what makes you look good in day to day life. One of my best angles is one shoulder to the front, slightly down, with my head tilted a little bit down. In real life it looks (and feels) awkward. On camera I look like a badass.\n\nThere are some good general rules for this (standing side on with your arm pressed against your side makes your arm look fat. Duck face for better cheekbones. bend over a little to show some cleavage. That kind of stuff), but it is mostly individual. Best thing to do is to actually experiment with it... set your camera up on a tripod (or better yet, get a portrait photographer for a couple of hours!), and try to copy the face and body positions from a few magazine shoots of celebrities you think you look like, or just ones that you think look good. Most people manage to find 2 or 3 angles that just look great no matter what. ", "/u/stoopdapoop has a really great answer, but I may be able to provide a reason from a different perspective.\n\nI learned a while ago in my Intro Psych class that the more we see things, the more we tend to find them attractive.\n\nWith that being said, whenever you see yourself, it's almost always through a mirror.. And that's why you tend to find yourself more attractive when you look at your reflection in the mirror, as opposed to looking at yourself from a photo that's taken at an angle that you don't see yourself in.\n\nTheoretically, even though you THINK you look ugly in photos, your friends might think you look attractive because they're more used to seeing you in that light.\n\nI hope that made sense.. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any citations on this.. Hopefully somebody with an actual background in psychology can back this up/debunk it.\n\nEdit: /u/Nut_Cancer below found the wikipedia article referencing the thing I was talking about. It's called the [Mere-exposure effect](/_URL_0_).", "I read somewhere that this has something to do with it...\n\n _URL_0_", "This seems to be an issue with being photogenic: 1. You have two eyes, the camera has one \"eye\". You need strong features to look good in a flattened representation of yourself. 2. Posing takes practice, even the most photogenic person in the world can look awful at the wrong angle. 3. You may be using unflattering direct flash to take pictures.", "The worst is when you think aw yeah lookin' good let's capture this shit and update the ol' profile pic.\n\nAnd then you go into photobooth and it takes a picture and you just close the laptop.\n\nfucking photobooth.", "This is why pro photographers get paid a lot of money.", "Yeah, the focal length is part of it, but most of it is that when you look in a mirror, you automatically adjust your facial expressions to be the most aesthetically pleasing you can do. You can't see what you look like in a camera and make those same adjustments. Your blank stare is not as sexy as your mirror smirk. ", "Isn't it true that part of the reason may because you can look at yourself in whatever pose you find yourself most attractive, and you do it naturally?\n\nFor example; someone self-conscious about their nose may prefer to see themselves in a mirror head-on, but a picture of them from the side may make them self-conscious.", "Humans have two eyes, cameras have one.", "When you look in a mirror, it's in actual time. You can adjust your angle, your expression, your posture, flex, the lighting, all in fractions of a second to fine the perfect alignment. \n\nIn photos, it's a single moment. It's locked. If you were slouching, smiling funny, hair out of place, unflattering angle, stomach sticking out, whatever, it's set. Done. \n\nUnless you have a professional photographer who understands all these things, and takes 100s of pictures of you, it's extremely unlikely that every detail will fall into place for that single moment in time. ", "Take a picture of yourself in the mirror to foolproof your camera. ", "_URL_0_\n\nThis is the radiolab episode in question.", "stoopdapoop pretty much nails it, but there's also the issue of color temperature....I just wrote a longer explanation, then remembered what subreddit I was on. Basically, the light bulbs in your bathroom are usually a warm color that's flattering to human skin. The flash of a camera often uses a different spectrum of light that's more likely to pick up the color of your veins and blemishes, as well as making you look more pale in general. Even if your camera has an auto-white function, you're still looking at a more balanced color image, which tends to pick up on more imperfections than the bulbs in your vanity. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://stepheneastwood.com/tutorials/lensdistortion/IMAGES/strip1.jpg", "http://www.ontakingpictures.com/postImages/Mary_focallength1.jpg"], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect#section_3"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.radiolab.org/2011/apr/18/mirror-mirror/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3rhat2", "title": "why do most heisman trophy winners not do well in the nfl?", "selftext": "Is it just a lot of hype for the players who then can't handle it? Or something more? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rhat2/eli5_why_do_most_heisman_trophy_winners_not_do/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwo0tf5", "cwo33au", "cwo4ajd", "cwo4yr6", "cwo4z9w", "cwo4zau", "cwo4zkn", "cwo4zxo", "cwo5n2o", "cwo5rpc", "cwo5x4e", "cwo6m1e", "cwo6tzl", "cwo7f21", "cwo7iem", "cwo80ct", "cwo8ws7", "cwocl12", "cwoe4is", "cwoe4mb", "cwog9pl", "cwogtaz", "cwohbpl", "cwoi6to", "cwoigxm", "cwoj8eu", "cwojasa", "cwojd5r", "cwojv5b", "cwokdsa", "cwokp6m", "cwokv6o", "cwolv2k", "cwolvjz", "cwolxaw", "cwomaic", "cwomizg", "cwon4gr", "cwont2u", "cwonu4u", "cwonzyl", "cwop6mi", "cworacs", "cwoumjk", "cwp1xkw", "cwp28kq"], "score": [1466, 643, 44, 18, 4, 2, 460, 5, 4, 50, 174, 82, 2, 5, 8, 9, 2, 3, 2, 5, 4, 2, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 33, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Quarterbacks at the college level deal with a whole different type of defense and game then the NFL. That's why a lot of those quarterbacks who can scramble for big games in college turn out to be a bust. Players in the NFL are too quick and the defenses are too much for a scrambling quarterback to do very well, especially right after college.", "In college everyone is good ( d1 ) but in the NFL everyone is the best of the best. So tim tebow who could outsmart and pretty much man handle 90% of college players can't just brute strength his way through the NFL. That's why you see an occasional glimpse from a guy like him, or the hundreds of others, but they just can't rely on the same strengths that let them dominate the college setting", "They get drafted early and go to bad teams. \n\nEdit: The first teams to draft every year are the teams that had the worst records the year before, meaning they were the worst teams. They go first meaning they get to draft the most attractive options, and most of the time, that's a Heisman winner or candidate. And one player doesn't make an entire team. ", "Also pressure. College, they have 4 years (5 if they redshirt) to get a feel for the system. If they get picked the first round, they have the four preseason games to play amazing (among salty pro monsters trying to make the squad). If not first round they get everything scrutinized to pin point weaknesses and then those weaknesses are exploited to see how they adapt\u2014this is also how newbie QB's get picked apart, since he opposition Def Coach has studied you since you left high school they will play on the weakness\u2014and if they fail its practice squad, where maybe one or two get a second chance if the main squad gets plagued by injuries, and I hope they learned something while in college.\n\nThen it's getting hit the first time by a Ray Lewis, who does not get tired...actually hits harder and comes faster as the game goes on. Your coach is looking down and shaking his head, and it's only the start of your second quarter playing with the cameras rolling. Every game will be like this and there are 15 more to play.", "I have been hearing a lot through sports media lately that there is a big concern about NFL ready quarterbacks coming out of the NCAA system. Since college is a win now league most coaches tend to put the best athlete at the QB position instead of finding the best QB prospect. So when these QBs get drafted more often than not they thrive in a spread system but can't read a defense to save their lives. After a season or two of open field hits they tend to migrate to a traditional pro system, and this is their first time exposed to it", "Most players period do not make it in the NFL, even highly regarded picks. Heisman candidates might be further predisposed to being busts because they often play in college offenses which inflate their stats and make them appealing to heisman voters, but are not systems which prepare them for the pro game.", "The Heisman rarely goes to the best player in college football.  It usually goes to a player who:\n\n(A) plays a skill position (basically, not offensive or defensive line)\n\n(B) plays on offense \n\n(C) plays on a top 5 team\n\n(D) racks up eye-popping stats\n\nBasically, the Heisman goes to the most successful (stat-wise) player on a team within the top ten, not the most talented player or the player with the best shot at succeeding in the nfl.", "Is there any evidence that they perform worse than the average performance of players picked at the spot they were taken?", "What I have seen is just the overall talent pool of people changes and only the best make it. Division 1 schools have about 12650 players in a given year. The Heisman is given to the best player playing against a subset of those 12650 players. \n\nNow think about the NFL draft, 256 players were taken this year in the draft and you know not all of them make it. But even still let's say they do. 256 divided by 12650 players. This doesn't even count offense vs defense where you could avoid even more players. \n\nThe best player of that year is not playing NFL players, they are playing college players. Many quarterbacks could have a great Wide Receiver to make them look better or an awesome offense line to protect them. Then they get to the NFL and lose those, and then they play a front 7 that will sack you in 2.5 seconds instead of the normal 3.5. \n\nLook at Johnny Manziel, you take away Mike Evans and put him where he doesn't get the same protection and the players can catch him. He's not the same because he's playing NFL players. And this is because the top college player of the year is playing against the best players now. This isn't even factoring in that he has to learn an NFL system, has to throw the ball to certain spots instead of improvising which is what he was famous for. \n\nLittle change of subject since this guy didn't win the Heisman, but look at Colin Kaepernick, you take away his line, his weapons, his coach, and he is still throwing the ball at 100 mph. There is no touch on his throws, you need to do that as a NFL QB. He isn't adapting, he's regressing. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are still adapting every game because the NFL changes week to week. Even a player who could take the NFL by storm can be adjusted to, and can fade away quickly. Colin's story isn't done, but there's a high chance it will be.\n\nLooking across the Bay Area, you see a different quarterback, learning, adapting, making 3rd down conversions. Derek Carr is adapting. We don't know if he will continue to adapt, but you see what a difference of work ethic, adapting and changing you need to survive in the NFL.\n\nAnd lastly, look at Andrew Luck, touted as the next Pocket Passer, the next Manning/Brady/Rodgers/Brees. In the AFC championship game last year, was coveted by every single team, the \"Suck for Luck\" year because he was worth it. Even someone like him, prototypical quarterback with success, he isn't adjusting, his decisions are BAD, especially Monday. You could blame the lack of weapons, the lack of the offense line, but seriously, it starts with the player, and even him has to be judged with his decisions.", "I can't remember who said it but \"college isn't there to prepare you for the NFL, to make you into a good or great football player. College exists to win games.\"", "This is more of a misconception than anything else. No player can dominate in the NFL the same way they did in college because of the level of competition, obviously. However, to say that most Heisman winners do bad is just false. \n\n4 of the last 5 Heisman winners will be starting quarterbacks in the NFL this upcoming Sunday. That is an accomplishment in itself, but now look at the teams they play for. \n\nTampa Bay, Tennessee, Cleveland, Washington, and Carolina.\nWhat do those first 4 have in common? They are flaming piles of garbage. The reason those teams have high picks is because of how poorly they performed. As a result, the \"best\" players will be high picks going to poor teams. It takes time for players to develop within a system, look at Carolina now that Newton has a few years in the system. They built a team around him, and they are 7-0.\n\nMarcus Mariota and Jameis Winston are both rookies. Trying to judge them now is just idiotic and a waste of time, both seem to be starting on the right foot. \n\nJohnny Manziel has been in and out of rehab and fighting for a starting job. Johnny, while electric and exciting to watch, has a playstyle more suited to the college game. That is why he wasn't an early first rounder like most other heisman winning QB's. Most experts knew he would not be overwhelmingly successful in the NFL.\n\nRG3 will definitely support your argument. I will chalk that up to the incompetence of the Redskins organization, as well as an overhyped player coming out of a spread offense. I could go into why playing in a spread offense is a disadvantage translating to the NFL, but I have already seen that covered in another comment. \n\nPerhaps the recency bias is playing into your mind when you posted this, but let me list some more Heisman trophy winners for you:\n\nCarson Palmer\n\nRicky Williams\n\nCharles Woodson\n\nCharlie Ward (Bball)\n\nEddie George\n\nBarry Sanders \n\nVinny Testeverde\n\nBo Jackson\n\nDoug Flutie\n\n\nHerschel Walker\n\n", "Looking at the last 15 winners:\n\n2014: Mariota (off to great start)\n\n2013: Winston (off to solid start)\n\n2012: Manziel (too early to tell)\n\n2011: RGIII (injuries/coaching destroyed his career)\n\n2010: Cam Newton (Franchise QB)\n\n2009: Mark Ingram (Average starter)\n\n2008: Sam Bradford (looking like a bust/injuries)\n\n2007: Tim Tebow (quintessential college QB/Bust in NFL)\n\n2006: Troy Smith (mid round draft pick/solid back up)\n\n2005: Reggie Bush (solid starter/didn't meet expectations)\n\n2004: Matt Leinart (Bust)\n\n2003: Jason White (undrafted)\n\n2002: Carson Palmer (Franchise QB)\n\n2001: Eric Crouch (run first QB with no real passing ability)\n\n2000: Chris Weinke (roughly 45 years old when drafted)\n\nFrom 2000-2008, only Palmer and Bush turned into quality NFL starters, though arguably neither lived up to expectations fully. But four winners were QBs that had skills better suited for college than the NFL and only of those four only Tebow was a 1st round pick.\n\nFrom 2009-2014, all the winners have shown an ability to play and start in the NFL--RGIII is the only player not starting next week I think. \n\nI don't really see much evidence that Heisman winners are more likely to not succeed in the NFL than other players.", "Cam Newton is recently the most successful Heisman winner in the NFL in my opinion. Even harder for a scrambling QB up against NFL defenses. ", "Most likely because if their positions.  As a lineman, linebacker, even cornerback or receiver you can have an \"average\" career, be left alone, play for a few teams, and retire.  Heisman winners are almost always either RBs or QBs, probably the two highest profile positions. So, expectations are enormous, so \"average\" becomes disappointing.\n\n\nAlso, in the NFL you play against other great players every week.  A Heisman winning RB that played for a big, division 1 SEC team still plays at least a handful of games every year against teams that largely have no shot of competing with them.  Even when they play against other good teams, most of the players on the defense they are playing against are not NFL caliber players.  In the NFL, they play against NFL caliber players every single snap.", "The biggest challenge for top tier college quarterbacks transitioning to the NFL is that now they are playing against a team composed of the very best college players. These are players that are not only the best physically but they understand the game extremely well. \n\nPeople think that football is quite simple but at the NFL level the quarterback is essentially playing a game of chess every play. They are positioning and moving players or calling changes in the play because the defense has predicted what play the offense will run. Not a lot of players are able to do this. ", "The \"best player in college football\" usually carries their team, often by being a better raw athlete than most of the other players. No one player entering the draft today can simply overwhelm the rest of the NFL's great athletes, and they get injured trying.", "To be good at College Football, you only need to be really good at one thing. Some QB's are good at running but not throwing. Most Pass-Rushers have one good move. Etc. In NFL football, you have to be able to make every throw, use a secondary pass-rush move, etc. Being really good at one thing isn't enough for the NFL. \n\nIn the same light, the Heisman trophy isn't awarded to the player people think will be the best NFL player. It is a college football trophy. RG3 made more exciting plays than Luck in college; however, almost everyone thought Luck would be the better NFL QB. Tebow won the award despite most people thinking he would never be an NFL QB. ", "It's like a senior in college would play against a senior in high school. They might be good in their own league, but it's basically a kid who just reached his prime playing against a grown ass man who trains in his free time most of the day, eats like a monster, and has all sorts of certain ways of life style imposed on them by their coaches. \nHowever, If you took that same college player and put him against a NFL player, it would be a man who is going against a monster who eats sleeps and breaths football. They don't have a job or school to consume their time to force them to have free time for football. The NFL is their job and say of life, so it would be putting a radroach against a behemoth, in fallout terms. ", "There are some good answers here however I feel like a lot of them make a good point but miss a few other points that need to be made.  \n\nTo start, the Heisman is generally awarded to a player on a top ten team.  By that standard, a player is going to be surrounded by a higher level of talent than others and will have a greater chance of succeeding in their position.  Matt Leinart is a *very* good example of this when he was at USC.  He had two elite running backs (one was a fellow Heisman winner) with him in the backfield and amazing receivers to throw the ball to.  Add in the fact that his  offensive line had 4 future NFL players (including a first round draft pick, and two second rounders) and it's pretty easy to see how his path to success was easier than a player who may be the only NFL bound prospect on their team. \n\nWhen a player like this goes to the NFL, they are not surrounded by the cream of the crop in the league on their team because the league is filled with the cream of the crop.  Suddenly the individual can't rely on others as much as they did before and have to rely on their own skills even more and can't take a moment off.  Heisman winners like Leinart, Chris Weinke, and Gino Torretta suffered from this. \n\nSome suffer a different fate which is that their team employed a system that works in college because players are smaller and slower than in the NFL.  Whether it's the spread style pass first offense (Andre Ware, Ty Detmer, Danny Wuerffel, Sam Bradford) or the option-style offense (Eric Crouch, Tim Tebow, Robert Griffin II), players in these styles of offense (QB's especially) have major catching up to do and often can't.  They generally win the Heisman because their systems put the ball in their hands a lot and lead to inflated numbers that give people the impression that their skills are better than they actually are.  Cam Newton is one Heisman winner from an offense like this that seems to be doing OK but he's a physical freak who seems to put in the work to do well.  Which gets me to my final point.\n\nTo succeed in the NFL takes a buttload of work on and off the field.   Whether it's because they were allowed to sit back every now and then because they were on amazing teams or they just never put the work in in the first place, some Heisman winners can't take the challenge of constant film room sessions and the bruising practices at the NFL level.  The league is incredibly competitive which means that you need to work on your craft to always stay ahead of the game.  Some guys just can't do that.  ", "Generally, the Heisman is given to a skill player.  Most often this has been quarterbacks and running backs, but with a heavy dominance by QBs in recent years.  If there's one position that vastly different between the college and pro game, it's quarterback.  Many colleges run offenses that include shotgun formations, options, zone-reads, and other types of attacks that are predicated on having a dual-threat (runner and passer) at quarterback.  Contrast that to the NFL where there are a few true \"dual-threat\" guys like Russell Wilson or Colin Kaepernick, but they are STILL very much a pass-first league.  The NFL values QBs who play under center, stay inside the pocket and make quick, decisive throws (either Manning, Tom Brady, etc).  \n\nBy contrast, you can have a college QB who makes big plays by letting the WRs run off the secondary and then burning the defense with his legs.  The last FIVE Heisman winners (Mariota, Winston, Manziel, Griffin III, Newton) have all been the prototypical college dual threat.  Some have done well in the NFL and others have crashed and burned.\n\nAlso, the QB dominance trend is somewhat recent as in the past running backs, wide receivers and even players who lined up on defense have won the award.  Ndamukong Suh was a Heisman finalist for Nebraska at Defensive Tackle (did not win) and he's continued to dominate at the NFL level as well.  That's partly because a position like DT is much more synonymous since the goal (hit the ball carrier) is somewhat simpler than a QB's duties (no offense to NFL DTs).", "Not researched, just a thought.\n\nCollege Heisman winners are usually those who are outstanding in a given scheme - quarterbacks are on heavy pass teams, running backs on heavy running teams.  Such strategies are not as common in the NFL, where a team that gets 75% of its yards from the run, or has an extremely fast downfield passing attack, doesn't do very well.\n\nSo those exceptional college players aren't as well prepared for the NFL style offense.  Most popular example is probably Tim Tebow, whose offensive scheme at Florida is great for him, but a poor match for any NFL team.  A top college player, no doubt, but a mediocre (and maybe undersized?) running back combined with questionable passing skills in the NFL.", "Most people who don't win the Heisman trophy don't do well in the NFL either.  Only so many people can be in the top 10%, you know?", "the only thing i know about the heisman trophy is that OJ won it, and he possibly murdered his wife and some dude and then definitely was involved in a low speed chase in his white ford bronco, which sucks because i fuckin love the bronco, especially in white.", "Most are quarterbacks. The quarterbacks who do best in college may rely on skills that are not as important in the NFL (running the ball). They are also usually at a good school that completely outclasses the other team 60-70% of the time. \n\nSo, they will be throwing to other NFL quality players, protected by NFL quality linemen, and have an NFL quality running back to draw heat away. For example, the dropoff from a top 10 football program to a bottom 50 program would be roughly the equivalent of an average MLB baseball player taking on AA players.\n\nOnce they get to the NFL, they will have about 3 seconds to release a pass, instead of maybe 4-5 in college. Their receivers will fight to get a half to a full step of separation, instead of 2-3 steps of separation they would see in college. The throwing windows are smaller. The defense has much better awareness, so they will pick off telegraphed throws more easily. The defensive backs, and especially linebackers are much faster, so a slightly errant pass will get picked off more frequently. Opposing defenses are FULL TIME players, who sit around and watch film for 20 hours on each game, instead of college students who may have a total of 20 hours of practice time in total in a week.\n\nMost importantly, there are skills that college football rewards that are unimportant or even negative in the NFL. Being pretty fast (4.7 speed) and running the ball is a huge asset when you're faster than the linebackers. It can be a liability when the linebackers are as fast as you are, and your inclination to run makes you miss an open receiver downfield, or get hit and injured, or fumble the ball.\n\nGood \"sit-in-the-pocket\" quarterbacks, who sit in the pocket and pick apart a defense do well in the NFL (Brady, Manning, Brees, Marino, Young, Montana, etc.) Some also do quite well in college, but not always.\n\nA good analogy would be an undersized basketball player. A 5'10 guard who is an excellent outside shooter, and drives hard to the rim can make you a superstar in college with a 6'1 guy guarding you, and a 6'10 guy blocking the paint. When you get to the NBA, you can't shoot over a 6'5 shooting guard, and you can't drive the lane past a 7'2 center who knows how to block your shots. Such a college superstar would be nearly worthless, while a 6'4 roleplayer shooting specialist can easily have a 15 year career and receive mid level contracts.", "most college players don't do well in the NFL. (it's really hard)\nmost heisman winners tend to be backs and NFL QB is arguably the hardest job on the planet (non-POTUS version). We also have very little ability to predict greatness at the position. \n\nPerhaps most importantly, EVERYONE on a football team is the beneficiary of (or subjected to) the system they play in. This is especially true at the prolevel. For example, as happened quite a few times over the past 10 years, you have a college RB who kills it in a zone read offense get drafted by a (dumbass) GM to play in a team that isn't a zone read, its not that surprising he doesn't flourish.\n\n", "Because NCAA and NFL have vastly different talent levels, which leads them to be rather different (yet highly similar) games.\n\nTalent Levels\n-\nAt the NCAA Division 1-A level, there are 128 teams, each with up to 85 players.   That's 10,880 players in Division 1A.  Of those, roughly [300](_URL_0_) will make it onto an NFL's 53 man squad (32 teams, 1,696 players).  Only half of those players will play more than a single contract.  So that means that out of 10,880 players, only about 600 (4 years@150) are \"truly\" \"NFL Caliber\" players.  That means 5.5% of players, or on average you're only going to play against 4-5 people who are capable of opposing you at your level per game, and roughly half of them are going to be sitting on the bench (because they, too, are on offense).\n\nThat means that there is a pretty decent chance that a Heisman winner won't be opposing someone capable of exposing their weaknesses with any regularity.  Indeed, depending on what team you're on, you might well end up never facing someone with your raw ability.  What's more, even those who are your equals in terms of ability are still also college students, who cannot afford the time to make defeating you their full time job.  They don't have the *time* for both film study and book study.  This leads to \n\nNCAA and NFL football being different games\n-\n\nThe above means that you can \"cheat.\"  You can be sloppy.  You can do things that would *never* work against a full team of people who are as good as you are.  Wildcat offenses work in the NCAA, but not very often in the NFL.  Likewise with the Spread Offense.  NFL coaches are currently lamenting the fact that they can't find good quality Offensive Linemen, because the ones coming out of colleges these days tend to be used to playing a type of offense that works wonderfully against a bunch of amateurs, but can't hold up to Pros.  It's not an indictment of the NCAA, simply that it isn't the same game, and what lets you excel in the NCAA, what makes you the best player in the NCAA doesn't necessarily translate to NFL.", "The NFL is full of players that have seen and competed at a much more competitive level against players better than anybody a fresh Heisman winner will have ever faced before. Some of these veterans will have done it for a decade or more in some cases.\n\n", "Tl;dr: Heisman winners often have stats that can only be achieved in college... many of them are reliant on a system of speed and strength, not individual talent. \n\nIf you are a top tier college program you very often are running non-nfl plays. This is because of a whole variety of peculiarities of collegiate football, quality of coaching, the value of individual players, the lack of awareness by defensive players etc.  \n\nHistorically this was compounded by huge discrepencies in athletic training. For instance, the University of florida\n could have nfl quality conditioning, training and medical staff. A coach could use this to build offenses that were so much faster and well groomed that most teams couldnt compete. This has more or less come to an end with the proliferation of quality training staff throughout the country. \n\nThe speed/strength differential compounds super quick. If you have 3 skills position players with both the speed and strength to dominate whoever they line up against you are almost always going to lose. Interestingly this occassionally happens in the nfl, the 1998 vikings had most of the moving parts. \n\n______________________\nEDIT: Just to clarify: many Heisman winners are offensive players. Most of them have relied on their physical prowess relative to their opponent and their coach's system.\n\nUsually a coach will get the best QB he can find but a college coach just needs an arm- he can usually design a system with superior recievers where the QB litterally goes into the play knowing who he will throw to - he doesn't even have to see the Defense. Meaning the QB isn't really an NFL qb he is just an arm with eyes.\n\nThe system is to spread the defense out and be able to tell before the play - usually before the day of the game, where the defense will fail. In the NFL this is impossible, there is just too much experience and athletic talent on the field.\n\nA QB like Miami's Brock Berlin can go into a play knowing he is throwing to Andre Johnson, this is good enough to really excel in college football. But in the NFL they will adjust before the play, and usually there is at least 1 defensive player who is Defensive Coordinator smart - this is rarely the case in college ball.", "In my opinion, it's due to supporting cast. Look at the heisman winners from the past 10 years:\n\nMarcos Mariota - QB - Oregon (top 5 team)\n\nJameis Winston - QB - Florida St. (top 5 team)\n\nJohnny Manziel - QB - Texas A & M (top 10 team)\n\nRobert Griffin III - QB - Baylor (top 10 team)\n\nCam Newton - QB - Auburn (top 5 team)\n\nMark Ingram Jr. - RB - Alabama (top 5 team)\n\nSam Bradford - QB - Oklahoma (top 5 team)\n\nTim Tebow - QB - Florida (top 5 team)\n\nTroy Smith - QB - Ohio State (top 5 team)\n\nMatt Leinart - QB - USC (top 5 team)\n\nI'm going to pick on Manziel, but the same can be said about everyone with the exception of Cam Newton and maybe Mark Ingram.\n\nThese guys are the MVPs of their teams, and their teams were always one of the best in the country. The QBs are throwing to elite wide receivers that were guaranteed locks to go to the NFL while standing behind a line of 5 future NFL starters. The running backs were finding holes behind guards and tackles that were all NFL stars in the making. \n\nOf course Johnny Manziel went bananas at A & M. He was throwing the ball to 6'5\" Mike Evans (1st round) while standing behind 5 future NFL starters, 3 of which were drafted in the first round. it wouldn't take much to succeed in that scenario. Is Manziel a gifted athlete? Absolutely. But everyone in the NFL is a gifted athlete. What makes a star in the NFL? Making something out of nothing. Being able to find that hole that doesn't exist or hit that receiver downfield because you saw the corner cheat up on the same play 6 weeks ago when you last faced him. Knowing that if you don't get the ball out downfield in under 2 seconds, you are going to get hit from behind, and if that happens, you might be able to roll out to the left because the End has a thumb injury and his grip isn't 100% on his right hand.\n\nSo why do the skill players (QB/RB/WR/CB) come from lesser schools as often as the power schools? Because Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco didn't have a single teammate in college get drafted. They were playing behind no name linemen and throwing the ball to no name receivers and still putting up numbers. Any college running back can step onto the field at Alabama or Ohio State and run for 800 yards. Do it at Toledo and we'll talk.\n\n", "Most college players in general never do well in the NFL. Heisman winners are more likely to get a chance to fail. ", "The simple answer is this:  \n\nSpeed of the game.  \n\nIn college you are the best of the high school kids.  However one thing you must realize is that there is a shit ton of high schools and colleges.  There are 32ish NFL teams.  \n\nSo when you get to college, if your the \"best\" player.  You are better than literally 99% of the players.  The only other players you have to worry about are the other \"star\" players on the other teams.  These guys are usually QB, RB, WR.  Basically people that get the ball and move it down the field.  They can do so because they are faster, and stronger than 99%.\n\nEnter the NFL.  Remember those other 1% players that were just as good as you?  Now you have a full roster of 1%'ers on your team.  Everyone is fast.  Everyone is strong.  You know that 350 pound lineman that in college couldnt make it down a 40 yard dash?  In the NFL they make it in 4.5-4.7 seconds.  \n\nTHAT. IS. FUCKING. INSANE.  Considering the fastest time ever is a 4.19-4.23 or something like that.  That is a lot of mass to be moving that quick.\n\nNo one ever talks about that.  No one ever says, \n\n\"Hey Johney Manziel, you know that big fat guy over there that weighs 340 pounds?  He can actually run faster than you.  Good luck kiddo.\"\n\nBecause thats literally what happens.  Not only is the speed of players faster, the speed of the game is faster.  You are expected to keep up with that pace.  Then there is learning defense/offense for your team and the other team in 1 week flat.  Thats how long you get.  Which in reality is more like 2 days if you include all the practices and lifting you have to do. \n\n", "In the NFL you are essentially playing against the equivalent of a college super-star team every week. In college you are playing against teams that are 90% or greater composed of guys who will never see the field in the NFL. Every guy who plays in the NFL was one of the best if not THE best player on his college team. In college, your opponent's defense may have 1 guy who will be good in the NFL and 2-3 guys who might see the field. Guys who can adjust to the superior oppositions make it in the NFL. Guys who can't adjust don't.\n\nLastly, the Heisman is awarded to the guy who has the best performance, not the guy with the best potential. If a player is able to bulldoze the weaklings at Shit State U who is last in their conference, he stands a chance at the Heisman. But what is he going to do when he faces the Ray Lewis Ravens?", "Several reasons really. \n\nCollege coaches are paid to win games, not groom NFL players. In some cases you get both, but most great college QBs play in a system designed to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses and since the players in the NFL are bigger, faster, stronger and smarter, often times the players weaknesses are too much to mask or their strengths just aren't strong enough to overcome their weaknesses or any combination of those 2 factors. \n\nThere's also the fact that there is more for an NFL QB to do in the mental aspect of the game, mostly before the snap, like audibles and defense/coverage recognition that college coaches do for the QB. This is why you see college teams look to the sideline before they snap the ball; the coach reads the defense for the QB and tells the offense whether or not to check out of a play from the sideline. In the NFL, with the exception of Philly it seems, these duties fall on the QB and many lack the football intelligence to handle it. \n\nMore generally, the skills needed to be a great college QB are quite different from those needed to be a great NFL QB and there isn't a while lot of overlap between them. ", "They get drafted by shitty teams, also their speed and agility that came as a bonus in college is often cancelled out by their relatively small size in the pros", "The way I see it:\n\n\nMost Heisman winners have a high enough skill level compared to their peers to play their own game in college.\n\nWhen they go to the NFL, they have to play football.", "eli5: imagine the best tecmo bowl players (for nintendo) being forced to play the best xbox players in Madden. Sure, the game (of football) might be the same, but the controls are so different and the game so much complicated that only the best make the transition. \n", "Because most Heisman winners tend to be QBs and the ones who aren't tend to be RBs. Being a great college QB won't necessarily translate to being a great pro QB.  RBs just have no longevity in the NFL, and the difference for an NFL team in having a great versus good enough RB is almost negligible.", "The simple answer is that college football and NFL football are almost completely different games.  Therefore, having success in college football is not a great predictor of one's success in pro football.\n\nYou might be wondering, why are college football and NFL football completely different games?  This answer is more complex, but basically it boils down to player talent.  \n\nLet's start with the numbers.  There are something like 250 Division I college football programs, each with ~100 players - That's 25,000 division 1 college football players.  The NFL only drafts 256 players every year - roughly 1% of active division 1 college football players.  So the players in the NFL are at least the top 1% of college football players (a lot of the players who get drafted never see the field or get relegated to the practice squad for their entire careers).\n\nTherefore, most of the people playing college football are physically closer to you and me than they are to anyone in the NFL.  This lack of physical skills gives way to a certain style of football.  If a team is lucky enough (or has recruited well enough) to have players with NFL skillsets, then that team can simply overpower their opposition.  I hypothesize that this is why the running game has become so prevalent at the college level.  \n\nCertain teams and certain programs that can recruit really well don't put really any emphasis on skill players and just get big bodied guys who can run the read option.  This practice has become so commonplace that college football more closely resembles track and field with tackling than it does pro football.\n\nObviously you still have programs that have stuck with pro-style offenses, but they are getting fewer and further between.  Some examples are Michigan State, UCLA, Memphis (this year with Paxton Lynch) and Michigan.  \n\nAs coaches face firing, pressure builds to \"win now.\"  In college football, \"winning now\" often involves switching over to the read option - see USC under Sarkisian (now fired) this year.  The move to read option works because the offense is simple and there is basically no learning curve - most high schools run the read option these days.  The only issue is recruiting.  \n\nSo if college football has turned into track and field with tackling and the Heisman trophy winner is the best college football player, then what is he good at? He's most likely good at running the read option and hasn't learned any plays more complex than a zone read.  If he's a quarterback, he probably never learned how to read a complex defense or even a quarter of the plays he's going to need to know at the pro level.\n\nGenerally speaking, the guys who win the Heisman are often naturally more gifted than most of their competition and they rely heavily on that to win games.  You see it every Saturday: Houston QB (an example) fumbles the handoff, but he jukes 6 guys who are 5'9\" 180 lbs and runs for 25 yards.  In the NFL that play never happens.\n\nWhen these Heisman guys get to the NFL it's a big shock.  No longer are they the biggest, fastest guy on the field who can run around and buy time to throw downfield (or just run for 20 every play).  Instead they have to learn the playbook, diagnose the defense, understand a pro style offense, allow themselves to check down on plays, etc.  Sadly, they have to learn how to play football for the first time in their careers.\n\nExamples:\nReggie Bush - At USC was always faster than everyone else, could just run around them.  Took him 5 years to learn how to really play football and be an effective RB in New Orleans.\n\nTebow - A spread offense QB who was surrounded by 10 other NFL caliber athletes at Florida. \n\nRG3 - Another Spread Offense QB who was always faster than everyone else.  It worked in the NFL for about 10 games.  One knee injury later, he's done.\n\nManziel - Should have stayed in College Station one more year to really learn the offense. The running around and \"extending the play\" thing hasn't worked very well in the NFL.  Also it invites injury.", "Every team that a college player faces includes from 0 to 10 players who will make it to the NFL.  Fewer than 2% make it. Every team that an NFL player faces includes ONLY players who made it to the NFL.", "The NFL game is a different beast than College.\n\nGeneralization incoming: It's why people who follow College don't follow the NFL.", "The success rate for ANY college player to make it in the NFL is low. Incredibly low. I have a strong hunch that if you calculated the following:\n\n* A = % All D1 college athletes who made it in the NFL\n\n* B = % All D1 college athletes from elite schools who made it in the NFL\n\n* C = % Heisman college athletes who made it in the NFL\n\nC might well be the highest percentage out of all of them, despite still being a low percentage. \n\nKinda like if someone told you they could shoot a basketball from half court with a 25% success rate. Sounds low on its own until you realize how goddamn hard that shot is and you stare at that person like they're a freak of nature.", "Most of them are too busy planning for the opening their family-friendly sports bars and interviewing for various used car and mattress dealer commercials.  ", "\nLots of reasons....\n\n1. Award not always given to best player in CFB. If a team is undefeated the QB of the team is always a finalist.\n2. Sometimes a great CFB player doesn't translate to the NFL.  Different tactics and talent level.\n3. First pick in NFL draft typically goes to worst team.  This is usually detrimental to a QB that ends up as first pick as a bad team may not be able to protect him or coach him.  There are exceptions like Jameis Winston who played in a pro-style offense in college. Winston had a couple of rough games but is now tearing up the stats despite being on one of the worst teams.  Mariotta on the other hand came from a college style offense and has severely struggled despite having great athletic qualities.", "Like most are saying it is drastically faster than college. Take the fastest and strongest guy from a college team that will make the NFL. Next you do the same thing 21 more times and that will make up an NFL team. ", "Quarterbacks in college play against 18-20 year olds who spend their time studying, partying, going to class, chasing women and enjoying being young adults. QBs into the NFL play against grown men aged 22 - 40 who are paid millions of dollars to play at the position they play.", "Heisman winners are drafted by the worst teams in the NFL.. it has to deflate the winning ego to go 2-14 after winning the highest honor in all of college football"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://i.imgur.com/zNOVaO6.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "yse9m", "title": "What is the physiology of a liver shot knockout?", "selftext": "In MMA, Boxing, and other fight sports, knock outs are often achieved by hitting the opponent's chin or head in such a way that it causes them to lose consciousness. \n\nHowever, a lesser seen knockout is a strike to the liver. \n\nDuring these knockouts, the opponent stays conscious, but usually has little control over his body. The abdomen is often clutched, and the fighter will often sink to the ground. Curse words are said to alleviate the pain more quickly. \n\nI would like to know the physiology behind the liver shot or body shot knockout. \n\nHaving been on the receving end of a few of these, I can tell you it is very, very hard to stay standing, as your body just wants to crumple into the fetal position. \n\nI, of course, would also like to know the physiology of such a knockout in order to improve my future performance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/yse9m/what_is_the_physiology_of_a_liver_shot_knockout/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5yhlya"], "score": [3], "text": ["I think the short of it is that there's a number of soft tissue vurnerable points on your body that don't deal well with getting hit because they have almost none of the normal protection.\n\nYour musculature (and ribcage) are like body armor. The more well developed it is, the better it protects your important bits by placing a thick layer of muscle over the top.\n\nUpper cuts to the chin work well not because the chin is especially vurnerable but because it works like a car crash, snapping your head backwards and sending your brain slamming into the inside of your skull. It basically gives a brain the hardest jolt possible by snapping the entire head like a lever on a pivot. Your skull itself is pretty tough but your brain can't handle being thrown around inside the skull, so any punch that really snaps the head around is a bad thing.\n\nBoth the liver and the solar plexus suffer from the fact that they're not as well protected as they could be. [If you look at this picture](_URL_0_) you'll notice that there's a part of the liver not protected by the ribcage and not protected by either the major chest or abdominal muscles. It's pretty much wide open to get squished by a good punch from the right direction. This is also the approximate location of that nerve cluster, the solar plexus.\n\nThe liver is an important and squishy organ, it does not like getting punched and unfortunately it's partially behind a chink in your natural armor. By comparison the stomach and intestines are behind a solid wall of abdominal muscles that most athletes train to be pretty thick.\n\nYour wind pipe is another such weak spot. It's pretty well protected by the neck muscles from punches coming in from the side but a straight jab at the wind pipe can land you in seriously trouble or even kill if it get's crushed.\n\nFinally, from the back your kidneys are in much the same situation. Close to the surface, relatively unprotected. A hard punch to the kidneys won't do you any favors either.\n\nThat's why many fighting stances start by teaching you to fight chin down and arms in front. Protect those weak spots in your armor. From what I hear boxers do actually train to strengthen the muscles protecting the region underneath the rib cage, but those muscles will never be as strong and protective as say your chest or stomach. Which is why fighters train in dodging and protecting their vurnerable area's, you can't solve every problem head on.\n\nTL;DR don't get hit in the squishy important bits of your body. If there isn't bone or thick muscle on top, don't get hit there."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.medicinenet.com/liver/page2.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "5vfl8q", "title": "what do pharmacists do? doctors write the scripts, big pharma manufactures the drugs, what's the pharmacist do other than select a bottle from the shelf and dole out the pills?", "selftext": "Genuinely interested, sorry for belittling an entire profession. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vfl8q/eli5_what_do_pharmacists_do_doctors_write_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de1oshn", "de1otqc", "de1oubz", "de1p2a3", "de1pd4c", "de1riqa", "de1tekx", "de1u6ne", "de1uxst", "de1wlig", "de1zzqv", "de2a91q", "de2eom6", "de2gbmi"], "score": [15, 355, 5, 33, 4, 12, 2, 2, 2, 2, 46, 6, 3, 34], "text": ["Makes sure that your Doctor isn't asleep or overworked by checking for interactions.  \n\nProviding a ton of free advice about what cream for this rash or that minor condition you may have.\n\nTeaching about generics which might save you money.\n\nCalling your Doc and working out an alternative prescription which IS covered under your health insurance.\n\n", "A pharmacist is basically a specialist in medication, meaning they probably know more about medicines than some medical practitioners.  They do so much more than dispense medicine, they also offer consults on use and dosage.  They are also the last line of defence when it comes to drug interactions, especially when a patient is treated by numerous practitioners.  And last but not least, they deserve a medal for being able to translate a practitioner's handwriting.", "Pharmacy technician here, They check that the prescription has been written correctly, that the patient can take the drug, i.e. is not allergic to something in it or that any other medications they take can be taken with the drug, and that the dispensed drug is correct. They also answer any questions that the patient has about the medication ", "Pharmacists are experts in medications, even more so that doctors. Doctors are responsible for a lot of information and decisions, done quickly. Under those circumstances, it can be easy to order medications that are incompatible in the same patient. One of their chief responsibilities is to make sure medication orders make sense, drug interactions are minimized, doses are appropriate, and so on.  \nThat makes it sound like they're only purpose is to doublecheck Dr.'s work, but in truth they tend to have a much more in-depth knowledge of the field of medications, their effects, and their doses.\n\nThere's a lot more to it than that. The stuff you see them doing is counting to make sure the right number of pills get into your prescription. It gets much more difficult when there are multiple prescriptions on the same patient. Also sometimes doctors need doses that don't exist in pill form. In these cases it's up to the pharmacist to make a new pills, or capsules, or syrup liquids, in order to make the doses precise. \n\nFor example, let's say there is an antibiotic that is only available in  200 mg tablets. A doctor needs syrup made up to give to a baby that has 75 mg in 1 teaspoon. A pharmacist has the technical expertise and know how to mix the syrup with the pills that are available. They really are an indispensable part of the care team.", "Typically they counsel patients on proper dosage, potential side effects, any adverse issues when used in conjunction with other drugs, and recommend generics when available. ", "Pharmacists assume I'm an idiot and view all of my prescriptions as pending death certificates for my patients.\n\nAnd, I can't be more pleased about it.\n\nEveryone makes mistakes. Even doctors.\n\nPharmacists have saved my patients from my mistakes many times.", "pharmacists also deal a lot with insurance companies. getting drugs covered that would otherwise not be covered or have a very high copay, they obtain prior authorization for medications as well, get things overridden. things the patient is not going to be able to do. i worked at a pharmacy and the pharmacists there did a ton of interaction with insurance companies. \n\nalso, before the wave of electronic scripts, pharmacies busted a lot of fraudulent prescriptions. i worked at a small locally owned pharmacy, places like that attracted a lot of fraudulent Rxs and it was pretty easy to spot a fake. e.g., a doc wrote for X medication 50 mg let's say. then the patient would put a 1 before the 50 but not in the exact same pen as the doctor did. or, a patient either obtained a doctor's script pad or the doctor was just in on it, doctors office was 50 miles west. pharmacy 50 miles east of the doc office and patient lived 50 miles east of the pharmacy. red flag right there. ", "Think of your doctor as the waiter of a fine dining establishment. They suggest the wine to go with your dinner, and you can tell them what you like or what you need, and they will make sure you get taken care of. The pharmacist is the guy who actually prepares the food correctly, makes sure it's safe, and that you are getting what was ordered. \n\nThere are many different doses for common medications and some of them don't come ready to dispense but instead have to be mixed on site by the pharmacist. The doctor who prescribed the drug is the expert on it's affects on the patient. And the pharmacist who fills the prescription is an expert on the drug itself, how it's dispensed, the dangers of the drug, possible interactions with other drugs, how to safely dispense the drug, etc. \n\nA pharmacist is a specialist in drugs and medications including preparation, dispensing, and safety, even more so than your doctor is. ", "From what I know, as far as the medical profession goes, we actually know very little about most medications. Pharmacists are the ones who understand and help research this stuff. It's a growing field and they have a serious education behind them.\n\nIf it helps, think of the pharmacist as a medical teams reference for meds. \n\nThere are tons of intricacies to medications that we have discovered (by accident) and use to our advantage, like the anti depressant effects of anti seizure medications (among others).\n\nPharmacists do look after the rights of patients when dispensing a medication (right time, dose, frequency, person, medication, etc etc) but they're also monitoring those meds for rate of consumption (for those elderly patients who may forget to refill, or those patients at risk for addiction or abuse), they repackage into blister packs for people with arthritis or meter out small amounts for patients at risk of overdosing. \n\nThere are intimacies to mixing up creams for fungal infections vs steroids for massive bacterial infections.\n\nThese are the people who make the final warnings to avoid things like making sure you're not on oral birth control while taking antibiotics.\n\nIf \"It's a Wonderful Life\" taught us anything, pharmacists have had to evolve a long way from keeping all the different white powders in jars along the same shelf. \n\nPeople probably die a lot less. ", "I have multiple health issues and when I am sick we call our pharmacist and the doctor around the time for treatment advice.  I can't always see the same doctor in my group but I can talk to the same pharmacist. ", "I'm a nurse in a hospital, and pharmacists do a lot. They dose medication for patients whose liver or kidneys aren't functioning properly (meaning they're not able to clear the meds out of their system like a usual person would) and dose especially toxic medicines based on lab results. Lots of meds my patients get come with a physician order stating \"Pharmacy to dose\" bc the pharmacists are experts in how the drug works in and is processed by the body. They figure out alternate ways of getting a medicine into a patient when the usual ways aren't working, like when the patient needs a pill but chokes on everything they try to swallow, or need an IV drug but don't have an IV for whatever reason, because they have the knowledge to compare different methods if the same drug or alternate drugs that can go in a different way. They also double check medicine compatibility and dosage, which seems like a computer could do, but gets complicated when you have patients on many drugs being used in non-standard dosages for different conditions. They also physically mix the drugs, which requires a lot of knowledge of the chemistry of the body in order to ensure the med is safe to give and being given correctly. They're also in charge of a lot of the facets of making sure med errors don't happen. Pharmacists are experts on the drugs, so the doctor can focus on treating the patient, instead of reinventing the wheel. ", "My pharmacist has saved my life a couple of times. I take a medication every day that doesn't play nicely with other drugs. When my doctor prescribes me something else like an antibiotic or an anti-inflammatory, even though she always checks her computer for interaction issues with my main meds, I still always double-check with the pharmacist. More than a few times he's had to call my doctor and say \"oh hell no\" and recommend a different drug. His knowledge of medications, uses and interactions is on a different level from my doctor's. Her focus is in diagnosis. So the two work together in concert very well.", "I have to say that my pharmacist is a great guy.\n\nI get multiple scripts.  Some are mail order through the Caremark, which CVS pharmacy is a part of.  Carmark CONSTANTLY fucks up my orders.  It becomes a big deal when I ordered my daughter's insulin 2 weeks ago and we are down to the last of it, and the mail order assholes still say it will be another 2 days.  Sure I can get it at the CVS directly but it will cost $250 for one vial.\n\nThis is when Dave, the pharmacist of the year, takes over.  He called Carmark, chewed them out, got them to cover the cost of the temp vial due to it being their screw up, and there was no charge.\n\nCaremark has fucked up about 90% of any mail order scripts I have ordered.  I have gone weeks without my blood pressure meds due to their screw ups.  It is one thing to deal with high blood pressure, but quite another when your young kid is T1 diabetic.\n\nThanks Dave!  You are awesome and make my life easier.", "Canadian retail pharmacist here:  \n- My main job is to \"check\" prescriptions that come my way to make sure they're accurate. My assistant 99 times out of a 100 is the one who types the prescription and counts the actual pills. Common physical things I catch are wrong doses (2.5 mg instead of 25mg), wrong drugs (doxycycline-an antibiotic to be avoided in pregnancy vs doxylamine a morning sickness pill) and illegal prescriptions (narcotic forgeries). Some trained technicians can perform this step but IMO the above are easier to spot with pharmacist training.   \n- Check prescriptions for \"drug related problems\" such as interactions. In my experience, pharmacists tend to be overly cautious people. So yes, we will run certain drug combos through our computer, or glance at the patient hand-out to \"double check\" ourselves-this is a good thing. Sometimes I need to remind myself of a drug I haven't seen in a long time! Once we get the information we can interpret its severity quickly, which a lay person could not. As others have pointed out, there are tons of interactions that get \"flagged\" and a pharmacist is able to determine which is important based on the individual patient. For example, I have prevented very serious problems by contacting doctors over a dangerously high dose of antibiotics in a child, or a drug interaction that was only meaningful because it was for a frail elderly lady. This is a pharmacist's job-doctors are trained for diagnosis, not drug interactions.  \n- I help people understand their medications. For example, the man who just had a heart attack and is leaving the hospital overwhelmed with a pile of meds. Without me they usually will stop taking one or two (or go back to smoking, or try a over-the-counter snake oil instead) and be at risk for a second heart attack. I sit down with them, and based on their personal needs talk about the risks vs benefits of the meds. Then I call them in a few days and follow up, making sure they've made an appointment with their family doctor. Or, I do a medication reconciliation with an elderly woman who has too many medications with side effects, and work with her doctor to see if some can be stopped.  \n- I answer people's questions 24 hours a day with more accuracy and clarity than google. (We are open extended hours) For example- its 2 AM and someone comes in with a sick child: what medication do they use? Should they go to the ER? This saves the healthcare system (or you, if you're American) money.  \n- I give flu shots which saves the government money as they pay us less than doctors, and the patient time. I also give other vaccinations, such as hepatitis B, so if you're going to Mexico you can be protected without the need for extra doctor visits.  \n- I prescribe certain medications for minor conditions, again saving the healthcare system money and the patient time.  \n- I can change some prescriptions with the patient's ok, for example if a product isn't available or something is missing from the prescription.  \n- I specialty make a lot of drugs, for example certain seizure medication for children isn't sold in liquid form- I will make this for you at 3AM when you realize you are completely out of doses for your kid.  \n- I dispense and monitor methadone, helping former addicts come off narcotics and re-integrate back in society (in partnership with their awesome nurses.)  \n- I deal with insurance agencies to try to get medications covered, sometimes contacting your doctor to see if an alternate drug would be acceptable.  \n- I consult on the phone with doctors, nurses, homecare workers etc deciding what course of action would be in the best interest of the patient.  \n- I use math calculations to be able to figure out the correct dose of things like Tylenol for infants too small to be listed on the box, again at 2 AM. Or help someone self-adjust their insulin.  \n- I get annoyed when someone is yelling at me from across the counter wondering why their order isn't done yet, asking what the heck I do all day. ;)  \nTL;DR: Pharmacist's are drug therapy experts who can help you take charge of your health and decide if a certain medication is right for you. Like any profession there are a few dumb/lazy ones out there- but most of us work our butts off to keep you safe!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3yasuv", "title": "what (who?) exactly defines a reliable news source?", "selftext": "Is it based on popularity/viewership, type and/or expanse of delivery, age, political leaning, perceivable lack of bias, ...who/what financially backs the outlet, ...?\n\nI see so much banter back and forth about it on reddit and I have never completely understood it myself. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yasuv/eli5_what_who_exactly_defines_a_reliable_news/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cybwalh", "cybwku4", "cybwtbj", "cybxj9k", "cybzpe6", "cyck15i", "cyclmm1"], "score": [2, 15, 9, 4, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["Personally I believe a reliable news source tells you the information with as little conjecture as possible. However reliability is based on a person's view of the product as it meets their own set of criterion so it's impossible to definitively call a piece of media reliable or not. \n\nTL;DR: It's impossible to label media as reliable for everyone. ", "For my own sake I try to browse news sources from all over the world. This tends to cut down on specific left/right narratives for a specific region and allows you to extract just the relevant facts of the story. Some discretion and intelligence is needed", "Reliability is used as a way to describe a news source's reputation. Before the internet, the only way to have people listen to your news over others was to have the reputation for the most accurate and truthful information. So organizations would all try to be as reliable as possible.\n\nNow that has fallen off for mainstream news organizations, for they only want page views, but many organizations still operate they same way. This incompasses many non-profit organizations, like Human Rights Watch. If they said whatever they wanted, people wouldn't listen to them because they could not be trusted to be right, so they invest a lot of time checking their sources and such so that when they say X many civilians were killed in Syria in 2015 people trust that number.", "A reliable news source has nothing to do with your opinion of the news itself. What makes the source reliable is that they provide as many concrete details as possible to their news and back these details up with sources themselves. For example:\n\nBad source: Everyone at the mall was going insane yesterday when Santa refused to take pictures with a black child. This shows that there is a serious problem with racist Santas in this town. \n\nGood source: The Santa line was put on hold at the mall yesterday when Santa had to take an impromptu break yesterday. When interviewed, St nick told (reddit news) that he was developing a cough and didn't feel up to working around children. The mall security was worried about upset parents so they set up a quick process of getting them out of line and away from Santa. *including picture of security guards doing this or what not*. ", "In a sense, no news is reliable, since it is \"spoken\" ie. choice of words. But, in order to ensure reliability, multiple news sources on one topic and prior knowledge to cross reference is needed.\n\nSome news sources may have several unbiased news but may ALSO contain biased news at the same time ie. topics that relate to that news  sources' country", "Good news reads like Wikipedia.  It links to original sources, shows where their poll data or statistics comes from, and talks about what both sides of an issue are arguing.\n\nAlmost no news is like that though.  Different companies focus on and ignore different stories and view points.  Getting the full story takes piecing together information from a wide range of sources.", "Reliable would basically be that their reporting is ethical, researched, and corroborated. It is separate from bias, which many people in this thread seem to be mixing the two. You can be reliable, and biased. Examples would be: telling only one side of a story, omission of all the facts (lying by omission), or on a more meta level by not reporting on some controversial issues, but focusing on the other side (which is what is referred to as media bias)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1j3p9a", "title": "I'm a pretty standard Southern Vietnamese citizen in 1975. How much trouble am I in when the North win the war?", "selftext": "I realised recently that while I know a lot about the Vietnam War, I know precious little about it's aftermath. So in short, what could I expect after defeat as an average Southern Vietnamese citizen? I know there were re-education camps and many left the country but how brutal/wide-ranging was the repression when the North finally won?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j3p9a/im_a_pretty_standard_southern_vietnamese_citizen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbaxe7b", "cbb8qh1"], "score": [67, 4], "text": ["The average South Vietnamese citizen during this period was a peasant living on the South Vietnamese countryside. In the history of Vietnam, the peasant as an individual had a very complex relationship to the government which can perhaps be neatly summed up as *indifferent*. Traditionally, the South Vietnamese peasant would only have contact with the government when the tax collector came along or when it was time to send the age appropriate men for the traditional draft. However, most of the time, everything outside of the immediate hamlet or village was seen as foreign, and it was not uncommon to be suspicious of individuals from other villages. \n\nWhen people think of the fall of South Vietnam, they see images of the chaotic evacuation from the port cities and the frenzied evacuation from the American embassy in Saigon. However, this is not representative of the majority of South Vietnamese who lived in the countryside. I feel like it's appropriate at this time to examine the reasons as to why some South Vietnamese civilians chose to leave their homes and join the large lines of refugees trying to find safety. \n\nThe number one reason for which many chose to flee was for the simple fear of reprisals. Many had cooperated with the South Vietnamese government, and it was these people who feared the coming onslaught the most. There was a strong belief that they would all be killed, and considering the large amount of individuals with direct ties to the government payroll (2.5 million people out of an entire population of 19 million), that fear was widespread. Most families had at least one family member with a direct tie to the government in some way. Much of this fear of North Vietnamese reprisal came from atrocities committed in Hue 1968 during the T\u00e9t offensive where several hundreds of individuals with ties to the South Vietnamese government were executed. The second major reason was one that is very common for all wartime refugees: To escape the fighting. The possibility of getting killed was definitely very present for those who got stuck in the middle of the battles between the North and South and most chose to abandon their homes when they began to see how everyone else were fleeing the oncoming storm.\n\nAll in all, we can see that the refugee population was not at all in accordance with the general South Vietnamese population. Far more Catholics and merchants became refugees than farmers, and those living in urban environments had a far better opportunity to flee than those living more inland (which were the places who fell first to the North Vietnamese). Another very interesting note is that there was a very large amount of North Vietnamese amongst the refugees. These had been families and individuals who had fled from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, only to have to flee once more when the North Vietnamese Army were behind their backs. These were amongst those who feared the North Vietnamese the most.\n\nSo, what happened with the people who were unable to flee, were captured or ended up in refugee camps within the borders of South Vietnam in 1975?\n\nThis came as a surprise to anyone involved, but the newly unified Vietnamese government chose to focus on re-education rather than executions. However, this is not to say that executions or revenge killings didn't actually happen. It was not part of the official North Vietnamese policy, however, and there are no proper numbers for the amount of men executed. Those that were, however, were soldiers or police. Most chose to fight until the end or to commit suicide in these cases. All former personnel belonging to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN - South Vietnamese Army) had to attend these re-education camps in which they would be politically indoctrinated and \"cleansed\" from any imperialistic tendencies. This also applied to members belonging to the former South Vietnamese government, political organizations as well as those deemed to be \"corrupted\" under the former regime: doctors, lawyers and other professionals. The ordinary citizens had it far easier and had for the most part only deal with political courses in which they, in most cases, only had to send one member of their family to attend to get past it. If you belonged to the more decadent elements in society, you would be sent to a camp though.\n\nThese camps were of varied conditions. Some of them were straight forward re-education camps, but some were labour camps which resembled the Soviet Gulags. Hard labour was most definitely on the schedule and some men, in particular from the armed forces, were not released until 1987. \n\nSo to answer your original question: If you were a South Vietnamese prostitute, you'd be out of luck. Otherwise, you'd be alright.\n\nSources:\n\n *South Vietnam in 1975: The Year of Communist Victory* by John C. Donnell, *Asian Survey*, Vol. 16, No. 1, A Survey of Asia in 1975: Part I (Jan., 1976), pp. 1-13.\n\n*The \"Boat People\": Are They Refugees?* by B. Martin Tsamenyi, *Human Rights Quarterly*, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1983), pp. 348-373.\n\n*Why They Fled: Refugee Movement during the Spring 1975 Communist Offensive in South Vietnam* by Le-Thi-Que, A. Terry Rambo and Gary D. Murfin, *Asian Survey*, Vol. 16, No. 9 (Sep., 1976), pp. 855-863.\n\n*Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75* by George J. Veith. Encounter Books, 2012.\n\n*ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army* by Robert K. Brigham. University Press Of Kansas, 2006.", "I would love to post; unfortunately all I have is anecdotal evidence from my father's family who were upper class South Viets living in Saigon who escaped after the war.\n\nIf the moderators allow it, I could ask my dad any questions you'd like to know about what happened and what they did!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3gmrby", "title": "how can espn copy and paste a reddit ama and profit off it by calling it an article while i'd get in trouble for doing the same thing for a school paper?", "selftext": "Some espn writer just picked the top questions from the\nRonda Rousey AMA to make a low quality article. \n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gmrby/eli5_how_can_espn_copy_and_paste_a_reddit_ama_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctziktj", "ctzimbn", "ctzrxv3", "ctzsph2", "ctzuasx", "ctzzw4m"], "score": [175, 98, 2, 12, 3, 16], "text": ["The author clearly cites it as a Reddit thread.  In a scholastic paper,  you would be expected to have a bit more original content,  but you wouldn't 'get in trouble' ", "ESPN is a journalistic organization. Reddit is a forum open to the public. An AMA is a conversation between a famous person and a group of people. ESPN may repeat what is said in an AMA because it is said in a publicly-open place; the words are not private or copyrighted, so they may be repeated freely. \n\nYou can't do the same thing for a school paper because your instructor doesn't want you to. ESPN only answers to the law and its readership, neither of which have a problem with poaching answers from an AMA.  ", "Wow they didn't even take the good questions, like the ones about Pok\u00e9mon and WoW and Dragonball.", "People are using content from other websites? That's unheard of on Reddit!", "Because the rules for publishing an article and writing a school paper are different. Your teacher likely set explicit or implicit rules that you yourself be the author of your essay. The author wasn't under the same restrictions.", "As a student you are held to a higher standard of integrity than a journalist working for a newspaper."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://espn.go.com/espnw/athletes-life/the-buzz/article/13413690/ronda-rousey-ama&amp;ex_cid=SportsnationFB"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5u0dlu", "title": "if sperm donation is anonymous, how do they make sure some guy is not sleeping with his daughter 18 years later by a true mistake?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u0dlu/eli5if_sperm_donation_is_anonymous_how_do_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddqbyi6", "ddqc353", "ddqc4mo", "ddqdb90", "ddqdozh", "ddqi371", "ddqjfbi", "ddqp9g5", "ddqpwre", "ddqrh2b", "ddqxk31", "ddqyw63", "ddr1ier", "ddr3st6", "ddr3xij", "ddr5n0f", "ddr6exl"], "score": [116, 8, 67, 2, 349, 17, 100, 19, 2, 28, 8, 6, 3, 3, 2, 2, 56], "text": ["Iam not exactly sure how it works but I think they do take your name and such. To make sure that doesn't happen They also screen for STDs. What do I know there could be shit loads of inbred kids with STDs running around", "It's quite an ethical issue pertaining to sperm donation. Thankfully men don't normally sleep around with women half their age, at least where I'm from that is.", "I'm a little bit confused. Are you asking if a guy donates sperm anonymously how can he be sure he does not accidentally sleep with his daughter 18 years later? Well the answer is he can't unless he forces every girl he sleeps with to take a DNA test.\n\nBut the chances of that happening are extremely low.", "Short answer is they dont. There was a couple of cases of a doctor implanting women with his own sperm and a city having something like 300 of his kids out there. I'll try and find the link, but if it is an  anonymous donation there is no real way to inform the kids of the moms who accepted this donations. ", "As far as I know, there isn't any mechanism to prevent this, but with how ridiculously unlikely it is to happen (and then even more unlikely you'd ever find out even if it did happen) I don't think it's something to be worth worrying about. \n\nSure it's creepy to think about but even in the extreme off chance this couple then actually settled down and had kids completely unaware of their relation, I don't think notable genetic issues arise after just one generation.\n\nThe sheer unlikeliness of any issue ever arising like this makes it not worth the effort trying to prevent imo. Maybe just don't sleep with people half your age who kinda look like you", "Short version - they don't.  I was conceived through this process, and that's a thought I considered off and on from the time I was old enough to figure out that boys didn't have cooties.  I was more concerned with a half brother than the father, but same idea.  There is no way to know, short of getting yourself and your partner DNA tested.  The odds of it happening are ridiculously low though. ", "This \"problem\" is not unique to sperm donation, fathers sometimes abandon their families/children (even before the child is born) and the child/father's identity would be unknown to the other. There's also anonymous sex, multiple partners, and other situations where the identity of the father is unknown or unrecorded.\n\nSo besides the small chance of this really being a problem, sperm donation doesn't necessarily create a large number of these situations compared to those that occur \"naturally\"", "One of the biggest issues with incest is the social relatedness, not the biological. Fathers usually have a position of power over their children, so if they have sex with their daughters it's very likely that this power is abused. In your case they don't know that they are related, so there's no power to abuse.\n\nIncest may lead to genetic defects, but it's not that big of a problem if it doesn't\u200b happen at a regular basis. (Just consider the odds that someone is accidentally sleeping with his daughter. There are other reasons for genetic defect which are much more likely to happen.)\n\nInbreeding is a problem in some aristocratic families, yes, but they married their relatives at a regular basis, not just once.\n\nEdit: Some countries, mine (Austria) included, don't allow anonymous donors. Every donor is recorded and when the child reaches a certain age, they have the right to ask for the identity of their biological father. It's not to prevent incest, though. Some governments just believe that everyone has the right to know who their biological ancestors are. (I don't share this belief.)", "It's probably about the same odds of accidentally hooking up with a 2nd cousin in your home town. ", "The odds are low, but possible.\n\nThe real issue would be the donors kids having sex with each other, especially because there is a known tendency for siblings raised apart to be attracted sexually to each other.  Its being raised together that makes people far less likely to want to have sex with family.  \n\n", "On a somewhat related topic, there's an app and registry in Iceland to help you avoid accidentally sleeping with your cousin/random relatives given the small and interrelated population.", "I mean, I'm a child of a sperm donor, and we get information packets about the donor. Hair, eye and skin color, build, age, generally where they're from, etc. I know my donor's info by heart and I'd never hook up with anyone who could match that. I'd definitely ask some background info about them if I thought they might possibly be my donor. Same with half siblings, I would always ask them where their dad was from. ", "It's now law in the UK that children have the right to track down their biological parents. ", "Or what if someones daughter has to use sperm from a sperm bank and it ends up being her fathers :O", "Statistically speaking, this is a more likely scenario: donor (dad) is involved in a accident and is unable to use his arms...they totally aren't broken though, it's some other type of injury. His home care nurse takes pity on him and helps him get some \"relief\". That nurse turns out to be his daughter.", "I don't think there's any safeguards in place to prevent this from happening.  But, like other posters have pointed out, the chances of this happening are astronomically low.  But long lost siblings have accidentally ended up in relationships, so maybe the powers that be should put something in place.\n\nBut (playing devil's advocate) let's say they tell the child \"Here's your dad's real name- first and last.  Don't ever sleep with him.\"  What if she goes to the club and her real daddy only gives his first name?  Or a nickname?  What then??? \ud83d\ude33", "I'm sure this will get buried since I'm a little late, BUT\nAs a child conceived from sperm donation, you don't! There is a valid chance you will sleep with someone related to you. Due to the age of my donor, I'm much more worried about sleeping with a half sibling. I usually sit down with people I'm seeing and ask if there's any chance they were conceived from/a parent donated to a sperm bank.\n\nWorst part is that there's always a chance *they* don't know. Sperm donation is a bit of a taboo subject still, so some parents never mention it.\n\nI appreciate that my parents wanted children so badly, but it's still an ethical grey area for me. I enjoy being alive, but don't enjoy not knowing my father, not knowing half of my medical history, and wondering how many half siblings/cousins/relatives I have out there. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "13d4cu", "title": "When visiting a comatose friend in ICU, we were told we should talk to her because \"she can still hear you\". Is there any science to back this up, or is it mostly for the healing and comfort of the loved ones?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/13d4cu/when_visiting_a_comatose_friend_in_icu_we_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c72vt4r", "c72wqrh", "c72xr2g"], "score": [5, 7, 8], "text": ["It depends on which regions of the brain are damaged. There's a whole spectrum of awareness, yet it's often difficult to determine how aware someone may be. In the case of [total locked-in syndrome](_URL_0_) a person can be conscious yet be unable to move or communicate in any way. While improving technology allows doctors to detect more of these cases, they still appear to be very rare. ", "This question reminded me of an article my friend linked a few days ago.  Looks like at least some people in comas/vegetative states may be more awake than we thought. _URL_0_", "ICU specialist here. I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Your comment about this being said mostly for the comfort of the family is fairly close to the truth, but I am a bit surprised at the definitive nature of what you were told - you \"should\" talk to here because she \"can\" hear you. In my practice I tell relatives that its can't hurt to talk to their loved one (some people are worried they might make things worse by speaking to or touching the patient) and that we don't know if they can hear you or not. I remind my juniors to always assume the patient can hear what you are saying when speaking around the bedside as this is an important issue relating to patient dignity.\n\nCan they actually hear and understand what is being said? As other comments have suggested its impossible to be sure at the time. A patient rendered unconscious from a intracerebral haemorrhage that eventually leads to their death is highly unlikely to be able to comprehend speech. Patients who recover from ICU often recall very little of their time there,and are frequently delusional during their admission. In the end, its always best to assume they can, even if we strongly suspect they can't.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome"], ["http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1287098--vegetative-ontario-man-scott-routley-talks-to-researchers-through-brain-scans"], []]}
{"q_id": "1dvkc7", "title": "do animals know they're going to die?", "selftext": "Do animals understand what death is? I know they instinctively avoid danger, but do they know why they do it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dvkc7/eli5_do_animals_know_theyre_going_to_die/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9u96fb", "c9u99tj", "c9u9arn"], "score": [5, 12, 9], "text": ["Well, considering that human beings are animals, and we understand what death is, I think it would be safe to assume that sufficiently intelligent animals understand what death is.\n\nIt is easy to imagine that dolphins, monkeys, apes, and other intelligent animals understand that death means the end of an individual's existence. ", "Animals, at least higher functioning mammals, have some sort of concept of death, though I don't know how much it differs from what you or I understand death to be.  Elderly pack animals (wolves, for example) will voluntarily leave the pack, stop eating, and find a quiet place to die, for example.  Elephants that come across the bones of another elephant will stop and \"feel\" skulls with their trunks and even cover remains with brush.  ", "I think they do because about 2 years ago, my dog suddenly just jumped out of my bed and went over to the living room. After some struggling, he died. I think he knew he was going and he didn't want to die where me and him went to sleep. Gosh, I miss him."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28nv5c", "title": "why don't opponents of illegal immigration go after the employers who hire illegal immigrants?", "selftext": "What would be the political/social/economic implications of forcing employers to hire legal workers?  Isn't the basic tenet of economics supply and demand?  If you reduce the supply of jobs the illegal immigrants can obtain, fewer will try to come settle here, no? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28nv5c/eli5_why_dont_opponents_of_illegal_immigration_go/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cicpfkh", "cicpice", "cicpo2n", "cicpxjp", "cicq59o", "cicqiyi", "cicqtdn", "cicqujh", "cicrcqk", "cicrf9n", "cicukoi", "cicx7th", "cicxhg8", "cicxqoj", "cicyf8i", "ciczb5i", "ciczhh8", "cid0bd2", "cid1bv8", "cid1y45", "cid3ed8", "cid3jp5", "cid4x97", "cid58ej", "cid78xw", "cid8ucr", "cid9qgi"], "score": [36, 3, 5, 21, 2, 64, 13, 51, 10, 291, 5, 4, 3, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Because they don't care about poor or unemployed people, they care that their food and consumer goods are cheap to buy, which they are because they're produced by such workers.", "People who oppose illegal immigration don't want a bunch of people to come into the US and have the government take care of them.\n\nThem getting a job and supporting themselves is what people want.", "I am against illegal immigration and I won't explain this from everyone else's point of view, because I don't know why other people are against it.\n\nI am 100% pro-immigration. Totally for it, and I don't think it's any of the governments damn business who comes into the country. I think a man or woman should be allowed to walk across the border, fill out 50 applications, get a job, and live here to their hearts content. \n\nWhat I am against is a non-tax-paying-person getting state, or federal money for any reason at all, ever. I am a citizen of the United States, and I have a good portion of my hard earned money taken away from me by force every month, then once a year, I am required to \"voluntarily\" give them even more of my income based on my lifestyle. \n\nSorry, tangent. Back to the point. If a person wants to come live, and work here and remain a non-citizen, I think that's great. What I don't think they should get to do is live here, pay no taxes, and get all the benefits of being a registered citizen. \n\nTl/dr: Replace income tax with 5% across the board sales tax, and open borders. ", "I live around many farms in South Florida. I drive by them and see a bunch of people hunched over in 90 degree weather picking fruit (tomatoes usually).\n\nAre all those people US citizens? Of course not. So they are paid cash, and do not collect social security, pay income tax, etc.\n\nNow imagine the farmer has to hire only citizens to do the same job. Now those employees cost at least twice as much, and so will the tomatoes they pick. When you go to market and tomatoes are expensive, you stop buying. The market stops purchasing from that supplier, and he's out of business.\n\nIt's like you said: supply and demand. There is always high demand for cheap labor, and supply is limited. The only source of it is undocumented workers. It's the price some businesses pay to stay in business.\n\nMind you, there are some studies showing that immigrant labor does not, in fact, take \"jobs from Americans\". The main point of immigration is cultural. People fear what it's different. They don't want to go into a store and see weird products being sold to cater to an immigrant population. They don't want to see signs in languages they don't understand. They don't want to see people that look different from themselves. It's human nature, and every large immigration wave has been like that (Italians, Irish, Chinese, and now Latinos).", "Because the only reason people care about it is because it serves as a useful political narrative to drive a wedge between two groups of people (poors and immigrants) who would otherwise band together to provide more challenge to the people in power.\n\nIt's a classic divide and conquer strategy that has been used for centuries.", "They do, here in Arizona a local car wash chain (a very big one at that) was temporarily shut down for hiring mostly illegal immigrants (and paying them very low wages). Businesses that hire illegals in this state (I can't vouch for the country) receive warnings and fines for the hiring of illegals and if they continually do so, they can risk losing their business licences.  ", "Hang on, its not illegal? \n\nAs a brit who would like to move to the USA, I've looked into the laws a bit. And its very illegal to go over and work without one of the visas that allow it (which are bloody hard to get BTW). But its not illegal to hire someone who can't legally work? Surely they'd be guilty of assisting or enabling a criminal act?", "They don't want to admit our country's dependence on illegal immigration. Entire areas have been devastated when borders were closed (e.g., _URL_0_). Plenty of research has found that most undocumented immigrants pay into the system as much or more as they get out (especially given that undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most services and there is a five-year waiting period for legal immigrants. \n\nTL; DR: They don't want to \"restrict\" \"innocent\" employers, don't want to pay $10+ for a pint of blueberries, and they want someone to blame for the less than ideal economy. Irish and Italian Catholics used to be blamed, and today it's Mexicans. ", "The party that is more anti-immigration is also more pro-business. Small business owners trend Republican. So essentially, they would be going after their own voters and campaign contributors.\n\nAlso, keep in mind that labor law is definitely not in worker's favor these days. So if you know your company hires illegal labor and you report them, it's hard to protect yourself from being fired and given poor references. In some industries, it's not like you can find other local companies that aren't doing the same thing.\n\nWhile you technically do have protection, you have to eat while suing your former employer. This makes reporting less likely. Then contending with lawyers and the like makes it expensive and time-consuming.\n\nMuch easier to deport the immigrant (who probably has no lawyer).", "Because the rich actually love having a permanent underclass of workers without rights, and have always played on the ignorance and racism of the white working class in order to direct the blame at those beneath them, rather than those at the top.", "This has been my argument for years.  Illegal immigration is basically an unholy alliance between American business and the illegals.  If businesses  operated above board and didn't hire them illegal immigrants would largely \"self-deport\".  You can't live on air.  The whole issue of of illegal immigration is a manufactured one and EVERYONE'S hands are dirty.  Gutless conservative politicians won't enforce the border laws because they don't dare shut off the supply of cheap labor that their business supporters rely on.  On the other side, gutless liberal politicians won't enforce the laws because it's basically a giant voter registration drive for them. Change the demographics of the country and ensure democrats win for decades. Need an example?  See California.", "The answer is simple: Illegal immigration, whatever the merits of the various positions might could take, effectively functions are a vote driver and party ID builder for the Republican Party. It allows Rush Limbaugh and company to drive up the rage of middle age white men against \"the liberals.\" If effective measures were taken to curb illegal immigration, then the party would lose this cudgel and many of the party's biggest financial backers would lose a source of cheap labor. Hence, as far as the GOP is concerned, the status quo is a good one: Illegal immigrants serve both the political needs of the party and the financial needs of the people who effectively control the party.\n\nAnd I do not mean to say that there is some master plan to make it work this way. Things have a way of working out to create these kinds of balances (though I imagine there are plenty of cynical political types who recognize it for what it is).", "Can't believe no one has mentioned this, but they have: _URL_0_.\n\n > The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), Pub.L. 99\u2013603, 100 Stat. 3445, enacted November 6, 1986, also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law. The act[1]:\n\n > * required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status;\n* **made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants;**\n* egalized certain seasonal agricultural illegal immigrants, and;\n* legalized illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously with the penalty of a fine, back taxes due, and admission of guilt; \n*c andidates were required to prove that they were not guilty of crimes, that they were in the country before January 1, 1982, and that they possessed minimal knowledge about U.S. history, government, and the English language.", "Because they like cheap stuff and service.", "This, being 94 comments down will probably receive little attention. \n\nThe problem (and reason for so many to oppose illegal immigration) isn't a shortage of jobs, but the problem of welfare.\n\nDr. Friedman will be able to explain his points better than I will ever be able too, and for those interested in hearing his wisdom please watch the following links: \n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_ ", "I'm probably one of the more conservative people on Reddit - I'd be 100% fine with severely punishing Illegal Immigration by punishing the employers, including jail time.\n\nI'd be fine with broadly opening up Legal Immigration, but I have absolutely zero tolerance for Illegal Immigration.", "So we're telling illegals to not come into this country, but if they do come, well hire them immediately.  Mmmmhhhhh", "Employers aren't tasked with securing our borders.", "They do. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County Arizona (where Phoenix is located) is famous for going after employers of illegal immigrants. ", "I work on a huge farm, most employees are Mexican. During harvest we hire a bunch of new guys. Every person we hire has paperwork. We can't say \"I don't think your paper work is legal\" with out getting in trouble for discrimination. We also get in trouble if ICE comes out and says these guys shouldn't be here. It's lose lose for us. \n\nEdit: Also we pay a dollar over minimum wage, anyone that comes out here and is obviously american quit after a day. ", "You don't fight the rich, you sway the poor", "It's up to law enforcement.", "I worked for a company that hired illegals.  I learned a lot about mexico/mexicans there.  Great group of guys really.  Do not fault them one bit for coming to America to find work.\n\nNearly all of them had plans of returning to Mexico.  I called it the mexican 401k.  They worked state side for many years.  Sending money home to eventually retire back to their families who have been running stores or farms with their funding.\n\n\nSome F'ed up...  Went home and bought big trucks, drank all day, had a bunch of women until their money ran out.  Then they come back and do it again.  The smart/lucky ones went home to live decent lives being the boss of a nice sized farm.\n\n\nThey often took vacations back home for extended time.  I was told by them that the whole dangerous boarder crossing thing with coyotes and what have you were for dirt poor mexican crossing for the first time.  Once you had some money you flew over the boarder for cash.  It was no more dangerous or difficult than legals flying to mexico.\n\nI had the privilege of doing the payroll for a group of them for a few months.  Dont want to give too much detail away but this group were paid piece work. It wasnt slave labor wages but the piece work was well under the standard.  The company was saving money for sure but...  They were so damn fast and efficient some of the guys were pulling paychecks that would put them at 60k- 70k per year.  It wast 100% steady but the most of them were floating at around 40-50k per year.  More than your average office worker at the company.\n\nDid I mention they would buy/lease/rent a large nice house with 7-8 bedrooms and bunk 2-3 per room all chipping in to live cheap.  The wives made all the food each day for lunch.  They all sat and eat the food the wives prepared each day together.  It was really awesome actually.  Food was great.  Except for Fridays...  Fridays the wives didnt have to cook because friday was drinking day after work.  They would order fast food / take out that day.\n\nThey all had fake docs.  Fake SS#, Fake DL, and such.  You buy these on the street.  One of the supervisors was the point of contact and would send new hires off to get docs if they didnt have.  They used these docs when they got hired.  They even passed the government screening, forget what it is called now.  When the forged docs didnt and a red flag came back, the guy was sent away to get new docs and just filled out new paperwork as another person. Rescreen and hired.\n\n\nAs much as I liked these guys it was wrong.  Not wrong of them for abusing this system.  Good on them.  Wrong for the company to knowingly allow this.  To turn a blind eye to it.  To keep it at a legal distance so they had deny ability while gaming the system. I must say I was and still am openly jealous that while they have no employee matched 401k... they basically had a 401k were for each dollar they put away they got 10 added to it.\n\nI really hit home when one day the police came on site. They were looking for one of the employees.  He was a driver. See one guy always drove the others.  The guy with the good docs or DL.   If they got pulled over for speeding they would give false information, get a ticket, and never show up for court.  Who cares when its not REALLY you. Who needs insurance?  So back to the police.  That day in the morning while driving to work the mexicans pancaked a car with a mom and some kids in it.  Killed the mom from what I heard.  The mexicans all took off.  Hit and run.  Cops wanted the driver.  Nobody knew a thing.  The word was the guy went back to mexico.  I heard from one of the supervision that he just got new paperwork and went west to work on a farm to avoid the heat.\n\nI cant help to  think that lady would be alive and thoes kids would still have a mom if the company I worked for didnt hire illegals.  All the hit and runs that happen from these illegals on the road with no insurance and fake docs would not happen if the companies did not game the system.  The gov, the state... they do not care.  There is almost zero enforcement.  ", "I this question for real?  There is law after law prohibiting US companies from hiring illegal immigrants.  This really is ELI5.", "_URL_3_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThe first is a law that was enacted with the second. Opponents of Illegal Immigration (read: Republicans) did in fact right legislation to stop the hiring of illegal workers.\n\nHere's some examples of people actually going and raiding businesses, first a famous one:\n\n_URL_4_\n\nand a recent one:\n\n_URL_2_\n\nHere's an NY Times article talking about the change from the practice of these kinds of raids under Bush, to audits under Obama.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo, ELI5: Your premise is false, opponents of illegal immigration DO go after the employers who hire illegal immigrants, and the also try to prevent those hirings in the first place.\n\nAssuming your premise is correct: There are 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. Assuming they have a similar set of employable ages and unemployment as legal residents (a big assumption, granted) then there are arguable six and a half million or more illegal aliens employed in the county, or about 5% of employed persons.\n\nSo 1 in 20 is a lot of people, but how do you find them? Can you imagine the amount of investigation required? You can't just go around checking business because they hire a lot of people with accents. Even with farms, how do you know?\n\nI grew up in a farming area, and since moved to LA. I took a girlfriend to my home town and she asked:\n\nWhy don't the Hispanics here have accents?\n\nThe answer of course is, as opposed to her experiences in Arizona and LA where there is a large immigrant population, there are accents. In the central valley where people have lived there for generations and are citizens, they don't have accents. Arguably, it could be said that the largest centers of illegal immigrants then, are in major metropolitan areas where it is easy for them to fit in, rather than small rural towns where everybody knows your grandfather.\n\nMajor Metro Areas are skewed towards political views that tolerate illegal immigration, leaving the rural areas with less 'magnet businesses' so that, while they are against illegal immigration, they may not have anything news worthy in their jurisdiction to go after.\n\nTL:DR ELI5: Texas and California have similar % numbers for Illegal Aliens in residence, California (which banned E-verify and has Sanctuary Cities, predominately pro-illegal alien.) has 7% more illegals employed than Texas, who less than five months ago went after the businesses and arrested the owners. ", "This guy is apparently going to jail for hiring restaurant workers...\n_URL_0_", "They do. It's called E-verify.  \nMy dad is a small business owner and he hates that shit. He argues that he shouldn't have to do the government's job by screening for illegal aliens. That costs time and money. Furthermore, he can be severely fined or have his license revoked for hiring illegals, even if it's done by mistake."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&amp;t=1&amp;islist=false&amp;id=176911169&amp;m=176954620"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfU9Fqah-f4", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eyJIbSgdSE"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/us/10enforce.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996", "http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Chinatown-raid-targets-exploitation-of-illegal-5188938.php#photo-5801201", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Verify", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_raids"], ["http://www.centralmaine.com/2013/03/18/waterville-restaurant-owner-and-his-brother-convicted-of-harboring-undocumented-aliens/"], []]}
{"q_id": "1l6pz5", "title": "Tuesday Trivia | It\u2019s Simply Not Done: Historical Etiquette", "selftext": "[Previous weeks\u2019 Tuesday Trivias](_URL_0_) \n\nWelcome to the AskHistorians Finishing School! Let\u2019s get prim and proper in Tuesday Trivia this week. **Tell us about some interesting examples of what was \u201ccorrect\u201d and \u201cincorrect\u201d behavior through history.** Any time, any place, any social standing. \n\n**Next Week on Tuesday Trivia:** Rags to Riches, Riches to Rags! We\u2019ll be talking about interesting examples of historical people who experienced significant changes in wealth (for better or for worse) during their lifetime. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l6pz5/tuesday_trivia_its_simply_not_done_historical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbw9ds3", "cbwajqn", "cbwaok6", "cbwbw4i", "cbwbzpc", "cbwc261", "cbwc45s", "cbwc5fr", "cbwdmsu", "cbwn0ey", "cbwyzg8"], "score": [106, 78, 45, 39, 18, 26, 52, 17, 32, 7, 7], "text": ["I've been reading James Howards [Shawnee](_URL_0_) this week, which has a section on hunting and trapping etiquette in the 18th Century. \n\nWhile a man is out hunting, he'll take whatever small animals he can find along the way and hang them in a tree out of reach of wolves and bears. If another man came upon them, it was incredibly bad form to take them. Likewise, if a man came upon a animal in another man's trap, it was expected that he'd deal with the animal, hang it in a nearby tree, and reset the trap, so that the original trapper could come and collect the animal later.\n\nIf two men came upon each other while hunting or trapping, they might accompany each other and work together. The first animal taken by either (or the best part of a large animal like a deer) was offered to the other and refusing was unacceptable. This hospitality was offered even to captives. The exception to this rule was if an otter was caught. A hunter or trapper was not obligated to offer the otter, but if he did so, etiquette demanded that the would-be recipient decline the offer. EDIT: Howard does not go into why otters received special treatment, but the high value of otterskin likely played a role.", "According to a biography I read on the Duke of Wellington a few years ago, on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was reviewing the troops in the front of his lines. Wellington just so happened to be reviewing his artillery positions at the same time and could see his opponent through his telescope. An artilleryman apparently suggested that he could shuffle *l'empereur* off this mortal coil with a single well-placed cannonball. Wellington treated that man to the most scornful look he could muster, then declared that \"Commanders of armies have better things to do than fire at each other.\" The line is immortalized in Sergei Bondarchuk's fantastic movie *Waterloo*. ", "My main lady Amy Vanderbilt on how to handle teenagers smoking... cornsilk:\n\n\u201cThe first signs of ersatz smoking should be treated in a relaxed manner and with some words such as these: \u201cI see you\u2019ve been smoking corn silk. It doesn\u2019t taste very good as I recall!\u201d (surprise on the child\u2019s part.) \u201cWhen you feel you must try your first real cigarette, tell me and I\u2019ll let you do it here at the home. No, I wouldn\u2019t like you to smoke regularly yet, for a great many reasons you\u2019re hearing in school. I would like you to wait until you\u2019re 18 or even 21.\u201d\n\nAlso, the very complicated way a businesswoman can pay a dinner check when taking a client out:\n\n\u201cYes you may, saying something such as \u2018This is business\u2014you\u2019re the firm\u2019s guest.\u2019 If the bill is to be paid at the desk, quietly put money to cover it on the check and ask your customer to take care of it. Either leave the tip yourself or ask him to take care of it out of the change. Try to avoid passing any money yourself, for other diners in the restaurant would not necessarily understand the circumstances.\u201d\u2018", "During the sway of Nelson's Navy, dining was a big deal aboard ships. Captains were expected to entertain nightly, and officers were formally invited at least weekly to the Captain's quarters for meals. If ships were traveling together (ships of the line) there were remarkably rigid rules for who ate where/invitations/dress, etc. \n\nThe thing that gets me is that the Captain was in charge of the conversation. If he did not speak to you, you sat in silence. Tremendous pressure to sit in 100+ degree weather, in a room often without windows, a ceiling no more than 5 feet high, wearing a wig, going through course after course (when supplies were in plenty), all while having to obey rigid rules of conversation, eating, and dealing with a myriad of social rules. \n\nAnd all of this was considered mannerly at the time for a gentleman. \n\nThere were times through a meal that everyone would converse with their partner, but the entire experience makes me thankful for sweatpants and a pb & amp;j on my couch. ", "How much of etiquette is involved in enforcing social class structures?  In other words, would the antibellum south have had such a focus on manners if it hadn't had the wide disparity of the destitute slaves and wealthy (but out numbered) plantation owners?", "For me, the incident that skicks out to me about WWI is the dogfight between Udet and Guynemer.  My fascination with arial warfare leads me to commit certain things to memory, but this one sticks out to me for its continuation of the ideals of chivalry in a most unchivalrous war.  \n\n[This video describes the fight](_URL_0_), but the moment for me is Udet realizing that he is doomed.  He is disarmed by a malfunction.  He knows that his enemy knows his situation, and that his opponent is a feared french ace who just killed Udet's friend.  Udet knows he has moments to live...and Guynemer spares him because it would not be fair to kill an unarmed opponent.  It just wasn't done.  \n\nThese rules were unwritten and applied inconsistently.  It was also ungentlemanly to follow a stricken plane down, but this taboo was broken when pilots faked being crippled to get away.  When the conflicts grew from one on one two tens of planes swirling in the sky, the opportunities for etiquette and the motivations to observe it became more scarce.  \n\nMany argue that chivalry in the air died during WWII, but that doesnt account for WWII pilots refraining from strafing an enemy in his parachute.  Of course, this taboo was also broken repeatedly and was applied differently in each theater, and possibly from pilot to pilot.  There are other examples, possibly most famously a [German pilot refusing to destroy a stricken Allied bomber](_URL_1_).  But for as divorced from their opponent as pilots were--confined to their own machine, often mentally approaching combat as a contest between machines and not men--it is remarkable how human they could sometimes choose to act. ", "In the early 1900's it was improper for a man to ask a lady to relinquish her seat.\n\nWhen the RMS Titanic sank in 1912. Carlos Hurd, a writer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and his wife Katherine were on their way to Europe aboard the RMS Carpathia. After the Carpathia picked up the survivors form the Titanic wreck, the Captain tried everything he could to prevent Carlos from interviewing the survivors and writing a story while they headed back to the United States, even confiscating all the stationary on the ship so that he had to write the story on toilet paper. He and his wife interviewed the survivors of the Titanic, but the Captain was determined to maintain a news blackout and he would keep searching the Hurd's cabin to find their material.\n\nEvery time the captain would come search the cabin, Katherine would place the interviews beneath her seat cushion and stay seated until they were finished, thereby preventing the seizure of their interviews.\n\nEdit: 1912 ( I wrote this at work sorry)", "I've been meaning to ask a question on this subreddit lately that seems suitable here. What as the etiquette for duels in 18th-19th century Europe? Duels are made out to be common in popular fiction, but I can't imagine that people were willing to die over every insult. So I would suppose that challenging a person to a duel either was a very big deal or an event with a number of opportunities to back out, if not both.\n\nI've seen an *awful* lot of myths about that - some of them even here on /r/AskHistorians! - so I would appreciate reliable sources.", "Northern Indo-European tribes had a taboo against mentioning the bear's name as it was a jinx on the hunt. The result is that Balto-Slavic and Germanic tribes do not preserve the IE word for a bear (preserved in Latin as *ursus*, Greek *arktos*, etc...). All that survives are the euphemisms they had in its place: English *bear* \"the brown one\", Russian *medved* \"honey-licker\", etc...", "Jewish ritual has *tons* of things that, while they're religious laws, are essentially rules of etiquette for religious communities.  The etiquette surrounding mourning is particularly interesting to me because there are so many of them, and they're still fairly commonly practiced and assumed as etiquette even among relatively integrated Jewish communities.\n\nFor the funeral and such, Jewish ritual places a massive value on treating the dead well, because it's the only time you can do something for another person where you can't think they'll pay you back.  As a consequence, it is customary to have people guarding the body around the clock until the funeral.  At the funeral itself, the body is to be buried by the mourners--burial shouldn't be left to strangers.  Even outside traditional communities, it's still near universal to have mourners at least bury the casket until it is covered, and bury it completely if there a large number of mourners.  Everyone begins their turn burying with the shovel upside-down, using the underside to hold dirt at the beginning.\n\nFor the seven-day mourning period, people are to visit the mourners and bring them food.  Some Jewish communities (ones from Yemen) don't pass food hand-to-hand, reserving that action for mourners, so they're feeding them in a physical way.  Bringing people food is still an assumed default thing for people to do for mourners (there's an amusing anecdote I could tell from last week involving Jews trying to figure out what they're supposed to do for people in mourning besides bring them food), with chicken, brisket, and brownies as the most common foods.  There are anecdotes I have of people *breaking in to mourners houses while they're out of town at the funeral* to leave food in their fridge, which is regarded as uncommon, but certainly not outside the bounds of courtesy towards mourners.  It's actually *more* courteous than bringing them food later, not less.\n\nThe religious rules of actually visiting mourners are again a complex set of etiquette rules.  Visitors visiting mourners are supposed to never speak to the mourner unless spoken to, and never introduce a topic to the mourners (this isn't so universal nowadays, and is practically rather challenging with large numbers of people).  The mourners are supposed to always sit lower than visitors, which is usually done by having mourners sit on a low stool or short chair.  Visitors also are to abstain from practices forbidden of mourners, such as singing or looking in mirrors (which are traditionally covered or taken down in houses of mourning).\n\nAgain, what's so interesting about these is that they're still assumed etiquette even outside traditional communities.  Bringing over food to someone who's just had a family member die is simply an assumed act, as is visiting them, rather than simply dropping food off.  There are, of course, very interesting rules of etiquette surrounding other Jewish rituals, but they're not nearly so formalized, and tend to not be so deeply ingrained in Jewish culture.", "From Desiderius Erasmus' *De civilitate morum puerilium* (*A Handbook on Good Manners for Children*, 1530):\n\n >  It is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating... (qui urinam reddit aut alvum exonerat)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Tuesday+Trivia%22&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=new&amp;t=all"], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=qJY0AAAAMAAJ"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylgMb2km3s", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ugsep", "title": "shouldnt the sun be orbiting something else?", "selftext": "Okay guys, im pretty ignorant as towards astronomy.  If an object with mass, modifies spacetime, and an object with less mass, orbits around it due to gravity, shouldnt the sun orbit something else which orbits something else and so on? is the whole universe orbitting around something? \n\nEdit: Thank you very much everyone, i been educated", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ugsep/eli5_shouldnt_the_sun_be_orbiting_something_else/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5plko4", "d5pllyu", "d5plms0", "d5ploe4", "d5plrns", "d5pm749", "d5ps78f"], "score": [4, 7, 92, 5, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["Our Sun orbiting center of our galaxy known as Milky Way. which in turn probably orbiting something else which we cant see on our human timescale so for us its kind of moving through Universe ", "The sun orbits the centre of the galaxy.  It takes 200 million years or so. I don't remember the exact number. The galaxy is also part of a local group of galaxies which orbit each other. There is also evidence of larger structures in the universe. ", "The sun orbits around the Milky Way center (where there is most likely a supermassive black hole of all the other stuff that fell in). \n\nThe Milky Way orbits around\u2026something. As it stands right now, it's going towards the Great Attractor, which is\u2026something. Big. (It's really unfortunate that the way we are aligned with the Milky Way disk that it blocks our view of that\u2026something.)\n\nThe Great Attractor probably orbits around something else, but it's so far away that we'll never know for sure because it'd take too long to make one orbit. And maybe that orbits around something else. And so on. \n\nThe Universe as a whole cannot orbit anything, because orbiting is moving around something *in space*, so by definition it can't orbit. Unless you subscribe to a multiverse model, but that's mostly unproven. ", "The sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a powerful x ray and gravity source which we believe to be a supermassive black hole.\n\nThe galaxy is also moving, along with the [Local Group](_URL_0_) towards an area of strong gravitation we call the [Great Attractor](_URL_2_)\n\nThe universe is all there is, so to say it orbits something is kind of meaningless from a scientific perspective. There are ideas of multiverses and multiple universes existing on separate [Branes](_URL_1_) but that is all highly speculative. ", "The Sun, along with the other stars in our galaxy, is orbiting the galactic center. \n\nHowever, a less massive object is not guaranteed to orbit a more massive one. For example, you are not orbitng your house. If you are thinking in terms of curved spacetime then:\n\n* Imagine a planet going around a star.\n* If the planet is moving fast enough it will simply  escape the 'well' in spacetime.\n* If the planet is moving too slow, it will eventually fall into the center of the 'well' and crash into the star.\n* If the planet has the right speed, it will keep going around the star in a stable orbit.", "If you want to zoom out and really look at it, basically everything orbits everything else.  For example the moon orbits the earth, but also the earth orbits the moon, its just that the moon is much smaller so its a much smaller orbit.  You can see a drawing i just randomly pulled off a google search here: _URL_0_ . \n\nThe barycenter, the center of mass, between the moon and the earth lies inside the surface of the earth, but not at earth's center.  So there's actually a wobble going on as the earth orbits the moon.  \n\nThis is also true of everything else, because the distances are very large and the masses are pretty large, its generally enough to talk about an object being close enough to dominate, the one object, the planet, the star, that's close enough to make all the other gravitational pulls look insignificant.    Though really the moon is actually not so much dominated by the earth, its orbit around the sun is always concave, basically the moon is always falling toward the sun the earth just sort of slows it at places, never bends it away like a bigger planet might do with their moons.  \n\nAnyway,  basically gravity goes from anything to any other thing, the center of mass of our solar system drifts around as the planets, especially the giant ones like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune move around.  Sometimes its inside the sun, and sometimes its outside the sun, the sun itself can orbit that.  \n\nIn a broader sense, the Milky Way galaxy that we're in has a bunch of other mass distributed throughout it, and may have a giant black hole at its center.  The sun can feel that pull and orbit the center of mass there.  And the Galaxy can feel all the other mass in the universe transmitting gravitational force at the speed of light across vast distances, the sum of immense amounts of mass generating force that dissipates over vast distances.  \n\n\nEssentially an orbit is just a way of talking about the motion under gravity when there's a big heavy thing close enough by to make all the other big heavy things far away seem insignificant.  In reality, everything is orbiting everything else all the time.  Everything is falling towards everything in the most efficient way it can. ", "Our sun, like all the other stars in our galaxy, is orbiting the galactic centre. One 'galactic year' (the time it takes us to complete one orbit of our galaxy centre) is about a quarter million of our standard (solar) years. Our galaxy however is not, to our knowledge, orbiting anything else. Galaxies may interact with each other gravitationally, and some do move in various kinds of orbits. But not all, and as far as we can tell so far not ours.\n\n >  is the whole universe orbitting around something?\n\nAt least in the standard model, this is impossible. \"The universe\" is the sum of all that is, and so it could not rationally be interacting with anything else, since by definition there *is* nothing else.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor"], [], ["http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd456/lancewen/Space%20Stuff/barycenter_zps10942287.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ytuqw", "title": "why did european/asian nations develop faster than the native americans?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ytuqw/eli5_why_did_europeanasian_nations_develop_faster/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6qefiy", "d6qhq51", "d6qi88l", "d6qm6h7", "d6qn29k", "d6qvzeu"], "score": [63, 60, 11, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["Originally almost all animals that could be domesticated lived in Eurasia, like the cow and pig. The Americas only had the llama, which was still hard to domesticate. Because of the possibility of domesticating animals, communities grew larger, because more food was available. This caused more people to be set free from hunting and agriculture. These people could then devote their time to inventions, which lead to this huge development advantage.", "It depends on what you consider advanced.  For example: the aztecs has a sewage system and coupled with the lack of domesticated animals, then this made epidemics unheard of. Their math system was based on 20 and not 10 and only used 3 symbols and therefore were very efficient especially with higher numbers.  Their doctors were separated into specialties.  They had surgeons,  antibiotics,  antifungal medication, sedatives,  anticancer medication which modern research has shown that it worked.  The road system was very advanced and that's what made travel by the Europeans easy.  It's why conquering other nations harder or in some cases never.  By the same token they didn't have the wheel.  The were great gold and silver smiths but didn't use iron even though it was readily available. Their cultures prioritized different values, so they branched off down different technological paths.", "Always thought the second half of [this video](_URL_0_) was a good easy summary of the issue, this video was based on conclusions from a book called \"Gun, Germs and Steel\" which is a book that sets out to answer your very question, some people don't agree with the assumption but I personally think this video gives a solid argument as to the main reason Europe was so ahead.", "Human settlement of the Americas only started less than 20000 years ago and with much smaller population figures than those in Eurasia and Africa.\n\nThe smaller initial population meant nomadic hunter-settler societies in the Americas took longer to adapt agriculture and form civilizations.  And all technological breakthroughs from domestication, agriculture, and metal working have to be independently developed from the old world.\n\nLack of domesticated draft animals are also a factor in slowing development, as these allowed massive agriculture productivity increases instrumental to population growth.", "Agree with other posters with Guns Germs and Steel as the most plausible theory. The title is misleading. It should be \"Horizontal land masses are better\"", "I would say that great strides in progress come from being disadvantaged.  Europe stripped much of their resources, their population grew and became crowed, and there was a lack of human comfort.\n\nWhenever there is a problem, and depending on the severity of the problem, it is human nature to seek out a solution.  When societys are content and their populations are satisfied with their way of doing things, there is no reason to upset the apple cart."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7n2l7t", "title": "how does carbonation aid with an upset stomach?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n2l7t/eli5_how_does_carbonation_aid_with_an_upset/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dryk79l", "drympuy", "drymyw8", "dryn86n", "drynz0n", "dryphgt", "drypor3", "dryqw73", "drysr2b", "drzfw0v"], "score": [82, 63, 4, 4, 210, 9, 2, 6, 14, 3], "text": ["It doesn't. People say flat ginger ale helps with alleviating nausea symptoms. Ginger has been studied to have anti-nausea properties.", "I'm pretty sure the relief people feel from drinking say sprite or ginger ale comes from being able to burp and release excess gas buildup alleviating a little bit of pressure in the persons stomach.", "Wait, so why does the \u201cplop plop fizz fizz\u201d shit work? ", "It works for me too, but I can't find any scientific reason. Maybe I just find soda comforting. One possibility is that your nausea can come from low blood sugar, which is fixed with soda. That said, even diet soda helps me eat when I normally can't ", "A lot of times nausea is caused by your stomach being very full, not necessarily just with food but also with air.  If you have a bit of soda it can make it easier to burp and release some of the gas in there which puts pressure on the top of your stomach and nerves that make you feel uncomfortably full and nauseous.  Release some of that air and there is less pressure and less nausea.", "To everyone saying it doesn't help- that is a narrow view. One sip of diet soda can help with nausea I sometimes get in the mornings.  Sometimes I also get very nauseous along with the urge to sneeze. When I sneeze, the nausea is instantly gone. I've never met anyone else with the same symptoms. ", "I don't have a scientific reason behind it but I have chronic nausea and soda definitely helps me settle my stomach, I guess it might just be psychosomatic though...", "You may be thinking about soda water. Years ago people that had eaten too much or for whatever reason had an acidic stomach would go to the drug store soda jerk and get a soda water. Back in those days every drug store had a food bar where you could sit on a stool order a sandwich and a soda and eat it there. The high school aged kid that worked behind the counter was called a [\"Soda Jerk.\"](_URL_0_) I'm old enough to remember when this was common. \n\nThe soda water was carbonated but the carbonation is slightly acidic. The soda (think: baking soda) on the other hand is an alkali (opposite of acidic). A soda water had a duel function, it would make you burp and the soda would counteract the excess acid in your stomach. \n\nToday we can make soda water with a big tablet. The brand name is Alka-Seltzer.  ", "Carbonation stimulates the pyloric valve (the sphincter between the far end of the stomach and the small intestine), allowing it to open longer than it usually does. Carbonation allows you to empty the stomach more quickly in the proper direction. Other ingredients (ginger, for example) may be helpful, but plain carbonated water does the trick, too.", "Haven't read every comment, so sorry if this has already been said, but another benefit of soda with an upset stomach is the folic acid. Drinks like Coca-Cola have so much sugar in them that your body should naturally reject it like poison. Folic acid is a chemical agent in drinks like these because it keeps you from throwing up. Offsets all of the sugar. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3u1gjr", "title": "why are shows like dr.oz allowed to give out health advice that isn't scientifically supported? how isn't this considered illegal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u1gjr/eli5_why_are_shows_like_droz_allowed_to_give_out/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxb2yr4", "cxb34fd", "cxb4uwz", "cxb54hm", "cxb5hyx", "cxb5ra1", "cxb67km", "cxb6zwp", "cxb7a5v", "cxb7m4p", "cxb7y7v", "cxb82pv", "cxb92f3", "cxb95lv", "cxb9gtq", "cxb9isf", "cxb9xt8", "cxba1e4", "cxbajfo", "cxbasbi", "cxbaviw", "cxbb6rp", "cxbbnyj", "cxbd7vc", "cxbdcwz", "cxbdg9e", "cxbe627", "cxbee6c", "cxbeffq", "cxbfb4q", "cxbgrb6", "cxbgxbu", "cxbgy82", "cxbhb8r", "cxbhp7e", "cxbhxib", "cxbhxxy", "cxbieiu", "cxblltz", "cxbn5rf", "cxbru00", "cxbsawx", "cxbsqak", "cxbuq6k", "cxbusjh", "cxbx0vc", "cxbxjni", "cxbyurw", "cxbzplz"], "score": [44, 688, 138, 53, 2, 4517, 12, 3, 18, 6, 75, 8, 46, 13, 4, 2, 9, 11, 4, 2, 24, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 5, 20, 4, 2, 2, 3, 11, 5, 2, 5, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I don't know about others but I consider Dr Oz a quack and anything he endorses I immediately dismiss as quackery. He must pay a load to lawyers for all the crap he puts his name on. ", "If the health advice was actually dangerous then maybe somebody would sue him but its usually just ineffective.  I don't think there's a law against bullshitting on TV.", "Don't know the legality of it, but John Oliver had a segment about it. link [here.](_URL_0_)", "Due to free speech laws in the USA, it is not illegal to give out incorrect information.\n\nIf you knowingly provide false information and it hurts someone, they can sue you for damages. But if you have reason to believe it may be true, and/or you explained your sources and that it isn't certain, they might not win that suit.\n", "If you tell me you have a headache and I tell you to take some aspirin that's not illegal and is basically what they are doing just larger scale.  Also I believe they have disclaimers at the beginning or the end to cover their asses.", "He's not *really* giving out health advice. Instead, he protects himself by merely reporting what others say. He'll never say \"/u/DanaNotDonna's itchy feet will be cured by eating dryer lint.\" Instead, he'll quote a study like this: \"According to a recent study by the Home Appliance Institute, 57% of people who eat dryer lint say their feet do not itch.\" So it's the authors of the study making the claim, except not really. The study authors are going to say something non-committal like \"Although a positive correlation was found between dryer lint consumption and non-itchy feet, more study is needed and it will be several years before the production of dryer-lint based medicines.\"  \n\nDr. Oz can also shield himself by interviewing a guest about the problem instead of making any statement himself. \"What options are there for people with itchy feet?\" \"Well, a recent study . . .\" So, you'll have to go through 3 or more layers of people to finally find someone who didn't really say your itchy feet would be helped by the dryer lint anyway.", "Disclaimers. If yiu say something like \"some of this information may not be scientifically proven and any viewers should take precautions\" then its up to the person watching", "1st amendment. It's not illegal for people to say things that are stupid and wrong. Nobody is forced to take his stupid advice and he's always careful to work in a few disclaimers somewhere.", " > How isn't this considered illegal?\n\nThat pesky first amendment that everyone seems to shit on these days.", "My mom sings Dr. Oz's praises nonstop, and I always shut her down. One day she made me watch an episode with her. I don't remember the topic, but I do know he had his so-called-expert, Dr. Debbie (not even a last name? This is a character on a television show, not a doctor!), promoting whatever she was promoting. She claimed that a recent study has found that [blah blah] does [blah blah]. She never once said who performed the study, nor did she tell us where we could see the study for ourselves, no link posted on the screen either. That was all I needed to prove the show had no validity, but it wasn't enough to sway my incredibly stubborn mother.\n\nShe always complains that doctors only care about making money from pushing drugs, but refuses to acknowledge that Dr. Oz gets paid millions to do nothing but talk about stuff that has no scientific basis. ", "I'd like to make a point on free speech laws that everyone is citing.  They don't protect people from giving false information, especially when it can harm others.  It does protect Dr. Oz because of his double speak and disclaimers and such as has been previously mentioned.", "Most good scientists would never try to shut down debate -  just try to prove why a hypothesis is misguided.", "Dr. Oz's BS is nothing compared to what drug companies can legally get away with.\n\nIt is perfectly legal in the US for a drug company to fund multiple studies, not release the results of studies that make their drug look ineffective (they are required to report safety data though), pay a \"medical ghostwriter\" (basically a marketing expert with limited medical knowledge) to write an puff piece article based on the positive study data, and then pay what they refer to as \"key opinion leaders\" (basically highly respected doctors in their field) to make slight revisions to the article and then sign their name on it as authors without any mention of the drug company or ghost writers involvement.  \n\nMost major universities in the US also do NOT have a policy against professors \"authoring\" papers in this way because it brings them more esteem and better odds at getting grant money from the government for \"legit\" research.\n\nPaxil study 329 is probably the best known example of this although they crossed the line by committing fraud in this study. _URL_0_\n\nMany of GSK's internal documents related to this can be found at the US Justice departments website because they get sued partially over this study under the False Claims Act for defrauding the government.  They paid $3 Billion to settle it which is largest pharmaceutical settlement in history although they probably profited from it anyway given the sales of the drugs involved.  _URL_1_\n", "I always thought that it was considered entertainment, not the same as a real Dr... Like pro wrestling.", "We have this policy in this country, it goes something like \"we don't actually give a shit about you people\". You can see it reflected everywhere from the way many forms of mental and physical child abuse are allowed to the way its completely legal to send scam mail to an old lady with Alzheimer's telling her she needs to donate to keep Obama from getting reelected... for a third term. Corporations on the other hand are deeply loved by the government, this is apparent in the way they're given massive tax breaks (especially their religious equivalents), the way they're allowed to blatantly lie about damn near everything and call it advertisement, and the way they can put dehydrated dog shit in a bottle and claim it makes you immortal, so long as they put \"nutritional supplement\" on the side of the bottle. Its also painfully obvious in the way charities are allowed to donate  < 5% of their earnings to the cause they claim to support and still call themselves charities\n\nHere's some ways to keep it from hurting you too much. Look where your money is going, make sure it is giving you lasting tangible benefits. If someone is getting paid to tell you something and it isn't verifiable, ignore it. It doesn't matter if its a politician, a news pundit, or a doctor. The source is usually more important then the information itself. If you're receiving a service for free, you are the product being sold.", "Possibly mentioned here already, but it should be noted that the FBI have just announced a very large operation to scale back the \"health supplement\" industry which preys on the same kinds of people taken in by Oz  &  co.", "Well his health advise has not gone unnoticed. He was called to congress last year to answer for his weight loss product advice. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "Why do less than half of the states require sex ed. in public schools and why are only 19 of those states required to provide medically accurate information? Most of the government funded schools in America can just say whatever the hell they want, if they even choose to say anything at all.", "Check the Last week with John Oliver - Dr. Oz special:  \n\n_URL_0_", "Well, he wasn't exactly sued, but still:  _URL_0_", "The other one that is getting really bad for this is Dr. Phil.  His show used to at least seem like he was giving actual advice.  It has since devolved into Jerry Springer followed by what sounds like a late night infomercial for the last few minutes followed by his wife trying to pitch whatever ridiculous product she's sold her name out to this week.", "Oh, Oz. This guy is a malpractice hearing away from the funny farm. [He was even grilled at a senate hearing over his ridiculous pseudoscience. And it was hilarious](_URL_0_).", "Before you call him a fraud just realize that every drug/procedure/medicine removed from the market was first approved to be safe for humans after 'extensive, unbiased studies'\n\nAnd... If you trust what you see on TV, your parents didn't get you exposed to the world enough", "American laws are written by industries. Basically every other nation regulates what can be said on the air about medical advice. Ever since Reagan America has thrown caution to the wind and voters declared to trust the snake oil salesmen instead of the big scary gubment. ", "Because of this;  [The Disclaimer](_URL_0_)  \n\nThe grand white wash of all things.  As long as you have this, you can have an entire show made of nothing but voodoo and lies and be liable for nothing.\n\nWhat you and everybody needs to understand is television has no legal obligation to tell you the truth whatsoever.  Liable laws only applies towards people.  That means you cannot tell lies about them such as \"This just in, Donald Trump is an Oompa Loompa\"  But it is perfectly legal to present *opinion* as news.  \"This just in, Donald Trump looks like an Oompa Loompa according to Ted Cruz.\" \n\nIt is also illegal to pitch falsehoods if you profit from them directly, which Dr Oz did when he made erroneous diet claims for a fraud of a product, but all Dr Oz faced was a scolding from a US Senate hearing.  Since the claims have subjective interpretations I guess it's difficult to make a legal case to send Dr Oz to jail.  \n\nHowever Dr Oz is perfectly free to pitch utter lies and snake oil cures that he profits from indirectly simply through improving the ratings of his show and keeping his cult of personality stoked.  That alone makes him plenty of money like a hukstering televangelist promising people a seat next to God in heaven if they donate enough money.", "From a legal stand point the AMA at one time banned allowing doctors to refer people to non-scientific practitioners. This really threatened chiropractics ability to operate, since they no longer received referrals and discredited them in the eyes of the public (at least in their opinion). So they sued, lost, appealed and won. Their position was that the AMA wanted a monopoly on practicing medicine and won based on anti-trust laws. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn my opinion this provides the legal mechanism for homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, faith healers, shamans, etc... to exist with no oversight in terms of actual effectiveness. I think they should all be banned. ", "Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Jenny McCarthy...what do all these things have in common?", "Well you bring up a bigger question.  What IS scientifically proven medical advice?  I'm a doctor and I will tell you, there is a lot of leeway in what we consider to be correct treatment.  Ask 4 different dentists about something and you get 5 opinions.  \n\nThere's a battle between doing what we think is correct vs following the literature.  ", "\"**Disclaimer:**The following message is not the viewpoint held by Reddit or any of it's affiliates and is for purely entertainment purposes only.\"\n\n\"Dr. Oz is the epitome of modern medical sciences.\" *Source:* No One Ever, MD, MMD, MADD, PHD, graduate of Fake Unaccredited  College of Kansas (FUCK)\n\nThe preceding message is intended purely for entertainment purposes only and in no way represents the viewpoint of Reddit or any of their affiliates. ", "Better question to ask....  Why is the government allowed to give out health advice that isn't scientifically supported?\n\nEven their most recent update to nutrition guidelines was full of stuff that wasn't about health, but a combination of environmental concerns and industry lobbying points.", "The same reason it's not illegal to sell you an unlimited internet connection that they have throttled the shit out of.   What are you gonna do, hire a lawyer?", "OP:  \"Why are people allowed to say things in my ears that aren't true.  Only true things should be allowed to exist.  Government!!! Please come censor everything that's not true!!!  Hurry!!!\"", "Even if a doctor charges you directly for medical advice, which Oz is not doing, he can say whatever he wants. That's why they call it a medical *opinion*. If doctors could only read research to you verbatim, what would be the point of a doctor?\n\nNot to mention the fact that every day brings a medical study that appears to contradict some other medical study. A doctor could never say anything.", "Because people believe it.  That's why and he's shady about it, he skirts the line just enough.\n\n\nI despise Dr. Oz and everyone like him.  From psychics to \"ghost\" hunters, these people are literally what holds the human race back and they exist on every continent on the planet.\n\nWe as a people do not generally care about the truth, only what makes us feel better/stronger or included in some way. We take pleasure from listening to the guy \"on the outside\" and getting privileged information \"they\" don't want you to know. or are hiding from you.  The one who presents himself as the anti-establishment guy. Every single one of us here on reddit, right now is in one way or another an accomplice.  There is something YOU believe in that is pure bullshit.  We are all guilty.\n\nDr. Oz is like your grandmother telling you not to go outside in the winter when you are wet.. you'll surely catch a cold. That shit stayed with you until this day.. didn't it?\nYea, because you trusted your grandmother and she trusted hers.  This guy is using that part of your brain that trusts and doesn't bother to research, using it to shill products.\n\nMy wife has this show on in the background (I work from home) and I occasionally get a glimpse of it.  This guy will tell you one day that *this item* is the way to lose weight like crazy, then the next day it's *this* item and so on, it's a never ending stream of \"this is the miracle you've been looking for 'Trust me, I am Dr. Oz and I am on TV!'\"\n\nSome of his statements that were brought up at the senate hearing (not said at the hearing just quoted):\n\n*\"'You may think magic is make believe but this little bean has scientists saying they've found the magic weight loss cure for every body type\u2014it's green coffee extract.\"*\n\n*\"'I've got the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. It's raspberry ketones.\"*\n\n*\"'Garcinia Camboja. It may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good.\"*\n\n***Which one is it OZ?  Which one is it?***\n\nWhat is supremely frustrating is that he IS a doctor and he SHOULD know better.  People trust this guy with their lives on and off the screen and that's scary.\n\nIt's a fine line between lying and opinion.  I can go on TV, make a big deal about Ghosts knowing full well I am lying about it and I can make a million dollars to all the gullible people. The guys on Ghost Busters?  They are professional Liars.  They have never caught a ghost on tape, they have never heard a voice in a house/building that was not explainable and yet, there they sit, millions in their bank account.  Each episode drives you to the next, maybe NEXT week they will have it!  Next week we got wide some more eyed expressions, personal gasps and quick camera cuts! I would bet they actually laugh when they check their bank accounts.  And why?  Because the masses eat it up.  We're all stuck in our little selective bias. There are no 'ghosts' people. Everyone you know who has passed is now on their way back to being stardust.\n\nThere will always be a person who believes in ghosts, always be someone willing to watch and willing to buy what Dr Oz is selling.\n\nThere are no ghosts, there is no bigfoot and no little green men have landed in that farm down the road in bumfuck Kentucky. And buying this weeks new wonder weight loss berry will not instantly make you Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, no matter who tells you it *might*. Dr Oz is a paid shill, one of thousands on TV every day.\n\nThis guys really grinds my fucking gears. ", "My company recently did a microbiology study with Dr Oz. I was absolutely horrified to learn that our name was now associated with his show. Even if the science we did was sound, we are guilty by association. ", "This reminds me of news sites or news channels having people who give their opinion.  It's a new source, so you would think the information is correct, but they say it's an opinion piece, so they can pretty much say whatever they want and it doesn't have to be true.  ", "ELI5. Why do people watch and take advice from shows like Dr.Oz?", "He's got 100 top lawyers behind the scenes, which is why everything he says is based off a \"new study\". He's only relaying info from someone else's work, therefore he's not held accountable for anything he says.", "It's because he appeals to the people and because he has the title \"Dr.\"\n\nIt's kinda like how Reddit loves Bill Nye because everyone watched him growing up.  So they take his word when he says things like race doesn't exist. In reality he has a bachelors in electrical engineering ", "He actually has got in trouble before for backing a weigh loss diet product that he admitted knew would work. \n\nBut It's all about the word play people like Dr. Oz use. \n\nHe can show you \"**guaranteed scientific data** that says *product* **can** fight cancer.\"  because all he's *really* guaranteeing that it's scientific data.. And the word \" can\" is just another legal way of saying \"might or might not\" \n\nHow ever he can't show you \"**guaranteed** scientific research that **proves** *product*  **cures cancer**\"  because in this case he is guaranteeing the research that it cures cancer. \n\nProbably a bad example but it's the first one that came to my mind.", "For the same reason Fox News is allowed to exist. There's no law that says what is broadcast on tv has to be true, or factual. ", "Physician here. While not illegal to give advice unsupported by evidence, it is certainly not accepted by our profession. \"Professions\" are basically careers that are self governed by the professionals that make them up for the reason the profession is so technical or specific that the lay person cannot possibly know this information for themselves. This is in contrast to a job, such as a car salesman, which operates under the idea of \"buyer beware\", in large part because car salesman is a career with a finite amount of information that is presumed the average person can learn and make adequate decisions about. Our profession has set the standard that we will provide medical advice for patients that are safe, effective, and supported by medical literature. Dr Oz does not do this, and is pretty much rejected by most in his profession for being a quack. This is not a perfect system, however. He has not had to face the medical board in the state in which he practices as far as I know, and my guess is that is because he is an extremely prominent figure whose reprimanding would cause a giant stir.", "It's classified as entertainment, if he went on air and tried selling \"Dr. Oz's 100% effective mineral water cure for cancer!\" then he'd find himself in front of a judge.  He doesn't do that, instead he cites other snakeoil salesmen and \"reports\" their \"findings\".", "Why would free speech be illegal? He's merely reporting on studies and what other people do", " > How isn't this considered illegal?\n\nBecause there's no such thing as \"considered illegal.\" Something is either illegal or it isn't. Expressing your opinion is protected by the First Amendment. The government has a little leeway when it comes to fraud, but it's very difficult to make it illegal for someone to say something in the United States.", "You might be surprised how much information you get from your in-person doctor isn't scientifically supported. Pretty much anything to do with \"arch support,\" to pick just one example.\n\nOn the flip side, accessing in-person doctors is extremely expensive in the US. People need less expensive alternatives. In my experience, those less-expensive alternatives often work quite well, like stretching my wrists instead of the recommended surgery. Is stretching scientifically supported? Who knows? (No one makes big $$ to run that study - nothing to sell.)", "Why does dr oz keep emailing me?", "What do you mean? Real doctors or anyone else can give out any advice they want. That's called free speech. You dont have to believe or follow it, but it is not illegal to speak freely. ", "_URL_0_\n\nI'm not a physician or anything like that. What this video boils down to is, the industry us unregulated and protected by a surprisingly big lobby."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU&amp;list=PLmKbqjSZR8TbfAMV9bLy4beDh4vrze5kc&amp;index=62"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_329", "http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents-and-resources-july-2-2012-glaxosmithkline-gsk-press-conference"], [], [], [], ["http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/dr-oz-congress_n_5504209.html"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU"], ["http://www.nbcnews.com/health/diet-fitness/dr-oz-effect-senators-scold-mehmet-oz-diet-scams-n133226"], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkkNFhZkvRo"], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/pZQoOeH.jpg"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_v._American_Medical_Ass'n"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU"]]}
{"q_id": "7sx7eq", "title": "in ancient and medieval times, how did soldiers distinguish friend from foe in battle?", "selftext": "When I look at movies that have vikings etc in them, they have no regulation uniforms whatsoever and their enemies wear roughly the same looking gear. How did the soldiers know, who were the enemies? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7sx7eq/eli5in_ancient_and_medieval_times_how_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dt85dy4", "dt86iu4", "dt87x0f", "dt8bl3t", "dt8hjj8", "dt8llri", "dt8zdcj", "dt91kdp"], "score": [23, 371, 192, 34, 3, 21, 3, 2], "text": ["Battles used to be quite smaller in medieval times. Smaller units like viking raiders were small enough that everyone knew the face of everyone else on their side. These are people who travel together and live in the same camp together so they would be able to recognize each other, even if they did not remember everyones name. Just remember back to when you went to school with 3-400 other kids and would still be able to recognize people from your school if for example two schools were at the same sports event. This is the scale of most battles. Bigger battles were fought between mostly between different empires. So you would be able to tell people apart based on their gear. A polish knight would have a different style of armor then a french knight.\n\nThere were times throughout history when you would be able to gather enough men from similar regions to have a big battle. But this does require a lot of organization as you need to convince people though money or politics to take part in your war. It is easy to get people to the battlefield when the mongols or the crusades comes and invade your country, however it is much harder to summon people to the battlefield when the neighboring town stole your bucket. When you have an organized wealthy society that can manage such armies you would be able to equip your soldiers with some sort of uniform. Not all soldiers in an army would get the same uniform as they were often belonging to different mercenaries or independent lords. However remembering a few banners is much easier then a few thousand faces. The people under each banner were also kept away from each other for the most part.\n\nBut there are a lot of stories of friendly fires in medieval battles. Soldiers had a hard time recognizing allies in big battles and sometimes mistook their uniforms or banners. One such famous example happened in one of the battles in the war of the roses when a cavalry flanking charge were successful at driving an enemy to panic into opposing infantry forces. But this maneuver send the cavalry charging head on into friendly forces who did not recognize their banners. It was also not that uncommon for soldiers to stop and see if someone they did not know were a friend or foe would attack or not, sometimes even asking them directly. The movie Braveheart uses this as an element a few times and demonstrates how such confusion can happen in the heat of battle and how it can be resolved.", "Sometimes they didn't. However for the most part it involved big flags and designs on the shields. Some armies were equipped totally different but others where similarly equipped there were special people called heralds who could tell whose design on a flag or shield were who and which side they were supposed to be on.", "1) Even though there were no \"standard\" uniforms, armies would often have their soldiers marked with a specific symbol on their clothing, like a big cross or X or something.  You can see an example [in this old painting](_URL_0_).\n\n2) Battles didn't descend into disorderly chaos very frequently.  Armies survive on discipline and cohesion, more than any other factor.  So for the most part, you would stick in a tight group with the rest of your unit, and it would be pretty obvious who was in your unit and who wasn't.\n\n3) Simply yelling.  If a unit got separated, an officer might try to re-group it by yelling for his men to get back into formation.  The average soldier would also be yelling a battle cry, partly to induce fear in the enemy and partly as a unit identifier.  Language and accent would help identify who was who.", " >  When I look at movies that have vikings etc in them, they have no regulation uniforms whatsoever and their enemies wear roughly the same looking gear. How did the soldiers know, who were the enemies?\n\nA couple of things could make this easier. If you for example are fighting a different cultural group they likely look different enough to distinguish at a glance, even though movies these days are generally going to be pulling extras from the same general ethnic group.\n\nAnother aspect is that soldiers are going into battle with their own unit. If you live with a group of people 24/7 you are going to start to be able to recognize them fairly easily, so when in battle you aren't going to suddenly forget who they are. At that point it is just up to the unit commanders not marching their troops on a different unit from the same army, which can be achieved simply by carrying a standard with the right colors.", "Uniform/Armor Style (colors worn, kind of gear, cloaks, tabards, etc), Ethnicity, Shield decoration, flags being flown, personally knowing each other, etc. But it was common for mistakes to be made. ", "Most battles didn't decend into madness. Even Vikings and other raiders, when not looting, organized into tight shield walls\n\nOf course there are mistakes made. The Austrians once killed thousands of their own men mistaking them for Ottoman regiments and a battle between the two sides ensued. This was a minority though, as most armies evolved banners, uniforms, and other communication methods to reduce friendly fire. But there were occasional mistakes, especislly at night.", "Common lore that the leek became a symbol because during a rebellion, I wanna say owain maybe Llewelyn, maybe a story figure, realised both English and Welsh were killing one another, so he called a retreat, went to a nearby field and placed leeks on his men. Thus, a leek would mark a Welshman ", "A lot of armies fought in formations which helped since everyone who was a good guy was over HERE while everyone who was a bad guy was over THERE.\n\nBefore the era of formations, when skirmish warfare (people just running around bonking each other) prevailed, the fact that the basic social unit was probably a village, etc. may have helped since everyone would've been speaking the same language and the same dialect of the language (kill everyone with a funny accent!!!!).\n\nStill, even in the era of formations, accidents can and did happen - during the Peloponnesian War, there were \"friendly stabbing\" incidents during night time battles, some of which were catalyzed by people hearing other people speaking with a funny accent and not realizing that they were allies and not the bad guys."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Schilling_murten_bern.jpg"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hieqi", "title": "Stretching Cold Muscles: I've heard plenty of recycled, non-scientific articles telling me not to. I've also had some physical fitness professionals tell me otherwise. Can we straighten this out?", "selftext": "Yes, I have read the stretching muscles question that was posted 4 days ago!\n\nThe title nearly says it all. 95% of the articles you find when you search \"stretching cold muscles\" or something similar all state the same thing- stretching cold muscles is horrible and you'll injure yourself and die. Okay, no death, but the articles really do seem sensationalized. The articles seem poorly written and they draw poor parallels with rubber bands, without getting into scientific discussion of what is happening on the cellular level in either case of stretching up while \"warm\" and \"cold\".\n\nI unfortunately don't have access to peer review or else I would have searched this on my own. However, it is my belief that stretching a cold muscle is not *bad* for you as long as you stretch gently and slowly (stay away from ballistic stretching). I've also been told by a physical fitness professional that stretching cold is okay if gentle, but it won't work as well compared to stretching out when blood fills the tissue, and that it's actually great for relieving soreness when you stretch cold a day or two after an intense workout.\n\nSince I've gently stretched out my own cold muscles quite a bit in the past, without injury, I'm fairly confident that it's okay for you. I just hate the fact that 95% of my search results scream not to, even though not one article I found backs it up.\n\nIs there an absolute answer to this, or is it a question with a blurred answer?\n\nAlso, feel free to talk all you want about viscoelastic forces, dashpots and spring diagrams, plasticity, etc. I would enjoy a scientific discussion, and I'm more than capable of looking up complicated biological terms when they pop up!\n\nThank you very much.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hieqi/stretching_cold_muscles_ive_heard_plenty_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1vnn5r"], "score": [3], "text": ["Just graduated with Kinesiology degree. Most of the literature we have been read has disproven benefits of cold stretching, and actually  suggests a detriment in performance. However, as of now I have read nothing that shows a relationship when it comes to negative effects and stretching. \n\nIf it feels good, do it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4t9lgn", "title": "why do manufacturers make different types of screw heads?", "selftext": "[Image of some types of heads](_URL_0_)\n\nWhy there has to be these many types? Why not only one type so we dont have to use many screw drivers?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t9lgn/eli5why_do_manufacturers_make_different_types_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5fltw7", "d5fm3mn", "d5fmr7d", "d5fprhq", "d5fqoit", "d5fz5aj", "d5g0imp", "d5g1lwa", "d5g1qk4", "d5g3myv", "d5g42ja", "d5g543v", "d5g5eym", "d5g6343", "d5g7y58", "d5g8hyy", "d5gbd56", "d5gbfed", "d5gc922", "d5gf6f0", "d5gfl82", "d5ginxo"], "score": [14, 2103, 7, 88, 3, 2, 3, 2, 14, 440, 2, 14, 2, 12, 9, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 2, 2], "text": ["It's a balance between strength of the connection and cost. Screws with a flathead connection are extremely cheap to make, but the flathead connection 1) is difficult to deliver a lot of force to and 2) doesn't handle repeated insertion/removal well. The philips head connection, on the other hand, can easily delivery significantly more force and can handle repeated insertion/removal, but it costs more. When you can get away with it, you'd rather use the flathead to save money, but the philips head (or something even stronger) may be required depending on the application. \n\nThere's other factors as well, such as size/shape of the screw head and, as /u/SinkTube mentioned, security concerns. ", "The format (apart from the tool standard) follows function and/or aesthetics - conic flat heads for when they need to be flush with the surface for example.\n\nNow, for the tool standard, they differ due to cost, application, evolution, competing standards, etc.\n\nThe old simple slotted head is cheap to make and good for hand turning, but when you use an electric tool, they make it dufficult to keep the driver centered, so you start needing something different.\n\nThe phillips type was developed with this in mind; it's self-centering, but they are also more prone to get damaged if the tool slips or a lot of torque is needed. For this case, the allen is better (albeit not self centering, but good for automated robot assembly).\n\nBut hey, with excess torque it's also possible to damage the screw head - specially with the wrong size due to the metric/imperial mess of allen tools. Let's come up with an evolution - torx. No slipping, single size standard, more self-centering than allen (IMO, the best, we should only have torx). But that's more expensive to make than the old single slot, I guess, and relatively \"new\".\n\nThen there are the ones specifically made to avoid tinkering (require special, not easily available tools), and the opposite: ones made so you can use either a phillips or a standard slot screwdriver (I suppose for stuff designed to be self assembled by the average consumer who doesn't have dozens of screwdrivers).", "[This search](_URL_0_) answers your question.", "Remember that items like screw head formats are a product of hundreds of years of evolution, with each new generation/system improving on the previous standards and having issues of their own...\n\nFlat headed screws were simple and basic, but annoying to centre.\nPhilips used modern/improved production techniques to make a more easily driven screw (albeit at the expense of being more easily stripped)\nHex head made a system that allowed for a more positive connection, but had more reliance on correct sized drivers (which gives issues and potential problems when you also add a mix of metric and imperial)\nTorx and Robertson introduced more upgrades and simpler sizing, but are currently more of a niche product and typically more expensive...\n\nYou also get the additional collection of less common systems designed as tamper proof or for specific uses like tri-wing screws or security bits.\n\nThe biggest issue is that we don't instantly switch standards - we have old products requiring old standards, different systems will be more suitable in different products and even when there are clear benefits, big companies are slow to adapt thanks to costs, backward compatibilities and a whole myriad of other reasons, so we end up stuck with a myriad of competing and incompatible systems.\n\nWhile it would be lovely to come to a planet wide agreement to use torx, somehow I can't see us getting rid of the whole array of screwdrivers anytime soon...", "There are so many different head designs because of the huge number of applications in machinery like automobiles, aircraft, etc.  The head type is going to be dependent on the characteristics of the joint you are trying to assemble with the installation of the screw.  You can torque socket head cap screws more than a Phillips head screw which will result in more tensile preload in the joint.", "I csn semi-answer.\n\nI work in automotive manufacturing, and we use weird screws for any exposed screws\n.... it's to save people from themselves.\n\nYou need a semi-hard to find screwdriver head to remove them.... it's to prevent anyone besides proper mechanics from taking their car apart. Also on a warranty front, a customer could damage their automotive part and then claim the warranty for repairs. They could claim the screw was improperly assembled in the plant. ", "And why do they put flat head screws on socket covers?  One slip and you're done", "Lots of reasons.\n\nFlatheads generally need to keep the torque low. Fine for little plastic pieces, but bad for anything that's gonna need to be tightened down hard, you know, stuff that would take a beating, like cars, bikes, etc. But they're simple to use, difficult to strip, and cheap to make.\n\nPhillips tend to run into the same issue with *higher* torques. But generally are a lot better than flatheads. But they're easier to strip, slightly more costly to make, but still simple to use.\n\nHex/Alan can withstand a lot of torque, pretty useful for your rough and tumble applications. But will get stripped real easily if you use the wrong bits, generally slightly more costly to make, and also use the least common type of bit.\n\nAnything Else: Security reasons. They're frequently called \"security screws\" this has the potential upside of no one being able to undo it and fuck with your stuff. It has the down side of you can't fuck with your own stuff, and who is gonna fuck with something rather than just steal it in that sort of situation anyway? To be fair, sometimes the security bit is included in the packaging. However, some companies use these *cough cough* APPLE *cough cough* so that home repairs or upgrades are impossible and you have to take them to a licensed repairs shop to actually work on it. ", "Honestly it's all preference of the engineer who designs it. I'm a mech engineer who makes control panels that are commonly serviced by clueless service techs. So any fastener that is going on something like plastic has to be Philips otherwise it will be over tightened and crack the plastic. I mostly design sheet metal structures so I use machine bolts (hex heads) for just about everything. But thats only because I used to be an auto tech so anything I design has to have machine bolts, because that's my preference. Yea you could also use torx or allen keys for high torque application but it's not efficient to have your service tech switching tools so often, and they are less likely to have them on hand. \n\nThat's why I love Japanese vehicles. Everything is a 10mm. Have you ever worked on a Harley? That's why I design fasteners as consistently and conveniently as possible. ", " > Why there has to be these many types?\n\nLots of reasons. For example, I believe Phillips head was created to solve the problem of your driver slipping out of a slot head screw. Phillips head is the most common, probably just from being grandfathered in as much as anything, but there's a more modern drive geometry called [Torx](_URL_1_) (or generically \"hexalobular\"). \n\nOne of the big advantages of Torx drives comes from a design feature of the Phillips head drive. Phillips head screws were designed so that your driver bit will slip out of the screw when you apply too much torque in order to prevent over-torquing your screws. This was a great feature at the time, but in the modern era of torque-controlled electric screwdrivers, it's a pain in the ass more than anything else. Torx-style screws were designed to prevent your driver from slipping out with too much torque, and also to allow more efficient torque-transmission in general.\n\nAnother type of screw that intentionally causes your screwdriver to slip is the [one way screw](_URL_2_). This geometry allows you to tighten the screw without difficulty, but your screwdriver will slip right out if you try to loosen it.  \n\nMost other drive types are primarily to prevent people from tampering with things. For example, I work for a company that makes traffic products that go out on the street, and we use a security screw called [pinned torx](_URL_0_) (which are just torx but with a pin in the center to prevent people from using a regular torx driver) to prevent some punk-ass kid with a screwdriver from taking our stuff apart. There are all kinds of weird drive types out there, but for the most part their purpose is to prevent tampering. \n\nMy only other observation is about the screw in the OP's picture with the embossed \"+\" and \"-\". I'm guessing this attaches to something like a potentiometer--i.e. an electrical resistor whose resistance changes when you turn a knob. Potentiometers are often used for things like volume knobs, so the \"+\" and \"-\" tell you which direction to turn to make things louder or quieter. The point on one side gives you a reference so you can tell which positions of the screw give maximum and minimum volume. \n\n > Why not only one type so we dont have to use many screw drivers?\n\nEven if there were only one drive type, there would still need to be different *sizes* of screwdriver due to the need for different sizes of screw. For the most part, you can get away with using whatever screwdriver is lying around for a Phillips head screw, but using the wrong size will make you more likely to strip out the head. In some contexts this doesn't matter too much, but there are a lot of situations where it does. Also, other drive types (e.g. torx) are quite a bit more sensitive to using the wrong driver size. \n\n**EDIT:** Just a couple more, I promise... Two more notable ones are an inset hexagon screwhead and an embossed hexagon (or embossed square--both are in OP's picture). The inset hexagon allows you to drive with an Allen wrench, and the embossed hexagon/square allow you to use a socket wrench/ratchet, both of which give you a much larger lever arm than a screwdriver would. This means in theory they can drive more torque than a regular screwdriver--the issue is a little more subtle than this due to the rather inefficient way that a hex driver transmits force, but for socket and Allen wrenches the answer is to make your lever arm long enough to offset the inefficiency.", "I've worked in a factory with a lot of automation and injection molding machines and 90% of all the screws are socket heads or \"Umbrako\" as we normally called them. They are versatile because there are various wrenches designs that you can choose depending of the work you are doing.  \n\nEven the molds that I worked with, only had socket heads, but in that case you have to choose the best quality screws, otherwise if you damage the screw head (like when using a pneumatic screwdriver), then it's a pain in the ass to remove them.", "There are a few reasons.\n\nFirst, innovation.  For most purposes, the Phillips screw (+) is an improvement on the slotted screw, because the Phillips will stay centered on its own.  Robertson (square), Torx (star) or Allen (hexagon) screws are all improvements over Phillips for most purposes, because they are less likely to slip, but these each came from different sources who probably didn't consult each other and each had different ideas on how to solve this problem.\n\nSecond, \"security\".  A screw head might have an rare or modified form to it that is hard to work with unless you have the right special screwdriver.  There is, for instance, a modified Torx screw that has bump in the middle that keeps a regular Torx bit from being able to fit in there far enough to turn the screw.  For the same reason, there are things like Apple's infamous \"pentalobe\" screws, which look like a flower.\n\nThird, purpose.  In some applications, it may be okay for a screw head to sit up on the surface of the thing it is screwed into, in others you might want it to sink partway into the surface, or all the way, or even below the surface in order for you to be able to put a cap on top of it to give it whatever look the designer thinks is appropriate.\n\nEdit: Some of the screws in your photo are actually designed to be driven by more than one kind of screwdriver, as well.  Notably, the second and third in the top row can be driven by a Phillips or by a coin, and the middle two in the bottom row can be driven by a flathead, or a nut driver, or a wrench, or in the one more to the right, a Phillips.", "To add to the answers already posted, the type of screw head that is best for the job depends on a few factors. Type of material (wood, metal, plastic, composite, etc...) is a big consideration. If you want the screw to sit flush, but you're not going to fill the hole, you'd want something like a square head or Torx bit. [This illustration shows the benefits of Torx screws](_URL_0_). \n\nWhen I worked construction, we would use size M 25 screw heads to fasten deck boards to the floor joyce that underneath the boards. We used a really nice, very hard type of wood called Balau. Torx screws were chosen because they can handle an immense amount of torque without stripping. Moreover, the Torx design allows the screw head to be very small in diameter compared to a Phillips screw of the same length (about 3 inches). The Phillips screw head would have to be much larger diameter to handle the amount of torque necessary to drive the screw down flush with the wood. You would also have to countersink the hole before drilling the Phillips screw since the screw head would be a cone, and the base of the cone is the circumference of your screw head. On a deck surface, you don't want any screws poking their heads up, and Torx screws were the best choice in our case. My favorite decks are made with hidden fasteners. Those are a bitch to construct, but they look so great when complete.\n\nPhillips screws are very common and inexpensive conspired to their newer, sexier screw-head counterparts. They are best for all-around applications like drywall, where you're using a lot of screws, but the screw heads won't be visible. \n\nSo for me, the biggest considerations when choosing a screw head are type of materials, location, and cost. ", "Relevant [xkcd](_URL_0_)\n\nBut jokes aside, different screws are less/more prone to stripping at different levels of torque (say, torx vs philips), do/do not self-center (flathead vs allen), and also offer security due to irregular shape (all of the apple ones or security torx).", "I sell fasteners for (mostly) old Euro car restorations, so can help with the answer...\n\nWhen you need a screw in most industries, it needs to be the same screw as the one that was broken/lost....\n\nA lot of times, machines and equipment have spec sheets that call out for (example) a slotted.counter sunk screw. You could easily use a phillips drive, counter sunk, or robinson, or pozi drive, or hex drive etc..but in these instances, the person sourcing the fasteners MUST stick to what was required.\n\nAnother example is the classic auto industry. People want what was time period correct.\n\nTo summarize - We didn't always have 15 different types. The slotted head, preceded the phillips, and the phillips the torx, and so on...\n\nIt only appears that we now how this huge choice as fastener suppliers still make the old styles as there is still a demand for the above reasons (and many more).\n\nNow...go find me a pentalobe drive cheesehead nickel over brass screw for my 19th century telescope...!!!", "This is more of a history lesson, but the real question should be \"Why do manufacturers STILL make many different screw heads?\"\n\n\nUnfortunately, in this modern world, there are still idiotic countries, like the cocky (ignorant) assholes in America, my home country, and very nostalgic ones in other countries, and legacy industries that figure, \"if it ain't broke, don't fix it.\"\n\nIn America, we've refused to adopt the MUCH simpler, universal Metric system.  The metric system was created to standardize everything in the simplest way possible. They chose what was the most cost effective, yet functional design across the engineering spectrum.\n\nNearly every other design came from the legacy industry that they originated in.  Slotted screws can be easily blacksmithed, so they were first.  Then people realized they sucked to use, so put an + so they screw driver wouldn't slip out.  Then they stripped, so they came out with a socket head.  Then, those stripped, so they came out with Torx.  Those are the best we have commercially available.  But, for the most strength, there's always been the bolt, which needs a wrench.  \n\nBut, only because of America, do we have so many stupid sizes that you can't remember.  They refuse to give up on the imperial system, when even the country that invented them, England, thought it was stupid in the modern age.  It just makes everything more expensive to keep going with two systems.  ", "Some are more suitable to a task than others. In most cases, its to screw with you, like manufacturers that insist on using proprietary connectors for their electronic devices. ", "And for that matter, why do car manufacturers use different size bolt heads on the same part of the engine?\n\nI mean, why do I have to swap sockets three times when removing an engine mount?", "cause the guys selling the screw heads are selling the screw drivers too. The real question is what type of head is at the top of this conspiracy. ", "Originally there was the flat type screw and driver which had a number of problems such as camming out which damages the screw head. A Canadian inventor, P. L. Robertson created and patented his square drive screw and driver manufacturing process that uses a cold forming double press on the screw head in 1908 that solved the camming problem as well as made the screw stay on the tip of the screw driver as well.  Additionally he gave away the screw driver as a method of boosting sales.  Henry Ford liked the design so well he offered Robertson $10,000.00 for the patent but Robertson refused to sell.  Ford then said he would insure that no Robertson screws would ever be sold in the U.S. and used his influence to make sure that happened.  The Phillips design was created to work around the camming problem but that didn't allow the screw to stay on the tip of the driver either so it was only a partial improvement. ", "If the world was a sane place where everyone used the superior Robertson bit, everyone could live in harmony. ", "Once upon a time all screws were flat head, flat head screws are easy to make you just cut a grove on top. Then Philips thought with a self centering design it would be easier to keep the screws in line with your screwdriver and came up with the cross head, with a magnetised head the screw stays just where needs to as you line it up with your holes. But cross heads slip easily which can quickly turn a stubborn screw into a cone head which is imposible to remove. So people came up with more durable desighns and this happened: _URL_0_ Then there are companies which deliberatly use proprietry screw heads to stop their customers from fixing their devices themselves. Such as those awful one way screws if they don't even want to fix it themselves."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://previews.123rf.com/images/lior2/lior21108/lior2110800042/10348194-Vaus-screw-head-slot-XXXL-Stock-Photo.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=different+screw&amp;sort=new&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;t=all"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/SG4MzYP.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#One-way"], [], [], ["https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torx-hex-contact-angles-forces.svg#mw-jump-to-license"], ["https://xkcd.com/927/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://xkcd.com/927/"]]}
{"q_id": "3201q3", "title": "Why was Plato able to build the Academy in Athens and write dialogues featuring Socrates without fear of also being executed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3201q3/why_was_plato_able_to_build_the_academy_in_athens/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq6nlfs"], "score": [106], "text": ["It is easy to view Socrates' execution through the lens of totalitarian control of free speech or the stamping out of heresy, but in most respects these don't really fit the situation. Socrates' execution was not part of a broad campaign to stamp out dangerous ideology, it was very specifically targeted on Socrates and specifically happening at that particular time. As is pointed out in both Plato and Xenophon's *Apologies* the actual contents of Socrates' thought was in most respects rather incidental to his execution, if not outright contradictory of the charges. It is, for example, very difficult to view his thought as actually atheistic (which is something that could get you in trouble) or as a rejection of morality. Conventional morality had already been challenged by the sophists, and it is somewhat difficult to imagine Socrates as being more threatening than, say, Gorgias. And to top it all off, Socrates himself was seventy at his time of his trial and had been doing his thing for decades before.\n\nNow unfortunately it is very difficult to actually know why Socrates was executed despite its popularity as a story because we don't have a single speech, or even an example of a theoretical speech, against him. All we have are the presentations of the opposing arguments within the two Apologies: Xenophon had little interest in portraying the opposing side sympathetically, and Plato had clearly not yet developed his talent for presenting strong opposing arguments, as the accuser Meletus is quite possibly the worst interlocutor to appear in any dialogue. Most people today therefore focus on the rather damning association that Socrates had built up in his life. Critias, one of leaders of the brutal Thirty Tyrants, was an old associate of Socrates. Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens (twice!), was another old friend (despite Plato's dialogues making clear a pretty significant amount of mutual lust they seemingly never consummated an eramenous/erastes relationship). Perhaps more importantly however, the sorts of people Socrates kept in his circle were the sorts of rich and well born idle young men who were thought of, with justification, as sympathetic to the Thirty Tyrants--a good example would be Xenophon himself, who was both pretty nakedly oligarchic (although also somewhat liberal in a modern sense--he is an interesting guy) and had joined a Persian army as a mercenary a few years before. In short, Socrates *as a person* was viewed as a threat to the democracy.\n\nSo it wasn't really about thought control or stamping out dangerous ideologies. It was about Socrates *as an individual*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1v3iwr", "title": "Why was the Concorde's nose pointed down during takeoff? Wouldn't that cause more force downwards?", "selftext": "I know that the concorde's nose was made to rotate, but how come they didn't point it upwards during takeoff if that would help generate lift?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1v3iwr/why_was_the_concordes_nose_pointed_down_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceoh5ao"], "score": [15], "text": ["Pointing it upwards would likely be detrimental, actually, probably creating more drag than lift.\n\nThe actual reason it moved is much more simple than aerodynamics - when it was in the horizontal position, the pilots couldn't see the runway! The [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) covers the reasons, and also details how it was used. I suspect the extra drag wasn't much of a concern at those low speeds, with the nose instead being important for supersonic flight."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Droop_nose"]]}
{"q_id": "351wv4", "title": "why are drunk people not able to make conscious sexual decisions but dwi is a conscious decision?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/351wv4/eli5_why_are_drunk_people_not_able_to_make/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr05i9x", "cr06z2k", "cr076c2", "cr08qko", "cr09mh3", "cr0addc", "cr0cgnq", "cr0clo4", "cr0cmd6", "cr0csas", "cr0dmyl", "cr0dn91", "cr0dpi2", "cr0e2u3", "cr0e6eg", "cr0e9bp", "cr0egzt", "cr0enpb", "cr0eub9", "cr0ewi2", "cr0f3ls", "cr0f7w3", "cr0fg01", "cr0flgk", "cr0fwe1", "cr0g2t7", "cr0go3p", "cr0h6om", "cr0hdam", "cr0hr47", "cr0hrb5", "cr0i8op", "cr0i9p4", "cr0icgo", "cr0ieim", "cr0ij69", "cr0ione", "cr0itmv", "cr0iwi0", "cr0jf7x", "cr0k0er"], "score": [1091, 9, 58, 714, 3, 2, 10, 47, 6, 2, 2, 4, 6, 2, 5, 5, 3017, 13, 2, 6, 2, 6, 2, 16, 4, 11, 9, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 9, 2, 164, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Legally speaking, drunk driving is a thing you do, drunk sex is a thing that happens to you.  When you're drunk, your car does not approach you and convince you to drive it, but when you're drunk a person can take advantage of that fact and have sex with you when you normally wouldn't have.  \n\nIn short, you create the situation where you drive drunk.  You drive somewhere, you get drunk, you get in the car.  All of these are you, and you alone.  You intentionally get drunk, and you are accepting the consequences of YOUR actions, you are not accepting the consequences of a different person's decisions.  ", "Some of the difference is perception and the legal response to that perception.  Both sexual assault and drunk driving are consequences of abuse of alcohol.  How leaders have chosen to react to the different consequences of abuse is to a degree very much a matter of who is seen to have agency in the situation.\n\nI got no horse in this game since when I was an alcoholic I was home based, but I've been around enough people in recovery to realize that public response to abuse is very varied and also very tied to how the abuse plays out for the individual.  I would personally love to see more people acquire a better understanding of the issue since it effects millions of people and the Be responsible mantra of the alcohol purveyors makes for a great first line of prevention but a really terrible response to addiction once that first line of defense fails.\n\nEDIT:  When talking about varied responses, what I mean is that college campuses are a bubble that does not exactly reflect what is going on in the rest of the country.  Rape in poor areas are unlikely to be treated in the same manner to one on a college campus as one example of many.", "If you had to co-operate with a sober person to drive your car, then people would get pissed at the one that isn't drunk.", "Drunk people *are* able to make conscious sexual decisions...it is a myth they cannot.\n\n*Incapacitated* people cannot.  The level of inebriation to get to that point far exceeds the legal standards for drunk driving.  Someone so drunk they can no longer consent to sex wouldn't be able to walk to a car, much less drive one. ", "Just like every law ever made the severity is based on the society that makes it.\n\nIt is simply an expression that we feel drunk driving is worse then sexual misconduct. ", "You are still responsible for the damage you do while you were drunk, but people who take advantage of you while you are drunk are responsible for that as well.  The basic issue is one of practicality not logic.  Drunk driving and sexual abuse of drunk women are both problems in our society and we have laws against them", "I don't know that either are \"conscious\" decisions, however, whether you do something consciously or not, the spirit of the law is to punish people for harming others, damaging property, or potentially endangering people. \n\nWhen you engage in drunk sex, if both parties afterwards think it was consensual, great! If not, the one who is seen as forcing sex on someone else is prosecuted. Whether the aggressor made that decision consciously or not he or she can have charges brought against him or her for hurting someone else. That decision may not have been a conscious decision, but he/she can be charged for it. \n\n If someone is forced into sex that he/she didn't want, he/she is the victim and that person is not at fault because as the person who didn't want it he/she is not the one who hurt someone else. \n\nIf you get into a car and drive drunk - whether you are able to make conscious decisions or not you are able to be charged because your actions have the potential to hurt people. \n\nIf you are drunk and a passenger you are not charged because your decisions were not endangering people. \n\nSometimes drunk people do force other drunk people to have sex. However, I don't know that drunk people force other drunk people to drive. You can be drunk and unresponsive and be raped. You can't really be drunk and unresponsive and forced to drive.  ", "Ignore all these other idiotic reasons.\n\nThe real reason:\n\nDrunk drivers cause accidents that society wants to prevent.\nHistorically, the only way to prevent people from drinking and driving is to punish them if they do so.\n\nIts a solution to a problem.  Allowing people to avoid punishment with an excuse does not serve society, so that excuse is not allowed. ", "Consent for sex isn't a question of fault, it is a question of a potential victim's capability. The difference is one example is looking at the victim and the other is looking at the perpetrator.\n\nA proper analogy of the two would be if a rapist is drunk would they still be guilty. The answer is yes just like if they drove drunk.", "Their was a rape case a few years back where the woman claimed she was too drunk to consent. Security cam footage showed that after the act I'm question she walked over to, and purchased a burrito from a food truck. She then consumed the burrito with no issues. Needless to say the judge ruled that if you can engage in commerce, you are not too drunk to consent.", "The issue is simply impairment.  You have no right to drive with this particular kind of impairment *because* it damages your ability to properly reason.  As such, we've set up laws banning the behavior in order to discourage it.\n\nWith sex, it is the *exact same thing*.  When someone is impaired their ability to properly consent is damaged.  As such, we've set up laws that create a framework to ban the behavior in order to discourage it.\n\nYou've framed the question illegitimately, whether you meant to or not.  These laws are passed with a goal of encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors regarding drunken impairment.  Your complicated questions of ethics and morality aren't actually relevant.", "According to the military if you have sex with a woman when she is drunk, regardless if you are drunk as well, it is not consensual sex and therefor she could call rape.", "This is typical stupid americans who think they understand law. \nQuoting the top commenter here: \"drunk sex is something that happens to you\". no, it is something you do, wether u would do it drunk or not makes no difference. If you become so drunk that you're nearly uncapable of saying no, then ofcourse it's rape. But being really drunk and then having sex is not something that is done to you, you're just being a drunk dumb slut(male or female). \n\nSorry for my english, not my strong suite.\n\nEdit: phrasing.", "Because if you drive to a party, where you know you will be drinking, you are knowingly putting yourself in a situation where your judgement will be compromised, and you will have easy access to your car to drive home in that compromised state. ", "In the case of sexual assault the perpetrator cannot claim that they are not responsible because they are drunk, just like they cannot claim they are not responsible for driving drunk. The victim's are not responsible for what happens to them because of the actions of the perpetrator. ", "As someone who works at a law firm that handles DUI and CSC cases regularly, the comments in this thread make me want to slam my head in a car door.", "I hate to be \"that guy,\" but most commenters are missing the point. Society punishes drunk drivers because they do something dangerous after choosing to drink so much that it impairs them. They might beyond making good decisions at the time they choose to drive, but at some point they chose to get super drunk. With sex, we are not punishing the drunk person at all. We are punishing someone else for taking advantage of someone who is so drunk they cannot give consent. Source: I'm a criminal lawyer (and not in the sense that most lawyers are criminals :) )", "What you aren't pointing out is that women can't consent to sex when drunk.  Men on the other hand are completely responsible even if both the man and woman are drunk.", "Because how else are women supposed to get people arrested for having consensual sex that they regret the morning after?", "It's a load of horse shit driven by the need for people to have an excuse for their actions instead of taking responsibility. I've been drunk enough times to know that being drunk doesn't make me incapable of making decisions. It just makes the inhibitions go away. There is no way anyone could convince me that you can't give consent if you're drunk.  \nYes mean yes.", "This has no bearing on law in the US.  IN EVERY state of the US, drunken consent constitutes *legal* consent.  Just like drunk driving.  \n\nFeminists however, have switched the *social* burden of guilt for drunken sex in some younger circles.  But that has nothing to do with the law.  \n\nYou don't have to take my word for it.  This link has the sexual assault laws, verbatim, for every state.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis may differ in your country, but in the US drunken consent STILL means legal consent.", "Differs from country to country, in England the reason is as follows:\n\nMost crimes require two things to be proven - the mental and physical aspect. In the case of rape this is Unwanted Intercourse  &  Intention to do so. \n\nThe law says, if you are drunk enough you are unable to form 'Intention' so unable to commit rape. \n\nDrink driving is one of a number of unique 'Strict Liability' crimes which require no intention. So as soon as the drunken person drives the crime is made out. \n\n(Note - ELI5 so simplified version) ", "Lawyer could explain better and with more authority, but here goes my answer.  \n\nThe difference is in whether or not a person intended to do something wrong. For most crimes, there needs to be some intent to do something wrong. Called by lawyers, mens rea. \n\nThat is not the case with drunk driving. It is a \"strict liability\" type of crime, where there is no need to want to do something wrong. In these kinds of crimes, it does not matter a person's judgement is impaired. If you drive drunk, you are liable to be convicted for drink driving, even if you were so drunk you could not form the intent to drive drunk. \n\nHere's a lawyer explaining mens rea and actus reus:  _URL_0_", "Very similar questions: Two consenting adults (m,f) have sex. Both equally drunk. The man can get charged with rape because the woman was drunk......why?  The man was just as drunk and just as unable to give consent, right?!", "Legally speaking, you don't have to \"consent\" to anything to be convicted of a DUI.  At least in my state, there is no intent requirement.  All you have to do is : 1. be driving a car; and 2. be drunk. ", "Both laws are punishing people who put others at risk, either by driving drunk or raping a drunk person.  Punishing a drunk rape victim is tantamount to punishing a sober driver who was hit by a drunk driver.  The drinking isn't the problem; the behavior that follows is.  \n\nIf you can't drink without driving intoxicated or raping someone, maybe don't drink. ", "Wait.  Before you go down this path, what do you mean \"If they were severely inebriated and they have sex then [...] they [...] are ultimately not at fault\"\n\nOf course they are at fault.  If you get drunk and then rape someone, you are still at fault for raping a person. \n\nThe difference is consent versus responsibility.  If you are intoxicated, then you are not making good decisions.   In a state that you're not making good decisions, certain things aren't allowed.  In general, when you're not of sound mind, a contract that you enter into may be voidable. \n\nConsent for sex is essentially a contract.  It's saying \"I give you permission to touch me in ways that I'm normally protected by law against.\" The problem is, if a person is intoxicated, that permission can be found void, because the person wasn't thinking properly.\n\nOn the other hand, when you drink and drive there's no parallel.  With sex, you have the ability to grant permission to other people to have sex with you, you are by default protected from people touching you inappropriately without your permission.  If you're intoxicated, it's possible that you wouldn't reasonably give permission, but weren't of sound mind. \n\nWith driving drunk, you have no permission to drive on the road drunk.  There's nothing about being drunk that gives you the protected right to drive on the road drunk.  \n\nThere's nothing about being drunk that gives you special rights in sex either.  The only thing that being drunk can do is protect you from giving away the protections by the law unintentionally.  The law protects you from being touched sexually, drunk or sober.  You can grant permission, but if you're unable to make decisions, that permission might not count.  People can have sex with you only if they have permission, and if that permission doesn't count, they have hurt you.\n\nIt's a bit of a minefield to have a one-night stand with someone who is drunk.  You don't know if they are really giving consent, or if they are not.  You won't find out until they're sober.  If you don't know, then you don't do it. \n\nOn the other hand, in a long term relationship, it's probably not such a big deal. You know the relationship, you know the person, you know what they're comfortable with, you know what's expected.  If you have had sex every night for the past year and get drunk and eagerly have sex together one night, it might be OK.  But even then, you don't know for certain.  Without being in the situation it's impossible to tell whether it's reasonable. \n\nBut you don't get special protection from being drunk.  You just don't have the ability to be trusted to enter into contracts.  Since there's no contract involved in drunk driving, nothing changes. ", "Because reddit is confused as to what \"too drunk to consent to sex\" really is.\n\nThat means passed out, can't say anything.  Being drunk, saying yes to sex, having sex and blacking out and forgetting about it later is not rape, no matter what reddit-lawyers think.", "Because people don't like getting killed by drunk drivers, but don't really care if a random dude they never met goes to jail.\n\n", "Because one is a measure to protect people from being exploited by predators and the others is a measure to punish people for making bad choices that affect others. If you're gonna get drunk off your ass, don't fucking drive wherever it is you're planning on getting sloshed. Also, if you're doing it at home, make sure to hide your keys or give them to someone for safe-keeping. Or you try not to be a selfish dickward whenever you get drunk.", "Legally, drunk people are able to make conscious decisions about sex, up to a point. It's a grey area where that point lies, but it essentially revolves around their ability to function and think reasonably. Most people would see a buzzed person and realize they are fine to make  most decisions, but looking at a person who is smashed and having a hard time walking and picking up social cues, most people would realize they are not capable of reasonable decisions.\n\nDriving while intoxicated isn't the same. Once you begin driving a car intoxicated, the law does not care about your ability to reasonably make a decision, it cares only about your capacity to safely operate a vehicle. That's key, because driving drunk puts yourself, other drivers, and pedestrians at greater risk. Given that operating a vehicle is a multitask function requiring attention, reaction, prediction, and combined physical tasks, any point of intoxication can reduce your ability to drive.", "UK Law student here. Not certain about US but over here the act of getting intoxicated is classed as reckless, which can constitute the mental element of most crimes, notable exceptions being murder. You get drunk knowing that you have the ability to drive, since you have your car keys, and could walk there easily, etc. Therefore you can be held responsible. \n\nFor something like sex, it's very unlikely you are aware before drinking that sex is a potential outcome. Most people would never imagine sleeping with someone randomly that they wouldn't do normally. The key difference is which act is foreseeable. Driving is, while sex is not.", "Because when you're coerced into having sex when you're drunk presumably someone in a clearer state of mind is taking advantage of your inebriated state of mind. When you're drunk and you decide to drive you're making the decision on your own, your car doesn't know you're drunk and can't make the right choice for you, and didn't try to talk you into driving it.", "I've heard it explained like this: the law will not protect you from what you do to other people while you're drunk, but it will protect you from what other people do to you.", "The way I learned this in 1L crim was that we draw lines for timing of decision making:  when did the criminally negligent or reckless behavior begin?  In the case of drunk driving, we have decided that the time when you decided to get shitfaced with your car keys in your pocket and no plans to stay the night was the time when you were criminally responsible.  In the case of drunken sex, the timeline is much, much shorter.  The person who gives consent is concurrently wasted, and so cannot legally consent.  In most states, if both parties drunkenly \"consenting\" to sex were past some point of inebriation, the male is in fact liable for his decision to have sex, and the female is a victim of assault or rape.  I believe that the unequal treatment of men and women on this issue\u2014ability to consent/liability for sexual misconduct\u2014is unconstitutional.  FWIW I'm a female type human.", "As a five year old, you know when Mummy says that it's time for a nap because you are tired, but you really don't want to? Well if you don't nap and then fall asleep whilst riding your bike and get a booboo, it's your fault because you know you should have slept.  \nIf you fall asleep and someone takes your bike from you while you are asleep, then that's not your fault. \n\nPeople shouldn't take your bike just because you aren't awake to say, \"don't take my bike\" or if you are talking in your sleep and mumble \"sure, take it\"", "Listen sir, if I may even call you that, I happen to specialize in law as well, Bird Law mainly, and your response is unfortunately redundant. I think the better do smarts here of Reddit have made there point about drinking and driving. Point made, point made.", "What are you even asking? You need to be more clear because \n > if the common consensus is that if a person is severely inebriated and they have sex then it was not consensual or they weren't in the right state of mind and are ultimately not at fault.\n\nmakes no sense. If you're drunk and you rape somebody, you're still at fault. If you get raped, you're not at fault, whether or not you're drunk. If nobody is around to witness whether or not both parties are coherent enough to consent and one of them cries rape the next day, then there's obviously a problem and each situation is different.\n\nDriving drunk is never excusable, so I really don't see how you're making the connection to drunk sex. Of course they were drunk and didn't know what they were doing when they got behind the wheel. That's the point. What's so hard to understand about that? Drunken sex isn't usually a hazard to public safety, unless you're trying to have drunken sex while driving.", "So I recently got a TAPS card and couldn't believe that amount of liability liquor stores and bars have for serving people who then later injure others. I think I kind of support this now tho!!\nWe still punish the shit out of drunk drivers, but at least we are punishing the shit out of other people who were responsible for their reduced inhibitions. ", "DWI is not a conscious decision. In fact in most jurisdictions the offense of DWI does not require a conscious mental state. Most criminal statutes require that a person have a certain mental component such as knowingly, intentionally, negligently, etc. DWI generally does not have this. In my jurisdiction the mens rea is specifically excluded by statute and the defense of involuntary intoxication is not available. ", "The person who decides to get drunk, by putting alcohol in their mouth, should make the decision not to drive before hand. Most people do make this decision, that is how they plan a way home (for example it is common to check that one friend is staying sober before you start drinking, or make a note of the last train home, or arrange to stay at a friend's place). While sober and making this decision some people will give their keys to someone sober or put them somewhere safe, just in case while under the influence of the alcohol they don't make sensible decisions (e.g. lose their keys or start driving - oh dear).\n\nBy contrast: A person who is raped or assaulted while drunk did not choose to have this done to them, so they did not make that decision while drunk or while sober. And it makes all the difference that an assault is a thing done to a person, not done by a person. The drunk person cannot be heald responsible for the actions of others (uhem, victim blaming?). \n\nA drunk person can make choices on how they act, and because they choose to get drunk they can plan ahead to not do certain things while drunk that they make an active choice over (for example arranging not to be at work while drunk, by doing some basic time planning). \n\nThere is also a massive difference between choosing to do a thing and choosing not to do a thing. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://apps.rainn.org/policy-app/index2.cfm"], [], ["https://www.translegal.com/legal-english-lessons/mens-rea-2"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jimk2", "title": "why do tire treads lead to more traction when there is less surface area touching the road?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jimk2/eli5_why_do_tire_treads_lead_to_more_traction/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cupig1m", "cupihxu", "cupik7n", "cupiuce", "cupj11s", "cupj6c4", "cupv2io", "cupz23u", "cuq34ts"], "score": [20, 5, 231, 5, 2, 5, 2, 6, 2], "text": ["I'm not sure that the treads themselves lead to greater traction so much as they help prevent hydroplaning.  ", "The grooves in the rubber are designed to allow water to be expelled from beneath the tire and prevent hydroplaning. The proportion of rubber to air space on the road surface directly affects its traction.", "They don't. That's why car racing often uses \"racing slicks\".\n\nThe problem is that if you get even a little bit of something between the tire and the road (e.g. rain water) that there isn't anywhere for it to go, and it forms a film between the tire and the road that prevents the tire from getting any traction.", "I am not sure if I understand the question but:\n\n1. Tires without any tread definitely have more traction (note no tread, not bald tires) see: [Racing slicks](_URL_0_)\n2. The tread is there as a trade off of a little dry traction to vastly improve wet/snow traction.\n\nTread design and materials are all various combinations of tradeoff in traction between surface conditions.", "Since wheels are circular, the actual area of contact with the ground is very small    \nNow when it is wet, its easy for this little patch to skid on the water kind of like skipping stones. So there are channels cut into it to allow the water to expel towards the outer sides of the rim.    \nThere is some advantage during dry, which is it helps channel air which keeps the temps slightly lower. This prevents excessive wear at high speeds.", "on road, treads act as a path for water and fine dust to escape so it doesn't break the wheel's road contact. \n\non terrain, tires compact the dirt. with treads, this offers an edge to grip. ", "Part of this is the rubber compound used. Track tires are much softer and stickier than a car tire. \n\nThe other part. Contact. Traction is made by contact. The amount of contact and the amount of friction expressed over that contact area. By using tread you effectively remove some of the contact area. So for instance a tire that is a given compound and has no tread has say 20 square inches of contact. The friction over that area gives a certain amount of total traction. If I use tread then the contact area of the tire goes down, however the friction coefficients will actually go up since the weight of the vehicle is being felt through a smaller area. That will increase the total friction for that patch. \n\nFor steet tires they need to be able to grip in both dry, wet, etc conditions. A track tire or slick is only really effective in the dry on a clean track. If you look up rain tires for say NASCAR you will see they have tread. It not only concentrates the force (weight/area) but also helps to channel the water from the center of the tire. This allows the grip they would not get if they were still using slicks. \n\nAlso if you buy a good track tire for say a motorcycle and run it on the street it will wear out very quickly. And would be dangerous if you encounter any kind of debris in the road like sand or gravel. ", "Traction is mostly independent of area of contact so tread or no tread you get the same traction.  If all other things are equal.  But they aren't.  As noted in several posts below, tread is mostly to give liquids and small gravel a place to go without disrupting your traction.", "It is because you are driving over things like dust, oil, water, etc. You have to leave space for that material to be displace otherwise it prevent the tire from contacting the ground at all. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_slick"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "23l0bu", "title": "How did German military doctrine differ from Allied and Soviet doctrine during WW2, and what happened to German doctrine afterwards", "selftext": "Many militaries today use doctrines that have evolved from either allied/NATO doctrine or from Soviet/Russian doctine, depending on whose sphere of influence they were in. I guess I have two questions regarding German doctrine here:\n\n* Did German doctrine differ much from the others, and in what ways?\n* If it did differ, were there any strong points from German doctrine that were picked up by others after WW2 was over, or was this knowledge lost?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23l0bu/how_did_german_military_doctrine_differ_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgy43fw", "cgy67d6", "cgymf9m"], "score": [222, 31, 2], "text": ["Yes, German doctrine did differ a lot from both the Allies and the Soviets.\n\nAll of course changed throughout the war, as what was available to commanders changed and the strategic possibilities and constraints changed.\n\n**The Germans**\n\nThe Germans entered ww2 with one of the absolute best armies the world have ever seen. Building on their experience in ww1, where they had developed both operational and tactic doctrines that were well-adopted for both trench and more open fighting. Flexible defence, where you deployed small groups of troops to the front to hold the line and reserves to the back allowed them to delay and then counter-attack an enemy attack both tactically and operationally (note - tactics involves small units, operations divisions and corps and strategy large armies and logistics). A quick counter-attack to retake lost territory while the enemy was still trying to organise his defence, bring his heavy weapons up, entrench and re-align his artillery to provide defensive fire was often devastatingly effective.\n\nOn the offence, the Germans had developed infiltration tactics, meaning that small heavily armed groups of men would attack and bypass strongpoints and heavy resistance to allow following troops to neutralise them, and continue deep into the enemy line to attack support weapons, artillery and logistics and other rear area troops to cause the most destruction.\n\nBuilding on these two doctrines, the Germans added a concentration of force - especially tanks - and the idea of punching even deeper to completely disrupt the enemy force. This is what Anglo-Saxon sources love to call *'Blitzkrieg'* (the Germans themselves never gave it a name other than *'Schwerpunkt'* - conctration point). Combined with a strong air force and close co-operation between tactical bombers (German infantry would often have Luftwaffe liason officers attached for communition and requests of air support), the Germans brought a revolutionising co-ordination and focus on air support to the battlefield in ww2.\n\nGerman NCOs were extremely well trained - the Reichswehr, the 100 000 man army the Weimar Republic was allowed was trained so that every soldier could be an NCO, every NCO an officer and so on, to allow for a rapid expansion. German NCOs led from the front, died at a higher rate than regular soldiers, trained with their soldiers, ate with their soldiers and brought a very strong unit cohesion to German units, especially early war. It can probably be said that German NCOs led and kept the German army together throughout the war.\n\nGerman officers and NCOs were not only very well trained - they were also allowed an extreme level of independence of action in what the Germans called *auftragstaktik*, or mission tactics. The unit was given a mission to solve and allowed a high degree of freedom to solve the mission how they saw most fit (as they were on the ground close to the objective). NCOs and lower officers were also encouraged to take opportunities without waiting for orders as the time to get a confirmation from higher command could mean that the opportunity was lost.\n\nThe Germans excelled in tactics and operations, but were not as good in artillery tactics, logistics and strategy as their opponents, especially the British and Americans.\n\n*Auftragstaktik* was picked up by the Western Allies after the war, and is more or less standard for any western army today. Combined arms warfare, adapted to the armies of the time, is also standard in all armies today, as is concentration of armoured assets in specialised divisions.\n\nSoviets, British and Americans will follow below.", "*Have to go. Will be back to expand on points and add sources.\n\n**Air power**\n\nThe German's focused on developing very fast, highly offensive shock tactics in the post-WW1 era (specifically in 1936+). Ernst Udet was in charge of shaping the Luftwaffe in the iner-war years, and a focus was placed on fast planes used to support offensive operations, instead of long range, high volume bombers.\n\nAgain, the favor of medium planes and the lack of long range bombers was an intentional choice to support the \"blitzkrieg\" concept. Hitler, and his various top planners abhorred the idea of static warfare.\n\nThis lead to dive bombing planes such as the \"Stucka\" Ju 87s making up a large portion of the bombing forces.\n\nThis concept worked very well in the opening stages of the war, such as the offensive against Poland and France. However, it lead to strategic weaknesses as the war dragged on. German planes were short range, requiring airstrips closer to the targets, and the carried relatively few bombs compared to something like an allied B-17 (Stuka carries 990lbs of bombs compared to a B-17 load of 8000lbs). The Germans could not really conduct effective long range, strategic bombing of logistical facilities the same way the allies could. \n\n***\n\n**German machinegun tactics.**\n\nThe Germans integrated real machineguns into their squads in the form of putting 4 MG42/MG34 machineguns into a platoon, which meant 12 machineguns in a company. Their tactics used the machinegun facilitating a lot of the movement. What the Germans did in WW2 with machineguns became the blueprint that the US and other western countries have since copied and expanded on. \n\nIn contrast, the US issued Browning 1919 machineguns as company or battalion level assets. They supported the troops but were not as integrated into lower levels. A US rifle squad did use Browning Automatic rifles [(TO & E diagram)](_URL_0_), but those were more like oversized battle rifles and not true machineguns.\n\n(As a semi-related sidenote, after the war the US combined the designs of the MG-42 and FG-42 to create the T44 machinegun. That design was continually evolved upon and eventually created the M-60 machinegun.)\n\n***\n\n**Airborne**\n\nThe German command was enthralled with the idea of airborne operations. During the Battle of the Netherlands in 1940, the Germans dropped two divisions of airborne troops. It was the first large airborne operation in history (although the Italians beat them to the punch for the first ever airborne drop.)\n\n***\n\n**Tanks.**\n\nGermans built impressive tanks, although the aspects of their abilities have become somewhat mythically inflated.\n\nThe Russians first integrated sloped armor in their tanks with the T-34. (Sloped armor effectively makes the armor thicker without adding weight when an AT round is first head on.) The Germans were impressed, and copied the sloped armor concept for their Panther and Tiger II tanks.\n\nThe German tanks had notoriously hard to crack armor. This reputation is especially heightened because the allied tanks were still using IFV type designs instead of tanks with main guns designed to defeat other tanks. The Sherman tanks main gun was not powerful enough to consistently defeat the more heavily armored German tanks. This lead to the creation of \"Firefly\" Shermans which used enhanced main guns.\n\nGerman tanks were built with a much more \"hands on\" process. In popular culture this has been spun into a positive which supposedly reflects superior German craftsmanship and respect for detail. The reality though, is that without identical parts, this made the tanks more difficult to repair and more time consuming to build. The Germans had to make their tanks by hand because they didn't have the powerhouse logistics the way the US did. (The US used retooled car factories to pump out large amounts of identical vehicles very quickly.)  \n\n***\n\n**Helmets**\n\nThe German helmet design was hands down the best of all the countries involved in the war. After the war, everyone recognized this, although it took many years for the shape to be widely adopted because of the Nazi stigma attached to the shape. \n", "The germans developed their offensive doctrine from the works of liddel hart and other soviet strategists in the 20s and 30s. Through literature from people like heinz guderian and the small scale exercises by the germans in the mid 30s and the condor legions experience in the spanish civil war, the result of these was Blitzkrieg, literally lightning war. The essence of Blitzkrieg starts with the organization of the main heavy hitting components of the german army together into light, mobile formations with a premium put on communication. Tanks (panzer I  &  IIs), armoured troop carrying half tracks, Self propelled Artillery (SIGs), Light and Medium bombers (JU87 Stuka and He111s) would concentrate their forces at a percieved vulnerable point and blast open a hole in the front line while the light mobile armored units would drive into the enemy rear hitting vulnerable points and cutting off retreating troops while less mobile infantry units followed and consolidated the ground. See the Battle of Sedan for a perfect blitzkrieg scenario. \n\nThe way blitzkrieg differed from allied doctrine was that other than the soviets nobody had come close to using the tank to its full potential. The french for example had alot more tanks and alot heavier tanks like the Char B but they dispersed them and used them as infantry support. The way the allies eventually beat the germans in europe was by copying blitzkrieg and putting their own spin on it. The soviets learned the hard way by losing millions of troops to german encirclements brought on by blitzkrieg. But the soviets learned them well and went on to create the operational art of maneuver warfare. The counter-attack after Stalingrad,  Operation Bagration and the encirclement of berlin are all good examples of soviet ability to learn. Im sure ill be hacked apart by my fellow WW2 enthusiasts but im typing this on my phone with my kids jumping all over me. The reason I mentioned only the german and russian armies is that the eastern front was a titanic struggle that developed the future army doctrines of the great powers and showcased the beauty and potential of armoured maneuver warfare. The soviet operational maneuver groups that threatened western europe during the cold war and the american armoured cavalry regiments using AirLand Battle doctrine were all born of the beast of the eastern front."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/images/ww2/handbook/rifle_squad.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "65v49n", "title": "On April 17th, 1907, Ellis Island processed 11,747 immigrants...more than twice as many as an average day. What led to this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/65v49n/on_april_17th_1907_ellis_island_processed_11747/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgf4gn2"], "score": [13], "text": ["According to [this dataset](_URL_0_) on April 16th, 1907, there were 3702 immigrants processed. On April 18th of that same year, just 1314 immigrants were processed. So what happened on the 17th?\n\nHere are all the ships that came in on the 17th of April, 1907:\n\nCount  |  Date  | Port | Ship\n\n2409\t04/17/1907\tNaples\tRepublic\n\n2299\t04/17/1907\tLiverpool\tCarmania\n\n2222\t04/17/1907\tRotterdam, Holland\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n1600\t04/17/1907\tTrieste\tGerty\n\n1317\t04/17/1907\tLiverpool\tOceanic\n\n521\t04/17/1907\tCopenhagen\tUnited States\n\n491\t04/17/1907\tQueenstown\tOceanic\n\n401\t04/17/1907\tChristiansand\tUnited States\n\n396\t04/17/1907\tQueenstown\tCarmania\n\n375\t04/17/1907\tChristiania\tUnited States\n\n232\t04/17/1907\tSt. Michaels\tRepublic\n\n65\t04/17/1907\tKr. Ania\tUnited States\n\n22\t04/17/1907\tKingston\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n18\t04/17/1907\tColon\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n11\t04/17/1907\tPort Limon, Costa Rica\tLiberia\n\n8\t04/17/1907\tSt. Michaels, Azores\tRepublic\n\n8\t04/17/1907\tSavanilla\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n5\t04/17/1907\tJamaica\tJoseph J. Cuneo\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tCartagena, Colombia\tLiberia\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tSavanilla\tLiberia\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tLa Guaira, Venezuela\tMaracaibo\n\n1\t04/17/1907\tSt. Lucia\tPydna\n\n\nNow compare that to the 16th:\n\n\n1509\t04/16/1907\tAntwerp\tFinland\n\n1480\t04/16/1907\tHavre\tLa Gascogne\n\n387\t04/16/1907\tRotterdam, Holland\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n163\t04/16/1907\tHavana\tMorro Castle\n\n115\t04/16/1907\tBoulogne\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n49\t04/16/1907\tAntwerp via Dover\tFinland\n\nor the 18th:\n\n1068\t04/18/1907\tBremen\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n127\t04/18/1907\tCherbourg, France\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n81\t04/18/1907\tSouthampton\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n37\t04/18/1907\tColon\tAllianca\n\n1\t04/18/1907\tBaracoa, Cuba\tFagertun\n\nAs is clearly evident, a *lot* of ships came in on the 17th. But not just any ships, in fact several of the largest ships of their particular fleets all arrived at Ellis Island that day. The Carmania (on the liverpool line) alone holds more passengers than the entirety that arrived on the following day on all ships. If you look further in the dataset, you can see that whenever the Carmania on the liverpool line pulls into Ellis Island, *lots* of passengers are discharged. Here's some [more info](_URL_1_) on that ship in particular.\n\nSo I think on that particular 17th of April, a bunch of huge ships all arrived at the same time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hopperrr/ellis-immigration-by-ship/gh-pages/data/trips.tsv", "http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2011/03/liverpool-ellis-island-aboard-carmania/"]]}
{"q_id": "1q1ogr", "title": "What is the story behind President Andrew Jackson's adopted Creek Indian son, Lyncoya?", "selftext": "I haven't really been able to read a lot about Lyncoya but I'm very interested in what his life was like living with the Jacksons and how he was treated. From what I could gather online, I know he died from tuberculosis at around the age of 17 in either 1828 or 1829. Another thing that I'd be very interested in knowing is the role Lyncoya played in his father's second Presidential campaign throughout 1828 before his death. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q1ogr/what_is_the_story_behind_president_andrew/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd8o5fg"], "score": [6], "text": ["While there is not a great amount of information available on Lyncoya Jackson it is thought he was born sometime around 1811 and was found found as an infant after the Battle of Talladega in November of 1813 near his deceased mother.  Jackson decided to adopted this child and provided him educational opportunities similar to Jackson's biological son.  Apparently Jackson was grooming Lyncoya to enter West Point, but did not pursue that idea based on political considerations.  Lyncoya became a saddle maker and as mentioned died around 17 years of age.  Although there is no known direct information it is unlikely Lyncoya sired any children. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3wn2i4", "title": "why have governments, particularly in western europe such as in the uk, stopped using the term isil (until recently the uk govs preferred term) and suddenly switched to using daesh?", "selftext": "I think that by changing terms for seemingly inexplicable reason could help create a confused message.\n\nI've not seen any explanation of this change and wondered if anyone knew why.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wn2i4/eli5_why_have_governments_particularly_in_western/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxxfd59", "cxxfn35", "cxxfqr7", "cxxg7zj", "cxxh7ya", "cxxiu69", "cxxlost", "cxxlsa1", "cxxntmv", "cxxsnj5", "cxxuhru", "cxxxzmk"], "score": [9, 130, 10, 13, 4, 5, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Not an expert, but I think ISIL was more of a validation of their proclaimed state.. so for example the BBC always referred to them as \"so called islamic state\"..  Daesh is more of name which they hate being called.. i guess it is more accurate. Plus I think their were dozens of petitions to force news groups to change the name.. some may have succeeded", "\"Islamic State\", or other terms including that, is what they want to be called. It implies they are both Islamic and a state.\n\nThe UK government does not acknowledge them as a state. And they also want to push the idea that they are not really Islamic, to stop people jumping to the conclusion that all Muslims are like them.\n\nDaesh was created as a derogatory term for them which doesn't acknowledge them as a state or Islamic (at least not in English).", "\"Daesh\" is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, same as ISIS in English. Semantically they're the same. However, Daesh has unpleasant connotations in Arabic; it sounds like another word that means something like \"sower of discord\", so the ISIS jayvee league tortures anyone they hear using it.\n\nIn other words, European governments are using the term Daesh out of the hopes that it will get them angry. I don't particularly see this as a good thing. Are we trying to piss them off and encourage more terrorist attacks?\n\nsource _URL_0_", "It is in part support for Muslims worldwide who want to disavow IS as being un-Islamic.\n\nIn part a misguided politically correct attempt to not alienate/otherise those muslims by lumping them in with a terrorist group.\n\nAnd in part because there is an alternative name that achieves those basic aims while also being a pun that they absolutely hate(Daesh sounds similar to two words, both of which have bad meanings: \"one who tramples/crushes\", \"one who sows discord\").", "The most simple answer is that Daesh is the nigger of Islamic extremists.  Spin it however you want, but that's the bottom line.\n\nIt is a word created/intended to insult and reduce individual meaning.  \n\nPersonally, I think it's nonsensical.  Islamic extremism is a real thing, I don't need a government or anyone else to hold my hand through the valley of political correctness because we don't want to send the message that not all Muslims are extremists.\n\nOf course they aren't.  This is nothing new, be it Muslims or any other group of people.  The incessant need to create a distinction, in my mind, has the end result of clouding the conversation altogether.  There will always be morons who think and spout, \"all Muslims are terrorists!\" and really, who cares about those people?  No one.  They are not in positions of power and, as the world and indeed Western societies age and evolve, these types of people will be eventually so few in numbers that they will be irrelevant to any discussion and their absurdity will be obvious to all.  They will probably even garner, \"oh you poor thing\" type dispositions towards them by the rest of society.", "If the article I read on _URL_1_ to do with the CystISIS magazine is anything to go by, then they don't actually really care at all about what they are called. For some reason or the other, people are under the impression that using a term like Daesh is going to upset them and that they hate it.\n\nSee section #6 in this article - [_URL_0_ article](http://www._URL_1_/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/)\n\n > Daesh is an acronym for the original name ISIS fought under before declaring their \"caliphate\" (a formal religious-led Islamic state) and, so the argument goes, they just hate it when you call them that. But from what I can tell, ISIS doesn't seem to care much about that themselves. On Page 38 of Issue 4, they note that some Westerners call them Daesh matter-of-factly, without seeming to care much about it either way. It's never brought up again and barely comes off as an annoyance within the context of the article.\n\n", "I work in North Iraq. DAESH have threatened to cut out the tounge of anyone they hear calling them DAESH,why? Basically DAESH translated can mean a number of things of which one could be your a DICK! They don't like this and so they placed the threat. So it's insulting and disrespecting them,a bit like insulting the Koran which not only they but all Muslims dislike except the fanatics go to town over this proven by their combat styled assaults on defenseless civilians especially the French (banning the berka/cartoons about Mohammed etc,etc) So heads of state are insulting them in a diplomatic manner.\nNot in depth I know but a basic mans explanation.", "For the acronym 'ISIS' there was also a campaign by girls with that name who've received abuse due to their name. Along with the inclusion of 'Islamic State' in the name and the validation this gives to their claim, it was decided by many that it's better to use the more insulting name of 'Daesh'.\nNot sure if allowed under the rules (didn't find anything to suggest it's not) but this is the petition that was started over it:\n_URL_0_", "We're putting too much thought into this.  We should just call them GFC for Goat Fucker Club.", "\"Daesh\" sounds close to \"daes\" meaning \"one who crushes something underfoot\" it also sounds like \"dahes\" meaning \"one who sows discord\"", "I feel like it is more offensive to a monotheist extremist group to refer to them as ISIS, a polytheistic female deity.", "Because MPs want to moralise and look like they are doing something.  Isis gives little shits whether it is called Daesh or Isis or isil.  This has come about because some media commentators thought they were clever and wanted to signal virtue. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#Current_name"], [], [], ["Cracked.com", "cracked.com", "http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/"], [], ["http://www.thepetitionsite.com/en-gb/takeaction/767/932/805/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hmt6a", "title": "Is there any technology utilizing the strong and/or weak forces?", "selftext": "Pretty much every technology I can think of(except maybe nuclear bomb or nuclear power) rely on electro-magnetic and/or gravity to work.  Is there any that uses the strong and/or weak forces?  If not, could you conceive of one?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hmt6a/is_there_any_technology_utilizing_the_strong/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1wn5sz", "c1wn9aq", "c1wngws", "c1wosre"], "score": [7, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Household smoke detectors depend on the weak interaction.", "Radiation therapy often uses beta-decaying nuclei (weak force).", "I can only think of three categories of technologies that currently use the strong/weak forces:\n\n1. Nuclear power/weaponry\n2. Things that use radioactive decay in some way\n3. Things that use the structure/existence/interactions of nucleons/a nucleus.\n\nThe last category is a bit nebulous, I suppose, since it technically would encompass all of chemistry, and possibly all of everything.  Protons, neutrons, and the nuclei they form all exist because of the strong, weak, and EM forces... so if you want, you could label anything a use of those forces.\n\nThere are some more unique applications in the latter category, though, like using neutrons for [diffraction experiments](_URL_0_) to investigate the structure and properties of new materials.  Since the neutrons are electrically neutral, you're getting strong and weak force interactions (mostly weak) in those experiments.  ", "PET scans! As mentioned in other posts, it's radioactive decay (though since we detect photons in PET scans I suppose you can make an E & M argument too)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_diffraction"], []]}
{"q_id": "5gicnb", "title": "why do very high resolution images/videos look \"sharper\" than reality ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gicnb/eli5_why_do_very_high_resolution_imagesvideos/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dasgpfg", "dasgpm7", "dash2fm", "dasiwka", "daslzts", "dat1iaa", "dat1l4h", "dat3tq1", "dat5j1a"], "score": [85, 9, 7, 3, 15, 3, 12, 3, 2], "text": ["Reality is moving all the time.  Your eyes can only handle so much resolution and your brain can only process so much at once, but with a high res picture you have a frozen image that you can study up close, so it looks razor sharp.", "Usually because everything's in focus, IRL your brain cuts out a ton of the signal from your eyes. If you had a way of making the image take up your entire field of vision it'd probably be less noticeable", "It's has to do with HDR (High Dynamic Range), also known as Contrast (between pixels / colors).\n\nThose picture have an higher contrast compared to reality. Yes, that 4k landscape video actually is not that colorful in real life.", "The image processing electronics actually *do* adjust the image to give things sharper contrast (especially at the edges) compared to real life. You're not mistaken.", "Or its possible that you are near sighted like i was as a kid. Even normal 90's tv looked amazing compared to real life because it was all in focus if you stand the right distance from it.", "A lot of pictures and landscapes use a technique called High Dynamic range, where they combine several photos shot at different exposures to captures different details, then combine all these photos, only taking the parts that are properly exposed. \n\nFor instance weve all been blinded by the sun and unable to see an object, well a digital camera can focus and take a clear photo of the sun but the object  is  not properly exposed and looks terrible, or it can focus and take a clear photo of the object but the sun isn't expose properly. Using Photoshop, you could combine these two images and get a single photo where the object and sun are properly exposed even tho we could never really see it like that in real life. ", "i'll just add in: why do 60FPS Videos look more fluid than real life?", "Pick up your phone, put it one foot away from your face and stare at the screen. You can see the phone perfectly fine but all the stuff behind it looks blurry unless you purposely stare at it. This occurs because the eyes will focus on whatever you are paying more attention to. In a movie, the entire picture looks sharp which isn't what would happen if you were there in person.", "Digital images have a range of detail greater than the eye can observe. The traditional gray scale used in traditional photography has a 14 steps the eye can perceive individually. A digital gradation involved in high resolution images on the other hand has so many values the eye cannot perceive as individual steps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2kvv38", "title": "What was the reaction to the rise of Unitarianism and Universalism in New England?", "selftext": "Unitarian and Universalist beliefs are quite different from some more traditional Christian beliefs. How did the more traditional people in New England react to these movements during their introduction and rise? I've never heard anything about this topic, really, but I imagine there must have been some tension, at least.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kvv38/what_was_the_reaction_to_the_rise_of_unitarianism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clptqgz"], "score": [3], "text": ["I can speak to the conflict between Congregationalists and Unitarians, at least. I'm aware of a substantial amount of tension between Methodist missionaries like Peter Cartwright and Universalist groups on the early 19th century \"frontier\" (Ohio at the time), but doesn't quite get to your question. The Unitarians and Universalists didn't merge until 1961, but perhaps there were some other Congregational-Universalist conflicts that I'm not aware of.\n\nIf you go to Cambridge, Massachusetts you'll see a pattern that's repeated in many other New England towns. First Parish in Cambridge is just across the street from Harvard Yard, and First Church in Cambridge is a few blocks away from the town center. Obviously the question is which is the real first church. \n\nThe answer goes back to a court case in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1818. But some background first: according to its members, the first Unitarian church in the United States was King's Chapel in Boston. That was a bit of an outlier in the Unitarian movement, however, as the Unitarian leanings of the church were more closely connected to one pastor's personal revelation than a broader movement. The real Unitarian moment in New England didn't come until the early 19th century. Charismatic Unitarian preachers claimed that an academic reading of scripture led to the inevitable conclusion that God was a unity rather than a trinity (in addition to a collection of other conclusions), and the message spread rapidly. You can take a look at William Ellery Channing's [Baltimore Sermon](_URL_1_) if you're interested in what sort of message these ministers were spreading at the time.\n\nUnitarian converts started to take over Congregationalist institutions. Traditionalists panicked as a Unitarian was appointed to Harvard's Hollis professorship in 1805 -- which led directly to the founding of Harvard Divinity School. HDS became Harvard's first independent graduate school specifically because university leaders wanted to reassure traditional Congregationalists that their sons could still receive an undergraduate education untainted by Unitarian ideas -- which would be confined to the Divinity School slightly off campus. Still, many parents opted to send their children to Yale instead, which retained its status as a bastion of old-style New England Congregationalism.\n\nThat institutional takeover went down to the church level as well, which brings us back to the churches by Harvard Yard. Congregational churches were largely independent from one another without any larger governing hierarchy. Ministers were chosen by parishes (everyone who lived in town). Therefore, when a sufficient number of a townspeople turned Unitarian they then had the power to elect a Unitarian minister -- regardless of the wishes of the church's actual members. Obviously, that led to some conflict. \n\nIn 1818, when the people of Dedham elected a Unitarian minister for the town's church, its Orthodox members protested by taking up all of the church's documents and valuables elsewhere. They insisted that they alone had the right to decide the leadership of their church, despite the fact that the church was supported with public funds. There were further arguments and trials, which there's a bit more on [here](_URL_0_). But the upshot is that the Unitarians won and the traditionalists had to leave and start their own church.\n\nSo First Parish in Cambridge is Unitarian -- the original church taken over by the Unitarian townspeople in the early 19th century. First Church is Congregationalist -- the traditionalists who split away and moved down the road. Of course, there were impassioned theological debates taking place alongside all this, but that's a subject for another post."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop9/workshopplan/stories/178594.shtml", "http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN212/unitarian.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3i1jxi", "title": "Why did France sink the Rainbow Warrior?", "selftext": "I've read several books about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, and seen a documentary about it, but none of the above said WHY France did it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i1jxi/why_did_france_sink_the_rainbow_warrior/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucjoig", "cucnsh5"], "score": [77, 4], "text": ["The goal was simply to stop the vessel from completing its planned 1985 trip to Moruroa to protest/stop the testing of French nuclear weapons.  The tests were seen as vital to French national security and the only way to remain independent of US or USSR influence.\n\nThe bombing of the Rainbow Warrior only sounds shocking if we do not take into account the full history of French interference of groups who might oppose their nuclear testing pattern. France was very concerned about the activities of Greenpeace- they had agents infiltrate the group.  They had worked hard to mute any opposition to testing from within French Polynesia, manufacturing a case to exile autonomy/independence minded leader Pouvanaa a Oopa until he accepted nuclear testing.\n\nThe whole thing was bizarre; so I can see why you are still asking why even after reading/learning about it.  The affair, which landed several French agents in a New Zealand jail for some time, ended up far more embarrassing for France than if they had just allowed Greenpeace to attempt to interfere with the testing.  More protesters ended up coming than might have otherwise been inclined and Greenpeace sent a greater part of their own resources attempting to disrupt the French testing after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in harbor.\n\nFyi, for those who don't know about this event: Metaphorically, one of the biggest bombs France detonated in the Pacific was the bomb secretly attached to the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior.  French agents set several explosives on the ship in an effort to keep it from interfering with upcoming French nuclear tests at Moruroa.  The bombing was scandalous, and immediately suspicious.  While terrorism is not new, nor new to the Pacific; the bombing of a peace ship in neutral and nuclear-free New Zealand was startling.  French agents were sent on a bizarrely complex mission, posing as tourist divers and swiss holiday seekers in order to penetrate New Zealand.  Their French accents and spending habits gave them away when locals searched for culprits after the bombing.  The agents were careless, not hiding their activities very well and leaving behind a trail of evidence afterwards that made the whole venture painfully obvious; though hard to believe that France would bomb a peace ship in the harbor of an ally.\n\nThis was not the only crazy political move France made in the 80's- so like I said, we shouldn't see it in a vacuum.  Between 1975-80, France was responsible for instigating secessionist movements against the new government in Vanuatu.  In 1986-87 France was condemned by the South Pacific Forum and the UN for its actions in New Caledonia hostage crisis- hostages had been taken by Kanak independence activists, French special forces stormed the cave on Ouv\u00e9a where they were being held resulting in 20 deaths- the whole thing was pretty brutal with serious allegations that France had executed some of the hostage takers on the spot (the whole affair is part of a longer cycle of government violence in New Caledonia).  In 1987 France offered aid to Fiji immediately after a coup when New Zealand and Australia had withdrawn foreign aid- French support for a military coup was not seen very favorable by other Pacific powers.  The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was just one in a long line of political missteps that damaged French influence in the region in the ensuing decades.", "In addition to the other posts, the Rainbow Worrier would have acted as a \"Mother ship\" to many of the smaller yachts so allowing them to stay on site for longer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "433yve", "title": "why is it cheaper to build your own computer than buying it pre-built, but more expensive to build your own car than buying it pre-built?", "selftext": "Aside from the difficulty of building the car, car parts are super expensive. I always wondered why buying the parts separately are more expensive than just buying it from a dealership.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/433yve/eli5why_is_it_cheaper_to_build_your_own_computer/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czf8kvn", "czf9jzi", "czf9y3n", "czfc613", "czfu9y3"], "score": [21, 17, 16, 3, 2], "text": ["Car parts aren't mass produced for outside retail. Computer parts are. Thats really why.\n\nIntel makes a ton of processors. It doesnt make a difference if you buy one or dell buys thousands. The processors the same. In This way you can get a similar deal to what they can and not have to deal with their markup for profit.", "Computer parts are universal sizes/cross compatible. A Dell uses Intel chips and WD hard drives, and so does a Lenovo. Or they may use both use Seagate drives -- because they are standardized in terms of size to fit. More competition means better pricing. Or you can buy a generic case and add the Intel chip, WD, Seagate, or other drive yourself knowing they'll work because components are standardized.\n\nConversely, a ford engine won't fit into Chevrolet chassis, and a Toyota seat won't work with a Hyundai so you are tied to a particular maker once you have a frame/chassis. Fewer options, higher margins and profits for those selling those items.", "In some instances, building a computer may not be cheaper then buying a prebuilt from a company like Dell or whatnot. LinusTechTips recently put up a video stating just that.\n\nBut yea, just like other people have stated, PC parts are mass produced for retail purchase.", "Putting together a car is much, much more difficult, requires way more work and way more knowledge than putting together a computer.  If you fuck up the computer and put it together wrong, your computer doesn't work.  If you put the car together wrong, you could kill yourself and others.", "I see you checked it as answered but, I feel that no one really answered your question correctly. As I read your question what you are really asking is \n\n > Why can I buy the parts to make a computer for cheaper than I can buy a computer, while buying all the parts to make a car would cost more than than just buying the car already made?\n\nIf this is so then I think a better answer than you have been given is\n\n-\n\nCar parts are heavy and bulky and thus the cost of retail distribution and storage makes up a much larger percentage of the retail cost than for computer parts.  Thus, say, while the markup between wholesale (for the manufacturer) and retail (for you) might only be 2x for computer parts where it would be much larger for car parts.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1si524", "title": "How is it that a seismograph can be sensitive enough to detect activity on the other side of the planet but isn't inundated with background noise? (e.g. the seismologist moving his chair 10 feet away)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1si524/how_is_it_that_a_seismograph_can_be_sensitive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdy5q15"], "score": [12], "text": ["Seismometers do indeed get a lot of background noise. It should also be noted that seismometers do not detect every earthquake that occurs elsewhere on the planet - they can only identify earthquakes when the signal intensity is above the local noise.\n\nNow, on the whole seismometers are placed as far from noise sources as possible, but the department I used to work in had one, and they were within 100 m of a busy main road, less than a mile from one of the busiest stretches of motorway in Europe, and less than 4 miles from the 3rd busiest airport in the world. It would detect people walking along corridors, vehicles going past, and aircraft taking off. However, it was still sensitivite enough to record low magnitude ( < M4) earthquakes within maybe 500 miles, and (very clearly!) detected stuff like the Honshu earthquake. Anything bigger than about an M7 globally it would be able to detect.\n\nAn important factor in all of this is that earthquakes produce very specifically shaped signals at very low frequencies. These are very different to the signal you get from people walking, vehicles passing and so on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ishwm", "title": "Suppose you're an English Lord living around 1110 to 1120, how often would you actually eat one of those giant lavish multi-course feasts that people tend to dwell on when they talk about medieval dinning?", "selftext": "Was it everyday or just for special events, or was it like the equivalent of Sunday diner, regular but not every meal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ishwm/suppose_youre_an_english_lord_living_around_1110/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d315ywm"], "score": [54], "text": ["I'd just like to say, you give a tiny timeframe. Any reason for this?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6e7vek", "title": "Why do electrical oil radiators have oil in them, rather than heating the air directly?", "selftext": "I know the oil circulates and convects heat inside.  Wouldn't air do the same?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6e7vek/why_do_electrical_oil_radiators_have_oil_in_them/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di9fjox"], "score": [3], "text": ["Air is a pretty good insulator. That's why things like down blankets work: they trap air inside which prevents the heat from conducting away from you. Similarly, the reason why a breeze feels so good on a hot day is because your skin heats up a layer of hot air which is held close to your body by body hair and this layer of heated air acts as an insulator and slows the continued escape of heat. The breeze removes this layer and passes cool air over your skin which allows for increased heat transfer.\n\nOil, on the other hand, is a good thermal conductor allows the heat to better conduct to the exterior of the radiator where it can heat the room."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2crtvu", "title": "What was the colour of the hair of Ramses II? And the race of the egyptians? Were they black, or semitic or what?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2crtvu/what_was_the_colour_of_the_hair_of_ramses_ii_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjieb93", "cjije5g", "cjj69jp"], "score": [50, 29, 3], "text": ["\"Semitic\" is not a race, it's a linguistic group. A blonde haired, blue eyed Syrian is a Semite just like a tan Egyptian or a jet black Sudanese woman (provided they all speak Arabic or a more obscure Semitic language). Ancient Egyptian wasn't a Semitic language but it was in the same family (Afroasiatic) and it certainly influenced modern Semitic languages, at least in the Nile region.\n\nRace generally is a problematic concept to use when talking about pre-modern history because many people have had no concept of race, or a much different one than ours. Luckily, with the Egyptians we have [a lot of art made by Egyptians which seems to depict them very realistically](_URL_0_)\n\nAs you can see, ancient Egyptians broadly resembled modern Egyptians and most other Arabs. While you can find depictions of white and black people, most people depicted are neither strictly speaking black or white, but tan.", "Later Pharaohs are definitely white because of the Ptolemaic dynasty from Macedonian extract.\n\nHowever, genetic testing on native Egyptian pharaohs has shown diverse results: For example, Ramesses III is part of [Haplotype E1b1a](_URL_3_) which today is most common amongst the ethnic groups of Ethiopia and East Africa, yet Tutankhamun (aka Tut) is [R1b](_URL_0_ which is a very European group.\n\nEDIT: Also, they were not [Semitic](_URL_2_) who were a distantly related group within the same [family](_URL_1_).  \n", "hi! this question is oddly common here. You may find additional info in these posts:\n\n[What race were the ancient egyptians? In the media the portrayal of their skin colour and facial features often differs.](_URL_4_)\n\n\n[Would the people of ancient Egypt be considered proto-Greek or are does that time period pre-date any sort of Greek race?](_URL_5_)\n\n[Were black people the ruling class in ancient Egypt?](_URL_2_)\n\n[Was Cleopatra VII black?](_URL_10_)\n\n[How are ancient peoples different from their modern successors? Modern Egyptians-Ancient Egyptians, Italians-Romans, Persians-Iranians ect.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Racism in the ancient world?](_URL_6_)\n\n[What skin color did Ancient Egyptians have?](_URL_3_)\n\n[Did Ancient Egyptians have black skin?](_URL_7_)\n\n[What was the racial composition of Ancient Egypt?](_URL_9_)\n\n[What was the primary ethnic or racial group in Ancient Egypt?](_URL_8_)\n\n[what race/ethnicity were the ancient egyptians?](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.google.com.eg/search?q=ancient+egyptian+art&amp;es_sm=93&amp;tbm=isch&amp;imgil=5WOMWIUZ5k8LbM%253A%253BijBiPPVWYBJ8SM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com%25252F2011%25252F03%25252Fancient-egypt.html&amp;source=iu&amp;usg=__RLeTRuJvqxoTXD3n5oNCyegvkxc%3D&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=8ATiU62aOYO57AbsyYDQCw&amp;ved=0CB4Q9QEwAA&amp;biw=1242&amp;bih=606#facrc=_&amp;imgdii=_&amp;imgrc=5WOMWIUZ5k8LbM%253A%3BijBiPPVWYBJ8SM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F4.bp.blogspot.com%252F-YvTnKULH_GI%252FTWjJdCNgQJI%252FAAAAAAAADgE%252FYKCK6HI-cAg%252Fs640%252FAncient%252BEgypt%252B-%252B%2525252854%25252529.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com%252F2011%252F03%252Fancient-egypt.html%3B450%3B300"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages", "http://ethiohelix.blogspot.com/2012/12/ramesses-iii-belonged-to-ydna.html"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19f8cm/how_are_ancient_peoples_different_from_their/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ax5ph/what_raceethnicity_were_the_ancient_egyptians/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/udq1z/were_black_people_the_ruling_class_in_ancient/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dclp1/what_skin_color_did_ancient_egyptians_have/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uc8n6/what_race_were_the_ancient_egyptians_in_the_media/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ua2dg/would_the_people_of_ancient_egypt_be_considered/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17r3o2/racism_in_the_ancient_world/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1px0og/did_ancient_egyptians_have_black_skin/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f9sxa/what_was_the_primary_ethnic_or_racial_group_in/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n1p0q/what_was_the_racial_composition_of_ancient_egypt/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u28mh/was_cleopatra_vii_black/"]]}
{"q_id": "nuceb", "title": "different hair products (mousse, gel, etc.) and what each is good at doing", "selftext": "I know about gel, but there're even subcategories of that! How does pomade work, or mousse, or spritz, or any of it? Thanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nuceb/eli5_different_hair_products_mousse_gel_etc_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3c0gyw", "c3c24zp", "c3c26bv", "c3c0gyw", "c3c24zp", "c3c26bv"], "score": [9, 23, 7, 9, 23, 7], "text": ["(this is purely my opinion as a heterosexual male)\n\n- Mousse seems to work best to really hold the hair in one direction, its kinda like pasting your hair (but it washes out at the end of the night). imo at a distance it looks hard/reflective/plasticy\n- Gel does ok in terms of strength, its doesn't work as well as mousse, but it isn't as visible. The main downside is if you sweat, it will drip down your face\n- Wax is probably my favourite, its neither as effective as the two above, but it holds reasonably well, and is the least visible. Also, when you sweat, it doesn't go everywhere.\n\nmowhawk - mousse\n\nSki jump - gel\n\nStyled - wax\n\ni have nfi what the rest of that stuff is", "Here's the really tough part, depending on your hair type, different products do different things.  For me:\n\nMousse:  make your hair big\n\nGel:  sticks your hair in place (think *There's Something About Mary*)\n\nHairspray:  sticks your hair in place, but doesn't make it look like cement, like gel can do (and thus, doesn't hold as well)\n\nPommade:  gives your hair \"texture,\" makes it less smooth and holds it in place a little more  _URL_0_  (in a pinch you can substitute Vaseline and it works the same)\n\nWax:  depending on the brand, the same as pommade, or thicker for heavier hair\n\nLeave-in conditioner:  detangles, sometimes adds volume\n\nSerum:  usually calms frizz, can also add shine\n\nOil:  usually used to combat dry scalp, less often to add shine\n\nPeanut butter:  removes gum from hair\n\nMayonnaise:  adds shine, useful way to use up that impulse purchase from Costco", "Mousse works best actually to keep your hair down, but still curly and voluptuous. You'll see some people use so much that their hair looks wet, but I've always thought that it works best to maintain a messy look without your hair looking like you're put a lot of product in it.\n\nHairspray is for setting your hair, and is often used with other products. I believe that spritz is a type of hairspray that mainly refers to the way it sprays out of the bottle, in 'spritz' rather than a continuous spray.\n\nGel is for more long lasting or extreme hairstyles, like a mowhawk. Once it is dry, your hair will have to be washed or rinsed to restyle.\n\nPomade, when used for more subtle styles, should be used in small amounts and only as a way to add more texture. When used for more extreme styles, pomade allows for a ridiculous amount of control, and can be fixed throughout the day.\n\nI'm not exactly 100% about how all these are used professionally, but that's how I've always used these.\n", "(this is purely my opinion as a heterosexual male)\n\n- Mousse seems to work best to really hold the hair in one direction, its kinda like pasting your hair (but it washes out at the end of the night). imo at a distance it looks hard/reflective/plasticy\n- Gel does ok in terms of strength, its doesn't work as well as mousse, but it isn't as visible. The main downside is if you sweat, it will drip down your face\n- Wax is probably my favourite, its neither as effective as the two above, but it holds reasonably well, and is the least visible. Also, when you sweat, it doesn't go everywhere.\n\nmowhawk - mousse\n\nSki jump - gel\n\nStyled - wax\n\ni have nfi what the rest of that stuff is", "Here's the really tough part, depending on your hair type, different products do different things.  For me:\n\nMousse:  make your hair big\n\nGel:  sticks your hair in place (think *There's Something About Mary*)\n\nHairspray:  sticks your hair in place, but doesn't make it look like cement, like gel can do (and thus, doesn't hold as well)\n\nPommade:  gives your hair \"texture,\" makes it less smooth and holds it in place a little more  _URL_0_  (in a pinch you can substitute Vaseline and it works the same)\n\nWax:  depending on the brand, the same as pommade, or thicker for heavier hair\n\nLeave-in conditioner:  detangles, sometimes adds volume\n\nSerum:  usually calms frizz, can also add shine\n\nOil:  usually used to combat dry scalp, less often to add shine\n\nPeanut butter:  removes gum from hair\n\nMayonnaise:  adds shine, useful way to use up that impulse purchase from Costco", "Mousse works best actually to keep your hair down, but still curly and voluptuous. You'll see some people use so much that their hair looks wet, but I've always thought that it works best to maintain a messy look without your hair looking like you're put a lot of product in it.\n\nHairspray is for setting your hair, and is often used with other products. I believe that spritz is a type of hairspray that mainly refers to the way it sprays out of the bottle, in 'spritz' rather than a continuous spray.\n\nGel is for more long lasting or extreme hairstyles, like a mowhawk. Once it is dry, your hair will have to be washed or rinsed to restyle.\n\nPomade, when used for more subtle styles, should be used in small amounts and only as a way to add more texture. When used for more extreme styles, pomade allows for a ridiculous amount of control, and can be fixed throughout the day.\n\nI'm not exactly 100% about how all these are used professionally, but that's how I've always used these.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://i.imgur.com/M8S9n.jpg"], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/M8S9n.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ji34o", "title": "how does the rear view mirror work after flipping it up at night?", "selftext": "Is it like a reflection of a reflection or something? Please explain! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ji34o/eli5_how_does_the_rear_view_mirror_work_after/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cupde44", "cupdfk6", "cupefns", "cupnwv7", "cupob31"], "score": [60, 6, 17, 3, 3], "text": ["The front surface of the mirror is glass, which is only slightly reflective and mostly transparent, while the back surface of the mirror is smooth metal which is highly reflective. The glass surface and metal surface are titled with respect to each other. Usually, you are looking at the strong reflection from the metal surface. When you adjust the mirror at night, you align the mirror so that you are now looking at the weak reflection from the glass surface and not the strong reflection from the metal. You need a weaker reflection at night because you need your eyes adjusted to low-light levels to see the streets, but the headlamps of the car behind you are very bright and will destroy your visual night-adaptation if you see a strong reflection of them. \n\nGlass always reflects a little bit of the light. If you look very closely at any standard metal-glass mirror, you will see two images slightly offset: the strong reflection from the metal and the weak reflection from the front surface of the glass.", "It's not just one mirror piece but a mirror behind an angled glass piece, when you flip it up the mirror points at the darker ceiling and the glass projects the image behind your car onto the mirror for viewing. ", "You can flip it up??? I'll be damned.", "What are we talking about? What do you mean by \"flipping it up\"? Are we talking about the mirror in the middle of the windshield?", "As others have mentioned, when it's \"down\" the reflection that you're seeing is from the silvery metal coating in the back of the mirror. This provides a normal reflection like you'd see looking in to, say, your bathroom mirror.  \n   \nWhen it's flipped \"up\", that silvery mirror part is facing upward, and the reflection you're seeing is the reflection from the glass that's in front of that silvery part. It's similar to seeing your reflection in a window at night. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ck9r6", "title": "On Roman Centurion Galea helmets, did the direction of the plume signify anything?", "selftext": "Some are [vertical](_URL_1_) , others are [horizontal](_URL_0_), and I was just wondering if there was a symbolic difference between the two, or if it was purely aesthetic?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ck9r6/on_roman_centurion_galea_helmets_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1jjkqi"], "score": [5], "text": ["Follow up questions:\n\nDid the colour of the plume (red, blue, yellow, black...) meant something?\n\nWhat was the penalty if it were dirtied/damaged outside of combat?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/u5hvFY7.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/ggOftyO.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8uyry6", "title": "What is the most potent non-opioid painkiller?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8uyry6/what_is_the_most_potent_nonopioid_painkiller/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1ld5yq"], "score": [6], "text": ["It depends. (I wish the answer was more clear-cut but there are examples why this is not the case)\n\nA person suffering from neuralgia may find moderate to no relief from NSAIDs, opioids, or acetaminophen; rather be better treated by an antiepileptic such as gabapentin or pregablin. \n\nA person suffering from postherpetic neuralgia of the skin may find topical lidocaine more potent than oral agents such as tramadol and/or ketorolac.\n\nA person with a migraines episode may find triptans more potent than other painkillers.\n\nSo, there isn't a definitive \"one-pill fits all\" type of painkiller out there. Hence, the most potent painkiller depends on the type of pain being treated.\n\nFor NSAIDs - ketorolac is the most potent drug of this class but is associated with a high risk of side effects, hence the reason why it cannot be used for longer than 5 days. \\[1\\] It is available in the U.S. \n\n\\[1\\] [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda\\_docs/label/2013/019645s019lbl.pdf", "https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/019645s019lbl.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1yfkj1", "title": "why does the cost of a hard drive increase with capacity? are there actual material costs or are we putting a price tag on a virtual concept? what is the history here?", "selftext": "My google search only prompted specific news regarding events that impacted shipping and therefore rose the price of hard-drives. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yfkj1/eli5_why_does_the_cost_of_a_hard_drive_increase/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfk1rey", "cfk2gw0", "cfk3pax", "cfk5s47", "cfk6h4k", "cfk7182", "cfk9noq", "cfka1hc", "cfkb8jq", "cfkdn13"], "score": [19, 10, 178, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 7], "text": ["Yes there are also actual material costs, but mostly it's because the data on a hard drive has to be organized by controller electronics, and the more data is there to manage, the more complex that controller has to be.\n\nEDIT: because the reply to this was buried, but it did make me bring up this point: Apart from the electronics, if you want to double the capacity of a hard drive, you need either double the medium to store the data on or store the data at double density, requiring more expensive read/write hardware.", "Additionally there are R & D costs and investment that went to the production of that hard drive. Actually same is true for all high tech stuff.", "I'm assuming you're asking something like: Why does a 3TB drive cost more than a 2TB drive and the answer is yes, there are material costs involved. First take into consideration what a hard drive is made of:\n\n* Enclosure (the casing)\n* Controller (that green thingy on the bottom)\n* Drive Platters (basically shiny discs that actually store your data)\n* Drive Head  &  Etc (How the drive is read)\n\nThe enclosure and drive head are pretty unimportant in this argument since they rarely change between drive types. What increases the cost is usually in the controller and the drive platters. \n\nLet's start with platters. Each platter has a certain physical capacity. Say for example you can fit 1GB of data onto a platter -- It would take 1000 of these to be able to store 1TB -- there's no physical way you could fit 1000 of these into a hard drive (which has certain height, length, width restrictions). So, you'll need to engineer some way to fit more space on a platter. You spend $$$ on research and development and finally (years later) you figure out how to get a whopping 250GB per platter. Now you can take 4 of these put them together to get 1TB. But ... you just spent a fortune figuring out how to store more data on these platters. So how do you recoup your costs? Make the price higher -- the high price reflects the huge investment made in figuring out how to make the drive in the first place. This is also why the price decreases as times goes by. The technology is mostly established for that drive, there's no more costs involved other than production (and occasional maintenance). \n\nNow, on to the controller. The controller, as the name might imply, controls how the data is read or written to the drive; it's the interface for your computer to talk to a hard drive. Imagine you spend very little on making a controller. All it does is blindly read and write data -- there's no error checking. So if by some weird mishap data becomes corrupt, it won't bother telling you or even noticing. Sounds like a pretty shitty drive, right? Well, that's why a lot of work goes into making more robust controllers that are catered to the drive. A specific hard drive model will probably have a completely custom controller that cannot be swapped with the controller for a different hard drive model. And this, again, goes back to the R & D in making said controller. \n\nAfter those factors, there's also supply and demand to take into consideration. Spinny drives on the smaller side have a smaller amount of demand, so supply is usually limited which drives the price up a bit. So the price per GB is usually higher than larger sized drives.", "It's a combination of technology and market. Higher density devices cost more to manufacture. That's true for every device. Smaller parts, tighter tolerances, higher quality control, etc.\n\nBut market costs come into play, too. The top of the line leading edge technology will be sold in smaller numbers and the price will be high. Limited competition, sales, etc. That would be the high-capacity drives.\n\nOnce they've been out for awhile, the prices drop. Stores now have them in stock and want to move them out. Price is constantly dropping, so stores want to move their inventory before they lose profits.\n\nWhat's interesting is that the curve of cost (per MB) vs capacity has an \"elbow\" to it. The highest capacity (highest density) drives make up a sharp increase in price per MB. The LOWEST capacity drives, strangely, ALSO make up an increased price per MB. That's because those drives reached a minimum price and stores stopped discounting them. They may have even stopped stocking them.\n\nWhen buying a drive, you likely want to pick the saddle of that cost-per-MB curve. You want a drive that has a high enough density that the cost per MB is low, but not so high that you pay the premium for top-of-the-line new technology. ", "For drives that are relatively close in size it doesn't have anything to do with material cost as they are all the same. Manufacturing things like hard drives in a consistent manner is rather difficult. To deal with this the factories build all one size drive, lets say 5TB. After they are built they run them through a set of tests. Some drives will reliably spin faster than others so they get a 7200 RPM rating. The slower ones get a 5400 RPM rating. Some will have 4TB of usable space and some will only have 1TB. What the drive ends up being sold as just depends on how it tests and what firmware is written to it. Drives that may meet requirements but not very well are sent to Walmart.\n\nThe same thing happens with computer processors. They sell 3 core processors but that is just so they can do something with the 4 core ones they make that have a core that doesn't work so well. ", "One simple reason is hard drives often have a different number of [platers and heads](_URL_0_) inside (you can see them better in [this image](_URL_1_) stacked one on top of the other)\n\nIf a single platter can hold 1TB, then you may find a 1TB drive has just 1 platter, a 2TB drive has 2 platters and a 3TB drive has 3 platters etc.\n\nAlternatively a 1TB drive may have 2 500GB platters because 500GB platters don't have to be as precise and can be made cheaply, or they have a lot of old 500GB platters they want to use up.", "I bring up the same scenario with motorcycles. A 250cc motorcycle can cost thousands more than a 125cc motorcycle, even though only a few minor things in the engine are different. The manufacturing process of these bikes are identical. You may even say that the 250cc should be less expensive since they outsell them 2:1. ", "Why something costs X can be summed up in three words: Demand and Supply\n\nSince the supply side has been covered below, I'll talk about demand. Demand in economics shows how much people in economics are willing to pay for something. How much they are willing to pay for something depends upon the size of the benefit they can get from that something. Since people can get more benefit from a 1TB hard-drive, than say a 500GB one, they are willing to pay more for them, and therefore, the 1TB hard drive will cost more.", "Let's say we compare a 128gb and 256gb solid state drive. Besides R & D is there that much of a difference in manufacturing cost?", "Virtual concept? It's hardware! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/bNGffsO.gif", "http://i.imgur.com/wlJ4TgT.jpg"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3qba9h", "title": "What were the religious practices in pre-Christian Scotland?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qba9h/what_were_the_religious_practices_in_prechristian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cweg9ck"], "score": [3], "text": ["Can't attest to Scotland, though Iron Age burial custom in the north of Ireland - which was culturally very similar to Scotland, with migration and religious ideologies moving in a two-way process - was for cremation, and there was probably some excarnation as well.\n\nDruidism was popular in Ireland, if the early Christian monk's writing is anything to go by. Votive offerings were made, possibly to propitiate the gods and ensure the continued fertility of the soil. Druids would have worked as intermediaries between the spirit world and reality, and peasants would have been terrified of offending the gods.\n\nThere was certainly a belief in life after death, and if the stone circles and henges are anything to go, sun worship was a part of the cultural package.\n\nIrish culture became more ingrained in Scotland as time went on, and we really don't know much about the Picts, but if you believe that they were a Celtic society - which is prevailing theory - then they would have had gods similar to Dagda, Morrigan, and the 'Dis Pater' that the Romans claimed the Gauls worshipped.\n\nAs the Iron Age progressed, and the influence of Roman and Romano-British settlement was felt, inhumation became more popular.\n\nGood sources on this would incude Colin Renfrew and Barry Raftery, whose *Pagan Celtic Ireland* I've drawn on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "11wgxb", "title": "If you could pressure cook food in water at 190\u00b0C, would it have the same effect as deep frying in oil at the same temperature?", "selftext": "Not sure whether this is best placed in /r/askscience, /r/askreddit or /r/cooking but here goes.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11wgxb/if_you_could_pressure_cook_food_in_water_at_190c/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6q72zg", "c6q74ww", "c6q7yks"], "score": [9, 6, 2], "text": ["No, the main reason to deep fat fry is to case the water inside of food to boil and escape, drying out the food while cooking it.  If you pressure cook you do not cause moisture to leave the food (you may actually force more water into the food).  That is desirable for some things, but you couldn't cook french fries in a pressure cooker, they would never get crispy.", "Part of the cooking mechanism in deep-frying is the water in the food flashing to steam when in contact with hot oil.  If you're pressure cooking in water at 190 deg C, then by definition you're preventing the water in the food from flashing into steam.\n\nYou might be interested in reading about [pressure-frying](_URL_0_).", "No, in fact you'd probably get the opposite result. Instead of a crispy little treat you'd just hydrolize, and thus solubilize everything. People use water at that kind of temperature/pressure to hydrolyze wood into its component sugars. What do you think would happen to your french fries?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_frying"], []]}
{"q_id": "2hzvm1", "title": "if our body is constantly producing new cells to replace old ones, why do we age?", "selftext": "If our body has all new cells after 7 years. Why does our body show signs of aging?\nWow! Thanks for the awesome insight. Definitely some interesting stuff here!", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hzvm1/eli5_if_our_body_is_constantly_producing_new/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxhsm0", "ckxi32t", "ckxicv6", "ckxlf0j", "ckxm7bx", "ckxn5lj", "ckxnf1l", "ckxqi37"], "score": [86, 4, 65, 8, 3, 2, 6, 3], "text": ["When you make a copy of a copy of a copy, you start to get errors. As you get more errors, you get older.", "Because of the way that those new cells are made. The simplest way to describe it is to think of what happens to a piece of paper if you make a photocopy of something, then take the photocopy of that and photocopy it again. Over and over again you take the new photocopy and when you want another copy you make a copy of a copy. The image quality is going to get worse and worse, with it harder to make out certain things on the paper.\n\nEventually it will be unreadable. Then you die.", "The accepted theory at the moment is telomeres.  \n\nWhen your DNA  is copied you lose a tiny bit off the end due to the chemical nature of DNA replication.  To prevent you losing anything important there are long segments of DNA that do not code \"traditional\" information (called telomeres) that will be lost instead. You can think of telomeres as a DNA clock, when they run out your cells won't naturally divide anymore. This is one cause of aging. ", "So at about what age have we completely replaced our body with new cells?", "Tissues in your body can be broadly divided into permanent, stable, and labile. Their regenerative capacity is dependent on which category they are in. \n\nPermanent tissues don't have significant regenerative capacity. If you have a myocardial infarction (a \"heart attack\") the heart muscle that is killed will scar and there will be no significant replacement of that killed muscle. If you kill neurons in your central nervous system, there will be scarring and little to no replacement (although interestingly this is not the case in the peripheral nervous system). \n\nStable tissues are tissues which can regenerate if they are injured (note: regenerate and repair are not synonymous; regeneration means the tissue is \"like new\", repair means scar formation). The classic example of this is the liver, which can regenerate almost completely if part of it is removed (for example liver transplantation works this way).\n\nLabile tissues are tissues that are constantly being replaced; these would be immune / blood cells, the cells lining your GI tract, urogenital tract, etc. These cells slough off and are repaired continuously throughout your life. ", "I know the female eggs are all created at birth (I believe?) but the male testes are always producing sperms.  Do the male sperms change over time as the cells are being copied as well?\nIs there a different process when creating a zygote vs copying a whole cell?\nEDIT: To clarify and to admit I used the word zygote incorrectly, my question was specific to the creation of sperms or gametes.  Does the deterioration of the telomeres in the cells creating these gametes affect the gametes in anyway?", "The generally accepted theory at the moment is because of a part of DNA called the telomeres.\n\nTelomeres are essentially a \"buffer zone\" around your DNA. Basically, when your DNA is copied (this occurs whenever new cells are created), you lose a tiny bit of DNA from the ends.\n\nThis means that each time a cell is copied, you lose some Telomere, then, when cells have been copied so much that there is no Telomere left, you begin to lose important DNA and your body essentially begins to degrade.\n", "Lots of incorrect answers here about mutations occurring when a cell divides, and how making \"copies of copies\" eventually results in DNA that is too damaged.\n\nThis is not correct. Luckily we are not jpegs, and DNA replication is very accurate. DNA does not accumulate enough mutations (usually) fast enough to be a factor in aging.\n\nAging has been linked to the length and presence of \"telomeres\".\n\nWhen a cell divides, and DNA replicates, the replication process (while fast and accurate) is unable to copy the end pieces of DNA. Because of this, DNA is capped with junk code at both ends. We refer to these as telomeres. So, every division results in a loss of some of these telomeres.\n\nWhen the telomeres run out, further divisions would result in losing valuable DNA code. Instead of doing this, cells will cease further division and die.\n\nTo further complicate this, a thing called \"telomerase\" is responsible for replenishing telomeres. ~~As you get older, the telomerase replenishes less and less of your telomeres.~~ Telomerase is active during fetal cell replication, and in your balls where frequent rapid cell division occurs. In the rest of your body, dividing cells will whittle away at their available telomeres. This results in fewer new cells, and more frequent dying of cells.\n\nThis onset of shortlived, dying cells is \"aging\" in the traditional sense. People with \"hyperactive\" telomerase tend to live longer. However, a careful balance of telomeres and telomerase is thought to be crucial in preventing cancerous growths."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1yikao", "title": "Why doesn't lightning occur in fog?", "selftext": "The way I understand is that fog is basically just clouds on the ground, so why so we have lightening in the up top clouds and not the down below clouds?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1yikao/why_doesnt_lightning_occur_in_fog/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfkyrh8"], "score": [6], "text": ["Thunderstorms are the result of convective activity - i.e., rapidly rising and falling air due to differences in temperature and moisture content in a parcel of air relative to the air around it. This strong vertical motion leads to a separation of charges within the cloud; lightning is the result of this charge separation (similar to static electricity). \n\nUnlike thunderstorms, fog is the result of a very stable air layer. There's very little or no vertical and horizontal motion - even a wind of just 1-2 m/s is enough to prevent fog from developing. With no motion, there's no charge separation and thus none of the precursors for lightning exist. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "jzl92", "title": "When something painful happens in a dream, what is happening when you wake up?  Example inside", "selftext": "So I just had an absolutely CRAZY dream.  [Here](_URL_0_) is a link to it because I don't want to explain it again in that great of detail.  In said dream, I lose my middle finger and the tip of my index finger on my left hand.  They **HURT** while I was dreaming, and after waking up, they continued to hurt for a little bit.  Now, approximately 30 minutes later, my middle finger feels stiff and the tip of my index finger just doesn't feel right somehow.  My middle feels like it hasn't been used for a while somehow, even though I was dreaming for only an hour tops (actually much less than that because REM cycles are so short).  Why and how does this happen?  It is not the first time that I have had residual pain from dreams.  Does this happen to other people as well?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jzl92/when_something_painful_happens_in_a_dream_what_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2ge0yf", "c2ge2r6", "c2ggha7", "c2ghxxh", "c2ge0yf", "c2ge2r6", "c2ggha7", "c2ghxxh"], "score": [4, 15, 3, 2, 4, 15, 3, 2], "text": ["From my experience, pain in dreams is the direct result of a pain stimulus in actuality (like rolling on to painful surface while sleeping). I've had dreams where I've been stabbed and shot, but they didn't hurt because no actual stimulus was attached to them.", "Just last week I was dreaming my leg was in pain and when I tried to stand up, my feet couldn't touch the ground because I was levitating. I woke up immediately and realized I had a cramp in that leg and walked it out.\n\nMy point being that our mind recognizes pain that occurs while we are asleep and blends it into the dream. It wasn't the dream that caused the pain, it was the pain that impacted the dream.", "Pain is partly a construct of the brain and partly actual pain. So, the pain you felt in your dream could be either of the two cases - \n\n1. you were actually hurting your fingers and the dream incorporated it.\n\n2. your brain physically manifested the pain from your dream.\n\nFor ex. _URL_0_", "I don't experience pain in my dreams, that's actually a signal I managed to use once to induce a lucid dream.\n\nExceptions might be if something external was causing pain and that 'leached' into my dreams. I can't think of any examples but radio alarms have given me dreams full of chatter and song ..", "From my experience, pain in dreams is the direct result of a pain stimulus in actuality (like rolling on to painful surface while sleeping). I've had dreams where I've been stabbed and shot, but they didn't hurt because no actual stimulus was attached to them.", "Just last week I was dreaming my leg was in pain and when I tried to stand up, my feet couldn't touch the ground because I was levitating. I woke up immediately and realized I had a cramp in that leg and walked it out.\n\nMy point being that our mind recognizes pain that occurs while we are asleep and blends it into the dream. It wasn't the dream that caused the pain, it was the pain that impacted the dream.", "Pain is partly a construct of the brain and partly actual pain. So, the pain you felt in your dream could be either of the two cases - \n\n1. you were actually hurting your fingers and the dream incorporated it.\n\n2. your brain physically manifested the pain from your dream.\n\nFor ex. _URL_0_", "I don't experience pain in my dreams, that's actually a signal I managed to use once to induce a lucid dream.\n\nExceptions might be if something external was causing pain and that 'leached' into my dreams. I can't think of any examples but radio alarms have given me dreams full of chatter and song .."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jzkst/reddit_what_are_some_of_your_craziest_dream/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12405613?dopt=Abstract"], [], [], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12405613?dopt=Abstract"], []]}
{"q_id": "6vv6tw", "title": "what is the purpose of teaching children to believe in santa claus? is it for reasons other than to teach good behavior?", "selftext": "To introduce children to spirituality is one possible example of another reason I would assume.", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vv6tw/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_teaching_children_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm388jx", "dm38pkk", "dm38vbo", "dm39fgi", "dm3aewu", "dm3fc1a"], "score": [5, 3, 18, 11, 7, 4], "text": ["\"christmas is the season of giving\"  \nWhen a child gets a huge pile of presents and only has some arts and crafts for mom and dad it can create a guilty feeling in some children. Santa allows parents to spoil their kids without taking responsibility for the gifts...which alleviates some of the inequality of giving", "I think at this point in time it has simply become a fun cultural tradition. Yes it can be a tool to make children behave around christmas time, but most people, children included, don't really care about Santa most of the year except around christmastime. It evolved from various folklore. One in particular was a Germanic story about a troll like creature that would come down the chimney at night and eat misbehaving children. Germanic folklore was filled with many stories of this sort intended to keeo children from doing things like wandering into the forest or eating too much. This is where we get the idea that Santa comes down the chimney and delivers coal to bad children. As for the gift giving. That came from other various folklore like Saint Nick, Sinter Klaus, Father Christmas, and others from various regions of Europe like the Netherlands and England. He was a benevolent man who would give gifts to children, in some cases at christmas and in some cases just whenever he was in town. All of this folklore eventually converged into what we know as Santa Clause and became associated with Christmas. It's really just a combination of various European cultures and folklore, some intended to teach children lessons, some just to bring joy. Then it became commercialized and a staple of the Christmas tradition. We don't necessarily teach children to believe in Santa anymore than we teach them to speak our language. It's just a cultural phenomenon. It doesn't do any harm and it brings joy to children and adults enjoy telling stories about him. It's simply a fun custom.", "Its just fun watching the wonder and amazement in there little faces, then they talk about it for weeks prior and post. And it is always fun tricking your kids. \n\nIt is funny you bring up spirituality, because after the Santa game is up the kids start to think about what else is not real, and it is hard keeping God on the real list when Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy drop off. ", "The way I see it...   By mitigating the gift giving to a 3rd party, my kids can't 'beg' for certain gifts.   If we can't get exactly what they want, we write a 'I'm sorry, but Santa couldn't get you that exact toy this year... or Santa recieved the letter too late... etc\" letter.   They also don't try to look for gift we hide in the house, anytime they ask for something we refer to Santa Claus...   Plus, we get them to write down what they want for an easy cheat sheet.   Writing a 'Thank You' card afterwards helps them remember their manners.  ", "The purpose is to scare kids into behaving - same reason for all religion.  \n\nIf you're bad you get coal. The elf on the shelf is watching you masturbate.  Your soul is being graded at all times and you are punished for a bad grade and rewarded for a good one.\n\nOf course, there are serious flaws with this logic.  Poor kids who treat everyone with respect are still not getting an Xbox.  If they are taught about Santa they think they did something wrong.  Shitty rich kids get rewarded even if they are brats.  It associates parents with money with a kid's worth as a human being.  I think it is harmful in pretty much every way. \n", "I look at it as the gateway drug to believing in religion. To believe in Jesus, you have to accept that there is an invisible, all-powerful, supernatural being who knows everything you do and will reward you with intangible gifts in heaven, though you have to take it on faith and never see the evidence of it during your lifetime. With Santa Claus, you're asked to believe in a powerful supernatural being who knows everything you do and will reward you with great gifts--and you can see and meet that being and he comes to your house and then he rewards you with tangible gifts you can see and touch every day as proof that such wonders exist. Sure, then you eventually learn it's not real, but it's taught you the pathways to accept this kind of thing as true, so it becomes more natural and familiar and easy to accept that religious stories *are* true. It's like how millions or a billion or more people believe in the creation myth of Adam and Eve. It makes sense because it's something they've been told since before they could speak. But then if those same people hear the creation myth from another culture, it's sounds ridiculous and fanciful, obviously untrue. Because it's new and can be analyzed with adult feats of reason and logic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "b41p7c", "title": "If a person is unconscious from a trauma for several days, is there a way to forcefully wake them up?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b41p7c/if_a_person_is_unconscious_from_a_trauma_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ej3unfg", "ej43eff"], "score": [5, 8], "text": ["There are ways to chemically or physically stimulate their central nervous system, and that might make them wake up, but not only is the chance slim and the dangers way higher than the chance of success, why would you do that? Let them heal.", "As someone trained i really have to say: this. Isn\u2018t somethings we would. I can\u2019t picture a situation of life and death where this would be necessary or feasable. First of all, depending on the cause of the coma, there might be no way. If it\u2018s physical trauma induced, the coma is either due to severe damage of the brain, and you can\u2019t wake someone from thatjust like that, even if there was a drug to do that, you wouldn\u2018t get a wide awake patient. People emerge from coma gradually, over the course of days and weeks, most likely agitated, disoriented, hallucinating. If the damage is permanent you may get wake-sleep cycles, but without consciousness. Thst\u2018s called persistent vegetative state. \nMost of the time though, after some severe physical trauma that doesn\u2019t involve the brain (crushing injury, burns, etc.) patients are held in induced coma to spare them pain. That one can, depending on the agent used, be reversed.\nA constant perfusion of propofol and remifentanyl can basically just be turned off and after a few minutes the patient emerges, but usually very confused. Ketamine is tricky, because it requires longer to wear off, and in the emergent phase patients have strong dissociative hallucinations. Because of that they are usually held asleep with midazolam or similar until the ketamine is gone. Those are two very common drugs. Actual reversals are only gesred towards muscle relaxants in general anaesthesia, so likely irrelevant to your idea.\n\nOnly thing i can imagine for your idea is that the patient is, for some reason, uninjured, but was given a dose of diazepam or similar to knock them out of an agitative and combative state.\nThose drugs can be reversed fairly instantly via injection of a drug called flumazenil.\nThis would happen mostly in psychiatry settings, emergency personnel called to a drug overdose (xanax, eg) or in general anaesthesia if some calculated his midazolam doses wrong."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2hz7e5", "title": "\"Alexander conquered the known world\". I've heard that or variations on it said many times and it always makes me wonder why China, North Africa and Europe don't count as the \"known world\"?", "selftext": "The Greeks did know about all three places", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2hz7e5/alexander_conquered_the_known_world_ive_heard/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxffwm", "ckxr7zo"], "score": [29, 4], "text": ["Yeah, Alexander was made to turn around when attempting to invade India, and was planning on attacking the coastal kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula when he died. He might have considered the Greek colonies in the Mediterrenean his allies in spirit if not in arms (we're talking Greek colonies in Spain, France, Sicily and Italy now), but the fledgling Roman alliance and above all Carthage was out of his grasp (although Rome was mostly irrelevant at this time).\n\nThe Greeks considered the Carthaganians offshoots of the Phoenicians of the Levant, and fighting between Syracusae (a Greek colony) and Carthage in Sicily during the time of the Persian invasion of Greece that would culminate in the Battle of Salamis was interpreted as an alliance between Carthage and Persia by the Greeks (there's little to no evidence of such an alliance outside Greek sources, and the general consensus among scholars today is that there were no such alliance).\n\nWhat Alexander did was to conquer the greatest Empire of the known world. India was largely unknown at the time, the proto-Arab states were small fish on the international scene, Rome was nowhere near its later size and power.\n\nOnce could say that Alexander had conquered all relevant parts of the known world (except Carthage) and had allegiance from all Greeks (except the Spartans).\n\nEurope beyond the Greek, Aechemenid and Carthaganian world was filled with barbarian tribes that offered little but potential slaves to a would-be conqueror. China and India was mostly unknown then.", "That statement is a bit of a fallacy and it has fallen out of favour in recent years. It stems from the heavily eurocentric idea that the classical world was an isolated font of civilization surrounded by savage barbarians.\n\n/u/vonadler already covered it very well but I just want to reiterate certain parts of what he said. Instead of the 'known world' it is more accurate to say the 'rich and relevant parts of the world'. This is a bit of a generalisation, but the Greeks were aware of the fact that there were many unexplored places and cultures in the world, but most simply didn't care. Why bother with conquering a small nomadic tribe in an empty steppe when an empire with the richest cities known to you could be yours?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "321e1a", "title": "Did the Union consider charging, trying, and executing Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis after the former's surrender at Appomattox? Relatedly, how did Lee hope the South would reintegrate?", "selftext": "In honor of the 150th anniversary of Lee's surrender, I was thinking about the intended and unintended consequences of Appomattox. Apparently some of Lincoln's councilors [did recommend](_URL_0_) charging Davis, but ultimately decided it would cause more unrest than it would avoid.\n\nIs that accurate? How exactly did Union leadership react to the surrender? \n\nAnd simultaneously, what was Lee's life like after Appomattox? An entry in the Times's blog, \"Disunion,\" suggests Lee wanted a [quiet reintegration](_URL_1_) with the Union, but his lieutenants, instead, fostered the \"Lost Cause\" myth that gave/continues to give us so much trouble today. Is there any merit to that claim? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/321e1a/did_the_union_consider_charging_trying_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq7255u", "cq7ec88"], "score": [68, 7], "text": ["Lee had a relatively quite life after the war, doing his most to ease tensions and not draw attention to himself. After living in Richmond for a while he moved to Lexington Virginia to become President of Washington College (Now Washington and Lee) a small college sharing a campus with VMI, and spent the rest of his life there, and is buried in the chapel. \n\nHe most notably did not engage in any writing or letter campaign to defend his conduct of the war, and was critical of personalities like Jubal Early and Davis who were very vocal about their opinions and attempts by Radical Republicans who supported a harsh Reconstruction. However the Lost Cause movement didnt really get going until a few years after Lee's death in 1870. \n\n\nAnother side note. The surrender at Appomattox was not, and was never intended to be a general surrender of CSA forces. It was only the capitulation of those forces immediately under Lee's command excluding even those cavalry forces away from Lee's main body. Grant however was very conscious of the war drawing down, and of Lincoln's wish for reconciliation, expressed both in speech at his 2nd Inaugural, and in his recent meeting with Grant and Sherman at City Point. \n\nIt was a few days later when General Joe Johnston surrendered his commands(The Carolina's, Tenn, Georgia, and his field army) to Sherman outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Sherman was told only to accept a local capitulation as well, but exceeded his authority and agreed to a surrender of all remaining CSA field forces. The deal was later rejected in DC but by that time most remaining Southern forces had already surrendered. \n\n_URL_0_ focuses on C but speaks to the general experience of most Southern soldiers after the war. \n\n\n\nAs for their legal standing, once most men had signed their amnesty and loyalty statements they were free to go and vote. President Johnson did sign legislation excluding several classes, mostly field officers and politicians, but by 1868 even these were withdrawn and by applying for it virtually all Confederates had all their rights restored. ", "Broadside texts gleefully calling for the execution of Jefferson Davis were fairly common over the course of the war. Some examples: [[1](_URL_1_)] [[2](_URL_3_)] [[3](_URL_2_)] [[4](_URL_5_)] [[5](_URL_4_)] [[6](_URL_0_)].\n\nI'll quote liberally from the best of these:\n\n > That herb well deserves cultivation,  \nOh scatter its seed all around,\u2014  \nLet it flourish in every plantation,    \nWhile Rebels and Traitors abound.  \nDown, down with the tyrant \u201cKing Cotton,\u201d  \nKing Hemp holds the rascal in check,  \nIf you cant cure the heart that\u2019s all rotten,  \nTry a bandage of Hemp on the neck.  \n  \n > . . .  \n  \n > Come, spin a strong rope for Jeff. Davis,  \nAnd a couple for Yancey and Rhett,  \n(For each a detestable knave is,)  \nNor Pickens nor Stephens forget.  \nHave a cord for old false-hearted Pillow,  \nHave another for Letcher supplied,  \nHang old Toombs, (gloomy rogue!) on a willow  \nAnd let Twiggs to an oak twig be tied.  \n  \n > Let Chestnut be quickly suspended  \nFrom a branch of his own name-sake tree;  \nThus let every scoundrel be ended  \nWho shoots at the Flag of he Free.  \nThus deal with the foul instigators    \nOf treason and treachery base,  \nFor Hemp is the Physic for Traitors  \nAnd the Gallows is their proper place.  \n\nObviously, these aren't serious political treatises, but perhaps they're indicative of a certain mood. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/12/should-we-have-executed-jefferson_26.html", "http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/lee-surrendered-but-his-lieutenants-kept-fighting/"], "answers_urls": [["http://civilwarexperience.ncdcr.gov/narrative/narrative-4.htm"], ["http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg301263/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg301354/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100154/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100105/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100108/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100392/"]]}
{"q_id": "ccxzqp", "title": "What is the name of the first species?", "selftext": "I've tried to google the name of the first organism, but I just get Bacteria or Prokaryotes. What is the earliest classified species of life?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ccxzqp/what_is_the_name_of_the_first_species/", "answers": {"a_id": ["etr4dyc", "etuff2l"], "score": [23, 2], "text": ["Well they're long dead, and no fossils exist, so they cannot be formally named. Working backwards from the genomes of modern organisms, we can make some inferences about the most recent common ancestor of all extant life--sometimes called LUCA for \"last universal common ancestor\". It would necessarily have been a prokaryote, and we can even infer some details of its metabolism--but without direct evidence, we can't formally classify it.\n\nAnd LUCA was probably far removed from the actual first organism. In fact, in many models of abiogenesis there was no clear first organism, just a set of molecules that become more complex over time and gradually assembled the traits of all modern life. At this point we can do little but speculate.", "The oldest organism for which we have a fossil is Stromatalites, which go back to about 3.6 billion years ago.  It's been though that life began over 4 billion years ago with simple single-celled organisms.  Unfortunately, single-celled organisms don't generally leave fossils.  The Stromatalites themselves are single-celled organisms, the only reason we have fossils of them is that they clump together into mats and excrete calcium (like building a reef).\n\nIn writing this I discovered that they have found possible microfossils in Northern Canada that are 4.28 billion years old.  These were only discovered 2 years ago, and are still being debated whether or not they are fossils or natural deposits (they are hollow iron tubes that were deposited around hydrothermal vents)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4v60ko", "title": "how can animals like bats carry hundreds of diseases which are harmful to humans and be unaffected? are there diseases humans carry which are harmful to animals?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v60ko/eli5_how_can_animals_like_bats_carry_hundreds_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5vs8vb", "d5vsemf", "d5vu477", "d5vu4e8", "d5vwpdk", "d5vxd2p", "d5vyjyq", "d5w0lqr", "d5w777j", "d5w92xw", "d5wb64v", "d5whx7c"], "score": [135, 16, 78, 5, 2, 2, 2, 6, 205, 2, 5, 2], "text": ["We were kind enough to donate leprosy to the unfortunate armadillo, and we may have spread anthrax to cattle, rather than the other way around. \n\nWe're dicks.", "Think about it logically: A disease would be able to spread itself far more efficiently if it does not make the animal that carries it from host to host become sick. \n\nBacteria and viruses are dependent on abusing the receptors on top of the cells of their primary hosts as well as the content inside the cells to let them in and work. Most diseases are relatively specific to one or a few species. \n\nIn the case of bat and mosquito vectors, the disease is often unable to multiply in that organism, or is relatively harmless there.\n\nBut yeah humans function as vectors of some diseases, especially parasites which often have no symptoms in humans.", "Bats, mosquitoes, and other carriers of disease are often unaffected by the diseases they vector (transmit). To them, these microbes are about as dangerous as the bacteria that run rampant in our mouths but don't cause acute disease. \n\nHumans can and do vector diseases to animals. Anyone who has ever owned a turtle hopefully knows to disinfect their hands before and after handling turtles because we can give them diseases from bacteria that is harmlessly resting on the surface of our skin, and they can give us different diseases right back.", "I mean even humans can carry diseases that are harmful to other humans. Look at when the Europeans colonized north America. They had built up a resistance to many diseases like the flu and bubonic plague which decimated the Indians but did not really affect the colonists anymore.", "Insects are carriers of many diseases that also affect humans.\n\nBats are special because they are mammals that fly and predominately eat these carrier insects.  Since they are mammals, we share a lot of physiology with them.\n\nAdditionally, in order to keep their weight down for flight, Bats have minimal amounts of bone marrow (kinda like birds with hollow bones).  Bone marrow is an important part of the immune system in mammals.  Many of these diseases do affect bats, but to varying degrees.\n\nThese factors and many more lead to bats being an ideal reservoir for certain diseases with the ability to infect humans. \n\n(I'm not used to ELI5, so I may have been too basic)\n\n", "i think op meant diseases that do t affect humans but do harm animals that we carry. Maybe an edit would help clarify", "They have improved DNA repair abilities and the exertion of flying increases their body temperature to well above ours. [MinuteEarth](_URL_0_) has a 3 minute video about this to explain it better.  ", "Human's carried spores causing white-nose disease into bat habitats and have essentially decimated many populations several times as a result. ", "Oh man, this is such a great question! I'm new-ish to reddit and have never posted but I just HAVE to join this discussion :)\n\n\nThe short answer is that we don't completely know. There are many, many factors involved and much of it is poorly understood. I'll try to be ELI5 friendly, but if I fail please tell me and I'll try again.\n\n\nSome viruses are very well adapted to their reservoir host. This means that they can \"live\" within that host without doing much, if any, damage. For humans, herpes viruses could be a good example of this. Most often in this case, the virus has \"lived\" within that host for a very long time (from an evolutionary perspective). As the host evolves ways to combat the virus, the virus evolves right back. This is called co-evolution. There is a tendency for these viruses to evolve to be less damaging over time. However, if one of these viruses co-evolved to a different host happens to infect a human successfully, it can be... very bad. We are a different host, with different biology and a different immune system. The virus is not \"co-evolved\" with us and it can make us sick in a way that it doesn't make its other host sick.\n\n\nThis is just one aspect of a complex issue, but I hope it helps some.\n\n\nSource: I'm a virologist, focused in emerging pathogens.", "Imagine diseases as a kind of key to unlock the door of pain, suffering and death. \n\nWhen the key that unlocks your door gets in you, you have a bad time.\n\nYou can carry lots of different key, but many of them don't unlock the door to your doom. \n\nBats carry the key for lots of species.\n", "An interesting sidenote to this question is why bats, in particular, seem to function as reservoirs for so many communicable diseases.  In humans, they are established or have been implicated as a reservoir species for rabies, Hendra virus, Nipah virus, Marburg and Ebola.\n\nThis question is addressed in David Quammen's *Spillover*, and I found this link online that sort of makes some of the same arguments: _URL_0_\n\nSummary:  Bats live in large communities with huge amounts of intimate individual-to-individual contact that allows for a great base for infections to reside and spread within the group.  They also travel greatly, allowing the infections to spread geographically and to other species.  Lastly their physical characteristics might favor infections that are well suited to infecting humans in particular.\n", "Iirc sickle cell anemia is exclusive to humans, and very prevalent amoung those of african decent. And somewhat related, aliens to this planet are susceptible to common viruses and bacteria, that natives of earth have learned to suppress. In movies at least."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao0dqJvH4a0"], [], [], [], ["https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwivycaitZnOAhUIzmMKHeENB_kQFgggMAE&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iflscience.com%2Fplants-and-animals%2Fwhy-do-bats-transmit-so-many-diseases%2F&amp;usg=AFQjCNF_Czg2ZnP83amC-xMnlcJ4XEbAqg&amp;sig2=XGYWiSFXyURSpsIlgUNbZw"], []]}
{"q_id": "8c8sr9", "title": "Does space equipment get dirty in space ?", "selftext": "All kinds of equipment needs regular cleaning from things that get deposited on them, specific to which environment its in. Does the same go for the space station or the the canadarm? Would the effect of these objects in the vacuum of space be strong enough to attract dust and other things? Is there even enough stuff in space to deposit on the equipment for it to matter? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8c8sr9/does_space_equipment_get_dirty_in_space/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxe2e5s"], "score": [3], "text": ["I assume you men the outside? The answer is sort of. The only thing that actually gets the station \"dirty\" is exhaust from visiting spacecraft. A few years ago, 2 Russian cosmonauts actually did a spacewalk to clean the outside of the station's windows because over the years, they'd be covered in a layer of this exhaust, but that's about it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2n9jod", "title": "in books we read of people eating \"roots and berries\" when living in the woods. what roots were these?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n9jod/eli5_in_books_we_read_of_people_eating_roots_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmbl59r", "cmbo83f", "cmbt4q8", "cmbyazx"], "score": [170, 22, 12, 3], "text": ["My guess wild carrots, parsnips, potatoes, radishes, burdock, salsify, beets, native ginger, earthnut, varieties of yams and sweet potato etc.", "In the woods you can find wild versions of many of the root vegetables we buy in the grocery store.  Ginger and wild onions are the most prevalent I've seen. ", "Lotus and wapato tubers, Hopniss, maybe even cattails could have a piece of edible root, jerusalem artichokes, daylily tuber, leek bulbs, wild carrot, groundnut, horseradish, wild ginger, burdock, chicory, bugleweed, arrowhead, bulrush, Smilax, dandelion.  I'm sure there are more. ", "Blackroot.  Just don't give it to Elora Dannen."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2blxl9", "title": "How close was Israel to defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War before the US resupplied them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2blxl9/how_close_was_israel_to_defeat_in_the_1973_yom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj6sd73", "cj6vy6a"], "score": [173, 6], "text": ["Well, the resupply was not something that happened when Israel was close to defeat, at least not in the Sinai. It was *ordered* when the Israelis were facing a defeat, without a doubt. The airlift, which began on 14 October, had been ordered to begin on the 9th, and came after a decisive battle in the Sinai on the 14th, which may have made it superfluous in terms of \"saving\" the Israelis in the Sinai.\n\nOn 12 October, under increasing pressure from Egyptian General Ahmed Ismail Ali, Lieutenant General Sa'ad Al Shazly was given orders by General Ismail (over all objections) to make for the Gidi and Mitla passes. A \"political decision\" had been made, to relieve the pressure on Syria, and Shazly had his hands tied. He reminded General Ismail of what had happened last time a brigade was caught without air cover, as they would be (they were advancing past air defense ranges), but to no avail. An attack would be launched from the bridgehead. Shazly got it postponed 'til the 14th.\n\nThe IDF had been debating ending the war with a ceasefire, or undertaking a hazardous canal crossing, right around the 11th or 12th of October. It didn't think it would be able to continue this war, especially if it turned into a war of attrition. Then word came on the 12th that Egyptian armor was moving and crossing the Suez Canal, appearing to be preparing for an attack on the 13th or 14th. Israel decided to wait, instead of taking initiative or making peace, and to fortify positions.\n\nShazly put it this way: \"The enemy had 900 tanks in his operational zone. We were attacking with 400. We were doing so, against well-prepared positions, in precisely the 'penny packets' that had cost the enemy so dear over October 8-9. And we were condemning our tank crews to attack over open terrain dominated by enemy air power.\" The Israelis had estimated some 1,000 tanks would be in the attack, so the fact that only 400 showed up was undoubtedly a relief.\n\nThe Israelis prepared for an armor battle, which some said they expected to be large and \"savage\" beyond belief. On the night of the 13 October, the Egyptians heli-lifted multiple commandos behind Israeli lines in the hopes of creating chaos in the Israeli rear. They were almost all captured and killed, quickly. The Israeli fortifications and preparations paid off, when the Egyptians launched the strike at dawn on the 14th. In the northern sector, the Egyptians were repelled with ease, and 50 tanks of theirs were destroyed. In the center, similar losses were had by the Egyptians. The Israelis had fortified on high ground, and fired on the charging Egyptian armor. Egypt's 1st Mechanized Brigade lost 93 tanks, effectively destroying the entire unit, and only 3 Israeli tanks in that area were destroyed: none by enemy tanks, all by rocket fire. In the south, near the Gidi and Mitla passes, the Egyptian attack was contained and the Israelis counterattacked, destroying some 60 Egyptian tanks. Egyptian forces tried to flank through Mitla pass to the south, and were stopped by the tanks they encountered as well as paratroopers. The battle ended with around 20 Israeli tanks destroyed. Egypt had lost around 260. The Egyptians had attacked superior gunnery, faced IAF superiority and bombing, hit fortified positions, and all with the sun in their eyes. In one swoop, Israeli forces watched the Egyptians retreat back to their bridgeheads on the East Bank of the Suez Canal, and an Egyptian general suffered a heart attack (Sa'ad Maamon) and had to be replaced by General Abd El Al Mona'am Wasel. All told, the Egyptians had taken such heavy losses that Israeli forces felt they could finally attempt a counterthrust, a genuine one that would cross the Suez. On 14 October, Israeli general Elazar gave orders for the crossing of the Suez the following night.\n\nWith regards to the Egyptian front, Israeli leaders were not only heartened by the sudden success, the airlift made them much more fluid and willing to fight. However, the Israelis were still fearful of a loss, and only in retrospect was the 14 October guaranteed as the turning point of the war in the Sinai. Israelis did not begin to have a confident assessment of their prospects until the 16 October, as the American resupply effort was already underway and helping replace equipment lost in the previous fighting. The airlift was not *fully* intended to \"save\" the Israelis, but to ensure they could continue their momentum. It was helpful that as soon as it began, Israel had begun to win on both fronts. Thus it was not so much that the airlift came when Israel was \"close to defeat\" and \"saved\", but rather it came when the Israelis thought they'd be defeated (it was ordered October 9, begun October 14, Kissinger blamed it on the Pentagon), and gave them more flexibility when they began a counterattack that might've failed because of the Israeli inability to win a war of attrition without getting crucial ammunition and resupply help.\n\nOn the Syrian front, the tide had begun to turn earlier, prompting the Syrian pleas to the Egyptians for relief. See, the Egyptians had promised the Syrians they would advance far further than they actually planned to into the Sinai. When the Syrians began to falter, they pointed the finger at the Egyptians, who had stopped advancing. The Egyptians decided to advance as a result, with the results I detailed above.\n\nThe Syrians had begun to falter by October 10. The IAF had begun to overcome the Syrian air defenses, partially due to a lack of more defense rockets. The Israelis had been relentless, launching airstrikes in almost suicidal fashion over the 7-8, and the Syrians lost their determination and began to move back. By that point the Israeli counterattack began to drive back the Syrians, and by October 9 the Syrian thrusting forces were effectively surrounded in the \"Hushniye pocket\". Both sides took severe losses as Hushniye turned into an \"armor graveyard\", but the Syrians came out worse. Israel began bombing military airfields belonging to the Syrians by October 8, and almost all of them were useless by the 14th. 8 Phantom F-4s, on October 9, managed to get to Damascus and bomb the General Staff and Air Force Headquarters buildings, catching the Syrians by surprise. Only one Phantom was shot down, and the morale blow was crushing. The second wave, another 8 Phantom F-4s, had been slated to hit the same buildings but couldn't get through thick butts safely, so they dropped their bombs on Hushniye's large tank concentrations, contributing greatly to the fight there. The Israelis got slightly overconfident, and on the 10th mounted an insufficiently manned and prepared attack: based on 1967 they had expected the Syrian army to be on the brink of collapse. The attack took serious losses and was called off. On October 11 the Israelis launched an attack aimed to get to Damascus, all the way to the Syrian capital, but they encountered heavy resistance. While the Syrians could not attack, their fortifications and defensive posturing was still very strong, and both sides were taking heavy losses as a result, especially since once again the Israelis sent an undersized force, not expecting such heavy resistance of two strong lines. The Syrians now had higher morale (knowing their capital was under threat), and their SAMs had begun to be effective again (more missiles gotten, closer ranges), curtailing Israeli effectiveness in launching the attack. Eventually these became less effective as Israeli pilots got better at handling the SAMs, and by October 14 when the airlift began they were running many sorties on the Syrian rear, and Israeli forces had managed to fight a difficult campaign that got them within 20 miles of Damascus. There, the ground offensive stopped, and Israeli forces managed to (with the help of the resupply) hold off counterattacks, and make one last achievement on the ground: the capture of Mount Hermon on October 21-22. Because of the huge alarm the Syrians faced with the mounting attempts on their capital, around October 11 Assad appealed to Sadat to advance as he had promised, hence the Sadat response conveyed to Shazly on October 12. The airlift helped the Israelis take Hermon at best, and hold off counterattacks on the 16th and 19th, but also did not \"save\" Israel: it permitted them greater freedom and kept them afloat during a war that might've turned against them if they hadn't gotten more ammunition and equipment.\n\nEdit: Adding a portion on \"Why the airlift, then?\"\n\nWell, the airlift came with a few motivations. One was to match, and surpass, the Soviet airlift that had begun on October 10 for the Egyptians and Syrians. It succeeded, in that regard. The Israelis had implicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons by some reports, and gone to a nuclear alert they were sure the US would notice, threatening nuclear war especially if they ran out of conventional weapons and could not sustain their losses (which, at the time, were quite massive). The US also hoped to gain from it, and Kissinger egged the Israelis on, telling them to advance against Syria. He said to the Israeli ambassador: \"The IDF must attack [Syria] with all its strength, as if it had another 40 aircraft in hand, and not stint on ammunition or aircraft, because the United States will supply everything.\" On October 13 he told them to continue their attack, apparently because he knew the airlift was about to begin. The airlift undoubtedly helped Israelis feel secure in advancing.", "As a another question about the war,why does the arab world considers it a victory?is their claim correct?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "37r6qk", "title": "why don't nations unite to fight isis?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37r6qk/eli5_why_dont_nations_unite_to_fight_isis/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crp57bp", "crp5mfn", "crp5s4l", "crp639b", "crp79so"], "score": [33, 16, 3, 6, 3], "text": ["We have a multinational military coalition that include various nations who are launching airstrikes at ISIS and supplying/training their opposition. ", "It's a simple cost-benefit analysis.  Countries such as the US and others are willing to throw low-risk support behind the effort (such as airstrikes), but there isn't the political will to commit something like ground forces which will be essential to actually defeating ISIS.  Effectively, the 'value' of ridding the world of ISIS is not currently seen as greater than the 'value' of the lives of the combat troops that would inevitably be lost if ground troops were deployed.  For countries like Iraq, the value is obvious in that ISIS has taken over large areas of their country, and that is why they have troops on the group, but for countries like the US there is no political will to incur those kinds of costs.", "Deep down, not everyone wants to commit to it and in some ways, some nations might not want to fully do something as in the long term  it may be beneficial for self interests (destabilizing the region to later take advantage for example). ", "The short answer is most nations don't care enough to engage in a costly campaign to uproot every adherent to the ISIS political ideology. \n\nIt could be done, sure, but doing so would be expensive, increase tensions with Muslims living in the west (leading to more fighters for ISIS), cause more bombings of civilian targets (leading to more fighters for ISIS), and continuing a trend of unwanted Western meddling in the middle east... leading to more fighters for ISIS.\n\nYou can't just bomb a political/religious ideology, and such extreme actions only strengthens the perspective ISIS fighter have that they are standing up against evil- he who does battles with monsters. \n\nThe biggest problem is, despite trying to start a government, ISIS is an NGO (non-government organization). They're bases of operation are civilian buildings meaning bombing them takes out more civs than it does bad guys. They keep their brass scattered. We don't fully know where they are. And, possibly the biggest reason, because they're already on a shoestring budget anybody that fights them can only bleed themselves dry. They just need to lie dormant and survive until it's too expensive to continue fighting. All the while, other nations' economies grow weak, their people lose the will to fight and the fight against ISIS grows more brutal. Such is the nature of terrorism. ", "I sincerely have no idea, but I'll tell you what a taxi driver told me not so long ago when we heard news about this on the radio:\n\nBecause it's very difficult to simply go there and win a war. It's guerrilla warfare, a l\u00e1 vietnam. They're everywhere and nowhere at the same time, which is one of the reasons they're so dangerous. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6956kj", "title": "what's the difference between air inside and the \"fresh air\" outside?", "selftext": "People always say \"go out and get some fresh air\". Does that even do anything? \n\nEdit:? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6956kj/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_air_inside_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dh3xxes", "dh41yvc", "dh4390d", "dh4dir2", "dh5qmlr"], "score": [17, 5, 116, 11, 2], "text": ["Dry air both inside and outside is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon.  The only real differences are in the very trace compounds present in minute quantities, which make different smells.\n\nDoes it make a difference? Well, it's bad for your health to sit on your butt inside all day, although the reasons why have nothing to do air quality. So as health/lifestyle advice the saying is sound, even if \"fresh air\" doesn't mean all that much.", "An interior room that is not well ventilated will accumulate CO2 from exhalation. That's most of what makes air feel stale.", "It is really just the humidity and temperature that makes the air feel \"thick\" or less oxygen saturated. In addition, more humid air can transport its temperature better and more humid air smells more. That's why dogs can smell stuff better on rainy days. The CO2 level is not noticeable different. There was a video about a guy in a chamber where they lowered the oxygen level slowly. And the guy had to put a oxygen mask on when he notices. He didn't notice anything. Someone had to put it on him. Can't find the video.. And sorry for my bad English ", "Humans shed at an alarming rate. Some of the pollutants include human skin, but other common sources of dust pollutants are animal dander, sand, insect waste, flour (in the kitchen), and of course lots of good, old-fashioned dirt.", "Our research group has been involved on matters of indoor air quality for many years now. There are two main aspects to consider in answering your question:\n\n1. There is only one air! That means, all the atmosphere and all indoor spaces are connected and, with the exclusion of very special airtight spaces, in general you have to assume that there are continuous exchanges of air between indoors and outdoors. This justifies other peoples' answers here. The bulk general composition of the air will be the same (nitrogen and oxygen, mainly).\n\n2. Despite the above, there are many more compounds and components in the air that have a very important role in both the perception of 'freshness' and the potential health impacts of being in contact with the air. Apart from things like humidity (i.e. water in gas form, dissolved in the air) and CO2, the large majority of the other compounds are cumulatively known as 'air pollutants', regardless of being harmful or not to humans. Even though these are generally present in small amounts/concentrations, frequently measured in 'parts per million' (ppm) or even smaller measuring units, they can still be perceived by people in multiple ways, be it by smell, 'staleness', lung and eye irritation, allergies, etc..\n\nThe World Health Organisation has established a list of [particularly relevant indoor air pollutants](_URL_0_) that we should take special care about. For instance, one important pollutant is nitrogen dioxide (NO2) which originates from high-temperature combustion processes such as internal combustion engines in our cars, trucks, etc. Despite originating mainly outdoors, NO2 can still be problematic indoors, particularly in urban areas, because air will get in the house from the outside bringing with it its air pollutants. These will then be added to the pollutants that originate indoors, be it from people (yes, we emit a number of so called bioeffluents!), cooking, cleaning products, air-fresheners, perfumes, construction materials, furniture, and many other human activities. There are literally thousands of chemicals around us all the time, but the probability of these being present in higher concentrations indoors is higher due to an accumulation effect. This will only be exacerbated in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation.\n\nRegarding CO2, the average world level has now gone above the 400 ppm mark and levels indoors can frequently climb to over 1000 ppm. While this is not damaging to health, it is generally a good indicator of deficient ventilation in regards to a space occupancy. The main sources of CO2 indoors are people. You need a minimum amount of air renovation to dilute their exhaled CO2 along with many of the other bioeffluents. If CO2 levels are too high, then it is likely that you will also have high levels of many other compounds which will make the air feel heavy. The perception is particularly intense when someone comes into a room with these high levels. People in the space will generally not notice the gradual degradation of air quality in the space.\n\nNote that in many cities outdoor air quality can become very poor at times. Some Chinese and Indian cities have been particularly hit these past few years. In these cases, it is actually better for your health to stay inside and try to keep outdoor pollutants from getting in (i.e. do not open windows and refrain from opening doors too often). I have also read about the health impacts of going for a run or cycling in urban streets. When you exercise you inhale a lot more air and if you are doing it close to the tailpipes of cars and trucks, you will be absorbing very high loads of pollutants through your lungs. At the end of your exercise, you might actually have damaged more your health from breathing bad quality air than what you gained from exercising.\n\nHope this helps."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/128169/e94535.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "2dmk8k", "title": "Were there proposals for a two-state solution in South Africa?", "selftext": "During the apartheid era, of course.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dmk8k/were_there_proposals_for_a_twostate_solution_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjr1chw"], "score": [29], "text": ["Apartheid was theoretically a [multi-state solution](_URL_0_). An obvious problem is that the vast majority of the black population lived outside of the states that were set up. In reality, the purpose was to deprive them of South African citizenship and rights, by instead claiming that they were really citizens of some other country. So, no other nation besides South Africa ever recognized these \"countries\".\n\nAs for a two-state solution, that was never seriously discussed. The white population is [a majority in few areas](_URL_1_), any white state would have to be a multitude of non-contiguous tiny splotches utterly surrounded by the other state. A white/coloured state would have a much more substantial eastern base, but there would still be a multitude of non-contiguous tiny enclaves in the east. And coloured people where never accorded full civil rights by the whites anyway, so there's really not much basis for a union of them.\n\nA comparison between the policies of Israel since 1967 and apartheid is sometimes made - the accusation, I suppose, being that a west bank that has seemingly been under permanent Israeli occupation puts the people of the west bank under an apartheid like situation, citizens of a theoretical state that actually has no sovereignty. But there is a long standing basis for a division of the area between arab and Jewish states, this didn't exist in the South African situation, so no two state solution would've made sense there. The situation is further differentiated by the fact that Israeli Arabs actually living in Israel have full civil rights."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Bantustans_in_South_Africa.svg/640px-Bantustans_in_South_Africa.svg.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#Racial_groups"]]}
{"q_id": "3du1qm", "title": "why is it so controversial when someone says \"all lives matter\" instead of \"black lives matter\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/eli5_why_is_it_so_controversial_when_someone_says/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuqq4de", "cu0w2qo", "ct8m5gg", "ct8mleg", "ct8n992", "ct8pei1", "ct8rbeh", "ct8xr1r", "ct94ief", "ct95ouz", "ct9din8", "ct9gp7h", "ct9l1mr", "ct9r613", "ct9r7ef", "ct9x0ey", "ct9yk8r", "cta114o", "ctaivgz", "ctbo4fp", "ctbr22k", "ctdawyv", "ctdbag7", "ctdl8gb", "ctewhfd", "cvn0gq0"], "score": [2, 4, 67, 6, 5, 5612, 154, 17, 15, 26, 3, 3, 5, 2, 3, 7, 29, 3, 4, 10, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["fact blacks kill more blacks than cops do within a year..the real epidemic is black on black crime..if black lives mattered to these playing victim protesting..then go to chicago and protest the real epidemic ", "Imagine someone says 'gay marriage matters', and someone rebuttals 'ALL marriage matters'. Well, yes, but... like... some people don't think gay marriage is ok. We are trying to vie for the rights of some people. Our language reflects that. So, black lives matter.", "Because the 'Black lives matter' campaign / proponents are trying to get media attention on one particular issue - that is, the issue that black people are disproportionately killed by police officers, especially in situations in which people of other races would be treated very differently. Going 'all lives matter' is not only nonsensical because nobody is saying that other lives don't matter, but it also invalidates their efforts in getting this particular issues talked about.\n\nIt's like going to a rally for victims of a particular cancer which does not have a lot of attention / funding, but is killing a bunch of people, and going 'nobody should ever die from a disease'. ", "Because black people's lives have been ended, unjustifiably often, by police lately. If you say Black Lives Matter, you are saying you agree that the police shouldn't have the right to just mow down black people like they have been doing.\n\nIf you say \"All lives matter\" instead, you are saying a truth that is so general it's almost the same as saying, \"I don't care about the specific issue you're responding to, I think that my people's lives are important just as much as your people's lives are, and I don't want you arguing that your people have it harder.\"\n\nThat can be offensive, especially to the family of a police-shooting victim.  \n\nEdit: forgot closing quotation mark.", "It's the context of when the statement was made that makes it offensive. There is a better time and place to argue that the problem goes beyond race.", "Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say \"I should get my fair share.\" And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, \"*everyone* should get their fair share.\" Now, that's a wonderful sentiment -- indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share *also*. However, dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any!\n\nThe problem is that the statement \"I should get my fair share\" had an implicit \"too\" at the end: \"I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.\" But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant \"*only* I should get my fair share\", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that \"everyone should get their fair share,\" while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.\n\nThat's the situation of the \"black lives matter\" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.\n\nThe problem is that, in practice, the world doesn't work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn't want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That's not made up out of whole cloth -- there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it's generally not considered \"news\", while a middle-aged white woman being killed *is* treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate -- young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don't treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don't pay as much attention to certain people's deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we *don't* treat all lives as though they matter equally.\n\nJust like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase \"black lives matter\" also has an implicit \"too\" at the end: it's saying that black lives should *also* matter. But responding to this by saying \"*all* lives matter\" is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It's a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means \"*only* black lives matter,\" when that is obviously not the case. And so saying \"all lives matter\" *as a direct response* to \"black lives matter\" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.\n\nTL;DR: The phrase \"Black lives matter\" carries an implicit \"too\" at the end; it's saying that black lives should also matter. Saying \"all lives matter\" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.", "The problem is when is it in response to the \"black lives matter\", making it dismissive at best. When someone says \"save the rainforest\" do you say \"what about the rest of nature?\"  When someone does a \"cure MS\" walk, do you say \"we need to cure all diseases?\"\n\nIt takes the focus off the problem and dilutes the message to a meaningless feel good statement. ", "It's like if someone walks up to you with a severed finger, and your response is \"everyone's got problems.\" There's a clear issue that needs to be dealt with, and you're trying to bury it with non-specific, less immediate, less severe generalities.", " >  **When some people rejoin with \u201cAll Lives Matter\u201d they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered**, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve.\n\n >  Whiteness is less a property of skin than a social power reproducing its dominance in both explicit and implicit ways.\n\n >  Claiming that \u201call lives matter\u201d does not immediately mark or enable black lives only because they have not been fully recognized as having lives that matter. I do not mean this as an obscure riddle. I mean only to say that we cannot have a race-blind approach to the questions: which lives matter? Or, which lives are worth valuing? **If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, \u201call lives matter,\u201d then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of \u201call lives.\u201d** That said, it is true that all lives matter (we can then debate about when life begins or ends). But to make that universal formulation concrete, to make that into a living formulation, one that truly extends to all people, we have to foreground those lives that are not mattering now, to mark that exclusion, and militate against it. Achieving that universal, \u201call lives matter,\u201d is a struggle, and that is part of what we are seeing on the streets. For on the streets we see a complex set of solidarities across color lines that seek to show what a concrete and living sense of bodies that matter can be.\n\n-[Judith Butler](_URL_0_) (emphasis added)", "Just answered this in R conservative ... Imagine you are at a cure for cancer rally. Then someone bursts in saying \"hey what about diabetes\". You would think they are ridiculous right? Not because one affliction is not worse than another, it's just that is not the time to talk about it. It's not that all lives don't matter ... It's just that's not what we are talking about right now and you butting in trying to empathize or change the narrative doesn't help at all. ", "I just heard on npr the lady that started this phrase and that she was pissed that other creeds and religions and whatnot were using the same formula she used. ", "If there was a march to raise awareness of breast cancer and fundraise for research to cure it, that's a noble cause. Trying to interrupt that march and saying \"ALL cancer is important\" is, while true, a bit dismissive of the heartbreak and suffering that the people at that march felt as Breast cancer hurt their families and loved ones. It's a harsher way of saying \"everyone suffers (and you don't get special help).\"", "It's kind of like going to a meeting of children with cancer and screaming \"all diseases matter!\" Yeah, that's true, but we're discussing the issue of cancer in children.", "It's only controversial to those who wish to silence those who say it. I read the supposed brilliant analogy given elsewhere on this thread and found it extremely weak in reasoning. All lives do matter with the possible exception of thugs, killers, etc. ", "It's only controversial to those who wish to silence those who say it. I read the supposed brilliant analogy given elsewhere on this thread and found it extremely weak in reasoning. All lives do matter with the possible exception of thugs, killers, etc. ", "The reason is that saying \"all lives matter\" is a deliberate attempt to distract from the problem of racially motivated police brutality. Some people may not be using it in such a way, being unaware of where it came from, but those who say \"all lives matter\" have the racist context set for them. \n\nI mean, imagine you set up a charity to help victims of AIDS, and someone came and started telling everyone how important cancer research was. No one is debating the merits of cancer research, but i think you can still see how it would be disrespectful to say such a thing.", "I'm kind of impressed. The replies to this have hit every single idiotic, oddly angry talking point ever used to diminish the idea that cops are killing black people with impunity. The two most annoying ones:\n\n\"More blacks are killed by blacks than by cops!\" And more whites are killed by whites, at roughly the same rate. So? Not unusual, you're more likely to be killed by the people in your area. Also not your best argument: in the past 20 years, black-on-black homicides have decreased by 67 percent, a sharper decline than white-on-white homicide. What's that got to do with cops killing black people?\n\n\"Whites killed by black people get ZERO coverage!\" \"Where's all the marching when whites get killed?\" \"Why isn't Al Sharpton angry about white people getting shot?\" etc etc. Here the complaint is that whites shoot blacks and get in the news, blacks shoot whites and no one pays attention. But it misses a very important point.\n\nThe various outraged Facebook memes going around about horrible crimes committed by blacks that \"the media won't talk about\" all ignore the fact that in every single one I've seen, the criminals were arrested and are in the process of being punished. They're NOT a story because in those situations, the system is working the way it should. They did horrible things. They got arrested. They will go to jail. \n\nMedia coverage and outrage are not, strictly speaking, about any black person being shot by the police. Media coverage and outrage comes when a black person is shot without sufficient cause and the officer is not punished for it, even in recent cases where video evidence was available. \n\nOutrage comes when justice is not evenhanded, and just about every study done shows that it isn't. \n", "Let's change the phrase to \"Black lives matter, too.\" It's what it should have been from the start.", "It shouldn't be.  If we are honest, it's all about capturing the public microphone so to speak vs the multitude of other causes fighting for just a moment's notice of our time. \n\nSaying, \"Black lives matter\" specifically focuses on the suffering of that group of people.  Go even further and it only pertains to an American context.  (If anyone actually knew anything about the history of the Ivory Coast, Timbuktu, the Tripoli Slave Trade, ect...)\n\nThe supposed argument is that \"black lives matter\" represents all oppressed an marginalized groups within the last 400 years of American history, but it doesn't and is only along specific racial lines.\n\nFor instance, my Armenian ancestors went through slavery for over a thousand years, plus repeated massacres and genocides not including the one in 1915.  Should we use a hashtag to demand people recognize our suffering specifically over others?  (Hell, the US still won't even officially say the word genocide in regards to the Armenian Genocide because it will offend a certain NATO member.)\n\n Then again, do the lives of my 3 half-black cousins matter or do they only matter if they are 100% black? Do the lives of me and my half middle eastern cousins matter, or are we not black enough?\n\nDuring the Ferguson riots there was a Bosnian man beaten to death by a hammer and the Bosnian community has alleged that their have been racially targeted crimes against their community over the years.  Do their lives not matter? \n\nApparently not as the police deny its a hate crime while the Bosnian community insists it is.   Thats what happens when you dehumanize the plight of other people by insisting that only certain lives matter.", "I think [this cartoon](_URL_0_) covers it quite well.\n\nBasically, \"black lives matter\" is a response to a particularly severe immediate problem \u2014 a string of incidents involving unarmed black people being killed by police in dubious circumstances. \n\nWhile we really don't want _anyone_ killed by police in dubious circumstances, the wealthy white guys (for example) are doing OK and really don't need the help, so why insist that it has to be just as much about them, other than to be a dick?", "Most simply when something is said as a retort to a statement, then it exists to invalidate the original statement. This makes people angry. ", "I appreciate people having their mind changed but its mond-blowing to me that this wasn't obvious. If anything it only further solidifies the huge disconnect that exists between the actual treatment of blacks in society vs the perception of the treatment they receive.\n\nThe way I would describe its like a \"save the music in schools\" movement and someone Deeboing your mic to say \"Math matters too!\"... Well OK, no one argued otherwise...but music programs are the ones being cut and in need of awareness ", "Nuance. Black Lives Matter Too. But you only see Black Lives Matter as an offense. When it is clear as day that people of color are treated much differently. That we are wishing to be heard and understood.\n\nNo one is saying Black Lives Matter think that white lives don't matter. Why would that train of thought cross your mind. I'm sorry but is there a hashtag called kill whitey followed at BLM? No. \n\nIt was never implied and you should know that.\n\n\n", "Anybody who truly thinks that black lives don't matter won't be swayed by this phrase, or any phrase.  Catchphrase activism.  A sub-genre of the ever popular slacktivism.  How many Berkeley students can dance on the head of a pin?  Black lives matter, catchphrases ... not so much.", "\nThere's only so much time in a day. You can waste it on negative things or use it wisely on positive things that are important\n\nThis could be \"ones perspective\" on the whole #blacklivesmatter debate. It doesn't mean its right or wrong but it will always exist as a thought. It's how someone else may see things to which you have no control over. All you can do is \"be the change you want to see in the world\" Mahatma Gandhi\n\nsomeone creates a movement #blacklivesmatter\nsomeone creates a movement #whitelivesmatter\nsomeone creates a movement #mexicanlivesmatter\nsomeone creates a movement #jewishlivesmatter\nsomeone creates a movement #asianlivesmatter\n\nand so on to infinity.. the freedom to voice your opinion happens\n\nsomeone says, \"This sure seems silly to have so many INDIVIDUAL lives that matter. I mean we are all the same people just in different places in life. We should put together a movement called #alllivesmatter and work together as a TEAM! Just think of how much more we could accomplish working as a human society!! Super excited about this!\"\n\n#alllivesmatter is created\n\nthe creator of #whateverlivesmatter takes offense that it doesn't address their movement specifically and proclaims you can't use #alllivesmatter because it would be ignoring what they're about and they will not be heard.\n\n#alllivesmatter feels upset because it can no longer have the freedom to voice their belief that \"we are all the same people just in different places in life\" Yet #whateverlivesmatter continues their movement excluding all the #otherlivesthatmatter\n\nThe TEAM has been segregated, and we go back to working as INDIVIDUALS and accomplish much less\n\nAll racist groups have been INDIVIDUAL efforts\n\nA human society is a TEAM effort\n\nRacism-consists of ideologies and practices that seek to justify, or cause, the unequal distribution of privileges, rights or goods among different racial groups. Modern variants are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. It may also hold that members of different races should be treated differently (_URL_0_ )", "the problem though, the only reason i know about the black lives matter movement is because i saw representatives ruining speeches of a presidential candidate multiple times and being extremely rude and unreasonable...oh and they interrupted the candidate that they would actually want on their side. makes it hard for me to respect the movement when that's the behavior that's exhibited "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-lives-matter/?_r=0"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/12/08/all-things-considered/"], [], [], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism"], []]}
{"q_id": "27k0pr", "title": "why do the uk countries play separately at the fifa world cup but as one nation in competitions like the olympics?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27k0pr/eli5_why_do_the_uk_countries_play_separately_at/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci1joob", "ci1jt6b", "ci1jtic", "ci1k0cs", "ci1lwrj", "ci1psh7"], "score": [38, 42, 12, 5, 6, 2], "text": ["I don't know the real reason, but I'm inclined to blame the Scots.", "_URL_0_\n\nELI5 answer: each of the Home Nations (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland) formed their own soccer leagues before FIFA formed. When FIFA was created, they let The United Kingdom keep their own separate leagues. After the split between The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, The North made a new league so they could keep playing soccer.\n\nThe IOC forces all countries to play as one team, so they will not allow countries like Great Britain to break up into the four Home Nations. Dependent territories gets a little trickier.", "The nations that compete at the World Cup are represented by their football associates - the FA for England, the SFA for Scotland, FAW for Wales, and the IFA for Northern Ireland. Because each country has its own football association, they each send their own team to the World Cup. Additionally, there is a long history of the teams competing against each other.\n\nIn athletics, there are no separate national entities. The British Olympic Association was formed in 1905. There is no history of each country competing separately, and no reason for the BOA to split up.", "There is no British FA. The home nation FAs predate FIFA and were not even members at the time of the first world cup because we were a tad annoyed after WW1. \n\nWe used to play in the Olympics as Great Britain but that was really just England, and we stopped bothering in 1972. Recently we played as a distinctly ersatz Great Britain side at the Olympics (2012), which was fairly controversial amongst the home nations, and won't be happening again. ", "missing out, Bale on the England squad would be fun to watch", "Other people have answered why England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland compete separately at the FIFA World Cup. However, no on has really answered the Olympics part.\nTechnically, Great Brittan doesn't compete in Football (soccer) at the Olympics. They fielded a \"GB Team\" in 2012 because London was hosting; however, the team consisted entirely of English players. The Scottish, Irish and Welsh FAs simply said ok to the GB team but, \"we won't participate in case this sets a precedent for FIFA.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_national_football_team"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3te1p9", "title": "how and why do female's menstrual cycles \"sync up\" if they are together for long periods of time?", "selftext": "I've often heard that if females spend a lot of time together their menstrual cycles will sync up. How does this happen? Exactly what process takes place for this to happen? Is there some kind of evolutionary advatage for this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3te1p9/eli5_how_and_why_do_females_menstrual_cycles_sync/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx5dnlj", "cx5dp69", "cx5dr9i"], "score": [19, 30, 6], "text": ["They don't... if you constantly hang out with the same women sooner or later all your cycles will sync up. Kind of like when you turn your car blinker on. The person in front of you who also has their blinker on, your blinker and theirs will at some point blink together.\n\nSource: I am a female, and I also like to watch the person in front of me's blinker.", "This doesn't actually happen - it's an outdated scientific theory and a very common [urban myth](_URL_0_).  \n\nBasically, most women will bleed one out of every four weeks.  If you have a bunch of women living together, there will naturally be overlaps between their individual cycles, and some people have misread this as \"synching\".  But the theory is largely discredited by now.  ", "Many studies have been done but there remains great uncertainty (and skepticism) about whether it even happens.  If it does it must be a weak effect.  There are theories about pheromones being responsible but proving these will be even harder than proving the effect exists."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_synchrony"], []]}
{"q_id": "3brkm2", "title": "Is there a \"narrative history\" and a \"social history\"?", "selftext": "(x-post from /r/badhistory)\n\nAbout a month ago I submitted a thread asking, \"[Am I a bad historian if my personal interests align with the great man theory?](_URL_0_)\" This engendered a really great discussion about the accuracy of various modes of historiography, and made me question many convictions I had previously held about the field of history and my interest in it. In this thread, I tried to verbalize my personal conflict with history by explaining that my personal tastes tended to hover toward more methodologically conservative works of literature, but I realize now that this isn't fully correct. I don't exactly prefer studying about \"great people\"; I prefer studying a narrative. I tend to think of history as \"things that happen\", and am most interested in learning history this way. I recognize the incredible importance of anthropological social history, and find it to be oftentimes very fascinating, but I prefer to learn what *happened*, not what *was*. Quite a long time ago, I insisted on another forum that \"history is about studying changes to the status quo\". While I'm now very aware that this is an immature and ignorant view of history, I'm still most interested in individual events, people, or movements that changed society. More broadly, I want to understand the narrative. \n\nMuch of my opening post dealt with a recent course by [Guido Ruggiero](_URL_2_), a rather illustrious Renaissance historian who recently published (and taught) a lengthy [overview of the Renaissance and Italy](_URL_1_), which I found incredibly enlightening but also very disappointing. While I took the class mostly hoping to learn what happened in the Renaissance, the textbook was primarily a work of \"social and cultural history\". This meant that the course was almost entirely non-chronological, and was in many ways an ethnography of 14th-16th century Florentines. Every chapter was centered around a lofty concept like \"Self\", \"Discovery\", or \"Violence\" and how they ideals of the Rinascimento (the terminology that Professor Ruggiero preferred). This book covered a very wide range of topics, from attitudes toward premarital sex to the baronial organization of Rome, but never delved into the events that specifically piqued my interest.\n\nAs I mentioned in the last thread, there was very little attention given to the motivations or effects of any individual or event. The late-fifteenth century French invasion of Italy, which I might consider to be possibly the most important single event of the Italian Renaissance, was not covered. We never learned why the war was fought or how it ran its course, and Dr. Ruggiero didn't mention its implications on the politics of Italy. Instead, we learned how it reduced efficacy in the strength of the Italian states and promoted resentment against the French and the Church. Similarly, the rapid and mind-numbingly massive conquests of Gian Galeazzo Visconti were not described. Despite its 650 pages, the textbook only mentioned the Count of Milan in reference to his \"virtu\" and how he was idolized by certain Italian intellectuals for his shrewdness. Personally, I would be thrilled to read an account of Gian Galeazzo's campaigns and how they transformed the governments and erased the borders of Northern Italy. It may not be as consequential to the scope of European history in the long-term, but learning about the specifics of these wars is far more interesting to me than studying Boccaccio's views on sexual morality and whether or not they represented popular opinion (a topic that Dr. Ruggiero was especially fond of). \n\nCould there be a \"narrative history\" that contrasts with mainstream social history? Do there exist any noteworthy recent works that cover events as they happened? It seems that nearly all pre-modern works of history follow the mold I prefer, and because about 90% of the historical literature I've been assigned has been a primary source, that might explain my tastes. In an earlier semester I read the *Diary of Margaery Kemp* and *The Murder, Betrayal, and Slaughter of Charles, Count of Flanders*, two very different but equally engrossing medieval texts that described in very real terms the Middle Ages as experienced by its people. Another book assigned that semester, concerning the \"True Levellers\" of early modern England, was much more of a drag. Although it was written centuries later, it was less engrossing due to its non-narrative structure, as it carried an assumption that a student could understand the English Civil War without needing to know the events as they occurred. With some slight reservation I'll concede that I'm a pretty big fan of certain Dan Carlin podcasts. I take his material with a grain of salt, given his spotty reputation among academic historians, but the way he presents history -- a storytelling approach, emphasizing certain influential figures and particularly important or exciting events -- is really exciting and a little bit inspirational. One traditional work of \"narrative history\" that I've often seen mentioned is Robert Carlyle's *The French Revolution*, and while it sounds somewhat appealing I'm very hesitant to read it. Carlyle is obviously infamous for his reductionist outlook of history, and is essentially the mascot of the kind of intellectual childishness that I worry I may be associated with, for not preferring modern social history. Moreover, Carlyle's theories are very popular with current white supremacists, making me even more wary.\n\nCan a proper historian (or at least a proper student of history) justify a preference for narrative history, or is it deterministic and immature to perceive history as a \"collection of stories\"? Is there an ongoing struggle between social historians and narrative historians, or am I rambling about an imaginary distinction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3brkm2/is_there_a_narrative_history_and_a_social_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csoyxmv", "csp2a1z"], "score": [22, 23], "text": ["It appears that you are asking a question about the status of these methodologies in historiography, i.e. the study of how the writing of history has changed over the years. Hopefully this attempts to answer your question.\n\nTraditional history, i.e. history written before the 1920s, was focused on politics, economics, military, and a \"Great White Man's history,\" all of which contained more or less a chronological depictions of events. These works did not deeply delve into too much analysis of sources the way that modern historians do. That is to say, \"reading against the grain\" of a source or attempting to find divergent sources (sources from the poor and etc) was not their goal. The goal of such works was to merely lay out how things happened and at times postulated theories about causation and conduct. Now while traditional history is focused on the narrative, I would not necessarily call it narrative history. I'll explain more below.\n\nFrom traditional history we get the Beards, basically economic causation. From there we get Progressives (Schlesinger Jr.), i.e. class conflict. Then Consensus historians (Hofstadter), i.e. change vs. continuity. After that, depending on the country, you see a move towards social history (Marwick), i.e. the little people, women's history, i.e what women did (This can also be broken into four trends within women's history called Compensatory or Women Worthies, Golden Age, Feminist History, Gender History) (Joan Scott), and cultural history that looks at material culture and its influence on history.\n\nSo in terms of historiography, those are the big hitters. I am of course leaving out the earlier historiography, like Hellenic history and Christian centered history, as it isn't in the modern trends. So why does this matter? Because within these broad methods, exist diverging writing styles, which is what you appear to be mostly interested in. Books have various writing styles, monographs (a focused analysis), surveys (textbooks), academic synthesis (blended), and popular history. I'm kind of making these categories up, but this is the way I see things anyway. Narrative history as you describe I typically find in synthesis and popular history.\n\nPopular histories (which is my synonym for narrative) are most common in works by journalists or historians near the end of their career. Part of the reason for this is academia, publishing, and public taste. In academia, you are encouraged to write on very specific topics (monographs) that go into a great deal of analysis on the source material itself. The idea behind this torture test is that your dissertation is you proving you can do history on a truly academic (read obtuse) level. Simplistic language is replaced with ostentatious erudition. Topics are narrowly focused and really designed for specialized readers. etc. These books rarely make it into Barnes and Nobles. Thus, journalists and older academics with the leeway from publishers can take on more popular historical topics. This is where publishing comes into play.\n\nAcademic presses love the academic books I described above, it makes them look professional. But they also have to pay the bills. Thus, all publishers also produce popular histories designed for the lay public, which by and large, are narrative styles of history. These books leverage the leg work done by all the aforementioned research and academic writing and turn it into something the public can engage. Great examples of these works are David McCullum's 1776, Shelby Foote's The Civil War, etc.\n\nAs I said above, you can actually engage social, cultural, political, military, economic histories in synthesis, which also has a narrative style. The difference is that they spend a good deal of space on footnotes for sources, lengthy historiographic essays, and are meant for student and professional alike. While these too can be approached by the broader public, they are lengthier and beefier. Good examples of these are the Oxford Series on American History, like Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.\n\nCan I justify your preference? Not really as a professional, but yes as a reader. Is your distinction rather imaginary, yes and no. As to your question about is there a struggle between social historians and \"narrative\" ones, yes and no. We call this the academic hedge, heh. People like what they like, don't worry about whether its what professionals say you should like. As I described above, while your terms may be off, you get to the heart of the matter for the fight between professional and popular histories. \n\nIn terms of academia, professional histories that use, social, cultural, gender, etc. reign supreme. You want to do a thesis or dissertation, you will be doing that. In terms of publishing, the money makers are popular histories, synthesis, and textbooks. \n\nProfessional historians lament that history gets dumbed down, yet they do not do much to make their topics or works more approachable. Most people enjoy a good story, a narrative, something linear that they can understand and see progression. But by and large professionals don't write these until much later. Popular histories are useful and well written, but lack nuance and proof. I don't see either type of history changing much in the next few years. But with technology, professional histories are getting more digital time, like The Valley of the Shadow Project online that brings very complex historiographic arguments about the Civil War into a more approachable and visual method.\n\nSo that is my spiel. Hope it helped.", " >  am I rambling about an imaginary distinction?\n\nWhile I certainly don't think you are rambling (you make some great observations), I do think you have assumed a distinction between social history and narrative history that doesn't inherently exist.\n\nIf I'm reading your post correctly, you're perhaps muddling the definition of social history. Social history is, at the most basic level, the study of \"ordinary people\"--groups like ethnic and racial minorities, the lower economic classes, women, and many others that were for a long time marginalized and discounted by historians. There is nothing inherently contradictory between a social history and a narrative history, which you and many others define as the history of events. I am woefully unfamiliar with historical works on the pre-modern era like the ones you brought up, but one book that I can think of that combines social history and narrative history is Steven Ozment's [*The Burgermeister's Daughter*](_URL_2_).\n\nFrom what I gathered from your post, I don't think your problem is necessarily with social history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it may be that your grievance is more with history books structured thematically (like the Ruggiero book you cite) rather than chronologically (a la, narrative histories that focus on \"events\"). There are benefits to both the chronological and thematic ways of writing history, and those benefits boil down to what historical forces the historian is wanting to emphasize. \n\nAt the most basic level, there are only two historical forces: structures and human agency. Ideally, historians should recognize that these two forces are interrelated, but I get the impression that most historians today emphasize one at the expense of the other. \n\nFirst, what are structures? They are impersonal forces--whether ideological, social, or economic--that simultaneously compel and constrain human action. Moreover, structures constitute social systems and make the world in which historical actors operate intelligible. In other words, structures provide the boundaries in which human action occurs; it is very difficult for individuals to take actions outside the boundaries of contemporary historical structures. Economic class relations is one example of a structure (think Marxist historiography). For another example, I'll pull one from the Ruggiero book you mentioned: \"the self\". Conceptions of the self have throughout history been tied to large-scale symbolic structures. Arguably the most dominant of these in recent history is nationalism. Throughout the modern era, an individual's identity has always been inextricably tied to the nation that he claims (and the nation that claims him). Getting back to your comment and question, history books that are structured by themes, like Ruggiero's, are excellent at clarifying the dominant structures that existed within a particular historical era and provide the context for why and how the major events within the era took place. (A good, if dense, discussion on the role of structures in history is William Sewell Jr., [*The Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation*](_URL_1_)).\n\nThe other historical force is human agency. Agency is in many ways the opposite of structures. If structures constrain human action, agency is the ability of historical actors to sometimes break free of those dominant structures. In my opinion, narrative histories are much better at tracing agency, particularly during periods in which  structures become unstable. (A good example of this type of history is Mary Sarotte's [*The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall*](_URL_0_)). By honing in on specific events and individuals instead of broad themes, narrative histories are able to effectively show how old structures fall and new ones arise.  \n\nSo, in response to your question as to whether a proper historian can justify a preference for narrative history, I think he certainly can. But I also think that he needs to be aware of the limitations of narrative history, particularly its propensity to focus exclusively on agency at the expense of structures.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/36mqk7/am_i_a_bad_historian_if_my_personal_interests/", "http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/renaissance-italy-social-and-cultural-history-rinascimento", "http://www.as.miami.edu/history/people/faculty/guido-ruggiero/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=OaAVBQAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=mary+sarotte+the+collapse&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=EkKUVYaJGcftsAWi17uADg&amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=mary%20sarotte%20the%20collapse&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=EY0yuWBBkWYC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=william+sewell+jr+the+logics+of+history&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=CESUVfeQOMTQtQX7goDIBw&amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=william%20sewell%20jr%20the%20logics%20of%20history&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=oRNkS42m1h8C&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=the+burgermeister%27s+daughter&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=6iWUVYy1E4LssAWvrIbgAQ&amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=the%20burgermeister%27s%20daughter&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "2s0qha", "title": "why don't we inhale close to (or all of) our lung's capacity worth of air when we breathe naturally?", "selftext": "In other words, why isn't every breath a deep breath if our lungs can handle it?\n(Assuming we don't put a great deal of consciousness into breathing.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s0qha/eli5why_dont_we_inhale_close_to_or_all_of_our/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnl2euv", "cnl2hrk", "cnl2nld", "cnl6bgt"], "score": [22, 6, 2, 20], "text": ["Life has this tendency to want to do the thing that takes the least amount of energy(for the same result). It takes a lot of work to fill your lungs to capacity, and it isn't like all the air gets used by your lungs in either case. ", "Your body only takes in oxygen at a certain rate so why spend the energy breathing full breaths just to breath most of it out again ", "because your ancestors needed the extra capacity to run from predators. When you work out you use a much larger greater share of your lungs. ", "Did anyone else switch to \"manual breathing\" while reading this question? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1aix2o", "title": "Anyone able to shed some more light on the 'Baader Meinhof Gang' aka The RAF  &  the militarised left wing of Europe during the 70's? ", "selftext": "I caught ['The Baader Meinhof Complex'](_URL_0_) on at about 3am the other night.  As I'd never even heard of such brutal left wing 'terrorists' in cold war Europe it really struck a cord and I found the whole movie compelling.  I understand within Germany the film did ok, but a lot of people thought the film was too vague on a lot of points, but for me it was a great intro to an unknown subject.\n\n\nHowever any more detailed info about them, the time they spent in prison, acts of terror, motives and ideology etc would be really interesting.\n\n\nThanks!\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1aix2o/anyone_able_to_shed_some_more_light_on_the_baader/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8xut1s", "c8y3mpa"], "score": [37, 5], "text": ["'Revolutionary' groups, so to speak, were relatively common during that time. Germany had the Baader Meinhof gang (Red Army Faction), Italy had the 'Red Brigade' (who were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro). The student protests in France in 1968 nearly brought (or actually did) bring the country to a standstill for a period of time, though weren't radicalized or violent in the way that the RAF or RB were. \n\nAlthough the RAF had its roots in the student protests and for a long time were no different from what tens of thousands of other students were doing across different countries. The RAF however, unlike similar groups, soon radicalized with a pledge to match action with words. The common characteristic between the groups was a feeling of disassociation from the mainstream political ideologies as well as disenfranchisement from mainstream politics in general. \n\nAbove all, the RAF felt that they were in a fight against imperialism. They identified very strongly with Mao Tse Dung and his resistance to capitalist pressures and many students in Germany even went so far as to identify with the rebels (Viet Cong) in South Vietnam.  German activists, for example, organized a 'Vietnam Summer' in 1965. The common trend was that these groups saw Capitalism as both imperialist in nature and as a system of oppression and that it was their duty to oppose such a system. Many Germans felt that their government was nothing but a 'puppet' regime for the United States - since the US did have a relatively strong amount of influence in their country -  thus they found it easy to compare their situation to that in Southern Vietnam (hence the German support for the South Vietnamese rebels). Many German activists actually declared the Vietnam war to be a genocide and given their recent past with the Nazism, many student groups felt it was uniquely their moral duty to oppose the conflict. \n\nI could elaborate on the ideology, but I don't really think it's necessary because in this case you can get it straight from the horse's mouth. Have a look at \"The Urban Guerilla Concept\" by Ulrike Meinhof, published in 1971. \n\nA brief excerpt:\n\n\"The Urban Guerilla is not waiting for the Prussian-type marching orders that some so-called revolutionaries are holding out for in order to lead the people\u2019s struggle. When the time comes, the Urban Guerilla is completely ready for the armed struggle. He assumes that in a country like the Federal Republic, with a weak revolutionary tradition and massive potential for State violence, that revolutionary intervention is a necessity. The Urban Guerilla assumes that the conditions for revolution have never been better than at present \u2013 due to the economic and political circumstances prevalent in late-capitalism.\"\n\nHopefully that helps!\n\nP.S. I don't like grouping different countries/groups together since every country has its own history and each group has its own roots/motives/ideology etc. If you want me to specifically discuss the French student protests or the Red Brigade in Italy, I will do so :-)", "Speaking on extreme left wing terrorism in general;\n\nHere in Belgium we had the [CCC](_URL_3_) in the mid-80's. They specifically targeted international organisations; but often announced their attacks well in advance. \n\nIn Italy, you had the [Red Brigades](_URL_1_). I couldn't find how many victims are \"attributed\" to them, but unlike the CCC their method focused on kidnapping and assassinationg people.  It wasn't just left-wing terrorism though, a lot is still being uncovered regarding [Operation Gladio](_URL_2_). This was a stay-behind network in Europe sponsored by the CIA, to organise an uprising in case of a Soviet invasion. For this, they created paramilitary organisations and provided training. Some people now **speculate** that parts of the people involved with Operation Gladio carried out terrorist attacks in Europe; as part of the [strategy of tension](_URL_0_).\n\nAgain, this is all incredibly recent reseach. The first academic research into the topic of Operation Gladio was published exactly 8 years ago. The author (Daniele Ganser) speculates part of the attacks that are attributed to left-wing terrorist cells, could've been the work of Operation Gladio in order to damage communism in the public opinion.\n\nIt's certain that Operation Gladio did indeed exist, but there's no consensus (yet) on what their operations were.\n\n*Mods: I know the piece about Operation Gladio is largely speculation; so feel free to remove it.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765432/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Combatant_Cells"]]}
{"q_id": "5qcec3", "title": "Why is there no electric field within a conductor?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5qcec3/why_is_there_no_electric_field_within_a_conductor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcyaod1"], "score": [15], "text": ["This is true for a conductor in an electrostatic system. If the field were nonzero anywhere inside the conductor, a current would flow, and the charge distribution would reorient itself to cancel the nonzero field."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5hvqte", "title": "what prevents online test takers from just googling the answer?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hvqte/eli5_what_prevents_online_test_takers_from_just/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db3cuec", "db3czfo", "db3d0wu", "db3d19b", "db3ec3u", "db3entp", "db3fd4r", "db3hkmz", "db3kvuu"], "score": [17, 2, 17, 39, 44, 2, 4, 2, 2], "text": ["Usually the time limits \n\nI took a few online tests (though they were \"open book\" so using google wasn't considered cheating) and whilst it's easy enough to highlight the question and google the answer the time limit makes any meaningful research difficult.\n\nIf it's short answer or multiple choice you might be able to google em all, but otherwise you still need to study", "There are multiple ways where an online test can limit the possibilities of you 'cheating', but they can never take it away completely. Not without some additional requirements that i haven't seen before.\n\n- Time. By only giving so much time to answer the questions, you limit the time a candidate has to look it up. It won't prevent it, but if you look up every question, you'll run out of time\n- No tab / app switching. By detecting if a window is deactivated (because you're switching to another tab or another program) and immediately terminating the test. This does not prevent a candidate from using his cell phone or secondary computer to look it up.\n\nI think the only way they could prevent it, if you were forced to enable your webcam, so they can make sure your eyes stay on the screen. Maybe even requiring you to use the webcam to show your surrounding to make sure you have no notes hanging about.\nBut this has serious implications and i'm not sure if they could make it a requirement. ", "When I was in college, we had to use a special browser ~~(I forget the name)~~ called Respondus LockDown Browswer that basically locked down a lot of functionality while it was open. You couldn't ALT+TAB to a different window, you couldn't close it without exiting the quiz, it was full screen be default so you could only see it, etc. There were ways around it (I had an iPad, so... yeah), but there were ways to try to stop people from being able to use the computer from doing anything but taking the exam at the time.", "If they are serious about preventing cheating they require you to use a browser \"lockdown\" software. However this does not prevent someone from using two computers for their test.\n\nThe most effective method I've seen is a test that has the lockdown browser and additionally a webcam feature. Students must take the test on a computer with a webcam and it records your face and hands as you take the test.", "Google won't help you much with a well made test. Properly made tests test if you understand the topic, they don't ask you to regurgitate memorized definitions, or if they do, such questions don't have a big impact on the final score.", "In India, for GATE exams, they had a browser open that doesn't have the title bar so you cannot minimize the browser. The browser was locked down, so you cannot open tabs. There was a scientific calculator sticked to the top left corner. The computer did not have a keyboard. To select the correct choice, you have to click the corresponding radio button. And also, they give you a 25 page scratch pad with your serial number on it, so that you cannot exchange it with dude sitting next to you. You are not allowed to take anything with you except a pencil. I couldn't think of any way some one can cheat without getting caught.", "In most careers, you are not expected to retain everything you learned in school. The expectation is that you will know where to find the information you need when you need it. If you studied well, you should remember where to find the the information needed. ", "At my school, they use an online proctoring service. You connect at a certain time and the proctor will video chat with you. They can see your screen and take over your mouse if need be. \n\nYou have to pick up your computer and show them the room you're in so that they know you're not using another computer, a paid test taker, or notes. They also check your ID and watch you take the test. \n\nThere are ways around it (my favorite technique is hiding a cheat sheet under my laptop and holding it when they ask you to pick up the computer and show them your desk) and it's not cheap (25$/exam, 3 exams/class, 4 classes/semester) but it is much better at preventing cheating than nothing. ", "In the world we are living in the question is why we keep teaching how to learn by memory and not how to search for the answer. It's like learning to build a car in order to get a driver's license"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2luzve", "title": "Why were the 1918 Germany spring offensives (\"Michael,\" \"Georgette,\" \"Blucher-Yorck,\" \"Gneisenau\") so much more effective than comparable allied offensives from previous years?", "selftext": "The spring offensive launched by the Germans in 1918 was ultimately a failure that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Germany's best troops and the squandering of significant material resources. The Germany army found itself overstretched and was soon back on the defensive as the allies launched their own \"100 Days offensive\" that would end in armistice.\n\nThat said, in comparison to the major allied offensives of 1916 and 1917 which failed to capture significant amounts of territory, the Germany spring offensives captured vast tracts of albeit strategically useless country side and threw the British and French armies back 50 miles in some places.\n\nWhat explains the near successes of these massive German offensives while similar allied offensives never achieved similar \"breakthroughs\" into open country?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2luzve/why_were_the_1918_germany_spring_offensives/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clyhpp4", "clyj6lo", "clyopqv"], "score": [29, 37, 16], "text": ["You're not comparing like with like. The perception of the allied offensives of 1916 and 1917 is of them failing to seize territory, as if the ground itself  was the prize. Like the failed German offensives of 1918, they were aimed at knocking their enemy out, not at seizing ground. One could argue that the British offensive on the Somme in 1916 was at least a partial success; the German Army leadership clearly thought so, and believed that the battle had destroyed the cream of their Army. Despite the Brits being pushed back so far in the Spring Offensives, the necessary breakthrough was never achieved, and the Allied counter-attacks ultimately led to Germany's defeat in the Autumn. So, not much more effective at all. ", "Right I just lost an enormous post which handled this question directly and I'm not even going to bother; I'm sorry. I wrote a post on a similar topic here titled [\"In 1918, why was the Allies' 100 Days Offensive so successful, while the Germans' Spring Offensive failed?\"](_URL_0_) which I hope will answer some of your questions but is mostly, as you can tell, about the offensives themselves and not comparing them to the likes of the Somme.  \n\nThe **TL;DR:** of it all for your question though is that the allied offensives were not necessarily trying to achieve breakthrough like the Germans were. The offensives were in no way comparable because their objectives were different. The Germans were making a mad dash for Paris, the British were trying to seize this one little railway center or take out a ridge or just generally kill Germans. \n\nWe must also remember that on the basis of *Hutier Tactics* the Germans were using the absolute best of the best soldiers and striking the most lightly defended areas of the front. *Of course* they would break through. The issue came with, though, once they broke through *then what*? They weren't capturing major supply depots, rail centers, or HQ's because obviously there was nothing there if the allies weren't defending it very much. However once the stormtroopers broke through all that remained on the front were the least experienced troops on the front and now the stormtroopers were out of range of their own artillery and were basically on their own to be cut down by allied strategic reserves, heavy guns, and cavalry. ", "As /u/splitbrain says, the Germans were able to transfer a lot of soldiers from the eastern front to the western front.\n\nNow by a lot, we are talking about A LOT. British estimates put German strength in March 1918 on the western from at 177 divisions. To put that in perspective, at 2nd Alamein, the British Empire would field a total of only 11 Divisions!\n\nThe German blow for Op Michael would fall on British Fifth Army with approximately 14 divisions. Ranged against them were some 74 German divisions. Again for perspective, that's more divisions than the Germans had in the whole of western Europe in 1944.\n\nThe superiority of artillery was even more pronounced. The German bombardment on 21/03/1918 lasted for 5 hours during which an *absolutely staggering 3,500,000 shells* were fired. \n\nOf course, Fifth Army had to fall back. \n\nBut they were falling back on strategically worthless ground. In fact, fifth army was to be so denuded of troops that for the battle of Bapaume, they only had 3 infantry and 1 cavalry divisions.  \n\nWhen the Germans attempted to attack the well defended and strategically valuable ground in and around the Ypres salient, Arras and Amiens, they were stopped dead. They made almost no progress at all, despite huge expenditure of blood and treasure.\n\nSo what does this mean? Yes infantry tactics, improved communication, logistics etc. helped, the fact is that artillery and overwhelming weight of numbers must be counted as the main ingredient of German success (such as it was) in spring of 1918.\n\nIt was a single shot weapon though. And once the Germans had shot their bolt and missed the target, they could not possible hope to win the war."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eetst/in_1918_why_was_the_allies_100_days_offensive_so/"], []]}
{"q_id": "389slp", "title": "if you are still conscious for several seconds after being decapitated, what would be happening physiologically? would you instinctively breathe even though you wouldn't need to?", "selftext": "[7]", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/389slp/eli5_if_you_are_still_conscious_for_several/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crtf11a", "crtg7wl", "crth0cn", "crtjsec", "crtlhox", "crtmtui", "crtn8ax", "crtnu4z", "crtoy03", "crtozth", "crtwzfa"], "score": [11, 6, 96, 52, 21, 6, 21, 3, 30, 5, 2], "text": ["For starters, you breathe using your chest/abdomen, so your severed head wouldn't be breathing. If conscious, your brain would be panicking trying to send signals to your lungs \"breathe in! Come on! Breathe!\"", "The evidence that consciousness persists for any significant time after beheading consists entirely of unsubstantiated anecdotes, mostly from the French guillotine days.\n\n\n\n", "I was super interested in this a while back and did some research. Obviously we can't study this kind of thing humanely, but there is anecdotal evidence of some consciousness (pretty much always the head the head just sort of looks around in shock/fear) from the guillotine and one story I remember reading about an Iraq (Afghanistan?) veteran talking about a friend whose head was removed during an attack. The most interesting example was some guy (don't remember who it was, hopefully some other commenter will help me out here) who knew he was going to be executed and told the executioner he would try to say something when his head was off. He didn't, but the executioner called his name several times and the head did look at the man each time.\n\nAlso, if I remember correctly, it takes 4-7 seconds to go unconscious  due to cutting off the blood supply if you are hanged without breaking your neck (also unsure about this statistic, sorry for all these parentheses but like I said I was interested in this a while ago and have forgotten a lot). I believe that 4 seconds also comes up in rats who are decapitated. I made that (very unscientific) connection on my own, but it seems logical that your brain needs a few seconds without blood supply before it entirely powers down and 4 seconds is the number that seems to come up the most. If you think about it, it doesn't really make sense that you would die literally INSTANTLY, since nothing has actually happened to your brain and it is likely going to die due to blood loss.\n\nAnyway, the little evidence I found seems to point to the fact that the brain is still working, but you're probably in too deep a state of shock and the time frame too small for you to actually do or think of anything (other than maybe pure shock/fear) as demonstrated by the fact that shocked or painful looks are the only things that come up in even the most fantastic of stories and by the one guy who actually did try and fail to do something more. As far as things like heartbeat and breathing, those are involuntary and still happen in a state of shock, so I imagine your brain is still sending those signals to the neck, though obviously no one is listening.", "You might be conscious for a few seconds but you'll already be losing it. It's not like you're totally aware for 7 seconds then black out, it's more of a gradual loss of awareness. \n\nT+1 sec : \"Shit\"\n\nT+2 sec : \"Well, I gue\"\n\nT+3 sec : \"...\"\n\nT+4 sec : \n\nT+5 sec : unconscious. \n", "I read some historically stuff on the French Revolution and the use of the guillotine in those days.\n\nIt seems a Doctor marked for death wondered if any life or conscious remained as the head came off?  He agreed to blink his eyes, as many times as possible, after his head fell into the basket.  Witnesses said he blinked his eyes about 15 times.", "You wouldn't lose consciousness until the lack of blood took it's toll, but it would be more like the feeling quickly fading away rather than a sudden awake-dead transition. Think holding your breath for a really long time, those last few instants before you would pass out. You'd get really dizzy really fast, then everything would fade to black before you knew what was happening. \n\nAs for breathing, you breath because a muscle in your abdomen (diaphragm) expands and contracts, the vacuum created by it drawing in the higher pressure atmospheric air around you. So you would not be able to breath, or speak since that requires air moving past your vocal chords. \n\nHere's a fun vsauce video about death if you're interested: _URL_0_", "The closest thin we have to proper evidence is the effects of high g turns in an aircraft. This causes blood to flow out of your brain. If you don't prepare for this, you can black real quick. Imagine that without a heart to push blood back into your brain. Think about if you stand up too fast and everything gets fuzzy. That's just a small drop in blood pressure. ", "Breathing is controlled by respiratory nuclei in your brainstem, and the  actual breath mechanism is carried out by your diaphragm (and chest wall) so severing the connection between the two would stop attempts at breathing. You don't really have much sense of oxygen concentration, either, just respiratory drive triggered by chemoreceptors that do sense carbon dioxide load, which, presumably, wouldn't be triggered in that small amount of time, so you wouldn't really have a sensation of suffocation.", "This is where the introduction of a catapult to a guilitine would be amazing. Your head seperated from your body and then flung 400 feet instantaneously. Imagine the rush! Wheeeeeeee!! Splat!", "Is that an /r/trees highness scale in ELI5?", "When I stand up really fast and black-out for a few seconds it's only a very small drop in blood pressure but it has a huge impact. I'd imagine the loss of blood to the brain would leave you perhaps conscious for 2 seconds but no more. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CK8VxMz9g"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4i8bx7", "title": "why is it that muscle knots on your back/neck/shoulders are indicative of high levels of stress?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i8bx7/eli5_why_is_it_that_muscle_knots_on_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2w09ty", "d2w1tmj", "d2w20l3", "d2w2dcg", "d2w2p6j", "d2w3d16"], "score": [326, 14, 2, 14, 6, 2], "text": ["This is 2 questions. You pretty much posted the answer to why knots can be associated with stress. That is, prolonged tension, overuse, and poor positioning can basically damage muscle fibers which is one of the several mechanisms which most professionals generally agree can lead to knots (myofascial trigger points).\n\nStress can cause these because it puts the person persistently in a \"fight or flight\" mode. The brain may respond with a hormone release (norepinephrine  &  others) which has a cascading effect through the body that results in tense muscles and postures. Your brain is basically saying hey body, you need to be ready to react and move, so be a little tense. If it lasts a long time it is thought to cause possible damage to muscles. This damage may become evident as knotted areas in muscle fibers.\n\nThis is of course an oversimplification, and knots can be a subject of debate when it comes to scientific evidence. I hope this helps when it comes to a possible theory.", "In addition to all those physiological explanations given by other commenters, the reason why the those areas listed are more affected is because your body under stress wants to protect itself to reduce vulnerability.\n\nIt's why dogs/wolves raise their hackles when stressed and warning, or when birds fluff themselves up. It makes you look bigger and more intimidating and protects the neck.\n\nChronic stress and modern lifestyles/posture just exacerbates the problem.\n\nGo outside, stretch and exercise more! :)", "Your body is responding to a mental stressor the same way it would respond to a physical one e.g. An attack. Your shoulder muscles are primed to raise your arms to fight/defend. Ever notice how people put their head in their hands when stressed? To \"protect\" themselves. Your shoulder muscles constantly working causes them to be overloaded and tighten/form muscle knots. There's some debate on why knots form but we know there's decreased blood flow to the affected area.", "There are no good evidence based answers to this question. It is very controversial that trigger points Even exist. _URL_0_", "When stressed, your body releases neurotransmitters like cortisol, norep, and acetylcholine and more. Acetylcholine regulates muscle contractions and relaxations. Generally speaking, if you are stressed for a prolonged period of time the cholinesterase breakdown leads to muscle soreness and tightness.\n\nA more specific example would be using Adderall which increases the sympathetic nervous system which leads to everything I said above. A common side effect of dex-amp use is muscle tightness in and around the neck and back.", "A \"knot\" is commonly referred to a muscle that is \"tight\" or \"tough\" when you feel it. \n\nWhen we are stressed, we have a tendency to contract our muscles to \"brace\" or \"stabilize\", ourselves in preparation for the big event...what ever that my be. In our day and age it could be just about anything. From watching a murder mystery to hiding from a murder. Though, it is more commonly associated with poor posture and trying to meet deadlines. (stress at work) \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.painscience.com/articles/trigger-point-doubts.php"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2fkyh3", "title": "how is it that very complex 10-hour seasons of tv shows can be produced in a year's time, yet 2-hour movies so often take years to produce?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fkyh3/eli5_how_is_it_that_very_complex_10hour_seasons/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cka7y4w", "cka821a", "cka842a", "ckabad1", "ckahw4c", "ckam6r8", "ckatx8z"], "score": [109, 12, 2, 14, 5, 23, 2], "text": ["A lot of it is setup that takes place before any production begins - hiring people, finding actors, locations, etc. A tv show has to do that just once - just like in movies, except they get to reuse all of those resources in every episode. ", "Movies don't often take that long. Everyone is always doing something, while their may be a few years in between movies, more often than not it's because the producer/actors/directors are doing other projects. Most filming only takes between 1-3 months. The rest of the time it's sitting waiting for post processing and editing, in that time actors do other movies as well. \n\nAlso all studios have release boards that give them a projected outlook for movies releasing on specific weekends. It let's them know when to release their movie that will give them the best opportunity to be seen. Meaning that 2 blockbusters won't do well up against each other so they may hold onto the project until a prime weekend shows itself. \n", "Movies tend to have more unique sets that need to all be constructed or located for the first time, more cgi, a long pre production period because of the director and principal cast having prior commitments. The production takes a bit longer as the cast and crew moves from set to set but that's mostly negligible. The post production takes a lot longer because of increased cgi (even if you don't notice it) and the need for each frame and each transition to be perfect. In tv you can be less precise and still achieve your goals so the post production for a 42 minute tv episode might take a week to two weeks instead of the months it takes to edit a film. ", "There are a number of factors that make it so TV shows can film much more content in a similar (or shorter) period of time; here's a couple of the biggest:\n\n1.  Location:  Television shows generally use many fewer sets than movies; both Dramas and Comedies usually put a set of characters usually in 2-3 different places for the duration of an episode, which means less moving around for the production team and the actors.  Often they'll take place indoors, or somewhere that can be simulated on a studio backlot, which lessens the need for things like travel to locations or permits to shoot scenes.  Some movies *thrive* on the exotic \"real-life\" locations they show; think of how many locations are featured in a James Bond movie.\n\n2.  People:  Television casts, especially for dramas, are much larger than than a movie.  This means television shows can shoot more scenes at the same time in parallel, with different sets of actors.\n\n3. FX: Movies in general have much more involved FX shots.  While something like \"Arrow\" tries to have fights and explosions every week, it pales in comparison to the same fare from something like \"Avengers\".\n\nThere are other factors, but these are probably the 3 biggest. Taking them to extremes can contribute to a bunch of both money and time-saving tricks that TV can use, but movies can't.  The [\"ship in a bottle\"](_URL_0_) are probably the most famous example of this, which can still yield great television (the \"Blink\" episode of Doctor Who is a great example of this).  There's no real way to do an equivalent of this with movies; the closest is something like \"The Bourne Legacy\", but changing a principle actor is not usually the solution to a problem of needing more time in the movie business.", "Because they have to. The priorities are different.\n\nTV shows are produced on tight schedules to meet strict deadlines to make specific air dates. Whatever budgets they have are then planned around making the best show they can with the limited amount of time available.\n\nFeature films are generally made without such strict time constraints. As a result, the priority shifts from doing everything as fast as possible to spending as much time as you can afford to make everything as perfect as possible.", "I've worked on both feature films and TV shows, and I can give you the answer in one word: Post-production.\n\nYes, features tend to shoot at a much slower pace, but production generally accounts for a relatively small percentage of overall time spent on a project. The biggest difference is when it comes to editing. A feature will often spend several months just in editing. First, the editor will get a first cut up and running, which can take a couple of weeks past the end of shooting. Then the director will come in and make changes\u2014this can take weeks to several months. Often the producers will also chime in, and sometimes (especially if it's a new, unestablished director), they will exercise creative control over the project, and a lot of horse trading goes on between the director and the producers (and on bigger projects, the studio gets input as well) over what the final cut will look like.\n\nWhile this is going on, there's a lot of other stuff that's just getting started. Visual effects are being planned out, bid out to companies, sent out, reviewed, and so on. This usually doesn't even start to happen until well into the editorial process. Music is being decided on. Composers are being interviewed, and then the music has to actually be written. Existing music has to be licensed. The sound design is starting to take form.\n\nAt this point, there's often audience testing, which is generally a huge waste of time and effort, but producers and studios insist on doing it anyway. And what's worse is they'll make changes, often substantial ones, based on the opinion of between 20 and 300 people who just watched a rough, unfinished version of the movie with temp music, sound effects, VFX shots, and so on. A movie that tests poorly can sometimes drag on for several months as changes are made, or maybe they'll even do a week or two of reshooting.\n\nFinally, the picture is locked, which means that they're done editing. Now the sound design really begins. Dialogue lines are cleaned up, or selected to be re-recorded and replaced (this is called ADR). Sound effects are added, and music is scored and put into the film. Meanwhile, the picture is being brought \u201conline\u201d\u2014they take the cut and recreate it from the high quality raw footage, as opposed to the lower quality \u201coffline\u201d media that was used to edit the film. The director of photography will usually come in and oversee the color correction process. Final visual effect shots will be inserted. This whole process (picture and sound) can take as much as a month or two, sometimes even more if it's a really complicated film.\n\nLastly, it all comes together at the final mix. The online picture is taken and played back against the final sound design, and levels are adjusted, sound effects and such that are deemed extraneous are removed, tweaks to the music are made, and the movie looks and sounds the best it ever will. All in all, it's taken a minimum of six months of post-production to get here, and a year or more is not unheard of. \n\nThe thing is, I've very rarely heard of a movie locking picture and finishing without any further changes. I've worked on films that have changed literally dozens of times after picture was supposedly \u201clocked\u201d. Each change lengthens the overall process by at least a day or two, and sometimes as much as several weeks if the changes are fairly substantial. Those changes add up quickly.\n\nThe thing is that there's no real pressure to get the movie done on any reasonable time frame, so everyone wants to take as long as possible to do everything. Why not? There's always more work that can be done, and as long as there's money to keep paying people, you can stave off unemployment for that much longer. As they say, art is never finished, it's abandoned.\n\nNow, contrast this to a typical TV series. They've got an air date, and that's non-negotiable. So everything *has* to get done on a schedule that is backtimed from that air date. The editor's cut for a show might take a day or two, the director gets maybe another day or two, and then the producers (writer-producers are invariably the driving creative force in TV, not directors) come in and lock picture. And that's it. It goes to the sound department, VFX are rushed through, music is added, and the show is put on the air. I've been on shows that have made changes within a week or two of the airdate, and there's very much a sense of emergency, because things *have* to get done on time. There is no alternative. Not only that, but the pipeline can run in parallel\u2014you can be doing sound and music on one show, while editing another and shooting a third. Often shows will have multiple editors working on different episodes, and unlike in features where editors usually see the movie through the whole process to the final mix, editors are there to edit picture, and *that's it*.\n\nThe bottom line is that work expands to fill available time, and since there's a time pressure in TV things get done faster because they have to.\n", "Mutliple writers and directors (most of the time) means multiple episodes can be filmed at the same time.\n\nOne thing that's worth noting about movies is, if you ask any actor, they'll tell you they have a *lot* of downtime between filming scenes due to things like having to set up lights and cameras etc, they spend a lot of time in their trailers. They also have a lot of prep time, weeks of rehearsal time.\n\nCompare that to TV where even Actors will be rushed off their feet and things move a lot quicker with almost no rehearsal time.\n\nBasically, things work a lot faster on a TV show than they tend to on a film."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4mfp46", "title": "why does absolutely nobody live in vermont if nearly all other northeastern states like new york and connecticut are so densely populated?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mfp46/eli5_why_does_absolutely_nobody_live_in_vermont/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3v4yql", "d3v5h1l", "d3v5kad", "d3v6m6k", "d3v71zp", "d3v7cas", "d3v8usj", "d3v937w", "d3vgad5", "d3w1b68"], "score": [2, 6, 24, 2, 2, 6, 3, 2, 8, 2], "text": ["Because it's geographically quite small.\n\nIn terms of population density, it's actually fairly average.", "In terms of population density, Vermont isn't that far out of line with other states.  It's more of a Minnesota or Mississippi instead of a Wyoming or Alaska.  It's also further from the coast and major rivers, where the largest populations on the East coast are concentrated.", "This is only part of the story, but Upstate Vermont and New Hampshire used to be fairly densely settled with scattered small farms tilling the rocky soil. As the American West opened up however, people realized that there was much better land to be had elsewhere. Many of these people moved away. Once the farmers left, there wasn'ta lot to replace the local economies. Not a lot of mineral resources, no large navigable rivers, not a lot of major trading centers As a result, people did not return to the areas they moved out of. Vermont used to be 85% farmland, 15% forest. Now the opposite is true. If you go through a lot of forest in Vermont you'll find old stone walls all over the place from abandoned farms.", "Historically, population tends to pool around sea ports. Nyc, boston, etc. are major sea ports and have always been major sea ports. Vermont doesn't have any major sea ports, so that foot hold was never established. ", "Much of upstate New York is sparsely populated.  The Catskills and the Adirondack parks are very sparsely populated.  The Adirondack Park in NY has almost the same area as the state of Massachussetts (9375 sq mi vs 10,500 sq mi) and the full-time (non vacationer) population is about a hundred thousand people.  Hamilton county NY (in the park) has one traffic light in the entire county, and it's a blinker.", "Vermont is not sparsely populated so much as it lacks the big cities that raise the average population density.  If you took a similarly sized chunk out of upstate New York, it would have a similar population density.\n\nVermont (and New Hampshire and Maine) never developed large cities because they are in a mountainous, heavily forested region, and because many of their rivers flow out to Canada instead of towards US ports on the Atlantic.\n\nAlso, Vermont was claimed by France, and not ceded to the UK until 1763.  Also, it was not one of the original colonies, remaining semi-independent (it was claimed by NY and NH) until it became a state in 1799.  As a result, it was less integrated with the other colonies.", "Population centers tend to be situated along major natural shipping or transportation centers. NYC is at the mouth of the Hudson, Boston is situated on a natural harbor, New Orleans is the mouth of the Mississippi, Chicago is on a great lake, etc. \n\nThere's nothing in Vermont and NH so they traditionally aren't centers of commerce and industry. So there's no extensive infrastructure, no talent pool, etc. ", "More limited work/economically beneficial options when outside commuting distance to NY or Boston", "Because we don't want you here. The ratio of humans to cows is already too high as it is. Go back to Massachusetts you damn flatlander!", "Another thing nobody else brought up and I'm maybe uniquely qualified to comment on, being that I was born and raised in Vermont and my family had a business in Vermont. \n\nThe state and local laws are very non-friendly to business. This includes high tax rates and tight restrictions on business size, building size, zoning rules, etc. My dad owned and ran a bakery in White River Junction VT. He was forced to move it into his garage at home because the taxes, regulations, and zoning restrictions made it financially ruinous to continue running the bakery in the \"commercial park\" where he had been operating for several years. \n\nVermont is non-conducive to business success, therefore the population shift is always away from the state. New Hampshire is so much more welcoming to businesses. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2wvbgk", "title": "Was it possible for an individual to become exceptionally rich in a purely communist country like the Soviet Union? If so how? Are there any historical examples?", "selftext": "I have a Bachelors in Economics, although they never taught me much about Communism at all, except in vague historical courses where communism was briefly taught and mostly shunned, hated and laughed at. I have some knowledge of the theories of Communism, although I have very little idea of how communism actually works in practice. \n\nI was wondering: Was it possible for an individual living in a *purely communist* country like the Soviet Union, Cuba or other Eastern Bloc countries to become *exceptionally rich compared to the rest of the population*? If so how? Are there any historical examples? An example of any of the communist countries, especially Soviet Union would be great. \n\nIt seems almost impossible for an individual to gain massive wealth, if the state provides all the jobs, food, money and all that. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wvbgk/was_it_possible_for_an_individual_to_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cougkiz", "couig8z", "couij9b"], "score": [57, 6, 39], "text": ["I'm no expert but I did study Marx, history and comparative political science at university.  First off there has never been a truly communist country as Marx defined it.  He lists stages of development towards communism, which itself is really a benign for of anarchy.  Basically it goes: Revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, then eventually communism.  The classic example of the USSR is the dictatorship phase.  Nobody ever got past that.\n\nNow in terms of wealth the idea was the everyone would be paid the same wage, regardless of your job.  However it was more complicated then that.  There was a sort of class system where the upper classes such as party members, important skilled people (doctors, scientists, etc), and high ranking military officers enjoyed perks that a factory worker did not.  At the elite level people lived like kings compared to most other citizens.  Even though they notionally were paid the same, all of these \"extras\" were off the books.  However, even for these elites, they were still stuck in the closed off economy of the USSR; meaning that there was little travel, consumer goods, or entertainment options to enjoy compared to the west.  It would have been much better to be rich in the West then rich in the USSR.", "This reply may be below the standarts of this sub, since the book I'm about to mention is a fictional one, albeit immensely influencial in the Russian culture. You may want to read a satirical novel [*The Golden Calf (1931)*](_URL_0_) by Ilf and Petrov. From the summary:\n >  Ostap Bender hears a story about a \"clandestine millionaire\" named Alexandr Koreiko, who has made millions through various illegal enterprises by taking advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period while pretending to live on an office clerk's salary of 46 rubles a month. Koreiko keeps his large stash of ill-gotten money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet government, so that he can make use of it. Bender finds out about Koreiko and starts to collect all the information he can get on his business activities.  < ... >   \nSuddenly rich, Bender faces the problem of how to spend his money in a Communist country where there are no legal millionaires. Nothing of the life of the rich that Bender dreamt of seems possible in the Soviet Union.", " > I was wondering: Was it possible for an individual living in a purely communist country like the Soviet Union, Cuba or other Eastern Bloc countries to become exceptionally rich compared to the rest of the population?\n\nThere have been questions of that sort before. Problem with wealth in the Soviet Economy was you couldn't buy a lot of stuff with money. You couldn't own more than one flat and one dacha. You couldn't have several cars. When there was a shortage on, say, toilet paper, you received a set amount per head regardless of how much you were willing to pay.\n\nEven if you had a lot of money you still had to work since unemployment was a crime. Your holiday destinations, your ability to have your daughter attend an important concert, to study in a prestigious university or to travel to prestigious holiday destinations was a matter of goodwill from bureaucrats independent of your bank account. And the bureaucrats have mostly shown goodwill to other influential people, like the other bureaucrats, to teachers, or, say, to medics treating their relatives. (See Alena Lebedeva's \"Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange\". )\n\nHowever: Khrushchev introduced some luxury goods (cars, cameras, fur coats) to work as a money sink (to make f.e. higher wages incentives to go to Northern Siberia work). Aside from that there were \"Beryozka\" stores for foreigners only and there were special luxery goods provided to, f.e., the scientists willing to live and to work in Akademgorodok or, say, to officer families living in similarly hazard regions. (see \"An Economic History of the USSR from 1945\" by Philip Hanson)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Golden_Calf"], []]}
{"q_id": "klo04", "title": "Can a bullet made of ice feasibly be fired into a person to kill them?", "selftext": "EDIT: Also, would an ice arrow on a crossbow fare any better?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/klo04/can_a_bullet_made_of_ice_feasibly_be_fired_into_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c2l9akh", "c2l9fv9", "c2l9yse", "c2lb6cp", "c2lbpu6", "c2lddh8", "c2l9akh", "c2l9fv9", "c2l9yse", "c2lb6cp", "c2lbpu6", "c2lddh8"], "score": [15, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 15, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Not perhaps a properly scientific answer, but it appears [MythBusters suggest: no](_URL_0_)", "In answer to your edit: Yes, an acceleration method that isn't as violent as a gun would stand a better chance of success.\n\nI'm of the opinion that a slingshot or a sling would be the best choice.", "An ice arrow on a crossbow would fare better, yes.", "Are you asking for a bullet or a general projectile? I would guess that you could feasibly kill someone with an ice projectile from a sling shot. Take it a step further: a giant ice ball and a trebuchet. ", "Taking the most liberal interpretation of the question, I don't think that there could be any doubt that the answer is yes.\n\nCreate a railgun in the vacuum of space that accelerates slowly enough not to shatter the ice \"bullet\" with a barrel long enough to get it to lethal velocity. \n\nIf you mean just sticking some ice into a modern gun, then MythBusters probably have you covered.", "Every time this kind of question has come up I've asked myself, why? As in why would you want to use something other than a normal bullet to kill someone. I realise the answer may along the lines of tracing the gun that fired the bullet would be impossible. \n\nThe hypothetical argument is that the use of an ice bullet would result in the ice evaporating. But what evidence does this actually erase? If the projectile had enough structural integrity to act like a bullet, then it will produce a wound just like a bullet so it would be elementary to deduce that the person was killed by a projectile, so that peice of information is not destroyed. What is missing is the trace.\n\nSo yes I've seen the MB episode where they try this, and there may be problems. \n\nSo why not pykrete? very strong, much more likely to survive the firing and impact. Not going to provide any recoverable information on the gun that fired it. Will melt down to a woody pulp if not completely disappear.\n\nNot an expect in material science but on first insepction the numbers [here](_URL_0_) look more promising. Seems to do the job with the same benefits", "Not perhaps a properly scientific answer, but it appears [MythBusters suggest: no](_URL_0_)", "In answer to your edit: Yes, an acceleration method that isn't as violent as a gun would stand a better chance of success.\n\nI'm of the opinion that a slingshot or a sling would be the best choice.", "An ice arrow on a crossbow would fare better, yes.", "Are you asking for a bullet or a general projectile? I would guess that you could feasibly kill someone with an ice projectile from a sling shot. Take it a step further: a giant ice ball and a trebuchet. ", "Taking the most liberal interpretation of the question, I don't think that there could be any doubt that the answer is yes.\n\nCreate a railgun in the vacuum of space that accelerates slowly enough not to shatter the ice \"bullet\" with a barrel long enough to get it to lethal velocity. \n\nIf you mean just sticking some ice into a modern gun, then MythBusters probably have you covered.", "Every time this kind of question has come up I've asked myself, why? As in why would you want to use something other than a normal bullet to kill someone. I realise the answer may along the lines of tracing the gun that fired the bullet would be impossible. \n\nThe hypothetical argument is that the use of an ice bullet would result in the ice evaporating. But what evidence does this actually erase? If the projectile had enough structural integrity to act like a bullet, then it will produce a wound just like a bullet so it would be elementary to deduce that the person was killed by a projectile, so that peice of information is not destroyed. What is missing is the trace.\n\nSo yes I've seen the MB episode where they try this, and there may be problems. \n\nSo why not pykrete? very strong, much more likely to survive the firing and impact. Not going to provide any recoverable information on the gun that fired it. Will melt down to a woody pulp if not completely disappear.\n\nNot an expect in material science but on first insepction the numbers [here](_URL_0_) look more promising. Seems to do the job with the same benefits"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29#Ice_Bullet"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete#Durability"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29#Ice_Bullet"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete#Durability"]]}
{"q_id": "voyli", "title": "Have humans always aged at the same rate?", "selftext": "Recently I came across the fact that the current average life span for humans (~75 years) is much higher than the life span of humans who lived before modern medicine and other discoveries (~50 years).  My question is this:  Did those ancient humans age at the same rate as we do?  Example:  would a 50 year old human in the year 2000 BC look as old as a 75 year old human does today?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/voyli/have_humans_always_aged_at_the_same_rate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c56ds76", "c56e7lo", "c56i70p"], "score": [6, 4, 2], "text": ["Mclovin804 is trolling, so disregard his comment. The reason why people died at a much earlier age, was not that they age faster, but because of nutrition/hygiene/technological advancements. People in 2000BC did not have dentists, or family doctors. Back then, diarrhea killed lots, but now we just take some medicine and we're fine. If you look at life expectancy by country, you can see that 3rd world countries, which are lacking in medical technology, poor hygiene, etc. have lower life expectancy than 1st world countries.", "The opposite may be true.  To add to ArtemisMaximus's answer, ancient humans were likely genetically superior to us, at least in part due to decreased selection in recent years.  As geneticist James Crow [published](_URL_0_):\n\n >  If war or famine force our descendants to return to a stone-age life they will have to contend with all the problems that their stone-age ancestors had plus mutations that have accumulated in the meantime.\n\nGeneticist Michael Lynch [adds](_URL_1_):\n\n >  per-generation reduction in fitness due to recurrent mutation is at least 1% in humans and quite possibly as high as 5% ... Finally, a consideration of the long-term consequences of current human behavior for deleterious-mutation accumulation leads to the conclusion that a substantial reduction in human fitness can be expected over the next few centuries in industrialized societies unless novel means of genetic intervention are developed. ... Possible solutions to this problem, including multigenerational cryogenic storage and utilization of gametes and/or embryos, will raise significant ethical conflicts between short-term and long-term considerations.\n\nFor the record, the concept of eugenics terrifies me.", "Consider the difference between primary and secondary aging:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPrimary aging is the gradual - and presently inevitable - process of bodily deterioration that takes place throughout life: the accumulation of biochemical damage that leads to slowed movements, fading vision, impaired hearing, reduced ability to adapt to stress, decreased resistance to infections, and so forth. Secondary aging processes result from disease and poor health practices (e.g. no exercise, smoking, excess fat and other forms of self-damage) and are often preventable, whether through lifestyle choice or modern medicine. The two categories are somewhat fuzzy at the borders by these definitions; we hope that advancing medical and biotechnology will move the known and understood aspects of primary aging into the secondary aging category as rapidly as possible.\n\n\nAging is damage. Length of life is a function of damage load. e.g. see:\n\n_URL_1_\n \nSome of that damage will happen as the consequence of the natural operation of human metabolism - e.g. build up of waste compounds like lipofuscin, damage to mitochondrial DNA, etc. But chronic disease and parasitism cause a lot of damage from the cellular to the systems levels that also feeds into degenerative aging, such as through immune system exhaustion, chronic inflammation, and so forth. There's no such thing as suffering a disease and getting completely better aging: you are carrying the damage load from all of the diseases you've suffered in life, which is most likely small in comparison to that of your ancestors. Ancient peoples were severely impacted by disease, as was most of humanity up until comparatively recently."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8380.full", "http://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/961.full"], ["http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/06/primary-aging-versus-secondary-aging.php", "http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/applying-reliability-theory-to-aging.php"]]}
{"q_id": "2t0ecb", "title": "this country's obsession with bacon.", "selftext": "I just don't get it. No one seems to favor pork over beef/chicken, unless its bacon. Bacon is always either too crispy where it essentially just becomes pork jerky and tough to chew, or its a little softer but then the flavor tends to over power the rest of the bite. And then when it does cool down it becomes hard anyway. I can enjoy truly fresh bacon from time to time if its homemade, but I will skip over the bacon entrees 10 out of 10 times from fast food places/casual restaurants. I don't think its awful, its just, I don't know, not something I really want to eat on a daily or even weekly basis. And this is completely ignoring the unhealthy factor. \n\nAm I the only one who feels this way? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t0ecb/eli5_this_countrys_obsession_with_bacon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnuki8d", "cnul4n4", "cnulnsy", "cnulssc", "cnumvuj", "cnuog7e", "cnup6cr", "cnupj4m", "cnupmsr", "cnupty4", "cnupwxf", "cnuq2ye", "cnuw4et"], "score": [3, 94, 2, 4, 2, 56, 2, 11, 2, 13, 2, 3, 4], "text": ["I don't know how common it is, but if you haven't already, you HAVE to try porkbelly.\n\nIt is incredible and growing up in Norway it was served every year for Christmas and it would be the best meal of the year.", "Bacon simultaneously appeals to all three flavors people crave-- sugar, salt, and fat.  Event the scent of bacon is unique, thanks to the Maillard reaction (a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned foods their desirable flavor)\n\nIt's easy to prepare, reasonably priced, and readily available in the United States, so chefs started using it's properties as a \"cheat\" to enhance any dish.  Want to make boring eggs and toast more appealing? Add bacon. Want to make a mediocre burger taste better? Add bacon.  Want to make a dessert a little less sweet and more balance? Add bacon.  \n\nThe salty-sweet-fat combination is irresistible to most people, not just necessarily Americans. It's just more accessible in a place like the US.", "When that bacon is sizzlin' at waffle house dawg, you can hear it explaining itself. When that delightful scent hits your nose, it smells like fucking freedom.", "because most Americans experiences with pork is 1.glazed ham, 2.Pork chop,  &  3.Bacon of those three bacon is the best. \n\nI grew up in Miami and everything cubans do to pork showed me it is the meat of the Gods.", "It's all about [The Smell](_URL_0_) \n\n > It turns out, the amazing aroma stems from 150 organic compounds. As heat is applied, sugars, amino acids, and fat in the meat undergo Maillard reactions, and creates the molecules used in their aroma. While many of these compounds smell amazing on their own, they are a force to be reckoned with when they are smelled in concert.", "What country? The Republic of Reddit?", "It sounds like the majority of the bacon you're eating is not prepared well.", "The obsession is highly exaggerated. Hardly anyone consumes it as often as they claim or enough to actually be considered an obsession. It's a good tasting snack and sometimes a good addition to some foods, but really the Internet has exaggerated its love for it.", "I love bacon, but I'm with you on skipping it at mid- to lower-end restaurants. But when I'm making it myself, I can get it perfect every time, and it's pure sex.\n\nThe problem with cheap restaurant bacon is that they have big griddles and are more concerned with prep time (and other factors) than getting the bacon cooked exactly right - crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. So it's sliced too thin, then cooked too hot and too fast. But it's still bacon and a lot of people don't care, don't know any better, or both.\n\nBacon takes a surprisingly long time to cook well.", "Bacon has become a meme. It's always been good, and people have always liked it, but in the last 10 years or so, it's been crazy. There's bacon salt, bacon mayonnaise, bacon flavored gum, chocolate covered bacon, maple bacon milkshakes, bacon wrapped everything, bacon print ties, etc. Because of the recent obsession with it, the price has gone up to the point where it's one of the most expensive meats at the store after steak and fish. It's $6 a pound here in NC, one of the biggest pork producing states in the country, whereas chicken breast is $3.50, chicken thighs are $2.50, lean hamburger is $4.50 and even pork tenderloin is $5.20.\n\nAnyway, I'm one of the people you think doesn't exist. I prefer pork to beef or chicken. I like bacon, but it's not my favorite pork. That would be pork tenderloin cooked on the grill. I wish the bacon craze would die down so I could actually afford it occasionally. I refuse to pay $6/lb of 50% fat bacon when I can get a tenderloin for less.", "Marketing. I'll have to look up my sources later, but in the 50's, there was a push to create \"the American breakfast\". Marketing pushed the idea of bacon and eggs, and it's been in advertising so much people went with it. Nutella is much the same in that respect. \n\nTl;dr could just as easily have been spam", "Few people know about this, but Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew) is in a good part responsible for it.\n\nTake a look here:\n_URL_0_", "American bacon is weird.   \n   \nIt's like a strip of crispy fat.   \n\nProper bacon is meat. I think you call it Canadian Bacon but I'm British and it's just good ol' bacon.     \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/science-why-bacon-smells-so-damn-good"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.americantable.org/2012/07/how-bacon-and-eggs-became-the-american-breakfast/"], []]}
{"q_id": "76kyz5", "title": "would a flag on a flying spaceship flap or would it stay in the same position?", "selftext": "sorry for the badly worded question, but I'm half cut and will forget my question by the morning :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/76kyz5/would_a_flag_on_a_flying_spaceship_flap_or_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doeshwi", "doffgbh"], "score": [31, 3], "text": ["It would move during the initial acceleration, not due to the passage of air (as flags do on earth) but due to inertia while the ship is being accelerated. \n\nIf you think of the direction of acceleration as \"up\", then during acceleration the flag would hang \"down\", lagging behind the ship. Incidentally the occupants of the ship are subject to the same inertia and would experience the acceleration as if it was a gravitational pull downwards.\n\nWhen the acceleration stops, the flag would move again, as tension in the material is no longer being opposed, pulling the flag towards the mast. When the ship is not accelerating, internal friction will slow the movement of the flag until it is still.", "If you put it on a flagpole, it can move for quite some time even after the spacecraft stopped accelerating. The flagpole acts like a spring, and there is no atmosphere to dampen the motion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2kkh45", "title": "why is loan sharking illegal but pay day loans which can have an interest rate of over 350% are legal (in the us).", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kkh45/eli5_why_is_loan_sharking_illegal_but_pay_day/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clm4bqm", "clm4d7z", "clm4j4j", "clm4u6v", "clm5aw0", "clma3c5", "clmfbuz", "clmgdk7", "clmgwl2", "clmidqz", "clmj9fq", "clmkw31", "clml12n", "clmm0gc", "clmm37c", "clmmaew", "clmmvlu", "clmn0fl", "clmn2uu", "clmniha", "clmns5x", "clmoaae", "clmocs0", "clmpnio", "clmq90b", "clmqal2", "clmqltm", "clmrclk", "clmrgce", "clmrxwo", "clmsje9", "clmt7ap", "clmu735", "clmu7nt", "clmua7n", "clmuyui", "clmv0s9", "clmvfxz", "clmvr13", "clmvv0e", "clmvv1f", "clmw02q", "clmw9k8", "clmwkc0", "clmwkhg", "clmwten", "clmx3ln", "clmx8ga", "clmxf0t", "clmxs63", "clmy2j5", "clmza86", "clmzvv6", "cln1lbd", "cln1yqx", "cln20nw", "cln211e", "cln24vt", "cln29dm", "cln2u0h", "cln469g", "cln4b7x", "cln57u2"], "score": [1628, 20, 102, 115, 28, 6, 170, 53, 5, 14, 3, 9, 4, 5, 8, 2, 5, 2, 6, 5, 2, 3, 2, 14, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 5, 3, 2, 2, 3, 8, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Because the pay day loans still operate within the parameters of the law, such as paying taxes on the loans, paying for a business license and not physically harming the people who owe them money, while sharks purposefully choose to engage in that illegal activity by shirking tax and licensing responsibilities and physically harming their clients who do not pay up. ", "The only practical difference is the method of overdue collections. In reality, both offer really disadvantageous interest rates and terms.\n\nThe \"legal\" places can only send your outstanding balance to a collection agency. Then someone will harrass you, phone you, maybe come and repo stuff....\n\nThe loan shark on the other hand, has a more immediate, albeit illegal recourse: you get visited by \"The Fish\" with his baseball bat \"Lucy\", and maybe if you promise to pay up in the next 5 days you might get to save one kneecap.", "The short answer is that different types of loans are allowed to have different interest rates. 350% on a home loan would almost certainly be illegal, but state laws may allow for such high interest rates on short-term emergency loans like payday loans or pawn shop loans. The state acknowledges that sometimes people need a small amount of money fast, but they also acknowledge those loans are very risky for the institutions that give them and allow higher interest rates as a result.\n\nA little more info from another post I made:\n > Usury is the legal term for charging a higher interest rate than is allowed by law. Usury laws are still on the books in some states (or maybe all, I don't know the laws for all 50 states). In Texas, for example, the amount of interest varies by the type of loan. Most commercial loans under $280,000 can only have up to 18% APR. Over $280,000 and you can up to 28% APR. Pawn shops can have 240% APR. I believe most states have similar laws where the usurious interest rate varies depending on the purpose of the loan and the type of collateral.", "In theory a loan shark could apply for the legally required parameters to be considered a pay day loan company.\n\nUnfortunately, he would have to give up the effective but unfortunately illegal practices such as leg breaking, fire bombing property, and murder.\n\nOf course not all loan sharks will resort to violence or the use of terror via organized crime in order to get their money back, but as an unregulated entity, there's really nothing to stop them from going down that road at a moment's notice.\n\nAnother issue is tax. Loan sharks generally don't pay tax on their earnings or keep accurate books accessible to the tax man.", "Loan sharks don't make campaign contributions.", "Institutionalize anything (Give it a loose set of rules and tax it) and it can become legal. ", "350%\u203d Think yourself lucky, in the UK they're often more like 3,500%", "OP question seems adequately answered, but if people are interested in more examples of pay day loan DBags, and a good laugh, check out this clip of [Last Week Tonight](_URL_0_). And John Oliver is good for Karma.  ", "If you have the money to be a loan shark, you're basically wasting your time being a criminal loan shark and just open a pay day loan.  Same thing, except legal.  And you can use it to launder money like crazy.  It's so easy to launder money through these places I'm willing to bet one of the contributing factors to why there are so many of them is they are owned by members of organized crime.  ", "In part, the 350% interest doesn't really reflect the nature of the interest on the loan.  The interest on a one-month loan of a few thousand dollars isn't enough to pay for the filing and documenting of the loan.  So the loan may have an interest rate of 25% or higher, but there is also a fixed fee for the loan documentation.\n\nIn the required disclosures, all loan costs must be calculated *as if they are interest, over the life of the loan.*  Since it's a very short term loan, that fee results in an incredibly high interest amount.  But that fee is not paid over a year, or a few years, like a credit card or mortgage.  So although it's still expensive (which is why these loans are really desperate measures), using an APR to explain the transaction isn't always a fair comparison.", "There have been all kinds of laws passed trying to reign these scumbags in, but they always find a way around. Case in point: I live in Ohio and here we passed a law that actually does not allow any business to operate in payday lending. The solution? They all just register as small scale mortgage brokers and call the loans mortgages. Same shit, different name.", "Pay day loan businesses won't break your kneecaps if you don't pay them.", "The US has a cap on the interest rate they can charge, right? In the UK there's no cap and some charge over 4600%.", "Cause pay day wont break your legs if you dont pay.", "I think this is a relevant segment from John Oliver's show, which explains how these places get around some of those laws. I haven't watched it in a while, but from what I remember, I think it exposes a lot of the questionable activities surrounding these establishments and the politicians that protect them. _URL_0_", "Payday loans in most places have legal limits that make them almost useless for the people that loan sharks would cater to.  For instance, I make quite a lot of money, and in the past I've hit a couple of cash-poor months due to various reasons.  I looked into payday loans to make my life easier for those periods but it couldn't help because payday loans in my state are limited to like $250.   $250 would do nothing for my situation, I was looking for multiple thousands at the least.  I had to go another route and just run tight for a little while, which wasn't what I wanted, but was necessary.  Alternately I could have done business with a loan shark, but that was less desirable than running tight.", "I think it's the whole beat the shit out of you if you don't pay part that makes it illegal.", "This is one of the few things that is actually more heavily regulated in the US than it is in the UK.  Over here payday loan companies have APRs in the thousands, it's pretty disgusting, we need to sort it out.", "Just finished writing a huge consulting report on this industry - so I'll chime in. \n\nThe 350% includes interest and fees. Most of that is fees, not interest. So the 350% equals $15 on a $100 loan for 14 days is the effective rate. Factor in that 75% of the loans are from roll-overs, and you've got a a big business. By the way, some research also indicates that local competition doesn't affect pricing in mature payday markets, and that the likely charge-off rate is comparable to what credit card issuers see (around 6% of loans.)\n\nFeel free to ask any questions you like. ", "most, if not all of the answers you seek can be found in John Oliver's piece on payday loans on Last Week Tonight [here](_URL_0_) ", "In America if a special interest has enough money they pretty much always get their way.", "The government doesn't make any money from the loan shark loans.", "From [State Payday Loan Regulation and Usage Rates](_URL_0_) (US):\n\n >  Nationally, the average usage rate for payday loans is 5.5 percent, but usage by state varies from 1 percent to 13 percent. Usage rates also vary by law type and are 6.6 percent in Permissive states, 6.3 percent in Hybrid states, and 2.9 percent in Restrictive states.\n", "If you think Pay Day Loans are bad, have a look at this shop which just opened up in London.\nIts for kids...\n\n_URL_0_", "Because payday loan stores have excellent lobbyists.  How else do you think these stores can CHANGE THE LAW to make their practices legal?", "Because payday loan companies have lobbyists. ", "I work at a firm where we deal with \"fair debt collection practice\" stuff. When I asked my boss the other day, he said that they are basically just pushing/holding off the lawsuits. They're pretty bad, and soon they'll start seeing major repercussions. ", "One thing I don't see coming up in the comments too much, they're a bit like liquor stores, gun shops and McDonalds, they flood lower socioeconomic areas. They target people who have very little voice, power or representation.", "Loan sharking itself is not illegal. Pay day loans are actually a pretty good example of loan sharking. (although 350% is pretty low for payday loans. The place by my house has a 650% interest rate.)\n\nHowever when people are talking about loan sharks they are typically talking about people who loan money with high interest rates AND who commit crimes in order to maximize profits (like threatening, assaulting, and enslaving people the people they lend to). That is just the connotation of the word though. \n\nTechnically loan sharking just means having ridiculously high interest rates that only desperate people and idiots would accept. Doing that isnt illegal as long as you pay taxes and follow the relevant laws. Then you can just have the police threaten, assault, and enslave people for you anyway.\n\nBasically its all loan sharking. Some people do it with the approval of the government and some dont.", "Well the violence associated with loan sharks is the bad part... Payday loans actually probably help cut down on black market loans.  If our eager dogooders ever decide to get rid of payday loans I fully anticipate the unintended consequences of this would be an increase in mob style or similar loans to rise.", "because payday loans won't come to your home and break your damn legs if you dont pay them back", "A nonprofit in Texas has developed an affordable program to directly compete with payday lenders.  Over the past 3 years this organization has provided over 3,500 borrowers, who otherwise would have no other choice but to go to a payday lender, the opportunity to borrow small amounts of money at a very reasonable rate of 18%.  They are expanding statewide and have created a crowdfunding campaign to show institutional investors that this product is needed and supported at the grassroots level.  You can learn more about the Community Loan Center at: [Community Loan Center of Texas] (_URL_0_)\n", "I'm guessing it's because loan sharks typically leave their clients with broken limbs, a burned down house, and bullets in their body.", "Hello, Payday loan employee here\n\nWhat most people don't realize is that the 350% is rhe APR. In most states, you are only allowed X amount of loans per year or six months. Here in VA, you are only allowed 5 loans within a six month period. At the 5th loan, a payment plan must be taken or pay off the loan. Payday loans are used by many people. It is important to know that many states have created laws to protect consumers and to restrict lenders from overcharging.  In TN, the max loan amount is 300 and here in Va is 500. You have to qualify for the amount. I have helped financial advisors, security consultants, pilots, and to average joe. It is important to note that an overdraft fee is like is like a loan. Your bank gives you the money to cover your amount and the 35$ equals to an interest rate of 17,000%. \n\nI will still say that payday loans are the best option compared to overdrafting your bank account.\n\nI believe that payday loans are sometimes the best option. Your bank can charge you a overdraft fee for a .01 cent charge. \n\nP.s. most companies give you the total payback for the last day, but the intrest is a pro rated amount. \n\nI should do a AMA.\n\n", "loans sharks are criminals that accept collateral under threat of violence ", "Question: What if I make up a completely fake yet convincing identity backed up by falsified evidence of my \"existence\", take out a loan from a loan shark, and then skip town. What happens?", "Because some politicians own the payday lender businesses.", "_URL_0_\n\nThis should help answer your questions.\n\nSorry for weird format. On mobile.", "Pay day loans won't break your legs.  Loan sharks will.", "Guido doesn't come out and beat the holy shit out of you and then break your knee caps with a lead pipe if you don't pay back that pay day loan. Plus taxes, government will always get you for not paying them their cut of the take.", "Because the government can make money from one but not the other.", "I thought this video was best from HBO's John Oliver Last Week Tonight. _URL_0_\n", "Because pay day loan places won't murder you when you don't pay them back. ", "Kickbacks to politicians?", "The same reason car manufacturers can't sell their own cars. Pay Day Loans have better Lobbyists.", "Because the Government makes money on it. They do not make money off of the loan sharks. That's it in a nutshell plain and simple. They only care about the money. Not you.", "Easy answer: The poor are disenfranchised and you can get away with anything as long as the gov't gets their cut.", "Pffft.. Payday loan companies in the UK typically have APR's over 2000%. \n", "MAny places it is \"car title\" loan places. there must be 20 of them here. they too have a crazy high interest rate. you're fucked if you get one of those \"loans.\" Why? USA gov culture is just completely predatory, does not protect, enjoys destroying the weak. Plus, seems the bankers always win and laugh about it. Anyone care to discuss the scam from hell \"state lottery\" that \"helps the schools.\" Wtf is the state doing in the gaming business? Same thing: occupy and manage the morons - the general public that are dumb enough to spend their time and money on this shit, the bumblers with their magic \"numbers.\" It is some sick shit. And wtf is the state doing in the gaming business?", "They're often not.  [Payday loans are only legal in 27 states](_URL_0_).  I know someone in the government who was working to make them illegal in another.\n", "Actually, the answer to this is ridiculously simple...\n\nPayday loans and loansharking are basically the exact same racket from an economic perspective.  The only difference between the two is that loan sharks bribe local cops and low level politicians to protect their businesses, while payday loan operations take the corporate route and hire lobbyists to pay off state and federal legislators.   Unfortunately, the Mafia never quite understood that to expand their interests beyond a certain level, they would need to replace physical violence with economic violence (i.e. ruin credit ratings of customers who don't pay and harass them with debt collectors as opposed to breaking legs) and structure itself as an actual corporate entity with lobbyists so that politicians would have a legal cover for accepting bribes, and outside investors could also participate in the equity and bond markets.  This is exactly why they lost Las Vegas.\n\n", "I feel like the TL;DR is probably something like \"It's legal with the government gets a cut\".", "payday loan companies don't injure you, break your bones, or do other things to you that violates the terms of the loan agreement", "UK payday loans can easily be in the thousands of percent.  I don't understand how its legal either.  Its certainly not morally right not matter how you spin it.", "They had a spot on this on the \"last week tonight with John Oliver\" show. Pretty explanatory", "Here's how to stop all this nonsense...\n\nStop being a slave to \"credit scores\".\n\nBuy what you can PAY for.\n\nI'm 34 and have lived without credit. The ONLY thing I carry debt on is my house. I buy used cars. I bargain shop on slickdeals and the like. I have all the gadgets I want, and smoke weed when I desire. i don't buy a lot of new clothes...it's amazing what taking care of what you own will do. I buy my daughter's clothes at once upon a child, and spend about $100 per size (she's at friggin 8-10 already).\n\nI work part time making 30k a year and have a 5 year old daughter, and provide everything we could need or want, and am steadily building up her savings.\n\nI do without cable. Without a new, payment-having car. I have internet. I do without a 100+ a month cell phone bill. I don't eat out. Really, ever.\n\nAnd when she decides last week that the Elsa costume that my Aunt made for her is out for Halloween, I go on to amazon and get her the exact giraffe costume for $43 that she wants, and all is well. I paid with my debit card.\n\nWhen people start realizing what they don't actually need, money goes a LOT farther. When people stop trying to impress others with what they buy/wear/drive/eat/drink...well, then financial freedom is right there.\n\nI don't mean to be preachy, but I have friends that have literally said \"Oh no, I got approved for amazon credit...I'm in trouble now!\". They laugh, think this is funny/normal...and go max out that card. And then bitch about not making enough money. That 2k may cost them 4k because of their impatience and greed. And they will do it again. And again. And hate their job, and be stuck because they can barely get by making minimum payments. It's depressing to watch smart people make insane life-destroying decisions.", "Why? because a loan shark cannot be taxed it is really that simple mate. \n\nAll those licenses and regulations are a form of or support for proper taxation.\n\nAnother example: running numbers is illegal and lotteries are not, yet they are the same thing the difference? taxation.\n \nGovernments do not like people making untaxed revenue. A garage sales profits are supposed to be reported as income mate as are barters. On a barter you are supposed to pay the tax on the cash value of the goods in question.", "Because pay day loan collectors won't break your kneecaps...", "Yep actually in Australia, the government is auditing bikie gangs for tax evasion. \n\nBecause here, even if you're a dangerous criminal with the best paid lawyer, the only way that the government can convict you is if you don't pay your taxes.\n\nThat is a surefire way of securing a conviction. ", "It probably has to do with a pay day loan company giving money to political campaigns.", "You guys only have 350%? Here in the UK we have 2000%+\n\nYes. Two thousand.", "Simple: *Corruption.*\n\n[Last Night with John Oliver*](_URL_0_) does a bang up job of explaining it (and why it's corruption.)\n\nThere are plenty answers referring to the law, and yes they are skirting the law on the legal side, but that is also why the only *actual* answer is corruption. However short it may be.", "one has people lobbying for them - the other doesnt"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/PDylgzybWAw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/PDylgzybWAw"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw"], [], [], ["http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/multimedia/data-visualizations/2014/state-payday-loan-regulation-and-usage-rates"], ["http://imgur.com/xgInjXZ"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/community-loan-center-of-texas"], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/PDylgzybWAw"], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payday_loan#United_States"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://youtu.be/PDylgzybWAw"], []]}
{"q_id": "40ove5", "title": "why does .9999 repeating equal 1?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40ove5/eli5_why_does_9999_repeating_equal_1/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyvwhoz", "cyvwl32", "cyvwlm1", "cyvwn54", "cyvzf0c", "cyvzr8c", "cyw09qz", "cyw1jbz", "cyw1p5i", "cyw3n18", "cyw6zjb", "cyw8ig4", "cyw9d37", "cywdiwj", "cywfbvx", "cyww23e", "cyxcrwn"], "score": [5, 41, 77, 2, 34, 201, 35, 3, 8, 12, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2], "text": [".3333+.3333+.3333=.9999\n.3333= 1/3\n1/3+1/3+1/3= 3/3\n3/3= 1\n\nOther person skipped some steps but was right.", "One argument goes like this:\n\n0.111... = 1/9\n\n0.2222... = 2/9\n\n0.333... = 3/9\n\n0.444... = 4/9\n\n...\n\n0.999... = 9/9\n\nand 9/9 = 1\n\nAnother argument goes like this:\n\n1 - 0.9 = 0.1\n\n1 - 0.99 = 0.001\n\n1 - 0.999 = 0.0001\n\nIf you extended the 9s to infinity, then the difference between 0.999... and 1 would vanish to 0, making them the same.", "If 0.9999... did *not* equal 1, then that means there would have to be some non-zero *difference* between these two numbers. You can look at the series:\n\n    1-0.9   =0.1\n    1-0.99  =0.01\n    1-0.999 =0.001\n    1-0.9999=0.0001\n\nIt should be clear that with each term of the series, the difference gets an order of magnitude smaller. In fact it gets arbitrarily small - choose any positive number, and if you add enough 9s then the difference between 0.9999.. and 1 will be smaller. And there is no limit on how many 9s you can add, because this is an infinite sum. Therefore, 1-0.99999... is smaller than *any positive number* and must therefore be zero. ", "What is the difference between the two?\n\nIf they aren't the same number, then there needs to be a difference when you subtract \"1 - .999...\" but there isn't, because they are the same number.\n\nA few other proofs:  \n\n1/3 is .333....\n\n2/3 is .666...\n\n3/3 is .999....\n\n3/3 is also 1.\n\n", "The way I learned was as follows:\n\n    x=0.9999....\n    100x=99.9999...\n    100x-x=99.9999...-0.9999\n    99x=99\n    x=1\n\nSo x=1 and 0.9999....", "1/3 = 0.333333333 repeating. \n\n0.333333333 repeating x 3= 0.99999999 repeating.\n\n1/3 x 3 = 1\n\nTherefore 0.999999999 repeating = 1", "A slightly different question is \"what does 0.9999... even mean?\". Once we give some meaning to 0.9999... it becomes clear that it is also equal to 1. \n\nThe most common interpretation of 0.9999... is :\n\n9/10 + 9/100 + 9/1000 + 9/10000 + ...\n\nand that means we are gonna have to know a little bit about a series of additions with infinitely many terms... and that can be a tricky and subtle topic. \n\nLuckily this is a pretty simple type of series, it is a *geometric series* with a common ratio that is less than 1 in absolute value. \n\nIn fact, the common ratio for this series is (1/10). Meaning you start with the first term x = 9/10 and just keep multiplying by r = 1/10. \n\n9/10 + 9/100 + 9/1000 + 9/10000 + ...\n\nThe reason we are lucky is that there is a formula for this type of geometric series... \n\n**SUM = (x)/(1-r)**\n\nor in this case\n\nSUM = (9/10)/(1 - 1/10) = (9/10)/(9/10) = 1\n\nSo, since we give meaning to 0.9999... we see that it is just a geometric series and we can find the value of the series by using the formula x/(1-r).", "[This guy](_URL_0_) rules! He's got other cool maths stuff, too.", "use the cauchy sequence construction of the real numbers\n\n0.999... is the sequence 0, 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ....\n\n1 is the sequence 1,1,1,1,1...\n\nthe difference between them is 1, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, ... it tends to zero\n\ntherefore the two cauchy sequences are related by the equivalence relation and they are part of the same equivalence class. As real numbers are equivalence classes of cauchy sequences, they represent the same real number\n\n_URL_0_", "A variety of good explanations already here, so I'm just going to offer a related comment:\n\nIf it \"bothers\" you that the repeating decimal 0.9999.... equals the integer 1, note that the repeating decimal 1.0000... does as well. It's just a by product of the decimal system that decimal representations of numbers are not unique, really no different from the fact that in fraction land 1/2, 2/4, and infinitely many other expressions all represent the same number.", "One third plus one third plus one third equals 1.  One divided by 3 equals 0.3 repeating, and 0.3 repeating plus 0.3 repeating plus 0.3 repeating equals 0.9 repeating.  Therefore 0.9 repeating equals 1.", "Easiest way to visualize it, in my opinion:\n\n10 \u00f7 3 = 3.333...\n\n3.333... \u00d7 3 = 9.999...\n\nWhich equals 10. \n\nA number should always be the same in the end if it's divided and then multiplied by the same number. For the same reason, 0.999... = 1.", "Just want to make sure [Vi Hart](_URL_0_) gets mentioned, because she's always good for math answers. I think everyone has covered everything she says, but she deserves a shout out.", "Because that's just how decimal notation works.  It really has nothing to do with real numbers at all.  Decimals are just one representation of a number.  They're kinda like a map that tells you how to find a number, where each digit gets you one step closer.  If you start looking for the number from the left, your map is going to be 0.999..., whereas if you start looking for the number from the right, your map is going to be 1.000... and then we drop the zeros because we're lazy.\n\nA little less ELI5:\n\nSay we're trying to find the decimal representation of a number between 0 and 1.  Look at the closed interval [0,1] and break it up into 10 equal length pieces, where each piece is another closed interval.  So you have [0, 1/10], [1/10, 2/10], [2/10, 3/10], etc.\n\nYour number is going to be in one of those intervals, right?  Let's say it's in [1/10, 2/10].  Now break this new interval up into 10 more intervals.  Again, your number is going to be in one of those smaller intervals.  Do this infinitely many times and you'll have infinitely many intervals, and they all have exactly one number in common, which is the number you're trying to represent.  Draw it out if that sounds fishy.\n\nTo get a decimal out of this, just label each interval with the numbers 0, 1, 2, ..., 9.  When you find which interval your number is in at any given step, the number it's labelled with is the next digit of the decimal.\n\nSo for 1/2 your first interval is [5/10, 6/10], your second is [50/100, 51/100], third is [500/1000, 501/1000], and so on.  The labels for these are 5, 0, 0, 0, ...  So your decimal is 0.5000...\n\nBUT these are CLOSED intervals!  That means the endpoints are included, which means that you can also find 1/2 in the interval [4/10, 5/10], then in [49/100, 50/100], then in [499/1000, 500/1000], ....  The labels for these are 4, 9, 9, 9, ... so the decimal is 0.4999...\n\nSo you have two maps but, based on the way they're constructed, they obviously lead to the same place.  Then they represent the same number.\n\nEvery number that lands on a point shared by two intervals can be written two ways in decimal notation.  These are numbers whose denominator has prime factors 2 and/or 5.\n\nThis is a work in progress but it might also help:\n_URL_0_\n\nSome people will tell you that 0.999... != 1 in the hyperreals or surreals, but that's not true either.  The number in the surreals that is infinitesimally close to 1 is not 0.999... because 0.999... is still written in decimal notation, and in decimal notation 0.999... = 1 no matter what number system you're using.", "The way i learned to this of this in school was. As the number of 9's increases to infinity the value approaches 1.\n", "All of these responses are cute manipulations that can be useful to motivate something but are not rigorous. It's really subjective. You've seen some of the cute manipulations before, but they don't convince you, and then you see one and it kind of does, but maybe you'll think about it a bit more later and end up unsatisfied. I'll try to give you an understanding of the rigorous way mathematicians talk about this.\n\nThe most common explanation here uses the fact that we agree that 0.333..= 1/3.\n\nThe thing is that if you have a problem with 0.9999.. being one you should also have a problem with 0.33333... being 1/3. Because no matter how far you go, 0.3333 will never be 1/3. 0.3, 0.33, 0.333, 0.3333, etc. are not 1/3, you have to go \"infinitely far\" for it to be a third, kind of like the problem that people have that no matter how you go 0.9999 repeating will not quite be one. \n\nTo rigorously capture the idea of what we mean by infinitely far, we've invented the limit. \n\nWe teach these decimals to elementary schoolers because they discover them by long division (for fun, try dividing 2 by 2, but in the first step instead of writing one put a decimal point, you end up with 0.9999...), but repeating decimals allude to a pretty advanced (high-school - college level depending on how rigorous you want to be) idea, the idea of an infinite series.\n\n0.333333...\n\nJust means 0.3 + 0.03 + 0.003 + ... or an infinite series with first term 0.3 and common ratio 0.1.\n\nSimilarly 0.99999..\n\nMeans 0.9 + 0.09+ 0.009 + ...\n\nFor a finite series, we can find by simple manipulations that the sum of a series with n terms, first term a and common ratio r is a(1-r^n) / (1-r). (These manipulations are of course OK because the series is finite). \n\nHere's the manipulation if you want to see it:\n\na+ar+...+ar^(n-1)= S\n\nar+ar^(2)+...+ar^(n)=Sr\n\nS-Sr=a-ar^n\n\nS=a(1-r^(n))/(1-r)\n\nIf r < 1 and we let n towards infinity, we find that the LIMIT of the sum is a/(1-r) because r^n goes to zero. \n\nWhat does it mean that r^n goes to zero as n approaches infinity? The rigorous definition of something going to zero as n approaches infinity is that eventually, it gets as small as you want. You want all the terms to be less than 0.00001? That happens if you go far enough into the series. \n\nThe confusion is exactly that which leads to Zeno's paradox, and really the fundamental confusion about limits; the exact confusion that limits were invented to resolve. Our definition of limit DODGES the idea of infinity in a way, because we get closer and closer, and we say that we can get as close as we want by going far enough, so for all purposes we can say that, for example, the sum of the whole infinite series is a/(1-r). \n\nFor example, in the series 0.3 + 0.03 + 0.003 +..., if you tell me you want that to be within 0.0001 of 1/3, I can do that! It's really easy to see here, because 0.0001 **0.3333**33..  < - anything past what is bolded is smaller than 0.0001. \n\nThe other common explanations are things like:\n\nx=0.999...\n\n10x=9.9999...\n\n10x-x=9 therefore x=1 !!\n\nWell a lot of manipulations like this do work, even with things like square roots and partial fractions. But you're literally multiplying infinite series by constants and subtracting them and nobody proved that you can do this. In general, actually, these kinds of \"obviously okay\" manipulations can give you contradictions like 1=2. You have to be really careful.\n\nThe people talking about 0.000...1 being an infinitesimal.. Because repeating decimals are infinite series where we specify a number between 0 and 9 inclusive for every natural number (the \"decimal place\") and shove it into the decimal places, what does this mean, does the last 1 go in the spot for the \"biggest\" natural number? Well there isn't one. We are allowed to use repeating decimals in the first place because they correspond to infinite series, which infinite series does this correspond to? You have to specify for every decimal place a digit, and there's no place you can put the 1. \n\nIf on the other hand, you want to talk about the limit of the series, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, ..., a question that is valid, the answer is zero. \n\nYou can use infinitesimals because there are some ways to define them. But if you don't know they're defined, you don't know what you're allowed to do with them! 0.0...1 doesn't correspond to any infinite series, and the only reasonable way to define it as a limit shows it to be zero. This isn't a good way to define infinitesimals, worse, playing around with it will give you some contradictions.\n\nThe people arguing that 0.00...1 is infinitesimal have never actually taken a nonstandard analysis class. There are a couple of ways to define infinitesimals, each with its drawbacks (the ultrafilter definition requires Axiom of Choice, which leads to unsettling results like Banach-Tarski and the hat problem (as well as the issue of using axiom of choice for analysis!), and the nil-squared infinitesimals require you to throw out law of the excluded middle, proof by contradiction, all functions that aren't smooth, and nonconstructive proofs and you need to use intuitionist logic). \n\n\nThere's nothing wrong with the intuitive explanations AT ALL. In fact, they're incredibly important to motivate the idea and give you an idea of why it should be true. Hopefully, seeing the plethora of them should give you an idea of why it should be one. But if you've looked at the explanations, have a bit of an idea of why it should be one but are still unsatisfied, that's what mathematical rigor is for, and I hope to have given you an idea of how mathematics resolves this particular question in this response. If you want a fuller explanation, it'll be explained in the beginning of any analysis or higher-level calculus book, or in the beginning of corresponding classes. Or PM me!", "The way my calculus teacher taught us that blew my mind was that with .9999 repeating, there is no number that you can put in between them (.9999999999999 and 1) and therefore they must be one and the same."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtFBSjNmm0"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_real_numbers#Construction_from_Cauchy_sequences"], [], [], [], ["http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TINfzxSnnIE"], ["http://picklenerd.com/lernin/decimal-expansion/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2kcbtm", "title": "is nodding for 'yes' and shaking the head for 'no' universal? or is it a specific to certain cultures?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kcbtm/eli5is_nodding_for_yes_and_shaking_the_head_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cljx00l", "cljxb8z", "cljxl7d", "cljz4o2", "cljz7z0", "cljz9a5", "cljzdy3", "cljzfg0", "clk0gdj", "clk0ukx", "clk13ha", "clk1to2", "clk5gcp", "clk7mlc", "clkarbb", "clkctx1", "clkedd8"], "score": [172, 23, 107, 29, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["It isn't universal, but it IS extremely common across cultures, with by far the majority of cultures sharing a head nod as an indication of acceptance or agreement and a head shake indicating refusal or disagreement.  One of the common theories as to why this may be is that it comes from how babies use body language to indicate things before they speak.  When they are searching for a nipple to latch on to to get food they will scan up and down, and when they want to refuse food they will move their head to the side.", "I heard some tradition in Bulgaria shakes head for yes and nods for no. \n\nAnd some people from India shakes head for yes too.\n\nIts not universal standard at all. Its culture that makes it different. But its true that its yes-nod and no-shake is widely common thing across the world.", "I work with Indian people at work (from India, not Native Americans).\n\nIt's extremely hard to talk to them because their \"yes\" / \"agreement\" gestures look very much like out \"no\"\n\nTo show \"yes\" they tilt their heads from side to side instead of nodding. Even though I know it means yes, my instincts keep making me feel they disagree with me.\n\nAnyway - it isn't universal.", "We do a nod down yes. And nod up no. From Iran. ", "I'm reminded of this video (_URL_0_) that I've seen a while ago about gestures and how they differ from culture to culture. You'll probably find the end of the video interesting as it talks about head movements in different cultures. ", "I work with a bunch of Bulgarians and whenever they say 'no' they nod up and down and when they say 'yes' they shake their heads sideways. One guy explained to me that it's because you move your hand up and down when writing the 'N' in 'no' and you move your hand sideways when you write the 'S' in 'yes'.\nBut I always had a feeling he was lying to me about this so I don't know how true this is.\n\nEdit: words", "Shaking your head in bulgaria means yes and nodding means no", "While reading all of these answers, I found myself trying to shake my head while saying \"yes\".  Try it; it's hard.  It's like rubbing your head while patting your belly.", "I'm Albanian and in my family it is the opposite, nodding for yes means no and no means yes. ", "Inuit:\nPickle face (puckered mouth, drawn eyebrows): no\n\nSmiley face (raised eyebrows, smile, but mostly just raised eyebrows): yes\n\nSo at least in one culture is an exception.", "I live in Micronesia and a common way to say \"Yes\" is to raise your eyebrows. No other part of the face changes the eyebrows just go up and down once. Took me awhile to catch on to that one, for a long time I thought my students were blatantly ignoring me when I asked them a question. Shaking head and nodding is also understood, but the eyebrows are used more often than nodding, I'd say. ", "You should read Dr Paul Ekman's work, you will learn about universal and non-universal symbols and body language, emotions etc.", "It's definitely not universal.  One of the most frustrating experiences I've had was trying to get a taxi driver to go anywhere in India.  \"Do you know where this is? *Driver shakes head back and forth.* \"Oh.  Alright then. *Moves along to next driver as first driver shouts angrily after me.*\n\nIt turns out that shaking your head can mean \"No\", \"Sure\", \"I don't really care\", and sometimes \"Isn't that strange?\".", "Bulgarian here. We shake for yes and nod for no. Took about three years to lean the other way when I moved to the states.", "FINALLY a question where I can add something. Serbian people nod their heads as a 'no' and shake their heads as a 'yes' - from what I've read in this comment section, they appear to be the only culture that does this.", "Nope! I lived in Turkey for a year and it took me way too long to notice the important difference. There, shaking the head side to side doesn't mean \"no,\" it means \"I don't understand\" or \"I don't follow\" or general confusion. Tilting your head upwards (back) and/or raising your eyebrows indicates \"no.\" Indicating \"yes\" isn't that different from the standard way, but it's typically just a single nod down (rather than up and down, repeatedly)", "I went to Bulgaria recently. You do a single upward nod for no, and a subtle shake of your head for yes. Left me pretty confused at times."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRQSRed58XM"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "hqg18", "title": "Does pelvis width in humans have an appreciable effect on morbidity/mortality associated with birthing? If so, why weren't 'childbearing hips' more strongly selected for?", "selftext": "I get that our upright posture puts a cap on pelvis width, and makes birthing tricky at best, but isn't there a degree of variation within the population, with some mothers getting an easier time of it than others? \n\nIf so, why haven't they outbred the competition?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hqg18/does_pelvis_width_in_humans_have_an_appreciable/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c1xi6uv", "c1xiiwx", "c1xrnbd"], "score": [6, 14, 3], "text": ["_URL_0_ -- there is variation, and the gynecoid pelvis is the most common for women (about 60%). Android/anthropoid pelvises (pelvi?) have a higher percentage of feti that arrest in labor.", "Because the narrower the hips are, the more efficiently you can walk and faster you can run. \n\nThere's a trade-off between easy childbirth versus dying of exhaustion trying to get to the next watering hole or getting caught by hyenas.\n\nWorld-class female runners - \n\n\n\\- _URL_2_ - \n\n\\- _URL_0_ \n\n\\- _URL_1_ - ", "Also keep in mind that during childbirth and really all throughout pregnancy there is a constant release of the hormone relaxin. As it's name implies, it relaxes the joints all around the body (pregnant women are surprisingly flexible as a result). The pelvis is actually 3 bones held together by various joints that aren't fused, so relaxin actually relaxes these joints such that they can actually widen during childbirth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.aps-web.com/projectreview/IV/IV_v5_2010web/OVD_PelvisTypes.jpg"], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/2009_World_Championships_in_Athletics%2C_women_marathon.jpg/398px-2009_World_Championships_in_Athletics%2C_women_marathon.jpg-", "http://blog.oregonlive.com/trackandfield_impact/2009/08/large_ath-goucher.jpg", "http://www.huaxlee.com/Image/2008819052082877801.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "58nav8", "title": "Can dominant traits disappear?", "selftext": "Hello, I have a question regarding dominant traits and genes, as I can understand, a dominant allene, if passed down, will always express the correlated trait in the offspring, even if there is a recessive allene passed down as well, as the Punnett square says.\n\nLet's suppose that we have several individuals with only the recessive allene that little by little take over the rest of the population never breeding with the ones having the dominant trait, so that only the recessive allene is passed down in the end, will the dominant trait eventually disappear completely? Even if there is the case of only the recessive allene present in the population, is it still correct to call it a recessive trait?\n\nAm I missing something?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/58nav8/can_dominant_traits_disappear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d91wg4c", "d91wmul", "d94uy0q"], "score": [8, 14, 3], "text": ["The part your missing is why we refer to it as recessive. It has nothing to do with the proportion of that allele in the population, only how the inheiratance works (i.e. how genotype leads to phenotype).\n\nBeing \"recessive\" doesn't mean it is \"uncommon\". I think the problem is that you are blending in the non-scientific connotations of the word \"recessive\". ", "Are you saying the individuals that are recessive [aa] **never breed** with the individuals that have the dominant trait [AA] or [Aa]?\n\nIf that is the case, then the only way for [aa] to take over the population is for [aa] to fundamentally out-compete [AA] and [Aa] and push them out of the ecosystem or push them to extinction. Which *can* happen. Absolutely that can happen. \n\nOnce the allele [A] goes extinct, then there is no point in referring to [a] as recessive if there is no variant allele that is dominant over it. But if a mutation arises that creates a new dominant [A^new ] then [a] could reasonably be referred to as a recessive allele again. \n\n", "Something to remember is that dominant trait doesn't mean it's a beneficial trait. It means that a certain trait will always express itself in the presence of other allele.\n\nFollowing a simple distribution of two alleles, *A* and *a*, where *A* is dominant and *a* is recessive, we have the following possible pairings: *AA*, *Aa*, which will express *A*, and *aa*, which is the only instance where *a* will be expressed. *AA* and *aa* are called homozygous (zygote with same alleles), *Aa* is called heterozygous (zygote with different alleles). \n\nIn your scenario, the recessive homozygous, *aa* take over the population and never with either *AA* or *Aa*. That can happen if the dominant trait happens to be a [dominant lethal](_URL_0_), where the dominant trait effectively kills the individual. An example of that would be [Huntington's disease](_URL_1_). But it can happen for other reasons, for example, the dominant trait expresses red coloration in a bird, which makes it more evident for predators, leading it to extinction.\n\nWhen the homozygous takes over the population, it is known as [fixation](_URL_2_). In that case, the recessive is still called recessive, it isn't a matter of abundance, but a matter of expression. If we were to introduce the *A* allele to that fixed population, *A* would still express over *a*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_allele#Dominant_lethals", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%27s_disease#Genetics", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_\\(population_genetics\\)"]]}
{"q_id": "1ixgth", "title": "Why would Polysporin be recommended for wound care after a punch biopsy but not Neosporin?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ixgth/why_would_polysporin_be_recommended_for_wound/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb8zv5o"], "score": [5], "text": ["Neomycin has a high incidence of contact allergy - this is the ingredient that isn't found in polysporin and is why this brand exists :)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3h4llq", "title": "how does a touchscreen work?", "selftext": "And how does it know if you're using a finger or not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4llq/eli5_how_does_a_touchscreen_work/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu45z27", "cu47r0o", "cu49pcl", "cu4aica", "cu4aq3j", "cu4b00o", "cu4c2ec", "cu4izmf", "cu4j5ji", "cu4kqad", "cu4l0n1", "cu4l3rn", "cu4lwta", "cu4mkgn", "cu4pjnd", "cu4pnsg"], "score": [5567, 8, 855, 66, 22, 7, 247, 6, 5, 2, 5, 6, 3, 4, 31, 10], "text": ["There are several different types of touchscreens. The two that you're probably most familiar with are resistive and capacitive.\n\nResistive touchscreens, which are used in Nintendo's products and pre-iPhone PDAs and smartphones have flexible plastic screens. When you push on the screen, you squeeze multiple layers together and this completes an electric circuit.\n\nMost modern smartphones use capacitive touchscreens. These touchscreens are made of glass. When you touch the screen with your hand, you distort the electric field in the screen and it can measure where that change took place. Insulators, like plastic or most fibers, won't distort the field so the screen won't recognize them. \"Smartphone gloves\" have metal fibers woven into the fingertips to make the screen notice them. ", "Is this at all similar to those novelty plasma balls? ", "The top answer is a great ELI5, but I'll see if I can go into more details while keeping it simple. \n\nSo the most common form of touchscreens these days is \"capacitive\" touchscreens. What does that mean? That they use capacitors! Now capacitors are this weird thing where you can store electricity in two things that are *close but not touching*. \n\nThe classical example is two metal plates separated by air. It turns out that the electric field between them can store energy, and the closer they are together, the more energy they store. \n\nThe \"plates\" don't have to be metal, though, they can be anything conductive. Like skin!\n\nSo what your phone has is a bunch of half-capacitors. It has only one of the two conductive plates, and those plates are hidden behind the screen. The magic comes when you use your finger to be the *other half* of the capacitor!\n\nSo remember how I said that the closer the plates are to each other, the more energy they store? Your phone is constantly charging/discharging its plates (it has a big grid of them), and figuring out which take more energy to charge. Because the ones that take more energy have something conductive near them (your finger)!\n\nAs I said earlier, there's no contact between the two plates, so you don't have to be touching your phone for it to sense your finger. It's just calibrated at the factory so that you're *most likely* touching it when it notices a \"tap\". \n\nLikewise, other conductive things will work. Sausages are a good example, but metal coins will work too (careful about scratching your screen, though). \n\nThey really are a pretty cool piece of technology, I hope this explanation helped. ", "On top of this, why do rain drops on the screen make me phone freak out? ", "[Here's](_URL_0_) an excellent video that explains it.\n\nTL;DW: When electricity flows through a wire, it creates an electric field around it. When your finger comes close to the wire, some of that charge transfers to your finger and causes the voltage in the wire to decrease. Smartphone screens have a grid made of wires, and when you touch the screen, you phone can figure out the coordinated of where you tapped by looking at which horizontal wire had a voltage drop and which vertical wire had a voltage drop", "Depends on the touchscreen. However most work through a very simple mechanism, regardless of their differences.\n\nEver see a grid? Like grid paper. Now imagine the grid itself was wires instead. Now imagine they are all separated from each other, so all the wires going horizontal are above the ones going vertical. \n\nIf you pushed down on the paper in a certain spot, the top wires contact the bottom. However only in a very specific spot, so the phone sees a signal or a circuit sent down Horizontal 15, and comes back on vertical 15, thus it knows the position is 15,15.\n\nThat's pretty much it. The wires are extremely thin, can't see them and or in some cases screen is above them. Sometimes it's an impact screen where literally pushing two layers together makes contact, or it's capacitive (Most touch screens in phones) where the layers are in contact and always charged, and your finger near the screen has it's own magnetic field, the closer to the wires changes the circuit, so the phone sees a disturbance and recognizes 15,15 is the best location for where you are hitting. They seem to be both more accurate and best to use.", "Have you ever touched your finger to a stereo plug?\n\nIt gives a little hum when it is in contact with your skin, that you don't get when you touch it to a table, for example.\n\nThe electrical **Capacitance** of a human body is very particular.\n\nImagine that you have a Battleship board, with these little plugs sticking out, instead of the pegs.\n\nEach is connected to a stereo labelled with the coordinates of the plug. When someone touches it, you can tell if they're using their body, based on whether it hums.   \nYou can tell where they're touching it, based on which stereo makes the hum.\n\nThis is essentially how \"Capacitive\" touch phones work, except that you can't see the plugs, and there are a lot more of them, than there are on our Battleship board.", "related question, why does it often seem that cracking my screen, even severely, not have any effect on its touch accuracy?", "I would like to ask a (probably) related question: how does a wacom pen and tablet work?", "Fun fact: if you turn your phone screen off and hold it at an angle with a bright light shining on it (like the sun), you can see the little grid that pinpoints your touchy-bits \n\nAlso your body gives off a small electrical charge, which is what's used to disrupt capacitive phone screens when touched.", "Was it explained how touch screens work in *glove mode*? It seems to register pressure, like *blah* explained in resistive touchscreens. I've used it, but its accuracy is wonky.", "There are millions of tiny people standing on the screen. Holding cards of color. When you touch them, they flip the card to the right color . ", "There are many different types of technology but I'll just explain the most common type that is in almost all phones.\n\nThere is a nearly invisible grid of wires imbedded in the screen. Half the wires go side to side and the other half go up and down. Where these wires overlap they come very close to touching but don't quite touch.\n\nA tiny amount of electricity is applied to each of the lines going in one direction (the up-down lines for example) many times a second. These are the \"Send\" lines.\n\nWhen a finger touches the screen it forms a grounding effect that pulls some of the electricity from the sending wire and some of that ends up on the wire going in the other direction.\n\nA chip measures the amount of electricity on those lines going in the other direction (the \"Read\" lines) many times a second. When it sees a spike of electricity it knows that the line that it read from was touched. Because each \"Send\" line is charged differently it is also able to tell which line the electricity started on.\n\nNow that it knows the two lines going in each direction it knows where on the screen the touch happened.", "Capacitive sceens work by measuring your body's capacitance. \n\nCapacitance is how much charge your body can store. Different materials have different capacitance. Also depending if the are grounded or not.\n\nWhen you approach your finger to a positively charged plate the electrons in your body are attracted to that body and move to that area. Now if you have that plate connected to electronics that can measure the micro disturbances in the plates you can determine if the capacitance of the object close to the plate. By calibrating those electronics now have a sensor that knows if there is an object with capacitance of a finger close or away from the plate. Now if you make the plate small enough and put a grid of them **under** a glass panel you know under which sensor there is a finger and under in what there is not. The rest is software.\n\nIn reality the sensors actually used are more complicated but they are still sensors that measure the capacitance of the object on the other side of a glass.\n", "To answer your largely-ignored second question, it definitely doesn't know if you're using your finger.\n\n--\nSource: My dick.", "Reading through a lot of these comments are wrong so I just want to clear things up. There are no electrical contacts at all and it has nothing to do with electrical signals from your muscles. \n\nCapacitive touch is simply a flat piece of metal. By rapidly charging and discharging this plate and measuring the charge/ac current you can determine the capacitance. This single plate does not have much capacitance by itself. When you bring a finger close to this plate you increase the capacitance of the plate by creating an electro static field between your finger and the plate. \n\nA touch screen has rows and columbs of long thin plates. When you bring your finger to the screen you are increasing the capacitance of 2 seperate plates a row and a columb. But you are also increasing the capacitance of neaboring plates. Your phone may only have 40 rows and 30 columbs but it can determine where your finger is between plates. So say your finger is halfway between row 25 and 26 and directly on column 16. Your phone would measure 3 plates having a significantly higher capacitance compared to the other 67."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyCE2h_yjxI&amp;feature=iv&amp;src_vid=5fOI-EQCOOQ&amp;annotation_id=annotation_558874"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7nilu0", "title": "how is putin so rich and why is no one suspicious?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nilu0/eli5_how_is_putin_so_rich_and_why_is_no_one/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds21ts9", "ds222ln", "ds224is", "ds22kf5", "ds242ca", "ds26lag", "ds26qv3"], "score": [73, 16, 64, 16, 28, 4, 2], "text": ["1. Corruption and he's ex-KGB, he knows where the bodies are buried and isn't afraid to add to them.\n\n2. See #1.", "There are worlds of people that are suspicious of him.  And he is so rich because he inherited a ton of information and connections from his old KGB job and was absolutely ruthless as hell exploiting them.", "Yeah to the fear factor noted.\n\nBut more fundamentally, why don't *we* seem to care that Senators become multi-millionaires while in office? Except for Joe Biden and I've never been absolutely sure that's because he's honest, or just stupid.", "No one is \"suspicious\" because everyone knows that he has managed the standard dictator maneuver, of:\n\n 1) knowing where the money is hidden \n\n2) using the majority of it to pay off the people essential to keeping him in power \n\n3) Siphoning off a chunk of the rest of it to live in luxury and hopefully have a lavish lifestyle when he falls out of power and has to run to a neutral country", "He's rich because he pretty much IS Russia at this point. Everything must go through him and he takes a percentage of all business.\n\nIt'd be the same as a mob boss being in charge of a country.\n\nAnd everyone who is outside of the Fox propaganda cone knows it.", "There's no need for suspicion, everybody knows.\n\nPeople are just too scared to do anything about it, as they should be.\n\nIt's his country, he's the Emperor.  It's not like this is a new concept.", "There is no single reason, and many suspicions are raised. But historically, when USSR collapsed, many state-owned industries like oil or mineral mines were privatized and granted to high-ranking party members (incl Putin, kgb) and he and many other oligarchs capitalized on their newfound wealth and power by working together politically to protect their assets. After decades of continued corruption, consolidation, and cooperation, the oligarchs still control Russia. Putin may be singular in his wealth and power, but there are many of his ilk, who thrive under his protection, and so his reign is very stable. \n\nHe may or may not be the worlds best blackmail artist, and was known even early in his career for his cunning. This collectively silenced opposition that wasn\u2019t outright destroyed by his police and military forces (see Ukraine). \n\nAs far as the question of trump and collusion, I believe DT may feasibly be an unwitting agent of Putin, handled by multiple advisors with more direct connections to the kremlin. There are many dirty fingerprints on his administration and our nations\u2019 politics, and indictments have already happened in relation to the ongoing investigation. DT is an easy candidate for manipulation because of his defiant compulsions and egomaniacal worldview. Putin\u2019s take from winning this hand is a USA too distracted internally to continue to progress technologically, culturally, etc, while other countries grow. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33q9n5", "title": "how did detroit become the undesirable city that it is now?", "selftext": "I heard it was like any other large cities back in early history. Why is it the only large city that turned out with the most crimes and negative stereotypes?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33q9n5/eli5_how_did_detroit_become_the_undesirable_city/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqndbk3", "cqngieq", "cqnjm9j", "cqnk4al", "cqnquqt", "cqnrf45", "cqnx4ko"], "score": [33, 2, 4, 11, 15, 3, 2], "text": ["The city was built and supported by the growing auto industry. In the 70's and 80's a lot of external factors (rising prices, competition, new labor laws etc) forced most of the car companies to change their business models/move somewhere else. This means a lot of the manufacturing plants in Detroit were shut down and all of a sudden you had a large percentage of the population unemployed with nowhere to go. The cities economy started to suffer and has never fully recovered back to the state it was in in it's glory days.\n\nThere's a lot more to it than that, people have written entire books on the decline of Detroit. There's a lot of socioeconomic analysis that can be put into it, but that's the basics.", "Lots of other cities are like Detroit.  All over the Rust Belt there's cities just like Detroit where half of the population has left since their populations peaked in the 1950's.  Workers leave the city, taking with them large amounts of tax money, but for people on public assistance there isn't that financial pressure to move.", "Detroit is basically what NYC would be if wall street left, and there was a better port a few hundred miles away.\n\nThe auto industry declined and Chicago is a better shipping destination in modern times.", "The Detroit Free Press ran a pretty good in-depth [explanation](_URL_0_).\n\nTL;DR Suburbanization, Deindustrialization, Taxes, Legacy Costs, Kwame and several inept city councils", "This has been answered, quite well, previously here so I will repost /u/iheartbbq's comment seen [here](_URL_0_). \n\nFrom their post:\n\nI keep this around for just such an occasion:\n\n* Detroit is founded in 1701 as a trading outpost on the edge of the Detroit River, first main terminus on the westward expansion. \n\n* Detroit rises in power as a logging hub, the vast deciduous and northern coniferous forest are leveled and shipped by boat back east, creating the original fortunes of the city.\n\n* The late 1800s saw a growing city often called the Paris of the West. Major building projects began in the city's hub and rail lines were routed to Detroit from the east through Canada and out to Chicago. The lumber barons were investing in real estate and the architecture of the time reflects magnificently. The hub and spoke road system is adopted, but crucially is not rigidly adhered to. Main line roads radiate from the downtown hub, but secondary roundabouts and opposite diagonals are not constructed. \n\n* At the turn of the century, the auto industry explodes. Albert Kahn creates an architectural model still in use today that allows for rapid construction of space-efficient factories. Factories are built almost as fast as they can be. At this point, Detroit begins installing a street car system on its main line roads. Henry Ford establishes the $5 day. Ford is viciously anti-union and rumblings of union formation at the time are knocked down by Ford's generous pay levels. Word spreads and poor black southerners begin moving to Detroit in droves. The city housing stock explodes to accommodate this new population and vast tracts of land become identical row houses all built in the 1910-20 era. \n\n* The first section of roadway is paved with concrete in Detroit on the Woodward corridor. As poorly maintained and expensive brick and dirt roads give way to durable concrete roads, more people begin using cars and the auto industry continues expansion.\n\n* Prohibition hits Detroit hard. The city's proximity to Canada encourages illicit importation of alcohol and a vast underground of speakeasies. Organized crime takes hold in Detroit and the City government becomes corrupted. Government culture shifts towards bribery and intimidation. \n\n* By the start of WWII, Detroit is economically the most powerful city in the country. Its companies are making money on both cars and foreign military equipment contracts. When the US enters the war, all manufacturers are retasked to produce \"the arsenal of Democracy\" tanks, planes, military trucks, etc roll out of Detroit's factories and while many other cities suffer under rations, Detroit profits. Due to the draft, many of the factory workers are at war and although 2.5M African Americans registered for the draft, a maximum of 700,000 were declared fit and served at any given time. Due to the economic opportunity in the factories, even more African Americans moved to Detroit. \nFollowing the war, the imbalance in certain government contracts meant some companies had advanced technology relevant to consumer markets while others did not. Ford and General Motors benefited greatly with technologies applicable to passenger cars while Packard and Chrysler struggled after receiving mostly airplane-related contracts. Returning GIs found a city with an increasingly black racial makeup and racial tensions began escalating. \n\n* By the 1950s Detroit was at the height of its population with 1.8M, but violence became endemic owing to racism and government corruption. By this time the Teamsters, UAW and various Gangsters had staggering political influence and were bending the laws to the benefit of labor and detriment of business. The Eisenhower Freeway System comes to Detroit and slices the city to shreds. The highly inefficient hub-and-spoke road system means regular cross-city transit is very slow. The freeway system is routed indiscriminately through poor and immigrant neighborhoods. Whole neighborhoods are demolished or cut in two, fragmenting the entrenched communities. It is very obvious that rich cities are carefully routed around. This sows deep seeds of resentment amongst poorer Detroiters. The completed freeway system allows for living in outlying towns formerly too far for a practical commute. Automobile ownership soars and ridership on the street cars plummets, by 1956 the street car lines are closed. 180,000 Detroiters have left by 1960. Chrysler issues major layoffs in 1961. Packard goes out of business and the mile long Packard Plant closes. \n\n* It's a hot summer day in 1967. A police raid on an illegal bar escalates to police brutality and African American retaliation. The incident was the match that lit the fuse on a powder keg. Five days of rioting left the city decimated. 43 dead, 1189 injured, more than 7000 arrests, and more than 2000 buildings destroyed. The riots were viewed by whites as a sign of things to come and what had been a slow stream of whites leaving the city for the suburbs exploded to a flood. White flight was in full effect. By 1980 470,000 Detroiters have left. \n\n* The Coleman Young era is a city descending into madness. Rapid depletion of the city population, an incredibly inept and corrupt government, and the rise of crack cocaine as the street drug of choice lead to extreme violence. Although the police force is up, the police are not much better than the criminals. Young is known to have had shady dealings with a great number of organizations, but no police organization will investigate him. It is during this era that massive projects are undertaken to attempt city revitalization. The Renaissance Center, People Mover and Joe Louis Arena included. One of the most controversial was the completion of the Poletown Plant, a GM plant built after the mayor evicted a large portion of neighborhood and razed it. Considerable city funds were directed away from fundamentals and towards these ends. The effects of these large projects were fragmentation of neighborhoods and bad blood between residents and the government-business partnerships. In 1989, the iconic Michigan Central Station closes. A city income tax on residents, workers, and businesses is established to supplement dropping property tax revenues.\n\n* 1994, the North American Free Trade Act passes. Ross Perot's prediction is correct and the biggest [sucking sound](_URL_2_) in the country is centered right over Detroit. The auto industry races to set up \"maquiladora\" along the border of Mexico. These towns are little more than dusty villages but in five years they'd be filled with factories churning out subassemblies with zero value added tax or tariffs imposed. Local suppliers and large specialized sub-assembly plants in Detroit begin closing, labor rates in Mexico under $2 an hour which puts American workers out of competition. The same model will be applied when China woos manufacturers in the 2000s, but their ~75 cent labor rates are even more enticing. (*thanks for the section suggestion [u/y2knole](_URL_1_)*)\n\n* By the late 90s projects to restore downtown begin. Massive sporting arenas (Ford Field and Comerica park) are constructed while neighborhoods continue being hollowed out. The renovation of downtown continues through the early 2000s and defunct neighborhoods such as Brush Park and Corktown are being purchased by speculators. The city government is heavily in debt, however in 2003 it's not running deficits. As the city enters the new millennium, its population is below 1M for the first time since the 1920s\n\n* The housing and banking crisis cripples the city. Rising property values plummet and speculators and developers pull out. The city pushes on with ambitious riverfront projects hoping to lure citizens downtown. Automakers and suppliers lay off thousands and the city's revenue disintegrates. Jefferson North plant closes. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is indicted on corruption charges. The police force is sliced down and police respond primarily to violent crime calls only. A series of police commissioners are fired following corruption investigations.\n\n* Mayor Dave Bing is elected and his straight-talking, no baloney style chafes city council. The new mayor proposes bold plans to bring the city finances in line with its receipts, including closing down sections of the city and relocating population, selling or leasing Belle Isle, and restructuring the city charter. All are shot down following political infighting. Downtown development has been successful and the downtown district is now a major entertainment location. Investors are buying and renovating major downtown structures formerly vacant. Some downtown neighborhoods are at 100% occupancy, however this effect is concentrated and vast stretches remain vacant and essentially urban prairie. Jefferson North plant re-opens and GM invests heavily in the nearby Hamtramck plant. Special economic zones such as TechTown are centers of innovation. Outlying neighborhoods slowly disintegrate and scrapping rages out of control. Vacant homes in these areas are stripped of plumbing, HVAC, and wiring within days of becoming empty, rendering them essentially useless for market sale. The population is below 700,000 in spite of urban renewal in concentrated areas. \n\n* The Governor of the state declares the city in a financial emergency and appoints Kevyn Orr as emergency financial manager, effectively rendering Detroit's elected government impotent. Orr analyzes the city finances and offers a 10 year budget plan the council accepts (although primarily a ceremonial vote). Orr files bankruptcy proceedings, which are currently being adjudicated. \n", "To be slightly pedantic, when you use the superlative \"most\" you can only have one of whatever you are discussing. \n\nThere are actually /lots/ of big cities that have experienced all of the problems of that Detroit has. After all, right now not many people are saying nice things about Gary, Indiana (it's population is 1/2 what it used to be!). It also isn't new, in the 70's there was a pamphlet called Welcome to Fear City that was about what a craphole NYC was. Detroit stands out because of the huge contrast between what it is now compared to what it used to be, but it isn't unique except in its scope: it lost more people in absolute numbers than any other major american city. 1.1 million fewer people live there now. It also comes in second in terms of percentage loss at 61.4%. \n\nOne of the other issues that hasn't been brought up is the role of redlining. Racist housing policy created large swaths of slums and blighted ghettos where poverty, crime, lack of education, and chaos were endemic. People who could afford to move away from inner city slums did so, which deprived the city of taxes and worsened the condition of the city, which prompted more people to leave, creating a vicious cycle of poverty - >  white flight - >  more poverty. This got even worse with the decline of US manufacturing. The book \"The Origins of the Urban Crisis\" covers this process is great detail. \n\n ", "1. Detroit isn't the only city with negative stereotypes, just the largest one, and the one with the most black people. I'd be willing to bet that those two factors contribute to its reputation.\n\n2. The sharp decline of the population has decimated the tax base, and the residents who do live here can't afford the taxes either. Taxes are the lifeblood of city income. \n\n3. Terrible mismanagement, from the Mayor's office down. This is turning around with the current mayor. \n\n4. The decline of the auto industry dealt a huge blow to the city, as it was built by the automobile, and the automobile by it. \n\nCrime, high cost of living, and the city's reputation are three main factors that slow and deter the city's comeback. This is turning around though, starting from downtown and (hopefully) spreading to the residential areas.\n\nMy source? Lifelong Detroiter. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://archive.freep.com/interactive/article/20130915/NEWS01/130801004/Detroit-Bankruptcy-history-1950-debt-pension-revenue"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r6f8w/eli5_americans_what_exactly_happened_to_detroit_i/", "http://www.reddit.com/user/y2knole", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_sucking_sound"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ro752", "title": "why it takes longer to heat up two hot pockets in a microwave than one.", "selftext": "Same applies to any food, obviously. I just happen to be consuming a hot pocket currently while staring vacantly at the instructions.  And does the same effect apply to normal ovens at all?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ro752/eli5_why_it_takes_longer_to_heat_up_two_hot/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c47bxt4", "c47c8t1", "c47d4tl"], "score": [30, 72, 22], "text": ["Because the microwave puts out the same amount of heat per second regardless of what's in it, and you're asking it to heat up twice as much food. \n\n", "A conventional oven that heats up everything inside an oven including air, the oven sides, etc.  That's quite a waste of heat but if you put one or two hot pockets in the oven, you won't see much of a difference.\n\nA microwave oven is much more efficient, which is why it's fast. It only sends energy to food you put in it.  Its energy output is limited though, so the more food you put in it, the less energy each part is getting.", "It's the same reason that one towel shared with two people doesn't dry as efficiently. \n\nThe microwave puts out the same amount of energy regardless of what's inside, and more mass takes more energy to heat up. same reason that it would take forever to boil a gallon of water with a BIC lighter. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "iaf8g", "title": "can a material get hotter than the heat from the heat source applied to it?", "selftext": "I you have a gas flame of X temperature heating material Y can the material reach higher temperature than X?", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iaf8g/can_a_material_get_hotter_than_the_heat_from_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c226kjq", "c226pv2", "c226r89", "c227i29", "c227qwh", "c2296yk"], "score": [11, 22, 2, 6, 2, 2], "text": ["No. Heat always flows from higher to lower temperatures, so as soon as they hit equal temperature there will be no net heat transfer.", "Sure, if the heat triggers some kind of chemical reaction inside it.\n\nPerhaps some non-chemical reactions too -- like if you counted a charged capacitor as a \"material\" and your heat source caused it to short out internally.\n\nBut short of some reaction in your material, no, it won't get hotter.", "I'm not sure if these count since material Y is technically changing physically, and I can't find the right words for how I want to say this, but I have the following questions:\n\nWhat if a physical reaction took place? Is it possible then, where somehow a small increase in internal energy made some sort of an adjustment in the energy terms (I haven't had thermo yet, but maybe entropy?) and the total energy of the material increased where the temperature was able to increase a lot, but another part of the energy term decreased as to balance total energy? Does that make sense? I know some materials heat up when you bend them, which seems odd, and I was wondering if that could be extrapolated where instead of bending them you just initially heated them up a small amount.\n\nAnother thing, what about radioactive materials below the critical mass? If you increase the environmental temperature of a radioactive material, will the small increase in temperature create a stable, but more active, \"chain reaction\" event where the radioactive material erodes more quickly, which I think makes it hotter, but not to the point where it creates a huge nuclear explosion?\n\nBecause clearly chemical reactions exist where the leftover material would get hotter after the reaction. I'm not sure if there are physical reactions that exist where the material can also get hotter, but not change chemically.", "If all you're talking about is placing two materials together and establishing an equilibrium, the only way either material would reach a higher temperature is if it started a chemical/nuclear reaction.\n\nYou can achieve a much higher temperature by compressing a gas though, without actually having to add energy to it using a higher temperature material. In this case the energy added to the material comes from either the work done on the system by a compressor, or the enthalpy of gas forced into the system.", "_URL_0_\n\nThe accepted laws of the universe say no, my friend.", "Yes and no. If the source is in contact then no (except for the reaction as mentioned by RMXZ or sometimes briefly due to phase transition )\n\nYes if the source is a radiation and the object is not in direct contact. You can increase the temperature of the solid heated by an high intensity laser in vacuum. There are certain conditions where you would \"accumulate\" more energy over time than the energy lost by radiation or conduction(since its in vacuum). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics#Clausius_statement"], []]}
{"q_id": "176wwb", "title": "if north korea was to fire a nuke at the us right now, what would be done about it", "selftext": "how would the US stop it, could they even? What would they do in retaliation.?", "document": "", "subreddit": "explainlikeimfive", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/176wwb/eli5_if_north_korea_was_to_fire_a_nuke_at_the_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c82r1r6", "c82r27b", "c82r5dl", "c82r8sz", "c82rv9r", "c82t1uk", "c82ur1d", "c833sa3", "c836lys"], "score": [39, 6, 12, 4, 7, 22, 10, 2, 2], "text": ["Starting tomorrow, we wouldn't have to call it \"South\" Korea anymore.", "Bye bye North Korea.", "I suspect the US has the capabilities to defend against certain (limited) attempts at dropping a warhead on US soil.  I don't know if we advertise this capability, but nuclear weapons have been around for a while, especially anything NK would have, I imagine a lot of money would be spent on protecting against singular strikes like this.\n\nAssuming we couldn't do anything we would probably hit NK with multiple strikes all over their country from nuclear submaries we likely have parked very close to North Korea.  It could probably happen in minutes.", "The US would likely take steps to destroy the nuke via our defense network, and we would declare war and be attacking later that day.\n\nAs to stopping the bomb we would launch intercept missiles at it and shoot it down in mid flight. The US also has very powerful chemical lasers that can be used to destroy incoming ordinance depending on where it is headed. ", "My guess is that the missle would either explode shortly after liftoff, obliterating much of the surrounding area. Or it would fall into the ocean somewhere.\n\nAnd the rest of the world would facepalm.", "It will fall into the ocean\n\nNK doesn't have the kind of missiles to launch a nuke that far.", "I guess i can answer this one, it is my job.  Anyways, the US has a system in place called [Balistic Missile Defense](_URL_1_) that is based out of naval ships stationed around world.  They will detect the launch and shore sites will track missles fired and we will shoot them out of space with [SM3](_URL_2_) missiles.  Here is a [video](_URL_0_) of it.  Then we would declare complete war and take them out losing south Korea in the process.", "I really want Jeffrey from [ArmsControlWonk](_URL_0_) to answer this question because (1) nothing on that blog is ELI5 and (2) he knows what he's talking about, whereas everything else I've read here is wild speculation.", "It would probably be called the Obama Doctrine.\n\nFor every nuclear weapon detonated in an attack on the United States, we will answer by making the attacking country glow in the dark."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PnQVmqy64U", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defense_System", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_Missile_3"], ["http://armscontrolwonk.com/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3qduzr", "title": "(Economics) How do we accurately measure a standard of living?", "selftext": "Is there a true method to measuring a certain standard of living? If so, what are some of the independent variables used in measuring it? How is standard of living defined? These questions have left me puzzled and curious. Don't know if i came to the right place.", "document": "", "subreddit": "askscience", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3qduzr/economics_how_do_we_accurately_measure_a_standard/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwege8c", "cwej0b1", "cwel44j"], "score": [5, 2, 2], "text": ["I think HDI is the most common these days.\n\n > The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.\n\n_URL_0_", "You're correct that standard of Living is quite a vague concept, and the standard can differ greatly between countries, regions or cultures.\n\nBut if we have to measure standard of living, we often look at a country's economic activity (ie GDP / PPP per capita). You'll also want to look at inequality (Gini coefficient) if you do so, as the economic activity will probably be concentrated in the upper class, thus the measurement cannot reflect the true standard of living of the majority.\n\nA more advance method would be combining few factors together to get a aggregated index. The popular one would be HDI, which looks at education and life expectancy besides income.", "One oft-used concept that forms part of a standard of living comparison is using a *basket of goods* or *commodity bundle*. A bit simplified, you would find a cross-section of goods and services, and measure their price. These are basically field observations, and are used (in part) when tracking inflation and comparing economies. \n\nBy measuring the price of these goods at the same time in different countries or areas, you can compare standard of living between them and say what you can get for a standard wage. This is why, when you go on the Wikipedia page for a country, you'll see one entry for *nominal* and one for *PPP* or purchasing power parity. If nominal is higher than PPP, it basically means that the basket of goods is more expensive, so even though you have more money in dollar amounts, you can buy less with it. Using [Switzerland](_URL_1_) as an example, we'll see that they have a relatively high nominal GDP per capita of $84000, whereas the GDP (PPP) is $58000 \u2013 indicating that while the GDP is high, prices for goods and services is also high, meaning that what you can really buy for your money is just above what you can get in the US (with a GDP per capita of $54000). \n\nIf you measure the price of these goods and services in the same country but one year apart, you've began creating a [consumer price index](_URL_2_).\n\nAt the end of the day, you could measure the price of this basket of goods in say the US and India, and conclude that the average person in the US can buy a lot more with a normal wage than the average Indian, even if the income converted to dollars can give you a different picture. That can give you one indication of standard of living.\n\nOf course, there are many more things to measure, like access to healthcare, education, crime rates, life expectancy, and so on. The [Human Development Index](_URL_0_) includes some of these factors and is one of the most used standard of living indexes, and the purchasing power measurements described above is part of that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index"]]}